The Black Tower (9 page)

Vra’taars
slid from their sheaths and hewed prisoners in half.  Dozens of hungry and manic captives dragged Dawn Knights to the ground and overwhelmed them with sheer numbers.  The prisoners pried their captor’s helmets away and tore at their faces and eyes and pummeled them with stones found in the mud.

Ijanna saw a host of dark cloaked men at the edge of the trees – the Red Hand.  They used short rods to pummel the well-armed Jlantrian warriors with streams of Veil power. 

The Dawn Knights regrouped and descended on the prisoners and the Red Hand with a vengeance. 
Vra’taars,
spiked shields and clawed hammers ripped into bodies.  Screams filled the night as the twisted mountain forest was spattered with blood. 

The Red Hand blasted into the Dawn Knight’s ranks with arcane missiles and bolts of acid.  A few of them vanished and reappeared closer to the heart of the conflict, where they snapped open cage locks and helped the prisoners escape from the burning shacks. 

Ijanna was in the thick of it.  Sammael cried as they moved through the ranks of exhausted prisoners and into darkness blazing with fire.  The prisoners made for the tree line.  People fell onto swords or slid into the burning pits.  Whorls of electricity and bladed ice storms hammered armored bodies.  Horses whinnied in fear as Veil energies tore them down. 

Skulls burst, men screamed.  Women and children were trampled beneath hooves.  Some made it to the treeline, their escape covered by Bloodspeakers who used their battle wands to form walls of burning thorns.

Many of the Dawn Knights ignored the Red Hand and focused just on the fleeing prisoners.  Arrows and bolts tore through weak and malnourished flesh, and soldiers crushed faces and opened stomachs beneath their merciless assaults.  Swords swept back and forth, hacking people apart like they were bloody wheat stalks. 

Ijanna moved fast and tried her best to steer clear from the larger clusters of prisoners.  She lost Malath somewhere in the chaos, but she couldn’t let that stop her.  Cold sweat washed down her face, and her body was battered and bruised from colliding with the other prisoners.  Fear ripped across her skin like claws. 

A Dawn Knight swung and tried to take her head off.  Ijanna ducked, and before the man could gather for a follow-through a blast of fire incinerated his skull.  Another Knight cleaved through a pair of fleeing boys not ten paces away. 

She ran without sense of direction, away from the fires and towards the shadows.  Some part of her brain reasoned she’d be safe there.  She slipped in gore and nearly tripped over bodies. 

Ijanna Breathed.  Veil power swept around her and filled her with strength.  Her powers were still weak – whatever hold the Dawn Knights had on the area didn’t appear to affect the Red Hand’s battle wands, but Ijanna’s reserve of the Veil seemed almost depleted, and as she stumbled over corpses and dodged her attackers she felt like she floated through some terrifying dream.

Blood and noise, a ground slick with mud and carnage.  Ijanna took hold of Sammael’s little hands where he’d locked them on her shoulder.  She felt his weight, and a tingle of fear spread through her body.  At any moment she expected something to strike them down, and her back twisted with tension and anticipation of a blow, but she couldn’t think about that, couldn’t stop.  She crouched low, held tight, listened to her son’s tears and felt his heart pound against her back.

She ran.  Red spattered across their path.  Something exploded just out of sight and nearly threw her to her knees.

Fire scoured the ground ahead.  Ijanna took a breath and ran through the flames, felt them lick her knees and scorch the bottoms of her feet.  Pain lanced up her limbs. 

Everything was covered with blood.  People died behind her.  Blades and screams and blasts of power echoed into the atmosphere. 

She ran along the edge of a wide pit, barely keeping her balance.  Dozens of people were slowly dying inside, submerged up to their waists in boiling hot water or being flayed by Dawn Knights who didn’t seem to notice that their camp was under attack, or else just didn’t care.  She saw more cages filled with prisoners who cried out to her in pity, begging her to come and release them.  She wasn’t sure, even years later, why she didn’t stop.  Fear must have pushed her on, fear for her son, fear for herself.  Ijanna heard their voices in her dreams, sometimes, calling out for her.

A Dawn Knight tipped a vat of burning oil into one of the pits.  More Knights lined up outside the cages and fired in from all sides with crossbows, and when they ran out of bolts they stepped up and shoved their blades through, again and again, sawing through flesh until nothing was left alive. 

Ijanna ran, terrified.  She didn’t even realize she was screaming. 

The stench of bodies turned her stomach.  She was so dizzy she could barely focus on the path to the trees.  Twenty paces more and she’d be there, in among the cedars at the base of the slope.  Sammael was crying.

The shadows of the forest loomed ahead.  Every step sent razors of pain up her shins.  She clutched Sammael’s hands and kept running.

She fell through the dark.  It seemed they’d fallen for years.  She knew they weren’t really falling, that all of this was happening in that instant it took for her and Dane’s bodies to plummet through the
cutgate
, out of the Bonelands and into Chul Gaerog. 

What was this?  Some defense, some test?  Why were these memories so fresh, so real, like she was living it all over again?

She knew what happened next, but she saw it through someone else’s eyes.

Dane felt like vomiting.  He ducked beneath a Bloodspeaker’s staff whose tip glowed with potential, another blast of flame aimed for his face, but he swept up with his
vra’taar
and sliced both of the man’s hands off with one clean strike.  The mage screamed and stumbled back long enough for Dane to bring the sword down and cleave the man’s skull in two, and the ruined body fell to the ground. 

He stood on the corpse of a dead girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old.  Dane couldn’t recall if he’d killed her.

The battle raged on around him.  The Knights had the upper hand.  The Red Hand attackers were being dealt with, but the damage they’d caused was considerable.  General Crinn ordered that all prisoners be slaughtered to prevent them from escaping.  Dane listened to cries of pain and pleas for mercy.  The stench of blood and fear made the air as thick as smoke.

Why was he fighting?  He, Ghost, Corva, and a few others had been ready to capture Crinn and put an end to the madness, but then the Red Hand had launched their assault.  Reflex drove him, that old desire to protect his friends, his allies, but the moment of calm reminded him how
wrong
this all was.  The killing had to stop, one way or another.

Another blast of flame ripped into a group of Dawn Knights, spattering them across the ground.  General Crinn ran a Red Hand Bloodspeaker through with his blade, and as the man sank to the ground he pounded the poor bastard’s skull with a gauntleted fist, again and again, grinding the bone to bloody paste.  His
vra’taar
was greasy with gore and his helmet was gone, revealing a stony face and short dark hair.  The General’s tabard had been scorched. 

He motioned for Dane to help him, and Dane did so without question, a lifetime of servitude and duty overriding his doubts. 

As Dane drew close a pair of prisoners, one man and one woman, ran into Crinn; they didn’t even see him until they smacked into his armor.  Crinn hacked off the man’s leg with a clean swipe and left him to bleed and scream, then pushed his blade through the woman’s turned back.  She fell to the ground, pinned there by the sword, but kept writhing in pain, so Crinn stomped on her skull with his armored boot, again, a third time, crushing brains and bone, turned beauty to muck on his heel. 

Dane watched in horror.  This man, this act.  He’d done this himself, had been doing it for weeks.  His insides twisted.  Dane felt the world spinning.

Crinn took hold of him and dragged him forward, as if searching for something.  They came to the crest of the hill near the edge of the forest.

“There!” Crinn shouted, and he pointed at a woman running for the trees.  “Stop her!”

Dane obeyed, because he had to, because it was his duty, because he was a soldier again, ignoring his doubts, doing what his General commanded.  Dane had a crossbow in his hands; he didn’t even remember picking it up.  It felt heavy and unnatural as he propped it up to his shoulder. 

He watched the woman run.  She had something on her back, a pack of some sort, but a drift of fire smoke swept across the ground between them.  She was fifty yards away.

Shooting a woman in the back.  Goddess, why?  Was this the only way to save the Empire?  His home?

His dream?

She was at the edge of the trees.

“Do it!” Crinn shouted, and Dane did.  The bolt flew through the smoke and landed just as a blast of acid and fire ripped into the earth behind Dane and knocked him prone. 

“Good shot, Dane!” Crinn cried.  “You got the bitch!”

Dane rose, and dropped the crossbow.  Bile built up in his throat.  All of the blood was in his stomach.  He felt like he was being torn in two.

He knew even then that he’d just killed an infant.

Dane lifted his sword from the ground, turned, and sliced Crinn’s throat. 

“Noooooooooooo!!!!!” he shouted.  “No more!”

Blood sprayed onto his face.  Crinn fell backwards, into the acid fog.  All of the rage and fear and anger that had been roiling inside Dane came spilling out.  A figure emerged from the darkness, come to stop him from murdering the General, but Dane paid it no heed, just followed his commander as the body rolled down the hill.  Dane would take revenge for all of the pain they’d caused.

Ijanna’s vision swam.  She saw red and white, floating and insubstantial, a fog of color and sound.  Sharp pines pushed against her face.  Her body seemed distant, in such pain it was beyond her capacity to even feel it anymore, and when she tried to push herself from the ground her arms were almost numb.

As sensation slowly crept back into her body she felt the forest floor beneath her, sharp and hard.  Fatigue flooded her muscles like poison.  Blood ran down her neck and cheeks.

For a moment she froze, but as realization of what had happened dawned on her she seized and bolted up in panic. 

Sammael was silent. 

No, please, no, no, no….

And she tore the makeshift backpack off and carefully cradled her baby son in her arms, her little boy, so happy and bright and full of life, with big blue eyes and a smile that made her heart glow.

Ijanna howled in terror.  He was so cold in her arms, limp, a bloodsoaked weight that wouldn’t stir no matter how she held him or squeezed him or begged for him to be all right. 

Gone. Just flesh, now.  Hurt seared through her body.  The world seemed to melt.  Ijanna fell to the forest floor, her soul rent apart.

And they fell, deeper into memories, into the nightmare that had been her life.  They fell through the void and into Chul Gaerog, with Ijanna’s arms wrapped around the man who’d murdered her son.

Azander Dane was eclipsed by the void.

Ijanna fell with him, into the oblivion between worlds, an endless dark which led to the heart of Chul Gaerog. 

He pulled her close.  He knew what harm he’d caused her, and that he could never be forgiven. 

All he could do was serve her.  All he had to give was himself, and if she didn’t want that he’d gladly disappear, never to be seen again. 

The darkness swallowed them. 

He saw into her, saw
through
her, witnessed her pain.  The most terrible loss she’d ever suffered had come by his hand.  He saw her memories of the camps, saw himself through her eyes.  She knew who he was, knew the madness that had taken hold of him.  She saw the source of his scars, felt the wounds on his soul.

He felt himself bound to her.  The Veil moored his heartbeat to hers, and their souls melted together. 

They fell.

Everything snapped back to reality.  The fall, the darkness, the loss of direction.  Dank wind rushed around his body.  He felt weightless, sensed the walls looming close.  Murky red light pushed against his tired eyes.  They were almost on the ground. 

Dane held Ijanna tight.  She resisted, but he was stronger than she was, and he twisted them so she’d land on top of him as his back faced the ground.  He glimpsed dark and flickering flames.

He had no idea how far they’d fallen.  It might have been miles.

The ground slammed into him.  Air painfully ejected from his lungs.  Hurt spread across his back, and his head came down with such force he thought his skull had split.  Blood seeped from his ears and nose.

Dane gasped.  Ijanna was curled on top of him, held in his embrace, her eyes shut.  He felt hollow.  His limbs didn’t work.

For a time neither of them moved.  Ijanna’s weight was a strange comfort, something he could focus on other than his pain, which flared through every last fiber of his being.  Something moist lay under him on the stone.  He heard waterfalls in the distance. 

Dane tried to open his eyes, but all he saw were the blonde wisps of the woman on top of him.  She smelled sweet with sweat, which thankfully was more powerful in his nostrils than the otherwise prevalent odor of rot. 

His vision swam in and out of focus.  After a few unsuccessful tries he finally managed to push himself up onto his elbows, and he felt Ijanna stir.  He put his arm around her back to keep her from falling, and looked around.

They’d landed in a massive and open chamber wrought of deep grey stone.  Ledges and balconies lined with marble railing and rusted black iron loomed overhead.  The place was vast beyond measure.  Aged and shadow-rimed walls stood in the distance, and the ceiling was impossibly tall.  Tall pillars of white fire erupted from the dark and spread fumes which sparkled like magnesium. 

The air tasted stale and dead, like the inside of a tomb.  Dark tunnels and empty doorways spiraled off into a fathomless network of catacombs and portals.  Dark ooze dripped from above, turgid rain the consistency of oil.  Drifts of silver fog settled into patches of crusted minerals that fell apart like dust.  Distant stones like monstrous teeth barred way to some of the larger passageways, blood-capped ivory boundaries in the shape of tusks.

Dane and Ijanna lay on a shelf of stone, one of two bridges which spanned a deeper valley of sharp rock and pits filled with forests of antler and bone and rivers of slow-moving blood.  A lake of darkness lay hundreds of feet below, churning with waters from the falls.

His muscles tensed.  The bridge they’d landed on was only a few feet wide but several hundred feet long, and it stretched to one of two dark alcoves at the far end of the behemoth cavern.  It was a miracle they’d landed on the bridge and not kept falling, only to wind up impaled on one of the jagged stalagmites.  Dane sat up all of the way, cradling Ijanna in his arms and holding her unconscious body against his chest.  Her breathing quickened, but she didn’t wake. 

Skeletons were scattered in the valley, where bits of skull and rib-bones decorated the spikes.  A complicated series of staircases and ledges lined the walls, hundreds of them, criss-crossing like highways and emptying into the corridors.  The waterfalls were the only source of sound, deeply black waters stained with filth and decay. 

They were in Black Tower. 

It didn’t seem possible.  Dane had heard stories about how the inside of Chul Gaerog was immense, for not only was the citadel hundreds of feet tall but its interior plunged deep underground, like a spike of black stone burrowing miles into the earth.  Dane sensed Veilcraft in the air, so thick it burned his lungs. 

Ijanna woke and slowly pulled away from him, her face buried in her hands as she moaned in pain.  Dane made sure she was steady before he stood up, his every muscle aching.  The height of the bridge was dizzying, and it took him a few moments to right himself.  He was worried that he’d stumble right off the edge and dash his body on the rocks below, but after a moment of watching his feet and counting to himself the sense of vertigo passed.  He shifted his limbs, wiped the blood from his face, and was relieved to find nothing was broken – something had magically cushioned their fall, or else the
cutgate
had deposited them closer to the bridge than he’d originally thought.

He felt eyes on him.  An icy sensation wound its way up his spine.  He scanned the darkness around them, watched for any signs of immediate danger, but saw none.  Even then, he reached for his
vra’taar
and cursed when he realized it wasn’t there.

They weren’t alone.  Dane had thrown the traitorous Jlantrian priest, Gallaean Storhmshrike, down the
cutage
before he and Ijanna had fallen, and since there was no sign of the corpse on the stalagmites he had to assume the bastard survived the fall.  Dane tensed his hands, wishing he had another weapon.  He was tempted to grab hold of the Veil, but he wasn’t sure what effects that evil place would have on his admittedly limited ability to wield magic.

Dane was exhausted beyond all measure.  He’d been fighting ever since his escape from Kaldrak Iyres, but he couldn’t stop now.  He felt sure Ijanna was his purpose, the reason he’d survived.  He had to protect her, or die trying. 

I have to believe this is where I’m supposed to be.  All of the pain I’ve caused, all the lives I took...they led me here. 

Dane sensed something behind him, but he couldn’t move in time.  A strike caught him in the head and nearly sent him off the ledge and into the darkness below. 

Ijanna landed another well-placed blow, this time on the back of his neck.  Pain jolted down his shoulders.

“You murdering bastard!” she shouted.  She came at him like an animal, and Dane backed away.  He couldn’t even consider doing her harm, but Ijanna had no such reservations.  She tackled him hard, apparently with the intent of throwing them both over the side.  Dane felt emptiness at his back, sensed the darkness under their feet.  He twisted his body and took hold of her shoulders, spun them around and twisted her back onto the bridge so he landed on top of her.  Her elbow connected with his face, and pain exploded across his aching nose.  He tried to pin her hands down to keep her from lashing out at him but she twisted away, rolled back before he could gather himself and brought her knee against his jaw.  Another blow landed on his stomach, and then she kicked him between the legs.  Hurt buckled up and down his body.  Blood spilled from his lips.

She stood over him, her eyes burning with fury.

“Stop!” he shouted.  His voice echoed through the vastness of the chamber, doubled back and came at him like a thousand doppelgangers had shouted in unison.  Ijanna came at him again, fists raised and murder in her eyes.  She feigned and attacked his weak side, moved her feet so she could kick him in the head and send him off the bridge, but Dane anticipated the move and grabbed her ankle just as her foot would have connected with his face.  He took hold of her arm with his other hand and threw her onto her back, hard, and while she struggled to breathe he pinned her under his weight.  She writhed wildly, and screamed.  “I said stop!” he shouted in her face.  Surprisingly, she did, but her lips were curled in a snarl and she looked like she’d bite his face off if given half the chance. 

Their eyes met, and all he saw in her gaze was hatred.  This was the last thing he’d expected a few weeks ago when the Iron Count had given him the contract to hunt down the Dream Witch.  Dane hadn’t known at the time that he’d met her before.  That he’d murdered her son.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  He knew how preposterous that sounded, how pathetic.  She must have known who he was, and there were no words that could keep her from wanting him dead.  How could he explain he’d come all this way to help her, to protect her?  “I’m sorry,” he said again. 

“You’re...sorry...” she said coldly. 

There were tears in her eyes.  Her face was smeared with blood and sweat.  Dane felt a bond with her, like they breathed the same breaths, like their hearts beat in unison. 

Something had happened between them, something unnatural.  Something driven by the Veil.

“I’m here to help you,” he said.  She seemed to relax a bit, but he couldn’t be sure if was a subterfuge, so he maintained his grip.  “I was...spared.  The Veil saved me.  I should have died long ago, but it kept me alive, and I think...I think the reason it let me live was so I could wind up here, with you.”

Dane didn’t notice until she rose her knee hard into his groin that he’d allowed her legs to slip free.  White-hot pain lanced through his stomach and chest, and his limbs throbbed with weakness.  Pain radiated out from his balls like she’d shoved nails down his pants. 

Ijanna pushed Dane off the bridge.  His eyes took in the empty darkness beneath him.  The ground was suddenly gone, and his body flailed into open air. 

Dane reached out, desperate.  One hand took hold of the stone and dug in, fingers straining so hard he felt them bleed; the other grabbed Ijanna’s arm and pulled her with him.  She fell, tumbled past.  Dane cried out as his shoulder twisted.

They dangled over the abyss.  Ijanna was below, holding onto Dane’s left arm, while his right hand clawed the ledge over their heads.  Wind heavy with the smells of mold and death enveloped them.  Their shouts echoed through the deeper dark. 

The stone valley below, with all of its spikes and holes and shattered crystal structures, seemed to grow deeper as he watched it.  His chest heaved with exhaustion.  His muscles felt close to ripping, and he knew he’d wrenched his shoulder out of place.  Pain blazed through his body.  He felt himself being torn apart.

Ijanna kicked and writhed.  His grip was weakening, and his fingers were slipping off the stone above.

“No!” he shouted.  He tried to kick his feet up to get some sort of foothold, but his boots wouldn’t reach the bridge.  The only way they’d get topside would be for him to lift her high enough to climb up his body, but with how she writhed and clawed at his vambrace to try and pry it loose he suspected that wasn’t going to happen.  “Ijanna, don’t struggle!”

“Go to hell!” she shouted.  “We’re going to die, both of us!”

“Damn it,” he growled through clenched teeth.  “We’re not dying.  Not today.”

He tried to lift her up, and she thrashed harder.  He felt the vambrace coming undone.  He had a firm hold on her arm, but his grip on the stone was sliding.  Tears of pain rolled down his face.

“Ijanna, please...”

“You killed my son!” she shouted. 

Dane held tight. 

“But
you’re
alive,” he said.  “I’m not dropping you...”

“I came here to die!” she shouted. 

Dane’s heart went cold.  His arm felt ready to pull out of the socket.  The darkness loomed. 

“What...”  It was hard to breathe.  He focused, and Touched the Veil to fill his body with strength.  Cold power lanced through his veins.  Dane’s heart chilled, and he sensed that something had dug its claws into his soul .  “What are you...talking...about...?”

“I’m here to die, Azander Dane,” she said, looking up at him.  She’d stopped struggling.  Fresh tears ran down her face.  Her grip on his arm slackened, and she dangled low, hanging like a flag in the breeze.  “I have to die, so the world can live.”  She started sobbing hard, and her gasps for breath were filled with painful tears.  “Drop me.  Please.  I can’t do this anymore...it’s time for this to end...”

Dane’s body was coming unknit.  His bones strained as he pulled, tried to lift her so she could take hold of him.  

“I came here...to help you...”  He cried out in pain.  “Ijanna...please...”

“You can help,” she whispered.  “By letting me die.”

“We can find...another way...”

It was no good.  The strain of trying to lift her up while supporting both of their weight with his weak arm was too much.  Everything gave.  He let out a violent gasp of air as his fingers came loose.  Fear fired into his heart like an arrow.

But they didn’t fall.

Dane looked at Ijanna.  They were level now, both dangling, floating like they were feathers.  His body felt like he was swimming, but there was nothing there, just the darkness of the underground cavern.  Dane’s chest heaved with desperate breaths.  He tried to reach out and take hold of Ijanna but she was suddenly out of reach, her eyes locked on something up above.  Dane followed her gaze.