So many generations had passed since then that no one living in Darsus had ever actually experienced the “good times” that were surely coming back any day now. But it had become a religion, a way of life, and the citizens of Darsus today were no more willing to face reality and leave than their ancestors had been. And so Darsus continued on, a wound on civilization—an ugly, rotten little town of no means, no future, and no hope.
Well, no hope for most. As with everywhere else, a select few managed to thrive, even in the cesspool of despair that was Darsus. Like leeches or vultures, such people grow healthy as those around them sicken.
Sergin was just such a man. He'd always been one of the lucky ones. He was taller than average, although his rather extensive paunch and broad shoulders made him appear a little squat. His hair was greased black to hide the gray that everyone knew lurked beneath, and he had a perpetual squint.
Now while Sergin was neither a kind nor a generous man, it must be said in his defense that he wasn't particularly malicious, either. He was no happier to see the constant rot and ruin than anyone else, and he wasn't at all conscious of the fact that he was figuratively—perhaps even literally—feeding off the despair of those around him. Sergin was merely trying to survive, just as everyone else was; it was just that he was in a better position to do so.
Sergin was the proprietor of the Rusty Piton, Darsus's only remaining tavern, and that made him one of the richest men in town. His ale was weak and thin, his liquors of inferior vintage, his meals greasy and poorly cooked. A tavern like the Rusty Piton wouldn't have lasted a month in Timas Khoreth, but it was the only source of liquid solace available to Darsus's depressed masses, and those masses drank. A lot. On average, they spent more of their earnings on drink than they did on food. Sergin did his part to help; he kept his prices relatively reasonable, even going so far as to occasionally offer a free meal to the truly destitute. (Said meal served with murky water; alcohol, he never gave away.)
On this particular morning, Sergin was not a happy man. Last evening, he had unwillingly played host to a substantial brawl—not an uncommon occurrence, but neither was it an enjoyable one—and he'd lost several chairs, one of his best tables, and an uncountable number of tankards. It had been a profitable afternoon up to that point, one of the best that month; now, because that damn drunkard Lomis couldn't keep his damn hands off women with large brothers, the whole night was a loss. Maybe even the entire week.
Cursing under his breath, Sergin stomped out the back door of the Rusty Piton, a spent ale barrel loaded with garbage on each shoulder. He didn't bother to hold his breath anymore; most people couldn't set one foot in that alley without gagging or even retching outright, but Sergin had grown accustomed to the near-tangible stench. This alley had been his refuse pit for years now, and it had been cleaned out only on those occasions when it rained really, really hard. The miasma was enough to nauseate the roaches, and the rats’ eyes watered constantly.
This, to Sergin, was a good thing. The walls of the tavern were thick, so the smell never troubled the paying patrons, and that scent kept the drunks from staggering into the alley to pass out. He hated when they did that.
And thus, when he tripped over someone lying not four feet from the door, nearly causing him to drop his barrels of refuse, it was enough to set him screaming.
“You bastard!” Sergin dropped the barrels where he stood, despite the fact that he'd just pulled something trying not to drop them. “You get the hell out of my alley, you hear? You get out right now! You…”
The bartender gasped as he recognized the body. He couldn't see the man's face, of course; but that shape, that shirt, that hair…
Lomis. It was Lomis.
Sergin began to kick him. “You bastard! You—you damn bastard!” Sergin, it should be noted, was not the most creative-minded of men. “You wrecked my tavern, you bastard! You owe me! Oh, gods, do you owe me! And I’m gonna collect every stinking copper, you hear me?” Another kick. “Every stinking one!” Kick. “Now you get the hell out of my alley!” Kick, kick.
Kick.
It was just about this point that reason began to slowly seep through the righteous rage enshrouding Sergin's mind. The owner of the Rusty Piton paused in midkick, staring down at the body. And body, he admitted reluctantly, is just what it was. Not even Lomis could possibly be so drunk as to have failed to notice the shoe-leather hailstorm. For a moment, the bartender felt the first surges of panic. Had he killed the man?
No. No, Lomis hadn't moved at all. Hadn't even twitched, not from the very first kick. The man had been dead before Sergin even entered the ally. The large barkeep breathed a quick sigh of relief, and then set about pondering what to do next.
Obviously, he would have to report this. Darsus didn't have a formal watch, but the council of merchants who made decisions for the city occasionally assigned their private guards as a part-time police force. (It had been they, in fact, who had finally broken up the previous night's brawl.) It was highly doubtful that they'd bother with any serious investigation into Lomis's death, but still, they'd have to be informed.
But first there was something else to do. The man was dead, and dead men, for the most part, are not known for paying reparations. Sergin would have to settle for whatever Lomis had on him at the moment. Probably not more than a few stray coppers, maybe a little silver if he was lucky—but it was something, and as far as the barkeep was concerned, it was morally his. Carefully, Sergin dug both hands into the tunic that covered the corpse's right shoulder and heaved him over….
The naked, empty skull peered up accusingly at him as a small horde of maggots tunneled, squirming, through its running, viscous eyes. A thin dusting of blood dyed the sharp white of bone a stomach-churning pink. Here and there, some few strips of matter dangled between the ribs, swaying slightly as the body shifted.
Sergin felt his gorge rising and choked it back more by luck than by effort of will. Too stunned even to scream, he could only stare, paralyzed, at the hideous sight. So horrified was he at the gory thing that had once been a frequent customer, it took him a moment to notice the swarm of worms and maggots—coated in blood and other, less readily identifiable substances—that poured from the body. It was only when the first one, a bloated maggot coated in black slime, had begun to wriggle up his hand and into his sleeve that he finally reacted.
Now he did scream, a bellow of primal revulsion. Swallowing a second tide of nausea, Sergin shot upright and slammed his right palm over and over into his left arm, determined to crush or dislodge the creature before it climbed any further. He was rewarded, if such is the proper term, by a sudden moist pop—rather like squeezing a fermenting blueberry—beneath his fingers.
But by then, several dozen more of the vile things had begun to climb him; many had already found their way into his boots, or inside the legs of his pants. And then, finally, he let loose a true, horrified, soul-wrenching shriek. No one came in answer, but in those final instants, he imagined that he heard similar cries from other nearby alleys.
Unspeakable things writhed against his skin, biting, digging, tunneling. He tried to flinch away, but there were dozens, hundreds of them now, all over his skin, in his hair, under his nails, filling his ears. Sergin felt himself topple, land amid the oozing refuse of the alley—and a thousand more crawling things that waited, impatient and hungry.
He was already mad by the time the bulk of the worms began to eat into his body, his throat, his face. When the end came, he was well beyond any capacity to feel it. For the others, for most of Darsus, the screaming would last for hours.
But then, Sergin always had been one of the lucky ones.
“Well,” Gork said, glancing pointedly back over his shoulder at the looming forest of Thewl, “we're out of the woods, so to speak. Where's this magical solution that was supposed to fall into our laps?”
Cræosh's lips twisted in a nasty scowl. “I didn't say we'd be handed a fucking answer when we cleared the trees, Short
y. I just said maybe something might come to us.”
“Something might have,” Katim pointed out helpfully, “if….some of us hadn't been too…nervous to talk about it on…the way.”
As he'd been doing more and more often of late, Cræosh ignored her. It was his only option, really, other than violence, and he still wasn't ready for that.
“Fort Rheen's not really that far,” Fezeill said. He was once again wearing his favorite human guise. “Why not head there first?”
“And then what?” Gimmol asked from atop Belrotha's shoulder. The gremlin still sounded on the edge of panic. “How's that going to help us?”
“And your idea is that much better?” the doppelganger snapped. “Even if we wanted to go there—and I assure you that none of us who remain remotely sane have any such desire—Dendrakis is clear across Kirol Syrreth!”
“I know that! It doesn't matter. He has to know!”
“How do you know he doesn't already…?”
Cræosh turned a deaf ear. It was the same cycle they'd repeated half a dozen times back in the now-abandoned temple of Ymmech Thewl. In theory, he actually agreed with the gremlin: This sort of thing had to be reported. Where the consensus broke down was “To whom?”
General Falchion? That was Cræosh's vote, but Gimmol contended, and the orc had to admit he might have a point, that one of the general's own staff or messengers might let something slip to the wrong ears.
Sergeant Shreckt, then? They hadn't seen the little bastard in over a month, and even if they could find him, it meant going back to Castle Eldritch. Cræosh had ended that line of conversation with a “Fuck, no!”
(It had been then, incidentally, that Gimmol had revealed that the final component of the ritual was the soul of a demon. After a twenty-minute debate—read: screaming argument—about whether a demon could, by definition, even have a soul, they all managed to agree that Shreckt was the only feasible candidate. “That'd explain why we haven't seen him,” Fezeill had observed casually. That had, in turn, opened up a whole new line of discussion, regarding whether or not it was worth letting the loathsome little imp die. They hadn't resolved that issue, either.)
All of which left only one other option, and most of the discussion since then had revolved around desperately trying to find a way to avoid it. They had to carry word to the Iron Keep itself. Cræosh could, just off the top of his head, think of about ten thousand things he'd rather do than report Queen Anne's activities to King Morthûl in person, many of which involved being disemboweled or boiled alive in various sticky substances.
And some of the squad, of course, still weren't sure why it was such a big deal. “Jhurpess not understand why this matter,” the bugbear said—again.
“Much as I hate to set this sort of precedent,” Gork added, “I agree with Jhurpess. I admit that King Morthûl's more than mildly horrible, but so what? So what if Queen Anne wants to be like him? Hell, if one of them's enough to scare the other kingdoms shitless, imagine what two of them can do for Kirol Syrreth.”
“That's just it!” Gimmol was actually screeching. “It's too much!”
Katim winced. “Gimmol, tone it down…a little. My ears are about to…climb off my head and seek…their own way in the world.” She reached up and poked him in one dangling foot with a talon. “Perhaps your head…might be willing to keep them…company?”
“It's too much,” the gremlin said again—at a much lower volume. “You're making a common mistake, Gork. You see the Charnel King as a wizard who just happens to be dead.”
The kobold shrugged. “It's what he is, isn't it?”
“Not by far. You ever wondered why this entire world isn't ruled by wizards? Why they don't just step in and make themselves gods?”
Another shrug. “I just sort of assumed they didn't have the power.”
“Exactly. Even the greatest sorcerers can only channel so much magic, because the body and the mind can only handle so much without burning up. That's why you won't see any single wizard blowing up an entire kingdom, or mentally controlling thousands of people at once. A whole cabal working together might be able to do it, but most wizards don't trust their fellows enough to cooperate to that extent. Too many trade secrets.
“But King Morthûl doesn't have that problem. His body's dead! It's sustained by magic; it simply doesn't have the same frailties as a living one, and he's had eight hundred years to learn how to use that. King Morthûl can perform feats of magic that no mortal wizard could even contemplate, let alone achieve!” Gimmol's voice had been rising again; at Katim's snarl, he took a few deep breaths.
“It's as close to godhood as a mortal can get,” he continued once he'd calmed down a bit. “In all recorded history, less than half a dozen mages who attempted the ritual actually succeeded; the strength of will required is enormous, even more than the sorcerous proficiency. Under other circumstances, I wouldn't worry about Queen Anne being able to pull this off—except that she's a stark raving loony, in case you hadn't picked up on the fact. She might start off cooperating with her husband, but it wouldn't last. How long do you think either of them could go on, trying to work side by side with the one person who posed an actual threat?”
Gork was finally starting to look troubled. “So wouldn't one of them just kill the other?” he asked hopefully. “We wouldn't be any worse off than we are now, right?”
Gimmol shook his head frantically. “You've never seen wizards go to war, have you? This would make all previous mage duels look like a children's squabble. I doubt Kirol Syrreth would survive. I’m not completely sure the continent would survive!”
“We'd hide,” Gork said, very obviously arguing now for nothing more than the sake of being stubborn. “Kobolds are good at that. It's what we do.”
“Not from this, Gork. If Kirol Syrreth goes, we all go with it.” Gimmol paused a moment. “And besides, even if by some miracle you did survive, what would you come back to?”
Gork was trying very hard not to be convinced, but the others, even Jhurpess and Belrotha, had heard quite enough. “Okay, Gimmol,” Cræosh said, “you've sold me. You're the mage here. What do you suggest?”
“There's no way I can take Queen Anne,” the gremlin told them. “Ten of me wouldn't be powerful enough. The only choice we have is to tell King Morthûl and let him handle it.”
“You're still assuming he doesn't know,” Fezeill interjected. “That it wasn't he who assigned us to Queen Anne.”
“He doesn't. He'd never take the risk. I’m sure of it.”
Cræosh sighed. “I was really hoping for another way out of this,” he told the world at large.
Katim's jagged, saliva-coated teeth gleamed in the setting sun. “There's always…suicide.”
“Remind me of that when we get a little nearer to Dendrakis. I just might want to give it some thought.”
For good or for ill, he would have plenty of time to think it over. All the way from Ymmech Thewl, in the shadow of the Brimstone Mountains, to the Sea of Tears from which the isle of Dendrakis rose, was pretty close to the entire length and breadth of Kirol Syrreth. Between terrain and distance, even accounting for the Demon Squad's stamina, reaching the Iron Keep would require…
“A month,” Fezeill told them, having been the first to complete the math. “Maybe more.”
“Well,” Cræosh said philosophically, “we're fucked.”
Gork frowned. “Are we? I mean, the Stars only know what Queen Anne might do with that kind of time, but we've got the Tree of Ever. Even assuming it now properly qualifies as a forgotten god's relic, it's not going to do her much good if she doesn't have it.”
“No,” Katim said, “we can't…count on that. If Shreckt is the…demon in question, it means that…Queen Anne has all the components but…one. Were I in her…position, I would not be sitting around…waiting for it to come to…me.”
Belrotha cocked her head. “Little tree will go to her? What us here for, then?”
“You think she's got other
feelers out besides us?” Cræosh asked, letting the ogre stew.
The troll nodded. “It would make sense, don't…you think? I'd say that we…can't afford to wait a…month on this.”
“And our other option is what?” Gork asked caustically. “Do you suppose if we ask nicely enough, we might persuade time to wait for us?”
“Actually,” Cræosh said, his face lighting up, “yes.” He looked pointedly at Gimmol.
“Oh, no,” the gremlin protested, thrusting both arms out as though to shove the notion away. “Not even the Charnel King messes with time. No way.”
(Had Gimmol known the precise nature of Morthûl's recent ritual—the one compromised and thwarted by duMark and his allies—he might have chosen a different example.)
“I didn't mean it literally, Gimmol,” Cræosh clarified. “Can't you just—I don't know—pop us over there?” He snapped his fingers for emphasis, the sharp retort echoing like a breaking bone. “Shreckt and Queen Anne do it all the time.”
“I’m not Shreckt or Queen Anne,” Gimmol said bluntly. “There's a whole steaming pile of things they can do that I can't.” The gremlin scratched his temple, just beneath the brim of his hat. “Still…”
“Still what?” Fezeill prompted after a moment. “‘Still’ isn't very informative.”
“I can speed us up a little,” Gimmol said hesitantly. “We won't feel like we're going any faster, but we can cover the distance in a couple of weeks. Ten days or so if we really push it.”
“Well, why didn't you just say so?” Cræosh demanded.
“Because it's harder than all hell, Cræosh,” Gimmol said. “And because there's a price.”
Katim scowled dangerously. “What kind of…price?”
“This sort of thing wreaks havoc on the body,” the little wizard replied. “It's vaguely possible that a few of us might not survive the shock. Not likely, since we're all in pretty good shape, but possible. But even if it doesn't kill us, it's going to drain us. Think of it as aging a year or three over the next month.”