Song (The Manhunters Book 1) Read online

  SONG

  The Manhunters

  Book One

  by Jesse Teller

  Copyright 2017 Jesse Teller

  Kindle Edition

  Also by Jesse Teller

  Legends of Perilisc

  Chaste

  Liefdom

  Mestlven

  The Manhunters Series

  Song

  Hemlock

  Crown

  For Rayph Teller, the hope of my nation.

  And for Chris, more than a friend, more than a brother.

  Thirty-three Years After The Escape

  “Tread softly. It might be awake. This land before you was once the continent of Perilisc. A smoking, reeking wasteland is all that remains. We now stand in the lands of one of its three lords. The beast that reigns here is a monster of mythical strength and power. It possesses a mind devious and malevolent and a heart chipped from stone. It will devour us if we rouse it. I brought you so we might make sense of this place and the one that rose here, the beast that had no rival, the monster of Lorinth.

  “Ah, this hole, this shell of what used to be Nardoc will be our shelter. We shall take refuge here and rest for a bit. Tomorrow, we will march for the corpse of Dragonsbane and seek the survivors we came in search of. For now, lie there on that stone and heed my tale. I will tell you of the first time I became aware of the beast of these lands. I will tell you the first time the destroyer of Perilisc lifted its head.”

  Map of Lorinth

  The Guard of Mending Keep

  One Year After The Escape

  The serving boy’s face was stained green with disgust and horror. He looked about to be sick, about to flee, about to weep. Rayph saw the trembling lip and the panic in the eyes, and he knew what the boy was carrying. It was small, maybe a little over a foot wide, spherical, and covered with a towel. The boy wove a path through the reclining bathhouse patrons and made his slow, methodical way around the main tub to the corner where Rayph sat with his good friend, playing crease and taking in the steam.

  As the boy drew closer, the dread that rose up within Rayph prompted him to turn to Dova and grimace. Rayph moved his tile, tapping it lightly with his finger, and shook his head.

  “I’m afraid we are about to be interrupted,” Rayph said.

  The boy trembled beside the gaming table. His white, sweating face held the world’s shock, and Rayph nodded at him. “Set it down.” He waved his hand across the boy’s eye line and muttered an incantation. The serving child’s face smoothed clear of all trepidation, and he let out a long-held breath.

  “Where did you get it?” Rayph asked.

  The boy’s dark eyes looked troubled even through the effects of the spell. “He hurt me,” the boy said.

  “Hurt you how?” Rayph asked.

  The boy pointed to his temple. “He got in here. He burned me.”

  Rayph clenched his fist and anger bubbled deep within him. “What did he look like?”

  “He was trimerian, but his third eye,” the boy rubbed his forehead, “it seemed to be flaming. He stunk of sulfur.”

  Rayph’s blood ran cold, and he stood. “Watch the boy. Lock down the house. If he returns, do not engage, just defend, Dova. He is beyond even you.”

  He looked to his ethereal friend, naught but churning wind where his body sat. The towel draped over Dova’s shoulders and tied around his waist, the only indicator of his form.

  Rayph grabbed the boy’s shoulders a little too rough, just a little too hard. “Where did he go?” Rayph tried not to let fear get the better of his voice, but it trembled. There are so many innocents here. If he unleashes, how much of the city can I save? The answer was very little.

  Dova exploded with a slight puff of wind. The towels fell to the floor. Rayph could feel his friend fill the room, warm air, fluttering and vibrant with life, swelled, blowing curtains in a flurry. The doors to the bathhouse slammed shut.

  “Where did he go, son?” Rayph asked the boy.

  “Who said he’s gone?” The voice held a new lilt of arrogance to it, a soft tinkling, musical and filled with spite. The boy leapt back. His forehead ripped open, betraying an eye. His back split and out flapped two wings that bled greasy smoke.

  “Clear the room,” Rayph commanded as he loosed his spell. The power of the spell’s thrall was so great that every reclined man leapt to his feet and rushed for the door. The doors flew open to slam closed again. Every lamp in the room surged, hissing flame before dying completely. The room was thrown into gloom, the only light issuing from the great opening in the roof centered over them.

  With a flick of his wrist and the uttering of a command word, the air around Rayph’s right hand tore and his sword dropped from the wound. The air zipped closed again, and Rayph turned to the serving boy, who hovered before him.

  “You harm that boy any further and I will hunt you, Meric. I will plunge into that darkness you surround yourself in and I will rip you from it.”

  The boy tossed his head back and unfurled a hideous laugh that trembled the ceramic tiles of the wall. “I have not come to quarrel with you, old friend.”

  “You and I were never friends,” Rayph said. The sky above the opening darkened, and Rayph stepped closer. “Why have you come here? Why show yourself now, after this many millennia?”

  “The nation is wide open, dear friend. No one is watching over Lorinth in your absence. You have forsaken your post.”

  “I still guard this nation. I serve not the throne, but this is still my home. I will return as court wizard one day.”

  The boy’s head lobbed back, and he poured out another hideous laugh, so violent the corners of the mouth split, and the boy coughed blood. “Too late, Rayph, you will return too late.” The head shook. “You have not yet looked at the present I left for you. How rude you are, Ivoryfist.”

  Rayph extended an arm toward the table and muttered a word. His eyes stayed locked to Meric as the object floated the room to hover before Rayph. With a jerk of the cloth, he unveiled the severed head. Rayph looked in horror at the face, so contorted in pain from its last moment he could not recognize it.

  He stared at it. The left side of the face was badly burned, the neck severed with some keen, hot blade that cauterized the wound perfectly. Deep claw marks covered the right side of the face and neck. Blood stained the chin and mouth.

  Rayph’s heart broke out in a rampaging rhythm, and his mind burst into flames as he recognized the face. “No.” He looked away, but his eye was drawn to the head again as the identity of the head locked in his mind. “It can’t be.”

  A gurgling laugh filled the room, and Rayph summoned forth the power to smite Meric.

  “No, Rayph, you mustn’t!” Dova screamed. He threw his whistling form before Rayph, and two thrumming hands landed on his shoulders. The air that comprised Dova’s body filled with the water of the tub they stood in, making a figure of rampaging moisture. “If you engage him here, you will destroy my city. You must not.”

  “Listen to Dova, Rayph. He always was one for caution,” Meric said. “Caution and cowardice looking so much alike and all.”

  “Rayph, who is it?” Dova motioned toward the head.

  “Stoic,” Rayph breathed. “He has killed Stoic.” Saying it aloud let the words take on meaning. His friend was gone, his guard, dead. What would become of Mending Keep? Had they all fled? Had the world’s unkillable fiends made good an escape?

  He knew the futility of the words before he spoke them but felt helpless to say anything else. “I will make you hurt for this, Meric. In this one act, you have killed yourself.” Rayph felt nauseous.

  “Step aside, Dova,” he said.

  “Oh, my dear Rayph, please
do keep tight check on that temper of yours. I would hate to reduce this city to rubble because you threw a fit,” Meric said. The black smoke issuing from the flapping wings filled the room with unbreathable air. “Stoic is gone, as are his charges, but that does not mean we need come to blows. I was not the one who killed him.”

  “This head was severed with your blade. Do not try to deny it.”

  “Yes, for easier transportation, I assure you. He was dead long before I got there.”

  Was Meric lying? Did he have any reason to? Why bring the head at all? Meric was not one to gloat. It was not his way. Why alert Rayph the prison had been broken in to? There was an element to this Rayph could not see, something big moving powerful pieces about the board.

  “Who did this?” Rayph asked.

  The boy laughed again, weaker this time. He doesn’t have much time. I have to get Meric out of that boy as soon as possible.

  “I won’t do all your work for you, Ivoryfist,” Meric said. Lightning flashed outside, the inky clouds that followed Meric everywhere boiling in the sky above them.

  “Does this mean you’re coming off sabbatical?” Meric asked.

  “I will find out who did this and why, and when I do, if your name comes up at all…”

  The boy laughed again, a hissing wheeze that scared Rayph.

  “Remember who helped you when it all comes out, Rayph. Remember who alerted you to the break. You owe me now,” Meric said.

  “I owe you nothing. You did not do this for anyone’s reasons but your own.” It’s big. It’s really big, but I can’t see it.

  Meric laughed again. The wings pumped, throwing blood through the air, and the boy’s body lifted.

  “Leave the boy!” Rayph said.

  “You don’t give me orders any more, Rayph. Those days are over.” The boy lifted high above the bathhouse, and Rayph splashed into the center of the tub to stare up at darkened skies. With a deafening explosion, Meric broke loose of the boy’s body, and the child dropped. Rayph set his feet and watched as the body tumbled. The boy dropped through the opening in the ceiling, and Rayph caught him in his arms. The sky opened and rain hammered the city. Rayph looked at his friend and grimaced.

  “I must leave, Dova,” Rayph said. “But first I have to know what happened to Stoic. Can I use your lab and summoning room?”

  “Everything I own is at your command, Ivoryfist, you know that.”

  The boy woke up screaming.

  Rayph threw a glance across the pages of the book once more before stepping around the table and into the summoning circle. He waved a hand in the direction of Stoic’s head, and it floated to him. Rayph gently set the head in the center of the circle and walked away. At the circle’s edge, he lifted his arms and called for his friend.

  Long hours passed, filled with incantations and a smattering of the spells it took to summon forth the realm of the dead. The air above the head warped and boiled until it ripped open. As the air was seared, the smell of burnt ozone filled Rayph’s nostrils. The rip widened until a vista of a world beyond opened before Rayph and Dova.

  A low-lying mist crawled the ground, issuing forward from the afterlife. A darkness filled the air that made the place a sinister land. From within the mist, a shambling figure lurched toward them. It carried an enormous staff it planted with every step, trembling both worlds. Rayph’s mouth went dry as the being came forward.

  The cloak of The Grim was a ratted thing, black and gray, sewn with patches of rotting cloth. The hood sheltered the head, hanging low, blocking out all signs of a face within its grasp. The staff was a gnarled branch from the First Tree, the only branch to have fallen from the tree since its creation at the birth of the world. It bore strange grain that moved and stretched as she neared. Rayph fought to pry his eyes away as the grain took on the shape of screaming faces.

  “You trespass the world of the dead, stranger. My mistress will impose a hefty fine for your crime,” The Grim said.

  “I am no stranger to your mistress, Grim. Long has she been friend to me. I have come to her aid, and she to mine.”

  “Long? You can not comprehend the word, trimerian.”

  “I stand corrected, ancient one. For my part, my alliance with The Pale has been a long and comforting one. I ask for a boon from her now as payment for the last favor I did for her.”

  “You possess great nerve, trimerian. How dare you intrude upon this ground, then demand payment for imagined debt?” The Grim lifted her mighty staff with one hand and pointed its end at Rayph.

  He did not flinch. The mist surged, and The Grim lowered the staff. The mist crawled from the tear between worlds to fill the room, and Rayph felt the presence of The Pale.

  The staff fell to the ground. The slight, feminine hands of The Grim broke free of the robe’s sleeves. The bent and blackened fingers gripped the hem of the hood and pushed it back.

  The grisly face of death’s avatar turned her gaze to set her clouded eyes upon him, shifting back gray, knotted hair with the consistency of cobwebs. The deeply creased face locked smoky eyes on Rayph.

  The voice that issued from the mouth of The Grim changed. It held a pristine quality, a strong, musical lilt that charmed Rayph to hear. He lowered to his knees and looked to the ground.

  “Pale, you have blessed me with your presence, and it honors me.”

  “Behold my face, Rayph Ivoryfist.”

  Rayph looked up. The smoke in the eyes blew away to clear, beautiful blue. The deep wrinkles pulled back, replaced with a countenance of such grace and beauty that Rayph wept. The skin lightened from gray to blemish-free pale, the color of milk, and Rayph sighed at the ravishing beauty of the Goddess of Death.

  “You honor me too much, Mistress of the Fallen,” Rayph said, his voice soft as a feather on the wind.

  “Long have you been friend to me, Rayph Ivoryfist. Now I will ask what has brought you to me. Do you wish another soul returned to you? My wrath will be great if you ask again.”

  “Never would I come to you for that favor twice, Mistress. No, I need to speak to one of your children. He has come to you recently. He holds information I cannot do without. A few questions answered will be a great aid to me and my current endeavor.”

  “Name him, and I will produce him.”

  “His name is Cooth Taker. I knew him as Stoic.”

  The mist behind her swirled as Stoic stepped through. He stood before Rayph, headless, bearing the armor of the guard of Mending Keep.

  “May I grant him his head, Mistress?”

  “You may,” she said.

  Rayph lifted a hand, bringing the head to levitate between worlds. The body grasped the head and tucked it under the arm. The eyes opened and the mouth shut.

  “Stoic, I am sorry I left you to your post.”

  The eyes turned to regard Rayph from under the man’s arm, and the mouth spoke. “My post was mine to fill. Your absence did not bear effect on the events that transpired there.”

  “Had I been there—”

  “You would now be dead, as I am, though much more grievously mutilated, I am sure. Ask me your questions.”

  “I have thought about the prison and who could have attacked it successfully, and the only name I can summon to mind is Dotley Cherlot. Am I correct? Was the Stain of the Second Age the one that perpetrated this atrocity?”

  “Dotley Cherlot was not present at my death. I did see his student Black Cowl. He seemed to be leading the assault.”

  “Leading? How many were there?”

  “Thirty powerful villains assaulted Mending Keep, though I fear many of our charges escaped.”

  The number struck Rayph hard. Thirty. A team so large, led by such a mind as Black Cowl, could have done the job and more. “Were they bent on finding me?”

  “No, Ivoryfist, you were not their concern. In fact, I do believe they chose to strike while you were away, though I’m sure the thirty of them would have been your death. They were bent on freedom for our inmates. There seemed no o
ther goal.”

  “Did you see any others you knew?”

  “They were on me in an instant. Too many for me to fight, and as they released, the prisoners joined in the attack,” Stoic said. “They took their vengeance upon me.”

  The words cut into Rayph. A great wave of hate and guilt rose up like bile before a purge. “I am sorry I was not there.”

  Stoic said nothing in response until he added, “They wore a symbol. Some wore a pendant, some a badge. There was more than one tattoo, and a stamp upon the armor of one ghastly warrior I cannot name but will spend the afterlife in fear of.”

  “What sort of symbol?”

  The head tucked neatly beneath the arm of his friend paused to collect itself before continuing. “It bore the head of a dragon crossed with a sword and bolt of lightning. I cannot relay the effect it had on me to behold it.”

  “Can you try?”

  “Looking upon this symbol was like staring into the face of hate and corrosion. If evil has a face, if wrath can be captured in steel or tattooed upon the body, then this is its visage.”

  Rayph nodded. He fought back the horror of the words, unwilling to show his fear in the face of the goddess of death. Those who had trained him could not be shamed by his display of a fear so encompassing.

  Rayph turned back to the image of The Pale, and he bowed his head. “I thank you, mighty Death. The honor you have bestowed upon me has not gone unnoticed. When the day comes that I can repay you in any way, send word to me and the deed will be done.”

  The withered mask of The Grim once again shrouded the beautiful countenance of The Pale before the hood stole its face and it turned away. Stoic glanced back as he walked away, casting a look of longing at Rayph that broke his heart. Rayph closed the rip between worlds with little effort and turned to Dova.

  “I must go to Mending Keep. I wish I could take you with me, but your place is here in Dorf, beside your lord.”