A Haven in Ash (A Sanctuary Series) (Ashes of Luukessia Book 1)

by Robert J. Crane

  The man was preceded by lights. Like two great fireflies against the sky, white orbs heralded him, dancing above the rooftops. Not much brighter than the moon when it was full, they might be pretty if one did not know who or what they presaged. Knowing the truth, Jasen only felt nauseated at the sight of his strange magic.

  The crowd shuffled.

  As one, they could pummel Baraghosa, tear him limb from limb the way the scourge had threatened to do to Jasen and Alixa this night. But the magic he wielded was slippery, dangerous, unknown—if indeed it was magic at all, although it must be, for him to slink through the land of the scourge unassailed year after year—and so the villagers receded, parting like the mountains to let sharp blasts of air between them.

  Jasen couldn’t see him. Didn’t wish to. Yet he knew him well enough.

  “Monster!” some shouted.

  Roars of approval went up from around the person who’d cried out. Scattered disdain, including another yell from the woman at Alixa’s side, filled the night in retaliation.

  The woman at Alixa’s side tired of waiting. Grabbing Jasen and Alixa around the neck—Alixa yelped, while Jasen shouted—she grunted, “Get to the front!” And she marched them forward, parting the crowd, her fingers tight like vices.

  The crowd split. Jasen tried to jerk free. Yet there was little strength left in him, and though the woman drew angry calls—”You’re a monster too!” Jasen heard before that voice was lost behind—none made a move to stop her.

  Then they were at the front, and the woman released them both with a shove.

  Alixa landed on her knees. Jasen stumbled, then twisted after the woman, one hand slapped to his neck.

  She was already retreating to her place in the crowd, disappearing in their number, not looking back.

  Jasen gripped Alixa by the arm, pulling her up—

  And then he had no choice but to look ahead, to see—

  The crowd had moved back from the assembly hall entirely, although Baraghosa had come through a junction farther down the street and hadn’t yet reached the hall’s entrance. Everyone knew where he was going, with whom he planned to meet, and none would stand in his way.

  He slunk past, preceded by those peculiar white lights …

  Jasen’s gaze fell to him, unwilling, yet drawn like moths to a flame.

  Clad in deep purple clothes fitted tightly to a spindly frame, Baraghosa reminded Jasen of a spider. His hair was dark, like his eyes, and swept to one side. Though plain-faced, there was something disconcerting about him, the expressionless way he regarded every person he laid eyes on. It was a look of purest detachment, almost boredom … yet there was more beneath it. His face was a mask, but beneath this veneer was calculation, even joy. Though his lips barely moved from the flat line they so often appropriated, as if drawn on that way, every time a villager cringed away from him they seemed to move just a fraction in the faintest, most ghostly facsimile of a smile. And he would edge deliberately closer to that person, turning that cringe into a frightful trembling.

  It was the closest Jasen had ever seen Baraghosa to smiling, and it made him feel more ill than he had ever felt.

  Thin and almost unnaturally tall, Baraghosa could’ve taken great long steps, crossing the distance to the assembly hall’s door in a fraction of the time. Yet he drew it out.

  He enjoys this, Jasen thought—and he hated him all the more furiously for it.

  Baraghosa passed. His eyes swept disinterestedly across the crowd. They passed over Alixa, who turned away, her hand on Jasen’s wrist becoming a claw. Then they fell to Jasen—and though it was only an instant before he moved on, Jasen felt as if he’d fallen into some great abyss.

  He’s one of them, he thought. Scourge made human. They share the same eyes.

  Then Baraghosa was beyond them, and Jasen released a breath that brought no satisfaction to his tight chest and frenzied heart.

  “Vile man,” whispered Mrs. Tomlins at Jasen’s left.

  “You’re sick!” someone else shouted farther that direction.

  Another: “At least bring your seed into our village if you’re going to defile it with your presence, sorcerer!”

  Baraghosa did not turn. But he said, “Not until a deal is struck.”

  Was that what Jasen hated most about him? His voice? Perhaps. It was emotionless, not remarkable in any way other than being slightly too high-pitched. Yet it sent a chill down Jasen’s spine, Alixa’s too, perhaps most of the village—and he never had to raise it. Even over the villager’s shouts, he could speak as though he were talking in a silent room, and he would be heard.

  Jasen hated it.

  At last, Baraghosa slunk to the assembly hall door. He stopped upon the step leading in, lifted one spindly arm, and gently rat-a-tat-tatted against the wood. Even that was audible above the noise of the crowd, as if amplified somehow.

  The door creaked open.

  Adem stood inside, face terse. Beside him was Hanrey Smithson, looking almost comically small and fat beside Jasen’s father. Hanrey’s cheeks were crimson, and Jasen wondered if perhaps he had shouted himself that color, or found himself at the end of a flask of grain alcohol to get through this night. Possibly both.

  Neither Adem nor Hanrey greeted Baraghosa; Adem simply said, shortly, “Come in.” And he stepped aside.

  Baraghosa entered.

  The white lights drifted above the assembly hall. They’d stay, dancing in lazy circles until Baraghosa departed.

  A handful of villagers piled in after him, and against his better judgment, Jasen again found his feet moving of their own accord, taking him forward.

  Alixa was possessed too. Though she choked out a strangled-sounding cough, she followed in Jasen’s wake, clutching him the whole time.

  They stepped through, and for the second time in a day, Jasen was assaulted by the odor of those candles. Most had been full and tall in the sconces when he’d stood in here earlier. Now, only small pools of wax with inch-long wicks remained of them. Soon the flames would snuff themselves out in the pools they’d melted beneath them, and someone—Eounice, probably—would set new candles in their places.

  The tables filled by the assembly remained at the far end of the hall. Eounice remained in her place, and if she was standing politely at Baraghosa’s arrival (though Jasen doubted it), he could not tell. Matron of the Assembly Griega Marks helmed her seat in the center, her headpiece positioned perfectly. Neither looked pleased to see Baraghosa.

  Aunt Margaut sat to the left of where Hanrey would shortly take up his seat. And the empty seat beside Eounice would be filled by Adem.

  The two councilmen led Baraghosa to the same spot where Jasen had stood just this morning.

  Behind, as many villagers filled the assembly hall as could.

  Another wave of nausea spread over Jasen. Too many were teenagers, his age or less, and they were crowded right to the front by the mob, pushed in like herd animals.

  For all the shouting on the street, here silence reigned.

  Adem and Hanrey took their seats.

  The moment their backsides had touched wood, Baraghosa extended an arm to all of them. “Good evening, Terreas assembly.” And he bowed, almost unnaturally low, as though he were a puppet on strings. “May I say,” he finished, rising, “what a pleasure it is to meet with you once more.”

  “Terreas greets you too, Baraghosa,” said Griega, voice metered. “How do we find you?”

  “Most well,” he answered. “Most well, indeed. How do I find you, Assembly Matron?”

  “Equally well,” Griega answered.

  “Wonderful. And your assembly?” Baraghosa’s head turned, and Jasen could see him as though he stood before him, raking those coal eyes across the remainder of the gathered council in turn. “How has life treated you all since last I visited?”

  They answered, in turn, and Jasen listened. He hated this part. It was so proper, so polite and nice and friendly—and this man deserved none of those things. That the a
ssembly engaged in this dance with him disgusted Jasen, made his stomach clench.

  Aunt Margaut was last to answer. Hers was the thinnest statement of all, curt like Eounice’s: “I’m fine, Baraghosa.”

  “So lovely to hear it,” he said. There was a faint lilt to his voice, barely audible—this was polite Baraghosa, charming Baraghosa, the Baraghosa who seemed to be perfectly friendly, and not the demon all of Terreas knew him to be.

  “I’ve thought of you often this past year,” he went on. “Many a night, I’ve spent hoping that the rains are kind, that the sun blesses you, that your fields are fruitful with a grander harvest than ever you have before laid eyes—”

  Eounice slammed her walking stick to the floor. The sound was louder than it had any right to be, and stilled Baraghosa’s words.

  “Oh, let’s dispense with this flowery nonsense, why don’t we?” she grumbled. “We all know why we’re gathered here. Let’s just get to it, yes?”

  Baraghosa rubbed his palms together. They whickered, dry.

  “Yes, let’s move past these formalities,” he agreed.

  Griega nodded. “Please proceed, Baraghosa.”

  He did not tarry. “How much seed do you require for the season ahead?”

  Eyes went to Margaut. She sighed, lacing her fingers, the same way Alixa so often did. Drumming them idly against her knuckles, she said, “We will come about as far short as we did last year. Four of our fields will stand empty once they’ve been picked, and our winter squash will go perhaps far enough to leave the same gap when the hail arrives.”

  “The same as last year,” Baraghosa repeated. He drew the words out, and Jasen pictured his face as he savored the feel of each of them on a tongue that was leathery, just as haunted by drought as his hands. “You’re sure?”

  “Perhaps more,” Margaut amended, looking as though it caused her great pain to do so.

  “Yes, I anticipated as much. Your village seems to have grown in number this year—so wonderful amidst all this blight, truly. It fills me with great happiness to know …” Eounice had lifted her stick to slam it down again, and so Baraghosa’s words petered out. When she’d lowered it again, he said, “How much more do you think, Mrs. Weltan?”

  Aunt Margaut bit her lip. Heaved a sigh, and reached a hand to her temple. “Another two fields’ worth, for both seasons.”

  “Six fields’ worth of seed for summer, and six for autumn,” Baraghosa mused. Head cocked, he touched a hand to his chin. “Twelve fields in all …”

  The assembly hall was silent, tense.

  “Difficult,” Baraghosa said at last.

  Jasen gritted his teeth. It wasn’t. It never was. Baraghosa always had enough seed, always. The assembly could ask for one hundred fields’ worth of seed, and Baraghosa would produce it. This was just him getting his kicks, same as ever.

  “You must have enough,” someone behind Jasen said, almost begged. There was the sound of an elbow being driven into their hip, and he spoke no more.

  Baraghosa tapped the side of his chin with a long finger—his fifth, the smallest, Jasen saw, yet still it was unnatural in its inches.

  “Twelve fields’ worth of seed,” he mused again.

  Long, long quiet …

  Eounice broke it by growling, “Enough of this, Baraghosa.”

  Jasen pictured the corners of his lips flickering up, just for an instant. “Twelve fields’ worth of seed it is.”

  “You can provide it?” Hanrey demanded.

  “I can. Of course, there is the matter of my price; one of—”

  “We know your price,” Adem cut in stiffly.

  Baraghosa nodded. “But of course you do.”

  And he turned … and those dark little eyes, impossible to peer into, swept over the crowd, raking slowly from left to right. Not for one second did he consider any adult—for adults were worthless to Baraghosa.

  He wanted a child, one of these teenagers or ten-year-olds, or even that boy of six—though perhaps not, as his gaze moved past him without pausing.

  Jasen saw it every year, and never did it ease the agonized squirming in his stomach.

  It always went the same. Baraghosa would single a child out with a too-long finger, selecting them for Terreas’s part in this trade. The child’s parents would scream, cry. The assembly, much of the village in fact, would push, would remind them that without this devil’s deal they would go hungry, that their fields would not produce enough to feed Terreas’s growing numbers, would remind those parents that they had not complained the just last year, or the year before, or the year before …

  And so, tear-stricken, they would be beaten down. Their child would be wrested away from them to accompany Baraghosa away, out of Terreas …

  And never be seen again.

  Like Pityr.

  Past face after face he went, only his head moving as he tracked—

  Over Alixa—

  She clutched Jasen’s wrist tighter still, hard enough to dig crescents into his skin as she closed her eyes, breath caught—

  Then Baraghosa looked at him.

  The moment seemed to draw out forever—

  It did draw out. For Baraghosa did not look away. His perusal ceased, those onyx depths fixated on him as the scourge had stared so single-mindedly not two hours ago.

  Jasen’s heart skipped.

  Baraghosa lifted a hand.

  A spindly finger pointed right to Jasen.

  “I choose him.”

  9

  What usually happened was this: Baraghosa made his choice. The boy or girl chosen would typically have been accompanied by their parents, or grandparents, or other guardian, and upon Baraghosa’s choosing, they would fall apart. The mother would clutch her son or daughter close, falling into a muddle of tears. The father would stand in their way, forbidding Baraghosa from taking the child, offering up threats or bribes alternatively. Frequently, one parent or the other, sometimes both, would offer themselves up. Several years, Jasen had even see adults fall to their feet at Baraghosa’s knees, like peasants swearing fealty to a king like the stories of old.

  Yet their cries would be met with deaf ears, from Baraghosa and the assembly both … and ultimately the child would be taken, the family’s cries lasting long into the night.

  Tonight there was a stunned silence—or perhaps that was only how Jasen saw it. His whole world had become stilled amber in that one moment, and he could only stare in horror, Baraghosa’s pointed finger and those three damning words ricocheting in his head like a stone rattled in a tin.

  I choose him.

  This was it.

  He was this year’s sacrifice.

  Adem thrust to his feet, and his voice, steady, echoed in the hall:

  “No.”

  Voices from the crowd rumbled. Eounice silenced them with a slam of her stick.

  Baraghosa turned, only halfway, so he was still pointing at Jasen, his pencil-thin body side on to the boy. An eyebrow drifted up his forehead. “No?”

  “I refuse you,” Adem growled. “This is my heir.”

  “Sit down,” Hanrey grunted.

  “No.”

  “You agreed!”

  “Before it was my boy this scoundrel decided to take!” Adem thundered. Heat rose in his face, and rage contorted his face into an expression Jasen had never seen before.

  Adem whirled, jabbing a finger at Hanrey. “This swine is not taking my child from me!”

  “And what say you we do instead?” Hanrey barked. “Let our newborns starve?”

  Adem’s words came from between gritted teeth. “Not my boy.”

  “You ruddy hypocrite,” said Hanrey. “This vote was three to two in favor of making the year’s trade. You said yourself, Rabinn—” he said it like the name was dirt, even less “—that this is for the good of Terreas. You have agreed, year after year after year. And now the deal hits your house—involves your son—you turn your back on us all!” This last sentence was roared.

  “Quiet your
selves!” Eounice shouted.

  “I will not let that ghoul take my son!” Adem boomed.

  Hanrey was on his feet now too. “You selfish bloody—”

  Margaut grabbed him before he could stride beyond the table.

  “You watch your tongue when you speak to me, old man!” Adem snapped back.

  “Watch my tongue?”

  “Hanrey, sit,” Margaut pleaded—

  “Watch my tongue? Your mother should’ve given you a ruddy smack on the backside and taught you some respect, instead of lying on her back like some—”

  “Enough!”

  The last cry was Griega’s. She had risen, and though her face had barely changed from its usual severe moue, fire danced in her eyes. And like Baraghosa, though she had not raised her voice even as high Hanrey and Adem had, it cut through the rest of the sound in the room, and brought it to silence.

  Hanrey scowled. Adem scowled back, his nostrils flared and eyebrows pressing a heavy line in between them.

  “There will be no further disrespect in the assembly hall,” Griega said, looking from Hanrey to Adem in turn. “I will not allow it. You may disagree, but do so with dignity, especially in front of our guest.”

  “He’s no guest,” Adem spat. “Just a crackpot peddling lies.”

  Baraghosa had barely shifted, just watched the tirade unfold with that lone eyebrow still quirked. Only now that the assembly’s attention had returned to him did he turn entirely their way, retracting that digit pointed at Jasen and lacing his fingers together in front of his midriff.

  “You do realize, of course,” he said, “that without paying my price, I cannot provide you with seed.”

  “Your price can go—”

  “Adem,” Eounice muttered.

  “And if I cannot provide you with seed, it is very much as Mr. Smithson says. You will not be able to feed your newborns, and some of you will, most assuredly, die.” He bobbed his head, looking back at Jasen, driving a wedge of ice into his chest. “In the scheme of things, is this one life worth giving up for so many others?”

  “Yes,” Hanrey said immediately.

  “No,” Adem said at the same time. “Not my boy.”