The war born, p.15
The War Born, page 15
Whistler cringed mentally at the very idea, which put a smile on Jeron’s newly restored features. Perhaps his new masters had made him in their image in other ways because, before the Overlords, he had never been so randomly sadistic. It might have been the sort of thing that would have worried him once, but he found he liked the change. He liked the fear he created in his pet.
Still, there were other matters to consider. The savages, the Sa’ba Taalor, needed to be broken before they could regroup. For that he needed the War-Born to continue their brutal assaults.
The weather was to his benefit, as it should have been. He had bent the world to his will and increased the cold and snow until most of Fellein was nearly buried in a blizzard. Most of the roads, even the highways that were nearly constantly traveled, were impassable. For the gray-skins that was hardly a challenge. They rode through worse storms constantly in their Blasted Lands, but the empire suffered as a result of his actions. One of the two enemies he faced for his new masters was very nearly crippled and the other would soon be badly wounded. He’d make certain of it.
He found himself missing Roledru again. The man had been a faithful servant, and he handled many of the mundane details, like finding the proper victims for his necromantic needs. Now he either had to trust someone else – a doubtful and risky proposition – or he hunted for himself. He needed fresh kills. The War-Born helped sustain him, a portion of every wretch they killed fed directly to him, but he needed more.
Easy enough, really. With a thought he shifted himself to what remained of Morrow. The people there were cold and destitute, few daring to leave their homes for fear that the nearly invisible War-Born would attack them. He only had to look for the signs of a fire burning in a hovel to know where he would find good hunting.
The smoke from such a fire carried into the starry skies, and he moved to the home with little concern. His robes kept him warm and safe from very nearly any attack. The door to the domicile was barred, but that too was of little concern. A gesture and a thought and the door collapsed. He heard the scream of fright from inside the structure and entered, hood drawn up over his head, face lost in shadows that were far from natural. He had learned that trick from Desh Krohan a long time ago. The garments he wore caused those who saw him to be afraid, deeply frightened of what might be lurking within that cowl.
Four women of different ages waited inside near the fire, shivering with a cold that could not be pushed aside with heat. They were terrified and he in turn was amused.
“Boo!” He roared the word and the women shrieked. The youngest of his targets wept and tried to crawl into the shadows as if they could possibly hide her away. Part of him wanted to toy with the women but really, there was no time for games. Instead, he pointed the tip of his spear at the closest and sent his power writhing across the ground until it bit into her very life essence as a serpent might strike.
The old woman let out a gasp and fell back, dead. The second of the women raised up, a dagger in her hand and would likely have attacked if he gave her the chance. Instead he made another gesture and ripped her soul away from her body, taking in that energy as easily as a Pra-Moresh might eat an infant. The third fell as quickly, and that left only the youngest, a girl no older than ten, who stared at him from the shadows with bulging eyes and mouth agape.
She almost cried out before he pulled the life from her. Her corpse hit the ground and Jeron shivered as a wave of pleasure moved through his body. There was little in his life that had ever given him greater pleasure. That hadn’t been the case before but now as he worked the sorceries that had been forbidden to him by Desh Krohan and his ilk, and as the power rippled through his being, he had to admit that forbidden fruit tasted sweeter.
When the attack hit him, it came as a surprise. He was still reveling in the sensations he’d taken in, basking in the afterglow of his feast, when the very power he’d absorbed was ripped from his body.
One moment he was smiling and the next Jeron was screaming in pain and shock, completely unprepared for the assault. Had he been a lesser sorcerer, he’d likely have been killed, but his defenses were always at the ready.
Had his victims felt the same sort of pain as he siphoned away their lives? Very likely yes. He knew such agony from Desh Krohan’s assault mere hours earlier and had not thought to experience its like so quickly. The cold that replaced his warm glow was like icy daggers carefully inserted under his skin that carved into nerves and muscles alike. His eyes ached, his teeth hurt, and his blood felt as if it had been frozen within his veins.
And that after he knew he’d been warded against even worse attacks.
The sorcerer who came for him was hidden in shadows, draped in darkness and anonymity. The blast crippled him and left him on his knees, but he fought back just the same lashing out blindly and following the trail of the very power that had been pulled from his body. He had an advantage over his enemy: he could borrow more power from his masters, and he did. The Overlords granted his power without any hesitation and Jeron lashed out, sending a wave that rippled across the air and seared the ground for a hundred feet or more around his enemy.
The figure waved his attack aside as easily as a shield might deflect a pebble.
Jeron was not prepared for that. His enemy had stolen his power and wielded it easily. Whoever his attacker, there was no warning and no boasting, merely the assault. The air around Jeron shifted and constricted, crushing down on him like the pressure of a lake falling over him. His robes held back the worst of the attack, but he felt it more than he expected and he gasped out a breath, truly fearing that it might be his last. The blow likely would have killed him, but the Overlords were angered that yet another sorcerer had attacked him so swiftly after Desh Krohan, and moved to defend him with more of their own powers.
He groaned and lashed out, casting blindly toward the enemy he fought and sending a barrage of force through the air. The side of the hovel he stood in exploded outward, revealing more of his enemy.
Sunlight spilled into his eyes and the shape of his enemy staggered backward as rocks slid through the air and then bounced against a sorcerer as well defended as he was. A hundred men would have been crushed under his onslaught but the wizard he fought still stood, though he retreated.
“Enough of this, Jeron. You have betrayed your every trust and defied the empire. Surrender before I am forced to kill you.”
Fear caught him as he recognized the voice. It was Corin who attacked him. Corin, who was older than he was, and whose morals were not as simply defined as Desh Krohan’s. Desh Krohan had written the very laws that defined what sorceries could be used, and he would follow those laws. Corin was not the same. Corin was quiet, observant, and relentless. He could remember times when the man had faced other sorcerers in combat, and he had crushed his enemies with ease. For a moment, Jeron regretted returning his features to their familiar pattern – had he not done so, he might have had a brief advantage.
“Corin, stop this.”
The man did not answer, but instead pushed against him again. He did not make grand gestures, or reveal what he planned to do by speaking his sorceries aloud. Instead, he cast the sort of spells that Jeron himself preferred, the subtle sort of powers that struck as hard as falling stars. A wave of force ripped across the distance between them, and the air grew dark as shadows reached out and surrounded Jeron, digging at his defenses, carving into his robes and shredding them. A hundred arrows would not have touched his flesh had they been fired by the best archers in the land, but Corin caught him and cut him, slipping past the powerful wards surrounding him as if they simply did not matter.
Skin peeled away from his muscles, his nerve endings and his very bones. Jeron watched the flesh of his right arm stripped aside and shrieked in pain, overwhelmed by the unexpected agonies. Corin did not stop, but continued the assault even as Jeron fell to his knees and tried to defend himself.
He should have died right then, but the Overlords were not done with him. He felt their interference, watched the waves of shadow bend and ripple around him as surely as if he wore heavy plate armor. The flesh on his arm slipped back up his torn limb in a nauseating wave of healing that hurt exactly as much as being attacked had hurt. It was not a kind soothing balm, but another assault of blinding pain.
He should have lost. He should have died.
The Overlords would not allow it.
Corin moved closer, walking across the snowy fields and the ruins of a home without owners, power surrounding him like a heavy cloak. How long had the old bastard been preparing for combat? How effortlessly he gathered still more energies. Corin did not waste time with false bravado or threats. He simply came on, the power around him ripping a hole in the fabric of reality. The darkness of the space between the stars swirled around the man’s hands and head, his face lost in the folds of his hood. Had any man ever looked so terrifying? No. He had let himself think he was an equal to Corin and Corin had allowed him to believe it, but now he knew better.
Still Corin said nothing as he attacked. The ground under Jeron vanished and he fell, dropping as if he’d toppled from a mountain top, the earth falling away in a thousand broken shards.
Jeron reached for anything to save himself and found nothing there. He tried to gather his thoughts, but everything happened too quickly. He had let himself grow soft over the years, while all along he thought himself clever and prepared.
Heat washed over him and burned the air away. His hair crisped and his beard ignited.
The Overlords saved him again, caught him in their powerful grasp and pulled him back from the fall that would surely have ended in his death. Jeron stood in the air, untouched, his skin no longer burning, and wept as the pain that had started to tear at him vanished.
And then, finally, the Overlords attacked his enemy.
They had the power to combat gods, to wound deities.
Next to that, Corin was defenseless.
One moment the sorcerer was moving closer, preparing another attack. The next he imploded as if little more than a bug crushed in a giant fist. Bones were pulped, muscles torn apart. Corin did not so much as scream before he was dead. Painted in a spray of his own blood he was folded over himself again and again.
Jeron drifted slowly to the ground, dazed. The great cavernous hole Corin had summoned was still there, but he fell near it, not into it, and he looked around wildly, expecting another attack that did not happen.
For several seconds he felt the power of the Overlords wrapped around him and then that essence was gone, leaving him standing in the potent cold of the ruined town. He willed himself home. The cave was still there. The Godless rested on their beds of stone and moss, though now they woke from their slumbers.
Safe. Somehow, he was safe.
Jeron fell to his knees in the snow and thanked his new gods. Those gods said nothing at all and offered no form of comfort.
Whistler
The voices said to kill the Inquisitor or lose his face again.
Whistler decided to listen.
He moved through Goltha as a shark cuts across the seas, aimed unerringly at the place where the Inquisitor waited unknowingly to die.
As he had anticipated, the Inquisitor was in the tower where many of his kind lived. There was no chance that he could enter the building without being seen. And so, despite the bitter cold and the falling snow, Whistler waited. It was almost a day before the man left the building. He once again walked with the woman who was half his size but bore a strong resemblance facially, which was inconvenient as the Inquisitor had to die. There was simply no choice in the matter. Whistler had lived with his ruined face and would not suffer it a second time. If that made him vain then he was vain, but he would not live as a monster in the eyes of the people around him. Better to be anonymous than nightmarish.
The snow kept falling, and Whistler slipped into the street behind the Inquisitor and his companion. He kept back a distance, and cursed the cold that ate at the edges of his fingers and feet after so many hours outside. The only saving grace he’d had was the heavy cloak that protected him from the worst of the weather and had kept him warm even when he napped while waiting.
Now his consolation was the blade he carried in his right hand. This time it was tipped with a thick coating of ground parva seed oil and raw garlic. One strike, one deep cut, and the Inquisitor was as good as dead, though it would take a few hours for his heart to stop. He intended a clean death for the man, but he would take whatever sort of victory came his way.
The Inquisitor moved onto one of the main roads. His companion had left him, but she was not his target. Where wagons rolled past in both directions and people walked on foot between busy shops. The snow might stop many things, but it would never prevent people from buying the food they needed, or stopping at a pub for an ale or a goblet of wine.
As the crowd moved, Whistler stepped in closer to make his strike. Too busy for an easy kill, but one good thrust of his blade and in a few hours…
The Inquisitor’s broad back kept a steady pace and Whistler moved forward, and got a firm grip on his blade.
Merros Dulver
“Corin is dead.”
The First Advisor looked as if someone had struck him a telling blow across the back of his head.
“What?”
“Corin is dead.” Desh Krohan was staring at him with shocked eyes and speaking in a voice barely above a whisper. “By all of the gods, Merros, I thought the man nearly immortal. He was older than me, and twice the sorcerer besides.”
It took Merros a moment to fully understand. He had been contemplating Swech where she lay on a bed and offered little besides shallow breaths. It was three days since she had made any significant motions, and he worried that the woman might well die before she ever woke again.
Valam, his son, her son, still waited by the bed, seldom leaving except to relieve his bladder. He concentrated on his mother with the same sort of devotion that she offered to her gods, and Merros felt for the child. Jo’Hedee, another of the Sa’ba Taalor and second to Swech, watched over the boy and made certain he ate and slept, but could not get him to leave his mother’s bedside.
Much as Merros wanted to hate her, Swech still haunted his thoughts on any day, and now more often as she lay in a state that showed little hope for positive change.
Desh’s words finally crawled through his thoughts with enough force to penetrate.
“Gods, Desh. I am so sorry.”
“I have no idea what he found, but something killed him. Merros, he was the strongest of us, and he’s gone.” Desh looked ancient in that moment, and on the verge of tears, not from sorrow, but from a quiet desperation.
“What could have killed him?”
“Corin was the most cautious among us. He never left his chambers with his hood down, never went anywhere without wards and protections that would stop a sword or a bear for that matter.”
“What was he doing?”
“Looking for the Overlords and their servants, the same as all of us, really. There are threats that cannot be ignored, and they are chief among those dangers.”
Merros had seen the sort of damage the wizard’s robes could withstand, and he was unsettled by the idea that anyone could so easily kill one of the sorcerers strong enough to create the garments.
“He was my friend, Merros. I have known him for as long as I can remember.” Desh lowered his face into his hands and sighed mightily. “For nearly my entire life.”
Valam stepped closer and stared at Desh as if he were studying a statue that suddenly moved. The sorcerer looked up and stared into the child’s eyes and managed a weak smile though he said no words except, “This one, he has your eyes, Merros.”
The boy frowned. It was clear now to Merros that his son did not speak the common languages of Fellein. He did not understand the words.
Jo’Hedee answered the silent question Valam cast in her direction. “He says you look like your father.”
Valam nodded and stepped toward his mother’s bed.
“She is gone.” The boy’s words caught Merros off guard. He looked toward the bed fearing the worst, that Swech had died while he was distracted. The thought sent his stomach into a storm of worry that felt like he was falling from a great height.
Her bed was empty.
Swech was literally gone, no longer on the bed where she had been resting for days on end.
“Where did she go?” Merros stood so quickly that the world tilted for a moment, shocked as he had seldom been surprised before. Jo’Hedee shook her head and said, “If my king decides to move quietly, no one will see her or hear her.”
“Where would she have gone?”
“Wherever the gods send her.” Jo’Hedee made a wave motion with her arm, and they moved closer to the empty bed.
Merros stared, shocked and worried. If she moved so quietly on the hunt, he pitied her prey and hoped that the target of her hunt was someone he did not know.
Nachia Krous
This was not the sort of news that made the Empress of Fellein happy. Swech was gone and one of her most powerful wizards was dead. She would have preferred to hear that the Overlords were dead, or that the winter was calming down, or that the Sa’ba Taalor wanted peace.
No. Instead she got disappearances and death. Oh, and more fanatics begging for her to speak with them so that the gods would have a voice in her court.
Theor waited patiently for a chance to speak with her – a chance she had promised he would have as soon as she was done handling the business of running an empire. He was a handsome enough man, older than her by two decades at least, but charismatic and friendly. Unlike some of the others he did not push for her attention, but merely waited his chance to speak on behalf of Entrilla, the god of cities. Here, in Canhoon, Theor was a powerful man indeed. He was in the second largest city in the empire, and while he did not rule over the Silent Army, the living statues offered him a quiet deference that they offered to very few others. When he walked past them, they lowered their heads and watched him as he moved past. The only other person she saw them act that way with was her, and she was the ruler of the entire empire.
