William Wilde and the Sons of Deceit Page 5

  He almost believed his own words.

  PLANS OF DECEIT

  November 1989

  * * *

  SINSKRILL

  * * *

  Unaccustomed nervousness made Adam Paradiso’s hands tremble as he eyed Shet’s Spear, which currently rested in his brother’s thick hands. The weapon was shod with steel on one end and from the other rose a leaf-shaped blade the color of coal. A straight bar of ivory-colored wood formed the shaft, and it glowed with whorling designs, red-rimmed like the flickering the embers of a fire.

  The constantly shifting patterns had Adam’s heart thudding, racing and palpating like that of a stallion fleeing a lion. His reaction made no sense. After all, Adam was a big man, large-boned and powerful, menacing when he wished it, and possessing an intellect that had seen him rise to power here on Sinskrill. He was the Secondus to his brother Axel, the Servitor, and he answered to no one but Axel, an equally large man with similar heavy-set, dark-skinned features but with a full, thick beard in place of Adam’s sculpted goatee.

  As Adam studied the Spear, he knew what icy sensation gripped his heart: terror. But he couldn’t admit to such a weakness, not on Sinskrill where any perceived vulnerability would be quickly exploited. Instead, he had to maintain a mask of simple curiosity or sneering disregard.

  “Take it,” Axel ordered.

  Adam stepped forward and reached out to receive the Spear, but at the last moment he hesitated. A fresh surge of fear coursed through his veins and held him frozen. He knew what would occur when he touched the Spear, when his fingers closed upon it and he sourced his lorethasra. He knew where he would go.

  Seminal. The realm of myths and magic. The abode of Lord Shet.

  Adam tried to maintain his mask of haughty derision, to hide any sense of his disquiet, but a single drop of perspiration betrayed him. It slid as a thin line down his forehead, circling around the orbit of his left eye before dribbling into his goatee.

  Axel noticed, a simple flick of his eyes and a furrowing of his brows. “Take the Spear,” his brother ordered anew. “Shet desires your presence. Do not disappoint him.” Axel leaned in close and hissed, “Or me.”

  Despite the coolness of Shet’s Throne Hall, Adam broke out in fresh perspiration. Thankfully, no one else was present to witness his humiliating loss of control. No one else but the six-armed monstrosity that towered behind the throne at the far end of the Hall. Adam studied the figure, the statue of their god Shet. Within its three right hands it grasped a khopesh, a mace, and the Book of the Dead while the left ones held a bow, a spear, and the Knife of Woe. It was the statue’s features, though, that gave Adam the greatest pause. The jaws of a crocodile crowned Shet’s head, while an arrogant sneer—one uncannily mimicked by his brother—curled its mouth. You mortal fools, the sneer seemed to say. You will bow or be burned.

  Adam mentally sighed, unable to delay the inevitable. He grasped the Spear and sourced his lorethasra. As soon as he did, a rainbow bridge—or a road, perhaps—opened within his mind. It stretched into an all-consuming darkness.

  With a sound like a rushing river in flood, Adam’s Spirit set forth upon the rainbow bridge. He’d made this journey on several previous occasions, but those prior excursions did nothing to prepare him for what was to come. Sound and sight faded, and he found himself encased in a black tunnel. His travel surged, gaining speed, covering an incomprehensibly vast distance. A tearing sensation ripped at him, an impression that his core, his soul maybe, frayed. Emptiness tore at his heart, but on he raced, pulled forward by a tide like gravity. Colors faded to bleak, black night. Silence reigned. The darkness never ended, and it encroached upon Adam’s mind, threatening to devour his sense of self.

  At his breaking point, the travel ended with a jarring halt.

  Adam floated in the clouds, high above a foreign realm. Seminal. Nearby, a red dragon soared above a world infested by living nightmares: solitary necrosed, wild tribes of constantly shifting unformed, and elegant vampires who held court in dark, unlovely castles. He viewed a rugged range of strangely shaped hills that held the aspect of broken teeth and contained broken palaces on their slopes. There he found armies of ghouls stirring restlessly under the earth, hidden inside dead cities as they waited for the living to provide them sustenance . . . and entertainment.

  Adam silently snarled. He hated this place.

  An instant later, fear replaced loathing when a voice whispered to him on the wind.

  “Come to me, child,” the voice urged. “I sense your presence.”

  Adam knew who spoke to him—Shet—and he focused his mind upon a distant range of dagger-sharp, snow-capped mountains. His Spirit sped there, to where desolation and fear roiled off the peaks, dripping like poison into valleys filled with inky menace, places where the sunlight grew strangely dim as it reached the ground. As before when he’d visited this terrifying range, one mountain loomed above all the others, and there he found his destination. On a jutting ledge, wide and deep enough to support all of Village White Sun, brooded a newly-hewn palace built of black stone. It hunkered like a poisonous mushroom, seeming to consume all light. It swallowed sunshine like a snake would its prey.

  Adam’s heart shriveled.

  As he approached the citadel, features became evident. First and foremost was the titanic figure seated in a high courtyard upon a raised throne made from the jaws of a dragon. Lord Shet. His sense of power dwarfed all around him: the throne, the palace, the very mountain range. All shrank to the size of midgets in Shet’s presence.

  Adam descended and settled his Spirit-self upon the ground in front of Sinskrill’s god. He bowed and did his best to control the fear burbling in his mind.

  Shet wore a partial, bone-white mask, one meant to hide the gnarled burns marring his features on the right side of his face. It moved with the motions of his features. Shet gestured and bid Adam stand. “Arise, child, and be welcome.” Shet’s voice rang deep and melodic, and when he smiled, his unruined eye shone falsely warm and fatherly.

  Adam wasn’t deceived. Shet was cruel and despotic, and the truth of his essence was most clearly reflected by the masked desecration ruining the right side of his face, a true reflection of his nature.

  “What news do you bring from Sinskrill?” Shet asked.

  Adam cleared his throat. “In the months since Arylyn’s attack . . .”

  “An attack made possible by your own slovenly lack of preparation,” Shet chided in the warm voice of a father instructing his errant child.

  Adam dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Yes, my lord, but we’ve taken steps to earn revenge upon your enemies.” Adam spoke in what he hoped was a firm tone, one without the slightest hint of quaver. “We’ve rebuilt the ranks of the mahavans by enacting your instructions. The Spear restores those who were previously drones.”

  “Your training of these once-drones consists of . . .” Shet trailed off.

  “No different than what we’ve always done,” Adam replied. “The drones are hardened and tempered in the Crucible. They’re made strong, or they’re broken.”

  “And if broken, I expect they’re reforged.” Shet’s words were a statement rather than a question.

  Adam nodded. “If they fail again, we strip them a second time, and the pain of the second such punishment is far worse than the original such judgment. It acts as an excellent means of concentrating their minds. We then restore and reforge them a second time, giving them a third attempt to achieve the rank of mahavan.”

  “The failure rate?”

  “Less than five percent,” Adam answered, “and those who fail twice are decimated, one in ten are hurled from the Judging Line atop the Servitor’s Palace.” Adam managed a faint grin, a forced sentiment of pleasure that he didn’t feel. Terror filled him whenever he spoke to Lord Shet. “None survive the fall from those heights.”

  “Well done,” Shet said. He smiled, a grin that carried across his features, including the mask covering the right side of his f
ace. The resulting image was hideous, reminding Adam of a snake in the midst of shedding its skin.

  “What of your plans for Arylyn?” Shet asked. “How do you intend to attack the island of my enemies?”

  “By stealth and cunning,” Adam said. “We will send scouting teams to learn all we can about Arylyn. And when the time is right, we will pay them back for what they did to us.” Adam’s features hardened, and his eyes grew flat with anger. This time the expression truly reflected his sentiments. The magi had spat in the face of Sinskrill’s mahavans, defeated them, humiliated them. Such a challenge could not go unanswered.

  “The World Killers?” Shet’s face grew guarded, as it always did whenever he spoke of those two, the strange magi who moved like the wind and struck like a storm of swords, they who had defeated the Servitor.

  “We haven’t discovered any sign of their presence.”

  “You will,” Shet said, his words sounding like a dire promise. “You may return to Sinskrill.”

  Adam bowed low and prepared to ascend. In that instant, he noticed a white-cloaked knight approaching the Lord. The man moved in a vaguely familiar fashion, smooth and languid as a cat, yet precise as a raptor. He briefly wondered who it might be before he departed.

  SEMINAL

  * * *

  Shet snorted in derision as soon as the pathetic mahavan departed. Adam Paradiso had tried his best to maintain a semblance of dignity, but in this, he’d failed utterly. In fact, during their brief conversation, the man had almost wet himself in terror, trembling like a broken cur.

  Of course, Adam hadn’t realized it. He likely thought he’d acquitted himself well, that he’d managed to maintain his facade with no one aware of his terror.

  Fool.

  Shet saw through all lies, and before his sight all truths were made manifest. The lord of Seminal smiled in grim humor as he imagined Adam’s incredulity when the god finished wrecking the magi and then turned about and broke the mahavans.

  A white-cloaked knight interrupted Shet’s reflections. The figure, a human, strode toward the throne, proud and strong. Shet eyed the man, studied his tall, lean form, the way he paced like a panther, and approved of the manner in which he groomed his black hair, keeping it martial-short. He also noticed the man’s unusual skin color, tea touched with cream, and equally unusual, how the knight’s dark eyes held no fear. Instead, arrogance filled the man’s features even as he dropped to a knee.

  Shet remained impassive, waiting for the knight to speak.

  The warrior served an elf princess of poor repute. In the three centuries of her life, she’d steadfastly refused all offers of marriage, going so far as to withdraw from her mother’s court. This human was said to be her only companion, and with her elf magic, she had made him puissant.

  Two traitors to their kind. How delicious.

  Of course, the knight’s power could have been tenfold greater if not for the Orbs of Peace. Millennia ago, the glowing crystal globes had been forged and scattered throughout Seminal. They were meant to prevent humans from fully accessing their lorethasra and deny the rise of another god like Shet. The other races had thought the Orbs would keep them safe.

  All they had done was ensure Seminal’s eventual enslavement.

  Shet gestured for the knight to rise, and the human did as commanded, but he also rested a hand on his sword. The god straightened slightly. He feared nothing, but sometimes this man could put him off balance. He moved too gracefully, too much like Shokan.

  Shet mentally sneered at the notion. Shokan is dead. A notion flitted across his mind: he couldn’t recall his great enemy’s features, the same with Sira, the Lady of Fire. It was of no consequence.

  “We have found one of the Orbs,” the man said.

  Shet’s heart stirred with excitement, and he shifted on his throne, leaning forward. “You have the Orb with you?”

  The knight reached into his cloak, into a null pocket—a voided area meant to secrete prized possessions. From it, he withdrew a crystal the size of a skull. It glowed, a coruscating wash of blue and green in endless conflict. “One down, my lord . . .”

  “. . . and six to go,” Shet finished. He reached for the Orb and caressed it. He sensed the weaves billowing off of it, the ones that essentially stripped all humans upon conception and kept them weak.

  It also sapped Shet’s strength, and that would not do.

  The god crushed the Orb, and for an instant, he thought he saw relief pass across the human’s otherwise impassive face. Shet mentally shrugged. If not for the fact that they pursued the same ambition, he would have long since done away with the knight and his elf princess.

  “Find the rest of the Orbs and bring them to me,” Shet ordered.

  “As you command, my lord.” The human slowly backed away, his posture properly bent in obeisance before he reached the proscribed twenty feet. There, he straightened, turned on a heel, and stalked away, moving like a lion in the long grass.

  After the knight departed, Shet’s mind returned to Earth. More work was needed to herald his arrival. After breaking the chains that had once shackled him to this mountain, this place where he strove to remake his nation of domination, Shet had reached out to the many beings who naturally inclined toward his mastery.

  They had answered and bowed to his rising power.

  Except on Earth.

  The god had never directed his call there, and it was time to correct that oversight. Shet sent a summons to his minions on that faraway world. Minutes passed, and eventually he grunted in satisfaction when he felt the stirring of those born to serve him.

  A thought came to him then, and he smiled. He included one final command to his servants. It wasn’t likely to prove fruitful, but luck favored those who forced any opportunity.

  Let mahavan and magi battle one another with firewagers. They could bring glorious ruin upon one another. The traitors.

  SINSKRILL

  * * *

  Adam inhaled great gulps of air after exiting the anchor line to Seminal. Sweat poured down his face, and hunger gnawed his insides. He held onto the Spear even as he collapsed to a knee. Traveling to Seminal always left him weak and feeble as wet clay, and he needed a moment to collect himself.

  While waiting to recover, he stared around the Throne Hall.

  He and Axel were still alone. The light from an early afternoon sun glinted off a forest of gold-enameled columns that led from the double-doors at the Hall’s entrance to the Servitor’s Chair set at the second step of a tall dais, atop which rested the empty throne of their Lord. The titanic statue of Shet’s warrior persona loomed over it all.

  Adam blinked as a flash momentarily blinded him, sunlight bleeding through the stained-glass windows lining the room and forming part of the vaulted, ribbed ceiling. There up above, images depicted Shet in various poses of humility: providing shelter from a storm, battling ignorance with the long-lost Book of Binding, or shepherding humanity to a brighter future.

  All of them were lies.

  Shet was unfettered power made flesh, with no thought or ambition but to acquire ever more. He could never be allowed on Earth.

  The last of the journey’s lassitude left Adam, and he strengthened his knees, levering himself upright. He allowed Axel to gently pull the Spear from his lax fingers.

  “How did it go?” his brother asked as he strode to the Servitor’s Chair, seated himself, and laid the Spear across his knees.

  Adam inhaled a settling breath. “It went as expected.”

  Axel leaned back in his chair. “Tell me everything.”

  Adam did as bade and spoke of all he had seen.

  “The lord still supports us?” the Servitor asked.

  “I believe he does,” Adam said. “Yet it is hard to be sure. Every historical account indicates how much he hates failure, and we failed him when Arylyn attacked.”

  Axel’s jaw briefly clenched. “We can still make amends for that unfortunate incident.”

  His brother
was a fool if he believed it, and Adam kept from rolling his eyes by the barest of margins.

  Thankfully, Axel didn’t notice his scorn. “We will bury the magi,” the Servitor said.

  Adam merely nodded agreement, remaining quiet while a long-considered thought circled to the forefront of his mind. As always, he hesitated to speak it.

  Axel saw. “What is it?”

  Still Adam paused. He knew his thoughts were blasphemous, but at this point, weren’t all options on the table, even the profane? “What if we ally with Arylyn?” he asked. “Perhaps together we could learn how to seal the anchor line between Seminal and Earth.”

  Axel’s gaze sharpened. “To what end?”

  “To prevent the death of our kind,” Adam said. “I don’t trust Shet.”

  “Neither do I,” Axel mused with a frown. His gaze grew distant, as if he was lost in thought and hope burgeoned with Adam.

  Perhaps Axel will let go of this terrible plan of attacking Arylyn. Doing so would only weaken both islands. Deal with Shet first, and then crush the magi.

  “Arylyn has always been and will always be our enemy,” Axel said, dashing Adam’s hopes. “They invaded our island and attacked us. We won’t go to them on bended knee. We are not ‘kindred covens’ as the witches might reckon matters.”

  “But when Shet returns to our world, I fear he’ll treat us as kindred covens and kill us both.”

  “A possibility,” the Servitor admitted. “But just as possibly, we’ll earn the Lord’s favor and evade his judgment.” The Servitor spun the Spear and rapped its steel-shod heel on the white-marble floor as he rose to his feet. “The decision is made.”

  Adam mentally grated against the Servitor’s decision, but he also knew better than to argue. The matter had been settled. He bowed low. “As you say, my liege.”