At the Gates of Darkness Part 8

They parted company and Magnus dispelled the illusion he had conjured as the counter spell and they waited quietly in their rooms until they were summoned for supper with Jim.

The meal was sumptuous in true Quegan fashion. Four long tables had been established in a square, with just enough s.p.a.ce left between the corners to allow servants to move inside the open area to bring fresh trays of food. Each guest was free to pick whatever morsel appealed to them or wave the servant past. Behind them moved more young men and women carrying large vessels of wine and a very light ale.

The servants were uniformly attired in a simple tunic that fell below the knees, cinched at the waist with a double cord. Pug thought of them as boys and girls as none looked older than their late teens or early twenties, and all were exceptionally attractive.

The n.o.bles present were all minor palace functionaries. Only the Imperial Chancellor held a noteworthy rank; his attendance a concession to Jim's diplomatic rank. Normally a Kingdom Baron wouldn't be ent.i.tled to so lofty a host, especially when only on an academic mission with little political or military significance, but it was probable that the Quegans already suspected Jim of being more than he appeared. Jim's own spy network wasn't the only one operating in the Bitter Sea, and he had, over the years, no doubt attracted as much Quegan interest as he had from the Keshians.

Pug had been paired with a very attractive middle-aged woman named Livia, who reclined on one of the large settees employed by the Quegans for dining. She waved away a servant holding a tray of candied fruits and said, 'Too sweet. I must confess I prefer simple foods.'

She wore a traditional Quegan toga, which clung to her form well enough to promise a full healthy body beneath it. Her features were strong yet feminine; she had deep dark brown eyes, and a tiny touch of grey among her auburn hair, which she wore loose to her shoulders. While Pug had little interest in dalliances, he still found her attractive and interesting. She was introduced to him as a fellow academic, and the archivist who had been a.s.signed to a.s.sist him and his companions the next day. Pug was certain that she'd prove helpful, and just as certain that she had been charged with reporting everything the three visiting academics did. What he didn't know was if she was an archivist playing at being a spy or a spy playing at being an archivist.

'Really?' said Pug in a non-committal tone as he selected a ripe pear lightly coated in honey and sprinkled with crushed almonds. He bit into it and said, 'Unusual, but very good.'

'You get bored,' she sighed. 'I'm not very good at this sort of thing. My parents were only minor n.o.bles, ragged cousins of some very important people. I was not likely to marry well, so they secured me a position here in the palace.'

Unsure what to say, Pug merely nodded. Then he asked, 'Do you enjoy it?'

She seemed less than enthused by his question, but said, 'It can be interesting. Occasionally someone such as yourself arrives to disrupt the monotony.'

Pug smiled as if flattered. He was now certain she was a spy, sent to seduce him and discover if there was anything more to him than the story Baron James of the Prince's Court in Krondor had offered them. He glanced at where his son reclined, and saw that a somewhat younger, equally attractive woman had been seated next to him. Amirantha was paired with a very academic looking gentleman, and Pug held his grin in check. Amirantha had revealed himself to be something of a lady's man over the time Pug had known him, while Magnus...

Pug occasionally worried about his last surviving son. Magnus had been terribly hurt by a young woman when he was barely more than a boy, and had refrained from becoming involved with any woman since then. Pug knew he succ.u.mbed to his more fundamental needs-he was injured, not dead-but while he might enjoy the occasional company of a courtesan in Kesh or the odd visit to a good brothel in Roldem, Magnus had avoided more serious interest from several young female students at Sorcerer's Isle over the years. It would have worked out better for the Quegan intelligence apparatus had they placed the academic gentleman with Magnus and the pretty woman with Amirantha.

Pug turned his attention back to Livia and asked, 'Seriously, do you enjoy working in the archives?'

She shrugged. He had touched on something and wondered just how well she had been prepared for this visit. If she was a Quegan agent, she would have some knowledge of the archives, but would be far from expert.

She said, 'To be completely truthful, it bores me. Once in a while I come across something interesting to read and mind those hours less. My task is to write a one paragraph precis of the work, a.s.sign it a location within the archive, and ensure that my entry is copied into the main codex.' She fixed him with a calculating gaze. 'I could return to your quarters with you, if you'd like, to discuss some of the more esoteric volumes in the archives. Some are quite revealing.'

Pug held a smile in check, and merely inclined his head slightly, as if thinking about the offer.

'Unless you prefer to stay for the orgy?'

Pug's eyebrows lifted slightly. Of all the nations in this part of the world, he had visited Queg the least and had forgotten that some of their customs were radically different from those of the Kingdom or even Great Kesh. Now he remembered why all the servants were young and attractive. The after dinner orgy was a normal part of grand welcomes for foreign visitors and always a feature of certain holidays. He had no qualms about other people's moral behaviour on this level, but his own feelings demanded that intimacy be limited to a committed love.

Not having to feign his feelings, Pug softly said, 'I have just recently lost my wife.'

Livia's eyes widened. 'I'm sorry. Was it sudden?'

'Very,' said Pug. 'It will be a while before I'm...'

She reached out and touched his hand lightly. Her tone remained bright, but her expression was solicitous. 'If I can do anything, please.'

Pug admired her persistence. He sighed. 'Someday, I'd like to return and then, perhaps.' He slowly rose. 'Now if you'll excuse me, I think I shall retire before the festivities commence.'

'Of course.'

'I look forward to seeing you in the morning,' he said.

'Until then.'

Magnus and Amirantha both had noticed him stand and were watching. Pug nodded slightly at his two companions, indicating that they should leave as soon as possible. Jim was deep in conversation with a n.o.ble, but Pug knew he had missed nothing.

Pug reached his quarters and found wine, sweets, nuts and cheeses waiting for him. He sat heavily in a divan before the window; he hadn't eaten much at the supper, and wasn't particularly hungry now, but he did feel like a sip of wine. He picked up the carafe and then closed his eyes. He had learned a spell years before, which would cleanse the wine of any drug designed to incapacitate or poison. He doubted this was necessary if the evening's objective had been seduction, but caution was the byword on this journey.

A few minutes later Amirantha appeared. Laughing slightly, he said, 'You and Magnus get the pretty girls, but I get the scholar who wants to ply me with questions about Muboya!'

'Well, that is logical,' said Pug. 'Most people love to talk about their homes and the Quegans consider everyone beyond their island a potential enemy.'

'I told him plenty about it,' said the Warlock, sitting down in a chair on the other side of the room. 'Some of it was even true.'

Pug smiled broadly at that.

Magnus entered and with a raised eyebrow said, 'Orgy?'

'It's a local custom,' said his father.

'Maybe we should go back?' quipped Amirantha.

Both father and son looked at him with narrow gazes, one of the few expressions that made a resemblance between them evident. Magnus was tall and pale, while his father was short and dark, but their look was identical.

After half an hour of idle conversation, they decided to retire. As they stood to enter their respective rooms, Amirantha said, 'I wonder if Jim stayed.'

Pug smiled. 'As ranking n.o.ble, it would have been something of a political incident for him to leave.'

Amirantha sighed. 'I noticed him keep that very pretty serving girl at hand.' Shaking his head slightly, he said, 'It's heroic what that man does for his King.'

Pug chuckled and Magnus laughed as they both closed their doors.

CHAPTER EIGHT - Fortress.

SANDREENA SIGNALLED.

The two Knights-Adamants reined in their horses. She had recruited Brother Farson as she prepared to leave Krondor, just as he had arrived in the city. Brother Jaliel, she had found in Durbin along the way. Her newfound rank gave them no option but to change their current plans and follow her.

She indicated they should stay while she slowly urged her horse on.

She had led them to a parched desert fortress, abandoned by Great Kesh's Empire centuries before. There was almost nothing that now resembled a fortification. A few large stones that were once part of a wall, the lonely foundation of a gate half-buried in dust, and a staircase leading down into a labyrinth of tunnels and storage rooms. So little was left above ground that anyone might ride past it at a short distance without noticing that the Empire had once thought this pa.s.s worth defending.

Sandreena's two knights had been told only what she needed them to know until they reached this point. Using the doc.u.ments that Creegan left for her, she had followed an ancient trade route out of Durbin, south into the Jal-Pur, then southwest into some foothills. They would eventually rise in the west to become the Trollhome Mountains, but here they merely formed a landscape of tablelands and hills. Whatever the original name of this once proud fortress, it was now known to the desert men as The Tomb of the Hopeless. To its south lay a valley with an even less appealing name, The Valley of Lost Men.

Before leaving Krondor, Sandreena had studied all of the maps of this region that had been in the Order's possession, and not one had shown the fortress or the valley. She trusted that Creegan wouldn't have insisted she read the report if he hadn't wanted her to act on it, and she was equally certain that he expected her to do exactly what she was doing: taking matters into her own hands. There was no one in Krondor besides herself that could do so. She knew Creegan had a relationship with Pug and the others on Sorcerer's Isle, but in rushing off to Rillanon to become the Order's leader, he had neglected to leave her any hint about how to contact them. She suspected there were other Kingdom agents of the Conclave, like the man who had pa.s.sed her the messages in Durbin, but she had no idea how to identify and contact any of them.

She remembered the young man who had fetched her from Ithra after she had almost died during her first encounter with the Demon Legion's agents; Zane was his name, yet she had no idea how to reach him. She felt frustrated that Creegan had put this burden on her alone, but she pushed down her concerns to deal with the matters at hand.

Farson and Jaliel were reliable, but neither of them had been named on Creegan's list, so there were some things she could not share with them. They knew only that they were needed for a special mission at the Father-Bishop's request and that secrecy was paramount.

They had left the city together at sunrise to ride into the desert, headed due east, and then turned south and circled around to meet the ancient caravan trail. Sandreena did not know if the Imperial Keshian Intelligence Corp was following them, but she was certain they knew her small party had left. When they failed to appear at the usual oasis in a few days, the Keshians might send someone out to track the three knights, but Sandreena hoped that by then, her business here would be finished and they would already be heading back to Krondor.

It was near sundown when they reached the edge of the ancient fortress. The report about the carnage that had taken place here had been written weeks before, but the scene before them now was no less grisly. The corpses were now bones, picked clean by scavengers, the drying heat and blowing sands. But enough of their connective tissue remained that a few skeletons still hung from the makeshift gibbets around the edge of the clearing. The piles of ash contained the contorted forms of those who had been burned alive, and bones riddled with arrows were strewn around the fortress ruins. Hundreds of people had been slaughtered.

Sandreena called out. 'You can come up now!'

The two other Knights rode into the ancient fortress and Jaliel said, 'G.o.ddess! What manner of butchery is this?'

Farson looked at Sandreena and said, 'If you don't mind my saying, Sergeant, this is a little more unusual than any normal mission, secret or otherwise. Are we to know what is going on?'

'I'll tell you what I know,' she said. 'There is a very dangerous, evil man named Belasco, who consorts with dark powers; his followers did this.' She decided to omit the fact that most of the remains belonged to fanatics who had gone to their deaths willingly. It was an unnecessary detail for these two to do their duty.

'Sergeant,' said Farson. 'What happened here?'

'I only have a rough idea, but it appears that it's the work of a cult of death worshippers who have appeared around here.'

The two Knights exchanged glances, and Sandreena knew exactly what they were thinking. A death cult should be the province of the worshippers of Lims-Kragma or perhaps even, Sung the White, they were not usually a concern for the servants of Dala.

Sandreena said, 'Father-Bishop Creegan is worried that they may be abducting local villagers for their sacrifices.'

It was not a complete lie, for she could imagine that might be part of Creegan's concerns, but left her explanation at that. The Conclave of Shadows had made an alliance with the most important man in the martial order of the worshippers of Dala, perhaps because Pug didn't have anyone else to call upon. There were certainly few other people who had as much experience with demons as she did; she had destroyed more than her share.

'Are you both carrying wards?' she asked.

'Against what, Sergeant?' asked Jaliel.

'Necromancy, demons, and anything else you can think of?'

Both Knights patted their hip bags in which they carried their wards.

'Good,' she said. 'We have no idea what we're going to find down there.'

'Down where?' asked Farson.

She pointed south. 'Down there, in the Valley of Lost Men.'

Farson's expression communicated just how much he liked that idea, but he remained silent.

'We'll rest up for the night, then head down at dawn.'

The men secured their mounts without further comment and then began untacking them. Sandreena unloaded a small bag of grain, then took off her horse's saddle. The knights groomed the beasts and Sandreena took it upon herself to fill and fix nosebags for all three horses. They knew that they would have to start their return journey within two days, else the horses would begin to starve. There had been no grazing or fodder to be found between their present location and Durbin, only arid tablelands, thorn-covered hills, and the odd dry desert plants that would bloom briefly after a rare rain, but otherwise remained dry and dormant. It was hard to believe that this area ever needed defending.

There was one obvious mystery that Creegan had failed to mention and its omission from the report he had given her surprised Sandreena; why in ancient times had Kesh built a fortress here in the first place? The Trollhome was, as the name implied, the residence of creatures best avoided. Mountain trolls were smarter than their lowland cousins, who were little more than animals, but the desert already provided an effective barrier against them. If she knew that the caravan route had originally only pa.s.sed by this place, then perhaps then it would make more sense, but as far as she could judge from all the old maps she studied before leaving Krondor, the route ended in the valley below.

She mused over what might be down there; if it were an ancient gold mine or source of some other wealth, sense would dictate that the route ran east, eventually reaching the city of Nar Ayab, and then run on to the capital city of Kesh. She deduced that whatever they had been moving along the route, had travelled from Durbin to this location. Maybe, she speculated, this was the terminus rather than the start, and the trail was a quick supply route from the nearest Keshian city. Which would imply that the only reason for building this fortress would have been to keep whatever was down in that valley, in that valley.

She finished tending the horses and broke out her own rations, and said, 'Cold camp,' to her companions. They were both veteran Knights and a night without fire was nothing new to them. They understood there was a strong possibility that someone or something was out there watching them.

They ate in silence, and when they were done, Sandreena said, 'Jaliel, you have first watch, Farson takes the last.' They both nodded, but silently thanked her, for as leader she was taking the least desirable watch. She lay down using her saddle as a pillow and due to years of ingrained habit, fell asleep within minutes.

Dawn came hot and dry, which was no surprise, but brought an early wind. The wind was a blessing and a curse; it would stir up enough dust to prevent them from being seen should hidden sentries be posted along the trail into the Valley of Lost Men, but if it was too blinding, Sandreena and her companions risked losing the trail altogether and could find themselves taking a much faster route down to the rocks below.

Sandreena spoke loudly, to be heard over the rising wind. 'How many demons have you faced?'

Farson said, 'Two, Sergeant.'

Jaliel said, 'Seven, Sergeant.'

She said, 'Jaliel, you bring up the rear in case we get attacked from behind.' To Farson, she said, 'Do not do anything unless I tell you. Demons can be very tricky sometimes.' He nodded. Both knights knew that she was right; she hadn't asked how many demons they had defeated, because if they hadn't defeated those they had faced, they wouldn't be alive.

Sandreena realized that Jaliel had faced two more than her count, but the last had been particularly nasty and without Amirantha's aid...She silently cursed herself for a fool at the sudden stab of feelings. He was a miserable excuse for a man, a charmer with no substance and his words were nothing but honeyed lies. Still, he knew more about demons than any man she had ever met, and right now she'd put aside her urge to strangle him in exchange for his ability to control the monsters.

'Grab a tail,' she instructed.

Farson moved his horse close to her mount, approaching fromthe side and guarding against an unexpected kick, and gripped the warhorse's tale. The mare snorted, but she had been through this drill before. Jaliel did likewise with Farson's horse, and the three began a slow descent from the plateau into the Valley of Lost Men. This formation ensured that no one wandered away blindly, and missteps would be kept to a minimum.

The wind blew blinding clouds of dust at them; small stones, pieces of plants, dried insect carca.s.ses, and a powdery grit like chalk or ash coated their skin and matted in their hair. Twice they found large outcrops of rocks to shelter behind as the wind increased in intensity and the howling in the air made even the well-trained horses paw the ground, nicker and snort. Sandreena patted the nose of her palfrey in rea.s.surance, but she was hardly in a position to rea.s.sure anyone, even her mare. The impulse that had driven her to undertake this mission now seemed like an impossibly vain idea. But each time this doubt had risen, she had returned to the same conclusion; there was simply no one else in the order, save herself, Creegan and two other knights whose whereabouts unknown, who could follow up on what that mysterious Kingdom agent had reported, and she was the only one of them in a position to help.

Necromancy and demons were not usually intertwined. Demons took too much delight in devouring the living to leave enough useful remains for a necromancer to employ his arts. As demons always devoured whatever they killed, and quickly.

However, from her studies Sandreena knew there was a great deal of energy used in the dark arts, albeit black and evil, and necromancy was one of the most powerful. Perhaps someone was harnessing death magic to control demons? She left the thought unfinished; she really did not know if it was possible or what it implied, and wished again for five minutes to talk to Amirantha; before she'd strangle him. She became as aggravated with herself as she was with the Warlock: of all the times to start thinking about that b.a.s.t.a.r.d again!

The wind began to shift and then started falling away, but Sandreena knew the desert winds in these hot tablelands were unpredictable. However, for now, in the relative lull, free from the worst of the stinging sand, they would better be able to see trouble coming.

She motioned for the others to fall in and started down the trail. The wind game in gusts and swirls, but she could see her way down clearly enough. The path was roughly equivalent in type to the one she had followed up to the fortress from Durbin: it was ancient, eroded by wind and the occasional flash flood, and rarely used. Yet, when the wind died down, there were moments she could see signs that the track had been recently used. A large number of horses and wagons had come this way, and by the look of the hoof marks, they had headed into the valley, but not out of it.

Sandreena wondered who was behind this, and what they were playing at. Durbin was a vermin hole on the Bitter Sea, where the governor made huge profits from looking the other way as smugglers moved contraband into or out of the Empire. It was endemic of Imperial Keshian behaviour, but no matter how many times the Empire sought to reform that office, the mixture of greed, opportunity and distance from the capital, that melded together in that miserable city, always a.s.serted itself. Still, the number of wagons and men coming this way recently was high even by Durbin standards.

Sandreena estimated that there were at least one hundred dead people rotting in the ancient fortress, perhaps more; that amount of movement across the desert should have brought attention. Whoever was behind this incident had managed to prevent the Imperial guards reporting it, which meant that the governor or someone highly placed in his office had looked the other way, either due to bribery or fear...or both.

As they descended the winding trail, following long switchbacks that took them slowly down the mountain, the wind died. It was as if a curtain of blowing sand and dust was suddenly pulled aside.

'What is that?' demanded Farson.

'What, indeed?' said Sandreena as Jaliel moved forward and halted.

'Good G.o.ddess!' He exclaimed.

A ma.s.sive structure was being erected in the distant heart of the valley. The outline showed that it was a ma.s.sive fortification of some type, encircling something, but from this distance detail was lost. Four towers were being built, one farther along in construction than the others, and it was clear they would arch over and touch over the centre of...whatever it was.

Farson said, 'I'm not an engineer, but my da built siege engines for the King, so I know a bit. Those towers...' he pointed, 'they can't do that; they can't arch over and touch.'

Softly Sandreena said, 'I won't mention it to them.'

'To whom?' asked Jaliel.