by David Benem
Handsome’s eyes darted about and his lips trembled. “Karnag, there is no need for violence here! Dead gods, you know me! I didn’t think I could question Tream. You’d worked with him several times, so I reckoned he had your trust.”
Karnag fingered the hilts of his blades, each in turn. “Where is he?”
“I have no idea, I swear to you. Your patron sent him a note, asked him to meet at Old Gallows Rock. That’s the last I saw of him. I only arranged the meeting because I thought you were dead. You have to understand that, Karnag! I would never betray you!”
Karnag grabbed Handsome by the throat and slammed him against the tavern’s sandstone wall. His eyes darkened and he gave him a fierce look. “You should never believe news of my death unless you bear witness to it yourself, and then you should question your eyes. Where is he?”
Handsome flailed and fumbled with Karnag’s iron grip. “H-Hargrave,” he gasped.
Karnag eased his grip, allowing Handsome’s feet to touch the floor.
“Hargrave,” the barkeep said through wheezing breaths. “He told me once his brother had a farm near Hargrave.” Karnag withdrew his hand and Handsome sucked in air. “There’s a chance he’d head there,” he said. “I’ve built my business on keeping people’s secrets, but you’ve been wronged. I’ll break his trust if it means regaining yours.”
Fencress placed a hand on Karnag’s shoulder. “If a man is on the run, he runs most often to family, they say.”
The narrow streets of Raven’s Roost were choked with refugees fleeing the threat of war. Karnag pressed through the throngs of bedraggled folk and their mangy animals, his company in tow.
“Dead gods!” called Fencress, shouting over a braying donkey, “I thought this place smelled like shit before. What do you reckon it smells like now? What smells worse than shit?”
Karnag said nothing. He no longer had humor within him. He kept moving through the crowd, forging a path through the rabble with an icy glare and powerful movements. An old man stumbled into his path, and Karnag shoved him hard against an overladen cart.
“Death,” said Drenj from behind, voice barely loud enough to be heard over the din of the crowd. “Death smells worse.”
“You are a veritable poet, my young Khaldisian friend! Oh, the songs we’ll write once we’ve settled in some seedy tavern to count our coin!”
After a moment Karnag felt the black-clad woman’s eyes upon him. “What is it?” he grumbled.
“New horses?” she asked. “Hargrave is a good two days’ ride southeast, perhaps three.”
Karnag grunted and continued his march, turning a corner and heading toward the town’s stockyards and smithies.
Fencress edged to Karnag’s side. “We’re spilling a lot of blood for the coin we’ve been paid. What’s more, Tream may not be as dimwitted as we suspect. He could prove a hard man to find.”
Karnag regarded her. Fencress had for years now been a trustworthy companion, his only friend even, but work such as this tested everyone. “I’ll ride to the world’s ending to find him,” said Karnag. “I leave no score unsettled.”
Fencress nodded in reply. “I’m at your side, of course.” She glanced over her shoulder at Drenj and Paddyn. “But what of them?”
Karnag chuckled grimly. “Neither of them will want to be sitting behind these walls when war arrives. The Khaldisian’s greed will keep him loyal, at least until the crowns are in his hands. Paddyn is young and scared, but he’s more frightened of crossing me than helping me.”
“Such are the ties that bind,” said Fencress, smirking.
The crowds thinned near the city’s gates. In the shadow of the wall they found a horse trader, his stall holding a sad collection of steeds. Six bony beasts, each more emaciated than the last. Their merchant sat with legs raised upon a table near the street, lounging in the shade of the stall. He had a fat belly and smiled smugly as he looked up from the bowl of olives balanced on his yellow shirt.
Drenj passed wordlessly by the man and moved to the horses, checking their teeth and hooves. After a moment he turned back to Karnag and nodded.
“How much for the lot of them?” asked Karnag.
The merchant stood and his smile broadened. “War is on the way,” he said, stroking a long mustache. “They say folk should be fleeing north.” He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “A healthy horse is the fastest method of travel. But, they are hard to come by now, and highly valued.”
“Your price, merchant,” said Karnag. “We have no time to tarry.”
“Three hundred silver crowns.” His eyes drifted across each of the company, as though appraising opponents in combat.
“Three hundred?” demanded Drenj, arms flailing. “That is many times a fair price!”
“These are hard days, gentlemen!” said the merchant, rolling his eyes as though bothered by the insolence of children. “I have but six horses to sell, and that is my price. The Arranese may soon be at our gates. What would be the value of such horses, then? Trust me, my price now is a bargain compared to what it could be in just a few days.”
“We have a deal,” said Karnag, dropping three heavy purses on the table.
“Madness!” yelped Drenj, his dark-lined eyes wide with shock. “Think of the coin, you ingrate!”
“I appreciate a customer who knows value,” said the merchant, drawing open the purse strings and fingering the coins with a smile. “The horses are yours. And, as a gesture of my good faith, I’ll throw in their tack.”
Drenj stormed across the hay-covered ground to stand before Karnag. “Are you mad? You’ve just spent the bulk of our advance for a slim chance to recover the rest! You realize if we don’t find Tream we’ll be left with next to nothing for our troubles? He has wronged us all equally, Karnag. Vengeance would be a fine thing, but this is business.”
Karnag regarded the Khaldisian stoically. “I’ve told you,” he said in a level voice, “I do not do these things for the coin.”
“But I do! And you’ve just squandered nearly all the money we had in hand!” He paced about the stall. “I’ve been away from my family for weeks, I’ve undoubtedly missed other opportunities for easier, more reliable work, and now I’m being asked to ride south again, toward an invading army, on the meager hope Tream is picking his rotting teeth on his brother’s farm?”
“I know he’s there.” I can see it. He shut his eyes for an instant, and heard the sound of Tream begging for his life. It will happen thus.
“Ah yes,” Drenj said, “Karnag Mak Ragg, the great slayer of men. Tell me, do you smell his blood? Can you taste his fear? Tell me just how is it you know? Tell me you haven’t just cast aside our coin on nothing more than a hint from that hare-lipped barkeep?”
Karnag tapped the hilt of his short sword. “You are free to go, Khaldisian. Just as Tream was.”
“Not without my share,” he said, squaring to Karnag.
“Gentlemen!” said the merchant, moving between the two and placing his hands upon their chests. “Please, if you must quarrel, do it elsewhere!”
“Out of my way,” Karnag growled.
The merchant spat, offended. “I’ll not be treated this way by scum such as you!”
Karnag slapped the man across the face. “Out of my way.”
The merchant stood in shock for a moment, rubbing a flushed cheek. He then withdrew a bejeweled dagger from his belt. “I rescind our bargain! Best of luck finding healthy horses within five leagues of this city!”
Karnag struck the merchant square upon the jaw, sending him sprawling onto his table with a shower of silver coins. The merchant tumbled backward and off, into a pile of hay. Karnag gave Drenj a dangerous look and then strode to stand over the merchant.
“Guards!” the man screamed, staggering away from Karnag while sweeping straws of hay from his shirt. “Guards!”
Karnag lunged forward, driving the merchant into one of the stall’s wooden posts. The post snapped and the two men crashed to the ground near t
he horses.
Karnag pressed himself upward and drove a knee into the merchant’s chest. Bones snapped and the man gasped in shock. He struggled beneath Karnag but to no avail.
Karnag grabbed the merchant’s head in his hands. “No man commands me,” he said through gritted teeth, “and none dares betray me.”
Fencress screamed from somewhere and there was a clamor of shouts and steel.
Karnag roared and he squeezed tightly. The merchant gurgled and his eyes bulged and he squirmed desperately. Karnag felt hands pulling at his shoulders but he would not be moved. I yield to no man.
He roared again, and a feeling rose within him. A feeling from deep inside, from a place beyond thought and instinct, from his very essence. It rose and swelled, filling him completely. A spirit, a power, an invulnerability.
His hands flexed and dug into the merchant’s sweaty skin. Then, Karnag shouted a word he did not know, in a tongue not his own. A loud crack sounded, and the man fell still.
Karnag stumbled back and stood. He regarded the corpse, split asunder from the crown of the head to the center of the gut. Blood and brains spilled from his skull, and broken ribs pierced his chest and poked through the yellow linen of his shirt.
He regarded the carcass and realized a wide grin had split his face. I can slay by will alone.
Hands tugged at him and heard his name called as though from far away. Over the span of several heartbeats the sounds grew louder. Someone came into his field of vision, a face frozen in a rictus of horror.
“Karnag!” It was Fencress, her face spattered with blood. “Dead gods, man! What have you done?”
Karnag allowed himself to be pulled away from the merchant’s stall by Fencress as Drenj and Paddyn frantically gathered handfuls of the spilled coins and what few horses they could. A dead guardsman lay near the stall, his guts cut open. Bells clanged as the city’s alarm sounded, and Karnag caught sight of several red-sashed soldiers scrambling toward the stockyards.
They pulled their horses hurriedly through the city’s gate, its guardsman whimpering and holding up his hands as they passed. Screams of terror sounded from behind them.
Fencress yelled at the men to mount the horses bareback, to worry about the tack for the beasts later. “Get clear of this place, now!”
Karnag did so in a daze, his movements slow and dreamlike. The wicked smile did not leave his face.
They rode hard and came to a clearing half a league south of Raven’s Roost and dismounted their steeds. No one said a word as they fitted their horses with bits, bridles and saddles.
“A warning would have been a nice thing,” said Fencress, her face displaying her usual bemusement but her eyes something else. “We have little left of our supplies.”
Karnag shrugged. “We’re bound to cross refugees on the road.”
“Simple criminals, then?” said Paddyn, spitting through the hole left by his missing tooth. “Is that what we’ve become?”
Karnag gave him a black look. “Did you ever think of yourself as something more?”
They were quiet and climbed astride their horses once more. Karnag turned and regarded the road behind them, shadowed by leafy trees and gently rising toward Raven’s Roost. The alarm bells could still be heard, faint and distant. On the road, perhaps three hundred yards away, was a lone, green-cloaked rider.
“A guard?” asked Fencress. “Perhaps a friend of the merchant?”
Karnag shrugged and turned his horse slowly about. He straightened in the saddle and breathed deeply. He fingered the hilts of his blades, each in turn. No matter. Let them come.
Shivering, Karnag pulled his moth-eaten blanket to his chin and rolled over to face the dead remains of the campfire. His teeth chattered and his body trembled as though he stood upon the snow-laden highlands of his youth. Yet, it was a warm night, and his companions rested peacefully in their bedrolls nearby.
He rubbed at his neck, and his hand came away slick with sweat. He wondered for an instant whether he’d fallen ill, but then thought of the horse trader, his corpse broken and awash in blood. And then were those words—those of the Lector—threading through his thoughts. No. I fight with something else entirely.
He squeezed shut his eyes and searched again for that place within him. He slowed his breathing and disregarded the chill in his bones, settling deep within himself. He sought that center, that focus he’d drawn upon just before the killing. It had seemed a sense of utter certainty, a willful embrace of death and all its cold consequences. It had seemed then so familiar, like something he’d known he’d held within all along, but had never been fully able to touch. It had seemed like his very soul.
He searched, but within were only the words. The maddening words whose meaning was utterly incomprehensible. Over and over again they came, at first as soft as a lover’s whisper but growing steadily louder. “Necrista traellus a abridalusi Yrghul y ogo alliata. Illienne cradus e Warduren renden e sallem orn argo apocha.”
He opened his eyes and smacked his head, as though he could knock the words from his skull. His eyes found the stars above and he breathed deeply the night air. He took in the world around him, the heavy boughs of the old trees, the groaning sound they made as the wind moved through them. The faint rustle of leaves. He pulled in all the perceptions he could discern, but still, through and over it all, the words resounded.
They grew louder still. “Necrista traellus a abridalusi Yrghul y ogo alliata. Illienne cradus e Warduren renden e sallem orn argo apocha.” He could not pull his thoughts from their utterance, and could not bend his mind to think of other things.
Soon, they were like a thunderclap, as loud and forceful as the most violent storm. He tossed aside his blanket and pressed himself upright. It seemed as though the whole forest shook with the noise, yet his companions slept soundly still.
The words were heard by him alone.
Louder and louder they came, until all other thought was drummed from his mind. His vision went to blackness and his head rang. “Necrista traellus a abridalusi Yrghul y ogo alliata. Illienne cradus e Warduren renden e sallem orn argo apocha.”
His head seemed ready to split with the reverberation. He reeled with agony, squeezing his hands to his skull in hopes of keeping it whole.
“No!” he roared. He fell back to the ground, writhing in his struggle to force the sounds from his head.
“Karnag?” called someone, the sound distant and drowned by the words roaring through his mind.
“No!” he screamed again, gnashing his teeth and cracking his jaw.
After a time he rose, defiant.
No.
And then there it was. The feeling. It began deep within him, in his very center. Faintly at first, but growing ever more intense.
The chill fled his form and the shivers subsided. He felt within him a warmth, a strength, a conviction. A truth. The feel of it invigorated, and he surrendered to it and reveled in it. His heart became a cauldron, spreading white-hot fire through his limbs.
I am the predator, the taker of lives. I am the executioner and decider of fates. I shall not succumb to the will of another.
The words of the Lector diminished and grew silent.
I have become their master.
12
THE DEEP SHADOWS
LANNICK SHIFTED UNCOMFORTABLY in his straw cot. Every last bit of him hurt, and he’d been unable to eat for days. Horus had been kind enough to deliver the occasional bottle of wine, but even that did nothing to remedy his aches, much less his profound despair.
What pains can I bear, when even the wine fails to dull them?
Ever since his encounter with General Fane his sleep had been fitful, as it was this night. He lay with eyes open, watching the barred portal of his door, the thin moonlight streaming from his window, and the deep shadows pooled in the corners of his cell.
He knew they were coming.
General Fane was right: the Necrists would torture him for as long as he could endure, until
at last he was broken and revealed to them everything. He would be forced to surrender the identities of all the Variden, the Vigilant Ones. They were the surviving disciples of Valis, one of the seven banished Sentinels, and he would betray them all.
He thought of the lacquered box he’d left in his quarters, and how foolish he’d been to leave it there. It was his Coda, the bracelet of black iron given to him when he’d taken the oaths of the Variden—the same bracelet Alisa had worn when she’d come to visit him. The Codas had been gifted to the order by the Sentinel Valis, and were the key to their power and survival. All the Variden wore them, for the Codas sealed their secrets, and preserved knowledge upon the death of the body. Without it, Lannick would stand naked before the sorcerous inquisitions of his enemies.
He shifted again in his cot. He would not sleep this night, he knew. The memories of his old life, of his countless failures, were growing too tangible. When his family was murdered he’d disappeared. He’d abandoned his order, buried the symbols of his affiliation and spent his time sulking in taverns. He’d drank and drank, desperately trying to wash away all regrets. At last, he became lost. Lost to his enemies, his order, and himself.
But here, in prison, his past had found him once again.
He kicked aside his blanket. He felt unsteady, plagued by the vague dizziness of insomnia. His eyes trailed again to the door, waiting for it to open. Waiting for death.
He knew the Necrists would not come for him during the day, bound as they were to darkness. But if he could avoid them for but one more day, then perhaps there was some narrow chance. Perhaps Alisa would come to rescue him as she’d promised. He pulled himself from his cot and shuffled to the cell’s arrow-loop window. The sky was dead black, still a long while before dawn.
As they had for several nights, his thoughts focused on his meeting with Alisa. It seemed now a lifetime ago she’d visited him. “I will return for you,” she’d said.
