The Wrath of Heroes (A Requiem for Heroes Book 2)

by David Benem

  But then came Arranan’s Spider King. If the whispered rumors were true, the Spider King had quelled the tribal infighting within a matter of months, completing a stunning rise to power by being crowned the very first ruler of a unified Arranan. It was said that, during his coronation three years ago in Zyn, Arranan’s tribal chieftains prostrated bare before his throne, which had been built from the bones of those who’d opposed him. He seemed a most terrifying figure.

  And it is his realm I encroach upon now. Can I do this thing?

  “Hungry?” Lorra grumbled from across the small fire.

  Bale breathed deeply and pulled himself from his thoughts. He looked again to the pot she tended. Floating in a greasy broth were several lumpy roots she’d pulled from beneath a bush a league or so back. The concoction smelled none too pleasant, a scent not so different from that of his feet when he’d gone too long without removing his boots. He smiled weakly. “A little.”

  She huffed and pulled a wooden cup from her pack. She dunked the cup in the pot then handed it and a spoon to Bale. “You’re quiet,” she said. “I’m usually more annoyed with you by this time of day. What’s bothering you?”

  Bale cleared his throat. “Just far from home, is all.”

  “Must be a pleasant thing,” she said in a low voice. “Having a home you miss, I mean.”

  Bale’s heart sank with pity. “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely.

  “It’s nothing for you to worry about,” she whispered, eyes tilting skyward.

  The light of early evening was a tricky thing, but Bale thought tears fell upon her cheeks. His father’s apathy and rejection, as much as they’d hurt him, were far lesser crimes than the violations Lorra had suffered. “I’m sorry,” he said again, then shifted about the fire to sit next to her.

  “Eat your stew,” she said gruffly, wiping her nose with her sleeve.

  Bale looked at her a moment longer before turning his attention to his cup. He pressed at the ugly root and it crumbled easily. He ate a spoonful and found it tasted less like stinky feet and more like potato. He was hungry and ate the rest quickly. “Thank you,” he said through his last mouthful. “You are quite the cook. I’d never have guessed those roots were edible.”

  She chewed and shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing? It’s quite a skill. I have knowledge of herbs and certain minerals and other such compounds, certainly. Things my order uses in alchemy, for the healing arts and our other works. Those things I can find and identify and use. But the food we’ve eaten? I would have never—”

  “I said it’s nothing. As long as you know the difference between what you can eat and what can poison you, you can find something to fill your belly.”

  “But it is real knowledge, a true talent, a—”

  “There you are,” she said, eyes squinted and brow bent. “Now you’re back to being annoying.”

  Bale’s shoulders slumped. For a time he sat aimlessly trolling his spoon about his empty cup, looking into the campfire’s flame.

  And then Lorra placed a hand on his knee.

  “Bale,” she said. Her eyes were wider and kinder now and her tears had dried.

  “Y-yes?” he stammered, startled.

  “I know I said I’d be your courage, but sometimes it’s you who makes me feel safe.”

  Bale smiled widely, and for an instant his doubt disappeared.

  “But let’s talk no more of it,” she said, and scooted away from him.

  “So where are we going?” Lorra asked, squinting at the horizon in the morning light.

  Bale placed the last of his things in his pack and stood, groaning at the pain in his knees. He shielded his eyes from the sun and looked about. The landscape consisted of yellow dirt and claw-like trees and scrubby brush, with no features to mark the progress of their journey aside from the receding silhouette of the Southwalls behind them. In the far distance a white-robed shepherd tended a herd of what appeared to be goats.

  “You do know, don’t you?” Lorra asked, her tone impatient.

  “I do,” Bale said slowly. “The seeking stone I used, the one Lyan held. It points southwest, so that’s where we’re headed. The pull is quite intense.”

  Lorra snorted. “Southwest isn’t a place, spooker. Do you know where? How far?”

  “Zyn. I think Kressan the Kind may be there.”

  “Think?” she said with a wrinkled scowl.

  Bale threw out his hands, pleading. “I wish I had better answers to offer, Lorra, but much of what guides me is written in old books I read some time ago, and even those books sometimes disagree with each other. The ancient accounts claim that High King Derganfel, the one who banished the Seven Sentinels from Rune, had his army escort them to the Southwalls, where they were forced into exile. Exiled and never to return.”

  A vulture croaked harshly. It stood on a small rise nearby, wings twitching as it tugged at the red flesh of some rodent.

  Bale rubbed his overlarge nose and continued. “One forbidden account I read claimed Kressan came upon a starving acolyte in this very wasteland, roughly eighty years ago. The acolyte had been on a pilgrimage to the Temple at Cirak, and afterward was inspired to venture farther south to see if these lands held any sign of the Sentinels’ passage. He became lost, exhausted his provisions, and was close to death. The account claimed Kressan carried him to a shanty in one of Zyn’s vast slums, where his health slowly returned.”

  “Eighty years? And you think she’s still there?”

  “It’s where the stone points.”

  “You and your magic rock.” She kicked at the dirt with a boot that had lost much of its stitching. “I’m trusting you, Bale. Don’t disappoint me.” She shouldered her satchel and set off southwest.

  Bale hefted his pack and stumbled after her, finding the dusty, uneven ground difficult to traverse. They’d found a road the day before, one moving southwest to Zyn, but he thought it best to avoid it. He didn’t fancy the notion of encountering a group of Arranese warriors headed toward Rune.

  “So this Sentinel is real nice, or something?” Lorra asked. “Kressan the Kind, isn’t it? She won’t be like that last one?”

  Bale shrugged. “‘Kind’ is a lazy translation of the word that was used in the ancient tongue. The old accounts instruct that she had profound empathy, a deep sensitivity to the feelings of others. It may not mean she’ll be nice to us.”

  Lorra huffed, her expression sour. “And just how far is this place?”

  Bale scratched his nose. “If my recollection of the maps is accurate, I’d guess sixty leagues. Perhaps less. If we don’t wander too far off course we should make it in a week or so.”

  “A week? On these scraps?” Lorra said, jabbing a skinny thumb toward her pack. “I have only a few turnips and potatoes, and too many of those smelly roots I cooked last night will make a body sick. Watery craps and worse. Can’t eat them raw, and we don’t have much water for boiling. Or drinking, for that matter.”

  “Worry not. My order was gifted with ways of finding water, drawing it from earth and plants and such. A little, at least. Enough to survive.” He enjoyed the woman’s practicality and admired the dogged determination of her stride. And then his thoughts turned to the idea of eating those foul-smelling roots for an entire week or more and he giggled. The odors his body would produce were sure to be most foul.

  “I’m trusting you with an awful lot, Bale,” she said through a frown. “With my life.”

  Bale nodded, his mirth fleeting. “And mine, as well,” he whispered.

  “And just what is Zyn? Like Cirak, all wicked and abandoned?”

  “Most certainly not,” Bale said. “Zyn is one of the oldest cities in all the world. The historians say it had the only clean water in all of Arranan, and after much fighting the tribes agreed it’d be something of a sanctuary, a safe haven. With the tribesmen being such rovers, Zyn became the only permanent city in the entire land. It grew into a place for trade with other nations and meet
ings among the tribes. It was said to be a truly grand city, a great bazaar for things and peoples both odd and wonderful. And then,” he cleared his throat nervously, “it became the place where Arranan’s Spider King set his throne.”

  They walked in silence for a long time, over broken earth, through dry creek beds, and through the jutting teeth of splintered boulders. They spied in the distance a collection of a few dozen rounded tents and gave it a wide berth. At other times they caught sight of riders on horseback and huddled low against the ground until they vanished in the distance.

  Doubt haunted Bale as they trudged along. Lorra had been justified with her questions. He was relying upon a decades-old tale discounted by scholars and upon a stone that revealed only the direction in which he could find a Sentinel.

  Perhaps not even the one I’m seeking, and perhaps one who’ll prove to be less welcoming than the last.

  “Bale!” came a sharp hiss.

  Bale sucked in a mouthful of the night’s hot air and his eyes fluttered open. A starry, cloudless sky above. He felt about. Rocks and dirt and scratchy weeds beneath his hands. “What?” he moaned, his tongue thick with sleep.

  “Quiet!” came the hiss again, along with a sharp jab against his shoulder.

  His eyes fluttered again. The voice was Lorra’s, of course. But why such a tone? He pulled himself upward and peered ahead.

  There was only darkness. A vast and impenetrable darkness untouched by the moonlight above.

  “What?” he asked again, but much more quietly this time. “I don’t see anything.”

  “That’s just it,” said Lorra, her voice shaking. “Can’t see anything at all over there.”

  Bale swiveled his head about. Behind and to his sides was a moonlit landscape, a wasteland palely illuminated in places and full of shadow in most others. Ahead, though, beyond a hundred or so yards of broken stones and cracked earth, there was nothingness. Only a curtain of deep black that stretched from the earth to the sky above.

  What strange necromancy is this?

  He narrowed his eyes and peered hard into the void of purple and ebony. As he looked, a coldness settled upon him, an icy, unnerving sensation that felt like fear given form. It felt familiar, somehow. His brow wrinkled and he struggled with memories held in his sleep-fogged head.

  I have sensed this before.

  The darkness appeared a physical thing, a blanket of tangible shadows gathered in the distance. It seemed to shimmer and shift though not from any reflection of the sky above. It was as though it was moving, slithering slowly northward upon the steppe.

  The cold fell upon him again and then he remembered it: that sensation he’d felt in the governor’s mansion in Riverweave. When he’d overheard General Fane’s disturbing insinuations of betrayal to that thing he spoke with. That thing with the stitched face.

  The Necrist.

  He fumbled for the satchel he’d used as a pillow and withdrew from it his leather sleeve of reagents. He undid its clasp, unfurled it before him, and felt the various pouches and pockets, recognizing the compounds by shape and texture. He knew he’d packed spit-thistle—a weed named for the usual reaction to its vinegary flavor—and after a few moments he located it.

  He cupped a sprig of spit-thistle in his hands and thought of the words that would awaken the hidden power within the plant, powers granted to it and many other living things by the Elder God when the world was wrought.

  “What are you doing?” Lorra whispered.

  “Something that will lend me sight in the darkness.”

  He calmed himself and mouthed words without speaking, words taught to him by Lector Erlorn, the Sentinel Castor himself. He paused and thought of that, how what seemed a simple lesson from a caring teacher was in fact knowledge from a man who held within him the very essence of godliness. For that instant, Bale’s fear subsided and a power surged within him, a spark of courage that told him these terrible tasks could be overcome.

  He concentrated deeply and uttered the sacred, divine phrase. “Ea sparos,” he whispered, “abralide y ganode vira.” Spirits of the gods, awaken and grant me sight.

  The sprig burned in his hands, but it was not overly hot and the burning incited neither ember nor flame. Rather, the weed dissolved, changing from a stiff, prickly shoot to a viscous paste. When the transformation was complete, Bale raised his cupped hands to his face and the substance dripped like thick phlegm into his mouth.

  He chewed with a pucker. It tasted much like vinegar though many degrees stronger. He fought back the urge to expel the stuff and instead forced it down his throat.

  The effect of the weed took time to manifest. Bale waited and watched. In time, the night glowed, the whole world set alight with a bluish hue in his eyes. Soon, the black curtain became translucent.

  And what was beyond it was terrifying.

  Bale sucked in a shuddering breath, rubbed his eyes, then breathed again.

  “What is it?” Lorra whispered.

  He could only shake his head and stare. Before him, along the road he and Lorra had avoided, walked a long line of black-robed Necrists. Three score or more, slinking in dead silence through the night. Their stitched skin glimmered in Bale’s augmented vision. Pallid flesh wriggled and writhed against the stitches, forming faces cobbled together from corpses.

  Bale rubbed his eyes again, almost hoping the effect of the spit-thistle would subside.

  In the Necrists’ trail trudged the twisted creations of their dark sorcery. Dwarfs hobbled crookedly, gnarled things with stunted limbs and humped spines. They tittered and rubbed knotted hands together, possessing what seemed the faces of slain children. And there too lumbered giants twice the size of men, tethered by great chains. Hands like shovels dragged against the earth and eyes too large even for their massive heads lolled miserably about.

  These were things wrought in the deep shadows and the old hells. Half-made things, clumsy and unnatural.

  Things not meant to be.

  “What is it?” whispered Lorra again.

  Bale could not manage an answer. His mind reeled, searching for any minutiae he’d encountered in his studies, any hint of the Necrists and their powers. The Necrists cloaked themselves in secrecy, so much so they’d become an almost mythical enemy. Precious little was known of their ways and methods, for such knowledge had been buried beneath the dust of ages.

  But Bale had studied much—more than most—and had often pursued subjects frowned upon by his brethren. Perversions, forbidden histories, even the macabre. As he filtered frantically through the memories of his frightened mind, he recalled weathered scrolls reciting accounts of Necric practices. Blood rites, rituals of speaking with the dead god Yrghul through the pooled blood of sacrifices. The manipulation of shadows into something tangible, and moving unseen among the black paths of shadows cast.

  He surmised this was what he saw now, only different. The eerie caravan moved not along the jagged weave of the shadows cast by stones and stunted trees, but behind and beneath a veritable wall of them. He wondered for an instant if a collection of many Necrists could work their powers in concert, amplifying them to forge a path of shadow.

  He’d read, too, of their reworking the flesh of their sacrifices, using it to cover their sinews and bones after necromancy had rotted their own skin. And there were also rumors of how they used what was left of the dead. These things, these dwarfs and giants, seemed the products of such foul industry. Beings assembled from the leftover bits and bones of those who’d died in terror.

  At the train’s rear walked a tall Necrist, its head lost in a black hood. It wielded a barbed whip, lashing the giants’ knotty shoulders and sloped backs. The sound did not penetrate the black curtain, but Bale sensed the whip’s crack in the wide, cow-like eyes of the monstrosities.

  Then the tall Necrist halted and the whip fell slack at its feet. It stood immobile for a long moment, the caravan of Necrists and their abominations trudging away. Slowly it cocked its cloaked head and the
opening of its hood drooped, a black abyss revealing nothing.

  Bale shivered, sensing unwelcome eyes upon him. Does it see me?

  “Bale,” Lorra hissed, “you’re scaring me. What is it you see?”

  Bale sat speechless, gripped by fear and doubt.

  The Necrist squared to him, the hundred yards between them feeling no more than an arm’s length. It turned its whip in a lazy circle that stirred eddies of dust. It moved its other arm upward, sleeve falling away to reveal an ashen, skeletal hand. Then it pulled aside its hood to display a sickening visage.

  It seemed to glow in Bale’s enhanced sight, a hairless, pale head of messy, mismatched flesh. The skin squirmed as though trying to escape the gnarled bands of black stitch binding it. The Necrist smiled, a grotesque gash of yellow teeth dripping from purple gums. Obsidian eyes glittered from sunken sockets.

  Bale’s mind whirled as he frantically sifted his memory for any incantation that could be of use against a Necrist. Lector Erlorn had taught him many things, including means of summoning light. Erlorn had also taught him divine spells to subdue wicked spirits. He remembered these, vaguely, and surmised they’d prove effective. Yet he’d never performed a true exorcism nor confronted a wraith, and thought this a poor time to try.

  The smiling Necrist glided forward, pressing against the curtain of shadow. Its mouth moved with apparent commands and its hands worked upon the wall of shadow, thin fingers with bony knuckles seeming to search for a seam. Two of the misshapen dwarfs hurried clumsily back from the caravan to join the tall Necrist. They poked stunted fingers against the curtain and its surface warped and swayed.

  Bale found himself creeping backward across the dirt. I am too weak an instrument! “Run,” he whispered.

  “What is it?” Lorra demanded.

  “Run!” he commanded, tugging his boots on. He scrambled to his feet, snatched his pack, and took several quick steps from their campsite. He turned back and saw Lorra still gathering her provisions and cookware. “Run! Now!”