Instead, he focused on the living. Runes powered his senses, and he used them to listen to the soft footfalls of approaching thanes. While he kept watch, he blamed himself for the attack. The march and the battle had taken their toll, and he collapsed instead of setting up a proper defense. They were fortunate that Norsil had attacked them and not something worse from Shinar.
Lying in wait, ready to surprise anyone who thought he might be sleeping, Tyrus enjoyed the little trap he set to protect Marah. Her family, House Pathros, had conditioned him from a young age and groomed him for the role of guardian after plucking him out of poverty as a boy. They taught him to be a guard dog for their children. Back then, he had defended her father, a young prince Azmon. Even when they were children, Tyrus had loomed behind Azmon as the fearful older brother who would crack the skull of anyone foolish enough to harm the prince.
Watching another heir of House Pathros sleep brought back ancient memories. He had done that many times before, lying in a bed recovering from wounds intended for his ward.
Tyrus remembered another wound on another continent long before. Burns covered his body as he lay in a bed in the capital of Rosh. Prince Azmon and his father, Naram Sull, cared for him. The day had begun like any other, he guarding Azmon as the teenage prince walked the city streets. A sorcerer sent to kill the prince cast an orb of fire at them. Tyrus shoved Azmon aside, and the flames burst across his back. He had charged through another blast to break the sorcerer’s neck.
In the bed, Tyrus gnashed his teeth to keep from whimpering in front of his emperor. Naram was a much older man with a long face and a bald head. He honored Tyrus by changing his dressings.
Blisters pocked one of Tyrus’s arms and most of his torso. They pulled the skin tight along his neck and under his chin. Naram used a brush to paint runes over the burns, claiming the runes would draw out the heat. A young Azmon stayed at his father’s shoulder, studying every brushstroke.
“I thought the sorcerer killed him,” Azmon said. “Tyrus charged the flames and disappeared.”
“That is his purpose. You should have run while he fought the assassin.”
“I couldn’t abandon him.”
“You are a prince, Azmon. You cannot afford such stupidity.”
“How did he keep fighting?”
“You know the runes. You know how.”
“But I didn’t think it would work. He was on fire and kept fighting.”
Naram applied a balm and wrapped Tyrus’s chest. The chill of the balm soothed, and Naram smiled when Tyrus relaxed.
“Your guardian did his duty,” Naram said. “Now, you must do yours. Help him eat and drink until he can fend for himself.” Naram raised a finger in warning. “If you order anyone to do it for you, I will not be pleased.”
“Yes, Father.”
“And don’t paint runes on him. One mistake could make the blisters worse.”
Azmon nodded.
Naram appraised Tyrus with a knowing eye. “For a youth to defeat a sorcerer—and survive the flames—it’s like one of the old songs. With such a warrior at your side, you shall make a fearsome prince.”
Tyrus spent weeks in the bed, waiting for his blisters to heal. He had been a boy with two runes, not the freak with over a hundred. Healing hadn’t hurt as bad back then, but it had taken a lot longer.
On the plains of Shinar, the old memories haunted Tyrus. He felt like a relic from a forgotten age. Few people had lived as long, and fewer remembered the Old Roshan Empire, before the beasts and demons ruined everything. His body had stopped aging when he was in his thirties, when Azmon etched him with the forbidden runes that gave him an unnatural life. He had forgotten his age, but if he had to guess, he was near eighty years old.
I’ve served three generations of them now, each more powerful than the last.
The memories wore him down—an entire lifetime, which seemed to stretch on forever, spent killing for House Pathros. Each generation had made powerful enemies, and he spilled rivers of blood for them. Whether it meant anything, he couldn’t say, other than they survived to fight again.
The battles had become harder to win.
He watched Marah tremble in her sleep and wondered what enemies she would make. Few things made him fearful, but Marah managed to fill him with dread. He had grown accustomed to fighting monsters, but Marah was worse. She spoke with the dead. She’d survived a battle with Azmon, a feat made more frightening by her freakish youth, and he’d watched her fend off Norsil thanes, men like him, with too many runes.
Tyrus silently asked her, What are you?
He hoped she was worth protecting. If she turned out like her father, the world would wish she had died young.
Sleep was the best way to heal, but he lost himself in old memories and regrets. The plains were full of dangerous men, and worse things might be waiting for them in Shinar. As the hours passed, the night sky turned a dark blue, and the sun began to rise.
Tyrus watched the camp awaken. Still feverish and bruised, he noticed he was not alone. Several thanes walked with lurching steps. As the plains grew warmer, Olroth’s men dragged a dozen prisoners to the base of the little hill where Tyrus and Marah slept. Marah rubbed her eyes and stood. Tyrus dragged himself to his feet.
The prisoners were forced to their knees with hands bound behind their backs. Olroth’s men stood guard with halberds and swords.
In the morning light, the site of the battle looked worse. Strange shapes were burned into the ground, and several of Marah’s victims smoldered. Tyrus remembered when the Roshan army had first marched on Shinar. The city used to have white walls with gold adornments. After years of war, the walls were burned black, and corpses decorated the doorstep.
Tyrus noted fewer red cloaks in the morning. Many of the thanes had abandoned them during the night—maybe a hundred had left. He guessed about a thousand remained.
Olroth said, “We rounded up the ones who helped Barros.”
Tyrus said, “Many are missing.”
“These were seen raising a blade against the Ghost Warrior.”
“And what are you going to do with them?”
“We must defend the Ghost Warrior’s honor.”
“I’m more concerned about her life.”
“Tyrus, this is important. The men you killed last night must not be allowed to challenge the Ghost Warrior to a duel. It is petty and small. They dishonor our clan. They should fight us for the right to challenge her.”
“We have more pressing concerns. We need to eat.”
“The plains are dead—nothing but yellow clay.”
“Then we must claim the city.”
Tyrus wanted to talk to Marah about how to handle the traitors, but she approached the men on her own.
She looked at each in turn, lifting their chins and peering into their eyes before giving a sentence. “Mercy… mercy… death… mercy… death.”
Tyrus watched her work down the line, and his mouth dried. The death sentences coming in a child’s voice chilled him.
Olroth spoke to himself, “She chooses well.”
Tyrus asked, “How so?”
“The ones marked for death are Barros’s cousins. The rest are sellswords.”
“How could she know that?”
Olroth shrugged. “She is the Ghost Warrior.”
Lahar came to stand near Tyrus, and the other knights and sorcerers stayed near him. Tyrus thought it odd that a handful of Kassiri knights and sorcerers would stay with a thousand thanes, then he realized he was starting to think like Olroth. The armor and the robes marked them as outsiders, and he reminded himself to do something about that. If the thanes could not kill Marah, they would target her friends instead.
Lahar asked, “You speak their tongue?”
“I do. Marah passes judgement on the traitors.”
Before Lahar could say anything, the three condemned m
en were dragged forward, held down, and executed. Halberds cleaved their heads. Olroth’s men didn’t waste any time on ceremony, and Marah turned from the mess as soon as it was over.
The quickness of the kills was part of the Norsil culture. When something needed to be done, they did it quickly and moved on, but what bothered him was the way they let Marah settle the matter. As warlord, he thought he might have had some say in who lived and died.
Lahar asked, “Just like that?”
Tyrus said, “Life is cheap in the wastelands.”
“But was that Marah’s idea or the clansmen’s?”
Tyrus couldn’t say. He suspected Marah had done what any Norsil chieftain would do, but the fact that she knew to do it, along with the fact that none of the thanes questioned it, was troubling. His war band was changing before his eyes, becoming something new.
Marah asked Olroth to summon three thanes by name. Olroth gestured to his son, and runners were sent. When the men stepped forward, Tyrus recognized thanes who had helped him defend Marah. They were the first to fight against Barros. Marah bade them kneel, and the air chilled as she reached for sorcery. The thanes, as well as all of the Norsil, fidgeted when her eyes became whiter than normal, with little pinpricks for pupils.
“You stood with your warlord against a hundred assassins. For this, you earn a boon.” Marah used a small knife to cut her hand and then palmed the forehead of one of the thanes. The man gasped, his head rocking back, but Marah held firm.
“Arise, Urud, and join Olroth in his place of honor,” she said.
When she was done, the man fell to his knees. He scrubbed his forehead of the blood and revealed a red rune like Olroth’s.
Lahar gasped. “She didn’t use inks.”
“She used blood,” Larz Kedar said. “They claim Alivar did the same.”
Tyrus had experienced something similar with Nisroch, a grigorn in the wastes. He touched the red rune that adorned his right eye. That etching had hurt and left him blind for a day, but as Marah etched the three thanes, they seemed to celebrate their new runes. As Marah performed the rites, he began to understand her powers—at the very least, he knew she was as strong as Nisroch, which explained how she had fought off Azmon.
When she finished, she staggered a little. Many people moved to help her, but Tyrus made it to her first. He picked her up and grunted as pain wracked his stomach. The pain washed over him, and he took a calming breath.
Tyrus asked her, “Are you well?”
“I didn’t want anyone else to die.”
“So why execute them?”
“They would not stop. We would fight them again.”
“Did Olroth tell you that?”
“He didn’t have to.”
Tyrus wanted to comfort her. She seemed to need comfort, but he had never been good at that sort of thing. Her size terrified him, making him morbidly aware of how easy it would be for his giant arms to crush her. He feared his armor might pinch her tiny limbs, and he had not bathed since the battle. He must smell like a hog rutting in a field. Whatever bothered Marah must have been worse than his smell, because she clung to him.
Tyrus asked, “What did you etch them with?”
“It’s a hearth rune. It doesn’t do much.”
“Then why tire yourself with it?”
Marah whispered, “The Ghost Warrior needs a Ghost Clan.”
Tyrus stood a little straighter, as though he might pull away from her. Olroth could have said something like that, and hearing chieftain words in the voice of a little girl unnerved him. She relaxed in his arms. Whatever had possessed her to talk like an adult faded away. He carried a child again, but Tyrus began to question what kind of creature he was holding.
V
Marah enjoyed being carried by Tyrus. She rested her cheek on his massive shoulders, and his great size gave the impression of riding a horse. Heat radiated off him, which she also found comforting.
The sorcerers in the Red Tower had stopped carrying her around years before, claiming she had grown too big, but Tyrus towered over them. One of his arms was almost as big as Marah. She felt protected. Both the living and the dead feared him. Ghosts whispered his many titles with dread—he had killed Shinari who called him the Butcher of Rosh and Norsil who called him the Dark Walker and Roshan who called him the Damned.
The dead said horrid things about him, but Marah didn’t care. Too many people wanted to hurt her. Tyrus was one of the few who defended her, and that meant everything. He wasn’t a sorcerer though, and only a sorcerer could help her understand runes.
Only her grandmother, Dura Galamor, had understood Marah.
Marah fought away tears. When she cried, some of the dead mocked her, but she couldn’t help herself. She kept reliving the same terrible moment when Dura had transitioned from a warm person to a cold thing. Marah felt her die, and she could not forget the sensation.
A breeze tossed her white hair, and she hugged Tyrus harder to ward away a chill. The ghosts clawed at her, moaning about their misery. The weight of their anguish slumped her shoulders. Countless people had died fighting for Shinar, and their ghosts clung to the city like a bad smell.
Voices filled her mind:
A Gadaran whispered, They will never accept you. The Norsil will hound you until you die. One of the Norsil whispered, The Ghost Warrior is not a little girl. And a Roshan noble told her, You belong on Sornum. Abandon these animals and claim your birthright.
Many blamed Marah for their deaths. Others blamed her father. Her family had left an army of ghosts in its wake, and they all wanted to tell her how they had died. She had experienced more pain and suffering than a child could bear.
She closed her eyes and fought against the tide of voices. She thought on her grandmother’s last words, about how Dura wanted to return to the place from before her birth. Trying to imagine such a place helped Marah blank her mind. She forced the ghosts away, for a moment, but they always returned.
She became too tired to fight back.
The battlefield around her had grown quiet, but the one in her mind still moaned. The freshly dead were mired in the world between worlds, and they called out to her in confusion. She wanted to run away from everything and hoped she could push the burden of the ghosts onto someone else. Someone like Dura should argue with the dead.
When the voices became too loud, Marah reached for sorcery. Time seemed to slow as she found the place in her mind with the burning white gate. She entered the gate, pulling sorcery into the world, and a sense of power filled her being. A chill radiated from her, making gooseflesh spread across her forearms. When she opened her eyes, the tunnel vision left her nearly blind.
Tyrus tensed as she built runes around herself to keep the dead away. He asked, “What is wrong?”
“The dead won’t leave me alone.”
“You can use spells to banish them?”
“It pushes them away, but it makes me tired.”
“Nothing else helps?”
She turned to a distant mountain, too distant for her poor eyes to see, but she sensed the presence of Mount Teles. If she asked, the ghosts would help her see the great peak through their eyes, but she enjoyed sensing it instead. The mountain was a sacred place and quiet, the only silent place she had ever been. Few of the dead haunted Teles, and the one voice she had heard when she was in the woods belonged to a dragon who guarded the White Gate to the Seven Heavens. She wanted to return to the mountain and gaze upon the white clouds clinging to the peak.
She called to Dura’s ghost, I did what you wanted. Why did you leave me?
Her abilities mocked her. The one dead person she needed to speak to was beyond her reach. But Dura wasn’t a ghost. Unlike all the miserable things haunting Shinar, Dura’s last words had been about love. She had wished Marah the best and moved beyond the mortal world.
Marah remembered holding her thin, wrinkled hand wh
ile the warmth drained away. Tears clouded Marah’s eyes and spilled down her face. She was too tired to sob and couldn’t stop reliving the memory. Dura died again, and a piece of Marah died with her.
She could have used runes to keep Dura alive. Dura had asked her not to interfere, but Marah still didn’t understand why she could do such things. Why do I pick who lives and dies?
While she was protected by sorcery, none of the ghosts could answer. She feared asking them. The storm of complaints would sap her strength. The voices were sometimes like a physical weight that could push her into the ground.
They smothered her.
Tyrus asked, “Why are you crying? What is wrong?”
Marah kept looking at the mountain and thinking about Dura. If she could bring anyone back, it would be her grandmother. She wanted to bring her back and make her young and strong again.
Marah called to her again, I can’t do this alone. I need you.
She released her guard and sifted through the chorus of the dead voices for the one that mattered most. She hoped Dura had heard and would answer, but Marah could not find her among the teeming dead.
Marah whispered, Please, come back.
Multiple dead voices mocked her:
You are all alone, and you will die alone.
You’ve started something you can’t possibly control.
It is too late to ask for help.
Marah ignored their taunts. Both the living and the dead expected her to conquer the world. They wanted a prophet to defeat their enemies. The dead said as much, but she thought she saw the same hunger on the faces of Larz Kedar and Olroth. The Red Tower wanted to understand her powers, and the Norsil wanted a Ghost Warrior to drown their enemies in an ocean of blood. If Dura were still alive, she could tell Marah what to do. Dura would know how to control such men. She begged the mountain for help, but no one answered.
Dance of Battle: A Dark Fantasy (Shedim Rebellion Book 4) Page 3
