Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (67 page)

“I understand, my lord consul,” the elf said gravely. “However, would it ease your conscience if I informed you that the last time I engaged in any such occult concourse was more than three hundred years ago? I am, of course, willing to give any amount of assurances required that I will not do so again while I am a guest here in your lands.”

Corvus and Torquatus looked at each other. The Amorran Empire had been founded only four hundred years ago. “Yes, I think that should do,” Torquatus said.

The elf smiled. “Elven ways are not the ways of men. Nor, I hasten to add, are they the ways of the Witchkings. My lords consul, your church and your god speak firmly against consorting with demons, and I will not say they are wrong to do so. But if you believe that even mere discourse with them is evil that merits punishment by death, then I think you will readily admit that the sins of the Witchkings were far graver, far more despicable, and far more dangerous than anything we elves have ever done. Well, except for Bessarias, but that is another matter. For you see, they did more than summon demons: They discovered a means of bringing them into the material plane and keeping them here by binding them to the flesh.”

The elf raised his narrow, pointed eyebrows, but neither Corvus nor Torquatus understood the distinction he was making.

“Do you mean something like demonic possession?” Corvus asked.

“No, possession is a temporary and artificial state. In such cases, the extraplanar being is only acting through the physical being like a puppeteer pulling the strings on a puppet and making it appear to dance. I am speaking of a chthonical wedding between a demonic spirit of the nether planes and the physical bodies of one or more living beings, which has the result of permitting the spirits to live and interact in our world while simultaneously permitting the bodies with which it had been merged to draw upon the dark powers provided by this unholy bond.”

“That sounds like something straight out of Hell,” remarked Torquatus.

Corvus couldn’t have agreed more. He knew the depravity of Man knew no bounds, but this was something altogether more distressing than he’d ever imagined. It was even worse than the nightmarish images of the bloody massacre in the chapel that still occasionally flashed into his mind’s eye without warning.

“I suppose that would depend upon which of the nether planes you would regard as your Hell, but yes, that’s essentially true. And through this occult marriage of spirit and flesh, the Witchkings were transformed into creatures that were less than demons but more than men. They became formidable fighters and, much to our horror, we learned their mages had become very nearly as strong as our own, at least, as strong as the younger elven mages who customarily went to war. Their sorcerers were no match for the magisters of the Collegium Occludum, of course, but the magisters seldom bestir themselves in the service of anyone or anything except their own interests. If I recall correctly, Lord Consul Civitas, you had some experience warring against my people in your youth.”

“A little,” Torquatus answered. “Nothing more than a few skirmishes, really.”

“And yet perhaps you will understand that even though our armies were larger and our warriors more skilled than they are today, we found we needed to maintain a ratio of one-to-two if we were to expect reliable success against them in battle.”

“Legionary doctrine still considers that one must have a five-to-one advantage before engaging elves, and that a ratio of seven-to-one is necessary to guarantee success.”

“Accompanied, one imagines, by your doughty thaumaturges.” The elf smiled. “I can still recall those terrible battles against the Witchkings. Nothing had been seen like it before, and nothing has been seen like it since. Villages, cities, even mountains were destroyed by their demonic sorceries or the mighty retribution of our greatest magisters.

“That was how we finally defeated them in the end. We could not beat them by force of arms. The kingdom of Glaislael had fallen, and those who were privy to the truth of the situation were lost to despair. Finally, the High King humbled himself and went to the Collegium in supplication. He went down on his knees before the council of magisters and begged them to intervene, which was without precedent in the three thousand years since the Vilthoniel the Wise first established it as a library and a center for arcane scholarship. Even so, the vote was close, as the magisters only deigned to join the war effort if the High King was willing to heed its council and obey its commands for the remainder of the war.”

“Why did they do that?” Corvus asked, curious despite himself. “That seems to make little more sense than a group of Church ecclesiasticals suddenly deciding to assume command of the legions! What would a group of mages and scholars know of war?”

“How to win them,” Silvertree answered simply. “The High King and his generals made the mistake of attempting to use natural means and natural tactics to defeat an enemy that was, at least in part, supernatural. The magisters had no interest in troop movements and battlefields. Instead, they struck directly at the heart of the Witchkings’s power, which is to say, at the demons that had been bound to them.”

“Sounds almost like a Michaeline approach,” Corvus mused aloud.

“It was very similar. To deny the enemy the core of his strength is the shortest path to victory. After forty years of vicious war and three defeats for every victory, in less than three years, the magisters completely defeated the armies of the Witchkings. And by completely, I mean just that. Using the power of their sorcery to augment the High King’s armies, they eliminated every man, woman, and child throughout the land of that abhorrent people. The few who escaped the initial slaughter were tracked down and killed over the next two decades. Selenoth has been rid of their cursed race for centuries.”

“Then why are you telling us all of this? You’re not saying that the murders of our churchmen were committed by the Witchkings, are you?” Corvus was surprised to see Torquatus looked genuinely alarmed. “If their defeat was as complete as you’re saying, that’s clearly impossible!”

“It is,” the elf admitted. “And I am not suggesting the Witchkings were responsible. What I am saying is that the murders appear to have been committed through the use of a magic very similar to theirs. Since the Witchkings are no more, I imagine you can understand that this poses somewhat of a puzzle.”

“Somewhat? I’d say either your precious Magisters missed a few of them, or you made a mistake about the magic involved.” Torquatus placed his empty glass on the table. He blinked with unvarnished astonishment as Silvertree refilled it with a flick of his finger. “That’s a useful trick.”

“They didn’t miss any of them. And I don’t make mistakes, my lord consul, not of that sort. Their magic was…very distinctive. In fact, I can tell you exactly what happened to your priests, and I can also tell you that you need not concern yourselves with any search for the goblin involved in the murders. By this time, the creature will be dead. I expect those who collect the refuse in the morning, or perhaps those who drag the river by night, will come across its body on the morrow.”

“You said ‘goblin,’” Corvus said. “As in only one. We were under the impression that there were several of them. I’ve fought goblins before. One couldn’t possibly have been so lethal as to have slaughtered the celestines like that, especially bare-handed. The men were old, admittedly, but there were six of them! At least one or two should survived an attack during daylight hours by just a single goblin. They had only to run outside the chapel—there were guards all over the palace.”

“A simple goblin , yes, but they could not have escaped one infused with demonic power. Especially one whose mind had been given over to the demon.” Silvertree folded his hands. “Forgive me, my lords consul, I realize you are both experienced men of war, but this is something far beyond simple battle magic or anything you have ever known. I confess it is even somewhat beyond my experience. I have never studied this form of magic, never practiced it, and what I witnessed of it as a young archer was mostly from a reasonable distance some five hundred years ago. But the reason I am certain it was Witchking magic is that the blood that was smeared in the ritual pattern was neither a summoning nor a banishment—it was an attempt to reverse the spell that had bound the demon with the goblin.”

“I don’t understand,” Torquatus said. “Who was attempting to reverse it?”

“The demon inside,” answered the elf. “I have seen elegant and stable forms of this spell. The Witchkings perfected it to the point that the spiritual bonding was transferred across generations, fragmenting the demon and infusing their descendants with substantial power that was entirely under their control. But this appears to have been a slapdash effort, though whether it was amateurish or simply careless, I could not say. The ritual was the demon’s attempt to break the bond and free itself before the goblin died as a result of the spell.”

“Why would it care about the goblin’s life?”

“Presumably, Consul, it was either bound to return to its summoner or to the plane from whence it was originally summoned upon the dissolution of its anchor, which in this case would have been the goblin. But it failed, and the careless nature of the original spell indicates what I said earlier: The goblin is most likely dead and the demon back where it belongs. Of course, this leads us to certain intriguing questions. Such as, who the demon’s binder was, why he used it to murder the princes of your Church, and, most of all, where he could have learned Witchking magic?”

Corvus shook his head. “How could anyone learn something that doesn’t exist anymore? Books, one presumes, but I assume you burned them back in the day, or you wouldn’t consider it a question.”

Silvertree nodded at Corvus. “Precisely. I asked myself that very question this afternoon. And I reached a conclusion, but it is one I suspect you are not going to like. I don’t like the implications myself. Now, you must understand that some of our ideas about the Witchkings have proven to be false.”

Torquatus sighed impatiently.

Corvus nodded to the ambassador. “Go on.”

“The magisters at the Collegium have long asserted that the Witchkings had been nothing more than normal men who, by virtue of sheer chance combined with steadfast devotion to their dark arts, had reached an unusual level of skill that has never been matched, before or since. But we now know this is not true, and that someone has been able to replicate their efforts. We know this because the Amorran embassy of last year was kind enough to gift the High King with one of the wolf creatures. It was the one that attacked your son, Lord Consul Valerius.”

“Ah, yes?” Torquatus glanced at Corvus. “You’ll have to tell me more about that one day, Sextus Valerius.”

“Why is that?” Corvus asked Silvertree. “How were you able to determine that?”

“Because the beasts are the product of the same demonic magic that once created the Witchkings. It is a sorcery akin to the one that made use of the goblin here in Amorr last night, albeit a more sophisticated one. This suggests to me that the Witchking magic wasn’t developed by the Witchkings any more than it was developed by wolves in the wild. While the Witchkings made use of the magic to great effect, I strongly suspect they were its product, rather than its author. Someone else, something else, used it to create them. Quite possibly the same being or beings responsible for creating the wolf creatures.”

“And the same that did whatever you said happened to the goblin?” Corvus asked.

“No, almost certainly not. The spell utilized there was too crude, too haphazard. So we are speaking of at least two, and quite possibly three, different sorcerers over the centuries. There is the creator of the Witchkings. There is the creator of the wolf-creatures. And then there is the murderer of your priests.”

Corvus rubbed his lip with his index finger. It was a lot to take in. “Could they all be the work of the same hand? I know it’s an awfully long time, but then, you elves are damn near immortal.”

“It is unlikely. The difference between the wolves and the goblin, to say nothing of the sophistication and subsequent mastery exhibited by the Witchkings, is profound. But as it happens, I have an idea about a certain group from whom the sorcerers responsible may very well have hailed.”

“What group is that?” Torquatus asked.

The elf smiled mysteriously. “We call them the Abandoned. But men, as well as orcs, goblins, and other breeds have usually called them by another name over the centuries. Your race, in particular, has been known to worship them as gods.”

MARCUS

There were few things more intimidating than an Amorran legion arrayed for battle, Marcus thought to himself. Perhaps only the steep mountainous approach to the elven city of Elebrion, with its silver-helmed hawk riders patrolling the blue skies overhead, was more impressive.

The heavily armored cohorts stood evenly in their black-armored lines, identified by their banners as well as the numbers painted on their shields. The crimson crests of the centurions made it easy to distinguish them from their men. There was one for every hundred infantry, and the veteran officers on the front lines looked as if they were encrusted in gold and silver, with their armor well nigh covered by the medals they had won in battle over the years. There were few battlefield prizes so rich as a fallen centurion. The scorpions and onagers were grouped in six locations, each manned by three ballistari, although none of them were loaded yet with the giant bolts and rocks they hurled to such devastating effect.