Six Celestial Swords (25 page)

The young man groaned, his eyelids fluttered, and he stared bleary-eyed at Xu Liang. He seemed mildly startled, but otherwise reasonable, so Taya started to bring him his medicine, hoping he would be equally calm about it.

And then, as if suddenly remembering to panic, the knight’s eyes shot wide, showing the world their intense blue color. He bolted upright and did something that made Taya gasp out loud: He latched onto Xu Liang’s arm, twisting up the mystic’s silken sleeve in his tight grasp.

The questions came almost too quickly to understand. “What’s happened? Where am I? My armor! Where is it?” He looked all around him, still gripping Xu Liang’s arm. “Where is
Dawnfire
?”

And then, in a tone Taya had never heard the mystic take with anyone, Xu Liang said, “Take your hand from my arm at once.” He wasn’t loud, simply...commanding.

The young man obeyed, a peculiar awe capturing his features and quieting his panic. Apology followed. “Please,” he started to say, but Xu Liang wouldn’t let him finish.

“You are disoriented,” the mystic said. “Be still and rest. Our healer will tend to your chill and when you are warmed again, you may recoup your belongings. Both they and you are safe here, so long as you do not attempt to harm any of us.”

Slowly, the stranger shook his head. “No... I wouldn’t. I won’t. I just...”

“Rest,” Xu Liang said again, softer this time. Then he stood and left, handing the affair over to—Taya beamed proudly to herself—
their
healer.

Her smile faded a bit when she saw the knight’s eyes shift from the tent entrance to her. His limp brown hair was curling as it dried, draping a face that wasn’t ugly by a good shot, but it was drawn and sad. His eyes were big wet pools of sky blue beneath a soft brow. The young man’s nose was straight with a decent shape to it and his lips were almost too generous. The rest of him was long—though not too long—and well arranged; a tad undernourished currently, but surely capable of bearing the weight of his armor.

He smiled half-heartedly at her. “I know I seem a wretch to look at right now, but I’ll do you no harm, little one.”

Taya felt her heart beat just a little faster. Give her a stout, bearded dwarf any day, but if she was going to be surrounded by young human men, thank the Heartstone of the Stormbright Caverns they were a handsome lot! Xu Liang was walking art, of course…once one got used to his exotic style. Taya was proud to have matured enough over the course of her current travels to understand such things now. The bodyguards were bold and dignified, if not handsome in their own right, and then there was Fu Ran, who had the impressive features of a titan. Even Bastien, with his sun-chafed skin and his scar wasn’t bad to look at. And the elf...well, he was an elf.

Taya carried her bowl to the Andarian and watched him take it in both hands.

For a moment he seemed to bask in the steam rising off the liquid mixture. Then he shrugged, “It doesn’t smell half bad.” He drank it down, displaying his hunger. Then he offered the bowl back to Taya with thanks. “It didn’t taste half bad either,” he added.

Taya beamed with pride again. Tarfan always blanched at her cooking and had to be tied down and have his jaw pried open to get some of her medicinal concoctions down his gullet.

“I hope that I didn’t offend that cleric,” the knight suddenly said. “I...”

“Cleric?” Taya was confused until she recalled that Andaria didn’t have sorcerers. Their magic-users were known as clerics. “You mean Xu Liang,” she said.

The knight frowned, puzzled. “That’s a curious name. I don’t think that I’ve ever heard one quite like it.”

“It’s Fanese,” Taya informed. “You have to be as well traveled as me and my uncle to have heard of a name like his. Or a name like Gai Ping’s, or Guang Ci’s, or Fu Ran’s, or Deng-”

“Please,” the knight interrupted, as she reveled in demonstrating the particular pronunciations of each guard. “I understand. Thank you. As I was about to say, if I’ve offended him, I’m sorry. I only didn’t expect to wake this morning under a roof of any kind, let alone beneath a kind stranger’s gaze.”

“It’s all right,” Taya took the liberty of saying. “I don’t think he holds grudges. He just has a lot on his mind right now. We weren’t planning to camp this early in the day, but we couldn’t just leave you up to your neck in snow.”

“Thank you,” the knight said, sounding weak while he appeared to think back on the severe cold outside.

Taya simply smiled, deciding she liked his gentle, polite way of speaking. Andarians were high on propriety, tradition, and ceremony. According to Tarfan the Andarians and the Fanese were the only people in the known world that could literally die of shame.

“Perhaps I’d better take a few moments rest,” the young knight said, and finally laid back down. “Only a few,” he murmured, pulling the blankets up to his chin and closing his big, pretty eyes. “And then I’ll...be...on my...”

Taya sighed wistfully as sleep claimed him. She brushed an errant tendril of hair from his boyish face and patted him gently on the cheek. “You’ve been a very good patient. The first one I haven’t had to chase down and hog tie.”

“SO, WHAT DO you think about the stranger?”

Xu Liang scarcely heard Fu Ran while he stood beside Blue Crane and watched the clouds ribbing overhead in the tumultuous mountain air. It was going to snow soon. There were already light flakes in the air and daylight left more swiftly in the mountains. If they were lucky they would have a few more hours to travel by before the darkness settled again. At this rate, it was going to take a week or longer just to get to the lower regions of the Alabaster Range. This was unacceptable. But going around the mountains would have taken longer. There was nothing they could do. Time would move as time did, without regard or remorse.

Fu Ran’s words eventually filtered into Xu Liang’s thoughts and he gave a belated reply. “He is...troubled.”

“How do you mean?” the large man asked.

Xu Liang lifted his hand to stroke Blue Crane’s soft pelt and thought of the knight’s sudden grip on his wrist, so tight that he could feel the man’s faint fever through his robe. He wondered now if it was arrogance or fear that made him react as he did to the man’s action. While he was not accustomed to being groped, he’d been outside of Sheng Fan enough to set aside certain expectations where the behavior of others was concerned. Certainly, Fu Ran had handled him with less respect in his rough way at shielding him from harm. Perhaps it had to do with the pain the man’s sudden, desperate touch had inflicted. But he could not have known how fragile Xu Liang currently was, how the faintest physical contact could amount to a serious affliction if he wasn’t mentally prepared for it.

“Xu Liang.”

He thought a moment more, then answered his friend. “I sense something about him that troubles me. Perhaps that is the better way of putting it.”

“What’s he doing in the Yvarian mountains?” Tarfan asked from his perch on a cold boulder, where he struggled to hold a map open against the wind. “That’s what I want to know. Knights of Eris aren’t cause seekers.”

“Eris?” Xu Liang inquired.

“Eristan,” the dwarf muttered. “The Divine Citadel, a temple to the highest order of the Andarian knighthood. They’re not soldiers of men or kings. They’re warriors of God.”

“Which one?” Fu Ran asked him.

“The One,” the dwarf answered with emphasis. “The True God, the Great and Glorious Father of Heaven and of the Winged Children, the Angels of Eris, Swords of Heaven.”

“Swords...” Xu Liang started.

Tarfan shook his head. “No relation to your Celestial Blades, mage. There’s a reason I wouldn’t let you wander civilized Andaria by yourself, didn’t you know? They’d have a man like you tied to a stake and set afire for blasphemy!”

“No,” Xu Liang said. “I didn’t know. I thought you said the Treskans were the ones to be concerned about in that aspect.”

Tarfan dropped his hands and therefore his map into his lap and sighed. “About the only thing separating Andaria from Treska is a pasture. The Andarians spread the faith that drives the Treskans. They don’t suffer sorcerers. The Andarians tolerate some rituals involving magic if it pertains properly to their religion.

“Like, for example, if an officially recognized cleric prays over a dying soldier that he be saved and chants a healing spell that does, in fact, save him, its considered God’s mercy, or something to that effect. Summoning the wind on a still day, using words they couldn’t even repeat properly, let alone understand, is called witchcraft. That earns you a stake and a toasty fire.”

Xu Liang couldn’t suppress the mildly sardonic smile that came to his lips as he considered that there may indeed have been barbarians in the western world. “Well then, let us try not to impress too offensive an image upon the young man before we send him on his way. We have little to spare, but perhaps...”

At that moment, someone cried out. It came from the only tent they’d set up, leaving no question as to who it was.

Xu Liang walked away from Blue Crane to investigate. Fu Ran followed with Tarfan sliding off his boulder to do the same. Guang Ci and Deng Po were about to enter, but Xu Liang waved them away, decided against a misunderstanding leading to anyone’s death or injury.

Inside, the knight was stalking around the tent, strapping on pieces of his armor as he searched for something. The look of distress on his face was almost painful to behold. He caught sight of Xu Liang and the others crowding in the entranceway and didn’t wait for them to say anything, demanding, “Where is
Dawnfire
?”

Xu Liang considered that such might have been the name given to his horse and took instant pity upon him, thinking that his mental faculties had suffered to such a degree that he believed the animal might be hidden in the tent.

“The animal has perished,” Xu Liang explained with the gentle patience one gave to a small child. He saw no other way to approach the man’s apparent mode of behavior.

The knight stopped his search, a look of abject dismay and confusion on his youthful features. “What?” He seemed to understand in the next moment and a half smile crept into his panicked expression. “
Dawnfire’s
not—it isn’t a horse. It’s a spear.”

An inaudible gasp escaped Xu Liang’s throat, and he watched with renewed interest as the man held his arms out as if to display the weapon’s length.

“A great platinum staff with a marvelously crafted blade,” the knight said. “What’s happened to it?”

“We found no such weapon with you,” Xu Liang offered, but the knight wouldn’t have it.

“That’s impossible!” he shouted, tears filling his eyes and quickly spilling onto his flushed cheeks. “I didn’t let it go!” He brought his arms in toward his chest, as if in demonstration. “I was clutching it just before I…just when...”

Xu Liang studied him with a sensation of puzzlement and a deliberate administration of patience.

The young man dropped his arms to his sides. “I’ve failed,” he said.

And there he stood in utter dejection and a misery so profound it angered Xu Liang as much as it inspired pity within him.

Taya moved from the place she’d been standing out of the knight’s way and gingerly touched the young man’s arm. He covered his face with both hands and began to weep.

Xu Liang tried to take his eyes from the spectacle of grief, but he found himself unable in his dismay at what he was seeing. He had seen such weakness and self-blame once before and it was nothing he wanted to see again. And yet, he was mesmerized, trapped in this bitter reflection of the past.

“Now what?” Tarfan said, breaking the spell. “If he’s not mad...”

“I know,” Xu Liang said. “We must learn more about this spear, if it actually exists.”

“I’m not mad,” the knight suddenly announced. “I’m not. I swear to you!” He did nothing to support his claim by saying next, “The spear was given to me by an angel, who saved my life.”

TRISTUS DIDN’T EVEN believe himself. When he came to consciousness in a warm place beneath the gentle gaze of the most beautiful woman he thought he’d ever seen, who changed into a man no less fair right before his eyes, he was sure he’d lost himself in a dream. And then he realized he was awake and he reached for the angel’s spear, and came away with the stranger’s arm…and things only went worse from there. He felt like a lame animal, the way the dwarf medic stared at him, and he’d felt like a foolish child the way the man in the strangest cleric’s robes he’d ever seen scolded him. And he was withering in Xu Liang’s quiet gaze now, while panic slammed in his chest and festered in his stomach. He felt ill and he must have sounded like a lunatic.