The Path of Ashes [Omnibus Edition]

by Parker, Brian

  “They look like snakes. Daddy says snakes are evil and that we need to stay away from them.”

  She hugged the girl tighter. “Well, don’t worry. They’re not bad. They were the ones who told us about you. We had to bring you here because of the war.”

  “The war?”

  “All the fighting at the Home of the Lakes.”

  Jade nodded solemnly. “The Vultures. They’re bad. They fight with our friends.”

  “The Vultures?” Varan seethed, hearing the girl’s words. “After all this time, they’re still fighting the Vultures?”

  Freya waved her hand angrily, attempting to shut him up. “See, that’s why we needed to get you and bring you here. It’s dangerous back at your home.”

  “What about Jensen and Michael?”

  Freya shook her head, “I’m sorry, I don’t know who they are.”

  “They’re my brothers. Jensen is my twin brother. I miss him.”

  She released the girl and stood, turning to where the priest argued with Varan. “She’s a twin, and you separated her?”

  “The boy is not important,” Grobahn said. “The girl will help you unlock your powers to heal the damages done to the earth.”

  She shifted to place her body between the men and the girl. “And how is she supposed to do that, exactly? You keep saying that she’s the final piece we need to unlock my powers, but you haven’t told me how that works.”

  “I… I don’t know,” the priest admitted.

  Varan threw up his hands in disgust. “So you found the Traxx family—my family—and decided to take one of their children, another of their children, I might add, and you don’t know how her power works?”

  “Our visions often come in stages. Now that the first stage is complete, we will soon learn what it is that needs to happen.”

  “Grobahn, if I may,” the Summoner, Brahm, interjected. The high priest motioned for him to continue. “What if the child goes to stay with the Mother? Maybe developing a relationship between the two and the responsibilities of being a physical mother for the girl will unlock the spiritual power of being the Mother.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Grobahn said. “I’d planned on keeping her here in the rectory to have her close to assist with our visions.”

  Freya looked around the priests’ sparse lodging. The common area was designed for functionality and durability, not comfort. Nothing in the room would even remotely interest a girl Jade’s age and she would be miserable.

  “I like Brahm’s suggestion,” Freya stated. “Jade should come stay with me and Varan.”

  “Whoa. Hold on,” Varan said. “I don’t want a Traxx anywhere near me.”

  “You are a Traxx, Varan! You need to come to terms with that.”

  “They abandoned me and Caleb a long time ago.”

  “Varan and Caleb?” Jade asked. “My mommy talks about you.”

  “What do you mean she talks about us?”

  “She says that the family searched for a long time to find you, but there weren’t any tracks to follow. It didn’t stop grandad and Uncle Blake from looking for so long that mommy thought they’d gone missing too.”

  Freya saw the war of emotions battle across his face. He’d conditioned himself for so long to hate the Traxx family for abandoning him, but what if the girl spoke the truth? What if they tried to find the boys and they couldn’t? Varan himself said that they traveled for weeks inside a cage on the back of a wagon, barely kept alive, until Lucas purchased them. The tracks could have easily been concealed if they traveled down a paved road.

  “Who… Who’s your mommy?” Varan asked, showing the first signs of vulnerability.

  “Tanya. She’s the princess.”

  “Tanya! Tanya is your mother? Little Tanya?” He fell to his knees and began crying.

  Freya held her tongue and gave warning stares to the hovering priests. This was going to be good for him. He was a broken man and had almost fallen off the cliff into insanity after he killed his brother. Learning of his past and what had happened in his absence would go a long way toward healing his soul.

  Varan wiped away the tears and reached out tentatively to place a hand on Jade’s shoulder. “Little one, I know your mother. She was my cousin and we used to play together every day, training to fight against the Vultures that our fathers told us would return one day. I guess that means I’m your uncle.”

  *****

  “Dammit, Nicholas. No more excuses,” the king slammed his hand down on the map of Homelake. “I want to get a force outside of these walls. I gave you a week to get us outside and here we sit. Tanya and Brandt have been out there on their own this entire time.”

  “Garrett, we’re trying. The Vultures have countered every move we try. Your daughter snuck off in the night over the wall and lit a beacon for the entire world to see as she left, effectively eliminating rappelling a force down the walls impossible.”

  Traxx clenched his fist. It was true, dammit. When Tanya and Brandt snuck out of the city, they burned the ropes they’d used to climb down. He knew that they did it to ensure they didn’t leave a ready-made way for the Vultures to infiltrate the city, but it also eliminated that method as a way to get the search team outside the walls. The Vultures tightened their siege lines and lit fires every night that illuminated no-man’s land at overlapping intervals.

  “You’ve told me that your troops were capable of opening a hole in the Vulture lines. That we could force a bubble of safety around the back gates to get a mounted force through, but we’ve had zero progress.”

  “We’ve killed dozens of them this week with archers, My Lord,” Lieutenant Rylan, the deputy commander of the Traxx Guard, stated.

  The king turned on him. “We need to kill hundreds, Rylan, not dozens. My daughter and granddaughter are out there somewhere along with my nephew and that fool sergeant of yours. Every day we delay, the greater the peril they face.”

  “Yes, sir, but—”

  “You’ve been out there,” Garrett continued. “You know what it’s like beyond the plains. Man is not the master of the wilds any more than he’s welcomed in the wastes of the old cities. There are things out there that will easily kill such a small party. We need a breakout.”

  Nicholas cleared his throat. “We are setting the conditions for—”

  “Shut up, Nicholas. We’ve been friends our entire lives and I owe you more than I could ever repay, but this is personal. We need—I need—a breakout from the city. The future of our people is out there, wandering around looking for clues about where that thing took my granddaughter.”

  Nicholas took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “Garrett, this is personal for all of us, which is why we need to step back and look at it strategically.” He held up his hands as the king began to protest. “No, hear me out. I love Tanya and Jade, and they are the future of Homelake, but if we attack the Vultures without proper planning to ensure ourselves a victory, then we risk opening up the city. If those animals get inside, we’re done for.”

  He’s right, you old fool, Garrett told himself. I’m responsible for almost ten thousand residents, I can’t let my heart overrule my mind. Be the king that the people need you to be, dammit!

  “Nicholas, you’re right,” the king said. “We can’t allow the Vultures to get inside the city and they seem content to try and starve us out for now. But I also can’t allow my family to be decimated out in the wilds.”

  He held up his hand to keep the commander and his lieutenant quiet as he worked through the problem. His thoughts turned to the books he’d read about the kings of old and how they led their people to victory—or to defeat. They’d been great warriors, and their subjects loved them for their sacrifices. Garrett didn’t need the adulation of the people, but he did need their support. The answer came to him.

  “Rylan, I need you to find my brother, Blake,” Garrett ordered. “He’s likely in the smithy, working on that giant crossbow design of his. That damned thing may
save us one day, but for now, he needs to put it aside. I’m appointing him as Regent in my absence.”

  “Absence?” Nicholas asked in confusion.

  “I can’t allow the Vultures to get into the city, but I will not allow my family to be left alone in the wilds. I’m going to lead a force of fifty volunteers on a breakout from the back gates.”

  “My Lord, I—”

  “It’s decided, Nicholas. We will have an old-fashioned cavalry charge and smash through their lines. We’ll keep riding west to the Seers and figure out where those witches sent my daughter.”

  FOURTEEN

  “We need to stop for the night,” Darci said as she slowed her horse to a slow walk.

  “Are you sure?” Tanya asked. “I mean, you said that the mountain lion was still stalking us.”

  The archer looked up to the rock ledges surrounding them. The red and yellow cliffs held dozens of places for the animal to hide, but this was the most defensible spot on the ground that she’d seen for several miles. The light from the moon and stars barely reached the bottom of the canyon, so they couldn’t risk stumbling around in the dark any longer. If one of the horses’ legs broke before they crossed the Skull Lands, they were done for.

  “I’m sure it still hunts us,” Darci acknowledged. “It would do so if we went another ten miles, but it would have a much better chance of taking one of us in the darkness. It’s best to make camp on our terms while we have a little bit of daylight left.”

  “Why don’t we try to kill the damn thing, become the hunters ourselves?” Frederick said in frustration, swinging his leg over his horse’s rump and stepping down to the ground.

  The older woman smirked. “You’re welcome to go up onto those ledges and attack it. Maybe you’ll get lucky and it’s a young cat, not a grizzled fifteen-year veteran of fighting in these canyons. Or, it could be old, slow and on the verge of death instead of a blur of motion that will eviscerate you with one swipe of its paw.” She held up a finger. “Maybe it’ll be a small, malnourished creature, barely able to open its mouth instead of a three hundred and fifty pound monster capable of crushing your skull in its massive jaws, just as sure on its feet up there on the ledge as if it were on the ground.”

  Frederick swallowed hard and looked around the space she’d picked as a campsite. “This looks like a good place to stay for the night.”

  Tanya laughed nervously and then dismounted as well, followed by Brandt. They began to unroll their blankets and the younger Traxx fussed with untying the string wrapped around his bedroll. His cousin took the blanket from him and untied the knot before handing it back to him. The boy was an enigma to Darci. She shook her head and chastised herself, He’s not a boy; he’s twenty years old. Just because I’m starting to show my age doesn’t mean I should consider him less capable than the other two.

  It was hard for her to think of him as an adult, though. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, inexperience mostly, but there was something else underlying his actions. Darci wasn’t sure if it was privilege or arrogance, maybe a little of both. She’d learned a lot about the way of life in Homelake over the past week and decided that their lifestyle is what made Brandt seem so childish to her. By the time she was twenty, she’d already killed several men and was more than capable of handling herself in any situation. But Brandt, he was another story. The royals apparently still worked in their fields and shops like everyone else, but there was obviously a difference between the two Traxx in her company.

  Brandt became part of the royal family when he was thirteen, whereas Tanya had been nineteen, already an adult capable of seeing after herself. Sure, his musculature told her that he spent hours each day loading wood into fires and pounding metal with a hammer at the blacksmith shop where he worked, but he often displayed an inability to do the simpler tasks for himself, like untying the knot just now. Darci hoped he wouldn’t be a liability to the group’s success.

  “What are we having for dinner?” the youth asked, rubbing his belly.

  “Hard biscuit and salted meat is all we have,” Tanya said. “We haven’t seen much wildlife for Darci to shoot.”

  That was her cue. The archer put aside her observations and closed the gap between them. “Just because we haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it’s not here,” she stated. “The high desert is teeming with wildlife; it just does a good job of hiding.”

  As if to emphasize her point, the mountain lion screamed. “Shit, that sounded close,” Frederick said, sliding his sword from the scabbard at his waist. She appraised the way his stance changed and how natural the blade seemed in his hand. Frederick is a fighter, what does Brandt offer?

  “You two, continue setting up camp,” Darci told Frederick and Tanya. “Brandt, come with me.”

  He withdrew his own sword and fell into step slightly behind her, off to the side. “You know how to use that thing?” she asked.

  “Everyone from Homelake is required to enter the militia when they turn seventeen and all men must participate in the reserve force for their entire life after they’re released from compulsory service at twenty-three.”

  She glanced sidelong at him. “Okay, thank you for the rundown on the city’s military, but I asked if you knew how to handle your sword. I don’t need you accidentally gutting me when you get spooked.”

  “I’m much better in the phalanx, but I can hold my own with a sword. Frederick is the best swordsman in the entire kingdom—that’s how he ended up getting assigned as Tanya’s bodyguard before they began having children together. I’ve trained with him since I was a kid.”

  “I could tell that he knows how to handle his weapon.” She paused as she knelt near a waist-high rock beside the old road. Darci began scanning the ledges through her crossbow’s scope. The distance seemed to disappear in the lens.

  She didn’t like how close the mountain lion had gotten. It had been mildly interested in them earlier and she hadn’t been too concerned with it, but now it was right on top of them, which meant it was more than interested in them now.

  “What’s a phalanx?” she asked to pass the time as she searched for the lion.

  Brandt spent the better part of twenty minutes explaining the weapons and fighting techniques employed by the militia at Homelake and told her about the victory that Frederick had been part of last year against the overwhelming Vulture force. They’d won a battle of nearly three-to-one odds through their superior tactics.

  Finally, Darci decided that the mountain lion wasn’t going to show itself for an easy kill and they returned to the campsite where Tanya had unpacked some of their supplies for dinner. It was a cold and meager meal, composed of the rations purchased in Creede for their journey. She wished that she’d been able to shoot a rabbit or deer for fresh meat, but none presented themselves. The fresh meat would have been welcome and a deer carcass would have helped to get rid of the lion as well. As it was, they had to eat from their packs. That worried her. The map that the Mistress gave her showed that they were on the verge of the Skull Lands where water and food sources were nonexistent.

  After dinner, Darci set the watch at two people awake at all times. They hadn’t been able to find enough wood to make a fire, so they would just have to cope with the darkness and be vigilant when on watch. She took the first watch with Brandt so she could continue to keep an eye on him.

  The night stretched on and a chill settled over the valley. Darci wondered what was on the other side of the giant water. She’d read about deserts and tried to prepare their supplies appropriately, but she knew that they would suffer, especially the horses.

  Behind her, the soft snoring of Tanya and Frederick was distracting. Is Brandt distracted by the noise? Darci was used to hours of solitude on her perch, watching for trouble around the lodge, the boy wasn’t.

  She shifted to look at him and saw the white of his eyes practically glowing in the moonlight as he stared wide-eyed at her. “Everything alright?” she asked.

  “I heard a popping n
oise. You know, like when your knee joint pops after sitting or standing for a long time.”

  She nodded and gently shook Frederick’s boot. “Wake up. It’s coming.”

  To his credit, the bodyguard rolled out of his blanket quickly, sword already in hand. “Where is it?” Frederick asked.

  “Haven’t seen it yet, but Brandt heard it approaching,” she whispered. “Everyone stay still.”

  Frederick nodded and sank to the ground to wait. It didn’t take long before the creature showed itself. Darci suppressed a gasp of surprise. Slinking from rock to rock, the lion was almost six feet tall at its shoulder and easily nine feet long. She’d seen them in the mountains near the lodge, but this beast was something different.

  Besides the obvious size difference, its shoulder and hip joints seemed to work in odd angles from one another and the skin across its forehead was missing, exposing the dirty white skull underneath. She slowly rotated the focus on her scope and zoomed in. The injury was old, the ragged skin around the wound healed long ago, lending an evil appearance to the creature.

  Each of the canines emerging from its mouth to frame its jaw was larger than a man’s thumb. She’d seen big teeth before, but nothing like what this beast sported. They could probably pierce the light armor she wore with ease. The creature was something from her nightmares.

  Slowly, Darci pulled two more crossbow arrows loose from the storage rack along the stock of the weapon and then lined up the crosshairs on the lion. She thought about trying for a shot through the eye, but quickly discarded the idea. There were too many variables to account for and any slight movement by the animal would cause her to miss. Besides, she wasn’t entirely confident that her crossbow could pierce that thing’s skull.

  She shifted her aim point lower to the center of its chest and then slightly off to the side. If she was extremely lucky, she could get it through the heart, otherwise, it would penetrate the lion’s lung and she’d be able to get another shot off before it closed the distance. The twang of her bowstring shattered the silence of the night.