Sir Devon's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

Devon rode hard for Frostborn keep, his knights scattered behind him. Snow bit their faces. The frozen lake was miles back now, but the fear rode with them. Drusilla had counted every man. Devon knew a reckoning was coming. He just did not know how fast. They crested a dark ridge and Devon reined in. Below, on a slope of jagged black rock, stood a temple he had never seen. Its stone was black as pitch, carved with strange marks, dusted white by the storm. Its doors hung open. Light the wrong color leaked from inside. Devon's horse balked and would not go forward. The witch stood at the top of the temple steps. She had traded the swirling snow for a silver dagger, held loose in one pale hand. The ruby at her throat glowed like a coal. Behind her, in the dark doorway, waited a tall shape in a tattered black robe. Where its face should be there was only blackness. Devon felt the cold deepen in his chest. "You dug him up," Drusilla called. "Now watch him wake." She knelt on the black stone and pressed the dagger to her own palm. Blood ran onto the steps. The tall figure stepped from the doorway into the storm. He did not hurry. "I have waited long," the lich said. His voice was flat and quiet. "She holds the spot. That is all I need." Devon looked past them and his stomach turned. Beyond the temple lay the frozen ground where his men had died in the mountains. The snow there heaved. Armored hands broke through the crust. Fallen knights rose, their armor dark grey, their capes torn purple, their faces bare skulls with burning eyes. Devon knew that armor. It was his own order's steel. His dead were standing up wrong. "Those were my men," Devon said. "They were," the lich answered. "They work for me now." The risen knights turned toward Devon and drew their old blades. There were a dozen, then more. His living knights backed their horses, spears shaking. Devon counted the odds and knew he could not win this slope. Not today. Not against his own dead. "Fall back!" Devon shouted. "To the keep! Ride!" They wheeled and fled. Behind them the dead did not run. They walked, steady, in the tight formation Devon himself had taught the order to use. His own tactic marched against him now. Devon reached the gate of Frostborn keep with fewer men than he'd left with. He dropped from his saddle and looked back at the ridge. The black temple glowed in the dark. The lich was awake. The witch had opened his door with her own blood. And the dead of the Frostborn served the very evil Devon had sworn to root out. He had come to hunt the dark. Now the dark wore his order's face.