Watcher of the Dead

by J. V. Jones

  “What do you know of the Far Shore, Ash March?”

  “I was told it’s where Sull hope to go when they die.”

  “We dream.” He paused. “In perfect proportion to our fear.”

  “That all becomes nothing?”

  Mors Stormweilder’s smile was brief and sad. He was sitting cross-legged on a worn blue rug he had taken from his saddle pack. A random field of stars was picked out in gray thread on the silk. “Did you ever see Raif Sevrance make a heart-kill?”

  Ash blinked, barely understanding where the question had come from. What had the Naysayer told Stormwielder? She glanced at the Far Rider, but his ice-blue gaze gave away nothing.

  Mors watched her decide upon her answer, as she weighed one loyalty against another. Motioning toward the freezing deer carcass, he said, “This Sull heart-kills also.”

  Oh. That changed things. Ash ran a hand through the mist. Tiny white moths had begun to gather around the flames and they fluttered in the current she created. “The first time I saw Raif Sevrance I watched him heart-kill five men.”

  Something in the glance Mors shared with the Naysayer made Ash wish she hadn’t spoken. Thinking back on the events of last winter, she realized that the only thing the Naysayer knew for certain about Raif Sevrance was that Raif had heart-killed a wolf.

  “Did he use a bow?” Mors’ tone was brisk.

  “Yes.”

  “And he killed them one after another?”

  Ash nodded.

  Mors was silent. Her answers had not pleased him.

  “But you do what Raif does,” she said, half challenging, half hopeful.

  “This Sull does not heart-kill men.”

  “But—”

  “Only game.”

  Ash felt tricked. “You can’t do what Raif does then.” It was not a question and Mors did not answer. “No one can. Is that why he’s so important to you?”

  Something shrieked in the darkness beyond the clearing. Something killing or being killed.

  Mors said, “It is written Mor Drakka will destroy us.”

  Ash looked to the Naysayer. “Yet you helped us. You helped him. ”

  Mal Naysayer inhaled over several seconds, filling the deepest levels of his lungs with air. He had not spoken since she’d returned to the clearing and Ash guessed he did not want to speak now. His voice when it came was soft and weary. “Daughter, this Sull is proud to have saved you. Your companion . . . this Sull cannot say if it was ill done or well done. Word from the north is that the clansman has taken possession of Sul Ji, the God Sword. This fills us with fear and hope.”

  A moth shushed past Ash’s ear. “I don’t understand.”

  “The Naysayer speaks of the sword humans call Loss,” Mors said.

  “It is ours. We forged it in another Age, on another continent, in the Mountains of Giants. Hala, the First God, let his blood for its making. He sent its metals to us through the black void of space.”

  “A meteorite?”

  Mors smiled, flashing strong blue-white teeth. “Yes, xal ji. Our most precious swords are forged with steel that fell from the sky.”

  “You want the sword back?”

  Mors and the Naysayer exchanged a glance. In the silence that followed Ash understood the deep pride and sorrow of the Sull. If they wanted the sword back, they would take it. Raif Sevrance could not stand against them. How could he? He was one clansman, one human, against the might of the Sull. He could heart-kill like a machine and still not stop them. Yet they wouldn’t take the sword from him, and Ash was beginning to understand why. The questions Mors asked were her answer. Mors had needed to know for himself if the rumors about Raif were true. She had confirmed them: Raif was Mor Drakka, the one who could heart-kill men.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine a sword made from a god in Raif’s hands. It wasn’t hard to imagine what damage he could do with such a sword.

  “Loss.” She barely said the word out loud, but Mors heard it.

  He absorbed it like a blow. After a minute or so he surprised her by speaking. “Thousands of years ago, during the Battle of Dammed Falls, a man, a human, wielding Sul Ji struck an Endlord. We do not say the Endlord was destroyed, but it was xisa. Displaced. It turned the battle. Until then we were failing and the enemy was pressing us hard. The armies of Men had called a retreat. When the Endlord fell all changed. The Unmade broke ranks. Thousands fell along with their Lord: we do not know why. We fought in chaos and darkness. The Sand Men lost seven in ten that night. We lost nine in ten. Yet we lived and the story of that night is told around the Heart Fires. Loss displaced an Endlord . . . and the one we believed to be Mor Drakka delivered the blow.”

  Here it was. The balance. Fear with hope. Mor Drakka might be the one who extinguishes the Sull, but he was also the one who could save them.

  For a reason she did not fully understand, she thought of her foster father. It occurred to her that Iss had possessed some knowledge of Sull history—enough to try and enslave his own Reach—yet Iss had used that knowledge solely for his own gain. The Sull were not like him. They fight for us all.

  Out loud she said, “Why is it the Sull’s duty to fight the Unmade?”

  Moths had formed a galaxy around the fire, and soft hisses sounded as stray wings touched flames. Mors flexed his left hand. It was a small thing, something one might do to stretch out stiff fingers, but Ash knew straightaway it was more. Hairs on her neck rose, letting cool air brush her skin. The moths ceased orbiting and fled.

  Mors took a breath and then spoke. “We fight because we have looked into the night sky and seen the absence there. Men call the nights when there is no moon new moon. We call them mor lun. The end of moon. Every two days in twenty-eight, we look up and see the future. The world is dark and the stars burn cold and give no light. We teach our children that what is created will be destroyed. Xhalia ex nihl. All becomes nothing. We fight to slow oblivion, not halt it. Xana lun, our warriors cry as we ride into battle. The moon will rise this night.”

  Ash was stirred but did not show it. She wasn’t sure she trusted Mors Stormwielder, and she wasn’t sure why he was here. “Why must you fight alone?”

  It was the Naysayer who shook his head. “Nay, daughter. In other Ages we fought with men and those who are not men; the old races, the Ice Trappers and Sand Men and the Hounded. We seek allies, but we have learned caution. Allies turn. Territory is lost. We fight the longest and our losses mount more swiftly than our allies’. We are vulnerable at battle’s end. Allies trusted with our maps are tempted. If we do not take this land, they tell themselves, others will.

  “Opportunities are seized. Territory is lost and we retreat. North, always north, and east. What is left is mountains, forest and shore. Our Heart Fires have burned on the shore of the Night River for five thousand years. We will not give them up.”

  It was a lot of words for the Naysayer, and Ash could see they had unsettled him. He rose and walked from the fire. Within seconds he was swallowed by the darkness. One of the horses whickered as he passed the corral.

  Out of respect for him, Ash waited before speaking. Silence, she was beginning to understand, was a language in itself to the Sull.

  After a time, she said to Mors, “Even if you don’t ally with the clans and Mountain Cities they’ll seize your land. My foster father wanted a slice of it.”

  Mors looked at her carefully. “Are you Sull?”

  She felt a beat of fear. The Naysayer was gone and she was alone with a stranger. Tilting back her head, she revealed Dras Xaxu, the First Cut, under her jaw. “Look at my eyes,” she said, lowering her chin. “What color are they?”

  “Blue.”

  “For seventeen years they were gray.”

  They weighed each other up. Age showed in the Sull as a hardening of muscle and skin. Mors Stormweilder’s face had that hardness. Time and experience had sucked away unnecessary flesh.

  “When you speak of us you say you not we.”

  “I am an outsider.
Your people do not trust me.”

  “Choose a name.”

  Again she felt the prickle of hairs along her neck. She had thought much the same thing at the lake, yet as Mors spoke she understood it went deeper than distancing herself from her foster father. Mors Stormwielder was challenging her to be Sull.

  He had come here as her judge.

  Light dimmed as the fire shrank to a smolder. The forest was quiet. Mors rose to tend the horses. There was nothing to say. She either made herself Sull or she would never see the Heart Fires. Mors Stormwielder, brother to He Who Leads, was their gatekeeper. Strange how it was all clear now. This meeting was not by chance. The Naysayer had deliberately slowed the journey, waiting for Mors Stormwielder to intercept them. During the entire time they’d been speaking, Mors had been judging her.

  And found her wanting.

  Ash pushed her hands through her hair. The lake water had left it heavy and smooth. She felt tired, and sore in strange places. Her chest and armpits ached; probably from swimming. On impulse she stood and headed for the trees.

  Moonlight bouncing off the mist lit the points of the cedars. Wanting to avoid the Naysayer, Ash turned north.

  You will be able to walk the borderlands at will, hear and sense the creatures that live there, and your flesh will become rakhar dan, Reachflesh, which is held sacred by the Sull.

  Heritas Cant’s words, spoken half a year ago in Ille Glaive, kept repeating in her head. The broken man had not known why her flesh had value to the Sull. He had not anticipated that it could destroy the Unmade.

  Jal Rakhar. The Reach.

  The Sull did have a name for her, and she liked it about as much as the name March. So what should she call herself? She wanted to feel the warmth of the Heart Fires. She wanted to understand what the Sull saw when they looked at the night sky. She wanted to hear the word daughter again. It was a big lonely world and her foster father was dead. What had Mors said about Angus? Xalla nul. Cast adrift. She was one thread away from the same fate.

  She had no family waiting back home. There was no home, just a place where she’d been held prisoner and hadn’t known it. This was all she had.

  Turning, she headed back for the camp.

  She had chosen her new name.

  CHAPTER 16

  In the Star Chamber

  THEY FED. THEIR great jaw detached and their teeth ratcheted on to the newborn foal and began pulling it down their gullet. Saliva jetted from the roof of their mouth to grease the motion, and when the head reached their throat banks of muscle contracted in waves. As the muscle drew the foal deeper, they began constricting its spine. When the head reached the digestive tract they allowed themselves to relax. The largest section was through. Everything else—shoulders, hips, legs—could be crushed.

  They settled into a languor as the full length of the foal was enclosed. A half-moon was up and its perfect blue light provided a second, no lesser, nourishment. They felt heavy and overstretched and content. Horse blood pooled at the back of their throat and they would taste it later with relish. The night world was theirs. They owned and controlled it.

  Sidewinding across sparkling snow, they returned to their den to sleep.

  Cold water thrown at force onto his face woke him from profoundly strange dreams. He felt himself being peeled away from Moonsnake and grafted onto another life.

  It was hot here. The world was crammed with too much color and movement. All stillness and purity was gone. Someone touched him and he lashed out. A startled cry informed him of the success of the contact. He received a single jab of pain to the meat of his upper arm in return.

  The world immediately blurred. A word floated to him. Drugged. He blinked, remembered some things he had no desire to remember, then watched as they prepared him to fight.

  Two Sull worked with the economy of men who had performed their task more than once. They pulled him upright, toweled him dry and strapped armor plates to the planes of his chest, arms and legs. It was like being buried alive. They ran a line of grease around his neck and plugged the helm against his face. Straps were cinched at the back of his head. Indignation was a fury in his blood, but his body would not obey the command to hurt the men who did this. Among the memories he recalled one that was useful: this state wore off quickly. Soon it would be possible to strike.

  The Sull returned him to the pallet and left. A clangor of rusted iron echoed through the chamber as a bolt was engaged behind the door and then silence. Raif, for he recalled his name now, lay flat on his back and stared at the traprock ceiling, waiting for the numbness in his limbs to wear off.

  They, Moonsnake named the Sull. In the world of moon and stars they were beneath her. They claimed to own the night, but they could not see in the darkness as she could see in the darkness. They could not move and strike in perfect silence and live month after month upon the moon-blued snow. Her contempt fueled Raif’s anger. How dare they hold him. He was Mor Drakka. They needed him to fight the Unmade.

  Kill them and we will feed.

  Current passed along Raif’s body. His legs twitched and the tendons in his fingers contracted. Objects floating across his vision began to slow. His body was becoming his own again. They drugged him in different ways, he’d noticed, sometimes forcing sleep, other times subduing him while they worked on his body. He wondered if they still poisoned his water. His piss always smelled like the chemicals his mother used to soften hides.

  Da.

  The word helped hold him in place. It was the reason not to return to Moonsnake. Da was dead. Mace Blackhail had killed him. Through his, Raif Sevrance’s own negligence, Mace Blackhail still lived and ruled in the clan.

  Kill him and we’ll swallow him whole.

  Raif turned his head a fraction and looked around the chamber. Traprock blocks, blackened with age and damp encased the tomb-like space. Moonholes in the upper wall and ceiling let in circles of pale gray light. Part of the chamber was sunk belowground, and water seeped through cracks in the mortar. The dome of the night sky had been deeply carved across the ceiling and walls. The quarter moon rising in the east was the only feature he recognized. The stars and constellations might have been from a different world.

  A thunk sounded on the far side of the door as the bolt was drawn back. Raif looked wildly around the room. Where was the mark? Hadn’t he kept a record of the time that had passed? He had a clear memory of scoring lines with his thumbnail—one for every day. Had they scrubbed it clean from the wall?

  The door opened and the two Sull who had battle dressed him earlier entered. This time they did not need their hands free to tend him. Swords were drawn and the brilliant white light of meteor steel sent sparks across the room.

  “Up.”

  The command was spoken by the Sull with the hard purple-blue eyes and copper skin. His nostrils flared fiercely as he spoke, and Raif wondered if his contempt was for his task or his prisoner. Or both.

  Raif’s own contempt rose in response.

  They are beneath us.

  He swung his legs off the pallet, fought the nausea. Stood.

  “Out,” the Copper One said. Both he and his companion stood wide of the pallet, leaving clear space between Raif and the door.

  Raif noticed the other Sull, the younger one with golden eyes and deep slots cut in his earlobes, glance toward the water pail in the corner of the room. Was he checking if any had been drunk?

  The thought slid away as Raif concentrated on moving his body. The drug was wearing off quickly now, but it left shocks and tingles and patches of numbness that had to be managed in order to walk.

  As he passed the younger Sull, Raif calculated the probability of a successful strike. Nights hunting with Moonsnake had shifted the way he saw things. Surprise was everything to her. To achieve it she worked the angles and tangents, finding the blind spot and using it to lay a short and perfect line of strike. It was survival in its purest form. Calculate the correct angle and she would eat.

  Raif headed
through the doorway. He could see a possible line of strike. The younger Sull was holding his two-handed sword with a single hand, his right. Smash the left quickly enough, driving close to his body, and the Sull could be thrown off center and denied sufficient space to wheel the sword. There were two problems with this though. First, Raif didn’t know if he had the necessary speed while his body was still jerking back to life. And second, Copper One. The older Sull could cross the room while possession of the younger Sull’s sword was still unresolved.

  Climbing a short series of steps, Raif emerged into the forest. It was dusk. Broken sections of wall and paving tiles set amidst the ferns told him something had once stood over the chamber that had become his prison. Absurdly Raif recalled something Angus had once told him about Sull fortresses: They cut perfectly aligned moonholes through every floor and ceiling so no matter what level they are on they can look up and see the sky.

  Bloodwood saplings as slender as reeds stirred in the wind. Raif smelled wood and tar smoke. The Sull camp was close and to the east, the rayskin canopy just to the west. A third Sull walked him at spear point to the paved circle he had first seen from the cage. A drum was beating and torches had been lit. Sull were gathering. Raif recognized the tall not-quite-perfect form of Yiselle No Knife. Her lips had been painted blue-red and her eyes were inhumanly bright.

  Have I done this before? He felt a moment of free fall, as if the ground vanished from under him. The circle, the torches, No Knife: it all looked familiar but he couldn’t be sure. Abruptly, he remembered the thumb marks on the chamber wall. Had he remembered to look for them? A muscle in his heart missed its cue and he felt the sickening suction of panic. What was happening here? He was Raif Sevrance from Clan Blackhail and this was madness.

  Kill them we must feed.

  The spear point prompted the back of his neck, directing him into the circle. Raif spun and smashed the spear to the ground. His jaw sprung apart and suddenly he no longer knew what he was doing. He hesitated, and in that instant the Sull drew his sword. The body armor strapped across Raif’s chest bowed as it took the point of meteor steel. The shock wave rolled across Raif’s rib cage, punching his lungs. He blacked out, stumbled, somehow managed to keep on his feet. The Sull was on him, guiding his sword toward the crack between Raif’s chest and back plates; left side, oblique angle, straight for the heart.