Heirs of the Fallen: Book 02 - Crown of the Setting Sun (2 page)

He paused to help one who fell nearby. His darting eyes searched for
Alon’mahk’lar
, but did not find any. “Get up, Altha,” he urged. “We can run together.”

The boy fought when Leitos tried to pull him to his feet. “Get away! Your grandfather brought this on us! We will all die because of him!” Altha clawed at Leitos’s hand.

Leitos released the boy and backed away. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, not sure if he was. While the same condemnation had flitted through his own mind, hearing it from someone else angered him. Who was this wretched, whining child to denounce his grandfather?

With a rabid snarl, Altha hurled a stone. Leitos ducked, just avoiding having his head cracked. Altha began scraping his hands over the dusty ground, searching for another rock. Leitos left him there, and Altha’s curses hounded him long after he moved out of earshot.

The land rose almost imperceptibly, going from mostly pale sand and rounded gravel to a more rugged landscape of reddish rock and brush. As he ran, Leitos relived the scenes of death back at the mine. Above all others, he saw Adham driving his pick into the
Alon’mahk’lar’s
skull, heard again the terrible sound of that killing blow. That assault had changed everything for the worse, just as Altha had said. Still, Adham had given his life to gain freedom for others.

Or had he acted in madness?

Leitos had no answer for that, and thinking about it seemed to make matters worse, so he kept on toward his mysterious destination. Miles slowly became leagues, and his grandfather’s voice recited things Leitos had always dismissed out of hand, at least until now.
“A day will come when you must run, Leitos. Go into the west, always west. Run and hide, survive any way you can, until you spy the Crown of the Setting Sun beyond the dark spires of the Mountains of Fire. Seek out the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. Learn from them. Grow strong and cruel, and avenge the blood of our forefathers....”

Leitos paused atop a low rise with Adham’s demand for vengeance repeating in his head. Back the way he had come simmered a broad, shallow basin. He expected to see a band of trailing
Alon’mahk’lar
, but nothing moved. Of vengeance, he knew only that the
Alon’mahk’lar
had often warned against it. “
As surely as rain falls from the clouds of storm, blood flows in the wake of vengeance taken.”
The conflicting ideas of vengeance and submission, or whether Adham had destroyed his life or set him free, struggled for supremacy until he pushed it all aside to focus on getting farther away.

The sun climbed higher, and Leitos’s bare feet pounded against the broiling, uneven ground. Each gasping breath seared his aching lungs. He bore the pain with grim resolve, and chased his spindly shadow over a shimmering wasteland resting below mirages of quicksilver. By now, he was utterly alone in his flight. He glanced over his shoulder again, neck creaking on stiff tendons, but found no pursuers.

I escaped
, he thought dazedly. The very notion that he was free was as strange to him as the idea of seeking vengeance, even after the countless times Adham had related how men had known freedom in the world of his youth. Leitos willingly fell into the memories of his grandfather, anything to take his mind away from the day’s ever increasing heat and his awful thirst. He formed an image of the cool darkness of their cell, then revived his grandfather’s voice, kind and soothing. He did not notice the tears running slowly down his cheeks, drying to a salty crust before they could fall.…

Every evening after a grueling day of breaking and hauling rock, Adham had talked with Leitos rather than falling into an exhausted slumber, teaching him things that seemingly had no use in the mines.
“In the days after the Upheaval,”
Adham often told,
“just before the Faceless One came to power, men clawed their way out of the rubble of fallen cities, began to remake their lives, followed their hearts desire and used the talents lent them by
Pa’amadin
, the God of All. Peace had reigned, for men had seen too much suffering to want war and strife. During those days, men rebuilt some little of what had been lost. They lived with hope in their hearts.”

Adham usually paused then, letting the imagery of the telling sink in. Leitos knew the story well, but he could not envision the things of which Adham spoke. For him, they were only words. In the world he knew, sweat and grime combined to rub skin raw, and then the sun burned it a deep, leathery brown. Thirst and hunger were constant companions, and the only hope was for night’s darkness and a chance to ease aching joints, if only for a few hours, when he bedded down.

Invariably, Adham would continue his tale, stirring in parts about the Faceless One.
“Some believe he journeyed from the darkness between the stars,”
Adham would scoff. With hard eyes and a contemptuous tone, he would add,
“He came from darkness, yes, but it was the black from beyond the grave, the eternal night reserved for the damned. Unseen by all save the
Alon’mahk’lar
, he moves between the world of the living and
Geh’shinnom’atar
, the Thousand Hells, the realm of
Peropis
and of the Fallen.”

Adham would then explain that the Faceless One held an enduring hatred for the rebellious King of the North and his followers—the ice-born people of a far-flung land called Izutar.
“We are of that land,”
Adham would say, as if it were the most important thing.
“We carry in our veins the blood of that great and mighty warrior king.”
This last he would mutter in a hush, as if fearing anyone other than Leitos might hear.

Leitos had never believed there was anything of strength and nobility in his blood. What he knew for certain, as taught by the
Alon’mahk’lar
, was that he was born of a defiant people, whose opposition had earned chains and hardship. For the men of Izutar, there would be no quarter given, and everlasting enslavement was the only answer for their crimes.

It was far easier to believe the slavemasters, than his grandfather’s hopeful fantasies. After all, if his people had done no wrong, then why would any god of goodness ever allow such sorrows to fall upon them? Adham’s explanation was that
Pa’amadin
had created the world and set it adrift in the eternal heavens, so what men made of their lives, good or ill, was their choice and their responsibility.
“As to suffering, it serves its own purpose, child, by building strength in the hearts of men.”
That had never made sense to Leitos. All he had ever known was suffering, yet he was not strong….

As the day stretched long, the sun’s heat eventually shattered the defense of hiding within memory. Leitos’s head began to ache, and a ringing noise filled his ears. He ran on in a stupor, weaving erratically, lost in a strange dream where he could smell, taste, and feel water on his tongue….

At some point, he found that he had come to a stop. He was not sure how long he had been standing in place, arms dangling, tongue like a tacky stick in his mouth. He had been thirsty often, but never like this. His throat, his very flesh, ached for moisture, but there was none to be had.

Remembering a slave’s trick, Leitos picked a pebble from the ground and popped it into his mouth. It burned his tongue instead of bringing saliva. He spat it out and pushed on, the day becoming the longest of countless long days he had known.

Overhead, the molten-bronze face of the sun scorched the heavens to a hazy white. Weaving now in broad sweeps, he tried to ignore his discomforts, telling himself they were nowhere near as bad as the bite of the lash, which often led to corrupted lesions and left crisscrossing scars. This he knew well, for his back and shoulders were marked so. Such was the branding of every slave.

Sometime after midday, he slowed to a dragging walk. The hardened soles of his feet had begun to crack and bleed, leaving faint red stains on the ground behind him. He did not go much farther before stopping again. He stood with his head hanging, his dark hair smelling burnt as it waved before his nose. He rested that way for a long time, slitted eyes red and puffy, his heart laboring to push thick, sluggish blood through his veins.

After he caught his breath, he straightened slowly, like an old man. He winced as rippling cramps wracked every inch of his body. He looked one direction, then the other, but found only blinding nothingness looking back at him. Despair fell over him. There was no escape, and the wasteland would surely serve as his open tomb. As if his soul had separated itself from his flesh, he saw his body fall and lay still. Caught in this terrible vision, he witnessed days flashing by, becoming years….
His skin dried and withered, became a tattered shroud cloaking bleached bones. In the fullness of time, blowing sands scoured away that parchment skin, then devoured his skeleton. The only proof that he had lived were the bits of white bone scattered over an unknown parcel of desert
—

Leitos came back to himself with a horrified gasp. For the first time since taking flight, he gave full thought to turning back. The
Alon’mahk’lar
were cruel, but fittingly so, he reasoned. They might grant him continued life. Doubtless, they would deliver upon him pains beyond reckoning ... but after, perhaps, they might favor him with shade and water and food…. Or they might take him away, like they did a select few slaves.
Where do those slaves go?
he wondered absently, not for the first time.
Are they truly sent to serve the Faceless One, as it is whispered?
To find out, to end his suffering, all he had to do was turn—

A noise, soft yet so unexpected that it might as well have been a mountain crashing down from the sky, obliterated all other considerations. Leitos’s muscles seized up, and he could scarcely breathe. His eyes slowly rolled, seeking the source of that stealthy noise.

Sand and rock baked under the sun. Nothing moved, yet that sound, a click of stone striking stone, rang loudly in his skull, changing … becoming the sound of stalking feet, hard leather soles studded with iron hobnails, like the sandals the
Alon’mahk’lar
wore.

All thoughts of being blessed by the chance to serve the Faceless One perished. Fear fell on Leitos, as intense as that which had driven him from the mines. This time, his legs and feet remained fixed. Waiting for death to fall, Leitos squeezed his eyes shut and hunched his shoulders. The brightness of the sun reflected off the barrens, spearing through his eyelids with a crimson glare. Another soft click made him flinch again, but he could not bring himself to open his eyes.

Silence fell, gaining weight. It took greater courage to finally crack an eyelid and look around than anything he had ever done. He was sure that he would find one of the slavemasters looming nearby, uncoiling a lash, or hefting a cudgel or a sword. So strong was his certainty that Leitos actually saw one of those creatures grinning at him with sharp teeth, an abomination formed by the forced union between the demonic spirit of a
Mahk’lar
and a woman.

Leitos choked on a scream, even as the image vanished. Only the desert’s cruel face gazed upon him. Leitos blinked, fearing his mind had broken. Without warning, a very real shadow flickered over him. He flung his arms over his head, and collapsed into a tight ball. He huddled there shuddering, waiting….

Death did not come. The shadow passed, came again, fled and returned. When he chanced to peek through his crossed arms, he saw no
Alon’mahk’lar
standing over him, but a circling vulture. It drifted high above, a dirty scrawl against the sun-seared sky.

Then came that furtive clicking sound, much softer and less threatening than before. Leitos looked to a nearby scatter of rounded boulders. After a moment of scrutiny, he made out a coiled serpent resting in a band of shade under a stone protrusion. Relief washed over him, and his laughter came out as a desiccated rasp. Before his mirth evaporated, an idea drove away his despair and thirst and fear.

L
eitos struggled to his feet, one hand gripping a smooth, fist-sized stone. He took one wary, unsteady step, then another. He paused, still seeking out the slavemasters. Except for the glaring adder, he was good and truly alone.

Arm cocked, he advanced, moving slowly so as not to provoke the serpent. Senses heightened by anticipation, he keenly felt each blistering pebble dig into the bottoms of his tattered feet. The serpent coiled tighter. Leitos halted two paces away when the adder vibrated its tail in warning. His arm shook from the strain of holding still. All at once, the snake struck, and Leitos barely leaped clear. At the same instant, he threw the rock, but it flew wide by a foot or more.

The serpent slapped down and slithered near. Leitos spun away, and his foot rolled on a loose stone. He fought for balance, but fell onto his back. He immediately began kicking against the ground, propelling himself backward, and flinging grit into the adder’s face, driving it aside. It seemed that the snake was retreating, then it abruptly coiled and struck.

Everything was moving so fast, but Leitos could see all with startling clarity. The serpent flew at him, its hooked fangs jutting from gaping, puffy white jaws. As it soared at his unprotected face, its scales formed a delicate yellowish gray pattern that glinted in the sunlight.

At the last possible moment, Leitos flung up a hand. By chance alone, his fingers clamped down on the snake’s body, just below its head. Too stunned to consider his luck, he jumped to his feet as the adder began wrapping around his arm. The creature was twice the thickness of his wrist, and incredibly strong. His fingers went numb under the building pressure, and the brief thrill at capturing his prey turned to apprehension. If he did not dispatch the reptile quickly, his grip would fail, leaving the serpent free to sink its fangs into him. His end would come slowly, painfully.

Leitos rushed to the serpent’s lair, where the ground was littered with stones. Holding the creature’s weight at arm’s length was no easy task, but Leitos suffered through the weakening of his muscles, ensuring that the serpent remained well clear of his face. In his haste, he lost his footing and slammed to his knees, nearly losing hold of the snake in a frantic bid to keep from pitching to his side.