Black Stone Heart (The Obsidian Path Book 1)

by Michael R. Fletcher

  “It’s been abandoned since the war.”

  “Why? It looks to be in good shape.”

  “Demons. It’s inhabited by thousands and thousands of demons. They’re bound to objects and walls, right to the very superstructure of the city. They maintain and repair it, even now. No one knows how to command or control them. It was easier for the wizards to abandon and ignore the old cities than to destroy them.”

  “Are there many cities like this?”

  Henka shrugged, staring wistfully at Kazamnir. “So I’ve heard. The further south you go, the more you’ll find.” She glanced at me. “Apparently PalTaq still stands, untouched by time.”

  PalTaq. The capital of the old empire. An entire island given to city. And she still stood? I wanted to rush to see her, my bright gem.

  “Every now and then,” said Henka, “some adventurous idiot wanders into one of the old cities. Most are never seen again, their souls—or so claim the wizards—devoured by demons. But every now and then one returns with fantastic tales and some demonic artefact.” She laughed, a soft, breathy sound. “The wizards then hunt and kill them, and hide away whatever they brought out. Still, there’s always another adventurer willing to risk certain death.”

  When I was ready, when I had something of my old power, I would plunder these cities. They were, after all, mine.

  The pull of the nearest shard of my heart had drawn us south for weeks, but I awoke the next morning to discover I suddenly wanted to veer east. Closing my eyes, I examined my feelings. That larger shard remained, far to the south, likely somewhere in PalTaq. But the closer shard had definitely moved.

  “We need to go east now,” I told Henka.

  I rarely bothered talking to Chalaam. He tended to be uncommunicative, answering in grunts and baleful glares. His skin grew greyer with each passing day, and I caught the first wafts of decay. Soon Henka would either have to work her necromancy to repair him, or let him die. We could do much better, I thought, if we hand-picked a guard. Perhaps someone educated, and more skilled in combat.

  Hand-pick. Kill. Murder. Was I really contemplating killing someone so they might be enslaved as a bodyguard? And yet, it made so much sense. My experience showed me that people could not be trusted. The wizards betrayed me all those millennia ago, and more recently Tien betrayed me. Why trust someone when you could own them? Why give them the chance to betray me the way Tien did?

  I still couldn’t believe she played me so well, that I hadn’t seen it coming. Certainly, there had been clues. My naivete embarrassed me. Had all this happened before? Was that why I’d previously ended up the kind of person willing to spend souls and enslave innocents?

  We walked another day, and I still felt no closer to the shard of my heart. If anything, it was farther east now.

  “It’s moving,” I said. “The piece of my memories is moving. Someone is trying to take it away from me.” I considered the possibilities. “Wizards.”

  “Wizards?” asked Henka.

  “It’s the only answer. Somehow, they know I’m coming.”

  Had the wizards realized someone had been to their tower and taken something? Did they know what was missing, what it meant? They must have taken my heart from wherever they’d previously stored it, thinking to move it somewhere safer. I couldn’t let that happen. My one advantage was that they apparently didn’t realize how close I was. If they did, they’d be moving faster.

  “We need to catch them,” I told Henka.

  “We need to kill horses.”

  Seeing my confusion, she explained. “The dead never tire. You can ride them hard all night.” Then she winked.

  It took a moment for her words to sink in.

  I remembered the way she licked the blood from my wounds, the sensuous heat of her tongue.

  The pieces clicked together, things I’d avoided thinking about.

  ‘Necromancy requires some blood,’ she once said. ‘Human blood.’ She’d been talking about the spells that warmed her body and allowed her to pass for living. Every time she was warm, she’d somehow made use of human blood to achieve that.

  I’d seen the implements of torture in my floating castle. I’d seen the rooms where the sacrifices took place, the floor carved deep with runnels for the blood. Most damning of all, I’d sacrificed an unknown number of souls, fed them to Felkrish, my portal demon. Me, not some forgotten past. I did that.

  Who was I to judge?

  She needed a little blood. That hardly made her a monster.

  I surreptitiously studied Henka’s form-fitting dress, the way it clung to every curve, accentuated her perfection. She was not at all dressed for travel, and yet seemed perfectly comfortable.

  Confusion tore through me. Every time I looked at her I saw fragile beauty and gorgeous eyes. And then part of me would whisper, she’s a corpse.

  “Let’s find horses,” I said. “Lots of farms around here.”

  Late in the afternoon, we found a farmstead with a paddock of four horses. Huge grey and black beasts, well over seventeen hands high, they looked more suited to pulling ploughs and wagons than running. Henka assured me that, once dead, it wouldn’t matter.

  The farmhouse, a rough-hewn log cabin, sat atop a slight rise in the ground. A second building, larger than the house but less sturdy-looking, served as a barn. From within I heard the gentle bleating of sheep. A score of chickens wandered the space between the two buildings pecking at the dirt as if eating pebbles. Smoke wafted from the cabin’s smoke-hole in lazy curls, filling the air with the rich scent of birch. I saw no sign of the family living there. This late in the day, they were likely taking their dinner.

  The horses shied as we approached, moving to the far side of their enclosure.

  “Animals don’t like the dead,” said Henka. She watched the beasts with longing.

  Their manes and tails, lustrous black, swayed in the wind, twitched at flies. Muscle rolled under grey hair. They were beautiful. I didn’t relish the thought of murdering such fine creatures.

  “What’s the best way to do this?” I asked.

  “Use the bow,” said Henka. “Minimal damage. No one will even know they’re dead. At least, not for a while.”

  Was I really going to hesitate at killing a couple of horses?

  I needed them. I needed to catch the wizards moving my heart.

  Unslinging the bow I’d taken from Chalaam and his companions, I nocked an arrow and shot the nearest horse. One arrow from a short-bow will not kill a horse. Though maybe a better archer than I could manage it. It took three arrows before I managed a lucky shot and the horse dropped. They aren’t stupid creatures; they understood immediately. But the poor beasts were trapped in their paddock. Still, I missed as often as I hit.

  The second horse staggered about, bleeding profusely from the many arrows puncturing its hide. Its screams drew the farmer from whatever field he’d been working, an event I’d rather foolishly hoped to avoid. He must have been somewhere deep in the corn as I had no idea he was there until he suddenly appeared, roaring and charging straight at us. Spinning in surprise, I loosed an arrow that went over his shoulder. With a knife clutched in one fist, he rushed me. I fumbled for a weapon of my own, but Chalaam stepped forward and chopped into his neck with a long-knife as he passed. Eyes wide, the farmer fell.

  Chalaam raised his weapon to finish the man when Henka said, “No.” She darted a look to me, hesitating. “I…” She looked away. “I need the blood.”

  The man writhed at our feet, desperately trying to stanch the wound. It was futile, the wound too wide, too deep. He was a dead man. Nothing I could do would save him, and Henka needed the blood to pass for living.

  “I need the blood to be warm for you,” she added in a small voice.

  I wanted that. I wanted to touch her. I wanted her warm and alive, not cold and dead. That hot tongue licking the blood from my wound.

  I nodded. This man was dead anyway, I told myself.

  “Collect as much as you
can,” she ordered Chalaam, handing the dead man a wine skin.

  A scream came from the farmstead. A woman stood there, a small child in her arms.

  “Kill her,” commanded Henka.

  The woman fled inside, banging the door closed behind her.

  Chalaam set off, pace even, unhurried.

  “No,” I said, grabbing a cold arm to drag him to a halt.

  Shaking me off, he continued up the hill. I knew then who his real master was.

  “We have to,” said Henka. “She’ll tell people. The wizards will come after us. They’ll break me apart. They’ll bury me.”

  “I won’t let them. We’ll be on undead horses. No one can catch us. Call him back.”

  She watched Chalaam march up the hill a moment longer. “Chalaam,” she finally called, “come back.”

  He did as instructed. I’m not sure if I imagined it, but I thought he shot me a look of gratitude as he passed. With his unquestioning obedience and apparent lack of personality, it was easy to forget he was still the man he’d once been. Not that he’d been a paragon of virtue, but a man willing to rape and kill might still baulk at murdering babies. Henka could command him to do anything, and he had no choice but to obey.

  What cruel hell would that be?

  He hadn’t wanted to kill that woman and child any more than I wanted him to. Yet he set off without a word of complaint.

  And here I was, planning to create battalions of enslaved necromancers who would enslave countless dead to make me an army unlike anything the world had seen.

  Not evil. Not evil at all, I chided myself.

  Chalaam bent to the task of bleeding the dying man into the wine skin.

  Shaking the image off, I returned to the business of killing the horses. The desire to be moving grew in me. The wizards were fleeing with my heart. If they got to wherever they were going, I had no doubt retrieving it would be markedly more difficult.

  Henka approached as I killed the third horse. “Not killing the woman, this may come back to haunt us later.”

  It might. I understood all too well that the ‘wise’ thing to do was kill any and all witnesses. The old me wanted to. That woman, her child, they were nothing. Small lives, easily crushed.

  “I’m not that man,” I whispered.

  “Pardon?”

  “I’m not that man,” I repeated, not caring if she understood.

  Maybe she saw something in my eyes, because she stepped close and pulled me into a tight, cold, hug.

  “You’re better,” she whispered into my ear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  After sending Chalaam to the barn to fetch saddles, we rode hard through the rest of evening. Night fell, clouds swooping in as the sun picked up speed in its mad plummet into the western horizon. The horses, raised by Henka’s necromantic magic, never slowed nor tired. We only reduced our pace in the dark for fear of them tripping on an unseen hole and either killing me or damaging the others. In the end, it was my own exhaustion that drove me to call a halt. If I didn’t get an hour of two of sleep, I’d surely fall from my undead mount. My weakness disgusted me.

  After shovelling some hard biscuits and salted meat into my mouth, I cleared an area of stones and curled up in the grass.

  “Wake me in two hours,” I instructed.

  Henka sat, cross-legged, beside me. With the clouds growing ever thicker, she was rendered to a curved slice of shadow.

  “I could kill you,” she said.

  Curled in my sleeping blanket, I froze.

  “I could cut your heart out. I could make you like me. You wouldn’t tire. I could teach you necromancy. We’d be together. Forever.”

  I lay in the dark, contemplating this. While shedding the weaknesses of life held some attraction, I saw problems. Would it even work with my incomplete obsidian heart? More importantly, could I trust her to give me my heart after? In raising me, she’d have complete control. I’d be her slave.

  I couldn’t chance it.

  She shifted in the dark, touching the ground between us with a pale finger. “You don’t trust me with your heart. I understand.”

  “I’m not ready to die.”

  She brushed cold fingertips across the back of my hand. “I could never hurt you. You saved me.”

  That wasn’t quite true, but I saw nothing to gain in correcting her.

  Rain, pounding the earth to mud, woke me less than two hours later. Crawling from my sodden blanket, I rang it out as best I could before stuffing it into my pack. Henka stood watching, motionless as stone. Even in the dark I saw how her wet clothes clung to her. Water ran down her face like tears, dripped from her petite nose. She showed no hint of discomfort. I, however, shivered uncontrollably.

  Seeing me examine her, she smiled, a slight quirk at the corner of perfect lips. “Will you hold me? Just for a moment?”

  I nodded and she stepped into my arms. Our clothes soaked, I felt her against me, every curve, every softness. She was so different from Shalayn’s muscularity. I hated myself for comparing the two. Though she melted into me, no warmth came from her. Wrapping her arms about my neck, I felt algid lips against my throat.

  “I’m sorry I’m cold,” she whispered.

  I pulled her tight, kissed her neck.

  Corpse. No pulse. No heat of life. A side of rain-chilled meat.

  “You’re so warm,” she said. “Like a fire.” She licked water from the hollow of my throat. Dead tongue.

  “We should keep moving.”

  Remounting our horses, their ears drooping, we rode east, though at a safer pace. The rain broke just before dawn. Clouds fled the morning sun and for the first time in hours, I thought I might not freeze to death. Our mounts looked miserable, dejected.

  With every passing hour we closed the distance. The call of my heart thrummed through me.

  An hour later we passed the remains of a sodden campfire. At Henka’s command, Chalaam dismounted to search the ground.

  “One person,” he said. “Mounted. Rode east.”

  One? Had the Guild only sent a single wizard to move the shard? Did they think so little of me, or did they not know how close I was?

  Or, was the single mage more than enough to handle a demonologist who knew almost nothing of his power? They must not know of Henka. The thought made me feel better, though I wasn’t sure what she could do against a Battle Mage.

  With the sun up, we pressed the horses hard, thundering across the grasslands and cutting through tilled fields of wheat and clover. My chest tightened with every passing mile, hunger and excitement building. What would I learn? Who would I be? I had no real plan. Without knowing what we faced, it was difficult to decide how to approach.

  “What are we going to do when we see him?” Henka asked.

  Him? Why was she sure the wizard would be a man? It didn’t matter.

  I shrugged and said, “Ride him down before he can cast a spell.”

  Hopefully we’d catch him off-guard and unprepared.

  We caught sight of him mid-morning. His horse plodded east, sagging with exhaustion. Its head hung low, swung back and forth with every step, ears flat. The rider didn’t look much better. Shoulders hunched, long black hair hung down his back in tangled knots. Riding at speed, the wind had dried us somewhat. He looked sodden.

  I knew that shape.

  While we were still a distance off, he reined his horse to a stop, wheeling it about to face us.

  Midnight black skin. Obsidian eyes that drank light.

  “Don’t kill him,” I said.

  We approached, slowing, fanning out and surrounding him with our much larger mounts. His horse hardly noticed us, it was so tired. There would be no mad attempt to escape, no dash for freedom.

  He eyed me with distaste. “Hello, Khraen.”

  “Hello,” I answered, “Khraen.”

  I stared at myself. Unlike me, he had not suffered recent starvation, the effects of which I was still working off. Yet he remained gaunt and thin.
r />   “What do you remember?” he asked.

  I dismounted. “Enough.”

  “Were that true, you wouldn’t be here.”

  What did that mean?

  “You know why I’m here,” I said.

  “Don’t do it. Let him die.”

  I knew he meant the Emperor.

  “The wizards seek to destroy me,” I said. “I won’t let them break me again.”

  “The wizards?” He laughed, a mirthless chuckle. “Ride away. You have a new life.” He glanced at Henka and his eyes narrowed. “You look familiar.” He shook his head as if trying to dislodge a memory. “Ride away and be with your woman. You can be happy. If you succeed in bringing him back, you’ll find only misery.”

  “How do you know? What do you remember?” Hunger ate at me.

  “We did terrible things. I know nightmare truths. He was evil. If the wizards did this to us, they did so with good reason.”

  Unslinging my bow, I strung it and nocked an arrow. He watched.

  “I need to know everything you know.”

  He turned pleading eyes on Henka. “You love him. I see it in you. Don’t let him do this. It will end whatever you share. It will end any chance at happiness.”

  Henka studied him, head tilted, the ghost of a smile dancing her lips. “You’re wrong. He will be better than he was. I am his. He is mine. Always and forever.”

  “You…I almost remember…”

  I knew what he meant. I too had fleeting memories of a woman with pale skin, dark eyes, and long, straight black hair.

  Henka shrugged, unconcerned at being compared to someone from our past. She turned to me. “Shall I have Chalaam kill him?”

  Dismounting, Chalaam drew his long-knife. Unless this piece of me was more skilled in combat than I, this corpse would have little trouble dispatching him. The dead had too many advantages.

  “No,” I said.

  I put an arrow in his chest and he grunted. He tried to wheel his horse about to flee but the beast staggered. I put another arrow in his back. He fell to the ground.

  Drawing my own blade, I approached cautiously.

  He watched me, eyes slitted, lips peeled back in a grimace of agony. “Don’t.”