I gathered an armful of brush, the driest I could find on such a damp night, piling it carefully around the body, and removed my ragged old cloak, using it to cover Brig’s face. For lack of a better parting gift, I laid one of my long-bladed knives across his chest. I remembered the strange bow I still carried and briefly considered leaving it instead, but somehow I was reluctant to part with it. Anyway, it hardly made a fitting gift either. There seemed nothing more to be done and so I used my flint stone to set fire to the smaller bits of brush, managing after several tries to coax to life a fitful flame. The fire spread reluctantly over the rain-dampened kindling, but at length, the entire funeral pyre was wreathed in flames.
I sat at the edge of the circle of firelight that penetrated the night and watched the blaze consume Brig. Whenever the flames threatened to die, I added more brush until I had a tall bonfire raging. The heat warmed my face and the smoke burned my eyes, but I didn’t move back. After a time, I reached behind me and, for no particular reason, pulled out the bow to examine.
It was a finely crafted weapon, making it all the stranger that I discovered it in an abandoned barn. The pale wood looked and smelled freshly cut and took on an almost living glow beneath the firelight. It took me a moment to realize the carvings spiraling up the limb weren’t random designs, but strange runes unlike anything I’d ever seen. I had a peculiar feeling, looking at those runes, almost like the stirring of magic I felt when sensing another life nearby. Maybe I would ask Terrac later if he could decipher the unfamiliar form of writing. He was the scholar, not me.
But hard on the heels of that thought came the memory that the priest boy and I weren’t exactly on friendly terms at the moment. I glanced at the burning pyre and loneliness washed over me as I remembered the one person who cared for me most, the only friend who knew about my forbidden talents, was now gone forever. In the face of that, everything else lost significance. When I looked back to the bow, there appeared to be a forlorn sense to its unreadable runes that matched my pain.
It was a mark of the strangeness of my mood that I didn’t flinch this time when the bow began to glow orange and gold. I felt it grow warm in my hands and pulse like a stilled heartbeat throbbing suddenly to life. Inside my head, I seemed to hear its quiet moans of anguish, perhaps echoing my hurt, or maybe crying out for some loss of its own. Either way, the result was oddly comforting. I continued tracing my fingers absently up and down the runes as I watched the flickering flames.
My grief grew muted and while there was a chill loneliness in my heart, an ache of regret beyond words, I shed no more tears for my loss. It was as if, with the death of Brig, my own essence had abandoned me as well, leaving me incapable of feeling anything but emptiness. Was this how Rideon had grown so cold? I felt a sudden surge of understanding for the man, an understanding that had nothing to do with sympathy or affection.
Trying to shake this alarming change, I dug deep inside myself seeking some spark to prove who I was still hid within, but it was like reaching into an empty shell. I dipped into a chasm of nothingness, sifting blank thoughts and meaningless images through my fingers in search of something I knew should be there. Even my unease at this discovery was a quiet, distant thing as if I were merely a witness, observing myself through another’s eyes.
I felt older, emptier, and vastly changed as I sat hunched before the flames, lost in thought, until the fire burned low and a pale dawn came to chase away the stars.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I watched Terrac warily the following morning, but if he was still angry over my betraying him to the Fists, he gave no sign of it. It took us all of the following day to find our way to the place in the wood where the trees never greened. Here, the rest of our band had set up a temporary camp after evacuating Molehill and Red Rock. It was nearly dark by the time we stumbled on the outlaws a few miles upstream of the creek leading to Red Rock falls. The gathering was large, the combined number of both our camps crowded together into the temporary one.
Immediately on arrival, I felt a pervading sense of gloom hanging in the air. Until now, we thought ourselves impervious to attack, hidden as we were deep within the safety of Dimming’s shadows. But our confidence had been shaken and we were all acutely aware of the danger that might break over our heads at any time. No one knew as yet what had become of our homes at Red Rock and Molehill; the only thing we could be certain of was that it was unsafe to return. Rideon moved among the outlaws, planning with them, seeking to lift their confidence. Wherever he had been, spirits lifted, but it was obvious it would take time for us to recover our former self-assurance.
I had to give an explanation for my disappearance and as my story quickly spread through the gathering, I was hailed as a kind of hero. No one appeared to care that I had set out to save Brig and returned without him. What mattered was that one of their own had struck a blow back at the Praetor’s men. A dozen times over, my attack on the Fists was declared the most daring and bold deed anyone had ever heard of from such a youngster. Suddenly, men who hadn’t so much as given me their names before today were clapping me on the back and congratulating me around the campfire.
Terrac, unwilling to partake in the glory, wandered off and left me to deal with it alone. In a different time I would have enjoyed retelling my tale as many times as it was requested and recounting my actions in the most fantastically exaggerated manner possible. But now I couldn’t enjoy the attention because I knew, whatever the others thought, my mission was a failure.
My thoughts were dark ones that first night back, as I sat surrounded by my throng of newfound admirers. I huddled over a bowl of venison stew, not because I was hungry, but because someone had shoved it into my hands. I forced the warm liquid down my throat, reasoning that as long as I kept my mouth full, I couldn’t be expected to talk. I was quickly wearying of recounting my adventure.
When I heard the sounds of someone’s approach and silence descended over my companions, I didn’t need to look up to know Rideon stood over me. I was expecting this moment.
“Hound,” Rideon greeted me.
I knew now was the time to apologize and beg forgiveness for disobeying his orders in following Brig, but I couldn’t find enough fear inside to prod me to it. Instead, I looked up and met his gaze unflinchingly.
He didn’t react with the anger I expected.
“The men tell me you are a hero tonight, that you’ve defeated a handful of the Praetor’s Fists and survived to boast of it. They also say you’ve killed the traitor Resid.”
“I did,” I admitted, bracing myself for whatever was coming.
“Perhaps I’ve underestimated your courage and skill. You broke my orders, but in so doing, you risked your life to strike a blow for all of us. For that, it seems to be the general will we should honor you tonight. Bold deeds notwithstanding, I warn you the next time you discount a command of mine so blatantly I’ll kill you on the spot.” Here his voice hardened momentarily. “But on this singular occasion, it would be ungrateful to kill a returning hero.”
He offered the ghost of a smile or the nearest thing to one I had ever seen on his face. “And so, for this night and this night alone, I make you immune to our laws. Revel in your glory for a few hours and at dawn return to work.”
He looked around at the gathered assembly. “All of us will set to work. There are difficult days ahead, but I’m confident we will survive this setback and be the stronger for it.”
As he turned on his heel and strode away, I wished I could feel flattered, could know a thrill of joy at receiving this recognition before my comrades. But the time when I would have felt pleased was past. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore.
Despite Rideon’s advice to enjoy the moment, I sought my bed early that night. I was exhausted and the purple bruises marring my ribs still pained me. I found an out of the way spot, well distanced from the others, and curled up beneath a tall elder tree.
I woke at one point during the night, thinking I heard footsteps
rustling in the leaves nearby and Terrac softly calling my name. I kept still and when his footsteps eventually receded, breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t know why he sought me, but all I wanted was to be left alone tonight. I cradled my head in one arm and rested my other hand on the finely grained wood of the bow beside me. I didn’t have any arrows for it as yet. I thought in the morning I would ask Dradac to make me some fine new ones, the best he ever fletched. I fell asleep stroking the smooth wood and vaguely wondering that it felt warm to my touch.
Despite my exhaustion, I spent a troubled night tossing and turning on the rocky ground. For the first time in a long while I dreamed of the night my mother died all those years ago and of the brooch she left me. Then I dreamed of Hadrian, the priest of Light who promised to teach me about magic if I came to him in Selbius.
I awoke early the next morning and lay awake, staring up into the scattered patches of lightening sky peeking between the leafless branches of the trees overhead. I was unused to seeing so much sky. The bare branches made it look later in the season than it was, but I knew elsewhere in the forest the trees would still be thick with greenery. Three days short of Middlefest, it seemed wrong to be surrounded by this gloom and deadness.
I rose and passed through camp, stepping carefully to avoid trampling on the sleeping forms of my comrades where they huddled on the ground. I remembered from past explorations a small spring not far from this spot, probably one of the factors Rideon had taken into account when settling on this site. Finding the gurgling stream only a little distance away, I knelt and washed the sleep from my eyes and filled my waterskin.
When I rose from the stony banks, I found Brig sitting nearby on a fallen log, watching me. His grey eyes were fixed on a point in the distance, his weathered face creased in the half-frown that always meant he was puzzling over something. He rubbed listlessly at the calluses on his rough hands and his mouth moved, as if he were muttering beneath his breath. The sight of him sent a pang through me, but I felt no shock or alarm, only comfort. I shook my head and smiled, noting how the front of his faded woolen tunic was fastened crookedly. I leaned forward to right it for him, as I had done many times before, and stopped abruptly, my hands hovering inches from him.
Cold reason reasserted itself and Brig’s image wavered. I had to stop this. Brig was gone. Unless I wished to let go of my reason entirely and live the rest of my life in a world of pathetic imaginings, a place where the dead walked and events I didn’t like could be changed, I needed to pull back from what I was doing. As much as it pained me to do it, I pushed Brig’s flickering image aside and forced myself to see the reality instead. The space opposite me was empty, occupied only by a fallen tree stump with a handful of jumper beetles crawling on its surface.
But my vision of Brig helped me form a decision I’d been contemplating for a long time. It was as if he had appeared to remind me of things I already knew but had refused until now to accept. Of old obligations unfulfilled and promises broken.
I returned to camp, where the outlaws were just beginning to stir in their dew-soaked blankets. Someone started to build a campfire, until Rideon ordered there be no fires lit today. We weren’t safe from discovery yet, he said.
I slipped quietly among the men, found the lonely spot where I had passed the night, and collected my bow. Then I set my back to the camp and my comrades without a word of farewell. No one called out to me or even, I suspected, noted my departure.
I’d come to a decision and with this new-found direction a little of the strangeness of last night fell away. I was done settling for whatever fate served up to me. If I followed along the road life set at my feet the future was already a given. I would be a hunted criminal, forced to skulk within the boundaries of Dimming the rest of my life, wondering daily if this would be the day a Fist’s blade or the Praetor’s noose found me. Such an existence I had once craved but Brig’s death had opened my eyes to the waste of it.
It was time to step off that path.
NOT AN ENDING, BUT A RESTING PLACE
Golden and amber leaves crunch loudly beneath my boots, startling my thoughts back to the present, as I follow the forest trail leading away from Rideon and the others. I have come far since the dark night so long ago when I lost my parents. In some ways I’ve journeyed farther still since losing Brig two nights ago. But as I leave the outlaw camp behind, anticipation stirs within me and I contemplate the distance I have yet to travel.
A sudden flair of warmth radiating from the bow slung across my back seems to echo my sense of hope.
Continue Ilan’s journey in Book II: Betrayal of Thieves…
About the Author
C. Greenwood started writing stories shortly after learning her ABCs and she hasn’t put down her pen since. After falling in love with the fantasy genre more than a decade ago, she began writing sword and sorcery novels. The result was the birth of her best known works, the Legends of Dimmingwood series. In addition to her writing, Ms. Greenwood is a wife and mom and a graphic designer.
Want to learn more about C. Greenwood or her books? Check out her website at www.cgreenwoodauthor.com or sign up to receive her new release announcements at http://tinyurl.com/3dbegmw
* * * * *
FANTASY BOOKS BY C. GREENWOOD
Legends of Dimmingwood Series
Magic of Thieves ~ Book I
Betrayal of Thieves ~ Book II
Circle of Thieves ~ Book III
Redemption of Thieves ~ Book IV
Journey of Thieves~ Book V
Rule of Thieves ~ Book VI (Coming soon)
Catalysts of Chaos Series
Mistress of Masks ~ Book I
Betrayer of Blood ~ Book II
Summoner of Storms ~ Book III (Coming soon)
Find C. Greenwood’s Books on Amazon
CITY OF DEMONS
KEVIN HARKNESS
Reprinted by permission.
published by Tyche Books Ltd.
www.TycheBooks.com
Copyright 2012 by Kevin Harkness.
Cover Art by Malcolm McClinton
Cover Layout and Map by Lucia Starkey
Interior Artwork by Galen Dara
Editorial by M. L. D. Curelas
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright holder, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third party websites or their content.
These stories are works of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in each story are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
This book is dedicated to my wife, Cecilia, and my son, Thomas, for their support and love; to the three muses: Wendy, Karen, and Jenny for their inspiration; to Alison Acheson for her advice; to Margaret Curelas and Tina Moreau of Tyche Books for trusting their luck; and to all the writers and all the readers.
~ Kevin Harkness
CHAPTER ONE
THE UNEXPECTED HERO
“Get up, you lazy pigs!”
The words, which came out as “Geryupyalazpigs,” crashed through Garet’s sleeping brain. He stiffened and cracked open one eye. His father’s own eyes glared back at him over the top rung of the ladder. Garet kept still and squeezed his eyelid down to the limits of secret sight. With a sour grunt, his father climbed down from the sleeping loft to transfer his loud ill-wishes to his wife.
He would have to be extra careful around his father today.
Garet was always careful around Hilly. The big man so obviously disliked his youngest son that Garet had once asked his mother if Hilly was really his father. He had been too young then to realize the insulting nature of the question, but his mother had merely sighed and pointed out that although Gar
et had a thick head of hair as black as her own and had a smaller build compared to his older brothers, who had all seemed determined to catch up to their father in girth and height as soon as possible, he still possessed his father’s grey eyes and high cheek-bones, as well as, she said dryly, a certain stubbornness—especially when facing a difficult problem.
Garet shook his head at recalling this conversation. Everyday was a problem, made bearable only by the presence of his mother and sister in this rough farmhouse. With his father safely out of reach, he pushed back the itchy blanket and sat up. After a stretch and a tug at his hair, cut short and roughly, for the shears were the same ones they would use to trim the sheep in the spring, he put his bare feet into his shoes, feeling the cold floor through a hole in one tattered sole. Something moved near the toe. He hastily pulled the shoe off and shook out a long, green sting-bug that had crawled inside during the night. A shudder ran through him at his close call.
A snicker sounded from across the loft. His older brother Gitel, sliding to the floor from the top bunk, exchanged a knowing look with his twin, Galit, in the bunk below. The two of them laughed their way down the ladder.
Not chance, Garet thought. Deliberate. A sting from the fierce little insect, now hissing on the floor, would not have gotten him off work today. No, his father would not put up with such “laziness” and “wool gathering” for a mere sting. But the pain from his swollen foot would have made each step a torment until well after the sun dropped behind the western hills.
His little sister, Allia, reached out for the bug. Although still small enough to be tied by a long cord to her bed for safety’s sake, she had never feared anything in her life. She wobbled full tilt at anything fate put in her path. She almost had the enraged insect in her hands when Garet hauled her back by the cord. Howling in indignation, she flailed her arms and the sting-bug waved its antennae in equal anger until Garet brought his other foot, shod in an unbroken shoe, down on the creature. Allia was silent for a moment, then bent down to look at the slimy mess now covering the bottom of Garet’s shoe and the rough planks of the loft’s floor. Sting-bugs always had more juice in them than you expected.
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