The Cor Chronicles: Volume 02 - Fire and Steel (21 page)

“Wise indeed,” Nadav answered pensively, as if he did not already have this information. “What is its name?”

“My name is Geoff.”

With the boy’s answer, Menak decided to remain quiet until the emperor put a question directly to him.
I will not speak. Allow the Dahken to dig his own grave
, he thought.

“Geoff, it seems you have returned to Losz. Perhaps you longed to see your homeland or maybe your family?” Nadav asked. “You have Loszian blood in your veins, do you not? Tell me where you are from, that is, before you ended up in Taraq’nok’s cellar.”

Geoff did not answer, but his eyes visibly darkened. He set his jaw in such a way that the hard angles and points of his teeth ground upon each other, and he lowered his eyes to stare at the carpeted steps instead of the tall Loszian made giant by the dais and throne upon which he sat. Menak sighed and slowly, cautiously backed a few steps away from the boy.

“Tell me!” screamed Nadav, and it jolted everyone in the hall except for Menak, who had expected the reaction.

“Both of my father’s parents are part Loszian. They live in the eastern part of the empire,” Geoff explained. “They expelled my father from their household when he married a Westerner.”

“As well they should have,” Nadav interrupted. “Where are your parents now?”

“Dead at the hands of Taraq’nok. They lived quietly near the Northern Kingdoms and raised me and my sisters. Taraq’Nok came and killed them all and took me prisoner.”

“They were weak, barely Loszian then, to allow one such as Taraq’nok to eliminate them,” Nadav spat as he said the name. “The loss of so many of impure blood is a boon for the empire!”

Geoff’s gray face screwed up in anger; his darkly ringed eyes closed a bit as his forehead furrowed. It gave them an even more sunken in appearance, making him look like some Western ideal of a Loszian demon. He clenched his teeth so hard that they felt as if they may crack, and he resisted every urge in his body to charge up the dais and beat the Loszian emperor to death with his bare fists. The effect made Nadav leer, and Menak was now fully off the gold carpet to one side to make Geoff stand alone.

“I’ve made it angry!” Nadav said gleefully as he rose from his throne. He came to stand at the top of the stairs, and he knew it made him appear twenty feet tall to those below. “You are an abomination Geoff! An abomination of both men and the gods! That one gifted by his parents with Loszian blood would choose to mate with a Westerner for any other purpose than creating slaves or servant is disgusting, an affront to all Loszians! The Dahken race itself should be extinct, and I will take a step toward that end right now!”

Nadav threw his arms and open hands out before him as if to push an enemy who stood just in front of him. A great black, semi-transparent cloud extended from his open hands and billowed toward Geoff, who stood fearfully of the approaching magic. Even Menak shuddered as it enveloped the boy, well aware of the fate about to befall him. Geoff stood in the center of the cloud, at first frightened almost completely out of his senses. His fear began to abate after a moment, as it was clear that the magic had no effect on him, at least no more effect than a slight tickling sensation.

Geoff began to laugh as Nadav dropped his hands to his sides and the pestilent cloud dissipated. He laughed mirthlessly at the seething emperor and his obvious frustration. It seemed that Rael’s stories of Dahken resistance to Loszian necromancy were true, and now Geoff would have his turn at dealing death. He quieted his laughs and sat peacefully on the carpeted floor, lowering his head and closing his eyes in concentration. He focused his mind into the sound of his heartbeat and felt his essence pour from his body into the open air. Within seconds, his blood ghast, seven feet of animate blood and death, stood at the bottom of Nadav’s steps.

“Protect your sovereign!” Nadav screamed as he backed away.

Geoff’s essence bounded up the steps three at a time, but it only managed to reach halfway before bodies closed in about it. Armored soldiers rushed from all parts of the hall, but they were still precious seconds from intercepting the threat. Also, several dozen shambling forms, corpses and skeletons animated by magic moved in from the dark places of the room, but they were even slower. Unexpectedly to Geoff, it was the slaves that slowed him from reaching his target. While they were all children, none of them even half the ghast’s size, the sheer mass of their combined bodies prevented him from closing any further. They grabbed a hold of his arms and hung limply and wrapped themselves around his torso and legs. He backhanded one hard and heard its body thud sickeningly at the bottom of the steps, and another he kicked in he face - a small boy whose neck snapped instantly. A third was shorn clear in half by the ghast’s great sword, her blood and innards spilling everywhere to stain the steps and make them slippery. A fourth was decapitated by the return stroke.

Nadav’s guards, armored in black plates over chainmail, rushed in to the attack, and the child slaves released the ghast in attempts to slink away from the battle. Geoff’s essence hewed through the first soldier with one blow and immediately turned to find itself facing several others. It fought with blazing speed and cold detachment as it spilled blood, heedless of the blows that landed upon its body.

Menak watched from the side of the hall with great interest, but it was Geoff’s prone form, not the battle that held his gaze. He watched as the ghast was struck, a wound appeared on the boy’s body. The wound did not bleed, as if all the blood was gone from him to form the creature, and it healed just as quickly as it appeared when the ghast struck its foes. Menak drew a dagger from beneath his blood red robes. It was a ceremonial weapon with a wickedly curved blade and a gold hilt inlaid with precious gems, deadly sharp, but clearly not meant for combat. He rushed over to the boy’s still body and knelt down beside him with the thought that he could end the battle now before it got out of hand, as it threatened to do.

For a moment, the ghast’s instincts overrode Geoff’s conscious thought, its most basic of which was to protect Geoff’s physical form. The thing ceased its fighting and leapt from its place halfway up the dangerously slick, blood soaked steps. The distance to where Menak knelt over Geoff, dagger in hand, was easily twenty feet away with a drop of a good ten feet, and the ghast landed lightly and easily to stand over them both. Menak froze for just a moment, looking up at the menacing ghast above him. He regained his senses just in time as he fell to his left, narrowly avoiding the massive red blade as it struck the stone floor where he just knelt. Menak turned and scrambled to his feet; as he retreated, hot ripping pain tore through his left leg, and he collapsed forward onto his belly, suddenly no longer able to run or even stand. Nadav’s guards and undead servants now surrounded Geoff’s ghast as Menak’s life poured from the stump just below his left hip.

“Enough!” thundered Nadav’s voice; he again stood at the top of the black steps. “Dahken Geoff, I demand that you end this. You may destroy many more of my servants, but you will die in the end. I know you can hear me, and I promise peace between us.”

The ghast stood on the balls of its feet unmoving for several seconds, and both of its hands stayed on its great red blade, ready to strike. It even seemed to breathe heavily as if from exertion, its great torso rising and falling. Finally, it began to dissolve, streaming back to Geoff’s body from whence it had come. As the threat dissipated, Nadav became distinctly aware of the cries of the dying around him, including Lord Menak.

“Do shut up Menak,” Nadav said disdainfully as Geoff’s eyes fluttered open. “We’ll be sure to get you a peg or some other contrivance to help you walk again. You men, make sure our Lord Menak does not bleed to death on my floor. Though, I am afraid it is too late to save my carpet.

“Dahken Geoff, I welcome you to Losz,” he said, turning to the quietly brooding boy. “I am curious however. What has brought you here?”

“I…” Geoff started, but he could not find any words to continue. For months he had felt a call in his blood pulling him east past the Spine, and for once in those months, he felt nothing. It was as if he had found it. “I don’t know.”

Nadav’s laughter filled the hall amidst the spilled blood, innards and body parts of the dead and dying.

18.

He had no idea how long he slept, but he was sure that it was late into the day. His rooms had several windows that faced east, and the sun was not to be seen through them. Geoff had been given a suite several floors above Nadav’s hall in the palace’s great tower, and he knew the emperor occupied an entire floor well above his. Despite the unpleasantness that ensued on his arrival, he had to give his host credit for hospitality. The bed was clean, with sheets of fine silk and was perhaps the most comfortable thing on which he’d ever laid. There were also several soft divans, and a thick layer of plush carpet covered the cold stone floor. Nadav explained to Geoff how he could merely touch certain stones, and they would provide differing levels of light, depending on what his wishes were. The Loszian also assigned him a trio of slaves to meet his every need for as long as he stayed. It was not long into the night that Geoff realized they were also there to indulge any desire he may have. Just the previous day, he had been ready to kill the Loszian emperor, but he was starting to think that he would instead prefer the lifestyle that friendship with Nadav would afford.

As he lay on the soft bed in consideration of the unadorned ceiling, Geoff felt an urge as he often did when he first awoke, and he climbed atop the girl that slept next to him. As he took her, he gave no thought to her cries, whines or the fact that she was about two years younger than he. She was about the same age his oldest sister would have been. He finished, climbed from the bed and found his discarded clothes on the floor near a divan. As he dressed, he demanded food of the other two slaves, who hastened from the suite. Geoff waited, looking out a window over the black city below, which looked oddly serene during the day in stark contrast to its devilish appearance at night. Indeed, he could truly enjoy this life.

The slaves returned after a short time with two trays of food, including a suckling pig, some slices of rare beef and a host of different fruits and cooked vegetables. As Geoff ate, he thought long about the events of the last day or so, and he wondered what the new day would bring. After the bloodshed, Sovereign Nadav seemed friendly, even cordial in the way he spoke to the young Dahken. He said the future would hold great opportunity for them both, and they would come together tomorrow after Geoff had plenty of time to rest from his travels. Geoff briefly had the feeling that things were about to spin out of his control, but the tenderness of the meat and a look at the naked girl in his bed replaced it with other thoughts and feelings.

A servant, a man clearly of mixed Western and Loszian blood entered the suite unannounced. He was fairly unremarkable, and he had a bundle of silver silk draped over his arm. He strode across the room to kneel directly in front of the divan on which Geoff sat as he ate. After a brief pause, he raised his head and stood politely.

“My lord, Sovereign Nadav commanded that I make certain all of your needs have been met thus far,” he said. Receiving a nod and mumbled response from Geoff, he continued, “Sovereign Nadav asks that you join him when you are ready.”

“Where?” Geoff asked around a mouthful of pork.

“In his sanctum at the top of the tower,” the servant answered, and he placed the silks on the divan next to Geoff. “Merely exit your suite and climb the stairs until there are no more to climb. I shall inform the Sovereign that you will join him shortly. He has provided this elegant set of robes for you, something more appropriate for a man of your stature.”

Geoff watched as the man silently left, and he stared at the silver robes left on the next divan as he chewed absently. They were in fact of fine silk and excellent workmanship, and he had already accepted Nadav’s hospitality in multiple ways. Even still, something about adopting the style of dress common to a Loszian sorcerer gave him pause. The Loszian hierarchy had brought his parents pain and sadness, and even Nadav himself made clear his disgust for those who rejected their Loszian blood. A realization suddenly broke in on Geoff’s thoughts - the servant actually meant that Nadav expected him immediately, not whenever he was ready.

He jumped from the divan, pushing the food aside, and caught a glimpse of his reflection in one of the several floor to ceiling mirrors in the room. The Loszians were clearly a narcissistic lot, or maybe it was just Nadav, but the mirror served its purpose. Geoff was quite disheveled, and his clothes caked with dust and dirt from his short travels through the Spine. He looked disdainfully at the silver robes and decided that they would do; he would wear them only until he received a new tunic and breeches or had these washed.

He needed little time to don the robes, as they were in fact the simplest form of clothing he’d ever seen. As he looked over his new appearance in the mirror, Geoff thought the robes had the opposite effect of that he expected. They were not made for him, but it seemed for a pure Loszian of similar height. The sleeves swallowed his arms whole, and his fingertips did not even peek out from them. His legs were not disproportionate to his torso like a pure Loszian, so several inches of the silk dragged upon the ground. The gleaming silver threads did not provide the contrast against his gray face that he expected, not to mention that he had never seen a Loszian in anything other than rich, dark colors. Instead of bringing out his Loszian blood as he expected, the silks made it even more clear that he was not pure.

Satisfied that Sovereign Nadav would not like the effect of his choice of robes, Geoff began the long climb up through the cylindrical tower. He counted steps as he went, discarding the thought as he reached fifty, and instead counted floors. Just as he passed the eleventh, he caught sight of the servant again - the man had been coming down the steps from a floor above, and upon seeing Geoff, hurriedly turned and ran up the steps two and three at a time. Geoff shrugged, mentally at least, at the realization that he obviously hadn’t come as quickly as expected.