Warbreaker (74 page)

Lightsong nodded. “We should keep moving,” he said. “Those guards in Mercystar’s palace know we’re down here. I don’t know who they’ll tell, but I’d rather finish exploring before we get chased out.”

Llarimar shivered visibly at that. They walked back up the steep tunnel to the main one just below the palace. Lightsong still felt life down a side tunnel, but he chose the other branch to explore. It soon became apparent that this one split and turned numerous times.

“Tunnels to some of the other palaces,” he guessed, poking at a wooden beam used to support the shaft. “Old—much older than the tunnel to the barracks.”

Llarimar nodded.

“All right, then,” Lightsong said. “Time to find out where the main tunnel goes.”

Llarimar followed as Lightsong approached the main tunnel. Lightsong closed his eyes, trying to determine how close the life was. It was faint. Almost beyond his ability to sense. If everything else in this catacomb hadn’t been merely rocks and dirt, he wouldn’t even have noticed the life in the first place. He nodded to Llarimar, and they continued down the tunnel as quietly as possible.

Did it seem that he was able to move with surprising stealth? Did he have unremembered experience with sneaking about? He was certainly better at it than Llarimar. Of course, a tumbling boulder was probably better at moving quietly than Llarimar, considering his bulky clothing and his puffing exhalations.

The tunnel went on straight for a time without branches. Lightsong looked up, trying to estimate what was above them.
The God King’s palace?
he guessed. He couldn’t be certain; it was difficult to judge direction and distance under the ground.

He felt excited. Thrilled. This was something no god was supposed to do. Sneaking at night, moving through secret tunnels, looking for secrets and clues.
Odd
, he thought.
They give us everything they think that we might want; they glut us with sensation and experience. And yet real feelings—fear, anxiety, excitement—are completely lost to us.

He smiled. In the distance, he could hear voices. He turned down the lamp and crept forward extra quietly, waving for Llarimar to stay behind.

“...have him up above,” a masculine voice was saying. “He came for the princess’s sister, as I said he would.”

“You have what you want, then,” said another voice. “Really, you pay far too much attention to that one.”

“Do not underestimate Vasher,” the first voice said. “He has accomplished more in his life than a hundred men, and has done more for the good of all people than you will ever be able to appreciate.”

Silence.

“Aren’t you planning to kill him?” said the second voice.

“Yes.”

Silence.

“You’re a strange one, Denth,” the second voice said. “However, our goal is accomplished.”

“You people don’t have your war yet.”

“We will.”

Lightsong crouched beside a small pile of rubble. He could see light up ahead, but couldn’t distinguish much beyond some moving shadows. His luck seemed remarkably good in arriving to hear this conversation. Was that proof that his dreams were, indeed, fortellings? Or was it just coincidence? It was very late at night, and anyone still up was likely to be engaged in clandestine activities.

“I have a job for you,” the second voice said. “We’ve got someone I need you to interrogate.”

“Too bad,” the first voice said, growing distant. “I’ve got an old friend to torture. I just had to pause to dispose of his monstrosity of a sword.”

“Denth! Come back here!”

“You didn’t hire me, little man,” the first voice said, growing fainter. “If you want to make me do something, go get your boss. Until then, you know where to find me.”

Silence. And then, something moved behind Lightsong. He spun, and could just barely make out Llarimar creeping forward. Lightsong waved him back, then joined him.

“What?” Llarimar whispered.

“Voices, ahead,” Lightsong whispered back, the tunnel dark around them. “Talking about the war.”

“Who were they?” Llarimar asked.

“I don’t know,” Lightsong whispered. “But I’m going to find out. Wait here while I—”

He was interrupted by a loud scream. Lightsong jumped. The sound came from the same place he had heard the voices, and it sounded like...

“Let go of me!” Blushweaver yelled. “What do you think you’re doing! I’m a goddess!”

Lightsong stood up abruptly. A voice said something back to Blushweaver, but Lightsong was too far down the tunnel to make out the words.

“You will let me go!” Blushweaver yelled. “I—” she cut off sharply, crying out in pain.

Lightsong’s heart was pounding. He took a step.

“Your Grace!” Llarimar said, standing. “We should go for help!”

“We
are
help,” Lightsong said. He took a deep breath. Then—surprising himself—he charged down the tunnel. He quickly approached the light, rounding a corner and coming into a section of tunnel that had been worked with rock. In seconds, he was running on a smooth stone floor and burst into what appeared to be a dungeon.

Blushweaver was tied into a chair. A group of men wearing the robes of the God King’s priests stood around her with several uniformed soldiers. Blushweaver’s lip was bleeding, and she was crying through a gag that had been placed over her mouth. She wore a beautiful nightgown, but it was dirty and disheveled.

The men in the room looked up in surprise, obviously shocked to see someone come up behind them. Lightsong took advantage of this shock and threw his shoulder against the soldier nearest to him. He sent the man flying back into the wall, Lightsong’s superior size and weight knocking him aside with ease. Lightsong knelt down and quickly pulled the fallen soldier’s sword from its sheath.

“Aha!” Lightsong said, pointing the weapon at the men in front of him. “Who’s first?”

The soldiers regarded him dumbly.

“I say, you!” Lightsong said, lunging at the next-closest guard.

He missed the man by a good three inches, fumbling and off-balance from the lunge. The guard finally realized what was going on and pulled out his own sword. The priests backed against the wall. Blushweaver blinked at her tears, looking shocked.

The soldier nearest Lightsong attacked, and Lightsong raised his blade awkwardly, trying to block, doing a horrible job of it. The guard at his feet suddenly threw himself at Lightsong’s legs, toppling him to the ground. Then one of the standing guards thrust his sword into Lightsong’s thigh.

The leg bled blood as red as that of any mortal. Suddenly, Lightsong knew pain. Pain literally greater than any he’d known in his short life.

He screamed.

He saw, through tears, Llarimar heroically trying to tackle a guard from behind, but the attack was almost as poorly executed as Lightsong’s own. The soldiers stepped away, several guarding the tunnel, another holding his bloodied blade toward Lightsong’s throat.

Funny
, Lightsong thought, gritting his teeth against the pain.
That was not at all how I imagined this going.

Annotations for Chapter 52

Fifty-Three

Annotations for Chapter 53

Vivenna waited up for Vasher. He did not return.

She paced in the small, one-room hideout—the sixth in a series. They never spent more than a few days in each location. Unadorned, it held only their bedrolls, Vasher’s pack, and a single flickering candle.

Vasher would have chastised her for wasting the candle. For a man who held a king’s fortune in Breaths, he was surprisingly frugal.

She continued pacing. She knew that she should probably just go to sleep. Vasher could take care of himself. It seemed that the only one in the city who couldn’t do
that
was Vivenna.

And yet he’d told her he was only going on a quick scouting mission. Though he was a solitary person himself, he apparently understood her desire to be a part of things, so he usually let her know where he was going and when to expect him back.

She’d never waited up for Denth to come back from a night mission, and she’d been working with Vasher for a fraction of the time she’d spent with the mercenaries. Why did she worry so much now?

Though she had felt like she was Denth’s friend, she hadn’t really cared about him. He’d been amusing and charming, but distant. Vasher was...well, who he was. There was no guile in him. He wore no false mask. She’d only met one other person like that: her sister, the one who would bear the God King’s child.

Lord of Colors!
Vivenna thought, still pacing.
How did things turn into such a mess?

~

Siri awoke with a start. There was shouting coming from outside her room. She roused herself quickly, moving over to the door and putting her ear to it. She could hear fighting. If she were going to run, perhaps now would be the time. She rattled the door, hoping for some reason that it was unlocked. It wasn’t.

She cursed. She’d heard fighting earlier—screaming, and men dying. And now again.
Someone trying to rescue me, perhaps?
she thought hopefully.
But who?

The door shook suddenly, and she jumped back as it opened. Treledees, high priest of the God King, stood in the doorway. “Quickly, child,” he said, waving to her. “You must come with me.”

Siri looked desperately for a way to run. She backed away from the priest, and he cursed quietly, waving for a couple of soldiers in city guard uniforms to rush in and grab her. She screamed for help.

“Quiet, you fool!” Treledees said. “We’re trying to help you.”

His lies rang hollow in her ears, and she struggled as the soldiers pulled her from the room. Outside, bodies were lying on the ground, some in guard uniforms, others in nondescript armor, still others with grey skin.

She heard fighting down the hallway, and she screamed toward it as the soldiers roughly pulled her away.

~

Old Chapps, they called him. Those who called him anything, that is.

He sat in his little boat, moving slowly across the dark water of the bay. Night fishing. During the day, one had to pay a fee to fish in T’Telir waters. Well, technically, during the night you were supposed to pay too.

But the thing about night was, nobody could see you. Old Chapps chuckled to himself, lowering his net over the side of the boat. The waters made their characteristic lap, lap, lap against the side of the boat. Dark. He liked it dark. Lap, lap, lap.

Occasionally, he was given better work. Taking bodies from one of the city’s slumlords, weighting them down with rocks tied in a sack to the foot, then tossing them into the bay. There were probably hundreds of them down there, floating in the current with their feet weighed to the floor. A party of skeletons, having a dance. Dance, dance, dance.

No bodies tonight, though. Too bad. That meant fish. Free fish, he didn’t have to pay tariffs on. And free fish were good fish.

No...
a voice said to him.
A little bit more to your right.

The sea talked to him sometimes. Coaxed him this way or that. He happily made his way in the direction indicated. He was out on the waters almost every night. They should know him pretty well by now.

Good. Drop the net.

He did so. It wasn’t too deep in this part of the bay. He could drag the net behind his boat, pulling the weighted edges along the bottom, catching the smaller fish that came up into the shallows to feed. Not the best fish, but the sky was looking too dangerous to be out far from the shore. A storm brewing?

His net struck something. He grumbled, yanking it. Sometimes it got caught on debris or coral. It was heavy. Too heavy. He pulled the net back up over the side, then opened the shield on his lantern, risking a bit of light.

Tangled in the net, a sword lay in the bottom of his boat. Silvery, with a black handle.

Lap, lap, lap.

Ah, very nice
, the voice said, much clearer now.
I hate the water. So wet and icky down there.

Transfixed, Old Chapps reached out, picking up the weapon. It felt heavy in his hand.

I don’t suppose you’d want to go destroy some evil, would you?
the voice said.
I’m not really sure what that means, to be honest. I’ll just trust you to decide.

Old Chapps smiled.
Oh, all right
, the sword said.
You can admire me a little bit longer, if you must. After that, though, we really need to get back to shore.

~

Vasher awoke groggily.

He was tied by his wrists to a hook in the ceiling of a stone room. The rope that had been used to tie him, he noticed, was the same one he’d used to tie up the maid. It had been completely drained of color.

In fact, everything around him was a uniform grey. He had been stripped save for his short, white underbreeches. He groaned, his arms feeling numb from the awkward angle of being hung by his wrists.

He wasn’t gagged, but he had no Breath left—he’d used the last of it in the fight, to Awaken the cloak of the fallen man. He groaned.

A lantern burned in the corner. A figure stood next to it. “And so we both return,” Denth said quietly.

Vasher didn’t reply.

“I still owe you for Arsteel’s death, too,” Denth said quietly. “I want to know how you killed him.”

“In a duel,” Vasher said in a croaking voice.

“You didn’t beat him in a duel, Vasher,” Denth said, stepping forward. “I know it.”

“Then maybe I snuck up and stabbed him from behind,” Vasher said. “It’s what he deserved.”

Denth backhanded him across the face, causing him to swing from the hook. “Arsteel was a good man!”

“Once,” Vasher said, tasting blood. “Once, we were all good men, Denth. Once.”

Denth was quiet. “You think your little quest here will undo what you’ve done?”

“Better than becoming a mercenary,” Vasher said. “Working for whomever will pay.”

“I am what you made me,” Denth said quietly.

“That girl trusted you. Vivenna.”

Denth turned, eyes darkened, the lanternlight not quite reaching his face. “She was supposed to.”

“She liked you. Then you killed her friend.”