Then you get this goo, which sounded positively like witchcraft, submerge your new creation in it for a few years, and voila! Out comes a fresh corpse, like a pie from the oven. And, far as I could tell, the dead simply jump right out of their old body and into the new. Or something like that. Apparently they sell for a handsome price, but the Prim offered them for free if you met ‘special requirements.’ The corpses were called Preen.
Preen rot easily, though — without being tethered to the dead — hence the pissy confrontation with Rovid. Hopefully they wouldn’t rot on us. That wasn’t the only worry that kept me awake, though. I had a plan brewing. A big fucking plan. A plan born from kings on a chessboard and, if luck would have it, one put into action against the kings of Mizridahl.
The image of Occrum sped through my mind like bouncing sheep. I’ll surprise you yet, you bastard.
Chapter Seventeen
A wheelbarrow it was, because intact wagons didn’t exist in the Prim. Lysa, Rovid and I salvaged the parts from abandoned carts and engineered a marvel of a wheelbarrow. It didn’t roll straight, it had uneven handlebars, and its bed consisted of partially rotted wood. But it didn’t collapse as we piled about six bodies into it, so that was good.
Rovid didn’t speak, opting to grunt and point us in the direction of the village he’d referred to earlier. When it was his turn to push the wheelbarrow, he’d cast a few curses and called the wagon a few choice names as its wheel sunk into the mud, but otherwise said nothing to Lysa or me.
He finally broke his silence that night, while the three of us sat around a warm fire.
“What is your plan?” he asked, jaws mashing the leg meat of a rabbit we’d found hobbling about earlier. “To run away? That won’t help you.”
“Told you our plan already. It’s to make Occrum take a long, long nap. A permanent one.”
He spat out a piece of bone into the fire. “So you don’t have a plan. You have a wish.”
“Oh, I’ve got a plan. But I can’t reveal its secrets. No hard feelings. And it’s not just you. I can’t tell Lysa, either. Or my good friend Vayle, if I ever find her. Only I can know its twists and turns.” I peeled away a thin strip of meat from what looked like a rib. “And even that might not be enough.”
Rovid licked his fingers clean. “You don’t have shit.”
“I’ve never known him to lie,” Lysa said. “But… why can’t you tell anyone?”
After inspecting the rib for more meat and finding nothing, I lay back on the crisp grass and looked at the stars. “The trick to outwitting Occrum is to surprise him. That’s a fairly difficult trick to pull off when he can read your thoughts.”
“He can’t read them here,” Lysa said.
“No,” I agreed, “but we can’t stay here, either.”
“Where are we going, then?”
“To Mizridahl. I can tell you that much. But nothing more. See, the way in which you outwit someone who knows what you’re thinking is not to think about it. You never give him a glimpse as to what lies ahead, because then you’re finished. You move and think one step at a time. Is that possible? Maybe. Maybe not. Better chance of it succeeding if only one of us knows each notch in the rope, though.”
Lysa begrudgingly accepted this. Rovid laughed. Probably a laugh he thought would be insulting, but I regarded it as ignorance. Rovid had it deep in his head that Occrum was this all-mighty creation whose will could not be challenged. In the end, it was Rav who was correct. He was just a man. A man who’d built himself up big and mighty, sure. But I’d seen big things fall before. I loved the thud they made when their knees finally buckled. Loved seeing the bewilderment dash across their eyes. Loved the slow realization that they’d been had.
After our short rest, we continued on till morning, when we slept for two hours. We spent much of the afternoon dodging rainclouds and learning how great a pain in the ass a wheelbarrow is in soft mud.
Then, we arrived. More or less. The village Rovid mentioned — Crokdaw Village — lay ahead, its paths and buildings arranged in a circular fashion. Bells had been sounding in the distance for the past thirty minutes, apparently alerting the inhabitants to our coming. Also alerting the well-armed militia, who looked about as pleased to see us as a cow staring down a butcher’s knife.
“Reapers,” one of the men said, poking his face forward in front of his bow. A triangle was painted on his forehead, centered with a vigilant red eye.
“I am,” Rovid said. “They are not.”
Red Eye traced Lysa and me from head to toe with the tip of his nocked arrow. Clearly we weren’t the sort of reapers he usually encountered, and this seemed to startle him.
“If not reapers, then what?”
“People,” I chimed in. “That want to leave this realm.”
A bead of sweat wet my eyebrow. Must’ve been twenty bows, which meant twenty arrows, which meant… well, by simple calculation, a very dead Astul if even one of those hit its target.
“Why’s he with you?” Red Eye asked. Then he lifted his chin at the wheelbarrow. “Flesh?”
“Not just flesh,” Rovid said. “Preen. Fresh. Pristine.”
Red Eye signaled for us to push the wheelbarrow to him, but Rovid shut that down quickly.
“Not until we come to an agreement. We need a wagon. With a mule, horse, anything that can pull it.”
Red Eye jerked his bow up, putting a target on Rovid’s throat. “Reaper. I don’t trust reapers. Taken people I’ve loved.”
Rovid faced us and said, “I’m their prisoner.”
Red Eye looked at me for clarification, which I was all too happy to give. “Oh, yes,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’ll chop his lanky fuckin’ head off if he makes one wrong move.” Then, for emphasis, I dragged my thumb across my neck.
This made Red Eye smile, which made the others smile.
“Stay,” Red Eye said. “We must vote.”
He slung his bow around his shoulder and sprinted off toward the village. The rest of the militia stayed behind, ensuring we couldn’t take a step without steel arrows making a mess of our organs.
A bell rang, and children scurried through the circular village, filtering between an outpouring of taller, older figures. The kids stayed outside while the adults went into a large building. A few minutes later, Red Eye emerged and returned to us.
“Yes,” was all he said.
The barelegged and bare-chested men under Red Eye’s apparent command put away their bows. Apparently an agreement had been reached. We needed more people like Red Eye in the world, I thought. Short on words, but he got things done. I liked him.
We followed him into the village, where he pushed the wheelbarrow past clamoring children and adults alike. A woman with braided black hair inspected the Preen with a probing finger, then gave an approving nod. She snapped her fingers and ordered the children to take them inside.
She approached us, hands cupped in front her, emotionally subdued. She smelled strongly of jasmine and sandalwood, or perhaps that was the scent emanating from the whole village. Her breasts hung freely, legs bare. Must’ve shivered something bad during wintertime. Did winter exist here?
“Where did you find them?” she asked.
I waited on Rovid to answer, then realized she wasn’t addressing him. In fact, she walked right past him. Which made sense. As a reaper, he was beneath her. Hell, beneath the dirt she walked on.
“The Prim,” I answered. “Stumbled upon a room full of them.”
“May I ask where exactly in the Prim?”
“Er, big colorful building.”
She smiled as I tried to convey the details of a world she knew far better than I.
“Top floor,” Lysa said. “It was locked. But it’s not anymore.”
The woman took Lysa’s hands in hers, then softly let them slip beyond her fingertips. “Thank you.” She traded glances between Lysa and I, brow furrowed. “You don’t belong here, do you? How did you—”
“It’s a long st
ory,” I said. “One that I can’t even explain very well. It’s just that — well, we’re here, and we’re trying not to be.”
“Where are you going?”
I swatted a fly out of my ear. “Ultimately a land called Mizridahl, if you’ve heard of it. But anywhere other than here is the first step. No offense. Lovely place you’ve got, but we don’t much belong. Yet.”
She tapped her chin thoughtfully. Then, she turned and hollered out a name. Sounded like Taryl.
A man jogged over, straw necklace wiggling around his neck. Big guy, all shoulders and chest.
“Our guests who brought us the Preen,” the woman said.
“An honor,” Taryl said, steepling his hands and offering a slight bow of his head.
“They require passage to Mizridahl.”
Taryl crossed the tree stumps he had for arms and bounced slightly on his knees. “Mizridahl? Anywhere in particular?”
“I’m not greedy,” I said.
He grinned and shot a thumb behind his shoulder. “I can get you there in half a day. Need rest, or…?”
“We’re rather invigorated,” I said. “Especially with this news. You can put us on Mizridahl in half a day?”
“Before night falls. Meet me by the stables. I’ll get us a wagon and some horses.”
I elbowed Lysa. “Well, fuck me, huh?”
“Luck’s changing,” she said, winking.
“I wouldn’t go that far. But at least we got a break.”
Before we went off to the stables, the woman before us wanted a last word.
“Thank you both from the very bottom of my soul,” she said. Her eyes set on Rovid. “For taking this monster away, and for bringing happiness into our lives. Over one hundred years, some here have been forced to persist in the same flesh as when they arrived. Children. The elderly. This will change everything. If you ever make passage into this realm again, you are always welcome in our village.”
“Thank you,” Lysa said, in the kind of heartfelt way only she could convey. “What is your name?”
“Silma.”
“Silma,” Lysa parroted. “We’ll end the reapers for you, Silma. I promise.”
That comment turned Silma’s head sideways and put a teary smile on her face. She cupped Lysa’s cheek, whispered something to her, and then let us be on our way.
Once we were out of earshot, I told Lysa, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“I didn’t.”
“Confident, are you?”
She brushed up against my arm, smirking. “Just taking after you.”
I laughed. “Don’t do that.”
Taryl had readied the wagon, reined in two horses, and told us we were ready to go.
So I shoved Rovid forward, playing up the whole prisoner thing at his expense. “Get up in there, you filth!”
“Bind his hands!” a villager recommended, rushing to my side with rope.
I could’ve turned aside the suggestion, said I clearly had things under control. But this sounded like fun… and retribution for the piss fit he had thrown about our chosen method of transporting the Preen. Which had turned out completely fine.
Once the three of us were safely inside the bed of the wagon, Taryl uttered some commands to his horses, and off we went. Trundling into a forest.
After picking a well-traveled trail that’d beaten weeds and creepers far back to the edges of tree trunks, Taryl turned around in the seat and faced us.
“Been scouting for reapers recently,” he said. “Been an uptick in the area. So I’m sitting in a tree, cracking walnuts, and all of a sudden, one appears. Out of nowhere. Figured I found myself a new tear. And I did. Right to Mizridahl.”
“You went through it?” I asked. “I thought the dea— I mean, people like you, they couldn’t go through.”
He snapped his head around and jerked on the reins hard. “Quit eating that, Rilly! Sorry, can’t have her eating the whole forest, and she would if you let her. Anyways, naw. Reaper told me.”
“Doesn’t seem like a reaper would willingly give that information up,” I said.
“Nothing said about willingly. I threatened him with choppin’ off his head. They speak real fast if you say stuff like that.”
Lysa curled up into a ball and laid her head against me as the forest jolted us about with its unwieldy terrain. “Did you free him, or take him prisoner?”
“Neither,” Taryl said. “Chopped his head off.”
I could feel Lysa’s head pulling back against my jerkin. “But you said—”
“He’s no good alive. They do terrible things. Sure you know that, since you’ve got one of your own.”
“But—”
I tapped Lysa on the leg and whispered, “Drop it.”
Taryl wasn’t questioning why we needed passage to Mizridahl, nor why we were escorting a reaper there, so I wasn’t about to have us question him.
Lysa glanced up and shot me a frown. She was a stubborn one, but knew when she was in the wrong.
The forest canopy consumed most of the sky, letting only the occasional droplets of blues dribble in. Those blues were getting darker now, smeared with the color of coal dust. Wouldn’t be much longer before we’d have night smothering us. But Taryl made good on his promise, and soon proclaimed we were there.
“It’s somewhere in the middle there,” he said, a finger drawing circles around the bridge of a fallen tree.
Lysa and I clambered out. Rovid rather fell out. I yanked him to his feet, brushed the leaves off his face.
“You should know,” Rovid said, keeping his voice muted as we walked toward the presumed placement of the tear, “that they do not put these things in places where just anyone could stumble into them.”
I helped him over a few fat, coiled vines. “They’ll be guarded? Is that what you’re suggesting?”
“Maybe. Probably not. They don’t stand fucking guard. Do you know how suspicious that would be in a place like Mizridahl, still full of life?”
“Then what are you telling me for?”
“They take secluded, abandoned camps. Coves six hundred miles from civilization. Places where no soul would think to look, understand? We go through this and we might find ourselves without any hope of reaching so much as a village.”
I shoved him forward. “We’ll worry about that when we cross over.”
As it turned out, we didn’t need to worry about that. The transition was sudden and startling, as it had always been. One moment I’m walking in a forest, and the next I was in a cave.
A very familiar cave that wasn’t a cave at all. Rather a hole. My Hole. And bodies lay strewn before me.
Chapter Eighteen
Parts were missing. A finger here, square chunk of flesh there. Somehow an eyeball had fallen out of a socket, although where the thing had rolled off to was a mystery. By the slight stench of decay that staled the air, I figured they hadn’t been dead long. More importantly, none of them were my Rots. Or former Rots, as it were.
“Reapers,” Rovid said, crouching down and taking a closer look.
“How can you tell?” Lysa asked.
“Modifications. This one here, his teeth are thin, sharp. Like those of a cat. Big cat. This one’s got eyes like me. Guess they picked a bad place to tear a hole in the fabric of time.”
I kicked a decapitated foot out of my way. “You could say that. If I’m a reaper, I sure as shit don’t set up camp where a bunch of assassins call home.”
“You know where we are?” Rovid asked.
I ducked my head into a side room, where the Black Rot vault stood. It hadn’t been touched. “Yeah, I know where we are. Home. Well, what I used to call home. It’s a long story.”
I heard Lysa whispering to him, probably bringing him up to speed about the Black Rot. About me. I snaked my way through the tunnel, ascending into the wet air beneath a morning blush sky.
Between the caws of crows, a voice broke. “Astul?”
I squinted at the figure s
itting before red-hot embers of a doused fire. I was smiling from ear-to-ear as I pointed a wagging finger at him and walked his way. “Now there’s a face I like to see.”
Kale got to his feet and embraced me in the kind of hug brothers share after a bloody war has ended. I stood back and patted his chest, which made him wince.
“Got roughed up a bit,” he said. “How in the hell did you sneak past me? I’ve been sitting here since last night. Fox couldn’t have made it past the hill unseen. And who are they?”
Lysa and Rovid had stuck their grimy heads up from the Hole. In the morning rays, they looked like shit. So did I, probably.
“Wait, wait,” Kale, biting down on his lip. “I recognize the girl. From down in, er… Vereumene.”
“Lysa Rabthorn.”
“That’s the name, yep. Don’t know the guy. What’s up with the creepy eyes?”
I reached down and snagged a couple pieces of dry meat sitting on the cobbles that circled the fire pit. “I’ll answer all your bloody questions in a minute. I’m fucking starving.”
Kale made a face. “Don’t eat that shit, Shepherd. Dry as the fucking sand. I scored a hit on a deer couple days ago, then came back and found visitors in the Hole. I’m guessing you already came across their bodies. Deer’s skinned, cooked and salted in the scullery. Didn’t feel like moving it.”
I went back into the Hole and tapped into some old butcher training I’d once received from a fat farmer who used to sell me apple wine. Couldn’t remember much about the training, to be honest, other than to slice it at the joint.
After sweating and chopping for twenty minutes, I carried chunks of disfigured, unidentifiable meat out of the Hole. There was a reason why foxes and rabbits and small game had sustained me my entire life in the wilds: because I was too fucking ignorant to pick apart something larger.
But meat is meat, even if it does have bone chips in it. And Lysa, Rovid and I gladly tore into the hearty stuff, and it tasted like God-given sustenance. Nuts and berries may keep your body intact, but meat keeps your sanity intact.
The Miscreant (An Assassin's Blade Book 2) Page 18
