Black Spice (Book 3) Read online

  Lerica tapped Kyric on the shoulder. “Did you get me a present?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t even think of it.”

  She tried to make an exaggerated frown, but ended up giggling. “I have one for you.” She dug in the pocket of her pack and pulled out a mass of wax with a wick protruding from it. It was different shades of brown.

  “It’s a candle. I made it from scraps,” she said. “It was supposed to be multicolored, but they all melted together.”

  “Thank you. We’ll light it together tonight,” Kyric said, his words sounding false even as he spoke them. Suddenly he was afraid that it would not come to pass.

  The far side of the hills lay covered with stunted trees, and they wove a path through them, trying to stay concealed as they went. No one spoke. When the ground leveled out, Aiyan said, “Ready weapons.” He unslung his longbow and nocked an arrow. Kyric did the same. Lerica hadn’t wanted to lug her crossbow the length of the island. She had brought a fancy dueling pistol that Kyric didn’t know she had, and now she drew it from her sash. Mahai shrugged. All he had was his war club, and it was always in his hands.

  A watery, gargling sound issued from Kyric’s abdomen, so loud that the others stopped and looked at him. Great. I’m going to get us all killed because my stomach can’t take red pepper.

  Mahai led them down a ravine that took them to within a mile of the town. A thick belt of palms and broadleaf shrubs lay directly ahead of them. The drums grew louder, the beat remaining steady. As the ravine began to shallow and open into the woods, Mahai ducked, backing away.

  “A dozen Hariji,” he whispered, “Guarding the main trail to the cassia grove, about a hundred paces to the north.”

  Aiyan took a peek. “We’ll crawl till we get into the trees, one at a time.”

  They crawled for a while, Kyric much more worried about these poisonous snakes he hadn’t yet seen. They stood when they reached an intersection of three narrow game trails. Aiyan held out an open hand in each direction, as if feeling for a current.

  “All these trails lead to danger,” he said. “Let’s take the middle one.”

  They walked carefully and quietly, Aiyan stopping every time they crossed an animal path to reach out and feel the way to go. At one point, he selected one that curved behind them to the west, but then it doubled back. He nodded to himself, satisfied with the choice. The drumming got louder, along with distant voices, and they crept forward, one step at a time. Aiyan halted, dropping to one knee. Kyric could see the sky through the trees ahead.

  A number of rocky outcroppings thrust through the soft forest floor like the knuckles of a giant hand. One large boulder stood near the edge of the trees. They crawled up its backside and lay on their bellies, peering over the shrubs.

  Hundreds and hundreds of men, at least a few thousand, filled a clearing more than a furlong wide. They had gathered in a huge circle, all facing a platform in the center. Soth Garo stood on the platform, mist curling from his bare arms as he raised them in triumph. He wore nothing more than a short chainmail skirt and a gigantic sword strapped to his back. His skin was white as bleached linen. Kyric had thought that his hair would be white too, but he had no hair at all.

  Two men holding large sacks flanked him. They were Baskillians, with military boots and sabres in their sashes, but they also wore sleeveless tunics with a strange fringe at their hems, crisscrossed with belts of human bones. At first Kyric thought that some kind of small helmet sat on top of their heads, then one of them turned and he saw that it was a skull.

  Soth Garo pulled handfuls of broken bones from the sacks and threw them to the eager crowd like they were the wooden coins of midsummer.

  “The legacy of the Onakai,” he crowed as he tossed the bones. “They are no more. I have eaten the soul of their king!”

  He gave his war shout, the cry of a nameless creature, and the crowd thrashed with fervor, a visible wave moving over them as his voice echoed off the side of a nearby cliff.

  Lerica had been watching with a narrow squint, and now she suddenly pulled back.

  “Gods,” she said, swallowing. “The fringes on their clothes — they’re human fingers.”

  “Elistar’s breath,” Aiyan whispered. “Where did Cauldin find him?”

  Kyric estimated the range to be a hundred and fifty paces, closer than the final target had been at the Games of Aeva. “Let me take the shot,” he said to Aiyan.

  “It won’t work. Remember what Mahai said about the power of his skin.”

  “It will work if I nail him right in his eye. I did it once before.”

  Aiyan shook his head. “You were only a few steps away from Vaust when you did that. Besides, he would feel your aim upon him. It would give us away. In fact, don’t even look at him for too long.”

  “Would he feel it coming if I didn’t aim?”

  Lerica rolled her eyes. “Now you’re being stupid.”

  Soth Garo had run out of bones, and his lieutenants now stood at one end of the platform where a wide column of smoke rose from the ground below. Kyric strained to see the fire, but the crowd of hunters blocked his view. All of them wore some kind of headdress, most of them being a wide leather headband with a set of tusks fixed to it, making it look like curved horns grew from their foreheads.

  “What’s with the headpieces?” he asked Mahai.

  “Everyone on the island has one for ceremonial days. The tusks are for Hariji hunters; others wear the tail. All the Hariji have purple stripes on their faces. The ones with the big seashells are Silasese.” His face darkened. “You see those three men on the other side, with shark’s teeth on their headbands? They are Onakai.”

  Soth Garo turned full circle to the crowd. “Now comes the wedding of the two nations. The Silasese to the Hariji.”

  The drumming stopped. Someone blew a single long note from a conch shell. Kyric watched a procession come out of an opening in the woods to their left, the north side of the clearing. The crowd parted for them.

  A young couple dressed in long white gowns walked in front with measured steps. The girl wore a headband with the Hariji tail. The boy’s headdress featured a large seashell above each ear. They stared solemnly ahead. About twenty of Soth Garo’s death-head soldiers followed them like attendant priests. When they reached the platform, the white warrior held out one hand and let them up the steps. At the other end of the platform, the smoke grew thick.

  Soth Garo had them face each other, a lieutenant behind each one, and had them take each other’s hands. The lieutenants untied the gowns and removed them with a quick yank. The boy and girl were naked underneath.

  “God and Goddess,” Lerica said. “They’re just teenagers.”

  “I recognize the boy,” Mahai said. “He’s one of the Silasese whale singers.” He shook his head. “Only virgins may be whale singers.”

  Lerica’s mouth fell open. “You don’t mean that they’re going to make them — why do they seem so easy with it? Are they drugged?”

  Mahai shook his head. “The black spice doesn’t do this.”

  “They’ve taken his blood,” Aiyan said through clinched teeth. “Like everyone else in that field.”

  Soth Garo raised one hand. “By the authority of my divine and immortal father, as the son of a god, I pronounce you wed.”

  He lay the girl on her back and signaled to the boy to mount her. The crowd of hunters began to rap their spears against their boar-hide shields. The rhythm grew quicker, the tapping louder. It didn’t take long, and as soon as the couple lay still, the boy kissing the girl gently, one of his men handed Soth Garo a long wooden stake. He plunged it through both of their hearts with one thrust, pinning them together in death. The surrounding hunters erupted in a frenzy of cries and shouts, leaping into the air. The two lieutenants dragged the bodies to the edge of the platform and rolled them off the far end, into the fire.

  Aiyan was the only one to make a sound. “Elistar’s holy breath,” he whispered.

&nbs
p; Soth Garo held up his hands to quiet the crowd. “It is done,” he announced. “And tonight when we feast, this union will be consummated by all. Now the remaining Silasese will join us by blood.”

  Kyric felt sick, and not from the red pepper. “Is he saying what I think?”

  No one answered him.

  Soth Garo jumped down, the Baskillians forming a guard around him, and they pushed through the crowd toward a point where two cliff faces came together at a sharp angle on the south side of the clearing. Some of the hunters broke away from the crowd, but most of them stayed. Slowly, they began to move, circling the fire pit in one solid mass, the men at the outer edge having to trot to keep up.

  “What are they doing?” Aiyan asked Mahai.

  “I’ve never seen this before. But after you stay up all night dancing you get a little dazed. You can find yourself doing strange things.”

  Aiyan shook his head. “If we had an army with us we could take them right now.”

  Soth Garo and his skull-crowned guards climbed to the top of the cliff on steps cut from the stone. Several hundred Hariji gathered to watch them from below.

  The far edge of the clearing seemed to drop away, and beyond it they could see only the ocean and a few treetops. Kyric figured that the clearing was on a low tableland above the town, and that the way down to it could be difficult, but then a column of men came over the edge. A company of Hariji hunters led a line of about fifty men right to the steps at the foot of the cliff. The captives didn’t have headpieces, but Kyric could tell they were Silasese.

  One of the Baskillian lieutenants pushed the first man up the steps at sword’s point, forcing him kneel before his master at the apex of the cliffs where all could see. Soth Garo jabbed his own wrist with a dagger and offered it to the man. He lowered his head and licked at the wound.

  Mahai let out a breath. “I do not believe it.”

  Another man was brought, a young warrior by the looks of him. Pushed to his knees, he raised his head and refused to take the blood. Soth Garo looked to his lieutenant. He held two fingers above the man’s head.

  Soth Garo nodded, and the lieutenant drew back his sabre, beheading the man with one clean stroke. He kicked the body over the edge to the hunters waiting below. Kyric didn’t want to know what they were going to do with it.

  He looked at Lerica. Her expression had gone from surprise and outrage to the mask she had worn in the slave camp — an angry resignation, quietly furious that they were surrounded by imminent death, and nothing could be done about it. He should thank Colonel Thurlun, he supposed, for his week in the slave camp. He couldn’t say it had inured him to this — nothing could do that — but that experience had given him a kind of insulation against the shock, a way of putting it aside for later.

  Another was brought, and he took the blood. And another.

  Then one came who knelt before Soth Garo and hesitated, looking at the bloody head that lay there. He would not drink. The lieutenant held one finger over his head, and Soth Garo waved him away. He was taken back down the steps and out of sight.

  The next one took the blood. And the next. And the next.

  “Why do so few refuse him?” Mahai said. “I would rather die than become his slave.”

  “The only ones who refuse are the young warriors — no wife, no children,” Aiyan said. Then he seemed to have a thought.

  “Mahai, is there any way up the back side of that escarpment?”

  “Yes, but it would take some time to get there.”

  Aiyan lay quiet for a moment.

  “Belay that talk,” Lerica whispered sharply. “There’s two dozen trained Baskillian killers up there with him. You’ll never get close to him while he’s with his army. We have done all that we can.”

  She looked to Kyric for support and continued. “We know the strength and the location of his troops, and we know they won’t be marching right away. We should go back to King Tonah and report what we’ve seen.”

  “Maybe the three of you should do exactly that,” Aiyan said. “Anyone on watch tonight will be near exhaustion. I’ll stay and look for an opportunity.”

  Mahai slid back off the rock, taking a knee and signaling Aiyan to join him. “There’s more at stake here than you and Soth Garo. Men are taking his blood here before our eyes. If they are doing so because of threats to their wives and children, it is because they are hostages. I need to scout around and see what’s going on in the village. Maybe I can find where the unconverted Silasese are being held, maybe talk to them.”

  “What good will that do?” Lerica said.

  “I can’t say. Maybe they know something about Soth Garo that we don’t know. Maybe they’re only shut away in their houses and we can rescue some of them.”

  “I suppose you are simply going to go among them,” Kyric said.

  “The right headdress, a little face paint, and they will think I’m Hariji. I know enough of their pig-tongue to fake it.” He stood and peered over the boulder. “I just need someone with a big head. There’s a likely candidate.”

  A hunter had left the swirling mass surrounding the fire, staggering across the field to find a shady spot along the tree line. He sat down, and his head slumped forward.

  Mahai smiled. “I’d better go get him before someone wakes him up.”

  Aiyan gave him a hard look. “Don’t get caught.”

  CHAPTER 6: Seahorse

  It was an hour before Mahai came back. A line of dark clouds rushed at them from over the sea. The rains would begin soon.

  Mahai had been able to scrape some purple paint off the face of his victim, and with the headpiece and Hariji tunic — a rectangle of red and black cloth with a head hole, held down by a stringy belt — he really did look different. And off he had gone, sauntering across the clearing, shouting with the crowd when another Silasese took the blood, joining the turning circle, going halfway around and then disappearing. Soth Garo continued to give his blood. The line of fifty men had been reduced to no more than a dozen.

  “The remaining Silasese are being held all together,” Mahai said as he wiped away the paint and changed back into his own clothing, “inside an open enclosure, just below the drop off at the far side of the clearing.”

  “How many hostages?” Aiyan said.

  “Several hundred.”

  “Guards?”

  “About thirty.”

  “How much of a drop?”

  “Enough to break your leg,” Mahai said. “There’s only two ways down: A cut in the rocks where they’re bringing the men up, and a ladder near the north side of town, at the head of the path that runs through the woods to the wedding house. You know, where they came out earlier.”

  “What about the town?”

  “It’s a mess, but it’s nearly deserted right now. There is a camp about a quarter mile south along the road — maybe a few hundred more Hariji there.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Resting.”

  Aiyan nodded. “A fresh reserve in case of the unexpected. I’m sure they’ll be used as guards tonight.”

  “So can we go now?” Lerica asked.

  Kyric blinked in surprise. “I though you weren’t afraid of anything.”

  “I’m not. I’m just bored.”

  Aiyan ignored them, saying to Mahai, “Thirty guards. Are any of Soth Garo’s men with them?”

  “None there. A pair of them were standing guard at the door to the wedding house, though, along with Ziddgan.”

  Lerica made a face. “Probably more virgins inside.”

  “Who is Ziddgan?” Aiyan said.

  “He is the high sorcerer of the Hariji.”

  “And what kind of sorcerer is he?”

  “He knows the natural and the preternatural. He is stronger with his night magic, but he will use his evil eye in the light of day.”

  “These sorcerers aren’t real magicians,” Kyric said to Aiyan in Avic, “are they? Not like Pitbull.”

  “You should k
now the answer to that. The old magic was broken in Aeva, right there where we stood, with the fall of Derndra. Aeva is the center, and to my experience the farther from there, the more magical the world becomes.”

  “So what could he do to us?” Kyric asked Mahai.

  “He could paralyze you with one look,” he said, deadly earnest. “He can break things if they are made of stuff that once lived. Your bows and arrows would be useless against him.”

  “Alright,” Aiyan said, turning back to Mahai, “does anyone else have a line of sight on the enclosure? Can Soth Garo and his gang see it from their perch?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mahai said. “There’s a few houses on the edge of town close by, but I think they were empty.”

  “I know what you’re planning,” Lerica said, jumping down from the boulder. “You can’t be serious.”

  “For now,” Aiyan said, “I’m only waiting to see what the rain brings.”

  Mahai stood. “If there is an opportunity to rescue them, then we have to try — for those who took the blood to save their family, and for those who died to remain free. If there is to be any hope at all, this abomination must not be allowed to continue.”

  The line of clouds pushed closer. Kyric wrapped his wheel-lock in an oilcloth and placed it in his knapsack. Lerica did the same with her pistol.

  “Better unstring our bows, as well,” Kyric said to Aiyan.

  Aiyan cocked one eyebrow. “We could wax the strings instead.”

  “Where are we going to get . . . “ Kyric started to say, then they both looked at Lerica.

  “It was supposed to be a Solstice present,” she said.

  Kyric nodded. “And so it is.”

  They waxed their bowstrings, and it wasn’t long before the wind rose and they felt the first drops. Atop the escarpment, Soth Garo had sent the last few captives away, then came down the steps as the rain began to fall in earnest. He and his death guards crossed to the circling mass of men and pushed their way in. Everyone else gathered under the cliffs or beneath the palms at the edge of the clearing to sit out the rain.