The Chasing Graves Trilogy Box Set

by Ben Galley

  ‘Caltro?’ whispered Pointy. ‘The guards are coming.’

  I nodded to the sword, but made no answer.

  ‘What do we do now?’ he asked of me.

  At the end of it all, there was only one choice. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s time we got our freedom. Don’t you?’

  Before he could answer, I broke into a run, heading for the glittering core of the city.

  THE END

  Tenets of the bound dead

  They must die in turmoil.

  They must be bound with copper half-coin and water of the Nyx.

  They must be bound within forty days.

  They shall be bound to whomever holds their coin.

  They are slaved to their master’s bidding.

  They must bring their masters no harm.

  They shall not express opinions nor own property.

  They shall never know freedom unless it is gifted to them.

  Chapter 1

  The Slatherghast

  What if the Nyx were to dry up? The question has perplexed many a scholar and thinker since the dawn of the Arctian Empire. You may as well ask an Arctian, “What if the Duneplains freeze over?” Nobody has ever needed to answer such a preposterous question.

  From ‘A Reach History’ by Gaervin Jubb

  Nilith came awake with a start so violent she slammed her head against the bars of the cage and knocked herself out afresh.

  It was perhaps another hour before she woke again; groggy and head pounding. She kept her eyes shut and probed with her senses instead.

  There had been many occasions on her quest where Nilith had awoken aching, bewildered, knowing some great evil was nearby. Far too many times, in fact, and here she was once more. She was growing rather exhausted with it. She would have sighed, but there was a quiet to her surroundings she did not want to shatter.

  Nilith pieced together her situation.

  She was on her back.

  A rough wooden surface jiggled beneath her, hot with the sun every time her cheek rolled onto a fresh portion.

  She was clothed, or so it seemed. Every brush of the fabric felt like the scuttling of insects.

  Somebody whistled nearby, faintly and tunelessly.

  There was a stench, too. Maybe hers.

  And she ached. Oh, how she ached. This was no torn muscle or gaping wound. It was as if a poison burned through her veins.

  Nilith racked her brains, trying to remember being cut with a blade. Trying to fathom the black void in her memory, the one between this painful moment and a man and a wagon. And a creature in a cage…

  Her eyes snapped open, finding an eyeless slab of grey meat grinning at her through crisscross bars. Three fat tentacles flapped at the iron. Skeletal hands with claws of blue smoke groped for her, but the bars held them back.

  Nilith wriggled as far away from the monster as she could. Which wasn’t far, it turned out; her cage was pitifully meagre. She found more bars at her back, leaving an arm’s reach between her and the beast’s sickle-shaped claws. It whined, blubbering charcoal saliva from its lips and blue fangs, and Nilith kicked at the bars. The creature curled up on itself with a hissing laugh, its barbels waving at her from a coil of sweaty flesh. It tapped its vaporous talons idly against its arms, counting the moments she stared at it.

  Movement beyond the monster caught her attention. Her head snapped up to a black shape stencilled against a bright sky. The shape wore a wide hat, and it was then she remembered a name. Chaser Jobey.

  Whether it was rage or panic that forced Nilith upright, she didn’t know, but she was soon thrashing around, trying to glimpse a horse and a falcon.

  She was thankful to find Anoish behind her, tethered to the wagon and staring at her dolefully. He was leaving as much space between him and the vile creature as possible, his rope taut. Dried foam coated the horse’s lips.

  Bezel was nowhere to be seen, and the sky too bright to search for him properly. Nilith’s eyes ached as if her pounding brain were trying to pop them from her skull. Instead, she hoped there was a dark speck somewhere high above, keeping watch. It was comforting to know hers was a situation shared, even if it was only with a horse and a foul-mouthed falcon.

  ‘You!’ she croaked, finding her voice once she’d hawked up enough sand. She had never thought her tongue could ache, but somehow it was managing it. ‘You let me go this instant!’

  Jobey sighed, not bothering to turn. ‘I find that debtors always say that, as if being let go a moment later would be somehow inhumane.’

  ‘How dare you! What did you… What did your thing do to me?’

  ‘I did nothing but reclaim you in accordance with your debts. That “thing”, as you call it, was merely the tool.’

  Jobey had yet to look at her, and it inflamed Nilith’s rage. ‘Fucking let me go!’

  As she brought up a leaden arm to strangle the bars, she felt it: a deathly cold, striking deep to the bones of her hand and wrist. She saw the colour in her peripheral vision, and somehow, she knew before her eyes could summon the courage to look down.

  Where a live, dark-skinned hand should have been, a ghostly hand had taken its place. With wide eyes, Nilith traced the smoky sapphire lines of her knuckles and fingers, just visible in the parching sunlight. Where the shade gave the vapour more weight, she saw the faint glow light the wood. With her other, trembling hand, she dragged back her sleeve, where the apparition of a hand met her wrist, which was still very much alive. The border between life and death was as black as Nyxwater, and looked like a wound turned sour. It blistered in places, and blue shone through the cracked and pustulent skin. And on the back of her hand, a row of white stab-marks showed where the monster’s fangs had punctured her skin.

  ‘I… I…’ she gasped. All her rage had withered like a shadow at dawn. Fear had swooped in to replace it, bringing its chums, panic and dread. All else was forgotten – Farazar, Araxes, Sisine, even Anoish and Bezel – as she stared down at her ghostly hand.

  Nilith was petrified to move her hand and make the mirage real. She was afraid it would fall apart as dust, or evaporate into the sun in smoke. It took her an age to stomach flexing a single finger. She saw it move, but the sensation was absent, as if she’d lain on her arm for half the night and awoken with it numb. ‘What foul curse is this?’

  Chaser Jobey finally turned around, looking first at Nilith’s hand, then at his pet. The creature seemed to sense it was the subject of conversation, and its greasy head poked out of its coil.

  ‘I warned you,’ the chaser said, no hint of remorse or guilt in his voice.

  ‘What is this?!’ Nilith screeched.

  The man had the gall to sound proud. ‘You sit beside a slatherghast, madam. A beast from the Far Scatter, on the outermost rim of the Reaches.’

  ‘What did it do to me?’

  ‘What I instructed it to do! They are quite loyal once trained, you know. The slatherghast bit you, plain and simple. Now its poison is at work. Fascinating creatures, and fabulous for chasing debtors. It’s why the Consortium began to ship them in from the far north.’

  Nilith would have given her whole arm to burst out of the cage and show the man exactly how much she disagreed. She could not tear her eyes from her hand. ‘What poison? Answer me, Jobey. I have the right to know!’

  ‘Slatherghasts, madam, live in wild Nyxwells, drinking their water from birth. It turns their teeth and claws to shade, making them half alive, half dead. Stuck somewhere between the two, or so the scribes say. A ghast doesn’t savage you like any other wild beast would, but bites its prey only once. Then it waits, for slatherghasts are wonderfully patient, you see.’

  Nilith hated to ask, but she found herself speaking involuntarily. ‘Waits for what?’

  Jobey withheld the answer for a moment, taking pleasure in watching her squirm. ‘It waits for you to turn to shade before feasting on you.’

  Nilith squinted at the man, longing for her stare to pierce his skin and gut him.
‘That’s my fate? Slowly fading away?’

  Jobey flashed a wide smile. ‘You should be happy, madam. You can consider your debt to the Consortium paid once you’re dead and working.’

  ‘No! No!’ Nilith had no other words. She yelled it over and over as reality sank in, as if arrowhead after arrowhead pierced her. Thoughts of Farazar and Sisine and Araxes filled her mind. Her mission had failed. ‘NO!’

  She seized the bars, and felt the copper in them sting her left hand. It was a pain like none she had experience before. Yet she endured the sensation as her vapours flared. ‘How long? How long does it take?!’

  ‘A week, perhaps more. Depends on the person.’

  The bile churned in Nilith’s gut. ‘There must be a cure! An antidote!’

  ‘A reversal?’

  ‘Yes! Tell me!’

  Jobey paused to suck his lip. ‘No, I’m afraid not. And even if there were, the Consortium would not accept anything less than payment in full.’

  ‘FUCK YOUR CONSORTIUM!’ Nilith roared.

  Jobey continued staring straight ahead, uncaring.

  Defeated, Nilith slumped against the bars, her ghostly hand held in front of her face. She stared at it with abject hatred. It was a disease. A fungus, claiming her bit by bit. She could have sworn more of her wrist had disappeared since she had started yelling at Chaser Jobey. The Ghouls’ clutches had been a circus compared to this man and his cage. His monster. Krona could not beat her, but Chaser Jobey had. Now Nilith was as good as dead. Worse, she would be a ghost slaving away in some hellish mine.

  Chest as taut as harp strings, Nilith tried desperately to slow her breathing. The air came in quick and panicked gasps. She clawed at the skin of her forearm, finding it numb but still alive. She wondered if hacking it off would stop the poison’s spread. She would have gladly given an arm – maybe both – to be rid of the slatherghast’s curse and be on her way.

  She stared at the creature again. It was still peeking at her over its folded arms. Even without eyes, with only slits for nostrils, and those grey, waving tentacles, she could feel it looking at her. Its claws had stopped tapping. Now they just shone a fierce blue, bright even in the harsh sunlight.

  Nilith turned instead to the horizon, where streaks of clouds lay draped across a shining city. It was tantalisingly close; maybe thirty miles lay between them. She could even make out smaller buildings on the outskirts, and minor towers where the rooftops began to climb. She knew that from the edge of the Outsprawls, almost seventy miles of city remained between her and the Core Districts. Between her and the Grand Nyxwell. Many nights, she had dreamed of being this close, but the difference between dream and reality was like an icicle through the heart.

  A week. Even if Nilith were free of that cage and on Anoish’s back, it would still be a race to reach the well in time. An overwhelming feeling of failure washed through her, as if her blood had been replaced with river water. So many miles. So much pain. So much work. And all to end up like this.

  Her heart started to drum again, and she tried to focus on what few positives remained. One small mercy was the fact Jobey was going north, not south, and that he was pushing his wagon at a fair trot. At least she didn’t have to face lingering as well as a slatherghast’s damning poison.

  Nilith smacked her good hand against the bars, making the cage rattle. Jobey looked over his shoulder. ‘What of the ghost? The shade I was with in your Consortium’s so-called White Hell?’

  ‘Kal Duat does not deserve such a name—’

  She spat through the bars of the cage. ‘Not been there, have you?’

  Jobey tutted. Nilith hoped she was beginning to nettle him.

  ‘The shade will be found shortly. His tracks are heading north like you were, madam. Beetle tracks, if I’m not mistaken. Which I hardly ever am.’

  ‘That’s why you’re not wasting any time.’

  ‘It behooves one to be swift in all matters relating to business. His debt is still to be collected.’

  At least that gave her time. At least Farazar would be back at her side, behind bars and far away from any Nyxwell. Another small mercy.

  Nilith groaned and knocked her head against the bars, punishing herself for letting Chaser Jobey come anywhere near her. She should have learned from the brutality of the desert and shot him square between the eyes.

  Many more times she pitted her head against the bars, and by the time afternoon was slipping into evening, she had quite the lump to nurse, and no brighter a mood for it. She had seen Bezel once, or so she thought, through her sun-blind eyes. Something dark and winged had fluttered low over a nearby dune, looking dishevelled but still alive.

  Jobey pushed his wagon harder the closer the city loomed. He followed a rough road carved between the dunes that had begun to peter out and bow before Araxes’ might. A handful of travellers had passed them by in wide berths, as was the custom, with wary eyes for the cage and its occupants.

  When one horse tired, Jobey switched it for the other, and so maintained his pace. It was smart, and meant he could keep ploughing on through night and day, napping at the reins. Nilith had seen him do it once or twice, and took the opportunity to peer about the wagon for anything remotely useful for picking locks or hacking off poisoned arms. There was nothing in reach, and she was left to rattle the locks, infuriated. The slatherghast hissed at her noise, rearing up to face her. She gave it a foul gesture and told it to go fuck itself.

  Jobey snuffled as he righted himself, and Nilith reassumed her moody slump, turning away from him. In the darkness, a few tears may have hurried down her cheek, eager not to be seen.

  The beetle was behaving at last.

  It could have even been said that Farazar was starting to enjoy the creature’s lurching gait. It wasn’t that he had learned to tolerate its unpredictability, but rather to work with its strange habits. All it had taken was perseverance.

  It was this determination – this iron will – that had kept them moving and brought the city lights much closer. They filled his view, sunrise to sunset; myriad pinpricks of light set in a jagged mountain range of buildings, black against the purple dusk. For what must have been the hundredth time that day, he stared up at the mighty pillar of the Cloudpiercer – his Cloudpiercer – and grinned eagerly.

  He kicked the beetle on, not that it did much to spur it. The throne awaited him, as did whatever his daughter or the torrid sereks had been plotting in his wife’s absence. Nilith had jeopardised everything for her greed, and Farazar damned her for it. Damned her to the void. When he was on his throne again, he would keep her for forty days, and make her watch her body decay until she evaporated, banished forever. That would teach her. Grinning smugly, Farazar held his eyes on the city and let the beetle do the work beneath him.

  It was when they rounded a dune that he saw the distant crack in the earth, black against the sand. It ran south from the edge of the Sprawls, lined by small candles hanging from rope railings. They stretched into the sands and gathered around a squat building. Bent over it was a bone-like structure: three huge black tusks upended so their points crossed. Several more buildings spread out in a line from there. They looked dilapidated, and those furthest out had been swallowed by the dunes. If Farazar squinted, he thought he could make out shapes moving across the maw of a bright square deeper into the Sprawls.

  If he still had a heart, it would have been pounding against his ribs. Farazar leaned to the side, as he had learned to do, and slowly turned the beetle towards the Nyxwell. Even from a few miles away, there was no mistaking the dark river and the structure. The Nyxites had always marked their territory with flamboyance. Their version of it, anyway. Farazar thought it drab, macabre and outdated, just like the Nyxites. Perhaps Farazar would finally take control of the wells himself once he was back in the Cloudpiercer. Declare it a royal responsibility. This little trip through the desert had taught him a thing or two about seizing what a man wanted. He may not have been a man any more, but he knew what he wante
d. He had spent long enough hiding in his sanctuaries, both north and south. He had grown soft, and though it had cost him his life, it would not cost him his rule.

  He kicked at the beetle’s armoured sides, and again, until the creature clicked in annoyance and finally put some speed into its gait. Farazar turned around to steady his body, and as he did he saw the dark mark on the face of a white dune, several miles behind him.

  There was no moon tonight but stars aplenty, and in their light it looked like a wagon with three horses around it. He couldn’t spy any people, but he recognised the shape of it enough to know he’d seen it before. The man in the gold and flat hat.

  Farazar did not believe in coincidences. Once more he kicked the beetle, until it whined so much he feared it would stop moving altogether. It stumbled into a good trot, but so did the man behind them. Farazar swore he heard the snap of a whip over the rushing breeze, and felt desperation descend. It made him lean forwards, urging his stupid insect on with what scant weight he had.

  There was little time to fetch a half-coin from the Nyxites now. If they refused him, he could either race into the streets on the back of a beetle, or fuck the intentions of both this man and Nilith, and throw his body into the Nyx unbound. He had promised himself freedom, afterlife or the void, and though it disappointed him deeply not to have the freedom, he was a stubborn bastard. If it stopped Nilith, so be it.

  With the beetle’s stumbling canter, the Sprawls and the Nyxwell edged closer. Barely two miles to go, and they were agonising. Farazar spent them snatching looks over his shoulder, seeing the man and his wagon come closer every time. Now and again he would lose them between the dunes, and Farazar would tense in hope, glowing darker and moodier when they reappeared.

  The chase drew so close that he could see a cage on the man’s wagon, and something glowing faintly inside it. The two horses pulling the wagon were slathering and wide-eyed.