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

by James A. West

  He remained where he was for a long time, chest heaving. His wits and strength came back slowly, harried by vague thoughts of the hunting Alon’mahk’lar. But even that threat failed to rouse him completely. He had been on the run, fearing for his life at every turn, less than one full day and night, yet he was so exhausted that the thought of pushing any farther made him want to weep. He remained where he was, praying that no searching eyes would find him.

  A chill crept over his skin, but he was too worn-out to do anything more than acknowledge that he had never been so cold. With that thought drifting in the back of his mind, his eyes closed, and he lost all awareness and concern.

  When he awoke, he found he had curled into a tight, shivering ball, and the river was a beast roaring around him. The sky to the east showed the first gray hints of the coming dawn, but it was still too dark to clearly make out his surroundings.

  River, he thought with a measure of coherency, realizing it was not the first time his mind had named it so. Adham had spoken of rivers, telling that they flowed down from high mountains, emptying into either lakes or salty seas. They were filled with all manner of fish and snails and other things to eat, and had banks frequented by any living thing that needed water to survive. While Leitos had only ever seen a river in his mind, without question he had jumped into one. While delighted that he had escaped the slavemasters, it mystified him that so much water could exist in an otherwise bone-dry land.

  He sat up and peered through the lightening gloom, gauging the distance to either bank was only a hundred paces away. It might have been a mile, for all the good it did. His grandfather had mentioned that as a youth, he enjoyed swimming in a cool pond or mountain lake during the heat of the day, but such a skill could hardly be passed on when surrounded by countless leagues of sand and rock, where the greatest source of water Leitos had ever seen was that held in clay cisterns.

  Thinking of water, how thirsty he had been, Leitos cautiously edged to one side of his slab of rock, and used a cupped hand to bring the river to his lips. In the faint morning light, it was silty, reddish brown, like the land around him, but it was sweet on his tongue. So sweet, and there was so much!

  He gave up using his hand and plunged his head into the endless, gurgling surge, gulping the delicious, cool wetness until he feared his belly would burst. With a deep, satisfied sigh, he splayed out on the rock. Indifferent to his chilled skin, he slept again, taking comfort that if he could not leave his sanctuary, then neither could anyone or anything reach him, especially Alon’mahk’lar, who feared water.

  Leitos came awake with a start and jumped to his feet under blazing sunlight, searching for the danger he felt but could not find. A dream. He relaxed, knowing that the Alon’mahk’lar cudgel he thought was about to crush the life from him was but a vision from beyond the waking world. Just a terrible dream.

  Dream or not, he took the opportunity to survey his surroundings, now basking in the full light of day. By all accounts, he had slept nearly to midday, and felt refreshed. The first thing he discovered was that riverbanks were not banks at all, but sheer cliffs. Over ages, the river’s mighty flow had undercut those stone walls.

  Tilting his head, he saw just how far he had plunged the night before, and his mouth fell open. Taking into account that these particular cliffs could be higher than the one he had flown off, he glanced upstream. As far as he could see, which was a good bit since the river here flowed mostly straight, the height was fairly uniform. A hundred paces, came his stunned thought, maybe more! Interspersed along that stretch of river, water exploded over boulders and flat bastions of stone similar to the one upon which he stood….

  Imagining himself plummeting so far made his knees weak, and his insides churned at the sure knowledge that he must have just narrowly missed slamming into any one of those rocky knobs. He plopped down on his rump, shuddering deep within himself. After a moment, he shook that off. It was far easier to push aside his certain brush with death than it would have been just the day before. In that short span, he had faced death many times over.

  Again taking up his study of the deep gorge, it took no time to determine that getting out of the rocky corridor would be no easy task. But at least I have water. Of course, that did next to nothing to appease the hollow grumbling in his belly. Before all else, he needed to find food.

  He scanned the tongue of stone upon which he had washed up. It rose out of the river, long and narrow, perhaps ten paces wide and two score long. It was lower on his end, and sloped upward to a rounded pinnacle at the other. Over its length, several pools of mossy water suggested that, at times, the river flowed higher than it did now.

  He walked to the nearest oblong pool, its surface alive with skipping waterbugs. Large fat ones paddled amongst tufts of bright green moss below the surface. He barely noticed the insects. His attention was on his scraped and scabby toes, which were clean for the first time he could ever recall. As if he had never seen them before, he slowly held up his hands before his face, rolled them over and back. The sun-darkened skin from his knuckles to his shoulders, from his toes to his chest, was free of grime. Entranced, he cautiously raised his forearm to his nose, delighted to find that instead of smelling like dirt and sweat, he smelled like the river.

  Tears glistened in his eyes, brought on by a mingling of joy and sorrow in his heart. He wished Adham was at his side to share in this experience. His sorrow soon gave way to gratitude. His grandfather had paid with his life to give him freedom, but until now, Leitos had not truly understood the depth of that sacrifice.

  His growling belly arrested his thoughts and, with a silent heartfelt thanks to his grandfather, Leitos knelt down to get a closer look at the pool.

  The waterbugs skipping over the top of the pool were small and quick, while those swimming through the dazzling green moss below were the size of his thumbnail. Having eaten plenty of beetles, he did not hesitate to make an attempt at catching a meal. Capturing either type proved harder than he envisioned, but after several failed efforts, he perfected his skill.

  For an hour or more, using a cupped palm, he herded them into the other waiting palm, quickly clutched his fingers around their wriggling bodies, then brought them to his mouth. With great relish, he gobbled them all. The surface bugs tasted slightly bitter and salty, while the plump ones burst between his teeth with a sweetish flavor he found delightful.

  In the course of his hunt, his fingers occasionally came up holding clumps of moss, which he ate as well. The moss was slimy, and it tasted like the river. Despite needing to drink to get it down, to his tongue the moss was just as tasty as the waterbugs. He found snails in an even larger pool, and ate those as well. Their shells crunched around squishy, gritty meat, but overall they were palatable. Taken as a whole, the varied flavors proved to be the finest meal to ever pass his lips.

  With his belly full, Leitos made another thorough search of the cliffs now shading the river. Of enemies, there were none to be seen. Birds by the hundreds flitted over the cliff faces, or skimmed the few placid eddies in the river.

  Sure that he was safe, Leitos sprawled on his back against the sun-warmed rock. Night would fall in another few hours, leaving him cold again, but for now a sense of peace fell over him and he dozed, contented.

  Chapter 7

  Leaving his refuge proved more difficult than Leitos imagined. The second day, he decided he needed more rest and food before he set out, so he hunted and devoured an abundance of waterbugs, moss, and snails. He savored every bite, then slept.

  After waking, he investigated other pools and found the deepest held a few finger-long, silvery fish. As his shadow passed over them, they flashed out of sight under a submerged tree limb as thick as his waist. He had never tasted fish, and decided he wanted to.

  He pondered the water, the obstacle to his next meal. Until he had splashed into the river, he had never seen so much water. But this pool was not the river, and other than being wet, it was different in all other regards.
The water in the pools was warmer, it did not move, and was nowhere near as deep and treacherous as the river.

  Without thinking, he sat down at the edge and slipped his legs into the pool. Its sides were slick with moss and silt, and shaped like a shallow bowl. If something went wrong, he could easily climb out. The river might be dangerous, but the pool was not. He eased himself into the water, and while it was far warmer than the river, it stole his breath as it climbed above his waist, then to his midsection, and finally all the way up to his neck.

  Leitos stood still for a time, marveling at the peculiar sensation of buoyancy. It was not weightlessness, but close. He took a step, pushing off with his toes, and seemed to soar before settling back. Forgetting about the fish, he walked around the pool, gliding through the water. After two circuits, an idea came to him.

  With an unconscious grin, he cautiously dunked his face, eyelids and lips firmly pressed together. After a moment, he opened his eyes. All was blurry but recognizable. He exhaled through his nose, and a blast of tickly bubbles rolled over his cheeks and past his temples. When he needed air, he raised his head, took a breath, then bent again to look under the water. He did this over and over, never growing weary of the bubbles, or the floating sensation.

  After a time, he grew emboldened. Taking the deepest breath he could, he leaned forward and lifted his legs. For a brief but terrifying moment, he sank. Only the knowledge that he could stand whenever he needed to kept him calm. With his heartbeat thumping in his ears, he floated to the surface and hung there. Looking down at the bottom of the pool, alive with flashes of blurry silver, his arms spread wide, he felt as if he were flying. Marveling, he forgot himself and laughed. Water gushed into his throat, and then he was splashing about, coughing and gagging. Only when his toes scraped bottom did he remember that he could stand.

  Eyes bulging in panic, he scrambled out of the pool as if it were a bath of poison, and flung himself onto the rocks. After he cleared his lungs, his fright passed. He lay panting, naming himself a fool. Nevertheless, it was a good while before he mustered the courage to return to the water, but return he did. He simply could not resist.

  Much of the day passed in the pools, and in that time he discovered that he could control himself imitating the movements of the surface-skimming waterbugs. He began slowly at first, swishing his hands back and forth, and propelling himself forward by tentatively kicking his legs. Over time, he found that if he did both, in just the right way, he could raise his head to draw a breath without having to put his feet on the bottom.

  Soon after, his thoughts turned to the waterbugs that maneuvered below the water. With his confidence higher than ever, he dove under, then let buoyancy take him to the surface. He did this again and again, assuring himself that he would always rise. Once he had convinced himself of that, he went under, pressed his hands together, pushed them forward, then spread them and swept them back toward his hips. Arrow-straight, he glided on one breath to the far side of the pool.

  He stood up, looking around, smiling broadly, and feeling like all the world had changed. He knew it had not, not really, but it felt different, and that difference swelled his heart with a sense of expectancy and hope. Leitos set his mind on the fish he had observed while he taught himself to swim.

  At first he chased them, diving and swimming after, but they were far too swift. Next he stood still, trying to snatch them when they came near, but that proved futile as well. When his belly began to rumble, he gave up on delicacy and thrashed his arms and legs wildly, driving the fish into the shallowest end of the pool. From there, he used his hands to push them, one at a time, onto the rocks.

  By the end of the day, he had managed to collect a dozen fish. He ate them raw, washing them down with frequent drinks. Afterward, with the gorge lost in deepening shadow, he sprawled out on his back until darkness fell, then watched the stars long into the night.

  When he awoke, the sun was shining in his face.

  After making a quick meal of waterbugs the third morning, he climbed to the highest point of his refuge, looking for an easy path to dry land but finding none. The river rushed by, splashing and spraying over submerged rocks, or parting around larger boulders and islands similar to his. As he tried to convince himself to plunge into the river, he remembered the way the powerful currents had dragged him deep below the surface. Swimming the river would be nothing like the pool. It was not lost on him that he had to make the attempt at some point, for he could not live the rest of his days on a rock. Moreover, he had made his silent vow to Adham to seek out the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. And because Adham was the only kin he had ever known, he meant to hold to his word ... just not this day.

  So he swam again throughout the morning, ate and drank his fill, and rested under the sun.

  In a peaceful drowse, he found himself considering the true vastness of the world. After fleeing leagues across the desert and seemingly getting nowhere, then dropping into the river and having it sweep him miles downstream, he knew that the world was far wider than all his previous conceptions. So wide, in truth, that just thinking on it made his rocky sanctuary, with its small pools and the river’s protective surge, feel all the safer. How could he possibly traverse such dangerous and broken territories inhabited by hunting Alon’mahk’lar and worse, if even a fraction of the stories Adham had told him were true?

  Beyond the river and the gorge waited lands that had been torn apart by the Upheaval, a cataclysm so powerful that his grandfather claimed it had destroyed two of three moons, upset the balance of the world in the heavens, changed the seasons and the placement of the stars in the firmament, and reshaped all former kingdoms.

  Usually when his grandfather recounted this tale, Leitos could get no further than trying to imagine a night sky with three moons, the faces of gods, instead of the one that remained, and gave virtually no light. Adham said a handful of years before his birth the remaining moon, the face of the goddess Hiphkos the Contemplator, had shone a pale blue, bathing the world in a cool, comforting glow. Before their demise, Adham told that her brothers had followed after her every evening—first the middling Memokk, with his amber radiance, then the diminutive Attandaeus, who burned like an ember in the night. Now the Sleeping Widow, as Hiphkos was sometimes called, wore a veil of dark gray shot through with threads of black.

  Under an unsettling sense of loss for a world he had never known, Leitos spent the rest of the day watching the river flow by, pondering what awaited him once he dared leave his island. Nothing good, he concluded with a shudder, as darkness fell over the gorge.

  Later, as his eyes slipped shut for the night, a stray thought, like a whisper on the wind, suggested that it might be better if he never left his secluded refuge.

  Chapter 8

  The next morning, he awoke to find a slate gray sky, with heavy clouds piling up to the north. Summer storms were often the fiercest, but he disregarded the potential danger of being caught out in the open. After all, summer storms were short-lived affairs. He remained calm, even when lightning began flashing in the distance, followed by low, steady peals of thunder echoing through the gorge.

  As the storm spread across the sky, he went about gathering his breakfast. Munching a handful of waterbugs, thinking about another swimming lesson, an unexpected gust nearly toppled him into the river. That wayward blast of wind proved to be the first of many, and quickly became a steady gale that forced Leitos to sit with his back to the storm.

  He remained that way until a streak of lightning struck the river a little downstream, followed by a boom of thunder that rattled his bones. The wind increased, as did the lightning and thunder. The sky darkened under purplish black clouds that billowed and swirled like living, malevolent entities. The first raindrops fell huge and scattered, and rapidly became a pounding deluge.

  Shivering and bedraggled, Leitos huddled down and waited for the storm to pass, arms wrapped tightly around knees pulled close to his chest.

  But the storm did n
ot pass. Instead, it became more powerful, its thick cloak creating a premature nightfall. Erratic winds howled, driving the downpour first one way, then another. Through it all, Leitos did not worry too much, and only started when lightning struck close.

  His first inkling that he might be in trouble came when, through the blur of driving rain, he noticed the birth of a dozen muddy waterfalls pouring over either rim of the gorge. Soon after, a hundred cascades were plunging into the river. Leitos told himself that the storm would pass in its own time. Instead, the tempest raged on, the battering rainfall stinging his exposed skin.

  Alerted by a strange sensation, he looked through his dripping hair, startled to find that the river had risen high enough to lap at his toes. Where he sat, that meant the surface had risen a good two feet.

  Leitos clambered to the highest point on his rapidly shrinking island, and there sat down again. Eyes narrowed, he watched with dread fascination as the river rushed by, its surface getting higher, wilder, muddier, and choked with swirling debris.

  Soon the turbulent flow had covered the whole of his sanctuary, forcing him to stand up to keep his backside out of the water. Disbelieving, he watched it creep above his ankles. He told himself it could rise no more … but it did, until the flow tugged at his legs, upsetting his balance. He was a heartbeat from being swept away. Fighting for balance, he whipped his head around, searching for any place to go. In all directions, boiling spray marked drowned boulders. Of dry land, there was none.

  The river inched higher, and the storm showed no sign of abating. Water surged against him, his feet slid. There was no more time. As he prepared to leap, he felt a strange trembling in the rock underfoot, and with that sensation came a sound out of the north that stilled his pulse.