Heirs of the Fallen: Book 04 - Wrath of the Fallen (21 page)

—“Keri, my mother,” he breathed, and was startled to find himself once more drifting on dark tides with Zera and the golden spindle. He searched her eyes. “That was my mother ... on the day of my birth?”

“It was.”

He studied the thread again, how it wove itself into the thickness of the cord, but this time he did not touch it. “This is my life?” It seemed strange that such a fragile thing could represent his existence.

“It is what your life may be,” Zera said, pointing at the thread. She traced it to the cord stretching over the whorl. “And this is what your life has been.”

It was so wondrous, so confusing, but....

“How can any of this help me to claim the Powers of Creation?” Leitos asked. “How can it help me defeat Peropis?”

“These threads represent all life, Leitos, and in all life, great and small, resides some measure the Powers of Creation, most often so little as to be meaningless beyond the existence that it grants the living.”

“Then why doesn’t Peropis claim it for herself?”

“In time she will, unless you stop her.”

“How?”

“You must take these powers into yourself, as much as you can bear to hold.”

“And then what?”

Zera gave him a reassuring smile. “When the time is right, you will know what to do.”

Leitos kept his doubts close. “Does Peropis know you are here, helping me?”

“She is a goddess, but she is not omnipotent. And besides, she is busy.”

“With what?”

“Planning your doom.”

Leitos closed his eyes and shuddered at those words. When he opened his eyes, Zera and the golden spindle had vanished. The darkness remained, but it was not complete. Stars glittered overhead, the smell of the sea filled his nose, and the distant boom of crashing waves lurked just below the creaking of oars.

He felt someone’s gaze on him. Belina sat nearby, studying him in that disconcerting way she had. That expression was better than the fear had seen on her face the night he saved her from the sea-wolves. He gave her a faint smile, and looked away.

Zera’s voice drifted out of the residue of slumber.
Do you love her?

I can’t
, he thought in answer.
Not with war upon us
.

Laughter bubbled through his mind, but as far as he could tell, it wasn’t Zera’s laughter.
Why, that is no answer at all.

Chapter 26

“Leave it,” Leitos suggested.

Belina stopped short of wiping sweat from her brow. “Why?”

“It’ll cool you. Besides, by midday the desert will dry you out so much you’ll wish you had the sweat back.”

She lowered her hand and, with a look of dismay, surveyed the arid landscape of rock, sand, and prickly scrub. The rest of the Yatoans wore similar expressions.

“It’s not so bad, once you get used to it,” Leitos said, pleased to be in a place free of crawling bugs and constant damp. He might have been born in the frozen wastes of Izutar, but knowledge of his homelands began and ended with the short time he had spent battling his possessed grandfather. Yato, for all its lushness and green murk, did not suit him. Witch’s Mole had been a good home, but he preferred Geldain’s long views of high plateaus, broken sandstone hills, and sweltering plains paved in sand and gravel. It was a deadly land for those who did not know the secrets he had learned while still a slave, but he counted it as his true home.

“I could never love this place,” Belina said. She sipped from a waterskin, then grimaced. “This is awful.”

Leitos knew well the gritty taste she meant. There were many hidden water sources in the desert, but all they had been able to find came from digging deep into a dry wash, and waiting for silty water to seep into the hole. He laughed quietly. “It’s not so bad, once you get used to it.”

She gave him a stern look, and he was glad for it. Seeing her frown reminded him of the way she looked at him after she and Nola drubbed him senseless, dragged him to her clan’s camp, and tossed him into a pigsty. Things between them, it seemed, were getting back to normal. As normal as they could be, on the eve of war.

“Is that a good idea?” Nola said, peering at a column of dark smoke rising off the sandy verge between sea and land, where they had put ashore. Ulmek and Adham were stealthy shapes darting between cover, making their way back to the rest of the company. “Someone might see it.”

“Doubtless they will,” Sumahn answered. As was his habit of late, he remained close enough to brush shoulders with Nola. She did not seem to mind and, surprisingly, neither did Damoc.

It pleased Leitos that she was there for the young warrior, and he for her. Hopefully her sway over Sumahn was long-lasting. If not, Leitos imagined the death of Daris would provoke Sumahn to do something rash. But even with Nola at his side, he was more solemn than he had been, and given to brooding silences.

“Then why do it?” Nola asked, her remaining eye a brilliant green under an arched brow. The expression tugged at the healing scar running up the other side of her face, but the dark band of cloth swaddling her head concealed the empty socket where her other eye had been.

“Why indeed?” Damoc growled, gaze flicking here and there, as if he expected Alon’mahk’lar to burst from the ground at his feet.

“It will attract any of our enemies who are close,” Sumahn said.

“Why draw their attention at all?”

“Alon’mahk’lar and their human pets patrol all of Geldain. It’s better to draw them to the boats, while we escape in another direction.”

Damoc looked unconvinced. “Couldn’t we just sneak along, and avoid searching eyes altogether?”

“Smugglers are common this close to Zuladah. Better for us if Alon’mahk’lar find the boats and believe they are dealing with those attempting to escape obligations to the king.”

“Obligations?” Damoc murmured, at the same time Belina said, “King?”

“The obligations are levies paid in wares and supplies to the king,” Sumahn said, “who is actually a chosen servant of the Faceless One.”

“Don’t you mean Peropis?” Nola said, gently poking an elbow into his ribs.

Sumahn shot Leitos a hard look. “You could have let us believe the Faceless One still lived. But, no, you had to go and complicate everything by revealing that a demon-goddess was behind the whole mess.”

“Forgive me,” Leitos said with mock humility, and Sumahn’s rigid mask cracked a bit, then broke entirely. He laughed out loud, and Leitos laughed with him.

“Gods good and wise, are you trying to get us caught?” Damoc demanded, ducking behind a boulder, as if that would keep any passing Alon’mahk’lar from seeing him.

Leitos and Sumahn laughed harder, and even Nola joined them, though she winced when her smile grew too large.

By the time the mirth faded, Leitos was wiping tears from his eyes, wondering what he had found so funny. Belina gazed at him as if he were daft, and Leitos almost fell into another fit of hilarity. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to lose control again, she came back to the grim matter at hand—a rather unfortunate choice, to Leitos’s mind.

“Why would Peropis need human servants?”

Leitos explained, “We humans have an inborn fear of Alon’mahk’lar, and Peropis rightly worries that such fear could lead to a unification of humankind, and eventual rebellion. As it stands, Peropis uses willing humans to rule their fellows. Of course, those
rulers
don’t actually rule anything. In their way, they are slaves like everyone else.”

“I think that is too kind,” Sumahn said. “Like the sea-wolves, they bowed to Peropis, and help Alon’mahk’lar keep their boots on the throats of humankind.”

“Why?” Nola asked, shaking her head in disbelief.

Leitos’s jaw clenched. “Doing so earns them station and peace, bread and leisure.”

Ba’Sel’s mad cackle drew every eye. He sat in the shade of a tipped boulder, arms tight around his knees, rocking and rocking. “Was the same even before the Upheaval. The highborn rule, and the lowborn wear chains of servitude.” He cackled again. “It’s the same now, and will be the same forever. The faces of our rulers change, but that changes nothing. Better to accept and bow and hide....” his words gradually trailed off to a muttering whisper.

“We should never have brought him,” Damoc grumbled.

No one disagreed, but Leitos found in his heart a measure of pity for his old mentor. A moment later, the idea of giving Ba’Sel to the sea flashed through his mind, and he quickly tramped it down, mortified by the callous thought.
Mortified
, but at the same time sure that getting rid of Ba’Sel was the right thing to do, at least for everyone except Ba’Sel.

“Are we ready?” Ulmek asked, as he came around a jumble of spiny brush. Adham stood at his side, adjusting the straps of his haversack. Everyone else wore one, as well.

“Zuladah awaits,” Sumahn said. He cut his eyes toward Leitos. In a quiet voice, he added, “I hope you’re right about the folk there, little brother, or we are taking a great risk for nothing.”

“I don’t consider losing my head or ending up in chains
nothing
,” Damoc said.

“They will join us, once we show them they can,” Leitos said.

After sending a few scouts ahead, Ulmek led the rest of the company to the east, and soon brought them to a gulley where all but Ulmek and Leitos would stay under cover. The day’s heat increased, but no one complained aloud. Leitos was sure that they, like himself, had more important things to think about. Things like starting a war with an enemy that had never lost a significant battle.

Chapter 27

Although he had first come to the city from another direction, and in far different company, Zuladah was much as Leitos remembered it.

Dismal and dusty under the setting sun, the city sprawled like a trash heap within the confines of a shallow basin. A disorderly string of mudbrick shanties sprouted up just outside the city wall, and followed a serpentine road down to a large crescent harbor, where small fishing boats swam timidly around a score of sleek Kelren galleys and slave ships.

Closer by, folk were still entering the city, but at this time of day, most were trudging away, their pushcarts and rickety wagons empty, the baskets and panniers they carried barren.

“How do you mean to get us in?” Leitos asked Ulmek.

“We walk.”

Leitos frowned. “We cannot simply walk in. There are guards at the gates and on the walls, if you haven’t noticed. Likely, there are also hidden Alon’mahk’lar. And since we are not farmers or crafters, we have nothing to pay the king’s obligations.”

Ulmek smiled. “You, boy, underestimate the power of deception—and where that fails, there’s always intimidation.”

“You mean to
threaten
your way in?”

“I don’t believe it will come to that.” Ulmek stood straighter, put on his fiercest face. “I fancy that I make a fine Hunter, don’t you? And you, little brother, will be my apprentice.”

Leitos thought of the Hunters he had known: Zera, Sandros, Pathil. They had all been changelings, but when not showing their demon-born faces, they had looked as human as anyone else. If there was a difference, it was in their bearing—confident to the point of brazen. He and Ulmek might pull it off, but.... “What if they see through our disguises?”

Ulmek chuckled grimly. “Then a lot of gate guards will miss the setting of the sun this evening.” When Leitos didn’t share his humor, Ulmek added, “Trust me, boy, Hunters are not so few in Geldain that a lowly gate guard can recognize them all. Just leave the talking to me.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Just stay quiet and look very, very angry. You can do that, yes?”

Leitos wasn’t so sure, but he nodded.

They were about to make their way down to the rocky road below them, but froze at the dull clanking of a bell. “Hold,” Ulmek said, motioning Leitos to hide behind a thorn bush.

The racket grew louder, and a small herd of wooly sheep came around a bend in the road. A man and two young boys in roughspun tunics used sticks to goad the animals along.

After the shepherds had gone by, Ulmek and Leitos hurried down to the road. “I see no reason for us to dance around sheep dung or eat dust,” Ulmek said, quickening his stride until past the shepherds, who looked neither left nor right.

Leitos had seen similar beaten expressions when he came to Zuladah with Zera. It angered and saddened him, and made him wonder why no one had ever risen up against their crushing servitude before now. He thought maybe they feared death, but amended that. For them, death and life were the same. It was the manner in which they would perish that kept them groveling. Also, like his own enslaved people, they believed the lies about their ancestors’ disobedience to the Faceless One, and so accepted their fate.

Before Leitos and Ulmek reached Zuladah’s southern gate, a familiar refrain rose up from the few folk they shared the road with.

From the darkness between the stars,

Came He, the Lord of Light,