The Complete Darkwar Trilogy: Flight of the Night Hawks, Into a Dark Realm, Wrath of a Mad God

Pug motioned around himself, swinging his arm in a wide are ahead of them. ‘Since Leso Varen fled Olasko, we’ve been trying to find the range of his “death rifts”, for lack of a better term.’

‘That much I know,’ said Nakor, walking through knee-high grass.

They were standing with Ralan Bek in the middle of a wide grassland that swept down from the mountains to the east, approximately three days’ ride from the border between the Kingdom of the Isles and the Duchy of Maladon and Semrick. Had they travelled by horseback from the nearest city, Maladon, it would have taken another four days.

Bek stood watching the two men wandering through the grass in front of him and laughed. ‘Are we going to be walking around in circles all day?’

Pug glanced at the troubling young man and nodded. ‘If needs be. Over a year ago we found evidence of some very powerful, very dark magic, and without boring you further, let’s just say that there is a relationship between that magic and a great deal of trouble yet to come.

‘It would help us if we could find … the track, if you will, between the place this magic originated – in Olakso’s capital, Opardum – and somewhere else. Our best calculations indicate that we should find a place where we can pick up that trail somewhere near here, if that makes sense.’

Bek shook his head and laughed. ‘You name places I’ve never heard of. One moment it’s midwinter, and the next it’s summer. You speak with a strange tongue, yet I can still understand most of what you say.

‘Besides,’ he added with another laugh, ‘I was not given the choice about being here or not. So, here I am.’ He narrowed his gaze at Pug. ‘And none of it makes sense.’

Pointing to a stand of trees a hundred yards to the north, he added, ‘But I think you’ll find what you’re looking for over there.’

Pug raised his eyebrows as he looked at Nakor, who shrugged. The two men turned towards the trees and Nakor said, ‘I don’t sense anything.’

‘Varen worked hard to disguise his work. Look how long it took us to trace the link this far.’

Turning to Bek, Nakor said, ‘Stay here so we can mark this spot if we find nothing in the trees.’

Bek took off the black hat he had taken from the man he had killed at the Talnoy’s cave and feigned a courtly bow. ‘Your wish is my command, Nakor.’

The two old friends walked towards the trees and Pug said, ‘Have you thought about what we should do with him?’

Nakor said, ‘The simple solution is to kill him.’

‘We’ve murdered for our cause, but only when we judged that there was no other way.’ Pug glanced back at Bek who stood quietly where they had told him to wait. ‘And had you thought that there was no other way, I am certain you would never have brought him to Sorcerer’s Isle.’

‘True. Potentially, he may be the most dangerous man we have ever encountered.’ Nakor reached into his bag, pulled out an orange and offered it to Pug who shook his head. The little gambler started to peel it. ‘As powerful as he is at twenty summers old, can you imagine what he might become in a hundred years, two hundred?’

‘Will he survive that long?’ asked Pug as they reached the edge of the trees.

‘Look at you, me and Miranda,’ said Nakor as they stepped between the boles. The white and brown peeling bark confused their vision for a moment, as did the sudden shadow after standing out in the midday sun. ‘You and Miranda have powerful magic to keep you young, but me, I only have my tricks.’

Pug nodded, smiling indulgently. ‘Call it what you will, Nakor. I’ll concede that your talent has no logic or system to it, but you may still be the most adept practitioner of magic on this world.’

Nakor shrugged. ‘I don’t think so, but that’s not the point.’ He lowered his voice, as if there was a remote chance Bek could overhear them. ‘I have something inside me, Pug. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s been here,’ he tapped his chest, ‘since I was a boy.

‘I am like Bek in some ways. But I think that whatever it is inside of me, it is not a piece of the Nameless One. But it is similar. I think that’s why I can do all my tricks.’

Pug nodded. ‘We’ve drunk many a cup of wine before the fire whilst discussing this sort of thing, Nakor.’

‘But this is not a theory anymore, Pug. He is real.’ He pointed in Bek’s direction. ‘And when I touched that thing within him, there was no doubt about what I found. No doubt at all.’

Pug nodded, saying nothing.

‘One of our favourite discussions is about the nature of the gods.’

‘Many times,’ said Pug.

‘I once told you that I suspected that there is an ultimate god. A being that is connected to everything – I mean everything, Pug. And everything below him, her or it, is also connected.’

‘I remember. It’s as good an explanation for how the universe hangs together as any I’ve heard. Your theory is that the Greater Gods, the Lesser Gods, and all other beings, were this ultimate god’s attempt to understand himself.’

‘I’ve said that he’s like a baby before – pushing things off a table to watch them fall, over and over and over. Watching and trying to understand what is happening. But we are talking about a time scale of millions of years; billions, perhaps. This supreme being has all the time in the world, more – it has all the time there ever was or will be.

‘Would it then not make sense that the gods beneath this one might also somehow reach down and touch lesser beings, so they too might come to understand their place in the universe?’

‘So the Nameless One placed a tiny piece of himself inside Bek in order to learn about his place in the universe?’

‘No,’ said Nakor. ‘It’s possible, but I don’t think that is his intention.

‘I think the Nameless One has had many agents like Varen working on his behalf over the years.’ Nakor looked at Pug. ‘Tell me about him.’

‘You’ve heard all I know already.’

‘Tell me about the time you first encountered him.’

‘When I first got word of him, he was already an accomplished practitioner of the dark arts. Arutha was the prince in Krondor then, and Duke James his principal agent, a young Baron at the time; he, my son, and one of my most able students confronted a magician named Sidi, who I now believe was Varen in a different body.’

‘I remember that story about the amulet,’ said Nakor. ‘No one’s ever found it, have they?’

Pug shook his head. ‘It’s still out there somewhere. Until the assault on Elvandar and our island last year, seizing the Tear of the Gods was Varen’s last overt attempt at bringing chaos to our world.

‘Between those events he was content to work in quiet, out-of-the-way, places.’

‘Like Kaspar of Olasko’s Citadel?’ asked Nakor with a grin.

‘Hardly an out-of-the way place, I’ll grant you, but how many people knew he was there? It was a very well-kept secret outside Kaspar’s household,’ Pug said. ‘His necromancy has given him the power to move from body to body. My research indicates that somewhere there is a vessel in which his true soul – for lack of a better term – resides. This allows his mind to capture bodies and use them at will.

‘He will not stop until he destroys the Conclave or any other opposition to his mission, which is simply to propagate evil at every hand. So, he is a problem.’ Pug pointed in Bek’s direction. ‘And now, from what you say, we have another one right over there.’

‘But I don’t think he’s like Varen,’ said Nakor, tossing aside the orange peel. ‘Varen was recruited, or seduced, or trapped, conned, or whatever term you like, either with the promise of power or eternal life or something. No sane man gives himself over willingly to evil.’

‘There is nothing sane about Leso Varen.’

‘But he may have been at one time,’ said Nakor, ‘merely a luckless man who blundered into the wrong place at the wrong time. That amulet you spoke of can take over a weak-willed man and drive him mad. And sanity is all that stands between good and evil.

‘There is no possibility that this young man will be remotely sane in a few more years. He’s already lost any sense of morality; he is driven by impulse and little else.’

‘What possible use can we have for a man with no morality, no moral compunctions against doing evil?’

‘We found a use for Kaspar, didn’t we?’ asked Nakor.

Pug was silent for a moment, then said, ‘Point taken, but he was under Varen’s influence. This lad is directly touched by the Nameless One. Isn’t that a difference?’