Heirs of the Fallen: Book 02 - Crown of the Setting Sun (23 page)

He did not halt until his booted feet splashed into icy water. That cold bath cleared his head. Gulping air, he gazed about at the lightening day, unable to believe that the wolves had not given chase.
I escaped,
he thought, relieved, if not a little bewildered.

The land had changed during his flight. The ankle-deep stream flowed broad and clear through a canyon braced on either side by low hills carpeted in tall, summer-yellowed grass. A few trees dotted the hills. Not scrubby thorn bushes, but real trees. Most towered two and three times his height, and some taller still. The air, which had burned his lungs for so long, smelled fresh and was free of the sulfurous haze. Hills waited ahead, no telltale veins of molten rock marring their flanks.

He faced east and scanned the Mountains of Fire, standing between him and the rising sun. They ascended stark and black, close enough to be imposing, but far enough to give him a sense of relief at having escaped them. For the moment, he avoided thinking on Lakaan’s death and Zera’s absence, and focused instead on taking advantage of the stream, and the apparent tranquility of the moment. After that, he had to get farther from the mountains, and all that hunted within them.

After drinking his fill of the sweetest water he had ever tasted, he made his way to the far side of the stream, filled his waterskin, and reorganized his pack into a firmer bundle. While he worked, the bushes along the stream’s bank came alive with songbirds harvesting a wealth of dark, purple-black berries.

If those are good enough for birds
,
they are good enough for me.
He plucked one, squeezed a drop of juice onto the tip of his tongue. Sweetness flooded his mouth. Then he was dumping the berries into his mouth by the handful, indifferent to the small thorns that guarded the precious fruit. The sticky purple juice stained his hands, lips, and chin.

Full to bursting, he went back to the stream and washed away most of the stains, then drank again. After another search of the eastern bank, it was with great reluctance that Leitos adjusted the straps of his pack, and set out in the opposite direction. He did not know how far he had to go, but he was beyond the Mountains of Fire, and that meant he was closer to the Crown of the Setting Sun and the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. Zera was somewhere behind him. In the deepest reaches of his heart and soul he knew she would be coming. She had told him to stay on the trail and she would find him, and he believed her.

Between one step and the next, the sun edged above the mountains, casting shafts of golden radiance upon the world. Leitos stopped in his tracks. Without question, the land through which he now trod was arid, but nothing like the waterless desert wastelands he knew. Birds sang as if in praise to the coming day, insects whirred in dense thickets, and there, just at the edge of a field, he saw a pair of antlered animals he knew as deer from his grandfather. They saw him and bounded away in graceful leaps, their short bushy tails waving. He felt awake and truly alive for the first time in his life, like all he had experienced before was just a nightmare.

It was no dark dream
, he told himself.
It was all
as real as this place
. Something Zera had said to him filtered through the events that had come afterward.
“Some believe
Pa’amadin
has a design … but it is not for us to know.”

“What if it
is
for us to know?” Leitos questioned under his breath. “What if
Pa’amadin
places the truth of his will for our lives before us, but leaves the recognizing and care of that truth to us?”

A hush fell, as if the world waited for him to find a puzzle piece he had not known he sought. No answer came, and he let it go. If there was some plan for him, then it would surely make itself known, one way or another.

Despite the constant running and hiding over the last many days, he felt refreshed. He walked slowly at first, loosening the stiffness that had settled into his muscles, then strode out. The trail he followed was a trail no longer. Wider than two wagons abreast, the ancient road ran west. Grass and low bushes had taken root in the joints between the paving stones, in many cases cracking or heaving them out of the underlying soil. No matter the overgrowth, the road was passable. Somewhere along it waited Imuraa, the bone-town Zera had mentioned. Leitos peeked over his shoulder.
She will find me,
he thought, hoping it was sooner rather than later.

When Leitos turned back, he saw a man under a tree. His feet faltered to a stop. Leitos closed his eyes and opened them, thinking shadows under the tree’s boughs were playing tricks. The man remained, cloaked head to foot in pale, threadbare robes, and huddled against the tree.

Leitos carefully reached into his satchel, searching for his knife. His hands went still when he remembered burying it in the neck of the wolf that had attacked him. In his mind’s eyes, he also recalled Lakaan’s dagger, flung away from his outstretched hand. In the aftermath of that battle, it had never crossed his mind to retrieve the dagger.
I am no more dangerous with a blade than without.
The thought was supposed to be reassuring, but fell flat.

At a distance of over a hundred paces, he did not think the man had seen him yet. By his posture—head bowed against arms wrapped around his bent knees—he might have been sleeping. Leitos had decided to skirt around the man, when he raised his head.

“You might as well come up here,” the man advised in a slightly familiar voice. A moment more, and a name and face came to Leitos.
Pathil!

He spun away, choosing the path taken by the deer. From the corner of his eye, he saw the Hunter rise up and give chase. Leitos could not outrun him. He halted, caught up a fist-sized stone, and stood his ground. The Hunter stopped not more than twenty feet away. Leitos waited, knowing his aim was not good enough to dispatch his enemy, even if the distance had been halved.

Moments stretched out while they eyed each other, and Leitos came to the conclusion that the man before him was not Pathil, after all. This man was much taller, nearly as tall as Sandros, though far more slender. With a disconcerting casualness, the man planted the tall staff he was carrying in the ground at his feet and leaned on it. A hood obscured his face, and from a broad leather belt he wore a long, scabbarded sword. Nothing he did seemed overtly threatening, but Leitos felt sure he was dangerous.

“I am Ba’Sel,” the man finally said, pulling back his hood to reveal a face as dark as Pathil’s, marking him as the race that had given rise to the Asra a’Shah. Shorn of all hair, his head shone in the sunlight. Like Pathil, there was a handsomeness to him, his features unlined and somehow noble. Despite the dangerous air about him, his dark eyes glinted with disarming warmth.

“I have no quarrel with you,” Leitos warned.

Ba’Sel flashed a white smile. “That is good, for I can see that you are a fearsome youth. Such a wildness can be tamed—and
should
be. Given half a chance, I dare say I could shape you into a weapon that any
Alon’mahk’lar
would fear.”

Leitos thought the man was mocking him, but he actually seemed sincere. None of that about being turned into a weapon mattered, though. “Will you let me pass?”

“Of course,” Ba’Sel said amiably. “But then, why would you want to pass? Have you not been seeking my order, the Brothers of the Crimson Shield? I am of the mind that in finding me at last—or rather, in me finding you—it would be foolish to turn aside. Do you not agree,
Leitos
?”

Leitos caught his breath. “How do you know who I am?” He thought too late that he should have kept silent, instead of proving his identity by speaking up.

“It has been revealed to me,” Ba’Sel said evasively, “by someone who would very much like to see you again.”

“Zera!” Leitos blurted, unable to control himself.

“I am curious, how exactly did you meet her?”

“She did not tell you?” Leitos asked, surprised. When Ba’Sel shook his head, Leitos said, “She took me from two Hunters. Since then, she has kept me out of their hands on the way west. Last night, she went after a pair of wolves in the mountains—
Alon’mahk’lar
wolves—but they got around her and came after me. The man who was with us, Lakaan, he … he fell to one.” Leitos did not see any reason to bring up the man’s cowardice at the end, when he had offered Leitos up to the wolves. “After that, I fled.”

“We should go,” Ba’Sel said, as if nothing Leitos had explained carried any great significance. “This land is not so abysmal as the dark reaches within the Mountains of Fire, but it is just as deadly.”

“How can I believe that you are who you claim to be?” Leitos demanded.

“I should think placing your name with a face I have never seen is enough,” Ba’Sel said dryly. “Also, I know your purpose.”

Leitos could find no argument to counter that simple logic. Viewing humankind as less than animals,
Alon’mahk’lar
did not acknowledge the names by which people called each other. While the slavemasters had surely passed his description to every Hunter in Geldain, they would not have attached his name to it. He scanned the low, rounded hilltops, but saw nothing to indicate he was near his goal.

“If you search for the Crown of the Setting Sun,” Ba’Sel said, guessing Leitos’s intent, “then you seek in vain.”

“Has it been destroyed?” Leitos asked, dismayed.

“Many years gone,” Ba’Sel admitted.

“I do not understand.”

Ba’Sel tugged the end of his staff from the ground and signaled for Leitos to follow. He hesitated only a moment, then joined the brother. As they walked, Ba’Sel explained.

“We remain hidden by moving to new safe havens. If
Alon’mahk’lar
patrols come too close, we move. If any of our brothers are captured, we move. If there is any indication that our secrecy has been breached, we flee without hesitation. Sometimes our refuge is a mountaintop bastion, as was the first of its name, other times not. Moving so frequently, and finding suitable places to hide and train ourselves, makes for a difficult life. However, it has ensured that the servants of Faceless One have never found us after that first time. And like all others, he still looks in vain for the Crown of the Setting Sun, unable to accept that it no longer exists. At some point, he may realize his folly, but not—”

The wail of an
Alon’mahk’lar
horn cut him short. More followed suit, dozens, screaming like wicked spirits far back in the Mountains of Fire. When the horns fell silent, howls and guttural roars took up the cry of the hunt.

“And here I had planned to spend a pleasant day with a new friend,” Ba’Sel chuckled, strapping his sword belt across his back.

“It is time to run,” Ba’Sel said, repeating words Leitos had long since grown accustomed to hearing.

B
a’Sel trotted back to the road, then headed straight for the Mountains of Fire and the hunting
Alon’mahk’lar
. Leitos was about to question the man’s judgment, when they splashed to the center of the stream and turned south.

“The water will mask our scent,” Ba’Sel said, as if teaching an apprentice. Leitos only nodded. He had run enough since fleeing the mines to know he should conserve his breath when he could.

Where Leitos fought the maddening urge to take flight, Ba’Sel calmly stooped and brought a cupped handful of water to his lips. Only his dark eyes, scanning the wooded hillsides for any sign of movement, indicated that he felt any sense of alarm. Save for flitting birds and rustling leaves, nothing moved.

When the horns wailed anew, closer now, Ba’Sel set out downstream. Leitos splashed along in his wake, wondering how long he would be able to keep the pace after having run through the night. Soon enough he stopped thinking anything, except that he despised the sound of horns and the baying of demon wolves.

For many miles, the stream meandered slow and shallow. Moss slicked the stones below the surface, and more than once Ba’Sel had to pluck Leitos from the water. Soaked as Leitos was, he did not at first realize that the stream was getting wider and swifter. Fed by other streams coming down off the mountains, it was becoming a river.

“Can you swim?” Ba’Sel asked, raising his voice above the river’s deep, watery gurgle.

“Enough to keep from drowning,” Leitos said.

Ba’Sel eyed him askance, no doubt wondering how a slave had learned the skill, then nodded in acceptance. “That is enough.”

A flurry of howls went up, closer than ever, driven to a frenzy by the horns.

Ba’Sel glanced at Leitos’s pack. “If there is anything that cannot be replaced, take it out, and give the rest to me.”

Leitos handed over the pack. “I have nothing.”

“Swim where you need to, but let the current do the work of carrying you downstream,” Ba’Sel advised, his eyes on the steep, forested hillsides overlooking the river. “I will rejoin you shortly.”

Leitos’s heart sped up. “Where are you going?”

In his instructing tone, Ba’Sel said, “I am going to spread your scent through the forest. That will gain us some time to get ahead of these accursed beasts.” He paused, then said, “Are you afraid?”

Leitos saw no reason to lie. “Yes.”

“That is good,” Ba’Sel said, offering a comforting smile. “Let that fear into your soul, but do not let it run free. It will lend you strength. You must harness fear, and all other emotions, Leitos, bend their consuming, chaotic power to your will.”

“I will try,” Leitos said doubtfully.

Ba’Sel gave him an encouraging nod, then waded toward the eastern shore. Leitos waited to see if Ba’Sel would look back, but he never did. Once on shore, he vanished into the forest. Another howl convinced Leitos it was time to leave.

Swimming the river proved far easier than walking, and floating along easier still. And as long as he was moving, harnessing his fear, as Ba’Sel had suggested, did not seem so hard. While he was not exactly sure what that meant, or how to do it, every time a horn shrilled through the forest, or a howl sent birds winging toward the sky, he found that his tired arms gained enough strength to keep propelling him downstream.