The Queen's Blade Prequel I - Conash: Dead Son (8 page)

The sand ended.
He stared at the rocks under his palms. The tracks had vanished.
Rivan's tracks. He raised his head. A tree stood two man-lengths
away. A real tree? It had shade. A scent came to him, and he
glanced around at Rivan, who sat on a rock a man-length away.
Conash could smell water. Was there water in Damnation? Or trees?
What was Rivan doing in Damnation? He crawled towards the cat.
Rivan waited, purring, his long tail twitching. A trickling sound
came. Conash crawled faster. Water. Real water.

The boy
struggled over rocks and splashed into a tiny pool. His hands burnt
and his throat was on fire. He thrust his face into the water and
sucked. Sand washed down his throat. He gulped. It was cool, and
real. He coughed and choked, sucking it down. His stomach clenched,
and he vomited, then drank again. His thirst emptied the pool, and
it filled again. Water trickled into it from a higher place. A
mountain. A whole line of mountains. A stone barrier that guarded a
verdant land. Jashimari. He was home.

Conash flopped
down. His stomach gurgled, and tears ran down his cheeks. Now he
could die. He had made it. Rivan had brought him home. He raised
his head, searching for the cat. Rivan had vanished.

“Rivan,” he
whispered.

Darkness
slammed down like a closing door.

Conash woke in
darkness. Cold bit through the ragged dress, chilling his skin. He
turned to the pool and drank until his burning thirst was quenched.
His stomach gurgled. He tried to stand up, and fell over. His legs
wobbled and his arms shook. The cold froze him, eating through his
skin to his core. There, it found more frostiness. The dead place
inside him shivered. Frozen. Dead. The cold drove him to move, or
he would die. He chuckled, for he was already dead. His body was
cooling, soon it would stiffen, then it would rot. Why was he still
in it? He crawled. He was mad.

The insanity
ate into his brain, baring its bones to the chill wind that
whistled through his ears. It howled within his bones and blew down
the veins that had once carried his blood. When had he ever been
alive? It had all been a lie, a cruel dream. Rivan appeared ahead
of him, luring him up the slope. Did he have to climb a mountain
now? What did he care? What was a mountain to a corpse? It was an
ant hill, and he was invincible. The dead felt no pain, no remorse,
no anguish. They felt no despair, no desolation, but they did feel
hatred, and rage. That was all he had left. No sorrow. Just hatred.
Endless, sweet hatred. This was good.

The cat led him
up a trail, faint amongst the stones, walking slowly and pausing to
chirp every now and then. Conash longed to feel his familiar's
soft, warm fur again. Catch the cat. Climb the mountain. A corpse
could do many things that a man could not. It could not die again,
for one thing. Crawl. Keep crawling. Never stop crawling. The Ages
turned, centuries passed.

Light warmed
him as the sun rose. Rock passed beneath him, a faint trail. Rivan
waited ahead, purring. The mountain was behind him now, and he
crawled downhill. More centuries passed, and the sun moved over
him. His fingers touched grass. He gripped it with his blistered
palms and clung to it, weeping. Jashimari. His broken wails were
offensive to his ears. How pathetic.
Stop it. You are not a
child. You are not even alive.
Hungry though, and thirsty
again. Exquisite misery. Crawl.

A dead bird.
Had Rivan brought it? It looked fairly fresh, although ants ate it.
He stuffed it into his mouth, feathers, ants and all. It fed him,
although the feathers almost choked him, and someone growled. It
filled his stomach, but now he was thirsty again. Rivan led him on,
and he smelt water. A stream. He drank. Trees rustled overhead,
stirred by a cool wind. There were frogs in a pool downstream; he
could hear them croaking. He crawled towards the sounds. Little
green frogs. Too slow to evade his grasping, bloody hands. He
stuffed them into his mouth, the portal through which sustenance
passed. His teeth crushed tiny bones, and cold blood oozed from
slimy flesh.

Blood ran from
his hands, and he licked it off. It tasted better than frog, and he
sucked his palms, biting his skin to make more of the warm, salty
fluid flow. Pain jolted him. He was eating himself. That was really
stupid. Find more frogs. Drink more water. He was a hunter with a
sleek, lithe body and sharp claws. He was a cat. Bonded to a dead
cat. The bond sustained him and gave him strength. Rivan's
strength. A cat's lithe form, its sharp senses and supple grace. He
would hunt and eat. Nothing else mattered. Rivan would come back
soon.

The pond had a
lot of frogs in it. Too many. Conash ate them all, and still his
hunger gnawed at him. He found eggs in the reeds and ate them. A
duck tried to defend its nest, and he pounced. His legs were
stronger now. The duck struggled, and he snapped its neck, ripping
off its feathers with quick, deft, bloody hands. Rivan watched him
with gentle approval. The boy tore the raw meat with sharp fangs.
His claws gripped it while he snarled and spat. He had regressed to
a cat, or progressed. The heavy slave chain around his neck annoyed
him, but he could not free himself of it.

Darkness came,
and he slept, then woke when the light returned. He found more
frogs, and another nest. A drake fell afoul of his swift pounce and
ripping claws. The pond mud stank, and he smeared himself with it
to hide his scent. He prowled around it, a feline hunter, ready to
kill whatever he could, and eat. Darkness returned, and he slept,
shivering. Another day passed as a cat, then another, until he lost
count. Ages passed again. He hunted and ate, growing stronger. He
was a strong corpse now, although he smelt like a rotten one.

Conash the cat
was eating a frog when a clatter of hooves alarmed him, and he
slipped into the reeds. A man rode up on a broad bay mare and
dismounted. Conash sniffed the air, scenting tobacco, dried meat,
and blood. The horse sucked at the water, and cat Conash watched it
with hungry eyes. Perhaps it was a little too big. The man was
smaller though. Would his claws and teeth be enough? Perhaps a rock
would help. He found one, just the right size, and smooth. Madness
filled him. He was going to hunt a man.

The plump man
sat on the pool's bank and paddled his pink feet in the water.
Conash looked down at his own feet, which were black. He squatted.
A steel spring coiled inside him. It had been growing stronger,
hunting frogs and ducks, this cold spring that was his new core.
Hunter. Killer. Drinker of blood. He hefted the rock. The man's
skull was like an eggshell, it would shatter. He hated men. Conash
stood up for the first time since he had become a cat and sprang at
the man. The fat merchant goggled at him, and Conash slammed the
rock down on his sneering head. It cracked, and the man
slumped.

Conash sat down
and stared at the dead man. Blood ran from the corpse's head in a
steady stream. The boy's eyes burnt. He had killed a man. Now he
would eat him. No. Rivan appeared before him, and snarled. No
eating men. Conash rocked, shivering. What had he become? A corpse
that needed to eat. A survivor. Frogs tasted bad, ducks were hard
to catch. His ribs protruded. He must find more food.

Rising to his
feet, he went to the horse and searched the saddlebags, finding a
treasure trove of food. Dried meat, pastries, jam, bread, spiced
meat and pickled potpears. He stuffed them into his mouth, and they
tasted far better than ducks and frogs. A little sanity seeped back
into his brain, and he looked down at the ragged dress and mud that
covered him. He was a boy, not a cat. Setting down the food, he
went over to the dead man and stripped off his clothes. A warm
coat, trousers, a fine shirt, a knife and a money pouch. The shoes
were too big, so he left them on the corpse's feet, then rolled it
into the pond. He had committed a crime. He was a killer. That is
what it took to stay alive.

Conash waded
into the pond and washed off the mud, scrubbing it from his hair,
then braided it and hacked it off with the knife. With a leather
thong from the saddle bags, he tied the braid around his neck over
the slave chain. He donned the clothes, which were several sizes
too big. Replacing the rest of the food in the saddle bags, he
mounted the bay horse. It set off through a forest, and he let it
go where it wanted. It seemed to know the way. It found a road and
followed it. At dusk he stopped it and slid from its back, tying it
to a tree. He ate more food, then slept.

Two tendays
later, Conash rode into a vast city. The horse had brought him
here, following the road through forests and fields, past villages
and towns. He did not know the city's name, but it would do. At a
livery stable, he sold the horse for thirty silvers and went to the
market. A new set of cheap clothes cost a few coppers, and the dead
merchant's purse remained heavy. His hunger drove him to a vendor's
stall, where he bought a bowl of hot ryelen for a copper. Many
people thronged the streets, and they made him nervous. Surely they
could tell that he was a killer? He stank of it.

Conash found
sanctuary in a sordid alley choked with litter and home to rats and
stray cats. Urchins hounded him, pelted him with dung and shouted
insults. He retaliated in kind, and they soon learnt to leave him
alone. He had no past. He had been born in the pond with the ducks
and frogs.

The silvers
bought food for two moon-phases. He slept in the gutter under an
abandoned box, with the rats and cats. Food was expensive in this
city. When the coins ran out, he slipped through the crowds and
filched purses from pockets. He was fast, but one day he was not
fast enough. A man grabbed him and beat him, leaving him bruised
and battered. A tenday later, he was caught again, and barely
escaped with his life. Thieving was a risky business, apparently.
He still had not spoken to anyone, and did not intend to. No one
cared about him, and he cared about no one. That was the way of the
world.

The third time
he was caught lifting a purse, the man beat him with a stick, and
it hurt. He was not a good pickpocket, but perhaps he was a better
killer. The fat merchant had not complained. Conash armed himself
with a smooth stone, like the one he had used to bash out the
merchant's brains. It worked well, and he killed a luckless,
drunken man in a dark alley, taking a fat purse. The man had no
familiar with him, so it was probably a goat or sheep locked away
in a pen while its friend went drinking. Killing was easy,
especially for a corpse. He had not seen Rivan for a long time, and
he missed his dead familiar.

The coins from
the drunkard's purse fed him for several tendays, but he had
stopped marking the time. He survived, and that was enough. When
the coins ran out, he hung around an alehouse's kitchen door. The
cook's helpers threw out scraps, and he fought with the stray dogs
for them. Fishing bread out of the gutter seemed like a perfectly
good way to find food, after eating frogs and ducks. Several times,
drunkards who staggered past singing raucous songs disturbed his
slumber under his box in the gutter.

One night, the
gentle fall of warm liquid on his face woke him, and he smelt
urine. Conash sat up, his hatred consuming him. His stone came to
hand, and he brought it down on the surprised urinater's head with
a satisfying crunch. The man’s purse yielded only a few silvers,
and Conash had to find a new box in another gutter to sleep under.
The coins fed him for a tenday, then it was back to the alehouse to
fight for scraps with the dogs. Apparently the alehouse's cook did
not like wild boys eating his scraps, however, for he stopped
throwing them out for the dogs.

Conash's hunger
gnawed at him, goading him to feed it. He needed money. His stone
filled his palm again, and he crept down a dark, refuse-choked
alley in search of another urinating drunkard. They deserved to
die, since one had pissed on him. No one had the right to piss on
him. A man entered the alley, and Conash the killer followed him,
waiting for him to urinate. He almost escaped, but Conash emerged
from the shadows like a hunting cat, the rock raised.

The man spun
around, and the rock swished through air. It cracked into Conash's
shin, and he doubled over to clasp his leg with a grunt. Something
hit him on the side of the head, and everything went black.

Talon studied
the girl who lay in the gutter, dressed in ragged men's clothes.
She looked no more than fourteen, frail and innocent.
Shoulder-length black hair straggled over her cheek, and thick
lashes fanned her milky skin. He squatted, noting her sunken cheeks
and skinny neck, her slender hand lying in the filth. Starvation
must have driven her to try to knock him out in order to steal his
money. Dirt caked her cheeks and rimed her neck, and she stank.

Talon glanced
around at his familiar and stroked Myren's head. The girl's
approach had been uncannily silent, and, if not for the wolf's
warning, she would have succeeded. Myren always followed a few
paces behind, and tended to stay in the shadows. Evidently the girl
had not noticed him. There was no sign of her familiar, but he
searched her clothes just in case a deadly viper or scorpion hid in
them.

The retired
assassin bent and scooped her up, shocked by how little she
weighed. A fragile waif, probably abandoned by uncaring parents, or
left behind by a murdered whore mother. He headed for his
apprentice shack, deep in the slums, whence he had just come.
Halfway there, he slung the child over his shoulder to ease his
arms, for it was a fair distance.

At the shack,
he placed the girl on the narrow cot and lighted two lamps,
bringing them to the table to cast light on his smelly prize. He
sat beside her and pulled off her ragged coat, surprised by the
breadth of her shoulders. The worst of the stench came away with
the coat, which he threw outside. Beneath it, she wore a coarse,
patched man's shirt with most of the buttons missing, and a long
chain was wound around her neck.