The False Martyr (128 page)

“
We go after you,” one of
them said.

“
Very well,” Eia conceded.
“Come on.” She took Ipid’s arm and pulled him away.

A pounding at the door
froze Ipid as he turned. The Darthur bristled. Eia froze and seemed
to concentrate. “Let me in,” Commander Tyne begged through the
door. He pounded again. “We’re holding them outside, but not for
long. Please, Lord Chancellor. I’ve done everything you’ve asked,
and they’ll string me from the window for it. You have to take me
with you. Please, I’m begging you.”

Ipid let out his breath.
The commander was right. Wallock’s pardon would be wasted on a dead
man, and the mob would certainly not wait for it. If he left him,
Commander Tyne was as good as dead. “Let him in,” he
ordered.

One of the Darthur turned
the lock.

“
No!” Eia yelled, but it
was too late. The door flew open. Commander Tyne was lost behind
four men with crossbows – the captain’s own men. Two of them were
crouched, two standing. They had been there the entire time. Tyne
had been part of it all along. He was the piece that Ipid had been
missing, the one who had been purging the city, the one who had
destroyed Vontel’s network, the one who had coordinated all of
this, the one who had been overlooked and would now deliver the
final piece of Allard Stully’s revenge. The crossbows released at
the very instant the door came open. Four bolts flew, aimed
directly at Ipid. And he could only watch them come.

Eia’s hand came up. The
air before them shimmered. Ipid was too stunned to move, too
stunned even to take a final breath. The bolts came so fast that he
could not see them until they were bouncing away. They stuck Eia’s
invisible barrier and ricocheted, flying back and away. Ipid
stumbled, still expecting to feel the steel and wood cutting
through him. He released his breath and watched from the corner of
his eye as one of those bolts slid around the barrier and struck
Eia. The thick bolt tore through her slim shoulder, striking her
tiny body with so much force that it carried all the way through.
She flew with it to the ground, landing hard. Her head bounced. The
portal blinked out.

Everything seemed to
happen in a blur after that. Ipid fell to Eia’s side, placed a hand
on her shoulder, felt blood pulsing over it, watched it creep
across the floor, up her hair, onto her face. She was not moving,
eyes closed, body peaceful. Ipid pressed on her shoulder with one
hand, praying for the blood to stop flowing, and slapped her cheek
with the other, staining it red from his fingers, calling for her
to wake, for her to make another portal, for her to get them away
from this.

The crossbowmen stepped
aside, replaced by a new set with weapons armed. The Darthur
created a wall between them and their target. One of the warriors
fell. The other two descended upon the archers. Two men appeared to
stop them. They whirled, moving like dancers around the first of
the warriors, making the giant look as clumsy as a drunk trying to
catch a band of pickpockets. Except that these pickpockets carried
two swords each, one long, one short in the style of Imperial
legionnaires. They were the perfect team, and the first warrior was
down before his fellow, stumbling with a bolt in his leg, could do
anything to aid him. The men smiled at each other as they engaged
the final Darthur. The bolt standing from his leg made it all the
more pointless. The men almost seemed to be playing with him as
they cut and slashed and stabbed until the mighty warrior crashed
to his knees. A final backhanded twirling blow sent a blade across
his throat, removing Ipid’s final line of defense.

Only when Lord Stully
walked through the door and stood between the men did Ipid realize
that he had seen the swordsmen before. They were the twins that had
flanked the lord that night so long ago. Now, pressing Eia’s
shoulder, slapping her cheek, begging her to wake, Ipid could only
watch Allard Stully advance. Behind him, the room filled with
familiar faces, members of parliament, governors, Commander Tyne,
Jon, Di Valati Wallock. Every one of them was present. Every one of
them had been part of the plan not only to usurp him but to kill
him. He felt his heart fall. At least they weren’t
smiling.

“
This is it,” Lord Stully
sneered, face screwed up tight with his fury. “There was no reason
for it to be like this, but you couldn’t help yourself. You had to
take out your petty quarrel on my son, had to make me pay before
you gave me what I wanted. I should make you suffer like I
suffered, but I know better than to leave a wounded snake, so I’ll
make it quick.” He motioned to his henchmen. They closed in steady
strides, bringing their longer blades up as one.

A portal opened. Every eye
went to it. The twins paused. Allard Stully’s grim countenance
faltered. Ipid felt hope rise as he waited for Naidi, waited for
the blast of energy that would cast back his attackers and provide
his escape.

Naidi appeared. The hood
of his black robe was thrown back, revealing a disfigured, white,
scar-lined head and mangled face that looked like something a small
child would make from clay. But he did not stride through the
portal, did not throw up his arms and cast back the swordsmen. He
stumbled, hand clasped to his stomach, and fell to the stones in a
motionless ball.

Ipid’s eyes flashed from
Naidi to Stully. Allard’s face formed a grim smile.
Failed them all
, was all
Ipid could think as he brought his bloody hands from Eia and raised
them over his head. There was no use in begging for his life, so he
might as well give them a clean shot at his heart.

“
No!” a voice rose. It was
deep, gravely, husky with emotion, terrifying. It was Rynn. Wearing
the black robe for the first time Ipid had seen, hood down,
blood-soaked hands stretched out, he looked the very image of
death. And that is what he brought. Ipid felt his emotions sucked
away. “Burn!” the boy, Dasen’s fondest friend, ordered in a voice
that could have come from the Maelstrom itself.

Towers of flame rose
around the twin swordsmen, around Lord Stully, around the
governors, parliamentarians, officials, advisors, generals, and
guards. Every important official, every leader had wanted to be
part of this, had wanted to tell his people the part that he had
played in the overthrow of the Tyrant. They had all gathered in one
place, increased their emotions to hide their unity, and with a
single word, Rynn turned them to ash. With a single word, he killed
every leader the nation had and ended any hope that the Kingdoms
would ever be unified again.

Ipid watched in horror as
everything he had fought to create, as any chance his nation had to
heal went up in flames. The heat was such that his eyes burned, but
he could not make them blink. They had to watch as hope was scoured
away, condemning an entire generation to chaos. Given the choice,
he would have gladly, willingly accepted his death, that of Eia,
Naidi, even Rynn. He would have given all those and more. But he
wasn’t given the choice. All he could do was watch.

Chapter 74

The
59
^th
Day of Summer

Jaret could almost sense
the creatures. He peered through the trees around them, hoping for
a glimpse of the things, some sense of what was waiting, but they
were in the densest, darkest, most remote portion of an already
impossibly remote forest. Branches and brush surrounded them on all
sides, green and dense and tangled. The creatures could have been
anywhere, could have been fifty feet away, and he never would have
seen them. He looked to the sky instead with little relief. The
canopy above was nearly complete. Even with the midday sun shining
in a cloudless sky, it felt like twilight. Ahead of them a rock
outcropping, a craggy peak standing twice the height of a man, rose
from the forest floor like a fortress.
That’s where I’d be
, Jaret told
himself.
If I were the creatures, I’d hide
there and hit us from above
. Eyeing the
rocks, he considered saying something to Lieutenant Caspar before
reminding himself that he was the amateur here. He needed to allow
his officers to lead, to trust them as much as the Order would
allow.

“
The trail leads south,”
Lieutenant Caspar said in hushed tones from ahead. “I doubt they’re
in the rocks. They prefer surprise to geographic advantage, would
rather come at us from a poor location that we don’t expect than a
defensible one that we do. My guess is they’re on the other side
waiting for us climb up.” He paused and looked again at the rock,
the trail they had been following, and the men around him. “We’ll
split up,” he declared. “First platoon with me around to the south.
Second, come in from the other side. Wait until we engage then hit
them from behind. Understood?”

The men, including Jaret,
nodded. The lieutenant for all Jaret’s talk about letting him lead
was sure to catch his commander’s eye, confirm his approval, before
giving the signal for his men to move out. Lieutenant Caspar and
his men had been hunting these creatures nearly every day for over
two weeks now. They likely knew the things better than any men on
this side of the Clouded Range. This was Jaret’s first time.
Despite his position, he’d nearly begged the lieutenant to let him
come, had promised that he’d stay out of the way, that he would not
endanger himself, that he would not even engage the things.
Lieutenant Casper had finally relented but only because there had
been no one of sufficient rank to support his denials. If Joal,
Yatier, or even Ewon had still been with them, they might have
forced their commander to see reason, but a lieutenant, even one as
esteemed as Caspar, had no chance against the man who was, by some
people’s accounts, the Emperor in exile.

Thus it was that Jaret had
joined his men early that morning, tracking these creatures,
following the signs of their movement, circling around almost to
where they’d started before the trail led them here. Twenty
legionnaires accompanied Jaret all with weapons out and ready. They
were all veterans of these hunts, had made it their only jobs since
the attack on the Camp, and had gotten, by all accounts, very good
at it. But that did not mean there had not been losses. The
creatures were still profoundly dangerous. They could still kill,
many of them from far away, many before you even knew they were
near. Jaret had seen the men return from these hunts, had buried a
few of them, had heard their screams as the bite of the Curava
Deilei Tuhar’za were administered to heal the wounded.

The men called them
phukers. It was an acronym – pain healer, something – that someone
had made up. They had names for most of the creatures now,
typically crude and slightly comical. It was part of the game,
almost a contest, just like using Thagas’kuila’s cousins to heal
themselves. They’d captured fifteen of the things after the battle
and in the hunts that followed and had almost turned it into a
moniker of pride to have their injuries healed by the things. They
displayed their scars with pride, made a game of who could go the
longest after a bite without screaming – none of them had made it
more than a few seconds – and then taunted the creatures after. It
meant that any injury could be healed in a matter of seconds. The
man only needed to shove an arm through the bars that contained the
things and put up with a few minutes of incredible pain. But it had
also made them reckless. It took the fear of serious injury, even
death, from the equation to the point that it was almost an honor
to be injured, a chance to show your bravery, rather than a sign of
your stupidity.

For his part, Jaret had no
desire to feel the poisonous bite again. He was not sure that even
the wall that held his emotions could handle it, and after his calf
had taken most of a day to heal and left him even now with a slight
limp, he was losing faith in the healing power that Thagas’kuila
had given him. That had made him more cautious –
like I have any control
,
he scoffed at his own thought. He had not ventured from the Camp
until today and, if not for the power compelling him, would not
have done so this day either. He reminded himself of that. It meant
that the Order had plans for him out here. Something important was
going to happen, or It wouldn’t have made me come. Somehow, that
only increased his unease.

Ever since the battle,
Jaret had been waiting. He knew now that he did not control his
words or actions, so he simply waited for the Order to break his
paralysis. The army surrounding the forest had withdrawn
completely, marching west to invade Liandria according to the few
legionnaires who had defected from their ranks. Commander Valien
had returned about the same time to confirm the claims. He had made
it through to Liandria but failed to secure any assistance. More
disturbing, he had brought news of an invasion from across the
Clouded Range, of a massive army led by wizards and creatures like
those that helped Emperor Nabim. The invaders had, according to
Ewon, already conquered the Kingdoms and were, even now, preparing
to take Liandria. The entirety of Liandria had gathered to face
them north of Lianne, which meant that they were sparing no one to
defend their eastern cities from Nabim or aid Jaret’s nascent
rebellion. Reading between the lines, Jaret guessed that they were
hoping to use the Morgs for that purpose. It had become Jaret’s
hope as well.