Nicholas closed the door behind Najari and bolted it. It was a perfunctory act, done more to add to the aura of peril than out of necessity. Even with their hands tied behind their backs, these people could, together, probably overpower him—knock him down and kick in his head, if nothing else. But for that, they would have to think, to decide what they ought to do and why, to commit to act. Easier not to think. Easier not to act. Easier to do as you are told.
Easier to die than to live.
Living took effort. Struggle. Pain.
Nicholas hated it.
“Hate to live, live to hate,” he said to the silent, ghostly white faces watching him.
Out the window the streaks of clouds had gone dark gray as the touch of the sun passed beyond them and night crept in to embrace them. Soon, he would be among them.
He turned back from the window, taking in the faces watching him. Soon, they would all be out there, among them.
Chapter 27
Nicholas seized one of the nameless men. Powered by muscles crafted of the Sisters’ dark art, he hoisted the man into the air. The man cried out in surprise at being lifted so easily. He struggled hesitantly against muscle he would not be able to resist were he even to put daring into it. These people were immune to magic, or Nicholas would have used his power to easily lift them aloft. Absent the necessary spark of the gift, they had to be manhandled.
It made little difference to Nicholas. How they got to the stakes was unimportant. What happened to them once there was all that mattered.
As the man in his arms cried out in terror, Nicholas carried him across the room. The other people withdrew into a far corner. They always went to the far corner, like chickens about to be dinner.
Nicholas, his arms around the man’s chest, lifted him high in the air, judging the distance and angle as he raced ahead.
The man’s eyes went wide, his mouth did likewise. He gasped with the shock, then grunted as Nicholas, hugging the man tight in his arms, drove him down onto the stake.
The man’s breath came in short sharp gasps as the sharpened stake penetrated up through his insides. He went still in Nicholas’s powerful arms, fearing to move, fearing to believe what was happening to him, fearing to know it was true…trying to deny to himself that it could be true.
Nicholas straightened to his full height before the man. The man’s back was as straight and stiff as a board as he sat impaled on the sharpened stake. His eyebrows pushed his sweat-beaded brow up in furrows as he writhed in slow agony, his legs trying to touch the ground that was too far away.
Into that confusion of sensation, Nicholas reached out with his mind, at the same time clawing his hands before the man with the effort as he slid his own being, his own spirit, into the core of this living creature, slid into this man’s open mind, into the cavernous cracks between his abrupt and disconnected thoughts, there to feel his agony and fright. There to take control. Once he had slipped his own mind in there with this man, seeped through his consciousness, Nicholas drew his essence out and into himself.
With a staggering fusion of destructive and creative power dealt by those women that day, Nicholas had been born into a new being, part him, and yet more. He had become what no man had ever been before—what others wished to make of him, what others wished him to be.
What had been unleashed in him by those Sisters all linked in their ability to harness powers they could never have touched alone and should never have invoked together, they instilled in him. They engendered in him powers few could ever have imagined: the power to slide into another living person’s thoughts, and withdraw their spirit.
He drew his closed fists back toward his own abdomen with the effort of drawing with him the spirit of this man on the cusp of life and death, drew onward the marrow of this man’s soul. Nicholas felt the slick heat of this other spirit slide into his, the hot rush of sensation at feeling himself filled with another spirit.
Nicholas left the body there, impaled on the first stake, as he rushed to the windows, his head spinning with the first intoxicating wave of excitement at the journey only now just begun, at what was to come, at what power he would control.
He opened his mouth wide again in a yawn that was not a yawn, but a call carrying more than just his silent voice.
His eyes swam with wavering images. He gasped in the first scent of the forests out beyond, where his intent had been cast.
He rushed back and seized a woman. She begged as she wept, begged to be spared as he bore her to her stake.
“But this is nothing,” he told her. “Nothing compared to what I have endured. Oh, you cannot imagine what I have endured.”
He had been staked naked to the ground, in the center of a circle of those smug women. He had been nothing to them. He had not been a man, a wizard. He had been nothing but the raw material, the flesh and blood innervated by the gift, that they needed for what they wanted, that they used in yet another of their trials, all to be twisted by their tinkering at creation.
He had the ability, so duty required he sacrifice it.
Nicholas had been the first to live through their tests, not because they took care—not because they cared—but because they had learned what didn’t work, and so avoided their past errors.
“Scream, my dear. Scream all you want. It will help you no more than it helped me.”
“Why!” she screamed. “Why!”
“Oh, but I must, if I am to have your spirit to soar on the wings of my distant friends. You will go on a glorious journey, you and I.”
“Please!” she wailed. “Dear Creator, no!”
“Oh, yes, dear Creator,” he mocked. “Come and save her—like you came and saved me.”
Her wailing did her no good. His hadn’t either. She had no idea how immeasurably worse his agony had been than hers would be. Unlike her, he had been condemned to live.
“Hate to live, live to hate,” he murmured in a comforting whisper. “You will have the glory and the reward that is death.”
He drove her down onto the stake. He reckoned her not far enough onto the stake, and shoved her down another six inches, until he judged it deep enough within her, deep enough to produce the necessary pain and terror, but not deep enough to lance anything inside that would kill her right off. She thrashed, trying desperately, hands helpless behind her back, to somehow remove herself.
He was only dimly aware of her cries, her worthless words. She thought they might somehow make a difference.
Pain was his goal. Their complaints of it only confirmed that he was achieving his goal.
Nicholas stood before the woman, hands clawed, as he slid his own spirit through her sundered thoughts and into the core of her being. With mental strength far superior to his physical strength, he pulled her back. He gasped as he felt her spirit slide into his.
For now, he slipped those spirits out of tortured, dying bodies while those spirits existed in the netherworld between the worldly form they knew was lost to them, but still alive, and the world of the dead already calling them in from beyond. Life could no longer hold them, but death could not yet have them. In that time of spiritual transition, they were his, and he could use those spirits for things only he could imagine.
And he had not yet really even begun to imagine.
Such ability as he possessed was not something that could be taught by another—there was no other but he. He was still learning the extent of his powers, the things he could do with the spirit of another. He had only scratched the surface.
Emperor Jagang had sought to create something akin to himself, a dream walker, a brother, of sorts. One who could enter another’s mind. He had gotten far more than he could have ever have imagined. Nicholas didn’t simply slide into another’s thoughts, as Jagang did; he could slide into their very soul, and draw their spirit back into himself.
The Sisters hadn’t counted on that aberration of their tinkering with his ability.
Rushing to the window, his mouth pulled open as wi
de as it would go in a yawn that wasn’t a yawn. The room swam behind him. It was only partly there, now. Now, he was beginning to see other places. Glorious places. See them with new vision, with spirits no longer bound to their paltry bodies.
He rushed to the third person, no longer aware even if they were man or woman. Their soul was all that mattered—their spirit.
He drove them onto a stake with urgent effort, slid into them and drew their spirit into his, shuddering with the power of it entering him.
He rushed to the window again, opening wide his mouth again, twisting his head side to side again with the thrill of it, the slick, silken, sliding ecstasy of it…the loss of physical orientation, the exaltation of being above his corporeal existence, the former bounds of his mere worldly form—carried aloft not simply with his own efforts, but by the spirits of others that he had freed from their bodies.
What a glorious thing it was.
It was almost like the joy he imagined death would be.
He seized the fourth weeping person and with delirious expectation ran with them across the room, to the stakes, to the fourth stake, and drove them screaming onto it.
As he lurched back from them, he thrust himself into their wildly racing, confused, swirling thoughts, and took what was there for the taking. He took their spirit into himself.
When he controlled a person’s spirit, he controlled their very existence. He became life and death for them. He was their savior, their destroyer.
He was in many ways like those spirits he took, trapped in a worldly form, hating to live, to endure the pain and agony that was life, yet fearing to die even while longing for the promise of its sweet embrace.
With four spirits swirling through him, Nicholas staggered to the fifth person, cowering in the corner.
“Please!” the man wailed, trying to ward what he would not commit to warding. “Please, don’t!”
The thought occurred to Nicholas that the stakes were really a hindrance; using them required him to carry people around like woolly sheep to have their souls sheared. Yes, he was still learning what he could do and how to control what he did, but to have to use the stakes was limiting. When he thought about it, it was actually insulting that a wizard of his ability would have to use so crude a device.
What he really wanted to do was to slide into another’s spirit and take it without any warning—without needing to bring people to the stakes.
When he was fully able to do that—to simply walk up to another, say “Good day,” and slide like the thrust of a dagger into the heart of their spirit, there to draw it into his—then he would be invincible. When he was able to do that, then no one could challenge him. No one would be able to deny him anything.
As the man shrank down before him, Nicholas, before he fully realized what it was he was doing, driven by an angry need, by hatred, thrust out his hand as he thrust his own mind into this man, into the spaces between thought.
The man stiffened, just as those on the stakes stiffened, when Nicholas had impaled them with his ability.
He drew back his closed fist toward his middle as he drew in this man’s spirit. He gasped with the heat of it, with the silky slick feel of it sliding into him.
They stared at each other, each in shock, each considering what this meant for them.
The man slumped back against the wall, sliding down, in soundless, silent, terrible empty agony.
Nicholas realized that he had just done what he had never done before. He had just taken a soul by his will alone.
He had just freed himself to take what he wanted, when he wanted, where he wanted.
Chapter 28
Nicholas, his vision a blur, staggered to the window.
All five were his, now.
This time, as his mouth opened wide, a cry at last came forth, a cry of the five spirits joining his as he drew them together into one force guided by his will alone. Their worldly agony was a distant concern to them. Five spirits gazed out of the windows along with him, five spirits now waiting to soar out into the night, to where he chose to send them.
Those Sisters had not known what they unleashed that night. They could not have known the power they fused into him, the ability they burned into him.
They had achieved what none had achieved for thousands of years—the altering of a wizard into something more, honing him into a weapon of specific intent. They had imbued him with power beyond that of anyone living. They had given him dominion over the spirits of others.
Most had escaped, but he had killed five of them.
The five were enough. After he had slid into their souls and pulled their spirits back into his that night, he had appropriated their Han, their force of life, their power, for himself.
It was only fitting, as their Han was not natural to them, but was male Han they had stolen from young wizards—a birthright they had sucked from those to whom it belonged in order to give themselves abilities they had not been born with, could not be born with. Yet more nameless people with ability to be sacrificed to those who needed it, or simply wanted it.
Nicholas had taken it all back from their trembling bodies, pulled it out of them as he had clawed their living insides open. They had been sorry that they had done Jagang’s bidding, that they had twisted him into something Creation never intended.
Not only had they made him into a Slide, they had given up their Han to him, and made him that much more powerful for it.
After each of those five women had died, the world had gone darker than dark for an instant when the Keeper had come and taken them to his realm.
The Sisters had destroyed him that day, and they had created him.
He had a lifetime to explore and discover what he could do with his new abilities.
And, to be sure, Jagang would grant him payment for that night. Jagang would pay, but he would pay gladly, for Nicholas would give him something none but Nicholas the Slide could give him.
Nicholas would be rewarded with things enough to repay him for what had been done to him…. He hadn’t decided, yet, what that reward would be, but it would be worthy of him.
He would use his ability to hold sway over lives—important lives. He no longer needed to cart people to the stakes. He knew how to take what he wanted, now.
Now he knew how to slip into their minds at the time of his choosing and take their souls.
He would trade those lives for what he would have in power, wealth, splendor. It would have to be something appropriate….
He would be an emperor.
It would have to be more than this petty empire of sheep, though. He would frolic in rule. He would have his every whim fulfilled, once he was given dominion over…over something important. He hadn’t decided just what, yet. It was an important decision, what he would have as his reward. No need to rush it. It would come to him.
He turned from the window, the five spirits swirling within his, soaring through him.
It was time to use what he had pulled together.
Time to get down to business, if he was to have what he wanted.
He would get closer, this time. He was frustrated from not being closer, from not seeing better. It was dark, now. He would get closer, this time, under cover of the darkness.
Nicholas took the broad bowl from the table and placed it on the floor before the five who still owned the spirits within him. They writhed in otherworldly agony, even the man not on a stake, an agony of both body and soul.
Nicholas sat cross-legged on the floor before the bowl. Hands on his knees, he threw his head back, eyes closed, as he gathered the power within, the power created by those wicked women, those wonderful wicked women.
They had considered him a pathetic wizard of little worth except as flesh and blood and gift to toy with—a sacrifice to a greater need.
When he had time, he would go after the rest of them.
With a more immediate task at hand, Nicholas dismissed those Sisters from his mind.
Tonight, he wo
uld not merely watch through other eyes. Tonight, he would again go with the spirits he cast.
Tonight, he would not merely watch through other eyes. Tonight, his spirit would travel to them.
Nicholas opened his mouth as wide as it would go, his head rocking from side to side. The joined spirits within released a part of themselves into the bowl, whirling in a silken, silvery swirl lit with the soft glow of their link to the life behind him, placekeepers for their journey, a stitch in the world holding the knot in the thread of their travels.
His spirit, too, let slip a small portion to remain with his body, to drift in the bowl with the others.
Fragments of the five spirits revolved with the fragment of his, their light of life glowing softly in this safe place as he prepared to journey. He cast his own spirit away, then, leaving behind the husk of a body sitting on the floor behind him as he fled out into the dark sky, borne on the wings of his invested power.
No wizard before had ever been able to do as he, to leave his body and have his spirit soar to where his mind would send him. He raced through the night, fast as thought, to find what he hunted.
He felt the rush of air flowing over feathers. As quick as that, he had raced away through the night and was with them, pulling the five spirits along with him.
He summoned the dark forms into a circle with him, and, as they gathered around, cast the five spirits into them. His mouth was still open in a yawn that was not a yawn that back in a room somewhere distant let forth a cry to match the five.
As they circled, he felt the rush of air beneath their wings, felt their feathers working the wind to direct them as effortlessly as his own thought directed not only his spirit but the other five as well.
He sent those five racing through the night, to the place where he had sent the men. They raced over hills, turning to scan the open country, to look out over the barren land. The cloak of darkness felt cool, encasing him in obscure black night, obscure black feathers.
He caught the scent of carrion, sharp, cloying, tantalizing, as the five spiraled down toward the ground. Through their eyes that saw in the darkness Nicholas saw then the scene below, a place littered with the dead. Others of their kind had gathered to feed in a frenzy of ripping and gorging.