The Motive for Massacre (The Kinless Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  This time, the hardened wooden box gave up the ghost to her strike, and the lid split wide open. Everyone leaned in to try and see what the box contained.

  Chelsea sat her false sword in the grass and picked away the shards of broken lid with care. The dark wood of the box was sharp, like long teeth, and were just as dangerous in their own way as Alisanne had been. It was a fitting last gesture by the dead Bishop's precious case. Chelsea pried the larger pieces away and tossed them over her shoulder into the grass, revealing a lush red velvet interior. The material inside was puffy, as if it were the wrapping for something.

  "So this key was in our home our entire lives," Mal said suddenly. "I have a hard time imagining our parents keeping such a big secret from us all for so long. So strange."

  "Yeah," Umaryn said, thinking on the idea her brother posed. It was a depressing thought and she shook it free quickly. "Let's see it Chel."

  Chelsea tugged on the velvet and a lump of the red fabric came out via the cracked open lid into her hand. "It's really light. If it's a key it's not metal at all," she said as she squeezed it and tested its content's weight. "I think it's square?"

  Everyone leaned in to see better as she unwrapped the cloth one fold at a time. It took her nearly a minute to unravel it only to be foiled by a series of pins holding an inner layer of fabric closed. She undid the pins carefully and revealed a white silk wrapping beneath. It was no bigger than the palm of her hand.

  "That looks like a blessed shroud fragment," James said, reaching out to touch the white silk Chelsea held. "Yeah. It is."

  "What's that?" Malwynn asked.

  "It's very rare. As rare as Saints. When a person dies and their purity is revealed, they are examined and then prepared for their display, or their dissection into Relics if the body is not suitable for display. They are cleansed, purified, cleaned. Their bodies—or parts—are blessed a hundred times over by a series of specially trained Apostles that have dedicated their entire lives to the ritual. They are a secretive and elite group. That white cloth is the same cloth used to wrap the body of a Saint when it is moved. It's very rare and they guard it quite well. It is a symbol of something incredibly sacrosanct. For her to have even this small amount raises some troubling questions. Is what it contains holy beyond normal measure, or was she committing a secret heresy by using the cloth for an incorrect purpose?"

  Chelsea unfolded the creamy silk and with no ceremony at all, revealing in her palm an odd object that was their key.

  Whatever it was, it was not square. The object was instead rectangular, perhaps three inches long and an inch wide, and was as black as coal, yet as smooth as polished steel. Chelsea tossed it a few inches into the air effortlessly, showing that it had no weight to it. Inscribed in what looked like faded white paint two odd looking symbols that were either letters or numbers.

  "Is that an O and an I?" Umaryn asked.

  "No," Mal said confidently. Dad once showed me an old book he had that was all about ancient markings. I remember seeing something like that in the book. That's an old, old form of number writing. It predates The Fall, before the Great Plague nearly destroyed our world. That's a zero, and a one. May I see it?" Mal reached for the key and Chelsea handed it to him. He examined it very closely. "It has a seam, like it was molded but it is not steel. It feels hard yet pliable. Like a fingernail." He handed it to Umaryn.

  "So strange." She closed her eyes and held the strange key tightly and reached out with her inner voice. She was summoning the key's spirit. After a moment her eyes popped open and she dropped it in the grass as if it were scalding hot. She scooted back in the grass away from it with a frightened expression.

  "What?" James asked.

  "That… that thing is not alive."

  "What do you mean?" Mal asked.

  Umaryn looked at the black device as James picked it up. "It was not born of love or from the hands of a crafter. It was made. By a machine. A soulless machine that begat a stillborn thing into this world. It is heretical to the Guild, and to all of us who can speak to the souls of things that are made. It disgusts me."

  "That can't be," Mal said. "People haven't made things like that for three hundred years. Unless..."

  "Unless the key is over three hundred years old," James finished.

  They all looked at the black little device and had a collective shudder. The dark potential of something so small and so old was chilling.

  How many had died so that this thing would remain hidden from the people of Elmoryn?

  As the guards rushed out of Alisanne's office to pursue the stranger who'd leapt from the window a moment before, an Apostle walked in urgently. The need to tend to the wounded and dying was a powerful one for all who worshipped the spirits.

  The young lady healer took in the sight of Weston's dead body lying on its side and knew he was already too far gone. His shirt at the stomach was punctured multiple times and copious amounts of blood surrounded his body on the floor, and he was drained of all color. He'd rise up as the undead soon if his soul was not released. She'd attend to that shortly. Several feet away she saw a body she recognized as the body of Bishop Alisanne.

  "Bishop!" she exclaimed. She paused when she saw the strange globe of red streaked water that clung to the dead Apostle's head. The exclamation point of the dagger in her back was an afterthought. The healer dropped to her knees and scooped at the water, trying to move it away. At first the water fought back, taking on a rubbery consistency that wouldn't pry off. After a few seconds of prayer she felt The Way inside the water fade, and it began to come away with her fingers, splashing on the floor one handful at a time. The healer rolled the Bishop on her side—careful to not embed the dagger any deeper—and clapped her hard on the lower back. A flood of bloody water shot from her mouth and her eyes opened a crack. She coughed and immediately winced. The dagger in her back stabbed away at the bloody meat of her lungs.

  She was not fully dead, but there was nothing the healer could do to prevent her death. The spirits could not give air to the living in the way she needed it.

  The young healer stroked Alisanne's wet hair away from her eyes and comforted her. The Bishop mumbled something and more blood and water trickled from her lips.

  "Speak, Alisanne. What are your last words my lady?"

  The Bishop's eyes were glazed over and could only manage to stare at the wall. Her lips moved with deliberate focus and she whispered something.

  "Say again?" The healer asked, leaning closer. As her ear reached Alisanne's mouth a swirl of energy came up from the floor and her body, stirred by the words of the dying Alisanne. The white motes of streaming magic were barely visible in the air, hovering between this world and the next, but the Apostle could see it for what it was: a spell.

  "Peiron. My enemies have struck me down, but you may continue in my absence. May the Ancestors guide your sword this day. Begin," she whispered, still staring at the wall. "Aleksi they come for the door. May their blood sustain you and your children. Protect the vault. None can enter, nothing can leave."

  The young Apostle watched as the ebbing energy clung near to her, listening. When she fell silent the power of the dead flowed out of the window, divided in two and carried Alisanne's message away. It was a Sending spell.

  The healer turned back from the open window and looked down at Alisanne as her body went limp for the last time.

  She didn't know what the messages meant, but the words made her feel ill inside.

  - Chapter Nineteen -

  KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE…

  Something concerning was afoot. From his room on the second floor of the Ockham's Fringe inn Marcus could see that the Empire forces were moving far more than they had in previous days and perhaps ever. It was noon now, and when the sun had risen in the east the dead and living alike across the invisible border were already moving.

  I wonder if they are mobilizing to return to Graben? I hope.

  Doubtful. Marcus stood looking out the window with a
pair of incredibly rare and expensive field glasses at the vast expanse of plains and the massive array of Empire forces. His experienced eyes paid close attention to several details inside their movements.

  At the center of the cluster Marcus could see the swarms of undead the Empire was known for. Tens of thousands of them at a bare minimum now. At the head of the crowd he could see a small portion of them that wore metal cages around their heads and ramshackle armor on their bodies. He'd heard of the war dead and their armor before, but he'd never seen it in person. The wrought iron cages protected the zombie's skulls from bludgeoning and beheading, and the armor made it that much more difficult to destroy their bodies. If the Queen had seen to it that so many of the dead here were to have armor, it spoke ill of her seriousness for a war. Marcus had a chill.

  The armored undead were at the very front line, forming a hardened head to an army sized warhammer. Outside of the undead and mixed in as well Marcus could see living soldiers and purple robed figures moving about, orchestrating the dead. These people were critical to kill if violence occurred: they would be the handlers of the dead, and if they were to die, the zombies would act as they should, killing everything around them, instead of just who their handlers pointed them at. Each necromancer could only hold sway over so many of the dead. Their personal willpower determined how many in the moment and overloading an already stressed death mage at capacity could turn the tide of the battle if it happened. The number of handlers present on the plains was far larger than Marcus would've hoped to face, and that meant the number of dead was equally ludicrous.

  Far to the rear of the army Marcus could see the ordered rank and file of the archers standing out. They wore no armor to remain mobile and fluid, and each had large woven baskets on wheels that served as mobile high capacity quivers. The baskets of arrows were attached to more dead. Why use a beast of burden that needed to be fed? Instead of swords or axes, the archers held longbows that sported a tremendous range, and Marcus could envision how sharp the tips of the arrows were. The bowmen would remain afar, and rain down thousands of missiles on the village blindly, pinning down anyone trying to move in the town. It was a tried and true siege tactic that caused chaos and death on a massive scale almost without fail. Marcus wasn't too worried about the archers. He had a plan for them them that The Empire wouldn't like.

  To each flank of their gargantuan war host Marcus could see flashes of iridescent purple, and the larger forms of heavily armored warriors riding mounts. Gvorn mounts exclusively, many of which were just as dead as the zombies in the center of the army. Atop the Gvorn rode the elite Order of the Purple Flower, Knights in service to the Purple Queen. They were arrayed as Marcus would've had them, at the flank where their speed would be best utilized. He feared the Knights most of all. Their armor and speed would be problematic and their best defense was the quickly dug moat that surrounded the village. Moats have been crossed before with less.

  The tactics they would use were obvious. The flat and open terrain gave no one any advantages, save for the slight rise the village sat on and the moat dug around it. The fighting would be brutal and as simple as could be. Run the bulk of your entirely expendable forces up the middle, directly at the brand new city walls of the village until the moat was full of dead bodies and then keep your cavalry in reserve at the far flanks where they could sweep in to turn the tide at a moment's notice. And while all this happened, your thousand archers would draw and let loose, draw and let loose.

  Marcus knew he only had to hold the village for six hours—ten at the most—but he felt that task might be too much to ask of his men, and the people of Ockham's Fringe.

  A knock came on the door behind him.

  "Enter please," Marcus said with the field glasses still pressed to his face. He didn't dare look away from his enemy.

  "It's Dunwood sir."

  "I figured as much. It's either you or Howard bringing me a beer to drown my sorrows in now. What news do you have for me?"

  The replacement Sergeant approached the Knight Major, his mud covered boots making sticky thuds on the clean floor as he came. "Our scouts have spotted forces far to the east and west, moving to flank us. It appears that the Empire forces have crossed over the border." Marcus had sent out two small groups of highly trained soldiers to serve as scouts days ago. They had left under the cover of darkness and dug small hides into the very earth so they could be in plain sight, and yet hidden.

  "Further south than before?" Marcus asked.

  "Yes, Sir. Larger forces as well. The men who returned at dawn reported that there was a platoon sized element maneuvering both east and west of the village. Several miles out, just out of sight. All footmen, no undead."

  Marcus took the binoculars from his eyes and looked to the sergeant. "All living?"

  "Yes."

  "Any purple robed men with them?" Marcus asked.

  Dunwood shook his head no. "It's possible that they simply took off their robes. It wouldn't be the first time Empire necromancers have hidden themselves amongst common soldiers."

  "This is bad," Marcus said. "Alert all the soldiers. Get the full complement of archers in all of the towers immediately. Have a sending made for the scouts to return at once. Make sure the moats are ready."

  "You think they plan to attack today?" Dunwood asked.

  "I do. They are organizing now, more so than before and if those units to the east and west are so small, they must be elite or a decoy designed to draw us into starting this so they can blame Varrland for first blood. They might be knights on foot, or perhaps saboteurs. Scouts would've moved at night as ours did, or under the cover of The Way. We must assume they are attacking as soon as this afternoon or tonight. Do as I wish please and get everyone prepared. Oh, and tell the Apostles to ready themselves for the sending to Daris for reinforcements. There can be no delay."

  "Immediately sir," Dunwood said as he saluted the Knight Major. Marcus returned the Sergeant's salute crisply and went back to his magnified world outside. The enemy troops continued to move like an undulating serpent on a horrible scale.

  Marcus realized he wasn't wearing his armor and more than ever, realized he needed to put it on very soon.

  Peiron Fitch was born in the heart of The Empire. He was raised at the base of the giant cliff in the city of Graben. His family was wealthy enough to stay out of the slums on the far edges of the city, but not affluent enough to afford a modest home in the High City nearer the Queen's Palace. He was hated by the poor for what his family had, and mocked by the rich for what they didn't.

  In the end he was thankful for that. It gave him enough exposure to the poor and sick to be able to understand how they lived, and that allowed him later the gift of being able to mimic those of a lower station. It helped him to understand how difficult it was to be even a bit wealthy, and how hard it was to maintain that wealth, and to improve on it. His childhood gave him skills that earned him a berth in the Queen's school at a young age.

  Spirits spoke to him. He hid it at first, frightened of the truth they whispered in his ear, and because his parents were devout believers in the divine will of the Purple Queen and her sovereignty in The Empire. To admit openly that the spirits of the dead existed and could interact with the real world would've gotten him a beating from his father, likely with a belt, or with his father's cane. But when he was learning spy craft for The Queen he realized that being able to hear the spirits meant he could channel The Way as an Apostle would if he tried hard enough.

  And the Queen's spies saw to it he was taught how to be an Apostle, and that he lost his accent, and found a new one that more closely resembled someone from the Northern Protectorate.

  A strange life awaits anyone in Graben that becomes an Apostle. The spirits there are few and far between unlike elsewhere on Elmoryn. No one releases souls in The Empire; they are left instead to rot in the carcass they were born in, and then harvested into undead for the Queen. He was given instruction by an Apostle that had been hel
d captive for a decade for just this purpose, and when he was deemed ready, he was sent south. He could remember laughing at the old Apostle as he tried to sell Peiron on mercy, and forgiveness, and the power of the spirits.

  The old Apostle died alone right after Peiron left.

  It took him years to be adopted into the Church in Daris, hiding where he truly came from all the while. It took him even more time to find his way into the service of Bishop Alisanne, a specific task and a pawn of the Queen in the Cathedral there. Alisanne was a woman deluded by some personal quest and haunted by mistakes made in the past. Mistakes so deep and powerful she'd asked The Queen's Guild for assistance in ensuring they never saw the light of day again. Alisanne was ripe for manipulation and was intent on starting a war to better the world, and the Queen was more than happy to oblige her. Especially so when the Queen was able to stack the deck in her own favor by placing her servants inside the Church.

  On the eve of war Alisanne told Peiron to be the first person to launch an arrow when she called for it. Peiron had every intention of helping to start the way though his deed would not be to shoot the first arrow.

  No, that task would fall to someone else in The Empire's forces outside the village walls. The war would start without him, as his most important task was to ensure that the reinforcements that were waiting many miles south in Daris were never called for. But he had to wait. He had to bide his time. It had to be perfect.

  Peiron kept close to the inn the Knight Major used as his quarters. He knew Marcus' call would come from within, and as the designated Apostle to make the sending, he needed to know precisely when the call was needed. He of course would not send it, but all appearances would appear that he had. Once the false sending was made, it would then fall to him to sabotage the defenses inside the city, which he'd already formulated a delicious plan for.