Had I ever been a parent? Had the dark-eyed, pale-skinned woman I almost remembered been my wife? My lover? Ten thousand years I walked the earth. Surely, I must have fathered children in that time. How many of my descendants were out there, ignorant of their past? Did I owe them anything? How many generations had come and gone since my death? Sixty? One hundred?
“The Empire’s armies were swollen with corpses,” said Henka. “Millions and millions of dead, marching to the command of the necromancers. We conquered the world.”
I examined a mill as we strolled past it. The huge millstone turned, a rumble more felt than heard, even though no water moved it, and no millwright required its use. More demons. Bound, they followed their last commands and would until the end of time. Or until the wizards worked up the nerve to come and destroy them. Truly, I had made an empire for the ages.
Yet, it fell.
“They, I mean,” corrected Henka.
Lost in my own thoughts, I’d only been half listening. “They?”
“They conquered the world. For the Emperor.”
They also turned against me, sided with the wizards. I’d given them too much power, too much freedom. A mistake I would not repeat.
Henka. Could I do that to her? Could I enslave her? I didn’t want to. The thought twisted my gut with guilt. But I also had to protect myself from betrayal. Whatever happened last time, could never happen again.
“You know a lot about history,” I said.
Focussed on a burnished bronze weathervane shaped like a strutting rooster, mounted atop a stone house, she didn’t seem to have heard.
“The necromancers had their own libraries. They were the keepers of the past. It’s all gone now, burned by the wizards. Every now and then a book turns up. I read everything I can find.”
Keepers of the past. Did the necromancers remember me? It occurred to me it was entirely possible that some among their numbers might be old enough to have known me. The dead never die.
“Do you suppose there are any necromancers left from the old Empire?” I asked
“After the Great War, the wizards hunted them down. The mages turned on everyone, not just the necromancers. Elementalists, shamans, sorcerers. There must be some left, hiding far away, but not many. Anyway, it’s too long.” She flashed a quick smile at me, winking a dark eye. “That kind of time would drive anyone mad.”
Would it? I was ten thousand years old when the wizards turned against me. I remembered my sacrificial chambers, the abattoir stench of thousands of dead, the copper reek of blood. I remembered the sword, Kantlament. An end to sorrow. A war to end all. Had I gone mad at the end? Was that why they rebelled?
No. They were power-hungry, hated not being at the top. And wizards could be immortal too. Surely, then, they’d have been just as mad.
“We have company,” said Henka.
At first, I thought it was a huge man, half again my height and wrapped in thick ropes of muscle. Like mine, his skin was black. As he moved closer I saw my mistake. His knees bent the wrong way, giving him a chicken-like bobbing gait. A monstrous axe, steel stained crimson, haft of ebony, hung in one massive fist. His eyes were all black, lacking whites.
“We should run,” I said, retreating.
“No,” said Henka, eyes fierce. She made no move, stood her ground without flinching.
I couldn’t leave her, couldn’t abandon her to this demon. Drawing steel, the knives felt small in my hands.
The demon lumbered to a halt ten paces away, and I realized it was female. Or at least guessed it was by the curve of its hip and chest, though it wore a kilt of leather hiding any real proof.
It stood, examining me, slit nostrils flaring as it tested the air, milky membranes flicking across black eyes. The beast ignored Henka.
“You,” it said.
“Me,” I agreed.
Slinging the axe over its shoulder, it called out, “I can’t kill him!”
Relief sighed through me. I was damned sure I couldn’t kill it.
“Khraen,” said the demon, again facing me, “I can’t take sides in this. Though he bound me, you are shards of one soul.”
Shards.
A young man dressed in black pants and a red shirt reminding me of the sails on the Habnikaav, the flagship in my dreams, strode from a nearby building. Black skinned and dark-eyed, he had a couple of years on me. He hadn’t shaved his beard either, though it looked well maintained. I liked it that way. His hair, like mine, hung thick and black around his shoulders. Though we were the same man, he was bigger, better fed and more muscular.
A sword hung at his hip and my heart skipped a beat. But it was just a sword, not my sword.
“Khraen,” he said, grinning bright teeth.
“Khraen,” I answered.
“I’ve felt your approach for days.”
“You didn’t come out to meet us.”
“Safer here,” he said.
“And you didn’t run.”
“Why would I?”
Glancing back the way we’d come, I said, “The last one did.”
He gave me a confused look. “I’ve been waiting. I want what you want.”
I nodded at the demon. “Did you summon and bind that, or find it?”
“Summoned and bound, though I had to find a Soul Stone to do so. Harvesting souls is beyond me.”
It was my turn to smile. “I know how to do that.”
We stood for a moment, grinning at each other. This was not at all what I’d expected.
“What’s its name?” I asked, nodding at the demon.
“You’ll know soon enough.”
“Its name,” said the demon with a sigh of annoyance, “is Valcarb.”
“She gets a little touchy,” he explained. He drew his sword. “Shall we?”
A shock of fear ran through me. “I rather thought to take your heart.”
“And trade this strong and healthy body for your scrawny malnourished one?”
He had a point.
“We could fight,” I suggested.
“And risk injury? Why?”
Damn, he had another point. We did want the same thing, and he was me. What did it matter who took whose heart? And he was right, his body looked to have suffered fewer hardships and was in much better shape. While I’d filled out since leaving the north, he had eaten well and been strong his entire life. Not to mention the great beard.
Henka moved close, pulled me into a hug. “Kill him,” she whispered into my ear.
“Who is that?” asked Khraen, as if finally noticing her. “She looks familiar.” He examined her, dark brows furrowing as if trying to retrieve some deep buried memory.
“Kill him” she whispered again. “When he gets close, kill him.”
“Why?” I asked. “We’re the same man. Or parts of the same man.”
“Why is she whispering?” called the other Khraen.
I knew that distrust. Had he, too, known betrayal? Or was it perhaps deeper, written into our very blood?
“Please,” she begged, still whispering. “You have to kill him.”
There it was. Who did I trust more, Henka, or myself? If I asked more questions, I might give something away, lose any chance of killing this other me. On the other hand, why was it so important I took his heart instead of the other way around? If we both wanted—
That was it. What if he had no intention of taking the stone from my heart and joining it with his own? What if he, like the last me I met, didn’t want to change? But he’d spent souls to summon and bind a demon. And I saw the hunger in his eyes when I mentioned I knew how to harvest souls. He wanted that. He needed it. Soul Stones still carrying their burden of souls must be terribly rare. There hadn’t been demonologists in thousands of years.
Henka released me, stepped away. Dark eyes watching, she left me to make the decision.
Who did I trust more, me or her?
But he wasn’t me, not really. Not quite. His past, the years since waking, would h
ave shaped him as mine shaped me. They’d have been different. How long had he hidden here, safe and comfortable in this demonic village? How different from mine were his early years? I murdered a trapper for his boots and clothes, scraped out a meagre existence in a hut of mud and sticks. I split my own head with an axe.
Shalayn.
Tien.
Henka.
Nhil.
When we took on shards, we learned of our ancient past, but nothing of the experiences gained since our rebirth. He wouldn’t remember Shalayn. Tien would forever go unpunished. He wouldn’t know about Nhil, or the floating castle.
Turning, I examined his clothes. They were spotless, new. Were they made here in this town, or did he travel to nearby villages to purchase them?
“You and I are the same,” I said. “We want the same thing.” I held my hands away from my weapons.
“Good.” He raised his sword, moving closer.
”Do you know how to use that?” I asked.
“I woke knowing.”
“Good. I learned these knives the hard way.” I moved to meet him.
“Khraen,” said Valcarb.
“Yes?” we both answered.
The demon’s nostrils flared. “Someone is out there. Something,” she corrected.
Henka cursed under her breath.
“Go find out what it is,” commanded Khraen.
Valcarb set off, backwards knees propelling her from sight in an instant.
Closing the distance, I asked, “Should we wait until she’s dealt with whatever is out there? We might need two of us, and the pain of taking on a shard incapacitates us.”
“It does?”
Ah. He hadn’t killed any of us yet. That other shard hadn’t been far from here, days at most. And I’d sensed both. Even now I could already feel another shard calling me south. Why had he stayed here? Why hadn’t he gone after the others? Had he not known they were there, or did he have reasons for not leaving?
Was he afraid?
I nodded. “Takes us out for two days.”
“Valcarb can handle anything out there,” he said with utter confidence. “And anything she can’t kill would make short work of us.”
Drawing my knives, I lunged. He spun away, slapping a knife from my hand.
“I know you at least that well.”
Hadn’t I said something similar to the other me before I killed him?
He advanced, sword ready, moving with relaxed confidence. With only a single knife, I retreated.
“Why?” he asked. “I thought we want the same thing.”
“I think we do.”
“Then why?”
I glanced at Henka. “Because I trust her more than I trust me.”
“Your trust is going to get you killed.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I faced myself, wondering if, for reasons I couldn’t comprehend, this was exactly what Henka wanted. It made no sense. If she wanted me dead, she could have stabbed me a thousand times as I lay sleeping. What could she possibly hope to gain?
Khraen lunged at me and I retreated. Between his greater skill and the reach advantage the sword gave him, my future looked grim. Except, of course, I was pretty damned sure he’d cut my heart out and join it to his. If we wanted the same thing, why were we fighting?
Henka.
I darted a look at her but she seemed more interested in where the demon had gone off to. Eyes narrowed, she watched the streets around us. She looked more annoyed than scared.
My distraction cost me. Not only was he stronger and more skilled, but he was faster, too. Steel tore a line of fire along my ribs. I tried to back away but found my legs unwilling to move. My knees buckled, dropping me to the cobbled street. I knelt, looking up at him. I’d dropped my knife when I fell.
Khraen stood over me. “Why?” he asked again. “It didn’t have to be like this. I would have made it painless.”
That would have been nice.
“I know,” I said. I sat back, stanching hot blood with a hand.
“Then why? You can’t possibly trust her more than you trust yourself. Look where it got you!” He shook his head in disgust. “How could we be so different? How could you be such a fool?”
“I don’t—”
An arrow stood in his chest. Then two more.
He, too, crumpled to the road. We knelt there, looking at each other, seeing ourselves and seeing someone completely different.
He laughed, coughing blood. “See where trust gets you?”
And yet, I still trusted her.
“She betrayed us,” he said, looking over my shoulder at the woman I loved. “I wish I could remember where—”
An arrow took him in the throat. He gurgled and fell dead.
I toppled to the side and lay groaning, pouring my blood out on the clean stone of the street. Shadow fell across me and I looked up to see Henka. Kneeling at my side, she fussed with the wound.
“You’ll be fine,” she said, pressing a handful of material against me to slow the bleeding. “You heal quickly.”
“How do you know that?”
She blinked dark eyes at me. “My rotting mountain lion tore open your back. You should have died then, either of the wound or from infection. At the least it should have crippled you.”
I’d forgotten about that.
Valcarb returned, blade sheathed, half a dozen arrows sticking from her. Too weak to do anything less embarrassing than crawl away, I lay watching. Henka, unworried, ignored the demon.
Valcarb stopped, stood over me with narrowed eyes of black. “There was a score of corpses running around with longbows,” she said, glancing at the other me. “Where do you suppose they came from?” she asked, pointedly ignoring the necromancer as she pulled arrows free and tossed them aside.
A score? I looked to Henka.
“I worried,” she admitted. “I’ve been gathering a small army of dead to keep you safe.” She touched a cold hand to my cheek. “I’m sorry.”
“A small army?”
“I had Chalaam wander at night, kill anyone he found and drag them back. I raised them while you slept. Sent them to get more. They hunted. Brought down wolves and rats and rabbits and I used those as spies.”
She saw something in my face. “I was afraid you’d tell me to release them, but Chalaam and I weren’t enough. I couldn’t risk losing you.”
Would I have done that? I wasn’t sure. “You sent them ahead of us,” I said.
“They reported the demon to me. I didn’t know she wouldn’t be able to hurt you. I had to be ready for anything.”
“But he’d take my heart, or I’d take his. It didn’t matter.”
Anger flashed across pale features. “You know me, he does not. What am I to him?”
“He’s me. He would have loved you just as I do.”
“You don’t know that.” Cold fingers brushed hair from my face. “And it does matter. He isn’t you, hasn’t lived your life. This way,” she nodded at his corpse, “when you take his heart, it is your life that will be the base, your memories that will continue on. He had it easy. He was cruel and self-centred. He never knew love, or the pain of betrayal.”
While I could assume she meant my love for her, I’d never spoken of Shalayn, or of Tien’s betrayal. Could she mean something else?
“The order matters,” she said. “It has to be you taking the shards. Your experiences in this life will shape the man you will be.”
The order matters?
“By deciding the path of one shard,” she said, “we can exert some control over who you become.”
Decide the path? Exert control? “Why?” I asked.
“Whoever you were, ended up like this.” She waved a hand as if to encompass all the shards of me littered about the world. She looked miserable beyond words but no tears fell. The dead don’t cry. “If I let you become that man again, the same fate awaits you.”
“If you let me?”
If she heard the anger, she
ignored it. “I love you too much to hurt you. You must know that by now. You know I would do anything for you. You trusted me, you killed him. I know you love me too.”
I did. Blood loss left me weak and confused, my thoughts fraying apart with pain. Her plan seemed impossible, but ever was I the kind of man who wanted control. Even if it was somewhat illusory. Maybe I couldn’t guarantee what kind of man I would be at the end, but I did prefer the idea of being the consciousness that survived. Of course, the others, assuming others lived, would likely feel the same. I realized, when I faced Khraen moments ago, that neither of us had truly been willing to sacrifice himself. And she was right: The old me died. The old me failed. I couldn’t be that man.
I grimaced a fractured smile at Henka. “Thank you.”
“You’re not angry?”
“I am, but you’re right. So, I’m mostly angry at myself.” Mostly. “Every piece we meet would rather die than give himself to me.”
I looked over her shoulder at Valcarb. The demon stood watching. “So?” I asked. “What now? Will you kill us to avenge your master’s death?”
Valcarb snorted through the vertical slits of her nose. “You’re still alive.” She tilted her head, examining the corpse. “That’s why I couldn’t kill you when he wanted me to. You and he are the same. Were the same.”
“You’re bound to me now?” Having a demon in my service could prove handy.
“I am.”
“Good.” I crawled to Khraen’s body. “I’m going to cut his heart out and take the shard in. I’ll be unconscious for a day or two. Protect me. Do whatever Henka says.”
“As you wish.” The demon bowed low.
Finding the knife I dropped during our struggles, I eyed Khraen’s corpse. I wasn’t at all sure I was up to cracking his ribs open.
“Valcarb, can you open him for me?”
She did so with ease, sliding clawed fingers under the lower ribs and then snapping them apart in a single pull.
Setting aside my regret at the waste of such a good body—it would have been nice to wear that muscled form—I cut free his heart. The obsidian shard was the largest I’d yet seen. What had he been like? How had his life of ease and safety here shaped him?
I’d never know.
Henka, I decided, was a lot smarter than I gave her credit for. She clearly thought all this through long before I. She loved me, and yet she wanted me to be a certain kind of man, someone different than the man I’d been. That was fine. Someday I would once again be the emperor, but I would not make his mistakes.
Black Stone Heart (The Obsidian Path Book 1) Page 24