Under A Colder Sun (Khale the Wanderer Book 1) (15 page)

“How did you know that?”

“Because that’s what heroes do. You want to be one, more than anything. More than honour. More than nobility. More than love. I will tell you this,” Khale said, looking into her eyes, “Alosse wanted to be a hero and he was one, and he died hating everything that being a hero brought him.”

Leste said nothing.

“I don’t ask you to think your King’s murderer an honest man, or even a good one. I ask only that you remember I said this to you, here and now.”

“I will remember.”

“Good.”

“And now?”

“Now, let’s storm the gates of Neprokhodymh.” Khale shouted the cursed city’s name so that it echoed back through the pass.

“Do you think we will die?”

“Perhaps.”

“I thought you could not die, Khale.”

“There’s always a first time.”

“How can that be?”

The Wanderer turned and gave her a curious smile, “Because I live in hope.”

They set off across the lifeless plains towards the sorcerers’ city.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Colours came first, then shapes and light as Milanda awoke. Sensations came next. She was bound upon a low dais of polished limestone. She was in what appeared to be a vast library that smelled of mildew and incredible age. Its ceiling was high, vaulted, and held in place by pillars of ebon and incarnadine, as broad and thick as ancient trees. She noticed there were tall mirrors of shadowglass set into the pillars.

She had read of shadowglass in her books, and of the uses it was put to. A shudder passed through her body. Across the ceiling’s panels, she could see a fresco of flowing figures; their faces were twisting masks of obsidian, their limbs ending in tendrils, teeth and claws. All of them were as one, and all were caught in the chaos of a seemingly endless maelstrom, silently tearing one another apart.

“
The Darkness wherein the Gods and their Black Madness writhe
...” she whispered, reciting the words as they were taught to her by the Sisters of the Church of Four.

A figure that had once been a man walked through the leaning corridors of the library’s teeming shelves towards her. He ran his fingers along the decrepit, leathery spines of ancient books, stroking them with a gentle lover’s touch. He stank of the same rot that pervaded the chamber and the city standing beyond it, for this was the Autarch of Neprokhodymh. He might have been a great man once, but no more.

The Autarch made his way to a chair of ornately carved wood that creaked as he let his weight fall upon it. His weight was not great as his bones were hollow flutes and his skin was dry papyrus stretched over worm-grey flesh. The faces carved into the wood of the chair were those of the dead, but none were as terrible as the face he bore; it was barely more than a skull with strings of withered hair and beard clinging to it. The skin had dried out to such a degree that it glimmered like a coating of powdered amber crystal.

“How I envy them so,” the Autarch whispered, stroking at the faces that adorned his chair. “The peace of the grave, the quiet of decay and the absolute rest of oblivion. If only I had known that eternity could be such a long and tedious thing.”

He met Milanda’s eyes, and she flinched away.

“I have lived for hundreds and thousands of years, daughter of Colm. I do not remember how long exactly. Within these walls, the passage of time becomes meaningless.”

The Autarch sighed, and Milanda saw breath pass over the space where a tongue quivered like a slug and through teeth that were stalactites of ossified bone.

“I had not foreseen this as my fate when I was a young adept. I spoke the words from my Master’s tome, the one I stole, and now I can’t even remember the title of it, nor a single damned line. I cursed myself, and I’ve forgotten the words that I did it with. I felt like a God when I struck down my Master with the merest glance. Do you think I can remember the spell I did it with either? No. The hieroglyphs and elder signs are all gone from my mind. These eyes that once commanded such a terrible stare are all gristle and cataracts. You can see that, can’t you?

“The strain is atrocious, keeping it all together. A moment’s pause, a second’s thought not spent on keeping everything moving and my bones would collapse and become one with the dust I have feared since birth. Terrible, terrible, terrible.” He rose from his chair, cloaked in grey light, and came towards the dais.

Milanda struggled against her bonds, but the leather thongs she had been tied with did not yield. The head of the Autarch bent towards her, and his fragile hands divested his torso of robes. She saw the preserved parchment of his flesh and the silvered things that squirmed beneath. His penis was uglier and more twisted than the root of a dead tree.

He ran a rotten finger down her cheek, leaving a fragrant trail of embalming powders and funeral spices. “I made it my life’s work to drive the cold of the world from my breast, to be able to draw breath eternal, but now I sit here waiting for death, dreaming of death. This is not how it should be for one such as I. This old body of mine does not have much longer left to it. Milanda, daughter of Alosse and heir to Colm, you are my last hope, but that does not mean I cannot enjoy you somewhat before the ritual begins.”

He moved with a litheness that should not have been possible. She fought against him. She bit and scratched at dead, dried-up skin as cloth tore, flesh was bared, and innocence was taken and lost. Milanda had time but for one scream.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Neprokhodymh came into view after many dark leagues were crossed, during which time Leste spoke not a word. The longer it took for her to bring the Princess back to Colm, the more the city became vulnerable to whatever plots to sack and overthrow it were being made by Barneth and Farness.

Yrena, Osta,
I’m so sorry,
she thought.

Her anger was as much with herself as with Khale. She knew that. The look in Yrena’s eyes before she left her that morning burned her heart every time she thought about it. That look had said:
You’re leaving and you’re not coming back. I am alone again. You will soon be dead. I will weep. I will mourn. I will try to live on without you, but no more than that.

Leste bit back tears as she thought of Yrena teaching and playing with Osta in their home, trying to show the boy that there were good things in the world, things worth living and fighting for, while believing that her lover was going to die on a pointless quest for glory. Her fingers ached from gripping the horse’s reins too hard, and the winds of the waste blew a bitter dust into her mouth and eyes. It was through this constant windblown mist that Leste first beheld Neprokhodymh.

It was a colossal, ruined hive that had once been majestic towers and palatial temples. It stood cracked and hollow above long-broken walls. There was no trace of colour or life to be seen. The winds had blasted the city until it was the same dismal hue as the land it was rooted in, like mouldering teeth jutting from rotten gums. Khale found the remnants of a trail leading to the city, and Leste fell in behind him, as much for a little protection from the stinging bluster of the wind as anything.

How could life exist out here?
she wondered,
and what happened to turn the land to such a state?
She doubted that Khale would give her answers, even if she did have the desire to talk to him. She didn’t, so she left her questions for later—if there was a later.

“Why do you go on Khale? The Autarch has her now. You will not be delivering her to him. You slew Alosse yourself. There will be no golden-eyes for you after this.”

“Colm barely has ten thousand golden-eyes to call its own,” Khale said. “There are those in the South who would pay highly for your Princess. I meant to take her to them.”

Leste looked at him, disbelieving.

“Alosse meant to see her sacrificed to protect Colm. The marriage was a lie.”

Leste looked into his eyes, waiting to see them flicker, to see some trace of untruth there. There was none.

Everything, all of it, was a lie. Yrena had been right after all: she was risking her life in the name of a stupid, chivalrous dream.

Neprokhodymh came closer, and Khale went on, “I meant to sell her for a good price to some rich Lord or other after laying a false trail into the desolation. I never meant to cross through Traitors’ Gap and come here. But for the betrayal of my men and the mirror-beasts that came for us, I would never have come this far and it would have all worked out. I could kill them all for this. I do not mean to leave her in the hands of the Autarch though, that I promise you.”

Leste saw his eyes flicker for a moment –
was Milanda more to him than money?

No, that could not be.

“But you would sell her to be a slave?”

“Which would you prefer, Lady of the Watch? To be a live slave, or a dead princess, which is the nobler fate, and which is the better?”

Leste said nothing to that.

Khale allowed her to try to sleep one more night in the wastes before they entered the city. Leste did try to sleep, but for cries in the night that sounded like Milanda, and the moans that sounded like her own.

They stood at the gates before the light of morning finished filling the sky. Khale laid his hands upon the rust-studded wood and pushed; not a word of incantation passed his lips. There was no spell of warding to break. The doors swept inwards. They went on foot as their steeds whickered and refused to go near the city’s threshold.

The way was open, and the wretched stink of Neprokhodymh assailed their nostrils. A patina of dust covered everything in sight. Their footsteps echoed and grew in volume as they walked along streets lined with rubble and fallen masonry. Leste glimpsed white shapes that were not stone, glimmering here and there. She didn’t have to go any closer to see they were bones left to dry and bleach in the open, but the bones were not the worst of it. After a short way, Leste saw the first of the mages.

“These are the creatures Alosse thought would defend his city,” Khale said, a dark humour colouring his words.

Leste looked and felt sick at the sight of them. These mages were supposed to be the necromancers, witches, and warlocks of legend, but instead they were men and women with scabrous skin and mouths stained by the residue of powders and tinctures. Their eyes were the colour of spoilt eggs and discoloured tongues licked at age-worn teeth.

“I don’t think they’ll be defending anyone, do you?” Khale said.

Leste nodded, grimacing. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Don’t worry, they won’t notice, much less care.”

They passed mages sprawled on makeshift beds and seemingly dozing in the shadows of fallen houses. Leste saw weeping lesions and faces crawling with insects and untreated disease.

“What’s happened to them?”

“Addiction,” Khale said. “High on their own power and visions.”

“Seed-sniffers and powder-merchants,” Leste whispered. “I never would have thought it of mages.”

Khale smiled his scar-twisted smile. “Most of them are little else. The strength to will the world to behave as you see fit is born to a precious few. More than a few can open the path to the Outside and the Thoughtless Dark, but less than a few know how to close it before they see what they should not see, understand what they should not understand, and have to spend the rest of their lives swallowing seeds and tinctures to stay the touch of insanity.”

“I suppose you think yourself to be one of the precious few, then?”

Khale shook his head, face solemn. “No.”

Leste fancied she could hear the entire place breathing, for there were so many mouths about, lightly gasping as their bodies slept and their souls roamed free through other dimensions and planes of existence. Leste could feel the grit and grime of Neprokhodymh settling into her skin.

They came to an open courtyard where once-rich tapestries hung from balconies as rags. Friezes painted onto bare stone had worn away to resemble the etchings made on tombstones.

A high, lonesome wail came from the shadows, and a dank wind blustered through the courtyard. It tugged at her like the weak fingers of the dying. Leste felt a cold sweat pebbling her skin as she heard Khale begin to mutter under his breath. The wind, which tasted sour and smelled of old earth, strengthened until it whipped at them. She took a deep breath and mastered herself.

Leste drew her sword, but her heart did not have time to grow lighter as another fearsome wail cut through the air. As it came to an end, she heard the sound of footsteps on stone, and then she saw what was moving towards them out of the gloom. She did not see all of the apparition at first, only the eyes—or rather, the empty, red spaces where eyes should have been.

Leste’s sword slid from her fingers.

The world seemed to darken, becoming suffused with a crimson atmosphere. The wailing returned, this time with renewed force. It battered at her. It lashed at Khale. It sent them crashing to their knees. Leste’s eyes did not leave those gaping holes in the phantom’s face for a moment. She saw her own death in them, as pale, blood-freckled arms were revealed, and she found herself breathing in the stench of the scarlet stains on a ghostly burial gown. She could feel the cold closing in, the darkness and red of death.

Her fingers groped towards her fallen sword; shaking, trembling, she grasped at it and rammed the pommel upon the stone ground with a resounding crack. The apparition paused. Its wail faltered. Its eyeholes stared at Leste; it burned as she stared back into them.

“You belong with the dead,” Leste croaked.

Her sword’s blade was hot; weeping smoke and a blood of its own, which ran down its length and fell as dark tears to the ground. She felt a curious ache in the palm of her scarred hand.

Voyane, Blood-Creator, protect me.

She stepped towards the grim, wailing spectre, wielding the sword as a cleaver of blood and steel.

“You will be silent! Go back to your grave!”

She drove her sword through its heart. Her teeth ground together as she pierced the torso, feeling it split open like old sacking. Bloodstained fingers grasped at the wounding steel and smouldered. The wailing rose to a scream. The eyeholes wept, pleading, but Leste did not relent.