Soulbreaker

by Terry C. Simpson

  What was King Ainslen planning now?

  Following the wisemen were attendants wearing the king’s golden livery. Carts trundled behind them, hauled by disheveled slaves, most of them criminals or prisoners-of-war who had availed themselves of the harsher sentence of life in the dungeons or work in the mines. Lestin spurred his mount forward, passed out instructions to a Curate, and then took position at the head of the newcomers.

  The nimbus of soul magic sprang up around the wisemen like luminous smoke. Undaunted by the menacing crowd they strode past the militia, chanting mantras to the Dominion.

  One by one the mass of commoners lowered their weapons. Their angry clamor quieted, and then ceased altogether. Silence reigned, interrupted only by the chants and the wind’s low moans or the matching grief from folks on Leering Lane or in the Circle. Thar doubted if the people near the wisemen realized what was happening, such was the effortlessness of their surrender.

  When the wisemen spread throughout the crowd, the glow of soul magic did not dissipate; it increased. Thar squinted. The wispy nimbus gathered around the hands of the Bishops, Mystics, and Curates as they healed those wounded during the recent skirmishes.

  During the process, Lestin pointed out folks in the worst condition and bent to speak to others in a kindly fashion. For a Blade taken from the Smear’s folk his concern for them was an oddity. Many shied away at first, but eventually more and more began to look to him for help.

  After unloading heavy sacks from the carts, the attendants passed out what Thar soon realized were supplies—bread, dried meat, rice, grain, and the like. Within moments this piteous bunch of people, who seconds ago were ready to throw their lives away, were gobbling down meals.

  Despite the use of mindbending, relief washed over Thar. At least the wisemen weren’t here murdering and raping in secret, or helping the bandits employed by the Ten Hills, or spreading disease only to later deliver a cure from the Dominion. He shook his head. Such heinous tactics had become the norm, driving parents to despair, to give up their children on the Day of Accolades. The Consortium had worked to change that last bit as much as they dared.

  Word must have spread, for the crowd surged toward the carts like a river of greasy furs and rags. Riot threatened for a scant moment, but the flow of soul increased yet again. The people calmed; order was restored.

  Slaves dragged forward metal drums filled with wood. The torch-bearing wisemen stepped up to each container and lit the kindling. Flames whooshed to life. The crowd gradually shifted toward the comfort of the braziers.

  “Tell the men there’s to be no more fighting in the city.” Thar glanced over to the man at his side.

  “The Shaded Snakes won’t take it well,” Tomas answered. “I doubt I’ll be able to control my own men,” the new leader of the Red Beggars added.

  Revenge was writ in the glint of Tomas’ eyes and his grimace. On Succession Day he had lost his entire family and half of the Red Beggars, including his former leader and best friend. All the guilds had suffered similar fates, each leader captured or killed, ranks decimated.

  “I don’t care how they take it,” Thar said, voice flat, “as long as they obey. And you’d better control your men. Not only will I cripple any Consortium member who disobeys my order, but I will leave them for the king’s soldiers.” Thar let his words sink in as Tomas’ gaze inadvertently drifted to the gibbets lining Deadman’s Gap near the militia. Inside each steel cage were King Ainslen’s enemies, guild members and nobles alike. A few were dead, rotting bodies left as a reminder of the fate that awaited those still alive. If the harsh winter didn’t kill them, starvation would.

  “Why the change of heart, Keshka? The people that remain here aren’t ours.” Tomas turned to regard him, wearing a scowl. “All these years spent trying to topple the nobility, to remove the hands choking the life from us, the murderers who would make it seem as if we wantonly killed and raped our own, now the chance is before us and you balk? Why now?”

  Thar understood Tomas’ argument. The man was a product of the Smear. As it was for so many others who joined the Consortium, he had been a child destined to become a Blade whether he wanted the calling or not. His parents chose a different life for him in hopes of liberating their people. He was a grizzled veteran, there from the Consortium’s inception, when Thar had banded together Kasandar’s largest guilds, the Shaded Snakes, the Coinmen, the Red Beggars, and the Shipmen, and formed them into something more than a vilified bunch of cutthroats, thieves, and smugglers gifted with the ability to meld. Thar had given them a purpose.

  “My heart hasn’t changed, and neither has my goals. Ainslen will fall. We will bring change to the Empire for the betterment of all its people, but not at the expense of innocents.” Thar took in the Smear once more. “The very fact that the people who remained here are not those descended from our blood, and lack the means to protect themselves from the nobility, is more than enough reason for us to reconsider our approach.”

  He had more reasons than that for calling off the attacks, reasons he couldn’t reveal to Tomas. His brother was one in particular. Once a month the king had brought Delisar out to be flogged in front the gibbets. Those beatings had stopped with the onset of the recent skirmishes. If he wished to save Delisar, the best chance would be right there, at Deadman’s Gap. Ainslen needed to believe it was safe again.

  Thar pointed to the Smear’s downtrodden remnants. “They’re here more by necessity than choice. The king doesn’t care how many commoners he kills in his efforts to put us down. In his eyes, they … we … are all dregs, undeserving of life. We’re no better than him if we continue fighting in the city and cause the destruction of the little they have left.”

  “All we know is the fight in one form or another,” Tomas said. “It’s all we’ve ever had. What do we do now if not fight?”

  Tomas was right. Either you fought or you died in the Smear. Such was the cost of survival. The abhorrent conditions made criminals of the best men, whores of its women, and thieves of its children. Of course, the nudge from the nobility and the Order ensured things remained that way.

  “There will be fighting aplenty, just not in the city,” Thar said, studying the wisemen once more. “Our recent struggle relied on Ainslen’s cruelty, on his heinous acts, on trying to expose the role the Order plays in all of this. Against their apparent compassion, we are at a disadvantage.”

  “We feed the commoners also,” Tomas argued. “We give them a home in the Undertow during the winter and much more besides. On the dreariest days we’ve given them hope.”

  “Agreed, but that hope and support is limited. For the moment, Ainslen and the Order provide much more than we can. Not just physically, but also mentally. Think about it. Even when we’ve provided the assistance you speak of, we do so in secret, in fear of the nobility’s reaction. When the people take advantage of the comforts we offer, they hide and sneak and pray not be discovered. No crime is being committed by accepting our help, but to us and to them, it feels that way. That sensation of some ethical misconduct is gone when it’s the king’s men making the same offers. We cannot win out against that, not yet. Now, go, let everyone know they will receive their instructions by the usual method.”

  “Fine—” A pattern of three knocks, four, then two, cut off Tomas’ response. Both men glanced toward the door, and then nodded to each other.

  The heavy thuds of boots and the jangle of armor reverberated from the street. Thar snatched a look through the crack in the window slats. Militiamen poured out from the alleys to the right, spears and longswords bared.

  Thar ducked before anyone saw him and crept to the closet across the room. Tomas followed. Once inside, Thar waited for Tomas to close the door behind them. When darkness engulfed the space Thar drew on the energy of his soul, using it to enhance his vision. Night became day. With his boot he pressed down on a floorboard
two planks from the wall. A latch released. The wood in front of them slid aside to reveal a dark space beyond.

  They were almost to the first floor in the hidden staircase when the first soldiers entered the building. The men shouted to each other as they searched each room. Under cover of the racket Thar and Tomas made it to the basement and into the sewers.

  No matter how many times he’d been in the sewers Thar always found the stench revolting. He cupped a hand over his nose for a few moments until his senses adjusted. They hurried along the tunnels, manipulating soul to prevent the splash of boots through all manner of filth, while rats protested their passage in squeaks and squeals. Occasionally, they stopped to listen for signs of pursuit. There were none.

  Running through the passages conjured memories of Thar’s early days when he first turned from his calling as a King’s Blade. Elysse recruited him back then, taught him much of what he knew today. The introduction to the tunnels had come as a surprise. Who would have thought such an extensive network existed under Kasandar?

  The tunnels ran all the way south to caves within the Cliffs of a Thousand Sorrows, north to the mines in the Whetstone Mountains, or east to various exits along the River Ost. Through them the Consortium had done brisk business, smuggling in goods from across Mareshna. And then there was the Undertow—the ancient city beneath Kasandar, filled with rich history and knowledge if one knew where to look. He spent countless days and nights learning its debris-strewn streets.

  A series of turns and four-way intersections later, Thar held out a hand to stop Tomas. Their breathing was loud in the silent stillness. He didn’t have an exact reason for halting; it was a reaction to the odd sensation in his gut. Their escape had been too easy. The king knew of the guilds’ use of the sewers. Surely, the militia had been informed. Thar’s brow furrowed. How had the militia appeared so quickly? I should have seen them sneaking through the alleys. If not myself, then the lookouts should have given earlier warning.

  With a thought Thar drew on the tenth cycle, jin, a combination of sintu, sera, and lumni, extending his soul away from his body, the nimbus thinning to almost invisible, and spanning some three hundred feet in every direction. Something too big to be one of the sewer’s many creatures broke the nimbus. Two of them. Focusing, Thar picked out the familiar patterns of other souls. He pulled Tomas closer to whisper in his ear. “We’re being followed.”

  “How? We would hear them.”

  “Not if they held back the soldiers and only sent Blades or Farlanders capable of melding to lighten their footsteps. Or already had people down here. The only way the militia could have gotten so close without us receiving more of a warning would be through the sewers.”

  Tomas remained silent for a moment before he nodded. They slipped into the deeper blackness of an intersection. Time slowed to a crawl. Other than their breathing, the only noises were incessant drips, an occasional splash from one of the sewer’s denizens, and the squeaks and scurrying feet of rodents. The putrid muck beneath the two men was alive with squirming forms.

  A man-shaped shadow detached from the walls two intersections back. Short, no more than five feet. Tomas’ hand tightened on Thar’s coat. The shape melted into the darkness. A similar form repeated the process, this one taller by at least two heads.

  “Impossible, I-I can’t see their souls,” Tomas muttered, voice tremulous, words barely audible.

  Thar understood Tomas’ fear. The guild leader was an experienced melder, strong too, one of the most adept at soul magic among the Red Beggars. Seeing the nimbus of a living creature’s soul was second nature to one such as he. All living things had a soul, the energy lingering even after death.

  “Must be a trick,” Thar said reassuringly. “They’re Farlanders, it’s possible that they’re more adept in the second cycle than we.” He wished he could take back that last bit even as the words left his mouth.

  “Look at them,” Tomas implored. “That’s not some expanded use of koren to hide their souls. If it were I’d see through it.” His voice was soft, an awed and yet fearful whisper. “It’s … it’s as if they have no souls. The stories must be true, about some of them being soulless, that they’re trapped between living and dead.”

  “Foolishness. It’s a meld of some sort, one we don’t know. Regardless, you must slip off to the Undertow and warn the others of this new ploy. I’ll deal with these two.”

  “Are you certain? These Farlanders slaughtered Jemare’s Blades as one might a chicken.”

  “Yes, I am. Go. Now.”

  “I have an ill feeling about this,” Tomas said.

  In truth, Thar had an ill feeling too, but unlike most people he was drawn to the sense of impending doom. The few times he experienced the sensation were the ones he cherished most, the ones that gave him life. “Just go. Trust me.” Thar felt Tomas squeeze his arm before the man slipped around the corner.

  At the intersection, the Farlanders edged closer, both dressed in pale leather. The first was a squat, square man, bald, clean-shaven. His partner was the opposite, blond hair to his shoulders, a wispy mustache, and a forehead too flat to have occurred naturally. Flathead carried a firestick, the weapon’s metal barrel aimed down the tunnel. Their nimbuses thickened, stark white in the blackness.

  Small bursts, like miniature lightning bolts, flickered through Thar. The skin under his skin shifted, growing, elongating to the response of a threat. He smiled. He’d spent much of his early life not experiencing such excitement. As a Blade he’d been undefeatable, unrivaled in his prowess with soul magic until one of Jemare’s servants delivered a contract for Elysse’s head. He met her that same day. He recalled her confidence before they fought, so much like his own. Life had changed since. One challenge after the next presented itself, each with enough skill to test him, sometimes to best him. These Farlanders were two such.

  Thar released his hold on koren, knowing the men had seen through the veil he created with it by stopping his soul energy. He stepped into the middle of the passage, ignoring the wetness soaking into his boots.

  The two Farlanders halted. Flathead snapped the firestick up to his face and sighted down the long metal portion as if it were a bow. He had one arm stretched out, slightly bent, hand cupping the weapon, the other hand near his cheek. Barrel-gut produced a shield the same size as himself.

  “Must be a hell of an offer for you to betray your own,” Thar said, voice echoing.

  “You are not one of us,” Barrel-gut replied in a rough accent, pronunciation deliberate.

  Thar nodded, impressed that the man not only understood, but also spoke Kasinian. “Oh, I wasn’t speaking of me. I meant those like you enslaved in the Farlands.”

  “What would you know of them?” Barrel-gut asked with a scowl.

  “I know enough,” Thar said, shrugging, “more than you give me credit for. I know that we are related.” With those words he allowed the outer layer of skin on his face to fall away, revealing fine golden scales.

  Barrel-gut snarled in a guttural language. The words did not sound friendly. Confirmation of intent arrived when fire and smoke belched from the black hole at the tip of Flathead’s firestick. Thunder accompanied it.

  Thar dodged, a purely instinctive shift of his body, and was happy for his reaction. Another one of his instincts had been to harden the nimbus surrounding him, making it like steel. Vision enhanced, he tracked the metal ball streaking in an instant toward him. It passed through his nimbus like a hot poker through snow, striking the wall behind him, the impact echoing.

  Refocusing on Flathead, Thar picked out a slight motion from the man’s hand where it held the rear section of the firestick near his face. The Farlander’s finger was contracting, an easy squeeze like an archer aiming before he loosed an arrow.

  Fire and smoke belched. More thunder.

  Again, Thar tracked the metal ball a
nd dodged it. The ball shifted, changed trajectory. One moment it was tearing by, heat trailing from it, and the next it was zipping toward his head. A bit of soul clung to it, extending back to Flathead.

  Eyes wide, Thar managed to turn his face a heartbeat before the pebble-sized ball struck. Fire scorched his cheek. The metal projectile continued on by, splashing into the sewage behind him.

  Flathead’s finger was tensing once more. Snarling silently, Thar poured a major portion of his soul into his legs. He imagined massive coiled springs. With one motion he bent his knees and drove forward. In the instant it took Flathead’s finger to squeeze, Thar covered the distance between them, water sloshing around the tunnel with the backlash of his velocity.

  By the time the fire and projectile erupted from the hole at the front of the firestick, Thar was slamming into Barrel-gut’s shield. Thar expected the men to be blasted off their feet. Instead, the short Farlander stumbled back a few steps through sewage, and then regained his balance, but not before he bumped into his partner.

  Thar was on them, attacking with punches and kicks. In the limited space of the tunnel his sword would be useless. He became a blur of blows, strikes landing with metallic thuds, water splashing.

  Barrel-gut parried every attack simply by shifting his shield a foot or two in the appropriate direction. Behind the short man, Flathead had taken advantage of the situation by sprinting farther down the tunnel. He was bent, head down, attention focused on the firestick, hands working with practiced efficiency. Thar glimpsed more metal balls.