Darkened Blade: A Fallen Blade Novel (17 page)

Kelos knew,
I sent to Triss. The idea made me sick.

But Triss’s response surprised me.
He may have known about the Son, but he couldn’t have known about this.
His mental voice was very firm.
He would never have countenanced it.
Malthiss
would never have countenanced it.

I hope that you’re right. If you’re not, I may have to change my mind about accepting his help.

And letting him live?

That, too.

I can’t believe that he knew. I refuse to believe it, even of Kelos the Traitor.

Siri lifted her eyebrows at me, obviously wondering if Triss and I were done with our silent little conference. Only she and Faran would have noticed. I nodded very slightly to let her know that we were.

“I wouldn’t have chosen to expose them to this,” she said very quietly, indicating the students with a jut of her chin, “but this is the only path that a human can manage into the hidden ways. Come on.” She crossed the broken magical circle defiantly—the message that she would not let it affect her expressed clearly in the proud lines of her back and shoulders.

I followed, doing my best to emulate her quiet poise. Siri’s refusal to let the Son’s work make her treat the temple as less than it had once been was exactly the thing I needed to fortify my own flagging nerves. She led us all to a seemingly innocuous point about midway between the top of the eye as seen from above and the left corner. There, she slipped around some of the roughly stacked fallen blocks from the ceiling and drew her sword before kneeling and inserting the point into an open gap between two of the stones that made up the wall.

“There was a false piece of mortar here when I found it initially,” she said. “I didn’t see much point in replacing it, since this can’t be opened without the right key.” She pushed then, sliding the short curved blade of her sword all the way home. “Let’s see. . . .”

Siri rocked the sword ever so slightly, and was rewarded
with a sharp metallic click. She pivoted, gently torquing the hilt of her sword to the right, and a slim section of wall opened inward to reveal a narrow set of stairs descending into the depths beneath the sanctuary.

“Why don’t you go first, Aral?”

Her tone made me quite sure she was up to something. Nor was I wrong. The stairs led down thirty or so feet to a landing where they doubled back in the other direction. Faint light was visible through an arch at the bottom. I passed through and found myself in a mirror image of the sanctuary above. Here, the blue circle of Namara’s unblinking eye was set in the ceiling, and the iris that centered it was a great orb of white marble spelled to give off a gentle light.

Where the eye above looked up into the sky, this one looked down into a seemingly bottomless reflecting pool. It was beautiful and peaceful. Holy. One, last, pure fane to a fallen goddess. Seeing it healed something in my heart. I understood then that Siri’s choice to send me first was a gift, a chance to spend one perfect moment alone with the Eye before the others followed me in.

Once everyone else was settled, I sat down beside Siri. “Thank you. I needed that.”

She smiled at me. “I thought you might.”

“Faran and I will have to go steal some baskets soon, but I want to sit here for a few minutes first. You mentioned that there were other rooms down here. . . .”

Siri nodded. “There are, but the only way for a normal person to get to them now is to swim.” She pointed at the reflecting pool. “It’s not far, but I wouldn’t advise trying it if we don’t have to. That connects to the lake, and those who haunt the deeps come here as well. There was once another way down, which leads more directly to other areas, but it’s buried under the ruins of the outer temple. It would take a good-sized crew a couple of days to excavate it.”

“Have you explored the underwater ways?” I asked.

“Not thoroughly, no. I see where you’re going, but I still think that the island is a much more likely place to find the
swords. It . . .” She paused for a long time, before shrugging and saying, “It just feels right.”

*   *   *

I
had made the swim out to Namara’s island and back three times previously. Once, when I asked her to make me a Blade before my time and send me after Ashvik. Once, when I returned my swords to her. And again, when I reclaimed them. It’s nearly a mile of deep water, and you can feel the great scaly horrors that live in the lake sliding by beneath you, but I have never feared them. The first time, I knew that my goddess would protect me, and the two times since, I had been indifferent to my fate.

Tonight was different. I had things that I needed to do. I still might not have a huge emotional investment in living, but dying would be damned inconvenient. So, this time, when I felt a fast moving current of cold drag across my legs as though something big were swimming past not far beneath, I couldn’t help but stick my face underwater and look to see if I might spot what had caused it.

It was dark, but the moon was high and full, and that gave me barely enough light to see something long and narrow and scaly. I only saw the back end of the thing, but that was enough for me to be sure that it was neither dragon nor crocodile. If it was a fish, it was a damned skinny thing for its size. It reminded me most of an enormous eel or marine snake, and it had to be at least thirty feet long. Then it was gone, and it didn’t return before I had to resurface and take a breath.

Siri was closest to me then. “You saw?” she asked as I began to swim again—stroking as quietly as I could manage.

“Not well enough to identify it. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything quite like that before.”

“No surprise there,” she said. “To the best of my knowledge they live nowhere in the eleven kingdoms but here and in Lake Leivas.”

“You seem to know quite a bit about them. What are they? And where did you learn it?”

“Master Illiana made a study of them. She was the Master who brought me to the island for my investiture, and she was feeling chatty that night. They’re creatures of magic from the wastes in the west. Freshwater eels once, or possibly snakes. They were bent and twisted by the runaway magic that created the wasteland.”

“Then why have I never heard of their like in the River Dan?” I asked. “It’s supposed to meet the Leivas out west somewhere, beyond the edge of Varya.”

“The Dan doesn’t touch on a body of water big enough to support them—not within the eleven kingdoms anyway. I imagine that they know that. Illiana said that they’re at least as smart as we are in their own way. She said that both Namara and the Lady of Leivas had made treaties with them.”

“I didn’t know that.” The Lady was . . . a special case in every way, a mage that was only just this side of being a goddess, if the legends were to be believed. Though her power supposedly ended at the edge of that greatest of all freshwater lakes.

It’s news to me, too,
sent Triss.

“So,” I said, “Master Illiana subscribed to the idea that the Lady is a real person?”

Siri nodded. “Absolutely. She told me that she had met her once, on a special commission from Namara—that the lake itself was somehow the Lady’s familiar, and that was why she is so powerful within its bounds.”

“I wish that I had gotten the chance to know Master Illiana,” I said—suddenly wishing that I had not been so intimidated by her in life. But she was another of the grand old legends of the order, Illiana Spellslayer, and she had seemed all but unapproachable when I still had that opportunity. “The Son of Heaven robbed us of so much. . . .”

Whatever Siri might have said in answer to that was lost when a hiss sounded in the darkness ahead of us. We had reached the island, and Kelos was there, waiting.

“You and I need to talk,” I said, ignoring the hand he offered to help me out of the water.

“All right. Alone? Or would you prefer an audience?”

“In this case, I think I’d like the audience.” He nodded and stepped back, crossing his arms impassively while he waited for everyone to come ashore.

I do not believe that he did it,
sent Triss.

I don’t think I do either, but this has to be dealt with openly and immediately. I won’t let it fester.

“In front of the goddess.” I jerked my chin in the direction of the sacred pool.

Kelos raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything before turning to follow me to the pool.

“Stand there.” I pointed to the place where an initiate waited for the goddess to invest them as a Blade.

Once he was in place, with the rest of us facing him in a semi-circle, I told him what we had all seen in the Sanctuary at the temple and what Siri had to say about it. His face visibly paled, and he looked absolutely stricken by the time I finished. I hoped—almost prayed—that was an honest reaction. The alternative was simply too horrible.

After a moment, he shrugged out of his sword rig and extended it toward me hilts first. “There is no oath I can make that any of you would believe. I have earned that mistrust, and I won’t insult you by pretending I haven’t. I have earned even your suspicions about that abomination in the Sanctuary. I will swear no oath, nor protest my innocence with fair words.”

He took a deep breath. “I will say only this: I did not know about the spell, and I would have died to prevent its setting. If I am lying to you, I pray that the ghost of the goddess will send one of the hunters in the deep into her pool and have it devour me right now. If you don’t believe me, please take my own swords and put an end to me.”

I nodded at him, but neither took his swords nor suggested that he put them back on. Instead, I said, “Malthiss?”

The shadow basilisk rose from the tattoos that wrapped Kelos from waist to neck and bowed before me. “He speaks the truth, First Blade. I would have taken him into the darkness before I would have let him participate in something
like that. I know that we have done nothing to earn the faith of any here, and much to betray it, so I, too, will make no vows. I will tell you that we have not been back to the temple since the day of the fall, nor have we stepped beyond the ring of salt on this visit. Were it not for the ritual of attunement we would not tread the shores of this island tonight either. We have not the right.”

“I have a question,” said Kumi, startling me with the firmness of her interjection. “I know that Kelos betrayed the order, but how exactly? It doesn’t seem to me that one man could convince the gods themselves to move against Namara.”

I turned to Kelos. It wasn’t something I’d thought about in quite that way before, and I wanted to hear his answer.

“Of course not,” he said. “The gods had long since decided that Namara was a problem. She had created weapons that could kill a god and she didn’t subscribe to the idea that the gods were themselves above justice. The question was always when. Never if. I only helped to decide the timing, and that because I thought I might make the inevitable serve the estimable, and bring an end to the rule of kings once and for all.”

L
iars
are exhausting.

Take your favorite goblet. Shatter it. Pick up the pieces. Use magic to fuse them back together. Even if the repair is seamless, you know that it was broken. It may hold water now, but can it ever be the same? I don’t believe that it can, but others may reach different conclusions.

Trust is like that. Break it once, and no matter what you do to mend it, it will have become a different thing. The greater the degree of trust and the more badly it is broken, the harder it is to make whole.

With Kelos we haven’t even reached the part where you put the pieces back together—might never—but much of what he said seemed to hold water. It
felt
true. But the nature of his betrayals meant that the simple fact that it was
Kelos
saying it made it feel false, too. Every single thing he said had to be weighed and judged on its own merits as much as possible and independently of the source. Dealing with that wears on the soul.

Take his statement about the intentions of the other gods about betraying Namara. It was a self-serving answer, but,
I thought, an honest one, too. It fit with what I had learned from other sources, and it made Kelos seem to be less powerful than he might otherwise, not an easy choice for a proud man—and he was that. All things that made it feel true. On the other hand, while the story made him seem less powerful it also made his betrayal less extreme, and that might serve his interests better than the other way around. Feeling false again . . .

And so it went, back and forth with every single thing he said or did. As long as he lived he would always cost me in time and energy I could ill afford. I didn’t want to kill him myself, nor to have one of my fellows kill him for that matter, but my life would be much eased by his passing. . . .

I took a deep breath and nodded. “Put your swords back on, I believe you about the necromancy, and we have a thing that needs doing.” I turned my attention to Roric and Kumi. “I want you two to sit over there.” I pointed. “Don’t move or say a word if you don’t absolutely have to. This will be tricky enough without interruptions. Siri, I know that you and Kyrissa have been discussing how best to do this with Malthiss and Kelos for weeks now and have created a ritual structure for the thing. You’re in charge. Tell us what needs doing.”

“There are actually two main possibilities for how to go about the attunement,” said Siri. “One involves a lot of ritual fancywork on the part of the petitioner and the assembled Blades. It has a decent chance of success. The other is harder, darker, faster, and a lot more painful. It also increases the chance of success enormously. I crafted a ritual for each, but I’ve had extensive talks with Faran about the two methods, and she’s expressed a strong preference.” She turned her eyes on the younger woman. “Last chance to change your mind.”

Faran lifted her chin and spoke clearly. “I choose the way of pain.”

Siri nodded, her expression grim. “It’s what I would have done in her place, and it’s much surer, but it’s not a decision one person can make for another.”

“Siri, what do you need from the rest of us?” I asked,
trying to conceal the concerns Siri’s speech had raised for me. This was Faran’s future at stake here, and the choices were hers to make.

“From most of you, I need little beyond following simple orders and a promise not to interfere when things get bloody. You’re going to have a rougher task, Aral, but I’d rather you don’t have too much time to dwell on it in advance.”

I don’t like the sound of that,
sent Triss.

I don’t either, but Siri’s our magic expert and Faran knows her own mind. I won’t interfere . . . however much I might like to.

I know, it’s just . . . I worry.

I didn’t have an answer for that.

Siri turned to Kelos. “Can you fetch me the head of the goddess up from the deeps? It’s no more than stone now, but it will serve better than any other choice, and I think that Namara would have approved of what we are about to do.”

Kelos nodded, whispered a few phrases, and touched fingers to his lips when spell-light answered his call. Without so much as another word to the rest of us, he turned and dove into the pool. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, and tried desperately not to think back to my nightmare about the throne.

Aral? Are you all right?
sent Triss.

Not even a little bit, but I told Siri this was her show, and she asked me not to interfere. This is me not interfering, hopefully without drawing blood from my own cheek.

She doesn’t make it easy.

That she does not.

Siri spoke again. “Jax, this is going to be a directional magic. The pool faces north and the deep lake. That’s going to make you and Kelos the Wardens of East and West respectively. I will be the South Warden. Aral, as Faran’s sponsor, you get to assume the role of the Warden of the North since that is the direction of Justice in this case. While we wait for Kelos we can set up the warding patterns—a diamond rather than a circle or something fancier, in this case—and fifteen feet on a side. You two cover your directions.
I’ll do for me and Kelos both, as well as making the connections. Be about it.”

Ritual wards come in a relatively small number of flavors, and they are drilled into every mage at a very young age. The simplest arrangement of all is the ward of the four directions, though a circle or octagon sealed to the eight elements is nearly as easy and buys you more flexibility. It scales up from there. Considering how nervous all the talk about blood and pain and fetching the head of the goddess had made me, it was a damned good thing that all I had to handle was the ward of the North.

I had to recenter myself and force my breathing back to calmer rhythms twice before I was able to assay it properly. By the time I was done, Siri had finished both the ward she would hold and the one for Kelos. Then she started in on laying the connections down, using the tip of her index finger to draw lines of light across the paving stones.

I turned to Faran while Siri was finishing up, and spoke quietly. “How upset am I going to be with you later that you didn’t give me plenty of warning as to what’s coming?”

She grinned at me, though it obviously took an effort. “In the short term? Extremely. Once you’ve had time to think about it? Less . . . I hope. Now, shut up and let me concentrate. This is going to take a lot out of me, and I need to prepare myself.”

I wanted to pace and swear, but, again, the First Blade doesn’t get to do that sort of thing. Not with Roric and Kumi there at any rate. Instead, I settled cross-legged on the pavers a few feet south of my ward, and pretended to meditate.

Good try, but you’re not fooling anybody,
sent Triss.
Well, maybe the youngsters, but Siri and Jax and Faran all know how you feel about meditation.

Then I’m fooling the only ones I need to fool. Now, shut up and let me pretend to be peaceful in something resembling actual peace.

Too late,
sent Triss.
Kelos is back. Which means you probably need to move.

Kelos came up out of the water as I returned to my feet.
He was trailing a thick blue chain of spell-light from his left shoulder. Once he’d coughed the water out of his lungs, he unlooped the chain. One end of it vanished into the skin of his chest, just above his heart, as though it were anchored there.

Once he had the chain free, he started pulling it up out of the water hand over hand. From the way the thick muscles of his shoulders and back bunched and strained it must have taken enormous physical effort to supplement the magical working. With each pull, the slack he created vanished into his chest, like a capstan winding up one of the heavier ropes on a sailing ship.

As much as I didn’t trust the man or want to be anywhere near him, I didn’t like to think about what would happen with that chain if he slipped or stumbled. But he was Kelos, and he didn’t. Not even at the end, when the great weed-encrusted head of the goddess rose out of the water, drawn by a golden loop of light set in the center of her forehead.

I couldn’t help but draw a sharp breath when I saw her. While the goddess had lived, that stone face expressed a deeper sense of presence and vitality than any dozen human beings. Now, it was just another chunk of lifeless statue, albeit depicting someone I had once loved with all my soul. It burned my heart to see her ruined so.

Though he could never have done so physically, Kelos’s magic allowed him to lift the enormous stone head completely free of the water, so that it hung a few inches above the pavers. Holding the head clear of the ground, he turned and slowly carried it into the diamond of the wards. Siri pointed at a spot maybe six feet south of the northern ward, and he set the head down there, facing away from the pool.

She had him hold it in place for a moment while she did a fancy little bit of magic that fused the broken neck to the stone pavers beneath, fixing it there as firmly as any statue on its plinth. That put the top of Namara’s head about five feet above the ground. Together, they made a few more quick preparations that left the stone glowing faintly with a spell-light that fluctuated between a dark green and a deep red.

Siri turned to me as Kelos stepped away. “Come here for a second, Aral. I need you to look into the face of the goddess that was and not move until you’re ready to let go of that knot of pain I saw you swallow a second ago. This will be hard enough without you trying to hold your breath. Trust me when I say that I believe with my whole heart that Namara would have approved of what we will do here tonight.”

I didn’t want to do it, but I
had
put Siri in charge, and she wasn’t wrong about my feelings. So I went and I faced my goddess once again. Not there on the stones—Namara was dead, and the sculpted head was nothing more than an elaborate and broken tombstone at this point. No, I faced her in my heart, and I asked for her forgiveness for what we were about to do here.

She didn’t answer. The dead rarely do, and then it’s never good. But, after some minutes, I found a measure of peace. Enough, I thought, to face whatever I would have to do next. When I was done, I returned to the north ward and took up station there, with one foot on either side of the glyph I’d inscribed and my arms behind my back—left hand clasping right wrist as I had been taught.

Are you prepared for this?
Triss asked into my mind.

Most definitely not, but that won’t change, so I might as well deal.

Good luck. I’ll see you on the other side.
With that, Triss subsumed his will to my own, going into a sort of waking dream that would allow me to control our joint actions, a necessity for any elaborate ritual magic.

Thanks, old friend. I will meet you there.
I whispered the words into the silence of my mind, knowing he couldn’t register them now, but might remember them later.

Faran stepped up to the edge of the diamond then, between Siri and Jax. I was only slightly surprised to see that while I had been communing with my past she had stripped down to nothing more than a loincloth and her sword rig, exposing a lean muscular figure with high, small breasts. For one so young she had a lot of scars.

“Who comes before the ghost of the goddess?” Siri
stepped in front of Faran, and drew her sword as she asked the question. “I am Siri Mythkiller, Blade of Fallen Namara and the voice of the challenge.” Her tones mimicked the ritual delivery of the priests who had once served Namara.

“I am Faran Ghostwind.”

“And why do you come to this place of the dead, Faran Ghostwind?” Siri touched the tip of her sword to the base of Faran’s throat. A moment later, it was matched by a sword of smoke held in a wisp of a hand.

“I come here to the tomb of my goddess, seeking a boon.” Faran’s voice was firm and clear. “Justice the goddess may have died, but justice the ideal lives forever.”

“Then pass within.” Siri dropped her swords away from Faran’s throat and stepped aside. When she did so, the left one puffed away into nothing.

Faran moved to the middle of the diamond, facing the head of the goddess, while Siri sheathed her sword and returned to the southern ward. As she did so, Kyrissa flowed up from the ground to enclose her in a second skin of smoke and shadow, giving her will into Siri’s keeping for the duration of the coming ritual.

“The Warden of the South is in place and ready to defend the rights of the petitioner.” Siri bent and touched a hand to the glyph between her feet. As it flared to golden life, she looked at Kelos.

“The Warden of the West is in place and ready to defend the rights of the petitioner.” He touched his glyph and it burst into light, igniting the line that lay between Kelos and Siri, who turned and nodded to Jax.

“The Warden of the East is in place and ready to defend the rights of the petitioner.” Jax placed one finger on the glyph, waking it and sending another line of light to meet Siri’s glyph.

Siri didn’t bother to prompt me, and I had already pulled the stuff of shadow up and over my skin in anticipation of what came next. “The Warden of the North is in place and ready to defend the rights of the petitioner.” My will and the touch of my flesh lit up my glyph and connected it to those
belonging to Jax and Kelos. “With my seal, the warding is complete. None may force the ward while any Warden lives.”