Darkened Blade: A Fallen Blade Novel (12 page)

“Altia is . . . my fault. Entirely. She’s smart, and she’s
efficient, as you’ve seen today. But she lacks the proper ruthlessness a Blade needs. In that, she reminds me of you at twelve or thirteen, Aral. Ultimately, the temple trained the worst of that out of you, but I haven’t done the same for her. She was the first of the children that I rescued—not even a year after the fall—and I have coddled her because of my own pain. If she’d had to live on her own for a time, she might be stronger now, but she was lucky there, too. A band of Rovers found her scant days after the temple’s ruin. She has been too much sheltered, I think.”

“But if you had to make the decision right now?” I asked. “If this was the one chance to give or deny her her swords for at least the next few years?”

“I would hand them over and I would pray that I had done the right thing.”

“That leaves only Malok, then.” I took a deep breath and nodded. “We go west. If we can find the swords I will see every one of them invested.”

“I just told you Malok was too young,” said Jax.

“I will not have one boy singled out, alone of all who survived the fall on their own, and refused his swords. I don’t know if we will find the swords. Further, I don’t know when or if we’ll be able to go back to the temple after this trip. It might be years, it might be never. Much will depend on how things play out with any attempt to deal with the Son of Heaven. But if this
is
our young people’s only chance, and if you have that much faith in them, I will not see any of them denied. If I’m wrong, so be it. I will accept the consequences, however it falls out.”

The door to the council chamber opened again. It was Maryam, with Faran and Siri trailing along behind. Siri had collected the rest of my gear as well as her own, and she slid it across the table to me now. I was particularly happy to have a trick bag again after going so long without—I had lost mine in the Sylvani Empire some months before, and hadn’t had the resources to replace it until we got to the school. I started hanging things off my sword rig as Maryam began to speak.

“We’ve got all the students collecting their bolt bags and
their other gear. I gave them a quarter hour to get ready and meet us in the great hall. Those servants who don’t have immediate duties are either helping out with readying the horses and the agutes, parceling out food for the locals, or have already gone out the gates and scattered into the hills.”

I was glad to hear that we had agutes. The large wooly pack goats would be enormously helpful for getting supplies over the narrow tracks of the southern passes.

“So, we’re ready to move out?” asked Jax.

“Very nearly. The only major task that’s left is to rouse the sleepers and throw open the undergates.”

“Sleepers?” asked Triss.

Jax smiled—a thoroughly predatory expression. “The Kvani will get no joy of this castle. When we took the place over, we knew that the Son of Heaven might send his forces against us at any time, so we made preparations to see that anyone who came for us would have a great deal more to worry about than hunting us through the hills. Loris labored long hours in the deep catacombs that lie beneath the lowest cellars. He created a lure and a trap for the ghouls and night-gaunts that roam the high wastes. It draws them in and lays an enchantment of deepest sleep on them until we need them.”

Faran whistled. “Nasty! I like it. How many are there?”

“No one knows,” replied Maryam. “They’ve been collecting there for seven years. Hundreds at the least, and not one of them has fed since they arrived. They will be
very
hungry when they wake, and trapped within the walls of the castle by Loris’s enchantments.”

“Setting the dead against a lord of the dead,” said Siri. “There’s a poetry to that.”

“There is,” said Jax, “though we didn’t know about the Son of Heaven when we set the trap. I wish Loris had lived long enough to know how appropriate his work truly was.”

Kelos arrived then. “Chomarr’s gone. Looks like he went out the garderobe to avoid the watch you had set on his room, Jax.”

“It’s barely eight inches across,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I put him there.”

Kelos shrugged. “He widened it a bit, and by hand if I’m any judge of such things. Wanted to avoid any light of magic as he worked, I imagine. At least we have the small pleasure of knowing he had to wallow in his own shit to get out.”

“Five minutes,” said Maryam.

Kelos raised a questioning eyebrow at me.

“That’s when the students meet us in the great hall,” I told him. “At which point, we ride for the temple. Jax, if you’re planning on rousing your sleepers, you’d best get to it. Take Siri and Faran with you. I’d like them both to see Loris’s setup. It sounds like it might come in handy for future arrangements.”

“Sleepers?” asked Kelos.

I was already out of my chair. “I’ll tell you about it as we go.”

*   *   *

“There’s
a party of Avarsi raiders camped out in the valley ahead,” said Xin, his voice quiet in the darkness. “They’re well ahead of the main army of the Kvani—probably sent to cut off the high tracks that lead over the mountains and down through the Evindine watershed to Varya.”

The valley in question lay two days ride west of Jax’s castle. It was a narrow vale just below the only viable route that ran directly between Dalridia and Varya. As with the goat tracks that crossed over from Uln in the Magelands to the east,
viable
was a term more of art than commerce. It was possible for a hiker in good health to cross from Dalridia to the birth waters of the Evindine, but only during a few scant months in summer, and afoot. Agutes were the only pack animal that could make the crossing at all, and the goats were unsuitable for really big loads.

“Can we get around the raiders?” I asked.

Xin nodded. “Probably, but only if we go shrouded. They’re camped right up into the throat of the pass. Even now, in the early hours before morning, with most of the camp asleep it would be difficult.”

Jax broke in. “That would mean abandoning the agutes
and any supplies we can’t carry on our backs. If it snows before we reach the headwaters of the Evindine that gear and food could mean the difference between riding it out and freezing to death or starving.”

“That’s no good,” I said. We had always intended to release the horses once the going got too tough for them, but losing the wooly goats with their ability to carry loads over broken terrain would be a heavy blow. “How many of the Avarsi are there?”

“Looks like a hundred or so,” replied Xin.

“Any mages?” I asked.

What are you thinking?
sent Triss.

That we are at war, and that abandoning our supplies could mean the difference between life and death for the people that have entrusted me with their care.

So, you will kill them all in their sleep?
Triss sounded more surprised than distressed by the idea.

I fear that we may have to.
I didn’t much like the idea, but we
were
at war. The Kvani had invaded Dalridia with the express intention of killing us all, and they had already slaughtered thousands of Jax’s people.

While Triss and I held our exchange, Xin was shrugging. “I didn’t see an obvious shaman’s tent, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have mages with them.”

“And the same is true of any hidden risen,” added Siri. “I would be quite surprised if the khan leading this party is not of the restless dead.”

“So would I.” I turned to Jax. “I hate to have to ask this, but how many of your students are ready to take a human life?”

She sighed. “Expedience has hardened many of them earlier than it did our generation. Perhaps two-thirds of them have killed, either at the fall of the temple or in the years since. Of those, a bit over half might be ready for the kind of task I think you’re contemplating.”

Kelos pushed forward. “I’ll lead your throat cutters if you want. I’ve no compunctions about the thing.”

I shook my head. “No. If it has to be done, and I think it does, it’s on me. I
will
assign you their khan. If he or she
is
risen, we will need to take care of that first and preferably by beheading. That strikes me as your sort of work.” I hated to rely on him, but that is one of the problems of a Kelos: if you have one, it’s mortally foolish not to use his talents.

Kelos grinned. “It is that.”

Though the swords of the goddess would not slay the risen Sumey for Devin, Kelos had demonstrated more than once that particular magic worked just fine for him, and I had begun to formulate a theory about it. Unlike Devin, Kelos still believed in his heart that he served the ideals of justice if not the goddess of justice. He might feel that his betrayal of Namara had earned him death, but he had never once wavered in his dedication to the principles that she had espoused. At least, not as he saw them. In the depths of his own heart he was still a champion of justice.

Are you really going to do this?
Triss asked into the silence of my mind.

I thought about it.
Yes, I am. I never liked the idea of killing guards just because they were in my way, and this has some of the same flavor. But these people came here to make war on us and they have already killed many of Jax’s countrymen for no reason other than that her brother chose to give refuge to our children. They are soldiers of an army whose sole purpose is our destruction. Whether we want to be or not, we are at war, and this is the enemy.

We
could
go around them,
sent Triss, but it was clear from the emotion that came through with his words that he simply wanted to understand my reasoning, rather than seriously suggesting that we try to avoid the confrontation.

Yes, we could probably get around them, but only by assuming risks that might kill us all. If it were just you and me in danger, I might be willing to accept those odds. But it’s not, it is all that is left of Namara’s legacy and that includes those like Malok who is still little more than a boy. The Kvani are here to kill us. If that doesn’t make them legitimate targets, I don’t know what would.

I agree completely. But are you going to be able to live with this decision?

I really didn’t know the answer to that, but I would not let it put my people in more danger.
I will have to.

“Siri,” I said aloud, “you’re on mage duty. You go in first with Kelos and do what needs to be done on that front. If you don’t find any mages, move on to chain of command. Kelos will do the same. As for the rest of us, it’s a big camp and that means multiple parties. Four, I think—pairs, or trios if we have enough volunteers for it. I’ll lead one, Jax another, with Maryam and Roric taking the other two. Faran, you’re in charge of dealing with those sentries that Siri and Kelos don’t clear out on their way in.”

Faran nodded and loosened the swords in her sheath.

“What if the camp wakes?” asked Jax.

“Then somebody fucked up,” I growled. “Don’t let it happen. If any of the raiders get away, they’re going to run straight back to the main army and report what happened here. Even if the enemy can’t take horses over the high pass, they’ll send hundreds of soldiers after us, to say nothing of whatever risen they have with them. I don’t think that will end well for us.”

“Point,” said Jax. “Since it’s come up, what do you think the odds are of us getting all the way to the temple without running into another major force after this one?”

“Zero,” I replied, “though hopefully we won’t have to take them so directly. We never mentioned our plans to go to the temple anywhere that Chomarr could hear, but I don’t doubt that he figured it out from things said in passing. I’m confident that the Son of Heaven won’t have sent another Kvani army into Varya, but there’s no doubt that he already controls some portion of the local nobility.

“There will certainly be troops guarding the temple, and likely more between us and it, but one battle at a time. Right now, we need to fight this one. Kelos, Siri, Faran, give us five minutes to put together our teams and then go in. We’ll be right behind you.”

N
o
matter how necessary, there is no honor to be had from killing a man in his sleep. There is no challenge to it. No effort. No art. It lessens you.

I slipped over the crest of the hill above the camp with Kumi and Gryss following in my wake. Or, at least, I assumed that they did, for I could neither see nor hear them. Gryss was a relatively talkative Shade who took the form of an enormous, winged rat, but for now he and his mistress were absolutely silent, ghosts in the night behind me.

There was a slain sentry tucked in under the edge of a bush a few yards below the ridgetop. His throat looked as though someone had torn it out with claws—unmistakably Faran’s work and a reminder that at least some of my companions were less reluctant to take a life than I. There was a savage joy expressed in Faran’s kills for those with the skill to read it. I paused beside the body to look down over the camp and plan my descent.

While the commanding khan and some of his officers had retired to felt tents, most of the raiders slept on blankets in the open. The Kvani in war mode traveled exceedingly
light, carrying more gear for their horses than for themselves. The open nature of the camp would make the coming slaughter both easier and harder. Easier, in that we would have no need to slip in and out of tents. Harder, because there would be no way to conceal the dead from the living should they begin to wake.

We were approaching the camp from four points—a quarter turn off the cardinal directions. Kumi and I had the greatest distance to cover and the hardest approach. So the signal was mine to give. As soon as we reached the darkness at the edge of our hunting ground, I let out the low hoot of a cloud owl and moved in.

There is no skill involved in this,
I sent to Triss as I slid the edge of my knife along the throat of my first sleeper.

Not in killing one alone, perhaps. But a dozen, without waking the others? Each death must come in total silence yet quickly. Strike, move, strike again. It’s a dance, cold and cruel and hard, but as intricate a series of steps as any duel.

I shook my head as I killed a second of the raiders. I understood that Triss was trying to make me feel better about my choices and my task, but I couldn’t agree with him. I am very good at what I do, and what I do is kill people. There is no way around that, but usually I am facing an enemy who is awake.

Taking out an alert guard with her back to the wall and a weapon in her hands? That is a challenge. Slipping past her to kill the duke she guards without her even knowing I was there until they find the body the next morning—there’s art to that, even joy. Likewise killing armed foes in a battle. But this slaughter?

No. I would do it because it was necessary, but I would take no pride in it.

I would like to say that something went wrong, that someone woke, and that great deeds were done in the aftermath. But that would be a lie. A hundred and twelve Avarsi warriors died that night, mostly in their sleep and mostly without so much as a grunt. It was no battle, it was butchery.

When the killing was done, we used horses and ropes to drag the bodies into a great pile with all of their gear and we set a slow burning magical fire that would devour the evidence of what had happened without making too great a light. That they were gone and that there had been a fire could not be concealed, but who had done it and why and how would be muddied. That would keep the enemy from throwing all of their strength over the pass after us. As long as they couldn’t know that it was us or that we had not gone another way or divided our forces before or after, they must cover all of our possible paths.

After the talk I’d had with Jax earlier, I couldn’t help but pay close attention to the students as they went about the task of hauling and burning bodies. Those who had helped with the killing mostly wore the grim mask I remembered from my own experiences in dealing with corpses. Those who hadn’t participated in the killing looked more disturbed by the exercise, though none of them balked or vomited.

I paid especially close attention to Malok and Altia since Jax had worried about their readiness to take the formal oath of a Blade. The former actually appeared calmer than many of his older peers. The latter, well . . . she didn’t look happy, but she did the work, and she did it without complaint or dawdling. And these were her people—well, the Avarsi and the Dvali did as much cross-clan horse and cattle raiding against one another as they did cooperating, but there were blood ties aplenty connecting the two clan confederations. I don’t know that I’d have done half as well at her age if the corpses had been Varyan.

“How are you doing?” I asked her when the thing was almost done.

“Better than I would have guessed if you’d asked me about it beforehand, Master Aral.”

“Good lass.” I punched her shoulder lightly.

As soon as the fire was burning well enough that nothing short of major magic would put it out, we turned loose all the horses and began the long climb to the high pass. Kelos had made the trek many times in the training of young
Blades, so he led us, with Siri following just behind to keep a close eye on him. I brought up the rear with Faran. Again, I regretted the way that Kelos kept making himself useful. It would be so easy and so foolish to come to rely on him. . . .

As soon as the others had moved far enough ahead that we could speak with relative privacy, Faran turned a hard look on me. “You’re doing it again, old man.”

“Doing what, my young monster?”

“Bleeding over the wrong things.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked, even as Triss sent,
She’s got you nailed.

“There are people who need to die. Sometimes, they’re like the Son of Heaven and they need to die because they are the horrors that have always haunted the darkness beyond the edge of civilization. Sometimes they need to die because they are doing things that need stopping—I’d put this entire invading army in that category. But, even if I didn’t, sometimes someone needs to die for no other reasons than because they are in the way.”

“It really doesn’t bother you,” I said rather wistfully, “does it? Any more than it bothers the Shades.”

She canted her head to the side. “The killing or the reasons for it?”

“Either . . . both. I don’t know.”

“Not really, no.” Then she put her hand on my shoulder. “Which is one of the reasons I’d be terrible at your job. Somebody has to sweat those details if justice is going to be served, and I’m glad it’s somebody like you, even if you do overthink absolutely everything and cut yourself up about it afterward.”

“Today it’s me. If the order survives, it might be you someday. What then?”

“I will think very long and hard to figure out whatever necessary choice would have made you least happy if it were you stuck with the decision. Then I will go with that.”

Triss chuckled, but I shook my head. “No, really. From where I’m sitting, you’re the shining star of the younger generations. You could very easily end up as First Blade.”

“All right. Then, without the sarcasm: I will think long and hard about what you would do in the same situation and I will try to do that. You may be softer than you ought, and dither more than I’m capable of, but I have yet to see you take a life lightly or for the wrong reason.”

She gestured at the trail ahead and the rest of our little line of climbers. “We’re all of us killers, selected expressly for that purpose by the hand of a goddess now dead. Whatever else we might do, or want, or aspire to, an aptitude for death was one of the things that we had to have to make us appropriate candidates for the purposes of the goddess.”

“I have no idea where you’re going with this,” I said.

“I’ve seen you in a fight, Aral, watched you when you didn’t have time to worry about the details or when you felt the cause was unambiguously just. There is no hesitation in you then, and the joy you take in the work is obvious. You’re a killer born. But you’re also a thinker, and the lessons of the goddess sank into your bones. What you
do
is my model of what a Blade ought to
be
. How you get there is sometimes a mystery to me, but if I can
choose
to do what you would do simply by dint of your natural inclination, I think that I’ll be all right.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to try to live up to,” I said.

“So, don’t fuck up.” She punched me in the arm.

“That simple?”

“That simple. Now that I’ve knocked you loose of the worst of your brooding, we should probably catch up.” She broke into a slow lope, and I fell in behind her.

I don’t deserve that kind of faith,
I sent to Triss.

Nope. But you’d better damn well do your best to be worthy of it.

In other words: Don’t fuck up?

Don’t fuck up.

Because I’m so
very
good at that. . . .

Triss didn’t answer.

*   *   *

The
great Temple of Namara stood upon the south shore of Evinduin, the smaller of Varya’s two sacred lakes. A half
mile offshore lay the isle of the goddess, a low wooded outcrop with a deep pool that was connected to the main body of the lake by an underwater arch. A series of granite flags surrounded the pool in a neat ring, with a second ring of carefully trimmed grass between the stone and the woods.

When last I visited, there was moss growing between the flags and the grass had given way to rank weeds, but right here, right now it was as it had been when the priesthood maintained it—as clean and perfect as it was on the eve of my investiture. That made no sense to me. Neither did the fact that I had no memory of how I had gotten there. But I had more important things to worry about.

On that long ago night the goddess had risen out of the depths of the pool to present me with my swords. Now she rose again, her six arms held in the classic pose of her sculptures, her heavy stone breasts bared to the night.

The top of her head stood nine feet above the surface of the water that girdled her waist. The darkness and reflections hid her lower body, though a hint of fishy scales and fins could be seen beneath the surface, suggesting that she wore her aquatic form. At other times she might assume the shape of a serpent from the waist down, or, for certain formal ceremonies, legs. As always, and despite her stillness and the cold granite of her skin, she seemed utterly, wildly alive—more so than any merely mortal figure ever could.

Namara extended her middle hands, then, offering me a pair of black swords, though I knew somehow that this was not simply a revisiting of my investiture. I walked across the surface of the water as I had back then, reaching for these swords that both were and were not mine.

My hands touch the hilts and my experience of time shifts, as it usually does only in battle. I move wholly into the present moment with no real sense of past or future. I turn the blades as I pull them to me, drawing their sharp edges along the open palms of my goddess. They cut deep, leaving an impossible trail of bright red blood welling in their wake.

Namara yanks her hand back and away, and her expression shifts from welcoming benevolence to shock and horror.
I feel the same way, but cannot do anything to affect the actions of my body as I whip the swords around and thrust them both up under her left breast, driving the points deep into stone flesh. I want to vomit when my blades enter her great heart. I can feel the ponderous beat of it through my fingers and palms, feel my own heart somehow matching its rhythm, as first it beats faster, then slows, and finally stops.

For perhaps a minute my own heart feels dead in my chest. Then, suddenly, and with a tearing pain, it begins to beat again. Above me, the life has left my stone goddess, rendering her into little more than a statue. I wonder then how I will be able to draw the swords from the stone. But when I tug on the hilts, they come away easily enough.

Namara topples forward and I step aside, letting her crash to ruin on the shore. Her granite neck snaps and her head rolls to the edge of the flags. I want to run and hide, or slit my wrists, or do anything that will let me move away from the enormity of what I’ve just done. But I still have no control over my body. I am an observer, my mind trapped in amber as my hands move of their own accord, chopping the upper arms from that great fractured torso. . . .

Time blurs as I butcher Namara’s stone corpse, hammering and hacking away and levering the broken pieces of my goddess into a rough heap. I create a nightmare throne where I may rest my arms on Namara’s and prop my feet upon her fallen head. As I mount my new seat, I hear a scraping noise behind me and I turn. Devin is there. He draws his swords and sets them before my feet before performing the formal obeisance a Kadeshi peasant gives his lord, banging his forehead thrice on the hard ground. The traitor swearing fealty to me, his new master . . .

I lean over one hacked-off arm of my goddess and vomit onto the greensward.

“Aral, hsst, Aral, wake up.”

I blink my eyes open, instantly awake, and find Siri kneeling beside me. The fingers of her hand rest lightly on the back of my right wrist. By the sun it is late afternoon.