He averted his eyes to watch his brothers as they rode ahead. Abe’s spirits had risen again in the days after the meeting with the Scourgers in the mountains; his smiles came easier, as did his supportive words. Meesh remained the lewd practical joker he’d always been. The two had even broken out in song the night before. Shade had tried to join them, but his heart just wasn’t into it. Vera was never far from his thoughts, and after his fellow knights fell asleep, he found himself staring at their dozing forms, a feeling akin to hatred swelling in his heart.
Not hatred, Shade thought. He surely envied them, but could never hate his brothers. He was simply frustrated the Vera hadn’t come to visit him again. His hatred was reserved for Ronan Cooper alone.
His gaze drifted to the lumpy bag tied to his saddle. There were seven Heartcubes in there, seized from a cubby hidden beneath Burrell’s tavern upon their return to Barrendale. Shade smiled despite himself at the memory of Quint Nolan nearly losing his mind when the Knights Eternal demanded the Cubes be handed over. The villagers had hissed and thrown clumps of petrified feces at them as they departed, merchandise in tow. Another village we won’t be welcomed in any longer.
Shade unlaced the bag and removed one of the Heartcubes. It fit squarely in his palm, and he held it up to his face and turned it from side to side. The cube’s glow was so bright it made the blazing desert sun seem pale. The radiant substance inside was in constant flux, with veins of orange, crimson, and ochre along with the dominant gold. He ran his thumb along the exterior of the cube, which was smooth like glass, but strangely soft and almost pliable. The Cube also had a faint vibration to it, and the close proximity to the Eldersword on his hip, with its shard of Heartcube embedded in the hilt, caused the blade to quiver and quake.
This wasn’t the first time Shade had seen a Heartcube up close, as the citizens of Sal Yaddo used them to live a life of comfort. There was one in the Temple of the Crone, displayed on a ledge outside the library. This was the first time he’d ever had one in his hand, however. Shade wasn’t as devout in his beliefs as Abe, but when he stopped to consider that power akin to a god’s existed within a six-inch box, he found his mind leaning toward superstition.
Snapping the reins, he urged Gypsy to pick up speed. Unlike the area around Barrendale, the air here was so dry that the wind whipping past his bearded face felt cool. He pulled back when he reached his brothers, and Gypsy once more fell into a trot.
Meesh reached the end of a particularly nasty joke, and Shade could tell by Abe’s tight-lipped expression that the eldest knight was trying not to laugh while Meesh cackled in his saddle. It wasn’t until his burst of hilarity ceased that either noticed Shade was there.
Abe turned toward him. “What?” he asked, the grin melting from his lips. Shade hated that Abe was so careful of Shade’s moods now, though he knew he deserved it.
He shook his head. “Something’s bothering me.”
“What would that be?”
“This,” Shade said, lifting the Cube, “and the legend Cooper told the Scourger king.”
Meesh waved his hand dismissively. “C’mon, brah. You really gonna take anything that came outta that nutter’s mouth seriously?”
“Of course not. But the legend has ramifications.”
“It’s just a story,” Abe told him.
“That’s not really the problem.”
“And what is?”
“How much of the legend is based on fact?”
Abe sighed. “Who knows,” he said. “It’s manipulative speculation. We know little about the Heartcubes because the only records we have are from the Elders, and they didn’t leave behind much. According to their histories, the Cubes were created by the Ancients. We know the Rising took place a thousand forty-seven years ago. We know the Elders descended the mountains three hundred thirty-six years later and put the Heartcubes to use.”
“Fine,” Shade said. “But do we really know the Ancients created these things? Heartcubes contain more energy in a single square millimeter than twenty windmills. Their use helped the Elders open portals to the Nine Hells. Could an archaic, primitive culture really have created them?”
“That’s what the records say,” Abe said earnestly.
Shade frowned.
“You don’t believe them?” asked Abe.
“No, I do,” Shade said. “But we live in a superstitious time. Nothing we know of the Cubes explains why the Pentus brought about the Rising to wash the Ancients from the face of the planet and yet left their most dangerous inventions behind. Credulous folk might think this is a silly mistake for a deity to make.”
“What’re you saying?”
“That Cooper did more than tell the Scourgers a carefully crafted lie. There’s thousands of them on top of that mountain, and now they’re scared. There’s nothing we or anyone else can tell them to change their beliefs, as there’s no evidence to support or deny the legend. The only real proof we have is that the Crone’s riddle says nothing about some dark force, but it mentions Cooper by name. What good would that information be to the Scourgers? They wouldn’t believe a word. No, what Cooper did was worse than anything. He created an enemy that could potentially wreak havoc on this entire godforsaken land, all to help him in his quest for power. The enslavement of man, the end of all time.”
“I know,” Abe said gravely. “It crossed my mind as well.”
“So what’re we gonna do about it?”
Meesh shook his head. “Wait, you’re saying a race of plague-ridden hermits who haven’t left the mountaintops in, well, forever, pose a threat? Abe, even you said they can’t live long off the mountain. Methinks you two’re nutters, just like them.”
“Shut it, Meesh.” Shade turned back to Abe. “They could cause a problem. They could attack the outlying settlements like they did Barrendale, couldn’t they?”
“I’m not sure,” Abe replied as he gnawed on his cheek. “You saw the way the Heartcube reacted to Azzar. If they truly are made of the same stuff as the Mists, then all they’d need is to get their hands on some more…”
“Oh shit,” Meesh muttered.
“Exactly,” Shade said, placing the Heartcube back in the sack with its six siblings.
“So what’re we gonna do about it?” asked Meesh.
“We kill Cooper and hope his lies die with him,” Shade said with a shrug. He saw Vera’s face in his thoughts and tensed. “That’s obviously what the Crone wanted us to do.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Abe. “The riddle is rather…vague. Beyond that, we don’t know where Cooper is or how many men he has. For now, we just need to think on it. Ramstable’s only another couple hours away. We’ll get some water, put our feet up, and rest. If we’re lucky, maybe he’ll have passed through there and someone can point us in the right direction.”
Meesh laughed aloud. “Ramstable? Seriously? You really think they’ll even let us walk into that town after what happened? We should just go around and camp in the desert. The sabrewolves would make better company than those dumbasses.”
Abe tilted his head. “That was a year ago.”
“Yeah, but those folks got long memories,” Meesh said.
“Time will tell,” Abe answered. “Time will tell.”
The knights rode on as the brutal sun slowly crawled upward in the sky. It was the high point of the day when Gypsy first stumbled. The horse panted, her skin gone rubbery. She needed water badly, but there were no trenches around, and his spare skin was empty. There was a reason this portion of the Wayward Pass saw so little traffic. Shade glanced ahead of him, to where the horizon shifted from beige to crimson. He patted the trusty mare’s neck. They were close. “Only a little while longer,” he whispered.
Within a half hour, the Pass veered sharply to the east, where it butted up against the edge of the Red Cliffs, a large territory marked by towering rock formations and reddish, uneven plateaus. That meant shelter was nearby, two miles away at most.
They came to the we
st-leading offshoot from the Pass that led to Ramstable. Shade gazed north, where multiple trails of black smoke rose into the sky from somewhere within the Red Cliffs, and pulled back on the reins before making the turn. Gypsy came to a shuddering halt, blowing angrily out her nostrils.
“Why you stopping?” asked Meesh.
Shade pointed toward the smoke. “Something’s going on.”
“Brah, it’s the middle of the day. They’re on lunch break. Y’know, eating. Which is something I’d kill to do right now. Let’s just get to town and hope they don’t try to stab our bellies instead of feeding ’em.”
“No,” said Abe as he licked his dry, cracked lips. “Shade’s right. The mines are further into the Cliffs. That smoke’s too close to the Pass.”
“Cooper?” Shade asked, hopeful.
“Only one way to find out.”
“And all I wanted was a rest and a damn sandwich,” Meesh grumbled.
The knights continued along, the smoke growing thicker in their vision. The first thing they saw was horses, at least fifty of them lingering near the edge of a steep rock face. The air stank, thick with sulfur, and there were people everywhere, some huddled beneath the overhanging crags, some lying atop the rocks, some just lingering as if in a trance. There were so many of them, dressed in dusty rags that looked like they hadn’t been washed in ages. Shade knew these were citizens of Ramstable—like most settlements in the Wasteland, folks of like appearance stuck together to form their own communities. It was only in the southern backwaters like Barrendale that there was any sort of ethnic diversity. That meant nearly every face possessed similarly smooth skin, slight builds, and sloped eyes. Most ignored the three men on horses as they passed, but a few glanced their way with down-turned lips.
These people are scared, Shade thought.
Abe held out his hand, and the brothers came to a halt. Shade sat atop his shaking horse and took in the scene. Twenty feet from the Cliffs, wooden posts had been laced together to form a conical enclosure. A slab of some sort of gray meat hung from the center of the structure. Six men stood around it, all hunkered down and holding long hooks in their hand.
“Brah, what’re they doing?” asked Meesh.
“Hunting,” said Abe.
“For what?”
“Sand spiders.”
“Ah.”
Shade squinted against the sun, intrigued. He noticed that the structure had been erected over a hole in the sand. One of the men slackened his grip on the rope holding the meat and lowered it closer to the hole. The six men tensed. Nothing happened, so the man let out even more rope. When the hunk of flesh was mere inches from the hole, a slender, beige-colored claw shot up and snatched it.
The men burst into action. One looped his hook around the claw while another hurriedly knocked over the structure. The man who’d hooked the hidden beast fell to his rump, audibly grunting as he tried to keep hold. The claw snapped in the air, the pincer strong and deadly. The man’s companions closed around the hole and thrust their own hooks inside. One of them tripped over a fallen log and landed face-first just inches from the gap. The trapped claw jerked in his direction and closed swiftly around the man’s head. Shade heard his skull crack; blood gushed onto the sand.
The other men continued their task without pausing to grieve, lunging backward to pull the sand spider from its hole. The appendage ending in the claw was long, at least three feet. The first man with the hook continued struggling backward as his mates dislodged their hooks and moved closer to the hole again. Others came to help them. With a collaborative effort, they succeeded in dragging out a long, plated torso. Six legs, each four feet long and covered in spines, flailed about. They struck the men holding the creature, but none of the brave souls relinquished their grip. The pointed end of one of those legs pierced the belly of the dead man who lay beneath the beast, and the body twitched.
Two glistening black eyes on stalks peered outward like lifeless marbles above snapping mandibles. When the hunters finally got the animal’s segmented, flattened tail out of the hole, they hopped atop the sand spider to pin it down and held on for dear life. The one who had first trapped it shouted incoherently at those looking on, and a young woman stepped forward holding a long metal cylinder. The woman pointed the end of the cylinder at the animal’s head and squeezed a lever. An explosion sounded and black smoke billowed from the end of the barrel. The carapace over the sand spider’s head disintegrated, and after a few shudders, the beast fell still.
Sand spider shells were surprisingly soft, and given that the creatures were the size of a horse, there was enough of what the locals called “bug meat” inside to feed a large family for a month or more. There should have been celebration, but not a single person even smiled. Twenty men hauled the carapace-covered corpse toward the Cliffs, while another two grabbed the dead man by his ankles and dragged him along the sand.
“Well, no ceremony in that,” Meesh said.
“There’s no time for ceremony,” came a voice from behind them. “Not anymore.”
Shade turned slowly in his saddle to see three people approaching on foot. The one in the center was Mara Choon, a woman whose face, however filthy, refused to reveal her fifty-some-odd years of life. Mara had been the one who’d ordered Shade and his brothers out of Ramstable the previous year.
“Milady,” Abe said.
Shade proffered his wide-brimmed hat at the approaching trio, while Meesh whistled, earning a glare from Abe.
The men on either side of Mara both carried the same sort of makeshift rifle that had been used to kill the sand spider. They held the slender barrels across their arms and stood threateningly, their fingers close to the lever that would activate the flintlock mechanism. Ranged weapons such as these were relatively new to the Wasteland. Abe said they’d first come about fifty years ago, when one of the missionaries from Sal Yaddo had unthinkingly blurted out the properties of the black powder used to propel the Elder’s weapons. Given that the Red Cliffs were rife with caves filled with bats, and hence their crystallized droppings, along with deep ravines containing ample deposits of sulfur, Ramstable transformed from a ranching community to one that specialized in mining and the creation of the black powder. The residents were duly compensated when they sent their new wares all across the Wasteland. Now there were no cattle or goats to be seen.
Mara came to a halt fifteen feet from the saddled knights. Her two handlers scowled, and Meesh laughed aloud.
“Abednego, it’s good you came,” Mara said, ignoring Meesh’s cackling.
“It is?” Abe asked.
The woman nodded. The expressions of her two handlers softened.
Meesh leaned over in his saddle. “Well that was unexpected,” he whispered to Shade.
“You seem surprised,” Mara said.
Abe removed his hat, wiped sweat from his bald head. “To tell it true, I am,” he replied. “Given the way we departed last year, I wasn’t expecting such… niceties.”
“Forgiveness is a wonderful thing, Pentus be praised,” Shade said, though he didn’t fail to note how wrong those words felt coming from his mouth.
“Oh, screw your Pentus. All isn’t forgiven,” Mara said. “Your missionaries only made matters worse, and you will never be forgiven for what you did to our young men.”
“You called us here,” Shade said with a sneer. “You requested our help. Who are you to complain about how it all ended?”
Abe shot him a look, silencing him.
Mara shook her head sadly. “You were to talk to them. You were to reason with them. Not wipe them out.”
“Hey, they shot first,” Meesh said. He pulled down the collar of his loose tunic and displayed the ragged scar on his shoulder where an iron ball had punched through his flesh.
“They were children!” shouted one of the two guards.
Shade inched his hand up his chest, ready to snatch Rosetta from his back should the man try to fire. A crowd was gathering around them, and he had no de
sire to kill any innocents, especially when he could understand their anger. Mara Choon had written to Sal Yaddo requesting help with a band of brigands that had been terrorizing their shipping lanes, killing two of their couriers. When the knights arrived, Mara had insisted that no violence come upon the brigands despite what they’d done. “They’re youths from our own village,” she’d said. “They are simply misguided. Frighten them. Tell them enough is enough. Let them know that if they come home, all will be forgiven.”
Unfortunately, the youths hadn’t wanted to negotiate. They had opened fire as soon as the Knights Eternal rode into view. Meesh took a round. An arrow glanced off Shade’s leg. Infused with the Rush, the brothers returned fire. The brigands and their primitive arsenal had no chance against the might of the Elders’ weapons. Sixteen of the seventeen youths were killed, Mara’s youngest son among them.
Abe held up one hand. “Enough,” he said, and glowered at Meesh. “What is past is past; it won’t be brought up again.” The bald man faced Mara. “However, you did say it’s good we came. Why? And why are your people out here instead of at home?”
The woman’s face softened. “A terrible blight came over Ramstable.”
“Would that blight’s name be Ronan Cooper?” asked Shade.
“Not entirely,” the woman said, eyebrow raised. “Though Herr Cooper did ride through six weeks back on his way to Breighton, spewing some nonsense about dark forces rising in the east.”
“Breighton,” Shade said. We’re on the right path.
“Did you listen?” asked Abe.
“Not most,” Mara said. “Some did. We lost twenty-two miners to his bullshit cause. The man can certainly talk. To think I thanked him so profusely for his generosity when he arrived.” She spat on the ground. “We also lost the twelve Heartcubes we had stored in the stables, along with the one that powered the Stone Willow. Now our wells require hand pumps. Do you know how hard it is to draw water from three hundred feet beneath the sand by hand?”
Soultaker Page 7
