Drawn Blades (17 page)

Shadow blotted out the doorway, visible through Triss’s senses in a way my eyes never could have perceived it. Faran.

“Come on through to my room,” she said quietly. “I forced a window. Hurry! I’ve cleared the stairs, but there might be more below.” The shadow vanished.

Siri’s blurrier presence occluded the door a moment later as I dropped to the floor. “Dead. All of them. Is she always like that?”

I crossed to the door as Siri moved into the hall. “Efficiently ruthless and cheerful about it?”

“That.”

“Yes.” I stepped over the first of the bodies, a tall Sylvani woman with her throat slit. Beyond her another Sylvani slumped against the wall—male this time, but likewise with a slit throat. The—presumably dead—owner of the third voice was somewhere out of sight around the curve of the spiral stair.

“Huh,” said Siri. “I think I’m going to like this girl.”

“I rather thought you might.” I bent and tore the small crest free of the first corpse’s short cape for later examination—Triss’s senses didn’t lend themselves to the finer points of reading heraldry. Then I stepped over the body and moved on.

Faran’s door was open, the room beyond it empty. The bars of the southwestern window lay on the floor, and the glass was broken out. The window briefly wavered and fuzzed out as Siri went through. I followed her a moment later, dropping ten feet to land on the roof of the common room. My thigh twinged a bit, but the older injuries in calf and knee seemed to have pretty well healed.

“Now what?” Faran asked. “Do we collect the horses?”

“No, let’s head westward along the rooftops for now,” I said, suiting action to words. “Even if there aren’t more soldiers below, we might have to kill some of the stable hands. I think we’ve already made enough unnecessary corpses for one day, don’t you?”

“Aral.” Siri’s voice came out soft but cold as she followed me along the roof. “Don’t second-guess the girl. This wasn’t the way I intended to play that scene, but you weren’t in her position, so you can’t know if she had any choice in the matter.”

I nodded, though no one could see me. “Point. Faran?”

“I don’t know. That first woman had a big rod thing she was aiming into your room—looked like some kind of heavy-duty magical siege equipment maybe.”

“See?” Siri said rather smugly. Then, “Sounds like you made the right call, Faran. Well done.”

“Thanks . . . but, don’t get me wrong. I was planning on killing them all before I ever saw the rod.”

I repressed a petty urge to tell Siri “See?” in the same smug tone she had used on me.

“You were?” Siri asked Faran.

“Anyone blasting in the doors of the place I’m sleeping is an enemy. Especially when I’m having one of my headaches and they make so much noise about it—I thought the top of my skull was going to come off when they smashed your door. I popped mine open as soon as I heard them pounding up the first set of stairs. One of them stuck a nose in my room, but I was shrouded up and they moved straight on to yours. I was less than five feet away when they hit it with a burst from that rod. Damn, but that was loud.
And
, the flash hurt Ssithra.”

“How bad is your head?” I asked.

There was a long pause. “Bad. Ever since they blew out your door I’ve had a fucking bolt of rainbow lightning running right across the center of my vision. It feels like someone’s trying to shove a hot iron ball through the side of my skull. It wasn’t great before that, but after . . . Damn!”

“Can you run?” If the Sylvani who’d broken in the door really were imperial officials of some sort, we probably needed to pick up the pace.

“Won’t be much fun, but yeah. Just try to keep up, old man.” Then she blurred past me.

The morning sun made it easier to keep track of my companions’ shrouds but harder to maintain my own. Triss remained mostly dormant in the face of the intense light. I had to constantly feed nima into it to fight against the abrading power of the sun and I could feel it drawing down the well of my soul all too quickly. Two miles and a quarter of an hour later, I knew that if I didn’t release my shroud soon I was going to keel over. I hated sunrunning.

“Can’t keep this up much longer,” I panted as we dropped into the shade of a broad chimney to take a brief rest. “Sun’s way too fierce, even if it is cooler on this side of the wall than in the human lands.”

Faran dropped her shroud then and pressed her forehead to her knees. “Feels like my head’s gonna come apart.”

I released my own shroud as I reached over to lay a hand on her shoulder. “There hasn’t been any obvious sign of pursuit. We can stop here for a bit and let you recover.”

Siri stepped out of shadow and knelt in front of us. She looked as fresh as if she’d just climbed out of bed after a long night’s sleep—though whether that was due to her own reserves or additional protection provided by the god I couldn’t say.

“Aral’s right. You need a break.” Siri caught my eyes. “I think it might be best if we split up for a while. The Sylvani mentioned a god-sniffer, which means it’s me they’re really looking for. If they’ve another, there’s no good way for me to shake them off afoot, and I’ll be a risk to you as long we’re together.”

“You know more about the way things work on this side of the wall than I do.” I wasn’t entirely convinced about splitting up, but it was Siri’s call, and I wouldn’t argue. “Which reminds me, what’s a
god-sniffer
?”

“It’s a who, not a what. After the godwar the Sylvani didn’t want to have anything more to do with any kind of gods ever, so they created a sort of imperial anti-religion, the nuliphate. Initially there wasn’t much to it, but the buried gods do not rest easy in their prison-graves. They have enormous power still and most of them have cult followings of one degree or another. When they started to reach beyond the bounds of their tombs and draw cultic followings, the emperor created the office of the disquisition to investigate and deal with the problem of the cultists and merged it with the nuliphate.”

“And the god-sniffers?” I prompted.

“I was getting there. They’re a suborder within the disquisition—Sylvani mages who’ve attuned themselves to the magical signature of the buried gods. They can suss out the presence of even very minor manifestations of the buried ones. They can also track them over short to medium distances when the trail is fresh enough.”

“That doesn’t sound good.” I suddenly remembered the badge I’d taken from the corpse and pulled it out. “I picked this off one of our late visitors. Let’s see if it has anything to tell us.”

It was a disk of translucent crystal an inch and a half across. The outer edge was a sort of dusty rose that glowed faintly from within. The stark outline of a leafless tree was etched into the surface of the facing side. It stood on a low hill in front of a westering sun, likewise faintly glowing. I recognized the lowering sun as an emblem of the Syvani emperor, but the tree . . .

“What’s this symbol?”

“That’s the emblem of the disquisition. It’s a dead grave tree. The Sylvani plant them over the burial places of their fallen in the way we might put up a stone. Normally, they’re shown thick with leaves to symbolize the continuation of life in the face of death. They’re incredibly hardy and long lived—ten thousand years or more. But every single one of them that stands on the grave of a buried god died within a century of being planted.”

Siri took the badge from me. “There are three shield pips here on the lower left.” She shook her head. “This belonged to a hierarch of the disquisition, one of their senior anti-priests. If there isn’t another god-sniffer close at hand already, there will be soon. We definitely need to split up.”

“Won’t they scent this?” I held up my wedding ring.

“Surely, but it’s a paltry thing compared to the god reek I trail around these days. They’ll see me as the greater threat. Besides, you can cross over to the human side of the wall where they can’t follow you.”

“Why can’t we all just do that?”

She touched her hair. “I can’t cross the wall either. Not at the moment, at least. My divine infection has grown too intense to pass the ward.”

“What will you do when they catch up to you?” I asked.

“They won’t. Once I’ve drawn them out of the area, I’ll light a fire and ‘poof.’ Being able to vanish in a puff of smoke comes in very handy.”

“It would. All right, I don’t like it, but I see the need. Where should we meet you?”

“Head west for another fifty miles along the wall, then turn south. Give me five days, then light a fire and smother it. I’ll find you.”

Before I could argue or ask any more questions, she shrouded up and vanished.

“Faran, are you ready to move?”

She didn’t lift her head. “No, not really, but I can if I must.” She pushed herself to her feet, took a step, staggered, and barely stayed upright. “I don’t think I have the will left to hold Ssithra in shroud form.”

That was a problem. As long as we stayed in the sun, the Shades would have a terrible time of it no matter how much of our nima we fed them. Triss was older and more experienced than Ssithra and I doubted his ability to maintain himself in shroud form under the circumstances—a big part of why I was running things at the moment. If Faran couldn’t hold the shroud herself . . . We had to get out of the sun, and we had to do it now.

“Can you clear the wall?” I pointed to the narrow street that ran down the center of the thousand-mile city.

“Eight feet?” Faran snorted. “With one broken leg, and a blindfold. If that ever changes, cut my throat and leave me for dog food.”

“Then we’re going to take Siri’s suggestion and jump back to the human side of things. There are woodlands over there. We’ll be visible on the way, but Triss and Ssithra should be able to keep us out of sight once we’re mostly in shadow again. That should keep us out of the hands of any human allies the disquisition might send to our side of the wall.”

Siri had said that no one would follow us there, but I’d spent too many years running from the authorities to take anyone’s word on something like that.

*   *   *

“Anything
this time?” Faran was flat on her back with a wet cloth draped across her eyes as she had been for most of the past three days. The Sylvani blasting rod had triggered the worst round of headaches she’d had since starting her treatments with Shang and Harad.

I stared at the spiral of smoke climbing up from my freshly extinguished fire. “Nothing.” It was now ten days on from when we’d left Siri. “But the wedding ring’s still happily smoking away. I expect something would have changed there if she’d been killed or the disquisition had taken her prisoner. They’d have to have ways of shutting down god-magic if that’s their primary mission. She’s probably fine.” Yeah, right.

“Maybe. Or maybe you’re married to the god directly now instead of at one remove. This side of the wall, he’s bound to have a lot more power over you.”

“Cheery thought, that. Thanks.”

Faran didn’t answer me.

I’m sure it’ll be fine,
sent Triss.
Siri can take care of herself.

I hope you’re right.

T
he
voice of a god speaking in your heart can never be forgotten. The silencing of your god can never be forgiven.

The latter truth came home to me with a brutal horror when the voice of the Smoldering Flame burned itself into my memory forever.

Awake, mortal. I have need of you.

There was no mistaking the voice for Triss. I heard the words in my mind, but it spoke in my heart, resonating through blood and bone and soul. It came up from the same place that that sense of home I’d felt with Siri came from. This was the Smoldering Flame speaking painfully through the channel that Siri had made between us.

The sheer force of the god’s voice hammered at my mind like a giant shouting in my ear. But even worse was the way the unmistakable divinity of it woke echoes of Namara in my memory. That ripped at my soul. I tried to sit up and make it stop, but I found that I couldn’t move. Not so much as the tip of my little finger.

What do you want?
I sent along that same channel once I realized I couldn’t break free.

I demand a service of you.

I felt an incredible compulsion to obey, but resisted. It burned my mind.
You have no right.

WHAT?!
The voice set my bones painfully ashiver, and my ring finger suddenly felt as though I was wearing a band of fire.
You dare question
my
orders? I am a god!

Not mine, you aren’t. My god was slain.
Without that loss, I don’t know that I could have fought the pressure I felt now.
If you want something from me, you will ask for it the same as anyone else.

I will destroy you!
The smoke ring burned even hotter on my finger, and I thought I smelled cooking meat. I wasn’t sure whether or not the god could make true on his threat, but death scared me less than compromising who I was. I had only just gotten back to a place where I knew who that was.

Perhaps. But if you kill me that’s going to make it very hard for me to perform whatever service you’re trying to sweet-talk me into.

I do not sweet-talk. I command. I am obeyed.

The god’s voice sounded just as loud and autocratic in my head as when it first began to speak to me, but the channel that tied me to Siri carried emotional freight as well as the words. And, there, I sensed something like confusion—the god didn’t know how to deal with someone who would not be forced. That gave me more strength to fight against his will.

You may command all you want. I am no longer in the business of obeying anyone.

Shock, consternation, confusion . . .
But I need you to do something for me.

Then it will be on my terms or it will not happen.
I spared a moment to wonder what it would be like to contend with the god when he was unbound, and couldn’t suppress a shiver at the thought. That would be a
very
different contest.

You are even more trouble than the Siri.

She obeys you when you attempt to force her? Somehow I have a hard time seeing that.

I could sense the god fuming away at the other end of the channel, but he didn’t say anything immediately.

It’s like this,
I sent.
You can tell me what you want in a polite way, and I can decide whether or not I’m interested. You can try to kill me and end any hope of my cooperation ever. Or, you can hold me here on the edge of dreams for however long it takes Faran to wake up, walk over here, see the way my ring is burning my hand, and decide to cut my finger off. Those are your options.

Would the child do that?
The god’s mental voice shifted, becoming more calculating.

She is no child, and she’d do it in a heartbeat. She’s offered five times so far. If I am not free to stop her, she may well decide this is the perfect opportunity. For that matter, if
she
doesn’t do it, and you release me without us coming to some sort of arrangement, I’ll cut the finger off myself.

But what about the Siri? Is she not your bride?

She is. But I married
her
, not you. Since Namara’s death I have no use for gods. So, ask me your favor politely, attempt to kill me, or fuck off. Those are your choices.

I felt frustration and a great weight of weariness followed finally by resignation.
The Siri is trapped and I am still too tightly bound by the dagger in my heart to free her. You are the only one I can communicate with whom I can trust to extract her from her present situation.

Why not send a pack of cultists? The ones that attacked me on my way here seemed eager enough.

Anger!
Because
they attacked you on your way here.
The Fire That Burns Underground sounded furious now.
My truevelyn—those who walk in my shadow—hear me . . . imperfectly.

They do not . . .
approve
of mortals usurping the power of the Smoldering Flame. If they could, they would see you slain and the Siri relegated to a . . . more symbolic state. That has led them to do something very foolish, and why I need . . . why I must
ask
you to perform this service for me.

If I do this thing for you, you’ll get out of my head and stay out?

It hurts me to manifest my attention through so narrow a channel as the one that binds me to you through your bride. I do not use it willingly.

Not quite a yes, but I guess it’ll have to do for now. Siri is important to me. I would do what I could for her with or without you. Tell me what needs doing.
I felt cold and wet, as wrung out as the rags we used to soothe Faran’s headaches—but I had won. For now, at least.

*   *   *

“That’s
crazy.” Faran spoke very quietly. She was sitting up with her back against a boulder in an effort that obviously pained her. Ssithra was perched behind with her wings draped across the sides of Faran’s head, using her connection to the everdark to cool and soothe her partner’s hurts.

“Which part?” I asked. “The god speaking into my mind? Or the part about the cultists trapping Siri to use as an icon?”

Faran rolled her eyes. “Neither. I was thinking about the bit at the end, where you said ‘yes.’”

“Siri’s in trouble.”

“And you’d jump into a fire for her. Yeah, I got that. That doesn’t make it not insane. Quite the contrary, if you want my opinion.”

Ssithra spoke, “Siri is First Blade.”

“To a goddess who died eight years ago! Doesn’t that change things?”

I said, “Not for me,” in the same breath that Triss said, “Of course not,” and Ssithra asked, “Why would it?”

Faran looked like she wanted to scream, but didn’t dare for fear of blowing the top of her own skull off. After several deep breaths, she said, “Right, right, what
was
I thinking?” She sighed. “So, when do we begin our assault on this heavily fortified temple full of crazed fanatics armed with cursed weapons and dark magic?”

“
We
don’t,” I said flatly. “You’re sitting this one out.”

Faran shouted, “No, I fucking well am no—” But then she visibly paled and her hands went to the sides of her head. “Shit, shit, shit. This isn’t fair,” she whispered. “I was getting better.”

“And you will again,” I said, quietly. “But you need to give your body some time to heal right now. That means that Triss and I have to do this alone.”

Faran glowered at the dragon shadow on the ground beside me. “Don’t you dare let him get killed, Triss. He gets these stupid ideas about mercy and goes wobbly at the worst times.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” replied Triss.

I started sorting through our gear. “If the Smoldering Flame is right, the underground temple is only about forty miles from here. That means I can leave everything but my weapons, a few magical tools, and a couple days’ worth of dried meats and fruits here with you. Considering the state you’re in, I don’t think we could find a better place for you to hole up until I get back.”

The main chamber of the cave was nearly thirty feet deep and half that across, though the roof was too low for standing. It had a nice little natural chimney at the back—a key point in the selection process, given our need for a fire to connect with Siri.

The only reason it didn’t have any residents other than us and a few enormous fruit bats was the position of the only reasonably sized entrance. It was big enough to fit a person—barely—and it opened under a brittle shale overhang forty feet up a mostly sheer cliff that was over a hundred feet tall with whitewater running along the ravine at its base.

That same little river had almost certainly carved the cave at some time in the past. We’d never have found it from above without the Shades’ ability to crawl down the narrowest cracks, and Blade training that included a good bit of instruction in how to locate defensible fallbacks in environments both urban and wild. Faran would be as safe here as anyplace.

My big worry was how well she’d be able to get out if I
didn’t
make it back. I’d needed rope to get down to the cave. Faran needed that plus an awful lot of help from both Ssithra and me, mostly due to the giant rainbow-colored holes in her vision. The headaches had eased up a bit after we settled in and the auras went away completely. I didn’t like the idea of leaving my apprentice in this kind of shape at all, much less in such a tight place a hundred miles from the southernmost edge of the eleven kingdoms of man, but I didn’t have much choice.

Once I had my trick bag packed, I slung it to my rig. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“You’d better.” Faran waved me toward the door, then closed her eyes and laid her head back against the rock wall.

Even with the rope it was a tough climb—wet and slippery from the spray coming off the wild rapids below.

*   *   *

The
entrance to the cultic temple lay in another water-carved ravine. This one was much broader—more a canyon, really—and it lay just on the edge of an incredibly ancient and dense forest. There were only two truly virgin forests remaining in the eleven kingdoms—places where the hand of man had never felled a tree. The heart of the gigantic wood around White Fang Mountain, and Twilight in Dan Eyre. This felt infinitely older and more dangerous than either of them. No surprise really since it belonged to the Kreyn.

According to Smoldering Flame, his cultists had built their temple where they did because the canyon lay in one of the undisputed territories that surrounded the Kreyn’s ancient enclaves. Established by a treaty between the Oaken Throne and the Emerald, the territories provided an uninhabited buffer between the peoples. They were among the most lightly trafficked lands anywhere inside the wall—perfect for the cultists.

I arrived at the lip of the canyon shortly after dawn and about a mile below the temple’s entrance. Yellow clay turned the river into a thick golden snake slithering ever eastward to the sea. As I worked my way carefully westward, the gentle rush of the water fifty yards below me slowly blurred into the deeper roar of the waterfall that lay just to the west of the hidden door to the temple.

The Smoldering Flame had written the plan of the temple into my mind in a series of intensely detailed pictures, very much in the way Namara used to brief us before a mission. It was a painful reminder of all that I had lost. I needed to slip past three guard posts on my way upriver, and it took me well over an hour to travel that one short mile.

The last of the three stood on a concealed platform high up in an enormous arimandro tree barely fifty feet from the hidden entrance. I crawled another ten yards before slipping in under some sort of low and thorny evergreen that reminded me of a juniper. It had a fair view of the falls—though I couldn’t actually see the crack in the canyon wall where the door lay hidden—and provided a thick patch of shade.

Wake up, my friend.
I reached into my trick bag and pulled out a handful of raisins and nuts.

Are we there yet?
asked Triss.

As close as we’re going to get this side of sunset.
I filled him in on the details of our immediate situation while I ate a cold breakfast.

Can you see the smoke from the temple?

No, not even knowing exactly where to look.
Another reason the cultists had chosen this particular site was the waterfall. By piping the smoke from the god’s altar fires out behind the waterfall, they were able to hide what little came through the water in the mist.
Very neat work.

Now we wait.

Now we wait. Are you up to holding the shroud? I’d love to catch a few hours’ sleep.
It was day, and a bright one, but the thick brush kept out the worst of it.

I think so. At least until the hour before the sun is highest. The days are longer and brighter here than anywhere on our side of the wall, but it’s cooler, too. Strange magic, that. I wonder what drives it.