Beyond The Shadows (30 page)

After riding most of the night, Kylar camped a short distance off the road, merely unsaddling Tribe and throwing a blanket
on the ground. A few hours later, Tribe’s snort woke him. Kylar blinked and rolled to his feet.

“So you haven’t forgotten everything I taught you,” a brown-clad figure said, leading his horse to tie it next to Tribe.

“Master?” Kylar asked.

Dehvirahaman ko Bruhmaeziwakazari snorted. It was odd to hear the sound, so characteristically Durzo, coming out of the Ymmuri’s
mouth. He glanced at Retribution in Kylar’s hand. “Good, I see you haven’t managed to lose it again, yet. See that you don’t,
would you? You ready to ride?”

Kylar felt an odd excitement. He did feel ready to ride. The overflow of energy from his invocation of immortality hadn’t
worn off yet. “I’m not dreaming this, am I?” he asked.

Dehvi lifted an eyebrow. “There’s one way to find out for sure,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Go piss in the woods. If you feel wet and warm afterward, wake up.”

Laughing, Kylar went and relieved himself. When he came back, Dehvi was seated cross-legged and had laid out a huge, albeit
cold, breakfast.

Kylar tore into the food with gusto that surprised himself, though apparently not Dehvi. The scene still had an air of unreality,
though, and Kylar kept glancing at him. Finally, the Ymmuri said, “If you’re looking for Durzo’s mannerisms, you’re going
to see fewer and fewer of them. I don’t chew garlic anymore, for one. And I’m getting rid of the rest as fast as I can. A
new face isn’t much good if you still do everything else the same. I have done this a few times. So if you need me to prove
who I am, let’s get it over with.”

“There is one thing Durzo told me that he never told anyone else. You’ve had all these names, and you always picked something
with meaning: Ferric Fireheart, Gaelan Starfire, Hrothan Steelbender. Even the other wetboys had names that meant something:
Hu Gibbet, Scarred Wrable. Why Durzo Blint? Is that another Old Jaeran pun?”

Dehvi laughed. “Trick question. I never told you why I chose it. But to answer, it was supposed to be Durzo Flint. I was drunk.
Someone repeated it Blint, and I didn’t care enough to correct them. Next?”

“Flint makes a lot more sense, you old bastard.”

“Only by nature, not by birth. Anything else?”

Kylar got grim. “What does immortality cost?”

“Right to the gut, huh?” Durzo said. He cleared his throat and looked away. “Every new life costs the life of someone you
love.”

There it was, as simple as anything. If Durzo had told him that before the coup, everything would be different. Of course,
Durzo had tried to tell him, in the letter.

“Is there any way to stop it?” Kylar asked.

“You mean stop your immortality or stop it from killing someone else?”

“Either. Both.”

“The Wolf never told me the limits—maybe he didn’t know himself. I avoided anything that would fully destroy my body like
burning or being drawn and quartered.”

“And Curoch?”

Durzo shot Kylar a sharp look. “A fatal blow from Curoch would blow apart the immortality magic. Jorsin feared the Devourer.
He made sure there was at least one way to kill an immortal.”

Kylar had a sudden feeling of dislocation. He was talking with someone who had known Jorsin Alkestes. Jorsin Alkestes! And
Jorsin had feared the magic Kylar possessed. “What about stopping it from costing someone else’s life?” Kylar asked.

Durzo sighed. “You think in seven centuries I didn’t try? It’s deep magic, kid. A life for a life. The Wolf can delay it,
but not stop it, and it’s not easy even for him.”

Kylar cleared his throat. “What if, um, what if I were killed by Curoch during the time between me dying and the person who
is going to die for me dying?”

The look on Durzo’s face made it clear that Kylar’s question was far too specific for him to dismiss as theoretical. “Boy,
you have no idea what Curoch is like—”

“Yes I do, I threw it into Ezra’s Wood.”

“You what?!”

“I made a deal with the Wolf. I didn’t get your note until afterward.”

Durzo rubbed his temples. “And what did he give you in return for the most powerful artifact in the world?”

“He brought me back to life faster—and gave me my arm back, which I kind of cut off.”

Durzo’s flat stare was all too familiar, despite that it was coming through almond-shaped eyes. It suggested he was seeing
previously undredged depths of stupidity. “And between assassinating a Godking and a Cenarian queen and rescuing a man from
the Hole and making a king of him, when did you squeeze in the time to find and lose the world’s most coveted magical sword?”
Durzo asked.

“It only took me a week. Lantano Garuwashi had it. I dueled him for it.”

“Is he as good as they say?”

“Better. And he’s not even Talented.”

“Then how’d you win?” Durzo asked.

“Hey!” Kylar protested.

“Kylar, I trained you. You’re not the best. Someday, maybe. So either he’s not as good as they say, or you got lucky, or you
cheated.”

“I got lucky,” Kylar admitted. “Is it so bad though? I mean throwing Curoch in the Wood?”

“Do you know who the Wolf is?” Durzo asked.

“That was the next question.”

“The better question is who the Wolf was. No one knows what he is now.”

“I’ll bite. Who was the Wolf?” Kylar asked.

“In Jorsin Alkestes’ court, there was a mage with golden eyes. He was slightly less Talented than Jorsin himself in terms
of raw power, but whereas Jorsin had to learn the arts of war and leadership and diplomacy in addition to magecraft, the golden-eyed
mage had only magecraft to study, and he was the kind of genius of magic born once in a thousand years. He had few graces
and fewer friends, but Jorsin meant the world to him. In the war, he lost everything: Jorsin, all his tomes of magic, his
only other friend, Oren Razin, and his fiancée. He lost his sanity, too, and no one knows if he ever really regained it. He
hid in a forest where he could work out his hatred. The forest, of course, took his name.”

“Ezra’s Wood,” Kylar whispered. “The Wolf is Ezra?”

“Jorsin had a close friend who betrayed him, a man named Roygaris Ursuul.”

“Oh God.”

“During the war, Roygaris Made something—out of himself. We called it the Reaver. It was impervious to magic, faster than
thought. It killed thousands of us.” Durzo touched his cheek. “I was the first person to even wound it. My pockmarks are from
where its blood sprayed me. Magic couldn’t heal me. After the last battle, the Reaver was badly wounded. Instead of killing
it, Ezra took it to the Wood. Fifty years later, there was a power struggle of some sort, and every living thing in that wood
died—and dies to this day, whether animal, krul, mage, or the purest virgin. Armies from both north and south have perished
there. Whatever it is, the Wolf has been collecting artifacts for seven centuries, and he gets the best of every deal.”

Kylar felt suddenly cold. “What did you give him?”

“A couple of the ka’kari. He wants them all—and Curoch and Iures.”

“Iures?”

“The companion to Curoch. The Sword of Power and the Staff of Law. Jorsin died the day Iures was finished, before he could
use it. No one knows what happened to it.”

“But what’s the Wolf trying to accomplish?”

“I don’t know. Kylar, we’ve held one ka’kari, and its power is awesome. Imagine what an archmagus could do with seven ka’kari
and Curoch and Iures. Even if the Wolf is Ezra, would you trust a madman with that much power? Would you even trust yourself? What if the
Wolf isn’t Ezra, what if it’s Roygaris?”

“So you’ve opposed him,” Kylar said.

“After I gave him the brown ka’kari, I thought better of it. Since then, I’ve scattered ka’kari to the ends of the earth.
This is no short-term ambition. It has taken the Wolf seven hundred years to get a few ka’kari and now Curoch, and perhaps
Iures. He doesn’t care if it takes another hundred years to get the rest. This is part of your burden. Make sure he doesn’t
get them all.”

“But he might be on our side,” Kylar said.

“You tell that to all the innocents he’s murdered.”

“What do I tell all the innocents you’ve murdered?”

Durzo blinked. He chewed on his lip. “The problem with the black ka’kari is that it doesn’t work in a mirror. I could never
see the state of my own soul, and you can’t see yours either. But if you wish, bring it to your eyes now. Judge me.”

Kylar didn’t dare. Durzo had poisoned dozens during the coup alone. There were surely hundreds—thousands—more deaths on his
soul. If Kylar saw profound guilt, he might not be able to stop himself from killing Durzo. Or at least trying. It wasn’t
a fight he wanted to win, and now that he knew the cost of losing, that was even worse. “What should I do about the Wolf?”
Kylar asked.

“Nothing now. But if you hear that Mount Tenji isn’t spitting fire for the first time in two centuries, or you hear that the
Tlaxini Maelstrom has stilled, you need to move fast. Like I said, this is not a short-term threat.”

“When does it end?”

Durzo snorted. His hand moved to his belt where he used to carry a small pouch of garlic cloves. He noticed and gritted his
teeth. “It could be hundreds of years. It could be twenty. Giving him Curoch was a big mistake.”

Thanks. “Can we win?”

“We? I’m mortal now, kid. At best I have thirty, forty years left? I’m not terribly interested in tangling with the Wolf.
Can you win? It’s possible. He can’t live forever. His magic’s only an imitation of ours. Yours.”

“He made one black ka’kari, why not make another one for himself?” Kylar asked.

“Made it? No. Ezra found it. He studied it to make the others, but they were all inferior copies.”

“It told me—”

“Let me guess, something about being crafted with ‘limited intelligence’? The black ka’kari was ancient when I was born, Kylar.
It told you that so it wouldn’t scare the shit out of you. You’re sharing your head with a being whose power dwarfs yours.”

~I wouldn’t say my power exactly dwarfs yours.~

“Give the fucker my regards,” Durzo said.

~I loved you better than you loved yourself, Acaelus.~

“I have to say, though, if he tells you to move, do it,” Durzo said.

Right. Thanks. The first time the ka’kari had spoken to Kylar, it told him to duck. He hadn’t—and had taken an arrow through the chest moments
later. “Wait,” Kylar said. “You never answered my question about dying by Curoch before the ka’kari kills someone in my place.”

“Don’t,” Durzo said. “It’s not the ka’kari that kills anyone. It’s us. You’re twenty years old and you’ve died five, six times?
That’s not the ka’kari’s fault.”

“Fine, it’s my fault. Curoch?”

Irritation passed over Durzo’s face, but he let it go. “Dying by Curoch might leave the person you love alive. Equally possible
is that it will kill everyone you love. It’s a feral magic. Curoch means the Sunderer. It was not intended for gentle things. It’s a bad gamble, kid.”

Kylar exhaled heavily. “This is all kind of a lot to absorb at once.”

“Then absorb while we ride. We’re burning daylight.”

They rode until dark, and ate together, speaking only of inconsequential things. Kylar told Durzo everything that had happened
in his absence. Durzo laughed, sometimes in the wrong places, as if laughing at similarities to his own memories, but more
frequently than Kylar remembered him ever laughing before.

Then Durzo began telling stories. Kylar was surprised to find him an excellent raconteur. “I was a bard one life,” Durzo said.
“I took it up to train my memory. I wasn’t very good.”

Some of the stories he told were familiar from bards’ tales Kylar had heard, though the details were very different. He told
of a young Alexan the Blessed caught with dysentery in the mountains during his first campaign taking off his plate cuisses
and dropping his mail trousers to squat in the bushes and then getting ambushed. His descriptions of Alexan fighting with
a sword in one hand and trying to hike up his armor with the other had Kylar howling. Then Alexan tumbled down the mountain
and fell a hundred feet. They found him at the bottom without a scratch—or his trousers, which had caught in a tree ten feet
from the bottom of the ravine, slowing his fall and saving his life. “The Tomii used shitting as an intensifier, like we might say someone was damn lucky, they said he was shitting lucky. That’s why they called him
Alexan the Shitting Lucky. Later some prude translated it Alexan the Blessed. He was a good kid.” Durzo laughed. Then his
smile faded. “Broke my heart to kill him. But he needed killing by the end.”

Kylar looked at his master intently. He said, “You’re different now.”

Durzo said nothing for a long time. He was like a caterpillar half-metamorphosed. One minute he was the old, hard-as-nails
Durzo. The next he was this laughing, reminiscing stranger.

“The Wolf has worked with me for almost seven hundred years. Ezra and Roygaris were the best Healers ever. Whichever the Wolf
is, he’s seen me die and come back dozens of times. He knows the magic and how exactly the ka’kari worked with my body. But
he isn’t a prophet. At least not a natural-born one, unlike Dorian. So even with all his magic, he can only get bits and pieces.
When I died, I think he spent a long time trying to figure out if my being alive one more time would help him or hurt him.
Then he decided to raise me.”

Kylar wondered about that. The Wolf had said Durzo’s resurrection was a mystery, a gift. Was he simply being modest, or did
he really not know how Durzo had come back?

“Anyway, by the time the Wolf started working on me, my body had pretty much rotted away. So I feel like a new man.” He grinned,
then stirred their little fire, watching the sparks.

“So this life is different, isn’t it?” Kylar asked.

“Sometimes to love is easy, but to accept love is hard. I used to always be the man who led the charge. The Devourer steals
that. Tell me, what kind of man would put his eight-year-old daughter at the spear tip of a cavalry charge? A monster. But
what kind of man would refuse to fight when his enemies threaten all he holds dear? That’s why I trained relentlessly. That’s
why I became the perfect killer. Because every time I wasn’t good enough, I murdered someone I loved. I thought I finally
defeated love when the ka’kari abandoned me, but then there you were in the tower, standing athwart fate and crying, No! I
realized three things as your crazy ass dove into the river. First, you . . .  cared about me.”