Apostate: Forbidden Things

by Nikki Mccormack

  None of the soldiers made an effort to communicate with him for the first few days. They gave him food and tended his needs in an impersonal way, neither cruel nor kind in their treatment, simply indifferent. He didn’t even see the adept who bound him or the warlord he had encountered in AhnSegys until the third day.

  The army had stopped in an open field and was arranging itself in ranks. They appeared to be preparing for a confrontation. Lord Inaki’s holding was nearby. Perhaps they meant to eliminate the potential threat before moving on again. Myac didn’t know what losses the lord might have suffered in the campaign to overthrow Emperor Rylan, but he’d had a considerable force prior to that and Lady Shyalis would bring her soldiers to his aid in an instant. With the barrier abilities Myac had witnessed during his own battle with some of these warriors, he wasn’t sure how much damage even a substantial force could do to this army. It was always worth hoping.

  He could speculate about the foreign army, but he had no way to know what was really going on. Their language was completely strange to him. Listening to their conversations had taught him only that they appended something, perhaps a family name or honorific of some kind, to their common name when addressing one another. Thus far, he had come up with no way to use that information to his advantage.

  Myac could feel the adept approaching long before he saw him. The malignant presence attached to his inner aspect grew stronger when he came close. Warriors parted and bowed their heads to the man who walked through ahead of the adept. Upon closer observation, Myac noted an elaborate pendant hanging at the throat of the lead man, and the small plates of his armor were individually painted with the same design as the pendant in painstaking detail. The young man and the adept who flanked him on either side wore the same armor as the rest of the warriors, only the small plates woven into theirs were darker in color. There were also a few among those men surrounding them who wore the darker shade. An indication of rank, perhaps.

  The leader stopped a few feet in front of Myac and exchanged words with the adept then turned to him. The young soldier flanking him made a sharp gesture toward Myac, holding his hand out flat and pushing down with it. Were they telling him to bow down?

  Myac lifted his head and glared at the warlord.

  All of a sudden, he felt his own power draining from him as a leech might drain his blood, then power, bearing his own ascard signature, began to press him down. He tried to fight both the draining and the pressure, but he could do nothing. Humiliation and rage burned through him, heating his face as he sank to one knee beneath the pressure. The warlord approached him and gazed down, the dark eyes on either side of his broad nose full of an almost paternal patience. It was the regard of someone who knew they would win.

  Myac spat at the warlord’s feet. A bludgeon, formed of his own stolen power, struck him across the face, sending him sprawling on his side. Blood burst through his mouth along with something hard. A tooth. Furious that he couldn’t do so much as stop the blood with his power, he spat the tooth at the warlord. The younger man surged forward then, his leg swinging to land a fierce kick in Myac’s gut. He curled around the burst of agony.

  “Na-jnai!” The warlord snapped.

  The young man, Na-jnai, dropped to his knees, bowing his head almost to the ground and uttered something in their strange language, his tone thick with remorse. He addressed the warlord as Ksa-jnai, appending something else that sounded like a title to the name. Through the haze of pain, Myac clung to the fact that the two shared the same honorific, if that’s what it was. The information might prove useful somehow. At the very least, the thought gave him something to focus on. Ksa-jnai nodded and said something to the adept. Again, Myac felt his own power being used on him, this time to force him to rise against his will, ending in a kneel with his head pushed low enough that he had to put his bound hands out in front of him to keep his balance.

  The warlord addressed Na-jnai again, his tone scolding, while the adept healed Myac’s injuries. The tooth was gone, but the torn gums and cheek mended quickly. Apparently the adept’s abuse was acceptable, while the kick Na-jnai had given was not. He yearned to understand the difference. There were so many possible answers and, without understanding their language or being able to read their emotions with ascard, he couldn’t know the right one.

  Fighting an urge to curl on the ground and give up, he turned inward and made himself inspect the working that controlled his power again. What little he could access of his inner aspect was barely enough for him to recognize that the invasive working was there. Beyond that, he couldn’t even begin to build up enough strength to try to counter it. His weak probing met with a laugh and Myac glanced up to see the adept’s gloating smile. The warlord looked over then and saw the smile as well. His lips pressed together in a firm line.

  To Myac’s considerable surprise, the warlord sharply reprimanded the adept, and Myac finally caught the man’s name, Ini-jnai. All three shared the same honorific. What was the connection? They didn’t look like family, though it was hard to make a real assessment of their unfamiliar features.

  The adept accepted his reprimand with a nod to his warlord, then he turned to Myac and bowed his head, lowering his eyes in a manner that he could only call apologetic. He said a few things under his breath and the warlord nodded approval, then turned a disturbingly fond smile on Myac. Confusion and frustration raged through him like a tornado. There was no doubting that he was a prisoner. The peculiar treatment made no sense, unless…

  Fresh fury boiled through Myac. He wasn’t being treated like a prisoner. He was being treated like a wild horse. Ksa-jnai had an enemy adept in his army and he needed to break him in properly. Firm treatment had to be mixed with kindness when bringing any creature to heel.

  Still, there was a certain respect in the warlord’s manner, perhaps because of the power he had seen Myac wield or his defiance despite the odds. That grudging consideration confused him, giving him a rock to cling to in a sea full of predators. Surrounded by the hostile army and rendered powerless as he was, it was hard not to want to turn to the warlord for protection. That too, was probably a calculated outcome on Ksa-jnai’s part, but knowing that the foreign warlord was manipulating him didn’t seem to change the effects of that manipulation.

  They could heal, or at least Ini-jnai could. It was important to keep that in mind because it significantly pushed out the limits on how much they could hurt him if he didn’t behave the way they wanted him to. He met the warlord’s eyes. There was respect in those dark depths. Staring down at Myac, he made the same gesture the young warrior made earlier, indicating that he should bow his head, but the gesture was gentle, more of a request than a demand. When he made no move to submit, Ksa-jnai tilted his head ever so slightly to one side and continued to watch him, patient.

  I must hate you. Myac memorized every feature of the warlord’s face and drew in a deep breath. I must hate all of your army, but you the most.

  There was no press of power this time. He bowed his head on his own. The weight of that submission was crushing. The warlord spoke a few words then walked away, Ini-jnai and Na-jnai following. Someone brought a horse up next to Myac and another warrior took his arm, helping him to his feet with a grip that was only as firm as it needed to be. As he mounted, he ran his tongue over the right side of his lower jaw, feeling the gap left by the missing tooth. It wouldn’t be so hard to remember to hate Ksa-jnai.

  The entire army mounted and finished organizing in ranks. The soldier leading Myac’s mount moved up through those ranks until they were only two rows of warriors behind the warlord when the army surged into motion. A shudder coursed through him. This wasn’t where he would prefer to be if the army was heading into a battle. Ideally, he would like to be somewhere on a tower or fortified wall, watching from above. At worst, down in the thick of things was tolerable, if he had a plethora of barriers and his immense ascard power to throw around. If Ini-jnai died in the fighting, that would be worth it, but he doubt
ed Inaki and Shyalis combined had the military might to face this army down, especially with the magnitude of the combined power Ini-jnai wielded.

  Did any adept in the army have control of his own power? It was pointless trying to pick out the other adepts without being able to use ascard. Even Ini-jnai wielded one of the bladed spears and his armor was no different from that of the other ranking soldiers. When he had tried to face the adept down in AhnSegys, he had felt that combined power and it was substantial, the power of hundreds of adepts woven together with remarkable mastery. Given those numbers, he should have seen at least a few adepts by now, which suggested that they all wore the same armor and carried the same weapons as the warriors.

  The kind of working that bound the adepts together was something he’d encountered before. Combining power was difficult because a group of adepts had to feed their own power willingly into one leader who then had to weave it together and control it. It was hard enough to find adepts who would relinquish control of their power, finding someone willing to control that blending with the risk of someone pulling out at a critical moment was nearly impossible. This method of binding, however, eliminated that risk. The adepts on the feeding end had no control at all. If all of them were bound as he was, Ini-jnai could draw from them as much or as little as he needed whenever he wanted to.

  Did these foreign adepts give themselves willingly to such servitude?

  A wave of motion moved through the army as they drew their short-hafted weapons. Myac tensed, wishing he had at least enough power left in him to burn through the rope that bound his wrists. It would be far easier to ride without his hands bound and control of his horse in someone else’s hands. It would also be easier to get his hands on a weapon and go after Ini-jnai in the heat of battle. Hence the reason his hands remained bound, and he didn’t have enough ascard at his disposal to do anything about it. He was essentially blind without his power, unable to reach ahead and search out the opposing force, unable to feel what the other adepts in the army were doing.

  There was a sudden drain on his power, not enough to weaken him significantly, but enough that he noticed. Focusing on the power wrapped insidiously around his own, Myac found that he could feel some of what was going on through Ini-jnai. The lead adept was drawing on the adepts to sustain a powerful barrier over every man and horse in the entire army. The concussion of ascard assaulting areas of that barrier from without reverberated through the other adept, jarring Myac slightly. The incoming attacks were inadequate against the combined power the warlord’s primary adept wielded.

  With his power being leeched from him and his focus following Ini-jnai’s workings, he was caught off guard by a group of mounted Lyran soldiers surging into the midst of the army. The attacks of the Lyran soldiers bounced uselessly off their targets, but a few of Ksa-jnai’s warriors were imbalanced by the force behind those attacks. One Lyran soldier spotted Myac, a flicker of surprise lighting his eyes, then bright red blood choked up through his lips in sharp contrast to his pale skin as a swept blade punched through his chest.

  The warrior leading Myac’s mount turned his own horse at an angle in front of him and several other warriors formed up protectively around him. They weren’t willing to lose such an asset. Under different circumstances, the realization might have been flattering. Here it only ensured that no one was going to get close enough to help him escape.

  Leaning to look around the warriors blocking him in, he saw that Ksa-jnai was no longer in front of them. Following the binding that linked him to Ini-jnai allowed him to locate the adept and Ksa-jnai whose side he rarely strayed far from. The warlord was at the head of a charge that swept around one side and surged toward a second group of Lyran soldiers charging into the heart of the army. The Lyran tactics were haphazard and reckless. It was a suicidal charge, a ruse, and judging by the rage on Ksa-jnai’s face, he knew it.

  Leveling the short-hafted spear with its long swept blade, the grey-skinned warlord charged at the opposing soldiers. In the last instant, the nearest soldier spun to face him, the man’s long, pale hair flowing out beneath his helmet as he spurred his mount toward Ksa-jnai. His sword came forward in a fierce thrust, powered by the lunge of his horse. The sword struck the warlords chest and rebounded to the side, twisting from the soldier’s grasp. He caught hold of the front of his saddle with one hand to keep from falling. Ksa-jnai’s bladed spear swept up, sunlight sparkling on the polished steel, then it swung down and around, slashing through the Lyran man’s neck effortlessly. So effortlessly, in fact, that Myac was certain Ksa-jnai had used ascard to add force to the strike.

  Moments later the battle was finished. The opposing force had been small and fierce. Too small for this holding. A decoy for an escape. If he judged right, Lord Inaki, and likely Lady Shyalis as well, would be well on their way out of the area by now. They must have gotten warning about the coming army. It was a desperate and costly move, but it might pay off.

  Ksa-jnai sneered at the bodies of the Lyran warriors, then his gaze lifted and locked on Myac. There was smoldering anger there, lighting a fire in those dark eyes. For a tense moment, Myac wondered if the warlord intended to take that molten store of emotion out on him, then Ini-jnai leaned in close to Ksa-jnai and said something. The warlord held Myac’s eyes for a moment longer, then he nodded and turned away, barking out orders. The army fell back into their ranks.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The trip back to the Murak village on the northern border went quickly. A brief respite from the more intense heat allowed for longer and faster hours of travel. Suac Chozai and the Murak warriors traveled with single-minded intensity, focusing on the coming conflict now that the suacs had committed to action. In the silence of her own head, Indigo wondered if all that had happened had perhaps driven her mad. Was she really attempting to influence the outcome of war? Who did she think she was?

  She was one woman, one adept, now turned traitor to her country for the love of a man who hated her. Despite that, she was going to try to help him save his empire just as she had helped him win it in the first place. If she could see Yiloch again and talk to him more about how she had come to betray him, perhaps show him how she meant to help Lyra, would the uncertainty swelling in her chest disappear?

  As soon as they were back in the Murak village, Suac Chozai retreated to his hut with a group of men, one of whom he had pointed out to her before they left for Farid. The man was the Murak chief, though she had yet to see him do anything that suggested significant authority. Although impressive in appearance, the chief appeared to defer to Suac Chozai in most things.

  Abandoned by the suac with no one else to talk to, she turned to wandering through the village, watching the people and listening to their conversations in an effort to pick up some of the language while trying to ignore their suspicious looks. At least they had stopped glaring at her outright. Something in the way the suac treated her had gained her a grudging respect from the people of the tribe.

  After a time, she wandered back to the suac’s hut and waited outside, fighting the urge to eavesdrop with ascard. She yearned to know what they were talking about, but they were certainly speaking Kudaness and knowing how they felt about ascard use made her feel self-conscious when she used it anyhow, even when they had no way of knowing she was doing it. She waited, picking at her fingernails until other men finally left the hut. Then she hurried in, heart thrumming double-time in her chest.

  She stopped inside the entrance and stood silent a moment, considering what to say and recognizing that he might not appreciate her barging in as she had without invite.

  The eyes of the suac turned to her from where he sat cross-legged in the center of the hut. His head dipped in the slightest nod of acknowledgement, showing that her unannounced entrance at least hadn’t offended him.

  She took a few steps closer. “Is it possible to direct a walk with the gods in order to see something that’s happening now?”

  He tilted his head to one side, brow furr
owing in thought, the expression rearranging the shape of the tattoos there. When he spoke this time, he mixed in a few words in the Murak dialect, letting her translate through context. “Direct, no. You must make your desires known to the gods. If they feel your need is great enough, they will guide you to what you seek.”

  She chewed at her lip. Was it wise to continue using the drug? What might it be doing to her? She glanced at Chozai’s copper eyes and yearned for a mirror, but there were no such frivolities here. She would have to take her chances or abandon the idea.

  After a moment, she nodded. “I would like to try.”

  “You know where the sucar is.” He swept a hand toward the cupboard in the corner.

  The thrumming in her chest became a violent pounding. Both times she used the sucar, once she recovered from its effects, her connection to her inner aspect had felt stronger than before. That didn’t lesser her fear of the vile substance. “Will you…”

  His level look silenced her. “I have many things to do if my people are to go to war. You do not need me there to walk with the gods.”

  She took a deep breath to ease the tremor of fear in her chest. When that failed, she clenched her teeth and made her feet move to the corner. The skin waited, pushed to the back of the cupboard, ominous in its shadowed place. She grabbed it, strode over to a rug with forced courage in her steps, and sat. Pulling off the stopper, she glanced at Chozai. He nodded and she lifted it to her lips, taking a quick swallow. A dark hand moved into her periphery. She handed him the skin and succumbed to the swaying rhythm of the drug.

  •

  The blackness hung with her, wrapping around her and clinging to her. The tremor of fear became a panicked bird, its wings beating against the inside of her chest, demanding release. There was a spinning feeling in her head and she thought she might throw up, then vision returned, pushing through dizziness and pain.