The Eighth Warden Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Ivy Veritas
Interlude
Author’s Note: This short story takes place in the world of The Eighth Warden. It’s not actually part of Book 6, but it contains spoilers for Books 1 through 5, so I’m putting it here.
Short Story: After the Burning
Five thousand and six years before the events of The Eighth Warden...
The village of Lapithos, at the edge of what had once been central Van Kir, had hung on through the long years of the Burning, its residents stubbornly clinging to what lands still remained to them.
Or they had until now. Most of the bodies were arranged in a wide circle on the village green, but a scattered few had fallen elsewhere, as if they’d realized too late what was happening and attempted to run.
The man who called himself Calum stared out across the village, dust clouds along the northern horizon announcing the foreboding presence of the barrens. Or the wastelands, or the burned lands. The region had been given many names by many people, but Calum still thought of it as Van Kir.
“The bodies are only a couple of days old,” his second-in-command, Sakur, told him. “We’re catching up.”
“Not fast enough,” Calum said.
They’d been tracking Dekar for over two months. This was the third village the dark mage had slaughtered, but it was difficult to gain ground on him when there were no obvious patterns to the man’s actions or the direction he was traveling. In some villages he brought gifts for the children, while in others, he ranted and raved and cried. And in the unlucky few, he killed everyone around.
Tracking down an individual murderer might not have been the best use of Calum’s time, particularly when the victims were just humans, but these little tasks he assigned himself served to give his life some sort of purpose while he considered his broader plans. The world he’d discovered himself in after recovering from the ritual was much changed from what he’d known before. It had been over a century since he’d escaped the darkness, yet the Chosar had been dying out even then, whether from hunger, old age, or being unmade by the wildstorms. These days, very few of The People still remained. They’d been gradually replaced by their changed children, who were more capable of surviving these new circumstances.
With the loss of the Chosar’s guiding presence, the human barbarians had been left to fight over the scraps, vying against each other for the power once wielded by their former overlords. Calum owed the world a debt, yet with civilization having fallen into chaos, it was unclear how he would pay what he owed. The wildstorms might have died out, but the damage they’d caused would be felt for generations.
“Calum!” someone called. “We’ve got a survivor here!” The shout came from Berto, or possibly his brother Berno. Calum had trouble telling humans from the same tribe apart. With identical twins, he didn’t bother to try. He’d hired the two men after executing the warlord they’d been working for.
“Who is it?” he called back, heading in the direction of the voice. Sakur followed him.
“This fellow,” Berto said, the battle axe strapped across his back giving away his identity. He was nudging a smaller, greasy-haired man ahead of him. “Says his name is Lederis.”
“Lederis,” Calum said. “You live here?”
“Y-yes, sir,” Lederis said, his eyes darting back and forth as the rest of Calum’s men approached. He looked like he wanted to run, but Berto had a tight grip on his shoulder.
“What happened?” Calum asked.
“A ... a man, sir. He said he knew magic that could keep the plague from touching us, but then he killed everyone. Killed them all!”
The swelling plague had been racing across the continent, at least in areas with poorer sanitation, but Calum and his men had been able to ignore it during their search. One of their number, Mikus, was an acolyte of Pallisur—a priest of Pallisur, as the humans would say. Mikus had been gifted with the ability to heal any sort of disease. No one had thought to question why the fellow had been chosen by Pallisur so soon after Calum recruited him.
“This man,” Calum said. “Dark hair, rich clothing? Calls himself Dekar?”
Lederis bobbed his head up and down. “You know him, sir?”
“Not yet,” Calum said. “If he killed everyone, how did you manage to escape?”
“I didn’t like the look in his eyes,” Lederis said with a shiver. “He promised to save us, but I didn’t like his eyes at all, or that skull he was showing around.”
“Skull?” Calum asked. “Why was he was carrying a skull?”
“Not a real one. A small pendant, silver. Red gemstones for eyes. He said that’s how he would keep the plague away.”
“He used it for the spell?” Enchanted objects had been very rare since the fall of Van Kir, but the last dark mage Calum had hunted had one as well, a gauntlet of unknown purpose. Calum had buried it with the man’s body.
“I didn’t see anything,” Lederis said. “I got out of here before he started, hid at my family’s farm. When I came back, everyone was dead and he was gone. That was two days ago.”
“Were there any other survivors?”
Lederis’s eyes darted to the southeast before he could stop himself. “N-no, sir. I was the only one.”
An obvious lie to protect his family from the heavily armed strangers. Calum let it pass. He had secrets of his own.
“Do you know which way Dekar went?” he asked.
Lederis shook his head, but Drocus, the group’s scout, answered. “We found a single set of tracks heading north, toward the barrens.”
The men exchanged worried glances—they knew Calum wouldn’t turn back. The firestorms had finally burned themselves out five years earlier, but the barrens remained a desolate wasteland where nothing could grow, a huge, near-perfect circle surrounding the abandoned mountain fortress of Tir Yadar. In another month, the autumn rains would arrive, packing down the soil for the winter, but for now, the dust and ash would blow across the dry landscape in massive, choking clouds.
What could Dekar possibly want in the barrens? Nothing useful remained in the Chosar’s former bastion of power. Or, at least, nothing that the human mage could possibly know about.
“Odar, you’ll stay here with the horses,” Calum ordered. “There’s no grazing in the barrens. The rest of you, search the village for provisions. We’ll take as much as we can carry in our packs. And find more waterskins! At this time of year, there’ll be too much ash blowing into the rivers to refill there.”
The men set to work, not raising the obvious complaints. For humans, they were decent sorts. Calum had hand-picked each one himself—capable fighters, able to stand against the wrath of the warlords when the need arose, and willing to face the strange new dangers which had arisen since the Burning.
But if necessary, he’d sacrifice them all if it meant catching his quarry. The greater good had to be considered.
On their second day into the barrens, they discovered that more footprints had joined with Dekar’s—a small group which had come from the west, then turned to match the dark mage’s trajectory.
Calum pulled the dust scarf away from his face. “Are they traveling together?” he asked.
“It’s hard to tell,” Drocus said. The scout got down on his hands and knees and crawled ten feet down the path, peering closely at the indentations in the dirt. “Four or five people in the new group. Their tracks cross Dekar’s, but the wind has blown away too much to tell who came first. They can’t be very far apart, though. No more than a few hours.”
Which didn’t eliminate any options. Dekar might be following the new group, they might be following him, or they could be together. Perhaps the whole reason he’d come to the barrens was to meet up with them. Regardless of the answer, he was still traveling north. If he stuck to his current route, he might actually make it to Tir Yadar itself, and that was a troubling thought.
Calum closed his eyes and tried to focus his mind on the likely probabilities, but no visions came. One of the skills he’d discovered in himself after the ritual was the ability to see potential futures. Unfortunately, the talent was marred not only by the sheer number of possibilities but also by the fact that he had little control over what he saw. While the visions were consistent in their warnings about the years of war still to come, whatever power Calum had tapped into apparently didn’t consider Dekar to be of any import.
Giving up, he turned back to Drocus. “Set out ahead of us, and don’t let anyone see you. We’ll follow behind, but at a slower pace. We need to know who they are and whether he’s with them.” There was a chance the interlopers were innocent, but Calum couldn’t risk allowing Dekar to get away. And if they were together ... well, he would make that decision when he had to.
It was late in the afternoon when Drocus returned. Calum’s men gathered together to find out what he’d learned.
“I found him, I think,” the scout said. “A mile out, north by northeast.”
“You think?” Calum asked.
“It’s one man, not the group. Either it’s him, or they left someone behind. I couldn’t get close enough to tell for sure without alerting him.”
“Then let’s go,” Calum said. “Everyone, leave your packs behind, and anything else that’ll make noise. We’ll try to take him by surprise.”
His men were wearing a primitive sort of armor, with small metal plates woven into padded coats. It didn’t offer the protection of Chosar silversteel, but at least it made less noise. Calum’s own armor was quiet as well, being made of leather and silk. As a wizard, he had to avoid wearing too much metal on his body.
They headed toward their target, spreading out and creeping more quietly as they reached the last small rise. Calum crouched down and ducked his head to keep from being seen as he peered through the dust storm.