Blessings and Trials (Exiles and Sojourners Book 1) Page 3

  Heaps of baggage were still smoldering by the narrow stairway. Around the meeting room, the cries of the spider-bitten had faded off into silence. The Eater of the Unwanted was looking around the carnage with a hint of frustration on his charred features. “How are they putting up such a fight?”

  The web mother was jittery. The Eater chalked it up to her only giving violence and never receiving it. Yellow splatters and eight-minus-a-few legged bodies were strewn everywhere. She herself only had a few scratches on her abdomen and human arms, but the destruction of her offspring seemed worse than physical wounds to her.

  A muffled clanging and banging was filtering into the room from somewhere. All human tongues were stilled, and there were no other sounds covering it. “Find the source of that sound,” snarled the Eater of the Unwanted. “I don’t want to split up and head down one of these passageways only to be bushwhacked from behind. Besides, contract says complete extermination.”

  Quiet rasping from the spideresses scurrying competed with the clanging for a few moments. Then, a spider daughter piped up with a high, high voice, “Over here, Lord Exile.”

  The Eater turned toward the speaker and glided a few paces. It stopped when it suddenly heard leather sandals hurriedly slapping down the stone stairs. The Eater of the Unwanted turned and drew itself up to its full height. It’s charred face was cracked into a furious expression. Even before the other creature was in view, the Eater was bellowing, “Kuruskos, how can you possibly take over an hour to kill two skybeasts and set a skyship dock on fire? Wait, don’t tell me. You tripped over your big, flappy wings? You clubbed yourself over the head with your own shofar? By the Prince, even an overgrown page boy like you should have been able to handle that.”

  The footfalls slowed. “I’ve been busy, Eater,” was the annoyed response.

  The steps were sardonically far apart when the other Exile entered the abattoir of a meeting hall. A statuesque man with great leathery black wings stepped gingerly over various bits of carnage to enter the room. A look of disgust drifted across his handsome face. Kuruskos, Messenger of the Exiles, could only manage to say, “Well, I guess you have been busy too.”

  In the Celestial City, Kuruskos had feathery white wings like the other servants of the King. When the rebels were exiled, their physical forms changed. Kuruskos had been the only one to keep his wings, though now they were featherless and dark. His wings were almost exactly like the wings of the skybeasts he had just been chasing. True, Molech the Father of Dragons had gotten similar wings back, but he had mingled his soul with skybeasts and other creatures to do it. Kuruskos wondered if jealousy over lost wings explained the Exiles’ ancient war of annihilation against the Numa and the bitterness often spat at him.

  “My dear Eater, skybeasts are not easy to catch, especially when somebody raises the alarm early by setting the top of an entire section of the wall on fire,” Kuruskos was not exactly a bellicose being by nature, but he was none too pleased with the situation. “One of the skybeasts flew over the village and screeched a warning. I’m not sure how much it helped the villagers, but I couldn’t stick around to find out. I had to chase the other skybeast.”

  Kuruskos rued to himself, Who knows how much trouble those dimwitted half-breeds attacking the village caused.

  “Oh poor little birdie, had to flap your wings too many times?” mocked the Eater of the Unwanted.

  “Listen, I’ve told you before, even if we don’t get physically tired from walking, flying is different. It’s more like using a greater or maybe a lesser power, similar to how your fire burns low, if you use it too much between your...” Kuruskos’s perfectly formed lip curled away from his pristine teeth, “...meals.” The winged Exile snorted and then went on, “Listen, this next part was strange, and I’m not sure what it might mean. The other skybeast and rider acted oddly. They flew up in a big wide spiral into those clouds that overcast the area all day. I was sure they were just running away, and I had lost them. But when I popped up above the clouds, there he was, doing great big figure eights trailing two lanterns on a line. Not sure what that was about, but I killed them soon enough.”

  The Eater stared at its fellow Exile with thinly veiled disdain. “You might note the large amount of luggage and personal belongings in this area. That might lead you to surmise that they were all getting ready to take a journey somewhere, I don’t know, perhaps by skyship, since there was a serviceable dock on top of the tower until you burned it. That is, assuming you succeeded in burning it. You might then piece together these bits of information to guess that your second skybeast rider was warning off any approaching ship because of our attack.” The Eater’s sarcasm had meandered off course and lead it into a genuine observation. “Actually, these people have seemed far more prepared for this than they should have been. They couldn’t have known we were coming, could they?”

  “You might note,” began Kuruskos mimicking the Eater’s hissing and crackling voice almost perfectly, “our employer sent one force here to do this job just three months ago, and they failed. You might then surmise that these Sojourners were waiting for the other boot to drop, and might have planned ahead in case it did.”

  The web mother and several of her more sentient children gasped. They had not known about the previous failure. They began whispering in their eight-legged language.

  “It is not just their planning, you ninny,” spat back the Eater of the Unwanted, not realizing the arachnids had just found out the secret of the failed attack. “They’ve kept fighting like seasoned soldiers.” A quizzical look from Kuruskos caused the Eater to pull back a little. “Fine, not as well as actual soldiers. But, they put up a fight against our lovely eight-legged ladies. Even my charming visage didn’t throw them into a panic. Even in a skyport city accustomed to Exiles like Stormhold or Kaladar, people go into hysterics if I walk around uncovered. Do you know how difficult it is to get fireproof cloaks made?”

  “Very, I’m sure,” sympathized Kuruskos. His wings made his tailoring a challenge as well.

  “But these people fight at every turn, even after I burnt down the door to the tower and stalked in, wreathed in smoke and flame like Death incarnate. Their women and old men just looked right at me as I was killing them. They just kept singing their ridiculous song and talking to their dead god, fighting with whatever they had. Worse yet, none of them were Unwanted, not a single one. Not even after I’d killed almost all of them.”

  Kuruskos tapped the mouthpiece of his trumpet on his chin. “Are they all Sojourners?” Turning around, he continued, “I see many of their tree pendants around broken necks. Do you think that has anything to...”

  The Eater of the Unwanted waved him to silence because the constant banging and clattering that they had been investigating had been replaced by the muffled sound of someone singing.

  “Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies,” came a steady and clear but faint voice singing in the ancient tongue. “Heaven’s morning breaks and earth’s vain shadows flee.”

  The two Exiles could understand the words perfectly, though the spideresses could not. The ancient tongue was the language the Exiles had spoken in the Celestial City so long ago. It was one of the languages of the Sojourner holy texts.

  “These people,” growled the Eater of the Unwanted, “Are beginning to bother me.” It was again clenching and unclenching its burnt hand around the haft of its curved black blade.

  “Split up,” it barked at the spideress, her offspring, and Kuruskos. “Exile, take that big passageway there. The rest of you, divide and conquer. At least two of you down each passage, then meet back here. You know the job, kill everyone and everything in this keep and the walled village on this side of the river. Just in case you find an exit, remember! You are not to kill our employer’s loyal subjects on the north side of the river. I’m going to personally take care of our,” the Eater sneered, “tenor.”

  Spideresses scurried. Kuruskos headed where instructed, and the Eater stal
ked toward the source of the sound.

  The Eater had to step over an old man’s spider-bitten body just to get to the pile of boxes and baggage that had toppled in front of the door. “Haven’t these people ever heard of packing light?” it asked itself aloud, then started chuckling at its own joke, like a fire popping and snapping.

  Looking at the pile, the Exile realized that it wasn’t just luggage. There were also crates and chairs that had probably come from the open empty room halfway down the passage. Not wanting to waste anymore of its limited supply of fiery power, the Exile just kept heaving the obstacles out of the way.

  The voice inside the room had finished the whole song twice over again before the Eater finally tossed the last box out of the way with a splintering crash. Without pausing, the Exile put its shoulder down and rammed into the door with all of its weight. The heavy oaken door bound with black iron bands creaked and opened only about an inch. There was another pile inside the door as well. Growling deep in its charred throat, the Eater of the Unwanted set to using its shoulder as a battering ram. Though its physical form looked like a burnt human body, most of the Eater’s body was actually made of sterner stuff. It was more than up to the challenge of the wooden door and the heavy pile behind it. Still, the outer layer of the Eater of the Unwanted’s body left a blackened greasy smeared spot with each door rattling blow. Slowly but steadily, the door was forced back farther and farther until it was finally open enough for the Eater of the Unwanted to enter.

  A pan flew out of the room, hit the Eater in the forehead, and clattered loudly to the stone floor. The pan took a chunk of burnt flesh with it. The Exile was not even bothered by this blow that would have killed a man.

  The pan’s failure to stop the Exile did not surprise Vänlig Ullwitt. He did not miss a beat in the song while he looked up into the repulsive, yellow eyes and the burnt face with an oozing black gash in its forehead. He didn’t seemed surprised or frightened by the nightmarish form of the Exile.

  Vanlig continued to sing, “Through my Door morning breaks, and vain shadows flee.” His eyes darted to the door behind the Exile and a story from the Gospel of Matthias. Thoughts were flying through his mind now. His Door. He’d wondered what his would look like.

  “In life, in death, O Lord abide with me!

  The Eater of the Unwanted’s face shattered into a snarl. The ceiling was lower in this storeroom than out in the meeting room, and its blackened head almost touched the smooth stone. It drew back its black sword awkwardly to its side, the ropy strands of burnt muscles in its arm quivering with tension. The Eater of the Unwanted had always loved war and joined in when rewards outweighed risks. Fighting and killing came naturally to a being whose essence was consuming what others abandoned and rejected. It had feasted on battlefields the world over and through the ages. Here, with the wreckage of casks and shelves strewn about, the Eater of the Unwanted found an old man who had not abandoned hope nor rejected duty. The Eater’s very essence told him this old man couldn’t feed the fire in its belly. Old though he was, this man was loved and wanted, just like all the others the Eater and spideresses had killed out in the meeting hall.

  Neither Vänlig’s gaze nor voice wavered at the sight of the Exile or its blood covered sword, “Abide with me, fast falls the evening tide.”

  Smoke roiled out around the Exile, as if the greasy gray haze were furious and filled with hate too. The Eater spat out, “Don’t you see your death before you, you old fool?”

  The only response from Vänlig Ullwitt was, “The darkness deepens, Lord abide with me.”

  “All of the others are dead already. Can’t you see their blood on my blade?” The Eater of the Unwanted snarled at the man, who only answered him with a placid lake-blue gaze. “Were any of them special to you? Any of the old women perhaps?”

  Vänlig pictured Ingrid in his mind’s eye. He thought of the first Sojourners he’d ever met. They’d been betrayed by Vänlig’s own brother. Sentenced to death for belonging to a forbidden religion. He thought of his wife, who had beaten him through her Door to the Celestial King’s city by a dozen years. I’m coming, Sweetness. Very soon.

  “When other helpers fail and comforts flee,” the old man continued steadily. Thoughts of Ingrid, and of the man who had died hanging on a tree hundreds of years before lingered in his mind. He knew he would see that man very soon, and he hoped he would see Ingrid much, much later. “Help of the helpless, O abide with ...”

  The Eater of the Unwanted was overwhelmed with rage as it finally lashed out. Its black blade ended both song and singer, at least in that time and place. Though the man was dead before his mortal husk hit the floor, the Eater did not stop slashing. Rage drove its sword back and forth, over and over, as if it could make the man’s death more emphatic with more violence.

  In a city a thousand miles away, an eager young man in sky blue robes shouted excitedly. He foolishly flung the smoky grey crystal monocle out of his eye in celebration.

  “I saw it! I saw it!”

  He was pointing in triumph at a solid oaken door bound with black iron bands in the middle of the room. The door was at the precise center of the room and was floating more than a foot off the ground with no visible means of support.

  “We all saw it you nitwit,” spat out a seemingly jealous blonde woman in similar robes. “The Door has blood on it now where there was none before. Write your report like the rest of us are. Unless you have the courage to go and touch it.”

  “No, I have no need to risk my life touching the Door. I saw a photarguros and a photochruseos being eaten by the Door just now, right after the blood appeared” The eager young man was almost taunting the five other blue-robed observers, but especially the blonde woman. “See if anyone bothers reading your reports when I’m done writing mine. I don’t think anyone has even seen a photos since that Ärlig fellow did. Do you think I’ll get an audience with the Prince?”

  Anger spent though hate still percolating, the Eater of the Unwanted looked around the little storeroom. It shook its head in puzzlement and frustration. How did he manage to get me so mad that I killed him quickly? I was going to take my time with him. Find out what else might be around here that I should watch out for. Looking down at the dead man who somehow managed to have a peaceful look upon his face, the Eater ground its yellow teeth together. So much for that idea.

  It stalked out of the little stone storeroom. Despite its smoky ‘legs,’ it still needed to pick and weave its way through the detritus of the previous battle. Its own body puzzled it sometimes. The Eater couldn’t escape another, more philosophical question. Why had the man gone through such trouble if he hadn’t even feared death in the end? Why hide in a room if you’re just going to sing and bang and get everyone’s attention?

  “Cowering in fear!” the Eater of the Unwanted decided, as it returned to the empty meeting room. “They should all be cowering in fear! That is it. Not hiding in rooms banging away and singing their ridiculous songs. I have fought men who were bedfellows to violence and death. Men who killed without compunction and expected any day to be their last. Yet, those men were sobbing before me when I came for them.”

  If the Eater had possessed solid legs, it would have kicked an old woman’s corpse that it was standing beside. Instead, it pointlessly hacked at it with its black blade.

  Fouled sword waving around in the air, the Eater spun in a circle admiring the carnage. Bodies, some burnt, a few wrapped in spideress silk, and blood were mingled with the parcels and luggage. The Eater’s fire flickered and licked at its ribs lustily as its yellow eyes lapped up all the death and destruction. Shaking its head as it returned to the here and now, it added, “Or, begging for mercy at the least. That last one had the temerity to look me in the eye and start singing right in my face. What is wrong with these people?”

  The web mother’s voice replied from the shadow of a doorway, “Perhaps these people know our kind better than we thought.”

  “What are you still doi
ng here?” shouted the Eater, furious that his monologue had become a dialogue. “And, we’ve already gone over this once tonight. You are not one of my kind, web spawn. You may have a shard of Arachne’s shattered soul inside your wretched mass somewhere, which I am being sorely tempted to rip out of you at the moment, but you don’t have the memories, the experiences, or the power of a true Exile. No matter how you want to split hairs, you are just a half-breed like the Wildmen down in the village.” The Exile stalked into the middle of the room and pointed its sword at the spideress’s doorway menacingly.

  “The power of a true Exile?” spat back the web mother contemptuously. Rage filled her at being compared to the Wildmen yet again. The Wildmen were not shard bearers. They were not even claimed by any Exile any longer. She was a Chosen One, not some miserable cur wandering the wastes. “My Mother Daughter Sister Arachne could drain every drop of power from your filthy four-limbed husk and not so much as bat one of her eight eyes. How dare you compare me to those beasts of the field that Abzu has abandoned! My Mother Daughter Sister has even given me the power to make my own daughters. A fact which you have already so disgustingly availed yourself of. Though you can eat mine well enough, can you make offspring? Little smoky sparks with lives all their own? Or are you impotent and childless? Can you do any more than devour what others have cast aside or are forced to give you?”

  For a moment, the Eater of the Unwanted stood in the middle of the room with his sword raised, pointing at the spideress’s doorway. Fire crept out of the creature’s torso and wrapped around its shoulder and arm, gliding like a deadly serpent onto its blade. “I asked you what you were doing back here already. Are you done searching? Because if you are done here, I would love to see just how much power your precious Mother Daughter Sister has given you.”

  The threat hung in the air just like the flaming sword pointed at the doorway. After a long pause, the voice answered, “My passage was short. I am directing all my daughters down this passage as they return. This way we will be together.”