The Path of Ashes [Omnibus Edition]

by Parker, Brian

  Miraculously, the same buyer purchased Varan and his brother at an auction, while the other children from his family’s compound went to other owners. Lucas Miller, the man who’d bought them, owned a stadium where men fought all manner of people and beasts to entertain the crowds. The boys were too young to be gladiators, so they had to clean the warriors’ cells while they were away training and bring them food and water once they were safely secured for the night.

  As he settled in to his life as a slave, hauling away the buckets of shit from the gladiators whom he would one day train beside, Varan’s heart hardened against the Traxx family. They had betrayed him. They were secure in their tidy little compound with enough food for everyone, laughing and drinking in the courtyard as their grandfather regaled them with fabricated stories of the family’s past.

  Over time, he grew into a man. Both Varan and Caleb became gladiators, fighting for the glory of the House of Miller in local and regional contests. As their fame grew the memories of home lessened, but the sting of betrayal remained.

  Varan became the Primus, the most skilled warrior in the stable of slaves owned by Lucas, and he hated the Traxx family for abandoning him to this life.

  ONE

  Garrett Traxx struggled along the jagged pathway leading to the top of the mountains dominating the terrain around him. Homelake lay almost sixty miles from the mountain, far out into the foothills where the weather was milder and more predictable. The people had insisted that he consult with the Seers before they made his coronation official, so he’d set out on the journey with a few men and his twelve year old nephew, Brandt.

  The years since they left Texas had been a strange and often confusing journey for the Traxx family. When slavers abducted Caleb and Varan, along with nine other children from families in their compound, people had understandably been devastated. The security that they’d thought their pitiful walls would provide had proven false. The guards were easily overwhelmed and the fence scaled.

  The compound’s leadership realized that they hadn’t isolated themselves far enough from other communities, so they decided to move once again. After the harvest, the Traxx family gathered their belongings and left. Another forty people from various families in the compound joined them. There was too much heartache and too many memories to remain in Texas any longer.

  They went further north, away from the old homestead, crossing into what had once been Colorado. An abandoned hotel along an overgrown highway within sight of the mountains provided the shelter that they needed. The old town was far enough onto the empty plains to be able to grow their crops and near enough to the mountains for safety. Even in the old world, the hotel had been in the middle of nowhere, more of a rest stop for road-weary travelers than a destination of any consequence.

  The Homelake Hotel and nearby lake provided their small group with shelter and an ample supply of water once they purified it. Over time, they converted the hotel into a legitimate stronghold with real walls built of earth and wooden timbers. Others began to flock to the area to make use of the abandoned homes and arable cropland nearby, building a small community around the Traxx family’s home.

  The winters in Colorado, like everywhere else, were cold and miserable with deep snow that blanketed the land and kept people cooped up inside their homes. The season lasted much longer than anyone could remember, even his aging father, Aiden who was born just a few years after the old world ended. In the summer, though, the fields surrounding the hotel were fertile. Their farmers surmised that the surrounding mountains had caused most of the acid rain that plagued the country after the war to fall to the west of their location. The growing season was short, but productive, yielding more than enough food to make it through the long winter.

  The Traxx family had lived in the hotel, known as The Keep after they’d built the fortifications, for almost ten years. Then, last month, the surrounding community had shocked Garrett by voting for him to be its king. His friend Nicholas read of the kings who ruled their lands hundreds of years before the end the old world and convinced the villagers to crown Garrett. It was only an honorary title, but the sentiment remained. The residents respected him enough to make him their official leader instead of simply being one of the men who lived in The Keep.

  Like everything in life, there was a catch to him being crowned king. The merchants insisted that he speak to the Seers of the Valley Lodge, a reclusive group of women who secluded themselves in the mountains and were renowned for their ability to perceive events that might happen. The people wished to know whether the election of one man to lead them was the right move.

  Garrett was wary. His father had told him often enough that his aunt Mary had the Gift as a child and that she’d even been instrumental in helping to save the old city of San Angelo from certain doom. The visions often twisted a person’s perception of what may come to pass, he’d cautioned Garrett before the journey. The Seers could likely see one possibility for the future; it wasn’t set in stone and events could be altered.

  Garrett had met with them a few years prior. They’d had a particularly dry spring on the heels of a near disastrous winter and he’d gone to ask them about the harvest. The Seers had predicted rainstorms in the late summer that ended up saving the crops. The following winter was hard, but they’d survived and had bumper crops ever since.

  The Seers even told him that a Traxx would become lord of The Keep. At the time Garrett laughed at their obvious attempt at trickery; he was already the head of the family, living in the hotel with his brother Blake and a few other families who’d traveled with them from Texas.

  He glanced sideways at Nicholas with a slight frown. His friend had been present when the Seers proclaimed that Garrett would be elevated to royalty and had been the one who led the people in the vote. He often wondered if they’d foreseen Nicholas’ involvement in the bid to have Garrett elected as king or if Nicholas got the idea from the Seers, effectively fulfilling their prophecy. He’d never know.

  “Are we here?” Brandt asked, stirring him from the memories that had crept up on him.

  Garrett’s face flushed from embarrassment as he realized that he’d allowed himself to stop walking. For once, he was thankful of the cold that permeated his limbs, hiding the color in his cheeks. “Almost,” he replied. “At the crest of this rise, we’ll take the path down into a small valley. The Seers live in an old lodge in the center of a clearing.”

  “A lodge?” the boy asked excitedly. “What’s a lodge?”

  He grinned at his nephew, of course he wouldn’t know what a lodge was; he’d only learned of it himself when he visited the first time. “It’s a big house. You’ll see soon enough, Brandt.”

  The boy frowned, “So it’s like The Keep?”

  “No, not anywhere as big as that; it’s a big house where hunters used to stay when they would go hunting. It’s designed to look like a wood cabin, but it’s not real wood, it’s—”

  “What’s ‘not real wood,’ Uncle?”

  “It’s… Well, it’s something from the old world. You’ll see when we get there.”

  Nicholas chuckled at Garrett’s frustration. The family hadn’t taken children beyond the walls in years. After the coronation, Brandt would be second in line for the throne behind the king’s daughter, Tanya, so he’d reluctantly agreed to allow the boy to come.

  “Brandt,” Nicholas coughed, diverting the boy’s attention away from Garrett. “Look up ahead. How far do you reckon we are from the top of this path?”

  Brandt looked up at the crest of the hill they were traversing and Garrett could tell that he was attempting to estimate the distance. After a moment he said, “Maybe three hundred feet.”

  “Okay, so in three hundred feet, you’ll get your questions answered. Stop pestering the king.”

  “I—Yes, sir,” the boy replied. He bent his head down so he could focus on the path’s treacherous footing and pulled ahead of the group.

  When he was out of earshot, Garrett s
aid, “Thank you, but I’m not the king yet. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to be responsible for a nine year old. His father and mother were always around so they dealt with the constant questions of his.”

  “Well, m’Lord, the—”

  “Don’t start that shit again,” Garrett cut him off.

  Nicholas bent slightly at the waist as they walked, “As you command.” He darted quickly out of reach as Garrett threw a playful punch in his direction.

  “Seriously, though,” his friend continued. “The questions are how they learn about the world around them. It’s a good thing that he’s curious.”

  He acknowledged the fact with a grunt. “I know. I’m just not used to being the sole recipient of his questions. Tanya turns eighteen after the next harvest, so it’s been a while, and even then Peyton handled most of them while we worked in the field.”

  Snowflakes drifted across their vision, causing them to look skyward. The clouds were a light grey, not the angry dark grey and green that indicated a poison snow, so they were fine to continue along in the open. Nicholas gestured upward, saying, “I hope these aren’t the first flakes in a blizzard. I don’t want to be stuck up here with the Seers… They’re creepy.”

  Garrett continued to examine the sky as they walked. “It shouldn’t be; too early in the season. The harvest was only last week. We haven’t even finished storing everything yet.”

  Ahead, Brandt had stopped at the crest, staring down into the valley, hidden from view of the rest of the party. He pointed excitedly toward where Garrett knew the Seers’ home was located in the valley below.

  “Looks like we’re here,” Nicholas stated.

  Garrett waved his arm over his head to get the boy’s attention. “Remember, stay on the trail,” he called, mindful of the defenses hidden in the fields surrounding the lodge.

  Brandt paused long enough for his uncle to catch up before picking his way down the trail toward the structure in the center of the valley.

  The Valley Lodge was exactly as Garrett remembered. Situated between several rows of mountain peaks, the dell before them was well hidden from outsiders. Waist-high grass, turned brown with the changing of the seasons, circled the vale’s floor. Garrett knew that the tall grass held a nasty surprise for unwelcome visitors and raiders. It bent in the wind that swept constantly from the north, hiding the old world magic that would kill any who stepped away from the path with an explosion that sprayed jagged shards of metal in all directions.

  Closer to the lodge, an old chain-link fence kept a small herd of cattle and flock of chickens confined to the area immediately surrounding it. The animals kept the grasses trimmed short, allowing for excellent fields of view for five hundred feet all around the building. The explosives in the grass, coupled with the long standoff distances—as well as the ability to see danger in the future—gave the Seers an easily defensible home against any medium-sized raiding party.

  The Seer’s home sat directly in the center of the little valley. It was a moderate-sized hunting lodge, once used by sport hunters when they’d vacation in the wilderness of southern Colorado. He chuckled to himself. The hunters of old must not have liked to leave the comforts of home behind when they went out to pursue their quarry.

  The lodge wasn’t nearly as large as The Keep, but it was large enough to house all of the Seers and the small guard force they kept on staff. When he’d been here before, there were five of them. Three performed the ritual that gave the idea to Nicholas to nominate him for king, while the other two sat in the shadows of the room they used for their ceremony.

  The women had surprised him. He’d been expecting old cronies covered in warts and moles; the women who’d been present had all been wart-free. While none of them stood out in his mind as particularly attractive, each of them would have made good wives for some of his people if they hadn’t been cursed with the Gift.

  “HALT!” a disembodied male voice echoed across the valley.

  Garrett had been expecting this as well. The Seers had a system of pipes buried in the ground that all lead from a central point inside the building to the edges of the valley. Someone could shout in one end of the pipe and be heard on the other end. He’d liked the idea so much that he had one installed on either side of The Keep’s walls so they could talk to people while the gates were closed. Theirs didn’t work nearly as well as the Seers’ pipes though.

  His group halted, except for the youth, who continued to work his way down the path, heedless of the orders from the lodge. “Brandt, stop!” Garrett shouted.

  The boy paused to look back toward his uncle. At that moment, an arrow embedded into the ground five feet in front of Brandt. His nephew’s head whipped around to focus on the quivering shaft and he slowly raised both of his arms.

  “What do you want?” the voice demanded, echoing once again from everywhere around them.

  Garrett looked around for the end of the pipe and saw it near where the arrow rested. The mottled green and brown tube blended perfectly into the landscape surrounding it. The arrow indicated a stronger level of security than the Seers had the last time that he was here, so he followed Brandt’s lead, raising his hands. Then he walked slowly toward the copper pipe and bent down to talk into it.

  His breath clouded as he pulled the scarf away from his mouth. “My name is Garrett Traxx. I came to—”

  “We know you, Traxx,” a new, female voice stated. “We’ve been expecting you; however we didn’t know you to come with a war party.”

  He looked back at the ten men who’d journeyed with him and his nephew. It was a small war party to say the least. “These men are here to protect me, not to raid you.”

  “Protect you from whom? Yourself? Foolish Traxx.”

  “Now, wait a minute.”

  “You have nothing to fear from us, King Traxx.”

  “How did you— Never mind.” He glanced back at his traveling companions. They could hear everything that was said through the tube as clearly as if they were standing in front of it and not him. He looked back toward the lodge and continued, “I’ve come to speak to you about the coronation.”

  “Coronation? You have greater things to worry about than a celebration.”

  Garrett bit hard on the inside of his cheek. He knew before he came that speaking in riddles was the way of the Seers. It was a trick they developed to help with their prophecies, allowing enough room for multiple interpretations of a statement, thus, when an event came to pass, they could claim credit for it. It was a delicate game they played and his people took much stock in what the women had to say.

  “Life amongst the wastes is tough. What do we have to fear that we don’t already experience on a regular basis?”

  “Pride. So much pride, like your famous ancestor. It was his undoing.”

  “Famous ancestor… Do you mean Aeric Traxx?”

  “Yes, of course. You may enter our valley, along with three others, plus the little Traxxling.”

  There was a pause and the original male voice returned, “Just the five of you. Everyone else will stay where they are or they’ll be killed, no questions asked.”

  He grunted his approval into the pipe and turned to survey the party. Nicholas would be one of the three to go with him of course; he picked two others, both the sons of prominent merchants around Homelake. Brandt would round out the party.

  “You men stay here,” Garrett told the seven who would remain. “Make sure to stay on the path, don’t wander off. The rumor is that the fields surrounding the Seers’ lodge are seeded with explosives that will take a man’s legs completely from his body.”

  Several of the men edged warily back from the grasses and one of them spit out the plant stalk that he’d been idly chewing. Garrett thanked the stars that his companions hadn’t wandered too far into the grasses while he set the order of business with the speaker in the tube. He certainly didn’t need a death or maiming overshadowing the coronation.

  “Alright, let’s go,” Garret
t sighed. “Don’t do anything stupid, you can bet that whoever shot that arrow at Brandt’s feet is watching us.”

  He trudged ahead of the small group down the cleared path toward the lodge. Three men sat on the front porch, watching their advance until they came to the chain link fence, then one of them stepped off onto the grass and made his way slowly toward the gate. The same man had been here the first time he visited the Seers.

  “You could have met us at the gate when we got here,” Garrett stated, annoyed that they’d waited in the cold for several minutes while the man ambled over from the lodge.

  “Not the protocol that Darci has established,” the guard replied gruffly.

  “I didn’t meet Darci last time I was here. Who is she?”

  He snickered and pointed back up the path, “She’s the one that shot that arrow.” The man, Garrett thought he remembered his name to be Garth, pulled a set of keys from his pocket and inserted one into the padlock linked through the chain holding the gate closed. “She was hired after the incident.”

  Garrett was slightly confused. “What incident?”

  Garth shrugged, “A few years ago, there was a guy who didn’t like the prophecy that Erika gave him. He slit her throat before I was able to react.” He gestured toward the bleached bones resting in a cage near the center of the front pasture, “That’s him. Bastard begged for death by the time I was done with him. Unfortunately, the fire underneath him burned out one night and the cold finally took him.

  “After Erika’s death I was finally able to convince the rest of them to employ more security. We’ve got the four of us, plus several men who range through the forests surrounding the valley, and Darci. Finding her was truly a blessing.”

  Garrett scanned the rooftop of the lodge while Garth fed the chain through the fence. To be able to shoot as far across the valley as she had, he figured she had to be up high on the roof. He didn’t see her at first, but then, resting against one of the chimneys, he saw her. The cloak she wore was the same dull brown as the rock chimney, allowing her to blend in easily with her background at that distance. If he narrowed his eyes, he could make out the stock and limbs of a large crossbow.