“We should go,” he said.
“Follow me,” she answered in a hollow voice. Instead of threatening to spill his blood in some new way, she handed over the Kelren dagger and set out, leaving him to follow or stay behind.
He went after her, his heart racing as fast as his mind. If even half what she said was true, he intended this night to end his quest for vengeance against the Faceless One this night.
Chapter 24
Ringed by torchlight, Damoc inspected the pigsty that had held Leitos, then the severed vines that had held shut the small door. My own daughter has betrayed me.
Damoc cursed, ripped the door off the pen, and hurled it into the forest. Nola gave him a startled look, her green eyes wide … Nola, who looked so much like the first abomination foisted upon him and his wife by their Fauthians masters.
He had not always thought so poorly of that first daughter, but that had been before her change, and his wife’s death. On that night, when all that Belina had foretold came to pass, he had finally seen the truth, which led him to stir his people against their oppressors.
Even now, it pained him to admit that until that tragedy had struck him, he and most of the other elders had refused to believe the evil of the Fauthians. Instead of listening to the rational voice in his head, he had believed the Fauthians were good, and that serving them was the proper course. But no more.
“Will we go after them?” Nola asked. Her startlement had vanished. She was so different than Belina and their mother. If anyone had been born to fight, it was Nola. In truth, he sometimes feared that she craved battle too much.
Damoc ignored her for now, and stabbed a finger at Robis, the bumbling youth who fancied that he loved Belina, and who had blown the warning horn. “Come here,” he ordered.
Robis stepped forward, eyes downcast. He was a dullard with not the wits to properly wipe his own arse, let alone to see the deception Belina had cast over him. For all his faults, he was good in a battle, being too stupid to know fear or feel pain. Still, he had betrayed the clan.
“I did not know what she had planned,” Robis blurted. “She promised that she would-” He suddenly clamped his teeth shut, perhaps thinking it better not to reveal just what Belina had promised.
“Where was she taking him?” Damoc demanded.
“I–I don’t know,” Robis stammered. “She never said she was taking him anywhere. If I’d known, I would not have joined in her sport.”
“What manner of idiot believes rallying our defenses is a simple game?” Damoc seethed. “Did it ever cross your mind that sounding the alarm without cause might lead to leaving the camp undefended?” And that was yet another thing he would have to rectify. Someone should have stayed behind to guard the camp. Instead, all had snatched their weapons and run off like untrained louts. But again, that was for later.
Robis swallowed, his throat clicking in the quiet. “She said it would be fun to stir the camp.”
“Fun,” Damoc said flatly, his wrath extinguished by his disbelief. “We are not about fun,” he announced to all. “This rebellion we wage is no game. We fight an enemy that has every advantage, and no mercy for fools.”
A few nodded, but most looked at their feet, or the weapons held in their hands.
“I do not want your shame,” Damoc went on. “I want you to do what we have prepared to do. To accomplish that, we must keep our wits about us. Had the Fauthians crept into our camp, using Robis’s foolishness as a distraction, they could have wiped out the bulk of our clan in one attack.”
“How do we know they did not creep in among us?” Nola asked, her jaw set. “Why else would my sister have-”
“They did not,” Damoc said firmly. “Belina is confused, that is all. If there is a betrayer,” he allowed, “it is this Leitos.”
He refused to believe Belina had betrayed them. At the same time, it disturbed him that Nola so readily accepted the idea. But then, Nola had always been a girl who saw all in stark contrasts. To her there was right and wrong, even if the wrongs were done out of ignorance.
“Then what would you have us do?” Nola said, sounding unconvinced.
How long will I hold sway over her? he wondered-hardly a rare thought of late. A woman had never led a clan or served on the Great Council, but Damoc thought Nola might, one day. She was capable and ambitious enough. And should things go badly against the Fauthians, her unbending, pitiless ways might well appeal to the clans.
“We must find Belina and break the hold this outlander has over her,” Damoc said. “Then we will carry out his sentence.”
He was not entirely convinced Leitos was an enemy, but he refused to let his doubts outweigh what had to be done. If he ever discovered that his judgment had been made in error, then the burden of that mistake would have to be carried in his heart.
“And after that?” Nola pressed.
“After that,” Damoc said, “we do what we have planned so long to do-we destroy the Throat of Balaam, cutting off the Fauthians’ source of power. Then, while they are vulnerable, we will destroy our enemies, one by one, until none are left in all the Isles of Yato.” He cast about, pleased at the determined faces directed his way. “But first, we retrieve Belina.”
“Is that a mistake?” Nola did not say it as a challenge, but the challenge was there nonetheless.
“When we took up arms against our former rulers, we promised, when at all possible, to never again leave our people in their hands. You know that. We all know that. Even the least of us cannot be left to the Fauthians. That is our law,” he said again, ensuring all understood that his going after his daughter had nothing to do with his position as an elder.
There was no grumbling, no irreverent stares, but he felt the doubt flowing from his clan.
“Strike camp,” he called, giving them something else to think about, “and prepare to march. Leitos has already had too long to turn my daughter’s mind and heart. We must reach her before it is too late.” He paused, then added, “If you see Leitos, kill him straight away. He cannot be allowed to corrupt more of us.”
A subdued cheer went up, and Damoc found himself hoping he was right about the strange young man who Belina claimed to have seen in her visions, this so-called man of shadow and steel, the hope of the world…. If he was wrong, then even the mercy of the Silent God of All would fail to redeem him.
Chapter 25
The darkness of the cell was familiar to Adham, but little else. His long years in the mines had been a time of constant pain, be it from the lash, shackles, the sun, or the backbreaking labor of first crushing rock with pick or maul, then loading the rubble into buckets with hands covered in weeping blisters. Callouses he grew in abundance, but they were never strong enough to resist the cutting edges of freshly broken rock. The same could be said for the pitted iron bracelets he had worn, the marks of their long presence on his wrists a living testament to his captivity. Too, he remembered the harsh desert sunlight, the way it sucked moisture from the tongue and every pore, how it had roasted skin, left a man feeling hot and cracked. And there had been the hunger, a bitter companion with a will only to gnaw your insides. So while only the present darkness was the same, it brought sharply to mind all those past agonies and struggles.
Adham dropped his fingers from the heavy wooden door, and walked to the back wall, his shoulders brushing cool stone. His trek was short, less than his height. He had made it a hundred times since Adu’lin had him tossed into the cell. He turned, thought of the return journey, and decided to sit. In such a cramped space, pacing in circles left him dizzy.