Darkened Blade: A Fallen Blade Novel (4 page)

Triss had followed Kelos to the head of the stairs. Now he looked back at me, his posture questioning.

“All right, I’m coming.” As I reached the head of the stairs he let his dragon shape go and faded back into my shadow.

The taproom below was all but empty, a very unusual circumstance here in the early hours of the night. The only members of the local crowd who remained belonged to the staff of the inn, and
they
didn’t look any too happy about being there. I couldn’t fault them for wanting to leave given the newcomers—a half-dozen members of Heaven’s Hand. Priests and sorcerers of the most deadly and fanatical sort. I wanted to leave, too.

They had shed their uniforms for loose dark pants and shirts cut in the style of the steppe riders of the Kvanas. They weren’t fooling anyone. Everything about them spoke to their true origins, from the hard, cold expressions on their faces, to their military bearing and the many weapons that hung in use-worn sheathes at hips and shoulders or tucked into boot tops. Long ponytails bound with the ritual knots
of their order identified them more exactly for any who knew what to look for. And then there were the Storms.

Each of the six companioned a cloud-winged familiar. The Storms were elemental creatures of air that assumed a myriad of forms, everything from the lucent shapes of huge gemstones, to wheels of golden flame, or abstract swirls of color. Their only commonality, one to another, was that they flew on wings of cloud.

The obvious leader of the troop was partnered by a tight bundle of colors and tentacle-like streamers that reminded me of nothing so much as an octopus trying to conceal itself on a bright coral reef. She had taken a seat at a small table not far from the base of the stairs, where she sat as ramrod straight as if she were occupying a bench in the front row of the master temple at Heaven’s Reach. Her followers had ranged themselves around the room in a loose cordon that allowed them to see every entrance and exit and to cover each other as needed in case of attack. I had to give them points for execution at the same time I deplored their very existence.

Kelos, being Kelos, had taken a stool at the bar with his back to almost everyone, as though he was daring someone to stick a knife in it. Tempting as that idea sounded from time to time, I ignored him in favor of approaching the woman at the table. A second glance refined my first impression. For one, she was absolutely ancient, her hair bone-white rather than the blond I had first thought, and the lines in her face many and deep.

If she were not a sorcerer I might have guessed her age at eighty, but her life was tied to her familiar’s, and the Storms, like the Shades, may live for hundreds of years. For her to have aged so much, she must be at least three hundred, and maybe as old as six.

“I am five hundred and thirty eight,” she said, her voice crisp and more than half-amused. “Also, I don’t read minds, just faces, and I’ve had lots of practice. My name is Toragana, and this is my second time wearing the ring.”

She waved her right hand, where the Signet’s insignia of office circled her thumb. “After a hundred and ninety years of retirement in a peaceful hermitage I have been drafted back into the role of head of my order and I am not at all pleased about it. Now, sit. We have much to talk about and our time is short. The Son would kill us all if he knew I were here talking to you. Besides, I’m ancient and angry. Apoplexy could carry me off at any moment.”

I suppressed a grin and sat. Despite all of the weight of history and blood that lay between our two orders, I found myself instinctively liking this woman. “Angry?” I prompted.

“Extraordinarily so. Mostly at Corik Nofather. First, for failing to succumb decently to the risen curse fifty years ago, thereby sparing me the trouble of doing something about his continued reign as the Son of Heaven. Second, for doing such a horrible job on the throne,
necessitating
my doing something about it. Third, for being an inhuman monster that makes doing something about it a task that requires me to seek help. And, before you put on that curious tone and say ‘Mostly?’ I’m also mad at myself for hiding away in my hermitage and missing out on the chance to simply kill the little bastard off before he got too powerful for one old woman to handle.”

I like her,
Triss sent rather bemusedly.

So do I.
This time I couldn’t stop a grin. “So, you know what he is, then—” She cut me off with a chop of her hand.

“Yes, and all of his history, though I haven’t been able to do anything with the information, since he’s converted the bulk of the curia into undead slaves.” She sighed. “I admit it’s an improvement in some cases, but still, it complicates things. The only ones I’ve been able to bring in on this are certain members of my own order and that idiot Devin Nightblade.”

I started at the name of my onetime best friend, now head of the Blades who had gone over to the Son of Heaven after the fall of the temple. He had been Kelos’s chief pawn in the matter, and he hated me with a rare vigor.

She nodded at my reaction. “A piece of work that one.
Venal, dumb in a clever sort of way, and more than half a coward. He speaks very highly of you, which would have been enough for me to look elsewhere for help if it weren’t for the fact that it’s obvious he despises you and that it pains him to feel the way he does about your abilities.”

“So, he sent you here?”

“No, I sent me here. Devin—gods help us—heads one of the five branches of Heaven’s forces on earth. I head another. Together we
ought
to be able to push the Son of Heaven off his throne without any help. But in addition to Devin’s cowardice, his traitor Blades are bound by terrible oaths that prevent them from acting directly against this Son of Heaven, and my own order is a hollow shell of what it once was. For which, curse Corik’s name for five thousand generations.” She spat on the floor.

“As much as I agree with you about the Son of Heaven, I’m finding it hard to feel a lot of sympathy for you after what your order did to mine.”

Her mouth tightened at that, but she nodded. “I can understand your position on that conflict. What would you say if I told you that I mostly shared it?”

“I . . . what?” That was not what I had expected.

“That attack killed over half of the active members of my order, and it utterly destroyed our command structure. Nor was that result unintentional. The Son of Heaven cannot convert mages without revealing himself, and that means that his control over the Hand has always been the weakest element of his command of the forces of the church. Since he took office, he has been systematically throwing our most powerful and independent members into the riskiest of situations, and the pace has accelerated dramatically of late.

“Seven Signets have died in the last ten years. Two at the fall of your temple, counting Taral’s single hour in that role. One in an ill-planned mission to Aven. Another, you killed two years ago at the abbey outside Tavan along with more than thirty of the Hand. One vanished shortly afterward, no one knows where. One fell in the battle understairs during the conflict over the Key of Sylvaras. His replacement was
executed for treason three weeks later. For comparison, we lost three in the hundred years before that. Discounting half-trained novices and dotards like myself, the order has one fifth the number of members it did before your temple fell.”

She slammed a fist down on the table. “The Son has killed far more of us than your Blades ever did. Following the death of the last Signet there were only three active officers left who had held significant command roles in the organization, and not one of them felt up to the task of assuming the office—which is why they came to me. Privately, and
before
I took the ring, the three of them told me that they thought it would be a death sentence for any of them to do so. All of them were willing to offer up their lives if they thought it would save the order, but not one of them believed they could make a difference.”

“And you think you can?” I asked.

“I honestly don’t know. But I had to try. That’s why I’m here. The Son of Heaven has made
this
into little more than a shiny bauble.” She took off the ring and tossed it to me.

Reflexively, I caught it out of the air. When I opened my hand to look at it I realized for the first time what was missing. “What happened to the magic . . . ?”

I held it up to my eye and looked through the circle at Toragana. I had held the ring of a Signet before. Two of them, actually, and each had glowed brightly in magesight, infused as they were with many spells. Among other enchantments, they were, or had been, keys that opened every one of the many wards that guarded the great temple at Heaven’s Reach.

“Two years ago
someone
slipped into the Son of Heaven’s bedroom.” Toragana gave me a pointed look.

“Really?” I asked, my face as blank as I could make it.

“Really. Though the story has not been widely shared beyond the upper echelons of the temple, the intruder stabbed two swords of your goddess into the headboard of the Son of Heaven’s bed, bare fractions of an inch above his face. When the Son of Heaven woke up, he ran into them, putting
twin slices into the flesh over his cheekbones. Those wounds have never healed.”

“That’s fascinating,” I said.

“Oh, do stop. Kelos was the one outlawed for the thing—losing his place as head of Heaven’s Shadow to Devin and garnering a death sentence in absentia—which is part of why I sought him out. But he’s already told me who actually marked the Son of Heaven’s face, and how, and why. That’s also when he told me that you’re the one I have to deal with if I want your people to help us with the Son of Heaven.”

“Me, not Siri?” Toragana nodded, and I glanced over her shoulder to where Kelos continued to pointedly ignore us all, wondering what he was up to. “Interesting.”

“Look, I don’t care about your internal politics. What I care about is rescuing my order and my religion from the half-risen monster who currently heads it, at any cost. If bringing him down means I have to work with the sworn enemies of the Hand and start the biggest war in a thousand years, well, that’s what I intend to do. My duty to Shan demands nothing less.”

“Do you believe that killing the Son will mean war?” I feared that it would, but I wanted to hear the Signet’s feelings on the matter.

Toragana nodded, her expression grim. “Half a dozen civil wars at the very least. How could it not? Corik Nofather controls most of the ruling houses of the East. When the old rulers fall, there will be a rush to fill that opening, the likes of which the eleven kingdoms have never seen. There will be pretenders, and wars of distraction, and bloody crusades to root out more of the hidden undead. I don’t like it, but I don’t see any way around it. We cannot allow a half-risen monster to sit the throne of Heaven’s Reach.”

Triss hissed silently in my mind.
Do you think she’s right?

I don’t know,
I sent, though I very much feared that she was. “How did you discover the Son’s true nature?”

“After you left him with those slices on his cheeks, the
Son of Heaven went a little mad—paranoid and vindictive. He executed every guard who had been within a hundred yards of his rooms that night. Then he cut off all access to the innermost temple for the Hand, the Shadow, and those members of the Sword who are also mages.

“He restricted entry to a very few at first, his risen slaves within the priestly hierarchy and the military orders. But that also restricted his ability to get things done, so he started converting more and more risen. Concealing their true nature takes enormous amounts of blood. Too much to hide from someone with my connections and history in the church. Combine that with things that I scared out of Devin, and I knew what the truth had to be.”

“That’s when you decided to come to me.”

“Well, Kelos initially, but yes. Will you help me make war upon Heaven’s Son?”

I took a deep breath, as I tried to decide how to answer her. That’s when a large boulder smashed right through the Fallow-side wall of the Roc and Diamond at shoulder height. It passed directly over the table where Toragana and I faced each other before punching out the wall on the other side. A few inches left or right and it would have killed one or the other of us.

Triss wrapped me in a shroud of darkness as I rolled backward out of my chair. In a hand-off we had practiced thousands of times, he released control over his senses and substance to me as I bounced to my feet. My view of the world changed as my own vision became irrelevant and I shifted to seeing through Triss’s borrowed darksight. Color went away as textures and how they reflected or absorbed light became central to my awareness, and shadows took on a depth of meaning beyond anything I can ever hope to describe. . . .

As I drew my swords, a tattered horde of risen came pouring up the main stairway from the lower level.

The Son of Heaven had moved first.

D
eath
or Justice?

Sometimes, when I’m being especially honest with myself, I wonder what impulse I truly serve. The memory of my goddess? Or the darkness of the grave? I have always tried to kill only those whom Justice demanded I slay, but how far does Justice’s writ go?

Ashvik was my first, King of Zhan, and as clear a case for the justice of the sword as you could ask for. But he was not the last. Many have died at my hand since that day. Some deserved their deaths as clearly as Ashvik deserved his. Some put themselves between me and my rightful prey. Others . . . others merely stood too close.

I might say that I took no pleasure in their deaths, that I would have spared them the edge if I could have, but I would not be telling the whole truth. For I love my work. There are few pleasures that can compare with being one of the best in the world at what you do. I do not like being responsible for the deaths of those who do not deserve it, but the cut and the parry, the interplay of steel and spell and knowing that the ultimate price will be paid by the less skilled
player . . . that is another thing entirely. To deny the shock of joy that went through me as I unsheathed my swords and prepared to wade into the ranks of the risen would be to deny who I am.

I would like to believe that I wouldn’t have felt the same way if my opponents were living breathing humans with wills of their own. I would like to believe that very much.

I do not.

The Hand met the risen at the stairhead with spells and steel and the miniature lightnings of their familiars. Heads fell, rotting skin crisped and burned, a score of the restless dead fell in a matter of seconds. But more came bounding up the stair. Indifferent to their fallen comrades as anything more than an impediment to decent footing, they came on in their hundreds. By sheer weight of undead flesh they forced the Hand back and back again, establishing a bridgehead.

Kelos had shrouded himself at the same time that I did, but I could trace his path across the room toward me by the line of fallen bodies he left in his wake. The swords of Namara are one of the most effective tools against the undead. Even now, after the death of the goddess, that part of their enchantment will work for the proper wielder. But, the next wave of the risen rushed toward the Signet and me then, and I lost track of Kelos and his swords. Before the dead reached us, another great rock smashed through the inn.

It killed one of the Hand and tore a dozen of the risen into rotting shreds—not that they seemed to care. The death of the sorcerer-priest engulfed his familiar Storm, causing a great roar of thunder to shake the inn as the heavens mourned one of their own. Though I couldn’t see it, I knew that the clouds would already be forming overhead—a harbinger of the wind and rain to come.

The Signet drew a pair of short, leather-bound rods from her belt, like a pair of truncated axe handles. Crossing them in front of her face, she snapped them down and out in the manner of twinned whips. Bright coils of lightning lashed outward, crisping the entire front row of the oncoming
horde, but more of the dead quickly flowed in behind. She struck again and again, but the risen kept coming. I moved to one side to intercept a couple that had slipped around the edge of the zone of death described by her lightning whips.

She was one of the most accomplished magical warriors I’d ever seen, but even with me guarding her blinds, the dead forced us back, and back again, until we were wedged into one corner of the long common room. That uncovered the base of the spiral stairs that led to the apartments above, and more of the risen swarmed upward. I hadn’t the time or breathing space for more than a passing worry about what that might mean for Faran and Siri.

Periodically, the engine hurling stones from outside would fling another through the inn. Mostly they killed the restless dead, but I had just beheaded another—the surest way to make this their last rising—when a lucky shot turned the Signet’s legs into a mass of pulped flesh and shattered bone. She fell at my feet and faceup, her eyes somehow seeming to pierce the shadow that hid me from my foes.

“You must end Corik. He profanes the world by his very existence.” She coughed then, and red bloomed on her lips. “Do what I could not,” she whispered, and was gone. Thunder boomed again and again and again, as a mighty wind hammered the inn.

Though I had only just met Toragana, I felt her passing with a sharp pain—mourning the friendship that might have come with time. I wanted to stay and make those who had killed her pay, but she was right. The risen might fall here like autumn leaves before a northern wind, but there was no end to them, and they seemed to care nothing for the final death. If I remained longer I would die as surely as the Signet had.

A glance around the room reinforced the futility of our situation. All but one of the Hand were dead or taken, as were the inn’s staff. I couldn’t speak to Kelos, nor Siri and Faran for that matter—if they’d even come down to join the fight here instead of meeting the dead above. I couldn’t see any of them—though that would be as true if they were
simply shrouded as it would if they’d fallen under the seething horde of the dead. The building itself stood on the brink of collapse after all the rocks that had ripped their way through its walls. The growing storm was already causing it to creak and sway. When it fell it would bring ruin to any who remained within.

By dint of a very controlled sort of manic flailing I cleared a brief hole in the fighting and sent up a shock of magic. Pink and orange—invisible to the mortal eye, but a bright burst for those with magesight—the colors my order traditionally used to signal one another. The flare formed itself into a blazing arrow pointing toward the side of the inn that faced the wall and the Sylvain, slipped through a hole, and then shot away, paralleling the magical wall’s top in the direction of the sea. I hoped that my companions would see it, but I couldn’t wait around to find out. I cut my way to the nearest window and vaulted through, dropping toward the wall below.

The risen were thinner here, but still present in great numbers, so it was more luck than skill that allowed me to land in a clear space. Even through the pounding rain I could see that many of the nearer buildings had their doors and windows broken in. Here and there knots of fighting had sprung up where the restless dead had met with some resistance, particularly on the empire side of the wall.

As I watched a swarm of them bring down a tall Sylvani lord in his shining crystalline armor, I revised my estimate of the scope of the battle radically upward. It wasn’t just the inn under attack, but this entire section of the city of Wall. The living were losing badly, and too many of those who weren’t torn apart or devoured would join the ranks of the enemy over the next few days as they rose from their graves in turn.

The thought of it made me sick at heart. Again, I found myself wanting desperately to stay and fight. Again, I forced myself to move on. My goddess-forged swords and their enchantments might give me an advantage against the restless dead, but even if I slew scores before I fell, hundreds
would remain. There was no winning this battle. The dead were simply too many. It was hard to believe the scale of the thing. Nothing like it had happened in more than a thousand years, not since Master Corvin and Resshath Ssura ended the Necrotariat that had risen in Dan Eyre of old before the merging of my order and the worshippers of Namara.

Over the next quarter of an hour I fought and shadow-slipped my way through the horde of dead mobbing the wall. The warm rain was my ally in the latter, making my shrouded presence even more invisible than usual. I finally broke free of them a half mile or so east of the inn.

There, a small group of heavily armed and armored Sylvani nobles had taken a position on the wall with a more slapdash force of human irregulars backing them up. Facing a sharp and organized defense heavy with magic and enchanted weapons, this ragged edge of the army of the dead was faring badly. I pressed myself into the shadow of a broken door and took a momentary rest while the dead focused on the Sylvani and their human allies.

The Sylvani all stood at least a head taller than their human auxiliaries, with one or two taller yet—close to the seven feet and change of my friend Ash. The Sylvani had donned full armor and close-faced helms against the threat of the risen, all in varying hues and shades of crystal. As I watched, one of the risen struck their leader in the center of her breast plate with the terrible strength of the dead. The point of impact flared and sparked, sending light crazing away from the spot like cracks running through a dropped mug, refracting the force of the blow by a sort of elemental light magic.

The Sylvani struck back, whipping a slender dueling blade up and around with inhuman speed to stab the risen in the eye. A bright spark of light flashed down the length of the crystalline blade from the hand that wielded it toward the point of the sword. It vanished for a moment when it passed the point where sword met rotting flesh, but the risen’s head started to glow from within a moment later, like a bright lamp glimpsed through paper walls. The glow
spread down and out, filling the risen with light. Then, there was a bright flare—viciously so to my borrowed darksight—and the risen collapsed in on itself.

The sudden brightness had come as a painful surprise, leaving me blind for several long beats of my heart. I hadn’t realized that the Sylvani could perform magic atop the warding wall as well as within its boundaries. The gods had created the thing to bind the power of the older race among other things—preventing them from using their magic in the lands beyond its bounds.

As the battle intensified, I saw my chance. Sheathing my swords, I climbed up the nearest building to the rooftop, and slipped past the barricade along the chimney road. I finally released my hold over Triss once we were well and truly beyond the fighting, though I kept moving. He rose at once from the dreams where he’d retreated to allow me finer control over both shroud and magic.

Faran?
he sent anxiously as soon as he was fully himself again.

I don’t know.
I shrugged, and then winced as the motion sent threads of rainwater crawling down my back—I was going to regret not having had time to grab my poncho, or any of my gear beyond the bare minimum—I always kept my sword rig on.
I didn’t see her join the battle before the risen stormed the upper stairs, and I’ve no idea what happened above.

I hope she’s all right. . . .
Triss rather dotes on Faran, but then, so do I.

Me, too.
And then, because I could feel a weight of worry behind his thoughts,
She’s tough and smart and her new swords should serve her well against the dead.

I know, but—
He stopped speaking when another shroud brushed across us—a familiar and welcome presence.

“Siri!” I said.

We were far enough away from the fighting now that I halted, signaling Triss to drop his shrouding effect so that we could see and be seen. The shroud collapsed into a dragon-shaped shadow at my feet as Triss shifted forms to
show his public face. Kyrissa did the same, becoming a smoke-feathered serpent who hung in the air behind Siri as we faced each other.

“Aral.” She nodded hello and I nodded back.

“Do you know where Faran is?” asked Triss.

“No, we were separated when the risen swarmed the sitting room. She went up and I went out a window.”

“Dammit!” I growled.

Siri put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure she’s fine. She’s very good with her swords, and an excellent mage.”

I nodded. “And smart and tough, and all of that. I know, but . . .”

“Dead sexy, too,” said a familiar voice.

I spun around in time to see Faran drag herself up over the fallow-side edge of the roof. Her tone was light, but her right sleeve was drenched in blood and she had no shadow because Ssithra had wrapped herself tightly around Faran’s arm above the biceps reinforcing a rough bandage. Faran staggered as she got closer and I leaped to catch her. She was soggy and cold, though the rain was warm.

I ran a finger along the lower edge of her shadow bandage. “Is that . . .” I trailed off, too horrified to say more. When you fight the restless dead . . .

Faran grimaced. “One of the risen nicked me with a claw, barely more than a scratch really.”

“The curse?” demanded Siri, her voice sharp and tight.

“That’s what all the blood’s about. I shaved off a rather large chunk of meat, making sure it didn’t go any farther.”

A shadowy phoenix head lifted free of the darkened bandage. “She acted quickly enough,” said Ssithra. “The curse will not take her, but she has lost a great deal of blood and if I let go she will lose more.”

Faran looked embarrassed. “Yeah, I had to cut and run after this.” She touched her arm and winced. “Sorry I couldn’t stay to guard your back. I wanted to, but my swords weren’t affecting the risen the way yours do—I had to cut them apart or behead them—and Ssithra kept yelling at me to get out.”

Not good, but also not wholly unexpected. I had hoped that the enchantments on Parsi’s swords would perform properly for Faran as Devin’s had for me the two times I had been forced to borrow them before recovering my own. But Faran had never been confirmed as a full Blade and the circumstances under which she’d taken possession of them were unprecedented in the history of our order.