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

by James A. West

  Another arrow struck his back. Leitos wheeled to face the cowardly foe, but now his sword arm refused to work. He switched hands and charged into the ring of men and demon-born. A third and a fourth prick of fire blossomed in his ribs. He tried to raise the sword, but his hand was empty. He tried to breathe, but it seemed he was sucking in water instead of air.

  Something hard crashed against the side of his head, and a splash of blood obliterated the sight of one eye. He reeled drunkenly, as a muffled rushing noise filled his ears. Sneering faces blurred before him. Leitos stumbled, reached out with hooked fingers, wanting to gouge out the eyes of his foes. He never touched the first enemy. Whatever had hit his head fell again, crashing between his neck and shoulder.

  He fell and lay gasping, blood thick on his tongue, and defeat screaming in his mind.

  Chapter 34

  “Come to me.” Soft, comforting, familiar. Almost Zera’s voice, but not.

  “Where are you?” Leitos asked, wondering if the golden spindle turning in the darkness before him had grown a voice. It seemed unlikely, yet....

  “I am where I have been since my end.”

  Leitos blinked at that, now sure the voice was coming from the spindle. But how could a thing created within his mind speak?

  Because it was created within your mind, came a laughing response. Again, the voice was almost Zera’s, but harsher than the first.

  “Do not believe the deceiver,” said the gentle one.

  Leitos did not trust either voice. A dream, then.

  The gentle one spoke again. “Are the arrows in your flesh a dream?”

  Mention of those brought him pain, not too much, but enough to remember that something terrible had happened. Fire replaced the spindle, and faces hovered within those flames. Faces of men. Faces of demon-born. All furious, all taunting.

  “Am I dead?”

  Kian’s words came to mind. What is death, but another realm of living? It’s just that in this age, the living and the dead are much closer together than they should be, two sides of the same coin, but without the middle. Adham had said those ideas were born of the madness that infected all who lived too long after being washed in the Powers of Creation.

  You are dead, came the harsh voice.

  “You are not dead,” soothed the other.

  Leitos’s laughter was devoid of humor. “Which of you am I to believe?”

  No answer.

  The flames vanished, and once more the golden spindle turned and turned, the silver hook on one end gathering up the colorful chaos of innumerable threads, twisting them into a single cable, dragging it over the revolving whorl, and winding it along the shaft. When the cord reached the top, it stretched off into the black.

  “Come to me.” Gentle.

  Come to me. Harsh.

  “To the Thousand Hells with you both,” Leitos snarled, and opened his eyes on sunlight glaring off sand dimpled with footprints and speckled with blood. His blood, and also some other dark, foul smelling stuff, all of it swarming with flies. The gruesome mixture was running in trickles down his naked legs, collecting on his toes, and falling ... falling ... falling into the dust around a slender pole sunk into the ground beneath him.

  Leitos tried to move his hands, but they were bound against the small of his back. He tried to lift his head, but blinding white pain stabbed into his neck, spread through the rest of his body. His insides felt torn open, broken, a pain so great that his mind could not fully contend with its enormity.

  Shuddering, he waited for some measure of the agony to pass. It only grew worse. He tried to catch his breath, but couldn’t. He tried to swallow, and gagged. Something was lodged in his throat.

  Teeth gritted against a whimpery cry, he tried to look up again. Bones crackled in his neck, his muscles screamed in a voice of scarlet agony, but he finally managed to raise his head, but only to one side. Something rigid kept him from looking straight ahead or turning. Panting, he rested his ear on one shoulder, blinked against the glare.

  Across a hundred paces of pale red sand, people sat watching him. Clad in dusty tunics and dead silent, they were arrayed in a wide crescent. Ten or more rows of them, rising up one behind the other. The last row ended below a curved wall studded with thin poles, and upon those dangled limp pennants. Vultures circled higher still, black scrawls wheeling through sun-washed blue.

  He searched for the name of what he was seeing, something his father had spoken of when they were both slaves, after a long day of breaking rock in the mines. Adham had told him such places had once been used for games and contests. An arena.

  A low moan off to one side.

  Leitos rolled his eyes, and saw that Ba’Sel had not escaped, after all. An involuntary groan passed Leitos’s lips. His mentor hung naked ten feet off the ground, skewered by a tapered wooden post topped with a maroon-streaked point of burnished steel. Beyond him hung more men. Yatoans. Those few who had pledged to fight Peropis, those who had trusted in Leitos’s belief that the enslaved of Geldain would rise up against their masters, if only someone showed them they could. Instead, his companions had been pierced, while the folk they had sought to free sat in silent attendance, offering no help.

  Leitos’s groan became a fearful sob when he realized that he was on a level with his impaled companions. Of their own volition, his eyes turned upward to find a steel point jabbing toward the sky above him. He closed his eyes. He wanted to go back to the place where the spindle turned, and hide there forever.

  That desire eluded him.

  Within the void of his mind, he heard another of Adham’s tales, this one about how Alon’mahk’lar took great care in threading men, and how it was common for their victims to live on for many grueling days, before death finally stole them away.

  When he heard the rattle of harnesses and the creak of axles, Leitos refused to open his eyes. He did not want to know what was coming before him. He heard a soft murmur from the seated denizens of Zuladah, and he couldn’t refuse any longer.

  Muranna stood atop the seat of a long wagon, much like those used by gate guards to collect the king’s obligations. She wore regal blue-and-cream silks. A delicate golden crown held her braided hair in place.

  Leitos’s gaze fell to the contents of the wagon—another impaled man, but his post had been driven through him in the opposite direction, so that the thick end was buried in his neck, thrusting his head to one side at a severe angle. The man’s mouth opened and closed weakly. No sound came. Neither could he see, for his eyes had been sewn shut. Blood was caked in his long, iron-gray hair. It took a moment longer for Leitos to recognize that the gasping man was his father.

  “No,” he cried. The effort brought on a fit of coughing, which in turn extended a spasming agony through every inch of him.

  Muranna smiled up at Leitos. “It seems I did not need you or Ulmek to give me a crown after all.”

  “Why did you betray us?” Leitos rasped.

  She laughed softly, and sunlight glinted off her golden circlet. “What sort of fool would willfully live in fear of the true master of this world? Better to bow to Peropis, gain her favor and a crown, than to stand against her and face a death as certain and unpleasant as yours is sure to be.”

  Muranna made a great show of looking over the skewered men. “A pity Ulmek is not here to see what awaits traitors. Well, that is of no matter,” she sighed, “and a mercy besides.”

  At her gesture, two Alon’mahk’lar stalked into view, their black-slashed crimson hides oiled with sweat. Studded leather kilts hid their legs to the heavy sandals they wore. They halted beside the wagon, one at each end of Adham’s post. Lifting him easily, they planted the thick end of the post into a hole in the ground, and raised it up. Moaning, Adham hung upside-down. A hissing wheeze tore from his throat as they carelessly packed dirt back into the hole. The murmur from the stands rose to an excited pitch.

  “Don’t do this,” Leitos begged.

  “We all serve a master, little brother,�
�� Muranna said in a mocking tone. “And this,” she said with a gesture toward Adham, “is demanded of me.”

  The demon-born went back to the wagon. One retrieved a large golden bowl. The other drew out something that resembled a long, narrow trough of beaten silver. It was open on one end, and the other end was shaped into something akin to a flat spoon the breadth of a man’s shoulders. As the Alon’mahk’lar went to stand under Adham, the crowd became livelier still. Quiet at first, then louder, a chant filled the arena.

  From the darkness between the stars,

  Came He, the Lord of Light,

  To deliver peace and safety upon all lands.

  Praise the Faceless One,

  He who suffers the unworthy.

  Praise the Faceless One,

  He who blesses the contemptible.

  Bow to His wisdom,

  Bow to His righteous judgment.

  Praise be to the Merciful One,

  Praise be to the Lord of Light and Shadow.

  “There is no Faceless One!” Leitos howled, and fell again to coughing and gagging.

  “Don’t trouble yourself with these fools and to whom they pay homage,” Muranna said. “Your hope for them, I fear, was always wasted.”

  “No,” Leitos wept. He refused to accept that. He had been a slave once, and he had believed the lies his slavemasters told him. Surely the chanting slaves around him would see the truth, as well, if only he could show them.

  “No?” Muranna looked at him with mock astonishment. “Why would you think differently? How many generations have given most of what they have as obligations to one merciless king after another? How long have they suffered misery and humiliation, and never once had a thought to stand against their oppressors? How long have they given their sons into bondage, and their daughters into the hands of the Alon’mahk’lar to be ravished?”

  “They are humankind.”

  Muranna snorted, and the twist of her lips erased her stately bearing. “They are less than shit, boy, and do not deserve the wretched lives they are allowed to have. Even base creatures will seek to escape suffering, yet these mindless fools fall on their faces and beg for punishment. Listen to them, Leitos,” Muranna invited, waving a hand over the still chanting crowd. “Even now, even knowing what is about to befall one of their own kind, they summon their master.”

  Leitos struggled against the pain burning through the center of him. “I warned you of Peropis’s intentions. When she has gained the power she needs to become flesh, you will suffer eternity with the rest of us.”

  Muranna shook her head. “After I cut King Rothran’s beating heart from his body, Peropis spoke to me through a ... a tear in the fabric of this world.”

  Leitos chuckled, despite the searing pain in his throat. “She spoke to you from Geh’shinnom’atar—your future prison.”

  “I will trust in the word of a goddess, before that of a foolish boy.”

  “And so you have condemned us all.”

  “You were condemned the moment you came squalling into this world. Perhaps all of us were, but I will enjoy the time I have left, while you will beg and scream.” Muranna abruptly turned and nodded to the Alon’mahk’lar.

  One demon-born thrust the spoon-shaped end of the silver trough under Adham’s purpling head. The other positioned the open end over the golden bowl. As the Alon’mahk’lar closest to Adham drew its dagger and reached high, the crowds went still.

  Leitos began praying to the Silent God and Creator of All. His answer was the whisper of sharp steel raking through his father’s throat, a gargling hiss, and the tinkling patter of blood spraying against beaten silver. When Adham died, he did so mouthing words only Leitos could understand. Until our last breath, and last drop of blood.

  In that moment, Leitos hated his father for standing against their slavemasters, for daring to dream that freedom could be retaken. And he hated himself for believing in the same false dream, and for fighting so hard to gain nothing. Most of all, he hated that he had convinced some few others to join him, those who hung on spikes nearby. Thinking that last brought to mind Belina. He hoped she and Nola were dead, and that they had died quickly. If there was any mercy in the unforgiving blackness of the world, perhaps it had granted them that one small blessing.

  Chapter 35

  Belina cowered in the gloom next to Nola. Both were naked and chained to iron rings bolted to the stone floor. They could move a little, but there was no hope of escape. Chance alone had brought them together in this dusty stone chamber, with its many crude altars topped with begging women, and lighted by smoky torches. Their human and Alon’mahk’lar captors had stripped them, whipped them, and fettered them. And now the latter took their bestial pleasure.

  Tales told of the smell of fear. It was something Belina had never truly considered, until that reek assailed her nostrils. But it was no single odor. It was the smell of emptied bowels and urine and cooling blood. It was the particular scent of sweat oozing oil-thick from flayed skin, and the exhalation of panicked breaths over dry tongues.

  But for herself, Nola, and the women around her, what drove true and inescapable fear deep into their fluttering hearts was the musky scent wafting off the clotted discharge that poured from the engorged loins of Alon’mahk’lar. That foul seed overfilled wombs, escaped to run down the trembling thighs of shattered women, and dampened the floor.

  Neither was the scent of fear born of any fear of death, for what was death but the blessed escape? Fear, and the stink to which it gave rise, was birthed of the nightmare that came in the moments and hours before. Belina smelled fear on her skin, tasted it in the tears that gathered like poisoned dew upon her lips, and she prayed that she would die, that her heart would simply give out.

  A woman howled in the distance.

  Nola pressed close to Belina, squeezed her hand. “Did father escape?”

  No, little sister, but his death was swift. “Of course,” Belina said.

  “Why are you lying?”

  Belina had no breath to answer.

  “Sumahn died in my arms,” Nola said. “A man killed him, a soldier. Sumahn was helping me fight a demon-born, and a filthy betrayer put a spear through my Sumahn. I killed him. The soldier. One cut took off his head. It was not enough for his treachery.”

  Chains rattling, Belina embraced Nola. “I know, little sister, I know.”

  Another woman cried out, an ululating shriek punctuated by the eager grunts of an Alon’mahk’lar.

  Nola clutched Belina. “Will they do that to us, what they did to...?”

  “Mother?” Belina finished for her, but could say no more. Her tears wetted Nola’s dirty shoulder.

  “We cannot allow it,” Nola said, voice empty. “We must deny them the privilege.”

  “How?” Belina asked, ready to escape, if her sister had found a way.

  Nola held up her shackled wrists.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The rivets are sharp,” Nola whispered, running a finger over a pointy bit of iron joining the chain to one of her manacles.

  “I don’t see....” She trailed off, because of course she did see, and fully understood what her sister intended. Belina fingered a barbed rivet on one of her own shackles, seeking some other way to get free. Such a way might exist, but the thudding tread of an approaching demon-born destroyed her hope of finding it in time.

  “Together,” Belina said fiercely, keeping her gaze on Nola’s remaining eye in order to avoid looking on the nearing Alon’mahk’lar.

  Nola bobbed her head. “I love you, sister.”

  “I love you,” Belina said.

  Together they raised their iron bindings to their necks, gouged the rivets deep through yielding flesh. Together, in blood and pain, they found their freedom.

  Chapter 36

  Leitos avoided moving. As long as he stayed still, the pain in him remained a dull, throbbing ache. If he twitched, even a little, he felt every agonizing inch of the pole running through his
body.

  With unfocused eyes, he watched the Alon’mahk’lar that had cut his father’s throat take three wrought iron stands from the wagon, and carefully set them equidistant apart in the sand. Next they opened a small wooden chest and withdrew three glowing stones. Keys, Leitos thought. One by one, the stones—topaz, amber, and ruby—were seated into the fixtures atop the stands.

  Come to me. The soothing voice.

  Leitos waited, but the harsh voice did not speak.

  She cannot speak, for even now she is coming here.

  As the demon-born retreated, a dazzling point of light blossomed between the stands, then became a crackling, widening.... What had Muranna called it—a tear in the fabric of the world? That seemed fitting.

  Something began to emerge from that tear, a terror of lashing tentacles, an abomination from the darkness between the stars, born here in the sight of men and demon-born. The crowds hushed. The Alon’mahk’lar dropped to their faces, and Muranna bowed.

  Come to me, Leitos, before it is too late.

  Leitos watched the darkness begin to coalesce into the shape of a woman, a pale creature, her skin flawless, somehow more than flesh. She was tall, taller than most men, but far from ungainly. A cascading tumble of silver-white hair barely cloaked her nakedness. Leitos’s dry tongue seemed to wither further in his mouth. There was a perfection about her that pained him to behold. She turned slowly, taking in the sight of those in attendance. Overawed silence greeted her scrutiny.

  So this is a goddess, Leitos thought. Peropis. He now understood how she had captivated the long-dead Prince Varis Kilvar. She could have chosen anyone, and they would have worshiped her.

  Come to me! The voice in Leitos’s mind was not soothing now, but urgent. She will not harm your body, not before gathering what you hold.