by Jon Kiln
“What do you want?” he said, stiff as a mannequin standing at the doorway into the room.
“I already told you that. I want to talk.” She sighed. “I want to understand.”
“What is there to know that you couldn’t already guess?”
“E’ghat,” she said simply, as if it were an entire speech unto itself. And Draken supposed in a way it was.
“I don’t believe. I never did.”
She shook her head. “That can’t be true because you killed Mirah.” Her words were simple, just as her faith was simple. But still waters can run deep, and hers ran to the bottom of everything.
“You fooled me. I thought I was acting out of faith.”
“Then what? What were you acting out of, if not faith?” she asked with on offhand shrug, taking an entertaining cookie from a tin on the end table. Carella had such tins scattered throughout the public areas in the house. “These are good.”
“You fed off the worst things in me. I am a violent person. It’s my job to be violent. I know there is darkness in me. You used it to make me think some false god was calling me.”
“You believed,” she said, shaking her head again. “I know you did.”
“I was wrong.”
That thing, stirring within him, was not still. It flipped and grew and enticed him. He just didn’t know what it was or what it meant, only that it would not be ignored for long.
“I can be yours for the rest of your life,” she said, and there was nothing but sincerity in her words. “That’s what I want and what you want.”
He loved Carella now, he truly did. But he couldn’t deny that his body still burned for Sula. There was something about her that was undeniably erotic, a core aspect of her person that few people could boast.
“I want to serve Rada,” he said, trying to steer the conversation away from any comparison that might be made between Sula and Carella.
She looked at him, and her eyes were as deep as her faith. That stirring thing revealed itself. The purest fear he had ever known. In the hidden reaches of his mind he knew he feared nothing as much as this woman.
An atavistic compulsion to remove the object of his fear compelled him. Flight was not enough. The fear was too large. She hadn’t known the danger she was walking into when she’d come.
Despite the throbbing confusion and terror within him, Draken stood still as a rod, afraid that to move in any way would compel him into a frenzy he wouldn’t be able to stem until the room was painted in her blood.
He didn’t want to kill her. He didn’t want to kill anyone. But she was a danger to everything that mattered in Draken’s life. And not just that, but what about all of Figa? Drammata? If she converted him again, how many would be forfeit?
“Draken?” she asked, suddenly attuned to the danger in him, the wire-tight violence.
“You should leave,” he said.
“No.” She stood, she crossed over to him, perhaps stupidly thinking her arts of seduction could overcome that burning rage within. She touched his chest, and even through his evening coat he could feel with accuracy her slender fingers that he knew from experience could—
But the fire within him was too great, and morality of all kinds became purely academic.
He shoved her with both hands, not a clumsy push, but the kind he would use in the pit to unbalance a hefty opponent. Her sylphlike figure was not just unbalanced, it went flying from the force of the push. After seconds of airtime she came down with a crash on her tailbone, the dense hardwood floor absorbing almost nothing of the blow.
She cried out in agony. He had never doubted she could be deadly as an opponent, but she could not have anticipated this. She had come with no weapons. And now Draken knew she would hardly be able to think with the pain of a fractured tailbone.
He was above her in an instant. She tried to roll, but a shooting jolt of pain from a nerve stopped her, forcing her left hand to go to the source of the pain. Her flank was utterly exposed with nothing but the finely laced patterns of moons and stars on her dress to protect her. He had a moment to appreciate the quality of her smooth skin beneath those patterns before his barefoot went slamming into it, heel first.
Draken had always possessed an extraordinary strength, but even he could not have guessed at the effect this kick would have. His intense fear had brought out the most intense action of his life. He heard the snapping of perhaps a half-dozen ribs. He knew they would slice the lungs, the arteries, the organs, the heart.
It was not very dramatic, the moment she died. It was something like crushing a tin beneath his foot so it would fit in the trash. She never knew the end was coming. Her insides ruptured beyond function, the only blood a thin line mixed with saliva from her mouth. An easy thing to clean and hide.
He wasn’t feeling then. He had only a series of cold, mechanical thoughts. These thoughts sought information only as it served the present needs, not searching for meaning, motive, or comfort.
The body needed to be removed. He wasn’t going to take it to the authorities.
The sewers. Bodies disappeared there all the time. They were usually found, but no one would know who she was…
And soon Draken was back home. Aside from a wet tunic he’d worn in the storm, there was now no evidence that Sula had ever visited him. He could almost believe it was a nightmare, until he remembered the feeling of her fingers on his chest. An act rich in sensual promises. He would never see or feel those fingers again. No one would.
It was his final murder, he promised himself. He might kill again, if needed, but never murder.
He wanted to tell Carella. He wanted to tell her…
Chapter 31
“But you never did,” Pul said presently, as Draken wrapped up the story. There was almost something like sympathy in his voice, though the red light of the dancing fire stopped him from looking benign.
“It was the beginning of the end for me,” Draken said. “The guilt of that murder. And I know it was a murder, she would not have attacked me that night. It has driven me to the edge of sanity. I looked for absolution at the bottom of a thousand bottles, but it was never there. I dedicated my life to the gods to make up for what I did. I only hope it will be enough.”
“It will be,” Pul said, “once you serve the right god.”
“Do you really think you are being objective?” Jace asked Pul.
“What do you mean?” Pul sounded genuinely surprised, and Jace laughed good-naturedly.
“You know, I feel sorry for you both,” Jace said.
“What do you mean, objective?” Pul asked again.
“You think you believe in this god, and maybe you do, but that’s not why you’re here.” His eyes locked onto Pul’s, and Draken watched in fascination. His brother had become a fanatic. He’d seen it in Pul’s eyes those years ago, and he could see it now; there was a wildness there. And yet Jace, with the calm demeanor of a simple faith, matched the intensity of Pul’s gaze without employing any of its madness.
Draken felt inadequate to sit beside the man who had often annoyed or confused him. He was learning something about Jace’s strength. Something worthy of envy.
Through closed teeth, Pul said, “Then why am I here?”
Jace answered simply. “You are lonely.”
And then Jace’s throat was in Pul’s hands. Like a frieze, Draken took in the look on Jace’s face. There may have been truth to what he’d said, but that didn’t mean he knew everything. Jace had not expected Pul to react with violence at this time. Something Draken could have told him might be a fatal error.
Draken was in action almost without realizing it. He was still thinking about the look on Jace’s face when his fist went onto Pul’s nose, the force of it throwing Pul clear. It was the first time he’d hit his brother since they’d been children, and it gave him a passing moment of dark amusement to think of Pul realizing just how strong Draken was firsthand, and not just from the sidelines.
Draken could hear Jac
e gasping for breath, could imagine the monk clasping his aching throat with both hands as if he were staring right at him. But Draken’s vision was filled with the form of his brother, as he planted another fist on Pul’s chin.
He hadn’t been in position for the full power of his arm and body to lend itself to the blow, but he was still hitting Pul harder than Pul had ever been hit before. He realized, distantly, he was trying to kill Pul before the bear-masks set on them. Without Pul’s guidance and lust for revenge, maybe none of the priests of E’ghat would care so much about using Draken. Maybe they would let him go, or at least let him die.
But he wasn’t fast enough. As Draken had seen with others of their order, the guards which had until that moment been hidden in the trees, moved quicker than Draken could have guessed. His arms were pinned down. The seat he’d been sitting on, now a device for torture, something they could bend him unnaturally across. His back felt as if it would snap at the bad angle.
From the corner of his eye, Draken saw Jace had also been apprehended, though he’d hardly shown himself to be any kind of threat. Pul loomed over him, blood streaming down his face from his nose and where Draken’s rough knuckles had torn the skin.
“Don’t hurt them,” Pul said, and instantly the pressure on Draken’s back lessened. Five bear-masks still had him pinned, but at least his body wasn’t screaming for relief. Hands came off Jace entirely, and the monk sat bracketed by guards, but otherwise uninhibited. He was still stroking his sore throat.
“Forgive me, Jace,” Pul said in flat tones. “You are wrong to question my faith, but you are right that I miss my brother and I don’t need to punish you simply for stating the obvious. He took away the only other person in my life. But I don’t blame him for those actions. I know Sula wouldn’t. So, you’re right. It just makes me want him by my side all the more. Is that such a crime?”
“Greed,” Jace whispered, his voice raspy from his injury.
Pul was calm as he listened, but Draken could read the hidden tension within his muscles. There were tight emotions at play that Pul himself may not have been aware of.
“Be honest with yourself,” Jace said, looking at the fire instead of Pul’s face as if he thought it had been his look, not his words, that had incited violence.
“Don’t talk like that,” Pul said. And then, to Draken, “Does he always talk like this?”
Draken almost smiled. It was absurd, but there was a moment of closeness that passed between them at their shared frustration at the cryptic Jace.
“I’m sorry,” Jace said. “It’s my years as a monk, you know? In the church, everything is wrapped in mystery. It’s a form of power, and they wield it well. Like you with your masks.”
Pul nodded. “I understand, but drop it for now. What do you mean by greed?”
“You want to believe you have good motives, faith motives, but let me ask you something. In Edan, who will you be if Draken comes back with you?”
Pul said nothing.
“I’ll tell you,” Jace went on. “You become a celebrity in your own right. Less famous than Draken, but still important to these cultists. Now, let me ask you, who will you be if Draken fails to return?” Jace looked up now, chancing another glance. “You have no place in Edan without Draken. And you can never return to Figa. And so you are greedy. Greedy for belonging. You don’t understand that true belief is almost without exception a lonely road. Well, until you die, and you get to serve.”
There was a moment of tension so tight Draken could feel it in the soles of his feet. Then Pul said, “I see no reason for you to delay your service, then.” A complicated, but fast symbol flashed from Pul’s hand was all the guards needed. One of the bear-masks had a knife in hand as if he’d magicked it from the air.
Many things happened as if at once. Draken repositioned himself minutely, shifting the fulcrum of the seat inches higher on his back, offering him more thrusting power. Like a corner-jester’s slapstick routine, he brought the heads together of the bear-masks pinning his hands. The painful sound of their meeting reminded him of the sharp crack pocket-balls made as they knocked one another about on the felt mat.
He pushed off from the ground with his toes. Even these were stronger by a wide mark than those of a typical man’s, and he rocked his body back so the seat balanced him momentarily. He kicked both heels out into the identically-dressed faces of the bear-masks at his legs. He felt the tremor of a crunch from the one on his right and knew it was possible the man was dead, the brittle bones of his nose severing important veins in his head, or perhaps even finding their way into the lower-front of the brain.
There was another man behind him, but as gravity brought Draken forward again, he leaned forward with it, stiffened ramrod straight, and brought his head forcefully into the last man’s jaw.
Not all of them were down for the count, but Draken didn’t have the luxury of assessing them. Jace had a second, maybe two, of life left if Draken didn’t intervene. Draken crouched and launched himself at the bear-mask with the knife. The man was intent on his target, ready to give his life if needed just to get the job done.
Jace, with impressive mindfulness, shoved the other guard who flanked him instead of the man with the knife, as most people would have done reflexively. This saved his life. Draken was able to reach the bear-mask with the weapon since the only person who could have obstructed him had lost his balance at the older monk’s shove, tipping over one of the other seats.
And then Draken was grappling. He knew he had only a moment to dispose of this foe before others converged on them. Pul had said there was a man for every tree, but surely that had to be an exaggeration.
But Draken only needed a second. His instincts were on over-drive, even though the fire of Rada did not seem to be burning within him. Maybe it was because his own life was not the one at stake. He got the man’s hand, knife still in it, engulfing the hand holding the handle in his own with an iron grip. He brought it into the side of the bear-mask’s head, who had time for a horrified gasp, and then went silent. Blood ran from the wound, but not as plentifully as he might have imagined.
“Run!” he yelled to Jace. “They won’t kill me!”
“I’ll find you,” Jace said and did as he was commanded, scrambling up the seats of the strange, completely circular amphitheater at a dangerous pace. Draken only hoped Jace could escape without getting injured incidentally.
Draken turned to see the bear-mask Jace had unbalanced rising to his feet. A mighty shove sent him into two of his companions. The awkward spacing of seats and steps again sent them sprawling, and Draken heard a sickening crack that might have been a skull or neck breaking.
Then Pul was on him, raging like a bull. Or maybe a bear who’d been separated from her young. Draken was shocked at the strength his brother seemed to possess, but then he felt the truth behind it. He was full of adrenaline and rage, and needed only to be put off for a few seconds before he became the weaker man he was. Draken grabbed him in a hug-grip reminiscent of the wrestling fighters who sometimes performed for small crowds hours before a real arena fight.
Pul slashed at Draken with nails that must have been sharpened unnaturally, tearing his skin open in three long lines. Draken hadn’t even realized his shirt had become torn at some point in the fracas, leaving his skin exposed to Pul’s attack. Hot blood streamed down his back, mixing with the dribble flowing to him from Pul’s head wound.
“Stop it!” Pul screamed, his desperation making his voice quaver and his face uglier than Draken had even seen it. “Stop it!”
“You sound like a child!” Draken huffed as bear-masks grabbed him, more than five this time, and again pinned him painfully to a seat. The rough surface caught his scratches, further opening the wounds.
“Find the monk!” Pul barked. Draken craned his neck up to see, but could make out no specifics. The only thing he knew was that if Pul had been exaggerating the number of his guardian bear-masks hiding in the trees, it hadn’t been by muc
h.
It was a distressing sight. Draken would not have guessed this many bear-masks could be spared for this expedition. There were more than he’d ever seen at once.
How many are there? he thought. How many can there be?
Pul looked at the man holding Draken. A bulbous bruise marred his forehead.
“Silence him!” Pul yelled, and a fist smashed into Draken’s face.
Stars blinded him, accompanied by a flash of white brilliance. Distantly, he heard Pul say, “He’s still conscious.”
Another blow followed.
And then… darkness.
Chapter 32
Jace was whispering something to Draken. Nothing was clear. The world was raw with haze. There was light, sunlight, but Draken felt himself draped in shadow. An ache in his head tempted him… tempted him back to the black world of dreamless sleep, but a twinge of need… a need to know… a curiosity for the circumstances in which he found himself… begged Draken to remain in the land of the living.
And Jace was whispering.
And part of his words got through. “Furious,” Jace said, the word tucked into a sentence of unknowable sounds. “Our chance.” The urgency of these words, and whatever meaning they were meant to have, was not lost on Draken, whose instincts scrambled up through the scattered bramble of his thoughts, willing him to understand.
Action was required!
His eyes opened, more an impulse borne of his instincts than a conscious act on his part. The first thing he saw was the cage he laid in, a cart with wheels and bars of some bleak, tempered metal. Knowing the technology of the followers of E’ghat, Draken had no doubt this wasn’t something he could break out of with his own strength. The next thing he saw—his head throbbing at the motion of turning it—were the two dead bear-masks, holes in each of their heads.
This evidence of violence so close to him, but without his awareness, roused him fully to waking life.
“What—” he began to ask, but the question was answered by the site of Jace, crossbow in hand, looking like a bright-eyed little boy on a birthday hunting trip, clearly proud of his kills. Even though the monk held the crossbow with obvious understanding of its status as a weapon, and with the knowledge needed to wield it well, it looked out of place in his possession.
