The Ippos King (Wraith Kings #3) - Grace Draven Page 0,24
had the impression she’d just abandoned her husband to a fate of which she wanted no part.
Pluro straightened his quilted tunic and flexed his shoulders if he prepared for a confrontation. Serovek’s eyebrows crawled toward his hairline though he said nothing. The vassal motioned to the hall’s entrance. “If you’ll follow me please.”
Whispers of inquiry exchanged between those in Serovek’s escort reached Anhuset as they all trailed the two men out of the manor and back into the cold outdoors. Serovek fell back a step or two until Anhuset came abreast of him. Pluro didn’t wait but strode ahead, skirting a flock of roaming geese and a pair of hay carts parked nearby. Lines of wash flapped in the cutting breeze.
“What do you think?” Serovek asked her, his voice quiet.
She tried not to dwell on the pleasurable warmth that coursed through her at his request for her opinion. “I didn’t expect the monk not to be in his brother’s house.”
“Nor I.” He signaled to the rest of his men. “Wagon,” he said. They saluted and broke away to retrieve the wagon they’d brought transport Megiddo.
When they approached the smallest of the farmstead’s three barns, Serovek’s harsh “Surely, he’s jesting,” echoed her own thoughts. There was no possible way Pluro had stashed his own brother in a barn with the livestock. However, the man never changed directions, and soon they entered the dark, pungent structure.
Occupied by a few head of cattle, two mules, and a small number of sheep, the barn was a little warmer than outside, but their breath still steamed in front of them. Weak sunlight bled through splits in the building’s cladding and flooded the entrance, illuminating the space enough for the two men to see without too much trouble. Anhuset saw everything clearly, including the ominous thunderhead that had descended over Serovek’s countenance.
Pluro led them to the very back of the barn, past the stalls, hay racks and shelves of tack and tools, to another closed door partially covered in an array of webs spun by busy spiders. The webbing spread across the hinges and surrounded the latch and handle, signs that it had been some time since anyone had disturbed their labor by opening the door.
Anhuset and Serovek waited as their host paused to light an oil lamp before brushing away the webs and freeing the latch. Hinges squealed as he pushed the door inward. The newborn flames inside the lamp stretched fingers of light into the ink-dark room. Shadows fled at their encroachment, and soon the flickering illumination spilled onto a bier on which a man lay in peaceful repose.
Anhuset took in the sight with a heart that slowed its beat and breath that hovered in her nostrils. Beside her, Serovek sighed softly, a reverent sound laced with regret. Five men had sacrificed much to battle galla and save a world. One of them had paid an even more terrible price.
Megiddo Cermak breathed but slept the slumber of the dead, his soul trapped in a galla prison while his body, kept alive and protected by ancient Kai magic, waited for his soul’s return. He wore armor similar to Serovek’s but plainer, its only nod to decorative elements a border of runes etched into the steel around the collar of his breastplate.
The bier on which he lay was a simple affair of wooden slats laid adjacent to each other, their ends fastened at either side to rails that ran the length of the platform. Designed for ease of transporting the dead, the bier acted as Megiddo’s transparent coffin as well for now. Kai magic, the last remnants of power Brishen had drawn out of his own people with necromantic spellwork, flitted across the width and length of the bier in tiny blue sparks that faded as fast as they ignited.
A year ago, Anhuset would have sensed Megiddo’s presence even before she reached the barn, felt the pull of sorcery similar to her own, albeit feeble, magic. No longer. Now there was nothing. No twinge or draw, no prickle along her spine. Not even a strip of gooseflesh to signal an awareness of magic.
She’d known the moment it happened, when the desperate Khaskem had stripped every adult Kai of their magic in order to save them from total annihilation. A hollow had opened up inside her and remained. Neither rage, nor grief, nor acceptance of the necessity of Brishen’s devastating act filled it. Anhuset stared at Megiddo—more simulacrum than living man despite the fact he breathed—then looked