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

by James A. West

  Belina stepped closer. “You do understand, don’t you?” She searched his face, shaking her head. “You know, but still you cannot condemn Zera. When you first told us of her, outside the Throat, do you know why we were so eager to learn more about her?”

  Leitos thought back. “I believed you wanted to see her.”

  Belina’s laugh was bitter. “No, Leitos. We wanted to make her pay some small price for what her kind had done to us. We wanted her dead, and seeing this pile of rock marking her grave—” she turned and spat on the cairn “—pleases my heart.” Her gaze narrowed to menacing slits. “At the same time, it disgusts me that you’ve honored her, when you should have left her rotting carcass for the vultures.”

  “I loved her,” Leitos said again, just above a whisper.

  “Then you are a fool.”

  Heat flushed Leitos’s cheeks. “Yet, according to you, I’m also the hope of the world.”

  “I’m beginning to think I was wrong!”

  Belina left him standing there. Leitos watched her go, anger and confusion warring in his chest.

  Just before she dropped below the crest of the hilltop, she spun back and screamed, “You are a blind fool!” She stood there a moment, waiting for him to respond. When he didn’t, she whirled and stomped out of sight.

  Leitos listened to the wind, part of him hoping she would come back, another part glad she was gone.

  “That didn’t go so well,” Zera said at his elbow.

  Leitos’s sword was out before he had turned to face her.

  Zera’s gaze was alight with emerald fire. “I shouldn’t have to remind you, I’m already dead.”

  Leitos put a few strides between them, and rammed his sword into the scabbard. “Are you real, or are you something else, a creation of my mind?”

  Zera stepped close, caught his face between her hands, and kissed him deeply. “Did that seem real?”

  Head spinning, he stumbled back, struggling to get his wits in order. “Answer me!”

  “What could I say that would make you believe what your eyes and lips have already told you?” She folded her arms across her chest. “We often accept what our minds tell us to believe. Recall what you were thinking a moment ago, about the Fauthians and slavemasters.”

  “So you are a fancy of my own creation.”

  “And yet you felt my lips upon yours. Can we imagine so perfectly as to feel what is not real? Or, in believing what is real, do we make our own reality?”

  “What are you going on about?” Leitos demanded.

  “Think of your grandfather in his sanctuary, a place he created from a fragment of his own memory. Was that real?”

  “Yes ... no ... I....” Leitos trailed off, frowning. “It seemed real, but how could it have been? It was built from a moment that has come and gone, centuries ago. I don’t know what to think.”

  “But you do know, Leitos. You felt the ground under your boots, breathed the air of that place, felt the warmth of its sun, did you not?”

  “Yes,” Leitos admitted. “But it is impossible.”

  “For most, it is.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Zera looked in the direction the Kelrens sailed from the first dawn after Leitos’s testing. The turquoise swells of the Sea of Sha’uul rolled endlessly on, as if fleeing the coming storm prowling the horizon. “The reason humans have never been able to defeat the Faceless One—”

  “Peropis,” Leitos interjected.

  “Does the name of your enemy change anything? No, of course not. Now, as I was saying, the reason Peropis stands on the brink of absolute victory, is because all who have been washed in the Powers of Creation cannot fully exploit those powers. Your minds are too small, too weak, too limited in focus and imagination. Those powers were given to the Three by Pa’amadin, and truly were never meant for the shriveled understanding of men.”

  Leitos struggled to contain his irritation. “Then why fight at all. Why not surrender, and be done with it?”

  “Perhaps that is the better choice,” Zera said, shrugging. “But your incompetence is also your greatest strength.”

  “Talk sense,” Leitos snapped.

  Glowering, Zera explained, “Peropis sees humankind as little more than creeping insects—annoying, to be sure, but never a true threat.”

  “Did she feel that way when my grandfather defeated her?” Leitos asked, recalling Adham’s story of that encounter.

  Zera snorted. “One man in the last two hundred years was able to stifle her plans, but only for a short time. Kian did not defeat her. That same man also fought against her hordes, but could only slow their advance, never hold them at bay. Year by year, Peropis’s armies took more and more ground, slaughtered more and more warriors. And now all the lands across the Sea of Drakarra are fallen. And that one man who led them, the great Kian Valara? He is dead and gone.”

  “What has any of this to do with humankind’s incompetence in using the Powers of Creation?”

  “Only this, Leitos. Peropis has learned that she has nothing to fear from your kind. Even the man who momentarily blocked her efforts to take this world as her own, eventually fell.”

  “So I ask again, why not surrender, and be done with it?”

  Zera looked at him as if he were daft. “Your apparent weakness, Leitos, humankind’s proven inability to wield the Powers of Creation, has become Peropis’s greatest weakness. Her surety has created a blind spot.”

  Leitos laughed. “When I reach Kula-Tak, I’ll be sure to keep in mind what you have told me. I’m sure it’ll be very helpful when I poke my dagger into Peropis’s heart.”

  “If you reach Kula-Tak, no dagger is going to help you.”

  “Then what will?” Leitos asked suspiciously.

  “Believing this is a war of steel and blood was your grandfather’s mistake. You’d be well-served not to make the same error.”

  “If not blood and steel, then what?”

  “Spirit,” she said, “and the Powers of Creation.”

  “I have no skill with these powers.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Leitos said, and he was. He could admit something strange had happened inside the Throat of Balaam, when he had forged a black sword from the essence of Mahk’lar souls, and when he had encased the Faceless One in a pillar of darkness, but those things had been little more than useful accidents. Even now those events were vague in his recollection, just broken pieces of a strange dream. It was easier to believe that Peropis had done it to put him off balance, and then brought him to Izutar, where she could kill him at leisure.

  But she had failed to defeat him, and her failure had nothing to do with him using the Powers of Creation. His living hands wrapped around her puppet’s throat, and his sword frozen in its scabbard crushing that puppet’s skull, had led him to victory. His strength and steel were all he needed, and all he dared put faith in.

  Zera seemed to read his thoughts, and the dissatisfaction was plain upon her face. Seeing it angered him.

  “Perhaps it’s time for you to go back to wherever you came from,” he said, “be it the Thousand Hells, or my mind.”

  “Perhaps it is time,” she said, and it came as no surprise to him that she vanished. One moment there, and the next gone, as if she had never been at his side.

  Chapter 21

  “Do you know where you are?” Ulmek asked Ba’Sel.

  Adham kept his eyes on the man, seeking some indication of awareness. Damoc looked like he rather be anywhere else than in the presence of a madman.

  Ba’Sel ceased rocking long enough to gaze around the gloomy cavern. His black eyes widened a touch, then he began nodding. “The twenty-eighth sanctuary after the hole in the cliff with Nazeen! Sixth after the virgin Crown of the Setting Sun, far north up the Emperor’s Highroad, along the Spine of Geldain.” He grinned like a happy fool. “But this singing rock is the first we ever found that floats upon the sea ... Witch’s Mole!”

  His excit
ement faded, replaced by concern. “Peropis is close. She stalks nearer, always seeking. She hunts day and night. I can feel her against my skin—” his hands caressed his arms “—I can taste her on my tongue—” he poked his tongue out and waggled it obscenely to demonstrate.

  “You have nothing to fear,” Ulmek said, looking between Adham and Damoc. “Peropis is locked in Geh’shinnom’atar.”

  Ba’Sel’s tongue went back with a slurp, and his lips twisted in distaste. “She’s free now,” he muttered. “Seeking. Hunting.” He started rocking again, arms closing around his chest. “It’s dangerous here. Better to hide. Always run and hide. Never fight. Keep to the shadows, seek the deep—but not where Peropis sleeps! Never there!” Rocking, muttering. “She hunts the last blood of Valara ... her choicest meat and wine.”

  Adham moved away, motioning for Ulmek and Damoc to leave Ba’Sel to his crazed ramblings. “If you give that man a sword, he’s like to cut off his own leg.”

  “Or one of our throats,” Damoc added, nodding to the twenty-odd Yatoans he had persuaded to join his side. “We ought to leave him here, where he can’t hurt anyone.”

  “Never,” Ulmek said. “He saved my life when I was a boy, at great risk to himself and the Brothers. I’ll not abandon him like a sickly dog.”

  “Carrying him along puts us all in danger,” Adham warned, hating that he had to say what Ulmek should already know.

  “Be that as it may,” Ulmek said, “I’ll not leave him.”

  Damoc moved closer. “Then he’s your burden, not mine, not my clan. And if the time ever comes when he threatens our lives, in any way, I will strike him down first, then seek you out.”

  A dangerous gleam sparkled in Ulmek’s eyes. “That, friend, would be a foolish mistake.”

  “Are you two finished?” Adham growled. He had seen the same too many times before, proud men so eager to fight an elusive enemy that they began squabbling amongst themselves. “If not, then shut your festering gobs, draw steel, and have at it. If you are finished,” he went on after the two men moved apart, “then let’s get back to figuring the best way to slaughter a few sea-wolves.”

  Ulmek and Damoc glanced sidelong at each other, and nodded grudgingly.

  “Very good,” Adham said. “But I still say putting steel into Ba’Sel’s hand is too risky.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Ulmek nodded. “Agreed.” He glanced briefly at his old friend and quickly away, as if the sight of him was akin to drinking poison.

  And it is, Adham thought. Poison to the company, and poison to their endeavor. With great reluctance, he decided to trust Ulmek’s choice. He also decided he must keep an eye on Ba’Sel.

  Ulmek knelt to draw a rough outline of Witch’s Mole on the cavern’s sandy floor. He made a mark for the sanctuary, then marks for the separate groups of Kelrens.

  “Here,” he said, pointing at the western shore of the island, where Adham and Leitos had earlier watched the rutting Kelrens, “is the best place to trap them all. The cliffs here and here block them from escaping in any direction, save to the north—and that way is narrow, unless they swim out to sea.”

  Adham studied the map. “What about the path up through the boulders we used to get into the sanctuary? From what I remember, those boulders need only a little shove to get them rolling. We should post someone there. If few sea-wolves try to escape that way, we will crush them under a rockslide.”

  “Just so,” Ulmek said. He glanced at Damoc. “The best person is one we would rather not have in the fight, just now.”

  “All my people can fight,” Damoc said, puffing out his chest.

  “And we do not doubt it,” Ulmek said. “But, perhaps, there is someone you’d rather have wait a while longer, before throwing herself into a battle?”

  Damoc blinked as Ulmek’s meaning became clear. “Nola. She’ll not like it, but—

  “—But if we tell her just how crucial the mission is,” Adham said, knowing a little something about placating warriors, “she’ll be willing. Sumahn should join her, as he knows best how and when to start kicking rocks down onto the heads of our foes.”

  “We’ll need his sword on the beach,” Ulmek protested.

  “Do you really believe one extra sword is going to change the outcome? We’ll either succeed, or we won’t. But if the Kelrens should bolt for that path and escape into the sanctuary, we’ll have lost the advantage of surprise.”

  “I see your point,” Ulmek said, eyes flickering back to the map.

  After a moment, Damoc asked, “How exactly do you propose we get all the Kelrens in one place?”

  “We attack each group, kill those we can, then flee, leading them where we want them to go.”

  “Easy as that, is it?”

  “Nothing we do will be easy,” Ulmek said to the elder. “But this will work.”

  “We should set out as soon as Leitos returns,” Adham said, searching the cavern but not seeing his son.

  Damoc looked around as well, and as he did, his eyebrows pinched together. “Where is Belina?”

  “Last I saw her,” Ulmek said, “was before I sent Leitos off.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Adham said, but could not deny the sudden worry in his chest.

  Chapter 22

  The wind had picked up by the time Leitos left Zera’s grave, and the clouds in the west had turned menacing shades of gray and black. As he started down the slope and into a grove of scraggly trees, lightning began tasting the white-capped sea with forked tongues. Thunder pealed, still far off, but getting closer.

  Leitos counted the coming storm a blessing, and prayed for a bit more luck in the coming hours against the sea-wolves. As ever, the Silent God of All remained silent, but Leitos was sure Ulmek, Adham, and Damoc had not been quiet in determining the best strategy for defeating their foes.

  Lower down, the wind shook trees and brush into a skeletal clatter, and sent leaves skipping over the ground. Leitos followed a trail he had spent many a day running up and down when training to become a Brother of the Crimson Shield. He had intended to angle off to the east and enter the sanctuary from that side of the island, but his feet took him in the opposite direction.

  He did not know just where he was headed, until he saw a particular tree growing up through a scatter of large rocks. Leitos moved to the tree and knelt down. He hesitated, then scraped away a tangle of dead grass covering a rocky hole. He had never seen any serpents on the island, but he still held off poking his hand into the hollow. His reluctance, he was forced to admit, had nothing to do with snakes, or any other creature that might have made a den of the hole. Instead, it was the idea that he’d be better served to leave the past buried and forgotten.

  He abruptly reached into the dark opening, knuckles scraping against sharp stones and roots. For a moment, he was sure that what he sought was gone, then his fingers fell upon a small cloth bundle. He pulled it out and sat back on his heels. Dust puffed from the coarse parcel resting on his lap, and the hooting wind carried it away. A pull on the tail of a hempen cord released the knot holding it all together, and a golden torque tumbled free into the summer-yellowed grass. He stared at it as if it were, indeed, a serpent.

  His final test to become a Brother had been to steal a few treasures from his fellows without them discovering his presence. The torque had belonged to Halan, likely taken from some forgotten bone-town in Geldain. The man’s snores had led Leitos through the darkness that night, and it had been nothing to take the prize and flee. Not for the first time, he wondered how much of that escape had been skill on his part, and how much of it had been Halan allowing him to escape.

  Leitos unwrapped the bundle a little more and found Sumahn’s dagger. In the diminished light of day, he saw that it was no treasure at all, but a rusted bit of steel. Most of the leather wrapping the hilt had rotted off. Still, it might have some sentimental value to Sumahn, and he deserved to get it back. Last out of the bundle was Daris’s small wooden box, its sides and top
deeply engraved with fanciful designs. Doubtless, he’d want it.

  Leitos bundled the dagger and the box back into the swatch of cloth and retied the cord. He carefully returned Halan’s golden torque into the hollow and covered it again with grass. As a final touch, he placed a few stones over the hole. Like Zera’s simple grave, it was the best he could do to honor the fallen Brother.

  The wind fluttered something at the edge of his sight. Leitos checked his surroundings again, saw nothing but trees and bushes, then stood and moved closer. There was a clump of hair caught in the grass. A slimy chill coated his gut. The hair, dark and long, was held together by a small patch of skin still wet with blood.

  Tucking the bundle into his robe, Leitos moved in an expanding circle, looking for signs. Twenty strides from where he had buried Halan’s torque, he found drops of blood splashed over an area of trampled grass. At the edge of that spot, he found a pair of drag marks, perhaps made by someone’s heels. They lead out of sight around a tall dense thicket.

  A noise turned him. Head cocked, senses alert, he faced the thicket. For a time, nothing unusual came to his ears. Then he caught a muffled shriek, followed by a round of gruff laughter. The nasty slime coating his insides froze solid.

  Leitos flung himself to his belly. Before he set off through the thicket, he reluctantly abandoned the bundle tucked into his robe. Crawling with it would be impossible. He began inching over dried leaves and prickly branches. The wind masked his movements, allowing him to move quickly.

  He came to the far side, saw no one, and exited the brambles to take cover in the notch of a split boulder. From farther down the hillside, he heard another muffled scream and more laughter.