Reap the East Wind

  Reap The East Wind

  Book Six of the Dread Empire Series

  Glen Cook

  Copyright © Glen Cook 1987

  Cover art by Ken W. Kelly

  First Printing: June, 1987

  This ePub edition v1.0 by Dead^Man Jan, 2011

  It has ended. It begins again.

  In Kavelin: Lady Nepanthe's new life with the wizard Varthlokkur is disturbed by visions of her lost son, while King Bragi Ragnarson and Michael Trebilcock scheme to help the exiled Princess Mist re-usurp her throne -- under their thumb. In Shinsan: a pig-farmer's son takes command of Eastern Army, while Lord Kuo faces plots in his council and a suicide attack of two million Matayangans on his border. But in the desert beyond the Dread Empire: a young victim of the Great War becomes the Deliverer of an eons-forgotten god, chosen to lead the legions of the dead.

  And the power of his vengeance will make a world's schemes as petty as dust, blown wild in the horror that rides the east wind.

  Contents

  1 Year 1012

  2 Year 1016afe

  3 Year 1016afe

  4 Year 1011afe

  5 Years 1014-1016afe

  6 Year 1016afe

  7 Year 1016afe

  8 Year 1016afe

  9 Year 1016afe

  10 Year 1016afe

  11 Year 1016afe

  12 Year 1016afe

  13 Year 1016afe

  14 Year 1016afe

  15 Year 1016afe

  1 Year 1012

  After the Founding of the Empire of Ilkazar Armies in Shadow, Waiting

  THE BEAST HOWLED and hurled itself against the wall of the cell next door. It raged because it could not sate its thirst for Ethrian’s blood.

  The boy had no idea how long he had been incarcerated. Night and day had no meaning in the dungeons of Ehelebe. The only light he saw was that of the turnkey’s lamp when the man brought pumpkin soup or made his infrequent rounds.

  Before the dungeon there had been an unremarkable childhood in the slums of Vorgreberg, capital city of a tiny kingdom far to the west. There had been a strange mother with witch blood, and a father stranger still...

  Something had happened. He did not understand it. He thought it was because his father had become politically involved. He and his mother had gotten caught in the backlash. Men had come and taken them away. Now he was here, in irons, in darkness, with only the fleas for companions. He did not know where here was, nor what had become of his mother.

  He prayed for silence.

  The damp stone walls never ceased shuddering to the moans and roars of the Hell things chained in neighboring cells. The laboratories of Ehelebe had yielded a hundred strains of monster terrible and strange.

  The scratching and roaring ceased. Ethrian stared at the heavy iron door. A light flickered in the passageway beyond. The beasts remained poised in an expectant hush. Slow, shuffling footsteps broke the abnormal stillness.

  The door contained one small, barred opening. Ethrian watched it fearfully. His hands shook. Those were not the steps of his keeper.

  His captors had raped away everything but fear. Hope was as dead as the darkness in which he lived.

  Keys jingled. There was a metallic scratching at his door. The rusty lock squeaked in protest. The door swung slowly inward.

  The boy gathered his legs beneath him. He curled into a balled crouch. Even had he been unchained he could not have resisted. He had been inactive too long.

  An old, old man entered the cell.

  Ethrian tried to shrink away.

  And yet... there was something different about this one. He lacked that air of indifferent cruelty possessed by everyone else the boy had encountered here.

  The old man moved as if in a dream. Or as if he were badly retarded.

  Slowly, clumsily, the ancient tried his keys on Ethrian’s fetters. At first the boy cowered. Then, moved by cunning, he waited for the last lock to fall away.

  The old man seemed to forget what he was doing. He considered the keys with a bewildered expression, surveyed his surroundings. He made a circuit of the dark-walled cell.

  Ethrian watched warily.

  He tried to stand.

  The old man turned. His forehead creased in concentration. His face came alive. He moved closer, fumbled with the last lock. It fell away.

  “Ca-ca-come,” he said. His voice was a crackling whisper. It was hard to follow even in the unnatural stillness haunting the dungeon.

  “Where?” Ethrian whispered too, afraid he would rouse the beasts.

  “Ah-ah-away. Th-they sent me to ka-ka... to ga-give you to thesavan dalage. “

  Ethrian cringed away. The turnkey had told him of thesavan dalage-the worst of Ehelebe’s creations.

  The old man produced a tiny vial. “Dra-drink this.”

  Ethrian refused.

  The old man seized his wrist, pulled him close, twisted him round, forced his head back and his mouth open. His strength was both startling and irresistible. Something vile flooded the boy’s mouth. The old man made him swallow.

  Warmth and strength spread through him immediately.

  The old man pulled him toward the cell door. His grip was steel. Whimpering, Ethrian tripped along after him.

  What was happening? Why were they doing this?

  The old man led him toward the stair leading up out of that subterranean realm of horror. The unseen beasts roared and howled. Their tone suggested they felt cheated. Ethrian glimpsed red eyes behind the barred window in the nearest door.

  He gave up trying to hang back.

  The old man stammered, “Ha-hurry. Th-th-they will ka-kill you.”

  Ethrian stumbled after him, to the head of the steps, then down a seemingly endless stair outside. There was a salt tang to the hot, still air. He began to sweat. The sunlight threatened to blind his unaccustomed eyes. He tried to question his benefactor, but could make only limited sense of the garbled answers he received.

  This was K’Mar Khevi-tan, island headquarters of the worldwide Pracchia conspiracy. He had been held as leverage upon his father. His father had not performed as desired. His usefulness was at an end. He had been ordered destroyed. The old man was defying those orders.

  It made no sense to Ethrian.

  They descended to a shingly beach. The old man pointed toward a distant shore. It was the color of rust in the foreground, a leaden hue beyond. The strait was narrow, but the boy’s vision did not permit him a sound estimate. One mile or two?

  “Sa-sa-swim,” the old man said. “Sa-safety there. Na-wami.”

  Ethrian’s eyes grew round. “I can’t.” The thought terrified him. He was an indifferent swimmer at best. He’d never swum in the sea. “I’d never make it.”

  The old man settled himself cross-legged, lowering himself with exaggerated care. Intense concentration captured his face. He grunted as he strained to bring his slow thoughts into speech. When he did speak, it was with a ponderous precision. “You must. It is your only hope. Here the Director will throw you to the children of Magden Norath. They are your enemies, those who abide here. The sea and Nawami are indifferent. They allow you the chance to live. You must go now. Before He discovers that I have denied His wickedness at last.”

  Ethrian believed he was hearing the truth. The old-timer was so intense...

  He looked at the sea. He was afraid.

  The strength of the drug flowed through him. He felt he could run a thousand miles. But swim?

  The old man began shaking. Ethrian thought he was dying. But no. It was the strain of making himself understood.

  The beasts beneath the island broke into a suddenly redoubled roaring.

  “Ga-ga-go!” the old man ordered.

  Ethrian took two steps and flung
himself into the chilly brine. He got a mouthful immediately. He stood chest deep while he coughed it up.

  He had been chained naked. He had been in the sun only a short time now, but already he felt the fire of its kiss. He knew he would burn miserably before he reached the nether shore.

  He pushed off, and paced himself.

  After what seemed a long, long time he rolled onto his back to feather and rest.

  He was scarcely three hundred yards off shore. He watched the old man climb the steps they had descended, take a few and rest, take a few and rest. The island was long and lean and jagged. The fortress was an ugly old thing strung out along its spine like the crumbling bones of an ancient, gigantic dragon. He turned and glared at a barren mainland that looked no nearer.

  He knew, then, that he would not make it.

  He swam on. Stubbornness was in his blood.

  He had learned four names during his sojourn. The Director. The Fadema. Malgden Norath. Lord Chin. He knew nothing about the man who owned the first. Norath was a sorcerer of Ehelebe. The Fadema was Queen of Argon and, apparently, bewitched by Lord Chin. He and she had spirited Ethrian to the island. Lord Chin was one of the high Tervola, or sorcerer-nobles, of the Dread Empire, against which Ethrian’s father had striven. Chin was dead now, but the empire that had spawned him remained active...

  Shinsan, the Dread Empire, surely was behind all this.

  If he survived...

  It seemed that many, many hours had passed. The sun had, indeed, moved westward, but it was not yet in his eyes. The grey hills had grown only slightly darker.... He was too tired to go on. His stubbornness had burned away.

  He was ready to sink into the deep. He was too tired to be afraid.

  Something brushed his leg.

  He was no longer too tired. He kicked in panic and tried to swim away.

  A dorsal fin slid across his field of vision. Another something touched him.

  He began to flail and gasp.

  One of the sea beasts flung itself into the air. It arced gracefully and plunged into the brine.

  Ethrian was not reassured. He was an inland child. He did not know a dolphin from a shark. Of sharks he had heard from his father’s friend, Bragi Ragnarson. His godfather had told cruel, grim stories of the great killers ravening amongst the crews of ships wrecked in fell sea-battles.

  His struggles earned him nothing but a belly full of salt water.

  The dolphins surrounded him. They bore him up and carried him to the desert shore. With his last spark of energy he dragged himself across the rocky beach into the shadow of a cliff. He collapsed, puked seawater till his guts ached, fell asleep.

  Something wakened him. The time was deep night. The moon was high and full. He listened. He had thought he heard a voice calling, but now there was nothing.

  He looked down at the beach. Something was moving there, making little clacky sounds... He saw them. Crabs. Scores of them. They seemed to be staring at him, waving their claws like soldiers’ salutes. One by one, they scuttled closer.

  He drew away, frightened. They meant to eat him! He sprang to his feet and stumbled away. The crabs became agitated. They could not keep his pace.

  He seated himself a hundred yards away. Stones had torn his feet and barked his shins.

  Again, faintly, he thought he heard someone calling. He could distinguish neither direction nor words.

  He stumbled a little farther, then collapsed and slept again.

  He had strange dreams. A beautiful woman in white came and spoke to him, but he could not understand her, nor did he remember her when he wakened.

  Daylight was almost gone. He was hungry and thirsty. His whole body ached. His sunburned skin had blistered. He tried drinking from the sea. His stomach refused the brine. For a time he lay on the sand in an agony of heaving.

  He rose and surveyed the land by twilight. It was utterly without life. There were no plants. No cliff swallows wheeled against the gathering darkness. No sundown insects hummed the air. Even the rocks were barren of lichens. The only living things he had seen were the crabs, which had come from the sea.

  A touch of cunning came upon him. He settled himself near the water, watching the waves charge toward his toes, peter out, and slide away.

  He used a stone to smash several crabs when they came. He ripped out salty flesh and ate till his stomach again rebelled.

  He retreated from the water and slept a few hours more.

  The moon was up when he wakened. He thought he heard voices. He crawled out to the sand, where he could stand and walk without further injuring his feet. Searching the line of cliffs, he thought, for an instant, that he saw a woman in white staring out to sea, her arms lifted as if in supplication. Her clothing whipped around her, yet the air was completely still.

  She disappeared when he moved to a better vantage.

  He considered his predicament. He had to get off the beach and find food and water. Especially water. And something useful as clothing, else the sun would cook him alive.

  He could see no way up the cliffs.

  He started walking along the strand.

  Exhaustion overcame him soon after dawn. He crawled into a shadow and slept among jagged rocks. His tongue felt like a ball of wool.

  The tide came in. The sea pounded the rocks, thundering, hurling white spray thirty feet into the air. And again Ethrian dreamed.

  Again a woman in white came. Again he could understand nothing she said.

  And again he wakened after dark, and ambushed crabs, and thought of walking on down the beach in search of a break in the cliffs.

  The tide was out, yet seemed to be in. The crash of breakers seemed far, far away. Over them, he heard the faintest creaking, then clanking and shouting. He settled on a boulder, waited to see what was happening.

  Suddenly, he saw what looked like a fleet of a thousand ships out on the white-capped sea. Boats plunged through the surf like raging black horses, scraped on sand and shingle, discharged lean, dark-bearded men in alien armor. Shorter, fairer men in armor equally strange met them on the beach. Their swords flashed and sang.

  A voice called out above the roar of battle. Ethrian looked up. A woman in white stood upon the clifftop, her arms outstretched. Blue fire crackled among her fingers.

  Blue witchfire played over the white-winged vessels upon the sea. Leviathans surfaced and flung themselves at the ships. Sharks and porpoises swam to the woman’s song, ignoring one another as they attacked the swarthy invaders.

  Then ruby bolts flashed from the ships, pounding the cliffs. Great walls of stone fell on the combatants on the beach...

  Winged things arced across the moon, their mouths trailing tongues of fire. Creatures bigger than men rode their scaly backs, vast black cloaks trailing behind them. In their hands they bore spears of light which they hurled at the woman in white.

  She spun webs of blue and cast them into the firmament. They fluttered toward the winged lizards like merry moths, wrapped themselves about the dragons, and brought them tumbling to earth.

  One thing Ethrian noted through the flash and flame: The land was alive. Riotously alive. It could not be the desert that held him captive on its shore.

  The vision began to fade. He looked this way and that, trying to make sense of it. It was gone before he could grasp anything more.

  He looked toward where the woman had stood. There was a gap where the red bolts had bayoneted the cliffs. A gap where, earlier, he thought there had been nothing but solid cliffline.

  He crept that way, unsure, cautious. The moon was high now. He could see the tumbled stone well.

  It was not a fresh fall. Ages had gnawed at the boulders in the slide.

  A voice seemed to call from the desert beyond.

  He froze.

  It was another of the ghost voices. He shrugged. He had no time for mysteries. His great task was to survive. To do that he had to get off this shore.

  The climb was an epic of pain. And he found nothing abo
ve but moon-silvered desert vistas. More land utterly without life. Yet... yet he heard the voices. Wordless voices. They called.

  What was this land? What forgotten spirits haunted its barrens? Gingerly, he limped in the direction whence the voices seemed to come.

  His feet were swollen, raw, and festering. His tongue was fat and dry. His sunburn blisters were breaking. He ached in every sinew and joint. A throbbing pain beat from temple to temple.

  But he was stubborn. He went on. And, in time, the descending moon outlined something atop the nearest mountain.

  The more he studied it, the more it looked like some gargantuan figure carved from the mountain itself. It was a great sphinxlike creature, facing eastward.

  Something crackled beneath his foot. He stooped. It was a twig with a few dry leaves attached. It had been tumbled along by the wind. It was acacia, though he did not recognize it, never having seen the tree.

  His heart leapt. Where trees grew there must be water. He limped faster, moving like a man dancing on coals.

  Dawn came. He was stumbling and falling more than walking. His hands and knees were raw. The great stone beast loomed high ahead, up just a few hundred yards of slope.

  It was larger than he had estimated. It reared at least two hundred feet into the air, and stretched back out of sight over the lip of the flat space surrounding it. It was very old and time-worn. The once deeply carven features were all but invisible now.

  He paid little heed to the stone figure. His eyes were all for the scraggly trees around the fabulous creature’s fore-paws.

  The sun beat at his naked back, igniting new agonies. Though he fell more and more often, he pressed on. Crawling, he dragged himself onto the flat area.

  Water! A shallow pool lay between the monster’s feet... He heaved himself upright and tottered forward, fell on his face half in and half out of the moisture in the depression. He gulped the algae-thick, stagnant water till his belly ached.

  Only minutes later he heaved it up again.

  He waited, and drank more, though sparingly this time. Then he splashed across the pool into a shadow that looked like it would persist all day. He collapsed into a fetal ball and slept.