Drawn Blades (3 page)

“How can it not?” demanded Faran.

“Because what I owe Siri isn’t about her. It’s about me, and my duty here is perfectly clear.” I paused for a long moment, trying to think of how best to explain the thing properly. Faran was my apprentice and if that was going to mean anything I had to let her see my thinking. “I don’t have much of my old soul left, but what there is, is bound to the service of Namara, whether that takes the shape of the goddess herself, her ideal of justice, or simply the word of her First Blade. I
can’t
turn Siri down if I want to remain true to what little remains of Aral the Blade.”

Faran glared at my shadow now. “Triss, don’t you have anything to say about this?”

The little dragon flipped his wings back and forth noncommittally. “I am concerned about the manner of the thing. But what we have heard from those who
did
betray the goddess suggests that even Kelos believed Siri was incorruptible. It’s one of the chief reasons why he sent both Aral and Siri away when the temple was about to fall.”

Ah Kelos, my mentor and master—two-hundred-year-old lord of assassins, and the father I never had. The Deathwalker. He was perhaps the greatest Blade who ever lived, and, without any doubt, the greatest traitor to our order. His actions had materially contributed to the death of our goddess. I knew that he deeply regretted her murder, but I also knew that he would do the same again in the same circumstances if he believed it would achieve his goals. He was brutal and ruthless, and yet he had spared both Siri and me as much because he loved us as because he wanted to preserve our talents. I could not hate him as I did, did I not love him, too.

Ssithra spoke for the first time, breaking my reverie. “Siri is the Mythkiller, and one of the greats of our order. I would marry her if she asked me. Or Kyrissa, her Shade, for that matter. I think that if you had completed your training you would do the same.”

Faran scowled. “I . . . You . . . I can’t even . . . Aral, this is one of the stupider things I’ve seen you do. And I’ve seen you pull some really dumb moves. You
married
someone you haven’t seen in years simply because she asked you to. No. Because a . . . a fucking smoke
effigy
of her asked you to. Do you have any idea of the magical implications of this?”

I shook my head. “No.”

Faran threw her hands into the air and snarled.

“Faran,” I said, trying one last time, “Siri is my sister in the order, my master in the arts of the Blade, my friend, and my lover. My honor is her honor, and what she asks it is my duty to give.”

“Augh!” Ssithra suddenly puffed into a black cloud, rolling forward to envelop Faran in impenetrable darkness.

It was always a startling transformation, even for one who had performed it as often as eating. One moment, Faran was there with Ssithra at her side, the next she became a sort of hole in the center of my vision. A simple blot of shadow would have been easy to pick out against the lights and sights of the library, but some magic of the Shades made the task infinitely harder, more a place you couldn’t see than a patch of darkness.

Even trained eyes had trouble focusing on an enshrouded Blade. You had to learn to look for what you couldn’t see, and it was surprisingly difficult. That shroud of shadow was the most powerful tool possessed by those of us who had once been Justice’s hidden weapons—Namara’s Blades. I lost track of Faran and Ssithra within moments as they moved rapidly away, slipping into one of the aisles between shelves.

“She seems angrier than she ought,” I said. “Any idea why?”

Triss looked over his shoulder at me and contracted briefly in the loose Shade equivalent of an embarrassed shrug. “No idea. Harad?”

“I wouldn’t care to venture a guess,” he replied.

That wasn’t a “no,” but years of association had taught me better than to call him on it. Harad would share what he wanted when he wanted, and nothing anyone could do would change that. Instead, I raised my beringed hand between us. “Any further thoughts on what to do about this thing?”

He nodded. “Shang informs me that he would like to have a look at it through his own eyes since it’s new to him as well.”

I blinked at that. Triss assumes the form of a dragon. Shanglun
is
a dragon, and not a petty dragon either. Shang is a river dragon, one of the greatest of the noble breeds, a power of the world, and Harad’s familiar—though I didn’t learn that last until after I’d known the librarian for more than a decade.

While such bondings aren’t completely unheard of, they’re so rare that you had a better chance of winning ten straight rounds of lin-hua against Ping Slickfingers than of actually meeting such a pair. He was also the reason for Harad’s great age, as the lifespan of any familiar-bonded pair will always conform to the longer of the two partners, and dragons live as long as they wish.

Normally, Shang prefers to slumber in his tank below the library and, dreaming, look out through Harad’s eyes. That he was interested in seeing Siri’s smoke ring through his own was both an honor and more than a little alarming. It drove home the unique nature of my new trinket in a way that Harad’s childlike delight simply couldn’t. This was a
dragon
and he wanted to see my ring because he’d never seen anything like it before.

Oh. My.

I gestured toward Harad’s apartments and the secret stair that led down to the library’s equally secret underwater entrance. “By all means, let’s go show it to him.”

The reservoirlike tank that Shang used as a bed lay in a deep, barrel-vaulted chamber under the river side of the building. The Ismere Library held the city of Tien’s largest private collection of books, including many volumes that had been officially banned by the government at one time or another. Protecting that collection from forces both official and un- was one of the chief reasons the library had such a powerful sorcerer as its chief. It had been founded four hundred years earlier by a Kadeshi merchant-adventurer—see also smuggler and pirate—and the underwater tunnel that connected the tank to the river was probably a legacy of the founder’s original line of work.

When we entered the vault, Harad waved his hands. In response, the blue and green magelights that picked out Zhani glyphs on various surfaces slowly brightened. In combination with the flickering reflections from the pool and the deep green moss that covered many of the stones, the magelight produced an illusion that the whole room lay deep under tropical waters.

As we crossed to the reservoir, a column of water lifted up out of the tank. It rose and twisted, extruding bumps and whiskers that slowly formed themselves into the features of a large dragon. As the face took on shape and character it darkened in whorls and swirls, like a fine tea when you first stir it. Its scales shaded in from the lightest hint of jade at the center to an oversteeped seaweed green along the edges.

The change rolled back from a head longer than my own five feet and eleven, coloring in his thick, ropy neck and the many looping coils of his snakelike body. Shang was big, perhaps a hundred feet from nose to tail, though he was dwarfed by Tien Lun, the guardian of the city’s bay. He smiled at Harad when he bent down to touch his nose to the old man’s forehead—a disconcerting expression that exposed teeth longer than my forearm.

Once he had greeted his partner, he turned my way. Dark green eyes the size of an extended hand fixed on me and he spoke in a deep, watery mindvoice.
Hello, Aral, what trouble have you found for yourself this time?

I responded in kind, sending my thoughts along the same channel I used to communicate with Triss.
I don’t find trouble. It finds me.
I held up my beringed hand.
This came to me. I didn’t seek it out. Besides, who’s to say that it’s trouble.

Shang laughed into my mind.
It’s a wedding ring. They
exist
for trouble. I have watched your people for two thousand years, and yet this magic is a new thing for me. When such takes up residence on your hand, you can bet that trouble will follow. Beyond that, I would have thought your experiences with the Kothmerk and the Signet of Heaven would have taught you to avoid such pretty baubles.

He’s got a point,
Triss noted, his mindvoice wry.
Rings have not been good luck for us.

I couldn’t argue that, but there was something about Shang’s tone that made me think he was teasing me as much as advising me. It’s hard to tell the difference with dragons.

I bow to your wisdom, venerable one.
Which I did, giving him the full formal court version.
But I’m afraid that the lady made me an offer I simply couldn’t refuse.

Such is the way of women,
said the dragon.
Now, let me examine this fancy of yours.
He bent lower still and twisted his head to the side so that he could bring one great eye within inches of the smoke ring.

Hmm.
He pivoted and looked at it with his other eye. Then he touched it with one of his long whiskers.

Very interesting. Hold it out and let me smell it.
My entire hand slid into a nostril big enough to engulf my head, though I could still see it through his translucent flesh.
One last test.

He opened his mouth and a tongue that was bigger around than my waist and long enough for two of me to lie end to end on shot forward. Before I could think to protest, Shang licked me from toes to top—the two forks of his tongue wrapping around me like a lover’s arms. It was a profoundly weird sensation, as the dragon’s substance split the difference between animate-water and mortal flesh.

I would like to see this Siri of yours now,
said the dragon.

That’s a lovely idea,
I agreed, somewhat sarcastically.
Any thoughts on how to manage it?

He nodded.
First, you will need to make a fire. . . .

“Faran,” I said aloud. “Would you be so kind as to fetch some wood from Harad’s apartments? I believe there’s a basket of it beside the fireplace.”

A snort issued from an unusually dark shadow at the base of the vault by the door. “Why me?”

“Because fetching and carrying is the reason they invented apprentices.” I smiled. “Aren’t you going to ask how I knew you were there this time?”

“No. You know the same way you did earlier, by knowing me. I may not always like the lessons you give me, but I do learn. And, yes, I’m off to fetch that wood now.”

Twenty minutes later we had a nice little fire going beside the pool. “Now what?” I asked.

We wait for it to burn away to nothing. Fire devours its prey entire. Smoke is the ghost of the consumed—shadow and flame. The sacrifice must wholly burn away before the true element can arise.

“That’s going to take hours,” grumbled Faran, who had dropped her shroud once again—though her mood seemed only marginally improved.

“It needn’t.” Harad stepped forward, put his hands out over the fire as though he were warming them, and spoke a single word in the language of ancient Kadesh.

A thread of spell-light—invisible to the normal eye—jumped from Harad’s hands to a point between Shang’s eyes. The dragon opened his mouth, and a great flood of spell-light burst forth, engulfing Harad in an aura of green and blue. As the light flowed down Harad’s body to his hands it changed color, becoming a scarlet torrent that shot from his fingers to the flames below.

It all happened in the pause between two heartbeats, and the very next instant the fire roared and flared like a burning building collapsing. There was a brief burst of heat almost too intense to bear. Then the fire was gone, leaving behind ashes and a thick curl of smoke.

Shang leaned forward, touching the smoke with the tip of his long tongue. “Come!” he said, speaking aloud in a voice like the Grand Rapids below Kao-li.

The smoke curl twisted back on itself, forming the rough outline of a human figure. It looped back and back again, until the whirls and swirls of smoke took on the character of the woman I had so recently married.

“Siri?” I said.

The figure nodded, but made no further answer.

Shang touched the figure with his tongue again. “I lend you my voice, that you might speak.”

The smoke woman bowed to the dragon and spoke in the rippling tones of a lively brook, “Thank you, great heart, you have saved me hours of pantomime.” Then she turned to me. “Hello, Aral. I need you to come to the Sylvani Empire. It’s a matter of souls and buried gods and unfinished business.”

W
hen
the gods make mistakes the world suffers.

That’s the story of the Sylvani Empire. Not to mention the Temple of Namara, but that’s another tale entirely. For the moment, let me stick with the Sylvain. We of the eleven kingdoms aren’t the first children of the gods. That “honor” belongs to the four kindreds of the Others: the Durkoth, the Vesh’An, the Asavi, and the Sylvani—who were all once one people but are no more.

I will relate a part of that tale now, because it is important to all that comes after, and I will tell it in the manner it was told to me by Master Kelos:

“It is said the gods created the Others because they wanted a people to share the wonders of the world they had newly formed. That the first Others looked and acted much as the Sylvani do now. That they were arrogant, and sometimes cruel, and that this drove a wedge between them and the gods, and that the gods were forced to bind their magics and confine them to the lands of the Sylvain. That the Vesh’An and the Durkoth refused the bargain of the gods and lost their magic because of it. Many things are said by the priests who serve the Son of Heaven first, themselves second, and their gods next before all others.

“But here in the Temple of Namara, Goddess of Justice and champion of those who cannot champion themselves, a different tale is told. The gods created the Others without limits on their magics because they wanted powerful servants and they were arrogant enough to believe that none could ever challenge them. But all too soon some among the Others began to rival their masters, and this the gods could not abide. So there was a war between the gods and their first children, and much that was wonderful in the world was unmade.

“The old gods were the more powerful and they defeated the Others, but only at great cost. Many gods died in the war, including the first Sovereign Emperor of Heaven. All of the great ones among the Others were thrown down, too, but some had grown too powerful for even the gods to destroy without dying themselves. These mightiest of the Others were bound into the earth of the Sylvain in a state halfway between life and death. The rest of the Others were bound as well, tying their magics to their buried mighty.

“The Sylvani and the Asavi accepted this confinement and limited themselves to lesser magics and the lands of the old empire. The Durkoth and the Vesh’An refused, forsaking magic for the deep places of earth and ocean that they loved more than power. The bound ones . . . they do not sleep easy or accept their fate. They fight against the injustice of the gods and ever they strive to rise from their graves to challenge Heaven once again.

“Namara never forgave the other gods for what they did to the Others, but neither did she make an effort to free the fallen. For they had become horrors in their own right, terrible and mighty, desiring only to renew their war with Heaven. And they would tear the world apart to wreak vengeance. In these days they are known as the buried gods, and now and again one will rip free of the earth and seek to regain the power they once held.”

It was in confronting one such risen god that Siri came to be called the Mythkiller. That was the mission that made her a legend and me second among the Blades of the day. The fight more than half killed her and it left her with many scars and a lifetime of nightmares.

That’s why I had been so surprised when I first learned she had forsworn the lands of man and gone south to the Sylvani Empire after Namara was slain. It seemed a . . . strange choice. One that seemed stranger still if she had become involved with the buried gods once again. There was nothing in the world I wanted to do more than stay out of the affairs of the gods, dead or otherwise. But if Siri told me that she needed me to do so, I would make war on Heaven itself.

“How soon do you need me?” I asked the figure of smoke.

“As soon as you can get here by land.” This time she spoke with the deeper tones of a river running slow and wide.

“A ship would be faster,” I said.

Harad leaned forward. “And there are spells that could send you as far as the Wall of the Sylvain faster still.”

“No, it must be by land or the connection will fail.” The figure shook her head—a quicker movement than any she had made yet. It blurred her features as the air currents pulled at the smoke. “The logic of smoke requires it.”

“The logic of smoke?” Faran lifted an eyebrow. “How so?”

“I don’t have time to explain,” said Siri. “Already I can feel the ghost of the fire failing. The magic involved is . . . complex. Suffice to say that the ring requires certain conditions to be met if it’s to work properly.”

Harad cleared his throat. “What, exactly, will it do if it works properly?”

“More importantly,” said Faran, “what happens if it doesn’t?” She gave me a hard look. “I
really
don’t like this.”

Ssithra flipped her wings and rose into the air, agitation showing in the ruffling of shadow feathers and the tension in her neck. “Child, for once in your life, respect your elders. This is the Mythkiller you’re talking to and she has a need for haste.”

“Phoenix,” said Siri. “That means Ssithra, and you must be Faran.” She turned eyes of smoke on the younger woman. “You were a clever girl, and very promising. I’m glad you escaped the fall. Please, trust me that this is necessary.”

Faran nodded reluctantly and bowed her head, stepping back.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“South of Tavan, near . . .” Her voice fell away to nothing. And then, with a faint puff, the smoke form collapsed in on itself and Siri was gone.

“Next time,” I said to Faran as gently as frustration would allow, “please save the arguments until
after
the important questions are all asked and answered.”

She looked down at her feet, but nodded anyway.

“When do we leave?” asked Triss.

I thought about it for a moment. “We’ll have to stop at the house and the fallback at the abandoned warehouse both to collect all the supplies we’ll need for traveling before we hit the western road. That’ll take some time. We really ought to leave here within a quarter of an hour if we want to get clear of the city yet tonight.”

“I’m coming with you,” said Faran.

I was not feeling in charity with her, and I immediately shook my head. “No, you’re not. You have to complete your healing here, with Harad.”

“Look,” said Faran, “we can have this argument, and you might even win. But if you do, I’ll only sneak out and follow you like I did the last time, and the result will be the same as if you’d just agreed in the first place. Besides, Harad says that I’m at a stopping point in his treatment anyway, so the timing is perfect.”

I looked at Harad.

He spread his hands noncommittally. “What I said was that we needed to take a break from your sessions so that you could rest and see how the healing was working. A two-thousand-mile speed run across the eastern edge of the eleven kingdoms isn’t exactly what I had in mind. . . .”

Faran looked stubborn. “It’ll be
much
more restful for me than staying here would be. I’d fret myself into a mess worrying about all the trouble Aral will get himself into if he doesn’t have anyone to watch his back.”

“Hey!” Triss flicked his wings grumpily.

“You know what I mean, Triss,” said Faran. “Given the sort of trouble a buried god is likely to pose, can you honestly say that you won’t need all the help you can get?”

“There is that,” Triss agreed reluctantly. “But I’m not taking you anywhere unless Ssithra and Shang both agree.”

Ssithra contracted briefly in a shrug. “I gave up arguing with her when she gets this tone in her voice years ago. But you’re right. If Shang doesn’t think it’s a good idea, we’re not going.”

At that point, all eyes turned to the river dragon. While Harad might be the one formally in charge of Faran’s treatment, it was Shang who was ultimately responsible for her progress. The curative powers of the great water dragons were without peer—most of the healing springs of legend had drawn their magic from a resident dragon.

Shang slid his huge head down and forward till he was inches from Faran. Then, much more gently than he had done with me, he extended the tips of his tongue to touch either side of Faran’s forehead. He stayed like that, perfectly still for several minutes before finally drawing back and canting his head to one side so that he could look deep into her eyes with one of his own.

“I know your vision is much improved, though it will never be perfect again. But tell me true, child, how are your headaches?”

“Bad,” Faran said in a small voice. “But not nearly so frequent as they were, and never so awful that I think about killing myself anymore.”

The dragon sighed, then nodded. “If you do this thing, I do not believe that you will backslide. But neither will you get better. It is true that you need a time away from my active care to set what we have done so far. But if you spend the time moving about rather than resting, what might have taken a few weeks will take some months at the least, and I won’t be there to soothe the pain for you.”

Faran winced. “I know, but I won’t be resting if I don’t go with Aral either. I’ll be stuck here alone with Ssithra and going mad with worry, just like I did when he went to face the Son of Heaven alone. He’s too gentle, and that’s going to get him killed one of these days.”

Shang turned his other eye on me now. “The gentle assassin—now, there’s an interesting turn of thought. What do you think of that, Aral?”

There was something about the dragon’s tone that didn’t brook dissembling. “Faran’s right that I prefer not to kill anyone I don’t have to,” I replied. “But I am not so gentle as I was when last Faran and I went a-hunting together. My definition of who needs killing has . . . widened a bit since our visit to the Magelands last year.”

“Really?” Faran looked doubtful—she’d been all of nine when the fall of the temple had cast her out into the world alone. It had hardened her in ways I didn’t think were entirely healthy. She killed with a cheerful remorselessness that didn’t suit one who should have grown up to become a champion of Justice.

But Triss nodded. “He’s coming around nicely, actually.” Like most Shades, Triss had never shied from killing anyone that he thought needed killing, and he had often chided me for letting loose ends keep breathing.

“What changed?” asked Faran.

“I remembered what I am,” I said. “When I was younger, I gave my conscience into the hands of Namara, and I killed who she told me to kill, knowing that I served justice as well as Justice. I was content with that. Then Namara died. And, for a very long time, I was lost. But I finally realized that the death of Justice the goddess didn’t free me from my obligation to do justice. There are many monsters in this world, and for some the only justice is death. It’s what I was born for and trained for, and ultimately death is what I am.”

“Death,” said Faran, and I nodded. “That’s a little dark for you, but I think I like it.” She smiled. “If I take the house and you hit the fallback we can save an hour. Meet at the bridge where the Great West Road crosses the Zien?”

“Done.”

*   *   *

Pick
up my gear and head out. A simple task, but important. Many of the tools of my trade are things that you have to make for yourself. Cornerbrights, drum-ringers, opium-and-efik-packed eggs for knocking out watchdogs, the blanks for making wardblacks . . . The list is endless. Others are hard to come by or expensive, like eyespys, good silk rope, spare Blade grays, etc. And, while things like bedrolls and silk tents can be picked up at most of the larger markets, it’s infinitely quicker and easier if you already own such things to collect them from storage.

Which is why I had come back to the long-forgotten warehouse that was my main fallback at the moment. At one point, the stone and timber building had probably fronted one of the many narrow lanes that spurred off the nearby canal road. But somewhere along the line someone had simply walled off the ends of the alley to make a new building, orphaning the small warehouse and cutting it off from the commercial lifeblood provided by the canal. That was likely when the main entrance got bricked over, though it could have been ten years before, or half a hundred.

When and who had cut the door-sized hole into a sidewall that accessed a dead-end alley not much broader than my shoulders was an open question. Though it had to be noted that whoever had done it had almost certainly been planning on using the rotting old building as a tuckaside for smuggled or stolen goods. At least, that was the conclusion I’d reached given how carefully they’d concealed the door’s construction.

Later still, the dead-end alley had been closed off, too—possibly by repairs made after one of the many fires that had burned through the area over the years. At that point, the only way in or out of the old warehouse involved either climbing down into the alley through a gap in the rooftops above, or heavy work with a saw and maul. Great for concealment, less so for quick entry and exit, and a major problem now that something had followed me to my hidey-hole.