Lisette and Parn approached cautiously, both eyeing the carnage I’d wrought and the surrounding shadows with wary eyes.

“There aren’t any more left,” I said. “If there were more, they’ve gone.”

It took me several minutes to catch my breath, and only then did the weariness truly crash down on me, in the moment when my blood ceased its boiling. I felt unsteady, but kept myself up through little more than sheer stubbornness.

I wasn’t out of this yet.

“Are you certain?” Lisette asked, pacing over to me. She put my body between herself and the dead creatures. "That was..." She took a deep breath. "That was a Demon of the Abyss. Here, in this city."

I narrowed my eyes at her.

"What?" Lisette asked, taking a step away from me.

"Your master already knows about it," I said. "He wasn't surprised when I told him, and he never asked me about it in our interrogations."

"He's not my master," Lisette said heatedly. She took a deep breath and calmed. "It makes sense. The Priory has been hunting something in the city, but only the Grand Prior, the Presider, and the Knight-Confessor know exactly what."

Parn sniffed at the air again. “My instincts are still warning me of danger. I feel like we’re being watched.”

“This place has been desecrated,” I said. “It’s not safe. Let’s go, before these bodies start moving around. This isn’t a place for restful death, right?”

Lisette caught my eye, and gave a jerky nod. “This way,” she breathed, leading us toward the passage.

We ascended through the undercity, and eventually the old architecture changed again to more familiar masonry. Lisette brought us into what looked like a sewer, and I could hear rain above. We passed from that into a cellar, with a ladder leading up to a hatch.

“Street’s above,” Lisette told me. “Should be a carriage waiting, if everything’s gone to plan.” She met my eyes. “This is where we part ways. I need to report back to the Priory, or risk losing my cover. I don’t know if we will meet again, my lord.”

“I’m no lord,” I said, almost on reflex.

A doubtful look crossed the cleric’s face, but she didn’t argue.

“What happened to Olliard?” I asked her, after placing a hand on the ladder.

She hesitated a moment, her blue eyes going distant. “We parted ways not long after Caelfall. I believe he may have gone back to the continent. We… Had a falling out. Our opinions about how to help the realms differed.”

Remembering the angry old man I’d met a year past, with his vendetta against what he perceived as dark things, I could imagine it.

I’d been him, even in the time we’d met. I recalled how I’d treated Catrin at first, let myself feel the shame, accept it, and nodded.

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me who you’re working for now?” I asked Lisette.

She shook her head. “You will find out soon enough, and I am under oath.”

I knew well enough about oaths. I didn’t press. I caught movement in the corner of my eye and turned to face Parn. the aged changeling shuffled, looking torn.

“You should get back to the lower city,” I told him. “I was trying to find you, before all of this. Learned you got captured from Joy.”

His big eyes blinked, and I saw the realization come over him — that he might live, and be free. It transformed him, making him look less like a haunted wretch and more like someone’s kindly grandpa.

“Thank you,” he said, and clutched the hem of my filthy shirt. “Thank you. I will not forget this. What is your name?”

“Alken,” I told him. “Probably won’t see each other again, but try not to get caught. I’m terrible at rescues.”

He nodded, then glanced furtively back. “I can find my way through the sewers,” he said. “God’s grace on you, Alken.”

I frowned. “You still say that, after what those zealots did to you?”

“The actions of Oraise and his ilk do not reflect on our God,” Lisette snapped, suddenly defensive. “These sins are theirs alone.”

I glared at her, annoyed at the interruption. No matter her true allegiances, she’d been part of all of this. She’d helped capture me, and probably others too.

But Parn only looked weary. “She is right. These are dark times, and folk are angry. Sometimes, they don’t know who to direct that anger to… But I still have faith. I will pray for you, Alken. Are you a knight?”

I bit off my frustration and turned my attention to the hatch. “Not for a long time.”

Lisette spoke up before I went. “I will help Parn get back to his home. It’s the least I can do.”

I met her eye. Her gaze didn’t waver. I thought better of her then, and nodded.

“Thanks.”

I climbed then, leaving my temporary companions below. I passed into a narrow alley with barely enough room for the cellar entrance. Rain pounded down over the city above — the spring storms had come in full force.

I closed the cellar and heard it lock from the other side. The alley was a dead end, so I turned to the street, moving cautiously forward. I kept my axe ready, still fearing a trap. Always fearing a trap.

In the street I found a carriage waiting, just as Lisette had promised. It was an ostentatious vehicle, carved all of ebony and framed in decorative silver caging. An anonymously garbed driver in a towering hat held the reins to a team of four chimeras. The mage-crafted beasts closely resembled great Edaean horses of old, black as night with eyes of ruby-colored glass, save that each had a crown of pale, elegant horns and feet that were more like claws than hooves.

I couldn’t name the type. They might have been a unique brood, which meant whoever owned them would be very, very wealthy. Cautiously, I moved to the edge of the alley and checked my surrounds. The street, mostly containing warehouses from the look of it, seemed empty. It was night, and distant lanterns glowed dimly in the haze of rainfall.

The rain washed much of the gore off me. I stood in it a while, letting myself feel the chill downpour of freedom.

I had a suspicion it might not last.

The cowled driver didn’t so much as glance at me, simply waiting like a scarecrow with gloved hands clutching the reigns of their beautiful beasts, the brim of their hate dripping with rain. In my dirty smock, I shivered. Now the rush of battle had passed, my depleted aura had withered again. No supernatural warmth to keep the storm’s chill at bay.

I could run, and then…

And what? If Lisette spoke true, whoever sent her had Emma. If I went my own way, I’d be lost in the city with the Inquisition hunting me, especially after one of their safe houses had been attacked.

I had little choice. I went to the carriage, opened its door, and slipped inside.

The interior was dim, illuminated only by a pair of small lanterns lit by tiny magenta flames — alchemical craft. They gave off a pleasant scent. I found the space comfortably furnished with leather seats and velvet cushions, the walls painted with scenes of knights and insectile irks battling on fields lined in gilded leaves. Black, velvet red, and silver were in abundance.

I expected someone else to be waiting for me inside the carriage. I was wrong. Alone, without answers as to who my mysterious rescuers might be, I sat and rested my axe on my lap. I felt the vehicle begin to move beneath me, wheels clattering on the neatly laid stones beneath.

Carrying me off into Garihelm.

***

The carriage ride gave me time to think, which I resented. It had been easy to lose myself to pain and despair in the darkness of Oraise's dungeons, to see and feel everything in a mire of abstraction. To wallow.

Now, hearing the rain drum down over the city and feeling the coach beneath me, I couldn't help but look at everything rationally, to face it.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Reynard lived. Perhaps. Demons are malicious, and Yith's "slip" could have been meant to manipulate me, feed paranoia.

But if true...

The Traitor Magi had been the catalyst. He'd been the mastermind behind the plot to destroy Seydis and drag the realms of Urn into chaos. He'd organized the Recusants, broken the ancient seals, subverted the Alder Table, started the war. He'd bound Abyssal Spirits to serve his interests, to infiltrate and spread terror.

For what? To cause chaos? To upend the world's order? Tuvon's death had been devastating, but the Accord had healed much of the damage caused by the Fall.

So what had it all been for?

Was Reynard behind all of this? It stank of him.

I wouldn't act without more information. I couldn't trust Yith, and I wouldn't play his games.

Reynard had been Fidei's master. She'd been one of the dark spirits he'd bound to infiltrate the Archon's city.

Dei. Even in my thoughts I couldn’t get her name out of my head, though I knew it wasn’t her real one, and had never been.

I had her real name now. Yith Golonac had gleefully given it to me.

Shyora. My right hand clenched into a fist.

I knew that some beings could reach even through the fabric of the Wending Roads, the tangled realm which separated my world from all others, and wield their influence in subtle ways. Though I’d destroyed her corporeal form, and the Devils of Orkael had caught and imprisoned her spirit before it could reform in the Abyss, she was not truly gone. Like elves and Onsolain, the dark spirits of Abgrûdai are immortal.

I’d never really thought about it before. In my heart, she’d been dead. I’d grieved.

Now she was in my dreams, and she was angry.

I felt…

I didn’t know. I hadn't wanted to grapple with it. That terrible day had already haunted me. Every night for eleven years it had haunted me. Rysanthe had given me her cursed ring for this exact purpose, knowing I was demon-marked.

Now the ring was gone, along with my other accouterments.

I’d tried not to think about it.

I’d loved her.

No, you fool, you loved the mask she put on.

She took the mask off. Everything she told you would happen did happen.

Demons can’t be trusted. She might have rebelled against her master, but it wouldn’t have changed your fate.

But if I’d listened, even if it had damned me, I might have saved everything else.

“Damn it.”

I pressed my elbows to my knees and rested my head on my fists.

I wasn’t cut out for plots and intrigue. They’d made me a blessed knight, a paladin, and I’d fallen for the tricks of a succubus. I’d told her my every dark secret, my every unworthy thought.

A joke. I was the joke of the Table.

Now she was back. And I felt…

What I felt couldn’t be trusted. It might still be her influence in me. I ran my fingers over the scars across my left eye. As always, they prickled hot as though infected.

Her mark. I was compromised. So I buried the relief and focused on what came next.

***

Despite my condition, I forced myself to stay awake through the ride. I could feel Lisette’s magic in my leg and hand, quickening my healing, warming my raw flesh from within. I listened to the sound of wheels clattering over stone, of the shift and bump of the vehicle as it jostled me.

Eventually, the sound of the carriage’s movement changed. We went over a bridge, I thought, judging by the change in sound. Not long after, I listened to the grinding gears of a gate opening, and my sense of danger evolved from being merely ready to fight to raising banners and calling the realm to war.

I took my axe off my lap and gripped it tighter. I went to open the door but paused, listening. I could hear movement outside. The carriage stopped, and there came the sound of men’s voices, of armor rattling and heavy boots on stone. Thunder rumbled high above, and waves crashed against rock. We were near the sea.

An armored fist rapped three times on the carriage door.

Taking that as my signal, I opened the door and stepped outside, moving quick so as to clear the interior of the carriage and get enough room to move in case I needed to fight.

“Halt!” A sharp, commanding voice cut through the rain.

I froze, realizing I was surrounded. I stood in a courtyard, and the shadow of something monolithic fell on me.

Nearly a score of armored figures, all in bright steel and yellow tabards, stood around me. Some held crossbows, and other wickedly sharp polearms. All those weapons were trained on me, the dirty, unarmored man with the ancient axe.

No militia guardsmen, these. They wore a variation of House Forger colors, silver leaves worked into the iron and gold of their tabards. A knight stood among them, tall as me, with an ornate helm fashioned, oddly, into something like a clam’s shell, ridged and eerily inhuman. Bright eyes peered at me from within the shadow of a serrated visor.

I glanced up, and found an enormous castle rising up from sheer, water-washed rock. We stood on some lower courtyard of the fortress bounded by a high wall, half siege defense and half stormwall, and I could hear waves crashing against its outer face.

The castle itself went beyond simply large. High bastion walls, fortified walkways, and satellite towers bounded a central structure which seemed to pierce the angry sky.

I recognized it. I’d been brought to the Fulgurkeep, the palace of House Forger.

The seat of the Emperor of the Accorded Realms himself.

“Damn,” I said aloud. More thunder growled.

“Drop the weapon,” the knight with the clamshell helm barked, clear even through the rain. He hadn’t drawn his sword, but the soldiers watched me beneath their morion helms with nervous eyes.

From one prison into another, it seemed. I was in no condition to break out of any fortress, and especially not one of the world’s greatest. Moving slowly, I held the axe up in the palm of my hands, then tossed it out to them. It clattered onto the courtyard’s stone.

The soldiers didn’t relax much. The knight pointed to the axe, and one of the guards scurried forward to collect it. He winced as a sharp bur of wood cut through his leather glove — Faen Orgis didn’t much like strange hands touching it.

“I’m to bring you into the keep,” Clamshell told me. “If you attempt any violence, you will be cut down. Do you understand?”

I nodded. The knight watched me a moment, as though measuring me. Though his helm was the strangest part of his ensemble, I noted he didn’t wear anything I’d call a uniform. His white surcoat had no insignia, nor did he wear a proper Knight’s Mark, a medallion or emblem worked into the design of his armor. His left pauldron had been shaped into a spiraling sea shell, and he wore a heavy, curved sword on his left hip with an oddly twisted looking handle.

The knight brought me up a set of stairs carved from the sheer rock of the cliff into one of the satellite castles sprouting from that greater bastion. The royal fortress of Garihelm was fashioned of five castles, all constructed into the jagged black rock of the island below and joined to the main citadel. A great bridge of iron and stone divided the island from the city, framed in high arches and protected by towers all down its length.

I hadn’t been brought into the palace’s main bailey, but into a satellite courtyard held within the bounds of a castle vassalized to the greater complex. Banners flapped in the rain above, stubbornly resisting the pull of the storm. I caught only brief glimpses of the city in occasional flashes of lightning before being led inside.

The storm abruptly cut off as we passed inside, its volume muting as guards slammed the heavy siege door shut. The sudden lack of sound deafened me a moment, and I took a moment to get my bearings.

“Do not lag behind,” the knight said. His voice emerged hollow through the helm, but with no muffling — some minor blessing had been worked into the metal to make his voice carry, a popular enchantment among tourney knights and commanders alike.

I followed the clamshell-helmed knight through winding corridors which became less militant and more richly appointed as we went. Stark rock gave way to carved stone, then to elegant halls laden with carpet, statuary, and hanging chandeliers. After the misery of the Inquisition’s dungeons, it was surreal in its cleanliness and peaceful quietude. The air smelled like incense, and more distantly of sea air.

I couldn’t tell how many knights standing at attention along those halls were empty suits of armor and which were very much capable of cutting me down if I so much as flinched wrong. Perhaps even the empty suits were dangerous, ready to spring to life at some arcane command.

The knight stopped at a tall door with another knight guarding it, this one in less eccentric armor and wearing an open-faced helm. They exchanged nods, then my guide turned to me and removed his helm, letting a mane of ash-colored hair spill out, and turned out to be no man at all.

She had a lioness’s face, strong-jawed and blunt, with a nose many times broken and ugly scars marring the corner of one lip into a permanent scowl. She’d shaved one side of her head, letting the rest fall into a curtain down to one shoulder. Her winged brows gave her an almost feral aspect, as did the intense sharpness in her dark eyes. She had bronze skin from a lifetime in warm climes, and looked young.

“When you enter,” she said, and her voice sounded different now too with the magicked helm off, husky and with an accent I couldn’t place, “you will bow, and you will address the person within as Your Grace. You will not speak unless spoken to, and only to answer direct questions. Do you understand?”

I already knew who was inside. I’d suspected the moment I’d seen the carriage, and that suspicion had evolved into dire certainty when I’d realized where I’d been brought. I just nodded, unable to trust myself to speak.

The knight glared at me a long moment, as though searching me for any defiance, before tearing her eyes away. She knocked on the heavy oak door three times, paused, then knocked again twice. A voice within commanded her to enter.

She opened the door and ushered me inside ahead of her. I walked inside, and the door shut behind the scarred knight as she entered behind me.

I found myself in a space evocative of a study. Books lined many of the shelves, and a wide window dominated one wall to look over the moonlit sea and the jagged isles of the bay. The hearth was lit, the room comfortably warm.

Standing in the middle of that chamber was a noblewoman dressed in a rich, layered gown of seafoam shades. A circlet woven in silver and gold rested on her brow, securing a complex net of gems which made her black hair gleam in the firelight like stars in a night sky. Her sleeves trailed nearly to the ground like folded wings, and the cloak hung about her shoulders had been woven of a transparent silk so fine it might have been made of mist.

She was in her mid thirties, not much younger than I, and there wasn’t a trace of gray in her raven hair. She had a stern face, coldly beautiful, the kind made for portraits.

She turned to me, the gems woven into her hair burning even as the lanterns in her carriage had done — an adept-smith had worked aura into each, and each was invaluable. Her eyes were shadowed by weariness and kohl, but her back was straight and narrow shoulders strong beneath that cape of mist. The painted lips above her narrow chin shifted, some emotion cracking the glass of perfectly bred composure.

“Thank you, Ser Kaia, that will be all.” Her voice was very much like the rest of her. Strong, assured, imperious as a winter sun.

The knight seemed startled. “But, Your Grace, I cannot—”

“Obey my will?” The noblewoman asked, arching a black eyebrow. “I assure you, I will be quite safe. This man will not harm me.”

“Even still,” the knight protested, stepping forward. “This is highly irregular, Your Grace.”

“I am aware,” she said, voice calm as still waters. “Please, Kaia.”

I wasn’t sure what expression the knight wore. My eyes remained fixed on the dark-haired woman. I’m not sure I could have looked away had her guard drawn a sword on me. I heard the knight bow by the shift of her elaborate armor, metal plates sliding against one another, chainmail rattling, followed by heavy steps. The door closed and I was left alone with the noblewoman.

With her.

The Winterstar Jewel. Royal consort to King Markham, last surviving member of High House Silvering, Sovereign Princess of Karles, Queen of the Karledale, and Empress of Urn.

It surprised me, how calm I sounded when I did speak.

“Hello, Rose.”

image [https://i.imgur.com/ZLwj1Qs.png]