Path of the Crushed Heart: Book Four of the Serpent Catch Series

by David Farland

  Fava nodded dumbly, and her jaw trembled.

  “Good,” Mahkawn said. “I am taking you to see him now. And I will put you under my own special care. You can be a slave in my personal household, if you like. I promise you that. You will be cared for.”

  Atherkula laughed abruptly, and Mahkawn shot a warning glance back at the sorcerer.

  “I understand that Tull has a smaller brother that escaped into the forest with you. I trust that the child is well? You have provided for him?” Fava nodded again, her pale green eyes pleading for him to ask no more about the child.

  “Hmmm. We must retrieve the child then, and bring the boy here where he can be properly raised. I know that you Pwi, living out in the Rough, think that you have something—freedom.

  “But your lives there really are so primitive,” he continued. “There are great benefits to our society. Here you will find that our medical facilities, our schools, are much better than anything that you have. If you want to give the child a future, you will help us bring him back here to Bashevgo.”

  “I have heard of your slave pens and your rapes and your mass graves,” Fava said, “but not of your schools or doctors.”

  Atherkula chuckled openly.

  “Well said,” Mahkawn answered. “Some people are garbage, no matter what society they are born into. We do not tolerate human garbage. Still, we have our benefits here. We will civilize you.”

  They reached the corner that rounded to Tull’s cell and were assaulted by the unholy reek of Phylomon’s rotting corpse.

  Mahkawn, unprepared for it, could hardly make his way forward. Both Fava and Atherkula covered their faces with their robes and walked as if pressing through a storm.

  They found Tull sitting, smiling, but his smile faltered when he saw Fava. The big Tcho-Pwi suddenly struggled at his chains.

  “Fava,” Tull shouted, and she broke then and ran to Tull’s cell. She stood outside it, reaching for him, trying to touch his hand.

  Mahkawn turned the key in its lock, opened Tull’s door, and Fava ran to him, then crouched down and hugged him. They were both weeping for joy.

  Atherkula bent close to Mahkawn’s ear and whispered, “You see how he cuddles with her! He could never have become Blade Kin.”

  Mahkawn found himself shaking, and he pulled his robe closer around his shoulder. He felt a strong desire to pull his sword and gut Atherkula, the smug bastard.

  Instead, he turned and gazed at the cell opposite from Tull’s, at the corpse of Phylomon. The right hand, which had been almost pointing into the air, had shriveled, so that bony fingers curled up from it hideously.

  The stomach was a hole where flies traipsed and maggots wandered. Mahkawn felt thankful that he could not see the face.

  After several minutes Mahkawn entered the cell, pushed Fava outside, and closed the door so that he stood alone with Tull.

  “I’m sorry, Tull,” Mahkawn said. “I’ve been ordered by Lord Tantos to kill you. I had looked forward to …”

  He found his hands shaking, and behind him Fava shrieked and grabbed at the bars. Atherkula caught her and pinned her arms back.

  Tull was chained so that he could move neither left nor right. Mahkawn drew his long blade, then plunged it under Tull’s rib cage.

  Tull’s eyes bulged and his mouth flew open. “Mahkawn …” he shouted, with so much hurt and disbelief in his voice. Blood spurted from his side. “I never dreamed!”

  Mahkawn held the sword in place for a moment, then stepped in and shoved it up quickly, letting the natural curve of the blade guide it up under the rib cage, piercing the left lung.

  Blood poured down the runnels of the blade like water from a spout, messing Mahkawn’s hand. He withdrew the blade and dropped it aside.

  Tull was struggling to his feet, his face white with terror, panting, and Mahkawn wrapped his arms around him, trying to hold him up.

  Behind them Fava screamed and beat against the bars like a bird in its cage, and Atherkula held her. Fava’s cape ripped free, and Atherkula shouted, “Guards! Guards! Hold the bitch!” spittle flying from his throat.

  The guards rushed from their posts and grabbed Fava. She spit and bit like a bobcat.

  It suddenly seemed strange to hear Atherkula’s human words, so thick and nasal in accent, coming from the throat of a Neanderthal.

  Mahkawn put his arms around Tull’s shoulders, found tears coursing from his eyes. “Forgive me!” Mahkawn whispered. “Tell me you forgive me! I will promise you anything! I will take Fava and your son and raise them as slaves in my own home! They will be like children to me! I … I … my, my—!”

  Mahkawn jerked back in surprise. He had almost called Tull his son.

  Tull had been staring at the hole in his ribs, at the blood gushing from it, taking tiny panting breaths.

  The room shook with Fava’s cries, the sound of a madhouse, and Tull raised his eyes. Sweat was glistening on his forehead, and his eyes narrowed, as if he were peering at Mahkawn from a distance.

  He coughed, and blood came from his mouth .

  “Okanjara!” Tull said, I am free! “By God’s rotting teeth, it’s so beautiful!”

  Then he trembled and sagged, and he was dead.

  Mahkawn unlocked Tull from his shackles and laid him down gently. He held Tull as he died. To Mahkawn, the sound of Fava’s shrieking seemed distant.

  Tull’s breathing stopped and his bladder loosed. His flaming yellow-green eyes stared open accusingly, so Mahkawn turned Tull’s head to the wall and laid him down.

  Mahkawn took off his cape and used it to clean the blood from his sword. He sheathed the blade, and then placed the cape over Tull, covering the body.

  The guards held Fava, and Mahkawn opened the door to the cell. “Let her in. Let her grieve.”

  Fava rushed to Tull and grabbed his head, holding it and rocking back and forth. Her wails echoed down the stone corridors.

  “A decent execution, that was,” Atherkula said. “Well handled, I thought.”

  ***

  Chapter 17: The River of Time

  Tull had been building his dream house in his imagination before Fava came—stone upon stone—a spiral stair of cream marble, alcoves with tall arching windows to let in the golden light.

  Vine maples would grow in the alcoves, with gray-green trunks climbing up like snakes, and at the feet the trees he would place a tiny pool with bushes where golden meadowlarks would sing, enjoying the endless summer of his home.

  But then a few mumbled words, Fava hugging him, and Mahkawn standing in the background with Atherkula.

  Then the sword seemed to fill his belly, a piece of cold steel the only thing that kept him from feeling totally desolate inside, and Tull was peering at his blood flowing down the runnel of the blade, at Mahkawn’s sweaty face, listening to his promises. “Forgive me, I will do anything …”

  Tull’s dreams crumbled. Heaven warped into the shape of a great hawk with stars in its feathers, black wings swept back, talons exposed, and the night descended.

  The only birdsong is the cry of ravens. He coughed blood. Oblivion waited, demanding Tull’s acceptance.

  No hope goaded him on. No fear held him back. No cares could dissuade him.

  And in that moment, Tull accepted destruction, and with that acceptance, a great burning heaven flared inside him. Okanjara!

  The words had formed naturally on his tongue, like dew on the petals of a mountain orchid, I am free!

  For one endless moment, he stared at perfect freedom.

  Beyond the Eridani who guarded the stars, beyond the Slave Lords with their armies and chains, beyond all his petty mortal fears and desires. “By God’s rotting teeth,” Tull said, “it’s so beautiful!” and then he trembled, and began his last Spirit Walk.

  In a great roaring thunder the world seemed to shatter, and Tull stood upon a world of crumbled red stone where dim stars glowed in the amber air.

  Tull lifted away from the crater of cracked red stones he ha
d built for himself, and stood outside the clot of his soul, watching the clear thing that had once been his body settle in Mahkawn’s arms.

  Atherkula held Fava, who was gray with grief, and as Tull rose he could tell that the sorcerer was aware of him. Old Atherkula watched him intently, tracking him with his eyes. The hollow of Atherkula’s soul was black, without lightning. Tull had never imagined that a man could make himself into pure evil, but now he saw it.

  Tull rose from his shallow crater on the barren red plain, looked at Phylomon in his own little cubbyhole. A glowing spirit burned within the rotted flesh, and Tull gazed at it.

  He had seen opossums lie flat in a field as a child, had picked them up and carried them home for his mother to cook, and all the while that he carried them, the opossum would sit with eyes only partway open, unbreathing, looking so fully dead that Tull could never really be sure whether or not it had died from fright when Tull first touched it.

  Phylomon’s symbiote was playing an elaborate version of the game.

  The blue man lay among a small circle of broken red stones, with many breaches in the wall of his shelter. Tull picked up a few stones to try to plug the hole, view Phylomon’s future. Within each stone he saw the same thing: Phylomon would die when Tantos had him skinned. The symbiote no longer had the strength to protect the Starfarer.

  Tull viewed the scene and felt no outrage, no sense of loss. The life Phylomon lived now seemed of no consequence.

  Tull meandered upward without purpose, like a cinder rising from a fire. Below him on the barren plain, he saw a river, the river of time that Chaa had spoken of.

  He stopped time, imagining it was frozen, and with time frozen, he wandered Anee, haphazardly stacking stones around the Slave Lords to see how it could all end.

  He did not connect the pale lightning of his soul with theirs, did not seek to learn their hearts—merely to watch their end. He built magnificent elaborate structures of the stones, some plain, some exotic, shaping ten thousand futures.

  He watched the humans of Anee destroy themselves a thousand times over through greed and corruption—Slave Lords assassinating one another in an endless bid for power, till even Tantos would be brought down.

  He saw the possibilities for suicidal wars between factions of Blade Kin until the land itself became burned and barren.

  He saw Thralls revolt through a hundred lifetimes, slaughtering all humans in the act, till the planet crawled with Neanderthals who worshiped their own waning psychic powers and lost all semblance of technology.

  He saw the gentle Hukm rise up in other versions, tearing down both man and mankind, then living peacefully off the land for endless generations.

  It became an intellectual exercise, watching societies rise and fall in various combinations. He kept waiting to see if it could succeed in terms that he would have considered emotionally valid during life.

  He found one branch of time where, between treachery among Slave Lords and revolts among Neanderthals, a new world order came to pass.

  The two species bred to the point that they became one—yet they were neither humans nor Pwi. They became dispassionate beyond anything ever dreamed, mating only to produce dull offspring to replace themselves, eating only to fill their bellies. They became living statues that somehow managed to reproduce enough to seem viable.

  Tull could not access the minds of the Creators, but he knew that somehow they would enter into the construct.

  When Tull had watched the world end ten thousand times, he was still not satisfied.

  He loosed the river of time, let it thaw and flow again.

  The lightning of his soul floated over the red rock crags and mountains of Bashevgo, a brilliant golden ball of thistledown for those who had eyes to see.

  He wound his way through the valleys of cracked rock and over the sifting sands, returning to Fava.

  He watched her shriek and wail above his corpse, calling his name, the clot of her soul gray with grief, the color of cobwebs. She held his head, rocking back and forth, and Tull decided to try to speak, to connect with his body long enough to tell her not to grieve.

  ***

  Chapter 18: Hard Kill

  A gray morning rain carried the scent of salt spray and open seas to Wertha for the first time in months, and out on the frozen ocean around Bashevgo, the morning thundered with the sounds of cracking ice, muted by rain.

  The slaves and businessmen of Bashevgo did not seem to notice the rain. Wertha paced among them outside the arena, shivering and drenched, an anonymous gray face in the cold morning crowd.

  At the arena, the great statues of the Mothers of Evil leaned their heads back, catching the rain in their open mouths. The ancient slave artists who had constructed the statues had formed them so that the rainwater funneled out the women’s eyes, as if they cried while giving birth.

  Wertha had watched Atherkula and Mahkawn enter the dungeons shortly before dawn, and just as the sun was rising, he saw the sorcerer Atherkula amble out, his black cowl wrapped above his head, picking his way through the wet and muddy streets with a smile on his face.

  Moments later, Fava announced her exit with wails of grief that echoed out from the corridors.

  The Blade Kin guards unlocked the gate, and two guards exited, bearing a pallet with a bloody man upon it. Wertha saw immediately that it was Tull, stained red from crotch to chest, his body as pale white as the belly of a fish.

  They had stripped his clothes, salvaging them for future use. And it suddenly struck Wertha how like a newborn child he looked, all bruised and covered with blood, pale from its cheesy covering.

  Fava was beside herself with grief, shouting, “Tull, Tull!”

  The crowds on the street barely spared a glance.

  Mahkawn stalked behind her, one hand clumsily touching her shoulder, unsure how to calm the woman. The guards set the pallet down in the rain to rest, and Mahkawn pulled Fava away from the sight, trying to drag her down the street.

  When Mahkawn and Fava were gone, along with all of the others, Wertha hurried up toward the guard post.

  Just then someone stepped up from behind and grabbed his sleeve, a stranger. The man had orange hair and wore the black cowl of a Blade Kin sorcerer.

  He emanated power.

  Wertha looked into deep-set eyes that had lived a thousand lifetimes, and recognized Chaa.

  “Will you help me get the body of Tull?” Chaa said. “There is no time to waste, if we are to save him.”

  “Save him?” That seemed impossible.

  Chaa grabbed Wertha’s wrist, and drew him toward guards who stood over the body.

  He called out, “We’ve been order to dispose of this corpse.”

  One of the Blade Kin guards raised a brow. He was an older human, graying and fat. “You can have my end of the pallet,” he said, and trudged back into the shelter under the stadium. The second guard, a skinny young boy, asked, “Will you take him to the dump?”

  Chaa looked up at him. “We’ve been ordered to take this one to Lord Tantos himself.”

  The boy nodded and backed away, obviously not eager to attract the attention of the Lord of Retribution. As Wertha leaned down to lift the pallet, he could sense the spirit there, pulsing in that miserable body.

  They hurried, carried Tull through the cold rain, grunting and slipping over wet, muddy stones.

  Wertha kept expecting the Blade Kin to come stop them, to question them, until it finally occurred to him that perhaps no one had ever tried to steal a corpse from them before.

  They rounded a corner, and Chaa stopped, set down his end of the pallet. “Forgive me, Tull,” Chaa said, and he opened his shirt and pulled out a thin strip of supple gray-blue leather, then placed it inside the wound in Tull’s chest, like a compress.

  They had to walk for another fifteen minutes, and all during that time Wertha looked down on Tull and trembled inside.

  Chaa finally stopped at a broken-down apartment building, took them up to a small room.


  Chaa sat down exhausted.

  Wertha stooped over Tull, touched the body, closed his natural eyes and peered from his spiritual eyes.

  He could see Tull’s spirit there, a pale fluttering thing, trying to remain connected to the body, inserting its pale fronds, experimenting with fingers, toes.

  The heart beat, barely; the lungs expanded so slowly that many healers would not have seen it. Yet, by all rights, Tull should have been dead.

  “What is this?” Wertha asked.

  “He is a Spirit Walker,” Chaa said, “trying to reconnect to his body. But he cannot do it unless you can heal him.”

  The healing power was strong in Wertha, billowing like a wind. He had not seriously tested his power in months, and he let his warm hands touch the frigid body.

  There, in the gut, the sword had entered, pushing aside pale blue intestines rather than piercing them. No food had spilled out of them to foul the abdominal cavity.

  But in the right lung, the soft pink spongy tissue was severed and clotted with blackish blood, while the sac around the lungs had burst, deflating them.

  Wertha’s fingers burned at the feel of such damage, eager to heal.

  “Wait!” Chaa said. “You cannot do this alone, just as Tull cannot hope to raise himself without your help.”

  Chaa knelt beside Wertha and held his hands. Together, they closed their eyes, and Wertha unleashed the power, letting the warmth flow free. He could feel energy from Chaa, an unexpected amount of power, coursing through his hands.

  “Call upon your Ally for us,” Chaa said.

  Wertha hesitated, and began. “Kwitcha. Kwitcha, my Ally, healer of old,” Wertha begged. “You who once raised the dead at Fox River and taught the mute to sing at Three Still Trees, be with me now.”

  For a moment, Wertha sat and waited for the cool touch of his Ally, but it did not come.