Thief of Destiny: The Collected Saga of the Panther Read online

  Cleon gave a mocking wave at the dead. "What grand works you’ve made."

  Roaring hatred, Calla stepped forward and thrust his staff at Cleon. The ghouls attacked, falling over each other to get at the sorcerer, who raised his wand and cast it like a stick against a drum, sending small red sparks that engulfed the corpses in shrouds of flame.

  When the smoke cleared, Cleon went forth, letting his wand lead him as he manifested a wall of electrified air, a shield he hoped would alert him to any attacks the voduni summoned. Instead, he discovered Calla on his knees, having cast aside his staff to draw his knife. A beheaded chicken in one hand, he scrawled his bloody blade in the dirt and threw his arms out, eyes rolled back as he chanted grim words.

  The ground shook beneath Cleon's feet. "Oh, damn." The earth exploded, sending him flying into the air.

  Wheeling in a freefall, he ignored the searing agony in his legs, knowing by the fact he could wiggle his toes that the damage would heal. Seeing the earth rise up to catch him, he pulled at the edges of his robe and released its hidden enchantment, a flying spell he had only used a few times since procuring the garment.

  Too late to halt his descent, it halved the impact when he struck the ground, rolling into the oozing legs of a ghoul that swiped down at him with its black nails. Dodging the slash, Cleon pressed his blue stone against the reanimation, satisfied when the body disintegrated into a fine dust. He reached into a compartment in his belt and drew out of the iron nails he had brought with him.

  Calla slaughtered his second hen, smearing the blood across his chest and on the skull of his vulture pendant. Growling, he took up his staff and charged, holding it up like a club.

  Drawing a small amount of his stone's power, Cleon whispered at the enchanted nails in his palm. They zipped from his hand, flying at the charging voduni. The iron pierced the wretch's shoulder, knee, chest, as the last one bounced off the vulture skull, unable to break past its protective blood charm.

  Undeterred by his wounds, Calla swung at Cleon’s skull.

  Cleon dodged, his feet constantly moving as he drew out one of the glass vials in his belt. Removing the cork with his thumb, he slashed upward, splashing the green liquid in Calla's face. The voduni yelped like wounded animal, wriggling to the soil as he struggled to control his flailing body.

  "I'm surprised you fell for that one," Cleon said, allowing himself to catch his breath. "Most people don't let other people throw Nestor's Poison in their face unless they're unaware or idiots… so never mind. You should be feeling your spine turn into jelly. That's the blessing. You won't feel the mess fry your mind by the time the poison reaches it."

  Calla, on his side and curled into a ball, gibbered nonsense in response, lost in a torturous stupor. Grabbing at the vulture skull, he held tight to the bone-cage of his green stone, its light pulsing in rapid beats until finally, he stilled along with it.

  Cleon sighed at the sight of his defeated foe, somewhat surprised. "I thought that would have gone on a bit longer. You didn't even get to use your last chicken."

  Drawing the rock hammer from his belt and putting his stone away, he approached the body. As he did so, he noticed the way the vulture's skull had changed, its calcified material now thick, mottled, and gray. Cleon checked the sullen, lifeless face of his foe, noticing how his poison had blackened the veins around his eyes and lips, leaving him looking like he wore one of those macabre masks actors used in Gypus when dark tragedies were all the rage. Satisfied, he took hold of the bird-skull.

  Calla woke, his poisoned hand gripping Cleon by the neck. His knife appeared in his other hand. "Not everything goes the gods’ way," he hissed as he stabbed the sorcerer in the side.

  Manwe woke to a foreboding silence, a lack of noise so acute that he wondered if he had found himself back in the underworld, beneath the earth where darkness pervaded. The air was warm, clinging to the flesh of his chest, arms, and legs like oil. Sitting up, he held his head, confused by its lightness when he expected pain.

  Then he smelled the world.

  Rotten like the sweet-sick of fungus, death choked him until he coughed, unable to bear the disgust working up his throat. Standing, he leaned against the broken edge of Tolivius' scorched wall, arms braced as he tried to stop the vomit. Heaving, he shut his eyes, focusing on a calm he often relied on in the moments he needed it. When he reopened them, he looked out upon the fields outside the city.

  They were gone.

  Fields burnt to crust, no birds flew the brightening skies as the sun rose in the east, and no animals threw dust in their chase to find water, food, or safety upon the savannah. No one traveled upon the road to the city.

  He gaped, unable to accept what lay before him. Without thought, his hands went to his mouth, his eyes filling with tears.

  What had become of Cleon? Or Folami? Or Sophicus?

  Where was the victory so many had marched to make?

  This hated city, this bastion of imperialism and racism and lies and oppression had become a great tombstone, an effigy to something that had been and now was gone.

  Where was Manwe's terrible city?

  Where was his home?

  Those questions disappeared when the dead sang.

  Manwe froze in panic, dropping a few inches as his knees bent without thought. Broken in harmony, thousands—no, more—lifted torn voices to the morning, a bellow beyond beauty or ugliness. Inching to the other side of the wall, he spied over the edge.

  The encroaching sun spread its white wave on the shore of a great sea of broken buildings and dirt. Dark plumes of smoke wafted from a hundred different points, each feeding the great cloud that stretched northward. Beyond the cinders and massed in the streets, the alleys, the multitude of the bloated milled among the emaciated ones, neither seeking nor finding whatever their master willed of them. Lost in the wreckage, the ghouls moaned for deaths denied.

  Life had lost.

  Above the sound of the cruel wind, the haunting music of the ghouls, Manwe picked out a third noise in the din—laughter. Running the wall, he searched for its source, desperate for something, anything to signal the presence of life. He regretted his search the second he found its source.

  Brighter than the coming sun, the green power of Voduni Calla's stone scored the heavens as the mad priest stood atop one of the city's higher roofs, his cackle reverberating far and wide to all those that fell under it.

  Too far to see his enemy’s face, Manwe knew well enough that he did not have to—the bastard’s glee was enough to hammer home the truth. Tolivius was a graveyard now, and left by himself, he remained its last ghost.

  Something sparked in the corner of his eye, something small and bright in a window of the city's old temple district. He recognized the tower from which this bit of light sprang.

  The Temple of the Goddess of Love.

  The first battle for the souls of the savannah had been lost, but that flame, that knowledge steeled Manwe for an inkling an idea, a hope he fanned until it grew into an everlasting flame to match.

  His revolution had not been lost. Not yet.

  THE END

  9

  Run the Jewels

  Manwe skidded sharply at the junction where the alleys intersected, the hobnails of his sandals scratching the stone flagstones as he tried to make the left turn into the next narrow lane. The six ghouls behind him, dripping black tar, chased him with the hands grasping in his direction. His knife free, he stabbed the closest one in the eye, the orb popping with a wet sound. Undeterred, the undead thing simply gaped, reaching to claim him before he escaped.

  Arms pumping, Manwe ran hard down the alleyway, looking ahead at the low roof of the abandoned shed at its end. The ghouls shuffled behind, crowding each other between the close walls.

  He leapt, hands grabbing onto the edge of the wicker roof as he hauled himself up. Sticking his knife into the thick, twisted band of his hide loincloth, he regained his footing and jumped a second time, one foot flat against the p
laster to push him higher. He grabbed the next ledge and pulled himself out of view of his pursuers.

  Above the street, Manwe waited for a few minutes, flat on his back before he rose. He walked a few feet and collapsed, rolling onto his back again. His heart beat hard while sweat dripped in his eyes, stinging worse than the bright white sun he faced. The smoke from Tolivius' ruined buildings had long died hours before, allowing the cinders to wash away with the wind. Now all that remained was blue, pure and clean and mocking.

  Manwe sucked air, heaving past the dead stink on the wind. He sat up, wiping his eyes clean of dust and debris with long black fingers. Exhaustion weighted in heartache paused the need to rise, but rise he did, taking the time to examine the surroundings.

  Tolivius' roofs, whether they were shingled or built of wood, smoked in the daylight, billowing black as the dying embers ate away at the last of their edges. Somewhere Manwe could pick out the cries of the few living lieutenants Voduni Calla left alive to share the spoils of his victory, young men and women who had confused bloodthirst with patriotism. These clusters, no more than a few dozen, roamed the streets in search of those who had failed to abandon their homes and shops, ending their lives with merciless spear-thrusts or at the edge of their iron swords.

  Manwe huffed, finally able to take a calm breath. Off to the northeast rose the spires of the city's temples where he had spotted a small bit of light from the Temple of the Goddess of Love's high precipices. He went forward, fixed on this destination.

  Head down, bent forward, he sprinted across the roofs, crossing the gaps from one building to the next. The thrill of the danger, the chance he might not judge the distance right, should have stirred some happiness in his thief’s heart. Yet the alleys beneath passed without thought, the ghoul-choked streets became mere background, a thoughtless trek, he let his mind sink inside until nothing existed. Through ash and across many blocks he crossed, the miles melting away in this state of meditation and movement, minutes passing by as Manwe embodied his namesake.

  From the southern quarters of the city where he began, the incline rose, the hill upon which Tolivius had been built like the world itself—those with less on the bottom, subject to both man and nature, and those at the top, emboldened by their proximity to the heavens. The buildings came at him in weird approaches and angles, forcing him to climb at points, work around them at others. The entire time he remained off the streets where ghouls lumbered in gross masses.

  An hour later, Manwe ascended to the temple quarter, surprised to find it free of both ghouls and Calla's reavers. Climbing down the side of an outlying building outside of the main square where the Gypians had built their holy sites long ago, he marveled at the beauty of a place he had visited since the days his mother had brought him to listen to the debates in the Philosophers’ Court, one of the many meeting places Tolivius' great minds met to examine the world they lived in. He passed the small clay alcove his mother used to instruct him to remain in while she went about selling her loafs of bread, many that were taken from her without payment or consideration for the plain and simple reason that the color of her skin did not match those who made up most of the audience.

  He remembered those days well, and the anger, the shame, but most of all, he remembered what she had told him: "Keep listening, Manwe. One day you'll hear something different and see it, too."

  Now he heard nothing as he walked the red-brick path set in the pave-stones, a perfect rectangle that allowed its travelers to pass by each house of worship, tall buildings built of pale stone. The Gypians had constructed them of varying heights, signifying each god's importance in society. Some, like the house of Adias, lord of the skies and king of the gods, stabbed for the sky in a smooth tube of silver-shod granite. Others, like Mercas, the god of traders, took up a small spot in a corner where his offering bowl rested, heavy with coins and small charms given by those who did business in the city.

  Manwe had never given the Gypians much thought in comparison to the Mother or her spirits that resided above and below her face, but he always considered the mysterious Goddess of Love worthy of some veneration. Her house had been the place where he first met Toba, the fence who had owned his heart, and also the place where he and Cleon found succor from the travails of the world. A structure of pink-white stone marbled in dizzying designs, its white doors were barred like the rest, the sacrificial fires within snuffed.

  Manwe slipped into the alley separating The Temple of the Goddess of Love and the house of fleet-footed Illo, a Gypian wind deity that served Adias as his messenger. Down the cobblestoned path lay a case of steps leading to a familiar door set in the foundation of the goddess' temple.

  He stopped in front of this portal, looking at it for a few moments while the memories swept in. Not a man to indulge in sentiment, he knocked on the door, knowing no one would answer.

  The slot slid open.

  A woman spoke. "What is the goddess' secret?"

  Manwe wept at the question, filled with joy.

  As a priestess of the Goddess of Love, Magera always cut a stunning figure no matter what room she entered, though her typical garb had changed. Gone were the revealing blue silk that had girded breast and loin and the golden chains that had held them up, replaced in a simple himation folded with brown wool. Resting a wooden tray of heaped with food and a jug of sour wine on her hip, she came gently to where Manwe lay, nestled in a corner of the alter room. Only a few oil lamps of dozens remained lit, disregarded by their owner in the wake of the last few days.

  "This is all that I have left," Magera said as she knelt beside Manwe's litter, placing the tray between them. She gave him a wavering smile in the short light. "A good fare, if I say so."

  His legs covered in a blanket he had taken from the private chambers of the temple's bordello, Manwe sank to the pillows of the bed he had made for himself, resting for the first time in... he did not know. All he cared for in that moment was that he was in a place he considered home, which remained as it had been, with a person he considered as close to him as a sister.

  And yet he could not let go of the world outside the door. "Why are you still here, Magera? Why didn't you escape?"

  She plucked a purple sausage from the platter. "Eat, Manwe. Regain your strength."

  "Priestess."

  "I stayed for the same reason you did." Blond hair shimmering in the lamplight, she chewed a small bit of meat. "This temple is my home. The goddess would never forgive me if I abandoned it, and I will never."

  "If Kosey and Calla's reavers had decided to knock down the door..."

  "Then I would have died in defense of my faith." She looked hard at him. "As you would die for what is right."

  Manwe knew better than to argue. He glanced to the plate of food and picked at a piece of sliced bread, eating crusty bits of it with some old goat cheese. The tangy bitterness almost made him smile, the sensation of taste an escape he reveled. His stomach growled in appreciation, and enlivened, he started for the dried salted pork and the sweet grapes, each bite fueling a strength flushing into his fingers, toes, until his gut ached, stuffed with a sudden infusion of joy long missed.

  "Are you the only one left in the city?" Magera asked as they ate.

  "I don't know." Manwe filled a cup she had laid out for him, spilling a little wine from the pitcher. "I know Calla roams, as does Kosey. Celebrating their spoil, I imagine."

  "I'm sure they will be quite fulfilled," she said dryly.

  Manwe grunted in dark agreement. "For as long as it lasts. I'm not done for today."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I need to find Cleon." He blinked past the sleep in his eyes, keeping his mind centered on the sorcerer. "Alive or dead, I have to know. I need to stop Calla as well."

  "How?" Magera refreshed her small clay cup, the red trickle falling in a glistening line from the pitcher's mouth. "Save for the temple quarter, the city is overrun with the dead. What is left to gain?"

  "Justice," said Manwe. H
e looked to one of the oil lamps, its warmth matching the anger in his face. "I'm under no illusion, Magera—I know I have lost. But I am not defeated, and as long as there is breath in my body, I will not surrender."

  The priestess stared back, her full lips a flat line before they formed into a sad grin. She sipped from her cup.

  Manwe peered at her through the dimness. "Must I ask?"

  "You've always been so adamant, Manwe, so willing to run into death's waiting arms for no other reason than you believe there to be a prize to be taken. It would be almost heroic if you weren't such a brazen thief about it."

  He laughed aloud. "At this point, it may be all I have."

  Their shared mirth was interrupted when a loud boom shook the earth, knocking dust from the crevices of the bordello's stone ceiling. Quick to rise from his bed, Manwe plucked his knife from the ground beside it and hurried to the door. Magera followed behind, carrying no arms but as brave as any warrior.

  Outside the sun had set behind the plains to the west. More smoke gathered in the sky, clouds of hot ash that glowed red from the blazes that fed them. Standing in their little alley between the temples, Manwe and Magera watched in terrified wonder as a stone landed in the center of the square, obliterating the raised verandas of the Philosophers’ Court. Manwe turned his body to shield her, pressing them both into one of the nearby walls when a second stone dropped from the sky, smashing Mercas' shrine into bits.

  "We're under siege," Manwe coughed through the dust and falling shrapnel. "The city is under siege!"

  Midnight had come and gone by the time the initial bombardment ended, leaving the city silent once more in the stale warmth of the renewed fires. The entire southern quarters of the city lay flattened or covered in the rubble of what were once homes, businesses, and artisans’ corners.

  Manwe emerged from the Temple of the Goddess of Love, the one building that had been miraculously spared of the Gypians' stones. Securing his knife in the band of his loincloth, he pawed the canvas wrappings around his wrists and hands, feeling the lengths and edges of the lock picks he always kept there. The feel of them brought some sense of certainty to the madness he planned to create.