Under A Colder Sun (Khale the Wanderer Book 1)

by Greg James

  He heard someone enter.

  “Khale! You bastard, no!”

  It was Leste. He knew that she saw him standing over Milanda, his sword piercing the Princess, and he could see all of her fears coming together as a terrible coldness behind her eyes. She broke into a run, sword drawn and high, ready to fall upon him. She would die in the fight, and she knew that, but she could not let this death pass—not this one. She had to do this, he knew, so Khale flung out his hand and Leste was swept into the air as if caught by a violent blow.

  “No!” she screamed.

  “Yes,” he quietly replied.

  Leste turned in her flight across the library and saw the approaching mirror, its frame appearing as a fluted maw and its shadowglass surface was black as endless night.

  “I will kill you for this, Khale. I will find you and I will kill you.”

  These were the last words of Leste Alen as she passed through the mirror and was lost to the Dark.

  Khale looked one last time into Milanda’s eyes, at where his sword pierced her, where the lifeblood had run out.

  The emptiness of existence, the void of life, bit down on the soul he thought had abandoned him long ago. Hope was too small and human a word for what now died in his breast. He had seen something in Milanda—something worth preserving.

  It was dead now.

  All that remained was rapine’s wound.

  He touched the lines on his face where the witch he raped so many centuries ago had marked him. He saw her eyes before him now. He saw her face. He heard her cries.

  Alosse had done this, and the Autarch had done this, but he had also done this: played his part in recreating the horror that made him as he was. He heard the words of the witch, but they were not the curse she once laid upon him.

  Some things cannot be forgiven.

  And so, something happened that had not happened for many centuries.

  Khale the Wanderer wept.

  It was a single tear, no more, and it fell onto Milanda’s breast.

  What came next began as a tremor, and he found his fingers winding tighter and tighter about the hilt of his sword as it grew into a mighty rumbling. A quaking violence reached out to touch everything around him. Dust fell. Stone shattered. The grinding of his teeth was the grinding of falling masonry as the Autarch’s palace began to collapse. The breath in his nostrils was a thunder that even the Gods in Shadow feared.

  And his scream, when it came, was a sundering of all things true.

  “Juuu-Laaar!”

  It went on, on and on, rolling out as a cataclysmic tide, churning through Neprokhodymh, razing the city to the ground, leaving only dust and a terrible silence in its wake.

  Nothing moved in the wreckage for a very long time.

  Of those who survived the collapse and might have lived, he cut their heads from their bodies without a second thought. He was Khale. He did not weep. He did not feel. He did not scream. To those who had made these things become a part of him once more, he could only give them pain and death. All who lived in Neprokhodymh died that day, and Khale left its ruins as dawn began to colour the sky.

  *

  Khale returned alone across the wastes, through the mountains and across the plains to Colm. He came in sight of it and saw what he had expected to see.

  The city, fallen.

  He had expected no less of the Lords Barneth and Farness. Without a leader, good or bad, its people had been slaughtered. His ears rang with death cries from days not long past. The violated corpses of women and children littered the streets within the fallen walls. Men in armour, and out of it, were scattered in pieces, or pieced together as crude totem poles that wept congealing blood. The armies of Barneth and Farness had come together like two great hands and crushed Colm between them.

  All for this, he thought, as always.

  Nothing had been left alive. All of the people were dead.

  Though something wasn’t right about it.

  There should have been birds picking bones clean, and signs of vermin and maggots at their work, but there were none. Something more than a simple slaughter had happened here, but for now he did not care.

  Khale took the rotting head of the Autarch—the one token he had claimed after sacking Neprokhodymh—from the bag tied at his waist. He dug around in the ruins of houses until he found a piece of splintered iron and mounted the flaking skull there, in one of Colm’s broken streets. In mourning, in remembrance—he wasn’t sure which.

  He looked at it.

  “Victory,” he said.

  Then, he walked away.

  Epilogue

  Leste scratched the last notch into the stone wall with raw, bloodied fingers. The piece of rusted iron she had used for the task fell from her trembling hand. Turning her head, she looked over her masterwork: the epitaph she was leaving to mark her time spent in this world. Rows upon rows tallying the days were etched into the mildewed walls. She lost count some time ago, but she kept going nevertheless. All she had left were the days that came and went. Her family was gone, her city was gone, and so was her honour, all because of him.

  “You will die, or become lost to me.”

  Yrena’s words haunted her, day and night.

  She had heard no word, but she knew that she had failed in her heart. And through the days and nights that passed so slowly, she remembered him, and she hated him. She held onto her promise to kill him. It was all she had left. Everything she once had was forsaken and lost.

  She did not know how she was still alive, or who her captors were. Occasionally, she heard thin, high screams from beyond the pit’s seal-stone above her head. They fed her on stale water, sour meat, and black bread each day. Streaks of white showed in her ragged auburn hair, and she knew she would be long in dying here. But her hate would not die so easily. It was dearer to her than the memory of her love for Yrena.

  There was an aching and itching in her fingertips from the cuts made by the iron. Clothed only in her own filth, she saw her surroundings by what little light filtered in through a solitary crack high above her head where the pit wall met the pit’s seal-stone. She had tried to reach it, tried to climb, but the stones here were slick with moss and lichen. She fell every time. Sometimes, Leste wished that she had died at Khale’s hand.

  She remembered passing through the mirror and the fall through the Dark that waited outside the world, and how it was peopled with the faces of all those she had known; that was when she knew Colm had burned. The Dark had seemed to go on forever, and she would never forget the sound of its screaming. And then, it spat her back out: alive and breathing into the world. The crown of her skull had struck upon the cold, damp stone that was now under her feet.

  Some days she spent with her fingers, exploring the scar that ran across the palm of her hand, the one made in Voyane’s name. And she thought on the words of Kereth and the dream she’d had about the God. It had all seemed like something born of stress and pain at the time. She had doubted what was to become of her.

  But then there had been the weeping blade; as sure a sign of Voyane’s favour as any.

  The ache of memory was as bitter and sweet as a given kiss, but there were deeper wounds also, those of the heart and soul. She barely remembered what it meant to be a woman: a simple creature born amid a torrent of blood and fluid that would go on to survive as best it could in the world, before its life was ended and returned to the Thoughtless Dark, as all others before it had been.

  No wonder we scream so when we are born, she thought, I understand now.

  Without windows, without doors, and without light, her time in the pit, and its darkness, had made her become something more complex and more empty. She was becoming closer to Khale in her nature. And why not, if that would make it easier to take his head one day?

  “I will kill you for this, Khale. I will find you and I will kill you.”

  She heard footsteps crossing to the seal-stone with acuity. Long days of complete silence had trained her ear
s to detect the slightest sound. She rose to her feet, brushing flakes of blood from her torn hands as there came a grinding from above. The seal-stone was being opened. It was not a surprise to her, though it should have been. A deeply buried part of herself had known this was coming since the night of the dream where the voice of Voyane spoke to her and she ate of the God’s flesh.

  But the time for such reveries was past, as she listened to the sound of steel separating mortar from stone. She thought on how those who had kept her trapped here had made one simple mistake: they were letting her out.

  After all these long days and nights of isolation and darkness, not one of them had thought what such conditions might create. Not one of them had thought it might be better to kill her and have done with it. One less prisoner to feed. They would not live long enough to dwell on how unwise they were, for they could not have foreseen what would emerge from the pit once the seal-stone was opened and the rope lowered down.

  A Blood-servant of Voyane and Daughter of War.

  Leste the Red.

  End of Book One

  Book Two of Khale the Wanderer

  Lost is the Night - available here

  The Evolution of Khale

  Author’s note: Khale is a character who has gone through a few stages of evolution before his final form was realised in Under a Colder Sun. For those of you interested in this, the following section contains two bonus stories; Timestone and Each Dawn, I Die.

  There are some situations and characters in each story that have been re-cast for Under a Colder Sun but I hope you still get some enjoyment from these early attempts at realising the Wanderer and his world.

  Timestone

  The world has grown old, and the sun is a cracked black lantern hanging in the sky. Everywhere from horizon to horizon has become a desert of dried-out land, snowless mountains and ruins. There is precious little warmth to be found and, just as her sun has grown dim, the Earth has grown cold. The last human beings huddle close around feeble fires to tell old stories of The Time Before. For they know that there will not be a Time To Come. There will only be The Long Dark Night and when it falls over everything, it will consume them and the last vestiges of the Light.

  *

  The Wanderer dragged his captive along by a length of hemp rope bound around her throat in a tight noose. Ahead rose a small mountain of blasted red stone and some other substance that shone and glittered in the eternal twilight cast by the shadowed sun.

  His name was Khale and he was older than most of the things left alive on this dying Earth. His features were brutish and masked by a bearded mane of dirty grey streaked with occasional stripes of obsidian black. He was clad in rough leather armour overlaid by fur pelts to keep out the cold of the days and nights. There were no seasons anymore, only times of settled temperance and freezing winds that followed no pattern. Khale could feel that a mild time was ending. In a few nights, he would need shelter to survive the tundra gales that would come surging across the land.

  The girl he dragged behind him was M’taoi, daughter-priestess of Talor, the Living God. Though Talor was no longer alive, as Khale had slain him. Not that it had been a callous killing. M’taoi’s cultists had cast Khale into the pit where they kept their God, and he found a bovine, albino mutant shuffling about down there in the dark. It was sick and weak, having no desire to fight man or beast. Though from the scars on its torso, Khale could see it had been forced to do so any number of times. The creature’s haunches had been worn raw from the rusted chains it was bound with, and it had torn out its own eyes long ago as madness from infection set in. Khale had crushed the moaning creature’s throat into collapsed fibres with his bare hands. He was sure that he felt a sigh of relief escape the thing named Talor by the savages above. Casting a look of disgust towards the shadows clustered around the mouth of the pit, Khale had uttered one of the most bloodcurdling screams he could muster until he saw them cheer and then begin to drift away to their sleeping chambers.

  Clambering out of the pit after nightfall, Khale crept through the shadows to the sleeping chamber of M’taoi and made off with her. Because the Cult of Talor knew one thing of importance among all of its broken gibberish and concocted fantasies.

  They knew where the Timestone was buried; a relic of the ancient world that would grant Khale his heart’s desire.

  M’taoi was pale-skinned, dark-haired and clad in a fur cloak and oilskin boots that were far too big for her. Khale had dug them out from his bags. Though he cared not for her, he did need her to remain alive until they reached the mountain. Having her perish from being barefoot and clad only in her sleeping robes would gain him nothing. Though the idea of leaving her to die out here alone had held a certain appeal as she sobbed and wailed her way through their first days and nights together. He could not shake the miserable image of the beast she had called God from his mind. It was seared into his retina, waiting for him whenever he closed his eyes. Such pain she had caused that creature. She should be rewarded with the slow and painful death that wandering in the barren lands would provide. But that was not to be as Khale needed her and she was quieter now, bearable company though hardly stimulating. When she did talk, it was monotone religious doggerel.

  “You shall be struck down for the wrongs you have done to me, Dark One. I will be avenged by the mighty Talor. He shall arise from his pit to tear the flesh from your bones.”

  “You’re very tedious, you know that?”

  She hawked and spat at him.

  Khale shrugged.

  He’d known worse insults and deeper wounds.

  *

  The mountain drew closer and M’taoi slowed her pace, her eyes widening as they crossed into its shadow. Khale listened to her muttering and chanting under her breath. More doggerel and superstition though her fear was well-founded, even if she did not know why or wherefrom it came. They reached the gateway into the mountain. A colossal door cut from the glittering, metallic substance that seemed to be fused with the rock and stone. M’taoi grovelled in the dirt before the gate, her forehead beating at the ground while Khale stood in sombre remembrance.

  There were shadows guarding the gate, recorded by the cult of Talor as creatures that walked the night when the sun went down to snatch away the unwary and drink the blood of unbelieving fools. But Khale knew that they were merely after-images, burned into the red rock by an explosion thousands of years gone by. And now that he was close enough, he could see that the other substance that made up the mountain was a dark-toned metal that had fused with the stone. A curious by-product of the blast, perhaps. Or, something that had come from what was waiting for him inside the vaults of the mountain. Something created by the presence of the Timestone. He could also see that the gate was fused shut. There was no way in here.

  He kicked M’taoi in the side, making her cry out.

  “Get up.”

  He yanked hard on the noose around her neck, feeling it bite into skin and muscle.

  “I said, get up!”

  “I shall not. It is profane and blasphemous to look upon the shadows when the sun is still high. They will drink my blood and carry me away into the Long Dark Night.”

  “Listen, the only reason you are alive and not wandering around out there like scavenger-bait is because you know something I don’t.”

  Still she would not get to her feet nor look at him.

  “You know how to get inside that mountain. There is a way and you are taught it. It is as a part of all the shit you believe in, right?”

  She said nothing. He pulled the noose tighter and leaned in so she could see his eyes. They were yellow eyes though not tinged with the gold of the wolf or the amber of the cat. This hue of yellow was one of plague, waste and disease. There was a taint inside him, something deeply rotten, that no balm or cure could ease.

  “I have heard stories ... ” she began to say.

  “The mark of the Death,” he said.

  “None live who bear Her mark but one,” she we
nt on, “and he is a man that walks alone. A Wanderer Eternal ... ”

  Suddenly, she was grovelling to him instead of the shadows, tugging at his pelts and patched armour.

  “Immortal lord, do not forsake me. Do not let me die here at the hands of the shadows.”

  He jerked the noose hard, dragging her up onto her feet this time.

  “I will not ... forsake you ... if you show me the way into the mountain and the iron labyrinth it houses.”

  “As my immortal lord commands.”

  Khale let her lead the way, a cold and amused smile on his lips. Maybe religion had a few things going for it after all.

  *

  M’taoi showed him the way inside. A small, unobstrusive passage a quarter of the way around the mountain’s circumference. There were guardians in the iron labyrinth but Khale had guessed as much and he was ready. M’taoi screamed until her throat was dry at the sight of the guardians but, in truth, they were even more pathetic than Talor had been.

  Khale had met such beings before. Remnants of the old world. Necroforms of some sort. He was surprised to see that they had survived this long. Their skinless faces, seething maggot-ridden bodies and chattering teeth were unsettling to look upon as they shuddered out of their hiding places. But they were little more than walking sacs of fluid and pus that burst like overripe boils as he struck them down with his sword. Their bones were trembling stalks and the crusts of marrow that made up their skulls shattered with ridiculous ease. The only thing Khale found offensive about them was the rank smell that hung in the air after they had been reduced to so much pulp and slurry.

  M’taoi whimpered and cried as they went deeper into the labyrinth that Khale was recognising more and more as a research facility. Clearly, the nuclear device detonated outside had been intended to sterilise the area. But it did not account for the strangeness of what he was seeing emerge around him. The rocky passages were inlaid with more than the weird dark metal; he could see outlines of fossilised human skulls and bones. A process that should have taken millions of years had been achieved in mere thousands. The cold smile was back on his face.