Jovan's Gaze
by
Aaron Dov
Copyright 2011 Aaron Dov,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0440-0
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To the mad minstrels and lunatic lunch-mates of my past. Thank you all.
For more information on Aaron Dov and his novels, visit www.tabletofdreams.com
PROLOGUE
Tapping. I could hear the tapping echo in the empty hallways. Tap, tap, tap. Somewhere ahead water dripped endlessly, and the sound carried outward from each tiny, wet impact, through the long stone-walled corridors, barren and scarred by burn marks. The sound carried all the way to my ears, knocking on my eardrums one after the other. It almost itched, the sound of it. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
It agitated me, set me on edge. I drew my short sword, felt the weight in my hand. I knew there was nothing here. I knew that. I was certain. This place was empty. It was so empty, not even insects dared trespass. It was as though they feared the place, as most creatures did. As most people did. It was not just that the massive stone keep was empty. Skyreach Keep had been that way for years. It was that it was always so silent, so utterly silent. It was like having thick cotton wadding in your ears. The silence was smothering, all consuming. I was alone, with nothing to keep me company but my own breathing and rustling. Still, the sword gave me some small comfort, like a child with a candle in the dark. It protected me from the tapping sound of the water against the stone.
It was dark here. The magic candles that should have burned eternally had long since been snuffed out by the angry storms that harried this place. The malevolence which once ruled here, and the magic which fed on it, had fled along with those whose darkness fueled it. The candles burned no more. The darkness hung in the corridor like a stench, some thick blanket of death that only added to the sense of emptiness. It was sickening, a barren deathscape where the silence was deafening.
Yet there it was. Tap, tap, tap. Incessant and loud, the water dripped upon the floor like a grim musician beating endlessly upon some odd instrument. The wooden floorboards which covered the stone floor were still intact in this part of the keep, so the drops must be falling into a puddle to make such a noise. So where was the water coming from?
It had not rained here in weeks. It almost never did, even before the war. The ground outside the keep, and for miles in every direction, was parched, cracked, and dead. The trees, sentinels, husks, stood as a reminder of just how very dead this place was, and had been since the magic plagues first took hold. Nothing grew here. Nothing could. The parched land did not help. The utter lack of water certainly did not help. So what was dripping? Some small container, knocked over during a plague storm? Surely, after so long, so very many years, anything apt to tumble would have long since done so.
The plague storms shook this place regularly. The raging storms pounded on the keep's walls, shook the ground, and sent fire and worse through the corridors. Anything not well sealed and stowed safely was long destroyed. The rooms and corridors, the dungeons and workshops, the rooms where machinations both dark and cruel were set in motion, all of them had been burned clean by some manner of stormy vengeance or another. Fire, rage, the cries of the dead. All of these things swept through the keep, and the lands which surrounded it, regularly. Fire, but not natural flame. No, not here. In this place, the fires burned with the angry, mournful cries of the dead, the countless victims who had suffered unspeakable ends in this place. This was one of the worst places in all of Theris, the darkest spot on a land where now only darkness reigned. Dark within dark. Only the throne room itself remained intact, its evil so deeply sunk into the stone, it kept out even the storms.
If it was not rain that dripped, if it was not some forgotten vial or vessel, what then caused the drip? I gripped my short sword tighter, leveled the blade for a quick, upward strike. Had some other wanderer decided to brave the storms, hoping for some trinket or treasure? In fifteen years, only a handful of us had ever dared come in sight of this terrible place. None but I had walked these corridors in well over a decade. The storms had seen to that, taking those less cautious than I in their wake. The shadows seared into the wall in the very next room attested to what happened when the foolish and inattentive wandered past their ability to stay alive. Their twisted forms, catching their last painful seconds, attested to that. This place, scoured though it was of the people who had made it such a fierce stronghold, did not suffer the presence of fools.
No, not other wanderers. I alone dared to come here. I claimed no great bravery to do so, since no danger but the storms held sway here. The exodus had drawn away all but the most terrible, the cruelest, and the most twisted denizens of this fallen, empty kingdom. They perished in those first few years, as the plague storms tore at places like this, scoured the land, and made short work of the drawn-out plans of those who lived here and conspired to do evil. Nothing that had lived here Before continued to do so After. After was a very different world, and only those who had come to understand its moods and desires had any hope of surviving in places like this keep.
No, I was alone.
So, what then dripped?
I caught my reflection in a shard of mirror upon the floor. My washed-out blue pupils stared back at me, the tanned skin framing them like the holy relics that once hung in the old reliquaries of the western monasteries. They were long since looted, yet I was not, and my thirty-five year old face seemed so much older. Was it the storms? Had they taken their toll upon my face? Surely not. There was not a wrinkle to be found on my face. My muscles were as taught and powerful as when I wore the King's crest. I brushed a lock of black hair aside; no gray to mar it. I was as fit a man as still remained in this plagued land, and yet I felt old. That feeling weighed upon me.
"Steady, Jovan," I whispered to myself. "Focus."
My words were a slight comfort, but more than most wanderers had in this terrible land. Perhaps it marked me as mad to speak to myself. Others said so, even Jeannine sometimes said so, yet I found that it gave me strength, and I needed that in great abundance. That was especially true in a place like Skyreach Keep.
"Focus on the task at hand, Jovan," I reminded myself, tearing my gaze away from my own tired visage.
I inched forward slowly, carefully, silently. The darkened corridors kept out the day's light. Even at its zenith, the sun could not find its way into this place in anything but the slightest portions. Still, it was enough. I could see far better in the dark than most could in the light, my eye sight growing more accustomed to the darkness every time I visited this place. The bare stone walls, gray, unyielding, seemed to close in on me. They were narrow, and the ceiling was low, built that way to make assault a terrible ordeal for the enemies of this place and its cruel Lord. The stone was scorched in places, blackened where the plague storms had swept through with fire. The scent had long since fled, but the black marks remained. The little light that found its way in illuminated the slight tatters of tapestries and such, rendered well beyond reading. These few artifacts of those who lived here crumbled underfoot, turning to dust as I passed.
I crept forward, the long corridor stretching out before me. The two doors ahead were both open, but I knew the sound was further ahead. The rooms themselves were empty. The room to my left had once been a guard post, where several