Heirs of Destiny Box Set

by Andy Peloquin

  “Move,” Issa growled. She had no time for this nonsense. The sun was rising; she had to reach her grandparents and get them to safety while she still had the cover of darkness.

  “I don’t think so.” The man’s face split into a grin. “You might be too big to be proper pretty, but a well-fed Earaqi like you ought to know a thing or two about—”

  Issa cut off his words with a clenched fist to his throat. Gristle crunched beneath her blow and the man dropped, gagging, struggling to breathe. She snapped out a kick that drove her boot straight into his nose. He didn’t even cry out—he simply slumped like a sack of dropped shite.

  Shocked surprise registered on four Mahjuri faces. They stared wide-eyed at their leader, at Issa, then back at the fallen man.

  Issa didn’t give them time to think. She drove a right-handed punch into one’s jaw and whipped her club free with her left. The cudgel slammed into another man’s skull, dropping him to the ground atop his senseless leader. Wood thumped against flesh and shattered bone as Issa lashed out at a third’s arm. She drove the blunt tip of the club into the fourth’s stomach and, when the man doubled over, brought it crashing onto his head. Even as the first body struck the stones, she finished off the last man with a clubbing blow to the temple.

  Four remained silent, the fifth lay whimpering on the ground, his broken arm clutched to his chest. Issa wanted to scream her rage, to beat the last man senseless, but she couldn’t afford the delay. Even just a few seconds could mean the difference between life and death.

  I’m coming, Saba and Savta!

  Issa raced the last three streets toward her grandparents’ house. The crowds milling on Commoner’s Row paid her little heed, and the Mahjuri rampaging through the back alleys were far too busy looting and stealing to give her a second glance.

  Ice slithered through Issa’s veins as she rounded the corner and caught sight of her grandparents’ house. The back door hung ajar, its upper hinge shattered. Two bareheaded Kabili lay on the ground before the door, crimson staining their clothing from deep gashes in their chests and stomachs. A pair of gaunt legs covered in blue, crusted blisters filled the doorway.

  “No!” The shout burst from her lips, an animal cry of fear and horror.

  Issa covered the remaining distance to the back door in ten long strides. The Mahjuri to whom the legs belonged lay sprawled in the entrance, blood pooling around his head.

  She leapt over the body, her boots splashing the still-drying blood, but the sight within stopped her cold.

  A dead silence hung thick in her grandparents’ house. The simple wooden table had been overturned beside the doorway, the chairs a shattered mess of splinters. Clothes lay strewn across the dusty floor, stained by blood and muddy footprints.

  But she had eyes only for the two figures in the center of the sparse hut. Issa’s pulse pounded in her ears. She felt as if someone had driven a dagger into her gut, and cry of terror burst from her lips. A man and woman, both with silvery-white hair, wearing red Earaqi headbands and simple clothing, lay silent and unmoving on the floor.

  -----

  Kodyn, Aisha, Evren, Hailen, Issa, and Briana’s epic journey continues in:

  Secrets of Blood

  (Book 4)

  Chapter One

  Issa’s breath froze in her lungs as her eyes fixed on the two white-haired corpses on the floor. Blood pooled in a gruesome puddle beneath the silent, still bodies. Age-gnarled hands reached for each other, fingers interlaced. Her grandparents entwined even in death.

  Strength fled Issa’s limbs and she collapsed, her knees striking the ground with jarring force. Yet she felt no pain, only the cold numbness of horror seeping into her limbs. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. The shouts, screams, and turmoil of destruction faded around her. Her anger at the looters and rioters dissipated in the face of horror.

  No! Her mind refused to accept the evidence of her eyes. No, no, no!

  They couldn’t be dead, not her Saba and Savta. She blinked hard, trying to erase the sight before her. It had to be a mistake.

  Yet when her eyes opened, the bodies remained. The two figures on the floor would never rise or draw breath.

  Fists of iron crushed Issa’s chest; her lungs struggled in vain to draw breath. A wild cry of pain, raw and ragged, burst from her throat.

  “NO!”

  Her mind flashed to her late night visit. Aleema had been sitting at the table—now a mess of splinters in the small kitchen—her tone comforting, encouraging, yet edged with the cold steel of determination. Her grandmother’s words had been the only thing that stopped her from quitting her training to become a Keeper’s Blade. The love and reassurance in Savta’s dark eyes had restored Issa’s willpower.

  Acid swirled in her stomach at the memory of her last words to Saba. Angry, harsh words, tinged with resentment. She’d hated that her grandfather, Nytano, hadn’t seen her acceptance into the Keeper’s Blades as a triumph. Yet at that moment, she felt only guilt for lashing out at the man who had done nothing but show her affection and care her entire life. Those couldn’t be the last words she’d ever say to him.

  Tears flowed now, fast and hot, burning their way down Issa’s cheeks and blurring her vision. She clawed her way forward, her limbs heavy and numb.

  The Long Keeper, god of death, had claimed her mother and father shortly after her birth. How was it fair that he’d taken her grandparents, too? What had she done, what sin had she committed, to earn such anguish?

  Blood splashed beneath her hands and knees as she crawled toward the white-haired corpses. One agonizing heartbeat at a time, closer to the bodies of the only people that had ever loved her.

  Hands trembling, Issa reached for the woman first. A fresh wave of horror washed over Issa as her fingers touched her Savta’s shoulder. Her grandmother’s skin hadn’t yet cooled. She’d been dead for an hour, maybe two. If only Issa had hurried, she might have been here in time to save them.

  It took every shred of strength to turn the body over. Seeing her Savta’s lifeless face would be the hardest thing she’d ever have to do—perhaps the grief and pain would kill her, sending her to the Long Keeper’s arms to join her family. At that moment, with her world crumbling before her, she welcomed it. Better kill me than—

  She sucked in a breath, the thought dying half-formed. The face that stared up at her bore the lines and wrinkles of age but didn’t belong to her grandmother.

  With frantic, desperate movements, she scrambled toward the old man and turned him over. A sob burst from Issa’s throat and she nearly collapsed atop the body. The slack, pale features lacked the strength of her grandfather’s jaw, nose, and brow.

  She wept freely, her shoulders shaking, but relief surged through her horror and drove back the numbness. A fraction of sorrow remained—the corpses belonged to Issumo and Poltana, their next-door neighbors, kindly people that had been like Issa’s aunt and uncle—but relief bathed her like a cool breeze, brought tears to her eyes.

  A single thought pounded through her brain over and over. My grandparents are alive!

  She could suddenly breathe, the grip on her chest loosening. Her limbs moved slowly but warmth and strength returned with every thundering beat of her heart. Sanity reasserted itself as she repeated the blessed words.

  My grandparents are alive!

  She fell backward and slumped against the hard stone wall, drawing in deep, ragged gasps. With the return of air came clarity of thought. Scrubbing the tears from her eyes, she scanned the small single-room house that she had shared with her grandparents for the last seventeen years of her life. Her mind struggled to piece together what had happened.

  The front door hung ajar, its upper and middle hinges shattered, the outer handle snapped off. Heavy boots had splintered the wood as the rioters rampaging through the Cultivator’s Tier invaded her grandparents’ home. The shattered remnants of the table, chairs, and bed—the only furniture her Saba and Savta had owned—told a vivid tale. Mahjuri
had come to ransack, loot, and kill. Issumo and Poltana had died in the turmoil.

  That thought led to another question. So where are Saba and Savta?

  The two elderly neighbors had fallen, yet she found no sign of her grandparents. Had they somehow managed to escape before the violence began? That seemed unlikely—their neighbors wouldn’t come over uninvited. The presence of Issumo and Poltana indicated that Saba and Savta had also been present when the rioters broke in.

  Confusion twisted in Issa’s stomach. She climbed to her feet, eyes narrowed at the corpses slumped across the rear doorway. The door had also been broken open, but the invaders had died where they stood. Crouching over the bodies, Issa stared down at the wounds that had laid them low. Deep, long slashes, gaping wounds, and gashes that laid open their flesh and muscle to the bone. Wounds from a sharp, heavy weapon.

  How is that possible? Her grandparents possessed only three knives—a butcher’s cleaver, a small paring knife, and the larger blade her Saba used in the fields—none large enough to wreak this massive damage. One of the looters carried a rusted, notched short sword. The stout blade could account for a few of the injuries, but the rest were too large and deep to have been made by anything so small. Even if her Saba had somehow managed to wrest away one of the other men’s weapons, he was a farmer, a laborer in the southern farmlands, not a warrior. The damage done to these men pointed to skill and training.

  Chaos whirled in her mind. What in the Keeper’s name happened, then?

  Had the Indomitables arrived in time to save her Saba and Savta? Had the black-armored Alqati slaughtered the rampaging Mahjuri and Kabili, hauling her grandparents away to safety?

  Hope surged within her. That has to be it! The Indomitables carried sickle-shaped khopeshes, blades more than heavy enough to inflict such grievous wounds on the looters.

  Strength returned to her limbs as warmth flooded to the core of her being. If the Indomitables did have her grandparents someplace safe, she had a chance of finding them.

  Her brow furrowed as she tried to figure out where the Indomitables would have taken them. She thought back to the map she had seen spread out on the table in the War Room that Lady Callista and the Elders of the Blade had set up on the Defender’s Tier. The map had showed the positions of the Indomitables spread out through the three lowest tiers, but that had been before the riots and chaos began. Any soldiers not fighting to restore order would be digging into fortified positions or trying to retreat to the safety of the upper tiers.

  That’s it!

  The Defender’s Tier, reserved for the Indomitables and their families, offered the most defensible position. A single gate led in and out, and the soldiers would die to hold that position. If the mob got past them, their husbands, wives, children, and parents would be in danger.

  The Indomitables had to have taken them up to the Defender’s Tier, then. That’s where I’ll find them.

  Grim resolve hardened in her gut. The Mahjuri and Kabili from the Slave’s Tier had risen up in violent protest, lending their fists and fury to the outraged Earaqi. If even a quarter of those that lived on the lowest of Shalandra’s tiers had joined in the riot, close to fifty thousand angry men and women stood between her and her grandparents.

  But at that moment, it didn’t matter if a million raging protestors flooded the Cultivator’s Tier. Nothing would stop her from making certain her Saba and Savta were safe.

  Issa tucked her club into her belt and, stooping, retrieved the rusted short sword. Facing so many enemies, she needed all the weapons she could get. Without hesitation, she raced out into the streets of the Cultivator’s Tier, heavy blades gripped tight. If anyone got in her way, she’d cut them down in a heartbeat.

  On she ran, her legs and arms pumping, her boots pounding on the solid stone of the narrow side streets. All hint of fatigue faded, driven back by a desperate hope that her grandparents still lived.

  Her mind worked in time with her flying feet. The smartest, safest, and likely fastest route would be through the secret network of Serenii-built tunnels beneath the city. She, Kodyn, Evren, and Aisha had made the descent from the Palace of Golden Eternity to the Artisan’s Tier in a little over half the time it would have taken them aboveground. The tunnels would enable her to bypass the crowds and looters altogether.

  But she had no idea how to find the tunnels, or how to trigger whatever hidden mechanisms opened them. She’d seen Evren do it twice, yet his explanation to Kodyn slipped her mind. With no knowledge of the secret paths, she could spend an eternity wandering in the near-darkness of the gemstone-lit tunnels.

  I’d be an idiot to go that way, she decided.

  That left her with two routes to take: Death Row, the main avenue that traveled from the Eastern Gate in the Slave’s Tier all the way up to the Palace of Golden Eternity, or the pathways within the Keeper’s Crypts.

  Death Row would be clogged with rioters; not just looters taking advantage of the chaos, but those angry enough to take up weapons against the Indomitables. The Mahjuri, Kabili, and Earaqi had suffered at the hands of the soldiers for years, punished and abused simply because of their low caste. It had taken only a few precise nudges to push them over the edge.

  She had heard the speech given by Blackfinger, the leader of the Ybrazhe Syndicate. He had spoken of ripping power from the clutches of the Pharus and restoring it to the people. Those words had held only a fraction of truth—he, along with his allies in the Keeper’s Council, wanted to overthrow Pharus Amhoset Nephelcheres and claim the rule for themselves.

  But the Ybrazhe thugs weren’t the only ones desirous of chaos. Hallar’s Warriors, a group of young, idealistic Earaqi that spoke of “restoring Shalandra to the days of Hallar”, had riled up the lower castes as well. Through the chaos and discord, they sought to rip the power of rule from the Pharus and place it in the hands of the people.

  The two groups had used the death of Aterallis, the man the people had called “Child of Secrets, Child of Spirits, Child of Gold” and “Hallar Reborn”, to incite the crowds to anger. Their peaceful protest at his execution had turned ugly after the Ybrazhe and Hallar’s Warriors armed angry Earaqi youths with their passion, the promise of power, and sharp steel.

  Issa didn’t know if they had acted in cohesion or on their own—at that moment, it mattered little. Nothing mattered beyond finding her Saba and Savta, hopefully alive and safe on the Defender’s Tier.

  Her steps led west, toward the towering sandstone cliff that served as Shalandra’s western border. With Death Row a seething mass of violence and bloodshed, her only hope of reaching her grandparents would be through the pathways of the Keeper’s Crypts.

  The Keeper’s Crypts served as the final resting place of all Shalandrans, from the Pharus to the lowest Mahjuri. The tombs were hallowed ground, a place reserved for the revered dead. Superstitious Shalandrans avoided the tombs—better to leave their deceased loved ones to rest in peace.

  The Gatherers, a cult of bloodthirsty death-worshippers that split off from the established priesthood of the Long Keeper, had used the tombs as a hideout. But according to Lady Callista, there had been no sign of activity after she, Hykos, and her Indomitables had raided the tombs.

  Golden sandstone cliffs loomed large in her view. The western cliff served as the city’s border, and the façade to conceal the tombs, sarcophagi, and monuments to the dead within the hollowed-out mountain beneath.

  The crowds grew thicker as she approached the Path of Sepulture, the broad avenue that ran alongside the crypts. Angry shouts, terrified screams, and chants of “Bring on the judgement foretold!” echoed loud on all sides. Mahjuri and Kabili broke down the doors of Earaqi that had little more than they, stealing whatever they could carry and leaving weeping, broken, or dead men and women in their wake.

  Few paid Issa any heed; a single Earaqi girl meant little, not with the vast riches that lay hidden behind the neat, square walls of the homes bordering the streets. To the wretched Mahjuri and en
slaved Kabili, the meager belongings of the hard-working Earaqi seemed a vast fortune.

  Dread froze the blood in Issa’s veins as she came in sight of the Keeper’s Crypts.

  No! The huge sandstone gates stood shut, barring entrance to the tombs.

  Never in her memory had that entrance been sealed. Even during the Fifty-Day Revolt, the last upheaval to scourge Shalandra’s tiers, the gates had remained open. All of the rioters had been given free access to the crypts to lay their fallen comrades, family, and enemies to rest.

  Closing the gates made sense—the Gatherers had used the Keeper’s Crypts to hide out and to traverse the city unseen, so Lady Callista had likely done it to prevent the rioters from flooding the tombs and attacking the Defender’s Tier and Keeper’s Tier from within.

  But that left Issa trapped on the lower tiers. With the Keeper’s Crypt closed, she had no way to reach the Defender’s Tier. Her simple Earaqi clothing and red cloth headband concealed her identity as a Keeper’s Blade from the raging mob, but the embattled Indomitables would only see her as one more rioter out for their blood. The soldiers would cut her down without a second thought.

  Panic sank icy fingers into her brain and set her heart thundering. Her breath caught, her mouth going suddenly dry. Issa swallowed and struggled to stave off the instinctive fear. If she couldn’t get out of the Cultivator’s Tier, she’d never be able to find her grandparents.

  Gritting her teeth, she drew in a deep breath, then another. I’ve got to find another way!

  One hope remained to her. A face sprang to her mind—sharp-eyed, with strong features, and framed by a thick black beard and short-cropped hair.

  Killian! Her breath came easier as her mind clung to the prospect. Killian might know how I can get through. Somehow, he knows everything.

  The blacksmith had been the one to reveal the secret way into the Hall of the Beyond, the temple of the Keeper’s Priests where she had battled in the Crucible to be chosen as a Keeper’s Blade. He was far more than just a simple smith—he’d proven that daily as he taught her how to fight like a true warrior of the Long Keeper.