Chapter 5
The Sons of the Black Sword stopped and made an early camp. They could have pushed on, but in the dark even their surefooted Somsak horses were bound to break a leg on the narrow, rugged mountain path. If the big moon, Canda, had been up, perhaps they would have tried, but tonight only tiny Upagraha was rapidly crossing the sky, and it was nothing more than a bright dot, not much larger than a star.
Ashok had the fortitude to suffer through the cold night in nothing but a coat, but the others might have frozen to death, even huddled together beneath blankets, so he allowed them to build a fire. If the Inquisition truly knew which pass they were crossing, there would be no hiding. If the masks sent a legion of warriors after them, they might as well die warm.
As Keta preached of forgotten gods to the fanatics, their general sat alone, away from the others, sharpening his stolen sword on a whetstone. Ashok had heard most of the Keeper’s stories by now. They were surely a mix of ancient truth and modern lies, but the telling made Keta happy, and it motivated his army. Ashok scoffed at the thought. His army was a handful of raiders and a few of the workers they’d been raiding. The only thing that united them was that they’d all worshipped the old ways in secret and had fallen into a religious fervor after seeing Thera’s odd magical powers manifest in Jharlang.
A year ago he would have executed all of them as treasonous cultists without a second thought. Now he was supposedly one of their leaders. Truly, Omand Vokkan had a gift for creative torments. The Grand Inquisitor would have a good laugh if he could see what indignities Ashok had been reduced to now.
He had once been numbered among the highest caste, the bearer of an ancestor blade, and a senior member of the Protector Order. In a land where everyone had a place, his had been near the top, and he’d done his best to keep everyone where they belonged. However that had all been a carefully crafted lie. His entire life he had been nothing more than an unwitting pawn in a political game, all because for some mysterious reason mighty Angruvadal had chosen a pathetic casteless boy to be its bearer.
Once informed of his true identity, Ashok had condemned himself, exposed the guilty parties, and then turned himself over for judgment. He would have taken his own life in shame, but it was illegal for the bearer of a precious ancestor blade to perish in such a dishonorable manner. So he’d sent himself to prison and waited until the Grand Inquisitor himself had delivered his final orders to Ashok’s humble cell. To a man whose very foundation was based upon obedience there was no punishment more humiliating than being banished to live the rest of his days as a criminal.
Yet Ashok had still obediently set out to fulfill his new obligation—find and serve the casteless prophet—for the Law demanded it. And he had failed so utterly, that after only a few weeks as a criminal, the prophet had been carried off in the talons of a great black bird, and his precious ancestor blade had been destroyed.
The only thing that remained of once mighty Angruvadal was a single black-steel shard that was still lodged in his heart. The sword had spared his life, and for that he was bitter, for as long as he lived he was required to fulfill his mission, no matter how terrible it might be.
While Ashok had been deep in thought, Keta had finished his nightly sermon. Satisfied that the inferior steel was as sharp as it could be, Ashok put his new sword away, and he listened as the believers asked questions about their god.
For a bunch of fanatics, their questions seemed reasonable. If the Forgotten was real, why did he abandon us for so long? If the casteless were the chosen people, why did the Forgotten allow the Law to crush them into dust?
Keta acted as if he had all the answers, but Ashok could see that he was afraid. The Keeper did a good job hiding it, but without his prophet to guide him, he was lost. Ashok found the whole situation odd, because Thera herself seemed to be an intelligent, level-headed woman—for a criminal outcast—not a believer in Keta’s wild stories.
When it came to Thera, Ashok was…conflicted. He had been torn down and rebuilt as a perfect servant of the Law. He despised rebels with every fiber of his being. Except he’d come to respect Thera’s dedication and professionalism, and in an odd way, even enjoy her company. It was difficult, getting to know those you were supposed to hate.
The worker Gutch wandered over, stopped a polite distance away, and coughed to get Ashok’s attention, even though one would have to be deaf to not hear the giant of a man lumbering through the trees, stepping on every crackable twig…Or perhaps he was loud on purpose, because Ashok had the reputation of not being a man you wanted to surprise on accident.
“Excuse me, General. Could you spare a moment to have a word with your humble servant, Gutch?”
Jagdish had warned him that the smuggler was often deliberately obtuse, and liked to play the jovial fool, but not to underestimate him. Gutch was the reason they were headed for Neeramphorn, because a faint hope was better than no hope at all.
“Of course.”
“Heh…Seems odd, calling you General.” Gutch squatted in the snow beside the log Ashok was sitting on. “I remember when we were both inmates in the same prison, and now you’ve got yourself a fancy title again.”
“The title is only as good as the army it leads.”
“Perhaps someday your ranks will swell into a mighty force, fit to take on the army of a great house or the Capitol itself.”
Ashok shuddered at the thought. “I do not think we ever met at Cold Stream.”
“Well, you were a bit more memorable than me, what with all the killings. Place got a lot safer after you arrived, once the uppity sorts became afraid to draw your ire. I did enjoy watching your many duels through a crack in the wall of my cell. Entertainment helped pass the time. As for me? Old Gutch prefers to stay out of the way and not cause trouble.”
“Since you’re too large of stature to avoid notice—an unfortunate trait for one who has chosen a life of crime—instead you play dumb and friendly so no one takes you as a threat.”
They were far enough from the fire that Ashok could only barely see his features, but it was obvious Gutch’s forced smile had died. As Jagdish warned, this one was smarter than he looked. Then Gutch chuckled. “Dumb, I take some exception to, and I don’t pretend to be friendly. I truly like everyone, General. I just like them better when they’re not informing on me. As the Law says, a man must recognize his place. My favorite place is outside the view of those in your former profession.”
“Of course.”
Gutch gestured rudely at where Keta was speaking to his faithful. “Not like those rabble-rousers. They’re just asking for trouble. Can you believe the tales the skinny one is spinning? You’d have to be terribly gullible to believe such things. Only the fish-eaters can save us from the army of demons that are gonna rise up out of the sea? Not bloody likely. Surely you don’t believe any of that?”
He had been taught the gods were a myth, created as a tool of the ancient kings in order to subjugate and abuse the masses, before the Age of Law had brought justice and reason to Lok. Exhaling, Ashok could see his breath. It was just vapor, visible because of the cold. There was no spirit inside like the fanatics proclaimed, and when it was gone, they were just dead flesh to be discarded in the most sanitary manner possible. However, a few recent events had made Ashok question his beliefs…Like Thera predicting the future, or ghostly beings speaking to him as he lay dying. So there might be gods—just in case he had warned them to stay out of his way—but he did not like to dwell on the idea.
So Ashok ignored the question, and focused on the real world. The worker was thickset, but it was not the lean, fast muscle of a combatant, but rather the big arms and chest which came from the repetitive movement of heavy weights. He might not have been a warrior, but Jagdish had said he’d seen Gutch crush a wizard’s head flat with the giant iron beam they’d used to bar the front gate of Cold Stream prison, a beam that normally took two warriors to lift.
“I am told you were a smith.”
“Forge master smith, first class,” Gutch corrected, pride in his voice, but then it was obvious that the many convoluted ranks of the worker caste meant nothing to Ashok. “I was high status among my people, or was, until I got stuck in prison over a little misunderstanding.”
Considering the usual penalty for smuggling unregistered magic was death, Gutch must have had resources sufficient to bribe a judge. “I assume you’ve come to speak about what we will do once we reach the city.”
“Correct. My contacts in Neeramphorn have among their customers some wizards called the Lost House, a dangerous, secretive lot, always hungry for…certain goods…”
“You may speak freely. They’re trafficking in illegal magic. A serious offense, but it’s no longer my place to enforce the Law.”
“Good. I prefer to speak honestly,” Gutch said, but Ashok doubted that very much. “I’ll level with you. I was merely a tracker. We’re a rare breed. There aren’t many of us who’ve got the gift of sensing magic over distance.”
His old sword master, Lord Protector Ratul, had also had such an affinity, and could even sense when things had been previously manipulated by magic. Ashok wondered if that extraordinary vision had contributed to Ratul’s descent into traitorous madness and religious fanaticism. “I am familiar with it.”
“That’s how I can tell you’ve got magic in your blood. Every Protector I’ve ever come across has. You’ve all been changed, whole men turned into something more.”
The Heart of the Mountain was the Order’s greatest weapon and most precious secret. “That is none of your concern.”
“Concerned me enough that when I sense one of them coming, I run for my life. Though none carry more of it in them than you, and I’m not talking about that shard stuck in your chest either. Far as I can tell, magic has been twisting you since you were a child.”
The worker was correct. After Angruvadal had chosen a casteless child to be its bearer, Vadal wizards had broken his mind, erased his memories, and rebuilt him as the perfect servant of the Law, but even thinking about Bidaya’s conspiracy filled him with disgust. “You were speaking of your contacts.”
“Understand…Back to business, men like me find the bits. Sometimes part of a demon corpse will wash up on shore, or an old chunk of black steel will get unearthed. Now we’re supposed to report such finds, but civic responsibility doesn’t put food on your table. Legal magic is expensive and the Inquisition controls who gets access to how much. People always want more. So I get those magic bits to my friends—think of them as a loose organization whose job it is to know people—then they sell to wizards, great houses, ambitious Thakoors, whoever, all off the books, with the Capitol and its tax collectors none the wiser. Everyone profits.”
Such flaunting of the Law offended Ashok to the core of his being. It was a testament to his absolute dedication to his new orders that he didn’t strike the brazen criminal down on the spot. Instead he just nodded. “I see.”
“It may take me a few days to put together a meeting, they’re careful like that. It can’t be rushed, but I’ll approach my old friends. Then we’ll see about how to find this Lost House who stole away your false prophet. However, you’ve earned a certain reputation among my business associates. You’re what we’d refer to as a detriment to commerce. As in you’ve massacred large numbers of them over the last twenty years.”
Ashok shrugged. “Then they should not have been Law breakers.”
“If they smell a Protector coming, they’ll run.”
“That is no longer my station.”
“Regardless of your current legal troubles, the name Ashok Vadal might as well be a synonym for Protector. All my people tell stories about you to scare our youngsters so they don’t get sloppy. Cover your tracks, lads, lest the Black Heart finds you out. You can’t be anywhere near. If my friends discover I’m working with you, I’ll get a knife between my ribs, and then they’ll disappear down a hole so deep and dark you’ll never find them.”
He found it interesting that Gutch said working with, rather than for, but the worker and Jagdish had come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. A partnership those two had called it. Jagdish wanted revenge on the wizards who had murdered the Cold Stream guards, and Gutch would help find them in exchange for any magical fragments recovered from the wizards. Though Ashok did not himself fully grasp the intricacies of profit, it was a supremely powerful motivator to those of the worker caste.
“I will defer to your knowledge on this topic, Gutch.”
“Good. Jagdish said despite your tendency for abrupt decision making, you were a thoughtful sort.”
“I am. Which is why I will be sending Jagdish with you into the city.”
“What?” Gutch sputtered. “I assure you, that’s not necessary. Once a worker shakes on something, the deal is sealed. Gutch is no betrayer of trusts!”
Ashok had been condemned to live the rest of his life as a rebel, not a fool. “During those twenty years I spent hunting down criminals, I learned a few things about them. They have no honor and they will turn on each other for the smallest reward.”
He let that hang there, purposefully unclear if he was speaking about Gutch or his associates. The last bounty he’d seen offered for his head had been a vast sum. He didn’t know what it would be in these lands, but it was surely more than enough to tempt a greedy worker.
Gutch slowly nodded. “Of course. I’m certain honorable Jagdish will be of great assistance in this endeavor.”
Informing on him to the authorities would even be the proper legal thing to do. It annoyed Ashok to no end that he was being placed in opposition to his beloved Law and everything he’d ever worked for, but he couldn’t fulfill the Grand Inquisitor’s commands otherwise.
“I, too, prefer to speak honestly, worker. Be aware, I do not care about your petty crimes or what you intend to do with their treasure after I have dealt with these wizards. My only purpose left is to find and protect the prophet of the Forgotten. To do this, I will do whatever is necessary. If you are faced with any difficult choices in the city, I would advise choosing the wiser path.”
“What do you mean by wiser path?”
“Take the one that does not place you as my adversary…” Gutch had seen the pile of corpses Ashok had left in Jharlang, so he paused to let his words sink in. “That’ll be all.”
Gutch stood up with a grunt. “Night, General.” This time when he wandered off through the trees he forgot to make a good show of blundering through the dark. In fact he didn’t so much as step on a single twig.