Crypt of the Violator Read online

  Crypt of the Violator

  The Vothan Guard, Volume 2

  K.J. Coble

  Published by Haymore House Publishing, 2021.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  CRYPT OF THE VIOLATOR

  First edition. November 26, 2021.

  Copyright © 2021 K.J. Coble.

  ISBN: 979-8201678340

  Written by K.J. Coble.

  Also by K.J. Coble

  Hell's Jesters

  Hell's Jesters

  Cry Havoc

  Rebel Hell

  Heroes of the Valley

  Defenders of the Valley

  Blood in the Valley

  Stand in the Valley

  The Quintorius Chronicles

  Lord of Exiles

  Legion of Exiles

  Republic of Exiles

  The Vothan Guard

  The Tome of Flesh

  Crypt of the Violator (Coming Soon)

  The Witch of Vendar

  The Witch of Vendar (Coming Soon)

  Standalone

  Magic Fire - Metal Storm

  The Shadows of Maunathyrr

  Ashes of Freedom

  Beyond the Bulwarks

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Also By K.J. Coble

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  EPILOGUE

  Sign up for K.J. Coble's Mailing List

  Further Reading: The Witch of Vendar

  About the Author

  For REH, whose influence was all over this one.

  CHAPTER ONE

  TAPERS OF A WEIRD, red wax fluttered from candelabras fashioned from onyx into likenesses of skulls. As they burned down, rivulets of melt flowed crimson over these, bloody-seeming as they drooled around jaws stretched open in silent screams. The stink of the flames bit the nostrils with an indescribable, infernal odor and their greasy smoke bunched in the corners of the large tent.

  More candles glowed from the hands of the men standing in a circle—not a circle; the five points of an unseen pentagram, as described by one of their number. All wore hooded cloaks of white, trimmed with inscriptions woven into the fabric, script of a hateful speech, long-dead. None moved. None spoke, until...

  “Enough of this mummery,” Duke Eddar Urius snarled from his spot and raised a hand to pull back his cowl. “We’ve stood here for an hour.”

  “Silence!” one of the others hissed. “Do not speak and do not move, on your life!”

  Urius bared his teeth, but the chill in the other man’s voice filled his blood, froze him in place. There was something happening now, finally, in the stagnant air of his personal pavilion. Hairs twitched across his neck, his scalp. The candles fluttered again, furiously, as though blown by a breeze that stirred nothing else.

  A clicking drew Urius’ attention to the middle of the room, to the object placed with painstaking care at the exact center of their formation.

  The sarcophagus appeared to be made of some hardwood, long blackened by age. The gold foil plastered over this had also darkened with tarnish, but the tiny jewels worked into its top still held a faint, wicked shine. A pair of these formed the eyes of a face carved into the head of the case and they caught the candlelight now, flared almost, as the whole thing twitched.

  Sweat drew an acidy streak down Urius’ spine.

  The man who’d scolded him pulled back his hood, too. He was a small, darkly handsome man with the eye-liner fashionable amongst Xyxia’s fallen, debased nobility. These accentuated the mad light in his eyes as thin lips peeled away from ivory teeth. “See, I told you.”

  The sarcophagus twitched again.

  Urius’ flesh began to crawl in earnest. Not for the first time did he note that the dimensions of the casket more fitted a child’s size than an adult. And as shuffling and scraping from within it intensified, he recalled shreds of the strange, wild story the Xyxian had told, of an expedition south to the headwaters of the Neelax River, of a raid on some depraved cult’s fastness, of the theft of the sarcophagus—

  —and of the slow, wasting deaths of every one of the expedition’s survivors, as though from some curse. All except the Xyxian who’d brought it here, Xass Kham, one of many claimants to the Deathless Throne, but the only one desperate enough to play for keeps.

  The sarcophagus rustled from within, a sound like pawing from the other side of a door. A blow shook the whole thing, jarred it an inch from its place. Another skipped it back the other way, caused moldy splinters to spiral off. The rustling became a steady scrape-scrape of fingers and the blows the impact of knees, elbows, feet.

  Urius licked his lips.

  A Strategos of the Scintallan Empire, he’d seen endless battles and crossed blades with barbarians and slayers of every nation. A councilor high in the court, he’d schemed and betrayed and—aye—murdered to maintain his station. A cousin to the Emperor, he’d marshalled resources and grasping men for a chance at the Throne, knowing each breath could bring his discovery and immediate execution.

  But damned if he didn’t want to run screaming from the tent in this moment!

  The lid of the sarcophagus popped open a sliver of an inch as a particularly savage strike from within broke its seals. Wisps of vaguely purplish dust puffed away and were gone. After a moment, Urius wasn’t certain he’d seen them. Wood crackled as the force inside pressed, bulged the lid further. Gold paneling crumbled or peeled back. A bead of onyx affixed to the side dropped free.

  Tiny fingers, darkened by centuries, trailing tags of funerary wrapping, wormed free of the gap and scrambled for purchase.

  A breath sucked in from the opposite point of the pentagram. Urius looked up and across at the man there, a monster barely hidden in his robes, golden-red beard spilling out of his cowl. Harald Hegruum had the tree-trunk height and build of his people, the Vothans, brutes of the wintry north who migrated to the warmer climes of the Scintallan Empire and took its pay in exchange for their swords and oaths. And, like all his folk, he had the simpleton’s fear of sorcery, which glimmered in his blue eyes, shown in sweat tracks streaking his pale flesh.

  “Don’t,” Xass snapped.

  The sarcophagus lid groaned open as another set of fingers clawed out from under it, joined the first set in peeling it aside. A crackle broke the last bit of resistance and the whole thing slid off. Every candle in the room fluttered. The thing in the casket slowly sat up.

  It was—had been—a child!

  Terror more than any false courage kept Urius planted to his spot. Nerves writhed within him. Nausea balled at the base of his gut and knees shivered, nearly gave out. He blinked sweat sting from his eyes and, for the first time, began to doubt the sanity of their small cabal’s scheme.

  The child-thing looked around and Urius realized his complaints of mummery had been quite accurate. Linen strips stained by time shrouded its little form, the discolorations not quite hiding cross-hatched script inked into them, hateful characters that hurt to look at—vague cousins of those woven into his ritual robes. Movement caused the brittle fabric to tear and flake and powder. A weird miasma seemed to hang about it as the wrapped form of its face turned to the Duke.

  Empty eye sockets looked back at him. Despite that, Urius felt a presence in those cavit
ies, drilling forth, a malice that couldn’t be denied. His guts liquified as the linens peeled back with the motion of its jaw, curving its decrepit face into what seemed almost a smile—something the bearing of sparse, fang-like teeth confirmed an instant later.

  What sounded like breath wheezed out between them.

  “The words,” Xass Kham ordered. “Now! As I taught you all! Speak them!”

  The five men arrayed around the unholy, writhing bundle began to chant, words that shook with each’s fear, but grew stronger with repetition. Urius had no idea their meaning, but they pushed out as though forced from him. He felt like boulder, shoved down the hill and gaining speed. So, too, did the energies that seemed to build with each utterance of the Xyxian’s phrase.

  Ee-Ech-Molod-Goz. Ee-Ech-Molod-Goz.

  Xass Kham began to trace something in the air with his candle. The motions left a filmy trail of crimson that lingered like some lighting-strike afterimage in the eyes. Each left a character not unlike the script on the child-corpse’s wrappings.

  The desiccated little form wheezed again, and there was no mistaking the rage in its voice. It began to pull itself upright, joints crunching as they flexed and straightened. Linens popped free, exposed winkled, papery dry flesh that split and spilled whisps of dust. The haze about it thickened as it stood and a smell of mold and something older, fouler caught in Urius’ throat. It took work to keep the words coming.

  Ee-Ech-Molod-Goz.

  The creature stepped free of the casket. Each motion seemed to take more work, though. A second step to drag its other foot free snapped and popped. Planting the foot caused it to stagger. It looked up with its empty sockets at Xass Kham, sweating profusely as he continued his chant, drawing his air letters. The sharp, little teeth gleamed in the candle’s infernal light.

  Ee-Ech-Molod-Goz.

  The child thing screamed.

  Urius gasped and dropped his candle, cupped hands to his ears. Xass did the same at his side. The others flinched or writhed in various, similar states. The thing’s cry rent the eardrums. But more, it pierced marrow and nerve, went deeper, slivered into the soul and left jags that cut and bled out terror of a sort unknown to Urius before. Death held no such dread, murder no such strain.

  The scream protested the violation of reality.

  And then ceased.

  A breeze puffed against the panels of the tent, shook the whole thing. The candle flames shivered wildly. A second gust boomed, ripped open the front flaps of the pavilion and sand from the wastes beyond swirled in. The air rasped and moaned, drowned out the airy hiss of the upright corpse, which turned and flinched as the current whipped about it.

  Sand swirled in the flung-open entrance of the tent, a funnel that drew further vortices to it, grew in size, bulged at the middle and began to take form. Urius had long-since stopped chanting, though his sweat-slick lips still moved mindlessly. Twin pricks of fire that gleamed momentarily from the little storm brought even this to a halt. His palate tasted of the ash that whirled and materialized before him.

  A figure formed for an instant. Sand eddies became twists of burial linens, inscribed like those of the child-thing. Half-rotten claws curled, and time-eaten limbs bent. The thing swayed with the wobble of the dust-devil forming it. A face more skull than the flesh peeling away from it sneered out at the five men. Sockets deprived of eyes turned to the split-open casket and its animated contents.

  Even Xass Kham no longer bothered to continue the chant.

  The sands hissed with a fury like fat boiling as they twined up into the form. The linens disintegrated, reformed as flesh, smooth and lifelike. Limbs straightened, hands rose with fingers flexing, and the face seemed to un-melt, skin flowing back over bones. Eyelids slipped over empty cavities, extended out as lashes painted to an ancient, yet familiar style. When they opened again, eyes flared ember-like before cooling to a dark, limpid brown.

  A womanly shape of tilted hips and haughty posture glowered at the men. Attire of bejeweled finery hung off her curvaceous form, concealing little, a lewd echo of a freer, yet more terrible age. Painted lips crooked and a tongue flicked over them, wetted them, gave a glimpse of teeth ivory and almost sharp within.

  “It has taken millennia,” the woman said in cruel, throaty voice, “but finally you have woken Thyss-Ulea.”

  “My lady!” Xass Kham exclaimed and folded to one knee. A desperate side glance at Urius guided him to do the same, and quickly. The others followed suite, Harald practically collapsing. The giant had dropped his candle, let it gutter out at his side as he folded his arms over his face and blubbered quietly into them.

  The child-corpse turned stiffly to her and folded at the waist. She stepped into the tent, past the men, and regarded it with a slight flinch. “You found one of my children. Few have escaped.” She glanced down at Xass. “You are Khemite?”

  “There are no more Khemites, Exalted One,” Xass replied without looking up. “All that remain of them are degraded cults, worshipping trinkets of your great era.”

  “Worshipping the dead,” she finished for him with a scowl of disdain. “They do not understand.”

  “No,” Xass replied. “But I did. I read the ancient Texts of Thyssus in the Forbidden Library. I studied the hieroglyphs on the walls of Tuthardem. I took the child from the Temple of Zet and killed the cultists who’d stolen it. I have dedicated my life to this moment. Highness!” Now he looked up. “Please, command me.”

  “Command you,” the thing called Thyss-Ulea mused. Slowly, she turned and regarded the others, pausing for a moment to chortle at Harald’s shivering form before setting her terrible, dark gaze upon Urius.

  The Duke—devils and mummery be damned—refused to look away.

  “What of these?” she asked.

  “They come to serve you, as well,” Xass insisted.

  “Oh?”

  “How is it that I understand you?” Urius demanded. “You are of an age thousands of years past and half a world away, and yet I hear words that would be at home in the royal court of my homeland.”

  Her smile chilled his blood. “The dead all share the same language.”

  “I am not dead.”

  “You’re not,” she replied softly, but with a smirk that sent unease spidering down his spine. “Who are you?”

  “Eddar, Duke of Dareasia, of the Empire of Scintallos.”

  “Scintallos...” she murmured thoughtfully. “The pestering cult that thought to supplant Osis as the god of the sunrise.”

  “He is the Sun!” Urius rumbled, driven by fear to piety he didn’t normally bother to feign.

  “He is immaterial,” Thyss-Ulea snapped. “But you...what do you want of me, Duke Eddar of the Scintallans?”

  “Alliance,” Urius replied. “This man” he nodded at Xass “seeks the Deathless Throne over his dozens of older brothers. But he has few followers and a small army. Mostly he has the devilry that summoned you here tonight. But my Emperor seeks a foothold in the Nightmare Lands, has delusions of purifying them, and needs a buffer state. So, we come with our own forces to aid Xass Kham’s rebellion.”

  “I asked what you want.”

  “The Emperor is my cousin, but more to the point, a buffoon. His crusades have drained our coffers and destabilized our state. Yet he ventures forth once more! His religiosity inspires the people, still, but they are fickle. An accident of war would be all that it takes to send them seeking elsewhere.”

  “So, two fools in search of two thrones.”

  “Exalted One,” Xass said with fervor, “our joint campaign has brought us near the ruins of Zadam! We expect to engage the army of my brothers within sight of its pyramids.”

  “Ruins...” the phantom noblewoman again mused, this time with a faint wince. “The sands of time slip so easily. I hardly feel their passage, anymore. Is that Oblivion? To feel nothing, care not at all?” She seemed to stare off into some horrid distance, a hand drifting to her breast. It tensed and she blinked away the reverie, looked
at Xass with a flare to her gaze. “I was Queen over the Nightmare Land, over all that your brutish hordes now trample.”

  “I would have you be Queen again,” Xass replied with a shiver.

  “In exchange for your own seat?”

  “When we defeat the Xyxian Loyalists,” Urius growled, “we will be at the ruins’ outskirts, as Xass says. The wealth buried beneath is known throughout the world. There will be the curious, of course, as well as the less-principled who might explore in their leisure. Who knows what they might stir up?”

  Thyss-Ulea chortled. “You speak of My Children.” She regarded the child-corpse still bowed stiffly before her pityingly. “And you suggest the Dead Guard, butchered to accompany our family into the Afterlife.” Her chortled became a cackle, manic and bitter. “Oh, the Afterlife! What fools we were, to believe the promises of the Dark!”

  “Fat and tired with victory,” Urius pressed on, despite her rattling proclamation, “the Scintallan army would be vulnerable to an attack from an unexpected direction.”

  “You would feed your own men to the Damned to gain a throne,” Thyss-Ulea said with a sparkle to her spectral eyes. “I see time has not made men any wiser.”

  “I would take what is mine!” Urius barked, clenching his fist before him, fear forgotten. “My cousin pisses away the greatest realm ever to stride the Mid Sea Basin! He squanders wealth and men on his endless whimsies! He is a slobbering dunce, the last scion of a bled-out line that would rather pray than rule!”

  Thyss-Ulea regarded him without words, with only that red smile and those witch-light eyes. The otherworldliness about her seemed to fade a moment, the veil between planes parted and her presence becoming warm, material. The curves of her form called with human familiarity, the rich acres of her darkly olive-tan flesh inviting. He felt a surge within him, but not of fear or rage.

  “What you plan is complicated,” she said at last, and turned to Xass Kham, “and you know we cannot leave the city. I am but a shadow, projecting myself even this far.”