Drawn Blades (20 page)

I plowed into him at knee height, knocking him over on top of me. He had a hefty pry bar, but my reflexes were better, and I gutted him with my boot dagger before he thought to use it on me. I was just dragging myself out of the worst of the flood and onto my feet when Kelos appeared in the doorway behind me. It was the first time I’d seen his face since the night I’d invaded the rooms of the Son of Heaven.

His shirt was gone, he had blood flowing down the side of his face from a long cut in the scalp, and a blistered burn on his shoulder and chest, but Kelos looked as calm and unruffled as always. He was a big man, taller and much more heavily muscled than I. There was a patch over the eye he’d lost to a basilisk, and his skin was basically nothing but scars, though the tattoos that wrapped his torso and arms in serpentine coils obscured many of them.

“Any trouble with the grate?” I asked. It had been tight for me. He shouldn’t have fit at all.

“No.”

“Of course not.”

Aral, be cautious.

“You sound almost disappointed, Aral. Were you hoping I’d get stuck?”

I shook my head, though I wasn’t entirely sure I hadn’t been. Kelos simply wasn’t fair. Two hundred years old with more kills notched on his hilts than any ten other Blades, and a casual confidence that always made me feel like a child all over again.

“Where to now?” he asked, his voice calm to the point of nonchalance—maddening.

Down!
yelped Triss.

I threw myself at the floor, sending up a huge splash when I hit the calf-deep water. In that same instant I heard a tremendous crackling noise like someone dropping the world’s biggest egg roll into the fryer, and the world lit up bright red above me. Triss screamed as a wave of heat rolled across my back—magefire—but some feet above me thanks to Triss’s warning. Before I could react any further, something grabbed me by the cowl and dragged me forward through the water.

I tried to twist away, but Triss spoke into my mind, his words tight and hard with pain.
Don’t fight. It’s Kelos—pulling us in.

My old mentor yanked me to my feet in the ashpit chamber a moment later. “Sylvani in the hallway,” he said. “A bunch of them, including at least one really outstanding spell-thrower. He’d have cooked you good if you hadn’t reacted so quickly. Being as soggy as a seal chasing after a fish didn’t hurt either.”

I tucked myself against the wall beside the door, drawing my swords in case they rushed us. “Any thoughts on how best to deal with them?” I hated ceding the initiative to Kelos, but the unexpected injury to Triss had thrown me off my game.

Triss retreated deep into my shadow and I could feel him drawing nima from the well of my soul as he worked to soothe his burns.
I’ll be all right. I just need a few moments to recover.

Kelos took the opposite side of the doorway. “We don’t have a lot of options. That hallway’s far too narrow for a shroud to do much good, and from what I could see when I poked my head around the doorframe, they’ve got a great defensive position at the base of some stairs. They can wait there indefinitely and nail us whenever we finally move. You’re the one with the map of this place in your head. What was the plan from here?”

“If you turn right when you go through this door, there’s a spiral staircase about forty feet up the hall. It leads to the upper maintenance-ways, and from there back to the tunnel to the main entrance. I’d hoped to get out that way, but that’s no good with those cultists on the stairs.”

He frowned. “And your backup plan?”

“If you go the other way down the hall, there’s a trapdoor in the floor about thirty feet along. The waterfall has undercut the cliff pretty deeply on that side over the years, and the door opens directly into the ceiling of the cauldron there. They use it to dump the ash from the fires above.”

Kelos whistled. “That’s a damn big falls, boy. The undertow has to be brutal. I’d hate to have to try to swim our way out through that.”

I shrugged. “That’s why it wasn’t plan A.”

“Point. Malthiss, go see what our friends in the hall are up to.” The shadow of a basilisk rose out of the coiled tattoos on Kelos’s back and shoulders, his cobralike head peering at me briefly before slipping under the surface of the water. “We might be able to slither down to your trapdoor without getting fried if we stay mostly submerged, but I have my doubts.”

I had more than doubts given the depth of the water. I was about to say as much when a thunderous blast shook the entire complex. “What the hell was that?!”

Kelos cocked his head to one side. “Given the direction and the tone, I’d say someone just blew the front door in. Class three combat magelightning, if I had to make a guess.”

I couldn’t have gotten all that from one distant explosion—hadn’t, in fact. But I didn’t doubt Kelos’s assessment. He really was that good.

“Who and why?” Triss inserted himself into the conversation for the first time as he climbed up out of my shadow.

Kelos shrugged. “No way to tell that from the sound of the blast. But given the politics of the thing, it almost has to be the office of the disquisition. That or a Kreyn special tasks unit—the Oaken Throne doesn’t like the cultists any more than the Emerald one does.”

He paused and looked thoughtful. “Well, or it could be one of the other buried gods trying to muscle in on the Smoldering Flame. Less likely, but still possible. In any case, our friends at the foot of the stairs are about to have worse things to worry about than our little blasphemy with the waterfall. Too bad whoever it is is likely to be just as happy to nail us up by our ankles as these guys are.”

“There is that.” I glanced down at the ring of smoke on my finger—I didn’t think it would endear me much to any of the candidates he’d mentioned.

Malthiss’s head slipped back into view above the waters. “They appear to have been demoralized by the blast, but they haven’t abandoned their position yet. We will have to wait if we want to pass the door and live. I will keep watch, and call out when the way is open. Be ready to move quickly.” Then he was gone again.

“While we’re waiting—” began Kelos.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I snapped, and then immediately felt childish for doing so.

“I know,” he answered. “That’s what makes this the perfect opportunity. You’re a captive audience.”

“You betrayed the goddess. I will fucking kill you if you don’t shut up.”

Kelos chuckled low and deep but he kept his eye fixed on mine. “Never make a threat you can’t back up, Aral. Especially when we both know you don’t
want
to make good on it.”

“I—”

He waved a hand, cutting me off. “Don’t bother. You had the glyph stone and a way out. If you were serious about wanting me dead this go-round, you’d have skipped the flare and closed the grate behind you. Who knows, that might even have worked. But you didn’t, which means you’re not yet ready to go that far to get rid of me.”

“Why are you here?” I shouted. Yeah, mature, I know, but there was something about Kelos that made me revert to the callow teen who’d practically worshipped this man.

“To make sure your rescue succeeded. I’d have thought that much was obvious.”

“No, not here-here. Here!” I threw my arms wide.

“Listen to yourself, boy, you’re babbling.”

He’s right, Aral. You need to calm down and think before you speak. He’s deadly smart and the best manipulator in the order. You can’t beat him by punching blind.

“Why. Are. You. Here,” I growled, ignoring Triss.

“Seems clear enough to me. I care about your welfare. Yours and Siri’s both. That’s why I sent you away before the temple fell. I have an investment in your future.”

“Fine,” I said. “Don’t tell me.”

Malthiss popped up again. “We have a problem.”

Before he could elaborate, a giant sheet of flame went roaring past the doorway, coming from the direction of the Sylvani cultists on the right. A split second later there was a deep ringing note, like a silver gong being struck, and the fire flowed back the other way even brighter and hotter. Screams followed.

“New players?” asked Kelos.

Malthiss nodded. “Sylvani lord, biggest bastard I’ve ever seen.”

“Which makes him old,” said Kelos. “This could get interesting.”

The hallway lit up with a giant streamer of spell-light—magic so bright I had to blink back tears—again, coming from the left. It was followed by more screams. Briefly. Then silence.

“Triss,” I said. “Take a look.”

“On it.” He stuck his head through the doorway, whipped it from side to side, and then jerked back. “The cultists are dust, but the Sylvani lord’s just standing there. He’s leaning on something that looks like a sword but isn’t.”

“What?” I asked. A sword that wasn’t what?

Before Triss could answer, a high clear voice called out, “Aral Kingslayer, we need to have a long talk. But first, I need you to escape.”

“Pardon?” I called back.

“My name is Ashkent Kelreven and we have . . . a mutual friend—resourceful young human woman with hair issues. You’re holding the stone that binds her in a pouch around your neck right now. I came to collect it, but you’re ahead of me, and that makes things much easier. Well, it does if you get out of here before the imperial disquisition sees you, anyway. At that point, things could get very sticky, so I’d really prefer we avoid it. . . . We haven’t got much time.”

“What do you think?” Kelos whispered, but I was already moving—if nothing else it would get me away from my former mentor.

“I’m coming out. Oh, and I’ve another . . .” I trailed off, Kelos didn’t deserve the name of Blade anymore. “I’ve got an . . . ally with me—an ally of convenience.”

Kelos lifted a mocking eyebrow, but I just shoved past him wordlessly. The Sylvani lord
was
huge. Well, tall anyway—seven feet if he was an inch. His shoulders were broader than Kelos’s, but his height made him look slender. He was leaning casually on the crossbar of an absolutely ridiculous sword very nearly as tall as he was.

It was eight inches across at the base of the blade and it barely tapered from there to the sudden narrowing of the point a handspan from its tip. The blade was striped orange and black like a tiger’s hide, and the pommel . . . the pommel was shaped into the head of a fantastical beast . . . A fantastical beast I had seen for the first time only a few weeks before, when one of them tried to kill me in a warehouse. The whatsis.

The Sylvani quirked a smile. “I take it from the way you’ve stopped moving and put your swords up that we have a problem.”

I nodded. “You might say that.”

“From the timing and the angle of your eyes, I’m guessing it’s got something to do with my sword.”

“The creature on the pommel,” I said. “What is it?”

“Oh, is that it?” He lifted the sword off the ground and gave it a sharp shake like a terrier with a rat before turning the pommel so he could look it in the eyes. “What have you been up to, old devil?”

The sword gave off an angry tinging sound, and the Sylvani shook his head and glowered at it.

“Don’t think I won’t follow up on this,” the Sylvani admonished the sword. Then he looked back at me. “I’m fairly certain that I will owe you an apology once I learn the story, but we don’t really have time for it right now. The disquisition is starting down the stairs right now, and you have to be gone before they get here. The trapdoor’s already open—that’s how I came in. So, I’m going to step to the side of the hall here and let you go past. We can talk later.”

“Put the sword down,” said Kelos. “Then we’ll go.”

“It’s not really a sword. And, again, I don’t have time for details. Suffice to say that it will be
much
more dangerous to you if I don’t keep a firm grip on its vicious little neck, and please, get moving.” The Sylvani pressed himself against the wall, pinning the blade between himself and the stone. It let out a harsh and angry clangor, like metallic grumbling. “Now, go!”

Malthiss whipped up out of the water behind us. “There are footsteps on the stairs behind the fallen—many of them. We must choose quickly.”

“You’re Ashkent Kelreven?” I asked.

The Sylvani lord nodded. “I am. Though not always the happier for it.”

“Fine.” I sheathed my swords and started splashing my way quickly down the hall.

“Aral?” Kelos asked.

I didn’t slow. “You can make your own choice, but he’s a friend of Siri’s.” Then I was at the trapdoor.

White mist floated up through the opening, obscuring everything below, and I could hear the hammering of the falls. By reflex I reached for my trick bag and a magelight to help me navigate the night-darkened waters, then remembered I’d lost it. Still, light’s one of the easiest enchantments, and I quickly set a temporary light on one of the rings of my harness.

I stepped into space.

W
hite
and black. Water. Rocks. Froth and foam. Pummeling, tumbling, air-starved madness. I clip my head on something and the whirling and twirling of the world grows wilder still.

Something catches me under the ribs and I lose the last of the air in my lungs. I stroke for the surface, desperate to breathe again. Triss shouts into my mind, but the words make no sense.

My leading hand sinks deep into mud, and I realize I’ve gone the wrong way.

Black and red. My vision pulses with waves of fire and darkness. I know that I am drowning, but I can’t seem to care.

A bar of iron closes across my throat. The spinning subsides, and the red fades away into nothing.

. . .

Gagging and retching, I return to the world of awareness. I am on my stomach, I hurt everywhere, and I appear to be vomiting up my lungs. Right, I was drowning. But, how did I stop?

There’s a strange noise in my mind—hissing—but I can’t make any sense of it. It sounds like:
Sshthisshesssthrssstra
, on and on and over again.

There is a heavy weight on my back. “Idiot!” It’s Kelos, using that special tone he reserves for my more spectacular failures.

Am I fifteen? If so, my mentor rarely leaves the temple anymore, so that’s where I must be. Perhaps I hit my head sail-jumping into the lake. . . .

I wrack my memory, looking for the beginning of the thread that led me here. For the longest time I can’t make sense of anything. Kelos taught me to swim, but he would never have let me get that badly out of my depth, and the lake is placid, not at all like the madness of tumbling white and black that dominates the vision in my mind. I must have done something especially stupid.

ARAL—ARAL—ARAL!
The voice hissing away in my mind suddenly resolves itself into my name repeated over and over again, and I recognize it as Triss’s.

With that, I return to myself and the present day, and coughing up about a hundred gallons of yellow river water. I feel like a shucked clam. “Fuck. Me.”

Kelos chuckled and got off my back. “You don’t need any help there, boy. I thought you’d finally managed to kill yourself that time. I’ve rarely seen you do anything dumber than trying to swim that nightmare without the proper magical preparation.”

For what it’s worth, I’ve seen you do much dumber things, though rarely so thoughtlessly.
I could feel Triss’s exhaustion echoing through the link between us and hear it in the hollow depths of his words.
I’m going to take a little nap now.
And, he was gone.

Rolling onto my back, I looked up into the starry depths of the sky. “I take it you fished me out?” My throat felt like raw meat and it hurt to talk, but I was becoming more and more myself with each passing beat of my heart.

“Yeah. Sorry I didn’t get to you sooner, but the turbulence in the main cauldron was awful. It took me a lot longer to get my charm of water-breathing going than I planned for. I wish we’d had time to deal with it before we went in the water, but Ashkent was right about the timing. I actually saw the first of the disquisitors enter the hall as I was dropping through the trapdoor, but I was half-shrouded and I don’t think they saw me.”

I nodded, but didn’t say anything. Kelos had just saved my life. I didn’t like the feeling of owing him something. Not at all. Triss continued quiet as well. I could feel him down deep in the shadow beneath me, a reassuring presence, though vague and distant at the moment.

“What happened to you?” asked Kelos.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play stupid, boy. Why didn’t you charm your lungs before trying to swim out of that mess?”

“I . . .” The answer was simple, but I hated to admit it to my first and most critical teacher. There
are
spells that will allow a man to breathe underwater and I have even learned one or two of them . . . sort of. But . . . “I’m still shit at the more complex magics. Give me an hour or two, and I
might
be able to manage something like that. But on the fly? In that madness of water and rocks? Never.”

“Loris was right.”

“That I’m no mage?” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Yeah, I could have told you that.”

Kelos growled deep in his throat and spat into the water. “No. You’re smart enough, and you’ve got the necessary power. What you lack, what you’ve
always
lacked, is the discipline of the magus. You could have been a good mage. Maybe not as good as Siri, but better than competent. Loris said you never got there because I spoiled you, and he was right.”

That made me sit up. “Spoiled me?” Shouting made me cough—briefly and rackingly, and I had to spit out more water when I finished. “Funny, I remember a brutal taskmaster who demanded that I know every sword form perfectly backward and forward, a man who insisted that I know the ins and outs of shadow-slipping better than most of the instructors. I sure as hell don’t remember being spoiled.”

“That’s because people who are, rarely do.”

“Really?”

“Truly. You were good, boy, really good. Gifted even. Siri’s the only student I trained in two hundred years that came close to you in blade work or shadow-slipping, and ultimately she bettered you in the latter. But she had to work five times as hard as you did to manage it.”

Kelos started to pace. “You were such a natural with shadow and steel that I pushed you to be the very best on those fronts and let you slide on magic. I bailed you out of trouble with Loris more than once when I shouldn’t have. I prized your heart and your stronger skills so highly that I didn’t push you to be all that you could have been. If you’d put half as much work into spellcraft as you did the rest of your studies . . .” He sighed and shook his head.

“No,” he continued, “
I
should have been harder on you, and I wasn’t. Today that nearly got you killed. I’m sorry. It’s too late for
me
to do anything about it now, and I know you’ve damn good reason not to trust a word I tell you anymore. But listen to me when I say that you could
still
be a decent mage if you would only give it the work it needs.”

“Thank you for your advice.” It wasn’t worth the effort of arguing with him. I was a lousy mage and always would be, no matter what Kelos might think.

“There’s no need to give me a pretty lie,” said Kelos. “If you mean ‘fuck you,’ you might as well just say it.”

“Fine. Fuck. You.”

The shadow of the basilisk raised itself from his shoulders, hood spread wide. “If Aral can move now, we should defer this till later. We’re less than a mile from the falls, and this beach is far too exposed for my liking.”

“Fair point.” Kelos extended a hand, offering to help me up.

I ignored it and got slowly and painfully to my feet unaided. The effort gave me another coughing fit, but I already felt considerably less shaky and more myself. After a quarter mile of hiking along the narrow beach—I was still in no shape to scale the cliff walls—we found a side canyon centered on a swift but shallow stream, and turned into it. Within half an hour we had climbed back up to the level of the bluff tops. By then, I’d blown through my initial recovery and out the other side, and I was pretty well spent. But Kelos insisted we travel on a little farther.

I made it fifty feet. That was when a sudden burning agony rolled up the front of my thigh and inside the point of my hip bone, like someone had dragged a branding iron along my skin. My leg gave and I collapsed, hitting the ground hard and starting into another coughing fit.

Aral!
Triss’s mindvoice sounded thick with worry.
What’s happening?

Between the pain and the coughing, I couldn’t answer at first, not even mentally. The coughing eased first.
I don’t know. It feels like that cursed wound has opened itself up again—that or started on fire.

Where’s the rock that Durkoth Uthudor used to contain the curse?
asked Triss.

In my trick bag
—I’d simply hung on to it for lack of a good plan about how to handle the thing—
which means it’s back in that temple somewhere.

Strong hands closed on my shoulders, pulling me up into a sitting position and sliding me back to lean against a boulder. “Easy there, boy, what’s wrong?” Kelos asked.

“Not sure, leg hurts like a . . .” As suddenly as it had started, the pain stopped. I lifted my hand from where I’d pressed it to the old wound, more than half expecting it to come away covered in blood. “And . . . now it’s gone.”

I reached down and loosened the ties that held my pants up so that I could examine the injury. The scar looked rough and red, but no more so than I would normally expect from a wound as nasty and recent as this one.

“Tell me about it?” Kelos settled back on his haunches.

I
wanted
to spit in his face and stalk off into the night. I didn’t trust the man, and I absolutely despised what he had done to my goddess and my people. But somewhere down deep in the bone, he was still my father in all but name, and I loved him where I couldn’t hate him. Besides, I wasn’t up to getting back on my feet, much less walking anywhere once I got there. For a little while at least, I was going to have to deal with him.

“Durkoth,” I began. “Cultists of the Smoldering Flame . . .”

Kelos got up and worked at making us a camp as I told the story, but he stayed within easy listening distance. By the time I finished, he had built us a good-sized blind under a thick bush so that we could lie hidden during the day that was fast approaching. Given the nearness of the forces of the disquisition, we didn’t dare risk a fire, which meant in turn that properly freeing Siri would have to wait at least another day.

After I wound my tale to its end, Kelos left me for a bit to go in search of food. He returned with some purplish berries, a couple of things he called muffin-fruits, and a score or so of freshwater clams. We ate it all raw—even the clams, which weren’t bad after Kelos doused them with some insanely hot Sylvani pepper sauce he had in a small skin in his trick bag.

“Does amazing things for putting dogs off your scent,” he said as he produced it.

“I bet it does. My nose is going to be running for a week.”

Kelos chuckled. “Entertain a theory?”

“About what?” I tensed warily, and felt Triss do the same.

“The wound in your leg, of course.”

“Oh, that. Sure.”

“If the disquisitors found that cursed rock, they would likely have recognized it for what it is. At that point, they would have moved to destroy it. Given your doubled tie to the Smoldering Flame, the pain might well have been some sort of backlash from the rock’s destruction.”

“Seems reasonable to me,” Triss agreed aloud, and I had to nod. Hopefully, I was well and truly done with the thing.

I yawned and stretched then. “I desperately need a little sleep. How do you want to set watches?”

“I’ve got it,” said Kelos. “I can rouse you near sunset if you don’t wake on your own, and we can move on then. We need to work quickly if we’re going to get ahead of the Son of Heaven on this key thing. When you were seen in that tavern with Siri, the news spread quickly. He has ears in many places and the two of you together and active in the Sylvain will almost certainly cause him to advance his timetable.”

There were at least three major assumptions involved in that statement, and I didn’t like any of them. But I was too tired to have that argument, so I just grunted and rolled farther into the blind.

The shade is deep here,
sent Triss.
I could keep an eye on Kelos. . . .

Don’t bother. If he wanted to betray or kill us, he’s had plenty of opportunity. I think we can trust him at least until we find this key that brought him to Siri . . . or refuse to do it. He seems to think he needs our help, or hers, at least. Of course, all bets are off if ever we actually get our hands on the thing.

You may be right.
Triss didn’t say anything for a long time after that and I was on the edge of sleep when he finally spoke again.
But somehow, I suspect it will be less simple than that.

I didn’t have a good answer for that, and his words followed me into troubled dreams.

*   *   *

I
woke in midafternoon, alerted to some change in my surroundings by instinct perhaps. Triss was deep down in my shadow, oblivious to anything that happened up in the world of light. Without moving, I opened my eyes. Kelos’s side of the blind was empty, and my thoughts instantly went to the glyph stone in the pouch around my neck. But the weight still pressed against my skin, and I didn’t want to betray my wakefulness to any possible observers by checking it more carefully. Not before I had a better idea what had brought me out of the dreamlands, anyway.

“Your companion has gone down to the river to see about catching the two of you some lunch.” The voice was clear and high, and though I had only heard it the once, I recognized it.

“Lord Kelreven,” I said. And,
Wake up, Triss.

“It’s
Duke
Kelreven, actually, but I’d prefer that you simply called me Ash.”