Battle Mage: The Dark Mage (Tales of Alus) (22 page)

“There has always been something different about you that
has made me come back... I guess,” the girl finally committed and started to try to leave his lap a bit chagrined.

The man’s arms held her fast for a moment before letting her go a bit longingly. He did enjoy the feel of the girl and Sylvaine always seemed right to him, but he was a man returned from the dead. Palose wasn’t even sure that he was alive anymore. What good could he be for her? The last question made him wonder how much he cared for Sylvaine.

“Fine,” the mage relented quietly as if a question needed another answer. “Troll ugly or not, I bring you back if you die young.”

Sylvaine’s eyes held more emotion than he would have thought possible for such an answer. She knew that his joke didn’t conceal much of his feelings for her and she leaned to kiss him one more time. The gesture held more feeling despite the simple touch of their lips before the girl returned to her seat.

Dark curls moved to screen her face from his and Sylvaine opened her book pretending to read its pages. Despite her attempt to hide her face, Palose was pretty sure that he had seen tears and when the back of her hand wiped at her eyes, he wasn’t surprised to see it wet.

A message from Wakaraq had reached him the day before and, when Sylvaine retreated from the library having said very few words, Palose decided to make the trip to the morgue to find out what the orc had found for him. Though Atrouseon barely tried to account for his apprentice’s time, coming home too late for dinner tended to bring the ire out of the older man.

While the warlock didn’t cook, he did like to eat it warm when his servants brought it out to him. Palose had rarely been that late, but those meals had been torture for a man that hadn’t had parents watching over him for almost six years. White Hall and the castles manning the wall set the time to eat when the dinner bell rang. If cadets and apprentices couldn’t find a way to be on time, they could try to find something to snack on in the kitchens or starve until the next meal. They learned quickly when they couldn’t eat a meal and grew hungry.

Hurrying his steps to a near run, the few pedestrians roaming the streets near the dockyard barely looked at the hurrying battle mage. Even when he neared the morgue, Palose found very few people nearby. The orc was one of those who worked until late afternoon, but most of the others had left for home by the time the mage arrived. Still he glanced around looking to make sure that he wasn’t being watched. Neither the orc nor Palose wanted to be caught dealing in dead bodies.

“Strange time to see you,” the deep voice of the orc greeted the mage.

“I had a little time and thought that I would check what you had before dinner,” Palose stated and wondered briefly how he could look at dead bodies and return for a full dinner so easily. Death and the dead brought little fear to someone who had already visited there once.

“Some good strong men apparently crossed the wrong person. They were found near one of the military barracks,” Wakaraq explained in common so fluid that Palose still wondered how an orc with tusks growing from his jaw could speak so well. He led the mage to a set of carts that served as both devices to retrieve the dead and to hold them like a table until they were burned or mulched.

When Palose saw the faces of the dead as the covering canvas was removed, he barely stopped from gasping in surprise. He knew these men. They were the ones who had harassed Acheri and now they were dead.

While he certainly didn’t want to raise someone from the dead who might have a vendetta against him, the mage did have his questions. “I can not use these three for the spells I want, but might I have a minute to try something before they are destroyed?”

A brown hand was put out before him and Palose gave the orc a gold piece before saying, “I need a little privacy, if you don’t mind?”

“Don’t do anything too weird,” the orc warned grumpily.

Left to look at the dead, Palose took a deep breath before starting his spell. His right hand touched his chest before reaching out with the left to touch the dead man who had started the trouble with Acheri. A rattling gasp escaped the man’s chest as Palose breathed life into the dead soldier.

“Can you hear me?” he questioned the man keeping his hands on each chest.

“Yeeeessss,” the dead soldier replied after a moment. It was as if the voice had to cross miles to respond to him.

“How did you come to die?”

“Acheerrrriii,” the name came out sending chills along his arms and up his spine.

“Did she kill you or was there a trial?”

“Siiileenced,” the corpse replied refusing to answer the question as he had set it.

“You never went to the city guard?”

“Nooooo.”

The response sent another chill down Palose’s back. A saying he had heard once long ago said that dead men told no tales, but this one certainly had revealed quite a bit with his magic’s help.

“Rest again, soldier,” he ordered removing his hand from the corpse’s chest.

The answers were disconcerting, but the dead had no reason to lie. They were free from the pettiness of the living world and should only benefit from telling the truth. It was a spell that he had never tried before, but Palose was pretty sure that he was right.

So Acheri had decided to be judge, jury and executioner all in one then? He had always had his fears that even the beautiful girl, who seemed sweet most of the time and even innocent like most girls of the age she appeared, could be tainted by the darkness of the emperor. While he had no problem with the way the emperor ran his empire and certainly didn’t care about right and wrong in many situations, when those factors skewed towards his harm, he did have a problem.

His fears that Kolban, and by extension Acheri and Lanquer, could be unpredictable and cruel turning on his own people; were looking pretty justified. Acheri, the sweet young girl who was only a few weeks old, had the true cruelty that only millennia must be able to engineer. She was a piece of the emperor despite the separate vessel. Her consciousness shared much of the original, even though she was supposed to be a separate creation from the new emperor.

Lanquer had a temper. Acheri had a cruel side and Kolban... was the emperor and Dark One. Knowing he had set the touchstones in Southwall as an escape plan, made the mage feel slightly better, but he was adding yet another secret to his list of things he felt he must hide from Sylvaine and his friends.

Stepping away from the cart Palose started to leave the morgue. Wakaraq noted his unusually distracted look and asked, “These don’t meet your needs either? What are you waiting for exactly, wizard? You’ve had me look out for bodies that are dead but in good form. These soldiers were all of that, yet you turn them away.”

“I will know the right ones when I find them,” he stated not wanting to deal with the orc’s questions in the face of knowing the thin ice he walked upon each day with Acheri. “You will get paid and well. The gold I gave you should cover sending a messenger for a month and, when I find the right bodies, the pay off will make you happy, I assure you.”

“I prefer gold over assurances,” the orc complained, but didn’t press the issue.

“Keep in touch, Wakaraq,” he said dismissively before exiting the morgue.

“Hurry up, boy!” Atrouseon ordered as the warlock kept a strong pace even as the massive spires of the emperor’s citadel stood before them. A stone wall ringed the central spires which reached to the ceiling of the cavern of Ensolus. Other lesser castles stood around outside of the wall. The homes of royal families, both human and elven, had been established in the old world and the new as men gravitated towards the power of the emperor.

Palose could understand seeing Kolban as the eventual winner of a war that had nearly ended when he broke from the Silver World destroying much of Alus in the Cataclysm. Island nations had disappeared beneath the North Sea along with much of the coastal cities, mountains rose breaking up the southern peninsula displacing people that had lived on gentle hills or plains before the upheaval. Many people of the south lands ran to cities like Hala or Estaria looking for hope. Others found the armies of the Dark One marching through the land and joined them hoping to become part of the winning side as they saw it.

Now the North Wall stood barring those who had sided with the emperor from the lands to the south. Families were divided and many from Southwall tried to pretend that the deserters had died in the past. For those who lived in Ensolus who had been allowed to gain power and establish ties as royalty, they often pretended they had never been associated with anyone other than the emperor.

Palose looked on both sides as hypocritical in their views, but it also mattered little. People were where they were and had to live with the consequences of their decisions. On a smaller stage, he had set his path with Ensolus, albeit under Atrouseon’s control, but the battle mage didn’t feel anything wrong with the decision.

Atrouseon displayed a paper to a handful of guards arrayed before a large door. Palose could see soldiers patrolling the twenty foot high wall above them. The wall was more to keep those who were unwanted visitors, than to truly protect the citadel from attack. The outer wall and mountain would either hold or it wouldn’t, though who could dare attack the emperor when countries had been decimated with the Cataclysm?

The two men followed an escort of four soldiers once inside and began a circuitous route that eventually led them to a large meeting room.

Over a dozen officers from the army stood alongside half as many wizards and the black armored wizard hunters numbered four as they waited for the emperor to arrive. Palose wondered if Kolban would reveal his new form or would he hide behind a disguise. In all of his history in Alus, the shadows and smoke had helped hide a withering old man, but now he had a youthful body, though perhaps too young for grizzled generals and elder warlocks to take seriously.

After several minutes revealed no more arrivals, Palose felt a powerful presence approaching through the hidden halls of the citadel. It wasn’t the emperor that he felt or his new siblings, though he was pretty sure that he knew who it was. When Garosh, the giant vessel for the emperor’s power, strode in from a side entrance followed by a pair of wraiths and a pair of rough looking men, who had the scent of wolves on them, Palose understood why he knew the powerful aura. After so many times seeing the man passing through the portal gates between Ensolus and the fortress in Southwall, the mage should have know him before even seeing his face.

One of his wraiths looked unusually disheveled. Black blood stained its clothes where a tear in its tunic had been cut. Being a swordsman, Palose knew that a sword had slashed the wraith and wondered if it had been Garosh in a fit of rage or something else that might have brought them all here today.

With the giant giving off so much power, the mage nearly missed as Kolban surrounded by orc and troll guards entered from opposite the entry he had used. Acheri was at his side looking cheerful as usual, though Palose knew that the girl simply used her looks to put others at ease, a mistake for those who might get on her bad side. Lanquer on the other hand looked unhappy and subdued as he trailed the other two between a pair of orc guards.

As the boy ascended to a raised chair, throne like in appearance though modest, the remainder of the room seemed to find the child emperor together. Murmuring began as the men, who largely hadn’t seen or heard of Kolban’s changing of vessels, tried to understand the boy’s presence.

A man dressed in regal finery stated loudly to be heard throughout the entire room, “All hail, Kolban, the emperor of Ensolus and the cities of the Dark Mountains, he who brought the world to its knees and freed his people from the Silver World.”

Many of the men looked ready to question the presenter, when Kolban rose and the shadows gathered around him. The dark facade of the emperor and the unquestioned might of his magic aura threatening the warlocks in the room caused the men to fall to their knees following the wizard hunters who took a knee and bowed their heads to the one they knew as emperor. Garosh and his men were almost as quick as Atrouseon and Palose, who were among those knowing of the emperor’s new face.

Releasing the shadows and suppressing his oppressive might, the boy emperor stated to his men, “You may rise.”

Palose rose with the rest and noticed that many still seemed confused. With all the rumors of the emperor’s health over the years, somehow it had never occurred to them that the Dark One would find a way to defeat death again.

Kolban continued to stand awaiting their attention and stated, “I have been reborn into a new body thanks to the efforts of Atrouseon, Thielius, Etriak and Alimus. Like with Garosh, I have shared my might with my sister Acheri and guardian Lanquer.” He gestured to the other two new faces making sure that the men committed them to memory. “If they come to you with an order, know that it is my will they enforce.”

The boy ran his fingers through his light brown hair gazing at the men amassed before him. He was still growing to full height and light of build. A child in appearance, his eyes held the wisdom of millennia and his power had been demonstrated to all there to witness.

Sitting in his chair, Kolban’s head was still slightly higher than most of those gathered there. Acheri stood to his left placing her hands over the top corner of the chair as the girl leaned against it. Her
cheek rested on the backs of her hands while she held a bemused smile. Lanquer stood on the right with his hands clasped behind his back in a military resting stance.