Where Serpents Strike (Children of the Falls Vol. 1)

by CW Thomas

  More of the ceiling collapsed above. Giant beams wrapped in flame plummeted to the ground. The door to the crypt slammed shut, plunging Dana into total darkness.

  MEREK

  Merek Viator felt the impact of the top step on his right shoulder first. The middle step jabbed into his back as he tumbled. He skipped over the last one and landed on his face in the muddied dirt. He was thankful for the alcohol coursing through his blood, dulling the pain, but he knew he’d feel it in the morning.

  “Don’t ever come back here!” the bartender shouted. With his muscle bound sidekick the bartender disappeared back into the tavern, leaving Merek in the pouring rain.

  Staggering to his feet, he wiped the blood from his lip.

  A moose of a man atop a tall black horse trotted by. “Get out of my way!” he shouted. Merek shuffled back on the greasy road.

  Ugly Town. At least, that’s what everyone called it, a slummy sector of Turnberry where the poor, the destitute, and the sleeping never-washed beggars struggled to survive. The permeating stench of cattle yards hung thick over Ugly Town like a blanket, thicker, even, than the vapors of rejection and cruelty that rose from every ruin.

  Merek meandered up the street, slipping in the mud, trying to remember if the way out of this section of the city was up or down. Truthfully, he didn’t know if he was going left or right.

  He’d been on the continent of Edhen for four months, wandering the taverns of Turnberry, picking fights, and maintaining a degree of drunkenness that kept his brain in a constant fog. He had done the same thing on Efferous for over a year until he’d pulled together enough sense to leave for Edhen. He had traveled in the cargo hold of a pirate ship called The Forge Ahead. The journey had cost him another regenstern, which he had given to the captain. From bottle to bottle he wandered, never having a clear idea of where he was or where he wanted to go.

  Awlin was dead, that he knew for certain, and for the last sixteen months that was all he could think about. That and his guilt. Just like before, the blame was on him. And that was one pain that no amount of alcohol ever seemed able to dull.

  Merek’s slacks and leather jerkin were soaking wet, chilling his skin. He had a cloak, but he couldn’t remember where he’d left it. The only thought on his mind now was to find another tavern.

  He made his way out of Ugly Town, through the curving narrow streets that rose to breezier hillsides. He stumbled along between stone buildings leased by swordsmiths, stonemasons, repairmen, tailors, armorers, and other tradesmen in need of space to produce their crafts.

  “What you starin’ at, drunky?” garbled an armor maker when he stopped from hammering a hot steel plate into a helmet.

  Merek realized that his legs had stopped walking. He was standing in the middle of the street staring at the man for no good reason. On unsteady feet he turned up the road and continued to the center of the city.

  He wobbled to a stop when he saw a large stone archway leading into what looked like a memorial ground. The words over the gate read: Allanvale Honorary. The location struck a dismal chord in his memory. He stood there a moment, looking in, and though he hated himself for doing so he started walking toward it. He passed under the drizzling stone arch, and wandered along paths paved with granite slabs, scanning the names of the noble families of Turnberry. Every highborn surname of the kingdom that had ever lived was listed here, the names proudly displayed on stone markers overlooking the family’s burial plot.

  The markers of the most honored families featured a silver seal embedded into the stone above the family name. The seal served as a symbol of the family’s honor within society, which, in Turnberry, was valued above all other things.

  When Merek found the plot of Viator, he stopped. A cold shiver ran up his spine. There was no silver seal on his family’s marker. Not anymore. The grass had long grown over the headstones of his ancestors, along with roots and brambles that further represented all that Merek had cost his family.

  Memories flooded him of the day he had shamed his family name—his drunken stupor, his foolish actions, the loss of his sister. The visions clamored around inside his head until he couldn’t bear to look upon the dishonored plot any more. He turned away, fighting back tears.

  He needed a drink.

  Merek staggered out of the honorary and back into the street, but he had taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in a back alley cluttered with garbage and teaming with rats. He wasn’t sure how far he wandered, but he knew where his legs were taking him, even though he was reluctant to go there.

  Home.

  It had been almost six and a half years since he had looked upon the house of his birth, but it wasn’t his anymore. It didn’t even belong to the family of Viator. Another noble family had purchased the building after Merek had disgraced his family name and fled.

  Merek kept walking, down old familiar roads and passed ancient memories.

  He stopped in front of a humble cottage on the outskirts of town. It was a simple straw and clay home situated behind a rickety fence. Chickens mucked around the yard along with a pair of goats and a few sheep, all looking dismal in the continuous rain.

  A gray haired woman in a long tattered brown dress sat in a chair on the crooked deck of the small home, her nimble fingers finishing the seam to what looked like a collared tunic. She looked up at him, noticed him standing there with her silvery blue eyes, and returned to her work.

  Then she paused, the tendons in her neck flinching. Her eyes lifted again and when they met Merek’s, he felt another shiver course through him. The woman rose, shocked.

  “Merek?” she whispered.

  When he said nothing, here eyebrows drew in. She frowned and left the porch, heading into the house and calling for a man named Richard.

  Merek reached out to the fence to steady himself. His throat seized, hot with grief and regret. He should have expected no less from his stepmother.

  A man appeared in the doorway wiping his butcher’s hands on a filthy rag. He eyed Merek with a pair of intense brown eyes, his bulbous jaw set in a deep scowl. He was angry, that much was evident, but Merek thought he saw a degree of compassion as well.

  “What are you doing here, boy?” the man asked.

  Merek staggered, forcing his mind to form words, but all that emerged was drunken stuttering.

  “If you’ve got something to say, say it. Then be gone. You’re not welcome here.”

  “I found her, father,” Merek said, and his voice cracked. “Awlin. She’s…” His throat locked. He forced the words passed the hot lump in his throat. “She’s dead.”

  Richard Viator stomped down the steps and approached Merek, his tattered black boots splashing in the mud. “Is that what you came here to do, break our hearts all over again? Haven’t you brought this family enough pain?”

  Merek hung his head in shame, his shoulder heaving as he sobbed. “I’m sorry, father. I’m sorry for everything.” His sorrow made a mess of his face while he talked. “I’m sorry for the dishonor I brought to our family. I’m sorry for losing Awlin. I’m—”

  “Stop.”

  “I tried, father. I tried to save her.”

  “Quit your babbling!”

  Staggering, Merek gripped the fence to keep from falling over as wave after wave of emotions crashed over him.

  Richard fell silent. His hand moved as if to comfort Merek’s shoulder, but then it stopped. Looking at his father Merek saw empathy in his eyes, but there was also anger and an ocean of hurt.

  He pulled his hand away.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” Richard said.

  Merek’s brows drew in. “My brother?”

  “Broderick Falls was a good boy. His family didn’t deserve—”

  “The Falls want even less to do with me than you did.”

  Richard shook his head. “Lilyanna loved you like a son. She would’ve come to see you more except the king didn’t want her—”

  “She was not my mother,” Merek blurted
. “Beth is my mother. And thanks to your infidelity she won’t even speak to me anymore.”

  “That was your doing!” Richard snapped. “You abandoned this family with your pride and your selfishness.”

  “And do you know why?” Merek shouted.

  Richard flinched.

  “Because my father had another son that he loved more than me.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Isn’t it? Lilyanna Falls was the woman you loved, not mother. Broderick was the son you always wanted, not me. You call me selfish? Your such a hypocrite. An selfish, tired, cowardly old man.”

  Merek lost his balance and fell when his father’s fist caught him in the cheek. He landed sprawled in the mud, his world spinning out of control.

  “After all these years, still nothing but a drunk and an imbecile,” Richard said.

  Merek climbed to his feet, gripping the worn old fence for support.

  “You turn around and crawl back to your cave,” his father said. “I never want to see you here again.”

  “Father, please.”

  Richard walked back into the house.

  Watching from the door was his stepmother, Beth, dabbing at her eyes with bony fingers.

  Merek found his balance. He looked at the house as a sudden rush of hate and self-loathing erupted within him. “Curse the name of Viator! Damn your traditions and damn your name. Curse this forgotten town and its bloody kingdom and all your damn honor!”

  Barely aware of what he had said he stumbled back onto the street. For hours he wandered out of town on mucky roads, plodding along on shaky legs.

  He came across a musky clapboard tavern and stumbled up the steps, drawing curious stares from the woodsy patrons within. He ordered a drink, but realized he had no money.

  He noticed a man next to him slouched against the bar in a long black cloak. He tapped his shoulder and asked for a few coppers. The man turned to face him and stood up straight, extending his massive frame until Merek’s eyes were level with his sweaty neck.

  “Yeh want a what?” the tower asked.

  The man looked strangely familiar.

  “Please. I just need a drink.”

  The tower laughed. “Sure.” He thumped a fist on Merek’s back, yanked him away from the bar, and dragged him outside. The other patrons laughed. They gathered at the doorway to watch as Merek was lugged across the street and thrown into a gutter.

  “Plenty of piss to drink down there,” he yelled, and the people watching from the tavern roared with laughter.

  The tower stood over him as Merek tried to right himself.

  “Hey, don’t I know yeh?”

  Once Merek had pulled himself out of the gutter, soaked in excrement, mud, and who knows what else, the tower kicked him over onto his back and leaned down close to his face. Merek opened his puffy eyes. Through the rain and his bleary drunkenness he saw a man he had tussled with almost four years prior in a wizard’s tower on Efferous. Gall Shea was the man’s name.

  Merek chocked back his nervousness. He couldn’t remember what exactly he had done to the soldier, but judging by the look on the man’s face he was hungry for vengeance.

  Gall locked his fists around Merek’s shirt. “I lost me job ’cause of yeh!” he said, hoisting him to his feet. “Yeh remember? Jumped out the window, yeh did, and pulled a bed down on top of me, broke me jaw and three o’ me fingers.” He slugged Merek in the stomach. “Yeh slimy li’l bastard.” He slugged him again, pushing him up off his feet. “Now I gotta work in the dirt with all of these Turnberrian filths, pushing a bloody plow to make a livin’.”

  Merek’s brain hurt. His eyes shut. The world shook so hard that he couldn’t tell from where the blows were coming. He just felt pain—in his ribs, his jaw, his gut.

  He vaguely remembered the soldier, or rather he remembered his immense size. The man had been one of the black vipers assigned to protect Versch Leiern, the troublesome wizard from whom Merek stole the shards of the regenstern.

  “What did yeh ever do with the gems?” Gall asked, leaning down over Merek. “Keep ’em for yerself, did yeh? Now what have yeh got? Nothing! Gotta ask for a copper just to buy a drink. Gives me a good chuckle, that!” He sent a vicious boot into Merek’s ribs.

  “Yeh ever heard o’ the phrase, ‘an eye for an eye?’” Gall asked as he pulled Merek to his feet. “No? That’s a’right. Let me show yeh what it means.”

  He drew his fist back and cracked him in the chin, sending him spinning to the ground.

  “That’s for me jaw!”

  He knelt down on top of him, driving his knee into his ribs. He lifted Merek’s right hand and latched onto his three largest fingers.

  “And this is for me hand.”

  Merek’s fingers broke at the knuckles as the man yanked them back.

  Gall leaned down close to Merek’s ear. “And here’s the kicker for yeh. Yer li’l bitch sister was always gunna die. We had orders to kill her if we ever did find her. That Ustus fellow, vile scum servant of the high king that he is, always had it out for yeh.” He hoisted Merek to his feet. “Even if yeh’d brought the stones back like yeh was supposed to he woulda killed yeh, and that li’l whore, too. Yeh don’t make deals with the Ivy of Edhen, didn’t yeh know?”

  Liquid rage coursed hot through Merek’s veins, but his limbs were too numb with alcohol to respond. He tried to latch onto the man’s collar, but ended up twisting his already mangled fingers. Gall slugged him a final time and dropped him back in the ditch where he landed in a painful heap.

  Blackness swallowed him.

  When Merek opened his eyes, or at least the one that hadn’t swollen shut, night had settled upon the town. The tower was long gone, and the surrounding air had chilled even more.

  Merek strained to pull himself out of the gutter. Then he half limped, half dragged himself across the road to the alley behind the tavern where he collapsed in the dirt and passed out again.

  Morning.

  He awoke the following morning in a painful haze. His stomach betrayed him and he wretched several times, feeling the agony of every bruise from his beating the night before with each violent clench of his gut.

  He staggered out into the woods behind the tavern, following the sounds of running water.

  Lapping the edge of a soft mossy bank was a narrow river. He stripped off his clothes and waded out to where it was deepest, relishing the soothing rain-refreshed gurgle of the creek and the invigorating coolness of the water. He submerged himself, letting the shock of the cold bring him to his senses and awaken his mind. He rose, punched through the surface, and gulped air like purifying nectar.

  Sitting on the forefront of his mind as if just waiting to be called into focus were the words Gall Shea had spoken to him the day before. The former black soldier had told him the truth about Ustus Rapere. The Ivy of Edhen. That traitorous swine had intended to kill Awlin all along.

  Or was that all a dream?

  Merek lifted his hand and examined his three broken fingers, now swollen and purple. He took them as evidence that he hadn’t imagined what the former black soldier had said.

  “Thank you, Gall,” he muttered.

  Purpose began to form within Merek once again.

  Tearing some fabric off his undershirt, he fashioned a crude splint for his broken fingers. He washed his clothes and hung them on some bushes to dry. Then he dressed and wandered back into town.

  He swiped a cloak off a fencepost and a pair of leather gloves from a blacksmith’s bench. He went to the market of Turnberry where dozens of farmers had gathered to sell bits of their harvest. With the fingers of his dominant hand broken, he had to rely on his left to pick a few pockets, which, for a trained, hungry, and desperate thief like him, wasn’t a stretch.

  After purchasing a few provisions and stealing a few others, he left town. By mid-afternoon he was well on his way along The Arch, a stretch of road that curved across the southern half of the continent from Turnberry to Perth.

>   Later in the day a wagon rolled up behind him with an old man seated in the front. He had dusty gray hair along the sides of his head, and the strong rigid jaw of a man who knew the value of a hard day’s work. There was an old woman with him, his wife, Merek guessed, and a quartet of young people ranging in age from adolescent to early twenties.

  Merek raised his hand to them and the old man drew the horses to a stop. The woman, he noticed, was regarding the bruises on Merek’s face with no small degree of concern.

  “Can I help you, pilgrim?” the man inquired.

  “I was wondering if I might travel with you, kind sir,” Merek said. “The road is dangerous, and I can offer you protection. I’ll fix your wagon if it breaks, tend to your horses when they need tending, and help you in any other way that I can. All I ask in return is some food.”

  The man considered this for a moment as his eyes searched Merek’s face. Old the man might have been, but Merek could tell that he was no fool. Cautiously he agreed, and allowed Merek to join the children in the back of the wagon.

  He journeyed with them for two months, told them his name was John Krullen, and that he was on his way to Perth in search of work. He left out the part about him being a wanted thief, and that he was out to murder one of the top advisors of the high king.

  To Merek’s relief the old man’s wife was a nurse. She helped him tend to his broken fingers along the way.

  The family traveled as far as the fertile farming community of Mellow Brook, at which point Merek continued to Perth on foot and arrived forty-two days later.

  Sneaking around the cramped, shadowy passages of the capital city of Edhen was easier than he remembered. Compared to the open, sunlit spaces of Efferous, Edhen was to a thief what a playground was to a child.

  He spent a couple days lurking among the crowds in the streets surrounding the castle, reacquainting himself with the structure’s access points. He had broken into the throne room once before, and so he figured that finding a way into Ustus’ chambers shouldn’t be half as hard.

  But it was.