Lakhoni

by Jared Garrett

  Lakhoni

  Future House Publishing

  Cover image copyright: Shutterstock.com.

  Text © 2016 Jared Garrett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-10: 0-9966193-6-4 (paperbound)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9966193-6-3 (paperbound)

  Developmental editing by Allie Bowen

  Substantive editing by Emma Hoggan

  Copy editing by Holly Astle and Jenna Parmley

  Interior design by Emma Hoggan

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  Read On!

  Adam, Helena, Ami, Ryan, Mandi and the rest of

  the Future House Publishing Team

  Join the Future House Beta Reader’s Club!

  Chapter 1 - Hunted

  Chapter 2 - Village Drums

  Chapter 3 - Sneaking

  Chapter 4 - Duty

  Chapter 5 - Panther

  Chapter 6 - Living Dead

  Chapter 7 - Cavern of the Dead

  Chapter 8 - Family of the Dead

  Chapter 9 - Sacrifice

  Chapter 10 - Alone Among the Dead

  Chapter 11 - Signs

  Chapter 12 - Useful Secrets

  Chapter 13 - Feather Leap

  Chapter 14 - The Grooming

  Chapter 15 - Purified

  Chapter 16 - To Betray the Dead

  Chapter 17 - The Missing

  Chapter 18 - Test

  Chapter 19 - Escaping the Dead

  Chapter 20 - A Lakhoni Statue

  Chapter 21 - Soup

  Chapter 22 - The Healer

  Chapter 23 - Slave-girl

  Chapter 24 - A Name

  Chapter 25 - Conversations

  Chapter 26 - Breakthrough

  Chapter 27 - A Voice

  Chapter 28 - Nightwing

  Chapter 29 - Meeting

  Chapter 30 - Change

  Chapter 31 - Orphans

  Chapter 32 - Caravan

  Chapter 33 - You Don’t Name Food

  Chapter 34 - The Brick Fields

  Chapter 35 - Plans

  Chapter 36 - Civilization

  Chapter 37 - The Taken

  Chapter 38 - Brands

  Chapter 39 - Fish Bones

  Chapter 40 - To the Dogs

  Chapter 41 - The King

  Chapter 42 - Guardians

  Chapter 43 - Servant

  Chapter 44 - Attack

  Chapter 45 - Slaves

  Chapter 46 - Cousins

  Chapter 47 - Hunter

  Chapter 48 - The Wall

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Before You Go

  Discover More Remarkable Books from Future House Publishing

  This one’s dedicated to my Kanab High School friends. I can’t thank you enough.

  Chapter 1

  Hunted

  Lakhoni heard the growl again. It sent shivers down his spine, his shaved neck, and his nearly-bald scalp, icy with fear. It sounded louder.

  He danced with the forest like Lamorun had taught him, ducking low-hanging branches, twisting around saplings, and lifting his feet high to glide over brush.

  Am I still ahead of them?

  Lakhoni threw a glance over his right shoulder. Bony branches and tree trunks. No running figures—no moving brush. Turning quickly back to the path ahead, he flung himself to the ground, only just slipping under a claw-shaped, low-lying branch. His breath caught as he rolled, the late autumn brambles tearing at the bare skin of his arms. He pushed himself to his feet and launched forward again.

  The men he’d seen. Painted and terrible. Covered in straps with weapons hanging all over. Hair in spikes and whirls that mimicked predators. They were definitely the king’s men. He thought they hadn’t detected him. He had been coming back from the hunt, practicing his stealth.

  His heart clawed up his throat. He had to move. His family, the village. They had to be warned.

  Lakhoni knew it was a sin to act against the king’s wishes, but if he could tell the village people to hide, nobody would tell the raiding party it was him. And none of his family and friends would die.

  As his fear grew, Lakhoni lengthened his stride, focusing on the world immediately before him. He allowed his senses to quest before him and guide his movements. A low bush appeared. His back twisted instinctively, his left leg kicking sharply out to the left and his right leg tucking under him. The moment his right leg hit the ground again, he spun left, arching backward to dodge under another low branch.

  Pain flared on his shoulder as the gnarled talons of a hibernating tree slashed him. He stumbled. His right foot came down crooked on a root, twisting. He relaxed his muscles and tried to roll with the fall, but suddenly he was tumbling out of control.

  The river! The rushing water might be his salvation. Instead of stopping himself, he focused on controlling his direction so he could enter the deep part of the water and let the current take him closer to the village.

  A ragged stump jutting from the rough river bank caught him in the side. His skin tore, filling him with blazing pain followed by shuddering cold as he splashed into the water.

  The shallow waters of the late season meant that the current was not as strong as normal, and after a few moments of disoriented scrambling, Lakhoni was able to put first one foot, then the other underneath himself. He rose from the river, slashing the frigid water from his face, his cool-weather leggings soaked through.

  The raiders were surely ahead of him by now. His sister, his mother, his father—who was still recovering from the battle with the wild boar—they had to hide.

  Lakhoni scrambled up the west riverbank, looking to the sky to get his bearings. Far upstream he could just barely make out the Maiden, a distinct rock formation in the shape of a woman with falling water for her hair. The sight assured him he was still on the right track. He only had a few hundred yards until he could shout the warning.

  Pain flared in his right ankle with his first step. He stumbled, nearly falling. A spear of pain slid through his stomach to his back. He gripped his side with a hiss. Warmth dripped over his hand. The cold of the river water must have briefly numbed the wound to his side. Now the pain burned through him as if it were the glowing, molten tears of the Fire Mountains. Lakhoni forced his body forward. The first step lanced pain up to his knee and from his torso to his head. Gripping his side, he tried again. He hissed at the sharp agony. Another step.

  He stumbled and grabbed a nearby branch.

  He was not going to make it. Lakhoni gasped a weak shout. Not loud enough. He pressed on, wishing Lamorun were running with him, helping him along. Lakhoni gathered himself for a final burst, opening his mouth to call out.

  White hot pain exploded in the back of his head; blackness fel
l like a heavy cloak.

  Chapter 2

  Village Drums

  The village drums played an unusual beat. It was pounding, steady, and unaccompanied by chanting. No fire burned; no figures moved in the Fire Dance or the Hunting Dance.

  Just blackness and a pulsating beat.

  Hot pain burned at the crown of his head with an epicenter of molten stone. Red torches flashed behind Lakhoni’s eyelids.

  Not the village drums. Drums in his head.

  Lakhoni tried to open his eyes. They felt weighed down like his father’s fishing nets, held down with heavy stones.

  Minutes—or perhaps hours or days—later, he moved back toward awareness. The drums in his head were softer, but the molten pain throbbed steadily. His head expanded and shrank with each throb.

  His teeth were locked together at the back of his mouth. He feared that if he did succeed in moving his jaw, his whole head might fall apart. He gritted his teeth tighter.

  A new sensation appeared; Lakhoni welcomed the chill. He began to feel rocks under him. He could become one of them if he stayed here long enough. Stones did not feel pain, did they?

  Lakhoni swam out of the blackness sometime later. It tried to hold him, pull him deeper. He fought hard, knowing he must break free or finally succumb to the nothingness that beckoned him. The pain would be gone if he stopped fighting. Nothingness . . . peace. Nobody in the village could bother him.

  The village.

  Lakhoni mentally grabbed the agony in his head as well as the increasing pains all over his body and held them tightly. These points of pain became his anchor, helping him fight off the need to give in to the darkness. He felt he should be out of breath when he finally cracked his eyes open. But why was all still dark? He blinked once, then again.

  His eyes opening reminded Lakhoni of the presence of the rest of his body parts. He was lying on his front, his face only inches from the dirt. His body was oddly contorted: his torso hung down one side of a log and his legs hung down the other. His arms were draped out, beyond his head. Where am I? What . . . what happened to me?

  He closed his eyes, then forced them back open when the deep blackness beckoned again.

  He had been running. The river, his side. As he remembered the branch on the river bank tearing into the flesh below his ribs, the pain he had been feeling there greeted him again. Sharp pains on his right shoulder ignited soon after. Soon pain at every extremity was making itself known.

  The village. The raiding party. He had to warn them.

  Was it too late? How long had he been lying here?

  He remembered the pain in the back of his head before the blackness. What hit me?

  Lakhoni gingerly moved his head from side to side. It felt as if his head wanted to continue rolling right off his neck to become a ball for the village children to play with.

  Lakhoni slid his arms back and under his body, grunting in effort and pain. He eased himself up. He forced his torso backwards until he was kneeling next to the log, his hands resting on it.

  His tongue felt like dry, unscraped hide. He needed water. He forced his knees under himself, then raised his head, searching for a tree he could hold onto while pulling himself to his feet. Dizziness washed over him with each movement, but it was diminishing steadily. He carefully looked heavenward. The sun was dipping below the trees at the edge of the desolate waste far to the west, with the mountains even farther to the west. He had maybe one hour of light left.

  The thatched roofs of his village brought him back to earth. Too late. He’d failed. Dark shapes littered the ground of the village center, obscured by the failing light. The king’s raiders had come and gone, leaving death behind.

  The sight slammed into him with the force of a wild boar. Understanding of what had happened to his home slashed like a lightning bolt. They’re dead. My home. Probably my family. The thought made him sway; Lakhoni shoved it away. He couldn’t think about it. Not right now. He would not think of the faces he would see if he looked any closer at the dark shapes all around him. His parents. Alronna.

  Of course my family. I’m the last—

  This thought made him stop short of the well. Why was he alive?

  Lakhoni focused on the well at the middle of the village center. Water. He did not think about the shapes he was stumbling over to get there. He did not think about why he still lived. He would not hope that others had survived. For now, he would get to the well and hope that the raiding party had not done something horrible to the water, or thrown the rope down the hole.

  He knelt at the well, gently fingering his head. His fuzzy scalp was covered in dried mud. His still-clumsy fingers brushed the hot center of pain up there, causing a bright flash behind his eyes.

  “Fool,” he whispered. “Don’t do that again.”

  He groped around until he found the end of the rope and gave it a test pull. There was weight on the other end. Water. He pulled at the rope, the effort flaring the pain in his head despite the notch in the short log that took some of the weight for him. By the time he got the bucket to the top of the well, he was out of breath, licking his rough, dry lips with each pull. His muscles shook like a child’s after their first try at lifting the water bucket. The blow has made me ten years old again. Will I have to learn my people’s dances again?

  He looped the rope around two wooden spikes, making sure the bucket of water would not fall back into the well. Then he fell to his knees, spilling water on his hands.

  He paused to sniff carefully above the bucket. Smells fine. He took an experimental sip. Then he was swallowing huge gulps of the cool liquid. It tasted like the sweetest fruit he had ever had—like the peaches and apples of the fruit grove the village kept.

  He forced himself to stop drinking. Lamorun’s lessons about dehydration had been too firmly ingrained for him to ignore them now. Lakhoni knew the heat in his body came from at least a day without water. He would have to eat soon if he wanted to avoid becoming seriously ill.

  Yes, food first. Then rest.

  Or perhaps rest first. His pains had faded while he focused on getting water, but now that he simply knelt by the well, the throbbing aches had returned in full force.

  Here was a bare spot of earth. He could sleep here and find food in the morning.

  Lamorun’s voice came to his mind. “Your body will use the water better if you give it food to work with.”

  With a resigned grunt, Lakhoni forced himself to his feet to heed his brother’s words. The cool feeling of the earth under his feet provided a stark contrast to the hot pains covering his body. He stumbled toward the nearest hut. Pushing through the cloth-draped doorway, he looked around the shadow-filled interior. Sitting mats encircled the fire pit in the middle of the floor. Scattered on the floor were dishes, some of which still held food. Lakhoni took one dish up, smelling the food left behind. He dropped the rancid mess.

  He had to find something that would still be safe to eat. The family would keep that in a stone box. He moved around the hut, searching, leaning on the wall at times to take some weight off his foot. Finally, beneath a doll made of long grass and strips of woven cloth, he found the stone box that held this family’s stock of smoked meat and grain. Guilt flashed through him as he lifted the heavy lid. Several pouches and a deep basket of grain filled the stone box.

  Lakhoni pulled the first pouch open. The aroma of cured meat wafted out; his stomach leapt in eagerness. He tore off a bite and chewed, the deep, wild flavor filling his mouth. He couldn’t chew fast enough! He needed more water. Clasping the pouch of meat tightly against his stomach, he hobbled back out into the darkening evening, head throbbing painfully.

  He limped to the bucket of water he had brought up earlier. Tearing another bite off the dried meat, he took a large sip. This helped the process of eating immensely. Next he cupped one hand into the bucket, pulling out a small handful of water. He splashed it on his scalp. The cool water somewhat quenched the fire in the still-throbbing spot on his head
. He worked the water into what he had thought was mud on his scalp. Pulling his hand away, he saw it had not been mud.

  Lakhoni spent the next few minutes carefully cleaning his wounds, cleansing them from the murderous attack. They must have seen all this and thought I was dead—or dying. He washed his hands clean again, took another bite of meat and another sip of cool water.

  He would have to find a sheep or goat gut so he could carry some water back to his hut. He pushed to his feet, his many injuries screaming in protest and his ankle threatening to give way. I’m not dead.

  Chewing more slowly now, Lakhoni stumbled around the graveyard that was all that remained of his people. But why? Why am I still alive?

  Chapter 3

  Sneaking

  Ree crept into the dimly lit room. The torches already had their hardened leather caps on for the day. A charred scent hung in the air from the servants extinguishing the torches. The sun had peeked over the ocean only moments before and it illuminated the king’s throne room with a pale, cold light.

  Looking around, heart in her throat, Ree moved deeper into the room, pulling the animal skin covered door closed behind her. The leather hinges squeaked slightly. She had to move fast; anyone looking closely at the door from the outside would quickly see that the handle was in the wrong position.

  She asked herself again why she was doing this. She wouldn’t be beaten, but her father would be furious. He expected absolute obedience from his people and he always told her that she was seen as an example.

  But Ree had to see what the raiding party had brought back. It seemed like Shelu’s raiding parties always brought back the greatest treasures from the land of the Usurpers. When Shelu himself had strode into the throne room, carrying a heavy-looking bundle in his arms, Ree had become obsessed. When Shelu had placed the bundle at King Zyron’s feet, the cloth wrapped around it had slipped and the object beneath the cloth had glowed with a splendor Ree had never seen before.