Blessings and Trials (Exiles and Sojourners Book 1) Read online

  Vänlig suddenly choked up, tears welling up in his eyes. “Yes, He did,” was all he could manage. He almost broke down.

  Instead, he swallowed her up in another huge, grandfatherly hug. Finally, he let her go, and looked at all three of the children. “Now, all of you, go down to the village through the tunnels and don’t stop!”

  CHAPTER 2 - THE FALLEN

  23rd of Sorun, 2nd Year, 31st Aion

  “The house of Enoch listened to the fallen ones, the Exiles, and were jealous of the Numa because of the high places. They set foot on the holy mountain and made war against the Numa. The faithful servants of the Lord defended the high places of the Numa, but the house of Enoch and the Exiles made ships that sailed in the air. The Exile Molech corrupted the great beasts into abominations with his own soul. Thus many of the faithful servants fell and the songs of the Numa fell silent as they were swept from the earth, like dead ashes from a cold hearth.”

  – The last paragraph from The Book of the Beginning

  Yellow eyes glared out of the charred black face. A burnt mouth that should have belonged to a dead man sneered. This was an Exile, a fallen angel tossed out of Heaven and into a physical form matching its dark soul. “It is a strategic decision. I have limited fire. It is unwise to expend it just to get in. We were told this complex extends quite far underground. We’ll need my flames there.”

  A larger, more hideous version of a spideress asked in a clattering, accusatory voice, “Are you not powered by worship and sacrifice like your brethren? Even within us, Our Mother Arachne is. The rush of power when I devour a sacrifice is divine.” She licked her lips, demonstrating that she did not have the false lips of the smaller spideresses. “If you are a whole Exile, do you not feel so much more?”

  “I am not called the Eater of the Unwanted for nothing, half-breed,” replied the burnt creature. The spideress rankled at being calling a half-breed, but she did not say anything. Shard bearers like her had only a small piece of an Exile soul in their mostly natural bodies.

  The Eater of the Unwanted went on, “My sacrifices must be given to me by others who renounce their claims upon them. As it is now, I have only the power I carry within me. None of these Sojourners—,” the thing spat the word through its yellow teeth and black lips with disgust, “—meet my needs. Our contract specifically forbids our hurting any of the ‘loyal subjects’ on the far side of the river. Your children must open the door, that is the end of it.”

  “Can you not summon more power from your temples? We do not need to put my children at unnecessary risk, do we?” This spideress was so knowledgeable because she was a web mother, a woman who had willingly undergone a transformation into this form to better serve her Exile mistress. Unlike her children, she retained some elements of humanity like her human mouth.

  In a singsong voice, she suggested, “I know you do not have many places of worship, but surely someone has given a priest of yours an unwanted baby or an annoying old relative they no longer wanted to care for...”

  “It is more complicated than that,” growled back the Eater of the Unwanted. “I did not have a spare smokestone to bring along and receive power through, and I…” the Eater paused ever so slightly and rehashed its decision to itself. I needed to give that new priestess a stone. How often do I get someone who wants to become clergy for me? Especially in a new city where I wasn’t represented before. It is a whole new marketplace, so to speak. At least this job for the Pale Lady came along. She has a skilled stonewright to make a new stone for me. Of course, I could have told that priestess to wait until I’d finished this job, but she probably would have jumped ship for The Lord of the Feast, or Ishtara, or maybe even Thanatos. She had that morbid look about her, dressed all in black. No, I had to get her set up and going first. I couldn’t have done it any other way.

  The Eater’s eyes flared with anger, “Why am I bothering to explain this to a half-breed?”

  The Eater drew its unnatural body up to its full height. Its torso looked like a man’s body burnt to the color of charcoal, except its ribcage was hollow above its hips where a fire constantly burned. Below its hips, the Exile’s body became a column of smoke that held it up like legs.

  The spideress was not cowed by the Exile’s unnatural form or show of anger. She did not like being called a half-breed. Her high voice screeched in defense, “I am a Chosen of one of the six Great Ones. You cannot just dismiss my concerns as...”

  The fire in the Eater’s belly roared up in anger, and tendrils of the smoke billowed out and writhed like they were alive. “Silence!” Its voice boomed off the stone walls. “You signed the contract in blood, or whatever you call that yellow phlegm that passes for your vital fluids. I am in command. Here, you are to obey me. It does not matter who you give your final allegiance to. Here, you are mine. Do I have to remind you of the consequences for breaking our contract?” The Eater of the Unwanted raised its black-bladed sword and pointed the curving tip between the spideress’s two human eyes.

  Cringing backward, the spideress reassessed the situation. “But… But... There are murder holes and embrasures guarding the door,” she squeaked. “Don’t make me send my children to their deaths!”

  The Eater howled, “If you aren’t prepared to use them up for your purposes, why did you even have the things in the first place?”

  It spun away, smoke swirling around it. Instead of burying the sword in the spideress like it wanted to, it lifted it high and chopped down at the stone floor. A normal sword would have bent or broken. With the Eater’s black blade, it was a chunk of the stone floor that splintered. Bits of grit and sharp chunks flew right through the eater’s smoky lower half, to little effect. The spideress, on the other hand, had to shield her eyes from the flying debris with her human arms.

  Turning around again, the Eater tried once more, “Aren’t you afraid I am going to kill you? By the contract, I’m well within my rights as leader.”

  “No, you need me to complete the full contract and claim your reward from the Pale Lady.” The spideress’s voice was irrationally confident.

  The Eater snarled back, “Kuruskos and I can complete the contract without you or your children. You are just here to make it go much, much faster. It is a purpose you are currently failing at miserably.”

  For a moment the spideress sounded like the human woman she used to be. “What are you so afraid of, Exile? You could do this whole job by yourself, you say. The fastest solution is to burn out the defenders. Then chop or burn down the door, strategy or not.”

  The Eater glared down at the spideress as it clenched and unclenched its hand around its sword grip. Its mind thought many times faster than a man’s. All of this flashed by while it clenched and unclenched its hand once. I want to kill her so badly. First I would hack off each one of her eight legs. Then… But it would take so long to hunt down every last one of these Sojourners without her and her ‘children.’ I wish I’d kept some of the Wildmen with me instead of sending them ALL to the village. They know how to follow orders. Unfortunately, they seemed pretty set on working together.

  I wonder if telling the spideress about the failed attack before would convince her to let me hold my flames in reserve? No, better she doesn’t ever find out about that, given how hard it is to get her to send her little spawn to take a single wretched door. She’s right about the murder holes though. I could try to walk right up there and hack the door down, but if they start peppering me with spears and bolts and dead chickens… That one time in Salizanidad, that was ridiculous. Immobilized by dead poultry, how embarrassing. At least I killed everyone who saw that happen.

  Point is, they could cause me an annoying amount of damage before I could hack through the door. Nothing that would actually stop me. Well, unless someone got the bright idea to douse me in water. That would be bad. But really, I’ll have to heal whatever they do to me later and it will slow me down too much to finish this job. Especially if the skybeasts weren’t the real reason the last
attack failed. I need to conserve my powers for whatever really wiped out that last assault, but this eight-legged web witch won’t help. Where’s Kuruskos? Send an Exile to kill two skybeasts and he’s gone for an hour? What is he doing? Ugh, I just want to get this over with. What an amateur operation, and I’m supposed to be the one in charge...

  The Eater suddenly set his bare eyebrows low and glared. “Out of the way, useless half-breed. Let a real Exile take care of it. I’m going to make a special trip to the isle of Arachnos after this just to tell your mother she hatched a coward and a cheat for a daughter.”

  An animal roar of frustration rattled off the stone of the narrow stairway. Wisps of smoke shrouding the Eater shook with the echoes. It had used up much of its flames to drive back the defenders at the door. Yet after hacking their way through the wooden barrier, their advance was quickly stymied on the stairway down.

  “I’ve spent the lion’s share of my flames just to make it another hundred feet? Why is this taking so long? These people should be quaking in terror! Untrained men can’t bear the sight of me,” its voice crackled and hissed like a fire in dry wood. “But these wretched fools are somehow improvising defenses?”

  More obsequiously than before, the spideress replied, “It is only a little barricade. My daughters will have it cleared away in no time at all. Only a momentary delay. Don’t worry, Lord Exile.” She was babbling, trying to fill the empty space and insulate herself from the anger of the Eater. “A few bags and parcels that my daughters will be rid of in a matter of moments. Nothing to concern us overly much, Lord Exile.”

  She had not seen it truly angry until it attacked the door upstairs. The sight had terrified her. She now believed the Eater could and would kill her and every living thing in the underground complex just for pleasure, no rewards necessary.

  The charred black Eater rounded on the spideress, “Even using my flames hasn’t sped things up. You’ve lost more of your daughters than we can afford. I guess expecting you and your children to be competent was overly optimistic.” The Eater sneered down at the spideress with pure contempt. “Why did I send those Wildmen down to the village? If I just had a couple here instead of all of you...”

  The Eater’s look fell from contempt to consternation, “Where is Kuruskos, that leather-winged fairy of an Exile? He should have been done and back by now. Maybe he could do your job for you...” Gouts of flame surged up through the Eater’s ribcage as it raged. The display reminded the web mother that beings as powerful as Exiles did not have or need internal organs.

  An inhuman scream from the direction of the baggage barricade illustrated the fact that the spideresses did in fact have internal organs. The organ in question was not essential to that particular spideress’s continued existence. Nevertheless, it was still quite painful to be stabbed in.

  At the sound of the scream, the web mother spideress dashed to the barricade. Finding one of her children wounded in the abdomen, she scooped it up in her human arms. With a jerky quickness, she darted back up the steps, out of reach of the spearmen behind the barricade.

  “You could have at least grabbed a bag or package on your way back to help clear the way,” spat out the black-bodied Exile. Above its fiery midsection, the skin on the creature’s chest, arms, and face was charred black and crispy. Its face broke into a sneer. The baked skin broke open in places, oozing a thick, almost black, crimson fluid.

  “I hate working with half-breeds,” it hissed.

  Despite her newfound fear of the Eater, the old epithet touched a deep nerve in the once-a-woman spider creature.

  “Arachne is one of the Great Ones, and we bear a shard of her mighty soul!” Her voice was chittering excitedly, screeching with emotion. The spideress was almost five feet long from her petite, feminine nose to the ghastly spinnerets on the end of her bulbous abdomen. Even so, as she reared up, trying to rise to the Exile’s level, her face never got higher than its fire-filled belly.

  “The Wildmen, they are filthy half-breeds! Nothing but animals and men mixed by Abzu’s sorcery. There is nothing sacred or holy or divine in them.” The spideress held up her monstrous, wounded daughter over her cephalothorax, “Look on the beauty that is the great and glorious Arachne, Mother Sister Daughter of all Exiles!”

  The charred black Exile struggled with its desire to grab the quivering, wounded spideress and stuff her into the blazing fire in its hollow belly. Simultaneously, it fought the urge to drive its blade between the two human eyes of the screeching web mother. Just like she said up in the tower, I need this idiotic shardling and its putrescent offspring if I am ever going to collect payment on this godforsaken contract. Arachne is far above me in the Grand Order, but this thing has only a drop of Arachne in her. Her little ‘children’ are just fractions of that. Well, words can make better weapons than steel sometimes.

  Crushing down all its violent urges, the Eater replied, “Do you remember the smell of the Tree of Life in the Celestial City in Ouranas? Do you remember the color of eyes that Enoch the Father of Men had? Can you see the flames burning the Last Eyre of the Numa in your mind’s eye?” The Exile paused for effect.

  The web mother glared up at the Eater and clicked her teeth together as spasms of anger made her jaw snap shut. It gave a rough approximation of the sounds her daughters made on similar occasions with their arachnid mouth parts. Then as the Eater’s gaze did not falter, she fell silent. Lowering her gaze, she brought her wounded offspring down into cradling arms.

  The flame-bellied Exile chided her. “You are not my Mother-Sister-Daughter. That is only Arachne. She was in the Celestial City before the Exile. You were not. She knew that old fool, Enoch. You did not. She watched the Last Eyre burn with all the rest of us. You were not there. You are a piece, a sliver of a fraction of a splinter of a whole Exile. But, you are not an Exile, shardling. You, the dragons of Molech, the giants of Anak, all of you are just little embers, sparks floating above the raging inferno we Exiles truly are. You are nothing more than a mingling of spider and woman and a little drop of Exile. You are so much less than me it can barely even be contemplated, let alone put into words. But, you and your offspring may still be useful, and many of you may live to collect whatever it was that the Pale Lady promised you. However, it will almost certainly involve some sacrifices.”

  Battered by the Exile’s words, the spideress crouched down, cradling her wounded offspring in her front legs. The offspring looked like a copy of the spideress only smaller, about two feet from tiny nose to little spinneret. The wound in the offspring’s abdomen was still oozing a little sickly yellow fluid.

  “What are you thinking of, Eater of the Unwanted?” whispered the web mother.

  “My fire is burning low.” It spoke now in a warm, low, soothing tone. “I used most of it to burn down the tower door, so that your precious little ones wouldn’t have to face the danger.” There was no sarcasm in its voice as might be expected. It sounded completely genuine.

  The web mother’s human eyes softened a little.

  “Obviously, if I had one of my smokestones here, I could fuel my flames with petitions and sacrifices as you so kindly suggested earlier.” This elicited an up and down rock of the spideress’s body, her equivalent of a nod. “However, as we all did, I thought this was going to be easier than it is. Because of various circumstances and needs, I did not even have an extra smokestone to bring.” The Eater’s features seemed apologetic.

  The spideress made a soft clucking sound in agreement.

  “Taking the door was much harder than it should have been.” An edge had returned to the Exile’s voice. “If I would have had any flames left for those infuriating spearmen or the ones pouring the stones down the murder holes, I would have incinerated them all there.”

  Bouncing in agreement, the spideress whispered, “Yes, yes! They hurt my children. Burn them all!”

  “Instead, these feckless cowards have escaped and are holding us up with some idiotic pile of luggage.” The Eater’s v
oice had been rising in volume and pitch, but it suddenly became soft, almost wheedling. “That old beggar woman we found on the edge of the last town was the last proper meal I’ve had. I need to eat again to recharge my fire. Once I do, we can get past this pile, and your children can stop being needlessly hurt.”

  Sensing a change in the Eater’s demeanor, the web mother suddenly became stock still. Her human eyes widened a little in anticipation.

  The Exile’s eyes narrowed as it stared hard into the web mother’s eyes. Its voice took on a hint of steel. “Give me your injured offspring. She is useless to us... to you, now. Renounce your desire for her and let me feast. Then, we will finish this job and all go collect our rewards.”

  The Eater of the Unwanted still held back about the previous attacks. Now is not a time for logic with this daughter of Arachne. Rhetoric, as the Prince says after all, is the sharper weapon of the two when assaulting most minds. The Pale Lady, their employer, had sent a previous group to wipe out these Sojourners three months before. That group of hired thugs and mercenary Wildmen had been completely defeated by the inhabitants of this tower. So far, I haven’t seen any sign of anyone or anything capable of such a martial feat, no matter what the Pale Lady says about skybeasts and ambushes from the air. As far as I’m concerned, that someone or something is still waiting for us somewhere around here. I’d rather not face them on an empty stomach.

  The spideress looked down at the little copy of herself in her dainty hands and then back at her other daughters trying to grab bags and parcels while dodging spear thrusts. Their venomous fangs did them no good if they could not get close enough to use them.

  “It is for the greater good,” she whispered down to her offspring in the tongue of the eight-legged. Looking up at the yellow eyes of the Eater of the Unwanted, the spideress whispered, “Here, take her. I don’t want her anymore.”