Regret's Shadow (Sins of Earth Trilogy) (8 page)

He watched the sacking of Kelleran’s Folly as he walked the lip of the ravine, wary of any more goblin scouts.  H
is spirit felt crushed as surely as the wall of the fort, but his duty kept him putting one foot in front of the other.

By noon, the fort had been fully engulfed, and the slaughter had ended.  The looting of the fort’s stores was nearly complete, and so the main structure itself had been put to the torch.

Hade was forced to turn away and put his back to the valley.  Part of him entertained the idea that some of the people of the ‘Folly had escaped, made their way west.  It was a pleasant fiction. He set his jaw, and plunged deeper into the forest, keeping the looming Holdwalls to his right.

Traveling to the nearest town would take days, and he doubted he could outpace the horde enough to make a difference.  Even
though he thought it might be a flight of fancy, he held out hope that the elves could help. 

While
the kingdom was far to the north, it was said they could travel with magic, and there were always reports by trappers and hermits that spoke of Fair Folk in the woods that hugged the mountains.

Hade nearly laughed at the absurdity of what he
was about to attempt.  His only hope was that he’d meet an elf who was willing to talk, rather than shoot first and ask questions later.

Deep beneath the
Temple of the Sacred Scroll, past the wine cellar and the crypts, far beyond where almost any member of the order had been, stood the Vault of Secrets.  It had never been opened since it was constructed, back in the mists of time.

It had only been visited by the highest ranking members of the temple, and at one point, the
headmaster himself had brought Dramus before the door to translate its inscription.

Made of an incredibly hard, dark metal, it was impervious to any form of assault known to man.  It was said to hold the most
dangerous of knowledge that only the king himself could order uncovered.  There was a bizarre panel set in the wall next to the massive portal, one with glowing buttons with unknown symbols upon them.

When Dramus had seen the door, his heart had skipped a beat.  He’d never, in all his life at the temple, even known of this place.  It was so strange, and yet exciting to the young page.  As he’d been drawn closer, the strange symbols on the door itself began to speak to him though his gift.

Graven into the upper portion was a simple inscription.

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY!

CAPTAIN’S KEYCODE REQUIRED FOR ENTRY.

Dramus had wondered about which captain it referred to, but then his gaze drifted to the various symbols that adorned the lower section.  There was a blocky glyph that
denoted the reader should exercise caution.  Another announced the presence of an alarm of some sort.

Two symbols scared the young page more than any other.  One was the yellow circle with the black flower inside, which he knew meant that one should be worried about radiation.  His brain was still working on what that meant, exactly, but he knew it would come to him.

The second symbol was a variation on the first, with three circles formed by gnarled arms that arched out from the center on a field of orange.  This denoted another hazard that Dramus’s mind equated with virulent disease.  The knowledge had caused him to shudder.

Satisfied, the
headmaster had lead him away, but not before Dramus had seen the final symbol which rested at the bottom of the door: a circular orb with seemingly random striations through it.  His gift told him it represented a place, called Earth.  He wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but he had dreamed of alien cities and metal carts that used no horses ever since.

That had been a month ago.

On this day, another figure found its way down through the bowels of the temple and to the Vault door. 

Brother Erick had no idea what had brought him through the twisting passages deeper into the dark.  Even more of a concern for him was that fact that he hadn’t needed a torch to see once he’d descended below the lit halls.  He told himself that there was a light source he wasn’t aware of, and that it was his sickness that muddled his perception.

A few weeks ago, he’d been stricken with a fever and bedridden for days.  The illness had come upon him with a vengeance, and while the physical ailments were uncomfortable to be sure, it was the nightmares that lingered.

He continued
to have horrible dreams about a pale man in who constantly jeered and cajoled him, showing him horrors unimaginable.  He saw blasted landscapes and tortured bodies limned in flame.  He saw armies of the dead descending from a full moon to sweep clear the cities of men. 

The man in his dreams warned him that an apocalypse was coming, and that if Erick didn’t act, the rivers of blood would be on his hands.

“You think you’re safe here among your books and papers?” the specter had hissed.

“There’ll be no escape once the Drejth descend from their lunar fortress and consume the souls of Man!”

It was silly, of course.  The Drejth had been defeated and forced from the world after the spectacular demise of their leader and namesake, Malavarius Drejth.  They had been naught but children’s stories for close to a thousand years. 

Still, the man was insistent and gripped Erick’s thoughts more and more.  At times he was unsure if he was dreaming or awake.

His trip to the Vault of Secrets was turning into one such waking dream.  He rubbed the back of his shaking hand across his sweaty brow.  Onward he stumbled, as if he could hear the insistence of the pale-faced shade in his mind.  Perhaps he could.

After an indeterminate amount of time he stood before the vault and stared at its strange symbols.  His eyes were drawn to the glowing runes on the right and he moved closer to inspect them, as a moth to a flame.

They meant nothing to him, but the voice in his head, (yes, he could certainly hear it now) told him to reach out and touch the glyphs. 

He resisted; his mind recoiled at the idea of violating the sanctity of the temple, and he could only imagine what injuries he might sustain from the incantations that no-doubt were lain upon the keys.

The console swam before his eyes and his vision was replaced with a picture of the upper halls of the temple.  The stones were red with the blood of strewn corpses garbed in the robes of acolytes.  Unseen flames cast flickering shadows upon the walls, and screams echoed through the haze.  It was too much for Erick to bear.

“Alright!” he shrieked, too loud in the oppressive quiet. In his mind, the spirit tightened its grip at
his acquiescence.

Trembling fingers acted of their own accord and keyed in a thirteen digit sequence.  The device bleated in a tinny voice and Erick was urged to type five more.  The console’s keypad went dim, and there came a hiss from
the door which caused the stricken acolyte to start violently and stagger back.

The massive door shifted inward and began to slide to the left.  A red light that Erick hadn’t noticed began to strobe above the door, and an arid wind wafted from the opening, cooling his feverish skin.

Lights flickered on to illuminate a long wide corridor made of the same exotic material that the door had been forged of.  Erick could see thick metal doors lining the sides of the corridor, each with its own miniature version of the Vault door’s glowing keypad.

The last thing in the world he wanted to do was enter tha
t alien place, but the man in his head was a force now.  Shaking steps brought him to the threshold where he put up one final stand against the intrusions of the wicked shade.

Unfortunately for Erick, he’d allowed his will to be bent by the shade of
Malavarius Drejth one too many times.  The undead villain assumed control of the young man’s body, while allowing just enough of his psyche to remain aware of what he was doing.  Drejth loved to feel his victims squirm as they participated in acts they abhorred.

Into the Vault he stumbled, little more than a marionette.  Wide eyes watched as he lurched toward the back of the corridor, only to find that it formed a T at which he was urged to go right.

The bizarre nature of the machinery he was seeing frightened Erick even more, but like his heart fluttering in his ribcage, he was caught now; a songbird in a cage that would only be let out at its master’s pleasure.

Drejth pushed his meat puppet toward the very heart of the vault.  It took time, and he was feeling the expenditure of his energy by the time they’d reached their destination
. He was glad his goal was at hand.

They stood in a small room roughly twelve feet cubical.  In the center of the chamber sat a black chest, smooth on all sides save for a small keypad on the front.  I had several symbols embossed upon it,
none of which Erick knew.

Drejth, however, was well aware what was contained within and had he been alive he would have quivered with excitement.  Again he urged his puppet into action.  Erick jerked and nearly tripped on his way across the grated metal flooring.  Reaching the case, he knelt to begin typing on the key lock.

Suddenly there was a chime from the panel and the lid opened with a burp of escaping air and split in half, each half receding to the side until it flipped down parallel to the case’s sides.

Inside
was a conical object, a little under a meter from tapered end to base.  It sported the same yellow circle symbol emblazoned on the Vault door.  Through the opening at the base, Erick could see wires and strange technical innards.

Drejth was practically giddy.  Of course, he’d seen all of this many times before while he wandered the world as a spirit.  He’d drifted down through here and what he saw caused him to begin the plans that would result in the end of the Van Uther line, and the beginning of a Drejth Empire.

He urged his pawn to lift the cone.  As Erick began to grunt and groan, while barely shifting the thing’s weight, Malavarius grew impatient.

Erick suddenly felt the presence of the dark man lift from his mind, and he was in command of his faculties again.  Unfortunately, he was so distraught and weak from his ordeal that he simply sank down to the floor and began to sob.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed as he wept in the Vault of Secrets, afraid and alone.  How could he explain what had happened?  For that matter, how could he even seal the Vault once he left? As he thought beyond the immediate, he started to obsess over the man in his mind, and who, or what, he was.

It was in the middle of this jumble of emotions and mental collapse
, when a small part of Erick’s perceptions that were still operating normally registered a sound in the Vault that rose above the background hum of all the bizarre machinery: footsteps.

A tiny alarmed voice was trying to get him to pay attention.  By the time he’d rubbed his puffy eyes and wiped the snot from his nose it was too late.  Standing before him, in all his corpulent glory, was a red-faced
Headmaster Colius.

Erick’s eyes went wide and he began to sputter through pale lips.  He struggled to stand, but found no strength in his limbs and collapsed once again to the floor.  The looming form of the
headmaster reached for him, and he managed a strangled yelp at the older man’s touch.

“What have you done, B
rother Erick?” the headmaster’s tone was strangely gentle.  It snapped the acolyte from his blabbering.

“I...I don’t…” he couldn’t seem to find a place to start.

The headmaster made conciliatory shushing noises, and slid his puffy hands under Erick’s arms to help him stand.  There was something about the way that this was all happening that ate at the young man’s fevered brain, but he couldn’t muddle it out amongst his fractured thoughts.

“There, there, now” cooed Colius.  Erick’s moment of relaxation at any easiness
in the man’s tone was quickly replaced with terror.  He could see the pale-faced man reflected in the eyes of the headmaster and he tried to recoil.  The grip upon his upper arms intensified painfully.

“Relax, Erick
,” the voice had changed slightly, and Erick’s nose began to bleed as he recognized the voice behind Colius’s.  The bigger man turned slightly to give him a view of an object behind the headmaster.  It was a trolley, one they used to carry loads of books through the halls.

“I’ve come to help you
,” the fat man purred.

Dawn was creeping into the forest and, not for the first time, Ethelrynne Rivenbow, princess of the elves, wondered what she was doing.  She slowed her pace along the animal trail that she and her scouting party were using to skirt the edge of the humans’ ranging.  She held her hand up to signal the group to stop and crouched among the ferns.

She blew out a frustrated
hiss.  It had been several days since her argument with the king, her father.  It had been a shouting match, really, in full view of the parliament, and an embarrassment for the both of them.

She, among all of the nobles in the elven court wore her sympathy for the humans most blatantly upon her sleeve.  Her father regarded the human king as a liar and a brute, and so their conversations as of late were seldom cordial.  Still, she shouldn’t have lost her temper as she had, and the guilt still stung.

At the same time, she could feel her cheeks redden with lingering indignation.  He was being unreasonable and too old-fashioned for the kingdom’s good.  Was she young?  Yes.  Was she the daughter of the king, instead of the son?  Unfortunately for her, yes.  Did that mean that her judgment should be immediately discounted in affairs beyond parlor dressing?  Not in her book!

The parliament had met to discuss the disturbing
reports of the scouts from the east. 

It was said that the goblins, hobgoblins, trolls, and giants of the Gloomwood Reach were mobilizing in unprecedented numbers. 
While they showed no signs of marching through the Pass of Irria to assault the elves, it was becoming more and more apparent that they would be moving against the human frontier in short order.

Ethelrynne had argued for her father to warn the human king.  He had flatly refused to speak with the man.  She tried to get him to send a delegation to Freehold to meet with the royalty and help them formulate a response.  He made noises about logistics, and many members of the court murmured their agreement.

She stewed at their short-sightedness.  The majority of the parliament had been held by isolationists for some time, and the age of cooperation between human and elf seemed to be a thing of the ancient past.  The princess saw them as greedy bootlickers and bristled.

“Father
,” she began, aware that she may be going too far, but unable to resist the fire growing in her belly and spreading through her neck.

“
There was a time that you made up your
own
mind about such things.”

He whirled upon her and she regretted the
comment immediately.

“Do you suggest that your father – your king – is somehow unable to come to his own conclusions?” he raged. 

A few quick strides brought them face to face, with the king glaring down at his daughter, the purple eyes they shared blazing so that onlookers could almost see sparks between them.

“I suggest
,” she hurled, “that there was a time that you would value the opinion of your own blood over that of those who could lay the most…
homage
at your feet!”

The insinuation was lost on no one.  It was common knowledge that in the years since the death of his wife, the king had sought to fill
the hole left both by her passing, and the passing of any possibility of a son, with material comforts. 

The fact that his daughter had thrown it in his face in front of the entire court made him white with rage.

When he spoke again, his voice was soft, taught, and began to build in volume as he went on.

“You forget yourself.  I am the king…the king, dammit!  I will not be goaded into a fight.  I most certainly will not be lectured by a daughter with delusions of interracial relations!”

Her eyes widened at this, and it was a good thing her face was red with rage or the embarrassment of this last statement would surely have shown.

“Oh, I know all about your secret ‘scouting missions’
,” the king was relentless, absently brushing aside a lock of his silver hair that had escaped its binding.

“Your attempts to single-handedly resurrect some golden age of co
operation between the kingdoms - which likely never existed to begin with - are nothing more than the latest in a long line of youthful fantasy.”

He turned his back on her to continue his rant, confident that he held the upper hand and deciding to do a little grandstanding for his audience.

“Perhaps I was premature in inviting you to attend these sessions.  You are, after all, merely a hundred years old.”

He smiled for his audience, “And a girl at that.”

Behind him, Ethelrynne simply stared at his back, rage being slowly replaced by shock. 

Where had this man who wore her father’s skin come from?  Where was the man that had raised her with a sword in one hand
and a bow in the other?  Where was the man who’d taught her that being a woman was every bit as grand as being a man, if not more so?

In recent months they’d grown more distant, but it wasn’t until this point that the princess realized that her father had become a stranger.

“I thought I had raised you better,” he frowned in an overdramatic display of disappointment for the crowd seated in the ascending benches of the court.

She interrupted his performance, striding up to stand beside him before taking the royal brooch from her collar in a clenched fist.

“You didn’t raise me,” she spat.

The lacquered pine cone brooch clattered to the marble floor as she stormed off.

“I don’t know who you are.”

Her sergeant, Chazmyr, placed a gloved hand softly on her shoulder, and the princess realized she’d been a million miles away.

She turned and met his inquisitive eyes before waving away his concern.  He took away his hand and gave the slightest of nods; no words were needed.

The two of them moved back to the wai
ting group of rangers.  The other six elves that ranged with her would have been tough to pick out of the underbrush. 

They all wore woodweave armor that had been glamoured to help them blend in.  A h
uman never would have seen them. An elf would have to have known there were rangers in the area to have a chance.

“You men don’t have to be here
,” she stated, for the fifth time.  She feared that their reputation in the military would be soiled by association with a princess who’d all but been cast out of the royal court.  Not one of them had seemed the least bit concerned.  She loved them for that.

“Princess, please
,” Chazmyr spoke for them, “We’ve run with you for years.  Each man here has watched you grow from a stripling to a better ranger than any of us. 

“
Stop second-guessing yourself, and lead on.  We follow, as always.”

She looked over the group.  Each man returned her glance with a steady gaze.  A few nodded reassuringly.  They were stalwart elves, warriors through and through.  A political spat was far beneath their
concern.  She decided in that moment that it was beneath hers as well.

“Right.  Well, I don’t think we’re going to be rescuing the human fortress from any goblin army. 

“Although, I’m sure some of you would love to give it a try,” she added wryly.

Several rangers chuckled and fingered their curved blades.  There was no love lost between the fey folk and the blackbloods, and these men were eager to dip their blades in goblin ichor.  Still, she held them to task.

“I aim to find out exactly what the humans are up against,” again, she gave them all a measured look.

“
Then I’m going to Freehold to speak with Remiel Van Uther.”

She let that sink in.  To their credit, the group held any reactions that might belie a dissenting opinion.  They were too well trained for that.  Again, she felt a swell of pride in her team.

“You all know the history.  There was a time when elf and man worked hand in hand.  I believe that we could do so again. 

“
Now, I know there are…some who believe otherwise, so any of you who weren’t banking on a trip to the heart of the Realm of Men can return to the Arbor now.  No hard feelings.”

Once again, they proved their dedication; no one present batted an eyelash.  Ethelrynne’s heart swelled, and she smiled through blurry vision. 

To cover the fact that she was getting misty, she reached out and clapped Chazmyr on the shoulder.

“Looks like you’ll get your chance to study the royal palace up close, Chaz.”

The sergeant smiled.  It was no secret that he shared the princess’s interest in humanity.  He particularly enjoyed hearing about their penchant for architecture that was constructed of stone, since elves generally used living wood in their buildings.

Growing serious, Ethelrynne rose to her feet, flashed the signal for the group to follow, and set off to the south.  She unlimbered her ornate longbow, a family heirloom that
practically crackled with ancient glamour, and nocked an arrow.

She led them along the trail through the mists of morning, silent as a dream in the wood. 

It was less than twenty minutes before they first began to smell the smoke.