by Sam Sykes
For a moment, as the despair and disappointment came across her face, she looked truly human.
But sorrow died in an instant and anger came chewing out of its corpse. Her lips curled backward in a fanged snarl.
Her coils tightened around him. Lenk could feel the air shut out of him. His bones groaned inside him. He could feel the blood pooling in his head, his face swelling and turning red, purple, blue. He couldn’t so much as squirm against her grasp, and though he strained to find the breath to scream, nothing came out.
From his mouth, anyway.
The coils loosened. Teneir’s spine snapped as she suddenly reared back, an agonized howl tearing itself from her lips. Her tendrils slipped from Lenk’s body as she arched her back, clawed hands groping at something lodged between her shoulders.
Lenk strained to swallow as much air as his crushed throat would allow. His head lolled on its shoulders. Darkness framed his vision. Yet through it, he could faintly make out the struggle of Teneir wildly thrashing.
And the dark-skinned woman jamming the knife into her back.
The shict. The khoshict. Her black braids whipping about as Teneir strained and shrieked and tried to shake her off. Her muscles straining as she clung to the monster’s back. Her knife pumping back and forth, bright red plumes bursting out from scaly hide, spattering her arms and belly and face.
Her face. Cold and angry and focused intently on the kill.
What had her name been?
“Kwar …” he gasped.
Even ears like hers couldn’t have heard him through Teneir’s pain. The monster’s shrieks filled the orange skies. She fell to the stone, wailing as Kwar crawled up her back, raised her bloody blade high and aimed for the base of Teneir’s skull.
A stray coil lashed up, struck Kwar hard in the back, and knocked her from her perch. She went tumbling, then rolled to her feet as Teneir rose to her full height. Dripping blood down her tendrils, she bared her fangs in a shriek as Kwar stared up at her.
“Fools!” Teneir howled. “Do you not understand? Does no one understand? I am doing this for Cier’Djaal! I am doing this for all—”
Kwar didn’t believe her, whatever she was about to say.
It was hard to sound convincing with a knife in one’s eye.
The khoshict’s wrist snapped, sending the weapon flying. It struck Teneir’s skull with a meaty thunk. The blow should have killed a woman—but she was no longer a woman, nor a saccarii.
She shrieked, staring at the ground in horror as her coils groped feebly at the knife in her eye. They pulled it free, loosing a red fountain down Teneir’s face. She stared at Kwar through the ruin of her eye, the monstrousness of her face unable to hide her horror.
Her tendrils hauled her to the edge of the wall and pulled her over. Her blood painting the stone, her shrieks painting the sky, Teneir disappeared over the wall and vanished from sight.
A swift fight. A brutal finish. Lenk would have said as much, had he the breath to do so. As it was, his head hung down to his chest. The air came too slow, too little. He began to fade into darkness.
Still, it would have been nice to thank her for saving his life.
He heard her footsteps as she approached. He could just barely see her sandaled feet as she stood before him, staring at him.
He watched her as she took up her knife, glistening with blood.
At least it would be quick.
And it came quick. A single stroke. And he fell.
The rope fell from his wrists. He pitched forward, his body too numb to stand. She caught him around the waist, eased him down to his rear, and pressed his back against the pillar. She squatted beside him, studying him intently with her dark eyes.
Her face was calm and placid as a lake at dawn. Her knife dangled in her palm, dancing impatiently as it waited for her decision. His vision faded in and out of darkness and, through the shifting light, the gore spattering her face made her look like a nightmare.
Slowly, her lips opened in a broad, toothy grin.
“Thought I was going to kill you, didn’t you?” she asked.
She reached out, smoothed a lock of hair from his face, and stared at him.
“I considered it, if I’m honest.”
She frowned.
“And if I didn’t know it would make Kataria cry, I’d do it, too.” She pressed a pair of fingers to his jugular. “That thing fucked you up good, didn’t she? But you’ll live, thanks to me.” She leveled the tip of her knife at him. A drop of blood fell, stained his pants. “You owe me now. Got that?”
He would have liked to say that he did. Really, he would have liked to say anything. As it was, she was lucky he was conscious enough to understand her.
“So you’re going to promise me something, all right?” She leaned close. Her ears were upright and twitching. “Don’t tell her I was here. Don’t tell her you saw me. Don’t tell her I’m here. Don’t …” She sighed, then looked away from him. “Just … I don’t want her to know what I did, all right?” She looked back. “All right?”
He tried to nod. But that might just have been his head lolling. She seized him, pressed his shoulders against the pillar, and forced him to look at her.
“I saved your life. I could have killed you and I didn’t, so I saved your life twice. Promise me you won’t tell her. Promise me.”
He gasped out something even he couldn’t understand. But whatever it was, it seemed to satisfy her. She sighed, took a moment to make sure he was propped upright, and then stood up and walked away.
Where it had only crept before, darkness now swept into his vision. And by the time Kwar had walked to the edge of the wall, he could see nothing at all.
“Hey.”
Her voice was far away, a dream in a dark and silent sleep. But her touch, her warmth, the smell of her sweat …
Those were close.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been out. Nor when she had arrived. When he stirred back to consciousness, his body was stiff and pained, but he could feel. And when he opened his eyes, he stared up at her face. A smile, weak and relieved, found its way onto his face.
Kataria did not return it.
She looped an arm around him and helped him to sit up. She held him tightly, tighter than she ever had before. His body protested, but he did not. He laid a hand weakly on her arm and squeezed her gently. She opened her mouth to say something.
And, instead, she simply stared out over the horizon, toward the distant Green Belt.
He followed her gaze.
And his blood ran cold.
The battle was distant, so far away that he couldn’t even see the pass where Asper had made her stand, where Gariath had made his assault. Yet he could see something all the same.
Against the orange sky, Khoth-Kapira rose like a colossus over the cliffs. His beard writhing, his crown coiling, he surveyed the land through empty white eyes.
And though they were miles away, Lenk could see the great demon as he craned his titanic head toward the city of Cier’Djaal. Lenk could see as his lips curled upward in a smile.
And Lenk knew it was meant for him.
ACT THREE
HOLDING HANDS AS THE WORLD BURNS
INTERLOGUE
OUR BLOODIED AND TERRIBLE DREAM
Rokuda,
You were wrong, old friend.
You were all wrong.
You all swore that the humans were too many. You all swore that our forces were too few. You all resigned yourselves to dying in your forests as your lands shrank away and your families broke.
I do not mean to sound as though I fault you. I once believed the same, as we all did.
But I saw too much. I saw too many families lose their sons and daughters. I saw too many children go hungry when there was not enough game to hunt. I saw too many homes wither and die and be built over by great stone castles.
I had to do something.
There will be cowards who will tell you I did this thoughtlessly. They w
ould see us all rot like fruit fallen to the earth before they would even lift a finger to help. There would have been more deaths, more families lost, had I not acted. And after careful consideration, I knew what I must do.
It was the s’ha shict s’na. The greenshicts, we call them. They drove the humans from their lands with their venoms and their toxins. But they saw only small uses: smearing arrows with venom, killing humans one by one.
I have a grander view.
It had to be war, Rokuda. The humans understand nothing else. Burn their villages, they build cities. Steal from their wagons, they build roads. Kill one of them, a hundred more come looking for revenge. These petty raids and assassinations would only bring us more despair.
You were not old enough to remember the war with the couthi, were you?
The bugs were relentless foes. They had numbers, they had weapons we didn’t understand, and they were keen on hunting us down. We knew that we would be fighting our war with them forever if we did not act decisively.
But even if you don’t remember it, you know what happened, don’t you?
We lured them out into the forests. We let them chase us. We let them think they had us on the run. All the while, more of us circled around and struck at their city. We burned their children alive. We flayed their precious maidens. We left their homes in rubble.
And that war was over. And many shicts lived.
This is our way, Rokuda. Anyone who tells you differently is lying. Anyone who pretends this is a war we can win through conventional means is an idiot. And anyone who says we shouldn’t fight would watch us die and do nothing.
The events at Harmony Road and Shaab Sahaar should provide proof of what I tell you. The desert is ours once again. The tulwar are simple-minded imbeciles who cringe at shadows. The humans are pathetic cowards who kill each other to flee from us.
The incident … I have no explanation for. Not now. Not while I must win this war.
Your daughter’s fate is a shame. I am sorry that you will feel the pain of that loss. But I will not apologize for doing it. I cannot let one more shict die because I failed to act.
I am a chieftain.
As are you.
And this responsibility extends to you, as well. Join with my tribes. Join with the khoshicts. The greenshicts are on their way and we are reaching out to our cousins in the north. We will become a great beast, long of tooth and silent as the grave. And we shall hunt.
And we shall feed.
Be swift about your response.
—Shekune
FORTY
FAREWELL TO FLESH AND BONE
Where are they coming from? What are they?”
Asper could still hear them.
“They’re too fast! I can’t see them! No one is helping me! Someone help!”
So far away and in such a dark place, she heard their screams. Before, though, they had simply been one incomprehensible mass: a stew of agony and fear through which individual words sometimes bubbled up to the surface and popped.
“I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not saan! I’m duwun! I should be back home! I want to go home!”
Now she heard all of them. Each and every word they last uttered, every corpse that had walked that cursed road. Tulwar, human; it didn’t matter. They spoke as though they were right next to her.
“I was an idiot to believe her. She had us working with Karnies, for Sovereign’s sake. Where’s this Prophet bitch now? Where are you now?”
She couldn’t see them, at least. Darkness stretched out around her, so deep and thick she wasn’t sure if she was in it or a part of it. Maybe this was hell. Maybe her soul had simply fused with this cold void and her punishment was to be one more voice in the blackness, screaming to no one that would hear her, asking questions that no one would listen to.
“Heaven is watching …”
That would be fitting.
“Heaven is watching …”
She had spent all her life doing that.
“Heaven is watching, Prophet.”
And what was hell but living?
“I didn’t fail you. Don’t you fail us.”
The next thing she heard was her own cry.
Asper shot up, sweat dripping, heart pounding. Pathon’s voice still echoed in her head. Those hadn’t been his last words, though. Had that been a vision? A message from beyond?
Or have you, quite understandably, finally gone crazy as shit?
She got no answer for that thought. Pathon’s voice faded, along with the darkness. Around her, she made out the shapes of simple furniture—a chair, a table, a dresser, a bed with sweat-soaked sheets. She couldn’t tell where she was, but the darkness around her was the shadowy softness of nightfall through a cracked window. Not the vast, endless blackness from where she had just been.
Unless this was all part of that, she wondered. Perhaps this, this seeming normalcy, was just one more part of hell: a moment of relative pleasantness to be snatched away in another moment and replaced with more screaming.
But as she eased out of the bed and put her feet to the floor, she quickly discounted that.
Even hell couldn’t provide the kind of pain she was in.
Her head hurt. Her skin hurt. Her bones hurt. It was the kind of new pain of a body remembering how it was supposed to work. She hadn’t felt anything like it. Not since Amoch-Tethr had left her, anyway.
She looked down at her left arm, fleshy, mortal, useless.
Would things have been different, she wondered, if Amoch-Tethr were still with her? Could she have simply lured Gariath out and destroyed him—utterly consumed him, as the fiend had done to so many others—and had her armies ready for the demons? Could she have simply done that to the demons, as well?
Maybe it would have been worth bearing that curse, then, if it would have saved others.
Or maybe she’d be free and even stronger.
In the end, it seemed anything she did lately meant people were going to die.
In hindsight, she preferred it when she simply felt helpless to stop deaths, rather than actively causing them.
She made her way across the floor, clad in a sweat-soaked undershirt and drawers, finding her way to a decrepit staircase. She made her way down, wincing as a splinter lodged itself in her big toe. The decrepit house was a match for her aching body.
In a tiny little room, consisting of little more than a few cupboards, a few chairs, and a fireplace, he sat, one more shadow among many. A meager fire burned quietly in the hearth, but whatever light it shed wasn’t enough to make him look any warmer. He was stark and black against the night, a darkness so deep that the lesser shades seemed to reach out enviously for him.
The Shadow leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring intently into the fire. Yet even then, she couldn’t see any sign of a face within his hood. And when he spoke, his voice was soft and distant.
“I can’t even feel it.” He held out his dark hand, moved it back and forth in front of the fire. “It doesn’t feel hot. Not cold. Just … nothing. Above all else, it’s the warmth of a fire I miss the most.”
He paused, as if considering that statement. Then he held up a finger.
“Actually, no. I miss whiskey more than I miss fire. And wine. And beer. Liquor altogether, really.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, and sex. I miss sex a whole lot.”
She approached the fire carefully, one eye always kept on him. Yet if he looked at her, she couldn’t tell. She took a seat next to him and stared into the fire.
“You saved me,” she said, after a time.
“I did.”
After a longer, more awkward time, she added: “You also undressed me.”
“You looked hot.”
She looked at him. “Can I ask how you did it?”
He didn’t look at her. “You can.”
“Should I?”
“You shouldn’t.” He looked down at his hand and flexed his fingers. “What did you see?”
“When?”
“When we jumped. Disappeared. Whatever you want to call what I did. What did you see?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Just … darkness.”
“Eerie, isn’t it?”
“The voices were worse.”
“Voices?”
“Are those not a part of it?”
“I haven’t heard any. You must just be special.” He chuckled. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Lucky, lucky you.”
A long moment passed as they stared into the fire. She found it difficult to look at him but harder to hear his voice.
“We’re in Cier’Djaal, if you hadn’t guessed,” he said, finally. “On the border of the Sumps. The remnants of your army are still filtering in, those that survived.”
“There were survivors?”
“Not many. They ran away in one direction. The tulwar ran in the other. The Chosen—the scaly guys—sort of milled around. Khoth-Kapira permitted the ones that still could to flee. The ones that couldn’t, well … I mean, you saw.”
She stared down at her hands. “Yeah. I did.”
The silence stretched out, put miles between them. She told herself it was because she didn’t want to relive her failure, to have the images of the dead put back in her head so quickly. But she knew that was a lie. They were already in her head, their voices still in her ears. And she would have taken them gladly.
Because when he spoke again, she felt as though she might cry.
“Ask me,” he said.
It came suddenly, a well of tears behind her eyes, something heavy caught in her throat. She spoke through it. “Where are the survivors gathering?”
“Not that.”
They came slowly, all but creeping out the corners of her eyes. She sniffed them back. “Are they safe? Are they well?”
“No.”
She shut her eyes tight to hold them back. “Did Gariath’s forces—”
“Asper.”
She looked at him. His face was just an empty void in a hood. But she knew he was looking straight at her.
“Ask me,” he said.
“No.” She shook her head. “No. I already know. Don’t make me. Don’t make me look.”