Black Stone Heart (The Obsidian Path Book 1)

by Michael R. Fletcher

  That stopped me. Was this a coincidence, or could someone have broken my heart with foreknowledge of what memories would be in each shard? Was it simply that I learned all these summonings at the same point in my old life? Why could I remember making Kantlament, but not where it was? Why could I remember a few minor summonings, but not my god? Why couldn’t I remember the castle in the floating mountains, or Nhil? Who was this dark-eyed, pale-skinned woman who seemed to haunt every shard of me?

  Questions without answers.

  Maybe I worried about nothing. Maybe there was no invisible hand guiding me along this obsidian path.

  I set aside my questions. Either way, I needed demonic weapons and armour. I needed souls. I felt exposed, weak and vulnerable.

  After exploring the basement and discovering it large enough for several families to live in comfort, with many of the same amenities I found in the floating mountain, we retreated to the surface.

  Henka watched, expectant and waiting, as I paced the cathedral. Valcarb, unhappy with not being able to see any approaching enemies, left to patrol the perimeter outside.

  “Why did he stay here?” I asked as I stalked past Henka. “He knew summonings that I didn’t, and yet the only demon he called was Valcarb. She hadn’t even really had to protect him until we showed up.”

  “And then she failed,” said Henka.

  “True.” But that wasn’t what bothered me. “He had a demon to protect him, and yet he hid here.”

  “If he set out, and the wizards found him, a single demon wouldn’t save him.”

  “I left the north with much less. Was he so afraid? He wasn’t startled when I arrived; he knew there were other pieces of me out there. Yet, he stayed. He could have hunted through abandoned cities until he found another Soul Stone and made demonic weapons and armour for himself.” I stopped in front of her and she looked up into my eyes. Words poured out of me with mounting frustration. “He should have been hunting other fragments. Hell, the last one I killed was only a few days from here. They must have known about each other. Certainly, I felt their presence. The fragment who knew how to make Soul Stones was within reach.”

  “He spent a soul to summon Valcarb,” Henka pointed out.

  “But he made no effort to get more souls.”

  Had he wanted to?

  I remembered being appalled at the idea of spending souls. Now, however, I wanted a demonic sword. I wanted demonic armour. I was at war with the wizards.

  Henka stepped closer, touched me with warm fingers. “It doesn’t matter. He isn’t you. You killed him. You took his heart. You are the path.”

  I breathed deep, calming. “I am the path.” Hadn’t I just been thinking something similar? Either way, it sounded right. I would decide who the new Khraen was.

  “Stop worrying about why others made different choices,” she said. “They aren’t you.”

  She was right, of course. The other Khraen hadn’t possessed the knowledge to harvest souls. Maybe he hadn’t even known it existed. I was continually learning things I’d never previously thought to question.

  Leaning close, standing on her tiptoes, Henka kissed, me, her tongue hot and wet. “What’s your plan?”

  “If I run into a wizard now, I’m a dead man.”

  “You need weapons and armour.”

  “I need weapons and armour,” I agreed. “I’m tired of being helpless.”

  “We’ll go to the nearest town and take a few souls?”

  There was a town not more than two days distant.

  “We’ll bring them back here. It’s a rather elaborate ceremony, not something I can do in a filthy back alley.” Though that wasn’t quite true. I had ancient memories of working dangerous magics in less than optimum circumstances.

  Unlike the other Khraen, I wouldn’t take children. I’d find criminals if I could, murderers and rapists. Failing that, at the least I’d take the elderly, those who’d already lived full lives.

  “Khraen, my love?”

  “Yes?”

  She hesitated. “These people… The ones you take… Can I…” She looked away, eyes downcast.

  I saw it. She wanted their blood to maintain herself, but was too ashamed to ask. She worried I’d turn on her, judge her evil, and reject her. If I was going to take their souls, why could she not have their blood? They were going to die anyway, I told myself.

  “I need some of the blood for the summoning,” I said, turning her so she faced me. “The rest is yours.”

  She grinned thanks and gave me a quick kiss. Already she was cooling.

  A thought occurred to me. “These corpses, after I’ve harvested the souls, can you raise them?”

  She shook her head, dark hair sliding across slim shoulders like a silken waterfall. “No. Raising the dead means recalling their souls to inhabit the corpse.”

  “Too bad.”

  She touched my chest, drew a line over my heart with a fingernail. “I can be warm again for you.”

  I grinned. “Not a total waste then.”

  My words hit me like a slap. Harvest. Blood. Not a total waste. I was going to this sleepy farm town to commit murder, to harvest people for blood and souls.

  “It’s alright,” said Henka, moulding herself against me. “You have to. You need to. Someday, the wizards will find us. They’ll break you apart again.”

  “Never again,” I swore.

  “Never again.”

  I called Valcarb inside and explained the plan. We’d take our two undead horses—the demon could easily match their pace—to the nearest town. If we were extremely lucky and stumbled across some criminals or otherwise disreputable folks, we’d take them. Failing that, we’d find a homestead on the outskirts with an elderly couple living alone. Depending on how things went, we might stop by two or three homes. A half dozen souls, I decided, should give me enough to summon the demons I wanted and leave me a couple to spare in the Soul Stone.

  I swallowed my doubts. This wasn’t what I wanted, but the wizards left me little choice.

  “I need these people alive,” I told the demon.

  Valcarb bowed acceptance. “If there is trouble, something unexpected?”

  “Keeping me and Henka safe is your priority.”

  It took a day and a half to reach the town. From the hill I selected as our vantage point, we looked down into a sleepy farm community of five hundred souls. I realized there was little chance of finding criminals of the type I sought here.

  Plenty of farms lay beyond the town proper offering us many to choose from. We watched, keeping a tally of how many were in each house, looking for places where the elderly lived alone.

  Valcarb, who saw better than Henka and I, spotted a family of seven at one house. When I realized one was a child of less than a year, and another not more than two, I discounted it. That was an evil I would not commit.

  As the sun sank toward the horizon, I realized what I’d first taken to be a church at the centre of town was actually a small wizard’s tower. Like the others, it had a single door and no windows.

  As I watched, that door swung open and a woman, dressed in robes of pristine white, exited. She crossed the town’s central square and entered a small inn.

  “A wizard,” said Henka.

  Cold rage.

  The fucking wizards ruined everything.

  Reining in my frustration and anger, I thought it through. “This changes everything.”

  “Why?”

  “If anyone notices people are missing before we’ve returned to our village, the wizard might come after us.”

  Getting caught by a wizard before I had a chance to summon and bind demons, would be the end of me.

  “We can find another village,” said Henka.

  What were the odds the wizard just happened to be in that tower when I was here? Did things like this happen all the time? In Taramlae, the wizards lived in mansions and houses, not in the towers. Had she somehow followed me here? Had Tien sent her? Did the mages already
know where I was?

  I wanted to question the wizard, but that was insane, too dangerous.

  I hated that the wizard was here, spoiling my plans. Rage boiled deep within me.

  There was, I realized, a way I could safely question the mage.

  “What if we surprise her?” I asked, thinking of how Shalayn stabbed that wizard in the throat when we were stuck in the tower. “If we kill the wizard, no one will dare follow us.”

  Henka, staring down into the village with narrowed eyes, said, “An arrow will kill a wizard, just like anyone else.”

  “We get close. Wait for her to come out of the inn.”

  Henka nodded, licking her lips. Perhaps she shared some of my hatred for wizards. No doubt the millennia of wizardly rule hadn’t been easy on the necromancers. Had the wizards lied to them all those thousands of years ago? Was that why the necromancers turned against me?

  “This is a bad idea,” said Valcarb. “Even a lone wizard is not to be trifled with. This will draw unwanted attention to this town, to us.”

  Valcarb was right, but I didn’t care. I was tired of running. I wanted a taste of revenge. They broke me, it was long past time they paid for that. Even if just a little.

  “Henka, if I kill the wizard, can you raise her?”

  Henka nodded, eyes bright.

  “And she’ll still be a wizard, but under your control?” I’d asked earlier, but wanted to be sure.

  Again she nodded.

  A pet wizard. She could get me into the towers. I could plunder their secrets. Were there other museum towers, like the one Shalayn and I had been trapped in back in Taramlae? I thought of that fist-sized diamond I suspected was a massive Soul Stone. Should I return there with my enslaved wizard and see what other demonic artefacts lay waiting for someone who knew what to do with them?

  My mind whirled with possibilities. Why stop with one wizard? Why not have an army of enslaved wizards? Much as I loathed their filthy chaos magic, they were powerful. They were useful. I knew better than to trust them ever again. When I once again rose to power, what reason had I to leave a single wizard free? They would all be mine.

  One thing at a time. First, I had to kill this wizard.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “Stay close. Not you,” I told Valcarb when she moved to follow. “You stay with the horses.”

  “I cannot protect you from here.”

  “The wizard will be dead before she knows I’m there. I’m going to have to be right in town to get close enough for a decent shot. Henka will watch my back.” I examined the demon. “You stand out too much.”

  The demon didn’t argue, though I didn’t know if that’s because she agreed with my reasoning, or if it was because she was bound and had no choice but to obey.

  “Did the other me talk to you much?” I asked Valcarb on impulse.

  “Yes. Though, in truth, it was more like he talked at me.”

  What did that mean? I’d ask later. “We’ll be back when she’s dead.”

  “If things go wrong,” said the demon, “should I come to your assistance?”

  “Of course.”

  Henka and I strode through a field of soft, waist-deep clover. Bees, fat and slow, lumbered from flower to flower, ignoring us. A cool breeze rippled waves in the alsike and we floated in an ocean of green and lavender.

  Alsike? I could differentiate between types of clover? It was, I remembered, poisonous to horses. Not that this mattered, with our undead mounts. What kind of man tore souls from people and knew about flowers?

  Henka took my hand in hers. Cold, dead flesh.

  “Do you mind?” she asked. “You’re not disgusted by the feel of me?”

  “Of course not.” I lied to avoid hurting her.

  She extricated her hand and walked in silence at my side.

  She’d have blood again soon. Thoughts of her, hot and wet, stirred deep desires in me. My nineteen-year-old body was a constant distraction and I found myself missing the focus of a much older man, even though I remembered little of his life. That woman with the dark hair and eyes and pale skin who haunted my memories, had she moved him as Henka moved me? Picturing what I remembered, a man splashed in gore, his eyes torn from their sockets and replaced by strange stones, I couldn’t imagine it. The older people I’d seen in my travels all seemed so lifeless, without passion.

  We found a spot not far from the inn’s entrance where we could wait within sight. Night fell fast. Candles and lanterns within various buildings lit the street with golden patches filtered through curtained windows. I worried for a moment that, in the gloom, I might mistake someone else for the wizard.

  I grinned at the thought. Their love of white robes made them easy targets.

  Keeping the bow in my left hand and the arrow ready in my right, I waited.

  “I wonder if she’s powerful.” Henka sounded excited at the prospect of owning a wizard.

  “I doubt it. She’s out here, after all. Wizards like their comforts. She’s probably a messenger or something.”

  The tavern door swung open and two drunks stumbled out, a man and a woman leaning heavily against each other like either would topple without the other’s support. They paused in the street to grope each other. Henka and I watched them kiss and nibble and fumble at each other’s clothes.

  Shalayn and I used to do that at the Dripping Bucket, making out halfway up the stairs, annoyed patrons squeezing past. It was so different with Henka. There was a familiarity, a comfort between us. With Shalayn, everything was new and exciting. We shared meals and drinks. Now, when I ate, Henka often sat and watched.

  I lost Shalayn to the wizards because of Tien’s betrayal. Had she planned it from the beginning? I couldn’t believe she duped me so easily.

  Again, the tavern door swung open and this time the wizard strode out. Ignoring the two drunks, she went around them, no hint of intoxication to her movements.

  Raising the bow, I sighted along the arrow. At this range, with these viciously barbed arrows, it was an easy kill. I loosed, the bowstring thrumming a deep bass note through my arm. The arrow cracked and splintered apart before reaching her, peppering the drunks with sharp slivers of wood. One screamed and the wizard lashed out in thoughtless reaction. The lovers came apart in a bloody explosion like someone shoved them at high speed through a fine mesh filter. A red mist hung in the air, blood falling around the mage in a pattering rain, staining her pristine white robes crimson.

  Loosing another arrow, I again heard it shatter in the air. Bubbling fire raged toward me and Henka. Spinning me with surprising strength, she put herself between me and the mage. Flame ravaged her, turned her beautiful hair to ash and boiled the flesh from her back. Those dark eyes never left me, showed no hint of pain or fear.

  Charred to the bone, Henka dropped as the wizard’s fire abated. I caught her as she fell, dragging her ravaged body around the corner and out of sight. She weighed nothing. Flesh and muscle, cooked to white ash, fell away where I touched her. I saw the burnt ridges of her spine.

  Something passed us in the night. Black, knees reversed, that odd bobbing chicken walk replaced by a deadly speed no horse could match. Valcarb passed the wizard, axe swinging in a decapitating arc. Light exploded with an air-shattering crack and the wizard was sent cartwheeling into the night. The force of the explosion buckled the nearest wall of the inn. With a long groan of tortured beams, the building crumpled. The wizard, clearly having survived being tossed like a doll, lashed out with twisting tongues of fire, stabbing blindly in the dark. The panicked screams of those trapped within the fallen inn rose in terror as her attacks lit the ruin ablaze.

  Scooping up Henka, I threw her over my shoulder and sprinted back to where we left the horses. Swirling whips of flame lit the sky behind me and then another explosion flattened several houses.

  We made it to our undead mounts, the sounds of battle echoing behind us. Her limbs a charred ruin, she couldn’t possibly ride. I climbed awkwardly onto my horse, damaging Henka fu
rther in my clumsy efforts. She made no sound of complaint. Directing the beast back toward the demonic village, I kicked it into motion, urging it to ever greater speed. We left the other horse behind.

  Riding hard in the dark is stupid. Riding hard in the dark on an undead horse who’d lost all sense of self-preservation, is suicidally stupid. When the beast found the inevitable gopher hole, there was a loud snap of breaking bone and we pitched forward, thrown from the saddle. I broke two ribs and one of Henka’s ravaged arms snapped off at the elbow with a sickening crunch.

  Wheezing, sobbing in pain, I staggered around in the dark looking for the missing limb.

  “Leave it,” she said, voice less than a whisper.

  Lifting Henka, cradling the ruin of her against my chest, I carried her from there.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  I walked, stumbling and often falling. Every time I tripped on some unseen obstacle and crumpled to the ground, some part of Henka broke and I cried. Exhaustion emptied me, left me a husk of flesh driven by will alone. At first, she tried to talk, offering soft encouragement, but her lungs were damaged and soon she trailed off into silence. Only her face, porcelain perfect, remained untouched. I saw fear in those dark eyes, horror at her helpless condition.

  “I’ll never leave you,” I told her.

  Hadn’t I said something similar to Shalayn? I pushed the thought away and staggered on.

  Sometimes weakness or exhaustion stopped me and I’d collapse to the ground, lie there breathing until I felt ready to move again. I kept turning to look back the way we came, hoping to see Valcarb, expecting to see the wizard.

  It took two days to carry Henka’s burnt remains back to the demonic village. I brought her to the church, and then carried her into the cool of the basement. Already, my ribs were beginning to heal.

  “Valcarb would have caught up with us by now,” I told Henka, laying her down on a soft bed in one of the bedrooms.

  She nodded.

  “My hatred of wizards cost us everything. No souls for summoning. Valcarb is likely destroyed. You…” I looked down at her, failure twisting my gut.