Heir to the Raven (The Pierced Veil, #1)

by J. Wesley Bush

  Heir To The Raven Copyright © 2017 by J. Wesley Bush. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  J. Wesley Bush

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing: Aug 2017

  Name of Company

  ISBN-13 ooo-0-0000000-1-

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my father, who taught me how to be a man through his every word and deed. He exemplifies the chivalric ideal: strong and resolute, but also tender-hearted, patient, and full of good humor.

  The world has far too few like him.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  LIST OF CHARACTERS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  B aby Zsuzsi was screaming, the boys were fighting, and Mother was out riding with the widower Gamil again, so it was up to Larissa to keep the family alive. As usual. She fed rolled oats into a metal tun, careful not to waste any on the ground. To the rest of the village she was Larissa the alewife’s daughter, but Mother called her Spillbread. She tried to pay attention, she did, but her thoughts were always a thousand leagues from the village.

  Larissa rested the baby on a hip, murmuring to her softly while scouting around for a ladle. Her brothers piled through the curtain door of their mud-brick hut, grappling with each other and nearly tumbling into the cook fire. A filthy leg kicked over the tun, scattering precious oats across the red dust of the floor.

  “Burn you!” Larissa put Zsuzsi on the ground and set upon the boys with her ladle. After a few good swats she pointed it like a sword. “Mother told you to help. Go fetch water from the rill or I’ll beat you bloody!”

  They responded with matching, insolent expressions before resuming the fight. Glancing back at Zsuzsi, Larissa noticed the girl had just shat on the floor. Again.

  “Night hags take you,” she muttered, grabbing two buckets of ale from the corner and turning for the door. “I’m going selling – mind Zsuzsi while I’m away.”

  Out on the village street, the air came as a welcome relief. It smelled of goats and rubbish, but anything was better than the sour reek of fermenting ale. Even if she escaped the village someday, Larissa imagined the scent would stay with her forever, permeating both skin and soul. Not that she had hope of leaving Far Ingarsby. It was a speck of a hamlet, far beyond the Sanguine Cliffs, only twenty-odd hovels and a patchy common at the center. There were only two ways for a girl to leave; she married a boy from another village just like Far Ingarsby or got herself in trouble with a boy and ran off to a city. Neither appealed to Larissa.

  “Ale! Good, stale ale!” she called out from the green. “We’re in want of cloth if you have it, meat if you don’t.” Mother would not approve of the expense of meat, but she was too occupied with her own affairs to notice.

  Marizka the elder’s wife bustled out from the largest hut. She was pinched and proud, but they had the biggest herd in the village and she was always good for a few pints. “Where is your mother, child? Out hoeing her furrow with Gamil again?”

  Larissa reddened, stooping down by the buckets to hide her scowl. It’s shameful the way Mother carries on. Father had breathed evil air and died of fever last autumn, and since then Mother seemed to have forgotten her own children. “Out hauling water, Auntie.” In a village where everyone was related, adults were always aunt or uncle, no matter how much they hated you. “How many pints?”

  “The elder has a thirst today. We’ll take a bucket’s worth.”

  “You have any meat?”

  “Don’t speak nonsense, child. But you can take an egg for each of you.”

  “Two eggs,” Larissa insisted impulsively.

  The woman’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “Very well. Someone must take care of you. Your mother is hardly fit in that regard.”

  Larissa met Marizka’s gaze and felt her eyes transfix the other woman in the strangest way, like a brush adder did with its prey. She felt a strange warmth behind her ribs and then her eyes seemed to bite the older woman.

  Marizka gasped and took a step backward, eyes wide and bloodshot. “I’ll take a bucket from your place myself,” she said, bustling away. “We all know you keep the best batches for your own.”

  For once, Larissa held her sharp tongue, too stunned to speak. What just happened? She’d always been an odd girl. At times she knew the unknowable or saw things that weren’t there. Before Zsuzsi was born, she had known the baby would have a withered hand. That’s when the whispers had grown too loud to ignore, and even other children began avoiding her like a sick animal.

  Whatever she had done to Marizka had to be wrong. Were the whispers true? Was she a witch? After all, every faietouched ever born in Far Ingarsby had gone dark.

  The crack of whips and ring of cattle bells broke off the melancholy thoughts. There was ale to be sold if they wanted to eat, so she pushed fears aside. “Ale! Good ale!”

  No other wives appeared, but Larissa knew to be patient, for their husbands would buy it. Cattle kicked up a lot of dust and minding them was thirsty work. Unfortunately, half the village men were leagues away with their herds, for the rill was low and would be until the Long Rains came.

  A twelve-foot hedgerow kraal encircled the village with a thorny embrace. Larissa departed the Night Gate and headed for the pastures, arms straining to keep her buckets from sloshing. She spotted the herdsmen south of the village, perhaps fifteen men and boys, each carrying a waterskin and a horsebow. Water was a fine thing, but men wanted ale when the sun was high. Rangy, gray cattle grazed among them. Goats wandered about in twos and thr
ees, always sure that better fodder was someplace else.

  Larissa glanced over her shoulder. A red smudge clouded the horizon. Squinting, she could see movement, like bugs crawling on the edge of the world.

  Nothing good comes from the west. It would be a Vyr raiding party, looking for women and cattle. The longer she looked, the deeper despair welled up inside. Horsemen covered the skyline, more people than she had ever seen. It was no raiding party, she realized, but a tribe. The buckets fell to the ground with a slosh.

  “Vyr!” she screamed at the herdsmen, waving her arms and pointing toward the approaching horses. “Vyr are coming!”

  A cousin raised his arms questioningly, drawing a frustrated screech from Larissa. She gestured frantically at the horizon. The boy took up his bow and yelled something to the others. The men mounted and rode hard for the village, while boys led the rest of the herd eastward, toward Near Ingarsby.

  Larissa ran for the kraal, forgetting the precious buckets in her haste. Inside the gate, she began shouting a warning, fighting down the terror rising within her. The village women wasted no time once they heard the news. Out came fire-hardened spears, sabers wrapped in oilcloths, and odd bits of armor. The best of these went to the men as they crossed the gate, but each woman kept a weapon to hand as well. Instead of mounting ponies and meeting the Vyr in the field, as they did with raiding parties, the village remained inside the kraal. It was hopeless to fight so many.

  Her brothers emerged from the hut, dragging Zsuzsi along with them. Kolos had managed to string their father’s old bow. “Where’s Mama?”

  “Safe and far away,” Larissa said, trying to keep tears out of her voice. She stripped him of the bow and quiver. “Now the three of you get inside. That bow belongs with someone who can use it.”

  “I can use it,” Kolos protested, arms folded across his meager chest.

  “To scratch your backside, maybe.” Larissa gave him a shove in the right direction. “Off with you. Arrows will be falling soon.” She turned away before they could see her terror.

  Villagers barred the gate once the last stragglers made it inside. The elder knelt by the dovecote, scratching on parchment with a piece of charcoal, while Marizka clutched a rock dove with a leather sheath tied to its leg. The other birds were for meat or eggs, but this one was special. Lord Dexter’s men brought a new one every year, a clever bird that could find its way back to the lord’s keep.

  “What’s he doing?” Kolos asked from the doorway to their house. “Who’s he writing?”

  Larissa growled at him, but the boy didn’t budge. “He’s writing the Lord, asking him to send help.” Not that it would do any bleeding good, she thought miserably. Far Ingarsby came by its name honestly, a full three-day’s ride from the keep, or so they said. “Now get away! And hide Zsuzsi under the bed.”

  Hoofbeats approached at a gallop. The Vyr had arrived. Their tongue was close enough to Jandari for her to understand the shouts coming through the hedgerow wall. They called upon Tengra-Nu, the dark faie they worshiped as a horse god. Village children began to wail in response, and the wails turned to panic as the Vyr music began. Drums beat eight times, paused, then eight more beats – the cursed number – while shell horns, whistles, and the chimes on their horse barding all mixed with the war chants, uniting into a deafening clamor. Larissa felt ill.

  The dove flew from Elder’s hand. Larissa watched anxiously as it cleared the blackthorn hedgerow. No arrow brought it down and her last glimpse saw it winging for the keep. By then the Vyr had satisfied their bloody god, and the chanting was replaced with a deathly silence. Larissa crouched just inside the doorway to their hut, pushing aside the curtain.

  The first volley of fire arrows landed with a sizzling hiss, most wasted on the dusty red ground. One struck the thatch of a neighboring house and set it aflame, but an auntie beat it out with a fat wooden spade. After that, the volleys came quickly, setting several homes alight.

  Metal claws leapt over the gate, trailing ropes behind them, then hooked themselves into the wooden crossbeam at the top and began to strain. Vyr ponies were strong, and Larissa knew the gate wouldn’t hold for long. Sure enough, after a moment the wood started to creak, bowing in submission. Soon it would give up and the slaughter would begin.

  Eyes stinging, Larissa turned from the door and gathered the children to her. She knelt in the dust, pulling Zsuzsi into her lap and squeezing until the baby grunted in protest. The boys were sobbing and each clung to an arm. It isn’t fair. Mother should be here. “Avishag’s quim!” It was the worst swearing she knew, definitely a bad one, because a cousin had his back switched raw for saying it. “Avishag’s quim! Avishag’s quim!”

  A strange tickly feeling ran up her scalp. No, more inside her head. Larissa closed her eyes and tried to make it go away, but the more she concentrated, the more it insisted. The sounds of the world faded. I must be dying of fright, she thought, and knew it was true when the tickling feeling led her into the sky, but not really the sky, but she was flying away from her body and toward something shimmering and twisting, and then it was a gate just like the one in the village. It felt as if the bottom had fallen out of her stomach, and yet it was lodged in her throat at the same time.

  She approached the gate. God must be on the other side. She pushed it open, but did not find paradise, but rather a void filled only with noise and shifting colors that made her mind hurt. Amid the tumult, she felt something moving. Not moving, really, but coming.

  What pact are you seeking, child?

  Larissa knew about pacts. They were dangerous if you used the wrong kind of faie. Whoever this was didn’t have a body, but she could feel it close by, as if it filled her very bones. It sounded like a woman.

  “Vyr are trying to kill us all. We need to kill them instead.”

  Larissa felt amusement from the faie. Your capacity is deeper than most, child, but what you ask is impossible. I have known these Vyr for thirty generations – they are excitable and superstitious. You could frighten them away with a glamour.

  “Yes!” Larissa called out to the whirling colors. Panic made her bold. “Can we do that? What should I do?”

  All power comes from sacrifice. Where is yours?

  Larissa’s heart sank. “I don’t have one.” If this was a dark faie, it might ask for one of her siblings, and she didn’t think she could do that, even to save the other two.

  There might be another way. If you were willing to make a promise.

  Back in the world, another part of her mind heard a cracking sound and frightened screams. The gate had fallen. It felt so far away, but she knew it was important. “Of course! Anything. Please just tell me.”

  I will ask a favor of you one day. You must swear by your life’s blood that you will do whatever I ask.

  She didn’t ask for my soul, Larissa thought feverishly. And I’m going to die anyway. “I swear it! I swear by my life’s blood.”

  She felt something settle into place, like when they barred the night gate.

  Until then. The faie was gone in an instant. Cries of pain and terror rose back in the world. Almost before she knew it, Larissa was crouching in the doorway with her siblings again. Burning thatch made the air thick with smoke, but she could see her uncles struggling with Vyr horsemen in the kraal’s opening.

  Then her back arched as something charged through her like an unbroken pony. Like a lightning storm.

  CHAPTER 2

  M ore than anything, Selwyn Harlowe wanted to go to Bulwark Isle, but not to see the Celestial Spire, highest tower in all the world of Trosketh; it was the library of the Knights-Scholastic that drew him. A life among its books and scrolls was the closest thing to pure joy he could imagine.

  Only a bit of ivory stood in the way. A bit of ivory and a fifty-stone aksu-kal.

  He had tracked the canny beast for two days, but still it eluded him, its most recent tracks shifting west toward a nearby mud pool where game was plentiful. Selwyn threaded his pony throug
h a stand of trees, following a game trail and thankful for a respite from the relentless heat.

  Movement erupted from the brush beside him. Terrified, he circled the pony leftward and raised his boar spear, but it was only a flight of honeybills taking wing. He breathed thanks to the High King of Heaven. Sixteen and still lacking a man’s strength, he had no chance of success if the aksu-kal surprised him – the beast would gut the pony and then tear him to pieces.

  Selwyn rode into open terrain and searched until finding a partial print still leading west. Reassured he was on track, he took shelter under a lonely acacia, tying off the reins and downing a quick meal of salted horsemeat and sweet wine. After a fortnight alone in the waste, stalking a mark that always seemed just over the next hill, he longed to finish the hunt and be home again.

  He’d wasted much of the time tracking a pack of eleven, but the females had never left the patriarch unattended. Then he had wandered for days before discovering this lone male and had pursued him ever since. Selwyn reckoned he was thirty miles from Wicke’s Keep and well into the Vyr lands. If they caught him alone, the best he could hope for was a bronze coil around his neck and a lifetime of servitude. Bad luck would see him dragged to death.

  His eyes prowled the savanna, hoping for a glimpse of the aksu-kal, but the only sign of life was a herd of kudu grazing nearby. Nevertheless, he had a sense his quarry would be hunting the mud pool. Wearily, he rose and stowed the wineskin in a saddlebag, then fed a slice of desiccated apple to the pony. She had no name, or at least none he remembered. He had stolen her from Lord Wicke’s stables. Time to prepare, he thought, uncovering the armor cinched behind his saddle.

  Selwyn quickly donned helm and hauberk, then clambered back in the saddle and gave the pony a nudge. Grasslands stretched in all directions like a green sea, broken only by shallow hills and the rare acacia. To the east, he could see scrub forest following the length of the Green Lady. He set the pony trotting toward a watering hole to the west.

  Moments later he came across a pile of droppings. They had the spiral shape of aksu-kal scat and were fresh and brown, not whitened as they quickly turned in the summer heat. Just ahead, he spotted movement in the grass near the pool as a powerful body slunk into some bushes and disappeared.