Black Stone Heart (The Obsidian Path Book 1)

by Michael R. Fletcher

  “Do the wizards have enemies?” I asked.

  “Like the sorcerers or the elementalists? Supposedly the Great War killed them all off. You always hear rumours about sorcerers in the deserts or elementalists riding mountains, but no one actually believes that stuff. Before the other day, I’d never actually seen proof that anything other than wizards remained. Now…” she shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe some of those rumours are true.”

  “And all wizards are Guild members?” I asked, trying to understand this world.

  “There’s always going to be people who live on the fringe. Thieves.” She darted a quick look at me. “Whatever. Not every mage is a member of the Guild.”

  “What about the demonologists you mentioned?”

  “Gone. Wiped out. Exterminated.”

  “Impossible.”

  “For a thousand years after the Great War it was death to be even accused of being a demonologist.”

  “Why?”

  “Seriously,” she said, “where have you been that you don’t know this?”

  I shrugged, helpless.

  “There are lots of traces left by the demonologists,” she said. “Entire cities no one dares enter. There are weapons and armour and artefacts of all kinds with demons in them. But because no one knows how to control them—”

  “Bind them,” I corrected without thought.

  “Whatever. No one knows how to use them. Touching a demonic object almost always leads to death. I heard a farmer picked up a shiny stone he found outside an abandoned city. He killed hundreds before the Guild brought him down.”

  The wizards, again.

  “There are the bones of an empire out there,” continued Shalayn. “The island of PalTaq is said to have been the capital of the demon empire. Apparently, the city still stands, untouched by thousands of years, empty.”

  Under Paulak’s orders, the caravan tightened formation as we rolled through the gate and into the heart of Taramlae. Chainmail-clad guards, liveried in bright white, patrolled the main thoroughfare. The streets were crowded, a press of humanity. Not everyone was quite as pale as the blond folks I’d been travelling with. Here and there I caught sight of light, sandy brown hair. No one looked like me. Those who noticed me, perched atop the wagon with Shalayn, stared in undisguised disgust, sometimes nudging companions and pointing.

  “They don’t much like me,” I said to Shalayn.

  “Ignore them. They’re just ignorant.”

  “But why?”

  “People like you never travel this far north.”

  People like me? So there were more of us, somewhere to the south? I liked the idea of fitting in, of not being an object of loathing.

  “It doesn’t bother you?” I asked.

  “No. I’ve travelled more than most. I’ve been to the ports on the southern coast. I’ve met sailors and islanders who come to trade.”

  Islanders. Isle of PalTaq. Far to the south. I wanted to go there.

  But not yet. There was something here, in Taramlae, I had to have.

  Nodding toward one of the guards I asked, “Does the city guard work for the mages?”

  “They are mages. Albeit, probably minor wizards. Maybe Battle Mages in training.”

  “So why is Paulak so worried now that we’re under their watchful eye?” I couldn’t keep a little of the barb from my voice.

  “Like I said, not all mages are white-wearing Guild members. Some hire out as assassins.” Again, that darted glance, jaw tight. “Some are thieves.”

  “They’re all thieves.”

  “For someone who doesn’t know anything, you carry an awful lot of hate for wizards.”

  She wasn’t wrong. But how could I explain?

  A tower, smaller than those lining the inner wall, caught my eye. Like the others, it too had no windows. The base was lost behind a block of shops selling bright clothes. I wanted inside. I needed to get inside that tower.

  Later, I decided. For now, I filed away its location. Not that I’d have trouble finding it. The incredible pull of the tower made thinking of anything else difficult.

  We entered a huge open square and Paulak called a halt to the wagon train. At his signal, Shalayn and I clambered from our perch. Squads of what looked like street-children mobbed the wagons, and began the task of unloading. Watching them struggle under the weight of the bales, I wanted to help. When I suggested it, Shalayn told me the kids would likely tear me apart for trying to steal their jobs.

  Paulak wandered from guard to guard, one of his personal retainers at his side. Each time he handed over a pouch of coins, said a few words, shook the guard’s hand, and moved on.

  After he paid Shalayn and I, I showed her my pouch of coins and asked her how long this would support me.

  “In some little farming community,” she said, “that would keep you for a month or two. If you leave now, and walk fast, you might make it out of Taramlae before falling deep into debt.”

  Then, she took several minutes to mock my haggling skills.

  “Come,” she said, “I’ll buy you dinner and we’ll have a drink. Or two.”

  She led me from the open area which, she informed me, was called the Grain Importers Market. There were, she said, other similar squares such as the Grain Exporters Market, the Silk Importers Market, and on and on.

  After years alone in the north, and a week or so with Shalayn as my only real company, Taramlae was too much. The city crushed me. People everywhere. Sweat, breath, and thick cloying perfume. The stink of horses and dung and fresh-sawn wood intermingled in an all-encompassing miasma. Glancing up I saw what looked to be eagles or large hawks circling above us. It was difficult to make out much detail at this distance, but they looked ragged and unhealthy, their wide-spread wings tattered. They wobbled often, as if having difficulty riding the updraughts.

  It was one thing to have a couple of wagon guards glare their hate at me, but this was an entire city of loathing. Everyone I passed flinched away from me, eyes wide. Some spat on the ground and made a sign over their hearts. Though I had no idea what it meant, I didn’t bother asking Shalayn. There was no way the answer would be pleasant. On the high side, it made travelling through the crowded streets easier. No one wanted to be anywhere near me.

  Except Shalayn. She ignored all of this, acted like she didn’t even notice.

  I tried to watch everyone. I tried to see everything. Hate like this had to lead to violence. Eyes everywhere, lips curled in revulsions. I was nothing here, a filthy savage out of his depth. I didn’t fit in, never could.

  To distract myself, I dug a coin from my pouch to examine it. Their money, these little wedges of bronze, meant nothing. I had no idea who the woman was whose face graced one side. The other side was a swirling mess that looked like entwined snakes.

  “What’s that?” I asked Shalayn, holding up the coin.

  “Chaos,” she said, glancing at the object in my hand. “Mages use chaos to feed their magic.”

  Filthy chaos magic. Power for nothing.

  “And this?” I flipped the coin.

  “That’s the Empress. She toppled the demon empire, built a new world. A world of brightness and sense and logic. A world not ruled by demons and slavers.” She spoke like she was rattling off something memorized in childhood, eyes glazing over at the litany.

  I kept my doubts to myself. This Empress may have ended the demonologists and built Taramlae atop the bones of the old empire, but I seriously doubted she was a paragon of purity and logic. More likely, she was a power-hungry tyrant hiding behind a veil of rewritten history.

  “If you’re going to look like a murderous lunatic every time we talk about wizards,” said Shalayn, “we are going to talk about something else.”

  She made a show of considering her options as she pushed through a crowd of children who parted before her. The kids paid no attention to her sword and armour. They also didn’t seem to notice me. Only the children didn’t care that I was different.

  “
Perhaps,” she said, “you could start by telling me why you hate them?”

  “The truth is, I don’t know. I remember very little of my old life.”

  “The truth is,” she said, “I learned long ago that sentences beginning with ‘the truth is’ are always lies.”

  “Yours wasn’t,” I pointed out.

  This time when she tried to punch me in the shoulder I was ready and slid away from the blow.

  “Missed!”

  She punched me in the other shoulder.

  Twice.

  Shalayn led me to an inn she knew called the Dripping Bucket. I asked about the name, and she shrugged, said they were everywhere, and ordered us a round of pints and two plates loaded with savoury lamb pie. The man who brought our food almost dropped the plates when he saw me. He looked ready to spit into our lamb. Eyeing Shalayn, he decided to drop it loudly to the table and stalk away, shoulders hunched.

  “Great service,” I said.

  “Eat.”

  Pastry.

  I lived off bugs, sometimes for weeks on end. I ate beetles and spiders. I ate snakes and frogs and chewed roots from the ground still caked in mud. I ate raw eggs that smelled like the farts of a dead rat and spent days after, puking. I sucked snails from their shells and choked down their gritty nasty little bodies.

  Pastry.

  Never once, not since waking surrounded by death, did I think of pastry. I’d been an animal. Since leaving my shack, the time I spent with Shalayn, I was finding myself, rediscovering something of who I’d been. Somehow, I knew what pastry was. Some memory lay buried deep within. This delicious pie, rudely delivered, brought some of it out.

  “I like pastry,” I told Shalayn.

  “Did you even chew?”

  “I’m going to eat pastry every day.”

  Those pale blue eyes examined me. She looked different now. I couldn’t explain it. That brutal haircut, strawberry blond hair hewn short, was her. The broad shoulders, the loose way she moved when relaxed, the coiled speed of a viper when she wasn’t. The way her eyes closed and her freckled chest flushed warm pink when she orgasmed, body bucking and twitching.

  “Will you eat pastry with me tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “And the day after that?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe.”

  I grinned at her. It was good to be alive. Good to be here, with her. The loathing of an entire city meant nothing while I was with this woman. Though some people still glared, for the most part, the patrons of the inn decided to ignore me. They focussed instead on singing loud off-key drinking songs.

  For the first time, I wasn’t alone.

  “You were in the north for a really long time, weren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Were you born there?”

  “Kind of.”

  She raised an eyebrow but let it go. “Let’s wait until you’ve seen some other women before planning years of pastry eating.”

  “All the other women hate me.”

  Except Henka. She hadn’t cared about the colour of my skin, didn’t seem to notice.

  Shalayn looked away as a band made their way to the stage. The room subsided to a low rumble of conversation. A lute, two strange flutes, and a singer, they entertained us with songs of love and tragedy.

  I laughed, and I cried, and we drank.

  Shalayn joined in the choruses of some of the songs, her voice rough and beautiful, and we drank more. Either the patrons got used to me and stopped pouring their hate in my direction, or I became so blearily focussed on Shalayn, I stopped noticing. She was beautiful. The soft pink of her skin, the dusting of freckles across her cheeks and nose. Pale blue eyes that danced with humour.

  Later, we stumbled upstairs into a room she rented. We fucked drunk. If I have previous experiences, I can’t remember them, but I can honestly say: You haven’t fucked until you’ve fucked drunk.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I woke with a world-ending hangover and Shalayn draped across me. She’d fallen asleep on one of my arms and it had long since lost all feeling. She drooled into my armpit. Waking her seemed like effort so I lay there, moaning in quiet misery.

  “Someone kill that fucking cat,” she muttered, falling immediately back to sleep.

  I moaned quieter.

  My second attempt at facing the world proved marginally more successful. I managed to roll Shalayn off me without getting stabbed or otherwise murdered. She scowled at me through one bloodshot eye, the other apparently not ready to open.

  “Whiskey,” she croaked.

  “You’re mad.”

  “It’s our only hope.”

  After puking in the shared soilroom in the hall and marvelling at—and hating—the water system that flushed away my rancid bile, I stumbled downstairs.

  The innkeeper backed away from the bar as I approached, bumping into the counter behind him. He regarded me with nervous eyes and I wondered if I’d done something terrible and violent the night before. Though hazy, I couldn’t remember doing anything worse than trying to sing along with Shalayn.

  Two whiskeys wiped out what bronze I had, and I staggered back upstairs, trying not to spill or puke in them. I found Shalayn sitting up, the sheets bundled about her waist. Her pale skin, freckled and pink, was laced with scars gleaming white in the sun forcing its way through the ratty curtains.

  “It’s too bright in here,” I said.

  She took one of the whiskeys and downed it. Then she took the other and drank that too.

  “You should have got yourself a couple,” she said, handing me the empty glasses.

  “Maybe next time.”

  Much to Shalayn’s amusement, I puked twice more before we managed to get dressed and make it downstairs for breakfast. Apparently being dead for a long time, and then living on a diet of worms and roots, had done little for my alcohol tolerance.

  Breakfast, served with darted looks of hostility shared evenly between Shalayn and I, was more lamb pies, no doubt leftover from last night.

  “I’ll never eat another pastry again,” I said, eyeing the food before me. My guts rumbled complaint and threatened rebellion.

  “So, we’re not having pastry together tomorrow?”

  What amounted to my drunken profession of love, returned to me. “If you’re there,” I said, hoping to salvage the situation, “I’ll eat anything.”

  She grunted and loosed a gut-churning fart. “That was the whiskey,” she said, as if having something to blame rendered her free of culpability.

  “I think I’ve gone blind.”

  I watched her wolf down her pie. Then, seeing I hadn’t touched mine, she ate that too.

  “I have to do something today,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t ask what.

  “Yeah? What?”

  “Probably something stupid.”

  Eyes narrowed. Pale shards of ice-blue examined me. “Sounds fun. What kind of stupid?”

  I was too hungover for subtlety or deceit. “There’s something in a wizard’s tower that I want.”

  “Oh. You meant stupid stupid and not fun stupid. What is it?”

  “I don’t know. Not exactly.” It wasn’t quite a lie. I had an idea, but couldn’t know for sure.

  She stared at me, unblinking.

  “It’ll be a small chip of black stone.” I held my fingers apart to show her what I guessed its size to be. “They won’t even notice it missing.”

  “Right.”

  “Today, I just want to look at the tower. I’m too hungover to attempt anything more.”

  “So, the islands man who wanders out of the far north and who has never heard of Taramlae and didn’t know it was the capital or what wizard’s towers are…” She drew breath. “…suddenly wants to break into one to steal something, though he’s not sure what?”

  “Essentially.”

  “Essentially.” Pale eyes examined me.

  I’d seen moments of softness. Sometimes the way she looked at me made me want to fo
rget whatever drew me south. Now, she was iron.

  “Have you been lying to me?” she asked. “Has everything you’ve said been a steaming boot-load of pig shit?”

  “No.” I tried to remember everything I’d said, as best as my muzzy brain allowed. “Though I can’t promise I never exaggerated or left out an unflattering detail.”

  “Why do you want this little piece of stone? And if you lie, I’m leaving.”

  I was pretty damned sure I could lie convincingly enough to fool her, but didn’t want to.

  “I don’t want to tell you,” I said. “You’ll think I’m lying.”

  “I’m leaving.” She stood.

  “Every time I find a piece of this stone I remember more of my past.”

  Shalayn leaned forward, bunched fists on the table. “What do you remember?”

  “I woke in the north. I lived there, alone in a mud shack, for maybe five years. Then I came south. You were the first person I really talked to.” I was leaving out a lot, but the details seemed increasingly insane. “My name really is Khraen. I know that. Otherwise, I have no idea who I was.”

  “Sounds like magic.”

  I shrugged, looking up at her. “Yeah, it does.”

  “And you want to break into a wizard’s tower.”

  “That’s where the stone is.”

  “If you don’t know anything, can’t remember anything, how do you know it’s there?”

  “I just do. I can feel it. I’m drawn to it.” I struggled to find the words without sharing exactly what it was. “It’s part of me.”

  “I’ve seen all your parts. And while some were rock hard, none were made of stone.”

  I shrugged again.

  Shalayn sat. “Fuck.”

  “What?”

  “Do you have any idea how much women love mysterious men?”

  “No.”

  She looked like she wanted to punch me. “Today we’ll stroll past the tower. We’re looking, nothing more.”

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I know that. I’m curious. I can’t help it. It’ll be the death of me.”

  “Just looking,” I agreed. “Once we’ve seen it, we can plan.”

  “Right. Plan to break into an impregnable wizard’s tower.” She tilted her head to one side and ran a hand through her rough-cropped hair. “You regain memories with each piece of stone?”