by Sam Sykes
“Now imagine that across a single world and a thousand centuries. Clearly, somewhere in all that time, your Gods have failed you.”
He clasped his hands and held them up before him.
“Let me fix this.”
The intelligent thing to do, Lenk knew, would be to shut his ears to the words of a demon.
No, a more intelligent thing to do would be to go to Sheffu, explain all of this in slow, painstaking detail, twice, and then see what could be done about it.
And yet maybe the best thing of all would be to just go to Kataria’s room, climb into bed beside her, breathe in her scent, sleep forever, and never wake up.
“Would you like to know what was on the note she wrote?”
Lenk’s attention was seized by Mocca’s words. The man smiled softly, encouragingly, all the malice having fled from his grin.
“Would you like to know what she’s thinking? Who she’s dreaming of? What her terrors are? What she wants to hear you say tomorrow to make it all better?”
“No!” Lenk had to restrain himself from swinging his sword at Mocca, if only because it would aggravate his wound. “You stay out of her head.”
“As you like,” Mocca said. “I don’t need to be in it to know what you know. She walks with the knowledge that, no matter what, she’s not one of you. She loves you, but not your people. You love her, but not the life she wants. You long for a world where you can walk with her and she with you and know that you will never need anything else.”
Mocca slowly reached out and extended his hand.
“I can give you that, Lenk,” he said. “I can give you, and everyone, a world like that. I ask you not to believe me… only to listen.”
Lenk looked down and considered the hand offered to him.
His palm was calloused, worn, more fitting on a smith than a man of his stature. The sleeve of his robe slipped, leaving his arm and all its patterned scars bare. He hadn’t noticed before—maybe he just hadn’t been looking—but these were the scars of something so ingrained that they couldn’t be removed or altered, even in a vision.
These were the scars of a maker. These were the scars of a demon.
The first mistake he had made since he had come here was in not walking away when he couldn’t enter the city. He had made many more since then, spilled so much blood, struck so much steel, hurt so many people. Had each one been a mistake? Had they all led to this moment?
Lenk did not know.
Lenk did not know if it was a mistake now, as he reached out, as he wrapped his hand around Mocca’s, as he felt the scars touch his.
And listened.
EPILOGUE
YOUNG MAN
On the fourth day of his meditation, shortly after the sun had awakened, Sekhlen felt it.
“Ah.”
He opened his eyes, bleary against the breeze that rolled up the mountain and through his window. The sun was already climbing high, casting the mountain’s shadow long over the forest, long to the desert beyond, long to the west.
Always west.
He rose from his knees to his feet, his old body protesting with popping joints and groaning muscle. He brushed the sand from his trousers, even though it pained him to bend over to do so. Age could not be accepted as a limitation any more than ignorance.
He took a moment to savor the breeze as it rolled in again, but only as long as it took him to feel the disease carried in on the wind. It was a shifting, nebulous sensation, at once both tiny and pronounced, like a needle inserted into the soft flesh of his eyelid.
Anyone else would have missed it.
As everyone else no doubt had missed it.
Which was why monasteries like this and men like Sekhlen existed.
He shuffled out of his tiny room carved into the mountain’s face and descended down the stairs. Sand, too, littered the steps here. An entire forest and miles of rock rising high into the air, and it still wasn’t far away enough to escape the desert.
He sighed, taking the steps one at a time. Halfway down, he paused before a crowd that looked up at him expectantly. The usual morning mob, feathers ruffled, beady eyes staring up at him expectantly, chirping various demands at him.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “I’m only a little late today.”
He reached into the pocket of his black shirt, pulled free a pouch, and emptied a fistful of seeds into his hand. As he sifted the handful gently out onto the steps, the mob of birds began to greedily—and ungratefully—peck up the seeds, allowing him to pass unmolested.
Sekhlen muttered gratitudes as he descended the steps to find his next nuisance. An initiate was busy sweeping the bottom of the stairs. A young man—Cheloe, if he recalled correctly—relatively new to the monastery. Yet they all came young, in spirit, if not in appearance. Cheloe had a young man’s muscle, his black shirt and trousers tight on his body, but his hair hung gray as a mule’s.
“Did you begin at the top?” Sekhlen asked.
Cheloe looked up from his duties. His eyes were a shade of such piercing blue that they would be breathtaking if Sekhlen hadn’t seen such a shade every day, especially when he looked at his own reflection.
“I did not,” Cheloe said.
“Have we not had this discussion before?”
“We have.”
“And?”
Cheloe shouldered his broom like a spear, stood rigid, and began to recite. “I am an instrument of the Order, a blade ever-honed. I am the force of what must be, a storm ever-brewing. I am a slave to no God, no king, no man, a wind ever-moving. I am—”
“Yes, yes.” Sekhlen interrupted with a sigh. Cheloe’s unerring willingness to recite the oath was proof enough that, given time, he could actually remember things he had been told longer than a day. “If you would not mind attending to my meditation chamber? It’s grown a tad dusty.”
“I just swept that yesterday,” Cheloe groaned.
A flash of a scowl was all it took to send the young man scurrying up the stairs, though. Cheloe had not yet been here long enough to grow unimpressed with the power of the eyes. Sekhlen lived in bitter dread of the day when that moment would come.
But that was a concern for another day.
He folded his hands behind his back as he continued through the courtyard. The other initiates went about their business: from the newer ones peeling rice and beating rugs to the older ones sharpening blades and bowing their heads in meditation.
Young, all of them.
Silver-haired, all of them.
Killers to a one, even the youngest having slain no less than three people before Sekhlen had found them.
“Sekhlen! Master Sekhlen!”
Shuro had slaughtered many before he had brought her here, beginning with her family. That wasn’t so uncommon; so many of these poor young people began with their families. What was odd was how long she went on doing it, her body count a tragic fifteen when she had as many years.
He could still remember her, some skinny thing holed up in a barn somewhere in some northern shithole of a town, blue eyes wide and trembling, silver hair matted with blood, clutching a knife in her hand. She was such a frail thing, back then.
Far removed from the healthy, vibrant creature that came trotting up to him now. This girl—woman, he reminded himself; she was a young woman—was wiry with lean muscle, powerful beneath her black uniform, her hair done up in an elegant tail. Far stronger, far more confident than she had been so long ago.
And still so, so serious.
“Master Sekhlen,” she said, sliding into a perfect posture as she came to a halt before him. Her chin, sharpened to a fine point like the rest of her features, angled up as she respectfully acknowledged him. “We have returned with the subject.”
“You can call me ‘Sekhlen,’ you know,” he replied. “I don’t at all mind.”
Her face, as honed as the blade she wore at her hip, twitched at that notion, such an impropriety completely beyond her comprehension. He sighed and made a gesture fo
r her to lead.
“Show me.”
The return to formality smoothed her again and she led him through the courtyard to the temple gates. Two other initiates, young men by the names of Calo and Fuma, surrounded another woman. They did little more than block her as she wandered this way and that and she tumbled away from them to stagger off in another direction, completely heedless of them.
She was not like them. Older, for one, and not having been spared the world of humanity like his initiates, her face was mapped with wrinkles that were exaggerated by the euphoric smile she wore across her face. Her hair hung about her in wild, greasy strands, framing eyes positively bulging with glee. The soles of her feet were completely black and her garments had been ripped, torn, and dirtied without any indication that she had ever even noticed.
Her wild gaze settled upon Sekhlen and she rushed toward him. Shuro immediately moved for her blade, but Sekhlen waved her off and let the wild woman come and seize his hand.
“Grandfather!” she all but shrieked. “How good to see you! You must hear the tremendous news! I heard it two weeks ago, saw it in my dreams.” She nodded vigorously. “He came to me, Grandfather. All in white and smiling, he came to me and told me that all would be well. He told me my worries were at an end, that it wasn’t my fault, that my husband did not die for nothing. He… he called to me… called to all of us, bade us to come to him. West. Always west. Oh, isn’t it wonderful? He calls us home!”
Sekhlen nodded gently at her and pulled his hand from hers to rest it gently upon her brow. With his thumb, he moved a stray lock of hair from her eyes, smoothing it back behind her ear. Her smile grew wider at his touch and she just kept on smiling.
Even as he reached into his shirt, pulled out a dagger, and drew it cleanly across her throat.
Heavily, he watched her collapse to the ground and bleed out upon the temple stones. She hadn’t deserved it, of course, neither the blade nor the visions. Such was his burden.
An instrument. A blade ever-honed.
“We discovered her at the edge of the forest with two others,” Shuro said. “Both dead from exhaustion. We had to force water down her throat to keep her alive long enough to get here.” The young woman’s frown was as sharp as anything else about her. “They were heading west. To the city.”
“Interesting,” Sekhlen said. “Perhaps she came from a village. Or a trading caravan.” He watched the woman’s life leak out. “I wonder if there’s anyone out there who wonders where she is.”
“Does it matter?”
He cast a glance askew at Shuro.
So serious. So hard. So very different from that little girl. But who did he have to blame for that but himself?
“I suppose not,” he said. “This confirms our fears, then.” He looked out the temple gates, over the forest, and west to the desert. “Khoth-Kapira has made himself known.”
“He has.”
Sekhlen nodded, reached down, and took up both of Shuro’s hands. He held them for a moment, noting just how cold she was, before releasing. And when he did, her fingers were bloodied by the blade he had left in her grasp.
“You know what to do, then,” he said.
She stared down at the blade before looking up at him, eyes unwavering and blue and cold as ice. She nodded exactly once and spoke.
“I do.”
THE END
extras
meet the author
Libbi Rich
SAM SYKES is the author of the acclaimed Tome of the Undergates, a vast and sprawling story of adventure, demons, madness and carnage. He lives in Arizona.
introducing
If you enjoyed
THE CITY STAINED RED
look out for
THE BLACK PRISM
Lightbringer: Book 1
by Brent Weeks
Gavin Guile is the Prism, the most powerful man in the world. He is high priest and emperor, a man whose power, wit, and charm are all that preserves a tenuous peace. But Prisms never last, and Guile knows exactly how long he has left to live: Five years to achieve five impossible goals.
But when Guile discovers he has a son, born in a far kingdom after the war that put him in power, he must decide how much he’s willing to pay to protect a secret that could tear his world apart.
CHAPTER 1
Kip crawled toward the battlefield in the darkness, the mist pressing down, blotting out sound, scattering starlight. Though the adults shunned it and the children were forbidden to come here, he’d played on the open field a hundred times—during the day. Tonight, his purpose was grimmer.
Reaching the top of the hill, Kip stood and hiked up his pants. The river behind him was hissing, or maybe that was the warriors beneath its surface, dead these sixteen years. He squared his shoulders, ignoring his imagination. The mists made him seem suspended, outside of time. But even if there was no evidence of it, the sun was coming. By the time it did, he had to get to the far side of the battlefield. Farther than he’d ever gone searching.
Even Ramir wouldn’t come out here at night. Everyone knew Sundered Rock was haunted. But Ram didn’t have to feed his family; his mother didn’t smoke her wages.
Gripping his little belt knife tightly, Kip started walking. It wasn’t just the unquiet dead that might pull him down to the evernight. A pack of giant javelinas had been seen roaming the night, tusks cruel, hooves sharp. They were good eating if you had a matchlock, iron nerves, and good aim, but since the Prisms’ War had wiped out all the town’s men, there weren’t many people who braved death for a little bacon. Rekton was already a shell of what it had once been. The alcaldesa wasn’t eager for any of her townspeople to throw their lives away. Besides, Kip didn’t have a matchlock.
Nor were javelinas the only creatures that roamed the night. A mountain lion or a golden bear would also probably enjoy a well-marbled Kip.
A low howl cut the mist and the darkness hundreds of paces deeper into the battlefield. Kip froze. Oh, there were wolves too. How’d he forget wolves?
Another wolf answered, farther out. A haunting sound, the very voice of the wilderness. You couldn’t help but freeze when you heard it. It was the kind of beauty that made you shit your pants.
Wetting his lips, Kip got moving. He had the distinct sensation of being followed. Stalked. He looked over his shoulder. There was nothing there. Of course. His mother always said he had too much imagination. Just walk, Kip. Places to be. Animals are more scared of you and all that. Besides, that was one of the tricks about a howl, it always sounded much closer than it really was. Those wolves were probably leagues away.
Before the Prisms’ War, this had been excellent farmland. Right next to the Umber River, suitable for figs, grapes, pears, dewberries, asparagus—everything grew here. And it had been sixteen years since the final battle—a year before Kip was even born. But the plain was still torn and scarred. A few burnt timbers of old homes and barns poked out of the dirt. Deep furrows and craters remained from cannon shells. Filled now with swirling mist, those craters looked like lakes, tunnels, traps. Bottomless. Unfathomable.
Most of the magic used in the battle had dissolved sooner or later in the years of sun exposure, but here and there broken green luxin spears still glittered. Shards of solid yellow underfoot would cut through the toughest shoe leather.
Scavengers had long since taken all the valuable arms, mail, and luxin from the battlefield, but as the seasons passed and rains fell, more mysteries surfaced each year. That was what Kip was hoping for—and what he was seeking was most visible in the first rays of dawn.
The wolves stopped howling. Nothing was worse than hearing that chilling sound, but at least with the sound he knew where they were. Now… Kip swallowed on the hard knot in his throat.
As he walked in the valley of the shadow of two great unnatural hills—the remnant of two of the great funeral pyres where tens of thousands had burned—Kip saw something in the mist. His heart leapt into his throat. The curve of a mail cowl. A glint
of eyes searching the darkness.
Then it was swallowed up in the roiling mists.
A ghost. Dear Orholam. Some spirit keeping watch at its grave.
Look on the bright side. Maybe wolves are scared of ghosts.
Kip realized he’d stopped walking, peering into the darkness. Move, fathead.
He moved, keeping low. He might be big, but he prided himself on being light on his feet. He tore his eyes away from the hill—still no sign of the ghost or man or whatever it was. He had that feeling again that he was being stalked. He looked back. Nothing.
A quick click, like someone dropping a small stone. And something at the corner of his eye. Kip shot a look up the hill. A click, a spark, the striking of flint against steel.
The mists illuminated for that briefest moment, Kip saw few details. Not a ghost—a soldier striking a flint, trying to light a slow-match. It caught fire, casting a red glow on the soldier’s face, making his eyes seem to glow. He affixed the slow-match to the match-holder of his matchlock and spun, looking for targets in the darkness.
His night vision must have been ruined by staring at the brief flame on his match, now a smoldering red ember, because his eyes passed right over Kip.
The soldier turned again, sharply, paranoid. “The hell am I supposed to see out here, anyway? Swivin’ wolves.”
Very, very carefully, Kip started walking away. He had to get deeper into the mist and darkness before the soldier’s night vision recovered, but if he made noise, the man might fire blindly. Kip walked on his toes, silently, his back itching, sure that a lead ball was going to tear through him at any moment.
But he made it. A hundred paces, more, and no one yelled. No shot cracked the night. Farther. Two hundred paces more, and he saw light off to his left, a campfire. It had burned so low it was barely more than coals now. Kip tried not to look directly at it to save his vision. There was no tent, no bedrolls nearby, just the fire.
