Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2)
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Authors: J.C. Staudt
Children of the Wastes
Book Two of
The Aionach Saga
J.C. Staudt
Children of the Wastes
is a
work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and
incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 J.C. Staudt
All rights reserved.
Edition 1.0
This one’s for Dad, my example of
dedication, consummate pursuer of passions.
Contents
CHAPTER 1
Seer
Lethari Prokin was home. He’d been away for a long
time, and for the last few horizons of his journey he’d thought of nothing else
than being with his wife. But instead of returning to Frayla’s open arms,
Lethari had come home to find a man dying in the front bedchamber of his house.
Now the man was dead, and the thought of love had become the furthest thing
from his mind.
Daxin Glaive had not been one of the
calgoarethi
, but
a pale-skin; a
lathcu
mongrel of the southlands. Lethari had always
considered Daxin a sand-brother nonetheless. For as every
calgoareth
knew, sand was the only bond thicker than blood.
The sand drinks the blood,
and so holds power over it. The sand was there when the flesh of the
calgoarethi
sprang from its depths, and the sand shall remain until after the ending of all
things
.
Frayla Prokin did not seem to mind the dead man. She
collapsed onto the cushions beneath her husband, her legs wrapped around his
waist like a belt. She searched his eyes, longing to find the proof of his
pleasure, matching his every ragged breath with her own.
Tired though he was, Lethari did not stop until he had spent
the last of his desire. He felt the stresses of his long odyssey lift from his
shoulders like a cloud. Frayla shuddered as he withdrew, a deep breath and a
rush of air. When he pulled away, the soft green fabric of her dress was
bunched around her midriff, stained with his sweat. Her eyes never left him as
he crossed the room to dry himself with a roughspun towel. He knew her desire
was only beginning to bloom. But now that his had passed, there was too much
else on his mind to bother with such things.
Lethari and his wife spoke at length about the business of
their household, the details of their servants, slaves, and incomes; of the
tradesmen who had visited while he was away, and of the arrival of
Maigh
Glaive a week prior. Frayla recounted the story of how Daxin had left their
household several days before and ventured into the city. Neacal Griogan’s
herdsmen had brought him back two days later with deep, fatal wounds in his
flesh.
When Lethari summoned Ceallach Golandi to examine the body,
the shaman confirmed that someone had cut Daxin open and stitched him shut
again. “It is a dreadful business,” the shaman said. “This is the work of the
muirrhadi
,
I have no doubt.”
Lethari was no stranger to carnage, but the slaughter of a
thousand foes could never shake him like the death of a friend. When the shaman
was gone, Lethari took out the goatskin scroll on which he had written Daxin
Glaive’s every word in the moments before his death: the locations, times, and
places where he might find every pale-skin trade caravan across the Inner East
for the next several months.
“You see the great gift
Maigh
Glaive has given you,”
said Frayla, pointing at the goatskin.
“It is a great gift,” Lethari agreed. “A gift I will bring to
the master-king at once.”
“Must you?”
Lethari gave her a puzzled look. “I know of no other way to
handle such a boon.”
“Could you not keep it for yourself?”
“I would bring disgrace upon our household if I were to deny
the master-king his due.”
“Daxin Glaive gave this gift to you. If you tell the
master-king, he will divide it between his warleaders, just as he has always
done before. If you keep the goatskin for yourself, the glory and the spoils
will be yours alone. You will have success in battle beyond measure. Then
everyone will commend your skill and good fortune. They will say you are the
greatest warleader who has ever ridden the sands. Think of it, my love…”
“This is folly, Frayla. Daxin Glaive did not die to make
liars of us. I would give the scroll to Tycho Montari and request a sabbatical,
that I may return Daxin to his homeland to be buried.”
“Why not bury him here, in the sky?” Frayla said. “A sky
burial would be a fine honor for him.”
“He does not belong in the sky. Sand-brother though he was,
he belongs with his own people. He has a daughter and a brother, and they must
know of his fate.”
Frayla’s voice grew stiff. “Send a rider to bring the news on
your behalf. Or bring word yourself, while you are there laying waste to the
lathcu
traders.”
Lethari raised his voice. “The master-king will not send me
to raid the caravans. He has other plans for me. He will give the goatskin
record to his other warleaders, and I will receive nothing.”
“What other plans?” asked Frayla.
“The People of the Hidden Sands are here, in Sai Calgoar.”
“The men who create light and fire with their hands? Where?”
“In the household of Sigrede Balbaressi. They wait on the
master-king’s retainers. He wishes to travel to their home, and he has
commanded me to lead the
feiach
.”
Frayla sat up, intrigued. “The hidden people will show Tycho
Montari their place of hiding?”
Lethari shrugged. “This is what they have vowed.”
“And what would the master-king do there? What does he want
from them?”
“He believes he can consume their souls. He wishes to become
one of them.”
Frayla laughed. Her mouth tightened into a mocking smile.
“Then he is as much a fool as I have always believed. And you are not the man I
thought you were. If you follow him, you are no more than his puppet.”
Rage boiled inside him. He was glad it was his decision and
not hers.
She must know by now that the high households who oppose the
master-king’s wishes never escape his wrath. Tycho Montari need only speak the
words, and we will be cast into disgrace like dust from a beaten rug
.
For a brief moment, Lethari found himself wanting to strike
his wife; to break her insolence. He had to remind himself he was no longer on
the warpath—no longer in the dominion of his enemies, where fear and violence
threatened to take hold at every turn. He was at home, where honor was earned
with tact, not cruelty.
Frayla pulled up her dress to cover her nakedness, then
turned to face the wall with a sigh. “Do what you must.”
Lethari sat on the edge of the bed and began putting on his
clothes. The silence stretched out. He stood, tucked the goatskin record into
his satchel, and started toward the bedroom door. He was halfway there when she
spoke again.
“So you will do it, then,” she said.
Lethari stopped, but didn’t turn around. “First I will go to
my father’s house to pay my respects. Then I will decide.”
“You will not speak to your father of this,” she said.
Lethari sensed the note of worry in her voice. He cleared
his throat, then thought better of replying. Instead, he left the room. By the
time he reached the front entrance, he could already hear Frayla screaming at
whichever servant had been unlucky enough to have crossed her path first. With
her shouts echoing over the sandstone, Lethari stopped in the doorway and took
a deep breath before pushing himself out into the daylight.
Lethari’s father lived in a palace on the heights, one
of the venerable places far above the city. The arched entrance was several
times his height, with domed sandstone towers that rose even higher from its
flanks. Guards stood in the open doorway and in the turrets above. These were
the trappings of an established family who had served the master-king
faithfully for many years.
The guards knew Lethari well; they gave him neither greeting
nor obstruction as he entered the palace fully armed. The servants bowed and
the slaves pressed their palms together, offering him the sign of submission.
“I am pleased to see you have made a safe return to the city,
my Lord Lethari,” said Tierlach, the thin, tidy man who served as Eirnan
Prokin’s head steward.
“Tell me, Tierlach,” Lethari said. “Where is my father?”
“Lord Eirnan is in his parlor, my liege.”
Lethari marched onward into the depths of the house. He
ignored the lavish rooms along the way, with their familiar tapestries, carved
sandstone pillars, tilework, and brightly-colored cushions. He found his father
in the midst of deep meditation, so he stood at the room’s threshold and
waited. Wisps of smoke were trailing up from a dish on the side table, filling
the air with a sweet fragrance.
“Why do you stand there as though you have forgotten how to
speak, my son?” asked Eirnan Prokin, without opening his eyes.
“I… did not want to interrupt,” said Lethari.
“Everything is an interruption of something else.”
“And when have you ever given me your leave to bear that
charge?”
“It is many years now since you were a boy. You have borne
heavier burdens than to worry yourself over the irritations of an old man.”
“I am here to give you my respect as your son, not to speak
of bygone grief.”
Eirnan opened his eyes and stared at the wall as if in a
trance. “Old grief is like an old wound. Hard to carry; harder still to hide
from the eyes of the watchful.”
I have borne grief of my own
, Lethari wanted to say.
But
I did not let it cripple me, as you have
. “I have only returned to the city
for a short time,” he said. “I would have your counsel while I am here.”
“Very well. Sit. Sit, and listen.” Eirnan gestured toward an
open space on the rug next to him, though the room contained many chairs and
cushions. “My counsel is this: count your days as you would the fingers of your
hands. For though it may seem to you that they are as numerous as the sands, or
as plentiful as the rain, you will deceive yourself to believe it. You have
realized success in this life, my son. You have seen happiness. But when the
joys of your life have waned like the ebbing tide—when the triumphs of your
youth are past, and you can see only the darkness ahead—you will know you were
a fool to believe yourself invincible. Heartbreak can slay a man the same as a
blade.”
Sitting beside his father, Lethari was at once disturbed and
angered. This was not the man he remembered. Eirnan had been a great warleader
once, just as Lethari was now. He had won many victories for the master-king.
It was in his father’s company that Lethari had come of age. He had slain his
first man and had his first woman while he was a young warrior in his father’s
feiach
.
The man seated beside him now was no conqueror; no champion
to be revered. Though Eirnan Prokin’s reputation was one of awe and acclaim, he
was a failed and broken man in his own mind. Lethari had long since stopped
trying to bring his father to reason. Eirnan was living as though already dead,
trapped in a prison of his own making.
“I have come to ask your counsel in a different matter,”
Lethari said. “I have been given an object of great value. I believe it is my
duty to offer this object to the master-king as a sign of my fealty… but I have
been advised not to.”
“Who gave you this thing?” Eirnan asked.
“You remember Daxin Glaive.”
“The son of Lyle Glaive, with whom we rode the sands in
friendship for many years.”
“Yes. He has given me another record of the pale-skin
caravans. Now he is dead, and so this is the last record I may ever lay claim
to.”
The corner of Eirnan’s mouth drew upward. “Frayla does not
wish you to surrender this thing to Tycho Montari.”
Lethari did not understand how his father could’ve
known—unless it was so easy for the man to read him with barely a look. “My
mother never asked you to betray the master-king, did she?”
“Your mother asked me to do a great many things,” Eirnan
said.
“How often did you do what she wished of you?”
Eirnan was smiling now, wide and full. “Without fail. And
more than that I would’ve done, had she only asked…”
Lethari couldn’t remember when last he had seen his father
smile that way. Eirnan’s face was clear and alive, like a weathered carving
suddenly wiped clean. The smile faded as quickly as it had come.
“I should betray the master-king, then,” said Lethari.
“Tycho Montari will gain as much from your silence as he
would from your admission. You will slaughter the same
lathcui
and
deliver him the same spoils, whether he knows how you came by them or not.”
“The truth is no less important than the spoils. He deserves
both. Without the master-king, I am nothing.”
“You are the man you are—with him, or without. Never let
yourself believe you are the king’s property. You are no slave, my son.”
“The master-king honors me with plenty. He gives me
everything I have, and eases my way with his bounty.”
“That is what he would have you believe.”
Lethari spread his hands to indicate the decadence around
them. “What is all this, if not the master-king’s blessing?”
“This is an empty reward, well-earned through blood and toil.
And yet a thousand palaces like mine will never restore the days that have come
to pass, or revive the sweetness of a time I once knew.”
“Then I should do as Frayla asks, to please her.”
“You should decide where your loyalties lie. Then, ask
yourself if that is where they belong. Tycho Montari does not warm your bed at
night. No, thank the fates. Tycho Montari does not share your household, and it
is not he you think of while you range far from home across the desert. It will
not be the master-king who bears your children, or whom you serve when you are
old and frail…” Eirnan’s voice broke off. He blinked, then shut his eyes.
“My father, you betray your king even now…”
“Many are the faces of betrayal, but there is none so
seductive as that which turns a man against his own household.”
“You broke your vow to the king and endangered the honor of
our household over the ill-conceived yearnings of a woman. And you think this
vague discourse does not make it plain. Though you do not confess it directly,
I now know it to be true. You gave him your allegiance, and you deceived him…
for my mother. It is not only her memory that grieves you, but the weight of
your shame.”