She looked up at him with pleading eyes. “How much longer must I wait?”
“The healers have told me it could happen any day now,” Wulfgen said.
Nuada shook her head rapidly. “With Vorconis gone for the next few days, we must make sure it will happen before he returns.”
Wulfgen looked away. Despite his love for her, he still had an affection for the old Khan. Dural had always treated him fairly, and if it were not for his recent bouts of madness, he surely would have stayed loyal. “If you are saying what I think it is, then I … cannot. Not yet.”
Nuada hissed. “Do not be a fool! This will be the most opportune moment we shall have. Please, I am tired of having to call for the servants to clean his vomit from the floor. I am tired of having to endure his moments of lunacy. Take your dagger and end this tonight!”
The waning effects of the wine and the gravity of the situation began to sober him up. He could see the impatient frustration in her eyes. “No, not yet. We must make sure the other tribes will be with us first.”
“How would we do that?”
“The desert we live in is vast,” Wulfgen said. “It will take Vorconis many days of travel to reach his destination, even with his swift sand sails. Once he is gone I shall confer with the tribes that are allied to me. You must woo the other tribes nearby. Only when we have secured a powerful alliance should we enact our scheme, and not before.”
Chapter 4
They all felt it. For each day of their travels, the climate seemed to have changed. The air had steadily grown colder, sending a chill down their bodies. There were a few hushed whispers that said they had reached the end of the world, but many continued to place their loyalty in Rion, hoping the boy would guide them to a safe passage. Rion continued to study the stories in the telling stones he had brought along, and he surmised the old trading routes along the Sea of Dunes would soon be filled with numerous tribes eager for barter. Orilion’s crewmen were mostly low ranking freemen, and they couldn’t wait to dispense the wares that had been stored beneath the hold of their sand sail, as the promise of riches from this expedition would give them enough coin to prosper upon their return.
It had taken the builders of Lethe nearly four moons to construct the sand sail. Resembling a squat, metallic beast mounted on wheels made of bronze and leather, the vessel had been built at great expense, and it carried the hope of an entire city with it. Three metal poles protruded from its flattened main deck, and it deployed huge sails made of leather to harness the winds in order to make it move across the flattened sands. Its small crew had to learn the nuances of how to operate a kind of vehicle that had not been constructed in hundreds of cycles. A few times they nearly collided with the occasional large boulder that jutted out from beneath the ground, but by the sheer luck of the gods no major catastrophe had occurred.
By the dawn of the third moon they had finally sailed out of the small oasis and made their way towards the outlying flatlands beyond. Their vessel’s speed had quickened with the anticipation of meeting the lost trading partners of Lethe, and with the ever-strengthening winds pulling at their sails. The lands beyond seemed like an archipelago of jutting mountains and boulders surrounded by an endless sea of dust.
Their first sighting of civilization was an ominous one. Just as the sand sail crested a large dune, they saw columns of black smoke emanating from a flattened slab of rock just a few leagues away from them. Ordering the crew to stop the vessel, both Miri and Zeren donned their armor and readied their weapons while telling the others to stay put while they scout up ahead. Rion had demanded he come along with them but Miri adamantly refused, leaving the boy to sulk with Orilion and the rest of the crew as they warily stood by on the deck of the sand sail.
Going on foot, Miri and Zeren crested a small hill while keeping low among the many rocks strewn about. They both moved silently as they were able to get into a vantage point that allowed them to see what was happening. At the edge of the flat rock formation stood a small village made of old stone houses resembling mounds made of dirt and rocks piled together, with a single entryway jutting out of its front. A number of bodies lay strewn about, indicating some sort of conflict had taken place. An overturned sand sail, much smaller than the vessel the two of them traveled on, lay wrecked at the edge of their vision. What made the whole situation even stranger was the dead that lay in the ground had bodies seemingly covered in fur.
Zeren squinted his eyes while crouching down beside Miri. “Were those creatures men?”
Miri shrugged. “Rion was saying something about the people in the Sea of Dunes being a different breed of humans. Perhaps those poor creatures were proof the telling stones were right once again.”
They had been observing for half an hour, and there were still no signs of movement. Zeren adjusted his vambraces to make sure the fit along his forearms were snug. “It does not look like anyone has been left alive. Can your mindsense detect anything?”
“I had a slight impression of terror and pain as we made our way here,” Miri said softly. “It was too much so I shut it out of my mind. Now that I am sending out my thought waves, I cannot sense anything that feels like a sentient mind in the area. We might have to get closer in order for me to get a better sense of things.”
Zeren was tempted to roll his eyes, but he stood up instead while adjusting the scabbard by his waist. “Well, if we cannot fathom anything from here, we might as well proceed.”
Miri looked up at him in surprise. “What are you doing?”
“You said you cannot sense anything, so I shall venture forth to determine what is truly going on,” he said while starting to walk down towards the ruined village.
Miri frowned as she too got up while clutching her spear. She followed him into the center of the village. Miri didn’t want to tell him about the strange presence in her mind that was distracting her. It was as if some unknown power was trying to delve in her thoughts and it was making her uneasy. Miri had made sure her mental defenses were fully active, at the same time she extended her thought shield over Zeren, just to be sure the weird feeling she had would not affect him either. She tried to locate the source of where the probing was coming from, but she was unable to determine its source.
Zeren walked over to one of the hairy corpses and knelt down beside it. “They seem to bleed red like us.”
Miri strode over and looked down at the upturned visage of a nearby body. The looks on the face seemed to be female, with sagging breasts that were partly hidden in the thick fur of its chest. Its hands and feet were hairless, and resembled her own while lying in a pool of dried blood. The eyes of the corpse were open as it looked up into the sky, the sun’s rays reflected along the cloudy irises. There was a gaping wound on its chest, evidently from a bladed weapon, probably a sword. A part of Miri hoped it didn’t suffer for very long.
Zeren stood up once more as he turned and looked at Miri, his right hand resting on the hilt of his blade. “Well, does your mindsense tell you anything now?”
Miri looked away into the distance as she once again extended her mental tendrils to probe the vicinity. But the moment her thought net had expanded, the other presence she had been anticipating against immediately started to probe into her own mind. The mental force was so strong that Miri’s thoughts immediately retreated back into the safety of her inner self, behind her own formidable defenses. Miri’s mouth hung open as her eyes blinked rapidly, the cascading power was so great her thought defenses were barely keeping them in check. The mental intrusion was relentless, and Miri’s knees began to buckle from the strain. The unknown interloper seemed to have unending reserves of Vis, as Miri was forced to match each attack against her mind by creating a psionic fortress of will to resist each and every assault. Her Vis was nearly empty, and she was now at the breaking point. If the intruder could keep this up, then she might very well succumb to its attack and reveal her true thoughts like telling stone. Just as she was about to expend the last of her Vis,
the invading mindsense suddenly mauled her mind with one final, powerful blast of mental energy before retreating back into the unknown. Miri cried out and fell to her knees.
Zeren knelt down beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Miri, are you well? What happened?”
Her breathing came in short, shallow gasps. The pain in her head was still crackling with an agonizing intensity as it slowly wasted away and she could think once more. Miri wiped the blood away from her nostrils while nodding slowly. “I … I sensed another presence. When I tried to probe it with my mindsense, it attempted to overwhelm me. I had to use all my Vis just to ward it off. I-I am not sure if I could withstand … another attack.”
Zeren looked around. “Another Striga? Where is she?”
Miri groaned as he helped her up, her nose still bleeding profusely. “I do not think she is in this place. The power felt like … it came from everywhere, as if it held sway across the land.”
“I have never heard of a Striga with a power like that,” Zeren said.
“Neither have I,” Miri said. “It is best you keep your thought defenses up at all times.”
Zeren nodded. “Very well. I must say I do not like this journey of ours. First we encounter strange people covered in fur, and now this mental presence over the Sea of Dunes. This whole place is cursed.”
Miri tilted her head up and wiped away the last of the blood from her nostrils. At least the bleeding had finally stopped. “We must continue onwards. I gave my word to Rion that I will take him to the Maker.”
“Either this land is in continuous conflict,” Zeren said. “Or we have just stumbled at the moment that some sort of war has begun. The omens are not good.”
“I had not expected a man like you would be frightened at the doings of the gods,” Miri said.
“What the gods do is of no concern for me,” Zeren said. “But there may be beings out here who would be more worrisome.”
Miri turned her attention to the rear of a dwelling at the far end of the village. “Wait, I sense something. It is a jumble of thoughts, but it seems very weak.”
Zeren drew his blade and they both proceeded towards the low wall. After bypassing the front of the house, they came upon a furry woman lying on her back, surrounded by a pool of blood. She looked up at them with pitiful eyes. There was a puncture wound on her stomach. Zeren let out a sigh as he put his sword back in its scabbard.
Miri placed her spear on the ground and knelt down beside her. She used her mindsense to block out the pain receptors from the woman’s mind, giving her a sense of peace as she drew in her final breaths. “We are travelers from Lethe. Of what sort of people are you?”
The woman’s voice had a strange accent to it. The tongue was clearly of the trade language, but of a more syrupy adaptation. “My … tribe is gone. We the Valis made p-peace with the old gods. We … knew our fate.”
It was Zeren’s turn to be surprised. “So they are humans after all.”
Miri angrily gestured at him to be silent before turning her attention back to the fallen woman. “Your tribe, are you in a war?”
“I … murdered my own children to … spare them,” the woman said. “We defied the Maker … and now we join the gods.” Her irises rolled up and she shuddered for a brief moment before finally expelling her last breath.
Miri stood up. She had been able to glean a bit of information from the dying woman with her mindsense. “Her final thoughts were with her children. It seems this tribe rebelled against the Maker of Entropy and paid for it with their lives.”
Zeren narrowed his eyes. “So this Maker is real?”
Miri walked over to the front of the house and peered inside. She could see two pairs of small, furry feet sticking out from beneath a leather blanket. The thought of murdering one’s own child repelled her, yet she had sensed the woman’s desperate plight to spare her offspring against a more insidious fate. What the Maker’s sacrifice entailed she was yet unable to glean, for it seemed only a certain person called the Oracle would know the exact details about the ritual. The rest of the recollections were of fleet of sand sails that came into the village to slaughter the ones who still remained.
Zeren stood beside her. “Does this Maker rule the surrounding lands?”
Miri shook her head. “It seems not. No one knows who this Maker is, for he never leaves his temple. The Sea of Dunes is ruled by the Khanate, an alliance of tribes. This very tribe attempted to murder the Oracle, who was serving as the voice of the Maker.”
“Why would they do that?”
Miri looked at him. “For the Maker demanded their youth as sacrifice. It seems this god takes the youth of the tribes and has them brought to his temple, where they are never seen again.”
Zeren scratched the back of his head. “If they have been doing this for untold ages, why attempt to rebel now?”
“It seems they had become desperate,” Miri said. “There were so few of them left and it would have been inevitable that another tribe would have absorbed them. They felt it was the honorable way to go about it. And they were influenced by another.”
“Another? Who?”
Miri shook her head. “All I could sense in her final thoughts was a name: Fumal Led.”
Zeren staggered backwards. The uttered name was like a blow to his head. “Fumal Led? Are you sure that was the name you have just gleaned?”
“Yes, her last thoughts were but a confusing miscellany,” Miri said. “Do you know of such a man?”
Zeren looked away. He let out a deep sigh. “Fumal Led was a Magus. When I was but a child he stole me away from the Magi Order and raised me in the streets of Lethe. He taught me how to fight, how to steal, how to survive. Everything that I am I owe it all to him. Did she mention his fate?”
“I am sorry,” Miri said softly. “It seems he was this Magus who led the attack against the Oracle.”
Zeren bit his lip. “So he failed then.”
“Apparently.”
“Which means he is most likely dead,” Zeren said. “Did you gather any thoughts as to why he did this?”
“All I could sense was this Fumal Led was well loved by the tribes of this land,” Miri said. “He seemed to help them through whatever troubles they encountered.”
Zeren nodded. “It sounds very much like the Fumal Led I knew. He had a good heart, but it seems to have been his undoing.”
“You speak very fondly of him, yet did you not say he stole you from your own father the Grand Magus?” Miri said.
“Yes,” Zeren said. “My father Jetan was subverting the Order to bend it to his will- he was defying the old customs and laws of the Magi. He sired my older brother and I so he could create his own empire. But Fumal Led would have none of it. My older brother was completely devoted to my father and that was why he only took me. We were in hiding for the next eight cycles when my father found out. The Order did not want people to know the truth about me, so only my father’s most trusted Magi were sent to find and return me to him. Fumal Led dealt with them all.”
“Why did Fumal Led not take your brother as well?”
Zeren shook his head. “Even as a child, my brother fully embraced my father’s plans. Fumal Led tried to take him with us, but Nylius fought against him so in the end he only fled with me.”
“I see,” Miri said. “And this Fumal Led left you behind in Lethe?”
“After a few cycles he knew I was able to take care of myself,” Zeren said. “I wanted to go with him, but he refused. In the end I was having too much fun in the city to want to brave the unknown, so I stayed behind. I have always wished to meet him again one day, but now it seems we have come too late.”
The sounds of people were soon heard coming from the village square. Miri and Zeren immediately kept their heads down while hiding behind the low wall. Peering out slightly, they could see a number of men and women carrying leather sacks. These ones looked like ordinary human folk and they were dressed in rags. The two of them watched in both a
mazement and disgust as the small group of people began to fan out and pick through any valuables that were on the bodies. It was clearly a scavenger party.
Zeren looked at Miri. “What do you suggest we do now?”
“Wait,” Miri said. She once again extended her mental tendrils as she tried reading the thoughts of the group in front of her. The scroungers had very base instincts that were only interested in possessing anything of value left in the village. A number of them felt a slight sense of pity for the fate of the Valis tribe, yet they felt it was a deserved outcome due to their rebellious actions. This group seemed to hail from a nearby tribe that was equally poor, yet she gathered a more fearful sense of loyalty emanating from their thoughts. The annihilation of the Valis tribe was apparently a warning to any of the others planning a rebellion.
When one of the scavengers emerged laughing from one of the larger dwellings while brandishing a sword he had just found, Zeren took one look at the weapon and instantly stood up. He kept his hand by the hilt of his sword as he strode out into full view in front of them. Miri had tried to stop him by grabbing at his arm, but Zeren was too quick for her and he was already out in the open. The scroungers looked up at him, their eyes and mouths open in silent shock and awe.
With the wind whipping at his dark cloak and partially revealing his brigandine armor, Zeren cut a dashing figure as he stood in front of them. He held out a gauntleted hand. “I have been looking for that very sword for a number of cycles now. I would like to thank you for finding it.”
The Maker of Entropy Page 5
