Heirs of the Fallen: Book 03 - Shadow and Steel

by James A. West

  The narrow passage branched when it came to the back side of another building, and Adham turned toward the armory. The way became tighter than before, forcing him to squeeze through with his back and chest brushing the walls.

  After a few paces, the walls pressed closer, making him breathe in shallow gulps. He used his hands to alternately pull and push himself along. When he investigated the way earlier, he had been sure there was plenty of room. Now his confidence wavered. Much tighter, and he would have to turn back.

  After a few more feet, he reached a point where even breathing became almost impossible, but only a few paces stood between him and freedom. Adham rested, fighting the sense that the walls were living beings that wanted to crush him.

  Preparing to push through, he went stiff when a small cascade of moss pattered over his shoulders and head. He glanced up, but saw only star-banded darkness … then a shadow silhouetted itself against that background. He blinked, and the figure disappeared.

  Adham tried to get at his dagger, but he couldn’t reach it. He commanded himself to remain calm, told himself that he had seen nothing, but his heartbeat increased, and sweat sprang from his pours. He began bulling his way toward end of the passage.

  After gaining a few more paces, he found himself pinned. More grit sprinkled down. He tilted his head back. The figure had returned, and with it several more. He recognized slender Fauthian heads peering down at him, radiating condescending triumph.

  “Adham,” Adu’lin said, “might I ask what you are up too?” A few whispery chuckles met this.

  “Where is my son?” Adham gasped. “Tell me, you creeping serpent!”

  More chuckles filtered through the darkness, but something else caught Adham’s attention. A misty shape oozed into the gap between the roofs, a thing of shifting smoke and dull, silvery eyes. Spiderlike, the Mahk’lar crept closer, making no sound.

  A swelling black terror filled Adham. He forced that fear down, and gusted all the air from his chest. His lungs began to burn straight away. Sensing the demonic spirit coming closer, he contracted his ribcage and lifted his feet. At once, his weight dragged him to his knees. Lower, there was a fraction more room. Adham scrambled ahead, clawing and kicking for every inch.

  “You will not escape,” Adu’lin called.

  Adham ignored him. He knew he could not escape from the Fauthians, not now, but he refused to die, trapped like a rat.

  The last few feet of the passage squeezed in, the rough stonework scraping skin from his knuckles and elbows. He could hear the Mahk’lar murmuring indecipherable words that spawned a thousand visions of death, each worse than the last.

  “Do not listen,” Adham told himself. “Do not see. Do not let it in.”

  The cautionary words became a low chant, a distraction meant to reserve his sanity. He pushed forward, every inch slower and more painful than the previous. The walls squeezed tighter, and still he pressed on.

  A pace from freedom, the two Fauthians guards he had initially tried to avoid showed themselves at the end of the passage. Growling low in his throat, Adham gave a last shove with his feet, and tumbled clear. His growl became a furious shout, as he bounded to his feet. He drew the Kelren dagger, and attacked as if it were a sword.

  Stunned by his ferocity, the guards backpedaled, using their spears to keep him at bay. Adham caught the haft of one spear in a hand strengthened by long years of wielding heavy picks and mauls. The Fauthian tried to jerk the weapon free, but Adham held fast. With a violent twist, he wrenched it from the guard, and reversed the steel tip.

  The other guard lunged. Adham deflected the attack, and drove the tip of his spear through his assailant’s belly. Adham ripped his weapon free, and the dying man’s scream filled the alley. From somewhere else, shouts of alarm sounded.

  Adham went after the unarmed guard, who was retreating with hands raised. “There is no surrender,” he snarled.

  Adham closed, and the Fauthian abruptly turned to flee. Adham hurled the spear, burying it between the guard’s shoulder blades. Before the Fauthian went still on the ground, Adham was there, tugging the shaft free, and wheeling to face the foes he knew must be coming.

  The Mahk’lar slid out of the tight passageway, and rushed forward on a mass of legs. Its bulbous head jutted off its undulating back.

  “You can do me no harm, demon,” Adham warned. “Best return to your mistress, and tell her that the line of Valera is alive and strong.”

  The creature halted. “Valera?”

  “Leave him be,” Adu’lin commanded, having come into the alley through a doorway at ground level.

  “You do not command here,” the Mahk’lar hissed, a score of jointed limbs unfolding from its body. “Not in this.”

  Adham took an involuntary step away, raising his spear. The demon continued to expand, driving back Adu’lin and his gathering men. Soon its dark bulk filled the narrow way.

  “Valera blood,” the demon said, peering at Adham. “Such blood as that has been washed in the Powers of Creation … such blood is precious. Come, offer yourself to me, satisfy my hunger, and I shall see your rewards last all eternity.”

  Adham forced a harsh, mocking laugh. “I will satisfy nothing of your needs, but I will destroy you.”

  The demon reared, bellowing rage. He threw the spear at the densest part of the demon’s body, but the shaft passed through that misty substance. An instant later he heard a thump and a scream, and knew one of Adu’lin’s men, perhaps the Fauthian leader himself, had been impaled.

  Before the demon could react, Adham flung himself at it. As he expected, the demon retreated, its limbs thrashing. Adham slashed a hand through the demon’s vaporous bulk, and a crackling flash of cool blue light brightened the alley. As he drove deeper into the demon’s suffocating mass, webs of azure lightning erupted from Adham’s skin, and spread like a ragged web over the demon.

  Shrinking in on itself, the creature scrambled to escape, its cries shaking the walls. Adham closed his ears to those sounds, slammed shut his watering eyes, and continued to rake his hands through the creature’s insubstantial form, the crackling bursts of energy paining him, as well.

  And then the agony vanished, along with the flickering pulses of radiance and the demon’s dread howls. Adham stood panting, eyes still shut.

  “To destroy a demon is to draw more—those that might not be so agreeable,” Adu’lin shouted fearfully.

  “And what manner of fool would wish to indulge demons, agreeable or not?” Adham asked. He opened his eyes to find no sign of the Mahk’lar, but the Fauthians had circled him about. Despite their professed aversion to violence, all held swords, long, brutal weapons. They seemed eager and willing to run him through, and waited only for Adu’lin’s command. Behind Adu’lin, a man lay on his back, fingers frozen around the haft of the spear Adham had thrown.

  Shaken though he was, Adu’lin visibly collected himself, and put on a face of bland calm. “It is not a fool who treats with demons and their master. Rather, the fool is he who thinks to resist their rule—especially one of the Valera line. A lesson you shall soon learn, to your great displeasure.”

  At the same moment Adham moved to break through those around him, the pommel of a sword crashed against the back of his head, driving him to his knees. The Fauthians fell on him, their brutal kicks and stomps first bruising him, then breaking him.

  Chapter 22

  Sumahn swept his goblet off the low table, watched it roll across the carpeted floor, then reached for the flagon of fruit wine. He poured the sweet nectar into his open mouth. Half of it splattered over his chest. That did not matter. There was more, always more, and the mess would invite Ina to use soft cloths to clean him … or, perhaps, she would use her lips.

  In counterpoint to the delightful Fauthian music, Daris laughed dazedly, and rolled into the embrace of several cooing women—tangled as they were, and naked besides, it was hard to guess just how many entertained Daris this night.

  All around the
gathering hall, more Brothers were similarly engaged. All were drunk to the point of delirium, as the fruit wine had flown especially heavy over the course of the day. Sumahn noted with half a mind that Ba’Sel and Ulmek were not in attendance, as well as some of the older Brothers.

  “Leave the young to their pleasures!” he bawled, as if his elders were listening.

  Laughter and bawdy calls answered him.

  Ina watched him with lidded golden eyes, a knowing smile turning her full lips. While Sumahn finished off the flagon, she swept back her red-gold hair, and arched her back enticingly. She was his favorite, as she seemed to guess his desires, no matter how chaste or perverse, before he had thought of them himself.

  “Wine!” he slurred.

  Ina reached behind her. Sumahn watched her skin pull taut over her lithe curves and thought of sweet butter, a delicacy he had not tasted in a lifetime. He reached to caress that warm flesh, but Ina turned back and pressed a fresh flagon into his hand. He blinked stupidly, and she seemed to double before his eyes.

  “You’ve brought your sister?” he quipped, finding it difficult to keep his chin from bouncing off his chest.

  He abruptly squinted at the gallery above, trying to clear his focus. “Did you see that?” he asked, struggling with the words. “Just there … I thought … I thought I saw someone.”

  “Drink, my love,” Ina said, voice as soft and sweet as the fruit wine she offered.

  “But there was someone watching—”

  She pushed a long, perfectly tapered finger against his lips. “Drink … and know peace.”

  “I would rather drink and know pleasure,” he murmured, fixated on her breasts.

  “Drink first,” Ina said, helping tip the flagon.

  Sumahn relented. Wine flooded over his tongue, the heady vapor of its honeyed effervescence filling his mind, crowding out all concerns….

  What concerns do I have? he thought, as a fresh round of laughter washed over him. If he had any, he drowned them in wine, distantly aware that when he had first tasted it he had gagged on the syrupy thickness of the Fauthian drink. Soon after, he and the others had come to relish it. Unlike other wines, which left a man reeling after a night of drinking, and the promise of a throbbing head the next morning, the fruit wine imbued him with a sense of bliss so deep and persuasive as to wipe away all cares. After many years of fighting and running under Ba’Sel’s inept command, the respite was not just welcome, but earned.

  After draining half the flagon, Sumahn dropped it and lay panting through a grin. Ina’s golden eyes never left his, as she began kneading the muscles of his thigh. Her touch sent tingles racing over his skin, and he let his head flop back. Through slitted eyes, he stared into the spinning darkness overhead, feeling weightless, serene, protected. Even when the shape he had seen before slowly materialized into a man bearing a terribly long-bladed sword, his calm remained. Gurgling like a fool, he watched more Fauthians emerge from the gloom, all armed and all stern of face.

  “I think your menfolk are jealous,” he managed.

  By now, Ina’s hands had moved higher up his leg, her feathery touch arousing. “Our people do not know jealousy,” she purred against his chest. She straddled him, and her eyes seemed to swell before him, like pools of molten gold. “But we do know hunger, my love,” she said. Sumahn grinned at her, despite the unexpected urgency in her voice. “A deep hunger … a soul hunger. It brings us both pleasure and pain. The need is unlike anything you have ever experienced.”

  “I have known such needs,” Sumahn argued breathlessly. He winced as her nails pricked his skin. “I know them now,” he added, catching her breasts in his hands.

  Ina’s eyes grew wider as she bore down. He thought sure he felt warm trickles of blood springing from his flesh. But that could not be. Ina would do him no harm … unless she had conceived some new manner of pleasure. Sumahn put on a wolfish smirk.

  Ina leaned down and breathed into his ear. “So hungry, my love.”

  Before Sumahn could respond, the boom of a crashing door echoed through the gathering hall. The music cut off at once. A life of battle and danger overrode the effects of the fruit wine, and he tossed Ina aside, his hands searching for the weapons he no longer had. His fingers flashed over the half-empty flagon, curled around the neck, and gripped tight. With a shout, he lumbered from the bed of pillows.

  Adu’lin stood in the wide entrance to the gathering hall, flanked on each side by two guards bearing wicked-looking swords, their blades half as long as a man was tall, slender and slightly curved.

  “It is time,” Adu’lin said.

  While his fellows looked on in bleary-eyed confusion, Sumahn staggered closer to the Fauthian leader. “Time for what?” He gave a halfhearted effort at brandishing the flagon, but felt foolish for doing so. This was their host, Adu’lin. He was no enemy.

  Adu’lin smiled in his flat way. “It is time for you and your fellows to repay our generosity.”

  Sumahn considered that … rather, he tried. In truth, he had no idea what Adu’lin was getting at. What he really wanted was to return to whatever games Ina had dreamed up.

  With that in mind, he faced her with a leering smile. Ina gazed back, her face as smooth and emotionless as carved stone. “Something amiss, my love?”

  She moved with such blinding speed that Sumahn could not react. In the next moment, he found himself sprawled on his back, the gathering hall spinning around him. His jaw felt crushed, and that made no more sense than the taste of blood in his mouth. He tried to talk, but sharp pain stilled his tongue. From far off, he heard dismayed shouts, followed by the sounds of men slamming against the hall’s floor.

  What is happening? That thought flitted through Sumahn’s mind, an instant before Ina’s bare foot viciously slammed against his head. All that he knew became as black and formless as the darkest reaches of the firmament.

  Chapter 23

  Gripping the rope, Leitos swung across the crevasse. Over the wind in his ears, he heard an alarming creak. The cleft below him was no more than a dozen feet wide, but darker than the night, and seemingly bottomless. Halfway across, something snapped overhead, and the rope dropped several inches.

  Then he was on the far side, beyond danger. He dropped to the ground with no small measure of relief, and put more distance between his feet and the edge of the gap. He swung the rope back, and Belina caught it.

  “Move over there,” she said, pointing at a tree farther along the trail.

  “Do you not trust me yet?”

  Belina laughed. “If I trusted strangers so quickly, I would have been captured or killed long ago.”

  “I think the limb this rope is attached to might have broken,” he cautioned.

  “Move,” Belina said, serious again.

  Leitos held up his hands in surrender, and did as she commanded. He supposed he could have just as easily run off—it had crossed his mind more than once in the hour since she freed him—but he wanted to see her evidence against the Fauthians.

  She eyed mistrustfully. Leitos folded his arms and leaned against the tree she had pointed out, doing his best to seem uninterested in what she was doing.

  “If you do anything—”

  “You’ll gut me where I stand,” Leitos interrupted, chuckling.

  “No,” she said sweetly, “I’ll strip you bare, tie you up, and dip you into a stagnant pool favored by fangfish. For the mud and slime, you’ll not see them come, but you will feel them. They have wicked teeth, those little fishes, and a fierce appetite. They’ll make a eunuch of you in moments. If I decide to leave you in the water, they’ll make bones of you quicker than it takes for you to perish.”

  Leitos swallowed. She sounded as though meant it. “I won’t do anything,” he said, thinking maybe he should take the opportunity to run.

  She gazed at him a moment longer then, seemingly satisfied that he was telling the truth, she swung across the cleft. The rope neither creaked nor dropped, and she landed lightly as a
butterfly.

  “From here on,” she said, “we need to move as if they are waiting for us.”

  “We are close then?”

  “On the doorstep of the Throat of Balaam.”

  Leitos began creeping down the trail. Over his shoulder, he asked, “Why does this place fill you with such dread?”

  She looked at him as if he were the biggest dolt she had ever seen, an expression he was growing as used to as her constant threats. “Only fools and the servants of the Faceless One would not fear the Throat of Balaam—and I should think that even they cower in dread.”

  “Why?” Leitos persisted.

  Belina caught his shoulder and spun him about. “The Throat of Balaam is not just an evil place, Leitos, it is a … a womb for the creation of evil things.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “Surely you cannot be this stupid?”

  Leitos could not help but grin at her exasperation, but it was short-lived. “I am not from these lands. But then, neither am I from Geldain, where I was enslaved and ruled over by Alon’mahk’lar the whole of my life.” She gave him a troubled look, but he ignored her pity. “The Throat of Balaam is only a name and a strange light to me. If you want me to understand, then you’ll have to explain it—slowly, if you will, me being a fool, and all.”

  “We do not have time for this,” Belina growled. “Go on, before I spill your guts.”

  “There’s a new idea,” Leitos mumbled, and set out again.

  They marched through the damp forest for another hour. The longer they went, the more Leitos began to wonder at how Belina and Nola had managed to carry him so far. More, he was curious about how they had kept him unconscious so long. He had seen slavemasters bludgeon men to insensibility, but usually those men came around soon after. Those who did not were rarely ever again right in their minds.

  “Did you give me some kind of sleeping tonic?” he asked. At her blank look, he explained his thoughts.