Book III
Chapter Ten
HOSTAGES and VESSELS
Rowan’s body was walking down the stairs, deep in the heart of the Pyramid at Ne’jum.
Her body walked, but she was not in control of it. The Lich ruled her limbs, and infected each of her senses.
Unlike the Lich’s previous hosts (all of them), Rowan simply… let it happen.
She did not fight.
She not not seem frightened.
At first, the Lich’s spitting soul was relieved.
“Oh, I love it when it’s easy,” he’d said out loud, using her voice, trying out the controls of his new vessel.
But even then, it didn’t ring quite true.
The Lich liked the idea of when things were easy, but the longer the walk went on, down the wide stairs, the more unsettled the spirit became.
“Say something,” the Lich commanded.
The priest in the cloud mask was walking behind Rowan, and just began to say something when the Lich barked—
“NOT YOU! Idiot.”
The priest was silent, except for his long striding footsteps. “S-sorry, of course, my… m-my Lord.”
Rowan didn’t smile within.
She didn’t rage, or fear.
She knew the fate of the soul in this stone.
She knew that it was not the god of storms.
Even better, she knew that he did not know that.
To Rowan’s great relief, the god of yesterdays and tomorrows seemed to stand between the Lich’s thoughts and hers. She had no fear of knowing the Lich’s mind, because she’d lived his whole life (and unlife) already. The artifact had no secrets from her, so long as her memory held.
“SPEAK, DAMN YOU! SPEAK! THINK! SAY SOMETHING!”
Rowan merely remained quiet inside herself.
There was no pleasure in it.
No satisfaction.
There was merely nothing to be said, and no reason to speak. No reason to think. No reason to be anything at all, until this chapter was over.
All there was to do was wait.
And wait.
And wait.
And wait, I will, she thought.
* * * * / * * * *
Ne’jum was still burning, as the Death Knight stormed across the bridge.
He dragged two orcs behind him, by the ankles.
His greatsword was slung over his back, worn in the scabbard of some fallen soldier or other. All his good gear was still at the top of the pyramid, which was not where Dor was going. Not yet.
One of the orcs he dragged behind him had huge, viscious looking wings that scraped the ground like a bride’s bloody train. He wore no clothes, as they’d all burned away, which only made him look more like an animal to the humans that glimpsed the sight.
The other orc was a young woman, with green skin and black hair.
Just a night before, he had been in the long-dead body of someone tall, with broad shoulders, in a full suit of very carefully customised armour.
But now, he wore the skin of a very round man, rather short, with swollen fingers and sores speckling both his arms. The new vessel’s hair was shoulder length and greasy. Had it been clean, his hair might’ve been beautiful.
But he was not clean.
He would never be clean again.
The Death Knight did not feel pain, though the vessel continued to suffer from injuries and strains for as long as it stayed alive.
As such, The Death Knight walked the same way, no matter the shape or the stride of his host. Not only that, but the man’s eyes had completely burned away now, replaced by those beaming purple candles.
All who looked on him knew…
This was the Death Knight.
As he got to the end of the bridge, at just the moment that he crossed under the massive square archway that led into the pyramid…
The Death Knight, chuckled.
That chuckle became a laugh.
And that laugh became a scream.
As he crescendo’d, so did the storm, until it put out every fire in the city.
By the time he disappeared from every onlooker’s view, humans were coming out of their homes, and hugging their children, and grinning up into the rain.
“Thank the Lich!” said a mother, laughing, grateful.
“Thank the Lich…” muttered a houseless man, high on a drug humans did here, called glow.
“Curs’ed lizards!” was another cry.
These phrases echoed, variations on many lips, as the humans thanked the Lich and the Death Knight for saving their city (once again) from hordes and sorcerers, from warlords and orcs.
But this was not what Dor was laughing about.
* * * * / * * * *
Dor threw Ba’ku’ra and Na’la in separate dungeons.
As soon as soldiers began to flock to him, the Death Knight began giving out commands.
Numb darts! All of them! Every one that Goblintown has! Now!
The soldier his mind was screaming at looked as if he would throw up, as he nodded, and tripped out of the room.
You three! With me, to keep this one attended at all times!
The three soldiers followed him to a cell, just below ground level. The only window in the cold stone room was a grate, that let rainwater and filth in from the street above.
There was view of the sky, so that (when he woke), Ba’ku’ra could see that he could not see the sun from here.
He had them chain Ba’ku’ra by the neck, wrists, and ankles to a stone table. The table was stained with blood from long years of use.
Cut off his wings, the Death Knight commanded.
The soldiers looked at each other.
“What?” said one.
“H-h-h-how, my Lord Death Kn-n—?”
But the Death Knight had already walked the other direction, with the other prisoner in tow.
With Na’la, the Death Knight went down, down, down into the lower dungeons of the pyramid.
Not as deep as where Rowan’s low chambers were. Those were deep in the heart of the complex, nearly twenty stories down. But twelve stories or so deep, there was a chamber that had not seen much use since the Na’ga had been evicted from this place.
The room was flat on the bottom, and almost appeared to be a mirror. But the walls and the ceiling were one curved surface, almost like the inside of a bisected egg.
On every piece of the ceiling, Na’ga runes were everywhere. And even though the Na’ga had been extinct for nearly 432 years, their letters still glowed.
They glowed a soft blue, the colour that Nal’kuth’ra’s magic had been. Dor didn’t know that, of course, but when Na’la woke, it’s the first that she would think of : Nal’kuth’ra’s water magic, turning arrows into a spray of cooling water before they hit Na’la’s flesh.
That was the blue of the letters in this room.
More importantly, for Dor’s purposes at least, there were no shadows here. The runes somehow kept all the shadows away.
Dor was dragging Na’la by the foot, and placed her in the center of the room.
Then, he stood in the doorway, and stared at her, waiting for her to wake from her numb slumber.
The winged fool was an easy problem to solve.
U’gur reborn?
Less so.
He would have to deal with her himself, at least until he had more numbing needles.
He hated to admit it, even to himself, but as he stared and waited for the one who housed U’gru to wake… the Death Knight felt (for the first time in thousands of years)…
The Death Knight
Felt
Afraid.
* * * * / * * * *
Link to Orcish-English Dictionary
Wanna hear the music of NALA SAGA?
* * * * / * * * *
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