Vultures

by Luke Tarzian

  1 6

  Premonition

  The Sixth Month, Illum Year 1144

  Leyandra had always been skeptical of illum dreams. Her mother and aunt both swore by the damned things and her father claimed to have foreseen Leyandra’s birth in one. To Ley they were fantasies, little more than gilded pictures formed by the darkness of sleep or the intoxication of alcohol and smoke. To say her opinion of divination was a popular one was to say the sun refused to set.

  What she was not skeptical of was instinct, the feeling in her gut that told her what she’d dreamt this past night with her illum’s aid was real—there was a way to escape this hell she called home, a way to save Bringer and end the Radichian War that’d been waging for seventeen years. All she had to do was shove her knife down a five-year old’s throat and hope the value of his death was enough to grant her entry into the Temporal Sea.

  Ain’t that a bitch.

  Leyandra wrapped herself in her fur blanket and withdrew from the relative warmth of her shaghound tent. The triptych sky had shifted. The azure blue of day was dominant now with the sun concealed behind a mass of eastward rain clouds gray as ash. The air was cold and ripe with smoke that reeked of burning flesh.

  Leyandra cocked a brow and spat. “You’ve made your point,” she snarled at nature, at the world and everything she’d dreamt. “It’s a damn fine day to kill a kid.” And there was little time to waste.

  She wandered past the fire at the center of her camp; no one said a word. These days energy was better spent on fight and fuck. She entered the armory tent, eyes scanning hastily for her prize—a crystalline dagger like a dragon’s claw, nastily curved and as long as her forearm. So much for a knife. She snorted, snatched the gleaming beauty from its rest, then withdrew from the tent. The weapon drew a couple of eyes but again nary a word was uttered nor spat.

  * * *

  The walk to Helveden was roughly a mile long. Leyandra didn’t mind, it gave her time to think about her dream and the brutality of its message. Bleed a child and dystopia dies. Such had been the case through histories old and new. Violence was the fashion of forever and she found her body tingling madly at the notion of a world and time reprieved of such a thing.

  Best hope your conscience takes the morning off, she thought. Or else this killing thing is going to be severely hampered by morality and tears. Theirs, not hers. The last time Ley had cried was seven years ago because her favorite knife had dulled.

  * * *

  The streets were slick with blood, empty save the several sorry souls who’d taken to mopping the crimson from the cobbles. Towers speared the sky, tall despite their crumbling ruin, and the smell of burning flesh clung yet to the morning air like a thirsty babe to a tit. To an outsider, to someone visiting Ariath, the city would have looked as though it’d just been massacred by some mirkúr-frenzied fucks. The reality was that Te Mirkvahíl had not attacked for months. Helveden’s ruin was its own, perpetrated by the illum wielders who’d been driven mad by radich, the wild temporal energy for which the war was named and the means by which Leyandra hoped to swim the Temporal Sea.

  Along with a child’s death. Make sure to a carve a crimson grin, that way everyone knows the final moment was the happiest of their short and shitty life! Leyandra spat again as she wound through alleyways and headed east. I hope my stupid dream was right. If she knifed this kid and the Sea decided “Fuck you, try again!” she knew her inner voice would cease to hold its tongue.

  “You’re an idiot,” it would snarl.

  “You’re a moron,” it would hiss.

  “Theailys An was just a child!” it would shout. Ley knew she’d rather fuck herself with a rusted pole than subject herself to that.

  * * *

  Varésh Lúm-talé sat in a chair with a glass of Liosenean whiskey in his hand. By his count he had gone through a bottle and a half of the stuff; he planned to consume at least a half dozen more. He had seen what violence the day would bring and thus endeavored to be as blackout drunk as possible before the Blood Time came. His eyes sought darkness, ears silence, and morality the void regarding his adopted son, Theailys An.

  Even in this thread you’re a shitty parent, Vare thought. He remembered well the other timelines of this world, especially the one from which this current iteration had diverged. The planet Harthe was of his own making after all, formed and molded by his energy, radich. Possibility, in the Celestial tongue. Vare had learned all of this only yesterday after being struck repeatedly by lightning. This really was a violent instance, if he said so himself.

  If only I’d been spared the painful truth. A legacy of failure. A legacy of lies. He sighed, watching little Theailys toss a ball across the room, then raised his glass to irony, to the fact his newfound knowledge had replaced his ability to swim through time. To do anything, really. For all intents and purposes, Varésh Lúm-talé was a mortal man with fabulous long-term memory and a drinking problem.

  The doorknob rattled, then turned, and through the open door came death and hope on legs like Vare had never seen—not in this life, at least. “Leyandra,” he said, and cursed himself for the smoothness of his speech. He downed his drink and poured another. “Come to—” He slid his index finger across his throat, nodding toward the child ignorant of impending doom.

  “Did you have my dream as well?” she asked. Her eyes were soft, and her calm demeanor made Vare shake.

  “I suppose that’s one way of putting it.” He took a sip then offered her the glass.

  Leyandra waved it off. She brushed a strand of gnarled scarlet hair behind her ear, eyes falling to the child ignorant of her presence at the far side of the room. “Will it work?”

  Vare tilted his head. “It, meaning…?”

  She looked him in the eyes and Vare felt cold.

  “Yes,” he said. “The price of temporal alteration—of attempting it, at least—remains the same. The life essence of whomever you desire to save.” What a shit brand of magic this was.

  Leyandra leaned against the wall, eyes narrowed in the way one does when things make little sense, yet at the same time, all the sense in the world. She reached into her cloak and from its darkness drew a blade so beautifully brutal in its make. Vare grasped for the whiskey bottle and chugged as silent words escaped Leyandra’s moving lips.

  Chugged harder as the room was bathed in the pale blue light of radich swimming, twisting, braiding toward the weapon in Leyandra’s hand.

  Harder yet as Leyandra knelt behind his son and dragged the dagger clean across his throat.

  Would he remember any of this in the world to come?

  THE END OF BOOK 1

  GLOSSARY

  Black Year—The last four months of the year.

  Channeling—The act of imbuing a person or object with illum.

  Dawn Year—The first four months of the year.

  Dissident—A lokyn sect no longer bound to the madness of Te Mirkvahíl. They dwell predominantly in the Ariathan capital of Helveden.

  Dren—A phantaxian epithet; also means father.

  Illum—A secondary stamina or energy; the light of the Keepers, bestowed upon the Illuminated at birth. Presently wielded by Illumurgists, formerly wielded by the Reshapers.

  Illumancer—One adept at using illum to interpret dreams and premonitions.

  Illumancy—Divination through the use of illum.

  Illuminated—Individuals born with illum. Primarily dissident or human.

  Illumurgist—One who wields illum.

  Illumurgy—The manipulation of illum for a variety of purposes.

  Lokyn—Demonic tricksters, malicious in nature. They take pleasure in the suffering of their prey.

  Mid Year—The middle four months of the year.

  Mirkúr—A secondary stamina or energy; the inverse of illum, the power of demons. Presently wielded by Te Mirkvahíl and Theailys An, formerly wielded by the Reshapers.

  Perdition—The realm in which the souls of the damned dwell.

  P
hantaxians—A plagued, mountain-dwelling people wrought by the Season God, Phantaxis.

  Rapture—The realm in which the honored dead reside. Also called the Second Life.

  Reshapers—The first race. The dead race. A powerful people capable of wielding both illum and mirkúr.

  Te Luminíl—The Light, or My Light. Translations vary.

  Te Mirkvahíl—The Darkness, or My Darkness. Translations vary.

  Tem—A phantaxian epithet; also means mother.

  Yssa—Bestial rage and frenzy made manifest; wild energy wielded by the phantaxians.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing a book is not easy. Revising a standalone and realizing it actually needs to be a duology, then consequently realizing the duology is going to be a trilogy…not easy either. Nor is doing your own cover art, interior art, and book design. But what’s the saying? If it were easy everyone would be doing it. Satisfaction comes from hard work, and I have poured my joy, sorrow, anger, and frustration into this project for the better part of four years, longer if you consider that the Shadow Twins trilogy is set in a world I began to build more than a decade ago while still in high school.

  But I digress. There are many people to thank, to acknowledge, and the first of those is my mother, who passed away in October of 2018 and to whom this book is dedicated. She instilled in me a love of writing and read practically everything I wrote from the start. I know she would be proud of this book. I miss her terribly.

  To my family, immediate and extended: Thank you. I love you.

  To my beautiful wife and fellow weirdo, Jenny: Thank you for putting up with and reading the six or so iterations of this story. Thank you for putting up with me in general. I am a handful at times.

  To Erik Margolin, the first friend I made in pre-school: thank you for your continued interest in reading and critiquing my work. I can always depend on you for fantastically detailed notes and the occasional Lord of the Rings marathon.

  To Casey Herndon: I’m so sorry Peter hired you. Now you’re stuck in a writing group with Jenny and myself. Thanks for the awesome feedback, my friend.

  To my brother-in-law, Greg: If you hadn’t asked that one question about the start of Vultures (YOU KNOW EXACTLY THE QUESTION), this book probably would not exist in its current, superior iteration. So thanks for making me pull my hair out and turn a moderately readable standalone fantasy into the first book of what I hope to be an exciting trilogy.

  To Josh Newman: Hocus Strokus, brother.

  To Chris Husberg: Thank you for being so awesomely friendly and helpful over the past few years. Thank you for providing me with some very insightful critique of this book in its earlier iterations and for blurbing it!

  To Robert Peterson: Thank you for reading and considering an early iteration of Vultures for publication. It helped light a fire under me.

  To my fantastically weird Twitter/Discord family—Clayton, Krystle, Justine, Angela, and Bjørn: If I could insert a vomit gif into this book, you know I would. I love you all and am so glad we’ve become such good friends.

  To Nick Borrelli: Thank you for including me in your Follow Friday tags on Twitter. Without that, I don’t know that I would have met so many wonderful people, let alone become so immersed in the indie fantasy community.

  To Justin Wallace: Thank you for Twitter friendship and your kindness, for continually supporting me and my work.

  To the people like me who suffer from anxiety and depression: I hear you and I understand. I am with you.

  To everyone else, to the indie fantasy community on Twitter, and to the names I have probably forgotten to include: My bad. Just kidding—my apologies and my thanks for reading the words I have written and will continue to write.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Fantasy Author. Long Doggo Enthusiast. Snoot Booper. Shouter of Profanities. Drinker of Whiskey. These are all titles. Luke is the Khaleesi nobody wanted and the one they certainly didn’t deserve, but here we are, friendos…

  He lives in Pasadena, California with his wife. Somehow, she tolerates him.

  Website: www.luketarzian.com

  Twitter: @luke_tarzian