Vol 7, Chapter 5

◆ Inner Sea, King Dastan's POV. ◆

A flash lit the sky beyond the horizon, the waves glowing blood-red. The rumble caught up with the ship, filling its black sails with air as hot as from a furnace. From the distant shore a majestic pillar of steam rose heavenward, visible for many kilometers.

A magnificent sight.

The King was certain—his unreliable ally would have given much to witness it, but alas... she had an important mission in the Third Duchy. The Third Duke had lingered on this earth far too long.

So, alas, he would savor the view alone.

"Well, well, they sacrificed the Academy. Truly, I had hoped the Lodge would allow my little ones to spread across the land," King Dastan the First mused, savoring the distant haze.

"More wine, Your Majesty?" his aide offered.

"No, I've lost my appetite." He grimaced and turned back to the table, where his breakfast and the stolen sword lay. "Proceed with the report."

The girl adjusted her glasses, carefully set her goblet on the side table, and opened a thick notebook.

"We lost three servants, they did not make it back to the ship." She hesitated slightly, her gaze drifting toward the burning horizon where the Academy once stood. "But I assume information leakage will not be an issue. We also lost several sailors and..."

The King waved his hand.

"That does not concern me. I wish to hear of matters of true importance."

She turned a page.

"Field studies showed that the plague did not spread as well as we had hoped. As long as the host remains strong, the pathogen does not attempt to abandon the body. In such cases, infection is possible only if it is forcibly extracted. I fear we also greatly overestimated the duration for which corpses remain infectious. Reports indicate that already within four hours the pathogens..."

"Die?" the King interrupted.

"No, Your Majesty. They remain alive, but after three to four hours the dead body no longer holds enough energy for teleportation. They can still infect, but only if the dead man's blood somehow enters the victim's bloodstream..."

"Note that we must involve a necromancer in the project. A few wide-area curses of undeath would help solve this problem."

She dutifully jotted the note and continued.

"Also, one of the servants discovered that if the blood of a corpse is mixed with fresh mage blood, the pathogen briefly regains its ability to teleport and can infect effectively once again. However, the primary issue remains the narrow window—when there is too little mana left in the body for the pathogen to desire departure, yet still enough to allow it. Roughly two hours before death, and four hours after. If we could adjust the pathogen's behavior so it always sought expansion, then the disease could never be stopped. This seems to me the most promising line of research."

The King sighed. To adjust the instincts of a microscopic creature without a brain? Easier said than done. Even an intelligent animal is difficult to teach not to eat from the closest trough—let alone something far more primitive. Yet...

"There is a more realistic option. We need to increase their aggression. If my micro-chimeras ravage the host's body enough to cause bleeding sores... then the host could infect those nearby far more effectively."

She wrote down another note.

"That is all for now. The new weapon has proven highly effective, and its limitations... seem surmountable," she said, then fell silent.

Yet she did not leave.

"Something else?" the King asked casually.

"Your Majesty... this weapon does not distinguish between Commonwealth magi and Kingdom aristocrats. My servants tested thoroughly and confirmed—metal mages fall ill just as readily as anyone else. Perhaps we should dedicate resources to limiting..."

"Do not worry. We do not intend to release it in the Kingdom's lands, do we?"

"I understand, Your Majesty. But if the plague were to escape... if there were an accident, the consequences..."

"Enough," Dastan cut her off. "I will hear no more of this. Do not pester me with lectures at the moment of triumph. Dismissed."

The girl hastily bowed and left the cabin at a brisk pace.

The King followed her with a dark gaze. He had given no order to investigate this nuance. That had been her initiative. By itself the offense was not treasonous, but... in the future it might become a problem. Especially if she guessed at his further plans.

She would need watching, and removal if she overstepped again.

He drew the massive two-handed sword closer. The hilt lay in his palm unpleasantly, unnaturally. The balance was wrong, the grip unfamiliar, the weight and shape alien—but that was not the sword's fault.

The sword was the same. It was he who had changed.

An impulse of will made the sword shimmer faintly with a bluish glow.

Anyone who had ever been at court would recognize that bluish sheen. More than once, or twice—the courtiers had seen it upon the head of the monarch. Yet the crown had held barely enough soul-metal for a decent dagger...

Now, from this same material, dozens of crowns could be forged.

The grip contracted to fit a smaller hand, the hilt grew heavier to form a new balance. The blade shortened, making the already thick edge even thicker.

Each alteration came smoothly, without resistance. Numerous enchantments had preserved the sword through its passage across the void... unlike his body.

The King eyed the weapon skeptically. Still too massive for his current form. He would have to split it.

Alas, to do so without preparation meant sacrificing the enchantments, and he would need those enchantments dearly. Especially against those who had let the void into themselves.

Dastan hurled the sword onto the table in fury, splintering the wood. The remains of food scattered with shards across the deck, wine spilling like blood.

Irrational. He had known the blade would never again be an extension of his hand as it had been for centuries. He had known... yet still he had hoped.

The King carefully wiped his hands with a cloth and, without glancing back at the steel companion that had betrayed him, strode toward the bowsprit.

Water slid beneath them. The ship did not sail; it seemed to glide.

And so it was. Long ago, magi had realized: the less of a vessel's hull touched the water, the faster it could be driven forward. A pity that their descendants had forgotten this wisdom.

Or perhaps they had merely lost the necessary knowledge to implement it? It mattered little.

Several minutes of gazing at the sea cooled his anger.

Pointless to be angry with this body. He had already hit the jackpot. Had the Third Prince not touched the sword decades ago—had it fallen instead into the hands of some enslaved metal mage of the Commonwealth, he would never have come close to the results he enjoyed now. That the sword was too great for him was nothing beside that. He would find a way to reduce it without losing its wards. He would.

"Your Majesty! Off the starboard bow, a ship! It looks to be aflame!"

"Shall we alter course to render aid?" the ship's captain asked cautiously.

At sea there were rules. Where men faced the elements, even foes stood together against them. With an enemy one might bargain—with storm or swarm of morays, never.

Even rival Houses had been known to set grudges aside when former enemies came to aid. Such were the unwritten laws: see a ship in peril, help it.

"What? Alter course? Sailors, give this fool a dozen lashes. Ha! We've troubles enough of our own without taking on another's. Maintain course." Dastan's bark froze the observer.

The bewildered captain was dragged to the deck, his coat ripped open, and the punishment begun. When else would the sailors have a chance to flog their captain?

The King did not linger to watch. He yawned lazily, pulled his sword from the shattered tabletop, and returned to his cabin... never noticing that the smoking ship on the horizon moved scarcely slower than his own.

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◆ Lands of the Third Duchy, Shadow Assassin's POV. ◆

The assassin, however, was in no hurry. Infiltrating Lothingham, the capital of the Third Duchy, had proven laughably easy. Even in the ancestral castle of the Claus's the guards were so incompetent it angered her.

No challenge. No risk. No game.

The wards were ancient and primitive, the guards so slothful and inattentive they might as well have been scarecrows stuffed with straw!

She had not even bothered to kill a single one, slipping effortlessly through shadows between posts, so much did she crave some shred of thrill in this assignment.

But all in vain.

The Claus's treated the Duke's protection with such disdain that she fancied she could don a jester's suit, march in with a whole orchestra, and still no one would bar her path. Reaching the Duke's private chambers was easier than entering a village cowshed!

Boredom.

Her target disappointed her too.

The aged Duke lay on a featherbed, breaking wind, while a young healer bent over his senile, demented patient. Killing them both would have been far too trivial.

Where was the fight? Where the challenge? Where the rush of adrenaline?

Snorting, the girl simply plunged her dagger into the nearest shadow.

In that instant her hand with the dagger emerged from the healer's shadow and struck the Third Duke in the chest. Straight to the heart—for though she might be bored, her skills had not dulled.

The healer shrieked like a child, noble blood splashing across his face, while the assassin was already far away.

Standing on the roof of a nearby building, she watched the rising alarm with a look of boredom. Guards burst into the chambers. The healer was seized, despite his screams that he had nothing to do with it. Pah, in their place she would not have believed him either...

Relatives and healers rushed into the room. They fussed, wrung their hands, examined the obsidian dagger lodged in the old man's chest...

But all they could do was confirm that the earthly path of the Third Duke, Senior Archmage of Metal... was ended. Finally ended.

The old fart had lingered far too long in this world, when it was plain to everyone he should have gone long ago. Gone while he still had enough wits and strength left to walk to the night pot on his own.

Still, he was lucky. He had died by the dagger, not from straining himself on the privy. One might say she had granted him a noble death...

But all she felt was disappointment. Her last battle had been far... far more interesting. Oh, yes...

Death at hand's reach, at the tip of a knife. Darkness, blood, and exhilaration.

She absently stroked her thigh, clad in blackened leather, and recalled the sweet taste of blood on her lips. The taste of risk. Of thrill. Of the game.

"Ah, Randal... You won't disappoint me, will you? You'll play with me?" the assassin whispered, vanishing into the shadows.

She still had much, much work to do.

Over Lothingham the funeral bell tolled, and above the castle a black banner was raised.

Subjects removed their hats and lowered their eyes.

The Third Duke was dead.

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◆ Theocracy, Unknown Village, Ordinary Hunter's POV. ◆
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The tolling bells drew closer to the village. Children poured into the streets, elbowing one another and pointing toward the dark forest from which the steady peal resounded.

Closer and louder it came.

Muttering prayers, the elder left his house and fixed his pale gaze on the forest, joined by the rest of the villagers.

This forest bore no sinister name. It was an ordinary forest. Ordinary by the standards of the Theocracy. No birds sang there, no deer grazed. It seemed lifeless, yet it smoldered with hidden life.

As with all forests of the Theocracy, it was perilous. In other lands dangerous beasts were hunted down, tracked, driven to the edges of civilization.

But in the Theocracy the chief weapon against them was prayer. And no prayer from the Scripture of the One was uttered more often than the plea "to avert the gaze of monsters."

At times it worked, and near the forest's edge the locals would behold a miracle—the corpse of a beast, drained to a husk by divine wrath.

At times the prayer went unanswered, and the monster feasted.

But no tale of such a feast could be told. Empty, sagging houses spattered with the blood of peasants had no voices.

Towns were rare. Even villages saw more emissaries of the Church than they saw folk from neighboring hamlets—for the paths through the woods were deadly. Isolation. Tales. Fear everywhere.

All this made the already dangerous forests something utterly mortal in the eyes of peasants. And now, from that forest, something was coming toward them.

The ringing of bells from the woods inspired hope, but... were there not monsters enough that imitated even human speech?

The villagers' lips moved on their own, whispering prayers, hands folded in supplication. Some fell to their knees.

From a hut came the hunter. Unlike the others, he was armed. In his hands was a crude bow, on his head a cap of squirrel pelts. He checked the string, set an arrow. The peasants recoiled in panic, curses rippled through the crowd.

Unlike sorcery, hunting was not forbidden by the Church, but it was frowned upon. An exemplary follower of the Church was meant to rely on prayer and the mercy of the One, not on his bow or his eye.

The hunter's practiced gaze swept the trees. Why did it seem to him there were fewer than there should be?

A sudden peal struck his ears. Behind him!

The hunter turned. Atop the wooden chapel stood the bell-ringer. He tugged at the rope in religious ecstasy. Strangely, the seemingly chaotic peals struck in time with those from the forest. From that height he must already have seen something.

The hunter's eyes betrayed him, for he now saw that the trees truly were fewer. Behind the thick trunks a procession was already visible. People. Many. Far too many. The trees dwindled more and more with each passing moment.

The hunter dropped his arrow, rubbed his eyes. Impossible! A tree standing in the path of the procession simply vanished, as though it had never been. It was not felled. Not a single needle fell. It simply ceased to exist.

Magic?

He barely stopped his hand. The reflexes drilled into him since childhood urged him to clasp his hands in prayer, but the instincts learned in the forest, on the edge of life and death, forbade him to drop his weapon. He could not.

That was death.

The procession advanced. The last trees disappeared, revealing a wide swath it had carved through the woods.

At its head—a closed palanquin. Four armored inquisitors bore it. Behind followed a majestic altar. A colossal bell. Relics of saints fused into gold. Their bones poured such an aura of sanctity into the air that space itself quivered and distorted.

After them came a long line of clergy. Priests rang handbells in rhythm with the altar's great bell and croaked out litanies. Acolytes walked in trance, muttering prayers each in their own cadence. Together they merged into a divine cacophony, irregular yet harmonious.

The hunter found, to his astonishment, that his bow lay on the ground, his hands folded in prayer. The sound was so powerful that peasants fell into trance. No one knew what this procession was or where it went, but none doubted it was a supremely godly purpose.

Most were ready to abandon everything and follow.

The palanquin opened a crack, revealing... was it a man?

A being so beautiful, so close to the One, that words could not describe it. The crowd fell into ecstasy, people losing themselves as they joined the march.

As had many others. Behind the clergy trailed masses of peasants, just like them. Gaunt, exhausted, with faces stamped with rapture. Their feet bled raw, their meager garments torn and filthy with road grime. Surely the same fate awaited any locals who joined.

But they did not think of that. They did not think at all. Their sacred fervor nothing could restrain. Nothing mattered more than following the Pontiff, the one anointed by the One himself.

The hunter picked up his bow. The moment the palanquin opened, the enchantment broke.

Inside was no man.

It was... a beast. A monster in human guise.

Years of hunting on the edge of death had taught the hunter to sense danger, and he knew with certainty: whatever led this procession, whatever name it bore... it was no longer human.

From the procession stepped a man in bloodstained robes. To the hunter's surprise, he spoke directly to him.

"May the One bless you. Help catch the children; they do not belong in our march. And you too, help," he added, addressing the few others who had resisted the call.

The hunter glanced around. Curious. Among those who had kept their senses were not the most pious souls. Some prayed with figs hidden in their fists, some despised the commandments. But now all of them were trying to drag resisting children out of the procession.

The march moved on, and the hunter now saw clearly that along the entire swath left behind lay bodies. Those who had not endured the burden of the journey. Old men, women, and men. Peasants and townsfolk.

Children had no place there.

The brats struggled and wept, but could not break free of his grip. The last child was shut inside a house.

The priest prepared to return to the procession, but the hunter stopped him.

"Wait, Reverend. Where are you going?"

"Where? Our march goes to the Capital of the Kingdom. But our paths part here. Only the most devout feel the call to join. Farewell." Blessing the hunter once more, the priest departed.

The procession disappeared over the horizon, taking with it nearly the entire village. The litanies faded, but the bells still rang in their ears long after.

The hunter picked up his arrow, set it back in his quiver. He went into the shed and picked up a wooden spade reinforced with a narrow strip of that precious iron.

This march—this was his chance. The chance he had waited for all his life. The swath they had left would allow him to pass safely into another land.

A land ruled by magic, where the forests teemed with game, and in lonely thickets one was likelier to meet goblins than true monsters. A land where even peasants owned iron spades!

But first... first he must bury the pilgrims who had died near their village. A great deal of work awaited. So many dead...

Lifting from the ground a body light as if dried and drained of all blood, he found himself wondering.

Would any of his fellow villagers ever reach their destination at all?