The Blasted Lands (11 page)

The forms nearly flowed down the sides of the boats and into the turbulent waters, but they did not hesitate to move toward the shore, swimming, walking or carried by the waves he could not say. He could only see them coming, see the odd gray glow of light where their eyes should have been and wonder if the Guntha who claimed demons pursued them had been telling the truth.

He had seen the Sa’ba Taalor, had seen their odd eyes in the daylight and in a well-lit room, but this was different. The light seemed stronger and it unsettled him.

He wanted to run. Oh, how he wanted to leave as quickly as he could, because the shapes coming toward him were fast, and even moving through the water they were intimidating.

Kings are not allowed to be afraid.

“Come then! Let’s kill a few enemies!” Marsfel roared the words and moved, sweeping the heavy Ghurnae sword in a few wide arcs to test the feel of the weapon. His men followed. He could feel them moving with him and that knowledge gave him strength. A king leads. That is what a king must do.

The ashes in the wind whipped through the air and stung at his eyes but Marsfel did not care. It was time to teach these fools a lesson. Time to show the Empire that he was a king to be respected.

Before he knew it he was running, charging on thick legs and driving toward the surf, a feral grin pulling at his lips. He was a king! He was a warrior!

The woman who met with him wore leather and carried two thin swords. Her hair was wrapped and pulled away from her brow by a thick blue length of cloth.

Marsfel swept his blade toward her head. It would make a fine prize to show his enemies when this was over.

His hand fell away from his body. The sword he carried flipped through the air with his hand and landed in the sand and surf.

The woman crouched and whipped one of the swords at his knees and fire ripped through his legs where metal met flesh.

Marsfel could not keep his stance. He fell forward and landed on his good left arm and his bleeding right stump.

The pain was immediate and ripped away all hints of confidence he had sported.

She stood over him and for the first time he saw the face of the demon that had crippled him with ease. The Sa’ba Taalor had worn veils. This creature did not. The eyes were fine. The nose long and elegant despite a heavy scar that ran from below the left eye and down to the right cheekbone.

But below the nose? Oh, truly, there must be demons in this universe!

“What are you?”

Rather than answer his question the demon spoke, her words carrying the odd echoing sibilance he’d heard from the Sa’ba Taalor before. “You are King Marsfell of Roathes?” Her eyes regarded him coldly and her twin blades glimmered.

Turrae tried to come to his aid. The man ran silently, but his words broke that silence. “I am Marsfel,” Turrae hissed.

Marsfel looked to his second. The man came in proper stance, his sword held before him to guard against possible strokes, the heavy tip at the right level to easily gut a foolish opponent.

The woman was not a fool. Her arms moved, the left sword struck against Turrae’s blade and sent that deadly tip to the side. She stepped closer, close enough to let Marsfel count the heavy laces on her boot, and then her right sword drove through Turrae’s mouth and opened the side of his face all the way back to his left ear. The left sword whickered through the air a second time and cleaved into his neck from the other side. When she stepped back only a trail of gristle kept Turrae’s head from falling completely away from his body.

She looked back to the king. “You are Marsfel?”

His mind wanted to lie. His heart would not allow it.

“Aye. I am Marsfel, I am the king.”

Her voice remained calm through the exchange. Around her, beside her and to her flanks more of the demons came out of the waters and attacked the people who ran with Marsfel. They did not leave survivors. His men were brave at first and then they were afraid. It seemed they did not fight humans. Nothing should have been as savage as the things that came ashore and killed.

“I am Donaie Swarl, Chosen of the Forge of Wheklam and King in Lead. This is my fleet. Do you surrender your lands to me?”

“Will you show my people mercy if I surrender?”

“I will offer the same mercy I gave the Guntha if you do not.” Her hand gestured to the waters behind her, where the column of flame and ash and smoke continued to roar into the skies.

“Spare the people in my palace then, and I will surrender.”

“I do not negotiate.” Her swords barely seemed to move, but the points found themselves in either side of his neck just the same and the movement cut through to bone with ease.

His death was fast, but Marsfel died just the same.

***

The cold was an old friend now. It wrapped itself around Andover Lashk and wove its spell through his skin and muscles alike. He did not shiver. Shivering took energy. Instead he walked, one foot forward and then the other.

The perpetual twilight was no better than it had been, but now the sky above was bloody and clearly showed the silhouettes of the great mountains he had heard so much about.

The Seven Forges were before him and Andover found the cold hardly mattered at all. His exhaustion was still there, but that too seemed a trifling thing in comparison. The mountains were enormous. So much larger than he’d have thought possible before.

Delil walked next to him and he saw her eyes looking at the vast black surface facing them. The only highlights he could see were the places where the reddish light from the clouds accented the more prominent edges of stone.

“You face Durhallem,” Drask spoke from directly behind him. When last he’d looked the man had been almost a hundred feet to his left and now he was only a foot away. How a man that large could move so quickly, so quietly, still unsettled him.

“That is the mountain? Where is the tunnel you spoke of?” Andover looked but could see no sign of the gate he was supposed to pass through in order to enter the valley of the Taalor.

Drask chuckled. “We are not close enough for you to see it yet.”

He looked away from the mountain and stared hard at Drask. “We’re not?”

“Not nearly. We have two more days of traveling before we reach the passage.”

“Two more days?” He looked back at the mountain, which already consumed most of the horizon. “We’re still two days away?”

“Durhallem is a very large mountain, Andover Lashk. We have at least two more days of walking before we are there.”

Andover shook his head.

Bromt walked closer and without and preamble he swung one massive fist at the side of Andover’s head. Andover worked on reflex alone and ducked under the blow, skittering back and staring hard at the man.

Drask spoke as if nothing had happened. “That is two more days to make sure you are ready for whatever you face in the Pass.”

Bromt came for him again, his eyes the only sign of features in the darkness.

***

Look to any map of Fellein and at the very southern edge is the Corinta Ocean and on some of the more sophisticated and detailed maps there is an indication of the Brellar below that.

There were people who had come from Brellar and a few of them had made it as far as Roathes in their time, but most of them were stopped long before they planned on ending their journeys. Roathians were not known for their tolerance of anyone with knowledge of the seas.

Still, it happened. There were tales written of the Brellar and a few of the older books at the Imperial Academy had illustrations of the Brellar and careful depictions of the scars they placed on the their bodies.

In total there were seventeen recorded situations determined to be historically accurate of the Brellar making it to Fellein and living to tell their tales.

So this time around Desh Krohan sent a representative to find them and talk them first hand. Because she was particularly good at dealing with sensitive issues, he sent Tataya across the ocean. She went with his blessings, a rather large supply of gold and gems, and a ship full of men who knew how to behave themselves around sorcerers.

There are maps that are more detailed than those most commonly found. Most of them belonged to Desh Krohan. The man who had paid several fortunes over the years to find and map the Seven Forges was not new to the notion of learning all he could about the world around him.

Tataya and Captain Callan were standing together on the prow of his ship, a sleek, fast affair that bore no name, when the lookout called “Land ahead, Captain!”

Captain Callan was a lean man with wind-tanned skin and an abundance of freckles. His hair was a dark auburn and he sported a thick mustache and a grin that was always eager and just a little bit ravenous. Tataya liked him immediately. He claimed to have encountered the Brellar before, thought there was little to prove it. Still, as he was exactly the sort of man who tended to ignore the rules he did not agree with, she could easily believe that he might have had a run in or two in his time.

He managed to take his eyes off of her for a moment and looked to where the young man crawling along the top of the sails was pointing.

“Well now, looks like we might just be in luck this day, milady.” His voice was cheerful and his grin stayed in place.

“That would be a lovely thing, Captain.” Far to the north the ocean was a foul mess of ash and dead fish. Here the skies were calmer and the waters were a clear and lovely shade of blue. The air was pleasant and the wind whipped a few stray strands of her hair around. Most of her locks were bound with a leather tie, but some escaped, almost inevitably. The captain kept staring at her hair as if it might be the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. At least he was good enough not to speak directly to her breasts, which was more than could be said for several of his crew.

“Do you want to set into a port if there is one?”

“’If there is one?’ I thought you said you’d met the Brellar before.”

His grin grew larger. “I have. Our ship met theirs. We waved and I managed to purchase a few trinkets and several crates of fruit from them.”

To be fair, that did actually qualify as an encounter. “And that is the only time you have run across them?”

“I have never had a reason to go this far south before, milady.”

“Why did you go now?”

Callan’s smile actually grew brighter. “A beautiful woman offered me a great deal of money.”

She allowed a small smile and a nod as acknowledgement of his words. “Perhaps we should see if there is a port where we can land.”

He called out to his first mate and they exchanged a quick flurry of words in the slang-heavy dialect normally employed by the Guntha until that people faded away. Likely he thought she had no knowledge of what he was saying and she chose not to disillusion him of that belief.

“What can you tell me about the Brellar, Captain Callan?” Her voice was calm and the question was casual enough. She had asked him before and he had carefully avoided giving her answers that offered any details. That alone was reason enough for her to doubt his claims, but not enough to make her call off the expedition.

“They’re friendly enough, I suppose, if they’ve a mind to be. I’ve only met them the once and we exchanged trinkets and food. The captain of their ship spoke the common tongue but it wasn’t his first language. If he hadn’t I’d have been hard pressed to deal with him properly.”

That was a lie and she knew it. He’d already displayed knowledge of several languages. He simply didn’t understand that she shared his knowledge. The Brellar might well speak the common tongue, and so much the better if they did, but the good captain was hardly without resource when it came to communication.

Still, it was a small enough lie.

“And if they have other notions?”

“The Brellar don’t have a home. What I hear was they had a place to call their own, once, but the good people of Fellein took it from them and cast them out. That’d be a few hundred years ago. No country, so they took to the water. Found new places to call theirs.” His eyes looked into hers as he spoke. He made sure he was looking at her properly when he continued on. “You need to know they’re not supposed to like Fellein much.”

“What do they like then?”

“What they can take as theirs, mostly. They like easy prey and if they find a ship that isn’t properly defended, they’ve been known to take it and everything on it.”

“And the crews of those ships?”

“Some of them survive. Others float in the water till the sharks come along.”

“Do you suppose your ship is defended well enough?”

His smile flashed out brightly. “I bought fruit and trinkets. A wise man has a crew large enough to handle troubles.”

“Well, I wonder what they’ll think of my offer.”

“You brought an abundance of gold and a promise of more?” Callan’s smile was wider still and she half expected him to purr. “I expect they’ll meet you with open arms. But I do not expect you should trust whatever they agree to.”

“Are they liars?”

Callan shook his head. “No. They are opportunists.”

He would give nothing more on the subject and she knew it. “And what do you know of the Guntha?”

The captain looked at Tataya and sighed. “That they are mostly dead now.”

“Mostly?” She looked back at him and raised one eyebrow in question.

“They are a seafaring race, milady. Not all of them were on their islands when the great fire took them.”

“What has happened to the rest of them?”

The captain shrugged his shoulders and looked away. “I expect they’ll do what everyone does in such situations. They’ll survive as best they can and fade away.”

“And do you know others who have been in such situations, Captain Callan?” She found herself looking carefully at his face, wondering what he was thinking. There were ways to find out, of course, but none she chose to employ at the time.

Callan’s smile faltered. It did not completely fade, but it seemed to her that he held it in place by force of will.

Neither of them spoke of the rumors just starting when they left port. A few spoke of the black ships finally closing in on Roathes. If there was truth to the stories, it remained hidden from them.