Darkness Ascending (The Paladin Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  As the moments passed, Darius too settled to the ground to rest his legs, and he began taking stock of their surroundings. Desolation in all directions, a blood-red sky overhead, a pit with a hungry flame burning deep within it, an inescapable sense of evil crushing in upon him. There was no doubt where they were.

  The Nether Regions. The Ohric had blasted him to the very brink of Hell itself.

  Yet this scene fit none of the images of the Gates of Hell that the Church always described in such lurid detail. There was no vaulted fortress, no citadel of power, no iron gates and massive walls. Only a blasted rift in the ground within which evil itself seemed to be smoldering. A hole that could be exited as easily as entered. There was no doubting the conclusion, however. The light that had erupted around him when he declared himself still burned brightly and put an end to the feeling of being eaten alive by insects. But every cell in his being still recoiled from that smoking crevice, and his very soul moved within him, yearning to escape.

  Banished into Hell. It was a horrifying thought. Darius had faced death hundreds of times in his service as Paladin, and while fear had been a constant companion, he had taken comfort that his soul would surely be welcomed into the Blessed Realms, if not for his morals then at least for his service. But what now? Could any soul hope to find its way out of this labyrinth of despair to return to the real world, let alone ascend to the heavens where Mirna awaited? Darius took a grip on the fear and forced it down again, refusing to let it master him, but images from his last moments in the world above returned to haunt and torment him. Adella struggling against the Juggernaut, Argus with the Ohric surging power in his hands, the destruction of Malcolm, and worst, worst of all, the memory of Shannon wielding Sarinian, his child in the grip of the murderous sword that had drenched his own life in blood. He took a deep breath and locked those images down in the same place as the fears for his immortal soul, summoning his courage. With a tiny grim smile, he actually shrugged a little as he muttered to himself, “I’m not dead yet.”

  “…not dead yet,” came a thick-sounding response.

  Darius leaped to his feet and whirled around looking for the source of the voice, but there was nothing; nothing except the fiery pit and the endless expanse of thorn trees leading off in all directions. An echo of some kind? he wondered.

  “Who is there?” he demanded.

  From the direction of the winged creature came a single word, “Who…”

  He spun and stared at the monster. Its yellow eyes were gleaming at him. There was the hint of a smile on its heavy lips.

  CHAPTER 2

  Madness at the Drift

  On the rooftop far above them all, Argus watched everything, nothing escaping his gaze or his notice. The Paladin’s daughter, the thief Adella, the priests of Mirna, all of them scattering before his triumph. Let them run. Let them flee and fear and fret, mulling over their hopeless situation, coming at last to the realization that all was lost and their deaths were assured. Nothing could stop him. Nothing could save them. Nothing could divert the awesome destiny that was fulfilling itself at this very moment. Argus felt as if he could turn his entire being into green energy and send it forth to envelop all the world, devour it, make it his new body, with all nature, all creatures, servants to his will. He drew back from the feeling, the sane portion of his mind assuring him that was only a glorious form of suicide, but the intoxication with power remained and sharpened his taste for destruction.

  He whirled the Ohric in his hands and laughed out loud. The puppet Georg-Mahl, one of the last remaining Dukes of the Southlands, was making the pronouncements to the crowd, uttering Argus’ every word with perfect precision and inflection, and that only added to Argus’ realization of strength.

  He had destroyed the Arch-Wizard Malcolm. He had frozen Brillis, the Mayor of the Drift, with a single gesture that assured him control of the city. And he had opened a hole to send the Juggernaut and that damned Paladin to…where? Argus frowned slightly as he suddenly realized that he had exerted the power to open the portal, but he had not selected the location.

  To the Nether Regions, of course, the Ohric answered, reading his thoughts. Did you not wish the Paladin to Hell?

  “The decision to act and the choice were both yours,” said Argus, though he replied only through his mind. “But did you act against the Paladin? Or against the Juggernaut?”

  Does it matter? asked the scepter. Both were a threat to us. And now both are eliminated.

  Argus nodded slowly at the answer, but some of the sense of omnipotence was gone from him, a recognition of the cunning of the entity in his hands. There were hidden purposes within this thing, twisted goals and convoluted thoughts that no human mind could hope to untangle, but Argus felt sure that blasting the Juggernaut to Hell was an action long foreseen. That was disturbing. Was the Ohric a tool in his hands? Or was it the other way around?

  “Will you corrupt and devour me?” he asked. “Discard me when your need for my service is over, just as you did Regnar?”

  He asked the questions without anger or even fear, more in the form of intellectual curiosity. He had the power now, and nothing in the Blessed Realms or the Nether Regions would induce him to surrender it, not even the certainty of his own end.

  Most assuredly, the Ohric replied. So you would be well advised to be of service to Bal as long as possible.

  Argus laughed again, and though it was impossible, he thought he saw a malicious smile fleet across the half-formed face of the scepter.

  *

  “…and Argus, Duke of Corland, shall henceforth hold the title of Lord Protector, and during this period of danger, he shall have total and complete authority over all the forces and armies of the Southlands. The Council of Lords has thus spoken!”

  Adella heard the words of the spokesman standing on the roof high above the crowd, one of the Dukes of the Council, though she wasn’t sure which one. She was one of the few people down in Second Tier of the city where the combat had occurred who was not hanging on every syllable, entranced by the booming voice and the sight of Argus standing beside him with the Ohric clasped in his hands.

  Darius was gone. Blasted out of existence by a single spell of the Ohric. There was a part of her soul screaming with the agony of a bereaved woman, but the warrior part had suffered the loss of countless friends in the past and had no time to mourn in battle. This wound is like any other, she told herself stonily. I will lick it clean in the lonely hours of the night.

  The Northing barbarians were as stunned by the sudden turn of events as the citizens of the Drift, and they were only slowly realizing that the sight of the green scepter in Argus’ hands as he stood flanked by two mountain ogres meant Regnar was dead and he was their new overlord. Adella knew she had only a few precious moments for this trance to continue, and she pushed her way calmly through the mob of gaping barbarians, pulling Shannon along by the hand. The girl was absolutely shattered by the battle and the disappearance of her father, and she held the massive sword Sarinian before her and stared at it as if unable to grasp its purpose. That, too, would not last for long.

  Adella elbowed her way through the last group of barbarians that blocked the way into Sherman’s Lane and their one chance for escape. She dragged the girl along but was careful to move at a leisurely pace, almost as if they were headed to market to pick up breakfast, mindful to meet no one’s eye. They got to the end of the lane, and she yanked the grate out of position, opening the path down into the sewers. She turned around to find Jhan standing beside Shannon.

  “Where in the demon’s name have you been?” she demanded, not expecting an answer.

  “By the wall,” he replied simply, but Adella had no time for his nonsense. She grabbed him by the arm and pushed him, unresisting, down into the sewer. Then she took Shannon’s hand again, and led her down as well. The girl went without objection, but once she was down, she paused and turned back, a puzzled look on her face.

  “Make your way to the third grate at the south exit. Understand?” Adella demanded. “The third gate at the south exit. And be quick!”

  “Where are you going?” asked Shannon, almost as an afterthought.

  “I’m going to kill Argus,” she answered as she dropped the grate closed on the girl’s anxious face.

  With that, she launched herself into the corner formed by the wall and the nearest small shop, and she climbed the short distance to the structure’s roof with ease. It was the distance above the roof that posed the problem. The walls of the Drift had been carefully constructed and polished to leave not even the tiniest of cracks or toe-holds that might allow an individual to scale them, and time had not left many marks upon the surface. But Adella was in no mood for a subtle approach. She pulled a hidden dagger from her boot, the blade forged of magiced steel, and drove it into the mortar between the blocks to make her own handhold. The edge of the weapon chewed through the fortified mortar like thin cloth, and strength flowed into her arms from the throes of loss and an unendurable ravenousness for revenge. She was cold steel thrusting upwards into an enemy’s belly, and she gained the top of the wall in the course of only a dozen heartbeats.

  There was total chaos on the ramparts, people screaming and pushing in all directions, the thrilling spectacle of a battle of champions having exploded into a murderous rampage, and none of them had any attention to spare for this single woman as she struggled through to the inner side of the battlements. The Drift had originally been designed to keep buildings a safe distance away from the walls, but over time, peace and the crush of new businesses had slowly eroded this safety zone until buildings were allowed to encroach even into the shadow of the walls. It was only a minor feat, then, for Adella to jump from the battlements down onto the roof of the neares
t building and make her way swiftly across to where the Leatherworker’s Guild rose above all its neighbors, approaching the structure from the side.

  She could see members of the Black Watch, Argus’ bodyguard, still milling around below, clearly as confused as everyone else, while above, she could make out only the side and head of one of the mountain ogres from this angle. She looked at the wall directly ahead of her and counted the iron-shuttered windows, her memory straining to recall the sequence she had once known by heart for virtually all the Guilds in the city. Six up. Two over. Or was it three? In defiance of the sudden doubts, she launched herself across the intimidating gap at the second window from the left and caught the iron shutter cleanly. Then in broad daylight, using only one hand, she inserted a thin shim through the gap between the shutters and worked the inner latch until it gave way, the shutters swinging open under her weight. She kicked off from the wall, scrambled around to the inside of the shutter, and a moment later, she was standing in a narrow, winding staircase.

  The stone steps were carpeted with a thick runner of rich blue, while a banister of finely polished wood whirled its way around the wall, offering support for the aged or infirm. Even here, the aroma of worked leather permeated, seeping up from the workshops below, one of the many smells of wealth. This was a private stairwell, reserved for use of the senior guildmasters, and it was supposedly secret, though surely half the thieves in the city had heard of its existence. Secret passages and private stairwells were very common in the privileged halls of the various Guilds, the means by which the senior members could quickly gather without alerting or alarming the majority of the craftsmen, and Adella knew this one led to the top floor of the building, barely a dozen heartbeats away from the roof and Argus.

  She began ascending the stairs swiftly, certain there would be neither guards nor alarms on these steps, so she was startled indeed when a figure leapt out of a small niche and pushed her against the wall.

  “May I ask if you have an appointment to keep here?” the man asked quietly.

  “Tallarand!” she hissed back as she recognized the master thief.

  “I couldn’t credit my eyes when I saw you scaling the walls,” he said with a sad shake of his head. “Everyone was fleeing from the monster. Only Adella would be rash enough to charge towards him.”

  “How did you get here?” she demanded, the bluntness of the question a clear admission of her surprise. Obviously, there were entrances to the guild buildings of which even she was not aware.

  “It’s my business to know every passage and rat hole through the walls of the Drift,” he answered, confirming her thought. “Whether it is to bring out treasure or stop an ill-conceived attempt at revenge.”

  “Stick to treasure,” she snarled softly. “It’s safer.”

  “You are fey,” he told her. “You go in search of your death, nothing more.”

  “Do you think Argus is going to become easier to kill?” she challenged. “Let him consolidate his power, and there will not be enough weapons, champions, or years to pull him down from the throne he is about to mount. This is our chance, our only chance, when he is not yet accustomed to his power and is not ready for the attack.”

  “Argus will not be brought down by power alone,” Tallarand replied. “You’ve seen what he’s done to the Juggernaut and to Malcolm. Only a skillful blow, carefully prepared, has a chance of success.”

  “Then go back and make your plans,” she said, starting to climb again. “I’ll let you know how I succeed.”

  He reached out and put a restraining hand on her shoulder, drawing a deadly stare from her eyes.

  “I’m afraid I cannot let you continue,” he said, a hint of steel in his voice. “A failed assassination now will alert him to his peril and make future attacks virtually impossible. We cannot waste our one chance on a hasty attempt for vengeance.”

  There it was, the ultimatum, the assurance that any further effort would be met with force. She was quite sure that in a straight fight, Tallarand would stand no chance with Bloodseeker in her hands, and the one thought that kept her in check was the annoying suspicion that in these close quarters, she might be dead before she could fully draw the sword from its scabbard. Tallarand was not a man to issue such an ultimatum if he had any doubts about the outcome of the struggle.

  “I promise you will be part of the group that kills Argus,” he added softly. “I only seek to make your vengeance the more certain.”

  She struggled to stay calm, to think clearly, to avoid the lure of killing for killing’s sake, the fury that had begun at the battle of champions, urged on still by the hungry whispers of Bloodseeker. Slowly, she forced down the battle-rage and asked in a husky voice, “And what do you propose we do in the interim?”

  “Oh, I think we can find ways to spend our time profitably,” he assured her.

  “Such as?”

  “The Paladin is gone, Brillis is taken, and more than half the Dukes are dead,” he said grimly. “The Southlands will be desperately seeking for a new leader, a figure around which they can rally their scattered forces. Fortunately, we have just such an individual available to us.”

  “This worthy would be…?”

  “The Paladin’s daughter, Shannon,” Tallarand answered with a smile. “Her kinship with Darius is already widely known. She is credited with bringing the hostages out of Nargost Castle. And now the entire population of the Drift has witnessed her apparent slaying of the Juggernaut. A proven warrior with an impeccable pedigree and no claims on the kingship. Who could be better?”

  Shannon! Adella had to stifle a sound that was half gasp, half laugh, yet her mind was already racing over the various aspects of Tallarand’s suggestion. The girl was sharp, sensible, and brave, but far beyond that, she shared her Father’s sense of purpose, that intangible charisma that was the hallmark of leadership. Yes. Given the right circumstances and the right support, she could see men following Shannon. And the girl’s inexperience would simply make her easier to…control.

  “Come now,” Tallarand coaxed. “Where have you left our new battle-general?”

  Adella replied with a wry smile. “I shoved her down into the city sewers. She should be emerging on the south end just about now.”

  *

  Shannon was stumbling through the ancient sewers of the city, oblivious to the smells and slimes that dominated the environment as she fought back the agony and despair that threatened to master her, blinking at this hideous new world through tear-choked eyes. Her Father was gone. She still couldn’t believe it, couldn’t credit the images, a nightmare insisting it was real. The dominant force in her life, the pillar that had supported her from her first memories had been splintered and destroyed in a single instant. Adella had assured her he wasn’t dead, but Adella was a liar who would say anything that served her purpose. There was no denying the image of the warrior in his shining armor with the tentacles of that…that thing entangled around him. Worse, there was no denying the presence of the Great Sword Sarinian in her hands, the weapon that had come at her call, the best proof that they were now both orphans.

  She stumbled, her one leg going down into the central channel, the cold sewage shaking her fully awake, and she blinked, trying to get her bearings. The tunnels all looked the same, nothing to distinguish her path, and with a jolt, she realized she would never be able to find the nearly invisible thieves’ marks that formed a map for the knowledgeable. Each mark helped point the way to the next, but without a starting mark, she was as lost as if they never existed.