The Fires of Vengeance
Page 22
Tau sucked his teeth and turned to the Ihashe. “Men, gather yourselves. We fight again.”
Duma heard someone lowing in fear, letting their cowardice show. When he took another swallow from the water bowl, the sound stopped, and Duma realized it’d been him making it. That alone told him they weren’t ready to go again, not that night, maybe not ever.
He looked at the others, expecting to see similar thoughts writ large on their faces, but saw nothing of the sort. Uduak was sitting, looking worn but ready. It was the same with Azima, Yaw, and even Themba. And Tau—the champion could’ve woken from a nap a breath ago, the way he looked.
Duma didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t face the monsters again. There was no way he was—
“Ready?” the champion asked them. “Remember, hold the circle. Watch your brothers’ backs. We can do this. Now, close your eyes.”
Watch your brothers’ backs. Duma saw everyone else close their eyes, and then the Lady Gifted was looking at him, the last man with his eyes open, and, Goddess, that woman was pretty as a new flower.
Watch your brothers’ backs, Duma thought, nodding. Fear or no, demons or no, he could do that. He’d always do that.
He closed his eyes, battled his breathing, and, getting it close enough to controlled, he let his soul sink to that awful place.
“Form the circle!” Tau said.
“Watch their backs,” Duma muttered. “Watch—”
“Move in, Themba! You’re too far out,” Tau said.
Duma had little enough idea where the others were. He knew they were near him and knew the Lady Gifted was in the center of their circle. He knew it as a practical thing, but he hadn’t turned to see it for himself. He couldn’t. His eyes were locked on the mists.
He heard them before he saw them. The demons had been drawn to the glowing of so many souls, and they came, screeching, howling, and cackling, disturbing the mist with their movements while staying hidden behind its ebb and flow.
Their sounds set Duma’s nerves jangling, building a tension in him that stacked itself higher and higher until there was nowhere left for it to go but out.
“Nceku!” he roared at the roiling mists. “Why do you wait? Come out! Come out and fight!”
Two demons, small ones, raced toward the circle of men. The first one lunged for Themba, and the second angled for Uduak. Another demon, bigger than the initial two, charged at Tau, and then three more burst out of the mists, crooked things that came for Yaw and Azima.
Duma saw his brothers engage the monsters, and he knew he should help them, but his feet wouldn’t obey his commands. He remained in place and out of reach, letting Azima fight two of them alone.
The drummer was on his back foot, slashing wildly at the demons harrying him, and it was the reverse of the situation on the night of the Xiddeen invasion. Back then, it was Duma who’d been outnumbered.
He’d been caught out of position by two spearwomen and was mere breaths away from meeting the Goddess when Azima came along. Even fighting together, it was close. The spearwomen had been damned good fighters, but, in the end, Duma and Azima got to leave that battleground, and the spearwomen did not.
Using the memory of that victory to lend him courage, Duma finally got his legs moving. He ran to stand with Azima, but he’d delayed too long, and one of the creatures clawed the drummer’s head clean off his shoulders.
Duma stopped in place, watching his sword brother’s head roll around on the ground, Azima’s eyes open but unseeing.
“No…. No!” The fear was back, and Duma turned to run, to flee this senseless battle with its certain outcome. He turned and saw the demon lord step from the mists.
It stood like a man but could never be mistaken for one. It had no eyes, and in their place were wide holes that expanded and shrank like nostrils tracking a scent. On the sides of its head were more holes, four on the left and four on the right. Those ears, if that’s what they were, were sunk into its head instead of protruding from it, and on top of the thing’s head were hardened spikes, ringing its skull like a melted crown held too long in a fire.
Fear took Duma’s voice from him, but that didn’t matter. The demon lord heard, smelled, or knew him anyway, and its head swiveled to face him. It came for him on two legs, spiked, malformed, and ending in two clawed toes that split from the main of each foot.
Panting, shivering, all hope stolen, Duma spun, searching for help, safety, anything.
In the eye of the maelstrom, he saw the Lady Gifted, hidden from the demons’ view by her blanket of darkness. Behind him, his sword brothers fought and fell, their battles lost already. The only man not breathless from destruction was Tau, though the champion was besieged on all sides.
“Help me!” Duma begged, finding enough of his voice to call to the Lady Gifted. “Please!”
If she heard him, she gave no sign, and Duma turned back to the demon lord. It was almost on him, and he swung his sword.
The lord used its arm to block the blade, smashing into it with so much force that the collision sent Duma stumbling back. He swung again and the demon lord parried with the thing it held … with its sword.
In its claws, the monster held a weapon that looked like the dragon-scale swords made by the Omehi. It was a bastard brother to the blades Tau bore. The handle appeared to be twisted bone, it had no pommel, and the blade itself was unrefined, seeming for all the world as if the demon had torn it from the back of a dragon and fused it clumsily to its hilt.
“This isn’t real,” Duma said, pulling his sword away so he could swing it up and at the demon lord’s neck.
The creature let him strike it, wading through a killing blow without reaction, and when it came within arm’s length, it flung its free hand out, snatching Duma by his face, its rocklike grip scraping the skin from his cheeks. It pressed down with its claws, puncturing his flesh, and it lifted Duma from his feet, pulling him close.
He could smell it, and the reek was one he knew. The demon lord was a funeral pyre, its odor the foulness of the dead being burned.
Duma tried to call out, opening his mouth as wide as he was able, and in the space he’d made between his top and bottom teeth, Duma felt pain so pure it bloomed in his head like lightning. The lord’s claws had pierced the meat of his cheeks, cracked through his teeth, and the thing’s thumb and fingers had scissored together, slicing his tongue away.
The thing’s palm was over Duma’s face, he couldn’t see, and that made the next shock worse. The demon lord drove its bastard sword into him, spearing him on its length, and Duma’s soul, bright with suffering, collapsed in on itself like a dying world.
Eyes snapping open and mouth half filled with sand, Duma sputtered, clearing the dirt from his lips. He sat up, and, eyes wild, he scanned the yard. He was with the Lady Gifted, Uduak, Yaw, Themba, and a crouching demon.
Stumbling, Duma leapt to his feet. The mists were gone, but the kneeling demon with its yellow eyes fixed on him and its open maw, showing knifelike teeth, told him where he was. He was still in the underworld.
The thing in front of him rose from its crouch and stepped closer to Themba. Themba had his back to the demon and it was too late for a warning to save him, but there was still time for Duma to act.
He charged the creature, sword crashing through the air, and the demon, with its yellow eyes, watched him come, waiting too long before it tried to scurry off the killing line.
Too late, you’re too late! Duma thought, putting all his weight behind the blow and feeling the blade bury itself into flesh and bone as he was spattered by the monster’s blood. It raised a taloned hand for him and Duma swung again, blasting his weapon into its side.
“I won’t let you have my brothers!” he shouted. “I won’t—”
“Duma!”
The growl, bending sound unnaturally to form his name, had come from behind him. Duma spun and his knees buckled. It was the demon lord with its twin twisted blades. It was the lord, come for him again.
Duma looked back. The lord was coming.
“I won’t let you have my brothers!” he said, attacking it.
It moved out of the way, mocking him with his name. “Duma, stop,” it said. “Duma!”
Fear lending him strength and speed he didn’t know he had, Duma sent his blade streaming the other way in a backhand blow, but somehow the lord had known the attack would come and avoided it.
It was toying with him, Duma realized, toying with him so it could torture him again. It wanted to keep him trapped in Isihogo, and that’s when Duma understood.
The demon lord had found a way to hide the underworld’s mists and most of its demons. It had found a way to batter and torment him without killing him. It meant to keep him in the underworld forever.
Duma forced out a laugh. He’d seen through the deception, and, knowing what needed to be done to free himself, he dropped his sword.
“Duma!” the lord roared, rushing at him as Duma pulled his dagger from his belt and quickly, quickly plunged it into his chest, pain exploding through him.
The lord had him then, grabbing at him, but with the last of his strength, Duma shook the demon loose, ripped the dagger free, and slammed it home again, piercing his own heart. He lost control of his fingers when he did it, his hand fell away from the dagger, and with the sound of blood rushing through his head, Duma collapsed.
He was on the ground and the edges of his body seemed to be contracting. His sense of his fingers and toes, his hands and feet, his calves and forearms, vanished, and the vanishing kept going, hurting as it went, hurting as it erased him.
Standing over him was the lord, and Duma, time short, offered it a trembling smile. He’d won, he’d—
The demon’s face fell apart like a city of sand struck by a wave. It fell apart as if it never was, and in the demon’s place was Tau.
“Duma … I’m so sorry,” his sword brother said. “I’m sorry.”
Desperate and filled with horror, Duma lurched his head to the side, seeking the demon he’d felled. Azima was on the ground not far from Duma, his body broken, destroyed by sword cuts and awash with blood. Azima’s eyes were open but soulless. His sword brother was dead.
It was then, staring into Azima’s lifeless eyes, that Duma finally understood the truth. He was already in Uhmlaba, but he wasn’t free. He was lost, and in the last beat of his broken heart, Duma Sibusiso went helpless, damned, and all alone into the dark.
LEGACY
They burned Duma and Azima in the eternal flames of the Sah Citadel’s funeral pyres that same night. It was late, and with no words passed between them, Tau’s brothers had gone to their beds. He stayed behind in the open-air circle of the citadel, watching the priestesses and priests, their features hidden behind sculpted nickel masks shaped to resemble the face of the Goddess, as they tended the twisting flames that they never allowed to die.
There were rumors, rumors about the two Ihashe from Tau’s scale who had come to a strange end in the Guardian Keep. Some said it was a fight between friends turned deadly. Others said that Gifted loyal to Odili remained in Citadel City and that they had forbidden powers that could break a man’s mind. The worst of the whisperers spoke the names of those they believed would be next to die.
Tau let the rumors run. They were no worse than the truth, and they were better than he deserved. As Hadith had once warned, he’d pushed too far and his brothers couldn’t follow. Now two of them were dead.
Gifted Thandi came to stand beside him and he saw her mouth moving in silent prayer.
“I failed them,” he said when she’d finished.
She turned to him. “Duma became demon-haunted. It can happen to women and men in their beds.”
“He wasn’t in his bed when he died,” Tau said, thinking about the demon that had come for Duma in Isihogo. He hadn’t seen it clearly, but it had looked like one he’d fought before. It had looked like it was carrying a weapon. “You were right,” he said to Thandi. “I’m asking people I care about to take too many risks. I’m pushing them too far.”
Thandi was quiet for a time. “Maybe I’m right,” she said, “or maybe coming out of bad times has always meant pushing for a place that seems too far.”
Lowering his head, Tau pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping to ease the ache in his skull. “I keep failing the people I’m supposed to keep safe.”
Thandi didn’t have words for him on that score and she turned away from the fire. “I’m going to see Kellan. Would you walk with me, Champion?”
Tau still wasn’t ready to leave, but losing Duma and Azima was a reminder that the line between life and death was a thin one, and he knew he should see Kellan. More, he knew he should see Jabari. He’d not been by his friend’s side for too long.
He nodded to her, and they left the priests, their citadel, and their eternal fires behind.
When they were alone, Thandi spoke. “Do you know why I’m on the Shadow Council?”
“No,” Tau said, wishing they could keep walking in silence.
“It’s because I believe in the things the queen is fighting for.”
He grunted.
“She’s fighting to give us back our legacy, and with that legacy comes freedom, real freedom, which will mean safety for the ones we love. Champion, I was born a Harvester. My family are all Harvesters … except my older brother.
“He was sickly and couldn’t fight. He was made a Drudge, but a man too sickly to fight will be too sickly to labor as Drudges must. He died in a farming field and it took two seasons for the news to reach us.”
Thandi’s hurt remained fresh. Tau didn’t think he was good at reading people, but he could see that much. “Goddess keep him,” he said to her.
“I pray She does, but I’ll also work toward the day when such fates cannot find my family or any others like it.”
“Gifted Thandi, with respect, you and the rest of the Shadow Council serve the monarchy, not families like ours.”
Thandi shook her head. “You don’t understand Queen Tsiora’s dream. She wants the Omehi to live as we were meant to.” She smiled. “She’s going to take us home.”
Tau realized that the unending agony in his leg wouldn’t have the chance to drive him mad. The fruitless hopes of religious zealots would do it first. “We have no home,” he told her.
“We do and we always have,” she insisted. “It’s on Osonte.”
“You think, after all this time, there’s a place for us there?” he asked. “Will Osonte’s women and men greet us warmly when we return? As warmly as the Xiddeen did?”
“The Goddess will see us through, and when that happens, we’ll no longer be Lessers; we’ll simply be Omehi. That, Tau Solarin, is what the queen wants. That is what I want.”
“And now we’re back to praying for change.”
She actually laughed. “You think everything is so hopeless. What are you even fighting for?”
“I have my reasons,” Tau said, thinking of Abasi Odili as he stopped in front of the infirmary doors.
“Are they good ones?”
“They’ll serve.”
She fidgeted with her belt. “I’d like you to know that I grieve the loss of your friends with you.”
“And the grief is more bearable for that,” he said, doing his best to be gracious.
“Tell me, will Duma’s and Azima’s passing be in vain?”
Tau took his hand from the infirmary door and faced her. “What?”
“Or will you honor them by finding others to complete the mission to which they gave their lives?”
“Lady Gifted,” Tau said, “their funeral pyre is still burning and that’s what you ask me?”
“Their funeral pyre is in the Sah Citadel. It will always burn.”
“But must my brothers be its fuel?”
“Don’t you see? Unless we take back Palm, everyone we love will fee
l the flames.” She looked nervous and perhaps even ashamed. “Champion, I went to the queen. I had concerns and I raised them to her.”
“Did you?”
“She told me to have faith. She told me that she believes in you, and because I believe in her, I choose to believe in you too.”
Tau wiped at one side of his face in frustration. “It’s nice to have your faith, but it doesn’t change the fact that I have too few to hold the circle. There’s four of us and that’s not enough. I need more fighters.”
“Then, find them,” Thandi said.
He didn’t mean to do it, but he sighed. “Lady Gifted, if you’ll excuse me, I’m tired and would like to visit an injured friend whom I’ve neglected for far too long.”
“You go to the burned Petty Noble? His survival is a miracle from the Goddess Herself.”
“There’s no give in Jabari,” Tau said, reaching again for the infirmary door when the thought struck him: Some things are made stronger in fire. “Kellan can’t fight in Isihogo because his blood prevents it, right?”
Thandi gave him a quizzical look. “Yes, you know this.”
“What about the blood of a Petty Noble?”
Thandi’s eyes widened. “Jabari? Champion, his body is a ruin.”
Tau began to pace. “But he doesn’t need his body in Isihogo. It’s his spirit that will see him rise or fall.” He stopped and turned to Thandi. “Can it be done?”
Thandi looked away. “Petty Noble blood is weak. It may be that he can fight in the underworld without suffering harm here, but why task him with this?”
“Because of the man that he is, because he’s always wanted to fight for queen and queendom, and maybe I can give him something of that dream.”
“You’ll be asking him to suffer more than he already does.”
“Lady Gifted, as far as I know, the only path to becoming what others cannot is to suffer what others will not.”
She opened her hands, palms up. “I have no idea what to say to the queen about this.”
“Tell her that we’ll have five men for our circle.”
Thandi tracked him with her eyes as he paced. “This is what you want to try, and you really think of yourself as a man lacking in faith?”