TYRANNY, SWORD IN HAND, CAST HER GAZE ALONG THE rocky shore. The morning sun had finally risen in earnest. As the remaining fog burned away, the scene before her only worsened. Taking a deep breath, she lowered the tip of her sword.
What a strange thing death is, she thought. How full of life a person can be one moment, then gone the next, leaving the body behind to become an empty, decaying vessel. Do we really possess souls? she wondered. If so, where do they go? It seems that even the wizards cannot answer such questions. She sighed and shook her head. If the mystics did know, they weren’t telling.
She looked at Sister Adrian to see that the acolyte was crying and her face was covered by her hands. But Tyranny had no such tears, for the rage she felt easily overcame her grief. She had seen much during her struggles against the Vagaries, but nothing equaled the sheer brutality of this.
Hundreds upon hundreds of Eutracian citizens had been systematically murdered, their corpses lining the shore for as far as the eye could see.
The victims were impaled on long staffs, freshly cut from a nearby beechwood grove. Even women and children had been brutally killed. The bodies were naked, bloody, unmoving. Human entrails lay scattered far along the shore, telling Tyranny that the carnage had taken place over a wide area. There was so much blood that she could scarcely tell that the rocks beneath her feet were black.
She saw no discarded weapons or clothing, suggesting that these poor souls had been stripped first, then brought here to be killed, and that most had died without a fight. Fearing that they had come from Birmingham, she had ordered two Minion phalanxes to immediately fly there and investigate. As Tyranny and her group stood staring, not one of them spoke, the only sounds coming from the restless waves as they lapped at the shore. As the fog lifted for good, the extent of the disaster was fully revealed.
Row after row of impaled corpses lined the shore as far as the eye could see, the stakes holding the victims’ bodies upright. Their sharpened tips had been viciously shoved into the victims’ groins, then threaded up through their abdomens and forced out near their collarbones. The lower end of each stake had been plunged into the rocky shore. Each corpse’s hands had been raised over the head, then clasped together and pierced through.
Shorter branches had been lashed to the stakes just below the victims’ feet and hands, keeping the corpses from sliding down the poles. Every corpse’s abdomen had been systematically disemboweled from the throat to the genitals. In some cases their internal organs dangled from the gaping wounds. Some stretched so far as to reach the ground.
Tyranny came to stand before an impaled young woman. She had been lovely, with blond hair and a strong jawline. A look of terror was frozen on her face. Tyranny sheathed her sword and reached up to gently close the woman’s eyes. As she did, Traax, Scars, Adrian, and the other three acolytes approached.
Tyranny turned toward Traax. “Have our scouts reported back?” she demanded.
Traax shook his head. “Given that you ordered every building to be searched, it will take some time. My warriors will not report until either they find who did this or their search is otherwise finished.”
“And the other two phalanxes that I ordered to ring this area?” she asked. “What of them?”
“They continue to search,” Traax answered, “but they have found nothing. Unless the killers remained behind in Birmingham, they are probably long gone.”
Tyranny turned to look out to sea. As though they were eager to take sail again, her four Black Ships tugged at their anchors. Several dozen fishing boats lay moored between the shore and the fleet, and two long wooden piers jutted from the shoreline into the restless waves. The nearby fishing village of Birmingham had been instrumental in supplying the Black Ships with goods and provisions whenever they moored in this wide delta bay. But as she saw dark smoke rising in the west, Tyranny feared that Birmingham was no more.
The privateer looked skyward. Her instincts told her that the day would become sunny and hot. Swarms of black vultures already wheeled overhead, and the greedy birds would soon swoop down to collect their next meal. Unless something was done, there would be much for the birds to gorge on.
Tyranny looked at Adrian. “Was the craft at work here?” she asked.
Adrian came to stand before the woman whose eyes Tyranny had just closed. The acolyte spent some time looking at the gaping abdomen. She pursed her lips thoughtfully.
“At first I wasn’t sure,” she answered, “but on closer examination, I believe that it was.” Adrian pointed to the wound and beckoned everyone nearer.
Tyranny soon saw what the acolyte was talking about. The privateer was no mystic, but she had seen enough azure bolts used to recognize the telltale marks that they left behind. The edges of the wounds were precise and singed black. Tyranny pointed at them.
“These wounds were caused by the craft, weren’t they?” she asked.
Adrian nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Do you see how smooth the cuts are? I know of no traditional weapon that can produce such perfect incisions and singe marks at the same time.”
Traax shook his head. “With all due respect, First Sister, you’re wrong,” he countered. “There is such a weapon, and I know the warrior who wields it.”
Tyranny nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “The warrior is Tristan, and the weapon is his dreggan. During the fight to take the Recluse, when he called on his gift ofK’Shari his dreggan glowed. It sliced though his enemies as if they were made of paper and caused these same burns. But does that mean that there is anotherK’Shari master roaming Eutracia with the same skills?”
Adrian again turned her attention to the corpse. She bent down and looked at the internal organs lying at the victim’s feet. Lifting the hem of her robe, she trod through the blood and regarded the next impaled victim in the same way. This time her inspection became more focused, as if she was searching for something specific. She quickly moved on to look at two more corpses. Thinking, she walked back to stand beside Tyranny. There was a puzzled look on her face.
“What is it?” Tyranny asked.
Adrian scowled. “Aside from the obvious, two of the four victims that I just examined have another thing in common,” she mused.
“What are you talking about?” Scars asked.
As though she couldn’t believe what she was about to say, Adrian shook her head.
“They are missing their livers,” she said. “Like the exterior wounds, the cuts that allowed their removal are equally precise and darkly singed.”
Tyranny shot Adrian a skeptical look. “Show me,” she ordered.
Adrian pointed to the dead woman’s gaping wound. Some organs were missing and dangled toward the ground. “Look there,” she said. “Do you see those interior cuts? They allowed the removal of the liver.”
“How do you know that only the liver is missing?” Tyranny asked.
Adrian gave Tyranny a rueful look. “All her other organs are accounted for,” she said quietly. “They lie at your feet. It is the same with the others. Only their livers are gone.”
Tyranny scowled and ran one hand through her hair. “What in the world…” she breathed. “You are that conversant with human anatomy?” she asked.
Adrian nodded. “All acolytes are. It’s part of our training. The craft has to do with blood; blood has to do with the organs; and the organs-well, you see.”
Tyranny shook her head again. She was starting to understand these horrors less and less. It was an unsettling feeling.
“But why would some attacker want theirlivers?” she asked incredulously. “Does that also have to do with the craft?”
“Probably,” Adrian answered. “On the anatomical level, magic has much to do with the liver. A person’s entire blood supply-be it endowed or unendowed-flows through it. We might be dealing with something never seen before. Either way, only our more senior mystics might answer that. I strongly suggest that we take several of these corpses to Tammerland. Faegan will certainly want to do necropsies. And there is one other thing that you need to know.”
“What is that?” Tyranny asked.
“Although each victim was impaled and rendered, the livers were taken only from those victims who possessed endowed blood. Clearly, there is much more going on with these horrors than first meets the eye.”
Wanting to look at another corpse, Tyranny beckoned Adrian to walk with her. The privateer stopped before the second victim that Adrian had examined. When she looked at the corpse’s face she saw that the dead man had been injured in ways that the woman had not. At first Tyranny thought that she might become ill.
Parts of the man’s eyes were missing. The entire front of each eyeball was gone, leaving only the rear walls intact. A trail of dried vitreous material ran down each cheek. The edges of the eye sockets were not singed like the man’s abdominal wounds. Rather, they looked pitted, ragged. As Tyranny looked closer she saw that the man’s face was similarly injured by what looked like fresh pox marks. His liver remained intact, telling Tyranny that if Adrian was right in her assumptions, this fellow had been of unendowed blood. She looked curiously at Adrian.
“What destroyed his eyes?” she asked. “And what caused these red marks on his face?”
Adrian shook her head. “I don’t know,” she answered. “It looks as though acid or some other caustic material was sprayed onto his face. That might also be what destroyed his eyes. But one thing is certain.”
“What is that?” the privateer asked.
“If these poor souls were alive during their mistreatment, they suffered horribly,” Adrian answered. “I’m talking aboutterrible pain, Tyranny-the kind that drives even the strongest mystics mad. What happened here is an outrage of massive proportions. I fear that a new Vagaries scourge has somehow been loosed on Eutracia. If we don’t stop it soon, more such atrocities seem sure to follow. But why bring these people here and then impale them? If they hail from Birmingham, herding them to this shore took great effort. They could easily have been tortured and killed in town.”
Tyranny cast her gaze back out across the sea. “I know why,” she said. “It was meant to be a warning. They knew that the fleet would arrive soon, and they wanted this travesty to be the first thing that we saw. It worked.”
Adrian was about to reply when she heard the flurry of Minion wings. As two warriors landed nearby, everyone hurried over to greet them. One of the warriors was male and rather young; his senior officer was an older female. They quickly approached Tyranny and clicked their boot heels together.
“We have finished the shoreline body count that you asked for, Captain,” the female warrior said. “The impaled victims number two thousand six hundred and thirty-three. There are no survivors.”
Tyranny’s heart fell. If these people came from Birmingham, it likely meant that the entire population of the town had been wiped out.
“Is there word from Birmingham?” Traax asked.
The female officer pointed toward the western sky. Everyone turned to see a cluster of dark specks approaching.
“A patrol returns from the village as we speak,” she answered.
As the figures in the sky grew larger, Tyranny soon realized that six of the twelve warriors were carrying a litter. She couldn’t tell what the litter contained, but she was eager to find out. As the patrol descended toward the shore, everyone ran over to meet them.
The newly constructed litter was about three meters square and made of freshly cut tree branches lashed together with rope. It was more like a cage than a litter, Tyranny realized. As she ran nearer, she finally saw what it contained. She and her group came to a quick stop.
The Minion warriors had captured a snarling, hissing beast. Tyranny had never seen anything like it. She approached cautiously, stopping about three meters away.
The half-man, half-serpent was a grotesque creature. The hairless skull was olive in color. A pair of twisted, sharp horns rose from either side of the skull. Long pointed ears lay on either side. The eyes were wide apart, with dully opaque whites and vertical yellow irises. Its mouth soon opened, sending a bright red forked tongue slithering forth to test the air. Before the mouth closed again, Tyranny saw sharp yellow teeth and a pair of deadly incisors flash in the morning sun.
Its upper body appeared to be human, and its muscular arms looked strong. From the waist down its body was a scaly, snakelike tail. Like the thing’s torso, the tail was olive in color, but it had dark spots all along its length and gradually tapered to a forked end. When it saw Tyranny approach, it coiled up and viciously hissed.
Without warning the creature suddenly shot forward and grasped one of the litter’s wooden braces. Hissing madly again, it used all its strength to try to rip the cage apart. The sturdy cage rocked wildly, but it held. The defeated beast then slithered toward the back of its beech wood prison and coiled up protectively. As its dark eyes bored into Tyranny’s, a quick shudder went through her.
Her mouth agape, she looked at the senior officer, who had also been one of the litter bearers. His name was Davin, and Tyranny had come to respect him during the past week’s sea trials. Although Davin was a graybeard, few warriors could outdrink or outfight him.
Tyranny pointed at the monster in the litter. “What in the name of the Afterlifeis that thing?” she breathed.
Davin unsheathed his dreggan. Before answering, he shoved his dreggan blade into the cage and poked at the creature. It hissed again, exposing its deadly teeth.
“We don’t know,” Davin answered, “but most folks wouldn’t want to meet it alone on a dark night! When we found it, it was lying in one of Birmingham’s streets, unconscious. One of the citizens must have stunned it. When we tried to capture it, the thing came awake. It injured one warrior, then spat at another, blinding him. It hasn’t spat again since its capture, so we think that a certain amount of time must pass before it can do that again.” Davin pointed to the rows of impaled corpses. “We believe that this thing and many more like it are responsible for these atrocities.”
“Can it speak?” Tyranny asked.
Davin shook his head. “Not that we have seen,” he answered. “But we all know that means nothing.”
Adrian took a step closer. “A warrior was blinded, you say?” she asked.
Davin quickly raised one hand, warning the sister to stay back. “That’s close enough,” he said. “The venom it spits seems to be acid. It burns the skin and harms the eyes. We have several healers caring for the warrior that this bastard blinded. They are hoping that the blindness is temporary, but they can’t be sure.”
Adrian looked at Tyranny. “That would explain the strange facial wounds that we saw,” she said. “My guess is that many more of these victims have them as well.”
Davin turned to look at Tyranny. “If it please the captain, the blinded warrior should be seen by one of the Conclave Wizards. I request that he be flown to Tammerland immediately.”
Tyranny nodded. “See to it at once,” she ordered. “But before you go-what of Birmingham?”
A dark look crossed the warrior’s face. “Birmingham no longer exists,” he answered. “Every building was set afire. By the time we got there, most were already consumed. We saw no citizens-dead or otherwise. It seems that they were all herded here and then killed. The phalanxes are doing what they can to control the last of the flames.”
As she sheathed her sword, Tyranny looked angrily at the ground, then back at the rows of grisly corpses. She had learned all that she could from this butchery, and it was time to go home and inform the Conclave. Her task would not be a pleasant one. She cast a hard gaze toward Adrian.
“I head for Tammerland,” she said. “Traax will come with me. You, the other acolytes, Scars, and the four phalanxes will remain here until you receive word that the ships’ new cradles have been finished. While I am gone, you are in command. If more of those beasts appear, get the Black Ships and the phalanxes into the air immediately. The monsters don’t seem to have the power of flight, so being airborne will give you a great advantage. But I don’t think those creatures will return.”
“And why would that be?” Traax asked.
Tyranny sadly cast her gaze toward the rows of corpses once more. “Because if Adrian’s suspicions are true,” she answered softly, “these monsters got what they came for.”
The privateer turned to look at Davin. “Build another litter,” she ordered. “I am taking six of these corpses back to Tammerland for further inspection. After I have gone, I want the remaining bodies burned. The Conclave failed to protect these people. Immolating their remains seems the least that we can do.”
Davin clicked his boot heels together and went to carry out his new orders.
“The bodies that you take back should be preserved by the craft,” Adrian offered. “Faegan would insist on it.”
Tyranny nodded. “You’re right,” she answered. “Please enchant on six of them. Make sure that at least one of them is without a liver. But leave the impaling staffs in place. I want Faegan and the other mystics to see exactly how these people died.” Adrian nodded her agreement, then walked off to start her grisly task.
As she waited, Tyranny looked out across the Sea of Whispers. The freshening wind smelled clean, making her wish that she could go straight back out to sea. Instead, as she stood in the drying blood among the glistening entrails, her heart became heavy once more.
Reaching for her gold case, she produced a cigarillo, then struck a match against one knee boot. As she lit the cigarillo, the first lungful of smoke calmed her. Even so, from the moment she had first seen the grisly impalements, the same question kept haunting her.
Why?