Black Stone Heart (The Obsidian Path Book 1)

by Michael R. Fletcher

  One of the men with the long-knives grinned brown teeth. “I want a fight.”

  “Then don’t hurt him and I’ll pretend to fight.”

  That confused him.

  “Who’s first?” she asked, gliding closer. “Or all five at the same time?”

  Drawn by her promises, the bowmen approached, not wanting to be left out.

  “Kantz,” said the hairy toothless bastard. “Watch him. Put an arrow in him if he moves.”

  Kantz looked unhappy, but did as instructed. The other four closed in on Henka.

  “How are you going to fuck me with all those clothes on?” she asked.

  When one sheathed his knife and started fumbling with the draws of his pants, she reached out as if to help, plucked the knife away, and stuck it in his neck. He gurgled, eyes wide, hands clawing at the knife, and fell backward.

  Pulling the knife free, she stabbed another in the belly as he came at her. He crumpled as the blade came free, curling about his wound and sobbing.

  An arrow appeared in her back, and I turned to see Kantz fumbling to nock another. Rushing him, I tackled him to the ground. The other two went after Henka. She made no attempt to defend herself as they stabbed her over and over. Then I was fighting for my life, too busy to watch her get slaughtered.

  Though shorter, Kantz had twenty pounds of muscle on me. I realized just how much of my former strength I had yet to regain. For a moment we wrestled over his knife, but we fumbled it and it landed in the long grass. Twisting my arm, Kantz rolled me off him and pinned me face down in the dirt. A knee in my back, a hand keeping my arm bent so far up my back I thought the shoulder would pop, he drove punches into my ribs with his other fist. Squirming and kicking, I failed to dislodge him.

  Hot blood splashed me from above, showered me in gore. I heard Kantz’s choked gurgling and his weight fell away. Groaning, rubbing my shoulder, I rolled onto my back. Henka stood over me, her beautiful silk dress shredded. Through the torn fabric I saw many knife wounds. None bled.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked, reaching back to pull free the arrow. She tossed it aside like it was nothing.

  I laughed, and then grunted at the deep pain. “Only my pride.” I winced. “And my ribs, and my arm.”

  Kantz rolled around in the dirt, making quiet wet sobs. Glancing at him, Henka strode over, pulled the knife from his neck, and then put it in his heart. She showed no hint of emotion.

  “Are you…hurt?” I asked.

  “They ruined my dress.” She wrapped her arms around herself, hiding the wounds. “They damaged me.”

  “I thought I had to protect you,” I admitted.

  “That’s sweet, but I’m dead.”

  “Can your necromancy heal the damage?”

  She nodded, studying the scattered corpses and turned back to me. “Not here, though.”

  I understood. It was a grizzly scene, and the dead would draw animals.

  “If we dress you in some different clothes,” I said, gesturing at the dead, “you can pass for living, if somewhat pale. We could go to the next town, get a room. Would that be better?”

  She wrinkled her petite nose. “Yes. But…” She hesitated, teeth worrying gently at her lip. “I need privacy.” She flashed a glance at me.

  “Can you do it in the room? I could leave.”

  “It would be too loud, draw too much attention.”

  I remembered her singing to the bear. Did the volume of the song depend on how much power she needed? “Can I help?”

  She shook her head. “No.” She pulled the wreckage of her dress tighter. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

  We stripped the smallest of the men and she made me turn my back as she peeled away the tattered dress and donned his clothes.

  Collecting a pair of long-knives and scabbards, I hung them from my belt. Then I selected a shortbow and a quiver with a dozen steel-tipped hunting arrows

  “Perhaps we were a little premature in releasing my pets,” she said, eyeing the corpses. “We could still use guards. I’d rather not get stabbed, if I can help it.”

  “They’re a little rough,” I said. “They’ll never pass as living.” She’d stabbed three in the throat, leaving gaping wounds. “Unless they start wearing scarves.”

  “That one is fine,” she said, pointing out a man she’d only knifed in the belly. “A new shirt and he’ll be perfect. At least until he rots.” She shrugged. “I can maintain him too, keep him fresh.”

  The idea of having a little extra muscle around appealed. An undead body guard wasn’t a terrible idea. I nodded agreement. Truth be told, I wanted to see if she truly could raise and control a dead man. Animals were one thing—not without their uses—but a man was something very different. I imagined an army of obedient corpses, all under the control of a loyal necromancer. Could she be that? Sometimes I saw such utter love and devotion in her eyes. Worship, even.

  Was there a difference between love and worship? I wasn’t sure. Both seemed useful.

  Useful? I twitched. Who was that? What kind of man thought like that? Was that the old me?

  “I’m selfish,” I said, admitting my flaw aloud.

  “We all are,” Henka answered. “But if you can get what you want, and I can get what I want… Maybe we can be selfish together.”

  “I’d like that.” I studied the corpse of this man who tried to kill us and rape Henka. “Is this evil?”

  “Bringing a man back from the dead?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “The wizards would say yes. They would say my very existence is evil, that I am a foul creature deserving of utter destruction.” She glanced at me, searching for censure. She found none. “They’d say the same of you, destroy you in an instant, given the opportunity.”

  The wizards.

  She shrugged. “We do what we must to survive. What is evil? Is the wolf evil for devouring the lamb?”

  “Let’s do this.”

  She smiled that shy smile and for a moment I forgot she just killed five men without a hint of emotion.

  But she had. She was perfect for what I planned.

  Staying out of her way, I watched Henka lay out the body. Peeling off his torn and bloody shirt, she carved strange symbols over his heart.

  “This is different than making a necromancer? You aren’t going to cut his heart out?”

  “Very different.”

  A thought occurred to me. “How did you get a pack of wolves?”

  “I found one already dead and used it to hunt and kill the others. There were more. Most got away.”

  “And the bear?”

  “Found it dead. No more questions.”

  Henka sang as she worked, dirges of incomprehensible gibberish. I resisted the urge to ask if this was part of the necromancy.

  An hour later, she stopped.

  The man’s eyes snapped open and he said “No” in the most heart-breaking tone of sadness. “Please, no.”

  “Silence,” commanded Henka. “You will answer questions and say nothing else.”

  He nodded, face miserable.

  “Stop looking so miserable.”

  He managed a broken smile.

  “Never mind,” said Henka. “What’s your name?”

  “Chalaam.”

  “Is he still…him?” I asked. “He’s not a mindless zombie?”

  “Different spell,” she said. “He’s more useful like this.”

  “He remembers what he knew, who he was?”

  “Everything.”

  I saw how that would be infinitely more useful. I also saw how unhappy he was. Turning away from his look of purest misery, I felt a pang of guilt.

  This was his fault. He shouldn’t have attacked us.

  Who was that, the old me, or the new? I wasn’t sure.

  “Should I raise the rest?” Henka asked. “They can scout ahead and follow us in the woods. Stay out of sight.”

  Useful as that sounded, I didn’t relish being followed by so man
y corpses. “Best we stay with just the one.”

  Shrugging, she turned back to Chalaam. “Find yourself clothes without too much blood.”

  Once he was dressed, we headed south.

  Walking at Chalaam’s side, I asked, “Is it really that bad?”

  He glanced at me, eyes bleeding depression, and said nothing.

  “Answer Khraen’s questions,” said Henka. “Obey his commands as if they were mine.”

  Had she ever said my name before? I liked hearing it on her lips.

  “There is something after,” said Chalaam. “It was awful.” Eyes closed, he trudged on. “Because of all the terrible things I’ve done. It was hell.”

  He spoke like there was only one hell instead of many. Was that a local belief? Could the actions of the living decide where their souls went? I’d ask Chalaam, but doubted an ignorant peasant would have any real knowledge.

  “Had you been better, you’d have gone to a heaven?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” He turned a bruised gaze upon me. “But that hell was better than this. Death separates me from the world. I can’t feel.” He broke his smallest finger to demonstrate.

  “Don’t damage yourself,” said Henka, shooting him a look of weary annoyance.

  Bending the finger back into place, he said, “I’m rotting. That I do feel. I’m decaying inside.”

  “I won’t let it get too bad,” said Henka.

  “Gee, thanks,” he muttered.

  “You were going to rape her,” I said. “After, you were going to kill us both.”

  Chalaam sagged. “I deserve this.”

  Henka rolled her eyes. “Stop being so melodramatic.”

  We walked on in silence.

  That tiny diamond with its burden of souls weighed heavily on me. Chalaam all but confirmed Nhil’s claim that souls existed after death. It was no great stretch to believe they might be reborn. The wizards were wrong. There were gods. I had a god. If only I could remember her.

  How many souls had I fed to Felkrish, my portal demon? I realized I had no idea. Not knowing how many there were to start with, I’d made no attempt to keep track. I remembered being appalled at the thought of sacrificing souls, but could no longer find the horror in me. Now, I was more worried about how many remained in the stone.

  The thought of sacrificing a living person, however, still filled me with revulsion. I wasn’t a monster. A soul in a stone is a difficult thing to relate to, to think of as a human life.

  I couldn’t make the distinct personalities in me coexist. I remembered the young man I thought I was, the youth who lived for years in a mud hut. That was me. But sometimes flashes of the ancient emperor slipped through. He considered Chalaam an ignorant peasant. He saw Henka’s power as useful. I couldn’t bring myself to hate him. I understood his drive to succeed, his willingness to do anything do win, all too well. Yet his self-centred manipulation of people disgusted me.

  Did it disgust me enough to stop what horrors were to follow?

  No.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The town of Willows on the Ridge had neither willows, nor a ridge for them to be on. The land was rolling fields of clover for as far as the eye could see. At best guess, a thousand souls called Willows home, with a few hundred more in the outlying farmsteads. An ancient cobbled road, very unlike the rough dirt paths we’d seen up until now, passed through the centre of town. The stone buildings looked old enough, I suspected this place may have been here back when I was emperor. A wizard’s tower, windowless and filthy from neglect, walls sprouting moss and lichen, sat in the centre of town. I wanted to knock it down, melt the stone.

  Though they stared at us, Henka still beautiful in her rough clothes, and my black skin standing me out as a foreigner, they left us alone. Chalaam shuffled along behind us, depressed and silent, the only one of the trio not drawing attention to himself. Misery, apparently, is more acceptable than being different.

  The inn, a two-story stone building that looked like it used to be part of a larger castle—of which there was no sign—was called Willows Inn. The main room held a dozen round tables, each big enough for six men to sit at with ample elbow room. The innkeeper, a huge woman with pale hair tied back in a loose bun that most of it had already escaped from, bustled to our table as we sat. Aside from one man nursing a whiskey at the bar, the place was empty.

  “How can I help you, honeys?”

  I choked down a laugh. A necromancer, a demonologist, and a dead man, and she calls us ‘honeys.’ If my black skin bothered her, she hid it well.

  “I’ll have a heaping plate of whatever is cooking, and a pint of something delicious.” Our four would-be-robbers had added a bit to our purse.

  “Kidney pies, today,” she said. “And we brew our own beer right here in the basement. Willow’s Ale, we call it.”

  “Great name.”

  She blinked at me before turning to the others. “And you, dears?”

  “Nothing, thanks,” said Henka, flashing that shy smile.

  “But you’re a waif! You need some meat on those bones!”

  Henka rubbed her belly. “Not feeling well.”

  “Poor dear.” She glanced at Chalaam and he glared sullenly at the table.

  “He’s not feeling well either,” I said. “We’ll need a room.”

  “Just one?”

  Looking up from the table, Chalaam stared at her until she left.

  “Are you going to wait until dark?” I asked Henka after the innkeeper delivered a huge wedge of pie and a pint of dark red ale. The pastry was thick and buttery, golden brown and flaky. Dark juicy mushrooms, butter-fried kidneys, and wedges of soft yellow potato, filled the pie.

  I tried not to think about drunkenly asking Shalayn to eat pastry with me.

  “Yes,” said Henka as I shovelled pie into my face. “I don’t want to be interrupted, and these small towns turn in early. It should be easy to find somewhere secluded.”

  “Will you be gone long?” I worried about her wandering the streets alone. Chalaam and his friends came from just such a sleepy village.

  “Not long. A couple hours at most.”

  “Perhaps I should come with you.”

  She shook her head, huddling her over-large clothes tighter. “You can’t see me like this. I’ll be fine.”

  I wanted to argue, but hesitated. “Where will you go?”

  “I’ll find an empty barn, somewhere quiet and out of the way. Perhaps Chalaam can ask around, save me time searching.”

  I examined the dejected corpse. “With his social skills? Might arouse suspicion.”

  Henka glanced at the man sitting at the bar. “I’m going to go talk to him.” She darted a quick glance at me. “I’ll have to flirt a bit to distract him. Don’t be upset.”

  “If it will keep you safe and bring you back to me sooner, I’m fine with whatever you need to do.”

  Flashing a look of gratitude, Henka unbuttoned her shirt a little more, exposing cleavage, stood, and walked to the bar. Sitting beside the man nursing his whiskey, she leaned in close and whispered something to him.

  I pretended to focus on my meal and they had their quiet conversation. The man checked to see what my reaction was and, seeing me occupied and uncaring, returned his attention to Henka.

  “Prolly Kamdi, Panfis’ daughter,” I heard him say. “She’s only eighteen, but she’s a looker awright.”

  The conversation once again dropped in volume.

  “Thank you, kind sir,” Henka finally said, leaning in to kiss him lightly on the cheek before returning to our table.

  “Cold,” I heard him say as she left, though I don’t know if that was in reference to her lips, or her abrupt departure.

  The whiskey-drinking man followed her with his eyes until he noticed me watching him. He abruptly returned to his drink, back hunched.

  “Done,” she said, joining us. “There’s an abandoned farmstead on the edge of town.”

  “Kamdi?” I asked.
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  “He started comparing me to other girls he knew.”

  “Are you sure you won’t at least take Chalaam with you?”

  “Would you like me to have dark eyes again?” she asked, ignoring my concern.

  I did. The blue eyes were disconcerting, reminded me of Shalayn. But more than anything, I wanted her to once again resemble that ancient and deep-buried memory of a specific woman. So selfish. I stared at the remains of my pie. An eyeball-sized mushroom protruded from one side, round and glistening in dark gravy.

  “I would like that,” I said. “But you don’t have to. Not for me.”

  “I’d do anything for you. You know that.”

  “I do.”

  “Anyway,” she said, “we’re being selfish together. I want this too.”

  Selfish together. Was that possible, or was I letting her believe the lie?

  So beautiful. So desperate to please. Was I using her, abusing her trust and her feelings for me? And what were her feelings? Did she feel she somehow owed me just because I didn’t kill her when I had the chance? Did she feel indebted because of my small act of kindness when others would have ended her?

  When you don’t know yourself, sometimes it takes a while to comprehend your choices. Understanding crept up on me: I wasn’t helping Henka for Henka. I was helping Henka for me. I needed her. I needed her undead. She would not only make for me an army of corpses unlike the world had ever seen, but she’d also make an army of necromancers, for me. Enslaved necromancers, their hearts under my control. I would not make the mistakes I’d made in the past. None of this, however, could happen until we had her heart back. I couldn’t chance the necromancer who created her showing up and claiming control.

  My self-loathing sank deeper as I realized that once I had her heart in my possession, I’d likely be unwilling to give it up. I knew from my fragmented memories that the necromancers had joined the wizards in their war against me. I could avoid that this time, if they were all under my control. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t done it this way last time. Why had I left the necromancers such freedom? I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

  For a mad instant, the young man I was wanted to confess everything to Henka, to tell her she couldn’t trust me, that I planned betrayal. The old man, the fallen emperor of the world, the demonologist who spent souls like bronze pieces, squashed the urge. We needed her. If we told her the truth, she’d leave, and neither of us would get what we wanted. He knew me, knew I wanted her. I hated him.