The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman (5 page)

So intense was her yearning that she did not recognize, at first, the knocking upon the door behind her. When it came again, louder and more insistent, her thoughts drew suddenly back into focus. Who could be calling upon her at this hour?

With her next breath, a chill seeped through her.
Allion.
Something had happened to him. What else could it be?

Fighting down a sense of panic, she belted her robe and strode toward the chamber door, tucking the Pendant away. Her only hesitation came at the doorway to her adjacent bedchamber, where she glanced through to see the Sword hanging from one of her bedposts. She started to go for it when the knock sounded yet again, and the voice of her guardsman carried through the oaken portal.

“My lady?”

Neglecting the talisman, she moved up against the door to answer. “I’m awakened, Bearer. What is it?”

“Ah, my lady. Forgive me, but you have a visitor: the young Master Pagus. He claims it cannot wait.”

Pagus. Allion’s only accomplice in this night’s endeavor. Her heart beat faster.

“Shall I send him away, my lady?”

“Let me hear his voice.”

“It is I, my lady.”

Taking a deep breath, she removed the bolt and opened the door a crack. Pagus stood just beyond her sentry’s warding pike, eyeing her urgently.

“You may admit him, Bearer.”

“As you will, my lady.”

A moment later, she bolted the door and asked the question to which she feared an answer. “What has happened?”

The chief herald shifted nervously. “Forgive me, my lady, I thought…I mean I—”

“Pagus, look at me. Is Allion all right?”

“Master Allion is fine, my lady, or was when I left him. But…”

“But what? What have you come to tell me?”

He met her gaze at last. “Elder Thaddreus, my lady. He came to me just
a few short hours ago, was waiting for me in my chambers, actually. He asked…My lady, he asked about the Sword. He wished to know if Master Allion had taken it.”

She glanced again to where the weapon hung in the adjacent chamber. Pagus’s eyes followed. “I see. And what did you tell him?”

“I lied, my lady. I told him that it was with Master Allion. He expressed concern that the blade be kept safe. But I…” His eyes fell.

“Tell me, Pagus.”

“I believe he is up to something, my lady. I cannot say why, but I have a terrible feeling. It was the way he looked at me. He wanted so badly to know where it was—the Sword, I mean. He claims Rogun will try to take it, but I’m not sure that is the sole reason for his interest.”

He stared at her for a moment, then looked to his feet as if feeling suddenly foolish.

“I’m sorry, my lady. I should not have disturbed your rest. But I couldn’t sleep. I thought you should—”

“You were right to tell me, Pagus,” she said, cupping his chin with her hand. “We’ve no one but ourselves to count on. While the speaker’s concern for the Sword comes as no surprise, it troubles me that he should try to use you so.” She smiled reassuringly. “Go now. Get some sleep. Let me worry about the speaker and any others who may take an interest in what does not belong to them.”

The boy nodded uncertainly. “Yes, my lady.”

She ushered him toward the door and drew back the bolt. “Off to bed, then.”

She had only barely cracked the portal ajar when it flew inward, smacking Pagus in the chin and sending him sprawling back into her. A stream of bodies came pouring through, clad in armor and with weapons drawn. No sooner had she landed on her back than the tip of a sword was leveled at her throat.

She glared at her assailant—a city guardsman—then looked to the doorway, where the body of her sentry was being dragged inside by a pair she recognized as City Elders. Blood washed his throat and chest, glistening in the firelight.

Then Thaddreus entered, closing the door gently behind him.

Marisha tried to cry for help, but the shifting swordsman smothered her shriek with his gloved hand.

“If she screams again, kill the boy,” Thaddreus ordered coldly.

She looked to Pagus, certain she had been betrayed. The young herald, sitting upright with the tip of a pike pressed against the back of his neck, stared back at her with frantic eyes.

“If
he
should do so,” Thaddreus added, addressing one of the dagger-wielding Elders, “cut off her feet.”

Four henchmen in all: the pikeman warding Pagus, the swordsman at her back, the City Elder at her feet—Ashwar, if she wasn’t mistaken—and the
other, Emric, who had helped drag her sentry inside. The latter stood beside Thaddreus, her guardsman’s blood upon his dagger.

“Better still,” Thaddreus decided, “gag them both while I search the chambers.”

Marisha’s thoughts raced. Fool that she’d been, she’d left the Sword hanging in full view. She had only seconds in which to act before Thaddreus—or perhaps the man who had once been Thaddreus—lay claim.

The blade at her neck fell away as the swordsman stuffed a rag in her mouth and, with a heavy cord, roped it in place. Now was her chance, but if she were to resist, would she not be sentencing Pagus to death?

Her gaze shifted back to the boy. Seeing the conflict in her face, he made the decision for her.

“No!” he shouted through his own gag, lunging from beneath the pike and drawing his knife.

As the others looked to the boy’s distraction, Marisha rolled to her knees and elbowed her captor in the mouth.

Pagus’s muffled cry spurred her on. “Run!”

Her hands and feet dug at the carpet as she raced toward her bedchamber. Thaddreus had a step on her, but he too had stopped to look back on his captives. His hesitation allowed her to barrel past with a shove, leaving him to stumble and trip on his robes.

Once inside the next room, she seized the Sword and tossed aside its sheath. Thaddreus had recovered by then, but skidded to a halt, gripping the inner doorframe lest he impale himself upon the Sword’s tip. Awash with the euphoria the talisman unleashed within her, Marisha advanced, forcing him back into the receiving chamber, her first thought that Pagus needed her.

The young chief herald had done a remarkable job against those trying to kill him. The swordsman assigned to her, along with Elder Ashwar, had come up behind Thaddreus and were ignoring the lad, but it was still two to one against him. As she rejoined the fray, Pagus tore his knife from where it twisted in the side of the pikeman, then slipped a strike from Elder Emric before gashing the man’s leg from behind. Whirling around in the same movement, Pagus plunged his blade into the Elder’s heart.

The dagger came free, and the boy searched for his next target. He froze, however, upon seeing Marisha with the Sword. In that moment’s delay, the pikeman seized him from behind, pressing the haft of his weapon against Pagus’s throat and pinning the lad tight against his armored chest.

Pagus thrashed and squirmed as Emric, who should have been dead, rose from his knees. The Elder did not strike right away, but looked to Thaddreus. When Thaddreus nodded, Emric reversed grip upon his own dagger and threw a forearm across the boy’s stomach, blade leading. Pagus’s belly opened, and steaming entrails spilled forth.

Marisha screamed against the gag in her mouth. Pagus’s eyes watered as
they remained locked on hers. His knife slipped from his hand. When he tried to speak, only blood poured from his lips.

The pikeman held firm until the body went slack, then let it slump to the floor.

“See what you have done, my lady?” Thaddreus teased, retreating toward the fallen boy while all four of his henchmen fanned to either side.

Eyes still fixed on the ghastly sight, Marisha kept the Sword raised and held her ground, even as the noose tightened.

“Surrender the blade, and the same need not happen to you. We can make it quick, and for the most part painless. Else we can suffocate you with your own screams.”

Marisha reached up to tear at the gag, but it was too tight. Meanwhile, the guardsman who had tied it tested her defenses. The Sword swept out, driving him back, before arcing around to discourage Ashwar, on her opposite flank. Both men sneered, yet their hatred was unmistakable.

She let the gag be, knowing that she would never loosen the knot with a single hand, and gripped the Sword with both.

Thaddreus continued to mock her. “Come, my lady, you are no swordsman.”

Neither are you
, she thought, recalling her earlier exchange with Allion.

But her own doubts weighed on her. She was a healer, not a fighter. She knew the basic forms of dagger and shortsword, but her meager skill did not encompass broadswords. Even with two hands upon its hilt, the Sword of Asahiel felt much too big for her, its heft and reach awkward and unwieldy. Were it not for its divine influence, she was certain she would already be dead.

She tried at once to banish the thought. She knew from experience—both hers and Torin’s—that the blade acted as an extension of the bearer’s will. Only the gods could tell her how, exactly. But she understood well enough to know that the weapon’s power would not compensate for her own uncertainty.

“Perhaps you mean to hold us at bay until help arrives,” Thaddreus taunted. “If that is the case, I fear you are in for a long night.”

Again he was right. Whatever sentries might have spied them at this late hour would have given little thought to their dealings. A trio of City Elders, escorted by a pair of Fasor, was hardly cause for alarm.

Her adversaries closed further. The sound of her own breathing sawed in her ears, harsh and ragged. Her question as to whether these were traitors or Illychar had been answered. Against the five of them, what chance did she have?

A wielder of the Crimson Sword never tired. And yet it seemed to grow heavier in her hands as the cold truth bowed her shoulders.
Allion
, she thought hopelessly,
forgive me.

“Take her!”

Somehow, she rose to meet their charge. In a whirlwind of motion, they
came at her, various weapons cleaving the air at odd angles. The swordsman died first. He knew there would be no trading blows, and so executed a high feint before driving his weapon around in a low arc. Marisha ignored the former and cut short the latter, sending his blade off in pieces and his head rolling after.

Daggers whistled past her ears as she dodged and spun. Ashwar fell, clutching his severed leg. The pikeman tore a hole in her fluttering robe, but missed her flesh. When the tip struck the wall, she split its shaft with a downward arc, then swept around and whipped a stroke across his back. Crimson flames erupted along the blade as it sliced through leather and mail like sodden parchment, skin and bone like air. The cut was so swift and clean that the torso did not slide from its perch until the legs had toppled.

The flames licked blood from blade and retreated within, leaving the talisman unblemished, its radiance undimmed.

Emric struck her with a lowered shoulder, slashing wildly. She fell back a step, onto a central rug. Another slash drew blood from her forearm. She could have prevented it, but sensed in the instant before it happened the small price it would exact. Marisha paid it gladly in order to raise the Sword high and bring it crashing down upon her assailant’s head.

A perfect strike would have cleaved the man from crown to groin. But her focus on him had been so strong that she hadn’t considered her feet. A sudden jerk by Thaddreus tore the rug out from under her, causing her to stumble. Her killing stroke slid sideways, exiting at Emric’s waist as she fell. When her hands separated in an instinctive effort to catch herself, that which clutched the Sword struck the edge of a table.

The blade skittered from her grasp and hit the floor on the other side.

The savage euphoria left her as if the wind had been blasted from her lungs. The warmth from the Pendant seemed but a distant reminder of its rush. She rolled to her feet, but slipped in a river of blood. Thaddreus was diving for the Sword again. She scrabbled desperately, even flung aside a vase and toppled an impeding chair, but was too late. Her fingers brushed the blade as Thaddreus seized it by the hilt and snatched it away.

He crouched there for a moment, gaping as if astounded by the waves of power now coursing through him. As he rose, Marisha found herself backing away in helpless denial.

“It is more wondrous than I’d imagined,” Thaddreus wheezed.

Marisha knew what he meant. Witnessing the blade, bathing in its aura, was nothing compared to handling it. Even that, she knew, was an experience largely affected by the glory one attributed to it—explaining why strangers in a room might not even recognize its presence, and a man who knew nothing of the talisman could carry it without feeling a thing.

The former First Elder, it seemed, knew well what he had attained, and was enraptured by the prospects.

“Ceilhigh be praised,” he said. “With this, their world becomes mine.”

Marisha had no response. She considered trying to rush past him for the
exit, but a step in that direction brought his focus back to her.

“My world might have a queen,” he suggested with a lewd smile.

She stepped away from him, back toward the balcony. Bodies twitched throughout the chamber. Ashwar, whose leg she had taken, clawed at the floor in anguish and fury, struggling to rise. She had killed the rest, but had failed to slay Thaddreus. And with that, she had failed all.

The First Elder came forward, and Marisha hastened her retreat. Before she knew it, she stood outside upon the terrace, pressed up against the balustrade.

“Don’t be foolish,” Thaddreus hissed. “’Tis not as you fear. Eternal life, for but a moment’s pain. A just trade.”

Tears and sweat stung Marisha’s eyes. All she could think of was what a fool she had already been. She never should have allowed Allion to leave. She should have fought better, been stronger, when she’d had the chance. Now, her only option seemed clear.

She risked a quick glance over the stone rail. A deep pond lay far below, but its area was small and ringed with boulders. Should she jump, she just might make it. But if her aim proved poor…