Heirs of the Fallen: Book 02 - Crown of the Setting Sun (6 page)

So he swam again throughout the morning, ate and drank his fill, and rested under the sun.

In a peaceful drowse, he found himself considering the true vastness of the world. After fleeing leagues across the desert and seemingly getting nowhere, then dropping into the river and having it sweep him miles downstream, he knew that the world was far wider than all his previous conceptions. So wide, in truth, that just thinking on it made his rocky sanctuary, with its small pools and the river’s protective surge, feel all the safer. How could he possibly traverse such dangerous and broken territories inhabited by hunting
Alon’mahk’lar
and worse, if even a fraction of the stories Adham had told him were true?

Beyond the river and the gorge waited lands that had been torn apart by the Upheaval, a cataclysm so powerful that his grandfather claimed it had destroyed two of three moons, upset the balance of the world in the heavens, changed the seasons and the placement of the stars in the firmament, and reshaped all former kingdoms.

Usually when his grandfather recounted this tale, Leitos could get no further than trying to imagine a night sky with three moons, the faces of gods, instead of the one that remained, and gave virtually no light. Adham said a handful of years before his birth the remaining moon, the face of the goddess Hiphkos the Contemplator, had shone a pale blue, bathing the world in a cool, comforting glow. Before their demise, Adham told that her brothers had followed after her every evening—first the middling Memokk, with his amber radiance, then the diminutive Attandaeus, who burned like an ember in the night. Now the Sleeping Widow, as Hiphkos was sometimes called, wore a veil of dark gray shot through with threads of black.

Under an unsettling sense of loss for a world he had never known, Leitos spent the rest of the day watching the river flow by, pondering what awaited him once he dared leave his island. Nothing good, he concluded with a shudder, as darkness fell over the gorge.

Later, as his eyes slipped shut for the night, a stray thought, like a whisper on the wind, suggested that it might be better if he
never
left his secluded refuge.

T
he next morning, he awoke to find a slate gray sky, with heavy clouds piling up to the north. Summer storms were often the fiercest, but he disregarded the potential danger of being caught out in the open. After all, summer storms were short-lived affairs. He remained calm, even when lightning began flashing in the distance, followed by low, steady peals of thunder echoing through the gorge.

As the storm spread across the sky, he went about gathering his breakfast. Munching a handful of waterbugs, thinking about another swimming lesson, an unexpected gust nearly toppled him into the river. That wayward blast of wind proved to be the first of many, and quickly became a steady gale that forced Leitos to sit with his back to the storm.

He remained that way until a streak of lightning struck the river a little downstream, followed by a boom of thunder that rattled his bones. The wind increased, as did the lightning and thunder. The sky darkened under purplish black clouds that billowed and swirled like living, malevolent entities. The first raindrops fell huge and scattered, and rapidly became a pounding deluge.

Shivering and bedraggled, Leitos huddled down and waited for the storm to pass, arms wrapped tightly around knees pulled close to his chest.

But the storm did not pass. Instead, it became more powerful, its thick cloak creating a premature nightfall. Erratic winds howled, driving the downpour first one way, then another. Through it all, Leitos did not worry too much, and only started when lightning struck close.

His first inkling that he might be in trouble came when, through the blur of driving rain, he noticed the birth of a dozen muddy waterfalls pouring over either rim of the gorge. Soon after, a hundred cascades were plunging into the river. Leitos told himself that the storm would pass in its own time. Instead, the tempest raged on, the battering rainfall stinging his exposed skin.

Alerted by a strange sensation, he looked through his dripping hair, startled to find that the river had risen high enough to lap at his toes. Where he sat, that meant the surface had risen a good two feet.

Leitos clambered to the highest point on his rapidly shrinking island, and there sat down again. Eyes narrowed, he watched with dread fascination as the river rushed by, its surface getting higher, wilder, muddier, and choked with swirling debris.

Soon the turbulent flow had covered the whole of his sanctuary, forcing him to stand up to keep his backside out of the water. Disbelieving, he watched it creep above his ankles. He told himself it could rise no more … but it did, until the flow tugged at his legs, upsetting his balance. He was a heartbeat from being swept away. Fighting for balance, he whipped his head around, searching for any place to go. In all directions, boiling spray marked drowned boulders. Of dry land, there was none.

The river inched higher, and the storm showed no sign of abating. Water surged against him, his feet slid. There was no more time. As he prepared to leap, he felt a strange trembling in the rock underfoot, and with that sensation came a sound out of the north that stilled his pulse.

He squinted against the sheeting pour. Upstream, through a nearly opaque curtain of rain, lightning flashed and thunder rolled. The river’s voice strengthened, and the sensation of quaking underfoot became a steady throb. Leitos blinked water out of his eyes, unsure what he was seeing. Out of that rain-soaked gloom raced a seething mountain of mud and raging waters, its boiling face riddled with deadly debris. He waited no longer. Leitos shouted as he threw himself into the river, but his voice could not contend with the raging fury racing toward him.

The powerful current snatched him from the air, eagerly, forcefully, as if it had been waiting these last days for just such a chance. He tried a few strokes, but swimming was useless. It took all his effort to keep his head above water. More than once, his feet scraped or slammed over rocks. Backward churning waves rolled him under, whirled him about, then vomited him farther downstream. He was at the mercy of the river as much as all the pummeling, water-black branches floating with him. After going over a low waterfall, he found himself facing upriver. The mountain of muddied water chased after him, falling over itself in great, exploding waves, gaining slowly; its immense power pushed him before it. He turned, doing his best to stay afloat.

The sides of the gorge narrowed at one point, flashing by, the river’s rage amplified by towering cliffs. Up ahead, the river took a sharp turn. In the outer curve, the waters crashed against the wall of the gorge, rising high before collapsing back over on themselves in a continuous, churning fall thrice the height of a man. All Leitos had taught himself about swimming fled his mind, and panic consumed his wits. He began clawing at the water, trying to get to the inside curve of the bend.

His efforts were in vain.

Thrashing and kicking, he flew into the base of the towering wave. Spray hit his face, and the river dragged him under. He struck the rock wall, the force crushing the breath from his lungs. All became a spinning, tumbling confusion. With malicious intent, the flow slammed him against the base of the cliff, set him free, then punished him again. Caught in an inescapable eddy, Leitos banged repeatedly against the wall before a squeezing force pressed in on him from every side. He shot up and up, feeling at once weightless and caught in a giant’s fist. Then, with stunning abruptness, he soared free. He pinwheeled before splashing into the river.

Bruised, scraped, and disorientated, he struggled to the surface and drew a sodden breath. All was a deafening roar, as the river thrashed him. Leitos fought as long as he could, but rapidly grew weaker and more desperate for a deep breath. His chest burned, but he dared not draw the river into his lungs. A part of him felt sure he was going to drown, but another part refused to accept the possibility. He had survived too much to let mere water destroy him. His anxiety gave way to his own fury, and he cursed the river and the storm, elements so much greater than he.

His anger gave him some little, momentary strength. He paddled and splashed with all the vigor he could muster, but his effort was short-lived. Far too soon, his arms and legs became leaden, useless. He sank again. This time, he failed to rise.

Knowing he had lost the battle, Leitos felt an unexpected acceptance surmount his fears. Lost in the swirling reddish murk, he went still and let the river take him. He drew in the extinguishing coolness of the river, quenching the fire in his chest. A suffocating pressure filled his lungs, but he soon moved beyond such physical concerns, as if his spirit and body were no longer one.

His consciousness drifted, rendering all previous apprehensions impotent. No more would he fear the bite of an
Alon’mahk’lar’s
lash, no more would he suffer hunger or thirst. In the wake of this release he found true freedom, and a sense of expectancy filled him, birthed a surreal peace in his soul. Only the sharp understanding that he had failed his grandfather haunted him. Yet even that concern evaporated, as points of light began dancing before his eyes, multiplying, until he floated upon an undulating sea of pearl white. As the white went to black he decided, with no small measure of relief, that death was nothing to fear.

S
harp, red pain drew him out of the serene dream and into a raucous nightmare of thundering waters, torrential rains, and driving winds. Something had caught the hair on his head in an iron-grip. It was pulling him from the river, carelessly dragging him along like a carcass over rounded stones, then through sandy mud.

He opened his mouth to shout a protest, but silty water dribbled past his lips instead of words. All the pain and fear he had so recently escaped crashed back down upon him, and he longed to return to that blessed void. He reached up with arms that refused to work as they should, and clawed with fingers that held no strength.

“Quit fighting, you damned fool,” a man’s gruff voice commanded.

Leitos’s arms fell, and his eyes rolled. A presence loomed above him, clad in dripping rags colored after the hues of the desert, all of browns, dirty reds, and fawn. In a lurching gait, the bulky figure brought him to higher ground, then tossed him down.

Still unable to draw a breath, the blessed darkness began to fall again over Leitos. He let it, for in death he had known absolute peace, and he desired to know that nothingness again. As if alerted to Leitos’s thoughts and finding them unacceptable, the man turned, his face lost in the shadow of a deep, drooping hood. Without preamble, he jammed a sandaled foot onto Leitos’s chest and stomped down. Leitos’s eyes bulged at the offending pressure, and a gout of water sprayed past his teeth. The ragged figure mercilessly trounced him once, twice, again. Each time, more of the river surged from Leitos’s lungs, until no more came.

A rattling wheeze assailed Leitos’s ears as his body, indifferent to the will of his heart, drew breath. Fresh air flowed, but after the gritty river water it burned worse than going without, leaving him coughing and retching. The agonizing fit went on until he was sure he had ruptured something.

In time, his labored breathing evened out, and the fierce blaze in his chest subsided. When his coughing finally dwindled to nothing, everything inside him felt raw and abused.

Leitos’s eyes fluttered open on a roiling expanse of clouds, their mottled gray-and-black underbellies torn by flicking tongues of white fire. The rainfall had begun to taper off. Head wobbling, he cast about and found that the walls of the gorge had fallen away to reveal a familiar desert landscape. At the river’s edge, thickets of lush green rushes bowed their heads away from the press of the wind. Farther up the bank, a few spindly trees swayed back and forth.

Leitos rolled to his side to avoid looking into the depths of his savior’s hood. He closed his eyes on the world, his chest occasionally hitching with a weak cough.

The dark figure hovered motionless, silent, ominous. “You will live,” the man growled.

“Why did you save me?” Leitos asked weakly.

The man cocked his hooded head. He remained silent for a time, then spoke words that sent a chill through Leitos. “I suppose one like you, an escaped slave, would rather die. No such luck, boy. You are worth more alive than dead.”

“A
Hunter
,” Leitos gasped. On the rarest occasion a slave escaped the
Alon’mahk’lar
. When that happened, they employed Hunters, men renowned as much for their tracking abilities as their unfeeling treachery against their own kind. Being human, such men roved without suspicion, seeking and finding those they pursued. Often, they worked hand-in-hand with slavers who brought fresh captives to the mines. Adham had hated Hunters worse than he hated the
Alon’mahk’lar,
or even the Faceless One.
“There are few betrayals worse than men hunting their own at the command of demon-spawn,”
he had often said, always spitting on the ground to emphasize his contempt.
“Nothing can ever redeem the soul of such a despicable creature.”

Looking askance at his captor, Leitos collected himself and sat up, muscles quivering uncontrollably. He felt cold and gray-fleshed, like something dead. All that mattered was getting his wits and strength back, then planning his escape. He could not let himself be given again into the hands of the
Alon’mahk’lar
.

The Hunter squatted on his haunches, his face still lost in the darkness of his hood. Nevertheless, the weight of his unseen eyes pressed against Leitos. He said nothing, only looked. What he saw besides a sopping and disheveled youth, Leitos could only guess. That continued study made him more uncomfortable by the moment. He imagined a mouse must feel the same, when facing an adder.

The Hunter kept up his silent vigil so long that Leitos began to wonder if the Hunter really was a man. Adham had told that
Mahk’lar
, before they began breeding to humankind, and thus transferring their essence into a human womb, had gone about possessing men, women, and even children, transforming them into walking horrors. Such abominations did not last long, for with the loss of its true soul, the inhabited flesh perished and began to rot. Usually within a few days, the
Mahk’lar
would burst free, seeking new flesh to control and destroy. Although a long generation had passed since the emergence of the vile
Alon’mahk’lar
race, Leitos supposed it possible that stray
Mahk’lar
could still roam the world.
I have to get away!