Darkened Blade: A Fallen Blade Novel (25 page)

Or did he simply set it up so that he won either way? He can’t be that good, can he really?

Maybe . . . or maybe he’s got us so bamboozled he doesn’t even have to play us anymore, we just do it to ourselves because we
believe
he’s that good.
We took a right turning then, following Kelos through another arch.
All I’m certain of is that he really and truly wants to bring down the current order. . . .

And how do
you
feel about that, Aral? You sound wary. Have you made your decision yet?

It should be so simple. The Son of Heaven destroyed us. He’s half-undead, a master of the risen, and a manipulator of kingdoms. But if I kill him, kingdoms will fall and tens of thousands will die. Maybe hundreds of thousands. If I leave him alive, he will do unmeasurable evil. . . .

But if you kill him,
you
will do unmeasurable evil. Or, at least, that’s how you see it. You know I don’t agree with you about that. From where I sit, the responsibility either way is his.

I know, Triss, and I know that taking it on myself isn’t entirely sane. But I can’t help it. I have always bled for the unintended victims of my actions.
We took a left then, as I tried to think of how to express my feelings.
Here, try this: What would you have thought if I had suggested we poison everyone at a state banquet as a way to reach Ashvik? There are slow acting poisons that we could have used to do just that, things that would have gotten past his tasters because they wouldn’t have taken effect for days or weeks.

That’s monstrous, Aral! You would never have done such a thing.

What if it was the only way to ghost him? He killed thousands of his own subjects including his own sons, and tens of thousands more in Kadesh. If we hadn’t killed him, it would only have gotten worse. Isn’t stopping that worth the price of a few dozen courtiers? People who supported
Ashvik in his madness and profited from it? Really, how many true innocents dined with the man on any regular basis?

I don’t think the situation with the Son of Heaven is the same, though I can’t quite explain why.

We turned left again.

But it
is
the same,
I replied.
In fact, it’s worse. The only way to kill the Son of Heaven is to do something that will kill an awful lot of other people as well. And, unlike that banquet scenario, a lot of the people who die will be genuine innocents, guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s what starting a war does, Triss. You can tell yourself that not starting it will result in worse evil, and maybe you’re even right, but it won’t bring a single one of those innocents back.

But you can’t know that this will start a war, can you?

Maybe not, but I believe that it will. So did Toragana, and the Lady of Leivas. For that matter, I think that was the true message of the goddess in my dream, that I must always be aware of the costs of my actions, that justice isn’t just a matter of guilt and innocence, but also a question of weighing the benefits and the price. Independent of the innocent deaths I believe it will bring, slaying the Son of Heaven is clearly just. When you bring in the cost though . . . I don’t know the answer, but I still have to make the choice and accept the consequences.

I . . . Oh, Aral.

The initial evil may be the Son of Heaven’s fault, but I won’t . . . can’t use that to excuse my own actions. Not without losing my moral core. Not without becoming a monster myself. I may
have
to kill him, but I won’t look away from what that means.

Before Triss could respond, Kelos called back, “The first gate is right around this next bend. Give me the key so I can open it.”

At that point we had passed three openings on the right and one on the left in this section, and while I
thought
I could have found my way out on my own if I needed to, I wouldn’t
have bet my life on it. The place really was a maze—chock full of twisty passages with nothing to distinguish one from another.

“I think I’d rather open it myself.” I slipped past Kelos to look through the arch.

“Fine by me,” said Kelos, “though it’d be quicker for me to carry it if I’m going to lead.”

“I’ll suffer the inconvenience.”

This passage was closed off by a large iron grate that sat about five feet back from the arch that led into it. The grate was perhaps eight feet tall, and ten across at the base where it was broadest, and it glowed a dim red in magesight because of the wardings woven into the iron. In the middle was a smaller, circular grate with a glyph-covered steel plate centering it. I pulled out the Signet’s finger, briefly checking the progression of the rot before I dove to press the ring against a bright green spot that perfectly matched the size and shape of the seal on the ring’s bezel.

The edges of the gate flared with spell-light and it pivoted aside, but I barely noticed. As I used the ring, I felt a sharp tugging sensation as if there were a thread running up from the spell lock, through the ring and finger to my own hand, and thence to my heart, where the sudden tug left a tiny hole—like a needle coming out of a finger. Nothing like that had happened when I had used the key on my last visit to the temple precinct, and I glanced quickly at the finger. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought the line of rot might have advanced a hair’s breadth from where it was only moments before.

What the hell was that?
demanded Triss.

In a minute,
I sent back.

I quickly tucked the finger away again—if there was something going badly wrong there I didn’t want the others to know until I had a better grip on it myself. I swam through the little gate, closely followed by Kelos and then Faran. It had already begun to close itself as Kelos moved ahead of me in the passage again. We swam now rather than pulling ourselves along on the ceiling, as the water level had dropped
too far to make the latter practical, and the current had completely stalled.

As we fell back into a line, Triss nudged me again mentally.
Well . . .

I don’t know, Triss. I think that using the ring on that gate did something to the finger. I couldn’t say what.

Why do I think you’re not telling me something?

Because you’ve been spending too much time around Kelos, and it’s making you paranoid?

I fully intended to tell him more about the finger once I figured out what was going on. I just didn’t want him panicking and trying to call the whole thing off prematurely if I was only imagining things. Well, and being honest with myself, even if I wasn’t imagining it, I would be very reluctant to pull out now. We were so close, and this was the only chance we would have to make use of the water route.

Maybe you’re right,
sent Triss.
Maybe I am being paranoid, but if you’re holding out on me . . .

Would I do that?

You have. You do. You will again. Usually you believe you have a good reason. Usually, you’re wrong. Next question?

Fine.
Kelos led us into yet another branch of the tunnel.
When I used the ring, it felt like something tugged at my heart, and maybe, maybe, the rot line moved. But I might have just imagined that part.

We should turn back, right now.

And give up what might be our best shot at the Son of Heaven?

Aral, you don’t even want to do this!

But I can’t not. You see that, don’t you? One way or the other, I have to face him and decide the fate of the East.

I . . . Argh! You are the most frustrating creature I have ever met!

“Is the current moving the other way now?” asked Faran.

“Yes,” replied Kelos. “I think you’re right. Let’s hurry, there’s another gate just beyond the next arch. If we can get through it quick enough, that’d be a really good thing. I
didn’t expect to make it this far this fast, but we have, and that gives us a much better chance.”

Perhaps two minutes later, we were at the gate. By then, the current going back the other way was strong enough that swimming against it had become damned hard. Having the grate to cling to was an enormous relief.

Watch the finger as I open this gate,
I sent to Triss.
Tell me if the rot moves.

Dammit, I don’t think—

By then I was already pressing the seal against the spell lock. This time, I expected the tugging on my heart. That didn’t make it feel any less awful, but at least it allowed me to brace for it.

The line moved,
sent Triss.
It definitely moved.

That’s not good.

No! It’s not. We have to turn back.

I don’t think it’s an option at the moment, Triss. Remember what Kelos said about getting sucked into the deeps and drowning?

I didn’t wait for his response as I went for the gate. The current had increased enough that dragging myself through took real effort, and letting it press me against the grate on the far side was almost a pleasure. Faran came next, with Kelos last.

“Hang on tight,” said Kelos while the flow increased and increased again till it felt like it was trying to press me right through the bars of the grate.

The water level dropped a good three feet over the next few minutes, leaving that much more flowing along the bottom of the tunnel, and the current made it foam and froth as it went through the grate. We were able to climb down and put our feet on the floor then, though there was no chance of moving against the weight of the water quite yet. I was about to ask Kelos how much longer we might have to wait before it slowed enough to move on, when I saw a pair of dark shapes eeling through the water at the edge of our light.

“Risen!” I shouted, drawing my swords and dropping
them into a low guard, though I couldn’t do anything in terms of stance with my legs pressed back against the iron bars.

Kelos mirrored me on my right, bracing for the risen attack, but Faran was more clever than either of us. Pulling herself up out of the water, she kicked off the gate and launched herself forward, landing full on the back of the one coming in at me and punching her swords down and through its torso. A moment later, they both slammed into the grate a few inches to my left. Faran got up, the risen did not. The other one—coming in on Kelos’s far side—suddenly kicked off the bottom then, bursting up and out of the water like a crocodile going after a pig that had gotten too close to the shore.

But Kelos was no pig. He scissored his swords up and out, meeting the thing’s pounce. It still hit him square in the chest, but it did so minus its head and its arms below the elbows.

I had a sudden nasty thought. “How aware do you think those things are?”

“I don’t know,” said Kelos. “Why?”

“Because the risen curse is the Son of Heaven’s familiar. If he can see through their eyes . . .”

“Then he might know we’re here. Is that what you’re suggesting?” asked Faran.

“Exactly.”

“I don’t think so,” replied Kelos. “From what I’ve seen he
can
look out through their eyes, but mostly he doesn’t. There are simply too many of them seeing too many different things all at once. You know how hard it is to look at the world with a Shade’s vision. Admittedly, that’s a much more alien view of the world than a dead man’s, but it’s only one set of ‘eyes’ as it were. My sense of the thing is that the Son mostly doesn’t try to put himself into their heads, and when he does do it, he can’t really focus on more than one or two at a time.”

I let out a sigh. “There’s a relief.”

Kelos tilted one sword back and forth noncommittally. “Yes and no. While he probably didn’t
see
any of that, he
might have been able to
feel
the risen die. Hopefully Siri has started her attack above by now, and he’s got lots of distraction on that front, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to hurry things along from here on out.”

He pushed forward, forcing his way through water that had dropped to about two feet, and against a much reduced flow. I fell in immediately behind Kelos, letting him take the brunt of the current.

You’re not going to turn back, are you?
asked Triss.

No. I’m not. I can’t. I’ve come too far, and there’s too much at stake. I’ve got to see this through, one way or the other.

Are you going to kill the Son of Heaven?

I wish I knew, Triss, I really wish I knew.

W
alking
into the darkness.

That’s what life is really, one step after another toward the darkness that will inevitably claim us all. Some steps we take with eyes wide open and a firm sense that our feet will land on solid ground. Others are blind. Either way, we’re moving forward with the knowledge that whatever happens in the next few seconds, the road ultimately ends in the abyss.

I was in the dark now, and any step might be my last, a fact that I was infinitely aware of as I lifted the Signet’s finger to open the next gate. The grates had grown more frequent as we moved deeper under the temple precinct, and I was no longer under any doubts about whether the process of rot was being accelerated by my use of the key. The last gate, our sixth since the water fell to knee height, had pushed the line of rot beneath the thick band of the ring.

I couldn’t see the point of failure in the spell anymore, and this gate might be the one that sent the rot to the root, the one that would show me once and for all what would happen if the spell backlashed through me. But there was no
point in turning back, even if I’d been willing. The gates locked behind us, and we would need the key just as much going the other way. No matter what happened, I would come to the end of its magic soon. I could feel it in my heart where the finger’s failing powers thrummed and fluttered continually now, like the beating of a trapped dragonfly’s wings.

Here goes nothing,
I sent to Triss as I pressed the bezel to the lock.

The fluttering in my heart briefly became a burning, gnawing pain, as though ants were biting it from the inside. Then a sharp click sounded and the gate pivoted aside. I held my breath, but no darkling band emerged from beneath the ring and the pain in my heart receded to the featherlight touch of phantom wings.

And we win another round.
I breathed a gentle sigh. But as I went to tuck the ring away, the tip of the finger broke off and fell away.
Shit!

I
really
didn’t want Faran to see that.

I’ve got it,
sent Triss. Shadow swirled in front of me and the bit of rotting flesh vanished into the darkness at the same time that I slipped through the gate.
Your secret is safe for a little bit longer.

That’s all I need, really. Kelos said this was the last gate. The finger just has to hold together for another half hour or so and then it won’t matter.

What!?
Triss’s mental voice split the difference between furious and horrified.

Sorry, Triss. That didn’t come out right. I mean that the secret won’t matter. I do intend to live through this . . . well, I hope to anyway.

You’d damned well better!

The current had reversed once again, and the level was slowly rising, having come up maybe two inches in the last quarter of an hour. Faran followed me through the gate. Kelos was in the process of joining us when a pair of risen came a-slithering through the water. Faran and I were able to dispatch them easily enough in the shallows, bringing our total for the venture up to ten. Whether it was because the
Son of Heaven preferred not to taint the water he himself had to drink—Faran’s theory—or simply because he wasn’t worried about the aqueducts as a serious possibility for invasion, there just weren’t that many risen down here.

“So, what now?” I asked.

Kelos had been very tight with information thus far, a fact that made me nervous. Without him to lead us we would have been utterly lost in the labyrinthine aqueduct. With the water rising again that was an ugly thought. We had passed a number of wells that we might be able to climb out of, but that would be the same as abandoning the mission.

He waved a hand ahead. “We walk up that way about seventy feet and duck around the corner. That will take us beneath the courtyard in front of the Son of Heaven’s apartments.”

I remembered it well, a huge area enclosed under a staggeringly expensive roof of the finest and clearest glass, which allowed for a very fair counterfeit of the Celestial City and the True Heaven itself. The paths—surfaced with chips of ivory and fragments of pearl—danced in and out through a garden filled with tropical rarities that had no business surviving in this part of the world. Jade tiles faced the walls of the buildings surrounding the courtyard as well as the gold-roofed pavilion that centered it. Even the fishpond was floored with fragments of precious stone.

“And then?” I asked.

“The pond,” said Kelos. “There aren’t any man-sized wells within the courtyard, but there is a ceramic pipe with a small bucket-chain pump in it for filling the pond. It’s not big enough for a man either, but we can yank it out, and that’ll give us a way up to the surface that doesn’t require blasting a giant and noisy hole in anything. It’ll be a damned tight fit for me, but a bit of grease and some luck should make it workable. I’ll be going last, of course, in case I get wedged.”

We were able to accomplish our demolition in relative silence by dint of getting Malthiss to send the pins that held the pump and most of the piping into the everdark. Soon we had a rough hole in the ceiling. Faran wanted to go first,
claiming the right as the smallest, but I nixed that idea on the grounds that she didn’t know the layout above and I did.

Are you ready for this, Triss?
I asked as I looked up into the raw opening.
I don’t know what we’re going to encounter up there, but the chances are good that I won’t be able to loose you until it’s all over.

He sent the Shade equivalent of a sigh.
I’ll be fine. It’s you I’m worried about. You might be able to hide your worries from Faran and Kelos, but I can sense exactly how conflicted you are about all of this. Don’t let indecision get you killed, all right?

I won’t . . . I hope.

Not very reassuring. You know that, right?

I wish I had a better answer for you, Triss, but I don’t. I could never go back to the way it was before, with Namara making all my decisions for me. I know that. I’ve grown beyond being that person, but sometimes I wish that I hadn’t. I wish that someone else was making the hard choices. . . .

I don’t. There’s no one in the world I trust more to do what is right, Aral. No one. I may prod and push and tease, but I believe in you more than I ever believed in any goddess. You
will
make the right choice when you have to. You always have. I just hope that it’s a choice that’s got a happy ending.

That
would
be nice,
I sent, though I had very serious doubts about it.

It would. But, if it isn’t . . . well, I’ll go with you to face the lords of judgment without any regrets. We’ve had an amazing run, my friend.

We have indeed.

Let’s go get ’em.

My sense of Triss as an independent presence dropped away as he slid into the dream state that allowed me to use his skills and senses as my own. Kelos gave me a boost into the base of the shaft then, and I began to climb. I paused briefly when I reached the top to brace my feet solidly in the holes where the supports had once been. There, I pressed my ear to the thick jade plate that concealed the workings of the pump from defiling the garden view above.

Nothing.

But then, I hadn’t expected to hear anything. Not unless Siri’s distraction had grown into something earth-shattering. The garden was designed to emulate the peace and opulence of the Celestial City. Having guards, human or risen, visibly tramping around it would have interfered with the faux divinity of the setting, and that was true whether there was an emergency in the outer wards of the precinct or not.

Next, I extended the portion of me that was, at least temporarily, a thing of elemental shadow down the short ceramic pipe that led from the top of the pump to the concealed outlet in the pond. The pipe opened under the arched bridge that divided the pond into two unequal halves. But my borrowed darksight revealed nothing more than my ears had. The dawn light spilling across the courtyard garden was simply too bright for me to perceive anything much beyond the immediate area around the bridge with Triss’s senses. Lacking any other choice, it was time to move.

I pulled my shadow back in tight around me and reshaped it into a shroud of darkness, rendering myself functionally invisible. Then I took a deep breath, put both hands under the center of the jade plate, and pushed straight up. It grated very faintly as it lifted free of the lip, and though I expected the noise, I winced. Straightening my back and shoulders, I rose up and tipped the plate to one side, lowering the edge silently to the rich soft earth of the garden.

The pump access was concealed within a small clump of shrubbery, allowing the gardeners to perform maintenance without visibly inflicting their peasant presence on those who believed themselves their betters. As had so often happened in the past, the triumph of aristocratic aesthetics over practical and security considerations created an opening I could exploit. Not to mention providing me with a protective patch of shade. It was a small justice of the poetic sort.

Once I had the plate stowed, I climbed out and pulled my sword rig up behind me, slipping it on over bare shoulders and reattaching my new trick bag. The shaft was too tight for me to fit with the rig or even a shirt on my back, though
I hadn’t needed to strip completely. I chose not to waste the time and create the momentary vulnerability of putting my shirt back on now. With each minute that passed the sun would rise higher, weakening our shrouds and posing a greater danger to us and our mission. I sent a faint tickle of orange pink magelight down the hole as I moved aside.

Faran appeared a moment later—a blot of deeper darkness in the shadow under the brush, identifiable mainly by the sword rig she pulled behind her. Kelos took longer and had a hard time of it. Even after leaving shirt and pants at the bottom of the well and greasing his shoulders, he ended up with deep and bloody scrapes on his right arm and down his left shoulder blade—exposed to sight briefly when he lowered his shroud to check the injury.

“One of the many reasons I’d intended this route for you or Siri.” He rubbed a bit of blue black ointment into his scratches—the bleeding slowed immediately, but his sharply indrawn breath suggested the effect came at some cost. “Damn, but that hurts. It’s a Kadeshi recipe made from manticore chitin among other things. It stings like a whole swarm of wasps, but it’ll keep me from leaving a blood trail.” He hadn’t bothered to reclothe himself, so he was wearing little more than boots and a loincloth as he slid to the edge of our little copse.

“The lights are burning bright in the Son’s apartments despite the morning sun,” he whispered after a long moment of looking and listening. “Judging by the shadows playing across the windows, there’s a lot of activity within, too. I suspect that Siri’s raid is having at least some of the desired effect. I hope she finds Chomarr out there and nails his hide to the wall.” He started to edge forward. “We should move quickly.”

“Wait,” whispered Faran. “Do you smell that? There’s rot under the blossoms.”

“Risen?” I asked.

“That would be my guess,” she replied.

“Good nose,” whispered Kelos, “and better thinking. I’m impressed.”

“Fresh turned earth, too,” I added after taking a few deep
sniffs myself. “A lot of it. I wonder . . .” A thought occurred to me. “He’s very image conscious, this Son of Heaven. Even if everyone this deep into the complex knows what he is now, I bet he doesn’t want the risen making an eyesore of themselves.”

“You think he’s buried them all through the garden,” whispered Faran.

“It’d be the best way to keep them close but out of sight,” I replied.

“That changes things,” whispered Kelos. “I’d intended for us to go straight for his apartments from here, but there’s a lot of garden between us and it, and much of it shadowed enough for the risen to brave the dawn. Let me think. . . .” A brief silence followed. “Right, we’ll go in via the gallery. It’s much closer, and the Son had a door knocked through from there to his playrooms.”

“Playrooms?” asked Faran.

“He’s almost half-risen himself,” said Kelos. “He shares their blood hunger, even if it’s expressed somewhat differently. He ejected his chief aide and several other members of the curia from the suites below his own and had the whole place made over so that he could indulge himself.”

“Torture chambers,” said Faran.

“And more,” he replied. “Come on, the wall of windows directly across the pond opens into the gallery. They’re east facing and that whole section of garden catches the morning light, which will help keep the risen off us if they sense our passing. I presume I don’t need to remind you to walk extra light and—”

“Watch for fresh turned earth,” finished Faran. “No, you don’t.”

“I didn’t think so.” The dark blot that was Kelos slid back into the heart of the little copse and out the other side heading for the small bridge.

The sun started chewing painfully away at my shroud the instant I cleared the shadow of the shrubs, blinding my darksight and forcing me to peel back the shadows across my eyes. Operating in bright daylight came at a heavy cost in both
efficiency and magic as I fed nima to a sleeping Triss to hold the shroud in place. But we didn’t dare rush or cut corners.