by Sam Sykes
People lined up to take cups from them, the many who could find no room at the fountain to drink from. The guards handed them wooden cups brimming with liquid, rudely shoved away those who begged for more, then waved the first one forward. Children who had never tasted it before blanched when parents made them drink. Elders with no taste for it anymore gagged a little but forced it down. None of them knew when they would have this again. If ever.
“Eat until you have your fill!” Teneir cried out. “Drink until you are sated! Rest until you are strong again! A new day is dawning on Cier’Djaal! Free from the tyranny of greed! Free from the misery of war! All will be needed to rebuild! But all will be rewarded, not in some shallow afterlife, but in this one. This mortal paradise is yours. And it has been given to you by …”
She held her hands out wide. She closed her eyes. And though she was far away and wore a veil, Lenk had seen that look of exultant ecstasy before, and he knew the kind of hungry smile she was wearing.
“ANCAA!” the crowd cried. “ANCAA! ANCAA!”
Teneir stood there, basking in their chants for what seemed like an age, until she finally lowered her arms and climbed down the fountain. A pair of guards flanked her as she turned and headed out of the square.
Lenk set off, winding his way around the hedgerows and darting between lawns. He found his way into a side street between two manors and hurried to catch up to Teneir.
He had told Kataria that he would only be half an hour. But he had no idea where he would find her after she had lost the dragonmen and only one opportunity to find out what Khoth-Kapira was planning. Teneir would know.
Teneir would talk.
He paused as the ground shuddered under his feet. He darted into an alley as two massive dragonmen came pounding up, hauling more casks of wine. They were laughing, drinking, bellowing, their snouts and mouths full of the liquid as they dragged rolling carts of the barrels through the streets, back toward the square.
When they were gone, Lenk went running out. Wherever Teneir was headed, it was a good bet that she’d have more dragonmen waiting for her there. He needed to find her and take her before she reached it.
Footsteps in his ears. The sight of three bodies walking swiftly, seen through the bars of a fence. He ran ahead, ducked behind a nearby pillar marching down an elegant road, and waited.
He got a chance to catch a glimpse of them as they walked past, their armor dented and well worn. Their faces were old; they wore old scars and moved easily with the weight of the swords at their hips. Teneir, swaddled in silks as she was, looked almost tiny between them. No pretty and ineffective house guards, these were her ugly, her scarred, her real fighters.
But Lenk had fought many things in his life. And some of them had been much uglier than these two.
He waited until they cleared the pillar he hid behind before moving. He rushed out, silent but for the thunder of his boots, as he lowered his body and collided, shoulder first, with the back of one of the guards. The guard let out a shout, staggering forward. Lenk’s hand was already on his sword, jerking it free from its scabbard with one swift motion and whirling upon the other guard.
She had just begun to draw her own when Lenk’s stolen weapon caught her in the unprotected gap between her breastplate and her helmet. She blinked, straining to look down at the wedge of steel lodged in her throat, before he tore it free.
The other one was already getting up and turning to face Lenk, groping for a weapon that wasn’t there. He found it, instead, punching through his armor and bursting out his back. A sputter of exclamation went drowned in the blood bubbling from his lips as he toppled backward, wearing the same look of shock his partner had when she died.
There were no easy kills for men like Lenk. Only thoughtless ones. And his thoughts were not for these two.
Teneir stood, hands folded gingerly before her, making no effort to flee or defend herself or even to look shocked as Lenk approached her, bloodied sword in his hand. Her eyes were steady, yellow serenity locked on Lenk with a decidedly unsurprised look.
“I have been expecting you,” she said.
“And I was expecting you to say something like that.” He sneered. “Freaky thralls of demons are always saying something dramatic.”
“Demons.” Teneir sighed, her veil trembling as she did. “How could a blind man tell the difference between a demon and a god? When he feels the warmth of heaven, how could he know it from the inferno?”
“Yeah, see? That shit is exactly what I’m talking about.” He leveled the sword at her. “I don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll ask you once before this gets difficult: What are you planning?”
“Planning?”
“With Khoth-Kapira. Ancaa. Whatever you call him. What are you—”
“I know you’ve come in quest for a power you don’t understand. I merely take exception to the term plan. A plan is a mortal thing, riddled with flaws and expected to fail. You expect me to have one, yes? Another hand-wringing villain for you to chop down after I lay out my elaborate scheme or some such foolishness?”
“I was planning on getting straight to the chopping, but yeah, something like that.”
“Of course. You define your world in bloodshed, one murderer among many, somehow convinced that yours will be seen as righteous when you are called to answer the great question.”
There was something heavy in her eyes, an iron weight that settled on Lenk with an uncomfortable certainty.
“It is for you that I was first moved to do this, you know. For the ignorant and the blind, those who saw no end to this ceaseless agony but for the sword. I would beg you to let me continue, to let me find an answer for you …”
She closed her eyes.
“But I am wasting my breath, am I not?”
“You’re wasting time.” Lenk took the blade up in both hands and stormed toward her. “A lot of people are going to die if you don’t tell me what I need to know. So stop your fucking sermons and tell me what you’re planning to—”
“I told you, there is no plan.”
Her eyes snapped open, a bright and burning and hateful yellow.
“There is only vision.”
Her silks fluttered. From beneath, a great tendril of scale and sinew shot out toward him. He hardly had time to scream before it slammed into his chest and sent him flying to crash against the pillar. The blade fell from his hands; he rolled to the stones and coughed, straining to find his feet.
“Yes, many will die. Many were dying long before you came here. Many have died under old ways, old gods, old and tired and broken promises. Yet no one seemed to care.”
A shadow loomed over him. Through swimming vision, he looked up. Teneir rose up on columns of tendrils, coils of scales that twisted and writhed beneath her. They carried her up on a pedestal of flesh to loom over him, so small and pitiable beneath her baleful gaze.
“Only now, when I have a chance at stopping it, do you care.” Her voice became a low and hateful hiss. “Ancaa spoke true. You are driven to bring misery upon yourself, Lenk.”
She knew his name.
She knew everything.
And he knew nothing. Not about how she knew it, about what she was planning or even what the hell she was.
He turned to bolt, to hide, to get clear, get Kataria, get another sword, get away. But he hadn’t taken three steps before he was knocked off his feet by a great sweep of scales. He fell to the ground, felt them entwine around his legs, haul him screaming across the stones.
“It was years ago that I first received her visions,” Teneir spoke, unconcerned by his flailing panic as she reeled him toward her. “In my sleep, at first, fleeting dreams of a world of beauty and harmony that I could one day see. But they grew stronger, until I saw it everywhere, in my waking life: a world without poverty, without hardship, where the saccarii could live without fear. It was when I dedicated my fortunes to the realization of this world that I began to … change.”
She hauled him off his f
eet, dangling him before her like a worm on a hook. More coils slipped out from beneath her silks, found their way around his arms, his waist, his throat. He felt them tighten. He felt them squeeze. He felt the breath begin to leave him.
“I have grown stronger these past days. It is Ancaa. She liberates me from my prison of flesh, expands my being. She speaks clearer to me. Her visions come stronger.”
She reached up and pulled the veil from her face. Reptilian lips parted in a snarl, baring a long, flickering tongue and daggerlike fangs.
“So tell me … why is it that, where she once showed me visions of a world free from strife, she only speaks your name now?”
He gasped out an answer, unheard as the coils tightened about his throat.
“You. Your face. Your sword. Your terrible thoughts and your terrible lies. You plague her dreams and cloud her thoughts. Why does she obsess over you and leave me without guidance?”
His face betrayed no answer, nothing but primal fear as the last breaths left him. Her eyes almost burst from her head with the force of her snarl.
“WHY?”
The coils tightened closer. He felt something crack inside him. The muscles in his limbs went bloodless and limp in her coils. Darkness crept in at the edges of his vision.
“A test, perhaps? Are you the sole blight on her perfect vision? Or are you simply an object of infatuation she wishes to see in the afterlife? It is no matter, Lenk. For there is no plan. You came here expecting to find something to stop, to destroy.”
The last thing he saw was her serpentine lips coiled into a smile.
The last thing he heard was the whisper on her flickering tongue.
“But she arrived an hour ago.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
INHERITED SIN
Kataria no longer heard them.
Now she felt them.
The earth shook beneath her feet with every stride they took. Their roars shook the bones in her skin. The wind died around her, the air holding its breath in anticipation.
That was when she knew she had to jump.
There was a great rush of air. She leapt forward, falling into a tumble. The cobblestones quaked as something huge struck the road behind her. Stone splinters flew, raining upon her as she got to her feet and whirled, nocking an arrow.
Why the fuck won’t they just give up?
Five feet away, the dragonman pulled its ax out of the road in a spray of dust. Its mouth craned open in a cavernous roar. She drew, fired in one fluid motion. Her arrow flew, found the giant’s mouth, sank itself into the soft flesh of its cheek.
The creature let out a surprisingly small yelp of pain.
She hadn’t expected that.
She certainly hadn’t expected it to simply snap its jaws shut, shattering the arrow, no more bothered by it than it would be by a piece of food stuck in its teeth.
And she hadn’t expected them to be this persistent, her to be this tired. She had run from creatures like this before, much bigger ones, in fact. She had a plan for situations like this: Run fast, move erratically, get to a place too small for them to get into, and then make a rude gesture at them when they couldn’t follow.
She had been planning something particularly coarse for these dragonmen.
But, as it turned out, Cier’Djaal was frustratingly accommodating for its larger residents. This close to Silktown and the Souk, the avenues were wide enough for carriages, wagons, large crowds, and, as it turned out, massive, bloodthirsty dragonmen.
She was quick enough to keep ahead of this one’s long strides, but her breath was going ragged, her legs were going numb, and her quiver was going empty. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep out of the reach of this one.
Or his friends.
Her ears quivered—she could hear them in the distance. One in the next street over. Two in the street behind her. Another one two streets ahead. And this one behind her.
Five dragonmen had come out to hunt her down. Five of them, each one with her scent in their nose, making the earth shake with their feet as they searched for her in the avenues.
They’d find her, sooner or later.
Or she’d trip and fall.
Or she’d just get too tired to keep going.
Really, there were a lot of ways she could die here.
An alley veered into view. Not as narrow as she would have liked, but it was at least narrower than this street. She turned down it, pivoting out of the dragonman’s way as it rushed past. It must have been between two shops—she could see crates stacked at the end of it, a tall wall at the end of it.
Perfect.
She heard the dragonman turn about, head for the alley. She scrambled up the crates, swung a leg over the wall, looked back over her shoulder.
The alley was too narrow for the dragonman to move comfortably down. But the dragonman hardly seemed to mind. It roared, charging down the narrow path, its massive shoulders tearing the stone and wood of the walls apart as it charged toward her.
But the wall was too tall for it to mount. There wasn’t enough space for it to climb. The crates wouldn’t hold its weight. She hopped down off the wall and scrambled into the alley behind it. It went on for a little more before opening out into a bigger road, but she took the moment to lean against a nearby wall and catch her breath.
Her muscles were on fire. Her breath was raw in her throat. Blood was throbbing in her body.
It didn’t used to be this hard, she told herself. She used to be able to run all day. Perhaps it was the years of running, of fighting, of surviving that had weighed her down. Or maybe it was the weight of something else.
Finally given a spare thought, she took a moment to think of Lenk. He hadn’t followed her. Turned out he could be trusted not to be a complete idiot once in a while. He would have made his way in by now and, if all went according to plan, he would be out by now.
Of course, she thought as she rose up and knuckled a sore spot on her back, it was his plan, so if it all went like he thought it would, he’s probably dead by now.
But if he wasn’t, she would handle it. She would protect him. Him and everyone.
She looked down at her bow, ran her fingers over the fletching of her remaining arrows.
She was done losing people.
Her ears trembled at the sound of the dragonman roaring impotently behind the wall. She looked up at it and smirked.
The giant might have been huge. It might have been strong enough to crush her into a fine paste with one well-placed foot. But she was small, nimble, and terribly, terribly clever. She had escaped beyond the beast’s reach and there was nothing it could do.
The bricks of the wall exploded as a great horn smashed through. Her smile fell.
Unless it does that.
The wall smashed behind her, exploding into a hail of bricks and dust. The creature’s howl filled her ears. She kept running, closed her eyes, lowered her head, and ran for the exit. Its footsteps were in her ears, in her bones, in her blood. Its breath was on her neck. Her skin pricked at the sensation of its claws reaching for her.
She reached the mouth of the alley.
She leapt.
And, for a few glorious moments, things actually seemed like they would be all right.
Before the claw caught her, anyway.
A great hand wrapped around her legs and brought her to the ground. The dragonman was on its belly, wriggling its way out of the alley. She snarled, trying to kick her way free. The creature clambered to its feet, breathing heavily, eyes weary—the chase had taken much out of it, enough that it might not crush her right away.
She couldn’t take that chance.
She drew her arrow as the dragonman lifted her up. It scowled down its snout at her, eyes bloodshot and teary. She aimed, she drew, she fired.
The arrow skittered off its scales as its head suddenly dropped. She screamed, anticipating the crushing blow to come.
But it did not come.
What came, instead, was a
great torrent of bile as the dragonman’s jaws craned open and expelled a wave of vomit onto the stones.
It drew in desperate, ragged breaths as it looked up again. She was quicker, drawing and firing an arrow right into its eye. It let out a shriek, dropping her. She fell and splashed down into the puddle of reeking filth, quickly scrambling away.
But the giant made no move to pursue her. It dropped its ax as it leaned hard against the side of a building, shattering the stones as it did. Its body shook as it struggled to gulp down air. Its flanks shuddered as something came up its gullet.
Kataria kept her bow up, arrow drawn, but did not fire. The dragonman looked as confused as she felt, its fear so desperate as to be plain even on its reptilian features.
It bent low, vomited again. What came out was thick, red, and full of glistening ichor. Its tongue lolled out the side of its mouth as it looked up, wheezing, at Kataria and gasped out a single word.
“Help—”
It couldn’t say any more. Its mouth was filled with bile. Liquid came pouring out of its mouth, sluiced between its teeth, until the road was painted with its insides. It clutched its stomach, doubled over in agony, eyes shut tight as it continued to empty itself.
Until there was nothing left.
The great dragonman, tall as a tree, big as a house, strong enough to have killed her in one blow, fell in a puddle of its own puke and lay there, eyes wide and wondering what the fuck had just happened.
She wished she could answer it.
She hadn’t heard of any god of digestive distress that might have saved her, but she wasn’t intending to dwell on it. She hiked up her bow, tried to shake out the pain in her leg, and started to make her way back to Silktown, back to Lenk.
She followed the road sixty paces before her ears twitched.
Elsewhere, there was the sound of something heavy hitting the ground.
One street over, there it was again.
One street behind her, another.
And just ahead, around the corner. She heard a choked, watery scream right before she felt the shock of something huge collapsing and striking the ground.