Book of Sacha: Dark Fate (The Dark Fate Chronicles 3)

by Matt Howerter

  SACHA walked beside Alexander through the vaulted halls of Terrandal. Their entourage followed close behind as they made their way to the council chambers. The procession contained a number of servants, assistants, and, of course, Rouke. Her bodyguard and confidant looked curiously out of place while simultaneously blending in with the high society that circulated all around him. The armsman was not dressed in armor today but in his very finest clothes. He was to address the war council directly and share with them the long-sought location of the Wildmen’s leader.

  It wasn’t just the clothes that made Rouke look odd. He had a distinctly dissatisfied cast to his face as well instead of the amiable, relaxed smile that was his custom. Rouke had expressed his dislike of speaking to crowds, especially nobles, but in the end, there had been no choice. Sacha had been forbidden to take up the search directly. It was Rouke who had been afield.

  Sacha had been delving into the minds of the Wildmen captives for three long months before her search had yielded any fruit. Even that success had been partial. She had determined where the Wildmen’s leader was most likely to be found but not the actual identity of the man himself. She had shared the location with Rouke so he could direct a scouting mission that “just happened to find” the same thing. Now it was her hope that they might convince the council of that truth and to motivate them to take action.

  As they walked the halls, Sacha could not keep her thoughts from her final success. She had been pushing herself past the limits of Teacher’s instruction, trying new techniques in that ethereal realm of thought and memory. Many of her trials had been unsuccessful. Some had even been disasters, but a small few of her attempts had been promising, and one had become key in her eventual success.

  Her subject on the day she had made her breakthrough was a man the other Wildmen called Waren. She only knew that from the others, because Waren was a mute. Beyond that singular fact, nothing made him remarkable at all—on the outside.

  She had carefully entered his mind as she had done so many times before, ignoring his look of fear and hate. She had come to know this look from the many others she had delved, and it had come to feel right. It was her due, in a way.

  The landscape she had found was similar to many of the other minds: rustic and more wild than tamed. Small huts and campfires dotted the landscape as the people and things that represented his thoughts and experiences went about their business. One figure had stood out, though: a lone figure that looked exactly like Waren’s physical self but more so in a way. This Waren was somehow bigger without actually being taller, more massive without gaining in girth. The best way she could explain it if she were called to do so would be to say that this Waren had a presence that made him everything that was and everything that would ever be Waren.

  Sacha knew from her mentor’s teachings that this was Waren’s core self, a focal point within the mind that held his thought and spirit. In spite of all her searching, she had not found the core of any of her other subjects, but here this one was, obvious and apparently waiting. Curious, she approached.

  Waren turned to face her but remained silent. She wasn’t sure if he didn’t speak because of his condition in the physical world or if he simply refused to. It did not matter, though. She had come to find answers and would get them, whether he could speak or not.

  “Who is your leader?” Sacha asked, coming to a stop an arm’s length away from him, heeding Teacher’s instruction to never touch the figures she found here.

  A wordless snarl twisted Waren’s face as a knife suddenly appeared in his empty hand. He lunged, slashing for her throat.

  Surprised, Sacha threw her arms up to block the attack as she had been taught in Pelos. Her hand snapped up, locking on Waren’s wrist. Immediately she understood Teacher’s warning. Her fingers didn’t simply close on Waren’s wrist, they sank in, disappearing into the flesh of his arm.

  Searing pain raced through her hand and into the rest of her body. She tried to wrench her hand away, but her fingers had been stuck fast, merged with Waren’s flesh.

  Waren bellowed in agony, thrashing like a hooked Baux fish.

  The surrounding landscape began to transform into a wild mountain range. Just as the native flora and fauna came into focus, the landscape changed again, this time forming into the shoreline of a massive lake that stretched away until the horizon met the water. The scene changed again, faster this time, and despite the radiant pain, Sacha understood that these were not just imagined scenes or the landscape of Waren’s mind. These were memories. Linked together, she and Waren spun out of control through his past.

  Nausea twisted Sacha’s stomach as the unfamiliar sights flashed by, and she felt her conscious mind begin to slip away. Out of desperation, she summoned an amber gauntlet to protect her free hand. Then, using all her remaining strength, she slammed her armored fist into Waren’s face.

  The gauntlet sank deeply into the Wildman’s head, driving into his flesh as easily as dipping into a pudding. Waren’s body went rigid, and the spinning landscapes came to a jarring halt. Sacha stumbled but managed not to fall as Waren’s body fell heavily to the ground next to a slow-moving stream.

  Pain still vibrated into Sacha’s unprotected hand and throbbed into her arm. She looked down at her trapped fingers and created another gauntlet around them. Blessed relief flooded through her as the agony was cut off, shut firmly away. She sank down next to the stiffened body of Waren to catch her breath.

  Thank Eos, she thought after regaining her composure. Sacha delicately pulled her fingers out of the Wildman’s forearm. Her other hand she allowed to remain buried in Waren’s skull. She feared if she pulled it out, the Wildman’s memories would once again begin to spin out of control.

  She took a moment to study Waren’s still form. Unlike many of her former subjects, she could tell that Waren yet lived despite the inconvenience of a mailed fist being where his brain should be.

  She closed her eyes to think and was shocked when visions of the Wildman’s memories began to appear. She snapped her eyes open to find Waren lying next to her, unchanged. How strange, she thought, and then closed her eyes again.

  The memories that had been flashing by before now slowly faded in and out from one to the next. Scenes of Waren’s life began to file past Sacha’s vision. His first hunt, his first woman, and even the first time he took another person’s life floated in front of her, each vision coming to her as she considered elements of the man’s past.

  Fascinated, Sacha pressed on, attempting to direct the play of memory as she wished. She focused on war and was rewarded with memories of the fights Waren had endured in his lifetime. She focused next on the invasion. Waren’s mind responded by showing her memories of his flight from hobgoblin raiders from the south. She experimented until she felt she had a good understanding of how to move through Waren’s mind, and then she focused on what she had come to learn—the name of the Wildmen’s leader.

  Again, memories faded from one to the other, but each time Sacha thought she found what she was looking for, it turned out to be a falsehood. If there was a leader of the Wildmen as a whole, this man did not know who it was. He only knew who led his personal tribe, a man named Jeral. The chief’s brutal face made Sacha certain there must be hobgoblin or maybe even ogre in his bloodline. Even though this chief was not the object of her search, she could not be entirely disappointed, considering what she had just learned about delving for memories and gaining control of her subject.

  Just as Sacha was about to give up on her search, a recent memory surfaced. In spite of her expectation of more folly centered around Jeral, she stopped to watch it.

  She was surprised to see a southern grahl land in the center of the tribe’s Wildman camp. This creature was smaller than its northern cousins and lacked the heavy, bony feathers that provided the larger monsters with a sort of armor. That didn’t stop the southern grahl from being a threat to man and beast, though. It was an agile flyer with vicious talons and a voracious hung
er. This one had a goblin clinging to a rude harness on its back, and it snapped at the scurrying Wildmen while its rider laughed.

  Waren ran to the pile of kindling on the far side of the fire before he came to a stop and strained to listen.

  “What you mean, invading?” Jeral had asked with anger, though he kept well away from the jaws of the grahl.

  “Yous and yous tribe gots to come east,” the goblin said as it slid to the ground and dug a bloody hunk of something out of a leather satchel hanging from one bony shoulder. The grahl snapped it out of the goblin’s hand, narrowly missing his fingers. Great crunching, gobbling sounds flooded the campsite as the grahl set to its feast with a will.

  The goblin turned away and limped to the fire. “They’s callin’. Big news.” He spit into the coals and scratched himself before pulling a tattered piece of hide out of a smaller pocket on the satchel and holding it up as if for inspection. “All of us in the west gotta come.”

  Jeral snorted and worked his way carefully past the grahl to snatch the old skin out of the goblin’s hand. The chief spread it out on the ground while the goblin hoisted his loincloth to piss on the fire.

  Waren could just see a sketched outline of a rough map with a bend of the Tanglevine shown near a massive group of trees.

  Sacha fell out of the memory in her excitement. I found it! she thought in shock. I finally found something I can use. She looked down at Waren’s limp body with a mixture of satisfaction and sadness. She wasn’t sure what Waren would be like when this was over, but she knew he wouldn’t be the same as when they started. None of the Wildmen had been.

  Sacha snapped out of her contemplation when Alexander cleared his throat. She blinked at him questioningly.

  “Everything is going to work out,” Alexander said soothingly. “I’ve already ordered some units to march. We just need to smooth some feathers.”

  It was then that Sacha realized she had been frowning. She smiled. “Yes, of course.”

  Alexander returned her smile and gave her a reassuring nod.

  They continued to walk through the halls of Terrandal, but Sacha couldn’t stop thinking about the things she had learned even as the doors to the council chamber came into view. She had entered many more minds after Waren’s. Armed with the knowledge of how to look and what to look for in hand, she had finally been able to discover where the tribes were being asked to gather.

  What she didn’t find, though, was what troubled her most. There had been no evidence of anything resembling a king. Perhaps there is more than one. Considering Jeral and the tiny tribe he had ruled. In spite of the Wildmen’s insistence that they were free, each of them recognized an individual chief at the end of the day. Or maybe, and the taste of this thought was bitter, there actually isn’t one after all.

  Sacha pushed the thought away. Now was no time for doubt; she needed to be confident if she was to give proper support to Rouke. She steeled herself as the doors of the council chamber opened. When she strode into the room, it was with chin held high.

  The brilliant light of the late spring afternoon slanted through the windows to fall on the map that detailed the southern waterways and jungle islands of the Tanglevine. “They’re to the southwest, milords,” Rouke was explaining to the war council. The soldier’s thick finger tapped a spot in the southern forests and wetlands that drained the Basinian plains. “The Rhadoken are thinkin’ this is where we’ll find the leader of the Wildmen.”

  Banlor eyed the soldier, careful not to let his feelings of disdain show. Rouke was an irritant with multiple facets, a thorn in the boot that had a maddening ability to remain hidden no matter the determination of the probing finger.

  Banlor had instructed Kesh that Rouke shouldn’t have come back from the mission to retrieve the princesses of Pelos. But then, that mission had been so badly bungled it was surprising that anyone had actually met their death. Of the six people Banlor had required to die, no more than two had done so: the Princess Sacha and the old magistrate, Brier Harristone. Only Harristone’s death had been confirmed, however. Jagger’s assurances about Sacha’s passing were as suspiciously hollow as Kesh’s had been, but Banlor had heard nary a whisper of the Pelosian princess despite listening intently these past nine months or more.

  At least Eric and his arrogant “son” Kinsey were apparently gone forever, if not dead. Banlor had been forced to accept the lesser of two fates for the pair, wanted for Princess Sacha’s abduction as opposed to their deaths. Better than nothing, he supposed.

  Kinsey... Just the thought of that name grated on Banlor’s patience and dragged to the surface memories he strove to keep buried. He could still feel the brute’s hands on him, twisting the lapels of his finely crafted coat, which had since been burned.

  Banlor shook away the memory. It had cost him much in time and gold to bury that scene. He was confident Rouke had never found out the full extent of the events that transpired that evening involving his sweet daughter. If the details had come to light, the armsman would have needed to be disposed of long ago. In any case, the whole affair was a cautious reminder of how commoners had grand thoughts about their rights in the face of the desires of their betters.

  Aside from his tangential place in Banlor’s memory, Rouke’s constant companionship with the princess was an increasing irritant. When Banlor had ordered Kesh disposed of, he had not anticipated that this associate of his former enemies would prove so ascendant. Sloane’s preference for the soldier above almost every other companion could only be attributable to the Pelosian affinity for base behaviors.

  A short time ago, Banlor had thought the royal marriage finally doomed to become a loveless and bitter arrangement. The first few months of their marriage had been such a disappointment, as Sloane and Alexander appeared to have found true companionship, but following the grahl attack, the bond between them had grown so cold that rumors frothed thick as the spawning waters in spring. Now, just when Banlor had begun to maneuver into their dissolving partnership, the pair once again gazed at one another in cow-eyed adoration. He fought to keep the anger from his face as his eyes shifted back and forth between the two royals and Rouke.

  Rouke pointed to two spots farther north on the map. “We have encampments of infantry here and here. A unit of Rhadoken could meet up with either or both to coordinate a flankin’ attack on the Wildmen, in the event that they don’t wanna talk to us.”

  Prince Alexander nodded. “Excellent.”

  “I suppose there is no way to talk you out of this, my prince?” Banlor asked, unable to restrain himself further. Even though it was happening right in front of his eyes, he could scarcely believe they were talking about making the princess’s pet project—finding a supposed leader in the rabble of Wildmen—into anything more than a diversion for the troublesome woman. Those at the war table who were in the minister’s pocket or under his thumb shifted nervously.

  Prince Alexander glanced up from the map. “No, Lord Graves. I believe we must make this attempt to negotiate. A greater threat looms that we must prepare for.”

  Banlor bowed his head, smothering the dangerous emotions that threatened to break free. “Very well. I am at your disposal as always, my prince. Whatever supplies you might require, I will make ready in all haste.” There was no sense in arguing the issue further; Alexander had made up his mind. Banlor would only draw undue attention to himself if he continued to debate the prince’s decision. And what did it really matter? The Wildmen were just an extra bit of chaos that helped draw eyes away from his mistress’s plans. Who amongst those seated here could guess that the hobgoblins coming from the south were the least of their worries? Once Jagger took care of the business with Linder Harrelfol, Selen and her hobgoblins would have free rein to move as they pleased along the northern borders of Basinia. Banlor had been uneasy in sending the doppelganger that wore Rashalon Spinaker’s fat face with Jagger, but the acquisition of the land was too important to allow any chance for failure.

  No, the lands
would be his, and they would be cleared. Well, they would be mostly cleared. Banlor had decided that Harrelfol’s prized wayward town of Braes Hollow was not going to be evacuated. If Jagger and Rashalon’s mission went well, the horde would find a well-provisioned stop on their long trek overland.

  “Good to hear, Lord Graves,” Alexander replied, interrupting Banlor’s contemplation. The prince then glance at Rouke. “Make sure your needs are given to the minister.”

  Rouke nodded his empty head along with the prince’s words like a good pet.

  Banlor nodded as well but toward Lord Soren Mencot, giving him permission to support the plan after weeks of resisting it. The minor lord had proven an effective tool ever since the night Banlor had shown him, and several others, the idiocy of their continued resistance to his rule. Banlor generally detested the sight of blood, but he did relish the memory of Soren’s face when Walina had dropped a bloody heart on his plate. She and the other doppelganger, Dammer Gornella, had made quite the impression that night. Business with Soren and his fellow detractors had been much more pleasant since.

  Soren leaned into the table, addressing the room. “Well, if we cannot dissuade you, my prince, then let us see about making this as successful a venture as possible.” One by one, the council members who had resisted the outlandish venture gave their consent.

  The prince grinned and said, “Excellent. Shall we get to it, then?” He gestured to the map, and then the council set to planning with a will.

  Almost half the people in attendance today were under Banlor’s influence, although even if he had had a majority, the prince’s opinion could move policy in the face of all but a unanimous vote. The council could make the process painfully laborious, true, but at the end of the day, this was a monarchy, and no matter how ill-suited the hand on the helm, the royal word could ultimately not be denied.