"What deal did he make?" she cried.
"They would give him immortality in exchange, he would bring the Immortal to Wrepta and wake her from her slumber. Once she awakened, they would be free."
One of the Lascha lunged for the hidden stairs intent on Leaf, who kept the others out of sight. Jalcina snatched it away and as she pulled back it left deep grooves in the wood under what had once been hands. The move cost her as Mekan continued his attack, opening a vicious wound across her midsection. Jalcina landed on the wood with a thud, her free hand coming to try and hold her together.
"A sacrifice of blood," Mekan rumbled as he moved over her. The other Lascha leered close and Jalcina breathed shallow in both pain and to avoid the stench. They might have been doll-like but they were dolls of rotten parts. When they moved or breathed, they expelled stench in a cloud. Mekan was no different, though he seemed to have enlarged. Where the man had once been strong, but not massive, he seemed to have grown in girth and inches, the monstrosity of him making more of him with every breath.
His shadow hid the moon as he stood over her and Jalcina's breath hitched as her heart sped. Her eyes leapt to the scrim of blood on his sword, her blood. A wail shot toward the sky from a thousand throats and the world shivered with it as Jalcina's vision darkened and shuttered.
Her skin chilled despite the warm breeze.
Wrepta's remains, the dying soul, smiled.
She would not go alone into death it seemed.
Mekan's blade moved and Jalcina fought to track it as it rose.
Terror forced her to put her heels against the deck and try to push herself out of the way, though Mekan followed with slow movements his sword still raised. She could not escape him.
"Help me."
In her mind's eye, Wrepta stood with her hands spread. She had nothing left to give.
Mekan's blade sliced the air in its descent and Jalcina twitched out of the way, avoiding by a hair losing her right ear. He pulled the blade free from the deck with deliberateness, wiggling it slightly.
Her wound wasn't deep enough to keep her from getting up, though the slow burn of pain made her movements slower than she wanted. Rise she did, putting her hands ahead of her in hopes of warding off another blow. What her hands would do against his sword was little, but she had to try. Her fear screamed she should run. On a ship, caught on shoals, in the middle of a sea there was no true escape. Her choices were two: win or die. How often that seemed to be so.
He came for her, speed striking with a half-dozen stabs, yet she stayed far enough ahead to avoid further pain. He grunted and growled as he moved, his former melodious voice lost to his broken nature.
"Stop!" she cried. The words disappeared in the moaning of the Lascha and the rising of the wind. If he heard, he did not stop. Instead he pressed his advantage, the sword ripping through fabric and gifting her with small cuts.
She would be his sacrifice of blood.
Wrepta, curled in her skin, offered her the knowledge of their birth. The first of them brought about by her pain and guilt, created by the loneliness she felt in her isolation from her circle. The choice she made that brought her to her end.
Save them. Wrepta damned them. Mekan sought to return to a world that no longer existed. Without Wrepta, the world beneath the waves he sought with such vigor no longer existed. Those he idolized hung dead in the water, their eyes vacant, a prosperous society destroyed with the loss of the magic preserving them.
His eyes tracked her around the arena as he pulled up short.
"Mekan," Jalcina began. "Stop. You've lost." Her hands drifted before her eyes, pain and weakness making it difficult for her to hold them still. "Please."
Her feelings for him were not care. He simply didn't deserve to continue to suffer. He made a fool's bargain and paid for it. How long ago, she couldn't know and she didn't want to know. Jalcina sought her survival. His might come along with it or not. Such was her choice.
Somewhere near her feet, Leaf mumbled. She only heard it as the Lascha dropped to silence. Leaf prayed for their safety as if some god would keep them from being killed by the monsters all around. Anger flushed Jalcina's face at the sound. Did he truly think some god would help them against these monsters? Would a lightning bolt strike Mekan down where he stood and keep him from slaughtering everyone? She did not think so.
Her anger brightened her vision the way she remembered from the brazier and torches of home, as if it were no longer night around her. She did not stop to mark it as Mekan moved to take her head off. The slow movement of blood down her skin and soaking into her skirt felt like a tiny flame. The pain brought her thoughts into focus as she pressed her fingers into the wound.
There were no words for what she wanted, just his lack of existence. She wanted those creatures destroyed. She wanted them as gone as the last of the ashes gathered up from a funeral pyre. The Lascha served no one. They existed only to harm.
As much of a monster as Vad'Alvarn had been, he never destroyed without reason. He rarely did so simply to serve himself. He had a purpose. They had no purpose.
Strange she would equate these things to him, the man who brought into focus the difference of her existence. Yet she did. Power created all of them. Misguided power brought to bear against those who could not understand the bargain they made.
What was she then? The spider weaving the web or the fly trapped and soon to be killed by it?
In that moment, it mattered little. She would not let him kill her.
He struck. She evaded and drew her bloodied fingers out and flicked droplets at him. The blood did nothing when it hit the boards but plink there between them. Mekan stepped forward without fear, blade at the ready to take her head. Jalcina gave no ground as he came, his bulk announcing itself with every step. It seemed she had forgotten fear in favor of allowing him to finish what he came for.
He loomed and she shut her eyes against the sight.
In her skin, Wrepta prepared for their oncoming death.
Without warning, the air chilled and he slowed.
The sword dropped, a flicker of light running down the blade as it fell, before stopping a moment from Jalcina's head.
With her eyes closed, she only felt the motion. Her breath stopped in her chest, she waited.
Nothing moved.
Nothing could.
Lazy snowflakes dusted her dark hair and brought a flush to her cheeks before she opened her eyes.
Mekan still hung above her, his arms outstretched to land the killing blow. Around them, the Lascha hung in the act of cavorting around Mekan's victory, grotesque statues with bold blind eyes. Jalcina stepped out from under the blade and moved through the crowd to the staircase where Leaf and the others hid. They huddled frozen as well, stopped as if time no longer existed. After studying them, she looked to the pillar of the world Wrepta left behind. Clouds hung above it, a velvet curtain of gray-black, against the bloody forgotten crystal.
It shattered.
The pieces dropped, first small splashes then great waves.
Jalcina felt Wrepta weep as it collapsed before the silence of her disappearance settled over Jalcina's mind.
"The world has changed," she murmured. Her breath turned to smoke as she spoke. Ice ran across the wood away from her feet. Taking a slow walk through the gathered creatures, she ghosted her fingers over their bodies and cracks appeared, splintering and falling apart. Arms dropped off to the deck with a thud. Faces slid off and broke.
As they dropped and turned to dust from her nearness, she turned to Mekan at center stage.
Remembering him as he had once been, the few solitary moments he smiled. The sparse jokes he gave himself to. Which reminded her how he had kidnapped her and sought to sacrifice her to a monster. The monster now residing inside her. Jalcina wrapped her hands around his and felt his broken life below the surface.
"Goodbye."
Mekan was no longer there. He hadn't been there since his early death taking the Lascha
's deal. He would no longer suffer. If there was peace, perhaps he would find it.
Warden In Ernal
They reached the ruins just as the worst of the rain battered down overhead. Hours of riding with its constant companionship had left the band surly and short tempered, but Warden kept his attitude to himself. Helenia appeared no happier than he did and daring her wrath did not appeal. With the grayscape around them, even his sharp eyes barely discerned the walls of the place before they were in it. Yet the moment the horse trotted through the gateway flanked by a pair of crumbling pillars, his eyes darted round for an intruder. A presence pervaded the place, he felt with certainty. It left him wary as if he needed eyes in a dozen directions. Weaponless, he considered his routes of escape should fighting break out.
Could the Glass Blades have beat them to the ruin and set up an ambush of their own?
They couldn't have known where they would be going. Despite its proximity to a trade route, Warden had never heard of this place. For a man who prided himself on his worldliness that alone was disquieting. If he didn't know where they were, certainly no one else did.
Helenia rode at the head of the ground and held up a fist for them to stop. The overrun boulevard, pocked as it was with vegetation, provided uneven ground for their beasts. Ahead, the road ended as abruptly as it began, dropping into a pit with some remaining houses crowded around it as spectators to its depth.
The closer he drew to the hole, the more his skin wanted to crawl away. Hiding was a necessary evil to him. Running in fear was not. Yet he couldn't deny the feeling he should turn his horse around and make for the gate as fast as he could. The warriors around him might attempt to stop him, but a quick glance told him his uneasiness was more shared than not. Several had their hands on blades and all cast their eyes about in search of an unseen opponent.
Warden did not wish for his blade, he yearned for it like a lost love, imagining the feel of those wrapped handles in his possession. His palms itched for them. Yet he was without.
The second in command drew close to their leader as they waited for a decision. Warden couldn't hear their conference over the pounding rain. The strain of the attempt brought a different sound to his ear, another brought on by the rain itself. Percussion, as if made by the rain, sounded around them. Not a heartbeat, too irregular, but not music.
It dragged at his attention, forcing him to notice it further. Helenia shouted something. Warden brought his attention back to make out her words. They would camp in the ruins. Time to get out of the rain.
They had their pick of intact structures, a step up from bedding down in the grass of the surrounding area. Dismounting and entering what must have once been a house not far from the hole, Warden sought firewood. He would get out of his wet clothes once there was a fire going. Otherwise, he sacrificed too much heat. Better to be wet and clothed then wet and naked. The shivering wasn't as bad.
Clothes did nothing to keep out cold in the soul.
Helenia entering after him with her second in tow did not surprise him. As her most valuable asset, at the moment, he expected she would want to keep a close eye on him but that she also wouldn't trust him not to slit her throat and make a run for it. In the end, they were both predators. Advantages had to be gained wherever they could.
Inside it was easier to tune out the mysterious drumbeat even though it did not disappear. It infected everything, he thought, reminding Warden of one thing, Backaran screaming. Yet within the walls of the city, the scream disappeared. This seemed the opposite. He guarded his thoughts even as he reached the bottom of a carved wooden staircase. Placing his hand on the railing, he caressed it. In spite of everything, it felt polished as if someone had buffed it and recently.
"Helenia," he said. She grunted an affirmative from another room. "We should leave."
Outside the structure, the rain pounded with the strength of thousands of tiny fists beating the world into submission and Warden wondered if they had walked into a trap. Rain had followed them since before the ruin came in sight, ominous black clouds clustered on the horizon awaiting their opportunity. Now they sat overhead and poured their discontent down on the party and the ruin they hid in.
His interior workings, and their dis-ease, occupied all his thoughts. This place, ruin or not, hiding place or not, was wrong and their presence there did nothing to make him feel better.
The sense of percussion, a consistently off beat drum, hammered at him. Her words became lost in the haze of sound.
He moved to re-enter the front room on footsteps far too loud, stomping as if to make each step seem real. Helenia turned to him and spoke but all he saw was her mouth moving. Her second tried to step between them but didn't move fast enough to stop Warden from grabbing her by her traveler's clothes.
"Leave now." It seemed like a whisper to his ears though he shouted. The drum beat on and he wanted to shut it out. The familiarity of it grew and he was desperate to escape it. It wasn't quite a heartbeat because it was a heartbeat out of time.
His fingers wanted to be frozen as he clutched Helenia's garments, they spasmed and seized. For a moment, he imagined he saw his breath puff out before him in a cloud obscuring her face.
The second grabbed him, hauling him back from their collective employer, as Helenia pushed him. Without protest, he went. Her sour expression flexed as she said something else he didn't hear over the din in his mind. With a curt gesture, she told the second to put him away. Squeezing his eyes shut, he refused to see how she resembled a personal ghost, a woman locked in the recesses of his thoughts.
Force marched up the stairs, he found himself in what must have been someone's living quarters. Whomever had lived near the hole had been wealthy. So much space dedicated to one set of people. At least it seemed to be only one set. He found clothes all of similar size left behind. Some of it rotten, but a great deal remaining in good condition. He searched the room for valuables as the second watched, turning his mind away from the noise with familiar thoughts of gain.
On the bed, a partially eaten light blanket said the weather had been nice around the time of their departure. Assuming those who lived in the house had departed and not simply been consumed by whatever made such an indention in the earth.
Every time his thoughts returned to the inexplicable earthwork, he fought back an urge to go see what might be down it. Helenia would not allow him to explore it. She would see it as him attempting to escape their bargain. Whether it was or not he didn't rightly know. Like the statue in the bowels of Backaran, it called to him and that made him suspicious.
When he thought of the hole, the strange drum receded as if he couldn't hold both thoughts with one full of dread and the other of curiosity.
At the door, the second continued to watch him, one hand on the blade in his belt.
Warden considered taking the blade and using it to cut the man's throat. It would serve no purpose save to remind Helenia he had teeth. An unspoken threat delivered on the back of a man who had done nothing wrong to him. How many times had he done much the same?
Or seen it done?
Kill those without power to frighten those with it.
A mantra an assassin could live by. Along with the blade goes to the highest bidder. He lived by that one more than once.
His mentor insisted on it.
The drum intruded. The heartbeat going too fast for death, but heralding it just the same. He steadied his breath and closed his eyes. The drum came from his memory. The cold as well. He had nothing to fear from either.
"Just shadows," he muttered. It had been long since shadows frightened him. Ghosts of skeletal trees shrouded in snow reaching long fingers over stumbling footprints with scarlet droplets at their side. The second twitched, but didn't come into the room.
"I'm going to lie down. You plan to watch me sleep?"
A quick pat reminded him he still wore wet clothes and the room had no way to build a fire. He searched quickly for something which could contain coals and
a chance at making the room warm. If any were available, he didn't find them. His search yielded him quite a bit, but nothing to match his current problem. Finally, he shrugged out of the worst of the wet and laid down anyway. Shutting his eyes, he listened for his guard to go even as visions of a dark and snowy night played behind his eyelids.
He survived many a dark night softened by snow. The sound of his approach muffled and his exit silent. Yet the night he remembered as if he lived it in his dreams was a night he was not silent. The first night in the forest with his hands freezing against one another as he sought to keep his siblings going following his mother, she had seemed so tall, into the wilderness beyond their homestead. His father's body stiffened in the street that night. His mother would survive longer, but even she would succumb to the cold.
Opening his eyes, he let them rove the ceiling.
Cold. Suffering. Death.
He brought those things to others just as he had been given them as childhood gifts.
Remorse held no flavor for him. Guilt became no companion. When he entered into his master's service and took up the mantle of an assassin, he left those days behind. Or so he thought. No matter where he would go, he carried them as precious cargo packed away inside his skull.
He closed his eyes again, listening for anything beyond the constancy of the rain.
Sleep ambushed him.
Waking to silence accented by the thrum of his heart disoriented him, but Warden recovered in a blink. He did not know where his captors were, but he let the thought not bother him for the moment. Getting up and preparing for an assault he anticipated coming far too soon energized him. Helenia, after changing their course, must have planned some what to insure their prey ended up where they wanted them. Otherwise, it would be for nothing. She didn't make those kinds of mistakes.
He sought her out.
In the kitchen, he found her sitting staring out the window. When he entered, she didn't move except to wave him to another seat nearby. Food sat uneaten on the table.
Ruins of Fate Page 18
