A Warrior's Path (The Castes and the OutCastes) (36 page)

The SuDin’s jaw clenched.  He disliked any reminder of his disgrace. 
In his other life, he treaded thin ice.  As far as he was concerned, he had been all but abandoned by both his House and his Caste.  Despite this, he would protect them.  Though he lived in the shadows now, working with people who were worse than a Chimera; though his soul had become incurably soiled; though all those proud Kummas of his Caste would gladly stake him out on the Isle of the Crows were he ever found out, he had no regrets.  His fallen state was of his own choosing, and all he had done had been for Ashoka’s sake.  He knew no other way to protect his city.  But in the end his legacy would be cleansed; his sacrifices made manifest; and his name as revered and hallowed as that of mighty Hume.  It had to be.  He had given too much and lost even more for it to be otherwise.

“I will be the one – and in time, all will learn of it – who convinces Her to bypass our city.”

“You think it’s possible?”

The SuDin shrugged.  “I don’t know, but I have to try.  I know others spit upon my name, but I have always been a loyal son of Ashoka.”

Varesea smirked.  “You murdered two people and stole their
Jivatma
, and for the past decade, you’ve enthusiastically shared my bed.  Most would name you evil for the first and a ghrina for the last.”

He grimaced and looked away.  “The dead…I didn’t
enjoy killing them, but it was necessary.”  He turned back, and his gaze bored into Varesea’s.  “I’ll murder a thousand more just like them, or even ten thousand, if it sees Ashoka safe.”

“An unsettling philosophy,” Varesea said, sounding not the least bit troubled.  “Kill whoever is needed to achieve your ambition.”

The SuDin smiled and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.  “I would never harm you,” he said, pulling her close for a lingering kiss.

Varesea pushed away.  “
Pardon me if I have my doubts.”

The SuDin laughed.  “You need never fear me.”

“And what of us and our time shared?”

“Perhaps I am every bit as depraved as my enemies claim,” he said.  “Or maybe
I’ve simply decided society’s restrictions are of only passing importance.  I will save Ashoka, but in doing so, I will not deny myself life’s pleasures.”

An ancient SarpanKum once questioned Mother’s orders, going so far as to label them nonsensical. No one now knows who he was.  His life was ended on the spot, and his name expunged from history.  The lesson did not escape the notice of his lieutenants.

-
From the journal of SarpanKum Li-Dirge, AF 2060

“
W
hy did you murder us, daughter?”
Mother asked.  Her voice was like sandpaper across Suwraith’s frayed thoughts. 
“Did we not love you enough?”

Mother was long dead, but She refused to remain silent, always demanding answers to a question
, which on most occasions, Lienna refused to acknowledge.

Sometimes, however, it helped to respond.

“I did what was needed.  Your deaths were required for the greater good.”

“The greater good?  Is that why I was slain as well?”
Her Father asked.

“Yes,”
Lienna answered. 
“And I regret it not.”
  It was a simple truth, and one She shunned facing, but tonight, for some reason, Her ancient dread of Her parents was quiescent.

“Be cautious of the Baels,”
Father warned, moving on to His favorite topic.

Lienna smirked.  Father was a fool, always counseling Her to be fearful of everything.  What did She have to fear from anyone?  She was the Queen of all creation, the most powerful being Arisa had ever known.

“They are devoted to Me.  They serve at My command,”
Lienna snapped.

“We once believed you served Us,”
Mother reminded Her. 
“That you loved Us.”

Lightning flashed, an echo of Lienna’s annoyance. 
“The Baels are as I wish them to be: they love Me as I never loved you.”

Good.  Such an ugly remark usually quieted Mother.

“And do you love Me?”
a softly sinister voice whispered.

Lienna worked to quell Her sudden fear.  It was Mistress.

“Of course,”
Lienna replied. 
“I am to you as the Baels are to Me.”

Mistress chuckled, an ugly, mocking sound
.  “Then you would betray Me at every turn,”
She said.

“I would never…”

“Be silent, stupid girl,”
Mistress cut Her off, never having to raise Her voice. 
“Look to Me, upon the bosom of My fertile land where Your Fan Lor Kum propagate like lice.  See how Your precious Baels conspire with Our enemies.”

Lienna did as commanded, looking to the ground where She had last spoken with Her SarpanKum.  She focused on the shallow vale wherein She had commanded the Baels earlier in the evening.

Lightning crackled, and She hissed a stormcloud of outrage.

Humans, and some not even properly Casted. 
The Human infestation sank ever lower into further abomination.  There the parasites stood; proudly and fearlessly beside Her Baels.  Why didn’t Her warriors attack?

“Because they seek to betray You,”
Father replied.

“A fitting punishment,”
Mother said. 
“You reap what you sow, Daughter.”

“What now, girl?”
  Mistress Arisa asked in a derisive tone. 
“Will you wreak Your vengeance upon Your children?”

“Yes,”
Lienna hissed. 
“They were always meant for death anyway.”

“Murder will not avail you Your problems,”
Mother said.

“And the Baels deserve life,”
Father added.

“You say this now…after what they have done?  You’ve always warned Me against them,”
Lienna cried.

“The Baels will betray You, and it is just if they do so,”
Father said, his voice buzzing loud and angry, a stinging of wasps in Her mind. 
“They betray You because You deserve no loyalty.  They betray You because of what you have done with Your life, and the lives of countless others.  They betray You because You are a wicked curse I wish we had never birthed!”

“NO!”
Lienna cried. 
“I am your Daughter.  You must love Me.  All must love Me.”

“I am dead, Daughter,”
Mother answered. 
“And whose hands are stained with My blood?”

Mistress Arisa laughed. 
“You are weak and worthless.  I give You the power to level mountains and You reply with mewling cowardice.  You are a feckless fool.  I should have ended Your misery ages ago.”

Lienna trembled fearfully. 
“I can do what is needed,”
She begged. 
“Please.”

For the longest time, there was no answer. 
“You have never been able to do what was needed,”
Mistress Arisa replied.  Her voice sounded as if it came from a far distance. 
“In Your birth was born the flaw of Your unmaking.  The Humans of no Caste demonstrate Your failure.”

Lienna cried out in anger and sorrow.  She had done everything –
everything –
the Mistress had demanded of Her.  She had murdered Her parents, overthrown Humanity, and spent the past two thousand years hunting the vermin to extinction with no company but the clouds and the Chimeras and unknowing trees swaying in the winds of Her passage.  And for what?  This perpetual criticism where anything She did was met with abrasive ridicule.

Enough!

She howled a hurricane of sound as She poured all Her anger out into the sky and down to the ground, even into the Chimeras far below.  Unknowingly, She filled them with Her unending madness.  On and on it went.  Distantly, She heard the screams rising from the camps of the Fan Lor Kum, but She was otherwise occupied.

Her mind was quiet.  There were no other voices.

What was this?

“Mother?  Fa
ther?”
She queried, hesitantly.  Where was Mistress Arisa?

For the first time in eons, Lienna was alone in Her mind, and Her mind was clear.  She knew reality.  Her parents were dead, and Mistress Arisa was simply a figment of Her madness.  For the first time in centuries, Lienna remembered all events as they had
actually happened.  She remembered the murder of Her Parents, Her ascension, the Night of Sorrows, and all the cities She had sacked on that terrible evening of blood and death.  She remembered Her madness, a timeless torment obscuring the truth.  She had been blind.  Cities long dead, She had thought still alive, and others still thriving She had thought desecrated long ago.

So much of it had been wrong.

And all the while the Baels had deceived Her, telling Her what She wished to hear, or even conspiring against Her wishes with their soft lies.

Lienna screamed at their betrayal, pouring even more of Her anger into the Chimeras.  This time She not
iced their rising howl of desperation as Her madness took them.

Yes.  Let Her Chimeras serve as
the vessels for Her insanity. Lienna did not care if they could think rationally.  She only required their obedience.  She smiled as further sanity returned to Her.  Now, She could think and plan, and lo’ would Her Baels suffer…

Her smile slipped.  She saw with sudden alarm how the Chimeras were attacking one another in
their crazed fury.  Her madness was driving them to mindless violence.  And She could feel how with every death, a very small portion of Her own sanity faded.

No!

The Chimeras couldn’t be allowed to kill one another.  If they all died, so too would Her newfound lucidity.

She hesitated, unsure what to do, but with each death, She felt the insanity
overwhelming Her.

Lienna screamed in frustration.

She took the madness from the Chimeras, just enough so they no longer sought to slay one another.  They still raged and snarled, but at least they were no longer leaping for one another’s throats.

Her own clarity of thought faded, however.  She could feel it slipping away like
a wriggling eel through Her hands when She’d been corporal.  The derangement Lienna had assumed back within Herself was an infection.  It left Her confused and frightened.

The voices would come back.  She knew it.

She would have to fight hard to remember they weren’t real.

She sobbed, unsure if She would be able to do so.

Once more, Her memories became jumbled, further clouding Her judgment, leaving Her uncertain as to what was real and what was false.

But one thing Lienna remembered.

The Baels would die for their betrayal.

And after them, the
Humans in their accursed cities, especially those of the no Caste.  From where did they hie?  The Oases?  Or perhaps some hidden citadel, separate from the bulk of their vermin brethren?

It didn’t matter.  Not right now.

She would find the truth of their making and eradicate the lot of them from the blessed skin of Mistress Arisa.

She roared groundward, unstoppable as a
tsunami.

A man aware of his own ignorance certainly has claim to a kind of wisdom.  Sadder by far is the fool who believes he knows the truth when all he knows is a lie.

-
Sooths and Small Sayings
by Tramed Billow, AF 1387

L
i-Dirge glanced at his crèche brother.

Reg smiled back at him.  He understood.  The
Humans hadn’t attacked.  They had listened, and their leader, the Kumma from Ashoka, had, however reluctantly, even been willing to believe.

It was the beginning of the dream prayed and hoped for by twenty-five generations of Bael
s, ever since Hume had taught them of honor and decency as well as mercy and love.  With luck, perhaps both Humans and Baels could build on tonight’s events and find a way to achieve a greater peace with one another.

Of course
, there was the question of these Humans who called themselves OutCastes.  They were a mystery.  Who were they, and where did they come from?  Their existence had been a surprise not only to the Baels, but also to the Ashokans, who quite obviously despised their half-breed brothers.

Dirge didn’t know what to make of such animosity.  Why hate those who were simply different through an accident of birth?  It made no sense.  Hume had explained all he could about the Castes, and how interbreeding amongst them was never allowed.  Those who violated this stricture were immediately expelled from their city with the expectation of a quick death, but obviously, some had survived. 
While Dirge was well aware of the law, he didn’t understand the rationale for it.  It seemed cruel and arbitrary.

Li-Choke, a young
Levner, handed the one called Lure Grey a flask of water and a strip of dried pangrill.  The young Human had Healed most of the Ashokans and looked spent.  Healing was apparently quite taxing.

Lure sniffed the pangrill and took a tentative bite.  He promptly spat it out.  “Bleh!  What in the unholy hells,” he spluttered, glaring at Li-Choke, who gazed back at him, surprise evident on his face.

“It is pangrill,” Choke replied.  “A delicacy amongst our kind.”

“Well, it tastes like mint-flavored vomit.”

Li-Reg chuckled.  “And how is it you know the taste of mint-flavored vomit?”

The one known as Rukh broke out in laughter, as did his fellow Ashokans, Keemo and Brand.  Even the OutCaste
s, Jessira and Cedar, smiled.  Only the acid-tongued and angry one, Farn, was immune to the humor.

Lure glared at the others before
eventually breaking into a sheepish grin.

Dirge smiled.  “Pangrill is made from the grasses growing north of Lake Nest – no finer grass exists on Arisa – and ground Chimera meat – the best is
Phed – and dried in the sun for three days,” he explained.  “Perhaps it is an acquired taste.”

Lure Grey appeared discomfited.  “You eat the other Chims?” he asked.  At Dirge’s nod, he set the pangrill aside.  “I don’t think I’ll be acquiring it.”

Dirge shrugged.  The stories spoke of Hume’s finicky feeding habits.  Evidently, his behavior was one commonly seen amongst Humans.  It was a perspective Dirge couldn’t understand. Once dead, meat was meat.  Ur-Fels, Tigons, Braids, Pheds, even other Baels…Dirge had tasted them all.  Once, he had even eaten Human flesh.  It had been stringy and tough, but edible.

Perhaps now would not be a good time to bring up such an observation.

Reg chuckled.  “The Tigons would…” he broke off and all the Baels shot to their feet, staring upward.

Mother raged.

She was furious, in a way Dirge had never before seen or heard.  The sound of Her wrath was like bones ground to powder or flesh ripped to bloody strings.  It was terrifying.
The Humans were frantic, demanding answers for the Baels sudden agitation, but Dirge had no mind to answer.  His attention was focused on Mother.  He felt it when She poured out Her rage, down into the Fan Lor Kum camped some ten miles distant.  A fearsome and incoherent howl roared across the Hunters Flats.  It was the sound of pure, unreasoning hatred – a noise to raise the hackles on Dirge’s neck and cause fear to work its way down his spine.  The Fan Lor Kum had gone insane.  The feverish scream rose higher in pitch and volume before suddenly cutting off.

But a new horror had arisen, and he gazed skyward in abject terror.

Mother was awake, and She was aware.

Oh, Devesh.

The Baels.  She knew they had betrayed and thwarted Her, time and again since Hammer’s fall.

She thundered toward them, crying fiercely in outrage 

Li-Dirge turned toward the Ashokans, terror on his face.  “Mother comes.  She knows…”

“Knows what?” Rukh asked.

“Everything. She knows everything.  Somehow, She has pierced the long millennia of Her madness and poured it out into the Fan Lor Kum.  She knows we have betrayed Her.  She comes now.  She’ll kill us all.”

Rukh rocked back, appearing stunned.

His fellow Ashokan, Farn, snarled in outrage.  “It’s a trick,” the man snapped.  “Don’t trust them.”

“There is little time,” Dirge said.  “She will be here in m
inutes.  “A few hundred yards distant lies a small thicket of trees.  You may be safe there.”

Rukh stared at him, seeming to study him as he considered Dirge’s words.  Lines of worry and doubt appeared on his face
before he turned abruptly to his fellow Ashokans.  He barked commands, turning even to the OutCastes.

“We don’t take orders from Purebloods,” the OutCaste lieutenant,
Cedar snapped.

“Then stay and let Suwraith find you,” Rukh snapped back.  “We need to hustle.”

“Can you take a few of us,” Dirge pleaded.  “You can Blend them.  The memory of what the Baels are at their heart must not die.”

“What about those of your kind back with your troops?” Jessira asked.

“They’re dead.  All of them,” Dirge replied, a catch in his throat.  “I felt them torn apart when Mother poured Her insanity into the other Chimeras.  They were attacked mercilessly.”

“We can take two Bael
s,” Rukh said.  “Any more, and we risk being exposed.”

Dirge nodded, relieved.  “Take Choke and Brine,” he said, pointing out his two youngest and most intelligent
Levners.  Of the younger Baels, they were also among those most dedicated to the way of brotherhood as taught by Hume.

“I still don’t know how I feel about you,” Rukh said to Dirge, “but we’ll protect your Baels as best we can.”

The SarpanKum – perhaps the last Bael to hold the title, at least for this Plague anyway – nodded.  It was a start.  Hume had said brotherhood began with small acts of trust.  It was more than Dirge could have hoped for or expected.

“One last thing, Ashokan,” Li-Dirge called out. “The
other Chimeras require dark caverns in which to birth their young.  It is where we hide their breeders, and where the Fan Lor Kum are the most
vulnerable.  You’ll find the breeding caverns housed in a rocky canyon where the Slave River races south from the Privation Mountains.”  He explained more.  “The only Chimeras Humanity has ever seen are the ones in the Plagues, male mules, including the Baels.  The breeders, though, the ones who can produce more Chimeras …they are empty-headed creatures, caged all their lives long.  Their only duty is to create more warriors for the Plagues, but they can only do so under the direct intervention of Suwraith.  Without Her power, the breeders are as infertile as us, their mule offspring.”

“
What about you?  The Baels.  How do you reproduce?”

“By accident.  We are born to the Bovars through no agency of Mother.”

“You know what I’ll do with this knowledge.”

Li-Dirge smiled.  “
Yes.  I’m counting on it.  Consider it a gift, brother.  Now go!”

He watched as the Ashokans, along with Choke and Brine raced away, soon joined by the OutCaste.

“It is good to have lived so long,” Li-Reg said.

“A life well lived,” Dirge agreed.  “Hume would have been pleased.”

Mother was nearly upon them.  Her scream seemed to tear the very sky.  But She was too late.  The Humans had made it to the copse of trees.

“To brotherhood,” Li-Dirge cried, staring heavenward, past Mother’s evil. 
Devesh offer us grace.

“Brotherhood!” his Baels shouted back.

Mother struck the ground upon which they stood with an obliterating blast, and Li-Dirge knew no more as he rose into a singing light.

*****

“
T
hey’re gone,” Keemo said into the echoing silence after Suwraith left.

The Baels were dead.  They had to be.  The Queen had struck hard
as a falling mountain.  She had led with streaks of lightning, blazing across the tortured earth as Her strikes incinerated everything they touched.  Then came a scouring wind to cleanse the ground of anything still living.  Nothing remained of where the Baels had stood awaiting Suwraith’s arrival except a deep crater and a cloud of dust hanging in the strangely quiet air.

What a waste.

Rukh didn’t want to admit it, but he had liked Li-Dirge.  If not for the fact that he was a Bael, Rukh would have described the general as having a near-noble quality to him.  Dirge had spoken so eloquently about the history of his kind and how the Bael had changed through their contact with Hume.  Rukh had almost believed him.  It
was
a nice story, and one Rukh wished were true, but now, with the general’s death, it might be impossible to ever know for sure.  Rukh wished he could have gotten to know Li-Dirge better.

“The Bael saved us,” Farn said, sounding amazed.

“We’re going to have one hell of a story to tell when we get home,” Keemo said.

“Let’s pack up and get moving,” Rukh replied.

“What of us?” one of the Baels – Brine maybe – asked.

“We need to find the Western Plague and warn our brothers,” Choke said.

“Our city needs to know about this, too,” the ghrina lieutenant said.  “We’ll take leave of you people now.  This has been a right proper bastard of a night.”

Cries, deep and rumbling, rose from several hundred yards away.

“Just our fragging luck,” Rukh cursed softly.

“Damn, damn, and double damn.” Brand replied. 

“What in the unholy hells was that?” Jessira asked.

“Our deaths,” Li-Brine said, grimly.  He unlimbered his chain and trident.

“It seems the Shylows have taken displeasure at our presence,” Choke added.

“Holy Mother, what a
nightmare this night has turned out to be,” Jessira said.

“Why don’t we all Blend?” Lure asked.

“They see right through them,” Brand answered.

“Form the Quad.  I’ve got point,” Rukh ordered.  “Keemo and Farn h
old the flanks.  Brand cover our backs.”  He pointed to Choke and Brine.  “Can you keep them off of us with your whips?”

“Doubtful,” the Bael replied.  “They are too swift.”

“That fast?”

“Faster than you would believe,” Brine said.

The ghrinas had formed up.

“Protect them as best you can,” Rukh ordered the Bael
s.  “They’ll try to drive you out from the trees.  Don’t let them.  You won’t stand a chance out in the open.”

Two Shylows
, both males, came into view.

Rukh had never seen one of the great cats before, and as they approached, details swiftly emerged. 
Both Shylows were similar in appearance with golden-tan fur all over their bodies, except on their backs where they wore a mottled black and yellow pattern.  Each cat was thick and powerful, stading over seven feet at the shoulder and twenty-five feet from head-to-tail.  Despite their great size, they weren’t slow.  Far from it.  The stories told by Trial veterans, describing the stunning speed of the Shylows appeared to be true.  The cats ran with breathtaking swiftness, their over-sized tails pointing straight back as they covered yards with every bounding leap forward.  They were only seconds away.

Rukh melded into the Quad, and his consciousness dimmed.

The Quad moved Primary to point.  Secondary and Tertiary flanked him.  Quaternary held the rear.

Quaternary threw a barrage of Fireballs.  They streaked toward the Shylows…and thudded
with a dull roar as they slammed into the ground, all of them missing.

Impossibly, the cats dodged all of the Quad’s ranged attacks.  Had it the ability to fear, the Quad would have
trembled.  Nothing in this world should move so fast.

The Shylows split apart and charged, one going for the group of OutCas
tes and Baels, the other for the Quad.

Primary stepped forward to meet the attack, but his straight thrust, usually so lethal, caught nothing but air.

The Shylow had leapt over Primary.