Heirs of the Fallen: Book 02 - Crown of the Setting Sun Read online

  Crown of the Setting Sun

  Book Two of

  Heirs of the Fallen

  James A. West

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTERS

  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11

  12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

  22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31

  Epilogue

  Other Books by James A. West

  Biography

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by James A. West

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Cover art by: Leonid Kozienko

  Published by James A. West

  First edition: June 2012

  Produced in the United States of America

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to my fantastic editors, Dawn and Elaine.

  To all my fans, a heartfelt thanks!

  To Julie, the one who matters most.

  Chapter 1

  “Ours is the blood of the north!” Adham cried, his voice rising above the clamor of pick and sledge battering stone to dust.

  Silence swept over the toiling slaves, and their knotted fingers clutched fearfully around rocks and wooden hafts. Shocked eyes locked on the old man who had dared raise his voice. Agonized screams or death rattles from dust-clogged lungs were acceptable sounds to the ears of the slavemasters, but what echoed from the open mine and out across the barren expanse of desert carried the unmistakable note of defiance. All had heard it, and all knew what it meant for Adham and for themselves.

  A furnace breeze swirled dust around unmoving feet. Shaking with fury, Adham hurled his short-handled pick to the ground. One tip clanged against a rock, throwing off a spark. With a tired sigh, the breeze gave up its fitful dance.

  Leitos cowered nearby, his cracked lips trembling, the bucket he had been filling with crushed stone forgotten at his feet. He saw not his grandfather before him, but a stranger, a madman. Like all slaves, Leitos knew better than to tempt the ire of their inhuman masters. Despite this unvoiced law, the wizened old man glared at the demon-born slavemasters, the Alon’mahk’lar, openly challenging them to stand against him.

  Leitos’s heart thumped inside the reedy cage of his ribs, forcing erratic breaths past his teeth. He hunkered down, trying to disappear into the ground under his bare feet. What had driven his grandfather to such folly? Slaves strove to avoid notice, hoping only to earn a daily bowl of thin porridge. Resistance invited hunger, thirst, and the flesh-reaving bite of the lash—not for the troublemakers alone, but for all the slaves.

  “You will know the moment to flee,” Adham said, his hoarse voice pitched for Leitos’s ears alone. Grim determination creased the old man’s brow, turned down the corners of his mouth.

  Leitos jerked as if slapped. He is mad!

  “Watch and be ready,” Adham continued. “The time of your escape is near. Do not hesitate!”

  What are you talking about? Leitos thought in a near panic. There is no escape! Deep below his denial, he knew what Adham meant. He had heard it all before.

  “I’ve told you where to go,” Adham said, his desperation rising in the face of Leitos’s hesitancy. “You must go west, boy, no matter what happens. Remember all I have taught you. Do not look back. Do not stop. Trust no one, save those I’ve spoken of.” This last Adham uttered as if he were unsure that those mythical saviors would help, or even existed.

  “Make ready, boy!” Adham commanded.

  Leitos gawked like a fool. Always before when Adham whispered of escape, or told of life as it had once been, Leitos mollified his grandfather with nods of agreement. Secretly he had often worried that those stories were born of a perilous mind-sickness. He had never taken those tales to heart. His life was the mines, the same as all slaves. Even the term slave, had no definite meaning for him. All his grandfather’s tales of hope and freedom were but dangerous musings better left in the darkness of their shared cell. Leitos was horrified to realize that Adham had meant every word, and had planned for this very moment.

  “You have come of age, and they will soon chain you,” Adham pressed. “Flee, boy, or die in bondage. You must go! Remember our people, remember that I love you as an only son—but you must go!”

  With that last admonition, Adham faced the approaching slavemasters, who had shaken off their surprise. The Alon’mahk’lar rushed to the challenge, creatures no more human than the Faceless One they served. No one else moved. Leitos felt trapped in another man’s nightmare.

  Adham thrust his gnarled hands, thick with calluses and blisters, toward the sky. Pitted black iron manacles clinked and jangled, as they slithered down his skeletal forearms. “Our freedom is a birthright stolen, an inheritance I reclaim for myself and my brothers!” he called out, voice reverberating across the steep walls of the open pit before sinking into the mineshaft’s lightless throat. “Freedom is at hand, brothers, if you will but take it!”

  No, Grandfather! Leitos tried to shout, but the warning perished on his tongue.

  The slavemasters clambered toward Adham, their coarse reddish hides streaked with patterns of black. They came, not scowling in anger, but grinning at the opportunity to uncoil the leather scourges at their hips, to swing the iron-banded cudgels held in their huge, six-fingered fists. A dark and bestial light shone in their eyes. They leaped forward like mastiffs, sharp teeth bared for the kill.

  Adham stood fast, a near-naked husk of a man clad only in a tattered loincloth, his white hair hanging about boney shoulders. Leitos flinched from the intensity of his grandfather’s gray eyes. Ferocity had replaced the tired warmth and kindness he was accustomed to seeing. A few tears flowed freely from that pallid stare, melting tracks through the dirt coating Adham’s sunken cheeks. It was not fear or shame that wetted Adham’s eyes, but a timeworn fury that demanded justice.

  Justice for what? Leitos wondered, fresh panic rising to precipitous heights. We earned our punishment for resisting the divine rule of the Faceless One. Or so the Alon’mahk’lar taught, a reality Adham always acknowledged but vehemently denounced as a half-truth.

  As the slavemasters drew nearer, Adham spread his arms wide in invitation, tightening the skin clinging to his jutting ribs. “Come for me, Alon’mahk’lar!” he roared, sounding like a man a third his age, a man of righteousness and strength, like the kindred of the fabled king he claimed to be. Leitos shuddered upon hearing the word, Alon’mahk’lar, Sons of the Fallen, spoken within hearing of the slavemasters. It was a name forbidden to humankind.

  Galvanized by the authority in Adham’s cry, a pitiful few of the eldest slaves reflexively moved into defensive postures. Armed with spades, picks, sledges, and rocks, they prepared for a battle they could not hope to win. Apprehension shone in their hollow eyes but, too, burned a forgotten desire for retribution.

  Where a few responded to Adham’s words, most scrambled clear, none willing to give their lives for the crazed old man in their midst. No matter which way anyone darted, they could not go far. A common chain running through a series of iron rings set in heavy stone blocks bound all together, save the youngest slaves. Like frightened hounds, they flung themselves against their short leashes. The frantic movements of the chained tugged against Adham, grinding rough iron against his wrists and ankles. Drawing on hidden strengths, he held firm, resisting the unrelenting pull of the fearful.<
br />
  A slavemaster, half again as tall as Adham and layered with slabs of muscle, slid to a halt before the old slave. It glared down with protuberant eyes as black as the deepest mineshaft and slashed by golden pupils. A double set of horns grew from the beast’s skull; one set curled upwards, while the other pair swept protectively down around its neck.

  “Your blood,” the Alon’mahk’lar said, raising the cudgel in its hand, “will be a sweet wine upon my tongue.” Those words rasped harsh and guttural through a mouthful of sharp, slanting teeth. The servant of the Faceless One offered neither truce nor pardon.

  Quick as a serpent’s strike, Adham caught up his discarded pick. The movement forced the slavemaster to take a single, faltering step backward. Shifting rocks upset its balance, leaving an opening. Adham lurched against his chains, screaming fury, swinging the pick. With a desperate flinch, the slavemaster avoided the full impact, but the heavy tool slashed across its brow, ripped through its nose, and gouged one cheek. The Alon’mahk’lar shrieked. With quivering fingers tipped in deadly claws, it tore away the shredded mass of its nose. Blood gushed over its lips and chin, then poured over its chest as the slavemaster tottered back.

  Adham stood his ground. The wounded slavemaster’s snarling roar sprayed blood in a crimson mist. That shout, joined with the other Alon’mahk’lar, rose to an unbroken note of such wrath that all who had stood in boldness now flung themselves facedown. All cowered, all pleaded for mercy … all save Adham.

  Fierce sunlight bathed his wrinkled skin, casting harsh shadows over corded muscles, highlighting past scars and fresh hurts. Fire seemed to ignite within his icy gray gaze. He heaved against his bonds, bloodied pick raised. He lashed out, his movements those of a man steeped in battle rather than in long submission. Adham’s pick bored into the creature’s skull with a sickening thud. The tip sank deep, screeching through a plate of thick bone. Adham wrenched the tool free and made ready for a fresh attack, but the creature’s roar had become a gurgling whimper, and it toppled backward to sprawl in the dust.

  The remaining slavemasters glanced at their fallen leader, then surged forward as one. Slaves bolted in all directions from the ravening creatures loping into their midst. In their mindless flight, forgetting again the shortness of their linked iron tethers, they dragged down Adham and each other. They clawed madly at the ground, ripping off fingernails. They screamed as the butchery began. Crude swords as long as the tallest slave flashed and whirled, severing limbs; iron-banded cudgels fell like tree trunks upon unprotected skulls; cracking whips tore meat from bone.

  Adham’s words resonated in Leitos’s mind. The time of your escape has come. Do not hesitate! Confusion froze Leitos. If he bowed, he would die. If he ran, he would die. Death would come, and nothing he could do would keep it at bay. He did not know what to do, other than what he had been trained to do, and that was to submit.

  Urged by an inborn desire to survive, Leitos’s body moved of its own accord. As the screams of the dying soared, Leitos wheeled and scampered up the litter of broken stone lining the walls of the shallow pit. At the top, he looked for his grandfather.

  Adham was sprawled on his back, focused not on his attackers, but on Leitos. “GO!” he commanded, even as he wielded his pick against a flurry of blows. Then he was lost from sight amid a swarm of scrambling slaves and savaging Alon’mahk’lar.

  Leitos spun and ran. He was not alone in his flight. Others his age and younger, the unchained, ran with him, their faces etched with horror. None spoke or cried out. There was no breath for that, not with death at their heels. They ran blindly in every direction, and the desert’s scorching emptiness swallowed them.

  Chapter 2

  Not long after the sounds of the massacre fell behind, the boys running with Leitos began to drop. His endurance had always been greater than the other slaves, but never until now had that been a benefit. A slave who could work harder than the rest, was forced to do so. Once down, few of the unchained bothered to stand again, choosing instead to wait for whatever might come.

  He paused to help one who fell nearby. His darting eyes searched for Alon’mahk’lar, but did not find any. “Get up, Altha,” he urged. “We can run together.”

  The boy fought when Leitos tried to pull him to his feet. “Get away! Your grandfather brought this on us! We will all die because of him!” Altha clawed at Leitos’s hand.

  Leitos released the boy and backed away. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, not sure if he was. While the same condemnation had flitted through his own mind, hearing it from someone else angered him. Who was this wretched, whining child to denounce his grandfather?

  With a rabid snarl, Altha hurled a stone. Leitos ducked, just avoiding having his head cracked. Altha began scraping his hands over the dusty ground, searching for another rock. Leitos left him there, and Altha’s curses hounded him long after he moved out of earshot.

  The land rose almost imperceptibly, going from mostly pale sand and rounded gravel to a more rugged landscape of reddish rock and brush. As he ran, Leitos relived the scenes of death back at the mine. Above all others, he saw Adham driving his pick into the Alon’mahk’lar’s skull, heard again the terrible sound of that killing blow. That assault had changed everything for the worse, just as Altha had said. Still, Adham had given his life to gain freedom for others.

  Or had he acted in madness?

  Leitos had no answer for that, and thinking about it seemed to make matters worse, so he kept on toward his mysterious destination. Miles slowly became leagues, and his grandfather’s voice recited things Leitos had always dismissed out of hand, at least until now. “A day will come when you must run, Leitos. Go into the west, always west. Run and hide, survive any way you can, until you spy the Crown of the Setting Sun beyond the dark spires of the Mountains of Fire. Seek out the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. Learn from them. Grow strong and cruel, and avenge the blood of our forefathers....”

  Leitos paused atop a low rise with Adham’s demand for vengeance repeating in his head. Back the way he had come simmered a broad, shallow basin. He expected to see a band of trailing Alon’mahk’lar, but nothing moved. Of vengeance, he knew only that the Alon’mahk’lar had often warned against it. “As surely as rain falls from the clouds of storm, blood flows in the wake of vengeance taken.” The conflicting ideas of vengeance and submission, or whether Adham had destroyed his life or set him free, struggled for supremacy until he pushed it all aside to focus on getting farther away.

  The sun climbed higher, and Leitos’s bare feet pounded against the broiling, uneven ground. Each gasping breath seared his aching lungs. He bore the pain with grim resolve, and chased his spindly shadow over a shimmering wasteland resting below mirages of quicksilver. By now, he was utterly alone in his flight. He glanced over his shoulder again, neck creaking on stiff tendons, but found no pursuers.

  I escaped, he thought dazedly. The very notion that he was free was as strange to him as the idea of seeking vengeance, even after the countless times Adham had related how men had known freedom in the world of his youth. Leitos willingly fell into the memories of his grandfather, anything to take his mind away from the day’s ever increasing heat and his awful thirst. He formed an image of the cool darkness of their cell, then revived his grandfather’s voice, kind and soothing. He did not notice the tears running slowly down his cheeks, drying to a salty crust before they could fall.…

  Every evening after a grueling day of breaking and hauling rock, Adham had talked with Leitos rather than falling into an exhausted slumber, teaching him things that seemingly had no use in the mines. “In the days after the Upheaval,” Adham often told, “just before the Faceless One came to power, men clawed their way out of the rubble of fallen cities, began to remake their lives, followed their hearts desire and used the talents lent them by Pa’amadin, the God of All. Peace had reigned, for men had seen too much suffering to want war and strife. During those days, men rebuilt some little of what had been lost. They lived with hope
in their hearts.”

  Adham usually paused then, letting the imagery of the telling sink in. Leitos knew the story well, but he could not envision the things of which Adham spoke. For him, they were only words. In the world he knew, sweat and grime combined to rub skin raw, and then the sun burned it a deep, leathery brown. Thirst and hunger were constant companions, and the only hope was for night’s darkness and a chance to ease aching joints, if only for a few hours, when he bedded down.

  Invariably, Adham would continue his tale, stirring in parts about the Faceless One. “Some believe he journeyed from the darkness between the stars,” Adham would scoff. With hard eyes and a contemptuous tone, he would add, “He came from darkness, yes, but it was the black from beyond the grave, the eternal night reserved for the damned. Unseen by all save the Alon’mahk’lar, he moves between the world of the living and Geh’shinnom’atar, the Thousand Hells, the realm of Peropis and of the Fallen.”

  Adham would then explain that the Faceless One held an enduring hatred for the rebellious King of the North and his followers—the ice-born people of a far-flung land called Izutar. “We are of that land,” Adham would say, as if it were the most important thing. “We carry in our veins the blood of that great and mighty warrior king.” This last he would mutter in a hush, as if fearing anyone other than Leitos might hear.

  Leitos had never believed there was anything of strength and nobility in his blood. What he knew for certain, as taught by the Alon’mahk’lar, was that he was born of a defiant people, whose opposition had earned chains and hardship. For the men of Izutar, there would be no quarter given, and everlasting enslavement was the only answer for their crimes.