Kadin and the Noble's Daughter by Michael E. Shea (top books to read txt) 📖

felt cold fingers touch her bare neck.

Lenda threw the glass of water.

The man screamed and Lenda nearly fell unconscious. She fled past and into the dawn. Her father’s horse was tied outside. She mounted the horse and kicked it into a gallop towards the gates and the desert beyond.

“That is quite a story.” Kadin chewed on another slice of horse meat. Lenda stared at him.

“You don’t believe me?” she asked.

“No. But it is a good story. I heard stories of demon blooded vampires in the forgotten cities below the desert as a child. I hear women use such stories to woo their children to sleep.”

“I speak the truth.”

“Whether a demon of the five hells chases you or the city guard sent men to punish you for pig theft, you are in the desert now. It doesn’t matter how you got here, what matters is what you will do next.”

“I will go to my uncle in Gazu Bedel.”

“Bedel is a week away on horseback. Do you know the path?”

Lenda looked at Kadin unblinking. Her eyes grew cold. “What shall I pay you?” she asked.

“Now that is a good question.”

She rode well for a noble’s daughter. They made good time as they rode through the day and into the dusk. They slept in mid-day when the huge red sun burned down mercilessly on the world.

At dusk they made camp, setting a low fire in a deep valley. Stone cliffs and plateaus towered over them like ancient sleeping titans.

Kadin had removed his leather vest and washed the dirt off his body with clean sand.

“You are a slave?”

Kadin turned to Lenda. He hadn’t thought about the brand on his back in years.

“I was.”

“That is the mark of Dan Vitar of the second slave pit of Gazu Kadem.”

“It is.”

“But you are not a slave now?”

“I am not.”

“My father knew Dan Vitar.” Kadin turned and looked hard at Lenda. Was she lying now? If so, he could not tell. “My father used to sell Dan Vitar’s artifacts, the ones he found in the pit.”

Kadin drew his knife, its black blade shone red in the setting sun. It warmed in his touch. Lenda looked frightened.

“This is one such artifact,” said Kadin. “Some day I will have to show it to Dan Vitar myself.”

They slept until just before dawn, ate a small meal, and rode again through the next day. They slept again at high sun, protected in a light cloth tent. Kadin watched Lenda sleep, his eyes moving over her soft skin. Any other man would have taken her by now. Kadin found little pleasure in taking a woman against her will. It was the burning of their own desire that aroused him. Their release of inhibitions and sudden drive of lust, that is what fueled Kadin’s own desire. It was difficult to explain that to the pleasure slaves. Their only inhibition was the amount of coin one must spend for their virtues. Kadin sighed. She probably thought he liked men by now. He drew a finger lightly against her arm. Lenda stirred but did not wake.

They rode over the cracked plains into the evening before stopping.

“We’re four days away now.” Kadin said, chewing. “Why don’t you entertain me with another monster story?”

The echo of tight catgut cut off any possible reply. Kadin dove as a steel tipped arrow barely missed the back of his skull.

“Get down!” he shouted, pulling his blade from his belt. He rolled behind his saddle as another arrow buried itself in the sand where he was but a moment before.

Kadin breathed slowly. He tried to relax his body as he listened.

“That’s Alakar.” said Lenda. Her voice lacked any emotion. She was in shock. “He’s very good.” Kadin looked at her. Her right shoulder was exposed to the archer’s aim yet no arrow pierced it. The archer only aimed for him.

“When I was young, my friends and I would throw flowers into the air. Alakar could fire arrows through three of them before they hit the ground. He didn’t smile or scold us. He used to tell us that his entire body and entire life existed to put his arrows into his targets.

“One time a knifeman tried to stab my father during a feast. Alakar put an arrow into each of his eyes before anyone else had seen the attack. Alakar’s expression was exactly the same as it was when he shot my flowers.”

Another arrow skipped off of the sand half a hand above Kadin’s head. The arrows stopped. Kadin waited.

The sound of feet running across the sand sprung Kadin into action. A heavy bladed sword cut into the ground.

From the glow of the red moon Kadin saw a huge man swing the sword again. Kadin slid back. The man’s eyes were both black. Purple veins stood out on the man’s neck and halfway down his chest. Kadin spun under the blade’s swing and kicked hard. He heard tendons pop in the man’s knee but if the man felt it at all, he gave no sign.

Kadin rolled back and onto his feet. His long braided hair whipped back. The huge man stood still in front of him and smiled. White hot pain laced from Kadin’s collar bone. His hand moved to the spot but it banged into the wooden shaft that now protruded from his shoulder. Kadin screamed and fell. He felt the big man close in as his upper left torso went numb. When he heard the big man raise the sword again, Kadin spun and cut. His black knife cut deep, down to the bone, in the man’s thigh. Blood spattered across the sand. The big man grunted and fell to one side. Kadin cut again, deep against the man’s throat. Dark blood pumped from the wound.

Kadin rolled, feeling the rush of pain when the steel tip of the arrow touched the ground. He lay still.

Foot steps, lighter and slower, came over the mound. In the corner of his eye, Kadin saw a smaller man with an arrow knocked on his long bow. Kadin watched as the man passed. His dry eyes burned. H waited until the man’s back was to him.

“Time to come home, little flower.” The man’s voice was harmonic and calm.

Kadin tucked his legs and stood. Quick as he was, the man heard him and reacted. The man spun and drew his bow. Kadin swung and cut the catgut string. The bow sprung loud and the arrow fell. Kadin stabbed hard, burying his black knife to the hilt in the man’s throat. The small man gurgled and fell. Even in death his face was calm.

They rode hard that night and into the late morning. Sweat poured over Kadin’s face and down his braids to his back. Every step his horse took was a new lesson in pain. He passed out at least twice but Lenda’s cry woke him before he fell from his mount. If he had fallen, he would have died.

At high sun, when the red orb burned hottest spotted the ragged peaks of their destination, Ava Tog Kar. The ruins looked the same as they had when he had stumbled on them three years earlier. As far as he knew, no one knew of the ruins but him.

Two of the four stone towers tapering from their wide bases to the sharp tips, had crumbled to dust. The northern wall, built of huge sandstone bricks, stood with the remaining two towers. Kadin and Lenda rode around the wall and through a path of sinister granite statues. Each was shaped either as a naked man or woman, half twisted and disfigured into the shape of a beast. On one podium, a statue of a man stood screaming at the sky, one arm of writhing snakes. One woman knelt on all fours, her face forward in ecstasy as a half man half bull mounted her from behind. Another figure, half man half beast with twisting horns and huge tusks, appeared to be eating a child. Kadin and Lenda said nothing as they passed.

Lenda gasped when she saw the well. It was forty feet across and deeper than their eyes could see. A rim of white marble surrounded it with a black raised platform to the north.

They dismounted. Kadin wanted to scream and his hand went to the wound on his shoulder. He could feel how warm his skin was underneath his sleeveless tunic. Kadin unwound a coil of rope and tied it to his water skin. he watched Lenda crawl to the edge of the pit and peer down. He threw his skin past her and she gasped again.

“It holds the greatest treasure one can find in the desert. And its fresh.”

While his skin filled in the invisible depths below, Kadin took an iron cup from his saddle pack and placed it on the ground. He untied his trousers and smiled when Lenda blushed and turned away. He urinated into the cup and retied his pants. He handed the cup to Lenda who looked at the cup with disgust. Kadin cut his leather tunic away with his black bladed knife. Kadin laid back and looked at the yellow sky.

“Pour it on the wound.” Lenda hesitated until he turned and repeated himself. She poured. He felt nothing at first and then a burning grew until he wanted to cry.

“Get the water,” he said, grinding his teeth. An eternity passed before Lenda returned with his dripping waterskin. “Pour it on.” Lenda did and the cool water flowed. Kadin let his breath out and fell into darkness.

Four days passed while Kadin and the noble’s daughter sat surrounded by the fiendish statues of a forgotten age. Fever burned at Kadin and Lenda used water from the well to wash his brow and clean his wound. When the fever broke on the third day, Kadin was confident he would survive. He remembered hearing Lenda whisper to him as she poured the water on his wound and into his mouth, deep in the dark dreams of his fever.

“Oh sweet mother, wash us to the end of days.” She had repeated it again and again.

“What was that you whispered to me?”

Lenda looked at Kadin a long while before answering.

“When my brothers and I feared the night my mother told us to repeat it. She said they were words of power that kept the demons and shadows at bay. She said her great grandmother passed it along as she had, words of the water priestesses of the old empire.

“I didn’t remember it until I saw that creature who looked like royalty standing next to my father. When I felt his cold mind touching mine, I spoke my mother’s words. They pushed his voice out of my head.”

“What sort of devil was he, Kadin?”

Kadin looked up to the red moon above. All around them, the statues of twisted horror seemed to move in the shadows.

“The high kings of the city states outlawed all gods, above or below, but many still call to them. They practice ritual and worship and prayer in secret. Some even practice the dark arts of the old ones. Madmen say they open pits and pull forth screaming creatures of the black hells. They drink their black blood and gain power over the mind. It lets them touch the minds of others and slow or speed up their own passage through time. They feed on the warm blood of mortals. Some call them demonbloods or vampires but no label can describe them correctly. Perhaps this fiend of yours was a vampire long forgotten.”

“Or maybe I’ve gone mad,” said Lenda.

“Maybe.” Kadin smiled at Lenda. She smiled and looked at him for a long time. She