“I remember,” the Hunter said. “We survived it together.”
“As did so many of our fellow Bucelarii. Soldiers that had fought and killed for our fathers, warriors stained in the blood of fallen humans. We were spared, but that was far less merciful a fate than we believed.”
The Hunter raised a questioning eyebrow.
“The armies of men had not been defeated, and many of their soldiers and warriors remembered what we had done. There were many that hunted us down in the name of vengeance for their fallen kin and friends. It was a time of hardship for the Bucelarii, yet in many ways, perhaps it was simply repayment in kind.”
“Where were we in all this?” the Hunter asked.
“Here,” Taiana replied in a quiet voice. “In Enarium, hiding from the men that sought revenge. Hiding from the Illusionist Clerics, the Cambionari, the Warrior Priests, the Swordsman Adepts, everyone that wanted our heads. For forty-seven years, we lived in hiding among the descendants of the Serenii. Wanderers, they called themselves as they set out across Einan in search of a place where they could belong.”
“The Elivasti.”
Taiana nodded. “But many remained, too many for us to escape forever. Somehow, the Cambionari and Illusionist Clerics learned of our presence here in Enarium. They came for us. You wanted to fight, to use the Im’tasi, the weapons we received from our Abiarazi forefathers, and our superior skill, speed, and strength to defeat the enemy. Yet even as you spoke the words, I could see that you had no desire for war or battle. You had given it all up.” A sad smile touched her lips. “You had become a gardener, caring for the vast gardens the Serenii left behind in Enarium. A man of peace, the father I wanted for our child.”
The Hunter found her words near impossible to believe. He’d lived blood and death and for so long he couldn’t imagine a life without it. A life of peace, tending to plants, encouraging things to flourish instead of killing them.
“When the Cambionari and Illusionist Clerics arrived in Enarium,” Taiana continued, “I was forced to make a choice. We had chosen not to give up the weapons that were our birthright, for we kept them as a reminder of what we had been before our lives were spared. Too late, we found out the Cambionari could use them to track us down.”
“So you turned me over to the Cambionari,” the Hunter said. To his surprise, he felt no anger at her. “To the Illusionist Clerics to have my memory erased.”
“And, in doing so, saved both of our lives, and the life of our unborn child.” Taiana lifted her chin, and a hint of defiance sparkled beside the remorse filling her eyes. “The Cambionari would have killed us had we remained together, for they believed their god had given them a command to disperse us.”
The Hunter recalled a passage from The Numeniad. “’The Beggar God visited the Bucelarii in secret, saying, 'The time will come when I have need of you. Until that day, I will spread you throughout the face of Einan, and your memories shall be forever expunged.’”
The book was alleged to have been written during the War of Gods—another fabrication, he’d learned during his visit to the Vault of Stars in Vothmot. Yet that lie had governed the actions of the Cambionari, Illusionist Clerics, and other priestly orders for thousands of years.
Taiana continued. “They agreed to let me remain here in Enarium after I had turned you over to have your mind erased.”
The Hunter’s brow furrowed. “They let you live?” Sir Danna, Visibos, Lord Knight Moradiss, and the other Cambionari he’d met in recent months had been all too eager to kill him the moment they discovered his true identity. They’d have no qualms about killing Bucelarii alone or in multitudes. “That doesn’t sound like the Cambionari I know.”
“I cannot speak to that,” Taiana replied with a shrug. “Perhaps they have changed with the passage of the centuries. But the Cambionari back then were different. They didn’t kill you, but took you far away from here. Where, they did not tell me.”
The Hunter pondered the revelation. Another of the Enclave’s lies, perhaps? Which priestly order decided it was better to kill us off than let us live in peace?
Tears slipped down Taiana’s cheeks. “Every day for months I wept, carrying the knowledge of what I’d done to you. I would have succumbed to the guilt had our child not arrived three weeks early. I welcomed the pain of childbirth as punishment for my betrayal of you, but the moment I held Jaia in my arms, I knew I could live with the choice I had made. For her sake, if nothing else.”
The Hunter could understand that rationale. He had killed for the sake of others. When a handful of misguided blood cultists in Voramis had chosen Farida as a sacrifice to cleanse the city of pestilence, he had cut them down without hesitation. Nearly a hundred of Il Seytani’s bandits had fallen because they dared to harm and threaten Hailen’s life. The Sage’s Elivasti, Sir Danna’s Warrior Priests, and the Cambionari sent by Father Reverentus had all died as a result of the Hunter’s efforts to protect the boy. Yes, he could understand it, indeed.
“That was the day I threw my Im’tasi into the deepest ravine I could find,” Taiana said, with a firm shake of her head. “Nothing would put our daughter in peril. I had given you up for her sake, and I would give up everything else, even my own life, to keep her safe.”
The Hunter squeezed her hand tighter and gave her a smile of encouragement. He could see how hard it was for her to talk about, but he needed to know.
“For three years, Jaia and I lived a simple life here in Enarium. We had little, but needed little as well. I watched our daughter grow into the most beautiful girl.” Her eyes sparkled, and a happy smile peered through her sorrow. “You should have seen her, Drayvin. The way her eyes lit up when I told her stories about her father, the great warrior. The way she would climb into my lap and curl up asleep in my arms.”
The Hunter felt hot tears slip down his own cheeks. He would have loved to have spent those moments with his daughter, with both of them.
“Until the day the Warmaster came for us.” Taiana’s face hardened, and anger flashed in her eyes. “I could not defeat his Elivasti, not without a proper weapon and with Jaia to protect. I fought as best I could, but…”
Her voice cracked, and a torrent of tears slipped from her eyes.
“Oh, Drayvin, I failed our daughter!” Great heaving sobs shook our shoulders. “I gave you up, gave up everything that could have saved her. My fear…my worry…I failed her.” She repeated the words over and over, rocking back and forth on the bed. “I failed her.”
The Hunter collected her in his arms and held her tight as she wept. Long minutes passed as she clung to him, letting out the sorrow and remorse she must have kept bottled up for years. In that moment, he saw the woman he had loved his entire life, even if he couldn’t remember it. She was the battle-hardened commander, the passionate wife, the concerned mother. She was all those things and so much more.
Something nagged at him. How did the Warmaster get into Enarium? The curse of the Empty Mountains would have shattered the demon’s mind long before he reached the lost city. The question filled him with doubt. The Sage had used a sob story to deceive him; was Taiana doing the same?
No, her sorrow was as genuine as the anger in her eyes when she’d spoken of the Warmaster locking her away. But that didn’t explain how the Abiarazi had bypassed the curse without giving up his demonic powers as the Sage had. Try as he might, he could find no answer to the question.
Nearly a minute passed before the flow of Taiana’s tears dried up and she managed to continue.
“The moment I was awoken from my Chamber of Sustenance, I tried to search for her. But without my Bucelarii weapon or a resonator stone, I could not get into the Keeps.” Her brow furrowed. “I don’t remember how I even got out of my Chamber and onto the street. It’s hazy, like so much else of our past. But one thing was clear: I had to keep searching the Chambers for the sake of our daughter.”
She swallowed and wiped the moisture from her cheeks. “I tried everything I could
to get into the Keeps, but you saw for yourself how useless all my efforts were. Not even the best steel spikestaffs of the Elivasti could do more than scratch the surface of the stone. But from our time hiding from the Cambionari and Elivasti, I knew of the tunnels the humans built beneath their houses. So I used them in an effort to get into the Keeps. I dug my way into the Keeps.”
“Alone?” The Hunter’s eyebrows shot up. The tunnel he’d used to get into the Northwest Keep had been at least twenty paces long, all through hard-packed earth and stone. “It must have taken you months to get through!”
“One year and three days,” Taiana said. A shudder ran down her spine. “One year and three days on my own, without a friendly face, dodging Elivasti and spending every spare moment digging those tunnels. But I got lucky. The first Chamber I tunneled into held a living occupant. Cerran.”
The Hunter felt a momentary stab of envy. The red-bearded Bucelarii had spent years in close proximity to his wife, while he hadn’t even known she existed.
“That was four years ago.” Taiana let out a long, slow breath. “Four years of searching for Jaia, of trying to find more Bucelarii survivors. In all that time, we have found just four more. Neroth, Arudan, and Kalil. And Nostok.” The way she spoke the name reminded him of the way he spoke of Bardin or Farida.
“What happened to him?” the Hunter asked.
“She fell to a Scorchslayer, just as Neroth did today.” She scrubbed at her face, which had grown suddenly weary. “We have not always been able to evade the Elivasti hunting us.”
“Hunting you?”
Taiana shrugged. “They know we are here, but have proven unsuccessful in finding our hiding places. We are careful to remain hidden when we are out and about. There are too few of us, and we have no weapons beyond what we can take from the Elivasti we kill.”
“No one else has a weapon like Soulhunger?” The Hunter couldn’t imagine being parted from the dagger permanently.
“The Cambionari claimed them when they captured the others. Where they have taken them, I do not know.”
The Hunter knew. All the Bucelarii weapons claimed by the demon-hunting Beggar Priests sat within a vault beneath the House of Need in Malandria.
Taiana sighed. “With no weapons, we have no choice but to remain in hiding.”
“Until today.”
“Until today,” the woman said, nodding. “Until I felt your presence drawing near.”
The Hunter’s eyes went wide. “You…felt me?” Since leaving Voramis, he had been aware of her presence pulsing faintly in the back of his mind. It had drawn him ever onward, beckoning him closer to finding her. She had led him to Enarium. Could it be that she had felt the same?
“Our souls are bound forever,” Taiana said, and a bright smile spread her lips. “The day we spoke our vows of love, the magick of Enarium joined us as one. No matter how far apart we were, that link would always bring us back together.”
A lump rose to the Hunter’s throat, and he pulled her into a fierce kiss. She returned it with passion, and the familiar fire burned within the Hunter. Only a superhuman effort of will and his burning curiosity to know more enabled him to break off the embrace.
“From the moment I was awoken from my Chamber of Sustenance,” Taiana said in a breathy voice, “I felt your presence in the back of my mind, far, far to the south. I knew you were alive, but our baby girl was not. I’ve spent the last five years searching for Jaia.”
The Hunter squeezed her hand. He would have made the same choice—fiery hell, he had made the same choice when he put aside his desire to find her in order to return to the Advanat Desert to free Hailen.
“But then I felt you drawing near,” Taiana continued. “I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me, so I pushed it from my mind. Until today, when I felt that tremendous burst of power coming from the west, outside the city.”
“The Dolmenrath,” the Hunter said. “Hailen activated it with his Melechha blood to save me from the Stone Guardians.”
She winced at mention of the stone-skinned monsters that guarded the path to Enarium. “When I saw you on the ground, I was certain I was dreaming. But the moment I saw your face, and Thanal Eth’ Athaur hanging from your belt, I knew my dream had come true.” She clasped his face in both hands. “Fate has brought you back to me, Hai'atim.”
The Hunter wanted to scoff at the idea of fate or destiny. For so long, he’d resisted the notion that he had been chosen by some divine force or existed for some purpose beyond simply existing. Yet right now, staring into those black eyes that mirrored his so perfectly, he could say nothing. Words would never express the true depth of his feelings for her.
So he kissed her. That told her everything he wanted to say, everything she needed to know.
Chapter Nine
The bed was far messier than it had been half an hour earlier. They lay spent from their passion, his arms around her, bodies pressed together. He breathed in deep of her scent, basked in the glow of their lovemaking.
“He’s dead, you know.” The Hunter spoke in a whisper. “The Warmaster.”
Taiana rolled over in bed, so quickly that she elbowed him in the face. “What?”
The Hunter pressed a hand to his bleeding lip and rattled off a string of curses that would have been at home in any dockside tavern in Voramis.
“You killed the Warmaster?” Taiana pressed, ignoring his invective.
“Yes.” The Hunter glanced at the red staining his finger. His body would heal, but damn she was strong!
He told her about his time in Kara-ket and his encounters with both the Warmaster and the Sage. He kept the details of his torture at the Warmaster’s hands to a minimum. Her eyes sparkled as he recounted his final battle with the massive Abiarazi.
“You’re certain he’s dead?” Taiana asked, a hard edge to her voice. “Our forefathers have a nasty habit of surviving even mortal wounds.”
“Thanal Eth’ Athaur has sent him to the deepest, darkest of the hells.”
“Good.” Her tone held not a shred of mercy. “It’s no less than he deserves.”
“But the Sage still lives.” The Hunter’s brow furrowed. “And he’s here in Enarium.”
“An Abiarazi, here?” Taiana shook her head. “That cannot be. The curse of the Empty Mountains would have turned him into one of the Stone Guardians long before he ever reached the city gates.”
“He is no longer Abiarazi.” At her confused look, he continued. “He relinquished the last of his powers to fully embrace the form of a human. It is how the demons have hidden from the gods all these millennia.”
His words brought a strange expression to her face, one he didn’t understand. Does she doubt me?
“I used Soulhunger’s ability to track his heartbeat,” he explained. “I was pursuing him from Kara-ket, but lost him somewhere in the Whispering Waste a little over a week ago. He would have looked like any normal human arriving in Enarium.”
Taiana frowned. “The purple-eyes would have collected him at the front gates. The only humans that arrive in Enarium are in the company of the Elivasti.”
It was the Hunter’s turn to be confused. What are humans doing here in Enarium? And why are the Elivasti bringing them? He shoved the thought aside until later. He had more pressing matters to worry about, like how he’d find the Sage.
“The Elivasti serve the Abiarazi,” he said. “With the Warmaster dead, he would be the only master remaining.”
“But you said he was human.” Taiana’s brow furrowed.
“I doubt he mentioned it.” The Hunter snorted. “The Sage only revealed his plan to me in his attempt to get me to confront the Warmaster, a battle he didn’t expect me to walk away from.”
“Which means he is with the Elivasti,” Taiana said, her expression falling. “He’ll be ensconced safely in Hellsgate with the rest of them.”
“Any chance Hellsgate is a nice grassy plain with lots of great vantage points for long-range assassinations?” Sarcasm l
aced his words.
“Sorry to disappoint, handsome.” She shook her head. “Blasted huge stone fortress would be an understatement.”
The Hunter mused. “Even if we could lure him out of hiding, get him in the streets so we could take a crack at him, he’d probably surround himself with way too many of those Elivasti and their bloody Scorchslayers.”
Taiana lifted her hands in a hopeless gesture. “You have Thanal Eth’ Athaur and your sword, but all we’ve got are the spikestaffs we took from those slain Elivasti. That’s not enough to face an army with.”
“No, it’s not.” The Hunter let out a long breath. He might have considered a head-on assault; he could tear through the Elivasti’s armor and steel weapons. But the Scorchslayers made that idea suicidal at best.
He sighed. “First order of business is finding Hailen. We can’t let the Sage use him, especially with the Withering—or what did you call it, the Er’hato Tashat—so close at hand. Once he is free of the Sage’s clutches, we can find a way to eliminate the demon once and for all.”
“And what of Jaia?”
The question, spoken in a quiet voice, struck him like a charging ox. He’d been so focused on Hailen that he’d forgotten about his true child.
He opened his mouth, but he could find no answer. The scale was weighed too heavily in both directions. On one hand, he ached to find the daughter he’d lost millennia ago and hold her in his arms. If he didn’t find her before the Withering, she would be destroyed by the surge of power running through her Chamber of Sustenance. On the other hand, he had to stop the Sage from using Hailen’s Melechha blood to activate the Serenii magick of Enarium. If he saved one, he’d condemn the other.
Chaos whirled in his mind, and he could find no answer to the predicament. He knew he ought to go for Hailen; the Sage would doubtless use him to return the Destroyer and thereby condemn Einan to destruction. But could he sacrifice a chance at finding his daughter? He would save the world, but condemn himself and Taiana to a life of misery. How could she ever forgive him for making such a choice?
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