Chapter 12A

"Lord Templar," the marine sergeant said, kneeling and lowering his head to regard Moghran's booted feet, "We have encountered more resistance than expected in the palace quarter."

The matte black plate armor of the marine seemed a poor imitation of the Templar's armor, their similarity ending at the basic color. Where the marine's was utilitarian armor, the Templar's was a work of art, hand crafted from over a hundred interlocking miniature platelets, each tailored to the needs of this particular man. Each piece enameled in black and gleamed as if cut from the surface of a pool of water at midnight.

Lord Templar Moghran shook his head at the sergeant, then patted the man's shoulder. Sergeant Gevaks was a good soldier and the difficulties were not of his making. "Take another two hundred marines and secure that palace, Gevaks," he said then sighed. "And four sorcerers," he added even as the sergeant stood to execute the orders given him. "Do not return unless it is to inform me that the palace is held fully." A little additional motivation went far to put an extra bit of steel in a man's spine.

"Yes, my Lord Templar," said the sergeant, almost running from the chamber.

He stood in an old Dockmaster's office, the only place that could be found with sufficient table space for the maps and other necessities of leading even a smallish army such as he now had at his command. The people of Tressen, a sensible lot, staying in their homes and laying low. He had a few brought to him, just after landing, for quick interrogations and information, though they had proven less than useful.

A different matter was the black-clad man whom they had tied to the chair in the corner. He called himself a Defender, and he sat stoically through two hours of handling by the Templar's pet interrogator. Even now, the man glared at the Templar, and made him slightly uncomfortable. "I suppose you still will not tell me what I wish to know?" asked the Templar, giving the heretic a sideways look from over the crude map of the city.

"Your ilk can rot in the Dark One's hell!" growled the Defender, still showing more defiance than the Templar would have credited to any heretic. Two of the Templar's aides moved as if to silence the Defender and Moghran waved them back, shaking his head sadly.

"I offer you a chance to redeem your soul, son," he said in his best fatherly tone. Moghran had three sons, and one of them was not much different in age than this young Defender.

The young man cocked his head back and laughed for a long moment before looking back at the Templar. "You offer me salvation?" he asked, a tone of stark incredulity in his voice. "That would be like a blind man trying to describe the color red, blasphemer!"

Righteous indignation seized the Templar and he knew he was being rash even as he sliced the head from the heretic's body. A man could only take so much abuse from such scum before the Fury of the One overtook him. Two slaves quietly slipped from corners and cut the ropes holding the body to the chair and dragged it outside, one returning for the man's head while the other returned with the Defender's cloak to clean up most of the blood that coated the floor where the chair had been.

The Templar looked toward his personal sorceress, a slim, frail-looking creature. Most Templars who were not themselves sorcerers maintained a servant-sorcerer, excepting a few paranoid individuals who could not bring themselves to trust a slave.

Tarasha was a pretty creature, most sorceresses were that as well, something to do with their Becoming, or so he was told. She had long, smooth limbs and fine silken black hair that hung in a smooth sheet to her backside.

The sheer gown she wore right now, like most of her garments, left little to the imaginings of an old man and she gave a slight smile toward one of the Templar's aides, her dark eyes glittering.

He followed that gaze to Rughalt, his newest aide. A competent man, especially regarding logistical matters, something that Moghran himself was a master of. The man lived in constant fear of performing poorly and so coming to Moghran's notice. When Tarasha realized she had been seen, she lowered her head slightly, by way of apology, and Moghran smiled to let her know all was well.

She rose from the low squat she had been sitting in and walked to him. Automatically, all the other men in the room tracked her progress with their eyes. None of them would dare approach her without her initiating the matter, but that would not stop them appreciating her supple form.

It was as if she sensed his desire to use her for a small mission at this very moment. He both loved and hated the sorceress' ability to all but read his thoughts. He sometimes wondered just how much of his mind she truly could delve into. The bond of a slave to a Templar was a strong one and she seemed to be more perceptive than most of her kind.

"My Lord has use for me?" she asked, kneeling gracefully. Somehow, she could do that, and it always pleased him. She knelt, yet seemed not in the least to be yielding to anything but her own desire to please him. Her dark eyes turned up to watch his stern face with hopefulness marking her features.

"Yes," he said. "I need you to tell my why the palace is being so difficult." He pointed to where the Palace of Tressen stood on the map and she rose to stand next to him to examine the best route to that location. As she moved close to him, the faint scent of soap and jasmine filled his nose. He did like a clean lover.

Among her many uses as a sorceress, she was also his to do with as he wished in private. The utter lack of concern for her own desires was always appreciated by the elderly soldier, though he did still think himself a worthy lover, even now. "I will find out, Lord Templar," she said softly, laying her hand atop his on the table. Her fingers were soft and cool.

Despite the cold of the fall night, she did not seem to need anything more than the gauzy shift she now wore. He had never seen a sorceress give much concern to the needs of the weather, excepting in the most extreme of cold.

Tarasha bowed then left the makeshift command post, all eyes following her graceful and quite feminine saunter out the door. As soon as she was gone, most of those eyes went back to Moghran, ensuring he was not glaring at any of them and he smiled.

The stench of burning wood and flesh hung heavy in the air as Siska came to the bronzed door to join Mannis. A half dozen other people followed her through the rubble-strewn hallway, most whole but disheveled, two bearing small wounds. Phillip helped Keeley when she nearly twisted an ankle amidst several fallen stones.

"It's stuck fast," said Mannis, glaring at the metal-sheathed door. Yelling behind them reminded the refugees that the Theocracy's marines had regrouped and were prowling the palace freely now.

Siska touched the door, to her relief it was cool. The knowledge of what a hot door meant had been gleaned the hard way by the little group, and one of the walking wounded had burn marks on his arms and chest, as well as almost no hair remaining.

"Do you have the reserves?" asked Phillip, looking at Siska. Her search of his eyes told her that he himself did not. His face was haggard and pale, with sunken cheeks and a look of near desperation in his visage. Her mentor, for the first time since their acquaintance, looked near his true age of almost seventy. The faint shimmer of magic about him might well be the only thing keeping him on his feet, she realized.

Siska nodded and turned to the door again. "Open it slowly, Siska," said Phillip, "We shall need that door afterward."

Again, she nodded, this time curtly as she concentrated and touched both hands to the bronzed surface. The bas-relief of the city of Tressen, as it stood over a century before felt odd under her palms, the buildings sharp and angular, the trees soft and round. Slowly, fighting the urge to simply turn the door into a pile of bronze-sheathed kindling, she pushed.

Mannis held down the thumb latch and with painful slowness, the door grated inward. Above her head, she heard masonry try to free itself and reached out with other streams of mana to hold them in place, bolstering the old cement. With a final protest of grating metal on stone, the door opened far enough for the small band to enter, beyond was darkness.

One by one, they slipped through, Siska waiting until last, with Mannis tugging imploringly on her sleeve. The yelling behind her changed tone and she heard boots crunching over broken stonework as the marines bore down on her.

She slipped into the room and again pushed on the door. It moved with equal slowness as it had from the outside, but there was little for it. Already the timbers within the bronze sheath were groaning in protest at their rough treatment, if she shoved harder, they would burst.

A loud click in the dark chamber and the door was shut. Siska released the mana holding the stones above it and they settled around the frame, further sealing the portal. "We need light, Siska," said Phillip quietly, his voice echoing off distant walls in the pitch dark of the chamber.

The effort of steady casting was wearing on her, though she still felt the power washing through her and knew she had, even now, more power in reserve than most wizards had after rest.

The little knot of people gasped slightly when a blue-white ball ignited in the air over their heads. It cast a cool, sterile light about the massive chamber in which they found themselves. Pale green marble made up the floor and the shoulder thick columns that stood, towering into the darkness overhead, out of the reach of the small illuminating spell she had formed. Siska fed a trickle more power into it and the sphere of light brightened until it was almost painful to look upon directly.

"The throne room," said Mannis in a soft voice. Those words echoed softly, carried as if this room was meant to make a speaker heard clearly, no matter the timidity of their own voice.

They had come into the room behind the throne, to its left. Another door, similar to this one, stood to the right of the throne. Barely touched by the bright light of the sphere, almost seventy paces away, stood the tall, wide double doors of the main entrance.

The throne was a massive thing, crafted of iron it was said, and gilded in artistic accents. The iron, according to local myth, was from the shackles and chains of the prisoners who were brought to Murder Isle by the Ghantians. When the Ghantians had left, the colonists had collected all those shackles and melted them down to form the throne, in which to seat their own ruler.

It was not a pretty thing, the throne. It had a brutal power, though, a sort of savage dignity. The throne radiated a defiance that at this desperate moment seemed just the aura this small group of tired people needed.

Mannis was pulling a steel pole down from the wall and bracing it against the door opposite the throne, wedging it between two wall-hugging pillars to form a sort of crossbar. The main doors were reinforced against siege and already had a crossbar in place, a massive oak timber as thick as Siska's thigh.

"Hardly a good retreat from a survival standpoint," said Phillip sourly. He had been helping Keeley stay on her feet, but it now looked as if Keeley were supporting him.

Siska looked at the six other people with in their little group. Two were elderly, a couple who said they were merchants and old friends of one of the retiring Defenders.

The middle-aged man with the nasty burns on arms and chest was a lesser nobleman, by the name of Galdiari. He seemed a decent enough sort, though it was his own headstrong sense of self-importance that had led to his injuries.

A young man, wearing livery of the palace itself, was a servant who maintained the place. He had been the only reason they had not yet been pressed harder, due to his intimate knowledge of the palace. He was hurt, though, and had not been stout before injury. Blood coated his tunic under his arm, where one of the invisible skeleton warriors had managed to cut him before Siska could blast it into shards of bone.

The two remaining were of middle years, and their grief seemed beyond consoling. They, like the elderly pair, were a couple, and their son was one of the Defenders of Mannis' squad, one who had fallen in the first rush of the Theocracy marines. They both sat upon the low, wide stairs below the throne and wept, trying to comfort one another. So far, they had simply followed Siska and Mannis, and kept to themselves, muttering and weeping intermittently.

When she looked up from this tattered band, she saw that Mannis was standing near the center of the wide open floor of the chamber. A simple cube of white stone stood there, unpolished and seemingly unfinished. Atop the cube was a enclosure of glass and iron bars. The unfinished white cube looked out of place amid the polished green marble of the throne room. "What is that?" she asked.

Behind her, Keeley eased Phillip to a sitting position upon the tall dais, atop the raised portion of the throne room's already three step elevation. The throne sat in the middle of this additional dais. He leaned a shoulder to the throne itself, seeming to take comfort in the cool of the wrought iron leg he put his temple to.

She walked up beside Siska. "Those are the shards of the crown," she said. "They used to be on display to the public, but some cad tried to steal them and they've been sealed away since."