The Forgotten (The Lost Words: Volume 3) (2 page)

The farmer deflated a little. But his callused, dirty hand rubbed the staff nervously.

Soon the tiny square filled with children. Not many of them, mostly younger ones, just as Tanid had hoped. Normally, when people discovered their special abilities, mostly as they grew up, they tended to flee their homes, terrified of their strange, wicked powers. They felt that if they ran away, they would leave them behind. With younger children, it was the opposite. They kept their abilities secret.

There were five male adults and a scattering of women present now, all looking rather hostile and afraid, every one of them armed. The Parusite settlers were a tough breed, he knew. Leaving their kingdom and coming here to build temples for the gods and goddesses. It was a noble call, and a dangerous one, in an abandoned land without law.

Tanid looked at the children, searching for telltale clues of dark secrets. But most of the kids had bright, bold eyes, like their parents. He knew what he had to do next. He stiffened. Oh, it would be so easy to give up, search elsewhere, but he could not bet the fate of humanity against cowardice.

“Do you have any…special children?”

The swordsman craned his neck. “Say what?”

Tanid spread his arms wide in a pacifying gesture. “Any kids with…problems. Anyone who doesn’t speak well or has bad dreams.”

“Take your filthy curse elsewhere!” one of the other men roared. “We got healthy children here.”

“Yes, yes, I mean no offense. Of course. The gods and goddesses bless your children.”

That seemed to work. The palpable thread of violence dissipated. Tanid breathed deeply. He hated his vulnerability. But that was the grim legacy of the lone god left in the world. To defeat Calemore, he must grovel before humans, begging for help.

No children with weird ailments, then. This village was empty. It did not have any Special Children. Tanid had hoped for a blind child who could foretell rain or one who would not meet anyone’s eyes and could tell when people would die. He desperately needed them.

“Does any one of you wish to become a merchant?” He asked the obvious question.

Silence. The children stared at him. Their glares shouted ordinary things like bread and toys, wild dreams of glory he could not offer them.

“There. No one wants it. You done here,” the swordsman declared.

Tanid nodded, slightly disappointed. “Yes. Sure.” He reached into his pocket and produced a handful of silvers. “For your trouble, kind people.” He handed the money to the youth. “The gods and goddesses bless you.”

“You, too, merchant.”

The village watched him depart without any waves or shouts of good-bye. Tanid crested the rise, and the village vanished from his view. He let the illusion of the cart vanish. Such a risky thing, he knew. But he did it, for the sake of humanity.

He went south.

CHAPTER 1

S
onya was lying on her bed, thinking. Well, it was not her bed. Not really. It was a bed in one of the guest rooms in Leopold’s palace. Not the lavish room she had stayed in just before the ill-fated alliance with the nomads. Neither was it Leopold’s anymore. The idiot was dead, and now, the rooms, all of them, belonged to General Pacmad.

Her master now.

An ordinary woman would spend her time in captivity as a concubine to a wild, savage, ruthless tribesman wallowing in pain and regret, cursing her bad luck, the beatings, the rapes. An ordinary woman would think how she might end her misery, if only they let her grab a knife or some poison. A lesser lady would choose to accept her pitiful destiny as a meat mattress for some primitive.

Countess Sonya was not an ordinary woman.

But to say she wasn’t afraid would have been a lie.

Upon reflection, Sonya valued her insistence on the alliance with the nomads to be a poor choice, one that disregarded history and past wars. But you could not ascend in a society of vultures by nipping daintily at the leftovers; you stuck your head deep into the innards and gorged.

She wondered what her useless husband would do if faced with the same predicament. Would he cry and beg? Would he try to weasel his way out? Where was he, anyway, she wondered. Still only a count, in a realm that no longer had a monarch, no longer had its aristocratic ladder. That made her plans to become a margravine that much harder. But she would find a way.

Sonya didn’t have much to do. General Pacmad kept her locked in the room and only came around when he felt like fucking. Some old, bent woman that served him brought her food and water twice a day and would sometimes give her new clothes or change the blood-spattered linen. Not much to do. Well, she could at least open the windows and enjoy some fresh air.

In the first days, it had smelled like soot and ash and fire. Then, for weeks, the stench of rotten meat was all she could breathe. Sonya did not much appreciate the reek of decomposing bodies of her fellow countrymen and the small folk, no more than she had sympathy for their fate. To invest in pity and sorrow for other people would be to undermine her own survival.

She remembered all too well the coup. That ax spinning, Leopold sagging where he sat on his throne, big, meaty hands with chewed, earth-lined fingernails gripping her, tearing her expensive dress and her jewelry, pressing their goat-stinking bodies against hers. The cold pain of dull punches in her stomach and legs, the smothering clench on her mouth and throat as they tried to silence her screams of indignation at the feverish humiliation of their acts.

After Pacmad’s warriors had claimed her, the chieftain himself had appropriated all of the noble ladies and had them
locked up in various rooms around the palace. Sonya did not quite know who else might have lived through that first night, but she knew that Queen Diana was dead. And they had burned that cretin of a prince. The Kataji had no use for the mad or crippled.

Her windows looked into the city, toward the zigzagging lines of narrow streets and tall buildings, away from the luxury and opulence of the palace grounds and nearby villas. She had watched the riots simmer for almost a week, first the resistance of the standing army, then the pillage. The tribesmen had almost broken into a war among themselves as they set about looting the city, trying to cope with the enormity of their plunder, the entire city of Somar.

With eyes closed almost shut from the initial beating, she had stood by that window and watched the nomads drag women and small children through the alleys, taking them away. Then, the bodies of men. Killed to the last, every one of them, soldiers, craftsmen, old people, anyone with a penis between his legs.

Sonya had stood, a chill spring rain cleansing the filth of the Kataji from her bruised limbs, a cold wind trying to cool down her rage. She had stood and watched the nomads turn Somar into a charred skeleton. They burned the parks, tore down anything they couldn’t steal or use.

And closer, much closer, they had given stage to eleven generations of postponed vengeance.

Countess Sonya had a clear view of the cobbled courtyard in front of the palace, a huge triangular space with cream-colored buildings on the far two sides. There was an ancient temple turned into a theater, a four-story villa turned into a tax house, the administrative offices of the Eracian army, a shameful institution of nostalgia and the more recent failures, the
elegant marketplace that served those who ate off porcelain platters with real gold forks.

The cobbles were pale red now, the blood soaked into the stone.

After securing the city’s outer perimeter, the nomads had retreated toward the palace and its defensible higher ground, barricading streets, setting up in buildings as temporary shelter. For people used to rutting in hide tents, they had very quickly taken to enjoying the best of Somar’s architecture and the dozens of rooms that each building offered. But then, savages were savages, so they took their horses and goats and dogs inside and used the exquisite furniture for cook fire.

And then, most leisurely, but in a very planned manner, the nomads had started the executions of Somar’s elite. Sonya had watched them march shackled men into that courtyard and kill them in all kinds of ways. Pacmad presided the grisly ceremonies, in the rain and under the hot sun, which came as the spring aged. There seemed to be some kind of justice scale to his judgment, because he seemed to allot different shares of killings to different tribes. Some got to exact their vengeance against only a few noble Eracians, others against dozens.

So she got to watch how they killed Konrad, Master of Coin Quade, Master of Trade Ital, Count Markus. Then, they executed Commander Raymond of the Northern Army, but she dismissed him as a commoner, unimportant in her scheme. With each death, Sonya sketched the map of the Eracian aristocracy afresh, trying to find her place in the narrowing pyramid of names and titles. Each death brought her that much closer to the top. Unfortunately, too many members of Leopold’s Privy Council, senior consultants and highest-ranking nobility had been detained by that Athesian whore,
escaping their executions. She could only hope they had died in the war against the Parusites.

They had beheaded Philip, simple and quick. But then, they had set Ludwig on fire and watched him run around the yard screaming, laughing and dodging his tiny burning frame. A small bear had been brought out, and it danced to the beat of their drums and claps.

Sonya had imagined she would vomit seeing these horrors. But she hadn’t.

Then, she had also realized that her new master had placed the captured noble ladies in rooms facing toward the city, higher up, so they could glimpse beyond the cascade of sloping tiles of the armory and the low, fat palace walls and enjoy the view of the destruction of the Eracian society. A statement, a message. Probably saved him hours of intimidation and clubbing them to oblivion with his meaty fists, not that they did not deserve it, most of them, spoiled bitches.

At that moment, Countess Sonya had decided she had to be very careful around Pacmad.

He might be an animal, but he was a clever one.

Still, she could not just give up and let him feel like he had defeated her. She allowed neither the beatings, nor the rapes, nor the vivid atrocities to break her spirit, and she had showed her resolve at every given opportunity. Pacmad never despaired or got angry at her; he just punished her more, in his simple, brutal ways. Very soon, Sonya had learned that in a contest of physical strength, she would quickly lose the battle. And no matter how tough she was, she hated the abuse and the pain, hated being helpless and weak.

She needed to bring Pacmad down by wit.

She was far from being defeated, but she had to adjust her strategy.

Quickly, she had adapted her behavior to suit her new master and deferred to him as little as she could while plotting her revenge. Not that she would stoop to trying to get back at him for the humiliation and pain he had caused her, or for ruining years of careful planning of becoming a margravine and later a duchess. No, she intended to use him, make him into her tool. So maybe one ruler was dead; there was another ruler, another opportunity. Perhaps Pacmad could give her what Leopold hadn’t, or even couldn’t.

So she no longer teased him about his smell and looks, no longer laughed at the small size of his cock. She did not laugh at his dialect, even though for a savage, he spoke a very decent Continental. And she would not argue or delay against his commands. It also spared her the kicks and punches. Not because Pacmad hated her, but because domesticated animals, beast and captive women alike, were meant to be treated that way, he reasoned. And maybe, maybe because his great-great-grandmother had been raped by Vergil. That gave her some small satisfaction. She knew she was above that, but still, she could not feel just a tad joyful about the fact so many of the tribesmen had paler eyes and russet hair three centuries after the conquest.

Even so, the general was never a gentle man, even when he was not bent on punishment and submission. He was also somewhat unpredictable, which worried her, but the worst part was, she was not really sure what kind of a man he was.

Did he like his concubines willing or fearful?

That was one thing she still had not checked and didn’t dare just yet. The plan she had set for herself was extremely dangerous and delicate. She could not let her eagerness, her lust for power destroy it. And that meant she had to be careful around Pacmad, make sure she was timid and frightened
and confused in the right doses. Then, slowly, when his guard dropped, she would own his soul.

Sonya got off the bed, stretching. Her ribs were still sore from that kick a week back. She wished she had a mirror so she could check her face. She didn’t fear getting fat, not on the meager diet he fed her, but the lack of exercise did make her muscles sag, made the fat crinkle under the skin on her thighs. She could not shower, so she stank like a beast, and her eyebrows had grown back to their original thickness.

She looked at her fingers; a tiniest flake of red polish still lingered on some of her nails, almost half an inch longer than they had been several weeks ago, when Pacmad had taken over Somar.