The Curse of the Raven (Raven Son Book 2)

by Nicholas Kotar

  “Yes, my people,” he shouted over them, arm outstretched for silence. “I know your anger, your frustration with these cowards, these degenerates, these postulants of a retrograde idea. It is time to winnow them from our ranks. I charge you. If any of you know of a friend, a neighbor, or even a family member who is of the Sons, you must come forward. The doors of the Consistory are at your disposal. Come. Let us cleanse the foulness of the Sons from our Vasyllia!”

  He turned back to Llun, his face a careful blank. “As soon as I hear of Mirodara’s involvement, I will bring her here before you. You will sit there and watch as I kill her. Slowly. Would you like to hear the details of my process? It is quite…artistic.”

  Llun’s hands shook, and his head spun wildly. He was sure he would faint. With an effort of will, he straightened himself and looked down at Aspidían. Such a small man. He would be able to crush his head with a single hand. Yet he had so much power in him.

  “I will be your man, Aspidían. But you must promise not to touch Mirodara.”

  Aspidían looked away from Llun, a slight smile playing at the edges of his lips. Swift as an adder, he backhanded Llun across the face. Hot, wet blood spurted. He had struck him on the place where the dog-man had sliced him during his mock trial. Llun looked at the blood on his hands, and could no longer support his own weight. He fell on his knees, the sobs racking his stomach. He released them, and a blubbering groan came out of his mouth. He hardly recognized it.

  “Don’t imagine you can haggle with me, vermin. You will do what I say.”

  Llun breathed deep. His heart slowly calmed, and he looked up at Aspidían. Deep inside, there was still something left of his strength. He shook his head.

  “No, Brother Aspidían. You let too much slip. I don’t know why, but you need me. And I will kill myself before I help you, if you so much as scratch Mirodara.”

  Aspidían held his gaze for an endless minute. Then he collapsed into hearty, chesty laughter.

  “Oh, Llun! I’m so glad I met you. It’s impossible to be bored with you around.”

  He snapped his fingers, and two dog-men appeared. They picked Llun up and carried him back the same way they had come.

  “No,” whispered Llun.

  “Oh, yes,” said one of the guards, flashing his eyebrows up and down at his companion.

  They took Llun back to his cage.

  I do not know if this letter will ever reach you, my beloved. I know that you are doing everything you can to come back to me. And I know that the forces arrayed against you must be strong indeed. But Voran, my love, I do not know how much longer I can hold on. I lost my body on the night of the Fall. I can hardly feel it any more. I fear my mind will be next. They say that you have become a Healer. Come to me, my love. Heal me. I need you.

  —From an unsent letter found in the apartments of Darina Sabíana of Vasyllia

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Darina of Vasyllia

  The first night, the cycle of cold and hot repeated five times. The second night, the cycle repeated six times. By the fifth day, Llun had trouble distinguishing day from night. It may have been a month, it may have been a year. The fever in his body reached some kind of critical point, and there was a period when Llun remembered nothing. He came back to consciousness with a strange sensation of being that he had never before experienced. He felt every fiber of his body separately. He moved individual muscles with a clear understanding of where they began and ended and how they worked. At the same time, every breath was an unbearable agony. It was as if there were two of him.

  “There’s more to this than mere torture, you know,” she said. “There’s a foul magic at work here. Not something I understand. But I’ve seen it at work in others already. They’re preparing you. Reforging you, if you like. To be able to withstand the horrors that you will perpetrate on others. And, possibly, for something even worse.”

  Where did she come from? And how did he suddenly get from his cage to this garret? It looked like an unused attic room, the kind where all the unnecessary bric-a-brac of a great house was placed in piles that were once orderly, but had long ceased to be so. Immense mounds of fabric, bits of metal, broken chairs. But then there was the wooden throne, its every inch carved into shapes of Sirin and wolves and giants and vila that came out of the wood like ripples on water. It was illumined with a dappled fire-light that…yes, it was fragrant. Like roses.

  “I will not be like them,” he said to the figure on the throne, whom he could not quite see, though he didn’t understand why.

  “No, I don’t believe you will. But there will be a price to pay.”

  Something about the voice enchanted Llun. It awoke forgotten images of sharp mountain peaks and waterfalls at dawn, images associated with a childhood longing that flared in his heart whenever he listened to his mother sing a ballad of Old Vasyllia.

  “I will gladly pay the price of my life,” said Llun.

  “You do not know what you are saying,” said the figure. She shifted in the throne, and the light also changed, so that he could see her more clearly. She was a young, dark-haired woman in chainmail, a heavy wolf fur draping her shoulders. Across her chest flew a black swan embroidered on a snow-white field. Her expression was still, but joyful. It was almost as though she were laughing at Llun, except her eyes were so old, deep as a lake with no visible bottom, that Llun was certain she was incapable of mocking others.

  “What if you did give them the gift of your life to save your niece? Mirodara, was it? You would be able to bear it, perhaps, but only because you knew you would die eventually. At some point, all the pain will end. Perhaps you even keep suicide in the back of your mind as an extreme measure.”

  She sighed and shook her head. Her hair shone in the firelight, mesmerizing Llun with the play of dark red and brown and even purple tints.

  “But you don’t understand what the Raven is. His eternal quest is for endless life. And if he does find the source of endless life, whether in the form of Living Water or in some other unknown form, then imagine what they can do to their dog-men. Given a few centuries of constant atrocities, a few centuries for the mind to hide their atrocities under a mental scar, they will be capable of any evil. Not just capable, but confirmed in it. Any internal change will become impossible. They will not think twice about murder, rape, torture. They will no longer be men.”

  “Why are you telling me this? And who are you?”

  “Can you not guess who I am?” She smiled mischievously, patting the black swan on her chest with her forefinger, with an expression that said, “Can it be any more obvious?”

  “You are Darina Sabíana? But they say you are bed-ridden. Unable to move.”

  “Yes, that is all true,” she said, faintly annoyed, “but you are also in a cage, are you not? And yet you stand here with me.”

  Llun opened his mouth to retort, but found nothing to say.

  “Have you never wondered,” she said, “why your name is Llun?”

  The name was a rare one, it was true. “I always thought my mother wanted to be unique.”

  Sabíana rolled her eyes. “Not much imagination, for an artist. No. Have you never considered the importance of names before? Why, for example, there are so few Cassíans and so many Lassars in Vasyllia?”

  “Oh,” he understood immediately. “It’s the old superstition. You need to give your child the name of a person who was successful in life. For good luck. Name a child after a martyr, and …” He chuckled significantly.

  “No, no, no,” she waved her hands in frustration. “That’s the … No … There is something profoundly important about naming. It’s not a matter of luck. The name does, in some ineffable way, reflect a person’s place in the Universal Harmony. Have you never wondered why in some of the Old Tales, you have different characters with the same name living in vastly different circumstances, yet in all of them, the same events keep happening? It’s not an accidental pattern. It’s part of the fabric of the creation.”
<
br />   “But Llun. He was a mad prophet, wasn’t he? His writings in the Sayings are incredibly arcane. More interpretations of his prophecies exist than the prophecies themselves. What does that say about me and my name?”

  “Llun wrote of a terribly important event. A time of blood, when the dead would walk as though living, but with no souls to speak of. He said that he, Llun himself, would bring this time about as a punishment for Vasyllia’s iniquity. But…”

  “Oh, you mean he could have meant that I am the Llun that will bring divine retribution? How?”

  “I cannot say for certain. But Aspidían has been studying Llun’s prophecies for years. He even comes to me in my bed of misery to speak of it. He finds no one else who believes him. But he seems to think that a smith is necessary. You are to make something. Something rather banal, I think. But with unexpected uses.”

  Hardly helpful. “Why are you telling me all this, my lady?”

  “It’s the only thing I have left, you see,” she said. “And it is why I linger here in Vasyllia. I am given to help those who are needed at Vasyllia’s sticking points. Yours is coming. You may have to make the most difficult choice of all. To abandon everything. Not only your own life, not only your own death, but even Mirodara.”

  “No. That I will not do.”

  “And yet, the alternative will be far worse than you can imagine.”

  “I will not!”

  The pain in his back grew and arched and exploded into stars that danced before his eyes, before they pulled him back underneath into the darkness. He felt turned inside out, and once again his legs were clamped in place, his arms hanging useless outside the cage that was too small for him. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

  And I, Llun of Vasyllia, will bring down the retribution of the Heights on fallen Vasyllia. The stars shall weep blood, the immortal one shall hold the lifeblood of the worlds in the palm of his hand, and the Realms themselves will hold their breath for utter terror. But in that day, the truth will become known at last. And the fire-born will brave the seventh baptism to demand vengeance from the Throne of the Most High himself.

  —From “The Prophecy of Llun” (The Sayings, Book XXIII, 10:3-6)

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Choice

  When Llun came to himself, he was no longer in the cage, but in a simple prison cell. He lay on a straw pallet on a wooden ledge. A pitcher of water was at his feet. He attacked the pitcher, spilling much of the contents on the ground in his haste. His hands shook, and he was unable to stop them. His hands…they were blackened with soot, thin and brittle-looking. How would he ever again manage to create anything with his hands? Why did they do this to him, if they wanted him to become the exclusive smith of the Consistory? Or had they now abandoned all that?

  Still, despite his shaking hands, he felt clear-headed for the first time since the ordeal began. He groped his chest and arms, trying to see how much muscle mass he had lost. It was not as bad as he thought. About as much as he would have expected after not eating for a week. No, they hadn’t been torturing him for months or years, then. Only days.

  It was then that he realized that, outside, some sort of commotion had been going on ever since he had woken up. He listened, trying to understand. Lots of pushing and jostling, by the sound of it. Scraping metal. Gumiren voices, angry, yet without that note of defiance that usually characterized their speech. These voices sounded…yes, frightened.

  So, the pogroms have begun, then.

  He was too tired to feel any emotion accompanying that thought.

  For the next few days, he was brought heaping plates of chicken and boar meat. It was unseasoned and not very well made, but these were the tastiest meals of Llun’s life. Almost in the space of hours, he began to regain his strength. His hands stopped shaking. He found the courage to try to scratch off the scorch marks on his skin. All that came off was a layer of dead skin. Underneath, everything was smooth, almost baby-like. Strange for a man whose skin was more like leather after a lifetime at the forge. But it would harden again, soon enough.

  A few days later, Aspidían himself came in the morning, bearing a tray of roasted ribs. Even from a distance, Llun smelled the rosemary. This was a king’s meal, not a prisoner’s. Behind Aspidían came a host of servants bearing trestles, stands, plates, crockery, spices, and wine. Urns and urns of wine. Llun’s mouth watered at the sight, even at the clinking of the cups on the makeshift trestles.

  “What are you doing?” asked Llun, his voice hardly more than a croak.

  “Your last meal,” said Aspidían, smiling. When Llun’s jaw clenched, Aspidían laughed. “Your face! Even after all we’ve put you through, you’re still as innocent as a babe in swaddling clothes.”

  Llun didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Aspidían poured wine for them both. It was blood-red, almost viscous.

  “I wasn’t lying when I said it was your last meal. It is. From this moment, you will be something else. It will be your choice, what you will be. But not Llun the smith of the former first reach of Vasyllia.” He raised his cup. “To the new order.”

  Llun hesitated a moment, then drank. There was something different about this wine. It burned him on the inside. Llun suspected that there was more than just wine there. But Aspidían drank it with Llun, so it was not poison. At least, not the kind that kills.

  “New order, you say?” croaked Llun. “One cleansed of both the Gumiren and the Sons of the Swan?”

  “Oh yes,” said Aspidían. “You would not believe how willing our Vasylli were to rat out the Sons. So many traitors in our midst!”

  “You do realize that people will say anything to keep themselves from being implicated. It proves nothing.”

  “Yes, yes. But that is well and good. It doesn’t matter who remains in the new Vasyllia, really. As long as they understand the new rules. As long as they are the ones who will resist external influence to the last drop of their blood. As for the Gumiren, we’ve killed most of them already. The Ghan escaped with a small band of his elite warriors, but they have nowhere to go. They’ll be found in the mountains soon enough. If not, they’ll have a surprise waiting for them at the border with Nebesta.” He chuckled. The expression on his face left no doubt that whatever it was, it would be painful and probably fatal.

  He snapped his fingers, and the servants began slicing the ribs apart. The meat practically fell off the bone. Llun’s hands shook again, and it took all the will he had left not to attack the food. Aspidían watched him the whole time and seemed pleased with what he saw. Finally, all the ribs were separated and placed in a pile in the middle of the table. A servant tossed herbs over it, and another poured sauce that smelled strongly of onion and beer.

  Aspidían inhaled deeply, eyes closed in pleasure. He sat there, savoring the smell, for what seemed an eternity.

  Llun could wait no longer. “Tell me what I want to know,” he said. He knew that he risked losing this meal, possibly the most elaborate and well-made meal of his life. He didn’t care anymore.

  Aspidían inclined his head and smirked. “Yes, Mirodara was turned in. I’ve kept her safe, for now. I was waiting to see how you’d do in your ordeal. And you did surprisingly well, considering the ordeal lasted almost two weeks. Do you know how many postulates to the Consistory survive it? Less than half.”

  “You risked losing your exclusive smith?” Llun said, with a hint of mockery.

  “Yes.” Aspidían became deadly serious. “Enough games, Llun. The Great Father needs you for a frightfully important work. I know you are squeamish about serving him, but you were never a particularly devout member of the cult of Adonais. You weren’t much of anything, really. But we live in a time where half measures have no place. I think you know that now, and not merely with your mind.”

  Llun nodded. His body would never forget the lesson.

  “You are more important than you know, Llun.” Aspidían pulled out his table knife and speared three ribs through, then dropped them on Llun’s s
ide of the table. “Eat, O important one.”

  Llun did. Somehow, he managed not to transform into a wolf on the spot, but ate with admirable restraint. Or so it seemed to him. Aspidían shook his head with a smile, again in his faintly amused persona.

  “Brother Llun, have you ever read the prophecies of your namesake?”

  So she had been real. The warrior-Darina who spoke to him from her throne.

  “Of course … when I was a child. Everyone reads The Sayings at least once.”

  “Ah … you have not read them, then. Have you ever heard the idea that names are not accidental? That when one takes on the name of another, especially an illustrious name, he takes up some of the qualities of his namesake?”

  “I have not given it much thought, to be honest.”

  “Well, you would not be the first. But your name. What a name! A rare one. And with good reason. ‘The Prophecies of Llun’ is the strangest book in The Sayings. So many contradictory interpretations. So many phrases with no apparent meaning. Until now.”

  Llun’s back straightened as he listened, unwittingly enchanted by Aspidían’s voice. The pain was there, but now no more than an ache. Amazing. Sabíana was right about the body’s ability to heal itself. Or was it perhaps something in the wine? Something with the appearance of goodness, but actually dangerous?

  “There is a series of images that keeps popping up,” continued Aspidían. “Most of them involve fire and a night full of stars in the constellation of the sword. The stars begin to weep. Then the tears turn to blood. By themselves, these images make little sense. But there is a mathematical precision to the prophecies. Certain images appear at regular intervals. Every seven verses, every twelve verses, and every four chapters, these central images repeat. I won’t bore you with the calculation, but I have managed to make a cipher of the prophecies. They speak of a moment in Vasyllia’s history when the lifeblood of the worlds will come into the hands of an ‘immortal one.’ At that time, the key to life and death will be revealed, and the dead will walk as though alive.”