Darklands (The Rhenwars Saga Book 3)

by M. L. Spencer

Haleem raised his hands, a rapid string of words spilling from his mouth. Darien waited, cautiously assessing the faces of the women huddled before him. He thought he could tell which one was Haleem’s wife. She was young but sickly, her skin moist with perspiration.

  Raising his hands, Darien took a step toward her. “Tell her I’ll have to touch her,” he cautioned Azár. He waited for his words to be translated. The sick woman before him gave a slight nod.

  Darien lowered himself to the ground before her, crouching as he took the woman’s hand into his own. He brought her fingers up to his mouth, kissing them the same way he had seen Haleem kiss Azár’s hand. The woman seemed shocked by his gesture, her eyes shooting up to find her husband.

  “It is not appropriate to kiss the hand of a woman,” Azár corrected him sternly. “It is she who must kiss your hand.”

  Darien frowned. “But Haleem—”

  “I am a Lightweaver,” Azár snapped. “My status is much greater than that of a caravan master.”

  Darien understood. He turned back to Haleem’s wife. “What is your name?” he asked, seeking to put her more at ease. “Ismir’och?”

  “Esvir.”

  “Esvir,” Darien repeated, testing the feel of the name on his tongue. He looked deeply into the young woman’s eyes, surprised by what he found there. “I’ll need to see inside you, Esvir.” He glanced up at Azár, pausing for her to translate. “You’ll sense something…a stirring. It won’t hurt.”

  He took Esvir’s hand and rubbed her soft skin in reassurance as he waited for Azár to finish communicating his intentions. The young woman nodded, inviting him to proceed. Darien leaned forward, cupping her pale face in his hands and closing his eyes. It didn’t take a moment to probe her condition, to sense the extent of the corruption in her damaged tissues.

  Dairen inhaled a deep breath. Then he sent a gush of healing energies flooding through Esvir’s body, repairing the injury that had been done to her airways and burning the corruption from her blood. The woman stiffened, her eyes rolling back in their sockets. She swooned, falling forward against his chest.

  “Ishil’zeri!” Haleem cried out, catching his unconscious wife in his arms.

  Darien kept his hands on Esvir until he was certain that the poisons had been driven completely from her frail body. He kept a measure of the beat of her pulse, the steady rhythm of her chest. Through his fingertips, he could sense her vitality renewing. At last, Darien opened his eyes and removed his hands.

  “She’ll sleep,” he informed Azár. “When she awakens, she’ll be hungry. Tell Haleem she must have all the food she can eat.”

  “Sukrien,” Haleem muttered, cradling his sleeping wife against his chest.

  Darien nodded, standing up. Without another word, he left the dark room, brushing the curtain aside as he passed through the doorway. He replaced his boots and strode back outside to the courtyard. There, he glanced up at the sky, feeling the weariness of the healing sink deeply into his bones. He heard the sound of Azár’s soft footsteps dashing up behind him.

  “That woman,” Darien said softly without looking at her. “Esvir. She has the potential. Do you need an apprentice, Azár?”

  “No. I will not take an apprentice. I will be the last of my kind.”

  Darien scowled, not understanding what she meant. “Why? Why would you be the last, Azár?”

  “Because, one way or another, Malikar will not be needing another generation of Lightweavers.”

  Darien spread his hands, turning to face her. His eyes sought her own. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But surely another use could be found for the gift that lives inside you. There aren’t many mages left in all the world.”

  Azár glared at him for a long, silent moment, hating him with her eyes. “Find a place to sleep,” she said at last. She turned and stalked away. His words halted her.

  “I’m sorry about your sister, Azár. I’d take it back if I could.”

  She whirled back around, her thick braid undulating like a whip. She snarled as she promised him, “Someday you, too, will lose someone you love. On that day, I will smile as you weep.”

  She grinned then, a joyous expression that brightened her entire face. It touched her eyes, plumped out her cheeks. The delight that filled her eyes chilled Darien’s heart. He had seen such a look once before in a woman’s eyes. A woman he had been forced to murder.

  “There’s no joy in hatred, Azár,” he cautioned her. “Find something else to do with your anger. You don’t want to end up like me.”

  Azár’s mouth opened as if she had a retort ready to let fly. But then she turned away, instead. She stalked back toward the fountain, braid swaying with her gait.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Darien spent the night huddled up in a niche-like compartment off the central courtyard of the caravansary with the thanacryst curled up against his side. The wind howled most of the night, making sleep all but impossible. By morning, he was stiff and exhausted, his joints aching from the cold.

  The morning brought no dawn, only more of the same dark expanse of cloudcover. Perhaps the sky was a little brighter than it had been at night; it was hard to say. The wind was still up, bitingly cold and brutally fierce. Darien left the shelter of the niche and sought the comfort of a fire. The smell of burning coal was dreadful, but the warmth was necessary. He stood, huddling in the indigo robes they had given him, warming his hands as the acrid smoke wrung tears from his eyes.

  “My wife is well this morning.”

  Darien turned, startled to find Haleem standing beside him.

  “You are welcome to my food, my fire, and my protection,” the caravan master told him solemnly. This time, the warmth of his smile touched his eyes.

  Darien considered him. “I didn’t think you spoke Rhenic.”

  “He doesn’t.”

  Darien turned to find that Azár had come up silently behind them.

  “He asked me for the words,” she clarified. “He wanted to tell you himself how thankful he is. Here. This is for you from Haleem and his wife.”

  She offered a woven satchel out to him. Darien accepted it, opening the flap and taking a look inside. It was filled with gear. He realized he would have to sit down and take his time if he wanted to go through all of it.

  “This bag is called a sufan,” Azár said.

  Darien nodded in gratitude and sat down on the ground. He upended the sufan, spilling its contents into the lap of his robe. He ran his hand through it all, stirring the assortment of items around. He picked up the first thing that caught his eyes: a curving knife, about as long as his hand. There was also a ceramic pipe. Darien turned the pipe over in his hands, wondering at it. Such an object was hardly a necessity. There was also a flint and striker, a charcloth, a pair of tweezers and a small blade. A patterned scarf was folded neatly into a small square, along with various assorted objects.

  “You have my thanks,” he muttered, replacing the items back into the sufan.

  “There is also this.” Azár handed him a waterskin that hung from a long hemp cord. “The Khazahar can be a thirsty place.”

  “Again, thank you,” Darien said, glancing up gratefully at Haleem. “Sukrien.”

  The man bowed, bringing a hand up to his chest, and backed away.

  “Haleem says it is not a good day to travel,” Azár informed him, watching his movements out of the corner of her eye as she stared at the brazier’s dancing flames. “We will stay here today and head out tomorrow, instead.”

  Darien didn’t like the sound of that. “Why’s today not a good day to travel?”

  Azár shrugged. “It is the fourth day of the month. The fourth day is never a good day to travel.”

  Darien looked up at her, carefully studying her face. The young woman appeared quite serious. He stood up, dusting off his long blue robes. “So, is the fifth day of the month any better for travelling?”

  “It is better,” Azár confirmed.

  Darien broke into a grin. “Then, I suppose
we ought to wait till the morrow.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The next morning, Haleem at last gave his consent to move out. Darien was impressed at the speed with which his group of laborers assembled in the courtyard, swiftly filing into lines that stretched all the way down the middle of the yard and out of the gate into the open street. Many men had equipped themselves with travois loaded with bags of provisions. Others pulled two-wheeled carts constructed of woven rattan and reinforced by metal bars. There were no animals; manpower alone would be exerted to transport Haleem’s supplies to the river.

  Darien had changed out of the robes they had given him in favor of the far more practical black shirt and breeches he was used to. He folded the robes of the Lyceum carefully and stored them in the bottom of a large pack Azár had purchased for him. Over his shirt, he donned a set of black spaulders, another gift from the Lightweaver. She had supplied herself with a similar pack, just the same as every other member of the caravan. The large packs were filled with all of the personal provisions each person would need for their own sustenance along the journey.

  “Why are there no beasts of burden?” Darien wondered aloud. “Just one pair of oxen would make all the difference in the world.”

  Azár motioned upward at the sky. “Do you have any idea how much light it takes to feed just one ox? Haleem is a prosperous merchant, but even one such as he has never seen the amount of wealth it would require to sustain such a beast.”

  Darien shook his head, unable to comprehend how such a society could have possibly managed to continue for so long without collapse. They had no animals, no wood. No leather, no meat. And yet, in some respects, the Enemy’s civilization seemed more advanced than the Rhen. What they had learned to accomplish with coal and oil was unsurpassed by any technology he had ever seen.

  There was a shout from the rear of the yard, and then the long line of men began to move out. Darien and Azár fell in behind a throng of women. The wives were laboring just as hard as their men, pulling behind them wheeled carts filled with coal bricks and cooking supplies. They wore long, dark dresses covered by coarsely woven shawls. Darien noticed that Haleem’s wife was there, walking in their midst. Esvir seemed completely hale, casting a thankful smile in his direction before turning to mind the cart she pulled behind her.

  The smoke that blanketed the city was thick, made worse by the dust kicked up by so many wheels and feet. As they started out, Darien quickly found himself reduced to fits of coughing. He glanced beside him at Azár, wondering how the woman could stand it. He saw that she was in the process of wrapping a scarf around her head, tying it in place to cover her mouth and nose.

  “You have one in your sufan,” Azár reminded him. Her voice sounded almost as if she were smiling, but it was impossible to tell. Darien reached down and fished his own scarf out of the satchel Haleem had given him, shaking out the folds. He tried to wrap it around his head, first one way and then the other. Despite his efforts, he couldn’t manage to make it stay in place.

  “That is completely wrong,” Azár scolded, observing his struggle. “Fold it first into a triangle, then wrap it over your head. Leave one side longer than the other,” she instructed. “You bring it around your face and then up behind your head.”

  The whole while she was speaking, she was wrapping the fabric around him, finally securing it with a harsh tug. Darien could see only her eyes, the rest of her face hidden beneath the patterned cloth. The look emphasized the shine of the gift in her eyes.

  They followed the long line of people down the street. Their group passed through the city gates and out into the vast expanse of black nothingness beyond. Darien paused to consider the sprawling wastes that lay ahead of them, league upon league of black, frozen terrain that stretched in every direction to the cloud-choked horizons. Above them, the heavens churned and flickered with the light of electrical storms that teemed deep within the cloudbank. Far to the west, a diffuse white glow could be seen. A breeze kicked up, flinging smoke toward them from Bryn Calazar.

  Azár said, “We will follow this road until we reach the village of Ibri. There, the river is deep enough for boats. In Ibri, there will be a barge waiting to take us up the river. We will be entering the vortex that surrounds Bryn Calazar. Shut your mind away from it.”

  Darien frowned, immediately throwing up a shield to protect himself. A vortex was like a cyclone of power, a place where the lines of the magic field converged. The fury of a vortex was overwhelming, lethal to any mage. Darien had no idea how far out the Bryn Calazar vortex extended. He only knew that while they were within the grasp of those energies, he would be forced to keep his mind shielded from it. He would be vulnerable, a state he detested.

  The absence of the magic field reminded him of when Arden Hannah had cornered him in a node, a place where the field lines cancelled out. Arden had tied him to a stake, hanging him out to roast over a searing fire. He would have died on that stake had it not been for Devlin Craig. Cut off from the magic field, all he could do was writhe and scream as his flesh was broiled off his bones. He’d been utterly powerless, completely at Arden’s sick mercy.

  That’s why he so despised the shield he was forced to throw up to protect his mind from Bryn Calazar’s vortex. It cut him off from the comfort of the field. The knowledge made his skin crawl, sending shivers of dread down his spine. He could almost feel the heat of Arden’s flames licking at his flesh.

  “What is it?” Azár pressed, staring intently into his eyes.

  Darien shook his head, adjusting the scarf over his face.

  “Something is bothering you. What is it?”

  “It’s nothing.” He clenched his hands into fists, squeezing his fingers until his knuckles went white. He could feel the raging torrent of power already clawing at his skin.

  “How big is this vortex?” he grumbled. “How long till we’re out of it?”

  “Two days.”

  A surge of panic seized Darien’s throat, choking him. He winced, recoiling with dread. He gasped for air, but still couldn’t get enough breath to fill his lungs. Reaching up, he ripped the scarf away from his face. He bent forward, hands on his knees, panting as his vision swam with sudden vertigo.

  “Something happened to you in a vortex,” Azár guessed, dark eyes widening. “Take hold of your nerves!”

  Two days.

  “What happened in the vortex, Darien?”

  Two.

  Days.

  “Tell me what happened!”

  Darien closed his eyes, bringing his hands up to cover his ears as he struggled to conquer his panic.

  “It wasn’t a vortex,” he admitted, voice quavering. “It was a node.”

  “What happened?” Azár’s eyes were bright with excitement.

  “Arden Hannah,” he gasped, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain of the memory. “She tried to immolate me.”

  Azár glared at him. “Good,” she said at last. “I hope you screamed until your lungs blistered.”

  Darien opened his eyes, gaping up at her in revulsion. He’d forgotten all about Azár’s sister. The satisfaction in her eyes was appalling to witness.

  “Why do you hate me so much?” he gasped, jerking back away from her. “You’re sick.”

  “And you’re a murderous demon. What is there not to hate?”

  All Darien could do was stare at her, unable to think of a suitable retort. Azár stood before him with arms crossed, eyebrows raised. There was a low growl from behind him. Darien realized that the demon-dog had become alerted to his mood. He spread his fingers wide, motioning for the beast to desist.

  “Keep your distance,” he warned Azár, striding away from her. He didn’t trust the woman in a vortex.

  “Darien!” she called after him. “The moment you died—what was the last thing you were thinking?”

  He turned and glared back at her over his shoulder, incredulous that she would dare ask such a thing. “That’s none of your gods-damned business.”

/>   As he stalked away, he caught a brief glimpse of the smile in her eyes.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ishara

  Ishara, The Black Lands

  MEIRAN SPILLED FORWARD, her body slapping hard against stone. She glanced around fearfully, startled by the absolute darkness that encased her. There was no light at all. She could see nothing, not even the outline of Quin’s body at her side. And it was freezing. The ground beneath her legs felt like ice, sucking the warmth right out of her body through her skin.

  Quin’s features resolved beside her in a wash of wine-colored magelight. Its churning glow spread outward across the ground away from his feet. Meiran gasped, her eyes scanning quickly over the walls of the small cavern. The room they were in was like a grotto carved out of black volcanic rock of a rough and porous texture. The ceiling was high, tapering to a point far above the portal’s cross-vaulted arch.

  “Welcome to Malikar, Prime Warden.”

  Meiran turned to Quinlan Reis. “Malikar. Where did that name come from?”

  “Well, they couldn’t very well call it Caladorn anymore, now, could they? Not after the Onslaught wiped it off the map. Malikar literally means ‘Cursed Lands.’ That’s where you are, my dear. Everything around you is cursed. The sky. The air. The rocks, the people. Even the gods here are cursed.”

  Meiran stared at him. Cautiously, she opened her mind and formed a tentative link between herself and the unsuspecting darkmage. Through that thin sliver of connection, she could sense Quinlan Reis’s mood. A profound sadness filled him as he spoke, the same sorrow that lent a life-weary texture to his voice. And there was something else there, as well. Something she hadn’t expected to find at all.

  Guilt.

  Guilt infested this man like maggots in an old, rotten corpse.

  Meiran raised her eyebrows in surprise. There was little doubt in her mind that Quinlan Reis had a lot to do with Caladorn’s transformation into Malikar. It was obvious that he felt responsible for the curse that had befallen his homeland. Which made sense, she supposed; the man was a Servant of Xerys. Meiran wondered just how direct a part he had played in that tragedy.