Hero Risen (Seeds of Destiny, Book 3)

by Andy Livingstone

  They stopped without warning, and he fell against the man pulling him; a hand grabbing his arm to halt him, dangling him at an angle and wrenching his shoulder, then righting him with what seemed like casual ease.

  He was dragged again into cooler air and the hood went darker: inside a building. A door banged shut behind, heavy wood from the sound. The same noise of wood on stone, but in front of him, and then a hand between his shoulder blades pushed him forwards this time, a lurch of panic searing through him as his foot met only space and he pitched forward. The hand slid down his back and caught the rope where his wrists met, holding him precariously for a moment to remind him of his utter helplessness. Both arms pulled and twisted and threatened to pop from the sockets but this time he welcomed it: anything but falling helpless, blind and head first.

  He breathed again, the air hot against his face as the hood confined it. He was pulled upright and felt gingerly for the step he hoped was there. His toes found it and he tottered his way down, needing no prompting from behind. He had long since abandoned any notion that he might have a say in where he was going.

  His feet found level ground and he was turned and led a dozen paces. He was stopped. Held. Nothing happened until he heard several sandals scuffing as their owners moved around him, then the frustratingly general sound of something indeterminate being arranged and the clank of metal.

  The front of the hood lifted slightly and his eyes, straining down to catch a glimpse of something, anything, after the darkness, saw the flash of light on metal an instant before the edge lay against his throat. A few swift slashes of a blade cut his tunic from him before his various weapons were unstrapped and lifted from their many locations about his body. Coldness touched the inside of one arm – more metal – before three jerks saw his hands come apart from each other, the severed cord hitting his heels as it dropped to the floor. He flexed his fingers, feeling the pain as the blood flowed again into his hands, and rubbed his palms together for an instant before his arms were grabbed again. He was dragged to one side and his hands were raised above his head, hard wood pressing against them as cuffs clamped around his wrists with a heavy snap. His legs were kicked apart and a hand pushed each back in turn until his ankles were secured in the same fashion.

  The bag was pulled from his head.

  Reflex sucked in a deep breath as his eyes blinked, blinded even by the dim lamplight. He jerked his head one way then the other, seeking his bindings. Two stout posts led from stone floor to stone ceiling, and were embedded in each. A wrist and ankle were manacled to each one, a heavy pin holding shut the clamps. He pulled at them, muscles straining as instinct moved him to test them. As expected, though, they were solid.

  He looked across the room. Marlo was similarly secured, facing him, terror in his eyes but the flexing of his jaw hinting at the determination that was fighting a fluctuating battle with the fear.

  Brann could understand the fear. He could feel it. There was little more terrifying than utter helplessness.

  He forced his breathing to slow and deepen. However unlikely it seemed that a chance would present itself, he would not be caught unready if it did. He nodded at Marlo, hoping he appeared reassuring, but doubting he achieved anything like it. Marlo nodded back, his movements jerking. He never took his eyes from Brann.

  Soft, unhurried footsteps descended the stairs, and the Messenger came into view. He looked from one to the other, his eyes settling on Brann. ‘In an ironic way,’ he said, his voice soft and even, ‘you are a success. You sought me, chased me, followed me across the width of a sea, all to try to find the High Master. And now you will meet him. You should rejoice.’

  Irony indeed.

  A murmur sounded from above and the three men who had brought them followed the Messenger in, dropping to their knees, holding themselves straight but with heads bowed. The room resonated with a deep hum from the four men as they swayed slowly from side to side. A man descended from above: a cloak around his shoulders of long feathers of countless hues descending past his ribs, brushing the steps as he came. As his head came into view, Brann could see it was covered with the mask of an exotic bird: a slender beak, the length of a child’s arm, curving forward and more plumage encasing his head and lying flat to hang to the nape of his neck.

  He reached the floor and moved to the centre of the room. A single raised finger stopped the humming, and when the rest of the fingers on that hand lifted as well, the men regained their feet.

  The beak turned to Brann, then Marlo, then back to Brann. Eyes glittered behind the mask.

  Both hands lifted to the mask, his head leaning forward to ease it free. The Messenger came to take it from him, standing in front of him to receive it, blocking Brann’s view.

  The Messenger stepped away. The head rose.

  The eyes met Brann’s.

  Brann’s eyes widened.

  A wordless shout of shock, of rage, of disbelief burst from him.

  It was Loku.

  Brann strained at his bonds, every natural urge forcing him towards the man. His muscles heaved; his skin bled against metal; his eyes felt ready to pop from his head. He wheezed with the effort and the emotion, pulled by an irresistible compulsion – swamping reason and fact – to somehow reach the man and tear his throat from his body.

  Loku stood calmly, waiting for the fury to subside.

  Subside it did. The struggle fading from determined to desperate to despairing; the grunted gasping becoming heaving breaths that slowed and softened.

  He stared at the man before him.

  Loku sighed, his expression relaxed. ‘It is sad to see such anger in one so young, but passion is always to be admired. You quite obviously believe deeply in your cause.’

  ‘As do you,’ Brann growled, his voice raw in his throat.

  Loku smiled sadly. ‘More than you know.’

  Brann glared. ‘Tell me, then. I am clearly not going anywhere soon.’

  ‘Actually, you are, soon but briefly, but that is another matter and there is time to talk. For that is the reason you are here: to talk to me, or to my associates, whichever you choose. I will try to persuade you, but should you decline the chance, I will leave the messier activities to those with more stomach for such things.’

  ‘No stomach?’ Brann was appalled at the gall of the statement. ‘You, who have brought about mass murder, who have made the infliction of torture and pain a leisure activity and cruelty an addiction, who have set people to wiping out entire villages and sacking cities across countries: you have no stomach for such things?’

  Loku nodded slowly. ‘An evil, I must agree, but sometimes an evil is unavoidable if an end is to be achieved.’

  ‘An end? What end could justify that?’

  ‘The end of a people. The extinction of a race. The snuffing of some goodness from this world. My people are threatened with doom, and if I can save them, then is my obligation not clear? If I question what I must do, I will falter, and if I falter, I fail the very people who I serve.’ He stared at the floor, fingering a feather on his cloak, his voice uncharacte‌ristically thick with emotion. ‘I cannot fail them.’

  He looked at Brann. ‘I see you do not understand.’ He gestured to the Messenger, who immediately gathered the men. ‘I must show you. If you understand, you will aid me, I know it.’

  One man immediately lifted a blade to Marlo’s neck while the boy was unfastened. When he stood secured, this time with iron manacles at hands and feet, the edge of the blade remained against his neck but the eyes of the man holding it fixed on Brann. The message was clear.

  Despite the threat through Marlo, Brann still felt sharp metal press against his own neck. His hands were released first, and clasped in the metal cuffs linked by a short chain. He could see the logic: his hands were more dangerous than his feet, but even in the short space of time between restraints, they were useless if his ankles were still fixed to the poles.

  A chain also linked his ankles, restricting all but the minim
um movement needed to shuffle forwards and up the stairs, as they were prompted to do. The room above was bare but, along one wall, more steps rose to an open hatch in the ceiling. At the top of these, they found themselves on a flat roof with a waist-high parapet, the final pyramid of the valley rising in front of them and the first mountain looming immediately behind. The sun was beginning to set, and the red smudges it smeared across the darkening blue of the sky seemed to mimic the smoke drifting from the top of the mountain.

  Loku noted Brann’s eyes resting on the smoking peak. ‘And so you behold our doom. Texacotl is angry, and we know not why. We prayed, but it brought Him no peace. We made offerings, but still He was not calmed. We sent priests, anointed for the journey – as dictated by our lore – to climb to the lip of His home and look within; those who returned spoke of His ire, so strong that the rock inside had melted to pool like a lake; His rage burning with such power that every hair on their heads, from their scalps to their eyes, was burnt and lost. Some offended Him so greatly that He took their sight with the heat. Still we prayed, more we offered, not merely the prized possessions and precious food of before but now sacrifices strong with the power of life: our animals, their essence released with their blood to send our love and homage to Him. Still His anger did not ease but, worse, it grew. So priests again were anointed and dared to look into the face of His anger. The very air of his home now poisoned them: just two returned to us, and one lived long enough to tell of the lake of boiling rock, now risen half the distance to the peak and bubbling and spitting its searing essence towards them as they dared to gaze upon His fury.’ He sighed. ‘The Second Annals of the Gods describe similar anger from the other four gods, a hundred generations and more in the past, when the power of their fury flowed as rivers of death and destroyed men and women and all their works. Each time the people fled and a new city was built in the shadow of a more benign god, four times in all as, in time, each god became angered for reasons beyond the understanding of His mere subjects.’

  Brann shrugged. ‘So move again.’

  ‘If only it were so simple. But man has no right to defy the will of a god and restore a city He or She has chosen to end. And there are no more gods from whom to seek succour; since the five crossed the sea to us in time long forgotten, all five will now have spoken. Every man, woman, and child of all the cities of this land bows to these gods, and if those chosen to live in the glow of Their magnificence were to abandon Them, all in these lands will be lost; without them, we are nothing. Their lore is our lore, teaching the knowledge of how we can live in these lands and encouraging the discovery of new methods. Some are required elsewhere, but here the remainder will stay, placing ourselves at the mercy of the greatest god of all.’

  Brann grunted. ‘And here you will die. Magnificence or not, you won’t exist. The others here I might mourn; you, however…’

  The Messenger’s face contorted and only a wave of Loku’s hand stopped his vicious blow.

  Loku stared at the peak. ‘We must survive. And so we make the greatest offering of all.’

  He moved to the edge of the roof closest to the pyramid, and Brann and Marlo were shunted in his wake. Before them lay a square, the ramp to the pyramid’s top starting slightly off-centre while, in the other half of the area, a temple sat, no more ornate in design than any other building but set apart by the multitude of colours that swathed its walls, bold geometric shapes on a rainbow background of broad horizontal bands. Before the building was a low wall, no more than the height of a man’s knee, marking an area square in shape and containing only two identical blocks of finely dressed stone, embossed with designs similar to those on the walls of the temple and picked out in matching bright colours. They were waist high and the length of an average table: altars, Brann assumed, in the sight of the mountain and its resident god. Behind them stood a glowing brazier.

  A crowd of worshippers were starting to fill the square, filtering in silently and standing, facing the temple and side-on to Brann. They stood silent, without moving, presumably in obedience to religious custom as no priests were evident.

  The Messenger moved close behind Brann, calm menace in his every word. ‘You are in the presence of a great one. Shout to them and you will achieve nothing but the loss of your tongue.’

  Brann stilled that very impulse. He was used to risking injury, but not for no possible gain. Had it not been for Marlo’s presence, he would have taken the opportunity to launch himself without hesitation over the parapet to the ground below. The drop was not substantial; if he rolled as he landed, he might avoid serious injury and his chances would be better than where he was at the moment. But with Marlo there… He subdued both his voice and his instincts.

  Perhaps the crowd could see no priests, but those alongside Brann could: five of them on the roof of the temple garbed for the gods in long feathered robes and plumed bird masks, together with a young man and woman, each clad in a simple shift of deep crimson.

  Brann looked at the garb of the priests and back at Loku. ‘You are a priest!’

  The Messenger growled in violence confined only by Loku’s previously signalled restraint, his breath hot on the back of Brann’s neck. ‘Show respect, dog. You speak to the High Master of the servants of Texacotl. He is the priest of all priests.’

  Brann ignored him, staring still at his nemesis, forcing his voice even despite the harshness that raked his throat. ‘Hence your responsibility to your people.’

  Loku’s eyes remained on the scene on the roof before them, the group moving as if in a private performance for them. ‘Naturally. If not I, then who?’ He nodded at the rooftop. ‘Watch. Understand our peril. Understand our fear. Understand our commitment. Understand our devotion. Understand the depth of our yearning that Texacotl should understand. Understand.’

  The young couple faced each other, taking hands and locking eyes. They swayed slightly as the priests began to chant and, at the sound, the unseeing crowd began the same low hum that the men had emitted at Loku’s arrival in the cellar.

  Loku smiled, as a father might, protectively and with affection, over his young children. ‘The great and the respected from each area of the city. They will return and relate.’

  ‘Relate what?’

  ‘The message we send to the god. The power of our devotion.’

  A priest stepped up behind the young woman and raised a slender, almost needle-like, blade shining black, seeming to be some sort of stone. Brann and Marlo gasped in unison as he slipped it smoothly through the shift into the unprotected area below her ribs, but the woman gave no cry of pain, no flinch, no reaction, no awareness even, despite the dark blood that pooled about her feet as the knife was withdrawn in as swift a motion as it had entered.

  The priest moved behind the man and slid the knife into him in identical fashion. Again there was no reaction other than to blink, once. All five clerics turned their gaze across to Loku without a break in their chanting. Loku nodded and lifted a finger, and a priestess, her gender evident in her build and movement, stepped forward with a golden goblet and lifted it to the man’s lips. He drained it in a single draught as she tilted it, and almost immediately the priest with the dripping knife repeated his action, this time to the other side of the man’s spine.

  There was not even a flicker. Loku smiled.

  Five times, the priests circled the pair, who swayed in time to the chanting, hands still held, eyes still locked. The clerics lined up two each side of the couple, and the fifth – the woman who had served the goblet – loosely looped a short length of cord the same hue as their shifts around the nearest wrists of the pair. She led them to an external stair at the rear of the temple and the group descended serenely, moving from Brann’s view to reappear around the front of the building. At the sight of them, the crowd’s humming grew stronger and, as one, they fell to their knees, swaying from side to side, eyes intent on the scene before them.

  The couple were led to the front of the small enclosure, facin
g the assembled throng. The priestess untied the shifts at the rear of the neck for first the woman, then the man, letting the material drop to the ground. Neither the couple nor the crowd showed any surprise at the nakedness, nor the arousal of the man.

  Brann, however, must have shown surprise.

  Loku glanced sideways at him. ‘The drink has several useful qualities for a ceremony such as this.’

  The couple were led to the altars, each of which had a small step placed at its side by a priest. The man climbed atop one and lay flat. The woman was guided to the same block, priests holding each of her hands as she stepped up, standing over her companion then lowering herself to straddle him, the trails of her blood drying on her back and legs evident as she did so. The humming of the crowd increased with the pair’s movements, building in intensity until the woman threw her head back and the man half raised himself, both shuddering in unison.

  Brann glanced at Marlo, seeing in the boy the same discomfort he felt himself. Seeking refuge in flippancy, he raised an eyebrow at Loku. ‘The numbing seems to be wearing off.’

  ‘On the contrary. In greater quantities, the tincture will induce unconsciousness and, should the donor be careless, death, but in the first doses numb sensation and awareness but enhance the feeling of pleasure to produce certain reactions. We find it helpful in the rites that bring fertility to our mothers and to the soil, where the participant must be suffused with the rapture of the gods but must also be able to, shall we say, enact the ceremony.’

  ‘You have just held a fertility ceremony? Now?’

  ‘Not the ceremony, but the rite has been enacted for another purpose. It is a part of the whole of what we do here for the great god.’

  His eyes, Brann noticed, were glittering. An uneasiness crept over him at the sight, and he turned back to the scene below, willing the pair not to be harmed, though he suspected the blood spilt already would not be the last they would donate. He hoped with a desperate fervour that whatever the pair lost in the sacrifice, it would be something relatively immaterial: a finger, or even a hand, rather than their sight; a scarring to the back rather than disfigurement of the face; perhaps just the mingling of their blood. Whatever the outcome, he prayed that they would be cared for throughout their lives for the sacrifice they would have made for their peers. Horror trapped his eyes on the young couple.