by Barb Hendee
Child of a Dead God
( Noble Dead - 6 )
Barb Hendee
J. C. Hendee
For years, Magiere and Leesil have sought a long-forgotten artifact, even though its purpose has been shrouded in mystery. All Magiere knows is that she must keep the orb from falling into the hands of a murdering Noble Dead, her half-brother Welstiel. And now, dreams of a castle locked in ice lead her south, on a journey that has become nothing less than an obsession.
Accompanying Magiere and Leesil are the sage Wynn, their canine protector Chap, and two elven assassins-turned-guardians who must fight their distrust of this sister of the dead. For forces more powerful than they are rallying around Magiere, arming her for the conflict to come. Because finding the orb may be just the beginning of the challenges that await her…
Barb Hendee, J. C. Hendee
Child of a Dead God
For J.P. Our sibling by choice
CHAPTER ONE
Chane stood in the hidden mountain gorge amid the Crown Range. Light snow drifted down around him as Welstiel's mad shout rose into the night sky.
"No more! I am finished with you! Go back to where you hide. Find another toy… to cheat!"
Chane lifted his eyes to the dark expanse. The winter storm's cloud cover left the sky black but for one small space that exposed the stars.
Welstiel stared upward, his eyes filled with hate. His disheveled dark hair almost hid the white patches at his temples. Finally he lowered his head, and Chane followed his manic gaze to a switchback path leading up along the gorge wall.
One lone building stood halfway up, cut straight into the ancient stone. A small flicker of light traveled up the path's last leg, and then a figure stepped out of the structure's narrow door. Dressed in a pale blue tabard over a dark robe and full cowl, it lifted a torch high to greet two similarly attired figures ascending the path. All three went inside.
"Lock them all in," Welstiel whispered. "Feed if you must, but leave them alive… for now."
For too many days, Chane had fed only from Welstiel's life-conjuring cup. At the promise of fresh blood, he dropped his baggage and trotted toward the switchback path.
As he rounded the last turn, dim light spilled from the crack beneath the weathered front door. He slowed and crept quietly up to listen.
More than three voices sounded within. At first he couldn't follow the words, then realized they spoke Stravinan-of which he knew enough to understand simple conversations. Only the smell of life beyond the door mattered, and he gripped the cold door latch, senses widening. In one fluid move he squeezed it and shoved the door in. It clattered against the inside wall.
Three men and one woman in dark robes and blue tabards stood before a narrow hearth within a small room. All stared dumbly at him. One more elderly woman sat upon a long bench to the left, frozen halfway through pulling off her soiled boots. They took in the sight of him, tall and long limbed, with red-brown hair beneath a hooded wool cloak, and a longsword's sheath tip peeking from beneath its soiled hem. He was clearly no mountain dweller.
Chane rushed them before he even distinguished their faces and lashed out with both fists.
A woman and a man went down before anyone could flee, and he found himself toe-to-toe with a cowled old man. Tufts of cropped gray-white hair stuck out above a deeply lined face. Then the last of the standing four darted for a stairwell.
Chane had not seen these steps from the entrance. He lunged after the slight figure, grabbing the robe between the shoulders as the man cried out.
"Help! Bandits are upon us!"
Chane braced a foot on the second step and jerked back hard.
The frail young man shot across the entry room. His head and shoulders struck the far wall among cloaks and coats hanging from wooden pegs. He slid down and tumbled off the bench, flopping motionless upon the stone floor. The elderly woman who had been sitting there was gone.
Chane twisted around the stairwell's partition wall.
Welstiel stood inside the open front door, holding the woman by her throat. His eyes roamed the entry room. Clipped choking sounds rose from the woman's gaping mouth as she fought for air. She pulled at Welstiel's grip, but he didn't notice. She grew weaker with each incomplete gasp, until her hands dropped limply to her sides.
As she sagged in Welstiel's grip, he released her. She fell, and her head smacked sharply against the stone floor. Chane turned back to the elderly man.
The old priest, monk, whatever he was, watched him with horrified fascination and lifted shaking fingers to his mouth. Chane realized what the old man was truly looking at, and stretched open his jaws, displaying sharpened teeth and elongated fangs.
The old man stiffened, eyes round in his wrinkled face as the scent of fear thickened in the room. It smelled so good that Chane almost felt it on his skin.
"Lock them up," Welstiel said quietly.
Chane whipped around. "I… you… said I could feed!" he rasped.
"Too late, too slow," Welstiel whispered. "You wasted your chance."
Chane took a quick step toward Welstiel. Pounding footfalls echoed down the stairs from above.
A crowd of people in dusky robes and blue tabards gathered at the top of the steps. One young man backpedaled at the sight of Chane, and then tripped and fell against two others behind him. A clattering of wood filled the entry room as Welstiel slammed the front door shut.
"Finish this!" he snapped, and kicked the crumpled old woman.
The impact lifted her from the floor. She landed across the room atop the bodies of her unconscious companions, and the old man backed away.
Chane looked up the stairwell. He could not count how many were huddled there. When he lunged upward, the tangled mob fled amid panicked cries. Chane crested the stairs before the last one bolted beyond his reach.
Old wooden doors lined the upper passage, each opening into a small stone chamber. He drove the shrieking robed figures before him, and though they struggled to escape, not one struck at him. These mortal cattle would not even fight him for their lives, and Chane grew more spiteful and brutal with each one. He wrenched and flung them into the small cells, their fear-scent making him nearly manic to be finished.
All he could think of was the taste of terror-seasoned blood tingling down his throat to fill him with euphoria. Not for release from hunger but for the pleasure of feeding.
He heard Welstiel's footfalls behind him, and the cracking of wood. When he pulled the last door shut, and shoved back a figure trying to emerge from the previous door, he was shaking with a wild appetite.
Welstiel carried shards of thick wood in his hands. He shoved one through each door's iron handle and braced its end against the stone frame. Anyone who tried to pull a door inward would need enormous brute strength. Welstiel passed his gaze over each door along the passage's sides.
"Seventeen candidates," he muttered, absorbed in thought. "Adequate… since we had no opportunity for a more studied selection." He lowered his head. "There are several still below, incapacitated. Drag them up and lock them away."
Chane wanted to snarl, but didn't. Instead, he pushed past Welstiel for the stairs, numbly following orders.
By his second trip down, only two priests remained in the entry room- the elderly woman and the young man Chane had thrown aside. Welstiel knelt on the floor by the latter, unpacking his little brass cup.
"Take the woman," he said. "Leave the man."
Welstiel refused to feed directly on blood, preferring his arcane methods to draw concentrated life force. He began chanting softly.
Chane snatched up the woman, dragging her limp body up the stairs.
By the time he returned,
Welstiel had finished. The young priest was a desiccated husk, and the cup brimmed with red liquid so dark it looked black in the entry room's low hearth light. But Welstiel did not drink. He poured the cup's contents into a brown glass bottle and pressed a cork soundly into its neck.
"You will remain here, out of my way," he said.
Welstiel headed for the stairs, but he paused at the first step. A shiver ran through his back. He lifted his head, staring up the dark stone staircase for a long moment, and then resumed his ascent.
Resentment could not stifle Chane's curiosity. He drew close, watching.
Welstiel climbed in a slow, forced gait, as if bearing a weight that grew with each step, until he slipped into the upper passage beyond sight. A door creaked above, followed by a dull thump.
Chane's suspicion sharpened, but he felt compelled to follow Welstiel's orders not to pry-at least for now. He scanned his surroundings.
A passage ran along the building's front from left of the front door. The stairs were set farther back on that same side and ran upward in the same direction. An old bench stood against the opposite wall, with three cloaks and a long-haired goatskin coat hanging on wooden pegs. In the rear stone wall, between the small hearth and the stairwell's base, was an opening leading deeper into the structure.
Chane was in no mood for poking about, but he did not care to just stand there, waiting, so he stepped through the rear opening.
The passage immediately turned left, ended in a right turn, and spilled into a wide chamber behind the entry room. A lantern on the nearest table offered enough light for Chane's hunger-enhanced sight.
Bundles of drying leaves, flowers, and branches hung from cords strung loosely across the ceiling. Below the dangling harvest, pottery and glass jars sat atop wooden tables along with rolling pins stained from long use, polished marble pestles, knives, and other instruments. It was the priests' workshop.
Chane stepped back and retreated down the passage, and as he reached the entry room, a muffled clatter sounded from above.
He looked up the dark stairs, wondering again what Welstiel was doing. Curious, he climbed until he was high enough to peer over the last step. He saw the doors along the upper passage. A sharp squeal of panic came from somewhere behind one of them. Silence followed, and Chane crept farther up. He smelled the rich, salty blood even before he saw it.
Smeared trails led from a dark pool at the passage's far end to the second door on the left. Chane's longing began to build as he stared at one door after another, trying to discern which cell Welstiel was in.
The wood brace was missing from the second and third doors on the left.
The third door jerked inward and Welstiel emerged.
His cloak, shirt, and sword were gone. He braced one hand on the door frame and gagged with his mouth tightly shut. Fresh blood seeped from between his clenched lips and ran down his chin to drip upon his bare chest.
Welstiel had been feeding, while Chane had been denied a chance to do so himself.
Welstiel's eyes rolled up, and his clear crystal pupils vanished, leaving white orbs. He faltered, wavering near collapse, then turned back to heave something from the cell's floor. Welstiel dragged a young priest to the first door on the left, and kicked it open.
The dead youth's eyes were frozen wide in astonishment above the red mess below his chin.
Welstiel tossed the corpse in and jerked the door shut, not bothering to reset a wood shard in the door's handle. Instead he staggered away until his back struck a door on the passage's opposite side. Small startled whimpers answered from within that cell.
Chane took a step, unable to hiss even one resentful word, and then Welstiel stumbled.
He fell to his hands and knees and crawled to the passage's far end. His back arched as he vomited out blood, heaving violently. Finally, in a shadow of living habit, Welstiel drew a breath into his dead lungs and toppled.
He tried to fall clear of his own mess, but there was too much blood. It spattered across him as he landed, convulsing in the pool spreading down the passage floor. Finally, he crawled into one far corner and propped himself up against the walls.
Chane couldn't fathom what was happening. His mind was too clouded by the smell and sight of the red trails creeping down the passage, as if seeking him out.
"One… mine!" he rasped. "One should be mine!"
"Get out," Welstiel whispered and lifted a hand to hide his face. He recoiled at the crimson running down his bare arm.
"No," Chane answered. "No more drinking from your filthy little cup! I want one of them… now!"
He bolted for the door across from where Welstiel had tossed the dead priest. Before Chane's fingers touched the handle, Welstiel was there, and his hand closed in a crushing grip on Chane's wrist.
"I said no," Welstiel growled.
Chane lashed out for his throat.
Welstiel's head twisted aside like a serpent weaving upon its coiled body. He heaved on Chane's arm, turning it back and behind, and pulled it taut with a crack.
"Already twice raised"-Welstiel hissed at him-"in your first year of death!"
A fist struck the back of Chane's skull. His head snapped down, driving his chin against his chest. The blow's power buckled his knees, and the passage dimmed in his sight.
"And still you do not listen," Welstiel added, "to your better!"
Pain spread through the back of Chane's skull. He saw only the blurred, dark shape of Welstiel's leg. He strained against his locked arm and sank his teeth through the thick canvas breeches.
No tang of warm blood filled his mouth-no salty sweetness or tingle of life flooded his throat. Only thin, bitter cold seeped from Welstiel's breeches. It flowed quickly through Chane's teeth and a taste like rancid seed oil coated his tongue.
Chane's shoulder cracked again as his jaws tore free and his knees lifted from the floor. He kicked wildly, trying to find footing, and then his whole body spun in the dark and slammed sideways into a stone wall. At the same instant, something struck hard into his chest.
His spine ground into the wall, making his throat clench in reflex. Before his body slid down, he was jerked through the air again.
A second impact, and a third, and he heard but did not feel the fourth. Only half-aware of the grips around his throat and twisted arm, he cried out as both released suddenly.
Chane felt an instant of weightlessness as he tumbled through the dark. He collided roughly with the floor, edges of stone scraping at him as he flopped over and over. When all motion ceased, he weakly rolled his head.
He lay in the entry room near the bottom of the stairwell and firelight flickered off the stone walls. A deeper shadow in blood-soaked boots stood at the top of the stairs.
"Servant beasts should obey," it whispered in Welstiel's voice. "If they want to be fed… and have their wishes fulfilled."
Chane's eyelids sagged closed. Something inside him cowered in anguish, like a chained beast with hands instead of paws. It had fed on gristle and joints for too long, while its master had just feasted on fresh meat.
Chane opened his eyes when a cold breeze rolled across his face.
Firelight danced over a stone ceiling above him. When he turned over, he found a congealed puddle of viscous black fluid where his head had rested, and he touched the back of his skull, wincing.
Looking about the entry room, his gaze passed over the withered remains of the young priest.
How long had he lain here unconscious?
The hearth's fire still burned as if recently fueled. A tin kettle rested near it, faint wisps of steam rising from its spout. And the cold breeze…
The front door was ajar.
Chane glanced up the dark stairwell. Not a sound came from above. All was silent but for the crackle of the flames and the cold air spilling around the open door. He struggled to his feet.
Twice risen, Welstiel had said, only in his first year of death. Less than a full season past, Chane had been beheaded, and Welstie
l had somehow brought him back. The only evidence that it had ever happened was the scar line around Chane's throat-and his forever maimed voice. Some among the dead would say he had been fortunate indeed.
Yet he had just tried to face an experienced undead freshly gorged on life.
Despite festering resentment, Chane acknowledged his own foolishness.
He tottered and bent over to brace his hands against his knees. His left shoulder and elbow burned as if filled with embedded needles. And now he was truly hungry. His dead flesh ached for life with which to repair itself.
But why was the front door open?
Chane stumbled over, pulling it wide. Falling snow swirled in the darkness outside, and he heard a grunt off to the left.
Welstiel knelt in a drift, still naked to the waist. Thin trails of steam rose from bloodstains on his arms and chest. He leaned down, scooping armfuls of snow, and splashed it over himself, scrubbing furiously. He repeated the process over and over.
"Why?" Chane asked.
Welstiel lifted his head. Flakes of snow clung to the locks down his forehead. When his gaze landed on Chane, his expression shifted from numb horror to startled wariness.
"Awake, are you?" he asked quietly, and rose to his feet. "And reason returns once more… for the moment… but always with one foot perched upon the Feral Path."
"What are you babbling about?" Chane rasped, though that last strange reference seemed familiar.
He tensed as Welstiel approached, but he was in no condition for another fight.
"Perhaps I should not help you reach your sages," Welstiel went on, but he stared into the gorge, as if alone. "Monster with a mind…"
Chane hesitated. Welstiel had promised him letters of introduction to gain acceptance at one of the sages' main branches, across the sea-in exchange for Chane's obedient service on this journey.
"A beast," Welstiel whispered mockingly, "sent in among the learned of the cattle."
That last word, which Chane had used so often, suggested Welstiel was fully aware of his presence, but the tone made Chane's instincts sharpen in warning. He sidestepped toward the switchback path down the gorge's sheer face, ready to bolt.