Excerpt: Embrace the Night

Prologue
To Feel Nothing

The light of the three cook fires illuminated the camp as Alasam Keral walked among the bodies. The orange light cast the hobbled horses’ flickering shadows onto the sides of the wagons, set in a circle around the camp’s perimeter. The horses pulled at the restraints, still whickering from the bloodshed.

He bent down to wipe his blood-stained spear on the fine coat of a slightly plump man who had slumped against a wagon wheel as he died, hands still clutching the hole in his middle, just below the waist. His eyes, flames dancing on their filmed surface, seemed surprised. As well they should.

Alasam stood and turned, taking in the carnage around him. A dozen bodies littered the campsite, most laying near the fires. Alasam had struck quickly, killing the adults before the three children could overcome their shock enough to run. The boy had died with a throwing knife in his back, and the two girls had fallen to spear thrusts from behind. The last adult -- the plump man beneath him -- hadn’t run at all. He had stood with his hands out, trying to placate him, even as he died. Alasam had been beyond placation.

The man had been the leader of the caravan, dressed in finer clothing than all the others, though none of them were dressed poorly. The Merchant Houses paid their caravan teams well enough to afford good cloth, and the Offenberr House was the wealthiest of them.

He knew he should feel regret at what he had done. Barely an hour ago, these people would have called him friend. His mind told him that he would have called them the same. But, looking down at corpses of those he had been hired to protect, he felt nothing.

Come, a voice boomed inside his head.

He didn’t know where it had come from, but he didn’t care. He obeyed, just as he had before, when it had told him to murder his friends. He turned away from the fires, walking between two of the wagons and out into the night beyond.

After the brightness of the fires, the night truly did seem dark to his eyes. He didn’t fear the night -- he felt nothing -- and he continued without pausing. They had made camp in a small field just west of the road. It had been a good spot. A small stream flowing by on one side, the road stretching north and south on the other, both of them close enough to access easily.

As he grew accustomed to the light of the first moon -- a fat crescent just rising above the mountain peaks ahead of him to the east -- it became easier for him to make his way. He crossed the road, and continued into the low, rugged hills that were the mountains’ feet. Short, bush-like trees sprouted up around him, close enough that he knew he would soon get turned around as he weaved his way through them. But he didn’t, his mind never losing its way. He walked forward, drawn like a pigeon to its coop, though he had never been this way before. That didn’t bother him, either, though his mind knew that it should have.

How long he walked, he did not know. The hills grew steeper and more rugged as he continued, the trees grew sparser, and the second moon rose above the mountains, a much slimmer crescent than its cousin, to add its light to his path.

He crested the last hilltop, not knowing or caring how he knew that his journey was almost at its end. There seemed to be nothing to differentiate this valley from those he had crossed before, save that the hills were taller this close to the mountains. His feet carried him inexorably down the hillside, where he found a man standing, staring into the night sky.

Alasam was not surprised to see the short, fat man standing there, though he had never seen him before. He wore clothes perhaps as fine as those worn by the leader of the caravan, though in the light of the moons they looked as if they had been dyed in vibrant hues, something none but the vainest of caravan leaders would have consented to -- clothing was easy to destroy while traveling.

When Alasam stepped up next to the man, he looked up and blinked a few times as though not quite sure where he was. His eyes seemed much larger than they should have been, magnified by large, wire-rimmed lenses. Then his eyes focused on Alasam’s face, and they narrowed to pleased slits. A small smile spread across his lips, making his cheeks seem even chubbier than before.

Good, the booming voice said, bouncing within his skull. Very good.

Except for that small, contented smile, the man’s lips never moved. Alasam knew that that should have bothered him. But he felt nothing.