Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2)

by J. C. Staudt

  Children of the Wastes

  Book Two of

  The Aionach Saga

  J.C. Staudt

  Children of the Wastes is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 J.C. Staudt

  All rights reserved.

  Edition 1.0

  This one’s for Dad, my example of dedication, consummate pursuer of passions.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  1. Seer

  2. Waking the Father

  3. Trace

  4. Battle of the Brinescales

  5. Bargain

  6. The Goatskin Record

  7. The Waiting

  8. Esteemed

  9. Conscription

  10. Warleader

  11. Den

  12. Sand and Sky

  13. Burdens and Benefits

  14. Brood-Father

  15. The Blackhand’s Return

  16. The Healer's Son

  17. Home to Rest

  18. The Fates

  19. A Revenge Sewn

  20. Stirrings in Molehind

  21. Squandered Stores

  22. Angels in the Wasteland

  23. Dark Horse

  24. The Open Wastes

  25. Pupil

  26. Farstrander’s Gambit

  27. Solution

  28. Brother

  29. For the Greater Good

  30. The Pale-Skin Ransom

  31. Closing In

  32. Revolution’s Harvest

  33. Shelter From the Storm

  34. Discount Sale

  35. A Slave Among Brothers

  36. The Marauder’s Sister

  37. Commune

  38. Bolt

  39. Dereliction

  40. Her Children

  41. Undercurrents

  42. Showdown

  43. Through the Breach

  44. Savannah

  45. Whelm

  46. Regime

  47. Secrets of the Child

  48. Judge and Betrayer

  49. The Unraveling

  50. The Deepness Stirs

  51. Descent

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Appendix: Dramatis Personae

  CHAPTER 1

  Seer

  Lethari Prokin was home. He’d been away for a long time, and for the last few horizons of his journey he’d thought of nothing else than being with his wife. But instead of returning to Frayla’s open arms, Lethari had come home to find a man dying in the front bedchamber of his house. Now the man was dead, and the thought of love had become the furthest thing from his mind.

  Daxin Glaive had not been one of the calgoarethi, but a pale-skin; a lathcu mongrel of the southlands. Lethari had always considered Daxin a sand-brother nonetheless. For as every calgoareth knew, sand was the only bond thicker than blood. The sand drinks the blood, and so holds power over it. The sand was there when the flesh of the calgoarethi sprang from its depths, and the sand shall remain until after the ending of all things.

  Frayla Prokin did not seem to mind the dead man. She collapsed onto the cushions beneath her husband, her legs wrapped around his waist like a belt. She searched his eyes, longing to find the proof of his pleasure, matching his every ragged breath with her own.

  Tired though he was, Lethari did not stop until he had spent the last of his desire. He felt the stresses of his long odyssey lift from his shoulders like a cloud. Frayla shuddered as he withdrew, a deep breath and a rush of air. When he pulled away, the soft green fabric of her dress was bunched around her midriff, stained with his sweat. Her eyes never left him as he crossed the room to dry himself with a roughspun towel. He knew her desire was only beginning to bloom. But now that his had passed, there was too much else on his mind to bother with such things.

  Lethari and his wife spoke at length about the business of their household, the details of their servants, slaves, and incomes; of the tradesmen who had visited while he was away, and of the arrival of Maigh Glaive a week prior. Frayla recounted the story of how Daxin had left their household several days before and ventured into the city. Neacal Griogan’s herdsmen had brought him back two days later with deep, fatal wounds in his flesh.

  When Lethari summoned Ceallach Golandi to examine the body, the shaman confirmed that someone had cut Daxin open and stitched him shut again. “It is a dreadful business,” the shaman said. “This is the work of the muirrhadi, I have no doubt.”

  Lethari was no stranger to carnage, but the slaughter of a thousand foes could never shake him like the death of a friend. When the shaman was gone, Lethari took out the goatskin scroll on which he had written Daxin Glaive’s every word in the moments before his death: the locations, times, and places where he might find every pale-skin trade caravan across the Inner East for the next several months.

  “You see the great gift Maigh Glaive has given you,” said Frayla, pointing at the goatskin.

  “It is a great gift,” Lethari agreed. “A gift I will bring to the master-king at once.”

  “Must you?”

  Lethari gave her a puzzled look. “I know of no other way to handle such a boon.”

  “Could you not keep it for yourself?”

  “I would bring disgrace upon our household if I were to deny the master-king his due.”

  “Daxin Glaive gave this gift to you. If you tell the master-king, he will divide it between his warleaders, just as he has always done before. If you keep the goatskin for yourself, the glory and the spoils will be yours alone. You will have success in battle beyond measure. Then everyone will commend your skill and good fortune. They will say you are the greatest warleader who has ever ridden the sands. Think of it, my love…”

  “This is folly, Frayla. Daxin Glaive did not die to make liars of us. I would give the scroll to Tycho Montari and request a sabbatical, that I may return Daxin to his homeland to be buried.”

  “Why not bury him here, in the sky?” Frayla said. “A sky burial would be a fine honor for him.”

  “He does not belong in the sky. Sand-brother though he was, he belongs with his own people. He has a daughter and a brother, and they must know of his fate.”

  Frayla’s voice grew stiff. “Send a rider to bring the news on your behalf. Or bring word yourself, while you are there laying waste to the lathcu traders.”

  Lethari raised his voice. “The master-king will not send me to raid the caravans. He has other plans for me. He will give the goatskin record to his other warleaders, and I will receive nothing.”

  “What other plans?” asked Frayla.

  “The People of the Hidden Sands are here, in Sai Calgoar.”

  “The men who create light and fire with their hands? Where?”

  “In the household of Sigrede Balbaressi. They wait on the master-king’s retainers. He wishes to travel to their home, and he has commanded me to lead the feiach.”

  Frayla sat up, intrigued. “The hidden people will show Tycho Montari their place of hiding?”

  Lethari shrugged. “This is what they have vowed.”

  “And what would the master-king do there? What does he want from them?”

  “He believes he can consume their souls. He wishes to become one of them.”

  Frayla laughed. Her mouth tightened into a mocking smile. “Then he is as much a fool as I have always believed. And you are not the man I though
t you were. If you follow him, you are no more than his puppet.”

  Rage boiled inside him. He was glad it was his decision and not hers. She must know by now that the high households who oppose the master-king’s wishes never escape his wrath. Tycho Montari need only speak the words, and we will be cast into disgrace like dust from a beaten rug.

  For a brief moment, Lethari found himself wanting to strike his wife; to break her insolence. He had to remind himself he was no longer on the warpath—no longer in the dominion of his enemies, where fear and violence threatened to take hold at every turn. He was at home, where honor was earned with tact, not cruelty.

  Frayla pulled up her dress to cover her nakedness, then turned to face the wall with a sigh. “Do what you must.”

  Lethari sat on the edge of the bed and began putting on his clothes. The silence stretched out. He stood, tucked the goatskin record into his satchel, and started toward the bedroom door. He was halfway there when she spoke again.

  “So you will do it, then,” she said.

  Lethari stopped, but didn’t turn around. “First I will go to my father’s house to pay my respects. Then I will decide.”

  “You will not speak to your father of this,” she said.

  Lethari sensed the note of worry in her voice. He cleared his throat, then thought better of replying. Instead, he left the room. By the time he reached the front entrance, he could already hear Frayla screaming at whichever servant had been unlucky enough to have crossed her path first. With her shouts echoing over the sandstone, Lethari stopped in the doorway and took a deep breath before pushing himself out into the daylight.

  Lethari’s father lived in a palace on the heights, one of the venerable places far above the city. The arched entrance was several times his height, with domed sandstone towers that rose even higher from its flanks. Guards stood in the open doorway and in the turrets above. These were the trappings of an established family who had served the master-king faithfully for many years.

  The guards knew Lethari well; they gave him neither greeting nor obstruction as he entered the palace fully armed. The servants bowed and the slaves pressed their palms together, offering him the sign of submission.

  “I am pleased to see you have made a safe return to the city, my Lord Lethari,” said Tierlach, the thin, tidy man who served as Eirnan Prokin’s head steward.

  “Tell me, Tierlach,” Lethari said. “Where is my father?”

  “Lord Eirnan is in his parlor, my liege.”

  Lethari marched onward into the depths of the house. He ignored the lavish rooms along the way, with their familiar tapestries, carved sandstone pillars, tilework, and brightly-colored cushions. He found his father in the midst of deep meditation, so he stood at the room’s threshold and waited. Wisps of smoke were trailing up from a dish on the side table, filling the air with a sweet fragrance.

  “Why do you stand there as though you have forgotten how to speak, my son?” asked Eirnan Prokin, without opening his eyes.

  “I… did not want to interrupt,” said Lethari.

  “Everything is an interruption of something else.”

  “And when have you ever given me your leave to bear that charge?”

  “It is many years now since you were a boy. You have borne heavier burdens than to worry yourself over the irritations of an old man.”

  “I am here to give you my respect as your son, not to speak of bygone grief.”

  Eirnan opened his eyes and stared at the wall as if in a trance. “Old grief is like an old wound. Hard to carry; harder still to hide from the eyes of the watchful.”

  I have borne grief of my own, Lethari wanted to say. But I did not let it cripple me, as you have. “I have only returned to the city for a short time,” he said. “I would have your counsel while I am here.”

  “Very well. Sit. Sit, and listen.” Eirnan gestured toward an open space on the rug next to him, though the room contained many chairs and cushions. “My counsel is this: count your days as you would the fingers of your hands. For though it may seem to you that they are as numerous as the sands, or as plentiful as the rain, you will deceive yourself to believe it. You have realized success in this life, my son. You have seen happiness. But when the joys of your life have waned like the ebbing tide—when the triumphs of your youth are past, and you can see only the darkness ahead—you will know you were a fool to believe yourself invincible. Heartbreak can slay a man the same as a blade.”

  Sitting beside his father, Lethari was at once disturbed and angered. This was not the man he remembered. Eirnan had been a great warleader once, just as Lethari was now. He had won many victories for the master-king. It was in his father’s company that Lethari had come of age. He had slain his first man and had his first woman while he was a young warrior in his father’s feiach.

  The man seated beside him now was no conqueror; no champion to be revered. Though Eirnan Prokin’s reputation was one of awe and acclaim, he was a failed and broken man in his own mind. Lethari had long since stopped trying to bring his father to reason. Eirnan was living as though already dead, trapped in a prison of his own making.

  “I have come to ask your counsel in a different matter,” Lethari said. “I have been given an object of great value. I believe it is my duty to offer this object to the master-king as a sign of my fealty… but I have been advised not to.”

  “Who gave you this thing?” Eirnan asked.

  “You remember Daxin Glaive.”

  “The son of Lyle Glaive, with whom we rode the sands in friendship for many years.”

  “Yes. He has given me another record of the pale-skin caravans. Now he is dead, and so this is the last record I may ever lay claim to.”

  The corner of Eirnan’s mouth drew upward. “Frayla does not wish you to surrender this thing to Tycho Montari.”

  Lethari did not understand how his father could’ve known—unless it was so easy for the man to read him with barely a look. “My mother never asked you to betray the master-king, did she?”

  “Your mother asked me to do a great many things,” Eirnan said.

  “How often did you do what she wished of you?”

  Eirnan was smiling now, wide and full. “Without fail. And more than that I would’ve done, had she only asked…”

  Lethari couldn’t remember when last he had seen his father smile that way. Eirnan’s face was clear and alive, like a weathered carving suddenly wiped clean. The smile faded as quickly as it had come.

  “I should betray the master-king, then,” said Lethari.

  “Tycho Montari will gain as much from your silence as he would from your admission. You will slaughter the same lathcui and deliver him the same spoils, whether he knows how you came by them or not.”

  “The truth is no less important than the spoils. He deserves both. Without the master-king, I am nothing.”

  “You are the man you are—with him, or without. Never let yourself believe you are the king’s property. You are no slave, my son.”

  “The master-king honors me with plenty. He gives me everything I have, and eases my way with his bounty.”

  “That is what he would have you believe.”

  Lethari spread his hands to indicate the decadence around them. “What is all this, if not the master-king’s blessing?”

  “This is an empty reward, well-earned through blood and toil. And yet a thousand palaces like mine will never restore the days that have come to pass, or revive the sweetness of a time I once knew.”

  “Then I should do as Frayla asks, to please her.”

  “You should decide where your loyalties lie. Then, ask yourself if that is where they belong. Tycho Montari does not warm your bed at night. No, thank the fates. Tycho Montari does not share your household, and it is not he you think of while you range far from home across the desert. It will not be the master-king who bears your children, or whom you serve when you are old and frail…” Eirnan’s voice broke off. He blinked, then shut his eyes.

  �
��My father, you betray your king even now…”

  “Many are the faces of betrayal, but there is none so seductive as that which turns a man against his own household.”

  “You broke your vow to the king and endangered the honor of our household over the ill-conceived yearnings of a woman. And you think this vague discourse does not make it plain. Though you do not confess it directly, I now know it to be true. You gave him your allegiance, and you deceived him… for my mother. It is not only her memory that grieves you, but the weight of your shame.”

  Eirnan’s smile was razor-sharp. “And now you stand alone among a multitude of my peers who will never know. What does it matter? My misdeeds will never be of consequence so long as I bear my shame alone.”

  Lethari wasn’t sure what to think. For a long time, he had doubted his father’s polished reputation. Hearing him admit to treason wasn’t the overwhelming shock he had expected. Now he knew he’d been idolizing something tainted—like an animal eating food off the ground without a thought to its filth.

  Lethari stood. “And you would have me resign myself to the same fate—to one day become an old man paralyzed by his guilt, who chose family over duty. Who spent a lifetime shattering himself to appease a woman who would have been unhappy nevertheless.”

  Eirnan looked up at him. His eyes were bloodshot, undercut with dark circles. When Lethari met his gaze, it pierced him like a spear. “You dare speak of your mother in such a tone—as if she were some spiteful wretch from the pit colonies? There is more dignity in your mother’s memory than you have earned in all your life. If I am shattered, it is because I could not repay her even a small portion of what she gave to me. That tiny solace is worth more than all my years in the master-king’s service.”

  Lethari drew in a heaving breath. “I have never wavered in my allegiance to Tycho Montari, nor would I entertain the thought.”

  “And what about your allegiance to your family, eh? With whom do you believe your wife’s loyalty resides? To whose side will she turn when the rest of the world has betrayed you? Will she flee from you in your disgrace and run to the safer course? Or do you really believe Frayla would stand with you, knowing you have always put the king’s wishes before hers? A woman’s love must be earned; it has no penchant for disloyalty. What I did for your mother, wiser men have shattered themselves many times over to achieve.”