Blade Kin (17 page)
Authors: David Farland
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Genetic Engineering
Chapter 25: The Sorceress
Tull lay among the sweat and stench of the slave pens as the great steel behemoth of the ship beat a path between the waves. A tap to his heel roused him from a deep sleep. For a moment, he realized he’d been dreaming of Fava, dreaming of her beside him on the bed, and he wanted only to hold that image in his mind.
He opened his eyes. Chulata stood above him.
“I need a body servant for the evening,” she said. “You will come service me.” The sorceress stood alone in the shadows without bodyguards. In her black robes she seemed almost an apparition hovering over him.
“I don’t want to,” Tull answered.
“You are a Thrall, and I am Blade Kin,” Chulata said. “If you no longer wish to use your genitals, I can have you relieved of them.”
Tull looked up to the turrets, at the guards there. He had no choice.
Chulata led him from the cage, up the dark corridors. He passed several cells filled with his townspeople, and at one point, his mother cried out to him, “Tull! Tull!”
Tull stopped briefly, and in the cell he saw Chaa and Zhopila, among other townsmen from Smilodon Bay. It took a moment longer to spot his own mother.
Chulata stood waiting. He saw the disapproval in her eyes, and he stepped in line immediately.
“Good,” Chulata said, as they got out of earshot. “Those who value father or mother or brother or sister more than the Blade Kin, are not worthy of the Blade Kin.”
Tull had hoped that Chulata would take him to the ship’s deck, but she escorted him past guard rooms with their barred doors, but just below the top deck she halted.
A Blade Kin with a sword guarded a door, and Chulata winked at the guard, then took Tull into a cabin that was several times larger than his own small home in Smilodon Bay, sparsely but opulently furnished: a large bed with silk sheets, a sunken pool to bathe in, lights somehow built into pale green gems that glittered from the ceiling.
Smilodon Bay had no electricity, though Tull had seen such lights before, down at Fish Haven, and in Craal.
There were several windows, and when Tull looked out of one, he could see only the ocean, a slate-gray sea under billowing clouds. Night was falling.
“Do you like my room?” Chulata asked, and Tull wondered at the furnishings.
“It is very nice,” Tull said. “Do you come here often?”
“This is my room. I live here.”
“It does not look like a soldier’s room.”
Chulata smiled at him, and Tull gazed into her eyes. She did not seem to be wearing her mask, hiding her feelings. Instead, he saw that he amused her.
“I am highly paid. All those who achieve my rank in the Brotherhood of Carnadine Sorcerers receive a salary equal to that of a Dragon Captain.”
Tull nodded. A Dragon Captain stood just below the Cyclops in rank, but Tull could not guess how much money someone of that rank might be paid.
Chulata smiled at him. “You will undress me and give me my bath,” she said, her voice cold, commanding. “You will do it gently, as if I were your lover.”
Tull stepped forward, struggled with the thought. He pulled off her black robe, and beneath she wore a tunic of some glittering cloth. The cloth was all of one piece, like a drape, held together on her right shoulder by a platinum brooch shaped like a swan. She wore a fine leather belt wrapped around her waist.
He carefully untied it, then removed the brooch. Her tunic slipped off, revealing her full breasts, the generous curve of her hips.
The triangle of hair between her legs was a color the Pwi called oak-leaf red, dull red with a touch of brown, a color that normally showed only in those of mixed human and Neanderthal ancestry. This surprised Tull, for it was a much darker shade than the hair of her head.
Tull wore only his black cotton breech cloth, and Chulata leaned forward, put her hands on his shoulders, and sniffed at his neck. “You smell like the slave pens. Take off your dirty cloth. I do not want it to foul my bathwater.”
The breechcloth dangled between his legs, and Tull pulled off the dragon clasp that kept it tight. He looked for someplace to set it, and Chulata took it from his hand, dropped it to the floor, pulled off his cloth.
Tull felt relieved that he had enough control to keep his organ from stiffening.
She took his hand, led him into the bath. Ivory tiles were inlaid around the tub, and as he climbed down the steps into its depths, the hot water swirled up to his chest.
“The water is hot,” Tull said. “Are you sure it won’t scald us?”
“It only feels hot because you have never taken a warm bath, have you?”
“No,” Tull said. “At home, I always bathed in the river.”
“Give yourself a moment. You will get used to it.”
Chulata grabbed a bar of soap from a dish, handed it to Tull. “Lather your hair and wash yourself.”
Tull obliged, washed his hair and chest, gave the bar of soap back to her.
“You are not all clean,” Chulata said. She moved forward to grab for parts lower down, but Tull pushed her hand away.
“How old are you?” Chulata asked.
“Nineteen.”
“Four years younger than I,” Chulata said. “Men your age are usually such animals. One woman is never enough for them.”
“As I said, you are not to my tastes.”
“Pecans yesterday, strawberries today. What would it hurt?” She leaned into him so that her nipples brushed his chest. She whispered in his ear. “I think you want to be faithful to the memory of your dead wife. No one is that strong …” Chulata kissed him under the ear.
Tull felt his desire swelling, but fought back the urge and said, “I want to go back to my cell.”
Chulata laughed. “You must wash me first,” she said, turning her back to him. “We aren’t even close to being finished.”
The perfumed soap smelled of lilacs, and Tull felt grateful that she turned away, for it allowed him time to regain his composure. He washed her hair and shoulders, her back and buttocks, her breasts and arms, her thighs and legs, all as a body servant should.
When he finished, Chulata wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his chest.
“How does a Spirit Walker practice his art?” she asked. “Do you use Guides?” Her hands wandered down below his waist again.
“I don’t know,” Tull said truthfully, capturing her wrists and moving her hands away. “I’m only an apprentice. How does a Carnadine sorcerer practice her art?”
Chulata looked up at him and her eyes glittered. They were eyes like Tull’s, pale green with flecks of honey, and her nose had two tiny bumps at the end. She crooked a finger, beckoning. “Come to bed with me, and I will tell you.”
“Yes,” Tull said, and he got out of the tub and dried Chulata with a cotton towel. As he did so, he wondered how far he should go with this woman.
Should he give sex to her, perhaps buy himself enough freedom to escape? In many ways it seemed a small price to pay. Tull did not believe that in her heart Chulata really wanted him; he told himself that she was only testing him, trying to learn the strength of his devotion to Fava.
Still, he could not do it and retain his peace of mind. To sell himself to a woman as contemptible as Chulata would be … a form of defilement.
When he finished toweling her, she grabbed his hand, pulled him to the bed. He lay beside her.
She gazed into his face and smiled, “What was your wife like?”
“Fava is nothing like you,” Tull said. “She is taller, and her hair softer orange. She has never slept on a bed of silk, nor bathed in warm water. I don’t think she has ever harmed anyone, either on purpose or by accident. She would never lie, or sleep with someone for gain. I think … she loves me as purely as anyone could. I suspect, she is stronger than you. As I said, she is nothing like you.”
Chulata sat up and her face hardened, all the humor and desire in her eyes turning to white-hot flame. “What do you want?” she asked bitterly. “To live in a cage like a Thrall, or to free yourself and become Blade Kin? Those are your only choices!”
The ship lurched as it suddenly slowed, and in the distance Tull heard the rumble of cannon fire. He slapped a hand over Chulata’s mouth.
“Listen, we are coming to port!” he said. He looked up at the windows. Full darkness.
Chulata struggled, tried to scream, tried to knee him in the groin, but the ship’s cannons fired in the night, growling above him like a beast.
The bed rocked from the vibrations. He held her a moment, realized that she was right. If he stayed in her world, he would be forced to become either a Thrall or a Blade Kin, with no other options.
“I’m sorry,” Tull said, striking her in the temple.
Her eyes rolled back and she collapsed. He gagged her with a pillowcase, and tied her hand and foot to the bed with strips of silk. He threw the covers over her so that no casual observer would notice.
He rolled from bed, and his wits seemed to have fled him. Licking his dry lips, he grabbed his breechcloth from the floor and wrapped it about him. He ran through the room looking for something to disguise himself with. Chulata’s robes were all he could find. Though they had looked bulky on Chulata, they were far too tight for Tull, and the red trim of the Carnadine Sorcerers would only attract attention.
Still, he reasoned that in the darkness he might escape notice.
He ripped the red rope tassels from the edges of the robe and drew the hood tight over his head. He searched the drawers of the dressers, thinking Chulata must have kept a sword, since she was Blade Kin—but he found none. He knew the guard would still be at the door.
Tull went to the wall, touched it, reached out with his mind, trying to learn where the guard would be. Yet he was nervous, and felt nothing.
Tull leapt out the door, hoping to catch the guard by surprise. But he was gone, and Tull wondered at his fortune.
Perhaps he had gone above deck to watch the fireworks. Tull glanced down the hallways. The corridor behind him was empty, and he hurried up the stairwell to the deck.
The fresh air that smote him was warm as summer air, and Tull realized that they must have sailed far to the south. The deck was relatively quiet—a few Blade Kin at each cannon—and Tull hid in a crack between two great pipes that served some unknown function in running the iron ship.
He looked out over the water for sight of land, and it seemed to be all about him, a huge sprawling city a hundred times larger than Smilodon Bay. The lights from it looked like ten thousand stars scattered across a black sky, and even at this great distance the war cry of Blade Kin carried over the water along with shouts of dismay.
Cannon fire rolled like thunder, and balls exploded near the ship.
This could only be the city of South Bay, the largest in the Rough.
That meant that the Blade Kin had captured every port from Storm Hold in the north on down. The free cities had been brought low.
The thought of it nearly stopped his heart, and he stood for one long moment, wondering what he would do if he escaped, and then he raced with all his might and leapt over the side of the ship, far out into the black water.
***
Chapter 26: A Crushed Heart
Acolytes, guards and body servants cowered aside as Atherkula stepped through the cabin door, gasping in the warm night air, and drew back his crimson hood to expose long cords of twisted hair the silvered color of dry leaves.
From deep-set eyes he looked upon the corpse of Chulata, who lay sprawled upon her bed, now covered with a ceremonial death skin, the tanned hide of a black dire wolf.
The room was dark and moist, and the ivory walls were saturated with the odor of perfumes. Beside the bed, a candle lay at both her head and her feet to guide her on her path into the Land of Shapes.
Behind Atherkula, servants, guards, and acolytes stared up at the aging shaman in horror.
“Omnipotent,” one of them called, trying to appease him, begging Atherkula to speak if only to break the silence.
Atherkula ignored him. The acolytes were terrified of Atherkula, and he could feel them, all working together to shield their thoughts, to hide their terror from him.
They fear me,
he thought,
because I feel no love, because it is said I am heartless and almost human.
Yet Atherkula’s heart pounded inside him, wild with grief, wild with a desire to escape this room.
Ah, that I were a mere human.
Atherkula pulled the dire wolf skin off the dead woman. Chulata was naked, and lay atop her silk sheets. He could see stains on a silk pillowcase where she had vomited into her gag, suffocating.
Thankfully, the guards had already cleaned her somewhat. Atherkula lightly touched her chin, and was surprised to find the body so cold. “I thought you said she had just died?” Atherkula asked a young man.
“Yes, Omnipotent!” the guard cried falling to one knee. “I mean—I just learned she was dead.”
“Are you not her personal guard?” Atherkula demanded.
“Yes, Lord!” the young man shouted, his voice loud. “But she released me for the night so that she could spend time with the slave Tull!”
Atherkula closed Chulata’s staring eyes, let his hands linger on her face.
“She was a promising sorceress for one so young. Perhaps in all Bashevgo, not more than three can equal her. We shall greatly mourn the loss,” he said, as if speaking to himself. “He must have caught her completely off guard.”
He turned to the young guard. “Where is Tull now?”
The guard seemed almost to wither into the floor, yet Atherkula could not feel his thoughts, could not read his aura. The man had learned to shield himself.
He has listened well to Chulata’s lessons. Wither, little would-be sorcerer,
Atherkula thought
, hide your thoughts from me, for as long as you can.
“We could not find him. He must have jumped ship last night when we took South Bay. We are checking the other carriers now to see if he was picked up during the battle.”
“Tull,” Atherkula said. “Now, he has claimed a second sorcerer.”
Outside, a gust of wind buffeted the ship. Atherkula stopped, listened to the wind with more than his ears.
Out on the ocean he heard a spirit walking on the water, the spirit of a man who had drowned there years before. Atherkula could tell that the man was aware of him, could feel Atherkula’s presence and was disturbed. “Leave me, with the body,” Atherkula asked, nodding toward Chulata. “Wait outside.”
The acolytes, guards, and servants ran into the night, scattering like rooks from a loft, leaving the door ajar.
Atherkula shut and locked it, then returned to Chulata, sprawled upon her luxurious bed.
For a long moment, Atherkula stood gazing at her, and tears began to moisten the old man’s eyes.
Almost human, almost human they call me, for they believe I am cruel and dead inside.
Atherkula felt a cavernous emptiness, a breathtaking sting in his heart. He stroked the dead girl’s arm, let his hand caress Chulata’s flat, hard belly, finally to settle comfortably in her hand.
He knelt and kissed her lips, as he had wanted to a thousand times in life, and found them to be more than cold—they were dry and cracked, like paper. The odor of vomit clung to them.
Twenty-three years,
Atherkula thought.
For twenty-three years I’ve known you were my daughter. I loved you, and could not tell you.
Among the Blade Kin, no man acknowledged his children, lest rivals use his offspring as targets.
Atherkula stood, arms stretched wide as if to encompass the girl, and the sleeves of his great red robe draped over her corpse so that Atherkula felt like some great red crab, staking claim to its prey, then he stretched out on the cot beside her, hugging her gently. He held his breath.
Where many another sorcerer would have needed to pour out his life’s blood until he stood at the gates of death in order to unleash his spirit and walk free in the Land of Shapes, Atherkula could feel something of it at all times.
Unlike other men, he was not bound to concepts of near and far, past or future, life or death.
In a small vial chained to his neck, he kept a mild poison, the Wine of Dreams, a liquid often used by his Neanderthal ancestors. Atherkula uncorked the crystal bottle, sipped. The dark-green liquid left only a musty aftertaste, yet the room immediately began to spin.
Atherkula cleared his mind.
The Land of Shapes opened to him, a world where the steel walls of the ship seemed but thin vapors. A world where six dolphins leaping through the ship’s wake glowed like fiery coals in a blacksmith’s forge, their spirits vibrant, while corals and starfish and anemones on the ocean floor below shone with a flickering light.
The black ocean waters became invisible, as colorless as the air, yet the ocean’s surface showed as a dark plain.
Upon this plain he felt Chulata. The shadow of her soul yawned dark; the pale fronds of soul-lighting danced in dismay.
One of those fronds appeared as a rope that seemed woven of starlight, and it formed a noose. She cast this spirit weapon far and wide, hoping to snare something.
Atherkula waited for his poison to take full effect, until his body seemed to drop away, then sent a thought to young Chulata. “Do you search for Tull?”
Chulata was not surprised by Atherkula’s presence. Having been cut off from her body, she no longer felt surprise. “He eludes me. Perhaps he is dead. He has disappeared.”
“That is impossible,” Atherkula said. “His spirit exists beyond death. Even if he were dead, you would find him.” He considered a moment. “Let’s hunt together.”
Atherkula imagined a hook, like the ones that slaves at the docks in Bashevgo used for gaffing large halibut as they unloaded them from ships.
Atherkula concentrated until one pale tendril of lightning emerged from the shadow of his soul, curved into a hook and glowed like an ember. His spirit weapon.
He swung it through the air, once, twice, listening to it whistle, then joined his own power with Chulata’s.
“Imagine Tull for me, since you know him best,” Atherkula whispered, and he found himself standing in a world of twilight looking over an alpine meadow.
Yellow buttercups dotted a field that extended to the forest. Chulata envisioned Tull—and Atherkula saw in his mind’s eye the young man with long dark-red hair and angry eyes.
Chulata cast her silver rope, and Atherkula swung his fiery hook, and for a brief moment they hurtled through the twilight toward the apparition, and then they seemed to slow.
Young Tull raised a fist, pushing them back, and Atherkula swung his gaff and caught Tull in the ribs.
Briefly, Atherkula saw from Tull’s eyes, felt the young man fleeing through a green countryside of gum trees and orange orchards.
But at that moment the world seemed to twist, and Atherkula found himself hurled back into the valley of buttercups. Chulata landed beside him.
Atherkula looked at the valley. The grass was lush, the buttercups in bloom. They were viewing a scene from the past, an illusion dredged from Tull’s mind.
Atherkula whispered. “He felt us hunting him, and he cast us here.”
“You see,” Chulata said. “He is powerful. Should we seek him again?”
Atherkula considered. “I’ve hunted other sorcerers, renegades who tried to elude the Brotherhood. None turned me as he did.
“Yet I know the country Tull is in. I know where to search. Gather our dead comrades. I will call you again, and we shall hunt him in a pack.”
Atherkula withdrew from Chulata and breathed slowly, moved back into his body.
For a long moment he lay, envisioning his arms, connecting himself to his arms. Imagining that he had fingers and toes, connecting himself to his toes.
The walls around him solidified, becoming ivory once again. The electric lights glared, casting emerald shadows. Atherkula shivered.
While separated from his body, he had felt no emotions. But now he felt a gnawing fear. Tull had thrown him off so easily. And he felt a yawning emptiness at the loss of Chulata. Atherkula separated himself from his daughter’s corpse for the last time.
He unbarred the cabin door, weak and dizzy from the Wine of Dreams, and struggled to the deck.
The body servants, guards and acolytes waited on their knees, the cowls of their robes pulled low. It was near dawn, and from the deck Atherkula could see the gleaming lights of Bashevgo’s fleet out over the ocean. Over sixty thousand slaves taken in the Rough, a whole new country opened, and it all belonged to Tantos.
It made Atherkula proud to be Blade Kin. It was a sacred trust. He looked at the young guard who had found Chulata’s body. The man struggled to keep his thoughts veiled.
“No more secrets,” Atherkula said. “I won’t let you hide. You did not know that she had died and grown cold, for you were not watching her as you should have!”
Guilt was etched on the young guard’s face. Though he had been blocking his thoughts, his concentration snapped and he could shield himself no more. Atherkula felt the man’s guilt.
“You were not even near the door. You were sleeping with someone else. A lover!” The other guards and acolytes separated from the young man.
The accused arose in shock, not knowing how to defend himself. “You are not worthy to be Blade Kin,” Atherkula growled. “You are not even worthy to be a Thrall. You are not worthy to live!”
The young man fell to the deck, whining like some animal, begging forgiveness. A rage took Atherkula, and he felt his power, raw and unyielding.
The Wine of Dreams still flowed in his blood. He was still half in the Land of Shapes, lightly clinging to his body.
The ghost out on the water felt Atherkula’s wrath and fled. The dolphins leapt away from the ship, and a wind began swirling in long lazy circles around him, picking up salt rime and debris.
“I shall rend you, body and spirit,” Atherkula said. “When you die, you shall not dwell in peace in the House of Dust! In the Land of Shapes are many terrors, and you shall meet them all.”
Atherkula reached out with his mind until he felt the shape of the beast, a massive dark creature that appeared to Atherkula as if made only from shadows.
He could not see the beast, wrapped in night, only feel the force of its malevolence.
Strengthen me, Adjonai,
the old sorcerer demanded, and he felt the beast take notice.
A wave of despair struck Atherkula, for he could not withstand the beast’s gaze, and Atherkula begged again,
Strengthen me.
The dark beast divined Atherkula’s intent, and a powerful wind rose from the creature, blowing tatters of night to circle Atherkula.
The old sorcerer stood in the maelstrom, and the beast’s power swelled like a flood around him, surging through him. Atherkula reached out with the shadow of his soul, grasped the lightning of his victim.
Atherkula was a Neanderthal of the old blood. Like some Talent Warrior he felt the power unleash and shouted, “Stand!”
With the snapping of bones the guard jerked into the air, where he hung upright as if skewered on an invisible pole.
The others on deck shrieked and tried to cower away, but Atherkula shouted, “Stay, all of you!” He used his power to wrench their heads forward and open their eyes, forcing them to watch.
The guard screamed and tried to twist away. He could not protect himself.
“Body and spirit, body and spirit,” Atherkula hissed, and he channeled his rage. The guard twisted in the air, gagging.
His chest heaved and his eyes bulged as a horrible ripping sound rose from deep within. Blood trickled from his nose and sweat streamed down his face. Suddenly, his whole body quivered as something inside tore free, and his eyes went vacant.
“Body and spirit,” Atherkula hissed, and he held his hand in front of the guard’s chin in a beggar’s gesture.
Though dead, the guard continued to twist and his feet did a little dance as they kicked, running, running from death.
The guard’s throat swelled huge, and his own bloody heart wriggled from his mouth like some animal and fell, plopping to Atherkula’s open palm.
Atherkula raised the warm, dripping heart, waved it overhead. He felt a rage unlike anything before at losing his daughter.
He felt a power like never before stirring within.
Killing the guard had not satisfied him. Chulata was dead, his only child. The peons on the ground backed away, ran to hide.
He let them go, but Atherkula was not finished. The guard’s body was dead, but only the body.
The others could not see the spirit, still fluttering in Atherkula’s grasp in the Land of Shapes, a globe of lightning, green with fear.
“Body and spirit,” Atherkula hissed, calling the beast. Darkness swirled around him, around the soul in his hand, and he heard a snarling, as if jackals lurked in these tatters of darkness.
The beast stalked in to feed. Across the Land of Shapes a cry of horror went out, the piercing shriek of a spirit being ripped to pieces.
Atherkula listened to the lonesome cry, amused. He watched the green fearful light flutter in his hand as the darkness circled, watched the light falter and fade.
For one brief moment, Atherkula imagined Tull smirking somewhere out in the Rough, thinking himself secure.
Ah, but you will not hide from me.
Atherkula bundled his energy as if it were a great fist and sent the image of the bloody heart hurtling through space toward Tull, and with the image, he sent the words, “Tull, I will crush your heart also!”