Within a handful of strides outside the passage, Adham was soaked to the skin. Lightning flashed almost continuously, lighting the premature darkness and silvering the rain. Thunder contended with the voice of the wind and the wet rustle of fluttering leaves. The rest of the company vanished quickly into the storm.
“Where is he, girl?” Adham asked, having to lean in close.
Saving her breath, Belina pointed uphill, and set off at a blistering pace. Adham ran with his sword out, the flashes of lightning turning the steel into a blade of rippling quicksilver. Making out a potential enemy beyond a few strides would be impossible. Adham concentrated on keeping his footing over the muddy slope. Belina never slowed, and they soon reached a small clearing surrounded by brush and trees.
Breathing hard, Adham scanned the darkness, waiting for the next flash of lightning. When it came, he saw several dark mounds lying on the ground.
“Gods good and wise!” he shouted, running to the closest one. He halted above the figure, but the erratic light showed him a Kelren, cleaved nearly in two. He glanced up to find Belina moving from one motionless form to another.
After she finished, she shook her head. “He’s not here.”
Adham rolled the Kelren at his feet. The next crash of lightning revealed that the man’s grisly wounds looked burned along the edges. Adham had never seen the like. What happened here? It was a question he could not force himself to ask, for fear of the answer. In his mind, he saw Leitos in the Faceless One’s throne room again, a walking corpse in place of his son.
“Would Leitos have gone after the sea-wolves by himself?” Belina asked at his elbow.
Adham’s gaze swept over the scattered dead, a negative answer caught behind his teeth. Before Leitos had entered the Throat of Balaam that last time, Adham would never have guessed his son would seek out the Faceless One on his own. But he had, and eagerly. And if the Faceless One really was Peropis, then what were a few sea-wolves to the man who had willingly faced a goddess?
“Yes,” he said slowly, thinking again of the Kelrens’ charred wounds.
“Witch’s Mole is not large,” Belina said, “but it’s far too large for us to search alone.”
Adham narrowed his eyes against the rain. After a moment, he said, “Besides Zera’s grave, there are a few places he might have gone.”
“Then let us begin.”
~ ~ ~
Leitos held the image of the golden spindle in his mind, imagined his fingers just short of caressing those ever-winding threads. The storm that beat against him could not touch him, any more than his enemies had been able to, those he left to bleed all over the island. He sensed more of them waiting up ahead, doubtless thinking they were safe. Such was a fanciful illusion he would soon dispel.
Without a care, Leitos strode across the boulder-strewn headland, his steps light, graceful. He was just another shadow in the rain-lashed gloom. But he knew that was not true. He was more than shadow, he was both the light of day and the dark of night, for as long as he held the thrumming heart of all life—the golden spindle, and the power within it.
When lightning flashed, the Horns of Memokk reared in the distance. Ages past, the horns had not been horns at all, but the feet of a great stone arch. At some point, the arch had shattered, leaving behind a pair of blunted stone hooks. When training to become a Brother, he had come here whenever he could. It was a good place to fish, a good place to think. Tonight, it would become a good place to exact judgment on the worst traitors of humanity, those who were human themselves, but who had sworn fealty to Peropis, in all her guises.
Leitos let his senses stretch out from him, until he felt the pulsing life of the sea-wolves hunkered down amid jumbles of rock up ahead. He paused when he detected an undulating radiance hovering behind a boulder. He had learned that those strange auras belonged to living things.
He stepped briskly around the edge of the leaning slab of stone and into the midst of a dozen sea-wolves. When another stab of lighting brightened the world, men and women turned toward him, their lips peeled back from their teeth in snarls of fear.
His sword streaked low, then high. Lifeless meat and hot blood splashed over the rocks. Another step, another sweep of his blade, and a shrieking Kelren’s arm fell away, the sword it had swung clanging out of sight. A backhand stroke split the man’s face, ending his cries.
The others came, in ones and twos, and Leitos ended them. He chased down those who fled, forcing them to turn and fight. Most did, and perished. Terror compelled the last few to brave the sea. And there they died, dashed against rocks by pounding waves.
With their deaths, the silvers and blacks before Leitos’s eyes melded together, until he looked upon a stormy night that was no different than countless other stormy nights he had seen. The sense of power and vitality fled from him, as if it had never been, left him weak, defenseless, tired.
Leitos raised a frail shout to the night, challenging the storm roiling overhead, but the tempest ignored him, for he was again only a flesh and blood youth standing upon a rock at the edge of a turbulent sea. Had he ever been anything else? He wasn’t sure. Suddenly all that had happened since the moment he saw the sea-wolves assailing Belina seemed born of a twisted fever dream.
Exhausted, the chill of the rain sinking into his weary shoulders and arms, Leitos dropped onto a rain-slicked rock. When he thrust his sword and dagger into their scabbards, he noted that both were good, simple steel, not some dark material forged of demon souls.
For a long time, he sat with his head bowed. The storm gradually blew itself out, the lightning and thunder fading away first, then the wind, and finally the rain. Waves still crashed against the shore, and would for some time, but they had lost their ferocity.
Leitos closed his eyes, resting them.
Sleep must have stolen over him, for when he looked up again, the faint grays of dawn were brightening tattered clouds.
“Gods, boy! We’ve been looking all over for you!”
Leitos blinked a few times to make sure the image of his father was not going to vanish. When Adham remained, clambering over the broken headland with Belina close on his heels, Leitos allowed that both were real. “Father,” he croaked, smiling wanly.
“Little brother!” This shout came from Daris. Sumahn was several paces ahead of him, and they were picking their way closer from the opposite direction.
Leitos gave a half-hearted wave. As his hand dropped, a bloody figure with small, scarred teats and shredded breeches lurched around a boulder, not two steps behind Daris.
“Watch out!” Leitos shouted.
As Daris began to turn, the sea-wolf’s cutlass slashed. It was a clumsy, sideways chop, but it sank the edge of the blade into the side of Daris’s neck. Against the gray steel and the flat gray light, the arcing spray of blood stood out sharply. Horror transfixed Leitos and everyone else.
Everyone, save the Kelren.
Through a howling grimace, she slashed again and again. Holding one hand to his spurting neck, making a pitiful squealing sound, Daris pawed his dagger free, and tried to block the Kelren’s attack.
The terrible spell broken, Sumahn rushed back to help his friend, but was still a dozen strides away. Adham and Belina were farther still, but coming fast. Leitos was running too, but his movements were sluggish. He sought the mysterious power he had held before, sought his icy rage, sought the image of the enigmatic spindle, but they eluded him.
Beaten bloody by the rocks and the sea though she was, blind rage fueled the sea-wolf. She batted Daris’s dagger aside, stepped in close, and thrust her cutlass through his bowels. He made a retching noise, as she sawed the steel though him.
Sumahn, Adham, and Belina were all shouting, but Leitos couldn’t find his voice, could scarcely draw enough breath. He had believed he killed them all, but this crazed Kelren bitch still lived, still hunted, and now she was killing Daris.
Her blade screeched wetly when it met the Brother’s spine. Still howling, sh
e dragged him close by the collar of his robe. The sand-hued cloth was stained red. So much spreading red. Panting through a grimace, she worked the blade deeper, yanking back, then plunging deeper still.
Daris had given up the fight, and was now struggling weakly to get away from the monster before him. She held him fast. They both went down when their feet tangled through his spilling entrails.
Sumahn seemed to be flying over the rocks, his sword waving overhead, but it also seemed that he was getting no closer. Adham was roaring shocked curses. A high, unbroken scream came from Belina. Leitos floundered drunkenly over the rocks, still searching vainly inside himself for the enormous power that had filled him the night before.
With a bestial grunt, the Kelren clamped her teeth on Daris’s cheek, yanked back, stretching the skin. A high-pitched cry passed Daris’s teeth, “Eeeeeeeeee!”
The sea-wolf tugged harder, ripping away a mouthful Daris’s face. He battered her, his blows feeble, ineffectual. She spat out his flesh, lunged again, and snapped off his nose. His whine began a bubbling snort. She spat, made to take another bite out of him, but Sumahn’s sword crashed through the top of her skull.
After kicking the corpse aide, Sumahn knelt beside Daris and hushed him with gentle, soothing, meaningless words. Adham joined them, but Belina stopped a few paces back, a hand over her mouth. When she looked at Leitos, he saw Daris’s death in her gaze. He halted, unwilling to go any closer.
Chapter 24
The small company of Yatoans and Brothers of the Crimson Shield stood next to the cairn they had built over Daris. Even in clean warm sunlight, it looked as old as Zera’s grave, lying a few feet away.
Leitos tried to remember if her stony sepulcher had ever seemed new, but he could only remember it as it was now. Weathered and ancient, a forgotten monument.
We should do better for our dead, he thought, but the how of it escaped him, just as Daris’s constant laughter was already fading into the depths of his memory. But Leitos could see the way he died. He worried that scene would never fade.
“It was my fault,” he whispered. Speaking any louder was impossible. Even long hours after Daris fell, Leitos still could not catch his breath.
“Don’t be foolish,” Adham said. “How could you have known the waves had not broken that crazed wench to pieces?”
“That’s not what I mean,” Leitos said. He wasn’t sure if he should explain what had happened after he touched.... What did I touch, colorful threads winding around some celestial spindle? Even spoken in his mind, it sounded insane, like something Ba’Sel might say in his deepening madness. But something uncommon had happened to him, he just didn’t know what.
Belina had not mentioned to anyone what she had seen him do to her attackers. If she had, he would have received worse than sympathetic nods. All anyone seemed to know was that Leitos had found a pack of Kelrens terrorizing Belina, and he had acted accordingly. Perhaps even foolishly, when he later pursued the rest of the sea-wolves scattered over Witch’s Mole.
So far, patrols had found the seventy-three dead men and women that Leitos had slaughtered. Of the living, there were none. Killing so many should have left some kind of mark on Leitos, but the more time that passed, the murkier it all became. It was as though a protective, numbing cloak had fallen over his wits.
With hooded eyes, Adham’s glanced at their fellow mourners, then pulled Leitos farther off. “Well, what do you mean?”
Leitos almost restrained the words, but the dam broke. “Something happened to me, and I think it has to do with the Powers of Creation.” He wanted to add more, but he was not sure how to explain the idea that he had somehow caught hold of the linchpin that powered the world, and everything else.
“Truly?” Adham asked, and Leitos saw a hint of recognition pass over his father’s face.
Leitos suddenly remembered how he and Ulmek had behaved when they went with him into the Throat of Balaam after Adu’lin. After passing through the blue veil and into the throne room, he had felt different, cold, and somehow more than himself. When he had spoken to Adham and Ulmek, his voice had sounded strange. To his eyes, they had been pale as ghosts, with gossamer strands of light rising from their skin and making undulating auras—just like the Kelrens the night before. When he had told Adham and Ulmek what he was seeing, they claimed that it was him that had changed, not them.
Quickly, Leitos reminded his father of that moment, and as he spoke, Adham’s face became a brooding mask. When he finished, Leitos said, “You know something you have never told me. Tell me now.” His tone left no room for denial or hedging.
With a resigned sigh, Adham explained, “My father told me that when Prince Varis Kilvar came out of the temple in the Qaharadin Marshes, he was not the boy he had been before he went in. Kian said Varis looked like a living corpse. Soon after, the princeling summoned—maybe created, is the better word—a murderous root-serpent to lay waste to his protectors. And when that was not enough, he began burning them to ash with bolts of unnatural fire. When I saw you in the Throat, I was reminded of that story.”
Leitos swallowed. “Why haven’t you told me of this before now?”
“I didn’t want to believe that you and Varis had anything in common.” He gave Leitos a pleading look. “I told myself I must have imagined it all. Ulmek must have thought the same, because he never mentioned it, either. Truth told, boy, I didn’t want to believe it.”
“I’m not Prince Varis Kilvar,” Leitos said.
“Of course not,” Adham agreed. He hesitated before adding, “But you are something more than anyone of the Valara line has been ... and that more makes you closer to whatever Prince Varis was, or became.”
“How do I stop it,” Leitos asked, dread gnawing at him. He knew well enough that Varis had shattered the Well of Creation and the barrier separating the demon realm from the realms of men, and that he had nearly become a living god. Peropis had surely played her part, but it had been a foolish and ambitious youth who had brought destruction upon the face of the world.
“My father rarely spoke of the Powers of Creation,” Adham admitted. “They were a mystery to him, much as they are to me, much as they are to all humankind.” His gray eyes became stern. “Best to avoid them. Best to not even think of them. Such power was never meant for the hands of men.”
Leitos nodded at the common refrain.
Adham left him with a wary glance, and Ulmek took his place.
“We depart first thing on the morrow,” the Brother said, gazing somberly at the two graves.
“I’ll be ready,” Leitos said.
Ulmek began to speak, paused, then said, “What you did last night, little brother, has brought honor to our order. I only wish we had a thousand more of you. If so, we wouldn’t need to build an army.”
Leitos was not about to explain how he had done what he had, especially since he could hardly explain it to himself. “If I had not found the sea-wolves, and saw what they intended for Belina, I might not have done anything.”
Ulmek’s black eyes flashed when he laughed. “Oh, little brother, I know you better than that. I expect the outcome would have been the same—though, I trust that next time you will leave a few enemies for the rest of us?”
“Of course,” Leitos said uneasily. Ulmek clapped him on the shoulder, and moved off down the hill toward the sanctuary.
Others came and went, offering praise or condolences. Belina came last, hesitant, her eyes following Sumahn and Nola as they moved away.
Leitos watched Sumahn for a moment, as well. He and Daris had been as close as trueborn brothers. Without Daris’s jests and laughter to counter Sumahn’s rages, Leitos feared the youth might journey to the darkest places of his heart, and never return. He feared that, yet at the same time knew rage and mercilessness were the best weapons they had against Peropis and her vast armies. Grow strong and cruel, Adham had once told him. More than ever, they all must heed that advice.
When Belina looked back at Leitos, her
gaze lifted no higher than his chin. Leitos winced to see her swollen cheek. It was not as bad as it had been at dawn, but it looked painful. “I wish I had found you sooner.”
Belina fidgeted, swallowed, cleared her throat. “You got there just in time.”
He searched her face, saw something he didn’t like. “You bear no shame—you know that, don’t you?”
She hugged her arms around herself, and a tremble shook her shoulders. He stepped closer, gently took her in his arms. She flinched, just a little, then she was squeezing him tight. “I thought—I knew—they were going to....”
“But they didn’t,” Leitos said.
“I’m glad you came,” she said against his shoulder. “I’m glad you made them afraid.” She looked up into his eyes, and said with deadly intensity, “I’m glad you killed them the way you did.”
A question lurked in her gaze. How did you do it? But, once again, he found himself unable to answer what she wanted to know. Instead, he remained silent and held her. For now it seemed enough for Belina. And for himself, he could finally breathe again.
Chapter 25
Oarlocks creaked in the night, driving the longboats toward shore. Above them, the Sleeping Widow was a sleepy gray eye sharing the heavens with a glittering sweep of stars. Shapes rising out of the gently rolling swells caught Belina’s eye. At first she had believed they were rocks, but now realized they were the remnants of buildings—peaked roofs and shattered domes, broken spires and square towers. The shoreline, an irregular silhouette of rough hills, was still a mile or more away, but somehow the bones of a dead city jutted from the sea. She had heard tales of the Upheaval all her life, but the destruction she saw here, off the coast of southern Geldain, already dwarfed anything she had ever come across on any of the isles of Yato.
Heirs of the Fallen: Book 04 - Wrath of the Fallen Page 14
