Heirs of the Fallen: Book 03 - Shadow and Steel (13 page)

When the guard passed by again, Leitos began climbing, using the finger- and toeholds provided by the wall’s undressed stonework.

In short order, he heard approaching footsteps, and paused under the wall walk. When the guard passed, he heaved himself up, spared a quick glance in either direction, then crawled on his belly over the wall walk, and through a notch in the parapet.

A moment later, he stood on the ground. Keeping up his count, he ran in a crouch through the tall grass, and vanished into the waiting forest. Under the cover of towering trees, he straightened, listening for an alarm that never came.

“That wasn’t so hard,” he said under his breath, and angled toward the narrow road that wended up the steep ridgeline. It felt good to stretch his legs and fill his lungs with deep breaths. After less than a mile, the road topped a rocky knob bare of trees. He paused to get his bearings. Back the way he had come, the outline of Armala was marked out by a string of torches along the city wall, and the city itself was a slash of darkness surrounding the glowing palace. He hoped his father would not worry over his absence, but it was too late to go back now.

Leitos was about to set off when a shriek burst from the trees up ahead. His heart thudded at the horror contained within that voice. For the first time since climbing down from the watchtower, he could just make out that faint blue light peeking through dense foliage.

Moving with more caution than before, Leitos left the road and crept in that direction, the night air heavy with dampness. He searched the forest. Trees with broad trunks loomed, their leafy boughs spreading high above. Night creatures, usually active with wild hoots, howls, and murmuring calls, had gone quiet. The darkness provided him with good cover, but it also concealed watching enemies.

He moved with slow deliberation, making himself one with the landscape, until he fully entered the forest.

The scream came again, closer. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. The voice belonged to a woman. His fingers clamped tighter around the hilt of the Kelren dagger. Eyes narrowed, he saw only darkness. Something waited for him ahead. He felt its presence, like outstretched fingers a hair’s breadth from touching his neck. Sweat trickled over his skin, raising a rash of gooseflesh.

The woman cried out, begging. Another voice answered, too softly to understand.

The tenuous thread holding him in place snapped, and he set out at a reckless pace.

He pushed through brush tangled with great spider webs. Dew that had collected on wide leaves and within trumpet-shaped flowers soaked his robes. Trailing vines and thorny creepers caught his feet, determined to trip him. He pressed on, mind bent on the woman.

He finally came to rocky outcrop draped in gnarled tree roots. Above the outcrop, the blue light shone brighter than ever. Leitos clamped the dagger between his teeth, and began to climb up the roots, causing dirt, moss, and crawling things to dribble over his head. At the top, he scrambled up and hid behind a huge tree trunk.

Settling the dagger back in his hand, he edged around the tree. Through the azure glow, he saw a cliff rising into the night. At the base of the cliff, a path led into an arched opening, the source of all that glaring illumination. As his eyes adjusted, and he made out a terrible visage carved into the rock above the arch. Narrow and long, it was a Fauthian face, but engraved all over with angular glyphs. Similar engravings decorated the arch’s stonework.

A low moan drew his eye back to the opening. He crept farther around the tree, breath caught in his chest. If anyone guarded this place, surely they would see him. When he stepped fully into the open the radiance fell over him, and a prickly sensation crawled over his skin. He drew back, and the feeling vanished. “What is this place?” he murmured.

His answer was a blade pressed to his throat. An instant before he smashed aside the weapon and brought his own dagger to bear, the keen edge pressed harder against his neck, and a female voice cautioned, “Do as I say, or I’ll have off your head.”

She sounded young, but no matter how he rolled his eyes, she remained out of sight. Leitos weighed his chances of escaping without earning a severed windpipe, and found the odds against him. He grunted in answer, and relaxed.

“Very good. Now, step back before someone sees you.” With the utmost caution, guided by the girl’s firm hand, he backed up until lost in deep shadow.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

Leitos decided the truth might persuade her to ease the blade from his neck. “I heard screams, and came to help.”

“You came to the Throat of Balaam, intending to help? You are either you are a fool, or a liar.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To grieve.”

Leitos kept quiet for a moment, then asked, “What is this Throat of Balaam?”

His captor spun him around, slammed him against the tree, and pressed the tip of a broad knife into the fold under his eye. At the sight of her, Leitos’s breath caught, his legs quivered. Zera’s ghost lurked in this girl’s face and pale green eyes.

As surely as shock held him, it clutched the girl. “You!” she said. “Why are you here?” she demanded.

Leitos tried to speak, but no words came. A leather thong held back her short dark hair. Smears of dirt covered much of her face, doubtless placed on her cheeks and brow in an effort to better conceal her presence in the forest. Her closefitting clothing was equally dark, all of mottled greens and browns and dark grays. She was not Zera, but there could be no question that Zera and this girl had a shared ancestry.

Something behind him drew her eye, and she dragged him down, hissing into his ear, “Stay quiet, or we will both die.”

At his questioning expression, she caught his chin in a strong grip, forced him to look toward the arched opening. He squinted against the glare, and saw a pair of men walk out. Their height, gangly limbs, and long kilts marked them as Fauthians. Behind them came an equally tall, beautiful woman in flowing robes, her arms cradled around a small bundle. Like the others, she was Fauthian.

“What is happening here?” Leitos whispered harshly. “What is this place?”

The girl jabbed a finger against his lips, shushing him. She remained quiet long after the Fauthian trio departed. He was about to break the silence again, when two more Fauthian men emerged from the opening under the cliff. Each held the ankle of a nude, lifeless woman who was clearly not Fauthian. They dragged her behind them. Blood covered her torso and legs from a gaping wound in her belly.

The girl at his side moaned and shut her eyes. Leitos swallowed the bile that flooded the back of his throat.

After the Fauthians turned off the path and vanished into the forest, yanking their burden over root and rock with cold indifference, Leitos leaned closer to the girl and asked again, “What is going on here?”

“This night,” she said in a halting voice, “one of my kindred died … and a demon was born into the world.”

That hair on the back of Leitos’s neck stood on end. “I must return to Armala and warn my friends.”

“You mean the men who were with you on the beach?” Nothing in her demeanor hinted that she might still want to stick her knife into his gullet, and that seemed promising.

“Yes,” Leitos said, standing. “And it was
you
I saw hiding in the forest,” he said, remembering the face he had seen.

She nodded. “As long as I can remember, I have been waiting for you to land on our shores,” the girl said, gazing into the empty space between them. “The night of the wreck, I awoke and knew you had come.” She faced him, looking uncomfortable. “I went to you, but found that you had already joined the Fauthians.”

“I have not joined them, we were taken into their care.” He shot her an inquisitive look. “And what do you mean, you have been
waiting
for me….” He trailed off, as understanding dawned. “You are a seer, is that it?”

She made a vague gesture toward her head. “Until tonight, I have always seen you in my mind—not as you are now, but as you will be. Your name is Leitos, yes?” He gave her a startled nod, and she added, “I am Belina.”

“Belina, I must return and tell my brothers about what I have seen.” In truth, he was not sure what he had seen, but knew it troubled him.

“You cannot.”

“Of course I can. I snuck here, didn’t I?”

“I mean,” Belina said, some of the fire coming back into her eyes, “that I will not allow you to return. You must come to my camp. Elder Damoc will have questions, especially now that my visions of you can be proven.”

“I will return,” Leitos promised, “this time on the morrow. For now, I must go. My people might be in danger. When I tell them what I saw, they will join me in helping you.” Considering Ba’Sel’s apparent trust of Adu’lin, he hoped he was not telling the girl a lie.

Belina’s gaze flickered over his shoulder. “No!” she hissed.

Leitos dropped to his haunches and spun, belatedly sensing a presence. His flung up his dagger against a looming shape, but a cudgel crashed against his skull. Blackness cascaded over his eyes, stealing away the sharp pain in his temple. From far away, he heard Belina’s protests. His shadowy assailant struck again, driving him to the ground. Then he was falling in to darkness, unfeeling, unknowing.

Chapter 17

A snuffling squeal filled Leitos’s ear, and something cold and wet bumped his cheek. He sat up, reaching for his dagger, but it was gone. A coarse-haired piglet bolted away, its squeals like spikes piercing his skull. He raised a muddy hand to his scalp, felt a pair of lumps under his crusted hair.

“Behave, and we’ll get you cleaned up,” a girl said.

Careful to not make any quick motions, Leitos glanced around in the predawn gloom. The rank air surrounding him was thick with dew and buzzing midges. For a moment, he did not recognize her. Then, slowly, the events of the night before came back, as well as meeting this young woman …
Belina
. She was prettier without mud covering her face.

She sat on a mossy rock outside his cage, an enclosure made of saplings lashed together with thick vines. Using the same knife she had wielded the night before, Belina sliced a piece of yellow-skinned fruit with a seedy pink center, and popped the wedge into her mouth. She chewed, eyeing him askance, as if expecting him to do something dangerous. That look of distrust annoyed him, since it had been her and her friend who had knocked him senseless, before tossing him into a pigsty.

“Is there any reason I should believe you?” he asked. She frowned as if offended. “So far, you and your people have done nothing to earn my good behavior. Having met two peoples on Yato, I can say that only the Fauthians have treated me well.”

“The
Fauthians
?” she spat. “Do you not remember what you saw last night?”

“I saw the Fauthians take a dead woman from a cave—”

“—the Throat of Balaam is no mere cave,” she interrupted. “It is a place of dark powers … an abode to evil.”

“Is it?” Leitos said, arching a skeptical eyebrow. “Or is that what you would have me believe? Adu’lin warned of your kind, how savage you are, even to your own. For all I know, you and that brute who clubbed me might have been torturing the woman, and her dying screams brought a Fauthian patrol to rescue her.”

“Are you mad?” Belina said, mouth agape. “The Fauthians are vile and cruel. They take our women and they … they do unspeakable things to them. On most islands they let the Kelrens hunt us. Our men, the slavers kill outright, or chain for the Faceless One’s mines. But our women are the true prize. They capture them and force them to … to.…” She cut off with an agonized look. “They do things that I cannot——
will not
—utter aloud.”

If Leitos could trust anything, it was that Belina believed what she was saying. But then, Adu’lin and the other Fauthians held a similarly hostile view of the Yatoans. Still, all that about the Kelrens hunting them bothered him. Telmon had named these islands the hunting grounds, and that made him want to believe Belina. He touched his scalp again, and wondered if he could trust anyone.

“If you expect me to behave,” Leitos said, “then you had better show me some proof against the Fauthians. As it stands, nothing you and your people have done convinces me not to side with them, and see you as my enemy.”

“You remember what I told you last night, about the birth of a demon, and the Fauthian woman carrying a newborn child, and the dead woman who was dragged out after?” Leitos nodded, and Belina took a deep breath. “The Fauthians force our women to breed with Alon’mahk’lar. What comes later are nightmares made flesh, changelings, Na’mihn’teghul.”

Leitos recalled the story the changeling Hunter Sandros had told him about his own mother, who willingly gave herself into the hands of Alon’mahk’lar for just such a vile purpose. Afterward, she had eviscerated her own husband, as a living sacrifice to the Alon’mahk’lar. Or, perhaps, the man’s death had merely been for sport. Sandros had never elaborated on the reason. Leitos also thought of Zera. If Belina was telling him the truth, then Zera might have been born in that cave, the Throat of Balaam.

But there were still unanswered questions.

“I have not seen any Alon’mahk’lar in Armala,” he said.