Six Celestial Swords (12 page)

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U LIANG’S BODYGUARDS patched up their own wounds, which were relatively few, and otherwise spent their time standing watch around their master, who’d yet to leave the deck where he’d fallen. At some point he shifted from his knees into a cross-legged position and held his hands together in front of himself. The torn sleeve of his robe—both the under and out layer—was heavily stained, defacing the elegance of the long-tailed birds embroidered into the silk, just as the minor ruination of his once perfect skin offended the mystic’s gentle beauty. The blood appeared to have stopped flowing, but the skin was still broken and greatly bruised. It made Yvain’s stomach turn to look at it, even though she’d seen far worse. The wound just seemed so out of place on Xu Liang. The pain he had shown after the battle had drained from his expression and he now looked like a delicate stone idol, marred by a blasphemous hand. Yvain understood the devotion of his guards…the same devotion Fu Ran evidently still felt, even years after abandoning Sheng Fan and his master.

“He is doing well,” someone suddenly said, speaking Fanese.

Yvain’s gaze darted to the bodyguard who’d spoken to her. He was an older man with black hair turning white, on his head as well as in his neat beard and mustache. She just noticed the way each of the bodyguards’ hair was bunched at the top of their heads in a uniform fashion. They had taken their helmets off, but were otherwise fully armored in Fanese tradition, and probably roasting in the afternoon sun that was shining down on the deck. Their ages were indeterminable with the exception of two; the elder and one who looked to be just out of his teens. The latter sat rigidly, either trying to seem imposing or stay alert. Yvain couldn’t decide which.

She approached the old one facing her. “It’s all right to speak? We won’t disturb him?” She indicated Xu Liang with her eyes.

“It takes more than simple talking to disturb my lord,” the guard replied.

Yvain accepted that with a nod, then asked, “What happened the other night?” She hoped after speaking the question that she hadn’t just offended the man by seeming to question his ability to protect the mystic. What she truly wondered was how the sorcerer had failed to protect himself, and she didn’t necessarily mean from the attack.

The aging guard did not indicate umbrage. He said neutrally, “My lord suffered for his bravery and now he suffers for his sorcery.”

Recalling what Fu Ran had said, Yvain asked, “Did you know he’d taken it this far?”

“No,” the guard answered honestly. And then a smile crept into his aging features. “My lord knows that I worry about him.”

Yvain returned his smile. “How long have you been with him?”

“Nine years.” The man sighed. “Perhaps now my lord will think I’m getting too old.”

“I doubt it,” Yvain offered. “All of you fought well and bravely.”

The bodyguard bowed his head in a manner that seemed more friendly than simply respectful.

“We’ll be arriving at Nelayne soon,” Yvain informed. “We only planned to stay docked for a few days, but we’ll stay as long as you and Xu Liang need.”

“My lord will be ready,” the guard said with confidence and nodded again.

Yvain left him to his duty.

NIGHT GREW DARKER as a storm approached.

From a balcony several stories up, Alere Shaederin watched the starless black mass encroach upon his home. A chill wind preceded it, billowing the observer’s ivory-blond hair and snapping the fabric of his shirt.

It would be fierce this time. Worse than any of the other storms that had invaded the Lower Verres Mountains of Northern Yvaria this season. Soon the steep towers, grand balconies, and elaborate bridges of the castle would be glistening wet as the rain sheeted down and sporadic strands of lightning leapt across the sky, weaving webs among the clouds.

Once Alere had marveled at such spectacles of nature, particularly as the warmer storm season was so brief in this region. Recently, he had begun to fear them, as he wondered now at their source. They seemed only to herald misery, with a determination that could not have belonged to nature.

Alere closed his gray eyes and felt the oncoming force. The energy brushed over his fair skin and filtered into his flesh. He thought back, to a night such as this, and a beautiful young mother, who had sheltered her son from his fear of the beasts in his dreams.

“You must never fear them,”
his mother had said. And she said it again, years later when the nightmare creatures attacked their home and slew nearly all of the Shaederin household.

It should not have happened. They were elvenborn, descended of the highest of their kind. Morgen Shaederin was renowned for his prowess as a warrior and a slayer of demons. And yet, somehow, he fell to darkness. His wife took up his sword and fought the invaders with her own skill, but the elves were overwhelmed. Eria Shaederin returned to the place where her adolescent son had been charged with keeping the other children of the household hidden and safe. She was mortally wounded, but showed no fear and little pain as she issued Morgen Shaederin’s blade to its rightful inheritor and said,
“You must never fear them, Alere. You must survive...and defeat them.”

The voices of the past departed and one belonging to the present spoke softly. “It still looks the same. It constantly amazes me just how much.”

Alere opened his eyes, but did not look back at his cousin. Aside from himself, Kailel was the oldest of the remaining Shaederins. He was just sixteen, and scarcely that, but it would have to be old enough.

“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” Kailel said in a moment, and while his tone was calm, Alere could sense the distress building inside of his cousin. “You’re going to leave us.”

“I cannot stay here.”

“I’ll come with you,” Kailel offered at once.

“One of us must remain. Our family must be rebuilt, and the rebuilding must take place here, in our home.”

“But your father was the lord of our house. It is your place…it is your responsibility to stay here!”

Unconsciously, Alere’s hand strayed to the hilt of the sword at his belt. “I inherited what my father wished me to inherit. The house is yours, Kailel. I did my part by leading you from it six years ago and by bringing you back to it now.”

“We would have died in those passages without you, Alere. I know that.” Kailel spoke with deference now. However, he continued to argue, as it was his only defense against Alere’s determination. “I know that well. I still have unsettling dreams about that night. I was not too young to understand why we’d been sent into the mountain corridors. It was you who kept us calm and safe. It was you who led us to Lord Doriel’s land and negotiated our stay. You were the one who served him. You lent him your father’s sword in becoming a guard in his army. I think that blade has done its task and you must do now what your father did when the fighting was over. You must put it away and turn your attentions to your family.”

Alere lowered his gaze from the horizon and closed his eyes again. “It is for my family that I must leave this place again. What happened here was not random.”

“Your father had many enemies,” Kailel confirmed unhappily, as if he knew what Alere would say next.

Perhaps it was predictable, then, that Alere’s answer would be, “They are my enemies now.”

A long silence passed between the cousins. At length, the younger said, “I cannot stop you.”

Kailel left and Alere opened his eyes once more to the coming storm. He watched the lightning tumbling from the sky until he could just hear the answer of thunder. Then he turned away and walked back into the bedroom that once belonged to his parents. He looked over the draping webs and layers of dust, and realized that it would take considerable effort to make the place livable again. Some of the others had already begun the cleaning since their arrival earlier in the season. Alere had spent much of that time searching the castle for unwanted residents and he would stay until the task was finished. Thus far he had discovered nothing but spiders and rats, and a few other small beasts that had strayed in from the surrounding wilderness, all of them mortal children of Ysis, the goddess of the sky and mother of all that lived beneath her ever changing veil. It was the goddess’s immortal children that one had to be wary of, particularly her daughter Ceren, goddess of the earth and of the Void.

The offspring goddess, according to legend, had been charged to watch over the physical world and its inhabitants from a closer perspective and to maintain a balance between the World and the Void; life and oblivion. It seemed that she more enjoyed toying with the scales than keeping them in check. There were times when Alere believed that the goddess had gone mad. There had been far too much war carrying on throughout Dryth. War among men, war among men and demons, possibly war among the gods themselves as well.

Alere had seen the battlefield. He’d seen it littered with the bodies of thousands of men and beasts, killed by blade and by will, and sometimes by magic. He had seen his own blood flowing freely over his eyes from a terrible wound, the scar of which still traced his hairline. He had seen much for his young age, but nothing that troubled him so greatly as what he had not seen; the murder of his family at the hands of a legion of unnatural invaders.

He wondered what could be worse, the actual event, or his imagination’s interpretation of it…of the sounds and the smells, and the sensations while running through blackened passages that claws were ever close to tearing at his back. Even now, he shuddered inside thinking about it.

Outside, the storm had finally arrived, and the sound of the rainfall washed at once into the room. Alere stood in front of the fireplace and listened to it. He stared long at the healthy flame and eventually his gaze wandered to an item on the mantel, covered over in dust and abandoned webs.

He stepped forward and lifted his hand to the object, slowly sweeping away the layers of filth. When he’d exposed the wooden sword stand, he stared at it, visually tracing every delicate engraving. He fell almost into a trance-like state while studying the fascinating work until he came upon a word; a name.
Aerkiren
, the name given to his father’s sword, which in the Northern Elvish tongue literally meant ‘sky of evening’, or more commonly, ‘twilight’.

“It sings when darkness falls,”
Morgen Shaederin had said.

Alere drew the long elven blade at his hip and held it in both hands, studying the emblazoned symbols for several moments before finally setting the sword upon its mount. He hesitated to take his hands away from it at first, almost as if he believed it would vanish or as if somehow he would not be able to reclaim it. Eventually, he lifted his hands and stepped back…and watched.

The lighting in the room made it difficult, but soon enough Alere descried the faint glow along the edges of the engravings; a soft violet light that seemed to actively trace the symbols. Alere had seen them glow stronger, but he had never seen them fully brilliant, not even in the near pitch darkness of the mountain corridors he and his siblings had fled through. Perhaps then he had been too preoccupied to notice, but it seemed unlikely, since the enchanted glow should have lit their path and all any of them could remember was the absolute depth of the darkness in those passages. This blade, clearly a gift from the gods, was mystery to him. He knew little of its origin and almost nothing of its true purpose in the world of mortals. Morgen Shaederin did not live long enough to explain such things to his son, if he had ever known himself.

I will not tarnish your legacy, Father. I will do whatever I must to serve the power that was bestowed upon you.

Alere did not hope to master the enchanted blade. To attempt to do so would be to defy the gods, and only arrogance and foolishness set a mortal soul on such a campaign.

The twilight glow of the sword
Aerkiren
gleamed in Alere’s eyes, as if the weapon itself were a sentient being and had read his thoughts, and understood them.

EVEN THE OPEN corridors of the castle were dark. Months could not lift the gloom that had spent years settling. Even after the bodies of their relatives had at last been properly buried, the spirits of those savagely murdered still seemed to linger in the air. They seemed to linger, but not one ghost of the past had been found after a long and thorough search.