The Empire of the Dead (The Godsblood Trilogy Book 1)

by Phil Tucker

  Then Akkodaisis looked to Acharsis. “Well done, Seeker. Your name?”

  “Warad,” Acharsis said, bowing his head. “These are my acolytes.”

  “Most interesting,” Akkodaisis said, returning to his throne. “And you were dispatched, I assume, by the empress?”

  “Of course,” Acharsis said. Something in the ruler’s tone had him on edge. “As soon as word of Jarek’s disturbance reached Uros, she sent us to capture him. It was an opportunity that could not be missed.”

  “Very generous of our empress,” said Akkodaisis. “And how did you come to find Jarek so quickly?”

  “Nekuul herself vouchsafed me a vision,” Acharsis replied. “I had come to inspect your ziggurat after I arrived, and, under a false name, I walked its halls. It was then that I met Rexashas, who witnessed the arrival of Nekuul’s blessing. It led me and mine to Jarek’s hiding place, where we apprehended him.”

  “You visited us over a week ago,” said Rexashas. “What took you so long to catch Jarek?”

  Acharsis smiled coldly at the man. “Demigods are not easily caught. I’m glad to say my trap went off without complications.”

  Akkodaisis leaned back in his throne. “Very impressive. But also inexplicably surprising.”

  “Oh?” Acharsis fought to keep his tone light. Sweat was running down his back, tickling his skin.

  “We all know how generous our empress is. It is she who has blessed me with this existence, she whose will guides the way of the land and whose spirit lifts us over the raging waters.”

  “Agreed,” Acharsis said, sensing the jaws of a trap closing around him. But how? What kind? Everything had gone according to plan thus far. Where did the danger lie?

  “But, even so, I cannot help but be surprised by her sending two teams of seekers to our aid.”

  A hand of stone closed around Acharsis’ heart. Ah, there it is.

  He didn’t speak. Akkodaisis had looked away from him and had lifted his hand to gesture to the side of the room. The crowd parted, and a group of five individuals clothed in identical robes trimmed with the same silver patterns stepped forward.

  Their leader inclined his head. His face was almost as cadaverous as Akkodaisis’, yet he was clearly still alive; older than Ishi, he seemed made of little more than tendon, skin, and bone. “Greetings, Seeker Warad. I am Seeker Sillush. I must confess my surprise. Despite my serving our empress as her lead seeker for nearly two decades, she has never made any mention to me of your existence.”

  Acharsis knew the ruse was over, but he kept his smile, even though it felt as dead as a rat nailed to a wall. “I am her most covert agent, Seeker Sillush. It is only Jarek’s resurgence that forced her into revealing me.”

  “Is that so?” Sillush didn’t seem impressed. “Then you will, of course, not hesitate to prove the veracity of your words by accompanying me to Nekuul’s sanctum above. Let us ask the undying goddess herself to verify your claims. A simple test that will put all doubts to rest.”

  Acharsis made a mocking bow. “I relish any opportunity to pay my deepest respects to our goddess.”

  Akkodaisis rose to his feet again as murmurs spilled out through the crowd. “Take Jarek to the warded chamber. Sillush, I ask that you and your seekers guard him yourselves until I can attend. I shall escort Warad to the sanctum myself.”

  And, like that, their plan collapsed in upon itself. But Acharsis kept calm, praying that the others would follow his example, that they wouldn’t panic and act out now, while they had no chance to escape. He bowed low as Akkodaisis stepped down from his throne. The leeches moved to surround him as the death guard began to force Jarek toward a far archway.

  He had to act now. He couldn’t reach Akkodaisis, but he couldn’t allow himself to be taken to the sanctum. Nekuul might have overlooked him thus far, but to intrude into her holiest of spaces, where the goddess herself could take form, was to invite the dissolution of his soul.

  Acharsis turned, letting Akkodaisis take the lead, as was proper. What could he do? Race down the outside of the ziggurat? No, he’d be apprehended well before he reached the ground. Run down the stairs within? Even greater folly.

  He saw Kish’s hand stray under her robe to where her hammer was hanging from her belt and saw Annara staring imploringly at him. Ishi had begun to murmur.

  The seekers were following Jarek. Any second now, he’d be asked why they weren’t following; any second now, everything was going to fall into the netherworld in a basket.

  “Follow me,” he said, pitching his voice clearly and confidently to his companions. “Run!”

  He broke into a sprint, threw himself forward and raced around the throne. Cries of alarm surrounded, but he ignored them all.

  There – a single, simple square cut into the floor.

  The corpse chute.

  He didn’t look back to see if the others were following, didn’t pause to reconsider. He didn’t give himself time to let fear freeze his limbs.

  He stepped out over the open space, pressed his arms to his sides, and dropped.

  Immediately, his gorge rose, his stomach flattened against his diaphragm, and the urge to yell clawed at his throat. Down he dropped, the floors flashing past him faster and faster, and all he could think was I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to -

  Acharsis plunged down into darkness and almost immediately collided with a soft, explosively yielding surface.

  His leg snapped, and the pain of it eclipsed everything else. He felt himself bounce and roll, and then he fetched up against something cold and sticky even as he began to sink into a gooey morass.

  He lay still, gasping for breath, fighting down the waves of nausea that pounded through him.

  A cry grew louder, then was cut off as someone hit the surface beside him.

  “Move,” he croaked. “Get out from under!”

  Someone cursed - Kish? - and then he heard Ishi and Annara’s terrified wails echoing as they dropped into the huge room that surrounded them. They hit with disgustingly liquid sounds, and then he heard someone - Annara? - begin to make frantic wheezing sounds, as if she couldn’t catch her breath.

  “Up,” he said. “We’ve got to get up!”

  His head was spinning, though, and a cold sweat had drenched him everywhere. His leg pulsed sharp flashes of sickening pain every time he moved, but he gritted his teeth and crawled, seeking an edge, something to pull himself up by.

  He was crawling on corpses.

  Kish let out a cry of disgust, and he heard her stagger to her feet.

  His eyes were growing used to the dark. Bodies lay beneath him in a wretched tangle, their limbs cold and greasy, some of them badly decomposed. Bile flooded his mouth as he heaved, but he forced himself onward, crawling until he hit a clay wall.

  “Here,” he said, reaching up.

  Please don’t let us be too far down, he prayed fervently. Please, Ekillos, please –

  And then his hand closed over the pit’s edge.

  “Ishi’s dead,” said Kish, her voice made flat by her horror. “No, wait. She’s breathing. She’s just unconscious.”

  “Carry her,” Acharsis rasped as he pulled himself out of the pit. “This way. Annara?”

  “Here,” came her voice, bleak with misery. “I’m here. Oh, Scythia. Oh, dear Scythia.”

  “Come on! We don’t have any time!”

  He sensed more than saw Kish approaching him, stumbling and staggering, and then felt her lay Ishi at his side. A moment later, she hopped up beside him, then stood.

  “Are we making a run for it?” she asked. She could have been asking about breakfast.

  “Not yet. Leave Ishi be for a moment. Light your candle. We need to find the tunnel.”

  “Oh, Elu,” Annara cried as she waded toward them. “Oh, sweet Elu, forgive me. We tried.”

  “It’s not over,” Acharsis said. “Hurry, Kish!”

  They heard the scrape of her flint, and then sparks flew, but nothing caught
.

  It was too easy to imagine the guards racing down the stairs, pounding toward them level by level. They had only moments to escape.

  More sparks. Still nothing.

  “Come on, come on,” Kish whispered. The sparks flew once more, and this time the tar-dipped wick caught and flared.

  “Raise it high,” said Acharsis. “Look for a reflection. There! Knock open the tunnel and signal for the waters to be released!”

  “Signal - are you sure?” Kish hesitated, about to leave his side. “But -”

  “Do it! We’re not leaving. Go!”

  Kish took the candle, her face a floating mask of gold and blood, and then he heard her grunt and the crash of clay chunks falling inward.

  She waved the candle from side to side. “There.”

  “All right. Everyone, we need to hide. Somewhere high. Annara, give me a hand. My leg’s broken.”

  Shouts echoed around them as Annara leaned down and he draped his arm over her shoulders. She grunted again, and together they rose, Acharsis balancing on one foot. Kish was swinging her candle around, searching wildly, and then Acharsis recalled Jarek’s description.

  “There! The old cells. We’ll have to climb onto them. For Ekillos’ sake, hurry!”

  They stumbled toward the far wall. Kish boosted Ishi up onto the roof of a cell, climbed up, and hauled each of them up after her. Acharsis nearly blacked out from the pain when his leg banged against the flat roof’s edge, and he rolled onto his back, gasping.

  The voices grew louder, then he heard the clatter of footsteps, and suddenly the darkness was pushed back by the blooming of torch light. He didn’t roll over to look. He simply lay still, the others lying by his side.

  “Check the pit,” someone ordered. “You, walk the perimeter. Watch the door. Find them!”

  Acharsis closed his eyes and prayed to his dead god that the dead sentry at the far bend of the tunnel had caught Kish’s flash of light – that he had been holding the mirror as instructed, and that it had reflected that thin, tenuous beam through the darkness to the second mirror, which would have sent the almost invisible reflection to the final dead at the docks.

  Acharsis waited, holding his breath. Even now, the dead man could be hauling down the timber and planks, clawing thick gobbets of mud from the underbelly of the harbor, opening up wounds in the earth that would allow the water to pass through.

  Ekillos, god of fresh water, send your deluge down into the earth. Drown the night with your blessing. Please, succor us in our hour of need.

  “What’s that?” asked one of the voices below.

  “What?”

  “That. Do you hear that?”

  Acharsis heard it: a faint rushing whisper, the tiniest of tremors coming up through the walls of the cell.

  Annara reached out and gripped his hand, squeezing it hard.

  “It’s coming from that hole.”

  “Is that the wind? A storm underground?”

  “No!. Get back! Everyone, to the stairs!”

  The whisper became a shout, then a roar, and then the waters of the harbor exploded into the great chamber.

  Acharsis rolled onto his side and looked over the roof’s edge. A brown torrent was blasting out of the wall, carving out a bigger hole with every moment that passed, flooding in white-foamed chaos across the dirt floor, already filling the great charnel pit.

  The soldiers were yelling and wading back toward the distant steps. Torches were dropped in the water and guttered out, and a half-dozen men lost their footing and were swept into the pit amongst the rising bodies. In horror, Acharsis saw them thrash and struggle with the corpses. It was as if the dead were rising to claim their revenge.

  The water kept flooding in. It was already at least a yard deep. The last of the soldiers hurried up the far steps, and there they stood, watching in sodden disbelief as the brown waters of the Leonis rose steadily through the chamber.

  “What do we do if it gets as high as we are?” hissed Kish.

  Acharsis felt delirious with pain. “Swim, I guess.” He almost laughed. “Or hop across the corpses.”

  How high would the waters rise? As high as the level of the Leonis? The ziggurat was built above the river. How deep did this cellar chamber go? There was no way to tell.

  He watched the rising waters grimly. They’d turned black with the retreat of the soldiers and their torches, and now only the faint illumination from the stairwell allowed him to make out the foam and the limbs and the scudding dirt that roiled on the water’s surface.

  “It’s slowing,” he heard one of the soldiers say, then he saw the torches move aside as several black-robed figures appeared. He recognized Rexashas and Yesu.

  “What happened here?” Rexashas’ words were more bark than question.

  “Master, I don’t know,” said the captain. “We were searching the corpses when this water came flooding in through a tunnel they’d carved in the wall there.“

  “A tunnel?” Yesu stepped close to the water’s edge and dipped his hand into it. He raised it to his nose and sniffed. “River water. It looks like they were prepared to make an escape.”

  “Impossible,” Rexashas snapped. “Nobody plans to escape by jumping down the corpse chute.”

  “True,” said Yesu. “But they didn’t anticipate Sillush. Maybe they hoped to sneak down here after accomplishing whatever they were after. The tunnel must have been their escape. They flooded it to prevent our following.”

  Silence fell as the men studied the swirling waters. They had indeed stopped rising. Acharsis bit back a sigh of relief - the water level was barely an inch below the roof on which they were lying.

  “Let’s fetch some deathless,” suggested Yesu. “Send them down this tunnel. Let’s see if we can find where it comes out. Perhaps they’ll not have gotten far.”

  Rexashas considered the swirling waters a moment longer and then nodded. He turned and climbed the steps, Yesu following. Only a half-dozen soldiers remained, staring curiously into the flooded room.

  Acharsis lowered his head, relief mingling with horror in his mind. They’d survived, barely. Wounded, harried, without a means to escape and with their plans in complete tatters – but somehow, against all the odds, they had survived.

  Chapter 16

  The butt of a spear cracked against Jarek’s shoulder, sending him stumbling forward. The moment he tried to stop, to turn, another spear slammed against the small of his back.

  He barely registered the pain. His heart was a thunderous rock tumbling down a mountainside, while his thoughts were leaves blown by a tormenting wind. He couldn’t focus. Couldn’t marshal his thoughts, rein in his emotions.

  Everything had gone catastrophically wrong.

  They were herding him down to Nekuul’s warded room. Step by grudging step, they forced him on, the rope around his neck yanked forward by a team of nervous death watch guards, the seekers fanned out around him, five deathless just beyond them.

  There was no breaking free, no escape. The others had failed, and there was nothing Jarek could do about it.

  Yet, beyond it all, beneath the fear and pain and fury, beat a second rhythm like a spiritual heart: an awareness of where he was standing. Once, this had been Alok’s demesne; once, he had strode these halls as its king, guided by and imbued with Alok’s presence and might.

  It was bewildering to gaze at the familiar corridors and feel nothing. No power, no reverence, no connection with his former god. It was like consistently thinking that there was another step at the top of a staircase and stumbling, that same sense of dislocation. Alok was dead, and each moment tore anew at his old agony.

  Grunting and struggling, they forced him on. Twice, he pulled the men who were holding his rope to their knees and rushed forward to overwhelm them only to be beaten back by a flurry of blows to his head and shoulders. The last attack left him nearly unconscious, so he was barely aware when he was guided at last into his destination.

  Blinking, he looked
around blearily. Green writing glowed where it had been carved into the walls. He couldn’t read it, but he knew instinctively what it was: the language of the dead. Nekuul’s power pulsed through this room, bathing him and robbing him of his vitality.

  He didn’t resist when they clapped fearsome manacles of cold iron around his wrists, their thick chains attached to the stone floor. It took all his strength merely to stand, to keep his chin raised.

  The room was square and unadorned but for the eerie writing that covered the walls. There was only one door, and the death watch guards were filing out through it, with the deathless amongst them.

  Leaving him? He felt a flicker of hope.

  But no – the seekers stayed. Five of them, clad in their robes of deepest night, Sillush at their head. In a matter of moments, they were left alone with him, and instinct told Jarek he was in greater peril for it.

  Sillush closed the door, and Jarek let out a pained gasp. The faith his return had galvanized in the people of Rekkidu, and the power that had resulted from that awakening, slipped away from him like dust between his fingers. That mantle of fell strength disappeared along with his unnatural resiliency, and pain crashed in upon him as he was shorn of his might and became merely Jarek, a man like any other.

  Sillush smiled coldly, and Jarek fought to keep despair from breaking his will. He watched as Sillush walked slowly around where he was chained, the other four seekers lowering their hoods as he did so.

  “Jarek, son of Alok,” Sillush said when he was standing in front of Jarek once more. “Empress Irella will be delighted to know we have you in our power.”

  Jarek licked his dry lips but remained silent. What use was there in insulting or goading this man?

  “Twenty years now, you’ve been hiding. And for twenty years, the thoughts of our empress have dwelt on your absence. Where did you go? What did you do with your time?”

  Jarek smiled at the man.

  “Nothing?” Sillush’s smile was just as humorless. “What of your return to Rekkidu? Why now? Did you hope to disrupt the invasion?”