Cor took only three days to return to Sanctum. He turned due west the next morning, crossing the road he’d turned off of the day before and continued. The weather stayed fair, though warm, and the stallion crossed the distance quickly. Cor and the stallion came out of a light wood atop a hill, much like he and Rael had two years ago, to see Sanctum and its crumbling walls, looking just as he had left it a week ago.
On the road leading into Sanctum from the north, Cor saw four hooded figures on foot just entering the castle’s gate. From his angle, he couldn’t see them once they passed the gate, but he was certain they had not spotted him either. He dismounted and walked the stallion back into the wood, tying the reigns to a thin tree. The horse was very displeased by this treatment, but Cor could see little other option. Approaching Sanctum on foot would be much quieter, and he didn’t want the robed men to leave the walls and see his horse milling about. He also removed his own hooded robe and draped it over the horse’s saddle.
It was about a thousand yards to Sanctum’s walls and most of that was uphill; crossing such a distance quickly on foot while wearing armor took more energy than Cor anticipated, and by the time he reached the castle, he had to lean against its walls for breath for several minutes. As he slowed his breathing, he listened carefully for any sound indicating the men were coming back, but heard none. Breathing easily again, he furtively poked his head around the corner, looking through the gate.
Seeing no sign of the men, he dashed into the courtyard and hid behind the smithy, which was the closest of the small buildings. As quietly as his armor would allow him, Cor moved around the back of the smithy and again sprinted across open ground to the armory. There was yet no sign of the four hooded figures, but the main doors leading into Sanctum’s hall were slightly ajar. Again, Cor skirted the rear of the small building and was about to approach the doors when one was kicked open from the inside. He ducked back behind the armory as three men came out of the hall; the bulkiest of them carried a fourth.
They wore heavy dark robes, which were really too warm for this season, and their hoods were now down about their shoulders. Two of the men were clearly Westerners, one short and weasel like in appearance, the other nearly seven feet tall and almost as wide. It was he whom carried the fourth man, and he dumped this man unceremoniously on the ground. The last man drew a long look from Cor. He was tall, well over six feet, and narrow of shoulder. Everything about him appeared stretched out along his height, as if every bone in his body had been racked, giving him a gaunt, alien visage, and he spoke to the other two, clearly in charge. He was the Loszian Cor had seen speaking with Kosaki in Katan’Nosh, the one who paid Kosaki to abduct him. Anger flared in Cor’s eyes and veins.
“The two of you,” he said in Loszian, “return to the library. Start there and make your way back out. Set aflame everything that will burn.”
“What of him, milord?” asked the weasel faced man.
“He was stupid like all of you Westerners, dazzled by shiny objects, and he died for it,” said the Loszian with a sigh. “But it matters not; he will serve me better in death than he did in life.”
Cor stood with his back against the wall of the armory, listening to this exchange. He couldn’t let the Loszian burn Sanctum; while the keep itself may stand, the accumulated knowledge in the study was far to valuable to lose. The men were perhaps ten yards away, probably not close enough for him to close the distance while maintaining the element of surprise. The two began to light torches, and the Loszian stood over the corpse, his hands weaving. His fingertips began to glow with a deep purple power, and Cor knew he had no more time for thought.
He rounded the corner and headed straight for the necromancer at a full sprint, drawing Soulmourn and his fetish at once. The Loszian, focused on the corpse, looked up only too late. Fortunately for him, Cor underestimated how quickly he would close the distance, and rather than kill the sorcerer then and there, Cor charged bodily into him. The Loszian, knocked sideways, hit his head hard on the keep’s stone wall while Cor flailed to the ground, sprawling. Fortunately, he didn’t lose his grasp on his weapons and recovered to his feet quickly. The big man, less surprised than his comrades, hurled his lit torch at Cor, who could do nothing but turn away while ducking to avoid the flames. The small man dropped his torch to the ground, fumbling with two long poignards.
“Go!” shouted the big man. “I’ll handle him.” He pulled the knot loose at his neck and shrugged off the cloak, revealing an armored torso. His arms were heavily muscled and his legs as large as tree trunks. Cor tried to break for the smaller man who had picked up his torch and was making for the keep’s side entrance, but the big man blocked his way, producing a massive two handed battle axe.
The man grinned and leered as he brought his axe around in huge sweeping strokes. There was little skill in it, but Cor knew, armor or not, one strike would likely end him. The Brute laughed maniacally as his attacks missed Cor by inches and clanged off stone with showers of sparks and debris; this man lived for the joy of carnage. Cor needed only one opening, but the man recovered from every swing of his great axe with the reflexes of a tiger. Cor ducked and dodged, sometimes falling and scrambling out of the way of a blow that would surely kill him.
As the big man swung, he slowly tired, and Brute finally faltered with a sweep of his axe that swung too far wide; he couldn’t bring it back around before Cor struck with the quickness of a snake. His blade cut through the iron thews of the man’s right arm neatly and to the bone. Brute raged and brought the giant axe around with only one arm in a mighty arc aimed at Cor’s head. Cor easily ducked this again striking, and this time he completely severed the large man’s left leg above the knee. Brute lost his grip on the axe, and it flew for many yards before landing heavily, and he uncontrollably rotated on his remaining leg and fell onto his chest. He tried to turn himself over, but his ruined right arm would not support any weight at all.
“Slay him,” came a voice in heavily accented Western, and Cor turned to see the necromancer standing behind him. “I am impressed. Slay him now or not. He will die soon enough I am sure. Unfortunately, he is not much use to me now. Even risen, he will do me little good so damaged.”
“Call your man back. If he burns Sanctum, I will kill you both,” Cor threatened in perfect Loszian.
The necromancer’s face registered surprise at hearing his native tongue, but only for a moment. “I am afraid it is far too late for that. Yes look, smoke rises into the air. Come with me Dahken Cor. You should not live in the squalor of a decaying fortress. You already know the Westerners would use you for their own ends. Come with me back to Losz where you will be treated as a king, if not a god. All your whims and pleasures shall be indulged whilst you train a new generation of Dahken. Together we shall overthrow both empires.”
“You’re the one who sent Kosaki after me in the Narrow Sea,” Cor accused, eliciting no denial from the Loszian. “Was it your man who slaughtered my parents?” Cor asked.
The weasel faced man had emerged from Sanctum, tossing his torch in behind him. Acrid smoke began to billow out of the doorway behind him.
“I did not order him to kill them. He acted alone in that matter, but your parents were little more than breeding stock for you. You had less in common with them as they did with insects. Surely you know that,” the Loszian said with absolute confidence in the rightness of his words. Cor felt his temper flare, but he needed more information from this sorcerer before he killed the Loszian.
“How did you find Sanctum?”
“I have always known the location of Sanctum. It was only an issue of knowing you were here,” answered the Loszian, the corners of his mouth upturned slightly. “Now, let us leave this place.”
Cor had no intention of leaving until he found what he came for, but his hopes of that were literally going up in smoke. He could now hear the cracking sounds of fire spilling forth from Sanctum, and he knew he had littl
e time. Cor had less than fifteen feet to cross between him and the Loszian, and he crossed it in just a few long strides. Before his blow could land, the necromancer clapped his spidery hands together, and a brilliant light flashed in Cor’s eyes; when his vision cleared, the Loszian was gone.
The weasel faced man still stood before him, apparently also blinded. Cor moved towards the man, and he bounded away as fast as a jackrabbit. The man ran straight for the dilapidated wall that protected two sides of Sanctum, discarding his robe in the process. Before Cor could reach the wall’s base, Weasel Face was already halfway up, free climbing the stonework faster than a mountaineer could dream of it. Cor knew he couldn’t catch the man; by the time he ran around the outside of the wall, Weasel Face would be down the other side and gone.
Cor picked up a broken stone brick and hurled it at the man just as he reached the top. The brick missed by inches, bringing a laugh from Weasel Face as he reach the top of the wall. He waved down at Cor in a manner of goodbye, just as the stone he sat upon shifted and tumbled down the wall with Weasel Face still sitting on it. Cor leapt aside as the two landed in a jumbled heap at the wall’s base, Weasel Face broken and beaten to a pulp.
Cor rushed back to the keep, but stopped short of entering. He needed to get down into the catacombs, but there was one thing he had to see first. Sheathing his sword, he half ran to the big man who lay still alive, but only barely. His eyelids were heavy, and his chest barely moved while a huge puddle of blood at the end of his severed leg slowly soaked into the ground. The man’s armor did not cover his shoulders or arms, and on his left shoulder Cor found the emblazoned image that matched the tattoo of the man who killed his parents. He then knew he would hunt down and kill the Loszian sorcerer, but now he had a bigger issue at hand.
Cor sprinted into the burning ruins of Sanctum; the main room he had occupied with Rael was full of flame and black smoke. He quickly realized he couldn’t breathe and fought the stars that threatened to black him out. The timbers comprising the ceiling had caught aflame, and Cor could hear them creaking in complaint, likely to give way at any moment. He charged through the fire into the stone hallway beyond; there was little fire here, but the smoke was quite thick. He ran past the rooms he and Rael had slept in, the mattresses, in fact anything flammable, burning hotly. The study was awash with flame, and Cor had to stay on the side of the corridor opposite the doorway due to the shear heat of the blaze.
Cor quickly lost his momentum; his run turned into a staggering gait as he could no longer breathe. He came to the stair leading down into the catacombs just as he was certain he could go no further. Cor half staggered, half fell down the first set of stairs to the landing, where he coughed horrendously for several minutes. The smoke in his lungs cleared, but the coughs gave way to one of his chronic coughing fits, one of the worst he’d had in years. He hacked up several large globs of crimson streaked phlegm, as well as pink and red masses he dared not contemplate.
Cor lay there for some time, the fire raging overhead, before he could move again. He finally made his way down the rest of the steps into the catacombs; the air here, though stale and stagnant, was clean and cool as smoke and heat tend to rise. Cor realized he had another problem; though some ambient light filtered down the stairs, he could walk little more than fifteen feet without being in total darkness. He yanked a torch out of the sconce on the nearest crypt and gingerly made his way back up the stairs. A piece of flaming detritus had fallen onto the steps little more than halfway up, and Cor used this to light his torch.
Returning to the catacombs, he set out for Lord Dahken Rena’s tomb yet again. Hopefully, Rena would be as understanding about this intrusion as she had his first. As he walked further into the catacombs, he could still hear the fire above; in fact it seemed to rage more strongly than before, and occasionally he would hear large crashes. Cor found and entered the tomb with little difficulty. He truly did not wish to tarry here long, somewhat concerned with the fire above him. As it was, getting out of the catacombs may be near impossible. He used his torch to light another inside the tomb and set them both in sconces on opposite walls to provide him ample light. It didn’t take Cor long to find what he needed; Rena had an extensive journal, and it seemed she obsessed constantly in recording the details of her life.
Cor unrolled two scrolls, made of some type of leather, and wrapped them about the thick tome. He quickly removed his breastplate and chain shirt, followed by the sweaty tunic underneath. He turned the tunic into a sort of sack, inserted Rena’s leather wrapped journal into it, and then tied the tunic’s sleeves around his belt. Cor pulled his chain shirt back on and buckled on the breastplate; the steel was extremely uncomfortable on his bare skin, and the chain links continuously pinched him painfully as he moved. He quickly bowed before Rena and exited the crypt, closing the door behind him.
Cor carried one torch with him; the other he’d left burning in the crypt, but he was unconcerned as it would burn itself out shortly. He knew he couldn’t exit by way of the stairs he came in, so he made for the matching set he had seen on the other side of the catacombs. He found it easily enough, but it was blocked only a few feet up by some ancient cave in. The stone, some of it hewn and shaped blocks, some not, was well settled and wholly unmovable. Cor had no doubt some of the natural boulders that blocked the staircase weighed more than ten men could lift.
As Cor contemplated this new, somewhat grim discovery, he noticed a low rumble over the other signs of the fire above. The sound quickly built into roar as the entire catacombs began to shake violently. Cor struggled to keep his footing and began to sprint, realizing he may have but one chance to exit these catacombs alive. He could see the hole in the wall of the catacombs and just as he approached it, a great quake rocked everything around him. The cave that comprised the catacomb’s ceiling burst inward as huge blocks of masonry and stone tumbled through the opening. Cor struggled to his hands and knees and scrambled the remaining feet into the cave. A huge impact exploded from the catacombs behind him. It threw Cor forward in the cave with great force, and then he knew nothing.
18.