Sons of Evil: Book 1 Book of Dread (3 page)

The three
men leaned in close, Darius putting the candle within inches of the book. There
was no mark to indicate where the axe blade had fallen.

“Back up boys,” Kevin said. There
was an edge to his tone that his sons knew would brook no argument.

He raised the axe again, this
time letting out a small yell as he drove it home, less concerned now with the
accuracy of the blow than with its force. He struck again and again, his shouts
growing with each attempt, his muscles drawing strength from the emotions he
had kept buried while listening to his daughter relay what had happened to her.
His last blow was accompanied by a cry that could have been boiling anger or an
anguished sob, and as it landed the book fell from the stump and Kevin fell
back onto the seat of his pants, totally spent.

Darius gave his father a few
moments to slow his ragged breathing, then pried the axe from his trembling
hands. He set it aside, then leaned in close to the book so he could study it. “Nothing,”
he reported.

Kevin did not reply, just sat
with his head hung, beaten.

“Let’s sleep on it,” Darius
suggested. “Might have a better feel for things tomorrow, plus we’ll be able to
see what we’re doing.”

Kevin remained silent, but
assented by his actions, grabbing the book and starting back for the house
while Darius put the axe away.

*

Darius found sleep hard to
come by despite a long day toiling under a harsh summer sun. Thoughts of Sasha
and the strange book whirled in his mind, but he could neither come to a
satisfactory solution to the Stoneman family’s new problem, nor call a truce
with his mental struggles so that he might get some rest. Finally in the
darkest hours of the night exhaustion took him, and when he awoke he felt
hardly more refreshed than if he had not slept at all.

He found his father still at
the kitchen table, the candle not out but burned low during the passage of the
night. Kevin’s eyes did not even flick to Darius as he entered the room, but
rather stayed fixed on the book. Kevin rested his chin on the thumbs of his
folded hands, as if to steady his head for a staring contest with the book, a
battle of wills he had no chance to win.

By unspoken consent the family
gathered in the kitchen and waited. Sasha was last to rise and still wore the
haggard look of the hunted. She sat next to her father and squeezed his
forearm, breaking the trance. He offered her a wan smile, then cleared his
throat.

“I see four options,” he said.
“We destroy the book, hide it, try to find someone who might know how to deal
with it, or return it. The last is not even worth consideration. The third opens
us up to betrayal, and I would not even know where to begin to look. If we
destroy it, we lose whatever is inside, which would deny Landri whatever power
this thing represents, but would also mean we could not use it as a bargaining
chip if it comes to that.

“I care little for the book or
what it holds, but if it might in some way protect Sasha, it will be preserved.
I will find a safe place for it, known only to me, and Sasha will remain here,
where we can look to her safety.”

“It’s too dangerous for me to
stay, father,” Sasha protested, “as much as I want to. Once they know that the
book is gone, and I with it, they will surely come here to look for me.”

“No doubt,” he replied evenly.
“But we will be watchful, and when they come, we’ll hide you as surely as we’ll
hide the book. Once they leave, you’ll be safer here than running from them
forever, with no food or shelter.”

“But I can—”

He held up his hand. “My word
on this is final.” He rose and said, “We have a lot of work that needs done. Farms
don’t run themselves.” With that he took the book and walked out the door.

The others watched the door
for a moment, as if expecting something further to happen. Then Marissa said
aloud to herself, “I guess I better get breakfast started,” and the others took
that as a signal to begin their morning chores.

*

As the sun set in the west
that evening, not a word to contradict or question the course of action Kevin
Stoneman had prescribed was spoken by his family. But for the trepidation they
all held in the their hearts, the day passed as any other, with only their
frequent, watchful glances at the surrounding countryside indicating that
something might be amiss.

While the dim stars flickered
in the hazy summer sky, Darius found a patch of ground where the grass had grown
thick and long, and sat gazing heavenward. When he heard the soft swoosh of
feet passing through the grass, he did not turn, but rather waited for his
sister to join him.

Sasha sat
down, looking at her brother instead of the sky. “I can’t stay.”

“I know.”

For a while they listened to
the cicadas singing to one another, a sound from a more peaceful time. A cool
breeze gusted from the north. It was hard to believe anything could be wrong
with the world on such a night.

“Where will you go?” he asked.

“I don’t know. South, I
suppose, to where it will stay warm in winter. If I can find work in some small
village I’ll take it.”

“You can’t take the book with
you.”

She shrugged. “I can’t leave
it here. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll find someone who might be able to open it.”

“It’s our best hope,” he
agreed. “But I’ll take the book, and head north.”

Sasha’s eyes widened in
surprise and fear. “No. I’ve already endangered everyone enough by coming here.
If you’re found with the book…”

“I’ll be no worse off than you
would be. They won’t be looking for me, though.”

“They will soon enough, but
not because of the book. I thought your leave was over soon.”

He nodded. “A few weeks from
now. It may be enough time. If not…we’ll see.”

Sasha shook her head. “Going
missing from the army is as good as a death sentence. I know it must be awful
fighting, but I’ve heard the king has been merciless with conscripts that
refuse to do their duty.”

“I’ve heard the same. And the
war itself…well, it’s bad enough seeing men die, and knowing you’ve got to kill
or be killed. But I’ve seen things, things no one should see…”

“War is an awful, brutal
thing.”

“There are worse things,” he
said, and he looked at her directly for the first time since she had joined
him. There was a shadow behind his eyes that made her recoil, a fear that he
would not name that she dared not ask about.

“You know where the book is,
don’t you?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Yes. I’ve known Dad’s hiding
places since I was a kid. I bet Luke does too.”

“You two had too much time to
play spy,” she said with a laugh. “I guess there’s no chance of me talking you
into getting the book for me and letting me take it.”

He shook his head. “You need
to do what you have to do, and so do I.”

“You’re as stubborn as Dad,”
she said.

He took it as a compliment and
returned it. “So are you. Must be a family trait.”

Slowly the smile faded from
Sasha’s face and she grew serious again. “Should we go tonight, or risk another
day?”

“You need rest, and we both
could use some time to plan our next moves.” He grimaced and shook his head.

“And we’re leaving tonight,”
she stated.

“No choice. If the king’s men
come tomorrow, we’d never forgive ourselves, and even if they don’t, we’d be so
distracted we’d likely give ourselves away.”

She sighed, felt the tears
coming, then held her brother close, wanting to say so many things, but sure
her voice would simply be a choked-off squeak if she tried to speak. She felt
the wetness on her cheek and realized Darius was weeping, and then she could
hold her emotions in check no longer.

*

Darius had always hated
goodbyes. He struggled to find the right words, the right facial expression,
the right way to depart from those he loved. Now he found that not saying
goodbye was even worse. Sasha was the hardest, because he had so many
questions, and because he knew even if all went as well for both of them as he
could hope, he still might never see her again. He wanted to know where she
planned to go, what road she would take, what name she would use. But such
information, in the wrong hands, could betray her, and as much as he knew he
would never intentionally do anything to harm Sasha, he had heard enough about
the methods used to make war prisoners talk that he did not trust himself with
such knowledge. His parents might understand why he and Sasha had done what
they did, assuming they pieced it together, but they could leave no note of
explanation behind. At least he hoped to return home someday, so they would
know his fate, and perhaps that of the book. Maybe he could even go south then,
looking for Sasha, if things were right in Longvale.

Leaving Luke was hardest for
him. They had grown close, and not including him felt too dismissive, like Luke
was the kid brother who could tag along for fun but who was sent away when
there were important, grown-up things that needed to be done. Darius didn’t
feel that way at all, and wanted Luke to understand that he respected him as a
friend and even as a man. He didn’t know how he could verbalize such thoughts
even if given the opportunity—these things were easier to consider in one’s own
mind than to say to a seventeen-year-old who would likely be embarrassed and
crack wise to hide it—but he regretted he wouldn’t get the opportunity to try.

Darius had left in the wee
hours of the morning. He had quietly packed his few belongings and strapped on
the sword the army had provided him. He collected enough food and water for a
couple days, planning to find enough nourishment for the rest of his journey on
the way. He left the house without looking in on the others, afraid he might
wake someone, and he wasn’t sure as the door closed behind him if Sasha had
already left or not. The moon had just passed full a few days back, so he had
plenty of light to see what he was doing as he brushed away the loose dirt near
the bottom of the grain silo, slid aside the wood plank that hadn’t been
fastened in years, and reached inside one of his father’s favorite hiding
places. He pulled out a canvas bag, checked to make sure the book was inside,
then covered the hole once again. He doubted the king’s men would find such a
spot without an extremely thorough search, but they had other ways of getting
information that would render any secret liable to exposure.

Darius had
headed southwest, thinking to eventually come to the Old Road, which connected
Longvale’s capital city of Old Bern to Anson’s Furnace. The initial portion of
the trip was cross-country, as he wanted to avoid walking directly into Old
Bern to get to the road, and Darius knew the area well enough that even at
night he moved with decent speed. He knew he was now a fugitive of sorts, but
only in his own mind. He had the correct papers, and the Old Road was an
acceptable route to be taking to get back to his unit at the front. If any of
the King’s Guard came upon him, even those who might be engaged in looking for
the book, he would be a traveler with a solid story. Hopefully they wouldn’t
demand to search his pack anyway...

Anson’s Furnace was a possible
destination for him, although he was hoping to find help at some of the smaller
towns along the way. If it came to it, he could lose the book deep in Wyndham
Forest or perhaps at the bottom of Westlong Lake, but what he really wanted was
to get the book open and see what secrets it held. The more he thought about
the problem, the memory of how the book resisted the axe his father wielded
with such savage fury still fresh in his mind, the more he whittled down the
possibilities. There was a chance an expert locksmith might know of some trick
to keep an apparently keyless lock closed against physical attempts to open it,
but that would have little to do with the cover resisting the edge of a sharp
weapon. He was willing to admit to himself what his father never would, that
some sort of magic was in play. Kevin Stoneman was a man of the earth, a farmer
who lived by the sweat of his brow, who brought forth a crop through knowledge
and hard work. Tales of sorcerers roaming the world had been just that to him,
stories told for amusement or to wile away the hours of a dark winter evening. Darius
had been brought up as his father had, and until he had gone off to war he
would have been as reticent to come to such a conclusion about the book as his
father, preferring to think it was made of some new material or alloy. But his
time fighting for Longvale had changed him, and though he had not seen any
wizards, he knew there were things in the world that couldn’t easily be
explained. The problem would be finding someone skilled in the magic arts
without drawing too much attention to himself, and then having enough trust in
such a person to reveal the book and ask for help getting it open.

The first day of his journey
passed without event, Darius staying to goat paths and cart roads as much as
possible. With the exception of a few noisy dogs, one of whom gave Darius a
second dose of barking after he was well past, he managed to remain out of
sight and unnoticed. As he gazed at the sun setting in a blaze of orange glory,
he guessed that he was within a couple miles of the Old Road, and he thought he
should start to look for a likely spot to spend the night. He munched on an
apple as he went, taking his time with it, having decided it would have to
suffice as dinner. As he was finishing, twilight arrived, and just at the edge
of his perception he heard a noise that was out of place, a rustling of leaves
and branches behind him and to the right without a corresponding gust of wind
to explain it. He avoided turning or stopping, continuing forward with the same
cautious gait, but he tossed the apple aside and swallowed the last bite of it
so that the sound of his own chewing would no longer act as cover.