The Rise of the Fallen (The Rotting Empire Book 1)

by Peter Fugazzotto

  Maja looked uneasily around the room. Maja felt small, as if the walls were too large, as if the memories of the place shrunk her. Ji had gone to the entrance, creeping up and peering into the hallway that led to the upper reaches of the Eye of the East.

  “Never thought I’d return. Not in ten thousand years,” said Wayan.

  Bui nodded silently next to him. The others seemed equally stunned and Maja saw their gazes drift to the various devices in which they had screamed, in which they had put on obscene performances for the others chained to the walls. She avoided looking at the spot along the wall where she had been chained. Even though those shackles hung empty, she felt cold iron biting against her wrists as if the metal beckoned for her. She suppressed a sudden shiver.

  “Should be someone in here,” said Wayan. “No one to torture in the whole of the Empire? Not a single enemy of the God-Emperor? Or Duke Buranchiti? We tracked through the blood. Where did that come from?”

  Bui touched his mask. “He did this on purpose. He cleared the room. He knew we were coming.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Maja. “He could not know.”

  “All this time and he lured us back.”

  “We mean nothing to him. He would never do this.”

  “The place still smells likes piss and blood. I can taste the death on the air. They cleared the room. They knew we were coming back. He’s waiting for us.”

  “We’re not turning back,” said Maja. “We’ve been over this before. We’re here to rescue Sri. We’ve come this far. We’re not going to leave without him.”

  “No one said that we were,” answered Wayan.

  “But what now?” said Bui. “Our brothers and sisters are not here.”

  “We search the Eye of the East,” said Maja heading towards the door where Ji waited. “We find them and get them out of here.”

  The castle was empty. They crept out of the Hellhole, up the narrow passage, and peered into the central courtyard. At any moment, Maja expected a flood of yellow-armored soldiers. She waited for men and women to charge with sword and spear and for the tiny troop to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. But the Fallen were only met with emptiness.

  Maja paused in the shadows of the passage. Wayan stood next to her, nearly invisible as he pressed against the moist wall. The others waited with steady breaths behind them.

  “Is it possible they took him away already?” asked Wayan. “Maybe the Duke was trying to deliver him to the God-Emperor and win favor.”

  “Khirtan pulled Sri’s nails out of his hand. Why would they deliver Sri after that? Touching an heir is death. You know that.”

  “Then where the hell is everyone?”

  Maja shook her head. A warm breeze swirled over the walls of the castle. Dried banana leaves scraped across the stone. She smelled the musky scent of incense burning from somewhere unseen. A pot sat on a small fire in the corner of the courtyard. The water bubbled and boiled, abandoned.

  Bui hissed from the rear of the Fallen. “I hear something. Movement. Behind us. Back in the Hellhole.”

  “Should we turn around and see what it is?” asked Ji.

  Maja looked down the line of her companions. They clutched weapons in their hands. They held a fierce look in their eyes. She would not make them return to the Hellhole. Bad enough that she dragged them back to the Eye of the East, and worse that she made them pass through the torture chamber. She could imagine the horrors that raced through their minds, the memories suppressed. But she would not make them return to that dark dungeon. They had passed through and survived. No need to relive the nightmares.

  “We search the Eye.” She glanced up the ivory walls of the tower. A single light flickered in the topmost window. She pointed with her sword at the light in the tower. “We go there.”

  They were halfway up the tower, having only found empty rooms, some with bedding still warm from bodies, when Bui hissed. He peered out of one of the tower windows.

  “Come quick,” he said.

  Maja pushed past the others. She stared out the window. A sudden gust buffeted against her face. Beyond the walls, in the plaza of the small town that had risen on the landward side of the Eye, more than a hundred yellow-armor soldiers had gathered just outside the gates of the fortress. Before she could turn back to the others to let them know what she saw, the gates groaned open and the soldiers began to the flood the courtyard where only a few minutes before the Fallen had been standing.

  “Shit!” said Bui.

  “We might be able get back down and into the Hellhole again,” said Wayan angling to get a view of the soldiers below. “It’s dark still, and if we are quick, they would be hard pressed to follow us. It’s the last place that they would look for us.”

  “Not going back in there,” said Bui. “Never. Die out here first.”

  “We get trapped up here, that wish’ll come through.”

  “We keep going up,” said Maja. “We find them.”

  “And what if they’re not here after all this?” said Bui.

  “Then all the suffering ends.”

  The winding stairs ended above. The light from the chamber spilled down the stairs. They had almost reached the top of the tower. One last room.

  Maja crouched in front of the others. Her swords trembled slightly in her hands and she hoped the others could not see the shaking of the blades. Her armor clung to the line of sweat that trailed down her back. She craned her head. She could hear nothing from the room itself, but she felt a faint vibration through the stone steps as if the feet of an army climbed the tower behind them.

  “It’s a trap,” said Wayan. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “We rescue the heir. We finish our business with the Duke. What he did to us betrayed the Empire.”

  “Maja, you know this won’t end well.”

  “Can’t turn back now, can we?”

  He shook his head.

  “I trust our blades,” she said. “We are the Demon Guard. Who else is as well trained in the art of fighting? We can hold this tower against an army forever.”

  Wayan chewed his lips. “We aren’t what we once were. We’ll likely die here. Maybe it’s best to end it here with swords in our hands.”

  “Don’t give up so easily. Believe.”

  His eyes looked weary. “I believed we are cursed and that if it’s possible, things will only get worse.”

  “You used to be the shining light.”

  “Whole wide world used to beckon me.” He winced and quickly scratched at the scars that ran around his body. She imagined the stress of their mission had reignited the fire beneath his skin. “I often think about the child that was supposed to be ours. I imagine his soft skin in my arms. His milk-sour scent. His plump little fingers reaching for me. We should have just fled. You and me. With our child.”

  Maja felt the stairs buckle beneath her and put a fist against the wall to steady herself. She felt a pull against her like a great wind that would suck her down the stairs and she would fall backwards, tumbling head over heels, past Wayan, past the others, down the carved steps, spiraling deeper and deeper into the fiery pits of earth, falling forever.

  But then she steadied herself with her breath. She stood on the solid stone of the steps. Wayan waited with sword in fist at her shoulder. She saw the masks of the others, fierce, demons unleashed, in the light from the room above.

  “Those times are dead,” she said. Then she nodded to the others and crept up the steps towards the light.

  A giant brazier hung in the middle of the room, a pile of fungus burning bright, and a thick ochre smoke roiled out of it and filled the room with a haze. Beneath the brazier, Sri sat, tied to a chair, facing the one of the great windows to the left that overlooked the sea. They had stripped him down to his undergarments and his dark, tattooed skin glistened with sweat. His one hand, nailless, bled long streaks down the leg of the chair. One eye was swollen nearly shut.

  The walls of the room were decorated with shie
lds, dented, splintered, crossed with spears, swords, and axes. She saw the remaining fragments of Hanu’s Moon Sword. And Wayan’s lost Sun Sword. Trilli’s great shield painted with the rising sun. The weapons of the Fallen. Trophies.

  And in one section, she saw dozens of battle masks. Masks in the contorted, angry faces of demons, of the many personas that the Duke had assumed, of the spirits he had channeled before stepping into battle. Beneath the armor lay couches, desks, and chests. The room was filled with the scent of bitter fruit. At the far end of the room, a single open doorway led to darkness.

  Maja made a sharp hiss and Sri whipped his head around to look at her. His sudden look of fear and panic vanished when he saw that it was Maja. A dark gray mass of fungus covered his mouth. Suddenly the fear returned to his eyes and he shook his head wildly. He strained at the ropes that bound him, his small muscles rippling for a moment before he gave up the effort and relaxed. Tears streamed from his eyes.

  Maja, swords clutched in her hands, crossed the threshold into the room. The warm air from the ocean pulsed though the open window and she saw the black sea, an undulating curtain, beneath the flickering stars. She dashed to Sri.

  The floor tilted and she steadied herself on the chair to which Sri was tied. Behind her, the Fallen spread through the room, Wayan and Bui slowly approached the far doorway. Maja stifled a yawn.

  She shook her head sharply. Anxious energy surged through her body. The yawn seeped through her lips.

  Trilli slid against the wall to a sitting position and lifted his sword repeatedly. Bui lurched several steps, regained his balance, then spun on his feet like a dancer and fell, arms spread, to the floor, his sword clattering.

  “Maja.” Wayan reached for her from his knees. His voice stretched and echoed in her ears.

  Maja lay at the foot of the chair. Sri doubled in her vision and the ceiling spun. Her throat burned with the bitter yellow smoke pouring out of the brazier. She relaxed her hold on her swords.

  The room spun, turned upside, before righting itself for a moment.

  Figures emerged from the dark chamber. The tall man with the bone piercings. The squat man in the gold-fringed sarong and shimmering vest, his well-muscled arms covered in tattoos. Their faces were hidden with masks of gray fungus pressed over their noses and mouths.

  But even masked, she recognized them: Khirtan the torturer and his master Duke Buranchiti.

  Maja wanted to curse them. She wanted to seize her swords and cut their heads from their bodies. But instead the world darkened and she drifted into unconsciousness carried by the embrace of the bitter smoke.

  33

  MAJA WOKE TO screams.

  She spasmed as if her body had been plunged into cold water. She saw darkness and flame. She heard whimpers, yowls. Her head filled with the stench of coppery blood, piss, and, worse than all that, burnt flesh.

  Maja’s mouth hung open and her breath roared out. She stood shackled against the cold stone wall, back in the torture chamber.

  For a moment she thought she screamed. Then she saw Gima chained naked on the table in the middle of the dark chamber and Khirtan standing over her. In his hand, he clutched a long piece of iron, the end of it bright orange where it had been heated. He lowered the glowing metal to her thigh and pressed. Skin hissed and smoked. Gima unleashed a high-pitched scream. Khirtan reinforced his grip on the metal rod with both hands and then leaned into her, shoving the brand so deeply that the orange head disappeared into the poor woman’s flesh.

  Warm piss washed between Maja’s legs. She had fucked up. They were back in the Hellhole.

  She shook her head. Such fog. Had she woken to a nightmare? This could not be true. Then she remembered their journey up the steps of the tower, Sri bound to the chair in the room, the bitter smoke billowing out of the brazier. It had been a trap just as Wayan had warned. And she had led the Fallen headlong into it and now they were back in the pit.

  Her eyes clouded with tears. She glanced to her right. Wayan stood against the wall, stripped down to his loin cloth, his manacled hands overhead, chained to the cold stone. One by one she looked at the rest of the Fallen and they all were in the same state. The artificial limbs of Hanu and Ji had been pulled off of them. Bui hung his head so that his wrecked, scarred face was hidden in the shadows.

  Gima screamed and Maja lunged forward, the shackles tearing at the skin on her wrists and ankles. She strained at them, trying to rip them from the walls but they had been bolted securely and all she ended up doing was cutting herself. After her initial burst of fury, her energy sapped and she stood panting, bare chest heaving, rivulets of blood racing down her arms.

  She heard her name whispered and glanced at Wayan who shook his head almost imperceptibly and then looked back at Khirtan. But it was too late. The torturer had seen that she had woken. He withdrew the brand from Gima’s smoking flesh and slipped it into a small furnace, turning it slowly to singe off the blood. He dipped a small cloth into a bucket of water, dabbed his brow, and spread the cloth over the back of his neck.

  He too had stripped down to a loin cloth. The bone piercings covered even more of his body. Each of those piercing represented the bone of one of his victims. Her stomach tightened at the thought of how many men and women had been chained to these same walls, how many screams had been swallowed up in the Hellhole.

  Khirtan picked his way through the various torture chairs and boxes, the scattering of shiny tools, towards Maja. He smiled with lips painted black. He paused at one of the tables, running his long fingers over the shiny metal instruments, and, after a clicking of his tongue, picked up a knife with a thin blade that ended in a wicked curve. He turned the knife in his hand admiring it in the flickering light of the room.

  By the time he stood in front of Maja, she was trembling uncontrollably.

  Khirtan’s breath smelled like overly sweet wine. He brought his face close to her body and sniffed from head to belly, lingering, his hot breath against her skin. He lay the flat of his blade just beneath her eye. The metal was cold like ice. Maja shivered.

  “Been thinking of you,” he said. “Little pale bird of my dreams.” He smacked his lips. “You should have just kept running. You should have left the boy for me.”

  “You’re a monster!”

  “Did you think this would end well? Did you think I, me, look at me, did you ever think, really think I’d give up? Abandon the scent.”

  He pressed his nose into her neck and inhaled deeply. Maja bucked against him but was bound by her chains. Khirtan pushed more deeply against her. Then she felt the sharp pain, the burning cut through her earlobe.

  She grimaced but fought against the urge to scream. She would not give him that pleasure.

  “You’re a son of a bitch!”

  He ran his index finger over her lips, pulling her lower one open and running his fingertip over her teeth. “And you, despite such lovely lips, have a foul mouth. Oh, what to do? Quite the puzzle. If I smash your teeth in and break your jaw, you are much less pleasant to look at. If I sew your lips shut, no more dirty little words but, again, what a sight. Even now they tremble. I could sew up other things.”

  Maja bit her lips but even then her jaw trembled. She could not stop it. Fear mixed with rage. She clenched her jaws and pulled again at the chains. The manacles cut deeper into her wrist. Hot pain circled her wrists and raced down her arms.

  Khirtan laughed. “You are my favorite plaything among all my little creations.”

  “I’m going to kill you,” she hissed through bared teeth. “Going to cut your fucking black heart out and feed it to the fish.”

  “You’ll do no such thing.” He flicked the blade and cut her lip deeply. She jerked her head back. Hot blood ran down her chin and dripped onto her chest.

  He swept his knife back across the room. “I’m saving you for last. Because honestly you’ve given me a gift beyond dreaming. You brought them all back. Every single one of them. Every one of my children. All my creations.
I had thought you all beyond my reach, never to be touched again, my work never to be finished. But you brought them back, Maja. You brought them all back to me.”

  “I’ll kill you!” She jumped at him but was held back by her chains,

  “No, you won’t,” he said. Then he balled his fist, and slugged her so hard that she lost consciousness.

  Maja heard dripping. Water plunking. Drops falling. Marking time.

  Then she heard her own breath, ragged, guttural, rushed, her own way of marking time.

  She opened her eyes. She stared at her manacled feet, her blood-streaked chest, her scraped and bruised body, the pale skin of an outsider.

  The steady dripping pounded like a drum.

  She lifted her head. The room was gloomy, the fires of Khirtan’s furnace had died to pulsing embers. A still shape lay on the table in the center of the room, an unmoving shape, bound by chains.

  When Maja tried to readjust her position, to relieve the pain in her hands and arms, she groaned. Her hands were swollen, numb. Burning pain stabbed into her shoulders and neck, and only by putting all her weight on her unsteady feet did she relieve the pressure a little and feel the pain slip away.

  She released a low guttural moan.

  She heard her name and turned her head. Wayan stared at her, the dull shard of light reflecting in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “By the gods, I’m sorry.” Her last words broke apart in bubbling sobs.

  “Would have been better if you had not woke again,” he said. He leaned against the wall, hands shackled above. The old scars wound around his body. No fresh scars had been made but then again none needed to be in order for him to feel pain. Every moment whether waking or sleeping had the potential for the constricting pain to seize him again.

  “I never should have led you back here.”

  “We came on our own. Every one of us. No one forced us to return.”

  “I never should have come to Land’s End. What made me think to drag you all into this?”