The Empire of the Dead (The Godsblood Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  “Speak,” he said at last.

  Acharsis rose to his feet and began to pace, first clenching his fists and then running his fingertips roughly through his short hair. Finally, he wheeled about and stared at Jarek.

  “She lied to me,” he said, his voice barely a croak. “Used me. I thought I was one step ahead of her, that I knew how she was manipulating me, but I was wrong.”

  Jarek crossed his arms and schooled his features into impassivity.

  “She came to me at the very end of our war against the Athites. Only Rekkidu was left in the hands of the Athites. She came to my tent, and I thought, in my foolishness, that she had at last succumbed to my wiles.” Acharsis smiled bitterly. “She played me like the fool I was. I should have known that the daughter of Nekuul would never feel such ardor for a living man.”

  He coughed into his fist. “Regardless. After a - well - intense night together, she told me her fears. Confessed them in the manner of a desperate young woman. She told me that she couldn’t stand the thought of our returning to the old ways once the Athites had been scoured from the land. City warring against city, vying endlessly for the kingship.”

  He sighed. “I felt like a genius, suggesting her own plan back to her, not realizing I was being led like a puppet. It was my suggestion that we all gather at Alok’s ziggurat once we had conquered Rekkidu. That we not split up the moment the last Athite was dead, but gather to discuss a league of cities, a confederation of equals.”

  Acharsis’ smile grew pained. “So, yes. I agreed to persuade you all to gather, to entreat each and every one of you to not return immediately to your cities. I should not have been surprised when Irella claimed in the days thereafter that she was being contacted by Nekuul and had to step away - ammi shalash, she called it, a divine vision of the netherworld - and left me alone to do her work. But I was young. A fool. And when Irella opened the netherworld around us, I was as surprised and horrified as you all were.”

  Acharsis stared defiantly at Jarek. “Remember that she tried to kill me as well. I saw you descend into the earth, Jarek, but you didn’t see me take a spear through the throat.” Acharsis turned his chin and revealed a messy white scar across the side of his neck. “They thought me dead, but I managed to escape afterwards, before she could raise me.”

  “How fortunate of you,” growled Jarek. He didn’t want to believe a word of it. “Unlike the others.”

  “Unlike the others,” said Acharsis quietly. “I was betrayed as well, Jarek.” His expression became bleak. “I thought she loved me, or at least felt a passion for me - but she watched as I was nearly killed, and her eyes were as cold as the dead she commanded.”

  Jarek turned away. Acharsis’ story was a neat one. It fit all the facts, and the scar was convincing, but he didn’t want to believe it. He could remember still when Acharsis had come to his tent all those years ago, burning with enthusiasm and conviction, and had painted an image of such beguiling power that Jarek had set aside his own plans and agreed, reluctantly, to attend that miraculous meeting. He had even left his Sky Hammer behind, as Acharsis had insisted all the demigods do, as a gesture of goodwill.

  What a fool he had been.

  He sighed and sat down. He rubbed at his temples and then looked up at Acharsis, who was watching him, hope and fear and self-loathing burning in his eyes.

  “You honestly believed that Irella wished to create a league of cities.”

  “I did. I swear it by my love for Ekillos.” Acharsis took a step forward. “I was a fool. I thought her taken by my Ekillos-gifted charms, like every other woman.” He caught himself, glanced at Annara, and blushed. “But I was wrong. She played me as finely as I’ve ever manipulated anyone else. Jarek, I may be the world’s greatest idiot, but I swear to you that I am no traitor.”

  Jarek felt no stirrings of sympathy, no lightening of his mood. Instead, a dull and deadening sorrow flowered in his soul, the remnants of the mad grief that had haunted the first few years after his fall.

  “Yes, Acharsis. You are a fool.” He spoke with all the withering coldness that he could muster.

  The other man’s expression hardened, and Jarek waited for the easy attack, for Acharsis to bring up how Jarek had fled the ambush. It would be all too easy to skewer him.

  Acharsis remained silent.

  Annara stepped between them. “We’d best be going. We have mounts waiting for us in Shan, and we’ll need their speed if we’re to pick up the raiders’ trail. It’s two days old already.”

  Jarek began to walk down the trail and shook his shoulders as if physically casting off his pain. The others fell in with him. He’d process Acharsis’ story soon, but for now, he had something to fix on, a purpose to keep him going, something he’d not had in far too many years. Something that he’d thought he might never have again. It didn’t heal the old wounds, didn’t salve the bitterness, but it helped, at least a little, to take his mind off his old wounds.

  He glanced sidelong at Annara. “So, tell me what happened. From the beginning.”

  Chapter 4

  A camp without a campfire was a dull and dismal thing. And yet, looking out across the vast sweep of the somber Golden Steppe at night, Acharsis knew that a campfire would prove to be little more than a suicidal beacon. Anything within a thousand miles would see its cheerful summons and comply.

  Sighing, he threw a blanket over Annara’s horse and patted it awkwardly on the rump. The small dirt-colored animal turned its large head to stare at him with a wise and impenetrable eye. Of the three of them, Acharsis had the most experience with the beasts, but that wasn’t saying much. He knew they needed a wealth of caring and tending, but other than feeding and watering them like dogs, he was unsure of the particulars. At least these three weren’t monstrously big like the ones the Illoi rode. These were small and manageable. Or so he hoped.

  Kneeling, he spread his arms open wide and spoke the words of warding.

  “I pick up a stone; I defy all attackers.

  I have been caught among the animals of the wilderness.

  South wind, do not neglect your watch.

  East wind, do not neglect your watch.

  Earth and sky, do not neglect your watches

  until Qun the Sun-god has arrived!”

  He sighed and cast the stone aside. His prayers, spells and incantations had all lost their power after Ekillos had died. Even Qun himself had died along with the others during the Betrayal, and Acharsis couldn’t bring himself to pray to Nekuul. Still, he spoke the old words of warding, a comforting ritual if nothing else.

  “I still can’t believe you used my name to acquire them,” said Jarek, sitting cross-legged beside his saddle.

  Acharsis smiled in the dark. “We were confident you’d agree to come. And, to my unending surprise, it turns out you’ve done the people of Shan a few favors over the years. They were most grateful and eager to help.”

  Annara returned from where she’d stepped away to stare out over the steppe. Acharsis knew she had been crying again, though he’d heard nothing. It was how she held herself tightly, how she reached up to wipe at her cheeks with the blade of her hand, the gesture almost angry.

  No one spoke as she sat by her saddle, legs crossed. Jarek offered her some dried boar meat. She took it silently and stared down at the strip. “How did you pass twenty years alone on a mountainside?” Her voice was soft in the gloom. “How could you stand to be so alone?”

  Acharsis lowered himself carefully before his own saddle, then leaned back against it, legs kicked out into the knee-high steppe grass. He’d not found a way yet to comfort Annara. Didn’t know if it was possible. How could he of all people console her for the loss of her husband?

  Instead he settled for working his thumbs into the muscles of his thighs. The bones of his ass were throbbing, and his spine felt compacted. Riding all day at his age was tantamount to torture.

  Jarek was but a shadow at one side. He didn’t seem to be in any pain. Somehow, despite
the loss of his god and the passing of twenty years, the man had retained his formidable physique and presence. A slab of granite was probably softer, though it would wear his beard less well.

  “I found ways to pass the time.” Jarek’s voice was subdued. “I traveled some every few years. Into the mountains, mostly. I avoided people. There was a stretch of years where I’d wander for months on end each summer.” He grew quiet. “I kept myself busy. Staying alive by yourself takes work.”

  Acharsis laced his hands behind his head and looked up at the sky. The clouds that had drifted magnificently across it that evening had disappeared, leaving an endless array of scintillating specks of white fire that stood out against the void. There were as many stars as there were blades of grass in the steppe; perhaps more. As always, though, his eyes were drawn to the void where Ekillos’ constellation had once shone.

  “The Khartisians believe that the sky is a great expanse of water,” he said. “That we live in a bubble of air. The sun and the moon, the stars and the clouds – they all drift through this celestial sea.”

  The wind drifted over their camp, bringing with it the soft whisper of the steppe. The only other place that made him feel this small was God’s Mountain.

  “He’s out there right now,” said Annara quietly. “Elu.” Her voice was twisted, like a cloth being wrung of water.

  Acharsis sat up. Annara was staring out into the darkness, in the direction the tracks led. They’d followed them all day, plodding alongside them on their little horses, and had only stopped when dusk had fallen and the tracks had disappeared. It had taken both Jarek and him to reason with Annara, to convince her it would be folly to ride on in the dark.

  “We’ll find him,” rumbled Jarek. “The raiders will have returned to their tribe’s camp. They’ll slow down at that point. We’ll find their camp and then make our plan.”

  Annara looked so bleak and lonely that Acharsis felt the urge to rise and wrap his arms around her. He forced himself to stay still.

  “Make a plan,” said Annara with a mirthless laugh. “How do we take on a hundred nomads?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jarek. “But when we can see what we’re up against, we’ll think of something.”

  “We don’t have to kill them to free Elu,” said Acharsis. “There are other ways of accomplishing our goals. Guile and deception. Trickery and bluffing.”

  “Something you know only too well, Acharsis,” said Jarek.

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “I do. And, for once -”

  The horses stirred uneasily, stamping their hooves and whickering. Acharsis turned to regard them. They had their heads up, and their ears were erect as they shifted from side to side, constrained only by their hobbles.

  “What’s gotten into them?” asked Jarek.

  “I don’t know.” Acharsis rose to his feet. “They were fine a moment ago.”

  “Did you feed them?”

  “They eat the grass, you idiot.” Acharsis stepped closer to the horses. Had he failed to do something essential?

  Annara’s voice came as an urgent whisper. “There’s somebody out there.”

  Acharsis froze and stared out into the darkness. Jarek had risen to a crouch. He tried to pierce the darkness, to make out movement. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” Annara raised her hand and pointed out into the endless sea of night that the steppe had become. “Over in that direction. A man, I think.”

  “An ambush?” Acharsis looked over to Jarek. “You think they spotted us?”

  Jarek picked up his Sky Hammer. “If it is, we’re done for.”

  Acharsis bit his lower lip and drew the blade he’d taken from the fallen nomad. It was light in his hand. How long had it been since he’d swung a sword against another man?

  “There,” said Annara, but this time her hand swung out far to the left. “Another one. Do you see him? He’s hunched over.”

  “Damn these eyes,” muttered Acharsis, moving up to Annara’s side. The darkness was suggestive. The harder he stared, the more it seemed to swarm and shift, like the depths of a river. “Is he moving now?”

  “No. He’s standing still, watching us.”

  Acharsis’ skin crawled.

  “This doesn’t feel right,” said Jarek. “They should have fallen on us by now.”

  “A small group of outcasts?” said Acharsis. “Maybe they were waiting for us to fall asleep?”

  There – movement. Acharsis forced himself to look away so he could observe the stranger in his peripheral vision. As Annara had said, he was a large man, but stooped. Strangely tentative, almost hesitant. The mere hint of a form, a darker patch of darkness.

  “Please, no.” The stranger’s voice was that of a woman, pitched high, startling in its volume, shot through with fear and pain. “Please, you don’t have to. Please, no.”

  “What?” Acharsis gripped his blade tightly as fear squirmed in his belly. He pitched his voice to carry. “Don’t have to what?”

  Another voice came from the darkness behind them. “Hello? Hello? Hello? Who is that? Hello?” It was an older man’s voice, taut with tension.

  Annara stepped back between Acharsis and Jarek, spear held in both hands. “What’s going on? Who are they?”

  The horses were snorting and rearing, bumping against each other as they shifted from side to side.

  “Those aren’t people,” said Jarek, his voice leaden with hatred and anger.

  Acharsis heart sank. “Lakhar.”

  “No, no,” came a sob from their left. Then it suddenly screamed, “Leave us alone! Leave us alone!” A wicked cackle followed right after and was picked up by the others in the darkness so that the high-pitched, whining laughter surrounded them.

  “They’re going to rush us now,” said Jarek. “Get ready!”

  Acharsis could barely hear anything over the pounding of his heart, but he saw the shape suddenly charge in toward them. It came in fast, hunched over as if it was about to run on all fours. Acharsis took a deep, shuddering breath, lowered himself into a crouch, and forced himself to wait.

  The charging man leaped. He seemed to change shape in midair, arms and legs shrinking, his laughter spiraling high into the night, and then he was landing on top of Acharsis, now furred and heavily muscled and massive, and snapping at Acharsis’ face.

  Acharsis cursed and fell under the thing’s weight, his sword held in both hands, turning so that its hilt would hit the ground first. They collapsed into the steppe grass. The pommel hit the dirt, and the lakhar sank onto the tip of the blade. It was massively heavy, and its jaws sheared and snapped, seeking purchase, lacerating Acharsis’ shoulder, smacking the side of his head.

  Acharsis screamed in revulsion and kicked his way free. The lakhar fought to climb to its feet as well, but fell onto its side instead, legs still kicking, jaws clacking.

  Gasping, Acharsis spun around. The shadows were writhing around him. He heard Annara cry out, trying to drive one of the creatures off with her spear. Acharsis heard the crunch of wood as the shaft was shattered, then saw her turn to flee into the darkness. Jarek was swinging his hammer with both hands, bellowing in an incoherent rage. Acharsis heard bone crunch and saw a large form drop at Jarek’s feet.

  “Annara!” He darted in and yanked his blade free of the lakhar’s gut. The bronze sword was badly bent.

  The steppe grass whisked against his bare knees as he sprinted after her, just as another of those infernal shapes leaped up and brought her down. Without the moon in the sky, it was shadow play. Her screams grew pitched. With a cry, Acharsis threw himself forward, slamming his shoulder against the furred bulk.

  It was like tackling an ox. He bounced off, dropped to one knee, and then was sent sprawling as a great paw batted him on the shoulder, claws shredding his robes.

  But Annara’s screams gave him strength he’d not felt in years. He pushed himself up with one hand and swung the blade blindly with the other. It connected, sliding across the lakhar’s pelt, cutting
it open.

  The creature’s snarl tore the night, and it leaped off Annara and onto him, pinning him to the ground. Acharsis gritted his teeth and fought to bring his blade to bear, but his arm was trapped. The monster blotted out the stars as it reared up, jaws opening wide, its teeth glowing milk white in the darkness, and then something whistled down and connected with the side of its head.

  Bone shattered. Hot blood sprayed through the air. The monster’s bulk sagged over and fell heavily to the ground.

  Acharsis cried out, sat up, saw Jarek heaving for breath beside him.

  “Fucking lakhar,” Jarek growled. “Nothing I hate more.”

  “Annara?” Acharsis scrambled across the grass to where she was lying. “Annara!”

  “I’m all right.” Her voice was shaky.

  He found her, helped her sit. In the night, he couldn’t tell if she was wounded. He patted her desperately, feeling for blood, for torn flesh.

  “Did it get you? Are you hurt?”

  “Scrapes,” said Annara. “I’m - I’m fine. I promise.” She held a knife in her hand. It’s length was slick with blood.

  “Thank Ekillos,” he whispered, and pulled her into a tight hug. She didn’t squeeze back, so he let her go and sat back on his heels. He looked over to where Jarek had fallen into a crouch, hammer dropped by his side. “Jarek? Are you hurt?”

  “N-no,” said Jarek through chattering teeth. He was leaning on one arm, the other hand pressed to his temple. “Not hurt. Just - just a bad reaction. I get - shook up - after - after -”

  Annara hurried over and crouched beside Jarek, reaching out tentatively with one hand to his shoulder. “It’s all right. You took care of them. You killed them.”

  Acharsis bit back a retort. He’d played a small part in the fight as well.

  “I know.” Jarek was shivering violently. “Just - a moment.” He ducked his head and curled his arm over it as if he was expecting a blow.