Heirs of the Fallen: Book 02 - Crown of the Setting Sun

by James A. West

  It was far easier to believe the slavemasters, than his grandfather’s hopeful fantasies. After all, if his people had done no wrong, then why would any god of goodness ever allow such sorrows to fall upon them? Adham’s explanation was that Pa’amadin had created the world and set it adrift in the eternal heavens, so what men made of their lives, good or ill, was their choice and their responsibility. “As to suffering, it serves its own purpose, child, by building strength in the hearts of men.” That had never made sense to Leitos. All he had ever known was suffering, yet he was not strong….

  As the day stretched long, the sun’s heat eventually shattered the defense of hiding within memory. Leitos’s head began to ache, and a ringing noise filled his ears. He ran on in a stupor, weaving erratically, lost in a strange dream where he could smell, taste, and feel water on his tongue….

  At some point, he found that he had come to a stop. He was not sure how long he had been standing in place, arms dangling, tongue like a tacky stick in his mouth. He had been thirsty often, but never like this. His throat, his very flesh, ached for moisture, but there was none to be had.

  Remembering a slave’s trick, Leitos picked a pebble from the ground and popped it into his mouth. It burned his tongue instead of bringing saliva. He spat it out and pushed on, the day becoming the longest of countless long days he had known.

  Overhead, the molten-bronze face of the sun scorched the heavens to a hazy white. Weaving now in broad sweeps, he tried to ignore his discomforts, telling himself they were nowhere near as bad as the bite of the lash, which often led to corrupted lesions and left crisscrossing scars. This he knew well, for his back and shoulders were marked so. Such was the branding of every slave.

  Sometime after midday, he slowed to a dragging walk. The hardened soles of his feet had begun to crack and bleed, leaving faint red stains on the ground behind him. He did not go much farther before stopping again. He stood with his head hanging, his dark hair smelling burnt as it waved before his nose. He rested that way for a long time, slitted eyes red and puffy, his heart laboring to push thick, sluggish blood through his veins.

  After he caught his breath, he straightened slowly, like an old man. He winced as rippling cramps wracked every inch of his body. He looked one direction, then the other, but found only blinding nothingness looking back at him. Despair fell over him. There was no escape, and the wasteland would surely serve as his open tomb. As if his soul had separated itself from his flesh, he saw his body fall and lay still. Caught in this terrible vision, he witnessed days flashing by, becoming years…. His skin dried and withered, became a tattered shroud cloaking bleached bones. In the fullness of time, blowing sands scoured away that parchment skin, then devoured his skeleton. The only proof that he had lived were the bits of white bone scattered over an unknown parcel of desert—

  Leitos came back to himself with a horrified gasp. For the first time since taking flight, he gave full thought to turning back. The Alon’mahk’lar were cruel, but fittingly so, he reasoned. They might grant him continued life. Doubtless, they would deliver upon him pains beyond reckoning ... but after, perhaps, they might favor him with shade and water and food…. Or they might take him away, like they did a select few slaves. Where do those slaves go? he wondered absently, not for the first time. Are they truly sent to serve the Faceless One, as it is whispered? To find out, to end his suffering, all he had to do was turn—

  A noise, soft yet so unexpected that it might as well have been a mountain crashing down from the sky, obliterated all other considerations. Leitos’s muscles seized up, and he could scarcely breathe. His eyes slowly rolled, seeking the source of that stealthy noise.

  Sand and rock baked under the sun. Nothing moved, yet that sound, a click of stone striking stone, rang loudly in his skull, changing … becoming the sound of stalking feet, hard leather soles studded with iron hobnails, like the sandals the Alon’mahk’lar wore.

  All thoughts of being blessed by the chance to serve the Faceless One perished. Fear fell on Leitos, as intense as that which had driven him from the mines. This time, his legs and feet remained fixed. Waiting for death to fall, Leitos squeezed his eyes shut and hunched his shoulders. The brightness of the sun reflected off the barrens, spearing through his eyelids with a crimson glare. Another soft click made him flinch again, but he could not bring himself to open his eyes.

  Silence fell, gaining weight. It took greater courage to finally crack an eyelid and look around than anything he had ever done. He was sure that he would find one of the slavemasters looming nearby, uncoiling a lash, or hefting a cudgel or a sword. So strong was his certainty that Leitos actually saw one of those creatures grinning at him with sharp teeth, an abomination formed by the forced union between the demonic spirit of a Mahk’lar and a woman.

  Leitos choked on a scream, even as the image vanished. Only the desert’s cruel face gazed upon him. Leitos blinked, fearing his mind had broken. Without warning, a very real shadow flickered over him. He flung his arms over his head, and collapsed into a tight ball. He huddled there shuddering, waiting….

  Death did not come. The shadow passed, came again, fled and returned. When he chanced to peek through his crossed arms, he saw no Alon’mahk’lar standing over him, but a circling vulture. It drifted high above, a dirty scrawl against the sun-seared sky.

  Then came that furtive clicking sound, much softer and less threatening than before. Leitos looked to a nearby scatter of rounded boulders. After a moment of scrutiny, he made out a coiled serpent resting in a band of shade under a stone protrusion. Relief washed over him, and his laughter came out as a desiccated rasp. Before his mirth evaporated, an idea drove away his despair and thirst and fear.

  Chapter 3

  Leitos struggled to his feet, one hand gripping a smooth, fist-sized stone. He took one wary, unsteady step, then another. He paused, still seeking out the slavemasters. Except for the glaring adder, he was good and truly alone.

  Arm cocked, he advanced, moving slowly so as not to provoke the serpent. Senses heightened by anticipation, he keenly felt each blistering pebble dig into the bottoms of his tattered feet. The serpent coiled tighter. Leitos halted two paces away when the adder vibrated its tail in warning. His arm shook from the strain of holding still. All at once, the snake struck, and Leitos barely leaped clear. At the same instant, he threw the rock, but it flew wide by a foot or more.

  The serpent slapped down and slithered near. Leitos spun away, and his foot rolled on a loose stone. He fought for balance, but fell onto his back. He immediately began kicking against the ground, propelling himself backward, and flinging grit into the adder’s face, driving it aside. It seemed that the snake was retreating, then it abruptly coiled and struck.

  Everything was moving so fast, but Leitos could see all with startling clarity. The serpent flew at him, its hooked fangs jutting from gaping, puffy white jaws. As it soared at his unprotected face, its scales formed a delicate yellowish gray pattern that glinted in the sunlight.

  At the last possible moment, Leitos flung up a hand. By chance alone, his fingers clamped down on the snake’s body, just below its head. Too stunned to consider his luck, he jumped to his feet as the adder began wrapping around his arm. The creature was twice the thickness of his wrist, and incredibly strong. His fingers went numb under the building pressure, and the brief thrill at capturing his prey turned to apprehension. If he did not dispatch the reptile quickly, his grip would fail, leaving the serpent free to sink its fangs into him. His end would come slowly, painfully.

  Leitos rushed to the serpent’s lair, where the ground was littered with stones. Holding the creature’s weight at arm’s length was no easy task, but Leitos suffered through the weakening of his muscles, ensuring that the serpent remained well clear of his face. In his haste, he lost his footing and slammed to his knees, nearly losing hold of the snake in a frantic bid to keep from pitching to his side.

  Gasping and sweating, he pressed the snake’s head against the close
st boulder, while his opposite hand retrieved an egg-shaped stone. His first wild swing collided with his wrist, and he bit back a howl. Furious now, his second, third, and fourth blow crushed the adder’s skull to a pulp. The serpent wrapped tighter around his forearm, but it was dead.

  Waiting for the creature to accept its demise, he settled back on his heels, shaking as exhilaration waned and his heartbeat slowed. On rare occasions, he and Adham had secretly caught serpents or lizards or rats and, well out of the slavemasters’ sight, had prepared forbidden meals. Adham often stated that meat tasted better when cooked and spiced, but the closest slaves came to fire was its light, when the slavemasters burned camel dung of an evening.

  Leitos unwrapped the snake from his arm and set it aside. Even in death, it writhed back and forth. He hunted until he found a prominent lip of stone jutting off one of the boulders. Using the same rock he had used on the adder, he smashed the stony protrusion. Sandstone crunched and flew. He stopped after he had a collection of shards littering the ground at his feet. Kneeling, he picked through the sharpest bits until he found one as long as his hand and somewhat knife-shaped, then sharpened the crude blade against the curve of a boulder.

  While he worked, he searched the desert. The only prominent landmark was a long, knobbed ridge of reddish sandstone far to the west. Other outcrops reared up, all stubby and offering little reliable shade. Of Alon’mahk’lar, there was no sign.

  After dragging the makeshift knife back and forth over the boulder, the roughness began to smooth, providing an edge of sorts. Most importantly, he created a sharp tip. After a few more licks, Leitos strode to the serpent and went to work. He considered his grandfather’s cautionary words, making sure the cut was well down from the head in order to avoid the snake’s venom sacs. His knife was sharp for stone, but not really sharp at all, so he sawed and hacked, until he could rip off the head and toss it away. Next, he dug the tip into the adder’s belly, making a gruesome mess of things, but managing to gut the serpent.

  Tucking the stone knife into his loincloth, Leitos ducked into the shade the adder had been using, but found it far too narrow for him. He draped the serpent over the boulder, then set to digging with his hands until he carved out a suitable burrow. Once satisfied, Leitos took up the snake and crawled inside.

  Out of the sunlight, his skin tingled with relief, and the sand was delightfully cool under his folded legs. Using his teeth, he dug into the pinkish-white meat, tearing away stringy mouthfuls. The taste of blood was good and wetted his tongue, but the meat was full of thin bones, forcing him to eat slowly. Every bite renewed his strength a little more. He still wanted water, and as every hour passed, it became all the more important to find some. Come nightfall, he planned to move west again, and hopefully locate a hidden spring, or maybe a dry streambed in which he could dig down until finding a seep—something the Alon’mahk’lar forced slaves to do. He refused to fully consider that he might never taste water again.

  After finishing his meal, Leitos peeked out of his burrow. The same vulture wheeled in great, slow circles far above. He flung the snakeskin out into the sunlight, then scooted deep into his shelter. He reclined on his side, head resting on his arm. He lay there a long time, breathing easy and resting.

  Between one moment and the next, the extent of the day’s trials fell on him. The sounds of begging men surrendering to pitiless slavemasters rose up in his mind, and he heard the dreadful wet clangs of edged steel cleaving flesh from bone, the guttural snarls issuing from the slavemasters as they crushed the hopeless uprising. The appalling outcome of Adham’s act fell heavily on Leitos, evoking a strangled sob full of grief and resentment. Why, grandfather? Why did you stand against our masters? You ruined everything!

  Never again would he share the cool of the night with his grandfather, feel Adham’s hand upon his brow, or take comfort from his low, rumbling voice. Adham had doomed himself, the other slaves, and even his own grandson. The result of his insurrection had destroyed the life that the Faceless One had provided his sworn enemies. At the mine, there was always food, water, and shelter—perhaps not as much as one wanted, but enough to live. As long as slaves served without complaint or defiance, the Alon’mahk’lar mostly left them alone.

  That last thought rang hollow, but Leitos denied the truth that the slavemasters made sport of the chained at every opportunity. Instead, he nurtured his resentment, clinging to the idea that his life, difficult and uncertain as it had been at times, had become an ongoing nightmare of thirst and suffering in the face of Adham’s revolt. His only consolation was that if he found no water, his misery would end within two or three days.

  Trying not to think what the morrow would bring, he scrubbed the back of his hand across his damp eyes, sighed deeply, and curled into a protective ball. With all his heart, he hoped that when he awoke he would find himself back in his cell, and that all he had experienced since Adham challenged their masters was but a horrible dream. Regrettably his thirst, the taste of drying blood on his lips, and the ache in his cracked feet, proclaimed the truth. His foolish hopes died quickly and quietly.

  Chapter 4

  When Leitos’s eyes opened, the day’s overpowering brightness had dwindled to a ruddy afterglow. Outside his burrow, a mangy jackal growled and snapped at a trio of vultures. Befuddled by sleep and intense thirst, it took a moment for Leitos to realize the carrion eaters fought over the snakeskin he had discarded. He watched until he succumbed once more to sleep….

  Seemingly moments later, his eyes flared wide to find that night had stretched its cloak of darkness over the land. Despite the apparent tranquility, his heart fluttered, and he was panting for want of breath. He waited, still as stone, not daring to blink. Something had dragged him out of a sound sleep, and whatever it was had filled him with alarm. Chewing his bottom lip, he waited.

  After a time, his heartbeat slowed, and he relaxed. He told himself that an already forgotten nightmare must have brought him awake. With what had happened at the mines, he must expect bad dreams.

  He licked his lips, but his tongue was too dry to offer relief. Now more than ever, his body cried out for water. Stiff and achy as he was, and desperate for a few more hours of sleep, Leitos decided it was past time to set out again. He had not yet shifted his position when the sound of feet crunching over desert gravel froze him.

  The walker came nearer, a stealthy advance. Despite the gloom, Leitos easily made out a pair of huge sandaled feet come to a halt in the sand piled at the mouth of his burrow. Fearing the seeker would question the suspicious mound of loose soil and the subtle tracks covering it, Leitos’s heart lurched into a frantic rhythm. Starlight glinted dully off the rivets of the Alon’mahk’lar’s sandals. He imagined the creature looking about, its broad, flat nose raised to the breeze.

  When the head of an iron-banded cudgel thumped down next to those feet, it was all Leitos could do not to bolt from his makeshift cave. His only hope rested in knowing that Alon’mahk’lar saw poorly in the dark, and could catch a scent no better than a man. If he remained still, his pursuer might move on, allowing him to flee under the cover of night.

  But why should I hide from them anymore? a small, compelling voice wondered. With but one word, he could give away his position and accept the enslavement he deserved. He would be chained on the morrow but, too, he would be fed, watered, and sheltered. And he might even find Adham still alive, waiting for his safe return in their cell. Giving up was the right course, that voice assured him.

  Leitos did not understand why he resisted surrendering, until the night’s gentle breath filled his nostrils with a scent as familiar to him as that of his own sweat. The smell of blood wafted from the dark smears glazing the cudgel’s head, and beneath this lurked the bestial reek of the Alon’mahk’lar. While the mingling of odors was recognizable, Leitos had never consciously noticed them because of their close and constant proximity, the whole of his life. If oppression, sorrow, and death had a scent, this was it; a stench that emb
odied all that Adham had stood against.

  I never noticed, Leitos thought in dismay, taken aback by his lack of discernment, horribly ashamed that he had so recently condemned his grandfather’s actions. Over long moments, understanding began to fall upon him and, like a pick striking unyielding stone, all that he had been forced to believe by the slavemasters began to crack and fall asunder.

  Leitos shrank away from the Alon’mahk’lar, both physically and within his mind. Once backed as deep into his burrow as he could go, he found himself shivering and struggling not to vomit. His distress had nothing to do with any odor or fear, but rather the realization that he had nearly given himself over not to a benign master, but rather to a lifelong oppressor, a creature that cared no more for him than it cared for stomping a beetle underfoot. In surrendering, he would defile his grandfather’s sacrifice, the deaths of all the other slaves, and his own life.

  In the darkness, Leitos cursed that quailing voice within himself. He had known only suffering at the hands of the slavemasters. There would be neither food, nor shelter, nor forgiveness. Nor would he find Adham waiting. Slaves that resisted, few though they were, died staked under the sun for all to see, their skin cut off in strips, their screams choked with handfuls of sand. Such despicable cruelty was a warning to the chained. Moreover, that action was a testament to the black whims of the Alon’mahk’lar and the one they served.

  “I am sorry,” Leitos murmured under his breath, tears beginning to flow as he saw in his mind’s eye a smiling Adham, his protector, his kindred. Adham had cast aside his own life to ensure Leitos’s escape. Of course there was a price for such freedom, and for whatever reason Adham had believed Leitos could meet it. Grow strong and cruel, and avenge the blood of our forefathers.

  A wave of shame fell over Leitos for ever thinking along the same lines as Altha. Are we all so weak? Leitos thought, recalling how few slaves had stood with Adham, how most, including himself, had looked at the man as if he were insane for standing against the slavemasters. “I am sorry,” he murmured again.