Drawn Blades (14 page)

It didn’t. It felt old and alien and inimical to mortal life. This world didn’t want us in it. Or, at least, that was how it felt to me.

“It’s beautiful!” Faran slid off her horse and knelt to touch the ground. “And so alive. Can you feel it, Aral?”

“Vividly.”

Faran turned and gave me a concerned look. “Are you all right? Because you sounded a little funny there.”

She’s right,
agreed Triss.
Your voice had a sort of vibration to it, something that I don’t recall hearing before.

I don’t know,
I replied.
There’s something not right. . . .

As I tried to articulate my feelings, I looked down and saw that I was twisting at the smoke ring with the thumb and forefinger of my other hand. That was when I realized I could feel something else as well—a sort of pulsing or throbbing in the ring, like something alive and suddenly awake. I held my hand up where I could see it better. The smoke band had grown thicker and wider. It was more active as well, rolling and coiling wildly where before it had slowly swirled in a way that ebbed and flowed.

“Aral?” Faran had one of her cane knives out and a calculating look on her face. “I’m pretty sure I can take that finger off without touching the others if you spread them just a little bit farther.”

I closed my hand into a fist and shook my head. “I’m going to hold off on that option for a little while, if you don’t mind. The ring isn’t doing anything really drastic, and we probably should have expected some changes when we crossed into the Sylvain, given its suspected origins.”

“Suspected?” Triss asked aloud—a sure sign he wanted Faran’s support . . . or Ssithra’s. “Don’t you think that’s understating the case a bit, given the Durkoth cultist attacks, and the way the King of the North reacted to them and to your newfound bauble?”

“Possibly, but I trust the Durkoth slightly less than I would your average gutterside runner. While it’s unlikely they staged the whole thing for reasons presently unknown, I’m not going to completely rule it out. Also, I’d like to give Siri a chance to tell me her side of the story before I make any irrevocable choices.”

Faran lifted both her eyebrows. “That sounds like you’re finally feeling a bit more skeptical about this whole wedding thing and Siri’s part in it. I approve.”

I sighed. “The buried gods aspect of the matter definitely makes it harder to believe Siri was acting in good faith.” I held up a hand before Faran could respond. “But, and this is a big
but
, I owe Siri both duty and honor. She is, or was, the First Blade of Namara. I can
feel
her soul speaking to me through these sendings of smoke, and I know that she never betrayed the goddess or justice. As long as all of that holds true and
anything
remains of her, she can ask me for my life and I will give it to her. Can we drop this now?”

Faran took a deep breath and let it go before speaking. “I don’t understand why you feel that way, and I don’t like it, but I can see it’s true. Maybe I
would
understand if I had completed my training, but I doubt it. I think this is more about the kind of person that you are than any lessons I missed out on. Now, let me just ask you one question before we get back on our way. It’s a question about the kind of person Siri is. Would Siri, if it truly is her,
ever
ask you for your life?” She turned away before I could even start to respond, and vaulted back into her saddle.

It’s a good question,
Triss sent as Faran kicked her horse into a fast walk.

And one I can’t answer without talking to Siri. Not now. In the old days, when Namara yet lived and Siri was her First Blade, I would have said yes. Namara did not spend her Blades lightly, but in her name Siri might well have asked me to take on a task knowing that my death would be one result. Now . . . I just don’t know. Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.

The Fallows made for excellent riding—with little chance of gopher holes or other hazards—and the horses were fresh. So, we trotted the sun down before looking for a place to spend the night. We found it in a large inn centering a miles-long stretch of buildings. The bottom floor of the inn was mostly stables.

When we handed our horses off to the grooms—young, female, and human—they gave us chits with our stall numbers and pointed us toward a small booth at the base of the central stairs that led to the upper level. There was an older woman there, human as well.

“Welcome to Wall,” she said as soon as we were close enough to speak without shouting. “At this hour, I’m guessing you’ll be wanting beds as well as dinner. We’re mostly full, but we’ve a few of the rooms as are cheapest and a few of the most expensive left open. By the cut of your cloth and the fact of your horses, I’m thinking it’s the latter you’ll be enquiring after.”

“It is,” I said.

She gave us a more thorough looking over. “Swords, and good ones, plus knives enough to outfit a spare kitchen or I’m no judge of subtle bulges. I can offer you the last of our tower suites for six silver kalends. No way in but the common room at the base of the stair, and bars on the windows. Very secure.”

“And not yet booked an hour before midnight,” I said. “Which means it’s likely to go begging if we don’t take it, especially here so far from a major crossing. Let’s say three silver kalends, and you throw in whatever’s left in the pot at this hour.”

She snorted. “What’s left in the pot is a sweet lamb curry with dates and almonds, flat bread buttered with garlic and ginger, and a cream custard with caramelized sugar and blueberries on top. Throw in the house red wine, and call it four kalends. Have we a deal?”

“Done,” said Faran, before I could think to argue. “It’s my money, and that sounds delightful.”

“’Tis,” said the old woman as Faran handed across the coins.

“Fine,” I said. “But we’ll take tea instead of the wine.” Faran didn’t like booze, and I couldn’t have it, though the thought of a Sylvani red made my mouth water.

“Suit yourself. Here’s the key.” The woman handed across an elaborate bronze artwork designed to open a Durkoth-made lock with at least nine pins. “There’s a spiral stair back of the hearth farthest west. That unlocks the gate at the base. Tell the first serving maid or boy you see where you want your dinner—sitting room or common room—and I’ll have the grooms haul your luggage up.”

We took the steps to the level above, where a long and narrow common room spread out like wings on either side of an open kitchen and central bar. There were eight hearths not counting the huge iron grill centering the kitchen and the various stoves and cooking fires that surrounded it.

We told a boy at the kitchen to have our meals brought to a table somewhere near the stair to our rooms. It was getting late enough that the bulk of the local crowd had gone home. That left a few workmen, a couple of near-unconscious drunks, a minstrel counting his hat, and one Sylvani lord eating alone—the first nonhuman we’d seen since crossing the wall. Even here on the edge of their ancient empire, the Others were few and far between, outbred by the peoples who had succeeded them in thralldom to the gods.

About forty feet along we came to the third hearth on the wall side of the inn. It was a warm night with open windows, and the fire was obviously laid on more for atmosphere than warmth. No one was paying much attention to this particular hearth and it had nearly burned itself out. As I glanced at the smoldering coals, the fire finished dying all in an instant, making a subtle whumph noise as it did so, rather like someone had smothered it with a lead blanket. An instant later, a thick rope of dark smoke billowed out of the fireplace, twining itself around me briefly, before moving on to form a churning column in the air a few feet away.

I drew my swords by reflex and saw Faran match my gesture with her cane knives as she sidestepped right to box the smoke between us. Startled cries broke out from here and there in the long room as other patrons noticed something strange was going on. Most folks started moving away from the smoke, but the Sylvani lord drew a serpentine sword and matching dagger as he rose from his chair and headed our way. He was tall and armored in indigo crystal and he quickly stepped in to form the third point of a triangle around the pillar of smoke, with Faran and me at the other corners.

Before I could get a close look at him or decide how I felt about that, the smoke bent and twisted, collapsing in on itself to become a tall slender woman with a burn-scarred throat and her eyes fixed on mine.

Siri.

Unmistakably so and in the flesh this time. Yet also transformed in ways both subtle and stark.

Things that had not changed: The deep icy black of her skin. The hard lean muscle of her arms and shoulders. The swords of our goddess riding high on her shoulders.

Things that had: Thick curly hair worn short and dense against her scalp had given way to scores of long braids that seemed two parts smoke for one part Siri. Eyes with irises every bit as smoky as her hair. A bittersweet half smile like no expression I had ever seen her wear before. The ring of smoke on her wedding finger. And, most of all, her shadow.

I would normally have expected Kyrissa to hide herself within Siri’s shadow, but the Shade had made a different choice. The shadow curled up from Siri’s feet to hang in the air behind her in the form of a winged snake. The same smoke that had transformed Siri’s braid into something more than half of another world had touched the Shade even more deeply. Where once Kyrissa had worn bat’s wings and a serpent’s scales, she now had feathers of smoke. Only her face remained smooth and wholly a thing of a shadow.

Siri waited a beat to let me take in all the changes, then she nodded at me, and for an instant her smile lost its bitter undertone. “Hello, Aral, you made good time. Now, bide a moment.”

I
f
the Durkoth are marble idols, their Sylvani cousins are crystalline figures filled with the fading sorrow of twilight.

There are eight major elements: light, shadow, earth, air, water, fire, death, and life, though we only know of corresponding elementals for the first seven. Just as the Durkoth aligned themselves with earth, the Sylvani gave themselves to the light. In the beginning, they shone with the bright star of morning, but that was long ago, before the godwar broke their power. These days, their light is all but extinguished, but still it shines through, illuminating them from within, however dimly.

The tall Sylvani lord who had risen to face the smoke with us was a perfect example of the type. Like the Durkoth, he was beautiful in a way no human could ever hope to match. But there the resemblance ended, for his face was full of expression and life. This was no carven effigy, but a centuries-old man with all of a man’s passions and needs and twice his sorrows. There were lines on his face, fine as the purest calligrapher’s stroke. Lines of pain, and lines of grief, lines that told the story of fighting the long defeat. I found him far more attractive than any Durkoth.

When the pillar of smoke transformed itself into Siri, those lines twisted themselves tighter still, and I had little doubt that he saw in her the echo of the buried gods who had fought a war with Heaven and lost. But his hands remained firm and steady, his blades ready to attack or defend. If he suspected that he couldn’t win the fight he had chosen, he accepted the chance and would not back away. It was a sentiment I could salute in another, even as I recognized its echo in my own losing battle for the ideals of justice after the fall of Justice herself.

So, when Siri pivoted to face the Other, I stepped forward without thinking to put myself at his side. She quirked an eyebrow at me, but kept her hands open, palms outward, showing the Sylvani no slightest hint of hostility. He held his blades ready, but made no further gesture of aggression.

She gave him the same nod she’d given me a moment before, only without the smile. Siri is taller than I am, but she had to look up to meet his eyes. She spoke a long fluid string of what sounded to me like a high-court version of the dialect the Sylvani used among themselves, then—I didn’t speak even the common version well enough to make sense of it.

Her voice was gentle, but cold, and, knowing Siri as I did, I suspected there was more than one hidden message buried beneath the musical words of high Sylvani. When she was done, she quirked a faint smile at the lord and crossed her arms.

The Sylvani turned his head to look at me. There was a question in his eyes, but not one I understood, so all I could do in answer was shrug and put up my swords. His glance flicked from them to the pair on Siri’s back, and his eyebrows climbed toward his silvered widow’s peak. Finally, he nodded and sheathed his own blades. It was a liquid movement and very fast.

He touched the first two fingers of his right hand to forehead, lips, and the breastplate of his crystal armor just above the heart, ending the gesture with a flourish the elegance of which would have raised envy in the heart of the most polished human courtier. Then, without ever having spoken a word, he turned away and returned to his table and his dessert, settling in with his back to us as though nothing had ever happened.

As soon as he was gone, Siri smiled that bittersweet smile again. “Will you put away your swords now, Aral? Or, were you planning on testing your edge on me?”

I bowed from the waist, inclining an apology as I returned them to their place on my back. “Honestly, I’d more than half forgotten I still had them unsheathed.”

She arched a brow at me. “I will believe that Aral Kingslayer has forgotten the placement of his blades by the tiniest fraction of an inch roughly one hour after the sun rises in the west.” Then she laughed—a deep, rich, booming sound. I hadn’t known how much I missed that laugh until the tears started in my eyes as she stepped forward to draw me into her arms. “Ah, my friend, it half unbreaks my heart to see you still alive.”

It is Siri!
Triss said into my mind, but I was too busy holding her as we both cried to answer.
And Kyrissa—though her soul tastes more than passing strange.

For a little while I let go of everything but the joyous pain of a reunion I’d never expected to see. But every moment must end, and, after some unmeasured strand of time had passed away, I felt Siri’s hands press less tightly on my back and I let go my embrace as well. Stepping back, I took her hands in my own and turned her to face Faran with me.

The younger woman had as sour an expression as I’d ever seen on her face, though she
had
put her weapons away as well.

“Siri, I don’t know how well you remember my apprentice, Faran.”

“
Your
apprentice?” Siri’s question came out with a distinct note of curiosity as well as the faintest dash of disapproval. “That’s the language of a mage school, not the temple.”

I nodded. “Namara is dead and her temple is in ruins, but her onetime novices still need instruction. I have undertaken Faran’s, and she is under my protection.”

Faran snorted at that. “That’s one way of looking at it, though I’ve spent nearly as much time watching Aral’s back as he has mine.”

Siri pulled away from me and spoke to Faran. “I’m glad you found each other, little sister. From what I’ve been able to discover from here at the far end of beyond, he was badly in need of someone to live up to.” She extended her right forearm to the younger woman, hand open.

Faran eyed the hand for a long suspicious moment, rather as though she wanted to refuse the formal greeting and with it the implied kinship Siri had offered. But then she stepped forward and clasped forearms with Siri. “Maybe you are who you seem to be, after all . . . sister.”

Siri released her and stepped back. “I am, and I am not. I have become as you see me.” She touched a finger to the smoke in her hair. “I am . . . infected with a god.”

Through all of this Kyrissa had hung silently in the air behind Siri, though I knew that she and Triss had exchanged the greetings of their kind while we embraced. Now the smoke-feathered serpent leaned toward me, bringing her nose within a few inches of my own.

“We are both become infected, Aral. Which is why I asked Siri to marry you.”

Interesting . . .

Very,
I agreed with Triss.
I wonder—
I began, but was interrupted by the advent of an extremely worried-looking boy carrying a tray full of food and drink.

“Excuse me, milord mage, but did you still want to eat this down here? Or would you prefer to take refreshment in your rooms?” His tone made it obvious that he was hoping we’d take our little freak show upstairs. “Also, the grooms have your baggage, but they need your key to let them in.” He jerked his head back toward the kitchen where a pair of young women were pretending to be part of the counter.

“I think we’d better have you take this upstairs. Oh, and we’ll want a third meal, I think.” I looked at Siri, who nodded. “Come on.”

Half an hour later we were all ensconced in large chairs around a fresh fire—Siri had insisted. The way that smoke kept wisping off the logs to slither around her legs like a cat in search of attention before returning to roll up the chimney was deeply disconcerting. Even stranger, Kyrissa had curled up on the floor less than a foot away from the flames.

I don’t like it,
Triss said into my mind.
It’s not natural. I can’t share darkness with her without getting painfully close to the fire. For that matter, I’m not entirely comfortable doing so. The smoke has changed her ssassisshatha . . . her soul’s signature, if you will. She still tastes of Kyrissa, but . . . not.
His mental voice sounded very frustrated.

He and Ssithra had settled in between us and Kyrissa and were whispering away with her in the way of their kind, though neither of them was actually overlapping her shadow as would have been more normal at such a gathering. The familiar combination of the susurration of Shade speech and being able to actually reach over and touch Siri if I wanted to gave me a weird, out-of-time feeling, like we’d never been apart. I felt simultaneously more comforted and more homesick for the temple and my old life than I had in years.

I kept having to refocus on the present moment to keep myself from sinking too deeply into the want of a world gone forever. Fortunately, the food provided an excellent anchor to the here and now since it was nothing like the fare we had eaten at the temple. Not even while practicing poisons for court use. The inn had adopted many of the spices and staples of Sylvani cuisine, which we simply hadn’t covered in our poison lessons.

The bread was bread, if particularly well made—there are variations, but the basics are much the same across the whole of the East. The curry, on the other hand, was subtle and sweet and full of alien flavors that delighted the tongue. The tea . . . well, the tea was like nothing I’d ever had before, rich and dark with a blend of sweet and sharp spices added. I actually
liked
it, and even found myself wishing for more when I’d finished the pot.

We ate mostly in silence because none of us wanted to start the more serious conversation that was all too likely to shatter the comity of our reunion. Though I doubted she would ever admit it, I think that Faran was also rather enjoying the idea of sitting down to a friendly meal with
Siri the Mythkiller
.

Eventually, though, Siri looked me square in the eyes. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I suddenly showed up and insisted that you marry me before dragging you down the whole length of the East?”

“No.”

“No?” She blinked, several times, and the smoke in her eyes swirled a little more wildly. “What about the ring itself? Aren’t you going to demand answers about that?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Yeah,” said Faran. “I’d like to hear the answer to that one, too.”

Triss had lifted his head at “no” and I could feel his full attention weighing on me.

I shrugged my shoulders. “We both know that if you want me to know the answers to those questions, you’ll tell me. If you don’t, nothing I can possibly say or do will pry it out of you. What point could demanding an answer possibly serve?”

Siri’s face went very thoughtful. “You’ve changed, Aral, a very great deal.”

I laughed. “Said the woman with smoke braided into her hair.”

“Point. Though, that’s not what I meant. I’m talking about inside. Whatever he looked like on the surface, the old Aral would never have sat there quietly eating dinner and waiting patiently for me to crack and spill my secrets. You were not a patient man in our temple days, not when you had anything like a choice in the matter. A patient man would not have gone to the goddess and asked her to make him a Blade before his time so that he could go after the King of Tien.”

“I was a boy when I killed Ashvik, with a boy’s patience. The world has taught me many lessons since then, none of them gentle.”

Siri looked into her tea and slowly swirled the cup. “When you speak like that, with such a weight of weariness in your voice, you almost remind me of the way Kelos spoke in the old days.”

“The Deathwalker is not dead,” I said flatly. “He betrayed us all in pursuit of an impossible idea of what the world ought to be.”

Siri nodded, her expression blank and closed. “I know. He’s here in the Sylvain now. I’ve spoken with him. A bit less than a month ago, actually.”

I saw Faran tense at that and look around as though she were expecting the Deathwalker to appear from behind an arras like something out of a Zhani melodrama.

“What happened?” I asked.

“He came to me, and asked if I would help him track down an item.”

“Did he tell you that he arranged for both of us to be away on missions when the temple fell . . . so that we would live?” I could feel every muscle in my body tightening like a garrote.

Siri nodded again.

“What did you do?”

“I let him walk away alive.” Her face remained blank, but her hands were fisted and I could see the cords on her forearms standing up from the strength of her grip.

It was a remarkable statement. The last time I’d crossed swords with Kelos, I’d lost badly. But I had no doubt that she could have killed him if she’d wanted to. Siri was that good.

“Letting him go was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” she continued. “Afterward, once I was sure he was gone, I asked you to marry me.”

“I take it the two are related?”

“The item he wanted me to help him find . . . it might help me with this.” She touched a finger to the smoke in one of her braids. “It’s . . . complicated. I’m going to tell you a story about how I got like this.” She touched the braid again. “The question is where to begin. Give me a moment. . . .” She trailed off, staring into the fire like someone thinking deep thoughts about another time and place.

As the silence stretched out, I noticed something strange. When Siri let go of the braid, her hand dropped into her lap, landing palm up, fingers half-curled. A natural enough gesture. Except for the fact that her fingers were moving in a slow but distinct pattern, like someone playing an instrument, or trying to convey a silent message.