A Dream of Mortals (Book #15 in the Sorcerer's Ring) (3 page)

Darius felt his face sprayed with blood, and he
turned to see a dozen of his men cut down by an Empire soldier riding an
immense black horse. The soldier swung a sword larger than any Darius had ever
seen, and in one clean sweep he chopped off twelve of their heads.

Darius heard shouts rise up all around him, and
he turned in every direction to see his men being cut down everywhere. It was
surreal. They swung with great blows, and his men fell by the dozens, then the
hundreds—then the thousands.

Darius suddenly found himself standing on a
pedestal, and as far as the eye could see lay thousands of corpses. All his
people, piled up dead inside the walls of Volusia. There was no one left. Not a
single man.

Darius let out a great shout of agony, of
helplessness, as he felt himself grabbed from behind by Empire soldiers and
dragged off, screaming, into the blackness.

Darius woke with a start, gasping for air, flailing.
He looked all around, trying to understand what was happening, what was real
and what was a dream. He heard the rustling of chains and as his eyes adjusted
in the darkness, he began to realize where the noise was coming from. He looked
down to see his ankles shackled with heavy chains. He felt the aches and pains
all over his body, the sting of fresh wounds, and he saw his body covered in
wounds, dried blood caked all over him. Every movement ached, and he felt as if
he had been pummeled by a million men. One of his eyes was swollen nearly shut.

Slowly, Darius turned and surveyed his
surroundings. On the one hand he was relieved that it had all been a dream—yet
as he took it all in he slowly remembered, and the pain came back. It had been
a dream, and yet there had also been much truth in it. There returned to him
flashbacks of his battle against the Empire within the gates of Volusia. He
recalled the ambush, the gates closing, the troops surrounding them—all of his
men being slaughtered. The betrayal.

He struggled hard to bring it all back, and the
final thing he remembered, after killing several Empire soldiers, was taking a
blow the side of his head from the blunt end of an ax.

Darius reached up, chains rattling, and felt a huge
welt on the side of his head, coming all the way down to the swelling in his
eye. That had been no dream. That was real.

As it all came back, Darius was flooded with
anguish, with regret. His men, all the people he had loved, had been killed.
All because of him.

He looked around frantically in the dim light,
looking for any sign of any of his men, any sign of survivors. Perhaps many had
lived, and had, like him, been taken prisoner.

“Move on!” came a harsh command in the
blackness.

Darius felt rough hands pick up him up from
beneath his arms, drag him to his feet, then felt a boot kick him in the back
of his spine.

He groaned in pain as he stumbled forward,
chains rattling, feeling himself go flying into the back of a boy before him.
The boy reached back and elbowed Darius in the face, sending him stumbling
backwards.

“Don’t touch me again,” the boy snarled.

There stared back a desperate-looking boy, in
shackles like he, and Darius realized he was shackled to a long line of boys,
in both directions, long links of heavy iron connecting their wrists and
ankles, all of them being herded down a dim stone tunnel. Empire taskmasters kicked
and elbowed them along.

Darius scanned the faces as best he could, but recognized
no one.

“Darius!” whispered an urgent voice. “Don’t
collapse again! They’ll kill you!”

Darius’s heart leapt at the sound of a familiar
voice, and he turned to see a few men behind him on the line, Desmond, Raj, Kaz,
and Luzi, his old friends, the four of them all chained, all looking as badly
beaten as he must have looked. They all looked at him with relief, clearly
happy to see that he was alive.

“Talk again,” a taskmaster seethed to Raj, “and
I’ll take your tongue.”

Darius, as relieved as he was to see his
friends, wondered about the countless others who had fought and served with him,
who had followed him into the streets of Volusia.

The taskmaster moved further down the line, and
when he was out of sight, Darius turned and whispered back.

“What of the others? Did anyone else survive?”

He prayed secretly that hundreds of his men had
made it, that they were somewhere waiting, prisoners maybe.

“No,” came the decisive answer from behind
them. “We’re the only ones. All the others are dead.”

Darius felt as if he had been punched in the
gut. He felt he had let everyone down, and despite himself, he felt a tear roll
down his cheek.

He felt like sobbing. A part of him wanted to
die. He could hardly conceive it: all those warriors from all those slave
villages…. It had been the beginning of what was going to be the greatest
revolution of all time, one that would change the face of the Empire forever.

And it had ended abruptly in a mass slaughter.

Now any chance of freedom they’d had was destroyed.

As Darius marched, in agony from the wounds and
the bruises, from the iron shackles digging into his skin, he looked around and
began to wonder where he was. He wondered who these other prisoners were, and where
they were all being led. As he looked them over, he realized that they were all
about his age, and they all seemed extraordinarily fit. As if they were all
fighters.

They rounded a bend in the dark stone tunnel,
and sunlight suddenly met them, streaming through iron cell bars up ahead, at
the end of the tunnel. Darius was shoved roughly, jabbed in the ribs with a club,
and he surged forward with the others until the bars were opened and he was given
one final kick, out into daylight.

Darius stumbled with the others and they all
fell down as a group onto the dirt. Darius spit dirt from his mouth and raised
his hands to protect himself from the harsh sunlight. Others rolled on top of
him, all of them tangled up in the shackles.

“On your feet!” shouted a taskmaster.

They walked from boy to boy, jabbing them with clubs,
until finally Darius scrambled with the others to his feet. He stumbled as the other
boys, chained to him, tried to gain their balance.

They stood and faced the center of a circular dirt
courtyard, perhaps fifty feet in diameter, framed by high stone walls, cell
bars around its openings. Facing them, standing in the center, scowling back,
stood one Empire taskmaster, clearly their commander. He loomed large, taller
than the others, with his yellow horns and skin, and his glistening red eyes,
wearing no shirt, his muscles bulging. He wore black armor on his legs, boots, and
studded leather on his wrists. He wore the rankings of an Empire officer, and
he paced up and down, examining them all with disapproval.

“I am Morg,” he said, his voice dark, booming
with authority. “You will address me as sir. I am your new warden. I am your
whole life now.”

He breathed as he paced, sounding more like a
snarl.

“Welcome to your new home,” he continued. “Your
temporary home, that is. Because before the moon is up, you will all be dead. I
will take great pleasure in watching you all die, in fact.”

He smiled.

“But for as long as you are here,” he added, “you
will live. You will live to please me. You will live to please the others. You will
live to please the Empire. You are our objects of entertainment now. Our show things.
Our entertainment means your death. And you will execute it well.”

He smiled a cruel smile as he continued pacing,
surveying them. There came a great shout somewhere off in the distance, and the
entire ground trembled beneath Darius’s feet. It sounded like the shout of a
hundred thousand citizens filled with bloodlust.

“Do you hear that cry?” he asked. “That is the
cry of death. A thirst for death. Out there, behind those walls, lies the great
arena. In that arena, you will fight others, you will fight yourselves, until
none of you are left.”

He sighed.

“There will be three rounds of battle,” he
added. “In the final around, if any of you survive, you will be granted your
freedom, granted a chance to fight in the greatest arena of all. But don’t get
your hopes up: no one has ever survived that long.

“You will not die quickly,” he added. “I am
here to make sure of it. I want you dying slowly. I want you to be great objects
of entertainment. You will learn to fight, and learn it well, to prolong our
pleasure. Because you are not men anymore. You are not slaves. You are lower
than slaves: you are gladiators now. Welcome to your new, and final, role. It won’t
last long.”

Volusia marched through the desert, her
hundreds of thousands of men behind her, the sound of their marching boots filling
the sky. It was a sweet sound to her ears, a sound of progress, of victory. She
looked out as she went, and she was satisfied to see corpses lining the
horizon, everywhere on the dried hard sands outlying the Empire capital.
Thousands of them, sprawled out, all perfectly still, lying on their backs and
looking up to the sky in agony, as if they had been flattened by a giant tidal
wave.

Volusia knew it was no tidal wave. It was her
sorcerers, the Voks. They had cast a very powerful spell, and had killed all
those who thought they could ambush and kill her.

Volusia smirked as she marched, seeing her handiwork,
relishing in this day of victory, in once again outsmarting those who meant to
kill her. These were all Empire leaders, all great men, men who had never been
defeated before, and the only thing standing between her and the capital. Now here
they were, all these Empire leaders, all the men who had dared to defy Volusia,
all the men who had thought they were smarter than her—all of them dead.

Volusia marched between them, sometimes
avoiding the bodies, sometimes stepping over them, and sometimes, when she felt
like it, stepping right on them. She took great satisfaction in feeling the
enemy’s flesh beneath her boots. It made her feel like a kid again.

Volusia looked up and saw the capital up ahead,
its huge golden dome shining unmistakably in the distance, saw the massive
walls surrounding it, a hundred feet high, noted its entrance, framed by
soaring, arched golden doors, and felt the thrill of her destiny unfolding before
her. Now, nothing lay between her and her final seat of power. No more
politicians or leaders or commanders could stand in her way with any claim to
rule the Empire but she. The long march, her taking one city after the next all
these moons, her amassing her army one city at a time—finally, it all came to
this. Just beyond those walls, just beyond those shining golden doors, stood
her final conquest. Soon, she would be inside, she would assume the throne of
power, and when she did, there would be no one and nothing left to stop her. She
would take command of all the Empire’s armies, of all its provinces and
regions, the four horns and two spikes, and finally, every last creature of the
Empire would have to declare her—a human—their supreme commander.

Even more so, they would have to call her
Goddess
.

The thought of it made her smile. She would
erect statues of herself in every city, before every hall of power; she would
name holidays after herself, make people salute each other by her name, and the
Empire would soon know no name but hers.

Volusia marched before her army beneath the
early morning suns, examining those golden doors and realizing this would be
one of the greatest moments of her life. Leading the way before her men, she felt
invincible—especially now that all the traitors within her ranks were dead. How
foolish they had been, she thought, to assume she was naïve, to assume she
would fall into their trap, just because she was young. So much for their old
age—so far that had gotten them. It had gained them only an early death, an
early death for underestimating her wisdom—a wisdom even greater than theirs.

And yet, as Volusia marched, as she studied the
Empire bodies in the desert, she began to feel a growing sense of concern. There
weren’t as many bodies, she realized, as there should have been. There were perhaps
a few thousand bodies, yet not the hundreds of thousands she had expected, not
the main body of the Empire army. Had those leaders not brought all their men?
And if not, where could they be?

She started to wonder: with its leaders dead, would
the Empire capital still defend itself?

As Volusia neared the capital gates, she
motioned for Vokin to step forward and for her army to stop.

As one, they all came to a stop behind her and
finally there came a stillness in the morning desert, nothing but the sound of
the wind passing through, the dust rising in the air, a thorn bush tumbling.
Volusia studied the massive sealed doors, the gold carved in ornate patterns
and signs and symbols, telling stories of the ancient battles of the Empire
lands. These doors were famous throughout the Empire, were said to have taken a
hundred years to carve, and to be twelve feet thick. It was a sign of strength
representing all the Empire lands.

Volusia, standing hardly fifty feet away, had never
been so close to the capital entrance before, and was in awe of them—and of
what they represented. Not only was it a symbol of strength and stability, it
was also a masterpiece, an ancient work of art. She ached to reach out and
touch those golden doors, to run her hands along the carved images.

But she knew now was not the time. She studied
them, and a sense of foreboding began to arise within her. Something was wrong.
They were unguarded. And it was all too quiet.

Volusia looked straight up, and atop the walls,
manning the parapets, she saw thousands of Empire soldiers slowly come into
view, lined up, looking down, bows and spears at the ready.

An Empire general stood in their midst, looking
down at them.

“You are foolish to come so close,” he boomed
out, his voice echoing. “You stand in range of our bows and spears. With the
twitch of my finger, I can have you all killed in an instant.

“But I will grant you mercy,” added. “Tell your
armies to lay down their arms, and I will allow you to live.”

Volusia looked up at the general, his face
obscured against the sun, this lone commander left behind to defend the
capital, and she looked across the ramparts at his men, all their eyes trained
on her, bows in their hands. She knew he meant what he’d said.

“I will give you one chance to lay down
your
arms,” she called back, “before I kill all of your men, and burn this capital
down to rubble.”

He snickered, and she watched as he and all his
men lowered their face plates, preparing for battle.

As quick as lightning, Volusia suddenly heard
the sound of a thousand arrows releasing, of a thousand spears being thrown,
and as she looked up, she watched the sky blacken, thick with weaponry, all
firing down right for her.

Volusia stood there, rooted to her spot, fearless,
not even flinching. She knew that none of these weapons could harm her. After
all, she was a goddess.

Beside her, the Vok raised a single long, green
palm, and as he did, a green orb left his hand and floated up in the air before
her, casting a shield of green light a few feet above Volusia’s head. A moment
later, the arrows and spears bounced off it harmlessly and landed down on the
ground beside her in a huge heap.

Volusia looked over in satisfaction at the growing
pile of spears and arrows, and looked back up to see the stunned faces of all
the empire soldiers.

“I will give you one more chance to lay down
your arms!” she called back.

The empire commander stood there sternly,
clearly frustrated and debating his options, but he did not budge. Instead he
motioned to his men, and she could see them preparing another volley.

Volusia nodded to Vokin, and he gestured to his
men. Dozens of Voks stepped forward and they all lined up and raised their
hands high above their heads, aiming their palms. A moment later, dozens of green
orbs filled the sky, heading for the capital walls.

Volusia watched in great expectation, expecting
the walls to crumble, expecting to see all the men come crashing down at her
feet, expecting the capital to be hers. She was anxious to sit on the throne
already.

But Volusia watched in surprise and dismay as
the green orbs of light bounced off the capital walls harmlessly, then
disappeared in bright flashes of light. She could not understand: they were
ineffectual.

Volusia looked over at Vokin, and he looked baffled,
too.

The Empire commander, high above, snickered down.

“You are not the only one with sorcery,” he
said. “These capital walls can be toppled by no magic—they have stood the test
of time for thousands of years, have warded off barbarians, entire armies
greater than yours. There is no magic than can topple them—only human hands.”

He grinned wide.

“So you see,” he added, “you’ve walked into the
same mistake as so many other would-be conquerors before you. You’ve relied on
sorcery in approaching this capital—and now you will pay the price.”

Up and down the parapets horns sounded, and Volusia
looked over and was shocked to see an army of soldiers lining the horizon. They
filled the skyline with black, hundreds of thousands of them, a vast army, greater
even than the men she had behind her. They clearly had all been waiting beyond
the wall, on the far side of the capital city, in the desert, for the command
of the Empire commander. She had not just walked into another battle—this would
be an outright war.

Another horn sounded, and suddenly, the massive
golden doors before her began to open. They open wider and wider, and as they
did there came a great battle cry, as thousands more Empire soldiers emerged,
charging right for them.

At the same time, the hundreds of thousands of
soldiers on the horizon charged, too, splitting their forces around the Empire
city and charging them from both sides.

Volusia stood her ground, raised a single fist
high, then brought it down.

Behind her, her army let out a great battle cry
as they rushed forward to meet the Empire men.

Volusia knew this would be the battle that decided
the fate of the capital—the very fate of the Empire. Her sorcerers had let her
down—but her soldiers would not. After all, she could be more brutal than any
other man, and she did not need sorcery for that.

She saw the men coming at her, and she stood
her ground, relishing the chance to kill or be killed.