The Spirit Eater

by Rachel Aaron

  It wouldn’t be long, at least. Her blood was red again, mixing with the dirt to dye the snow a dull burgundy in a circle around her. Soon, all her failures would be behind her. All her weakness, everything, it would all be gone. She was so focused on this she didn’t notice the man coming across the mountain slope toward her until his shadow blotted out the sun in her eyes. She looked up in surprise. He was very tall, dressed like a poor farmer in a ragged wool coat, but his body was that of a fighter, with blades strapped up and down his torso and a monstrous iron sword on his back.

  He stood a step away from her, his face shadowed and unreadable with the sun behind him. Then, in one smooth motion, he drew a short sword from the sheath at his hip. This much, at least, she could understand, and the girl closed her eyes, ready for the blow.

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  It never came. The man simply stood there, staring at her with the blade in his hand. When she opened her eyes again, he spoke.

  “Do you want to die?”

  The girl nodded.

  Overhead, the sword whistled through the cold air, then stopped. The man’s voice spoke again. “Look at me and say you want to die. ”

  The girl lifted her head and stared up at him. The morning sun glinted off the sharp blade he held in the air, ready to come down. How easy it would be to let this stranger end it, how simple. And yet, when she tried to tell him to go on, finish what the demon hunters had started, her voice would not come. She tried again, but all she managed was a squeak. The dull red circle on the snow around her was very wide now. Soon, she wouldn’t even have a choice. She knew she should take his offer, end it quickly, but her mouth would not move, because it was not true.

  She did not want to die. The realization came as a surprise, but the truth of it rang in her, vibrating against the inner corners of herself she’d long forgotten. She had been defeated, abandoned, wounded beyond repair. She owed it to the Master to die, owed it to herself to save the horrible shame of living on when she was not wanted, but still, despite all reason…

  “I want to live. ” The words came out in a croak, and she only recognized the voice as her own from the pain in her dry throat.

  Above her, the man nodded and sheathed his sword. “Then take another breath. ”

  She met his eyes and slowly, shuddering with pain, did as he said.

  He grinned wide and reached down, grabbing her arms in his hands. He lifted her like she weighed nothing and tossed her over his shoulder.

  “Come on, then,” he said. “I had a long walk up here to see what that crash was, and we’ve got a long walk back. If you’ve chosen to live, you’ll have to keep your end and keep breathing. Just focus on that and I’ll get us back down to camp to see to your wounds. Then we’ll see where we go from there. What’s your name?”

  “Nico,” the girl said, wincing against his shoulder. The Master had given her that name.

  “Nico, then,” the man said, setting off down the mountain. “I’m Josef. ”

  Nico pushed away from his shoulder, trying not to get blood on his shirt, but he just shrugged her back on and kept going. Eventually she gave up, resting her head on his back to focus all of her energy on breathing, letting her breaths fill the emptiness the Master had left inside her. As she focused her mind on the feel of her lungs expanding and contracting, she felt something close at the back of her mind, like a door gently swinging shut. But even as she became aware of the sensation, she realized she could no longer remember how she’d come to be on that mountain slope, or where her wounds came from, and just as quickly, she realized she didn’t care. The one thing she could remember was that before the man Josef appeared, she’d been ready to die. Now, clinging to his shoulder, death was her enemy. Something deep had changed, and Nico was content to let it stay that way. Reveling in a strange feeling of freedom, she went limp on Josef’s shoulder, focusing only on savoring each gasp of air she caught between jolts as Josef jogged down the steep slope to the valley below.

  CHAPTER

  1

  Two years later.

  The house on chicken legs crouched between two steep hills, its claws digging deep into the leaf litter to keep the building from sliding farther down into the small ravine. If Heinricht Slorn had any worries about the precarious position he’d put his walking house in, his face didn’t show it. He sat in his workroom, his brown fur glowing in the strong lamplight. His dark, round eyes glittered as they focused on the object taking up most of the large worktable. It was about four feet long, white as a dried bone, and shaped somewhat like a sword, or like a stick a child had carved into a sword. Despite its crude form, Slorn hovered over the object, his enormous hands running over its smooth surface with the painful, meticulous slowness of one master appreciating the work of another.

  Pele sat at his elbow, also staring at the white sword. She was trying her best to match her father’s focus, but they’d been doing this for two days now and she was getting awful sick of staring and seeing nothing. Sitting in the dark room, her mind began to wander back to the other, more interesting projects she’d been working on before Slorn had put her to work on the Fenzetti blade.

  “Pele. ” Slorn’s gruff voice snapped her back to attention. His eyes hadn’t left the sword, but that didn’t matter. Her father seemed to have a supernatural ability to tell when her attention began to drift. “What is the first thing we determine when examining an unknown spirit?”

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  “Its nature,” Pele answered at once, sitting up on the hard workbench. “A Shaper must know the nature of her materials. Only when a spirit’s true nature is known will the Shaper be able to bend it to her purpose. ”

  “Good,” Slorn said, reaching out to take her hand and press it against the smooth surface of the Fenzetti. “And what is the nature of this spirit?”

  Pele flinched when she touched the sword. It was unnaturally smooth and strangely warm, yet she knew from experience that its surface could not be scratched even by an awakened blade. They’d tried half a dozen blades the morning it had arrived, and none of them had been able to make so much as a nick in the sword’s white face.

  Slorn was looking at her now, and she shrank under his intense gaze, her brain spinning to come up with an answer. “It’s not wood,” she said uncertainly. “Not stone either. It could be a metal not yet known, one of a different nature than iron or the mountain metals, perhaps a—”

  “Stop,” Slorn said. “You’re not answering the question. I did not ask what it wasn’t. ”

  Pele sighed in frustration. “But—”

  “Look again. ”

  Slorn picked up the sword and set it point down on the floor between them. “Look at it as if you’d never seen it before and tell me what you think it is. ”

  Pele bit her lip, looking the sword up and down. “A bone,” she said at last.

  Slorn grinned wide, showing all his yellow teeth. “Alright, let’s say, for the moment, it’s a bone. ”

  “But that’s impossible,” Pele said. “Bone metal is ancient. If it was actually bone, it would have rotted away ages ago. And why haven’t we found any two pieces together? Surely if it was bone we’d have found a skeleton or…”

  She stopped. Slorn was shaking his head.

  “You’re doing it again,” he said. “If you’re ever going to be more than a common wizard tinkerer, you need to stop trying to make the spirits fit into your expectations. ” He returned the blade to the table. “This is the spirits’ world, Pele, not ours. We may command them, but they see the nature of things that we cannot. As Shapers, it is our job to fit into the spirits’ order, not the other way around. Fenzetti understood this, and that’s how he was able to shape what everyone else called unshapable. ”

  He reached out and took the sword, not by its handle but by its point. “A Shaper must remember,” he said, wrapping his fingers around the blade,

  “t
rust what you see, not what you know. Human knowledge is fragmented, but the spirit always knows its own nature. ”

  With that, he began to tilt his hand up. The table creaked as he pressed against it, the muscles in his arms straining from the pressure. The sword, however, remained unchanged, but then, slowly, subtly, it began to bend. The white point curled with his hand, bending over on itself with a creak unlike anything Pele had heard before. Sweat started to soak through Slorn’s shirt, but his face remained calm and determined. His hands were steady, bending the strange metal in a slow roll until, at last, he’d bent it over completely so that the tip of the sword brushed the blade.

  He stopped, panting, and slumped over the bench, an enormous grin on his face. Despite the pressure of Slorn’s bending, the curve was smooth, like an ox’s curved horn. Pele touched it with murmured wonder and then snatched her hand back again. The sword was warm as a living thing.

  “It is bone,” she whispered, eyes wide. “But bone from what?”

  “That’s a mystery I cannot answer,” Slorn said, sitting down on the bench. “But I think it’s time we tested the rumor that drove me to send Monpress after it in the first place. ” Still smiling at the curled tip, he picked up the sword. “Fenzetti wrote that bone metal is indestructible, even by demons. It’s the one spirit they can’t eat. ” He paused. “Do you know why I make manacles for your mother?”

  Pele shook her head, silent. Slorn never talked about her mother.

  “They give the demon something to chew on other than the demonseed herself,” he said. “Before she had to be isolated, Nivel and I did many experiments on the subject. She was the one who came up with using restraints. A demon, you see, will always attack spirits outside the demonseed first, since the seed relies on the host’s strength until it is ready to awaken. This need to be constantly eating can be exploited by placing a strong-willed material along the host’s body. Even though the demon knows better, knows it’s a trick, it can’t help its nature. It will attack those spirits endlessly, focusing its attention on the manacles instead of the host. This division of attention slows its growth phenomenally. Of course, it’s not a perfect solution. Manacles are still spirits, and even the most stubborn awakened steel can only hold out for so long before it gets eaten down. But”—he tapped the bone metal against the table—“let’s see how the demon does with a manacle it can chew on forever. If this bone metal is truly inedible by demons, it may slow Nivel’s degradation to almost nothing, buying us a few more years to work on a cure. ”

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  “But Father,” Pele said slowly. “You always say there is no cure. ”

  Slorn’s smile faded. “It is good to think that way,” he said, laying the bent sword down again. “We must be realists. Still”—he looked at her, and his dark eyes were almost like the human eyes of the father she remembered from her childhood—“your mother has not given up. Not yet. And I would be a poor husband indeed if I let her fight alone. ”

  Pele shook her head, blinking back tears. Slorn put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to lean against him. “None of that,” he whispered.

  Pele sniffed and scrubbed her eyes, trying to compose herself. They had work to do. Now was not the time to go crying. But as she tried to pull away, she realized her father had gone stiff. She looked up at him, but he was staring out the window, his round bear ears swiveling.

  “Father?” she whispered.

  He didn’t answer. Then she heard it too. Outside, something thumped in the dark. It was big, and loud, far too loud to be one of the mountain cats, and the bears never came near Slorn’s house.

  “Pele,” Slorn said, “get your knife. We have company. ”

  She did as he told her, grabbing her knife from its hook. While she was belting it on, Slorn whispered something to the wall. She couldn’t hear what he said, but the wall’s answer was plain.

  “I don’t know,” it said apologetically, timbers creaking. “He’s no wizard, and that makes him very hard to keep track of. This one’s especially bad.

  His soul is like a dull spot. He’d never have been able to slip by the Awakened Wood otherwise. ”

  “I am well aware of the wood’s weaknesses,” Slorn said, giving the wall a pat. “You’d better wake the house. ”

  “Yes, Slorn,” the wall whispered, but Slorn was already gone, marching down the narrow hall. He threw open the front door and stepped out onto the rickety stairs. Pele pushed right up behind him, gripping the hilt of her knife as she peeked over his shoulder. There, standing at the edge of the rectangle of yellow light cast from the doorway, clinging to the steep slope with one arm, was a man she never wanted to see again.

  Slorn glared down from his steps, crossing his arms over his chest. “Berek Sted. ”

  The man sneered and moved into the light. He looked very different from when Pele had seen him last. His bald head was covered in several weeks’ growth of stubbly hair, all except the top, where true baldness had left him bare. His scarred face was overgrown as well and streaked with dirt. His black coat was gone, as was his sash with its grotesque collection of severed hands and broken swords. Instead, his bare chest was wrapped in bandages, most of which were dark with old, dried blood. But the greatest change of all was his left arm. His shoulder and the first half of bicep looked the same as ever, but then, his arm simply stopped. He had no elbow, no hand, just a badly bandaged lump that he kept pressed against his side.

  “Found you at last,” Sted panted. “Swordsmith. ”

  “What do you want?” Slorn asked, his voice dry.

  Sted shifted his weight, pushing off the steep hillside with his one good arm to hurl something straight at them. It landed with a clatter at Slorn’s feet, biting into the weather-stained wood. Slorn looked down, arching a furry eye ridge at what was left of Sted’s black-toothed awakened blade. The top half of the sword was gone, leaving a ragged, twisted edge, as though the metal had been ripped apart.

  “You sold me a faulty sword,” Sted said. “I want another, a real one this time. One that won’t break when I need it. ”

  Slorn reached down and picked up the broken blade. He turned it over in his hands, and Pele winced. This close, she could hear the metal whimpering.

  “Your sword was a quality piece of work,” Slorn said. “Even if there was a flaw, the League is the only body entitled to demand my services, and I doubt very much they sent you here looking like that. ”

  “Don’t talk to me about the League,” Sted growled.

  “Ah,” Slorn said, his voice cold. “Now I see. You’ve been drummed out. ”

  “That’s none of your business. ”

  “It is indeed my business,” Slorn said. “I made that sword for the League, not for you. What was it, Sted? Insubordination? Dereliction of duty?”

  “Little of everything,” Sted said with a shrug. “To hear that bastard Alric talk, choosing a good fight over a quick demon kill was the end of the world.

  After all I gave up to join the League, he kicked me out, took away my gifts. But I wouldn’t be in this position if your sword had been up to the task, bear man. ”

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  Slorn crossed his arms over his aproned chest. “And how did my sword fail you?”

  “It was weak!” Sted shouted. “Too weak to take a blow from that blunt bat Liechten uses. I said as much in my defense, but Alric couldn’t stand to hear the truth about his precious swordsmith. ”

  Slorn bared his teeth just a fraction. “If that’s how you feel, why did you come here?”

  “To get what I’m due,” Sted said. “After all, it’s only fair. You’re the one whose failure got me kicked out, so you’re the one who’s going to have to make it right. ”

  Slorn turned the broken sword over. “I can see from the dents that your sword took several blows from Josef Liechten’s ‘blunt bat. ’ An impressive achievement, standing up to the
greatest awakened sword in the world. I’d hardly call that deficient. ” His eyes narrowed. “Though I can’t say the same for its wielder. ”

  “Don’t blame this on me!” Sted shouted. “I was winning until your sword broke! It’s not my fault I lost! I don’t lose! Your sword failed me, and now you’re going to make up for it. Make me a proper sword, swordsmith! Make me a blade that can take the Heart of War!”

  “Impossible,” Slorn said, handing the broken blade to Pele. “The Heart of War is the first and greatest awakened blade, forged at the beginning of the world. Even if I could somehow make a blade to rival it, it would be pointless. ” He glared at Sted. “A blade is only as powerful as the swordsman behind it. I’ve never seen you fight, but I can tell from how you’re acting now that you are no match for Josef Liechten. ”

  Sted sprang forward with astonishing speed and grabbed Slorn by the collar. Slorn was a large man, but Sted towered over him, his face scarlet with rage.

  “Mind your snout before I take it off your face!” he roared, jerking Slorn off his feet. “You’re going to make me that sword, and then I’m going to kill Liechten and everyone else who’s made a fool of me. Starting with you, if you don’t watch yourself. ”

  Pele fumbled for her blade, her hands trembling in panic, but Slorn’s calm never faltered, even with Sted’s screaming mouth an inch from his black nose.

  “You will unhand me,” he said.

  “Or what?” Sted growled.

  Slorn smiled, and the fibers of his collar where Sted was holding him suddenly unraveled. Sted was left gripping air as Slorn dropped down. The Shaper landed neatly, and he had just enough time to give Sted a toothy smile before the stair beneath the swordsman’s feet snapped like a green branch, launching the larger man into the night. Sted was too surprised to make a sound. He flew through the air, landing with a bone-snapping crack on the opposite slope. He bounced once and then began to slide into the ravine as the leaves that might have stopped his fall skittered away from the source of Slorn’s displeasure.

  Sted slid all the way to the bottom of the little gorge, landing with a splash in the icy stream. Twenty feet up, Slorn stared down from his stairs, a smirk on his muzzle as his torn collar began to mend itself. “This is my land, Sted,” he said calmly. “You don’t get to make demands here. Any tacit welcome you had as a League member is now gone, and I suggest you go as well. The forest is unkind to those who threaten me. ”