What a strange thing death is, she thought. How full of life a person can be one moment, then gone the next, leaving the body behind to become an empty, decaying vessel. Do we really possess souls? she wondered. If so, where do they go? It seems that even the wizards cannot answer such questions. She sighed and shook her head. If the mystics did know, they weren’t telling.
She looked at Sister Adrian to see that the acolyte was crying and her face was covered by her hands. But Tyranny had no such tears, for the rage she felt easily overcame her grief. She had seen much during her struggles against the Vagaries, but nothing equaled the sheer brutality of this.
Hundreds upon hundreds of Eutracian citizens had been systematically murdered, their corpses lining the shore for as far as the eye could see.
The victims were impaled on long staffs, freshly cut from a nearby beechwood grove. Even women and children had been brutally killed. The bodies were naked, bloody, unmoving. Human entrails lay scattered far along the shore, telling Tyranny that the carnage had taken place over a wide area. There was so much blood that she could scarcely tell that the rocks beneath her feet were black.
She saw no discarded weapons or clothing, suggesting that these poor souls had been stripped first, then brought here to be killed, and that most had died without a fight. Fearing that they had come from Birmingham, she had ordered two Minion phalanxes to immediately fly there and investigate. As Tyranny and her group stood staring, not one of them spoke, the only sounds coming from the restless waves as they lapped at the shore. As the fog lifted for good, the extent of the disaster was fully revealed.
Row after row of impaled corpses lined the shore as far as the eye could see, the stakes holding the victims’ bodies upright. Their sharpened tips had been viciously shoved into the victims’ groins, then threaded up through their abdomens and forced out near their collarbones. The lower end of each stake had been plunged into the rocky shore. Each corpse’s hands had been raised over the head, then clasped together and pierced through.
Shorter branches had been lashed to the stakes just below the victims’ feet and hands, keeping the corpses from sliding down the poles. Every corpse’s abdomen had been systematically disemboweled from the throat to the genitals. In some cases their internal organs dangled from the gaping wounds. Some stretched so far as to reach the ground.
Tyranny came to stand before an impaled young woman. She had been lovely, with blond hair and a strong jawline. A look of terror was frozen on her face. Tyranny sheathed her sword and reached up to gently close the woman’s eyes. As she did, Traax, Scars, Adrian, and the other three acolytes approached.
Tyranny turned toward Traax. “Have our scouts reported back?” she demanded.
Traax shook his head. “Given that you ordered every building to be searched, it will take some time. My warriors will not report until either they find who did this or their search is otherwise finished.”
“And the other two phalanxes that I ordered to ring this area?” she asked. “What of them?”
“They continue to search,” Traax answered, “but they have found nothing. Unless the killers remained behind in Birmingham, they are probably long gone.”
Tyranny turned to look out to sea. As though they were eager to take sail again, her four Black Ships tugged at their anchors. Several dozen fishing boats lay moored between the shore and the fleet, and two long wooden piers jutted from the shoreline into the restless waves. The nearby fishing village of Birmingham had been instrumental in supplying the Black Ships with goods and provisions whenever they moored in this wide delta bay. But as she saw dark smoke rising in the west, Tyranny feared that Birmingham was no more.
The privateer looked skyward. Her instincts told her that the day would become sunny and hot. Swarms of black vultures already wheeled overhead, and the greedy birds would soon swoop down to collect their next meal. Unless something was done, there would be much for the birds to gorge on.
Tyranny looked at Adrian. “Was the craft at work here?” she asked.
Adrian came to stand before the woman whose eyes Tyranny had just closed. The acolyte spent some time looking at the gaping abdomen. She pursed her lips thoughtfully.
“At first I wasn’t sure,” she answered, “but on closer examination, I believe that it was.” Adrian pointed to the wound and beckoned everyone nearer.
Tyranny soon saw what the acolyte was talking about. The privateer was no mystic, but she had seen enough azure bolts used to recognize the telltale marks that they left behind. The edges of the wounds were precise and singed black. Tyranny pointed at them.
“These wounds were caused by the craft, weren’t they?” she asked.
Adrian nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Do you see how smooth the cuts are? I know of no traditional weapon that can produce such perfect incisions and singe marks at the same time.”
Traax shook his head. “With all due respect, First Sister, you’re wrong,” he countered. “There is such a weapon, and I know the warrior who wields it.”
Tyranny nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “The warrior is Tristan, and the weapon is his dreggan. During the fight to take the Recluse, when he called on his gift ofK’Shari his dreggan glowed. It sliced though his enemies as if they were made of paper and caused these same burns. But does that mean that there is anotherK’Shari master roaming Eutracia with the same skills?”
Adrian again turned her attention to the corpse. She bent down and looked at the internal organs lying at the victim’s feet. Lifting the hem of her robe, she trod through the blood and regarded the next impaled victim in the same way. This time her inspection became more focused, as if she was searching for something specific. She quickly moved on to look at two more corpses. Thinking, she walked back to stand beside Tyranny. There was a puzzled look on her face.
“What is it?” Tyranny asked.
Adrian scowled. “Aside from the obvious, two of the four victims that I just examined have another thing in common,” she mused.
“What are you talking about?” Scars asked.
As though she couldn’t believe what she was about to say, Adrian shook her head.
“They are missing their livers,” she said. “Like the exterior wounds, the cuts that allowed their removal are equally precise and darkly singed.”
Tyranny shot Adrian a skeptical look. “Show me,” she ordered.
Adrian pointed to the dead woman’s gaping wound. Some organs were missing and dangled toward the ground. “Look there,” she said. “Do you see those interior cuts? They allowed the removal of the liver.”
“How do you know that only the liver is missing?” Tyranny asked.
Adrian gave Tyranny a rueful look. “All her other organs are accounted for,” she said quietly. “They lie at your feet. It is the same with the others. Only their livers are gone.”
Tyranny scowled and ran one hand through her hair. “What in the world…” she breathed. “You are that conversant with human anatomy?” she asked.
Adrian nodded. “All acolytes are. It’s part of our training. The craft has to do with blood; blood has to do with the organs; and the organs-well, you see.”
Tyranny shook her head again. She was starting to understand these horrors less and less. It was an unsettling feeling.
“But why would some attacker want theirlivers?” she asked incredulously. “Does that also have to do with the craft?”
“Probably,” Adrian answered. “On the anatomical level, magic has much to do with the liver. A person’s entire blood supply-be it endowed or unendowed-flows through it. We might be dealing with something never seen before. Either way, only our more senior mystics might answer that. I strongly suggest that we take several of these corpses to Tammerland. Faegan will certainly want to do necropsies. And there is one other thing that you need to know.”
“What is that?” Tyranny asked.
“Although each victim was impaled and rendered, the livers were taken only from those victims who possessed endowed blood. Clearly, there is much more going on with these horrors than first meets the eye.”
Wanting to look at another corpse, Tyranny beckoned Adrian to walk with her. The privateer stopped before the second victim that Adrian had examined. When she looked at the corpse’s face she saw that the dead man had been injured in ways that the woman had not. At first Tyranny thought that she might become ill.
Parts of the man’s eyes were missing. The entire front of each eyeball was gone, leaving only the rear walls intact. A trail of dried vitreous material ran down each cheek. The edges of the eye sockets were not singed like
