Six Celestial Swords (19 page)

“You travel with strange folk, dwarf,” a large, bearded man was saying.

Taya watched as the heavyset gypsy took Xu Liang’s seat, continuing to speak to her uncle. The ill feeling she’d experienced days ago was coming back.

The red-vested youth from before smiled at his companion from the end of the table, arms folded casually across his chest. “Stranger than us? Strahm, you injure me.”

Strahm chuckled, inviting others at the gypsy table to laugh as well. The bodyguards sat quietly in their places around the table, obeying whatever orders Xu Liang had given them, paying no attention to a conversation they couldn’t understand.

“Strange armor,” the large gypsy said when some of the laughter subsided, glancing at one of the bodyguards. “Doesn’t look like anything forged in Stormbright to me.”

“Neither is the dagger your friend’s fingering,” Tarfan growled, and Taya discreetly lowered her hand to her sword’s hilt.

She sighed with relief when the red-vested man spread his hands before him as if in a display of peace, though she didn’t like his crooked smile.

“Where do you suppose they come from, dressed like that?” the one called Strahm asked.

His companion shrugged. “Where does a soldier don armor adorned with demon faces? Where are the lords slight and delicate as a painted doll?”

“Evondorf,” Strahm blurted. “The count and his sons, as frail as his daughters, oozing in riches, speaking with their long noses in the air.”

The other held up a finger in contradiction. “But this stranger is not oozing in riches, none but the silk of his robes and his hair. And his nose is not all that long, nor is it in the air. Yet, there is an eerie confidence about him, like he knows something that we do not.”

Tarfan laughed. “If it’s the man’s intelligence that intimidates you unsightly orphans, go back to your caravan! It’s the only place you’ll find people as dung-headed as yourselves!”

Surprisingly, the gypsy ignored the statement and concluded his own. “He is not from any class or part of Yvaria, my friends. He is as strange as strangers come, and...”

“And?” Strahm prompted, as if he’d rehearsed the cue.

The other gypsy’s smile faded slowly. “And I think that I smell magic.”

“Would you be referring to real magic over your gypsy trickery?” Tarfan barked.

The gypsies bristled now and Taya’s heart leapt into her throat. She wasn’t afraid, but she always felt a small rise of panic before a fight began. Her uncle seemed to stir a lot of them—particularly when he’d suffered too much to drink—and he was busily stirring at the moment.

“I advise insolent rabble such as yourselves to go back to your drinks and your women before I give you a taste of something that was forged in Stormbright!”

The larger gypsy stood, throwing back his chair in the process. Tarfan shot up as well, reaching for the war hammer at his back. He climbed up onto his chair, then stepped one foot onto the table, glaring at the gypsy. Taya hopped down from her own seat, unsheathing her short sword while the red-vested gypsy presented his dagger and his larger companion balled his enormous fists. The other gypsies were just beginning to move away from their table, either to watch or to help, when the bodyguards made their presence known.

Each of the Fanese men rose nearly unseen out of their seats, grabbed up the swords leaning beside the chairs, and tore them from their scabbards. They rushed the gypsies, knocking them back in such a fierce tide of action that Taya was sure they’d killed them on the spot. Somehow the gypsies lived through the moment and slowly picked themselves up off the floor, standing wide-eyed and unsure at the ends of the guards’ bloodless swords. One of them hissed at the gypsies in Fanese, clearly giving a first and final warning as to what would happen if they tried anything else.

Tarfan watched the gypsies back away scowling and hoisted his hammer onto his shoulder. He chuckled. “I almost forgot what it was like having these lads around!” He looked to Taya, who stood dumbstruck and filled with adrenaline that had nowhere to go. Her uncle said, “Never wonder how the mage has managed to live as long as he has.”

Taya just shook her head.

WIND STIRRED THE tops of the trees high overhead, none of it reaching the town scattered beneath them. The pole-hung lanterns stayed motionless along the dirt paths that connected one building to the next, casting shadows upon the shadows. An owl alighted on one of the low wooden poles, then fluttered away into the depth of the night to continue its search for a meal. Horses milled about. Many of them were attached to carts, some of which were completely enclosed with doors at the rear to allow entrance. Lanterns adorned nearly every cart, and a few of them were glowing, perhaps in a vain attempt to add more light to what seemed unwilling to be lit.

The darkness hadn’t quite settled this deeply when Xu Liang and the others arrived in Nidwohlen. It would not have mattered, except that this darkness had a presence to it, a will almost. The gypsy might have been correct in his claim. And now Xu Liang was faced with the decision of bringing his men indoors and entrusting the horses and much of the equipment to the respect—or lack thereof—of these strangers, or attempting to leave Nidwohlen now.

They had entered the Hollowen Forest at its southeastern edge and traveled only a few hours in. Tarfan’s maps showed that the mountains were less than a day from the town. However, less than a day could be most of a night and while they had lanterns, firelight did not seem effective against such a thick cover of darkness.

“Lord Xu Liang,” Guang Ci spoke. “What troubles you?”

The mystic turned to face the bodyguards, having forgotten for a moment that they were standing with him in the shadows. He looked into each of their faces, searching now for that instinct of theirs that had forewarned him of the rogues at Li Ting. He saw only the restlessness of men too far from their homeland. Perhaps he was reading too far into the darkness of the Hollowen Forest and the strangeness of Nidwohlen’s residents. He started to speak to his men, but then fell silent when one of their horses suddenly jerked its head and pulled away from the pole its reins were wrapped around.

Gai Ping went to the animal to calm it, begging the assistance of his fellows as the others started to panic as well. Xu Liang looked around at the horses belonging to Yvarians and noticed that all of them acted nervously, though none quite so nervous as his own. Undoubtedly, like the villagers, these animals were more accustomed to whatever moved through the darkness here.

A nearby presence stole the mystic’s attention. Xu Liang looked to one of the enclosed wagons sharing the bole of the enormous conifer the company had stopped beside earlier in the evening. He watched a thin old woman move slowly down the two steps suspended beneath the wagon’s door. She leaned heavily on a plain walking stick. Once on the ground she stood in the warm glow spilling out from what may have been her home and began to speak to the still air around her. “It is chaos that makes them uneasy.”

Xu Liang frowned pensively, wondering at her choice in words. Was she unconsciously referencing the Dragon, like Cai Shi-meng when he’d written about the
Spear of Heaven
as a weapon against chaos? The unlikeliness of that almost brought an amused smile to his lips as he pictured himself a paranoid doomsayer on a mad quest for weapons that would come together and do nothing more than glow a bit brighter than they might have on their own. And then he thought of what he’d felt in his homeland, and what his Empress felt, and all traces of mirth drained from him in the very instant. Somehow the Dragon was real. Somehow it was waking.

“Or being awakened,” the old woman suddenly said, and she looked directly at Xu Liang. She smiled a toothless smile at his silent dismay. She had read his mind.

“Yes, I can hear your thoughts, young man. Come,” she beckoned. “Come closer and talk to me for a little while.”

Xu Liang recovered himself and his manners, bowing respectfully at the waist. “Forgive my rudeness, madam. I was not expecting to meet one of such talent.”

“Come,” she said again.

Sensing nothing at all threatening about her, Xu Liang stepped closer. He bowed again. “I am honored.”

Before he straightened, she took his hand, pressing her thin, old skin upon his own that was smooth from lack of toil and from the youth he managed still to hold onto while his mind seemed to age at a much more rapid pace.

“Let me see you,” the elder said.

Xu Liang didn’t understand, until she reached her other hand up to his face and he finally realized that her white eyes weren’t looking at him. He held still while her gentle fingertips traveled over his features, stroking his brow and cheeks, and carefully tracing the soft shape of his mouth and the smooth edges of his jaw.

“You are a lovely man,” she concluded. Then, almost affectionately, she touched his cheek once more with the back of her hand. She added, “And not from Yvaria.”

“No,” Xu Liang said truthfully. “My homeland lies far to the east.”

The woman nodded. “Yes. It is there where your heart breaks.”

Xu Liang did not deny her statement. “I fear my homeland will soon be in ruins.” He didn’t realize the woman still had his hand until she squeezed it comfortingly.

“Weep not for what you may lose,” she whispered. “But for what you have already lost. A wound that is seen and recognized is one more quickly healed.”

Xu Liang couldn’t honestly say that he didn’t understand her, and it was thinking that he might have known what she meant that prompted him to slide away from the subject. “Forgive my diversion, madam, but you mentioned that the horses fear chaos. What did you mean by that?”

She let go of his hand and touched her ear. “Listen. You hear it as well. The whispers of chaos. It comes and it has many messengers to announce its coming.”

Xu Liang straightened and closed his eyes, hearing nothing but the stirring of the horses and the wind in the very tops of the trees. He realized shortly that he was hearing what the old woman meant for him to hear, for it made him feel watched and unsafe. He looked at her again and asked, “What messengers of chaos are there in Yvaria?”

“Not a dragon,” she said, wrapping her knit shawl closer about her shoulders. “In Yvaria chaos has come on black wings, but not a dragon’s wings.” She lifted her chin and closed her cataractous eyes, seeming to absorb the impure wind. And then she said, “Yvaria has the Keirveshen.”

“The Keirveshen?”

The woman nodded slowly, opening her unseeing eyes again. “It has always had the Keirveshen, but their numbers are growing. There are not as many to hunt them as there once were.”

“What are they?” Xu Liang asked.

The elder turned on him suddenly, and gripped his arm in both hands, tightly. A look of fear came to her face. “You must heed my words, wise child of the East! You will survive the darkness. That is not for you to fear, but when all around you is bright...that is when chaos will come for you! Fire will consume you, and while you escape the burning, the heat will smother you slowly!”

She left him in the next instant, heading back for her cart, climbing the steps much quicker than she’d descended them, and closing herself in.

Xu Liang stared after her, slow to absorb having had his death foretold to him by a western seer. Eventually he saw the dwarf staring back at him from the other side of the cart.

“Don’t listen to her,” Tarfan advised. “Never trust a gypsy! Lies and trickery.” He continued mumbling as he came forward, Taya and the rest of the bodyguards behind him.

“Did something happen?” Xu Liang inquired, seeing the tension in the guards’ faces and the unease in Taya’s as she continually looked over her shoulder.

“We got tired of waiting for you,” Tarfan said quickly, then cleared his throat a little too deliberately and stepped around Xu Liang.

Xu Liang recalled the dwarf’s short temper, and didn’t have to ask any more questions.

“Are we leaving here now?” Taya asked impatiently. When Xu Liang nodded, she stomped around him, grumbling. “This is not what I meant by exciting!”

Xu Liang stood alone for a moment. Slowly, his eyes sought the old woman’s cart. He could hear her inside, humming to herself, sounding suddenly unafraid. Eventually he turned away and joined the others of his group, preparing to push on through the oppressive darkness.