Heart of a Huntsman

by Liam Reese

  It felt more to Besmir as if the world flowed beneath him rather than him moving above it, as if the entire plane of existence bent to his will. The joy of freedom pulled at him, and he willed himself faster, the planet flashing by below him in a grey blur.

  He passed the city of grasping darkness, arms reaching for him from the odd buildings. He flew over other weird structures that had been abandoned and lay in ruins, slowly being reclaimed by the planet, until he slowed at the edge of an area of utter blackness.

  Besmir landed, staring at the place where the grey planet disappeared into nothing. It was blacker than oil. A gaping, hungry absence that pulled gently but insistently at him, somehow willing him to enter. Deep, ancient evil radiated from inside it − a pervasive, nasty thing that was so completely alien to anything Besmir knew. Its very existence should not have been possible. Yet he could feel something calling him, pulling him in, and he wanted to go. It promised delights beyond imagining, the restoration of his life and an eternity wallowing in pleasures never imagined by any human in history.

  Besmir stepped forward, his feet immune to the grating savage surface of the world now. As if controlled by a puppeteer, he took another step towards the edge of nothing.

  Something emerged from the absence of everything. Something that was alive with horrible power, an extension of the unimaginable thing that resided there. It birthed wetly from nothing onto the ground before him, squealing and mewling pathetically for a few seconds. Maturing at a disturbing rate, Besmir watched it grow into adulthood before his eyes.

  It was a squat ball-shaped thing with a spiked head that waved uneasily atop a long neck. Sucking mouth parts moved endlessly, making a wet clicking sound that frightened and disgusted Besmir at the same time. Insectoid arms flapped at him, and he recoiled as it hissed.

  Laughter! It’s laughing at me.

  It moved towards him, a flowing, rolling motion that reminded Besmir of swallowing, and his revulsion grew. Whatever had created this, whatever warped madness lay at the heart of the nothing, had also been responsible for the Ghoma. Besmir’s revulsion turned to hate.

  He ripped at it with his mind, tearing and cutting as it writhed and screamed. Fire and green lightning exploded from his hands, burning and lancing through the monster as it tried to escape. The stench of its burning flesh reached his nostrils, and he recoiled from the pungent odor of putrefaction. Besmir continued his assault, unrelenting and merciless, forcing the thing back through the portal into the nothing from which it had been birthed.

  “Nicely done,” Joranas growled, making Besmir jump. “You have done well, Besmir.”

  “What was that thing?” Besmir asked as hate radiated from the blackness.

  “Not here,” Joranas said. “Return to my home,” he instructed, streaking off into the distance.

  Besmir followed, eager to discover what he had to say. He dropped down beside the pool Joranas conjured for his own pleasure and stepped inside the house, looking at the altered surroundings the horned man had wrought.

  “That was called a T'noch,” Joranas said as he reclined on a sofa that hovered above the floor.

  Besmir had not considered before, but there was no need for any of the comforts Joranas conjured at all. He could float without the aid of a sofa, but brought one into existence for the sake of his mind. He wondered about the strange creature’s life as a human. Where was he from? What had he done? Had he been a husband? A father? Besmir had no idea, and his constant probing questions had revealed nothing whether blatant and direct or subtly asked.

  “The Ancient One finally managed to produce something that can exist in your world, even if it cannot follow them. T'noch are pieces of the thing that lives in the absence, and anything they encounter, it can experience also,” Joranas said. “They are utterly without conscience, remorse or empathy, just as the Ancient One is, and deserve none from you.”

  “These entertainments you said about,” Besmir commented as he thought. “Were they fighting these demons?”

  Joranas grinned a savage smile that showed his carnivorous teeth.

  The raids they led on an almost daily basis were more than satisfying for Besmir. His destruction of the beastly things birthed by the Ancient One became like an addiction, and he killed them relentlessly, changing his technique over time. Initially he chose to end their existence quickly, scything through their different bodies with speed as they snapped at him. Eventually Besmir slashed at the fiends with weapons and powers he fashioned from the planet, wounding them and causing pain, reveling in the agony he caused these inhuman extensions of the thing that resided in the absence of anything.

  He grinned at Joranas as they flew towards the oddly shaped citadel, preparing to attack the dark, tentacled, grasping things that resided therein. Joranas frowned and slowed his pace, drawing closer to Besmir.

  “What?” the hunter asked with a frown of his own.

  “You have been here too long,” Joranas growled, laying one of his long-boned fingers against Besmir’s brow.

  The hunter did the same and felt a raised area beneath his skin, bumpy and hard.

  “Scales,” Joranas said.

  “Well, there’s not much I can do about it,” Besmir said with a shrug. “And you’ve thrived here, so...”

  “I exist!” Joranas snapped. “Nothing thrives in this waste. It is a purgatory worse than any hell, and I am stuck here eternally.” The horned being sighed. “Return home,” he said before darting back the way they had come.

  The interior was still rendered in wood of varying shades of grey, but every scrap of furniture had been removed to make room for the dark mass that hovered above the floor. Slate-grey as a thundercloud but somehow dense, it flowed and swirled before Besmir’s eyes in a mesmerizing dance. The hunter had no idea what it was, but he could tell it was not made of the same stuff as the planet. It was not from here.

  “What’s that?”

  “The portal back to your world,” Joranas said simply. “It is time you returned.”

  Confusion hit Besmir as he stared at the thing. “You said I’d fade into nothing if I went back,” he said accusingly. “You said my body was dead and I had nothing to return to.”

  “There is a slight chance I might have lied about that,” Joranas said with a smirk.

  “Why?” Besmir demanded angrily.

  “Think back on when you killed the T'noch as it birthed from the absence. How did you kill it?”

  “I burned and shocked it,” Besmir said. “Used this planet to rip it to shreds.”

  Joranas raised his hairless brows in question. “Did you?” he asked. “Did you use the stuff of this planet to kill it?”

  Besmir thought back, recalling the feelings of revulsion and hate as he had watched the demon been born.

  “It came from me,” he said in wonder. “The fire, the lightning...it-it came straight from me!”

  Joranas nodded, a smile crossing his face as he clapped his hands together once.

  “I knew from the first your body lives,” he said, casting a glance at the portal. “Barely, but it does live. You are able to return. But there was need to remain. To stay here and hone the skills you were born with.”

  “Why lie to me?” Besmir asked as betrayal cut him.

  “So you could learn how to control your power, Besmir,” Joranas said as he approached the hunter. “So I could teach you as I was unable to do in life.”

  “What?” Besmir asked in shock as Joranas shoved him into the portal.

  “Farewell, Besmir,” he said sadly. “Farewell, my son...”

  18

  Thoran’s heart soared when Sharova’s eyes opened, focusing on her face with recognition.

  “Th...oran?” he croaked.

  She grabbed their bottle, lifting it to his lips so he could drink. He choked a little, his face screwing up as he coughed and spluttered the water from his lungs.

  “You are...more beautiful in the light,” Sharova said, warming her chest.r />
  She felt the blush crawl up her neck and looked away.

  “Your fever is making you say things you should not,” she said.

  Sharova grunted and tried to sit up. Thoran pulled him up, wincing as the muscles in her back strained and stretched. Even in his wasted condition, Sharova was a substantial man.

  “What is this place?” he asked, looking round the ambassadorial suite.

  “We are in one of the palace wi—”

  “The palace!” he nearly screamed. “What are we doing here?”

  “Laying low, Sharova,” she said gently. “There is no need to worry, we have been here for three weeks undiscovered. Tiernon does not venture this way.”

  “Tiernon,” he spat. “Wait...Three weeks!” Thoran pitied the look of shock on his face.

  “You had an infection that had spread into your blood,” she explained. “When I found you, you were delirious and I did not know if you would live.”

  “You saved me?” he asked in complete puzzlement. “I was in the dark...trapped.”

  “Yes,” Thoran said, explaining how she had found him.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Those words do not seem adequate, but thank you.”

  “You saved me first, remember?” Thoran asked with a warm smile. “It seemed only fair to return the favor.”

  “How is it we have not been found here?” he asked, drinking some more water.

  “No one has been looking,” she said. “His evil has chased everyone away. The buildings are in disarray, the servants fled and ambassadors left. Nothing alive comes willingly to the palace now,” she said, the memories of his slaughter surfacing again.

  Sharova lifted her chin, his face blurred by her tears.

  “What is it?” he asked gently.

  “Nothing,” she said, not wanting him to know what she had been through. “I am fine.”

  Sharova looked at the fine drapes and small stock of food she had secured, the silken dress she wore and expensive perfume that sat beside the bed.

  “So I see,” he said with a grin. “What shall we do next?”

  “ I would like to leave,” Thoran said. “Once I managed to find you, I was unsure if you would even live but now all I want to do is go.”

  Sharova scratched his cheek, feeling at the beard that had grown there in surprise. He tried to rise, but his weakened body would not support his weight and he fell back, panting and gasping with the effort.

  “Maybe I need to recover a little more,” he said, smiling through his pain. “Might I have something to eat?”

  “Of course,” she said, grabbing some of their meager supplies. “You need not ask.”

  “A gentleman always asks a lady’s permission,” he told her. “Although I very much doubt I look like a gentleman at present.”

  Sharova held his hands up to examine their skeletal appearance, his gaunt face showing distress.

  “Well, I am no lady,” Thoran said, embarrassed by her low-born status. “Just a woman who sews clothing for a few coins.”

  She turned away from his stare, pretending to busy herself with something. She stopped when she felt his fingers on her arm, pulling gently, and turned.

  “You are wrong,” he told her gently. “Of all the ladies I have ever met at court, you are the most gracious, kind, selfless and brave I have ever met.”

  Thoran felt herself filling with pride at his words, and looked down with a little smile on her face.

  “Thank you,” she said, feeling genuine praise from another human being. “My lord,” she added, raising his status.

  “There is never any need to call me that,” he said. “Not after everything you have done for me.”

  “All right then...Sharova,” Thoran said, smiling. “What do you think we should do?”

  Sharova paused in the middle of chewing a hunk of dried meat as if he had never tasted anything finer.

  “There is nothing I am able to do at present,” he said. “I will have to get some of my strength back before I can even walk,” he added seriously.

  “Then that is what we should do to begin with,” Thoran said, rising from the bed.

  “Where are you going?” Sharova asked.

  “We are going to need more than this if you are to get your strength back,” she said, pointing at the half-empty jar of honey and thin strip of jerky that remained.

  “No,,” he said. “It is far too risky for you to be roaming the palace.”

  “What do you think I have been doing for almost a month?” she asked. “I am careful and quiet. Neither Tiernon or his abominable guards have any clue we are here. I will return soon.”

  With that, Thoran left Sharova for the privacy of the main room, where she stripped out of the fine dress. It was a beautiful thing to wear, one that made her feel like the lady he thought she was, but Thoran was practical. She unraveled the ball of rags she had spent time assembling, slipping into dark cloth trews and a brown shirt she had pinched at the waist. She slipped a pair of cloth slippers on her feet for silence and grabbed the soft bag she had found to carry her finds in.

  She slipped from the suite, cold welcoming her into its arms like a lover. A shiver ran down her spine as she padded silently through the corridors.

  How can it be so cold in here?

  Sunlight flooded the palace, but Thoran’s breath formed a mist before her. She had been methodical in her search so far, working further out from their little suite, building a map in her mind. She had already searched the ambassadorial section of the palace, taking what few items had been left behind. Today she was to venture farther than she had since moving to the suite, down a flight of stairs to the servants’ quarters.

  Stone steps, worn smooth by the passage of thousands of feet, took her into a darker part of the palace where shadows large enough to hide any predator clung to corners. Her heart beat faster and a greasy sweat beaded on her brow despite the biting cold that numbed her arms and slowed her legs.

  What little light there was showed her a world very different to the ambassadorial quarters above. Cramped and tight with crude furnishings and little in the way of decoration, the servants had been forced to share rooms for the most part. Thoran began her search, holding out little hope that anything of worth would have been left down here. She uncovered books stashed beneath mattresses, cheap novels for the most part, a diary that made her face redden with its racy entries and a book of recipes that made her mouth water to imagine.

  Room after little room brought nothing of any use, the contents being stripped as people fled Tiernon’s mad wrath. In despair, she searched room after room looking for anything that might aid them, help heal Sharova or make life easier for them. One room, larger than most, was filled with cupboards, and Thoran started opening each, her excitement building.

  Empty. How can they all be empty?

  Weariness and depression sapped her strength, and she slumped on the floor, back against the wall. What was the point? Everything of any value had been stripped from the place, food as well as clothing. Thoran rubbed at her face as if washing, pressing her eyes hard enough to make patterns appear, and thought about returning to Sharova. From this lower angle, a glint of something caught her eye, wedged between two of the stone flags in the floor.

  Deciding it was probably nothing but wanting to know anyway, Thoran crawled over to where the floor met the wall and peered between the stones. Something flashed in the dim light, wedged between the stones, but it also appeared as if there was a hollow beneath the flag. Wedged in tightly, there was no way for her to lift the stone with her hands, and her mind worked, thinking back to the rooms already searched. She sprinted back through to the rooms she had discovered the diary in and pulled at the bed frame until a piece of loose wood gave way.

  Eager anticipation swamped Thoran as she tried to fit the wood between the stones, annoyance making her frown when it was too wide.

  If only I had a knife or sword…

  She remembered the rusted blade used t
o pry Sharova from his prison but shuddered at the thought of trying to find it in the oily blackness down there. If there was no other way, she would have to, but the idea scared her beyond belief.

  A nail jutted from the wood, and she battered it against the stone floor to try and release it, hoping it would be thin enough to fit. It loosened, pushing back through the plank until the point sat flush with the surface, but no amount of pulling would make it come. Her fingertips split, blood coating the nail and making it slick. Tears of frustration rolled down her cheeks but she carried on, working the nail back and forth, ripping her fingertips deeper in desperation.

  Abruptly it came free, her arm shooting up into the air and holding her prize aloft like a trophy. She jammed it between the flagstones, joy filling her when it fit, and gently levered it back. Pain rolled up her arm when the nail pierced her thumb deeply, but a low grating sound issued from the floor as the stone began to move. She slipped the piece of wood beneath the stone and lifted it, the wooden lever a much better device.

  A gasp escaped her when she managed to stand the massive stone up out of the way and saw inside. The small pit had been carefully hollowed out to hold someone’s treasures. She found a small statue made from gold and onyx, carved into the image of a beautiful woman. Gold coins sat in a leather purse that she dropped in her sack to count later. More money than Thoran had ever seen was now in her possession, and the pleasure of ownership shivered through her.

  Nothing to eat, though.

  Nestled at the bottom of the hole sat a silver chain with a diamond-encrusted sapphire drop attached. The size of her thumb, the dark blue gem gleamed, its inner beauty calling to her, and she gripped the jeweled thing tightly in her fist, standing to get back to Sharova with her finds.

  It was as she reached the top of the stairs leading from the servants’ quarters that she almost died.

  Her mind whirled with thoughts of her and Sharova at some grand ball. She wore a flowing gown of dark blue silk, the necklace at her throat, and the love and pride shone in Sharova’s eyes as he took her hand, grasped her waist. She did not feel the icy blast that passed her at the apex of the stairs until she had rounded the corner.