Chapter 2
“Behold, the outsider who floated across the sea, to be found washed up on our shore as a frozen corpse. Except through some wizard’s trickery it turns out he was not dead at all. This vile deceit was the first of his several crimes against the Workshop.”
Only before that judge could list the rest of the allegations against him, another of the judges interrupted. “Is this the one the collectors claim to be the living avatar of Ramrowan?”
“I am Ashok Vadal.” He stood below them at the bottom of a dimly lit pit, defiant, though he was in chains sufficient to bind an elephant. “I claim nothing. If I speak, it is true. Ramrowan reborn is a title I’ve neither held nor sought.”
Seven men were seated on the wooden platform above him, each of them holding a candle. Ashok thought of them as judges, since their duties seemed to match that obligation in the Capitol, arguing over and ruling upon matters of Law. Except these were foreigners who had their own strange ways. They did not have the Law, but they still had laws, and Ashok had apparently broken a great many of them by coming to this damnable island.
“So you claim, Ashok Vadal.” Though the islanders spoke the same language as in Lok, they possessed a curious accent that made it nearly as difficult for him to decipher as the garbage dialect used by the most isolated casteless. “Except all who dwell in blessed Xhonura know mainlanders are liars who cannot be trusted.”
When applied to most of Lok, Ashok could not disagree with that assessment.
The Capitol and all the great houses were infested with untrustworthy liars. Ashok recognized that now. Except Lok was where he was needed, and he had already been imprisoned on the island of Fortress—or Xhonura as the locals seemed to call it—for far too long. It was difficult to tell the passing of the days, as he’d been kept chained in a dark, windowless cell, comatose at first, then starving and delirious, as he slowly recovered from the aftereffects of the magic that had somehow kept his body alive in the ice.
Surely weeks had passed since Devedas had cast him into the freezing sea. Long, terrible weeks, with barely any food or water, sustained only by magic and determination. This was the first time he had been out of that horrible cell. He did not intend to return.
“I intended no harm to this island. Let me free. I will depart and never return.”
“How do you plan to get back to your wretched home, infidel? Our paths are secret and never shown to outsiders. Do you intend to swim with ravenous sea demons across miles of water cold enough to stop a man’s heart?” Several of the men laughed.
“That is how I arrived. I assumed it was how I would depart.”
The way he stated that so flatly left a few of the graybeards shaking their heads. “You will not convince us to spare you by claiming you intend to execute yourself. We are here to determine guilt and apply punishment. We do not gather at the Judgment Pit to waste our time listening to the ramblings of the insane.”
“List the man’s crimes,” the one who appeared to be the eldest directed.
“The dead man awoke on the beach, striking fear into some of our collectors, and filling the heads of the others with infidel lies that he is Ramrowan returned. They say he is the Avatara, as prophesized. His mere existence has inspired rebelliousness.”
Ashok couldn’t help himself. He laughed. It was a grim laugh, but the first one that he’d had in a long time. It appeared that causing rebellion simply by existing was to be his fate in every land.
“What is so amusing, infidel?”
“I did not intend to cause rebellion…here.”
“Yet you did. The Collectors Guild is in upheaval. Some among them have convinced the others that this man is Ramrowan born anew. The prisoner was put in the dungeons to be tested as per the instructions left by the master of the Workshop. By some manner of trickery he has not died yet. Word of his survival leaked to the collectors, and pleas have turned into demands, and even threats of a strike. That is the only reason this board has gathered early to hear this case.”
Ashok scowled at that. He had been rotting in a dark cell, naked, chained to a wall, trapped, while his obligation, Thera, remained unprotected and in danger. He did not know how long he had slumbered after being placed here, but since he had woken up, there had been no opportunity to escape. His wrists, ankles, and neck had been shackled the entire time, so tightly that he could barely move, with steel links that even his hands were unable to bend. No guard ever got close enough to attack. His food, stinking chunks of fermented fish, was shoved at his mouth speared on the end of a long stick, and only came at rare, seemingly random intervals. Whenever the filth on and around his body became too thick, they would throw buckets of cold water down upon him. From the way that water had burned his eyes it had been treated in some alchemical manner, probably to stop an outbreak of plague in the prison. No one had spoken to him the entire time, despite having shouted himself hoarse demanding an audience with anyone in a position of authority.
There was no doubt that these terrible conditions were intended to kill. Any normal man would have succumbed by now. This wasn’t imprisonment, it was a gradual, inexorable, murder. Ashok did not know what a collector was, but he owed them a great deal of thanks for forcing this audience. Because whatever these judges ruled today, Ashok was done dying slowly.
“In addition to his lies, the infidel injured several officers when they tried to capture him. He broke the limbs of three different men before the rest were able to ensnare him in ropes.”
They had been lucky that Ashok had still been so cold he could barely move his arms, or he would have killed them all. Either the Heart of the Mountain or the shard of Angruvadal buried in his chest had somehow kept him alive as he had floated unconscious down the Akara River and across the southern sea, but that magical effect had left him extremely weak for a long time afterward. It turned out that even the legendary Ashok Vadal could not fight well with his blood turned to ice.
“I was frozen and still trying to understand what was happening when they laid hands upon me. Your servants are fortunate I was very tired.”
“Plead your case and beg for mercy, cur.”
“Beg?” Ashok did not understand what manner of man they usually sat in judgment over, but they clearly didn’t understand who they were dealing with today. “I do not beg. I will not plead. I will speak clearly, and you will make a decision. Hopefully for your sake it will be a wise one. My arrival here was not intended in offense.”
One of the judges extinguished his candle as Ashok spoke, while another angrily demanded, “You intended no offense? Yet you trespass on our shores, while claiming the title of our most sacred hero. At their guild house they chant the name Avatara.”
“That was a mistake made by those who found me. I have held many titles, but Avatara is not among them.”
Another candle was blown out. From their sneering manner, Ashok assumed that each dead light was a vote of condemnation, though he didn’t know if his death required all of them to go out, or just a majority. Fortress justice left you to die in the dark, so perhaps the candles represented a small hope of seeing the sun again? It was a mystery. He had never dealt with a foreign law before.
“So the prisoner is not a common fraud but claims to be a man of importance. Tell us of these supposed titles you’ve held, mad fool.”
Ashok bore the insults with calculated disdain. The judges were seated around the ledge a dozen feet above, surely thinking that they were secure. No malnourished, sickly prisoner could scale those sheer walls to reach them before being stopped. The heavy chains were still upon him, but they were dragging at his feet, not anchored to an immovable stone wall like before. Four men had escorted him into the pit and were waiting in the hall outside. There were an unknown number of guards stationed around the judges above. Each guard had been armed with a deadly Fortress rod—or gun as Ratul had called them—unlike any design Ashok had seen before. These seemed more refined than the simplistic weapons procured by the rebellion, and each had a knife mounted on the end to serve as a clumsy spear.
The instant the tension on those chains had been released, the future had been decided. The only question was whether Ashok’s exit would be peaceful or bloody, because one way or the other, Ashok would not be returning to that cell ever again.
He could have protested his innocence. He could have made logical arguments, and then hoped for reason to prevail. Except these haughty foreigners had made him suffer in near unmoving misery, being slowly devoured by rats and fleas, and starving in his own filth, so that would not be the case. He no longer served the Law, but the same righteous anger he’d felt while burning the villages of lawbreakers or putting whole families to the sword was upon him once again.
“You demand to know my titles? Very well. The greatest among them was Protector of the Law, twenty-year senior, Ashok Vadal, bearer of mighty Angruvadal, the ancestor blade of Great House Vadal.”
There was some muttering about that. “A bearer?” So even the island that had been cut off from the rest of the world for centuries knew about ancestor blades.
“There is no black steel in Xhonura! Where is your magic sword now, vagabond?”
“I was not finished. Those were my official titles. I am told Great House Vadal calls me Ashok Sword Breaker, for Angruvadal is destroyed. I have been called Black-Hearted Ashok, for the many terrible things I have done in service of the Law. The casteless named me Fall, and the rebellion declared me their general. Now you will call me free, or I will kill you all.”
That last part took them by surprise. Apparently those being judged did not usually speak in such a manner. Ashok’s faith in the Law had been destroyed, and he had devoted most of his life to serving it. He owed nothing to the false laws of a nation of separatist fanatics, especially respect for their judges.
“You dare threaten us?” Two more candles were hastily snuffed out.
“Were my words unclear? I have important duties I must attend to in Akershan. I have rotted in this foul place far too long.” Ashok lifted one hand to display his shackles. The bands were so thick a demon would not have been able to break them, and there was in excess of fifty pounds of steel chain attached to each of his limbs. “Release me or I will do it myself.”
After that only a single candle remained flickering above, and Ashok wasn’t sure if that man was voting for mercy, or if he had been too startled by Ashok’s nerve and had forgotten to blow it out.
“Jailers! Return this insolent barbarian to his cell.”
Ashok didn’t wait for the single door leading into the pit to open. Instead he called upon the Heart of the Mountain to give strength to his muscles. Gathering up the chains that weighed as much as his body, he leapt toward the wall. The sudden movement must have been far faster than anything the judges had been expecting because they fell from their chairs in surprise.
There was very little to hold onto, but Ashok clung to the smallest cracks of the stone by his fingers and toes and scrambled upward. The great swinging, clanking weight of chains threatened to drag him down, but driven by wrath and magic, Ashok continued.
The jailers rushed in below him, and he heard the metallic clack as the firing mechanism of a Fortress rod was cocked. Such illegal devices used to fill him with loathing, but he had grown accustomed to them in rebel hands. Seeing them used in battle from both sides had removed the mystery. They were simply a tool with strengths and weaknesses, like any other weapon.
Fortress rods took a moment to ready, and another to aim, so by the time the jailer fired Ashok had already pulled his body over the edge. The projectile slammed into the rock beneath him as thunder and smoke filled the Judgment Pit.
Even as inhumanly strong as he had once been, it still took Ashok time to lumber to his feet beneath the cumbersome chains. A guard rushed him, but Ashok struck the clumsy thrust aside, and used the man’s momentum to launch him screaming into the pit. A second guard tried to ready his Fortress rod, but Ashok whipped him across the face with a chain. That one went down spitting teeth.
There were two more guards left on the upper platform. One of them even managed to trigger his Fortress rod, only it was a panicked, unaimed shot. Ashok reacted, lifting his hand purely by instinct, and the lead ball fragmented into pieces against one of his wrist shackles instead of hitting him in the chest. That had either been luck, or Angruvadal trying to keep him alive. Either was acceptable.
“He is Ramrowan!” one of the judges cried.
When Ashok picked up one of the chairs and hurled it at the last guards, they fled down a corridor, crying for help. Such cowardice disgusted him. Fortress must have relied too much upon their strange and terrible weapons to develop a proper warrior caste spirit, because no great house soldier would have broken so easily. He’d barely even killed anyone yet.
Unfortunately, even the projectile failed to destroy the shackle. All it had done was leave a lead smear across the steel. Fortress may have been populated by cruel fanatics, but their metalwork was superb.
Ashok stumbled, as atrophied muscles trembled. His plan had been to slaughter his way out, but he had underestimated just how weak his body had become. Starving and dehydrated, with cramping limbs, the only thing keeping him on his feet was the Heart of the Mountain.
The judges had been too surprised to flee, so Ashok grabbed the nearest by the neck and lifted him from the ground. “Who has the key?”
“I don’t know!”
“Do any of you have the keys?” Ashok roared, but all the men did was cower. Of course, judges would not dirty their hands by touching filthy prisoners. One of the jailers would have to unlock him. His escape would require a different tactic. “Which of you is the highest status?” He shook the man he was holding. “Is it you?”
“No. I’m just—”
So Ashok tossed that one over the side into the pit. “Who is the most important among you?”
Their comrade landing with a leg-breaking thud and a squeal must have motivated the rest toward honesty, because they all pointed at the same man. That would do. Ashok grabbed him by the end of his beard and dragged a hundred pounds of judge and two hundred pounds of chain down the hall.
Ashok had no idea where he was going, except that the fleeing guards had gone this way, and it was going upward—and more importantly, away from that damnable cell. The whimpering old man was slowing him down, bouncing along the stone, so Ashok took him by the arm and pulled him to his feet.
“You will be killed for this.”
“Dying by bullet or blade is preferable to that cell,” he snarled in response. As they shuffled along, the judge continued his bleating. It was very undignified. So Ashok smacked him across the back of the head. “Silence.”
There was light ahead. Real sunlight. As Ashok reached the end of the hall he felt actual wind on his face and breathed in clean air that didn’t reek of mold and fish. It was fiercely cold. The light was scalding against his weakened eyes. Even if he were to die here and now, pierced by lead, that brief feeling of freedom would have been worth it.
They had entered a courtyard surrounded by walls. The guards who had fled were shouting at several of their surprised compatriots to gather their weapons, because the dead man had jumped out of the hole and was slaughtering everyone.
The cowards. This was no slaughter. He would be happy to show them slaughter.
Taking one of his arm chains, Ashok looped it around the judge’s neck, and pulled the rings tight. “I am here.”
Half a dozen Fortress rods were immediately swung his way, but he held the struggling, choking judge in the doorway between them. Thankfully they hesitated. It would have annoyed him to go through the effort of taking a hostage, only to have holes blown in him.
“Calm yourselves, warriors.” He didn’t know if that was their status on this strange island, but that respectful name would do. They wore an unfamiliar, plain-brown smock, but the uniform nature suggested they were some manner of soldier. Negotiation never came easy to a man who had simply taken whatever he had needed most of his life, but it was his best strategy in the moment. “Undo these chains, and I will spare your judge and leave. Or fight, and I will kill all who oppose me and then find the keys among your corpses.”
The men hesitated, obviously unprepared for this situation. The Fortress rods pointed his way were shaking badly. This was clearly not a situation that they had been prepared for. Near skeletal men did not jump out of pits.
“Decide quickly,” Ashok warned, because the judge’s face was changing colors as he clawed desperately at the steel crushing his neck.
“Alright, alright,” said one of the guards as he lifted his weapon skyward with one hand. That was apparently the highest ranking among these, not that Ashok understood any of the symbols sewn onto their clothing. “Don’t hurt the guildsman and we’ll let you go.”
Ashok relaxed the chain a bit, and the guildsman gasped for breath. Whatever manner of office that was, a guildsman was clearly of enough status that these soldiers dared not risk his life.
There were eight guards in the courtyard, and probably more on the way. Any more and they might find their courage. “Undo these chains. Now.”
With an angry gesture from their officer, one of the men was sent forward, reluctantly pulling a ring of keys from his belt. The man was clearly terrified of Ashok. Then he realized this was the one who had shot him.
“Forgive me, Avatara,” the guard squeaked as he unlocked the damaged shackle on Ashok’s wrist. “I didn’t know it was really you!”
The steel had been tight for so long the flesh beneath was as white and fragile as the fish they’d occasionally fed him. Patches of skin stayed stuck to the metal, and the wound burned as it touched the air. He watched the guards carefully, ready to hurl the guildsman at the first to make a move, but they seemed too frightened to try. It was a mystery what being an avatar entailed, but he must have filled enough criteria that they were clearly terrified by his presence now. The soldiers’ attitude was very different from those who had sat in condescending judgment over him. That was not too different from Lok, where the different castes often believed wildly divergent things.
As the other shackles were painfully removed, Ashok looked around for the fastest way out. The dungeon had been beneath a small fort. They were in what had to be the central courtyard, surrounded by mud-brick walls. Free of the damnable chains, he could climb over, but unfortunately he didn’t know what was on the other side, and if one of these men found their spine before he made it to the top he would be an easy target. The only other option was a barred gate to the left.
“You.” He jerked his head toward another guard. “Open that.”
The soldier waited for his officer to nod that it was allowed, and then ran to do so. When the door swung open, it revealed a pebbled road, leading downhill.
The last ankle chain fell away, and Ashok had never wanted to scratch at his own flesh more than in that instant.
“Back up,” he warned, and waited for the soldier who had unlocked him to move aside—that way he could keep the captive guildsman between him and all the rods. Walking his human shield toward the gate, Ashok hoped that path didn’t lead somewhere even worse. It appeared the fort was on a cliffside. There seemed to be no immediate dangers waiting for him outside the gate, so this route would have to do.
“Your duty may require you to pursue me. If so, I understand. But know that my duty will require me to slay any who stands between me and my home.”
Ashok shoved the guildsman at the guards and ran for the cliffs.