Shadow of the Ghost Bear (The Tale of Azaran Book 2)

by Arbela, Zackery

  Azaran stood, shaking his head, ignoring the pain from his ribs. Tarazal remained where he was, holding the club in his right hand. He raised it up, shaking his head.

  "You have grown soft," he said to Azaran. He tossed the club aside. "Sloppy. It's a wonder you are not dead."

  Azaran raised his fists, stepping to the side, keeping his eyes on the other man. Tarazal rolled his eyes. Azaran feinted to the left and then struck right, sending out a flurry of punches at the man's face. Each time Tarazal ducked aside, his expression not changing. He slid to his left, letting Azaran's right arm shoot past, grabbing it just above the wrist. He twisted his grip. Pain shot up Azaran's arm. He was raised up on his toes, suddenly losing control of his body,

  Azaran relaxed, twisting about, trying to drop down his elbow. Tarazal snorted and let go, giving him a hard shove. Azaran fell to the ground again, gasping at the pain.

  "Over extended," said Tarazal. “You came in like a novice. You've become a barbarian. No skill. No discipline. You are more than traitor, you are a disappointment!"

  Azaran stood again and charged at Tarazal slid back, grunting at the effort, his arms pinned at his sides. He shifted about slightly, and Azaran somehow felt his grip weaken. One of Tarazal's arms slipping free. He pressed his hand against Azaran's face. For a moment they stood there, straining against one another, almost perfectly matched in strength.

  Muscles shifted under Tarazal's skin. He spun about, his balance shifted off to one side. Azaran stumbled forward into a sudden unexpected opening, Tarazal spinning him around suddenly and hurling him hard into the wall with enough force to crack the stones. Before Azaran could so much as blink Tarazal closed in, hurling punches strong enough to break a lesser man's skull into his gut and ribs, tearing flesh and breaking bones. Azaran fell back against the wall, grunting with each strike, each blow, too stunned to do more than take the hits.

  Tarazal then grabbed him by the shoulders and hurled him to the ground. Azaran collapsed, his existence reduced to one of pain and shock. He struggled to rise, pushing up against the ground, just in time to see Tarazal's foot coming towards his face.

  "A disappointment," Tarazal repeated as Azaran fell to the ground. "A waste."

  No dreams, this time around. Azaran awoke to the smell of his burning flesh.

  "Ah!" He jerked against the heavy chains binding him to a stone post.

  The man holding the hot iron jumped back with a curse. "Awake!" he said. "Alive! Thought the old fellow beat you dead. Shows what I know..."

  He turned back to a smoking brazier filled with hot coals, shoving the iron back in to join several others already glowing hot. He kept talking to himself, but Azaran paid no mind. He slumped in the chains, taking note of the various aches and pains across his body. Broken bones, now mending. Cuts and bruises, now closed and fading. The scars might remain, but from the way the runes glowed on his chest, the wounds would be healed up by dawn. A day from now it would be like he was never wounded.

  Stronger, faster. Minor wounds will not affect you, greater ones mend in a fraction of the time for other men. You can die, make no mistake...but your enemy will have to work harder for it. Just one of the gifts we give you...

  Stronger. Faster. But not strong enough or fast enough, it looked like. The chains binding him to the post were thick and heavy, able to resist any attempt to break them. No getting out of this unless someone let him out.

  "Never could tell," mumbled the guard. Wine fumes clung to him, adding their smell to the stench of this place. "Probably won't make that mistake again, when he's done with you...

  The door banged open. Tarazal strode in. He sniffed the air and grimaced. "Have you been drinking?"

  "Yeah. What's it to you?" The guard glared at him blearily, belligerent for a moment...until he got a look at Tarazal's face. He looked down rubbing the back of his head. "It's just...you know, not the sort of thing I should be doing..."

  "Out," Tarazal commanded. "Now."

  The guard fled. Tarazal closed the door to the cell and turned back to Azaran. "Sodden and stupid. These are the savages you've chosen to stand with, Azaran? Have you fallen so low?"

  Azaran didn't say anything. The patch of burned skin on his arm stung fiercely. He glanced at the glowing irons. Tarazal saw him look and shook his head.

  "Fear not the pain. Have you forgotten the first lesson?"

  "I've forgotten more than that," Azaran answered.

  "Don't even play that game with me. It is one more insult. All those years...I thought we knew each other. All those fights, the campaigns, the battles. Brothers, we called each other. But I suppose you can never truly know another man. You learn his strengths, his weaknesses, but you never truly know what's in a man's head, until he disappoints you..."

  "I know your name," Azaran said. "But don't know the man who owns it. You speak of battles...I don't know them. You call me brother, but you are a stranger to me." He shifted about, trying to stand, one of his legs was about to fall asleep. "I don't remember. I have no memory of anything. They pulled me from the ocean, before that there is nothing..."

  Then he saw stars. He head snapped to the side, cheeking stinging where Tarazal backhanded it.

  "Stop lying," Tarazal said. "You can play the fool with these savages, but not with me. I know you better than any man alive. I know who you are. I know what you have done. I know what you can do...because I taught you everything I know, including how to lie! And you are lying to me now, Azaran. You aren't very good at it."

  Azaran spat out a gob of blood-flecked saliva. "It's not a lie. I have no memory of anything..." Another blow, and this time it took a while before his eyeballs figured out which way they wanted to focus. By that point Tazaral was standing by the brazier. He plucked out one of the iron rods, holding the point up, turning it this way and that. "I don't like these kinds of methods," he said. "You learn more from a man when he tells you willingly, then when he speaks out of pain. Nine words out of ten will be a lie. But you act the fool, like a child. You will be punished like a child."

  "You punish a child with hot irons?" Azaran asked incredulously.

  "You know the answer to that."

  And before Azaran could reply, Tarazal shoved the red hot tip into his gut.

  The pain was intense. His nostrils filled with the smell of his burning flesh. Tarazal twisted the rod slightly, increasingly the agony. At no point did he lose that look of detachment. Azaran did not scream, much as he wanted too. Mastery begins with the self, said Tarazal's voice in his head, even as the man himself burned his guts. Master your mind and you Master your body. Pain is but an illusion of the body. You feel it only because you allow yourself to feel it...

  "I...will...not feel it..." he muttered, pulling his mind away from the pain. He felt it, his body screamed with it, but did not let his mind acknowledge it, as if he was viewing from a faraway distance...

  "You remember that lesson," said Tarazal. "Good. Now end the charade. Why did you betray the Master?"

  "I...don't know..."

  "Liar!" Tarazal plucked out another hot iron and shoved it into the flesh of his thigh. "What are you doing among these natives? Do you seek power for yourself..."

  "I...want...memories..."

  "Liar!" Another iron, shoved into the flesh of his other thigh. This time Azaran did let out a grunt.

  Tarazal picked up a fourth iron rod. He held the tip up close to Azaran's face, inches from one of his eyes, the heat heavy on his skin. "You are starting to annoy me," Tarazal said. The iron drifted down slightly, then pressed on Azaran's cheek. "One final time, Azaran. Why did you betray the Master? And if you start with this babble about not remembering, this..." He pressed the iron hard against Azaran's cheek, "goes into an eye!"

  He whipped the iron away, taking some skin with it. Blood trickled down Azaran cheek. More blood dribbled from the other rods in his body. His self-control was starting to crack, he could feel it. And he didn't want to lose an eye. He needed his eyes. But
he didn't want to give that son of a bitch the satisfaction...

  Tell him what he wants to hear, said the silent passenger. The tree that bends with the wind stands straight again when the wind is gone.

  "I...wanted power," Azaran said. He looked up, forced himself to smile. "I wanted to rule...as a king. I want power, wealth, women..."

  "And for that you betray our Master?" Tarazal shook his head. He raised the iron again. It was starting to cool, so he tossed it aside. "Duty is everything. Obedience is the first virtue. We serve because we serve. Gold is a worthless metal. Power belongs only to the Masters. Women are just beasts for breeding. You know all this. It was beaten into your head, it was burned into your flesh!" He jabbed at finger at one of the rune lines on Azaran's torso.

  "Guess...it didn't take..."

  "I supposed not." Tarazal yanked the rods out of Azaran's body, blood and burned flesh coming out with the iron. Azaran slumped against the chains. He sensed the runes coming to life, his body already healing the damage, as it had the broken bones from the night before.

  "I was going to kill you," Tarazal said. "You were my student, my comrade, a brother of the Green Banner. The least I could do was offer a worthy death. But seeing what you are, what you've become... Something is wrong with you, mistakes were made, so death will have to wait. The Master will want to look at you himself. One of the Osa'shaq gone so shamefully wrong. He will want to find out why. It will be a long process. It will be exceedingly painful. By the time he is done you will be broken in every way imaginable. I will watch every moment of it, if the Master allows me such a favor, and I will enjoy it all. For it's nothing more then what you deserve!"

  Tarazal hurled the last iron to the floor. He exited the cell, slamming the door behind him. Azaran hung from the chains, no strength left in his body, weak from pain and blood loss. He fell into a dark, dreamless void.

  "Hurry, we don't have long!"

  The voices brought him back. "Is that you, Tarazal?" he mumbled.

  "What bloody speech is that?"

  It took Azaran a moment to realize he'd been speaking in Tarazal's tongue. He opened his eyes, and looked into a pair of Eburrean faces. He switched to their tongue. "Come to finish me off?"

  "If you don't be quiet, we'll all finished," said one of the Eburreans.

  Azaran frowned. He recognized the face, or at least thought he did, it was hard to keep a coherent thought in his mind at the moment... "You were in the hall when..."

  "When Belandec shamed us all before gods and men." The warrior nodded. "Now be quiet! We don't have long!"

  He heard them fumbling around with the chains. "Almost...there!" Links clattered at they struck the floor, the chains slithering off his body. He fell over a moment later, the breath knocked from his body as he struck the ground. He groaned as blood rushed back into stiffened limbs, inflaming the wounds from the hot pokers...

  "I don't see why he's flopping about like a fish," said one of the warriors. "I been knocked about worse when the wife has the drink in her."

  "Maybe he's a delicate one," said the other.

  Azaran touched the spot on his belly where the hot iron had gone in. His fingers ran over ridges of flesh and a multitude of soreness. There was no blood, no sign of burning, only a round scar, surrounded by several inches of bruised skin.

  A lesser man would be dead. For Azaran it was just the aftermath of a rough night. He stood, swayed as his head swam and grabbed the pillar to steady himself. Healed, to be sure, but so tired, so bloody weak...

  "They worked you over hard," said one of the warriors.

  "I'll be all right," Azaran mumbled. "A few hours sleep and I'll be in fighting trim..."

  "We don't have a few hours. Help him along, Gelinec."

  "Right, just put your arm over my shoulder...bugger me backwards, he's a heavy one!"

  The warriors helped him out of the cell and down the narrow corridor. Azaran looked out a narrow window near the top of the wall and saw darkness. Night time. "Where are you taking me?" he asked.

  "Away from here," said one of the warriors.

  "The Rhennari is already free," said the other. "But he wouldn't leave without you."

  "But, your chieftain..."

  "Never mind him...up the stairs, that's it, one step at a time..."

  They emerged in the night time air. More men were waiting outside, along with a pair of horses. Segovac stood with them, watching as Azaran was carefully set on the ground. "You look terrible," he observed with his customary wryness.

  "You're hilarious. I've never felt better in my life." And then Azaran placed his hands in his head, waiting for the spinning to stop.

  "You must be gone," said one of the men. One of the clan elders, judging from the silver arm band and fine clothing. "Belandec feasts his guests in the great hall for a while. But come the dawn you will be found missing. Belandec will turn over every leaf to find you."

  "Sorely lacking in backbone and moral fiber is our chief,” said one of the warriors who helped Azaran out of the dungeons.

  "Ganascorec will kill him for this," said Segovac. "You should give him the chance to flee as well."

  The clan elder spat on the ground. "That for the King. He may piss on the old ways, but there many who hold to them still. Better half the clan should die than all of us live in shame." And he placed a hand on the sword belted to his hip. "Let the witches come with their black knives. We'll see whose blood is spilled."

  The horses were brought forward. Segovac mounted one, wincing at the various aches and pains in his body. "Azaran," he called out. "Can you ride?"

  "Yes..." Azaran forced himself to stand. The dizziness rushed back for a baleful moment, then just as quickly vanished. A rune just under his left breast flared briefly. He was clear headed again, but he knew it wouldn't last. He needed to rest soon, he desperately needed something to eat, a body could only be pushed so far.

  But not here. He climbed onto the horse. One of the men handed him a bag full of rations, which he slung over his shoulder. Another gave him his sword.

  "Ride west until you reach the Vaenilan Forest," the clan leader said. "Seek out Prince Gwindec. Tell him Beshamis sent you, he will give shelter."

  "Gwindec!" Segovac exclaimed. "What is he doing in the forest?"

  "Hiding from his uncle. The Iturai are giving him shelter." Beshamis pointed towards the west. "Ride now, and don't come back!"

  Segovac looked to Azaran. "Not the welcome I expected, my friend."

  "It's exactly what I expected." Azaran nudged his horse into a trot and rode towards the gate. The doors were open, the men standing atop the gate house watching them leave. As soon as they passed through the walls the doors closed behind them.

  Azaran looked back at the stronghold. Tarazal was in there and with him a long list of answers to questions. Only now Azaran was starting to fear the answers.

  "You're the one they want?" said Segovac.

  "Yes."

  "Any chance that some bit of your past might be knocked loose in that head of yours?"

  Azaran shook his head. "Nothing worth repeating."

  "Right." Segovac clearly didn't believe him. For his part. Azaran wasn't sure if he believed it himself. He knew Tarazal...had learned to fight from Tarazal. Called him comrade, even friend. But he couldn't remember any of this. And now Azaran wondered if he wasn't receiving the better part of that bargain.

  "Ponder the questions while we ride," Segovac told him. "It's a long way to the forest. When dawn comes they'll be on our heels. Best put some distance behind us."

  Chapter Five

  "I need to rest."

  "Again?"

  "Yes, again."

  Segovac sighed and reined in his horse. He watched as Azaran slid out of the saddle and sat down on a nearby rock, holding his head in his hands and shivering.

  Segovac reached into the ration bag and plucked out a small piece of hard tack. He took out another and tossed it to Azaran. "Eat."

  "My
thanks." Azaran wolfed it down in two bites. His body fairly screamed with hunger, his stomach knotting from the sheer emptiness. He needed nourishment. The biscuit removed the edge a bit, but it was still there. Nothing comes for free. Everything has a price. He wasn't sure which voice said that, but either way it was true. The runes healed his wounds, but it came at a price.

  Another biscuit dropped onto the grass beside him. "Have another," Segovac said to him.

  "You should eat as well, old man."

  "I had a big dinner."

  Azaran didn't quibble. He ate the biscuit and stood again, climbing back into the saddle. They continued on, cantering across an open field. On the right was yet another abandoned farmstead, on the left a broken stone wall marking the edge of the plot. In the distance was a faint green line.

  "This forest," he asked, more to keep his mind off the hunger than anything else. "How big is it?"

  "Big enough. It takes a weeks hard riding to get from one side to the other. Of course, you might be dead before the second day has passed, depending on the locals opinion."

  "The Iturai. Are they another clan?"

  "No. They're not like us."

  "How do you mean?"

  "They're not human."

  "Oh." Azaran pondered this for a moment. It never occurred that there might be people who were not human, but now that he thought on it he realized how ridiculous it was to think otherwise. Of course there were other races...he'd seen them. He knew he had...he just couldn't remember where and when...

  "So, they are not friendly."

  "Not these days. Ganascorec demanded they pay tribute, not long after he declared himself King. The Iturai laughed in his face. He sent men in to collect. Only one came out, tied to his horse and feathered with so many arrows he looked like a goose. Since then most folk avoid the forest."

  "And you're expecting them to act different with us?"

  "There was friendship between the Iturai and the Rhennari, back in the old days. Pacts sworn, oaths made and so on. And Ganascorec is our mutual enemy. That should count in our favor."