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

by James A. West

  Leitos did not notice that the Alon’mahk’lar had moved away, until it called out to its brethren in its natural tongue, a deep and garbled muttering. Upon hearing that demonic voice, dismay came alive in Leitos, stealing his breath. Slaves rarely heard that language, and it induced a nearly incapacitating fear. Oily sweat popped out on his brow. He forced his shuddering limbs to remain still. The effort left him weak, but also gave him a sense of victory.

  By the time he was in control of himself, the Alon’mahk’lar had moved out of earshot. With the utmost caution, he peeked from his shelter and sought his enemy. Off to the south, moving with slow deliberation, the group of hunting Alon’mahk’lar were but shadows within shadows drifting over a low dune of pale sand. Even with the distance, their eyes winked and glimmered like dull silver coins.

  He could not understand how they had missed him … until he remembered the jackal struggling to claim a meal from the vultures. Though he had been half-asleep, he recalled the jackal darting in, over and over, to snatch the snakeskin, only to have the squawking carrion birds flap and hop forward, driving their adversary back. Their battle must have obscured his tracks. Never in his life had he given thanks to animals that feasted upon death, but he did so now.

  Leitos crept out of the burrow and raised up into a crouch, keeping a wary eye on the slavemasters. They continued to move away, unaware of how close they had come to capturing him. Not only were they moving away, they did so at a hard angle from the direction he intended to travel. Relief washed over him, but he quickly tamped it down. He could ill-afford to grow confident that he was safe. Not yet, maybe never. Adham’s demand that he avenge their forefathers meant that he might never know peace or safety.

  How can I do your will, grandfather? he thought, setting out. All too well Leitos recognized that he was but a half-starved youth, alone in a perilous land about which he knew nothing. In truth, he was only vaguely aware of his location in a world larger than he could imagine. Geldain, he thought in answer to the unspoken question, recalling the name Adham had mentioned when pointing to the crude map he had sketched in the dust on the floor of their cell. Somewhere far south of a land once known as Tureece. Based on that, Leitos supposed he was half a world or more away from the place he had been born. Just the thought that so much land and water existed made him nervous, as it always had when Adham spoke of such things.

  As he crept from bush to boulder, eyes darting from one shadow to another, he sifted through old conversations until recalling Adham’s story of a voyage across the Sea of Drakarra, a journey during which he and the other slaves had, by turns, been either chained to the decks of a great ship, or lashed to one of a hundred oars. Leitos had been but a babe then, Adham told him, newly weaned and tossed with other infants into a large basket. Alon’mahk’lar feared deep water, Adham had said, which meant the shipmasters were treacherous humans. That self-serving men would betray their own always troubled his grandfather, perhaps more so than the presence of the Faceless One and the Alon’mahk’lar. After landing on the shores of Geldain, the slaves had been given over to new masters, chained together, and marched into the heart of a nameless desert. Most slaves perished long before reaching the first of many mines, but the Alon’mahk’lar always brought more.

  Adham had many stories about fighting the Faceless One’s dread armies, and how the Alon’mahk’lar victors made a point of separating captured men from the women, boys from the girls. They were stories of valor and hardship, but Leitos had only ever gleaned that those who resisted suffered and died, miserable and broken.

  In that light, the future Leitos faced seemed to grow more dangerous. The whole of his existence had been spent digging into the desert for a season or two, then moving a short distance away to dig again, always clawing into the earth, searching for something that the Alon’mahk’lar never disclosed. Most slaves believed they toiled only to toil. Adham had been convinced they were looking for something, though he knew not what. Hunger and thirst, dust and rock, blisters and blinding sunlight, were all that Leitos knew. Freedom had ever been his grandfather’s dream, but to Leitos the same had been an idea shunned at all costs. Freedom, even the attempt of it, meant death. Now, he must embrace his grandfather’s will as his own. Leitos was prepared to try, but worried he would fail.

  Grow strong and cruel, and avenge the blood of our forefathers, he heard Adham say again. Leitos knew he must survive in order to avenge his grandfather and his people.

  Setting aside all other considerations, save putting distance between himself and the Alon’mahk’lar, he searched the stars until he found the Turtle, then looked farther south until making out the setting Archer. Keeping the Archer on his left side, he headed on a westerly course, careful to remain quiet and low to the ground. He still held doubts that his efforts would yield anything of worth for his people, but for Adham’s sake, he would at least fight to escape his masters.

  Masters, he thought, a frown pinching his brow. For the first time, that word held not fearful reverence for the Alon’mahk’lar, but derision. And for the first time, he dared to hate them.

  He had no sooner thought that than the resonant wail of a horn shattered the night’s stillness. Leitos did not have to look around to know they had found his trail. From the east another horn sounded, telling him that there was not one hunting party, but two!

  Leitos abandoned skulking and ran.

  Chapter 5

  After the wails of Alon’mahk’lar horns, Leitos heard only his feet hammering against the desert and the soft rush of wind in his ears. Fright made him blessedly unaware of the pain in his torn feet, or the stiffness of his water-starved muscles. Despite the blessed lack of feeling, he was well aware that his limbs were not working properly, nor were his lungs. At best, his pace was half what it had been when he fled the slaughter at the mines.

  Like the baying of demonic hounds, the horns split the night, closer than before. Leitos found the two bands of Alon’mahk’lar converging into one hunting party behind him, their shadowed forms and silvery eyes bobbing in time with their great strides. While they could not see or smell any better than men, they were fair trackers, and tireless besides, able to run twice the speed of a man, and ten times as far. They would catch him in no time.

  Leitos winced every time his toes kicked loose a rock, or his legs thrashed through night-shrouded bush. Commonsense told him these things did not matter, because his feet were doubtless leaving telltale marks in the sand at every step. His only friend this night was the darkness, but his flagging strength all but destroyed that advantage.

  The call of a third horn, this one farther off to the north than the two bands at his back, told him there were three hunting groups. With his mind working far more effectively than his body, Leitos deduced that there could be up to two dozen slavemasters after him. He had never known so many Alon’mahk’lar to go after a single slave. For the barest moment, he thought it possible that some of his fellows had made it farther than he had believed. Just as quickly, he dismissed that idea. He had seen them fall, one by one, many miles back. And in the openness of the desert, he would have noticed if others were about.

  It does not matter! he thought forcefully, ducking his head and willing his arms and legs to pump faster. While not as speedily as he wished, his feet began to fall in a surer, steadier rhythm, and his great gulping breaths managed to keep the fire in his lungs from becoming a debilitating inferno.

  The edge of a jutting rock caught his foot caught and sent him soaring. He plowed through sand and gravel, scraping away layers of skin from his knees and palms. Leitos gritted his teeth against crying out, and lurched to his feet in a bid to run, only to stumble and fall flat. He sprawled facedown, fingertips digging grooves through the coarse soil, his whimpery breaths puffing dust into his nose and eyes. The horns sounded again.

  “Damn you!” Leitos screamed, relishing the explosion of hate and fury in his breast, uncaring that he had pinpointed himself to his enemies. He wanted th
em to find him, so that he might punish them for making him afraid, destroy them for hounding him to such extremes.

  As if mocking the futility of his desires, the horns wailed again. All the enraged heat coursing through Leitos’s veins went to ice. Fool! he cursed himself.

  Continuing to berate himself, he pushed himself to his bloody knees, then to his feet. He stood swaying, wanting more than anything to crawl into a deep, dark hole until the Alon’mahk’lar moved away. But there was no such shelter, at least none he was likely to find. Instead, he searched for and found the slavemasters. Their feet pounded the ground, and their eyes formed a broken line of winking lights. They were gaining ground at a shocking pace, and their silvery stares bored through the darkness to find him.

  I will not surrender, he thought, gritting his teeth.

  He found the Archer again, then locked his eyes on the brightest star he could find above the horizon, using it to guide his shambling trot.

  All before him blurred together, save that glowing beacon in the heavens, and he forced himself to disregard the crying horns. In this enthralled state, he did not at first notice that his feet no longer thumped against pebbly soil, but rather slapped against sandstone. Only when a rising cliff forced him to halt, did he come fully back to himself.

  Despite the gloom, he could tell it stretched miles in both directions, and rose up no less than twenty paces. The top edge climbed, fell, and climbed again, like the spine of a great beast. He had seen the ridge of stone the day before. He wished he had remembered it before he took flight from his makeshift den, for he might have gone in another direction. Now he was trapped.

  Am I? he wondered, brushing his fingers over the surface. It seemed the wall of rock was smooth, but on closer inspection, he found that it looked as if mud had been poured out to bake under the sun, then more was poured over the first layer, then more, slowly building up hundreds of thin sheets….

  He reached up, wedged his fingers between two layers of stone, then pulled himself up enough to drive his toes into another seam. He began to climb, his muscles weak and shivery. Still, the ascent was far easier than he would have imagined. His life in the mines had made his grip firm, and the skin of his fingers tough as leather. And despite the abuse the soles of his feet had taken since his escape, the tips of his toes were in better shape, and they clung to the layered stone like a second set of fingers.

  Over several paces he climbed, then the cliff arched over the top of him like a frozen wave, halting him. He hung there, breathing deeply but calmly, searching for another way. Finding what he needed, he moved off to his right and came to an area pocked with dozens of deep pockets. Some, he was surprised to find, were filled with empty bird nests made of dried, crumbly mud and feathers.

  With a new path chosen, he climbed up and sideways, well over half the height of the cliff, then came to a ledge. Needing a rest, he tugged himself up, then settled his rump amid a scatter of twigs. Here, birds had attached even more mud nests to the rock.

  Back the way he had come, the Alon’mahk’lar were much nearer. They did not blow their horns any longer, and Leitos thought sure they had noticed him climbing up the cliff. He grinned at the idea of their fury before wondering if they, too, could climb. Abruptly deciding he had rested enough, he resumed his ascent.

  In short order, he made it to the top of the sheer spine of stone, and halted in the notch of a cleaved boulder. From far away, he heard a strange, monotonous rumble, but thought nothing of it, his attention fixed on the Alon’mahk’lar staring up at him from the base of the cliff.

  There were at least two dozen, perhaps more—it was hard to separate one shadow from another. He should have run then, but instead he peered back, waiting. It struck him that he had never seen so many slavemasters gathered in one place. Why are there so many ... and where did they come from? Since they seemed disinclined to crawl up after him, he also wondered what they intended to do.

  “Come down, child,” one slavemaster invited, “before you fall.” It spoke as did all Alon’mahk’lar, in a voice that sounded like the grinding of stones and suppressed ferocity.

  “Why should you care if I fall, if you mean to kill me anyway?” It took all his courage to keep his voice light, almost indifferent. He had never directly addressed one of the slavemasters.

  “We wish you no harm,” the slavemaster said, snarling the words.

  Leitos thought of mutilated slaves, and about what another Alon’mahk’lar had said, just before Adham drove his pick into the creature’s skull. “Your blood will be a sweet wine upon my tongue….”

  Harm, Leitos concluded with growing anger, was all that these monstrous beings wanted for him, or any human.

  The Alon’mahk’lar smiled up at him, a terrifying vision. “A place of comfort has been prepared for you. You will want for nothing.” Several of the demon’s fellows nodded in agreement, all smiling as nastily as the first.

  Leitos’s eyes narrowed. “And a place has been prepared for you, Alon’mahk’lar,” he said, speaking that forbidden name with as much disdain as he could muster. “Geh’shinnom’atar is your true home, and Peropis is your master!”

  He hoped to infuriate the creatures, and by their harsh growls he did. A handful of the slavemasters flung themselves at the cliff, snarling and snapping. To Leitos’s horror, one began scampering up the rock face with a mind-numbing grace, as if it were floating rather than climbing. Then one huge hand caught a lip of stone that broke away, sending the Alon’mahk’lar hurtling back. It bounced when it hit, scattering its companions. In the next instant, it was on its feet. A moment after that, the beast set to climbing again, cursing Leitos in its natural tongue.

  The spell of watching the slavemasters come was broken by their terrible utterances, and Leitos clawed his way up and over the cleaved boulder. His desperate movements caused the massive stone to shift. By the time he had reached its crown, the boulder was moving downward in a sickening, sliding roll. He leaped with all his strength, not sure if he would fall into a bottomless crevasse, or land on solid ground. The boulder wobbled underfoot as he pushed off, then the sound of grinding stone filled the night. He landed in a sprawl on a flat sandstone surface. For the barest moment quiet held … then came a roar of crashing rock mingled with the slavemasters’ pained screams.

  Leitos clambered to his feet and sprinted away. He did not look around. His legs flashed in the darkness, thrusting him along. Where before every step had been a struggle, now it seemed as if he were flying, light as a feather. Exhilaration filled him, for he knew at least some of his pursuers had died, crushed under falling rock. Crazed laughter erupted from his parched throat. Whether by accident or not, in some small way he had begun to exact the vengeance his grandfather had demanded of him. Galvanized, his feet flew. He felt as if he could run forever.

  Even as his ears detected the rumbling sound he had dismissed earlier, he smelled wetness on the breath of the night. He passed through a strange veil of cooler air that pebbled his skin. Over another hundred feet, the strange rumbling grew into a throaty roar. He ran toward that sound, alarmed by its foreignness, but driven by the danger at his back.

  Suddenly his feet were pedaling over nothingness, and he truly became buoyant as a feather—if a feather that fell through space, like a stone hurled into a chasm filled with darkness and unending thunder.

  Chapter 6

  Arms flailing, Leitos fell, his cry buried under the fury of a thousand raging storms. After what seemed an age, he slammed into a chilling, turbulent froth and plunged down until his feet struck unyielding rock. Water, shockingly cold, gushed into his mouth, nose, and ears. He kicked off the bottom and rose through a speeding current. He bobbed to the surface once, then the raging waters dragged him back under. Leitos floundered, turned one way then the other, tumbling in the watery void.

  Instinct kept him from drawing a deep breath. That same inborn knowledge guided his hands to churn before his chest in a clumsy paddling motion. A moment later
, his head shot clear of the roiling water. He floated along, splashing and kicking, and the river became less turbulent. High cliffs swept by on either side. Above them, the stars shone with bland indifference.

  Leitos’s initial panic faded, and he drank his fill from the river. He found that with minimal effort, he could keep his head above water. How long he drifted he could not have said, but he guessed at least an hour passed before he sensed a change in the currents. The river’s chuckling grumble grew angry again, the surface rising and falling in waves. Soon, he was hurtling along, a bit of flotsam caught on the undulating back of a serpent made of water.

  All at once, a powerful current pulled him under. He kicked at the force, and though his calves plowed through the water, it held him firmly in its grip, dragging him down into the crushing dark. Pressure mounted and a painful popping noise sounded in his ears. His lungs burned for want of the last breath he had been denied, but there was none to be had. Slow fire rapidly spread from his chest into his arms and legs. The darkness before his eyes came alight with sparkling flares. The bright pinpoints faded soon after, devoured by creeping gray spiders … a few at first, then more and more. As the gray swarmed over his vision, it also sank into his mind, subduing his panic, replacing it with a resigned calm.

  His mouth yawned wide, involuntarily preparing to draw a breath, and then the swirling current slammed him into a wide mass of moss-slicked rock. The last of his spent breath burst from his chest in a flurry of bubbles, but the same currents that had threatened to drown him, now carried him up, rolling him over slimy stone.

  Thrashing feebly, Leitos cleared the surface, waterlogged and retching. The gray spiders of looming unconsciousness quickly retreated. He clawed his way onto a mass of rock until he lay half-in, half-out of the water. The river toyed with his legs, trying in vain to drag him back. Leitos pulled himself a little farther up onto dry ground, then collapsed.