Bladesorrow (The Agarsfar Saga Book 1)

by D. T. Kane

  “I’ll have to take him to Tragnè City then.” She turned to go back inside.

  “That would be madness,” Erem growled, remaining seated.

  She stopped and spun on him. Head still bowed, his unbound hair hid his face.

  “Well I have to do something. He’s already saved my life more than once, and I owe him. Particularly after how I’ve treated him.” She felt her face burn. “And even if he hadn’t saved me, it wouldn’t matter.” She stomped her foot to conceal the tear she had to brush from her eye. “Because he’s my friend. Maybe more than a friend.”

  She’d never thought of Ferrin like that. He was a good friend, but just a friend. But after nearly seeing him die.... She shifted her weight uncomfortably, realizing what she was likely revealing to a total stranger.

  But if Erem thought she looked a silly girl he made no showing. He didn’t even point out how awful she’d been treating Ferrin.

  “You mustn’t be too hard on yourself.” His voice was softer than she’d have thought possible only hours prior. “I know Raldon tried, but I’m sure you still spent your whole life hearing how awful the shadow is. How it would spell the end for life as we know it if it weren’t suppressed.”

  The backs of her eyes burned. “He stood by me, and yet I’ve been nothing but disloyal.”

  Erem raised his head to regard her with bespectacled eyes. Somehow the look held a suggestion of comfort.

  “We all fail those we care about. Loyalty comes from how we act after.”

  She bowed her head, this time not bothering to hide the tear that slid down her cheek. That sounded like something her father would say. It was all so confusing. Aside from father, and maybe Ferrin, everyone she’d ever known had just assumed the shadow was evil. To be avoided at all costs. But until the events of the past day, she’d never actually met a shadow attuned. That she knew of anyway. Now she’d met two and seen nothing to verify what she’d thought had been a universal truth.

  “I have to do something for him.” She stared hard into Erem’s face. “You said there are two options: light or alchemy. I figure the first is out since anyone with enough light attunement to fight off... whatever that is,” she motioned in Ferrin’s direction, “is either with the Parents or was a Keeper, and is either exiled or...”

  “Executed,” Erem finished as her voice dragged off. She narrowed her eyes at him, but he’d spoken the word as neither a question nor slight, just a simple truth.

  “So I figure finding a light attuned strong enough to help is unlikely.”

  She paused, but when Erem failed to disagree, went on.

  “That leaves your second option, and the only place in Agarsfar I can think of where there are practitioners of particularly powerful alchemy,” she echoed the phrase Erem had used moments before, “is the City of Light. And you haven’t made much secret of the fact that you were once a Keeper. Certainly you know of someone there who could help us.”

  She narrowed her eyes, daring him to dispute her. She didn’t know where she’d found the confidence to defy this man, one apparently touched by the Seven. But she had to do this. Perhaps father’s efforts to mold her into Ral Mok’s next leader had impacted her more than she knew.

  “Absolutely not,” Erem replied. “Going there is not an option.” His voice had returned to that even, emotionless tone, full of a power that made you want to listen. The only other person she’d ever heard speak in such a way was her father.

  But this man certainly was not father. She needn’t listen to him.

  “You can’t stop us,” she growled.

  Erem looked at her with incredulity. “You’ve never set foot in Tragnè City.”

  “Of course I have!” she shot back. Why did he insist on treating her like a child? “I was born there; lived there with my father when I was little.”

  Erem scoffed, shaking his head. “You know that’s not what I meant. That was before the Disbanding.”

  “So?” she retorted, almost grimacing at how meek she sounded.

  “So?” He made that same, irritated sound in the back of his throat that reminded her so much of her father. “How many Parents have you had occasion to battle? How would you defend yourself against a concentrated beam of light aimed at your heart? A spray of water channeled strong enough to drill through you? Agar help you. How would you defend yourself against an ordinary spear?”

  She said nothing, averting his gaze. The man had summed in a single breath all the failures that made her ashamed to be her mother’s daughter.

  “You wouldn’t last five minutes inside the City walls with a shadow attuned in tow. Probably less than a minute since he’s corrupted. They’ve sniffers all over the City looking for people just like Ferrin. From what Raldon told me, they’ve got whole camps of shadow attuned locked away like cattle waiting for the slaughter. Valdin’s obsessed with hunting them.”

  She wanted to say something cutting back to him. But faltered. What could she say?

  “You also know nothing of shadow attunement, and the boy...,” her glare cut him off. He could at least use his name.

  “Ferrin,” Erem amended. “He barely knows more of his attunement than you. He nearly killed himself trying to channel shadow against the shades. The mistake might still prove deadly. And even his control of other elements is precarious. That earth shroud he tried on me in the woods? He’d be dead if my intention had been to kill. Perhaps that worked in sparring matches against inept opponents. But not out here. And that fire hex he cast at the shades? I don’t deny it may have saved us, but he nearly incinerated the whole house, and us along with it.”

  Jenzara narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth.

  “No.” Erem held up a hand. “Don’t you deny it. I may’ve been preoccupied when I entered with him earlier, but I saw your fevered face. Nearly dropped the boy to see to you.”

  This time she held his glare, but knew her eyes betrayed her. She’d felt the uncontrolled power of the fire hex. A chill climbed her spine as she realized how close she’d been to sharing the fate of those creatures Ferrin had charred nearly to ash. A tale she’d once heard rose from the recesses of her memory, of a fire-attuned child who’d burned down an entire village, no one ever having realized the power he’d possessed. She’d never given such stories much heed. But now she saw the truth of them. Her eyes dropped from Erem’s once more.

  The man’s voice softened as he continued. “I’ve let Raldon down so far; I don’t intend to continue failing him. I won’t let you go traipsing off into a certain death trap. The boy may die here. But he’ll certainly perish if you leave. And you, Jenzara, would likely die right along with him.”

  She threw up her hands, but said nothing for a time. As much as she hated it, she and Ferrin needed Erem. No one else was going to help them. If not for the help he’d already provided they’d likely already be dead. They certainly wouldn’t stand a chance getting to Tragnè City alone, and even if they did somehow manage it, how could they possibly hope to hide from the Parents? Or find the help they needed?

  They couldn’t, and she knew it. She wasn’t sure how much help Erem could be, but he seemed to know things; certainly much more than he let on. And Ferrin needed someone to teach him of his shadow attunement.

  “You could come with us.”

  Twelve hours ago she’d never have imagined making such a suggestion. But she wouldn’t let Ferrin waste away. And Erem wasn’t going to let them go off on their own. Desperate times.

  “No.”

  The response had come seemingly before the words had even escaped her mouth. And was that a hint of fear in his voice? She frowned. He clearly wasn’t a man who scared easily. Though, if he was going to choose something to fear, she supposed walking into a city full of people who wanted to eradicate him—and all like him—from the face of Agarsfar was a sensible enough choice.

  Silence reigned again for a time. The sun was rising, a bloody spectacle that shown through the pair of mature trees that stood beside
the house, one several heights taller than the other. Not unlike the tree that grew in Ral Mok’s courtyard, branches sloped downward over the dwelling like a mother protecting a child. Looking at them suddenly caused her to question something she’d seen during the earlier battle. She wasn’t quite sure why, but it seemed important.

  “If you’re shadow attuned, how did you manage to raise those roots to pull all those, um...”

  “Shades,” Erem said, seeming to be caught off guard by her shift in topic.

  “Shades,” Jenzara repeated, testing the shape of the word as it stuttered off her tongue, still not quite sure she believed the nightmarish creatures were actually real. “How did you raise those roots that pulled the shades from the clearing? Ferrin certainly wasn’t strong enough to have done it.”

  For a time Erem said nothing, and Jenzara sensed he was weighing whether it was prudent to answer at all. She leered at him impatiently, which only frustrated her further when the look seemed to have no effect on the man. Hadn’t she done enough to show him that he didn’t have to treat her like a child?

  “I was not the one who summoned the roots,” he eventually said.

  So there was someone else in the clearing? She hadn’t seen anyone besides Ferrin, Erem, and the... shades. But it’d been dark beyond the circle of flames. She waited for Erem to go on. When he didn’t, she prompted, “Who was it?”

  Another long pause. He removed and replaced a ring on one of his fingers as he stared into the sunrise. An odd accessory, seemingly crafted from wood.

  “After all that’s transpired this night, I suppose you deserve some answers.” He considered her for a long time again and she began to feel uncomfortable under his gaze. It was like he was looking within her, trying to feel out her true self.

  Finally, he continued. “Yes, I believe you do. But the answer to your question is very important to me, and I ask that you not repeat it.”

  This surprised her, but she certainly wasn’t going to ruin this opportunity to get somewhere with him.

  “I cannot promise that I won’t tell Ferrin,” she replied, then added quickly, “but of course I will keep it between us otherwise.”

  That must have been satisfactory, as Erem began to speak with weighted consideration.

  “I do not live here alone. Well, not entirely. There is a young girl who lives in the woods, perhaps ten or eleven years of age. Her name is Autumn, and I take care of her sometimes. Try to teach her what I can. She is earth attuned; perhaps other elements too. She called up those roots. She saved your friend and me.”

  Well that was certainly unexpected. A girl who lived in the woods? And skilled enough to fight off the shades? Under other circumstances she wouldn’t have believed it. But Erem wasn’t lying.

  “She’s also indirectly responsible for that trap I snared you in.”

  Was that the hint of a smile in the man’s tone?

  “She’d been south several days ago and saw the contingent of Parents traveling to Ral Mok. Several of them had seen her and chased her back into the woods. I worried they might find their way here. Thus the trap.”

  Now Jenzara almost smiled, remembering the “trouble” the Grand Father had irritably mentioned encountering on the way to Ral Mok. And Erem seemed a different man talking of this Autumn. Caring. Almost tender.

  “Is she your daughter?” Jenzara asked.

  Erem’s face contorted. “Daughter?” His features clouded as he spoke to her. “I don’t think so. She’s just been here ever since I came here.”

  That doesn’t make sense, Jenzara thought. Based on how the man talked of this place, he had obviously been here for quite some time, at least since the Disbanding, which had been almost fifteen years ago. If the girl was only ten or eleven, she couldn’t have been here since he’d first come to the clearing.

  But Erem didn’t seem to grasp this. Or perhaps he did, judging from the look on his face. Whatever the case, he continued without addressing it.

  “Sometimes I feel like she is my ward and I am here to care for her. Other times—tonight for example—it feels more like she is here to teach me things. She’s a child, but in some ways very sensible. Shrewd, even. Like a woman grown in a child’s body. But regardless, I cannot leave her, not even to fulfill a dead friend’s final request.”

  And there was her opening.

  “But didn’t you just say she’d been South recently?” Jenzara asked, shooting Erem an innocent look.

  He considered her with a guarded expression. “Yes,” he said with reservation. “What of it?”

  “Well, if she’s capable of traveling such a distance on her own and protecting herself from more than a score of Parents—not to mention saving us all from whatever the Elsewhere those things were—then certainly she could make the journey to Tragnè with us? Or at least get along fine while you’re gone. Tumbling boulders! You yourself just said she cares for you as much as you for her.”

  “No. That won’t work.” But he sounded uncertain now. “She doesn’t like being around people. And though she’s able to leave, I don’t think she can stay away for long. It’s difficult to explain... And then there’s the crops. The corn and beans. I—”

  “Erem,” Jenzara said. “Ferrin’s life is at stake here. We need to do this. And,” she exhaled sharply, “we can’t do it without you. Autumn will be fine. And if you’re gone, you won’t need your crops.”

  “You don’t understand about the crops,” Erem mumbled, still trying to resist.

  “It’s what my father would have wanted.”

  The words felt cruel coming out of her mouth and she felt worse still at the reaction they caused. Genuine sadness came over Erem’s stony features. But it worked, and that was the important thing. Erem remained silent and eventually looked away.

  “When it grows light enough, I’ll find Autumn and see what she thinks of the matter. But I still say going to Tragnè City is a poor decision. No matter the boy’s... Ferrin’s condition.”

  “Fine,” she replied. After his vehement denials, she would take that. Somehow, she knew that just as Erem didn’t want to abandon this Autumn girl, he wouldn’t abandon her, either. Or Ferrin. And though she barely knew the man, wasn’t even sure she liked him, she took some small comfort in that. Part of her still screamed that she could never trust a fifth. But this time, at least for now, she was able to ignore it.

  26

  Devan

  Annihilate a Constant? No easy task, what with the Path’s propensity to self-correct, though certainly it’s possible in theory. For instance, one could replace the Constant with a power strong enough that even the Path could not alter it without assistance. What sort of power would that be, you ask?

  [Remainder of page blank]

  - Excerpt from Stephan Falconwing’s Commentaries on The Lessons

  HE’D CONSIDERED NUMEROUS options for hiding the Grand Master Keeper. Val was clever, resources vast even in his wounded state. At full power, he surely would have found Bladesorrow already.

  In the end, a time loop had been the only answer. Like ponds offset from the True Path’s river, time had no flow in them. Useful for preserving precious moments in time while an Aldur corrected other parts of the Path. Long-term use of them had been disfavored, if for no other reason than most Aldur had lacked the ability to maintain a loop’s integrity without interrupting the Path’s orderly flow.

  But Devan hadn’t been like most of the Aldur. He’d been—was—Master Horologer for a reason; such manipulations of time and place came as easily to him as riding a horse did to an equestrian. And, it just so happened, he already had a loop constructed for another of his projects, one that’d been his top priority until Val’s betrayal. The Path often complained of it, like a nagging headache that never fully left him. But he was skilled enough to keep it stable, such that the Path never demanded its removal. And with all the other problems the Path now faced, Devan’s rogue time loop was little more than a rusty nail in a sinking ship.

>   The loop was the only safe place to hide the Grand Master Keeper from Val. Where better to conceal Bladesorrow than a place inaccessible without the power to manipulate time and place? A power Val had lost.

  And even more important than hiding him, keeping Bladesorrow in the loop would slow the damage his very existence was causing to the Path. It’d been just over a year’s local time since Riverdale, yet the pink tinge of the Path’s flames was already visible in the skies. So long as Bladesorrow remained in the loop, he wouldn’t age, wouldn’t create a paradoxical series of events along with his anti-self. It wouldn’t stop the Path’s degradation entirely. Uncontrolled flows continued to branch off the Path now that the damming force of a Constant had been removed, time’s forward momentum becoming increasingly confused. But placing Bladesorrow in the loop would slow the damage to a rapid trickle, rather than an unrelenting torrent.

  Devan needed all the time he could get. He’d been through the Grand Master’s timeline like a beggar through a tavern’s refuse, yet found nothing. No sign of where the anti-self was. For all Devan knew, Val had sent it to an entirely different time and place before he’d lost his power. But even that made no sense. If that was all Val had done, then Devan surely would have been able to see it, looking down on the Path from his high perch. Something like that would be akin to the land’s highest mountain suddenly being on both the east and west coast at once. You couldn’t possibly miss it.

  Which was why Devan now stood where he did. He scratched at his scalp, still agitated with fresh growth from when he’d shaved it clean. A wall of bound logs stood tall before him, dark shapes of guards patrolling the ramparts.

  He liked asking for help about as much as he liked dying. And to ask it from a Linear? He’d never looked down on the common men as much as his fellows had. It was so easy to forget the strain and urgency such an abbreviated lifespan could create. But asking one for help on such a matter of importance seemed about as sensible as a philosophical discussion with a canine.