* * *
Ashok woke up furious with a jagged black shard embedded in his heart. Somehow he knew that it was all that remained of the once great Angruvadal and it hadn’t killed him only because it loved him. He could feel it there, almost as if it was molten, purifying him with fire. Reaching up with one shaking hand, he shoved two fingers deep into his chest wound, probing. The shard scorched his fingertips when he found it, and he had to pull his hand away.
He was lying in a puddle of melting ice. The air burned, hot as the Capitol in the summer. He saw Nadan Somsak, revealed as an abomination, screeching at his troops to obey, and he knew that this was not yet done. Struggling to stand, he found that one leg was still pathetically weak, so he dragged it along behind. There was a crossbow bolt sticking out of his stomach. He thought about ripping it free so he’d have something to stab Nadan with, but he couldn’t risk tearing out his guts. He didn’t have time to shove them back in.
Ashok saw something that would make a passable weapon and scooped it up along the way. Nadan Somsak turned just in time to see that Ashok was still alive, but then Ashok took the antler that had broken off the Somsak’s helmet and drove it deep into Nadan’s throat. White puss sprayed out. Surprised, Nadan tried to push him away, but Ashok twisted it deeper, rocking the antler back and forth until he found the spine. Ashok pried the vertebra apart.
Paralyzed, Nadan dropped to his knees. There was fear in his eyes.
Ashok had known fear once, in the river, but never again. “You broke my sword.”
Ashok drew back one arm and smashed his fist into the Somsak’s face with everything he could muster. He hit him again, and then kept on hitting him. Fat droplets of blood, both red and white, flew into the air as Ashok pounded Nadan’s face into meat. An eye ruptured. Sharp teeth sliced into his knuckles, but Ashok kept striking him, following Nadan as he sank to the ground, determined to flatten his skull and beat his brains out.
Every bone in Nadan’s face was broken, but Ashok kept beating him until the flesh of the cheeks ripped open. Ashok could see the demon’s tongue there, twisting about, an independent creature, a foul parasite, so he quit striking Nadan long enough to take hold of his face, break his jaw open far enough that he could reach inside, then grabbed the thrashing evil bit. It squirmed in his grasp, but he squeezed and ripped it out of Nadan’s head. The tongue came free with a sick tearing noise.
Ashok stood up, tottering, his injured leg nearly failing him, but he managed to stay upright. The tongue was still in his hand, wiggling about like some grotesque parody of a worm. He moved away from Nadan’s twitching body, threw the tongue on the ground, and stomped it flat beneath his boot. It ruptured like a fat slug.
Soaked in blood, the Black Heart glared at the many Somsak watching him along the bridge. “Who else will contend with me? Come and finish it.”
The Somsak warriors backed away.
Chapter 51
“Now what do we have here?” Sikasso asked as he strolled over to where his men had secured the source of the strange magic he’d sensed earlier. The villagers had fled in terror as they’d fallen from the sky, giving them a bit of peace in this corner of the village square. The woman was on her knees, with a Lost House wizard holding onto each arm. Bhorlatar was behind her, with the point of his sword pressed against her neck. If her strange powers had any offensive capabilities, it was doubtful she’d be able to use them before Bhorlatar severed her spine.
“Careful, Sikasso, this one’s got claws.” Bhorlatar gestured toward Vilsaro, who was lying in the mud, throat slashed ear to ear, gurgling, and staring at the sun. There was nothing that could be done for him. “He grabbed her first, but she surprised him. The blade came out of nowhere and damn near took his head off.”
That was another valuable wizard lost on this awful, wasteful mission for the Grand Inquisitor. From what Sikasso had seen of the destruction of Angruvadal, he seriously doubted there would be very many fragments left large enough to be worth their effort. He’d never seen a piece of black steel so thoroughly consumed before. Sikasso was feeling very annoyed, but perhaps something could be salvaged from this mess.
Sikasso picked up the knife that had been used on Vilsaro. It was a thin, practical blade, sharp enough to shave with. He walked to the captive woman. “Who are you?” The woman had her head down, hair covering her face, and didn’t respond, so he stuck the knife under her chin and lifted. It was either raise her head to face him or get cut. She chose to face him, which was good, because it turned out she was pretty enough that Sikasso would have hated to mar such a nice face. “Tell me your name.”
She glared at him. There was rage in this one. “Thera.”
“House and caste?”
“None.”
“You’re no untouchable. You’re too tough to be of the first, and workers know how to hide their anger better. Warrior then, and probably thrown out to keep from drawing the attention of the Inquisition when you started to display such a unique talent.” Her silent look of disgust told Sikasso that he was close. “Who are you? I’ll have it out of you eventually one way or the other.”
“Vane, vassal house to Makao, daughter of the warrior caste, but I wasn’t thrown out. I left on my own accord during a house war. They think I’m dead, so leave my family out of this.”
“You mistake us for Inquisitors. Not even close. We’re merely scholars, dedicated to understanding the mysteries.”
“Go to hell.”
He backhanded her in the face. Then Sikasso glanced around the square, which was still sweltering with unnatural heat. They were surrounded by the bodies of soldiers who’d tried to stop the Black Heart. After Thera’s bizarre manifestation, they were being watched by a large group of frightened workers, but they were holding back. The rest of the Somsak raiders all seemed preoccupied by their Thakoor’s antics across the square on the other side of the ditch. Sikasso had no idea what those fools had gotten up to after the precious sword had blown up, and he was mostly disappointed he’d wasted such a valuable piece of demon flesh on that idiot, Nadan.
Frustrated, Sikasso turned back to Thera. Her lip was split open and bleeding but she was still giving him a defiant look that was just begging to be sliced off. “I only know of two sources for magic, the ancient and ever-dwindling supply of black steel, and whatever we can wring from the remains of sea demons, yet yours comes from neither. What is your source?”
“I don’t know,” she muttered. Sikasso put the knife against her cheek. “Really, carve away, you bastard. I don’t know.”
“Some fool was carrying on about her being a prophet of the old gods while we circled,” Bhorlatar said. “That’s what her illusion was supposed to be about, I think.”
“It wasn’t an illusion,” Thera said. “The Voice comes from somewhere else and works through me. That’s all I know.”
Sikasso had been on the ground at the time of the manifestation and he’d clearly heard the voice inside his head. It had been rather impressive. “You have an intriguing power. I believe you’re telling the truth.” He removed the knife. “Yuval, fly her back to camp and wait for us there. We’ve got some cleaning up to do here first. There are far too many witnesses.”
She struggled against the wizards, but years of magical augmentation had left the men of the Lost House far stronger than they appeared. “Let go of me, or you’ll regret this!”
“Doubtful. You’ll remain my prisoner until I discover the true source of your power, then afterwards—if you are truly the troublemaking prophet they’ve been hunting in the south—I’ll sell you to the Grand Inquisitor. Perhaps it’ll even be enough to make up for this mess…Bhorlatar.” He nodded toward his subordinate, who lifted his sword and struck the struggling woman with the pommel hard enough to knock her unconscious. Flying while carrying extra weight was difficult enough without cargo flailing about the whole time too. The wizards let her collapse into the mud so Yuval could change form. You couldn’t very well hold onto someone when your arms were t
urning into wings. That’s what feet were for.
“Sikasso, we’ve got a troublemaker.” Bhorlatar pointed with his sword at a thin man who was heading their way. He was dressed as a merchant, but had just picked up a discarded Somsak crossbow and was trying to figure out how to use it against them. “That’s the one who was carrying on about her speaking for the old gods. Want me to burn him?”
“I’ve got him. Save your magic. We still have a village to scrub.” With Vilsaro missing his throat, and Yuval carrying the woman back to camp, that meant he, Bhorlatar, and Choval had a lot of work to do. As Sikasso began walking toward the religious fanatic, the area around them darkened as magic was called upon. Yuval was the biggest of them, and in his flying form he seemed huge, with a wingspan that covered a vast portion of the square. His gleaming black talons locked around Thera’s arms, and with several mighty beats, he took to the air.
Snap. The fake merchant figured out how to fire the crossbow. Sikasso smiled as the speeding bolt missed Yuval by several feet. “Your aim needs work,” Sikasso shouted.
Obviously terrified but determined to stop the abduction of his prophet, the fake merchant picked up another bolt from a dead man’s quiver and went about trying to figure out how the hand crank worked on the powerful device. That amused Sikasso to no end. Yuval was already far above the village and searching for a good air current to carry him back to the mountaintops. “Bhorlatar, kill all the hole diggers. Choval, start on the sword swingers, and make sure you secure Ashok’s body. As long as the Inquisition thinks he’s still alive they’ll pay us to keep following him.” He started toward the balding man with the crossbow. “I’ll catch up.”
“Hold on. How’s he still alive?” Choval asked, sounding incredulous. Sikasso turned his head to see what his man was talking about. The young wizard was looking toward the bridge, but then he was struck in the chest with a spear thrown across the square so hard that it swept him off his feet and slammed him back into the side of a house. Choval hung there limp, pinned like a butterfly.
“Ashok!” Sikasso bellowed as another of his valuable wizards died. There was no way the Protector should still be alive, but there he was, bloodsoaked and determined, limping across the bridge toward them. The Somsak parted to let Ashok through. “Burn him!” Sikasso shouted at Bhorlatar, as Ashok bent over and picked up a discarded battle axe. “Burn him to ash!”
Bhorlatar was a master of the inferno. No matter how resilient the Protectors’ secret rites made their bodies, nothing could survive that kind of fury. Circles of darkness formed around Bhorlatar’s outstretched hand as the chunk of demon bone in his fist was consumed. The air around Ashok shimmered with heat waves and the fallen Protector stumbled, clutching at his eyes. The Somsak around him fled, crying about witchcraft, as wood smoked, leather scorched, and cloth caught fire. Ashok cried out in pain as he was engulfed in a sphere of intense heat. Bhorlatar cackled.
This time the fake merchant’s aim was true.
Bhorlatar lowered his dark encircled hand and looked down at the crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest. He seemed surprised by the sudden pain, but not nearly as surprised as when Ashok came out of the faltering fire, covered the distance, and cut off both of Bhorlatar’s legs in one swing. The wizard went flipping through the air, screaming.
As he shrugged out of his flaming coat, Ashok limped toward Sikasso.
He was a powerful wizard, possibly one of the greatest in the world, yet when Sikasso looked into Ashok’s maddened eyes he saw only his death there. His men were gone. Sikasso was proud, but pragmatic, and knew when it was time to retreat. The Lost House had claimed the girl with the mysterious power. That would do for today.
Taking up one of the demon bone chunks tied to his belt, Sikasso called upon the unnatural energy inside. Magic was made of tiny bits, invisible to the eye, and as those fled from the bone and into his body, reality changed. Light was vanquished as the bone was consumed, and within the unnatural darkness that existed in the space between, the rules of the physical world no longer applied. His limbs twisted and distorted as the tiniest bits of his flesh were moved and redistributed. Sikasso willed his body into the familiar form of the giant vulture and leapt into the sky.
A few mighty beats of his wings and he was soaring upward, away from the damnable Protector and his—
There was a flash of heat in his left wing, followed immediately by a searing pain.
Ashok had thrown the axe. End over end, it continued past him, but he could no longer follow it into the air. Instead Sikasso spiraled helplessly toward the ground. His left wing was gone.
The wizard landed hard in the mud. The magic ruptured and reality flooded back in. As his body and senses returned to normal, Sikasso began to scream as blood pumped from the stump where his arm had been. Panicked, he looked around. A long black wing lay a few feet away, shedding obsidian feathers. It slowly melted into a severed arm and the feathers turned to spatters of blood.
The Protector was coming for him.
Chapter 52
Ashok could barely see through the haze of blood and hate.
“Where have you taken her?”
The wizard weakly held up his remaining hand. “Wait.”
Barely slowing, Ashok snatched up another spear from the ground. “Where? Where is Thera?”
“Don’t. The Grand Inquisitor sent me. You’re not allowed—”
“Omand?” That made no sense. He’d obeyed his orders and gone willingly to his punishment. Ashok didn’t know this man. “No games, wizard. Where is she?”
“Nowhere you’ll ever find her,” he snarled as he grabbed for a pouch at his belt. The area around the wizard was consumed by darkness. Ashok hurled the spear into the center of the black, but when it dissipated, the spear was embedded in the dirt where the wizard had been, only his body had turned into a massive pile of swarming insects. The swarm immediately spread outward, flying, scuttling, and burrowing away. Ashok swatted and stomped at them, cursing, but within a few heartbeats the insects had disappeared.
The wizard had escaped.
Ashok sank to the ground. Battered, bleeding, burned, with nothing left to give. The Heart of the Mountain was the only reason he was still alive, and he knew that if he closed his eyes and simply gave up, that would be the end of him.
Ashok held on just out of spite.
Keta appeared, his face swollen and bruised, looking toward the distant peaks where the flying wizard and his prisoner had disappeared from view. “They took the prophet. I tried to stop them…I don’t…I don’t know what to do.”
“Why didn’t you tell me who Thera was?”
“The Forgotten said I had to test you—trust you—first. You’re still alive. The faithful servant sacrificed was Angruvadal. You’re the one…You have to know what to do! What do we do, Ashok?”
“First? Survive…” Keta hadn’t noticed that they were being approached by a small crowd of Somsak warriors and Jharlang workers, but Ashok had. There weren’t that many, but enough to easily finish Ashok off in the sorry state he was in.
The group stopped, split into two halves, each one nervously eyeing the other. A young warrior, his facial markings only recording a handful of battles, broke off by himself and approached. When he was a few strides away, he stopped and asked, “Is it true? Does the Forgotten truly speak again?”
Ashok had no idea, but Keta boldly stepped forward. “Yes. The old gods have chosen a prophet to speak through, but I’m only the Keeper of Names. The prophet has been taken by these wizards. This is our general.” Keta pointed at Ashok. “But we need help to rescue her.”
The young warrior looked to his compatriots. There were a few stern nods to give him courage, then he turned back, earnest and imploring, to speak on their behalf. “We want to remember.”
* * *
There were no dreams to trouble his sleep, only a profound sense of loneliness.
“For a man who only wants to die, you’re remarkably bad at it.”
Ashok woke up on a cot inside a humble dwelling. A large fire was burning in a stone pit. He remembered being taken to a farm somewhere near Jharlang but was unsure how long he’d been out since. Every muscle in his body ached. His skin was raw and stinging and the fire had burned most of his hair off. The simple act of breathing was torture. Worst of all was the contorting pain in his guts from the bolt wound. He noted all of those things and then paid them no further mind.
He was surprised when he saw who it was who’d spoken. Jagdish was sitting on a stool next to the cot. “I must hand it to the Somsak. Despite looking like fools, their surgeons get a lot of practice stitching men back together. The fact you’re healing so fast has got the fanatics out there dancing about praising false gods’ miracles. Apparently they’ve elected you general or something. That’s an archaic rank no house uses anymore, but I think that’s equivalent to a phontho. Not too shabby a promotion from prisoner.”
“The Forgotten picked him, not us.” Ashok turned his head to see that Keta was standing at the foot of the cot, arms folded, giving Jagdish a disapproving scowl. “I’m sorry, Ashok. I tried to turn him away, but then he threatened to duel me.”
“It’s alright, Keeper. Jagdish was the warden of my prison. He’s an honorable man.”
“And these Somsak who’ve pledged to serve him aren’t fanatics. Some of them have been practicing religion in secret. They’re faithful who’ve heeded the call to—”
Ashok cut Keta off. “You’re a long way from Cold Stream, Risaldar.”
“I found a worker who’s got a gift for tracking magic and we followed you. It was quite the journey. I must admit this is the farthest I’ve ever been from home.”
So that was it then. House Vadal had caught their fugitive at last. “I’m assuming you have a legion waiting for me outside. You won’t need it. Angruvadal has been destroyed.”
“I was told. I truly am sorry. That is a tragedy.”
There were almost no memories of the time before the sword. Of his life since, there had been a brief time where Ratul had forced him to live without Angruvadal, and that had driven him to undertake desperate risks to get it back. That made Ashok think of himself and his only friend, huddled together for warmth in an ice cave, two stupid children, too brave for their own good, trying to become real Protectors. Angruvadal had been his constant companion ever since. It was as if he’d lost a part of himself. The ghostly instincts and memories of all of the bearers who’d come before, gone. For a people with no belief in life after death, at least the bearers had some measure of immortality, but now they were all lost as well.
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