Elyon Page 9

  Johnis placed the medallion around his neck in open view and waited for a signal from Sucrow. By his expression, something like terror had overtaken him, but was it his or the Leedhan’s?

  Silvie took the knife from Sucrow. She would never relinquish it, Darsal knew. The slender, lithe woman looked more serpentine than ever and kept eying Sucrow as if judging the distance for a successful death throw.

  Sucrow stopped chanting. He held aloft something silver and round in his right hand for the bats to see.

  Johnis found his confidence and stood to one side of the altar. He puffed out his chest, raised his chin high, and spoke clipped words in a language Darsal didn’t recognize. He reached into his robe and withdrew a yellow, rotted, maggoty fruit that was bigger than his palm and held it at arm’s length in both hands.

  The bats fell quiet.

  “I come seeking audience with your guardian!” Johnis demanded of the Shataiki. “I come with a gift, should he desire such! Or is Derias a coward?”

  Dissention and arguing rustled through the ranks.

  A Shataiki twice the size of the others flapped overhead, circled, and swooped down onto the platform, landing directly across from Johnis before the altar, his wings partly folded.

  “Who comes to my home?” the beast asked. His eyes didn’t leave the fruit. He ran his long, pink tongue over his black lips and sneered. “So you survived. And returned.”

  Johnis raised his chin. He started to change. To turn completely transparent. His eyes took on the purple gaze. Lips curled into a wicked sneer. Animallike.

  The Leedhan.

  Even Silvie looked unnerved by his behavior. Derias made a coughing sound that was probably a laugh. His eyes narrowed and brightened. “Then you understand the danger.”

  “I concern myself not with such risks.” Johnis tightened his jaw. “I present to you a means of restoring that which has so long been denied you. The glory of the sons of our Great One, our lord Teeleh, shall at last be made complete again. These trappings which now bind you shall no longer hinder. What say you, mighty guardian?”

  Johnis would know better. The entity had to be lying. Shataiki could never regain “glory,” assuming they’d ever had any.

  The bat drooled over the fruit. He wanted it, badly, but something was holding him back. Only one choice would allow them to find out. Was it base to ask Elyon to bestow wisdom upon a Shataiki?

  “You think me so easily swayed?” Derias stroked his chin with a claw. His gaze flicked from the fruit to the sacrificed bird to Johnis. “Begone!”

  “We have an agreement.” Johnis’s voice was husky. Seductive.

  “I am not persuaded.”

  “Such is for you and you alone, my prince. Taste and see.” Johnis opened his free hand toward Silvie. She passed him the knife. He cut the fruit open, returned the knife to her, and smelled half of the fruit.

  Darsal’s stomach churned.

  Johnis said something so soft she couldn’t even hear his voice. She only saw his mouth move.

  But the bat heard. Silence lingered.

  Then Derias turned to Sucrow and took the bird from his outstretched hand. Johnis watched, blank faced, while the Shataiki tore its prey to pieces and fed. Darsal imagined Johnis was the bird, his soul ripped apart by cruel talons.

  Silvie whispered to Johnis, and the bat replied.

  “Such is not within reach forever,” Johnis warned.

  The throng of Shataiki fluttered in the trees. Darsal grabbed for one of Marak’s knives. He pulled her hand away.

  “Take and eat, most excellent of beasts.” Johnis offered the fruit to the bat one last time, his words lost in the air that clung to them.

  No, Johnis, no.

  Derias shrieked and took off into the air, circled high beyond the trees, and dove back down, wings folded, straight for Johnis.

  Darsal grabbed Marak’s knife and whipped her arm back to throw. Marak grabbed her, pinned her down, and took the knife away.

  The bat let out another roar and whooshed past Johnis’s head, knocking him down. His talons closed around the fruit, and he swerved upward again. The other Shataiki took flight, and hundreds upon hundreds joined their queen in the sky. They screeched and dove over the humans’ heads.

  Marak threw himself over Darsal.

  “Did he eat it?” Darsal screamed. “Did he eat it?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Darsal fought at first, then remembered the general wasn’t going to hurt her. He scooped her up and ran with her in a dark, hot cocoon.

  “Josef!” Marak yelled. “Get down from the—”

  Johnis shouted over the din. Water splashed when he jumped in and started swimming.

  “What’s happening?” Darsal demanded. “What’s going on? Did they take it?”

  “Yes,” Marak snarled. “They’re following us out. Josef ordered them to meet us in the sky but not to attack.”

  “Then put me down!”

  “They aren’t all obeying the command! I don’t want you to—”

  He grunted and fell flat on his face on top of her. He fought off the Shataiki clawing them. Another bat assaulted the first, and the pair rolled away. Marak picked Darsal back up and continued his retreat.

  “Sucrow! Forget that! Come on!”

  “Marak!” She threw her arms around his neck.

  “Hold on!” He lost his footing, and they both went flying.

  Darsal fell, her head smashing against rock, with Marak’s weight slamming into her. Red and yellow stars, then darkness.

  fourteen

  Johnis raced with the others back through the forest, with two million Shataiki at their heels. Shaeda dug into him, riding him like a horse to steer clear of the bats. Derias had relayed the order not to attack the humans, but the ranks were unstable, and the beasts kept breaking the line to harass them. The queen had taken the bait.

  And he was enraged.

  The bats roared around them, their wings like thunderclaps, darkening the sky further. Silvie scrambled ahead of Johnis and the others and went for the horses. She yelled.

  Shaeda’s power surged through him, charging his muscles and shoving blood through his body with enough force to mow down a Horde army.

  Johnis and Marak, still carrying Darsal, were only seconds behind. Sucrow straggled. Johnis tripped over something solid and fumbled. He rolled sideways and jumped back up, looked down.

  A horse’s leg bone. Grimacing, Johnis darted around the corpse. All three horses were completely torn to shreds and stripped of flesh.

  Marak’s knife was in his hand. He shifted his wriggling bundle over one shoulder. Disgusting, Johnis thought, holding an albino like that.

  “They did this?”

  “Better the horses than us. Can’t she walk?”

  With a snarl, Marak started back up the path, seething over the dead horses. Johnis hurried after him with Silvie and Sucrow.

  On and on they fled, breathless and fumbling in the unnatural night. Shaeda made Johnis swift and surefooted, skirting up the sides of the rock faces and canyon with ease. Twice the general stumbled with his burden, and twice Johnis caught him and helped him regain his footing.

  “Just leave her!” Johnis said the second time. They were halfway up, and the wench was only slowing them down. “Leave her already! How do you stand the smell of the worm?”

  Marak glowered at him. “She’ll die at the appointed time!”

  “So now you favor the albino,” Johnis snapped, appalled at the thought. Shaeda bared her teeth in scorn. “Will you be joining Eram’s ranks?”

  Marak struck him with his free hand. “Mind your tongue, boy. Bats or no, I’ll have your head and—”

  “You think you can destroy me?” Johnis rose from the ground. Shaeda bristled, terrified of the Shataiki and ready to engage any lesser being. This general was now simply a nuisance. Johnis’s hands curled like talons.

  Marak turned his back. “You can kill her with the others.”

&n
bsp; He marched on, heedless of the rest. Johnis started after him, compelled to tear the general’s heart out and feed it to Derias.

  Silvie grasped his shoulder. Shaeda tensed. “Enough,” Silvie said. “Deal with the albinos first. Then the general.”

  fifteen

  Darsal regained consciousness while she was still slung over the general’s shoulder. She grunted as her teeth snapped together, chin bouncing off Marak. He took the final steps up the side of the canyon and set Darsal on her own two feet. With Shataiki still swarming in the cauldron, they hadn’t dared slow. Her head throbbed where she’d hit it. Blood caked the back of her neck.

  The blow she’d taken seemed to jar her general more than anything else.

  “Can you walk?” He had an edge to his voice. Who knew it would take a swarm of blood-lusty Shataiki to unnerve a general?

  Darsal staggered, wincing. “Of course I can walk.”

  Her general’s gaze lingered on her.

  His touch was astonishingly light. Those big hands that could crush held her steady with all the care one would give a newborn. His eyes were wild from the chase, lit with terror at the implications of the carnage these beasts could create.

  The Throaters were quiet, faces ashen and set like flint in an attempt to conceal their obvious fear. Good. Nothing like a trip to hell to put the fear of Elyon in a cutthroat.

  Sucrow stood gaping, awestruck by the sight of his master’s servants. The Dark Priest fell to his knees and uttered a prayer to his god, thanking him for their success thus far. Darsal frowned.

  “I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t sacrifice to Teeleh,” she scoffed.

  Johnis had won this round. Assuming any deal made with a Shataiki could be considered a win. Johnis had the power and the medallion that controlled the bats. And Marak’s ear.

  “She is using him, daughter.”

  She bristled at that. What will she do?

  Elyon’s silence made her skin crawl.

  Desert greeted them. Stark, silent desert that vanished beneath a shadowy, writhing curtain. Marak ordered the torches lit. The bats howled and shrieked, keeping their distance from the flames.

  “We have four days,” Johnis warned Marak in that deep, husky voice that had to belong to the entity Gabil spoke of. “We’ve no time to waste. You’ve brought fresh horses as instructed?”

  In answer, horses and riders pounded toward them, kicking up a dust storm. From out of the sands came Cassak and some of his men, leading horses. Ignoring the surprise of the rest of the group, Cassak brought a stallion to Marak and Darsal.

  Captain and general traded long, cold looks. What had become of these two, once friends?

  Without a word, Marak helped Darsal astride, then leaped behind her.

  Shataiki filled the canyon and poured out of it into the sky, a giant black tornado, a whirlwind of leather, fur, fangs, and claws mottled with red, beady eyes.

  Johnis, Silvie, and Sucrow mounted their new horses. Johnis held his accursed medallion in one hand and looked to the blackened sky, enthralled, terrified, his eyes stained purple. He was speaking in the foreign language again.

  Johnis afraid of the Shataiki?

  No, the thing inside of him was.

  At this moment Darsal feared him more than Sucrow. Johnis knew no boundaries beyond the thoughts of his heart. Right now he either wasn’t listening to his heart or his heart had turned as black as the hurricane gathering above them.

  “Are you ready?” Marak whispered into her shoulder.

  Had it really only been a few days since Johnis asked her the same question?

  “I’m ready to die, Marak. But this? Never. This is mindless slaughter.” Darsal straightened in the saddle. The acid ball in her stomach knotted further at her epiphany.

  Johnis was still reciting whatever wicked spell pleased him as Sucrow lifted his clawlike hands to the sky. Silvie pricked her finger with the silver ceremonial dagger, for reasons Darsal didn’t know. But then, the girl seemed to have developed a fetish for those knives. Cassak kept a baleful watch, ordering his men not to panic, to keep the line.

  None of them had ever seen so much as one Shataiki—much less this swarm of two million.

  Derias, the Shataiki queen, erupted from the throng of beasts and circled Johnis, shrieking over his head. He spiraled back into the cloud, roaring against his entrapment. His long, cold shadow eased by.

  “Have you heard of the mountain called Ba’al Bek?” Johnis asked, his voice still the strange sound of one possessed by a Leedhan.

  Ba’al Bek. Darsal’s eyes narrowed. Why did that sound familiar? Certainly she hadn’t learned it from this earth.

  “No.” Marak tensed. The certainty in his voice had dissipated. Sucrow was not the only one capable of sorcery.

  The Leedhan . . .

  “I will show you the way. We have four days to reach it. But first we require the blood of the ruler of this world.”

  Marak’s eyes narrowed. “Qurong’s blood.”

  Johnis gave a sharp nod. “Only a little.”

  “Why?”

  Marak glared at Johnis. Darsal watched him. Her general’s eyes fixed onto Johnis’s purplish-blue ones and seemed half-drugged. Johnis’s mouth curled into a wicked, coy grin.

  “I must perform a ceremony preceding the incantation,” Sucrow said. “It can only be done at Ba’al Bek.”

  The general didn’t seem to notice. He was seeing something else entirely.

  “General Marak.” Darsal cleared her throat, unwilling to touch him in front of the priest. The trance broke.

  “You know where this place is?” Marak snapped at Sucrow and Johnis.

  “We must make haste,” Johnis said in Shaeda’s voice. “Such is two days beyond Middle, and a day and a half must pass before we reach the esteemed leader.”

  sixteen

  The eclipsing clouds of Shataiki merged together, blotting out the sun entirely. No moon, no stars, nothing but millions of red dots marking the beasts’ faces. Their unblinking eyes stared down at the band of humans below. Overhead the Shataiki queen raged and thrashed, darting in and out of the throng, barely restrained. Derias snarled and howled against his imprisonment.

  The hours passed, and evening came, further pitching the blackness. The cold night air strangled Darsal. How the others still knew where they were going, she had no idea. They were lost out here. At the mercy of savage monsters.

  Her unease returned. Marak’s outbursts of affection had ebbed. Another half hour passed. She couldn’t abide both his silence and the Shataiki’s wrath.

  “Tell me about Jordan,” she said. His mind had refused to make the connection between his family and the albinos, between not serving Elyon and serving Teeleh. Maybe in drawing the two brothers together she could make him see . . .

  The general didn’t respond for a minute. Then he clicked his tongue at the horse and rode forward, a short distance away from the others. Away from Sucrow.

  “He was my brother.”

  Stubborn Scab. “And . . . ?”

  “He’d be a captain by now if the disease hadn’t taken him.”

  The general looked ahead, his voice quiet. For a minute he looked like his brother, hidden beneath a shell.

  “I wish I’d known him better.”

  “Me too.” A half smile crossed Marak’s face. “Stubborn fool.”

  THE EXPEDITION PARTY RODE ON TO THE STEADY THRUM OF rushing bat wings, punctuated by Derias’s snarls. Johnis, Silvie, and Sucrow argued occasionally, but even they were mostly silent. Silvie wouldn’t relinquish Sucrow’s dagger. The priest, understandably, wanted it back.

  “What was it like?” Marak’s voice rumbled through Darsal’s bones and roused her. She sat up straighter and looked around. He’d ridden out again, separating them from prying ears.

  “Drowning. I never asked Jordan. You told me how it happened. But . . . there’s always more with you.”

  She summoned the memory back. “Terrifying. Exhilarating. The
water’s cold as ice. And deep, impossibly deep. The deeper you go, the warmer the water becomes. Darker. And soon you realize Elyon’s in the water with you.”

  She went on, explaining how her lungs burned and how, finally, she’d breathed in the water. Like a fish.

  The general listened, emotionless. “Was Jordan out of his mind?” he breathed.

  Darsal kept her voice even before speaking of his family’s deaths. That wound was still ragged and festering, hot with blood. “Were you out of your mind when you tried to save them and stay loyal to Qurong? You didn’t have to do that, Marak. Elyon knows it’d have been easier if you hadn’t.”

  For a full minute they merely stared at each other. Marak was listening now. And he was so close she could feel his body heat. But in five minutes he might consider killing her again.

  Her jaw set. Idly, she fingered Jordan’s pendant, but she didn’t notice until she saw the general staring at it.

  “I’m not afraid for myself, Marak.” She didn’t look. Didn’t want to see his reaction to that. He could take it however he liked.

  Elyon . . .

  Seconds ticked by.

  “People die whether albino or not, Darsal.”

  She drew a breath. “Then I have already failed.”

  TORCHLIGHT DID LITTLE MORE THAN ILLUMINATE THEIR faces in this unnatural darkness. Cassak spoke from horseback to his four scouts, who were flanked by servants carrying the flames. Sucrow was right—Marak no longer considered him a friend, not since Jordan and Rona’s arrests. He hadn’t seen it before, but now, with the growing rift following their executions, he could see plainly.

  And now Marak was falling for an albino. Worse, Marak knew Cassak had stolen the amulet right from under his nose and taken it to the priest. He’d taken the copies of the journals, too, but thus far the general hadn’t noticed. More of the priest’s skills.

  “Keep the torches in rotation,” he said to the scouts. “And relay from beyond the cloud. Try not to agitate the beasts.” Cassak glimpsed the priest riding up. “You’re dismissed.”

  He narrowed his eyes at Sucrow’s approach, staff in hand. He still detested the priest and his cutthroats, and he had no intention of watching Marak send himself down a hole. Maybe this would wake him up and snap him back into the real world, where albinos were the enemy to be destroyed, and loyalty to Qurong was to be held above all else.