Sunset of Lantonne (33 page)

Without the light, Therec quickly thought through his options. He might be able to kill the remaining guard without exhausting himself much, but he had no way of knowing what else was hiding in the dark. Worse still, given that most undead could see far better in the dark than he could as their vision was based on magic, rather than physical capabilities, Therec expected the new arrivals to attack while he destroyed the door guard. Summoning a light of his own would leave him defenseless for a moment while he concentrated.

Therec backed into the main hall, then turned to follow the man that had met him. Once he was far enough into the light, he hoped the other creatures might not actively pursue him. He heard nothing that indicated they were following, but with his limited sight, he worried that even a moment in the dark could be fatal.

The man led Therec down the long hall, then turned and took a smaller side passage, lit with sputtering torches every twenty feet. Every large wooden door along the hall was open, and as Therec passed each, he saw gleaming eyes staring back at him, though that was all he could make out.

“Forgive my children,” the man called over his shoulder as though he had known what Therec was looking at. “They are always hungry, and you are the first morsel many of them have seen in some time.”

As if in response, the pair of eyes Therec was watching rushed toward him, the light just barely illuminating the twisted face of a woman whose slack skin gave Therec the impression a poison had been used on her during life. She hissed and spit as she bit at the air, then fell back into the dark room. Snarling and growling like an animal, the woman shielded her face against the light, watching Therec angrily.

Soon, Therec was led into a larger room that had clearly once been a dining hall of some kind. Rows of tables with stools began just inside the door, becoming more ornate and farther-spread as he followed the other man. Soon, they reached a large single table at the head of the long room, which had been set with food and drink, as well as two large padded chairs, the likes of which Therec had not seen outside of the Lantonnian king’s chambers.

“Please, sit and eat with me. We have much to discuss.”

Therec’s whole life had been a series of lessons about caution and observation. Here, no amount of searching for threats did anything to alleviate his fears. He found himself hesitating by the chair, checking for visible traps overhead, needles or darts around the seat, or scents of poisons that he knew of. Finding none of those, his attention went to the food and drink that waited for him.

“I said to sit down,” the other man said, sitting across from Therec. “You were allowed past many thousands of my children…do you honestly think I would bother to murder you creatively when I could just signal to any number of soldiers who would gladly tear you apart?”

Wincing, Therec eased himself into the chair, still unable to stop looking for the trap he knew deep down had to be coming. He eyed the foods nervously, touching a piece of meat with his glove and sniffing it. Nothing in its aroma hinted at a toxin, but he knew little of the poisons used in these lands.

“If you are concerned about poisons, preserver, those are long gone from the foods here. Many of those outside died of poison, but I will use none on you while you are here. That much I promise you.”

The other man watched Therec for a short time, then picked up a pear from a bowl near the middle of the table. Turning it over in his hand a few times, he looked over at Therec impatiently. “After this long trying to get at me through my troops, I had expected you to be more conversational,” he told Therec, setting the fruit down on a gleaming plate in front of him. “I spend a great deal of time talking to myself. I had hoped for a change. Dinner conversation has never been the strongest capability of my children.”

Swallowing past a lump in his throat, Therec eyed a full decanter of wine on the table nearby, but could not bring himself to reach for it. “Why are you doing this, brother?” Therec managed, though he knew that was the least of the questions he wanted to know answers to. “We have waged war only in defense for centuries. Why raise an army of the dead to attack those who mean nothing to our people?”

“Brother,” mused the man, tapping a finger on his chin, while grinning broadly. “Amusing, but so very wrong. You are an infant and I am far nearer to a father than a brother. I know you invoke customary titles, but you should think before speaking.”

“Turess is the father of our people. If you are claiming…”

The other man’s amusement vanished instantly and he swept an arm across the table, sending plates and his goblet clattering to the floor. Almost as the items hit the stones, corpses dressed as if they had been servants in life hurried from the darker edges of the room to pick them up and arrange them on the table again.

“Turess was a fool who got himself killed and very nearly took the empire with him,” shouted the man, clenching his hands angrily. “This is why I did not approach the clans that he created before taking action. You are all so mule-headed that you cannot see what he has done to us. You ignored me then and you do so again now!”

“He has been dead two thousand years. I doubt he has anything further to do with you breaking the laws he set forth…”

“Enough!” the man bellowed, then took a deep breath and sat back. “We will not discuss that man any further today. I’ve been angry at him far too long, and it would not do to have me rant about him when we have so much more to cover. Please choose a new topic, my friend.”

Therec watched the zombies scatter to the shadows once the plates were back in place. He had seen no cues from the man that would indicate that he was controlling them. Even the best necromancer among his people would have given some sign of using the magic that bound the dead. Either this man was using some other means to control them or there was someone else aiding from nearby.

“Your name then,” Therec said softly, sliding his plate away from himself, “since we are trying to be polite.”

Grinning madly, the man giggled for a time as though the request was meant to be a joke. When he did at last answer, he leaned forward and lowered his voice as if to keep his words a secret. “My name I tend not to give out, as names have power over some creatures…can’t be too careful,” he whispered, eyeing the shadows of the room, putting a finger to his lips. “After this many years, I have so many that I cannot decide on one. You seem a trustworthy sort, though. Turess called me Dorralt, and the clans’ children spoke of me as the lord of the puppets. Either is fitting.”

“You said we would not speak of Turess again.”

“Silence!” screamed Dorralt, clasping his hands to his ears. “Arturis may still view that man as our kin, but I will burn his bones and see his people ground to ashes before I would have him mentioned at dinner!”

Therec studied the man’s face as he mumbled in angry tones, clutching his head as though the very thought of Turess brought him physical discomfort. He looked to the food before the man. “You knew…him,” began Therec cautiously, drawing Dorralt’s attention back to him. “That would make you more than two millennia old. Why put on the show of having food here if you are undead? You should be revered as an ancestor rather than leading armies that defile our people’s traditions.”

Dorralt picked up the pear that had been placed alongside him on the table by the servants. He smiled at it coyly, as though it were prey. “Did you know that they denied my brethren food and water for centuries, in the vague hope that they would eventually die? Foolish, I know. I am not an undead, though some of those like me are,” he said as though to himself, eyeing the pear. “I breathe, eat, even sleep, though I cannot die from failing to do any of those. I am what my brother dreamed of before we were called abominations. In the end, I am what he failed to be.”

Trying to be subtle, Therec invoked a small stream of magic. The voices of the lost spirits that fed his abilities shrieked and howled inside his mind, some of them clear enough he heard them pleading for him to run. He ignored them, focusing the magic pulled from their realm into a simple spell that would let him view magic around him.

The instant the spell took shape, Therec bit back a scream and covered his eyes as Dorralt flared brightly enough that he felt as though he had stared into the sun for hours.

“Foolish, quite foolish,” the other man said. “Trust that I am something that you have never seen and were not trained to deal with. Your training was meant to keep control over the creatures that I create and to ensure that you never found a way to make more like me. I founded your order to serve me, but you seem to have lost your way. You were to be my right-hand, but you have attempted to stand in my way. This is why I had you sent away, along with any of the others who had studied the old laws too long.”

Therec tried to blink away the tears that stung his eyes, but everything was a white-hot light. He could not make out even vague shapes.

“I will give you three questions before I send you back to wait for me to call, Therec, though you must answer three questions that I have for you. I would not give anyone else that courtesy, but you have been educated properly and would have made a fine apprentice in another lifetime. Consider this my gift to you…that and your life, at least until it is time for Lantonne to fall.”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Therec struggled to make sense of the pain and scattered images that had seared into his vision. Nothing in any land had ever done anything like that to him before. Some ancient artifacts had glowed brightly enough that he had been forced to look away, but this was far beyond that. Whatever magic gave this man the ability to live as long as he claimed was more intense than anything Therec had even read of.

“You’ll answer anything I ask?”

“Anything, so long as you do the same. Do be polite.”

“My wife and son. Are they alive?”

Dorralt chuckled. “In all honesty, I do not know. If they were near the council when I had my people seize it, I would doubt they still breathe. Arturis is quite thorough, and when told to kill he does so with remarkable zeal. I could find out the answer for you, but I do not have it at this time.”

Therec blinked a few more times and began to make out shapes, though little more than the torches was identifiable.

“Do you know where the artifacts are that were stolen from our lands and brought here?” asked Dorralt. “I assume you know nothing of the one here in Altis, but it is my understanding that Lantonne stole from us as well. Do you have possession of it?”

“I have heard nothing of Turessian belongings. They honestly have no understanding of our lands and would have no reason to keep anything of ours. If they did, they would be unable to use it, given that even their scholars have no understanding of our language.”

“A pity, though I can feel that the items are still here. I will find them, even if I have to tear down both cities.”

Therec could finally make out the shape of the plates on the table, though details were still difficult to discern. He continued to blink as he mentally made notes about what Dorralt was saying. Turessian artifacts in these lands would be unheard of, though after seeing Turessian rune-words beneath Lantonne, he had to wonder. “What are the artifacts that you would invade these lands to get?” Therec asked. “Name them.”

“These lands?” Dorralt began giggling uncontrollably for several seconds. “I’ve coordinated invasions of fourteen different lands simultaneously. Don’t underestimate the conviction I have for seeing something through to its end.

“As for what the items are…you know as well as I do. I can feel them. They call out to me like a piece of my body that wishes to be brought home, but I only know what one of them is. Unfortunately, I cannot answer what it is, as that will give away more of my hand than I am willing to show. They are mine…maybe ours…but they are certainly not meant to stay in these lands, unless we rule them again.”

Dorralt leaned forward, cocking his head as he stared at Therec. “You can see again. Excellent. The journey home would have been difficult without your sight. I feared you would have fallen and hurt yourself. Who knows what might have happened to a man bleeding in the wilds near here.”

Therec’s skin prickled with a nervous chill at the man’s malicious stare.

Taking a bite of the pear that he had been playing with, Dorralt seemed to become lost in thought for a time. When he did look back to Therec, he appeared a little surprised that he was not alone.