CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ral spewed profanity with a vengeance as a troupe of table dealers from the gaming room downstairs battled the flames burning his suite. The blaze was under control, but it had reduced his rooms to a burnt shambles. Everything reeked of fire and ashes. Damn Caim! He had the Horned One’s own luck. The sorcerer was gone as well. Good riddance to both as far as he was concerned. They could kill each other for all he cared.
As Ral paced across charred carpet, he considered Vassili’s papers, tucked inside his jacket. He hadn’t been able to make out everything on those yellowed pages, but what he understood spelled out dire implications, not only for the Church, but for the entire country. The archpriest had been involved in dirty dealings, even by his standards. Trucking with sorcery, deviltry, regicide…Vassili hadn’t just wanted to rule Nimea; he had wanted to spread the Church’s influence throughout the entire world. What boldness! In the end, the archpriest’s sin had not been a lack of ambition, but trust in the wrong persons. Ral wouldn’t make that mistake. He didn’t trust anyone, especially his new ally. But knowing what to expect from the sorcerer—secrets, lies, and eventual betrayal—was better than trust. It was a certainty upon which to base his decisions. To rule an empire. It could be done, if he was bold enough.
Ral stopped beside the sideboard table. The wooden boxes had survived the fire with a few singes, a minor miracle for which he was almost prepared to bend knee and offer a prayer of thanks. He had seen for himself the kind of power a symbol could hold over common folk. Give them a hero, especially one raised from their own ranks, and they would follow him to the gates of Hell. Everything was almost in place. When Markus returned with the prize, they could proceed to the final phase of the plan. The last throw of the dice. Ral could barely contain his excitement.
A centurion of the Sacred Brotherhood, a grizzled veteran with more gray in his hair than blond and deep lines crisscrossing his face, appeared at the door and saluted with a fist pressed to his heart.
“The surrounding streets are clear, sir. But I sent a squad after the culprit.”
Ral turned over his left hand. The tower-shaped blot gleamed on his palm like a patch of wet ink. He had tried washing it with lye, brine, vinegar, and bourbon, but so far the stain proved indelible. More to boot, in the fight with Caim he could have sworn it had started to tingle, barely noticeable in the heat of the melee, but a strange sensation nonetheless.
“Recall them. Are we prepared for Master Arriston’s return?”
“Yes, sir. I have Brothers posted at the Market Gate to receive him and the package.”
“Good. Have them brought to Celestial Hill as soon as they arrive. We’re going to the palace.”
“As you command.”
At the centurion’s command, thirteen Sacred Brothers entered the suite. Each left carrying a wooden box. A jaunty tune played in Ral’s head as he glanced down at his hand. The mark rippled with the supple contractions of his tendons. A noble mark. Perhaps he would use it in his new family crest, a black tower on a field of white. It had a touch of elegance to it.
He looked around the room for the last time. The mural of Dantos was singed beyond recognition. The hero now appeared to be disappearing into a black void, his love forever beyond his reach. Ral didn’t intend to return here ever again. In fact, he would try to forget his time spent here. Rising stars had no need for memories of the earth below.
He hummed as he walked out of the suite.
There once was a man who danced with Death…
* * *
Levictus stepped from the shadow of a sagging oak tree and onto a carpet of soft loam. Night seeped between the boles of the ancient grove. The sweet promise of its power beckoned to him like a lover’s perfume.
His cheek burned through lines of blood congealed along his jaw. He had attempted to pursue the one who injured him through the city, but finally lost the man somewhere in the labyrinthine alleyways.
With a curse, he seized one of the shadows crawling under his robe and tore it open. Its minuscule death shriek rattled the dying leaves on nearby trees as he stuffed its gelatinous body into his wound. Murmured spells halted the bleeding and set the flesh to mending. This man, Caim, was a devious foe, but only a man after all. He would be dealt with before long.
Levictus strode across the uneven ground. Moldy stones and fallen pillars of an old sacellum studded the earth under the canopy of interwoven branches. Built as a temple in Nimea’s pagan past, the site also marked a fault point, a weakness in the fabric between realms. It was here, less than a league from the city walls, he had discovered his budding powers as a young man, here he taught himself how to access those abilities with sacrifices of small forest creatures and, eventually, larger victims. Later, Vassili, ever the supportive mentor when he wanted something, had supplied him with proscribed texts to further his education in the black arts. Now the archpriest was dead and he, a man remade in the torture cells of the Holy Inquest, manipulated the strings of an empire.
He went to the stone altar at the temple’s center, the very spot where he had made his fateful pact so many years ago. The memory of that night was seared into his brain. He had sought to avenge his family, but what he summoned in his ignorance went beyond anything he had ever imagined. He had seen things that night he couldn’t forget, no matter how he tried. By the following dawn, he’d been a changed man.
He ran his hands across the weathered stone and drank in the power permeating the temple, let it fill him to completeness. He hadn’t been back to this place in years, but now he needed to make contact again. It was time to unleash the full measure of his powers upon those who had tormented him.
Raising his voice to the night, he began to chant. Shadows screamed as they were consumed in the sorcery. The wound ceased to bother him. In its place arose a wave of ecstasy far beyond any earthly pleasure. It raced through his body like lightning as his paean to the forces Beyond soared into the sky.
Above the altar, a window of nothingness opened.
He braced himself as a frigid wind erupted from the rift and stood firm, resolute in the powers at his command, even as a figure appeared in the aperture. Harsh words resounded from the void. They grated on his ears like gnashing mountains, like the grinding of the world’s bones.
“Levictus. Long has it been since your last communication. Is this the manner in which you pay homage to the Lords of Unrelenting Dark?”
Levictus knelt on the broken ground. “I have summoned you to—”
His voice broke into a hoarse scream as a jet of black flames lashed out from the portal. Levictus dropped to the ground, wrapped in their searing embrace. When the flames departed, he was curled into a tight ball.
The figure leaned closer to the rift. A dark gown clung to voluptuous curves. Cascades of midnight hair framed eyes that glowed like the pits of hell.
“Such as you do not summon us,” she intoned. “You are a servant, a slave of the Shadow, to be used in whatever manner we require.”
Levictus pulled himself back onto his knees. The pain was subsiding. He held his hands up to the moonlight, expecting to see a mass of charred flesh. Instead, there was only smooth, healthy skin.
He genuflected before the altar. “Forgive me, mistress.”
“Tell us why you have reached across the Void this night.”
“I require…I ask for another infusion.”
“You dare? You, to whom the Lords of Shadow have granted more power than any mortal in a thousand years, to whom the secrets of the Dark were laid bare? You dare to demand more?”
Levictus dared to lift his gaze. The words, so long withheld, poured out of him in a rush. “I do not demand. I merely beg for the strength to serve your will. Othir, the jewel of the empire, lies under the sun like a great, bloated whore, spreading her cancer to every land. I would tear down her scabrous walls and scatter her people to the four winds. I would bring the Shadow to this place and extinguish the light of Nimea forever.”
The emissary’s head tilted so that her hair fell across her face, hiding her dusky features. “What you desire is possible, but there is a danger.”
Levictus lowered his forehead to the cool earth. “I accept the risks.”
“And there is another price to be paid as well.”
Levictus had feared as much when he hatched this plan. Sixteen years ago, he had been given a task to cement his original pact with the Other Side. He didn’t mind at the time; it gave him a chance to experiment with his newfound powers. Now, after freeing himself from Vassili’s yoke, the idea of continued service enraged him, but he would have his final revenge on Othir and the man who had wounded him. Though his heart resisted, he bowed his head in assent.
He listened to the emissary’s message, whispered across the Void, and all the while his chest grew heavy with dread as the Shadow’s plans were divulged to him. And yet, what choice did he have? He had bound his fate to this path long ago. It was too late to break free.
When she finished, Levictus exhaled a long sigh, and then nodded once more. “I will do as you bid. When do I receive my boon?”
The figure faded from view as the window shriveled up like a dead leaf. “It comes.”
The grove darkened, and black clouds gathered above to block out the moonlight. Branches scratched together as a breeze from the Other Side crept through the trees. The ground quivered under his feet. Levictus clenched his fists as the tides of magic coalesced around him, but he could not have prepared himself for the tsunami that crashed down upon his head. He gasped and shivered, helpless in the throes of power. It scoured the marrow from his bones. It pounded through his veins and swelled in his chest until he thought his heart would explode. Overhead, storm clouds crackled and spat.
Then, like the calm in the eye of a hurricane, the surge evaporated.
Levictus picked himself up from the patch of dry ground where the convulsions had thrown him. He was himself again, and yet he was changed. Things looked different. The darkness churned around him like a living, breathing thing. Glowing eyes watched him from the shadows.
The shadows.
They had changed, too. Looking upon them, he understood what had been given to him, and he accepted.
With a smile, Levictus wrapped his cloak around him. As the deep, cool blackness fell around him, his body lightened and he flew on the night winds, back to Othir to sow the seeds of destruction.