Darkened Blade: A Fallen Blade Novel (20 page)

Even with Siri’s new powers, and if I recovered Signet Nea’s finger and it worked to our maximum advantage, I had my doubts about managing it. But if we somehow managed to succeed and make an end of the Son of Heaven and his risen puppets?

At the very least there would be wars and upheaval on a scale that hadn’t been seen in a thousand years. The lakes of blood we had created so far would become a vast sea of crimson. And however much it might ultimately be the fault of the Son of Heaven,
proximally
it would be
my
decision that triggered the coming days of long knives. . . .

Aral?
Triss sent, his tone rife with concern.
They’re waiting for you to finish your thought. Are you all right?

Not really, no,
I replied.
But that doesn’t change what I have to do.
I gave myself a little mental shake.
Thanks for the prompt, old friend.

“We’ll let them go,” I said, as though I’d never gotten lost in my own head. “Both because we don’t need to kill them, and because the death of that Hand down there would bring on a storm. That would seriously interfere with our progress if we take the lake path at the same time it alerted others to her fall.”

“It’s your call.” Kelos sounded disappointed.

I looked at him. “It is that, but I’m willing to entertain arguments that go the other way. Did you have something you wanted to add there?”

Kelos sighed, and for the first time in all the years I had known him, he looked embarrassed. “One thing only. I was hoping for a chance to test a bit of magic I spent most of last year working on.”

Siri cleared her throat before stepping in. “This is the
first you’ve mentioned anything like that. Care to elaborate?”

Kelos looked from her to me, and then over her shoulder to where the others knelt in the darkness farther down the hill. “Not really, but I’d better. You know that when I took service with the Son of Heaven, my initial plan involved getting Aral to kill the man and becoming the new Son of Heaven myself. Not for the power, of course, but for the chance to smash the very idea of a noble class.”

“Of course.” Faran’s tone was deliberately colorless, but still managed to leave no doubt as to her true feelings about Kelos and his
noble
aims.

Kelos continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I presume Aral’s also mentioned why I couldn’t kill the Son myself?”

“You’re talking about the geas all you Shadow of Heaven types had to bind yourself with before he would let you into his presence?” said Siri. “Yes, it’s come up.”

Kelos nodded. “I thought it might have. However, I don’t know if Aral also told you that the geas bound me to do no harm to anyone who serves the Son either.”

Siri and Faran both nodded, while the other three young Blades simply remained quiet, so Kelos continued. “Obviously it doesn’t extend to the risen of his curse—the Son would have had to admit to what he is in order to set that condition. But, with that one exception, it was a very tight leash indeed that he bound us with. After Aral put me on the wrong side of my first plan, I suddenly found myself in need of a way to slip it.”

“And . . .” said Siri.

“And I still don’t know. I think I’ve found my loophole, but magical loopholes are inherently chancy things. Especially where god-magic is involved. I can’t even
see
the portion of the spell that the Son arranged through his god, and that means I can’t know if I’ve done the trick entire, short of a working test.”

“Hence the interest in yonder batch of Heaven’s Sword,” said Ssithra.

Kelos nodded. “Exactly. I was rather hoping to take a
shot at these charming villains here while I have you all as backup, in case I couldn’t touch them, and when there were miles yet to go to Heaven’s Reach. Or, failing this particular bunch, others in the same sort of case. But if Aral’s going to go all
no just cause
on us, that will make the testing of things a bit more challenging.”

“I know you,” I said, flatly. “You wouldn’t have stopped experimenting with your spells unless you’d successfully managed some sort of test already. I would bet a pint of my own blood that you killed at least a couple of people wearing the Son’s livery before ever you came looking for the Key of Sylvaras back in the Sylvain.”

“Two Hands, four Swords, and three priests of the Voice.” Kelos nodded.

“Not to mention all those Kvani who invaded Dalridia on hidden orders from the Son,” added Faran.

Kelos shrugged. “Right enough, but every minion of his that I’ve killed has been far from home and short on any direct link to their master’s orders. That tells me that I’ve loosened the leash considerably, but I won’t know if I’m entirely free of it without facing off against someone operating directly under the Son’s orders while wearing his colors openly.”

“That does change the weight of things,” I said. “We need to know what your limitations are
before
we get someplace where they might cost us the mission.”

I thought the whole thing through again, and again decided against killing the group on the other side of the hill—in part because turning Kelos down would serve as something of a test of how he might react if our purposes eventually crossed for real.

“No,” I said. “This isn’t the time or the place. I still maintain that attacking this group wouldn’t advance justice and, whatever else we are, we are servants of justice first.”

Kelos sighed and nodded. “You always were the most stubborn of my students.”

I let out a little mental sigh of my own at his surrender of the point. That was a good sign, if a small one.

Now to throw him a bone to gnaw on. “Mind you, if it were Lieutenant Chomarr down there instead of some random Hand and her Sword backers, I would happily grant the exception. He seems the
perfect
test case for you.”

“True that.” Then Kelos grinned. “It’s not like we won’t have plenty more opportunities to eliminate opposition on our way to Heaven’s Reach. I imagine we’ll be tripping over enemies the whole way.”

“
Which
is exactly why I think we’ll do better taking the water route and the long way around,” I said. “If we go straight across the Kvanas we’re looking at weeks of flatland and little cover beyond the grass sea itself. That would be more than bad enough, given that the whole country is roused against us, and even if you didn’t add in the restless dead. With them? Getting caught out on the flats by the risen will get us all killed, goddess-forged swords or no. Anyone think otherwise?”

Nobody wanted to argue the point, so I continued. “That leaves three options. Skirting the mountains would be fastest, but it’s also what they’ll be expecting since it’d save us at least a month of travel time over the next shortest route.”

“I don’t much like the idea of following the Kvani scarp, either,” said Siri. “Yes, it offers cover on one flank, but it’s flat above and a hard scramble over broken rock below. Add in the Avarsi patrols and fortifications and it’s one of the least hospitable places I can think of.”

Three of the four Kvanas shared a high flat plateau. The scarp ran along its western edge, loosely defining the border between Avars and Radewald on the southwest and Dan Eyre on the northwest. It was a huge natural fortification, and the Avarsi had been using it to drop boulders on the neighbors for centuries. They had a thick network of forts strung along its whole length and they patrolled the area constantly.

“Which leads us back to the water route,” I said. “We’ll need to acquire a good boat or two, but once we’ve done that we can cross Leivas, exit by the river, pass Hove and most of Radewald on the west, and then take the river Dan
much of the way back east to the foothills of the Almarn Mountains.”

“That or take the fork that leads past Luvarn Keep in Avars,” said Kelos. “I think you’re right either way, but it’s going to double the distance we have to cover and add nearly that much in terms of time.”

“But most of it spent on wild water,” said Faran. “That’s the thing that really sells me. The dead
hate
rivers and they’re none too fond of lakes, especially ones as big as Leivas. That’s without adding in the power of the Lady or a bunch of hungry Storm Eels. The risen will have a very hard job coming at us while we’re on a boat, and an even harder one following us.”

I looked at our other youngsters. “Do any of you have anything you want to add? You’re all full Blades now. That means pointing it out when the old guard fucks up. Maryam? You’re not one to shy away from speaking your mind. . . .”

“I’m fine.”

I raised an eyebrow at her.

“Really. Jax was very clear that we three are here to observe and to learn. So that’s what I’m doing. Observing.”

“Roric?” I said. “You’re Avarsi by birth. Anything to add?”

“No, sir.”

“Kumi?”

“I like boats and know them pretty well, so I can help with the sailing . . . or paddling . . . or whatever it is the particular boat we end up with requires. Beyond that, think of me as invisible.”

A
knife slices through a sea of stars leaving the shattered universe rippling in its wake.

That image alone is enough to make me take back every bad thing I have ever said about boat travel, though really, it’s barges I hate. The sky was cloudless and moonless, the black waters deep and still. Where a barge is a battering ram forcing its heavy way through the water endlessly and tediously, the pair of slender hulled, sampan-like night runners we had purchased from a Varyan smuggler slashed through the water as effortlessly as a razor slitting an unsuspecting throat.

The boats were designed to move drugs and other small expensive packages back and forth across the lake between the Kvanas and Varya without submitting to silly things like taxes and customs inspections. Each one was long enough to hold six people, but had been rigged up for four paddlers with a couple of small watertight cargo cases in the middle. They had been stained a rough gray with the juice of the oris plant, and couldn’t have been much more than two feet wide at the beam. Both ends came to knifelike points.

Despite a shallow hull, they felt remarkably stable. Possibly because of the solid metal lance that hung about a foot underneath the boat. The lance provided both an easily removable second keel and a ramming beak designed to punch an ugly little hole below the waterline of any craft with a deeper draft than our own.

“Best way to deal with customs boats,” the smuggler who sold them to us had said. “Get up a fast run and give ’em a nice distracting fountain to think about.” He tapped a device on the floor of the boat. “Once the lance is sunk in good and hard you pull the pins here and upfront and leave it behind. If you place it right, it’ll foul either their oars or their rudder. Then you back-paddle, pivot hard, and run for the deep dark. Replacing the lance is an expensive bit of work, but it costs ever so much less than the headsman’s cut if they catch you with the wrong cargo.”

“Anything else we ought to know?” Kelos asked—I’d had him take point on haggling since he scared the resistance out of people even when they didn’t know who he was.

The smuggler nodded. “Don’t get caught out in the deep if a storm blows in. You probably won’t capsize, and you’ll stay afloat even if you do, but you’ll be miserable. And if you do fall in and can’t get back aboard on the quick, the hunters in the deep will take you. They love to come up to the surface when it gets nasty. Oh, and I wouldn’t run by daylight if I was you. These little beauties draw the wrong kinds of attention.”

“Not a problem we’ll have,” said Kelos.

“Somehow I didn’t think it would be. And now, if’n you don’t mind, I’m off to see a lady about replacing a couple of boats.”

“You won’t mention where these two went,” said Kelos, and it wasn’t anything even close to a question.

“She won’t ask and I won’t say. Building, buying, or using—these are the sort of fancies nobody talks about or admits to seeing. You’ve paid me more than fair instead of slitting my throat, which is what I feared you might do when first you showed up all dark and scary like there at the end
of my little dock. As far as I’m concerned, you was never born and these here boats weren’t ever made. Good enough?”

“Good enough,” said Kelos, but as soon as the man was out of sight, he shook his head. “It would have been safer if you’d let me kill him.”

“I have no doubt of it,” I agreed. “That doesn’t change my mind. Let’s go.”

Our meager gear went into the cargo bins in practically no time at all with room to spare, and we’d launched within minutes of the smuggler’s departure. That first night we’d left Lake Evinduin behind quickly enough, but made slower work of moving downstream toward Leivas.

The boats took some getting used to, and we nearly capsized both of them more than once despite their relative stability. We’d also decided to put in well before dawn because we weren’t sure about how tough it would be to hide the boats. But they were easy to pull out of the water and stow under the whorled dark green tarps provided for the purpose.

The second night we’d gone farther and faster. By the time we reached Leivas and that sea full of stars late on the third night, we’d had plenty of practice at managing the runners, both in the water and ashore. Slipping quietly past the watch at Emain Tarn on the river’s mouth had been almost childishly easy—the Shades working together gave our little boats nearly as thorough a cover as they could give us individually.

Our plan for the lake was to hug the southern shore and put in each day a bit before dawn, but we wanted to start out by swinging wide to the north to avoid the most heavily populated section of the Varyan bank of the lake. That meant driving straight out from the river’s mouth initially.

Aral,
Triss sent about a quarter of an hour after we left the river,
I think you might want to look over at the other boat.

Why?
I glanced to my right but didn’t see anything special.

It has two wakes.

What?
I looked again, and this time I saw what Triss meant. In addition to the faint white line the keel of the little boat was drawing through the water, there was a thick silvery thread following along behind and beneath.

I noticed it because it changes the way the light comes off the water, and . . .
Triss trailed off as the silver line suddenly vanished.
I suspect that we are about to find out what is going on.

You are indeed, Dragonshadow.
The mental voice was strong and sharp, like an axe blade, yet distinctly feminine. Kumi startled in the other boat when it began to speak, which made it clear that whoever was talking, she wanted all of us to hear her.

A moment later, an enormous whiskered head broke the surface silently between the two boats.
I am Shallowshunter. Mudlight asked me to look after you while you travel across our waters.

I blinked a couple of times.
Thank you, Shallowshunter. I had no idea that your people could speak lake to lake, or that Mudlight even knew we were coming this way.

Shallowshunter flicked the short barbels on her upper lip and sent a little mental chuckle our way.
Lake to lake would be a long reach indeed, but an unnecessary one. Mudlight swam beneath you on the water-road as you traveled from his lake to ours. He sent for me as you neared our waters, and only turned back for home once I had arrived to keep an eye on you.

Mudlight followed us all the way out here?
asked Triss.
And we didn’t notice him?

No, and yes. Or, the other way round, really. He followed you only as far as the end of the water-road, but he did not cross into the broader realm because that would have forced him to make a formal visit of it. And, obviously, he kept out of your sight if you had to ask about it.

Obviously,
Triss sent my way dryly.

If Shallowshunter heard, she ignored him.
Mudlight told me little of your purpose beyond who and what you are and that you travel by night to avoid unfriendly observers. Given
whom you once served, I can do a bit more than keep an eye out for you. If you like, I can arrange to bring you across to the dirtplace of the Lady. None will bother you in the waters there.

That would be appreciated,
I sent.
Perhaps a few nights from now? Even the nearer shore of the island would make an impossibly long paddle for us in one go.
It was well over a hundred miles from the river’s mouth to the nearest point of the Lady’s island and out here in the lake we wouldn’t have the current to help us.

Tonight,
sent Shallowshunter. Then, without another word, she sank beneath the waters.

“I wish they wouldn’t just vanish like that without saying good-bye,” said Faran. “It’s disconcerting.”

Several minutes passed and Shallowshunter didn’t return, so we began to travel again. After perhaps a half hour, I felt the boat suddenly surge forward beneath me.
What the fuck is that . . . ?

Tonight I said, and tonight I meant,
the reply came from below, alerting me to the fact that I had done the mental equivalent of speaking my question aloud.
I have acquired some help,
continued Shallowshunter.
We take you to the island now.

We were soon moving at such a clip that water foamed along our bows, and putting a paddle in was nothing more than an invitation to have it yanked from your hands—at least as fast as a cantering horse, if not faster. The eels went on and on at that pace without flagging. I don’t know how many of her fellows Shallowshunter had summoned to help out, but our speed dropped only briefly and occasionally when one of the Storm Eels passed off the job of towing to another.

The sun was just beginning to spill blood into the sky when we finally spied the nearer shore of the vast island that belonged to the Lady of Leivas.

Do you wish to rest here on the shore, now?
sent Shallowshunter.
The sun is not yet up, though it soon will be. The slopes are very steep here and we have only another
few hours’ travel if you wish to reach better accommodation for your kind.

We should probably put in,
I sent.
It’s far more important that no one see us than that we have a comfortable place to bed down.

The decision is yours, of course, but there are no hostile eyes here to see you. Boats do not approach within five hundred lengths of the Lady’s isle uninvited, and she is not currently receiving. If we stay close to shore we can take you many thousands of lengths yet without any danger of detection.

Lengths?
asked Triss.
Lengths of what?

Of an adult of my kind,
replied Shallowshunter.

So, a three- or four-mile exclusion zone,
I sent once I’d done the rough math to sort out five hundred eel lengths in my head.
There’s not many who could see us at that distance, especially against the dark backdrop of the island. All right. Take us where you will.

Done.

The eels towed us north and east, hugging the coastline all the way. The island was tall and steep sided—a pair of low mountains really, rising sharply from the lake bottom a couple of hundred feet below. The underlying stone was a color near black, showing through the lush green forest in ragged stripes and scars where rockfalls had ripped away the growth. Perhaps three hours after dawn we arrived at a point due east of the larger peak and the boats suddenly slowed, turning sharply to the left.

For a moment it seemed as if the eels were about to drag us into the rocky cliffs, but then we turned left again and I realized there was a hidden opening there. A narrow channel of water ran north to south between two vast curtains of stone—all but invisible from the broader lake. After perhaps seventy feet we turned right into a tiny bay cradled between the arms of the mountain. The eels left us then with their usual lack of ceremony and we paddled in to a narrow, black sand beach that provided us a place to pull the boats up out of the water.

“Now what?” asked Maryam. “Set up tents and collapse?”

“I think not,” replied Faran from farther up the beach. “Shallowshunter said we would have better accommodation, and there it is.”

She pointed toward what looked at first glance like a darker patch of rock. It was actually a rounded stone arch, likely the top of an old lava tube. Sand filled the lower half and had been neatly raked flat. A cursory examination suggested that someone or something had brought the sand in intentionally.

Perhaps thirty feet back from the cave mouth we found a neat stone hearth beneath a chimney in the rock. Cord hammocks hung from pitons driven deep into the stone of the arched ceiling, and sealed amphorae sunk, point down, in the sand held water and a selection of preserved foods.

Roric held up a strip of salted pork. “Do we make ourselves at home?”

I nodded. “I don’t think the eels would have brought us here to go hungry in sight of a good meal.”

Once we had finished with our early morning dinner, we climbed into the hammocks. Even with light coming in from the entrance and down the smoke hole, it was dark enough in the cave to leave watch duty to the Shades, which we gratefully did.

*   *   *

I
woke from a deep sleep suddenly and gently, as though a beloved voice had called my name. When I sat up, I saw that no one else was awake yet. The light from the entrance told me it was late afternoon.

Triss?

Here, nothing to report.

You didn’t hear anything?

Nothing but insects and sleeping Blades.

Thanks.
I rolled out of my hammock and grabbed my sword rig from where I’d hung it in easy reach.

Something wrong?

No.
I could still hear the dream echo of the voice that
had called me, but I didn’t want to try to explain.
I’m slept out and I want a walk. I thought I’d check out the deeps of the cave.
The direction of that echo.

Fair enough. I’ll let Kyrissa know we’re going.