Crossed Blades (20 page)

I had gone with my friend Devin to Aven once, the country of his birth. It was deep winter at the time and Devin had insisted on reliving one of the few experiences he remembered from his childhood, a steam bath followed by an ice water plunge. I don’t know how cold it was that day. Cold enough so that in the quarter of an hour we spent in the sauna a good skin of ice formed over the hole we’d cut in the lake.

After my time in the steam bath I was so hot I felt light-headed and I was dying for a chance to cool down. The edge of the ice lay barely two long steps from the door of the sauna, a distance crossed so quickly I barely felt the cold. I leaped out and down, breaking the skim of ice and plunging into a sort of ecstatic agony of cold. My skin felt frozen and on fire by turns. In deeper water I could easily have drowned as sensation buried thought. The passage through the gate of shadows was like that, only more so.

If not for Triss, I’d have been lost then—overwhelmed by the cold and the pain and the utter lack of light, much as Master Thera must have been. Where I couldn’t make any sense of my entry into the everdark, Triss had come home. He caught my hand and tugged at me, telling me to walk. Though I was falling and there was nowhere for my feet to find purchase, I followed his command and found that it made a difference.

No up. No down. Nowhere. Nothing. No when, even. Yet, walking moved me. Maybe it was the intent to move that mattered and not the motion, but whatever the reason, I suddenly knew that I could choose my path through the eternal falling darkness. And I did, following a strand of green spell-light that I could sense but not see—walking through pain, but walking still. I felt better then, but Thera had been companioned by a Shade, too, and she had never come back. I knew I couldn’t relax until I came out the other side.

The distance felt simultaneously infinite and yet no farther than the one might casually walk between one breath and the next. I tried to count my paces, but I found that I had lost my ability to comprehend numbers. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, I passed through the other end of the gate. My left foot trod nothing. My right came down on rough flags tilted at a bizarre angle.

Up and down reasserted themselves, and I tumbled forward onto hands and knees to empty my stomach through a stone grate in the floor. Sound came back then, as the roar of the storm hit me like a falling wall, brutal even indoors. It was so loud I could barely hear the rush of the water below the grate.

Clear the way.
Triss gave me an order and I obeyed, rolling to one side when I found I hadn’t the wherewithal to easily return to my feet. The action reminded me of my bruised or cracked rib—painfully.

We were in a low wide space with a steeply angled ceiling/wall combination that hosted the gate. It was too small and strangely shaped to be called a room, more like a stone lean-to. The air smelled of damp rock and old dust and the burned air that comes with lightning.

“Where the hell are we?” I asked, my voice a ragged croak.

“Underneath a flight of stairs, I think.” It was Faran, speaking very quietly and sounding even worse than I felt. She was sitting on the floor to one side of the shadow gate. “That grate there opens into a drainpipe. It’s where we came in. Check around the corner, but do it quietly, I think the sanctum’s just beyond. I have to stay here to anchor Ssithra.”

I started to slowly crawl off in the direction she was pointing just as Roric fell through behind me. He was swearing quietly, or at least he was until Faran gave him a gentle shove with her boot. But then I was at the place where our weirdly shaped little alcove met the world with a flattening out of the ceiling at about chest height. I had just enough sense left to use a cornerbright to do my looking.

It took me a moment to make sense of what I was seeing, as much because of my perspective and the horrible disorientation I’d carried forward from the everdark as anything. We were indeed under a set of stairs. The shadow gate opened from the back of the first course. The corner where I lay was underneath a landing where the stairs turned back on themselves. From there, they continued up toward the second floor gallery at the back of the sanctum behind the great sculpture of Shan.

The area under the landing and stairs acted as a storage space for religious paraphernalia which blocked much of my view. What little I could see was further occluded by the half-open door and the raised dais where Shan’s sculpture sat. The floor was visibly wet inside the doorway, and the door—obviously blown inward by the storm—kept banging against a bronze chariot built in an ancient style.

I looked back over my shoulder just in time to see Maryam and Javan fall through the shadow gate in a heap. Javan was unconscious again and lying across Maryam’s shoulders.

“I bumped into him,” she said as Roric helped her shift Javan aside. “Tripped over him, really. Vrass saved us both then, kept me upright and pointed us in the right direction.”

“Fuck!” Faran snarled. “Fuckfuckfuckdamnit!”

“What is it?” I started to crawl toward her.

“Master Loris just closed the gate.”

“What? No!”

A tiny hippogriff appeared on the angled ceiling where the gate had been, all of himself that Issaru could project so far. “Loris is dying. The effort of holding the gate open was too much for him, was always going to be too much. He’d never have made it through the everdark and we both knew it going in. Get them home, Aral. He told me to tell you he was counting on you.” The shadow wavered and started to fade. “Avenge us.”

And then he was gone. They were both gone. One more pair of Namara’s champions fallen to the Hand and the Son of Heaven. Two if you added Leyan and Ulriss buried in the cave-in below. Tears burned down my cheeks, and I promised myself that I would make my old teachers’s final requests into reality whatever the cost.

19

W
hen
someone important to you dies, they take a little of you with them into the grave. Though we’d never been all that close, Loris took the last vestiges of my childhood with him. I was now the oldest living Blade. There were no more generations between me and the void.

I didn’t count Kelos and Devin or the other turncoats. They’d lost any right to that name by betraying our goddess. All the priests were long dead, too. That left me the senior heir to the tattered remnants of Namara’s once great legacy. The weight of it fell heavily across my shoulders and heavier still on my heart, as I tried to figure out how the hell to get Loris’s students and mine free of the trap that currently held us. Perhaps fortunately, those students didn’t yet seem all that interested in looking to me for answers.

Maryam worked busily at restoring Javan to coherence, while Roric leaned in close to Faran to say something. He spoke quietly, and it was impossible to hear him from even a few yards away over the roar of the winds, but the gist of his words became obvious when Faran handed across a small knife. He used it to cut shallow slices over his cheekbones.

When he was done, he caught me looking at him and gave a grim smile. “A custom from my childhood in Avars, before the priests took me. They would not approve, I think. But they’re gone now, and Loris was more than my teacher. He was my clan chief.”

I nodded. “Blood for mourning. Blood for vengeance.” I knew the custom well.

“And blood for blood,” he finished. “You don’t object?”

“No. I understand and I sympathize.”

Roric nodded in turn. “I see that you
do
understand. It’s in your eyes.” His expression went very thoughtful and he flipped the knife over so that he held it by the blade, offering me the hilt. “In your heart, too, I think.”

And, because it was, I took the knife and I slashed my cheeks as well.

Faran leaned forward as I finished and extended her hand. “Mine.”

I handed the knife across, and she, too, cut her cheeks. Then she offered it to Maryam. The tall lanky young woman took it and shook her head.

“Madness,” she said. “Primitive, superstitious madness.” Then she cut her cheeks and passed the knife to Javan, saying “Blood for blood.”

She’s right,
Triss said into my mind.
Both her words and her actions.

Roric’s Shade, Ssolvey, shifted into his giant badgerlike form and gave us a very formal bow. “Master Aral, Resshath Triss, what are your orders?”

Javan nodded. “With Loris dead and Jax missing, we are yours to command. What’s the plan?”

What I wanted to say was, “A giant fucking mess.” This was the point where we were supposed to go over the wall and head for the hills. Of course, that failed to take into account the fact that anyone who stepped outside right now was going to get blown clear to Kanjuri, on top of all the other stuff that had gone wrong.

Triss?

Your call, Aral.

We hadn’t properly factored the winds into our thinking. Oh, we’d known there was going to be a big storm, planned to use it to help cover our tracks even. The fight at the cemetery had served as a recent reminder of the immediate consequences of killing the Hand and their Storm bond-mates. But we simply hadn’t anticipated the scale and killing ferocity of it. Until the winds calmed, we were all trapped in the temple. Faran raised her eyebrows at me then, and I realized that I’d run out of time for thinking. Besides, there was only one possible answer.

“The plan is simple, Javan. We shroud up, we go out into the sanctum, and we kill everything that moves. Hand first, Sword as it’s convenient.”

“Now, that is a good plan.” Roric’s grim smile returned. “I like it. Blood for mourning.”

“Blood for vengeance,” I added.

“And blood for blood,” which we all spoke as a chorus. Madness.

Then, one by one, we vanished into darkness.

Though I had assumed full control of Triss and his senses, I took the risk of leaving my eyes uncovered as I slipped out into the sanctum. I wanted to give myself one clear human-eyed look at the field before I surrendered my sight. The skies obliged me with a huge bolt of lightning that momentarily lit the whole place in a brilliant eerie light. I was pretty sure it was the last clear picture I was going to have of things for some time to come, so I set it in my memory.

The temple was more than half destroyed, with all the windows blown in. Portions of the vaulted stone roof had fallen, and rain was coming in every which way. One of the cave-ins had happened over the altar and the giant sculpture of Shan. Falling rubble had torn off the arms of the god on the left side, and left the ones on the right cracked and dangling. Bodies and debris lay everywhere.

No matter what happened in the next few minutes, the Son of Heaven had suffered losses here that he would be a very long time in replacing. It wasn’t nearly enough for me.

Then the lightning was gone, and the battle began. Five Blades, all of them wounded, against a half score of sorcerer-priests and a hundred soldiers in the dark of a ruined temple. I lost track of the others in the first seconds, as my world narrowed to a series of fleeting impressions and momentary flashes of clarity.

The rain pounds and the wind hammers. Lightning tears giant holes in the sky and rips irregular stripes out of Triss’s unvision. The shadows of the raindrops create a million false dark-echoes that drown out the real ones. Blind fighting. I am forced to push aside the shroud over my eyes, risking visibility so that I can see.

I kill the first Hand I encounter with a thrust from behind. She falls away from me, leaving her blood on my sword. A giant bolt of turquoise lightning spikes down through one of the holes in the roof, incinerating her body in an instant funeral pyre. My shroud compresses almost to nothing, and Triss shrieks agony in his dreams with the intensity of it. The heat shatters the stones beneath her, and a wave of pressure edged with bits of hot rock throws me back and away.

I roll up onto my feet, only half dodging the spear thrust of a soldier who has taken advantage of the momentary reduction of my shroud. He misses anything vital, but I come away with a long shallow slice across the front of my right hip bone. I’m hunting the Signet and I don’t have time for a Sword, so I throw a burst of magefire that sets his clothes afire and move on.

A half dozen more Swords die at my hand over the next couple of minutes before I spot my real target. Nea Sjensdor, Lady Signet, right hand and heir of the Son of Heaven, a potent symbol of the forces that destroyed my goddess and my life. She stands at the base of the altar. Her back is pressed tight against the stone facing, and there is a loose pile of rubble above and behind her, guarding the rear approach. I will have to take her from the front.

That’s good on one level. I
want
her to know what killed her, and I want to see the look in her eyes when she dies. But it will make my task harder. Though her sword of office lies in its sheath across her back, she is armed with a pair of the short scythes called kama. Spell-light paints them a deep purple with some sort of combat enchantment, and the handles are steel instead of the more usual oak. I can see from the way that she holds them that she’s an expert in their use. With the hooked blades extending her reach, she looks ever more mantislike than when I first saw her back at the Gryphon in Tien.

I can’t spot her familiar—a Storm hiding in the chaos of the greater storm, but it has to be someplace close. The rain and the lightning continue to make it impossible for me to use Triss’s senses, but I want to get in tight before she becomes aware of me. I look at the thirty or so feet of debris-strewn ground that lies between us, and set it in my memory. I shroud my face before releasing my hold on Triss. Magic won’t win this fight for me, and having Triss awake to cover my back might.

I tell him,
I’ve found the Signet
, and I quickly fill in the details as I start forward.

For Loris and Issaru,
he says when I am finished.

For Namara and the temple,
I add.

This was not the Signet who commanded the forces of the Son of Heaven that day. That Signet died in the battle, slain by Master Illiana and Resshath Ssuma in a suicide attack, or so I had been told. But Nea was there, third in the line of command. The most senior of the sorcerer-priests to survive the battle, she was made Signet on her return to Heaven’s Reach.

The changing sound of the rain as it strikes the statue of Shan and the feel of the floor under my feet tell me that I am within striking distance.

I need my eyes.

Triss parts the veil that covers them and I swing a low cut at the Signet’s ankles with my left-hand sword in the same instant that I drive my right at her throat. The blades are cloaked in shadow, and yet somehow, the Signet anticipates them. She snaps her own right-hand weapon down in a flat block, while sweeping her left around to hook my thrust aside.

I have a brief moment to remember that her Storm had shown an uncanny knack for spotting us back at the cemetery, too. Perhaps it can read the patterns of the winds in weather like this in the same way that Triss sees dark-echoes. Then, with a twist of her left kama where it engaged my sword, the Signet points the end of the rod directly at my face. Reflexes buried far below the conscious level scream at me, and I bend sharply backward without having time to think why.

A blast of pure magical force passes through the space where my face had been only an instant before. I feel my nose break in response to the pressure wave, as I realize the kama are battle wands as well as blades. Avoiding the blast has forced me to take my eyes off the second of the Signet’s weapons. I hop back awkwardly, hoping to avoid the blow that I know is coming.

Pain sears along the outside of my left thigh as the hooking slice finds my leg, and Triss grunts in sympathy as the enchantments on the blade cut him, too, but I’m lucky. The combination of shroud and my jump back is enough to keep her blade from leaving me with much more than a long deep scratch. I snap my free sword down and around, batting the kama aside before she can bring it in line for a magical attack. I can feel the blood trickling down my leg, but none of the big muscles is badly damaged.

I want to move out and away from the Signet, reshroud, and then come back in, but I don’t dare. Not with the battle wands extending her range to as far as she can see. I have to stay close and keep her from getting them in line again. I move into a more defensive posture, focusing my eyes on her center but tracking the flickering shifts of her kama so that I can bat at them whenever one looks as though it might point my way. It’s a weak position, but all that I can think of in the moment. Before I can even begin to formulate a new strategy, I feel my shroud leave me.

Triss!

Storm above!

Tiny lightnings flash overhead and Triss’s words dissolve into a series of hisses and snarls. But I don’t dare take my eyes off of the Signet, not even for an instant. If there are any of the Sword close at hand, I’m going to die in the next few minutes. I cast a prayer to a dead goddess, knowing it’s futile, and yet still hoping that Faran or Roric or one of the others is close enough to act as its instrument.

Over the next few seconds, the Signet and I exchange a dozen quick blows and counters, and no one runs a spear through my back. I can hear Triss fighting with the Storm as a sort of continuing angry snarl in the back of my mind, and I can only hope that he’s doing better than I am. I don’t dare look up to check. The Signet’s damned good. Too good for me to take her quickly, or possibly at all. Not unless I get lucky, or my prayer comes through.

That’s when Jax whispers in my ear. “Aral, can you hear me?”

Her voice is low and faint, full of pain and exhaustion. To me, she sounds like a goddess. I nod, hoping that she can see me from wherever she is projecting her voice, and not wanting to speak for fear of giving her away to the Signet.

“Good,” she replies. “I’m hurt, badly. Very badly. Dying maybe. I can’t do much, but I can probably give you one split second of distraction. Make it count.”

“Wait!” I shout.

An idea has come to me, inspired by where we stand, or where I think we stand anyway. Maybe I don’t have to be lucky. Maybe I just have to be smart. I glance upward to see if I’m right. Storm and shadow tumble and twist around the remaining arms of the great statue, the scytheblade head of the Storm mirroring the paired kama of its bond-mate.

“Wait for what?” It’s the Signet, responding to my yell and looking at me like I’m a madman. “Is the great Aral Kingslayer going to give himself up?”

I look her square in the eyes, I want her to think that I’m talking to her, even if what I say doesn’t make a lick of sense. “No, what about you? Where are you? Where do you stand?”

The Signet shakes her head, but doesn’t say another word, just lashes out with her left kama, aiming for my wrist.

“Leaned against the intact side of the altar,” replies Jax. “Why does it matter?”

“Because Shan himself is about to strike you down,” I say to the Signet, hoping Jax will understand what I want.

“You’re mad,” replies the Signet.

“Oh, I think I see,” says Jax. “But how—”

Before she can finish the question, I flip my left sword into an underhanded grip, an insane shortening of my reach considering the circumstances. But I can’t afford to lose it, and if I don’t want to cut my own nose off, it’s going to be a much safer grip for what I need to do. The Signet takes advantage of the maneuver to press the attack, and I’m in serious danger of losing the fight then and there. Twisting and turning like a madman, I manage to hold off the blades and dodge the blasts long enough to get my hand in the right position.

With a sharp yank, I rip the pouch free of my chest where it hangs off the straps of my sword rig. I use the same motion to flick the pouch and its contents to the place where Jax lies in shadow. Then I go on the offensive, pressing the Signet with everything I have. She knows something’s up, but good as she is, she’s not good enough to pay attention to anything but staying alive for the next few seconds. It’s exhausting and I can’t hope to sustain the pace, but I push her back and to my left, waiting for the sound of the first crack.