“This is a strange time to express distrust,” I said. “I am already free. If I wanted to, I could have snatched the torch right from your grasp, put it to the back of your hair and watched as you went up in flames. But I’ve been a good boy, haven’t I?”
“Give him the torch, Karem,” Tylik said.
With uncertainty distorting his mouth, Karem passed me the fiery rod. He knelt and wrapped his thin arms around his uncle’s sickly body. He rose up onto shaky knees, his uncle’s nearly lifeless corpse slung over his shoulder like a sack of wheat. Poor Tylik… he resembled decrepit livestock being hauled to the butcher’s knife. His head hung, chin animatedly bouncing off his nephew’s back as he was carried toward the steps.
“You go ahead,” Karem said. “You are the torchbearer, after all.”
“That’s all well and good,” I said, “but I’m afraid I have as much sense of direction here as a eunuch has in a brothel.”
“Keep left when we emerge, along a hillside. The moon is full tonight, so you should see a small outcropping of low-hanging trees in the distance. Go towards them, away from the city of Lith. Once we reach the forest, we should be free.”
“Good berries grow on them trees,” Tylik explained. “Real good ones. Blue ones, red ones, yella ones. Yellas are a bit sour, but some savants crush them and make ’em into a paste. Claims it can make holes in yer skin heal faster, but I don’t know about all that.”
I grinned and pushed past Karem, up the crooked wooden planks that ascended in an uneven fashion to the surface. The door at the top was already open.
“Cover your trail next time,” I told Karem.
“I thought I closed it.”
I stopped and turned. A gust of fire swirled around me. “Did you?”
Karem licked his lips. His pebbly eyes scoured the wooden plank at his feet. “Maybe I didn’t. I… tonight has been a blur.”
I poked my head out, hopeful not to see a band of guards ready to impale us with pikes. A gentle breeze tickled the fuzzy beard on my face. It seemed clear.
“Come on,” I said. “Kick the door closed behind you this time.”
With Karem and his skeleton of an uncle behind me, I crept around the craggy face of a hill that sped upwards into a mountain of jagged summits. The moon looked like an albino cherry, its stem a thin crescent cloud pausing overhead.
My hand trailed along jutting rocks and dense wet mud as I slowly led the way. The percussions of a terrified heart pounded in my ears. I spent my life portraying a man whose courage and intimidation could not be possessed by fear, and I did a pretty damn good job of it. But inside, far away from prying eyes, I was as scared as any when the time came to stick a blade in a man’s belly or put my plan of escape into action. I just didn’t show it. But here, in an unfamiliar land, with a city of mind-leeching conjurers on the other side of the hill… well, my fingers trembled a little.
There was a whisper behind me. “That’s the outcropping, over there. Do you see it?”
“What do you suppose that is, then?”
There was an eye-blinking silence, which is the type of silence one experiences when your mouth is agape, but all you can do is blink your eyes and wish away the horrible thing you’re staring at.
Finally, I said, “I’d venture a guess that it’s a torch.” Another blink. “Coming quite quickly.” Another blink. “You could perhaps even suggest it’s galloping.”
“Oh my fuck,” Karem cursed, which was an interesting way of showing surprise. If I lived through whatever barreled toward us, I’d have to remember it. “Someone must have seen us.” Panic clung to his words.
Against the inky horizon, silhouettes tumbled toward us, a ball of fire heading the charge. The silence that draped over the land fled, chased away by disturbing stampeding hooves. A hunt had commenced.
I spun around, desperate to find something from the landscape with which I could work. Back toward the entrance of the dungeon, a small patch of earth ramped up into a discombobulated formation of dirt and rock, surrounded by flat land. It looked like the straggler of a hill that’d been struck by explosive lightning.
The hooves of assailing horses thundered closer.
“Stay here,” I told Karem. “I’m going to draw them wide and away from you. When they pass, run your ass to those trees and get the fuck away from here.” I grabbed Karem by the collar of his shirt. “You run like you’re going to lose your legs tomorrow. You run like you want to see your uncle live. You run to be the hero of your little village. Understand?”
A steely resolve iced over the boy’s eyes. His jaw tightened. “Yes.”
I patted Tylik’s shoulder. “Take care, my friend. If I live through this madness, I’ll come back and take the toes from that bloody ogre who took yours.”
The torch fire flared across Tylik’s sloped forehead. His eyes welled up. With a shattered voice, he said, “Thank you. Truly, thank you.”
The rumbling intensified, reverberating into the soles of my feet. The shadows drew closer, their outlines blacker, larger. It was time to set fire to the night.
I ran away from the hillside, in a large swooping pattern. I centered my eyes on the queer rock formation, putting everything I had into each stride. The flames from the torch crackled and burbled, streaking through the night.
The deafening blows of hooves striking the mud were catching me. Their thuds and booms nipped at my ankles. The percussions enveloped me. My entire body quaked.
It’s a terrifying thing to be in such a silent place that you hear only the rasping of your breath and the monsters that chase you. It’s even more harrowing when you know there’s no escape, only a prolonging of your inevitable end.
I jumped onto the twisted structure of rock and dirt, climbing up as high as I could. I felt like a preacher about to deliver a sermon to his faithful followers. Except my followers were the kind a captain of a ship has on the day of his mutiny.
Like the impetus of a toxic wave, the shadows of the beasts and their riders crescendoed over the land, coming to an abrupt halt before me.
“Oh, you got to be fuckin’ me here,” a man said, his face partially covered with steel. He held a small torch that glowed menacingly against the black sky. His voice was gratingly familiar.
Crooked Tooth.
The other two men remained silent, their mail-covered hands tightly woven around their steeds’ reins.
“Get your bloody ass down from there, or I’m comin’ up there and yankin’ you down. And I’ll make yer pretty li’l face turn inside out.”
I wagged the torch insultingly in front of him. “I would highly recommend another approach. You see this here? This fire. Fire burns. Fire bad. Hurts. Ahh! Ouch! Ooo! Hurts! Do you understand any of this?”
With a big, bad huff and an angry frown, Crooked Tooth clambered down from his horse. He withdrew a sword and shoved his torch forward. “Eh? I got one too.”
“That’s impressive. But I have the higher ground. By all means, haul your gaunt self up here, but I think it would be prudent to negotiate. Hammer out a deal. Strike an agreement. What do you say?”
The vast number of sentences clearly spun Crooked Tooth into a whirlwind of confusion. His eyes seemed to dilate and narrow, and his cheeks twitched.
He looked at his pals. “One of you go tell the queen. See wot she wants to do with ’im.”
Both men pulled their left hands back, rearing their steeds around.
“One of you!” Crooked Tooth roared. He pointed to the closest one. “Go.”
The horse galloped away with its rider. I watched as its shadows sunk into the black horizon, hopeful it didn’t stop suddenly and pick up two stragglers. When it continued onward, beyond the bend of the hill, a celebratory sigh of relief washed over me.
I sat on a smooth rock and cracked my knuckles. Equally bored, Crooked Tooth chewed his nails, or what were left of his nails. His fingers resembled stubs, the tips of which had been gnawed down to soft flesh.
I hu
mmed a little tune, counted the dimples on the moon and attempted to snatch stray sparks as they darted like fireflies from the torch when finally the air rumbled with crashing hooves. Two horses blinked in from the black horizon, galloping my way.
Crooked Tooth straightened himself like a good boy. His pal dismounted and followed suit. Apparently no matter the world, the bullshit of royalty stinks the same.
Looking more like a ranger than a queen, Amielle and her trailing guard stopped up short of the overgrowth of earth and rock I was perched upon. She climbed down from her chestnut steed and sidled over in front of Crooked Tooth, a lopsided grin on her pale face. A dull green tunic wrapped around her, the familiar C centered with a devious eye embossed upon her breasts. Her auburn hair looked frizzy, as if she’d just woken up.
With a voice of honey, she said, “The Shepherd does not disappoint. Who freed you?”
“The god of imprisonment,” I said. “He was craving irony.”
Amielle side-eyed Crooked Tooth. “Have you checked the dungeon for Tylik?”
The ogre’s massive nostrils flared. “Uh. No. I, er… no. But he got no feet, so don’t think he’s goin’ nowhere.” He became visibly distraught as the silence tugged at him. “But I can go put an eye down there and see.”
“That would be good,” Amielle said dismissively. She looked at his two friends. “You can join him.”
Crooked Tooth and company took to their horses and obediently ambled over to the dungeon entrance.
“If I gave you a weapon,” Amielle said, “would you attempt to use it on me?”
I traced a circle around my jugular. “I’d stick you right here.”
A haunting grin cut across her scarlet lips. She held her palm toward the sky. Her chest heaved and her jaw shifted. A spark the color of a bloody orange flickered in her hand. It rose above her flesh, swirling into a growing ball of searing heat. The light from my torch melted into the ball’s intensely blinding illumination.
“How much do you truly know about us? About the conjurers?”
I shrugged, pretending that the sudden appearance of an ensorcelled sphere of flames did not shake me. “I’ve slaughtered your kind before. Hundreds of them. You’re nothing special; just a bunch of mutated freaks who can steal the thoughts of the innocent and mold them into monsters. Conjurers made me a very rich man, though. Everyone in Mizridahl wanted them dead, and I gladly made everyone’s dreams come true.”
Amielle shook her head like a disappointed mother. “They were supposed to spread our name in peace. And they did, until you barbarians murdered them. And what for? Hmm? Why did they die? For showing you we can mend the broken and piece back together the shattered?”
“Is that why your conjurers ruined Serith Rabthorn’s mind? And his wife’s? And what of Lysa Rabthorn? You experimented with her, tried making her become one of your obedient freaks. Didn’t turn out like you’d hoped, did it?”
“I once met a boy,” she said, ignoring me, “who lost his mother in a tragic fire. His thoughts were dark. Hopeless. He lived in a world where nightmares slowly drowned him. I took his nightmares and showed them the power of a conjurer. I hid his horrors and rediscovered his hope. I made him better.”
Her words did nothing to me. I knew the truth, even if she wanted to conceal it. “The most horrific tyrants I’ve ever seen have been those who have mixed morals and power. We’re helping, they say — helping spread the good word of our god by cutting off the heads of those who don’t believe in him. We’re helping, they say — helping the king enforce his virtuous ideals by slaughtering anyone who won’t bend the knee before him. It’s the easiest way to obtain control: by wielding your power under the guise of help. I’ve never been fooled by it, and I won’t be fooled by it this time.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “you must adopt the mind of a tyrant to achieve your goals. Even if those goals are pure. History does not bother itself with how progress was made, only that progress was made. Five hundred years from now, when my people have enjoyed generations of prosperity on your lands, they will not recall that I bludgeoned an entire world’s worth of cultures and societies. They will eat their abundance of food, drink their abundance of drink and live happily until the end of their days, hailing Amielle Scorticia as their goddess.”
A sense of pride struck me like an unlikely bolt of lightning on a cold winter night. Chauvinism was not an emotion that often moved me. Ever since I was a boy, I’d held civil zealotry in little regard. If a lord from the North wanted to take over our little village, I thought, then I would simply run away into the woods. I didn’t care for “my people.” I cared for myself. But this… this was different. The conjurers, they didn’t belong in my world. They didn’t belong in any world. For them to march in and eradicate all I’d known… no. No, that wasn’t going to happen.
I stood tall and wagged my torch at her. “People will remember you in much the same way they remember a bee buzzing around their flowers. Here one day, gone the next, leaving nothing of significance behind. I’ll make certain of it.”
A shrill laugh bolted from Amielle’s throat. “I can churn the wind that will extinguish your light.”
Intense concentration wrinkled across her forehead. A foreboding howl bounded from the cliffs and from the forest, from the north and from the south. It surrounded me like the eye of a tornado. The air whipped about tumultuously, pulling at the rags on my body, yanking the hair from my eyes.
The flames in my hand sizzled.
They hissed.
They died.
Blackness entrapped me.
“And you think,” Amielle said, her face invisible, “that you can stop me? I can conjure the earth to rumble and eviscerate the rock on which you stand.”
As the raging wind quieted, an uncomfortable sensation trembled in my feet. No matter a man’s profession — assassin, jester, stable boy, ring polisher — feeling the ground shift beneath your toes is a sign you will not be having a very good day.
Beneath the earth, something roared without pause. The hard shell of the jagged rock I stood on began to give way to the powerful storm beneath the surface. Cracks crawled across the top, deepening into massive gorges.
I dropped my unlit torch and held my arms out, balancing myself as my body began to sway uneasily. Stuck in the impermeable blackness like a rat in a blanketed cage, I felt the world around me begin to buckle. The ground thundered now, and the outcropping of earth and rock that served as my gracious host was ground up into morsels by whatever hell was rising from below.
Air rushed past my face, which is another way of saying I was bucked into the air and approaching the unforgiving ground quickly.
Holding my hands out, I braced myself for impact. Luckily my face was the third body part to thud into the densely packed mud and not the first. Still, the bridge of my nose twisted into an unhealthy curve, and my jaw felt like I’d gotten kicked by a horse.
“And you think,” Amielle said, gasping, “that you can stop me?” She sounded like she was standing over me. “I can rive the sky and show you—”
I threw a hand in the air, my face still buried in the mud. “I get it. You can do a lot of wacky shit.”
The haunting warmth of her body surrounded me. She knelt beside my head and conjured a tiny speck of flame that idled above her fingertips, illuminating her eyes, which were whiter than snow. “I will break you, Astul. You will not leave my world with your mind intact.”
I hauled my face off the ground and offered her my best crooked grin. “People have been trying to break me my entire life. Good luck. You’d best pray that you’re successful. Otherwise, I’ve got a blade with your name on it. I will kill you.”
She vomited — a symptom of the exhaustion that comes with the use of a conjurer's perverted powers — then licked her lips. “A conjurer never dies.”
“I know a few who impaled themselves on my sword that would disagree with you.”
A wretched smile formed on her lips stained
with yellow bile. “A conjurer never dies,” she said again. She stood up and walked away, one hand cupping her stomach, the other pressing firmly against her temple.
A heaviness sunk into my mind. And I fell asleep.
Chapter 13
My mother used to tell me that having a routine would save me from becoming a vagrant one day. Waking up once again in a cold, dark room with unforgiving stone slabs beneath me, I wanted to shout, “Well, lookie here, Mother. I finally found a routine: being knocked unconscious and then coming to in a place rats keep their distance from.” Really fantastic thing these routines were.
To be fair, the dungeon did lack the acrid smell of piss this time around. And the stone wasn’t quite as cold. In fact, it felt quite strange: gritty and uneven, as if tiny specks of sand dotted its surface. And was that a breeze? Something resembling wind certainly rippled through my hair. Speaking of hair, hard bubbles of blood were dried to mine. Upon a bit of inspection with my fingers, perhaps it was mud.
Hmm. My hands were free. Strange. Amielle’s preference since I’d gotten here was to toss a chain around every movable body part and clasp it into place with ridiculously large iron locks.
Wiggling my ankles uncovered another interesting twist: they weren’t bound either.
A fat drop of water — gods, I hoped it was water — splashed onto the bridge of my nose.
It did not fall from the ceiling, because there was no ceiling. If I was a gambling man — and I certainly was — I would have bet Rivon’s roosters it was the sky that towered above me. Pinpricks of glittering light stretched across the black canvas, the moon full and fat and bright. That’s not to say it provided me with a whole lot of light, though, thanks to a gargantuan wall blotting out most of its pearly sheen.
That wall seemed familiar. Hauntingly familiar. It looked like an imposing curtain of stone rising high into the air, cylindrical spikes overlooking tiers of seating. If you were a suicidal bird who fancied putting a pike through your body, this would be the place.
Hauling myself off the ground, I stretched my stiff arms and walked carefully into the shadows. That’s when it hit me.
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