Heirs of the Fallen: Book 04 - Wrath of the Fallen (20 page)

“I’ll be ready,” Leitos said.

Ulmek began to speak, paused, then said, “What you did last night, little brother, has brought honor to our order. I only wish we had a thousand more of you. If so, we wouldn’t need to build an army.”

Leitos was not about to explain how he had done what he had, especially since he could hardly explain it to himself. “If I had not found the sea-wolves, and saw what they intended for Belina, I might not have done anything.”

Ulmek’s black eyes flashed when he laughed. “Oh, little brother, I know you better than that. I expect the outcome would have been the same—though, I trust that next time you will leave a few enemies for the rest of us?”

“Of course,” Leitos said uneasily. Ulmek clapped him on the shoulder, and moved off down the hill toward the sanctuary.

Others came and went, offering praise or condolences. Belina came last, hesitant, her eyes following Sumahn and Nola as they moved away.

Leitos watched Sumahn for a moment, as well. He and Daris had been as close as trueborn brothers. Without Daris’s jests and laughter to counter Sumahn’s rages, Leitos feared the youth might journey to the darkest places of his heart, and never return. He feared that, yet at the same time knew rage and mercilessness were the best weapons they had against Peropis and her vast armies. Grow strong and cruel, Adham had once told him. More than ever, they all must heed that advice.

When Belina looked back at Leitos, her gaze lifted no higher than his chin. Leitos winced to see her swollen cheek. It was not as bad as it had been at dawn, but it looked painful. “I wish I had found you sooner.”

Belina fidgeted, swallowed, cleared her throat. “You got there just in time.”

He searched her face, saw something he didn’t like. “You bear no shame—you know that, don’t you?”

She hugged her arms around herself, and a tremble shook her shoulders. He stepped closer, gently took her in his arms. She flinched, just a little, then she was squeezing him tight. “I thought—I
knew
—they were going to....”

“But they didn’t,” Leitos said.

“I’m glad you came,” she said against his shoulder. “I’m glad you made them afraid.” She looked up into his eyes, and said with deadly intensity, “I’m glad you killed them the way you did.”

A question lurked in her gaze.
How did you do it?
But, once again, he found himself unable to answer what she wanted to know. Instead, he remained silent and held her. For now it seemed enough for Belina. And for himself, he could finally breathe again.

Chapter 25

Oarlocks creaked in the night, driving the longboats toward shore. Above them, the Sleeping Widow was a sleepy gray eye sharing the heavens with a glittering sweep of stars. Shapes rising out of the gently rolling swells caught Belina’s eye. At first she had believed they were rocks, but now realized they were the remnants of buildings—peaked roofs and shattered domes, broken spires and square towers. The shoreline, an irregular silhouette of rough hills, was still a mile or more away, but somehow the bones of a dead city jutted from the sea. She had heard tales of the Upheaval all her life, but the destruction she saw here, off the coast of southern Geldain, already dwarfed anything she had ever come across on any of the isles of Yato.

Belina’s gaze shifted to Leitos, sleeping on the narrow deck with the others who had rowed for most of the day after leaving Witch’s Mole. He murmured in his sleep, shifted about, went still.

“Do you think his plan will work?” Belina asked Adham.

Framed by hanging iron gray hair, the old Izutarian’s features were indistinct in the gloom, but she could see his jaw flexing. After a time, he said, “When I was a boy, I heard tales of Alon’mahk’lar hordes destroying whole armies of my people. They were all well-trained, all sure of the mission, and all fought with the assurance that they had made good plans and had a righteous cause. Yet they perished, or were led off in chains. There are also stories of a few warriors standing against great hosts, and somehow prevailing.” His teeth flashed in the dark. “I learned long ago not to put much faith in plans. Be they well considered or foolhardy, they can all fail. The best we can do is fight until our last breath passes our lips, and the last drop of blood flows from our veins.”

That was a bit too grim for Belina’s taste. “But what Leitos suggested, it’s a good plan, isn’t it?”

“As far as plans go, I believe it’s sound.”

“You have reservations?”

Adham inhaled deeply, gusted the breath out. Pitching his voice low, he said, “It’s a good idea, girl, but full of the blind hope that others think as we do, seek what we want, and so will take up arms to gain back what has been stolen from their forefathers.”

“You don’t think all men and women want to be free of chains?”

“Most probably do,” Adham said, “but, then, most are too weak and cowardly to sacrifice for those things. Of course, they would never admit that fear and weakness holds them back. Instead, they cloak their reluctance in reasoned excuses, and in time those excuses become unbending conviction. Seems to me that Peropis’s greatest victory was convincing much of humankind that they are better off in chains.”

“How can you believe that?”

Adham laughed humorlessly. “I saw it with my own eyes, girl. In the mines, men I had once fought beside gradually convinced themselves that their chains were not so heavy, and that the scraps of food we ate filled our bellies. And, soon enough, most came to believe that they
deserved
the bite of the lash. Though they knew the truth, they came to accept the lies our demon-born slavemasters told us. So many men I have known came to hate themselves and their leaders for standing against the Faceless One.”

“How can something like that happen?”

“You might want to search the actions of your own people to find the answer,” Adham said dryly, and Belina knew he spoke the truth. The Yatoans, while most were never chained with iron had, until recently, worn chains of a different sort. The best evidence of that truth was how few of her people had sided with Leitos and sailed from Yato. It seemed that most of her people had never truly broken loose of their bonds.

“What if Leitos is wrong?” Belina asked.

“If the beginning of our bloody little adventure goes well, enough will join us,” Adham assured her. “Later there will be more, those who draw courage from our numbers.”

“Will it be enough?”

Adham shrugged. “Only the Silent God of All knows the answer to that, but Pa’amadin, as ever, is reluctant to reveal anything to us humans.”

Quiet fell between them, and Belina looked again to the shoreline, now close enough to see waves beating themselves into rumbling white froth against the rocks. Leitos mumbled again, and she wondered what dreams troubled him.

~ ~ ~

Islands of rough black rock glided over a burning sea, and upon these crude lumps Leitos saw countless men and women writhing in a crazed dance of undying agony. Some were naked, others skinned, but most had little or no flesh covering their bones.

Leitos stood alone on his floating refuge. Leaping curtains of fire raged all around, burning tongues of ugly green, yellow, and black that fed on themselves and licked higher and higher, as if to set the stars afire. But here were no stars, no moon, no sky at all. This place was a vast and burning tomb, and he knew the only name it could bear—Geh’shinnom’atar, the Thousand Hells.

A smoldering hand slapped onto the edge of Leitos’s refuge, followed by another, and then Daris was climbing up onto the drifting isle. Leitos wanted to help his friend, but could not move. Greasy soot and weeping blisters covered the Brother’s skull in place of hair. Foul blood leaked from his cleaved neck, and where it ran, trails of fire crisped his raw flesh. When Daris clambered to his feet, Leitos saw that the wound in his belly had become a smoking ruin, black and hollow. Within that dark pit winked the glint of bone.

“Why?” Daris croaked.

Leitos shook his head, took an involuntary step backward. He wanted nothing to do with this creature before him. It was not Daris, couldn’t be. A nightmare, he told himself, and tried to wake up.

Behind Daris, another hand rose out of the burning sea. Fingers curled like claws around a knob of dark stone, and then a Kelren face showed itself. The man’s skull was split in two, but his eyes were alive, so dreadfully alive. More hands appeared, more faces. One by one, they crawled onto the isle, some whole, others barely held together by strips of meat and sinew.

Leitos edged farther back. “What do you want?”

Daris lurched closer. “Join us, little brother. Join us, and end your useless war.”

“No,” Leitos said.

“Suffering is our fate, little brother. The fate we deserve.”

“That’s not true,” Leitos said, but couldn’t think of a single instance to support his claim.

Soon, everyone Leitos had ever killed joined Daris, a small swaying army lurching closer, all grinning, all reaching.

Leitos drew his sword. Beneath the blade’s surface, inky smoke swirled, and he heard muted screams and curses within the dark steel. He almost flung it away, but just managed to tame his disgust. Despoiled as the sword was, he had no other weapon.

“Put aside your quest, little brother,” Daris crooned. “End this foolish battle, and join us here, where you belong.”

“I’m sorry,” Leitos said, not sure if he meant that for Daris’s first death, or his second. He set his feet and drove the sword through Daris’s chest. Where that profane steel met dead flesh, threads of silver lanced out, washing over Leitos and dissolving his friend. Leitos quickly slashed through his risen enemies, until all had vanished in dazzling bursts of light.

“Do you love her?” Zera asked.

Leitos spun, and the fiery realm was replaced by a lifeless city. Night reigned here, but he recognized the place as one of the bone-towns he and Zera had passed through on their way to Zuladah. The sword in his hand was still black, the blade alive with the trapped souls of its forging. “Who do you mean?” he asked cautiously.

“The girl ... my little sister.”

“Belina?”

Her green eyes flared, casting her skin in a hideous light. “So you
do
.”

Leitos scowled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I have two sisters, Leitos—Nola and Belina. It tells me much that you named only one of them.”

“She is pleasant enough, I suppose,” Leitos said, smiling wistfully at all the threats Belina had made against him when they first met. “But I do not and cannot love her.” He stopped short of saying that Zera was his only love. “War leaves little room for love.”

“Too true,” Zera said. “Remember that, and you might survive. Forget, and you’ll die.”

“I won’t forget,” Leitos said, and winced at the unexpected stab of regret in his heart.

“That is good,” Zera said. When Leitos did not respond, she went on. “You did well on Witch’s Mole, but you have only begun to take hold of the powers you will need to face Peropis.”

“I don’t know what I did.”

“How could you understand, as the Powers of Creation were never meant for the hands of men? However, you must find a way to claim some measure of those powers.”

The deeds he had done that night had drifted deeper into his mind, but he remembered one thing clearly. “I saw a golden spindle, and upon it was woven the threads of ...
life?
” He was not sure how accurate that was, but it felt right.

Zera considered that. “Can you find that spindle again?”

Leitos concentrated, not really believing he could, but then he found himself and Zera drifting upon a black sea, and before them revolved the golden spindle, with the chaos of countless tangled threads slowly passing through the silver hook on one end to become an ordered cord that wound up the shaft and stretched off into eternity.

“What is it?” Leitos asked.

For a long time, Zera said nothing. “What you see is what your mind created in order to accept what it otherwise could not.”

“More riddles?” Leitos asked, thinking of what Kian had told him about being dead, and all that about the coin that no longer had two definite sides.

“To humankind, the Powers of Creation will always be a riddle. But you, Leitos,” she said, brushing a hand through the threads, “are more than a mere man. What you see is an image of life and time.”

“I don’t understand.”

“These loose threads are lives and what
could
be. They are wild, unpredictable. Once they join, they form into the cord of what has been. Take hold of a thread, Leitos, and follow it to the cord.”

He looked over them all. Some stretched long, others were shorter. Some lost their radiance as he watched, grew dim and gray, as though wilting, then dissolved. “Which one?”

Zera pointed. “Perhaps that one?”

Leitos hesitated, then reached out to gently run his finger along it and—

—and suddenly all was a madness of images racing through his mind. Before those chaotic scenes could overwhelm him, he traced the thread through the hook and reached the cord. He was not with Zera anymore. Now he stood in a warm room lit by dozens of candles. A screaming woman lay upon a rumpled bed, her hair dark with sweat. She was propped on her elbows, and her knees were drawn up. Between her legs an old woman sat on a stool, murmuring reassuring commands. Adham stood near a door, his gray eyes bright. His hair was darker than Leitos had ever seen it, and only a hint of his long years showed in the lines on his face. Leitos looked back at the woman, at her features, and understanding flared in the center of his skull—