Enjoy this sneak peek of Undead, Book 2 in the Heirs of Anarwyn series. It will launch in a couple of weeks so don’t forget to pre-order now.
Chapter 1
The Sting of Death
Cam learned to embrace the pain by the time his Inverni captors drew rein on the edge of a muddy wallow somewhere on the Plains of Pannon. That he could feel pain meant he was still alive, for now. Why his captors hadn’t killed him outright he did not know. It could only mean they planned some fate for him that was worse than death.
A few deer and wild cattle scattered as they approached, only to pause and look back curiously. Cam, Rebecca, and the three Inverni who captured them at the great bend of the Afon Fathwe River had been riding west across the Plains of Pannon since early morning. The sun hovered directly overhead. Sweat trickled into Cam’s eyes, making him blink at the sting.
The three Inverni, with their mottled cloaks and strange, loose-fitting trousers, swung down from their saddles and led their horses to the water. They untied Cam and Rebecca and dragged them from their horses’ backs, letting them fall to the trampled, muddy earth.
Cam winced at the jarring thump that made his ribs ache again. His hands were still tied behind his back, and the ropes gnawed painfully at his flesh. Warm blood slipped over his fingers. His tongue was tacky, and he harbored a savage thirst. The tall, sharp prairie grass scraped against his bare feet, leaving them raw and bleeding. The musky stink of cattle and deer mingled with the aroma of wet earth and crushed grass. He struggled to adjust his position so he could see if Rebecca was all right.
The muscles in his legs complained, but he forced himself to stretch them. He hadn’t ridden a horse in a long while, and the past weeks of running and canoeing hadn’t prepared his backside for the saddle or the bruising trot they maintained all morning. With his feet tied underneath the horse’s belly, he couldn’t use the stirrups so he could post and rise with the trot. Instead, he sat heavy in the saddle and endured the teeth-rattling pounding as the miles had disappeared behind them.
Rebecca rolled onto her side to peer at him. She looked terrible. Her face was bright red from the sun and heat, and her ankles, where the ropes secured her to the horse, were caked with dried blood and dirt. Her blonde hair clung to her sweating face and neck. Despite all that, she gave him a brave smile.
He nodded encouragement to her and struggled to sit up. The baby-faced Inverni, who was the apparent leader, knelt beside him and pressed a wooden cup filled with muddy water from the wallow to his lips. Cam jerked his head away, and the Inverni grabbed his hair and yanked his head around.
“This is the only water you’re gonna get, boy,” he said.
“Give it to Rebecca first,” Cam stammered.
Baby Face jammed the cup to Cam’s lips. “Drink it now or you’ll get nothing.”
When the water spilled into Cam’s mouth, the burning thirst overpowered his will to resist, and Cam drank. The water was gritty and tasted of mud. It would probably make him sick. Still, his thirst was so terrible he downed two cups of the stuff before the Inverni yanked the cup away and stalked to Rebecca. The water gurgled through Cam’s stomach, and he waited for the rush of nausea. It didn’t come.
“Took ’im long enough,” one of the other Inverni said, motioning with his head to someone behind Cam.
Cam wriggled around to follow the direction of their gaze. A slender man, wearing almost nothing, strode toward them.
The other two Inverni shuffled about in agitation. They were twins, sharing the same round face, needle-sharp nose, and black, scraggly beards. One of them sported a long scar across his forehead, and the other had different colored eyes—one blue and one brown. The way the wild-eyed Inverni examined them made Cam’s skin crawl. There was something crafty about the set of his jaw and the intensity of his gaze as his eyes roamed over Rebecca’s body.
The scar-faced twin turned from peering to the west with one hand on the long knife he wore in his belt. “I don’t like this.”
Baby Face grunted and climbed the little incline to stand beside him. “You don’t have to like it.”
A tall, slender man wearing nothing but a leather loincloth and close-fitting leather shoes stopped before Baby Face and extended his hand. Baby Face shook it and gestured for him to join them at the wallow.
The newcomer’s jet-black hair was greased so that it shone in the sunlight. He wore it in one thick braid down his back. His eyes were dark, and his bare skin was tanned a deep russet brown. Squatting at the edge of the wallow, the man studied them without saying a word. Cam eyed him curiously. He had never seen or heard of anyone like him.
A blue tattoo resembling a bird colored the man’s cheek. His face was angular, and he possessed a quiet dignity about him that Cam found immediately appealing.
“Let’s kill them and be done with it,” the wild-eyed twin said, ignoring the stranger.
“Our orders are to carry them to the ship,” Baby Face said.
Wild Eyes snorted in annoyance. “Across a burning desert where the only water is found in rancid little holes—when there’s any water at all.” He gestured to the stranger. “And all he can give us is this ignorant savage as a guide. It’s a death sentence, not an order. I say we finish them and go back south where the action is.”
Scar Face rubbed his hands together. “We never agreed to tend a couple of children.”
Baby Face sneered at them. “Afraid of a little desert? I thought you were men.”
Wild Eyes balled his fists and stepped toward Baby Face. Cam tensed. Maybe they’d kill each other and be done with it. Then Cam could convince the man in the loincloth to untie them and set them free.
Wild Eyes lunged at Baby Face, swinging a big fist. Baby Face ducked the blow, punching his fist into his attacker’s groin. He reached around to cup his hand on Wild Eyes’s heel, braced his knee, and swept the foot out so Wild Eyes crashed to the ground. His head cracked against a rock.
Baby Face glanced at Scar Face who had drawn his knife. “Don’t try it. You two agreed to carry them to the ship. Once you’ve done that, you can do what you want.”
“Bardon wants him dead anyway,” Scar Face said. “Why not do it now?”
“Because Jathneel wants them alive, and he’s the one who’s paying us. Bardon demands much and gives little in return.”
Wild Eyes crawled to his feet and spat. “So long as we get half.”
“That’s what we agreed,” Baby Face said.
They staggered away and fed their horses a bit of grain in their muzzle bags. The set of their shoulders and their mumbling curses proved they had only been temporarily subdued. The fight had not gone out of them.
While they worked, Baby Face sidled over and squatted in front of Cam. He held up the opal Life Stone that Hebron gave Cam when he presented him with the sword of King Hewel of the West Mark all those weeks ago. The opal was simply beautiful with a gentle, iridescent blue and swirling clouds of white.
“That’s mine,” Cam said and struggled to loosen his bands. The stone was connected to the sword and belonged to the legitimate kings of the West Mark. Lorna explained that one of her ancestors had infused it with the right to rule the West Mark and only someone who possessed it freely could use it. The stone had already accepted him and even helped him. The sight of it in the hands of this scoundrel sent Cam’s blood racing. “Get your filthy hands off it.”
Baby Face smiled maliciously and flipped the opal around in his fingers.
“Is this what you used to create that fire, boy?” Baby Face spoke low so the others wouldn’t hear. “You teach me how to use it, and I can make sure you escape before we reach the ship.”
“It belongs to me,” Cam insisted. He wasn’t about to explain to this Inverni how the stone worked. The more this man knew, the more dangerous their situation.
Baby Face raised his eyebrows and cocked his head in contemplation. “Why are Jathneel and Bardon fighting over you, I wonder? Eh?”
Cam pinched his lips tight, and the Inverni clicked his tongue in annoyance. He held up the dyad Lorna had given Cam back in Abilene.
“Or maybe it was this,” Baby Face said. “I’ve heard of these stones.”
The dyad was made from an orange-brown agate and a green malachite connected by a little band of silver. It was a pretty trinket, though its purpose was far more important—to free Maelorn and Tara from their stone prison in the Lonely Valley. Lorna insisted Cam was the only one who could do it, but that wouldn’t matter if he couldn’t retrieve it, or worse, ended up dead.
When Cam refused to speak, Baby Face grunted.
“Have it your way. You should know, however, that once we reach the ship, Jathneel will kill you anyway. Maybe he’ll let my two friends here have your girl. They would enjoy that. She might too.” He barked a nasty laugh.
The muscles in Cam’s jaw tightened as he ground his teeth, struggling not to let his emotions show.
“Think about it,” Baby Face said. “You’ve only got a few days, and you’re not likely to find any friends out here.”
Baby Face sneered as he slipped the Life Stone and the dyad into his pocket and strode away to tend to his horse.
Cam glanced at the stranger crouching silently beside the wallow. He noted that the man carried a short bow and half a dozen arrows in his hand. He also carried a long knife at his hip. A gourd and a satchel dangled over one of his shoulders. The man studied Cam and Rebecca. The slight downturn of his brow indicated he didn’t like what he saw.
He rose. “We should go,” he said with a thick accent. “The sun goes down while we sit.”
The twins scowled in his direction, but Baby Face gestured for them to mount. They secured Cam and Rebecca to their saddles again by tying the rope to one ankle, stringing it through the stirrups and underneath the horse’s belly, before securing it to the other ankle. The rope burned in the already inflamed sores. Rebecca suck in her breath as they cinched the rope tight. Cam glanced at her, wishing he could get her out of the clutches of these fools.
In minutes, they were trotting out of the depression with the nearly naked guide jogging along in front. Cam’s backside smarted as the pounding trot commenced again, and he thought how ironic it was that he had complained when Alaric ran him all night. He’d wanted a horse then. Now, he wished he could be on foot wearing a pair of soft leather shoes, like their guide. His own boots and Rebecca’s had been tucked into their saddlebags. What he wouldn’t give to be free of the burning ropes and able to ride like a man, rather than strapped down like a sack of grain.
The prairie grass thinned and became shorter as the miles slipped behind them. Strange plants with long, meaty leaves erupted from the soil. Tall rods budding with yellow flowers shot up from the leafy clusters. Here and there, prickly pear clung tenaciously to the sparse soil amidst the rocks. These were much larger than the ones that bore white flowers he had known in the mountains. Occasionally, a band of antelope or deer bolted away with their tails raised high. Distant hills on the western horizon possessed a strange, red hue. It was a wild, lonely country. There was no sign of human habitation or any evidence that people had ever wandered this land.
They paused occasionally at little watering holes, where they refreshed the horses, and Baby Face gave them more dirty water to drink. The nasty stuff made Cam’s bowels churn and cramp. He was afraid he might soil his trousers.
The stranger in the loincloth led them on hour after hour, deeper and deeper into an increasingly forbidding landscape. Prairie grasses gave way to an immense variety of cacti and prickly bushes. Soft prairie earth transitioned to hardpacked clay and stone and then to sparkling sand. They wound their way among the bushes and cacti that clawed and snatched at them like bad-tempered cats. At long last, the sun drooped behind the red hills in the distance, and their guide led them through a gap in the rock he called Arakaná, which he translated as the Pass of Judgment.
A deep sadness seeped into Cam as they penetrated this lonely, hostile landscape along with a sense of loss he didn’t understand. It was as if the land itself were in mourning or preparing for some great cataclysm. He craned his head around to see if Rebecca had noticed it. She made no sign that she did. She rode with her head held high, far more suited to the saddle than he was. He supposed as a lady of the king’s court, she had been given the best training available, while he learned through hard experience and rarely enjoyed the chance to ride far.
He closed his eyes against the glare of the sun and tried to let his mind extend into the landscape the way it did when he used the Life Stone. The jarring pain of every step of his horse made it difficult, but he persisted until the throbbing soreness receded to a dull ache. He reached out to that sense of sadness.
It lived in the rocks themselves, infused the plants and animals, coiled around every grain of sand. This land was ancient, scoured by millions of years of wind and water. It belonged to neither the Anarwyn nor the Bragamahr, and it wanted neither.
Far off in the distance, something familiar stirred. The Bragamahr sent tendrils of thought in his direction, enticing him with the promise of power. Trussed up and aching like he was, the temptation to yield proved beguiling. If he accepted the Bragamahr, he could save Rebecca from whatever terrible fate awaited them.
The Anarwyn was no use to him now. He’d lost the stones and was separated from all his friends except Rebecca. The black sand in the scars on his knuckles and at his temple itched. He had already accepted the Anarwyn to save his friends. Would it be so bad to accept the Bragamahr to save Rebecca?
Even as the desire boiled up and he considered the prospect, the earth trembled, and his horse staggered. Cam snapped out of the trance-like state.
“Run!” the twins shouted.
Cam looked up. Stones tumbled down from the rocks above in a roar and a cloud of dust. The horses bolted and fled as stones rumbled into the narrow pass, bouncing among them. A stone struck a glancing blow on the side of Cam’s head. If he hadn’t been tied to the horse, it would have torn him from the saddle.
The twins whipped their horses as if the rockslide had been their fault. Cam knew better. The land didn’t want them here. They brought with them the potential of the Bragamahr. This land would not accept them, and in his desperation to save Rebecca, Cam had endangered them all. The guide had been right. This was the Pass of Judgment and it had rejected them.
The horses clattered over the broken stone into a dry wash beyond the pass.
“What just happened?” Baby Face demanded of their guide. “Did you plan that?”
The guide scowled. “The land of the Orren knows who is friend and who is foe.”
Cam had guessed right. There was something in this land that was older than either the Anarwyn or the Bragamahr. He checked to make sure Rebecca was uninjured. She was white-faced and tight-lipped but seemed to be unhurt. Her horse bled from a wound on its shoulder, and it was trembling. Blood dribbled down Cam’s cheek. He ignored it.
After casting a knowing glance at Cam, the guide started out again, following the wash for another mile until he called them to a halt. Baby Face untied Cam and Rebecca’s hands one at a time so they could eat a sparse meal of jerked meat and some rock-like cake that tasted like wheat and rye with a bit of honey and herbs. The taste was pleasing, but Cam’s throat was so dry he could barely swallow.
Baby Face only allowed each of them three sips of water before he tore the waterskin away and replaced the stopper. When they finished, he retied their hands and feet, made them lie down beside each other, and threw a single blanket over them before retreating to the fire and rolling into his own blanket.
Cam wriggled around until he was facing Rebecca. They had been kept apart all day. Now, he lay beside her, touching her, feeling her body against his. A shiver swept through him, and he shook himself. This was not the time for such thoughts.
Rebecca watched him with her gentle, gray eyes. Bits of twigs and clumps of sand matted her blonde hair. Her face was scratched and streaked with dirt and small trails of blood. And yet, she was so beautiful.
“Are you all right?” Cam whispered.
“A little sore,” she said. “But I’ll manage. How about you?”
Cam was far more than a little sore, but he wasn’t going to admit that to Rebecca. “Same. I’m gonna get us out of this.”
Rebecca smiled. “You have a plan?”
Cam glanced around. Tied up like he was and lost in a vast devouring desert, there weren’t many options. “Not yet,” he admitted.
“We’ll think of something,” Rebecca said.
“How did they capture you?”
Her eyes narrowed, and she frowned. “I strolled upstream for a bit of privacy, and Briallen followed me.”
Cam stiffened and regretted it immediately. Everything hurt from his head down to the soles of his feet.
“He tried to convince me to run off with him,” she said.
Cam scowled. “Where to?”
“To Badayev.”
The implications stunned Cam. “You mean he wanted you to marry him?”
Rebecca gave a little non-committal bob of her head. “I suppose.” She briefly described her encounter with Briallen, how he understood that she was restless and hankering for adventure anywhere but in Abilene, how he promised to make her wealthy and powerful.
Cam found himself temporarily choked with an irrational, jealous rage that made speaking impossible. When he mastered himself, he said, “That underhanded, son of a—”
“That’s not the worst of it,” Rebecca interrupted.
Cam steeled himself. He didn’t want to think about what could be worse than losing Rebecca to a man like Briallen.
“While we were talking, I saw Zenek in the bushes speaking to an Inverni on a horse.”
“What?” Zenek had been Cam’s paddling companion from Abilene and all the way down the Afon Fathwe River.
“Somehow,” Rebecca continued, “he told Bardon’s riders where to find us. That’s how they knew to wait for us at the great bend in the river.”
“No.” Cam didn’t want to believe it. He remembered how the Mahrowaith attacked him at the Afon Darodel, and he suspected that Zenek had been using the paddle to hold him under the water. He had convinced himself he imagined it. Now, it all made sense.
“By the breath of the Bragamahr,” Cam cursed. “I can’t believe it.” He recalled Ewan’s words before the last rapids. “Ewan guessed there was a traitor among us. He said something was wrong.”
“What about the rest of the men?” Rebecca’s voice was unusually thick, and Cam realized she was on the verge of tears. “Drakeman?”
“He was alive when I was captured,” Cam said. “They were retreating into the river in the canoes.”
“Then how did they capture you?”
“Draig.” Cam struggled to keep the knot from forming in his throat. “Draig saved my life from the Mahrowaith, and the Inverni shot him down.”
“I’m sorry,” Rebecca whispered and gave a little sniffle. “He saved my life, too.” She shivered and pressed her body closer to Cam. “It’s cold.”
The temperature dropped surprisingly fast for a place that had scorched them all day. Cam shifted to try to find a comfortable position. With his hands and feet tied, he couldn’t do much. He didn’t want to tell Rebecca how much he had longed to be this close to her, though he’d imagined it under different circumstances.
“So, we could be all that is left of the company?” Rebecca asked.
Cam hadn’t let himself think this. But now that she said it, he had to admit that it was possible. If the riders had cut them off from the canoes or chased them downriver, they might have killed everyone. After all their effort, how could things have gone so wrong?
He opened his mouth to reply when Scar Face plodded up to sit the first watch on a big boulder not ten paces from them. He grunted as he found his seat and stretched his legs.
“One peep out of either of you and I’ll slit your throats,” he snarled.
“Where are you taking us?” Cam demanded.
Scar Face sneered and drew his knife. “You don’t listen, do you, boy?”
“Not to cowards who run from battle and kidnap innocent people.”
Scar Face rose to his feet. “I’ll slit her throat first then, shall I?”
“All right, all right,” Cam said, afraid his bravado was placing Rebecca in danger. “I’ll be quiet.” The thought of anything like that happening to Rebecca sent cold dread coursing through him.
“Yes, you will.” Scar face sank back down and leaned against the rock with a sigh.
Cam watched Rebecca until she closed her eyes. The weariness of the journey swept over him, and he allowed himself to drift off into a fitful sleep filled with wild dreams and the faces of his friends swimming in a river of blood. His dreams lingered and shifted to no apparent purpose until he jerked violently awake as a strong hand smelling of woodsmoke and deer fat clamped over his mouth. His eyes popped open, and he struggled, desperate to get free. Rebecca jerked awake beside him. At any moment, Cam expected to see the flash of a knife and feel the bite of its blade.
Pre-order now! Undead, Book 2 in the Heirs of Anarwyn series.