Soul Stealers cvc-2

by Andy Remic

  Myriam was dying, and she still found it difficult to admit, to say out loud, but at least now she had in some way acknowledged it to herself. For a year she had harboured denial, even as she watched her own flesh melt from her bones, and she'd continually conned herself, thinking that if she ate better, exercised more, found the right medicines, then this illness, this fever would pass and she would be well again. However, for the past three years now she had grown steadily weaker, flesh falling from her bones as pain built and wracked her ever slimming frame. She had often joked how the rich fat bulging bitches in Kallagria would pay a fortune to have what she had; now, Myriam joked no more. It was as if humour had been wrenched from her with a barbed spear, leaving a gaping trail of damaged flesh in its wake.

  Myriam had travelled Falanor, attempting to find a cure for her sickness. She eventually tracked down the best physicians in Vor, and spent a small fortune in gold, stolen gold, admittedly, on their advice, their medications, their odd treatments. None had worked. What she had gained from her vast expenditure had been knowledge.

  She had two tumours, growing inside her, each the size of a fist. They were like parasites, but whereas some parasites were symbiotic – would keep the host alive so that they, also, could live, these tumours were ignorant, killing the host which supported them. Her one small triumph would be they would also die. Yes. But only when Myriam died.

  Myriam stared into her reflection, the stretched skin, the gaunt flesh, drawn back over her skull and making her shudder even to look at herself. Once, men and women had flocked to her. Now, they couldn't stand to be in the same room, as if they feared catching some terrible plague.

  I am a creature of pity, she realised sadly. Then anger shot through her. Well, I don't want their fucking pity! I just want my fucking life back! I have only existed on this stinking ball of pain for twenty-nine winters. Twentynine! Is that any age to die? Are the gods laughing at me, mocking me with their sick sense of humour? How fair is that, that others, evil men and women, or useless, stupid, brainless men and women, how is it they get to live – and I do not? Who made that choice for me? Which rancid insane deity thought it would be fun?

  Tears coursed her gaunt cheeks, and Myriam bit back the need to scream her anguish and pain and frustration through the frozen trees. No. She breathed deep. And she did what she always did. She thought about this day. And she thought about the next day. And she knew she had to take one day at a time, step after step after step until… until she reached Silva Valley. There, she knew, they had the technology to cure her. Using clockwork, and blood-oil, and dark vampire magick.

  However, persuading them? That would be a different matter.

  Fear flashed through her, then, and she licked dry lips. Her mouth tasted bad. Tasted like cancer. She grimaced, and her belly cramped in pain and she brought herself back to the present with a jolt; they had not eaten for two days. And the sparse woodland in the low foothills leading to the great feet of the Black Pike Mountains contained little game. She would have to work hard if she wanted supper.

  Myriam was a skilled hunter. Before her affliction, she had won the Golden Bow three times in a row at the Vor Summer Festival. Now, the cancer ate her, and had sapped her strength, made her aim less true. But she was still a devastating archer, nonetheless.

  Myriam crept through the woods, her boots treading softly on hard soil and patches of snow. She picked every footfall with care and stopped often, looking around with slow, fluid movements, her ears twitching, listening, her mind falling in tune with the winter trees.

  There!

  She saw the doe, a young one, rooting for food. Were there any parents close by? The last thing Myriam needed was a battle with an enraged stag; if nothing else, it made the meat damn tough.

  She saw nothing, and eased herself to her knees, allowing her breathing to normalise, to regulate, as she notched the arrow to the bowstring and with a slow slow slow measured ease, drew back the string, taking the tension with her ever-so-slightly trembling muscles.

  The arrow flashed through the woodland, striking the doe from behind, between the shoulder blades, and punching down into lungs and heart. It was a clean kill, instant, and the doe dropped. Myriam felt a burst of joy, of pride at her skill; then she stood, and the smile fell from her face like melting ice under sunshine.

  Death. She shivered. Death.

  Myriam crossed the forest floor and drew a long knife; expertly she sliced the best cuts of meat and placed them in a sack, blood oozing between her fingers. Then she stood, looked around, eyes narrowing. Something felt wrong, but she couldn't place her finger on it; however, Myriam trusted her senses, they were fine honed and reliable. If the element which felt out of key wasn't here, it must be back at camp. Her jaw tightened.

  Myriam moved like a ghost through the trees. The world was silent, filled with snow and ice, and occasionally snow clumped from trees with a tumbling rhythm.

  She approached the makeshift camp, trees thinning where huge fists of rock punched upwards at the sky, dominating her vision. Myriam felt her throat dry for a moment, for the Black Pike Mountains were a panorama indeed, a line of domineering peaks that lined her sight from the edge of the world to the edge of the world. Each peak she could see reared black and unforgiving into the sky, many damn near ten thousand feet. And beyond, she knew, they got much bigger, much more terrifying, and much more savage.

  Myriam stopped, head tilting. The camp was quiet. Too quiet. Her eyes scanned right, where they could see the narrow trail which led from the Great North Road to the gawping maw of the Cailleach Pass; it was along this, she knew, Kell would finally come, head hung low, poison eating him, begging her for the antidote, for her to relieve his pain, for her to slit his throat and end his torment. Only Kell would not; he would be thinking of Nienna, and her suffering, and how he could save her instead.

  A cold wind blew, and Myriam shivered. Snow fell from the trees behind her, making her jump, and she realised she had dropped the sack of meat and had notched an arrow to her bow without even realising it. Kell, the wind seemed to whisper. Kell. He will gut you like a fish. He will cut out your liver. He will drink your blood, bitch!

  Scowling, Myriam grabbed the sack and stalked into their small camp, where the men, Styx and Jex, had built an arched screen of timber and evergreen fronds, for protection against the wind. Within this semi-circle they'd dragged logs for seats, and built a fire in a square of rocks. The fire burned low. Again, Myriam's eyes narrowed. To let the fire go out was foolish indeed; here, in this place, it meant the difference between life and death.

  "Styx?" she said, voice little more than a murmur. Then louder. "Styx? Jex? Where are you?"

  The camp was deserted. Myriam's eyes looked to where Nienna, their young prisoner, had been seated; there were deep marks in the snow created by her boots. A struggle?

  "Damn it."

  Myriam left the sack at camp, and followed tracks through the woods, kneeling once to examine a confusion of marks. She cursed; they had been using the camp for nearly a week now, and there were too many contradicting signs. Something rattled nearby. Myriam's head came up. She broke into a run, arrow notched, and skidded to a halt before a series of huge trees swathed in ivy, creating an ivy wall on two sides like a corridor; against this backdrop Nienna struggled, and even as Myriam watched Styx, squat, black-lipped Styx, with pockmarked skin and his left eye, uncovered, nothing more than a red, inflamed socket – she watched him push the blade to Nienna's throat and snarl something incomprehensible on a stream of foul spittle down her ear.

  "Styx!" shouted Myriam, moving swiftly forward. She stopped, looked left at Jex, who simply shrugged. The small tattooed tribesman was not in charge of Styx; Styx was a free agent. He could do what he liked. Or so Jex's simple philosophy ran.

  "She bit me!" snarled Styx. "This bitch has been nothing but trouble! Now I'm going to teach her a lesson." His free hand dropped down Nienna's side, to her hips, where he started to tug at her skirt.
Nienna struggled wildly, and the knife bit her throat allowing a trickle of blood to run free.

  "No, Styx," said Myriam. "This is not the way."

  His head came up, black lips curling back over the blackened stumps of his drug-rotted teeth. His dark eye glittered like a jewel. "She's trouble, Mirry, I'm telling you! What I have in store for her will break her spirit; you'll see, it'll bring her back to the real world. Either that, or one of us will wake up with a knife in the heart."

  "Put the girl down," said Myriam, voice deadly calm.

  "And what if I don't?"

  Myriam lifted her bow and sighted down the arrow. It was aimed at Styx's one remaining good eye, and Styx knew she was a good enough shot to pull it off, despite the illness which troubled her aim.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Exerting my authority."

  "You're being a fool, Myriam. We've been through some shit together, girl, and now you'd turn on me? I don't bloody understand! This little bitch needs taming; you've watched me rape a hundred women before, young, old, fit, fat, diseased, what's the fucking problem with you now?" He gave a nasty grin, teeth like a fireravaged forest of stumps. "It's not like you haven't tasted a bit of screaming young pussy yourself. You always said the bigger the fight, the better the bite."

  Myriam stared at him, and she knew she was willing to see him die. Because if he harmed Nienna and Kell went berserk then she would never make it to Silva Valley, where the vachine technology could make her whole again, make her well again; turn her into a woman again. And also, only if she admitted it to herself, she was a little frightened of Kell. If they abused Nienna he would never stop till they were dead; as it was, they walked a fine line between angering the old warrior, and turning him into a permanent merciless enemy, one that would hunt them to the ends of the earth.

  "If you hurt the girl, Kell won't help us reach Silva. If we don't reach Silva, then you won't get your Blacklipper contacts; remember? The ones that will make you rich. The ones that will lead you to the three kings of the Blacklippers and all that precious gold beyond."

  That stopped Styx. His eyes narrowed. In a voice like mist in a tombyard, he said, "What do you know of the three Kings?"

  "I know enough," said Myriam, her arrow still aimed for Styx's face. Nienna had stilled in his arms, but the blade rested against her throat, a very real threat. A bead of sweat broke out on Myriam's brow, and her elbow gave a tiny tremble.

  Styx saw this. He smiled.

  With a whoosh, Myriam released the shaft which slammed through the air, piercing the lobe of Styx's ear and rattling off through the trees. He yelped, hand coming up to his lobe, and in doing so released Nienna. She ran to Myriam, cowering behind the tall woman's legs, and when Styx looked up she had another arrow notched, ready, steel point aimed at his face. There was a snarl on Styx's face; but worse, there was hatred in his eye, deep and glittering, and although Myriam had seen that look before a thousand times, she had never seen it directed at her. It chilled her. Styx was a very dangerous man; and not an enemy she wished to invoke. However. If Nienna was damaged in anyway, then it compromised her situation with Kell, finding the vachine, and living to see the next winter. For she knew, as certain as water flowed downhill, that these were her last few months on earth.

  "I think you just made a big mistake," growled Styx. He held up his hands, his knife glinting a little with traces of Nienna's blood. "But don't worry. Don't panic, little Myriam; I am no danger to you. I value the Blacklipper contacts and their great wealth more than I value killing you in your sleep." He glanced at Nienna. "Or tasting her foul juice."

  Styx lowered his hands, and walked past Myriam and the cowering form of Nienna; he disappeared into the woodland, and Myriam released a long breath. She glanced at Jex.

  "Not such a good idea," said Jex, eyes fixed on Myriam.

  "You think I don't know that? You think I'm a village idiot?"

  "No," said the tribesman, carefully. "But I do think you should have let him have his fun with the girl; it would have kept him happy, not harmed her too much, and as he says – it would have tamed her spirit just a little." He shrugged. "Now you have to watch your back. From both fucking directions."

  "You can watch it as well," smiled Myriam.

  Jex did not return the smile. "Some things in life, we do alone," he said, and moved off through the trees.

  Myriam finally lowered her bow, and placed the arrow in her sheath. Nienna moved around to face Myriam, and her hands were shaking. She looked up, and at first Myriam wouldn't meet her gaze.

  Then their eyes locked, and Myriam studied the tall girl before her. She was pretty, with a rounded and slightly plump face. Her hair was a luscious brown down to her shoulders, and her eyes bright green, dazzling with youth and vitality. For a long moment Myriam hated her, despised her, was jealous to an insane degree of her youth, and beauty, and strength, and health, whilst she was slowly being eaten from the inside out, turning into a husk of degenerative cells. Hate flooded Myriam, fuelled by envy, and she wanted to smash Nienna's face open with a rock; split her head and watch the brains come spilling out. But Myriam breathed deeply, controlled herself, and fought the evil in her veins, in her soul. She forced a smile to her face.

  "Thank you," said Nienna.

  "Don't be too grateful," grunted Myriam. "You're still my prisoner… until the mighty Kell arrives, and shows us a way through the mountains."

  "Still – Styx would have…" she shuddered.

  Myriam smiled. "Don't think about it. He's a bad man, aye, but at least it's nothing personal. He hates all women. Come to think of it, he hates all men." Myriam turned, and started back through the trees with Nienna close behind. Nienna was still shivering.

  "Why do you travel with such hateful creatures?" said Nienna, her voice low, almost conspiratorial. "It must darken your soul to see such evil at every turn. To witness such horror, and do nothing to halt it."

  Myriam stopped, suddenly, and Nienna almost crashed into her. "I saved you, didn't I, little Nienna?" Her tone was mocking, her eyes flashing angry. "Darken my soul? Child, you know nothing of me, or my life, of my horrors and pain and suffering. Don't think because of one little moment, one tiny lapse in my self-control that I'm suddenly a mother figure. You're here for a reason, and that's to draw Kell. That's why I helped you. I care nothing for your suffering. In fact, I wish I'd let Styx rape you – he was right. It would have taught you to shut your bastard mouth."

  She stalked off ahead, leaving a confused and now terrified Nienna behind. Nienna trotted after her, tears on her cheeks, and filled with a complete and devastating misery.

  Kell managed an hour's sleep. In it, he dreamed. He dreamed of Ilanna, his axe; he dreamed of murder; he dreamed of the Days of Blood. He stood, muscles bulging, tensed as if pumped on drugs and violence, and his whole body quivered, and his mind flitted and could not settle on a single thought, like some butterfly caught in a raging storm. Blood smeared his face and arms and he glanced down, and Kell was naked, naked and proud and bulging with sexual arousal. His entire body was smeared with blood, and blue and green whorls of paint which were intricately complex and he frowned for he did not remember being painted, or tattooed, but then they did not matter for they were an irrelevancy… Kell leapt down from the stone wall and stood in the street, Ilanna in his hands, a snarl on his face, and refugees were streaming past him, sobbing, faces blackened with soot as behind the city burned, huge towers of fire screaming up into the skies. Kell watched the men and women and children stream past him, and Ilanna said something in his mind with a soothing caress and she sang, and Kell twitched and a head rolled, and blood fountained and Kell moved and allowed the twitching body to spray lifeblood over the butterfly blades of the great axe…

  "Ugh!" Kell sat up, shivering, and pain washed through him like honey through a sieve; slowly, an ooze, spreading gently through limbs and veins and muscles and organs and into… into his bones.

  It's the poison, he told
himself.

  It's getting worse.

  He pulled his cloak tightly about him. The wind howled. Kell licked his lips. What he'd give for a drink. Gods, he'd kill for a drink. And then he smiled, face black in the moonlight, eyes glittering like some dark devil's, and he remembered the unlabelled bottle of whiskey deep in the basket on Mary's back.

  It was a matter of moments to get the bottle and retire back to the phantom warmth of his cloak; the wind stirred eerily through the trees. Kell pulled out the cork with his teeth and an odour of sour, cheap, nasty whiskey filled him. He did not care. He breathed in the scent like drugsmoke; he revelled in its base oil consistency, in its hints at raw energy and amateur production. This was a whiskey made by unskilled peasants. This was a whiskey in which Kell could identify, not like the rich honeyed slop the aristocracy of Saark's social circle enjoyed. This was fire water, and Kell drank it.

  He took several gulps, and it burned his throat.

  He took several more, and a haze filled his mind.

  The pain of the poison left him.

  And Kell slept, whiskey bottle cradled like a small, adopted child.

  The moon was high in a cold, crystal sky. Nienna sat, wrapped in blankets, listening to the soft snoring of Myriam by her side. The woman turned in her sleep, stretching out long legs. For a moment – a fleeting moment – Nienna considered running. She had tried twice before; the second time, Myriam had caught her and explained, using the back of her hand, what she would do the next time Nienna ran. Now, Nienna slept with her ankles bound so tight her feet would be blue by morning. And anyway, she had seen Myriam operate her bow. She was a lethal, very deadly young woman… who could kill over great distance. It made Nienna shiver in horror and anticipation.

  Nienna drifted in and out of sleep, as she had done since her kidnapping. Such a simple word, and yet it embodied day after day of a living hell. Riding in front of Styx, and then Jex, they had shared her burden, swapping her often so as not to tire the horses with extra weight; they had ridden north, fast, as if Myriam feared Kell would take up immediate chase. Nienna knew Saark wasn't going to take chase; she had watched him beaten and then stabbed with a long, sharp dagger. Even now, Nienna was sure Saark must be dead and she shuddered, on the edges of sleep, once again picturing the beating, hearing every crunch, every slap of impact in her nightmares. Even now, she could see the blade slide so easily into his soft flesh, and thought no, it cannot be, cannot be happening, cannot be true, but blood poured from Saark and it was true and Myriam had come to them and they had ridden away into the snow, without a backward glance…