TheT/InterludeNightOnTheRoad
There would be four, her spies told her, and they were right, of course. She had to be careful to remain unseen, and sure in her course. The powers she served had guided her here, and could be the night all things turned irrevocably in her favor. Wrapped in her veils and funereal dress, the Singer of the Solemn and Endless Dirge kept herself well-hidden, crouched in a shallow depression in the hillside.
It was four that the Singer needed to be aware of, for it was on them that tonight’s events would hinge. Four Terrestrial Exalted doing the work of the Malfeans. She had to smile. A score of mortal soldiers trailed them – fodder for the Anathema the four hunted. There would be only death for those poor mortals, no matter what. They were only distractions to better serve the main goal of killing Anathema. Win or lose, they all served her cause. Still, she was here to nudge things a bit, to make matters sure. She longed to have those Solars in her hand, weakened and desperate, and each stain on their souls would bring them ever closer to wholeheartedly embracing the darkness.
In the lead below, riding at a canter along the hard and dusty road was a fiery-haired, fierce-eyed warrior woman. Her back was as straight as her dire lance, and she was full of purpose. The Singer’s spies had named her Ledaal Niloba, and she was a child of the Elemental Dragon of Fire. It was her life’s goal to kill the Solar Anathema that was once her friend, Anjis Maret, who now called herself Nil.
Slightly behind Niloba was her twin sister, Ledaal Linopa. Bark-brown hair and green-tinged skin marked her as Wood Aspect Dragon-Blood. She was kind where her sister was fierce, an odd quality for a Dynast, but then, there were many unusual things about the Ledaal twins, or so the Singer had been told. Linopa was only there for the sake of her sister. She had no desire to kill anyone, let alone someone she once considered a friend.
Plodding behind the twins was a broad-backed Aspect of Earth, his mighty shoulders slumped under the weight of his mission. This would be Anjis Pren, brother to Maret. His despair and conflict called to the Singer. He was the weak link. Niloba was consumed with fervor, Linopa with devotion to her sister, but Pren honestly loved his sister and could never truly believe that such a brilliant soul had been given over to demonic powers. He might be able to bring himself to kill her, out of duty and his love for Niloba, but he himself could very well break in the process.
Last of the four was the monk with the unassuming name of Sparrow. He rode amongst the mortals but was not one of them, an Exalted monk of some kind. At least that was the impression the Singer got. Even under the most assiduous questioning, her spies were never able to tell her much about this man. It didn’t matter, the Singer decided ultimately. He, too, would die. They would face three Solars, instead of just one, and die, for they would face the Solars alone.
Night was falling and the Singer’s hour would soon be at hand.
The roadside hostelry wasn’t much, but it was better than sleeping on the side of the road. Niloba let Linopa handle the detail of securing rooms while she herself got the troops in order. They knew she would brook no shirking or hesitation or any lack of discipline and her every command was carried out with alacrity.
While the men went about their orders, Pren slouched past her and went inside, without a word. Niloba was still glad he had come, nonetheless. He was so much less than he used to be, the steady rock of his presence was slowly eroding. She had asked him to come because he had to understand – he had to see what his sister had become, and avenge her by putting the demon in her skin to the sword.
Truly, though, Niloba wasn’t surprised little Maret had succumbed to the temptations of the Anathema. She was always striving so hard to fit in among her betters. Maret had been a truly exceptional mortal, and if her soul had been advanced enough, she would have been a truly formidable Dragon-Blood. But there were flaws within her, and Exaltation was not for her in this life. Niloba could see Maret would never have accepted her destiny, and so wasn’t surprised that she took another avenue of power, probably inadvertently allowing herself to be destroyed. Maret had been a sweet and charming thing, but Ledaal Niloba would shed no tears when her lance pierced the demon’s heart.
Inside, Linopa had negotiated what accommodations she could. The soldiers would be housed in a common room – they were used to barracks, while the Exalted would share two adjoining rooms. They had much to discuss.
Sparrow was troubled. Everything was preceding entirely too well. Fate, due to the vagaries of free will and Essence was rarely so ordered unless there was a guiding hand, and Sparrow knew very well that hand did not belong to him or one of his brethren., and he’d be damned if he knew just whose it was. Damned. Sparrow immediately regretted that line of thought. The manipulations of demons and the dead were hidden from his sight – could they be somehow involved?
His three Dragon-Blooded companions talked around him as though he wasn’t there. Actually, Niloba did most of the talking while the others were pulled along in her wake, drawn by love and duty and Niloba’s bright fanaticism. Oh, how the Inner Circle was proud of this one. If she didn’t die killing Anathema, she would go far in the world created by the Exalted of the Maidens. But the others, poor listless Pren, and sad-eyed Linopa, they would surely be burned to a husk by Niloba’s fervor, torn between their love for her and their love for a friend fallen into darkness whom they had come to kill.
It didn’t really matter what they said or what happened to them – Sparrow had come to see the work of Creation done – and if that furthered his own personal goals, so much the better.
It was midnight, and the ambush was both swift and silent. Impervious to the blows of mortals, the walking dead came out of the shadows and murdered the keeper of the hostel and every last servant, most in their sleep. Even as they breathed their last, the unliving soldiers slunk inside to follow their assignments. The largest group went to the private rooms, while to the occupied common room went a knot of zombies, among them the Singer of the Solemn and Endless Dirge.
Just as the mortal soldiers were fodder to the Anathema, so were these undead fodder against the Wyld Hunt. The Singer had come for two purposes only – the first was to slay the Hunt’s mortal hounds.
Niloba was already awake when the monk… what was he called?... Sparrow… when Sparrow came to her pallet to wake her. She put a finger to her lips and nodded. Something was wrong. With Sparrow, she woke the other two, cautioned them into silence and listened.
At first, there was only a deep and ominous silence, and then from down the hall came a faint hymn, beautiful enough to break the heart. It was a solemn dirge so weighted with pain and sorrow that Niloba felt tears spring to her eyes and her heart falter within her…
“Oh, merciful Mela!” gasped Sparrow. The usually passive monk was deadly pale. “Cover your ears, if you love your life!” He had already followed his own advice.
The others all obeyed instantly, and Niloba found herself swaying on her feet. The few notes she had heard had left her feeling hollow, weak, and sick, though the sensations were even now fading. What was happening?
The tramp of booted feet on the stairs stopped any speculations and muted the sounds of the distant and poisonous dirge. They were under attack. This, Niloba understood to her very bones. Freed from the deadly voice, she picked up her dire lance and prepared herself.
A number of the soldiers were struggling from their pallets, even as the Singer crooned her hymn. They struggled, but it was all in vain. Most of them slumped to the ground, exhaling the sigh of their final breaths as the dirge drew from them their very lives.
Methodically, the few undead that she had brought with her pinned those to their beds that were too slow to die. And still some fought, dying where they stood or spitted on the weapons of the zombie soldiers.
One of the living, likely the captain, broke through, bleeding copiously, spear poised to impale the Singer. Checking a sigh at the foolish tenacity of mortalkind, she stilled her song and met his eyes, showing him the futility of his struggle. Oblivion filled his soul and he fell, spear clattering to the ground, a moan of utter anguish escaping his lips.
The Singer of the Solemn and Endless Dirge held up a hand to stay the killing of the remaining soldiers. Now, they belonged to her. From above came the sound of splintering wood. The battle would soon be joined.
A smile lit the Singer’s face, a warm and open smile that led so many into the arms of Oblivion. She had come for two things, and one was accomplished. There was time for a little something extra.
Her smile became sharp with fangs.
Ledaal Linopa was not a warrior. She was most at home among her plants and her books. She wished fervently that she had never come. But when the moment of battle came, she was every bit an Emerald Dragon. The door shuddered from a mighty blow and Linopa summoned her anima, an aura of green light waving like a field of tall grass. In her hand was her powerbow, arrow already nocked.
To one side of the door stood Anjis Pren, daiklaive held in a ready stance, his anima shining around him in a diamond-bright halo. On the other side stood Sparrow. The monk’s hands cut the air in a blur of motion as he assumed the Air Dragon Form. Before the door, in front of Linopa, stood Niloba, dire lance set for the charge of the enemy. Linopa drew the string on her bow.
The door burst open in a shower of splinters and undead monsters in rusted armor lurged through in a steady stream. Unmoving except for his mighty arms, Pren removed legs and arms and heads with impunity, and the doorway was quickly clogged with the immobile bodies of incapacitated zombies. Bones were shattered by Sparrow’s hands, the monk driving enemy after enemy to its knees, only to have its skull broken. Niloba danced forward and back, her lance like a darting tongue of flame, neatly and precisely skewering the advancing horde one by one.
Even as she sent arrow after arrow into the ranks of the enemy, Linopa could not help but witness the joy of her sister as she fought. Doubtless Niloba would attribute this attack to Maret in some fashion, but Linopa couldn’t help but feel they were being led by the nose, somehow.
The battle was more cleanup than anything else. Hampered by their fallen comrades, the dead came on until their were no more to come. Niloba glanced back at her sister, as if to catch her thought, then scowled. Her anima flared into a bonfire, and she burned her way through the undead, fallen and unfallen alike, to see to the soldiers on the floor below.
Linopa was the second in, once the undead were all taken care of, since she was the most versed in healing, but there was nothing to be done. They were all dead. There were a four zombies among them, inert, apparently defeated by the soldiers even as they themselves died. Most of the command they had brought, however, had been killed by the haunting dirge, their corpses withered. Still others had been pinned to the floor as they slept by sword and spear. Most horrifying to Linopa was how some of the corpses had apparently been fed upon. Puncture wounds from fangs marked their pallid throats.
“Do you see what that… that… monster had called to block our path?” Niloba’s voice trembled with righteous rage as she turned to Linopa, and Pren who had come up behind. “We must kill her when we find her, and we cannot hesitate! So much corruption.” With the clarity that sometimes happened between sisters, especially sisters so close as them, Linopa could see Niloba was almost sick with horror – but bolstered by fervor. Still flaring like a torch, Niloba knelt next to the dead captain of the company. The look of absolute despair fixed on his face would wake Linopa in the night, for many nights to come. His throat, too, bore the mark of fangs.
Niloba strode to the door, anxious to catch the perpetrator, only to be blocked by Pren, who didn’t quite seem to know he was blocking the way.
“You don’t know it was Maret…” Pren began reflexively, his deep voice plaintive and without hope.
“Who else?” Niloba snapped. “Damn it, Pren, Maret is gone. If you loved your sister, you would want to kill the monster in her skin as much as I do.” Her flaming anima licked against his diamond-bright one as she brushed past him. The resigned slump returned to Pren’s broad shoulders as he followed.
Linopa pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, wishing all of these had never happened. She focused her thoughts on the monk’s prayers for the dead in the background. She’d heard the argument too many times. As much as she hated to admit it, this could only have something to do with Maret. It was too much of a coincidence, otherwise. As much as she didn’t want to believe it, it was looking more and more like Anjis Maret was the Anathema Niloba so deeply believed she was.
Sparrow went through his prayers for the dead in automatic motions. He was constructing what had truly happened, filtering it through what he knew as a Chosen of the Maiden of Secrets rather than through the limited understanding offered by the Immaculate Philosophy. The murders here were clearly the work of an Abyssal, who could very well still be about. They were being herded by the servants of the Deathlords, and whatever interest they could have in this hunt could only work toward evil.
Why did this deathknight sacrifice so many to kill these mortals? To make Sparrow and his team more vulnerable. Sparrow knew it as surely as he knew anything. They were being lured into a trap for the purposes of the Underworld, now when turning aside would mean losing their quarry. And Niloba would certainly never give up. She’d go on alone if she had to. Perhaps Sparrow could convince her to find an Imperial outpost or satrapy and find reinforcements…
“Where day and night meet….” The voice was wet-sounding, breathy and labored, rising from the throat of one of the fallen undead. It spoke again, as both Sparrow and Linopa turned to it, its voice rising in unison with a second zombie’s.
“…stands the Tower of the Descending Suns…”
Sparrow swallowed a gasp. Tinch! Tinch, at long last. He knew he was on the trail of the Solar sorcerer, but had no idea he was this close to the Tower he had sought for so long.
Three of the zombies now spoke simultaneously. “…the Deceiver goes to meet the Unclean… look to the hills south of Kirighast…”
Maret. The Eclipse Caste, renamed the Deceivers in the canon of the Immaculate Philosophy. Tinch could not be allowed to join with other Solars. He was dangerous enough on his own – he always had been, even before his Exaltation. Trap or not, he had to destroy Tinch, and if that meant destroying this Anjis Maret along the way, so much the better.
Now all four zombies spoke in tandem. “…and as night fades, the stars will fade and die, the earth corrode, the trees rot, the wind still, and the fire turn cold.”
“You will not turn me aside!” Sparrow vowed. No, not after so long. He rushed outside, leaving the gaping Linopa behind. In the dark of night, Ledaal Niloba burned with holy fire, her anima flared high, and above her reared the image of a dragon of flame, a she searched the night. Even Sparrow’s heart was stirred by the image. One day, this woman would lead nations.
Behind, Ledaal Linopa and Anjis Pren bowed their heads. If it was from awe or love or terror or sorrow, Sparrow could not tell.
They came after the Singer of the Solemn and Endless Dirge, but they found nothing. She watched from a hilltop, able to mark three of the Dragon-Blooded by their animas in the darkness. Some time later, Ledaal Niloba set the hostel aflame, aided by the monk to set the dead to rest.
While they consigned the souls to the Dragons, the Singer murmured praise to her Neverborn masters. She had been led here to do a great work, and the lives of so many Exalted hung in the balance. On this could eventually hinge the control of much of the Southeast in the name of the Bitter Maiden of the Devouring Sorrow. It was time to return to the Desert of Plague’s Triumph.
The four walked on with purpose, little knowing that purpose was the cause of Oblivion. The Singer of the Solemn and Endless Dirge stretched her bloody lips into a smile.
Night was waning, but the darkest hours were yet to come.
