The White Towers (19 page)

Pockets straightened. A very, very bad feeling sank through him and he glanced around again, as if searching for an enemy, or at least some sign of life. It was instinct that kicked him back a step as the creature landed in front of him with a thud; a split second earlier and it would have landed atop him. Pockets caught a glimpse of skin like bark, and deep black eyes and teeth like thorns, and he spun, skidding, to accelerate into a spin… but a cluster of thin tentacles shot out, wrapping around his waist, his legs, his arms, and he was pulled back suddenly with a shriek and gasped as the ground rushed away and he was launched upwards, body screaming, then tugged into the dark black upper stories of a four storey house – where the elf rats were waiting for him.

 

The Iron Pike Palace, Vagandrak. A vast monolith of marble and iron, a beautiful sculpted edifice towering ten stories up and dominating the centre of the country’s War Capital. Up polished iron steps, gleaming under a winter sun. Black and white tiles spread out in patterned arcs, under ornately carved stone arches and balconies and sculptures that belonged more in a cathedral than Yoon’s War Palace. Rushing through the throne room, it was dominated by vast statues depicting former Kings and Queens of Vagandrak, and a series of ten thrones stood lining the far wall on a raised dais of granite. Now, the vast, high-ceilinged chamber was dominated by a gathering of elf rats. There were several hundred, standing silently around a central space. In this defined area stood four acolytes of Bazaroth aea Quazaquiel, Sorcerer to the Elf Rat King Daranganoth, swaying, each with quests like long white roots connected to a central, locked down figure. Masketh, Captain of the Royal Guards, lay pinned to the floor, face red with shouting curses and struggling against the thin, wavering strands.

Bazaroth appeared at the huge arch that defined the entrance to the palace throne room; a hushed silence spread through the elf rats, and all heads turned, tracking the sorcerer as he shuffled forward, staff clacking on the marble tiles, to eventually stand, staring down at the tense, snarling figure of Masketh with spittle on his lips and hate – and fear – in his eyes.

“You humans are more resilient than I would have given you credit for.” Bazaroth smiled, his face wrinkling and corrugating like some monster from childhood’s darkest dreams. “Many are hiding. But they cannot hide for long.”

“Scum!” snarled Masketh. “Why did you come here? What do you want, you filthy, poisoned rat bastards? You’re not even supposed to exist! What dark sorcery is this?”

“An interesting perspective,” said Bazaroth, gaze fixed on Masketh. “A shame your ancestors felt a need to erase us from the history books; from your history, specifically. Other cultures, the jungle tribes of Jugenda, for example, see fit to give us some credit for the building of their ancient civilisations. But you,” and now a dark gleam was in Bazaroth’s eyes, “not only do you seek to exterminate us, driving us from lands we nurtured for ten thousand years; hunting us like common vermin; exterminating our menfolk, our females and our children. Then you have the
fucking temerity
to delete us from history altogether.” He’d leaned forward during his exposition, but now straightened, or straightened as much as one so old and bent and broken and crippled
could
straighten.

“You are childhood nightmares, nothing more,” said Masketh. “This is some black magick. Evil sorcery. We will fight you, and we will defeat you.”

“Your race’s answer to everything,” sighed Bazaroth. “The law of the sword and the axe. Conquest by blood and death and slaughter.” His face grew a little tighter. “By genocide,” he said, quietly. “Do you feel guilty for the crimes of your ancestors? But then, of course you do not. You have no idea of the atrocities of which I speak. The dark deeds carried out underneath the ground in vast torture chambers. The mass exterminations. The burial pits filled with oil and corpses, then igniting with vast explosions, flames roaring up into the clouds like huge mushrooms of blinding white energy, a terrible rage, an all-consuming fire, eating flesh and eyes and bone.” Bazaroth was panting, one hand raised, lifting his twisted hardwood staff. Then it hammered against the palace floor, and a thick marble tile cracked. His eyes narrowed. “Do you feel guilty, Masketh?”

“Fuck you, elf rat scum.”

Bazaroth aea Quazaquiel smiled, and made a swift gesture. From behind, through the crowd, two elf rats dragged a struggling woman. She was slim, dark-haired, pretty. Her blue dress was torn and blood lay indelible on nose and chin and shins. She was barefoot, hair tangled, eyes just a little wild. She stopped struggling the minute she saw Masketh, and from his trembling lips there came a tiny, “No.”

“Masketh. I think you recognise Shaela. Shaela, I think you, too, recognise your loving husband, Masketh. He’s the Captain of the Royal Guards, you know.” Bazaroth was moving, hobbling forward, his staff clacking on the polished floor of the throne room until he was close to the woman who recoiled in absolute terror. Bazaroth grinned at her, teeth like dark thorns tipped with blood. He glanced back at Masketh, still pinned to the floor but struggling now with an intensity that was almost frightening; as if he might split himself in two in the act of trying to escape.

“Please,” said Masketh, halting his struggle suddenly in the realisation that he would never break the root-bonds of the acolytes. “Please. Don’t hurt her. Please. I’ll do anything!”

“Tell me where Yoon’s wife, Tryaella de Franck, is hiding. This palace is a warren of hidden rooms and escape tunnels; she has taken Yoon’s three little bastards and flown their rich little nest. Where have they gone?”
 Masketh suddenly paled.

“I don’t know,” he whispered.

“You do know!”

“No, such important information is kept from me!”

“Horse shit!” roared Bazaroth. “You are
captain.
One of your roles is that of protector of the
queen
and Yoon’s spindly little fucking offspring. You will tell us where they are, or we will rip Shaela apart!” Already the quests were squirming from Bazaroth’s gnarled hands, thrashing like a fist of oiled snakes as they lurched and writhed across the air space between him and the suddenly cringing, squirming, wailing woman…

The seething mass of thrashing root strands paused in front of Shaela’s face and she went suddenly rigid, as if struck by a bolt of high magick energy, and her eyes were fixed on those seething roots, which bunched as if into a giant fist ready to punch a hole through her teeth and down into the gurgling stomach beyond. Her scream of panic started almost beyond the range of human hearing, dropping in pitch until Masketh coughed, and with tears streaming down his face yelled, “Stop! Stop, please; I’ll tell you. I’ll show you where the queen has fled.”

“Where?” Bazaroth’s head turned and fixed on Masketh. His eyes were older than the forests and mountains of Vagandrak. Masketh felt a chill wind blow through his soul, tolling a bell that signalled an End of Days.

“Let me up,” he panted, sweat staining his clothing, lank in his hair, rolling down his forehead, dripping into his eyes. “There is a chamber, I will show you. I will take you there. But please, do not hurt my wife.”

Bazaroth nodded, and Masketh was released. Shaela was tossed in his direction and they crumpled together like crushed flowers, hands and arms clamping one another as they fell into an embrace, and sank to their knees, sobbing at one another.

Bazaroth made an impatient, clucking sound. “Your sentiment is touching,
humans
, but if you are not on your feet in three seconds and showing me what I want to know, then my original offer of tearing you limb from bloody, shredded limb still stands. One. Two…”

Both Masketh and Shaela scrambled to their feet, still clinging to one another like drowning lovers. Their eyes were wide. Masketh’s understanding sank in slowly, and he lurched into motion, dragging a limp-limbed Shaela with him. They moved across the throne room, into a series of large, high-arched corridors with high plaster carvings of kings and queens from ancient history. Limping, staff clacking, Bazaroth snarled at many of those depictions in unfavourable remembrance. Some of them had been responsible for driving the elf rats from Vagandrak in the first place.

Down long corridors they travelled, Shaela sobbing, Masketh attempting to calm her, until they came to a mammoth, redwood panelled library, rising up with ornate black iron spiral staircases to three balconies above, revealing towering stacks of books, not just in their thousands, but tens of thousands. The smell of leather and polish was strong, until Bazaroth brought his own elf rat stench; a mixture of woodland decomposition and… a metallic something, underlying, like a half-buried cat corpse half eaten by maggots.

“There.” Masketh pointed.

Bazaroth limped forward, and whacked his staff against a dark panel in a wall of similar panels. There came a hollow thud. Quests wormed from his opened hand, surging from his palm. They wrapped around the panel and wrenched it free with a tearing of wood and iron brackets. There was a
twang
, as of heavy released springs.

Bazaroth smiled, and stepped disjointedly into the darkness of the tunnel beyond.

General Namash, a huge, hulking elf rat warrior with skin like dark oak and fists like tree stumps, pushed forward through the acolytes who had followed the sorcerer. “Bazaroth!” he barked, and the wizened old sorcerer turned.

“Yes, General?”

“What about those?” he pointed to the two shivering humans who had betrayed their queen.

“Feed them to the Tree Stalkers,” Bazaroth whispered, eyes gleaming.

The mountains of Skarandos were huge, a vast range of towering grey and black peaks, some nearly ten thousand feet in height and perpetually capped in snow, both at summits and in great rivers of ice down their flanks. They bordered the southwest realm of Vagandrak, running all the way from the Plague Ocean, where glittering metallic waters lapped at shores of fused sand and tainted rocks, a vast crescent of dragon’s teeth curving up to the western Salt Plains, the inhospitable desert of salt that bordered Vagandrak to the west, and which had never been successfully crossed. Or at least, not by anybody who could tell the tale. The Mountains of Skarandos were broken by just one natural pathway through their mass – the Pass of Splintered Bones, and guarded at the southern end of the pass by the mighty vast walls of Desekra Fortress, built from stones mined from the very mountains themselves.

Now, snow was falling heavily across Vagandrak, and the land seemed to have sunk into a surreal grey witch-light. Mist drifted in thick patches, and silence was heavy at the foot of the Mountains of Skarandos on their northern flanks, where various huge peaks stood as enormous black guardians, like serrated pike teeth, with rocks the size of houses at their splayed toes and steep, stocky, unwelcoming feet.

There were caves along the feet of that mountain wall, surrounded by a million scattered rocks. Many were shallow, carved by rushing spring melt water, cold from the upper slopes. Some went deeper, but were far too cold, damp and bleak for any kind of reasonable habitation. Now, as snow fell and mist drifted in icy curtains, a face appeared. It was a face that had once been carved by the razors of a savage torturer, a face with only one good eye that worked, the other having been burned out by acid and an unflinching hand. There was tufted stubble on that face in uneven patches, thanks to the criss-cross scarring, and a bleak look to the single eye to match the savage, lifeless scenery, a cynical snarl on scarred lips to make even the most optimistic man look at his own life and future prospects with caution.
This could fucking happen to you,
that face seemed to say.
I was handsome, once. I was happy, once. And then some cunt with an agenda took a razor to my face; took his time, he did. Left me as a proper Pretty Boy. And you know what? You put your foot wrong in this life; you disrespect the wrong people, you fuck over the wrong criminal gangs, and this could happen to you.

Narnok stepped from the cave and stopped, head lifted a little as if sniffing the air. He carried his huge axe in one fist, and in the other a length of rope, which he tugged viciously and with some little joy. King Yoon came stumbling from the darkness, blinking rapidly and coughing up phlegm, which he spat. The noise seemed deafening in the midst of the mist, the snow and the boulders.

“Looks clear to me,” rumbled Narnok, and stepped down the slope sending rocks tumbling, skittering, clattering.

Trista and Zastarte came next, also blinking but taking deep, exaggerated breaths, glad to be out of the tunnels; glad to be out of the dark. Next came Sameska, lifting his long fingers up to cover his eyes like bars. He limped into the open and stood, lips working noiselessly, nostrils quivering; a tiny keening sound came from deep within him. He was free of his imprisonment. Free of King Yoon’s torture cell. For now.

Finally, wary of the elf rat in their company, Dek and Kiki brought up the rear, hands never straying far from sword or knife and looking around themselves, gazing with long years of wariness at the many places an ambush could lurk.

“You think Yoon’s soldiers know about this exit?” said Zastarte, taking several steps forward, his neat boots causing nothing but a stirring of pebbles. He frowned in annoyance, noticing the scuffs on the leather. “That just won’t do,” he muttered.

“Well, they’re not here yet, lad,” rumbled Narnok.

“There’s always time,” said Yoon, smoothly, and shook back his hair. Despite his bindings, despite the accumulated filth from days spent under the mountains, despite the dried blood in his nostrils, he set back his shoulders and lifted his head high, eyes challenging. Yoon had a natural haughtiness, an arrogance born of an entire life pampered, an entire world which bowed to do his will.