Path of the Crushed Heart: Book Four of the Serpent Catch Series (11 page)

Chapter 19: The Crow Mage

Fava’s stomach knotted in hunger, but she could not eat, could not drink. The killing grief had taken her since Tull’s murder, and after four days she waited for her own death in the luxurious room Mahkawn had given her.

Her single bedroom in the mansion was larger than many homes in Bashevgo, and fine tapestries covered the walls with scenes of peaceful animal herds—mastodons grazing beside woolly mammoths while imperial lions watched from the shade of great trees.

Sandalwood burned among the apple logs on the fire, scenting the room, and huge glass windows and a glass door overlooked a wide veranda and the ocean beyond.

Freya, one of the smaller moons, hovered over the ocean, a blue globe covered with white swirling clouds.

Mahkawn had assigned a matron to care for Fava, an old Pwi woman who sat in a rocking chair in the corner and talked incessantly of the antics of her grandchildren. Fava lay on the red silk sheets of a wide bed. Never had she lived in such luxury, yet she could not enjoy it.

“Please go away,” Fava said to the matron, and the chinless old woman nodded, climbed from her chair, and left the room.

Fava was gazing out the window when almost immediately she saw a black shadow drop from the roof to the veranda—the shape of a man who ducked into deeper shadows so quickly she could almost not be sure if she saw it.

Fava went to the window, saw a flash in the darkness along one wall, and a moment later a familiar figure emerged: Chaa stood before the glass door, unbolted it from outside. He wore the red uniform of the palace guard.

Fava rushed through the door, hugged him, and Chaa kissed her forehead.

“What are—” she asked, but Chaa covered her lips with his fingers.

The night air carried a biting cold, and Fava wore only a thin linen shirt, but Chaa bolted the glass door from the outside, then pulled her along through the shadows to a rope that dangled from the roof.

He picked her up, got her started on the rope, and she climbed. When she reached the roof, Fava found a strange uniform on the ground—black robes with red trim, tall black boots lined with rabbit fur.

She pulled the warm clothing on gratefully, and Chaa reached the top of roof.

He hugged her again, and a bitter wave of grief rose in her, and she began to cry. She did not know if she would have to tell him what had happened, or if in that way of his, he already knew.

“Don’t worry,” Chaa said. “Tull is still alive, barely. I’ll take you to him soon, but first we have much work to do. We have others to save this night. Come.”

“Wait!” Fava said. “How did you escape? What are you doing?”

“It is not hard to escape from the mines if you know when the guards are going to blink, which paths to take in the darkness,” Chaa said. “They don’t even know I am gone.”

“What of the others? What of Wayan and Darrissea and Mother?” Fava urged.

“Shhh,” Chaa whispered. “In time. We can worry about them in time.”

They tiptoed across the roof, leapt down to a high wall and then again into the streets of the city of Bashevgo. Chaa directed her boldly, till they reached a doorway that led down to a tunnel under the streets.

There he marched her through long passages where furnaces boiled water to generate the electricity needed to power Bashevgo’s laser cannons.

They passed room after room where naked slaves toiled in the darkness, tossing logs into huge furnaces, their thin, muscled bodies sweating and starved.

In the twisting light, they looked like the inhabitants of some hell, and Chaa urged her forward, down hallways clotted with steam pipes.

After twenty minutes, they reached a furnace where Chaa stopped, went in, and spoke to the Blade Kin on duty. Chaa motioned toward a line of naked slaves against the wall, and the guard nodded, took a blanket from a pile, wrapped it around one of the slaves. In the dim firelight, in the shadows, Fava could not see who it was.

Chaa came back, towing Darrissea behind. Her face was pale, as if she were in shock, and great drops of sweat rolled down her chin and neck to disappear between her small breasts under the tattered blanket. The Blade Kin had shaved off her hair.

Darrissea grabbed Fava and sobbed, “They were going to kill me here!”

Fava hugged her back and Chaa hissed, “Not here! Not now!” He took Fava’s hand, led them at almost a run down the narrow tunnels until they reached a side opening and a ladder.

They climbed up, and found themselves outside a stockyard. The air smelled heavily of blood and dung; pigs grunted from pens nearby.

Woden had joined Freya in the sky, casting double shadows, and Chaa led the women into a small grain shack. From a bin of oats, he pulled out a backpack and a set of plain street clothes, and then urged Darrissea to dress.

“We have much to do tonight,” Chaa said. “Phylomon remains a prisoner under the arena, and we must rescue him, but we cannot let anyone know that we have taken him.”

“But I saw Phylomon!” Fava said. “He’s already dead!”

“Not dead,” Chaa insisted, “but very close to death. He is wounded, and his symbiote cannot keep him alive much longer.”

Chaa hefted the backpack. “Darrissea, you will remain nearby until we return at dawn.”

***

Chapter 20: The Starfarer’s Corpse

Chaa led the way to the arena, walked calmly to the guard door, shoved a handful of papers through. “We have business inside. Lord Tantos wants one of his sorcerers to examine the corpse of the Starfarer.”

The guard glanced at the dragon insignia on Chaa’s uniform, saluted, took the papers, and hurried to unlock the gates.

Once inside, the guard lit a taper and offered to escort them to the cell, but Chaa brushed the offer aside, saying, “Remain at your post. I know the way.”

They hurried downstairs past row after row of empty cells. Fava recalled a few prisoners being in the cells only days before, but they were all gone, then she remembered the arena games. The prisoners who had lived were free, and all the rest were dead, which explained the light guard.

Fava smelled Phylomon long before they reached the cell. Someone had covered the body with straw and a blanket, apparently trying to hide the smell, leaving only Phylomon’s right hand and face exposed.

The eye sockets looked sunken and skeletal, and as Chaa pulled the blanket off, Fava saw maggots around Phylomon’s bloated belly.

Fava put her hand up over her eyes and nose, unable to withstand the rotting stench, but Chaa opened his pack, took a bottle of wine and began pouring it down Phylomon’s mouth.

The corpse did not move, and Fava wondered if her father had gone mad.

Chaa stroked the Starfarer’s forehead, and said softly. “It is all right. I am a friend. Heal yourself.” He spoke as if to a child, and Fava wondered at it, until she realized that Chaa was talking to the symbiote.

He reached into his pack, took out a sponge, and poured wine over the sponge, then began dabbing the gray, papery skin. Almost immediately, the skin changed hue to a pale blue.

Chaa kept sponging the corpse for nearly an hour, and Fava watched as the distended belly sank and Phylomon’s eyes bulged under the lids.

The stench lessened; at last Phylomon’s eyes fluttered open, and he gazed around with a vacant stare.

Reaching into the pack, Chaa pulled out food—dried fish, a loaf of bread, apples.

Fava fed the Starfarer slowly, while Chaa heaped straw in a pile, laid the blanket over it. Phylomon groaned, flexed his stiff fingers.

“The guard is wondering what takes us so long,” Chaa told Fava. “He will be coming downstairs. Go meet him, tell him that our examination is not complete, and that I need more tapers. Pretend you don’t know your way back to the cell, and get him to follow halfway until you ‘remember’ where to come. By no means are you to bring him back here.”

Fava did as he asked. She followed the tunnels back up to his guard shack. The fellow went into a side room, bent to pick up a couple of tapers from a stack, and as he did so, from the corner of her eye she saw Chaa drag Phylomon to the shadowed doorway and stand in the darkness, holding the Starfarer by the door.

Fava asked the guard to lead her back to the cell, and she stood aside for him to pass, shielding Chaa in the shadows, then let the guard lead her down.

Exactly halfway to the cell, she “remembered” how to get back, and sent the guard away.

Fava sat in Phylomon’s cell for several minutes, alone, and worried about how Chaa would get her out. Nearly an hour later, Chaa returned, carrying the upper torso of a burned corpse.

He laid it in the cell where Phylomon had been, dusted it with flour to color the skin gray, and Fava stared in amazement.

“How did you get back in?” Fava asked. “Where is the Starfarer?”

“I left the gate ajar, then sneaked back in while the guard took a pee. Phylomon is lying hidden in a wagon out on the street.” When Chaa finished with the corpse, he stepped back, gazed at it thoughtfully. “That should fool them for a few days.”

Fava stared. The corpse did look amazingly like Phylomon—the same high cheekbones. If the man had ever had hair, it was all burned away now. She didn’t dare ask Chaa where he had managed to find the thing.

They left the arena together, reached the wagon where Phylomon was hidden, and Chaa helped Phylomon back to the stockyards through a maze of winding alleys and narrow streets.

A dozen times Blade Kin passed on side alleys—but each time, Chaa would stop a moment before, always standing well in the shadows, never to be seen.

Fava listened to him counting under his breath, and every second seemed to be orchestrated, so that at times he would run full-speed ahead, then wait for ten minutes in a shadow until some guard passed.

His face was sweaty, twisted in concentration. Obviously, he had Spirit Walked this path many times, practicing his escape.

Without having seen the future, he could never have choreographed this escape. Without him, Fava would have been captured a dozen times over.

They made it back to the stockyards and met Darrissea, then hurried to a large barn and climbed into a hay loft.

Chaa set Phylomon down, and then nearly fell himself from exhaustion.

The Starfarer lay askew on the hay, apparently asleep.

The loft was freezing, and its hay smelled moldy. The walls had begun to warp, so that even in the shadows of dawn, Fava could see that the walls were uneven. No one had used the barn in years.

“What do we do now?” Darrissea asked, and the dark-eyed girl sounded frightened. Her brief capture had left her unnerved.

“No one will come to this barn today. Phylomon should be able to walk a little by dusk. Tonight I can take you across town to where Tull and Zhopila are hidden. Once we are safe, we will need to wait, give Tull and Phylomon some time to heal.”

“Then what?” Fava asked.

“I don’t know,” Chaa said. “In Smilodon Bay the Blade Kin’s attack interrupted my Spirit Walk. My vision ends here, tonight. Beyond that, I can only hope and do my best, like any other man.”

***

Chapter 21: Awakening

On the following day, in a small room in a deserted apartment complex, Darrissea tended Phylomon.

The blue man would seem to rouse for a moment. He had a look to his eye, a look of fear, of infinite pain, as if he he were terrified of Darrissea.

But then he would close his eyes and fall away into a deep sleep. From time to time his skin would fade to a papery gray, and he would thrash his arms and mutter, in the throes of evil dreams.

Then Darrissea would bathe his skin with wine and water, and it would turn a pale blue and lose its papery dryness for awhile.

Thus, on the following evening, while Fava lay beside Tull who was as still as death, Phylomon’s eyes fluttered open and he simply stared at Darrissea for a long time.

The pain was still in his eyes, and she wondered what it had been like for the Starfarer to be helpless while his symbiote slowly consumed him.

She fed him tenderly, and he drifted to sleep. When he woke two hours later, he pulled himself up from the floor, moving shakily, and crawled to sit beside the small fire in the fireplace. “How did I get here?”

“Chaa broke into the prison and freed you,” Darrissea said. “You nearly died. Chaa managed to save Tull, too. He is still sleeping, trying to recover from his wounds.

The Starfarer gazed around the small room. Tull lay under a pile of mammoth-fur blankets in one corner, with Fava beside him.

Chaa roused from his sleep, as if disturbed by the sound of voices, and sat up, looking at the Starfarer.

Phylomon simply said to Chaa, “Thank you.”

“You are welcome, Starfarer,” Chaa said.

Phylomon squinted, looked at the rough floor which smelled faintly sour from wood rot.

“I lost,” Phylomon said. “After a thousand years of fighting the Slave Lords, they have defeated me.”

“You cannot rally the Thralls,” Chaa agreed. “You are only a relic to them, something left from a forgotten age. They cannot love you as if you were one of their own, and they will not sacrifice for you if they do not love you.”

“Then what can we do now?”

“I don’t know,” Chaa said, and he came and sat beside Phylomon and the fire, with his arms wrapped around his knees. “I don’t know. I discovered that the Blade Kin would attack while I was on my Spirit Walk, and I immediately began trying to learn how to free us. I was able to bring us here, but now my foresight fails me, and I cannot return to the Land of Shapes. My allies there have turned from me.”

“You touched the minds of the Slave Lords?” Phylomon asked.

“Yes,” Chaa answered. “That is how I learned that Tantos would attack the Rough. We could not have withstood him.”

“So, I have failed,” Phylomon said.

“We have both failed,” Chaa corrected, fatigue evident in his voice.

“What do you mean?” Darrissea asked. “Do you plan to give up now?” The thought of surrender seemed alien to her.

“No,” Phylomon said. “But our attack has left the enemy stronger than before. The Rough has been captured; the Hukm armies lie wasted. I can tell by the smell of the air that spring is here.

“That means that the last of the Hukm will not be able to cross the sea to attack Bashevgo for another year. Beyond all this, I brought five portable laser cannons into the city—weapons more powerful than any seen here in three hundred years.

“Now the Blade Kin must have them. We will need to use Fava’s fader if we are to steal those weapons back.”

“Fava lost the brooch that goes to the fader,” Darrissea said.

Phylomon looked at her, crestfallen, and began to laugh sadly. “Of course,” he said. “Of course. And what of you, Chaa? What did you see in our future when you took your Spirit Walk? Have we any hope?”

“The future is dark to me,” Chaa said, glancing back at Tull. “Perhaps if I had had a few more days to Spirit Walk, I could learn more. Still, there is Tull. He is alive, but I am worried. I do not know why the beast approved of him. I did not see what was in his heart. We must decide now whether to let him live. I put a symbiote in his wound.”

Phylomon sighed, “I feared you would do something like that.”

“He needed it,” Chaa said defensively. “He would not have recovered without it.”

“Yet if he is a Talent Warrior,” Phylomon said, “as you foresaw, and if he overthrows the Lords of Craal and Bashevgo, he could sit upon the throne for ten thousand years, ruling in tyranny. Once the symbiote reaches maturity and covers his body, he will become nearly invincible. Perhaps we should kill him now, in his sleep.”

“I may have erred,” Chaa agreed. “Still, I think that he is our only hope.”

Phylomon took Darrissea’s hand, held it lightly. It seemed a spontaneous act of affection, and Darrissea wondered at it. She squeezed his hand tightly.

“This is my world, too,” Darrissea said.

“What?” Phylomon asked, as if surprised she had spoken.

“This is my world, too!” Darrissea said more loudly, suddenly angered. “And it belongs to Tull and Fava and the Slave Lords as much as it does to you. Who gave you the right to treat us as children? Who gave you the right to decide for us? You two can’t even make one simple decision, you are so busy bickering.”

“We are older than you,” Chaa answered. “We know more about this matter.”

Phylomon arched a brow on his hairless face, looked at Darrissea askance. “You are right,” Phylomon said thoughtfully. “This is your world, too. You decide for us. What shall be our next step?”

Darrissea sat, gazing at him. To her amazement, Phylomon seemed to be totally sincere, and Chaa stared at her patiently, awaiting her orders, and she suddenly realized what it must be like to be Phylomon or Chaa.

Everywhere they went, people asked them for counsel, for solutions to problems, as if they knew the answers. And now they were admitting that they had no answers. Both of them feared Tull, and while Darrissea wanted to ridicule their fear as if it had no merit, she had seen Tull fight among the Blade Kin in the arena. He had not merely killed his enemies, he had reveled in their deaths.

She recalled the last fight, when he had tossed the dying body of his foe over his head into the crowd, much to the applause of the Blade Kin, then cut off his own ear. What had Tull been telling them? Was he truly Blade Kin?

And if he was a Talent Warrior, and if he overthrew Bashevgo, how could she hope that he would do anything more than take his place upon the throne? She imagined that a thousand years from now her descendants would serve him, the Blue Lord.

Outside, down the hall in the apartment complex, a board creaked.

Both Phylomon and Chaa jerked their heads up, alarmed. Darrissea heard another creaking, the sound of a quiet footstep, someone creeping toward the door in the middle of the night.

“Blade Kin?” Phylomon mouthed, and Chaa shrugged.

The footsteps came nearer, and someone stopped outside the door, scuffling like a dog trying to catch a scent.

Chaa unsheathed a dagger, and Phylomon picked up a log from beside the fire to use as a club. Darrissea got up soundlessly and went to the door, yanked it open.

A stranger stood there, a young man in his mid-twenties. He was handsome, with perfect skin and a disarming smile. He seemed surprised.

Darrissea glanced at the young man, instantly knew him for what he was. An oddly sweet scent filled the room.

“I … I’m sorry,” the young man said. “I did not mean to wake you. I’m new to town and I was only looking for some place to sleep.”

“A strange human,” Darrissea said, looking askance at Phylomon. The blue man’s skin had already begun darkening in hue, preparing to attack. Chaa and the Starfarer exchanged glances.

“Let him in,” Phylomon said with an undertone that chilled Darrissea to the core of her soul. “He can sit next to me. We have ample room for him to sleep here by the fire. Perhaps he could tell us a few tales of his home, of faraway lands and how he came to be in our city.”

Darrissea understood what he meant. While they sat and argued whether Tull should live or die, the Creators were moving their plots forward. Phylomon wanted to question the monster.

The blood eater stood in the doorway smiling his endearing smile, too naïve to understand the dangerous tone in Phylomon’s voice.

“Thank you, friends,” he fawned. “Thank you!” and as he entered the room, Darrissea took his cloak and set it on the peg beside the door next to where Chaa’s Blade Kin uniform hung, then pulled a pistol from Chaa’s holster.

“By the way, Darrissea,” Phylomon asked. “Did you ever find the rope in the kitchen?”

“No,” Darrissea answered, as she stuck the pistol in her belt and went into the kitchen to get Phylomon the rope.

Tull woke in the afternoon, drowsy. Motes of dust floated in the air, lit by the yellow sun. His lips felt parched, thirsty, though his body was cold, and he was deathly tired. It did not bother him. Instead, beneath the nagging pains, he felt only ecstasy—the steady sense that he needed nothing. Thirsty, naked, nearly dead. Yet he needed nothing.

Tull lay on the floor. He felt no kwea. No fear, no desire. All such things had burned away. If the Blade Kin were to rush in the room and take him back to die, he’d hardly fight them.

Okanjara,
I am free.

The sense of perfect freedom would not leave, and Tull realized he had no name for this thing he felt. He tried to sit up, eager to explore this strange new companion. But dizziness forced him back down.

He turned his head. Across the room, Fava slept on the floor in a dark-blue dress. Her hair was braided and slung over one shoulder.

Tull lay watching her, happy to be thirsty and cold, his belly cramped with hunger. He heard footsteps in another room, and Phylomon walked in, dressed in a loose flowing robe.

“How did you get here?” Tull asked.

Phylomon smiled, but there was a look in the Starfarer’s eyes that Tull had never seen before, a haunted animal look. “My skin’s ability to feign death and make a nuisance of itself thereafter seems to have left you all somewhat astonished. Fava tells me that I smelled worse than a family of skunks in a dogfight. To be honest, I had almost forgotten that my symbiote carried that ability.”

Fava woke, stretched, and smiled gently at Tull. “Can I get you anything?”

“Water,” Tull said, “and a kiss.” She got up, gave him the kiss first, then went into the kitchen. “How long have I slept?” Tull asked.

“Six days,” Phylomon answered. “I would appreciate it if you would heal immediately. We need you.” The tone of his voice said that he was serious.

Fava returned bearing a bottle of wine and a goblet. She sat and poured.

“While we were all managing to get captured,” Phylomon said, “Chaa has been trying to learn the minds of the Creators. They have already begun to attack outlying communities around Bashevgo with poisonous snakes, and something far more dangerous—beings who look human, but must dine on human blood. I questioned one of these. Darrissea has been out on the streets. Rumor has it that Tantos plans to lead an army to attack the Creators.”

“I know. I think we should let him,” Tull answered.

“I fear Tantos will not accomplish much,” Phylomon said. “He does not know how to battle the Creators. None of us do, but he knows far less about them than I do.”

“What of the gray birds with their snakes?” Tull asked. “Have they attacked the city?

“Chaa’s prisoners said that millions of gray birds hatched in midwinter. It will take time for them to grow and learn to fly, but if they grow as fast as other birds, I suspect they will be ready to attack this summer, when the skies are clear.”

Fava helped Tull up, poured a sweet red wine down his throat. He lay back afterward, dizzy, and closed his eyes.

“I mean it when I say that I want you to heal soon,” Phylomon said. “Now that the ice is clearing, we must set sail.”

Tull considered. In all his Spirit Walk, he’d never set Phylomon or himself back into the equation. He knew it would change the world, but he did not know precisely how, or how much.

If Fava had stayed with Mahkawn, the Omnipotent would have been trying to seduce her by now. So Fava too had moved out of the time line.

Tull considered: it was evening six after the stabbing.

At this very moment little Wayan and Vo-olai ran in a swamp down by Smilodon Bay, fleeing Blade Kin who would bring them to Bashevgo.

Tantos planned to attack the Creators, and Tull could not guess the outcome. Theron Scandal, the old innkeeper from town, was congratulating himself as he tasted soup in the kitchens of Lady Initha, while Slave Lords prepared to party at her house. His cooking skills would serve him well, so long as he served others well.

The people of Smilodon Bay were scattered across Bashevgo. In five days Tantos would prepare to attack the Creators and think to order Phylomon skinned. He’d discover that Phylomon had escaped then.

Tull realized they would need to flee the city well before that.

Fava lay on the floor next to him, stroking his chest, and Tull gazed at her a moment before drifting back to sleep. A great sense of peace flooded over him. She smiled. “Why do you look so happy?”

“I was just thinking about the end of the world.”

***