The Hidden Relic (The Evermen Saga, Book Two) (16 page)

"Halt!"

It was the voice of his detachment's captain. The Primate smiled to himself; they were far enough into Akari lands now. Something told him the Akari were here.

"What is it?" Melovar called out of the open window. He could see pine trees, covered in snow, and swirling eddies of low-hanging mist. The Akari certainly lived in an inhospitable place. Melovar supposed they preferred it this way.

A templar guard came to the window. "There's a strange man standing on the side of the road ahead," the templar said, his voice betraying his anxiety.

"Strange?" Melovar asked. "In what way?"

"He doesn't come forward, or say anything, or respond to our calls. He simply stands there, watching. We've sent out one of the scouts."

Melovar barked a laugh. "He won't get much sense out of him. Keep us moving, the rest of them will show themselves when they're ready."

"Yes, Your Grace," the templar acknowledged.

The carriage began to roll ponderously forward again as the drudges resumed their plodding walk. Melovar leaned out the window as he saw the scout return.

"Bring the scout here," Melovar called. "Tell him to keep quiet."

The scout came to the Primate's carriage, white-faced, rigidly keeping his composure.

"Well?" asked Melovar.

"He's dead," the scout said. "His skin glows with runes and his eyes are white. There is the stench of corruption about him and he stands still as though frozen. He doesn't answer when I speak."

The Primate nodded. "The rest will be close. Very close. Stay silent."

The scout nodded and moved away. The column continued to advance.

When the Akari finally showed themselves, they openly walked out of the forest rather than materialising out of thin air. These were just men after all, Melovar reminded himself.

Melovar looked out of his window, seeing them on both sides, edging slowly forwards, encircling the carriage and the men the Primate had brought with him. The Primate heard the shouts as his captain formed the templars up, and swords were drawn. Melovar's bodyguard formed a close ring around the carriage. The Primate's personal guard all had the taint, and he idly wondered who would win in a fair fight between one of his templars and one of the Akari.

Melovar had never seen an Akari, and he looked at them with fascination. He quickly divided them into two groups. There were the white-eyed silent warriors, men and women both, who wore swords and armour and seemed neither angry nor scared, but simply waited. Then there were those who stood behind them, also armed, but eminently more aware of their surroundings.

The Akari were tall and pale-skinned, with broad shoulders and narrow waists. They were an attractive people, with almost universal blonde hair and blue or grey eyes. The white-eyed men and women wore their hair long and loose, while those behind had their hair in braids, the women in a single, thick braid at their back, the men with multiple braids entwined in their hair. Many of the male warriors had forked beards, and all warriors regardless of gender seemed to prefer axes, maces, and hammers to swords.

One of the men at the back walked forward. Taller than the rest, with a height that must have measured close to seven feet, he had white hair but his face was unlined. His brow was cruel and his lips were turned down in a perpetual scowl. He wore clothing of bleached leather and a mantle of silver fox fur on his shoulders. At his belt he carried a two-headed war hammer and the muscles of his arms and legs rippled as he walked.

The big man halted, his right hand on the war hammer, and called out. "Your standard says that the Primate of the Assembly of Templars travels with this group. Show yourself, Primate, otherwise we'll destroy this column."

Melovar opened the door of his carriage and stepped out, leaving the book of the Evermen inside. He felt the snow crunch beneath his heels and heard the wind as it howled through the trees, tossing the falling white flakes. One of the white-eyed warriors stood close by, his skin pale and the mottled flesh under his eyes showing an advanced stage of corruption. The hem of Melovar's heavy white robe trailed on the ground as he ignored the revenant and walked towards the tall warrior.

"Dain Barden Mensk, you must be," Melovar said. "I heard your name spoken with fear when I was just a priest."

"That is I. You are Primate of the Assembly?"

Melovar was close enough now that he could see where Barden's forked beard had been threaded with silver. The colour suited the Akari; silver-grey was prevalent in their furred clothing and the colour of the older warriors' hair, in the shades of their eyes and the mood of the sky.

Melovar kept walking until he stood close enough that he knew Barden could see the countless crevices of his ruined skin, the yellow of his eyes. "I am Primate Melovar Aspen." Melovar lifted his voice. "Men," Melovar called, "this is Barden Mensk, Dain of his people. Dain is what we would call High Lord, and he is the ruler of the Akari."

Dain Barden looked around him, his mouth turned down with distaste. The strange silent warriors stepped forward at some unspoken signal. Melovar could see their skin glowing softly where runes had been tattooed onto the dead flesh. With so many around him, he could see where they were in varying states of repair; some looked fresh, if that could be said of the dead, while others were in an advanced state of decomposition.

Once, the Primate would have been filled with revulsion. Now he just thought of the power he would have at his disposal with the Akari by his side. Melovar looked around at his men — tough warriors, hand-picked for this mission, many of them with the taint — seeing that they were both disgusted and filled with fear.

"I come to treat with you, Dain Barden," Melovar said, looking up at the huge leader of the Akari, ignoring the revenants who stared at him with their empty eyes.

Barden looked back at the Primate, frowning, his brows coming together over his ice-blue eyes. "Why would the Emperor send you, Primate? Why not come himself?"

Melovar stepped forward and touched the chin of one of the silent warriors, a woman with loose silver hair and a short sword on each hip. The Primate turned the head, looking into the white eyes.

"Because the Emperor is dead," Melovar said, "and I am the ruler of the Tingaran Empire now."

"You?" Dain Barden said. "A templar?"

Melovar turned his yellow eyes on Dain Barden, lowering his hand until he grasped the woman's neck. "Yes," he said, "a templar."

The Primate began to squeeze, feeling the power of the elixir flow through his veins. The white-eyed woman flailed at her assailant with one arm, while the other drew a sword, and moving with surprising speed plunged it into Melovar's chest.

The Primate laughed as the revenant withdrew the sword; he could feel the wound resealing itself. The woman plunged the sword in again, this time pushing the point up, towards Melovar's heart.

The pain was excruciating, but Melovar continued to laugh, hiding the effort as he continued to squeeze the revenant's neck. If the woman had been alive, she would have choked and perished long ago, but this… thing… had no breath to yearn for. Finally, Melovar felt the vertebrae give beneath his fingers. As the woman withdrew the sword and prepared to plunge it into Melovar's flesh again, the Primate felt the spine crack. He gave one last squeeze, and the revenant crumpled to the ground.

The Primate turned to the ruler of the Akari, who looked at him with wary eyes. "The old ways are finished with, Dain Barden," Melovar said. "Your exile can end. We need to talk."

The tall warrior took his hand away from his war hammer, tugging on his forked beard. "Yes, Primate," Barden said. "I can see that we do."

~

D
AIN
Barden entertained Primate Melovar Aspen at his frozen palace in the ice city of Ku Kara, with Melovar's men remaining outside the city. A woman bowed in front of the Primate, descending to one knee to offer him strips of salted seal liver.

Melovar took one of the strips and put it in his mouth, rolling the oily texture over his tongue before biting into it. He chewed thoughtfully before swallowing. Disgusting.

Compared to the pain of withdrawal from the elixir, compared to the pain of his burned and ruined skin, it was nothing.

"I can see you admiring her beauty," Dain Barden said, gesturing to the near-naked young woman, dressed in a transparent garment of silver gauze. Her golden hair flowed to her waist, and the large nipples that crowned her breasts could be seen pressing up against the material. Her narrow waist flared to hips that were round and descended to long, athletic legs.

"I am an old man," said the Primate, "and a templar. Such pleasures have never driven me."

Barden gestured, and the young woman came closer to him. He ran his fingers over her hair. Except for the whiteness of her eyes, and the glowing symbols tattooed on her skin, she could have been alive. "My niece," he said. "She drowned in the ice a month ago. Such a shame."

Melovar nodded, shifting on the furs that cushioned his seat of ice. This was Barden's palace, and as host it was the Dain's prerogative to dictate the flow of conversation.

Dain Barden dismissed the woman with a curt gesture. "So let us be clear," he said. "You know where this relic is, along with this pool of essence?"

"That is correct," Melovar said.

Barden looked past the Primate's shoulder. "Renrik?" he called.

Melovar turned in his seat, where an Akari in a silver robe approached. He had black hair, which was unusual for an Akari, and wore a necklace of what appeared to be bones around his neck.

"Primate Melovar Aspen, this is Renrik Hormundar, one of my best necromancers. Well, Renrik?"

The necromancer ignored the Primate. "We have examined the book. It is authentic. We believe the relic exists, as does this pool. The structure though, where the relic is housed… we cannot say where it is."

"And we can return to the Empire?" Dain Barden addressed Melovar.

"Yes," said the Primate. "You can resume links with the houses, with the Assembly, and with the Empire. Your exile will be revoked."

"This relic will be ours?" Dain Barden asked.

"Yes. And the essence," Melovar said.

"And in return?"

"In return, you provide your formidable warriors to fight alongside the imperial legion and our templars."

Renrik spoke up, "But not in the warmer lands. Not in Altura, Halaran, or Petrya. Our warriors will decompose too quickly."

"Agreed." Melovar knew that with the Akari added to his strength in the colder lands in the east, he would be able to free up more of the Black Army to crush Altura.

"However, I know what you want most of all," Dain Barden said.

Melovar knew he was too eager, and that the Akari knew it. He didn't care.

"Yes, I want the secret."

"The reason we were exiled." Dain Barden regarded him with level eyes.

"Yes, yes, I want it."

"Let us show it to you first, and then we'll see if you're still so eager."

~

T
HE
Primate wished Zavros was with him. The sharp-eyed templar would understand much more than did Melovar himself. Nevertheless, it was beautiful to behold.

Dain Barden spoke as he showed the Primate the cavernous chambers deep beneath the ice city. "The dead are animated using the necromancers' arts. Depending on the age of the body and the skills it possessed in life, it may become a warrior, or a servant, or a, how do you say it, a creature of pleasure?

Melovar shivered. "How long do the revenants last?"

Necromancer Renrik spoke up. "We do not call them revenants, that is a word of your people." He gestured to a corpse that lay flat on a slab of ice. "To us he is a draug, the plural of which is draugar."

"Not ghouls then?" Melovar smiled thinly, his lips splitting again and blood trickling through the cracks.

"No," Renrik bristled, "not ghouls. They were once beloved, and they serve the Dain in death as they served in life. They are draugar."

"I understand," Melovar said. Not being a man of lore himself, he enjoyed pointing out their pretensions.

"The draugar are obviously better suited to colder climates, such as we have here in the north. The decay is our greatest challenge, for they will remain animated long after they've started to rot, or in battle when they have lost limbs or been stabbed many times."

"Impressive," Melovar said.

With Renrik leading and the Dain and Primate following close behind, the three continued past a massive vat, as high as the tallest tree and as wide around as a large house.

Renrik halted them. "Here, in Ku Kara, when the dead have served their purpose, and can go on no longer, they are recycled. The Lord of the Night gave us something far greater than your Lexicons." The necromancer and his Dain both looked up proudly at the vat. "We Akari have no Lexicon," Renrik continued. "We have no harvesters or extraction plants, eking out droplets of essence from the plant matter and the lignite. The Lord of the Night instead gave us a method of extracting essence from those with the most life force of all. We take our essence from those with much more life than plants. We, Akari, extract our essence from the dead."

~

M
ELOVAR
left the lands of the Akari jubilant. He had his agreement, he still had the book of the Evermen, and he would now head to Seranthia to prepare for Dain Barden's arrival. It had turned out better than he had ever imagined.

The Primate would send a fast messenger to Zavros, ordering him to Ku Kara where the templar would learn from the Akari. In particular Zavros would discover how they extracted essence from the dead.

Soon the Akari would send their armies to Seranthia, and Melovar would unleash the draugar against his enemies.

When he had his own supplies of essence again, and his own method of producing more, he would once again have power at his disposal. When the Primate ruled all the world he would give the Akari the same fate he planned for all of the houses. He would destroy them and give the world peace from lore at last.