Heirs of the Fallen: Book 03 - Shadow and Steel

by James A. West

  “The juice from the root of the heart flower can soothe a teething babe. A bit more can put a man to sleep.”

  “And if you use too much?” Leitos asked. “Would that kill a man?”

  “Indeed,” Belina said cryptically.

  “You have not given me much reason to trust you,” Leitos said. “At every turn, you threaten to gut me, or to feed me to fangfish, and now you tell me you might have accidently poisoned me to death.”

  “When you see what I need to show you, you will understand why we do not trust outsiders,” Belina said, and ordered him to keep going.

  They had not gone much farther when Belina dragged him behind the cover of a bush with leaves as broad as a man’s head. “We are close,” she said, her breath tickling his ear.

  Leitos looked around, but saw only dense forest, mossy boulders, and hanging vines. The night was warm, and the long walk had brought sweat to his brow, and sweat brought buzzing midges. There was nothing around to indicate they were anywhere near the Throat of Balaam, especially the blue light that had initially drawn him. He said as much, even as he kept searching.

  “We are farther up the mountain, above the entrance.”

  “And where is this evidence you wanted to show me?”

  “Before we go, I will answer your earlier question about why the Throat of Balaam frightens my people.” After a moment to collect her thoughts, she said, “Before the Upheaval, the Fauthians did not exist. Only Yatoans lived on the islands.”

  “The Fauthians were created?” Leitos asked, thinking of the Alon’mahk’lar.

  “Not exactly. Many generations gone, soon after the stars fell from the heavens and the skies burned, and the seas boiled against cracked shores, the Throat of Balaam burst open, casting its terrible light over the land. That light lured some of my forefathers to betray the command of the Great Council of Elders. They entered the Throat and communed with the Faceless One, and in that cold light, they were … remade.”

  Leitos shook his head, confused. “So Fauthians are Yatoans?”

  “They are not,” Belina said, fury tingeing her words. “Not anymore. The light changed them. And if not the light, then the Faceless One, who lives within the light, did it.”

  Leitos’s pulse jumped. “The Faceless One lives here, on this island, within the Throat of Balaam?” It was all he could do not to shout the question. For a year, he had thought he must travel to his homelands, and from there search countless leagues of ice fields and snowy wastelands for the Faceless One. To know he stood so near his enemy, raised the hair on his neck.

  “I need a weapon,” he growled. “I will destroy him—I must destroy him.”

  Belina recoiled from the hatred on his face. “The Faceless One cannot be killed with a mortal weapon, otherwise it would have been done by now.”

  “Perhaps those who have tried before did not have the skill or courage to do so,” Leitos countered. “Arm me or not, I am going to test myself this night.”

  “The day may come when you face the enemy of humankind, but it is not this night, and not here,” she said with an odd surety in her voice.

  “How would you know—your visions?”

  “Yes.”

  Leitos snorted and made to stand, but Belina laid his stolen dagger against his neck. “Sit down, and let me finish answering you.”

  “And if I don’t, then what? Will you gut me, as you have so often promised? How does that fit with your visions?”

  Belina leveled a flat gaze at him, making him feel slightly foolish for his bluster. “I do not wish to kill you, Leitos. I never have.” The way she said it made it sound as if she had known him for many years, instead of mere hours. If she really had been seeing him in visions all her life, then maybe to her it did seem as if she knew him. “You must heed me.”

  “You mean trust you?”

  “Yes,” Belina sighed. “Now, sit still, and let me finish.”

  Leitos made a face, but settled back to the ground.

  “As I was saying, those who communed with the Faceless One were never the same. For a time, my ancestors believed the Fauthians had been purified, remade with eternity in their flesh, and so honored them as gods.

  “In time, the Fauthians became betrayers and destroyers of their servants, keeping only the strongest of us alive, and giving the rest to the Kelrens. Our masters began taking women and girls into the Throat, and bred them to Mahk’lar in the creation of Alon’mahk’lar. In time, they gave them over to Alon’mahk’lar, and the Na’mihn’teghul were born.”

  Leitos peered at Belina. Hers was a face haunted by horrors too vile to speak of. But what if she was wrong, or lying, or telling only what she believed was the truth? As a slave, he had been deceived into thinking that his people deserved their enslavement for betraying the Faceless One. It was not until he escaped the mines, and had time to truly consider what he had endured all his life, that he changed his mind about the cruelty of the Alon’mahk’lar and their master, the Faceless One.

  He looked closer at her, and saw no deception. What if everything she has said is true? If the Fauthians created changelings, then that meant they had made Sandros and Pathil … and Zera.

  “Show me what you will,” he said abruptly, finding it difficult to remain impartial.

  Belina looked at her hands, curled protectively around the hilt of the Kelren dagger. “I cannot know if it is too late to show you everything, but usually they keep our women for a few days, until they know that the seed of the Alon’mahk’lar has quickened within their wombs. After that, we do not know where they are taken.”

  “You’re saying that some of your women are in the Throat of Balaam, at this moment?” He remembered the screams and the dead woman the Fauthians had dragged out of the Throat. He also recalled the Fauthian woman, holding a small bundle. Had she carried a changeling babe? Distaste quivered his skin.

  “They may be,” Belina said. “I was child when they stopped bringing pregnant women back to the villages, where they would raise their accursed babes until the Fauthians came to take them. My mother and eldest sister were the last of our clan to be returned. My sister showed herself to be a Na’mihn’teghul the likes of which no one had ever seen, and she destroyed half the village. After that, the Fauthians began to keep the women and the babes, never to be seen again.”

  “We should go,” he said.

  “Follow me,” she answered in a hollow voice. Instead of threatening to spill his blood in some new way, she handed over the Kelren dagger and set out, leaving him to follow or stay behind.

  He went after her, his heart racing as fast as his mind. If even half what she said was true, he intended this night to end his quest for vengeance against the Faceless One this night.

  Chapter 24

  Ringed by torchlight, Damoc inspected the pigsty that had held Leitos, then the severed vines that had held shut the small door. My own daughter has betrayed me.

  Damoc cursed, ripped the door off the pen, and hurled it into the forest. Nola gave him a startled look, her green eyes wide … Nola, who looked so much like the first abomination foisted upon him and his wife by their Fauthians masters.

  He had not always thought so poorly of that first daughter, but that had been before her change, and his wife’s death. On that night, when all that Belina had foretold came to pass, he had finally seen the truth, which led him to stir his people against their oppressors.

  Even now, it pained him to admit that until that tragedy had struck him, he and most of the other elders had refused to believe the evil of the Fauthians. Instead of listening to the rational voice in his head, he had believed the Fauthians were good, and that serving them was the proper course. But no more.

  “Will we go after them?” Nola asked. Her startlement had vanished. She was so different than Belina and their mother. If anyone had been born to fight, it was Nola. In truth, he sometimes feared that she craved battle too much.

  Damoc ignored her for now, and stabbed a finger
at Robis, the bumbling youth who fancied that he loved Belina, and who had blown the warning horn. “Come here,” he ordered.

  Robis stepped forward, eyes downcast. He was a dullard with not the wits to properly wipe his own arse, let alone to see the deception Belina had cast over him. For all his faults, he was good in a battle, being too stupid to know fear or feel pain. Still, he had betrayed the clan.

  “I did not know what she had planned,” Robis blurted. “She promised that she would—” He suddenly clamped his teeth shut, perhaps thinking it better not to reveal just what Belina had promised.

  “Where was she taking him?” Damoc demanded.

  “I-I don’t know,” Robis stammered. “She never said she was taking him anywhere. If I’d known, I would not have joined in her sport.”

  “What manner of idiot believes rallying our defenses is a simple game?” Damoc seethed. “Did it ever cross your mind that sounding the alarm without cause might lead to leaving the camp undefended?” And that was yet another thing he would have to rectify. Someone should have stayed behind to guard the camp. Instead, all had snatched their weapons and run off like untrained louts. But again, that was for later.

  Robis swallowed, his throat clicking in the quiet. “She said it would be fun to stir the camp.”

  “Fun,” Damoc said flatly, his wrath extinguished by his disbelief. “We are not about fun,” he announced to all. “This rebellion we wage is no game. We fight an enemy that has every advantage, and no mercy for fools.”

  A few nodded, but most looked at their feet, or the weapons held in their hands.

  “I do not want your shame,” Damoc went on. “I want you to do what we have prepared to do. To accomplish that, we must keep our wits about us. Had the Fauthians crept into our camp, using Robis’s foolishness as a distraction, they could have wiped out the bulk of our clan in one attack.”

  “How do we know they did not creep in among us?” Nola asked, her jaw set. “Why else would my sister have—”

  “They did not,” Damoc said firmly. “Belina is confused, that is all. If there is a betrayer,” he allowed, “it is this Leitos.”

  He refused to believe Belina had betrayed them. At the same time, it disturbed him that Nola so readily accepted the idea. But then, Nola had always been a girl who saw all in stark contrasts. To her there was right and wrong, even if the wrongs were done out of ignorance.

  “Then what would you have us do?” Nola said, sounding unconvinced.

  How long will I hold sway over her? he wondered—hardly a rare thought of late. A woman had never led a clan or served on the Great Council, but Damoc thought Nola might, one day. She was capable and ambitious enough. And should things go badly against the Fauthians, her unbending, pitiless ways might well appeal to the clans.

  “We must find Belina and break the hold this outlander has over her,” Damoc said. “Then we will carry out his sentence.”

  He was not entirely convinced Leitos was an enemy, but he refused to let his doubts outweigh what had to be done. If he ever discovered that his judgment had been made in error, then the burden of that mistake would have to be carried in his heart.

  “And after that?” Nola pressed.

  “After that,” Damoc said, “we do what we have planned so long to do—we destroy the Throat of Balaam, cutting off the Fauthians’ source of power. Then, while they are vulnerable, we will destroy our enemies, one by one, until none are left in all the Isles of Yato.” He cast about, pleased at the determined faces directed his way. “But first, we retrieve Belina.”

  “Is that a mistake?” Nola did not say it as a challenge, but the challenge was there nonetheless.

  “When we took up arms against our former rulers, we promised, when at all possible, to never again leave our people in their hands. You know that. We all know that. Even the least of us cannot be left to the Fauthians. That is our law,” he said again, ensuring all understood that his going after his daughter had nothing to do with his position as an elder.

  There was no grumbling, no irreverent stares, but he felt the doubt flowing from his clan.

  “Strike camp,” he called, giving them something else to think about, “and prepare to march. Leitos has already had too long to turn my daughter’s mind and heart. We must reach her before it is too late.” He paused, then added, “If you see Leitos, kill him straight away. He cannot be allowed to corrupt more of us.”

  A subdued cheer went up, and Damoc found himself hoping he was right about the strange young man who Belina claimed to have seen in her visions, this so-called man of shadow and steel, the hope of the world…. If he was wrong, then even the mercy of the Silent God of All would fail to redeem him.

  Chapter 25

  The darkness of the cell was familiar to Adham, but little else. His long years in the mines had been a time of constant pain, be it from the lash, shackles, the sun, or the backbreaking labor of first crushing rock with pick or maul, then loading the rubble into buckets with hands covered in weeping blisters. Callouses he grew in abundance, but they were never strong enough to resist the cutting edges of freshly broken rock. The same could be said for the pitted iron bracelets he had worn, the marks of their long presence on his wrists a living testament to his captivity. Too, he remembered the harsh desert sunlight, the way it sucked moisture from the tongue and every pore, how it had roasted skin, left a man feeling hot and cracked. And there had been the hunger, a bitter companion with a will only to gnaw your insides. So while only the present darkness was the same, it brought sharply to mind all those past agonies and struggles.

  Adham dropped his fingers from the heavy wooden door, and walked to the back wall, his shoulders brushing cool stone. His trek was short, less than his height. He had made it a hundred times since Adu’lin had him tossed into the cell. He turned, thought of the return journey, and decided to sit. In such a cramped space, pacing in circles left him dizzy.

  Arms wrapped around his knees, the darkness pressed in. That, too, was a familiar sensation. He put it out of his mind. A barely heard ringing tickled his ears, and above this the slow thump of his heart.

  After a time, the few noises he could hear faded to the voices in his mind. Those voices spoke their concern for Leitos and the Brothers, and some fretted over his own quandary.

  Slowly, anger rose up, and he turned his attention to it. Worry rarely did a man any good, and while anger served its own dark master, at times it had a way of providing strength, even as it exacted a price. Right now, Adham was willing to pay whatever fee his wrath demanded.

  By the time the rattle of a bar being removed from the door sounded within his tiny cell, he was grinding his teeth to the point of pain. As the door swung open, allowing a wedge of pale light to slice through the widening gap, his muscles clenched into tight knots. When he saw the narrow Fauthian face, Adham sprang.

  The guard’s impassive expression flashed away to stark surprise. Dropping the torch, he reached for his dagger. At the same time, his lips parted to sound the alarm.

  By then Adham was on him, fingers buried in the flesh of the man’s skinny neck. Eyes popping and shot through with hot blood, his teeth bared like a wolf, Adham wrung that throat, twisting, ripping.

  The Fauthian forgot his dagger and clamped his hands onto Adham’s wrists, tried to pull them off. Adham drove forward and slammed the guard against a wall. The gagging Fauthian lashed out, his fists fluttering like a pair of startled birds.

  “Where is my son, you filthy yellow worm?”

  The guard, eyes bulging, answered with strained gurgles. Even if he freed the man, his crushed windpipe would not allow him to answer.

  But Adham did not want an answer, he wanted weapons. Still, his fury drove him to shout. “Answer me!”

  Other guards began to spill from a doorway from farther down the corridor. They rushed to aid their fellow, shouting and drawing swords.

  Adham rammed the top of his head against the Fauthian’s face, once and again, each blow bringin
g the crunch of shattering bone. His fingers sank deeper, and the Fauthian’s mouth gaped, his tongue wagged. Adham darted his head forward again, driving that bit of pink flesh against the man’s teeth. The Fauthian’s eyes rolled.

  Before the others could reach him, Adham snatched the Fauthian’s dagger, slashed his throat, then threw him before his companions. The lead guard danced to avoid his fallen companion, but fell in a sprawl. One after another, the guards tripped, adding to the growing tangle of arms and legs.

  Adham sprinted down the corridor. Curses chased him, but nothing else. He paused at a crossing corridor. Right or left? Gloom marked one way, and torches brightened a distant junction in the other direction.

  Adham ran full out into the light, and soon reached the intersection. Here he had only one choice, a wide stairwell leading up. He took the stairs two at a time, thinking up had to be better than down, when escaping a prison.

  At the top of the stairs, he crashed into a massive set of double doors. He expected resistance, but they banged open, revealing a circular hall alight with scores of torches burning between grotesque sculptures. At the center of all that radiance stood a ring of smoothly tapered pillars, rising up to meet an open portal in the domed ceiling—the heart of the palace. Within that columned ring knelt the blindfolded Brothers of the Crimson Shield, most bloody and battered, all with their hands tied behind their backs.

  Shouts rang out behind Adham, pushing him into the hall. He sensed a trap, but surely it was not for him. Or so he thought, until the architect of that snare spoke.

  “It seems the resourcefulness of you Izutarians is not overstated,” Adu’lin said to one side.

  Dagger at the ready, Adham searched for the Fauthian leader, but he remained out of sight.

  “I now see why the Faceless One prizes your people,” Adu’lin went on. “I dare say that if you ice-born savages abandoned your futile resistance and embraced the High Lord of this world, his rewards would be beyond measure.”