Child of Thunder (Renshai Trilogy) Read online

  “WHO ARE YOUR PARENTS?”

  Colbey scowled. The tedium of the seer’s interrogation wore on him. “My parents are dead. In Valhalla, where Renshai belong.”

  “Their names, please,” the seer persisted.

  Colbey responded with a sigh. “Calistin the Bold and Ranilda Battlemad.” This was probably a test of patience. He swallowed his rage; he might be answering questions for days.

  The seer nodded and sought answers in the crystal globe. Suddenly, his eyes widened. His chair toppled backward, shattering on the granite floor and spilling the seer to the stone. He jumped up, sputtering. An instant later, he vanished, along with the ring of Wizardry Colbey need to complete the Task and return to his own world.

  “Where did he go?” Colbey asked, not really expecting a response. He circled the table, hoping to find an answer in the globe that had condemned him. He saw only a smoky haze. Stung to fury, Colbey reached for the crystal. As his hand closed around the globe, a bolt of amber split the room, lancing through Colbey’s chest. Agony slammed him, his nerves seizing into a tight convulsion. Glowing shards of crystal fell from his hands, stained crimson with blood. Darkness enclosed him. . . .

  DAW Books Presents

  the Finest in Fantasy by

  MICKEY ZUCKER REICHERT

  FLIGHTLESS FALCON

  SPIRIT FOX (with Jennifer Wingert)

  The Novels of Nightfall:

  THE LEGEND OF NIGHTFALL

  THE RETURN OF NIGHTFALL

  The Books of Barakhai:

  THE BEASTS OF BARAKHAI

  THE LOST DRAGONS OF BARAKHAI

  The Renshai Trilogy:

  THE LAST OF THE RENSHAI

  THE WESTERN WIZARD

  CHILD OF THUNDER

  The Renshai Chronicles:

  BEYOND RAGNAROK

  PRINCE OF DEMONS

  THE CHILDREN OF WRATH

  The Renshai Saga:

  FLIGHT OF THE RENSHAI

  FIELDS OF WRATH

  The Bifrost Guardians Omnibus Editions:

  VOLUME ONE:

  GODSLAYER

  SHADOW CLIMBER

  DRAGONRANK MASTER

  VOLUME TWO:

  SHADOW’S REALM

  BY CHAOS CURSED

  Copyright © 1993 by Miriam S. Zucker.

  All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-66384-4

  Cover art by Jody A. Lee.

  Published by DAW Books, Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

  Interior map by Michael Gilbert.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 910.

  First Printing, April 1993

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A

  Version_1

  To Sheila Gilbert,

  one of the very best

  and to

  Old Man Mikey,

  just because.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank the following people:

  Jonathan Matson, Jody Lee, Charon Wood,

  David Moore, and Mark Moore

  and to

  Benjamin and Jonathan Moore,

  for understanding when page proofs

  come before Nintendo.™

  “Should the whole frame of Nature round him break,

  In ruin and confusion hurled,

  He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack,

  And stand secure amidst a falling world.”

  —Joseph Addison

  Horace, Odes, book III, ode iii

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Part I—THE SEVEN TASKS OF WIZARDRY

  1. The Outworlder

  2. The High Seas

  3. The Scene in the Pica

  4. The Tasks of Wizardry

  5. The Task of Leadership

  6. The Woman of Gold and the Shape Changer

  7. A Power Challenged

  8. Spawn of Fenrir

  9. The Black Door

  Part II—THE KEEPERS OF LAW AND CHAOS

  10. The Keepers of Law and Chaos

  11. Chaos’ Task

  12. Mainland

  13. The Ahktarian Trial

  14. Long Way Home

  15. Aristiri Song

  16. Shadimar’s Apprentice

  17. Frost Reaver

  18. The Bard of Béarn

  19. Crossroad Fyn’s

  20. The Gods’ Council

  Part III—THE GRAY GOD’S DOWNFALL

  21. The Wizards’ Successors

  22. Dreams of Gold and Demons

  23. Thor’s Solution

  24. Offworld

  25. Back to Béarn

  26. From Nowhere to Nowhere

  27. Hunting the Hunter

  28. Willing Prisoners

  29. Gateway

  30. The Green and the Pink

  31. Parlay on the Fields of Wrath

  32. In Ruin and Confusion Hurled

  Epilogue

  Appendix

  PROLOGUE

  Silence filled the women’s court in the Eastern kingdom of Stalmize, broken only by occasional tense whispers from the spectators. Khitajrah stood near the far end of the courtroom, her head bowed and her back to the murmuring crowd. She faced the three-man tribunal who sat, with stony expressions, at their long table. Behind them, a doorway led to their chambers, where they had deliberated for less time than it took for the woman’s heart to beat two dozen strokes. Khitajrah never doubted they would find her guilty. It was only the sentence that remained a mystery: imprisonment, mutilation, death.

  Khitajrah raised her head slightly, her curly, shoulder-length black hair falling into eyes nearly as dark. Directly beside her, the guard stirred, attentive to her movement, though he did not otherwise respond to it. She was, after all, only a woman and, also, half his size. She twisted her gaze to the spectators, counting them to expend nervous energy. It was not her way to stand mute in the presence of injustice; her need for action had committed her to this trial that had proven little more than a recitation of her crimes. As an Eastland woman, she had no right to a defense, and the proceedings in the women’s court were a parody of justice.

  Khitajrah’s gaze played over the seated rows of the audience. She counted eighteen, all men, and weaponless as the court law specified. Her son, Bahmyr, sat along one aisle, fidgeting helplessly. At twenty-three, he already sported the heavy frame and hard musculature of his father. Ebony hair fringed a handsome face, friendly despite growing up amid the cold evil of the Eastern culture. He was the last of Khitajrah’s children. Her other two sons, one older and one younger, had died in the Great War, along with their father, Harrsha, who had served as one of two high lieutenants to King Siderin.

  The other seventeen spectators included family, curious neighbors, and soldiers. Among the latter, Khitajrah recognized at least two who had placed the blame for the defeat of the Eastern army on her late husband. That accusation, at least, seemed ludicrous. Khitajrah understood the need for these broken veterans to find a scapegoat, to blame the hundreds of casualties on a specific man whom they could curse and malign. As the chosen of the Eastlands’ one god, General-King Siderin must always remain a hero, though he had led his followers and himself to their deaths. But Harrsha had been Siderin’s last surviving high commander, and the Western warrior who had killed him on the battlefield was a woman.

  A woman. Khitajrah pursed her lips in a tense frown, torn by the irony. She had fought for the dignity and worth of women for as long as she could remember: comforting those beaten, lending her strength to the overburdened, and stealing food and medicati
on where needed. Now, at forty-three years old, she would pay the price for a lifetime of assisting her sisters and decades of walking the delicate boundaries of the law. Now that her cause finally stood a chance, she would fall in defeat, with no one to continue her work. The war had left women outnumbering men by three to one, and the Eastlands needed to use the guile and competence of their women, as well as their bodies, to keep the realm from lapsing into decay. The overtaxed farm fields could scarcely feed the populace, even with their numbers whittled by war.

  The central man of the tribunal cleared his throat. Khitajrah returned her attention to them, her gaze sweeping briefly over the only armed men in the courtroom. Two burly soldiers guarded the door. Another stood, braced and watchful, between the tribunal and the crowd. The last remained at Khitajrah’s right hand, alert to her every movement.

  The central man rose. “Friends. Freemen. It is the opinion of this court that this woman . . . this frichen-karboh . . .” He paused on the word, one of the ugliest in the Eastern language. Literally, it translated to “manless woman, past usefulness,” a derogatory term used for widows. In the East, violent crime and a constant life of labor saw to it that a woman rarely outlasted her husband. When he died first, it was expected that she, and her unattached female children, would suicide on his pyre. “. . . this one called Khita is guilty of theft, of inciting women, and of treason in the eyes of the one god, Sheriva.” Though he spoke formally, he used the shortened form of Khitajrah’s name, as if to imply that she was not worth the effort of a third syllable. “She is guilty.”

  “Guilty,” the judge to the speaker’s right echoed.

  “Guilty,” the other concurred.

  Khitajrah stiffened. Though the law condemned dissent or revolt, thoughts of these rose naturally. She had spied on her husband when he taught their sons the art of war. Hard labor, her own and that which she had spared weaker women, had honed her agility. Stealing from men had taught her to climb, twist, and dodge. And, since the Great War, Bahmyr had worked with his mother on strike and parry, his love for her outweighing the risk of violating Eastern rules. It had never been his or Khitajrah’s desire to break the laws that had become a fixed part of their culture for millennia, only to revise them. Without change, the Eastlanders as a people would die.

  The speaker continued. “We sentence Khita Harrsha’s-widow . . .” His dark eyes met Khitajrah’s, strong and intense; they seemed to bore through her. The woman had been trained since infancy to look down in deference, yet this time she met him stare for stare.

  Caught off-guard by her boldness, the speaker lost his place. Flustered, he glanced away first, covering his weakness by turning his glare on the guard at Khitajrah’s side. “. . . sentence Khita to work the silver mine until the end of her life.”

  Slow death. Khitajrah knew they had given her the worst sentence of all, an anonymous and prolonged death. Starvation and cave-ins took those strong enough to survive the constant pace of working to the limit of the most competent prisoner from moment to moment, without rest. Few lived out a year in the mines. Khitajrah had expected death, yet it should have come in the form of a public execution, as an example to the other Eastland women. Given the chance to defy crying out at the tribunal’s torture or to speak last words, Khitajrah could have become a martyr to her cause, her death the shock that might have driven others to take her place.

  “No!” Khitajrah screamed. She whirled, managing to turn halfway toward the audience before the guard caught her arm in a grip like iron. His sword rasped from its sheath, its edge coming to rest at her throat. Despite the threat, she struggled against him.

  The spectators erupted into a wild, indecipherable hubbub.

  Drawing swords, the guards by the door leapt forward to assist. Even as they moved, Bahmyr sprang to his feet, catching the nearest one’s hand where it clutched the sword’s hilt. The guard spun toward him. Bahmyr stomped his booted heel on the guard’s foot. In the same motion, he caught the haft, whipped it fully free of its sheath, and buried the blade in its wielder’s gut.

  The son’s voice rang out over the others, clearly audible. “Mother, run!” Freeing the sword, he shoved the guard’s corpse away. The other hacked high. Bahmyr’s parry rang against the guard’s attack. His counter-slash opened sleeve and sword arm. The soldier’s arm flopped to his side, his sword clanging to the floor.

  Khitajrah’s guard spun to face the attack, his sword falling from the woman’s throat. He shoved her violently aside, his blade cutting the air above her head, and he leapt for Bahmyr.

  “No!” Khitajrah made a desperate grab, catching the man’s hilt and hand as he spun. Using the technique her son had taught her, she twisted violently downward, breaking the guard’s grip. The effort took her to her knees, the sword still clenched in her grip. Unable to recover quickly enough to defend, she hurled herself against the guard’s legs. The man staggered onto Bahmyr’s stop thrust, the sword impaling him cleanly through the abdomen.

  The guard screamed. Bahmyr’s cry sounded equally agonized. “Behind you!” He choked off the last syllable in shock or pain.

  Still on her knees, Khitajrah whirled toward the tribunal. She met the last guard’s attack as much from instinct as her son’s warning. Steel crashed, chiming against steel, the man’s strength driving her to her buttocks. Blow after blow followed, each so fast and hard she could do little more than block. She waited for Bahmyr to come to her aid. Between them, they could handle her enemy. Yet her son did not come.

  Fatigue wore on Khitajrah. She exaggerated its effect, whipping a frightened gaze to the man above her. She met an expression of icy cruelty, devoid of mercy. His blade slammed against hers once more. She gave with the motion, all but pressed to the wooden floor. The instant he raised his weapon for a final strike, she lunged, slamming her hilt into his groin with all the power she could land behind the blow. The guard collapsed, hand still clutching his sword.

  Hands, throat, side of the chest. Calling on Bahmyr’s training, Khitajrah naturally struck for a kill. She hacked at his neck. The blow lacked the power to inflict serious damage, but the draw cut she used to recover the blade opened his throat. Blood splattered, warm droplets pelting her, and the guard went limp at her feet.

  Khitajrah rose, assessing the situation in an instant. Bahmyr sprawled, facedown, in the aisle, blood washing from a wound in his back at the level of a kidney. Another knife cut ravaged the tunic she had sewn for him, now dark with her son’s blood. The sight paralyzed her. She stood, sword still in her clenched fist. All color drained from her and, with it, all her will to fight.

  From beyond Bahmyr, two veterans of the Great War advanced on Khitajrah. She knew both men well. Diarmad had been the first to disparage her dead husband, laying blame on the commander, at the top of his lungs, from the curtain wall of the king’s palace. The other had engineered this mockery the tribunal dared to call a trial.

  The elder who had pronounced Khitajrah’s sentence shouted. “Stop her at any cost!”

  Some of the audience sat, rooted. Others leapt to obey, charging down on Khitajrah with her son’s killers in the lead. The judges ran around their table toward her.

  Attacked from all sides, Khitajrah mobilized as well. She whirled, running directly for the judges’ bench. Footsteps pounded behind her, liberally mixed with shouts and threats of violence. As she sprinted for the bench, the judges hurried around it, to corner her against it.

  Khitajrah did not slow. She sprang to the surface of the table, dark hair flying behind her, entwined with her cloak hood. For an instant, she balanced there. Then, her momentum drove the table over backward. Wood crashed, splintering against planking. She dodged free as the judges scattered, leaving her an open path to their chambers.

  “Get her!” the speaker shrieked.

  A knife whizzed by Khitajrah’s head. Its hilt struck the door frame and bounced, skittering across the floor. She threw a quick glance around the room, finding its furnishings wastefully exce
ssive at a time when the Eastlanders could scarcely feed what remained of their masses. Pillows covered the floor, surrounded by half-eaten platefuls of beef and grapes and goblets of wine. Three desks lined the walls, festooned with intricately carved leaves and vines. Above one, a window overlooked the mazelike alleyways of the Eastlands’ royal city.

  Khitajrah hurled the sword blindly behind her. Its length in her hand could only hamper her escape. She hoped throwing it might gain her the precious moments she needed to maneuver. She had prowled the streets of Stalmize enough times to know them by heart, even under the cover of night’s darkness. Although she had never entered the tribunal’s quarters, she knew its window from the outside. It opened a story over a populous street, full of vendors and shops. Though it would leave her exposed and hemmed in by crowds, a few steps could take her in any of a thousand directions. If she worked her way into the street, she had a chance of evading pursuit.

  Khitajrah made a wild leap for the desktop. A hand snagged her sleeve. The sudden jerk of motion tore the cloth and stole momentum. Jarred backward, she missed the desk, crashing to the floor and skidding half beneath the desk. She sprang to a crouch, banging her head against the underside of the desk. Pain howled through her head. A foot lanced toward her. She dodged, twisting, hurling her body up and over the desktop, and rolling through the window.

  Khitajrah’s mind told her the fall was too far for an uncontrolled landing. She clawed, managing to catch a grip on the sill. Splinters jabbed beneath her nails. Then, a knife blade slashed the back of her hand, and she recoiled reflexively.

  Khitajrah fell. She twisted, her body still lithe from training, despite her age. She scrambled for a hold on the masonry of the building. Stone snapped her fingernails into grimy irregularity. The touches friction-burned her flesh and made the wound in her hand throb, but they slowed her descent. She landed on her feet on the cobbled roadway, bent her knees, tucked, and rolled at random. Her already aching head pounded over stone, then struck a woman burdened with two buckets of water.