Chapter 1
“Gather ’round, children, to hear the saga of Ashok Vadal, the Forgotten’s holy warrior, who was chosen by the almighty gods and sent to save our kind from Law and demon alike!”
In the desert south of Akara, a group of casteless were clustered around a tiny campfire for warmth, eager to listen to the storyteller spin tales. They were mostly women and children, which meant their men had probably gone off to join the rebels. These scrawny, malnourished untouchables had clearly heard the elder’s story many times before, yet still seemed to hang on his every word.
“Ashok’s true name, his casteless name, was Fall, for he came from the north where there are giant trees that turn to gold and fall off when the seasons change. He was a casteless boy, tiny as some of you are now, and his obligation was to clean the floors of the first caste’s mansions, scrubbing them stones till his hands bled and his fingernails fell off. In Great House Vadal he lived. They’re the richest of the rich, where the whole men eat all they want and their endless river is clean and tastes like honey, except little Fall got none of that. He was poor, same as us, starving, living in a barracks shack over a pig wallow, working all day and getting bit by fleas all night. Let it be known Fall was a true casteless! No different than us!”
This particular audience understood that life of hardship well, for it was the only thing they’d ever known…at least until the horror of the Great Extermination had come along to make the harsh traditions of old seem merciful in comparison. Labor and hunger were preferable to mass murder.
“When the bearer of Vadal’s magic black sword died it caused the whole men to fear, for the black swords are the strongest magic in the big wide world, and without that magic, great houses get crushed by the others! Like a bug!” The old man stomped the ground with his bare foot for emphasis. “The whole men of Vadal needed a new bearer so they could keep fighting their endless wars. Only black swords have a mind of their own. They only pick the bravest, the strongest, the most fearsome of all warriors. Vadal’s best tried to pick up the sword, but they all failed, and when they did it punished them for it! Arms, legs, heads, sliced right off!”
“Serves them right!” shouted a listener, for the non-people loved the rare times their cruel masters suffered for their hubris.
“As the whole men died, poor little Fall worked his fingers to the bone scrubbing their blood from the mansion’s floors. And they just kept coming. Hundreds, no thousands, of Vadal’s mightiest got cut, for the sword was very unhappy. Then one night it was just Fall, doing his job, scrubbing that floor, and the terrifying black sword was there nearby.” He lowered his voice to a theatrical whisper. “The sword called to him…”
Even though they knew what was coming next, the casteless waited, eager, to hear the result.
“And little Fall dared to pick it up…” The old man paused for a long time for dramatic effect. The littlest casteless held their breath. When the only sound was the crackling of the fire and the noise of the cold desert wind, he suddenly roared, “The black sword let him!”
The casteless cheered and hooted.
“That changed everything. They say we casteless are nothing. They spit on us and starve us and make us live in the mud and now they condemn us all to die, but on that night, that sacred night, a little casteless boy showed a great house he was better than them all! Better than their warriors! Better than the first caste! Fall was picked to be the bearer of a black sword, and bearers are mighty indeed!”
In that ecstatic moment, carried along by the story, the filthy youngsters were probably imagining themselves going from the life of hunger, fear, and rags they were used to, to one of power, wealth, and authority in an instant. A few of the little ones took up sticks from the store of firewood and began to swing them about like they were a terrifying black sword, because even the lowest of the low could still dream of something more.
“Oh, but the first caste couldn’t bear it! A non-person with one of their precious magic swords? Such indignity! Such shame! They despise us and use us and sneer at us and work us to death, but they’d never ever share their power with our kind. They need us hungry and begging, not proud and armed, and this was more than twenty years ago, long before the Capitol decried we all needed to die. The Capitol has always been mean and evil, blaming us for all their problems, but it was a little kinder back then. Today, the Capitol is consumed by cruelty.”
The children hissed and spit at the description of their hated betters. The little ones might not have understood the ways of the world yet, but they all knew that the first caste had condemned every casteless in the world to death. That was why they were here now, hiding in a canyon of rocks and sand, rather than the barracks they had always called home. Casteless quarters were places of disease and squalor, but at least they’d had a roof overhead.
The storyteller grinned at their rebellious spirit and continued his tale. “To keep Fall’s triumph secret, the Great House Vadal wizard scrubbed Fall’s mind clean as Fall did those mansion’s floors. They took away his memory and used their magic to trick poor Fall into thinking he was and had always been a whole man. They named him Ashok Vadal, and pretended he was one of them all along. Unwitting Fall became Ashok, Protector of the Law, fearsome and terrifying, and for the next twenty years he did the Capitol’s evil work, never knowing no better.”
“They say Ashok’s killed a thousand men!” one of the older children shouted.
“Yes,” the storyteller affirmed. “Probably even more, because back then he didn’t bother to count our kind. And not just men, but he’s fought all manner of dark things in every corner of Lok, demons and ghosts and wizards and horrors that time’s forgot. Ashok became the greatest killer the world had ever known. Fall cleaned blood. Ashok spilled it. Little did anyone realize that this servant of the Law wasn’t a whole man at all, but one of us. Until one day, while fighting two demons at once, a defiant casteless broke the Law, took up a spear, and saved Protector Ashok’s life! And deep down, seeing that courage from one of our kind reminded Fall who he really was. The wizard’s spell began to break! Fall began to remember what had been forgotten.”
“Baba says the Forgotten has come back,” whispered a little girl reverently.
The storyteller looked around the camp of refugees conspiratorially, as if they weren’t already breaking the Law just by continuing to exist, and there might be masked Inquisitors hiding in the shadows, waiting to pounce at the mention of their illegal religion. The casteless could not know that there was one unseen listener to their story, who was secretly watching them from the bluffs above, but he was certainly no Inquisitor.
“Yes, child. Your baba speaks true. The forgotten gods have returned! Even as Ashok was deceived to fight against the very gods who had blessed him, those same gods sent a bolt from the heavens to anoint a warrior caste girl in the west, so that she could serve as their Voice. I’m told her name is Thera and the Forgotten speaks through her today. She’s our prophet, and gives us the revelations that’ll teach us how to free us from the tyranny of the Law. The gods also sent a priest to serve her—another casteless like us, but wiser than any of the judges—to teach our people the old ways again. He is called Keta.”
“The Keeper of Names!”
“That’s him, boy, and all the names of all of us casteless will surely get written in Keta’s holy book, so that we may dwell in the Forgotten’s paradise forever. It was Keta who taught Ashok his true name and who he really was. It was Keta who convinced him to join with the Voice. Together they gathered the Sons of the Black Sword—fierce warriors who love freedom and the gods more than the great houses they were born into—and together they went to war against the Law. Our hero’s heart is pure, so once he knew the gods were real, Fall didn’t hesitate to rise up and fight to save us!”
As Ashok listened, hidden in the darkness beyond the reach of their of firelight, the absurdity of that description of events made him shake his head. There was no purity in his heart, only a shard of black steel that should have killed him. The broad strokes of the tale may have been accurate, but his journey from Law enforcer to Law breaker had been much more complicated than the old man made it out to be. It wasn’t as if he’d woken up one morning and decided to forsake all he’d ever known to embrace wild rebellion. He’d been forced into it, bound by an unbreakable oath, and then it had been an exceedingly difficult path to follow, even for a man of his focus.
But as Keta had once told him, a simple people required simple legends.
“Remember, children, even as we hide in this wilderness, our gods watch over us. The great fire that recently split the sky apart was a sign of the gods’ anger against the Capitol. The gods have called Ashok to smite our enemies on our behalf. He has fought entire armies by himself, legions of demons, and even other bearers and their black swords, and each time the Forgotten’s Warrior has been victorious. Ashok has even been killed and come back to life!”
Several of the casteless—adult and child both—reflexively touched the tiny hook-shaped charms they wore on necklaces as the storyteller said that, and Ashok marveled at how fast a symbol that captured the imagination could spread across the world.
“As the gods will it, the Sons of the Black Sword will defeat the wicked Capitol, the Law will be thrown down, and we will be accepted, not as non-people, but as whole men, allowed to live free!”
Ashok was far from their camp, only able to eavesdrop because of the Heart of the Mountain aiding his senses. He had been leading Horse along the edge of a cliff when he had smelled their fire and, weary, had paused to rest. It was good that the dangerous beast had learned to instinctively tell when Ashok required him to remain silent. Usually Horse would have snorted and stomped his displeasure if they paused too long, and such an unexpected sound coming from the ledge above would probably have startled the refugees and caused them to flee across the desert, thinking the Great Extermination had finally caught up with them. The casteless were by nature skittish, and that behavior had been learned long before it had become the Law to kill them on sight.
One of the casteless mothers spoke. “You have big dreams, Guru, but right now we just want to live through the rest of winter. The warriors from Akara who killed our kin and burned our huts are searching the desert for us again.”
“Don’t be afraid. With Fall on our side, we will survive.”
Ashok pondered on that prediction for a moment. With the seemingly insurmountable challenges and terrible threats arrayed before him, that was not a promise he could make to them. It would take a miracle to save them all.
He gently coaxed Horse away from the ledge, moving quietly so as to not frighten the casteless. They’d been through enough already.
Canda was full and bright tonight. The moonlight enabled him to keep traveling without danger of Horse stumbling and breaking a leg. The magnificent white stallion had been Ashok’s only companion for the last month as he’d made the difficult journey across the cold southern reaches of Lok, from the mountains of Akershan to the high deserts of Akara. Through bitter winds, hail, and the occasional snowstorm. Now he would continue west toward the city of Kanok, because that was where the enigmatic Mother Dawn had told him he would find Thera.
Being imprisoned on the isle of Fortress had kept Ashok away from his duties for far too long. It was his obligation to keep Thera safe, and that responsibility had been neglected. If she was in danger now, it was his fault. He would destroy anyone who threatened the woman he loved, but in the meantime the uncertainty of not knowing what had happened to her gnawed at him. After his escape from Fortress he had returned to find their rebellion was in shambles and their hideout besieged. Keta was dead, killed in battle by another bearer. The location of the rest of the Sons of the Black Sword was unknown. Though surely if the rebellion’s army was still intact, it was doubtful they would be with Thera in Kanok, for that city was the center of Great House Makao’s power. In a direct confrontation against such an overwhelming number of troops, the Sons would certainly be destroyed.
Thera had rarely spoken to Ashok about that part of her life, but Kanok had been Thera’s home during her miserable arranged marriage. It was doubtful she would have returned to that place willingly.
So Ashok continued west, into the unknown.