Embermore: Curse of Amaranthis BOOK TWO

Rain had been falling since dawn, turning the road outside Embermore into a black ribbon of mud that wound beneath the kingdom’s eastern gate. King Mordred stood beneath the stone archway with his cloak drawn tightly around his shoulders, watching the storm consume the countryside beyond the walls. The watchtowers rose on either side of him like ancient teeth against the gray sky, their torches sputtering whenever the rain found them. Embermore had survived worse than a storm. It had survived famine, plague, invading armies, and winters that buried entire villages beneath snow. Mordred had spent thirty years learning that kingdoms rarely fell because of the catastrophe everyone could see coming. More often, ruin arrived quietly, wearing the face of something that seemed harmless until it was already standing inside the walls.

That was why the gates remained closed. Not because of the rain, but because of the man standing beyond them.

Mordred narrowed his eyes as he studied the stranger. The man stood alone in the middle of the road, perhaps fifty paces from the gate, seemingly untouched by the miserable weather surrounding him. He wore a lilac robe that hung strangely still around his body despite the wind, its hem already stained with mud. He carried nothing that Mordred could see. No weapon, no traveling pack, no staff. Nothing that explained how a man could have walked through such weather and appeared so utterly unconcerned by it. He looked less like a traveler who had wandered into Embermore and more like something the storm itself had carried out of some distant and forgotten world.

Mordred had heard the name whispered by merchants, travelers, and soldiers for months: Amaranthis, a warlock. Some claimed he had lived for centuries. Others insisted that he could turn blood into fire, speak with the dead, and make a man forget his own name with nothing more than a word. Mordred had dismissed most of those stories as tavern nonsense. People invented monsters when ordinary dangers weren’t frightening enough. Yet years upon the throne had taught Mordred another lesson, one he had never forgotten: sometimes the stories were not inventions. Sometimes they were warnings.

The stranger slowly raised his head, and even from the gate Mordred could see the smile beneath his hood.

“King Mordred,” Amaranthis called.

His voice carried through the rain with unsettling clarity.

Mordred stepped away from the shelter of the archway, and the guards surrounding him immediately straightened. “You know who I am.”

“I know precisely who you are.”

“Then you know this is Embermore.”

“I do.”

“And you know my laws.”

Amaranthis’s smile widened slightly. “I know many things.”

There was something about the man’s voice that irritated Mordred more than outright insolence would have. It was too calm, too certain, as though every word had already been spoken in his mind before Mordred ever heard it. The warlock stood in the road like a man who believed the kingdom beyond the gate already belonged to him.

“You will not enter,” Mordred said.

Amaranthis tilted his head. “Perhaps you should reconsider.”

“I have nothing to reconsider.”

“I have traveled a considerable distance.”

“Then travel farther.”

“I seek only shelter.”

“You seek entry.”

“Yes.”

“And you shall not have it.”

For a moment, Amaranthis said nothing. The rain drummed against the stone walls and armor of the guards. Mordred watched the warlock carefully, waiting for anger, fear, or perhaps some indication that the man understood he had been refused. Instead, Amaranthis merely sighed.

“King Mordred,” he said, “I am not your enemy.”

“That is exactly what an enemy would say.”

“I am offering you an opportunity.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You don’t even know what it is.”

“I don’t care.”

Amaranthis’s expression hardened. “That may be your first mistake.”

Mordred’s patience finally broke. He had spent the morning listening to reports of broken carts, arguing with his council over grain shipments, and settling a dispute between two noble families who had apparently decided that murdering one another over a patch of farmland was preferable to paying taxes. He had no intention of spending the rest of his day standing in the rain while some wandering sorcerer attempted to impress him with riddles and threats.

Mordred descended the final stone step and approached the warlock until only a few feet separated them. Up close, Amaranthis looked older than he had from the gate. His face was pale and lined, but his eyes possessed an unnatural brightness that seemed almost youthful. Mordred couldn’t decide whether their color was violet or merely a reflection of the lilac robe surrounding him.

“You are Amaranthis,” Mordred said.

“At last.”

“I’ve heard enough about you.”

“Have you?”

“I’ve heard that you practice forbidden sorcery.”

“Many forms of sorcery are forbidden by frightened men.”

“I’ve heard that villages have emptied after you visited them.”

“People leave places for many reasons.”

“I’ve heard that you speak with the dead.”

Amaranthis smiled faintly. “Sometimes the dead have more interesting things to say than the living.”

Mordred stared at him for several seconds before pointing toward the road. “Turn around.”

Amaranthis did not move.

“Leave Embermore.”

Still, the warlock remained where he stood.

Mordred’s hand closed around the hilt of his sword. He had given the man every opportunity to leave peacefully, and yet Amaranthis seemed determined to test the limits of his patience. Mordred’s voice hardened as he stepped closer.

“I have no time for your sorcery, fool! You will leave, or I shall smite that head of yours clean off.”

Something changed in Amaranthis’s expression. The smile disappeared, but not entirely. For the briefest moment, Mordred thought he saw something almost like satisfaction behind the warlock’s eyes.

“Clearly you do not realize who I am.”

Mordred answered by shoving him.

Amaranthis stumbled backward and fell directly into the mud.

For several seconds, nobody moved. One of the guards turned his head, apparently attempting to conceal a laugh, but Mordred ignored him. He stood over the fallen warlock with his sword still at his side, watching as Amaranthis slowly pushed himself upright. Mud streaked his lilac robe and stained his hands, yet his face remained strangely calm.

Mordred looked down at him. “I realize exactly who you are. You’re a man who has mistaken my patience for weakness.”

Amaranthis lifted his head, and Mordred noticed that his eyes had changed. The violet seemed darker now, almost black around the pupils.

“You have made a grave error.”

Mordred drew his sword, the blade flashing beneath the gray sky. “No. I’ve made a decision.”

“You would deny me entry?”

“I would.”

“You would turn me away?”

“I would.”

“You would challenge me?”

Mordred stepped closer, refusing to give the warlock the satisfaction of seeing hesitation in his face. “And I’ll be damned if I do!”

For a moment, Amaranthis simply stared at him. Then he laughed. It was not loud, but somehow that made it worse. The guards shifted uneasily around Mordred, and the king could feel something in the air now, something he couldn’t name. The rain seemed quieter. The wind had died. Even the torches along the gate appeared to burn without flickering.

Amaranthis slowly rose from the mud. “Sleep tight, King. It’s the last time you ever will.”

Mordred’s expression hardened. “Guards,” he ordered. Four soldiers immediately stepped forward. “Cut off his head.”

The guards raised their swords, and Amaranthis did not move. The first blade came down, followed by the others, but before a single sword could reach him, the air around Amaranthis rippled as though the world itself had become a disturbed pool of water. His figure blurred, his lilac robe dissolving into the rain, and in the space between one heartbeat and the next, he was simply gone.

The swords struck nothing.

The guards stumbled forward, staring at the empty patch of road where the warlock had stood only moments before. Mordred remained frozen beneath the gate, his sword still in his hand, staring at the space as if sheer force of will might compel Amaranthis to reappear. But there was nothing there except rain, mud, and the faint impressions of footprints already disappearing beneath the water.

One of the guards slowly lowered his sword. “Your Majesty...”

Mordred raised a hand, and silence fell.

His gaze shifted toward the road beyond Embermore, searching the gray horizon for any sign of the warlock. There was none. Amaranthis had vanished without leaving behind a weapon, an artifact, or any physical trace that might explain what had happened.

Yet Mordred could still hear the man’s voice in his mind: Sleep tight, King. It’s the last time you ever will.

Mordred clenched his jaw. He had spent his life believing that a king was protected by walls, soldiers, laws, and the fear of consequences. Standing there in the rain, he suddenly wondered whether any of those things mattered against an enemy who could simply disappear before a sword reached him.

Then a strange thought struck him.

Amaranthis had never truly fought him.

Not once.

He had asked to enter Embermore, certainly, but he had never tried to force his way through the gate. He had not attacked the guards. He had not cast a spell when Mordred threatened him. Even after being shoved into the mud, he had simply smiled.

Mordred’s grip tightened around his sword.

Why?

The question came too late.

He looked back at the place where Amaranthis had stood and remembered the warlock’s words.

I am offering you an opportunity.

Mordred had assumed the opportunity was entry into Embermore.

Now, with the rain washing the last traces of Amaranthis from the road, Mordred wondered whether the warlock had been offering something else entirely.

Perhaps Amaranthis had never needed to cross the gate.

Perhaps he had only needed Mordred to open his mouth and refuse him.

The thought was absurd. It was superstition. The kind of nonsense Mordred had spent his reign stamping out.

And yet the cold spreading through his chest had nothing to do with the rain.

Behind him, Embermore continued as though nothing had happened. Bells rang somewhere within the town. A cart rattled over cobblestones. Citizens hurried beneath awnings, complaining about the weather, unaware that a warlock had stood outside their walls and spoken to their king.

Mordred watched them through the gate.

For the first time, the walls of Embermore did not look like protection.

They looked like a boundary.

And somewhere beyond that boundary, Amaranthis was alive.

Mordred had thought he was the one deciding whether the warlock entered his kingdom.

Now he was no longer certain who had been deciding what.

The guards waited for another command, but Mordred gave them none. He simply stared into the rain, remembering the faint satisfaction in Amaranthis’s eyes when the king had finally spoken the words he wanted to hear.

Somewhere in the storm, far beyond the reach of Mordred’s sword, the warlock was smiling.

The king did not know what Amaranthis had come to Embermore for.

He only knew, with a certainty that settled like ice beneath his ribs, that turning the warlock away had not ended anything.

It had begun it.