by Greg James
“There will be no hunting in the steppes as we cross them, and if we are forced inside the mountains, the going will be much, much worse. We must be prepared for the worst, for it may well come,” Ossen said.
But that can all wait for the morrow, thought Sarah, as she joined the people of Trepolpen to watch the fireworks blossom in the night sky. Dragons fought there. The forms of angels and demons were traced out amid the stars. And she was sure she saw faces from back home, in Okeechobee, Mom, Kiley …Dad… shimmer brilliantly for a short while and then fade away.
~ ~ ~
The following day passed without incident, although Sarah was still uneasy around the Sworn. The warrior never spoke, except with gestures. The steel-grey eyes were young, Sarah knew, but she couldn’t decide if they were male or female. What she did know was that such a hard, silent person was difficult to be around. It made her feel tight inside, as if her skin was tensing whenever the Sworn moved or motioned as they walked through the town or picked supplies from the market stalls. The people of Trepolpen also seemed ill-at-ease with the black-swathed figure passing snake-like along their streets. But Ossen maintained they needed the Sworn, and Sarah could not disagree. The Sworn was the only trained warrior of the three of them, and they would need someone who could fight on the journey.
Yes, she was sure that they would have need of the Sworn very soon.
Evening was setting in when they returned to The Water Mark, footsore but ready to depart the town on the morrow. After enjoying a hearty dinner with Master Jez, they retired to bed.
~ ~ ~
It grew dark outside, and quiet inside, as Master Jez made for the inn’s door to lock up for the night. He reached up to secure the bolts. The rattling rain outside had come on at nightfall, but seemed to be falling harder and more persistently now than before. Jez felt suddenly cold down to his bones and could not catch his breath. The cold spread through his limbs until his hands spasmed and refused to do as he wanted.
Then, looking down, he saw the smoking blade that had pierced the wood of the door.
He sprang away from the door as the blade swept from side to side, carving through the wood as if it were paper. Shattered, smouldering pieces fell all about him as the five Shades strode into the bar.
Master Jez met them with steel of his own.
A swordsman of Highmount in the war against the Far Isles, not so many years ago, he skilfully feinted, countered and struck as the five blades that had been smelted in Nightland Forges sang and wailed around him. Tables were overturned. Chairs and stools were kicked over or flung at the wraiths. Soon, Master Jez was panting and red-faced with exertion. The Fallen-born were slowly manoeuvring themselves closer to the stairs that led to the first floor and the bedrooms above. Despite his ailing strength, Master Jez leapt onto the bar and ran its length, knocking flagons and ale mugs towards the Fallen-born. He jumped from the end of the bar to the foot of the stairs, where he continued the fight and shouted up the stairs, “Ossen! Awake, Wayfarer. Get up and flee the town. Now, for the Mother’s love. Go!”
Turning his face back to the Shades, he saw an opening and swung his sword into it, hoping to take at least one of the fiends down so Ossen and his charges could escape. But something happened that he did not expect.
The blade struck the shadowy form, which then seemed to fill out and harden as he watched. Armour, angular and studded, sprang forth from the darkness. The iron it was fashioned from smoked and reeked like the Fallen-born swords. And he saw their faces, wasted and rank, with fangs that were also plated with the same blackened, ever-burning iron.
And then, there were the eyes.
The Devil-eyes of the Fallen-born—coals cast from a benighted forge, where screams and suffering were the sparks of creation. Master Jez could not move for looking into them, and his blade was now fused with the plate-armoured chest of one of their number. Black blades rose into the air, ready to strike the deathblow.
There was a blur, a shout, and something passing fast struck the swords away from their downward arc. The Fallen-born keened in fury, and Master Jez shook his head and found his scattered senses again. Looking up, he saw a lithe figure standing on the bar, all in black, a short sword in each hand.
The Sworn.
Their interest in him gone, the Shades charged at the bar and brought all of their swords down upon the wood with a mighty crash of cleaving steel and splintering timber. The Sworn was already away from them, leaving them struggling to free their weapons from the collapsed bar. The Sworn danced nimbly on tiptoe over to Master Jez, flinging a small bundle towards him. He caught it with one hand and gasped from the sudden weight. A heavy purse—gold, plenty of it, no doubt. The Sworn favoured him with a sly wink and then was out of the broken door. Moments later, with unearthly shrieks emanating from their beings, the Shades were on their feet, swords freed, and were quickly shifting back into their incorporeal shadow forms. They streamed out of the doorway like foul black smoke and were soon lost in the night, in pursuit of their quarry. Master Jez lay down his sword. Still panting, he tossed the purse of gold from hand to hand. It was enough to repair the inn, and then some. It would go a long way in these dark times.
“Thank you, my friends,” he said. “And the Mother speed you safe to your destination, wherever it may be.”
~ ~ ~
Ossen whipped the reins hard upon his mount and the horse gathered pace, breaking from a trot to a canter to a gallop. Sarah and the Sworn followed hot upon his tail. The tree branches and glimpses of the night sky overhead all became a cold blur, seething past. Sarah did not speak, and neither did Ossen, until they were well clear of Trepolpen. Only then did Sarah see the Wayfarer glance back for a moment. His face tightened, as if he had heard a terrible sound, and then he stared across the undulating landscape before them and on to the horizon, made jagged by the peaks of mountains.
“There are the Mountains of Mourning, Sarah,” he said. “We must ride on hard to reach them. Those Fallen-born came with Fellhounds, and they may have Drujja seeking us too. Ride on, both of you!”
The company of three rode hard and long into the night until the first pale streaks of dawn lined the horizon. It was only then that they slowed to a canter. The steeds’ flanks glistened with sweat, their eyes were wide and wild, and their bits were crusted with spittle and foam. But still the howl of things that were rank and fallen from grace came from not so far away.
~~~
Chapter Sixteen
The river they came to the following day was a shimmering green serpent parting the hillocks of the Grassland Plains. The ground was becoming stonier as they drew closer to the Mountains of Mourning, but there were still days to go before they would be in their shadow. The hillsides slithered with old roots, storm-churned mud, and unnamed ruins. A pillar, weather-worn and lost to the structure it had once come from, had fallen across the surging water’s surface. Along the banks bloomed flowers by the hundred, their white, pancake-shaped petals mottled with patches of pink, magenta, and rose. Some were darker in hue, as if the virgin blossoms had been daubed with blood. Sarah wondered if it were just her imagination working overtime.
Too many late nights and too little sound sleep, she thought. A slight perfume issued from the flowers, heady and piquant. She felt Ossen’s fingers dig hard into her shoulder. It’s not safe here. She knew it without needing to be told. Looking back at the flowers, she saw only spilled blood, for sure, on the mottled blooms—the dried-out spots of life left by others who had come here before them. Something awful had happened in this place.
“You see that?” Ossen whispered, pointing at the pillar over the river.
She nodded. “It's out of place. Someone’s put that there. It’s a trap.”
“An ambush, most likely. And they’re watching us right now from the ruins.”
“Who?”
“Bandits. Waiting in the brush and ruins.”
“I can’t see anyone. Nothing.”
“They’ll have bolt-holes dug out. These parts of the plains are like rabbit warrens because of them.”
Sarah looked to the Sworn, who nodded in agreement with the Wayfarer’s words.
“What do we do?”
Ossen breathed out through his moustache and scratched at his beard. “There is only one thing we can do,” he said.
The Wayfarer dismounted from his stallion and walked out onto the pillar that had fallen over the river. He held up his hands, his staff between them, and called into the scattered ruins beyond, “I am of the Wayfarers. We seek safe passage through your lands. We come in peace and have no allegiance. We mean no harm to the Kay’lo.”
A reverberating shriek answered, echoing through the shattered stone walls and crumbling spaces all around. Dark shapes sprang up, moving and darting, closer and closer. Ossen stepped away from the pillar and mounted his stallion once more.
“That didn’t work, did it?”
He shook his head with a sigh. “No. O Sworn, we will need you.”
The Sworn nodded and dismounted, drawing its short swords, eyes flicking this way and that as grass rustled and voices drifted lightly on the wind.
Then, the Kay’lo came, sprinting and jumping out of the ruins with knives and whips in their hands. Clad in light leather and woven cloth, their delicate amber-toned faces made them appear furious and feline. Black hair streamed behind them as their cries rose to shrieks and their eyes narrowed to slits. Their movements were snake-like, just like the Sworn. The black-clad warrior was a blur around the horses as it fenced and fought with the attackers. Sarah could see that they were as lithe and nimble as the black ghost they were facing. She tried to feel the Flame inside her, to bring it out and send it against the Kay’lo, just as she had the Drujja, but nothing happened. She drew Fang from its small scabbard to stab, strike, and cut at Kay’lo hands that grabbed her ankles, trying to unmount her. Ossen flailed and battered at the surging tide of bandits with his staff. More and more of them seemed to stream out from the ground, the mouths of hidden burrows disgorging them. There were too many, far too many. The Sworn was lost to sight among them. She saw Ossen go down into the melee with a cry.
Then she, too, fell.
~ ~ ~
“Where are they taking us? Where is the Sworn?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know, Sarah,” said Ossen, “but I fear we shall find out soon enough.”
They were walking between Kay’lo bandits, their horses being led along separately. If they had let us stay mounted, we might have had a chance, Sarah thought.
But she could see that these people were smarter than that. This was their way of life; she could see it in the hard lines and unfeeling stares of their faces. This was not crime to them. It was how they survived in the Plains. Every few steps, a prod in the back with a pole-arm would make her stumble along a little faster. They were being taken to a camp, Ossen said, after which they might be taken to Lo’a’Pan: the underground city of the Kay’lo. A shudder went through Sarah as she thought back on the time she had spent as a prisoner in Yagga’s hut. To go through that again.
No, she thought. I will not. I’ll burn them all to ashes before I let them do that to me.
Ossen had said, “Take what they give you until you are at the edge, and then do whatever, say whatever, lie through your teeth. Do whatever you need to do to survive, Sarah. It is the only way we will live through this.”
Sarah could feel herself starting to shake.
“Not again, Ossen. Not like Yagga. I can’t do it. I can’t.”
“You have to. We both have to.”
“But what will happen to us?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry, Sarah. I don’t know.”
Sarah nodded.
They marched on without another word.
~ ~ ~
The Kay’lo encampment was small and sad-looking. Bowl-shaped fire pits had been dug into the ground and revealed the ashes and bones of old meals—at least that was what Sarah hoped they were from. The people who sat around the bivouacs, hammocks and huts, were malarial puppets. Yellow skin hung over wrinkled bones. No mercenary fervour lit up their eyes when Sarah and Ossen were marched in; only a tired resignation, like candle flames eating their way down to the root of the wick, like lights about to go out.
“The blight,” said Ossen, “even here. It is spreading out to touch all of Seythe; its people as well.”
On the trees and bivouac supports, scraps of paper hung like limp leaves. On each scrap, Sarah could make out delicate, flowing inscriptions. The inscriptions themselves formed the borders and underlines of charcoal drawings—lean, lonesome faces; mottled snowdrop flowers from the riverbanks; pole-arms and spears laid out at the ready; the death-masks of men, women, and children.
In one of the open house structures, a group of Kay’lo sat cross-legged around a ferret-faced man with a small, chipped harp. Despite its condition, he steadily tuned it, plucking its strings lightly, and then began to play. The acoustic melodies were eerie to Sarah’s ears. Strange, echoing chords shaped the air and seemed to stir it, creating a chilly breeze that crept over her and made her heart catch.
A thin, elderly woman with a noble, unlined face approached them, nodding a greeting. Speaking quickly, she said, “My name is M’Eoa. You are our guests. Please sit with me and eat a little.”
“You speak the southern tongue well,” said Ossen.
“Yes. Before the last war, I was a student in Yrsyllor. I learned a great deal about the Three Kingdoms. It is sad that they have learned so little about those of us who live in the Plains. Come, sit with me, please.”
Ossen and Sarah followed the woman, the points of pole-arms still in their backs, until they reached the largest bivouac. It was an open house with no walls, only flooring and a camouflaged net roof held in place by supports.
“What do you think is going on?” Sarah whispered.
“Interrogation. Soft then hard, by the looks of things. Play along. Tread carefully.”
Sat on simple stools, Ossen and Sarah were handed chipped finger cups of pink tea. The aroma was sweet and heady.
“Please drink,” said M’Eoa.
Ossen and Sarah looked at each other. The tea’s scent was inviting, but that was the point—it smelled exactly like the flowers by the river, the ones with a scent that had almost drawn them into the Kay’lo trap.
“Isn’t there a Kay’lo saying, Mistress M’Eoa,” asked Ossen, “that one should beware of bitter seeds served in the sweetest syrup?”
Ossen emptied his cup, the tea spattering at his feet.
Sarah did the same.
M’Eoa smiled, but it was a slightly sad expression. “I am sorry. It would have been better for you if you had taken the tea. I am kinder of heart than U’Uan.”
Pole-arm hafts smashed them into oblivion.
~~~
Chapter Seventeen
Sarah came eye to eye with the Fallen One at the end of the world. At the end of a wilderness lane, where the dirt path disintegrated into grasping green, flies murmured and buzzed around her head, disturbing the temperate summer’s day. At the end of the lane, through the broken fence, was her safe place. Even Kiley didn’t know about it, and she never took Malarkey there. On the other side of the broken fence was the grove—a den of old trees and shimmering mudslides adorning a hillside that had been excavated for another housing project in Okeechobee.
It was Sarah’s favourite place. She went there to be alone, away from people, to be inside herself. She listened to the water run, watched the bugs buzz, crawl, and fly, and climbed the trees, imagining herself to be Tarzan, not Jane.
Then, Sarah saw Him in the trees. He was rough-shouldered and goat-hairy. She saw Him darting and bounding through tangled grass, leaving broad hoofprints in the mud. Wherever He trod, the earth became pregnant, sprouting colourful, lush flora . Sarah watched from behind the crook of a tree limb, nervous about catching the eye of this thing that wore a tattered man’
s shirt and a tramp’s pants. The sight of Him raised a crazy heat in her. Her brain felt funny, full of butterflies and bees. Peering through twigs and brambles, she saw the thing looking back at her, now showing its teeth in a smile. So close. It snorted air from its lungs through a snout, rather than a nose. It smelt old and ripe in the warmth of the day. Those eyes of His were so warm, so innocent in their way. The faun reached out to her with fingers of burnished brown leather. A thick golden tear ran down His tanned face. Sarah bit her lip. Monsters can cry too, and more often than we do.
Sarah could see the horns on the faun’s head; one was chewed down to an ugly stump, and the other was loose, trailing a snarl of wire from a barbed trap. There was a crust of blood there. The faun was sick, growing thin, He would soon be starving.
Unless she helped him.
She went to the faun, running her fingers over its sallow fur. The faun blinked, cocking its head in understanding. Again, it smiled, and so did she.
~ ~ ~
The Rosara carna was all that the Kay’lo ever needed to use to make someone talk; other tortures took too long. The flowers that grew by the river were evil blossoms. Once, years ago, the Kay’lo had ignorantly dried and crushed the flowers to give the torbo leaves they smoked in their pipes more flavour. Ghosts and demons came, or so it seemed. Grass whispered, cursed, and muttered to them at night. Everything reeked of death. Foul, starving faces formed in the waters of the river, and dead, worm-skinned bodies dragged themselves from the ground where they had fallen long ago. Some of the Kay’lo drowned themselves in the river, and others hung themselves before they realised what had happened. The Rosara carna sowed their seeds behind the eyes, from where horrors would then blossom without end. Word came down from Lo’a’Pan that no Kay’lo was to ever smoke the Rosara carna.