James A. West

Crown of the Setting Sun

Chapter 1

“Ours is the blood of the north!” Adham cried, his voice rising above the clamor of pick and sledge battering stone to dust.

Silence swept over the toiling slaves, and their knotted fingers clutched fearfully around rocks and wooden hafts. Shocked eyes locked on the old man who had dared raise his voice. Agonized screams or death rattles from dust-clogged lungs were acceptable sounds to the ears of the slavemasters, but what echoed from the open mine and out across the barren expanse of desert carried the unmistakable note of defiance. All had heard it, and all knew what it meant for Adham and for themselves.

A furnace breeze swirled dust around unmoving feet. Shaking with fury, Adham hurled his short-handled pick to the ground. One tip clanged against a rock, throwing off a spark. With a tired sigh, the breeze gave up its fitful dance.

Leitos cowered nearby, his cracked lips trembling, the bucket he had been filling with crushed stone forgotten at his feet. He saw not his grandfather before him, but a stranger, a madman. Like all slaves, Leitos knew better than to tempt the ire of their inhuman masters. Despite this unvoiced law, the wizened old man glared at the demon-born slavemasters, the Alon’mahk’lar, openly challenging them to stand against him.

Leitos’s heart thumped inside the reedy cage of his ribs, forcing erratic breaths past his teeth. He hunkered down, trying to disappear into the ground under his bare feet. What had driven his grandfather to such folly? Slaves strove to avoid notice, hoping only to earn a daily bowl of thin porridge. Resistance invited hunger, thirst, and the flesh-reaving bite of the lash-not for the troublemakers alone, but for all the slaves.

“You will know the moment to flee,” Adham said, his hoarse voice pitched for Leitos’s ears alone. Grim determination creased the old man’s brow, turned down the corners of his mouth.

Leitos jerked as if slapped. He is mad!

“Watch and be ready,” Adham continued. “The time of your escape is near. Do not hesitate!”

What are you talking about? Leitos thought in a near panic. There is no escape! Deep below his denial, he knew what Adham meant. He had heard it all before.

“I’ve told you where to go,” Adham said, his desperation rising in the face of Leitos’s hesitancy. “You must go west, boy, no matter what happens. Remember all I have taught you. Do not look back. Do not stop. Trust no one, save those I’ve spoken of.” This last Adham uttered as if he were unsure that those mythical saviors would help, or even existed.

“Make ready, boy!” Adham commanded.

Leitos gawked like a fool. Always before when Adham whispered of escape, or told of life as it had once been, Leitos mollified his grandfather with nods of agreement. Secretly he had often worried that those stories were born of a perilous mind-sickness. He had never taken those tales to heart. His life was the mines, the same as all slaves. Even the term slave, had no definite meaning for him. All his grandfather’s tales of hope and freedom were but dangerous musings better left in the darkness of their shared cell. Leitos was horrified to realize that Adham had meant every word, and had planned for this very moment.

“You have come of age, and they will soon chain you,” Adham pressed. “Flee, boy, or die in bondage. You must go! Remember our people, remember that I love you as an only son-but you must go!”

With that last admonition, Adham faced the approaching slavemasters, who had shaken off their surprise. The Alon’mahk’lar rushed to the challenge, creatures no more human than the Faceless One they served. No one else moved. Leitos felt trapped in another man’s nightmare.

Adham thrust his gnarled hands, thick with calluses and blisters, toward the sky. Pitted black iron manacles clinked and jangled, as they slithered down his skeletal forearms. “Our freedom is a birthright stolen, an inheritance I reclaim for myself and my brothers!” he called out, voice reverberating across the steep walls of the open pit before sinking into the mineshaft’s lightless throat. “Freedom is at hand, brothers, if you will but take it!”

No, Grandfather! Leitos tried to shout, but the warning perished on his tongue.

The slavemasters clambered toward Adham, their coarse reddish hides streaked with patterns of black. They came, not scowling in anger, but grinning at the opportunity to uncoil the leather scourges at their hips, to swing the iron-banded cudgels held in their huge, six-fingered fists. A dark and bestial light shone in their eyes. They leaped forward like mastiffs, sharp teeth bared for the kill.

Adham stood fast, a near-naked husk of a man clad only in a tattered loincloth, his white hair hanging about boney shoulders. Leitos flinched from the intensity of his grandfather’s gray eyes. Ferocity had replaced the tired warmth and kindness he was accustomed to seeing. A few tears flowed freely from that pallid stare, melting tracks through the dirt coating Adham’s sunken cheeks. It was not fear or shame that wetted Adham’s eyes, but a timeworn fury that demanded justice.

Justice for what? Leitos wondered, fresh panic rising to precipitous heights. We earned our punishment for resisting the divine rule of the Faceless One. Or so the Alon’mahk’lar taught, a reality Adham always acknowledged but vehemently denounced as a half-truth.

As the slavemasters drew nearer, Adham spread his arms wide in invitation, tightening the skin clinging to his jutting ribs. “Come for me, Alon’mahk’lar!” he roared, sounding like a man a third his age, a man of righteousness and strength, like the kindred of the fabled king he claimed to be. Leitos shuddered upon hearing the word, Alon’mahk’lar, Sons of the Fallen, spoken within hearing of the slavemasters. It was a name forbidden to humankind.

Galvanized by the authority in Adham’s cry, a pitiful few of the eldest slaves reflexively moved into defensive postures. Armed with spades, picks, sledges, and rocks, they prepared for a battle they could not hope to win. Apprehension shone in their hollow eyes but, too, burned a forgotten desire for retribution.

Where a few responded to Adham’s words, most scrambled clear, none willing to give their lives for the crazed old man in their midst. No matter which way anyone darted, they could not go far. A common chain running through a series of iron rings set in heavy stone blocks bound all together, save the youngest slaves. Like frightened hounds, they flung themselves against their short leashes. The frantic movements of the chained tugged against Adham, grinding rough iron against his wrists and ankles. Drawing on hidden strengths, he held firm, resisting the unrelenting pull of the fearful.

A slavemaster, half again as tall as Adham and layered with slabs of muscle, slid to a halt before the old slave. It glared down with protuberant eyes as black as the deepest mineshaft and slashed by golden pupils. A double set of horns grew from the beast’s skull; one set curled upwards, while the other pair swept protectively down around its neck.

“Your blood,” the Alon’mahk’lar said, raising the cudgel in its hand, “will be a sweet wine upon my tongue.” Those words rasped harsh and guttural through a mouthful of sharp, slanting teeth. The servant of the Faceless One offered neither truce nor pardon.

Quick as a serpent’s strike, Adham caught up his discarded pick. The movement forced the slavemaster to take a single, faltering step backward. Shifting rocks upset its balance, leaving an opening. Adham lurched against his chains, screaming fury, swinging the pick. With a desperate flinch, the slavemaster avoided the full impact, but the heavy tool slashed across its brow, ripped through its nose, and gouged one cheek. The Alon’mahk’lar shrieked. With quivering fingers tipped in deadly claws, it tore away the shredded mass of its nose. Blood gushed over its lips and chin, then poured over its chest as the slavemaster tottered back.

Adham stood his ground. The wounded slavemaster’s snarling roar sprayed blood in a crimson mist. That shout, joined with the other Alon’mahk’lar, rose to an unbroken note of such wrath that all who had stood in boldness now flung themselves facedown. All cowered, all pleaded for mercy … all save Adham.

Fierce sunlight bathed his wrinkled skin, casting harsh shadows over corded muscles, highlighting past scars and fresh hurts. Fire seemed to ignite within his icy gray gaze. He heaved against his bonds, bloodied pick raised. He lashed out, his movements those of a man steeped in battle rather than in long submission. Adham’s pick bored into the creature’s skull with a sickening thud. The tip sank deep, screeching through a plate of thick bone. Adham wrenched the tool free and made ready for a fresh attack, but the creature’s roar had become a gurgling whimper, and it toppled backward to sprawl in the dust.

The remaining slavemasters glanced at their fallen leader, then surged forward as one. Slaves bolted in all directions from the ravening creatures loping into their midst. In their mindless flight, forgetting again the shortness of their linked iron tethers, they dragged down Adham and each other. They clawed madly at the ground, ripping off fingernails. They screamed as the butchery began. Crude swords as long as the tallest slave flashed and whirled, severing limbs; iron-banded cudgels fell like tree trunks upon unprotected skulls; cracking whips tore meat from bone.

Adham’s words resonated in Leitos’s mind. The time of your escape has come.Do not hesitate! Confusion froze Leitos. If he bowed, he would die. If he ran, he would die. Death would come, and nothing he could do would keep it at bay. He did not know what to do, other than what he had been trained to do, and that was to submit.

Urged by an inborn desire to survive, Leitos’s body moved of its own accord. As the screams of the dying soared, Leitos wheeled and scampered up the litter of broken stone lining the walls of the shallow pit. At the top, he looked for his grandfather.

Adham was sprawled on his back, focused not on his attackers, but on Leitos. “GO!” he commanded, even as he wielded his pick against a flurry of blows. Then he was lost from sight amid a swarm of scrambling slaves and savaging Alon’mahk’lar.

Leitos spun and ran. He was not alone in his flight. Others his age and younger, the unchained, ran with him, their faces etched with horror. None spoke or cried out. There was no breath for that, not with death at their heels. They ran blindly in every direction, and the desert’s scorching emptiness swallowed them.

Chapter 2

Not long after the sounds of the massacre fell behind, the boys running with Leitos began to drop. His endurance had always been greater than the other slaves, but never until now had that been a benefit. A slave who could work harder than the rest, was forced to do so. Once down, few of the unchained bothered to stand again, choosing instead to wait for whatever might come.

He paused to help one who fell nearby. His darting eyes searched for Alon’mahk’lar, but did not find any. “Get up, Altha,” he urged. “We can run together.”

The boy fought when Leitos tried to pull him to his feet. “Get away! Your grandfather brought this on us! We will all die because of him!” Altha clawed at Leitos’s hand.

Leitos released the boy and backed away. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, not sure if he was. While the same condemnation had flitted through his own mind, hearing it from someone else angered him. Who was this wretched, whining child to denounce his grandfather?

With a rabid snarl, Altha hurled a stone. Leitos ducked, just avoiding having his head cracked. Altha began scraping his hands over the dusty ground, searching for another rock. Leitos left him there, and Altha’s curses hounded him long after he moved out of earshot.

The land rose almost imperceptibly, going from mostly pale sand and rounded gravel to a more rugged landscape of reddish rock and brush. As he ran, Leitos relived the scenes of death back at the mine. Above all others, he saw Adham driving his pick into the Alon’mahk’lar’s skull, heard again the terrible sound of that killing blow. That assault had changed everything for the worse, just as Altha had said. Still, Adham had given his life to gain freedom for others.

Or had he acted in madness?

Leitos had no answer for that, and thinking about it seemed to make matters worse, so he kept on toward his mysterious destination. Miles slowly became leagues, and his grandfather’s voice recited things Leitos had always dismissed out of hand, at least until now. “A day will come when you must run, Leitos. Go into the west, always west. Run and hide, survive any way you can, until you spy the Crown of the Setting Sun beyond the dark spires of the Mountains of Fire. Seek out the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. Learn from them. Grow strong and cruel, and avenge the blood of our forefathers….”

Leitos paused atop a low rise with Adham’s demand for vengeance repeating in his head. Back the way he had come simmered a broad, shallow basin. He expected to see a band of trailing Alon’mahk’lar, but nothing moved. Of vengeance, he knew only that the Alon’mahk’lar had often warned against it. “As surely as rain falls from the clouds of storm, blood flows in the wake of vengeance taken.” The conflicting ideas of vengeance and submission, or whether Adham had destroyed his life or set him free, struggled for supremacy until he pushed it all aside to focus on getting farther away.

The sun climbed higher, and Leitos’s bare feet pounded against the broiling, uneven ground. Each gasping breath seared his aching lungs. He bore the pain with grim resolve, and chased his spindly shadow over a shimmering wasteland resting below mirages of quicksilver. By now, he was utterly alone in his flight. He glanced over his shoulder again, neck creaking on stiff tendons, but found no pursuers.

I escaped, he thought dazedly. The very notion that he was free was as strange to him as the idea of seeking vengeance, even after the countless times Adham had related how men had known freedom in the world of his youth. Leitos willingly fell into the memories of his grandfather, anything to take his mind away from the day’s ever increasing heat and his awful thirst. He formed an image of the cool darkness of their cell, then revived his grandfather’s voice, kind and soothing. He did not notice the tears running slowly down his cheeks, drying to a salty crust before they could fall.…

Every evening after a grueling day of breaking and hauling rock, Adham had talked with Leitos rather than falling into an exhausted slumber, teaching him things that seemingly had no use in the mines. “In the days after the Upheaval,” Adham often told, “just before the Faceless One came to power, men clawed their way out of the rubble of fallen cities, began to remake their lives, followed their hearts desire and used the talents lent them by Pa’amadin, the God of All. Peace had reigned, for men had seen too much suffering to want war and strife. During those days, men rebuilt some little of what had been lost. They lived with hope in their hearts.”

Adham usually paused then, letting the imagery of the telling sink in. Leitos knew the story well, but he could not envision the things of which Adham spoke. For him, they were only words. In the world he knew, sweat and grime combined to rub skin raw, and then the sun burned it a deep, leathery brown. Thirst and hunger were constant companions, and the only hope was for night’s darkness and a chance to ease aching joints, if only for a few hours, when he bedded down.

Invariably, Adham would continue his tale, stirring in parts about the Faceless One. “Some believe he journeyed from the darkness between the stars,” Adham would scoff. With hard eyes and a contemptuous tone, he would add, “He came from darkness, yes, but it was the black from beyond the grave, the eternal night reserved for the damned. Unseen by all save the Alon’mahk’lar, he moves between the world of the living and Geh’shinnom’atar, the Thousand Hells, the realm of Peropis and of the Fallen.”

Adham would then explain that the Faceless One held an enduring hatred for the rebellious King of the North and his followers-the ice-born people of a far-flung land called Izutar. “We are of that land,” Adham would say, as if it were the most important thing. “We carry in our veins the blood of that great and mighty warrior king.” This last he would mutter in a hush, as if fearing anyone other than Leitos might hear.

Leitos had never believed there was anything of strength and nobility in his blood. What he knew for certain, as taught by the Alon’mahk’lar, was that he was born of a defiant people, whose opposition had earned chains and hardship. For the men of Izutar, there would be no quarter given, and everlasting enslavement was the only answer for their crimes.

It was far easier to believe the slavemasters, than his grandfather’s hopeful fantasies. After all, if his people had done no wrong, then why would any god of goodness ever allow such sorrows to fall upon them? Adham’s explanation was that Pa’amadin had created the world and set it adrift in the eternal heavens, so what men made of their lives, good or ill, was their choice and their responsibility. “As to suffering, it serves its own purpose, child, by building strength in the hearts of men.” That had never made sense to Leitos. All he had ever known was suffering, yet he was not strong….

As the day stretched long, the sun’s heat eventually shattered the defense of hiding within memory. Leitos’s head began to ache, and a ringing noise filled his ears. He ran on in a stupor, weaving erratically, lost in a strange dream where he could smell, taste, and feel water on his tongue….

At some point, he found that he had come to a stop. He was not sure how long he had been standing in place, arms dangling, tongue like a tacky stick in his mouth. He had been thirsty often, but never like this. His throat, his very flesh, ached for moisture, but there was none to be had.

Remembering a slave’s trick, Leitos picked a pebble from the ground and popped it into his mouth. It burned his tongue instead of bringing saliva. He spat it out and pushed on, the day becoming the longest of countless long days he had known.

Overhead, the molten-bronze face of the sun scorched the heavens to a hazy white. Weaving now in broad sweeps, he tried to ignore his discomforts, telling himself they were nowhere near as bad as the bite of the lash, which often led to corrupted lesions and left crisscrossing scars. This he knew well, for his back and shoulders were marked so. Such was the branding of every slave.

Sometime after midday, he slowed to a dragging walk. The hardened soles of his feet had begun to crack and bleed, leaving faint red stains on the ground behind him. He did not go much farther before stopping again. He stood with his head hanging, his dark hair smelling burnt as it waved before his nose. He rested that way for a long time, slitted eyes red and puffy, his heart laboring to push thick, sluggish blood through his veins.

After he caught his breath, he straightened slowly, like an old man. He winced as rippling cramps wracked every inch of his body. He looked one direction, then the other, but found only blinding nothingness looking back at him. Despair fell over him. There was no escape, and the wasteland would surely serve as his open tomb. As if his soul had separated itself from his flesh, he saw his body fall and lay still. Caught in this terrible vision, he witnessed days flashing by, becoming years…. His skin dried and withered, became a tattered shroud cloaking bleached bones. In the fullness of time, blowing sands scoured away that parchment skin, then devoured his skeleton. The only proof that he had lived were the bits of white bone scattered over an unknown parcel of desert-

Leitos came back to himself with a horrified gasp. For the first time since taking flight, he gave full thought to turning back. The Alon’mahk’lar were cruel, but fittingly so, he reasoned. They might grant him continued life. Doubtless, they would deliver upon him pains beyond reckoning … but after, perhaps, they might favor him with shade and water and food…. Or they might take him away, like they did a select few slaves. Where do those slaves go? he wondered absently, not for the first time. Are they truly sent to serve the Faceless One, as it is whispered? To find out, to end his suffering, all he had to do was turn-

A noise, soft yet so unexpected that it might as well have been a mountain crashing down from the sky, obliterated all other considerations. Leitos’s muscles seized up, and he could scarcely breathe. His eyes slowly rolled, seeking the source of that stealthy noise.

Sand and rock baked under the sun. Nothing moved, yet that sound, a click of stone striking stone, rang loudly in his skull, changing … becoming the sound of stalking feet, hard leather soles studded with iron hobnails, like the sandals the Alon’mahk’lar wore.

All thoughts of being blessed by the chance to serve the Faceless One perished. Fear fell on Leitos, as intense as that which had driven him from the mines. This time, his legs and feet remained fixed. Waiting for death to fall, Leitos squeezed his eyes shut and hunched his shoulders. The brightness of the sun reflected off the barrens, spearing through his eyelids with a crimson glare. Another soft click made him flinch again, but he could not bring himself to open his eyes.

Silence fell, gaining weight. It took greater courage to finally crack an eyelid and look around than anything he had ever done. He was sure that he would find one of the slavemasters looming nearby, uncoiling a lash, or hefting a cudgel or a sword. So strong was his certainty that Leitos actually saw one of those creatures grinning at him with sharp teeth, an abomination formed by the forced union between the demonic spirit of a Mahk’lar and a woman.

Leitos choked on a scream, even as the image vanished. Only the desert’s cruel face gazed upon him. Leitos blinked, fearing his mind had broken. Without warning, a very real shadow flickered over him. He flung his arms over his head, and collapsed into a tight ball. He huddled there shuddering, waiting….

Death did not come. The shadow passed, came again, fled and returned. When he chanced to peek through his crossed arms, he saw no Alon’mahk’lar standing over him, but a circling vulture. It drifted high above, a dirty scrawl against the sun-seared sky.

Then came that furtive clicking sound, much softer and less threatening than before. Leitos looked to a nearby scatter of rounded boulders. After a moment of scrutiny, he made out a coiled serpent resting in a band of shade under a stone protrusion. Relief washed over him, and his laughter came out as a desiccated rasp. Before his mirth evaporated, an idea drove away his despair and thirst and fear.

Chapter 3

Leitos struggled to his feet, one hand gripping a smooth, fist-sized stone. He took one wary, unsteady step, then another. He paused, still seeking out the slavemasters. Except for the glaring adder, he was good and truly alone.

Arm cocked, he advanced, moving slowly so as not to provoke the serpent. Senses heightened by anticipation, he keenly felt each blistering pebble dig into the bottoms of his tattered feet. The serpent coiled tighter. Leitos halted two paces away when the adder vibrated its tail in warning. His arm shook from the strain of holding still. All at once, the snake struck, and Leitos barely leaped clear. At the same instant, he threw the rock, but it flew wide by a foot or more.

The serpent slapped down and slithered near. Leitos spun away, and his foot rolled on a loose stone. He fought for balance, but fell onto his back. He immediately began kicking against the ground, propelling himself backward, and flinging grit into the adder’s face, driving it aside. It seemed that the snake was retreating, then it abruptly coiled and struck.

Everything was moving so fast, but Leitos could see all with startling clarity. The serpent flew at him, its hooked fangs jutting from gaping, puffy white jaws. As it soared at his unprotected face, its scales formed a delicate yellowish gray pattern that glinted in the sunlight.

At the last possible moment, Leitos flung up a hand. By chance alone, his fingers clamped down on the snake’s body, just below its head. Too stunned to consider his luck, he jumped to his feet as the adder began wrapping around his arm. The creature was twice the thickness of his wrist, and incredibly strong. His fingers went numb under the building pressure, and the brief thrill at capturing his prey turned to apprehension. If he did not dispatch the reptile quickly, his grip would fail, leaving the serpent free to sink its fangs into him. His end would come slowly, painfully.

Leitos rushed to the serpent’s lair, where the ground was littered with stones. Holding the creature’s weight at arm’s length was no easy task, but Leitos suffered through the weakening of his muscles, ensuring that the serpent remained well clear of his face. In his haste, he lost his footing and slammed to his knees, nearly losing hold of the snake in a frantic bid to keep from pitching to his side.

Gasping and sweating, he pressed the snake’s head against the closest boulder, while his opposite hand retrieved an egg-shaped stone. His first wild swing collided with his wrist, and he bit back a howl. Furious now, his second, third, and fourth blow crushed the adder’s skull to a pulp. The serpent wrapped tighter around his forearm, but it was dead.

Waiting for the creature to accept its demise, he settled back on his heels, shaking as exhilaration waned and his heartbeat slowed. On rare occasions, he and Adham had secretly caught serpents or lizards or rats and, well out of the slavemasters’ sight, had prepared forbidden meals. Adham often stated that meat tasted better when cooked and spiced, but the closest slaves came to fire was its light, when the slavemasters burned camel dung of an evening.

Leitos unwrapped the snake from his arm and set it aside. Even in death, it writhed back and forth. He hunted until he found a prominent lip of stone jutting off one of the boulders. Using the same rock he had used on the adder, he smashed the stony protrusion. Sandstone crunched and flew. He stopped after he had a collection of shards littering the ground at his feet. Kneeling, he picked through the sharpest bits until he found one as long as his hand and somewhat knife-shaped, then sharpened the crude blade against the curve of a boulder.

While he worked, he searched the desert. The only prominent landmark was a long, knobbed ridge of reddish sandstone far to the west. Other outcrops reared up, all stubby and offering little reliable shade. Of Alon’mahk’lar, there was no sign.

After dragging the makeshift knife back and forth over the boulder, the roughness began to smooth, providing an edge of sorts. Most importantly, he created a sharp tip. After a few more licks, Leitos strode to the serpent and went to work. He considered his grandfather’s cautionary words, making sure the cut was well down from the head in order to avoid the snake’s venom sacs. His knife was sharp for stone, but not really sharp at all, so he sawed and hacked, until he could rip off the head and toss it away. Next, he dug the tip into the adder’s belly, making a gruesome mess of things, but managing to gut the serpent.

Tucking the stone knife into his loincloth, Leitos ducked into the shade the adder had been using, but found it far too narrow for him. He draped the serpent over the boulder, then set to digging with his hands until he carved out a suitable burrow. Once satisfied, Leitos took up the snake and crawled inside.

Out of the sunlight, his skin tingled with relief, and the sand was delightfully cool under his folded legs. Using his teeth, he dug into the pinkish-white meat, tearing away stringy mouthfuls. The taste of blood was good and wetted his tongue, but the meat was full of thin bones, forcing him to eat slowly. Every bite renewed his strength a little more. He still wanted water, and as every hour passed, it became all the more important to find some. Come nightfall, he planned to move west again, and hopefully locate a hidden spring, or maybe a dry streambed in which he could dig down until finding a seep-something the Alon’mahk’lar forced slaves to do. He refused to fully consider that he might never taste water again.

After finishing his meal, Leitos peeked out of his burrow. The same vulture wheeled in great, slow circles far above. He flung the snakeskin out into the sunlight, then scooted deep into his shelter. He reclined on his side, head resting on his arm. He lay there a long time, breathing easy and resting.

Between one moment and the next, the extent of the day’s trials fell on him. The sounds of begging men surrendering to pitiless slavemasters rose up in his mind, and he heard the dreadful wet clangs of edged steel cleaving flesh from bone, the guttural snarls issuing from the slavemasters as they crushed the hopeless uprising. The appalling outcome of Adham’s act fell heavily on Leitos, evoking a strangled sob full of grief and resentment. Why, grandfather? Why did you stand against our masters? You ruined everything!

Never again would he share the cool of the night with his grandfather, feel Adham’s hand upon his brow, or take comfort from his low, rumbling voice. Adham had doomed himself, the other slaves, and even his own grandson. The result of his insurrection had destroyed the life that the Faceless One had provided his sworn enemies. At the mine, there was always food, water, and shelter-perhaps not as much as one wanted, but enough to live. As long as slaves served without complaint or defiance, the Alon’mahk’lar mostly left them alone.

That last thought rang hollow, but Leitos denied the truth that the slavemasters made sport of the chained at every opportunity. Instead, he nurtured his resentment, clinging to the idea that his life, difficult and uncertain as it had been at times, had become an ongoing nightmare of thirst and suffering in the face of Adham’s revolt. His only consolation was that if he found no water, his misery would end within two or three days.

Trying not to think what the morrow would bring, he scrubbed the back of his hand across his damp eyes, sighed deeply, and curled into a protective ball. With all his heart, he hoped that when he awoke he would find himself back in his cell, and that all he had experienced since Adham challenged their masters was but a horrible dream. Regrettably his thirst, the taste of drying blood on his lips, and the ache in his cracked feet, proclaimed the truth. His foolish hopes died quickly and quietly.

Chapter 4

When Leitos’s eyes opened, the day’s overpowering brightness had dwindled to a ruddy afterglow. Outside his burrow, a mangy jackal growled and snapped at a trio of vultures. Befuddled by sleep and intense thirst, it took a moment for Leitos to realize the carrion eaters fought over the snakeskin he had discarded. He watched until he succumbed once more to sleep….

Seemingly moments later, his eyes flared wide to find that night had stretched its cloak of darkness over the land. Despite the apparent tranquility, his heart fluttered, and he was panting for want of breath. He waited, still as stone, not daring to blink. Something had dragged him out of a sound sleep, and whatever it was had filled him with alarm. Chewing his bottom lip, he waited.

After a time, his heartbeat slowed, and he relaxed. He told himself that an already forgotten nightmare must have brought him awake. With what had happened at the mines, he must expect bad dreams.

He licked his lips, but his tongue was too dry to offer relief. Now more than ever, his body cried out for water. Stiff and achy as he was, and desperate for a few more hours of sleep, Leitos decided it was past time to set out again. He had not yet shifted his position when the sound of feet crunching over desert gravel froze him.

The walker came nearer, a stealthy advance. Despite the gloom, Leitos easily made out a pair of huge sandaled feet come to a halt in the sand piled at the mouth of his burrow. Fearing the seeker would question the suspicious mound of loose soil and the subtle tracks covering it, Leitos’s heart lurched into a frantic rhythm. Starlight glinted dully off the rivets of the Alon’mahk’lar’s sandals. He imagined the creature looking about, its broad, flat nose raised to the breeze.

When the head of an iron-banded cudgel thumped down next to those feet, it was all Leitos could do not to bolt from his makeshift cave. His only hope rested in knowing that Alon’mahk’lar saw poorly in the dark, and could catch a scent no better than a man. If he remained still, his pursuer might move on, allowing him to flee under the cover of night.

But why should I hide from them anymore? a small, compelling voice wondered. With but one word, he could give away his position and accept the enslavement he deserved. He would be chained on the morrow but, too, he would be fed, watered, and sheltered. And he might even find Adham still alive, waiting for his safe return in their cell. Giving up was the right course, that voice assured him.

Leitos did not understand why he resisted surrendering, until the night’s gentle breath filled his nostrils with a scent as familiar to him as that of his own sweat. The smell of blood wafted from the dark smears glazing the cudgel’s head, and beneath this lurked the bestial reek of the Alon’mahk’lar. While the mingling of odors was recognizable, Leitos had never consciously noticed them because of their close and constant proximity, the whole of his life. If oppression, sorrow, and death had a scent, this was it; a stench that embodied all that Adham had stood against.

I never noticed, Leitos thought in dismay, taken aback by his lack of discernment, horribly ashamed that he had so recently condemned his grandfather’s actions. Over long moments, understanding began to fall upon him and, like a pick striking unyielding stone, all that he had been forced to believe by the slavemasters began to crack and fall asunder.

Leitos shrank away from the Alon’mahk’lar, both physically and within his mind. Once backed as deep into his burrow as he could go, he found himself shivering and struggling not to vomit. His distress had nothing to do with any odor or fear, but rather the realization that he had nearly given himself over not to a benign master, but rather to a lifelong oppressor, a creature that cared no more for him than it cared for stomping a beetle underfoot. In surrendering, he would defile his grandfather’s sacrifice, the deaths of all the other slaves, and his own life.

In the darkness, Leitos cursed that quailing voice within himself. He had known only suffering at the hands of the slavemasters. There would be neither food, nor shelter, nor forgiveness. Nor would he find Adham waiting. Slaves that resisted, few though they were, died staked under the sun for all to see, their skin cut off in strips, their screams choked with handfuls of sand. Such despicable cruelty was a warning to the chained. Moreover, that action was a testament to the black whims of the Alon’mahk’lar and the one they served.

“I am sorry,” Leitos murmured under his breath, tears beginning to flow as he saw in his mind’s eye a smiling Adham, his protector, his kindred. Adham had cast aside his own life to ensure Leitos’s escape. Of course there was a price for such freedom, and for whatever reason Adham had believed Leitos could meet it. Grow strong and cruel, and avenge the blood of our forefathers.

A wave of shame fell over Leitos for ever thinking along the same lines as Altha. Are we all so weak? Leitos thought, recalling how few slaves had stood with Adham, how most, including himself, had looked at the man as if he were insane for standing against the slavemasters. “I am sorry,” he murmured again.

Leitos did not notice that the Alon’mahk’lar had moved away, until it called out to its brethren in its natural tongue, a deep and garbled muttering. Upon hearing that demonic voice, dismay came alive in Leitos, stealing his breath. Slaves rarely heard that language, and it induced a nearly incapacitating fear. Oily sweat popped out on his brow. He forced his shuddering limbs to remain still. The effort left him weak, but also gave him a sense of victory.

By the time he was in control of himself, the Alon’mahk’lar had moved out of earshot. With the utmost caution, he peeked from his shelter and sought his enemy. Off to the south, moving with slow deliberation, the group of hunting Alon’mahk’lar were but shadows within shadows drifting over a low dune of pale sand. Even with the distance, their eyes winked and glimmered like dull silver coins.

He could not understand how they had missed him … until he remembered the jackal struggling to claim a meal from the vultures. Though he had been half-asleep, he recalled the jackal darting in, over and over, to snatch the snakeskin, only to have the squawking carrion birds flap and hop forward, driving their adversary back. Their battle must have obscured his tracks. Never in his life had he given thanks to animals that feasted upon death, but he did so now.

Leitos crept out of the burrow and raised up into a crouch, keeping a wary eye on the slavemasters. They continued to move away, unaware of how close they had come to capturing him. Not only were they moving away, they did so at a hard angle from the direction he intended to travel. Relief washed over him, but he quickly tamped it down. He could ill-afford to grow confident that he was safe. Not yet, maybe never. Adham’s demand that he avenge their forefathers meant that he might never know peace or safety.

How can I do your will, grandfather? he thought, setting out. All too well Leitos recognized that he was but a half-starved youth, alone in a perilous land about which he knew nothing. In truth, he was only vaguely aware of his location in a world larger than he could imagine. Geldain, he thought in answer to the unspoken question, recalling the name Adham had mentioned when pointing to the crude map he had sketched in the dust on the floor of their cell. Somewhere far south of a land once known as Tureece. Based on that, Leitos supposed he was half a world or more away from the place he had been born. Just the thought that so much land and water existed made him nervous, as it always had when Adham spoke of such things.

As he crept from bush to boulder, eyes darting from one shadow to another, he sifted through old conversations until recalling Adham’s story of a voyage across the Sea of Drakarra, a journey during which he and the other slaves had, by turns, been either chained to the decks of a great ship, or lashed to one of a hundred oars. Leitos had been but a babe then, Adham told him, newly weaned and tossed with other infants into a large basket. Alon’mahk’lar feared deep water, Adham had said, which meant the shipmasters were treacherous humans. That self-serving men would betray their own always troubled his grandfather, perhaps more so than the presence of the Faceless One and the Alon’mahk’lar. After landing on the shores of Geldain, the slaves had been given over to new masters, chained together, and marched into the heart of a nameless desert. Most slaves perished long before reaching the first of many mines, but the Alon’mahk’lar always brought more.

Adham had many stories about fighting the Faceless One’s dread armies, and how the Alon’mahk’lar victors made a point of separating captured men from the women, boys from the girls. They were stories of valor and hardship, but Leitos had only ever gleaned that those who resisted suffered and died, miserable and broken.

In that light, the future Leitos faced seemed to grow more dangerous. The whole of his existence had been spent digging into the desert for a season or two, then moving a short distance away to dig again, always clawing into the earth, searching for something that the Alon’mahk’lar never disclosed. Most slaves believed they toiled only to toil. Adham had been convinced they were looking for something, though he knew not what. Hunger and thirst, dust and rock, blisters and blinding sunlight, were all that Leitos knew. Freedom had ever been his grandfather’s dream, but to Leitos the same had been an idea shunned at all costs. Freedom, even the attempt of it, meant death. Now, he must embrace his grandfather’s will as his own. Leitos was prepared to try, but worried he would fail.

Grow strong and cruel, and avenge the blood of our forefathers, he heard Adham say again. Leitos knew he must survive in order to avenge his grandfather and his people.

Setting aside all other considerations, save putting distance between himself and the Alon’mahk’lar, he searched the stars until he found the Turtle, then looked farther south until making out the setting Archer. Keeping the Archer on his left side, he headed on a westerly course, careful to remain quiet and low to the ground. He still held doubts that his efforts would yield anything of worth for his people, but for Adham’s sake, he would at least fight to escape his masters.

Masters, he thought, a frown pinching his brow. For the first time, that word held not fearful reverence for the Alon’mahk’lar, but derision. And for the first time, he dared to hate them.

He had no sooner thought that than the resonant wail of a horn shattered the night’s stillness. Leitos did not have to look around to know they had found his trail. From the east another horn sounded, telling him that there was not one hunting party, but two!

Leitos abandoned skulking and ran.

Chapter 5

After the wails of Alon’mahk’lar horns, Leitos heard only his feet hammering against the desert and the soft rush of wind in his ears. Fright made him blessedly unaware of the pain in his torn feet, or the stiffness of his water-starved muscles. Despite the blessed lack of feeling, he was well aware that his limbs were not working properly, nor were his lungs. At best, his pace was half what it had been when he fled the slaughter at the mines.

Like the baying of demonic hounds, the horns split the night, closer than before. Leitos found the two bands of Alon’mahk’lar converging into one hunting party behind him, their shadowed forms and silvery eyes bobbing in time with their great strides. While they could not see or smell any better than men, they were fair trackers, and tireless besides, able to run twice the speed of a man, and ten times as far. They would catch him in no time.

Leitos winced every time his toes kicked loose a rock, or his legs thrashed through night-shrouded bush. Commonsense told him these things did not matter, because his feet were doubtless leaving telltale marks in the sand at every step. His only friend this night was the darkness, but his flagging strength all but destroyed that advantage.

The call of a third horn, this one farther off to the north than the two bands at his back, told him there were three hunting groups. With his mind working far more effectively than his body, Leitos deduced that there could be up to two dozen slavemasters after him. He had never known so many Alon’mahk’lar to go after a single slave. For the barest moment, he thought it possible that some of his fellows had made it farther than he had believed. Just as quickly, he dismissed that idea. He had seen them fall, one by one, many miles back. And in the openness of the desert, he would have noticed if others were about.

It does not matter! he thought forcefully, ducking his head and willing his arms and legs to pump faster. While not as speedily as he wished, his feet began to fall in a surer, steadier rhythm, and his great gulping breaths managed to keep the fire in his lungs from becoming a debilitating inferno.

The edge of a jutting rock caught his foot caught and sent him soaring. He plowed through sand and gravel, scraping away layers of skin from his knees and palms. Leitos gritted his teeth against crying out, and lurched to his feet in a bid to run, only to stumble and fall flat. He sprawled facedown, fingertips digging grooves through the coarse soil, his whimpery breaths puffing dust into his nose and eyes. The horns sounded again.

“Damn you!” Leitos screamed, relishing the explosion of hate and fury in his breast, uncaring that he had pinpointed himself to his enemies. He wanted them to find him, so that he might punish them for making him afraid, destroy them for hounding him to such extremes.

As if mocking the futility of his desires, the horns wailed again. All the enraged heat coursing through Leitos’s veins went to ice. Fool! he cursed himself.

Continuing to berate himself, he pushed himself to his bloody knees, then to his feet. He stood swaying, wanting more than anything to crawl into a deep, dark hole until the Alon’mahk’lar moved away. But there was no such shelter, at least none he was likely to find. Instead, he searched for and found the slavemasters. Their feet pounded the ground, and their eyes formed a broken line of winking lights. They were gaining ground at a shocking pace, and their silvery stares bored through the darkness to find him.

I will not surrender, he thought, gritting his teeth.

He found the Archer again, then locked his eyes on the brightest star he could find above the horizon, using it to guide his shambling trot.

All before him blurred together, save that glowing beacon in the heavens, and he forced himself to disregard the crying horns. In this enthralled state, he did not at first notice that his feet no longer thumped against pebbly soil, but rather slapped against sandstone. Only when a rising cliff forced him to halt, did he come fully back to himself.

Despite the gloom, he could tell it stretched miles in both directions, and rose up no less than twenty paces. The top edge climbed, fell, and climbed again, like the spine of a great beast. He had seen the ridge of stone the day before. He wished he had remembered it before he took flight from his makeshift den, for he might have gone in another direction. Now he was trapped.

Am I? he wondered, brushing his fingers over the surface. It seemed the wall of rock was smooth, but on closer inspection, he found that it looked as if mud had been poured out to bake under the sun, then more was poured over the first layer, then more, slowly building up hundreds of thin sheets….

He reached up, wedged his fingers between two layers of stone, then pulled himself up enough to drive his toes into another seam. He began to climb, his muscles weak and shivery. Still, the ascent was far easier than he would have imagined. His life in the mines had made his grip firm, and the skin of his fingers tough as leather. And despite the abuse the soles of his feet had taken since his escape, the tips of his toes were in better shape, and they clung to the layered stone like a second set of fingers.

Over several paces he climbed, then the cliff arched over the top of him like a frozen wave, halting him. He hung there, breathing deeply but calmly, searching for another way. Finding what he needed, he moved off to his right and came to an area pocked with dozens of deep pockets. Some, he was surprised to find, were filled with empty bird nests made of dried, crumbly mud and feathers.

With a new path chosen, he climbed up and sideways, well over half the height of the cliff, then came to a ledge. Needing a rest, he tugged himself up, then settled his rump amid a scatter of twigs. Here, birds had attached even more mud nests to the rock.

Back the way he had come, the Alon’mahk’lar were much nearer. They did not blow their horns any longer, and Leitos thought sure they had noticed him climbing up the cliff. He grinned at the idea of their fury before wondering if they, too, could climb. Abruptly deciding he had rested enough, he resumed his ascent.

In short order, he made it to the top of the sheer spine of stone, and halted in the notch of a cleaved boulder. From far away, he heard a strange, monotonous rumble, but thought nothing of it, his attention fixed on the Alon’mahk’lar staring up at him from the base of the cliff.

There were at least two dozen, perhaps more-it was hard to separate one shadow from another. He should have run then, but instead he peered back, waiting. It struck him that he had never seen so many slavemasters gathered in one place. Why are there so many … and where did they come from? Since they seemed disinclined to crawl up after him, he also wondered what they intended to do.

“Come down, child,” one slavemaster invited, “before you fall.” It spoke as did all Alon’mahk’lar, in a voice that sounded like the grinding of stones and suppressed ferocity.

“Why should you care if I fall, if you mean to kill me anyway?” It took all his courage to keep his voice light, almost indifferent. He had never directly addressed one of the slavemasters.

“We wish you no harm,” the slavemaster said, snarling the words.

Leitos thought of mutilated slaves, and about what another Alon’mahk’lar had said, just before Adham drove his pick into the creature’s skull. “Your blood will be a sweet wine upon my tongue….”

Harm, Leitos concluded with growing anger, was all that these monstrous beings wanted for him, or any human.

The Alon’mahk’lar smiled up at him, a terrifying vision. “A place of comfort has been prepared for you. You will want for nothing.” Several of the demon’s fellows nodded in agreement, all smiling as nastily as the first.

Leitos’s eyes narrowed. “And a place has been prepared for you, Alon’mahk’lar,” he said, speaking that forbidden name with as much disdain as he could muster. “Geh’shinnom’atar is your true home, and Peropis is your master!”

He hoped to infuriate the creatures, and by their harsh growls he did. A handful of the slavemasters flung themselves at the cliff, snarling and snapping. To Leitos’s horror, one began scampering up the rock face with a mind-numbing grace, as if it were floating rather than climbing. Then one huge hand caught a lip of stone that broke away, sending the Alon’mahk’lar hurtling back. It bounced when it hit, scattering its companions. In the next instant, it was on its feet. A moment after that, the beast set to climbing again, cursing Leitos in its natural tongue.

The spell of watching the slavemasters come was broken by their terrible utterances, and Leitos clawed his way up and over the cleaved boulder. His desperate movements caused the massive stone to shift. By the time he had reached its crown, the boulder was moving downward in a sickening, sliding roll. He leaped with all his strength, not sure if he would fall into a bottomless crevasse, or land on solid ground. The boulder wobbled underfoot as he pushed off, then the sound of grinding stone filled the night. He landed in a sprawl on a flat sandstone surface. For the barest moment quiet held … then came a roar of crashing rock mingled with the slavemasters’ pained screams.

Leitos clambered to his feet and sprinted away. He did not look around. His legs flashed in the darkness, thrusting him along. Where before every step had been a struggle, now it seemed as if he were flying, light as a feather. Exhilaration filled him, for he knew at least some of his pursuers had died, crushed under falling rock. Crazed laughter erupted from his parched throat. Whether by accident or not, in some small way he had begun to exact the vengeance his grandfather had demanded of him. Galvanized, his feet flew. He felt as if he could run forever.

Even as his ears detected the rumbling sound he had dismissed earlier, he smelled wetness on the breath of the night. He passed through a strange veil of cooler air that pebbled his skin. Over another hundred feet, the strange rumbling grew into a throaty roar. He ran toward that sound, alarmed by its foreignness, but driven by the danger at his back.

Suddenly his feet were pedaling over nothingness, and he truly became buoyant as a feather-if a feather that fell through space, like a stone hurled into a chasm filled with darkness and unending thunder.

Chapter 6

Arms flailing, Leitos fell, his cry buried under the fury of a thousand raging storms. After what seemed an age, he slammed into a chilling, turbulent froth and plunged down until his feet struck unyielding rock. Water, shockingly cold, gushed into his mouth, nose, and ears. He kicked off the bottom and rose through a speeding current. He bobbed to the surface once, then the raging waters dragged him back under. Leitos floundered, turned one way then the other, tumbling in the watery void.

Instinct kept him from drawing a deep breath. That same inborn knowledge guided his hands to churn before his chest in a clumsy paddling motion. A moment later, his head shot clear of the roiling water. He floated along, splashing and kicking, and the river became less turbulent. High cliffs swept by on either side. Above them, the stars shone with bland indifference.

Leitos’s initial panic faded, and he drank his fill from the river. He found that with minimal effort, he could keep his head above water. How long he drifted he could not have said, but he guessed at least an hour passed before he sensed a change in the currents. The river’s chuckling grumble grew angry again, the surface rising and falling in waves. Soon, he was hurtling along, a bit of flotsam caught on the undulating back of a serpent made of water.

All at once, a powerful current pulled him under. He kicked at the force, and though his calves plowed through the water, it held him firmly in its grip, dragging him down into the crushing dark. Pressure mounted and a painful popping noise sounded in his ears. His lungs burned for want of the last breath he had been denied, but there was none to be had. Slow fire rapidly spread from his chest into his arms and legs. The darkness before his eyes came alight with sparkling flares. The bright pinpoints faded soon after, devoured by creeping gray spiders … a few at first, then more and more. As the gray swarmed over his vision, it also sank into his mind, subduing his panic, replacing it with a resigned calm.

His mouth yawned wide, involuntarily preparing to draw a breath, and then the swirling current slammed him into a wide mass of moss-slicked rock. The last of his spent breath burst from his chest in a flurry of bubbles, but the same currents that had threatened to drown him, now carried him up, rolling him over slimy stone.

Thrashing feebly, Leitos cleared the surface, waterlogged and retching. The gray spiders of looming unconsciousness quickly retreated. He clawed his way onto a mass of rock until he lay half-in, half-out of the water. The river toyed with his legs, trying in vain to drag him back. Leitos pulled himself a little farther up onto dry ground, then collapsed.

He remained where he was for a long time, chest heaving. His wits and strength came back slowly, harried by vague thoughts of the hunting Alon’mahk’lar. But even that threat failed to rouse him completely. He had been on the run, fearing for his life at every turn, less than one full day and night, yet he was so exhausted that the thought of pushing any farther made him want to weep. He remained where he was, praying that no searching eyes would find him.

A chill crept over his skin, but he was too worn-out to do anything more than acknowledge that he had never been so cold. With that thought drifting in the back of his mind, his eyes closed, and he lost all awareness and concern.

When he awoke, he found he had curled into a tight, shivering ball, and the river was a beast roaring around him. The sky to the east showed the first gray hints of the coming dawn, but it was still too dark to clearly make out his surroundings.

River, he thought with a measure of coherency, realizing it was not the first time his mind had named it so. Adham had spoken of rivers, telling that they flowed down from high mountains, emptying into either lakes or salty seas. They were filled with all manner of fish and snails and other things to eat, and had banks frequented by any living thing that needed water to survive. While Leitos had only ever seen a river in his mind, without question he had jumped into one. While delighted that he had escaped the slavemasters, it mystified him that so much water could exist in an otherwise bone-dry land.

He sat up and peered through the lightening gloom, gauging the distance to either bank was only a hundred paces away. It might have been a mile, for all the good it did. His grandfather had mentioned that as a youth, he enjoyed swimming in a cool pond or mountain lake during the heat of the day, but such a skill could hardly be passed on when surrounded by countless leagues of sand and rock, where the greatest source of water Leitos had ever seen was that held in clay cisterns.

Thinking of water, how thirsty he had been, Leitos cautiously edged to one side of his slab of rock, and used a cupped hand to bring the river to his lips. In the faint morning light, it was silty, reddish brown, like the land around him, but it was sweet on his tongue. So sweet, and there was so much!

He gave up using his hand and plunged his head into the endless, gurgling surge, gulping the delicious, cool wetness until he feared his belly would burst. With a deep, satisfied sigh, he splayed out on the rock. Indifferent to his chilled skin, he slept again, taking comfort that if he could not leave his sanctuary, then neither could anyone or anything reach him, especially Alon’mahk’lar, who feared water.

Leitos came awake with a start and jumped to his feet under blazing sunlight, searching for the danger he felt but could not find. A dream. He relaxed, knowing that the Alon’mahk’lar cudgel he thought was about to crush the life from him was but a vision from beyond the waking world. Just a terrible dream.

Dream or not, he took the opportunity to survey his surroundings, now basking in the full light of day. By all accounts, he had slept nearly to midday, and felt refreshed. The first thing he discovered was that riverbanks were not banks at all, but sheer cliffs. Over ages, the river’s mighty flow had undercut those stone walls.

Tilting his head, he saw just how far he had plunged the night before, and his mouth fell open. Taking into account that these particular cliffs could be higher than the one he had flown off, he glanced upstream. As far as he could see, which was a good bit since the river here flowed mostly straight, the height was fairly uniform. A hundred paces, came his stunned thought, maybe more! Interspersed along that stretch of river, water exploded over boulders and flat bastions of stone similar to the one upon which he stood….

Imagining himself plummeting so far made his knees weak, and his insides churned at the sure knowledge that he must have just narrowly missed slamming into any one of those rocky knobs. He plopped down on his rump, shuddering deep within himself. After a moment, he shook that off. It was far easier to push aside his certain brush with death than it would have been just the day before. In that short span, he had faced death many times over.

Again taking up his study of the deep gorge, it took no time to determine that getting out of the rocky corridor would be no easy task. But at least I have water. Of course, that did next to nothing to appease the hollow grumbling in his belly. Before all else, he needed to find food.

He scanned the tongue of stone upon which he had washed up. It rose out of the river, long and narrow, perhaps ten paces wide and two score long. It was lower on his end, and sloped upward to a rounded pinnacle at the other. Over its length, several pools of mossy water suggested that, at times, the river flowed higher than it did now.

He walked to the nearest oblong pool, its surface alive with skipping waterbugs. Large fat ones paddled amongst tufts of bright green moss below the surface. He barely noticed the insects. His attention was on his scraped and scabby toes, which were clean for the first time he could ever recall. As if he had never seen them before, he slowly held up his hands before his face, rolled them over and back. The sun-darkened skin from his knuckles to his shoulders, from his toes to his chest, was free of grime. Entranced, he cautiously raised his forearm to his nose, delighted to find that instead of smelling like dirt and sweat, he smelled like the river.

Tears glistened in his eyes, brought on by a mingling of joy and sorrow in his heart. He wished Adham was at his side to share in this experience. His sorrow soon gave way to gratitude. His grandfather had paid with his life to give him freedom, but until now, Leitos had not truly understood the depth of that sacrifice.

His growling belly arrested his thoughts and, with a silent heartfelt thanks to his grandfather, Leitos knelt down to get a closer look at the pool.

The waterbugs skipping over the top of the pool were small and quick, while those swimming through the dazzling green moss below were the size of his thumbnail. Having eaten plenty of beetles, he did not hesitate to make an attempt at catching a meal. Capturing either type proved harder than he envisioned, but after several failed efforts, he perfected his skill.

For an hour or more, using a cupped palm, he herded them into the other waiting palm, quickly clutched his fingers around their wriggling bodies, then brought them to his mouth. With great relish, he gobbled them all. The surface bugs tasted slightly bitter and salty, while the plump ones burst between his teeth with a sweetish flavor he found delightful.

In the course of his hunt, his fingers occasionally came up holding clumps of moss, which he ate as well. The moss was slimy, and it tasted like the river. Despite needing to drink to get it down, to his tongue the moss was just as tasty as the waterbugs. He found snails in an even larger pool, and ate those as well. Their shells crunched around squishy, gritty meat, but overall they were palatable. Taken as a whole, the varied flavors proved to be the finest meal to ever pass his lips.

With his belly full, Leitos made another thorough search of the cliffs now shading the river. Of enemies, there were none to be seen. Birds by the hundreds flitted over the cliff faces, or skimmed the few placid eddies in the river.

Sure that he was safe, Leitos sprawled on his back against the sun-warmed rock. Night would fall in another few hours, leaving him cold again, but for now a sense of peace fell over him and he dozed, contented.

Chapter 7

Leaving his refuge proved more difficult than Leitos imagined. The second day, he decided he needed more rest and food before he set out, so he hunted and devoured an abundance of waterbugs, moss, and snails. He savored every bite, then slept.

After waking, he investigated other pools and found the deepest held a few finger-long, silvery fish. As his shadow passed over them, they flashed out of sight under a submerged tree limb as thick as his waist. He had never tasted fish, and decided he wanted to.

He pondered the water, the obstacle to his next meal. Until he had splashed into the river, he had never seen so much water. But this pool was not the river, and other than being wet, it was different in all other regards. The water in the pools was warmer, it did not move, and was nowhere near as deep and treacherous as the river.

Without thinking, he sat down at the edge and slipped his legs into the pool. Its sides were slick with moss and silt, and shaped like a shallow bowl. If something went wrong, he could easily climb out. The river might be dangerous, but the pool was not. He eased himself into the water, and while it was far warmer than the river, it stole his breath as it climbed above his waist, then to his midsection, and finally all the way up to his neck.

Leitos stood still for a time, marveling at the peculiar sensation of buoyancy. It was not weightlessness, but close. He took a step, pushing off with his toes, and seemed to soar before settling back. Forgetting about the fish, he walked around the pool, gliding through the water. After two circuits, an idea came to him.

With an unconscious grin, he cautiously dunked his face, eyelids and lips firmly pressed together. After a moment, he opened his eyes. All was blurry but recognizable. He exhaled through his nose, and a blast of tickly bubbles rolled over his cheeks and past his temples. When he needed air, he raised his head, took a breath, then bent again to look under the water. He did this over and over, never growing weary of the bubbles, or the floating sensation.

After a time, he grew emboldened. Taking the deepest breath he could, he leaned forward and lifted his legs. For a brief but terrifying moment, he sank. Only the knowledge that he could stand whenever he needed to kept him calm. With his heartbeat thumping in his ears, he floated to the surface and hung there. Looking down at the bottom of the pool, alive with flashes of blurry silver, his arms spread wide, he felt as if he were flying. Marveling, he forgot himself and laughed. Water gushed into his throat, and then he was splashing about, coughing and gagging. Only when his toes scraped bottom did he remember that he could stand.

Eyes bulging in panic, he scrambled out of the pool as if it were a bath of poison, and flung himself onto the rocks. After he cleared his lungs, his fright passed. He lay panting, naming himself a fool. Nevertheless, it was a good while before he mustered the courage to return to the water, but return he did. He simply could not resist.

Much of the day passed in the pools, and in that time he discovered that he could control himself imitating the movements of the surface-skimming waterbugs. He began slowly at first, swishing his hands back and forth, and propelling himself forward by tentatively kicking his legs. Over time, he found that if he did both, in just the right way, he could raise his head to draw a breath without having to put his feet on the bottom.

Soon after, his thoughts turned to the waterbugs that maneuvered below the water. With his confidence higher than ever, he dove under, then let buoyancy take him to the surface. He did this again and again, assuring himself that he would always rise. Once he had convinced himself of that, he went under, pressed his hands together, pushed them forward, then spread them and swept them back toward his hips. Arrow-straight, he glided on one breath to the far side of the pool.

He stood up, looking around, smiling broadly, and feeling like all the world had changed. He knew it had not, not really, but it felt different, and that difference swelled his heart with a sense of expectancy and hope. Leitos set his mind on the fish he had observed while he taught himself to swim.

At first he chased them, diving and swimming after, but they were far too swift. Next he stood still, trying to snatch them when they came near, but that proved futile as well. When his belly began to rumble, he gave up on delicacy and thrashed his arms and legs wildly, driving the fish into the shallowest end of the pool. From there, he used his hands to push them, one at a time, onto the rocks.

By the end of the day, he had managed to collect a dozen fish. He ate them raw, washing them down with frequent drinks. Afterward, with the gorge lost in deepening shadow, he sprawled out on his back until darkness fell, then watched the stars long into the night.

When he awoke, the sun was shining in his face.

After making a quick meal of waterbugs the third morning, he climbed to the highest point of his refuge, looking for an easy path to dry land but finding none. The river rushed by, splashing and spraying over submerged rocks, or parting around larger boulders and islands similar to his. As he tried to convince himself to plunge into the river, he remembered the way the powerful currents had dragged him deep below the surface. Swimming the river would be nothing like the pool. It was not lost on him that he had to make the attempt at some point, for he could not live the rest of his days on a rock. Moreover, he had made his silent vow to Adham to seek out the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. And because Adham was the only kin he had ever known, he meant to hold to his word … just not this day.

So he swam again throughout the morning, ate and drank his fill, and rested under the sun.

In a peaceful drowse, he found himself considering the true vastness of the world. After fleeing leagues across the desert and seemingly getting nowhere, then dropping into the river and having it sweep him miles downstream, he knew that the world was far wider than all his previous conceptions. So wide, in truth, that just thinking on it made his rocky sanctuary, with its small pools and the river’s protective surge, feel all the safer. How could he possibly traverse such dangerous and broken territories inhabited by hunting Alon’mahk’lar and worse, if even a fraction of the stories Adham had told him were true?

Beyond the river and the gorge waited lands that had been torn apart by the Upheaval, a cataclysm so powerful that his grandfather claimed it had destroyed two of three moons, upset the balance of the world in the heavens, changed the seasons and the placement of the stars in the firmament, and reshaped all former kingdoms.

Usually when his grandfather recounted this tale, Leitos could get no further than trying to imagine a night sky with three moons, the faces of gods, instead of the one that remained, and gave virtually no light. Adham said a handful of years before his birth the remaining moon, the face of the goddess Hiphkos the Contemplator, had shone a pale blue, bathing the world in a cool, comforting glow. Before their demise, Adham told that her brothers had followed after her every evening-first the middling Memokk, with his amber radiance, then the diminutive Attandaeus, who burned like an ember in the night. Now the Sleeping Widow, as Hiphkos was sometimes called, wore a veil of dark gray shot through with threads of black.

Under an unsettling sense of loss for a world he had never known, Leitos spent the rest of the day watching the river flow by, pondering what awaited him once he dared leave his island. Nothing good, he concluded with a shudder, as darkness fell over the gorge.

Later, as his eyes slipped shut for the night, a stray thought, like a whisper on the wind, suggested that it might be better if he never left his secluded refuge.

Chapter 8

The next morning, he awoke to find a slate gray sky, with heavy clouds piling up to the north. Summer storms were often the fiercest, but he disregarded the potential danger of being caught out in the open. After all, summer storms were short-lived affairs. He remained calm, even when lightning began flashing in the distance, followed by low, steady peals of thunder echoing through the gorge.

As the storm spread across the sky, he went about gathering his breakfast. Munching a handful of waterbugs, thinking about another swimming lesson, an unexpected gust nearly toppled him into the river. That wayward blast of wind proved to be the first of many, and quickly became a steady gale that forced Leitos to sit with his back to the storm.

He remained that way until a streak of lightning struck the river a little downstream, followed by a boom of thunder that rattled his bones. The wind increased, as did the lightning and thunder. The sky darkened under purplish black clouds that billowed and swirled like living, malevolent entities. The first raindrops fell huge and scattered, and rapidly became a pounding deluge.

Shivering and bedraggled, Leitos huddled down and waited for the storm to pass, arms wrapped tightly around knees pulled close to his chest.

But the storm did not pass. Instead, it became more powerful, its thick cloak creating a premature nightfall. Erratic winds howled, driving the downpour first one way, then another. Through it all, Leitos did not worry too much, and only started when lightning struck close.

His first inkling that he might be in trouble came when, through the blur of driving rain, he noticed the birth of a dozen muddy waterfalls pouring over either rim of the gorge. Soon after, a hundred cascades were plunging into the river. Leitos told himself that the storm would pass in its own time. Instead, the tempest raged on, the battering rainfall stinging his exposed skin.

Alerted by a strange sensation, he looked through his dripping hair, startled to find that the river had risen high enough to lap at his toes. Where he sat, that meant the surface had risen a good two feet.

Leitos clambered to the highest point on his rapidly shrinking island, and there sat down again. Eyes narrowed, he watched with dread fascination as the river rushed by, its surface getting higher, wilder, muddier, and choked with swirling debris.

Soon the turbulent flow had covered the whole of his sanctuary, forcing him to stand up to keep his backside out of the water. Disbelieving, he watched it creep above his ankles. He told himself it could rise no more … but it did, until the flow tugged at his legs, upsetting his balance. He was a heartbeat from being swept away. Fighting for balance, he whipped his head around, searching for any place to go. In all directions, boiling spray marked drowned boulders. Of dry land, there was none.

The river inched higher, and the storm showed no sign of abating. Water surged against him, his feet slid. There was no more time. As he prepared to leap, he felt a strange trembling in the rock underfoot, and with that sensation came a sound out of the north that stilled his pulse.

He squinted against the sheeting pour. Upstream, through a nearly opaque curtain of rain, lightning flashed and thunder rolled. The river’s voice strengthened, and the sensation of quaking underfoot became a steady throb. Leitos blinked water out of his eyes, unsure what he was seeing. Out of that rain-soaked gloom raced a seething mountain of mud and raging waters, its boiling face riddled with deadly debris. He waited no longer. Leitos shouted as he threw himself into the river, but his voice could not contend with the raging fury racing toward him.

The powerful current snatched him from the air, eagerly, forcefully, as if it had been waiting these last days for just such a chance. He tried a few strokes, but swimming was useless. It took all his effort to keep his head above water. More than once, his feet scraped or slammed over rocks. Backward churning waves rolled him under, whirled him about, then vomited him farther downstream. He was at the mercy of the river as much as all the pummeling, water-black branches floating with him. After going over a low waterfall, he found himself facing upriver. The mountain of muddied water chased after him, falling over itself in great, exploding waves, gaining slowly; its immense power pushed him before it. He turned, doing his best to stay afloat.

The sides of the gorge narrowed at one point, flashing by, the river’s rage amplified by towering cliffs. Up ahead, the river took a sharp turn. In the outer curve, the waters crashed against the wall of the gorge, rising high before collapsing back over on themselves in a continuous, churning fall thrice the height of a man. All Leitos had taught himself about swimming fled his mind, and panic consumed his wits. He began clawing at the water, trying to get to the inside curve of the bend.

His efforts were in vain.

Thrashing and kicking, he flew into the base of the towering wave. Spray hit his face, and the river dragged him under. He struck the rock wall, the force crushing the breath from his lungs. All became a spinning, tumbling confusion. With malicious intent, the flow slammed him against the base of the cliff, set him free, then punished him again. Caught in an inescapable eddy, Leitos banged repeatedly against the wall before a squeezing force pressed in on him from every side. He shot up and up, feeling at once weightless and caught in a giant’s fist. Then, with stunning abruptness, he soared free. He pinwheeled before splashing into the river.

Bruised, scraped, and disorientated, he struggled to the surface and drew a sodden breath. All was a deafening roar, as the river thrashed him. Leitos fought as long as he could, but rapidly grew weaker and more desperate for a deep breath. His chest burned, but he dared not draw the river into his lungs. A part of him felt sure he was going to drown, but another part refused to accept the possibility. He had survived too much to let mere water destroy him. His anxiety gave way to his own fury, and he cursed the river and the storm, elements so much greater than he.

His anger gave him some little, momentary strength. He paddled and splashed with all the vigor he could muster, but his effort was short-lived. Far too soon, his arms and legs became leaden, useless. He sank again. This time, he failed to rise.

Knowing he had lost the battle, Leitos felt an unexpected acceptance surmount his fears. Lost in the swirling reddish murk, he went still and let the river take him. He drew in the extinguishing coolness of the river, quenching the fire in his chest. A suffocating pressure filled his lungs, but he soon moved beyond such physical concerns, as if his spirit and body were no longer one.

His consciousness drifted, rendering all previous apprehensions impotent. No more would he fear the bite of an Alon’mahk’lar’s lash, no more would he suffer hunger or thirst. In the wake of this release he found true freedom, and a sense of expectancy filled him, birthed a surreal peace in his soul. Only the sharp understanding that he had failed his grandfather haunted him. Yet even that concern evaporated, as points of light began dancing before his eyes, multiplying, until he floated upon an undulating sea of pearl white. As the white went to black he decided, with no small measure of relief, that death was nothing to fear.

Chapter 9

Sharp, red pain drew him out of the serene dream and into a raucous nightmare of thundering waters, torrential rains, and driving winds. Something had caught the hair on his head in an iron-grip. It was pulling him from the river, carelessly dragging him along like a carcass over rounded stones, then through sandy mud.

He opened his mouth to shout a protest, but silty water dribbled past his lips instead of words. All the pain and fear he had so recently escaped crashed back down upon him, and he longed to return to that blessed void. He reached up with arms that refused to work as they should, and clawed with fingers that held no strength.

“Quit fighting, you damned fool,” a man’s gruff voice commanded.

Leitos’s arms fell, and his eyes rolled. A presence loomed above him, clad in dripping rags colored after the hues of the desert, all of browns, dirty reds, and fawn. In a lurching gait, the bulky figure brought him to higher ground, then tossed him down.

Still unable to draw a breath, the blessed darkness began to fall again over Leitos. He let it, for in death he had known absolute peace, and he desired to know that nothingness again. As if alerted to Leitos’s thoughts and finding them unacceptable, the man turned, his face lost in the shadow of a deep, drooping hood. Without preamble, he jammed a sandaled foot onto Leitos’s chest and stomped down. Leitos’s eyes bulged at the offending pressure, and a gout of water sprayed past his teeth. The ragged figure mercilessly trounced him once, twice, again. Each time, more of the river surged from Leitos’s lungs, until no more came.

A rattling wheeze assailed Leitos’s ears as his body, indifferent to the will of his heart, drew breath. Fresh air flowed, but after the gritty river water it burned worse than going without, leaving him coughing and retching. The agonizing fit went on until he was sure he had ruptured something.

In time, his labored breathing evened out, and the fierce blaze in his chest subsided. When his coughing finally dwindled to nothing, everything inside him felt raw and abused.

Leitos’s eyes fluttered open on a roiling expanse of clouds, their mottled gray-and-black underbellies torn by flicking tongues of white fire. The rainfall had begun to taper off. Head wobbling, he cast about and found that the walls of the gorge had fallen away to reveal a familiar desert landscape. At the river’s edge, thickets of lush green rushes bowed their heads away from the press of the wind. Farther up the bank, a few spindly trees swayed back and forth.

Leitos rolled to his side to avoid looking into the depths of his savior’s hood. He closed his eyes on the world, his chest occasionally hitching with a weak cough.

The dark figure hovered motionless, silent, ominous. “You will live,” the man growled.

“Why did you save me?” Leitos asked weakly.

The man cocked his hooded head. He remained silent for a time, then spoke words that sent a chill through Leitos. “I suppose one like you, an escaped slave, would rather die. No such luck, boy. You are worth more alive than dead.”

“A Hunter,” Leitos gasped. On the rarest occasion a slave escaped the Alon’mahk’lar. When that happened, they employed Hunters, men renowned as much for their tracking abilities as their unfeeling treachery against their own kind. Being human, such men roved without suspicion, seeking and finding those they pursued. Often, they worked hand-in-hand with slavers who brought fresh captives to the mines. Adham had hated Hunters worse than he hated the Alon’mahk’lar, or even the Faceless One. “There are few betrayals worse than men hunting their own at the command of demon-spawn,” he had often said, always spitting on the ground to emphasize his contempt. “Nothing can ever redeem the soul of such a despicable creature.”

Looking askance at his captor, Leitos collected himself and sat up, muscles quivering uncontrollably. He felt cold and gray-fleshed, like something dead. All that mattered was getting his wits and strength back, then planning his escape. He could not let himself be given again into the hands of the Alon’mahk’lar.

The Hunter squatted on his haunches, his face still lost in the darkness of his hood. Nevertheless, the weight of his unseen eyes pressed against Leitos. He said nothing, only looked. What he saw besides a sopping and disheveled youth, Leitos could only guess. That continued study made him more uncomfortable by the moment. He imagined a mouse must feel the same, when facing an adder.

The Hunter kept up his silent vigil so long that Leitos began to wonder if the Hunter really was a man. Adham had told that Mahk’lar, before they began breeding to humankind, and thus transferring their essence into a human womb, had gone about possessing men, women, and even children, transforming them into walking horrors. Such abominations did not last long, for with the loss of its true soul, the inhabited flesh perished and began to rot. Usually within a few days, the Mahk’lar would burst free, seeking new flesh to control and destroy. Although a long generation had passed since the emergence of the vile Alon’mahk’lar race, Leitos supposed it possible that stray Mahk’lar could still roam the world. I have to get away!

“I can see your mind working, boy,” the man said, as if sensing Leitos’s last thought, “but you will not escape me. I can track a lizard up a bare stone cliff, even a soaring bird. It is not the tracks the lizard leaves, boy, or the feathers that fall from the bird’s wings, but the reek of fear they leave when they know they are sought. I can smell that fear on all creatures, great and small … and I can smell it on you, even in this damnable rain.”

“And you smell like the piss of a leprous goat,” Leitos snapped with a flare of irrepressible malice.

The back of the man’s rough hand crashed into Leitos’s cheek before he registered movement. His head rocked back, and a warm trickle of blood mingled with cold raindrops on his cheek. Dazed, Leitos righted himself. He peered at the man with narrowed eyes, a smoldering hatred searing away his entrenched humility, daring to imagine that someday he would seek out such despicable men, as well as all Alon’mahk’lar, delivering upon them the bloody justice they had earned-

The Hunter struck him again. The blow, harder by far than the first, knocked Leitos sprawling. Stunned, he floundered about, eyelids fluttering. He did not know how long he wallowed in the gritty mud of the riverbank, but eventually his head cleared. Cunning, he thought. You must use your wits.

Storing away that precious tidbit, schooling his features to meekness, he pushed himself up and bowed his head in a show of surrender. The Hunter laughed, a deep mocking rumble that made Leitos’s stomach clench.

“You cannot fool me so easily as that,” the Hunter drawled. “I can smell defiance as well as fear-and the first is fairly dripping off your skin … at least for now. By the time I return you to your masters, you will be timid as a suckling babe.”

“Where are they,” Leitos asked, “my masters?” He needed time to plan, and if any Alon’mahk’lar were close, time would be all the more precious.

The Hunter lashed out again. Leitos made a show of trembling before the man, even as the tip of his tongue ran over his split lower lip. If the abuse kept up, he might have to act sooner than he would like, which could only be to his disadvantage.

“First lesson, runt,” the Hunter said, “is to speak only when I give you leave to do so. The second lesson is that you do what I tell you, when I tell you to do it. Stand up.”

Leitos got to his feet. Falling into the role of the compliant slave was easier than he liked, but he would use that to his advantage … somehow he must. His cheek and jaw throbbed from the Hunter’s blows, but those pains were the least of his concerns. What mattered was getting far away from the man, and the Alon’mahk’lar that he served.

The Hunter stood as well, towering half a pace over Leitos, a creature of menacing power with broad shoulders, a deep chest, and fists seemingly carved from stone. The dark hollow of his hood turned slowly. Leitos felt as if he were looking into a yawning mineshaft that delighted in destroying anyone foolish enough to enter. This man was as dangerous, maybe more so, than any Alon’mahk’lar he had ever encountered.

The Hunter struck Leitos again, a vicious backhand. He reeled, trying to stay on his feet. Blood ran freely over his face from many cuts, and his skull felt cracked. He stumbled and collapsed.

“That, boy, was for speaking out of turn. This,” he said, kicking Leitos in the ribs hard enough to flip him onto his back, “is to make sure that you learned the first lesson.”

Leitos retched, but felt detached from his agonies and the situation. All thoughts of planning an escape had soared away. He had to act, now.

Groaning, he rolled to his belly. When he could see straight, he dared not look at his assailant, but rather focused on his fists sunk into the mud under his nose. Blood dribbled from his ruined lips in fat crimson drops onto the backs of his hands, staining his skin and mingling with the stinking mud. Below that, the fingers of one hand secretly clenched a river stone.

“Had enough … or do you need another lesson?”

Fury exploded within Leitos’s breast, threatening to drive back all his caution and sense. But if he gave in and attacked the Hunter outright, he would gain nothing, and more than likely lose any future chance at escape. Retaliate or bide his time? It was a difficult choice, left him grinding his teeth in frustration.

Over long moments, a sense of dark calm invaded his senses. He had made his decision, for good or ill. He began crawling away, first on his belly, then on his hands and knees, and then he was up, wobbling along on unsteady feet.

“Where are you going, boy?” the Hunter asked in derision. He made no attempt to follow, and Leitos judged that the man’s self-assurance was too great by far.

Grow strong and cruel, Adham’s voice intoned, swirling like a sweet poison through Leitos’s veins. He kept walking, fueling his strength of will with an image of his grandfather standing tall against the Alon’mahk’lar.

“There is nowhere to go, boy,” the Hunter said, now sounding more irritated than mocking.

Leitos did not respond, just placed one foot in front of the other. A little farther. Dripping mud concealed the stone held in his fist, just in case.

He crossed the rising riverbank and scrambled up and over a sandy berm cut by the river when it flowed even higher than it did now. At his back, the Hunter had finally begun to drift after him. Just a little farther. To the fore, the desert stretched out, all sand, rock, and low-growing scrub made pungent by the rain. The only difference between when he had fled the mines and now was the storm had wetted the land, and clouds blotted the harsh sunlight. That last would soon end, for the storm had relented as it pushed farther north. Some many leagues south, dark clouds, having spent their wrath, were parting, showing patches of blue. Leitos trained his eyes on the west, and stumbled into a trot.

“BOY!” The Hunter bellowed.

With a fleeting wish that he had never encountered the Hunter, that he had been able to remain on his little island where there was food, water, and safety in isolation, he stepped up his pace.

A moment later, he was running. His legs, stiff and shaky at first, soon found their rhythm; the muscles loosened, his stride lengthened. Hard breathing forced the last of the river water from his lungs, and he spat out the silty residue. The throbbing bruises from the Hunter’s blows faded. A single shout, incoherent for the rage it held, chased after him. Leitos did not heed it. Let him catch me! He laughed aloud, knowing a man so huge could not.

The sound of pounding feet, closing fast, evaporated his mirth.

Disbelieving, Leitos looked around. The big man was coming at a clip made all the more terrifying for its impossible speed. The Hunter’s hood still covered his face, but his motley garb streamed out behind him like the shredded wings of a bat.

Leitos bowed his head and ran faster. Where a rock or patch of prickly scrub presented itself as a barrier, he leaped over it. On the flat, his feet splashed through puddles, or dug into mud.

The Hunter matched his speed … then began closing the distance.

Leitos pushed himself into a flat sprint. He could not keep the pace long, but hoped he could outlast his pursuer. Heart thumping wildly, his blood pounded in his ears. Every breath came as ragged gasps, and still the footfalls at his back matched his, falling heavily, beating unceasingly at the damp desert floor, getting nearer with every step.

The Hunter had no trouble catching a breath, and had plenty to spare. “When I catch you, I’ll peel the hide from your rancid flesh a strip at a time!” he roared.

You will never catch me, Leitos thought, but he no longer believed it. He ran as far and as long as he could, fully aware that he was losing the race. There was nowhere he could go that the Hunter could not follow. Grow strong and cruel. His grandfather’s command was his only hope, his only choice.…

Without slowing, Leitos rolled the stone in his palm until he had a secure and, he prayed, a deadly grip.

The Hunter surged closer, growling low in his throat like a demonic creature released from the Thousand Hells. Fleetingly, Leitos wondered again if a man had pulled him from the river, or actually something born of Geh’shinnom’atar.

With the Hunter right on his heels, Leitos pressed ahead with the last of his strength. His searching eyes locked on a jutting rock braced by a pair of scraggly bushes. He flew at it, imagining one possible outcome, and willing what he desired to happen.

At the last possible instant, Leitos turned sharply, ducking the huge man’s grasping hand. The Hunter twisted in a wild bid to catch hold of Leitos, and then his foot collided with the edge of the rock, stopping dead his forward momentum. He flipped through the air, limbs spread wide in four opposing directions. On the far side of the rock, the Hunter landed on his head with a heavy grunt, and crumpled limply to his back.

Leitos skidded to a halt, the stone raised in his hand, intending to hurl it if the man moved. The Hunter did not stir. He sucked wind until his heart quieted, then edged closer.

He is not breathing, Leitos determined, failing to detect the rise and fall of the man’s chest. Still he waited. If the Hunter was merely stunned, he would soon rouse himself, and the race would begin again. If he was dead, then it did not matter.

I cannot run again, Leitos thought wearily. Knowing that, however, meant he needed to be certain the man was dead, which in turn required that he get closer. And what if he is still alive? That question flew out of the darkness of his mind, as did the ensuing answer, the same answer that had come to him when he first began crawling away from the Hunter. Then I must kill him.

Just considering that, and the means by which he would dispatch the Hunter, made his insides queasy. Before, there had been fury in his heart, but with the Hunter sprawled on his back, that fury had changed. He tried to find an alternative course, but the Hunter’s earlier boast weighed on his heart. “I can track a lizard … even a soaring bird.”

Fighting the instinct to flee, Leitos inched nearer, skipping around a tall clump of brush to ensure the Hunter did not move while briefly out of sight. From two paces, the man looked no more alive than he had at ten paces.

Leitos crept closer … closer … until he stood over the sprawled Hunter. His tumble had pulled back his hood, revealing not a brutish face, as Leitos had envisioned, but one that was handsome, even noble. The Hunter was unkempt, to be sure, his strong jaw and chin furred with several day’s growth of beard, which was nearly as long as his close-cropped black hair. Grime made the swarthy skin of his cheeks and brow all the darker. Leitos could hardly imagine him being a betrayer of his own kind. The only flaw that marred the Hunter’s features was a rough, raised scar stretched across his throat. That, Leitos suspected, accounted for the harshness of the man’s voice.

A fly lighted on the Hunter’s cheekbone, wandered about, perhaps sipping from the raindrops and sweat that had collected on the man’s skin. Orit has come to feast on dead flesh.

As he knelt down by the Hunter’s side, it crossed his mind to smash the stone against the man’s temple, just as he had slammed another stone against the adder’s skull. The memory of the mangled mess he had made of the serpent’s head kept him from taking that action. It felt wrong to desecrate a corpse. Nevertheless, he held the stone overhead in one hand, and reached out with the other.

At the first touch, Leitos recoiled. The Hunter’s clothing was soiled, stiff, and greasy. Moreover, the man’s odor truly hit him for the first time, the stench of old sweat, rancid meat, and other unmentionable filth.

He had to know if the Hunter had any life left in him. He had to know. The sooner done, the sooner he could continue his westward journey toward the Crown of the Setting Sun, somewhere beyond the Mountains of Fire. For the first time, he was amazed to realize that the thought of that journey did not trouble him, but rather filled him with a glimmer of his grandfather’s hope….

Admonishing himself for delaying, Leitos pressed his hand firmly on the Hunter’s chest. His mouth fell open at the powerful thud of the man’s beating heart. His gaze flicked to the man’s face even as the Hunter’s dark eyes flared open, gleaming with a mad cruelty that destroyed his comeliness.

A squawk of terror burst from Leitos’s throat. Too late, he swung his weapon. The Hunter batted his hand aside, and the stone flew free. Then a massive fist clutched around Leitos’s throat, squeezing so tight that he could not breathe, let alone cry out. Leitos clawed at the man’s fingers. The Hunter drew him near, turned his head this way and that, as if seeking something behind his eyes.

The Hunter grinned, an ugly expression. “You should have broken my skull, boy,” he growled. “Would have been an easy kill-I was gone for a moment-and I deserved to die for misjudging you.”

He drew Leitos close. “Your third lesson, boy, is that mercy is for the weak,” he whispered, his thick fingers tightening around Leitos’s throat. The Hunter drew back his other fist and rammed it forward. Leitos felt no pain, no anything. In an instant, the day was made night.

Chapter 10

Mercy is for the weak.… the words were soft, sinister. Leitos loomed over the Hunter, for some reason sure he had done this before. He shook his head, thinking that strange thought about mercy was fitting and so true. Mercy is for the weak … and I am weak no longer. He swung the stone, cracking it against the Hunter’s skull. The man’s eyes flared wide. He reached up and caught Leitos throat. Leitos tried to jerk back, tried to shout-

Agonies beyond count assailed Leitos as he started awake. He lay there taking deep, ragged breaths that burned his throat, wondering what had happened, why was he not battering in the Hunter’s skull….

A dream, he thought in despair, remembering his failed attempt to get away, as well as missing his chance to destroy his enemy. He tried to open his eyes, but the Hunter’s attack had left one swollen shut. The other cracked, just a fraction, and through it he saw a world painted in muddy red hues.

He lay on a bed of cool sand, deep in shadow. For fear of alerting the Hunter that he was awake, he moved only his eyes, trying to guess where he was. Overhead, aged daylight reflected off a curve of smooth rock. I’m in a cave.

As his awareness grew, he noticed that tight ropes bound his wrists together before his chest. He cautiously wriggled his legs, and found his ankles tied as well. Silence fell on his ears. No wind, no shuffling of ratty clothing, nothing. He could hope the Hunter had decided to leave him to die, but that was unlikely. The man had risked his life to snatch Leitos from perilous floodwaters, all on the slim chance that Leitos was the slave he hunted. For now, Leitos was sure he was alone.

By the time he had screwed up his courage enough to test the strength of the bindings, the light of day had fled night’s dark substance. The ropes held tight around his wrists, the same as those securing his ankles. Exasperated, he flopped and strained until he lay on his opposite side, gasping. Recklessness gave way to desperation, and Leitos heaved and pulled against the lashings. Dust rose and sand flew, the ropes tore his skin, but he came no closer to getting loose. Tears of rage coursed over his cheeks, and he spat every oath he knew in an effort to relieve the burning ache in his throat.

In the end, he went limp, panting, staring into a darkness that had become like a living entity pressing hard against his face. The desolation he had held in check fell on him in cascading waves, extinguishing the rage. Sorrow came after, flooding him.

Grandfather, he cried silently, is this my path, a life of suffering? No answer came. Spent in mind and body, he eventually slumbered again. Matching his thoughts, all was blackness before his eyes, all was loss….

Something jabbed against Leitos’s spine, once and again, rudely bringing him awake. Dawn shed its golden light over the land, filled the cave with warmth. A solitary bird trilled in the distance, but Leitos focused on the closer sound of something shuffling about in the sand behind him. The digging pressure went away. He remained still, thinking some desert creature was preparing to make a meal of him.

“For an escaped slave to sleep so soundly,” the Hunter rasped, “life in the mines must be better than once it was. Or is it that you are a slave of a different sort? Did the Alon’mahk’lar wash and perfume you, boy … did they make a whore of you?” he finished with a nasty chuckle.

Leitos went rigid upon hearing that unforgettable voice. Doubtless, the man would decide he needed another lesson for keeping silent instead of answering, or for anything else he did, as the Hunter seemed to crave delivering pain and terror on his captives.

A madness swept through Leitos, and he decided that he did not care what the brute did to him. In truth, the worse, the better. Remembering how the man had beaten him before, Leitos guessed that he could anger him again, drive the Hunter to snuff out his life. If he could not hope to carry out his grandfather’s wishes, then death, he concluded, was better than returning to bondage. But how to provoke the Hunter?

He had unwittingly learned the answer to that question just after the Hunter dragged him from the river. When they first met, he had insulted the man, earning some many of the bruises from which he now suffered. He suspected that had he kept antagonizing the ruffian, the Hunter might well have killed him.

Steeling himself for what was sure to follow, Leitos said in a cracking voice, “Suffering the pleasure of the Sons of the Fallen … you seem to know a good deal about that.”

Heavy silence met this. Leitos pressed on, wanting to infuriate the man, goad him to unrelenting violence. “I suppose not,” he said in a scathing tone. “Had you suffered, they would not have allowed you to take up a life of seeking after fleeing slaves. I suspect you enjoyed all they did to you … longed for more. I wonder, when you bring back a slave, is your reward to pleasure them?”

Instead of setting upon him with curses and blows, the big man strode to the mouth of the cave. Leitos blinked at the Hunter’s back, eyes swollen, gummy, and sore. The puffiness had retreated a little with sleep, and the reddish hue that had clouded the one was gone. The Hunter, his hood pulled well forward, stood wrapped in silence, looking placidly out into the desert, as if he had heard nothing of what Leitos had said-or was considering how best to destroy him.

“You’ll want to break your fast,” the Hunter said after a time. “We’ve leagues to go this day, and I’ll not tote you like a weanling babe.”

“I’m not hungry,” Leitos muttered sullenly, unable to guess why the man had failed to react as he had believed he would.

The Hunter turned and slowly drew off his hood. His dark eyes shone like glass. “You’re a poor liar, boy. I can hear your belly grumbling from here.” He smiled then, a cheerless turn of the lips that showed strong, white teeth. “Come, I’ll cut you free. We can sup together on the sage hares I snared last night. They are scrawny, much like you, but I have a bit of salt and spices to flavor them.”

After the Hunter deftly used a wide-bladed knife to slice through his bonds, Leitos sat up, rubbing away the numbness in wrists, then worked on his ankles. He offered no word of thanks. The Hunter did not seem to mind, and went about starting a fire of twigs and dried dung. Next, he drove a pair of forked sticks into the sand on either side of the flames. He pulled a pair of mangy hares from a threadbare sack, skinned and spitted them, then set to roasting them.

“I would gladly die before eating anything from your hand,” Leitos said, wishing his belly agreed.

“You’re too weak by half, boy, to travel very far without growing faint. You will eat.”

“I have come this far,” Leitos retorted.

“And how far is that, do you believe?” the Hunter chuckled grimly. “A few days of hard travel from the mines, boy-that is all you managed. Your masters would have caught you if not for the river, which those iron-boned Alon’mahk’lar will not cross without a sturdy barge. As there are no barges in this part of Geldain, and fewer bridges, they sent word out to all their spies and Hunters to keep an eye out for a fleeing slave boy, and offered a fair reward to anyone who captured you.”

Leitos receded into himself, considering what the Hunter had said first. On one hand, it was hard to believe he had traveled so little, but on the other, he knew it for the truth. At the start of his journey, he had reasoned that it would be weeks, if not months, to reach the Mountains of Fire. Now, captured by the Hunter, he guessed he might never see those crags. His grandfather had placed his faith in the wrong person, Leitos thought, and had pointlessly thrown his life away. Save getting himself beaten to a pulp, captured and bound, Leitos grudgingly accepted that he had accomplished nothing.

The smell of roasting meat gradually drew Leitos from the smothering morass of his bleak ponderings. During his lengthy brooding, the Hunter had continually turned the spitted hares, searing them over a small fire. Now the brute rummaged through a handful of tiny leather sacks arranged around an iron pot and a few other cooking implements, all nestled within an old wooden crate sitting open beside his knees. He carefully sprinkled salt over the hares, delved into another sack and brought out some dried green leaves. These he crushed into coarse flakes, letting them drift onto the glistening meat.

Despite his conviction not to eat, the aroma of the cooking food set Leitos’s mouth to watering. He cursed his weakness. The only way to distract himself was to start talking. If the Hunter wanted to batter him for speaking out of turn, so much the easier to resist thoughts of eating.

“What is this place?” he asked.

The Hunter seemed to ignore him, not once looking away from the hares. Leitos had given up any expectation of receiving an answer when the man began to speak.

“One of my hideaways,” the Hunter said. “I have many. Some are mere hollows; others are deep and winding caverns. All Hunters have their secret dens. Most, like this one, are more than they appear, even up close. Behind a rock at the back of this cave,” he said, tilting his head to a spot hidden in the gloom behind Leitos, “there is a crack. Squeeze through it, and you find a passage that leads to a large chamber with a seep of the sweetest water you have ever tasted.”

Leitos found that interesting, but there was really only one thing he wanted to know. “Why do you do this?” The Hunter turned a questioning gaze on him. Leitos thought about it, then asked bluntly, “Why do you serve the Alon’mahk’lar. Surely their rewards alone do not make you want to betray your own kind.”

“My kind?” the Hunter snapped with a bitterness that went far deeper than anger. “By that I suppose you mean humankind, like those who placed me into the hands of the Alon’mahk’lar … much like those who did the same to you?”

“I was not placed into their hands,” Leitos insisted, then repeated what his grandfather had always told him. “Alon’mahk’lar raided our village and took us captive.”

“You are a blind fool. I grant that some few of your people still hide and fight from their icy strongholds, but has it never entered your mind to wonder how those places are found in the first place? Do you think Alon’mahk’lar wander about, covering league after endless league in search of future slaves?”

Leitos blinked. He had never considered that Izutarians might be swayed as easily as other peoples. Broached now, that idea troubled him.

“The last of your people, and you as well,” the Hunter went on, “fail to understand that the age of men died a generation gone, a doom heralded by the destruction of the Three and the burning heavens. Men do not rule anything anymore, boy, save the lost kingdoms of dwindling memory that the Faceless One allows them to rule. There is no war to fight, no matter that they raise banners and steel against him. The world of men is a corpse consumed by rot.”

Indifferent to the flames licking his fingers, the Hunter tore a chunk of meat off one hare and popped it into his mouth. He chewed for a moment, then sprinkled more spices on the hares. Again, he remained silent long enough that Leitos began to think he would say no more, but then he did.

“Some few are taken,” he relented, “but most men are sold into chains by their fellow men. And here is a secret, boy: most often the price needed for men to sell men is nothing of true worth, rather a pat on the head. For a bit of meaningless praise, and maybe a stale loaf for the reluctant, a loving mother will convince herself that her children would be better off in the hands of slavemasters. If not that, then she will tell herself that she would be better off-”

“You are a liar,” Leitos blurted.

“Of course I am,” the Hunter growled with a humorless smirk, “as I have learned to be. Lies and smiles, boy-that is how you survive under the rule of the Faceless One. We lie to our masters, bow and scrape, but mostly we deceive ourselves about the reasons and meaning of it all. As to what I said before about men, that was the plain truth.”

“You are wrong,” Leitos said, outwardly unmoved, but beginning to wonder.

“Am I? Then tell me, boy, how is it that you are bound and I am not? We are both of us humankind, as you say, yet I am a Hunter, ordained to that station by the very same creatures who enslaved you and your kin. The Alon’mahk’lar use me, and those like me, to seek and capture those like you.”

“You are a betrayer.”

“That I am,” the Hunter agreed once more, unapologetic in tone and countenance. Neither was there shame in his admission, but something very much like pride. “Unlike most, boy, I take satisfaction that I only became a betrayer after I was betrayed.”

“Is that another of your lies … what you tell yourself to excuse your treachery?”

The Hunter’s dark stare glazed over, as if he were no longer looking at Leitos, but something beyond. “That, boy, is one of the few absolute truths I cling to,” he muttered. “Like you, I was a slave. For five years the pain and disgrace heaped upon me was far worse than anything you have ever imagined or felt. I was betrayed not by the Alon’mahk’lar or the Faceless One, but by men … rather, by a woman. From that experience, I learned to accept the truths you still deny.”

The Hunter held quiet for a time, his whiskered chin trembling with emotion Leitos would never have thought possible from the likes of him. When he spoke again, the tenor of his voice had changed, making Leitos think of a small child, which was at odds with his fierceness and brutality.

“The Alon’mahk’lar came in broad daylight,” the Hunter said. “As they see their crimes as privileges, they never feel obliged to hide what they do under the darkness of night. But then, they did not have to hide, for it was my own mother, and others like her, who sought them out, invited them into our home as she had done many times before. For a whispered promise-be it for bread or something else, I will never know-she accused my father for a traitor, then willingly cut his beating heart from his chest as a pair of those laughing demons held him down.

“Before she handed me over, her skin stained by my father’s blood, she laid with the Alon’mahk’lar-and I say again, boy, it was not the first time I had seen such savaging. She screamed and wept at what those monsters did to her … but naked and torn, she and others like her watched with heads held high and smiles on their faces, as the slavemasters chained me and a dozen more from my village. That is betrayal, boy,” the Hunter snarled, “the likes of which you can never understand.”

Leitos stared in horror, but his captor was not finished.

“Unlike the accursed Izutarian slaves from north of the Sea of Drakarra, the enslaved of Geldain commonly serve men who in turn serve the Faceless One. I suffered as a pleasure slave to one of those men,” the Hunter grated.

“How … how did you get free?” Leitos asked quietly.

The Hunter shook away the troubled expression furrowing his brow, and a sinister gleam replaced the distant look in his eyes. “Lies and smiles, boy,” he said, casually adding more spices to the dripping meat.

“I do not understand,” Leitos said. After what he had heard so far, he did not really want to know, but a part of him felt that he needed to.

“My time in bondage was spent in my master’s bedchamber. That whoreson would lay with anything at hand: men and boys, women and girls, beasts of the field, or all at once. And when that failed to slake his vile lusts, he used cruelty, violence of the worst sort, doing things to me and others that I will not utter aloud.” At this, the Hunter unconsciously fingered the scar on his throat, and Leitos found himself gladdened that the man did not reveal the details of how he had come by it.

“During it all,” the Hunter said, “I taught myself that the body is nothing but skin and meat and bone, merely clothing for the spirit. And while any of us draw breath, the body heals. The mind, boy, is far more precious … fragile. I guarded mine well, sealed it off from all feeling. Most of the others with me failed at that. In their shame, many opened their veins or poisoned themselves, choosing death as an easy escape. I did not then, nor do I now, begrudge them their choice. Nevertheless, they were weak. I chose to live, boy, to fight for my every breath.”

Leitos swallowed, ashamed that he had begun the conversation with the idea of forcing the Hunter to kill him in a fit of rage, so that he might escape the silent oaths he had sworn to his grandfather. While he did not intend to become like the man before him, he knew he must, in some way, learn from him.

Grow strong and cruel. Was that what his grandfather had desired, for his grandson to become like the Hunter? It seemed doubtful, but at the same time, Leitos could hardly separate Adham’s instruction from what the Hunter was imparting. Uncertain, he continued to listen to the Hunter’s grim tale, feeling more sickened by each new word.

“Much the same as my mother betrayed my father and me, I turned on my master and gained what freedom I have. It was simple, really-a murmured lie here, bit of damning evidence there and, of course, my word against him. That last was key, for slaves do not accuse. For me to do so meant, to those who mattered, that I must be telling the truth. Neither the Faceless One nor the Alon’mahk’lar suffer even a hint of betrayal or opposition. Moreover, they delight in showing their displeasure with the disobedient-so much so that they gave me the privilege of tearing the skin from my master.”

The Hunter’s eyes shined with something like glee. “I peeled him like an overripe fruit, boy, relishing every scream. He begged for forgiveness, but instead of bowing to the folly of mercy, I gave back to him in double measure all the vile gifts he had bestowed upon my flesh. On that day, boy, I was reborn.”

Leitos thought he might vomit at the images flickering through his mind, but he did not. Grow strong and cruel. He still did not know exactly what that meant, but he was certain now that his grandfather had not intended for him to become like the Hunter, at least not exactly. And while he could understand why the Hunter had done what he had, Leitos’s sympathy had curdled, for he knew the man was rabidly insane.

He shook his head slowly. “You suffered evils,” he allowed, “but you were not ‘reborn’ that day. I think what you held most precious, the spirit you thought to protect and set free, began to rot. Willingly or not, you became as much a soulless abomination as those you now serve. In that, you are no better than your mother.”

The Hunter shot him an oddly stricken look, but Leitos ignored it, his thoughts turning inward. If he had learned anything from the Hunter’s tale, it was that self-deception, the so-called ‘lies and smiles’ was a deadly doctrine, a slow-acting poison that decayed a man, consumed him from within.

All at once, the Hunter leaped across the space between them, catching hold of Leitos’s neck. He did not squeeze down, but the threat of power was there, the feeling that he could snap bones with no effort. “Judge me as you will, boy, but you are a weak, useless fool. You will waste away and die as a slave, as all your people have before you.” With a sound of disgust, he flung Leitos aside, and returned to the hares.

Leitos sat up again, eyeing his captor. He struggled to bring his leaping thoughts under control.

Here before him was a man who might have been great. If not for the Faceless One, he could have been a warrior or a lord or even a king. Instead, the Faceless One and his ilk had bent him to their will as they had so many others, made him a hater and hunter of men. They had destroyed the Hunter’s mother’s soul, much the same as they had broken the spirits of multitudes the world over, making wretched beasts of mankind, who then willingly turned on each other for little or nothing.

That last was still hard to accept, but seemingly undeniable. And such, Leitos saw, was the Faceless One’s masterstroke. He had little need of great marauding armies to maintain power, for his subjects controlled themselves through their abiding mistrust of one another, and a desire to serve their own needs above the needs of others.

More thoughts spun through Leitos’s head, but they faded in the light of just one: How could he avenge the dying race of mankind? The only answer was the same enigmatic command that had been alive in his mind since he fled the mines. Grow strong and cruel. It was little enough to go on, all that he had in truth.

When the Hunter placed one of the roasted hares in Leitos’s hands, he abandoned all thoughts of not eating. Food would strengthen him and, he prayed, perhaps one strength would lead to gaining another, and another, until he could find a means to escape and resume his journey to find the Brothers of the Crimson Shield.

Chapter 11

“What is that?” Leitos asked, tugging the collar of the itchy tunic his captor had provided to keep the worst of the harsh sunlight off his back and shoulders.

While the Hunter had beaten him for speaking out of turn after dragging him from the river, the man had not so much as scowled since then for the same offence. For his part, Leitos had made it a habit to flinch and cower often around the Hunter, doing all he could to ensure that he seemed intimidated.

Now, at the worst, the brute ignored him when he asked after something, a silent indication that he would not answer. Most times, though, he responded to just about any question posed. The man held within his skull a wealth of information, apparently taught to him while he was a slave. Often, Leitos was simply curious about this or that. Aside from the vague images his grandfather’s stories brought to mind, he had no experience of the world.

Standing off to one side making water on a scraggly thorn bush, the Hunter turned his head at the question, squinting against the reddish light of the setting sun. They had paused on the crest of a sandstone bluff with a good view. “It’s a bone-town, you dolt,” the Hunter growled. “Just another open grave given over to sand and scorpions.”

Leitos ignored the insult, having grown accustomed to them. A few miles to the south, in the direction the Hunter looked, sprawled a sweeping collection of crumbled buildings. It was no mere town-bone or otherwise-but a city. They had traveled hard for a week. Until now, Leitos had seen only endless desert.

He studied the ruins more closely. Bleakness stole over him at the aspect of long abandonment, and darkness followed at a thought he could no longer afford to ignore. That is where I will kill him.

He had considered the same more times than he could count, but so far he’d not had the opportunity. Running was no option, for he had seen the uncanny way in which the Hunter could winnow out the signs of a passing serpent in the dead of night, and then follow it to its den and kill it for supper.

I must kill him, he thought again. There was no other choice, and there could be no more delay. He had even decided how he would do it, although the idea of crushing the Hunter’s skull with a rock while he slept still turned his stomach. Also, it must be done in the first hour after the Hunter fell asleep. That was when the man slept the soundest. After that, he began stirring. Within two hours after falling asleep, the Hunter became restive, jerking awake at the faintest sounds. This night, I will take back my freedom.

He looked away from the desolation of what had once been a sanctuary for humankind. “Not the town,” he said, hoping the thoughts of murder wrestling behind his eyes did not show on his face. He pointed out another landmark an equal distance to the west. “That.”

The Hunter finished his business, then moved to stand beside Leitos. He surveyed the land in all directions, save the one in which Leitos pointed. Leitos had witnessed this behavior often since they set out, and had adopted for himself the habit of always keeping a wary eye for potential threats.

The Hunter finally rested his gaze on the series of ragged craters gouged into the face of the desert. Most were small, no larger than the tumbledown abodes in the distant city. One in particular was far larger, a great bowl sunk into the face of the desert, with weathered fissures spreading crookedly from its crumbly rim. A layer of sand had accumulated on the bowl’s bottom, but the darker hues of scorched rock showed along the sides.

“I have heard it told that when the Three died,” the Hunter said, “burning stars fell from the heavens for months, the world cracked and trembled, and the seas raged far inland. With my own eyes, I have seen great cities throughout Geldain reduced to rubble by the Upheaval. Slavers and traders and the like say there are signs that the same happened the world over. Their elders told of a time when the sun did not give its light for a season or more.

“When light came again, bringing with it the new age-some years before the Faceless One took power-everything had changed. Where green things once grew, the lands had become dry and desolate. Where deserts had stretched for countless leagues, baking under the sun year-round, winter’s touch had swept in, burying all under snow and ice. Where land once stood, it had crumbled, allowing the waves of the sea to wash over fertile plains.”

Leitos nodded, for he had heard those same tales, and worse. According to Adham, the new age the Hunter spoke of was an age of darkness and loss, giving rise to demonic rule and the collapse of humankind’s greatest achievements. The Hunter saw his reaction and burst out laughing.

“Men say much, boy,” the Hunter said, “but mostly they utter lies. Take Geldain. It is as much a desert realm as ever it was.”

“But you said you have seen the destruction,” Leitos said, hiding his exasperation. “Do you now deny it … or was that another of your lies?” Belatedly, he recognized that he was treading on dangerous ground. The Hunter either did not notice, or dismissed it.

“On that score, I spoke the truth. I have seen signs like those holes in the earth, or places where the ground had been ripped apart, leaving bottomless chasms. As well, I have sheltered in what must have been grand palaces, and beside monuments hidden within cities so vast as to addle your wits. All were crushed by forces beyond my ken. But, who can say what really happened, and more, should we believe all that we hear about the world fairly breaking itself apart, even as stars fell from the heavens?” the Hunter asked in philosophical tone.

While Leitos coveted the knowledge the Hunter shared, it also never failed to leave him troubled. It was easier to think of the Hunter as a man of cruelty with little more than base cunning.

“Take my grandfather’s grandfather,” the Hunter continued, “born just after the Upheaval, and just before the coming of the Faceless One. Having never seen what had been before, he could only pass down what his father told him of those days-”

The Hunter paused in midsentence, eyeing Leitos’s odd expression. “What is it, boy?” he asked sharply, then scanned their surroundings, his hand falling to the hilt of his knife.

Leitos told himself he must have misheard. “My grandfather told me those same tales.”

Finding no impending trouble, the Hunter shrugged his broad shoulders. “Why should that bother you?” he snorted disdainfully.

“Your grandfather’s grandfather,” Leitos said slowly. “That would mean the last age ended nearly two hundred years ago.”

The Hunter offered him a bland look. “Depending on who does the telling, the new age dawned near on three or four lifetimes of men gone,” he confirmed. “But to my mind, the only thing that really matters is that the Faceless One rose from the ashes of what was, and he has ruled these past seven score years.” Such a vast number in relation to the Faceless One did not shock him anymore than it did Leitos, for it was known that the Faceless One was not human. Just what he was, however, was a matter of speculation.

“You do not understand,” Leitos insisted. “My grandfather told me he was a boy before the Faceless One came. He was old, but not that old.”

“I keep telling you, men are liars. Your grandfather included. I suspect he fed you all manner of deceits, the whole of your life. He probably lied so much that he began to believe his own drivel. If you were not such a blithering idiot, you would have thought about that before you fled your masters, and spared yourself a mountain of trouble.”

Indifferent to any response Leitos might have offered, the Hunter turned and followed a wild goat trail down off the bluff. Slipping and sliding, using stiff brush for handholds, they managed to reach the bottom just as the sun dropped below the horizon, its legacy setting the sky ablaze with a dusky crimson light.

The Hunter cast a sidelong glance at Leitos. “I’m curious, boy, just where did you plan to go when you fled?” His tone was almost friendly, his posture at ease-two mannerisms at odds with what Leitos knew of the man.

“Trust no one, save those of whom I’ve spoken,” Adham had warned, and now Leitos took that warning to heart.

“Away … I just wanted to get away. The slavemasters were butchering everyone.…” he faltered, remembering the smell of blood spilled into the dust, the screams and howls of the dying, his mind skipping over the blank spot during which his grandfather had perished. “I ran because I did not want to die for something that was not my fault,” he added, thinking that might convince the Hunter, if nothing else did. The sheen of tears in his eyes was real enough.

“We’ll sleep in the ruins tonight,” the Hunter said after a time, seemingly satisfied. “There are a few good wells, and I have yet to go hungry when sheltering within those walls. I hope you like wild dog. There are plenty about.”

“Do you know what the town was called before?” Leitos asked, knuckling wetness from his eyes.

The Hunter absently shook his head. “To me, it is and has always been the second bone-town north from Zuladah.”

“Zuladah,” Leitos muttered, his voice shaking from the sudden jump in his pulse. “That is where you’ll give me over to the Alon’mahk’lar.” It was not a question but a statement of truth, based on what the Hunter had previously revealed.

The Hunter did not so much as offer a sympathetic glance in Leitos’s direction. Emboldened by anger and genuine bemusement, Leitos asked the question he had before. “You curse the Alon’mahk’lar and the Faceless One, yet you would hand me over to those who will torture and chain me, as you were once tortured and chained. Why not stand against them, rally men to your side to fight against those who corrupted your own mother?”

Instead of answering, the Hunter scowled in the failing light. With a low curse, he set out at a slow trot toward the ruins of the bone-town. Leitos watched for a moment, thinking about trying to escape under the cover of night, thus avoiding the need to kill his enemy. As before when this thought crossed his mind, he quickly dismissed it. To make good his flight, the Hunter had to die.

With no other choice, Leitos followed the Hunter over a terrain of rock and sand, skirting bushes to avoid thorns, as well as any serpents that might be resting under their scant foliage. In short order, they reached an ancient roadway paved with broken slabs. On firmer ground, the Hunter increased his speed.

Full dark cloaked the lands by the time they reached the outskirts of the bone-town. The stars and the dull gray half-moon gave a little light, but not enough to make out much detail beyond a crumbled wall half buried under drifts of sand. At one time, the warding wall must have stood twenty feet or more. Men bearing spears, bows, and swords would have walked it of an evening, guarding the nameless town against bandits, or welcoming trader caravans and weary travelers. But no more. Now the bricks lay in heaps, wearing away under the constant onslaught of wind-driven sand and infrequent rains.

The Hunter rummaged through the leather satchel hanging by a long strap across his chest. He had worn it since departing the first of two hideaways, and it seemed to hold a great many useful things. Leitos expected the Hunter to pull out some implement to light the way, but instead he produced a tangle of leather thongs, from which hung a pair of teardrop-shaped stones.

“We’ll likely not need these, but we will wear them, just in case.”

“What are they?” Leitos edged closer, until his nose was no more than a hand’s width from touching the thumb-sized amulets. While he was no judge of craftsmanship, it was easy enough to tell that an inept hand had fashioned the reddish stones. Something about that hue, even in the darkness, caught his attention. He had seen such colored stone before, had on occasion dug it from the earth at the mines. He supposed it meant nothing, for there were many types of stone to be found under the desert sands. He focused on the amulets. If not for their similar shapes, he would have guessed the amulets had been found as they were, the only alteration being the holes bored in their points, allowing the threading of the leather thongs.

“Protection,” the Hunter said grimly.

Leitos took one of the crude necklaces and, mimicking the Hunter, dropped it over his head. It was heavier than he expected. “Protection from what?”

“Mahk’lar, boy,” the Hunter said, settling the satchel against his hip.

Leitos could not help but scoff. “There are no Mahk’lar, not anymore. And even if they did still wander the world, how could a bit of rock offer any protection against them?”

“For the life of me,” the Hunter said, “I cannot understand why the Faceless One bothers to hunt your people so vigorously. If he but let Izutarians alone, they would soon perish of their own stupidity.” He said this in an offhand way, but for no reason Leitos could fathom, he sensed the Hunter knew full well why the Faceless One enslaved his people.

Leitos eyed the lout with a questioning stare. The Hunter ignored him and strode toward what might have been a wide gate in the previous age, but was now just a gap in the bone-town’s wall.

“Mahk’lar are fewer than once they were,” the Hunter said, “that is true enough, as they nearly bred themselves out of existence. But not all the Fallen wanted to bind their spirits within the weaker flesh of their get, the Alon’mahk’lar, the Sons of the Fallen.”

“So,” Leitos said, “even among the followers of the Faceless One, there is rebellion.”

“I would hardly name it rebellion,” the Hunter retorted. “Rather a covenant that favors the Faceless One. He allows the few remaining Mahk’lar to run loose, but only because it serves his will.”

“And what would that be?”

Instead of an answer, the Hunter suddenly fell into a crouch, searching the ruins, head cocked as if he had heard something. Leitos imitated his posture. Up close, the town’s look of abandonment became a palpable sensation expressing complete loss. He neither heard nor saw anything dangerous, but started when the vague shape of a tumbleweed escaped an alley, rolled slowly across the broad roadway, then vanished into another alley. Then, far away, something thumped and creaked … thumped and creaked … then went still. Leitos imagined a door hanging from rusted hinges, opening and closing under the same gentle wind that had set the tumbleweed on its aimless journey. Farther still, a jackal cried to the night, an eerie, high-pitched yowling.

The Hunter abruptly released the hilt of his knife, straightened, and strode ahead. He appeared at ease, but Leitos knew better. He sensed more than saw a subtle tension in the set of the man’s shoulders, the furtive glances at each and every shadow. Nevertheless, he struck up his discourse again, as if he had never stopped.

“The Faceless One’s will and desire is to instill fear, and through that he exacts obedience,” the Hunter said. “Far as I know, that is all he desires of humankind-complete submission. Prowling Mahk’lar help ensure he gets it.”

Thinking of the slaves occasionally taken from the mines, with never a word about where they went, Leitos suspected that the Faceless One had other things in mind for humans. Yet, if he really was after something else, it did not matter as far as Leitos could see, for the result was the same: humanity in bondage.

For the better part of an hour, Leitos followed the Hunter deeper into the nameless bone-town. The moon rose higher, casting a bit more light. Leitos found himself thinking what his grandfather’s age would be if he had lived before the Upheaval. The answer was impossible to accept. This led to what the Hunter had said, “Men are liars … Your grandfather included.”

Leitos did not want to believe that about Adham, but could not help but wonder. The explanations he relied upon were merely the repeating of things Adham had told him. In truth, everything that he knew of the world outside of the mines was based on the stories his grandfather had fed him growing up.

Why would Adham have lied to me? The Hunter’s voice again provided the equally simple and altogether bleak answer. “Lies and smiles, boy-that is how you survive under the rule of the Faceless One and his devils.”

Can it really be so? Had his grandfather invented false stories in a bid to mask the hopelessness of a life spent chained and toiling? To retain some measure of sanity, had Adham given his life to ensure Leitos’s escape, set him seeking after a shadowy group of men whose existence even he had often seemed to doubt? Or had Adham gone irrevocably mad long before Leitos took that first step?

Leitos’s head ached with the effort of thinking these things through. More than anything he wanted to stop, throw himself upon the desolate street of this bone-town, and just give in.

While he continued moving along at the heels of the Hunter, his mind abruptly ceased wrestling with itself, letting his eyes see the truth. All around lay the evidence of what had been, the corpse of a place where men and women and children had lived before the Faceless One. Empty now, to be sure, but at one time folk had gathered together, built upon the desert, lived out their lives. If it was true here, then why not other places Adham had spoken of, in lands near and far?

The names of fallen realms filled his mind. Izutar, Aradan, Tureece, Falseth, Kelren, Geldain. And within each realm there had been many cities, great and small, corrupt and shining and in-between. It was certainly possible that Adham, caught in the throes of some insanity, had invented these places. But with the evidence of the bone-town all around, a city whose sunken foundations kept secret the name it once bore, Leitos had to believe some, if not all, of what Adham had told was real, and it did not matter if he had actually seen them before the Upheaval or not.

How many more bone-towns exist? Leitos thought then. By the Hunter’s lips, there were at least two lying north of Zuladah. If two, there could just as easily be a dozen, perhaps even scores, all of which had been destroyed by the Upheaval, or later subjugated by the Faceless One, a creature that walked the world in the form of a man, but who was not a man. A creature who had twisted the hearts and minds of humankind to the point that a mother would cut the heart from her living husband, then give over her only child for a loaf of bread, and perhaps a promise of peace.

Could not a creature such as the Faceless One also convince otherwise strong men that all they knew was a lie, that it was better to betray and hunt their own kind, rather than resist? His captor was evidence enough of that, but how many more were there in the world like him?

“Boy,” the Hunter snarled. He stood several paces away, peering at Leitos through the gloom.

Leitos glanced up, stunned to find that he had been so engrossed in his thoughts that he had stopped in his tracks. “I thought I heard something,” he mumbled, offering the only response that might convince the Hunter not to question his actions.

The Hunter tensed. “What did you hear?” he demanded, taking in the shadows.

He fears the Mahk’lar. Leitos was about to utter some lie, when he actually did hear something … a hushed scraping sound. The Hunter heard it too.

Though standing well apart, they turned as one, facing an alley heaped with smashed mudbricks, shards of wood from old barrels and crates, and moon-cast shadows. The scraping sound came again, followed by a rattling thud.

The Hunter drew his knife and inched toward the mouth of the alley. Leitos wanted to stay close, but as he had no weapons, he decided staying put was his best choice. As he watched the man’s broad back pass from the thin light given by the moon into the alley’s gloomy embrace, he again considered making a run for it, but just as quickly abandoned that idea. If left alive, the Hunter would find him.

The Hunter cursed under his breath, and Leitos moved forward, feet padding lightly over the sand-covered street. The dark of the alley greeted him as readily as it had the Hunter. The upper floor of one of the buildings bracing the alley had tumbled down, crushing a wagon laden with barrels and crates. Three-no, four skeletons lay half-buried under rubble. Doubtless, rescuers had come, hurling aside the bricks in a bid to free the victims, only to find that all had perished. As no one had fully dug out the dead to give them a proper burial, things in the city must have rapidly worsened.

When he stood near, Leitos whispered, “What did you find?”

“Save rats and shadows,” the Hunter said after a time, “there is nothing here. Come. I know a place nearby to rest for the night-”

The Hunter’s words cut off. Leitos froze at the sight of two wraithlike figures hovering at the mouth of the alley. He shot a glance over his shoulder, but a high wall blocked the other end. Leitos’s hand flew to the amulet at his throat. It was his only defense, but in that moment he feared that the trinket was utterly useless against Mahk’lar.

Chapter 12

The two figures closed in, spreading apart as they came. While they made no sound, and advanced with a disturbing grace, they did not float, as Leitos would expect from creatures of spirit. The duo approached as would cautious men, walking in crouches, each step placed precisely. He grew more troubled, thinking that the Alon’mahk’lar had tired of waiting for the Hunter to deliver his quarry, and decided instead to collect Leitos themselves….

But no, neither of the figures’ eyes glimmered beneath their hoods, and they stood far too short and too slender to be the offspring of the Fallen. In addition, the figures each bore a sword that would have been no larger than a dagger in the hand of an Alon’mahk’lar.

The Hunter abruptly straightened up to his full height. “After our last meeting,” he growled, “I did not expect to see the likes of either of you again.”

The two dark shapes halted. “How did you know it was us and not mere rogues, or greedy treasure seekers on the prowl?” the man on the left said. Friendly sounding or not, the man did not drop the tip of his sword. If anything, there was an almost imperceptible firming of his stance.

“He knew,” the other figure said dryly, “because only Hunters could possibly catch a Hunter off his guard. Isn’t that so, Sandros?”

Upon hearing the second figure speak, Leitos’s mouth dropped open, and a strange tingling rippled over his skin. Though he had never heard a woman’s voice, his grandfather had frequently spoken of their attributes-at least as often as he talked of freedom-and held them in high regard. But those wistful musings had in no way prepared Leitos for the stirrings he felt in his middle at the songlike tones of female speech. He imagined he could sit in the sand and let her run that sword of hers through his heart, if only she kept talking.

“Why are you here?” the Hunter demanded. “If I do not like your answer, I will string your guts from the eaves of this city.”

Unlike Leitos, he seemed unmoved by the man’s pleasantness or the woman’s voice. If anything, he too seemed more on edge. For Leitos, that last shattered the spell of hearing a woman speak for the first time, and he backed a careful step behind Sandros. Distractedly, he thought he would never be able to apply that name to the man he knew only as the Hunter.

“Sandros,” the woman said, feigning shock even as she sauntered closer, “are threats anyway to meet old friends?”

“You are no friend, Zera,” the Hunter said, pivoting a little in her direction. “And neither, Pathil, are you. That you have come together troubles me all the more.”

“Oh, come now!” Pathil said, jamming his sword into the scabbard hanging at his waist. “Enough posturing. Let us spend this night under a common roof, and take pleasure in our company.”

“As I remember it,” the Hunter said, “the last time we shared a roof, I awoke with you trying to poke that sword of yours through my heart.”

“A youthful blunder. Surely you do not still hold that against me-it is not as though I succeeded in marring even a single hair on your head.”

“Only because I broke your arm,” the Hunter said.

“And his nose,” Zera laughed, sheathing her own blade. “And nearly his neck.”

“See there?” Pathil said, his good humor sounding forced at the reminder. “You have nothing to fear. Besides, we all know you are and have ever been the best of us … maybe even the greatest Hunter ever to stride Geldain. Even against me and Zera, were we of a mind to attack you, I dare say you would shame us.”

Leitos listened to the odd banter, but suspected that what he was hearing was secondary to what was truly going on. “All men are liars,” the Hunter had said, and from another conversation, “They sent word to all their spies and Hunters to keep an eye out for a fleeing slave boy, and offered a fair reward to anyone who captured you.”

Zera glanced at Leitos, a bare shifting of her hooded head. Though he could not see them, he felt her eyes on him, a prolonged, invasive study. “Is this the boy the Alon’mahk’lar seek?” she purred. “Do not bother denying it,” she added, before the Hunter could do just that.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Pathil edged closer, coming abreast of Zera and passing her by, before halting no more than five paces from the Hunter. Like Zera, he moved with an unnerving grace.

Unaccountably, the Hunter seemed to take no notice, and went so far as to tuck his knife away. “Very well,” he said, visibly relaxing. He dropped a heavy hand on Leitos’s shoulder “It appears we will have guests this night.” He eyed Pathil and Zera. “I trust you have something to eat?”

Zera nodded. “The best fare to be had in Zuladah.”

“Which,” Pathil snorted, “is not so grand, but surely better than those boney, sun-cooked lizards we all ate together south of Loe-Sati.”

The Hunter’s abrupt laughter startled Leitos. In the next moment, the foursome were walking together, all outward hints of danger fading like water sinking into burning sand. Where the three Hunters chatted, Leitos coiled within himself, forced to accept that no matter what happened, he would not gain his freedom this night. Killing Sandros now, with the presence of two other Hunters, would be impossible.

It took little time to reach a large, domed building with a columned portico set upon the highest point in the center of the bone-town. Leitos suspected the decrepit palace had not been the Hunter’s original destination, as his previous hideaways had been uninviting and nearly undetectable. The place they entered stood out, an obvious beacon to anyone seeking shelter.

With unvoiced caution, they crept into the halls of the palace, passing a dozen or more partial skeletons, most of which had been scattered by scavengers many years gone by. They came to a vast and shadowed inner chamber, over which curved the palace’s cracked dome. Through a large gap, Leitos made out the light of a few stars, and wished he was out on the open desert, instead of trapped within the confines of what amounted to a massive tomb.

The Hunter laid a fire from previously gathered barrel staves, broken crates, and smashed furnishings. Whether the palace had been his destination or not, the Hunter’s familiarity of the place and its stores suggested he had been there before.

While the fire labored to push back the gloom and the night’s coming chill, the foursome dragged once plush chairs near the flames. Zera and Pathil shrugged off their hooded cloaks, hued in the same drab, desert tones as the Hunter’s garb, and Leitos momentarily forgot all his anxieties.

Rooting through a satchel similar to the Hunter’s, Pathil’s easy grin was made all the whiter by his smooth, sable skin. Black, close-cropped hair capped his head in small, tight curls. Where the Hunter was a large man, Pathil was slender. His corded arms poking out of his close-fitting, sleeveless tunic spoke of a quick, deadly strength. Leitos had a rough understanding of Pathil’s ancestry from Adham’s favorable stories of the races of southern Geldain who, before the Upheaval, had commonly produced companies of skilled mercenaries called Asra a’Shah.

As interesting as Leitos found Pathil, he considered Zera all the more so. Where her voice had stirred something unfamiliar and dangerously exciting within him, her olive-toned features held him captive. Of course, he had never seen a woman, but judging by Pathil’s and the Hunter’s frequent, admiring glances in her direction, he supposed Zera must be counted as attractive.

Like Pathil, Zera’s lithe arms held an uncommon strength, but they moved with far more natural and lethal grace as she drew a large round loaf of bread from her satchel, followed by a skin bloated by some sloshing liquid. Completely indifferent to the furtive looks of the other three, she turned away. Where Pathil wore a simple tunic and loose trousers, Zera’s clothing, a mix of cloth and leather, snugged against her body like a second skin. Besides her hands, neck, and face, no other part of her was uncovered. Leitos did not know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

He focused on her hair to avoid looking at the rest of her, noting that she had woven it into a long, glossy black braid. In a deft movement he nearly missed, she brought her palm to her lips, as if sneaking a bite of food, then spun around, catching Pathil and the Hunter off guard. They hastily looked away, avoiding her eyes, which flashed and glimmered in the firelight. She placed the loaf and the skin on her chair, then went back to digging in her satchel.

Leitos barely noticed her movements now. He stared into the flames, his mind fixated on the vision of her eyes. He had never seen such color, a liquid, shimmering green flecked with gold around the pupils….

All at once Leitos felt a lingering pressure upon him, and he glanced up to find the Hunter and Pathil looking his way. At his blush, they laughed aloud. Zera’s attention locked on Leitos. His lower jaw, dangling loosely, sprang shut hard enough that his teeth clicked. For the barest moment, her eyes narrowed. In the next, they softened. Her lips parted in an open, inviting smile. It was then that he realized she could be no more than a handful of years older than he, if that. Leitos fell into a state of near panic under her prolonged scrutiny, but in the back of his mind he wondered how such a young woman could have become a Hunter.

“Were your people not so few and far-flung, Zera,” Pathil said with a rueful shake of his head, “I dare say they could compel the hearts of men the world over to join in battle against the Faceless One.”

“Perhaps one day we will make the attempt anyway,” she said quietly, making it sound like a promise. Whether or not there was truth in her words, or merely some suppressed hope, Leitos breathed easier now that her attention had turned from him.

“No one will ever stand against the Faceless One,” the Hunter said firmly. “He is too strong.”

“Not to mention,” Pathil said with a mirthless smirk, “he has plenty of Hunters and spies to make sure the seeds of such a rebellion never land in fertile soil.”

At this change in the conversation, Zera avoided looking at either man, and seemed to struggle with some retort.

Pathil pulled a small, round table near the fire, then set about carefully unwrapping layers of thin cloth from two fist-sized rounds of some pale white substance marbled with darker streaks. Using a wicked looking dagger, he sliced the rounds into wedges, releasing a pleasing aroma. Leitos hoped whatever it was Pathil was preparing was food.

Zera tore the loaf into four pieces and passed them around. Leitos was surprised that she gave him the largest portion, and thought to thank her. But then she was moving away with such indifference that he guessed there had been more happenstance in her gift than compassion. Pathil plopped into his chair and proceeded to fling the pale wedges to the others.

Leitos caught his, momentarily juggling it with his share of bread. He sniffed at the firm but yielding substance, and saliva filled his mouth. He looked up, found the others eyeing him, and his eyebrows raised in question.

“Cheese, boy,” the Hunter grumbled. “You eat it.”

Leitos took a tentative bite. It was smooth on his tongue, and the sharp flavor nearly overwhelmed him. He took a nibble of bread to keep from drooling. In moments, he had gobbled both handfuls.

“You have never tasted cheese?” Zera asked, then shook her head and answered her own question. “Of course not. You are a slave.”

Instead of eating her share, she handed it to Leitos. He mumbled a thanks, unable to hold her gaze. Not that she seemed to care. She wheeled away, snatched up another wedge of cheese, and sat down. Even watching Zera eat with small, dainty bites drove Leitos into a baffling state of pleasurable unease. He concentrated on making his second course disappear.

He avoided licking his fingers, but only because Zera was looking at him again, even as she pulled the cork stopper from the fat skin Leitos had seen earlier. She directed a stream of dark red liquid past her parted lips. A little dribbled over the rounded point of her chin, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. The Hunter took the offered skin with a cautious gleam in his eyes.

“Even if the wine is poisoned,” she laughed, “I am sure you took the proper measures to survive.”

The Hunter grunted, took a long drink, and sighed with pleasure. He handed the skin to Leitos, but as he took it, Zera gave a nearly imperceptible shake of her head.

What do I do? He thought in alarm, holding the skin halfway to his lips. As his hesitation grew, so did his nervousness.

“Well, don’t just sit there, drink up,” the Hunter chided.

“It won’t hurt you,” Pathil said, his tone lighter but no less biting.

Leitos darted a look at Zera, but she sat motionless across the fire from him, its flames dancing in her placid gaze. Had she sent him a message of caution, or had he imagined it?

He swallowed, brought the wineskin to his lips, then jerked back, nose wrinkling. His reaction was partly an act, true, but for some reason he had expected a sweet aroma. He all but flung the skin at Pathil, who caught it with an oath condemning Leitos’s clumsiness, then proceeded to drain half the contents into his mouth. Zera’s eyes narrowed briefly at Leitos, then her face cleared, and she laughed with the men.

Leitos reclined in his chair, glad his belly was full of something besides the usual lizards, snakes, and scrawny desert hares the Hunter had provided on their southward trek. He feigned sleepiness, but he puzzled over Zera’s subtle warning.

Finding no answers, he eventually became drowsy, and the others spoke in low tones. On the morrow or the next, he thought, slipping into a welcome slumber, they will go their way, and I will be able to kill the Hunter….

His eyes flew open seemingly moments later at the pressure of a hand clamped over his mouth. Zera’s face loomed before his, her emerald gaze bright with urgency. “Time to go, boy,” she whispered harshly.

Chapter 13

When Leitos nodded, Zera moved away. The fire had died down, proving he had been asleep at least an hour or two.

Eyes slitted, Pathil sprawled half-in, half-out of his chair, a line of spittle hanging from his bottom lip to his chest. He seemed all too aware of what was happening, but was unable to control his limbs. Sandros fared a little better. One arm slowly stretched out, fingers clutching as if to catch hold of Zera’s throat. He mumbled unintelligibly, but Leitos heard the venom in his voice. The Hunter swallowed audibly, then managed, “Treacherous … whore.”

Zera laughed caustically. “By this time tomorrow or the next day, the effects of the poison I put in the wine will wear off, and you two will be as hale as ever.”

She dismissed Sandros and faced Leitos. No kindness shone in her stare. “You will stay at my side, boy. Fail that, and I will leash you. Understood?”

Leitos nodded slowly, having barely heard her. All he could think about was that he had to kill his captor to gain his freedom … and now that meant killing Zera. He had been able to envision crushing Sandros’s head with a rock, just barely, but not Zera. He wanted to scream in outrage at the unfairness.

“Carry this,” Zera said, thrusting the Hunter’s satchel into Leitos’s arms. Like her own, it was filled to bursting with supplies.

Sandros rasped, “I … will … find you.”

Before he could say more, Zera turned and smashed her fist against the big man’s jaw. He flew out of his chair and sprawled in the dust. Anything else he might have said was lost amid a sighing groan. Leitos stared, incredulous that she could have so easily crushed the consciousness from a veritable mountain of a man.

Zera pulled a length of cord from her satchel and tied Sandros’s hands behind his back tight enough to deeply crease his skin, then bound his ankles to his wrists. She did the same to an unresisting Pathil, then caught Leitos by the back of the neck and shoved him ahead of her. Pathil’s groggy laughter chased them from the decaying palace.

Out of doors, a faint gray line brightened the eastern sky above shattered rooftops, but stubborn shadows pressed down upon the ruins of the bone-town, refusing to surrender their dominion. Zera struck out to the south at a brisk pace. Imagining a short tether tight about his neck, Leitos stayed no more than a pace behind her, frantically wondering how he was going to get away from her.

“Why did you spare them?” Leitos asked abruptly, thinking to learn all he could about her convictions in as short a time as possible-anything that might aid his escape. She glared at him, and for a moment he was certain she meant to crack his skull.

“Hunters do not slay Hunters,” she said, her voice filled more with anxiety than anger. A moment later she amended that claim. “Except Sandros who, some say, has killed many of his brethren. Such may be lies, but he has never denied it. That is why the Alon’mahk’lar favor him. Another reason is because he hates men even more than the Sons of the Fallen. The stalking wolves of the Faceless One reward and nurture such hatred among their servants,” she finished, as if she herself was not a stalking wolf of the Alon’mahk’lar.

Leitos waited for her to add anything, but she kept quiet. With his mind awhirl at the sudden change of events, he could not think of anything else to ask. They strode along in silence until passing the southern gate. Zera halted there, looked in all directions, then took a thick bundle of cloth from her satchel.

“Wear this,” she said, tossing him a cloak. “It will keep the coming sun off your northern skin better than those rags Sandros gave you.”

He drew on the hooded cloak. It fit his small frame like a long robe. “Pathil will not miss it,” Zera said, running a critical eye over his attire. Locking on his bare feet, she dug through her satchel again and produced another bundle. “They are mine, but should fit you well enough.”

One after the other, Leitos pulled on a pair of leather, calf-high boots. They squeezed his toes, but not enough to trouble him. He had never worn footwear, and he rejoiced at the feel of soft leather encasing his feet. He walked a small circle. The tough soles were thin enough that he lost almost no sensation of the ground underfoot.

“Good,” Zera said with a brisk nod. “Now we can make better time.”

Leitos’s reflexive thanks withered on his tongue. “If you mean to return me to the Alon’mahk’lar, then you might as well kill me.”

Zera grinned. “You can go where you will. However, if you wish to hold to your freedom and your life, you will stay with me.”

Leitos blinked uncertainly. “All that about leashes-”

“A farce,” Zera interrupted, her grin widening. “Something to ensure Sandros and Pathil keep believing I am a proper Hunter-the same as them. They will be angry with my apparent treachery, but such deceptions are not uncommon among Hunters, and are expected besides. For the most part, they will be angry with themselves for underestimating me.”

Past voices filled Leitos’s mind. Trust no one, save those of whom I’ve spoken … All men are liars. “If you are not a Hunter, then who are you?”

“A friend.”

“How can I believe you?” he insisted.

She laughed, a low and enticing sound. “If you have any wish to become an old man, you can ill afford to fully trust me, or anyone else, ever. But know that in safeguarding your freedom, I stand on your side.” Unless I decide to become your enemy, she did not add, though it seemed implied.

Dawn’s soft pink light overtook the gray in the east, as Leitos mulled his choices: leave her and go alone, or stay with her and blindly hope she did not betray him, as she had Sandros and Pathil. Zera did not demand his immediate decision, but she fidgeted, eager to move on. He chose to let her answer to his next question decide whether he would stay with her, or set off on his own. “Where will we go?”

“In time, we will go west, boy, beyond the Mountains of Fire, then to the Crown of the Setting Sun. That is where you will find those you seek.”

“How could you know-” he blurted, stopping himself too late.

“Where else would you go?” Zera said impatiently. “That you are a slave in Geldain marks you as Izutarian.”

“Why does that matter?” Leitos asked.

“Long has there been an alliance between Izutar and those in Geldain who are faithful to the memory of the age before the Upheaval, and the rise of the Faceless One. Although the faithful are few, they never cease trying to counter him at every turn. He has succeeded in hiding this opposition, but he has failed to destroy it.”

“You are speaking of the Brothers of the Crimson Shield,” Leitos said cautiously, wondering why Adham had never mentioned any alliance. If not for Zera’s accuracy about his destination, he would have kept silent … or perhaps not. Even after all he had experienced since fleeing the mines, he found it almost impossible not to reveal his secrets to her. In truth, he wanted to trust her with everything.

“Yes,” Zera said. “And I masquerade as a Hunter in order to serve the brotherhood.”

Leitos thought about the Hunters, all who served the Alon’mahk’lar, and found it unimaginable that anyone could achieve such ends without detection. “How do you know that Sandros and Pathil have not guessed what you are about and won’t track us into the west?”

“We do not have time for this,” Zera cautioned, looking back toward the bone-town.

“If I am to go with you, then I must be able to trust you.”

“I cannot know the minds of Sandros and Pathil,” Zera said reluctantly. She motioned him to walk with her. “I will explain what I can on the way.”

Leitos strode along, waiting for her to gather her thoughts.

“Soon after the Faceless One made it known that he sought to enslave all Izutarians,” she began, “the last king of Izutar raised his banners in rebellion. The Faceless One crushed all resistance, and sent the enslaved to Geldain. The northern king retreated, still fighting, but he also made a pact with the Brothers of the Crimson Shield-rather, the father of the brotherhood, a man who rode with the king in the days before he gained his throne.”

“What pact?”

“You really do not know?” Zera said, arching an eyebrow at him. Leitos shook his head. She sighed. “The brotherhood agreed to do all they could to free any northern-born slaves in Geldain, in honor of past loyalties.”

“That pact must not have been very strong. There have been few if any slaves ever freed from bondage in Geldain.”

“True,” Zera agreed, “but that has nothing to do with any weakness in the fellowship between the King of the North and the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. You must understand, the Alon’mahk’lar hold Geldain with unflinching brutality. Even where it seems that men walk free, they are, in truth, as much slaves as any who wear chains. Freeing anyone in Geldain is no small matter.

“Now, in answer to your earlier question: I thwart the control of the Alon’mahk’lar whenever I can by posing as one of their agents. If it is ever found out that I serve the brotherhood, I will be tortured to discover all that I know, then killed.”

“So,” he said slowly, “did you become a Hunter before or after you joined this … this secret struggle?”

“After,” Zera said without hesitation. “So, boy, do we stay together, or do you wish to test your wits against Sandros and Pathil?”

“I will stay with you,” he said, seeing little choice in the matter. In his heart, he hoped she spoke the truth. Not just because it would be good to have an ally, but because he knew he would never be able to kill this woman. “My name is Leitos.”

Zera studied him a moment. “Leitos,” she said slowly. “I like that.” She offered him another those secretive grins, cracking her mask of hard, cruel beauty, and making her into a pretty young woman.

That smilewill be the death of me. Even as this idea drifted through his consciousness, a garbled shout echoed from deep within the ruins of the bone-town.

Zera’s head whipped around. “Sandros,” she hissed in disbelief. “He is stronger than I imagined. He will be weak for days, but he will soon follow. Come, Leitos, it is time to run.”

Chapter 14

They ran until Leitos began to lag. Zera halted long enough to take his satchel, then they set out again. “We must reach Zuladah as soon as possible,” she said, scanning the brightening emptiness at their backs.

“Why not just flee into the west?” Leitos panted.

“Long has the Faceless One known of the Brothers of the Crimson Shield,” she said, breathing easily, “yet he has never been able to crush them. I cannot allow Sandros, or any other Hunter, to suspect that I am part of that order. To ensure that, Sandros must believe I am taking you to Zuladah … which, of course, I am.”

Leitos rubbed sweat from his eyes, thinking that made no sense. “Won’t there be Alon’mahk’lar in Zuladah?”

“Yes,” Zera said. “We go into the very heart of the adder’s nest, just where Sandros would expect a fellow Hunter to take a slave captured this side of the River Ul’aman. When he gives chase, he will think I mean to give you over to the slavemasters. Out of fear of losing his status among them, he dare not ask the Faceless One’s lackeys if I handed you over. In time, he and the Alon’mahk’lar will begin to hear rumors of your unfortunate death-a common fate of escaped slaves. It is a dangerous game we play, one that may be found out, and so I will also use Zuladah’s populace to cover our escape.”

“If you mean to spread word of my death,” Leitos said, “then I still do not understand why we go to Zuladah.”

“If you need another reason,” Zera said, impatience tightening her voice, “it is because we require supplies to make the journey, which I can only get in Zuladah.”

Leitos had no head for such scheming, and decided to leave it to her.

The day passed, a seemingly endless flight under scorching heat and blinding sunlight, across a dead land filled with sand and dust and scrub. The only good Leitos could count was that the Hunter’s furious cry had not come again, suggesting that Zera’s poison had done its work. But Sandros would follow at some point, of that Leitos had no doubt.

By the time they reached the second bone-town two days later, all Leitos really cared about was water. Zera had doled out sips from a waterskin along the way, always giving him a greater measure than she herself took. In addition, she occasionally fed him hard strips of leathery, salty meat. “It is not much,” she said once, “but it will keep up your strength.”

On the rare occasions Zera bothered to say anything, she usually sounded like that-distant, as if talking to herself. The Hunter had also spoken to himself. But then, who else do they usually have to speak with, other than themselves? In a strange way, he suspected the Hunters were as much slaves as he had been.

The second bone-town resembled the first, a forsaken habitation of crumbled buildings and smashed palaces, all surrounded by a fallen warding wall. The only true difference was the size. With nightfall coming swiftly, he judged that the first bone-town had been a mere village next to the second. Leitos imagined the city as it had been before the Upheaval, a thriving capital of some lost kingdom, filled not with thousands of people, but tens of thousands. For the barest moment the illusion held, the grandeur of life made all the more believable by the golden glow cast by the dwindling sunlight….

Then the sun sank below the horizon, and the inviting city of gold and light transformed into a vast and open crypt bathed in blood. The false allure withdrew, revealing a haunt of jackals and carrion birds, lost spirits and lurking shadows. Jagged and misshapen, the bones of what forgotten men had built rose toward the coming night, as if in supplication for an unattainable mercy.

“Leitos,” Zera said softly, concern furrowing her brow, “are you well?”

Leitos pulled back from the dismal trance. “Yes,” he lied. He had not known the people who had once lived in the city, did not even know its name, but he felt those long-dead people around him, as if they yet lived.

Avenge the blood of our forefathers. That command now meant more to Leitos, and he was beginning to understand why his grandfather had given his life. He had wanted freedom for Leitos, but more, he desired that all men would one day live free of the Faceless One’s bondage. But how, grandfather, can I accomplish what you died for? At that moment, Leitos felt weaker than ever.

“Are you sure you were not bitten by something?” Zera asked sharply, catching his head in her hands and studying his face. “You look sick.”

Leitos froze, mesmerized by the color and depth of her eyes. Her skin was hot against his, her closeness pressing in. With a sigh, all the world seemed to pass away, leaving only him and Zera. Dust coated her cheeks and brow, but could not mar the smoothness of her skin. His pulse raced at the thought of drawing nearer, of falling into her embrace, of pressing his lips against hers-

As though by an unspoken command, they moved away from each other. A little breathless, and wholly confused, Leitos nodded belatedly at her question. “I am just thirsty and hungry,” he said, almost choking on the words. Had she seen into his mind, or read his features?

After a final lingering glance that seemed, ever so briefly, to mirror his uncertainty, Zera swept her gaze over the nearby ruins. “Better if we had reached the far side of the city before dark,” she said, “but there is nothing for that now.”

“I am not too tired to go on,” Leitos offered. That was an absolute lie, but he would rather press on, than set camp and try to act like his mind had not run rampant with amorous thoughts.

“Bone-towns are dangerous at any time, but more so after the sun falls,” Zera said. She pointed out a large building. Blocky and plain, it squatted in shadow like a broken thing just inside the collapsed city gate. “We will shelter there.”

Zera led the way to an area in front of the building littered with cracked paving stones. She sat Leitos down on a sturdy bench pulled from under a pile of rubble. Without a word of explanation, she walked back into the street, now enshrouded by the coming night. It was hard to see what she was up to, but for a long moment she appeared to be getting undressed. Sweat sprang up on Leitos’s brow. When he realized that she had only taken off her cloak, he breathed easier.

She strode to the city gate and, using her cloak like a broom, she whisked away all evidence of their passage back to where Leitos was sitting.

“What about our tracks outside the city?” Leitos asked, compelled to learn from Zera the same way he had learned from the Hunter.

Zera shot him a devious grin. “Sandros-and Pathil, if he chooses to follow that brute-will believe I am taking you to Zuladah to gain my reward. The road south is the safest and fastest way to get you there, so there is no reason to hide our route. But when they find that our tracks end at the gate, they will have two choices: waste time by searching the entire city, on the chance that I am up to something else, or try to get ahead and catch us on the road. Either way, they will have to take time to try and outwit me, which gives us more time to outwit them.”

“Could they do that?” Leitos asked, worried more about what they might do to Zera than to him. “Could they get ahead of us, even with the poison you gave them?”

“Anything is possible,” she admitted, “but highly unlikely. Because Sandros is so large a man, I sprinkled a double measure of poison in the wine-much to Pathil’s regret, I am sure.”

“But that shout,” Leitos said. “That did not sound like someone who was poisoned.”

Zera gave him a flat look. “Do not doubt me, boy.”

Chagrined, Leitos shrugged. “I still do not understand why you let them live.”

“I am not in the habit of repeating myself,” Zera snapped. “But because you seem rather slow of mind, I will explain it to you once more. A true Hunter takes great pleasure in besting their fellows, and leaves them alive to spread the tale of how they were outwitted, thus earning the respect of other Hunters and, more importantly, the trust of the Alon’mahk’lar.”

Leitos held silent, and Zera produced a skein of dark cord from her satchel and strung it low off the ground, crisscrossing it over all available paths needed to enter their shelter. After creating a nearly undetectable web, she anchored the cord’s ends to various bits of rubble. To the last, those pieces sat precariously upon other debris, and Leitos guessed that if any careless searcher passed by, their feet would tangle in the cord and drag down enough bricks to make a terrible racket. Even if her web was detected, there was no way to breach it without the same end.

While she worked to perfect her trap, Leitos thought about what she had said about Hunters, and decided that it sounded like a baffling game, and said as much.

Moving sections of the cord to more satisfactory places, Zera nodded absently. “Indeed it is, and all the world of men is forced to play by the rules and pleasure of the Faceless One. Living and dying, scheming against one another, these things come naturally enough, but the Faceless One and his Alon’mahk’lar have raised the stakes, disallowing any escape when you grow weary of the sport.”

“What does the Faceless One hope to gain?”

Zera shrugged. “No one really knows. Some think his motivation is simply an abiding love for brutality. Others believe he has another goal in mind, some unknown secret, and that he pits men against each other to distract them from his true ends. For me, all that matters is destroying the Faceless One and his hordes. That is what I live for, and what I will die for. It is for others to decide what happens after.”

Leitos stopped himself from saying how bleak that sounded.

“I trust you have a stone of protection?” Zera asked, drawing one similar to that which he wore from under the collar of her snug tunic. He nodded in answer, but she wanted to see it before believing him. She came close enough to fill him again with that stirring anxiety, then moved away, and led him into the building.

She halted just inside the entrance, dug through her satchel, and pulled out a palm-sized leather sack. Leitos gasped when she untied the drawstring and upended it, spilling a brightly glowing, pale amber glass orb into her hand.

“Firemoss,” she said in answer to his amazement. “When dry it casts no light, but add water and.…” She raised the glass ball, letting its radiance speak for itself. “It can only be harvested from the Qaharadin Marshes, north across the Sea of Drakarra-” her eyes found his “-your homeland.”

“That swamp lies far to the south of Izutar,” Leitos said, “so my grandfather told me.” At some point, Adham had mentioned firemoss as well, but Leitos had never expected to see any.

Zera shrugged at his correction and moved away, following the glow of firemoss. Leitos trailed after her, trying to focus on what the light showed, but finding his eyes drawn again and again to her silhouetted shape. While that was an attractive vision, his mind shifted, and he found himself basking in the idea of what her lips must feel like-

You are a fool, he scolded himself. There is nothing between us, and there never will be. Instead of relief, or a sense of acceptance, that idea brought only melancholy. You are a fool, he chided himself again.

They did not go far into the building before coming to a broad, square room filled with wooden furnishings so heavily dry-rotted as to be useless.

“This may have been the common room of an inn,” Zera said, placing the firemoss globe in a broken bowl sitting on a table. Instead of bread and cheese, she laid out a meal of water and more dried meat.

While he ate, Zera paced back and forth, the firemoss casting too small a glow to drive back the gloom. With each step she seemed to grow more agitated, and a deep frown pinched her brow.

“I must find water,” Zera muttered quietly. Before leaving, she pressed a short knife into his reluctant hand. “If anyone comes, defend yourself.” Leitos nodded, certain she was annoyed with him.

She left, depleted waterskins in hand, melding silently into the waiting shadows. Alone, Leitos worried off a bite of the leathery meat, but found it salty to the point of bitterness. He spat it out, wiped his lips, and stood up. He wandered aimlessly about the room, keeping at the verge between darkness and light.

There was nothing to see that did not bring to mind the futility of standing against the Faceless One: a human skull buried under a stack of broken benches, as if in some bygone era someone had hidden a friend or a loved one with all that was at hand; an abandoned packrat’s nest of twigs and straw and scraps of what might have been cloth but looked more like scraps of skin; shattered crockery and a collection of cracked wooden cups that would never again hold liquid.

All of it spoke of the failure to overcome the evil days that had befallen the world long before his birth. Yet, for the memory and love of his grandfather, he would take the path of vengeance Adham had set him upon. He would reach the Crown of the Setting Sun and find the Brothers of the Crimson Shield.

He settled under the table upon which the firemoss globe faintly glowed within a black void, and tucked one of the satchels under his head. He waited for Zera’s return, but sleep took him long before she came back.

Chapter 15

Zera hovered over Leitos. The emerald vibrancy of her eyes had dimmed, as had the glow of the firemoss, which now cast all in the sickly, greenish light of corruption. Everything looked wrong, skewed and malignant.

“Did you find water?” Leitos asked. Though it seemed the wrong question, he needed to hear her voice.

Instead of answering, she lifted her arm, her face as blank as that of a corpse. A solitary waterskin floated up, its neck clenched in her fist. It hung above him, bloated, leaking some reeking, honey-thick pestilence that collected on the underside in a single, quivering bead of moisture. Leitos tried to move away before it could fall, but an unseen force held him captive, constricted his chest. The droplet grew fatter … fatter … stretching toward its eventual release.

I cannot let it touch me, he thought, eyes growing wider with each passing moment. Try as he might, he could not shift even a finger. Within that drop, now the hue of poisoned, long-dead blood, his distorted reflection stared back, a terrified spirit-boy held captive by invisible bonds. “Please,” Leitos wailed, “do not do this … please.”

Zera’s pupils lost their shape, swirled like a befouled mist, devouring the dull green. Swiftly, that eddying darkness obscured even the whites of her eyes, then began to trickle over her cheeks. Hissing, those rivulets parted her flesh as though sliced with a keen blade, revealing the underlying bone.

“The age of men has ended,” she said hollowly. But it was not her voice, not anything human. “You are but a wasp without a sting, droning about its nest, smelling the smoke, but impotent against the coming inferno. Power never meant for mortals has nevertheless taken hold within their unworthy flesh. Better that you open your veins, than dare to stand against the coming tide of fire.”

Leitos’s gaze darted from the horror of Zera’s melting features to the engorged, venomous globule hanging from the waterskin-a corrosive fluid, surely the same substance that dribbled from her now oozing sockets. Then something stirred beneath her tunic, a pulsing, undulating, swelling movement that brought bile to the back of his throat. There is something inside her … trying to get out.

As if drawn by that thought, a vaporous thread wormed out of her forehead, another from her neck. More pierced her clothing. Before he could fully register what was happening, each of the threads had thickened to the size of his finger … his wrist … his thigh, nearly obscuring Zera. Their mottled surfaces rippled, dripped, thrashed. Bone broke apart with a sodden crunching noise. A wriggling stew boiled out of her ruptured skull, poured over her shoulders, splattered at her feet. Her mouth yawned to release a single, deep, resonant note.

Clapping his hands to his head, Leitos shut his eyes and screamed in a bid to block the sight and sound of the nightmarish vision-

Fingers, powerful and digging, caught hold of his arms and dragged him into a sitting position. He refused to open his eyes, and the hands holding him upright slid to cradle his face. “We must leave,” Zera said gently. It was her voice, the real Zera.

Leitos opened his eyes, expecting the worst, but finding all was as it should be, down to her blazing green gaze. “A nightmare,” he muttered. “It was … was….” He could not finish. No words could convey the horror of what he had seen, nor express his relief that it had not been real.

Zera hauled him to his feet. “You can tell me about it later,” she said, struggling for calm. “Now, we must flee.”

“Is there danger?” he asked, having no intention of recounting the nightmare.

Zera repacked the satchels while she spoke, her movements hurried, but not one wasted. “There is much of the world that you do not know. The Faceless One is powerful, but there are things worse than him.”

Leitos helped as he could, but mostly just got in the way. “What things?”

“Mahk’lar,” Zera said.

“They are here?” Leitos asked, looking to the darkest corners for movement that was not there.

“Yes,” Zera answered, and said no more.

They made their way out of the building by another route than the way they entered. Every step was precarious, and more than once they had to climb over wobbly mounds of brick, leaning tangles of collapsed timbers, or dusty piles of furniture.

Once free of their temporary shelter, Zera led them deeper into the city. They crossed open areas in a crouched run, hugged walls between places that offered cover. Where she stalked along leaving no trail, Leitos made a terrible racket no matter how he tried to mimic her stealth. She scowled at him when his foot loudly crunched through a slat of wood. Without a word, she placed his hand on her trailing shoulder, indicating with a look that he dare not let go. Soon after Zera halted in a dark alley.

“You are not telling me something,” Leitos whispered, but even that sounded too loud.

She eyed him a moment, then nodded in appreciation. “You are no fool, but your insight will earn you no comfort. The few Mahk’lar that have always resisted joining with the Faceless One,” she said, resuming her sneaking stride, “have hidden themselves away in order to build their own army. Some believe they mean to rise against both the Faceless One and humankind, and take the world they believe is rightfully theirs.”

Leitos swallowed. “An army of what?”

“Abominations, horrors unimagined by even the most depraved and forsaken mind,” Zera said. “Strange breeds of Alon’mahk’lar.”

“Is that why we are fleeing?” Leitos wondered aloud.

Instead of answering, Zera jerked him off the street and into a readily defensible nook created by a building’s collapsed side wall. In the same motion, she dropped into a crouch and dragged him down by her side. A long, slender dagger appeared in her hand.

Remembering the knife she had given him earlier, Leitos drew it from his satchel. In comparison to hers, it was a paltry example of a weapon. He waited, looking from Zera to the narrow, twisting street. Zera fixated on something, but he made out only darkness, outlines of collapsed buildings-

He detected a shape … a shadow within a shadow, low to the ground, sliding along in perfect silence. Something about the way it glided over the roadway, like a thick mist, raised the hair of his head. Once seen, he noticed more shapes like the first. Their paths seemed aimless, and thus unpredictable.

“Gods good and wise,” Zera breathed. Though just audible, her voice carried a note of fear that compounded Leitos’s own. “The city is overrun with Mahk’lar.”

“Then why did you bring us here?” Leitos demanded, his voice little more than a trembling hiss.

“Bone-towns have always been haunts for Mahk’lar,” Zera said. “Stones of protection prevent them from possessing the living … but I have never seen such a gathering.”

“What do we do?” Leitos asked, clutching the stone dangling from its leather cord around his neck, even as he wondered how a bit of polished rock could offer any defense against creatures of the Thousand Hells.

Before she could answer, a chill blade slid up Leitos’s spine. He flung himself against Zera, who first cursed his clumsiness, then went rigid, eyes locked on something over his shoulder.

Leitos wheeled. Within the darkness before his eyes hung something darker still, a total absence of light in the shape of no living creature he had ever seen. The blade that had caressed him was no blade at all, but a jagged, inky-black talon. That terrible claw raised up amid eight others, all spread in a wide fan. They slashed suddenly, almost playfully, across his face. Cold agony raked through one cheek, the bridge of his nose. He wrenched back with a garbled shout. With the pain came a brief flaring of dull blue light that originated from the stone of protection and raced over his skin, then dissipated in crackling sparks.

The Mahk’lar jerked away with a hiss, a twisted thing trailing wisps of vapor. A single gray eye centered in its forehead narrowed in hate. “Yours is a destiny cursed,” it snarled. “The age of men is an undying corpse longing for the reeking soil of the grave.” The demonic spirit said more as it retreated and vanished, the words spoken in a language beyond human understanding.

“Come,” Zera urged, rising from her knees.

Heart pounding, Leitos touched his face, and found the skin whole. “What of the Fallen?” he asked.

“Safeguarded as we are by the stones of protection, no Mahk’lar can harm our souls or our flesh, but their creations-the Alon’mahk’lar-can destroy us.” She dragged him up and over the rubble at their backs, and they dropped into a lightless alley.

Shaking off his revulsion, Leitos pulled his wrist from her grip. “I will follow.”

Zera thought about that for a heartbeat, then set off. Soon, they were jogging along, crisscrossing the barren city on what seemed to Leitos a haphazard path. He did not question her. He did not have the breath, for one, and for another it was apparent that she wanted to escape the Mahk’lar as much as he did. Still, he could not help but wonder if wandering about, instead of simply climbing over the nearest city wall, was the best choice.

Large as the city was, they kept on for an hour or more, and still there seemed to be no indication that they were getting closer to escaping. Zera paused at a building that had burned hot enough to powder its brick structure. Around its foundation grew a stand of tall, stiff, bushy weeds yellowed and dried from the summer heat.

“Here we are,” she said, as if she had been looking for those weeds in particular. She used her dagger to cut through several woody stems, and pulled her skein of cord from her satchel. Dividing the weeds in half, she tied each bunch together, then secured one cord around Leitos’s waist, and the end of the other around her own.

She moved off, the trailing foliage obscuring her tracks. Leitos could not help but think it was a pointless endeavor, given that they had left a trail throughout the city, but amended his judgment when the city wall abruptly materialized out of the night. Understanding dawned. They were about to escape onto the road to Zuladah, and she was still trying to confuse Sandros and Pathil.

Not for the first time, Leitos felt inept for the task with which Adham had charged him. He had completely forgotten about the two Hunters. If left to his own devices, he would have simply run. Such an oversight would surely have meant his capture. He berated himself, but also committed the lesson to memory.

Zera angled toward a sprawling break in the wall, and a din of growls rose up. Zera slid to a halt. Leitos careened into her and bounced off.

“Cut yourself free,” she said, low but insistent. In place of the dagger she had been using, now her sword came to hand. “Defend yourself, Leitos, for we face Alon’mahk’lar.”

As monstrous figures closed in, Leitos stabbed his fist into the satchel tangled about his shoulders, slicing his fingers on the small knife he had stored away. Hissing, he pulled the weapon free and slashed the cord tied about his waist. He backed away as one of the creatures came closer than the others, an enemy so hideous that the sight of it threatened to unravel his mind.

The Alon’mahk’lar had the shape of a dog, and a cluster of bulbous eyes, glowing an ugly amber, sprouted from its broad, knotted forehead. Spines of bone stretched in a ridge from its thick neck to its lashing, club-like tail. Powerful limbs propelled it, legs that had more joints than they should, each knobby and dense with rippling muscle and cords of taut sinew. A rough, splotchy maroon hide covered it.

Zera flung Leitos aside as if he were no more substantial than an empty sack. At the same time, she flitted sideways as the creature sprang. Its mouth, a reeking cavern filled with back-curving fangs, snapped closed around the empty space where she had just been, spraying slaver. Her sword flashed, parting the side of the creature’s neck. Spinning, Zera whirled her sword in a tight circle. The blade rose high, arced down, parting the beast’s spine with a crunching shriek. The creature howled as it tumbled into the sand, forelegs clawing for purchase, its hindquarters convulsing amid the spill of bloody intestines.

Zera wheeled, letting the beast writhe in the throes of death, and faced the rest of the Alon’mahk’lar. Where they hesitated, she attacked.

Leitos stood frozen in place, jaw hanging loose as Zera flew into their midst. Her blade hewed bone, savaged flesh. Teeth and fangs slammed together on empty air and pained howls. The smell of blood curdled Leitos’s insides. The agonized cries of dying abominations washed over him, brought back the day Adham had sacrificed himself. The same clamor had risen up then, the same scents-

Leitos to fell to his knees on the sandy street, retching. He raised a shaky hand to swipe away the burning drool from his lips, but the hand never reached them. While Zera was engaged, another Alon’mahk’lar had circled around, seeking easier meat. Leitos moaned, an unconscious plea for mercy that he knew would never be granted.

The Alon’mahk’lar crept forward, a giant spider mingled with a scorpion. It rattled when it moved, a chitinous sound that set his teeth on edge. It advanced on ten legs, the swaying knees of which rose above its horned and plated back. Each leg ended at a single claw that scored deep grooves in the sandstone cobbles.

Leitos lurched to his feet, the knife in his blood-slicked hand poised to stab. Spindly legs clattering, the Alon’mahk’lar darted half the distance between them. Nearer it came, gaining two paces for each one he backed away. Nearer … nearer … nearer, until he heard a hissing whisper issue from its masticating jaws. Leitos’s thoughts ground to a halt, as words in the human tongue reached his ears.

… hold little one … hold … hold still … lie down … down … sleep … rest child rest … submit … sweet flesh … feast … feed … devour bleed … bleed … oh sweet sleep …

The sibilant chant crept over his pebbled skin, sank beneath, wormed through him, froze his muscles and bones. He wanted to lie down, to offer himself up-

No! a voice shouted within him, pleading, futilely resisting … fading … fading.

… still the heart… sleep child sleep … no pain … sweet blood … savor the meat … devour the soul … sweet nectar … sleep … slumber … rest … sweet perishing … sweet death … be still be … be quiet …

Leitos sank to his knees, eyes watering as that singsong whispering pierced his mind. The knife fell from his numb fingers. The lullaby filled him, a soft, comforting, eager muttering.

…sleep … yes … rest … yes yes … lie down … yes yes yes … slumber … rest … peace … sleepslumbersleepslumberdie …”

Caught now in a placid dream, Leitos watched motionlessly as the creature’s jaws slid within a foot of his nose. Thick, pale foam spilled from its mouth. Sleep, he thought dazedly, rest.…

He slumped to one side, his body as limp as dewy grass. He no longer saw the beast before him, but rather a vision of a green field dotted with flowers. So beautiful, he thought drowsily. The sunlight was golden warmth on his face, so peaceful….

Sleep … forever … slumber … evermore….

A blow shattered the vision. For a moment he was trapped between the world he knew and the one he had seen. A thousand silvery-hot spikes lanced through his eyes, his skull, his very being. Even as the last syllables of that dread voice rolled over and through him, he found himself wallowing on the ground, choking on a mouthful of gritty dust.

“Get up!” Zera ordered. She stood over the Alon’mahk’lar. It whispered no longer, and lay in pieces, oozing black blood. Somewhere nearby, hidden within the night’s oppressive murk, monstrous voices spewed condemnation.

Gagging on the dust coating his tongue, Leitos caught up his knife and scrambled unsteadily to his feet. Muddled, he stood in place, muscles shaking with the need to escape, but unable to choose a route.

Fingers clamped around the back of his neck and shoved him forward. In a shambling imitation of running, Leitos threw one foot in front of the other. Somewhere behind him, Zera bellowed in fury. Leitos ran on, gaining speed.

You cannot leave her!

With every step, his self-loathing grew, and finally he slowed, unsure how he could help, except to serve as a distraction to the beasts that harried Zera.

Suddenly she flew out of the night, hair wild, green eyes flashing. And she was grinning. A merciless smirk that had nothing to do with humor, only lethal joy. “Keep on!” she ordered, and he obeyed.

Chapter 16

With the Alon’mahk’lar hard on their heels, Leitos and Zera fled. The dead city flashed by, and the break in the warding wall fell far behind. Alon’mahk’lar spilled from decrepit buildings, drawn like hounds to the hunt. Zera guided them through alleys, buildings, and down streets, keeping them one step ahead of their enemies.

Zera ducked into a doorway without warning. Leitos kept on a half dozen paces, skidded to a halt, and raced back through the opening. Zera caught him as he flew past and dragged him down, her hand clamped over his lips. “Hold,” she breathed.

The demonic baying filled the night, coming closer. Leitos struggled not to jerk out of her grasp, the need to flee warring with her instruction.

“Their blood is hot for the hunt,” she whispered, sounding too excited by half. “That will make them careless. They will trample our scent amid their own and lose the trail. Watch. Wait.”

As the last word passed her lips, a pack of Alon’mahk’lar surged past the open doorway, a heaving swarm of misshapen flesh, grunting and squealing to each other in their accursed tongue. Another pack trailed the first, then another. Just as Zera had predicted, not one beast slowed, or so much as glanced their way.

When the sounds of the pursuit moved off, Zera said, “Now we sneak.”

Leitos shook away the mesmerizing effect of her stare, and glanced down the lightless corridor. They were trapped, as far as he could tell, and he said so.

“The buildings in old cities press together like boils on a leper’s backside,” she answered.

Despite his reservations, Leitos followed her deeper into the building, one hand on her shoulder, the other clutching his knife. His cut fingers stung, a dull throbbing he easily ignored. Besides the soft grating noise of his footsteps, the only other sounds came from the searching Alon’mahk’lar, which seemed to have finally realized their prey had evaded them.

How long can that last … how long before they double back and pick up the scent? Despite Zera’s reassurance, he knew that once the enemy found their tracks, the building would become a snare, allowing the Alon’mahk’lar to stalk them at leisure.

Zera led them to a narrow stairwell, and took it up to the next level. Leitos came after, halting behind her on a landing. She exposed the firemoss globe, letting its light shine over their surroundings. Fire had gutted the structure, and the charred floorboards had burned through in many places, dry-rotted in others.

Zera hugged the wall, testing the floor with each step before resting her full weight upon the boards. Leitos was careful to step where she had, cringing every time a board creaked and sagged. He easily imagined himself crashing through and plummeting to the lower level. He swallowed dryly and forced himself to continue.

They kept on until they reached another stairwell, this one of wooden risers. Char and dust coated the thick treads, and Zera went more cautiously than before. Leitos came after, sweating profusely. The burned sections crumbled underfoot, raising puffs of ash that tickled the nose.

A bit farther, Leitos detected the clean scent of the night’s breeze. Zera tucked away the firemoss orb, and a rectangle of dark sky scattered with twinkling stars materialized before them. Zera rushed through the doorway, as did Leitos.

The building’s flat rooftop was a mass of cracks and gaping holes. One misstep would mean certain death. A door that might have once guarded the doorway lay a few feet away. In the shadowed streets below, groups of Alon’mahk’lar called to one another, or sniffed along the ground in erratic patterns. The individual bands were converging.

Zera guided them to the southern edge of the roof. At once, Leitos understood what she had meant about boils on a leper.

Flat rooftops marched off in every direction, some higher and some lower, all pressed tightly together, save where streets and alleys divided them into islands. And while the paths below might be wide enough for a large wagon to pass unhindered, the buildings’ upper levels overhung the thoroughfares, narrowing the gaps between buildings.

Leitos was contemplating ways to bridge the distance, when Zera said, “We must jump.”

“It is ten feet across,” Leitos balked. He peered over the edge. “And four times that to the alley.” He wanted to tell her it was too far, but in seeing that mischievous grin of hers, the disturbing, eager gleam in her eyes, he screwed up his courage and nodded.

Zera paced out a route mostly free of cracks or holes. Without a word, she swept forward and made an effortless leap, more graceful in the air than on the ground. She flew across empty space, landed on an outstretched foot, and tucked into a roll. After a single revolution, she was again on her feet. She waved him on.

That was not so hard, Leitos thought, his confidence swelling. Following in her footsteps, he trotted forward and jumped lightly. Where Zera soared, Leitos plummeted as if he had stones tied to his ankles. Instead of getting closer to the opposite roof, it seemed to recede. A scream lodged in his throat, and he clawed for the edge. He caught the lip, but at the same instant his chest and face slammed into the side of the building. His breath burst from his lungs in a whooshing grunt. His fingers scraped over rough mudbrick in a vain attempt to stop his fall. Friction seemed to hold him in place, a teasing hope. Then he was falling back, and the yawning gulf drew him down and away. Above, the sharp edge of the roof slanted horizontally across the night sky. Both began a sickening, weightless slide, as his body pivoted.

A hand flashed out, catching the strap of his satchel. The band of leather was twined under his arm and looped around his neck, and he jerked to a wrenching halt. Stitching popped with an ominous ripping sound, as the leather pulled tight against his throat. His flailing hands found that feeble tether and clung tight.

Zera gazed down, her loosened hair hanging around grim features. She reared back, hauling him up and over the edge. They both ended up sprawled on the roof.

“Next time,” Zera said wryly, “at least make a little effort. We are not stepping across cracked paving stones.”

Leitos stared up at the stars, heart pounding. There will be no next time. Even as he thought it, he knew that was not the truth-unless he wanted to become the feast for the Alon’mahk’lar.

“You made it look so easy,” he muttered, after he caught his breath.

“For me, it was easy,” Zera said, sitting up and wrapping her forearms around her cocked knees. “I have done this many times.” She cast him a sour look. “I did not think I had to explain the differences between a Hunter and a former slave.”

Disgusted with himself, Leitos sat up. “I am an idiot. It would serve you better to leave me here. Find another to save.”

Zera thought about that a moment, then rose to her feet. As she strode away, she pulled her hair back and retied the leather thong to keep it in place.

Leitos blinked in confusion. “Where are you going?”

“Away,” Zera said over her shoulder, not slowing. By now she was nearing the far side of the roof. In less than two heartbeats, she would be gone, bounding across to another rooftop.

“But-” Leitos began, scrambling to his feet.

Zera stormed back. “But nothing, boy. There is no place for weakness and self-pity in this world. You die or you survive. Life under the rule of the Faceless One is struggle and pain and sorrow. If you are favored by the gods, you may enjoy a rare and fleeting moment of joy. Lying down, surrendering, leads to death. Slow or fast it may come, but it is death all the same. Decide, here and now, if you want to fight and live, or quit and perish. Decide, Leitos, because there are many others who would chance all the remaining moments of their lives for the opportunity you have been given.”

“I will go with you,” Leitos muttered, his face hot with shame.

“Convince me,” Zera commanded. “Prove to me that I should squander any more of my precious time helping you.”

How can I? Leitos thought, fighting the urge to cringe away from her authority, much the same as he had cowered before the slavemasters the whole of his life. Since fleeing the mines, he had made many vows to himself and the ghost of his grandfather. Those promises had sustained him, pressed him forward, but only because of the guilt he had felt at not holding to his oaths. Not once had he moved forward without the goads of fear and remorse to drive him. He had not grown strong, as Adham had urged, and certainly he had not grown cruel enough to stand and fight against the Alon’mahk’lar, let alone the Faceless One. Ever had he run like a timid mouse, scurrying from cover to cover, shadow to shadow, telling himself that he was planning, making ready, when in truth all he had been doing was delaying taking upon his shoulders the mantle of his own survival. To continue that path meant he would never avenge his people, never gain freedom, never grow into the man his grandfather had believed he could become.

While he sensed no single act could convince Zera to aid him further, Leitos understood well enough that he must step onto the road of his choosing, and tread that path until it lead to success or failure. In the end, it meant he could never halt. Perhaps he would fail-in all truth, the chance of his triumph was and had always been slim-but he must press on. As Zera had said, to lie down and quit was to die. And going forward, at this moment, meant only one thing.

Leitos set off, striding out, chin tucked low. He hopped a yawning hole in the roof, flashed over a gaping crack. Every step his speed increased, and the distance to the next gulf narrowed. His heart hammered not from exertion, but from willing his fragile spirit to overcome the curse of dread and subservience forced upon all slaves.

Arms and legs slashing the cool night air, he fought against intangible chains, sought to break bonds stronger than iron. He might die in the next breath … or he might survive. And was that not the thing he feared most-living, struggling onward into a misty future filled with unknown troubles?

The gap loomed, a black gulf that plunged as deep as his doubts. Leitos raised his head, the wind of his passage sweeping back the hair from his brow. It filled his ears with a rush, and below that came the distant cries of the hunting Alon’mahk’lar. He leaped, pushing off with all his strength; he soared, cumbersome but aloft.

When he landed, his weight folded his outstretched leg, and he fell in a sliding, bouncing tumble. There came no flash of revelation in the leap, no inner voice commended his triumph, there was not even time to contemplate what he had done.

By the time he gathered his wits, Zera was there, pulling him to his feet. They made several more jumps in quick succession, until they had gone as far as they could.

Zera hunkered down, gazing into the depths of a wide breach created by a crossing street. Nothing stirred, but the calls of the beasts that hunted them sounded nearer.

“They have found our scent,” she announced. “We have time only until they reach the first rooftop. After that, they will be upon us.”

Leitos did not need her to explain the ease and speed with which the loathsome creatures would follow. He scanned ahead, struggling to separate merged shadows, until he found what had to be the southernmost portion of the city wall. It was not very far now.

“We must go down.”

Zera searched around. “There,” she said with a measure of relief, and strode to a pair of thick vertical rails joined by a rung, jutting a foot above the building’s rear side.

Leitos gave the ladder a critical appraisal, then made to climb onto the uppermost rung. Zera stopped him.

“Due caution does not make you a coward,” she said gently, and eased him aside.

Taking the vertical rails in hand, she heaved against them. Heavily rusted cleats affixed to the building held them in place. The ladder rattled, but seemed sound. Next she tested her weight on the top three rungs. They creaked, but held.

“This will not hold us both at the same time,” Zera warned. “Come at my signal.” Then she was gone.

Leitos leaned over to watch her descend. The cleats groaned in their settings, and a rung gave way with a dusty crunch, momentarily leaving Zera dangling by one hand.

“Hold on!” Leitos hissed.

“I’m fine,” she answered, regaining a secure hold. She scrambled farther down and jumped clear. With her back pressed against the building, she looked first one way then the other, head cocked to catch the slightest sound. Only then did she motion him to follow.

He mounted the ladder, and in doing so caught sight of a pack of Alon’mahk’lar on the first rooftop. They gathered too far away to make out individual characteristics, but without question they sought the scent of their prey. Suddenly one of the beasts raised its muzzle skyward, baying. The others turned, silvery eyes glimmering like dull stars. As Leitos started down, the first one bounded across to the next rooftop.

Leitos flew down the ladder. Splinters gouged his palms, rungs cracked, and the by the time he was halfway to Zera, several cleats had given way. The ladder’s upper length sprang loose from the wall, swaying like a tree caught in a high wind. A loud popping noise heralded the ladder’s demise, and while still ten feet up, Leitos flung himself clear, landing with a pained grunt. The ruined ladder crashed down around him and burst into a cloud of dust and bits of flying wood.

“Time to run,” Zera said, again with that disturbing, overeager light in her eyes.

Leitos did not wait for her to take the first step.

Chapter 17

The road out of the bone-town rose steep and winding for a mile or more, then crested a hilly plateau home only to rock, stiff thorn bushes, and sand. The familiar barrenness could not temper Leitos’s joy at escaping, but Zera’s words did.

“They follow,” she said in grim tones, head cocked in a listening posture. Leitos heard only the wind rattling through the nearby brush, the gentle hiss of sand swirling against itself. Nevertheless, he believed her. Not only could she see well in darkness, she also seemed to hear better than anyone he had ever known.

“I can still run,” he said, but worried about how long he could continue. As far as he could tell, Zera suffered no ill-effects from the chase.

They set out at a brisker pace than before. The road carried them south over low hills, and brought them to a wall of overhanging cliffs. The roadway passed through a narrow gorge. In the night it had the aspect of a bottomless chasm opening onto Geh’shinnom’atar itself. Leitos peered into that darkness. What waits down there?

“Maybe we can go around,” Leitos suggested.

Zera disagreed. “The cliffs are high and wide. We will make our stand here. Rather, I will make a stand. You continue on until I catch up. This is no fight for you.” Not a hint of doubt or fear lived in her voice.

“You cannot face these things alone. I can fight,” he added, unwilling to leave her behind. He was no warrior, but he was done bowing to the fear in his breast. If their fate was to face the enemy and perish, at least he would go to his grave with a clear conscience.

“Do not be a fool,” Zera chided gently. “If I must defend you and myself, at the same time, we will both die. Go, now, before it is too late. Run and do not halt … no matter what you hear.” It was not an invitation, or a plea, but a command.

Leitos looked back along the road they had run, its length indistinguishable from the rest of the landscape after a few paces. He could now make out the braying calls of the Alon’mahk’lar.

His lips parted to protest, but Zera held up a hand. “Go, Leitos,” she ordered, a lithe silhouette, sword bared, framed by an aura of night and stars. “Go, and do not look back!”

Leitos ran just far enough to escape Zera’s exceptional sight and hearing. Lost in the gorge’s deep shadows, he slowed to a halt. Where the racket of the Alon’mahk’lar had grown louder the closer they came, now an abrupt silence held sway. Unnatural, oppressive, full of dire portent, it seemed to smother the land.

He drew his knife and headed into the litter of boulders beneath the gorge’s towering walls. He lost himself amid the fallen slabs, creeping and climbing his way back toward Zera.

A shriek, inhuman and swollen with fury, ripped apart the tense stillness, reverberated back through the gorge, crashing over Leitos. He froze. Gods good and wise, what creature could have made such a cry? Zera could not face such a terror alone.

He scrabbled over the boulders, flung himself from one to another, bruising and scraping his flesh in his haste. He had made it most of the way back when he drew up short, perched atop a massive stone block.

Distorted shapes leaped and careened in a maddened frenzy at the feet of a towering, winged creature of swirling mists. Even as he watched, the thing changed, grew larger, humped of back, thick of limb. It lashed out at its foes, and howls of pain followed. The winged creature swept a knotted arm at an attacking Alon’mahk’lar, colliding with the sound of snapping bones. It sprawled in motionless silence. Another Alon’mahk’lar fared worse, seemingly torn in half amid a shower of vile blood. Instead of giving pause, the sudden destruction riled the attackers to greater frenzy.

They have turned on each other, Leitos thought, momentarily pleased, until he remembered that Zera was caught in that madness!

He slithered down the rock and dashed toward the enemy, knife held before him as though it were a weapon of mystic lethality. As he reached the edge of the fray a great, yielding mass buffeted him to one side with a leathery slap. He tumbled over sand and jutting rocks, and fetched up against a thorny bush.

“Run!” Zera cried from very near the winged creature, her voice throaty and strained from the labors of battle. Head spinning, Leitos bounced unsteadily to his feet.

“Damn your foolish hide, flee!” Zera commanded, sounding nearer. Then he saw her, just a hazed shape amid the swirling mists of the winged creature. Her sword slashed and stabbed, a fury of motion driving back the Alon’mahk’lar. As soon as he saw her, she was lost from sight, and the winged creature screamed into the face of the night. As that eye-watering cry raced over the desert, Leitos heard Zera once more. “LEAVE!”

His feet carried him away before he registered that they had turned. His shoulders hunched defensively, as another of those shrieks rose above the din and cascaded into the black depths of the gorge.

The road dropped precipitously, and the raging tumult lost much of its ferocity, sounding as if it were far above him. Leitos ran on, his treacherous heart pumping the searing poison of shame through his veins. It did not matter that he could not have done anything, save get himself killed. What did matter was that he had left Zera behind, abandoned her to a fate worse than death. She had commanded him, but in this instance obedience was unforgivable. Just as he was about to turn, a prolonged keening wail, no more human than any of the other sounds he had heard this night, pushed him onward.

After another mile, Leitos’s legs gave out, dropping him to the roadway. He lay curled in the dust, taking bitter solace from the blanket of darkness covering him. He wished the night was a black sea, churned by impartial tides that would sweep him away … away from all regret and fury and trouble.

Zera’s words came to him then. “There is no place for weakness and self-pity in this world. You die or you survive. Life under the rule the Faceless One is struggle and pain and sorrow. If you are favored by the Silent God, you may enjoy a rare and fleeting moment of joy. Lying down, surrendering, leads to death-slow or fast it may come, but it is death all the same…. Decide, Leitos, because there are many others who would chance all the remaining moments of their lives for the opportunity you have been given.”

Of the beautiful Hunter, he was certain she had given her life for him, as had Adham. He owed them more than surrender.

“Get up,” he commanded himself. He shoved his hands under his chest and pushed up, struggling through the oppressive weight of the night, and all the troubles it had brought him.

He stood in the middle of a forgotten road that led north to a forgotten city, and south to a haven of the Alon’mahk’lar. Unless some living horror came out of the north, he committed himself to wait until dawn for Zera’s unlikely return. After that, he would proceed to Zuladah, using the denizens of that city to confuse his trail for those who hunted him, be they men or Sons of the Fallen….

At a rattle of stone, Leitos whirled, ready to defend himself. Zera came into view, looking none the worse for wear.

“You are alive?” Leitos said in a breathless murmur.

“You expected otherwise?” she replied.

“I–I,” Leitos sputtered. Then burst out, “How? There were so many … and the one, it … it-”

“It died like the rest,” Zera said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Swords kill, when wielded properly.”

“But how?” Leitos persisted. He had fled knowing she would die, yet here she stood.

Zera sighed heavily. “Anything that has blood in its veins can lose that blood, if the proper means are used.” She frowned then. “Of course, had you heeded me, I would have dispatched those demon-spawn all the sooner. You and I need to talk about your failure to obey orders.”

“I did not want leave you,” Leitos said.

“Since things turned out well, I suppose you can be forgiven.” She offered him a smile that blurred the recurring images of the battle in his mind. “Come, we have many leagues to go before we can take a proper rest.”

Leitos stifled a groan, but knew they could not stay put. She had destroyed a number of Alon’mahk’lar, but more could come. Running was out of the question for Leitos, so they ambled along. Inside Leitos’s exhausted mind, he saw again that last battle, wondering how any one human could harbor the deadly skill needed to best such a dread host. In the end he decided it was a blessing beyond measure that Zera was a friend and not a foe.

Chapter 18

Morning found Leitos bleary-eyed and hungry. Zera directed him off the road and into the waiting desert. She followed, carefully obscuring their tracks. After a hundred paces, she announced that would have to do, and brought them to a hill comprised of rounded boulders that might have once been part of the large pillar of stone rising from their center. Similar formations jutted all around, making it anonymous.

“We will rest here for the day, and travel again tonight,” she said, circling around to the far side of the outcrop, and coming to a tiny opening. “We should reach Zuladah just after dawn.”

Zera took up an old dry stick, and used it to poke at the shadows beyond the opening under the boulders. Leitos recalled his first day away from the mines, and the snake he had killed and eaten, before stealing its shelter. He hoped that if Zera found a serpent, she did not want to eat it. He would, if he had to, but would rather have more of the dried meat she carried, along with a hunk of bread. Thinking on that, he almost laughed at his choosiness, after a lifetime spent eating thin porridge and the occasional beetle.

Still probing under the boulder, Zera dropped down and disappeared into the opening. Leitos waited until she called for him to follow, then crawled after her, careful to hide their tracks at her direction.

After a making his way on hands and knees for several paces, he came to a set of steep, narrow stairs leading down.

“Hurry,” Zera urged from farther down, bringing out her tiny firemoss sphere. “I’m starving, and filthy besides.”

Leitos descended the ladderlike stairs cut into the rock. Straight away he caught the scent of clean dampness on the air. They still had plenty of water, but after sloshing in a goat skin for any amount of time, it tasted of wet hide. The idea of having fresh water sent him rushing downward until he reached a sandy-floored cavern.

Leitos moved next to Zera, who was kneeling at the edge of a large pool. She had placed the small firemoss lamp in the crotch of a tripod made by strapping three sticks together near their tops, and splaying the legs. Its presence told him this was not her first time here.

The pool, a deep turquoise blue fading to black deeper down, dominated two-thirds of the rocky hollow. Sacks of what Leitos guessed were provisions rested against the base of one upward curving wall. The opposite wall loomed over a crude cot made from more sticks lashed together. Between the two sat a stone fire ring, a pile of twigs, and dried flakes of dung. Points of light pierced the vaulted ceiling, and Leitos reasoned that was how smoke from a fire escaped, filtering through those small holes and cracks, and dissipating before it drifted aboveground.

“It has little enough of comforts,” Zera said, dipping a cupped hand into the pool, “but it is adequate.”

To Leitos, it seemed a perfect sanctuary, save for one thing. “If someone blocks the entrance, how do we get out?”

Zera sipped water from her hand, then nodded approvingly. “Guarding your trust and finding an escape route are the best ways to stay alive and whole.” Leitos flushed at her praise. If Zera noticed his embarrassment, she did not let on.

“If it comes to leaving here undetected,” she said, pointing to the far side of the pool, “swim to the wall, then dive deep and-” She cut off. “Better that I show you, rather than try to explain.” With that, she began undressing.

Leitos’s mouth worked around dumbfounded silence. Just as she cocked her head in his direction, he whirled around. “I do not need to see it,” he blurted in a choked voice.

“Of course you do,” Zera said.

Quiet hung between them, growing more uncomfortable the longer it lasted, at least to him.

“Do you mean to swim with your clothes on?” she said after a time, her voice husky with what Leitos guessed was suppressed laughter.

He turned slowly, and his averted eyes involuntarily climbed from her toes to her legs, past her smooth belly, and finally came to rest on her face. He had expected her to be naked, and she was, save for a loincloth and a narrow band of cloth wrapped around her breasts. In the firemoss’ amber light, her skin glowed; her hands, neck, and face made a few shades darker from the sun.

Despite himself, what he noticed most were her wounds. Bruises, scrapes, cuts, and old scars mapped a tapestry of past battles over her skin. They did not detract from her beauty-he had spent his entire life seeing scars on the men of the mines-but it pained him to consider her suffering so.

“I suppose not,” he answered belatedly, shucking Pathil’s cloak. Next, he pulled off the itchy tunic the Hunter had given him. Though he had spent almost his entire life clad so, he felt self-conscious in just his skin and a loincloth.

“Can you swim?” Zera asked.

“A little,” he admitted, then told how he had collected waterbugs and fish on his little river island. He omitted how the flood had swept him downstream, and how if it had not been for Sandros snatching him from the river, he surely would have drowned.

“You ate bugs?” Zera said, wrinkling her nose in playful distaste.

Without waiting for a response, she spun on her heel. Too late Leitos looked away from the rounded, curving flesh of her backside, a sight that burned into his mind, left his mouth dry and his heart stuttering. She hit the surface like a well-thrown blade, barely disturbing the pool.

Leitos jumped in feet first. He popped up, breathless from the unexpected cold. Where she swam effortlessly to the stone wall, Leitos paddled awkwardly.

“This wall is the foot of the pillar you saw outside,” Zera said. “A little way down, there is an opening. Follow it a short way, then swim toward the light.” Leitos, doing all he could not to inhale water, simply nodded. She offered a slow, coy smile, then looked down. “Follow me.” In a graceful movement, her head and feet reversed themselves and she was gone.

Leitos floated amid rising bubbles, took a deep breath, then imitated her dive. Once underwater, he swept his arms back and kicked, the movement unpracticed, but familiar enough to give him confidence.

Darkness fell over him quickly. He kept kicking and reached out with one hand to touch the smooth stone wall. As Zera had promised, an opening presented itself. He swam into it, uncomfortably aware that it was akin to swimming into a yawning mouth. Just as his lungs began to ache for want of a fresh breath, he noticed a hazy glow ahead. He kicked harder, suddenly sure the immense weight of the pillar above him had waited eons for this exact moment to crumble-

He broke the surface before panic set in, and splashed to the edge of the second pool. This one was much smaller than the first, as was the cavern under which it hid itself. A lone shaft of sunlight sliced through the darkness from on high, lighting swirling motes of dust in a golden, enchanted glow. Leitos swam to a thin crescent of sand, climbed out of the water on his hands and knees, then rolled to his back, relishing each breath. The air was warmer in this cavern, and fresher.

“To escape, should the need ever arise,” Zera said, kneeling off to one side, “pass into the darkness just below the opening above. There is a fissure there, almost too narrow for even me, that leads out a little over a mile to the west. The way is dank, close, and blacker than any night. Once in, you cannot turn around. I took that way … once. Wriggling along like a blind worm, that single mile took a day and a night to travel.”

Between imagining what such a journey must have been like, and guessing that the need would have to be great indeed to prompt him to take it, Leitos’s eyes drifted shut. When they opened again, the light had changed from golden to ruddy.

“You have been asleep for hours,” Zera said, smiling. She was sitting cross-legged, idly tracing a finger through the sand.

“And you?” Leitos asked groggily.

“I took what rest I needed,” Zera answered, leaving Leitos to wonder if she had slept at all.

“And now we must swim back,” Leitos said, cringing at the memory of the cold water and the dark, breathless passage under the pillar.

“No point waiting,” Zera said with a playful grin.

She hopped to her feet, strode near, and leaned down. Her hair, hanging loose, tickled his nose. Her nearness set his heart to racing, but before he could do anything about it one way or another, she caught him under the arms, lifted him as easily as if he were a babe, and tossed him, squawking, into the pool.

Having made the trip once, the return swim was not nearly as terrifying as before. He popped up at the same time as Zera and paddled quickly, wanting to beat her to dry land. Zera, sensing what he was about, stroked smoothly to the lip of the pool, getting there just ahead of him. As with all she did, she climbed out of the pool with a uncanny grace, then stood waiting for him, water sluicing over her skin.

Mildly disgruntled, Leitos glanced at her hand held out to help him up. With a conceding nod, he took her hand. Before she could settle her feet, he abruptly jerked backward. Startled, Zera yelped as she flew over his head. Even before the echoing sound of her splash fled the rocky chamber, Leitos hurled himself up and out of the water. He was sitting calmly, as if he had been waiting there for hours, when Zera’s head crested the surface.

Treading water, she gazed at him. The inner light of her eyes danced with some emotion he did not recognize. It scared him a little, that strange fire, so unlike anything he had ever seen, and all the more because of what that radiance hid from him. What is she thinking? he thought, skin prickling.

He barely managed to keep his expression serene, but his heart had tripped into a faster beat. He scooted back when she climbed slowly out of the water, her stare unwavering. She crawled to him faster than he could retreat, the supple muscles of her arms and shoulders flexing and relaxing with every movement.

With a sudden blur of speed she was on him, a breathtaking hunter, him the hapless prey. She loomed, her face inches from his. Her lips stretched, and for a moment gleaming white teeth and twin portals of a green inferno filled his vision.

She abruptly caught the back of his head and drew him close. “Before we sup,” she growled playfully, “I must tend your wounds.”

“W-what?” Leitos rasped, his wounds that last thing on his mind.

“Your hand,” Zera said, sitting back on her heels. One moment she was there, so close his skin still held the memory of her faint heat; the next she had moved away, leaving him with a disturbing sense of loss. Her gaze flickered to his hand.

Leitos blinked rapidly, trying to understand what had just happened. To keep Zera from seeing the confusion in his eyes, he looked down at his hand, the same he had slashed while retrieving his knife when fighting the Alon’mahk’lar. He had forgotten about cutting himself, and during the night the wounds had clotted. Swimming and climbing in and out of the pool had reopened the cuts. Blood, a scrawl of thin reddish ink, stained the pale skin of his palm.

He was still looking at his wounds when Zera moved closer, until their knees touched. Stricken by conflicting thoughts-Is she playing some perverse game? Am I a gullible, self-deceiving fool? — he had not noticed that she had gotten up and returned with supplies. He looked into her face, then quickly away, resolving not to let her ensnare him again by whatever baffling charms she had used before.

Without speaking, she used a rounded wooden rod to grind together a mixture of dried leaves and water in a stone bowl. Once finished, she dipped her fingers into the thick, foul-smelling paste, then daubed a layer on his wounds. Finally, she bandaged his hand with a scrap of faded brown linen. Through it all, her touch was delicate and sure, suggesting she had done the same for others, even herself, many times before.

When at last she glanced up, she did so with a contriteness that troubled Leitos. Hers was not a face made for regrets. “I am sorry I toyed with you,” she said in a rush. Leitos felt a flash of vindication, then tamped it down. He did not want to revel in her apparent shame. She went on.

“A Hunter uses learned skills, but more importantly they employ inborn talents to manipulate their targets. Some of those traits are crude weapons-like Sandros with his great size and fierceness-while others are subtle, and the more deadly for it.”

“Like your beauty,” Leitos said, not thinking about the words until after they had passed his lips. His face flamed.

“Just so,” Zera agreed, flashing a brief smile that was both shy and pained. “I … I would not have-should not have-tempted you so. You and I are friends, and a friend cannot be a target.” Zera hung her head, looking like a vulnerable girl. “It’s just that … well … I have never failed to entice a man to desire, even when I do not try. But you … you seemed not to notice me as … as a woman.”

For a moment Leitos was stunned, his mouth hanging, then he burst out laughing. “Of course I noticed you,” he said, and barely cut himself short from describing all that he had noticed, how even with his eyes closed he could see every tantalizing inch of her. Instead he repeated himself. “I noticed you. I could not have done otherwise.” Even that sounded as if it bordered on lechery rather than praise, so he shut up.

Zera sat up straighter, a serious look on her face. “Again, I am sorry. And, I promise never to attempt to seduce you in jest again.”

Leitos shrugged reflexively, but his heart fell, and he felt more confused than ever.

“After our supper, you can sleep on the cot,” she said, the Hunter once more. “I have rested enough, so I will keep watch.”

As she spoke, she retrieved her garments and hastily drew them on. “We have only a few more hours before we must depart, and a night of hard travel after that. On the morrow, we will reach Zuladah.”

Chapter 19

As the sun rose over Zuladah, Leitos and Zera strode amid an ever-increasing throng of crofters and craftsmen. Trapped in a shallow valley, cloaked in a haze of dust kicked up by its denizens, the city emerged like a wraith escaping a reddish-gold mist. Leitos’s exhaustion evaporated at seeing their destination, so like the bone-towns in construction, but different in that it teemed with life-human life.

Men with sons, women with daughters and suckling babes, all walked at a slow pace. Others utilized burros, oxen, goats, or their own scrawny backs and legs to draw rickety carts stacked with assorted goods.

“All that the city needs, and that which the Faceless One demands in duties, comes by this road,” Zera said. “As well, fishmongers come from the south,” she added, raising a finger to direct his gaze, “from the Sea of Sha’uul.”

His breath caught when he realized that the sunlight glinting in the distance did so off a body of water stretching as far as he could see to the east, and just as far to the west. He knew of seas from his grandfather, namely the Sea of Drakarra, but hearing about so much water and seeing it with your own eyes was another matter entirely. I can even smell it, he thought, understanding now what unfamiliar scent had been tickling his nose half the night.

His wonder ceased when they passed by a trio made up of a man, woman, and boy shambling along at a slower pace than the rest. The man used a switch to goad a slat-ribbed ox hauling a flatbed cart with wobbly, much-mended wheels. The bed bore rows upon rows of carefully stacked pottery. Though young, the man and woman both had stooped backs and cracked, dry hands that looked like they belonged to people much older. This last, Leitos supposed, came from working clay into vessels.

The small family gazed ahead with hollow, hungry eyes, looking neither left nor right. Alerted to their misery, Leitos saw the same wherever he looked. Every face was gaunt. Their skin clung tight against underlying bones. None of them look any different than the men of the mines. He had believed the unchained would be more vital and hale. Instead, all looked a short pace from their own graves.

The road to Zuladah dropped off the gently sloping edge of a long plateau, and Leitos soon lost sight of the distant sea. He wished it were otherwise. Seeing so much water had brought to mind the stories his grandfather had told about the voyage across the Sea of Drakarra, enlivened some slumbering part of him to the idea of sailing those seas. There would be a freedom upon those waters, he felt sure, a means of escape unmatched by leagues of desert or even towering mountains.

Furtive movement drew his eye to a hooded fellow off to one side. He was walking the same as the others, weary and stooped, but he kept darting glances at Zera. In the shadows of his hood, Leitos made out wide fearful eyes and trembling lips. The man saw Leitos looking and ducked his head. One skeletal hand hurriedly drew his hood farther forward, obscuring his face. Leitos’s concern grew to alarm when he noticed that many people were looking at Zera that way, with a mingling of fear and unbridled hatred.

Before he could speak, Zera said, “Ignore them. If they ever got it into their minds to attack all at once, they might prove dangerous. But they never will, for fear of what would happen to them for assaulting an agent of the Faceless One.”

“They can tell … just by looking at you?” Leitos asked.

“Can you not?” Zera asked, one eyebrow arched.

Leitos allowed that he could see the difference. From the way she walked with head held high, back firm and strong and straight, and the grace of her movements, there was nothing about her that did not shout to even the casual observer that she was not subject to the same bitter, scratching existence as the others. Authority and strength wafted off her person.

“They fear me more than they do the Alon’mahk’lar,” she said-sadly, Leitos thought. “They are right to do so. I am the Hunter, and on a whim any one of them, at any time, could become the prey. Such is another means by which the Faceless One rules effectively. A natural and shared abhorrence for the Alon’mahk’lar could lead to a focused rebellion, but the Faceless One has employed humans to stand above their fellows to enforce his edicts, ensuring humans harbor a strong mistrust for their own kind. Divided so, they are weak.”

Leitos remembered Sandros’s tale about his mother’s betrayal, how she had willingly murdered his father, and then sent him away with the Alon’mahk’lar. When you could not trust even your kin, an uprising could never happen. Not for the first time, he wondered how the Faceless One’s rule could ever be toppled.

For a time they walked in the silence of the road. While there was plenty of noise from ungreased axles, wheels grating over ancient paving stones, from hundreds of sandaled and bare feet scuffling through dust and sand, no one spoke. All that changed as they neared the city gates, standing open for the incoming tide of humanity.

At first Leitos only detected a monotonous mumbling. Then he deciphered the words, spoken in a low chanting.

From the darkness between the stars,

Came He, the Lord of Light,

To deliver peace and safety upon all lands.

Praise the Faceless One,

He who suffers the unworthy.

Praise the Faceless One,

He who blesses the contemptible.

Bow to His wisdom,

Bow to His righteous judgment.

Praise be to the Merciful One,

Praise be to the Lord of Light and Shadow.

Leitos’s skin crawled as the tuneless paean washed over him, repeated again and again by cracked lips and parched tongues. While no fervor flowed amongst the words, neither did any hint of resistance or doubt. To his mind, had these people been properly fed, they would have shouted the words, sung them out with zeal. And in years past, maybe they had.

Before reaching the main gates, Zera veered off to one side and addressed a tall, rawboned solider clad in voluminous trousers the color of sand, and a boiled leather breastplate bearing no insignia or mark of any sort. His arms flexed as he slanted his long spear across his chest. Like his brothers-in-arms, he was better fed than the common rabble, though just. Eyes black and stern, he peered at the two of them from an open-faced leather helm snugged tight to his skull.

Leitos thought trouble was coming, but the man simply inclined his head at Zera’s softly spoken words and said, “You and your prisoner may pass, Hunter.” He opened a small wooden door set in the wall, stood aside as they strode through, then closed the door behind them.

Past the small gate they again joined the steady trickle of incoming traders and crofters heading down a main thoroughfare that stretched ahead, arrow-straight. A young boy with a harried expression sprinted by, heading for the gatehouse. Leitos thought nothing of it, captivated as he was by the press of folk around him. They had not gone a hundred paces when a roared command drew up short those closest to hand.

“You there, potter, halt. Halt, damn you!”

Anyone with more than three ranks of people between them and the gates bustled ahead a little quicker. Everyone else froze in place. Zera kept on, Leitos at her side, craning his neck to see what was amiss.

A pair of guards marched briskly to the potter’s cart that Leitos had noted earlier. The man stood a little apart from his small family, as if in an attempt to draw the guards’ eyes from his wife and son.

“The king has sent word that he has a need for wares such as yours,” said the guard in command, fingering an ewer at the end of the cart.

At the door of the gatehouse, bent double with his hands on his knees and gasping for breath, waited the runner Leitos had seen. He had no preconceived expectations of what a king’s runner would look like, but the child seemed ill-suited and poorly clad to be a messenger of any highborn.

“Of course,” the potter mumbled, bobbing his head in acceptance. “But these vessels are poorly made, meant for trade amongst the lowborn, unfit for the king.”

The guard was unrelenting. “The lot of it.”

The potter’s placid gaze blossomed with alarm. “All of it?” he breathed. “If you take it all … I cannot trade for food, for cloth, for clay to make new pottery. You have already taken the required obligation, and more.”

Leitos halted. Weighing what he saw now and what he had noticed earlier, he judged that the cart bore far less than half the load it had earlier.

“Please,” the potter begged, “find another to fulfill the king’s need. When I return, I will bring more pots and pitchers, crocks and bowls, all finely made, a proper tribute to the king.”

“The lot,” the guard repeated. His eyes then fell to the ox. “And the beast, too. The king is feasting his court this night, and has need of meat.”

Desperation flooded the potter’s eyes. “This wretched creature is no fit fare for the king,” he babbled, running his boney hands over the beast’s even bonier flank. “If you take it, I cannot draw my cart … and if not that, I cannot meet the king’s required obligations.”

The guard struck the man a backhand blow, knocking him into the dust. A collective, fearful murmur went up amongst the crowd. Once curious eyes turned inward, and people began shuffling hurriedly away, as if afraid that what was befalling the potter was a catching sickness.

Lolling in the street, the potter groaned. The blow had smashed his lips, crushed his nose, and blood dribbled from both. Indifferent to the man’s suffering, the guard cast a leering grin at the potter’s wife and son. “Take them, as well,” he ordered his fellow. “The king can fatten them both … and use them as he will.”

The woman wrapped protective arms around her son, drawing him close, even as she backed away from the advancing guard. She made a sound then, a strange mewling, whimpery noise that caused a sickening wave of anger and disbelief to rush through Leitos.

“Come,” Zera said, drawing him away. “All belongs to the king, and what is the king’s belongs to the Faceless One.”

“Is there nothing that can be done?”

“Indeed,” Zera answered. “The better question is would it be worthwhile to die by halting one small trouble of many hundreds in a given day?”

“She needs help,” Leitos insisted, pulling away from Zera.

“Perhaps one day you can help, if you still have the mind and will to do so-but not this day.”

Leitos flinched when the woman began screaming, a high crystalline wail that sliced to his soul. He was turning back when Zera wrenched him around.

“Keep your fool head down,” she said in an icy, uncompromising voice. “There are greater troubles in this land than that of one idiot’s wife and their wretched get. He should have let the guards have what they would, without a contrary word. Now he has lost what little he was allowed to have. Short days from now, even his life will be taken from him.”

Leitos went along, unable to do otherwise with Zera’s grip threatening to pop his head from his neck. Behind them the woman’s screams ceased with a finality that brought to mind images of a sudden and violent end. Leitos thought he might vomit, but managed to quell the urge. The throng of people behaved as if they had neither heard nor seen anything out of the ordinary.

And, of course, they did not, Leitos thought darkly. To them such screams, such groundless outrages against their fellows, must be commonplace to the point of acceptance.

“How can people live like this?” he demanded. “How can they tolerate such injustice?”

Zera looked askance at him, as if to confirm to herself that he would not do anything foolish, then released his neck. “They do not know or expect anything else. This way of life is all they have ever known.” And so it is with slaves, Leitos thought.

They went deeper into the city. The life he had believed he would see was no life at all. Rather it was a twisted, accursed form of living death. Listless trading went on everywhere: grain for stunted vegetables, vegetables for tiny loaves of hard bread, bread for wedges of moldy cheese, cheese for coarse cloth. Goods of every sort were bartered, but at the end of it no one seemed better off for what little they had gained. Having food this day meant going hungry on the morrow, when food would be needed to trade for some other necessity.

King’s guards strode every street ahead of high-wheeled wagons. With a word and a cuff to the head, they took additional obligations in the name of the king, and tossed them into the wagons.

“What can one man do with all that,” Leitos asked.

“King Rothran is little more than a provincial gaoler of Zuladah and its nearby territories, which in turn is but a parcel of land that serves as an open prison in this region of Geldain. There are many such kings of the same purpose across this and all lands. They are men chosen by the Alon’mahk’lar hierarchy to serve as the human representative of the Faceless One.”

She stepped into a crowded alley reeking of excrement, urine, and sweat. “As to what is done with all the obligations,” Zera went on, “King Rothran makes a fine show of squandering them for his Alon’mahk’lar masters, while at the same time secretly hoarding much wealth.”

“Why hide anything?” Leitos asked.

“Humans are forbidden to amass wealth or goods-this keeps them weak, and ensures that they can never have the means to mount a rebellion-not that Rothran would ever risk his position by staging a revolt.

“At the behest of his Alon’mahk’lar minders, Rothran provides feasts and entertainment behind the high walls of the palace. Alon’mahk’lar are the true authority here, yet they are rarely seen. Again, this is to keep humans eyes on the wrong enemy-Rothran and each other.”

“Is he an enemy?” Leitos asked.

“Yes,” Zera answered, cleaving through the press to come out on another crowded, dust-hazed street. She looked one way then another, and moved off to the south. “Not all kings are willing foes to their own kind, but Rothran takes pleasure in proving he is on the side of the Faceless One.”

“And what does he gain?” Leitos asked.

Zera ducked into the shadow of a building, pulling Leitos close. “Besides a pampered existence, he gains purpose denied the common rabble,” she said quietly. “Every day he rises for a single purpose: to serve the Faceless One.”

“And these others?” Leitos asked, watching a woman draped in colorful rags saunter from the doorway of a building across the street. She was more bone than enticing flesh, but she pressed herself against a passing guard. After fondling her a moment, he shoved her away with a lewd comment and a slap to her bony rump. Undeterred, the woman moved to another guard. “What keeps them from giving up all hope?”

Even as she answered he knew the truth, for he had lived it. “As I said before, this life is what they have, it is who they are. For most, even a worthless existence is not so easily abandoned for the cold emptiness of the grave.”

“I … I want more than this,” Leitos muttered.

Zera grinned without humor. “I should hope so. If not, then I have wasted my time dragging your scrawny shanks across the desert and through Mahk’lar-ridden bone-towns, ever just a few steps ahead of Sandros and Pathil.”

The way she mentioned the Hunters caught his attention. “Have you seen them?”

“Did you think I took us down that last alley because I enjoyed the stench?” Leitos shrugged uncomfortably at her waspish response. Zera’s hard expression relaxed. “Forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” Leitos said, meaning every word. “I should have been paying closer attention-I have travelled with Hunters long enough to know better than to let anything pass unnoticed.”

Zera gripped his shoulder to show her approval. “As to my counterparts,” she went on, “I noticed Sandros just after we passed through the city gate. Had it not been for that potter and his family, Sandros would have seen us.”

“He told me once that he could smell fear,” Leitos offered, making light of it.

“Sandros can,” Zera assured him gravely. “That is precisely why I trudged through privy-leavings and gods know what else-to make sure he loses our scent. As to Pathil, his skills favor shadow and night. Best not to let either of them catch us unawares.”

“What will we do?” Leitos asked, the city abruptly seeming far more dangerous. “Where will we go?”

“I know of a place.”

Zera said little else as they moved through the city’s warren of streets. She walked differently than before, her back bent, shoulders drooping, as if all the weight of the world were bearing her down. Leitos mimicked her movements.

Hours passed, and Zera never slowed. It took almost that long for Leitos to recognize they often crossed streets they had been on before, and a little longer still to understand that she was mingling their scent in a confusing pattern all over the city. It chilled him to think that a man such as Sandros-or any man, for that matter-could track a scent as would a jackal or a vulture.

Zera finally paused before a gray-bearded man pushing a cart bearing a large clay cistern, its rounded sides damp with condensation. His eyes, filmed in white, stared at nothing while he sniffed at a pair of dried red leaves Zera held in her hand.

“A dozen leaves for two dippers of water,” the wizened fellow said.

“Has swatarin become so commonplace as that?” Zera questioned. “For a dozen leaves, you have enough water to fill our waterskins to brimming, and give over that loaf of bread you have tucked away.”

The old man grumped and huffed, cried that if he had to give up his bread he would likely die before he could put the swatarin to proper use, but it was all for show. Even as he prattled on about how Zera was cheating him, he was dipping water into the skins, never spilling a drop despite his blindness.

When finished, he held out his hand for the swatarin. Zera countered with a demand for the bread. In the end, they settled by exchanging one for the other at the same time. Leitos noticed that Zera secretly added two additional leaves into the old man’s stack. As he tooled his cart away, using a gnarled thumb to recount the leaves held in his palm, he discovered the extras and hooted in delight, then fell silent. Shoulders hunched, he hurried away, losing himself in the crowd.

Zera chuckled to herself, tore off a chunk of bread for her and Leitos, and began moving off in a new direction.

“What is so special about swatarin leaves,” Leitos asked around a mouthful of bread. He had heard that name before, but it held no meaning to him.

“A little swatarin, taken in tea or with wine, eases aches and pains of every sort. It is as valuable, or more, as firemoss.”

Leitos asked what seemed an obvious question. “If a little does that, what does a lot do?”

“In quantity,” Zera said, nibbling her bread, eyes roving, “swatarin brings terrible visions, some say of the Thousand Hells and of demons. Before the Upheaval, the Madi’yin priesthood-or begging brothers-were said to indulge in the darker nature of swatarin, hoping to gain secret knowledge of the future.”

“Did they find that wisdom?” Leitos asked.

Zera snorted. “Since that order died out during the Upheaval, I would say no-either that or they misinterpreted what their visions showed them.”

After leading them to a part of the city with fewer people, Zera turned down a narrow alley. Scanning the ground, she slowed halfway between the street they had left and the next one. She kicked aside a maggot-ridden heap of offal, revealing a smallish circle fashioned from rusted iron straps. Through the openings in the straps, Leitos heard a sluggish, oozing trickle of some unspeakable fluid … and squeaking, the restless voices of countless vermin.

He knew what she intended, even before she knelt down and wrenched the circle of iron clear of a recessed groove carved into the paving stones. Leitos could not hold back the revolted groan in his throat.

“This is the only way to truly throw Sandros off our trail,” she said, a faint line of consternation between her pinched brows. “As I have never made a habit of wandering sewers, it may take longer than I wish to find our way.”

Taking a seat with his feet dangling down into the hole, Leitos sighed, closed his mind to the stench and the sounds wafting up through the narrow portal, and dropped into darkness.

Chapter 20

Soggy gruel roared up his spasming throat, burst past his teeth, and sprayed over the seething tangle of rats at his feet.

“Gods good and wise,” Zera growled, her face ashen, “would you please stop doing that!”

Leitos looked up, eyes burning from a stench so foul he could taste in on the air-

He doubled over, spewing. When his belly eased, he straightened, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “We need to get out of here.” For hours they had wandered in the sewers, and Zera’s earlier warning about taking longer to find their way repeated loudly in Leitos’s head.

At first the sewer grates, bright with filtered daylight, had marked out various paths. The light had gradually dimmed, then failed altogether with nightfall. If not for Zera’s firemoss lamp to light the low, narrow ways, Leitos feared he might have gone mad at the way the darkness slithered-

A plump, sable body squirmed over his feet, trailing a pinkish tail. He held still. Dancing about only drove the rats into a squealing frenzy.

“We are almost there,” Zera said with a relieved sigh. Leitos did not bother asking where there was. It did not matter to him, as long as they could escape the close confines.

True to her word, Zera scuffled through the waves of rats with an indifference he at once admired and envied, then halted below a grate. She listened a moment, carefully reached up, and pushed it aside. Next, she pulled herself up and out of the sewer.

Leitos took Zera’s waiting hands, and she hauled him out, depositing him amid a scatter of discarded crates. They hunkered in an alley. On either end, men and women moved by in the night, their demeanor different from earlier in the day. Arm in arm, swaying and singing they went, hurling jovial curses at any and all. Song and music meandered through the narrows ways, climbed the pocked walls of the buildings, mingling with boisterous laughter and ribald shouts.

Leitos would not name it merrymaking, for the noise carried upon its breath the flavor of anger. Restrained though it was, rage lurked, sought an escape. It made him wonder just how accepting people really were of the abuses heaped upon them. He sensed that one small gust might coax a guttering flame into an inferno.

“Follow me,” Zera said. “Keep your hood up, now, and say nothing.”

They had not gone far when a hulking figure rose up from the ground beside a closed door. Leitos’s heart skipped a beat, certain that all their efforts to evade Sandros had failed. But it was not the Hunter, could not be, unless he had grown.

“Stand aside,” Zera said, her sword flashing out, “or I’ll hew off your stones and feed them to you.”

The figure’s broad, flabby jaw thrust forward. “Zera? By the gods good and dead,” he rumbled, twisting the axiom with a dry chuckle. “Haven’t seen you in an age.”

Zera peered at the hulking shadow, still poised to destroy. “Lakaan? I did not recognize … are you thinner?”

“I am,” the monstrous fellow said morosely, patting the swollen bulk of his hanging belly with a huge hand. “The demand for obligations has risen again. It has gotten so a rogue must scrounge for even a bite of stale bread. And do not speak of getting ahead.”

Zera sheathed her sword. “I believe that is the point,” she laughed darkly.

“Of course,” Lakaan agreed, “but it is worse than ever. The king and his dogs now leave folk with but a tenth to trade. Suphtra, as always, takes no more than a tenth of a tenth in payment, which means I go hungry. It is … felonious,” he complained.

Zera tossed him what was left of the loaf she had bartered for earlier. Lakaan caught it, took a sniff, then stuffed what was easily half of the original loaf into his mouth-all of it, Leitos noted with amazement-bloating his already considerable cheeks. Equally amazing was all the rest of the sagging flesh the man carried on his frame. Leitos had never seen anyone so hugely fat, and did not know how Lakaan’s legs, thick columns though they were, could hold him up.

“Is Suphtra here?” Zera asked.

Lakaan bobbed his head, making his jowls wiggle. “If there are whores to monger, swatarin and swill to sell, and goods to be smuggled and traded, you can rest assured Suphtra will be about. Just now he is in the back, skulking in the shadows. Way he keeps hidden anymore, you would think he fancies himself kindred to the Faceless One.”

Zera and Lakaan had a good laugh over that, but the humor was lost on Leitos. His continued silence drew the big man’s questioning gaze.

“What you got there,” Lakaan inquired, eyes fixed on Leitos, “a weanling pup missing his mother?”

“A stray that shows potential,” Zera answered, her hesitation so brief that Leitos nearly missed it.

Lakaan’s already slitted eyes, however, narrowed a fraction. “Just so,” he murmured doubtfully, before perking up. “Well, bring him along! Suphtra will be pleased to see you. Stay around awhile, and it could be that I can teach this little man the art of stealing back some of the loot the king’s men steal from us.”

Lakaan booted open the door he had been guarding. He motioned them into a dim hallway thick with smoke, and a sickly sweet odor that went straight to Leitos’s head. In the light of thick, guttering candles poked into crude wall brackets, Lakaan bolted the door behind them, then led the way deeper into the building. They passed many open doorways that let in on rooms packed with crates of every size, overflowing sacks, and barrels filled with all manner of weaponry.

“Is Suphtra planning a rebellion?” Zera asked casually.

“You will have to talk to him about that,” Lakaan said over his shoulder, sounding uncomfortable. Zera did not ask any more questions, but she did not stop looking. Leitos did the same.

In one room men and women, all half-starved and bleary-eyed, sat about on a dirt floor. Flagons littered the ground around them. Many wafted the smoke rising from clay bowls into their faces, while others sat bolt upright, listening to the murmurings of a strange figure in rags.

Peering more closely, Leitos stopped dead. “Alon’mahk’lar!” he breathed.

The figure looked to be two people melded together, sharing the same misshapen body, yet having two heads bowed over a smoldering bowl. As if sensing his shocked appraisal, those heads swiveled toward him on a pair overlong, spindly necks. Two pairs of eyes peered at him from under deep brows, and two pairs of lips turned up at the corners. One head belonged to a woman, the other to a man.

Even though he had gasped the word just above a whisper, Zera spun, green eyes blazing, ready to join battle. Seeing what had captivated Leitos, she relaxed.

“The Twins,” she said with quiet deference, “are as human as you and I. They are seers-or maybe very good charlatans. Either way, they tell futures that seem to come to pass more often than not. Come, leave them to their work.”

The Twins nodded at his scrutiny, each of their heads bobbing independently of the other. Leitos’s insides twisted and he looked away. Zera and Lakaan moved down the hall, and he hurried after.

There were other rooms filled with people. One room in particular shocked Leitos to his core. Behind a sheer, pale green veil, naked bodies writhed against each other over a floor covered in rugs and heaped with pillows. Low moans and wicked, lustful laughter drifted out of that room and into the hallway. His face flaming, Leitos rushed by, refusing to look at Zera when she glanced at him over her shoulder.

After some time, the air cleared of the heady smoke, and Lakaan stopped before a door. “Wait here,” he said, opening the door and closing it behind him.

“What is this place,” Leitos asked, mind reeling at all he had seen … especially within that last room. Gods good and wise!

“People who can, often drown their sorrows in decadence,” Zera said with a shrug. “It is a weakness to my mind, and a waste. However, providing such services has made Suphtra a man of some wealth, even where such wealth is forbidden. It also makes him a danger to the order of things, which is why he hides his doings within the most sordid quarter of Zuladah. Bribing any that would report him to the king is also to his benefit.”

Lakaan squeezed through the doorway and into the hallway. “Suphtra will see you,” he said. Looking despondent, he added, “I suppose I will go back to guarding the alley. You don’t have any more to eat, do you?”

Zera grinned at him, rooted through her satchel, and pulled out a lump of something wrapped in greasy leather. Lakaan bowed his thanks and went on his way. After a few paces, he gave a delighted cry: “Cheese!” Then he was gone, a shadowy mountain of flesh vanishing behind a swirling haze of pungent smoke.

Feeling light-headed, Leitos was all too happy to follow Zera into the chamber beyond the doorway. His enthusiasm faded rapidly. The only light came from a pair of crimson firemoss lamps set high up on a wall. Centered beneath the lamps, a man sat upon a plain chair, his features lost amid the darkness under a tented curtain of thick cloth.

“Well met, Zera,” the figure said, his voice deep and resonant, even pleasant, despite the morbid surroundings. “It has been too long.”

“Not so long as that, Suphtra” Zera said.

“No?” The figure shrugged slender shoulders. “Perhaps it only feels like that to me, what with trying to counter all that has changed of late.”

“I seek shelter,” Zera said. “Only for the night. As well, a team of burros and a cart.”

“I loathe to ask,” Suphtra said, not sounding troubled at all, “but with the burden of obligations increased of late, I would require payment before delivery.”

“I have swatarin,” Zera offered. She opened a leather packet to display a large bundle of dried leaves.

“A year gone,” he said regretfully, “such would have bought you a pair of horses to ride and an oxcart loaded with supplies. Now….” He let the unvoiced refusal hang between them a long moment, then said, “Gold is required.”

“Since when do Hunters, or even smugglers, trade in gold?” Zera blurted.

“We never have,” Suphtra said, “which is at the root of my problem. I was informed this morning past that should I wish to receive the king’s continued blindness to my trade, I would pay with gold, silver, or precious stones.”

Suphtra’s voice had risen in anger as he spoke, until he was near to yelling. “Long years have I helped keep the people of Zuladah passive for Rothran and the Faceless One’s empire! Now … now the king and the Faceless One take and take, leaving people with nothing. They are either fools … or they want to incite a rebellion. In the end, if the obligations continue to rise, it will not matter, for rebellion is what they will reap. Men can only be pushed so far before they break.”

Zera tugged open the throat of her tunic and withdrew her stone of protection. “Do not insult me by claiming these have become valueless.”

Suphtra sat forward, the ridge of his nose pressing like a blade into the bloody light falling from above. “There is nothing more precious than that,” he murmured. “I must ask, what madness would drive you to relinquish such a prize?”

Zera showed her teeth in a mirthless grin. “As you said, things have changed of late.”

Suphtra nodded and sat back, threw a leg over the arm of his chair, and raised a hand to his chin. “What have you there, another stray … and this one an escaped slave, if I do not miss my guess?”

Zera stood motionless, silent.

“There is no point hiding it-I see the set of his shoulders, the bow of his back. This boy has spent his life digging and hauling rock, for whatever purpose that serves the Faceless One.” When Zera still did not respond, Suphtra chuckled. “Have no fear, my girl. He is safe here, at least for a night, as are you.”

“He is escaped,” Zera admitted, but would say no more.

“And you mean to safeguard his freedom,” Suphtra said. “I understand. I do, truly. But you must know that yours is likely time and effort wasted … unless you mean to take him far from the reach of the Faceless One … and from your fellow Hunters?”

“I see not how this discussion has anything to do with shelter for a night and a pair of burros. Do you wish to trade for what I need, or not?”

“I taught you to barter better than that,” Suphtra chuckled. “You must find a common bond between yourself and those with whom you would trade, create a kinship of sorts. But we will come back to our negotiations. For now, I desire information-a most undervalued commodity. I want to understand why so many slaves of late have taken to fleeing their masters? Surely a Hunter must be privy to such knowledge.”

“I do not know what you mean,” Zera said, sounding curious despite herself.

“Perhaps you do not,” Suphtra allowed. “Because I value our relationship, I will tell you some of the things that have come to my ear. By my count, there have been no less than a dozen escapes this year alone, and countless attempts-before that, perhaps one or two in a year. It seems reasonable to assume that even the slaves are growing restless.

“What’s more, rumors have it that some mines have been abandoned, the slaves chained like dogs and left to die, their masters simply gone. Other tales point to stirrings in the far west, skirmishes, murdered Alon’mahk’lar. Other whisperings say that the bone-towns-never safe at the best of times-are worse than ever, overrun by Mahk’lar and strange, twisted breeds of Alon’mahk’lar.”

Leitos flinched involuntarily at that, but Suphtra continued as if he had not noticed.

“Something, dear girl, has changed in the order of things, something for the worse, something not seen since the Upheaval.”

“I’m sure you will work your way around it,” Zera said. “You always have.”

He shook his head. “Not this time. I’m getting too old to play these tired games, too old to adjust to changes … too old, perhaps, to continue serving the Alon’mahk’lar and their pet king.”

“What are you saying?” Zera asked.

“War is coming-that is the change I sense. I do not know who will start it-humankind or demon-spawn-but it is coming.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“When all is taken,” Suphtra said slowly, “your family, your home, the very food you eat … when all that is stolen away, and there is nothing at all left to live for, men stop caring whether they live or die. Some will look to death, and whatever waits beyond the grave, as the better choice. The same can be said of the Mahk’lar, those which had free reign to haunt dead towns, but are now as much the slave as humans. War,” he said again, “is coming, because the Faceless One has miscalculated his strength and his perceived divinity.”

“You may be right,” Zera said, “but for now what might come to pass has no interest to me. I need shelter, burros, and a cart.” She held silent for a moment, then added with an edge in her voice, “And no one must know that either I or the boy were here.”

“How is Sandros these days?” the smuggler asked. “And Pathil? I have not seen either in Zuladah for some time.” He sounded merely curious, but Leitos sensed otherwise.

Zera glowered for a moment, then threw her hands up in surrender. “Very well,” she said, catching hold of the leather thong around Leitos’s neck, from which hung his stone of protection. With a deft twist, she pulled the amulet free. “Surely this will seal your lips.”

Suphtra gave her a look of mock astonishment. “You mistake me, dear girl. I would never betray you. Not for any price!”

“Indeed,” Zera growled, to which Suphtra laughed merrily.

Chapter 21

Leitos startled awake. Night’s black face, adorned with slashes of dim moonlight peeked through the gaps in the shutter of the room’s lone window. The raucous noise that had earlier filled Suphtra’s debauched refuge had ceased, and so too the racket upon the streets of Zuladah.

Zera, a faint lump on a pallet across the room, slumbered on. Her long, even breaths calmed him, but still he listened, waiting. Something had brought him out of a sound sleep.

The moments stretched, the silence held, and his eyelids grew heavy again. Zera murmured in her sleep, rolled over onto her back, went still. Caught between sleep and waking, Leitos heard again Suphtra’s warnings of change and coming war, leading him to wonder where he would be in a month … a year … in ten. He could scarcely imagine what the morrow would bring. As sleepiness stole over him, thoughts of the future, or anything for that matter, faded to nothing.

A rattle at the door made his eyes flare wide. Just another drunken reveler, lost and wandering. There had been many after they settled in the room Suphtra had given them for the night, enough that Zera had lost her patience and struck the last fool to barge in, knocking him unconscious. She dumped him in the hallway, and the presence of the bleeding brute had put an end to unwelcome visitors. Before falling into her blankets, Zera had made sure the door was bolted, and then shoved a heavy chest in front of it for good measure.

The latch jiggled again, softly. Instead of some grumbling fool throwing a shoulder against the door, there seemed to be an element of stealth with this would-be intruder.

Leitos sat up, straining to see. A blade, its keen edge crawling with a gleam of moonlight, pushed slowly between the gap of the door and the doorframe. It slid up, clicked almost inaudibly against the iron bolt’s shaft, then began wiggling gently in a bid to slide it loose.

“Zera,” Leitos hissed. “Wake up.”

She sighed peacefully.

Leitos flung his blankets aside and crawled over to her, cringing at ever pop and creak of the dusty floorboards. “Zera!” he said, his nose an inch from hers.

Her eyes blinked open, dancing with a muted emerald glow. “Why have you waited so long?” she murmured, as if still asleep. “Do you find me displeasing?”

Leitos stammered a senseless response, cleared his throat and started again. “There’s trouble. Someone … someone is trying to get-”

Her fingers curled around the back of his neck and his teeth clicked together, cutting off anything else he might have added. He had no mind to resist as she slowly pulled him down. A sound akin to distant wind filled his ears as their lips met, Zera’s heat mingling with his own, searing away all thoughts, all concerns. Unresisting, he pressed against her-

Zera’s eyes suddenly bulged, the sleepiness blasted away by a full, infuriated awareness. “What are you doing?” she asked coolly.

“M-me?” he babbled, trying to disentangle himself from her grasp. Her once gentle and caressing fingers had become like iron. “I … I-” he faltered. Then he remembered, and his heart skipped into a gallop. “There is someone-”

The door exploded inward. Shards rained down around Leitos and Zera. With impossible strength, she threw him to one side. He revolved through open space, struck a wall, and dropped to his rumpled pallet. Before he could right himself, Zera was on her feet, advancing on the grinning figure that filled the doorway-the Hunter, Sandros!

“You conniving bitch!” he snarled, rushing forward. His feet slammed into the old chest Zera had placed before the door. It had moved when he broke through, but not enough to help. The Hunter crashed down with a string of vile curses. Zera ended them with a thudding kick to his rage-twisted face. His head snapped back, then slammed forward to strike the floor.

Another figure slid through the doorway. “Is that any way to treat a friend?” Pathil asked, his white teeth a gleaming line splitting the dark skin of his face. Before Zera could react, another voice spoke from behind him.

“Give over the stray, and you can go.”

“Suphtra?” Zera said softly. “How could you betray me to the likes of these rogues?”

“We cannot resist the rule of the Faceless One. To thrive we must pay a price, make sacrifices-”

Zera moved before he could finish. One moment Pathil was standing between her and Suphtra, the next his limp body crashed into one corner of the room and thumped to the floor, and Zera had vanished into the hallway. A thick tearing sound cut off Suphtra’s squawk of fear. All sounds of the brief struggle gave way to a horrid bubbling noise.

Zera stalked back into the room. “Get your things.”

Leitos thrust what little he possessed into his satchel, then his eyes found Pathil. Something about the way the Hunter lay on the floor wrenched at Leitos. After a moment, he realized the man’s torso had been twisted like a damp rag, his spine folded in half until the back of his head pressed against his heels.

A pattering sound around Zera’s feet drew Leitos’s attention. She swayed slightly. “You are hurt,” Leitos blurted.

“We cannot delay,” Zera said, ignoring his concern.

“Damn you, Zera,” Pathil mumbled. The Hunter’s mangled flesh was changing, healing-

Lakaan burst into the room. “Let us be gone!”

Zera caught hold of Leitos and shoved him past Lakaan. In the dim hallway, Suphtra sat against the wall, one leg splayed out, the other bent under him. A bloody dagger lay a few inches from his limp hand. His eyes had rolled up to show the whites. Most of his throat was gone … not slashed, but torn away.

Then they were running down the hallway. Drawn by all the commotion, bleary-eyed men and women popped out of their rooms to see what was afoot.

Lakaan bawled, “Run, you damnable sheep! For your miserable lives, get away!” Where his thundering cries failed to spur them into flight, his battering shoulders slammed them aside.

Shouts of confusion followed in their wake, but the trio did not slow. Lakaan continued to smash his way through the crowd, while Leitos stayed at his heels, propelled by Zera’s firm hand.

They charged down the stairs. From there, they turned down another hallway lined with doorways hung with sheer curtains. Leitos noticed Zera’s hand leave his back.

Without slowing, he cast a look over his shoulder to find her halted, a burning candle in one hand, and a swatch of gauzy curtain in the other. She touched the flame to the material. Bearing aloft that makeshift torch, she lit every curtain she passed.

As the flames spread up the walls, quickly growing into a conflagration, pandemonium exploded behind them. In all that chaos of flame, roiling smoke, screaming and running people, Zera followed, her eyes burning bright and fierce like twin bores opened to some unknown realm of Geh’shinnom’atar. When the panicked shouts became howls of agony, she dropped the flaming material and ran.

Lakaan took them through a maze of hallways until bursting through a door that opened onto a broad street. From there he turned and raced along, keeping close to the front of several different buildings.

By then people were streaming out of Suphtra’s fiery deathtrap. Leitos looked back and found Sandros and Pathil, both seemingly larger than they had been before, smashing aside the shrieking throng. In the light of leaping flames, and through the haze of smoke, the two Hunters barely looked like men.

Lakaan turned down an alley, and the two were blessedly gone from sight. Leitos was uncertain if they had been seen, but he added his minuscule strength to help drive the lumbering brute ahead of him. Lakaan seemed to be slowing, his gasps were loud and wheezy, but with both Leitos and Zera now pushing him along, he managed to keep a brisk pace. After some long moments, twisting and turning at each new alley or street, the sounds of terror faded behind them.

“Do you know where you are going,” Zera demanded, “or are you just rabbiting along?”

Lakaan made a fair attempt to respond, but only managed a series of gasps. In the end, he gave up trying to speak and ran on.

Perhaps sheer terror overwhelmed him, or the rush of blood through his brain, but Leitos envisioned the man’s huge buttocks as a pair of heaving boulders trapped under a blanket, and he fell into a fit of hysterical laughter. Lakaan kept on, but Zera’s hand caught hold of his cloak, her fist bunching the material between his shoulder blades.

“Are you daft?” Zera snapped against his ear.

Leitos, tears streaming down his cheeks, could only answer by shaking his head and pointing at Lakaan’s swaying backside. Zera’s brow furrowed. A moment more and her lips quirked toward a smile. Then, all at once, she burst out laughing. Their merriment ended when Lakaan halted.

“By all the gods,” he panted, mouth gaping wide to draw breath, “what are you two going on about?” Sweat beaded on his brow, dribbled over his fleshy jaw.

“Never mind,” Zera said, struggling to hold back a gale of mirth. “Where are we going?”

Lakaan took a dozen deep breaths before he could respond. Even then, his answer came in fits and starts. “There … across the street … one of Suphtra’s stables. He … had me … ready a cart and a team of burros … before those hunting bastards came.”

At the mention of Sandros and Pathil, the last of Leitos’s hilarity dried up. “Are they-”

“They are Hunters,” Zera interrupted. “They need be nothing more for us to make haste from this damnable city, with all its deceitful friends.”

“Suphtra would not have betrayed you,” Lakaan said, sounding doubtful. “The Hunters forced him to it.”

“Am I to believe,” Zera said icily, “that when Suphtra tried to gut me after I dealt with those jackals, it was a mistake? Or was it because he thought my blood would adorn his blade so prettily?”

“He stabbed you?” Lakaan gasped. “But … why would he want a cart prepared for you?”

“A ruse for you, Lakaan,” Zera said gently, “so that you would never doubt him, and so that you would be out of the way when he betrayed me.”

Leitos remembered the pattering sounds around Zera’s feet, just before they fled the room. “We must tend your wounds.”

“Later,” Zera said. “Take us to this cart, Lakaan … that is, unless, you have decided to turn against me as well?” That she had winced when she moved was not lost on Leitos.

Lakaan recoiled at her accusation. “You know me better than that, Zera,” he said with a dejected sigh.

He turned away and searched the street. Nothing moved, and quiet held sway. Leitos could almost believe Sandros and Pathil were not after them, that Suphtra’s building was not, even now, charring to cinders … that Zera was not slowly bleeding to death.

He touched her arm, drawing her attention. The strange inner light normally burning in her eyes had faded, and her movements seemed sluggish. She swayed more than ever. “We have to stop the bleeding,” he said, mustering all the calm authority he could.

For a moment he thought she would castigate him, but she relented and gave him a wan smile. “I will see to that. There is time-believe me, I know.”

With no choice but to accept her assurance, Leitos nodded. He moved closer. She surprised him by draping an arm across his thin shoulders. He took her weight and wrapped a hand around her waist, his fingers sinking into the blood soaking her cloak. She hissed in pain at his touch, and gently moved his hand lower. “Keep a firm grip,” she said, leaning more heavily on him.

“All is clear,” Lakaan said. He trundled into the open, angling across the street toward a low, squat building with a rail fence jutting off one side.

“Lakaan?” a tremulous voice called out when the trio came within a few paces of a set of wide doors.

“Be at ease, Toron, it is I,” Lakaan answered. “Is all in order?”

“Yes, but I feared you were not coming,” Toron said, popping up from behind a pair of barrels sitting to one side of the stable doors. Clad in an ankle-length, dirty white tunic, he was as slight as Leitos and two hands shorter. He started at sounds not there, and his hands fidgeted at his waist. The boy was shaking from head to toe.

Lakaan eyed him a moment, then opened one stable door and vanished into the waiting gloom. Leitos and Zera came next, followed by Toron. As soon as the boy closed the door, Lakaan caught his shoulders. “Where is your father?”

Toron squeaked and tried to worm away. After a moment, he gave up. “Sons of the Fallen,” he said in a fearful whisper. “They took him, not long after you came earlier. The patrols are everywhere this night.”

“Alon’mahk’lar taking prisoners?” Lakaan thought about that, then turned the boy and gave him a swat on the backside to get him moving. “Get yourself to bed, boy. If anyone calls at your door, do not answer.”

“Is my father coming back?” Toron asked, tears in his voice.

Lakaan nodded. “Nimah knows what he is about, boy, trust in that. He will return.”

Leitos was not sure he believed that, but Lakaan’s pledge held enough promise for Toron. The boy bobbed his head and scurried away.

“You two get the cart,” Zera spoke up, each word an effort. “I’ll follow at a distance.”

“Where are we heading?” Lakaan asked.

“West,” Zera said, “as far as the road will take you.”

Lakaan’s face tightened, but he did not argue.

Zera pulled away from Leitos and staggered deeper into the stable. Leitos tried to follow, but she waved him off. “I’ll be fine. Just go. Hurry.”

“Come along, boy,” Lakaan rumbled, clapping a huge hand on his shoulder. “She is not new to this game.”

With a reluctant nod, Leitos followed after Lakaan’s lumbering bulk. He cast a lingering glance at the patch of darkness into which Zera had vanished.

Lakaan led them to a stall that let out on the fenced paddock. Within the stall waited a pair of burros harnessed to a cart that, by Leitos’s estimation, should have been broken up and used for a cook fire many years before. Lakaan peeled back the tattered canvas stretched over the back of the cart’s bed, revealing several bundles, tall clay pots with hempen cords to secure their tops, tools similar to those used in mines, and coils of rope. Satisfied, Lakaan replaced the tarp.

“If we are halted by anyone,” Lakaan warned, “keep your mouth shut, and let me do the talking. I’m just a poor crofter with need to dig a well, and you are my mute bastard.”

“What about Zera?”

Lakaan gave him a quizzical look. “I should not have to tell you, boy, that Zera can take care of herself-anything you or I do on her account will only foul things up.”

“She is injured,” Leitos said, thinking that she must be, even now, bandaging her wound to staunch the flow of blood.

“That is when a Hunter-her in particular-is most dangerous,” Lakaan said uneasily, as if he wanted no dealings with Zera at her most lethal.

Leitos peered into the motionless gloom, but saw no sign of Zera. He imagined her slumped in some dark corner, emerald eyes fading to a hint of their former luster, glazing over-

Leitos spun away from Lakaan and moved back toward the shadows where Zera had vanished. He had left her at the gorge, but not this time, never again. Every step he took eased the burden on his heart. He was done leaving behind those he loved.

Love? The word filled him with a storm of joyful confusion. What do I know of love? His pace quickened, as if carrying him away from the thought. Perhaps he was deluded, perhaps not, but in the end all that mattered was that he had to get back to Zera and help as he could.

Heavy footsteps sounded behind him. Without slowing, he looked over his shoulder. Lakaan bore down on him, face set in a scowl. “We will go when Zera is safe,” Leitos said.

“We will do as she told us,” Lakaan responded, reaching out.

Leitos quickened his pace. I am coming, Zera-

A stony fist crashed into the back of his head, catapulting Leitos into the dirt. Dazed, he rolled over, trying to get his bearings. His arms and legs refused to work right, and Lakaan’s bulk swam into view. The big man struck him again, and a false night fell over Leitos.

Chapter 22

A pale splash of rose and gold washed away the night’s persistent indigo stain. The air cooled in the hour before first light, giving Leitos something to consider besides Zera’s absence, Lakaan’s abuses, and his own aching head.

Feet padding along between the cart’s thin wheel tracks, Leitos walked with his face lost in the shadow of his hood. When he had come to, he found himself trussed in the back of the cart, the canvas rolled back. Twisting about, he had seen the night-shrouded desert, but no sign of Zuladah.

After they had progressed a few more miles, Lakaan had halted the burros and freed Leitos with a warning. “Try and run back, boy, and I’ll beat you again-I don’t want to, but I’d rather suffer your anger than Zera’s vengeance.” At Leitos’s look of concern, the big man had added in a gentler tone, “Trust that she is well, boy. A little scratch cannot stop the likes of her.”

When the sun was high, and his anger had faded, Leitos moved up beside Lakaan. “That seemed too easy,” he said. Having failed to distract himself from thinking of what Zera might be facing, he had no choice but to speak with Lakaan. Behind them, the road shimmered under the already hot sun, and ran in a dusty line back to the east. On either side, withered brush dotted a parched land of sand and pitted rock.

Lakaan kept his squinty eyes on the road ahead, now climbing up the flank of a tabletop plateau. Sweat glistened in his closely shorn black hair, dripped over skin the color of timeworn leather. His jowls seemed more flabby than they had in the dark of night. “What was easy?” he panted.

“Escaping,” Leitos said, trying to keep his voice even. Despite being unconscious at the time, it seemed that simply walking away from those who hunted them should have proved far more difficult. “That boy at the stables, Toron, he said his father was taken, that Alon’mahk’lar patrols were everywhere. Sandros and Pathil were after us, too. How did we just walk out of Zuladah?”

“Could be that Zera had a hand in misdirecting our enemies,” Lakaan allowed. “Far as getting out of the city, well … it has always served me well to be everyone’s friend-even if I hate them.”

Leitos’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “How do you hate a friend?”

Lakaan explained, “Something I learned from Suphtra-curse his black heart. A man has few true friends, but many cunning enemies. If you are unwary, they take all you have and leave you a corpse in the gutter.” He nodded to himself, then went on.

“A clever fellow will play the fool, give up a few gems, but secretly turn the table and steal the lot for himself. That, boy, is what Suphtra did to me and Zera. I was a fool to trust that bastard as much as I did, but have no doubt he was a clever, thieving son-of-a-whore.”

As they crested the plateau an hour later, Lakaan halted the burros with a yank on the lead ropes. “Past time for a drink and a meal.” His gap-toothed smile changed him from a hulking brute into an overlarge child. Leitos could not help but grin in return.

They shared a loaf of bread and drank water from one of the cisterns, never moving from the middle of the road. As their desolate surroundings heated under the climbing sun, a lizard darted over hot sand to take shelter in the shade of a thorn bush.

Leitos focused on the mountains far to the west. The Mountains of Fire. They jutted black and sharp, an occasional peak spewing a thin plume of smoke, which the wind tore apart and drove south in a hazy gray line. Over the Sea of Sha’uul, hidden now behind the curve of the horizon, that haze billowed anew, growing into gleaming white thunderheads.

“Will we wait for Zera?” Leitos asked.

“No,” Lakaan said. “She will find us. That is what she does. We will go as far as the road takes us, as she ordered.”

Leitos looked back at the Mountains of Fire. “And how far is that?”

“Farther than I have ever been,” Lakaan admitted, blinking away a drop of sweat. “Perhaps farther than anyone has been since before the Upheaval. No one really knows, for this is a land long forsaken by gods and men.”

Leitos did not mention the Brothers of the Crimson Shield, but Lakaan’s opinion troubled him. What if that mysterious order did not exist? They must be real, he told himself, otherwise Zera was a liar, and he refused to believe that.

“Let’s put this daylight to proper use,” Lakaan said, and they set out again.

The plateau rose a bit higher, then began a steady drop into a strange land of waterless canyons and gorges, towering stone spires, and steep hills of weathered boulders. By late in the day, as the road meandered around stony obstacles, the Mountains of Fire were lost to sight. Leitos and Lakaan trudged along without talking. The only sound came from the cart’s wheels grating over the roadway.

The road continued to snake its way through deep canyons that offered surprisingly cool shade at all times, save midday. When the sun hovered at its zenith, escape from the oppressive heat was impossible. Whether in sunlight or shadow, Lakaan sweated new rings into his grimy tunic, and kept up a ceaseless lament over his rumbling belly. That complaining, initially humorous, quickly became tiresome. Leitos bore it all, always watching for Zera. And as ever, all that lay behind them were their own pursuing tracks pressed into the dust of the road. She will come … she must.

Many days passed on their westward march, until Leitos lost all track of time’s passage. They had to replenish the cisterns with water dug from the sandy soil. The digging reminded Leitos of life in the mines. But when he drank, he did so relishing his freedom.

Their supply of bread dwindled faster than the water, and what remained became hard and tasteless. Leitos did not complain. It was food, it soothed the empty ache in his belly, kept his stride firm. Lakaan protested bitterly, until he remembered a sling hidden away within their supplies. With startling skill, he deftly took down the occasional hare, and a glut of lizards and adders. If it moved, it was food to Lakaan.

Leitos was eyeing Lakaan’s bulk one day, thinking that the man looked decidedly smaller than when he had met him, when the road took a sharp turn, and began climbing out of the endless maze of canyons, gullies, and ravines.

By that evening, they crested a steep slope, and halted before a landscape that numbed Leitos’s senses.

“Good thing we filled the cisterns this morning,” Lakaan said, his voice tinged with the same dread that filled Leitos’s chest.

Far nearer than before, the Mountains of Fire jutted off a sprawling plain dominated by pillowed black and gray rock, and interspersed by pockets of yellowed grass that swayed in the wind. Like a line of frozen waves, the craggy mountain peaks reached higher than Leitos believed possible. The columns of smoke he had thought were billowing off the peaks, actually originated from deep, sharp-edged crevasses running up the flanks of the mountains.

He was startled to see that white crowned the very highest peaks-snow and ice, Leitos knew at once. Adham had often spoke of the ice fields of the far north that never diminished, no matter the heat of summer in the lowlands. Leitos saw all this at a glance, and at the same instant recognized that there could be no passable route over such a barrier.

Carried by contrary winds, a bitter reek wafted over Leitos and Lakaan. Both fell into a fits of coughing, and the burros flattened their ears and brayed in affront. As quickly as the offensive odor came it departed, leaving man and beast with the gift of watering eyes and flaring nostrils.

“Brimstone,” Lakaan wheezed in disgust. “Damnable rock as far as the eye can see, no water, and surely no food.”

“You wail like a teething babe,” a placid voice said behind them.

Leitos spun, a startled cry locked in his throat. Lakaan cut loose with a garbled squeal and dashed forward a few ungainly paces, then tripped over his own feet. He landed with a grunt and rolled over, one arm flailing in a desperate warding gesture.

Zera gazed at them from farther down the road, eyes twinkling green mirth. With a backdrop of mazelike canyons spread out for leagues behind her, she appeared lessened in stature, but still dangerous-Beautifully so, Leitos thought.

He ran forward and halted before her. “Your wounds?” he asked, reaching out to touch her shoulder, just to make sure she was real.

“My wounds are mending nicely,” she laughed, catching him in her arms. He eagerly returned the hug, then drew back, feeling awkward and out of sorts.

Her lips quirked toward a smile, and she gave him a questioning look. Thankfully, Lakaan spoke up, sparing Leitos the effort of trying to voice his jumbled thoughts.

“I had nearly given up hope that you escaped Zuladah,” Lakaan said, grunting as he gained his feet. “Where have you been?”

“First we eat,” Zera said, holding up a string loaded with a half dozen scrawny, gray-brown hares. She threw her arm around Leitos, pulled him close, and whispered, “Let your heart be at ease, I am well.”

Leitos smiled. “I am glad you’re back … that is we-Lakaan and I-are glad you are safe.” He shut his mouth before he started babbling.

“I am happy you’re happy,” she said, and playfully elbowed his ribs. In that moment, all returned to normal, and a weight seemed to fall off Leitos’s shoulders. “Now it is time to eat. I am starving!”

As they set camp, night settled heavy and dark. After feeding and watering the burros, Leitos and the others fed themselves. In the flickering firelight, Zera licked the grease off her fingers from the last roasted hare with the same greedy zeal as Lakaan.

Leitos was more reserved, picking the stringy meat off the bone. He could not keep his eyes off Zera, nor could he shake his awe of her. He had not known that he had built up any expectations of what he would find when she returned to them, but he had. The woman sitting cross-legged across the fire from him did not resemble, in any way, who he had believed he would see.

With little water to spare for washing, her face was as grimy as his and Lakaan’s. She wore the dirt better than either of them. And where Lakaan’s girth had dwindled, and the already scant flesh covering Leitos’s arms had thinned, Zera appeared as if she had never gone a day in her life without food. Perhaps she had not-she was a Hunter, after all. There was also no sign she had been gravely injured, as she moved without a hint of pain.

“Getting out of the city was not so difficult,” she said now, continuing the story she had begun while they prepared their camp. “It was not the first time I have had to climb a city wall.”

“What of your wounds-” Leitos began, falling silent when Zera held up a hand.

“Were not so grievous as I first believed,” she said, flashing him a mollifying grin. “I’ll carry a scar, have no doubt, but it will serve as a reminder of the foolishness for trusting the likes of Suphtra.”

“Even I believed he was loyal,” Lakaan mumbled.

“He was,” Zera said, “if only to himself. I cannot fault him for that. But when he made the choice to turn on me, he sealed his own fate.”

“Did anyone follow you beyond Zuladah?” Leitos asked.

“I hope so,” Zera said. “I left a trail that headed straight to the harbor. With so many fishermen coming and going, it will be assumed that I escaped on fisherman’s skiff.”

“What about Sandros and Pathil?” Leitos asked, having decided that they must not have been as grievously injured as he first believed. As to thinking that they had begun to change form, he knew well enough that terror had a way of twisting the mind. When he fled the mines, such fright had made him see a slavemaster that had not been there.

“No doubt, they are cursing me even now,” Zera said proudly. “Although, they must know by now that I never intended to hand you over to the Alon’mahk’lar. I suppose my days as a Hunter are finished.”

“I’ve heard enough,” Lakaan grumbled, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. He rose and shuffled beyond the firelight and fell into his blankets. “If trouble comes,” he called, “keep it to yourself.”

“If there is trouble,” Zera whispered to Leitos, “it will have come and gone before we can wake him.”

“Do you think there is any danger coming?” Leitos asked, looking to the east. Far away, he thought he could hear a voice on the wind moaning through the canyons.

“Of course,” Zera said. “These lands-all lands-are full of menace … especially for humankind. Keep on your guard, but do not worry yourself into a panic over what might be.”

“I tried to come back for you,” Leitos said hesitantly, “at the stable.”

Zera gave him a reassuring grin. “I know you did, and I thank you.” With mock sternness, she added, “But I told you to go on without me. Trust that when I give you an order, it is for the best-for both of us.”

Leitos nodded. Silence fell between them, underlain by the soft crackle of burning twigs. A jackal yipped, another answered. A star streaked across the sky, a brief and violent flaring, then was gone.

“Will you sleep with me?” Zera asked quietly. Leitos almost swallowed his tongue. “This close to the mountains,” she went on, unaware of his shock, “it is cold at night. We can share our warmth.”

“Good idea,” Leitos said after clearing his throat.

He looked to the mountains in question, thankful for the distraction. There had been no question in his mind how they had derived their name, what with all the smoke, but in the night, it became all the more obvious. Deep red, meandering veins crept down the mountains’ flanks. “What manner of fire is that?” he asked.

Zera looked from him to the west. “It’s molten rock,” she said absently. “It bubbles up from deep vents that, some say, reach to the very bowels of the Thousand Hells.” She chuckled as if that belief was the height of absurdity.

Neither stirred for a long time. Zera sat lost in thought, while Leitos did everything he could to avoid thinking. The fire died slowly, until only faint embers glowed under layers of ash.

“We should sleep,” Zera said, rising. “Tomorrow will be a long day. Once we are in the mountains, the days will only get longer and more difficult.”

She held out her hand to Leitos. He took it and stood. After that, he felt lost in a daze. She rolled out their blankets, making a pallet that seemed far too narrow for two people. He was still staring at their makeshift bed, and Zera resting on it, when she shot him a questioning look. “What are you waiting for?”

The moisture fled his tongue, and his limbs lost all feeling, but he managed to join her. Laying on his back, with no less than a foot between them, he twitched when she nestled near and spread a blanket over them.

“It’s so cold,” Zera said, her voice already drowsy, muffled by their shared blanket. “Give me your arm.”

Leitos rolled to his side and did as she asked, fearing that his heart would leap from his chest. She pressed against him with a contented sigh, and then twined her fingers through his. By her breathing, she fell asleep almost at once, and he began to relax into her comforting warmth. He lay there a long time, the scent of her-leather and clean sweat and the faintest hint of some flower’s fragrance-filling his nose.

Chapter 23

It was still dark when Leitos came awake, his skin coated in cold sweat. The fire had been built up, its light mingling with the glow of a gibbous moon. Where is Zera? Strange howls crawled out of the canyons, crept over camp. There were words buried within those utterances, suggestions-

“Gods!” Lakaan bellowed. He sat up, his bulbous head turning this way and that.

“It seems that trouble has found us,” Zera said, standing near the restive burros.

Galvanized by another howl, Leitos sprang to his feet, flinging aside his blanket.

… still the heart … savor the meat … devour the soul … sweet perishing … sweet death … be still be quiet … yes yes … lie down … yes yes yes … slumber … die.…

“We must flee!” Lakaan babbled. He stood up, blundered one way, then another, spinning in mindless circles. “Run!” he shrieked. “We must run or die!”

“Calm yourself,” Zera snapped, her voice like a whip. Lakaan halted at once, panting, eyes wild. “We will run,” she growled, “but not in a blind panic. Do you understand?”

Lakaan nodded, his plump fingers plucking nervously at his collar.

Zera moved away from the burros, and pressed a fat bundle of supplies into Leitos’s arms. “An Alon’mahk’lar’s greatest weapon is its voice,” she said. “Do not heed their words. Push them away.”

… sweet perishing … sweet death….

Leitos gritted his teeth, focused on the shifting sand underfoot, the bundle in his arms, the memory of Zera pressed against him in the night, anything to avoid heeding the accursed voices on the wind. He realized that the howling beasts did not sound so near as he had first thought. He had been sure they were upon them, just a few paces from camp. But no, they prowled miles distant, using their voices to drive their prey mad with fear.

Zera led an ashen-faced Lakaan to Leitos’s side, then released the burros. Once freed, the beasts tore into the night, braying and kicking as if death were nipping at their hooves. Perhaps it is, Leitos thought with a shiver.

Zera retrieved two more bundles from the back of the cart and returned. “We continue west,” she said, handing Lakaan a bundle.

They did not run, but Zera set a pace fast enough to discourage talking. In the first hour, Leitos was sure the hunting Alon’mahk’lar were coming nearer, but deep into the second he knew they were not. By the end of the third hour, as the stars faded, the only sound in his ears was the steady, sulfurous wind blowing down off the mountains. There was no hint of the chilling whispers anymore. He didn’t know how they had shaken off the pursuers, but he was glad Zera’s skill had kept them safe once again. Other than pausing to sip from a waterskin Zera carried, they did not halt until midday, after climbing into the foothills of the Mountains of Fire.

While Lakaan and Leitos shared a crust of bread, Zera fashioned straps from a coil of rope she had taken from the cart, and then tied them to the corners of the three supply bundles.

“Rope makes for poor straps,” she said, testing her makeshift pack, “but sore shoulders are better than having our hands full if an Alon’mahk’lar sets upon us.” She gave them both a hard stare.

“We cannot stay here,” she said, handing Lakaan the depleted waterskin. “We will walk days and nights, until we are through the mountains.”

“And break our fool necks for the effort?” Lakaan complained.

“The trail is not easy,” Zera admitted, “but it is passable, even in the dark. Besides, staying still too long in these mountains is to invite the company of death.”

Lakaan weighed that for a moment, as if he were willing to take his chances, then shrugged in resignation. “So be it,” he muttered, and passed the waterskin to Leitos.

A long day followed, the beginning of a ceaseless march through a parched, desolate land. The open road narrowed to a rocky trail barely fit for travel. Behind them the broken canyons, through which Leitos and Lakaan had journeyed, stretched far away under an ugly haze. Dark gray and lichen encrusted, the mountains stood around them, an impregnable wall seamed with the sullen reds of molten rock. Where it had cooled and hardened, the new stone was darker still, clinging to the floors of dizzying ravines. Ever the reek of sulfur left them gasping and choking by turns. What vegetation grew was tough and scrubby. Spiny leaves hung curled and yellowed, starving for pure water and bright sunlight.

Zera called a halt one evening at a wide spot on the trail overlooking a gorge so deep that shadows hid the bottom. A muted roaring told of an abundance of water leaping and crashing amongst boulders far below. A battered bridge spanning the gap drew Leitos’s eye. Deep ruts grooved its surface, like those he had seen made by wagons on the road to Zuladah. Zera answered Leitos’s question before he could ask it.

“Once,” she said, her voice tossed and pulled by a fitful breeze, “this route was one of the greatest trade roads in all of Geldain.”

She saw Leitos’s doubtful expression and explained, “Ancient stories tell that from Zuladah to what was once the city of Imuraa, merchants used this route to avoid the stormy months on the Sea of Sha’uul. Great armies once trod this road, as did lesser merchants-those more given to smuggling than honest trade. That was a thousand and more years before the Upheaval, during the reign of the Suanahad Empire. Now it is a trail barely fit for walking, and seldom used even for that. I expect the day will soon come when every lingering trace of what was, will be lost.”

The finality of that statement fell over Leitos even as the last, muted rays of sunlight winked from the sky. “And then what?” he wondered aloud.

“Then some fool will build it all up again,” Lakaan said, peering into the impenetrable gloom under the bridge, “and another fool will tear it down. Birth, life, death … such is the way of things.”

“So our purpose is to live a life that amounts to nothing, and then die?”

“Some believe Pa’amadin has a design,” Zera said, “but it is not for us to know.”

Leitos gave her a quizzical look. “Do you believe that?”

“My purpose is to see you safe into the hands of the Brothers of the Crimson Shield,” Zera said. “Whether that is the will of Pa’amadin or not, I cannot say.”

“Brothers of the Crimson Shield!” Lakaan barked. He wheeled, not looking childlike anymore, but dangerous. “You have been traipsing us through these accursed hinterlands, searching after that false dream?”

Zera leveled a flat stare at him. “You are free to go where you wish, old friend, but I am taking Leitos to those who can help.”

“They do not exist!” Lakaan shouted, the words echoing away.

“They do,” Zera countered with deadly serenity. “Elsewise, they would not be sought after by the Faceless One.”

Leitos looked between them, then settled on Zera. “Tell him,” he insisted.

“Tell me what?” Lakaan demanded.

“That they do exist,” Leitos said slowly, “because she is of their order.”

Lakaan roared harsh laughter. He did not notice Zera’s fury, nor her hand falling to her sword hilt, but Leitos did. “She is no more a warrior of the Crimson Shield than I am. By the gods good and dead, boy, she is-”

A howl cut off whatever he was about to say. Thick with malice, it pushed up the trail and encompassed the trio, then sped past them and over the bridge, fading under the sound of rushing waters.

Zera’s sword flashed from its scabbard. “Go,” she ordered in a tone that ended any arguments before they could begin. “Stay on the trail as far as it takes you. I will find you, as I did before.” She wheeled and sprinted back down the trail. A moment more and she was gone from sight.

Another howl broke over Leitos and Lakaan, carrying with it all the dark promises of before. Not again, Leitos thought. He had taken two unconscious steps after Zera when Lakaan caught his arm in a crushing grip.

“There is much you do not know or understand, boy,” he snarled. “Believe me, now more than ever, when I say she can look after herself. Believe, as well, that her doing so is a sight you do not want to behold.”

At another of those terrible howls, Lakaan moved beyond explanations to action. He spun Leitos about and shoved him. “Run, damn you! RUN!”

Chapter 24

One moment Leitos was struggling to keep his footing over the bridge’s cracked surface, the next he tripped and fell hard against the low rail. The crumbling stonework, having survived the ravages of ages, the Upheaval, and the constant abuses of the Mountains of Fire, fell away with an almost trivial grating noise, taking Leitos with it.

Leitos clawed, seeking purchase he could not find. His legs flew out over the drop. The edge of the bridge slid under him, scraping his upper legs, his belly, his chest, then he lost all contact. The world tipped and spun. Lakaan ran toward him … too slow. Then Lakaan was gone, and the stars wheeled overhead-

His shout became a pained grunt when Lakaan caught hold of his wrist, arresting his plummet. Lakaan heaved back, flinging him toward the center of the bridge. The big man gathered himself, hauled Leitos to his feet, dragged him along to the far end of the bridge, and then pushed Leitos forward with a warning that iced Leitos’s blood. “They’re coming!”

His near-plummet forgotten in the face of greater danger, Leitos sprinted away. Lakaan came after, bellowing, “Run faster!”

Past the bridge, the trail fell in a steep decline, a wide ledge cut into the face of a vertical cliff. Leitos spun back when Lakaan’s cries changed.

The big man had stopped and held a crude dagger, half as long as Zera’s sword, angled across his chest. His opposite arm was outstretched, his hand raised like a shield. A creature stalked down the trail, while another clung to the cliff above Lakaan. Leitos had never seen such beasts, but he knew them for what they were by stories his grandfather had told. Wolves.

Not wolves, Leitos told himself, but Alon’mahk’lar. His next thought was for Zera. Had they gotten past her, or had they-

“No,” he prayed aloud. “Please, not that.”

The wolves’ eyes reflected back the moonlight in malignant, shifting hues-first a murky yellow, then muddy crimson, then a swirling dull silver. Leitos had never seen an Alon’mahk’lar with eyes that changed color, but that did not mean they were not Sons of the Fallen.

They closed in, muscles bunching. Dark sable bristles covered the smaller of the two creatures, which crawled spiderlike along the cliff face. It held to the rock using not paws but long-fingered hands tipped with wicked talons. The larger wolf, standing chest-high to Lakaan, wore a tawny pelt. It bared its glimmering white teeth, each matching the size of the knife Leitos clutched in his hand.

“Give over the boy,” the tawny beast said, its voice a guttural rasp. Leitos nearly screamed upon hearing it speak. All that stopped him was the terrible knowledge that he knew that voice.

“Take him!” Lakaan yelled, abruptly spinning on his heel and running headlong at Leitos. The trail was too narrow to avoid getting trampled. Leitos backpedaled, shouting for Lakaan to stop, but the big man gained speed with every step.

The wolves sprang. In their greed for the kill, they slammed into each other and fell to the trail in a snarling tangle. The darker one yelped and bounded away. Holding up one bloodied leg, it flattened its ears, growling low in its throat. The second wolf darted after Lakaan.

Leitos fled before a screeching Lakaan and the Alon’mahk’lar wolf. The short chase ended when the beast crashed into Lakaan. He screamed, thrashing the dagger over his shoulder. The wolf avoided the blade, and drove Lakaan to his knees.

Leitos ran back. As the gap narrowed between him and the struggling foes, the wolf reared its head back and howled. Froth flew from its mouth, slathering Lakaan’s face. Driven into a frenzy, Lakaan fought to get free, but the wolf’s freakishly human fingers clenched, sinking talons deep into his back and shoulders.

Leitos raised his knife, loosing his own cry. The wolf’s howl cut off and, staring at Leitos, it grinned. In that moment, its shifting eyes burned with red glee. Powerful jaws closed on Lakaan’s neck, stilling his fearful wails. Wrenching its head to the side, the wolf ripped the life from Lakaan, just as Leitos came close enough to use his knife. Hot blood sprayed over his cheeks and brow. Leitos swung the blade, raking sharp steel across the wolf’s muzzle. Reversing his swing, Leitos slashed again, and the wolf released Lakaan’s corpse to scramble backward. The tip of the blade just skimmed one of its eyes, stealing away that dread crimson light.

With no thought to skill, Leitos waded in, hacking and slashing. His feet slid in Lakaan’s blood, and he threw out a hand to catch himself. The needlelike spines of the wolf’s pelt punctured his palm, and Leitos jerked back. In a last, wild strike, he buried his blade in the creature’s neck. The wolf flung itself away in a twisting leap, taking Leitos’s weapon with it, and ran back the way it had come. Its darker companion had already vanished.

Gasping, Leitos searched the darkness for any sign of Zera, but found none. He called her name, but the only answer was the rumble of water deep in the gorge. A heartbeat later, the wolves howled in the distance. He waited a moment more, indecisive, then turned and ran. He feared for Zera’s safety, but if anything, it was the wolves that should be afraid. Whether she got to them before they came after him, was another matter. His flying feet barely touched the ground as he sprinted away. All became a blur. He fell many times, but the tumbles meant nothing, only getting away did.

He did not halt until his booted feet splashed into icy water. That cold bath cleared his head. Gulping air, he gazed about at the lightening day, unable to believe that the wolves had not given chase. I escaped, he thought, relieved, if not a little bewildered.

The land had changed during his flight. The ankle-deep stream flowed broad and clear through a canyon braced on either side by low hills carpeted in tall, summer-yellowed grass. A few trees dotted the hills. Not scrubby thorn bushes, but real trees. Most towered two and three times his height, and some taller still. The air, which had burned his lungs for so long, smelled fresh and was free of the sulfurous haze. Hills waited ahead, no telltale veins of molten rock marring their flanks.

He faced east and scanned the Mountains of Fire, standing between him and the rising sun. They ascended stark and black, close enough to be imposing, but far enough to give him a sense of relief at having escaped them. For the moment, he avoided thinking on Lakaan’s death and Zera’s absence, and focused instead on taking advantage of the stream, and the apparent tranquility of the moment. After that, he had to get farther from the mountains, and all that hunted within them.

After drinking his fill of the sweetest water he had ever tasted, he made his way to the far side of the stream, filled his waterskin, and reorganized his pack into a firmer bundle. While he worked, the bushes along the stream’s bank came alive with songbirds harvesting a wealth of dark, purple-black berries.

If those are good enough for birds, they are good enough for me. He plucked one, squeezed a drop of juice onto the tip of his tongue. Sweetness flooded his mouth. Then he was dumping the berries into his mouth by the handful, indifferent to the small thorns that guarded the precious fruit. The sticky purple juice stained his hands, lips, and chin.

Full to bursting, he went back to the stream and washed away most of the stains, then drank again. After another search of the eastern bank, it was with great reluctance that Leitos adjusted the straps of his pack, and set out in the opposite direction. He did not know how far he had to go, but he was beyond the Mountains of Fire, and that meant he was closer to the Crown of the Setting Sun and the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. Zera was somewhere behind him. In the deepest reaches of his heart and soul he knew she would be coming. She had told him to stay on the trail and she would find him, and he believed her.

Between one step and the next, the sun edged above the mountains, casting shafts of golden radiance upon the world. Leitos stopped in his tracks. Without question, the land through which he now trod was arid, but nothing like the waterless desert wastelands he knew. Birds sang as if in praise to the coming day, insects whirred in dense thickets, and there, just at the edge of a field, he saw a pair of antlered animals he knew as deer from his grandfather. They saw him and bounded away in graceful leaps, their short bushy tails waving. He felt awake and truly alive for the first time in his life, like all he had experienced before was just a nightmare.

It was no dark dream, he told himself. It was allas real as this place. Something Zera had said to him filtered through the events that had come afterward. “Some believe Pa’amadin has a design … but it is not for us to know.”

“What if it is for us to know?” Leitos questioned under his breath. “What if Pa’amadin places the truth of his will for our lives before us, but leaves the recognizing and care of that truth to us?”

A hush fell, as if the world waited for him to find a puzzle piece he had not known he sought. No answer came, and he let it go. If there was some plan for him, then it would surely make itself known, one way or another.

Despite the constant running and hiding over the last many days, he felt refreshed. He walked slowly at first, loosening the stiffness that had settled into his muscles, then strode out. The trail he followed was a trail no longer. Wider than two wagons abreast, the ancient road ran west. Grass and low bushes had taken root in the joints between the paving stones, in many cases cracking or heaving them out of the underlying soil. No matter the overgrowth, the road was passable. Somewhere along it waited Imuraa, the bone-town Zera had mentioned. Leitos peeked over his shoulder. She will find me, he thought, hoping it was sooner rather than later.

When Leitos turned back, he saw a man under a tree. His feet faltered to a stop. Leitos closed his eyes and opened them, thinking shadows under the tree’s boughs were playing tricks. The man remained, cloaked head to foot in pale, threadbare robes, and huddled against the tree.

Leitos carefully reached into his satchel, searching for his knife. His hands went still when he remembered burying it in the neck of the wolf that had attacked him. In his mind’s eyes, he also recalled Lakaan’s dagger, flung away from his outstretched hand. In the aftermath of that battle, it had never crossed his mind to retrieve the dagger. I am no more dangerous with a blade than without. The thought was supposed to be reassuring, but fell flat.

At a distance of over a hundred paces, he did not think the man had seen him yet. By his posture-head bowed against arms wrapped around his bent knees-he might have been sleeping. Leitos had decided to skirt around the man, when he raised his head.

“You might as well come up here,” the man advised in a slightly familiar voice. A moment more, and a name and face came to Leitos. Pathil!

He spun away, choosing the path taken by the deer. From the corner of his eye, he saw the Hunter rise up and give chase. Leitos could not outrun him. He halted, caught up a fist-sized stone, and stood his ground. The Hunter stopped not more than twenty feet away. Leitos waited, knowing his aim was not good enough to dispatch his enemy, even if the distance had been halved.

Moments stretched out while they eyed each other, and Leitos came to the conclusion that the man before him was not Pathil, after all. This man was much taller, nearly as tall as Sandros, though far more slender. With a disconcerting casualness, the man planted the tall staff he was carrying in the ground at his feet and leaned on it. A hood obscured his face, and from a broad leather belt he wore a long, scabbarded sword. Nothing he did seemed overtly threatening, but Leitos felt sure he was dangerous.

“I am Ba’Sel,” the man finally said, pulling back his hood to reveal a face as dark as Pathil’s, marking him as the race that had given rise to the Asra a’Shah. Shorn of all hair, his head shone in the sunlight. Like Pathil, there was a handsomeness to him, his features unlined and somehow noble. Despite the dangerous air about him, his dark eyes glinted with disarming warmth.

“I have no quarrel with you,” Leitos warned.

Ba’Sel flashed a white smile. “That is good, for I can see that you are a fearsome youth. Such a wildness can be tamed-and should be. Given half a chance, I dare say I could shape you into a weapon that any Alon’mahk’lar would fear.”

Leitos thought the man was mocking him, but he actually seemed sincere. None of that about being turned into a weapon mattered, though. “Will you let me pass?”

“Of course,” Ba’Sel said amiably. “But then, why would you want to pass? Have you not been seeking my order, the Brothers of the Crimson Shield? I am of the mind that in finding me at last-or rather, in me finding you-it would be foolish to turn aside. Do you not agree, Leitos?”

Leitos caught his breath. “How do you know who I am?” He thought too late that he should have kept silent, instead of proving his identity by speaking up.

“It has been revealed to me,” Ba’Sel said evasively, “by someone who would very much like to see you again.”

“Zera!” Leitos blurted, unable to control himself.

“I am curious, how exactly did you meet her?”

“She did not tell you?” Leitos asked, surprised. When Ba’Sel shook his head, Leitos said, “She took me from two Hunters. Since then, she has kept me out of their hands on the way west. Last night, she went after a pair of wolves in the mountains-Alon’mahk’lar wolves-but they got around her and came after me. The man who was with us, Lakaan, he … he fell to one.” Leitos did not see any reason to bring up the man’s cowardice at the end, when he had offered Leitos up to the wolves. “After that, I fled.”

“We should go,” Ba’Sel said, as if nothing Leitos had explained carried any great significance. “This land is not so abysmal as the dark reaches within the Mountains of Fire, but it is just as deadly.”

“How can I believe that you are who you claim to be?” Leitos demanded.

“I should think placing your name with a face I have never seen is enough,” Ba’Sel said dryly. “Also, I know your purpose.”

Leitos could find no argument to counter that simple logic. Viewing humankind as less than animals, Alon’mahk’lar did not acknowledge the names by which people called each other. While the slavemasters had surely passed his description to every Hunter in Geldain, they would not have attached his name to it. He scanned the low, rounded hilltops, but saw nothing to indicate he was near his goal.

“If you search for the Crown of the Setting Sun,” Ba’Sel said, guessing Leitos’s intent, “then you seek in vain.”

“Has it been destroyed?” Leitos asked, dismayed.

“Many years gone,” Ba’Sel admitted.

“I do not understand.”

Ba’Sel tugged the end of his staff from the ground and signaled for Leitos to follow. He hesitated only a moment, then joined the brother. As they walked, Ba’Sel explained.

“We remain hidden by moving to new safe havens. If Alon’mahk’lar patrols come too close, we move. If any of our brothers are captured, we move. If there is any indication that our secrecy has been breached, we flee without hesitation. Sometimes our refuge is a mountaintop bastion, as was the first of its name, other times not. Moving so frequently, and finding suitable places to hide and train ourselves, makes for a difficult life. However, it has ensured that the servants of Faceless One have never found us after that first time. And like all others, he still looks in vain for the Crown of the Setting Sun, unable to accept that it no longer exists. At some point, he may realize his folly, but not-”

The wail of an Alon’mahk’lar horn cut him short. More followed suit, dozens, screaming like wicked spirits far back in the Mountains of Fire. When the horns fell silent, howls and guttural roars took up the cry of the hunt.

“And here I had planned to spend a pleasant day with a new friend,” Ba’Sel chuckled, strapping his sword belt across his back.

“It is time to run,” Ba’Sel said, repeating words Leitos had long since grown accustomed to hearing.

Chapter 25

Ba’Sel trotted back to the road, then headed straight for the Mountains of Fire and the hunting Alon’mahk’lar. Leitos was about to question the man’s judgment, when they splashed to the center of the stream and turned south.

“The water will mask our scent,” Ba’Sel said, as if teaching an apprentice. Leitos only nodded. He had run enough since fleeing the mines to know he should conserve his breath when he could.

Where Leitos fought the maddening urge to take flight, Ba’Sel calmly stooped and brought a cupped handful of water to his lips. Only his dark eyes, scanning the wooded hillsides for any sign of movement, indicated that he felt any sense of alarm. Save for flitting birds and rustling leaves, nothing moved.

When the horns wailed anew, closer now, Ba’Sel set out downstream. Leitos splashed along in his wake, wondering how long he would be able to keep the pace after having run through the night. Soon enough he stopped thinking anything, except that he despised the sound of horns and the baying of demon wolves.

For many miles, the stream meandered slow and shallow. Moss slicked the stones below the surface, and more than once Ba’Sel had to pluck Leitos from the water. Soaked as Leitos was, he did not at first realize that the stream was getting wider and swifter. Fed by other streams coming down off the mountains, it was becoming a river.

“Can you swim?” Ba’Sel asked, raising his voice above the river’s deep, watery gurgle.

“Enough to keep from drowning,” Leitos said.

Ba’Sel eyed him askance, no doubt wondering how a slave had learned the skill, then nodded in acceptance. “That is enough.”

A flurry of howls went up, closer than ever, driven to a frenzy by the horns.

Ba’Sel glanced at Leitos’s pack. “If there is anything that cannot be replaced, take it out, and give the rest to me.”

Leitos handed over the pack. “I have nothing.”

“Swim where you need to, but let the current do the work of carrying you downstream,” Ba’Sel advised, his eyes on the steep, forested hillsides overlooking the river. “I will rejoin you shortly.”

Leitos’s heart sped up. “Where are you going?”

In his instructing tone, Ba’Sel said, “I am going to spread your scent through the forest. That will gain us some time to get ahead of these accursed beasts.” He paused, then said, “Are you afraid?”

Leitos saw no reason to lie. “Yes.”

“That is good,” Ba’Sel said, offering a comforting smile. “Let that fear into your soul, but do not let it run free. It will lend you strength. You must harness fear, and all other emotions, Leitos, bend their consuming, chaotic power to your will.”

“I will try,” Leitos said doubtfully.

Ba’Sel gave him an encouraging nod, then waded toward the eastern shore. Leitos waited to see if Ba’Sel would look back, but he never did. Once on shore, he vanished into the forest. Another howl convinced Leitos it was time to leave.

Swimming the river proved far easier than walking, and floating along easier still. And as long as he was moving, harnessing his fear, as Ba’Sel had suggested, did not seem so hard. While he was not exactly sure what that meant, or how to do it, every time a horn shrilled through the forest, or a howl sent birds winging toward the sky, he found that his tired arms gained enough strength to keep propelling him downstream.

When the sun hovered directly overhead, Leitos realized that the sounds of pursuit had stopped. He tried to remember if they had ceased all at once, or gradually fallen behind, and decided on the latter. Stroking along and drawing deep, even breaths, he looked for Ba’Sel, but saw only trees overhanging the rippling blue-green river, its surface dancing with sunlight. He could almost imagine there was no danger.

Ba’Sel gave Leitos a start when he materialized on the riverbank up ahead. He looked around, spotted Leitos, then slipped into the water. When he was close, he motioned for Leitos to swim toward the opposite shore.

“The wolves are busy hunting ghosts for their Alon’mahk’lar brothers,” Ba’Sel said with a broad grin, “but as they are not strictly Alon’mahk’lar, they are more cunning beasts than the slavemasters you faced in the mines.”

“What do you mean the wolves are not Alon’mahk’lar?” Leitos asked in confusion.

“What they are is of no matter, at the moment,” Ba’Sel said, leading them on.

After climbing back onto dry land, they trotted themselves dry, heading south and west until late in the day, climbing one hill after another. The forest of cool shade and dappled sunlight thinned to groves, separated by wide fields of sparse grass and jutting rock.

Having come to appreciate the cover provided by the forest, being exposed left Leitos continually glancing in all directions. In doing so, he found that the forest was only a thin green band, perhaps a league wide, following the river near the base of the Mountains of Fire. Beyond that, the desert began to impose itself again.

By dusk, the rugged hills had become sandstone plateaus. It was a familiar landscape, but Leitos felt no love for it. Neither did he want to run any farther. He struggled to remember a time when he had not been running and hiding.

Ba’Sel paused amid a patch of dusty green sagebrush, plucked a handful of foliage, and vigorously rubbed it on the soles of his boots, instructing Leitos to do the same. “Wolves can track far better than their predecessors-those you would know as slavemasters. But with a little help,” he said, holding up the ruined bit of sage, “we will become just another stinking weed in their noses. Come, we still have many miles to travel before we can rest.”

That was the last thing Leitos wanted to hear, but he plodded after Ba’Sel. As it always did, the sun fell fast over the desert, and the black of night followed just as swiftly. Jackals took up the hunt, calling out to one another in voices that seemed to speak of struggle and hardship. The waning moon rose, highlighting the slumbering landscape in a weak glow.

Leitos was asleep on his feet when a horn’s wail jerked him and Ba’Sel to a halt. For the first time since meeting him, Leitos thought he saw something besides calm in the man’s demeanor. It was not anxiety that showed on his face so much as outrage.

“How could they have found us so easily?” Leitos asked, dismayed.

“I do not know,” Ba’Sel growled, and sped up.

Leitos struggled to keep pace, searched for the strength fear would lend him, but he was either beyond such helpful terror, or his muscles simply had nothing left to give. He soon fell behind. Each breath tore at his lungs, and his legs swung in slow, numb arcs. Without question, the Alon’mahk’lar and the wolves were closing the gap.

Something snagged his toe, and Leitos sprawled in the dirt. He tried to stand, but his body refused to cooperate. His lungs heaved. When he looked up, blood dripped from his smashed lips to his chin. Of Ba’Sel, the man had disappeared!

As Leitos struggled to his knees, a guttural howl turned his head. Not more than a dozen paces off, two crimson eyes rushed toward him. A heartbeat more and a brutish wolf materialized from the gloom, racing toward him at full speed.

I am dead, Leitos thought with no surprise or burst of terror. Instead it was a calm musing, vaguely remorseful, and undeniably the truth. He had run his last.

Chapter 26

A strong hand caught his hood and dragged him into a hidden cleft in the ground. For the barest moment, Leitos imagined an underworld demon taking him into Geh’shinnom’atar. Where he had been strangely calm before, now he fought, the will to survive giving him a wild, desperate strength. Another hand clapped over his mouth and he bit down. No matter what he did, the creature dragging him down into the earth was relentless and strong. Complete darkness closed over him, and dust clogged his nostrils.

“Be still,” Ba’Sel snapped.

Relief poured through Leitos and he relaxed, allowing Ba’Sel to run, carrying him like a sack. The warrior’s labored breathing was harsh and erratic, amplified by the close confines. His footsteps thudded like a drumbeat. A howl from behind seemed to slam into them with physical force, and then the shriek of claws tearing at rock filled the narrow space.

“We will make it,” Ba’Sel muttered to himself. He kept repeating those words, as if they were a command. All at once he flung Leitos ahead, and he bounced off a rough stone wall and sprawled in the sand.

Ba’Sel’s figure danced between the advancing wolves’ burning red eyes and Leitos. There came a grating noise that drowned out the wolf’s growls, then a roar of falling stone filled the passageway. Dust billowed, leaving Leitos coughing uncontrollably.

Rough hands pulled him to his feet, and Ba’Sel wheezed, “We must keep going. They will soon dig their way through.”

Despite his warning, he moved away and rummaged around back toward the rock fall. The sound of metal scraping over stone, followed by a shower of sparks, drew Leitos’s attention.

In the stuttering light, Ba’Sel knelt over something, his back toward Leitos. The light vanished, leaving a dizzying afterimage. The flickering flash came again … faded … then a small flame burst to life on the end of a torch. Resin-dipped rushes flared bright with a hissing crackle, and Ba’Sel stood up. The natural passage proved no wider than two men abreast, and the ceiling hung a bare inch above the warrior’s head.

He handed Leitos a pair of unlit torches taken from a niche in the wall near the rock fall. “We are far from safety, and even that refuge may be in question now,” he said without explanation. “We must hurry.”

Cradling the torches, Leitos hurried after Ba’Sel. The passage twisted and turned, with many new passages branching off into the darkness. Footprints dimpled the sandy floor, but he could not have guessed how old they were.

Only when Ba’Sel’s torch began guttering out did Leitos see the first indication that people did more than walk these dark ways. At the junction of four passages, two small clay pots sat in a niche in the wall. Both had tops sealed with wax. After lighting a second torch, Ba’Sel cocked his head, listening. Far, far away, the grinding sounds of shifting rock slithered toward them.

“They are not through yet,” Ba’Sel said, relieved.

He handed Leitos the burning torch and moved to the clay pots. After studying faint markings on the tops of each, he chose one and went a little way down the passage. Leitos held the torch high, moving his head back and forth in a bid to see what the brother was up to.

Ba’Sel worked with haste, but carefully. After using a knife to slice away the wax, he set the top aside and poured a measure of thin oil into a bowl cleverly concealed behind a knuckle of stone protruding from the wall. He did the same on the other side, then made his way farther down the corridor, performing the same task a half a dozen times, until he was twenty or more paces back the way they had come.

Leitos studied the closest bowl and found that a small wooden lever sat under its bottom edge, and attached to that was a very fine black string. The line zigzagged back and forth from the bowls to the low ceiling through a series of tiny, nearly invisible metal rings. Like the first bowl, all the subsequent bowls, metal rings, and the line were invisible to anyone coming the way Ba’Sel had brought them. The last thing the warrior did was to unwind a tail of the line and stretch it low over the ground, farther down the passage from the last bowl. As he worked, the line tensed and released, jiggling the levers under the bowls.

When Ba’Sel came back and retrieved the second pot, he answered Leitos’s questioning look. “I am setting a snare. This,” he said, slicing the wax off the clay container, “is a gift given us soon after the Faceless One rose to power. An old woman, Hya of the Sisters of Najihar, showed us how to make it, just before her long years took her from us.”

“What is it?” Leitos asked, careful not to touch anything, as he followed Ba’Sel to the farthest bowl.

“The Blood of Attandaeus,” Ba’Sel said grimly. “The Nectar of Judgment. A single drop of any liquid sets it alight-we use oil, because it flows better and does not splash so easily as water. Nothing can smother its fire before it has burned away.”

Ba’Sel knelt on the ground and brushed clear a line in the sand, revealing a thin slat of wood. He pried up the slat and set it aside. Below waited a deep, narrow groove etched into solid rock. One end was open to a sloping gutter gouged in the wall under the bowl of oil waiting above.

With excruciating care, Ba’Sel filled the groove on the floor with what looked like glimmering crimson sand, replaced the slat, and then covered it with sand. They retreated a little way, and he repeated the task. By the time he began filling the fifth groove, sweat glistened on his brow. He daubed it away with his sleeve, took a few deep, calming breaths, and continued until the last groove was filled and covered. While he had no doubt of the destructive nature of fire, Leitos wondered aloud how such a trap could work.

“When the first enemy trips that far line,” Ba’Sel said, pointing down the passage, all the bowls tip at once. The oil is thin and flows fast, but not too fast. Once it ignites the Blood of Attandaeus, even a running intruder will not have passed this point before the flames trap it. Anyone or anything behind it will also be consumed.”

“What if more come,” Leitos asked, “after the first wave?”

Ba’Sel smiled humorlessly. “My brothers and I can set enough traps to destroy a small army. They may not be needed, for even the most bloodthirsty Alon’mahk’lar fears death enough to reconsider a useless attack. Nevertheless, I will set all I can.”

True to his word, Ba’Sel set many more traps along the way. The first two were rock falls like the one he had used to block their pursuers, the next was an even more elaborate snare using the Blood of Attandaeus, in which crumbly clay pipes routed the deadly substance overhead, and also along the ground. Other traps employed unseen mechanisms that hurled darts tipped in poison, or hinged grates arrayed with wicked iron spikes. The farther they went, the more deadly the contraptions became.

“They have to be,” Ba’Sel said, when Leitos asked after the reason. “If an enemy is tenacious enough to come so far, then they are truly a deadly foe.”

“Has an enemy ever come so far?”

“Only in our first Sanctuary,” Ba’Sel said, tying off a trip line which would unleash a fall of dust that, he explained, was laced with powder from a plant that dissolved the eyes and liquefied the lungs.

As they pressed on, he spoke of another matter. “Rumors say that the Faceless One is tightening his grip across Geldain, perhaps all the world. I have heard that the bone-towns are teeming with Mahk’lar and strange Alon’mahk’lar, not those brutish wretches that serve as slavemasters, but other things. Neither I nor my brothers know what this means, but there can be no question that the world is changing. I fear that the darkest days since the Upheaval are before us.”

“I was in a bone-town overrun with Mahk’lar and their vile creations,” Leitos said. “With Zera.”

Ba’Sel seemed about to say something, but then pressed his lips together, and led them into a series of ever tighter passages. At one point the main passage took a sharp turn around a jut of stone. Instead of continuing on, the brother circled around the protruding rock and got down on his hands and knees. “Stay close,” he advised.

They followed the flickering torchlight into a suffocating crevice. Going forward proved to be sweaty work that forced them to contort themselves around sharp rocks and tight corners. They finally emerged in a small chamber. In the wall to one side, a small opening overlooked a pool of water far below.

Ba’Sel raised his torch, showing an arched doorway at one end of the chamber, and beyond a near vertical set of steps leading down. At the top of the stairs a bronze disk splotched with green corrosion hung by a length of rope attached to an iron ring set in the ceiling. Ba’Sel rapped the disk twice in rapid succession with the hilt of his dagger. The resonant notes filled the chamber and echoed away.

“This will let my brothers know one of their own has returned.” When the disk fell silent, he struck it three more times. “That,” he said, “will tell them death follows close at my heels.”

Leitos cringed. “Won’t that lead the Alon’mahk’lar and the wolves to us?”

“If they are through the first barrier, they will hear the gong as easily as my brothers,” Ba’Sel said. “But beyond this grotto, the alarm sounds as if it is coming from all directions, making it hard to pinpoint. My brothers standing watch up ahead will hear it and repeat the message. Farther along, other guards will do the same, until the Sanctuary is alerted to the coming danger.”

Ba’Sel led them down the steep steps. Leitos abandoned counting the stairs after he passed three hundred. Soon after, his weary legs buckled and he stumbled into Ba’Sel. The warrior’s quick grab pulled him back from falling into the well of darkness that waited on their left side.

“Unless you can fly,” Ba’Sel said, firmly placing him nearer to the wall, “you may not want to go that way.”

Leitos swallowed. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply until the quivering in his legs subsided.

“Can you continue?” Ba’Sel asked patiently.

Leitos nodded, hoping they were almost to the Sanctuary.

Not long after they escaped the stairs, another passage brought them within sight of a torch thrust into a hole in the wall. A figure waited in shadow.

“Ulmek?” Ba’Sel called.

“It is I, brother,” the man said, coming fully into the light. He wore robes sewn from mismatched rags. When they drew closer, Ulmek halted Leitos with a withering stare. “Is that him?” He was shorter than Ba’Sel and of an age with him. His deeply bronzed skin clung to the bones of his face, making it into a brooding, sinister mask.

“Yes,” Ba’Sel said, affectionately clapping a hand on his shoulder. “We cannot hold him to account.”

“You may soon change your mind,” Ulmek said gruffly.

“Has something happened?” Ba’Sel demanded.

“Besides the enemy at your heels, Alon’mahk’lar are swarming the eastern hills near the Arch of Tracien, and more have been spotted just south of the White Dunes. We have heard nothing out of the north or west. Daris and Sumahn should have returned before now, but have not.”

“Our enemies have been closer before. As to our brothers, they are both of them young and strong-”

“And reckless,” Ulmek interjected. “It would not surprise me if either of them joined battle with one of the Sons of the Fallen, hoping to collect a trophy to prove they had.”

“They know better.”

“As did we,” Ulmek said with a harsh chuckle, “but that never stayed our hands.”

Ba’Sel ignored that. “Is the Sanctuary ready?”

“Before the last sounding faded, all were armed and waiting,” Ulmek said with a note of pride.

“Alon’mahk’lar come behind us,” Ba’Sel said gravely, “and also their wolves.”

“Wolves?” Ulmek spat. “I knew the day it was decided to help those wretches we would pay a price.”

Leitos looked between them, trying to understand why they would have let wolves into the Sanctuary.

“Come,” Ba’Sel said, “we must join our brothers and prepare to fend off our enemy.”

Ulmek shook his head and cursed bitterly. “Even now, you cannot admit that you erred.”

“Rest assured, we will speak of this later,” Ba’Sel said, looking ten years older.

“If we live that long,” Ulmek growled. He stalked into the waiting gloom, leaving Ba’Sel and Leitos to follow or stay.

“Do not mind him,” Ba’Sel said wearily. “Ever has Ulmek been given to wrath for wrath’s sake. But there is no better man to have at your side in battle.”

Leitos looked after Ulmek. “What did he mean about ‘helping wretches?’ ”

“Let us hurry,” Ba’Sel said, pointedly ignoring the question. “As I said before, there is someone waiting for you.”

“It is Zera, isn’t it?” Leitos said, glad for the distraction.

“Love,” Ba’Sel muttered with a shake of his head, and turned away.

Grinning sheepishly, Leitos followed.

Chapter 27

A dozen doors of thick, iron-banded wood-all of which were shut and barred by robed watchmen upon their passing-stood between them and the Sanctuary. Leitos had never fully imagined the fortress of the Brothers of the Crimson Shield, but he had anticipated more than what he encountered when he passed through the final doorway.

In the light of dozens of torches, the chamber reached no more than ten paces high, spread twice as wide, and ran half again as long. Along the curve of one wall, wooden ladders led up to a ledge that gave access to what could only be sleeping quarters, which were not so different than the cells in which he had slept in the mines. And where he had thought that perhaps there would be hundreds of warriors, their numbers proved pitifully small, no more than four score. All save a handful had assembled at the far end of the chamber, while the remainder ran past Ba’Sel and Leitos with brief nods of greeting.

“I hoped you would have more time for your reunion, but you must hurry,” Ba’Sel said.

Looking for Zera, Leitos asked, “Where is she?”

Ba’Sel gave him an unreadable look, then pointed to a man firing arrows into a plump sack. Something about the man’s posture caught Leitos’s attention. The man who turned was the last he expected to see. His mouth fell open in disbelief when his grandfather’s gray eyes found his.

“Leitos!” Adham cried, hastily stuffing the arrow he had been about to fire back into the quiver at his waist. He sounded less hoarse than Leitos remembered, and he looked stronger. He caught Leitos in his arms.

Leitos awkwardly returned the embrace. Of Zera, there was no sign, and despite his joyful surprise, he wondered why Ba’Sel had never said outright that his grandfather was waiting and not the woman who had rescued him from the Hunters.

The next Leitos knew, he had sat down at his grandfather’s feet, his legs too weak to hold him. He tried to say something, anything, but confusion ruled his mind.

Adham squatted down, his eyes showing concern. “Are you injured?” He ran his hands over Leitos’s shoulders and arms.

“You … I thought….” Leitos’s words dried up and he drew back to get a better look. Ever had Adham been emaciated, and he was still thin, but now he looked younger, his flesh filled out. Even his wisp of shoulder length white hair was thicker and shot through with streaks of iron gray.

“I saw you die,” Leitos muttered, unsteadily gaining his feet. Leitos backed a step away, then another. “Are you a … a spirit?”

“He is no spirit,” Ba’Sel said.

“You need water, food, and rest,” Adham said.

“I saw you die in the mines,” Leitos insisted. “How can you be here … unless-”

All weariness drained away, and he lurched clear. “Who are you?” he spat.

“You know me,” Adham said, raising his hands to show he meant no harm. “I escaped the mines soon after you did. It was a terrible battle, but we drove the slavemasters back. Others fled with me, but in our search for you, the desert took our kindred, one by one, until only I remained. The Alon’mahk’lar who survived the rebellion drove me far to the north. In time, I was able to escape.”

Leitos shook his head, unable to believe his grandfather was alive. But he was. There could be no question that the man who stood before him was the same who had raised him.

Slowly, Leitos approached his grandfather, heart swelling, tears brimming. He caught the old man in a fierce hug, feeling as though a part of himself that had been long dead was blossoming into new, vibrant life. Adham returned the embrace.

At last they broke apart, and Leitos faced Ba’Sel with a hopeful grin. “Where is Zera? Have you hidden her away somewhere?”

“There is no time to explain,” Ba’Sel said distractedly. “If our enemies have not found their way into the lower passages by now, they soon will.”

“Is she safe?” Leitos asked. “At least you can tell me that.”

Ba’Sel raised himself up to his full height. “I share your concern,” he said stiffly. “She is as a daughter to me.”

“But is she alive?” Leitos pressed.

“I have little doubt that she is,” Ba’Sel said.

Before Leitos could ask anything else, Ulmek trotted up with a harried expression. “Word has come that Alon’mahk’lar have passed under the Arch of Tracien and are converging on the Gates of the Sleeping Jackal.”

“How many?” Ba’Sel asked.

Ulmek swallowed. “Hundreds. An equal force marches from the south. Thank the gods that neither group is led by their wolves. Nevertheless, we have little time before they attack.”

“How could they have found this place?” Adham demanded, sounding as he had the day he rose up to challenge the slavemasters, like a king of men. “Unless one of your own has betrayed you?”

Ba’Sel and Ulmek shared a look with Adham that verified his unthinkable question. Adham cursed under his breath.

“If you can use that bow,” Ba’Sel said, “there is a place for you in our ranks.”

“It has been a long time,” Adham said, raising the double-curved bow before him, “but my arms and eyes have not forgotten its use.” He took a deep breath. “You have given me refuge, and now I must ask you to extend that courtesy to my kindred. Keep Leitos with you … and keep him safe.”

Ba’Sel said, “There is nowhere safe, and the most dangerous place at the moment is among our number. But I give my word, I will guard Leitos with my life, as long as it lasts me.”

“You told me your snares could hold off an army,” Leitos protested, unable to believe what he was hearing.

Ba’Sel shook his head. “An army that has no knowledge of our defenses would suffer great losses, but-”

“But since those who betrayed us and were removed from our order are among the demons that attack us,” Ulmek said, grinding his teeth in rage, “those traps are all but useless.”

“We are caught,” Ba’Sel admitted, looking between Ulmek and Adham. “I did not believe we could be, but we are. To make our stand here ensures our deaths, to the last. Yet, even if we flee, many of us will perish.”

“A few of us can stand,” Ulmek said grimly. “Our counterattack will serve as a diversion so the rest may escape. You are our leader, Ba’Sel. Take our brothers from here. I will stay behind with a few others.”

Before Ba’Sel could argue, the heavy door blocking the entrance to the lower passages exploded in a blast of indigo fire. One moment Leitos was looking between Ba’Sel, Ulmek, and Adham, wondering how things could have turned out so badly, and the next moment a hot fist of fire and smoke smashed into him. He floundered on his back, ears ringing. Shards of splintered wood and twists of iron rained down around him.

As the worst of the smoke began to clear, Ba’Sel roared and faced the invaders. One side of his robes blazed, but he entered the fray with sword bared. Ulmek shouted something over his shoulder, then joined his brother against two wolves struggling to squeeze through the narrow doorway. Growls became agonized yelps as the two men attacked, swords slashing.

“Get up!” Adham shouted, his voice muted to Leitos’s ears.

Leitos struggled up and followed after his grandfather. They did not retreat far before Adham turned back. No fear marked his expression, nor did he hesitate. As the chaos spread, Leitos’s only dazed thought was to wonder just who his grandfather had been before the Alon’mahk’lar had chained him.

Adham circled to one side and nocked an arrow. He waited until Ulmek and a smoldering Ba’Sel danced back a pace from their foes, then fired the shaft. The arrow streaked into the eye of the nearest wolf. Still jammed tight against its companion, the beast let out a terrible squeal, and began swinging its great head back and forth. Another arrow flashed into its bristled neck. The creature’s remaining eye dimmed, and blood spilled over its lolling tongue.

Ba’Sel charged in again, Ulmek by his side. They hacked at the wolves, steel ringing off thick skulls. Leitos’s insides turned at the reek of crushed bone and spilled blood that flooded from the carnage.

“Is that all?” Ulmek challenged when the wolves went still. A wild light glazed his eyes, and he gave the nearest wolf another swipe with his sword. His laughter, harsh and bellowing, mixed with the steel’s clang to make a brutal, ugly song.

A dozen brothers had come near, weapons held ready. The two wolf corpses began to shift and slide. Something was pushing against them from behind. The gathered brothers fell into wary stances, forming an arc of edged steel, spears, and drawn bows poised to attack whatever came through the doorway.

Adham pulled Leitos farther back, then placed a dagger in his hand. His grandfather seemed more imposing than he ever had before. There was nothing left of the chained man in his posture or in his gaze.

“No matter what comes,” he said in a stony voice, eyeing the dead wolves, “fight until there is no breath in your breast or blood in your veins. You are a child of the north, and that is our way.”

Leitos focused on drawing strength from his fear, the way Ba’Sel had said, but fear did not trouble him. One thought, however, did. All he had done to stay free had been for nothing. He would die this day. The dagger in his hand felt heavy and blunt, utterly useless, so he tucked it into his belt. If he fought, it would be with his bare hands.

“Do you understand?” Adham asked, a note of sorrow tingeing his voice. We are about to die, he might have said, but we will die proud.

Leitos nodded, wishing he had seen Zera once more.

Silence fell, broken only by the grotesque sounds of the shifting carcasses. One tumbled clear in a boneless heap. The creature’s broad skull, nearly severed from its neck, lolled. Where the corpse had been lodged, an irregular patch of darkness looked with festering malice upon the waiting warriors.

Instead of heaving the other wolf out with first, whatever sheltered within that darkness pulled it from sight by slow increments. Leitos waited, not daring to breathe.

The swath of darkness gradually redefined itself into an open doorway. Materializing from within, growing larger, twins points of emerald fire burned with hellish life. Leitos moaned low in his throat, knowing what he saw, but refusing to believe it.

Chapter 28

“No!” Leitos tried to scream, but the denial languished, never gathering the strength needed to escape his mind. Those green eyes drew nearer. Leitos fought for a deep breath, but shock and disbelief squeezed his chest tight.

“Make ready,” Adham said, taking three resolute strides forward to stand with the brothers. He nocked arrow to string and drew it back. The bow’s bone-and-wood limbs creaked as they reached full draw, and Leitos thought he could hear his grandfather’s pulse singing softly through the taut string.

Zera moved into the smoked light of the Sanctuary, dragging behind her a pair of dark, vaporous wings. Hers was a face of beautiful death in the eldritch light blazing from her gaze. As with the sooty gloom swirling in her wake, there was something ethereal about her, an aspect of transparency.

Leitos met her stare and something unspoken passed between them. A part of him wanted to run to her, wanted to feel her touch. That part tried to convince him that he was dreaming, that even now they were together, evading demonic wolves in some high mountain pass….

Another part cursed him for a fool for ever believing such lies. That part of him showed him how she had never needed rest or food, how she had fought with strength so far beyond that of mere humankind. Her eyes, burning with a wholly unnatural inner radiance, now spoke a truth he had continually failed to see. Even Lakaan had tried to warn him. “She is no more a warrior of the Crimson Shield than I am … Believe me, now more than ever, when I say she can look after herself. Believe as well that her doing so is a sight you do not want to behold.”

And how many times had he mentioned Zera to Ba’Sel, only to have him give some evasive or empty response? Why the warrior had avoided saying what he knew outright, Leitos did not know, unless he feared that Leitos was with her. And Ba’Sel had been right to be cautious, Leitos knew, even before Ulmek’s once mysterious words rose up with awful meaning. “I knew the day it was decided to help those wretches we would pay a price … you cannot admit that you erred … since those who betrayed us and were removed from our order are among the demons that attack us, those traps are all but useless.”

Zera shifted then, drawing his eye. From behind her wings emerged two more figures Leitos knew: Sandros and Pathil! Sandros glared about with one eye until he found Leitos. The darkness of that orb changed to muddy red. A deep and weeping cut had closed the other. He was on the bridge, the wolf that killed Lakaan, the wolf I attacked!

Stabbing pain lanced through his heart at the depth of Zera’s betrayal. Zera had not gone after the wolves, she had hidden herself away so that they could slaughter Lakaan … so that they could have the chance to kill him!

But no, had she wanted him dead, she would have done it herself. In a terrible flash, Leitos saw all that had happened since Sandros had dragged him from the river … their chance meeting with Zera and Pathil … the way she had so easily poisoned her fellows and escaped with Leitos … how no matter how far they had run, they had always been but one short step ahead of their pursuers….

Mind awhirl, Leitos struggled to piece the treachery together. At some point, Zera and the others must have come under suspicion, forcing them to flee before she could lead her true kindred to the Sanctuary. In her absence, the brothers had moved the Sanctuary…. They had not been running from the Hunters, she had let them drive Leitos along, a stupid bleating sheep that, at some point, the Brothers of the Crimson Shield would find and take into their Sanctuary in honor of some ancient agreement with an Izutarian king. In so doing, they would reveal their whereabouts.

Sandros laughed in derision when he noticed Leitos’s hurt expression. “I should have taught you a last lesson, boy: Never trust love.”

Pathil moved off to the other side, smiling at the brothers like an old friend, even as he tested the edge of his sword with a thumb. “Ba’Sel,” he called merrily, “have you managed to temper brother Ulmek’s rage?”

Ba’Sel ignored the taunt and studied Zera, his eyes shimmering with tears. “After all that I did to instill honor and goodness in your heart, after all the love your brothers gave, you return now as a traitor and an enemy? And you Pathil, foolish child that you always were, you benefited from the same devotion as Zera, and more. Yet you come into our Sanctuary and make mock of the man who saved your life on no less than three occasions? Is there no shame in either of you?”

Where Zera’s face showed a spark of disgrace, Pathil shrugged, smile widening. “Shame is for humankind.”

“And what are you, if not at least part human?”

“We are Na’mihn’teghul,” Sandros snarled proudly. “Ours are the faces that all Creation will one day wear. We are the perfection that the Three never dared dream. The Faceless One has foreseen our coming, and even now paves the way for our ascendency.”

“Na’mihn’teghul?” Ba’Sel said scornfully. “Is that what you call yourself, Sandros? Have you forgotten how we took you in after you fled your master, how we made you one of our own, gave you a life and purpose?”

“You always were a fool,” Sandros rasped. “Even now, your kind heart refuses to believe that it was I who came to you, a Hunter with the intention of destroying your pathetic band.”

“Na’mihn’teghul,” Ba’Sel said again, and spat. “I disbelieved such a low and despoiled affront to Creation could exist. It appears I was wrong.”

“You are wrong about many things,” Sandros said, his body swelling, changing between flesh and mist and back again. As he grew larger, his filthy robes shredded and fell away. A tawny, bristling growth of spines thrust from his darkening skin. His face rippled, elongated, becoming a brutish muzzle. His limbs bulged and bent, yet the all too human hands remained, talons ripping free of long fingers and toes. Pathil was changing as well, but not Zera.

Leitos could not take his eyes from her, still transfixed by the horror of revelation. She recoiled from his scrutiny until pressed against the doorway at her back. At her sides, Sandros and Pathil continued to transform.

Ba’Sel raised his voice. “You think to claim eminence with your false title-the Heirs of the Three-but you are the heirs of nothing. You are the consequence of a savage violation and defiled seed. Yours is a race of mongrels, born of human and beast.”

“Enough of this!” Zera cried, her voice as vast and powerful as the tides of all the seas of the world. “I have come for the last of the Valara line. I have come for Leitos … he is mine.”

“Come as you will, demon-born,” Adham snarled, “but you will take nothing.” With an insignificant twang, Adham loosed his arrow.

The shaft hissed as it cleaved the air between itself and Zera’s heart, and the word Leitos had tried to shout before burst from his throat in a strangled cry. “NO!”

Zera smiled.

Chapter 29

Dark gossamer wings folded over Zera in a protective embrace. The arrow struck that gauzy substance and burst apart. Her indistinct shape billowed and swirled, rising like streamers of black smoke, until it brushed the ceiling’s arc. Then those wings unfolded, revealing a creature of tattered mists and sweeping shadow. Zera’s eyes blazed with a terrible conceit.

Leitos had glimpsed such a creature before when he returned to help her fight Alon’mahk’lar outside a nameless bone-town. “No,” he murmured. Desolation devoured the last of his strength and conviction.

“By the Silent God of All,” Ulmek breathed, “what is that?”

“It is our doom,” Ba’Sel whispered.

Zera advanced on eddies of black smoke, and her wings spread wider, beating slowly. An overpowering shock had spread throughout the brothers, freezing them in place.

Leitos did not move, his mind still trapped at the edge of that bone-town. No matter what Zera was now, she had once fought against her own kind to protect him.

“Zera?” he murmured, his legs taking him a step nearer. Green eyes found him, recognition burning in their depths … and something more, an emotion that simply had no right to shine in such a dreadful gaze. “Do not do this,” he pleaded.

Sandros attacked then, a man no longer. Snarling, the wolf leaped at Leitos, mouth agape, rows of deadly teeth glinting in the dim light of the Sanctuary. Before Leitos could move, a misty tendril streaked from Zera and enveloped the wolf. The wisp bulged as the creature trapped within thrashed and howled. The struggle continued long, horrifying moments, during which the howls became whimpers, then abated altogether. Zera released her victim. Dissolving bones and steaming fluid splashed over the ground.

“He is mine,” she said again, her voice a crooning purr.

“Protect the boy!” Ba’Sel roared.

Many hands drew Leitos away, but he barely noticed. His focus was on Zera.

With a shout, Ulmek and a few others set themselves against Pathil and Zera. Swords broke against her vaporous form, and her gaze never left Leitos. Growling, Pathil backed away from the warriors, but was quickly surrounded. With reckless abandon, Ulmek and his brothers continued their desperate assault.

Ba’Sel, Adham, and the others carried Leitos away. A dying howl and the screams of men filled the Sanctuary … then silence fell. Leitos managed to look over his shoulder, and saw that Pathil was finished, gored through and slashed in a dozen places. Around his corpse lay a few men, torn to rags.

Zera took up the chase. When she moved away from the doorway blocking the lower passages, a surge of Alon’mahk’lar burst forth. Leitos knew them well-the slavemasters. Horned and baying, they charged around her. Cudgels and crude swords smashed against Ulmek’s pitiful band, and hobnailed soles trampled the dead under.

Zera’s wings swept slowly behind her, whipping up dust from the floor to create a blinding cloud. The infernal glow of her eyes burned through the haze, never leaving Leitos.

Leitos collected himself enough to turn and run on his own, though hands still held him fast. Before the dust obscured their faces, Leitos saw the brothers who had been waiting at the far end of the Sanctuary, all staring with dazed expressions at the enemies bearing down on them.

“Go!” Ba’Sel cried.

The bulk of Ba’Sel’s men responded as he wished, but a score rushed to protect their leader. Taking advantage of the dust, they split into two equal bands and converged on Zera’s flanks. Screams immediately filled the chamber.

Ba’Sel spared a look back, cursed, then led the way into a passageway narrow enough to force the brothers to run single-file. An unexpected voice pressed against the running men. “They are coming!” Ulmek cried. “Run!”

The passage grew tighter, but the torch-lit air cleared and smelled fresher the farther they went. Behind them, the sounds of battle faded, replaced by harsh breathing and drumming feet.

All at once, Leitos and the others burst into the open. The brothers sprinted across a broad, stepped plain of sandstone. Behind them a rugged bulge of rock rose high above the narrow cleft that led into the Sanctuary. Overhead, twinkling stars and the waning moon cast down their weak light. A few miles to the south, waves pounded themselves to foam against a thousand rocky pillars marching out into the sea.

Not rocks, Leitos thought dazedly, a sunken city. Ancient towers leaned in all directions, and what he had first believed were rounded rocks proved to be domes.

His amazement faded, as the warriors set off at a dead sprint.

Two brothers kept hold of Leitos’s arms, helping him run. After a pair of hard, desperate miles with no apparent pursuit, Ba’Sel called a halt. The brothers instantly spread out and made ready to fight.

As Leitos struggled to breathe, he knew the blessed calm could not last. Zera was coming, and with her a host of Alon’mahk’lar. He glanced at Ba’Sel and found the same despair in the warrior’s eyes that filled his own heart. Zera, why? The answer left him sick in his soul: Zera was a creature conceived only to destroy humankind.

Adham took his shoulder in hand and turned him this way and that, making sure he was not hurt. He breathed hard too, but seemed better off than Leitos. “Can you go on?” he demanded, and Leitos nodded in answer.

“We must reach the sea,” Ba’Sel said then. “We will sail for the Singing Islands. For fear of drowning, the Alon’mahk’lar dare not follow.”

“What is the use?” Ulmek countered. “The islands will shelter us for a time, but there we will be trapped. We must stand and fight.”

“We are too few, brother,” Ba’Sel said gently. “Such has always been the reason we attack from the shadows of night, and spend our days hiding below ground. We are not now, nor have we ever been, strong enough to oppose the forces of the Faceless One in open battle.”

Ulmek shook his head. “I am done running and hiding. It is all we have ever known. I say we fight. If the brotherhood is shattered, so be it.”

“No!” Ba’Sel said. “We must survive. That is the only chance that the Faceless One will one day taste destruction. We have no choice but to run this night, and fight on a day of our choosing … the right day.”

Adham pointed out what the others had failed to mention. “If the winged creature can fly, the sea will not bar its way to us.”

“Perhaps not,” Ba’Sel said in a hushed voice, “but we stand a better chance against one, no matter how fearsome, than against an army of Alon’mahk’lar.”

Back the way they had come, a thundering shriek crushed the night’s calm. All eyes turned to find a living shadow blotting out the stars above the rugged hill guarding the Sanctuary. The creature winged higher, wheeling, searching.

Zera, Leitos thought. Even after seeing her change, he could scarcely believe she was not human. She would spy them soon, and moments after that she would be upon them, destroying the brothers with the same contemptuous hatred for humankind as that shared by all Alon’mahk’lar. Once finished with Ba’Sel and his men, she would take and use him for whatever purpose she intended.

Her cry came again, filling the night. In answer, Alon’mahk’lar horns trilled far off, from all quarters save the sea.

“Whether we flee or fight, it must be decided now,” Ulmek announced, his fierce stare proclaiming what he thought was the right course.

“Some must stay behind,” Ba’Sel said in a pained voice, “in order that the rest can reach the boats and sail for the Singing Islands.”

Before he finished, a score of men had broken ranks in the defensive line. They looked on their leader with unflinching eyes. As word quietly spread, others joined the first brothers to volunteer, until none stood apart.

“I could have wished all of you would have cast down his weapons and fled,” Ba’Sel said. “That you have not leaves the choice to me.” He took a deep breath and called by name a dozen of the best archers, and did the same until an equal number of the finest swordsmen joined the first group.

“He is mine,” Leitos heard Zera say again. “Grow strong and cruel,” the voice of Adham whispered.

“I share your fear, but let none of us despair your sacrifice,” Ba’Sel was saying, voice wavering with emotion. “You will not be forgotten, my brothers.”

He might have said more, but Leitos did not hear. By then, he was running back the way they had come. Someone tried to grab him, but he dodged and kept on. Terror coursed through his veins, not courage. What drove him was guilt for allowing Zera to use him to find the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. He would not let them be annihilated for his mistake.

Chapter 30

Zera came, a winged nightmare falling from the sky, scattering those brothers who had given chase. Leitos steeled himself against whatever might befall him. Misty talons gently clasped his shoulders, and Zera carried him high, the wind of her wings buffeting him. As the world fell away from his dangling feet, his stomach knotted and rolled before relaxing. In that moment he knew a freedom he could never hope to describe.

Behind him, the brothers called out as they gave chase, their voices growing smaller and smaller, until they were no more. Leitos hung limp, eyes squinted against the wind, watching as the world spread wide beneath his feet. The shield of sandstone over which he and the brothers had run looked like stairs from on high. Farther north, a dozen separate bands of Alon’mahk’lar searched for their prey. To the east, the Mountains of Fire thrust upward, daggers of rock scrawled with veins of glowing crimson. In the west, the direction Zera took him, the scrubby desert ended at an irregular line of smooth dunes, frozen waves of white sand.

The sensation of flying and seeing the world in such an exciting way was nearly all-consuming, but one thought dominated: The Brothers of the Crimson Shield would escape, if they kept on toward the sea. The Alon’mahk’lar bands were disorganized and spread too thin to catch them.

Sooner than he wanted, Zera descended to a low dune of pure white sand, and gently set his feet back where they belonged. Once released, she flew a few paces and landed gracefully. As she turned, her misty shape, the embodiment of a shadowy dream, quickly shrank and solidified. He saw before him the face he knew well. Her eyes shone with the same green, bottomless radiance as ever. A shy smile quirked her lips, as if she had not just revealed a monstrous secret, but a wondrous gift. He stared open-mouthed, trying to understand.

“I could not tell you before,” she said, sounding abashed.

“Ba’Sel said you were like a daughter to him.” As he spoke, misery and rage filled him up. “Did you betray him as easily as you did me?”

“Do you not see?” Zera countered, holding her hands out to him. “I did it for you … for us … for what we share. It pains me more than you can ever know to have deceived Ba’Sel. For you and your love, I not only turned against him, I turned on my own kind.”

She drifted closer as she spoke, until stood before him. Leitos looked into her eyes, felt himself falling into them, into her. Madness, he thought, even as their lips met, tentatively at first, then with passion. In that moment, he nearly forgot all that had happened from the time he fled the mines to now … nearly.

He broke away from her with a strangled cry. “Alon’mahk’lar, Mahk’lar, Na’mihn’teghul,” he said angrily. “Whatever you call yourself, you are demon-born-and demons love only the slaughter!”

“Even I believed that … until I met you,” Zera said softly, trying to take him in her arms again.

Leitos jerked away. The sorrow in her eyes fell on him like a hammer blow, but he refused to surrender to his remorse. He wrapped himself in disgust and outrage. She was the progeny of the Fallen, born of atrocities. Her demonic race, under the reign of the Faceless One, had subjugated him, his people, all humankind, reduced them to animals with only despair and death to wish upon.

“I am sorry, Leitos,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes. “You must believe me.”

He had never seen her weep. Though it pained him further, he felt sure it was a trick conjured in the blackest chambers of her mind. “As am I,” he answered heavily. The trusting part of him did not want to believe that the woman before him was the very face of evil. Unspeakable grief soured his tongue, filled his soul with emptiness. “How could you have possibly believed, knowing what you are and what I am, that we could ever be more than enemies?”

“We do not have to be pitted against each other,” Zera said. “You and I, the love we share, the first of its kind, can bridge the gap between the children of the Fallen and humankind. Please, Leitos, I am willing to try, if you are….”

Despite his anger and sadness, he wanted with all his heart to escape with her, to live out their lives away from the reach of the Faceless One, and even his own kind. But it would be easier for the air he breathed and the sand he trod underfoot to become one and the same, than for them to shape any kind of life together.

“I can take us away,” Zera said in a desperate rush, as if she sensed the turning of his mind. “We can build a new creation … a blending of the best parts of each of our kind. One day our children can stand against those who oppose us now.”

“Those who oppose us?” Leitos said, stunned by her willful blindness. “The Faceless One and his allies stand against humanity. They have hunted my kind until only a few remain, and those living few are chained, made into starving, hopeless beasts for no other reason than that we exist. The best of your kind have ground to dust the bones of a hundred different peoples. Other than our existence, Zera, what have men done to oppose your kind?”

“Given the freedom to reap the slaughter, humankind would kill and destroy as eagerly as have the Alon’mahk’lar,” Zera protested.

Leitos shook his head in dismay. “Even a rat will gnaw the stick jammed against its throat in the hope of holding to its life, but that does not mean it is at fault. No less can be expected from any living creature, including humans. After suffering for three lifetimes of men, can you expect anything other than a spirit of vengeance to have grown within the hearts of my people? We did not ask to be conquered, we did not grovel at the feet of the Faceless One for the chance to be bound in chains the whole of our lives.” When he continued, his words rolled into the night, propelled by the force of his shouts.

“You speak as though it is wickedness if my kind were ever given the chance to seek justice against their torturers. Is that where you stand, Zera? With the demon-spawn who ravished our women in order to create abominations that would be used to further oppress men and women and children, whose only crime was trying to survive in a world laid to waste after the Upheaval?”

Zera stared at him. “I do love you, if you would only see it. Please come away with me. I have no other purpose, Leitos,” Zera said, her chin trembling. “Not anymore.”

Those words caught like a hook in his mind. “You used me to lead you back to the Brothers of the Crimson Shield, but in the Sanctuary, you said you wanted me. Why?”

“Because I love-”

“Stop saying that!” Leitos shouted. “It was not for love, could not have been! You wanted me because your master set you on this path, the same way he set you on the path to betray the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. Why me, Zera,” he said through gritted teeth, “why am I needed?”

In the silence that held between them, Leitos thought he heard a sound just below the whispering wind, a rhythmic drumming.

“You are the last direct descendant of the Valara line,” Zera whispered.

“You said the same in the Sanctuary. That name means nothing to me.”

Her puzzled expression faded as quickly as it appeared. “In order to protect you, for fear of the slavemasters learning your secret, of course your father would not have spoken of your shared heritage.”

“I never knew my father,” Leitos said bitterly, “or my mother, or anyone from my family except my grandfather. Alon’mahk’lar took us when I was an infant. We were brought to Geldain to dig and scratch away our lives away as punishment for resisting the will of the Faceless One. That is who you serve … that is who you are.”

“No, Leitos. No longer. Please, I beg you, believe me. Trust the quiet voice in your heart. Come away with me, and I will tell you all I know.”

“Tell me now,” he demanded, but she held quiet.

Leitos stood mere feet from her, but a chasm seemed to gape before them. From all directions, death stalked the desert, wearing the terrible faces of his lifelong oppressors, the slavemasters, the Sons of the Fallen. Facing that, the darkness grew wider. On the other side waited Zera, made all too human in her sorrow and professed love. Could such a creature know love, could she take it from him and return it in kind?

“Why can you not tell me now?” he whispered, voice cracking.

Zera spread empty hands and shook her head. The wind tugged her dark hair, and a few strands caught in the wetness on her cheeks.

Frustration wracked him, broke something deep in his soul.

The breeze shifted, bringing with it the drumming he had heard before. It thudded loudly now. He looked around, but saw only the face of the night. He turned back, thinking it his imagination, until he heard Ba’Sel shout a wild cry of warning.

“No!” Zera said in an anguished voice.

Leitos flinched when she rushed forward. Throat closing tight, he danced back, but not nearly fast enough. She slammed against him, her empty hands pressed to his shoulders, squeezing. Her gaze widened in dismay. A pained, breathless gasp drifted past her parted lips.

“Zera?” he muttered. Then cried out, “Zera!”

The scent of leather was strong on her, and that of faded flowers. Her green eyes flared inches from his own, brighter and more innocent than he had ever seen them. One of his hands rested against her hip, the other was lodged between them. He felt the suppleness of her flesh, the warmth of it against his own. He felt something else, a sensation he did not immediately recognize in his distress.

Zera fought for breath that would not come. A tremor rippled her flesh. “I … I … love you. Please … believe me. Tell me … Leitos….”

With each breath, her heart fluttered against the edge of his fist. That once unrecognizable sensation, a terrible damp heat, washed over his hand.

“Zera?” he murmured. He abandoned all his fear and loathing for what she was and, the dark chasm finally crossed, he saw only the woman in his arms.

Her eyes dimmed, and another tremor convulsed her limbs. A slow line, black in the night, sketched its way from the corner of her mouth and over the delicate curve of her chin. It grew fat, heavy with a portent he refused to admit. He had envisioned that drop before, had feared it when dreaming in that forsaken city of the dead, even as he feared it now. The drop swelled, became a single tear that could not endure its impossible weight.

“I do love you,” Leitos sobbed, willing her to hear.

The bloody drop fell. Another drop formed, its course altered by Zera’s faint smile, but it fell unnoticed against the blood pouring from her pierced heart over his knuckled fist-the same fist that held the dagger given him by Adham, which he had tucked into his belt and forgotten.

The shouts of the approaching warriors grew louder. It was a sound so far away, buried under a roaring inside his skull akin to the flooded river that had nearly drowned him. That raging tumult grew until there was no other sound in the world. It filled him, then flooded out in a single, tortured cry.

His breath spent, Leitos dropped to his knees, cradling Zera to his chest. Her smile melted away and her eyes drifted shut, as if she were dropping off into a much needed slumber. Tears scorched his cheeks as he looked upon her. A memory that might have been someone else’s swam through his consciousness. He could not remember where they had been, or what they had been doing, only that Zera had smiled at him. He had feared then that smile would bring him to his death. And so it had.

Chapter 31

After the black of night, the rising sun set the sea afire. Turquoise waters lapped the sides of a handful of long, slender boats, each propelled by sweeping oars toward the hazy mass of the Singing Islands. Leitos huddled in the bow of one, alone with a shrouded Zera. Her face remained uncovered. Leitos traced her cool cheek with a finger still covered in her dried blood, a haunted light smoldering in his eyes.

The others had wanted to leave her, but he refused. Had it not been for Ba’Sel and Adham, the remaining Brothers of the Crimson Shield, with Ulmek the most vocal among them, would have left him and her to the desert and the hunting Alon’mahk’lar. Had they abandoned him, he would have died or been taken captive. Either end would have suited him. Yet he lived, where she had died by his hand. A void had opened within his soul, a void now filling with unspeakable darkness. Instead of shying from that invasive blight, he immersed himself in it, used it as armor and shield against the remorse he could not fully face.

“We must speak,” Adham said quietly, so that only Leitos heard. Swells rocking the small vessel had masked his grandfather’s movements to the bow. Holding to the side of the boat, Adham positioned himself between Leitos and the others, just at Zera’s feet.

Leitos turned, his features blank. Right now he did not want to talk with anyone. What could there possibly be to say?

He relented only because his grandfather looked worried. While an emptiness had taken hold of him, he wanted it to stay there, his secret from the world, even from Adham. “I suppose we must,” Leitos said, failing to hide the wooden quality of his voice.

“It pains me to see you grieve, but.…” Adham trailed off with a probing look.

“But she was a creature born of Alon’mahk’lar,” Leitos finished for him. “I know this, but all I see is her as she is now. I can still hear her laughter, see the light of her eyes. I smell the scent of flowers on her hair. That is how I will remember her,” he finished, knowing even then that he spoke a lie. He could no more separate Zera from what she was than he could wish a stone to become bread. And that was the crux of his dilemma: he had not fallen in love with a mere enemy, but a foe to all humankind, a murdering device in the employ of the Faceless One. Trying to reconcile those two sides of Zera, and his feelings for her, left him troubled, confused. Despite it all, he had loved her.

“You loved her … the woman you thought she was,” Adham said, speaking aloud Leitos’s thoughts.

Leitos nodded slowly. “She was human … some part of her, at least.”

Even now, hours after she had died in his arms, grief struck him anew, as if for the first time. Her presence in the world, her companionship, had given him a sense of quiet joy and the strength to overcome the entrenched mindset of a born slave.

“Any love is a blessing in a world filled with so much malice. I cannot, nor will I, condemn your love for the member of a race bent on our destruction,” Adham said. “But all love, no matter the face it wears, is bittersweet, as every present delight is tempered by the future agony of inescapable loss. Hold fast to your fond memory of her … it will keep the darkness at bay.”

Leitos almost mentioned that it was too late to avoid the darkness with which he had already become fast friends, but instead he kept his secret.

“Why does it matter if I am the last of the Valara line?” Leitos asked, wanting to turn the subject of their conversation.

Adham cast his gaze upon the nearing islands, his face contemplative. He has changed so much. Impossible though it seemed, every hour spent free of the slavemasters and the mines gave Adham back more of his youthful vigor. The day he had risen up against the Alon’mahk’lar, Adham had looked ancient, weak, his body and flesh utterly spent. Now twenty years seemed to have fallen from him.

In the continued silence, Leitos looked toward the islands and waited for his grandfather to speak. In the newborn sunlight, the islands’ naturally reddish hue was overstated, and the rocky protrusions jutted from the sea like skulls coated in blood. As the bobbing flotilla drew nearer, the islands’ namesake became obvious. Wind off the Sea of Sha’uul whipped through hollows and rocky outcrops to create a mournful wailing, a morose song to fit his mood. White birds wheeled over the scant greenery growing atop the islands’ rounded crowns. Gulls, Leitos thought. He supposed Adham must have told him of such birds.

Under the steady creak and splash of pulling oars, the boats drew nearer to the main island. It proved larger than he had first suspected. Staggered cliffs and sharp outcrops dominated the side facing the sun, while the other side had collapsed into a jumble of boulders that eventually sank beneath the frothy blue-green waters. The gulls’ cries carried well over the crashing waves. Other birds plunged into the sea like spears. They surfaced moments later, flapped vigorously, and soared aloft with tiny silver fish dangling from their beaks. Leitos had nearly forgotten what he asked before Adham finally responded.

“I can now reveal something I never told you, Leitos. I ask beforehand that you forgive me for the things I kept secret. That will be hard for you, perhaps, but understand that I did it to protect us from the eyes of the slavemasters.”

“Zera said as much, before …” Leitos’s voice faltered, seeing again the stark vision of her death, feeling again the last fitful beats of her failing heart, the heat of her blood spilling over his skin. He pawed at his eyes, angry at the wetness that burned in them. “There is nothing to forgive between us.”

Adham troubled over that awhile, then gave a brief nod. “Kian Valara, the King of the North, is my father, Leitos. In turn, I am your father. To hide that from the Faceless One, it was agreed that I leave my father’s side soon after you were born, and pose as your grandfather.”

Leitos sat in awed silence. Adham’s eyes dimmed, as he spun a tale Leitos had never heard.

“Your mother and I, with you swaddled in the back of an oxcart, departed my father’s mountain stronghold at Cordalia and made our way into Miz’Ratah, a land far north of Izutar, beyond the Sildar Mountains. My father and I believed we would be safe there from any Alon’mahk’lar attack. We were wrong.

“We had just arrived to E’ru, one of a score of secluded garrisons, when the Alon’mahk’lar raiders came out of the snowy forest. We held for near on a moon’s turn, but eventually our walls were breached. In the end, we who survived surrendered at the edge of the sword. In the dark watches of the night between then and now, I have often thought it would have been better to die with the rest … but I could not do that which would have kept you out of the hands of our enemies.”

Leitos did not need clarification. Only his death would have kept him from being taken by the Alon’mahk’lar. He thought of Sandros then, who had claimed that Alon’mahk’lar did not aimlessly roam league after league in search for future slaves, but rather used human spies to find their prey. “All men are liars,” so he had said often. Maybe many are, Leitos thought, but in regard to Izutarians, Sandros had been wrong.

Leitos’s mind turned. “Was my mother taken?”

“Keri?” Adham rasped. He cast his eyes on Zera, his whiskered chin trembling. “No … no, my son, she was not. After the rise of the Faceless One, it is rare thing for an Izutarian woman to allow herself to be taken. Knowing what will come should that happen, they fight alongside our men. They are often the fiercer of the two, because where men have at least the choice of surrendering to chains in hopes of taking back their freedom later, our women have only death as a choice.”

“Why is that their only choice?” Leitos asked, a sense of horror filling him.

“Do not hate me,” Adham said softly, “but those like Zera are the reason that Izutarian women would rather die by their own hands, than fall into the grasp of our enemy. Alon’mahk’lar are created by the union of Mahk’lar and human women. Never have those abominations been able to hide among humankind. Some years before your birth, we had begun hearing unbelievable rumors that the Alon’mahk’lar had begun refining their race, breeding Alon’mahk’lar to human women. In doing so, they created creatures that looked entirely human.”

“The Hunters,” Leitos said, thinking of Sandros and Pathil. That joining had worked well enough to fool Ba’Sel and his men into taking what they believed to be humans into their midst. It also struck him that Sandros’s tale about the day he was taken from his mother had been a lie, at least in part. If Sandros had not known at first, he had learned in time that his true father had been an Alon’mahk’lar.

“Na’mihn’teghul … Hunters … changelings … no matter how they are called,” Adham said, “they are dread enemies. Fate seems to decide the manner in which they can alter their flesh. This Na’mihn’teghul-”

“Zera!” Leitos snapped, drawing a few glances from the rowing brothers. “Her name is Zera.”

“Zera,” Adham amended with grave reluctance, “is the first changeling I have known that could become a creature of both flesh and spirit. But then, I have been chained these last many years. I cannot say how much has changed in that time.”

“None of this tells me why it matters if I am the last of my line,” Leitos said “Does the Faceless One fear I will rise to take some distant throne?”

“There is no throne to claim,” Adham said bluntly. “As far as thrones go, there never really was one, nor was there ever an established kingdom. Kian Valara commanded a scattered army made up of any who wished to resist the rise of the Faceless One. Your importance to the Faceless One is the blood within our veins.”

Leitos arched an eyebrow. “Why would the Faceless One want our blood?”

“I asked the same of my father when I was about your age, and he told me of the legend of the Well of Creation-of course, to him, it was no legend, but truth.” Adham paused then, as if struggling to find a way to explain. “The Well of Creation was a receptacle, which for eons held the powers of the Three, the first children of Pa’amadin. In penance for creating the Mahk’lar, the Three foreswore their powers of creation. In doing so, they perished … but not before creating Geh’shinnom’atar, the Thousand Hells. Therein, they imprisoned their children, and also Peropis, the first of the Mahk’lar.”

“How did Kian come to this place, the Well of Creation?”

“A prince of Aradan hired Kian, who was a mercenary at the time, to protect him on a journey through the kingdom. Varis’s true intent was to seek out the Well of Creation-a secret revealed to him by Peropis herself. In destroying the Well of Creation, and taking within himself powers never meant for mortal hands, Varis very nearly made himself into a living god.”

“Nearly?” Leitos asked.

“Varis took some of those godly powers into himself, but for the most part they spread into all the world. As well, your grandfather always suspected that the release of such power had caused the Upheaval.

“Those powers spread like ripples in a pond,” Adham continued. “A random few, Kian included, absorbed some of those powers. In my father’s case, he gained the ability to resist Mahk’lar. As well, he told that for a short time he was able to heal the gravely wounded, seemingly by will alone. As far as he knows, he lost that ability in … in bringing his companions back from death.”

Leitos absorbed that, and Adham went on.

“There are other abilities Kian gained, which he passed to those he healed, and to me: strength, endurance, and long life.” Before Leitos could ask, Adham said, “The mines aged me, but as I am sure you have noticed, rest from constant toil has erased some of those years. I have walked this world for one hundred and sixty-seven years.”

Though Sandros had put the question into Leitos’s mind, seemingly a lifetime gone, he gaped in disbelief. “How old is Kian?”

Adham grinned. “All I know is that he has lived over two centuries. I cannot be more exact. My father often told how he stopped counting after his one hundredth year. ‘Why count single years or even scores, when they fail to mark my face?’ He usually said that in jest, but I believe it burdened him to live so long.”

“Why should that trouble him?”

Adham sighed. “Perhaps because I, his only living son, began to look older than him after my seventieth year. While I age slower than other men, I do age, where Kian does not. Without question, I will go to my grave before Kian Valara and my mother, Ellonlef.”

“How old am I?” Leitos asked.

Adham chuckled. “You have lived just sixteen summers, Leitos. Only time will tell if you are blessed with long life, but there is no question that the effects of the powers of creation dissipate through each generation.”

Leitos tried to mull all Adham had said, but taken as a whole it was too large for him. However, one thing about Adham’s tale stood out. “Do you truly believe your father and mother are still alive?”

“Unless some ill has befallen them, I am sure they are. But, as they are the face of the force that stands opposed to the Faceless One, I can only hope that they are still in the world, somewhere.”

After a pause, Adham canted his head toward Ba’Sel. “He, too, was there at the temple of the Well of Creation, and the years have not touched him.”

Leitos found that hard to believe, but did not want to think on it just now. Instead, he returned to his original question. “But why does the Faceless One seek our blood?”

Adham drew out a stone of protection from under his robes. It looked similar to the one Leitos had worn until Zera bartered it away to Suphtra. “This amulet is the answer, rather the resistance to the powers of the Mahk’lar that it grants its wearer. At some point, the Faceless One conceived that blood was the answer to that defense … but only blood from those who originally gained resistance to Mahk’lar. In some way we do not know, he joins the blood of those like us to certain kinds of stones, gaining protection for his pet humans and loyal Alon’mahk’lar against disloyal Mahk’lar.”

Adham tucked the stone away with a sigh. “That is the main purpose of the Na’mihn’teghul, the Hunters, to seek out and find those with the desired blood in their veins. It could be that the blood of the Valara line is no more special than that of others who can repel the attack of a Mahk’lar, but the Faceless One believes it to be special, and so we and our kindred are coveted above all others.”

“So we do not need stones of protection?” Leitos asked.

“No,” Adham said. “Mine was given to me by Sumahn, after he found me wandering through the Mountains of Fire.” Adham lowered his voice. “I continue to wear it because I cannot be sure who we can trust. It is a tragedy that she-Zera-spoke aloud our linage within the hearing of others, but what is done is done.”

Leitos thought about betrayers among the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. As much as he wanted to be among friends he could trust, he knew he could never again blindly accept the loyalty of others.

“Zera also said that the Faceless One did not stand unopposed in the world,” Leitos said. “And I saw with my own eyes the Alon’mahk’lar that the Mahk’lar created within a bone-town north of Zuladah. Could it truly be that some Mahk’lar are planning to make war on the Faceless One?”

“Without question,” Adham said. “It would seem,” he continued in a stark tone, “that while the balance of power has changed in the world, the struggle for power has not. Doubtless, the days ahead will be dark for all, whether they strive for dominance, or oppose it. And now, more than ever, the blood of those who can resist possession by Mahk’lar will be sought and taken. Ours is a dangerous time, my son, but we are of the north, and we will fight.”

Epilogue

“Did you know Zera had betrayed you when I first spoke of her?” Leitos asked Ba’Sel, who was placing a final stone upon her grave.

After landing on a slender tongue of stone that in no way could be described as a shoreline, Leitos had gathered Zera in his arms and began a grueling climb to the highest point on the island. He had picked it out long before they landed, marked it in his mind as the place she might have chosen for herself. He had not travelled far, before Ba’Sel caught up and offered to help. Leitos remembered what Adham had said about trust, and grudgingly agreed.

Now Ba’Sel straightened from his work, his dark face a mask of remorse. “I did,” he answered, arming away the sheen of sweat from his brow. “Though I wished otherwise, I knew. Had we not moved the Sanctuary after she last departed us, she would not have needed to use you to find us again. As we took her in, along with Sandros and Pathil, and even your father, she knew we would take you in. She just had to get you within the lands we patrol, and let us do the rest. As much as it pains me, it appears that I must rethink that rule.”

The breeze whipped around them, bending tall grass and rattling the green foliage of nearby brush. Where they stood, the singing of the islands and the crashing of waves lay far below them. Here the wind sang with a single, wavering note.

“Why did you keep it from me?” Leitos asked. He did not want to admit that Zera had initially used him to find where the brothers had gone. Yet, in the end, she had begged for him to love her as she loved him. It sat ill in his belly not knowing when she had given into to her feelings for him, and worse still in knowing that had she given into those feelings sooner, he would never have come to be standing at her grave.

“I chose to remain silent because I saw the love you held for her. If I had spoken any word against her, you would not have believed me. Such willful blindness is the blessing and the folly of love. You needed to learn the truth for yourself. Had I known you would run to her instead of away, even after you knew what she was, I might have reconsidered that choice.”

“I love her still,” Leitos admitted, and abandoned trying to hold back unshed tears. They ran freely, caught by the wind as they fell from his cheeks.

“As do I,” Ba’Sel agreed somberly.

They stayed that way, standing on either side of the mound of stones marking her grave, until the sun sank below the horizon and lit the sky with the brilliant colors of a fading fire. Far to the north and east, across white-capped waves, the imposing bulk of the Mountains of Fire waited and watched, a rugged blight upon the distant land that gradually melded with the coming night. To the south, scores of lesser islands marched off into the sea, now gone a deep blue in the waning light. East and west, only the expanse of the Sea of Sha’uul barred the way to the far sides of the world.

As the first stars began to dot the velvety darkness above, Ba’Sel said, “On the morrow, you will begin your training.”

Leitos blinked at that, not in alarm, but in curiosity.

“War is coming,” Ba’Sel said in answer to Leitos’s unspoken question. “War unlike any ever seen upon this world. You must be ready-we all must be ready. The days of cowering in shadows, of waiting for the most opportune moment to strike, those days are behind us.” With that, he turned and walked away, a troubled ghost heeding the mournful cries of its brethren trapped within the stones of the Singing Islands.

Leitos stayed behind in the cool of the deepening night, alone with Zera’s lingering spirit. The moon crept above the horizon, its battered gray surface bearing testimony to everything that the world and the heavens had suffered since the Upheaval. The winds calmed, and a voice spoke within him, kindled a tiny flame deep within his being. Grow strong and cruel, that voice said, slowly fanning the flame into a seething conflagration. Grow strong and cruel, and avenge the blood of our forefathers.

The Faceless One ruled with a scepter of iron and a fist of blood, sure in his knowledge that he held the advantage in seeking out all members of the Valara line. He may even know of a certain youth, Leitos Valara, not long released from ingrained fears stronger than any chains. Leitos meant to humble him, the Faceless One, but not before forcing that being to live in dread of his name. In the fullness of time, the Faceless One would cower before him, pleading for mercy that would never be granted. On the morrow, he would take the first step along the path to see that done.

Ba’Sel had named what was coming a war, and perhaps it was. Leitos vowed to himself, to the Silent God of All, and to those who had suffered under the Faceless One, that he would help in anyway necessary … but what he would wreak was nothing so trite as war. His soul demanded a reckoning, and he would have it.

Content

James A. West
Crown of the Setting Sun

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Epilogue