Hero Risen (Seeds of Destiny, Book 3)

by Andy Livingstone

  ‘The Royal? The Tribe? The plans?’ the Messenger asked the boy.

  Marlo whimpered involuntarily, stopping it almost as soon as it came. He made no more response.

  Loku shrugged. ‘The watching one will know more than he, I am sure. Apply the incentive.’

  The Messenger nodded simply and stepped behind Marlo. He laid the edge of the instrument on one shoulder blade.

  Marlo shook, but stared at Brann, his voice weak, but audible. ‘Say nothing.’

  Brann stared at him, but as the Messenger’s hand moved, Brann found himself unable to stop his eyes from moving to the mirror. The blade sliced a long slow line down at a slight angle, then returned to the spot and cut another, creating a narrow inverted ‘V’. Marlo shuddered, head thrown back, and a low moan followed every inch of the cutting.

  The Messenger examined his work. Apparently satisfied, he moved to the table and selected slender pincers similar to, but larger than, those that would be used by maids to pluck errant hairs from a noble lady’s eyebrows, and a new cutting instrument, this one with a longer, broader blade. He returned to Marlo’s back and used the pincers to grasp the point of the shape he had cut and pulled, the blade sliding underneath and following the movement downwards. The skin peeled away and hung, revealing the raw flesh beneath. Marlo screamed, a juddering noise that lasted beyond the Messenger’s action.

  Brann stared at the ceiling, the pain he felt inside as keen as that he had endured on his back. He snarled at his weakness, forcing his eyes down to meet Marlo’s. To abandon the boy completely now would be selfishness before compassion, and compassion was all he had in his power to give.

  The Messenger turned to the mirror, his reflection looking at Brann. ‘The Royal? The Tribe? The plans?’

  Brann looked at Marlo. The boy opened his eyes. The movement trembling, he shook his head. Brann strained at his shackles, roaring in impotent fury. To watch Marlo suffer was beyond comprehension. But to help Loku with the information he needed would bring death and suffering beyond death, as they had seen from his minions already, to thousands, maybe thousands upon thousands. But Marlo was here, now. He could end it. They would die either way – why force such suffering on the boy? He looked again into Marlo’s eyes. The boy’s lips moved, sound refusing to come. He coughed, and tried again. Six words, hoarse. ‘Give life meaning; give death meaning.’ The words carved above the entrance to the sleeping quarters at Cassian’s school, where their friendship had been forged.

  That was why. To give in now seemed a betrayal to Marlo.

  Loku must have seen the thought cross Brann’s face. He sighed regretfully and gestured to the Messenger. The man calmly, as if he were doing no more than delicately filleting a fish, cut and peeled a second long flap from Marlo’s back, the boy’s scream filling the oppressive room. As the noise subsided and Marlo hung limply in his bonds, heaving chest the only movement, the Messenger again turned to the mirror. ‘The Royal? The Tribe? The plans?’

  Brann shook his head, hatred in his eyes but resolve weakening in his heart. He pulled on his suppressed self: the Brann born in the depravity of the fighting pits of the City Below; the Brann who emerged to fight; the Brann who could look on this. But that Brann was his to suppress, but not to summon, it seemed. That Brann rose when he chose, and the only conscious choice was to allow or deny that rise. He despaired. He looked at Marlo, ready to say he was sorry, that he could take no more. He locked his eyes with his friend, expecting fear.

  But finding strength.

  Astounded and ashamed once more, he ignored all but Marlo.

  The Messenger gave no reaction but walked to his table, placing the bloody instruments on a rag laid to the side of the selection before him. His hands paused, moving to a large knife as the hatch above opened. The men assisting him moved before Loku, their broad blades held ready, but the tension relaxed as a local man hurried down the steps. Ignoring the scene of torture, he knelt before Loku until a light tap on his head raised him to his feet and allowed him to deliver his message in a low tone.

  Loku turned to Brann. ‘It seems our demonstration of the inadequacy of all we can do here to appease the god, has achieved success. The time has come to address the people, who are now ready to accept that I must seek the greater knowledge we need elsewhere. Even the highest priest needs the support of the people for the greatest of religious ventures. If you could be so good as to be helpful before I leave to join those who have been made ready for the fulfilment of my plans, it would be appreciated. If that helpfulness comes after I leave,’ he looked at the Messenger, ‘follow and enlighten me. I trust you to know what to do, in the meantime, to obtain it.’

  The Messenger bowed his head. ‘As ever, High Master.’

  Loku nodded, picked up his bird mask, and left.

  As if he had never been interrupted, the Messenger walked to the knotted cord and the wall and ran his fingers across them and, finding one, following it down as he looked at the knots with eyes and fingertips both, once more as if reading them. He nodded with satisfaction and turned back to his table, looking evenly across his precisely assembled equipment and tapping his fingers across the small vials of liquid until he selected one with a small grunt of recognition.

  He unstoppered it as he moved to Marlo and, with no pause, delicately poured the contents into the top of each great wound on the boy’s back, letting the liquid run down the exposed flesh.

  Marlo’s eyes went as wide as his mouth, his body arching forward in a spasm of agony as a sound, beyond a scream, a primeval noise of madness, burst from his core.

  The Messenger waited patiently for Marlo to lose the strength to scream. He moved to the side of him to stare directly at Brann. ‘The Royal? The Tribe? The plans?’

  Brann filled his mind with the look in Marlo’s eyes. His voice was a snarl of hatred. ‘Fuck you.’

  The man shrugged. ‘We have had pain. Now we add loss. Remember, when we stop is your decision.’

  Brann fixed his eyes on Marlo. Marlo looked back. ‘Stay on me, Marlo. Only me.’

  The boy nodded, though his body still shook without cease. Brann could hear the Messenger at the table, replacing the vial and picking up something else. He moved in front of Marlo, blocking Brann’s view. His right hand lifted, and Marlo gasped, a high moan slipping from his lips. Brann started shaking, but it was nothing to the judder that convulsed Marlo as the Messenger reached towards his face.

  Marlo croaked what sounded like two words, and the Messenger paused. ‘I did not catch that,’ he said evenly. ‘You will have to repeat it.’

  Marlo forcibly cleared his throat. ‘Prince Kadmos,’ he said, his voice a rough whisper.

  ‘Good, good,’ the Messenger said. He nodded to one of the men, who mounted the stairs in three bounds and ran from the house. ‘The Royal. Now you see what is possible? However, your back would have thanked you for an earlier answer.’

  He looked at Brann, and Brann stared back. The metal cuffs restraining him seemed ever more solid as he strained against them. If he could have one act left in his life, it would be to kill this man before he touched Marlo again.

  The Messenger looked at Marlo from up close, his head cocked to one side as if assessing the bloodied boy. ‘I am afraid, however, there were three questions.’

  His right hand lifted. His left hand twisted itself into Marlo’s hair to stop the violent trembling. The screaming started even before the instrument made contact.

  When the Messenger stepped back, Marlo’s head dropped, but not before showing a face of awful contrast: the right side untouched, the Marlo he knew, the features familiar albeit slack with shock; but the left side… the left side drenched in a mass of blood and gore, the greatest concentration where, until scant moments before, his eye had sat.

  The other Brann burst free. He felt coldness settle over him, a calm analysis unencumbered by emotion or convention. He was still himself, with his thoughts and memories and knowledge and opinions, but everything was
more… straightforward.

  The Messenger walked slowly to Brann, his impassive expression at odds with the blood and the gods only knew what else thick from the instrument in his hand to his elbow, dripping a macabre trail from Marlo to Brann, a connection of blood.

  A connection of blood.

  He understood that. And he understood that this man had to die. The uncertainty was how and when, but the certainty was that it must happen.

  The Messenger stopped in front of him, staring into his eyes. Brann no longer strained at his bonds. It was obvious they would not break, so it would be pointless and a waste of strength. He looked back with equal calm and, in that moment, saw the first seed of surprise, perhaps even doubt, in the Messenger’s eyes.

  ‘The Tribe?’ the man said. ‘The plans?’

  Brann frowned. ‘Why would I tell you after what you have done to my friend?’

  ‘So I will do no more? Believe me, this is only the beginning.’

  Brann shook his head. ‘You are already hurting him. You will kill us now, or you will hurt him more and then kill us. Or you will hurt him more, and then me more, and then kill us. When you kill us, the pain will be meaningless.’

  ‘But when it is happening, it will be meaningful.’

  Brann looked past him at Marlo. ‘There is little more you can do. More of the same. Other pain. But it can only last so long. Tomorrow, and next week, and next year, and after that, it will be nothing, as if it never happened. But if I tell you, it will make it worthwhile. Why would I make this worthwhile?’

  ‘And if I take his other eye?’

  Brann nodded thoughtfully. ‘Painful, yes. Horror to his mind, yes.’ He looked at the man. ‘But, truthfully, what difference if you have two eyes, or one eye, or no eyes when you are dead?’

  The Messenger shrugged. ‘We will see if you think the same when I bring forth his guts. When I take his arms and legs, bone by bone. When I turn him into a living monstrosity. When I keep him on the edge of death, denying him the release he begs for, with one pain after another. I need not take it slowly from pleasure nor hurry from distaste, I will just do what it takes. It is just a job.’

  ‘I can understand that.’ Brann looked deep into the man’s gaze. ‘Which is why I will kill you.’

  The Messenger looked pointedly at the stout metal encasing Brann’s wrists and ankles. ‘You may be mistaken there.’

  Brann looked deeper. His voice was a whisper, conspiratorial. ‘I know it.’

  He did not know it. He had no idea how it could possibly be accomplished. But he saw fear.

  He smiled.

  The Messenger composed himself in the space of a heartbeat. ‘We will—’

  The man across the room gave a strange gurgling sound. The Messenger started to turn, irritated at the disturbance. The movement brought him closer to Brann. Very slightly closer, but enough. Brann took the chance. He lurched as far as his arms would allow, his teeth closing on the man’s throat. Closing and biting and clenching, holding tight, arterial blood seeping then flowing then spraying on his face, filling his mouth with the taste, threatening to choke him, snorting from his own nose as his own body tried to breathe, ignoring it all as he worried and pulled and shook and grunted like a fighting dog finishing its opponent. And the Messenger was finished, the fact masked from him only by his desperation. Trapped by the grip of the teeth he stabbed at Brann with the instrument in his hand, but it was designed for a purpose other than piercing; his other hand pulled and punched and grabbed and gouged but Brann gripped unyielding. An indiscernible shape flitted beyond his clear sight and, above the noise of his own grunts of effort and the frenzied gurgled gasps of the Messenger, sounds reached his ears of struggle, but he had only one thought, only one purpose. The Messenger’s movements had quickly weakened and slowed and it was only a short time before the man fell limp. As his body sagged and Brann’s teeth began to take his weight, he at last let go. The man fell at his feet. Brann spat blood and sweat and lost the taste of neither.

  The room fell silent. Footsteps approached from behind. He tensed. Lamplight flashed on a blade stabbing down. His muscles tensed automatically, uselessly. A knife thunked into the wooden post to his right, embedding itself below his hand, level with his head. His knife, from the forearm sheath.

  ‘Thought I’d never get the chance to return it,’ a woman’s voice said, low and with the slightest hint of hoarseness. And amused.

  He shot a look at his weapons in a bundle at the wall. On the top were his arm sheaths, the last to have been removed from him. One was still filled.

  The woman walked to the front of him. Her build was athletic and strong, her hair the colour of the summer sun and framing a face of golden of hue and heart-shaped, who moved as only can a dancer or a warrior. When pale blue eyes turned to meet his, he knew she was no dancer.

  The coldness slipped from him. ‘You,’ he breathed, still panting. ‘You?’ The surprise and confusion lasted as long as it took for urgency to explode through his veins and into his head. ‘Please!’ He flicked his head at the restraints.

  She nodded and slipped the pin from the cuff at one hand. He immediately reached for the other while she freed his feet. He stumbled as awkward stiffness stiffened his legs, but he ignored it and forced his legs to move, pushing past her in a frantic rush to Marlo.

  ‘Oh sweet heaven,’ she gasped as her eyes followed his movement. ‘I was focused on the guard and then on you. The poor, poor boy. Does he live?’

  ‘He had better.’ The emotion growled from Brann. ‘He will, or the gods will know my fury.’

  He made to grasp Marlo around the chest to support him, but remembered the terrible wounds on his back and gripped him at the armpits. ‘Release him.’

  She did so and he took Marlo’s weight. She helped him gently lay the boy on his front, and the injuries to his back became apparent. She gasped and made to lift the flaps of skin back into place.

  Brann stopped her. ‘He poured something into them, for pain.’ His eyes darkened. ‘For more pain. They need to be rinsed clean, I would guess.’

  She looked across at the Messenger. ‘That death was too good for him.’

  Despite everything, Brann felt embarrassment. He wiped his hands at his face, hoping it would remove the blood – and whatever else – remained there. ‘I… I had no other way to kill him.’

  She shrugged. ‘When you have to kill someone and there is only one way, that becomes a good way.’

  ‘It was not the first time I have done that.’ He didn’t know why he felt the urge to explain. He wasn’t even sure what he was explaining. He was just letting thoughts become words.

  She stood. ‘Then you must have had only that one way before now. You don’t seem the sort to seek enjoyment in biting people to death.’

  Brann frowned. ‘I’m not, but how would you know? It is the only thing you have seen me do other than lay a knife on a step.’

  She smiled a dark smile. ‘And I thank you for that. But I have seen much more. From afar, but it has still been seen.’ Brann tensed. ‘Don’t panic, I was sent by a friend, one with your best interests at heart. Most of my efforts were, however, in keeping up with your trail. It is fortunate that this occasion was one of those when I was close, although for you and, especially this boy, it would have been better to have been closer.’

  Brann looked at her sharply ‘You were sent to follow us? Who sent you? What do you know?’

  Before she could answer, the sound of a door crashing open in the room above sent the pair hurtling across the room, the woman to the stairs, a short sword appearing in one hand and a knife in the other, and Brann to the nearest dead guard, reaching for the broad-bladed weapon at his side. Before either could reach where they intended, however, Gerens hurtled down from above.

  ‘Wait!’ Brann shouted at the woman. ‘He is a friend.’

  She lowered her weapons. ‘I know.’ She looked at him. ‘Trailing, watching: remember?’

  Gerens reached
halfway down the stairs, his eyes taking in the scene, and jumped from the side of them into the room. Grakk and Konall followed.

  Relief showed clear in their faces as they saw Brann, but then their eyes fell upon Marlo. Grakk was first to him, kneeling over the boy, his fingers probing quickly. ‘He is alive?’

  The woman nodded. ‘Barely.’

  Grakk registered no surprise at her presence, absorbed in Marlo’s state.

  The woman walked to the table, picking up the one empty vial. She tossed it to Grakk. ‘This was poured into the wounds on his back, I believe.’

  Grakk sniffed it and nodded. ‘Pain, but not damage. Though enough damage has been done.’ He looked at Konall. ‘Find water.’ And at Gerens. ‘Get what you can that is unbloodied on the tunics of those men. I need rags for cleaning and strips for bandaging.’

  Both complied without wasting time on an answer.

  Now that Marlo was receiving more expert attention than he could have offered, Brann started to feel naked without his weapons. The closest was the knife stuck in the wooden post.

  A man rushed down through the hatch, his features marking him as a local. Brann snatched the knife but, as he threw, Gerens hurtled into his side, knocking his arm askew and sending the blade to clatter against the wall further down the stairs.

  ‘He is with us, chief,’ Gerens said.

  The man was frozen in shock, staring at the knife. He looked hesitantly at Brann. ‘My home is across the street. I was on the roof, wondering at the commotion in the temple square, and saw you two foreigners on this roof with the High Master and the others. Then I heard noises, noises that were not good.’ He shuddered. ‘Not good at all. I remembered talk at my temple – not that temple, where they did that… that thing – a different temple. A temple where we do not interpret the lore of our gods to as brutal effect as the High Master preaches. And when I heard talk of newcomers from lands afar, asking questions, I followed the whispers and sought them out. I sought to trade my knowledge of their friends for their knowledge that I thought may help us.’ He paused, looking at Marlo with a sudden intake of breath. ‘What I see here makes me regret that I did not find them sooner.’