by Bruce Blake
The circle of soldiers pushed closer about them but their leader held them back with a gesture.
“You’ll tell,” Therrador whispered, “then you’ll beg me to kill you.”
Therrador rammed his knee into the prisoner’s groin and, as the man doubled over off balance, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him closer to the fire. The group of soldiers followed closely. Therrador threw the man face down in the dirt a foot from the flames and pressed his knee into the small of his back.
“Where’s the camp?”
“No tell.”
Therrador drove the man’s face into the dirt, grinding it against the ground. He came away sputtering, spitting a concoction of blood and soil from his lips.
“How many in your raiding party?”
The man shook his head. “No tell.”
Gathering fistfuls of the prisoner’s shirt, Therrador dragged him forward six inches and settled on his back again. When he struggled to pull his face away from the flames, the king’s advisor grabbed the man’s greasy hair and forced his nose closer. The heat scalded Therrador’s fingers; the smell of smoldering hair wafted to his nostrils.
“Where’s your camp?” Therrador growled through clenched teeth.
The man shook his head, his beard stirring up dust. Therrador grabbed his shirt again when Sir Matte put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. The king’s advisor looked at his long-time friend, barely recognizing him through a veil of hatred and anger.
“Therrador, my Lord, there are other ways,” he said low enough to keep the other men from hearing. “Don’t do this.”
Therrador glared at him. Fifteen years before, they fought side by side to win Braymon his crown—Matte had practically been a father to him. For a moment, he considered relenting, but the thought of Braymon stirred him.
Braymon the faithless.
“Get your hand off me.”
Matte must have seen the degree of Therrador’s rage, heard it in his tone. He removed his hand from his friend’s shoulder and backed away, head shaking. When he reached the circle of soldiers, he turned and left. Therrador returned his attention to the prisoner, bunching the doeskin shirt in his hands.
“Tell me.”
“Never.”
Therrador jerked the man forward a foot-and-a-half and the screaming started immediately. His hair and beard melted with a sickly smell, his flesh sizzled. Behind Therrador, the soldiers cheered. The man yowled. Through the tumult, Therrador almost missed the tribesman begging for mercy. He pulled him out of the flames and stared into the man’s smoking, ruined face.
“I tell,” he whispered before the pain caused him to lose consciousness.
***
Therrador stood in the middle of the encampment, blood dripping from the tip of his sword, the autumn breeze swirling smoke over his head. Flames engulfed the shelters of branches and makeshift tents, and Erechanian soldiers heaved bodies of tribesmen—some of them still groaning—onto the fires. Screams filled the air, silenced a moment later by sword or spear. The twenty-five tribesmen were no match for the forty trained fighting men with which Therrador surprised them. All of them lay dead or dying. Two soldiers strode past Therrador, a dead mountain man dangling by arms and legs between them.
“Wait,” he said and the men stopped, looking expectantly at their leader. “Behead the rest. Put their heads on spikes. I want them to be a warning: this is the fate awaiting any who defy the might of Erechania.”
Therrador spent the rest of the morning watching his troops carry out his orders. The prisoner, face oozing blood and pus, watched from his knees at Therrador’s side, the occasional whimper squeezing through his pain-tightened throat. When they were done, seventeen six-foot-tall wooden stakes adorned with bearded, long-haired heads decorated the ruined camp. Therrador stepped before the last remaining Estycian and looked into the man’s burned features. He rested his bloody sword on the man’s shoulder.
“Should I let you live to return to your tribe and warn them what will happen if they defy King Braymon again?” The name was a bitter taste in his mouth. He wanted to spit after he said it. How could he have done this to me? “Or should I relieve you of your misery?”
The prisoner looked up. Tears might have flowed from his eyes, or it may have been fluid weeping from his open wounds. His charred lips moved, but no sound emerged.
“You’re right,” Therrador said calmly despite the anger the name ‘Braymon’ bubbled up inside him. He looked around the camp. “There’s plenty of warning here for the rest of your tribe.”
The man’s eyes widened as Therrador drew back his sword. He hesitated a second to imagine it was the king kneeling before him, then swung his blade, severing the arteries in the man’s throat. Blood pulsed from the gash and his body fell sideways.
“Should we stake him, too, my Lord?” a soldier standing behind Therrador asked.
“No. Leave him for the animals.”
Therrador handed his sword to the soldier to clean and made his way to his horse, visions of his late wife swirling through his mind.
***
The night after the slaughter, the black-cloaked figure he now knew as Sheyndust first appeared to him. He thought himself delirious with grief, but it was the first of many visits which set in motion the events leading to Braymon’s death.
And Graymon’s abduction.
Therrador looked across the salt flats at the curls of smoke rising from the Kanosee camp. If he’d known then his rash decisions and betrayal of his friend would lead to this, he’d have chosen a different path. He might not have saved Seerna, but he didn’t have to blame Braymon for her death. He could have asked him about his wife’s choice of the name ‘Graymon’ instead of jumping to conclusions about the nature of the king’s relationship with her. Different decisions and his son would likely be safe; Erechania wouldn’t rest in the hands of a mad-woman who fashioned herself a Necromancer.
The breeze gusting in off the Sea of Linghala cut through Therrador’s thin cloak, but he didn’t pull it tight around his shoulders. Instead, he stared at the sun sparkling on the sea and at the tents strewn across the salt flats. Somewhere out there, a Kanosee wagon rattled down a bumpy track, taking his son away from him.
“Happy birthday,” he whispered and wiped a tear from his cheek.
Chapter Sixteen
Athryn crouched over the motionless figure lying in the middle of the cell, his hand resting on the man's chest. A dim light seeping in through the tightly woven latticework door reflected dully in the magician's eyes.
“He lives. Barely.” He looked up at the other prisoner. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” the man who’d told them his name was Callan said. “He was like that when they brought him.”
“And how long have you been here?” Khirro asked.
Callan shook his head. “A few hours before they brought your friend. Then you came perhaps an hour later. It’s difficult to gauge the passage of time in the dark.”
“Why did you not show yourself?” The magician pushed his fingers against the fallen man’s throat, then touched the back of his hand to his forehead.
“Didn’t know who you were. Don’t know what’s going on.” Callan leaned against the stone wall and allowed himself to slide down it into a crouch, head in his hands. “I was asleep in my bedroll when I woke with a start, my hands bound.” He paused for a deep breath that made his shoulders tremble. “There were things in the forest, dancing around me, with green flesh and yellow eyes.”
Khirro nodded. “I saw them, too.”
Athryn stood and looked from Khirro to Callan.
“Forest nymphs. They are said to lead travelers astray, make them hopelessly lost.”
Callan laughed nervously. “They seem to have done a fine job.”
Khirro looked at him and wondered about his reaction. A big man with broad shoulders and thick arms, Callan didn’t strike Khirro as the type to cower in the face of fear.
“But what were you doing in Lakesh?” he asked.
Callan looked up at Khirro, eyes wide with surprise. “Lakesh? What are you talking about? Do I look stupid enough to be caught dead in Lakesh?”
Khirro looked at Athryn, brow furrowed. “If you weren’t in Lakesh, then where were you?”
“Kanos, of course. Where were you?”
Athryn shook his head at Khirro then crouched again, returning to his survey of the injured fellow.
He’s right. Best not to say where we’ve been or what’s happened. Especially not to a Kanosee.
“It doesn’t matter. We’re all trapped here, now.”
Callan pushed himself to his feet, eyes narrowed. “You’re not Kanosee, are you?”
Khirro glanced at Athryn. “No.”
“Me neither.” His face relaxed and a sly smile crept across his lips. “I was passing through on my way home. To Poltghasa.”
Khirro saw that their cellmate intended the statement to inspire fear or awe but, after all they’d been through, the mention of the city of thieves and murderers meant little. There wasn’t a human alive—thief, rapist, murderer, or the like—half as fearsome as the giants, water serpent, or dragon he’d encountered in Lakesh. He was about to tell Callan so when Athryn interrupted.
“Something is happening.”
The magician opened the man’s jerkin, exposing his chest. Khirro and Callan both knelt at his side so they could see. Athryn pointed to the fellow’s stomach where the flesh pulsed and rippled, expanding and contracting like an irregular heartbeat underneath his navel. His belly appeared to glow dully.
“What’s happening?” Callan whispered.
Athryn shook his head. A few seconds passed and the palpitation shifted further up his torso, slipping under the man’s breast bone, pushing his rib cage unevenly. He gasped, his body jerked. The three men stood and took a step back.
The body on the floor convulsed; his head rose then fell back hard against the stone. The man-lump in his throat bobbed as though he wanted to speak, but no words came from his pale lips.
“What’s going on?” Callan said again; this time his voice was louder and held a note of panic.
Khirro looked at him, saw the expression of stark fear on his face, and looked away before it spread to him. The unconscious prisoner's cheeks bulged and a dim luminescence shone though his flesh. His lips parted.
And then the worms came.
They spilled out of his mouth and down his cheeks, their glow spreading and casting shadows across his strained flesh as they tumbled to the floor or caught in his hair. More emerged from his nostrils; Khirro watched in horror as they squeezed out around his eyeballs. Some caught on his cheek or in his ear, immediately burrowing themselves back into the body they’d left. Athryn thrust his arm in front of Khirro and pushed him back a step.
“Stay back.”
The things continued to overflow the man’s body until his head lay in a gradually expanding pool of glowing lice. More and more squirmed out of his head. A popping sound made Khirro jump as the worms pushed one of the poor fellow's eyes out of its socket. Some crawled from holes in his tattered pants and Khirro shuddered to think out of what orifices they’d emerged.
They watched until the clatter of the makeshift door opening pulled their attention from the grisly sight at their feet. Five of the pale-skinned men entered, growling and barking commands in their strange, guttural language. Khirro and Athryn fell back as the leader of the group menaced them with a black sword crawling with glowing red runes.
The Mourning Sword!
Relief washed through Khirro despite the threat before them. He’d thought the sword lost, and its disappearance left a hole in his soul he’d have been loathe to admit—weapons were never important to him before.
Callan also backed away from the shaggy-haired men, but he stepped in a pile of the worms which had writhed away from the body. His foot slipped and he went to the floor hard, three of the men falling on him at the leader’s command before he could recover. They grabbed him by the arms, pulled him to his feet and dragged him out of the cell. Khirro saw glowing worms smeared across the back of his shirt and breeches.
“No,” Callan screamed, voice high and shrill, and Khirro felt ashamed for him, and for hesitating to aid him.
He moved to help, but the man holding the Mourning Sword slashed the air in front of him and Khirro shrank back. The sword-wielder backed out of the cell, shouting at Khirro and Athryn as two of his companions replaced the wooden bars over the doorway. They rushed to the door, the luminescence emitted by the mass of worms wiggling on the cell floor spilling into the tunnel, but it was empty. They were left alone with the glowing worms and the sound of Callan’s screams echoing along the stone walls.
***
Not long after they dragged Callan away, the men returned with pieces of wood fashioned into shovels and their hands wrapped in beaten leather to gather the worms spilled from the dead man’s body. And none too soon, by Khirro’s estimation; the longer the body lay there, the more of the tiny grubs that emerged from it. The leader held Khirro and Athryn at bay in the corner with Khirro’s sword while the others scooped up the worms. They left the corpse and, an hour after they’d taken Callan, the body started to smell.
Khirro sat against the wall, as far from the dead man as he could get.
“Where do you think they took Callan?”
Athryn shrugged and scowled, concentrating on a line scrolled across his left forearm. A few glowing grubs had wriggled their way out of the body since their pale-skinned captors left, but they didn’t cast enough light to read by. Khirro shuffled to his companion’s side, giving the corpse a wide berth.
“Have you figured out how to use your magic?”
The magician looked up from his musings and gazed into Khirro’s eyes.
“I think so. But I cannot know until I try.”
Khirro rolled up his sleeve.
“Do you want me to draw blood again?” He didn’t like the possibility of wounding himself, but it couldn’t be worse than whatever they were doing to Callan and might eventually do to him.
“No. I think it will take more than a few drops of blood.”
“I can cut deeper. I can use my fingernails.”
Athryn’s eyes dropped back to the writing on his arm.
“No, Khirro. I think it will require a life. I felt the power when the worms overtook our friend.” He nodded toward the corpse, then rolled up one leg of his breeches to examine the tattooed writing on his calf. Khirro watched, waiting for further explanation, but hesitated at asking why he didn’t do anything when he felt the power.
A minute passed without words. Khirro shifted and was about to ask the question when Athryn’s gaze flickered up to meet his, then away again.
“I am sorry, Khirro, but I was not ready. When the power comes, the window of opportunity to cast a spell is brief.” He sighed and looked into Khirro’s face. “That is the second time I have let you down.”
“It’s all right, my friend.” Khirro put his hand on the magician’s shoulder. “I know it won’t happen again.”
***
Khirro slept in brief snatches. Each time he woke, he found Athryn sitting cross-legged, examining the incantations inscribed on his flesh. Between the sleep and the dark, Khirro couldn’t tell how much time passed before their captors returned.
The wooden latticework bars scraped against the stone floor and the first underground-dweller through menaced them with the Mourning Sword as they jumped to their feet. The blade whistled; the runes glowed a smear through the air in front of them. Khirro and Athryn retreated and watched others enter the cell, two of them gripping Callan under the arms, legs splayed out behind, the toes of his bare feet scraping the ground as they dragged him in. They struggled to the middle of the cell and dropped him unceremoniously beside the dead man. The way he fell to the ground without catching himself told Khirro he was either unconscious or already dead.<
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“Watch for any opportunity,” Athryn whispered, his words soliciting a grunt and a wave of the Mourning Sword from the leader. Nerves coiled and knotted in Khirro’s stomach.
He wants me to kill one of them.
Even after all that had happened since the day the king fell atop the wall of the Isthmus Fortress, the thought of killing sickened Khirro.
What choice do I have?
One of the men who dragged Callan in spoke and the others laughed, all except the one holding the sword. He barked a command, silencing them. More words spilled from his lips, all of them unrecognizable to Khirro’s ears; three of the bearded men nodded and moved toward him and Athryn. The companions tensed, ready to fight. Khirro glanced at Athryn and saw his lips moving, practicing the spell he would cast if the opportunity presented itself.
Kill a man with my bare hands.
The men rushed them. One pushed Khirro away while the others grabbed at Athryn, grasping his clothes and pulling him away from the wall. Khirro jumped one of them, got his arm around his neck, but the Mourning Sword’s pommel cracked against his skull before he cinched in.
The impact crumpled him to his knees and set stars swirling about his head. He ground his teeth and breathed deep through his nose trying to retain focus as the world swam. Through the haze, Khirro saw the three underground-dwellers grab Athryn, arms pinned, and drag him across the room toward the door. Khirro shook his head to clear the fuzziness from his eyes.
“No,” he said pushing himself to his feet.
A knot twisted his belly, the pressure of it building and spreading until it filled his chest. Warmth spilled down his arms and legs; his cheeks burned. The cell sprang into flickering view, darkness driven from it by an unseen light that set shadows dancing on the uneven walls. He said again, more loudly: “No!”
Khirro jumped at the men, a tongue of flame trailing behind his fist looping toward the nearest one. The man’s jaw cracked and fire leaped into his beard. He screamed—the most recognizable sound Khirro had heard any of them make.