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Morgan Rice
Morgan Rice is the #1 bestselling and USA Today bestselling author of the epic fantasy series THE SORCERER’S RING, comprising seventeen books; of the #1 bestselling series THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS, comprising twelve books; of the #1 bestselling series THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY, a post-apocalyptic thriller comprising three books; of the epic fantasy series KINGS AND SORCERERS, comprising six books; of the epic fantasy series OF CROWNS AND GLORY, comprising 8 books; and of the new epic fantasy series A THRONE FOR SISTERS. Morgan’s books are available in audio and print editions, and translations are available in over 25 languages.
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“If you thought that there was no reason left for living after the end of THE SORCERER’S RING series, you were wrong. In RISE OF THE DRAGONS Morgan Rice has come up with what promises to be another brilliant series, immersing us in a fantasy of trolls and dragons, of valor, honor, courage, magic and faith in your destiny. Morgan has managed again to produce a strong set of characters that make us cheer for them on every page.…Recommended for the permanent library of all readers that love a well-written fantasy.”
– Books and Movie ReviewsRoberto Mattos
“An action packed fantasy sure to please fans of Morgan Rice’s previous novels, along with fans of works such as THE INHERITANCE CYCLE by Christopher Paolini…. Fans of Young Adult Fiction will devour this latest work by Rice and beg for more.”
– The Wanderer, A Literary Journal (regarding Rise of the Dragons)
“A spirited fantasy that weaves elements of mystery and intrigue into its story line. A Quest of Heroes is all about the making of courage and about realizing a life purpose that leads to growth, maturity, and excellence….For those seeking meaty fantasy adventures, the protagonists, devices, and action provide a vigorous set of encounters that focus well on Thor's evolution from a dreamy child to a young adult facing impossible odds for survival….Only the beginning of what promises to be an epic young adult series.”
– Midwest Book Review (D. Donovan, eBook Reviewer)
“THE SORCERER’S RING has all the ingredients for an instant success: plots, counterplots, mystery, valiant knights, and blossoming relationships replete with broken hearts, deception and betrayal. It will keep you entertained for hours, and will satisfy all ages. Recommended for the permanent library of all fantasy readers.”
– Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos
“In this action-packed first book in the epic fantasy Sorcerer's Ring series (which is currently 14 books strong), Rice introduces readers to 14-year-old Thorgrin "Thor" McLeod, whose dream is to join the Silver Legion, the elite knights who serve the king…. Rice's writing is solid and the premise intriguing.”
– Publishers Weekly
Books by Morgan Rice
THE WAY OF STEEL
ONLY THE WORTHY (Book #1)
A THRONE FOR SISTERS
A THRONE FOR SISTERS (Book #1)
A COURT FOR THIEVES (Book #2)
OF CROWNS AND GLORY
SLAVE, WARRIOR, QUEEN (Book #1)
ROGUE, PRISONER, PRINCESS (Book #2)
KNIGHT, HEIR, PRINCE (Book #3)
REBEL, PAWN, KING (Book #4)
SOLDIER, BROTHER, SORCERER (Book #5)
HERO, TRAITOR, DAUGHTER (Book #6)
RULER, RIVAL, EXILE (Book #7)
VICTOR, VANQUISHED, SON (Book #8)
KINGS AND SORCERERS
RISE OF THE DRAGONS (Book #1)
RISE OF THE VALIANT (Book #2)
THE WEIGHT OF HONOR (Book #3)
A FORGE OF VALOR (Book #4)
A REALM OF SHADOWS (Book #5)
NIGHT OF THE BOLD (Book #6)
THE SORCERER’S RING
A QUEST OF HEROES (Book #1)
A MARCH OF KINGS (Book #2)
A FATE OF DRAGONS (Book #3)
A CRY OF HONOR (Book #4)
A VOW OF GLORY (Book #5)
A CHARGE OF VALOR (Book #6)
A RITE OF SWORDS (Book #7)
A GRANT OF ARMS (Book #8)
A SKY OF SPELLS (Book #9)
A SEA OF SHIELDS (Book #10)
A REIGN OF STEEL (Book #11)
A LAND OF FIRE (Book #12)
A RULE OF QUEENS (Book #13)
AN OATH OF BROTHERS (Book #14)
A DREAM OF MORTALS (Book #15)
A JOUST OF KNIGHTS (Book #16)
THE GIFT OF BATTLE (Book #17)
THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY
ARENA ONE: SLAVERSUNNERS (Book #1)
ARENA TWO (Book #2)
ARENA THREE (Book #3)
VAMPIRE, FALLEN
BEFORE DAWN (Book #1)
THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS
TURNED (Book #1)
LOVED (Book #2)
BETRAYED (Book #3)
DESTINED (Book #4)
DESIRED (Book #5)
BETROTHED (Book #6)
VOWED (Book #7)
FOUND (Book #8)
RESURRECTED (Book #9)
CRAVED (Book #10)
FATED (Book #11)
OBSESSED (Book #12)
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Copyright © 2017 by Morgan Rice. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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CHAPTER ONE
Thanos ducked as an arrow flashed past him, hearing it ping from the stone walls of one of Haylon’s houses. He hurried back through the streets, reached a junction, and spun, sword in hand.
A half dozen of Lord West’s former men came in from one side, former Empire soldiers came in from the other, while the native soldiers of the island poured out of the surrounding houses. They caught the pursuing soldiers of Felldust between them, and Thanos charged.
Thanos thrust his sword over one man’s shield, spun to parry a blow aimed at a man beside him, and kicked back a third soldier while Sir Justin stepped into the gap and killed another man.
“You’re getting into the habit of saving me,” Thanos said in a momentary lull in the fight.
“Just keep fighting and we’ll call it even,” Justin replied.
Thanos could do that part, at least. He caught an axe on his sword, holding it wide so that one of the Empire soldiers could stab into the space, then took the axe in his off hand.
There were more enemies coming now, pouring into the space as the invaders realized that there was a knot of defenders there. That meant that it was time to melt away again.
“Pull back!” he yelled, and the men around him ran into one of the houses, cutting through into another street. Thanos ran, and he found General Haven running along beside him, the old man’s face red with effort.
“Shouldn’t you find a less… energetic place to fight, General?” Thanos asked.
Haven glowered back at him. “Don’t tell me what to do, young man! You are not my prince!”
Despite his complaints, the old general seemed happy to fight beside Thanos and Justin as they fought their way up a set of stone steps and over one of the roofs in the city. It was impossible to tell which soldiers had come from which places; Thanos could only see that the men defending the island were doing so with bravery and tenacity.
From there, though, he could see the size of the fleet attacking the island. It wasn’t the huge invasion fleet that had come to Delos, but it was still massive. It covered the space around the harbor like a dark stain on the water, jamming it with ships that were even now disgorging more and more soldiers onto Haylon’s soil.
The only hope was to hit and run, drawing out pockets of attackers and then swarming them with greater numbers before fleeing deeper into the city. The native warriors of Haylon seemed to be more than used to such tactics, but Thanos found himself quite surprised by how well the former Empire’s soldiers employed them. Probably it had something to do with the time they’d spent being hunted in the hills of the island.
“This way,” Haven said, and Thanos followed the general on the basis that he probably knew the island the best of all those there. Thanos found himself wishing that Akila or Iakos were there, but the deputy leader was dead, and Akila was too severely injured for such running tactics.
Thanos saw a set of streets that he recognized and gestured to the general.
“Here,” he called. “The alleys.”
To his surprise, they followed him. They ran down a set of narrow alleyways and turned again. Some of Sir Justin’s men looked as though they wanted to charge back at the enemy, but Thanos put his arm out to stop them.
“Wait for them,” Thanos said. “We can defend better at this end, and… well, watch.”
They might not know him yet, but even so, the men held their place. Felldust’s soldiers charged, and that was when the waiting islanders pushed in the walls on either side, showering them with rubble.
“Iakos trapped half the city,” Thanos explained. He was breathing hard now, and wished that they could pause just for a moment, but in a battle like this one, there was no time. “Come on, we need to keep moving.”
They gave more ground, this time picking their way among tripwires and deadfalls.
“This is a dirty way to fight,” Sir Justin said.
Thanos put a hand on his shoulder. He could see what the other man was going through. Lord West’s former man was probably used to sweeping charges and carefully organized duels, not fights in alleyways and running away.
“We’re doing what we have to do to win,” he said. Thanos could still remember when he’d fought so carefully that he hadn’t killed his opponents, and he’d fought with honor. Those times seemed a long time ago now. “We’re keeping our families and friends safe. We’re saving the people of Haylon, and the Empire.”
He saw the warriors nod, and then they were away among the houses again, running in front of the advancing forces.
That was the worrying part in all of this. They were giving up ground with every encounter, unable to stand and fight in the face of so many opponents. Even when Thanos spun again, knocking aside a spear so that he could thrust his sword deep into its wielder, it was only so that he could set off running again, pulling back to the next position among the houses, and the next.
It seemed less like fighting to win than simply to hold off defeat for as long as possible.
Thanos was behind a barricade deeper in the city when a messenger came running up, bursting out of a nearby doorway. Thanos almost skewered him on instinct, but managed to pull back in time.
“Akila says that it’s time for the last people to pull back from the city. One of the beaches on the far side of the island has fallen, and we need everyone to reinforce the passes.”
Thanos nodded, trying to hide his disappointment at those words. He’d known that this was inevitable ever since Felldust’s forces had torn open the harbor gates, but he’d dared to hope that it was because they’d committed everything to that attack. If they were able to take beaches across the island as well, things were worse than he’d thought.
“Pull back to the hills!” he yelled, and the men around him looked surprised for a moment, before taking off through the city in the direction of the mountain passes. General Haven’s men did it as quickly as the men from Haylon, obviously having come to know the mountains over their time fighting there. Lord West’s former men followed along, obviously taking their lead from Thanos. He just hoped that he wasn’t leading them to their deaths.
They reached the rock walls and passes on the edge of the city. There were men there waiting with sledgehammers by great wooden wedges. Thanos guessed that when they drove them in, the rock walls around would come down, forming a natural wall. Thanos also guessed that unless they’d judged it very well, the men were risking being buried when the rocks came down. They were giving their lives to slow the advance.
Thanos couldn’t let them do it alone.
He grabbed one of the hammers, ignoring the man’s look of shock as he watched the troops with him filter through the gap. More of Haylon’s warriors came, and more still, but now Thanos could see Felldust’s men following close behind.
He found himself thinking of Ceres then. He hoped that she was doing better in her search than they were doing on the island. He’d wanted so much with her, and if he died here, that could never happen, but he couldn’t stand by and let these men do this alone.
“We need to do it,” one of the men there said.
Thanos shook his head. “Not yet. There are still men to come.”
“But if Felldust’s men get through…”
“Not yet,” Thanos repeated.
The warriors kept coming, and Thanos let through as many of his own people as he could. When the first of Felldust’s warriors came at him, Thanos parried the blow with the haft of his sledgehammer, then struck back, feeling ribs give way under the strike. Another came forward, and Haven was there, cutting the man down.
“This is not the place for you, my prince,” he said.
“I thought you said I wasn’t your prince,” Thanos pointed out.
He heard the other man sigh. “You’re not, but you’re right. I came to this island to be a butcher. Time to be something more.”
He nodded, and Thanos felt strong hands closing over his arms. A pair of the Empire’s soldiers pulled him back, while Haven took up the hammer Thanos had held.
“Haven, don’t do this,” Thanos said.
It was too late though. The old general was already swinging the hammer, alongside the few chosen men of Haylon. He swung it with all the strength of a much younger man, blows striking home on the wedge as above him, the rocks creaked.
When they gave way, it was like thunder, the whole world seeming to disappear under the falling rain of rocks. General Haven disappeared under that avalanche, leaving nothing but a solid wall of boulders.
Thanos stared at the pile in awe.
Even so, he knew it had only bought them a little time.
Haylon was lost.
He only hoped that things were easier for Ceres.
CHAPTER TWO
Ceres looked up from the pit, to the ring of half-dead sorcerers who surrounded it, and she tried to hide her fear. She managed to summon defiance as she watched them gather, clutching the hilts of her twin swords, waiting for them. She would not let them see her scared down here.
“You could have freed us,” their leader said in a voice like old paper.
“Freed you to destroy things,” Ceres called back. “Never.”
“Then we’ll take your blood, and be what we were for a while at least.”
Ceres stood there, waiting for them. Which of them would attack first? Would they just fire their magic down into the pit and destroy her? No, they couldn’t, could they? Not when they needed her blood. An idea came to her then. A way she might actually get out of this pit. It would be dangerous though. Very dangerous.
“Do you think I’m scared of you?” Ceres demanded. “I’ve fought in pits before. Come on, all of you.”
This wouldn’t work unless they all came at her. Even so, it was terrifying as they dropped in silence, landing on the hard stone of the pit and hurrying forward to attack her.
Ceres cut and moved. There was so little room in the pit to fight that the danger was that she would be swarmed. She cut off a hand that grabbed at her, ducked under the swipe of claws aimed at her throat. She felt the scrape of a hand on her side and kicked out, knocking one of the sorcerers back.
They weren’t as strong as they had been. Ceres guessed that they’d used more power than they wanted, throwing magic after her. She kept cutting, kept dodging within the pit while she waited for the moment when some of them would line up the way she wanted.
Ceres saw it, and she didn’t hesitate. She might not have the superior strength and speed that came from her blood, but she was still fast and strong enough for this. She cut one down to its knees in front of her, threw her swords out of the pit, and then used the sorcerer’s back as a springboard as it was still recovering. She leapt up onto the shoulders of the next enemy and then jumped with all she had for the lip of the pit. If she got this wrong, she had just thrown away the only weapons she had to protect herself.
She slammed against the rock of the pit’s wall, her hands catching on the lip as she struggled to pull herself up. Ceres felt something grabbing at her leg, and kicked back on instinct, feeling the crunch of bone as she connected with a sorcerer’s skull. That push was all she needed to set her climbing, and quickly, Ceres pulled herself up over the rim of the pit she’d fallen into.
She snatched up her blades and stood as the sorcerers shrieked their anger.
“We will follow!” they promised.
One roared in anger then, throwing magic her way. Ceres dodged aside, but it was as if that was the signal for the others to strike as well. Flames and lightning followed her as she ran from the room that contained the pit, and around her, Ceres heard the walls rumbling. Small rocks started to fall, then bigger ones.
Ceres ran on desperately, while rocks fell around her, ricocheting as they struck the floor and rolling in the case of the bigger pieces. She flung herself forward, and stood to find that the tunnel behind her was now blocked.
Would it stop the former sorcerers? Probably not forever. If they couldn’t die, then they would eventually be able to break through, but that wasn’t the same thing as being able to chase after Ceres now. For now, at least, she was safe.
She continued through the tunnels, not knowing which way to go, but trusting to instinct in the soft glow of the cave light. Ahead, Ceres could see it opening out into a broader cavern with stalactites hanging down from the ceiling. There was also the sound of water there, and Ceres was surprised to see a broad stream running through the middle of it.
More than that, there was a small landing post with a flat-bottomed boat tied to it. Ceres guessed that the boat had been there for more years than she wanted to think about, but somehow it still looked strong. Downstream, Ceres could see a light that wasn’t present in the rest of the caves, and somehow she knew it would be what she needed to head toward.
She got in the boat, untying it and letting the current carry it along. The water lapped at the side of the small vessel, and Ceres could feel anticipation building in her as it went forward. On another occasion, she might have been worried by a current such as this one, thinking that it might lead to a weir, or worse, to a waterfall. Now, however, it felt as though the current was a deliberate thing, designed to carry her to her goal.
The boat passed through a tunnel narrow enough that Ceres could have touched the walls on either side. There was light ahead, bright after the half-light of the caves. The tunnel gave way to a space that was not rock, not stone. Instead, in a space where there should have been just another cavern, Ceres found herself floating through a patch of idyllic countryside.
Ceres recognized the work of the Ancient Ones instantly. Only they might have done something like this. Perhaps the sorcerers might have found the power for an illusion, but this felt real; it even smelled of fresh grass and dew drops. The boat bumped against the bank and Ceres saw a wide meadow ahead, filled with wildflowers whose scent was sweet and delicate. Some of them seemed to move with her as she passed, and Ceres felt the brush of thorns against her leg, drawing blood in a sharp sting of pain.
They pulled back after that, though. Apparently, whatever defenses were there, they weren’t meant to keep her out.
It took Ceres a moment to realize that there were two strange things about the place she was walking through. Well, stranger than a patch of countryside in the middle of a cavern complex was in the first place.
One strange thing was the way the visions of the past seemed to have stopped. In the caverns above, they had flickered in and out of existence, showing the final attack by the Ancient Ones on the sorcerers’ home. Here, the world didn’t seem to be caught halfway between two points. Here, it was as peaceful as it was fixed, without the constant shifts that the rest of the place experienced.
The second strange thing was the dome of light that rose up in the heart of it all, shining golden against the greenery of the rest of it. It was the size of a large house, or the tent of some nomad lord, yet it seemed to be composed almost entirely of energy. Looking at it, she thought at first the dome might have been a shield or a wall, but somehow Ceres knew it was more than that. It was a living place, a home.
It was also, she guessed, the place where whatever she sought might be found. For almost the first time since she’d set foot in the sorcerers’ home, Ceres dared to feel a flicker of hope. Perhaps this was the place where she would recover her powers.
Perhaps she would be able to help save Haylon after all.
CHAPTER THREE
As she sailed in the direction of Felldust’s Bone Coast, Jeva suffered the strangest sensation of her life: she worried that she was going to die.
It was a new sensation for her. It wasn’t something that her people were used to experiencing. It certainly wasn’t something that she’d ever wanted. It probably amounted to a kind of heresy, floating along, seeing the possibility of joining with the waiting dead and actually worrying about it. Her kind embraced death, even welcomed it as a chance to finally be one with the great wash of their ancestors. They did not fear the risk of it.
Yet that was exactly what Jeva was feeling now, as she saw the faint line of Felldust’s shore appearing on the horizon. She feared the thought of being cut down for what she had to say. She feared being sent to join those ancestors, rather than being able to help on Haylon. She wondered what had changed.
The answer to that was easy enough: Thanos.
Jeva found herself thinking of him as she sailed toward land, watching the seabirds that gathered in floating flocks as they waited for their next chance at food. Before she had met him, she had been… well, perhaps not the same as all her people, because most of them didn’t feel the need to wander all the way to Port Leeward and beyond. Even so, she had felt the same as them, been the same as them. She certainly didn’t feel fear.
It wasn’t fear for herself, exactly, although she knew perfectly well that her own life was at stake. She was more worried about what would happen to those left on Haylon if she didn’t make it back; to Thanos.
That was another kind of heresy. The living didn’t matter except as far as they were useful to fulfill the wishes of the dead. If a whole island of people died at the hands of an invader, that was a glorious honor for them, not something to treat as an impending disaster. All that mattered in life was fulfilling the wishes of the dead and achieving an end for oneself that was suitably glorious. The speakers of the dead had made that clear. Jeva had even heard the whispers of the dead herself, when the smoke rose from the seeing pyres.
She sailed on, ignoring that, feeling the pull of the waves against the tiller as she kept her small boat on course for her home. Now she found herself hearing other voices, arguing for compassion, for saving Haylon, for helping Thanos.
She had seen him risk his own life to help others for no good reason that Jeva could see. When she had been tied to a Felldust ship like a figurehead, waiting to be flayed, he had come to rescue her. When they had fought side by side, his shield had been her shield in a way never seen with her people.
She had seen in Thanos something to admire. Maybe more than admire. She had seen someone who was in the world to do the best that they could there, not just to find the most perfect way of exiting it. The new voices Jeva was hearing told her that this was the way she ought to live, and that going to help Haylon was a part of it.
The trouble was that Jeva knew these only came from within herself. She shouldn’t have been listening to them so strongly. Her people certainly wouldn’t.
“What’s left of them,” Jeva said, the wind carrying her words away.
Her tribe’s village was gone. Now she was going to go to another gathering place and ask another clutch of her people for their lives. Jeva looked up at the way the wind billowed the small sail of her boat, out at the play of foam over the ocean; anything to keep from thinking about what she would have to do to make that happen. Even so, the words came up, as inescapable as the end of life.
She would have to claim to speak for the dead.
It had taken the words of the dead to get them to Delos, although Jeva and Thanos had not claimed to speak for them with that. But Jeva couldn’t just leave this to the speakers with this. There was too much of a chance that they would say no, and then what would happen?
The death of her friend. She couldn’t allow that. Even if it meant doing the unthinkable.
Jeva guided her boat closer to shore, working her way in between the rocks and the wrecks that had foundered on them. This wasn’t the beach nearest her old home, but a place a little further along the coast, in another of the great gathering places. They had still managed to pick the wrecks clean, though. Jeva smiled at that, taking a little pride in it.
Boats came out onto the water to meet her. Mostly, these were light things, canoes with outriggers, designed to intercept what was obviously not one of the Bone Folk’s craft. If Jeva had not obviously been one of them, she might have found herself fighting for her life then. Instead, they crowded around, laughing and joking the way they never did around strangers.
“A beautiful boat, sister. How many men did you kill for it?”
“Kill?” another said. “They probably went to the dead at the sight of her from fear!”
“They’d go to the dead at the sight of your ugliness,” Jeva shot back, and the men laughed with her. It was how things were done here.
How things were done mattered. Her people might seem strange to outsiders, but they had their own rules, their own standards of behavior. Now, Jeva was going to go to them, and if she claimed to speak for the dead, then she would be breaking the most fundamental of those rules. She could be cut off from the communion of the dead for breaking it, slain without her ashes being mingled with the pyres to be consumed.
She brought her boat in to the shoreline, jumping from it and pulling it up onto the beach. There were more of her folk waiting there. A girl ran to her with a funerary urn, offering her a pinch of the village’s ashes. Jeva took it, tasting it. Symbolically, she was one of the village now, a part of their communion with their ancestors.
“Welcome, priestess,” one of the men on the beach said. He was an old man with papery skin, but he still deferred to Jeva because of the markings that proclaimed she had undergone the rites. “What brings a speaker of the dead to our shores?”
Jeva stood there, considering her answer. It would have been so easy then to claim that she spoke for those who were gone. She had seen her share of visions; when she’d been a girl, there were those who had thought that she would be a great speaker for the dead. One of the older speakers had proclaimed as much, saying that she would speak words that would shake her whole people.
If she claimed that the dead had called her there, and required her people to fight for Haylon, they might believe it without argument. They might obey her borrowed authority as they obeyed so little else.
If she did, she might actually be able to save Haylon. There might be a chance that her people would be enough to break the attack by Felldust’s fleet. They might be able to buy the defenders time, at least. If she lied.
Jeva couldn’t do it though. It wasn’t just the lie at the heart of it, although the fact that she was considering it horrified her. It wasn’t even the fact that it went against everything her people felt about the world. No, it was the fact that Thanos wouldn’t have wanted her to do it that way. He wouldn’t have wanted her to trick people to their deaths, or to force them to face up to the might of Felldust without knowing the truth of why they were going.
“Priestess?” the old man asked. “Are you here to speak for the dead?”
What would he do then? Jeva already had an answer to that, forged from the last time he’d been to her folk’s lands. Forged from everything he’d done since.
“No,” she said. “I am not here to speak for the dead. I am Jeva, and today I wish to speak for the living.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Irrien walked the fields of the dead, looking around at the slaughter his armies had wrought without any of the satisfaction that normally came from doing it. Around him, the men of the North lay dead or dying, crushed by his armies, slaughtered by his hunters. Irrien should have felt triumph in that moment. He should have felt joy in the scale of it, or power at seeing his enemies slain.
Instead, he felt as though he had been robbed of true victory.
A man in the shining armor of his foes groaned in the mud, trying to cling to life despite the wounds that had been torn in him. Irrien lifted a spear from another nearby corpse and thrust it through him. Even killing a weakling like that did nothing to lift his mood.
The truth was that it had been too easy. There had been too few enemies there to make this a fight worth having. They had raged across the North, cutting through the villages and the small castles, ripping through even Lord West’s former fortress. In each place, they’d found empty dwellings and emptier castles, rooms people had abandoned in time to escape from the horde that had been descending on them.
That wasn’t just frustrating because it meant that he couldn’t have the meaningful victories he’d planned on. It was frustrating because it meant that his enemies were still out there. Irrien knew where, too, because the coward who’d stayed behind in Lord West’s castle had told him: they were on Haylon, reinforcing the island he’d only sent part of his forces to conquer.
That made every moment Irrien spent here feel as though he was chafing at the bit. Yet there were things that needed to be done here. He looked around to watch as his men worked alongside gangs of freshly taken slaves to tear down one of the castles that seemed to spring up here like mushrooms after rain. Irrien wouldn’t leave such things unoccupied behind him, because that would mean giving his foes a place to gather.
More than that, his men seemed satisfied enough with the easy victory. Irrien could see the ones who hadn’t been assigned to work gangs lazing in the sun, gambling with looted coins or tormenting prisoners they’d snatched for their amusement.
The usual hangers-on were there, of course. Someone had set up a slavers’ camp at the edge of the army like its shadow, with its carts and its cages quickly filling up. There was a clear space in the middle where the slavers haggled over the best and the most beautiful, although the truth was that they took what the soldiers were prepared to sell them. The men there were scavengers, not warriors in their own right.
Then there were the death priests. They had set up their altar in the middle of the battlefield, as they so often did. Now, soldiers were bringing them the wounded enemies they found, dragging them over to the stone slab to have their throats cut or their hearts cut out. Their blood ran, and Irrien imagined that the priests’ gods were probably pleased by the whole thing. Certainly, the priests seemed to think so, exhorting the faithful to submit themselves completely to death, as it was the only way to earn its favor.
One man actually seemed to take them seriously. He’d obviously suffered wounds in the battle, ones serious enough that he needed his comrades’ help to get to the slab. Irrien watched as he clambered up on top of it, exposing his chest so that the priests could stab into it with a knife of dark obsidian.
Irrien spat at the weakness of a man who would not fight his way back from his injuries. After all, Irrien was not letting his old wounds slow him, was he? His shoulder hurt with every movement, but he was not offering himself as a sacrifice to keep death at bay for others. In his experience, the only thing that kept death at bay was being the stronger of two warriors. Strength meant that you got to live. Strength meant that you could take what you wanted, be it a man’s lands, or life, or women.
Briefly, Irrien wondered what the priests’ gods of death would think of him. He didn’t worship them except for the effect it had in bringing his men together. He wasn’t even sure if such things existed, except as a way for priests who couldn’t control men with their own strength to have power.
He imagined such things counted against him with any gods there were, yet hadn’t Irrien sent more men, women, and children to their graves than anyone? Hadn’t he given them their sacrifices, promoted their priesthood, and made this into a world they would approve of? Irrien might not have done it for them, but he had done it, nonetheless.
He stood and listened for a moment to the priest speaking.
“Brothers! Sisters! Today is a great victory. Today, we have sent many through the black door to the world beyond. Today, we have sated the gods, so that we are not chosen by them tomorrow. Today’s victory—”
“It was not a victory,” Irrien said, and his voice carried effortlessly over that of the priest. “For there to be a victory, there must be a fight worth having. Is taking empty homes a victory? Is slaughtering fools who stayed behind when others had the sense to run?” Irrien looked around at them. “We have killed today, and that is good, but there is far more to be done. Today, we will finish things here. We will tear down their castles and give their families to the slavers. Tomorrow, though, we will go to the place where there is a victory to be won. To the place all their warriors have gone ahead of us. We will go to Haylon!”
He heard his men cheer at that, their lust for battle reignited by the killing. He turned to the priest there.
“What do you say? Is it the will of the gods?”
The priest didn’t hesitate. He took his knife and sliced open the dead man on the altar, pulling out his entrails to read them.
“It is, Lord Irrien. Their will follows yours in this! Irrien! Ir-ri-en!”
“Ir-ri-en!” the soldiers chanted.
The man knew his place, then. Irrien smiled and set off into the crowd. He wasn’t surprised when a robed figure slipped into the space beside him, matching his step. Irrien drew a dagger, not knowing if he would need it.
“You have been quiet since we last talked, N’cho,” Irrien said. “I do not like to be kept waiting.”
The assassin bowed his head. “I have been researching what you required of me, First Stone, asking my fellow priests, reading forbidden scrolls, torturing those who would not speak.”
Irrien was sure that the leader of the Dozen Deaths had enjoyed himself immensely. Of all of them, N’cho had been the only one to survive attacking him. Irrien was starting to wonder if that had been the right choice to make.
“You heard what I told the men,” Irrien said. “We are going to Haylon. That means going up against the child of the Ancient Ones. Do you have a solution for me, or should I drag you back to be the next sacrifice?”
He saw the other man shake his head. “Alas, the gods are not so eager to meet me, First Stone.”
Irrien narrowed his eyes. “Meaning?”
N’cho stepped back. “I believe that I have found what you require.”
Irrien gestured for the other man to go with him, leading the way back to his tent. At a look from him, the guards and the slaves there left in a hurry, leaving the two of them alone.
“What have you found?” Irrien asked.
“There were… creatures employed in the war against the Ancient Ones,” N’cho said.
“Such things would be long dead,” Irrien pointed out.
N’cho shook his head. “They can still be summoned, and I believe I have found a spot to summon one. It will take many deaths, though.”
Irrien laughed at that. It was a small price to pay for Ceres’s life.
“Death,” he said, “is always the easiest thing to arrange.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Stephania watched Captain Kang sleep with a look of disgust that seeped deep down into her soul. The bulky form of the captain shifted as he snored, and Stephania had to shift back as he reached for her in his sleep. He’d done more than enough of that while waking.
Stephania had never had a problem with taking lovers to bend them to her will. It was what she was planning to do with the Second Stone, after all. Yet Kang had been far from a gentle man, and he’d seemed to take delight in finding new ways to humiliate Stephania on the way over. He’d treated her like the slave she’d briefly been with Irrien, and Stephania had sworn to herself that she would never be that again.
Then she’d heard the whispers among the crew: that perhaps she wouldn’t be arriving safe after all. That maybe the captain would take all she’d given and sell her into slavery anyway at the end of it. That at the very least, he would share the bounty by giving her to them.
Stephania wouldn’t allow that. She would rather die than that, but it was much easier to kill instead.
She slipped from the bed silently, looking out of one of the small windows of the captain’s cabin. Port Leeward lay just a little way away, dust falling over it from the cliffs above even in the half-light of dawn. It was an ugly city, worn and cramped, and even from here Stephania could tell that it would be a place of violence. Kang had said that he didn’t dare to go in at night.
Stephania had guessed that had just been an excuse to use her one more time, but maybe it was more than that. The slave markets wouldn’t be open in the dark, after all.
She made a decision and dressed quietly, wrapping herself up in her cloak and reaching into its folds. She drew out a bottle and some thread, moving with the care of someone who knew exactly what she was holding. If she made a mistake now, she was dead, either from the poison, or when Kang woke.
Stephania positioned herself over the bed, lining the thread up with Kang’s mouth as best she could. He shifted and turned in his sleep, and Stephania went with him, being careful not to touch him. If he woke now, she was well within striking distance.
She dripped the poison along the thread, keeping her concentration as Kang murmured something in his sleep. One drop trickled down toward his lips, then a second. Stephania prepared herself for the moment when he would gasp and die, the poison claiming him.
Instead, his eyes snapped open, staring up at Stephania for a moment in incomprehension, then anger.
“Whore! Slave! You’ll die for this.”
In an instant, he was up on top of Stephania, pressing her down against the bed. He struck her once, and then she felt the crushing pressure of his hands fastening on her throat. Stephania gasped as she felt her breath cut off, thrashing around as she tried to get him off her.
For his part, Kang bore down with all his great bulk, pinning Stephania beneath him. She fought and he just laughed, continuing to strangle her. He was still laughing when Stephania drew a knife from inside her cloak and stabbed him.
He gasped with the first thrust, but Stephania didn’t feel the pressure on her throat ease. Blackness started to come in at the edges of her vision, but she kept stabbing, thrusting mechanically on instinct, doing it blindly because now she couldn’t see anything beyond a faint haze.
The grip around her throat loosened, and Stephania felt Kang’s bulk collapse on her.
It took far too long to fight her way out from beneath him, gasping for breath and trying to push her way back to consciousness. She all but fell from the bed, then stood, looking down at the ruin of Kang’s body in disgust.
She had to be practical. She’d done what she intended, however difficult it had proved to be. Now for the rest.
She quickly rearranged the sheets to make it look more like he was sleeping at first glance. She went through the cabin quickly, finding the small chest where Kang kept gold. Stephania slipped out onto the deck, her hood up as she made her way to the ship’s small landing boat at the stern.
Stephania stepped in, starting to work the pulleys to lower it. They creaked like a rusted gate, and from somewhere above her, she heard the shouts of sailors wanting to know what the noise was. Stephania didn’t hesitate. She drew a knife and started to saw at the rope holding the boat. It gave way and she plummeted the rest of the short distance to the waves.
Grabbing the oars, she started to row, heading for the harbor while behind her, the sailors realized that they had no way to follow her. Stephania rowed until she came up against the docks, then clambered up, not even bothering to tie the boat off. She wouldn’t be going back that way.
Felldust’s capital city was everything it had promised to be from the water. Dust fell on it in waves, while around her, figures moved through it with ominous intent. One closed on her, and Stephania flashed a knife until he backed off.
She went deeper into the city. Stephania knew that Lucious had come here, and she wondered how he’d felt while he was doing it. Probably helpless, because Lucious didn’t know how to relate to people. He thought in terms of storming up to people and demanding, of threats and intimidation. He’d been a fool.
Stephania wasn’t a fool. She looked around until she found the people who would have real information: the beggars and the whores. She went to them with her stolen gold and she asked the same question, again and again.
“Tell me about Ulren.”
She asked it in alleys and she asked it in gambling houses where the stakes seemed to be blood as often as coin. She asked it in shops that sold layers of wraps against the dust and she asked it in the places where thieves gathered in the dark.
She picked an inn and settled herself there, sending word out into the city that there was gold for those who would talk to her. They came, telling her snippets of history and rumor, gossip and secrets in a mixture Stephania was more than used to sorting through.
She wasn’t surprised when they came for her, two men and a woman, all in the wrappings the city used to keep off the dust, all wearing the emblem of the former Second Stone. They had the hard look of people used to violence, but that could have applied to almost anyone in Felldust.
“You’ve been asking a lot of questions,” the woman said, leaning over the table. Close enough that Stephania could have put a knife in her easily. Close enough that they could have been confidantes sharing gossip at some courtly dance.
Stephania smiled. “I have.”
“Did you think that those questions wouldn’t attract attention? That the First Stone doesn’t have listeners in the shadows?”
Stephania laughed then. Did they think that she hadn’t considered the possibility of spies? She’d done more than that; she’d relied on it. She’d fished for answers in the city, but the truth of it was that she’d been fishing for attention as much as anything else. Any fool could walk up to a gate and be denied entry. A clever woman made it so that those within brought her inside.
After all, Stephania thought with more amusement, a woman should never be the one doing all the chasing in a romance.
“What’s so funny?” the woman demanded. “Are you mad, or just stupid? Who are you, anyway?”
Stephania pulled back her hood so that the other woman could see her features.
“I am Stephania,” she said. “Former bride of the heir to the Empire, former ruler of the Empire. I have survived the fall of Delos and Irrien’s best efforts to kill me. I think that your lord will want to talk to me, don’t you?”
She stood as the others looked at one another, obviously trying to decide what to do in the face of this. Finally, the woman made a decision.
“We bring her.”
They moved in on either side of Stephania, but she made a point of moving with them, so that it looked more like a noble escort than her being taken prisoner. She even reached out to rest her hand lightly on the woman’s arm, the way she might have with a companion walking around a garden.
They led the way across the city, and since it was one of the rare gaps in the dust storms off the cliffs, Stephania didn’t bother with the hood of her cloak. She let people see her, knowing that the rumors of who she was and where she was going would start.
Of course, in spite of what she made it look like, this was still a long way from a pleasant stroll. These were still killers beside her, who wouldn’t hesitate to murder her if Stephania gave them a reason. As they came toward a large compound in the heart of the city, Stephania could feel the fear knotting in her stomach, pushed down only by her determination to do all the things she had come to Felldust for. She would have revenge on Irrien. She would get her son back from the sorcerer.
They marched her through the compound, past the working slaves and the training warriors, past statues depicting Ulren in his youth, standing over the bodies of slain enemies. Stephania had no doubt that this was a dangerous man. To be second only to Irrien meant that he had fought his way to the top of one of the most dangerous places there was.
To lose here was to die, or worse than die, but Stephania didn’t intend to lose. She’d learned the lessons of the invasion, and even of her failure to control Irrien. This time, she had something to offer. Ulren wanted the same things that she did: power, and the death of the former First Stone.
Stephania had heard of people basing marriages on worse things.
CHAPTER SIX
Ceres stepped from the small boat onto the bank, in awe of the fact that a place like this could exist somewhere underground. She knew that the powers of the Ancient Ones were involved, but she couldn’t see why they would do this. Why make a garden in the middle of a nightmare?
Of course, from the little she’d seen of the Ancient Ones, the fact that there was a nightmare might be a sufficient reason for the garden.
Then there was the dome, which seemed to be composed of pure golden light. Ceres walked closer to it. If there was an answer to be found here, she was sure that it was somewhere inside that dome.
There was a faint haze to the light, and inside, Ceres thought she could see a pair of figures. She just hoped they weren’t more of the half-dead sorcerers. Ceres wasn’t sure she had the strength to fight any more of them.
She pressed into the light, and Ceres couldn’t help bracing herself for some kind of shock or force designed to fling her back. Instead, there was just a moment of pressure, and then she was through it, inside the dome and looking around.
Here, it looked like the interior of some opulent room, with rugs and divans, statues and ornaments that seemed to hang from the interior of the dome. There were other things too: glassware and books that pointed to a sorcerer’s art.
Two figures stood at the heart of it. The man had the same look of grace and peace that Ceres had seen in her mother, and he wore the pale robes that she had seen in the memories of the Ancient Ones. The woman wore the darker robes of a sorcerer, but unlike the ones above, she still seemed young, not desiccated by time.
Looking at them, Ceres realized that they also had the faintly translucent look she’d seen in other parts of the complex, in the memories there.
“They aren’t real,” she said.
The man laughed at that. “Do you hear that, Lin? We aren’t real.”
The woman reached out to touch his arm. “It’s an understandable mistake to make. After all this time, I imagine we look mere shadows of what we were.”
That took Ceres a little aback. On impulse, she reached out for the man. She found that her hand passed straight through his chest. She realized what she’d just done.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be,” the man said. “I imagine it is a little disconcerting.”
“What are you?” she asked. “I saw the sorcerers above, and you aren’t like them, and you aren’t like the memories either, because those are just images.”
“We’re something… else,” the woman said. “I am Lin, and this is Alteus.”
“I’m Ceres.”
Ceres noted how close the two stood to one another; the way Lin’s hand lingered on Alteus’s shoulder. The two had the look of a couple very much in love. Would she and Thanos ever end up like that? Presumably not that transparent, though.
“The battle raged,” Alteus said, “and we couldn’t stop it. What the sorcerers planned was evil.”
“Some of your kind were no better,” Lin said with a faint smile, as if they’d had that conversation many times. “It happened so fast. The Ancient Ones imprisoned the sorcerers as they were, their magic blended past and future together, and Alteus and I…”
“You became something else,” Ceres finished. Sentient memories. Ghosts of the past who could touch one another if nothing else.
“I get the feeling you didn’t fight your way through everything above just to find out about us,” Alteus said.
Ceres swallowed. She hadn’t expected this. She’d expected an object, perhaps something like the point of connection holding the spells above together. Still, the Ancient One in front of her was right: she had come there for a reason.
“I have the blood of the Ancient Ones,” she said.
She saw Alteus nod. “I can see that.”
“But something is restricting her,” Lin said. “Limiting her.”
“Someone poisoned me,” Ceres said. “She took away my powers. My mother was able to restore them for a little while, but it didn’t last.”
“Daskalos’s poison,” Lin said, with a note of disgust.
“An evil thing,” Alteus said.
“But a thing that can be undone,” Lin added. She looked at Ceres. “If she is worthy of it. I’m sorry, but that is a lot of power for someone to have. We have seen what it can do.”
“And given what we are, it would take a lot to undo it,” Alteus said.
Lin reached out to touch his arm. “Maybe it’s time to see new things. We’ve been here hundreds of years. Even given the things we can create, maybe it’s time to see what is next.”
Ceres paused as she heard that, the implications of it sinking in.
“Wait, healing me would kill you?” She shook her head, but then thoughts of Thanos, and all the others on Haylon, interrupted. If she didn’t do this, they would die too. “I don’t know what to say,” she admitted. “I don’t want someone to die for me, but a lot of people will die if I don’t do this.”
She saw the two spirits look at one another.
“That’s a good start,” Alteus said. “It means that there is a reason for this. Tell us the rest. Tell us everything that led up to this.”
Ceres did her best. She explained all about the rebellion, and the war. About the invasion that had followed and her inability to stop it. About the attack on Haylon that was, even then, putting everyone she loved at risk.
“I understand,” Lin said, reaching out to touch Ceres. To Ceres’s surprise, there was a sensation of pressure there. “It reminds me a little of our war.”
“The past proceeds in echoes of itself,” Alteus said. “But there are some echoes that can’t be repeated. We need to know if she understands.”
Ceres saw Lin nod.
“That’s true,” the ghost said. “So, a question for you, Ceres. Let’s see if you understand. Why is this still here? Why are the sorcerers trapped like this? Why didn’t the Ancient Ones destroy them?”
The question had the feel of a test, and Ceres got the feeling that if she couldn’t give a good answer to it, she wouldn’t receive help from these two. Given what they’d said it might cost them, Ceres was astonished that they were considering it at all.
“Could the Ancient Ones have destroyed them?” Ceres asked.
Alteus paused for a moment, and then nodded. “It wasn’t that. Think about the world.”
Ceres thought. She thought about the effects of the war. About the blasted wastes of Felldust and the wreckage of the island above her. About how few of the Ancient Ones were left in the world. About the invasions, and the people who had died fighting the Empire.
“I think you didn’t destroy them because of what it would take to do it,” Ceres said. “What’s the point of winning if there’s nothing left after you do it?” She guessed that it was more than that, though. “I was part of a rebellion. We fought against something that was large, and evil, and made people’s lives worse, but how many people have died now? You can’t solve something by just slaughtering everyone.”
She saw Lin and Alteus look at one another then. They nodded.
“We allowed the sorcerers’ rebellion at first,” Alteus said. “We thought it would amount to nothing. Then it grew, and we fought, but in fighting it, we did as much damage as they did. We had the power to wreck whole landscapes, and we used it. Oh, how we used it.”
“You have seen the things done to this island,” Lin said. When I heal you, if I heal you, you will have that kind of power. What will you do with it, Ceres?”
There was a time when the answer would have been simple. She would have brought down the Empire. She would have destroyed the nobles. Now, she just wanted people to be able to live their lives safely and happily; it didn’t seem like too much to ask.
“I just want to save the people I love,” she said. “I don’t want to destroy anyone. I just… I think I might have to. I hate that, I just want peace.”
Even Ceres was a little surprised by that. She didn’t want more violence. She simply had to do it to prevent innocent people being slaughtered. That earned her another nod.
“A good answer,” Lin said. “Come here.”
The former sorcerer went among the glass vials and the alchemical equipment that seemed to exist in illusory form. She moved among it, blending things and shifting things. Alteus went with her, and the two of them appeared to work in the kind of harmony that could only come over many years. They poured solutions into new containers, added ingredients, consulted books.
Ceres stood there to watch them, and she had to admit that she didn’t understand half of what they were doing. When they stood in front of her with a glass vial, it almost didn’t seem enough.
“Drink this,” Lin said. She held it out to Ceres, and although it all seemed insubstantial, when Ceres took it, her hand met solid glass. She held it up, seeing the sparkle of golden liquid that matched the hue of the dome around her.
Ceres drank it, and it tasted like drinking starlight.
It seemed to wash through her then, and she could feel its progress in the relaxation of her muscles, and the easing of pains she hadn’t known were there. She could feel something growing inside her too, spreading out like a system of roots running through her body as the channels along which her power had run regrew.
When it was done, Ceres felt better than she had since before the invasion. It felt like a deep sense of peace spreading through her.
“Is it done?” Ceres asked.
Alteus and Lin took one another’s hands.
“Not quite,” Alteus said.
The dome around Ceres seemed to collapse inward, the contents disappearing as they turned into pure light. That light gathered on the spot where the Ancient One and the Sorceress stood, until Ceres couldn’t make them out in it.
“It will be interesting to see what happens next,” Lin said. “Goodbye, Ceres.”
The light burst toward her, filling Ceres, brimming through the channels of her body like water along freshly built aqueducts. It filled her, and it kept filling her, pouring in so that it seemed that there was more power resting within Ceres than there had ever been before. For the first time, she understood the true depths of the Ancient Ones’ powers.
She stood there, pulsing with power, and she knew the time had come.
It was time for war.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jeva could feel the tension growing with every step as she made her way up toward the meeting hall. The people of the gathering place stared at her the way she would have expected people outside their lands to stare at one of their kind: as if she were something strange, different, even dangerous. It wasn’t a sensation Jeva liked.
Was it just that they didn’t see many with the markings of priestesses here, or was it something more? It wasn’t until the first insults and accusations came from the gathering crowd that Jeva started to understand.
“Betrayer!”
“You took your tribe to the slaughter!”
A young man stepped out from the crowd with that swagger that only young men could manage. He strode as if he owned the path leading up to the house of the dead. When Jeva moved to step around him, he went to block her.
Jeva should have struck him just for that, but she was there for more important things.
“Step aside,” she said. “I’m not here for violence.”
“Have you forgotten the ways of our people that completely?” he demanded. “You dragged your tribe to die in Delos. How many came back?”
Jeva could hear the anger there. The kind of anger that even her people felt when they lost someone close to them. Telling him that they had gone to the ancestors and that he should be happy would do no good. In any case, Jeva wasn’t even sure that she believed that right then. She had seen the pointless deaths of the war.
“But you came back,” the young man said. “You destroyed one of our tribes, and you came back, you coward!”
On another day, Jeva would have killed him for that, but the truth was that the mewling of an idiot didn’t matter, not compared to everything else that was going on. She moved to step around him again.
Jeva paused as he drew a knife.
“You don’t want to do this, boy,” she said.
“Don’t tell me what I want!” he screamed, and lunged at her.
Jeva reacted on instinct, swaying out of the way of the blow, while she lashed out with her bladed chains. One wrapped around his neck, wrenching as she moved with the speed of long practice. Blood sprayed as the young man clutched at the wound, collapsing to his knees.
“Damn you,” Jeva said softly. “Why did you make me do it, you idiot?”
There was no answer, of course. There was never any answer. Jeva whispered the words of a prayer for the dead over the young man and then stood, lifting him. Other villagers followed her as she continued on her way, and Jeva could feel the tension there now where there had been jokes before. They followed her close as an honor guard, or the escort of a prisoner to her execution.
When she reached the House of the Dead, the elders of the village were already waiting for her. Jeva padded in on bare feet, kneeling before the endlessly burning pyre and tumbling her attacker’s body into it. She stood there as it started to burn, looking around at the people she had come to convince.
“You come here with blood on your hands,” a Speaker of the Dead said, stepping forward with his robes swirling. “The dead told us that someone would come, but not that it would happen like this.”
Jeva looked at him, wondering if it was true. There had been a time when she wouldn’t have questioned it.
“He struck at me,” Jeva said. “He was not as fast as he thought.”
The others there nodded. Such things could happen, in these harshest parts of the world. Jeva let none of the guilt she felt show on her face.
“You have come to ask us something,” the Speaker said.
Jeva nodded. “I have.”
“Then ask.”
Jeva stood there, collecting her thoughts. “I ask for aid for the island of Haylon. A great fleet attacks it, on the orders of the First Stone. I believe that our people can make a difference.”
Voices called out then, speaking at once. There were questions and demands, accusations and opinions, all seeming to blur together.
“She wants us to go to die for her.”
“We’ve heard this before!”
“Why fight for people we don’t know?”
Jeva stood there, letting all of it wash over her. If this went wrong, there was every chance that she wouldn’t be walking out of this room. Given who she was, she should have felt a sense of peace at that, but she also found herself thinking about Thanos, who had saved her at risk to himself, and about all the people who were stuck on Haylon. They needed her to succeed.
“We should give her to the dead for all she’s done!” one called.
The Speaker of the Dead stepped next to Jeva then, holding up his hands for quiet.
“We know what our sister is asking,” the Speaker said. “Now is not the time for talking. We are just the living. Now is the time to listen to the dead.”
He reached down to his belt, pulling out a pouch of the sacred powders mixed with the ashes of the ancestors. He threw it onto the pyre, and the flames leapt up.
“Breathe, sister,” the Speaker said. “Breathe and see.”
Jeva breathed in the smoke, taking it deep into her lungs. The flames danced in the pit below her, and for the first time in years, Jeva saw the dead.
It started with the spirit of the man she’d killed. It stood from his burning corpse, walking through the flames to her.
“You killed me,” he said in something like shock. “You killed me!”
He struck her then, and though the dead shouldn’t have been able to touch the living, Jeva still felt it as surely as if he’d slapped her while he was alive. He struck her, and then he stepped back, looking on expectantly.
The rest of the dead came to Jeva then, and they were no kinder than the young man she’d slain. They were all there: the people she’d killed by her own hand, the ones she’d led to their deaths on Haylon. They came to her one by one, and one by one, they struck out at Jeva, in blows that left her reeling, knocked her flat, reduced her to something holding herself on the ground.
It seemed to take forever before they stepped away from her, and Jeva was able to look up again. She found herself looking at Haylon, the island surrounded by ships, the battle raging.
She saw the ships of the Bone Folk slam into those attackers, punching a hole through, their warriors spilling out onto the shore. She saw them fighting, and killing, and dying. Jeva saw them dying in numbers that she had only seen once before, in Delos.
“If you take them to Haylon, they will die,” a voice said, and that voice sounded as though it was composed of the voices of a thousand ancestors at once. “They will die as we died.”
“Will they win?” Jeva asked.
There was a brief pause before the voice answered that. “It is possible that the island might be saved.”
So it wouldn’t be an empty gesture. It wouldn’t be the same as on Delos.
“It will be the end for our people,” the voice said. “Some will survive, but our tribes will not. Our ways will not. There will be so many more joining us, waiting for you in death.”
That brought a flash of fear to Jeva. She’d felt the anger of those who had died, felt their blows. Was it worth it? Could she do it to her whole people?
“And you would die,” the voice continued. “Announce this to our people, and you will die for it.”
Slowly, she started to come back to herself, finding herself on the floor before the pyre. Jeva put a hand to her face and it came away bloody, although she didn’t know if that was the strain of the vision or the violence of the dead. She forced herself to stand, looking out over the assembled crowd.
“Tell us what you saw, sister,” the Speaker of the Dead said.
Jeva stood there, looking at him, trying to gauge how much, if anything, he’d seen. Could she lie in this moment? Could she tell the assembled crowd that the dead were all in favor of the plan?
Jeva knew that she couldn’t lie like that, even for Thanos.
“I saw death,” she said. “Your death, my death. The death of our whole people if we do this.”
A murmur went around the room. Her people had no fear of death, but the destruction of their whole way of life was something else.
“You have asked me to speak for the dead,” Jeva said, “and they have said that in Haylon, victory would be bought with our people’s lives.” She took a breath, thinking about what Thanos would have done. “I don’t want to speak for the dead. I want to speak for the living.”
The murmurs changed tone, becoming more confused. Becoming angrier in some spaces too.
“I know what you think,” Jeva said. “You think I am speaking sacrilege. But there is a whole island of people out there that needs our help. I saw the dead, and they cursed me for their deaths. Do you know what that tells me? That life matters! That the lives of all those who will die if we don’t help matter. If we do not help, we allow evil to stand. We allow those who would live in peace to be slaughtered. I will stand against that, not because the dead require it, but because the living do!”
There was uproar then in the hall. The Speaker of the Dead looked at it all, then at Jeva. He pushed her toward the door.
“You should go,” he said. “Go before they kill you for blasphemy.”
Jeva didn’t go, though. The dead had already told her that she would die for doing this. If that was the price of gaining help, she would pay it. She stood there as a point of silence in the middle of the arguments in the room. When a man ran at her, she kicked him back and kept standing. It was all she could do right then. She waited for the moment when one of them would finally kill her.
Jeva was quite confused when they didn’t. Instead, the noise in the room died down, and the people there stood in front of her, looking her way. One by one, they fell to their knees, and the Speaker of the Dead stepped forward.
“It seems that we will go with you to Haylon, sister.”
Jeva blinked. “I… don’t understand.”
She should have been dead then. The dead had told her that it was the sacrifice they wanted.
“Have you forgotten our ways so completely?” the priest said. “You have offered us a death worth having. Who are we to argue?”
Jeva fell to her knees with the others then. She didn’t know what to say. She’d been expecting death, and had life instead. Now, she just had to make it count for something.
“We’re coming, Thanos,” she promised.
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