Fate of the Drowned (The Broken Lands Book 3)

by Carrie Summers

  After cutting a path through the fallen tree, Evrain brushed the hair and dust from his forehead, stepped over the trunk, and holstered his hatchet. The fallen trees slowed his progress, but compared to the ravines and loose debris left by the quakes, he lost only moments. In the last two days of travel, he’d been forced to abandon the road many times, shoving through brambles and dense woods along the edges of chasms too deep and steep to cross. The widest gorge had cost him half a day.

  As he rolled his shoulders and resumed his jog. Through the afternoon and on toward evening, he kept the pace, slowing only a little as the light began to drain from the sky, deepening the shadows on the rugged trail.

  As the last flickers of sunlight left the treetops, he started looking for a spot to hunker down for the night. Within a quarter hour, he was rewarded when the trail bent to the left, rounding a massive tree that could have sheltered a whole family between its curving roots. While the rest of the forest bent and swayed under the gale, the ancient pine stood firm as if laughing at the wind. Its drooping boughs slanted over the road, pulling the narrow track close. Evrain stopped in the tree’s shelter, marveling at how little power the wind had to press into the darkened nook. Of course, sleeping right alongside the road brought its own dangers, but as long as Evrain tucked deep into the shadows of the roots, he doubted he’d be bothered. After all, he’d only passed one other group of travelers since setting out, a family with haunted eyes and sunken cheeks who’d refused to return his greeting.

  He tugged his cloak from his rucksack then began stepping over the tangle of roots and earth in search of a suitable nook. Already, he was thinking of his humble rations, debating whether to suck on a piece of dried and spiced rabbit meat or whether to indulge in the last of his cheese when the smell reached his nostrils.

  Evrain stiffened. At first, he tried to tell himself it was his imagination. Perhaps a gooseberry patch having fruited and grown overripe. But as the stench grew, hints of oiled steel and sulfurous fumes joining the rotten-fruit scent, he couldn’t deny it. There were Riftspawn near.

  Ever so cautiously, Evrain lowered his rucksack from his shoulders, nestling it in a crook between roots so that it wouldn’t roll and clatter. He dropped his hand to his belt and loosened his dagger in the sheath. A ridiculous act, really. If the Spawn came at him, he had little hope of survival whether he fought back or not. But he wouldn’t go without landing a blow or two.

  As the smell grew ever stronger, he pressed his back against the rough bark of the ancient tree. At first, the sound of the advancing beasts was scarcely distinguishable from the moan and crackle of the surrounding forest. High in the treetops, the howling wind covered any shrieks from the Spawn. But soon enough, low pops and tearing sounds joined the clamor. A fresh crash of splintering wood followed, and Evrain jumped when a sapling pierced the curtain of boughs hiding him from the Riftspawn. The small tree had been ripped from the ground, roots and all, and earth still dribbled from its base.

  He cringed. Yes, indeed. What good would a dagger do against a beast that used trees as throwing spears?

  At the very least, the sapling spear didn’t seem to have been aimed at him. If it had, he’d likely be dead already. Back still pressed against the massive tree, he began edging around its base in hopes he could find even better concealment once the trunk stood between him and the monsters.

  Where the curve of the wide trunk took him away from the road, Evrain spied motion in the corner of his eye. He hadn’t realized that his movement had taken him beyond the shelter of the overhanging branches. He turned to look, unable to help himself, and his heart stuttered.

  Listening to the crash of their progress, he’d assumed that just a small band of Spawn moved through the forest. After all, the wails and shrieks of their kin still haunted his nightmares, so loud he could scarcely think. Fewer than twenty had attacked the ancient keep in the Icethorns, yet they’d been louder than an army of men carrying war trumpets.

  More than a hundred Spawn tore through the forest scant paces from where Evrain stood, so close that their pool of shadows lapped against his toes. But though they made a racket in their passage, it was the snap of splintering branches, the crash of trampled thicket. Claws raked the bark from trees as beasts passed in their awkward, unnatural gaits. But there were no feral shrieks and scarcely even a moan or grunt as they marched onward. After what he’d experienced in the Icethorns, the silence was almost eerie.

  As Evrain tried to edge back into the shelter of the needle-laden boughs, his motion caught the attention of a nearby monster, a creature whose animal basis Evrain didn’t even recognize. The thing’s nose was flattened to the side, and its yellow eyes reflected the sky’s failing light like a cat’s. Its head was sleek like a porpoise’s, unbroken by ear holes. Patches of thin fur covered its arms, while useless, papery wings flapped on its back. As Evrain lifted his dagger, the beast held his gaze.

  He swallowed as a strange chill pulsed through his veins. What good would fear do him now? He’d fought hard for his family and his people, and he would fight even harder in the minutes to come. At least one of those beasts would fall before the last drops of life left his body.

  The moment stretched out, the Riftspawn staring with tormented and hate-filled eyes. And then, defying everything Evrain had come to know, the beast turned away, shrieked once, and continued its march.

  Northward.

  Knees weak, Evrain sagged against the tree. He slid back into the shadow of its boughs, mouth stale and hands trembling. When he returned to his rucksack, he sank to the needle-covered earth and gripped tight to the smooth curve of a sheltering root. A few minutes later, the Spawn were gone, leaving nothing but a trampled path and the lingering smell of rotting fruit.

  Chapter Six

  Parveld

  Atal Plateau

  AROUND PARVELD, a small group of Riftspawn moved at a steady pace. Beneath him, the overgrown lizard-like Spawn he’d chosen as a steed marched with a sinuous back and forth curving of its scaly body. A crest of rippled plates stretched from the top of his head and down its neck, disappearing between the beast’s shoulder blades. The way these plates meshed and bent as the monster walked was mesmerizing. Parveld welcomed the trance. It pulled him from his bodily concerns, the chafing on his thighs, the aching in his shoulders. He was so much more than his human frailties now. Eventually, he would abandon this form altogether. But first, he had many things to achieve.

  On the horizon ahead, a thin curl of smoke drifted from what was likely a chimney. Though it was difficult to make out at this distance, the blocky shapes emerging from the waving grasses looked to be a cluster of buildings. Parveld closed his eyes and extended his awareness of the aether. The sensation caused his stomach to roil as his mind struggled to contain both the lifelights of the living and his even vaster sense of the Hunger’s far-flung self. But he focused all the harder, bearing down on his connections to both awarenesses.

  For two hundred years, he’d dipped in and out of the aether, swimming through both the mortal and spiritual realms with practiced ease. But since the Hunger had finally shown him the true and penultimate goal of existence, the ecstasy of unity with the immense and singular self, he’d found it increasingly difficult to perceive the sparks of the living, much less act upon them.

  It was a temporary setback, of that he was sure. Ultimately, he would do what was necessary to tear the rift wide, even if his Want couldn’t aid him. But surely he would master this. Oil and water could be joined. Together, his abilities would be far more powerful than each was alone.

  Gritting his teeth, he slid his mind around the small huddle of lifelights in the town. He didn’t draw energy from them or even try to form bonds of communication. That wasn’t the point of the exercise. But he did wish to bring them into the peace of his communion. Rather than manipulate the sparks, he kept a loose awareness of each light. Meanwhile, he focused the rest of his concentration on his small group of R
iftspawn. Bound to him by the Hunger, the Spawn felt like extensions of his own body. Much like moving an arm or waving a hand, he gestured for them to hurry ahead.

  When Parveld had been young, the neighborhood children had played a game where one wore a blindfold and was given a stick. The others spun him around and around until the poor, blindfolded child could scarcely walk. If the child could then hit his friends with the stick, each owed him a share of treats pilfered from the evening market.

  Parveld’s band of Riftspawn were the stick. The lifelights in the village were his long-ago friends. Though Parveld was dizzied and sickened by the effort of bringing his talents together, he fought the sensations as he had when he was a ten-year-old boy.

  One by one, he bludgeoned the living sparks in the town, setting his Riftspawn tearing into their flesh. As each light was extinguished, he extended a few words of comfort and apology to the soul. Someday, all those who had crossed the veil would be rejoined with the living in the singular whole of the Hunger. For now, the spirits of the townsfolk were freed from their earthly struggles. They could await the communion in peace.

  As Parveld released his grasp on the aether, he swayed in his seat. He unshouldered the simple rucksack taken from one of the first camps he’d set his Spawn upon. Pulling out a water skin, he drank deeply, then urged his mount to hurry toward the town. Next, he sent his awareness north to the more distant portions of his connected self. Altogether, every far-flung limb and fragment of his awareness had joined a slow, northward migration. But at the head of the group, a special fist of Riftspawn moved slowly and cautiously toward Jaliss.

  He abandoned his awareness of everything but that small group. Through them, he spied the dark crust of buildings surrounding the raw wound where Steelhold had once stood. His Spawn were still leagues distant, but already they could sense the agony that waited in the core of Jaliss. The Heartstone with its searing warrior. But along with the threat, the Riftspawn could smell the great clustering of humanity, and it drove them to ferocity. Each twisted shard of the Hunger ached to destroy those souls, to tear them limb from limb and feel their hot blood spraying. But they were part of Parveld now. They knew patience. Even in their savage spirits, they understood no single human death would bring the ultimate unity they ached for. The rift must be opened. The seal broken. Three knots of human magic bound the seal. One, in the blazing heart of Jaliss, was already flawed. Steelhold’s Heartstone had a weakness, an imperfection introduced at the moment of its creation. It would be the easiest of the wards to destroy. But eventually, all would fall.

  Beyond the outskirts of Jaliss, a few, scattered lives moved through the grasslands. The Spawn whined when they sensed the mortal heat, straining against Parveld’s control. But they were simple beasts and easy to dominate. Parveld only needed to focus, pulling their weak wills into union with his own. There was a reason this clutch of his forces roved ahead of the others. And revealing its existence would undermine his plans.

  As the Riftspawn closed on the city, Parveld swung them around, avoiding the humans roaming the plateau. He slid his phantom fist of Spawn through gaps between the crisscrossing specks of human life. As he pushed his awareness deeper and further into his connection with his brethren, he scented dry grasses and Icethorn breezes. The smell of fresh-turned earth joined the mix as he glimpsed huge chunks of stone standing like abandoned plows the size of homes. The rubble could only be the shards and wreckage of Steelhold strewing the Atal Plateau.

  There were bodies among the tumbled blocks and splintered timbers. That was what brought many of these warm sparks of life into the debris field. They were hunting for loved ones. Burying strangers. Searching for valuable Maelstrom-metals amongst the rubbled stone and shredded remains of a fortress that had stood for centuries. As he considered the wreckage, it occurred to him that he also had reason to pick through it, but that could come later.

  Though the scavengers were easy to avoid, the patrols were another matter. Of these, Parveld needed to be especially wary. The closer his Riftspawn came to the capital, the more difficult it became to evade the soldiers. Finally, he was forced to strike. Three dozen Spawn fell on the first pair of imperial protectors. The human’s deaths were quick, though savage. Parveld had no desire to make them suffer for their ignorance.

  And people who died quickly had no time to scream. His presence couldn’t be known. Not yet.

  Chapter Seven

  Savra

  West of Jaliss

  KOSTAN AND I rode side by side under a sky untouched by clouds. Grass swished against my feet and bent under the horses’ strides. The Emperor sat awkwardly in the saddle, not yet accustomed to the sway of the horse’s back. I smiled at the sight; it wasn’t so long ago that I’d ridden my gelding, Breeze, just as stiffly.

  I patted my mount’s sleek neck. In truth, after all the weeks I’d been away from the Graybranch Inn, I’d expected Fishel to have sold my horse to repay the cost of stabling him. After all, I’d left without explanation or any hint that I’d be back. But my faithful little gelding had been snugly paddocked the whole time, and the sturdy animal had grown almost fat on the oats Fishel had supplied.

  “It’s hard to believe what happened here,” Kostan said. “Seems almost peaceful, doesn’t it?” He tugged too sharply on the reins, prompting his mare to toss her head. I stopped beside him, stroked her mane, and then ran a hand down Kostan’s thigh. He swallowed as he stared ahead at the swath of churned earth where his army had fought the Riftspawn during their retreat from Pascar. Most of the grass was still flattened, but a few tufts had sprung upright. Scattered scraps of fabric and the glint of a broken buckle hid among the stalks. Within a day of the battle, the bodies of the fallen soldiers had been reverently carried from the field of battle, but I couldn’t help imagining them lying beneath the wide sky, lifeless eyes staring.

  “Compared to how it might have looked, I suppose so.” If Parveld hadn’t used his dawnweaving to transport the army to the Heartstone, the dead would likely still be here, a field of sorrow. The whole army would have been slaughtered, followed by the citizens of Jaliss. I wished we’d had a chance to thank Parveld. I shaded my eyes and scanned the horizon. Where was he?

  Kostan took my hand, holding it gently. The man didn’t quite seem real to me. At the same time, I felt I’d known him forever. Was this how other people felt when they met someone.

  The snorts of more horses and rattle of ripe grass broke me from my thoughts. Behind us, a group of six protectors drew rein, leaving a respectful distance of about fifteen paces between their horses and ours. I glanced over my shoulder, still unaccustomed to the attentive expressions that had replaced their dull-eyed stares. Kostan had freed Jaliss’ protectors from the argent magic that had stolen their free wills. Now they followed him by choice.

  “Are you ready?” Kostan asked as he nodded toward the town, Pascar, a few hundred paces ahead of us. Though the fighting had been fierce along the path of retreat, the battle within the town’s streets had been a frenzied massacre. From here, the signs of the melee were lost in the shimmer of heat rising from the grasslands. But I could see in Kostan’s face that his memories supplied what his eyes could not.

  “Are you?” I asked.

  He swallowed, the knot of cartilage in his throat bobbing. He wanted to pay respect to those who’d lost their lives, their bodies still sprawled in the streets. With extreme reluctance, he’d called for the town to remain undisturbed and guarded until he could be certain no more surprises lurked in the streets. The Prime had agreed with his concerns—where there had been one trap, there could likely be more. We’d needed to be sure none of Joran’s traitorous allies were in our midst—just a bucketful of Pascar’s tainted water could poison hundreds of innocent people. The dead wouldn’t mind the wait, and the safety of the living took precedence. Now nearly a tenday after the battle, nothing had disturbed Pascar’s calm. The members of Joran’s Shard were accounted for. A scouting party had
been sent in at dawn to assure the streets would present no threat to the Emperor. Now, he would honor those who had fallen. A terrible task, but one he would not shirk.

  I was no more eager to visit Pascar than Kostan was. But I’d made a vow to Parveld. If, as he’d believed would happen, the Hunger had driven him mad, I needed to grant him the mercy of death. Stormshard’s trackers had found no sign of his passage. The last place he’d been seen was near this town. I owed it to him to look for myself.

  Guards stood sentry around the perimeter of the town with instructions to allow no one but official representatives of the Emperor past. Otherwise, an evildoer might try to gather poisoned water from the wells. Similarly, soldiers were strung along the length of the poisoned stream until, around a league from town, it spilled into the new chasm opened by Havialo’s attack.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready,” Kostan said. “But either I pay respects now, or I live with the guilt. I won’t leave the bodies to lie rotting any longer.”

  “I wouldn’t have the strength for this without you, you know.”

  He took a deep breath then cast me a brave smile as he clucked to his mount. My chest filled with pride at the reminder of how he worked so hard to be strong for all of us. He wasn’t yet twenty, but he carried the responsibility for the safety and well-being of every citizen in the vast Empire. He hadn’t been ready for Ascension, and he hadn’t wanted the throne. But he stood unflinching before the impossible tasks destiny had assigned him. And he still found space in his heart to grace me with an encouraging smile.