Heirs of the Fallen: Book 04 - Wrath of the Fallen

by James A. West

  Contents

  Wrath of the Fallen

  Also by James A. West

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  About James

  WRATH OF THE FALLEN

  Copyright © 2013 by James A. West

  First edition: November 2013

  Published by: James A. West

  Cover art by: Darko Tomic

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Produced in the United States of America

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Also by James A. West:

  WORKS OF FANTASY

  Heirs of the Fallen:

  Book One: The God King

  Book Two: Crown of the Setting Sun

  Book Three: Shadow and Steel

  Book Four - Final Volume: Wrath of the Fallen

  Songs of the Scorpion:

  Book One: Reaper of Sorrows

  Book Two: Lady of Regret

  Be sure to join the Scorpion in upcoming volumes!

  Short Stories:

  Night’s Hunt

  Dystopian/Thriller

  Emerald City Protocol:

  Book One: Beasts of the Field

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my first readers and fantastic editors—you know who you are, and you are awesome! To my fans, I cannot thank you enough for joining me on this adventure. As Heirs of the Fallen comes to a close, I hope you will join me in further adventures! Again, thank you so much for sticking around, and I hope I succeeded in providing you with a few small entertainments!

  Be sure to check for updates and new book releases at: http://jamesawest.blogspot.com

  Chapter 1

  Leitos squinted against the screaming white gale, but could not hide from the splinters of snow scouring his cheeks and brow. Brutal cold unlike any he had ever felt stiffened his fingers, but that did not keep him from wrapping them tight around the throat of his unconscious grandfather—the Faceless One and Bane of Creation, the man who had betrayed the world.

  Kian’s jaw sprang wide, his eyelids fluttered, then his vibrant blue eyes flared open. Nothing of humanity or mercy shone in them. Leitos matched that glare with his own, and pressed his thumbs against the knob of Kian’s throat. Gristle and sinew crunched, skin began to tear. Kian’s gaze bulged, but instead of pleas for mercy, rasping laughter squeezed out of his constricted windpipe. Leitos bore down harder, enraged, a snarl stretching his face. His thumbs burrowed deep, until a hissing red froth erupted from the torn flesh of Kian’s neck.

  His grandfather’s fist suddenly cracked against Leitos’s ear, left it ringing, feeling half-ripped off the side of his head. He bellowed into his enemy’s purpling face. Kian roared in answer, spraying blood through his teeth. Another blow rocked Leitos, and another. Doggedly he clung to Kian, but his grip began slipping through the crimson flood, and the tide of battle began to shift against him.

  Frantic with fear, Leitos rammed the top of his skull against Kian’s nose, crushing it. A sucking gurgle sounded from the ragged hole in Kian’s throat, as he redoubled his efforts. One fist after the other battered Leitos, the iron blows making the world spin madly. Then a hand tangled in Leitos’s hair, yanked him off balance, and his fingers slid from his enemy’s neck.

  “All you seek to gain is already lost, boy,” Kian spoke in a harsh wheeze, each gasping word pumping scarlet foam out of the rip in his neck. “Submit, and I will show you mercy.”

  “Never!” Leitos abruptly reared back and jammed a thumb into one of Kian’s eyes. The warrior squealed and thrashed, flinging him aside.

  As Kian roared curses into the white storm and fought to gain his feet, Leitos floundered through the snow. Thinking to gain a moment’s respite, a moment to calm his thundering heart and plan his next attack, Leitos scuttled up and over a snowdrift. His blood and Kian’s soon became an icy sludge coating his skin. Each time he attempted to stand he sank to his knees. He gave up and crawled, but his movements were sluggish. The frostiness of this place was draining his strength.

  Leitos didn’t know how he had gotten here, or where here was. He had been fighting his grandfather in the Throat of Balaam’s throne room, on the isle of Yato. And then, for a bare moment, Leitos’s mind and body had seemingly been in two different places. Then the darkness of the Faceless One’s chamber vanished, and this howling white world had taken its place.

  None of that matters. Flee! The unspoken command seemed born of a feverish mind. But he had no fever. He was colder than death. Leitos shook off the rising delirium and concentrated on getting away.

  Behind him, Kian’s bellows had deteriorated into racking, blood-clotted coughs. Leitos flung himself forward, kicking and scratching for every inch. Every foot gained left him panting and shaking all the harder. Over five strides and then ten, the going never got easier.

  Without warning he fell flat. He commanded his limbs to move, but their disobedience was stronger than his will. Rapid breaths scalded his throat, burst past his teeth like smoke. A moment of rest. Just one. The thought was mesmerizing. Just one moment.

  As he lay there, the bitter chill crept from his limbs, leaving him warm. He chuckled deliriously, knowing it could not be so. His fingers, curled before his slitted eyes, were a faint blue beneath a crusted layer of ice. The tip of his tongue licked at lips that felt layered in crushed glass. Frozen glass. Yet inside he was warm ... so warm ... as if bathing in the jade waters off the rocky shores of Witch’s Mole....

  Home ... going home... to the sanctuary ... to be with my brothers ... the Brothers of the Crimson Shield ... Ba’Sel and Ulmek, Sumahn and Daris. He also imagined he saw Belina and Nola, then Adham, his father.

  Just a moment ... of ... sleep....

  Chapter 2

  “So, will you die like a spitted cur too weak to lick his wounds?” The woman’s voice, both wry and affectionate, burrowed into Leitos’s mind.

  He cracked his eyelids and saw a pair of booted feet which didn’t sink into the snow. Then his gaze climbed up the slender leather-wrapped length of her legs. More leather and sable cloth snugged against her torso like a second skin, accentuating the narrowness of her waist and the swell of her breasts. Besides her hands, neck, and head, no other part of her was uncovered. The wind neither fluttered her dark cloak, nor the glossy black braid hanging over one shoulder. His study ended at vibrant green eyes. They glowed like emeralds lit by an inner fire.

  “Zera?” he said in disbelief. The last time he had se
en her alive had been mere seconds before she died, his dagger buried in her heart. The pain of the memory drew an agonized sob from his throat. She had come to him in dreams often enough, and he guessed he must be dreaming now.

  Zera glanced back the way he had crawled and focused on Kian, who was still flailing about making thick gagging sounds. “If you stay here,” she said to Leitos, “more than the cold will kill you.”

  “Rest,” Leitos murmured, annoyed that even a vision would not allow him a moment of peace.

  “These days,” she said flatly, “the grave provides no rest. Now, drag your wretched arse off the ground, and come with me to the tower.”

  “Gods good and wise,” Leitos pleaded, face dropping into the snow. “Leave me be.”

  “I could leave you alone,”Zera said, “but he will not. He will not only kill you, but take your soul. After all you have done to prepare for this day, will you just surrender?”

  Her words and a series of inhuman growls brought Leitos out of his stupor. Neck stiff, his brow covered with globs of bloody frost, he looked over his shoulder. Kian stood not far behind, hunched over, hands held against his throat. Scarlet streams dripped off his fingers to bloody the snow at his feet. One of his eyes was a cratered mess leaking gore over his stubbled cheek.

  Leitos looked back around. Zera was gone, not even a track left behind. Why would he have expected otherwise? After all, she wasn’t real. Yet below the steady gusts, he heard the whispery remnant of her command. “To the tower....”

  He peered beyond where she had stood and saw the tower rising firm and dead-black against curtains of iced wind. He knew in his gut he could reach it, but feared it would be more of a trap than a refuge. If the dark energies that allowed him to travel to this frozen wasteland still filled his veins, there might have been another way. But those powers had come and gone, without him knowing how or why.

  Kian retched once and again. He sounded closer.

  Leitos shook off the lie of warmth and began crawling. He struggled to his knees, sank down. He kept going. A few paces on, he got one foot under him, then another, and stood. He immediately sank deeper, swayed into a cutting gust to avoid falling.

  He chanced another look at his rival, and found Kian kneeling. The man glanced at Leitos with one terrible blue eye. His mouth worked, making a harsh, bubbling noise. It might have been laughter, or a string of curses. The sound cut away Leitos’s terror and doubt, exposed a throbbing vein of hate.

  He had to end this, or die in the attempt.

  Leitos began wading back along the track he had made. He tried to yank his sword clear of the scabbard, but ice had welded leather and steel together. His stiff fingers fumbled to unbuckle his sword belt, then freed it from the loop in the scabbard. A truncheon would serve.

  When he stood over Kian, the man looked up, and Leitos walloped him with a sidearm stroke. Padded though it was, the scabbarded sword split Kian’s skin along one cheekbone. Blood flowed freely. Leitos reversed the stroke and clubbed him again, ripping a gash into his temple. Kian laughed, and crimson foam spilled over his lips, froze on his stubbled chin.

  Again and again Leitos struck, the blows to the man’s skull bringing a sting to his frozen fingers. Once more he struck, splashing blood, rending flesh. Again, tearing off a swath of scalp, the dark hair clinging to it steaming and red. Again, and the crack of bone was unmistakable. Leitos did not stop battering Kian until he lay face down, his skull broken and leaking.

  When the scabbard slipped a few inches down the blade on a backswing, Leitos ripped it free and chopped his sword into Kian’s neck. Six strokes it took. Six desperate, hacking strokes to separate head from body, and so end the Bane of Creation.

  Sucking frozen fire into his lungs, Leitos kicked the mangled head of his enemy. It bounced away, its blood-washed skin collecting snow and obscuring slack features.

  The closeness of so much carnage made Leitos’s guts churn, but he swallowed the bile, for there was also joy in him, dark and hard as old iron. It was over—

  A squirming thread of black vapor oozed from the corpse, growing larger by the second. Leitos staggered, knowing what he was seeing before he put a name to it. He also knew what he was seeing should have been impossible. Demonic spirits, Mahk’lar, had no power to possess those born of the Valara line, or anyone else washed in the Powers of Creation.

  Sibilant laughter bubbled from the shapeless creature. There was something distinctly feminine in that voice. Leitos took another faltering step away, as the dark strands and bulges began to weave themselves together. He saw a dozen protuberant eyes, blind and staring, and also limbs long, black, and slender.

  “There is no victory here,” an oily voice whispered from a malformed mouth. “You have done nothing, save to murder the empty skin that your kindred. And now, child of Valara, you have shown yourself to me.”

  “Who are you!”

  Laughter beat against the storm. “I am Peropis, Eater of the Damned.”

  Peropis? Shaken, Leitos tried to deny the truth, but recalled the inner struggle he had seen rippling his grandfather’s face while they had both still been in the Throat of Balaam. Leitos had not understood then, but did now. The demonic spirit before him, Peropis, the first of the Mahk’lar, had somehow taken Kian’s flesh for her own. What had remained of Kian’s spirit must have resisted, but in the end the demon-whore’s black soul had consumed him.

  “You cannot kill me,” Leitos called above the wind, no longer sure if that was true.

  A hundred eyes rolled, bulging black orbs within shifting black faces. Mouths gaped and tongues lolled through rows of slanted teeth. “It is not your death I seek. I want your blood, and I command those who are waiting nearby to take it. They will drain you slowly. You will live on, weak and wasted, until all that remains of the world of men dies.”

  Peropis stretched skyward. One lopsided mouth, set in a bulging swirl of ethereal black flesh, gaped wide. A piercing wail erupted from that cavernous maw, overriding the shriek of the gale.

  Leitos clutched a hand to his head to keep his skull from shattering. Her voice rose higher. Leitos screamed with it. Mad with pain, he chopped at the demon-whore. His sword slashed harmlessly through her inky mass. Her summoning grew louder.

  Reeling, nose bleeding, ears ringing, Leitos spun away. Whirling snow cut across his vision in tattered white sheets. Beyond, he saw the tower. Is it a trap, or a refuge? There was only one way to be certain, and that meant trusting the word of an apparition.

  He began fighting his way toward the tower. Far away, he heard the familiar keening of Alon’mahk’lar horns sounding the hunt.

  Chapter 3

  Leitos kept his eyes on the outline of the tower. Alon’mahk’lar horns wailed nearer, gouging a spike of terror through his heart. He clawed up the steep flanks of a snowdrift, then tumbled down the other side. Snow flew into his eyes, plugged his mouth and nose. He came to a halt where the wind had carved the snow, leaving it no more than a foot deep.

  He clambered up and ran on in great lurching strides, thin robes flapping. Such garb had suited him on the isle of Yato, where warmth and lush forests prevailed. Here, he might as well have been naked.

  Black and stark, the tower stabbed at the shifting white sky. No windows or arrow loops broke its surface, nor was there any ornamentation. The sheer walls were rough and pitted, like ancient iron.

  As Leitos came closer, an opening materialized at the base of the tower, and beyond this was a deeply inset passageway four times the height of a man, and half again as wide. A faint blue glow pushed out into the bitter storm, much like the light that had lit the Throat of Balaam. The tower and the Throat might be connected. If so, perhaps there was a way he could return to Yato. If not, at least he had a place to defend against attack.

  Closer he came, until the tower’s bulk blocked the worst of the wind. Here, patches of snow and rocky ground shared space with scattered bits of black iron. Despite his hasty flight, he saw deep etchings cov
ering the largest pieces of metal, angular glyphs that brought to mind anger and misery. Doubtless, they were a creation of demon-born.

  Leitos sprinted down the passage until reaching a massive doorway. All that was left of the doors were chunks of twisted iron hanging from great hinges still bolted to the walls. Without doors to bar, he had no means to keep the Alon’mahk’lar at bay.

  He scrambled deeper into the tower, desperately searching for anything to use as a barrier. Leitos halted when he stepped over a row of squared notches set in the stone floor. A quick upward glance showed a matching row of thick metal spikes jutting from a slot in the ceiling. A portcullis.

  Leitos looked over his shoulder. Beyond the passageway, a troupe of huge figures clad in furs and studded leather plunged toward the tower. Alon’mahk’lar. A dozen at least. Pairs of twisting horns jutted from each demon-born’s head, and below the upper horns, another set swept down to protect their thick necks. They called to one another in a harsh tongue. The voices of Mahk’lar and Alon’mahk’lar could bring stout men and unflinching women to their knees, leave them shivering in terror until shackles bound their limbs, or death found them. Sixteen years in the Faceless One’s mines had given Leitos some small resistance to that consuming dread. A very small resistance.

  Holding tight to his wits, Leitos pushed deeper into the tower. The entry passage ended at a chamber hazed with blue light. On a wall nearby, he found a corroded bronze lever, and next to this a wooden wheel banded with iron, and with handgrips jutting from its outer edge.

  Leitos tried to spin the wheel first. It clacked back and forth, but wouldn’t turn. He dropped his sword and scabbard, moved to the lever, and yanked it down. It inched down, then ground to a stop.

  The bellowing demon-born sounded closer.