Bladesorrow (The Agarsfar Saga Book 1)

by D. T. Kane

  The bridge had collapsed. Dust still rose from its ripped edges, rocky shrapnel splashing into the waters below. Forlorn whispers on the wind. On the other side of the rift stood the Grand Father, flanked by the handful of remaining Parents. Residual particles from their channeling still glowed in the air about them. Light, water, fire earth. Ferrin picked each out in turn.

  But what drew Ferrin’s attention lay beyond Valdin. Two of the Parents immediately behind the man supported Jenzara’s limp form between them, blood trickling down the side of her slack face. A massive bruise had already spread over one of her cheeks.

  “No!”

  He rushed to the edge of the decimated bridge, passing the remains of the guard tower, its top seemingly sheared off by a razor. Stone crumbled underfoot and Erem yanked him back by the shirt collar. He turned a furious glare on the man, but the pained expression showing at the edges of Erem’s eyes was so uncharacteristic that Ferrin had to look away without a word.

  Valdin frowned at them, like prize stags that had gotten away, then turned without a word. Shinzar considered them a moment longer with a look of smugness that radiated from his wretched face like wax oozing down a candle stick. Then he strode away as well. The other Parents did nothing to hide their disdain as they silently followed their leader, dragging Jenzara with them. The moonlight caused her face to look white as the stone of the bridge towers.

  Ferrin cried out again, struggling against Erem’s grasp. Not that he had anywhere to go. A chasm separated them. But there had to be something, some way to reach her. They couldn’t be allowed to take her away, harm her further. He reached out to the surrounding darkness.

  Pain shot through the festering wound in his shoulder. It had begun to bleed during the frantic crossing and his tunic now gleamed black around the trauma. He dropped his blade in shocked surprise, letting it clatter to the ruined cobbles. The sound reverberated off the guard tower like the dying moans of a suffering beast. He sank to his knees.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Erem hissed, eyes still on the retreating Parents. “You saw what you did to that child the last time you channeled. Do you want to do the same to Jenzara?”

  Ferrin winced. Killing the girl had been a mistake; he hadn’t intended the hex to affect that big an area. But it was so blasted difficult to limit his intake of the shadow, particularly now that Erem had told him of the Seven’s Call. If anything, confirmation of its existence had made things harder. Its strength was all but irresistible.

  “We must do something,” he gasped through the pain. “They mustn’t be allowed to hurt her anymore.”

  Erem looked down at him. The compassion that had been in his face moments before was gone. He released the grip on Ferrin’s shoulder and turned from the crossing, beginning to walk away. Ferrin made no move to follow. Erem got a good twenty or so paces before relenting, turning back to where Ferrin still knelt, staring across the abyss.

  “We must keep moving.”

  “No! There must be something more we can do for her. Scale the cliffs perhaps.” He quickly sized up the sheer rock walls, then said with more confidence than he felt, “It could be done. We could reach her.”

  Erem snorted, the most undignified sound Ferrin had ever heard the man make.

  “You’ve already acted the idiot. Don’t be a fool. Even if we were equipped to accomplish such a feat, we couldn’t face a whole coven—or more—of Parents on our own. We’d be doing Jenzara no favors getting ourselves killed.”

  “We seemed to withstand their attack pretty well just now,” Ferrin retorted. “Those two on the other side fell to my blade easy enough. How many did you kill as we sprinted away? I felt your channel.”

  Erem frowned. “None. Do you not listen? Those men are misguided, make no mistake about it. But they are doing what they believe is right. What the current laws say is right, in fact. And Valdin can be rather... influential. They don’t deserve death.”

  Ferrin gaped at him. “They tried to kill us, battered and kidnapped Jenzara. And you did nothing?”

  Erem threw his arms up to the heavens. “I was shielding us from that onslaught of hexes, you fool child. Do you think a dozen of the best-trained elementalists in all of Agarsfar just happened to miss us by chance?”

  The glare Erem gave him carried enough force to collapse the Crossing all over again. Ferrin remained silent for a time. Of course he’d shielded them. That many Parents had the power to slay them both many times over. The strength necessary to fend off such power even for a short time was staggering, almost incomprehensible.

  “Well, surely if you’ve power enough to withstand the full might of a dozen of the land’s best-trained elementalists, we could stand against them if we go back.”

  Erem shook his head. “I have power. I’ll no longer deny that. But we should be dead. They weren’t trying particularly hard to destroy us; only a few of their hexes actually posed any true threat. It was almost as if they intended to trap us on this side.”

  That made no sense. But it didn’t matter. Ferrin clenched his teeth as a stabbing pain shot through his shoulder.

  “We must do something for her.”

  “Ferrin.” His name sounded odd coming from the man’s mouth. Erem’s voice was quiet but firm, nearly lost in the cacophony of ragged breaths pounding in his ears. The rise and fall of Ferrin’s chest sent shocks of pain through his shoulder, like a rodent gnawing at his tendons.

  “I know you care for her,” Erem said. “I’ve no wish to see ill come of her either. I was supposed to protect her. Yet we must continue—”

  A howl shattered the darkening night. Inhuman, though it sounded like no animal Ferrin had ever heard. A screeching wail that left him checking his ears for blood. And hearing was only secondary to how much he felt it. The pain in his shoulder exploded into blinding agony. He gripped at Erem’s arm for support, looking up to his grave face. Tears streamed uncontrollably down his cheeks.

  “The Terror,” Erem said. “We must reach cover. Now.”

  “The Terror?” Ferrin mumbled through the pain, unsuccessfully trying to resume his feet. “That’s impossible, we left it back at the...” But even as he spoke, the realization dawned on him. If the thing could flit in and out of time and place like the shades, then it could go anywhere. Geography was no more a constraint to it than an open door to a common man.

  Erem hoisted him up. His legs provided barely enough support to stand.

  “There’s a waytower not far from here. Can you make it?”

  Ferrin might have laughed if not for the pain. A waytower? Those ancient relics? Doors two heights off the ground only accessible by a rope ladder. They’d been built in the early days of Agarsfar to serve as both shelter and protection for travelers. Climb the ladder, pull it up behind you, the bandits couldn’t get to you. In theory at least. He’d always found the idea ridiculous—bandits would just start carrying ladders of their own. And the Senate had seemed to agree with him—they’d voted to stop maintaining the monoliths centuries ago.

  “How do you know the lay of the land around here so well?” he muttered.

  “Snap out of it, boy. We must move. Can you walk or must I carry you?”

  The Terror wailed once more, sending a new wave of pain through Ferrin’s shoulder.

  Well, the tower’s better than meeting that thing out in the open. He nodded at Erem and pushed away, standing under his own power. His jaw was clenched too tightly to issue any more than a grunt in reply.

  So they set out at a lope—the fastest pace the agony screaming through his shoulder would permit. As they hurried in the direction of the waytower, Ferrin thought he could make out moving shapes in the shadows, just at the edge of sight.

  “Shades,” Erem muttered. “They’ve followed us too. Make haste, Ferrin. Make haste.”

  He tried to spit out a snarky retort. What in the deepest shadows did the man think he was doing? But all that came from his mouth was a mumble. The night had grown pitch black much too quick
ly. Combined with the anguish in his shoulder, it was near impossible to move any faster than a slow trot. Hadn’t the moon just been shining bright?

  After what seemed like hours—but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes—the looming shape of a waytower poked from the gloom ahead. It was a single, cylindrical construct, made of blocks of moss-covered stone, piercing into the sky like a raised finger.

  As they approached, Ferrin had to crane his neck to see up to the cone-shaped roof. A thousand years ago, during the Age of Heroes, such structures had been common. But elementalists then had been able to call upon the great Invocations to enhance their channels. Such power was lost now. It was said Taul Bladesorrow had once performed an Invocation. But even if true, the former Grand Master Keeper been the first in centuries, and he was now fifteen years dead.

  Erem jolted to a stop, causing Ferrin to stumble forward. The cold exterior of the waytower stopped him from collapsing to the ground. He savored the feeling of the cool, weather-worn stone on his face, letting the earthy smell of lichen invade his nostrils. He could collapse right here and never wake up.

  “Ferrin.” Erem shook him urgently, reviving him from his reverie. “You must climb.” He indicated a rope ladder leading up to the waytower’s elevated entrance. The frayed rungs seemed unlikely to bear the weight of a child, much less his own. But even if the ladder had been built yesterday, it didn’t matter. Erem might as well have been asking him to climb the Raging Mountains. He was too exhausted to do anything. Some small part of his mind was screaming that the corruption was taking hold of him, that he was precariously close to a precipice’s edge, and falling over meant eternal damnation as one of those cursed shades. But it felt so good to just let the shadow take him...

  His arm grew ice cold, snapping him to attention. Erem gripped his bicep like a vice, just below the injury. He’d removed his solar specs and for a moment Ferrin saw into the depths of his eyes, like staring into the yawning maw of a great cat. Then Erem released his arm and Ferrin staggered back. The man’s face contorted as if he wanted to be sick.

  Ferrin gawked at him. The pain in his shoulder was no more than a dull ache now. The irresistible need to collapse against the side of the tower gone.

  “Go. Now,” Erem rasped, turning his back to Ferrin and drawing his ebon blade. Its runes bled a demonic pallor over his face.

  Just within his range of vision, Ferrin could make out the plodding shapes of shades coming towards them. There must have been dozens. Arms and legs all at wrong angles, mouths gaping open in silent, eternal screams. The fact that so many creatures made no sound save for the relentless plodding of their feet only added to Ferrin’s horror. He’d been fighting the things for days now, as they’d traveled on through the woods. But there’d never been more than four or five at a time. Seeing enough in one place to fill Ral Mok’s Great Hall was something else altogether.

  For a moment, he reached out for the shadow, pure survival instinct driving him. Pain immediately shot through his arm once more and he dropped any thought of channeling.

  “Go,” Erem said, his commanding tone dangerously unstable. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Ferrin hesitated only a second more before scrambling up the rope ladder into the waytower. The fibrous rungs burned under his hands as he hoisted himself into the dark mouth of the tower’s entrance. But amazingly they held him. As he reached the top rung he rolled off the ladder into the chamber within. It was even darker than outside and he lost his sense of direction. He groped around in a momentary panic until he spun himself to face the opening through which he’d come and saw the dim gloom. Taking a breath to calm himself he peered around. The space was empty, save for a staircase spiraling around the inside of the waytower’s wall, up into the darkness above.

  The ladder strained with weight. Ferrin gripped the hilt of his sword, fully prepared for a shade to come tumbling over the lip of the opening. His arm shook and he wondered if he’d the strength to even draw, much less fight.

  Erem pounced off the ladder, landing in a crouch and turning to haul the ladder up behind him. Ferrin let out a breath, then grimaced as he saw that Erem looked no better than he had on the ground moments before.

  “You didn’t need to do that. Suck the corruption out of me. I was fine.”

  Erem waved a hand at him, out of breath. “Rubbish. You were barely conscious and there was no time. Besides, I can purge the sickness from myself later. You cannot.”

  Ferrin arched an eyebrow. “Why haven’t you done so already?”

  Erem made that sound in the back of his throat. “It’s not something I can do with the snap of my fingers, boy. And we must climb. Ordinary shades wouldn’t be able to reach us here. But these are driven by a darker force than any I’ve seen but once before. We must continue upwards.”

  So they climbed the stone stairwell. Ferrin was careful to keep a hand on the wall to his left at all times. Nothing but open space and a drop to the bottom awaited him to the right. Erem, for his part, stalked up the stairs like one of the mythical lions of lore, seeking no support at all.

  Ferrin was gasping for air as they finally reached the top of the waytower, breaths ripping at his throat. His efforts were rewarded by a dusty wooden platform with several bed frames, a small table, and a chest of drawers. Small clouds billowed up from the stuff as he moved slowly across the floor to the attic’s only window. He coughed at the mustiness of it all.

  Erem flung open the set of drawers, but found nothing of use. A rusty dagger, more a butter knife than a weapon; some torches, but nothing with which to light them; and a few shreds of cloth with dried lumps of something in them. They had perhaps been edible once, but the march of time had long since claimed them.

  Ferrin peered out the window, a new fit of coughing coming over him. He could see for leagues in every direction, but the sight immediately below was all he focused on. His original estimation had been far off. There must have been hundreds of shades fanned out below them. The tower was completely surrounded. A sea of groaning figures, limbs jutting at wrong angles. Many were just standing in place, swaying from side to side, like dead branches in a breeze. But several of the creatures were attempting to gain entrance to the tower, climbing over each other like some grotesque version of Build the Pyramid, a game he’d played as a child at Ral Mok. Ferrin turned his back to the window, leaning against the sill, trying to control his breathing.

  “Well, we’re up in your tower now. Any grand plan for fighting that?” Ferrin waved his good arm towards the window before another fit of coughing took him.

  Erem scrutinized the scene below, then looked back to him. His face was expressionless. Somehow, that was more unsettling than if the man had shown fear.

  “We wait here until morning, fight off any that make it inside. Even if they do, they won’t be able to come at us more than one or two at a time. And we must hope that—”

  The cry was more terrible than before, seeming to shake the tower’s very foundation. Ferrin doubled over in pain at the sound. Erem spun back to the window. This time there was true concern in the man’s face. Ferrin had been wrong—that definitely scared him more than no expression at all.

  “It’s here,” Erem murmured, not turning from the window. Though he stood not two paces from Ferrin, his words seemed to come from far away, as if he were underwater. Ferrin shook his head, trying to stand and look out the window. He suddenly felt lethargic, as if all the energy had been sapped from his limbs. Each step felt like trudging through mud, like he was moving in slow motion. He tried to say something to Erem, but found he couldn’t muster the will to make a sound.

  Finally, he reached the window and looked down. The sea of shades had parted. In their midst stood an enormous, shrouded figure, at least two heights tall. There was no face beneath its cowl. Just empty shadows.

  As he gazed upon it, his sight seemed to lose all sense of color, everything turning to muted shades of gray. The thing abruptly produced twin blades,
seemingly from nowhere, held in fingers that were thin as bones and far too long. From somewhere far away, Ferrin’s mind identified the weapons as scythes, though he’d never seen such things wielded before. They curved with sinister intent.

  I must have read that in a book somewhere, Ferrin thought serenely. How nice it felt to just stand at this window, gazing down on the Terror.

  Another thought tugged at the background of his mind, urging that he ought to be mad with fear. But the thought was drowning in his subconscious; easily ignored. It occurred to him that he might like to meet the giant creature down below. He turned to begin back down the stairs.

  Erem grabbed his arm, the injured one. Surprisingly, he felt no pain. Wonderful.

  “Ferrin. You. Must. Fight it.” Erem’s words came in stunted bleats, as if yanked from his mouth by a chain. Ferrin noted absently that the man seemed to be clutching at his side. Whatever could be bothering him? Ferrin felt so alive.

  “It’s a Lesser Terror. It tries to seduce us into its clutches. Fight it.”

  That thought at the back of Ferrin’s mind tried to poke its head above the murk of his subconscious. A Lesser Terror? Surely not. Those were mere fairytales, bedtime stories meant to scare misbehaving children. But hadn’t he thought that of the shades as well? And now he was surrounded by more than a hundred of them. He swayed with indecision.

  The Lesser Terror shrieked once more. Searing pain returned to Ferrin’s shoulder, shattering the serenity he’d been experiencing. He staggered and Erem caught him.

  “Good. Good.” Erem murmured, propping him up.

  Pop.

  The sudden sound emanated from below. Like a shade slipping, yet somehow distinct. The difference between a dying man’s death rattle and the contented murmur of one falling to sleep. Ferrin’s vision swam for a moment, like looking off into the distance at noon on a blazing day. An odd sensation, almost like he’d sensed someone channeling. But if that’s what it had been, it was no channel he’d ever encountered before.

  Erem started, drawing Ferrin’s gaze. A flash of what he could only describe as hope flitted across the man’s face as he half helped, half dragged Ferrin over to the window.