Apostate: Forbidden Things

by Nikki Mccormack

  Once more, she waited.

  The Grey warriors around them vanished, replaced by scenes of Lyran adepts wielding ascard in various destructive ways and the grim outcomes. Fire, ascard enhanced speed, weapons made of power all wielded by Lyran adepts with bloody results. Among those images, she was certain she spotted Yiloch at least once, or perhaps she wanted to see him bad enough to impose his image upon the memories of the suacs.

  “The gods support her words,” Chozai defended. “Look.”

  Around them, the images changed. Grey warriors fought Kudaness, and not just from a single tribe, but from many different tribes judging by their varied tattoos. Indigo wondered if Suac Chozai somehow controlled the images though she could find no evidence that he was consciously controlling ascard in any way. Blood spattered Kudaness warriors cried out in victory around the perimeter of the circle, raising spears and curved blades in celebration. Then the image of the Grey Army’s leader appeared among them. He stared at her and smiled and she sucked in a breath, terror coursing through her.

  Blackness fell around the circle, the glowing orb no longer penetrating beyond those gathered. She was trembling. Whether from fear this time or from the effects of the drug she couldn’t tell.

  “I, Suac Chozai Galal of Murak un Ani, pledge the warriors of Murak to the Dursik un Kar,” Suac Chozai declared, his strong voice echoing in the emptiness around them.

  After him, silence reigned for several minutes and Indigo, her head spinning now, wondered if she would manage to avoid passing out before the others gave their answers.

  The Denilik suac pounded his knee with a fist and swept the circle with a challenging glare. “I, Suac Kipith Denilik of Denilik un Ani, pledge the warriors of Denilik to the Dursik un Kar.”

  Chozai offered a nod of appreciation to the crippled elder. The silence held even longer this time then the Farid suac sat up straighter.

  “I, Suac Therah Hesik of Farid un Ani, pledge the warriors of Farid to the Dursik un Kar.”

  This time there was no pause. The rest of the prophets spoke in turn, pledging the warriors of their respective tribes to the Dursik un Kar. As they spoke, she realized tears were tracking down her cheeks. She made no move to stop them, feeling the gesture would be somehow inappropriate in this setting. They should know she felt the weight of their decision in her heart. When the last suac pledged his warriors, Suac Chozai met and held her eyes. He nodded once and she felt he did it in approval of her emotion. The gratitude her tears represented was not lost on him, though the deeper sadness, the sense that even this would not earn her a place in life, evaded him.

  “The Dursik un Kar will gather on the northern border where Murak lands meet Lyra.”

  The other suacs nodded and lowered their gazes to the glowing orb. One by one, they vanished, the orb fading more with each departure, until only the original three remained. Suac Therah nodded to Suac Chozai and vanished. Chozai turned to her and reached a hand out. She took the offered hand and blackness fell.

  When she woke, she was alone. She threw up again, emptying her stomach, but she recovered faster than she had the first time. Once she’d composed herself, she got up from the pillows and stepped outside. Chozai waited there with his warriors and Suac Therah. They both acknowledged her with a nod and a warrior held the reins of her mount out to her.

  “We will meet again, Unseen Woman,” Suac Therah said. “The gods have a purpose in bringing you to us. Never before has anyone from outside the Kudan brought about a Dursik un Kar. But remember, having the attention of the gods is not the same as having their favor.”

  She nodded, too tired to worry over his words, and the suac turned away, exchanging a few words in Kudaness with Chozai. Then she mounted and followed the Murak suac and warriors away from the Farid village.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Screams echoed through the night. Screams of terror, of pain. The screams of the dying. The intense heat of the inferno that engulfed houses and other buildings throughout AhnSegys had become almost too much for Yiloch and his soldiers, but they pressed on. Adepts scanned for life, sending soldiers after survivors when they sensed them. Yiloch’s need for vengeance burned as hot as the fires around them. Most of the soldiers and adepts acted out of obedience to their emperor, but a few, like Adran and his sister Eris who had grown up with Yiloch, acted out of love for their Prince. Those few would always support him, even in this grisly deed.

  A young woman bolted from one of the houses, an infant in her arms. Yiloch moved to go after her, but one of the soldiers came around the side of the burning house into her path and thrust his blade with enough force that it passed through the child into the woman’s chest. She shrieked as he ripped the blade free and the infant slumped in her arms. It was a sound of complete despair. A second strike cut off her screams. Yiloch stared, wishing he could erase from his mind the memory of his mother falling from her mount, a crossbow bolt through her throat. These people harbored her killer. Every one of them would pay.

  Someone touched his arm. He turned to Adran.

  “Have they not suffered enough?”

  “Father offered to forgive if they gave up mother’s killer. They chose this,” Yiloch shouted over the din of the fires.

  Above the trees, he could see flames rising up from the neighboring village, Segys, settled less than a quarter mile away from this one. Another band of soldiers and adepts were busy wiping it out of existence as well.

  Upon receiving word that the man who killed the empress, Yiloch’s mother, was hiding in one of the two villages, Emperor Rylan sent a contingent led by Yiloch to teach them a lesson. The villagers refused to give up the murderer, insisting he had never been there. Yiloch was more than willing to mete out his father’s justice.

  He turned away from those flames and spotted another woman stepping out of her burning home. She peered up and down the street for an escape route. Drawing on his power, he swapped himself with ascard in the air beside her and swept his elegant blade, the one his mother had commissioned for him, in a deadly arc. The flame reflecting on the blade left a trail of orange light in its wake. Her head flew, striking the ground some distance away and rolled to a stop like a child’s ball. Her body, slow to acknowledge its fate, remained standing for several seconds, as though propped up by unseen hands, then crumbled to the ground.

  Looking past that lifeless figure, Yiloch spotted a young boy standing in the doorway of the house. His eyes were wide with horror and the anguish of loss twisted his pale features. It struck Yiloch that the devastated expression on the youth’s face was probably much like that on his own face when the crossbow bolt had punched through his mother’s throat in front of him. He stepped toward the boy, not certain whether he meant to kill him or try to help him. The boy shrank back into the burning house, his pale eyes filling with tears. There followed a crack like thunder and the structure gave, collapsing on the youth.

  Yiloch stared at the collapse for several minutes, frozen in place by the remorse that welled up in him until someone touched his arm again. Adran. It was always Adran in his worst moments, regarding him with eyes full of sympathy and adoration. Never judgment, not even when he needed to be judged.

  They deserved it though, didn’t they? The villagers deserved this for harboring the man who had killed his mother. They all deserved it.

  •

  But they didn’t deserve it. They never had.

  Standing here now, with the pungent smells of burnt wood and flesh stinging his nostrils, he felt that old guilt twisting within him. This village, built on the site of the old AhnSegys, he himself had destroyed almost ten years ago. They had suffered the same fate again, but at the hands of the Grey Army this time.

  Back then, he had led the warriors and adepts of Yiroth against the villagers on his father, Emperor Rylan’s, orders. He was young then, and full of blind rage at the loss of his mother. Later he learned that his father had sent him to destroy the villages not because they harbored his mother’s ki
ller—that man was never found—but because he promised the land around the river to an old friend. That friend died of illness before he ever got around to building there and the people eventually came back to rebuild AhnSegys.

  Rylan had used him, stoking his rage until it burned out of control then setting him lose with a target on which to vent that rage. That was why Rylan was dead now, by Yiloch’s own hand, but his death didn’t undo this wrong. Why, of all the villages the Grey Army slaughtered, had they chosen to burn this one? They couldn’t know the history of the area, but that only made it seem like more of a dark portent.

  “My Lord,” Ian approached cautiously, sensing the volatility of Yiloch’s mood.

  Neither of his current companions, the young creator Ian or the warrior Cadmar, were part of that original misguided campaign. Like everyone, they knew the stories of the massacre that had earned him the nickname, The Blood Prince, but they would never understand the reality of that night and the events leading up to it. They would certainly never understand the unending torment of those memories.

  Yiloch scowled at the destruction, the churned mud colored deep red in places with the blood of villagers, the blackened wood of the still-smoking buildings. “The Grey Army will pay for this,” he snarled.

  His dappled grey stallion, Tantrum, snorted at the sting of smoke in his nostrils and stomped a foot in response to Yiloch’s upset. He patted the stallion’s shoulder, feeling his own head begin to ache from the acrid smell. Rather than depart, as he wanted to, he urged the stallion into the village. Tantrum tossed his head, displeased with the choice, but did as directed.

  Every village they’d passed through to this point had been the same. All the people slaughtered and homes ransacked for useful supplies. He had learned next to nothing new from poking around the remains. Still, it would be foolish to assume there would never be anything to learn, especially here where the fires already made the attack unusual. For some reason, the efficient slaughter had gone differently in AhnSegys.

  In the heart of the village, his efforts finally reaped rewards. With a squeeze of his legs, he drove the stallion toward the remains of a larger building, an inn judging by the size. Near the debris of the inn lay three bodies, not burned or damaged beyond the large wounds in their chests. They were the first Grey warriors Yiloch had seen and he finally understood the name the Kudaness had given them. The cast of their skin wasn’t bronze or pale or black like any of the races he knew. There was a distinct Grey cast to the skin that had nothing to do with their recent death. The hair and unseeing eyes of the dead men were as black as soot. They were stocky and muscular, broad across the chest, and they wore a flexible leather armor woven with small plates of some unfamiliar hardwood in the more vulnerable areas.

  Yiloch dismounted and examined the armor. The plates were woven on with perfect symmetry and, despite the thinness of those plates, the wood was extremely strong. Whatever these people were, they were capable and advanced enough to work with this iron-like material. He picked up one of their weapons. The short-shafted spears, topped with a sweeping blade, were both ornate, like the lethal spears of the Kudaness, and precisely weighted like a fine Lyran sword. He hefted the weapon and worked through a few intricate attack moves with it. The weight felt good, efficient and deadly. All of these things worked together to build a storm of dread in his chest.

  “They were killed with ascard,” Ian commented.

  Yiloch nodded. “An adept. I wonder what became of him?” His gaze swept the remains of the inn.

  “Or her,” Ian added pointedly.

  Yiloch ignored him. Indigo was behind them now and he couldn’t dwell on her until Lyra was secure again. He wasn’t going to let Ian’s well placed comments distract him from his purpose. “The important thing is that we know they can be killed. These are the first bodies we’ve seen from the Grey Army. I wish we could talk to whoever killed them.”

  He attached the spear to his saddle and mounted, but he waited, noticing that Ian’s focus had turned inward, his brow furrowed with intense concentration. After a few minutes, a small shudder passed through the creator’s lean frame and he met Yiloch’s eyes.

  “The signature on the ascard that killed these men is Myac’s.”

  A chill raced up Yiloch’s spine, though he managed to maintain the appearance of calm. Myac must have come after Indigo. Why else would he have been here? He’d followed her trail this far. “Is he still alive?”

  Ian shrugged. “I can’t tell. I can feel his signature in that building as well, but I can’t tell from that if he’s alive or dead, or where he went from here if he is still alive. All I know is he isn’t physically here anymore.”

  Yiloch took a deep breath, trying to chase away the malignant worry creeping through him. “We didn’t cross paths with him on the way here. If he was still after Indigo, we should have run into him.”

  “Maybe,” Cadmar said, “if he wanted us to.”

  Yiloch scowled at him, hoping he would realize how unhelpful he was being.

  The big warrior simply shrugged.

  “If it took someone of Myac’s power to kill them, I don’t suppose that says much for our chances.”

  Turning the scowl on Ian, he said, “None of this helps. Do either of you plan to give up on Lyra?”

  “No.” Ian’s look indicated that the answer should have been obvious. He looked reassuringly offended by the question.

  “I do not plan to give up on Lyra’s people,” Cadmar answered.

  That was good enough. “Then we keep going. I’m worried about Indigo as well, but she and Myac can’t be our primary concerns right now.”

  Tantrum danced sideways, done with breathing in the smoke and ready to be away. With a quick correction, he settled the stallion and turned back to his companions. They both looked weary, but they watched him attentively, waiting for his orders. Whatever he asked, they would still do, even Ian whose lingering resentment over his mistreatment of Indigo colored their every conversation.

  Yiloch scanned the surrounding forest then, his gaze coming to rest on the tree line to the northeast of the village. “This attack is fresh. With only three of us, we can take the game trails at speed and make our way to Yiroth. We can travel much faster than the Grey Army can and our route will be more direct. We should be able to beat them to the city by a few days even if they don’t take time to rest.”

  “Lead the way,” Cadmar urged.

  Ian glanced southward with a look of longing, wondering after Indigo again. With a heavy exhale, he turned back to Yiloch and nodded.

  Yiloch nudged Tantrum with his heels and directed him around the debris of a collapsed house. Once clear of the obstruction, he upped the pace, moving into the woods at a fast trot. The other two fell into a line behind him and he began to weave a path through the trees, searching out the game trails. This part of the forest had little undergrowth, allowing for easy movement. Tantrum responded fluidly to his direction, winding around and through the trees like a great serpent. The stallion broke over into a canter and Yiloch smiled, letting memory take him back to the hunts of his youth, a time before his mother died and everything changed, a time when life had been simpler.

  He and Adran had camped and hunted together in these woods often in their youth. On occasion, Adran’s sister Eris or Captain Kardyn—both of whom had lost their lives helping Yiloch overthrow his father—would join them. Even more rarely, they would allow his younger brother Delsan, to join them. Delsan had little interest in learning combat skills. On hunts, he would never take a shot with his bow, no matter how good the shot was. The younger prince was never a killer. In retrospect, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, but their father had put him to death for it.

  So many people had died in the war between him and his father. The pain of those losses was still fresh. How many more would die before this new enemy?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Myac hated as he had never hated before in his life. Not even Yiloch, his mo
ther’s murderer, inspired this level of loathing in him. Hatred boiled through him, searing his mind with its intensity, scorching and ineffectual. No matter how much he hungered to make these men suffer, he couldn’t take back control of his power.

  From the moment he woke after falling debris knocked him unconscious in the burning inn at AhnSegys, he knew something was horribly wrong. The soldiers of the foreign army were riding all around him and he lay slung uncomfortably in front of someone’s saddle, his hands and feet bound. None of that mattered though. What mattered, what sent icy blades of terror stabbing through him, was that he could do nothing about it. Whatever the foreign adept had done to him, Myac could still feel his connection to his inner aspect, but he could no longer control it.

  When they realized he was awake, they unbound his feet and offered him a horse. With no viable alternatives, he mounted the animal as best he could with his hands still bound. They continued, one of the warriors leading his mount. Another warrior riding near them led four more horses. He realized the extra horses must belong to the men he had killed. The thought brought no satisfaction. He was broken. The burden of defeat weighed so heavily on him he was surprised it didn’t slow his horse down.

  The link that bound him was perfect. The adept who controlled it allowed him enough control to analyze the fine workmanship of that binding, perhaps as a way of mocking him. There was an elaborate ascard working not only coiled around his inner aspect, but also penetrating it, drawing from it like a blood-sucking parasite. If he could find a way to mimic that creation, it could be a very useful tool.

  Was there a backlash on the controlling adept if someone bound to them in such a way died?

  There was no way to answer that. For now, he could do nothing. They had effectively raped him of the power that defined him. Unless he could find a way out of this predicament, being able to analyze the working was of no value to him. He would find a way to kill the adept who’d bound him or die trying, even if he had to use his teeth to do it.