Scavenger of Souls

by Joshua David Bellin

  The wind had picked up in intensity, whipping around us. Asunder’s voice creaked and whined as it poured over the glassy surface of the Shattered Lands. His people began to sway, their eyes closed, their fists clenched on their chests. A low chant arose from their throats, a mutter like wind or water or blood throbbing through secret veins. Asunder listened to the murmur as it rose and fell, then cut it off with a glance. It died as abruptly as if a single giant creature had let out a grateful sigh.

  “Bring them,” he said.

  Leaving Nessa in the hands of two warriors, Archangel stepped onto the black rock, forcing me ahead of him. Two additional warriors followed, bearing the prone form of Aleka in her stretcher. Getting my first good look at her since yesterday, I thought her face appeared thinner, the hollows around her eyes deeper than ever before.

  Then, to my utter amazement, a final warrior detached himself from the throng, bearing the bound form of Wali.

  He was naked to the waist, his uniform pants torn off at the knees to resemble the cave dwellers’ costumes. Blood, whether his own or the dead guard’s, streaked his chest and face, matted his hair. Though his eyes were open, he looked at me without seeing. As if in ridicule, they’d hung the ring they’d stolen from him around his neck, where it gleamed against the bloody stripes that crossed his chest.

  The guard threw him at Asunder’s feet. Wali crashed to the ground, then struggled into a kneeling position. But his head hung to his chest, and he seemed too exhausted or battered to rise.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nessa fighting to free herself. Asunder looked straight at her and smiled, then reached for the white staff at his side. Eyes ablaze, he pointed it at Wali like a flayed bone. The warriors on the trailhead fell back, covering their faces with their hands as the staff touched Wali’s forehead.

  His head snapped back as if he’d received a stunning blow. For a second he remained on his knees, the ring around his neck wobbling as his body swayed. Then he went limp, chin lolling onto his chest, body collapsing to the stone. In the instant before his eyes closed, I saw something I’d never expected to see there. Not confusion, or surprise, or shock. Not even dismay.

  What I saw was fear.

  Asunder covered the ground to where Aleka lay and repeated the performance. At the touch of the staff, her body arched upward so violently she fell from the stretcher and thrashed against the stone, her injured arm snapping beneath her. I struggled to overcome Archangel’s crushing strength, but he held me fast. Yet somehow Nessa wrenched free of her captors’ hold, and I saw that she’d sliced the bonds around her wrists, maybe using one of the warrior’s own spearpoints when we were surrounded by them. She leaped toward Archangel and pounded on the giant’s back, but she might as well have been hammering the trunk of a tree. Another warrior grabbed at her, but she spun, ramming the heel of her hand into his nose, and he fell in a spray of blood. Then a group of warriors from the trail swarmed her, and she went down. The next instant Archangel lifted my feet from the ground and rocked me forward, bringing me within reach of Asunder’s staff.

  He smiled. I saw myself reflected in his eyes, my face fractured in their black depths like a kaleidoscope. I felt the staff touch my forehead.

  I had a momentary sensation of cold, freezing cold, then searing pain coursed through me.

  It felt as if I was being torn apart by hundreds of razor-sharp teeth. They punctured me, penetrated me. They filled my mind, blotting everything from my thoughts. I couldn’t tell if I was conscious or not, if Archangel still held me, if my feet rested on the ground or my body had been cast into space. I couldn’t remember my own name, the touch of the little kids’ hands, the sound of Nessa’s voice. I had felt the pain of the Skaldi when they attacked me at their nest, felt as if everything inside me was being sucked away to fill their empty shells. This was worse. With the Skaldi, I’d had only one body for them to torture. Now it felt like I had a million bodies, and every one of them was being eaten alive.

  I thought I heard Nessa scream. I thought I saw Asunder’s staff grow veins and muscle and flesh until it was no longer a staff but an arm, no longer one arm but two. Then I thought I saw the arms being torn from a child’s body and blood exploding all around me. Then I thought nothing more.

  I woke with my back against rock, my head a knot of pain.

  My hands remained bound, but my shirt had been removed and my pants sliced like Wali’s, leaving my skin to bake on the black stone. The figures of my companions surrounded me, all of them half-stripped like the cave dwellers. Asunder and Archangel were nowhere to be seen, but the rest of the warriors stood guard in a circle around us. The sky had turned the color of a day-old bruise, reducing the glow of the black desert to a dull gleam like burnished metal. I tried to stand, but found my feet bound too.

  I counted my colony, and was relieved to find that of those who’d left the cave, only Wali was missing. But Nessa was tightly bound and gagged, Adem and the little kids under heavy guard. And when I saw Aleka, my heart froze.

  She lay on her stretcher with eyes open but sightless, and for a second I thought she was dead. Then I saw her chest move beneath what was left of her uniform jacket, sharp and shallow breaths like a kid caught in a nightmare. Her face had turned a chalky gray that reminded me of nothing so much as the Skaldi’s skin. The angle hid her injured arm, but I could see the blood that had soaked into her tattered uniform and the canvas of the stretcher.

  I looked around frantically for a sign of Asunder and Archangel, and realized we’d been moved. At the time of the attack, the black mountain had been a blotch on the horizon. Now it loomed over our heads, gleaming like obsidian, its steep sides cut into sharp facets. At its base stood an assortment of stone shapes that looked like grotesque, twisted mockeries of human beings. As my eyes adjusted to the altar’s solid blackness, I saw a rough stairway carved into the monolith, a series of narrow, uneven steps that spiraled to the top like a spinal column. The twin horns stood too high for me to be sure, but it seemed the stairs ended right between them.

  I turned my attention to the cords knotting my wrists, but gave up trying to untie them when one of the guards leveled his spear in my direction. I cursed myself for not thinking to use one of their blades to free myself like Nessa had. I cursed myself even more for not using Nessa’s own blade when I’d had the chance.

  “Querry.”

  I rolled over and saw Tyris, lying on the ground facing me, wrinkled and thin in her torn uniform. One side of her face was so badly swollen her eye was sealed shut, and blood crusted her nose.

  “I tried to get to Aleka,” she explained. “They didn’t like that very much.”

  “How is she?”

  “The fracture has reopened,” she said. “And the mistreatment she’s suffered has made it far worse. She appears to be in shock. Blood loss, maybe, or . . .”

  I shuddered, remembering the staff. “Did he touch you, too?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like it, Querry. It seems to be no more than a length of bone, but its touch—it’s like a severe electric shock.” She gestured with her one good eye toward the mountain. “Archangel took Wali to the summit. None of the other warriors would come near him. It’s as if they believe he’s carrying some terrible disease.”

  I rolled over again and struggled into a sitting position. My sunburned body ached, and the sharp stone scratched my exposed skin. The guard watched me but didn’t raise his spear. I peered through the semidarkness at Aleka, and thought I saw a red mark on her forehead where she’d been touched by the staff, a perfect circle the size of a curled thumb and index finger. It was impossible to tell in the bad light, but I could have sworn that, with every hidden beat of her heart, the redness was spreading. I reached up to touch my own forehead and felt the flesh drumming like a second heart.

  Then footsteps sounded behind me, and Tyris’s one eye widened in warning. I turned, my head throbbing as if it remembered the touch of the staff. Asunder sto
od there, his giant lieutenant looming in the twilight, brother to the stone mountain.

  “Nidach asa minach,” Asunder spoke. “The Scavenger awaits. Take them to the altar, and there let them be fed to the power that rules this land. Let them be clasped in his merciless jaws, and stripped of flesh, and harrowed for all eternity in the empty waste. Let them cry out for mercy, but receive none, and let them welter in their own blood and tears from now until the end of time.”

  Two warriors approached me, their hands tightening on my arms, and I was dragged to the steps of the altar. I fought the best I could, but my bare feet slipped against the glassy stone. Nessa and the others remained under guard at the altar’s base, but Aleka was lifted from the stretcher by Archangel, her ravaged body looking as frail as the old woman’s in his oversize arms. Tyris shouted, her voice joined by Nekane’s and Adem’s cries. Zataias tried to grab a spear, but a thicket of lances forced him and the others back. I was first to reach the monolith, the warriors shoving me forward until my feet touched the stairs.

  I stumbled on the stone. It cut my feet like glass.

  We had no sooner started up the staircase than a strange sound filled the air, a buzz, a pulse. I felt a momentary shudder like a shock of static. At first I thought the noise and sensation had come from contact with the black stone, but then the warriors holding me fell back, their hands flying to their heads, their bodies hitting the ground. Without support, I pitched forward onto the stairs, narrowly missing a sharp protrusion of stone. When I looked back to see what had happened to my captors, I saw the strangest thing: a cocoon of pale yellow light surrounded their bodies, a force field of some kind that held them in place even as it tortured them. They rolled under its light, blood flying where the black stone cut them. Angry red welts appeared on their bodies, and in seconds they stopped their anguished thrashing. The smell of cooked flesh filled the air.

  The other warriors had broken and run when the beam hit their companions. Some made it only a few steps before the glow surrounded them, and their mouths opened in a silent scream before their charred bodies fell and lay still. Most of them, though, vanished into the encroaching dark, carrying prisoners with them. I watched helplessly as warriors scooped up Bea and Keely, Nekane and most of the other children. Only Zataias held his ground, fighting like a madman with someone twice his size. Adem came charging to his aid, a spear held in his bound hands like a club. Archangel was headed in their direction when Asunder shouted something I couldn’t make out and ran off, his red cloak flapping violently behind him. The giant dropped Aleka’s limp body and stooped to lift Nessa instead. I pushed myself to my feet in an effort to make my way to her, but the cords tripped me and I landed on the bodies of the men who’d burned by the stairs.

  Archangel slung Nessa over his shoulder. She was tied too tightly to move and gagged too securely to scream, but I saw the terror in her eyes. Her captor seemed about to run too when something caught his attention.

  I followed his gaze and made out an unmistakable object: the barrel of a rifle, protruding from behind the base of the altar and trained on the ground at Archangel’s feet. The buzzing sounded in my ears, and a short burst of yellow light like a glowing thread emerged from the muzzle, striking the stone with a sizzling noise. The gunman stepped from behind the altar, and I saw that he belonged to a survival colony, with the customary boots, olive-drab fatigues, and short-brimmed hats we’d worn before Asunder’s warriors had stripped us down for the sacrifice. He stood no taller than me, but he carried himself with authority, his shoulders squared and his stride nearly a strut.

  He and Archangel faced each other for a long moment, the giant’s expression clouding with the first hint of surprise or doubt I’d seen him show. The gunman took a step toward him. For a second I thought they were going to speak.

  But then the giant turned and sprinted toward the canyon with Nessa hanging over his shoulder, his long strides carrying him away like a rocket. The gunman didn’t shoot, but took off after him and soon disappeared into the dark.

  I disentangled myself from the dead warriors and found a point of stone to slice the bonds around my wrists. With my hands freed, I was able to attack the knots around my ankles and pull the clinging strands loose. I ran to where Aleka lay, and my stomach lurched when I saw the shards of bone sticking from her arm like teeth.

  Tyris knelt by her side. “Don’t touch her,” she said to me. She tore a strip of cloth from her threadbare jacket, tried to tie a tourniquet around Aleka’s arm. There was barely enough arm for the knot to hold. “The stretcher! Bring it here!”

  Adem and Zataias appeared out of the dusk, carrying the bloody stretcher. Tyris gestured urgently and they set it down beside Aleka.

  “Hold her head,” Tyris said to me. “Carefully. Adem, you take her shoulders. Zataias, the feet. We all lift together. On my count. One, two, three.”

  We lifted her the few inches onto the stretcher. I couldn’t help feeling I was lifting a corpse.

  “It’s going to take all of us,” Tyris said. “Me and Querry in front, Adem and Zataias in the rear. Try not to jostle her.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  Tyris looked grim. “Anywhere but here. She’ll die if I can’t get the bleeding to stop. Plus I don’t think she’ll last long in this heat.”

  “What about the kids? And Nessa and Wali?”

  “Wali must be dead by now,” Tyris said. “And we’ll never catch the others. We have to try to save who we can.”

  We hurriedly gathered the few things that had been left on the field of battle: the dead warriors’ spears, the scarf that had fallen or been torn from Nessa’s hair, which Tyris had slightly better success using as a tourniquet. We had just hoisted the stretcher and taken our first step toward the south when a new voice froze us in our spot.

  “Hold it right there.”

  I turned and saw that the gunman had returned. Carelessly kicking one of the dead bodies out of the way, he advanced, his strange weapon pointed straight at us.

  “Step away,” he said. “Hands on your head.”

  Listening to his words, I realized that he wasn’t a he. The voice was female, and the small, cocky man was revealed as a teenage girl, dark-skinned and with black curls cropped short, her black eyes aimed at me with the same deadly intent as her weapon.

  I took a step toward her, my hands held out. The rifle jerked up, locking on my chest.

  “She’s dying!” I said. “We have to get her out of here.”

  “The only thing you have to do,” the girl said, “is put your goddamn hands where I told you.”

  “Please,” Tyris said. “She needs medical attention. Right away.”

  The girl took her eyes off me for a second to glance at Aleka, and following an impulse I couldn’t remember forming, I chose that moment to leap at her and grab for the rifle. I got my hands on it, tried to wrestle it away from her, but she swung the stock sharply, catching me across the forehead. I fell, too dazed to protect myself against the black rock rushing up to meet my face.

  “Goddamn it!” the girl shouted. Through blurred vision I watched her spin violently, her weapon leveled at the others. “I just knew this was one of his traps!”

  She marched up to Tyris and Adem and Zataias, making them lie down on the rock with their hands behind their heads. When she’d patted them down and made sure they had nothing on them, she removed the couple spears we’d laid on the stretcher and snapped the shafts across her knee, throwing the pieces to the ground. Then she came back and knelt beside me, jerking my face up to hers by the hair.

  “I’ve been itching all day for an excuse to kill people,” she hissed in my face. “Looks like you just gave me what I was looking for.”

  PART TWO

  WRATH

  6

  The girl marched us back to her camp at gunpoint.

  She let the others walk ahead with the stretcher, Zataias staggering under its weight. Tyris had begged her to help Aleka, and the gi
rl had chewed her lip in thought, finally jerking her head toward the east. She’d even allowed us a moment to wrap our feet in strips torn from the remains of our uniforms, which did practically nothing to cushion our soles from the punishment of the black rock. But she forced me to walk directly in front of her, hands behind my head.

  Which I thought was a bit excessive. I was unarmed, exhausted, bruised, and battered. My head swam from Asunder’s staff and the butt of the girl’s rifle. Not exactly what you’d think of as a threat.

  But she ignored my discomfort. Or that wasn’t entirely true. She seemed to revel in it. Any time I lagged or tried to look at her, she jammed the rifle into the small of my back, which was so chafed and sunburned it hurt as much as the rest of me. From the few glimpses I caught of her night-black eyes, I got the feeling she wouldn’t appreciate me asking her to be more careful, much less batting the rifle away. She hadn’t repeated her threat to kill me, and I figured if she was bothering to take us to her camp she must have reconsidered. But that didn’t change the fact that for the second time in less than a week, I was a complete stranger’s prisoner. And this time, every step I took toward her destination was a step I took away from Nessa and the children.

  “You can’t do this,” I said. “Take the others to your base, but let me go so I can find the rest of my colony.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she growled, sticking the rifle in my back. “I’m sure you’d love to bring your colony swarming after me.”

  “That’s not what I meant—”

  “Save it,” she snapped. “I’m getting the hell out of here before his whole army shows up. And you should consider yourself lucky I don’t fry your skinny butt right now.”

  And that was it for that conversation.