Jaleigh Johnson - Unbroken Chain - The Darker Road

By the light of Ilvani’s sphere, he saw the rider.

The human lay slumped across his horse, his arms dangling aside his head. Blood streamed from an arrow wound in his horse’s flank. The beast took a step forward and collapsed, dumping its rider in the snow.

Ashok pulled away from Ilvani and jumped to his feet. He ran to the man’s side, but he didn’t immediately see a wound. He brushed aside the human’s dark hair to examine his head and feel for a life beat at his neck.

The man opened his eyes and spoke at the same time Ashok felt the dead, hollow space where his heart should have been beating.

“Palum,” he said, “have you come to take me to the army?”

Ashok breathed in and out, harsh breaths that formed steam clouds. It took every bit of discipline he’d ever learned not to hurl the dead thing away from him and draw his chain to attack. The quavering in its voice stopped him. The thing that had no heartbeat looked at him with such imploring dead eyes that Ashok couldn’t look away.

“Have you?” The man spoke again, but his words changed to a language Ashok had never heard before.

“You must answer him,” Ilvani said. “We have to go soon, or they’ll be on the move.”

“I don’t understand him,” Ashok said. “I don’t understand any of this. That thing shouldn’t be talking. It should be in the ground.”

“He is,” Ilvani said. She laid her hand against the gravestones. “He sleeps, but he’s not at rest. Two worlds fade into one. Didn’t you hear him call to you?”

“I heard-” Ashok looked at the dead man’s face, though it unsettled him greatly. The face did look vaguely familiar, and then he remembered his vision, the man who’d reached out his hand before some distant battle.

If we’re meant to die today …

“I’m Palum,” Ashok said. The dead man looked at him and for whatever reason saw his friend’s face. When Ashok said the name, the dead man’s eyes filled with tears.

“I thought … you would leave me behind,” the man said. The language had reverted to Common. “I rode all night to be here, but the brigands were waiting. I managed to evade them, but it was a hard fight.”

“You were victorious,” Ashok said. “Yet your horse-”

“Is here,” Ilvani said. She stood up and took the nightmare’s reins. The stallion watched the witch’s movements but allowed her to lead him to Ashok’s side. “You can ride together.”

The man looked up at the nightmare with an odd expression. “The horse is not … I don’t see it.…”

“It’s all right,” Ashok said. He draped the man’s arm over his shoulder and looked to Ilvani. She nodded, so he lifted the man to his feet and half carried him to the disguised nightmare. The stallion did not react to the dead man, so Ashok placed him across the nightmare’s back and mounted in front of him. The man’s hands came around his waist in a weak grip. Ashok held on to his arm and guided the nightmare with his legs.

“Where are we going?” Ashok asked Ilvani.

She pointed to the north. “Ride fast but not far. You’ll make it in time. I’ll meet you on the other side.”

The man turned to look at Ilvani. “Thank you,” he said.

“Hold on tightly,” she said. “You’re almost there.”

“You heard her,” Ashok whispered to the nightmare, and dug in with his heels. “Let’s see where the ride takes us.”

The nightmare took off across the snow-covered expanse. The wind turned fierce and drowned out all sound. Ashok could barely see through the blowing snow to keep them pointed north. He had to trust the nightmare to lead them. He felt the heat of the creature’s body and took comfort from that buried fire. They could use it if they had to. Would Ilvani be so warm, walking the plain alone? He had to trust her, too, the same way he trusted that the man clutching him was not some dead yet animated abomination.

You wanted to walk in Ilvani’s world, Ashok told himself. This might be your one chance to know the world as she knows it.

When he felt the man’s voice at his ear, a voice with no breath behind it, Ashok gritted his teeth against the wrongness, the need to lash out and destroy.

“Who are you?” the man asked.

Ashok searched his memory for the name the man had called him. “Palum,” he said.

“That’s right. I thought.… Just now, I thought you were someone else. We will fight together, you and I?”

“Yes,” Ashok said. To a battle that was already lost. If the man was one of the Tuigan from Daruk’s song, he had no idea that his invasion failed and his people were defeated. All he knew was that he could not bear to be left behind.

“It would be safer for you to stay here,” Ashok said. He thought the spirit didn’t hear him above the wind, but he answered.

“To be safe is to lose my soul,” he said. “I am a warrior. I must fight.”

Ashok felt a chill that had nothing to do with the biting wind pass through him. The man spoke like a shadar-kai. “You’re human,” Ashok said. “You could be anything you wanted.”

“No. My fate was decided from birth. I will follow its course and be proud.”

“I’m carrying you to your death,” Ashok whispered. Maybe that was Ashok’s fate-the rider of nightmares, the bringer of death.

The land angled upward. The nightmare fought its way up a steep hill overlooking a broad valley. Ashok leaned forward with his burden to keep from falling off. When they reached the crest, the nightmare stopped and, with a startled cry, reared in the air.

Ashok surged forward to grab the stallion’s neck. His hands brushed the enchanted necklace-it was hot, nearly hot enough to blister flesh. The magic strained to keep the nightmare’s true nature in check.

It will burn out soon, Ashok realized. The necklace won’t last the journey to Rashemen.

He would have to deal with that later. For now, he worked to keep the beast from bolting down the hill and leaving them trampled on the plain. After several minutes of curses, cajoling, and threats with his chain, Ashok got the nightmare to keep its four feet on the ground. Only then could he begin to take in what had upset the stallion so violently.

Behind him, the man loosened his grip on Ashok’s waist and looked over his shoulder across the valley.

“We arrived in time,” he said, and there was such profound relief in his voice that it almost distracted Ashok from the sight of the vast army spread below them.

Men and women on horseback, armed for battle, rode in ranks as if they’d been born on the back of a horse.

There must have been thousands. The ghosts of the Tuigan invaders prepared to follow their leader into battle. Ashok saw the wild exultation on their faces as they slapped blades and rode their horses side by side.

In the distance, a horn blared. The riders shouted in answer and formed into lines. Their horses reared and neighed in frenzy, eager to run. The nightmare quivered beneath Ashok. The call to battle had infected him.

“Time to go,” the man said. “Will you ride with me, Palum?”

Ashok surveyed the steep slope into the valley. It would be a punishing ride, getting down to the army. He grinned and dug his heels into the nightmare’s flank.

The beast took off at a dangerous gallop. Ashok leaned all the way back in his seat, grinding his legs into the nightmare’s body to keep his balance. Snow and mud flew up around them. Ashok’s teeth clamped together painfully at the jarring motions. Fire burned in his muscles. Then, with a final, wild leap, they were in the valley and riding among the ghost horses and the Tuigan warriors. They saluted him with blades thrust in the air as he rode into their midst.

A fierce cry ripped from Ashok’s throat. The roar of hoofbeats deafened him. The charging army was a furious storm tearing across the plain to meet its fate. Come what may, the riders were together, and in that breath, they were invincible. Ashok lost himself in that feeling of wholeness, just as he’d once done among the shadar-kai dancers in Ikemmu. Now he was a man among ghosts, but they looked at him and saw-what? Not a shadar-kai but a warrior-his soul marked him as one of their own.