“Water,” Serovek said.
Anhuset frowned. “I used to go adventuring with the herceges in these woods when we were children. There's no water on this side. The Absu curves around the city's southeastern border before bisecting it.”
“There was no stream on this side when we arrived in Haradis to fight the galla, but I know what I hear. It's the sound of water.” He groaned softly. “And I'm just now warming up.”
His good-natured complaint didn't lessen her increasing unease. A strangeness clung to these woods now, even without the wet whisper of running water that wasn't supposed to be nearby. It was as if each step closer to Haradis took her one more step away from the living world, where the stars glimmered above, and the shadows cavorted below as they had always done. This felt more like a falling away toward an abyss where everything that pitched into it fell and fell and never stopped. This wasn't her magic sounding a warning; her instincts recoiled ever harder from Haradis with each step taken.
“Anhuset.”
They'd halted. Anhuset frowned. When had they stopped? Serovek stared at her, concern mingled with puzzlement carving lines into his forehead. “Can you feel it?” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Haradis is more than abandoned, more than destroyed. It's befouled. Those who died here...theirs weren't clean deaths. Are you sure you want to do this? We can turn back any time you wish.”
Were he anyone else, she'd assume he either patronized her or considered her weak. Instead, she considered his words for a moment, knowing they were offered in empathy and a shared sense of wrongness suffocating the entire area. “I'm sure,” she said. “Was Haradis like this when you were here?”
Serovek shook his head. “I don't know. The galla were spewing out of the heart of Haradis, thicker than a hive swarm. Maybe what we're feeling is the memory of the trees. Such evil leaves a smear on everything it touches and lingers.”
His conjectures were reasonable and only added to her sense of urgency that she scout the city and report back every detail to Brishen, despite his expected disapproval. She might tell him things he already knew or expected, but her instincts, which had always served her well and kept her alive, told her this was something far more sinister than the haunting tragedy of Haradis's ruin.
“You've done me the favor of delaying your own journey to give me this opportunity, margrave, and I'm grateful. You aren't obliged to accompany me into Haradis. I promise to be swift. In, a quick look around, and out again so as not to delay more. But I have to do this.” As Anhuset spoke the words, sense of duty overrode instinct, and she barely controlled the urge to sprint out of the woods for the gate hidden behind the tree line. “I need to.”
He eyed her for a moment without speaking, then lifted the long knife he held to regard it with a measure of disdain. “I doubt this will do much good against anything lurking in the city, but it's better than nothing.” He swept a hand in the direction of Haradis and gave Anhuset a short bow. “Shall we, madam?”
Gladness sang through her that he chose to join her, but she pushed it down. Such foolery was reserved for the drunken hours after too many pints in an alehouse and no bedmate to help stave off melancholy self-reflection. It had no place here where the darkness that was more than darkness inhaled, exhaled, and waited.
She gasped at the sight greeting them. The last time she'd visited the capital had been when Brishen brought his new bride to face his parents and the royal court. Haradis, far from the sea, now perched on an island.
A series of canals dug by unknown hands in a spiderweb pattern channeled the water she and Serovek heard earlier. From her vantage point, she couldn't see their source, but the water's flow told her it came from the Absu itself. A small portion of the river had been redirected here—not for irrigating fallow fields but to isolate the city within the confines of a liquid labyrinth. A prison for the galla.
“Someone's been very busy,” Serovek remarked beside her. “And very afraid. This took the labor of many, and they favored speed over neatness.”
He was right. The canals were numerous but shallow, the main one completely surrounding the city with offshoots of others spreading from it in a disorderly fashion. The canals' sides were uneven, higher in some spots than others, undulating in places like a ribbon instead of a spear haft. But they were clear of debris. At no point was a channel blocked or bridged by bits of detritus built up by storms or animals. Whoever had constructed this watery barricade continued to maintain it, providing safe haven in shallow runnels for any who might flee the city from that which couldn't cross water.
Anhuset noted all of it in a sweeping glance before returning to stare at what remained of the once thriving, living city. Saggara was her home, where those who meant most to her lived, but she'd spent her childhood here. Unlike the Kai who'd fled the carnage as refugees, or Brishen, who'd fought the demons to their very gate, she hadn't experienced the horror of the hul-galla's attack or seen the havoc they'd wrought firsthand. Haradis didn't have an emotional grip on her the way Saggara did. She'd believed it true when she declared such to Serovek. She was wrong.
A few seasons had passed since the galla had swarmed the capital, devouring thousands in a single night. She'd expected a place abandoned if not forgotten. She wasn't prepared for this.
Haradis squatted on its island, a decaying carcass of crumbled buildings half hidden behind what little remained of its fortifications. The once formidable palace, with its spear-point towers and sweeping bridges reached for the unforgiving moon with broken fingers, half of its façade gone to reveal split timbers dressed in bits and pieces of ragged clothing lifted by a long-gone wind and tossed into what remained of the rafters. They resembled funerary flags for the dead whose mortem lights were lost forever to the Kai. The wreckage of more modest structures—shops and hovels—revealed a devastation which didn't spare anything or anyone regardless of status. Haradis wasn't just a ruined city; it was a corpse. Desecrated. Violated. The galla had not only consumed its citizens, they'd sucked the life out of the very stone and wood from which the city was built.
She heard a keening noise, shocked to realize it came from her own throat. Haradis wasn't Saggara, but it was Kai to its bedrock, just as she was. Brishen's adamant refusal to come here or send scouts in his stead made sense to her now. Traumatized by what he'd been forced to do to become eidolon, he'd realized what his fellow Wraith kings hadn't, what the Kai themselves refused to acknowledge: The galla had shattered the Kai kingdom and the spirit of its fading people in ways the human kingdoms could never understand and must never know. Saggara represented a sliver of hope of what survived. Haradis was the culmination of all that had been lost.
Serovek remained quiet, a solid, comforting presence, as Anhuset continued to keen low in her throat, a soft dirge for all the Kai, both living and dead. She turned to her companion when she finished. Sympathy softened his expression though he didn't offer meaningless platitudes, for which she was grateful. Her unexpected grief still threatened to swallow her.
“We stand before an open grave,” she said. “I'm glad I took your advice and chose not to come alone.”
“I would have followed had you chosen to do so. Even the strongest shouldn't bear the sight of this place in solitude.”
She shook her head. “I didn't think it would be so...” She trailed off, uncomfortable with revealing her turbulent emotions, even when they threatened to burst from in a despairing, raging scream.
“How could you?” Serovek's voice sounded as heavy as her spirit. “More than lives were lost here. You have the right to grieve, but your grief will have to wait.”
His practicality worked its own particular magic on her, and the horror freezing her in place faded. “True.” She physically shook off the lingering effects of shock. She was here to scout, not to mourn. “I think we should wait to split up. Haradis may be dead, but it may not be abandoned.”
They entered cautiously, picking their way across rubble scattered across moonlit str
eets. Anhuset spared a glance at Serovek, noting the tight set of his mouth and hollow expression. He might not have suffered the shock she did at the sight of Haradis's current state, but he carried with him the memory of it overrun by the galla.
There were places in the world ancient or haunted or both. Remnants of Elder magic spun by the long-vanished Gullperi lingered there, along with ghosts unable to break the tethers that bound them to the life their bodies had forsaken. Haradis was old but not ancient, and the magic of the Kai had been drained by sorcery that made five men eidolon. From what she could tell, it wasn't haunted either. Even the dead didn't loiter in Haradis. It was emptiness profound—except for her instinctive certainty, she and Serovek weren't alone.
“Are you looking for anything in particular or just noting things to report back to Brishen?” Serovek asked the question in the same low voice, his gaze sweeping back and forth across the wrecked landscape.
“The latter.” Her instincts continued sounding an alarm that there was something here to find, but as of yet, it chose not to make itself known. She kept a tight grip on her knife, even knowing the weapon might be useless against whatever hid from sight.
Serovek followed her to one of the market squares, once a lively place whose perimeter was lined with stalls and interior enjoyed by visitors strolling under starlight and children playing on a manicured lawn. The grass was dead, the stalls collapsed heaps of debris. Bits of clothing littered the square. Anhuset paused in front of a cluster of rags. On first glance, it looked as if a washer woman had dropped her basket and left the spilled contents where they lay. Frocks and tunics, a cloak, even shoes and boots lay within the heap, all stained with dark splotches.
“I won't describe what seeing a full hul-galla in one place is like,” Serovek said as he squatted next to the heap. “But I think seeing this was worse, and it's everywhere in Haradis.”
Confused by his comment and the scene before her, Anhuset poked at a dress hem with the tip of her knife. “But what is 'this?' All I see is a pile of dirty, discarded clothing and shoes.”
Serovek turned to stare at her, the expression of sympathy on his face from earlier transformed now to one of awful pity. “Ah, firefly woman, Brishen shared very little of our battle here, didn't he? And I'm guessing the refugees refuse to speak of what they saw.” He gently pushed the hand holding her knife away from the clothing. “The stains you see on the clothes, they're all that's left after the galla consume their victims.”
Anhuset's heart vaulted into her throat and she leaped away from Serovek and the gruesome memorial to Haradis's dead. The horror she'd beaten back outside the gates nearly overwhelmed her once more. “I didn't know,” she said in a tight voice. The memory of her cousin's face, the flicker of horror in his eye when anyone mentioned Haradis by name had been the only tell or reaction he revealed. “My gods, the burden Brishen shoulders.”
The margrave stood and closed the distance between them. “It's a heavy one indeed. Think hard as to whether or not you want to share with him your visit here. If you do, I'll offer my own observations as well. If you don't, and we find nothing of import, then it will be our secret.”
“Why would you do this?” He had no reason to ally himself to her in this way, no obligation to keep any secret for her.
“Because Brishen is my friend, and I suspect he, like Megiddo, came away from the galla war more scarred by it than the rest of us. Why add to the burden you say he carries?”
They left the square then, Anhuset sick to her soul by every proof of Haradis's complete annihilation. She tried not to look at the numerous mounds of clothing dotting the streets. Instead, she scanned the few shops and dwellings that remained standing, peering inside with the conflicting hopes of finding something and finding nothing. She was spoiling for a fight, a way to bleed off the angry despair engulfing her. The gods help any human or Kai scavenger who might be looting their way through what was left. She'd carve them into pieces small enough to fit inside thimbles.
A thin echo of bone-chilling laughter drifted on the wind from the direction of the palace. Ice water trickled down Anhuset's spine. The laughter was like nothing she'd ever heard and prayed she'd never hear again.
“That's the sound of galla,” Serovek said. No pity or sympathy remained in his expression. Dismay had replaced both. Dismay and fear. The laughter pealed once more, this time closer and just as terrifying. “Water,” Serovek snapped. “Run for water.”
They sprinted back the way they'd come, toward the crumbled walls and broken gates and beyond that the safety of the canals and the prison they made of Haradis. More of the gibbering laughter sounded, nearly on their heels, and Anhuset stretched her legs for all she was worth to reach the gate. Serovek kept pace beside her, a swift runner despite his size.
She caught a roiling motion from the corner of her eye and glanced to the right. “Fuck!” she shouted, and the abomination rushing toward them on a writhing cloud of shadow shouted back in a voice that mimicked hers.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” The shout pitched higher until it became a scream that made her ears throb and teeth grind.
Suddenly Serovek veered away from Anhuset, sprinting directly across the galla's path. Both Anhuset and the galla shrieked, she in shock, it in triumph as it darted toward its victim.
“No you don't, you bastard,” Anhuset snarled, unsure if she spoke to the galla or to the margrave, figuring it applied to both.
Desperation pushed her to greater speed. She reached Serovek before the galla did, grabbed his wrist and yanked him toward a broken fountain set in the middle of a rubble-filled courtyard. They hurtled over the fountain's ledge, splashing ankle-deep into stagnant water deposited there from previous snows or rain.
The galla's gleeful shrieking changed to unearthly howls of rage at finding its prey snatched out of reach. It twisted and writhed midair, collapsing in on itself in a miasma of oily smoke before bursting outward to reveal a jumbled mess of every kind of body part as well as misty images of faces, mouths wide in silent screams.
“I thought the Wraith kings forced them all back into the void and sealed the gate.” The idea that they'd failed made her stomach knot itself into a ball of nausea.
Serovek kicked a spray of slimy water onto the galla, slinging even more as the thing recoiled out of reach. “So did I.”
Anhuset seized his arm. “Enough. You keep doing that, and we'll be standing in a dry fountain with no protection.” She let go of the margrave and kept an eye on the galla who'd retreated but didn't flee. So began a waiting game, and all the odds lay in the demon's favor.
She'd saved herself and Serovek from being devoured for now, but he was far from appreciative. The thunderhead of a scowl descended on his features. His dark eyebrows lowered, and for the first time since she'd met him, he bent the full weight of his disapproval on her in a withering stare.
“Never do such a thing again,” he said, practically baring his teeth at her. “If not for that foolish stunt, you'd be through the gate and safe among the canals right now.”
“And you'd be a bloody stain on those fine clothes you're wearing,” she snapped back. “I don't need a hero to save me,” she continued in a milder voice. “Though what you did was heroic and brave. And stupid.”
“Sha-Anhuset.” He said her name in such a way that Anhuset forgot about the galla for a moment, startled into silence by what she saw. “You misunderstand me. One of us has to survive this little trip to warn Brishen there's at least one galla frolicking about Haradis. Between the two of us, I'm probably stronger, and I know you're faster. Strength isn't what would save us from that thing.” He waved his knife toward the galla, and it lunged at him, snapping four sets of newly formed teeth.
“Your eyes,” she said softly.” He blinked at her, confused by her comment. “They glow like your vuhana's once did. Like they did when you dreamed in the inn's stables and said you saw Megiddo.”
His demeanor changed, posture stilling, and his face took
on a far-away look as if he contemplated some inner question with countless answers. “But I'm awake, and Megiddo isn't close by.” A hard shudder shook him. “There are still galla in Haradis. Maybe there is still eidolon in the five of us. Perhaps enough to bind us all together.”
An awful possibility to contemplate, but it made sense. “You don't know that for sure, and even if it were so, you aren't eidolon enough to resist a galla attack. We have to figure out a way to get to the gate before any of your men coming looking for us.” An ugly thought reared its head, and she buried her claws into the back of Serovek's thick tunic, holding tight. “Don't do it,” she warned.
A growl erupted from her throat at the false innocence in his expression. “Do what?”
“Leave the fountain and run toward the city's heart to draw the galla away. If you think I'll leave you so that thing can feed on you, think again. Run, and I'll simply chase after you, and my death will be on your hands.”
Pure extortion with a slathering of guilt, and she wielded it with unapologetic glee.
It was his turn to growl. “If you were my second, I'd remove you from command.”
“If I were your second, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.”
He gusted out a frustrated sigh and raked his free hand through his hair. “Then we're at a stalemate. Any suggestions?”
She was out of ideas at the moment. The fountain's sanctuary was a stroke of luck. She'd caught the glimmer of moonlight reflecting on a liquid surface as they'd raced for the gate and prayed to every god paying attention that the reflection floated on life-saving water. For now, they were relatively safe, but the galla had all eternity to wait them out.
Serovek jerked in her grasp. Afraid he'd ignored her warning and planned to bolt, she tightened her grip on his tunic and prepared to knock his feet out from under him if necessary. Instead, he pointed in the direction of the derelict palace. “Look.”
The Ippos King: Wraith Kings Book Three Page 13
