The Nesilia's War Trilogy: (Buried Goddess Saga Box Set: Books 4-6)

by Rhett C. Bruno

  The warlocks’ fire shield had managed to protect the zhulong stables filled with the giant creatures they’d stolen from the Black Sands. Beastmasters commanded the caged dire wolves with them to feast, and beasts chased beasts as the warlocks lifted the veil of fire.

  Mak and the survivors charged through the Glass ranks, heading north. Mak grabbed the fur of his own dire wolf, Trite, pushing him forward as Mak mounted one of the zhulong. Smoke and ember singed his brow, sweat poured down his back, but he charged ahead, his axe carving a bloody line through the cowards.

  By the time Mak reached the ridge looking down upon the camp and escaped the smog of smoke, he glanced back and saw that the Glassmen didn’t give chase. Instead, they cheered, raising spears and swords in the air as if they’d won a great victory. A few even continued firing arrows to keep the Drav Cra running.

  Mak yanked on the zhulong’s thick, orange mane to stop its retreat and watched as his people rushed by. Bloody, exhausted, terrified… he’d seen his warriors be many things, but terrified was never one of them. Even the few warlocks who’d survived looked as though they’d seen Skorravik, his people’s eternal plane of rest, and Nesilia wasn’t there. They rode on the backs of hard-scaled zhulong, slouched, drained of too much blood and on the precipice of death. They’d need water, food, and all their supplies were burned.

  From so high up, Mak could see beyond Nahanab into the shallow cove where it was located. The longboats his people had lent to the war effort were full of activity. Some burned, others flipped, and he could see the shadows of his own people being tossed overboard. Betrayed.

  The very sight sent a chill up Mak’s spine like never before. He wanted to roar and crack open the earth. Glass warships were on the way, and now, in the night, they’d stolen Mak’s ships so they could keep up the blockade on Nahanab. As if theDrav Cra had never been a part of it.

  A piece of parchment blew by, signed on the bottom and still spitting ash. Mak snatched it. He couldn’t read the Glassmen’s language too well, and the top half of the message was missing, but he put things together.

  REDSTAR HAS BEEN PROVEN A DECEIVER AND SLAIN... THE DRAV CRA ARE EXPELLED FROM YARRINGTON… THE ALLIANCE IS BROKEN… CLAIM THEM BEFORE THEY CLAIM YOU.

  —SIR TORSTEN UNGER, MASTER OF WARFARE.

  An arrow soared across the sky and stuck into Mak’s shoulder, blood spattering the parchment. He barely flinched, just gritted his teeth, snapped it in half, and then crumpled the letter, throwing it on the ground where Trite sniffed at it.

  “Drad Mak, we must go!” Ugosah ordered from atop a zhulong of his own.

  All those Glass townsfolk he’d spared in the Far North… now Mak wished he’d butchered them all. The Arch Warlock was dead, murdered by fools who prayed to a foolish god who had forgotten them. Forgotten everyone.

  Mak reached up, tore the white helm from his head and stared at it. He thought about slamming it down but instead placed it in his lap. He’d worn it in the name of an alliance Redstar promised would be fruitful. No longer. Now, the man who’d caused so many of his brothers to die, floundering and afraid, would pay. Mak would force the helm upon Torsten Unger’s head, and crush his skull within it. Every coward who worshipped Iam would die screaming… in the name of the Buried Goddess.

  THE THIEF

  Flames raced through the air, one after another like shooting stars. The heat bore down on Whitney like a rabid wolf as sweat poured from his brow. His back and neck were sore, arms burning from exertion, but he couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. Children were counting on him.

  “Five, four, three, two, one.” They all counted down together as they’d been doing for what felt like an hour. Finally, Whitney caught the torches, two in one hand, one in the other, then bowed with a flourish, hands out to his sides.

  “Good show, Master Fierstown!” called a voice from the crowd.

  Whitney looked down at the still-burning torches, then dropped them headfirst into a bucket of water. Steam rose like smoke from a dragon’s nostrils as the fire sizzled out.

  “Thank you, kind people of…” He leaned back to one of his fellow performers and whispered, “Where the yig are we tonight?”

  “Grambling,” one of them replied.

  Whitney returned to the crowd and shouted, “Grambling! It was an honor performing for you this evening.”

  The crowd was filing out even as he spoke. He heard clinks as a humble few autlas landed in his cup.

  Once all the Gramblites who’d come out for a show dispersed, Whitney picked up the container and gave it a shake. “Good show,” he scoffed. “Not good enough it seems. Ungrateful…”

  For as long as Whitney could remember, he’d wished to be a part of a traveling troupe, performing night after night, soaking up the peoples’ applause and hard-earned coin like a cotton towel on a rainy day. He’d even run with a group early on in his thieving career, but truth be told, he’d done little more than carry the actor’s props.

  Presently, he sighed, rolled his head back, and tried to recount the events that led him to this mud-sodden town just west of the gorge. As he did, he tried not to remember the fictitious-but-all-too-real-to-him six years he’d spent living in Elsewhere, tending his parents’ farm with Kazimir the Breklian upyr. He tried not to remember being so close to Sora after all that time only to watch her torn away and whisked back to whatever hidden mystics she’d—apparently—found in Panping. He tried to forget the sight of his only friend, Torsten—gods he hoped no one ever heard him say that out loud—blind as a bat, lying in bed and waiting for Iam to see fit to spare him the misery of life.

  The Webbed Woods and the terrors of the spider queen Bliss seemed so distant now. So trivial. So pointless. Shallow, even, the way most of his life had been. The World’s Greatest Thief was no more. Now he was merely Whitney Fierstown, a man obsessed with finding the woman he loved.

  That meant traversing the entire world from Yarrington, where that damnable portal had spit him out on the top of Mt. Lister, all the way to Yaolin City where he had to assume Sora still would be. All he had was the vision of her in a stone-walled room filled with frightened looking Panpingese men and women garbed in the robes worn by mystics in paintings.

  He removed his mask, the brand of the Pompare Troupe. It was a dark gray and purple fragment of wood that covered the left half of his face, part of the mystique, the show.

  Whitney had always said, “A good disguise hides a thief better than shadow…” It was lesson number eighty-two that he wished he could’ve taught Sora. She’d played the role of his apprentice, but she was so much more than that.

  If only he’d told her.

  Still staring down at the measly coins, Whitney fought the temptation to snatch a coin purse from one of the fine citizens of Grambling or even one of his fellow performers. But that was the old Whitney Fierstown thinking. He was a thief. The new and improved Whitney was not. At least, not at the moment.

  He’d done a lot of thinking since his time spent in Elsewhere—what else does one do while stuck in their own personal exile within the supernatural confines of Troborough?

  He’d done even more thinking when the troupe passed through the real Troborough a few weeks prior. The village remained in ruins, most buildings burned to ash and cinder, but the church stood proud and intact. Torsten would’ve called it symbolic, a church of Iam withstanding enemy attacks. Whitney just figured it was the only building in that shoghole, Iam-forsaken town made out of stone instead of thatch and wood.

  There’s no such thing as divine providence, Whitney thought. Just luck and shog.

  Lately, Whitney felt like he lived more on the shog-end of things. Luck had been his lady for years, but not since he’d met that dreadful dwarf, Grint Strongiron. It seemed so long ago when Whitney’d sat in the Twilight Manor, drinking and enjoying himself, minding his own yigging business.

  “Steal from the King,” that little piss of a dwarf had said. And Whitney had been stupid enough to take up the
challenge. From there, it was downhill. He’d been imprisoned more times in the last months than his whole life combined, and that wasn’t counting Elsewhere.

  Alless was there in Real Troborough. Quite a bit older now, but still pretty in her particular way. In Fake Troborough, Whitney and Alless flirted some, although his love for Sora made sure it never went any further. But the real Alless, like everyone else at the Manor—which they’d done a damn fine job rebuilding—didn’t remember him any better than Haam had all those years ago in The Lofty Mare in Old Yarrington.

  All those years ago, Whitney thought. Gods and monsters, it was only a matter of months on this side of Elsewhere.

  And that’s the way his life had been. The whole world had barely passed a season, suffering only months under the torment of a warlock named Redstar and the petulant little child, King Pi. But Whitney: he’d had years to grow and mature only to be thrust back into a Pantego that now barely felt familiar.

  That was part of why he knew he needed to reach Sora, besides how terrified she looked when the mystics tore her out of Elsewhere. He imagined that maybe, just maybe, a few moments with her would help him feel like he belonged again.

  “I’m on my way, fast as I can,” he whispered. Then he packed up his things and headed for camp. Trinkets mostly. Since joining the troupe, he’d been given precious-few opportunities to act. Instead, the Pompares, the overfed wretches they were, had him doing the sorts of magic tricks and feats of dexterity a life as a thief teaches a man.

  When the other performers also working the south part of town and the ogling crowds had wholly abandoned the area, Whitney clicked his tongue a few times. From behind a stack of crates by the general store, a small, brown reptile scurried out. She stuck out her tongue as if tasting the air, then scampered over to Whitney.

  “Good job lighting the torches and not burning my hands this time,” Whitney said, bending over to scratch the wyvern, Aquira, behind the frills on her neck. “I know you preferred Sora, but I think you’re great, too.”

  Aquira showed up just a week or so after Whitney had set out from Yarrington to find Sora. He woke up to the wyvern’s big eyes staring at him while she perched on his chest, damn-near giving him a heart attack. He had no idea why she was there, but no matter what he did, she followed him like a shadow.

  He was certain that with all her clicks and squeaks, Aquira was trying to tell him what had happened, where Sora was, and why Aquira wasn’t with her. He was also certain that made him crazy, thinking a wyvern could communicate on such a high intellectual level… but she was, except Whitney didn’t know how to understand her. For the weeks they’d been together, Whitney had tried everything to develop a form of communication they could share. But so far, nothing worked.

  He looked down once again at his cup. There weren’t even enough coins inside to pay for his place in the troupe. Hadn’t been for a few stops now. It wasn’t Whitney’s fault; that yigging, half-naked Glintish dancer kept stealing all the attention! She and her mother, the bard.

  He spotted them, bidding farewell to a crowd in the Grambling Inn, a rat-infested dump if he ever saw one. If I could just swipe a few silver autlas… but he couldn’t. That would only leave them short. If Elsewhere taught him anything, it was how every rotten thing he’ ever done affected somebody, even if he’d never realized it.

  His selfishness had caused more trouble than ever he could’ve imagined. Before Elsewhere, he’d only heard stories of his parents’ deaths. But there, even if they weren’t his real parents, he’d watched his father suffer and die because of decisions Whitney had made. He watched his mother grow old without Rocco there to take care of her, and ultimately, he watched everyone in his hometown die at the hand of sharp-toothed, red-eyed demons.

  It wasn’t much different in real life, though. The demons from the Black Sands had brought the fires of Elsewhere with them when they decided King Liam’s death was worth the lives of a hundred more.

  Whitney wasn’t used to thinking about others. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but it felt good. Sometimes he imagined that after he retrieved Sora, maybe, together, they could go back to Troborough and help rebuild things once and for all. They could dig up all the stolen trinkets and priceless items buried throughout Pantego which he’d stolen over the years and either return them to their owners or sell them, giving the gold to the less fortunate.

  Maybe Torsten, in his disabled state, would settle down there as well. Perhaps there was something prophetic about Whitney’s time spent in Quasi-Troborough, where Torsten had been the local priest. Whitney could see his stubborn friend fathering the masses. Yig, he wouldn’t even have to burn out his eyes like Wren the Holy. His were already gone.

  Maybe providence wasn’t all hog shog.

  Whitney regarded the darkening sky. It wasn’t the deep purple of Elsewhere, but the blue and green skies spoke of the rain that would be coming. Springtime in Pantego was the time of rain and storm, and thus far, it did not disappoint.

  You’re here, he reminded himself, as he often did when his musings wound up far too reminiscent of life in Elsewhere.

  A brisk wind blew in as if to further remind him, and Aquira nestled up against Whitney’s neck. She was warm, but also kind of itchy. Whitney pulled his cloak tighter between him and the wyvern. The Glintish performance troupe had him decked out in beautiful clothing from their homeland of Glinthaven. They were flashy folk, with a lust for intricate design—especially Benon and the rest of the actors. The lot of them walked just ahead of Whitney, leading the way back to their camp just outside of Grambling, each one dressed in sparkling clothes meant to draw the attention of the simple people of these simple towns.

  Whitney didn’t think it was altogether fair. There were so many Glintish, so few Grambling citizens and even less coin to go around. That each of them, including Whitney, had to pay the same for their spot in the caravan was an injustice. Nobody would pay to see me strip down and dance.

  He stopped himself; he was starting to sound like the noble he’d pretended to be. A man had to earn his keep, no matter the cost.

  But the cost was so high. He absentmindedly shook the can again.

  “Hey, don’t worry about it, Mister Fierstown,” said a small voice from behind him, moving quickly to his side.

  Whitney turned to see a young Glintish boy garbed in purple and yellow robes. His head was covered with a bandana of the same colors, and coins and charms cascaded down from it in a ring around his skull.

  “How’d you do, Gentry?” Whitney asked.

  “No better than you,” he answered. “Modera Pompare will take into consideration the state of this town when collecting dues. Don’t worry. Most men here went off to war, they say.”

  “It’s not Modera I’m worried about,” Whitney said.

  “What? Fadra? Fadra Pompare is a… what is the word? Stuffed animal?”

  “Sure. If stuffed animals were known for fits of anger and drunken rages.”

  “Oh, he is not that bad,” Gentry said, dismissing the idea with a wave. “I know you are new to the troupe, but Modera and Fadra have taken good care of us for decades.”

  “Us?” Whitney asked. The boy was barely even a decade old himself.

  “Sure,” Gentry said. “The Troupe. You know, everyone.”

  “And you?”

  “Awhile,” he said, but that was all. The boy was rather secretive about his time spent with the Pompares. Whitney had his suspicions why but kept them to himself. Gentry was his only real friend out here. The only one he could trust who hadn’t seen enough of the world to know backstabbing was the way of it.

  They walked together down the main stretch of Grambling. Whitney’s eye fell upon a small establishment a few doors down from the inn. Its walls were brick, with vines growing up the front, purple flowers beginning to blossom. Its shutters were the color of a morning sky with a door to match.

  A memory of the place hit him like a deluge. To him, it was more than six years a
go when he and Sora sat down at that very chowder house on their way to Winde Port. To the rest of existence, it was mere months.

  He closed his eyes. He kept trying to ignore thoughts of Elsewhere, but he couldn’t. His brain hurt when he considered the implications. Had he aged six years more than everyone else? Did his physical body age—hair, bones, teeth… heart? He had to imagine it had. If his mind retained all the memories and lessons he’d learned, and his muscles, thick and firm from years working his twice-deceased father’s farm, hadn’t disappeared, then it was only fair to believe he was six years closer to the grave.

  Aquira shifted on his shoulder, but Whitney hardly registered the movement.

  Gentry must’ve noticed Whitney eyeing the chowder house because he said, “Don’t worry, Ms. Francesca will have something good for us to eat back at camp. We’ll have to finish it quickly if we hope to avoid getting rained on, though.”

  “It’s not that…” Whitney started, then said, “How long until we reach Myen Elnoir?” He immediately felt stupid asking a boy so young to judge the distance to a city so far away. The troupe was headed there for some Glintish festival. Yaolin City was on the way, which was why he’d chosen to travel with them in the first place. It was his only option considering he hadn’t even a bronzer to his name after leaving Elsewhere. Moving south and east across the seas was far too dangerous with the Shesaitju at war. And stealing a horse and traveling alone across Pantego wasn’t in the cards. War brought the worst sorts of people to the roads, from greedy bandits to mule-headed Glass soldiers—not to mention rumors of marauding Drav Cra and Shesaitju east of the Jarein Gorge.

  In these uncertain times, traveling with a group was the best way to ensure he’d reach Sora alive, and he had to.

  “One thing you gotta learn about the Glintish: we’re never in a hurry,” Gentry said.

  “So I’ve seen,” Whitney groaned.

  “A month?” Gentry guessed. “Two? If everything goes all right.”