Savior of Istara Read online

  To this day, I don’t know the answer. And although Serra Viligotti died before my very eyes, not once but twice in my lifetime, I never summoned the strength of will to ask her.

  My unconscious mind spared me the torment of having to relive her grisly death under the iron-shod wheels of a drunk’s cart. But it did not prepare me for the fresh horrors I’d face upon waking in those cold catacombs beneath my beloved Istara.

  IV.

  I fell into darkness but awoke bathed in light. Pain coursed through my body as intensely as the torchlight flooding my open orbs. Gradually, I focused on gauging my location rather than the condition of my throbbing, possibly broken body.

  My immediate surroundings consisted of a chiseled sandstone chamber lit by torches ensconced along both walls. Countless indistinct figures crowded the room. Each one of them seemed to stare with their hollow eyes, questioning my very presence here.

  Where had I regained consciousness? Had I been captured and thrown into one of Istara’s dungeons? Had a caretaker seen my plight and come to my aid? Or had I fallen to my death only to awaken in one of the Nine Hells?

  Gingerly rolling onto my left side, I spied a staircase carved into the sandstone itself along with the identifying crest of Clan Viligotti. Dried blood and broken arrows retold the sorry story of my ignoble entry into the Viligotti family crypt. I’d escaped death and imprisonment in my own home to nearly find it in the tomb of a childhood friend.

  I’d been spared again. But why? And for what purpose?

  Was Serra watching over me even now? Was that the feeling I couldn’t shake, the sense of someone staring at me?

  When the answer confronted me an instant later, my heart skipped a beat as I fought to stifle a scream. Turning my head toward the opposite wall, my improvised sleeping arrangements became clear…clearly disturbing, for I lay at the feet of the desiccated, doll-like remains of Serra Viligotti.

  Despite the layer of dust on the glass lid of the coffin, her funeral finery shimmered in the flickering light of the tomb’s torches as if untouched by age or decay. Her dark locks curled about her face, framing her sunken cheeks and flattened, lifeless eyes. The priests of Eresh, Lady Death, did fine work.

  I wish I could say that strength and resolve filled me anew at that point. But it would take more to push me to my final desperate act than the mere sight of my best friend, my first love, on display in a gallery of skulls, skeletons, and mummies.

  Despair washed over me instead. I wept pitifully, my sore ribs hitching painfully as I wrapped my arms around her coffin. Urgency and haste meant nothing here in the halls of the dead, despite my pledge to save my mother and the others. For now, I needed to grieve properly. Not just for Serra but for all those I’d lost over the years without taking the time to mourn.

  Fresh tears begat fresh prayers. But this time I didn’t pray to our Creator, Kahl the All-Father, for the wisdom to find meaning in their deaths. Not to haughty Shamash for the return of rightful rule to my beloved city. Nor did I call upon her daughter, Ishta’Kahl, Goddess of the Moon, for the restoration of my health or protection from my enemies.

  No, on this rare occasion, I beseeched Eresh and the other gods of the Underworld to be more merciful in death to those I’d lost during the Siege of Istara than the gods of the Overworld had been to them in life.

  The eerie sensation of being watched did not end with the cessation of my prayers…or my tears. As I dried my eyes, I scanned the ghoulish gallery around me. The remains of nobles, knights, merchants, and clergymen lined the walls of the crypt. But neither their vacant eyes nor those of their loyal wives and servants accounted for my feelings of paranoia.

  And then I saw it. A gaunt figure clad in the plain white robe of an ascetic stood in the shadowy recesses of the archway at the far end of the chamber. The garment’s voluminous hood concealed the identity of the mysterious voyeur. As a result, I couldn’t see its face…or even if it had one. But I felt the intensity of its gaze boring into me as if it fell not upon my flesh but on my soul.

  I eyed it warily, wearily. But it did not move as I rose from the cold stone floor of the crypt. As I regained my footing, I realized that, despite being sore and badly bruised, I remained unbroken. Beneath the layer of dried blood and grime, my wounds had been mended. Even the burns on my body had faded to telltale pinkish scars, evidence of Aethyr-fueled healing.

  Could it be the High Priest of Lady Death Herself? One who’d been beyond the Veil took vows of silence to keep from revealing secrets of the Underworld to the uninitiated. After all, their order had engineered the catacombs of the necropolis in the wake of the Cataclysm. And had maintained it ever since.

  Clearly, whoever, whatever was watching me from the shadows did not intend to harm me. If so, it’d passed on a prime chance as I’d lain broken and unconscious at the bottom of the stairs.

  For once in my short life, I found myself at a loss for words. Smiling toothily, I offered my only means of gratitude.

  The robed figure nodded slowly, solemnly. And then it turned away, disappearing into the darkness beyond the archway.

  I felt compelled to follow, but I loathed the idea of leaving Serra behind. It didn’t feel right after so many years apart. But I reminded myself that she had only taken on the appearance of a doll and belonged with her ancestors. Before venturing into the dark, I hazarded a glance back at my friend, in case I never laid eyes upon her again.

  Torches lining the walls of the next chamber flared to life, lighting my way through the rest of the Viligotti family crypt. On either side of me, mummified and skeletal remains lined the walls, most of them wearing antiquated fashions.

  Already at the end of the long room, my rescuer moved quicker than I’d first anticipated. Despite the lingering pain, I hastened my pace, rounding corner after corner until the architecture shifted from the plain arch-and-column designs common in Baax cities to more decorative Ireti-inspired imagery, due to the influences of each conquering Empire on the next. The farther I descended into the heart of the necropolis below Istara, the closer I drew to its origins, rooted in the chaotic days following the Cataclysm that had ended Faltyr’s Golden Age.

  I couldn’t seem to catch the figure leading me through the catacombs. Somehow the perambulating priest managed to remain one turn ahead of me. But pain blurred my perception of time, and the shifting shadows played hell with my ability to judge distance in the torch-lit tunnels. For all I knew, my pace could’ve been that of the tortoise…or the hare.

  But no matter where I went, the silent dead loomed close at hand. The vacant stares of men, women, children—and even a few remarkable specimens from Faltyr’s bestiary—assailed me at every turn. A single question touched their shriveled, stitched lips, the same one pervading in my bewildered brain.

  What was I doing here, wandering in the land of the dead when I sought only to save the living?

  They made sense in their own way. How could a single mute priest and a legion of the dead provide me with the key to Istara’s salvation? Did I actually seek to solve the problems of my living neighbors by skulking around in the catacombs?

  Legion of the dead, I chuckled bitterly. Perhaps if they were undead then they’d be of some real use to our cause. For a moment, I reveled in the blasphemous fantasy of liberating the residents of Istara with an army of their bony ancestors.

  And it scared me.

  Shivering despite myself, I recalled why such an act had been prohibited by every civilization on Faltyr since antiquity. And why one man’s jealousy and pride had led him to breach that covenant, bringing the last cycle of ages to a cataclysmic end.

  As soon as the blasphemer Ra’Tallah entered my thoughts, the architecture of my surroundings changed to an older, more sinister form. As I passed through the low-ceilinged entryway of this unfamiliar section of the necropolis, I entered a wholly different type of catacomb.

  Skulls beyond counting lined the walls of the next chamber. Intricate sconces and chandeliers co
nstructed of bone cast a soft pall on the entire room. Apparently, their magical torches relied on the same style of Aethyr-devices to power them as those in the newer sections of this construct.

  The skulls framed small niches inset into the ruddy surface of the sandstone walls. A bone-filled ceramic urn rested within each of the shallow recesses.

  Sturdy columns of quarried and dressed stone supported the ceilings in this chamber. The pillars of pale marble matched the bleached bone decor and contrasted the native sandstone in a positively sanguine fashion.

  Bone white over blood red, I thought, subtle decor indeed.

  But where am I? What was this ancient, terrible place?

  I found myself in the center of an oblong antechamber, standing beneath a mosaic of exquisite workmanship and frightful imagery. It told me where I’d been led: the House of the Dead.

  V.

  I found myself inside the hoary, bone-riddled core of the Temple of Eresh—commonly known as the House of the Dead—far below the surface of the city cemetery. Few of the living had ever set eyes upon it, unless they were on their way out of this world. In fact, most people wouldn’t dare trespass on grounds consecrated to a god of the Underworld.

  Guided by one of Lady Death’s own, I felt welcomed instead. But why had I been led to this place, so far removed from the concerns of the living? What did Eresh or her clergyman want with a sixteen-year-old stationer, scribe, and bookbinder?

  I found out soon enough, just not everything…not all at once anyway. In my naivete, I trusted in powers beyond me and found salvation. But one person’s salvation can be another’s damnation. And to those cultures that had emerged from the aftermath of the Cataclysm to climb to preeminence on Faltyr once again, that caveat proved painfully familiar.

  As a result, I recognized the disc-shaped mural on the ceiling immediately. The painting shone as if lit by an inner sun. The unnatural light it emitted fell on an ornate dais in the center of the chamber. As I advanced toward the raised platform, the priest of Eresh faded into the shadows and out of our story.

  Painted directly onto the back of a massive shell from one of Faltyr’s countless species of giant chambered nautiluses, the mural depicted the previous cycle of ages, from the dawn of humanity’s Golden Age to the Cataclysm that ended it. The spiraling wheel of events portrayed so vividly in the masterful polychromatic piece captured my attention like the unblinking eye of a mesmerist. I stood transfixed.

  As I watched, an entire cycle of ages reeled out before the theater of my mind’s eye. An age after the Schism had sundered the Jade Throne and destroyed elven hegemony on the mainland, the humans of Ny, Faltyr’s main continent, arose to heights unseen since the glory days of the Empire of Chi’kakal. Booming empires expanded outward, conquering any weaker, scattered peoples in their path. And when the aims of these imperial juggernauts collided, the result was inevitable: total warfare.

  As petty Pyrrhic wars threatened to destroy humanity before it reached its full potential, two parties arose to challenge the existing cycle of chaos and bloodshed. For a time, their efforts would prove fruitful, until pride and jealousy divided them and nearly destroyed the known world.

  The marriage of Artemis to Ra’Tallah signaled the beginning of Faltyr’s Golden Age. Rumored to be one of the daughters of Ishta’Kahl, Artemis wore the Tripartite Crown, ruling the Baax Empire as well as the island kingdoms of Moor’Dru and Corr Deyraire. Whereas, her lover, partner, and eventually her nemesis, the accursed God-King Ra’Tallah, reigned over the expansive Ireti Empire and the lands of the conquered Nubari.

  The people loved Artemis as much as they feared Ra’Tallah. Together they made a potent force for peace and collected all the tribes of humankind under one banner, the United Nations of Ny (UNN). Strong alliances forged with elves, gnomes, and ogres made it possible to establish safe trade and travel across the Long Road for the first time since the height of Chi’kakal.

  But this Golden Age would not last, could not last. Even I knew that one cannot build a stable tower on shifting sand.

  As the decades grew into centuries, the venerable, undying rulers became deified by the multitudes of peoples united under their banner. Huge cults of worship sprung up across the land, competing with the gods themselves for offerings and sacrifices. As their power and influence grew, so did their discretion—or lack thereof—in using it.

  Artemis utilized restraint and mercy whenever prudent, preferring to win the people’s hearts and minds through her stern, sober oratory and equitable public policies. On the other hand, her husband and co-ruler preferred to keep the peace and maintain social order in a ruthless, militaristic fashion. By the height of the Golden Age, Ra’Tallah was as increasingly despised as his wife was adored. Relegated to the shadows as she bathed in the warm glow of her subjects’ love and loyalty, he became colder, crueler, and more calculating.

  And in the end, jealous gods manipulated this heartless pretender to their throne into annihilating everything that he’d worked alongside Artemis to create. Like too many men before him, Ra’Tallah let his pride, vanity, and ego become his undoing.

  The familiar scene passed before my eyes with the clarity typically reserved for the most unforgettable of memories.

  From astride his throne of bones, dread Darconius, Dark Father of the Underworld, ordered his eldest son, Nas’r, to steal the sole unabridged version of the Liber Inferum, the Book of the Underworld, from Lady Death Herself. Nas’r may have betrayed his sister’s trust when he pilfered Her holiest of holies, but the God of Lies and Intrigue betrayed all Faltyr when he delivered the source of Eresh’s potent necromantic abilities into the hands of ruthless, power-hungry Ra’Tallah.

  An Ireti devil emerged from behind the guise of heavy-handed peacemaker. With the Liber Inferum in hand, Ra’Tallah claimed to be the chosen successor to Eresh, handpicked by Darconius himself to unite the Overworld and the Underworld in a true Golden Age, one in which death no longer mattered. His words seduced those grieving for loved ones lost in the cycle of bloody wars plaguing the mainland at the time. But they did not realize the sinister implications of his silver-tongued oratory.

  Within his domain, Ra’Tallah instituted outrageous policies requiring debtors to provide labor beyond the point of bodily death, including service to the state in specialized legions of undead shock troops. While the UNN and the Churches of the Holy Trinitas protested these decrees and even threatened military action, none of them were in any position to remove Ra’Tallah from power, especially with an army of undead to swell the already impressive ranks of the Ireti military.

  Revulsion and anger filled Artemis. Her partner’s actions violated everything the gods of the Overworld held sacred as well as the laws established by the compact governing the United Nations of Ny. His abominable deeds drained her heart of any remaining love or devotion she felt toward her husband.

  Artemis had grown tired of his bullish demeanor and insane jealousy long ago; but some element of loyalty and concern had remained for the man she’d called husband, lover, and partner. So she beseeched Ra’Tallah to return the book to Eresh, the rightful ruler over the realm of the dead. But he only laughed.

  Drunk with power and convinced of his own divinity, Ra’Tallah had felt invincible. And he was…until he woke the sleeping dragon within his estranged wife.

  That proved to be his undoing.

  Their epic battle played out before my eyes with enough detail to jar my senses and fray my nerves. Under the command of Artemis, the last Dragon Empress of Ny, the weight of the world fell upon the infernal host assembled by Ra’Tallah in the shadow of the Meshkenet Mountains.

  Drawn into the conflict, I wept as the best of an entire generation of Faltyr’s peoples marched off to the slaughter. Men, women, and even children from a dozen races stood against the tide of terror sent by Ra’Tallah. They fought to prevent his undead legions from crossing the narrow neck of the Pelican Gulf into the heartland of the Baax Empire.

  Ra�
�Tallah commanded his troops from an Aethyr-powered airship of his own design, one of many enchanted vessels to travel the skies of Faltyr during its Golden Age. Although it provided him with relative safety from the armies united against him, the craft proved vulnerable to the fury of a woman scorned.

  Calling upon the powers granted to her by her mother, Goddess of the Moon, Artemis reverted to her true form, a silver dragon. And not the miniature versions known to the modern age, I remind you, but an elder wyrm of unimaginable size and power.

  As Ra’Tallah struck at her with tentacles of dark energy summoned forth from the Book of the Underworld, Artemis plucked the turtleback airship from its mooring and carried it aloft to the heavens. As her former lover drained her power and her life, she drove onward and upward through Faltyr’s atmosphere. The Dragon Empress did not stop until she reached the cold, unforgiving vacuum of space, for even a newly christened Lord of the Dead needed oxygen to survive, unlike a Dragon of Faltyr.

  With his final breath, Ra’Tallah uttered a particularly vicious curse from the pages of the Liber Inferum, sealing both their dooms as well as ushering in the Cataclysm that ravaged our world and ended Faltyr’s Golden Age.

  As they plummeted toward the planet’s face, his spell drew in Aethyr energies existent in the ambient universe to fuel its devastating effect, the separation of the immortal soul from its mortal coil before the point of death.

  The ruined airship burned away during their meteoric reentry, leaving Ra’Tallah in the death grip of his former queen. The damned lovers’ final fiery embrace ended where their ascent began, on the field of their armies’ apocalyptic battle.

  Artemis and Ra’Tallah struck with the explosive force of a thousand suns, annihilating not only themselves and their remaining forces but sundering the Meshkenet Mountains. In the wake of the mountain range, they left the shifting, sinister Sands of Sorrow, commemorating the Cataclysm for all time.