Bladesorrow (The Agarsfar Saga Book 1)

by D. T. Kane

  BLADESORROW

  The Agarsfar Saga

  Book 1

  By D. T. Kane

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Bladesorrow (The Agarsfar Saga, #1)

  Map of Agarsfar

  1 Taul

  2 Devan

  3 Jenzara

  4 Erem

  5 Devan

  6 Ferrin

  7 Jenzara

  8 Devan

  9 Ferrin

  10 Jenzara

  11 Devan

  12 Jenzara

  13 Ferrin

  14 Devan

  15 Jenzara

  16 Devan

  17 Jenzara

  18 Devan

  19 Ferrin

  20 Devan

  21 Valdin

  22 Erem

  23 Ferrin

  24 Erem

  25 Jenzara

  26 Devan

  27 Ferrin

  28 Devan

  29 Erem

  30 Valdin

  31 Jenzara

  32 Devan

  33 Jenzara

  34 Ferrin

  35 Devan

  36 Jenzara

  37 Valdin

  38 Erem

  39 Ferrin

  40 Erem

  41 Valdin

  42 Valdin

  43 Taul

  44 Valdin

  45 Jenzara

  46 Devan

  47 Ferrin

  48 Jenzara

  49 Ferrin

  50 Jenzara

  51 Ferrin

  52 Devan

  53 Taul

  54 Valdin

  55 Devan

  56 Jenzara

  57 Ferrin

  58 Taul

  59 Devan

  60 Jenzara

  E-Mail Signup and Social Media

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  To Mom,

  for teaching me how to read and write.

  To Dad,

  for reading aloud to me each night.

  To Linda,

  for giving me time to get it right.

  Thank you.

  BLADESORROW

  Map of Agarsfar

  Part 1: Traitor

  1

  Taul

  Taul Bladesorrow burst onto the Quadrangle, eleven Parents in pursuit. He charged down the Old Symposium’s broad stairs, blinking back the sun’s sudden glare. Overhead, a clear sky was marred by red streaks, a mortal wound bleeding out.

  He skidded to a halt in the shadow of Ral’s Obelisk, marking the square’s center. Ferrin came up gasping beside him a moment later, grasping at a bloody shoulder. Served him right, trying a hex so soon after having that wound healed.

  The commotion he’d caused at the Symposium had already drawn a sizable crowd. Most huddled about the grand steps of the Senate at the Quad’s head, its stately columns bringing to mind another life that Taul could hardly believe had been his own. The onlookers regarded him and the boy both with a fearful curiosity, a sort of sick fascination that oppressed men and women see in ones seemingly worse off than they.

  But even morbid wonder couldn’t spur any to stand within fifty paces of the building adjacent to the Senate. The Temple. Its façade of closely spaced pillars, coalescing like the northern lava flows, gradually grew into a single belfry that watched over the Quadrangle like an all-seeing eye. A monolith of oppression. A golden sun over the Temple’s arched entryway matched the sigil emblazoned on the white robes of the Parents who now pursued them.

  Ferrin’s breaths came in abbreviated pants, causing Taul to glower down at him. The boy grasped the base of the monument for support, as if it were the sole thing keeping him from a painful meeting with the ground.

  Taul resisted an urge to growl frustration at him. Ferrin had led the Parents right to them, thinking with his heart instead of his head. Had he expected to rescue Jenzara by himself? He worried for her too, more than the boy could possibly understand. But now they’d be lucky to live long enough to see another sunset, much less stage a rescue to retrieve Jenzara from the Temple’s grasp.

  He put his back to the Obelisk as the pursuing Parents fanned around them, angling his body to partially shield the boy. The Parents’ eyes shone with uncertainty, none wishing to be the first to move against him. They were terribly misguided, but at least they weren’t utter fools. They’d just seen him stand against their leader and live, a feat he very much doubted any had ever witnessed.

  Still, they were enchanted, under the Grand Father’s compulsion, and the spectacle back at the Symposium would only stay their hands for so long. Breathing deep, Taul reached out to the shadows about him, muttering and picturing the eyes of a long-dead friend, as he did whenever he prepared to channel. The seductive murmur of the fifth element greeted him as its power seeped into his bones, the darkness inviting him to swim forever in its murky depths, discard his mortal confines. He pushed the feeling aside, focusing instead on the protective sphere he meant to draw about himself and the boy.

  The shield materialized, an opaque dome that enveloped him and the boy in twilight. Just heartbeats later, the first of the Parents’ hexes reached them. Bolts of pure light, jets of water, gouts of flame, stones turned to small boulders. All these and more shot from the men’s hands. He could pick out the attunements of some by what they carried. Torches for the fire attuned, though it was midday; packs sloshing with liquid; pouches stuffed with soil and stone. And while those attuned to light bore no physical evidence, the noonday sun provided all the fuel they required. No shadow attuned among them, of course. The Parents would sooner agree with a Keeper than admit one attuned to the fifth element to their ranks. Especially now.

  The shell of dark energy he’d summoned wavered slightly as the hexes crashed into it, yet otherwise absorbed the attacks with the ease of an ocean swallowing a cup of water. The barrage went on for perhaps half a minute before the Parents subsided into an uneasy silence, uncertainty creeping back into their eyes.

  Eleven Parents of Tragnè. Taul frowned. Killing them wouldn’t be an issue, but they were just as much victims of the Grand Father as he was. There would be no justice in slaughtering these men. But incapacitating all of them while keeping both his and the boy’s lives intact? A difficult chore, if not impossible. And that wasn’t why he’d retreated to the Quad. His plan wouldn’t work if the Grand Father didn’t soon—

  Ferrin groaned and flung an arm out in the direction of the Parents. A torrent of shadow lanced from his hand, slamming into the Temple’s eaves. Taul reflexively covered his face, though the shaded spectacles he wore protected his eyes. The boy’s channels were always wild, and this had been no exception. He lowered his hand in time to see a sheet of stone slide from the Temple’s face. One of the Parents shrieked as the rubble crashed into his legs, bones emitting audible cracks. He slammed face first into the cobbles and moved no more.

  Taul spun on the boy. How many times must he admonish him against using mortal force? Cold anger prepared to leap from his tongue, but when he saw Ferrin down on all fours, dry heaving as if he’d been kicked in the gut, Taul snapped his mouth shut. The boy’s lack of restraint was bad enough when he was fully healthy, but the power of the channel combined with the injury to his shoulder had been more than Ferrin could take.

  “No more out of you,” Taul said, quiet enough so the surrounding Parents wouldn’t hear. “I’ll handle this.”

  He was prepared for a biting response. Ferrin’s tongue could burn like acid when he was angry. But before the boy could respond, Taul finally heard what he’d been waiting for. Hurried footsteps, the frenzied swish of robes. He drew Friend Slayer from the baldric at
his back, turning to the sound, the motion causing his dark, untied hair to billow about his head. The fabric wrapped around the weapon’s hilt and cross guard provided a reassuring grip in his hand.

  The Grand Father emerged from the Symposium. His brown eyes, set in a face that was at once wrinkled and yet somehow ageless, scanned the scene with the calculating coldness of a man who thought himself far above all those gathered. His hair, perhaps onetime a rich mahogany, was now wispy and gray, contrasting against the brilliant white of his robe and the golden staff-and-stars stitched across its chest. He glanced at the Parent buried under Ferrin’s rubble like one might consider a second-rate horse with a broken leg, then to the others who stood around them, doing nothing. He was quaking with rage as he met Taul’s eyes.

  “Kill him!” he shouted.

  Pulled from the depths of apprehension by the reappearance of their leader, three Parents simultaneously rushed forward. Taul’s sword felt an extension of his body as he settled into Water Over Steep Falls, one of the many stances Rikar had spent years drilling into his mind. It came as naturally as pulling on his boots in the morning. The first Parent took a wild swing at Taul’s head, the barbs of his mace glinting with malice. Taul ducked and slammed the broad side of his blade into the man’s gut. The Parent’s scream came out a breathless yelp as he crumbled to the ground.

  Without pausing, he spun into Feint Glow Beneath the Door, a low sweep that sent the second Parent spilling to the ground. His skull issued a startling thunk as it slammed to the pavement.

  Taul didn’t have time to meet the attack of the third with his blade. Rather, he deflected the man’s mace with the bracer concealed under his shirt’s left arm, grunting as one of the spikes penetrated both armor and flesh above his wrist, catching fast. Warmth trickled down his arm. Hunter Meets the Boar. That had been one of Rikar’s favorites, though he hardly had time to reminisce now. Rather than flinch back from the pain, he yanked the man closer, punching him with his sword hand. The Parent’s nose exploded in a crimson shower. Forgetting his weapon, the man threw both hands over his ruined face and staggered backward.

  Taul reset his feet and glanced to the others he’d felled. They wouldn’t be rising anytime soon, but they’d live, he guessed. He eyed the onlookers, who by this time had grown into a veritable throng. Half the City must have been there, their prior fascination replaced by unshrouded fear. Terrified sobs punctuated the air.

  He tilted his head to the sky and let out a yell so loud it hurt his throat. Part release, part anguish. The Angel had been right, Agar help him. Raldon too. These people—his people—had needed him. And what had he been doing? Hiding, as if avoiding the gaze of his fears would make them go away. But now he’d seen what had become of Tragnè City. The squalor of the Symposium. The “camps” in which the Parents kept the City’s shadow attuned. It could be tolerated no longer. He ripped the spectacles from his face, tossing them to the ground, ignoring the gasps and wide eyes as he did so. He’d hide no longer.

  The Grand Father flinched back. Uncertainty flashed across his face, though the man quickly hid his reaction behind a sneer.

  “Fifth,” the Grand Father practically hissed, looking into Taul’s black eyes. “And one with the Seven’s mark no less. You have defied the laws of this land. An assault on the Parents of Tragnè is an assault on Agarsfar itself. No better than spitting in her Lady’s face.”

  Taul could have vomited at the feigned indignation in the Grand Father’s voice. The Angel—Devan—had once told him that this man was the most despicable in existence. Devan had a tendency towards the fantastic, but after what Taul had seen this past week in Tragnè City he was ready to believe it.

  But losing his stomach would do little good at this juncture, so he did the next thing that came to mind. He smiled at the Grand Father, then turned and spat in the direction of the Temple. Not the Temple Taul had known, but the farce into which this man had made it. One of deceit and hatred.

  “I do not recognize your authority, Grand Father. And neither should the people of this City. I know you for what you are—a meddling imposter. And a traitor.”

  Once more he ignored the crowd’s consternation. They couldn’t know his words for truth, not after what they’d been fed these past fifteen years. But fearful realization flashed in the Grand Father’s eyes, for he knew. Truth deafens the dishonest, so Rikar had always said.

  The Grand Father hesitated. Then, just as Taul had hoped, he charged forward. His staff glowed with a righteous fury he’d no right to possess. It slammed into the channeled shield about Taul, shattering the defensive barrier in an eruption of white sparks. The Grand Father’s raw power was a difficult elixir to swallow.

  Yet it was just what he’d been hoping for.

  The Grand Father was now too close for his hexes to help him. He swung the staff at Taul, the arrogance burning in his eyes turning to shock as Friend Slayer turned back his blow. No ordinary steel could have stopped that staff, but Taul’s blade had been fortified by not one, but all five of the elements. Elemental steel of the strongest kind.

  The Grand Father had not planned to meet a counterattack and it took every stone of willpower Taul possessed not to run him through. He settled instead for a glancing blow that opened a gash across the man’s flank. Breeze over Empty Fields. The Grand Father gave an angered cry and fell back, clutching at his side, looking down at the blood with wide eyes. More in disbelief than pain, Taul thought. Unable to restrain himself, Taul lashed out once more, immediately regretting it as the Grand Father parried the blow and cracked him in the ribs with a quick riposte. Taul stepped back, hiding pain beneath a glare of disdain. The Grand Father might be despicable, but Taul would do well to remember that he was also the most dangerous being in existence.

  “Blasphemer! Blasphemer!” the Grand Father yelled, pointing a shaking finger at him. “In the name of the Temple and the Shadow Edicts I hereby sentence you to die. You are a menace.”

  Taul couldn’t hold back a laugh at the man’s charade. If only the crowd could see the fear in the Grand Father’s eyes. It was time to seal his plan. The plan that would keep him and Ferrin alive, at least for today. He hoped.

  “You cannot sentence me to death, Grand Father. I claim due process, for myself and the boy. You shall acknowledge my right to trial; then we shall see who the true menace is.”

  “You are shadow attuned—a filthy fifth,” the Grand Father shrieked back at him. He seemed on the brink of tears. “You have no rights. I have decreed it. You’ll not stop me when I’m so close!”

  Taul raised his blade, tensed for another attack. But the Grand Father stood unmoving, his eyes widening. Glancing down, Taul found the linen wrapping about his weapon’s hilt and cross guard had fallen away. The sculpted head of a roaring lion looked back at him. Cries of uncertainty rose from the assembled masses as they bore witness to the sword he held. One voice even named the weapon. Friend Slayer. The Grand Father’s next words were nearly drowned out by the crowd’s rumblings.

  “Who are you?” The Grand Father studied Taul’s face, his own features growing paler than the white of his robes. Looking back into Taul’s eyes, the Grand Father mumbled, “No. I killed you. You can’t be here. I killed you, gave you away. Disbanded the Symposium.”

  Taul only shook his head and turned his back to the man. The Grand Father wouldn’t dare kill him now. He studied the faces in the crowd. Most still appeared horrified. But he picked out at least a few with glimmers of hope in their eyes. This gave him strength to speak the words he’d never thought to utter again. He raised his sword, saluting as the Keepers once had.

  “Who am I?” he asked. His voice carried across the square and many in the crowd flinched back, as if the sound might burn them. Yet some leaned closer in anticipation.

  “My name is Grand Master Keeper Taul Bladesorrow.” The catharsis he felt was staggering, but he set his feet, keeping shoulders square to the onlookers.

  “I’ll be your specter no l
onger. And I will see justice done.”

  2

  Devan

  It is written that there are four Agarian Constants:

  Ral, builder of nations;

  Trimale, keeper of elements;

  Agar, sword of the people; and

  Tragnè, parent of all;

  To these, I say, add a fifth:

  Taul Lightsblade, equality’s champion.

  - Excerpt from Stephan Falconwing’s Commentaries on The Lessons

  HE SAT IN AN OVERSTUFFED, velvet chair, upholstered in a devoré pattern showing birds of prey on a field of green. The writing table next to him was a dark-grained oak, polished so fine he could see his grey eyes in the reflection, rimmed all round with dark face paint. His pale hair was similarly spiked in the traditional style. A scar at the corner of one eye gave him a perpetually sullen expression.

  Quills and ink wells of various colors lay strewn about the table’s surface. A magnificent bronze sculpture known by many names—Agar Rises and Shadow Falls among them—sat off to one corner. A lion rearing on its hind legs over a shrouded figure, hooded and faceless, one hand extended as if willing the beast to stop. It was somehow comforting and disturbing at the same time. Devan admired the dualism.

  A fire glowed in the stone hearth beside the chair. The fireplace’s arched mouth cast light out into the room in a wide arc; red and orange dancers illuminated walls lined with bookshelves that stretched up into darkness. There was no door. The room smelled of books, like shoving your nose into a tome. Old leather and ink, aging paper.

  Devan exhaled through his nose. Slamming shut the musty volume in which he’d been writing, he tossed it aside.

  “That’s the sixth rogue strand this week, Agar,” he exclaimed at the statue, not expecting a response. There was no one here to speak with, and he liked it that way. But sometimes he had to make a comment to someone.

  “You’re late.”

  He was so startled his chair tipped backwards, sprawling him onto the (thankfully plush) carpet. His face practically landed on a pair of sandaled feet. The owner of those feet wore a silken robe that somehow managed to match the five elemental colors in a manner pleasant to the eye. Devan bounced to his own feet, the rings he wore on each finger—each set of five connected by a fine gold chain—jingling as he did so.