Servant of the King (The Fledgling Account Book 3)

by Y. K. Willemse

  A pale light broke over him, and his eyes were drawn left, where a distended, insubstantial figure with a long, ghoul-like face reared over him. The indistinct spires stretched over the smoky lips were fangs. Francisco screamed piercingly.

  The Thing bent over him, jaws agape.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The

  Naztwai Camp

  “It stinks,” Etana murmured.

  They were half an hour from the camp, and with each step, the smell increased. The landscape had changed. The fiddlewoods and lancewoods had thinned, the ground was rocky and mossy, and it was harder to stay hidden. The blackroots and broomsedge plants were spindly and sludge-colored. Etana struggled to find food for them, and they had almost run out of the dry meat they had taken from Cyril Earl’s keep. Rafen couldn’t hunt, as it would draw too much suspicion to all of them.

  A fine, sticky rain had started to fall. Summer heat rose from the ground. Rafen supposed they were now in Ki Zion, the second month. Perhaps they had even passed his birthday. Since he had lost track of dates and had considered himself fifteen for the past two months anyway, it made no difference.

  Francisco was fifteen too. Rafen felt a shiver run down his spine. One thing was certain: he had to get back to his brother soon. He had felt this for some time, but he couldn’t explain why.

  His stream of thoughts could not mask the unavoidable truth he faced now: the Lashki’s scent had been getting stronger and stronger too. He was with his Naztwai.

  It was one thing, spying on Naztwai. Spying on the Lashki was entirely another, and now that Rafen knew he would be fighting the Lashki to the death soon, his heart drummed even more frantically. In the first ten minutes after finding out about his presence, Rafen had told the others softly that they could turn back if they wanted. It was a waste of breath.

  “Someone,” Sherwin breathed now, “forgot to wash with soap.”

  Rafen dashed raindrops from his eyes, plowing forward through the increasingly muddy ground. The rocks were slippery, and he and the others had to hold onto tree branches and bushes to keep their balance. The invisible barriers had greatly decreased. Rafen supposed there were fewer sentinels in this part of the Woods because there were plenty of other bad things to meet up with. Etana and Rafen had had to use kesmal three times to fend off oxalum, and they had seen a changeling earlier in the day. Sherwin had found a real dragon egg, which he had suggested in jest that they fry up and eat. Etana told him it would have caused an explosion fit to create a farm-sized crater.

  She paused behind Rafen, and he looked back at a rocky incline to see her removing her ring and stretching it into a scepter. Sherwin’s hand moved to his sword hilt.

  “Remember,” Rafen said in a carrying whisper, “if someone sees us, we run. We only fight if we have to.”

  “Yes,” Etana hissed sharply, “but if the Lashki runs after us we haven’t got a hope, so I’ll have to do kesmal.”

  “You won’t be alone,” Rafen said, even though he felt sick. “Shield me, and I’ll do my best to hurt him again.”

  He was already thinking vaguely about strategies. Biting the Lashki as a wolf obviously wasn’t wise, as it had virtually undone Rafen the last time he had tried it. Theoretically, if he attacked the Lashki’s throat, all would be well. But getting there unharmed would be the difficulty, and he couldn’t do any further kesmal as a wolf once he had transformed. No, it was better to face the Lashki as a man. He would have to shoot a beam of fire into his eye or something, if only he could aim his flame correctly. Or if he waited until the Lashki attacked him, he might be able to create a collision.

  Concerned, Etana saw him thinking deeply, and he gave her a faint smile and winked.

  Pink tinged Etana’s cheeks.

  Rafen moved ahead with a new spring in his step. Even though he knew the three of them were traveling toward destruction, he felt like he had swallowed a gigantic bubble. Sherwin scuffled his way down the slope behind much too loudly, muttering something about “bein’ nauseated”.

  “Quiet,” Etana whispered. “You’re being far too noisy.”

  Twenty agonizing minutes passed, and the smell became overpowering. Sherwin permanently had his hand clapped over his nose, but Etana toiled on, her face pale green as she clasped her silver scepter.

  “Stop,” Rafen mouthed, holding up his palm behind him.

  Sherwin and Etana froze. Rafen had been mindlessly stealing over stones and leaves until he had passed through some branches into the beginnings of a clearing. In the center, near a struggling sapling, Asiel stood with his back to them, his nhanya blade at his side. The wind stirred his knotted brown dreadlocks.

  Rafen was in plain view, but Asiel did not turn. He continued breathing deeply, as if in meditation, inhaling the pungent smell. Trembling, Rafen stepped backward, trying to stifle any sound. He tore his eyes from the philosopher to see a mud-spattered rock behind himself. Avoiding it, he darted behind the large bald cypress where Sherwin and Etana stood.

  Etana pressed close against him, her heart fluttering fitfully.

  A stirring in the clearing caught their attention. Rafen peered out from behind the tree as Asiel moved forward through the last screen of leaves shielding him from the camp. Beyond the greenery, the irregular tramping of many hard feet was audible.

  Sherwin met Rafen’s eyes, clearly waiting for orders. His stomach lurching, Rafen nodded and stepped out from behind the tree. With minimal noise, he loosened his sword in his sheath and crept forward, Etana and Sherwin close behind.

  A large rock amid fiddlewoods to their right was big enough to hide all three of them, and there would be a vantage point to its left, through the thinly growing leaves. Rafen moved quickly forward and flattened himself against it. The Lashki was painfully close; his phoenix feather burned his chest. Feverishly, Rafen pulled it away from his skin.

  He parted the leaves to his left with his fingers.

  “In a week then, Master?” Asiel’s oily voice said.

  He was standing before a mass of Naztwai, which were tramping round and round an immense, torn up circle of ground. They were an interminable sea of blue-black, apelike heads, blotting out the land for leginis. A few philosophers occasionally flicked kesmal their way, goading them. Though they were controlled by only a handful, Rafen estimated the Naztwai numbered close to two thousand. He lifted his eyes from the scene. The Lashki stood slightly apart from Asiel, directing his copper rod at the hairy forms. The rod jerked violently in his hand, and simultaneously, Rafen’s phoenix feather twitched within his shirt. He flung himself back behind the rock, hitting Etana and Sherwin, who had been watching over his shoulders. Sherwin mouthed something nasty.

  The voices had begun in Rafen’s head, and momentarily, he saw the crumbling cliff and the nude, faceless, toothless forms reaching for him, writhing against invisible constraints.

  Rafen, Rafen!

  They did need him, Rafen remembered suddenly, the hard rock only a vague sensation against his back. Their ranks would only be complete once he joined them, once he surrendered to the clammy touch that led to ultimate transformation, placing him above mortality.

  Rafen…

  He surged toward the leaves that separated him from the After Life, scarcely feeling his feet moving over the ground. Someone grabbed him and pulled him back, slamming him against the rock.

  “No, no,” Sherwin breathed. The wild look in his eyes was easily translatable: What’re yer doin’?

  Now facing him, Etana flung her arms around his neck, imploring in a whisper, “Stay, Rafen. Please.”

  Rafen relaxed against the rock, his heartbeat bubbling in his chest. The voices still roared in his brain, but he had been an idiot; the flaming of his phoenix feather told him so. He would be fortunate if the Lashki hadn’t heard any of that.

  Though the churning of many feet continued ceaselessly, Asiel and the Lashki made no sound. Etana’s arm tightened around him as they waited, scarcely breathing. Sherwin stood be
fore Rafen, his white face watchful. Trying to shut out the bellowing voices, Rafen concentrated on Etana’s cool touch. When he caught sight of her gleaming phoenix heartstring, he remembered the one thing that had saved him from Nazt and could save them now. His prayer to Zion was an internal falling to the knees.

  The wind had gone still around them, and the creeping cold the Lashki brought was palpable. A rustling of the leaves to the left prompted Sherwin to bite his lip hard. Silence again. A slight breeze tickled their faces.

  While Sherwin breathed a little easier, his eyes were still glued to Rafen.

  “Yeh’re losin’ yer mind,” he mouthed.

  Rafen thought he was. The pulling power of the voices was so strong he found it hard to focus. He kept remembering the bodies at the cliff’s edge, and the sight of them fascinated his mind. A pinprick of sanity told him they had come here to spy, and if they wanted to glean anything useful before imminent death, they had better do it.

  He crept back to the leaves, Sherwin nervously moving aside and tiptoeing behind him. Etana had a hold of his arm, her grip numbing.

  “So then why would I take a week?” the Lashki was saying in his low voice, two steps from Asiel. His Ashurite accent again struck Rafen; he realized Asiel and the Lashki could have spoken the language of Ashur together if they had wanted. The Lashki’s rejection of it intrigued him.

  “They will go in a matter of days,” the Lashki said.

  He turned to look abruptly at the rock behind him, but Rafen, Sherwin, and Etana were out of sight. The rod was twitching persistently in his grasp. When Rafen dared to look again, he was given a fleeting view of the gold circlet that passed across the Lashki’s gray forehead. The royal amethyst gleamed quietly on it while the Lashki turned back to Asiel, and Rafen fought a wild desire to snatch it away and run madly with it, so he could bear it to the true king of Siana again. He could fight the Lashki now, he realized. However, without Alexander’s planning, he might not survive.

  It was prudent to wait.

  “Do they know what to do, Master?” Asiel asked, turning to the Lashki.

  The Lashki’s dead, black eyes met his. “Know what to do?” he said, with keen resonance.

  Asiel cringed.

  “They have had it planted in them since birth,” the Lashki said, “since the day I bred them in the river where I first learned what death was. They will do what I ask, Asiel. What Nazt asks.”

  The Lashki raised the rod, and the two thousand Naztwai ground to a halt, crashing into each other’s backs, leaping at each other’s throats, whistling from their open mouths purposelessly. The Lashki flicked it again, and they continued their hungry circling.

  “I have their hearts,” the Lashki said. His eyes narrowed with satisfaction.

  “Of course, Master.” Asiel rubbed his thin hands together. “Of course. And the census will be complete when they arrive at the city?”

  The Lashki inclined his dripping head.

  “King Robert’s last possible supporters,” Asiel said, like a child contemplating his birthday party. “Excellent. Your victory will be unassailable. You were right not to trust them.”

  The Lashki gave a twisted smile as he watched his creatures run in circles. “It will mean that no one will have anything to rear an army with. Least of all Rafen.”

  “You will find him, Master,” Asiel encouraged. “No one can resist you.”

  “He will suffer before the end,” the Lashki said, more to himself than Asiel. “But I will not find him; I will never stoop to that again. I will wait until he is two steps from me. Asiel, he will come to me. He will come out of his hole like a rabbit, at the destruction of New Isles, or at the destruction of someone dear to him. We will let him play the hero, Asiel. And then—”

  He slashed the air with his copper rod, causing a Naztwai to fall sideways out of the circle, its body covered with brilliant blue glassy ants, consuming the flesh that was rock hard. Frozen, Rafen watched for a minute, until the bones lay clean on the ground, a dangerous yellow-white, warning in unintelligible letters. It was the first time he had sympathized with a Naztwai, and in his mind, he was wondering what it would feel like to have his skin eaten away like that.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The

  Lashki’s Plan

  “I will call the rest tomorrow.” The Lashki straightened, purpose in his eyes. “We will be ready. After razing New Isles, we will deal with Aronis too.”

  “We’ve seen enough,” Etana breathed in Rafen’s ear. The voices crescendoed in Rafen’s head again, and he wondered why Sherwin and Etana didn’t seem to hear them. Was it just him? Was he the only weak one?

  “Rafen,” Etana whispered in his ear.

  They were calling him… It was the difference between utter failure and immortality. He wavered, his hand still holding back the fiddlewood leaves slightly.

  With a wrenching of the mind, he remembered the burning phoenix feather at his chest, and staggered back, Etana encouraging him with hushed words. Sherwin stood to his right, transfixed, waiting for his next move. Rafen reeled around and stumbled into the bushes, Sherwin and Etana hurrying behind. Sherwin flapped his hands, and Rafen realized above the Nazt screeching in his mind that he was making too much noise, and there were likely watchmen nearby.

  His first instinct was to bolt, but it would be a mistake. If he started running, the crashing through the broomsedge would be audible to everyone. The slow picking over rocks was tedious, and Rafen kept glancing behind, expecting any minute to hear the sticky pulse of the Lashki’s pursuit.

  On their way back, Rafen glimpsed a philosopher to their left in the bushes. He had already seen another Ashurite pushing through distant leaves to their right, but he hadn’t told the others for fear of panicking them. He motioned to them to keep their heads low.

  For ten minutes, he scarcely breathed. They were further along now, and the only person Rafen saw was a Tarhian a little ways from them leaning against a red cedar wearily, his eyes closed. For a camp founded by the Lashki, it was not well guarded. Then again, the Lashki had probably thought no one could travel through the Woods this far undiscovered. He hadn’t counted on two things: a combination of the Secra’s and the Fledgling’s skill, and the instinctive kesmal that enabled them to move noiselessly. Even Sherwin seemed to have acquired the skill somehow.

  Once the Tarhian was out of sight, Rafen pulled Etana to his side before dropping to the ground as a wolf and rushing forward. Etana followed swiftly, sometimes slithering snake-like after him and other times remaining upright. Sherwin kept up admirably.

  Though Rafen couldn’t recall how long they ran, their flight ate away the distance between the Naztwai camp and them until Rafen at last transformed, shaking with the new knowledge he had acquired. He rested against a tree, Etana standing with her hands on her hips before him, breathing deeply. Sherwin waited, trying absentmindedly to balance on a tree root as he wrestled with the many new problems in his brain.

  “He is going to destroy New Isles,” Etana said, “and all as a way of getting to you.”

  Rafen rubbed his back against the tree’s hard bark, his eyes closed in a fruitless attempt to forget all he had heard. The fallen Naztwai’s bones were imprinted on his mind, and next to them, he could see his own.

  *

  Francisco fell in and out of dreams. The world was nothing more than meaningless spirals, shifting shapes, and shadows. Occasionally, he returned to the rocky floor of his previous life to encounter a searing pain in his shoulder. Something gave him water and a kind of liquid food to keep his ever-weakening body alive.

  Francisco enjoyed his reveries. Occasionally through the smoke in his mind, he could see stars. He lived for the stars. They were pinpricks he would reach some day.

  He slept deeply…

  And then the dreams were gone for good. Francisco lay on the hard, twiggy ground, his hands bound with rope behind his back. It was unnecessary. He was too weak to move. Voices spoke around him,
some sharp like knives, others curious but crude.

  “He is not dead?” a man said in a thick Tarhian accent.

  “Oh no,” another said more smoothly, and Francisco knew he was Ashurite. “But frail, very frail. The changeling sapped him, as changelings do. Look at his color: white as bones. You can see where the changeling was drinking. This mark, here.”

  A hand pulled at the thin material covering Francisco’s shoulder. A knife slit his shirt, revealing something for another man to see.

  “Ah,” the Tarhian said. “Yes. I see.”

  “Do you?” the Ashurite said mockingly. “The marks are faint, Garrak.”

  “I cannot see them,” another Tarhian said nearby.

  “No,” the Ashurite said. “I thought not. But they are there.”

  “Who is he?” the second Tarhian said.

  “Oh, I know who he is,” the Ashurite said, with a laugh like a sneer. “He matches the description perfectly. He is Rafen. The Master will be most grateful to see him. We will take him to the Naztwai camp. We are but five days’ journey away.”

  Everything was slowly returning to Francisco. It was like a weight on his chest, becoming heavier and heavier. Tarhians and philosophers had captured him after a changeling had ensnared him. The changeling had been living off his blood, though Francisco had no memory of this. He felt crazily weak – and cold, terribly cold. Where were the others? He searched further back in the mists of his mind. They had dropped him off… at the Hideout… where…

  No, he wouldn’t think of it. He kept his burning eyes squeezed shut, so his captors wouldn’t know he was awake. It was odd, Francisco thought bitterly, how once he could have commanded these Tarhians to release him. Now – and his pulse quivered as he thought of it – he was going to get the treatment reserved for his brother.