The Essence Gate War: Book 01 - Adept (13 page)

“
He grew older, and became concerned that he would reach the limit of his mortal lifespan before he had mastered all things arcane, and furthermore became increasingly convinced that he should not be subject at all to that most mundane of limits on lesser beings. His research became focused on this goal above all others, and at any cost, for achieving it would enable an eternity of further advancement. Here his dark mastery offered tantalizing possibilities, and he pursued them with fervor. Eventually he succeeded, and achieved immortality at the cost of his remaining humanity. A bargain price, some would argue, as he had little enough of that to begin with. He supplanted his own spark of life, his very soul if you will, with the wicked energy of Unlife, and became even more formidable as undead than he was when living. And if certain sacrifices were required to sustain his infinite life, well, then such actions were assuredly justified when weighing the fleeting, impotent lives of lesser beings to the needs of a titan such as himself.

“His foul deeds did not go unnoticed, however, and the populace rose against him in increasing numbers
. To defend himself the sorcerer reared his own forces, pressing savage races into service and raising his slain foes as undead to swell his ranks. Enraged at the audacity of the common vermin, he unleashed his vengeance in the form of veritable seas of dark forces guided by his potent mind and arcane might. City after city fell before him, razed to the ground, and entire nations followed. Historians hold that at one point his armies had conquered a third or more of all known civilization, and his thirst for blood was still not slaked.

“
Putting aside their differences, the remaining lands united against him as one, realizing that he was on the brink of sweeping them all from the map. They called themselves the White Alliance, a pompous name if ever I have heard one, but nevertheless they assembled numbers not seen before or since on this world. The opposing forces amassed to face each other, blackening the earth from horizon to horizon, from the Valley of Souls to the Talus mountain range. The White Alliance pressed its foe on all sides with its greater numbers, but the sorcerer’s war magic and necromancy were rapidly turning the tide. The Alliance leaders knew they could not be victorious in a direct clash, when mortal men faced pit creatures and undying troops, and their own dead rose against them under control of the foe. But they had a different strategy from the beginning. In a cunning series of multi-pronged attacks, they coordinated all of their forces to spear deep into the sorcerer’s territory, with the goal of severing the head from the snake. It was their fervent hope that his unearthly forces would follow him into oblivion.

“
As you may have guessed, the name of the dark sorcerer was Bellimar. Bellimar the Black, the Vile, the Vampire King, Lord of the Night. Branded with countless such epithets, he came nearest to subjugating the known world of any conqueror in history. The holy city of Tar Mora is said to have begun as a desert monument to the fallen in this cataclysm. If, that is, the ancient tales are to be believed.”

Bellimar lapsed into silence, his eyes tw
in pinpoints of amber in the shadows.

“I remember where I have heard the name,” Amric said
. “I studied military tactics and logistics for a time at the Academy in Lyden, seeking to supplement what I had learned in practice among the Sil’ath. The name ‘Bellimar’ was associated with some of the military maneuvers we studied; he was considered a brilliant tactical mind, though his origins were obscured.”

“I imagine they would be,” Bellimar agreed.

“He was defeated by this White Alliance, then?” Halthak asked.

“That depends on how much of the old tales you believe,” Bellimar replied
. “Legend maintains that the sorcerer trapped and smashed their offensive, but as he moved to wipe them all out and gain unfettered access to all the lands, the gods themselves intervened.”

“The gods?” Amric said, cocking an eyebrow.

“They struck him down and dissolved his forces, and his reign of terror was ended.” The gleam of Bellimar’s smile was visible even in the shadows. “I sense you doubt the story, swordsman?”

“
Assuming he ever existed, I find it far more likely that he was slain by this White Alliance, and that some amount of embellishment has bolstered most elements of the story over the many centuries.”

“Aye,”
said Bellimar. “That is the way of such things, to grow in the retelling, and ample enough years have intervened for it to do so.”

“That explains why Morland commented on the name being inauspicious,” Amric
said. “How were you given it?”

Bellimar barked a laugh
. “How else? My mother gave it to me. She was no student of history, and it simply held no meaning to her when she bequeathed it.”

“You could
have changed your name, to avoid the stigma. Why keep it?”

“
Discard the first gift I was given after life and breath? How supremely ungrateful that would be,” Bellimar chided. “And if, as some believe, one grows into one’s given name over a lifetime, at least mine is linked with ambition and accomplishment, however misdirected. Regardless, while it may have once been an appellation spoken only in hushed whispers or used to frighten children, it is all but forgotten now.”

They fell silent, and the sputtering fire reigned once more as each dwelled on private thoughts.

“Bellimar,” Halthak said at last with a stifled yawn, “I must admit two things. First, you are indeed a captivating storyteller. Second, you may have found the way to prevent me from sleeping tonight, despite my fatigue.”

The old man laughed and leaned forward into the ring of light, his face appearing rosy flushed
. “No bard could ask for a more rapt audience. Do not let some dusty old fable thwart your sleep, healer, for I suspect tonight we enjoy the calm before the storm.”

Amric nodded agreement,
studying Bellimar for a long moment before stretching out on his bedroll. He had a few hours to rest before he would relieve Valkarr to take his turn at watch.

Twice when drifting into slumber did he start awake, banishing the wisps of a striking image
: a dark and terrible warrior-sorcerer astride a towering nightmare steed, flaming hooves pounding a battlefield thick with twisted corpses as the rider wove foul, colossal magics against his foes. Each time the black horned helm turned toward him and blazing crimson orbs fix upon him, draining his will and drawing him in…. And then his eyes would flare open to find his companions lying undisturbed in the dank cave, their breathing deep and even, as the fire sank to embers. When sleep claimed him at last, it was with one hand curled about his sword hilt.

Amric and company
followed the road into the forest as the morning sun crowned the trees with gold. A dark and verdant world closed about them. Mammoth, ancient trees towered above the thick brush and entwined their branches hundreds of feet overhead. Sunlight spilled through that high canopy, dappling the road before the riders. Taut as a bowstring, Amric rode ahead on his bay gelding. The feeling of being watched had been with him since they left the cave in the pre-dawn hour, like a nagging itch between his shoulder blades. It faded from him now, as the foliage walled off the plains behind them, to be replaced by a pervasive sense of
wrongness
. To be sure, a myriad of expected noises enveloped them, the buzz of countless insects and the incessant chatter of birds. The warrior saw no signs of land-bound creatures, however; no movement or recent tracks from vermin or game or natural predator, and the voices of the birds echoed down from high overhead. Nothing dares approach the ground, he realized.

Amric cast a backward glance over his shoulder
. A short distance behind him rode Halthak and Bellimar, the former appearing to breathe only when he could avoid it no longer, and the latter with a languid air of curiosity. Valkarr brought up the rear of the procession on his blue dun, scanning to either side and behind them. His black eyes met Amric’s, and the Sil’ath’s expression made it plain that he felt something amiss as well. Facing forward once more, Amric opened his senses to his surroundings, letting the forest whisper its secrets to him. This was his element, and even corrupted as it was, he could read the woods like the worn pages of a familiar book. Moving at a guarded pace, they rode on, following the road as it curved deeper into the wilderness.

It was mid-morning when
they came upon a fork in the road. One branch headed eastward and became little more than a trail, so much did the undergrowth encroach upon it. The other branch veered more southward and was as broad as the road in had been, with deep ruts from wagon wheels. Amric consulted the maps given them by Morland, and found that the southern fork led to one of his mines, which explained the higher traffic and the furrows from carts heavily laden with minerals. The mine was a short ride from the fork, according to the map, and Amric led them down that path. Their destination was down the other path, but the detour would cost them little time, and this many weeks later there was no way to tell from the marred surface of the road where the Sil’ath party might have explored and become detained. Or, came the thought before Amric could quell it, if they had even made it this far.

The mine road clove into the forest, arcing further southward for a time until the ground grew rockier and the vegetation began to thin
. The path crested a rise, wound around a ridge of boulders jutting upward like the massive knuckles of some behemoth, and then fell away into a large basin. Amric drew rein before the apex of the road, dismounted and tied his horse to a low branch. The others did the same, and then followed him as he left the road. A few quick leaps from boulder to boulder carried him high enough to peer down over the ridgeline without exposing more than the top of his head to the other side. Valkarr followed on his heels, his movements just as nimble, and Halthak and Bellimar joined them both moments later. Together, they studied the scene below.

The clearing was a great bowl in the earth, devoid of any vegetation beyond scattered patches of dry scrub grass, declining gradually on this side and rising more abruptly on the far side into the foothills
of the mountain range. The trees parted around this cleft in the earth, standing like silent sentinels on its lip in disapproval of the mortal intrusion here. As a result, the basin was bathed in sunlight, which only made the yawning mine entrance blacker by contrast. The entry was set into the hillside and framed by stout timbers, twice the height of a tall man and forty paces across. Four sets of cart tracks ran into the maw and were swallowed by darkness within a few paces. There were no carts in sight, though there were scattered pieces of broken equipment such as picks and helmets strewn about.

“It is shelter at least,” Halthak
said. “We could camp here on the return trip.”

“I think not,” Amric
replied. “Look into the shadows within the mine entrance.”

Halthak squinted into the distance, and shook his head
. “I see nothing.”

“Look at the wall at the edge of the light, just past the
second timber brace. Be patient and let your eyes adjust.”

Amric waited while Halthak stared and strained
. Dust motes danced and swirled in the shafts of sunlight before the entrance, and, coupled with the deep shadows behind, did much to mask the interior detail. The longer one looked on, however, the more a portion of the movement seemed incongruous with the idle play of the breeze, and the more evident it became that there was motion on the walls inside the mine. Amric looked aside, watching Halthak’s expression, and he knew the moment of recognition because the healer blanched and his eyes bulged.

“What are they?” the
Half-Ork whispered.

“Varkhuls
. A great many of them,” Amric said, quirking a smile at Bellimar as he echoed the old man’s words from the previous morning.

“Indeed,” said Bellimar
. “They are not harmed by sunlight, but they loathe it and become disoriented and half-blind by it. That man-made cave is a perfect abode for them, and there is no way of knowing how many are in that deep network of tunnels, or how fast they are multiplying. Come nightfall, it will be like kicking a nest of hornets; they will issue forth from the mine and carpet the vicinity, seeking prey.”

Amric nodded
. “Agreed, and given the scarcity of local quarry, we should put a good distance between ourselves and this location before then. Let us be gone from here.”

Stealing back to the horses, the mounted up in silence and rode back up the mine road.

Outside the forest, a lone rider approached the cave in the foothills where Amric and
his companions had camped the night before. Halting at the foot of the trail that led uphill to the cave, the rider gazed in that direction for a long moment, then downward at the tracks on the road, and finally to where the road pierced the forest in the distance and disappeared. Turning back to the cave, the rider reached up and released the veil that exposed only the eyes, and swept back the traveling cloak’s hood. Auburn hair tumbled free to be tugged by the breeze, and the rider drew deep, unhindered breaths as she scented the air. An unadorned silver circlet sat upon her brow and tamed her mane of hair over fierce green eyes. Swinging one leg around, the rider dropped lightly to the ground, using one hand to steady the long quiver bristling with arrows slung across her back. From a sheath tied to the saddle, she slid a recurve bow nearly as tall as she. She braced it against the ground and strung it in one deft motion. With a whispered word to the black mare, she draped the reins over the saddle horn and ascended the trail.