Drawn Blades (19 page)

W
heeeeeeeeeeeee!

As a general rule, the job of the assassin doesn’t involve a lot of laughs. I am very good at killing people, and I feel more alive when I am working than I do at any other time. But it’s not really what you would call “fun.”

Normally.

Riding a watery torrent down a hundred-foot stone shaft in utter darkness, on the other hand? Pure delight.

As soon as I let go of the ledge, Triss moved back to cover me in darkness, surrendering his will to me as he did so. Down and down I went, sliding faster and faster until I suddenly tilted into a straight fall and dropped from darkness into ruddy light. Though the god’s tribute fire had been extinguished by the rushing water, the dome of the sanctum was studded with magelights in all the colors of flame.

It was thirty feet from the bottom of the shaft to the floor of the temple, more than enough to break bones at the speed I was traveling. Without the water I would have had to use Triss as a sail to slow my fall. Instead, I balled up tight and took the impact on my ass and the soles of my feet, landing with a huge splash.

The god’s fire was kept in a sort of stone well at the center of the sanctum. A low stone wall surrounded a shallow circular pit floored with coals and constantly fed fresh green wood that smoked heavily as it burned. With the water pouring into it from above, it quickly became a pool twelve feet across and half that deep.

I hit hard enough to drive me into the iron grating on the bottom, but not so hard that I took any injury from it. I did pick up a few nasty scrapes off the floating debris, but most of the bigger chunks of wood had been pushed out to the edges by the pressure of the falling water. Fortunately, the narrow chutes that led into the ashpits below made for a much narrower outflow than the chimney above or I’d have had a much rougher landing.

When my head broke the surface a few seconds later, I heard all manner of screams and shouts in the Sylvani dialect. But nobody actively tried to spear me—an excellent sign. I had to find the glyph stone before anything else, so I dove again as soon as I caught a lungful of air.

I started to quest outward from the well’s center using fingers as well as my borrowed darksight and other senses to look for the stone on the grates. But I had barely begun my search when I found something else entirely—something that very nearly startled the breath out of me and sent me straight back to the surface.

Kelos had been there before me.

Every shadow has its own distinct
flavor
or
scent
for a Shade. The stronger the shadow, the more powerful the taste/smell. The strongest are associated with the shadow-elementals themselves. They are as individually identifiable as any signature, and Triss had taught me how to read them, though I only knew a few well enough to recognize them myself. When I started feeling around the bottom of the well, I tasted one such trail. But fire or direct sunlight will burn them away in a heartbeat and the only way such a trail could survive here was if it were laid down
after
the flame was extinguished. That meant the stone was already gone.

I angled toward the wall around the edge of the pit. When my head broke the surface this time, I heard more shouting and a brief clangor of steel on steel, followed by an agonized shriek. I rolled over the lip of the wall, landing on fingers and toes and staying low. I wanted a moment to survey the room before deciding what to do next, but Triss’s senses made an utter hash of the scene. The light-scattering smoke in the air combined with the wild reflections off the rippling water on the floor to baffle and shatter my borrowed darksight into a senseless noise of brightness.

I had no choice but to flick aside the shadow covering my eyes. Even then, I couldn’t entirely make sense of the scene. The area behind me seemed relatively calm—I had come up on the side opposite the entrance to the sanctum, but the other half of the room . . . utter madness!

The great stone portal that opened out of the sanctum was closed up tight and sealed with a powerful spell that made it glow a deep angry purple, and the area between the door and the well was a churning chaos of spell-light. There were cultists everywhere, and all of them casting wildly, throwing spells and charms at every half-seen shadow.

Kelos had that effect on people. I forced myself to ignore the spell-lights and look for the most vulnerable target on the periphery of the scene because I
knew
Kelos. He wouldn’t be anywhere near the heart of the storm. He would kill and then slide around the edge of things to kill again, and he would keep doing it until not one of his targets was left standing. He wasn’t invulnerable, and with so many trying to fry him a lucky shot might well take him down, but he wouldn’t waste a step or a draw of the knife along the way.

I hadn’t yet decided on who his next victim was likely to be when I felt a shroud brush gently across my own and reflexively whipped my swords out of their sheaths.

“Easy, Aral, it’s just me.”

“Bastard!” The word snapped out of my mouth before I could even begin to think, but I put up my swords. More an acknowledgment of reality than anything—if I hadn’t been able to bring myself to try to kill him the last time I saw him, I certainly wasn’t going to change my mind when I could use his help as much as I could right then.

“Still angry,” said Kelos. “That’s good. It’ll keep you sharp. I’ve got the glyph stone. Nipped in and picked it up as soon as you killed the fire. Now we just have to get out of here. My plan involved the gate, but that sealing spell’s a thing of rare beauty.” He chuckled happily at that—he seems to genuinely delight in having things go against him. A perverse reaction to two hundred years of successes, perhaps.

“It would take hours to crack the thing,” he continued. “Even if we could manage it, the locks and bars are god-cursed cultic iron and I’ve no idea how to get around that. Magic seems to slide right off the stuff. Any clever ideas for our escape?”

“How are you even here?” I demanded. At the same time, I woke Triss up so he could listen in.

“Is that really important right now?” asked Kelos.

“No. Tell me anyway.”

He snorted. “Short version. I’ve been following you ever since you crossed back over into the Sylvain a few days after parting ways with Siri.”

“
And
listening to every word Faran and I have shared in that time.”

“Pretty much. But we really need to get moving.” His shroud brushed across mine again, directing my attention to the farther side of the room.

The spell-lights had shifted away from madness and into method, as the cultists organized themselves into mutually supporting ranks. There must have been a hundred of them, and every one of the Sylvani is a mage.

“Not good,” I said. “And yes, I do have a clever idea, but it’s going to need a hell of a distraction to give me the time I need to make it work.”

“Right. I’ll go play death-tag with the Sylvani while you get our exit sorted out. Make a flash when you’re ready. Oh, and tell me where I need to be for the endgame.”

“First, give me the glyph stone.” I didn’t trust Kelos even the tiniest bit.

“That’s fair. Here.” I felt his shroud impinge on mine in the instant before a cord looped itself over my head and a small but heavy leather bag fell across my collarbones. If Kelos had wanted to kill me then, I’d have died. Yeah, he was
still
that much better than I was.

I touched the bag, verifying that it held something of the right size and shape. “Keep an eye on the well. If the amount of water flowing over the edges drops, you’ll know my play worked.”

“The ashpits?” he asked.

“Exactly.” They hadn’t been an option with the plan I’d sold the Smoldering Flame, and they were never going to be my first choice given the inherent problems. But after I’d decided to cross the god and flood the well, they had become part of my thinking for possible backups.

“Tough to crack, but a good play. I’ll get on the distraction.” His shroud brushed mine once more and then he was gone.

I put my swords away and slipped back into the water. There, I started feeling along the edges of the iron grate. It was made up of two pieces, each of which must have weighed three hundred pounds.

It’s nearly indestructible,
Triss sent, after trying to send a piece of it off to the everdark.
I don’t know if it’s formally enchanted, or if it’s just the effects of bathing in the sacred fire, but it feels a lot like those cursed weapons the Durkoth had. If we have to cut through it somehow, we’re not going anywhere.

Right. Well, I still have one thing to try, but it’ll require a good deep breath first.

I surfaced long enough to fill my lungs and draw one of my swords before heading under again. There, I slid the blade between the two halves of the grate. Bracing my feet against the wall of the pit, I pushed on the hilt, using the nigh-unbreakable sword as a lever. Nothing happened for long seconds. Then, slowly, I felt it begin to shift—the grates moving ever so slightly apart. The effort had sent purple and gold fireflies sparkling across the edge of my vision, but I
had
moved it.

I surfaced and took another breath, then went down and shifted the placement of my sword, dropping my shroud as I did so—a risk I had to take. This time it was easier, even though I was trying to lift an edge. Opening the gap even the inch or so I already had was providing the water a better path into the lower levels and relieving some of the pressure holding it in place.

Your turn.
I fed Triss extra magic from the well of my soul as he took my other sword and slid it into place.
Good, hold it!

I grabbed another mouthful of air, then repositioned my first sword. That allowed me to brace myself against the bottom with one foot on either side of the sword. Of course, if I slipped, I was going to cut my own leg off. . . .

Two more rounds and I had the grate open wide enough for Triss to wedge it with a short log, and that opened up access to one of the pair of narrow shafts that led to the ashpits below. Siri probably could have figured a clever way to use magic to do the same work in half the time, despite the cursed iron’s resistance, but that was well beyond my talents.

It was time to go, so I resheathed my swords, reshrouded, and pushed my way to the surface one last time. Taking a deep breath first, I aimed a palm at the ceiling and fired off a huge crackle of orange pink spell-light. It was a very distinctive color, and one every Blade was trained to look for from the first day they exhibited magesight. Then, without waiting to see if Kelos was even still alive, I dove for the bottom and squirmed into the gap between the gratings.

I didn’t like the next bit at all, but if there was any good alternative, I wouldn’t have been underwater in the first place. The rectangular shaft was short enough that it could easily be cleaned from below, and that meant it didn’t need to be anywhere near as big as the chimneys. It didn’t, in fact, need to be big enough to pass a man.

I
believed
that it would, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I actually tried it, at which point the weight of the water above would make backing out all but impossible. With a small prayer to a dead goddess, I slithered my way into the mouth of the shaft. That was when the current caught hold of me and
yanked
!

My trick bag caught on the lip of the shaft when my hips slid over the edge, and suddenly I was pinned. Worse, I only had one arm free—the other was trapped against my chest. I’d have drowned then if not for the fact that I was playing the role of cork in this bottle’s mouth and largely blocking the flow from above. That quickly emptied the short shaft of most of the water that had been flowing through it, allowing air to come up to me from below.

I couldn’t reach anything with my free hand. When I scrabbled against the grate edge behind me with my feet I couldn’t get any real purchase, and I didn’t dare brace against the one above for fear of knocking the log free and trapping me even worse than I already was. I’d never felt more vulnerable, but I forced myself to breathe deeply and push aside the panic I felt rising in my chest. I
could
do this. I
would
do this. I had to think instead of simply reacting.

And, there was my answer—obvious once I got my emotions under control. I collapsed my shroud into a slender edge of shadow and cut the straps of my trick bag. The weight of the water did the rest—pressing me down and through the shaft in one sudden rush.

I landed hard and badly, with only one hand to catch myself, and a terrible angle for rolling out of the fall. It was a good thing the ashpit was partially flooded, or I might well have broken my wrist. As it was, I bounced my head off the stone floor, throwing sparks across my vision and sucking in a huge snootful of water as I lost my hold on Triss.

I came up coughing, spluttering, and tumbling in the current. Before I could so much as sort up from down, the water pouring out of the shafts in the ceiling washed me through the room’s blown-out door and into the narrow hallway beyond. I’m not sure who was more surprised at that point, me or the Sylvani cultist trying to staunch the flood.