Convergent Paths

By Chris Burzell

Cal finds the charms of a worldly woman drawing him from the only home he knows in a chase along the thieves highway. Can he catch up to her in time to save her life, or will he lose her in the twisting streets of the poor quarter and the sewers below?

Not far away, Leara, a guide to the city's underbelly, wishes only to escape this beautiful city where she'd once hoped to start fresh. As loyalties come into question, will she escape and find some new place to call home?

To the north amid high frosted peaks, the useless son of a cook finds he has a natural talent for magic. Will it protect him as he delves into the mysteries of an invisible enemy?

Across the sea, a young princess gathers the strength and company she'll need to escape the depraved Cult of the Ripper. Lost in a labyrinthine citadel far below the surface, surrounded by horrors from the darkest places of human imagining, will she find the strength to carry on and bring warning to her city of the evil that threatens it from below?

The great prophet, Parth, has foretold the ending of an age and the destruction of a great nation. Can these bright young people survive their many trials, or will they fall, and with them, all hope for mankind?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Burzell
• Release date: Jan 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452439198

Book preview

Convergent Paths

By Chris Burzell

Copyright 2010 Chris Burzell

Cover art by Chris Burzell

Edited by Benjamin Russack

And Aaron Madzik

For my mother

Preface

Don't think long on the future, or the past for that matter. The past is done. The future will come. No matter how anxiously we await it, or how hard we pray that it will not. Instead focus on the now: this moment, and perhaps as far as your next few breaths. Do this, and you will find that your life will be rich in unexpected surprises, and brimming with rewards.

-Excerpt of a letter by philosopher Chrysanthemum Parthenium Erasmus, to his nephew

Day 1

Chapter 1

Irica

The smell was unbelievable. She jerked awake for perhaps the hundredth time to the sound of a tortured scream and upon waking was almost choked by the thick flavor of detritus and old blood that hung heavily in the stale air. Even without the promise of pain being offered up by the sounds of torture around her, the place was so oppressive that she felt she might go insane if she were forced to spend another moment there. Her mind closed in on itself as she'd learned to let it. Horrible atrocities were taking place around her, she knew, but sometimes if she tried she could almost believe they were far away imagined things.

How long has it been? she whispered to the darkness. How long had it been since she'd heard a sound other than screaming, crying, and the struggling of prisoners as they fought hopelessly to survive just a little bit longer?

How long had it been since she'd truly slept? Through the haze of exhaustion, she distractedly identified the source of the cacophony that currently tormented her troubled mind. Tonight, the voice belonged to a woman: a young woman from the sound of it. She was astonished to discover that she could tell the difference between one pain-racked wail and another.

When she'd first arrived, she couldn't tell. She'd been too frightened to uncover her ears. Looking back on the way she'd been she thought how foolish and weak she was then. Now she sat and listened to the screams, identifying them because it was all there was to do in her lightless cell. Strangely, she was beginning to feel a sort of pride at becoming something of an expert on screams.

Some of the wailing was high-pitched and wild with fear. For all of their fervor, those didn't usually last very long before their issuers went hoarse and silent. There were sounds of struggle, but they too would end in time.

Other screams were deeper and seemed to resonate in her skull and in the stones around her long after the tortured sounds had ended. There were those who cried, both men and women. Some would yell threats. Some offered bribes of flesh, gold, title, and property. Still others tried to make no sound at all, but would struggle until they could struggle no more. She could hear their efforts and recognized their resolve. It gave her strength.

There were those who cried out to their gods for salvation that never seemed to come. She felt a little sorry for those fools. Not all of them, just those that she would hear forsake their gods in those final moments because their mortal forms were not protected. She believed with all her heart that they gave up much more than their lives when they allowed their faith to weaken and dissolve. Her faith was one of the greatest things she'd found in her dark loneliness. When she felt her mind slipping away, it was a strong root that kept her from being lost forever.

Every tormented wail would linger with her, tainting her soul and tearing at her thoughts. Too sharply she felt the suffering around her, even as she crawled deeper and deeper into her own mind. If her time never came to feel the pain her fellow prisoners had endured, she would still never sleep another peaceful night. Every night in her dreams she was visited by images of frightening creatures and the sounds of this nightmare unending.

In her mind there seemed to be no end to her captors' depravity. No one was safe from those cruel attentions. Her waking hours brought her screams of young and old, men, women, and even children. She hated all of it, but she could not deny that the women hit her the most profoundly. They stole away her hopes that she might be shown mercy when the time came for her to sing in this macabre chorus of suffering.

Her mind turned again to the beginning of all of this. She'd been abducted from her chambers one night that seemed impossibly long ago. They'd taken her from behind before she knew she wasn't alone. Her arms and legs were held and she was choked until she passed out. When she woke up sometime later she was in this cell surrounded by the sounds.

She became aware of her surroundings again as the sound of suffering that woke her up began to mix with sobs and the tearing of cloth and something else she chose not to dwell on. Tonight's victim is close, perhaps in the cell next...she thought before her mind slipped away again.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been in the pitch-black cell. The room was small. Just four stone walls with a lumpy, moist bed of straw and scraps of fabric that smelled of mold and worse. There was a small pit in the corner where she would relieve herself. She couldn't see the hole in the dark, but the smell told her she wasn't the cell's first occupant.

Sometimes she would catch glimpses of the filthy cold gray stones of her cell when faint torchlight would slip under her door and when food was kicked through the small slot in the bottom. When the light came, she would hide from it and shut her eyes against its harsh glare. Still, she was curious and at times would ignore the glare to peak at her jailers.

At meal times she could sometimes see the feet of her captors. If she laid her face on the floor, she could glimpse the long hallway beyond them. From the style of their shoes, she believed she was still in her city. They wore black fabric on top with fine golden embroidery and when they slapped against the stone she could hear that they had leather soles, just like the shoes many nobles of the city chose to wear. They were nothing like the thick leather boots travelers wore in the western lands, and they weren't the steel sabatons of the men from the mountains.

They were always clean of desert sand and so was the hallway beyond. The hall lacked the acrid smells of the M'a'ayah swamp and the rich smells of T'h'eit jungle that bordered Sien’sune. She considered the thieves of T'h'eit. Outlaws, they were the self-proclaimed masters of that dangerous region. While they were known for kidnappings, she doubted such rabble would tend stolen boots with such care.

She didn't think she could be in another city of her countrymen either. She couldn't have been unconscious long enough to make the journey to another city. The nearest city was more than a week's travel by land and another by sea. She must still be in Sien'sune. But… If magic was involved she might be anywhere. She hoped that wasn't the case.

Normally the hallway smelled earthy. Underground... she thought. The boots smelled of spices common to her home. It gave her hope. Such spices could often be smelled wafting on the breeze when she stood on the balcony of her own room. How she missed that balcony and that wind. She could only faintly remember them now. If she tried, sometimes she could still feel the wind against her skin for just a moment before the smells of her cell and the rough stone against her skin would bring her back.

Something changed and brought her attention to the girl in the cell next to hers. There... she thought. They've finished. The sound of torture that had brought her awake ended abruptly, followed by the sound of a door opening and closing, a key being turned, and fading footfalls.

Without the sun, she couldn't be sure of the passage of time, but she was certain she had been there in the dark for a very long time without a hint of rescue. There were no sounds of fighting, only despair.

Meals came at random intervals, and there didn't seem to be any cell order to the torture. It was as if they deliberately made both random so that the prisoners would live in constant fear. Any moment of any day might be the day. At any moment they might decide not to walk past her cell to visit cruel suffering on her neighbors.

As a door closed and locked, the sound of footfalls faded away down the hall and sobs quietly reached her ears. Still alive... She considered trying to console the girl but quickly decided against it. She'd tried once before to console a man in the cell across from the girl's cell. The punishment was swift and severe. Guards had heard their voices and returned to the man's room.

She'd pounded on her door until her fists bled while her screams for mercy fell on deaf ears. She stopped and fell to her knees, able to do nothing but listen in horror as they beat him savagely for a long time. The only sounds he made were grunts and soon those faded to silence.

It wasn't stubbornness that stopped his cries, she realized. He simply hadn't had the strength to scream any more. The wet sounds of packing meat continued long after he fell silent. When the guards had left she was too scared to call out to him. He might have died that very night for all she knew. Sometimes, like tonight, she would think of him and wonder after his fate.

No, she whispered. The girl in the next cell over would suffer alone this night and perhaps suffer the less for it. She put her hand against the wall nearest the girl's cell and whispered a prayer, May Aaro Swiftwill protect you in life from further harm, and when you die, carry you to your rightful place in eternity.

Resting there on her knees, thinking of the probably innocent girl nearby, and thinking of her god, her mind focused a bit more than it had in what felt like a long time. Something changed inside her. Something deep down and irrefutable within said that she must escape. She could not wait there in the dark for those feet to stop at her cell.

She could not wait to be tortured and broken to gods only knew what end. Never defeated, only delayed, she whispered for perhaps the millionth time, reciting her family's ancient motto. Resting there in the dark, she knew that her life would not... could not end in a damp, reeking cell. She was her father's daughter. She was strong.

There was work to be done before the end of things. Breaking out in stifled shudders of laughter, she knew hers to be the addled thoughts of a woman gone mad, but she would do all she could to learn of her captors before her time came. She would find a way to escape... or die trying.

They would never break her. That is what her father had taught her. She was not a victim to suffer at the hands and whims of men. She was a princess and she had the strength of a bloodline that had commanded a nation for many hundreds of years.

She would not fail in continuing that legacy. She would escape, one day she would come to rule, and she would use that rule to ensure that no one in her land could be made to suffer as she had here, alone and filthy in this starless, evil-smelling night that refused to break. She would hear of no other suffering as those around her had suffered. She would be free of this place, and she would return to pay back these dogs one thousand fold the suffering they had caused. She would escape... but she would most definitely return...

Chapter 2

Leara

A bell rang. Leara stirred. Another ring. Her dreams began to fade. A third ring. Her eyes flew open followed by a flurry of action as she awoke. She struggled to free herself of blankets and sheets before the caller would leave. She lost her balance and hit the floor with a thump and a groan. Free! she thought, and scrambled to her feet, already running for the door. Flinging it open she rushed down the hall, tearing away articles of clean clothing that clung to her, littering the floor in a trail of fabric.

A fourth ring. She was out of time. She lunged for the handle and tripped herself with a pillowcase. Off balance, she flew headlong against the door with a Crash. Her forehead bounced off the door and she crumpled to the floor in a heap. She listened to the sound of her startled visitor's panicked footfalls receding into the distance.

She sat biting her lip against the pain in her face and shoulder and cradled the growing lump on her head. As the pain began to subside, she lay down on her back with a sigh and fumbled off the pillowcase with the toe that had hooked it. She lay there for several minutes thinking what rotten luck she had and that she'd never get out of this rotten city. Then a voice came through the door. Leara?

"Garit? Garit!" she said, hopping onto her feet and suffering a throbbing head for it. One hand on her head, she opened the door a crack and peered through. Oh Garit! I thought you'd gone.

"I had. What was that blasted noise about?"

Dropping her hand she replied, Nothing. Hold on. She closed the door and undid the chains to let him in.

Grief, Leara. I was halfway down the block! I thought it was the Watch. What happened?

Nothing, I... I tripped and hit the door, she said leading him down the hall, picking up clothes as she went.

You really are a mess of a girl, you know? It’s past midday! You ready to go?

Coming back to her thrashed room, she dropped the clothes and looked around. Yeah. I’ve been ready for six months.

Alright look, we make the deal today through a third party.

Leara looked at him. "I thought you were the third party."

"All right, a fourth party, he replied with a sneer. If they like you we’ll be on the West End Pier in two days."

Leara smiled mischievously. If they aren't sure about me, why tell me now where the ship will be? I might stow away.

This isn't my first deal. They are sure. This meet is a formality and you know it, so unless you want to start paying me for my time, stop interrupting.

Leara put up her hands in mock apology to Garit's continued annoyance. If you’re serious about this, he continued gruffly, "be there before two o'clock. It’s not that we’ll be in a hurry, it’s just..."

What?

The captain is in a small way unwelcome in these waters. He finds it’s good business to keep his visits short.

Leara sat on her bed then. She abandoned propriety altogether, lowering her swimming head gently to a pillow. She watched Garit walking around her room, nudging at piles of her things with the tip of his boot. Garit was nothing if not predictable when it came to attire. A long coat covered most of his large frame, knickerbockers, oversized, heavy boots, his hands in his coat pockets, and that gray blindfold covering his eyes. She wondered how he could see through it, but he always sidestepped the question.

Traveling with disreputable company, huh? she asked as she flipped over articles of clothing on the bed around her. She found a shirt in the clean pile she had fallen asleep next to and retreated behind a screen to change out of her shift.

Garit chuckled. Yeah well. That’s what you get for free favors on short notice.

"There's no such thing as a free favor, Garit. Especially not from a businessman like you."

And don't you forget it. I expect you to make me look good. I referred you to the captain as hardworking and tight-lipped. I need to continue to do business with this man and your performance will influence my credibility when next I must ask a favor of him.

You, Garit? What do you need favors for? You're loaded.

He rounded on her. "I'll thank you never to repeat those words," hissed Garit. How you found out in the first place is a matter of great interest to me.

Peering around her changing screen she said with her sweetest smile, The color of your eyes is of great interest to me.

Garit huffed and returned to nudging at her things with his boot. "You should be glad I got you a spot in this at all. I am a businessman. It’s bad business dealing with someone you can't check up on. You've no researchable history. You've only one reference of questionable character. You won't give me a last name. For heavens' sake, how many Learas are in this world? Your real name is probably Irities or Hemala or Ericlatus or some such. For all I know, you've a dozen prices on you in a dozen cities for as many crimes under as many names. For all I know, you don't even know your real name, if have one. No hometown. No parents. But perhaps I was going about things wrongly. Perhaps instead of checking through the normal channels I should have consulted a priest."

What do you mean?

"My sources are thorough and I trust them as much as a man in my line of work can. Therefore they did their jobs well and you truly didn't ever exist, just poof came in to being by the whim of some deity with an inscrutable sense of humor to torment me for favors."

I don't see the problem with that. What? Jokes of the gods can't scrub decks in leaky old boats? said Leara, stepping out from the screen fully dressed.

"Not boats like this one. Not normally. Not without my word in the right ear."

She moved to hang a pot of thick black coffee from the day before over burning embers in the fireplace and added fresh water from a basin. There's no reason that a lack of history should stop someone from pursuing a future. A girl with no past can work on a ship just as well as one you know every detail about.

Oh certainly a girl can, but can they be trusted to work and only work and not keep an eye on the doings of their employer for those that make the laws?

Of course they can.

Consider me reassured, replied Garit dryly.

Leara stopped poking at the embers beneath the kettle. Thank you, Garit. She looked around at the mess of her tiny room and felt again how stale her life had become. She was in a rut. She inhaled through her nose to sigh and caught the smell of something ripe coming from... Gods knew where. She added, You can count on me. There's nothing more for me here. She smiled at him. You're my ticket out.

Chapter 3

Cal

The Twin Stags was a tavern on the northeast corner of the intersection of the two largest avenues of the king's city. Posh little shops surrounded it. To the west lay the road running to the northern gates and the Great Ruarch Forest. To the south ran Rekayant Boulevard which led to Castle Rekayant, the ancient home of the royal Rekayant family.

It was just another tavern and home to another burly son of the city trying to eke out a meager living by roughing up drunks and ejecting them into the cold night air when they got too rowdy. Once out on the street, they'd be collected by the city's Watchmen and taken to one of the small cells placed throughout the city, reserved primarily for drunks and street brawlers to spend a night sobering up or cooling off.

The only son of the bar's former owner and current bar tender Hadow, Cal was born in a bathtub in what was once his father's private chambers, now the chambers of Mr. Rickles, the slender, middle-aged hawk of a man that purchased the tavern when business was at an all-time low during the last Great War ten years ago. Mr. Rickles was generally fair and as upstanding a citizen as any, but years as an accountant for a minor noble lord had left him rather less sociable than most of the lower born citizenry. When his employer died in the fighting, Rickles set out on his own and met Hadow. After selling the rights to the tavern, Hadow agreed to stay on for a time to help familiarize Mr. Rickles with the business of running a tavern. As time went by, Mr. Rickles recognized that the only way his enterprise would succeed was with Hadow's aid.

Hadow got Cal working for his meals from the day he was strong enough to hold a rag and collect the rough metal mugs. As Cal grew up he grew strong, sure, and swift by helping carry drunks out to the street and by learning to defend himself when those drunks weren't entirely unconscious. With his short-cropped black hair, strong chin, broad shoulders, and much-used leather armor, he looked much like the toughs he ejected on a nightly basis. He was taller than most despite his relative youth, and his intense blue eyes contrasted strongly with his good-natured laugh and ready smile.

Until a fight broke out, he'd help the barmaids clear cups and meals or spread bark chips on the floor to minimize the effort of cleaning up blood, vomit, sweat, and alcohol, as well as some all too common mystery substances and unfortunately recognizable fluids that had no business on a tavern floor. When business was slow, he'd learn about the world outside of the city by chatting up the sailors that ventured past the bars in the Seafront District, or the adventurers and merchants that more commonly made their way to the city center to see the shops after their long trips from the Northlands. Travelers from all over would come to the capital city to see the castle and join in the nightly revels or just browse through the variety of exotic goods that made their way to the hub of modern society. Many of those travelers frequently rented the warm beds upstairs for a night or two.

Cal had no formal education, but was very clever and had a memory for every detail when it came to certain topics, in particular those topics that frequently slipped from the lips of adventurers. The only thing that could tear him away from hearing about creatures and magical places and far-off lands, was the sound of a wooden mallet his father kept behind the bar when it came down hard against a large metal plate specifically to announce that Cal was neglecting his duties. Hadow would hit the plate and Cal would politely excuse himself, begging to hear the rest of the story later, then he'd come running to wherever his father's mallet was pointing.

Usually the business end of the mallet brought Cal to a couple of drunkards that had bumped into each other or offered insult and it was time to move things outside before chairs started breaking and the room could get out of hand. Within seconds Cal would have them both in hand and informed of their change of plans... by dragging them out by their ankles if necessary. Moments later he'd be back in his seat urging his new friends for the end of their tale. A few hours before sun up he'd usher everyone out that wasn't paying to stay. They'd close and bolt the doors and windows, serve their renters a final round before clearing the main room for the night, and put out the large fires in the kitchen and in the hearth across the room from the taps.

During the last hour after all barmaids and kitchen staff had gone to their homes, the first floor belonged to Cal and Hadow just like it always had, just like it was when he was a child and the tavern was new. Hadow would wipe down the bar and get the place in order for the next evening while Cal swept wet bark chips out the back door into a sewer grate in the alley. He'd put the push broom in a nook near the taps, then mop the floors and dump the foul soup of dirty mop water out the back door. Then he'd lock the door and place the mop into a bucket of heavily perfumed soapy water to soak overnight. Finally, he'd carry several large bags of fresh, fragrant bark chips out from a storeroom off the kitchen and open them up one at a time with a long fish knife kept always at his hip in an oversized, secondhand scabbard that might once have held a small sword before Cal found it. He'd pour out the bags evenly coating the floor, while Hadow went around pushing in chairs.

During business hours with so many interesting stories to hear and so much esoteric lore to learn, Cal had trouble focusing on the task at hand, but once the crowds were gone he and his father worked like a machine at tasks perfected over twenty long years. That last hour was one spent silently working together. Cal knew his tasks and Hadow had long since stopped reminding him of them. When all was finished, Hadow would collect the night's earnings from a safe behind the bar and he and Cal would snuff the many candles around the taproom before heading upstairs.

The second floor consisted of one long, circular hallway with rooms along the inner and outer walls. The inner rooms numbered two to a wall and the outer rooms were three to a wall with the rooms in the outer corners being slightly larger and more expensive, but just as lightly furnished with simple cots, a small table with chairs, a wash basin, a chamber pot, and a wooden rack to hang garments.

The stairs in the building's northeast corner led from the taproom up to a door at the second floor, and then wrapped around, leading up to the third floor where Cal, Hadow and Mr. Rickles lived, as well as the head cook Charlotte that had been working in the kitchen since before the tavern's ownership changed hands.

The final permanent resident of the tavern was a boy of sixteen summers with wispy red hair and lightly freckled pale skin that reminded Cal of the thin parchment he so regularly saw the boy carrying. Kiernis Raelis was Mr. Rickles’ assistant, apprentice, and ward. He lived in the room next to Mr. Rickles’ own chambers. He was the son of a minor noble that drank well and gambled poorly. Three summers earlier the boy was presented to Mr. Rickles and offered as an assistant in exchange for the boy's lodging and care. According to the agreement, once every week the boy's father would come by the tavern to see how well Kiernis was learning and to make sure he was kept in new clothes.

For six months that's how it was. The boy would work for six days and come week’s end, he'd spend an afternoon away from the tavern with his father. He'd return tired but smiling with clothes in the current fashion and a slightly heavier coin purse. Then one week’s end his father didn't come. The boy waited all day and through the afternoon and evening sitting in a chair by the window of his master's study that looked out over the street. Mr. Rickles sent word to the Raelis estate inquiring after Lord Raelis, but the letter carrier returned with his letter saying that the estate was sealed by official edict from the castle.

The next day he hired a carriage to purvey him there in person. What he found was a chained and locked gate guarding the way to a dark and empty looking estate. After returning to the tavern, he sent a letter to the castle inquiring after the odd circumstances. He also sent a letter to the Raelis's accountant, a man he'd worked with during his training in numbers. From his old friend came an uncharacteristically impersonal letter saying:

Dear Sir,

The Silver Sail Accounting Firm is no longer serving Lord Raelis, as he was delinquent in paying his dues. Thank you for your inquiry.

Good day,

Mr. Pindletin

Silver Sail Accounting

From the castle he received an equally formal and much harsher letter indicating that no further inquiries should be sent after Lord Raelis, as there was an investigation pending on recent events.

Mr. Rickles then inquired at a local gentleman's club Lord Raelis had spoken of. He found through gossip that a sheriff with an entourage of soldiers had nearly two weeks prior been sent to collect back taxes on the lord's estate. When a servant was sent up to his chamber to fetch him, a scream brought the group running upstairs where they found the lord dead, seemingly murdered by suffocation in the dead of night. It seemed that Lord Raelis had failed to pay any of his debts for a period of months, and in some cases years. He had unfortunately relied too much on the patience of some unsavory characters. When those same individuals heard that the king's men were coming to collect their due, it was time to move in before nothing was left for them. The lord's chamber was in disarray. His rings and trinkets had been stripped off, and many small chests and anything of obvious value had been taken.

According to gossip, the king’s men had seized the estate and Lord Raelis's other debt collectors had taken everything else. The house staff scattered across the city to find new employment and nothing was left for Kiernis. No one had notified Mr. Rickles or the boy because there was no will and no documentation of the boy's employment at the Twin Stags. It seems Lord Raelis was trying to hide his son. He must have known or suspected what was coming and didn't want his son and only family to be held as ransom or taken as payment to work off his father's debts.

Upon learning this, Mr. Rickles had returned to the tavern and told the boy that his father had perished. The boy was heartbroken and cried for a long time in Mr. Rickles’ arms. Mr. Rickles promised to keep the boy on to complete his training as an accountant and legally adopted him, taking on the responsibility of teaching him to be a man as well.

For the last three years, the boy and the rest served as Cal's family. Kiernis was like his little brother. Charlotte was like a mother. He and his father were very close, and even Mr. Rickles with his often distant and unsociable tendencies, had come to be something like an uncle. It was a good life kept interesting by many travelers and the ever-changing sights of the city. He could think of a thousand, thousand places he wanted to see, and he promised someday soon he would, but for now he was happy.

Chapter 4

Jasit

It's cold today, said a boy resting atop a small hill with his feet out in front of him. His cloak was wrapped tightly against the wind blowing down from the snowy peaks overlooking his valley home.

It's cold everyday, said the boy's unusual companion stuttering through small, serrated teeth as he peeked just the tip of his long snout out of the boy's collar.

You're cold no matter the weather,