Authors: Greg Curtis
How did he do it? None of the other Circle wizards could fight him like that. Not even White Tail who still believed himself to be the most powerful wizard of the mind in the five kingdoms. He had folded easily and never even known. Now he was just a puppet like the others. But not the accursed summoner! Somehow Maynard kept slipping out from under his control. Some days Terellion suspected it was the damned work of the satyr god, Pan. He was an eternal trickster and the world of creatures was his domain. But could Maynard be a follower of Pan's? Could any human? Satyrs and fauns, yes. Not humans surely? Then again, some claimed that Pan was also Prometheus, and many wizards did follow him. Terellion himself had made the occasional offering. Until he'd launched his campaign of course. Now he knew there was no point. No god would help him. Not even Prometheus who was after all the god who had brought them both fire and magic.
Maybe it had been a mistake sending Maynard to Midland Heights. To let him a little further away from his direct control. But the bond had been tight and Terellion was sure he could control him at a distance through it. And in truth he'd just wanted the man out of his sight. Maynard was an embarrassment even when he wasn't causing him trouble. Terellion would have killed him if he hadn't been a part of the binding. He'd needed twelve Circle wizards for the binding, and when there were only eighteen to begin with and some of them like Rickarial had blood that allowed them to resist his will, Terellion had been short on numbers.
“Quiet you, the demons are close. They're in your thoughts.”
With just those few words and the thought behind them he twisted the summoner's thoughts, driving him to the edge and beyond with fear and most of all with the terror that Maynard's thoughts were not his own. And once again Terellion broke the summoner's reality. It was as easy as always but it would not be permanent. Nothing he could do to the summoner seemed to be permanent. In a few days the man would once again be free and causing him trouble.
Maynard screamed in terror, and Terellion knew the satisfaction that he'd broken him again. It was enough for the moment. In the end Maynard the Mad as they called him was only an annoyance. The demon king was the true threat. And if he wanted the High Priestess and was prepared to offer the Circle some more of the hard to get ingredients for the spells they needed to cast to learn the answers then that had to mean there was more to the woman than he knew. It was just a matter of finding out what. With that knowledge, maybe he could for once turn the deal around on the demon king.
Maybe it was time to have a chat with the demon king's thralls? Not Xin's first thrall obviously – the man was too closely connected to Xin and Xin might notice if Varrious' thoughts had been tampered with. But the man's aid. Just a quiet word in private which the woman would remember nothing of, always assuming he didn't have an unfortunate accident as a few others had had.
Terellion had found that killing them was often the safest option.
It was risky, but it was a risk he could limit, especially when no one knew he had the magic of the mind. They all still imagined he was just a summoner and worried much more about the faun White Tail. In fact the demon king's thralls were under strict command never to go near White Tail, or even to leave their false temple if he was in the city. But he wasn't in the city just then and no doubt they were feeling a little more relaxed because of it. The arrogant faun had his uses and acting as an unwitting decoy for Terellion was one of the most valuable of them.
After the soldier had gone Terellion decided to do it, and bellowed his orders at the other soldiers lined up around the wall.
“Bring me Odinne.”
Odinne was the right choice he thought. She was only a lowly ranked thrall among Xin's cohort, but she was often close to Varrious. More than that she was one of the few women among the thralls. Not worthy of bedding because of the plainness of her face, but still easily controlled because of her gender.
He could also claim a good reason for summoning her. She was the one who dealt with problems with the chimera in the city. And there were always problems with the chimera. The occasional accident when somebody got eaten or trampled. Most of the chimera were of course locked away. The furies were locked in a dungeon under the temple. The harpies had cages on the roofs of many of the buildings throughout the city. The leonids and cerberi had their own pens. But the minotaurs were allowed to wander around freely with just a keeper. They were the most docile of the beasts. But they were still dangerous and every so often they proved it.
If someone in that sordid pit of demon thralls knew what Varrious knew about his master's plans, she did. And she would tell him without ever knowing that she'd said anything at all.
Chapter Three
The Great Temple of Artemis. It was an impressive structure Terellion thought. The Huntress had had a loyal following. Though of course few of them now lived and the temple was no longer hers.
In fact it was no longer a temple at all. The shrines and altars inside had been destroyed. The priests had been killed. And everything that even looked sacred had been destroyed. What was left was just a building.
And yet for all that it remained impressive. And pretty. The domed roofs looked almost delicate in the day light, supported as they were on huge, thin columns. It was only when you got up close that you realised that those thin fluted columns were six foot thick marble. And when you looked up from underneath that you realised the domes were not delicate at all. They were incredibly solid and had been braced with massive lintels from underneath. Only the very edges of the domes were thin, and that was just to fool the eye.
It was also deceptive in its openness. It looked as though the temple was completely open. Purely a structure of tall columns and domed roofs. But it wasn't. It had a great many walls. The artisans who had crafted it had used many techniques to fool the eye. The marble of the walls was green veined with gold and black. Beautiful, but more importantly, able to remain unnoticed behind the rows of carefully planted trees. They had also built the temple down instead of up. So after you ascended the stairs to reach the giant plinth on which the temple stood, you then had to descend many more steps. The great chambers of the temple were actually dug into the massive plinth.
All of which meant that once inside the temple you could not be seen from the outside. Nor could you see outside. All you saw were walls of solid sandstone and marble, on top of which the impossibly tall columns stood, and then the roof arching overhead. On a good day the sun would shine between the columns, reminding you that the temple actually had no walls. Just a dome high above.
The gardens surrounding the temple added to its beauty. Untold centuries of gardeners had slowly surrounded the temple with massive gardens of trees and shrubs, not just for their beauty but because the Goddess was a forest guardian among other things. Where else could you go hunting after all?
Of course these days the gardens were filled with kennels for the cerberi, and like any hounds they tended to bay. Unlike most though, with two heads their baying was both disturbing and threatening. It was something about the way the two throats bayed in harmony.
From a distance when you approached the temple all you heard were the cerberi, and all you saw were trees – a small forest in fact. And from out of that forest endless delicate stone columns reached for the sky, together with a huge series of domes balanced precariously on top of them. It was a trick of the eye, but it was a good one. It was also very different from the style of his castle, which had solid stone walls and triangular stone roofs.
But the same was true of all of Lion's Crest. In fact, of all of the five kingdoms. There was no set style of design anywhere, whether it be a house, a temple or a castle. When the five kingdoms had first started to be settled a thousand to two thousand years before, artisans had come from all over the world to make their homes and start their businesses, and they all had different ideas of what a building should look like.
The temple's design had come from the far off lands known only as the Hellenic Isles. Some said they no longer existed. Others claimed that they had never existed. But it was from them that the pantheon of gods and the written language had come, not to mention the architecture of columns and lintels.
His castle had been built with the design ethic of the Teutonic peoples, another people from a far off land. And where the temple builders had favoured columns, friezes and delicate domes, the Teutonic had preferred massive square shaped walls of stone and solid buttresses. But then they were a brutal people. Their buildings were brutal and so were their gods. Was it any wonder then that the castle seemed ready to stand in battle against an army? The only exception to the sheer physical brutishness of the castle was in the massive arched windows.
Not far away was the city prison a ziggurat temple that had been converted to his needs after Terellion had taken the throne. Massive Romanesque aqueducts built of red brick ran overhead while sewers carried the waste to and from the city. The streets were cobbled in places, paved in parts, and bare dirt everywhere else. Some were narrow, some wide. Some were straight and some curved.
Every city in the five kingdoms was the same – a mix of designs and building materials. Wooden weather boards, rough hewn logs and brick stood side by side with mud and stone. Sharp angles and triangular roofs stood next to rounded walls and flat roofs. Even domes were popular, though none were as large as those of the Huntress' Great Temple. It gave the city a jumbled feel. As though it had never been planned. Which of course, it hadn't been. The city had slowly built up over the centuries as people had arrived from the different lands. But it also added something. Something creative and free; wild and fresh. It still had that something. Even after the terrible damage the attack had done to the city.
The Great Temple was in fact one of the reasons the Circle had first decided to take Artemis' following for their own. It was in the heart of Lion's Crest. It could conceal those who dwelt within from the rest of the city. And it could be defended if the need arose. As he approached, Terellion could see some of those defenders standing on the edge of the plinth looking out over the rest of the city, crossbows in hand. They should have been longbows, the traditional weapon of the Goddess, but when you hired mercenaries and most of them were skilled only with the crossbow, you had to settle. It was enough that they'd found enough uniforms of the original temple guards who'd fallen to dress them up as them.
The other main reason they'd chosen to take Artemis' temple from her was the Goddess herself. Though she was well liked as a goddess, she was not one of the most powerful. That was important when they'd had to break divine law in the case of whichever god or goddess' identity they assumed. With the other gods they didn't have to. Killing the priests and destroying the temples was not a breach of divine law. As long as the Circle didn't try to deny the existence of the gods, distort what they stood for, or prevent followers from praying to them they were fine. But with Artemis they'd had to destroy her name as well.
That was part of using her as a scape goat.
She would be angry. But whether she could persuade one of the more powerful gods to her cause was doubtful. Either Zeus flinging his lightning bolts their way or Nemesis unleashing his divine vengeance on them would have been a disaster. But that hadn't happened. The people could still pray to Artemis – few would of course – and her teachings hadn't been changed. It was just that they would blame her for what wasn't her doing.
Artemis had also been useful because of her nature. She was known to descend to the world from time to time simply to hunt. So for her to have descended this time for a longer period would be easily believed by the masses. Many of the other gods of the pantheon did not descend.
To add to that she was a huntress. Her followers, her priests and her guards were expected to be armed, which explained why the false temples they could build in her name could be homes to soldiers. No one seemed to notice that her guards now carried swords instead of longbows and hunting knives. The other gods and goddesses often did not have armed defenders. Hera's followers for example wandered the city without so much as a knife on them. Of course some Gods did actually have soldiers. Ares' followers for example were all heavily armed and well trained – especially the priests. After all he was the God of War. If they had taken his name that would have made things difficult when they had first had to take the temple. And they'd always had to. From the very start they'd needed the people to know that the chimera came from the temple of one god or another.
As a huntress Artemis also used hounds. Thus the chimera – no matter how twisted they were – could also be explained away as hounds of one sort or another. Traditionally the Goddess would have ridden a unicorn and been accompanied by griffins, but the chimera were close enough.
In the early days after the attack, convincing people that the Goddess had descended to the world on a great hunt had been important. At least until they had finally overcome the five kingdoms. And she had been the perfect scapegoat. Now, though they continued the lie, it didn't matter so much. The surviving people were so broken that they would believe anything they were told. Or more likely they simply didn't care enough to believe or disbelieve. They just obeyed without question. Even if some of them might have suspected it was all a lie, they obeyed.
None though he guessed, suspected the truth. That none of the current priests who to all intents followed Artemis, who wore her robes and stood in her temple, were in fact priests at all. That they were in fact thralls, their lives bound in service to the demon king. If they had guessed a few more of those that remained in Lion's Crest would have fled. As it was there were very few people left in the city. A few – a very few – survivors from the attack remained, some civilians he'd brought in to fix up some of the mess that had been left behind and to serve him, and after that mainly soldiers and wizards. All up perhaps thirty thousand people now called Lion's Crest home.
As Terellion slowly ascended the hundred paces of steps leading to the plinth on which the temple stood, he could see the leader of those thralls standing there in front of the huge wooden doors leading into the temple itself where the gate stood. Varrious, the first thrall of Xin.
As a man he wasn't that impressive. He was about thirty years of age, which was actually a good age for one of his calling – they tended to die young and of unnatural causes. He was also clearly no warrior of any sort. In fact he had the physique of a wizard, even though he had no magic of his own. What he had were charms of command that his master Xin had given him to control the chimera. Without them the chimera would have simply run wild, unable to be controlled by anyone. Not even by wizards. For since they hadn't been summoned in the first place, summoners like Terellion couldn't control them. And though most of them had human flesh at least in part, none of them had the minds of humans. So Terellion's own magic of the mind would not work on them either.
That was the demon king's intent of course. His part of the deal. The chimera were part of his army and he was not about to let them be controlled by anyone other than his thralls. Not even by his wizard allies. Especially not by them. So through that simple device the demon king had made himself and his thralls indispensable. Even if Terellion had wanted to get rid of the demon king's thralls and go back on Xin's deal, he couldn't.
“Varrious.”
Terellion addressed the first thrall once he made the top of the steps and stood in front of him. He even managed to do so respectfully, though he didn't like the man at all. Varrious was always untrustworthy, a shady character with a private agenda in Terellion's view. A man he would have very much liked to have taken direct control of through his magic. But he didn't dare. Although the thralls of Xin had no real ranks like priests or soldiers, Varrious was the one who seemed to lead them. He was closest to the demon king. And if any trace of Terellion's touch had been noticed the demon king might have seen and guessed what he could do. Hiding his magic of the mind was the single greatest protection Terellion could devise.
Terellion was also annoyed that he still had no idea why the demon king wanted the High Priestess brought to him. Odinne had told him everything she knew, but that had turned out to be nothing. She really was just another worthless woman. They had their place, tending to the men, cleaning their homes and warming their beds, but anything more than that seemed wrong to him. In fact he would have cheerfully killed her if she were not an ally.
“Terellion.”
Varrious never called him “Sir” as did the others, and that annoyed Terellion. The man was no Circle wizard. He was no one of any great importance. He had no great magic or learning behind him, no title or nobility. Who was he to address him by name? As if they were equals!
On the other hand he did serve one useful purpose. He acted as the intermediary between him and Xin.
Terellion had only ever spoken directly with Xin twice. Once when the deal had been struck and a second time two years later when the time had come to seal the deal with a binding spell and then begin the invasion. He never wanted to do that again. Even through the limited contact they had had, speaking across a portal where the vision was cloudy, he had seen enough to know that Xin was a truly frightening being. Powerful beyond what any human could be.