James West - Crown of the Setting Sun

Adham pulled Leitos farther back, then placed a dagger in his hand. His grandfather seemed more imposing than he ever had before. There was nothing left of the chained man in his posture or in his gaze.

“No matter what comes,” he said in a stony voice, eyeing the dead wolves, “fight until there is no breath in your breast or blood in your veins. You are a child of the north, and that is our way.”

Leitos focused on drawing strength from his fear, the way Ba’Sel had said, but fear did not trouble him. One thought, however, did. All he had done to stay free had been for nothing. He would die this day. The dagger in his hand felt heavy and blunt, utterly useless, so he tucked it into his belt. If he fought, it would be with his bare hands.

“Do you understand?” Adham asked, a note of sorrow tingeing his voice. We are about to die, he might have said, but we will die proud .

Leitos nodded, wishing he had seen Zera once more.

Silence fell, broken only by the grotesque sounds of the shifting carcasses. One tumbled clear in a boneless heap. The creature’s broad skull, nearly severed from its neck, lolled. Where the corpse had been lodged, an irregular patch of darkness looked with festering malice upon the waiting warriors.

Instead of heaving the other wolf out with first, whatever sheltered within that darkness pulled it from sight by slow increments. Leitos waited, not daring to breathe.

The swath of darkness gradually redefined itself into an open doorway. Materializing from within, growing larger, twins points of emerald fire burned with hellish life. Leitos moaned low in his throat, knowing what he saw, but refusing to believe it.

“No!” Leitos tried to scream, but the denial languished, never gathering the strength needed to escape his mind. Those green eyes drew nearer. Leitos fought for a deep breath, but shock and disbelief squeezed his chest tight.

“Make ready,” Adham said, taking three resolute strides forward to stand with the brothers. He nocked arrow to string and drew it back. The bow’s bone-and-wood limbs creaked as they reached full draw, and Leitos thought he could hear his grandfather’s pulse singing softly through the taut string.

Zera moved into the smoked light of the Sanctuary, dragging behind her a pair of dark, vaporous wings. Hers was a face of beautiful death in the eldritch light blazing from her gaze. As with the sooty gloom swirling in her wake, there was something ethereal about her, an aspect of transparency.

Leitos met her stare and something unspoken passed between them. A part of him wanted to run to her, wanted to feel her touch. That part tried to convince him that he was dreaming, that even now they were together, evading demonic wolves in some high mountain pass….

Another part cursed him for a fool for ever believing such lies. That part of him showed him how she had never needed rest or food, how she had fought with strength so far beyond that of mere humankind. Her eyes, burning with a wholly unnatural inner radiance, now spoke a truth he had continually failed to see. Even Lakaan had tried to warn him. “She is no more a warrior of the Crimson Shield than I am … Believe me, now more than ever, when I say she can look after herself. Believe as well that her doing so is a sight you do not want to behold.”

And how many times had he mentioned Zera to Ba’Sel, only to have him give some evasive or empty response? Why the warrior had avoided saying what he knew outright, Leitos did not know, unless he feared that Leitos was with her. And Ba’Sel had been right to be cautious, Leitos knew, even before Ulmek’s once mysterious words rose up with awful meaning. “I knew the day it was decided to help those wretches we would pay a price … you cannot admit that you erred … since those who betrayed us and were removed from our order are among the demons that attack us, those traps are all but useless.”

Zera shifted then, drawing his eye. From behind her wings emerged two more figures Leitos knew: Sandros and Pathil! Sandros glared about with one eye until he found Leitos. The darkness of that orb changed to muddy red. A deep and weeping cut had closed the other. He was on the bridge, the wolf that killed Lakaan, the wolf I attacked!

Stabbing pain lanced through his heart at the depth of Zera’s betrayal. Zera had not gone after the wolves, she had hidden herself away so that they could slaughter Lakaan … so that they could have the chance to kill him!

But no, had she wanted him dead, she would have done it herself. In a terrible flash, Leitos saw all that had happened since Sandros had dragged him from the river … their chance meeting with Zera and Pathil … the way she had so easily poisoned her fellows and escaped with Leitos … how no matter how far they had run, they had always been but one short step ahead of their pursuers….

Mind awhirl, Leitos struggled to piece the treachery together. At some point, Zera and the others must have come under suspicion, forcing them to flee before she could lead her true kindred to the Sanctuary. In her absence, the brothers had moved the Sanctuary…. They had not been running from the Hunters, she had let them drive Leitos along, a stupid bleating sheep that, at some point, the Brothers of the Crimson Shield would find and take into their Sanctuary in honor of some ancient agreement with an Izutarian king. In so doing, they would reveal their whereabouts.

Sandros laughed in derision when he noticed Leitos’s hurt expression. “I should have taught you a last lesson, boy: Never trust love.”

Pathil moved off to the other side, smiling at the brothers like an old friend, even as he tested the edge of his sword with a thumb. “Ba’Sel,” he called merrily, “have you managed to temper brother Ulmek’s rage?”

Ba’Sel ignored the taunt and studied Zera, his eyes shimmering with tears. “After all that I did to instill honor and goodness in your heart, after all the love your brothers gave, you return now as a traitor and an enemy? And you Pathil, foolish child that you always were, you benefited from the same devotion as Zera, and more. Yet you come into our Sanctuary and make mock of the man who saved your life on no less than three occasions? Is there no shame in either of you?”

Where Zera’s face showed a spark of disgrace, Pathil shrugged, smile widening. “Shame is for humankind.”

“And what are you, if not at least part human?”

“We are Na’mihn’teghul ,” Sandros snarled proudly. “Ours are the faces that all Creation will one day wear. We are the perfection that the Three never dared dream. The Faceless One has foreseen our coming, and even now paves the way for our ascendency.”

“ Na’mihn’teghul?” Ba’Sel said scornfully. “Is that what you call yourself, Sandros? Have you forgotten how we took you in after you fled your master, how we made you one of our own, gave you a life and purpose?”

“You always were a fool,” Sandros rasped. “Even now, your kind heart refuses to believe that it was I who came to you, a Hunter with the intention of destroying your pathetic band.”

“ Na’mihn’teghul,” Ba’Sel said again, and spat. “I disbelieved such a low and despoiled affront to Creation could exist. It appears I was wrong.”

“You are wrong about many things,” Sandros said, his body swelling, changing between flesh and mist and back again. As he grew larger, his filthy robes shredded and fell away. A tawny, bristling growth of spines thrust from his darkening skin. His face rippled, elongated, becoming a brutish muzzle. His limbs bulged and bent, yet the all too human hands remained, talons ripping free of long fingers and toes. Pathil was changing as well, but not Zera.