Chapter 23: Darkness

It was a good day for a sacrifice.

The three of them had stayed the night at the Divine Keg, ostensibly one of the best inns in Terynia, though Sir Themur had told her the innkeeper was actually on the payroll of the Lion’s spymaster, reporting directly to the secret police of the Agerian Empire. Still, whether Imperial Intelligence or a boarding house, the rooms had been clean, the beds soft, and the food delicious. And if the Knight Eternal was right about the inn’s affiliations, it was probably the best place in the city for them to stay.

The Emperor’s stablemaster had personally taken care of Sir Themur’s black horse and had provided two additional for her and Relaila, one brown, the other mottled black and white. All three animals were well-rested, fed and prepared for the journey.

Relaila and Sir Themur had already mounted their horses when a familiar presence made itself known at the back of her mind—dark and powerful.

“You must go to Castle Agamor”, Patera said, her words painfully worming their way through Dina’s skull. “And bring your special kit, dear.”

“I’m sorry,” she said to her two waiting colleagues. “I’m afraid we’ll have to postpone the mission for a short while. Patera wants me to go to the imperial dungeons first.”

Relaila laughed.

“Great!” she exclaimed. “What girl doesn’t like the smell of death in the morning?”

Dina couldn’t tell whether the Blood Sister was jesting or sincere, but given her patron god, she leaned toward the latter. She’d know soon enough, though, since Patera hadn’t actually asked for her companions to come along. If they wanted to, they could spend the morning on their own, or go with her to Castle Agamor and whatever task her god had waiting for her there.

She wasn’t surprised when Relaila and the Knight Eternal followed her on their horses as she rode back into the city. The gods of the world had spoken, and they both wanted to be at the center of their will.

As they rode along the street, the clip-clop of their horses’ hooves echoed off the hard cobblestones, startling a pair of hens pecking for spilled grain. The birds shrieked and flapped out of the riders’ path. Some of the local traders had started to set up their booths, but it was still too early for them to have any customers. The streets of Terynia, so bustling during the day, lay quiet and deserted in the morning fog.

Half an hour later, they arrived outside Castle Agamor. Its granite walls and tall towers loomed above them as they approached the guard post beside the heavy gates, made from rough-hewn oak and reinforced with thick iron braces.

“Ask for Cairn Tolmar, a Derimar prisoner of war.”

“We’re here to see a prisoner of the Empire,” she told the guard, an old man with a short, gray beard, sitting with his feet on top of a wooden stool. “Cairn Tolmar.”

The man looked up at her. He didn’t seem impressed by the young woman standing in front of him, dressed as she was in just a simple cloak made from roughspun linen colored green from boiled nettles. Still, he didn’t dismiss her out of hand. He was the Emperor’s man, and he took his duty seriously.

“Please show me your credentials,” he said to her.

She was about to explain to the guard that her authorization came straight from the gods themselves when Sir Themur stepped in front of her, pushing her to the side.

“These are our credentials,” he said gruffly, leaning on the low table in front of the soldier, the spiked black iron of his gauntlets pressed flat against its surface.

The old guard swallowed. “Yes, Sir!”

He barked an order to one of the other men outside the gates to come over to his booth.

“Jenne, bring the Knight Eternal and his entourage to the dungeons. They’re to see a Derimar. Kaern Tollmar.”

Dina didn’t really care that she was now considered the “entourage” by the guards. As long as she got the job done, other people’s labels didn’t matter much. Chances were, this was how things would be in the days to come. Sir Themur, towering above them in his black armor, would immediately draw the attention of anyone they encountered, while the two women with him, dressed in everyday clothing, would blend into the background almost unnoticed.

She glanced at Relaila. The Blood Sister, however, clearly reveled in her mistaken identity, and positively beamed with glee.

With heavy steps that echoed between the cold walls, the guards led them down steep stone stairs and through narrow corridors, lit only by sparsely placed torches that filled the air they breathed with thick, oily smoke, black as night. Eventually, they reached a small underground cell, barren except for the dirty hay lying on the stone floor, where six prisoners stood chained to the walls.

The air down here smelled of rank sweat, damp feces, and stale urine. But stronger than all of that, Dina thought, was the scent of fear that permeated everything. She didn’t know if it was her physical nose reacting to the sensation or if it was Patera’s intoxicating influence seeping into her own mind, but to Dina, the fear smelled like the summer wind, drifting gently in from the field, bringing with it the fragrances of red roses and blooming lilac.

“Cairn Tolmar,” she greeted the man the guards showed her to. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

The blond man hanging naked from metal binders tying his wrists to the wall just glared at her, not saying a word.

“You’ll be honored to know I came here to see you because the gods themselves have taken an interest in your well-being.”

She could sense a small flicker of hope in the man. Something in his eyes, or perhaps his facial muscles, betrayed that he had not fully descended into despair. Not yet.

Good, she thought. His pain would be so much sweeter to Patera if he hadn’t given up yet.

Slowly, she opened her kit, laying out the knives with their tiny blades next to the needles, drills, and pliers it contained.

Not wanting to risk soiling it, Dina carefully tied her curly red hair into a knot behind her head. She sighed as she got to work, carefully cutting an incision along Cairn’s right arm, from his shoulder down to his wrist. Sir Themur and Relaila stood behind her, watching the procedure with silent interest.

The Derimar writhed in pain, but with his arms and feet locked to the wall, his movements were severely restricted. There was nothing he could do except live through the experience, though just barely.

“What do you want?” he screamed at her through his agony, his fear blooming in the cell like perfume rising from the abyss.

“I want his pain,” Patera whispered into Dina’s mind, her voice feeling like a saw blade going to work at the base of her skull.

“I want his dying words to be a proclamation of my glory. He will worship me in death as he did in life.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” Dina told him. “But Patera does. To that end, I can tell you that we’re on our way to meet your little sister. You’re just the appetizer before the main course.”

Cairn screamed once more, the pain in his body now mixed with the agony in his soul.

“I don’t know where she is!” he cried, his face twisted by the suffering she inflicted on him. “I’ll tell you anything you want, but I don’t know where Soria is.”

Dina sighed, knowing this was how it usually went. People thought they were being treated by her because she wanted to extract information from them, when in reality, it was only their pain she was after. It was a sweet offering to the gods of the world.

She leaned forward to see better. It wasn’t that she wanted to do this, but Patera required it, and fulfilling her patron’s wishes was what Dina lived for. Still, if she could have avoided this side of her practice, she’d be perfectly happy. But the gods each had their dual domains, and if she served as Patera’s healer, she also served as her torturer. She had no choice in the matter. It wasn’t like she could say no to a god.

“What’s the matter, little one? I thought my will was your command?”

Yes, it is, Dina wanted to reply. But that doesn’t mean your command is my will.

Yet somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to finish the thought.

Focusing instead on the task at hand, she carefully plucked at his eye whites with the small pincer she held in her right hand, while attempting to hold his head still with her left. After several failed attempts, she turned to her companion.

“Sir Themur,” she asked, her voice betraying her embarrassment at needing his assistance. “Can you help me hold him still?”

Without saying a word, the dark shape of the Knight Eternal stepped forward, grabbing the Derimar’s skull with terrifying strength, his hands as steady as if they had been a black, spiked vise.

She attempted the procedure again, and finally got a good grip on the tissue in his left eye and began to pull. When the globe was far enough out of his skull for her to reach it, she cut his lateral rectus with a small knife and grabbed the entire eye with a larger plier. Twisting it, she could hear the crunching sound the remaining muscles made as they snapped. She pulled it out, dragging his optic nerve behind it.

With her left hand resting on the right side of his face, she could feel Cairn slipping away.

“Relaila, would you be so kind as to hand me the Water of Life,” she said, indicating her healer’s kit. “It’s a small blue bottle.”

“With pleasure,” the Blood Sister replied as she opened the satchel and retrieved the vial. “Here you go.”

Dina held the bottle below the Derimar’s nose and opened its lid. With a jerk, his head snapped up as consciousness slammed back into his mind. The scream that followed was torn from the raw depths of his being, filled with pain and horror.

“Tell me,” she asked him, “do you love your gods?”

His acknowledgment was a mixture of a groan and a cry, his voice broken in terror.

“Worship the gods of the world, and I will release your soul from your body.”

“Yes!” he shouted, desperate to end his pain. “Yes! Glory be to the gods! I worship at your feet, sons and daughters of heaven. In death, I pledge my soul to you.”

Then, silence, as Dina’s blade sliced his trachea, letting him slowly suffocate, hanging alone from a wall in a filthy dungeon, a thousand horizons from his home, far from everything and everyone he had ever loved.

* * *

With the sacrifice completed, the three Imperial agents could finally leave Terynia and begin their mission in earnest. Guided by the lesser spirits observing their three young targets from a distance, Dina, Sir Themur, and Relaila rode swiftly along the southwestern roads. Sometimes the spirits lost track of their prey, but more often than not, they provided her and her companions with a clear destination.

Slowly, the wide, well-traveled paths near the capital gave way to narrow two-wheel roads and dirt trails, as the trio entered the more sparsely populated regions of the Empire between the River Plains in the south and the larger cities in the north-west.

Several days later, they stopped to rest in the small village of Emberglow, picturesquely located at the entrance to one of the river valleys. They tied their horses outside the local tavern—not much more than a small wooden shed, really—and entered the establishment, keen on getting some much-needed nourishment.

As they had come to expect by now, the place fell silent when the patrons saw Sir Themur walk through the door.

“What do you want?” the tavern keeper asked him gruffly, drying his hands on a soiled towel.

“Meat stew, if you have it,” Dina replied. The man turned his head toward her, as if seeing her for the first time.

“Sure,” he said, pausing for a moment. “Glory to the Lion.”

“Glory be to the gods,” Sir Themur added, his voice slightly muffled from inside his black iron helmet.

The tavern keeper scooped up the slop from a kettle hanging over his fire and served it to the three agents in low, wide bowls, either made from red wood or merely colored that way. If the latter, Dina didn’t want to think about where the discoloration of the dishes, used by a thousand patrons before them, might have come from.

“You three going south?” he asked, somewhere between casual and curious.

Dina wasn’t sure why he bothered making small talk with them. But considering his earlier exclamation, he was probably a loyalist. Even though he didn’t know their mission, chances were he was on their side, despite his rough exterior.

“We’re following this tributary through the valley,” Relaila explained, apparently seeing no point in keeping their destination secret. The gods were with them, after all. “We’re planning on turning east once we reach the River Talar.”

The tavern keeper leaned forward on their table.

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “You might want to reconsider that.”

Aware of his audience, he quickly chose his words more carefully.

“Forgive me. I don’t mean to intrude in the Emperor’s business, but if it’s of any help, there’s been a dam breach farther downriver.”

Relaila glanced at Sir Themur, who nodded.

“That is helpful,” she said. “Your service to the gods will be remembered.”

“I’m afraid the road through the waist of the valley is completely blocked off. If you’re going southeast, you’ll have to find another way around.”

In the silence that followed, the only sound was Sir Themur drumming his iron-clad fingers on the tabletop.

“And is there one?” the Knight Eternal eventually asked.

The tavern keeper shook his head.

“No. Maybe,” he said. “It’s not a road. At least, not one made by us.”

What’s with all the secrecy?

The man almost looked afraid. But who would fear a road? They were operating under the direct orders of the Lion, and this was the heartlands of the Agerian Empire, the very center of civilization itself. Other than the gods of the world, there was little here to fear.

“Just tell us where we need to go,” Sir Themur barked impatiently.

The tavern keeper remained silent a moment longer, as if afraid the word he was about to speak might call down a curse upon him.

“Omanavar,” he finally whispered.

Perhaps it would.

Dina’s shoulders sank in dismay. Though she wasn’t familiar with the place, the rhythm of the sounds in its name told her all she needed to know.

If they wanted to reach the three targets they were hunting, they’d have to make a detour through the ruins of a city of the Old Ones.

She had been wrong. There were indeed things here, other than the gods, they had to fear.

Author's Note

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