Drawn Blades (28 page)

Siri nodded as I did so, and if she heard the buzz of our mindspeech, she showed no sign of it. “For the moment, our interests and the god’s run in parallel. We need to recover that key, if only to keep it away from the other buried gods.”

“What do we do with it once we’ve got it?”

“I don’t know. Time enough to figure it out later.”

“Perhaps it would suit best to give it to the disquisition,” I said. “Of all the players in this they’re the only ones I can think of who want to see the rising of their buried gods less than we do.”

“I don’t think that will work,” said Siri, but her hand jerked in what might have been squeeze code for
yes
. “But for now, time is short and we need to run. Follow me.”

Shadow bloomed around her and she vanished, but with the bond of our rings to guide me I had no trouble following in her wake.

*   *   *

The
last pair of the Smoldering Flame’s cultists stood back-to-back within a crudely executed ward a hundred yards into the vale. They had forsaken all semblance of an offense in favor of simply trying to maintain the ward. Spells representing every one of the greater and lesser elements licked out at them from their many enemies, now from one side, now from another. As the blasts hit the dome of protection that rose from the diagram, they outlined its boundaries and occasionally bent them inward.

They can’t possibly hope to hold for long,
I sent.
What were they thinking?

That relief would come from their god, I imagine . . . and so we have.

I didn’t like to think of us in that way, but I couldn’t logically argue with Triss. The Smoldering Flame probably had sent them a message to fort up and await
our
arrival. It made my bones itch to serve his interests that way, but I vowed in my heart that the alliance would last only as long it served our interests.

I hope we can make that stick,
Triss sent in the seconds before he released all control and sank into dormancy.

Me, too,
I whispered into his dreams.
Me, too.

Siri broke left as we approached the loose circle of enemies surrounding the Smoldering Flame’s cultists, so I went right. A trio of cultists of mixed following had taken up position behind a low ridge, their differences with one another apparently put aside while the key was held by another faction. All three laid their length on the ground, taking advantage of the cover provided by the rise, despite the fact that the Smoldering Flame’s disciples weren’t returning their attacks.

They never saw me coming. Five running steps, a high leap, and they died. Two pinned to the earth by my swords. The third, lying between the others, when my full weight landed heels first on the place where his spine met his skull, hammering the lip of his own gorget into the weak point there with the crack of shattering bone.

I moved on without looking back, working my way farther to the right as I felt Siri moving left. The broken ground made excellent cover, especially as the smoke and steam pouring up from the many vents grew slowly thicker and wilder, providing us with ever better concealment.

That was no coincidence. I could feel the Smoldering Flame exerting his will on the landscape of his domain to aid us. Nor was that the only way he influenced things. Subtler and more worrying by far, I found that I knew the vale as well as I knew my own neighborhood in Tien. Worse, I hadn’t noticed it happening until I was already taking advantage of the results. The god might be trapped in his tomb and running out of willing allies, but he was far from helpless here on his home ground.

My next kill was more aware than the first set had been, spinning to face toward me as I slipped up behind her, though I didn’t know how she sussed out my approach. But the blind spot defeated her staring eyes and she died when the point of my sword drove up under the chin piece of her helm, stabbing through the roof of her mouth and into her brain. Still, she was very good, and even in dying, her parrying dagger skidded painfully across my ribs in a thrust that missed going deep mostly by chance.

I moved on again, this time with blood slowly saturating the rough bandage I slapped over the wound in my side—oh, to have my trick bag back with its pastes and plasters. Somewhere to my left the ward fell, and with it the two remaining cultists of the Smoldering Flame.

The woman who would have been next on my list died before I could reach her. When the ward fell, she vaulted over the boulder she’d been hiding behind and sprinted toward the fallen cultists and the key, only to have the ground split in front of her feet and throw her into a scalding mud pot. I blocked out her screams and moved on.

My fifth target wore the badge of the disquisition and had his back to a rocky spire. He didn’t move when the wards broke, just hunkered down against the tall spur of rock and kept his paired battle wands out in front of him—a patient man. That was going to be a problem. Or, at least, I thought it was.

But even as I tried to formulate my best approach, I felt a sudden tug on my ring and the smoke curling out of the ground on his other side took on Siri’s form. Her sword licked out like the tongue of a snake, sinking deep into the bend of his elbow where the armor was thinnest, making him drop his right-hand wand. He spun toward her, firing off a shock of pink spell-light with his remaining weapon. By then, the smoke was just smoke again, and Siri had returned to the far side of the field.

Before the disquisitor could turn back around I was there, delivering a pair of heavy, chopping blows from behind. My first sword shattered the thick crystal helm that protected his head, and my second split his skull to his teeth.

I quickly moved on. With Siri’s new abilities and the god using the very environment to help us, it wasn’t a fight so much as butchery. I felt my stomach turning slow backflips as Sylvani who never had a chance died beneath my swords one after another.

And then, almost before I knew it, the slaughter was over. When I moved toward the next place I would have expected one of our enemies to hole up, I found only a corpse—prematurely cold and stiff as the venom of a basilisk slowly turned her to stone. Kelos and Malthiss had been there before me. Which meant it was time to turn toward the center of the field.

When I looked that way, I found that I could only see one of the fallen cultists, and that, a partial view. It took me a beat to recognize the weird blurring for what it was—the blind spot and a shrouded Blade. And not Siri, whose presence I could feel farther away.

“Kelos!” I yelled as I sprinted toward the key. “Siri, hurry! Kelos is grabbing the key!”

But then Faran dropped her shroud. “It’s me!” She raised a hand with something dull and brass sticking through her fingers. “They’re all dead. I’ve got it.”

I was ten feet away when the air behind her blurred. Something touched the back of Faran’s neck with the faintest glimmer of spell-light. Her knees sagged and she slumped toward me. I lunged forward and caught her by the shoulders. For one brief instant the key seemed to hang in the air above her open hand, then it blurred away into darkness.

Kelos! “If you’ve harmed her, I’ll kill you.” The words came out cold and hard and alien. More like a deadly anger speaking through me, than me speaking them myself.

“I would sooner destroy one of my own swords than hurt the girl.” Kelos spoke out of darkness. “She is the future of justice.”

By then I could see that Faran was still breathing. Some of the cold fire in my chest faded as I eased her to the ground. Some.

Another voice spoke out of darkness, this time behind Kelos. “You will put the key gently on the ground, or I will kill you where you stand.”

“Will you really, Siri? When I am your only chance at holding on to your soul?”

“What do you mean?” Siri’s answer came back slow and stilted.

“The key, of course. If it stays here even an hour longer, your inner fire will awaken with the god as he finishes burning away the dagger in his heart. At that point, for all intents and purposes you will cease to exist. You have to know that. Here, a small gesture of faith.” He dropped his shroud, and I let out a hiss at how much closer to me he’d slipped without my having any inkling—he stood now directly above Faran and me, his arms crossed. “Let me go, and I can get this bauble out of here before the Smoldering Flame bursts into fresh fire.”

Siri’s shroud fell, too. She was standing a yard behind Kelos, one sword back in a high guard, the other forward, its point lying a few inches below Kelos’s left shoulder blade. “I’m afraid . . .” she said, and her voice suddenly shifted lower and deeper as the god took control of her, “that you’re too late.”

She lunged, and her sword punched straight through Kelos, its point emerging just below the ribs on the left side where it slid to a stop less than an inch from my right eye. Before I could move away from the threat of Siri’s sword in front of me, a deep crunch sounded from behind, and I heard the voice of a god there.

“I am already awake.”

W
ithout
a word, Kelos slid forward off of Siri’s blade.

Without a word, I caught him and laid him beside Faran.

Without a word, I rose to face my wife, drawing my swords as I did so.

Her eyes were full of smoke, her face blank. The only indication of any inner turmoil was the faintest of tremors in hands that I had never seen shake.

The god spoke from behind me again,
“Face me, Kingslayer. We have a deal still to make.”

My shroud fell without my wishing it and I could sense Triss trapped somewhere deep within my shadow unable to act or awaken. I could do nothing for him and I felt a great pressure to turn around as the word and the will of the god beat down upon me. I knew that I couldn’t hold out long against such a power, that in a moment I would have to turn away from Siri to face the god whether I wanted to or not. My only chance lay in working that to my advantage.

I took a deep breath and let it out, releasing my thoughts and emotions with the air in my lungs. I couldn’t afford to tip my hand in any way. I would get only one chance at this. Maybe. Even if I succeeded, I might well die. Either directly at the hand of the god, or by proxy with one of Siri’s swords in my back.

“I told you to face me.”

I felt the pressure of his command growing stronger, unbearable almost. My left foot began to pivot slowly against my will.

Now!

I converted my slow turn into a sharp spin, whipping my swords into position for a thrust straight at the god’s burning heart as I did so. But then the ring of smoke on my finger pulsed and I slowed, grinding to a near halt in mid-strike. My sword continued moving toward the god’s chest, but almost too slowly for me to perceive it. At the current rate, I might move a few inches in the next hour.

The Smoldering Flame was taller than Ash—eight feet maybe—and even more perfect of feature. But the Sylvani lord had appeared as one filled with the dimming light of the westering sun, pale but still noble. The power within the god was dark and sullen, like the red glow of coals ready for the torturer’s irons. His was a fire of the earth, reflecting his place among the fathers of the fathers of the Durkoth.

A narrow diadem of red-hot iron wrapped his brow, burning the skin beneath it crisp and black. Above, his head simply ended as thick smoke poured from the open top of his skull. It trailed down his back in a great cloak that rolled out behind him to form a yard’s long train.

A sleeveless shirt of iron rings glowed dully on his chest and back, and the skin beneath was as black and burnt as his brow. Likewise the skin of his hips and thighs where a short skirt of the same iron mail burned into his flesh. When he moved, raw red cracks opened in his skin, but if it hurt him he showed no sign. He shook his head gently now and crossed his arms like a disappointed father.

“Oh, child, did you really think that you could fool me? That I would not see the ploy in your mind and stop it before it could start? Truly? Speak.”

I felt the power that held my voice in near stasis with the rest of me ease. I didn’t particularly want to answer the god with anything but curses, but if the only tool allowed me was words, then I’d best use them. “I had hopes in that direction, yes.”

At the same time I sent,
Triss?
But he remained deep in his dreams of darkness, and the part of my will that might have roused him felt as cold and slow as my body.

“When you married the Siri, you married me in the same instant. I can see your heart more clearly than you can. I know how much you want to kill me, and still I would bargain with you. With
both
of you. Siri, come forward.”

Siri slid up beside me, her swords still frozen in thrust and guard, her hands shaking more visibly now as she fought against the god’s will. The Smoldering Flame stepped closer. That put his chest mere inches from my sword’s tip, but it might as well have been a league away for all the speed of my movements.

“I could take the key from you now and bind you to my will so deeply that you would barely even feel the chains. But I said that I wanted you willing, and I meant it. Worship me and I will give you the justice you long for. I will
be
Justice, and there will be a cleansing the likes of which this world has never known.”

“I will not serve Vengeance and call it just,” I said.

He shook his head.
“This is your last chance. Siri, you have known my touch for longer. Can you not convince your husband to our cause? It is time now to put aside your swords and come to me. They can but prevent me for the briefest of times. You must know that you can’t resist me forever.”

“No, I can’t. But then, I don’t have to.” With a sudden vicious twist, Siri brought her guarding sword down on her own forearm and said, “I divorce you, Aral.”

It shouldn’t have been enough, but it was. Flesh parted like water before the steel of the goddess, and Siri’s thrusting hand fell away. The hand that wore a ring of smoke, fading now as it lost its connection to her soul.

Before I could even realize what that meant, my own ring puffed away into nothingness, and the binding will of the god went with it. My body was my own again. My thrust, halted for so long, punched forward now, shearing through burning iron rings to find a home in divine flesh.

I felt the tip of my blade slide into the heart of a god. Felt as it continued onward to burst out through the charred skin of his back. As the mail there slowed but didn’t stop the impetus of my thrust. The guard of my sword slamming into his chest to finally stop my thrust. Searing pain as iron rings, heated to a red glow, branded my thumb and the knuckle of my first finger, forcing me to let go my hilt.

But none of that came close to the horrible sense of violation I felt when the god’s presence invaded my soul. As the Smoldering Flame died for the third time, I felt the essence of him come slithering up along the line of my blade to worm its way into my heart.

The god fell, landing hard on his back and driving my sword deep into the soil of the vale. In the same instant, Triss screamed in his dreams and my shadow shifted, becoming once again the familiar dragon shape. But something else had shifted as well, and wings that once were wholly dark now sported a line of faint smoke along their trailing edges. It wasn’t as dramatic as the feathers Kyrissa wore. Not yet, at least. But it would come. I could feel it in my bones, and there was only one way to stop it.

I reached for my sword. . . .

Siri caught my wrist with her one remaining hand and her grip was cold iron. “Aral! You can’t. Not that way. If you withdraw the sword he will rise again.”

Smoky worms crawled through my soul, polluting me in a way I could never have imagined. I turned to look at Siri hopelessly. “But, he’s . . . I can’t—”

“I know, Aral. I know. I know. No one better. You won’t have to. You need only abide it a few moments longer.”

I stopped trying to shake off Siri’s hand. I had said that I would walk into a fire for her. How could I refuse her the smoke? For the first time since the Smoldering Flame had fallen I actually looked at Siri.

Her left arm ended midway between hand and elbow, the stump covered by a thick layer of pure shadow where Kyrissa had made of herself both tourniquet and bandage. Her skin above the shadow was only a few shades lighter, but it was sheened with sweat, and I could only imagine the pain she was in. I lifted my eyes to meet Siri’s—they were clear of any hint of smoke—and I nodded slowly and deliberately.

She smiled back at me. “Thank you.” The smoke was gone from her hair as well.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked.

“Hand me my sword—the one I’m still holding on to. I’m a little shaky at the moment, or I’d get it myself.”

I bent down and pried the fingers of her severed hand free of the hilt. I was about to give it to her when I realized what she intended.

“Siri, you can’t.” I touched the smoke wisping along the edge of Triss’s nearer wing—he was trembling, but he didn’t say anything either aloud or mind-to-mind. “It’s too monstrous. You’re only just free of him now.”

“There is only one way to bind him for the long run, Aral. It’s your blade or mine, and, frankly, I’m not going to have much need of a second sword given this.” She touched her arm a few inches above the place that it ended.

I shook my head. “It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not. Give me my sword.”

But still I hesitated.

“Don’t make me make it an order.”

I reversed the sword and extended it to her, hilt first. “You don’t have to do this. I
will
bear this burden for you if you ask it of me.” It cost me dearly to make the offer, but I had to do it.

“I know that you would. That’s part of why I can’t ask.” She took the sword from me and drove it deep into the heart of a dead god. Smoke bloomed in her hair as she turned to face me again. “Your turn.”

As my sword slid free of the god’s chest, I felt the worms of his presence withdraw from my soul. It was like being born anew, fresh and clean and impossibly young again. Triss collapsed back into my shadow with a sigh, and I felt his awareness fade into the deep dormant state that he sometimes fell into when he needed time to recover from some trauma.

I sheathed my blades and turned back to Siri. “It’s inadequate to the moment, but thank you. I . . .”

She reached out and touched her finger to my lips. “I know.” She pushed her shoulders back in the manner of one settling a heavy pack into place. “We’ll talk of it later. For now, there’s still much to do, starting with the key.”

We both turned then, and . . . “Son of a fucking sow!” I yelled.

Siri snarled, “I should have killed him!”

Kelos was gone, and, with him, the key.

“I would have, too,” she said. “But I could feel that was what the god wanted of me. And so I aimed so very carefully. More fool me.” She shook her head. “Do you know how hard it is to thread the line beneath heart and lungs but over the lesser organs?”

“I’ve never tried it, but I can imagine. Dammit! We have to go after him.”

Siri shook her head again. “
You
have to go after him. The shape I’m in I’d only slow you down. That, and someone has to take care of Faran and getting the Smoldering Flame back into his tomb. But, we’ve no time. Go!”

I went, pulling my shroud around me as I sniffed out Kelos’s shadow trail.

*   *   *

How
can he keep going like this, hour after hour?
I sent.

He is Kelos.

For two days I had run along his backtrail never daring to slow or to sleep, lest he use the opportunity to break his scent or simply double back and remove me from the scene. He’d taken a god-damned sword through the torso, and he was still running fast enough to keep me from ever gaining more than a few seconds at a time on him. Some of that was my own injury. The dagger that slit my ribs hadn’t gone deep, but it was another of the cursed weapons of the cultists, and it bled slowly but relentlessly, robbing me of strength a drop at a time.

On the upside, we hadn’t yet had to contend with any cultists or other competitors for the key. Whether that was because of our encounter at the tomb of the Smoldering Flame, or because of something Siri was doing to draw attention, or if Kelos had some way to mask the presence of the key, I couldn’t say. All I could do was continue to lope along in my old mentor’s wake.

Aral?

Yes?

Unshroud your eyes and tell me what you see.

I did.
Oh hell.

That
is
the wall ahead, then? I wasn’t sure. It’s too bright for me even here under the trees.

It is. I wish I had some idea where old smoke and mirror’s tomb was so that I could tell you what part of the wall we’re seeing. But we could be anywhere between Tavan and the sea. Wherever we are, it’s a heavily populated section.

I pushed harder, forcing legs that felt like sacks of rice to move faster. I was not going to let Kelos take the key beyond the bounds of the empire if I could avoid it. As we got closer to the wall, the shadow trail started to angle to the left, aiming toward a place where the buildings thinned out. It grew fresher as well, which made me hope that the old bastard’s strength was finally waning.

Then, a few hundred yards short of the wall, I saw him. Or rather, I didn’t see a bush. One moment it was there. The next gone. Then back again. I was close, so very close. But not close enough. I
would
catch him but not before he got to the wall.

I think we’ve got him,
I sent.
If he can’t pick his pace up again, I’ll catch him within a mile of the other side.

Unless he’s got a last trick up his sleeve,
Triss sent glumly.
Something about the wall, maybe?

Who knows? But there’s nothing we can do about it.

I ran on, scanning ahead for signs of his blind spot. It ate another bush. Then a stand of taller grasses. Finally, when I was less than a hundred yards shy of the wall, it bit a piece out of the structure itself.