Kroenel yelled and went charging up the shore. The other three men spun, weapons brandished. The cats were on them in a flash of slashing claws and snapping jaws. Against one cat, they might have stood a chance. Against two, they were but so much meat. It was over in minutes, each man with his throat torn open. The cats settled down to feast.
Shuddering, Keedar watched. Winslow vomited. When the cats had their fill, they dragged one of the remains into the forest.
After waiting until the commotion in the brush subsided, Keedar said, “Stay here, I’ll go first, make certain it’s safe.”
“Be careful, brother.”
Keedar nodded. He eased through the reeds and up onto the shore. He paused, waiting for any movement in the trees. The wind ruffling his hair was a cold thing, prickling his skin. He crept among the rocks and shale until he encountered the first corpse.
A deep rumble made him freeze.
There, its body hidden by the undergrowth was the male korgan cat, golden-eyed gaze tracking him. Slowly, ever so slowly, Keedar lay next to the body. Kroenel’s dead eyes stared at him.
The brush rustled. Soft footsteps padded across the ground. Fear coiled in Keedar’s chest, a knotted thing that made it hard to breathe. His mouth dried, but he knew if he moved he was dead.
He flared open his vital points. He would fight if he had to, but there might be another way. Using the fourth cycle, sera , he projected his soul, filling it with his will, and one set of thoughts.
I’m dead. Ignore my body. The food is beside me.
A musky animal stench threaded the air. Keedar was certain the beast could hear his thundering heart. The pad of footsteps stopped inches away. Keedar held his breath, not wanting his chest to rise and fall. A shadow loomed over him. He did not so much as blink when he felt a heated, wet breath against his head and heard an animal snort. A warm, rough tongue touched his ear. It took everything in him not to leap to his feet.
I’m dead. Ignore my body. The food is beside me. He repeated the thought over and over again. The korgan continued to sniff, a low growl in its throat. Keedar’s chest burned with the need to draw in air.
On the verge of panicking at his inability to divert the korgan cat’s attention, Keedar noticed his soul. It rose in its normal wispy nimbus. Keshka’s lessons on the beasts that inhabited the Treskelin Forest came to him. Korgans hunted by soul, using it to track their prey.
He opened his vital points wider, at the same time drawing on the first and only inner cycle available to him: lumni. With it, he expelled the majority of his soul toward Kroenel’s corpse.
The korgan released a rolling growl and leaped on the man’s body. From the corner of his eyes Keedar watched it tear at the corpse, the bitter scent of blood and offal filling the air. Minutes stretched before the cat dragged the body off by the arm.
Keedar’s lungs were afire as he waited until the thrashing sounds of the cat dwindled into the brush. He counted for an additional twenty heartbeats before he could bear no more. Heart hammering, he gasped for air. Sweet, succulent air. It rushed into him like life itself. Minutes passed before the forest’s songs resumed. When they did, he sat up, stomach heaving as he relived his brush with death.
Winslow ran up beside him, clothes dripping wet. “I-I’m sorry. I froze. I wanted to help, but …”
“I’m glad you didn’t try. The thing might have killed us both.” Keedar climbed to his feet, his body feeling as if he’d trained for an entire day.
“What did you do?” Winslow asked. “One moment I saw your nimbus and then it was as if your soul fled you.”
“It’s the seventh cycle, my first inner one.”
“Lumni?”
“Yes.”
“Really? When did you attain it? How—I’m sorry.” Winslow shook his head, mouth downturned. “You almost died and here I am asking after your meld.”
“It’s fine,” Keedar said. “I gained lumni the day I passed the Fast of Madness. And it’s not a meld, just the effect of that cycle. It allows you to expel most of your soul.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“Keshka says it is. I fainted the first time I experimented with it.” Keedar felt the weakness coursing through him even now. He took in the carnage around him.
The hunters’ faces were locked in their final death throes, mouths open, eyes staring. They sparked memories from his nightmares, memories of the day he’d killed Gaston. It was a day he tried to forget, but it clung like the aftertaste of rancid food. He tried his best to ignore the mess left by the cats, to ignore his close call, but before long he was retching up lunch.
“This isn’t good.” Winslow had rummaged through Kroenel’s satchel and removed the papers. He brought them over.
Keedar recognized the artist’s renditions of Consortium members. Details on each man and woman were written in ink below the drawings. Old haunts, habits, family, and the like. For each person the reward ranged between a silver monarch and a gold bit. There were over a hundred sheets.
“We must warn Keshka,” Keedar said. He made one step toward the trees.
Light exploded in the sky. It was a dizzying display, a crystal held up to the sun. Blues, greens, yellows, reds, pinks, and many more colors besides, like an artist splashing paint onto a canvas, the colors mixing together to form hues beyond description. The phenomenon stretched up from the west before spreading outward, radiating within the clouds. For an instant Keedar thought the colors coalesced to form a vague winged image before bursting into chaos once more.
“What is it?” Winslow whispered, voice as awed as Keedar felt.
“I don’t know.” Even as Keedar said the words, something about the sky seemed familiar. The bounty hunter’s papers forgotten for a moment, he watched, captivated. When he was finally able to pull himself away, he headed for home, the strange sky and the bounty hunter’s portraits occupying his thoughts.
D ance of D eath
C harred desolation. That was the Smear. Most buildings in Pauper’s Circle were blackened husks, dusted white with newly fallen snow. Some folks sifted through ruins, woolens and faces covered in soot. At least those who could afford woolens. Others clutched at the layers of old cloth or blankets wrapped around their bodies, heads down as they trudged aimlessly through the streets. They all had two things in common: the blackness that stained them and the lifeless appearance of people who’d lost everything.
The sight gouged a hole in Thar’s heart. This is my fault, all my fault, brother. I should have stopped you when I had a chance, and I should have known Ainslen would carve his pound of flesh from the common folk. The Night of Blades and Succession Day had taught those lessons, but he’d chosen to ignore them. Now, Delisar was imprisoned, tortured regularly for Thar’s failure, and the Smear’s current inhabitants suffered one atrocity after another.
Grimacing, Thar peered through a crack in a boarded up window on the third floor of a building that had escaped the worst of the conflagration on Leering Lane, two streets over from Pauper’s Circle. With most of its windows broken the structure did little to keep out the cold, but at least he didn’t have to cope with the howling eddies that rattled the eaves.
Out on the street, a woman fell to her knees near one of the many corpses littering the ground. She stroked the dead person’s disfigured face and wailed. Thar winced. Bawling, a man stumbled from the adjacent building, a small bundle cradled in his arms. All along Pauper’s Circle similar horrific tableaus repeated themselves, echoes of misery and suffering, the true face of war.
Several dozen narrow alleys to the left, on Deadman’s Gap, a crowd of survivors gathered, appearances as pitiful and bedraggled as those near Pauper’s Circle, but with one distinct difference. Most of them bore weapons of some sort: weather-beaten swords, pitchforks, axes, household cutlery, whatever they could lay hands on. Their voices rose, a tumult to protest the attacks by Ainslen’s militia of Blades, Farlanders, and watchmen. Perhaps a dozen feet separated them from the king’s mili
tia, but not one among them crossed that threshold. Arrows had made pincushions of more than a dozen corpses lying on the broken cobbles. Men learned fastest by example, a tried and proven practice that Thar himself had applied on occasion.
Steel bared, arrows nocked, the militia waited, King’s Blades and watchmen dressed in long cloaks and furs, leather or mail over woolens. Ainslen’s new insignia emblazoned their surcoats: a scaled hand bursting with soul. People called it the Hand of Soul.
The Farlanders were similarly attired but for the pale leather evident in much of their garb. Images of ereskars, the fabled beasts depicted with oversized ears and legs, adorned the backs of the Farlander cloaks. Rumors continued to fly that the Farlanders had brought a few of the gigantic creatures to the mainland. Idiocy. Thar shook his head.
The king’s newly appointed marshals, Count Shaz of House Jarina, a Marishman who’d once been a member of the Shaded Snakes, and Lestin, the former Blades’ Drillmaster, oversaw the soldiers, ready to give the order for slaughter. Shaz had taken to his new role well, dressed in a damask coat lined with fox fur, rich black trousers, and derin leather gloves. The expensive clothes did nothing for his drooping eye and scarred visage. His long cloak bore a crest of a drinking cup and a woman’s silhouette.
Lestin, another dark-haired, tawny Marishman, who had a thing for iron sabatons rather than leather boots, sat astride his horse, surveying the crowd. He reached inside his cloak, removed a small pouch of Bloodleaf, and popped some into his mouth. The man’s jaws worked like a cow chewing cud, but despite the apparent disinterest, Thar knew Lestin was ready for any threat.
Thar almost wished he were his old self, the young Lightning Blade, instead of a white-haired man, long in years, known to everyone as Keshka. He pictured that brash warrior in him wading through the militia. With the thought, tiny charges tingled through him, settling in his hands.
He recalled when he’d first gained his skill and thus his name. During his training he’d sought something different, something unlike the usual flames or stone favored by Casters and Manifestors. Intrigued by storms, he’d watched from a window in the Winds of Time as several lightning bolts lashed the metallic spire on the rooftop. The immense power lifted the hair on his body. For the next few months he chased thunderheads, making certain he stood near that spire. When the strike came again, the energy shot through him, made him arc his back, left him charged. Ever since that night he could copy lightning and much more besides.
A commotion at the rear of the gathered soldiers caught Thar’s eye, broke him from his reverie. Ranks parted. A sea of thick red and blue robes washed between the spears and swords. The ten-pointed Star of the Dominion was prominent on the newcomers’ breasts, the tips of each point connected by a line to those adjacent, forming a ten-sided perimeter.
Wisemen. Thar almost spit to one side.
As he considered the appearance of the Order of the Dominion’s members, Thar’s brow furrowed. These were not only the initiates, identified by their full heads of hair, but several of the upper echelon. Among them were Clerics, the left side of their heads shaven; Deacons, bald on the right sides; and Bishops, hairless strips running down the crown of their heads from front to back. Mystics were sprinkled among them, white sashes draped from left shoulder to right waist. Curates wore black sashes on the opposite side. Some of the wisemen held torches, flames capering in the wind.
What was King Ainslen planning now?
Following the wisemen were attendants wearing the king’s golden livery. Carts trundled behind them, hauled by disheveled slaves, most of them criminals or prisoners-of-war who had availed themselves of the harsher sentence of life in the dungeons or work in the mines. Lestin spurred his mount forward, passed out instructions to a Curate, and then took position at the head of the newcomers.
The nimbus of soul magic sprang up around the wisemen like luminous smoke. Undaunted by the menacing crowd they strode past the militia, chanting mantras to the Dominion.
One by one the mass of commoners lowered their weapons. Their angry clamor quieted, and then ceased altogether. Silence reigned, interrupted only by the chants and the wind’s low moans or the matching grief from folks on Leering Lane or in the Circle. Thar doubted if the people near the wisemen realized what was happening, such was the effortlessness of their surrender.
When the wisemen spread throughout the crowd, the glow of soul magic did not dissipate; it increased. Thar squinted. The wispy nimbus gathered around the hands of the Bishops, Mystics, and Curates as they healed those wounded during the recent skirmishes.
During the process, Lestin pointed out folks in the worst condition and bent to speak to others in a kindly fashion. For a Blade taken from the Smear’s folk his concern for them was an oddity. Many shied away at first, but eventually more and more began to look to him for help.
After unloading heavy sacks from the carts, the attendants passed out what Thar soon realized were supplies—bread, dried meat, rice, grain, and the like. Within moments this piteous bunch of people, who seconds ago were ready to throw their lives away, were gobbling down meals.
Despite the use of mindbending, relief washed over Thar. At least the wisemen weren’t here murdering and raping in secret, or helping the bandits employed by the Ten Hills, or spreading disease only to later deliver a cure from the Dominion. He shook his head. Such heinous tactics had become the norm, driving parents to despair, to give up their children on the Day of Accolades. The Consortium had worked to change that last bit as much as they dared.
Word must have spread, for the crowd surged toward the carts like a river of greasy furs and rags. Riot threatened for a scant moment, but the flow of soul increased yet again. The people calmed; order was restored.
Slaves dragged forward metal drums filled with wood. The torch-bearing wisemen stepped up to each container and lit the kindling. Flames whooshed to life. The crowd gradually shifted toward the comfort of the braziers.
“Tell the men there’s to be no more fighting in the city.” Thar glanced over to the man at his side.
“The Shaded Snakes won’t take it well,” Tomas answered. “I doubt I’ll be able to control my own men,” the new leader of the Red Beggars added.
Revenge was writ in the glint of Tomas’ eyes and his grimace. On Succession Day he had lost his entire family and half of the Red Beggars, including his former leader and best friend. All the guilds had suffered similar fates, each leader captured or killed, ranks decimated.
“I don’t care how they take it,” Thar said, voice flat, “as long as they obey. And you’d better control your men. Not only will I cripple any Consortium member who disobeys my order, but I will leave them for the king’s soldiers.” Thar let his words sink in as Tomas’ gaze inadvertently drifted to the gibbets lining Deadman’s Gap near the militia. Inside each steel cage were King Ainslen’s enemies, guild members and nobles alike. A few were dead, rotting bodies left as a reminder of the fate that awaited those still alive. If the harsh winter didn’t kill them, starvation would.
“Why the change of heart, Keshka? The people that remain here aren’t ours.” Tomas turned to regard him, wearing a scowl. “All these years spent trying to topple the nobility, to remove the hands choking the life from us, the murderers who would make it seem as if we wantonly killed and raped our own, now the chance is before us and you balk? Why now?”
Thar understood Tomas’ argument. The man was a product of the Smear. As it was for so many others who joined the Consortium, he had been a child destined to become a Blade whether he wanted the calling or not. His parents chose a different life for him in hopes of liberating their people. He was a grizzled veteran, there from the Consortium’s inception, when Thar had banded together Kasandar’s largest guilds, the Shaded Snakes, the Coinmen, the Red Beggars, and the Shipmen, and formed them into something more than a vilified bunch of cutthroats, thieves, and smugglers gifted with the ability to meld. Thar had given them a purpose.
“My hear
t hasn’t changed, and neither has my goals. Ainslen will fall. We will bring change to the Empire for the betterment of all its people, but not at the expense of innocents.” Thar took in the Smear once more. “The very fact that the people who remained here are not those descended from our blood, and lack the means to protect themselves from the nobility, is more than enough reason for us to reconsider our approach.”
He had more reasons than that for calling off the attacks, reasons he couldn’t reveal to Tomas. His brother was one in particular. Once a month the king had brought Delisar out to be flogged in front the gibbets. Those beatings had stopped with the onset of the recent skirmishes. If he wished to save Delisar, the best chance would be right there, at Deadman’s Gap. Ainslen needed to believe it was safe again.
Thar pointed to the Smear’s downtrodden remnants. “They’re here more by necessity than choice. The king doesn’t care how many commoners he kills in his efforts to put us down. In his eyes, they … we … are all dregs, undeserving of life. We’re no better than him if we continue fighting in the city and cause the destruction of the little they have left.”
“All we know is the fight in one form or another,” Tomas said. “It’s all we’ve ever had. What do we do now if not fight?”
Tomas was right. Either you fought or you died in the Smear. Such was the cost of survival. The abhorrent conditions made criminals of the best men, whores of its women, and thieves of its children. Of course, the nudge from the nobility and the Order ensured things remained that way.
“There will be fighting aplenty, just not in the city,” Thar said, studying the wisemen once more. “Our recent struggle relied on Ainslen’s cruelty, on his heinous acts, on trying to expose the role the Order plays in all of this. Against their apparent compassion, we are at a disadvantage.”
“We feed the commoners also,” Tomas argued. “We give them a home in the Undertow during the winter and much more besides. On the dreariest days we’ve given them hope.”
The Quintessence Cycle- The Complete Series Page 28
