REAPERS - Book Two: The Hunger and the Sickness

42

STAVE 14

The beleaguered Reaper had no fire. No shelter. He ate not a thing. Nor slept a wink. Halo was half there and the other half not. The endless gale of dead voices surged in his skull like some lightless and subterranean river. Rattanak brooded quietly within the blade as the ancient emperor pored over the lore stolen from the scattered magi they had together slain. Halo was now etched from crown to heel in the runes and while the pain had been excruciating over the long course of his runebinding there was now no hurt at all. Although he had not eaten in a great while he felt no pangs of hunger nor stirrings of thirst. He noticed he had not been breathing for some time and his breast was absent of rhythm. He put his fingers to his wrist and felt no pulse and he now knew the source of the pervasive noxious smell that had saturated him as he coursed through the wastes. Halo had before thought the odor was perhaps poisoned fumes in the air of the wastes, or the stench of the dead that littered the earth. But no—it was him that reeked so. His own decaying and rotting guts, cooking and liquefying within. Halo reckoned with the thought that refused to coalesce and proclaim itself in his trance. He'd taken in his share of the newfound secrets pillaged from those felled grandmasters and knew that the majority of the runes carpeting the skin of his body were necromantic in nature, not unlike the ones that gave new and unholy life to the corpses under Mad Skelen the Stitcher's control. He had been made into a rotter. A fucking rotter, damn the Trickster god. Constructed from the lessons Rattanak pried from the scholars and sorcerers whose cursing souls they together subjugated.

"You are dead of body, Reaper," said the Emperor, "but your essence lives on in my cradle. Forget your mortal vessel—it is ephemeral, dust upon dust. When this old husk has worn out its use, we will seek out another."

Halo's body stood unmoved by the soulshocking revelation, as any lich or rotter's would. But his inner being was shattered by this awful turn. The Reaper had sleepwalked through his own death. And yet his mind lived on, outside of nature. Bound to this callous master. Cursed to kill in concert with him.

"You are blessed," the old emperor soothed. "Free to stand back and witness my Second Rise firsthand. Relax and share in my glories from behind the eyes I have wrested from you and be thankful for the privilege."

Halo had no choice. With the Reaper's physical death he had little remaining true claim over his body. Inch-by-inch the Emperor had etched the runic patterns he'd learned from his foul accumulation of secrets in this delirious journey across the wastelands and gained the reins of Halo's sun-cooked corpse. Donric feared he would never see Mulia or his daughters again. He was now as restlessly dead as Mouth and Narder and the sandmaster or anyone else slain by this nefarious blade and relegated to the same mad babbling pandemonium no-place as they.

— • —

Birds nested high in the arches of Fetterstone Prison's lobby where its gray columns met at dizzying heights. Banners and awnings had been draped across the airy space to protect those who sat and walked below from the drippings. In his long career as advocate of law, Noakes had seen the prison's inner confines more times than he could number, taking meetings with prisoners to discuss their cases—those lucky few who could afford him or whose cause he and his partners felt compelled to plead at no charge. This hall of the prison that sometimes greeted officials and ambassadors was like a palace, a cathedral. Silent and solemn and more opulent than any prison should be. No prisoner saw this hall. Only those who had business here. Officers of the court and Diluvian highmen and the Warden's shady conspirators. People like Noakes, who had been sent here by Ogerius and his team of lawdogs to investigate those Reapers who had landed in this house of the unfree. Fallen soldiers who'd been awarded with shackles rather than medals. Noakes had spoken to most such men in these halls, at least those who would cooperate, uncovering countless bolts for Ogerius' holster in his legal campaign to skewer those who would fight this war too dirty. The so-called Ogre detested the Reaper program, saw it rife with failures and missteps and clouded in impenetrable secrecy. The clandestine force gave too much power to those who commanded the blackguards, men like Spymaster Knott and General Grattus and Commander Rooster and their superiors higher still whose names had not yet been brought to light despite Ogerius and his cohorts' greatest efforts.