Into the Desert Wilds Read online

  Slowly, the robed man knelt in front of Estin, his black eyes surveying every wound that Estin could feel across his face in much the same way an artist might study a rough first draft.

  “You take pain quite well,” the man thought aloud, brushing the fingertip of his glove across Estin’s swollen right eyelid. The rough leather tugged painfully at the battered flesh. “I see why Varra wished to keep you. You would have made a fine Turessian with a little…guidance. Most would disagree, though.”

  Estin raised his head slowly, glaring at the man.

  “Yes, of course I know about her small obsession with you,” chuckled the Turessian. “I ignored most of that day’s events out of boredom, but Varra’s insistence on claiming you drew my attention. We can see each other’s thoughts if we try, but it’s normally not something we desire to do. Personally, I find the thoughts of most of my brethren to be rather crass and short-sighted.”

  “So you knew me when I walked in. This is some kind of sick punishment for killing your kind near Altis.”

  The robed man sat back on his heels, that annoying smile playing at his lips.

  “No. We cannot see through our brethren’s eyes as easily, just hear their thoughts, which can give us glimpses of a face at times if they are very intent on it. Your name caught my attention, but your appearance was always a mystery to me. For some reason, she saw you as a good man, which was certainly vague, not as a wildling. It was rather confusing when I tried to determine who you were.

  “I’m punishing you out of frustration for not finding what I need. The rest is really irrelevant to me. Killing off a few of my people merely weeds out the weakest members in much the same way the most frail of your kind fail to survive their first winter.”

  Estin propped himself against the wall, trying not to let his trembling body collapse to the floor. There was not a bit of him that did not hurt, so attempting to get comfortable was out of the question.

  “Now,” the man began again, tapping a finger firmly against Estin’s chest. Each impact felt more like the butt of a staff than a finger. “I would like to believe that you found nothing, but I worry that you are just a good liar. All this is just to convince me that you are incompetent…imagine my disappointment if I find that you lied to me. I know that house was at a very interesting location in the city and I’m sure that I’ve missed something there. I am hoping you know more, or can figure out what I could not, with some motivation.”

  Touching one of his fangs, Estin found that the tooth he had chipped fighting for Feanne months ago was now snapped cleanly off. He could probably mend it somewhat with magic if he could get away, but fixing his injuries was looking more and more like a triviality compared with surviving.

  “I don’t know your people,” he told the human, though he could not bring himself to look the man in the eyes. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, the necromancer intimidated him. “How loyal are your people to their kin? Our loyalty to ours should be enough to tell you I would not lie, if it would endanger them.”

  Smiling more broadly, the Turessian stood and went to the desk. He sat down on its edge, regarding Estin as though they were having a polite conversation. “My people regard bloodlines to be nearly sacred. We do not let our ancestors’ bodies decay, if it is within our power to prevent. I am an example of the height of our skill to enshrine the dead for all time, no matter how long they have been dead.

  “Now,” the man continued, picking a bit of Estin’s fur off his robes, “that is not to say I will not brutally murder your family and scatter their bones to the winds. The moment I believe you have hidden from me what is rightly mine, I will find every ring-tailed rodent in these lands and tear their skin off while you watch. For now, I’ll let you scurry off and lick your wounds.

  “Do we understand one another?”

  Pulling himself weakly to his feet, Estin kept one hand on the wall to keep weight off of his sprained right ankle. The words of the man went round and round in his mind as he steadied himself.

  “You’ll kill all three of my ring-tailed children and my mate if I hide anything from you,” Estin said, testing the Turessian’s reaction to his wording. No reaction at all to the numbers or mention of the kits being ring-tailed. The man did not know what his family looked like. That, at least, was something of value. “You have my pledge that if I find whatever you’re looking for, I will let you know.”

  As Estin started to move toward the door, the man planted a firm hand on his chest.

  “Arturis,” he said softly, near Estin’s ear.

  “Excuse me?”

  “My name,” the man explained, taking his hand away. “In days past, my people believed that there was no honor in massacring a foe if they did not know who you were. You have my name, slave. Remember it, just in case you have to explain to your mate why your children were killed on account of your deceits.”

  “I have hidden nothing, Arturis.”

  “That may be. I like to keep my options open, though. Run along, little wildling, before I change my mind about breaking your neck. A great many of my kin are already lecturing me about the choice to let you live.”

  Estin stumbled to the door, pulling it open in a hurry to leave, but froze when Arturis spoke again.

  “If you see that imbecilic elf, please send him in.”

  Not willing to wait for the man to change his mind again, Estin rushed from the room, closing the door behind him.

  Estin found himself surrounded by silence in the main hall of the thieves’ guild. It had always been quiet, but it felt completely dead this time. To Estin, it seemed as though every last person had fled the building while he was being beaten. Even the archers were gone, leaving him in a vast chamber, filled only with silence and his own pain.

  Half-dragging his right leg as swelling in the ankle and knee grew unbearable, Estin made his way out of the main hall and out into the entry rooms of the large building. Once there, he collapsed, trying to focus his mind to keep the pain from making his vision blur.

  “Didn’t think you’d live to walk out,” came the hushed voice of the elven guild master, as the man appeared from the dark. Somehow the guild master had even managed to avoid Estin’s sense of smell, though his own blood was largely the only thing Estin was smelling at that moment.

  The thin man knelt beside Estin, examining the injuries, as though he did not see Estin’s glare.

  “You set me up,” growled Estin, trying to grab at the man’s neck, but the elf slapped his hand aside.

  “He promised that he was leaving town weeks ago. I had no way of knowing this would happen.” Pulling a scrap of cloth from his belt pouch, the man tied it around Estin’s shoulder to slow the bleeding of a long gash.

  “Believe me or not, I don’t care,” the man added, glancing back down the hallway Estin had come from. “I listened to what he said to you in there. While he was tossing you around, I found where he had my family held. We’re leaving town tonight and I suggest you do the same.”

  Estin shrugged weakly. “No use. He’ll find out soon enough where and who they are. You or your goons will tell him the moment he asks.”

  “Those two were the ones who took my family, squirrel. When I found out they were working for him, not me, I had to do…something. They’re not telling anyone anything now.”

  The elf pointed toward an open door, through which Estin could see a body lying on the floor. He used a touch of his healing magic to shift his vision—drawing a rush of whispered voices from the spirits at the back of his mind—to see that the body had a spirit lingering over it. The man was certainly dead, but only recently.

  “By the time he finds them, the bodies will be cold,” the guild master noted, helping Estin to his feet. “Get your wife and kids out of town before he has a reason to look for you.”

  “Why are you doing this?” asked Estin, pulling his arm free once he was standing.

  The man shook his head and began walking toward the front door of the build
ing. “I’d sell out my own mother on my terms,” he called over his shoulder. “I never agreed to work for that creature and sell out my entire city. I’m not a good man, but I won’t give Arturis anything I don’t have to. If you know what he’s looking for—by the hells, even if you don’t—I will do what I can to deny it to him.”

  With that, the man slipped out the door and was gone.

  Estin started to get up again, but fell back to the floor. It would take him hours to get back to Feanne and in his current condition, he might bleed to death before then from internal wounds. As much as he wanted to ensure that he was nowhere he could be watched when using magic in strange lands, he was not seeing much choice.

  Closing his eyes to help concentrate through the pain, Estin listened to the voices of the disembodied spirits as they began chattering in an agitated fashion at him or each other. The words were always a jumble, but he knew the gist of what they were saying—there were dead and injured nearby that he should be paying more attention to.

  The words and slight gestures of healing magic came easily to Estin after years of practice, even after neglecting his studies for several months. It took just seconds and his pain diminished, his wounds closing for the most part. He still felt pain everywhere, but his body was intact. Even his broken tooth was more or less back to the way it had been before the beatings. The bruising and aches would last weeks, but he would live.

  Estin did not bother to test his strength before leaping to his feet—he had been hurt far worse in days past and knew what his magic could do to remedy that. Hurrying from the building, he ran as fast as his unsteady legs could take him, working through the alleys toward the inn. Out of instinct, he kept out of the streets, just in case he was being pursued.

  That thought brought Estin to an abrupt halt about two blocks from the inn. What if he was being followed? He was the only one he trusted in his family to be ready to fight and he was barely conscious.

  Turning his nose to the sky, he sniffed at the air. At first, he smelled nothing more than the stink of humans and elves, as well as the exotic foods and spices of the region. Slowly, he filtered out those aromas, finding one that hid among the others.

  Death.

  The stench was unmistakable, but the smell seemed to move as Estin stood in the alley. With Corraith still free of undead rule, he knew there could not be zombies simply walking around the streets, so the scent made no sense to him, unless a body was being carted away nearby. Even the Turessians had no appreciable scent, ruling out the chance that Arturis was following him.

  Frantic to ensure he was not leading something straight to Feanne and the kits, Estin ran at the nearest wall of the alley, using his claws to climb swiftly up near the flat roof of the building. From there, he could see the roofs of the neighboring buildings, all of which were about the same height.

  He clung by one hand at the top of the wall, turning slowly at the shoulder to pivot his body and search the area around him. How long he waited he could not guess, but the sun was starting to come up.

  Estin turned and grabbed the wall with his other hand, thinking that perhaps he had been wrong about the smell when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye on another roof nearby.

  Flattening against the wall, Estin watched from the periphery of his vision, searching for anything that did not belong. It did not take him long to spot the creature as it grew careless.

  Two buildings over, a hunched humanoid was sitting in a partially-collapsed structure. The creature barely moved at all, but was becoming more obvious as the sun rose, revealing its hiding place. There was no doubt in Estin’s mind that the creature was staring straight at him, whatever it was.

  “Let’s see if you’re as fast as I am,” he told the creature softly, testing his grip on the wall.

  Estin waited another minute, then dropped the full distance to the ground, rolling as he landed to absorb the impact. The instant his feet were under him, he took off running away from the inn, sharply changing directions up another street. A little ways farther, he changed directions again and raced upward to a nearby rooftop, where he dove into a pile of broken tile on a leaning building, hoping that he was mostly concealed there. More importantly, he had positioned himself where he could watch the inn and any approach from the streets.

  This time, Estin waited almost an hour, judging by how high the sun had risen. Just as he was ready to move from his position, he saw the creature again, this time hidden in an alley below, watching him. It looked as though it had been there the whole time, waiting for him to move, its pale body mostly concealed among rubbish. It looked almost human, though so withered and pale that it reminded him far more of a decaying corpse.

  Estin shifted to run again and watched as the creature leaned in the same direction as he did. He sat back down into the wreckage he had been hiding in and the creature relaxed immediately.

  He sat up, turning slightly to look toward the inn. The place was still quiet at this early hour, but at any time it would be entirely undefended. Whatever this thing was that was following him, he had to believe it was more than capable of killing the few people at the inn before he could bring it down and that was assuming it was alone. He could not bring that threat down on his family. The newborns were an easy target for such a creature and Feanne might not be any better off than they were, so soon after giving birth.

  Slowly, Estin looked between the creature that waited for him to move and the inn.

  “I am so sorry, Feanne,” he said quietly, watching the window that he believed was their room. “I swear I will return when I can. Please forgive me.”

  Chapter Four

  “What Was Lost”

  I told myself that I would never make my mother’s mistakes. I would be independent, strong, and self-reliant. As a child, I saw my mother as wanting to be all these things, but failing. This perception lasted until I was nearly an adult.

  Sometimes, I would blame Estin for making my mother less than she could be. Other days, I would blame Insrin, my “real” father. I had it stuck in my head that the males in my mother’s life were a distraction from duty or purpose. In some way, they lessened what she could have been, at least by my thoughts of that time.

  I swore day after day that I would never let myself be so hindered. To that end, my brother was an easy target, being the only male that was fair game for me to pick on.

  It was not until much later that I understood what my brother saw, which was very different from my own perception. He said so many things I thought were naive or just him being a dumb male that later I could see for the wisdom of a person that was more observant than I. I’ve learned to respect my brother for those insights.

  Beyond the constant feeling that mother was letting us or herself down, I remember nightmares about the undead. Atall always woke with me, telling me I was being foolish and that mom and dad had saved us from them by taking us so far away.

  Regardless of Atall’s reassurance which, despite anything I said to him, was deeply appreciated, I continued to dream. Fear plagued me, no matter what exterior I tried to put on.

  I was terrified of losing those nearest me. Estin’s disappearance solidified that terror, giving it a more personal face for me. As much as I tortured my brother, every night when those fears came to me, I was clinging to him as my reassurance that not everyone had left me.

  More than anything else, as I write this I remember the nights in that inn, waking up at midday to the remnants of the horrors of my dreams. Always in that dream I smelled the rank odor of corpses and the brutal murder of Insrin, but I also would always smell father...Estin, that is.

  I tried very hard in those days not to think that I was smelling his corpse, possibly coming to kill us all. Very hard.

  As she had for nearly a month, Oria sat with Estin’s book on the floor in front of her, rereading the stories he had filled in during the weeks leading up to the birth of the kits. She mostly ignored the earlier pages with their weird scri
bbles and notes about magic, but the stories had caught her attention and imagination for much of the last two weeks, while they spent their time in the inn, waiting for some sign of what to do next.

  As had become her habit, Oria’s mother stood at the window as the sun was setting, watching the streets. The three kits slept in her arms, snoring softly, the black tips of their ears the only part that Oria could see from where she lay on her stomach on the floor.

  Nearby, Atall was practicing rolling his knife through attacks against imagined foes. He had gotten quite good at it with all the idle time he and Oria had, but Oria did not doubt for an instant that she could take the weapon from him and thump him if need be. He was, after all, just a male.

  “Children,” Feanne said suddenly, making Oria jump, given how little she had said in the last few days, “I have given it long enough. Your father has no doubt gotten himself killed. I think it’s time we move on.”

  “What?” Atall exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “He wouldn’t leave us. We can’t just go if he might still be out there!”

  “Your father is dead, Atall. Stop arguing with me and pack what you have.”

  Oria was shocked by her mother’s stern demeanor. There was not a hint of concern, other than mild annoyance at Atall. Her tone was not forgiving of his questioning of her, either.

  “Atall,” Feanne said more sternly, bouncing the three kits gently as she spoke, “do as I say.”

  “Mom, he’s right,” countered Oria, drawing her mother’s glare. “The kits aren’t even named yet. You said you wanted to wait for Estin...”

  “I have waited!” snapped Feanne, then calmed her voice as the kits began whining. “We will do what we always have. Survive. Your father clearly was not strong enough to do the same. We leave before sunrise.”

  “Where are we going?” grumbled Atall as he stuffed the few pieces of extra clothing he owned into a bag. Oria wondered if he would punch straight through the bag, with as hard as he was throwing things into it.