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

by James A. West

  And, of course, they did not, Leitos thought darkly. To them such screams, such groundless outrages against their fellows, must be commonplace to the point of acceptance.

  “How can people live like this?” he demanded. “How can they tolerate such injustice?”

  Zera looked askance at him, as if to confirm to herself that he would not do anything foolish, then released his neck. “They do not know or expect anything else. This way of life is all they have ever known.” And so it is with slaves, Leitos thought.

  They went deeper into the city. The life he had believed he would see was no life at all. Rather it was a twisted, accursed form of living death. Listless trading went on everywhere: grain for stunted vegetables, vegetables for tiny loaves of hard bread, bread for wedges of moldy cheese, cheese for coarse cloth. Goods of every sort were bartered, but at the end of it no one seemed better off for what little they had gained. Having food this day meant going hungry on the morrow, when food would be needed to trade for some other necessity.

  King’s guards strode every street ahead of high-wheeled wagons. With a word and a cuff to the head, they took additional obligations in the name of the king, and tossed them into the wagons.

  “What can one man do with all that,” Leitos asked.

  “King Rothran is little more than a provincial gaoler of Zuladah and its nearby territories, which in turn is but a parcel of land that serves as an open prison in this region of Geldain. There are many such kings of the same purpose across this and all lands. They are men chosen by the Alon’mahk’lar hierarchy to serve as the human representative of the Faceless One.”

  She stepped into a crowded alley reeking of excrement, urine, and sweat. “As to what is done with all the obligations,” Zera went on, “King Rothran makes a fine show of squandering them for his Alon’mahk’lar masters, while at the same time secretly hoarding much wealth.”

  “Why hide anything?” Leitos asked.

  “Humans are forbidden to amass wealth or goods—this keeps them weak, and ensures that they can never have the means to mount a rebellion—not that Rothran would ever risk his position by staging a revolt.

  “At the behest of his Alon’mahk’lar minders, Rothran provides feasts and entertainment behind the high walls of the palace. Alon’mahk’lar are the true authority here, yet they are rarely seen. Again, this is to keep humans eyes on the wrong enemy—Rothran and each other.”

  “Is he an enemy?” Leitos asked.

  “Yes,” Zera answered, cleaving through the press to come out on another crowded, dust-hazed street. She looked one way then another, and moved off to the south. “Not all kings are willing foes to their own kind, but Rothran takes pleasure in proving he is on the side of the Faceless One.”

  “And what does he gain?” Leitos asked.

  Zera ducked into the shadow of a building, pulling Leitos close. “Besides a pampered existence, he gains purpose denied the common rabble,” she said quietly. “Every day he rises for a single purpose: to serve the Faceless One.”

  “And these others?” Leitos asked, watching a woman draped in colorful rags saunter from the doorway of a building across the street. She was more bone than enticing flesh, but she pressed herself against a passing guard. After fondling her a moment, he shoved her away with a lewd comment and a slap to her bony rump. Undeterred, the woman moved to another guard. “What keeps them from giving up all hope?”

  Even as she answered he knew the truth, for he had lived it. “As I said before, this life is what they have, it is who they are. For most, even a worthless existence is not so easily abandoned for the cold emptiness of the grave.”

  “I … I want more than this,” Leitos muttered.

  Zera grinned without humor. “I should hope so. If not, then I have wasted my time dragging your scrawny shanks across the desert and through Mahk’lar-ridden bone-towns, ever just a few steps ahead of Sandros and Pathil.”

  The way she mentioned the Hunters caught his attention. “Have you seen them?”

  “Did you think I took us down that last alley because I enjoyed the stench?” Leitos shrugged uncomfortably at her waspish response. Zera’s hard expression relaxed. “Forgive me.”

  “There is nothing to forgive,” Leitos said, meaning every word. “I should have been paying closer attention—I have travelled with Hunters long enough to know better than to let anything pass unnoticed.”

  Zera gripped his shoulder to show her approval. “As to my counterparts,” she went on, “I noticed Sandros just after we passed through the city gate. Had it not been for that potter and his family, Sandros would have seen us.”

  “He told me once that he could smell fear,” Leitos offered, making light of it.

  “Sandros can,” Zera assured him gravely. “That is precisely why I trudged through privy-leavings and gods know what else—to make sure he loses our scent. As to Pathil, his skills favor shadow and night. Best not to let either of them catch us unawares.”

  “What will we do?” Leitos asked, the city abruptly seeming far more dangerous. “Where will we go?”

  “I know of a place.”

  Zera said little else as they moved through the city’s warren of streets. She walked differently than before, her back bent, shoulders drooping, as if all the weight of the world were bearing her down. Leitos mimicked her movements.

  Hours passed, and Zera never slowed. It took almost that long for Leitos to recognize they often crossed streets they had been on before, and a little longer still to understand that she was mingling their scent in a confusing pattern all over the city. It chilled him to think that a man such as Sandros—or any man, for that matter—could track a scent as would a jackal or a vulture.

  Zera finally paused before a gray-bearded man pushing a cart bearing a large clay cistern, its rounded sides damp with condensation. His eyes, filmed in white, stared at nothing while he sniffed at a pair of dried red leaves Zera held in her hand.

  “A dozen leaves for two dippers of water,” the wizened fellow said.

  “Has swatarin become so commonplace as that?” Zera questioned. “For a dozen leaves, you have enough water to fill our waterskins to brimming, and give over that loaf of bread you have tucked away.”

  The old man grumped and huffed, cried that if he had to give up his bread he would likely die before he could put the swatarin to proper use, but it was all for show. Even as he prattled on about how Zera was cheating him, he was dipping water into the skins, never spilling a drop despite his blindness.

  When finished, he held out his hand for the swatarin. Zera countered with a demand for the bread. In the end, they settled by exchanging one for the other at the same time. Leitos noticed that Zera secretly added two additional leaves into the old man’s stack. As he tooled his cart away, using a gnarled thumb to recount the leaves held in his palm, he discovered the extras and hooted in delight, then fell silent. Shoulders hunched, he hurried away, losing himself in the crowd.

  Zera chuckled to herself, tore off a chunk of bread for her and Leitos, and began moving off in a new direction.

  “What is so special about swatarin leaves,” Leitos asked around a mouthful of bread. He had heard that name before, but it held no meaning to him.

  “A little swatarin, taken in tea or with wine, eases aches and pains of every sort. It is as valuable, or more, as firemoss.”

  Leitos asked what seemed an obvious question. “If a little does that, what does a lot do?”

  “In quantity,” Zera said, nibbling her bread, eyes roving, “swatarin brings terrible visions, some say of the Thousand Hells and of demons. Before the Upheaval, the Madi’yin priesthood—or begging brothers—were said to indulge in the darker nature of swatarin, hoping to gain secret knowledge of the future.”

  “Did they find that wisdom?” Leitos asked.

  Zera snorted. “Since that order died out during the Upheaval, I would say no—either that or they misinterpreted what their visions showed them.”

  Afte
r leading them to a part of the city with fewer people, Zera turned down a narrow alley. Scanning the ground, she slowed halfway between the street they had left and the next one. She kicked aside a maggot-ridden heap of offal, revealing a smallish circle fashioned from rusted iron straps. Through the openings in the straps, Leitos heard a sluggish, oozing trickle of some unspeakable fluid … and squeaking, the restless voices of countless vermin.

  He knew what she intended, even before she knelt down and wrenched the circle of iron clear of a recessed groove carved into the paving stones. Leitos could not hold back the revolted groan in his throat.

  “This is the only way to truly throw Sandros off our trail,” she said, a faint line of consternation between her pinched brows. “As I have never made a habit of wandering sewers, it may take longer than I wish to find our way.”

  Taking a seat with his feet dangling down into the hole, Leitos sighed, closed his mind to the stench and the sounds wafting up through the narrow portal, and dropped into darkness.

  Chapter 20

  Soggy gruel roared up his spasming throat, burst past his teeth, and sprayed over the seething tangle of rats at his feet.

  “Gods good and wise,” Zera growled, her face ashen, “would you please stop doing that!”

  Leitos looked up, eyes burning from a stench so foul he could taste in on the air—

  He doubled over, spewing. When his belly eased, he straightened, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “We need to get out of here.” For hours they had wandered in the sewers, and Zera’s earlier warning about taking longer to find their way repeated loudly in Leitos’s head.

  At first the sewer grates, bright with filtered daylight, had marked out various paths. The light had gradually dimmed, then failed altogether with nightfall. If not for Zera’s firemoss lamp to light the low, narrow ways, Leitos feared he might have gone mad at the way the darkness slithered—

  A plump, sable body squirmed over his feet, trailing a pinkish tail. He held still. Dancing about only drove the rats into a squealing frenzy.

  “We are almost there,” Zera said with a relieved sigh. Leitos did not bother asking where there was. It did not matter to him, as long as they could escape the close confines.

  True to her word, Zera scuffled through the waves of rats with an indifference he at once admired and envied, then halted below a grate. She listened a moment, carefully reached up, and pushed it aside. Next, she pulled herself up and out of the sewer.

  Leitos took Zera’s waiting hands, and she hauled him out, depositing him amid a scatter of discarded crates. They hunkered in an alley. On either end, men and women moved by in the night, their demeanor different from earlier in the day. Arm in arm, swaying and singing they went, hurling jovial curses at any and all. Song and music meandered through the narrows ways, climbed the pocked walls of the buildings, mingling with boisterous laughter and ribald shouts.

  Leitos would not name it merrymaking, for the noise carried upon its breath the flavor of anger. Restrained though it was, rage lurked, sought an escape. It made him wonder just how accepting people really were of the abuses heaped upon them. He sensed that one small gust might coax a guttering flame into an inferno.

  “Follow me,” Zera said. “Keep your hood up, now, and say nothing.”

  They had not gone far when a hulking figure rose up from the ground beside a closed door. Leitos’s heart skipped a beat, certain that all their efforts to evade Sandros had failed. But it was not the Hunter, could not be, unless he had grown.

  “Stand aside,” Zera said, her sword flashing out, “or I’ll hew off your stones and feed them to you.”

  The figure’s broad, flabby jaw thrust forward. “Zera? By the gods good and dead,” he rumbled, twisting the axiom with a dry chuckle. “Haven’t seen you in an age.”

  Zera peered at the hulking shadow, still poised to destroy. “Lakaan? I did not recognize … are you thinner?”

  “I am,” the monstrous fellow said morosely, patting the swollen bulk of his hanging belly with a huge hand. “The demand for obligations has risen again. It has gotten so a rogue must scrounge for even a bite of stale bread. And do not speak of getting ahead.”

  Zera sheathed her sword. “I believe that is the point,” she laughed darkly.

  “Of course,” Lakaan agreed, “but it is worse than ever. The king and his dogs now leave folk with but a tenth to trade. Suphtra, as always, takes no more than a tenth of a tenth in payment, which means I go hungry. It is … felonious,” he complained.

  Zera tossed him what was left of the loaf she had bartered for earlier. Lakaan caught it, took a sniff, then stuffed what was easily half of the original loaf into his mouth—all of it, Leitos noted with amazement—bloating his already considerable cheeks. Equally amazing was all the rest of the sagging flesh the man carried on his frame. Leitos had never seen anyone so hugely fat, and did not know how Lakaan’s legs, thick columns though they were, could hold him up.

  “Is Suphtra here?” Zera asked.

  Lakaan bobbed his head, making his jowls wiggle. “If there are whores to monger, swatarin and swill to sell, and goods to be smuggled and traded, you can rest assured Suphtra will be about. Just now he is in the back, skulking in the shadows. Way he keeps hidden anymore, you would think he fancies himself kindred to the Faceless One.”

  Zera and Lakaan had a good laugh over that, but the humor was lost on Leitos. His continued silence drew the big man’s questioning gaze.

  “What you got there,” Lakaan inquired, eyes fixed on Leitos, “a weanling pup missing his mother?”

  “A stray that shows potential,” Zera answered, her hesitation so brief that Leitos nearly missed it.

  Lakaan’s already slitted eyes, however, narrowed a fraction. “Just so,” he murmured doubtfully, before perking up. “Well, bring him along! Suphtra will be pleased to see you. Stay around awhile, and it could be that I can teach this little man the art of stealing back some of the loot the king’s men steal from us.”

  Lakaan booted open the door he had been guarding. He motioned them into a dim hallway thick with smoke, and a sickly sweet odor that went straight to Leitos’s head. In the light of thick, guttering candles poked into crude wall brackets, Lakaan bolted the door behind them, then led the way deeper into the building. They passed many open doorways that let in on rooms packed with crates of every size, overflowing sacks, and barrels filled with all manner of weaponry.

  “Is Suphtra planning a rebellion?” Zera asked casually.

  “You will have to talk to him about that,” Lakaan said over his shoulder, sounding uncomfortable. Zera did not ask any more questions, but she did not stop looking. Leitos did the same.

  In one room men and women, all half-starved and bleary-eyed, sat about on a dirt floor. Flagons littered the ground around them. Many wafted the smoke rising from clay bowls into their faces, while others sat bolt upright, listening to the murmurings of a strange figure in rags.

  Peering more closely, Leitos stopped dead. “Alon’mahk’lar!” he breathed.

  The figure looked to be two people melded together, sharing the same misshapen body, yet having two heads bowed over a smoldering bowl. As if sensing his shocked appraisal, those heads swiveled toward him on a pair overlong, spindly necks. Two pairs of eyes peered at him from under deep brows, and two pairs of lips turned up at the corners. One head belonged to a woman, the other to a man.

  Even though he had gasped the word just above a whisper, Zera spun, green eyes blazing, ready to join battle. Seeing what had captivated Leitos, she relaxed.

  “The Twins,” she said with quiet deference, “are as human as you and I. They are seers—or maybe very good charlatans. Either way, they tell futures that seem to come to pass more often than not. Come, leave them to their work.”

  The Twins nodded at his scrutiny, each of their heads bobbing independently of the other. Leitos’s insides twisted and he looked away. Zera and Lakaan moved down the hall, and he hurried after.
/>   There were other rooms filled with people. One room in particular shocked Leitos to his core. Behind a sheer, pale green veil, naked bodies writhed against each other over a floor covered in rugs and heaped with pillows. Low moans and wicked, lustful laughter drifted out of that room and into the hallway. His face flaming, Leitos rushed by, refusing to look at Zera when she glanced at him over her shoulder.

  After some time, the air cleared of the heady smoke, and Lakaan stopped before a door. “Wait here,” he said, opening the door and closing it behind him.

  “What is this place,” Leitos asked, mind reeling at all he had seen … especially within that last room. Gods good and wise!

  “People who can, often drown their sorrows in decadence,” Zera said with a shrug. “It is a weakness to my mind, and a waste. However, providing such services has made Suphtra a man of some wealth, even where such wealth is forbidden. It also makes him a danger to the order of things, which is why he hides his doings within the most sordid quarter of Zuladah. Bribing any that would report him to the king is also to his benefit.”

  Lakaan squeezed through the doorway and into the hallway. “Suphtra will see you,” he said. Looking despondent, he added, “I suppose I will go back to guarding the alley. You don’t have any more to eat, do you?”

  Zera grinned at him, rooted through her satchel, and pulled out a lump of something wrapped in greasy leather. Lakaan bowed his thanks and went on his way. After a few paces, he gave a delighted cry: “Cheese!” Then he was gone, a shadowy mountain of flesh vanishing behind a swirling haze of pungent smoke.

  Feeling light-headed, Leitos was all too happy to follow Zera into the chamber beyond the doorway. His enthusiasm faded rapidly. The only light came from a pair of crimson firemoss lamps set high up on a wall. Centered beneath the lamps, a man sat upon a plain chair, his features lost amid the darkness under a tented curtain of thick cloth.

  “Well met, Zera,” the figure said, his voice deep and resonant, even pleasant, despite the morbid surroundings. “It has been too long.”

  “Not so long as that, Suphtra” Zera said.