Darkened blade, p.8
Darkened Blade, page 8
Wait, what? I thought.
My confusion turned to grudging admiration when a smoky hand holding an equally smoky sword suddenly formed on the end of her stump, hiding the raw scars underneath. A moment later, a faint slithering burn kissed the front of my throat. What should have felt like a brief puff of warmth somehow grew an edge, tracing a bloody line across my skin.
I put up my swords and stepped back. “Killing point, since I assume that if you’d wanted to do more than edge kiss me there, you could have.”
Siri grinned and nodded, panting when she spoke. “I’ve been working at it for weeks now, and I can make the smoke as hard as steel for a few tenths of a second.”
“Which is all it takes,” I replied, somewhat acidly.
“Yep. Of course, it makes me feel like I’ve got maggots crawling through my brain every time, and I’m going to need to sit down now and catch my breath. It burns nima like a runaway soul tap.”
“Is it worth it?” I asked. That kind of magic drain could kill you—and very nearly had done for me once.
Siri laughed. “Oh yes! The look on your face alone justified the cost. When you realized that you’d been suckered . . . a thing of beauty.” But then she swayed on her feet, and went to one knee. “Still worth it, but ugh. The brain maggots are soooo much worse than the exhaustion. Stop giving me that look, Aral.”
“What look?” She raised her eyebrows, and I blushed and bowed my head. “And another point for Siri.”
She always finds a way to win, sent Triss, no matter what it costs. That’s what makes her great.
“I have to do this,” said Siri. “To get a handle on what I’ve become. If I don’t learn to master the buried god within, he will master me. Maybe not so directly as the way he tried back at the Brimstone Vale, but fear and revulsion are also types of control, and I will not give in to them.” She grinned abruptly. “Actually, this is your fault.”
I startled. “What do you mean by that?”
“Not fault really, since I appreciate you allowing me the opportunity to do this more than I can say.”
I was still baffled, and shook my head.
“When you took over as First Blade, it freed me from responsibility for anyone but myself. I can afford to risk things that I couldn’t before. Where I had to fight against the smoke within every single minute, now I can strive to make it mine, to own it instead of the other way round. You might even say that it’s become my duty. If I can master this, it will allow me to do things for the order that maybe no one else can.”
“And if it devours you?” Though I didn’t entirely believe there was an order anymore, I let that part of her remark pass unanswered.
Siri shrugged. “You’ll kill me. Before, you would have hesitated, bound by your sense of duty to my authority as well as our friendship. Now, that same sense of duty will force you to do the right thing. I find that enormously reassuring.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I turned away. Only to find myself facing Kelos, his eyes unspeakably sad. If I had believed for an instant that he was capable of betraying his own inner emotions, and not just aping sentiment to manipulate those around him, I might have taken some comfort there. As it was, I had to restrain myself from spitting at his feet.
“What do you want?” I growled.
“Are you exhausted yet, or would you care to go another couple of rounds?” He looked hopeful, almost wistful—more manipulation, certainly.
“With you?” I couldn’t keep the incredulity out of my voice.
He nodded, but his expression closed, and sarcasm laced his response, “Believe it or not, I need to practice as much as the rest of you.”
“Why not with Faran?”
Are you mad? Triss asked me silently.
“I would prefer not to bleed out if I miss a parry,” replied Kelos. “I trust you not to kill me out of pique. Your apprentice . . .”
“It wouldn’t be pique,” said Faran. “It would be cold-blooded justice, and I’d be smiling all the while. Sunny, even.”
“So,” said Kelos. “Are you too tired to spar with me or not?”
“I’m good to go,” I said, surprised to find that it was true. Even six months ago, one serious round with Faran had been enough to wind me—maybe I really was the Kingslayer again.
“Will you?” Again he gave me that faux-wistful look.
I rolled my eyes, but nodded. “Fine, let’s do it.”
Are you sure about this? asked Triss.
Not even a little bit.
Kelos stripped off his shirt as he crossed to the far side of our tiny arena. When he drew his swords and turned to face me, I couldn’t help but remember the last time I’d crossed blades with him. That had been in the Magelands, too, atop the roof of the proctor house at the University of Ar. . . . I say crossed blades where I should probably not. I’d drawn steel right enough, but Kelos hadn’t bothered. He hadn’t needed to. He’d taken me down using little more than his bare hands.
It was embarrassing in the extreme and I couldn’t help but relive that humiliation now. Would he defeat me as easily again? I was in much better shape than I’d been then, but he hadn’t even needed to draw on me. I felt a bead of sweat form at my hairline and roll down the side of my face.
No.
I would not let him outface me this way. I refused. He might beat me anyway, but he would have to do it with steel. I wouldn’t let him win the fight inside my head. Not ever again. I forced myself to be calm. Forced myself to be the Kingslayer, and not just Aral. Kelos might be a legend, but so by the goddess was I.
I drew my swords and advanced on my old master, every sense at maximum alert, every nerve alight. There was none of the cautious circling that Siri and I had indulged in this time. Kelos came in hard and fast. He outweighed me by a good fifty pounds, all of it muscle. He used that advantage ruthlessly, hammering away at me with blows that would have shattered lesser swords, driving me back and back again with sheer raw power.
It was daunting. Doubly so since I knew that he could shift styles in a heartbeat, moving from force to finesse with ease. He had done so all the time back in the days when he taught me to use my swords—mirroring the styles of a dozen of the order’s most dangerous foes in aid of teaching us to defeat them. Through him, my childhood self had lost fights with the Elite, the Dyads, the Hairi . . . And, dammit, there he was again, beating me in my head instead of on the field.
He had backed me to the very edge of our impromptu ring, though I’d kept him from pinning me in the corner. I was in danger of letting him push me right into the river if I didn’t do something quickly. By sliding sharply to my left and at the cost of two points—one to my wrist, another on my shoulder—I managed to get around Kelos and shift back toward the center of the ring. It might not be in my head, but he was still beating me, and maybe he always would.
Kelos scored a third point then, knocking my right-hand sword aside with another smashing cut followed by a reversal of his blade to slap my hip with the flat, and that was the match.
“Again?” asked Kelos.
I wanted so very much to say no, to plead exhaustion and slither away to lick my wounds, though I was far more injured in spirit than flesh. It would have been the easy thing to do, the smart thing, even. But I refused to give up. I won’t say that I couldn’t have walked away, because I could have. I just wouldn’t.
“Again,” I said.
He switched styles now, shifting from hack and slash, to flit and flick, dancing his edges around me in swift and shimmering network that let him prick two points off me in less than a minute. He was so very good. But, dammit, so was I. I would not let him do this to me.
Kelos came in for the third point, but I deflected him. Barely. And again. And yet again. I was fighting him off, but only by pushing myself to the very top of my form, and only for a time. He really was better than me, and not just in my head. For some reason it was far harder to admit that than it had ever been to admit that Siri was.
So, I couldn’t win. Accept that, move on. Maybe I could still at least score a point if I waited for the right opportunity. My tactics stayed much the same—Kelos had kept me on the defensive from our first moment of engagement—but my attitude shifted. Instead of fighting a sense of defeat as well as Kelos, I embraced it. I was going to lose. The best I could do was lose with style.
I saw an opening that I wouldn’t have tried for before—too risky, too little chance of scoring a point. This time, I went for it hard. I missed, but Kelos had to actually hop back to keep my edge away from his skin. I had surprised him, and he grinned. He likes surprises. Another minute went by with me somehow managing to keep him from scoring that final point. I saw a second opening—low, and riskier even than the last. If I missed, Kelos couldn’t help but finish me off.
Why not?
I started a lunge at Kelos’s chest, but at the last moment I let my forward leg collapse, dropping my whole body toward the floor. I released my left-hand sword and caught myself on the palm of that hand. My thrusting hand shifted with me as I fell, angling up now at the meaty part of Kelos’s thigh rather than straight into his chest, just as I had planned.
My point went home, sinking a good inch into his leg before I had the presence of mind to stop my thrust, so unexpected was my success. We both froze then, him standing, me balanced precariously on knee and toes and palm. A trickle of blood ran down half the length of my blade before meeting the edge and dripping to the deck in a series of bright drops.
I didn’t know what to do or say. In all the years I’d known Kelos, and all the times I’d sparred with him, I had never once needed to pull a blow before. Even in those moments where I’d scored a point as a boy I had never been in any danger of actually hurting him, so thoroughly had he controlled our exchanges.
“I . . . I’m sorry. . . .” I stammered as I reverted briefly to nine. “I didn’t . . . I . . .”
Kelos stepped back, pulling himself free of my sword. “Good point, boy. Excellent!” He had a huge smile on his face. “Totally unexpected and you’d have hit bone if you hadn’t pulled it. No one’s pricked me that solidly since Nuriko.”
“I didn’t think I would actually hit you,” I said. “You’re so much better than I am . . . I just . . .”
“Stop apologizing, Aral. That thrust was a thing of beauty. Riskier than anything you’d want to try if you didn’t have to, but I am better than you are, and if you can’t outfence an opponent you have to outrisk them. You’re a thinker and a planner, always have been, and damned good at it. But that’s made you overly cautious. Sometimes you simply have to take a leap in the dark and hope.”
I realized then that I was grinning like a madman, and mentally kicked myself. I hated that praise from this man could still light me up like a fucking schoolboy. But somewhere, deep down inside, no matter how much I hated what he had done to the goddess and my order, no matter how much I might hate him, he was still my master, still the man whose approval mattered most to me.
Would I ever be able to let that go?
* * *
Whether it was the two weeks on untamed water, or simply that the last of the risen who had attacked us in Wall had fallen to the forces of the Magelanders, I couldn’t say, but we didn’t encounter any more of them in Uln or on our way into the mountains above. The series of high passes that led from there into Dalridia were little more than goat tracks, totally unsuitable for trade or anything other than the fittest of foot traffic.
We climbed higher and higher, now edging our way along the narrowest of tracks, now skirting huge drops, now scrabbling up one of the many short vertical climbs that punctuated the trail. Often, as we negotiated a particularly difficult stretch, I thought back to my last passage this way hauling three badly injured comrades and wondered how we had made it at all.
It snowed twice. Both falls were light enough, but a reminder that we needed to hurry if we wanted to get through the mountains to the temple before winter closed the passes on the west. We were midway through the month of Harvestide, which meant summer was winding down, and the western road that led down into the Kvanas lay at the far end of Dalridia. Though travel usually continued well into Talewynd, early blizzards had been known to shut the passes down before Harvestide’s end.
By the time we descended into the mountain valley that held the kingdom of Dalridia we were all pretty ragged and grimy. Fortunately, the royal castle Jax’s brother had set aside for her and Loris and their students was on the south end of the kingdom, and we didn’t have to pass through any heavily populated areas to get there.
When we reached a point on the road where the castle was visible high on the slopes of the mountains ahead, I waved our little group to a stop. “I think it might be best if Kelos and Chomarr waited here in the wood below the village, while Siri and Faran and I go on ahead.”
It was a cold afternoon with a fine rain falling, and waiting in the evergreen forest wasn’t going to be much fun, but Kelos nodded. “That’s probably the wisest course, given the time Jax spent with the inquisitors of the Hand, and Loris’s death. I don’t think she’ll be at all happy to see either of us.”
“Neither will her students,” said Faran. “Most of them would kill you both given the chance.”
Chomarr pointed back up the road. “Perhaps we should meet you above the western pass? We could wait for you at Riada on the lake.”
It was tempting for a number of reasons, not least that it would give the rest of us the option of simply skipping over the part where we picked them up, but I shook my head. “No. We have plans to make with Jax and her students and we’ll need you both close for that. I just want to warn them that I’m bringing you in so that no one does anything hasty.”
“Premeditated, on the other hand . . .” said Faran.
I shot her a look, but she ignored me. And that kind of closed the conversation down. With a sigh, I turned toward the castle and started walking. Siri and Faran fell in behind me.
An hour later, as we finished climbing the steep series of switchbacks that led up to the castle’s main entrance, the drawbridge came down to let us pass. It was a rough-looking old fort built heavy both for defense and to withstand the terrible mountain storms. Like the mountains behind, it was carved of some rough gray stone, but I knew the inside was comfortable enough, having been retrofitted as a luxurious royal retreat and then later converted for Jax’s use. Though she had surrendered the title when she was inducted into Namara’s service, Jax had been born a princess of Dalridia, and her brother now sat the throne.
A trio of figures was waiting for us at the far end of the plank bridge. Jax stood in the middle, looking ridiculously tiny between Maryam, a tall slender woman with black hair and beautiful eyes, and Roric, who was shaped like a bog troll—deep chested, long armed, and preposterously broad of shoulder.
As I got closer I couldn’t help but focus on what the Hand had done to them, and what I was about to ask. Jax’s entire skin was threaded with fine scars, like intricate lace, and she was missing about half her left hand, including her pinky and ring fingers. She hadn’t brought her cane, but I expected that she could tell the weather from the aftereffects of a leg broken in four places. Maryam had a huge burn scar across her right cheek and neck from the fall of the temple, and she’d lost the ear above it to the events that had brought Jax and I back into contact two years before.
Roric had fared the best, with only his missing right ear to mark his time in the dungeons of the Hand. Well, that and the fine scars across his cheekbones, but then Maryam and Faran and I all shared those, as did Javan, who was elsewhere at the moment. Roric was Avarsi. As was the custom of his people, he’d sliced those lines into his cheeks himself, both as a way of mourning for Loris and in promise of avenging him. The moment had been full of blood and rage and madness, and the rest of us had joined him in marking our pain on our flesh.
When we got close enough to speak without shouting, Siri extended her right hand and forearm to Jax. “Sister, it’s been too long.”
“SIRI!” replied Jax, leaping past the hand to wrap her arms around Siri’s neck and, literally, hang there—Siri being more than a foot taller than her old friend. “What on earth have you done with your hair?” Jax ran a finger through Siri’s smoking braids.
“That’s a very long story,” replied Siri. “I promise you all of it, but not till later.”
“Master Aral,” said Roric.
“Journeyman Roric.” I grinned and clasped forearms with him while Maryam did the same with Faran. Then we switched, while shadows mixed and mingled around our feet with a susuration of Shade voices. Next, I turned to Jax, who had finally let go of Siri, and bent to hug her. “Hey there.”
“You’re late,” she said into my ear while poking me in the ribs. “Clever, but still late.”
I let her go. “I . . . wait, what?”
“It’s been nearly two years since you said you’d come back to help me with the school once you killed the Son of Heaven. Don’t think I didn’t notice when you sent a letter to Faran asking her to meet you in Tien instead of coming to collect her yourself. You knew I wouldn’t let you leave so easy. Coward.”
I grinned at her. “First, I didn’t say I would come back, I said that I might. Second, the Son of Heaven isn’t dead yet, so even if I had said what you’re claiming I did, I’m still not in violation of my word.”
“Technicalities,” humphed Jax.
“Well, you did say I was clever, though I still haven’t figured out why.”
“Because of this.” She grabbed hold of Siri, who had just finished greeting the other two and pulled her up between us. “You brought me a Siri! Which means I’m not allowed to be mad at you for at least a day and a night.”
