PREPARE THE PYLONS, he commanded.
Nerazag bowed. "By your command."
The Nam'shaq withdrew from the chamber, carrying out their Master's command. Zal'zarrin turned back to the device, the Infinity Key-in-waiting.
So close. So very close...
Dawn on the steppe. The eastern horizon was a pale rose color, the sun just creeping skywards. The Mansion was beginning to fade into the blue sky though it never entirely disappeared. The light chased shadows across the rolling plains, the grass turning from the pitch black of night to shades of green. Creatures that came out at night found their burrows and hiding places. A herd of wild antelope nibbled at late summer grass, while a hawk rose high above, catching the growing morning heat on its wings, keeping an eye out for anything that might serve as a decent breakfast.
The antelope kept an eye out as well, for anything that might want to make them a meal. Wolves, plains cats, not to mention hunters on horseback, all might come bounding over the horizon at any moment. Fawns gamboled about, playing before the watchful eyes of their mothers. Long ears twitched as they picked up every sound carrying over the wind.
The ears caught something. One of the herd bucks perked up, looking to the west. He grunted twice, stamping his front hooves in warning. Something heard on the wind, possible danger. The herd took flight, bounded away to the east, white tails flashing in the growing dawn light. Within moment they were gone, leaving empty grassland.
A long moment passed. Then the source of their alarm appeared, trudging over a low ridge to the west, headed towards the sunrise. Tall, lean, his once cropped head now sprouting a growing mass of black hair, his face hidden under weeks of ragged beard. His olive complexion was pale from exhaustion, yet he did not stop, driven by a relentless determination that would not not stop short of death and perhaps not even then.
East. That was where Azaran needed to go. East, towards the sunrise, towards a mountain on the far side of this continent. Thousands of miles away, he came closer with each step. But not close enough, not fast enough. He had no horse, the last bit food to pass his lips was three days past, and he'd not seen another human being or any other creature capable of speech, just the beasts of the field and birds of the air, neither of which had anything useful to say.
The memories were back, all of them, yet Azaran had passed the point of wanting to recall them. He was tired, he was hungry, every step caused an ache in his bones. The runes glowed faintly on his chest, a sign than damage to his body was being repaired even as it was being inflicted. That would come with a price, the gnawing hunger in the pit of his stomach. The runes made him stronger then other men, faster, more resilient...but it demanded a price. Soon it would come due...but still he would walk. When he could no longer walk he would crawl on his hands and knees, then on his belly, then pull himself with whatever strength was left in his arms. He would continue, he would not stop, for if he stopped he would fall and die from despair, because there was no reason to continue existing. Vengeance against the Master, he could not turn away, it would expiate the blood guilt that stained his soul, quiet the grief that filled him at the death of the only real friend he'd ever had...dead because of his foolishness...
The Master. The cause of his suffering. Every murder committed at his command. Azaran did not know how to do anything else than obey, he was a weapon to be used as needed...he was also a man who should have known better. Every murder, every killing...someone else had ordered it, but he'd done the deed of his own will. Obedience was the highest virtue...he'd mouthed the lie until it seemed like truth. He'd obeyed. And for that he was damned.
And when the time came to fall, he would drag the Master down with him to whatever came next. The savages...no, the people of this world and a dozen others, had myriad beliefs about what happened after death, but had all had in the common the idea that there was something...a world to come, a final judgment, a rebirth. It was very different from what the Master's taught and their servants believed, that there was nothing beyond their own bodies that mattered. So many stories, so many ideas...all with another commonality, that those who met some standard of good behavior were rewarded, while those who failed to meet it would be punished. Azaran did not think he merited inclusion in the former group, while the latter seemed far more likely. He was actually curious to find out which version was the correct one, and that if he was bound to some kind of divine punishment, he meet it gladly while dragging the Master down with him...
The silent passenger said nothing, had remained silent over the last few weeks. Azaran was alone with his thoughts. For this he was grateful, he was in no state of mind to argue with a voice in his head. His own thoughts were unpleasant enough.
Morning came, and the steppe rolled on ahead, a green-brown carpet of grass, each step raising up a puff of dust and more often than not a handful of insects rudely awoken from the night slumber. Red patches on his flesh marked spots where biters had make a meal of his blood, the swelling fading under the power of the runes. A wind came down from the north and provided some relief. He saw antelope tracks, but no sign of the beasts. A hawk wheeled over head. Aside from that he was alone.
The landscape was flat, but as continued onward, hardly monotonous. For the last three days, Azaran had passed through an area he'd privately begun to call the Field of Faces. Giant stone heads were half-buried in the earth, each the side of a small house. Stone faces looked skywards towards the west, always the west, their features long and smiling, as if laughing at some secret joke they would never share. Stone eyes looked eternally towards the sunset, long stone noses served as convenient perches for birds of every type. Carved stony curls, only slightly weathered from wind and rain, framed the crowns, spreading out in a radiate style. The heads always appeared in batches of nine, lined up in rows of three by three. He walked past one group and then, as soon as it disappeared behind, another set, identical in number and design would appear, embedded in the earth nine at a time, looking toward the west, eternally waiting for...something.
When night came, shadows surrounded the heads in a way that seemed darker than the surrounding terrain. One night he sought shelter from the wind among behind one, taking a few precious hours to rest, huddled down at the base of one right below the left eye. Something here made him uneasy, made the hairs rise on the back of his neck...but not enough to prevent exhaustion from pulling him into slumber. The dreams that followed were dark and chaotic, filled with shapes gnawed at his soul...forgotten the moment he awoke, but leaving behind a sense of existential dread. He looked up in fear at the stone face, saw the way shadows filled the stone eye until it seemed like an empty socket in a skull. He rose up at the point and ran away, not stopping until the heads were far behind.
After that, he took what rest he could in the open, sleeping lightly and waking at the slightest hint of danger. More heads appeared, which he passed by without stopping. No sign of who built them or why, but he sense it was for a purpose that was best left unexplored.
Small streams crossed the land here and there, most little more than trickles. On this day, as the sun rose high and he left yet another band of heads behind, he saw a glistening band ahead, cutting through the grass in a lazy arc. A stream, wider than the last two he passed by. His dry mouth twisted at the site, his stomach growled. Water to drink, and where there was water, there would be fish, frogs, roots, berries...things he could eat.
The prospect of a drink and a meal, even one that was meager and uncooked, put an extra spring in his step. Soon Azaran stood before a stream perhaps ten feet wide at most, the water no more than two feet deep. Stones lined the bottom and flitting through them were silvery flashes that could only be fish. He fell to his knees and scooped up a double handful of water, drinking it down, the cool wetness finer than the finest of wines. He drank again and again, and would have have kept going until he could not swallow another drop, but forced himself to slow down so he would not vomit it back up. When he was done, he turned an eye ba
ck to the stream bed, his eyes fixed on the fish. Small creatures the side of his palm, floating lazily among the rocks. Green and gray spots were along the sides, the better to blend in with their surroundings. Not much of a meal...but better than chewing grass, which was increasingly looking like an option. He knelt down over the water, slowly raising a hand, stalking the fish below. He grabbed down, reaching for one particularly specimen, and missed. The clarity of the water disappeared into ripples and when it cleared the fish were gone.
He waited a while and soon enough they returned. The second time he missed as well, and nearly fell into the stream. A third attempt had his hand grasp the tail of a fist for one blessed moment...then it slipped free. He struck the water with a clenched fist, letting loose a spate of curses from three separate languages.
"So hungry..." he muttered. Azaran took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. He'd killed men on a dozen continents on five separate worlds, he could certainly catch one measly fish...
Azaran knelt down again and raised his hand. The wind then shifted, coming in from the southeast, and with it came something else. Hoof beats...shouts, then the unmistakable clash of steel on steel...
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Fires of Mastery (The Tale of Azaran Book 3) Page 25
