Soldiers of Tyranny, page 34
part #5 of Aielund Series
“No luck,” Aiden hissed in frustration.
“Bedroom,” Criosa suggested, rushing across the chamber towards the king’s personal chambers. The dull booming of the distant battle could be faintly heard, even in the castle, serving as a stark reminder of their dire situation. Aiden quickly joined the princess in her father’s bedroom, and saw it was just as garishly decorated as the throne room.
The bedroom, as it happened, was occupied. Seated on a plush chair near the fireplace was a withered old man in expensive, opulent clothes which seemed far too large for his frame. His head was slumped against his chest and he appeared to be asleep. Although he could barely believe it, Aiden recognised him as Duke Charles Montague, whom he had not seen since the almost-execution.
“Uncle Charlie?” Criosa breathed as she spotted him. The old man stirred from his slumber and looked up with bleary, dark-rimmed eyes.
“Criosa? Is that you my dear?” he croaked.
“Yes, it’s me,” she gushed, rushing to his side to embrace him. “I’ve been so worried about you.”
“Never mind me, child, your father has been looking everywhere for you,” the old duke mumbled. “He has been beside himself with grief when you were taken from us, but now you’ve returned, he will be overjoyed.”
“Uncle, that’s… not what happened,” Criosa said, faltering as she realised he wasn’t himself.
“How is your mother, by the way?” Charles asked vaguely. “I haven’t seen her in some time.”
“She’s fine,” the princess answered after a moment, smoothing down her leather skirt as she stood up. Aiden recalled Criosa’s mother had died long ago, and he felt melancholy at the failing of the old duke’s mind. “I’ll convey your regards when next I see her,” Criosa whispered. “Get some more rest, Uncle. You’re exhausted.”
“Good girl,” Charles muttered. “My how you’ve grown…” his voice trailed off as his head bobbed down to his chest once more. Within moments, he was snoring softly. Criosa wiped a tear from her cheek and turned away from the old man.
“He’ll be fine, once we’ve brought my father to account,” she informed Aiden with unwavering optimism.
Once more they set about searching every nook and cranny they could find, and even shoved the massive rosewood desk away from the wall so they could check behind it. The Duke remained asleep even with all their fidgeting, but it paid off when they finally found a small door hidden just behind the desk. It was locked, but she had come prepared to deal with such obstacles.
“Platinum tumblers and vythiric braces,” Criosa breathed. “This may be the most expensive lock I have ever seen. Keep watch while I figure it out.” Fishing out her lock picks, she went to work while Aiden moved to watch for any movement outside the door. He could hear her swear under her breath more than once, confirming her suspicions of the mechanism’s quality.
When Aiden heard footsteps passing through the throne room, it became evident the castle hadn’t been completely abandoned. He pushed the door closed but for a small crack, and peered through it. He was beyond fear at this point — his heart beat strong and steady as he watched one of the king’s personal guards stroll through the throne room, thinking only of ways to kill the man should he decide to check the bedroom. Still, Aiden breathed a faint sigh of relief when the guard passed them by.
“Got it!” Criosa whispered harshly. Aiden moved back over to see what she had discovered, and as she opened the door they could see only a number of parchments and some precious heirlooms within. The small compartment wasn’t even large enough to fit a staff, and Aiden cursed bitterly at their wasted efforts.
“Blasted thing!” Criosa hissed, stepping away from the wall and running her fingers through her blond hair. “We just have to keep looking elsewhere, that’s all. What I wouldn’t give for a blood hound to sniff the bloody thing out.”
Aiden didn’t pay much attention to what she said, until a moment later when her words finally sank in. The staff, like the Lexicon, was a relic of the ancient people who had created them. They used the same techniques, and all of their artifacts had one thing in common — they all worked from the same source of power.
During their previous discussions, Aiden had learned from Salinder, and to some extent Spartan, that relics such as these gave off a distinct odour that only dragons could detect. The Ironlord itself stank of this aroma, so much that it could be detected many miles away. Grasping at the slenderest thread of hope, Aiden rubbed his scaled arm in thought and dared to think it might just work.
He took a deep, long sniff of the room, but could only discern the regular, everyday sorts of smells. Criosa gave him an odd look, unsure what he was attempting to do.
“This is hardly the time to make fun of my suggestions,” she remarked crossly. Aiden held up one finger to suggest silence on her part, and took another sniff, but this time, attempted to alter his sense of smell in the same way he would alter his vision.
It was a difficult concept to wrap his brain around, but when he applied his will to the task, something changed. He took another breath and this time, all of the smells in the room had been magnified, but more importantly, a faint, acrid smell could be detected underneath it all.
Aiden turned about, trying to discern the source of that faint aroma, and figured it was coming from the door. Checking to make sure nobody was on the other side, he stepped back into the throne room and found the scent to be stronger. He began moving around the room, sniffing here and there with each step, and Criosa following along behind him, bewildered at his behaviour.
“We’ve already searched the throne room,” she complained as he moved closer to grandiose chair. “What on earth are you doing? We don’t have time for this!”
Ignoring her, Aiden narrowed down the area to the chair itself. He took a strong whiff and found the odour to be so pungent he screwed up his nose and recoiled in disgust.
“It’s here,” he growled in a voice that wasn’t entirely human, giving the ostentatious throne a baleful look. Aiden was able to narrow it down a little more and began focusing his search on the back. Given the shape of the item in question, there was only one place it could be. “Help me look for a latch or something — the staff has to be in one of these posts. Don’t ask how I know, just do it.”
Criosa complied, though her face spoke more than words ever could. Still, she went over the throne once more, looking for something they’d missed on the first pass. Their persistence paid off when Aiden found a small nodule amongst a group of them, sculpted in gold and impossible to discern through sight alone.
When he pressed it inwards, the cap on top of one of the back pillars popped open, revealing a hollow tube. Excited and relieved, Aiden peered inside and let out a hiss of triumph as he reached in and retrieved the relic staff.
“We’ve got him now,” he growled, feeling a surge of confidence race through him. Doubt was replaced by fury at the thought they could finally bring an end to all of this madness.
“How did you do that?” Criosa whispered suspiciously.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” Aiden replied absently as he took out the Lexicon and activated it with a stroke of one finger. “We have friends to save.” The familiar ephemeral pages of arcane knowledge appeared above the box and Aiden quickly began flipping through them.
“You’re right, we don’t have—” Criosa began to reply, but was interrupted from a shout of alarm from one of the castle guards who stood at a side entrance to the throne room.
“Run!” Aiden shouted, stowing the Lexicon away again as he and Criosa made a dash for another doorway. The guard, clad in heavy armour, gave chase but wouldn’t be able to catch them. The sounds of booted feet running throughout the castle could be heard, indicating the rest of them had been alerted to the presence of intruders.
Criosa took the lead and zigzagged through the corridors of power, a place she knew like the back of her hand. Every time a guard appeared ahead of them, they would divert down another passage. Aiden was lost, but had enough faith in the princess to get them clear of the castle’s confines. There was one flaw in her plan that occurred to him — the main entrance was the only way out, and it was sure to be guarded.
They burst into a disused storage room when they were out of sight of their pursuers, and while Criosa closed the door, Aiden glanced around and locked eyes with a familiar young woman with dark hair, in the middle of stuffing her possessions into a sack — Kara. The look of surprise on her face was beyond description, but Aiden didn’t wait to savour it.
“Traitor,” he muttered and instinctively raised his hand before Kara could speak. A bolt of lightning shot forth and struck the spy dead-on. She fell to the floor, twitching and blackened from the discharge. Aiden moved closer and plunged his sword into Kara’s chest.
“I did it… for Aielund,” she stammered through lips she could barely control.
“You chose the wrong side, my friend,” Aiden lamented quietly blood replaced the words coming out of her mouth. Criosa said nothing, but her expression was one of doubt as Aiden returned to the door.
“How far to the entrance from here?” he asked.
“It’s down the corridor to the left,” she whispered. “No more than fifty yards.”
“We make a break for it, and if anything gets in our way, I’m going to put some of these scrolls to good use,” Aiden said, taking out one parchment in particular which would ensure their escape.
“Perhaps I should take those, given your past record?” Criosa suggested
“Not this time,” Aiden answered hastily, and then peered out through the crack in the door. With no visible signs of pursuit, they crept out into the hallway.
They reached another door and when Criosa opened it, Aiden could see the large foyer, a familiar sight and very close to the entrance itself. Unfortunately, it was populated with nearly a dozen elite castle guards, watching intently for signs of their arrival. Another distant explosion echoed through the city, reminding them of the urgency of their mission. They could not wait.
“Enough running,” Aiden growled as he unfurled a scroll and threw open the door. He had spent several hours back at Auchlevie studying the incantations scrawled upon the ancient parchments, and was confident he could recite the archaic language without fault.
Every guard turned at his sudden appeared at the doorway, but Aiden was already halfway through the incantation before they could act. As the parchment crumbled to ash in his hands, a surge of immense power went through his body. He pointed to a location in their midst and watched in morbid fascination as a ball of pure darkness appeared there.
Aiden was nearly pulled from his feet as everything in the immediate vicinity of the ball was drawn towards it with incredible force. Curtains and tapestries were pulled from walls and drawn into the sphere, and the effect upon the soldiers was even greater.
Weighed down by their heavy armour, the soldiers cried out in terror as they were sucked into the sphere of darkness and crushed by their own weight into nothingness. The sphere vanished within moments of appearing, almost as if it had never been there, but for the devastation it had wreaked upon the room.
Virtually nothing was left standing, and all that remained of the dozen soldiers was a tiny ball of metal in the centre of the room. Aiden breathed in awe at the power he had unleashed, but he quickly snapped out of it and gestured for Criosa to follow him through the room.
They ran through the entrance and out onto the drawbridge, noticing the sky had lightened considerably while they had been inside. While the fog had thinned a little, it was still enough to prevent them seeing far down the road. The clamour of fighting rang out through the streets, but just below that noise was something else, a strange and haunting sound like nothing Aiden had heard only once before.
As the two of them ran down the street, a flicker of fire could be seen illuminating the fog, and the cry of men burning could be heard. Aiden and Criosa had to step carefully to avoid the bodies lying on the ground, many of them bearing terrible cuts and severed limbs, but more than a few appeared to have been burned.
They burst through the fog to the sight of Spartan standing amidst a crowd, searing the enemy with scorching flames and slicing them up with his long claws.
On his back sat the tiny figure of an old friend, the raelani druid Margaret Fairweather. Although she appeared to be clutching on to the dragon’s neck for dear life, she also summoned lightning from the sky to blast the countless number of soldiers.
Fighting alongside the dragon was Captain Sherrard, Nellise and Robert Black. Robert was a fearsome sight to behold, cutting a swath of destruction through their enemies with his elf-crafted vythiric blade and protecting Nellise and himself from harm with his indestructible shield.
The captain had acquired a shield of his own, and while not as masterful with the blade as Robert, he held his flank against the tide. Nellise, seemingly in some sort of ecstatic trance, channelled her divine might to create a wall of intense, radiant light to hold back enemies on their other flank. Whenever someone tried to move through it, they were burned and blinded from the brilliance.
“How are we going to break through?” Criosa shouted over the din. Aiden took in the scene, noting the sheer number of soldiers attempting to break through Nellise’s defence. On the walls of the buildings lining the street, archers began to shoot arrows into the fray. Most of them were destroyed when they impacted the wall of light, but one or two went through to strike Nellise directly.
“Deal with those archers while I thin their ranks,” Aiden instructed, taking out another scroll. Criosa had lost her crossbow some time ago, but found an undamaged longbow and a quiver of arrows lying on the ground amongst the bodies. Like most people in Aielund, she had been well-trained in its use and quickly set about sending arrow after arrow arcing through the sky.
Aiden focused his attention on the task before him. He read through the incantation and as the scroll crumbled, the flagstones in the streets beneath the enemy began to split apart. Piping-hot steam erupted from the gaps, and moments later the entire pavement erupted in a torrent of flame and molten rock.
The fissure widened, and men began to fall through the gap into the cauldron of arcane fire below. Those on the surface were either pummelled with rock or scalded by steam, but faced with an onslaught of powerful magic from two fronts, their sergeants called for a retreat and pulled back to the west. Aiden released his concentration and the active fissure died down again, releasing only a thin wafting of smoke from the superheated rock below.
Robert and Sir Denholm leaned on their weapons while they caught their breath, and Nellise released whatever aid she had given them, wilting visibly as she did so. The captain was quick to catch her before she fell.
“Are you all right, my lady?” he asked as she Aiden and Criosa hurried over to join them.
“I’ll be fine, thank you sir,” Nellise assured him. “Never in my entire life have I concentrated so hard for so long.”
“There sure were a lot of ‘em,” Robert grunted between breaths. He winced as he attempted to stand upright. His armour was spattered with blood, and more than a little of that was probably his own. He noticed the staff in Aiden’s hand. “You got it? Brilliant. Figured out how to use it yet?”
“I haven’t had time, what with being in the middle of a warzone and all,” Aiden drawled. “Spartan, it’s nice of you to show up. And I see you brought along a pet.”
“This is the thanks I get for coming?” Maggie protested. “Nice to see you too, Aiden.”
We have worked well together during the last few months, Spartan explained with his smooth mind-voice. I thought she would prove valuable.
“You’re both more welcome than I am capable of expressing right now,” Aiden assured them. “I had better figure out this staff.”
“Yes, get on it,” Robert growled. “I have a feeling they were waiting for His Majesty to show up.” No sooner had Robert stopped speaking when a blast of fire erupted further along the street. A group of enemy soldiers screamed and fell down in flames, while the familiar shapes of Sayana, Pacian and Ronan rushed around the corner, heading straight for Aiden and the others at top speed.
Criosa waved them over, but her movement faltered as the sound of distinctive, heavy steps could be heard approaching. A large house on the corner practically exploded as the Ironlord burst through it, taking a shortcut in an attempt to catch up with them. Seamus wasn’t close enough to swing his massive sword at them, but he ominously raised his arm instead. It began to shine with power and the sound of a thousand boiling kettles tore through the air as the blast of energy shot forth.
Sayana had anticipated this, having been looking over her shoulder at the time. She grabbed on to Ronan and winked out of sight just as the beam shot through the space where they had been running. Pacian, who hadn’t been the target, threw himself against the nearby wall. The blast scorched the flagstones but missed anything important by a wide margin.
Pacian wheeled around and brought his scythe down in a vicious stroke in a bold effort to sever the king’s right arm, but even his vythiric blade was unable to do more than scratch the surface. The giant metal fist swung at him, but Pacian managed to dive underneath the blow which shattered the front wall of a house instead.
“By God,” Captain Sherrard breathed, “I heard stories of this damnable thing but my imagination has been found wanting.”
Sayana and Ronan reappeared next to Criosa, their clothes a little torn in places but with no obvious injuries. Aiden barely noticed, however, for his eyes were locked on the approaching behemoth from his nightmares. Seamus ignored Pacian and continued to advance towards the others, and when the king fully emerged from the fog and smoke, a remarkable thing happened.
