Chains of Blood

by M. L. Spencer

  Walking at his side, Ashra said quietly, “That could be us, Gil. If we’re captured. Whatever they did to Payden, they could do to any of us.”

  Gil glanced at her sharply. “I know.”

  She wrapped her arms tightly about herself. “Doesn’t that terrify you?”

  It did. So much so that he didn’t want to admit it. They emerged from the corridor into the vast, echoing cistern. Gil paused, looking around at the long rows of pillars that marched away from them at odd angles. The effect was almost dizzying, like staring at a reflection within a reflection.

  “Was he always attracted to men?” Ashra asked.

  “No,” Gil said. “He wasn’t.” He took a step forward.

  The entire subbasement jolted with a terrible rumble. The floor beneath Gil bucked, tossing him off his feet. Ashra staggered and fell on top of him. The ground quaked again, and chunks of the ceiling rained down all around them. The pillar beside them crumbled, feeding the air with clouds of dust.

  Rolling off him, Ashra cried, “What happened?”

  Gil scrambled to his feet, choking on dust. “That had to be a fire strike.”

  It had to be one of the deadly fireballs produced by the Khar’s chained mages. He couldn’t imagine the power it would take to conjure something so devastating. All it would take was one direct hit to destroy the Lyceum. So far, they’d been lucky. But perhaps their luck had run out.

  The building shuddered again, and a terrible fear clenched his gut.

  “Come on!” Gil shouted. “We have to get out of here.”

  27

  Suheylu Ra

  They were almost a week out from the waystation. The Scalding Sea was days behind them, although they’d never managed to escape the haze-infected sky. It hung low overhead like a dirty pane of glass, fouling the sunlight. The temperature soared. Every night before they made camp, they stopped and searched for water, never finding it. The only opportunity they’d had to refill their canteens was when the sky had thickened with thunderheads that poured rain down on top of them in a violent downpour that lasted only minutes. Rylan scrambled to lay out a canvas tarp, using it to catch water to fill their canteens. That was two days ago. The water was starting to run out.

  The ground they walked across was just as parched as he was, its skin aged and cracked like old leather. They’d left behind the sea of wandering dunes that had consumed the landscape beyond Puna Ajaru and now crossed what looked like a dried lakebed. Every once in a while, a lone tuft of grass erupted from one of the cracks in the scorched clay. The first time Rylan had come across the sight of grass, he’d almost whooped with joy. It was a sign the Desolation wasn’t never-ending. He glanced at Xiana with hope, but only received a half-hearted smile in return.

  They made camp for the night amidst a group of strewn boulders that looked out of place against the otherwise unblemished landscape. There was no kindling for fire, not that they needed one. Nights in the Desolation were warm, and they had nothing to cook. Rylan occupied his time whittling a piece of wood he’d picked up at the waystation, while Xiana lay on her side, elbow on the ground, head propped in her hand. She was watching him work, her eyes fixed on the motion of his knife blade.

  Rylan held the piece of wood up to his mouth and blew off the shavings, then turned it slowly to examine his work. He hadn’t set out to make anything in particular, but somehow the wood in his hand had taken on the form of a woman in a simple dress. She had no face, and he wasn’t going to give her one. He wasn’t that good with a knife, and he’d only mess it up. Better to leave the face blank, an empty canvas for his imagination.

  “Is that your wife?” Xiana asked.

  He nodded, using the knife blade to shave a little more texture into the hair. Emma’s hair had been beautiful. Long and chestnut, the color of an autumn sunset. She’d usually worn it twisted into a bun, though he’d preferred it loose. He could still remember the way it smelled, like summer blossoms. Like her.

  “Describe her to me,” Xiana prompted.

  Rylan didn’t look up. Keeping the blade moving, he answered, “She was perfect. Kind, beautiful. Sincere. Full of love.”

  Xiana pushed herself off the ground, sitting up. “How did she die?”

  Rylan swallowed, the question provoking a brief but sharp stab of pain. He started carving another fold into the figure’s skirt. “She died in childbirth. I wasn’t there.”

  Xiana’s eyebrows knitted together in a look of compassion. “Where were you?”

  “Fighting a damn war,” he said without looking at her. He slipped with the knife, opening up a small cut in his finger. A red bead of blood swelled from the wound. He brought the finger up to his mouth and sucked it clean, then returned to his carving.

  “At least your daughter survived,” Xiana said. “What is she like?”

  Rylan scowled. “I wouldn’t know.” He pressed the knife point deeply into the wood, carving out a slice. “I was discharged after two years of service in the King’s army. I’d just gotten home, the day of the attack. I spent only three hours with Amina and Korey. Then my father asked me if I’d like to go into town so he could buy me a drink. I went.” He shrugged. “I thought I’d have the rest of their childhood to spend with them. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have gone.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Xiana’s face fill with sympathy. He focused his attention harder on the carving. His finger had started bleeding again, and the blood had soaked into the wood, darkening the figure’s breast. Somehow, the stain seemed appropriate. He blew the dust off again, examining his work. Satisfied, he sheathed the knife and tucked the carving away, then laid down to sleep with his back to Xiana.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she said softly.

  He closed his eyes. “No. But that doesn’t change anything.”

  They woke early the next morning and started out again across the dry lake. Eventually, the clay was replaced by sand as the terrain sloped upward into a wide plateau. A cool breeze eased their journey. It was refreshing after so many days under an oppressive sky and a sweltering sun. When they finally reached the edge of the plateau, Rylan stopped and looked down.

  And gasped.

  Below them spread a vast expanse of forest filled with oaks and sycamores, a forest that went on forever, as far as he could see, a continuous expanse of unadulterated green. Here and there, man-made structures peeked out from amidst the trees. Tall towers and rooftops, high walls and elaborate fortifications. A circular, many-spoked structure that resembled a wheel, made of stone. An entire city lay buried beneath the forest, which was partitioned into even, geometric patterns by the remains of ancient roadways. An entire metropolis, long uninhabited and thoroughly overgrown.

  “What is that?” Rylan asked, nodding in the direction of the ruins.

  Beside him, Xiana stood surveying the view, her hair stirring in the breeze. “Suheylu Ra.”

  Rylan stared down at the landscape, feeling mildly shocked. He’d thought Suheylu Ra was a town in the Desolation, or perhaps just an outpost. He’d pictured something in the middle of the waste, a place where caravans might come to trade and rest. He hadn’t been expecting an abandoned city in the middle of a dense forest. His eyes wandered over the nearest husk of a building that rose several stories above the canopy. Layers of balconies ribbed its sides, and vines wandered its walls like veins. One side of the building had crumbled away, the rubble lost beneath the sea of trees.

  “What happened to it?” Rylan asked.

  Xiana’s hand rose to touch the purple bruise on her face. “Suheylu Ra was attacked by the Turan Khar.”

  Rylan blinked, looking out over the ruins. “The Turan Khar did this?”

  The city below had been more than twice the size of Karikesh, and by the amount of overgrowth, it had been abandoned for centuries. He’d seen the Khar army and knew how devastating their mages could be, but this… this was devastation on a magnitude he couldn’t even fathom. An entire civilization lay before him, er
ased.

  “How long ago did this happen?”

  “Eight thousand years,” Xiana said. Before he could react, she started forward again, striding toward a dirt path that led down the side of the plateau.

  “Eight thousand years?” he called after her. When she didn’t respond, he hurried after her, stumbling over a rock that turned underfoot. The path was steep and made of red clay riddled with cracks and small stones.

  “And why did you bring me here?” Rylan asked, catching up to her. He slipped as the dirt beneath him crumbled.

  Ahead, Xiana took the trail nimbly, making her way downslope with ease. Looking back at him, she answered, “I told you. I don’t have time to train you, and you don’t have time to learn. In Suheylu Ra, you will find all the knowledge you need.”

  He didn’t speak to her after that, instead focusing his concentration on getting down the hill without falling on top of her. Eventually, the dirt path led off the plateau and into a grass meadow that bordered the margin of the forest. As they walked, trees sprouted up infrequently from the grass, mostly oaks, small and sparse at first, eventually becoming taller and more frequent the further they went. Soon, they were walking within a moist and shadowy woodland.

  The forest was dense, though there were many snags and fallen trees that looked like enormous bleached skeletons. The ground beneath their feet was thick with detritus; far more leaf litter had accumulated than Rylan would expect in such a forest. And there was no birdsong to be heard. The noise of the wind blowing through the branches was the only sound surrounding them.

  Overhead, the tree limbs parted, revealing a stone tower that thrust out of the ground, high into the sky. As they walked past it, Rylan saw it was an enormous monolith of fluted granite that looked scorched by an inferno. He had no idea what the function of such a structure could be; it wasn’t a dwelling or any type of fortification he could imagine.

  “Does anyone still live here?” he wondered aloud.

  “No,” Xiana answered, wiping the sweat out of her eyes. “No one can survive here. The air is contaminated.”

  Rylan recoiled, his eyes going immediately to the canopy of tree branches that hung low overhead. Her eyes followed his gaze.

  “The further we go in, the worse it gets,” she told him. “It kills anyone who lingers too long in this region. So we must hurry. A person can spend only one day here and still leave safely. And you can never come back again.”

  “Why not?” Rylan stared suspiciously around at the trees, a cold and eerie feeling creeping over his skin. He thought perhaps there was a taste on his tongue, something metallic; he couldn’t be sure. Nervous, he spat the taste out of his mouth. A branch broke underfoot with a sharp crack. The sound made him flinch.

  Xiana said, “The entire time we’re here, our bodies will be absorbing the taint that is in the air. It will never leave us; we will carry it with us the rest of our lives. It won’t harm us, so long as we never come back. But for anyone who returns to Suheylu Ra, it’s as though they never left. A person can only survive so much of the poison. That’s why each person can only come and go once in their lifetime.”

  With her words, the shadows of the forest somehow seemed thicker and more menacing. Rylan’s eyes darted to a dull gray wall covered in vines and found himself repulsed. His lungs suddenly hurt. He could almost feel the poison in the air seeping into his body. Groping fingers of fear traced over his skin, and a cold sweat broke out on his brow.

  He stopped in his tracks. “I don’t want to go any further.”

  Xiana halted and turned toward him, scowling. “You don’t have a choice. Not if you want to rescue your daughter.”

  His skin itched. Absently, he reached up and scratched his arm, probably harder than he should have. Looking down at the red patch on his arm, he wondered if the contamination wasn’t poisoning him already.

  Xiana said, “The training of deizu takes years. Do you want your daughter to wait years for you to learn all the things you need to know in order to rescue her?”

  Rylan scowled, knowing she was right. “No.”

  “Then let’s go. If you’re worried, wrap your scarf around your face.”

  He’d forgotten all about the scarf she’d given him. He started fishing it out of his pack but then stopped himself, wondering how effective it would be at filtering out the contamination. Apparently, Xiana didn’t think it would do any good; her own scarf remained tucked away in her pack. Grimacing, Rylan left the scarf where it was.

  She started forward again, her feet crunching on dry leaves and dead twigs. They walked on in silence for a long time. He focused on the conspicuous absence of sound in the forest. There was no rustling of squirrels, no insects, nothing.

  “All the animals are gone,” he said, stating the obvious.

  Xiana nodded. “No animal can survive here.”

  Ahead of them, a dark granite wall sprawled across their path, overgrown with vines. Saplings sprouted out of cracks in its sides, and the top of the wall was covered with shrubs and small trees. Xiana made toward an opening almost invisible through a thick net of vines. The passage through the wall was almost like a cave, humid and dark. It stank of water and loam.

  They emerged from the cavity onto a brick-paved street lined with tall buildings. Most of the pavement was broken, and pieces of uprooted bricks were scattered across the ground. Tall trees and bushes erupted from the street and groped out of rooftops and windows, reclaiming what was once rightfully theirs.

  The surrounding buildings were made of architecture that was completely foreign, all right angles and unadorned blocks of stone. They were mostly intact, though parts had given way and collapsed into the street. They had to pick their way carefully around the rubble. Rylan was careful to follow Xiana’s path closely, not trusting the pavement.

  “How is it possible that all this is still here?” he asked, staring in wonder at the petrified bones of the city. “Why hasn’t it all just crumbled to dust?”

  “Nothing decays here as it should,” Xiana responded.

  The buildings surrounding them were growing progressively larger, encasing them, much taller than any buildings he had ever seen before. He walked with his head craned, wondering how such soaring structures could have ever been built, much less survived thousands of years intact. Xiana turned onto a wide road that was completely overgrown. Rylan followed her, stepping around bushes and tall clumps of grass. Overhead, the sky darkened as a bank of clouds passed in front of the sun.

  “Suheylu Ra was the capital of Shira,” Xiana informed him. “It was the most beautiful city in the world, and also the most advanced. All built with magic. There’s never been anything that could rival it. In Suheylu Ra, there were wonders you can’t imagine, because you have no context. There’s nothing like it that exists today.”

  With a proud smile that seemed out of place, she went on, “Suheylu Ra was a center of learning and the arts. This is where the first school of magic was born, and the study of the arcane reached its pinnacle, thousands of years before Aerysius or the Lyceum of Bryn Calazar were ever built. The people of Shira celebrated free thought and exploration. They hungered for knowledge and searched for it endlessly. That’s how they created all of this. And that’s what drew the Turan Khar.”

  Rylan was taken aback. “Are you telling me the Turan Khar have been around for eight thousand years? That’s impossible. No empire lasts that long.”

  “The Khar Empire existed at the time of ancient Shira,” Xiana assured him. “And now they’ve come back.”

  The tremor in her voice gave Rylan pause. He looked at her. “What do you mean, ‘they’ve come back?’”

  Xiana turned to face him, her thumbs hooked in the straps of her pack. “The Turan Khar conquered Shira, but in doing so, they doomed their own empire.” She started walking forward again, turning down another road as though she knew exactly where she was going. “The Khar created a weapon that combined both magic and anti-magic. The two can’t be mi
xed; they annihilate each other. As you see, the results are cataclysmic.” She waved her hand through the air, indicating the vast expanse of devastation that surrounded them. “Anti-magic isn’t native to our world, so the Khar had to get it from somewhere. They pulled it from the Netherworld.”

  Her words made Rylan shiver. Again, his skin prickled. Almost, he could feel the air’s corruption seeping into him through his pores. “So, this anti-magic,” he said warily. “Is it the same as the Onslaught?”

  The Onslaught was the power of hell. The Well of Tears had been created by Xerys’s Servants to harness the power of the Netherworld, and his own father had been one of them. Darien Lauchlin had been capable of drawing on that power… and now, he feared, he could too. The oath he had made in the cornfield might have made it possible. He suspected that was how he had killed the Lonesome Ghosts in the Desolation. The thought terrified him.

  Xiana said, “Anti-magic has been called many things. The Onslaught. Hellpower. Dark magic. No matter what you call it, it all means the same thing. It’s the magic of the Netherworld, and it’s not compatible with our world. It’s an instrument of pure destruction.”

  She led him toward a thin bridge that spanned two buildings on either side of the street. The center of the bridge had collapsed, so they had to pick their way carefully over the rubble.

  As they walked, Xiana explained, “The Turan Khar opened a conduit to the Netherworld so they could harvest its magic. They called this opening Nya-Sagaru, the Sky Portal. Only, it wasn’t just the Onslaught that came through. Xerys has many minions, and some are capable of making the crossing. The Khar weren’t expecting that. Because of the way their society was structured, they were particularly vulnerable. One of Xerys’ demons insinuated themselves within the ranks of the Khar hierarchy and quickly took over. Then they turned their wrath on the Kingdom of Shira and attacked Suheylu Ra.”