Winds of War

by Rhett C. Bruno

  It confused Torsten as well. When last he left Yarrington, he had been exiled by Oleander in her unchecked fury. When he returned, she was shattered mind and spirit until Pi came back to her. Now, he left in her good graces, somehow knowing that of anyone in the castle with Pi’s ear, she was perhaps the one he could trust the most, the one with the most honest of intentions—protecting him.

  Yet there was no denying what she’d just asked of him. Stabbing Redstar in the back was less than the man deserved but to do so was to betray the will of his king.

  Torsten looked at the statue of Liam in the castle’s entry bailey and remembered how simple things were with him alive. His eyes moved down the line of statues: Remy the Revealer, Tarvin the Fair-Handed, and even King Autlas the First. He wondered if any one of them acted as rashly as King Pi had.

  Then the castle gates closed.

  “Your horse, Sir Unger?” the stablehand offered, returning from the bailey.

  Torsten nodded and waited for the young man to return with his horse, then he rode down through the heart of Yarrington. Wardric met him in the markets, which were simultaneously more crowded and quiet than usual.

  “Did you find what you were looking for in the cathedral?” Wardric asked.

  “Always… and never,” Torsten replied.

  “Sounds about right.” Wardric laughed, then grew stern. “I went to the kid’s home to see if he’d march with us, just like you asked. Sister didn’t even let me through the door.”

  “She’s tough, that woman.”

  “Aren’t they all? At least Rand’s got a better chance of surviving here.”

  Torsten surveyed the market. The people were roused, but none haggled, hawked wares, or exchanged autlas. Instead, they watched as soldiers flocked through open city gates. Mothers embraced their conscripted sons, father’s their wives and young children. They begged Iam for protection and for victory.

  Torsten, like Wardric, knew how many of them would never return. How many would die in the name of Iam and His chosen kingdom?

  “I never thought I’d live to see another war,” Wardric said.

  “Let’s hope this one ends quickly so we can rid our castle of unwanted guests,” Torsten said.

  “I wonder, do you mean the Caleef or them?” He nodded toward the gate. Redstar leaned against the stone in the opening, biting a chunk off a loaf of bread. Beyond him, a group of Drav Cra warriors knelt around the warlock Freydis, her breasts exposed. Her body was covered in white paint, chipped and cracked from the cold. Her head was black except for two streaks of blood under her eyes which dripped down her cheeks and neck. A circle of blood, bright against the snow, was painted over the frozen farmland and in its center stood a goat. Freydis held a knife to its throat; a sacrifice to their Buried Goddess in the name of victory.

  Redstar glanced back, noticed Torsten and Wardric, and smiled while he waved with his bread. Not a care in the world.

  XII

  THE MYSTIC

  Sora gasped awake, her heart racing as she scanned her dark surroundings. The air stank of mildew. Light from the moons filtered in through a circular panel of stained glass, a film of dust covering most of the imagery. She could just barely make out the Iam’s Eye sprawling across it in gold.

  A church?

  She’d only been in Troborough’s chapel, but she recognized the stone walls and glass windows when she saw them. Cobwebs glistened in the faint light, draping from every corner. The memory of the giant spiders in the Webbed Woods gave her a shudder.

  She tried to get a better look around but felt something tight against her wrists. Her arms were stretched taut above her head and spread apart, her feet dangling. She hung from two chains running down from a structure beneath the hipped roof clearly meant to hold a bell. When she stretched her neck to look behind her, she noticed it, a cracked bell on the floor, infested by spiders.

  She whimpered softly.

  She was in a church steeple, abandoned by the look of it. She felt so exposed under the blurred Eye of Iam, still wearing her glittering evening gown, arms and legs bare. She still had the coin purses they’d earned from selling that trader’s silks, which meant whoever did this to her had no interest in money.

  “Help!” she screamed. “Help!”

  “Nobody will ever hear you way up here.” It was the voice of the white-haired man from Tayvada’s house. The harsh accent could only be Breklian, far in the northern portion of the continent, beyond even the Dragon’s Tail and Brotlebir. Traders from the area had passed through Troborough very rarely, but their kind were hard to forget.

  Sora’s head whipped toward him, her skin crawling with fear. He wasn’t there.

  “I’ve waited so very long for you to wake,” he said.

  She felt a hand stroke her back, a cold finger tracing the line of her spine. She shuddered but didn’t give him the benefit of hearing her scream. But she wanted to. More than ever before, she wanted to.

  His voice was bad enough, very harsh consonants hanging in the air like the hiss of a serpent. But his touch... it was like what she felt every time she called upon the powers of Elsewhere, like there was some great evil trying to take her over.

  “Get away from me,” she spat.

  He chuckled. “You will learn to appreciate me.” His tongue ran up the side of her jaw. She wanted to crawl out of her skin.

  “You’re a monster.”

  “That very well may be true.” The man backed away and sat across from her on a moldy barrel. He removed two knives from his bandolier, one being Sora’s. Sora flinched, but he merely set them against each other as if preparing to carve roast duck.

  Sora closed her eyes and focused on Elsewhere, on that haunting feeling she knew so well. The man was right about power coursing through her, just as her old master Wetzel had been, and with all her willpower she begged for it to come to the surface.

  But the wound she’d earlier traced across her hand was sealed and freshly bandaged. Whoever the man was, he knew how to block her.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked.

  “Everything.” Sparks flew out from Sora’s blade as he used the other to start sharpening it. Sora wished more than anything she could summon sparks of her own and burn the floor out from under him.

  “Is this about Whitney?”

  “There you are, mystic. Smart and powerful. When that grotesque little man hired me to kill the thief, he severely underestimated you.”

  “Darkings,” she realized, all her fears coming true. She was right to be afraid of that vengeful wretch. Whitney had calmed her back at the Traders Guild, but she was right. “Is Whitney…” She couldn’t even bring herself to say it.

  “Not until sunrise, unfortunately for me. Darkings wants to make a public show of it, fool that he is, and until the kill is made I cannot touch my quarry. I may ignore many of my order’s doctrines, but the blood pact is sacred. I may neither eat, drink, nor… play, until his life on this plane is over.”

  “Well, you’re wrong. I’m no mystic.”

  “I think I’ll keep this.” He raised Sora’s knife, spun it, then grinned as he stowed it. In the faint light filtering through the stained glass, Sora could see now how young he was despite his white hair, how handsome. Yet beneath all his striking features was menace unlike any she’d seen before. Not even Bliss, with her eight eyes and eight legs, could compare.

  “You are so much more than you know,” he said. “Your blood radiates energy only so few of your people are born with. I could smell it across the city, not like any blood mage or Drav Cra warlock who can’t so much as make a spark without gashing themselves. Tainting themselves.”

  “That’s exactly what I am.”

  “No, you are raw, unfocused power—with a master who either did not see so or was, himself, too weak to properly instruct you.”

  “How do you know about him?” she questioned. The idea of him digging through her mind had her wriggling, desperate to shake free. But her st
ruggle only seemed to entertain him.

  “Relax, my dear. I’m capable of many things but reading minds is not one of them. However, I have walked this plane for a long, long time. I know what it is to see wasted potential.”

  She shook again. “When Whitney breaks free he’s going to kill you!”

  “Kill me? I am beyond life and death, but your friend? He will die. There is no escaping it. Because I must have you.”

  “Please, no. You can take every autla on me and leave, I won’t tell a soul. It’s...it’s enough to buy a ship.”

  “I already have one.” In an instant he was before her, dark eyes piercing her soul. His hands grasped her waist, and he slowly leaned in toward her neck. She turned her head away, but there was nowhere to go.

  “His death is the only way,” he said. Then, hovering there beside her neck, he exhaled into her flesh, his breath cold as freshly fallen snow.

  He backed away, closed his eyes and shivered. His eyelids flickered as if just the scent of her was enough to give him a rush. He licked his lips, and as he did, she noticed fangs as sharp as any dire wolf.

  “What are you?”

  He drew a deep breath to calm himself. “I am Kazimir.”

  “What…”

  “My kind have been called many things throughout the ages. You may know us as fangs, vampires, even some call us undead. I prefer upyr, the name Brekliodad gives us. Call me sentimental.”

  Sora swallowed the lump forming in her throat. Wetzel’s text mentioned the upyr from time to time. Men and women trapped between Pantego and Elsewhere, unable to die, yet not truly alive, thirsting for the blood of man lest they lose their tether to the mortal realm and go insane.

  Most books thought them a myth—or extinct. The terrible feeling in her gut told her he spoke truthfully.

  “You look horrified,” Kazimir said, a trace of disappointment passing across his face. “You have no reason to be afraid. Your blood is too precious for me to waste. For centuries upyr took the mystics as wives, using their blood so they may cross the light at will.”

  “You want me to marry you?” She spat at his feet. “I’d rather die!”

  Rage twisted his features. The dark of his eyes grew darker still and his fangs extended. He glared up at her, and at that moment, she knew she was alive only because he needed her for more than a rush. She didn’t understand exactly why, but it was clear he could devour her at any time.

  His icy breath upon her ear, he whispered, “As I said, you will learn to appreciate me. Together we can do great things.”

  Kazimir took one last euphoric whiff of her, then backed away. His monstrous face softened once again to the preternaturally handsome Breklian he’d been just moments ago. He turned and peered through the stained glass, where the amber light of the sun filtered through and a purplish glow of dawn washed over the room.

  “But for now,” he said, looking back at her. “I have an execution to attend.”

  The thought of Whitney’s neck snapping filled her thoughts even more than her captor’s horrifyingly pale face. “Please,” Sora said, her voice now brittle from unrelenting fear. “Please spare him.”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “It can. Please, Kazimir, I’m begging you. I’ll… I’ll try to be whatever you want.”

  “You will. After his life is given.”

  “No, please, no!”

  “We will see each other soon, my lady.” He grinned and bowed, then vanished through a door into the stairwell leading down from the steeple.

  Sora shook again, as hard as she could.

  “Help!” She screamed at the top of her voice, but by now, she’d realized she was in the abandoned church at the edge of the Panping Ghetto—where her cries for help would be lost amongst the beggars, even if anyone could hear her through stone and glass.

  “No, no, no…” If she couldn’t break free, they were both doomed. Whitney would be hanged, and she would be forced to marry an upyr for whatever dreadful reasons Kazimir desired.

  She searched the room for anything within reach of her feet that might help her. Nothing. Then she noticed the scars on her hands.

  Blood for power…

  Her captor may not have meant to, but he’d given her an idea. She twisted her neck to try and reach her arm so that she could bite into it. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to clamp down hard enough to draw blood, but she had to try.

  She stretched and wrenched her body, but it was no use. The chains cuffing her wrists had her arms spread too far apart to get the right angle.

  Her heart sank, and her gut roiled. She bit her lower lip and fought back tears, and then had another idea. The very thought had her wanting to vomit, but she bit down harder on her lip until the taste of copper filled her mouth. Then, she looked inward, reaching out with invisible arms for the vast well of power contained in Elsewhere.

  She reached into that dark place which both scared and astounded her. Warmth tickled the tips of her fingers… but nothing more. The sacrifice wasn’t enough. She stuck her tongue between her teeth instead. Biting off the tip might be enough, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  A tear ran down her cheek. She freed her tongue and gasped for air. The upyr was wrong about one thing—she was no better than the warlocks of the Drav Cra drawing on blood. No more powerful.

  “Help!” she screamed again. It was all she could do.

  XIII

  THE THIEF

  Whitney was beginning to get used to the feeling of having his wrists squeezed by rope. Ever since his triumphant return to Troborough, he’d found himself bound more often than he changed undergarments.

  “I’m sure we can work out this little misunderstanding,” he said to one of the Glass soldiers. “This isn’t what it appears to be.” They held him outside Tayvada’s house while they ransacked the place. He crossed his fingers in hopes that they wouldn’t shove their heads up the chimney.

  “It appears like you were standing just downstairs from the drained corpse of a respected member of the Winde Traders Guild.”

  “I found him that way.”

  “Aye,” said another soldier walking behind him, “and my wife’s half-gray son really is mine!”

  Whitney would’ve usually been able to think of some snappy remark, but the face of his and Sora’s white-haired assailant flashed through his mind. Those dark, soulless eyes, that nightmarish grin.

  “All right, move it.”

  Whitney felt a shove on his back and stumbled forward. “I swear it though, I didn’t do it,” he pled. Another push came, this time harder.

  “Shut your thieving, murdering mouth, or I’ll shut it for you.”

  Whitney believed the man. He’d been wanted for many things and been placed in far more precarious situations, such as battling a goddess with Torsten in the Webbed Woods but never before was he accused of murder.

  The guards finished up inside, then dragged him down the dark streets of the Panping Ghetto. He wondered where they were taking him, but he dared not ask. He simply walked, trying hard not to think about what might have happened to Sora.

  Whitney didn’t know who that man she’d disappeared with was. He only knew where he was from. And if he had to guess at his occupation, hired blade was a good start considering he was covered in them. But what was he after? Whitney had seen all kinds of men in his life, but never one with eyes like his. They were… soulless.

  Poor Sora, he thought. And then, Poor me.

  He looked around the streets he thought he knew so well as they emerged from the Panping Ghetto. The Shesaitju rebellion had the whole city on their toes. Unlike more normal times, the blue and white of the Glass Kingdom actually seemed to mean something, which meant he’d be under stricter watch and escaping would be even more difficult.

  “Shog in a barrel,” Whitney said out loud. He received a hard shove for it.

  As they approached the barracks, Whitney noted how it paled in comparison to Yarrington—or
even Westvale. He’d seen more of their insides than he cared to admit.

  “I hope you’re ready for the gallows, murderer,” one guard said.

  “I’m all for new experiences,” Whitney replied.

  “The guy was just a knife-ear, why does anyone care?” the other guard said, low to keep Whitney from hearing. But he heard. He also heard the response, which made his intestines clench.

  “Lord Darkings cares, and I heard his father is Master of Coin for the whole kingdom again. He’ll probably be prefect of Winde Port as soon as old Calhoun kicks the bucket, so you’d best be caring too.”

  Darkings Cares?

  Whitney recalled how the bastard spoke to Sora—like she was a stain on Pantego. That meant one thing. This was a setup…

  The realization that he’d been played bounced around like daggers in Whitney’s skull. Fantasies of killing Darkings were washed away only by the fantasy that Sora’s fire would have devoured him back in Bridleton. That quickly had Whitney wondering why that white-haired Breklian devil took Sora and not him.

  “Hey, where are we going?” Whitney asked as they led him right by the barracks. “Aren’t you going to throw me in a cell for the night? I’ll break out, and you’ll spend the next week wondering how I did it.”

  “Not today, scag.”

  “That’s okay,” Whitney said. “I’ve seen nicer barracks in Fessix.”

  “Move.”

  “So where are we going?” Whitney was shoved hard into a barrel. He toppled over, hitting his head on the rim, then rolled off onto the stone. He didn’t even have time to breathe before being hoisted back up and moved along.

  “You know, I’m not resisting,” Whitney groaned.

  “Try it. Make my night.”

  “Your mother said something similar last evening.”

  Whitney winced, expecting a cudgel to the gut, but none came. Instead, they silently walked him toward the northern sector. He’d already worn into them so much they were growing numb.