War of the Fathers (23 page)

I’ve killed a man.
The pain in his face became
numb. Slowly, through the numbness, through the pain, he remembered Soret. He
had to get her back to the arch and get to Rarbon; he couldn’t allow Thon to
defeat him.

Jorad tried to reach into his pocket with his right
hand but couldn’t move it because Thon was kneeling on it. With his left, he
was able to grab a dagger. Through his blood covered eyes and the continuing
beating from Thon’s remaining fist he caught a glimpse of Thon’s face. It was
contorted beyond recognition while he screamed. Losing a hand would have been
enough to stop another man, but not Thon.

It was too bad the man hated him. He could have been a
great ally.

Jorad’s hand closed around the handle of the dagger.
Summoning his strength, he plunged it into Thon’s massive chest, causing him to
scream. It was blood curdling, but Jorad wrenched out the dagger and plunged it
in again and again, until Thon stopped hitting him. He pushed Thon off and
scrambled for his blaster. He avoided looking at Thon’s chest which was now covered
in blood as his life ebbed away. As Jorad reached for his blaster, he felt the
blade of a sword against his neck.

Jorad had forgotten about Erro.

Erro pressed the blade against Jorad's skin, but for
some reason he hesitated. Jorad grabbed the blaster and aimed at Erro, only now
did he realize that Soret stood to the side of them.

“Don’t do this,” Soret said. “I'll never forgive you.”

Jorad wasn’t sure if she meant Erro or him, but he
pushed Erro’s sword away and got to his feet. Having just watched Jorad kill
two people she’d grown up with, he doubted that she’d be forgiving him anytime
soon.

“We know a way out.” Jorad backed away from Erro’s
blade. “You’re free to come with us.” He was surprised that after all that had
happened, his anger at Erro had dissipated. He’d been planning to make sure
Erro learned to not mess with him, but now as he looked at Erro, drenched in
the rain, he knew that he couldn’t go through with it.

“I'll kill you,” Erro said.

Tarner yelled while continuing to fire. “Run, Jorad!
Leave the girl if you have too!” Hunwei were now flooding into the street.

“Run Erro.” Jorad looked at Thon a final time. He wasn't
breathing. “Run if you want to live.” Jorad turned to the others. “Did Melyah
rob you of all sense? Run!” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tarner but
then he disappeared into the mass of people.

“Jorad, you killed Gorew and Thon. You’re covered in
blood.” Soret shivered and looked away. Guilt swelled up in him but he refused
to pay it heed.

“RUN!” Both Barc and Soret stood frozen. Jorad wanted
to scream in frustration. Instead, he grabbed Soret’s hand, shouldered Barc out
of the way, and dragged her behind him. He looked into an alley, saw it was
clear and ran in.

It had taken Adar and Tere the better part of half an
hour to get to the archive on the second floor. During that time, they still
hadn't been able to find Karn and they'd managed to kill another group of
Hunwei. During his years in exile, Adar had sometimes wondered what it would be
like when the Hunwei came back. He'd never once thought that the person at his
back would end up being Tere. He’d expected that it would be Jorad and had
spent countless hours training Jorad on what he would need to do when the time
came. As much as Adar hated to admit it, he could have been stuck with a worse
person. At least he knew how Tere fought and what he could expect.

After the first battle downstairs, they’d settled into
a sort of rhythm that they’d used in the years past. Adar would take the lead
while Tere watched the rear and then after they advanced for a bit, they would
switch. It had been their habit to keep them both alert to their surroundings
by constantly changing up their role. They’d settled right down into it again,
without even a spoken word between them. Working together with Tere reminded
Adar of what it had been like when they had still been in training. Back then,
they had been inseparable. As much as Adar wanted to let Tere back into his
life, he knew that it would be a mistake.

Now, as Adar watched constantly for an attack from
Tere, he couldn’t help but wonder what he would have thought back then if he’d
known that more than twenty years later they’d be just a hair away from killing
one another. He shook his head and pushed away the sentimental feelings, there
was no going back.

He’d been wrong to trust Tere before and it would be
wrong to do it again. During his time in Rarbon, Adar had never been able to
find out for certain, but he’d come to believe that Tere had been Abel’s man
from the beginning, specifically assigned to befriend Adar and become his
confidante. Every time that Adar had thought that he was closing in on the
truth about Tere’s allegiances, he’d been unable to prove the connection;
something had always obfuscated the truth. It was only now, in the face of the
knowledge that Tere had been looking for him all these years at the behest of Abel
that Adar had finally decided that he could deny the truth no longer. Tere was
sworn to Abel and always had been.

Adar took a deep breath and had to keep from gagging
as he stepped over the Hunwei he'd just killed to get to the door of the
archive. The smell of burned Hunwei flesh was disgusting. The town hall was
swarming with the monsters. Even though they’d gotten the drop on some of the
Hunwei and made quick work of them, more than once they'd been forced to turn
and run. Adar hadn’t realized how big this building was until now. They’d
gotten lost twice.

“Help me pull him in here?” Adar asked, motioning to
the dead Hunwei at his feet. Leaving the body in the hall would be as good as
hanging a sign announcing their presence.

Tere nodded and grabbed a leg as Adar took the other. The
fresh corpse made it pliable enough to drag but it was heavy; Adar estimated
that it weighed about four hundred pounds. As they pulled, the body left behind
a blue trail of blood on the floor. Adar looked around for something to wipe it
up with but couldn’t find anything. Leaving the blood smear wasn't ideal but at
least the body would be out of sight. Once they were through the doorway, they
pulled the body to the side of the room.

Adar shut the door and looked around the room and was
happy to see that the Hunwei hadn’t been through it yet, or if they had, they’d
left it largely untouched. Many of the books had fallen off the shelves, some
of the windows were broken, and one of the freestanding bookshelves had toppled
over against the back wall, but that looked like it had all been the result of
the explosions, some of which had been close enough to the building that the
whole structure had shook.

Adar approached the third safe and looked through the
key hole. He couldn’t make out anything inside, but he could have sworn he'd
seen light glinting off some metal. He closed his eyes and became certain that
he was just imagining things now. Wanting something bad enough made a man start
seeing it in the shadows; nobody knew that better than him. There was only one
thing to do, he took the blaster and leveled it at a hinge. He fired a shot that
caused the safe to fly into the wall. The blast had replaced the hinge with a
gaping hole.

“What are you doing?” Tere demanded. “You’re going to
destroy the tablet!”

“What did you think we were going to do? I don’t have
the key.” Adar reached into the hole and felt around. He began pulling things out,
much of it was jewelry and gold coin, there were several other artifacts but
nothing resembling Deren’s tablet. He tossed everything onto the floor and
continued to dig until he’d emptied out everything he could reach. Aiming from
above, he took out the other hinge while putting a large hole into the floor in
the process.

Tere spoke through clenched teeth. “With all this
blasting, the Hunwei are going to hear you and come looking.”

Adar didn’t answer. After emptying everything he could
reach through the new hole—there was now a small fortune on the floor—he began
struggling with the door but he was unable to lift it by himself.

He grunted. “Stop standing there and help me.”

Shaking his head and looking at the door to the
hallway more than once, Tere came over to help but after several attempts, they
still weren’t able to move the door. From out in the hallway there was the
sound of running footsteps and Adar recognized the heavy boots of a Hunwei. He
was glad they had moved the body because the footsteps continued past the door.

“It’s time,” Tere said, there was a sense of finality
to the statement that sent chills down Adar’s back. The words seemed to have a
dual meaning and Adar met Tere’s gaze for a few seconds before looking away.
Adar certainly wouldn’t put it past Tere to try something now but they were dependent
on each other for their survival. With a shake of his head, Adar looked away
but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Tere was going to come at him,
regardless of how things went today. He was tempted to bring up his blaster and
take Tere down now, but he refrained. That was one line he’d never crossed,
though he’d certainly been tempted multiple times. He’d killed many people, but
always in defense of himself or someone else. 

Adar brought up his blaster, causing Tere to step
back, but he didn’t aim for Tere. Instead, he fired another shot into the top
of the safe. If he destroyed the tablet, at least he’d keep it from the Hunwei.
He doubted they would know what to do with it, but he didn’t want to take the
chance. When the smoke settled, he set down his blaster and dug in with his
hand, ignoring the heat from the blasted metal. He added more items to the
fortune on the floor until his hand touched a rectangular object. He pulled out
a small shiny piece of metal that was pocket sized and embossed with the
ancient symbol for the number nine.

“It’s here.” Adar held it up and the room changed as
an illusion spread out from the tablet. Pictures, words, and sounds spun around
him. At first, he couldn’t understand what he was seeing and for a moment, he
could have sworn one of the images resembled Vigorock. There it was again. Adar
reached out and touched the image.

The spinning stopped and Vigorock froze in place,
expanding in size until it took up several feet of space as it hung in the air.
This was just like the globe in the Arches, only he was standing in the middle
of the globe and looking out. He began to feel his heart sinking. Had he come
all this way to find a navigational device like the one contained in the
Arches? He was disoriented until he realized that he was looking at Vigorock
from a bird’s eye view and that it was surrounded by a crowd. On closer
inspection, he recognized that it was an army of Hunwei. Well, this was
different from the globe in the Arches, but what did it mean? Was this a vision
from the past? A historical record of some sort?

A loud piercing sound came from the tablet and the air
above the illusion flashed with a word. It took him a few seconds to recognize
the ancient word for warning, or at least that is what he guessed it meant. His
time studying with Semal had been limited to preparing for the return of the
Hunwei and he’d been unable to learn all the things that he would have liked to
know. He reached towards the word and it changed when he touched it in the air,
now it sounded like the tablet was asking him a question. He frowned. Was it
possibly asking him if he wanted to arm Vigorock? That might be a stretch, but
everything he knew about the tower claimed that it was a weapon. He’d heard
that the tablet was a weapon as well, but what if the story was only half
right? What if the tablet was the way to control the weapons of their fathers?

If his theory was right that Vigorock was a weapon and
the tablet was somehow showing him what was happening there at the moment, then
it would require some sort of action for him before the weapon was activated.

“Yes,” he said, wondering what it would do but nothing
happened. He realized that he should answer in the ancient dialect so he spoke
“yes” again but this time in the language of his fathers. He didn’t know many
words, but he did know that one.

The voice spoke again and this time he recognized the
translation easily. “Weapon is armed.” It was lucky for him that he tended to
remember the military related words from his time with Semal.

The image zoomed out and he focused on the globe of
the world that surrounded him, his heart was racing as he noticed this representation
of the globe was different from the Arches. It represented different places with
the towers that were similar to Vigorock. If Vigorock was a weapon, perhaps the
tower in front of the town hall was too. He reached out and touched the tower
that he thought represented Zecarani on the globe.

There was a swirl of colors as the image changed again
and he was looking at the town hall and the smaller tower out front. Just like
before, he could see Hunwei milling around the field. The warning sounded and
he spoke the ancient word for yes again.

“Weapon is armed.”

Adar yelled with satisfaction as the image disappeared,
leaving the globe surrounding him again. He began to rack his brain. He’d never
paid much attention to the towers until he’d seen Vigorock, but he’d seen those
towers before in other towns. As he tried to remember where, he noticed a
reflection off the shiny surface of the tablet and dropped to the floor.

He was unable to avoid Tere’s sword as it cut into his
side, but it wasn’t the mortal wound it could have been. As he fell, he dropped
the tablet and the illusions disappeared.

When he rolled back to his feet, he brought his sword
out at the same time and ducked another blow and attacked. Even with the wound
in his side, he was confident that he would take Tere. Their swords met and
Adar looked into Tere’s resentful eyes. Without a word, Adar brought another
swing that Tere was barely able to block. The sound of the swords striking sung
through the air and had a calming effect on Adar. As the fight continued, they
moved around the room and Tere was forced to focus on defending against Adar’s
attacks.

While they continued to exchange blows, Adar ground
his teeth as he thought about the madness of the situation. The world was
falling apart, the Hunwei were about to overrun them, and here they were
wasting strength fighting each other. He spared a glance out one of the nearby
rain-covered windows that had managed to survive the explosions intact. Not to
mention the weapon that he’d just armed. How long would it be before it went
into effect? How far away did they need to be?

He went cold inside and nearly dropped his sword,
allowing Tere to get closer to him than he would have liked. He blocked an
attack from Tere as his thoughts whirled through his mind. What about the
people of Zecarani? He hadn’t thought of that when he armed the weapon. What
would happen to them?

“All this time. Have you never suspected?” Tere’s
voice was quiet but cut like a sharp knife through very thin cloth. Adar looked
at Tere waiting for him to continue. He’d prepared for this moment for a long
time. Could it really be? Was Tere about to confess? If he was going to do that
it was because he knew that he was losing and wanted to upset Adar, in a vain
hope to make Adar act irrationally.

Tere knocked a table over between them and used the
distraction to scoop up Deren's tablet. Without looking at it, he put it into
his pocket.

“I killed Nelion.”

Despite his expectation of the words and even knowing
that Tere had uttered them in an effort to manipulate him, all calm and control
fled from Adar. His blood boiled with rage. His heart beat with revenge.
Screaming, he charged Tere. At the same time, the door opened and several
Hunwei stepped inside. He caught the movement out of the corner of his eye but
didn’t care.

Tere would die today.

Adar stabbed his sword at Tere who deflected the hit
to keep it from taking him in the neck. The blade went into his shoulder
instead. Adar twisted the sword out and dove to the floor as the Hunwei brought
up their weapons. From the floor, he was able to cut Tere’s leg, but he lacked
proper leverage to do significant damage.

Tere ran to the closest window, broke it with his
sword, and jumped headfirst through the shards of glass that remained in the
window. Blasts filled the space where Tere had been moments before as Adar
crawled behind the fallen table, his ears ringing. Several feet away, lay one
of his blasters where he'd dropped it after shooting the safe. He briefly
wondered why Tere hadn’t killed him with a blaster instead of the sword but
didn’t dwell on it as he scrambled towards the blaster, grabbed it, and turned
to face the two Hunwei.