Chapter 15

Zaidna

The Empire of Chalei

The Jungles

Zalas sat up with a start. Birds were squawking overhead, and strong light streamed through the canopy. What was happening? He was supposed to have had the second watch, but it was already many hours past dawn. He quickly scanned the area for Davim, spotting him facedown on the ground near the fire pit and only just beginning to stir. “Get up, you fool,” Zalas whispered.

Davim slowly lifted his head from the damp earth, his expression dull and witless.

Realizing Davim had slept through the night as well, Zalas jumped up and searched frantically for Anoth. To his surprise, Anoth still lay slumbering, but the empty bedroll next to Anoth signaled something more alarming. The dalanai was missing.

As if sensing Zalas’s increasing panic, Anoth awoke, sneering as he rubbed his eyes. “Why did no one wake me?” he growled.

Zalas took a few careful steps back.

Upon discovering the empty bedroll, Anoth was on his feet in an instant, rushing at Zalas and shoving him to the ground. “Where is she?”

Zalas struggled to free himself but was pinned tight. “I don’t know! I just woke up!”

Anoth jumped back to his feet, wrenching Zalas up with him. “Sorai! Answer me!” His shout echoed through the trees, but when no reply came, he turned and shook Zalas. “I’m going to kill you for this!”

“It’s not my fault!” Zalas yelled between throttlings. “Davim never woke me for my watch!”

“And you didn’t wake with first light? It’s already midday!”

“I-I don’t know. I’ve never experienced sleep like that before.”

Anoth narrowed his eyes and loosened his grip on Zalas’s collar. “Where is Davim?”

Zalas pointed, but found that Davim had wisely snuck away during Anoth’s interrogation.

Anoth snorted, then stalked over to the edge of the clearing where a large tree stood. He bent low and reached into a hollow near its engorged roots, hauling Davim up from his hiding place and slamming him hard against the tree’s thick trunk. “You idiot!”

Davim yelped in pain. “I was awake! I don’t know how she got away!”

“Lies!” Anoth tightened his fingers around Davim’s throat. “You stink of wine. You will die for your carelessness!”

“No!” Davim rasped. “I only ever had two swigs of wine last night, I swear! There was a woman who came into the clearing; she talked to me, brought me to a pub! She was glowing—like a silver apparition!”

Anoth’s lip twitched, but he did not reply.

Encouraged by the fact that he was not yet dead, Davim continued. “I poured her a drink! I . . . I can’t remember anything that happened after that. But I swear I was awake!” Anoth abruptly released his grip and Davim dropped to his knees, massaging his neck thankfully.

“What, you actually believe his story?” Zalas asked incredulously. His own night had been filled with hallucinations that he couldn’t fully recall now, but the idea of a mystery woman or a pub in the jungle was ludicrous.

“I’ll explain later,” Anoth muttered as he hastened to his rucksack, unceremoniously tearing it open and pulling out his silken pouch that contained the Orb. “Pack up and prepare to hunt for Sorai. I will return in short order.” Anoth carried the Orb out of the clearing, the sound of his footsteps fading quickly.

Davim turned to Zalas with wide eyes, breathing fast. “How am I not dead?”

“I don’t know,” Zalas said, unnerved by Anoth’s uncharacteristic mercy. “What the hell happened? How could you get so drunk?”

“I only had two swigs!” Davim howled.

“Those wineskins were to last us a month at least,” Zalas scoffed. “I know you hold your liquor better than that.”

Davim growled through gritted teeth. “I know what I saw! It must have been a ghost.”

“A ghost? There is no such thing!”

“The Naltite slaves are always saying that—”

“You are a fool to listen to a Naltite. There is something at work here, and Anoth damn well knows what it is.” Zalas started to head toward the edge of the clearing. Anoth often held private counsel with the Orb, and Zalas had little interest in their discussions, but this was serious—life and death—and he was determined to make sure he didn’t end up on the wrong side because of Davim’s idiocy.

“Where are you going?” Davim hissed. “If he comes back and sees that camp isn’t packed—”

Zalas parted the leaves with one hand and took a step into the brush. “You pack. I’m going to find out what’s going on.” He slowly wove his way through the trees, making as little sound as he could. He only had to travel a few dozen yards before he heard Anoth conversing with the Orb’s discordant hum. He crouched down to watch and listen.

Anoth was kneeling on the ground, his head bowed, one arm outstretched to hold the Orb in his palm. “She showed her face to a mortal and then forced us all into an inert state. She has grown brazen in her oath-breaking!”

Oath-breaking? Only Anoth and the hadirs ever spoke of oath-breaking, and usually spat the term out like an epithet about a failed raid or bad fortune. What kind of oath-breaking could be involved where there were no hadirs? And who the hell was this “she”?

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The Orb emitted something that sounded almost like a laugh, followed by pulsating chatter that Zalas couldn’t make out from his position.

“I understand it was interference,” Anoth responded heatedly. “But it was disproportionate and clearly a direct insult to me.”

As Verahi spoke again, Zalas crept closer. Just when he could almost hear Verahi’s words over the base hum of the Orb, a twig snapped beneath his heel. He froze for a moment, looking down at his feet. But before he could turn to flee, he found Anoth standing over him, Orb in hand. “Zalas,” Anoth greeted coldly.

Zalas looked up at Anoth and held still, refusing to even breathe.

The Orb went dark, and Anoth calmly placed it back into its pouch at his belt. “Stand up and explain yourself.”

Zalas did so. “I only wanted to know why we hallucinated last night instead of waking.”

Anoth tilted his head, a razor smile splitting his lips. “There is a phrase where I come from: ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’ I ought to at least make you suffer.”

Recognizing there was no escape, Zalas simply bowed his head and waited for the inevitable.

Anoth stepped toward Zalas until he was just inches away. “Davim saw a silver woman.” He drew his dagger and pressed it to Zalas’s jugular. “What did you see?”

Zalas could feel the blade bite a little into his skin with each heartbeat. He gritted his teeth. “It was a hallucination, or my imagination. I think I saw my father. We ate—talked. I can’t remember what about.”

“I see.” Anoth’s expression remained inscrutable. “You have been dreaming, something only possible in this world for reasons you can’t understand.” He removed the blade from Zalas’s neck and turned away to head back to the clearing. “Your eyes are keen. Be grateful for them; you’re going to use them to help me track Sorai.”

Zalas followed Anoth’s lead. This was not good. Anoth was clearly rattled by whatever was going on, and if an immortal could be acted upon in such a way, it boded poorly for the helpless mortals accompanying him.

As they came upon the clearing, Zalas caught a glimpse of Davim through the trees, ducking for cover. Anoth ignored Davim entirely, keeping his eyes pinned to the ground.

They circled the clearing twice before Anoth paused, pointed, and said with certainty, “Here. Sorai left camp here. Keep a watch out for disturbed vegetation.”

Sorai’s trail away from the clearing was easy to follow. There were many broken twigs left in her wake, with bits of her tunic snagged on the thorns she had passed.

“She will have worn herself out quickly running like this,” Anoth noted as he pointed to a set of her distantly spaced footprints. “She drew strength from that creature’s psyche, but it won’t sustain her long. We’ll find her collapsed and frightened.”

Sorai’s trail was full of indications of her clumsy but fast flight, and her pace did slow as the trail went on. But once they reached a particularly large, cracked branch, all evidence of her passage ceased. Up to that point, the trail was full of motion, and then nothing.

“What happened to her?” Zalas asked as he scanned the surrounding area.

Anoth rubbed his jaw before running a hand along the branch. The crack was fresh, and the exposed wood still green and moist, but the bark surrounding the wood almost looked—scorched? Anoth rested his hand on the bark, stared at it, then shook his head. He looked up the tall trunk of the tree. “She’s too delicate to have climbed this tree. She must have changed direction. Let’s split up and search.”

Zalas nodded, and for well over an hour they made sweeping passes through the brush, meeting up at the end of Sorai’s trail each time in vain. Anoth was certain that Sorai was close by, but they could not find any trace of her—not even a drop of blood or scrap of clothing. Anoth grew increasingly agitated with each failed pass, his face turning red and his eyes going wild.

When Zalas returned from his tenth pass, he found that Anoth had thrust his dagger halfway through a tree and was now searching the ground on hands and knees. “She has to be here!” Anoth declared, more to himself than to Zalas. “She can’t shift focus—can’t work a conveyance pattern!”

“Is it possible that an animal got her?” Zalas suggested.

“No, there aren’t any signs of animal activity!” Anoth snarled. “Go and look again!” He turned away in disgust, reaching for the Orb’s pouch.

Zalas resumed his search, but was not happy about it. Anoth’s powers were unmatched; couldn’t he just find her with a flick of his hand? Was this “oath-breaking” so powerful that even Anoth couldn’t defy it?

When Zalas returned to the same spot once again, he kept his distance from Anoth, who had reconvened his discussion with the Orb. Zalas crept closer, but Anoth didn’t notice or care that he was there.

“Master, you can’t!” Anoth exclaimed.

“Enough!” Verahi snarled from the Orb. “It is by your actions alone that our enemies have elected to break their oaths of non-interference. You murdered an emperor of this world and sought to possess his wife! You disobeyed me by doing this and created justifiable cause for interference. And you wonder why they would take action against you?”

Zalas’s brow tightened. The Naltites were a danger, yes, but they were not the enemies which Verahi was speaking of. What other enemies could Anoth have with Naltena long dead? Were there others like Verahi?

Anoth shook his head repeatedly. “Master, I do not deny my weakness in falling victim to this oath-breaking, but I cannot abandon Sorai to their whims. She will die if she is left to wander the jungle alone. If that happens—”

Verahi thrummed loudly through the Orb, silencing Anoth. “You know what eventual fate lies in wait for your hadirs. You have done this to her yourself.”

Anoth bowed his head and gripped his forehead. “Do not ask this of me.”

“I do not ask, I command. You will leave Chalei at once and gather the witnesses in Judath, as you should have done in the first place. You could have had everything you wanted had you done it in the proper order. Your disobedience and impatience has made you fail. Leave your whore to rot.”

Anoth’s hand quivered before falling to his side. “Yes,” he whispered thickly.

The Orb darkened and Verahi fell silent. After a few moments, Anoth lifted his head. He stared at the Orb, and the longer he did so, the tighter his free hand clenched.

Zalas held his breath, only daring to move away when Anoth began to pummel a nearby tree, cracking the bark and splintering the wood beneath. Many minutes passed, and Zalas only returned when Anoth finally called out to him.

“I couldn’t find any other clues,” Zalas mumbled lamely.

Anoth didn’t reply, his eyes still searching the jungle.

“So, what now?” Zalas asked. “Will we find our boat or stay here?”

Anoth abruptly tugged the silk pouch from his belt and held it out to Zalas. “Not we. You. You will take the Orb to Judath and begin the search for the witnesses.”

Zalas gawked, refusing to reach for the pouch as it swung back and forth before him like a melon in a hammock. “What about you? Isn’t it the will of Verahi for us to go with you?”

“I know the will of Verahi!” Anoth snapped.

Zalas frowned. Anoth was lying, but Zalas didn’t dare accuse him of it.

Anoth stamped forward, thrusting the Orb out to Zalas again. “Take the Orb and get Davim. I will join you in Judath once I’ve found Sorai.”

Zalas hesitated a moment, thinking of what Verahi’s anger would be when he discovered Anoth had again disobeyed him, but reluctantly accepted the pouch.

“I need not tell you what would become of you should you be careless with the Orb,” Anoth hissed, leaning in close.

Zalas stood firm. “I won’t deprive my descendants of the Orb.”

“Only if your son lives long enough to sire children of his own,” Anoth reminded. “Walk directly west from camp and you will find the shore. Head south after that and you will find our boat.”

“And then?” Zalas asked as he tied the pouch to his belt like a coin purse.

“Sail west across the strait to Judath. Read the Mother Star as I taught you, and make judicious use of ormé if the winds fail you. I will meet you in Marin.” With that, Anoth turned and disappeared into the jungle.