Kalden awoke troubled. Never in his life had he experienced such a vivid dream. Ilandro's voice had been unmistakable, carrying both authority and urgency. The mage held no official title, nor was he formally one of Lothen's nobility. In truth, however, his influence was immense. He stood close to Baron Criden, and his connections reached all the way to the king himself. His word carried the weight of a Baron's.
Looking over at Darma, Kalden found himself conflicted.
There was no denying the man was a criminal. He was the Stone Kraken—a barbarian, pirate, and infamous killer of the Trident. Anyone in Nalia, or on any of the islands, could point him out at once. His broken wings, the trident, the kraken tattooed across his chest... all of it unmistakable.
And yet he was a remarkable warrior. Over the past few days they had shared the battlefield together. A bond is forged in combat, when you face the enemy with sword in hand and trust the man beside you to guard your back. Such bonds meant something to Kalden, and his warrior's code tightened like a knot in his stomach.
He decided to postpone the difficult choice.
The company spent two days licking their wounds.
Inside the cave they made use of everything they could find to tend to both their own injuries and those of the women. Besides Argar's treasure, they discovered an enormous collection of herbs, salves, tinctures, and medicinal ingredients. Maynar and Kalden oversaw the treatments, while one of the women, Melissa, assisted them with remarkable skill.
The women had begun to recover as the drugs slowly and painfully left their bodies. Guilt, shame, and rage battled constantly within them. At times they were overcome with fury and burst into tears. At others, despair hollowed them out until they resembled living corpses, moving as though invisible strings pulled at their limbs.
That same day they found Ada hanging from the branch of a tree outside.
Reality had claimed its due.
She had ended her life during the night.
When Maynar had offered to accompany her outside and she refused, he had thought nothing of it. Now he drowned in guilt and unbearable sorrow.
They buried Ada beneath the tree, and Kalden offered a prayer to Sayeth. Of the three young women, she had been the lowest-born—the daughter of a merchant from Saria.
They resumed their journey.
Darma and Arsik agreed to leave Argar's treasure in the cave until their return, dividing it only after everything was over. Surprisingly, the promise of riches held little appeal for any of them. Perhaps the circumstances had stripped gold of its shine.
Beyond the mountains stretched harsher lands, where only scattered cypress trees rose among rocks and scrub. The soil had turned dry and soft, and in the distance the endless peaks of Armorggrant emerged upon the horizon, where Lothen ended to the west and Armoria's ever-parched crimson mountains began.
A dry wind swept over them, carrying the scents of goats, earth, and ash.
The following day they escorted the women to a village called Garonville, east of Lyria.
Kalden gave them gold and hired men to ensure their safety. He declared both his own name and that of his father, making certain the guards remembered them and understood the importance of their charge.
Once he was satisfied they would be safe, he kissed each woman's hand and promised he would return after the mission to see how they fared.
Melissa gave him a flower, weaving it between the rings of his mail.
Kalden found himself captivated by her smile. Color had begun to return to her face after everything she had endured, and she reminded him of a flower blooming after days of relentless storms.
He knew she would remain in his thoughts for a long time.
Moments later, the weight settled upon his chest once more.
He looked toward Darma and his companions and remembered Ilandro's words.
Difficult choices lay ahead.
Duran and his manor were now close—only a day's journey away in the mountains.
Whatever fate had prepared for them, they would soon discover it.
That evening they built a fire beside a lake just outside the village.
They chose to sleep near the road.
Their recent encounter with Ulthar in Kertos had made them wary.
"I owe that little man in the village a visit," Darma said as he stirred the fire.
"He's a Magister of Lothen," Kalden reminded him.
"He's a weasel. He sent us into that pass on purpose. He's clearly working with the mage and made sure we'd be killed. Which means the mage will be expecting us. Which means I don't trust so much as an inn from this point onward."
Kalden could not argue with his reasoning.
It seemed unbelievable that a Magister of Lothen could behave so dishonorably, yet the evidence spoke for itself. He felt ashamed for having trusted him.
"I think it's time you told me your story," Kalden said, looking at Darma and Arsik.
Arsik took out his violin and laid it gently on the ground.
It had been a long time since he had touched it.
He was afraid.
Afraid for it... and afraid of it.
Darma thought of the woman.
She had found her way back into his mind, and he felt a growing longing inside him that he struggled to conceal. From time to time he caught Arsik watching him, and he disliked the feeling that the man might have begun to understand.
"It's... a strange story," Darma said at last.
The others gathered around the fire.
It was a beautiful night. Stars shone overhead, while the distant red glow of the Pantheon washed softly over the sparse vegetation and reflected against the rocks. Insects chirped around them, and there was a faint sense of warmth within their camp.
"It would be good to know," the knight said.
Darma frowned. It was an odd choice of words.
He exchanged a glance with Arsik.
"I don't know about him," the Gargoyle said, "but this is how it happened for me. We were sailing through a terrible storm. Purple lightning crashed all around us, the waves were enormous, and our ship was struggling to survive the Vespian Sea. We spotted another vessel on the horizon. It looked sturdier than ours, but there were only a handful of people aboard. Easy prey. So we decided to take it for ourselves and throw its owners to the fish."
Arsik narrowed his eye at the memory.
"And what happened next?" Maynar asked, captivated.
"Control yourself, poet. This isn't some story from a book. It doesn't have a happy ending."
Maynar swallowed.
"Anyway. We attacked them, pulled alongside their ship, and boarded. They were few, and we were many. But they had a damned dragonkin who fought like a demon, a bald telepathic witch, an old man who refused to die, and this bastard here—ten stones of scrawny lizard with the temper of a madman and more problems than the Vespian Sea."
"And Maestra."
"Hmm?"
"Maestra was there too," Arsik added bitterly.
Darma had deliberately avoided mentioning her.
"Yes. There was also a dark-skinned elf with white hair. Beautiful woman."
"Who won?" Pale asked.
"No one. Truly, no one. They fought and butchered my men. I fought the dragonkin and the old man, and when things turned against me, I became stone and fell into the sea. That's the last thing I remember until the other wreck—the fisherman in Ayaton—dragged me up in his nets."
"His name is Marbi," Maynar added.
"Whatever. I've got something waiting for him too, when I see him again."
Kalden felt uneasy, knowing what he knew.
"Is that all?" the knight asked.
Arsik tilted his head.
"That isn't even half of it," he said. "It happened as he described, and when every one of us had beaten him bloody, he tucked his tail between his legs and turned to stone. What he neglected to mention was that he dropped onto our ship as a boulder and sent it to the bottom of the Vespian along with us, his own crew, and himself."
He gave Darma a dark look.
"Two shipwrecks in one."
"How is that possible? You would all have died."
"I wish," Arsik said hoarsely. "We almost did, if not for some cruel joke of fate."
He stared into the fire.
"We awoke at the bottom of the sea. We had no idea what was happening, where we were, or whether we were even truly alive. Karadra—the bald woman he mentioned—was certain we had reached the right place."
"We were searching for Taarum, the Lich of the Seas, and we meant to stop him. It seemed we had entered his lair. Some kind of private realm of his, Karadra called it."
"There was amber everywhere. Eventually we reached an impenetrable wall, made entirely of it."
"And Taarum was inside."
"How did you get through?" Maynar asked. "They say amber cannot be broken, and that only the Sentinel can weave it."
"The gods opened it for us," Arsik said.
The air around him seemed to grow heavier.
Darma narrowed his eyes, while a vein stood out across Kalden's forehead.
"I don't appreciate talk like that," the knight said. "I don't like what you're implying."
"I don't care what you like, knight, or what you believe. Do you want to hear the story or not? Then shut up and listen."
Kalden muttered something beneath his breath and shifted where he sat.
"The old man Darmakaya mentioned was called Sentrik Elaya. He bore the same family name as the Queen of Ayaton. I don't know how they were related, and if he ever told me, I've truly forgotten."
"In any case, he was many things."
"But above all else, he had faith."
"Immense faith in the gods."
"He spoke to me about them constantly. And when we reached that wall, he called upon them."
"I remember it as though it happened yesterday."
"When his invocation ended, the heavens opened, the waves grew still, and the wall shattered."
"'I will lead you through this storm,' he told us."
"Then he walked forward without a second thought."
Arsik's voice grew quieter.
"Beyond that wall lay the heart of evil."
"It was an unimaginable place."
"A graveyard of ships."
"A throne made from seaweed and ocean stone."
"A whirlpool—or perhaps a source of energy—created by Taarum's ritual."
"Thousands of souls surrounded us like a solid wall, screaming to be freed."
"I have never seen or experienced anything like it."
"It is carved into me forever."
"The rest happened very quickly."
"Taarum killed them all."
"Arthax."
"Karadra."
"Sentrik."
"Maestra."
"Everyone."
"Except you," Darma said.
"How?" Maynar asked. "How did you survive? Darma was stone. What about you?"
"There was someone with me."
"A spirit."
"He was with me, inside me."
"He was me, but at the same time he wasn't."
"I can't explain it."
"He was someone who had once possessed great power. Someone who had owned this violin before Maestra."
"But he had died unjustly, and somehow his anger and mine became one."
"So did our spirits."
"Our very existence."
"He left me before we sank."
"Maestra taught me how."
"She had someone inside her too."
"Another presence."
"A woman."
Arsik looked toward Darma.
The Gargoyle felt his heart pounding like a drum.
"Endorious—my spirit—saved me. He brought me to the shore. I don't know how, but he did."
"He did it for his own redemption."
"To right an evil he had once committed."
"Something terrible."
"Wait," Maynar interrupted, suddenly agitated. "Wait a moment."
"Endorious?"
"A violin?"
"Something terrible?"
"You don't mean that Endorious was the man who burned the city two thousand years ago... in Evergrace?"
"The very same," Arsik confirmed.
Maynar went pale.
"How is that possible? I thought he was a myth."
"We all know the story," Kalden added. "Are you saying it happened exactly as the tale claims?"
"I don't know how the tale claims it happened. I had never heard it before."
"In Lothen, we spoke of it constantly as children," Kalden said. "It was one of the most frightening stories we knew."
"House Harthguron left Lothen, declared itself independent, and founded the kingdom of Evergrace—a great realm built upon fertile land."
"But that land lay above Arcanara, the underground kingdom of the meteor elves. Elves like the Maestra you describe."
"The legend says their queen—who was said to be Amar—demanded a terrible tribute from the lord of Evergrace."
"Ten young children, perhaps more, to be taken into her kingdom."
"The lord agreed, shaming the entire realm because he feared angering her."
"None of those children were ever seen again."
"No one knows what she did to them."
"The kingdom was never the same afterward."
"Years later, a ragged man appeared."
"No one recognized him when he returned to the city."
"Not until he revealed his black violin."
"Not until he began playing the melodies he had learned in the world below, from the mouth of the queen herself—or so the story goes."
"And with those melodies, he set the whole city ablaze and killed everyone within it."
"An entire kingdom became a graveyard in a single moment."
"From Evergrace... to Evergrave."
Maynar stared at the violin in awe, his mouth hanging open.
"That can't be..."
"It can," Arsik said.
"Maestra was there."
"She survived with the demoness's help."
"She traveled, and somehow, centuries later, she found Karadra."
"I've already told you the rest."
"This violin is the last thing I have of her."
"I don't understand its powers."
"I cannot comprehend them."
"It seems to understand me more than I understand it."
"It guides me."
"I don't know what it wants."
"But through it, I can summon a power whose limits I do not know."
"As for the queen... yes. She was Amar."
"Until they finally killed her."
"The Blade Guardians told me before they too died in the Vespian."
"They once fought beside her against Oligorius, the dragon who brought destruction in the year 343."
"Perhaps that was the only good thing she ever did."
"And who knows why?"
"They say she murdered her own sister, Laira, the goddess of the elves."
"But whatever the stories say, there is only one truth."
"Evil always survives."
"Taarum."
"The demoness."
"Dyran."
"Even that bastard Ulthar."
"All of them alive."
"And us?"
"One by one, we end up in the ground."
"Or somewhere worse."
"I'm sick of this world."
"In the end, everything turns to shit."
"Things seem beautiful when they begin, but sooner or later you learn it was all a cruel joke."
"All evil begins with a beautiful melody, someone once said."
Arsik lay back upon the ground.
The others lowered their heads, their eyes glistening in the firelight.
Darma became lost in thought.
The threads of his soul were impossibly tangled.
It was strange to sit across from someone who had lived through the other side of the same story.
He did not know why.
He did not even like Arsik.
And yet he felt sympathy for him.
A sorrow rose inside him, and he struggled to contain it.
The story of Taarum was greater than either of them.
Something ancient lay beneath it all, scratching at parts of Darma's soul he had never explored.
And then there was her.
Very soon, at last, they would be together again.