Six Celestial Swords (16 page)

Xu Liang overlooked the dwarf’s less than generous appraisal of Treska’s inhabitants and said, “That’s far from here.”

Tarfan nodded and lifted his finger. “Through the elven lands. The Shillan elves aren’t so bad, but the Zaldaine are a sure pain in the backside. Elitists, the lot of them, and warlike. Worse than your people, if you’ll forgive my saying so.”

“Of course,” Xu Liang replied absently, his concentration on the large nation of Treska and the various routes to it. Not only were there the lands of the elves to consider, there was also a great river that nearly split the Western Continent down the middle. It drew out of the Andarian mountains, seeming to almost intentionally divide the elves and humans before splitting the southern nation of Caleddon and branching off into various parts of the Sea of Orlan.

Tarfan saw what Xu Liang studied. “They call it The Strand, ironically. It’s the biggest river in all Dryth. At least, the biggest I’ve ever come across. Big enough to serve as an effective natural border between lands better off separated. There’d be a river of blood if not water.”

Xu Liang looked up, startled by this information.

“Elves and humans have despised one another since their creation,” Tarfan said. “The humans of the western land can never seem to have enough power, following the will of one god, whom they believe is the wisest and most just, and who must therefore cancel all others. The elves look down on men as a lot of hideous, blasphemous brutes who defile everything they touch. There may be some truth in that, considering some men I’ve met, but unfortunately, ordinary men breed much faster than elves. And they have a strange knack for accomplishment. They’ll have this land, someday, then maybe they’ll look to Sheng Fan, where—judging by its size and what I’ve learned of your people—they’ll be soundly thrashed.”

Not if Sheng Fan destroys itself from within, Xu Liang thought miserably.

They all looked at the map for several moments, each lost in their own thoughts.

And then Tarfan said, “It’s pretty far-fetched.”

“I know,” Xu Liang admitted. “But the Ancient Gods have some say in this as well. In the legend, it was the sun and the moon, each with two servants, that gave up their beloved weapons. The sun rises in the east—Sheng Fan, where the spear wielded by Cheng Yu was discovered. The moon was shining full the night before the sword of Mei Qiao came into my possession. This place is called Stormbright.”

Tarfan considered. At length, he said, “There’s no such blade in these parts. I can tell you that much certainly. Anyway Callipry doesn’t seem to fit with your ‘dragon anatomy’ theory. Yvaria, on the other hand, does. You’ll not get a worse storm than that which brews in the Flatlands just north of the Alabaster Range. Most your worst storms occur during the peak of the day. There’s one of your sun god’s servants...maybe.”

It was Xu Liang’s turn to consider. “Perhaps,” he said, thankful that he might have found a destination. Wandering without aim wasted so much precious time.

The dwarf seemed to be in the midst of a brainstorm. He tapped the Northern Continent next and said seriously, “Night lasts the longest here, right where you said the creature’s icy heart should be.”

“It’s something to start with,” Xu Liang said, sitting back. “And it’s more than I hoped for when I left my homeland. I thank you.”

Tarfan stood, his eyes filled with adventure. “Thank me when we find those blades, mage! I’m coming with you!”

“YVARIA?” TAYA WAILED. “Are you out of your mind? I can’t go to Yvaria!”

“Don’t be difficult,” Tarfan said, carefully packing his haversack after returning home and emptying it. “We were setting off to Shillan this morning. It’s no farther away. We just need a few different things to cope with the colder air.” He picked up a flask and stroked it lovingly. “Something warmer to drink,” he murmured before tucking the brandy away.

“I can’t go to Yvaria!” Taya insisted.

“Then stay here!” Tarfan barked. He looked around his cluttered cabin set in the forest well away from the Stormbright Caverns.

He preferred life above ground, someplace easier to get to when he returned from a long trip. He was a dwarf that defied tradition, rejecting any tools that weren’t helpful in climbing mountains rather than digging through them. It upset his family for a long time, but they remembered his name easily enough in a pinch, most recently when Taya’s parents passed away. Tarfan was the oldest brother of twelve. It was his responsibility to take in his orphaned niece. He did and it had not been easy. Three years of adolescent mayhem! She’d been struck with wanderlust as well; the intense desire to wander as far away from authority as she could get. She would probably jump at the chance to be left alone and to fend for herself, even in this nightmare of things out of place.

The young dwarf woman stamped her foot. “You said we were going to leave Stormbright this season and go someplace exciting! What’s exciting about a gigantic heap of cold rocks?”

Tarfan went back to his packing at the round table in the center of the main room. “Weren’t you listening to Xu Liang, about the dragon and the magic swords?”

“The dragon isn’t real, and getting eaten isn’t exciting. It’s disgusting. Anyway, why should we be concerned about his magic swords? I think he’s crazy.”

“Oh...crazy. I see. That’s why you were as enthusiastic as a knee-tall youngster in a baker’s kitchen when you saw the dragon’s image in those maps.”

Tarfan picked up his fattest journal, bound in green leather, featureless except for a small silver stamp in the shape of a leafy tree, a shield traced around it—not as a militaristic symbol, but as a sign of guardianship. To the elves of Shillan the tree itself represented the harmonious growth of nature and knowledge, both theirs to protect. It was a Shillan scholar who’d given Tarfan the blank book, as a token of friendship. If not for their intolerant cousins to the south, the Shillan elves might just have made for good neighbors, for men as well as for dwarves.

He was reminded of his friend from the distant east and slipped the journal in his bag, along with a quill and a bottle of ink. Then he closed it up and turned to his young niece, whose face was flushed with silent embarrassment.

“I’m going with the mage,” he concluded. “You can come along, or you can stay here and sort through this mess, and wait to have all your questions about Fanese myth and legend answered when I get back.”

“All right,” Taya gave in, as Tarfan knew she would once he piqued her curiosity. “But I still have a bad feeling about this.”

“I’ll document that later. Xu Liang’s camp is a couple hours away and daylight’s fading. I don’t want him to think we changed our minds.”

XU LIANG HAD turned the topic of discussion as was necessary to make it acceptable to the dwarves, who he’d found to be very practical, if not very stubborn creatures. Tarfan’s reaction to the possibility of a resurrected dragon god came as closed as he should have expected. Xu Liang didn’t know himself whether or not he believed it himself, but the tremors beneath his homeland were real and growing in intensity. Soon it would not take one as sensitive as he had trained to be to feel them. And they were not normal quakes. Something was rising in Sheng Fan, something terrible.

Take heart, my Empress. I have found an ally who will assist me in finding the others. He knows these lands well and he is worthy of your trust.

“You were hurt, my brother.”

I am well. You must not trouble yourself with such concerns. It is you that the land needs most of all.

Xu Liang opened his eyes and felt a pang of remorse deep inside of him. Song Da-Xiao had called him brother since he returned to the Imperial City and learned of Song Lu’s death. Seeing her sorrow and her fear at being left alone among corrupt officials, skeptical warriors, and dangerously apprehensive family members, he immediately took an oath with her, that they would be from that day forward as brother and sister. Beyond his station and obligations, he would support her always and defend her to his last, dying breath. It was a mutual pact usually made between Fanese men—soldiers most often—but it seemed appropriate under the circumstances. There was no one to adopt her, who would not try to seize power of the Empire and for the same reasons—and considering her age at the time of Song Lu’s death—there was no one to marry her. She’d lost a father and brother. Xu Liang did all that he could to replace some of her loss and to inspire her strength. He feared, however, that she had come to rely on him too heavily.

Xu Liang sighed in a useless attempt to try and alleviate some of the weight he bore. Then he stood and emerged from his tent into the cooling night air. He smelled rain faintly as a storm passed to the north.

Gai Ping approached and knelt before him. “My lord, the little ones return.”

Xu Liang nodded. “See that they are made comfortable for the night and treated with respect. We set out in the morning.”

Gai Ping inclined his head obediently and left.

Xu Liang’s gaze wandered north. The storm breeze stirred long strands of his black hair as he turned his face into it. He felt a sudden sense of foreboding as he watched the sky above the treetops flash with the reflection of distant lightning.

A blade of storm...would they find it beyond the mountains, in the shadow of the Dragon’s spine? And who would be carrying it?

D
ARKNESS AGAIN. Always darkness—even by day. Is there no light left in this world that will shine upon me? I have never acted with malice in my heart. I have never sought to harm. I wanted only to protect. God, why have you turned away from me?

Tristus Edainien considered throwing his head back and screaming the question at the blackened sky, but he refrained, held by the bitter fact that he would not be answered.

“Perhaps there is no one to answer me,” he mumbled to himself. “Perhaps my faith has been misplaced in nothing...a void.”

His jaw muscles began to work involuntarily.

“If only my memory would be swallowed by such darkness.”

Shame and anger filled his weary body, made wearier with the white-gold partial plate armor of the Order. Specifically, it had belonged to his father, who died in service to the One God. Tristus felt like a desperate thief taking it from his parents’ home after having his own armor stripped from him by the Order Masters at the Eristan Citadel. He had been cast out and retained no rights pertaining to the Order, least of all the right to don such a symbolic suit. There was no question what it represented, and he was inviting trouble by flaunting it.

But what else could he do? He needed armor and to sell his father’s for the sake of purchasing other armor was unthinkable. Besides this had all come in error. He’d earned the right to wear this armor and to serve as a Holy Knight of Eris. He would plead his case in the sacred city itself, to the winged children of the One God, who above all—even the laws and ethics of mortal men—enforced justice. They were the true swords of God and the guides of mankind. They would have the answers Tristus sought. They had to. There was no one else.

Tristus—young still, though he felt ancient—wiped his gloved hand over his face and pushed errant brown curls away from his eyes, mentally retracing the steps behind him. He started further back than he intended, recalling his childhood, how as an undersized child it was believed that he wasn’t meant for the Order. He had been taught early to accept a path less physically demanding and saw more books than practice swords. Yet he wanted more than anything to become a knight, a protector. He abandoned his books whenever his mother wasn’t watching to practice with the other boys. They accepted him out of respect for his father, a hero in Andaria. He worked hard, slowly gained inches, and his thin frame began to fill out. It was eventually decided that he would follow in his father’s footsteps after all. Tristus followed those steps diligently, and at some point lost his way, straying onto a path so foul and so twisted as to make him wonder if he’d left the natural world altogether and come upon a living hell. Perhaps, then, he could never reach Eris. Perhaps here it didn’t exist.