Black Stone Heart (The Obsidian Path Book 1)

by Michael R. Fletcher

  She nodded, just the tiniest movement. “If the wizards find me they’ll burn me to ash.”

  Wizards. A knot of anger built in me. Anything they hated was something I wanted to preserve.

  She studied me, gaze roving about my face like she sought to memorize every line and detail. “Better to hide,” she whispered.

  “You can’t have these people,” I said, nodding at the survivors surrounding the fire.

  She looked away, staring off to the side. So young. She looked no older than I. Or at least no older than I looked. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen when someone cut her heart out. I felt something for her, an affinity. I couldn’t end her unlife. Of all the people in the world, this dead girl might understand me.

  “If I get off you, will your creatures attack?”

  She looked at me. I saw no hope in her eyes, just an eternity of emptiness. How long had she been dead? Who would do this to a girl? Why? What had the necromancer who created her hoped to achieve?

  “No,” she said.

  I rolled off her and stood, shoulders hunched, waiting to die.

  Nothing happened. I heard the voices of those gathered around the fire. Shalayn called out to me.

  “You can have those who are already dead,” I said, deciding. “Take them and leave.”

  Midnight eyes, bright and unblinking, stared up at me. She seemed unaware that her robes remained open.

  “I am evil,” she whispered. “Damned.” She pushed herself into a sitting position, one shoulder slumped and low. “You should hate me. Loathe me.” She looked away again, glancing toward the fire, eyes narrowing. “You should fear me.”

  I didn’t. I couldn’t. I saw something of myself in this broken soul.

  “Don’t attack caravans,” I said. “Too many people. Too dangerous. There are homesteads with small families. Much safer.” I thought about the woman who fed me, and hated myself. Why did I care more about this dead girl than those simple souls living out here on the frontier?

  Simple souls? Why did I belittle their existence? What was I, that I thought myself above them?

  With a start I realized I had none of the loathing for necromancers that I bore for wizards. Necromancers paid a high price for their power. For some reason that mattered. It made a difference.

  I offered her a hand. When she took it, I pulled her to her feet. Her skin was cold, damp. She stood close to me. I had a head of height on her.

  Pulling her robes closed I said, “You have to take better care of yourself. You might not feel pain, but you have to learn to avoid danger. Don’t break so many bones.” I gestured at her mangled hand. “How did you do that?”

  “My wolves and I were hunting the mountain lion. It got past them and attacked me.”

  “Always keep at least two at your side. Had you done that, I never could have taken you down.”

  A grin flashed across her pale features. “I’m glad you did.” She licked her lips, not moving away, staring up at me. “Who are you?” she asked. “Why help me?”

  “I’m Khraen. And…I don’t know. You and I are, somehow, the same.” It wasn’t quite true. I had this inkling, the beginning of an idea tickling at the back of my thoughts, that a necromancer would be useful.

  “I’m Henka.” She hugged me, wrapping her arms around my waist and burying her face in my chest. Corpse cold, she held me like we were old friends, lovers long separated, moulding herself to me.

  Flustered, I waited until she let go.

  “Sorry,” she said, retreating, hurt crumpling her features.

  Feelings I didn’t understand scattered my thoughts, hints of memories of a girl with dark hair and white skin. Those eyes.

  “Some of those you killed tonight have armour,” I said. “Wear it.” I choked down a surge of emotion, anger that this girl had to live like this. “I have something I must do, but after, I will return. I will find you. Please stay alive—” I laughed. “You know what I mean. Still exist when I return.”

  She tilted her head, examining me. “Why?”

  “We’re going to find the bastard who did this to you. We’re going to get your heart back.” I felt like a fool making such a rash promise to this girl I didn’t know, but I meant it.

  “I’ll see you again” she said. “You’ll come back to me. I know you will.” Her eyes held no trace of doubt.

  I left her, limped to the campfire and the caravan guards huddled there. One of them almost shot me with a bow, but I called out. The wounds in my back burned.

  “What happened?” asked Shalayn, as I warmed my hands at the fire.

  I didn’t want to talk about it. These people lost friends here. They’d never understand why I let Henka go. And, as they so clearly hated me, I felt no compunction to explain my choices.

  “I found the necromancer,” I answered.

  “Are we safe?” asked Paulak, who miraculously survived unscathed.

  I nodded. “She’s dead.” It wasn’t a lie, though I knew they’d misunderstand.

  Shalayn put a hand on my shoulder. After Henka’s cold embrace, she was warm with life. “She?”

  “Just a girl.”

  “Are you alright?”

  Again, I nodded.

  “Your back!” she said when I shifted, wincing.

  Grabbing a water skin, she cleaned my wounds as we talked.

  “Turn your back to the fire,” she said, “so I can see what I’m doing.”

  “It’s not that bad, looks worse than it is.” I didn’t want them seeing what the necromancer’s creature did to me. Having survived an arrow in the leg and what should have been guaranteed infection, I was strangely unworried about this. But if they saw clearly the extent of my wounds, there’d be questions.

  “You can keep the shirt,” Shalayn said. It was torn and filthy, splashed with blood, stinking of rot.

  “Thanks.”

  “Should we bury her?” asked Paulak. “Or burn the corpse to make sure she doesn’t come back?”

  “No. Too dangerous.” I prayed I hadn’t made a colossally stupid mistake by leaving her alive, and hoped she wouldn’t return to finish what she started. “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Best if we’re gone before light. The bodies will attract animals.”

  Everyone seemed happy to put some distance between us and the grizzly scene no doubt hidden by the dark.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  We travelled south, the cold fading into an unpleasant memory. The days were long, the sun crawling across the bowl of the sky like it had not a care in the world. Farming communities came and went. Small towns were replaced by big towns, then sprawling villages, and eventually cities. We passed them all, taking the long way around.

  The wounds in my back healed fast. Shalayn, who cleaned them each day and changed the bandages for me, raised an eyebrow at that but didn’t comment

  She also gave me another shirt that smelled of her, throwing the other one in the fire.

  We always rode together now. If the rest of the surviving guards no longer glared quite so much hatred and disgust at our proximity, they still avoided me, communicating in grunts, if at all.

  I missed my hatchet but had been unable to find it in the dark. The two Septk knives were my only weapons. Sometimes, at night, I dreamed of a red sword.

  I thought of Henka often, her face haunting my dreams, so beautiful, so fragile. I couldn’t shake the idea that I’d known someone like her before.

  “Why don’t we stop at any of these?” I asked Shalayn as we rolled past yet another city.

  She looked up from sharpening her sword. The woman lavished great affection on her arms and armour. I’d only bathed at a stream we camped near because she informed me I smelled like a wet dog that had been sprayed by a skunk and then killed and left in the sun. I felt strangely light after, like I’d shed several pounds of filth.

  Glancing at the city in question, she shrugged. “These northern grains make the best ales and will fetch the highest price in the capital
.” She gestured at the city. “Everyone stops there because it’s close, convenient, and easy. Demand will be low.”

  “You ever kill anyone?” I asked, abruptly changing the topic.

  She frowned at the blade of her sword, rubbing at some offending blemish I couldn’t see. “Yes.” She looked up. “People like us don’t usually ask such questions.”

  People like us? Who or what did she think I was? Not that I knew the answer, but I wondered what she thought.

  “You?” she asked. “I saw those Septk knives. You kill to get those?”

  “I thought people like us didn’t ask such questions.”

  She arched an eyebrow.

  “I did,” I admitted. “They attacked me,” I added, though I wasn’t sure why I needed to clarify. “I had no choice.” I remembered killing the boy and swallowed the bile of the lie. Why did I feel worse for the lie than the murder?

  “Septks don’t much like southerners,” she said. “They don’t even like each other.” She grunted a laugh. “So, only a couple of Septks?”

  “No.” How could I tell her of the trapper I killed for his clothes and boots? How could I tell her I murdered myself for the fragment of obsidian lodged in my heart?

  She didn’t ask.

  That evening, after the guards finished their meal and those on picket duty walked their rounds, Shalayn and I sat by a fire. We’d taken to lighting our own rather than sharing the one the rest of the caravan folks sat around. Everyone seemed fine with this arrangement, happy to put some distance between themselves and us.

  “Why do you think some women are drawn to bad boys and dangerous men?” she asked.

  I wondered which she thought I was.

  “I didn’t know they were,” I admitted.

  We sat in silence, watching the flames.

  “You move very slowly,” she said.

  A fly buzzed past and I snatched it out of the air. I held it up for her to see. “Not so slow.”

  “Not what I meant.”

  Releasing the fly, I watched it wobble drunkenly away. “I’m not sure—”

  “We sit and talk every night.”

  “You’re the only one who will talk to me. Except maybe Paulak.”

  “And yet you have not once made an advance. Did I misjudge you? Are you not the trouble I was hoping you might be?”

  “Oh,” I said. “It’s been a while. It seems like a thousand years.”

  She glanced at me, pale blue eyes twinkling. “Are you planning on it being a thousand more?”

  I’d been so focussed on survival, on moving south, it never occurred to me there could be more to life. For the first time I really looked at this woman I’d spent so many hours talking to. She was sturdy and strong, but not unattractive.

  She punched me in the shoulder. “I know that look. You’re trying to decide if you want to, if it’s been long enough, you’re that desperate.”

  “No,” I said. “I was trying to figure out what you look like under that armour.”

  She showed me.

  Shalayn was a lot stronger than I realised. She hurt me several times, though I never complained. I figured if I somehow survived being mauled by an undead mountain lion, I had some slight chance of surviving her attentions.

  After, as we lay tangled in her sleeping roll, her head on my chest, she said, “Definitely trouble.”

  The next morning found me bruised and feeling more alive, more human, than I ever had. The savage creature that wandered down from the far north seemed distant and strange. I couldn’t believe the things I’d done. Violence. Murder. Hacking my own chest open to get at the shard in my heart. These were someone else’s memories.

  Though the sun had yet to rise, the eastern horizon glowed gold. Shalayn lay beside me, pale and freckled skin gleaming. One hand against my chest, pale pink on deepest black, she seemed lost in the contrast of our complexions.

  I met those blue eyes. “Yes?”

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  Physically, I’d guess that she had maybe two or three years on me. “No idea,” I said. “Older than you.”

  She looked sceptical. “The bath helped, but that scraggly scruff of a beard is a disaster.”

  “And?”

  “Can I trim it?”

  “Sure.”

  Sitting before me, wearing nothing but a shirt, she spent an hour trimming and carving with a knife so sharp I was amazed to survive. She was tender, gentle, moving slowly and stopping often to consider the next cut. The other caravan guards watched, their looks of disgust returning. It wasn’t her they didn’t like, it was me. Or maybe it was her with me.

  When she finished, Shalayn leaned back to examine her work. “No way you’re older than me.”

  “How old are you?”

  She punched me in the shoulder again. I winced as she connected with the bruise left by her previous blow.

  “You can’t be more than nineteen,” she said.

  Rather than tempt an explanation, I shrugged.

  “Fine,” she said. “Have your secrets.”

  She rose and I watched, laying back, as she dressed. She took her time doing that too, carefully setting each piece of armour, adjusting its weight, and strapping it tight. When she finished, she kicked me in the ribs and walked away, hips swinging in an exaggerated strut.

  I lay there for a while, trying to decipher my feelings for her, before giving up. When Paulak strode about the camp, bellowing marching orders for the day, I got dressed. He saw me clamber from Shalayn’s sleeping roll and raised an eyebrow. If he said nothing, I think it was more for respect of Shalayn than out of any fear of me.

  We were hours into the city of Taramlae, the supposed capital of everything, before I knew it. What I took to be a sprawling town, turned out to be the outskirts. Hour after hour, the homes became more numerous, the space between each, smaller. Soon we wandered cobbled streets, the wagon wheels clattering loudly on stone. The buildings were all either attached or so close together only the skinniest child could slip between. People watched the passing caravan, eyes widening when they caught sight of me. The looks of disgust and hate were either ill-concealed, or not hidden at all. I ignored them as best I could.

  Something in Taramlae called to me. I wanted to hop off this wagon and go in search of it, but decided entering the city as just one more caravan guard was probably safer. I clearly stood out.

  “It stinks, but I expected it to be worse,” I said to Shalayn. We sat together atop the baled grains stacked on the last wagon.

  “The Guild runs everything. There’s a magical aqueduct system under the city.”

  The Guild. Wizards. I ground teeth at the mention. Something deep in me loathed wizards.

  “Today is the last day on this caravan,” she said.

  I considered that. The tug of whatever pulled me south grew stronger with every passing day. Now, it was a constant pressure in my skull. Ahead, I saw a colossal wall towering the height of one hundred men, each standing on the head of the man below. Huge portcullises, bars of iron as thick as a man’s waist, were raised. A line of wagons awaited entrance to the inner city. Beyond the wall, the only buildings tall enough to be seen were evenly spaced towers running its circumference. None had windows.

  Shalayn noted my attention. “That’s the inner wall, ringed by wizard’s towers. It’s old. Dates back to the Great War, when the wizards threw off the yoke of the demonologists.”

  I wanted to tear it down. I wanted to topple those towers and raze the city, salt the earth with the blood of thousands.

  Her earlier words made it past my anger. “Our last day? What are you doing after?”

  Shalayn examined the row of towers fading into the distance. “Maybe sign on to another caravan. Preferably one going somewhere interesting.”

  What did I want to do? After years of living alone, the thought of Shalayn leaving suddenly terrified me. I didn’t want to be alone again, but there was something here, somewhere in Taramlae, that I
wanted more than anything.

  “You leaving right away?” I asked.

  “Nah. I’ll sample some of what the capital has to offer—food, drink, silk sheets—first.” She gave me a crooked smile. “I don’t like staying in one place too long. I get bored quickly.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Not bored of you.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Yet.” She grinned. “Bathe every day, and we’ll see how long we can make this last.”

  I made a mental note to hunt down a bath at the first chance.

  A dozen guards in bright chain armour and liveries of white lounged around the gate. To either side of the entrance to the inner city stood a figure in gleaming white plate armour. Each held a huge sword, point down, hands resting on pommels. At first, I took them as statues of worked metal but one moved, just the slightest shift of weight. As the day had grown warm, I imagined how much they must stink in that armour. I pointed them out and Shalayn smacked my hand down.

  “Don’t point. They watch everything.”

  “Who are they?” I asked. The slap stung. She was damned fast.

  “Battle Mages. I heard they’re immortal and that any one of them could level a city.”

  That stank of hyperbole, but I kept the thought to myself. What kind of brain-dead oaf would spend their immortality standing guard at a gate? I wanted to test one, wander over and see if I could kill him with my knife. I must have moved because Shalayn grabbed me.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” she said.

  Paulak called a halt to the convoy as we joined the line of wagons entering the gate. He hurried forward to talk with the Gate Master, an even fatter bald man with robes of sweat-stained white.

  “I don’t like white,” I told Shalayn.

  “It’s the wizard’s colour. It’s supposed to represent purity of thought, clarity of mind, and honesty of intent. Or something. I can’t remember.” She shot me a glance, jaw clenched, eyes hard. “In my experience, wizards lie just like everyone else.”

  I watched Paulak hand a heavy pouch to the Gate Master. The man pried it open with greedy fingers, peered inside, licked his lips with a quick dart of pink tongue, and nodded.