The attack came swiftly. Arrows thumped into the road, planting themselves in the ground in front of Nerris’s horse. He pulled back on the reins and the animal protested with a shrill scream. Before he could shout a warning, a score of men in black robes bounded over the ridge, dropping to the muddy road. One leapt off a boulder close to Nerris, serrated blade extended, but Nerris drew his sword, and he cut the man right out of the air in one motion. A few others came close and Nerris rode into them, cleaving through black fabric and flesh.
Dist had drawn the Big Black as well and was feathering cultists as fast as he could. Another score or so appeared on the road in front of them, blades at the ready and marching forward at a steady pace. With so many, Nerris called a retreat and directed his friends to ride back the way they came. He wheeled his horse around and caught a glimpse of Len-Ahl’s eyes as she did the same. He saw fear in them, but also a lack of surprise. Had she dreamed this too?
They rode away, intending to outrun the cultist footmen. However, a score of horsemen thundered around the bend to cut them off. These men were not cultists, but wore hauberks and carried sabers. They stayed in formation, a telltale sign of soldiers. Two men in ornate plate armor and fearsome helms led them. Nerris glanced around. The ridge and river prevented escape on either side. They were trapped.
The cultists moved in behind them, threatening them but not attacking. They closed ranks as the horsemen approached from the other direction. One of the leaders, the larger one, rode ahead and approached them, holding up a hand to halt any premature attack. Nerris couldn’t see his face through the steel, but the stench identified him. The man removed his helm to reveal a head of plaited hair and a sour face. Nerris silently damned their luck.
They had been caught by Falares.
PART THREE: ROAD OF HARDSHIP
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Chapter Twenty-Seven
NERRIS PALADA,” FALARES said, his bearded face sneering. “I see you’ve come crawling back to us. And you even brought some friends along. My Eternal will be pleased.”
“I’m just passing through,” Nerris said. “I no longer have any business with Qabala or her war.” The other man also bore the plate armor of a Dume-General. He removed his helm, and Nerris caught a glimpse of long, silver hair. “Lukas Kord,” he said. “I find it strange to meet you two all the way up here. No one ever accused Falares of intelligence, but I thought he would at least be able to tell north from south.”
That wiped the sneer of the big man’s face. “Enough with the jibes. My Eternal requests your presence at Palehorse. You all will be coming with us.”
“Wait a minute,” Jhareth said. “What does Queen Qabala want with Nerris?”
Nerris grimaced. “It’s a long story. These two gentlemen are old comrades. And I use both those terms loosely. The older man is Lukas Kord, former second-in-command of the Palehorse City Watch. The other is Falares. We called him the Lady’s Ape.”
Falares frowned and dismounted, but Lukas held out an arm to keep him from advancing. “The proper form of address is ‘Your Constancy,’ Nerris, you know that. After all, you were almost one of us.”
“What?” Dist asked. He and Jhareth looked sharply at him.
“They don’t know.” Falares laughed. “So much for the legendary camaraderie of the Thrillseekers. Had he not run out on us, you may have been looking at Nerris Palada, Dume-General, member of the Aeternal Council and consort of Queen Qabala Aeterna. I’m not sure what he is now, besides trapped like the vermin he is.”
“Is that true?” Jhareth asked Nerris.
He nodded. “As far as it goes. I never had any intention of becoming a Dume-General, but Qabala was keen enough on the idea.”
“She was more than keen on a few things,” Falares said. “Have you told them of how you used to warm my Eternal’s bed nightly like some grasping camp whore?”
Nerris’s eyes grew hard. “Falares, you have a big mouth. I’m like to shut it if you’ll call off your dogs.”
Falares placed a hand on his hilt. “Anytime you’re ready, you foreign goat.”
Lukas spurred his mount forward and came between them. “There can be no violence, your Constancy,” he said. “Our orders are to take Nerris and his friends to Palehorse, alive and unharmed.” He gestured to Nerris’s companions. “On the ground, all of you. The Thrillseekers are notorious for escaping tight predicaments and I’ll not have you ahorse.”
Nerris surveyed the situation and glanced at Jhareth, knowing he was doing the same. His friend’s look clearly said they would not be able to fight their way out of this. Sighing, Nerris dismounted to the muddy ground. Jhareth, Dist, and Len-Ahl did the same, and several of Falares’s men moved in to take their weapons and mounts.
“I don’t understand,” Dist said. “Nerris, you never told us you were so close to the new Queen of Yagolhan.”
Lukas smiled. “It is with thanks to Master Palada here that we were able to quickly turn the war in our favor,” he said. “Not seven months ago, he crept into the Aeternica and bereft old King Lahnen of his life as he prepared for bed. He is truly a national hero to all true Yagols.”
“Nerris!” Jhareth sounded shocked, and Len-Ahl’s mouth fell open as well.
“That was one of our rules,” Dist said. “We don’t kill in cold blood.”
Nerris hung his head. How could he make them understand the turmoil he had gone through since Miagama? Now that it was laid out before him, it all seemed useless. He thought back on King Lahnen in his present state and felt nothing but shame, not only for the act itself but what it had led to for Qabala.
“Dist, Jhareth,” he said. “I—”
“This information might have been useful before we trekked all the way out here!” Dist shouted, his temper flaring.
“Quiet, Thrillseeker.” Falares cuffed Dist in the back of the head.
Dist grunted and stumbled forward, but sprang back at Falares almost immediately. Two sabres grabbed his arms to stop him. “Try that again, you reeking bastard,” he said.
Falares ignored him. “Evening approaches, your Constancy,” he said to Lukas. “We should have them secured by then.”
“Yes,” Lukas said. He barked some orders and their soldiers marched them forward at sword point.
“What have we here?” Falares asked, leering as Len-Ahl walked past him. She cried out as the Dume-General grabbed her by the waist, pulling her in close. His free hand slithered up her body, groping at her chest. Len-Ahl trembled as he leaned close, breathing onto her neck. Nerris rushed forward, but again the sabres blocked him from getting to Falares.
“Dume Falares,” Lukas said. “I repeat, our orders are to bring them in alive and unharmed.”
“I wasn’t planning on harming her,” Falares said.
“I’ve seen your women after you’ve been with them,” Lukas said. “I know better.”
Falares shrugged and shoved Len-Ahl forward. “As you say, your Constancy.”
Sabres tied their hands behind their backs with stout rope, and they were marched in a single line to the east. As they had after the Battle of Gelnicka, the cultists melted away into the forest as if they were phantoms, leaving the sabres and Dume-Generals to guard them. They walked for an hour, climbing down hills and crossing game trails until they arrived at the main road.
Two wains had been prepared for them, resting on a dirt road next to a pond. Four strong drays had been hitched to each one, and the sides of the wagons were open to the elements, but for the thick, iron bars. It reminded Nerris of a circus he had seen in Locraw once, and the mobile cages which had housed the animals.
“We were sent up here to recruit some fresh blood for the Aeterna’s army,” Lukas explained. “However, some were less malleable than others and had to be persuaded to join up. So we have been using these prison wains to bring them in.”
Dume Lukas directed the sabres to search their packhorse to cannibalize any useful supplies and leave behind the rest
. The soldiers requisitioned their cooking utensils, as well as their tents. The rest lay forgotten on the ground. Others wrapped Nerris’s katana, Jhareth’s knives, Dist’s short sword, the Big Black, and even Len-Ahl’s flute in a brown tarp.
“Is this real gold?” Lukas asked when presented with Jinn’s medallion. As he turned the disc over and examined it, Nerris felt a moment of panic until he realized the dim watchman had no way of knowing its purpose. Sure enough, Lukas shrugged and stuck the medallion into his own horse’s saddlebag. “A gift for the Aeterna,” he said.
“What in the world is this?” Falares asked, opening Dist’s bag of ignition powder.
“Set a torch to it and find out,” Dist said.
Falares rifled through the powder with his fingers and gave Dist a contemptuous glare. He strung the bag up and heaved it into the pond. Dist nearly gagged with rage as his stash of powder sank below the dull gray water.
“Do you have any idea how long it took me to make that much!?” he yelled.
Falares smirked and barked out another order. Nerris and Len-Ahl were forced into one of the dirty wains, where their hands were shackled to either side of the narrow cage. Their bonds allowed them room to sit with their backs against the wood, wallowing in the filthy straw covering the floor. Falares supervised the men at the other wain, who forced Jhareth to enter with a saber at his back.
As Dist made to climb in after him, Falares stuck his foot out. Dist tripped and fell face first into the mud. Falares and several of the men shared a laugh, but even with his hands tied Dist regained his feet in an instant. He rammed his shoulder into Falares’s midsection. He caught the armored man off guard, shoving him into the side of the wain. All Dist could do was keep pressing him, as if he could put Falares through the iron bars with sheer force of will.
Falares’s men shouted in surprise, and one of the sabres brought the hilt of his blade down on Dist’s head. Dist slumped to his knees with a grunt, letting up on the Dume-General. Falares responded by slamming a steel clad knee into Dist’s nose. Blood spurted, and Dist fell to his back with a semi-conscious groan.
Falares spat. “Thrillseeker, huh? You’re not so tough.”
Len-Ahl began to cry, and Nerris leaned forward. “Dist, stay down and do what he says!”
Jhareth raged against his restraints. “Come on, you fucking whoreson, untie him and see how this fight turns out!”
“Enough!” Lukas’s shout, perfected from years of commanding watch units, quieted them all. “Dume Falares, this is not conduct becoming of a Dume-General. As for the rest of you, you are going to Palehorse whether you like it or not. It is useless to resist.”
Falares caught the eye of two sabres and jerked his head. The soldiers picked Dist up and placed him inside the wain, securing him opposite from Jhareth. They left and bolted the door behind them. A moment later, the crack of a whip sounded and the drays moved forward, pulling the wains in a southerly direction down the muddy road.
The following days blurred together with the steady movement of the wain’s wheels and the repetitive scenery. The sabres would not unshackle them, even to let them sleep. Once a day, their guards opened the doors to give them a bowl filled with some kind of runny porridge and a skin of water. Their chains were long enough that they had free use of their hands, but it made eating awkward all the same. Afterward, they would bring in a wide bucket for them to use as a chamber pot. Though Nerris averted his eyes whenever Len-Ahl would take care of her business, their guards laughed and hooted whenever she would hike up her skirts. Nerris could do nothing except clench his fists.
After some time on the road Len-Ahl scarcely moved at all, and it was a relief whenever their door opened and she raised her hands to receive her daily sludge. Whenever Nerris attempted to speak with her, a guard would rattle his spear against their bars and tell him to shut his mouth. Another sabre periodically entered to clean Nerris’s shoulder wound and replace the bandage.
Days and weeks passed as they left behind the forests and mountains, heading south through the Yellow Plains. The terrain grew even more monotonous as their wains creaked down the main highway amongst endless fields of golden grass. Though thunder often rumbled in the distance, it seldom rained, and the temperature picked up the farther south they headed. The once formidable trading town of Ryvetsk went by in an instant, still a burnt out shell after Qabala’s sacking all those months ago. With nothing to do except watch the world pass by, Nerris took to sleeping frequently in spite of the lack of comfort. He had lost his perception of time, and they could have been traveling down that road for five years, for all he knew.
A rattling against the bars awakened Nerris one morning, courtesy of a spearhead. Nerris opened his eyes and looked south to see the silhouette of Palehorse in the distance, a pall of smoke hanging high above from its many chimneys. Lukas Kord rode up beside his wain.
“End of the journey,” he said cheerfully. “I do apologize for the lack of comforts, but my Eternal wanted you and your friends in the worst way, and I would not chance displeasing her by giving you chance to plot an escape.”
The city seemed emptier than Nerris remembered it. Townsfolk peered out through shuttered windows, and those who walked the streets on their way to work or the marketplace stepped along hastily. He wondered what they were afraid of, until their wain passed a precession of black-robed cultists. It seemed every other square they passed featured those foul men gesticulating on the cobblestones in prayer. The grand city, once the seat of power to a vast empire, was rife with the Cult of Eversor.
None stood in their path as they rolled through the streets, and they soon came to the west end of the city, where they were admitted into the Aeternica. Once inside, their guards released them from their shackles and forced into the bailey, at the very spot Qabala had ordered him thrown into the dungeon. Weeks of idleness had rendered Nerris’s legs nearly useless, and he stumbled as he hit ground for the first time. He saw his friends having similar problems, but they were propped up by the sabres and forced through the doors of the main keep.
Qabala sat alone in the great hall, upon the ornate throne the Y’Ghan family had graced for many centuries. She wore the silky maroon robes of an Aeterna, trimmed with gold. A tiara embedded with diamonds and rubies adorned her head. Her hair had grown out a bit since Nerris had last seen her, but otherwise she was as beautiful and terrible as he remembered. He felt her jade eyes watching him as he was presented to her, with Len-Ahl at his side.
Dist and Jhareth joined them as well. Dist’s nose had healed, but the gash in his leg looked to be worsening. His and Jhareth’s clothes were filthy and ragged, and both seemed thinner. Nerris wondered if he looked as haggard as they did.
“My Eternal,” Falares called out. He and Lukas saluted. “I bring you the Thrillseekers and their companion, by your command.”
Qabala stood and descended the steps to stand before them. Her nose wrinkled and she grimaced as she beheld their unwashed and emaciated state. “I must apologize,” she said. “I told my Dume-Generals to bring you here by any means necessary, but it appears they went too far concerning your treatment.”
“Such self-reproach is uncharacteristic, Qabala,” Nerris said. “What do you want?”
Qabala’s eyes met his. “I think you know, Nerris. I want you by my side once more.”
Nerris shook his head. “Our time is past. You saw to that when you murdered Chalis here in this room and had me imprisoned.”
Qabala ignored him and turned to Dist and Jhareth. “You must be the other Thrillseekers. I am sorry our first meeting is under these circumstances, but I have heard the stories like everyone else. I could not pass up the chance to meet all of you at once. I regret that my subordinates’ treatment of you was so beastly.”
Jhareth’s mouth twitched. “I must confess we’ve had better accommodations,” he said. “The view was wonderful, but the service was absolutely horrid.”
Qabala chuckled. “I like this one. He’s
a bit cheeky.” She gave him a glance from head to toe. “If I remember the descriptions correctly, you are Jhareth Kanave. Tell me, Jhareth, what brings you to my kingdom?”
“Oh, just a little adventure,” Jhareth said. “I discovered a lead on a treasure that would yield us a quick profit.”
“And did you find this treasure?”
“No,” Jhareth lied. “It turned into a dead end. I’ll be sure to thoroughly chastise my contact when I return to Faerlin.”
“Huh.” Qabala walked back to Nerris’s right and looked upon Len-Ahl. “And you, no doubt, are the Stonechaser I’ve heard so much about.” Len-Ahl’s head jerked up in surprise and Qabala laughed. “Yes, I know all about you and your prophecy. I have a Nateus of the earth clerics in my custody who has been more than forthcoming about your mission. After a few sessions on the rack, that is. Tell me, have you found the first ‘beacon to light the path’ yet?”
Len-Ahl averted her gaze. “I do not... no, please...”
“My Eternal,” Lukas said.
“What is it, your Constancy?”
“All of the Thrillseekers’ possessions were of little value.” The Dume-General reached into his satchel and pulled out Jinn’s medallion. “Except this. I had meant to present it to you as a gift, but perhaps this is the beacon of which you speak.”
Qabala took the medallion and examined the runes. Her smile grew bigger. “This is it,” she said, laughing. “Oh, Nerris, you have no idea how much simpler this makes things. I was worried you might not wish to help me with my journey to the Exemplus, but now I see you are already amidst the Xenea Dolchin.”
“What do you want with the Exemplus?” Nerris asked. “Isn’t the Doom Rock enough for you?”
“To hold both is to hold absolute power,” Qabala said. “Imagine everything wrong with this world obliterated in an instant. Greed, envy, pain, gone. Today is a grand day, Nerris.” She turned back to Len-Ahl. “Tell me, where do I seek the second beacon?” When she didn’t answer, Qabala’s hand shot up and twisted her ear. “Tell me!”
Secrets of the Stonechaser (The Law of Eight Book 1) Page 25
