Fearsome Journeys (The New Solaris Book of Fantasy)

by Jonathan Strahan

  “We found him!” they called out to two other soldiers, who hurried to join them. “He’d been knocked out.” They set the wounded man they had rescued down beside a campfire. Reny paused to watch as the man sat up and groggily accepted some water.

  “I’ve seen Lady Death,” the man said, his eyes wide. “And she’s beautiful.”

  The four soldiers laughed.

  “Must have been a good knock to the head.”

  “Just like you to have visions of pretty women.”

  “Well, if you’re going to have visions, why not ones of pretty women?”

  “I saw her,” the wounded man said. “She saw me. But she let me live. She said I would live.”

  They laughed again.

  Reny shook his head and continued on to his tent. From such talk, superstitions and legends might spring. He hoped Kala knew what she was doing.

  If she returned tonight, he wasn’t going to ask what it was.

  IT MUST HAVE been torment enough to be dragged, defeated and in chains, to face one’s enemy. But to have been given the freedom to walk to meet his conqueror, and then waste that small gift of dignity by stumbling and falling onto his face in the mud, was too much humiliation for the prince. There were smothered sniggers among the audience of army captains, though not from the captive locals brought to witness the surrender of their leader. He struggled to rise, but could not get his legs under him on the steep embankment. A low sob escaped him, then two guards came forward, hauled him back to his feet and half-carried him forward, forcing him to his knees before Dael. He sagged, all pride and fight gone, his head bowed.

  Reny was surprised to find that, after the countless defeated men and women he’d seen brought before the sorcerer King, he still felt a stirring of pity for this particular man. Even in the fading light he could see that the prince was young, barely old enough to claim the princedom from his father, who had been killed in this nation’s first battle against Dael.

  “Your army is defeated, your cities have fallen,” Dael told him. “Do you surrender your land and people to me? Do you give your remaining army into my hands, to fight in the glorious Conquest to unite the lands?”

  The prince remained silent. He was still so long that Reny began to worry that the youth would not respond. Then suddenly the prince straightened his body and lifted his head. He glared at Dael with intense hatred.

  “I do not.”

  Reny looked at Dael. The sorcerer’s eyebrows had risen slightly. There was a strange, avid light in his eyes.

  “You know that the penalty for refusing is death, for you and everyone in your land?”

  “Yes.” The hatred in the young man’s face vanished and was replaced by a blissful, wide-eyed stare as he tilted his head to the sky. “The Goddess of Death will take us. She will bring us peace.” His gaze dropped to Dael and his eyes narrowed again. “And she will avenge our deaths.”

  The Goddess of Death? For a moment Reny could not breathe or move, then his heart began hammering in his chest and his knees felt weak. Was this a deity these people worshipped? Or was it, as he suddenly feared, the whore in his tent? The woman who had returned to his bed and fallen asleep at his side, then prepared his morning meal as if nothing had changed? In the morning light, it was too easy to dismiss what he’d seen last night as an illusion, or a dream. He forced himself to stand still and breathe normally, not wanting to give any hint of the shock that the prince’s declaration had given him.

  Fortunately Dael was not looking at Reny. His gaze was fixed on the youth as he rose.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “I wouldn’t want it to be known that I didn’t offer you a choice.”

  The young man’s eyes filled with fear as the sorcerer approached, but his voice was steady. “I am sure. As are my people.”

  Dael paused. “How disappointing,” he said quietly. He nodded to the guards, who hauled the prince to his feet. Then he drew a long knife and plunged it into the young man’s chest.

  As always, Reny made his eyes stay focused on the scene, but not his attention. He’d grown adept at not seeing in these moments, and thinking of something else. Usually the whore. But this time, something caught his eye. Something strange and yet familiar. Something he might not have noticed if he hadn’t slid down the ranks of Dael’s favour in recent weeks, and been standing further down the slope, rather than in his usual place nearer to the King.

  For the first time, he could see the knife protruding from the prince’s chest, and the hand holding it… and more importantly, the air surrounding both.

  It was shimmering.

  The movement was barely noticeable, and he might have again dismissed it as an effect of the twilight descending upon the battlefields, or the heat from a fire or torch beyond the sorcerer and the prince. Now he knew better, and he wished he didn’t.

  But I do know, and it is dangerous to pretend otherwise. I must do what I would recommend to another man in this situation: consider every possibility, no matter how strange—because it is better to be over-prepared than be caught out by the unexpected—then deal with the problem.

  He wished he could do his thinking alone and in peace, but, as ever, he didn’t have that luxury. Now, after the prince’s corpse had been removed, the sorcerer King and his captains retreated to the big tent where battle strategy was discussed and decisions made. Several hours had passed before all were sent to their beds. But as Reny reached the entrance of the tent he heard Dael call his name.

  “Stay a moment, Captain Reny. I wish to talk to you.”

  As the tent emptied, the sorcerer King regarded Reny from the battered throne that was always dragged from battle to battle.

  “Vorl doesn’t like you,” he said when they were finally alone. One thing Reny liked about the leader was how he always got to the point.

  “I know,” Reny replied, shrugging. “I don’t like him.”

  “Why not?

  “He is needlessly cruel.”

  “He is ruthless.” Dael nodded. “Killing is what he does, and he does it well.”

  “Women and children?”

  Dael’s gaze became hard. “This is war. Nobody should pretend that it is merciful to the weak.”

  Reny opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it and nodded.

  “He wants me to get rid of you,” Dael told him. “He says you have rebellion in you, and your scruples will lose us battles one day. What do you say to that?”

  Reny felt as if someone had dropped ice down the back of his armour, and it was sliding slowly down his spine. I have a sorceress masquerading as a whore in my tent; a woman who both this army—and the enemy—think is some sort of goddess of death. The last thing I need is Vorl putting further ideas of betrayal in Dael’s head.

  “I’d rather you got rid of Vorl,” he replied, frankly.

  Dael smiled. “Why should I do that?”

  “Soldiers are like weapons,” Reny found himself replying, “more useful in battle than hung on a wall. Advisers are like scrolls. You keep them so you can use their knowledge again and again.” Somehow it had sounded more eloquent when Kala had said it.

  Dael grinned, his eyes bright with amusement.

  “I like you, Captain Reny. And that’s most important. You may go.”

  Reny bowed, and hurried from the tent.

  RENY WOULD HAVE liked more time to think, but he suspected that time was something he didn’t have much of now. When he entered his tent and saw Kala waiting for him he felt a wave of relief, but it was followed by one of dread. And, unexpectedly, one of lust. She was regarding him with relaxed expectation from the end of the bed, with a small welcoming smile, and he was reminded once again that it was after strategy meetings that he most often used her services.

  He knew that he never would again. That filled him with regret, but also determination. He drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then sat down on one of the chests.

  “What are you?” he asked. “Are you really a goddes
s?”

  She showed no surprise, but her expression became serious, almost sad, and then the smile returned. “I am no goddess. What do you think I am?”

  Reny met her gaze. “What he is. What Dael is. A sorcerer and… something else.”

  Her eyebrows rose and she regarded him appraisingly. “You’ve worked out more than I expected—or hoped.”

  “I’ve worked out nothing,” he disagreed. “I have no idea what is going on. Am I keeping an enemy in my tent? Am I following someone … something more than an ambitious and clever sorcerer mercenary-turned-King, with a love for war and a desire to unite the lands?”

  Suddenly all trace of her smile was gone. She had that knowing, worldly look again, but this time there was anger burning in her eyes.

  “I am from the temple,” she said. “The temple Vorl attacked.”

  His stomach plunged to the floor. He stared at her and felt guilt and pity fill him all over again.

  “I’m sorry—” he began.

  “I lived there for over a thousand years,” she continued.

  Disbelief overtook guilt. He remembered the shimmering air between her hand and the dying soldier, and knew that he had to consider that something so incredible might be possible. If this was true… he felt the first spark of awe. I bedded this woman…

  “But I am several thousands of years older than that,” she added. She looked away, beyond the tent walls, and sighed. “When I was the age of the body you see before you, I developed more than womanly traits. I aged the same as other people, but then within a day or night I’d grow young again.

  “Whenever I returned to youth, I found that I could heal from an injury in an instant, and I could use magic. But in time, I’d lose those abilities and start to age again. How could this be? I only worked out why when a sickness came and many of the local people died. It took many, many more years before I started to age again.” She paused and looked at Reny meaningfully.

  He frowned. “You… you can take magic from people who are dying?”

  “I don’t take it. It comes to me. When someone dies, magic is released and if I am nearby it flows to me. Or if there is someone else with the trait nearby, it flows to whichever of us is closest.”

  “So you are immortal.”

  She shook her head. “I am sure that, if I stayed away from death long enough, I would age and die like everyone else.”

  He thought about the temple, so isolated and only attended by a handful of young women. Healthy young attendees were less likely than older ones to die while serving the old woman they believed was a goddess.

  “That’s why you were there,” he said.

  She nodded solemnly. “I have lived too long. I am tired of it.”

  His mind took a leap of comprehension. “But if death gives you magic, why didn’t you save the women in the temple?”

  She blinked at the sudden shift in his questioning, then scowled. “It was their death that gave me magic. Once dead…” She sighed. “I cannot bring the dead back to life. I might have been able to heal one or two of them, if any had been alive after the soldiers left.” There was bitterness in her voice.

  “So you joined the camp followers of an army, which would surround you with a never-ending source of death and allow you to grow strong.” He took a deep breath. “Is revenge worth delaying your release from this life?”

  She smiled. “I am not seeking revenge. If I was, Vorl would have stopped being a problem for you months ago.”

  “Why are you here, then?”

  She looked at him with an expression he could not name, and it sent a shiver down his spine. “All those years in the temple, waiting for death. I felt boredom beyond what you can ever experience. One thought kept me there, and kept me from giving up and leaving. One question that I will never know the answer to myself.” She paused, and then smoothly rose to her feet. “Where does the death magic go, if sorcerers like me don’t take and use it? What do you think, Reny?”

  He stared at her as she walked out of the tent, and disappeared into the night, her words repeating themselves unceasingly in his mind, and rousing a deep, undeniable horror.

  Soldiers believed in souls. They believed there was a life after death. They might not agree about the form that soul took, how it was judged, or who ruled the place souls went to, but they all held onto the same basic hope.

  If they knew what she did, nobody would worship the Goddess of Death. They would fear her.

  And Dael. Reny shuddered. Now that he knew the truth, some of the sorcerer King’s more destructive decisions made sense. Dael was not trying to unify the lands in order to bring peace to them. He was harvesting fallen soldiers, his own and his enemy’s, and keeping the lands in a perpetual state of war so that he might have eternal life and unending power over the living.

  RENY DID NOT see Kala again that night or the next morning. He did not expect her to return. If her absence was noted, he planned to shrug and say he had grown tired of her, and sent her away. He considered finding himself a new whore to make this lie more convincing, but didn’t.

  He pretended to have an injury—a strain in his back—to avoid having to fight. It wasn’t that he was afraid he would die and lose his soul to Kala or Dael. He simply didn’t want to miss seeing whatever all this was leading to.

  He pondered Kala’s motives and her possible strategy to carry them out. She had all but told him she wanted to stop Dael, but was she strong enough to face him and win? He considered that perhaps she intended to lose, and achieve the death she longed for, but he doubted it. She would not have been gathering strength by walking the battlefield at night. Instead, she would have confronted Dael in a deliberately weakened state, ensuring her defeat.

  AT MIDDAY DAEL led the army into the city to carry out his punishment for their defiance. To Reny’s surprise, the King placed him among his personal companions, and sent Vorl ahead to rouse the citizens, who had not emerged to face the invaders.

  Soldiers beat down a few doors before they realised all were unlocked. They emerged from the buildings, confused and pale, each group hurrying to report to Vorl, whose face grew darker and darker.

  “What is wrong?” Dael called.

  Vorl hurried over and knelt before his leader. “They’re dead,” he said. “All of them. Poisoned themselves, by the look of it.”

  Dael looked up, his eyes scanning the buildings lining both sides of the main city road. “Surely not all of them. I’d have… Keep searching.”

  Though soldiers roamed further and further afield, they found only corpses. Old men, women and children tucked in their beds or slumped in chairs. From the expressions on their faces, whatever poison they had taken had seemingly sent them to a blissful end.

  It was then, in the silence of realisation, that a woman dressed in white stepped out onto the main road. Reny heard all the men around him draw in a sharp breath. She glowed faintly as she walked toward them. Her feet were bare. Her pale hair was long and unbound and much too familiar.

  Reny could not believe this was the whore he had kept in his tent. She had been attractive, but not this vision of beauty. She certainly never glowed like that when she was mine. She must have gathered up the death magic of all the city’s remaining citizens as they expired from the poison they’d taken. Or did she poison them? Is this a part of her plan? Is she that ruthless?

  Unexpectedly, he saw through the glamour around her to a woman who must have suffered much in her long life, despite the magic that kept her alive and healed every wound. She was a woman who had not been able to escape the evils of the world, even when she had isolated herself in search of the peace of death. A woman who had no choice but to question if her own powers, over which she had no control, were evil. She must have cared deeply about the answer, he thought. Perhaps this was the true reason she sought her own death. No, she did not kill these people.

  The soldiers shifted fearfully, muttering to themselves. Reny guessed they saw something else: the Goddess of D
eath. But Kala’s eyes were fixed only on Dael. The sorcerer King was watching her, his eyes bright and smiling indulgently, as if watching children performing.

  “Greetings, King Dael,” she said, her voice echoing between the buildings.

  “Greetings… whom do I have the honour of meeting?” he asked in reply.

  “I have had many names. You may call me Saeyl.”

  He gestured to the buildings on either side. “Well, Saeyl. Did you do this?”

  “Poison all these people?” She shook her head. “No. They arranged that all on their own. I don’t know if they guessed what your abilities are and decided to deny you the magic you gain from the moment of their deaths,” she shrugged, “or if they hoped their souls would go to me instead.”

  Dael’s smile faded. She slowed to a stop a few paces away.

  “I have not met anyone with my particular skills before now,” he told her.

  Her lips twisted with distaste. “I have met plenty.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Gone. Dead.”

  “So we can die.”

  Her eyes brightened at his ignorance. “Yes, but only at the hands of another of our kind.”

  “So… you killed the others?”

  She shook her head. “Not all of them. Most fought and killed each other. The last one I met wanted to go. He was very old, and tired of living.” She lifted her chin. “How old are you?”

  “Two hundred and forty nine.”

  Reny’s skin prickled with cold. I have been fighting for, and been loyal to, a man who is more than five times my age!

  Kala’s eyes never left Dael. “So young. And with such skill in sorcery. When I discovered my power, few could or would teach me. Now there are mortals who know more than I did at your age.”