Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  If I’d known then that stealing a loaf of bread could have spurred on a legate of the Empire to chase us for leagues upon leagues, I might have been content to stay huddled in that little shared hut.

  “Come on, we have to help him!”

  “Are you sure?” Arwin whined. “We have the gold; we can just go.”

  I was already moving, bounding across the open space between me and Karver. The line of blood from his scalp had continued down his cheek, and I saw the dark liquid dripping from his pointed chin as I closed the distance. The light was so dim, I worried I might miss in the darkness. I swung my leg, though, and my foot connected surely with his jaw, snapping it shut with a click of teeth and a pained grimace transforming Karver’s face.

  He grunted in pain and fell flat on his back.

  Heavy footsteps came up from my left, and I turned to see Oren arrive at my side, his eyes glowing fiercely. “We should end him,” he said.

  “I agree,” Morena muttered with a scowl.

  Arwin came up on my other side, a large rock in hand. “For once, she’s right. We can’t even tie him up and hope for the best; he’s gotten out of bindings before.”

  “And what happens when others notice he is missing?” I countered. “I doubt he would have set off from Mitbas without telling anyone where he was going, or when they could expect to hear back from him. At the very least, they’ll have our descriptions,” I said, gesturing to include Arwin in the assertion.

  “What do you want us to do, Mal?” Oren groused. “You want me to magically disguise myself as the legate, march back to Mitbas, and tell them it was all a big misunderstanding?”

  “Can you do that?” I was ninety-nine percent sure he was putting me on, just spouting the most absurd option that came to mind to make me realize how foolish I was being in letting Karver live, but even so, that remaining one percent was hopeful.

  Oren was a high-ranking priest of the Lord of Clouds, after all. He had abilities the likes of which I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

  And for a brief second, the white-robed man hesitated, telling me all I needed to know.

  “You can do something about this,” I pressed. “Something beyond killing him and leaving his body lying in a ditch in the middle of the woods.”

  “I won’t deny it,” Oren said, “but what would I have to gain by putting myself out so much?”

  I stared at him in disbelief, sure that my mouth had dropped a few inches.

  “I am no priest of the Lord anymore,” Oren added. “Getting sidetracked over a hundred leagues to get you out of your problem doesn’t sound like an enjoyable adventure, sorry to say.” He drew an orb of fiery light into his palm. “Besides, now he knows my name. It would be better to kill him and be done with it.”

  “How can you be so callous?” I glanced around at my party members and found no sympathetic faces staring back at me. Even Arwin was in favor of killing the man, and for what? We were criminals. “I’m willing to steal bread when hungry or help out a friend for doing the same”—I glared Arwin down as I said this—“but this is cold-blooded murder, pure and simple.”

  “He would have done the same to you or any one of us,” Morena said, her voice lofty.

  “And so returning the favor makes it right? Now it is just, simply because we are the ones wielding the sword?” My heart felt heavy as the words poured forth. Deep down, I knew they were right. It was beyond stupid to let an enemy as accomplished as Karver continue to draw breath. But that was the problem, I didn’t see him as an enemy; he was just a man doing his duty.

  I stalked off a few feet away from the group. “No, I refuse to believe it,” I said loudly, not caring even when Arwin flinched. “Oren, you can do something about this. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

  “Fine,” the man muttered.

  I whirled around to face him. “Fine?” I echoed.

  “Yes, I can help without killing him,” Oren said flatly. I wasn’t sure if it was from weariness of arguing this with me, or if the former priest had had a crisis of conscience, but for the moment I wasn’t going to second guess the lucky stars shining down upon me.

  “Really? How?”

  “I can tamper with his memory, make him forget the last twenty-four hours even happened.”

  “Can you extend it to a week?” I asked, feeling nervous for pressing what was already a tremendous gift. “We ran into him several days ago in Mitbas, and he has apparently been chasing us since then. I just want to make sure there’s no opportunity for him to remember us.”

  Oren scratched the shaved top of his head, where the faintest stubble was starting to grow in. “That’s cutting it close, Mal. I’ve never gone further than three days, and that was under ideal conditions.” He shrugged and lifted his hands out flat to either side. “These are not ideal conditions.”

  “Still, you can do it?”

  “I would have to get in there deep,” Oren said. “The further back you go, the more pervasive the memory is—once you account for his traveling so far, likely requisitioning provisions, armaments, fresh mounts to ride nonstop…there are ripple effects even from the almost negligible memory of you and the girl stealing bread. I could end up wounding more than I mend.”

  “The girl’s name is Arwin,” my friend interjected.

  “No harm meant,” Oren said, raising a hand.

  “Two days,” I said, trying to sound more decisive than I felt.

  “Aye…two days could be done.”

  I thought hard about exactly how long it had been since we had fled Mitbas. A night ago, Arwin and I had been on the road with Mabaya, asleep in the back of her cart. Half a day before then, I had successfully rescued Arwin from Karver in that back alley, and bound his wrists to the wall using his own metal cuffs against him. The bread had gone missing shortly before then.

  It might be cutting it close, but I didn’t want to pressure Oren for any more time than he’d already promised. “Thank you,” I said instead.

  The former priest nodded, a dim silvery glow already surrounding his left hand as he held it steady over the fallen imperial legate. Though unconscious, Karver’s eyes rolled around behind his eyelids as Oren started to work his magic, rifling through the memories of the past forty-eight hours and expunging anything related to Karver’s quest to hunt down me and Arwin.

  “Is there anything else you need?” Morena asked, being uncharacteristically thoughtful.

  Oren grunted. “Just quiet,” he said.

  Arwin snickered, glad for any opportunity for the high-brow woman to be put in her place. Morena arched an eyebrow at her but said nothing.

  Something told me the process of removing memories wasn’t going to be a quick one, so I found a nice, flat bit of earth and hunkered down for the long wait.

  13

  There,” Oren announced what felt like hours later. He rubbed his hands together, seeming to clap away sparks of his silvery mind magic as if it hurt him to hold it any longer. His voice sounded more fatigued than I’d ever heard, worn from exertion. The light from the stars above was still dim and broken here and there by the forest’s canopy, but I thought I could see his eyelids bobbing in place, struggling to stay open. “Two days wiped,” he said, smacking his lips together to hide a yawn.

  “That’s great! Really, Oren, I can’t thank you enough.”

  “What do we do with him now?” Arwin asked.

  We all looked down at the body of the legate. Karver looked almost peaceful in sleep, and I wondered if, by some happy accident, Oren’s tampering had unburdened him of other pressures he had faced over the past two days—including sleeplessness, humiliation at being bested by two “kids,” and just physical exhaustion from having traveled so far in so little time.

  “Leave him here,” Oren advised. “He has no fatal injuries. The worst that could happen is that some large animal will happen upon his body while he remains unconscious. A rather fortuitous turn of events that would be for us, actually.”

 
I couldn’t think of a better alternative. We had wasted so much time already in fleeing and then fighting Karver, and now with the cart we had been traveling in utterly destroyed, the journey to Cleighton was going to take even longer.

  “Which direction is Briarsworth?” I asked, not wanting to reveal our true destination.

  Arwin realized what I was doing, and I saw her smirk out of the corner of my eye. She didn’t try to catch my gaze or do anything else to draw attention.

  Oren peered upward and seemed to consult the night sky, and even as I watched him watching the stars, I realized the faintest glow of light could be seen to one side.

  “That way’s east,” Oren announced, pointing in the direction of the glow. “If we follow the rising sun, we should arrive at Briarsworth in no more than a day.”

  “A day?!” With quick strides, Morena shoved her face into his, and though she was tall for a woman, she still had to edge up onto her toes to find her forehead level with his chin. “I am not walking that far in these clothes.”

  “Why not? They are already filthy.” He gestured to the finely woven sandals on her feet, which bore thicker soles in the back. They had been scuffed and nicked by our run through the forest fleeing from Karver, and now one shoe rested lower to the ground than the other. “Your shoes are still attached and you still have feet. Nobody is carrying you, so unless you want to stay here…”

  Morena scoffed. “As a priest of the Lord of Clouds, you should watch your tone. I have never been spoken to in such—”

  Oren cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Look, lady, I came late to the priesthood and left early. Only reason they took me is because—”

  Now it was he who stopped short, and I sensed he had been about to reveal something long kept hidden. “What is it?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he grunted. “They chose wrong.” He rubbed at the stubbly growth on his head and looked eastward. “We should get moving. Even though light is coming.”

  * * *

  Sadly, this wonderful tale was never finished as the author suddenly passed away. Sales from his books go towards the Tom Shutt Foundation, which supports young and aspiring authors.

  To read finished works by this author. Go here:

  Tom Shutt Books

  About the Author

  Tom Shutt was a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who wrote urban fantasy with generous helpings of humor and a sprig of mystery thrown in for good measure. Once voted in as a close fourth place for junior prom king, he had been resting on his laurels ever since.

  He lived on the perpetually green East Coast with some cats, dogs, and a basement full of mistresses. His favorite authors were Jim Butcher, George R. R. Martin, Jonathan Stroud, and Eoin Colfer. He knew how to hide a body from the police, and the research for his novels had likely landed him on a few security watch lists. He enjoyed reading, gaming (Halo, Civilization, BioShock, Call of Duty, Minecraft), playing pool, chasing deer, hunting deer, riding deer, and lying about what activities he did with deer. His favorite shows included Supernatural, Game of Thrones, iZombie, and anything created by Joss Whedon.

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