Zachareth, p.1
Zachareth, page 1
part #4 of Descent Series
Descent: Legends of the Dark
Terrinoth: an ancient realm of forgotten greatness and faded legacies, of magic and monsters, heroes, and tyrants. Its cities were ruined and their secrets lost as terrifying dragons, undead armies, and demon-possessed hordes ravaged the land. Over centuries, the realm slipped into gloom…
Now, the world is reawakening – the Baronies of Daqan rebuild their domains, wizards master lapsed arts, and champions test their mettle. Banding together to explore the dangerous caves, ancient ruins, dark dungeons, and cursed forests of Terrinoth, they unearth priceless treasures and terrible foes.
Yet time is running out, for in the shadows a malevolent force has grown, preparing to spread evil across the world. Now, when the land needs them most, is the moment for its heroes to rise.
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First published by Aconyte Books in 2022
ISBN 978 1 83908 144 6
Ebook ISBN 978 1 83908 145 3
Copyright © 2022 Fantasy Flight Games
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Cover art by Joshua Cairós
Map by Francesca Baerald.
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To Dad, as ever with all my love.
Part One
Castle Talon
Chapter One
Highsummer, 1822
The first punch didn’t draw blood, but the second did.
Zachareth felt it across his lips and in his mouth, warm and bitter. He spat, smattering Mikael’s face with red.
The heir to the Barony of Cailn had been astride Zachareth in the dirt, but he recoiled. Zachareth seized the advantage, heaving against him with both hands and kicking out with his feet. The boy was thrown off, sprawling in the dust.
The surrounding stable hands jeered and shrieked. Zachareth was only half aware of them as he scrambled back to his feet. His ears were full of a dull ringing sound, and his cheeks burned. He spat more blood, cuffing it from his lips.
“Is that the best Cailn can do?” he demanded.
Mikael was back on his feet as well, his blond hair unkempt, his jerkin dusty and askew. He bared his teeth and flung himself at Zachareth.
As was so often the case, it had all happened fast. Castle Talon was hosting the Silver Tourney, a contest of arms held every four years between the northwestern baronies of Carthridge, Cailn, and Rhynn. Mikael, Cailn’s heir, had arrived with his father’s entourage the day before and had quickly sought out Zachareth along with several of his squires. Sharp words had been exchanged, Zachareth’s own father insulted, and the honor of Carthridge questioned.
Zachareth couldn’t actually remember who had struck the first blow, but just then he didn’t much care. He tumbled in the dust with Mikael, grappling furiously, his long, dark hair half blinding him as he tried to rip himself free from the other boy’s hold and land a blow of his own.
Mikael was a year older and quite a bit taller, but Golfang, the lieutenant of Baron Zelmar’s guard, often told Zachareth that he was broad and strong for a thirteen year-old. He used that, trying to bear Mikael back down into the dirt, his teeth bared, pink with blood. Slowly, agonizingly, he overcame his rival’s resistance, his limbs shaking with the strain as he pressed him against the ground. He managed to throw a leg over to straddle him and poised one fist, his thoughts keening with vengeance.
Something struck him in the ribs below his raised arm, not painfully so but sharp enough to make him yelp. He twisted astride Mikael, expecting to find one of the Cailn squires intervening. Instead, he was confronted by Bernard.
“Don’t make me bloody your nose as well as your lip, boy,” the heavy old tutor exclaimed, ruddy faced and brandishing his walking stave like a spear. Zachareth glared at him, cursing the fact that he had found him and was, predictably, now interfering. The cursed tutor was always interfering.
“You wouldn’t dare hit me,” he said.
“I just did, and I will again,” Bernard replied, jabbing the stave threateningly.
Zachareth didn’t get a chance to respond. Mikael heaved against him, throwing him off. Once again, the two boys sprawled, and Zachareth cursed the loss of his advantage.
Bernard waded in, rapping the tip of his stave across Mikael’s knuckles as he grabbed the front of Zachareth’s doublet before physically wrapping one forearm around Zachareth’s throat and hauling him up and away. The baronial heir struggled and choked on the musty wool of Bernard’s long robe sleeve, finding his feet but remaining clamped in the tutor’s grasp. Despite his age, Bernard possessed a fearsome strength.
“Cease your squirming, you accursed worm,” he exclaimed irritably, keeping hold of Zachareth with one arm.
“That’s quite enough from you too, Master Cailn,” he added, using the stave in the other hand to ward off Mikael as the boy made to lunge at the pinned Zachareth. “Another twitch from either of you and I’ll call for Captain Travas and have you both dragged before your parents. I’m sure they’d appreciate hearing that you’ve been fighting in public again just two days before the start of the tournament!”
Thoughts of parental chastisement took the edge off the furious energy coursing through Zachareth. He had no wish to stir his father’s anger. He forced himself to be still and was rewarded with a loosening of Bernard’s grip. He pulled himself free, glaring at Mikael, who glared right back.
“Be gone to your chambers,” Bernard snapped, pointing the stave at the Cailn contingent before addressing the gawking pages and serving boys surrounding them. “And the rest of you, back to work! You should know better than to indulge these highborn dolts!”
As they scattered, Bernard grabbed Zachareth’s shoulder and steered him firmly into the nearby stable block, the smell of both horses and straw hitting him. The beasts loomed on either side, snorting and stamping, seeming to tower over him. Bernard marched him between their pens to the trough at the far end of the outbuilding, wheezing and muttering under his breath, stave clacking against the straw-scattered cobbles.
“Avoiding your lessons is one thing, but scrapping like a feral street dog? For shame! By the flames of Kellos, if I could still travel, I would have taken up that posting at Greyhaven. At least there my students would wish to attend my classroom of their own volition!”
Zachareth didn’t respond. He was still angry, but he knew better than to test Bernard any further. Right now, the tutor’s goodwill was all that was stopping him from reporting Zachareth’s m isdemeanors to his father and, worse, to the baron’s advisor, Leanna. That was a conversation he wanted to avoid at all costs.
Bernard stood him before the trough and planted a hand against the back of his head. Zachareth began to protest, then was forced to seal his mouth shut as he was plunged into the tepid water. The shock slammed through him, and it was an effort not to instinctively exhale the air he’d trapped in his lungs.
Bernard held him under for a few heartbeats, then hauled him back up. Zachareth gasped as water poured from him, drenching his doublet and running from his lank hair. His lip stung.
The tutor turned him around and snatched his jaw, angling his head left then right.
“It’s stopped bleeding at least,” he said, squinting at Zachareth’s lip. “If you’re lucky, the swelling will be gone by the time you’re called to the hall for supper.”
He let go. Zachareth scowled up at him and swept his sopping hair back out of his eyes.
“You look just like your father when you do that,” Bernard said, his tone finally losing its hard edge.
“I know,” Zachareth replied. Bernard often said such things, and he was never sure if it was meant as a compliment or not. He had no wish to turn out like his father, not now anyway.
“You’re late for today’s lessons,” Bernard continued, pulling Zachareth’s doublet straight. “I’ll avoid telling Zelmar why, but in exchange, you have to make an effort with your readings this time. Do we have a deal?”
Zachareth knew he didn’t have much of a choice. He nodded.
“We have a deal.”
•••
In the end, Zachareth didn’t get far with the day’s assigned text. They had just settled into Bernard’s makeshift classroom – a cluttered, dusty garret in the north tower – when a sharp rap sounded at the door. Zachareth paused halfway through a ponderous recitation of the epic poem The Foxes of Kell and looked at Bernard, seated across the scroll-scattered lectern from him.
Had the old man betrayed him after all? Zachareth’s expression clearly made the accusation for him because Bernard held his gaze for a moment before shaking his head. He picked up his stave and headed for the door.
Golfang was waiting beyond it, his craggy face unreadable. Like the rest of the baronial guard, the massive orc had been fully armed and armored since the arrival of the Cailn and Rhynn delegations, and he had to stoop slightly just to look in through the crooked attic door. Zachareth doubted he’d actually be able to fit through it, certainly not with the heavy-bladed falchion hanging at his hip.
“The baron wishes to see him,” Golfang said to Bernard, nodding at Zachareth.
“He’s in the middle of his studies,” Bernard protested, even his heavyset bulk appearing tiny before the hulking warrior. Golfang wore a battered breastplate and a chainmail skirt over leather breeches, but his arms were bare above the vambraces that clad his wrists. To Zachareth, his arms appeared like mighty tree trunks, gnarled and axe-hewn, each ringed by dozens of white tattoo bands. The orc had once told Zachareth they represented every enemy’s skull that he had crushed with his bare hands, though Bernard had confided that the more prosaic truth was that each band represented a year’s service on the baronial guard.
“Still, the baron wants him,” Golfang reiterated, his expression stoic as he looked past Bernard at Zachareth. Despite himself, he felt his heart quail at the thought of what awaited him.
“Is it actually the baron who wants him, or Leanna?” Bernard asked, seemingly unwilling to give up his charge. Golfang offered the merest of shrugs.
“You would have to ask the baron that yourself. Now, am I going to have to come in and take him myself?”
“No, you are not,” Zachareth said before Bernard could answer. He forced himself to get down from behind the lectern, pausing to pointedly close the heavy cover of The Foxes of Kell. He wasn’t going to let Golfang see he was afraid. He valued the guard’s opinion more than he feared his father’s summons.
Golfang nodded and moved aside for Zachareth to descend the creaking wooden staircase beyond the garret’s door. He heard Bernard calling out behind him.
“Don’t think this means you’re done with your studies. I’m leaving this book in your bedchamber, and I expect the next three chapters read by the time we meet again tomorrow!”
“Then I pray to Kellos that my father’s punishment involves making me wear a blindfold,” Zachareth called back, ignoring Bernard’s irate response. Golfang chuckled as he followed him down the stairs, his chainmail clinking heavily.
“You are wise to only bait the word teacher when out of reach of his stave,” he said. “If you had not come quietly, I fear I would not have been able to wrestle you from him.”
“You never had to learn letters,” Zachareth complained, disgusted at life’s unfairness. “And look what you’ve achieved! You’re second-in-command of the baronial guard of Carthridge!”
“True,” Golfang admitted. “But I am not a tiny little raven-haired human pup like you.”
Zachareth half turned to lash out at Golfang, but the orc simply swatted him away, laughing.
“Enough,” he said. “It is not for idle merriment that your father summons you.”
They passed through the echoing corridor that ran around the inside of the keep’s western wall, evening sunlight streaming through the arrowslits to dapple the smooth stonework. As they went, Zachareth tried to gauge how bad things were.
“You might be in the hot stew this time, pup,” Golfang admitted. “Your father knows about your scrapping.”
Zachareth looked up at the guard as they walked, a frown crossing his face. “Did Bernard tell him?”
“No,” Golfang responded. “Who do you think?”
“Leanna,” Zachareth growled. It made sense. She seemed to know everything, her presence within the baronial court of Castle Talon all encompassing. She was a Latari elf but had advised Zelmar Carth for almost a decade. She was also a sorceress. Zachareth hated her for how she had wormed her way into his father’s life, for how she now seemed to rule the barony more assuredly than he did. The emotion was so raw it momentarily came close to eclipsing his fear.
They descended the next set of spiral stairs and passed along the guest chamber corridor, pausing to let a pair of serving maids hurry by with bundles of used linen. This part of the castle was usually quiet, but now it bustled with the presence of the Rhynn and Cailn entourages. They encountered more chattering chambermaids, a scurrying errand boy, and a member of Greigory of Rhynn’s household, bearing the Grandmother Oak on the chest of his jerkin. There were also retinue guards posted outside the bedchamber doors, who stiffened to attention as Zachareth and Golfang went by. Zachareth half hoped he would run into Mikael leaving his room. They’d see how that Cailn whelp fared with Golfang to back him up.
Their route took them to the antechamber outside Castle Talon’s great hall. A taperer was lighting the braziers bolted to the walls, their kindling flames illuminating the graven expressions of Zachareth’s grandparents and great-grandparents, rendered in Carthmount stone in alcoves on either side. He always looked at them whenever he passed, trying to imagine his own likeness alongside them some day. It was difficult because he so rarely felt that he wanted to become baron like his father. He wanted more than a lifetime of duty and leadership. He avoided the hard, stony eyes.
They halted outside the oaken doors that led into the hall. Golfang placed one massive hand on them, but before opening them, he paused and looked down at Zachareth.
“You are afraid,” he said.
“I’m not,” Zachareth replied, scowling. The guard was too perceptive for his own good. His heart was racing.
“You are a poor liar too,” Golfang continued. “Which does not bode well for what is about to unfold. Have courage, little pup. There are worse things in this world than a father’s scorn.”
“If that’s so, I have yet to encounter them,” Zachareth said heavily, steeling himself and staring straight ahead. Golfang let out a short laugh and opened the doors.
Chapter Two
“Don’t just stand there, boy,” Zelmar Carth barked, his voice ringing from the timber rafters. “Come here where I can see you.”
