Drawn Blades (27 page)

I wanted to join her, but I knew that if I sat down I wouldn’t be getting up again anytime soon. “Well, if we can’t follow them, maybe we can get ahead of them.”

“I don’t see how.” Siri sounded utterly defeated. “Steered properly that carpet could take Iander all the way to Heaven’s Reach without ever coming within a mile of the ground.”

“That’s only if nothing stops him. How vulnerable are these carpets?”

“To attack? Very. It’s one of the reasons they’ve never gone into wider use. There must be a hundred ways to knock one out of the air.”

“Then he’s never going to make it to the border on that thing. There are too many players who don’t want that to happen, among them some very angry Asavi.”

“Good point.” Siri’s voice took on fresh hope. “So, say the carpet is destroyed. Then what?”

“If Iander lives through whatever takes out the rug, he can convert his fall into a sail-jump with Ssalassiss and glide to the ground.” That was a good thing to remember. If Faran had been crazy enough to follow along on one of the rugs and it went down she’d have a good chance of landing in one piece. “The fall probably won’t kill him, but he’s going to have serious problems when he lands. That key is going to keep drawing in the cultists, so there’s bound to be someone waiting for him.”

“Probably several someones,” agreed Siri. “But the badges tell the story there. Any other buried gods will be playing catch-up to Smoldering Flame and the Changer.”

I nodded inside my shroud. “Sure, because Kelos tipped them both off when he brought you into this and you shared the information with Ash. It’s given them extra time to prepare. That’s good actually.”

“And, now
you’ve
lost
me
.”

“It narrows the field. Iander is quite skilled, but he was never among the best of the Blades. As long as he’s holding on to that key he’s got a giant target painted on his back. If he can’t fly all the way out of the empire or find some serious help, I don’t see him making it out of this mess alive. Nor even as far as the border. He’s simply got too many people hunting him. Once he goes down, the key will almost certainly fall to one or another of the sets of cultists.”

“Unless Faran or Kelos get hold of it,” said Siri.

“If Faran gets it, that’s as good as you or I.”

“And what about Kelos?” Siri asked. “He
says
he wants it so he can keep it out of the Son of Heaven’s hands. And implies that he might use it to restore Namara if he can.”

“But you don’t trust him any more than I do. I have no idea what he wants, but the odds that he ends up with the key are pretty low. Not nearly as low as I would like, but there’s nothing we can do about that. We’ve already lost our chance at the clean kill. Now we have to play the odds and hope. That means betting on the cultists. Since Smoldering Flame and the Changer have the bulk of the soldiers on the field, the key’s likely to end up with one of them in the long run, even if Hairy Eyeball or that Lightning Bolt god get it for a while first. Given that, what are they going to do with the thing?”

“If it really is a tool for divine resurrection, they’ll have to bring it back to the tomb of whichever god they serve,” answered Siri. “The bindings that hold the buried ones in the earth are far too strong to be broken from any distance.”

“Which means the key is either going to end up at Castelle Filathalor or wherever it is the Smoldering Flame is buried.”

“The Brimstone Vale.” Siri’s voice sounded cold and dead when she said the name. “I know the place.”

“Then that’s got to be our choice. Ash and Kayla hold Castelle Filathalor, and they don’t seem the sort to go down without a hell of a fight. We’ll have to let them deal with the Changer, at least initially—if we could send them a message that would help. Where is this Brimstone Vale? Can you get us there? Before the key?”

“I could make the trip on my own easily enough. Maybe I can do that and you can go to . . .” She broke off into a fit of coughing. “Dammit, no. Get out of my head, you bastard. Aral, you
have
to stay with me no matter what I tell you after this moment.” She went into another fit of coughing. “The closer I am to the tomb, the more influence the god will have over me, and I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to fight it. You may have to kill me.”

I felt a chill in my guts. “Not an option. But we
do
stay together from here on out, no matter what.”

“Aral.” All she said was my name. No argument. No pleading. It was all she had to.

“Not unless there’s no other choice,” I whispered.

“Thank you.”

Oh, Aral. I am so sorry.

I didn’t answer Triss. I couldn’t.

Instead, I squatted down and took Siri by her ring hand—and, it was only as I did so that I realized I could
feel
exactly where it was. “Come on. We need to get moving.
Can
you get us both there?”

Siri let me pull her to her feet, but she didn’t answer me immediately. Then, “I think so. We’ll need a fire, a big one by preference. This is going to take a lot of smoke. Smoke . . . and sex.”

“Excuse me?”

Siri laughed. “Deep magic. We have to be one symbolically, and sex is the fastest way to make that happen, especially given these.” She touched the ring of smoke that banded my wedding finger. “Let’s go light a fire.”

It wasn’t the answer I’d expected, but . . . I grinned. “If we must, we must.” As ritual magic went, that sounded like a hell of a lot more fun than the way such things usually played out.

*   *   *

There
is something utterly disconcerting about starting a house on fire on your way
into
the building. Especially when your next step is to head upstairs to find a bedroom for a quick roll in the blankets.

We’d had to travel more than a mile out from the city center to find a small place with a structure that both would support a real fire and had any distance from its neighbors. I hated that we had to pick a place in a human slum where the buildings were poorly built and made out of wood. It was exactly the sort of neighborhood where a fire could do the worst damage, but the great gemstone palaces of the Sylvani inner city were all but fireproof, and once again time was our enemy.

The need to retain our swords and other gear limited our options, but at least we didn’t have to worry about the smoke and fumes—Siri’s divine infection protected us from both. Despite mutual exhaustion, things proceeded much as you would expect them to right up until the . . . critical moment, when we dissolved together into . . . smoke.

P
urity
of being is a state not suited to the human condition.

Time means nothing to smoke, so I cannot say how long I spent merged with Siri in a form I was never meant to assume, or in traveling through the elemental place between worlds in that shape. I can only say that I would prefer to die rather than return to the formless perfection of such an existence.

Smoke has no soul, no will, no feelings. In taking its shape you divorce yourself from the most fundamental aspects of being. I don’t know where they went when I didn’t have them. I only know that having them restored to me served to emphasize the horror of the loss.

As we re-formed out of whirling nothingness in the Brimstone Vale, I fell away from Siri, collapsing into a ball on the ground. The return of sensation and self brought with it a comfort and a terror that left no room for anything else. A six-year-old child with a sharp stick could have killed me in the first long minutes that followed my reentry into the world of individual existence. I was simply incapable of doing more than lying on my side and breathing.

But the awareness of self inevitably brought with it the awareness of time passing and, ultimately, a renewal of urgency as that time slipped away into the all-devouring void of the past. With urgency came action. First on the list, pulling my pants back up and retying them around my waist. As my fingers fumbled to remember what it meant to exist, I felt Triss begin to stir as well.

That was . . . not an experience I would care to repeat. The smoking void is even more unlike the everdark than the everdark is unlike this world. I will not return there willingly.

You’re not alone in that, Triss. I . . . ugh. No. Never again.

Where is Siri?

Fuck.
I looked around and saw nothing but a rocky wasteland devoid of any life. Here and there water boiled in small pools stained yellow with sulfur. But most of my view was obscured by columns of smoke that rose out of the countless vents pockmarking the floor of the narrow valley.
I don’t see her anywhere.

Without thinking, I flipped myself up and onto to my feet. “. . . huh.”

What is it?

An unexpected gift from the Smoldering Flame and our time in the neverwhere between the worlds.
I ran through a quick series of exercises designed to test the limits of a body’s injuries.
I seem to have mostly recovered from the wear and tear of the last few days. The only thing that still hurts is the cut on my cheek.

It’s a deep one. How did you get it?

Caught the back of one of my swords as I was getting out of the way of that rod blast at the Mouse Gate.
I started to follow Siri—only realizing in the moment that I did so that I still knew exactly where her ring was.

Interesting. Assuming that you’re right about the source of your healing, it would suggest that the buried god’s power is unable to touch a wound inflicted by the tools of Namara. I wonder if there are any other effects.

Nothing that I’m currently noticing, but maybe time will reveal more changes.

The Brimstone Vale was a place rich with smokes and steams and rife with half-hidden pits full of scalding water or boiling mud. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to get lost if I hadn’t had a personal lodestone in the shape of a wedding ring. As I picked my way amongst the many hazards, I found myself taking sudden unplanned sidesteps and unexpected turns that took me forward through the maze without ever leading me down one of the many dead ends I saw around me. My ring seemed to be guiding me to Siri by the best possible route.

Within a matter of minutes I arrived at the heart of the Vale. There, a wide-mouthed marble chimney rose up from a low dome of the same swirling gray stone. A heavy iron door opened out of the nearer side, giving the whole the appearance of some great beehive oven meant to cook for armies. A fallen and soot-darkened grave tree lay off to one side. Siri knelt in front of the door, her hands on her sword hilts and her whole body shaking as if with some great effort. Kyrissa hung in the air behind her, slowly sculling smoke-feathered wings.

“Siri?” I kept my voice low and gentle, not wanting to startle her.

“I’m trying to fight it, Aral, but he’s so very close to free.” She didn’t move when she spoke, but Kyrissa turned to me and nodded. “I can feel the dagger of the goddess burning in his chest as though it were my own. It’s little more than a ribbon of slag held together by hope at this point. . . . Help me!”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t . . . It comes!” Siri drew her swords and leaped to her feet in one smooth motion, her voice shifting into a deeper register as Kyrissa coiled around her protectively. “The key, it comes! Even now, it approaches the vale.”

She turned and looked at me, and where her eyes should have been there were only pits of smoke. “There is a running battle—one with many sides. Followers of the Changer, Corpus, Ugrit Earthshaker, Asavi hivelords, the deniers of the divine . . . and all with Namara’s bitter shadows nipping at their heels. My disciples cannot hold against them for long. They have lost too many getting this far and they will fail. You must go and fetch me the key.”

“Siri?” Reluctantly, I drew my own weapons.

She touched the swords of our goddess to the sides of her throat, pressing the flats into her flesh until it bulged around the steel and blood began to flow along the edges. Kyrissa hissed angrily and moved her chin to rest atop Siri’s head. Slowly—ever so slowly—the smoke in Siri’s eyes receded back into her irises, leaving the whites clear, if bloodshot.

“I’m here, Aral.” She lowered her swords, and the smoke-feathered serpent slipped back into her shadow. “Barely.”

“For how long?”

She shrugged and smiled ruefully. “I wouldn’t trust me at your back if I were you. Might also be time to start thinking about a divorce.”

That’s not good,
sent Triss.

Not one little bit.

“I’d rather not.” I held up my hand with its smoky ring. “I rather like the way this looks.”

Siri’s smile slipped into something much more wistful. “It is a pretty bauble, but one that may soon outlive its usefulness. Triss?”

The shadow of a dragon formed at my side. “Yes.”

Siri straightened her back, and her words came out slow and clear. “I speak now as head of our order. If you feel yourself start to grow feathers of smoke, take Aral’s finger off for me. If I try to countermand this order later, ignore me.”

Triss bowed formally. “I will see it done, First Blade.”

“Thank you. Aral, I am myself, but I don’t know how long that will last. A half dozen disciples of the Smoldering Flame have just entered the vale. They are pursued by at least a score of velyn of varying allegiances, as well as at least one shrouded Blade.”

“Kelos?” I asked, letting the interchange between Triss and Siri slide—I knew both well enough to recognize an argument already lost.

“Or Faran, but more likely both, given the way the fight has gone thus far. At least that’s how I judge it seeing what I have through the god’s eyes.”

“Speaking of which . . .” I nodded toward the great oven.

“For the moment we have the same goals, so he has released me. How long that will hold I can’t say.”

“I’m glad that he has,” I said. “But, you’ll forgive me if I don’t take it entirely at face value.
Why
did he let you go?”

“Mostly to prevent me from killing myself. There’s still enough of the dagger left in his heart for me to manage my own end . . . for a little while longer at least. He very much wants me alive if he can keep me that way. For his own purposes, of course.”

I felt a sudden weight of presence.
A dead servant is no servant at all.
The god’s voice spoke directly into my mind—and, presumably, Siri’s as well.
You are a powerful tool, Siri of the Blades. I would not waste you if I am not forced to it, nor blunt such a carefully honed edge. I want you well and in my service. You, too, Aral Kingslayer.

“I will not be your slave,” replied Siri. “I will die first.”

Do not be so quick to reject what I can offer you, children. You are of a kind who works better of your own will than as a puppet. I do not want you as slaves, though I will serve you thus if I must. No, I want you willing. Eager even. Both of you, and I can offer that which will make the deal a sweet one.

“Somehow, I doubt your sincerity,” I replied.

Then you are a fool. Heaven’s Emperor betrayed and murdered your Namara. Heaven’s gods are your enemies as surely as they are mine. Is that not an excellent basis on which to form an alliance? The destruction of those who have committed the gravest of wrongs against us all—those who even now seek to slay you as they would slay me. Heaven destroyed Namara for the same reason that it destroyed my kind. Because we were a threat that would not be controlled.

Fetch the key and raise me from my tomb and I will become the new God of Justice. A fresh order of Blades will rise to strike back against the tyrannies of the mighty and you two will lead them. The corruption of the system that you have spent your whole life fighting is rooted in the corruption of Heaven. You have seen the powers I have given Siri—smoke and shadow united. You will become unstoppable assassins in the service of the right. The Son of Heaven will fall first, but he will not be the last. Heaven itself will learn that Justice is inescapable.

I shook my head. “As much as I might like the fantasy of visiting justice on those who slew Justice, it all seems a bit grandiose, don’t you think? To believe that the Emperor of Heaven could have anything to fear from a handful of human assassins.”

The god laughed in my mind, a cold and mocking sound.
Grandiose? Do you not understand, even now, with all that has happened? He already fears you.

“That’s madness!” I spat.

Is it really? Your goddess died for the threat she posed to Heaven. A threat that did not die with her.

“What are you talking about?” I didn’t know why, but I was certain the god believed what he was telling me. That was almost more terrifying than the idea that he was insane.

The legacy of Namara is in your very hands and still you cannot see. Your goddess died almost without a fight because she had long since given up the bulk of her power to her disciples. She sank her soul and her strength into the swords of her chosen champions. In each hand you hold a splinter of the goddess you served, a physical embodiment of Justice’s power to execute. Deliver it with justice in your heart, and it will slay even a god. I know. One such took my life.

“But only for a time,” said Siri. “Even now you are a hair’s breadth from rising again.”

But that is my curse, and the curse of all my kind, bequeathed us by the first Emperor of Heaven with his final breath—to lie forever in the grave undying. The current rulers of Heaven are neither bound nor guarded by such a fate. They
can
die, if not easily, and the swords you carry are one means to that end. Never doubt that Heaven
already
fears you.

But we have spent too long in converse. The key enters my vale and but four of my disciples remain to guard it. Go. It must not fall into the hands of the Changer, or worse, the disquisition. Slay all who would keep the key from you. When you are done, come back to me and we shall see whether we cannot find our way to a bargain.

Abruptly, the sense of a mighty presence vanished, and I staggered at the feeling of a great weight suddenly lifted. Warily I held my blades up and looked across them at Siri. “Can all that be true?”

“I don’t know.” She turned her own swords this way and that as if trying to see deep inside the light-absorbing blackness of the divine steel. “I really don’t. But the god
has
removed himself from my mind as completely as it is possible for him to do. I feel more myself than I have at any time since Namara’s death.”

“So, what do we do about it?” I asked.

You’re not seriously entertaining his offer, are you?
Triss demanded.
To let
that
become Justice?

I shook my head.
No, of course not. The Smoldering Flame says
justice
when he means
vengeance
. I
want
vengeance, too, but I will never make it my master.

Siri moved then, sheathing her swords with the same practiced grace I had seen her exhibit ten thousand times before. I raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a long run from here to the far end of the vale,” she said. “Doubly so carrying naked steel.”

“So, we
are
going to get the key, then?” I looked deep into her eyes. The smoke was there in the depth of her irises but thin and barely moving.

A threat still, but a distant one, I think,
observed Triss.

I agree.
I flipped my swords around and put them away.