Jashandar's Wake - Book Two: Unclean Places Read online

Jashandar’s Wake - Book Two: Unclean Places

  By L. S. Kyles

  Copyright 2013 L.S. KYLES

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781301488827

  Jashandar’s Wake – Book One: The Happenings

  Dedication

  For Danielle,

  Who reminds me of the way things were.

  Table of Contents

  Part Five: The Missions

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Part Six: Unclean Places

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  About the Author

  Part Five:

  The Missions

  Chapter 1

  By an extraordinary coincidence of nearly magical proportions, at the very moment that Brine Denbauk found himself standing at the back of the royal gardens—his ruinous gaze resting on the immense pile of flagstones where, moments earlier, his brother Jaysh had been propping his foot and cradling his cat-thing—Kowin the healer was also thinking about rocks.

  Only the pile of rocks on Kowin’s mind was as different from the decorative rocks in the royal gardens as night was from day. His pile of rocks rose three stories into the sky, lay deep in the choking, motionless grasses of the Southern Sway, and—by definition alone—were not rocks.

  They were boulders (giant, brown boulders) and they had been carried there, into that smooth and rockless prairie, by the very monster that lived atop their backs. After all, it was not for alliteration alone that the great mound had been coined the Devil’s Dome.

  As one might expect, the monstrous creature living atop the Devil’s Dome was also on Kowin’s mind, though not as much as the boulders. The creature, after all, was classified as missing—no threat to him there, so long as it stayed missing—and it wasn’t the creature he was in danger of falling from and breaking ever bone in his pigment-challenged body.

  Come to think of it, the golden-skinned beast actually ranked in at number three on the healer’s list of grievances. After the stones, the beast itself came in at a distant third behind the inert, green prairie surrounding the stones.

  To understand Kowin’s dislike of the Sway, one need only apply a simple mathematic equation. First, take the healer’s approximate height (seven-hands), then subtract the approximate height of the indigenous grass (eight-hands), and there was the answer. The negative answer.

  Kowin couldn’t see where he was going. He knew which direction he was going (based roughly upon the position of the sun), but he could not see that direction. He could see only the curtain of grass and cockleburs through which he was kicking and thrashing…the kicking and thrashing being the other reason he disliked this region of the kingdom.

  In order for Kowin to make any sort of progress through the Sway, he had to lean into the grass at a rather severe angle, flail both arms and legs in a vicious tearing-kicking motion, and, in essence, swim through the thistles and spear-grass and purple nests of briars.

  To make matters worse, he had to perform these aerobic exercises wearing a one-piece, sackcloth robe over his pasty body. Well, he didn’t have to wear the garment, but the alternative was to endure an agonizing stinging sensation on all his exposed flesh.

  Eager to avoid said stinging sensation, Kowin was forced to move through the reeds with his sleeves pulled down over his hands (the ends gripped tightly in his palms) and his hood hauled down over his face (the hem clenched firmly between his teeth).

  Needless to say, Kowin had developed a Hierarchy of Hatred since setting out from the cobbles of Castle Arn. It was a virtual pyramid of loathing constructed with a foundation of insubordinate horses on the bottom (one hateful palomino in particular), a row of influential families above that (the long-haired brat and hick-king, mostly), a layer of military personnel atop that (the scrawny general, chief among them), and finally, serving as the evil capstone of this wicked structure, the mad, mad halfling.

  Kowin knew this fool’s plan had not been the halfling’s doing. He knew, as well, that he could just as easily hate the long-haired brat, Iman, for coming up with the plan and the hick-king, Jaysh, for authorizing the plan (or even the high-strung palomino that had kicked him through the stall door and refused him as rider), but in the end he did not.

  In the end, he saved his malice for the hobbling demon with the double-headed axe. It was the hobbling demon, after all, that had done this to him. The long-haired brat could concoct all the plans he wished and the slack-jawed hick-king could authorize them until he was blue in his vine-stuffed face, but it was that crippled rat-fink who enforced them.

  Thinking back to the enforcement in question, Kowin recalled how the horrible halfling had purposefully waited until sunrise to deliver the royal decree, even though the decision to send the healer to the Devil’s Dome had been reached at the end of a very long and arduous meeting the night before.

  Kowin knew when the decision had been reached because, at the time, he’d been skinning a live groundhog in his chamber and was eavesdropping on the debate with the listening crystal hidden beneath the roundtable.

  But does mad halfling bring paper at night, when sun down and moon up and I can hides my skin in shadow?

  Spit no!

  The halfling had bided his time that evening, had gotten a bit of shuteye himself in that stinking bedchamber of his, and only then did he mosey down to the cellar to deliver the royal decree to the healer’s chamber.

  Kowin had been working in the back of the room at the time. He’d been sitting on the sticky, rough-hewn floor and holding what appeared to be a miniature bear trap in his pasty, bloodstained hands.

  Not that anyone could have seen him in the nearly nonexistent glow of the seeing sphere, and not that anyone could have heard him with the nearly palpable growl of the guard-frog in the rear closet, but Kowin was actually cleaning the steely-toothed contraption.

  He was scrubbing away the gore of yesterday’s victim and preparing the device for today’s unlucky prey. It was an act so ritualistic that he would have had no trouble committing it in the absolute darkness of the Kilashan caves and with all the imps of Sira’s Pit moaning in his ears. In fact, so engrossed was the healer in the cleansing process that the thud at the chamber door took him completely by surprise.

  Thunk!

  He looked up. The noise at the door hadn’t been a knock or a rap, and it h
ad not come twice or three times. On the contrary, it had been a single menacing collision, the sound of someone walking straight into the vertical planks between his chamber and the outer hall.

  Kowin held his breath and listened, suddenly wishing he could quiet the guard-frog grumbling in the closet.

  Thunk!

  Kowin winced and set his trap on the floor. He had no idea who—or what—was outside his chamber door, but he couldn’t say he didn’t know why they were there. He’d heard the imbecilic debate last night the same as everyone else at the roundtable.

  The long-haired brat had been whining about the vast number of royal subjects either killed by the happenings or driven out by their inhospitable effects. He’d then gone on to whine about the last of the castle’s able-bodied guard being sent west to fortify the Mad Man’s Pass, and he’d finished his whine by raising a challenge to those at the roundtable to do their part in resolving the happenings.

  We have to do our part! he’d cried. Our king is calling us to do our part!

  Kowin had thought this an interesting point to make seeing how the hick-king was nowhere to be found, but when a few of the counselors pointed this out to the long-haired brat—the titan-wench for one, the scrawny general for another—the brat simply ignored their pleas and produced four pieces of parchment detailing four separate missions.

  He doesn’t need to be here, the brat told them. His signature speaks for itself.

  It was not the king’s name, per se (it was missing too many of the appropriate letters to be his name), but it was the king’s signature. Only a king who’d dropped out of his elementary studies at the ripe old age of five could make such a mockery of the written language.

  The long-haired brat pointed to the bottom of each royal decree and indicated the poorly-scrawled symbols that should have formed the name, Jashandar, but instead formed names like, Jockender, Justidore, Jenendeer, and, in the last instance, simply, Jooooooor.

  By that time, though, the royal counselors were more interested in the names listed in the body of the decrees.

  Being no exception, Kowin dropped his gory utensils and left the groundhog where it squirmed. He all but ran to the seeing sphere and dropped the area of focus to each of the four decrees, moving from one idiotic mission to the next until he found the one titled, Mission Four: Golden One, with the name, Kowin - Royal Healer, listed in the details of the decree.

  That what out there now, Kowin thought, staring at the thunking door of his dungeon chamber. Stupid paper out there, waiting for me to open door.

  He curled his upper lip and remained frozen on the floor. If whoever was out there thought he was going to open that door, thus consenting to the brainless mandate written on that paper, they had another thing coming. They had better pull their head from the fermented corn juice they’d been drinking and think again.

  He’d watched those proceedings himself—or at least the parts after his name had been mentioned—and it wasn’t even the king making the plans. It was the brat with the long-hair, the brat who’d played with the king when they were boys, the one who’d come to live with the hick-king’s family after the brat’s own parents proved too stupid or lazy to raise him.

  So if that worthless spawn of a madman’s seed thought Kowin was going to take orders from the likes…from the likes of…

  A puff of gray smoke wafted beneath the chamber door, visible in the thin strip of light coming from the hall.

  Kowin shuddered at the sight.