Black Stone Heart (The Obsidian Path Book 1)

by Michael R. Fletcher

  Maybe we were perfect together.

  “The difference between me and him” I said, “is that I remember more of Khraen. He knew more demonology, but I know more of the man.” Was this all an excuse, a pitiful justification for my actions? “He was only happy because…” I saw it, I understood. “…because he wasn’t me.”

  “Happiness is fleeting,” said Henka. She seemed to have relaxed, loosening her grip on my hand. “The longer you go on—the older you are—the more fleeting it becomes.”

  How old was she? I didn’t know, had never asked. When I met her, I’d assumed she’d only recently been turned into a necromancer. I decided that if I could have my secrets, she could have hers. She’d tell me when she was ready.

  “Can we build a lasting happiness?” I asked. “Together?”

  “We can build something lasting,” she said, not quite answering my question.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Chalaam returned from hunting rabbits, hobbling on a crude crutch he cut from a branch. Shattered at the knee, his right leg dragged behind him. A single rabbit hung limp over his shoulder, a breeze ruffling the powdery grey of its fur.

  “Vicious rabbit?” I joked.

  He stared at me, unblinking.

  “He’s damaged,” said Henka, leaning close to examine the knee.

  “Look at him. He’s miserable. Let him go.”

  “He’s useful. Who will hunt for you? Who will light fires? Who will stand watch at night while we’re…” She gave me a smouldering look which lit a fire of its own.

  She was right. He was useful. “I can hunt for myself. I can light my own fires. I’ve done these things for myself for a long time.” Years in the north.

  “But you shouldn’t have to.” She straightened, tutting at the damaged joint. “We could, I suppose, replace him at the next town, find someone more useful.”

  While I agreed, and it had been nice having someone do all those menial tasks, I couldn’t condone murder for the simple expedience of convenience.

  Demons sweeping the streets, working the mines, slaving at every task imaginable. I pushed the thought aside.

  “Please,” I said. “Let him go.”

  “Please,” echoed Chalaam.

  “He was going to hurt you. He deserves this.”

  “He has suffered enough.”

  Chalaam looked awful. In some areas his skin had sloughed away, exposing grey muscle. Countless scratches laced his face and arms where he’d blundered, unheeding, through thorns in pursuit of my next meal. With a little work, he could still pass as a living man, though not in the best of health. Soon, that would no longer be true.

  It hit me then. I’d been thinking of using Henka to create armies of enslaved necromancers who would, in turn, create armies of enslaved undead. Why was I concerned with this one man who’d tried to kill me, and rape Henka? If I couldn’t stand to see him enslaved, how could I do it to thousands?

  Would I be someone who didn’t hesitate to spend souls, or cut the throats of thousands to make a sword? Would I be the ruler of a world-spanning empire? Would I be powerful? Strong?

  I didn’t want to be a victim ever again. What Tien did to me, using me and leaving me to die, that was that last time anyone would ever use or take advantage of me.

  The wizards betrayed me, too. They would pay for that. I would topple their pathetic kingdom, bring down their towers. The empire of demons would return. I’d show the world sights unseen in millennia.

  This time, it would be forever.

  Shalayn was right. I would become someone unrecognisable to the man she knew.

  “End him,” I told Henka. “We’ll find someone better in the next city.”

  “Thank you,” he said, tossing the dead rabbit at my feet.

  Nodding acceptance, Henka led Chalaam away.

  Shalayn. I knew she wouldn’t like this choice, wouldn’t like this me. I made her a promise.

  “She’s dead,” I told the rabbit’s corpse. “What’s a promise to a dead woman worth?”

  What were any of my promises worth?

  By the time Henka returned, I’d cleaned and gutted the rabbit and had it turning over a fire. I was getting tired of rabbit, but it was a damned sight better than bugs and roots. I turned the spit occasionally, not caring if I burned the meat a little.

  Henka stepped across the fire and examined me. “Are we really going to replace him?”

  “And then some,” I said, hesitating to tell her of my plans.

  “And then some,” she repeated, grinning.

  Maybe I didn’t have to tell her. Maybe she already knew.

  “South?” she asked. “To the coast and beyond?”

  “South,” I agreed. “Though we have to make another stop first. I sense another shard of my heart nearby.”

  “How close?”

  I looked east. “Hard to tell. A couple of days.”

  She seemed to relax a little, nodding as if pleased with herself. Was she less excited about going to PalTaq than I thought?

  “Is this one moving?” she asked.

  “Not that I can tell.” I hesitated. “Henka, you don’t have to come to PalTaq with me.” She froze. “Not if you don’t want to.”

  “I’m coming,” she said in a way that left no room for argument.

  “You seemed happy that there was a diversion, something I had to do first.”

  Glancing east, she shrugged, wrinkling her nose. She was quiet for a while, unmoving and unblinking. You don’t realize how accustomed you are to the regular movement of people drawing breath until they don’t do it.

  “Oceans scare me,” she said, finally. “Sinking away from the light. Eaten by fish.”

  “I’ll keep you safe,” I promised, not at all sure I could.

  She flashed a look of purest gratitude. “I thought you were going to leave me, were looking for a reason.”

  “Never.”

  She pulled me into a cool hug. The heat from the blood magic she’d worked the previous night had almost completely faded. She must have sensed my discomfort because she backed away, eyes downcast. I felt like an ass.

  “I’ll get more blood,” she promised. “With Chalaam gone I won’t have to use so much maintaining us both. It’ll last longer.” She met my eyes. “I’ll be warm for you.”

  How much had she needed to maintain them both? I’d never thought to ask.

  “I’d like that.” I meant it.

  Three hours east, Henka reined her dead horse to a stop. I pulled up alongside her.

  “I have a confession,” she said, looking back the way we came.

  I couldn’t imagine what she might have done.

  “I left Chalaam. I didn’t end him. I told him to lie down on the ground and never move. I wanted to punish him for trying to hurt you.” She glanced at me, biting her lower lip. “I’m sorry.”

  I thought about Chalaam lying there, slowly going mad, someday to be buried in the earth or pulled apart by scavengers. I found no anger in me at Henka’s choice.

  “Perhaps,” I said, “when we venture north, we can try and find him. End his misery.” I took her hand. “If you want.”

  “Perhaps.” She smiled, happiness lighting her face, making her beautiful beyond words.

  We rode east, Henka chatting happily about everything and nothing, while I enjoyed the strange normalcy of the moment.

  Those people back in Taramlae who flinched away from me, glared barbs of loathing at the colour of my skin, they showed me something. They showed me how much rejection hurt, how deep it sank into you, poisoning your perceptions. Somehow, I suspected, it was a lesson I hadn’t learned in my previous life. I wouldn’t do that to Henka. I wouldn’t reject her because she was different. I would hold on to her for who she was, not because of the shell she wore. Henka was the woman inside the corpse, gorgeous as that corpse might be.

  “Do you ever think about memories?” she suddenly asked.

  I laughed. “All the time.”
r />   “When we’re born, we follow a path, even if we don’t see it. As adults, that path, each step a decision, shapes us. Our memories define who we are.”

  I wasn’t sure I agreed, but kept silent. If my memories defined me, I had no choice but to once again become the man I had been. I didn’t want that. I wanted his power. I wanted to protect myself from those who spat at me on the street, and from the wizards, but I didn’t want to be the man who cut thousands of throats for a damned sword. Much as I now wanted that sword.

  I didn’t want the diamond in the wizard’s tower, because spending those souls was evil.

  I was excited that I now knew how to store souls in a stone.

  I’d wanted Henka to free Chalaam, but wasn’t bothered when she didn’t, and was already planning on replacing him with a better undead slave.

  I was appalled at the number of souls I’d fed Felkrish, and couldn’t be bothered to keep track of them.

  I loved Henka and wanted to be with her forever.

  I wanted to enslave her so she could never betray me.

  I didn’t want to be the man I was, and yet I planned to rebuild his empire.

  I was, I realized, at war with myself. Every time I did something righteous—like telling Henka to free Chalaam—some part of me sabotaged the act. I didn’t even see it happening.

  Conflicting desires tore me apart.

  “What if those same memories—that same path, those steps, those choices—were walked in a different order?” asked Henka. “What if you only knew love after suffering pain and betrayal? What if you only knew victory after suffering defeat?” She darted a glance at me. “Would that change us? Would we end up different people?”

  We rode on in silence, me lost in thought.

  Was she on to something? Would the order I took on shards of my heart, and the memories they contained, define who I became? How could I do that? I had no idea what memories resided in each piece. Could I collect all the pieces together, without taking them into myself, and then make educated guesses as to what was in each? Or was there some branch of magic that could tell me? I had few memories on the topic, but knew powerful shamans were capable of reading souls. Those pieces of my heart found in other versions of me offered some hope, as that Khraen might be able to tell me what he knew. Of course, the fact I planned to cut their hearts out might sour the relationship.

  It was hope. A sad, desperate hope, but better than nothing.

  I clung to that pathetic hope like a drowning man.

  “It’s a good idea,” I told Henka. “But we have no way of knowing what memories are in each shard.” I felt oddly comfortable discussing this with her.

  “But if we could,” she said, “if we knew?”

  “I think it might work.”

  “I think so too.”

  Two days later, it became clear we were riding toward the ruins of an ancient village. Not nearly as impressive as the demon-haunted city I saw earlier, it still was very different from the many wizard-ruled towns I’d seen. Every night, fire sparked to life within bulbs mounted on tall poles, lighting empty streets. The flames danced in a familiar pattern. Swirling mini-tornados, little taller than a dog, swept the streets free of dust and debris, dumping it in fields long gone wild. No one lived here. We hadn’t seen another human in days. Though nothing looked wrong with the surrounding grounds, what wild plants there were grew tall and strong, yet no one was interested in farming them.

  This village could have housed five thousand or more souls, but stood empty. The buildings weren’t simply in good repair, they looked new. No blemish marred a single stone. Windows, unbroken after thousands of years, glinted bright and clean. It was beautiful, orderly.

  We stopped beyond the town’s limits. The sun would soon slip beneath the horizon and the town’s elemental lights would spark to life.

  “Is it really as dangerous as people say?” I asked Henka. “Or is that another lie told by the wizards, often repeated and never questioned?”

  Henka examined the town. “A bit of both, I suspect.”

  We watched as, in a heartbeat, the streets were suddenly lit.

  “Elementals,” I said. “I bound all the branches of magic together in the greatest civilization the world has ever seen. Why do the wizards not make use of elementalists?”

  “Fear. Paranoia. A need for dominance and power.”

  Henka dismounted. Her horse, hair fraying under the saddle where it chafed, stood motionless. It didn’t look around, showed no interest in the rich grass between its hooves. It looked as sad and depressed as Chalaam had.

  “Even horses don’t like being dead,” I said.

  Henka frowned at the beast. Reaching out, she touched its nose, a soft caress. “Have you ever cared about the feelings of a horse before?”

  I hadn’t done much riding since my return to life, but suspected the old me wouldn’t have concerned himself with the feelings of beasts of burden. Was this progress? Or had I not yet found enough of my heart to lose empathy for these noble creatures?

  I examined the village. Who would I find in there?

  “Do you feel strongly enough that I should send these horses back to the earth?” asked Henka. “We could walk.”

  Would I walk all the way to the coast just to prove I wasn’t the old me? “No.”

  She gestured at the town. “Then shall we?”

  I dismounted to stand at her side. “In the morning.”

  We lit no fire that night, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves. There was no knowing who, or what, might live out here.

  After I finished my meal of cold rabbit, Henka shuffled closer. She leaned against me as she often did, cheek cold even through the cotton of my shirt.

  Part of me stirred at the proximity of her shapely body. The rest of me twitched in revulsion at the thought of cuddling a corpse.

  “I wish I could make myself warm for you,” she said, dark eyes downcast.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I dreamed of dead lips and a gelid tongue, chill fingers fumbling at my pants and working me to hardness. I dreamed of a cold mouth and entering a corpse slick with rot. I woke, sweating, to find myself alone. The eastern sky showed the faintest flush0 of dawn. It was still an hour or more before sunrise.

  I squinted into the dark. “Henka?”

  Nothing.

  Sitting, I looked toward the horses. Hers was missing. Where would she have gone? Was she out hunting for food, or had she left in search of blood? After that dream, I had mixed feelings. I wanted her, alive and warm, but wasn’t sure I could forget the thought of her corpse flesh against me.

  Henka returned as the sun crested the horizon.

  “Everything alright?” I asked, as she dismounted.

  “I wanted to make sure we weren’t being followed.”

  Followed? By whom? We hadn’t seen another living soul in days.

  “And?”

  She grinned, pale and beautiful in the dawn light. “I was being silly. There was nothing.”

  I remembered how sometimes, back in my mud shack, I got the feeling I was being watched. Those desperate starved and ragged animals would stumble from the forest to stare at me before once again disappearing. I understood her paranoia. Out here, far from everything, with a demon-infested town less than half an hour away, it was easy to think others must be here too. We had, however, seen no evidence of life.

  “Let’s leave the horses here,” I suggested. “We’ll go in on foot.”

  One of the many advantages of dead horses was knowing they wouldn’t wander.

  Henka agreed, and we set off together. She made no attempt to touch me.

  We walked through fields ripe for harvest. A warm breeze, sweet with the raucous profusion of life, turned the landscape into a calmed ocean of gentle waves of soft clover. Butterflies, some ghostly white, others a mad riot of bright colour, danced in drunken pirouettes. They reminded me of Shalayn and I stumbling up the stairs to our room in the Dripping Bucket. Two ligh
tning fast swallows darted about above us, chasing a huge hawk that was weaving in stately grace with wide-spread wings. Though they went for its eyes, it seemed somehow unworried.

  A herd of wild goats, brown and black, long ears flopping as they cavorted, stopped to watch us, heads tilted, inquisitive. How many generations had they wandered free? They showed no fear of us. We continued past, and two broke from the group to follow. Now and then, they bleated something that might have been a warning or a question. Eventually they turned back, either having given up on us or grown bored.

  The village began with a cobbled street, stones gleaming, polished clean.

  “There are demons here,” I said. “Many.”

  “Elementals too,” Henka agreed. “The wizards tell everyone to fear demonology, that it’s all evil, can only be used for evil. This town…”

  I saw something in her I didn’t understand, a longing. She saw this abandoned village as more than just a proof of the wizards’ lies, more than just a reminder how far we’d fallen from our former glory.

  “We should be safe enough,” I said. “Most will have been bound in such a way they couldn’t hurt the non-demonologist population.”

  “The Empire made use of necromancers too,” she said. “Or so I read. Undead were used for unpleasant or repetitive menial tasks. Citizens were raised after death to serve in armies. One could sign contracts stipulating terms of service at the end of which they were released, their souls freed to go elsewhere.”

  Elsewhere. What differentiated heavens and hells? Was it simply a matter of perspective? Was one man’s heaven another man’s hell? What—or who—decided where souls went after they died?

  We entered the village side by side, close, but not touching.

  People could live here, I was sure they’d be safe. Why didn’t they? Was it fear, or wizard propaganda?

  “Folks used to buy themselves out of debt,” continued Henka. “They’d sign contracts for decades, even centuries. Some did it to ensure comfortable lives for their children.” She looked about the town. “What parent wouldn’t sacrifice themselves to guarantee their child’s future?”