Under A Colder Sun (Khale the Wanderer Book 1)

by Greg James

  “The strain is atrocious, keeping it all together. A moment’s pause, a second’s thought not spent on keeping everything moving and my bones would collapse and become one with the dust I have feared since birth. Terrible, terrible, terrible.” He rose from his chair, cloaked in grey light, and came towards the dais.

  Milanda struggled against her bonds, but the leather thongs she had been tied with did not yield. The head of the Autarch bent towards her, and his fragile hands divested his torso of robes. She saw the preserved parchment of his flesh and the silvered things that squirmed beneath. His penis was uglier and more twisted than the root of a dead tree.

  He ran a rotten finger down her cheek, leaving a fragrant trail of embalming powders and funeral spices. “I made it my life’s work to drive the cold of the world from my breast, to be able to draw breath eternal, but now I sit here waiting for death, dreaming of death. This is not how it should be for one such as I. This old body of mine does not have much longer left to it. Milanda, daughter of Alosse and heir to Colm, you are my last hope, but that does not mean I cannot enjoy you somewhat before the ritual begins.”

  He moved with a litheness that should not have been possible. She fought against him. She bit and scratched at dead, dried-up skin as cloth tore, flesh was bared, and innocence was taken and lost. Milanda had time but for one scream.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Neprokhodymh came into view after many dark leagues were crossed, during which time Leste spoke not a word. The longer it took for her to bring the Princess back to Colm, the more the city became vulnerable to whatever plots to sack and overthrow it were being made by Barneth and Farness.

  Yrena, Osta, I’m so sorry, she thought.

  Her anger was as much with herself as with Khale. She knew that. The look in Yrena’s eyes before she left her that morning burned her heart every time she thought about it. That look had said: You’re leaving and you’re not coming back. I am alone again. You will soon be dead. I will weep. I will mourn. I will try to live on without you, but no more than that.

  Leste bit back tears as she thought of Yrena teaching and playing with Osta in their home, trying to show the boy that there were good things in the world, things worth living and fighting for, while believing that her lover was going to die on a pointless quest for glory. Her fingers ached from gripping the horse’s reins too hard, and the winds of the waste blew a bitter dust into her mouth and eyes. It was through this constant windblown mist that Leste first beheld Neprokhodymh.

  It was a colossal, ruined hive that had once been majestic towers and palatial temples. It stood cracked and hollow above long-broken walls. There was no trace of colour or life to be seen. The winds had blasted the city until it was the same dismal hue as the land it was rooted in, like mouldering teeth jutting from rotten gums. Khale found the remnants of a trail leading to the city, and Leste fell in behind him, as much for a little protection from the stinging bluster of the wind as anything.

  How could life exist out here? she wondered, and what happened to turn the land to such a state? She doubted that Khale would give her answers, even if she did have the desire to talk to him. She didn’t, so she left her questions for later—if there was a later.

  “Why do you go on Khale? The Autarch has her now. You will not be delivering her to him. You slew Alosse yourself. There will be no golden-eyes for you after this.”

  “Colm barely has ten thousand golden-eyes to call its own,” Khale said. “There are those in the South who would pay highly for your Princess. I meant to take her to them.”

  Leste looked at him, disbelieving.

  “Alosse meant to see her sacrificed to protect Colm. The marriage was a lie.”

  Leste looked into his eyes, waiting to see them flicker, to see some trace of untruth there. There was none.

  Everything, all of it, was a lie. Yrena had been right after all: she was risking her life in the name of a stupid, chivalrous dream.

  Neprokhodymh came closer, and Khale went on, “I meant to sell her for a good price to some rich Lord or other after laying a false trail into the desolation. I never meant to cross through Traitors’ Gap and come here. But for the betrayal of my men and the mirror-beasts that came for us, I would never have come this far and it would have all worked out. I could kill them all for this. I do not mean to leave her in the hands of the Autarch though, that I promise you.”

  Leste saw his eyes flicker for a moment – was Milanda more to him than money?

  No, that could not be.

  “But you would sell her to be a slave?”

  “Which would you prefer, Lady of the Watch? To be a live slave, or a dead princess, which is the nobler fate, and which is the better?”

  Leste said nothing to that.

  Khale allowed her to try to sleep one more night in the wastes before they entered the city. Leste did try to sleep, but for cries in the night that sounded like Milanda, and the moans that sounded like her own.

  They stood at the gates before the light of morning finished filling the sky. Khale laid his hands upon the rust-studded wood and pushed; not a word of incantation passed his lips. There was no spell of warding to break. The doors swept inwards. They went on foot as their steeds whickered and refused to go near the city’s threshold.

  The way was open, and the wretched stink of Neprokhodymh assailed their nostrils. A patina of dust covered everything in sight. Their footsteps echoed and grew in volume as they walked along streets lined with rubble and fallen masonry. Leste glimpsed white shapes that were not stone, glimmering here and there. She didn’t have to go any closer to see they were bones left to dry and bleach in the open, but the bones were not the worst of it. After a short way, Leste saw the first of the mages.

  “These are the creatures Alosse thought would defend his city,” Khale said, a dark humour colouring his words.

  Leste looked and felt sick at the sight of them. These mages were supposed to be the necromancers, witches, and warlocks of legend, but instead they were men and women with scabrous skin and mouths stained by the residue of powders and tinctures. Their eyes were the colour of spoilt eggs and discoloured tongues licked at age-worn teeth.

  “I don’t think they’ll be defending anyone, do you?” Khale said.

  Leste nodded, grimacing. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Don’t worry, they won’t notice, much less care.”

  They passed mages sprawled on makeshift beds and seemingly dozing in the shadows of fallen houses. Leste saw weeping lesions and faces crawling with insects and untreated disease.

  “What’s happened to them?”

  “Addiction,” Khale said. “High on their own power and visions.”

  “Seed-sniffers and powder-merchants,” Leste whispered. “I never would have thought it of mages.”

  Khale smiled his scar-twisted smile. “Most of them are little else. The strength to will the world to behave as you see fit is born to a precious few. More than a few can open the path to the Outside and the Thoughtless Dark, but less than a few know how to close it before they see what they should not see, understand what they should not understand, and have to spend the rest of their lives swallowing seeds and tinctures to stay the touch of insanity.”

  “I suppose you think yourself to be one of the precious few, then?”

  Khale shook his head, face solemn. “No.”

  Leste fancied she could hear the entire place breathing, for there were so many mouths about, lightly gasping as their bodies slept and their souls roamed free through other dimensions and planes of existence. Leste could feel the grit and grime of Neprokhodymh settling into her skin.

  They came to an open courtyard where once-rich tapestries hung from balconies as rags. Friezes painted onto bare stone had worn away to resemble the etchings made on tombstones.

  A high, lonesome wail came from the shadows, and a dank wind blustered through the courtyard. It tugged at her like the weak fingers of the dying. Leste felt a cold sweat p
ebbling her skin as she heard Khale begin to mutter under his breath. The wind, which tasted sour and smelled of old earth, strengthened until it whipped at them. She took a deep breath and mastered herself.

  Leste drew her sword, but her heart did not have time to grow lighter as another fearsome wail cut through the air. As it came to an end, she heard the sound of footsteps on stone, and then she saw what was moving towards them out of the gloom. She did not see all of the apparition at first, only the eyes—or rather, the empty, red spaces where eyes should have been.

  Leste’s sword slid from her fingers.

  The world seemed to darken, becoming suffused with a crimson atmosphere. The wailing returned, this time with renewed force. It battered at her. It lashed at Khale. It sent them crashing to their knees. Leste’s eyes did not leave those gaping holes in the phantom’s face for a moment. She saw her own death in them, as pale, blood-freckled arms were revealed, and she found herself breathing in the stench of the scarlet stains on a ghostly burial gown. She could feel the cold closing in, the darkness and red of death.

  Her fingers groped towards her fallen sword; shaking, trembling, she grasped at it and rammed the pommel upon the stone ground with a resounding crack. The apparition paused. Its wail faltered. Its eyeholes stared at Leste; it burned as she stared back into them.

  “You belong with the dead,” Leste croaked.

  Her sword’s blade was hot; weeping smoke and a blood of its own, which ran down its length and fell as dark tears to the ground. She felt a curious ache in the palm of her scarred hand.

  Voyane, Blood-Creator, protect me.

  She stepped towards the grim, wailing spectre, wielding the sword as a cleaver of blood and steel.

  “You will be silent! Go back to your grave!”

  She drove her sword through its heart. Her teeth ground together as she pierced the torso, feeling it split open like old sacking. Bloodstained fingers grasped at the wounding steel and smouldered. The wailing rose to a scream. The eyeholes wept, pleading, but Leste did not relent.

  She held her sword firm as smoke crept across the apparition’s body, burning through dead flesh and turning rotten bone into cinders.

  Leste jerked the blade free, letting the remains collapse to the ground.

  The skull came loose to roll away into the rat-infested dark. The corpse bucked and thrashed, the mouth opened, croaking dryly, unable to conjure its murderous wail anymore.

  A few moments more and only ashes were left.

  Khale stood at her side. He used his blade to scratch the ashes into an intricate sign. “That will bind it. We don’t want it coming after us again. Even the ashes of a fire hold the essence of what came before.”

  “What was it?”

  “A blood-banshee; some call them Maunds. Conjured by the Autarch from one of his victims, I should think. He will know we are here now.”

  Leste nodded, getting her breath back.

  “How did you make your sword’s blade wreak and smoke?” Khale asked.

  Leste looked at him. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re no mage. I would have known long ago.”

  “I don’t know how it happened.”

  Khale rumbled in his throat, “Perhaps not.”

  The world is rotting, Leste, and things are no longer as well hidden as they once were, and those of us once bound are being set free.

  She didn’t repeat Kereth’s words to Khale, nor the dream of the shore where Voyane the Blood-Creator had spoken to her. She tried not to think of the scar on her hand. What they all might mean frightened her deeply. She did not want to think on such things. Now was not the time. They pushed through the city towards the one building that retained some of its former splendour: the palace of the Autarch.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The gates of the palace stood open for them. Khale’s two-handed sword was ready and Leste kept her own drawn. He could see her eyes occasionally flicking to it, wondering if it would begin to bleed again by the look of things.

  Something passing strange is happening to her, he thought.

  There was a great rustling in the dark halls ahead and the time for musing was over.

  Out of the Neprokhodymh pits, there poured a horde of the dead. Murtuvae raised from their crypts. Dozens upon dozens of creatures clad in wasted armour, wielding crumbling sword and shield.

  Khale swept his sword back and forth through them, knowing that these creatures were not meant to overcome them, merely to slow them. The blades of the resurrected were held together by rust and rot. Their shields and armour split like old parchment as he carved a path through them. But as he felled them like ears of corn, more came from catacomb doors and side corridors to stand within the crushing reach of his blade.

  And Khale knew as he waded on, waist-deep in carcass and death, that this was his life eternal: an unrelenting tide of horror that no-one but he could comprehend. The scream of the universe was his own, and the blood of Creation was on his hands. This was the work and design for which he was made and, usually, he found it good.

  But this time, it was not to be enough.

  These dead men were not worthy of his mettle. His taste for blood was not even piqued by the walking relics as they fell. Khale swung his sword all the harder, sending corpses tumbling into their fellows, crashing to the ground to be crushed into splinters and grit underfoot. He could see a set of great doors standing not far beyond the sea of staggering corpses.

  She was on the other side.

  Milanda.

  He hacked and hacked away at the stiff torsos pressing against him. The extinct creatures crackled and snapped under every stab and thrust. A thick yellow dust rose up, composed of spices and dried essences, which rained down upon the ground as aged spines gave way and broken remains scattered around him, becoming great heaps of dried limb and bone.

  Khale looked to Leste and saw that she was close to being overwhelmed by the weight of rotting bodies. There was little he could do to help her. Her swiftness was no strength when there was no room for her to manoeuvre, and there were too many of the crowding horrors between them. He could not wait for her.

  He had to go on—for Milanda.

  Khale pushed his way through and left her behind to drown in the dead.

  *

  Khale shattered the door that led into the palace library with a single blow, and felled the three mage-priests attending before the withered men could raise a cry between them. In the carven chair set behind the dais was the hunched, wizened form of the great Autarch, and upon the dais itself was a form covered over by black velvet cloth.

  He took the steps up to the dais in a few broad strides and looked upon the Autarch. The Autarch did not return his gaze, for the eyes there were truly as empty as the hollow body the skull rested upon. Nothing stirred inside but hungry worms: the boneless fingers of death.

  Khale tore back the black velvet from the altar, and there was Milanda – unbound but with her clothing torn and body bruised. The eyes that peered up at Khale were neither young nor as untouched by the world’s poison as they once had been. They brimmed with an archaic malice accrued over centuries of unlife. Khale knew such eyes well. He met them as the gaze of an equal.

  “Autarch.”

  Milanda’s lips spread in a smile that was hideously old for such a young mouth, and she stretched languidly. There was no trace of her left. He could see that. She was gone from the body that now spoke. “It’s ... warm and wet in here ... no longer old and dry ... this body is so warm and so strong ... free of age and pain ... so much blood and life left ... years ahead ... to go ... to come ... I like this ... indeed ... very much ...”

  Her fingertips caressed the fine hairs of her pubis and Khale saw the dried traces of her maiden-blood there.

  A flicker of dark anger passed behind his eyes at the sight.

  Khale’s eyes met those of Milanda, and he searched them still, knowing it was futile and that only the Autarch resided there now.


  “All comes to dust, except for me,” he said. “Everyone dies and goes away, except for me. I am the end of the world. I will see it and share it with no other soul. This is why each dawn I die, because the last day comes closer as each morn that comes before it passes away.”

  “Fair words ... from a foul form, Khale,” said the Autarch’s voice. “Did she die ... not knowing ... you were such a poet—”

  The Autarch’s words ended in a choking fit.

  Something was wrong; the body twisted violently on the dais.

  Milanda’s fair eyes raged and her mouth spat blood.

  “This is ... not what was ... agreed. This one is ... not pure,” the Autarch’s voice cried, “Alosse promised me ... virginity ... no ... she has been despoiled ...”

  “She cannot be”, said Khale.

  Then Milanda’s body trembled, and he saw it: the skin of her abdomen undulating, writhing with the motion of a life that was not her own.

  This was not the work of the Autarch.

  Milanda’s mouth opened, and the Autarch screamed through it as skin and flesh haemorrhaged.

  Khale had seen this before. A remnant of the old world he’d thought buried with its blighted iron cities: the seed of Chuma.

  The night she was lost to us, he thought, it must have happened then.

  Blood ran from Milanda’s lips. Her eyes opened wide. It was the Autarch staring through them, rather than the girl he had brought here, but Khale struck the blow for her.

  He felt the soft shell of the newborn larvae give when he drove the point of his blade home. He felt its death throes. How its first and last cries drowned inside Milanda’s flesh. The insect-spawn was dead, as was the Autarch, as was she.

  There was no light left in her eyes.

  “Out, out are the lights,” he whispered, “out all.”