by Travis Bughi
“What happened?” she asked.
Neither responded, and Emily’s eyes lingered on the pile of black ash. Not a moment later, the pile began to shift and shudder, and a tiny bird poked its head out. Its head and beak were a bright purple, and its neck a brilliant red. It chirped sharply.
“Ah,” Koll smiled. “It’s cute, ain’t it?”
Emily felt the corner of her open mouth turn up. It was cute.
“Yes,” Takeo agreed. “No surprises.”
Chapter 24
They left the oasis in a hurry. With both their destination and direction in mind, they had nothing left to discuss. There was only haste—desperate and essential haste.
It was unfortunate that they didn’t have more water containers with them. Takeo’s sparse supplies could only keep them traveling for two days at the most without stopping. Knowing this, they plotted a course to Kings’ Hearth that included necessary stops for water. Food was also an issue, but not nearly so much as water. They could ration and tighten their belts. Jabbar had planned on traveling for several weeks, and so Takeo had enough food to get them to Kings’ Hearth. However, a quick eye and a rough count told them they would likely be in trouble after that, and they’d need to hunt for some food before moving on from there. Fortunately, that problem could wait until after they survived Jabbar’s wrath.
The most immediate concern, one often brought up by Koll, was their lack of weapons. Takeo had one scimitar and one pesh-kabz, which was an even greater issue than it sounded because no one in the trio was familiar with either weapon. Emily had used a knife before, but not one such as the pesh-kabz. Its weight and dimensions were new to her, which meant she wouldn’t be at her full capacity. On the other end, Takeo had only carried a scimitar for a few weeks, and he’d only used it once. He’d not dared practice against Jabbar’s men for fear of giving away his prowess with a blade. He’d never used one as a boy, either, when he had lived in Savara. His brother had always made him use a katana.
This didn’t bother Koll, who considered both weapons disdainful in their lack of crushing power. He said he’d rather face Jabbar with his fists than take up such pathetic instruments.
Meanwhile, their opponents were a dastardly, skilled swordsman and a beast both legendary and infamous. Koll and Takeo gladly filled Emily in on the details of the rakshasa, things the pirates had failed to mention.
By reputation, rakshasas were a terribly cruel and frightfully powerful race of creatures. They lived long lives, were agile and fast, and could jump great distances. They could see in the dark and had a powerful sense of smell. Their padded feet allowed them to move unheard on any surface, despite their size. They were hunters with wickedly intelligent minds.
To add to their list of abilities, they were also shape shifters. They could alter their form at will and maintain the change for any length of time. This power was not absolute, though, because they could only change so much. Rakshasas could not transform into a phoenix and fly, nor could they become a hydra and gain extra heads. Their form had to be humanoid and not too far off from their own size, and they would only appear to be what they transformed into. If a rakshasa morphed to look like a vampire, the sun would cause him no harm.
It was a terrifying prospect, knowing that anyone at any time could be a bloodthirsty creature in disguise, but such was life in Savara. The only good news was that rakshasas were neither immortal nor were there many of them left.
Legends told that long ago, after the ancient civilizations that built the grand temples and cities fell, the rakshasas rose to power and commanded large armies of men. They swept over Savara, warred against the Kshatriya of old who stood in their way, and plundered the old tombs and temples of their riches. If not for their insatiable lust for power, they likely would have ushered in a new era of oppression.
However, at the height of their reign, their greed and ambition became so overbearing that they turned on each other. Slowly, or quickly, depending on the version of the story, their dominance over man was broken. Their long-suffering victims revolted and overthrew their vicious overlords, and if there had been a kingdom left standing, a decree might have been issued to exterminate their race altogether.
Lucky for them, Savara was completely broken and shattered by this time. The rakshasas faded into obscurity and folklore while the remaining men fought each other, like the very overlords they had just overthrown. It was said that the rakshasas never forgot their once mighty rule and longed to have it again. Few towns—typically only those whose warlords were secure and had no fear of death—allowed them entrance, and most people were afraid to interact with them at all.
Hearing all of this, Emily understood how Takeo’s promise of power had so easily swayed Jabbar. The chance to wield an army of samurai would have been a difficult prospect to turn down, even for a regular human. Emily asked about Kings’ Hearth next but did not receive nearly as much information.
Kings’ Hearth lay on the eastern end of Savara, roughly in the direction they were heading. It was aptly named, because it had once been a neutral meeting place for neighboring kingdoms, or so the stories claimed. Not so much a castle as an extravagant inn, it had been one of the first places to be picked clean when the ancient civilizations came to an end.
Beyond its reputation, neither Koll nor Takeo could offer much else, being as neither of them had been there. On the third night, an important question struck Emily, and over the thunderous snores of Koll, she broached the subject with Takeo.
“Do we at least know if the place is abandoned?” Emily asked.
“It is,” Takeo nodded, “or at least it should be.”
“I’m surprised any of these old buildings are abandoned at all,” Emily noted. “I mean, they’ve stood for ages, right? Why aren’t people using them for shelter? It seems like a waste of a perfectly good building.”
“Some of them are used,” Takeo answered, “at least those that have been repaired and kept up. Some of these places, though, these old tombs and temples, are no longer in a good location for people to live. Kings’ Hearth and Phoenix Temple are too far from current towns and paths of travel for them to be reused. Some people believe they’re haunted, or at least too dangerous to live in. Sometimes they’re right.”
Emily slept surprisingly well those nights. After the first night with the blanket, she found herself unable to turn down the small luxury. Instead of offering it to her, Takeo just set it aside for her to grab. He had somehow picked up on her prideful nature before she was aware it existed, and she realized she appreciated the gesture.
She was becoming more of an amazon every day, apparently.
With freedom, she found a few other things had returned, like her old habits. She cut her hair, for one, using the knife and slashing the long strands back so that they no longer touched her shoulders. Takeo said nothing as she did this, and she wondered if he thought her hair as odd as she did his.
On the second morning, she had flown into a panic because she couldn’t find her bow. She remembered why a second later, and a wave of loss washed over her. After the bow, she remembered her grandmother, then her mother, then her father, then her brothers, and then, finally, Adelpha. She did not wonder where they were, but she did ponder how they were doing. She expected they were well and, besides her grandmother, at least better off than her. As often happened while she’d been at sea with the pirates, Emily contemplated how long it would be before she’d see any of them again. Her family, she missed them so. She always would.
It was times like those that she would grab her pesh-kabz and breathe a sigh of relief. It was pleasant to be armed again. The heavy knife bounced against her thigh from its sheath as she walked, providing a comfort she had never realized until it was gone. Koll had not asked for it, saying he would rather die than use such a tiny weapon. He had held up one massive, closed fist to the pesh-kabz, using the juxtaposition to illustrate that he was deadly enough without it. Emily just smiled and ran the sharpened e
dge along her finger to check its condition. She found it acceptable, at least until she could get another bow.
Takeo kept the scimitar. Emily had a feeling Koll wanted the elegant meat cleaver, despite whatever he said otherwise, but for some reason the viking had not bothered to make an argument for it. She couldn’t say exactly why, though she could rule out fear of Takeo’s disagreement. If Koll was confident in anything at all, it was in his ability to fight. He filled their long hours of travel with vast details and overly extravagant tales of his epic conquests—from dragon slaying, to orc hunting, to troll wrestling.
“I once beat a dwarf in an arm wrestling contest!” he laughed and then frowned when Emily and Takeo blinked their confusion. “By Valhalla, how do you two find your feet in the morning? Do you not understand what I’m saying? You know nothing of dwarves, I’ll bet. These short, stubby creatures are as big around as they are tall. Imagine all the muscle on a viking packed into a creature smaller than you, Emily. They spend all day—I swear upon my wife’s soul—all day swinging a pickaxe into rock to mine for jewels and build their tunnels. They got arms as big as a pirate’s cannon! And I wrestled one! That deed alone is worthy of a song.”
Emily offered a weak smile, and Takeo lifted one corner of his mouth. Most of the samurai’s smiles came from his eyes, Emily noted. His dark pupils seemed to brighten when he showed humor and darken when he worried. She’d seen him angry before, too, and had watched the emotion pour from them.
She wondered at this and couldn’t help but draw a conclusion as to why. She’d only met a few samurai in her life and even then only for a few moments in combat, but she had yet to see their quiet and calm demeanor mimicked. Emily had a feeling that showing emotion was frowned upon for a samurai, and thus Takeo’s face was hard to read. His eyes, though, were like a window to his soul, and they spoke of sadness. Emily felt her curiosity grow, and as always, her curiosity got the better of her.
On the fifth night, as they neared their destination, she waited for Koll to pass into his noisy sleep before she turned to Takeo.
“So, what’s your story?” she asked.
She should have found a more tactful way to ask, but she still found it difficult to speak to the samurai directly. He had an aura that lingered between hard stone and still water, giving her the impression personal matters were private matters. In this, she was correct.
“I’m not in the mood to talk about it,” he said after a pause, his tone not unkind.
Emily didn’t want to press the issue, but her curiosity got ahold of her mouth.
“Is it a sad story?” she prodded.
Takeo looked at her, his face still and firm, and her words slammed back into her throat. She looked away, feeling shame for not minding her own business. She was usually much more respectful than that. Her parents had taught her better.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized.
“Don’t be,” he said. “I’m curious about you as well.”
He said it in passing as he rolled over onto his side, facing away. His breathing deepened a moment later, and Emily decided the conversation had come to a close. She felt an urge to say something else, but she had regained control over her actions and so kept quiet. She curled up in her blanket and let the constant blow of the wind combined with Koll’s wheezing lull her to sleep.
* * *
“We should reach Kings’ Hearth by tomorrow night,” Takeo explained on their last day of travel. “There’s no telling how much time we’ll have before Jabbar and Eisa reach us. We may have a day; we may have an hour.”
“Could we have longer than a day?” Emily asked.
“Not a chance,” Koll laughed. “That rakshasa is hot on our heels. I can feel it in my bones.”
“Your bones?” Emily blinked questioningly.
“Aye, a true hunter knows when he’s being hunted,” Koll bragged, lifting his chin and squaring his shoulders. “I can smell a battle brewing like warm ale on a cold night. He’ll be coming; fate is inexorable.”
Koll’s mention of warm ale made Emily grimace. The sound of warm anything didn’t go over well with her dry throat. It was another scorching day, just like every day had been, and just like every day would be, Emily assumed.
She was growing extremely weary of the Great Desert.
“He’ll come at night, too,” Takeo said. “If he comes close during the day, he’ll wait for night before he creeps in. That we can be absolutely certain of.”
“And considering we’ll reach the place by night,” Emily frowned, “there’s a good chance we won’t have any time to prepare at all.”
“Oh the good news doesn’t stop there,” Takeo said. “There’s still that trap to consider. The merchant was very clear that she trapped both locations. I doubt it will be another poison dart. I suspect this one will be more sinister.”
“Aye,” Koll nodded. “I was thinking the same thing, Samurai. It seemed awful strange that that old woman would trap her treasure room with just one trap that could kill only one person. My guess is that Phoenix Temple was nothing but bait. If Kings’ Hearth is where she hid most of her treasure, then this is where the real trap will be. Probably something horrid, like a collapsing wall or a room that fills with sand, or maybe we’ll fall into a pit of olgoi-khorkhois. Ugh, I shudder to think of that fate.” Despite the heat, Koll shuddered as if to prove the point.
A gust of wind sent their hair flailing as they crested the top of a sand dune, and they shielded their faces as they stumbled down the back side, the sand giving way and falling with their every step. It was hard to imagine that the wind could cover their tracks before Jabbar found them. Such deep prints were an easy trail for anyone or anything that knew the desert well.
“What is an olgoi-khorkhoi?” Emily asked.
“It’s like a fat, red basilisk,” Koll offered. “No legs, just crawls in and through the sand, using its plump, sausage-like body to wriggle and slide along.”
Emily shuddered as a memory struck her, causing Koll to pause.
“Oh,” she said. “The green venom, yes. I’ve seen a few already. They have no eyes and a mouth that’s just a pit of teeth, right? Shoot venom out of their mouths?”
“Aye,” Koll confirmed. “Where’d you see them?”
“At a ruin when I first came to Savara. I screamed and ran away when they spit at me.”
“Good call,” Koll chuckled. “You know, that venom is supposed to eat away and melt everything it touches. The venom is supposed to kill everything, but apparently if an angel saves your life, you’re alright. Who’d have thought? By Valhalla, if I’d have known, I’d have gotten an angel to save my life, too!”
Emily smiled, and Takeo smirked.
“Well, if there’s a possibility one of those olgoi . . . whatever, ugly things will be at the temple,” Emily said, “then I guess I’ll go first.”
“I was actually thinking I would,” Takeo offered. “There’s no guarantee it’s a poison trap. More than likely it’ll be something physical this time, like a trap door. I might be better prepared for it.”
Emily glanced at Takeo. He seemed to be offering rather than demanding. She took it as such and decided to argue back. She’d already made up her mind about this.
“If you feel bad about not being able to stop Jabbar from sending me into Phoenix Temple,” she said, “then stop. I’ll be fine. You can help watch for traps from behind me if you think your eyes are better, but if you get injured, we’ll be in worse shape than if it’s just me. I’m not so prideful as to not realize that I’m the least experienced fighter here. I’ll go first so we all have a better chance of getting out of this alive.”
Takeo just gave a shallow nod in reply. Koll looked between the two of them and then cleared his throat.
“Oh, ah, by the way,” he said. “Thanks for going first, Emily. I’d have died to that dart pretty easy, nothing but a lump of meat for old Jabbar to snack on. Oh, and uh, Samurai? May you die of old age in a warm bed.”
Chapter 25
They came upon Kings’ Hearth at dusk with the sun at their backs and long shadows cast before them. The setting sun lit up the area with a yellow and orange glow that felt welcoming and so at odds with the desolation they saw. Before their eyes, the trio saw a vivid demonstration of the power of time.
A mediocre wall, no taller than Emily, surrounded five buildings. Much of the wall had decayed to mounds of weather-rounded rock, much like Phoenix Temple, but there were sections that had somehow been spared. Shockingly, the iron-barred gate was still intact, though barely hanging from rusted hinges. Both halves were sagging so badly that they had folded over and a sizeable, human-sized gap had been created. There, black had faded to rusty red, speckled in flaky bits. Beyond the gate, a cobbled walkway wide enough for four knights to ride abreast led the way into the compound and split off to each of the buildings within.
The buildings were arranged with the largest in the center and each of the other four at its corners. The four outlying buildings reminded Emily of her old home back on the Great Plains, simple and quaint, though time had been most cruel to their less than adequate construction. Two were nothing more than piles of debris, folded in on themselves and shoved in the direction of the strongest wind. Another was half collapsed, showing a darkened entry way that would inevitably lead to solid obstruction. Only one of those outlying buildings remained standing, its mixed construction of wood and clay bricks somehow surviving better than its siblings. Still, Emily thought she’d be hard pressed to enter that building for any reason.
What truly caught her eye, though, was the building in the center. It was grand indeed. Larger than the Phoenix Temple, it was built with none of the shoddy workmanship that had been expended on its tiny companions. Nothing but large, stone bricks and massive columns had been used on this building, and although it was stripped bare, Emily imagined the elegant adornments it must have displayed before it fell into disuse.