Kingsteel (The Dragonkin Trilogy Book 3) (5 page)

Rowen had rolled up his sleeves, but blood covered him up to the elbow. Briel wondered how many battles the young Human had seen. Rowen had been wounded, but all of those wounds seemed to have vanished when Knightswrath came to life. Briel shuddered, remembering violet fire pouring from the blade, engulfing Rowen’s body. Rowen had screamed then—though in pain or panic, Briel did not know. Since then, though, Rowen had worn the sword without any ill effect. He had even drawn it, holding it in the sun after Fadarah fell, without any flames appearing along the blade.

Maybe the damn sword’s gone to sleep again.
Silwren had poured her power, her very life, into Knightswrath. He wondered again if it could heal, too.

Briel studied Rowen’s expression—if the sword could heal, Rowen had no idea how to use it. In fact, Rowen had seemed in a trance when he’d fought Fadarah. For all they knew, Rowen was nothing more than the pawn of a living piece of steel. And that made him as dangerous as that Dragonkin, Chorlga. They should kill him—or at least take the sword.

But what if Chorlga comes back? What if Fadarah’s not really dead?

Briel considered the second matter first. He’d seen Rowen use a burning sword to cut a swath in Fadarah’s body almost the length of a man’s arm. Fadarah’s disciples had carried him off, probably to try and heal him, but the Shel’ai were not Dragonkin. Their magic was impressive but not limitless. If Fadarah had not died right away, he would soon enough.

“Let’s hope so.” Rowen straightened, covered the Wyldkin woman with a blanket, said goodbye in Sylvan, and started to walk away.

Briel followed. The two guards assigned to watch over Rowen fell in behind them. Briel ordered them to wait. Racing after Rowen, he caught him by the arm and jerked him to a halt.

“You
can
read minds! That sword—”

Rowen twisted free with a look so icy that Briel drew back a step and reached for his sword, glad he’d learned to fight with his left as well as his right hand.

“I… don’t know,” Rowen said at last. “I can’t control it. It just happens.” He rubbed his eyes—still
green
eyes, Briel noted.

Green, not purple. He’s still Human. For now.

Rowen shook his head, and Briel wondered if he’d just heard his thoughts again. “The sword did something to me when… when it burned me. It didn’t make me into a Shel’ai. Not quite. That much is obvious. But Knightswrath’s part of me now.” He glanced down at the sword, and Briel could not tell whether his expression was longing or revulsion. “I can feel Silwren in there, sometimes. Don’t ask me to explain it, because I can’t. But I have to be careful—almost the way Silwren had to be careful.” He smiled weakly. “She was always afraid to use the power because she said it would overwhelm her. I think I understand now.”

Briel stared at him.
Gods, he’s gone as mad as the king,
he thought before he could stop himself. “What are you going to do?”

Rowen straightened. “I have to finish this. I don’t think Fadarah poses any harm now, but I have to hunt down the others—especially Shade. And I have to find that Dragonkin, the one called Chorlga. I have to kill him, if I can. And I have to do it all before… whatever this is… burns me from the inside out.” He looked up sharply.

Briel gasped. For a moment, he thought the pupils of Rowen’s eyes had gone white, though he convinced himself it was just a trick of light from the surrounding luminstones.

“Can I count on your help?” Rowen asked.

Briel rested his good hand on the hilt of his sword. “What do you need?”

“I need you to let me leave. I need you to let me take Knightswrath and go after Chorlga.” He hesitated. “And if I have to fight the Dhargots along the way, I need you to honor the Oath of Kin and give me an army.”

Briel almost laughed, despite the stitches in his cheek. “You want to borrow my army, Locke? There it is.” He pointed to the sea of injured bodies beyond them. “Even if I didn’t have to protect Sylvos—which I do—I’d be lucky if I could muster two hundred swords right now. Last I heard, the Dhargots have tens of thousands. If it’s help you need, go and ask the Isle Knights.”

Rowen smirked. “Half the Isle Knights probably want me dead. And the other half couldn’t care less what the Dhargots do to the Free Cities… or the Wytchforest, for that matter.”

Briel caught his meaning. “If the Dhargots come here, we’ll fight them as best we can. But I don’t think they will. Neither do you.”

“No,” Rowen admitted. “I think they’ll stick to the Free Cities for now. I think they’ll pillage two thirds of the continent before the Isle Knights get involved. And by then, it’ll be too late. And Chorlga… wherever he is,
what
ever he is… will sit back and laugh.” He paused. “I think I came here for nothing.”

The Isle Knight stood, exhausted and blood smeared, then went to reclaim his armor. Briel watched him go, glad that Rowen had not pressed him for an answer. After all, he was probably right.

I should let him leave, then. And he can take that damn sword with him.

But Sylvos was not yet safe. Doomsayer was still out there. Briel imagined the howls of protest when the people heard he’d sent away their greatest ally. He wondered if those would match the cries of protest if he let Rowen stay: a Human, an Isle Knight at that, tarnished by magic.

Briel thought back to Fâyu Jinn’s tomb. Just days ago, King Loslandril and the late Prince Quivalen had made a bargain with Chorlga and tried to kill Silwren in exchange for the Dragonkin sparing the city. Silwren had been stabbed. Quivalen, mad, had struck her with some kind of wicked magical blade. She’d fallen, yet something, maybe Fâyu Jinn’s ghost, had saved her.

The silent, towering figure in ancient armor had appeared out of nowhere to heal her, then vanished. It had all happened so quickly. Even at the time, Briel had scarcely believed his own eyes. Then the madness had increased tenfold.

Briel shuddered, thinking again of Rowen stumbling down the Path of Crowns after Silwren threw herself onto Knightswrath, after they watched her melt into the blade and set it on fire. Ragged, burning, he’d reminded Briel of the stories about the Nightmare. Was that really the man he was supposed to trust?

Apparently, Fâyu Jinn—or his ghost, at least—does.

Briel had gone back later and opened Fâyu Jinn’s sarcophagus, eager but fearful to see what was inside. He’d found the armor that had appeared to have temporarily reanimated itself: the armor of an ancient Knight of the Lotus. But it was smaller, just the size of an average man. With trembling hands, Briel had removed the Shao facemask, expecting to find a thousand-year-old skeleton staring back at him—or perhaps the open, laughing eyes of Fâyu Jinn himself. But the armor was empty.

Does that mean that on top of everything else, we have the ghost of some ancient Human hero wandering around our city?

CHAPTER THREE

The Last HousEcarl

J
alist did not know whether to rejoice or curse the fact that the storms had finally stopped. He was tired of running through rain and mud, cold and wretched, as he fled his pursuers. However, his pursuers did not sleep or rest, and he was alive only because the mud slowed them down considerably. But now, the dark clouds had cleared, and the sun shone through the haze.

Jalist stopped to catch his breath. Ignoring the aching in his legs, he glanced southeast. Sure enough, the creatures, though built more for murder than pursuit, still followed him. Surging over a hill less than a half mile away, the broad glistening column resembled hundreds of footmen in full armor, their weapons perpetually drawn. Jalist forced himself to move.

For the better part of a week, thunderheads had raged over Stillhammer, unleashing deluge after deluge on the ravaged land. There was something unnatural about the storms, though Jalist had no notion whether they were evidence of the gods mourning the abject destruction of the Dwarrish homeland or just some byproduct of whatever foul magic had unleashed the Jolym.

He had no time to consider this. For the unliving warriors—voiceless and wrought entirely of metal—had also proved to be eerily skilled trackers. Jalist had thought first to lose them by circling around the mountain, counting on the rain to wash away his tracks. But the Jolym had not been fooled. Once, trusting that he was safe, he’d lain down to risk a few much-needed hours of sleep.

His instincts awakened him in the middle of the night to find a Jol hovering over him, blades welded to its fists. Like the one he’d fought days before, it had a sardonic grin carved into its face, as though it were wearing a dancer’s mask wrought of iron. Jalist had already learned that the things were hollow—no mind to reason with, no flesh to injure. But he’d also discovered that they could be killed, if that was the word for it, by stabbing them through their dark, empty eyes.

Jalist had managed to do so to the one that had awakened him, but before it fell in a wrenching crash of metal, the Jol’s hands—a hook and a hatchet—had cut him in three places. Jalist had managed to clean and bandage the wounds before the rest of the host appeared.

Since then, the Jolym had chased him over hills and plain, through villages that were home now to nothing but rotting corpses. Jalist did his best to avoid both looking at and smelling the remains of his kin. Still, from time to time, he wept.

“I should try to get to Tarator again.” Jalist touched his weapons. Though he preferred axes and maces, which allowed him to make best use of his strength, such weapons were useless against Jolym.

Maybe that’s why the Housecarls never stood a chance.

He’d armed himself with a brace of stilettos, a spear, and a shortsword he’d found in an abandoned house. The shortsword, probably a dead man’s family heirloom, looked as though it had been forged for a woman. While Dwarrish blades were usually wide and heavy, this one was light and thin, practically a rapier, and it had already saved his life once.

Based on the destruction he’d seen, Jalist was certain now that the halls of Tarator had not been spared. Still, he longed to see the Dwarrish capital for himself, to see if any others had survived. Dwarrish tradition would not have permitted King Fedwyr to flee the enemy, so Jalist had no doubt that the old monarch lay among the fallen. Still, a few of the king’s Housecarls might have been elsewhere when Stillhammer was invaded. Perhaps they’d even fled Tarator altogether, driven not to save their own skins but to protect someone else.

“Leander…”

The thought of the prince quickened Jalist’s blood, bringing fresh tears to his eyes. He had yet to encounter even a single Dwarrish survivor. But the way to Tarator had been blocked by countless Jolym, hinting that they had already been there. Surely, his former lover could not have survived such a thorough slaughter.

Jalist took a drink from his canteen, examined his wounds, and turned southeast again. The Jolym were gaining. Using his spear as a walking stick, he pressed on.

By sundown, both the Stillhammer Mountains and the Red Steppes were miles behind him. The Simurgh Plains stretched before him, spotted with snow. Tugging at a cloak he’d taken off a corpse days earlier, Jalist marveled that the land could look so different. Within weeks, blizzards would replace the thunderstorms that had washed over Stillhammer. Jalist imagined snow falling on those quiet villages, burying the dead. He shuddered.

I have to keep going. There are villages a ways north of here. I’ll get a horse and warn whoever else is there to run like hell. Maybe somebody can even get a message to Lyos or the Lotus Isles.
But would anyone believe it? Jalist laughed, and a fresh rumbling in his stomach accompanied the sound.

Jolym had not been seen since the Shattering War. People in these parts had already suffered the Throng, the Nightmare, and the Dhargots. Would they believe Jalist’s warning or wait until they saw the Jolym for themselves?

“They can damn well believe whatever they want. If they’re foolish enough to stay behind, maybe they’ll make it easier for me to get away.” He remembered an old joke he’d heard as a child: “One does not have to be fast enough to outrun a greatwolf, just everyone else the greatwolf is chasing.” He did not laugh, though. He wondered if anyone had already used that strategy to escape the devastation at Stillhammer.

Within an hour, he had reached a fishing village nestled against a modest river. Though he could remember the name of neither the village nor the river, he recalled passing through there years earlier with Rowen and Kayden Locke. He especially remembered a well-built, soft-eyed lad who ran the sawmill.

But silence hung thick between the empty cottages and modest shops. Jalist looked around and, to his relief, found no bodies. In fact, he saw nothing but a few wild dogs that, thankfully, kept their distance. The village had been abandoned in a hurry. Jalist doubted the people could have already heard about the Jolym so far north. He thought of the Dhargots and wondered if they’d progressed even farther east than he’d thought.

He went down to the river and found a little boat abandoned in the reeds. “Well, it’s no horse, but it beats walking.” He searched the village again, salvaged a skin of wine and dried fruits from an empty tavern, and returned to the boat. He looked south. By the light of Armahg’s Eye, he saw a broad, glistening arm of stars writhing across the plains in his direction, moving low against the ground. He stared, momentarily awed by the strange sight. Then he shook himself.

No, not stars—unliving, metal men who want to slice me into little pieces. But something tells me the bastards swim even worse than I do.

Jalist took a long swig of wine. Even though he knew they could not possibly see him, he raised one fist and made a rude gesture in the Jolym’s direction. Then he climbed into the boat, grabbed the oars, and pushed off.

Though Jalist could not imagine anybody was close enough to hear him, he was careful not to lift the oars out of the water once he began paddling. He began sweating fiercely beneath his cloak, but he knew better than to slip it off and breathe in the cold night air. The last thing he needed was to get sick while he was already fleeing for his life.

He wondered where he should go next. He wanted to hurry west so that he could find Rowen Locke and warn him what he’d seen, but Rowen was on the opposite end of the continent. Jalist would need a horse and supplies to reach him. Like many sellswords, he’d hidden small caches of coins and weapons in various hiding places around the Simurgh Plains, but all were too far away.

Besides, even if he evaded the Jolym then bought or stole a horse, riding straight west was suicide. Since he’d parted ways with Rowen, the Dhargots had spread across more than half of the Simurgh Plains, conquering Free Cities left and right. The coming winter might have slowed the Dhargots’ conquest, but to reach the Wytchforest, Jalist would still have to pass thousands of them. If he were lucky, they would only rob him. More likely, they would torture or kill him purely for sport.

He glanced northeast, wondering how far away the Lotus Isles were. As far as he knew, the Dhargots had not yet declared war on the Isle Knights. The Dhargots were bloodthirsty, but they weren’t stupid. If Jalist were under the Knights’ protection, the Dhargots might think twice about harassing him. Besides, the Knights would surely be interested to learn that an army of nearly unkillable creations had quietly decimated a nearby kingdom. If Jalist could convince the Knights that he was telling the truth, perhaps they would help him search for Rowen Locke.

After all, Rowen’s a Knight!
Then Jalist shook his head.
A Knight that half the other Knights want dead.
He thought of Crovis Ammerhel, the haughty Knight of the Lotus who wanted Knightswrath for himself. Jalist had met the man only once, outside the gates of Lyos, but that meeting had been enough to confirm all that Rowen had said about the man.

Jalist was still rowing when he thought of the last time he’d helped Rowen reach the Wytchforest; they’d tried to avoid the Dhargots by veering south, near Atheion, the City-on-the-Sea. Repeating that would be suicidal, given how they’d left the city. But south of Atheion lay the Southern Basin, home to the realm of Quesh, where nomadic tribes raised famously fleet red horses called bloodmares. The Queshi had always maintained passable trade relations with the Dwarrs. They might offer shelter to survivors of the Jolym massacre.

That’s where I’ll find Leander… if he’s still alive.

Jalist grinned. If he could buy or steal a bloodmare, he could get to the Wytchforest by following the southern coast. The horse’s speed might even make up for the time he would lose finding a ship to carry him down the eastern coast, past Stillhammer and the endless desert of Dendain. That would also save him from having to worry about Dhargots, Lochurite berserkers, Isle Knights, and any of a dozen other enemies.

But that still leaves the Jolym.

He looked over his shoulder. What he saw made him swear under his breath. Countless glints of steel swarmed along the shoreline. Jalist wondered if the Jolym would swim after him. Instead, their entire host seemed to have wheeled eastward, continuing their pursuit along dry land. He could not see them clearly in the darkness, but they spread out in the distance like a huge sea of steel. What he had first calculated to be a few hundred now seemed to number close to a thousand.

Gods, why are they still following me?
He paddled faster.

Years before, he’d helped the Locke brothers escort a merchant to the Wintersea. The merchant had been half mad and poor, but the trip had given them an excuse to see a new part of Ruun. Rowen had even hoped they might see the Dragonward hugging the frozen shoreline; though, if it existed, it was as invisible as the legends claimed. But one day, near a spot of coast where the water was unfrozen, they’d seen something else: a great, terrible fish with fins and many teeth pursuing a much smaller fish, following it with dogged tenacity, ignoring closer prey that it might have caught more easily.

Jalist’s hands white-knuckled his oar. He had the awful feeling that
he
was that little fish and the Jolym intended to pursue him with the bigger fish’s same mad, hungry devotion. Cursing, he thrust the oar back into the water and pushed as hard as he could.

By the time the sun rose over the eastern hills, staining the grasslands like blood, Jalist had the sinking suspicion that he’d been wrong. The Jolym had either given up or had simply happened to be marching in his direction all along. He might have cheered, but something gnawed at him. Climbing a hill, he studied them in the distance. They were still a few miles behind him, but they had divided into two large steely masses. The larger half appeared to be marching northeast, turning unmistakably toward the Burnished Way.

“Guess I won’t have to convince the Isle Knights.” He studied the remaining force. There couldn’t have been more than two dozen.
If those others are attacking the Isle Knights, where are these going?
He decided it made no difference. He had a plan.

Descending the hill, he hurried westward. Three hours later, he watched from his hiding place in a copse of trees, heart racing, as the Jolym shambled past. He breathed a sigh of relief when they were gone. It would be easier to reach the coast now. From there, he could head south, skirting Stillhammer and the desert, and head into Quesh as he’d intended.