The Rise of House Dannegiatti, Book 2
Seven years have come and gone since Cairo Dannegiatti drove the Anshezzar from the streets of Cinterre. The Dannegiattis have done everything they could to bring their lives back to normal, but the dead walked in Cinterre, and that is not cast aside lightly. The necromancers involved with the Anshezzar invasion were exterminated – all but one – and the world has not forgotten him.
And so Cairo’s legacy haunts his family.
Constant reminders of all that came before and regular harassment from zealots out for glory make it difficult for Cairo and Bria to establish normal lives for their daughters, Dianna and Jessica. The family is forced to confront their history and decide whether or not it is time to find a new home.
The hunt is on, and the shadows rising in the wake of House Dannegiatti hunger for revenge.
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A Teaser from The Revenant
The Illizi had no regard for the natural order. They wanted control—no more, no less. Vesandar and his squad of espadas tracked the Illizi to a wide pit, like a great hole burrowed straight down to the heart of a mountain.
They camped on the rim. Espadas were not given to wild and undisciplined into-trap stumblings. Rosa studied the pit for hours. Tsama had reclaimed that land. The jungle is deep and full of undiscovered mysteries, but always it prevails.
On the third day, the espadas climbed in. The way down into the pit was covered over in vines and growth. They took the climb in stages. Two espadas pressed their backs to the rock and nocked arrows to ward off any Illizi that might lurk below.
Sunlight filtered down to the floor, turned green and yellow by the canopy, but it didn’t reach much further. They fanned out, searching through the light-strangled foliage and crinkling veins of water crossing the stone.
Vesandar’s machete peeled back the hanging red ward of a Heliconia flower. It had a dozen red and leathery pods, offset and edged in green and yellow. Vesandar let the hanging plant fall back across his path.
“Jefa,” he projected against the cave wall above and ahead. “La mira esto.”
Captain Rosa DeLeon appeared at his shoulder a moment later. “Heliconia,” she noted, then drew her hand in a blooming pattern over her chest. Heliconia was Tsama’s ward against the withering Amargura. Shaman would hang the plants around their necks to symbolize their allegiance.
Rosa’s surprise fell away. “We cannot let them dissolve into the shadows. The Illizi must be destroyed.” Her soldiers marked themselves with Tsama’s bloom as she had.
“Esperanza, Fernan, hold the floor.”
Rosa led Amado and Vesandar beyond the Heliconia and into the tunnels hidden beyond. Vesandar mapped the passages in his head, ensuring he could lead the others out once the Illizi were dispatched.
The warrens expanded into a wide cavern. Rosa and Amado carried torches whose light barely washed against the far wall. A waterfall tumbled on the left, and surface fauna carpeted the floor. Torchlight colored it orange.
“Eyes up, Ves,” Rosa ordered. “They will not be far.”
Vesandar drew his dueling sabre and rattled off the return instructions. Tucked back in the misplaced jungle, they found a squat structure. The walls were cut from the raw stone, but seeped a cold sweat, giving it a slick appearance. Columns rose from a narrow porch, etched with the history of an old world.
“What is this place?” Amado asked.
“Santuario del Marchitando,” Rosa answered.
Amado sucked in a breath and adjusted his grip on the machete. Vesandar twisted around. He studied the foliage again. Was it just the torchlight or was this forest blighted with the Morass?
“Shouldn’t we leave the Illizi to Amargura?” he asked.
“No,” Rosa answered. “We must dispatch them. They could very well survive down here.”
Amado swore. “Who could live in such a place?”
“The Illizi are a savage people,” Rosa answered.
The opening into the shrine seemed to stretch, revealing the pure darkness within.
“Out, you demons!” Rosa demanded.
An Illizi stumbled out. His close-fitting leathers were distinctive and vaguely geometrical. He gripped a broken sword in a bloodied hand, and regarded the trio from a ruined face. Fear still lit his eyes, but the tension in him didn’t threaten the Espadas. He was afraid of something else.
“Aegis,” he muttered, moving forward. “Aegis, guard me against this horror.”
A prayer, Vesandar realized, to some Illyrian deity. Rosa sank from his approach, slipping wide to let him pass and snapping back in his wake. Her blade cut at the base of his skull, dropping him to an instant death.
“Do you think he was the only survivor?” Amado asked.
In answer, Rosa moved into the darkness.
The sanctum was bleak and brief. A wide altar sat in the center of the only room. The rest of the survivor’s blade was buried in the skull of a comrade who lay bent atop it. Supplies were stacked in the corner, including the tainted coca the Illizi refined and spread throughout the Cape.
“Burn it,” Rosa ordered.
Amado raised his machete to his shoulder and moved to obey. Vesandar glanced at the entrance, then went to the altar. In the light, the Illizi there seemed coated with blackened blood. The supplies blazed, and the blood coalesced.
“Jefa,” Vesandar summoned Rosa. The fear in his voice drew them both quickly. Rosa laid the torch against the pool, causing it to scatter from the heat.
“We’ve only seen two of them,” Rosa said. “There were three before.”
“This doesn’t worry you?” Vesandar asked, pointing to the coalescing blood.
Rosa drew a breath. “It terrifies me,” she said simply, “but we have work to do.”
“The unfound Illizi will be trapped down here,” Vesandar noted, “with this.” He gestured to the coalescing fluid and Rosa scattered it with her torch again. “We’ve seen all the terrors and glories of this paradise,” Vesandar went on, “but I’ve never seen this. What is it, Jefa, that we’ve found?”
Rosa set her amber eyes on him. “I think you know, Ves.”
Vesandar could see the fear in Rosa’s eyes. Her self-control strengthened his. Amado, though, scowled and searched the deepest darkness of the shrine.
“We should go.” The supplies danced with dying flames. “The venena is destroyed, the last Illizi is dead or will soon die.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Rosa announced, scattering the liquid that gathered faster and faster. “I’m with Amado. Let’s move.”
Amado preempted her command, moving through the door and stopping in the open entryway. Vesandar peered around him, where stood a man slick with shadow. The corpse of the survivor had risen.
He lunged at Amado, whose torch snapped across his path, smashing his face aside. The head lolled farther than it should have been able to, but snapped back, knocking the torch from Amado’s hand.
Amado’s machete swung back, burying deep in the survivor’s chest. By then, both Rosa and Vesandar joined the struggle. Ves’ sabre dove through the blight-touched man’s eye socket and stopped against his skull. Ves forced him back until he fell backwards, down the steps and onto the path the espadas cut coming in.
The survivor hit the earth and rolled, disappearing into the waist-high foliage on either side.
“¡Marchito!” Amado swore. “¡Tsama! ¡Marchito! ¿Que era esa cosa?”
Rosa pushed past Amado, awakening him from his shock. He fell in behind his captain, and Vesandar held the rear. They sprinted for the exit, torches raised and machetes ready.
The blighted plant life on either side seemed to congeal, but Vesandar focused and saw terror’s illusion. His iron will was fading, his mind’s shield falling from the initial battle-focus. They walked the jungles of hell—the forsaken forest where rot and morass ruled. His stomach turned. He wanted nothing more than to retch. This place, this gangrenous growth, was the worst evil fathomable by the minds of those who called the Cape home.
They were near the warren’s end, the tunnel’s deeper darkness yawned ahead, but shadows lurch and bodies tumble.
Rosa went down in a yelp and a flurry of limbs. The torch snuffed out the moment it passed through the blighted scrub, which melted as the pair rolled through. Amado kept running, but Vesandar stopped.
“¡Jefa!” Vesandar shouted after Rosa. He dropped to his knees, cast his sabre aside, and searched the hedge for his captain.
“Rosa!” he yelled. “Rosa!”
Nothing was there—it was as if they had fallen in and dissolved altogether. Vesandar snatched up his sabre and ran for the entrance. He would find nothing in the deepening darkness.
A few yards inside the passage, Vesandar found Amado’s torch. He called for his comrade but heard no reply. Vesandar collected the discarded light and turned back toward the blighted cavern.
Rosa could still be in there. His heart searched that shadowed realm, feeling out his beloved who was lost within. He knew, at the forefront of his mind, that she was gone.
But then she emerged from the thick jungle wall. She dropped. Mud slid off her arms and slopped onto the path.
“Rosa?”
She did not answer. As she reached farther into the torchlight, Vesandar saw the slick darkness on her skin. Her eyes were alive but without recognition.
Vesandar ground his teeth, but hot tears came anyway. “Jefa,” he said softly, searching her eyes. “¿Jefa, dónde estás?”
Rosa barred blackened teeth, and Vesandar knew that whatever corruption gripped her was beyond any magic Vesandar had heard of. She was there, holding back the shadow within her, giving her beloved one last chance to escape.
Vesandar swallowed, stilled his heart’s frenzy, and ran.
Beyond the warding of the Heliconia, Esperanza and Fernan had been massacred. They lay near the tunnel mouth, where their killer had come upon them suddenly.
Esperanza’s throat had been torn out with a wild slash from a machete. Fernan had more time to defend himself. His sword was notched from savage blows, his arms scored with cuts, and his stomach slashed open.
His eyes lolled, and he groaned. “Ves,” he rasped. “Amado…” There was no more.
Vesandar found Amado at the base of the pit wall. His body had been smashed apart from a long fall, his brains scattered across the cool stone.
Vesandar assembled the story quickly. Amado had been driven mad. Upon reaching the pit floor, he had murdered Esperanza, eviscerated Fernan, and scrambled up the pit wall in a panic. The jungle was slick and treacherous. He had lost his grip and fallen back to join his butchered comrades. Vesandar stumbled back and sat in the center of the pit. Shock faded, tears surged back, and Vesandar screamed until his voice was hoarse.
S. A. Grove 