10.22.03 - HEROIC TREASON

Chapter One

The tops of the Chamber doors faded into the gloom above. Steel brambles braced the Chamber doors, and skulls impaled on the brambles stared into gloom, their jaws hung open as though still…

Screaming on their hinges, the doors relented. A glow from inside slashed through the crack in the doors. Darkness blotted out the glow as silhouettes moved through the doors: guards clustered around a prisoner.

Inside, everything hulked in shadow, both vast and entombing, and distantly, an urn full of coals glowed. Incense threaded upward from the coals into the black.

Behind the urn, three arbiters sat brightened by the glow. In the middle sat Ekul: knobby body, angular face … skeletal. Thin lips pulled away from his teeth. From his dark sockets, glassy eyes watched the prisoner approach, and glittered.

But the prisoner called Flayer did not look back. His eyes remained closed.

Under his gray robe, Flayer's frame bulged excessively, and yet sleek and curved. Manacles large enough to fit around a prisoner's legs restrained Flayer's wrists, while smaller chains restrained serrated eight-inch claws against the backs of his hands. Flayer's head, viperous, remained unmoving, eyes shut. Flayer's scales refracted the urn's glow fluidly, and intensified the coals' fire.

When Flayer stepped forward, the motion appeared surreal. And then his eyes opened.

Snap! Then a metal whine.

Flayer lifted an arm. On the end of Flayer's claws a guard thrashed. Blood oozed from where the claws punctured the guard's breastplate.

The other guards fell back. Flayer tossed the guard's body off his claws. It crashed into the urn and scattered the coals with a burst of sparks.

Flayer's voice rumbled so low it rattled the guards' armor and the bench under the arbiters' fingers. The overtones hissed and grated together to form words: "Are these old fools to judge me?"

Flayer's voice elapsed to silence. Ekul sat motionless, smiling like a corpse. The guards cowered and clanked; from the slain guard, blood dripped on the urn and sizzled.

Suddenly Ekul stood, and the scattered coals winked out.

* * *

Chapter Two

The Maniac had unnaturally yellow-orange hair. The brim of his nose always wrinkled, maybe because his eyes always squinted. He looked more than angry, he looked furious, and he looked it constantly. His motions were jerky, quick; he snapped when he spoke. People kept their distance from him, and yet people always gathered around him. His energy both drew people and repelled them. Those that did not hate him, loved him. Noth needed him.

Noth had problems finding the Maniac. Since the Council had taken power under Ekul, a spy listened at every conversation. Ekul made certain to suppress threats to the new government before they started. Civil war had all but destroyed the country after the revolution. The gods had left, the Bloodline heir been kidnapped. Government after government had failed. Ekul succeeded because he made the first move against his enemies.

Dangerous men like the Maniac had only one defense: hiding.

Noth walked along the sandstone caves, sword drawn. Wind and water had gnarled the sandstone for millennia, pitting and carving while the sun bleached the stone. No one knew how many caves tunneled through the sandstone, nor how far or deep. The Maniac could hide in them forever. Noth would have to lure him out.

"Here I am!" He bellowed to the caves. His voice shook the stone and sent sand sliding, hissing down the rock. "I am Noth. See me!" Noth spread his immense wingspan and ruffled his feathers. His chest, barrel-like with jutting sternum and massive pectoral muscle, inhaled and expanded. When he bellowed again his voice thundered into and echoed from the sandstone.

"Maniac!"

In the echoes, a different voice answered, "What do you want, god of trash?"

Noth raised his wings to the sun. His white feathers lit in the sun, illuminating him. "You, Maniac."

"Have you come to hide from the revolution that dethrones gods?"

"No, I have not come to scurry through holes like a rat." Noth's eyes kept searching the limestone. "I hear you revolt against the Council to shame your father's legacy."

"Ah yes. My father. We both hate him. So what reason have we to quarrel, you and I, bird? Throw down your weapon."

Noth dropped his weapon to the sand - but he stepped on it with a talon, clenched it with his toes, and weaved it back and forth till it buried under the sand. He kept his talon clenched around the buried sword. "Your father inspired the revolution to its bloodiest throes, and called it liberation. He helped to kill the other gods, helped kill the Bloodline heirs - killed all but the heir under my protection. All dead, save one. But that perversion called Flayer stole her. Now I am alone and useless."

"Then have you come for revenge?"

"No, I have something else in mind," Noth said, folded his wings, and nestled them against his back. "An opportunity has come, an opportunity for us both. You might more substantially sully your father's name, and I might undo his deeds."

"I will give you quarrel for this, bird! I hate my bastard father for creating the Council. Gods replaced by council, hand by foot. But I hate both! I will not help you any more than I would help my father."

Noth's eyes kept searching. A lizard darted from behind sage rooted into the sandstone, stopped, looked, darted off, stopped. Noth could make out the beetle the lizard hunted, and the markings in the sand where a sidewinder had hidden itself. None of them saw all that Noth could see. Yet Noth still could not find the Maniac.

"I have not come to ask you-"

"I am getting bored."

"I have not come to ask you to help me-"

"Bah. Go away! Or keep searching, if you have the patience."

"Perhaps I should leave. I did not come seeking a coward."

"Perhaps you came seeking a fool? But I am not so foolish to be lured out by insults."

"I would have expected otherwise from someone with your name. Your name does you wrong."

"As does yours, god."

The feathers on Noth's back rose in reaction. He felt the Maniac behind him. His talons clenched the hidden sword.


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