Six Celestial Swords (59 page)

Tristus felt weak in his shock, and took a step back to avoid falling down.

Xu Liang hesitated, angling his lovely head thoughtfully. “Do I alarm you, Tristus Edainien?”

“Y-yes,” Tristus stammered. Then he shook his head. “No. I mean…I don’t...”

The smallest of smiles formed on the mystic’s lips. “I knew you were a person worthy of my trust. The others would have abandoned me, but you stayed.”

Tristus wanted to speak on behalf of the others, but he couldn’t bring himself to contradict Xu Liang at this moment. He was mystified in his presence, so relieved to see him well, to see that he wasn’t angry with him.

The mystic came forward again, and Tristus stood frozen, seeing something in Xu Liang’s eyes that frightened him as much as it thrilled him. Could Shirisae have been right? Was there some chance that Xu Liang could love him?

This can’t be true
, Tristus argued with himself.
This can’t...

Xu Liang came within an arm’s reach. He took two more small steps, then stopped, standing so near that Tristus felt enveloped in his presence. His heart rattled and his breath faltered.

“You are alarmed,” the mystic noted quietly, reaching out. He carefully touched Tristus’ face, letting his cool fingers glide down to his chin. “I’ve seen the longing in your eyes,” he whispered and Tristus began to tremble uncontrollably. “I know what is in your heart…for it is in mine as well.”

Tristus couldn’t believe his ears, nor did he trust his aching body, filled with so much love and desire that he almost collapsed. Something wasn’t right. Xu Liang was too proud to come to him like this. He wouldn’t...

The mystic interrupted the thought with his continued approach. Tristus closed his eyes, held by what he wanted, over what he believed to be possible. He could feel the warmth of Xu Liang’s lips before they touched him, just before a sensation of wrong that was too great to ignore jolted him alert.

He snapped back, devastated by the shocked and angry look on Xu Liang’s face as he did the unthinkable in rejecting him.

And then his world came to a horrifying halt, when he realized that the source of Xu Liang’s anger was not his rejection, but an attack from Alere, who’d come out of nowhere and driven
Aerkiren
through the mystic’s back. Tristus was screaming, even as the image shattered, revealing a young man with a scar across his left cheek in Xu Liang’s place.

Tristus sank to the floor afterward, too confused to be angry—too horrified to be consumed by the fire within him. His condition only worsened when the stranger turned with Alere’s blade still in him and seized the elf by the throat.

“It would seem that I underestimated you,” the man said, his breath forming red bubbles through the blood on his lips. With his other hand he lifted his own black sword and braced the tip against Alere’s chest.

Tristus moved without thinking. Lurching forward, he swung
Dawnfire
in a low arc and swept the man’s feet out from under him. As the stranger fell, he dropped Alere, who managed not to fall on his opponent’s sword, or his own, which now stuck farther out of the man’s chest after he landed on his back.

Tristus rose quickly to pin the stranger, who refused death.

“He has the Night Blade!” the elf choked, and Tristus quickly lifted
Dawnfire
away from the man, who was raising his own weapon as if to display the fact Alere had given.

“Yes,” he chuckled, sitting up.

An unseen force seemed to be pushing Tristus further off him while his attention was on keeping the Blades from coming against one another.

“And now...I have the Twilight Blade as well.” The man rose slowly, keeping his opponents at bay with the black blade extended. “Give me the Dawn Blade, boy, and I will allow you to live out your days in a blissful dream state. Spend your last hours in arms that will never love you in life. If you force me to take the Blade, I will make certain your death is a long, miserable torture.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Alere warned.

“I know,” Tristus returned, unable to take offense at the elf’s estimate of his resolve. He was too absorbed in wondering how to kill a man that wouldn’t die, who was backing away from both of them slowly.

In the next instant, a dagger shot through the air, like a bolt of silver light.

The man lifted the Night Blade in front of him in response, and the eerie energy looming about the weapon caught the projectile, swiftly turning it about and sending it back to the elf who had thrown it.

Alere flinched aside, clutching his arm after the dagger glided past his shoulder. “If you are so confident, why don’t you finish us now?”

The stranger laughed. “You cannot provoke me! I have you where I want you, elf! I know you will not leave here without your precious
Aerkiren
! Perhaps in a hundred years, I will let you look upon it again, as it does to you what it has done to me. I doubt, however, that you will survive that moment.”

Tristus had heard and seen enough. He stood, dropped
Dawnfire
on the floor, and stepped confidently toward the stranger. While the man looked on in amusement, Tristus drew his sword of the Order, and held it calmly in front of him. He said evenly, “You are going nowhere. Your game has ended.”

The man spat blood on him. “You have chosen a slow death, boy!”

Tristus wiped the spittle away from his cheek with his glove, keeping his eyes on the man…or whatever his state made him. He was expecting the attack that followed, but he was unprepared for the transformation that preceded it.

Within seconds, the form of the man peeled away, like a snake’s shed skin, leaving the grotesque image of a demon with eyes that instantly terrified. He knew too well where he had seen those eyes before. He stared helplessly while the man stood straight, displaying his full height—which now easily matched Fu Ran’s—then flexed leathery wings, snapping them out of their fold against his back and making the glowing blade that protruded from his chest more apparent.

The demon came forward in a rushed series of strokes that Tristus found himself hard-pressed to beat back. He felt the energy of each blow. He heard it strike a dull ring in his ears. The sound made his skull ache while the force of the attack soundly tested his endurance. The beast was driving him back with the Night Blade, and with its strength, and with the madness in its haunting yellow eyes.

Tristus passed beneath a doorway and became briefly aware of the outdoors as snowflakes landed on his face, but his concentration remained on the demon and the Night Blade, which struck chords of terror deep within him with every blow. He saw only the demon’s hellish gaze, and acted with unconscious instinct when it dealt a blow that sent him reeling backward.

He reached out and grabbed hold of the demon’s wing. It issued a soul-rending shriek, adding Tristus’ heart to the rush of organs seeming to crowd in his throat, strangling his scream as he toppled over the balcony railing…toward the mist below, through a heavy orange haze, and into the dark, stinking water beneath it.

ALERE STRUGGLED TO his feet, touching his aching throat, as if the contact would make it easier to swallow after Vorhaven’s near crushing grip. He hadn’t been expecting such strength, but now it was all clear. Vorhaven himself was a demon. He was different from the others, but he had not been unaffected by his own curse. Perhaps he had simply refused to accept it. Whatever the case, it hardly mattered now. The demon had just gone over the edge of the balcony with Tristus. It would surely kill the knight if the fall didn’t.

Alere retrieved
Dawnfire
and hurried toward the balcony, emerging outside just as Shirisae did the same. He could not say where she had come from, where she had been while Tristus was being attacked by Vorhaven’s mind tricks, but he had no time to question. Their surroundings altered again when they arrived at the balustrade.

They found themselves on a smaller balcony now, one overlooking the bog in front of the stone house in the Deepwood. Alere watched without displaying the apprehension he felt as the foul water stirred below. Shirisae appeared to be doing the same in the corner of his vision.

The knight eventually surfaced, but he was not alone.

TRISTUS CLAWED HIS way to firmer ground ahead of the demon, gasping for air, grabbing up fistfuls of mud and snow. Something grabbed his leg. He turned over and kicked, shocked almost to stillness, seeing what his boot drove into. The giant serpent—eyeless and nearly without features—pulled back one of more than a dozen whip-like tendrils reflexively, then began flailing the many overlong limbs about in a blind search for its prey. A round mouth at the top end was open wide, displaying many circular rows of long, narrow teeth.

A strangled gasp of disbelief escaped Tristus, and he began to push himself away from the water’s edge, horrified as the tendrils snaked onto land and wound about him. He found his dagger and began to slash at the slick black appendages, forcing the worm to moan when it bled, and eventually to recoil, but not before it successfully dragged him half into the bog again. Tristus dug his arms into the cold, soft earth and the worm ultimately submerged without its intended meal.

The surface of the water never quite stilled in the moment’s respite that followed. Tristus thought for an instant that the worm had come back when a black form broke the slimy surface and shot into the sky. He realized as the lean, muscular shape came down on him that it was the demon. It landed hard, pinning him beneath its weight and one clawed hand, which clamped viciously around his throat. The other arm raised its obsidian blade above its head.

“Die!” the demon commanded, and Tristus thought that he might oblige it, before the creature’s head suddenly flew off its shoulders.

The body slumped forward immediately afterward, driving the Night Blade into the wet earth beside Tristus’ head while it retained its grip on the weapon, even in death. The tip of
Aerkiren
struck Tristus’ breastplate, but did not penetrate.

Tristus was thanking God, even as the demon’s reeking life fluid washed over his armor, staining it black. He realized when a shadow fell over him, that God was not who he needed to be thanking just at the moment—not God alone, at any rate.

Guang Ci stabbed his sword into the earth, jerked
Aerkiren
out of the demon’s back with a determined twist, then placed the Blade down and silently began lifting the dead shadow beast off of Tristus.

Tristus helped when his limbs were free, and accepted the bodyguard’s assistance to his feet after they rolled the foul corpse into the bog. Something, presumably the worm, rolled just beneath the surface afterward, perhaps to claim the remains of the demon for itself.

Tristus bent over when his stomach protested the excitement along with the stench of the bog and of the demon. He braced his hands on his knees and concentrated strictly on breathing for several moments.

“Guang Ci,” he said eventually. Even knowing the guard’s understanding ended there, he continued. “I owe you my life. Please accept my thanks.”

The guard scarcely regarded him. The Fanese man swiftly picked up a sword and placed himself in front of Tristus while several dark shapes sank through the fiery haze that had been cast just above them by the torches.

Tristus straightened slowly, still finding it difficult to breathe normally. The fear that had never left him renewed itself full, though it was swiftly being overshadowed by utter exhaustion. “God...have mercy.”

God did not seem to be listening. In a heartbeat, the Keirveshen were on them.

Tristus searched for a weapon. He was about to reach for
Aerkiren
when its rightful bearer hollered down at him from the balcony. Tristus looked in time to see
Dawnfire
soaring in his direction. He reached out and somehow managed to catch the weapon single-handedly. He considered returning the favor, but when he looked back to the balcony, he saw Alere vaulting over the railing.

The elf landed lightly, almost catlike, on his feet. Tristus threw Alere his Blade, just in time for him to wield it against an eager pair of winged demons. A quick glance let him know that Shirisae would be facing her opponents on the balcony. Tristus wished he could be up there to help her, but he realized quickly enough that she did not require his assistance—and he had his own troubles on the ground, besides.