“He called us the ‘First Ones,’” Egil said, passing the bottle of cider to Cain. “Back then, things were still good between us, and we thought we would become heroes, leaders of a new Sanctuary based on the Horadric principles we had embraced. At least, some of us did. But he’d based everything on his own corrupted vision. He called himself royalty, had some idea he was descended from a powerful mage. He even showed us a crest that was supposedly from his family, although we had understood him to be an orphan. We had no idea that he had fallen so far.”
“What do you mean, fallen?”
Egil sighed, looking at Lund, who avoided his gaze. It was as if the big man was ashamed—which, Cain thought, might not be far from the truth.
“Dark magic,” Egil said. “We did not see it at first. We followed him blindly. He led us on more quests to find artifacts, received prophetic visions of ancient sites to explore. He instilled faith in us, even during several excursions that led to actual demon encounters, which he always handled with ease. He knew the right spells, and they would yield to him. But with each new artifact he found, he grew more powerful, his intentions darker, his obsession with the dark arts more intense. Members of our order began to disappear and then return changed, completely loyal and obedient to Garreth. He began to talk of a new vision for the Horadric tenets, holding daily lecture sessions about the future of the order.
“He believed that the original Horadrim were wrong about the nobility of Tyrael and his intentions. He spoke derisively about the archangel, who formed the Horadrim but never directly combated the Prime Evils, after all. Instead, Tyrael used the mages to do the brunt of the work, Rau told us. Why couldn’t this powerful angel do battle himself, he would ask? Was humanity truly more powerful than the angels? Why were the angels considered any better than the Prime Evils, when they judge humanity so harshly?
“He spoke of humanity in the same way. Humans were inherently evil, he said, worse even than the creatures of the Burning Hells. Look how they treated each other, he said, the weakest of them, those who could not defend themselves, beaten down and destroyed like cattle. The time would come when a new order would arise to lead Sanctuary, and all those who did not embrace it would be gone. He began to insist we call him master. He had a tower built for himself in secret on the edge of the sea, by people—or other things—we never saw. It went up nearly overnight, through some kind of black magic.”
So Garreth Rau had become the Dark One. It didn’t surprise Cain, not really; he’d begun to suspect it since Jeronnan’s story of the scholars’ arrival in Gea Kul and their leader’s strange disappearance. Still, it was unsettling to know that one who had studied the ways of the Horadrim so closely could have been so terribly consumed with hatred.
“The prophecies have foretold it,” Cain said. “One of the Lesser Evils of Hell had corrupted him.”
Egil nodded, his strangely pale eyes somber. “It was Lund who discovered the final truth.”
Cain looked at the big man, who had stopped smiling, his gaze suddenly wary. “Don’t like to talk about that,” Lund mumbled, looking away.
“But we have to,” Egil said gently. He turned to Cain. “Rau had taken to leaving our meeting place by that time, and he was gone for longer and longer periods. He had Lund run errands. Lund traveled to the Black Tower to bring him some texts and witnessed a blood ritual. A . . . sacrifice of another member of our order. Garreth had made a secret pact with the Burning Hells. Somehow, through his studies he had found a connection.”
“Blood,” Lund muttered, his hands nervously working at a seam in his tunic. “Too much of it. Didn’t like that at all.”
Egil made a soothing motion, and Lund seemed to relax a little. “There was . . . a sacrifice. We tried to bring Garreth to his senses, but it was too late. He had been lost to his darkness, perverting what he had learned from the Horadric texts and following the very demons that he had once sworn to defend Sanctuary against.
“After that, our eyes were opened. We realized we had to escape or be destroyed by what was coming. We managed to get away under the cover of night and ended up here, in these caves. The few texts we managed to bring with us pointed to the arrival of a man who would save us from the darkness we faced. We’ve been waiting for you ever since.”
“Not all of us,” one of the men muttered from across the fire. He was tall and blond, and he’d been silent for most of the meal and the conversation afterward, but Cain recognized him: it was Farris, the leader of the group of skeptics within the order.
“The prophecies told of his arrival,” Egil snapped. “Isn’t that enough for you?”
“And we’re just supposed to believe it, now that he’s arrived?” Farris shrugged and took another swig of cider. “The legends are long past, and the Horadrim, if they ever truly existed, are gone. What’s left is darkness and death. We should go back to our homes and hope for the best.”
There were a few murmurs of agreement from Farris’s friends. “What homes?” Egil said, his voice growing louder. “Did you not see what Gea Kul has become? What the Dark One has done to us, to our land? You are blind if you think you can just go back—”
Farris leapt to his feet, his face bright red. “Don’t tell me how blind I am, Egil. Your blind faith has kept us living out here, in these caves, while our loved ones suffer and die alone. I would rather die with them than with you.”
Cain was growing ever more unsettled. He had hoped to find true mages who would help him conquer the darkness; but Egil, at least, seemed to look to him as some kind of hero, while the rest of them seemed suspicious, incompetent, or worse.
As he had suspected for so long, the Lesser Evils of Hell were at work in Sanctuary. Belial had sunk his claws into Garreth Rau. What would happen next was unclear, but Cain could not help but feel more uncertain than ever.
Cain felt the walls of the cave closing in on him. He got to his feet and glanced at Leah, who had fallen asleep leaning against Lund’s massive thigh. “I must take some air, to clear my head,” he said. “Perhaps we should all take some time to think. Please excuse me.”
The night was cool and silent. Cain’s legs trembled with exhaustion. He tried to make sense of a world that suddenly seemed turned upside down.
How could he have been so badly mistaken? Everything he had learned through months of research had pointed him here, to these men—only to result in a dead end. The group was a disaster. He was no savior, and if Sanctuary depended upon him, and him alone, all was lost. What was more, the idea that this group could be of any help in deciphering Leah’s condition and remarkable powers was laughable; they couldn’t even set up a decent camp, never mind find the answers to abilities that may have been based in magic or something else entirely.
Cain felt a touch on his sleeve. Startled, he glanced over to find Mikulov standing next to him. He hadn’t heard the monk arrive; in fact, he had been so absorbed in Egil’s stories, Farris’s arguments, and his own growing despair, he hadn’t even realized until now that Mikulov had been absent for some time.
“They are not what you expected,” Mikulov said. It was a statement, not a question, but Cain nodded. He wanted to remain strong, to appear as if he still held the confidence that what they were doing was right. Instead he found himself speechless, unable to describe the hopelessness that had welled up within him after meeting the men he had thought would be their salvation.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” he said. “Perhaps we should have taken a different path. Perhaps there are others—”