Darkened Blade: A Fallen Blade Novel (26 page)

Even on the shorter route we passed four or five carefully concealed disturbances in the earth, like shallow graves . . . rather exactly like. But nothing popped out at us. By the time we reached the windows, I was soaked in sweat. The fluttering of my heart in rhythm with the failing spells on the finger of the Signet in my pouch added another beat of urgency to the whole thing. I needed to get this thing settled one way or the other and quickly.

“These didn’t used to be warded.” Kelos’s shroud blotted out the lower portion of a window. “Let’s see . . .” The darkness briefly rose to hide the whole of the pane. “Yes.” A low pop followed and, as the shadow retreated, the window pivoted inward. “They’re often left open for days or weeks at a time to circulate fresh air through the wing.”

Kelos vanished within. Faran went next, and I followed her, glancing back over my shoulder and sending up a silent prayer of thanks to my dead goddess that we hadn’t wakened any of the sleepers under the earth. The paintings and screens we passed as we made our way through the nearer part of the gallery registered as weird, almost nightmarish mélanges of gloss and matte nothings in darksight, a marked contrast to the senses of my body. Shades simply didn’t have the right vision for this kind of art.

The sculpture in the next section was a little better, though not much, as many of the figures were carved or shaped from a single type of material, and to Shade senses that made the representational pieces look disturbingly off. But none of the disconcerting effects caused by seeing the art through a Shade’s “eyes” simultaneously with my own would have prepared me for the true nightmare of the next gallery. Nor Faran either, apparently, as I very nearly slammed into her when she stopped abruptly in the doorway. Our shrouds overlapped in an intimacy unique to our kind as I stopped inches behind her.

“That’s human skin, isn’t it?” she demanded, her quiet voice filled with anger. “What is this place?”

“Let me see.” I put a hand on her shoulder as I slid through the narrow gap between her and the door frame.

I had suspicions cultivated from a long ago discussion with Devin, but I wanted to see for myself. As soon as I slipped past Faran, I took a look around. What I saw hit me like a punch to the heart, temporarily overwhelming the flutters coming from the Signet’s finger. The large room was filled with dozens of frames of varying sizes and shapes, each one displaying a piece of the tattooist’s art. The tattooist’s, and the flayer’s and the tanner’s . . .

Knowing what Devin had told me about the way they were created, I wanted to vomit. Each piece of beautifully tattooed skin had been inked while still attached to a living human being. Only after the artwork had healed completely was it separated from the awake and aware victim and preserved for display. Devin had told me that this Son of Heaven used the technique to punish those of his servants who had especially displeased him; that the flayers were very skilled and that with the aid of magical healing many of their subjects continued to serve the Son after losing the skin of an arm or shoulder. The craftsmanship was exquisite and horrifying.

Devin himself had an incredibly detailed and gorgeous depiction of the god Shan on his left forearm—a warning. The Son had it inscribed and explained to Devin that it was a down payment of sorts. If Devin ever significantly failed him again, the Son would have the piece expanded to cover every inch of Devin’s skin before removing it for display in this gallery.

I couldn’t help but look around then to see if any of the half-dozen full-body pieces included the Shan I had seen on Devin’s arm, but none did. Hopefully that meant he was still breathing and attached to his skin, and not that it was off being prepared for display or in another gallery somewhere. I despised Devin, but not that much, and I pitied him, too.

“Aral?” It was Faran. “Are you all right? You just stopped. . . .”

“Not really. This is . . .”

“An abomination,” hissed Kelos, who had returned from
the far end of the gallery. “One that we will hopefully end today. But we really don’t have time to be properly horrified. We need to keep moving. Now, come on!”

As we started after Kelos, I leaned in close to Faran’s ear. “This is the Son’s failure gallery and I was looking for Devin’s hide. I don’t see it.”

“You knew about this place?” she asked.

I shrugged, though she couldn’t see it through my shroud. “Sort of, maybe. Devin told me about it, but I don’t think I ever really believed him until today.”

As we passed out of the gallery with its brightly burning morning light, and into a shady north-facing hall, I breathed a sigh of real relief, and slowed the flow of nima to my shroud to a trickle. The arrangement here was somewhat different from the formal galleries. A wide hallway ran for perhaps eighty feet with windows facing the garden on one side and open or window-fronted rooms on the other.

I was just reaching up to draw the shadows across my eyes again, when I bumped into Faran. Literally, this time. She was standing in front of the second room off the hall, a small, narrow, almost closet-like space that had been converted into a cell by the expedient of installing iron bars a foot or so in from where the windows had once been.

I peered into the cell. “Fuck.” We had found Devin, though he was barely recognizable.

“Is he alive?” asked Faran.

It was a good question, and one I couldn’t answer at a glance. He lay upon a padded table built in the shape of a spread-eagled human figure. It was tilted up at about a thirty-degree angle, with Devin’s head higher than his feet, which were only a yard from the bars. He had been shaved top to toe, and with the exception of a hand-sized patch on his face, every inch of exposed skin was covered in intricate tattoos. If he
was
breathing, it was so slowly and shallowly that it barely moved his chest.

“Devin?” I said, aloud. “Devin, are you in there?” His eyes snapped open and looked my way, but that was the only indication that he was alive or aware in any way. “Devin?”

“He
is
alive,” said Faran. “No one deserves this. We need to open this door and get him loose!”

“There’s no point,” said Kelos, “and no time.” Then, when Faran’s shadow reached over to cover the lock, he snapped, “Don’t! He’s not tied down. Not physically, anyway, and for now he’s much safer in there with locks and bars between him and the risen than he would be without that protection.”

As we spoke, Devin’s eyes tracked from one shroud to the next, but again, that was his only motion or sign of life.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s holding him?”

“Word of command,” said Kelos. “It’s part of the geas we in the Shadow took upon ourselves when we swore allegiance to the Son of Heaven. Devin is alive and aware. He can feel everything that is done to him, but he can neither move nor speak. Not unless the Son wishes it.”

“Can’t we break the binding?” asked Faran.

“No. Not with the resources we have here and not without many days of ritual and spell work. The only way to free him short of that is to kill the Son of Heaven. So the sooner we do that, the sooner we can do something for Devin. Now come on, we
really
don’t have time for any of this.”

But I was reluctant to move on and leave someone I had once thought of as my brother in such a state, no matter what had happened between us since. “That’s horrible.” Then another thought occurred to me. “But you’re . . .”

“I should be fine,” replied Kelos. “It’s the first thing I moved to break when I started chipping away at the geas. But we
really
can’t do anything for him here. We need to get down to the far end of the hall and up the stairs beyond.” He took three steps and then paused in front of the next cell. “My, my, what have we here?”

I moved forward and looked into the cell. “Well, if it isn’t Lieutenant Chomarr.” The Hand was strapped down tight with a leather gag to prevent him using verbal magic and his Storm familiar confined in a large blue glass bottle on a table behind him. He had a battle scene in lurid colors about half inked in on his chest. “How do you suppose he ended up here?”

“The Son of Heaven is a capricious master,” said Kelos. “I imagine the fact that the invasion of Dalridia failed to result in a single Blade death told heavily against him, and the Son just—Shit! Risen!”

A half score or so of the restless dead came shambling in from the far end of the long windowed hallway. They had their heads raised and seemed to be sniffing the air. Without thinking, I closed the shroud in front of my face, cutting off my human vision in favor of darksight and added concealment.

“They smell the blood of the living,” said Kelos. “Dammit! Into Devin’s cell, quickly.” I heard the lock pop, and a dark blot of shadows slipped inside, dropping down behind Devin. Faran and I followed a moment later, closing the gate behind us with a sharp click. “Quiet now. They can’t see well under the best of circumstances and, hopefully, Devin and Zass’s presence will mask ours where it comes to whatever other senses they have. He might as well be of some use to somebody for once.”

Within a matter of minutes the dead were outside the cell. About half the pack dropped to hands and knees in front of the door and began sniffing along the floor. Most of those quickly moved off into the galleries beyond, heading for the side away from the sun. After several very long seconds, one of those that remained rose and looked in at us. Its rotting hands went to the bars of the gate and shook it gently. But the gate had locked behind us, and it didn’t open. The risen pressed its face to one of the gaps and sniffed deeply. Then, shaking its head, it began to turn away . . . only to freeze an instant later.

I don’t know how to describe what happened next. One beat, the risen at the gate seemed much of a kind with its brethren, all mindless malice and inhuman horror. The next, it became something more. Inhabited, if you will, filled with presence and purpose. Its milky eyes took on a sort of unholy glow that was clearly visible in darksight when it pressed its face once again to the bars. I could sense the Son of Heaven looking for us through them. . . .

T
he
Son of Heaven spoke with the voice of the dead. It was a horrible, rasping, impossible sound—words forced up a rotten windpipe by the bellows action of a pair of dry and blackened lungs, the whole modulated with vocal cords and tongue the consistency of jerky left too long in the sun.

“Is there someone in there with you, Devin? I think there might be. Perhaps some of your little Blade friends. I can’t see anyone, but I smell more life than I should, both human and . . . that other. Come on, out with it, lad. . . . Oh, wait, you’re tongue-tied, aren’t you?”

The risen laughed then, a sound like nothing I had ever heard or hope to again—a jackal coughing up its own heart, perhaps. “Should I loosen that knot, do you think? Or should I make you choke on it? It’s funny watching a man choke to death on his own tongue. Truly.”

Chomarr’s voice sounded from the next cell then, but heavily muffled and completely senseless as the gag kept the Hand from conveying anything useful. The risen glanced that way, but stayed where it was and turned back to our cell.

Drawing a rasping breath, it nodded at Devin. “Well, come on then, speak. I command you by the—”

The thing’s head came apart like a rotten melon then as a rope of thick black night struck it full in the face. The attack came from the shadows on Devin’s farther side where Kelos stood—a burst of congealed magic, like liquid smoke or lightning turned inside out, with a weird, dark, purplish spell-light accompanying it. The five remaining risen all whipped around as one, facing the cell. Kelos killed two more in the next instant with that same dark magic.

I was surprised by his mode of attack, because I had never seen anyone but Siri use the technique, and the first time I’d asked her to teach it to me, she’d flat refused, implying it was too dangerous for me. Later, when I tried again, she refused me again, citing the unstable marriage of elemental powers and the possibility of draining your soul away if you used it too much. That didn’t keep me from wishing I could manage the trick. It was more effective than even the most powerful magelightning and it produced none of the Shade-poisoning light that came with that more common magic. Perhaps if Kelos and I both lived through the next few hours . . .

But that would all have to wait for after . . . if there was an after. I moved toward the gate in the wake of his blast, but it was already opening. Black steel licked out of a cloud of darkness as Faran slipped through and took the next one’s head. I followed on her heels, stabbing another through the heart as Kelos killed the last with his dark fire.

The time of sneaking was over. At this point, only striking fast and hard had any chance of success. I turned and raced for the far end of the hall, trusting the others to do their jobs without need of any words from me. Someone—Kelos, probably—slammed Devin’s cell shut behind us, a small mercy that verified my trust.

Knowing what I might have prepared in the same circumstances, I threw myself down on my belly a few feet short of the door, sliding along the slick jade tiles to pass through the door at ankle height. The vision of the Shades
operates equally in every direction, and I was able to focus my attention up and back as I went, watching as a pair of risen leaped forward from either side of the door, only to crash into each other when the life they smelled wasn’t where they expected it to be.

They died together, chopped in half by a goddess-forged sword, though whether it was Faran or Kelos who wielded it, I couldn’t say. As the impetus of my dive slowed, I tucked into a ball and converted the last of my forward motion into a roll that put me back on my feet. The stairs were just ahead, with four more risen standing side by side on the third step up, forming a gate of rotting flesh.

There were more risen in the room around me, sensed more from movements at the edge of my attention than by truly seeing them. Though darksight may operate in every direction, the human mind—no matter how well trained and highly experienced—simply isn’t equipped to fully deal with all the information that comes in that way.

I knew they were there, and I knew that none of them were close enough to prevent me from reaching the stairs, but their exact number and positioning was a thing beyond my ability to know in that moment. Neither did I care. The biggest danger from the risen came when they could use numbers against you. As long as I kept moving, I could ignore those behind me. Of course, if I slowed down, they would swarm me under.

When I reached a point eight feet or so from the stairs, I brought my swords up and back so that the blades pointed over my shoulders, and my elbows were in front of my chin. Then, as I took two more running steps, I snapped them forward and out as hard as I could. Edges met undead flesh at knee height. The risen are hard and tough, filled with a darkling curse that strengthens them against mortal steel. The swords of my lost goddess cut through eight legs like a scythe through wheat. The dead fell around and on top of me as my steel struck the jade-covered walls of the stairs, shattering tiles with a ringing crash.

Behind me, the remaining dead turned in toward the stairs
and their fallen brethren, putting their backs to the gallery . . . and to my companions, who hit them like a gale of darkness and steel. But I was only vaguely aware of the carnage behind me as I kept my attention focused up and forward. The stairs entered the room above in its center, coming up through a low-walled and open-topped well rather than a door.

With perhaps ten steps left to go I registered a half-dozen figures moving to cut me off. If they were risen, they were of the hidden variety, sustained in the counterfeit appearance of life by the blood of the innocent. They wore the garb of high officials of the church—Sword and Voice both.

Four more steps, and reverse my grip on my swords . . . five . . . six and a leap up and to the side. As I hit the top of my jump I jammed my swords down over the lip of the wall around the stairs, using them like a vaulter’s pole to lever myself up and over the barrier.

I landed in a squat, and flicked the shadows away from my eyes to get a fix on the room around me. It was a big open space, with a wide-swung pair of double doors on the side opposite the top of the stairs. Beyond lay a room I knew from my last visit—the withdrawing room just outside the Son of Heaven’s bedchamber. I recognized it by the circle of black swords stapled to a cross section of some enormous tree’s trunk on the wall—swords of Namara, obscene trophies taken from my fallen comrades.

Rage burned through me, but unlike the last time I had been here, it failed to consume my reason. With gritted teeth and a gut-churning effort of will, I held my concentration and finished my survey of the room around me. It was perhaps twice the size of the withdrawing room, and empty save for a few sculptures, a half-dozen benches, and the dead clogging the stairhead. Behind them another pair of doors opened into a grand audience chamber where the Son of Heaven sat on a white jade throne at the far end—a mirror of the Emperor of Heaven’s own black jade model.

He was tall and pale, almost white, as the men of Dan Eyre sometimes are, and somehow frail looking. Even from so far away I could see the wide, fixed gaze of the fanatic
or the madman—the only expression on an otherwise too still face. His robes were white threaded with gold, except for two bright spots of red above his collarbones where the blood that ran from the never-healing cuts I’d left on his cheeks dripped. His hair was thick and black and long, bound up in a braid that trailed down over his shoulder into his lap. In one hand he held the ivory rod of his office. In the other, a human thigh bone with a great green gem on the end, like some obscene mace.

There were perhaps a score of men and women in the room as well, all wearing the trapping of various orders within the church. Most of them looked as alive as I did, but a few had telltale signs of rot cropping up in the shape of pupils gone milky or dark cracks in the flesh around the eyes and mouth or across the backs of their knuckles—the places where the skin needed to bend and twist.

I could never hope to fight them all, but I might be able to get past them to reach the Son of Heaven if I moved fast enough. So, of course, I froze. Here was the moment. Would I end the reign of the Son of Heaven and begin a war that would engulf the eleven kingdoms? Or would I . . . what? Walk away somehow? Crash through the nearest window and hope to escape into the night? I had no exit strategy, no alternate plan, no way to go but forward.

I had come all this way hoping against hope that I would find my way when I needed it most. Perhaps believing somewhere down in the depths of my heart, below thought or rationality, that when I reached this place, my goddess would give me a sign—that, one last time, she would choose my path for me. But there was no whisper in my heart save the flutter of a Signet’s dying finger, and no ghost of a benediction to give me solace. There was only the Son of Heaven on one hand and the spectre of war on the other.

Black fire erupted out of the stairhead, blowing apart the dead that waited there—how was Kelos doing that? Raw blasts of magical force burned nima like nothing else could. Was the well of his soul bottomless? Shadow flowed up the stairs and split in two.

“Hold the stairs,” Kelos called, as one of the shadows rolled toward the audience chamber and the waiting Son of Heaven.

Finally, I moved—falling in behind Kelos as he headed for the throne, drawn as much by my former master’s utter conviction as by my own sense that I must act even if I didn’t know what to do. A woman wearing the robes of an archpriestess of Balor lunged at me, extending long-nailed fingers like claws.

Without any thought or intention I killed her. Reflex flicked my right-hand sword across her throat, half severing her head and spilling her undead life away, though no blood flowed. Another of the hidden risen came at me and I gutted him with an equally reflexive drawing cut. That disconnection felt wrong and surreal, nightmarish. Where normally in a battle I become hyper-engaged, totally in and of the moment, I was sleepwalking my way through this fight, killing this woman and dodging that man without truly seeing any of them, as I tried to make sense of what I should do.

Twice, I might have died if it were not for Kelos and his dark fire, but I simply couldn’t make myself care. Kelos should have reached the Son of Heaven long before I did, but he chose not to, moving in parallel with me instead. Before I really knew what was happening, I stood at the foot of the throne’s dais, vaguely aware of Kelos standing in a second’s place behind and to my right.

“Today is the day you die, Corik.” Kelos dropped his shroud as he spoke. He stood sideways to the throne, pointing one sword up at the Son of Heaven’s throat and the other out toward the remaining risen—an obvious distraction to allow me to do the deed.

I
wanted
to, but still I dreaded the result—on my hands the blood of kingdoms. I moved forward and to the side still sleepwalking, taking the first step on the dais to the throne.

The Son’s eyes passed across my shroud as though I weren’t there. “Ah, Kelos,” said the Son of Heaven, “I knew that you would return someday. That your arrogance would not allow you to acknowledge your final defeat. You have lost. You know that, right?”

“I don’t think so.” Dark light rolled down the length of Kelos’s lower sword, striking the nearest of the dead in the chest, blowing its heart and lungs apart in a messy spray. “Keep them back.”

“Or what?” asked the Son of Heaven. “You’ll kill me? I don’t think so. I think that if you
could
kill me, I would already be dead. But you can’t, can you? The geas still holds that far, even if it no longer protects my followers.”

Was that true? If so, any hopes that Kelos might solve my dilemma for me were in vain. This was my decision and my show, as I had always known it must be. So why couldn’t I choose? I forced myself up another step. One more and I would be close enough to strike. One more and I would
have
to make the choice. Surely, when I got there, I would know the right answer.

“It does,” continued the Son of Heaven. “The geas still binds your hands where it comes to me. If that’s true, you’re going to die here, Kelos. I have thousands more where these come from.” He nodded toward the dozen or so dead closing in on the throne. “Though I don’t think I’ll need them. If these all rush you at once, you will not be able to stop them, will you? Especially not if: Sithnish Kasht Keenim!”

The unknown words came out as a command, and Kelos went rigid—every muscle in his body straining as if against some invisible barrier. Then his hands opened and his swords fell ringing to the floor in the same moment that the remaining risen rushed the dais. This, then, was my true moment.

And, when it finally came, the choice
was
easy, though not for the reasons I had expected. I turned and dropped my shroud, releasing Triss as I drove my swords straight through the Son of Heaven’s heart and throat, pinning him to his throne.

I stared into his eyes as he died, expecting I don’t know what. A mighty explosion perhaps? Years to fall on him like a great weight, aging him away to nothing? A black fog that would take him straight to hell? What I got instead was death as it might have taken any man—a slumping and relaxing of muscles that had lost their driving will, as the
Son of Heaven’s soul departed for a long overdue appointment with the lords of judgment.