The Veiled Prophet

II

Uldyssian was not in the least bit anxious as he rushed to the edge of camp. He and his followers had been attacked in such a treacherous manner before. Lilith had managed to mask the Triune’s Peace Warders and the even-more-nefarious morlu through spellwork until the enemy had been nearly as close. Yet that had still not enabled her to defeat the edyrem.

Indeed, aware of their present surroundings, Uldyssian had set into motion enough security that should such a trick be repeated, the encampment would remain secure. Now that precaution was paying off.

Sure enough, a line of edyrem stood facing the jungle, out of which poured not the disciplined, silver-garbed Inquisitors of the Cathedral, but rather a horde of ragtag figures not unlike his own army. They were armed with not only swords but work axes, pitchforks, and a host of other tools turned into weaponry. They shouted and screamed and drove toward the waiting edyrem with what he sensed was strong anger.

“These are neither the Triune nor the Cathedral. These are merely people!” Serenthia declared needlessly. She readied her spear. “That can’t be! This must be illusion designed to make us uncertain.”

Her suggestion had merit, for illusion seemed as true as breathing to both powerful sects. Uldyssian shoved aside his uncertainty and thrust forward his left hand.

The area before him exploded with pure sound, the force of it barreling through the attackers’ ranks as if they were nothing. Men—and women, Uldyssian saw—tumbled through the air, crashing against trees or vanishing into the black jungle. They shrieked as they died, sending a sudden chill through him that, however, did not prevent Uldyssian from striking again.

Next to him, Serenthia aimed and threw. The spear utterly impaled one man and went through him to slay another. As both fell, the bloody spear came flying back to her.

The rest of the edyrem did not leave the battle to the two of them. Another attacker burst into flames. He collided with two others, igniting them. The three, in turn, created chaos among their fellows, as the rest desperately sought to evade even the slightest touch.

Elsewhere, spheres of light lifted men into the air, then dropped them onto their comrades. Tendrils of energy encircled throats, tightening enough to strangle.

Some of the edyrem’s defenses looked mundane, such as the use of bows, but even here, their powers came into play. The arrows, guided by the bowmen’s will, struck their targets’ hearts perfectly.

The attackers also had their archers, but it startled Uldyssian that they waited so long to use them. There was a whistling sound high in the air, and then the first bolts finally began arcing down toward the edyrem. The skills of the enemy bowmen were questionable, but with so many defenders, they no doubt did not fear too many misses.

Without even a gesture, Uldyssian seized control of the arrows. They turned sharply, heading toward the jungle.

One after another, the bolts struck those converging on the encampment. A line of six men dropped simultaneously, each pierced through the throat.

The ambush was swiftly turning into a debacle, as hardly any of the edyrem had suffered even a scratch. The shields that Uldyssian had trained his guards to create were impenetrable to mortal weapons, something that he was astounded the attackers would not have taken into account. More and more, they seemed exactly as they appeared: simple peasants, farmers, and the like. They were the type who should have been eager to join the edyrem’s ranks, not slaughter them.

Yet still they came, their ferocity now touched with desperation. Most were dark-skinned, like the Torajians and many of their cousins, but among them were also the first few light-skinned lowlanders he had seen, so light-skinned, in fact, that they could have passed for Ascenians such as himself. Those were said to be from an area that included the northern part of the capital, but other than Lilith’s false identity of Lylia, Uldyssian had seen none in all his time down in the jungle realms.

Still, their similarity to him did not save them from suffering as their darker comrades did. Uldyssian rewarded their base ambush with death a hundred times over. The bodies began piling up in a manner both grotesque and shameful, and yet he had no notion how to put an end to the struggle. The attackers refused to cease coming, and his people, well certain of their victory, had no inclination to end what was becoming pure butchery.

From behind him came words muttered in a tongue Uldyssian did not in the least understand. A faint glimmer arose at his back.

One of the dead attackers leapt to his feet like a marionette whose strings had just been pulled taut. At first, the macabre figure appeared ready to attack the edyrem, but then he whirled about, facing instead his former allies.

A second corpse and then a third did the same. Several others joined them.

The first took a step toward the enemy, and the sight of the dead walking was at last enough to put an end to the assault on the encampment. First one, then several, then all the attackers turned and fled in panic. They ran with no rhyme or reason, their only intent to escape what they thought was a rising army of ghouls.

A few of Uldyssian’s followers sent balls of flame or flying tree trunks at the stragglers, but the enormity of what had just happened finally began sinking in. The area surrounding the encampment lay littered with bodies, not one of them edyrem. Triumphant cheers arose from the defenders.

Uldyssian turned to Mendeln, the one who had been murmuring in the strange tongue. His brother looked as deathly as the risen corpses, and clutched in his hands was the unsettling dagger that looked as if it had been carved from ivory…or bone. Mendeln held the dagger point down. The blade was the cause of the sinister illumination.

The younger brother turned the blade upward, then muttered a single word.

There was a heavy thud from the direction of the jungle. Uldyssian glanced over his shoulder to see the animated dead dropping in horrific heaps among the other bodies. Some of the edyrem instinctively made signs from either the Triune or the Cathedral, old habits dying hard even in the face of the sinister truth concerning both sects.

“I had to attempt something,” Mendeln stated bluntly. “This was becoming tragic and demeaning.”

“They attacked us. Ambushed us, if you recall.” Still, Uldyssian could not fault his brother for wanting to stop the massacre, even if it was of the enemy. “They got what they deserved.”

“Perhaps…”

Uldyssian knew that tone and found himself frustrated by it more and more. “They may look like us, but make no mistake, Mendeln. If they’re not Triune, then they’re somehow Inarius’s minions.”

“A pity we can’t question any of them,” remarked Serenthia, prodding one body. “The edyrem are getting very good, Uldyssian. There’s not a living one among these.”

“There wasn’t supposed to be.” Now Uldyssian’s own tone startled him, if only for its coldness. “But yes, it would’ve been good to have someone who could tell us how this came to be. They had the power to mask themselves; that means demons or angels. But they fought like farmers and craftsmen…” He suddenly saw Mendeln’s point. “That makes no sense. They should’ve known that they’d be torn to pieces by us. Word’s spread by now of what we did in Toraja and the other cities where the Triune was…”

“If I may?”

That it was his brother who seemed ready to offer a suggestion concerning the truth behind this attack disturbed Uldyssian more than he revealed. “What?”

Mendeln kept his voice low, for the rest of the edyrem still stood waiting for commands. “Allow me a moment among the—defeated—to choose. Then have the others begin removing the bodies for burning or burial.”

“Choose?” Serenthia’s face paled. “What do you mean, choose? Choose for what?”

“Why, questioning, of course.”

Uldyssian kept his own expression unperturbed as he quickly commanded his followers to begin dealing with the dead. In a whisper to his brother, he added, “Go right now. Pick two…only two. I’ll help you bring them to where we won’t be disturbed.”

“They might not be the ones with the knowledge. It would be best if I could survey a few more—”

“Two, Mendeln! Two. Just tell the others not to touch the pair. No more.”

The black-clad figure let out a momentary sigh. “It will be done as you say. I’d best go now, then, while the majority of the dead still lay available.”

Serenthia waited until Mendeln was out of earshot before finally saying, “I love him as a friend and almost a brother, Uldyssian, but I worry about him. This is not right, this constant dwelling in spells touching upon the dead.”

“I’m not happy about it, either, but nothing he’s done has ever been evil. He’s saved many of us, including myself.”

“And he brought Achilios back to me, if only for a few short moments…” Her eyes moistened.

“I’m keeping watch over Mendeln, make no mistake. If he—or that damned Rathma—do anything I feel crosses the line, I won’t let it stand, Serry. I won’t. Not even for my own sibling.”

He meant it, too, even more than she would realize. If Mendeln’s studies brought him to the point where he did something ghastly—at the moment, Uldyssian dared not think just what that might be—then the elder son of Diomedes would have to see to it that the younger was stopped.

Permanently, if necessary. Uldyssian would have no choice.

There was no possible way to keep Mendeln’s intentions completely secret, but Uldyssian and Serenthia did what they could to occupy the edyrem’s attention while his brother located the two corpses he desired. The moment Mendeln found them, Uldyssian helped him remove the bodies from the sight of the rest. Serenthia remained behind in order to keep any of the others from wandering over to where the two worked.

“This will definitely do,” the younger brother finally decided. They had first carried the bodies out of the encampment, then, one at a time, brought them to where Mendeln believed he could best work. They stood in a slight clearing, perhaps ten minutes away but still too close for Uldyssian’s tastes. A stream flowed nearby, and thick, bushy trees draped over them. The dense jungle hid them well from the sight of the edyrem, although some of the more sensitive would likely notice the unsettling energies Mendeln summoned. That, unfortunately, could not be helped, as his brother had already informed him that any notion of shielding their work from the rest would interfere with his questioning.

Mendeln solemnly adjusted the bodies so that they lay side-by-side. They had their right hands on their hearts and their left on their foreheads.

“Why so?” Uldyssian found himself asking.

“Rathma and Trag’Oul taught me that the soul touches both the mind and the heart. I seek to call the souls of these two, and this strengthens that call. It is not necessary for what I seek to do, but it should help simplify matters…as I know you wish me to finish as quickly as possible.”

“That would be preferable.”

Nodding, Mendeln again brought forth the ivory blade. Uldyssian could feel its wrongness, as if it were not entirely of this world. He was repelled by it yet knew the good it had done for him and his people. Mendeln had sent to their deaths—again—morlu after morlu during the final great battle against the Triune’s warriors. So many lives had been saved because of that…

And yet Uldyssian all but recoiled in the dagger’s presence. It dealt in death and that which lay beyond death, the latter a thing into which no human should ever delve.

With the blade pointed down, Mendeln leaned over the chest of the first body. In life, it had been a middle-aged man who very likely had been a farmer, just as Uldyssian had. Balding, with a slight paunch but strong shoulders and arms, he looked as if he had merely fallen asleep.

Mendeln brought the tip of the blade directly over the heart. Uldyssian caught his breath, but his brother only began drawing runes over the chest, runes that flared to life in a blaze of white light before settling down to a dull silver. Mendeln drew five more in all.

When that was done, the black-clad figure repeated the process over the forehead, but with different runes. From there, Mendeln slipped to the second body, that of a woman perhaps only two decades old. She was thin, pinch-faced, but still too young in Uldyssian’s mind to have been caught up in all of this. Was she truly what she seemed, he wondered? If so, the implications bothered him more than ever.

“Please take a step back, Uldyssian.” When the older brother had done that, Mendeln took up a stance at the feet of the two corpses. Now he held the blade up. Words in the mysterious language he had magically learned through Rathma began spilling out, raising Uldyssian’s hackles.

Small flashes of magical energy erupted above the two bodies. Still chanting, Mendeln knelt. As he did, he stretched far enough to touch the hand that had been set over the male’s heart with the blade’s tip.

Uldyssian started as the dagger drew a faint line of blood. He had no longer expected blood. Before he could say anything, though, Mendeln repeated the deed on the woman’s hand. Oddly, the glowing dagger looked unstained when Mendeln pulled back.

His brother uttered something else, then waited. The wait was not a long one. A mist suddenly formed over the bodies, one that could not be at all natural. Tendrils grew from it, several darting down to each of the bleeding hands.

The blood just starting to pool over the hands dwindled as if rapidly drying up—or being absorbed.

“Mendeln—”

Muttering again, his brother waved him to silence. More and more of the half-congealed blood dissipated, until nothing remained but the open cuts.

And as the last of the crimson liquid vanished, the mist began to form into a shape—no, two shapes.

One vaguely male, the other possibly female.

The two men stood silent, Uldyssian relying on Mendeln for direction. The misty forms coalesced little more, which seemed to frustrate his brother.

“It should have done better,” Mendeln reproved himself. “They should have become more distinct, more semblances of their former selves!”

“Can they answer us?” Uldyssian interjected, wanting this to end. “Isn’t that the only point?”

“It is the most relevant point.” Having conceded this much, Mendeln shook his head at his success, then pointed the dagger at the male shadow. “By what name were you known?”

At first, there was only the hiss of the wind, but then that hiss became words.

Hadeen…Hadeen…

Satisfied by this result, Mendeln continued. “From what place did you hail?”

T-Toraja…Toraja…

“Toraja?” Uldyssian frowned. “All the way from there?”

“It is some distance, I agree.” To the spirit, the younger brother asked, “What was your calling? Were you a disciple of the Triune?”

There was a hesitation, as if Mendeln’s questions had proven complicated for the shade. Then: I tilled the land and grew wheat upon it…my father did, and my grandfather did, and my—

“Enough! Answer now about the Triune! Were you a disciple?”

No…

“He must be lying, Mendeln; otherwise, why would he have come so far with such dark intentions?”

Shrugging, Mendeln asked of the spirit, “Why did you come with the others to attack us, if not to serve the Triune?”

Again came hesitation…then: To save the land…to save all Kehjan…

His answer sounded absurd to Uldyssian. “He wanted to save all Kehjan…from us? We’re the ones trying to save everyone!”

“Patience, patience.” Despite his response to his sibling, Mendeln, too, obviously did not understand the shade’s reply. Mendeln scratched his chin, then turned to the female shape. “You. What name did you bear?”

Vidrisi…

“And did you come to save Kehjan from those in the encampment?”

The answer was as immediate as it was damning. Yes…

Before Uldyssian could interject again, Mendeln asked Vidrisi’s specter, “What urged you to this course? What made you join with all these others?”

We knew…we knew that we had to—

“No! What I ask…what I ask is…who was first to suggest it?”

The shade did not answer. In fact, both spirits lost much of what little definition they had. Mendeln quickly began muttering more unintelligible words.

“What is it?” Uldyssian demanded. “What’s wrong?”

“Not now!” His brother drew several symbols in the air, focusing most of them at the female shade. Her shape defined again, this time more distinct than before.

But Hadeen’s spirit faded back into simple mist, which then dissipated.

“I have lost the one,” Mendeln admitted angrily. “But she is still bound to the spell.” He all but growled to the specter, “Who instigated this march to battle? Who first set you on this course?”

There was no answer at first, but neither did Vidrisi’s shadow vanish. Mendeln drew more runes and muttered more words.

At last: I recall…I recall the missionary…he said it was so tragic…what the fanatics had done…how many innocents were slaughtered—

“Innocents?” blurted Uldyssian. “The Triune?”

So many innocents…caught up between the evils of the fanatics and the treacheries of the Triune… I remember the missionary mourning…and wishing something could be done…

“Enough,” commanded Mendeln to the specter. The shade stilled but did not depart.

The brothers gazed at each other, the answer now known to both.

“Rathma did warn that his father would move behind events, turning them to his favor,” the younger one reminded.

Uldyssian glared at Mendeln, although he was not angry at all at his sibling for bringing that up again. Instead, he was furious at himself for underestimating just how cunning and how thorough Inarius could be.

“The angel’s turning everyone against us, isn’t he, Mendeln? Wherever we’ve fought, his ‘missionaries’ have arrived afterward, tending to the wounded, feeding the hungry, and filling their heads with images of our evil!”

“Although we have tried, our hands are not completely clean. Inarius has no doubt magnified those regretful moments until they are all the survivors see.”

Uldyssian let loose with an oath. There was no denying what Mendeln said. Uldyssian had thought that he had at least left Toraja and the other locations with an understanding of the truth concerning the Triune and the Cathedral. He had not expected those who had remained behind to think of him and his followers with love, but certainly there would be respect of some sort.

But human nature, he realized, ever veered on the side of suspicion, suspicion the Prophet’s servants had fed well.

A great burning swelled within him. It erupted so fast and so furiously that it overwhelmed Uldyssian’s good sense. He saw how foolish he had been to think that Inarius would let him guide events. Why would the angel grant a mortal foe that? With one cunning move, Inarius had already nearly won the battle. To be able to arouse ordinary folk to such determined anger that they would be willing to march through harsh jungle in order to fight what they knew would be powerful foes was a strength that dismayed Uldyssian.

The burning grew more intense. Uldyssian could not hold it back any longer.

He stared at the corpses.

Mendeln leapt out of his way just in time. Fire exploded around the bodies, reducing them to cinder in mere seconds. The flames rose high, eating at the nearest trees. The area quickly became an inferno, fueled by Uldyssian’s frustration.

The woman’s shade dissipated with a mournful wail. Someone seized Uldyssian’s sleeve, but it took him a moment to register both his brother and the fact that Mendeln was shouting in his ear.

“You must stop it, Uldyssian! Stop it before you set the entire jungle ablaze!”

But he did not want to stop it, for the more the flames engulfed his surroundings, the better he felt. With some contempt, he shook Mendeln off.

Then something harsh struck his chest, and a new agony overwhelmed him. Uldyssian gazed down and saw that there was an arrow buried deep. His mind fleetingly noted that it was not just any arrow but one of a make familiar to him.

It was also an arrow encrusted with dirt.

Uldyssian toppled.

The assassin leapt through the thick jungle underbrush with a grace worthy of the swiftest predators. Even before he had fired, he had been on the move. It was not as if he sought to keep his anonymity. They would know him well enough, if only because of the arrow and the dirt upon it.

Achilios ran. Not because he wanted to but because it was demanded of him. He had fired, as he had been commanded, but that was not the end of it. Not in the least.

There was still Serenthia…

With his smooth, hawklike features, he had been considered a handsome man back in the days when that was something that seemed to matter. Blond and wiry as a good hunter needed to be, with the swiftness to match, Achilios had been desired by many a young woman around the village of Seram. He, though, only had eyes for one. Back then, it had seemed to him such a tragic thing that Serenthia had wanted not him but rather Uldyssian.

Death had changed much of his perspective.

He paused to listen, one moon-white hand planted against the nearest tree to give him support. When no sound of pursuit arose, Achilios fell to human habit and rubbed his chin in thought. That caused him to gaze with eyes that saw no difference between day and night at the particles of dirt that covered the skin on the back of his hand.

In a sudden fury, he dropped his bow and rubbed at the dirt. Even though he felt it brush off, the hand grew no cleaner, just like the one with which he rubbed. Achilios did not have to see his face to know that it was the same. His entire body, even his green and brown hunter’s garb, was grimy, almost as if he had freshly dug himself out of his grave. No matter how much he cleaned himself, there were always more particles, more bits of ground.

And now, worse, it was not only his flesh that he sought to clean but his conscience, too.

He had just shot his dearest friend, and although it had not been his intention to do it, that made it no less terrible a sin. Another had commanded, but Achilios had not found the wherewithal to refuse. He had bided his time, taken his aim, and, despite his mind screaming for him not to fire or to miss, Achilios had obeyed his master.

Retrieving his bow, the archer glanced back again. Whether the illumination he saw was from the fire Uldyssian had created in his rage or was simply from the encampment did not matter. If he could still see either, then he was too close. He had to continue his flight.

But where am I running to? Where?

He had only one answer to that, an answer he dreaded even to consider. Achilios was to run until there was no chance of being discovered. No farther. It had been commanded that he remain near but not too near. After all, Serenthia was next. Next…

Stricken by that horrifying thought, the hunter tried to let out a cry, but no sound came. Of course, that had nothing to do whatsoever with the gaping, crusted hole where his throat had once been. The magic that had animated him had given him voice, too, but that voice had been stolen, at least for this moment, by the one who now had utter mastery over him.

Thus, with no other choice left to him, Achilios continued to run. His pace would have exhausted to death the most powerful buck or horse, but, needing not to breathe, it was easy for him to keep up the grueling trek. Achilios dodged trees, slipped through narrow passages, and leapt over fallen trunks with an ease he had not had even in life.

And yet he could not feel even the slightest breeze. Even that small relief was forbidden him.

Then, without warning, the hunter stopped. It was not by his choice, and the abruptness of it nearly made Achilios lose his footing. He knew, though, what the extreme halt meant. He was now at the end of his invisible tether. All Achilios had to do to verify that was to look back and see that the glow was gone from view.

One thing that death had not forbidden him was a good, strong epithet. Now that he was far away and thus free to be vocal again, Achilios swore vehemently. The sound would not carry to anyone back near Uldyssian—or likely be heard by anything at all but a few animals—but it was one of the few things that made him feel almost alive.

But barely had he gotten the words out before a brilliant light of an unnatural blue appeared before him. Achilios swore again. He tried to notch an arrow, knowing all the while that the shaft would do no good.

A figure appeared in the midst of the light, a figure with wings that were tendrils of energy and who wore a silver-blue breastplate. The rest remained indistinct.

“I’ve done…your…your foul deed…” the hunter rasped. “Let me die now…”

COME…commanded the ethereal form, gesturing with one gauntleted hand.

“I did your damned work!” Achilios insisted. He held up the bow and the notched arrow. “I used these to slay my best friend—my brother in all but blood.” The archer laughed harshly. “Blood…now he’s all in blood…”

But the winged figure did not show any sympathy. Achilios’s despair finally drove him to aim and fire. The arrow soared exactly where he desired it, just above the breastplate where the throat would be.

But as had happened the last time he had attempted to slay his persecutor, the shaft flew completely through without pause. Achilios cursed yet once more; this very fiend had once enchanted his arrows so as to enable them to slay a huge, tentacled demon called the Thonos. They also had remained enchanted so that they would pierce any protective spell Uldyssian might have worn.

And so Achilios had prayed that perhaps they might also still work against the winged figure.

As if nothing had happened, the armored spirit repeated his command. COME…WE ARE FAR FROM DONE YET.

To Achilios, that could mean only one thing. “Not her, too! Not Serenthia—”

Against his will, his mouth suddenly clamped shut. The hunter’s legs started forward of their own accord. In the same manner, Achilios’s arms dropped. The bow dangled in his one hand, utterly useless.

Unable to do anything but obey, the undead archer followed the angel deeper into the jungle.