She spits in the dust. “Said something about wanting a fast boat.”
I throw up my hands. A massive army topped up with magical doom warriors approaches. The so-called weapon to stop them turns out to be nothing but an ancient graveyard. And now this?
“Trust Luz to pull one of her disappearing acts just when we need her most,” I mutter.
“Left this, though. Wanted you to have it.” Kip nudges Luz’s bag with the toe of her boot.
I open the pack and sort through the various vials and jars. The sight of sultis no longer makes me shudder – it has its uses. There’s more highly flammable yeb balm among other things. And a jar labelled “last resort”. That does send a chill snaking up my spine.
“She can’t have gone far,” Barden says, taking up the spyglass from Luz’s pack.
“Any sign of her?” I ask.
Kip shields her eyes from the sun and scans in the other direction.
Barden swings around, following her gaze with the spyglass.
“No sign of Luz…”
“Why do I sense there’s a ‘but’ coming?”
Barden grimaces. “Don’t shoot the messenger but…”
“Spit it out.”
“We have company. There’s soldiers coming through the Wastes. Hundreds. Maybe more. And I don’t think the Losians could have made it from the river in this time.”
“Stink on a reekin’ stick,” I curse, kicking the ground.
“And they’re not flying a standard.”
Anyone who doesn’t want to announce who they are can’t be good.
Kip scowls. “If they outflank us on the other side, they’ll have us surrounded. We have to warn the Prince.”
“Wait.” Barden holds up a hand.
“Waiting could get us killed,” I say, but I do as he asks.
“There’s something familiar about them.”
I suck in a breath. “Rangers?”
“See for yourself.”
I take the spyglass and scan the rugged terrain.
Barden was right. By the way the early morning light glints off metal, there’s a lot of them. And then I see what he was talking about.
I choke back a sob.
CHAPTER 34
ASH
I have no inkling of what occurred between the blow I took to the head and regaining consciousness.
All I know is that I’m in a cage.
And it’s moving.
The wagon beneath me is completely unforgiving as it bounces over rocks and into ruts, so that if I loosen my grip on the bars I’m likely to bash face or limb. My head pounds from the blow I took back in the tent, and I fight to retain consciousness, at times slumping against my mobile prison only to earn new bruises to mark the regret.
When I’m awake, I try to piece together the snatches of conversation around me. But all I can glean for certain is that we’re heading towards the setting sun, deeper into Los Province.
If I had a coin for every time a bigot at the Ekasyan court drew great amusement from a joke about Losians carrying a foul odour wherever they go, I’d be able to put a down payment on a manse in one of the capital’s finest boulevards. Yet I never met a Losian who smelled even slightly unpleasant.
It’s not the same case for the land.
The marching army still hasn’t reached the Wastes proper when the cloud of noxious sulphur and the gods-only-know what else reaches me. It sends my mind reeling back to the temple, to the ceremony Rakel had convinced me to undergo to see if she could rid me of this curse.
All I can do now is pray that she recovers. And that the gods keep her away from the thing that could harm her most – her desire to help me.
The stench is so overpowering it’s a good thing Rakel isn’t here. Even I’m struggling to keep my last meal – the dried meat and half a sabre-shaped yellow fruit my captors pass through the bars – from reacquainting itself with my mouth.
Twisted towers of red rock rise out of the plain, casting gnarled shadows. At irregular points between them, fetid pools belch and bubble. It’s beneath a particularly huge formation that one of the guards calls a halt. I strain to see up ahead through the bars. Are they making camp already?
Keys rattle, and my guard swings my cage open. I’ve never seen him before my capture, but the stylized bronze map of Aramtesh hanging around his neck tells me all I need to know. Ranger. Somehow I’ve become Iddo’s prisoner.
“Out,” the guard grunts.
I’m not about to argue.
My feet on the ground, he cuts the binds around my hands and shoves my pack against my chest. “Go.”
I frown. It could be a trick. And if it’s an act of mercy, it’s a misguided one. The Wastes are one of the most inhospitable places in the Empire. Leaving me here is tantamount to a death sentence. “But where?”
The guard shrugs. “Out there. Try to rejoin us, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
Death sentence it is.
Wheels creak in progress as the wagon resumes its trek, slowly pulling back to join the tail of the military column.
I figure there’s only one way to approach this. Head deeper into these hostile lands, out of sight of the main column, and rejoin them from the other side. The forces are large enough and stretched out enough that if I execute this correctly, I stand a chance of not being recognized. Especially if I start with the stragglers.
The Waste’s green-yellow pools boil before me. I stand still and observe the first group in my path, looking for patterns. I’ll have to have a route planned if I’m going to avoid the intermittent jets of steam that shoot up, geysers of mud spewing high into the air.
It takes longer than I’d like, but eventually I work out a path. I hitch my pack and start towards the first pool.
The crust around the water is a multitude of yellows, greens and blues, shining almost like metal. I poke at it with the bleached length of dead tree branch I picked up some ways back. The entire shelf collapses into the bubbling mess. I keep moving, taking extra care not to step near the edges.
I’m almost through to the next patch of clear ground when the last pool – one I thought stagnant – erupts. It splashes near-boiling water and sludge mere inches from my face, the steam that roils with it stinging like vinegar in an open wound. I rub it away, only for my eyes to begin smarting, burning hotter with each passing heartbeat. Tears stream. They only seem to make it worse, as if it’s spreading rather than diluting the residue from the noxious gas.
I force myself to get clear of the pools and fumble for my waterskin. It’s low, but if I can’t see, how am I going to get anywhere to find more? I tip my head and, as frugally as I can, splash liquid into my eyes, hoping it will do a better job than the tears. It provides small relief.
I kneel, blinking and crying for what seems like an hour, though my moons under Ekasya Mountain taught me how pain stretches time. Gradually, I will myself to calm, keeping my eyes closed for five breaths before letting the tears flow, hoping to flush out the last of the liquid. My fingers go to the prayer braid around my arm. They find nothing. I’d left the one I’d bought in Aphorai with Rakel. But I’d replaced that with one from Sal and Bil. Was I stripped of it when I was arrested?
For what it’s worth, I send a silent plea to Kaismap to preserve my vision.
The burning begins to subside.
A coincidence? After everything that’s happened, it would be fanciful to think my prayer had been heard. Wouldn’t it?
I rise carefully to my feet. The last of the sun’s rays seem harsher, the light reflecting off the muck-yellow pools an invasion. But I can see. That’s the main thing.
Tilting my head up further, I make out a lone figure in the distance.
Who in their right mind would be wandering alone out here? Another prisoner left for dead?
Or perhaps my eyes, still stinging, are deceiving me?
Only one way to find out. The figure is in the direction I was heading. It’s no slight to my plans to investigate.<
br />
As I near, I observe their clothes are plain workmen’s gear, nothing announcing their allegiance. They could still be a scout, so I keep myself hidden as I approach, following the shadow of one of the mushroom-shaped rocks sprouting from the arid plain.
There’s something slightly familiar about the figure. The breadth of his shoulders, the bulk of his arms. The kind of physique only certain trades acquire. Blacksmiths, even.
What would have drawn him to this gods-forsaken place?
My mind goes back to the Ekasyan slums not so long ago. The smithy had been boarded up. No sign of the man who had told me time and again that I was cursed. The man who locked me in the cellar when the Lost God’s moon rose to block the light from the other. The man my mother fought against for me, before we fled on to the streets only to starve.
I take another look. He’s got no supplies. He can’t be travelling. He couldn’t be; he’d not have made it this far on foot. Unless he’s camped here? But who would camp here? And why? Is he with the imperial forces?
“Father?”
“Ashradinoran.” His voice is flat, hollow. “Such a holy name.”
It was the name of one of the Empire’s earliest temple scholars. The very man credited with the aphorism I’ve lived my life by: magic belongs with our shadows, behind us.
“It was wasted on you,” he says, as if he’d heard my thoughts. He’s facing away from the sun, so that his features are shadowed. I can still see them twist into the cruel disdain that came before his temper erupted. “I should have known. You were supposed to be born in the month of Bozenai.”
It’s the month I’d always celebrated my name day, so none of our neighbours would know the truth. The month Mother would let me choose which incense I wished to light. I used to ask for the fresh, clean citrus blend for Riker, the youthful god. The deity of adventures and the harvest festival and of song. I so loved to sing as a child.
I should have chosen Kaismap’s foresight. Maybe then I would have lived a wiser life. I take a step back and rub my eyes again. What was in that muck? Or is my brain addled from the sun?
“But you came early,” he intones. “An entire moon early. Such was your soul’s determination to reach for evil.” He shakes his head in disgust. “And who was left to pick up the pieces? Me. I was the one who had to lie about where your mother was. To hide your first cries from the neighbours. For what would they have thought if they knew you were born on the Days of Doskai? What would they have done?”
At the last of his words, his form wavers, darkens. His face contorts into a gruesome mask, blackening before my eyes as if burning without flame. He reaches for me, hands digging into the flesh of my upper arms. I look down, horror coursing through me. His fingers have turned to claws, puncturing the skin.
Tendrils of shadow are unfurling from the wounds.
I jerk back, pushing him from me. The threads of shadow stay tethered, tearing at my flesh as if they were barbed. It’s agony. Like only one thing I’ve ever felt before.
The separation of the beast.
I hear a guttural moan and realize it came from my own mouth.
Somehow, I free one of my swords and bring it slashing down on the ropes of darkness yoking me to the abomination. They pass straight through with no effect. In desperation, I reach up with my bare hand and yank the shadow free from the opposite shoulder. The pain is red and blinding white, searing through my blood. I sway on my feet before righting myself. With an involuntary moan of agony, I free myself from the shadow ropes on the other side.
The next breath, I flee.
I run, skirting burning sulphur pools and weaving between the towering rocks. When my sides are heaving and sweat pours down my face I pause to catch my breath. It’s an effort to force myself to turn around, to see if I’ve been pursued by … whatever that was.
“He won’t be able to track you.”
I swing back around only to come face to face with another shadowed figure. It wears a cloak despite the heat. I consider running again, but what would that do? Will another apparition appear? My hands clench at my sides. If this is anything like the last, my weapons will be useless.
The figure pushes back its hood.
It’s like gazing in a silver mirror.
The same grey eyes – my eyes – stare back at me.
“Come, I’ll guide you where you need to be.”
I stumble back. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Not listening to anything you say. Not coming a step closer. Leave me be.”
“I’ll never simply let you be. You should know that by now.”
This time, it’s me who lashes out first.
The other me dances away, disappearing between two of the huge rock formations. I give chase, my legs pumping, feet pounding the ground until I round the boulder, skidding to a stop before a wall of shimmering heat. The shade, apparition, whatever it was, waves from the other side of a chasm, mocking me, then disappears. I reach out, then pull my hand back too late, rewarded with a scalding burn that immediately blisters.
The oven-hot air emanates from a huge vent in the earth that drops off like a cliff to depths so great that they’re invisible. It must run a mile or more in length, blocking the way forward.
I retreat from the vent, slump down on to the nearest patch of dry ground that’s not on fire or spouting acid.
What kind of existence is this? I may as well end things here and now. Throw myself to the mercy of the underground. Judging by the temperature spouting from the vent, it’d be over quickly.
And what would Rakel think of that?
I gingerly press the angry blister on my hand. Honour can broil with shit and sulphur, she’d said when I was considering falling on my sword after I thought we’d failed to heal Nisai.
Still, honour has always been a part of me. Joining Iddo’s army was honourable in a way. It was to save others from me. But if I truly wanted to do that, to make people safe from my curse, wouldn’t ending it here be the logical conclusion?
Or is honour wandering this place in endless purgatory? Facing down demon after demon in the Wastes? Weathering the pain?
My father’s words come back again and again. The curse he made of a child. An otherwise innocent boy. There’s one last honourable thing I can do. One last promise I can keep. The one I made to some children just like that small boy growing up in the Ekasyan slums.
If I’m going to be a danger to anyone, I’ll be a danger to Zostar and those who have willingly joined his cause. Because I promised Del, Mish, Lark and the others I left behind beneath Ekasya Mountain. I left them in Zostar’s hands to make them into the monsters they never asked or deserved to be.
I must save them from my own fate.
No matter what the Ranger who released me said, I’m going back. Zostar and his army were heading deeper into the Wastes along the banks of the river. Large forces are hard to hide. If I backtrack to the waterway, I’ll find them easy enough.
I retreat to where I’d left my pack and waterskin.
Another sulphur pool geysers into the air, this time drenching me. I wait for the pain of the terrible scald, but it’s cool.
Almost refreshing.
I wake in a cage.
It takes a few, blinking moments to realize I never left. I have no pack. No waterskin. Definitely no swords. But I still have a prayer braid.
The tepid water they used to rouse me from my latest hallucination stinks of soap and last night’s stew. It’s the wash bucket from the camp kitchen. I splutter and curse colourfully enough to make a slums fishwife proud.
“Now is that a way to greet a friend, eh?”
“Sal?”
“As I live and breathe.”
“Can you get me out of here?”
She scratches her chin, brow mock-furrowed. “Why would I want to do that?”
My eyes narrow. The fog clears enough for me to remember the last time I was outside this cage. “Sal…”
“Look, it was too good a deal
to pass up. There’s a bounty on your head, set by the Regent himself.”
“You sold me out.” I thump the heel of my hands on the bars.
“Hey now, none of that. You said you wanted to have a little chit-chat with him.” She produces her gold coin and flips it spinning. “This way we get what we both want.”
“I could slice you from neck to navel, you know.”
“Don’t doubt it. But you’d have to get out of there first. Find yourself some sharp-sharps. Now shut your ale-slurper, we’re about to be in well-to-do company.”
I grip the bars and peer up ahead. The wagon bearing me and my prison is still moving, though it looks like most of the column has called a halt for the evening. I can’t see either Iddo or Zostar, but there’s a pavilion set up with pennants snapping in the wind. Rather than the Kaidon phoenix, they’re stitched with the Trelian bull of Iddo’s home province on imperial purple. I’d expect the leaders will be meeting with their highest ranked officers, processing news from scouts, assessing any threats, deciding on the strategy for tomorrow.
Outside the tent, there’s something that snags more of my attention. A long line of figures wait in turn for the evening meal.
When I last saw them we were covered in the filth of the Ekasyan dungeons. The last time I saw them, I left them behind.
Del. Mish. Once so innocent. Now they wear sleeveless tunics edged in purple and black over leathers. As one reaches for a plate piled with food by a camp cook, I see a shadow at their wrist. A mark of the Blazers.
Did they take it on willingly? Have they been brainwashed? Or is this yet another in a long line of maltreatment and indignity?
I have to find out.
But first I have to get myself out of this cage.
CHAPTER 35
LUZ
The boat slices through the water. More accurately, it glides, buoyed by speed and the military discipline of its oarspeople. I used to find the idea of Losian boat races amusing. Renowned soldiers going for a paddle to secure bragging rights by being the first to cross an arbitrary line? It seemed a far cry from honing the necessary attributes for surviving in battle.
The reality is far from what I’d envisioned.
Crown of Smoke Page 30