Fulcrum of Light (Catalyst Book 2) C.J. Aaron (unputdownable books .TXT) 📖

space along the right wall that warranted further examination. At the moment, Ryl’s attention was solely fixed upon the tributes suspended from the wooden slabs.

Behind him he heard Aldren gag as he entered the room. The merchant retched, the splatter of vomit on the floor audible to all.

Ryl hesitantly approached the first of the tributes, noting the brand on his neck.

H1346.

He leaned in close, examining the face. The shell of a man looked familiar, though Ryl couldn't recall his name.

The man's body was shriveled from obvious lack of nutrition. Ryl had no idea to what lengths they had taken, what they'd forced upon the poor man over the cycles to keep his body alive. He noted a small incision in his left arm, just above the wrist. A thin tube of glass tapering to a fine point extended out of his arm. Crimson blood dripped slowly out of the tube into a thin glass vial carefully situated in a small notch in the center of the low table below his arm.

With pain in his eyes, he looked down the row of tributes. Each appeared to be arranged in a similar fashion. Each unwillingly gave up his or her lifeblood, drop after precious drop.

Ryl closed his eyes, settling the nausea that rolled through his stomach. The mindsight scanned the area without warning. Ryl counted the dim glow of the phrenics while he resisted the urge to vomit.

Ten.

The revulsion hit him as he realized the disparity. Two of the bodies suspended on the boards were already deceased. The surge of emotions that tore through his veins threatened to tear him apart. His anger was nearly uncontrollable, the nausea was unbearable. He opened his eyes, turning back toward his companions. They burned with an irrepressible fire.

“Gather the Vigil and the villagers that accompanied us,” his voice was but a whisper, yet it carried a force that shook the room. “Round up the guards, bring them here. I want all to witness what has happened, what they've allowed to befall.”

Chapter 55

Without hesitation the guards were brought to their feet and ushered to the entrance to the warehouse. Ryl met them at the outer door. Though his face was shrouded in the black shadow of his cloak, hints of the fire that burned in his eyes were clearly visible through the darkness.

In a low growl, no more than the whisper, he spoke to the assembled guards. The sound of his voice, while hushed, struck with the force of a tempest.

“Witness the horrors you’ve allowed to proceed unchecked for cycles,” he hissed. “Guilt falls on your shoulders as with the menders who lie rotting in the other room.”

Without another word, they paraded the captive guards through the torture chamber they formerly protected. All had been blissfully ignorant to the horrors happening merely steps away. This was only a stopping point in their tour of duty. A tediously quiet station where they were allowed to grow soft through laziness and boredom.

The capacity to question had slowly been broken generation by generation. The populace had suffered an existence of uninformed apathy. They had unknowingly turned a blind eye to horrors occurring at their doorsteps.

The silence of their revulsion was broken by the voice of a single guard.

“The pitiful herds deserved it, got what they were born for,” his solitary curse was cut blissfully short. A pained groan was followed by the thump of a body hitting the ground as Andr hammered the pommel of his sword into the guard’s head. His unconscious body struck the ground face first unimpeded. A small pool of blood spread from around his nose, while he twitched involuntarily. With side-eyed glances at their downed companion, the rest of the guards willfully removed their uniforms, throwing them in a pile on the stones of the courtyard before being bound by the Vigil and the contingent of villagers.

Ryl sent one of the villagers back with horses from the stable to fetch the village mender. A pair was dispatched on foot with the venomous guard, his unconscious body dragged between the two of them. Serrate’s Mender Caravais was an elderly man; his white garment had been discolored to a pale yellow over cycles of use. His disgust mirrored that of the phrenics as his shocked eyes absorbed the horrors before him.

Under his careful direction, the tributes still clinging to life were carefully removed from their slabs, and the vile needles that leached away their lifeblood removed. Their wounds were hastily cleaned and wrapped. A group of the imprisoned guards were made to dig two graves for the tributes whose lives had expired.

Safely removing the tributes from the chamber was an agonizingly slow process, one which took well into the afternoon. The decision had been made to move the tributes with the assistance of Aldren's wagon and the black carriage of the Lei Guard to the village where the mender could provide them more immediate care.

Their bodies would be bathed and clothed while a means of supporting their nutritional needs was addressed. It was decided that large pots of broth would suffice. The thin nutrient-rich liquid would need to be carefully spoon fed to the recovering tributes until the time arrived that they could do it themselves.

If that time arrived.

The mender was of the impression that their bodies had been drugged consistently over the duration of the cycles they remained hung aloft as they were bled dry. Given time he believed the effects would wear off, yet he had no concept of the time frame or lingering repercussions of the damage their bodies had sustained.

Though the mender strongly suggested that the withered shells of the tributes should remain in the village to recover, Ryl was adamant in his opposition. Their time was nearly up. They needed to make The Stocks before the annual Harvest, now just a week away.

Ryl wiped the sweat from his brow, watching as the last of the tributes was loaded on the back of the black wagon bound for