Stalking Darkness

41

The guards handled Alec with superstitious care after Gossol's sacrifice, but they clearly blamed him for the death of their "soldier brother."

Ashnazai came less often, too, although he still paid occasional visits in the middle of the night. Starting up out of some nightmare, Alec would smell the man's unclean odor in the darkness, feel the touch of cold fingers on his skin as Ashnazai plunged him into another punishing miasma of torment.

Locked alone in his tiny dark cabin, Alec grew increasingly despondent. He'd searched in vain for some means of escape, even if it meant throwing himself overboard, but there was none. Left with nothing to do, he slept a great deal, but his dreams were full of violence and omens. The dream of the headless arrow came far more often now, sometimes twice in one day.

Under such desperate conditions, he grew to look forward to his daily walk on deck with Mardus.

Despite his chilling revelation at the ceremony, Mardus continued to treat him with a strange sort of solicitude, as if he enjoyed Alec's company.

At midmorning each day Alec was given a cloak and escorted above under guard. Fair weather or foul, Mardus would be waiting for him, ready to hold forth on whatever subject had taken his fancy that day. To Alec's considerable surprise, Mardus was a remarkably intelligent, well-spoken man, with interests as broad and varied as Seregil's. He was as likely to launch into a discussion of Plenimaran war tactics or a detailed comparison of Plenimaran and Skalan musical conventions, although his discourses often took a darker turn.

"Torture is an undervalued art form," he remarked as they strolled up and down with Vargul Ashnazai one brisk morning. "Most people assume that if you cause enough pain you will achieve your end. While this may be true in some cases, I've always found that outright brutality is often counterproductive. Consider your own recent experience, Alec. Without drawing so much as a drop of blood, we were able to extract every scrap of information from you."

"Necromancy is a subtle art," Ashnazai interjected smugly.

"It can be," Mardus amended dryly, "although «subtle» is hardly how I'd describe many of the necromantic procedures I have witnessed. But to return to the subject at hand, I assure you that had it not been for the prohibition against shedding blood, I could have accomplished the same result without such an extraordinary expenditure of magic."

Giving Alec a poisonous smile, Ashnazai asked, "I am curious, my lord, as to what your method would have been?"

Mardus clasped his hands behind him, considering the question as coolly as if Ashnazai had asked what he thought the price of grain would be this year. "I often begin with the genitals. While the blood loss is negligible, the pain and emotional anguish are exquisite. Once that level of pain is established, the prisoner is usually quite easy to manipulate. In Alec's case, I could leave him still fit for the slave markets. Only a fool would destroy such a pretty creature unnecessarily."

Trapped at sea in such company, Alec nearly succumbed to despair. By day he was the toy of his executioners. By night the muffled cries that sometimes came up from the hold below increased his sense of helplessness. The few times he dreamed of better days with Seregil or his father only made things worse when he woke up. Lying in the darkness, he would try to recall the smell of their rooms at the Cockerel or the color of Beka's eyes.

Mostly, however, he thought of Seregil and cursed Mardus for the seeds of doubt he'd planted.

"He didn't abandon me. He didn't!" he whispered into the darkness one night when his spirits were at their lowest. He forced himself to recall his friend's grin when Alec had mastered a new skill, the delight Seregil took in tormenting Thero, the grip of Seregil's hand when he'd pulled him back from the edge of the cliff after the ambush below Cirna.

And the way he'd looked that night at the Street of Lights. Alec suddenly remembered the guilty pleasure he'd felt that evening, and later at the casual touch of Seregil's hand resting on his shoulder or the back of his neck.

His cheeks went warm now at the memory of that touch.

It was too painful to think of, now that he'd never feel it again.

"Stop it!" he hissed aloud. "He could come. He could be following right now!"

But not even Micum could track a ship across water.

Foundering in his own misery, Alec pulled the thin blanket around himself and tried to recall fragments of conversation he and Seregil had shared, just to imagine a friendly voice. He dreamed of him that night, although he couldn't recall any particulars when he awoke. But something had come back to him, nonetheless. Seated on the bunk that morning, he chewed his breakfast thoughtfully, summoning various lessons Seregil had instilled in him over the long months of their acquaintance.

Everyone on board considered him powerless, a prisoner of little consequence beyond whatever fate Mardus had in store for him. It was time to put aside fear and begin to pay attention, real attention, to what was going on around him, and then to ask questions—small, inconsequential ones at first—as he tested the water. After all, he wouldn't die any faster for at least trying.

Learn and live, Seregil's voice whispered approvingly at the back of his mind.

The soldiers' newfound wariness of him made it slightly easier to talk to them, though Alec quickly discovered that all that mattered to them was their unswerving loyalty to Mardus, a fact which made any overtures to them pointless. But he did learn that they were making for some point on the northwestern coast of Plenimar.

Later that same morning he made more of an effort at conversation with Mardus during their daily walk, allowing himself to be drawn into a discussion of archery.

The next day they spoke of wines and poisons.

Mardus seemed pleasantly surprised and began sending for him more frequently.

On the fifth day following Gossol's sacrifice, Tildus came for him at sunset.

The bearded captain said nothing, but Alec didn't like the smug, secret smile Tildus gave him as they went above.

On deck Alec saw with alarm that the ritual space had been prepared again. A line of soldiers held torches to illuminate the freshly laid square of canvas where Irtuk Beshar was already bent over the bowl and crown. Beside her, Vargul

Ashnazai stood ready with the stone ax.

Thero was there, too, standing next to Mardus as slack-jawed as ever. All eyes seemed to turn to Alec as he approached.

"O Illior," he whispered hoarsely, feeling his knees go weak. Mardus had had some change of heart, his god had sent different instructions, Alec's questioning had led him into some fatal misstep.

Tildus gripped his arm more tightly and muttered, "Easy, man child. Not your time yet!"

"Good evening, Alec!" Mardus said, smiling as he swept a hand toward the eastern horizon. "Look there, can you make out the coastline in the distance?"

"Yes," Alec replied, a fresh coil of apprehension running up his back at the sight.

"That is Plenimar, our destination. Seriamaius has been kind, guiding us so smoothly along our course. And now it is time for the second act of preparation."

As Alec watched with mounting dread, ten men and women were dragged up on deck by the black-clad marines.

This was the source of the weeping he heard in the night.

This had all been planned in advance, the sacrificial victims packed away in the hold as carefully as the wine and oil and flour.

They were not soldiers, but thin, pale, ordinary-looking souls who blinked and wept as they were herded together near the rail. Most were ragged or dressed as laborers, just innocent victims, he guessed, plucked from the darkened streets of whatever ports the ship had put into before Rhiminee.

"O Illior," Alec whispered as Mardus came to stand beside him, hardly knowing that he spoke aloud. "No, please. Not this."

Mardus slipped an arm around his shoulders and closed his hand over the back of Alec's neck. Giving him a playful shake, he purred, "Ah, but you should savor it. Don't you understand yet how great a part you played in bringing this about?"

Faint with revulsion, Alec made the mistake of looking up at Mardus. For the first time he saw the depths of naked cruelty in his eyes, and in that awful moment he knew as certainly as he'd ever known anything that Mardus had purposefully allowed him to see behind the mask, was delighting in his fear and confusion, savoring it the way another man might savor the first caress of a long-desired lover. And perhaps worse even than this was the conviction that Mardus was nonetheless sane.

Some of the prisoners were staring at Alec, mistaking him for one of their murderers.

He couldn't watch this again. Tildus had moved away when his master had come over, and the rest of the soldiers were watching the ceremony. Jerking out of Mardus' grip, Alec dashed to the rail behind him with some instinctive, half-formed notion of throwing himself overboard, swimming as far as he could toward the shore, giving up if he had to.

He'd gone no more than two paces when a deadly coldness engulfed him, locking his joints, forcing him painfully to his knees. Some unseen power forced his head around to see Vargul Ashnazai holding up a small vial of some sort that hung around his scrawny neck on a chain.

"Nicely done, Vargul Ashnazai," said Mardus. "Move him a bit closer so that he can see."

Unable to turn his head or blink, Alec had no choice but to watch as the ten victims were dragged down onto the deck at Ashnazai's feet. Ten times the blade rose and fell with deadly efficiency and each heart was taken by the dyrmagnos and drained into the reeking cup.

Thero stood just beyond her and through his own helpless tears of rage and impotence, Alec saw tears coursing slowly down Thero's cheeks. It was an eerie sight, like watching a statue weep, but it gave him a sudden thrill of hope in the midst of the nightmare being acted out before him.

The white canvas was scarlet by the time the necromancer had finished. He and the dyrmagnos were smeared to the elbows, their robes sodden, hair matted with it. Blood had soaked across the deck to where Alec knelt, staining his bare knees.

Leaving the soldiers to pitch the bodies overboard, Mardus took Thero below again.

Vargul Ashnazai walked over to Alec and laid one bloody hand on his head, breaking the spell.

Alec doubled over retching. Ashnazai snatched the hem of his blood-soaked gown out of the way with a grunt of disgust, then gave Alec a shove with one foot that sent him sprawling in sticky blood and vomit.

"I look forward to cutting you open," he sneered.

Scrambling back to his hands and knees, Alec glared defiantly back at him. The necromancer took an involuntary step back, raising his hand.

Alec braced for some new agony, but Ashnazai merely turned on his heel and stalked away, snarling something to Captain Tildus as he passed.

Dread returned as a pair of soldiers stripped Alec and washed him down with buckets of cold seawater. When he was clean, they thrust him into a soft robe and turned him back to Tildus, who led him below to a spacious cabin in the stern.

To his amazement, he found Mardus, Ashnazai, Thero, Irtuk Beshar, and the silent, grey-bearded necromancer, Hand, reclining on cushions around a low table. A young serving boy placed another cup on the table, motioning for Alec to be seated.

"Come, Alec, join us," Mardus said, patting an empty cushion between himself and the dyrmagnos. He and the others had also changed clothes and cleansed away all traces of the murders he'd just witnessed.

It's as if none of that happened, he thought numbly, too shocked to protest as Tildus steered him to his place and pushed him down.

Thero sat on Irtuk Beshar's left. At her nod, he raised his cup mechanically to his lips.

Wine dribbled down through his beard as he drank, his eyes locked on some distant point.

The sight filled Alec with a strange guilt, as if he'd spied on something unseemly.

Looking away, he fixed his attention on his cup as the servant filled it with pale yellow wine.

"Come now, dear boy, why so shy?" Mardus coaxed, the mask of gentlemanly solicitude in place once more. "It's an excellent wine. Perhaps it will put some color back in those wan cheeks of yours."

"Strong emotion does so spoil a young man's beauty," Irtuk Beshar added, her coquettish tone as incongruous with her cracked, blackened face as her robes and veil.

The entire situation had such a surreal quality that Alec found himself replying, "I don't care for any, thank you," as if he were Sir Alec of Ivywell dissembling at some noble's banquet with Seregil.

"Such pretty manners, too," Ashnazai noted.

"I am beginning to see your point, my lord. It will be a pity to kill him. He would ornament any gentleman's household."

Alec's sense of dreamlike detachment increased as the grisly conversation flowed around him in polite salon tones. If this was the onset of madness, then he welcomed it as a gift of Illior.

Whatever the case, he suddenly felt a giddy lightness coming over him. He'd experienced this before, though never so intensely. When death was your only option, it made you feel very free indeed.

"My lord," he began. "What is this all about? The wooden disk, the crown? I know you're going to kill me as part of it, so I'd just like to understand."

Mardus smiled expansively. "I would expect no less of a person of your intelligence. As I have said, you and all your misguided friends have been instrumental in a grand and sacred quest. At first even I didn't perceive the significance of it, but Seriamaius has revealed how you were all simply instruments of his divine will."

Mardus raised his cup to Alec in a mocking salute. "You can't imagine the trouble you saved us, bringing so many parts of the Helm together for us to reclaim with a single brief stroke. Not to mention the damage we were able to inflict upon the Oreska in the process. Why, in one night we managed to accomplish what might otherwise have taken months, even years. And we do not have years, or even weeks, now."

"A helm?" Alec asked, seizing on this new reference.

Mardus turned to his companions, shaking his head.

"Imagine! This Nysander, great and compassionate wizard that he is, had his closest friends carry out his thievery without the least hint of what they were being embroiled in. Why, he regarded Seregil and poor young Alec and Thero here almost as sons.

"Yes, Alec, the Helm. The Great Helm of Seriamaius. The coin, as you so amusingly refer to it, the cup, and the crown are all elements of a greater design. When brought together with the other fragments at the proper time, they will rejoin to form the Helm revealed to our ancestors by Seriamaius more than six centuries ago."

"It is the ultimate artifact of necromantic power," Irtuk Beshar told him. "He who wears it becomes the Vatharna, the living embodiment of Seriamaius."

"The legends from the Great War. Armies of walking dead," Alec said softly, thinking of the ancient journal he and Seregil had discovered in the Oreska library.

"Perhaps we have underestimated this child," the dyrmagnos observed, cocking her head to regard Alec more closely. "There may be depths within him still to be sounded."

Alec shuddered inwardly under the greediness of her scrutiny.

"Yet these tales of yours said nothing of the Helm?" Mardus continued. "I am not surprised. At the end of that war we were betrayed. Aided by traitors, fawning Aurenfaie wizards, and a pack of ragged drysians, the wizards of the Second Oreska managed to capture and dismantle the Helm before its full power could be invoked. Fortunately, they could not destroy the individual pieces. Our necromancers managed to recapture a few of them; the rest were carried off and hidden. For six centuries my predecessors have hunted for them, and one by one, they have been recovered."

"That's what you were doing in Wolde," Alec said slowly. "You'd been to the Fens, that village Mi—"

"Micum Cavish?" Ashnazai smiled as he broke off suddenly. "Don't trouble yourself. You screamed that name out to us already, just as you did all the rest of it."

Mardus paused as the serving boy brought in platters of roasted doves and vegetables.

"Do try to eat something," he said, serving Alec himself.

Surprised at his own hunger, Alec obliged.

"Now, where was I?" Mardus asked, spearing a dove for himself. "Ah yes. The three fragments guarded by Nysander were the last, and of those, the bowl was the most gratifying discovery. We knew of the others, you see, both stolen from under our very noses by your friend Seregil, as it turns out. But all trace of the bowl had been lost until the two of you led us to it with the theft of the Eye. And only just in time, too. As it is, we've only just enough time to complete the ritual preparations."

"The sacrifices, you mean?" asked Alec.

"Yes." Mardus sat forward as the servant brought in a course of roasted pork. "Each soul taken, each libation of heart's blood, brings us closer to Seriamaius, to his great power. No man could be a vessel for such power, but through the Helm we may partake of some small portion of it. By "small portion" you must understand I am speaking in relative terms. Once restored, the Helm will increase in power as more lives are fed to it until a single thought by the wearer can level whole cities, control thousands. And you, Alec, you and Thero, I am holding in reserve for the final sacrifice of the reconstruction ceremony. A hundred people will have perished before you, allowing you the privilege of watching every death until your own turns come, two last, perfect sacrifices. The blood is to a great extent merely symbolic of the life force given up to the god. The younger the victim, the more years taken, the richer the sacrifice."

Irtuk Beshar patted Alec and Thero on the shoulders. "A young Oreska wizard and a half faie boy—the youth of our greatest enemies! What could be more pleasing to our god than that?"

Alec regarded them a moment in stunned silence, trying to take it all in.

No, he thought numbly. No, I will not be apart of that. "Thank you," he said finally. "I think I'm beginning to understand."

There were no guards in the room now. No spells or chains held him. Forcing himself to give no leading hint of his intentions, Alec suddenly lashed out across the table and snatched up a carving knife lying next to the platter of fowl. Clutching it in both hands, he drove the blade at his own ribs, praying for a quick kill.

To his horror and astonishment, however, he twisted around instead and plunged the blade into the chest of the young servant. The boy let out a single startled cry and collapsed.

"Really, Alec, where are your manners tonight?"

Mardus exclaimed regretfully. "I've owned him since he was a child."

Alec stared down at the body, horror-struck at what he had done.

"Did you think us so lacking in imagination that we would not anticipate such a noble action on your part?"

Irtuk chided. "You forget how intimately I know you, Alec. One of the first wards I placed upon you was one to guard against such ridiculous heroics. Anytime you try to hurt yourself, you shall only end up hurting another, like this poor innocent."

"O Illior!" Alec groaned, covering his face with his hands.

"Perhaps I am somewhat to blame," Mardus sighed. "My explanation may have given the boy the impression that he and Thero are necessary for the final realization of our plans."

Mardus' hands closed over Alec's, squeezing painfully as he pulled them aside to fix Alec with a look of sardonic pleasure.

"Understand this. The presence or absence of either one of you will not make the slightest difference to the god. It merely pleases me, and Vargul Ashnazai as well, I am certain, that the two of you should be the final victims. Just imagine, dear Alec—watching all those others die, and you quite helpless to save them. And then, as your chest is split and your heart pulled free, your final thought will be that after all your meddling, all that extraordinary effort, it is your life bringing the Helm back into being! I'm only sorry that your friends will not be there to share in your reward. Now do try to eat something more. You're looking quite pale again."