Slave of Sondelle: The Eleven Kingdoms

by Bevan McGuiness

  The San dropped his eyes once more to the ground before slumping, exhausted, onto the earth.

  The Sana gave a short cry and crouched beside her brother. With trembling hands, she grasped his shoulders and rolled him over. His mouth hung open slackly, his breathing was fast and shallow, while blood trickled down his chin.

  Sana Waarde looked up at Slave with pleading eyes.

  ‘Will you help me get him back to our carriage?’

  Slave stooped to pick up the unconscious noble up but before he could, an arrow sliced through the air and slammed into the San’s chest.

  Waarde screamed and leaped to her feet. Slave sprang back, his Warrior’s Claw in his left hand. He reached out and grabbed the Sana’s hand as he backed quickly away from the San’s body. She resisted, apparently wanting to stay near her brother, but Slave’s strength easily overpowered her. He dragged her into the trees and took cover.

  From the other side of the clearing beyond the pool came the sounds of several men approaching. Slave watched as the first few broke cover and strode out into open space. They were trained and disciplined, if somewhat ragged in appearance. The leader was a heavy-set, brutish-looking man with shaggy hair and a scraggly beard. Even from where he was hiding, Slave could smell the rank stench of the long-unwashed. The man’s skin was darkened by a lifetime in the open and his eyes were alert as they scanned the area near where Slave hid with the shocked Sana.

  ‘I know you are there, my pretty,’ the man called. ‘I have sixteen men here, all armed, all ready to kill unless you show yourself.’ He gestured and several more men emerged from the trees and circled around the pool. They all carried swords, some new and well tended, others tarnished and battered, but all held competently.

  ‘Slavers,’ Waarde hissed.

  At the word, Slave felt himself go cold. The memories of his life under his master rose once more, threatening again to weaken him, disable him, but the sound of the Sana’s quiet moan of despair gave him strength. He wrestled his own horror back and took stock of his situation. There were eight men approaching them, four on either side of the pool, with the leader standing directly opposite. If it was only them, Slave would have simply charged and taken each group of four in turn, but there were the archers to consider. He looked around, trying to locate where they were hidden, to no avail.

  Only one option presented itself. He took Waarde’s hand.

  ‘Run,’ he said.

  Together, they sprang to their feet and fled, back to where Aesla and the others waited.

  They weren’t waiting.

  There was no campsite, no horses, no carriage — only signs of the campsite having been dismantled and taken away. The tracks led south, back towards Vogel. Slave could just make out the dust of their passage as the mercenaries returned home.

  He stood motionless, staring at the dust, unable to comprehend what had happened.

  ‘What?’ he said finally.

  ‘We’ve been betrayed,’ Waarde said softly. ‘Didn’t you think it strange that we stopped here?’

  All the oddities of this day crashed down on his mind: the early break; the scouts being sent out; the fact that he was allowed to simply wander away with the Sana; the San joining them.

  ‘We’ve been sold,’ he gasped.

  The creak of a bow made Slave spin around. Two men were standing nearby; one held a drawn bow aimed at Waarde’s chest, while the other stood with a war axe at the ready.

  ‘Never a truer word was spoken,’ the axeman said. ‘Slaaj could not resist my offer for the Sana. And you were too much trouble.’

  Slave raised his Claw, preparing to fight, and stepped forwards.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ the axeman cautioned. He flicked the bowman a glance and the bow creaked again as he readied himself for the shot that would end Waarde’s life.

  Slave lowered his Claw and stepped back.

  The axeman lowered his axe and made a gesture towards the forest. A dozen armed men swarmed out. Hanging between two of them was an unconscious Ileki. Slave narrowed his eyes in anger at the sight.

  The axeman saw his look and smiled. ‘Yes, your friend was not happy with Aesla’s decision. She had to leave him behind.’ He shrugged. ‘A Reader always fetches a good price. And as for your little friend …’ He leered at the Sana. ‘A Lac’un noblewoman. A young and pretty one at that. What a prize!’

  Rage, the like of which he had never imagined possible, exploded in Slave’s mind, obliterating all hint of rational thought. He roared in a language he did not know and launched himself at the axeman. As his Claw sliced into the man’s face, the berserk fury took his mind and all consciousness faded. The monster within him took control of his mind and body, driving him on to savagery. He spun and slashed, sending blood and viscera splattering on the ground.

  Screams, bellows of anger, of fear, of death and agony echoed through the still air. Slave was unaware of the carnage he wrought, of the wounds he suffered, of those who died; he knew only the desire for blood, the hunger for violent death, the overwhelming need for chaos. Bodies fell, twitching, to the bloodied earth, while the fiend that wore Slave’s body raged and howled.

  Finally his body slumped, his human energy spent and the preternatural need sated. He collapsed to the sodden ground and slept amid the slaughter.

  It was dark when he stirred, caked in blood. His mouth tasted vile, his body ached and his mind was numb. Slowly, he urged himself to his feet and stood looking around. His first feeling was one of relief that it was dark. In the low light of the small moon, he was able to barely make out the strewn bodies around him.

  He could not see the Sana’s body, nor Ileki’s. With mounting anxiety, he started to hunt, seeking any hint of their fate, but he quickly realised neither of them were here among the dead. Slave looked up from the slaughter, seeking clues of where they might have gone, or how they escaped his violent fury.

  ‘North,’ he said aloud. ‘Aesla went south, they would have gone north.’

  Not knowing how good his logic was, he started to jog.

  31

  Keshik stood motionless in the dark. His every sense was intensely concentrated, seeking anything he could use.

  Nothing.

  Total dark.

  Total silence.

  An odour. Keshik sniffed. Yes, definitely a scent. He wrinkled his nose. Something dead.

  He followed his nose, shuffling rather than stepping, until his foot nudged against something soft. From the smell, it had been dead for a while — several days at least. Keshik kneeled and cautiously reached out a hand.

  Human.

  Maybe not human.

  Dureg?

  Ice and wind, what did this?

  He stood and unsheathed his swords. A soft glow cast an incongruously gentle illumination over the body.

  ‘A broken blade won’t help you down here,’ Sondelle had said, gesturing over Keshik’s damaged sword. ‘But this will.’ While Keshik watched, the broken blade seemed to regrow, glowing with a pulsating yellow light.

  Sondelle handed it back. ‘Take this as part payment.’

  Keshik looked at his repaired sword again. Translucent, more like glass than steel, the material was harder than anything he had ever known. Its edge was finer than he could have imagined yet it seemed to writhe within like a living thing. He raised it above his head like a torch and looked down at what lay at his feet.

  The damage was cast into stark relief. The creature — Keshik could not speculate on what it had been: human, Dureg or Gaeblin — had not been merely killed, it had been ripped, torn to shreds. Curiosity won out over disgust and Keshik kneeled again to examine the corpse more closely. Bile rose in his throat as he realised that the body had not been eaten, just destroyed.

  ‘What could do this?’ he whispered. In the utter silence, his words drifted away from him, leaving nothing in their wake. Sondelle’s admonishment came to him: Kill anything you meet. Bring whatever you find back to me.

  ‘Kill
it,’ Keshik breathed. ‘Kill what did this?’ He stood and sheathed his swords. In the moment before the dark descended, there was a glimmer of white as he smiled. A worthy adversary indeed. Head held high, the Swordmaster strode into the darkness.

  * * *

  He lost track of time and space very quickly. That he was hopelessly lost in a lightless labyrinth inhabited by something that could take a living being apart so easily no longer bothered him. That he would most likely die in this black dungeon also mattered nothing. He knew he was facing the greatest adversary he could imagine. His peerless skills would be tested as never before.

  His recent defeat at the hands of the silver-eyed fiend was dismissed from his mind as an accident — he had slipped and fallen, not been beaten by force of arms.

  Keshik started to sing the old battle song of his people. It was something he had not done for a long time but he had not felt so much danger for a long time, either. And if his song hastened the battle, all the better.

  He strode confidently into the darkness, only stopping when his foot nudged another body. Examination under the glowing light of his newly enchanted sword revealed it to be similar to the previous body, only less damaged and more recent. From what he had heard about the legendary underdwellers, Keshik was able to identify it as Dureg. Two long thin wounds stretched from just below the hairline above the left eyebrow down across the face to end at the right-hand corner of his mouth. The cuts were older than the wounds that had ended the poor creature’s life.

  Satisfied that the same thing had done for this Dureg as the previous creature, Keshik continued, but now with his glowing sword drawn. The Dureg’s blood had not quite dried on the stone floor. It had died hours earlier, not days. Keshik’s heart beat a little faster.

  There were no bloody footprints leading away from the body, no sign of what had done this. His song faded to little more than a murmur as he turned his attention to every detail of the corridors around him.

  This was not a natural cavern. It was old and had been deserted for a long time. There were no signs of any form of inhabitant, yet something was down here with him.

  The Duregs, what were they doing here? Keshik knew little of the secretive underground dwellers beyond their name and description except that they tended to dig their own tunnels in preference to using those of others. What would have driven them into this maze? Where was their own lair?

  Keshik froze at the sound of metal on metal.

  A scream.

  The sounds of battle.

  Drawing his other sword, Keshik started to run towards the sounds. As the sounds became louder, the corridors grew lighter. He rounded a corner and skidded to a halt. A vast cavern stretched beyond a low wall that partially blocked the corridor. It rose in a spectacular dome far over his head and was at least three hundred paces across. It was lit by a globe of blue light suspended halfway from the top of its highest point.

  The harsh light showed a scene carved out of a poet’s maddest dreams. The entire ceiling was covered by bas-relief carvings showing stylised images of unnatural creatures engaged in battle or sexual congress, of humans in extremes of suffering, of cataclysmic events. Poised at the centre of the scene, at the highest point of the dome, was the image of a single being. It was humanoid in shape, but somehow perverted into something not human, something distinctly other. Keshik stared for a moment at the carved image of the being and could only describe it as something evil.

  A sharp scream broke Keshik’s concentration and drew his attention back to the battle taking place before him.

  Dozens of armed Duregs silently surrounded a dark shape in the centre of the room which seemed to absorb any light that fell upon it. They fought without sound, except when pain drew a cry. Many of the stocky Duregs had already died in the unnaturally quiet fight, their bodies scattered about the room, all seeming to bear the same facial scars — the twin cuts through the left eye.

  The black form swelled, surging high over the swarming Duregs. It rose until it nearly touched the glowing sphere then stopped expanding. With a sound that might have been an inarticulate bellow of rage, it sent out a wave of darkness that rolled over the Duregs, each one flaring briefly with a bright purple flame as the blackness swallowed it. The Duregs at the back dropped their weapons and attempted to flee, but before any of them reached the low wall they all burned and died.

  Keshik stood out of range of the purple flame, just beyond the wall, staring around the chamber. The thing of darkness that dominated the room slowly shrunk until it was roughly human size and shape. Near its top, where a head might have been, three bright spots of blue appeared. They moved rapidly, apparently randomly, around inside its ‘head’ before settling into a steady inverted triangle. Keshik had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being stared at.

  Come in, a whispering voice seemed to say, deep inside his mind.

  Keshik shook his head and raised his swords. ‘Come out,’ he replied.

  A sense of anger, of violent, irrational rage swept over him. He staggered back under its assault, but it ended quickly.

  Come in. The voice repeated in his mind. We can talk, you and I, Keshik, Swordmaster of the Tulugma.

  Shock, horror and deep gut-wrenching terror gripped Keshik as he heard his name.

  He bunched his fists around the hilts of his swords, tensing and releasing as he tried to regain control of his emotions. Slowly, the discipline won through and he calmed himself enough to speak.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  I am Kielevunenrohkimainen.

  ‘That name means nothing to me.’

  The rage, the violence, surged across his mind again. As before, it was short-lived, but it left its mark. The Swordmaster was shaken and still terrified.

  Kneel before me, human! Worship me and I will spare you.

  ‘No.’

  The thing erupted in a tide of insane rage. Its uncontrolled wrath took form and swept across the room like a wave of roiling black blood. Keshik’s face broke into a smile of sheer joy.

  ‘Worthy!’ he cried as he vaulted the wall and charged across the floor to meet the onrushing flood of anger.

  His swords, both the metal and magical, sliced into the mystical wave, cutting through it as though it were flesh. He created a path and advanced, while all around him insane images and maniacal sounds clashed. In a heartbeat, he was enveloped.

  He slashed and sliced, using every skill, every trick, every trace of experience and learning he had gained over decades of battling the best and worst the world had to offer. Slowly, he progressed. Step by step, he moved forwards, gaining advantage over this thing of rage and darkness.

  With every gain, the chaos that surrounded him intensified. The sounds became louder, the images wilder and more shocking, the colours more deranged as if his opponent sensed worthiness. Keshik lost track of all time as he drove himself on.

  Suddenly, shockingly, the room fell silent and dark. Keshik stood apparently alone in total blackness. He raised his magical blade, but its glow was feeble, as though drained, and it cast no illumination. His arms were like lead, his legs burned with exhaustion while, within his chest, his heart pounded as if about to burst. Unable to speak, the Swordmaster looked around, but nothing disturbed the emptiness.

  How long he stood like that, he could not tell, but slowly his heart calmed and strength returned to his aching limbs. Keshik heard a weak, low gasp.

  ‘Help me.’

  It sounded almost human, but deeper and not quite formed.

  ‘Help me,’ it repeated.

  Keshik took a slow step towards the sound.

  ‘Help me.’

  He moved quicker, advancing over the smooth floor. When his foot met a soft obstruction he swung both blades over his head and down in a killing blow.

  You fool! Maida is …

  A burst of brilliant colours erupted from the edges of Keshik’s blades to fill the whole chamber with light painful in its power.

  At his f
eet lay the body of something that was not quite human. On its chest was a small sphere. Keshik sheathed his metal blade and, keeping the magical blade high for light, stooped to pick up the sphere.

  It was warm in his hand and gave an unpleasant writhing sensation against his skin. Within the sphere, he could see swirling patterns of grey-blue smoke, or perhaps it was more like mud that shifted and slid around. Three tiny motes of bright blue light stared unblinkingly back at him. Keshik tore his gaze away from the sphere and raised it above his head.

  ‘Worthy!’ he bellowed. ‘At last.’

  * * *

  Finding his way out of the labyrinth was easier than he thought. With his magical sword now casting more light than a flaming torch, he moved confidently through the twisting corridors until he found the hole Sondelle had formed for him. He stepped through.

  Sondelle was waiting.

  His black eyes shone like obsidian as he reached out for the sphere containing the three points of blue light, but Keshik stepped back.

  ‘Maida,’ he said.

  Sondelle threw back his cowl and laughed.

  ‘There, feeble man. There she is!’ Sondelle pointed beyond Keshik’s shoulder, back into the labyrinth. Keshik turned.

  The moment his attention was diverted, he felt a strong hand snatch the sphere from his grasp, but he did not care.

  Maida, pale, naked and shivering, stepped towards him. Keshik dropped his sword and caught her as she fell out of the labyrinth.

  ‘Keshik,’ she murmured.

  He wrapped her in his arms and carefully lowered her to the ground, where he cradled her shaking form and rocked her like a baby, while tears trickled down his face.

  32

  Myrrhini awoke with a start. Something warm was touching her hand. She looked down and gasped in shock. A julle was sniffing her fingers.

  It was the biggest julle she had ever seen. Its head looked as big as her torso and it had a mouth that seemed as long as her forearm lined with ferocious teeth. At the shoulder it would have stood level with her breasts. Its chest was deep and powerful, striped black on brown with the scars and marks of a seasoned predator.