Torn By War: 4 (The Death Wizard Chronicles) (11 page)

Mucus gushed from her ears and nostrils. Spittle oozed from the corners of her mouth and dangled off the sides of her chin in greasy strands. Her lips were cracked and bloodied, partially from the constant dry winds of Barranca and partially because she chewed on them mindlessly with her gnarled teeth.

When she had first entered Barranca she had been traveling eastward, but after entering the wasteland she inexplicably veered to the north. Something called to her. Or she to it.

When night fell, Tathagata’s hunger increased and her senses magnified, especially her ability to scent human flesh. The smoke that rose from behind the ridge of a limestone crater caused her to slaver. She headed that way with as much speed as she could muster.

Tathagata saw them long before they saw her. Three haggard men with dark beards sat near a bristling fire. They wore only dyed loincloths, but they bore daggers on their belts, and they had other weapons as well—a pair of crude spears that had been stabbed into the sand nearby. She could smell roasting goat and boiled rice, but she cared naught for that fare. Their sweaty flesh is what drew her.

The three men—a father, son, and uncle, perhaps?—owned one camel that was tied to a line well away from the fire. When the camel let out a high-pitched bleat, the men stood and drew their daggers. At almost the same moment, Tathagata slipped behind the uncle and drove one of the spears into his back, the point emerging from his chest in a splash of gore. The uncle grunted and fell forward onto the fire.

The father turned just in time to get a glimpse of his assailant before she lunged at him and bit off a chunk of his face. The son attempted to come to his rescue, diving at her and stabbing his short dagger into her skinny thigh. Tathagata turned and pounced upon him, biting the youngest one’s neck. Then she began to chew, slurp, and swallow, making a sound so dreadful that the camel tore away from the line, broke the leather band that hobbled its left front leg, and ran off in a shuffling gait.

The reek of gore and burning flesh—both goat and human—filled the air. Tathagata continued to feed, heedless of anything else. But the injured father still lived, and he hoisted a heavy rock over his head and slammed it onto Tathagata’s back.

She cried out and leapt to her feet, her torso twisted grotesquely. But instead of retaliating, she smiled eerily, drew the dagger out of her leg, and returned to her business. The father, ignoring the pain of his tattered face, grabbed the other spear and drew it from the sand. But then his movements slowed, and he stood motionless for a time, eyes glazed. A short while later, he joined the feast.

Before the sliver of crescent moon rose at midnight, the son had been reduced to bones as efficiently as if a pair of Lyons had devoured him. The uncle was burned too badly to eat; otherwise, he too would have become part of the fare.

The father no longer cared for the son or uncle. He had become Tathagata’s disciple.

She finally stood, her face slathered with blood. The food had done her good. Her broken back had magically healed, and she was taller and not quite so skinny. Tathagata was growing, in more ways than one.

NOT ALL OF Peta’s prophecies were unpleasant. For instance, the ghost-child had foretold that Torg and Laylah would fall in love. And the healings of King Henepola and Queen Rajinii had been inspirational. But her visions of Sister Tathagata were among the most disturbing she had ever endured.

Unlike the Tugars, whose furnace-like metabolisms incinerated infections and poisons before they could cause much harm, the sister’s body had been susceptible to the
undines
. Most humans infected by the demon incarnations became mindless fiends, less intelligent than cattle and driven by ruthless hunger. The only sure way to kill them was to cut off their heads, though cutting their bodies in half above the navel also was effective.

To her horror, Peta foresaw that Tathagata’s spiritual achievements would work against her. The High Nun’s powerful mind could not be ruined as easily as her body. Instead, a portion of her wisdom and will would survive, making her far more dangerous than any fiend had ever been. To make matters worse, every time Tathagata fed, she would grow larger and stronger. Cutting off
her
head would not be so simple.

These revelations had thrilled Vedana, of course. The mother of all demons had long despised Sister Tathagata, whom she described as a “lazy goody-goody.” But it was more than the demise of the High Nun that Vedana found tantalizing. She envisioned Tathagata as yet another means to weaken her enemies. And so—unbeknownst to Invictus or even Jākita-Abhinno—she had joined with her most loyal witches and summoned a large batch of undines from the Realm of the Undead. Then she ordered the Warlish whores to dump them into the Ogha River north of Senasana.

Senasana . . . the nearest city to Tējo . . . and Anna.

“I’ll be gone for a few days,” Vedana said to Peta while Rathburt slept. “You know why. Behave yourself.”

“My loyalty is to Father,” Peta said. “As I’ve told you countless times, I’ll do nothing to endanger him.”

“Blah-blah-blah,” Vedana said.

“I must warn you again that my visions are becoming more and more fallible.”

“Oh, don’t worry your little head. Mother has everything under control. Just keep your eye on Rathburt. Oh wait, I forgot . . . you can’t
see
anything.”

“You’re not as funny as you imagine yourself to be, Vedana.”

“
Vedana
, is it now? What happened to calling me Mother? Oh, never mind! As I said before, just be sure to behave yourself. And don’t you dare have any wild parties while I’m gone.”

Then the demon vanished.

AT DUSK, TĀSETI, Kithar, and Silah sprinted from the camp, each carrying a goatskin of boiled water, a pack of
Cirāya
, their
uttaras
and daggers, and their slings and beads. Speed was of the essence. There would be little time for eating or sleeping over the next several days.

Soon after they departed, Kithar split from the trio and headed due east. His orders were to cross Barranca, the rocky wasteland that partially encircled the great desert Tējo, as quickly as possible and locate allies who could lend aid to the much-slower company he’d left behind.

Though Barranca was truly an inhospitable wasteland, Tējo was more heavily populated than most outsiders realized. The Tugars numbered more than twenty thousand all told, yet they were in the minority. Many of the permanent desert dwellers were allies of Anna, and all of them feared the Tugars. It would not be difficult to encounter willing assistance or to intimidate unwilling assistance. At this point, either would be acceptable.

When Tāseti and Silah entered the rocky border of Barranca, they continued to follow Tathagata’s trail. It wasn’t difficult to do. The High Nun was making no effort to conceal her tracks. Surprisingly, though, her path turned abruptly north.

“I no longer need you with me,” Tāseti said. “This is my task and mine alone. Do as Kithar has been ordered and search for help inside Tējo. And be quick: the noble ones’ lives are at stake.”

“As you say, Asēkha.” Then Silah bid her farewell and sprinted eastward.

Tāseti was alone.

This stretch of Barranca was nearly devoid of life. Scattered among large tracts of spiny limestone were pools of black mud, a few of which bore footprints barely half the size of a Tugar’s. There also was dried blood on the rocks that contained dead worms, each about the length of a fingernail and width of a blade of grass. These
undines
, at least, would cause no further harm.

Tāseti guessed that the fiend she tracked was a half-day ahead, which meant she had made up little ground, thus far. The fiend was shambling faster than Tāseti would have believed possible.

Just after midnight, something approached from the north. Tāseti’s heart skipped a beat, but the shape was far too large to be human. She raced toward it at a full run, managing through grace and skill to avoid stumbling or twisting an ankle. When she came near enough, she saw with joy that it was Chieftain. The gelding raised his head and whinnied. Tāseti laughed.

“Good boy!” She hugged the horse’s neck and patted his crest. Chieftain pressed his muzzle against her face. She was surprised to find that it was soaking wet. The horse recently had drunk, though she knew of no water within several leagues.

If they had been on less difficult ground, Tāseti would have mounted the gelding and continued her search on horseback. But the landscape of Barranca was more precarious for the gelding than for her.

“I’ll have to go on without you,” she said to Chieftain. “You can follow, if you like, and catch up with me later.”

It saddened Tāseti more than it should have to leave the horse behind, and she was worried that he would injure himself trying to stay with her, but there was too much at stake to give it further thought. Chieftain’s fate was his own.

Tāseti charged off at a full run. Try as he might, the gelding failed to keep up, letting out a series of high-pitched squeals that nearly broke Tāseti’s heart. But she didn’t look back.

Tāseti ran like this for the rest of the night, taking only occasional sips of water from her skin and eating only two squares of Cirāya. But she refused to give in to thirst or hunger. Besides, the cumulative benefits of the cactus would kick in even quicker if her stomach were otherwise empty.

Near morning, she approached the rim of a broad canyon. She knew this place well. Pale sand filled the canyon, as if an offspring of Tējo had taken residence within the wasteland. The circular rim stood about fifty cubits high. Tāseti scaled it easily and then made her way down. When she reached the canyon floor, a horrendous odor assaulted her. She raced toward the source—and found that she was not alone.

Six armed men had encircled a smoldering campfire. They wore gray head-cloths and long white shirts that hung past their knees. Tāseti recognized them as Kalliks, bandit tribesmen who wandered the desert. They were few in number but wicked, preying on the weak and unwary. The Tugars sometimes sent out hunting parties to weed out the worst of them.

When the Kalliks saw Tāseti approaching, they backed nervously away from the fire, but she was far less interested in them than in what they had been investigating. When she reached the smoldering cinders, she gasped. A blackened body lay upon the coals, tendrils of smoke rising from its scorched flesh. A few cubits away was the skeleton of another man, its white bones stripped clean of hair and flesh.

The Kalliks feared Tugars—and Asēkhas, especially—for the obvious reason that Kalliks were no match for them. The tallest among them was four spans shorter than Tāseti, but he managed the courage to approach her. When she turned to face him, he cast himself onto the sand.

She reached down and cuffed his ear. “Speak clearly, in the common tongue,” she commanded. “I have little time for nonsense.”

“We did not do this thing, Desert Mistress,” the tribesman whined. “The smoke attracted us—and the
smell
—and we arrived here just a few moments before you, I swear it.”

Tāseti cuffed him again, just because she was annoyed and felt like doing it. “From which direction did you come? And what did you see?”

“From the southeast, across the floor of the canyon. And we saw nothing, Mistress! We are honest men.”

Tāseti grunted. “Since when have Kalliks ever been honest? Don’t toy with me, fool. And I can see that one of your camels does not belong to you. He has been fed.”

“We found him wandering in the canyon. He is ours, fairly taken.”

“He is
mine
, now,” Tāseti said. “Be off, all of you, before I get angry. And another thing: If you come upon a gelding, do not touch it. It also belongs to me. If I find that you have harmed it, I will make it my life’s duty to butcher every Kallik alive in the world.”