Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Two

by Rypel, T. C.

  “Calm yourself, Wilfred,” Garth cautioned.

  “Nein, I won’t calm myself—you promised you’d help me rescue Genya,” Wilf accused Gonji. “What will happen to that promise?”

  Gonji paused and thought for an instant but avoided Wilf’s eyes and moved to the window to scan the streets.

  “If you go out there, I’m going, too,” Wilf announced.

  “You’ll stay here,” Garth ordered.

  “Nein, I’ll do as I please,” Wilf responded, turning on him. “Don’t say anything—just listen to me. I will never live down having struck you, Papa. It was unforgivable. But I’m still a man. I have a mind of my own, and I believe we’re not through. Have we trained so long, suffered through so much, to give it all up because Gonji’s pride has been hurt?” He saw the samurai stiffen as he stood behind him, but he continued: “Ja, that’s why you’re leaving as much as anything else. You know they don’t want you to leave, whatever they say. My father spoke in anger and exhaustion and fear. Nobody knows what in hell to do about all this, but your leaving isn’t going to stop it. The prophetess was right. Mord isn’t going to stop killing until we’re all dead, and some of us won’t stop fighting until we’ve won or died trying. I won’t stop—even if no one will help me—” He burst into tears of rage. “I’m going to get inside that castle,” he raved, “with you or without you.” He slammed off into another room, leaving deadly silence in his wake.

  By now Paille was awake and, having taken in what was occurring by random snatches, he came to understand the tragic circumstances of Vedun and the fact that Gonji was going to leave them. He registered his protest with a rambling tirade that was largely ignored.

  Gonji moved to Helena, who now sat weeping softly. She shook her head when he approached, indicating that he should not leave. She signed to him that she still loved him. He took her hands in his and set them on the table, nodded tenderly that he understood, but he closed his eyes with an eloquent finality that caused her tears to stream anew.

  Lydia mounted the steps. Gonji aimed a telling look at her, one that was fraught with the strange ambivalence she had aroused in him during his stay. The knock at the front door broke the spell.

  “Aldo Monetto,” Garth said, opening it. The bearded biller entered, out of breath.

  “Greetings, gentils,” he said. “Gonji—good to see you up and about. Listen, everyone, they’re cleaning up the city. The body count of citizens seems something upwards of fifty—very few militiamen, I gather. But it’s awful—God, it’s awful what they’ve done. I saw some of the Zarnesti raiding party, and some others who want to know what to do. A lot of them are sneaking down to the catacombs, I think. So what now?”

  Gonji remained speechless, though Monetto kept looking to him in confused appeal.

  “That’s where I’ll head, too, then...once I’ve checked on my family’s well-being,” Roric announced uncertainly. He seemed about to reluctantly take up the new slack in leadership.

  Gonji finally spoke. “Signora Vargo, let me borrow your husband’s capote, dozo, to cover myself as best I can.” She bobbed her head and brought him the hooded cloak. “The boots I’ll leave for whoever wants them. Can’t imagine why I ever bought them,” he continued distractedly.

  “I’m going along with you,” Wilf said, returning to the room, “and no one’s going to stop me.” The firmness in his voice smothered his father’s overture of disagreement, and Garth turned away from him.

  “Sayonara,” Gonji said finally, to all, a note of reluctance detectable in his tone. “Do what you must.”

  And as Gerhard whispered to a bewildered Monetto a quick recap of the grim events in the cellar, Gonji and Wilf slipped out into the pre-dawn gloom, a shroud of fog helping to mask their surreptitious movement. Moments later, Gerhard and Monetto left in a different direction, followed shortly by Roric.

  “Well,” Paille began, watching through the shutters as Gonji and Wilf disappeared through the narrow rear lane, “there goes the best fighting man among us.”

  “And the finest leader.”

  They all turned at the sound of Michael’s voice. The protege leaned against the cellar jamb, supporting his weight with both arms. “But still a man...a man who needed understanding, like any other....”

  * * * *

  They darted through the darkened lanes, using the shadows and the fog, weaving their way to the square not far off.

  “You can’t go,” Wilf kept whispering, his voice ever on the edge of furious tears. “I didn’t think you’d ever let those cowards influence you.”

  “Quiet, Wilf.”

  “What about those who trained hard to become bushi? We still need training. If we can’t overthrow them now, then why not next week, next year—sometime?”

  “Stop it before someone hears you, dammit!”

  Wilf snuffled in a breath, gripping the sheathed hilt of his katana. “I’ll not surrender this sword. You’ll have to kill me to get it back.”

  “Oh, shut up, already—Spine-cleaver is yours to keep forever. You know that.”

  Wilf grabbed his shoulder as they hunkered down in a cul-de-sac, waiting for a mounted party to pass. “How was I supposed to be sure? Can I believe any of your promises? You also promised to show me how to get into that castle and free Genya.”

  Gonji threw off his hand and glared back into his eyes, but Wilf didn’t flinch. Gonji turned away, struggling internally. “Come on, they’ve passed.”

  From between two market stalls they viewed the terrible result of the night’s slaughter at the square. Bodies of the dead were heaped near the chapel for identification by survivors. Soldiers’ corpses were loaded onto drays. The square crawled with troops. There was no getting to the chapel entrance to the catacombs for them, but Gonji’s mind was not on that problem now. His grim stare was fixed on the lightly dangling body of Master Flavio, swinging with the air currents from the ironic gibbet of the great crucifix between the fountain and rostrum.

  Gonji nodded. “May Iasu take him to the reward he lived for—let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “Tralayn’s.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mord had worked feverishly through the night since his return from the too easily thwarted rebellion in the city. He had failed there, thanks largely to the traitor’s inability to get to him sooner. That owed much to the blasted oriental’s security measures; there’d be much to pay him back for, once his usefulness was done. But there was nothing for it now but to forge ahead with an alternative plan. Specifics would be pursued later. For now...the groundwork.

  He hastily prepared his subject for the dramatic presentation he would make to Klann. The king had to be appeased in his renewed demands. And the thing he would show, Mord thought, should prove quite convincing. After all, what did any of these common mortals—or even one as uncommon as King Klann—understand of magick gramarye?

  Next—a fresh imputation of mana for his additional sorcerous manipulations.... Soon, the invocation at full moon, and then these extreme measures of acquiring dark power, via the draining of life forces, would be unnecessary. And this full moon would be special, he felt sure. It would mark the achievement of his and the League’s Grand Scheme, with the sorcerer annexing to himself both the manpower and the wealth left over from the holocaust. But for now....

  He lured five Akryllonian children into the tower, using as an enticement the strange malleable man-forms, the “dolls,” they all loved to handle, the ones that moved when the children ordered them to. Next he told them a story—and how they all were rapt by Mord’s way with tale-spinning! They would sit hand-in-hand in a circle while he wove his mastery about them, all the while draining them of their life essence, drawing from them the mana he would need to work his sorcery. Soon they all were asleep, exhausted. Their parents would blame the late hours they had kept, or their miserable peripatetic life, or changes in diet, or the spirits that roamed the territory, called down upon them in curses by th
e despised people of Vedun. They would blame anything, in short, except the dreaded sorcerer, who was, of course, working on their behalf. And the children wouldn’t tell them where they’d been; they were all forbidden to bother the magician in his tower.

  Mord had them carried to an unused chamber by mercenaries who drew pay from both the king and the sorcerer, though Klann knew nothing of their latter employment. Then, with some remonstrance from Mord at their childish cowardice, the mercenaries queasily hefted the wrapped subject that would be shown to Klann.

  Now remained the most difficult task of all: dealing with the holy woman, who had been granted a hearing rather than the summary execution Mord had hoped for....

  * * * *

  “See how the sorcerer bleeds your people!” Tralayn cried, raising her shackled arms to swing them over the audience in the main hall. “He has poisoned you, and now he is killing your people!”

  “Yes, keep talking, by all means,” Mord blared from the gallery, where he stood flanked by mercenaries. “This is all quite fascinating to the king and his subjects alike, I’m sure, witch woman. You guards with her, keep her arms down, that she may wave no vile enchantment over anyone in this hall. We’ve seen quite enough of her power lately.”

  Murmurs in the crowd. They had momentarily forgotten her notoriety, so shocked were they by her accusations against Mord, her denunciations of their king.

  “Indeed, tell us more,” King Klann commanded, glancing toward Mord suspiciously.

  “I have no more to say to you,” she replied, her impassioned obloquy at an end, “save to say that you’ve been the fool, Klann. You’ve opened yourself to use by the Evil One; chosen the Dark Way as a shortcut to power that is denied you. And your folly will see your life dashed.” People began to shout her down, cursing in the Kunan tongue and crying out for her blood, to hear their king so reviled. “The Lord God will send to Vedun his Deliverer—” she continued, shouting now over the din, “he who will turn your blood to ice for his very sight!”

  A Llorm pikeman leapt forward and thrust his lance through her heart, and there came a blinding flash of light in the hall that tore screams from their throats as they buried their faces in their hands. But when they timorously uncovered their eyes, everything had returned to normal.

  Tralayn lay across the table, her face set in the peace of death, her emerald eyes staring hollowly.

  The king and his retainers craned their necks from their side of the gallery. “What was that, Mord?” King Klann asked.

  Mord stood unmoving, hands pressed against his chest. A moment earlier he had felt there a burning pain and known the fear of kindled righteousness. The same fear he had felt fleetingly a month before, when Austrian troops had surged after them under the cross of Christ, the massed power of their faith arrayed against him, confounding his waning sorcery through the might of arms of those who truly believed in life-affirming Powers....

  “Her—her final weak attempt on your life, sire. I—I dispersed it, fortunately, at the last instant. Forgive me for not foreseeing it sooner. It’s the flagging of certain of my powers, you—”

  “It’s your duty to foresee such things, magician,” Klann roared. “I’ll not be threatened within my own castle again, or your head will roll in payment!”

  “Quite so, sire,” Mord replied, bowing obsequiously. “You men,” he called down to the hall floor, “burn that witch’s body and all her effects. And tomorrow, burn her house in the city, as well.”

  “Captain Kel’Tekeli!” Klann shouted down. “Come forward.” Julian marched out to the fore of the massed troops on the main hall floor.

  “Sire?”

  “What about that oriental rogue? Has he been arrested?”

  Julian paled. “No, sire, I’m afraid not. He—”

  “Slipped you again, has he?” the king taunted.

  “No, milord,” Julian said defensively. “This revolt kept us busy throughout the day, and he seemed to have no part in it.”

  “Is that so?” Klann remarked skeptically.

  “True, my liege. He was nowhere to be found, and the rebels are saying he’s not their leader, that he’s fled. But I have the troops alerted. If he’s about, he’ll be apprehended. Have no fear. I shall deal with him.”

  “See that you do—now what is it you want, courier?”

  Mord listened in amusement while the Llorm messenger related the lost contact with patrols sent to check on outposts in the territory. Probably more of the oriental’s doing; or the newly freed and more vigilant peasant village. Or perhaps it was the work of the enigmatic presence, the soldier ventured tentatively—the Deathwind....

  But then Klann was speaking Mord’s name.

  “Uh—sire?”

  “The charm of division—what new developments?” Klann pointed an accusing finger. “You swore there’d be results to show soon.”

  Mord was a bit startled to hear the king speak so openly of it, but then he bowed and snapped his fingers. So be it, then—a display to evoke fear and wonder.... Three of the mercenaries with him licked their dry lips and shuffled off to the chamber at the sorcerer’s left. They came out moments later with the slender wrapped figure that undulated in their tentative grasp. An unearthly moaning sound emanated from under the wrap. The crowd in the hall whispered and pointed.

  Mord undid the fastenings and unwound the shroud—

  “Behold!”

  Screams and epithets howled from those gathered below. Women covered their eyes and turned away into comforting arms. It was a ghastly sight: A fragment of what had once been a human being, split vertically through its middle such that no scar could be seen, the flesh covering the head-to-groin severance appearing like melted tallow. It was naked. A one-armed, one-legged, half-headed monstrosity that had to be supported by the quaking mercenaries, whose breaths hitched at having to touch it.

  The creature babbled hideously out of the bit of mouth left to it.

  “The latest experiment, sire,” Mord announced proudly. “A living, breathing division.”

  The crowd’s shock passed. Now many of them became coarsely amused at the apparition, their esteem for the sorcerer’s abilities also increasing.

  “Just mind that I don’t end up like that,” King Klann bellowed.

  “Oh, of course not, milord. This was but one puny man, while you are many. Soon I shall be ready to work the charm to the end you seek.”

  “Well, get that...monster out of here,” the king ordered. He thought of something that seemed to amuse him. “Have it sent to the city as a further warning of what to expect, should they consider another uprising.”

  The crowd began to disperse, shaking their heads in awe over what they had just witnessed, glad for the power of Mord that protected them from the enchantments of their enemies.

  * * * *

  “A drink?” King Klann offered archly. Then he smiled. “No, of course not. You don’t drink anything we would find palatable, do you?”

  Mord’s lipless mouth smiled under his ornate mask. “Your wit becomes a scion of Akryllon, sire.”

  “Indeed? Stop patronizing me, Mord. What do you really know of what it is to be the scion of Akryllon’s throne?”

  Mord tensed imperceptibly, uncertain of this wry turning of the king’s humor. “Milord?”

  “You know...if I could believe for a second that the witch woman’s accusations were true—”

  Emitting a great, patient sigh, Mord clasped his hands loosely before him. “So, milord, she has done her work well, caused just the sort of rift between us that she would have hoped. Somewhere her shade grins over what she’s wrought.... I make no response to her pernicious accusations, if that’s what you seek. Your very entertainment of the plausibility beggars any response. What do I say to such mad—?”

  “Say nothing,” Klann said curtly. A strange mirth danced in his eyes. “Suffice it to say that what happened did indeed happen.” His voice dwindled to a whisper. “But that you will prevent its ever h
appening in such a way again. Have I made myself clear?” The magician nodded slowly. “And you will separate our personages, so that there will never again be...such a Death and Rising. I crave the living flesh-and-blood counsel of those I might truly trust—my remaining siblings, who are trapped...within.”

  Mord’s mind raced with unruly notions. Was the king telling him he suspected that Mord had, in fact, murdered his late brother? Yet was this Klann-personage sanctioning that possible outrage, by virtue of his delight in being freed? The sorcerer’s unholy soul cackled. Things are indeed looking up.

  “Your wish, milord, is ever my duty.”

  * * * *

  Knowing that Mord was occupied with the hearing of the prophetess and sensing that it might be her only opportunity, Genya slinked into the ground floor corridors of the sorcerer’s drum tower, bent on fulfilling her promise to Richard.

  She had to find Lottie, and the three of them must flee this awful place.

  It was all wrong. Something inside her despaired for Lottie, told her that her friend was dead...or worse. But she had promised, and she was motivated by her own determination to discover what had become of her longtime friend.

  So far, so good. Genya cautiously, ever-so-deliberately made the circuit of the ground floor, checked the empty chambers that weren’t locked, and found nothing. No sentries were on duty, most of the garrison also at the hearing, so she hadn’t found it necessary to employ her questionable cover story; but still, Mord’s confidence in leaving the place so unguarded was disarming. And as she ascended the first cold staircase that rose to the darker, mustier second level, she was seized by the certainty of one thing: If Lottie could not be found in the tower, she would never, never descend into the subterranean levels, from whose nightmare pit crawled those dim moans of inhuman things in torment....

  Second level. A full, cautious circuit—this tower might well be abandoned. Or she was being played for a fool. The notion angered her, summoned an indignant courage that caused her to press onward. And upward.