Bladesorrow (The Agarsfar Saga Book 1)

by D. T. Kane

  “Justice shouldn’t have to wait for those bigots.”

  “Those...” Bladesong took another long breath. “Those men and women sitting in the Senate are the ones who say what justice is. Pride and fear always carry the day over ethics. You won’t accomplish anything until you learn that lesson.”

  “I won’t accept that.”

  “You must,” Bladesong said, as if reciting a eulogy. “Agarsfar will be lost if you don’t.”

  SHE SHOOK AWAKE, LIKE one does when they’ve only half fallen asleep and the body wasn’t ready. Perhaps only moments had passed. The Grand Father was still there, hunched over that portrait like a beggar, muttering. He seemed to have a slip of parchment in his hand, reading from it.

  “All you must do is ask the right questions. Surely you can handle that?” he read, almost as if he were speaking to the portrait. “The hand is so familiar. But who would send such a thing to me?”

  She lay there. Unmoving. Barely breathing for fear he’d notice her conscious state. But as she continued to listen to the troubled undertones in the Grand Father’s voice, her thoughts drifted to that night she’d met him at the chapel in Ral Mok. To that display of stars he’d put on.

  Was it possible he’d once been a good man?

  37

  Valdin

  What is the Elsewhere like? Picture a world just like the True Path, except whereas everything on the Path is the stuff of your greatest dreams, the Elsewhere is a twisted reality of your worst nightmares. Let that vision permeate for a moment. Now, imagine the blind confusion of drowning while wrapped in barbed wire. Hold this vision in your mind and perhaps you’ll begin to brush the surface of the Elsewhere’s true nature.

  -Excerpt from Stephan Falconwing’s Commentaries on The Lessons

  HE STOPPED AT A LANDING to catch his breath. It felt like he’d been climbing for hours, though he’d no sense of time here to be sure. An unsettling sensation for an Aldur. He couldn’t feel the Path at all, and there was no light. No peregrinating out of this place.

  But there was no turning back now anyway. Once he’d set foot in this tower his decision had been final. Death remained an option, he supposed, but it wasn’t one he’d choose. Not for selfish reasons, mind. He cared little for his own life now, after what had been taken from him. But he couldn’t die. Not yet. Not before he was certain there was no way to save her. His love. And he was almost certain there was. Break the Path’s repetition. If time didn’t always have to circle back to the same set of fixed events, then perhaps his beloved wouldn’t need to die. The Conclave could reverse its transgression, go back and stop her execution.

  They’d almost certainly condemn him if he succeeded. Maybe even submit him to the same fate as the Seven. Or imprison him in Noktus Tor. But if his plan succeeded, then so be it. Any punishment would be worth it if she could live. His life was worth one more chance to see her smile.

  He continued to climb. A left turn brought him to a stair with no railing. Just steps upwards into darkness with pitch black to either side. He pushed on without pause, knowing that even the briefest hesitation might leave him immobile, paralyzed in fear. What would happen if he were to fall? His mind told him there was ground somewhere below, that he’d merely splat upon the cobbles and cease to exist. But somehow he knew that wasn’t the case. Time and place were all mixed up here. There was a good chance he’d never cease falling, likely go mad before his body failed.

  Stop that. Such thoughts had no use. He’d a singular purpose, and that must be his sole focus. Break the Path. Save her. Perhaps doing so would save others from going through what he’d experienced. But to be honest, he didn’t care about that. He cared for nothing but to save her.

  He ascended another stair and suddenly he was on a landing bathed in light. A moment before there’d been nothing but darkness, yet now sunlight beamed in from a massive stained-glass window at this back. The landing stretched before him, longer than it was wide, yet certainly wide enough for many men to stand abreast. It terminated at a set of double doors, easily twice the height of even the tallest of men. Each bore a sculpted gold handle in the likeness of a roaring cat. Somehow, he couldn’t tell whether it was a lion, panther, or something else. It seemed different each time he looked.

  So far as he knew, no Aldur had crossed this threshold since before the Cataclysm, when Falconwing had banished the last of the Seven, the reviled Messorem, to the Elsewhere. This was the one remaining place where the Aldur’s great enemies of old could still exert some power. Why would any risk such an encounter?

  For a long time, every Aldur, including himself, had assumed such a question was rhetorical. All the others almost certainly retained that opinion. But now he saw a reason to face the peril. The only option left after the whole Conclave—even the one whom he’d counted his one true friend—had abandoned him.

  He plowed on, grabbing at the golden handles and throwing the doors open. They parted with far less effort than their size suggested and he staggered back from the wasted exertion.

  A dark chamber full of columns lay beyond the doors. It had once been a grand ballroom, a welcoming chamber where the Northern lords of Ral Falar had received honored guests. There was nothing welcoming about it now. He stepped forward and nearly screamed as torches along two parallel rows of columns lit from nothing, the purplish hews of shadow flame leading on into the distant dark. They beckoned like a siren’s song, and despite the terror welling up in him like a sickness, his legs propelled him on into the murk with a purpose that his mind vehemently denied. A plush carpet of deepest crimson compressed underfoot, and he couldn’t help thinking of his love’s blood, spilt by the Conclave’s hand. The thought, morbid as it was, steeled his resolve, and he gave himself over to the force that urged him forward, welcoming whatever it was that would come.

  He walked down that inexplicably illuminated pathway for what might have been only minutes, or might have been a lifetime. All sense of time continued to elude him. Finally, the carpet and columns terminated at a raised platform, several steps leading up to a solitary, empty chair. It was a massive thing, carved of stone. Thin fingers were chiseled into its arms, as if a prior occupant had been petrified while gripping them in fear. They were spindly fingers. Long. Too long for any normal man. Or Aldur.

  The seat back was equally disturbing. Much taller than any man would require, it towered over him. As he craned his neck to see to its top, a low moan escaped his lips. It was sculpted in the likeness of a shrouded figure, a gaping darkness where its face ought to have been. He could now see the fingers on the chair’s arms were intended to match it.

  A Terror—a creature of the Elsewhere, controlled by the Seven. Some said they even carried pieces of the Seven with them onto the Path. To sit in that chair would be to enter their embrace.

  The unseen force propelled him onward. Up the steps, until he stood before the seat. He turned, leg muscles tensing to force him down. For an instant he resisted out of pure instinct. The lines of a children’s song he’d learned before becoming an Aldur flashed across his mind:

  The Shades, they come to getcha

  At night’s fall, creeping in the dark

  The Seven come you betcha

  Take children Elsewhere, snuff their spark

  He shuddered. Everything he’d ever learned, ever known, cried for him to sprint away. Leave this place and never return.

  But this was what he’d come here to do.

  He sat.

  Immediately, a force like a gale wind threw him into the chair’s back and held him there, pressure building until he thought it might crush him. He fully expected his ribs to snap, insides to come bursting out upon the dais stairs. And perhaps he deserved such a fate.

  It ceased as suddenly as it had begun. He gulped in air, wheezing with the agony of life. Realizing he’d been clenching his eyes shut, he opened them.

  The ballroom was lit by midday light, streaming through windows that encircled nearly the entirety of the v
ast space. The columns remained, though the shadow flame was gone. In the illumination he could see the columns were white stone, much less imposing than they’d seemed in the dark that had surrounded him moments before. The carpet was a deep burgundy, calling forth suggestions of royalty and grandeur, rather than the torture and loss they’d implied as he’d approached the dais. An elemental shrine burbled a gentle song of serenity off to one side.

  “Welcome, Aldur Valdin.” The voice of a man speaking with the cool calm of a frozen death.

  It was then he saw them. Seven figures spread out before him at the base of the dais. How had he not seen them immediately? They must have been there the whole time.

  Or perhaps not. He wasn’t even certain where he was now. What rules existed here. Reaching out to the elements of the shrine, he probed for the Path, trying to center himself.

  Nothing. In fact, he could barely channel at all. He grasped at the elements, trying to corral them to his will, but it was like attempting to hold scalding water in cupped hands. His mind was scorched by the effort of it.

  “You’ll find that won’t work so well as you might think here.” The same voice, coming from the man who stood at the center of the seven figures. Valdin had to swallow back the discomfort the sound brought to his stomach.

  The speaker was fairly unremarkable in appearance. Light brown hair hung in curls that touched his shoulders. He wore a robe of midnight velvet with red stitching along the seams and cavernous arms that hid his hands, which were clasped together before him.

  But it was the eyes that held Valdin, more surely than the force that had pressed him into the back of the chair moments before. There was nothing hinting at contempt in the man’s voice. But his eyes regarded Valdin as if he were a bug smeared on the underside of his boot.

  Valdin tore his eyes away with some effort, surveying the others who stood to either side of the speaker. Three men and three women, each as distinct from the next as night was from day. The man furthest to his left was a veritable mountain, his broad shoulders and height actually seeming rather suited for the massive chair in which Valdin sat. He stared straight forward with a cold blankness to his expression, as if Valdin didn’t exist.

  The next man may have been above average in height, but he stooped such that he seemed much shorter. Dark, stringy hair covered his face. He seemed to be muttering to himself, rubbing his hands together, head continually jerking up in Valdin’s direction, then darting back to look at the floor.

  The third man was slender, olive skinned. Black hair slicked back. He was dressed in a fine overcoat, a white silk cravat at his neck. His smile held too many teeth and did not reach his eyes.

  The women were a similar panoply. One was on the wrong side of middle-aged, graying hair pulled back in a bun, skin tight as an apple, expression just as sour.

  The second was in her prime. In every way possible. The gown she wore accentuated every line of her and was sheer enough to leave little to the imagination. Her red lips brought a burn to Valdin’s face.

  The final woman wasn’t really a woman at all, but a girl, chestnut braids hanging over her shoulders. Her expression, though, held a hatred that no child could possibly possess. She gripped a knife, shifting it from hand to hand.

  “The first of your kind to visit us in all this time, and nothing to say?” This from the older woman. Her tone tart as her expression.

  “I say we kill him now,” said the stringy haired man, continuing to dry wash his hands. He inhaled through his nose between every third word. Raving. “We’ve waited long for one to fall into our hands. I’ve fantasized of what we’d do when it happened. It must be slooooow.”

  “I agree. Let’s see him bleed.” This was the girl. She’d produced a whetstone and begun sharpening her knife.

  “Wait,” Valdin said. He licked his lips, suddenly dry as the North. Trying to stand, he found his limbs unresponsive. The man at the group’s center gave him a thin smile, as if he were watching a boy pout in the corner.

  Was he really going to do this? Part of him hadn’t even believed he’d find this coterie here. Even among the Aldur, the tales of how the Cataclysm had begun straddled the border between fact and legend. But here they were. There was no denying the identity of the assemblage before him.

  He ought to have been terrified. And there was plenty of that, brewing in the depths of his being. But fear was outweighed by the overwhelming disgust washing through him. Loathing at what he was considering. These were the most despicable creatures to have ever walked the Path, having put their own desires over the wellbeing of all existence. Valuing their greed and lust above the ancient oaths all Aldur had sworn to uphold. Was he just as bad now as they?

  No. He did this for another. To cure an injustice. There was no avarice in his heart.

  The girl with the knife had advanced several steps closer as he’d collected his thoughts.

  “I come with an offer. A way to release you.”

  The girl bared her teeth at him.

  “Lies,” the raving man hissed.

  “Kill him!” screeched the vixen.

  The giant let out a rumble that shook the very foundations of the tower.

  Yet, the man at the center held up a hand, silencing the others. That smile hadn’t left his face. Now the fear began to leak from Valdin’s pores.

  “You’re here because of the girl the Conclave executed?” the calm man asked in a voice like the hushed moment before the fall of a headman’s axe.

  The sweat rolling down Valdin’s face froze.

  “How could you know?”

  The man’s smile widened. “We see many things here. Perhaps not always with the clarity of those of you who remain on...” His lips curled into a sneer for the briefest of moments. “On the Path,” he finished. “But this place reflects much of what happens on the Path, and we’ve learned to shape it to our liking. We’ve had countless lifetimes’ worth of time to refine our knowledge of this, our prison. Our new world.”

  Words escaped Valdin for a time. He’d expected them to be clueless as to what had gone on since their banishment. Prisoners locked in a dark hole. That they potentially knew everything, or even just some, of what had transpired since their banishment, that they’d perhaps been watching the Aldur all this time, left his hands shaking. It could ruin everything. He gripped the arms of the seat in which he sat.

  “She’s nothing to do with this.”

  “But of course she does.” There was a smile in both his face and voice, but his eyes scrutinized like a surgeon ready to make an incision. Or a torturer.

  “They killed her. Took her from you in cold blood. And you’ve come here thinking this is all you have left. The only possibility that remains to potentially save her. The question is—”

  Suddenly, the man was no longer paces away, but right in front of Valdin, speaking into his face. The man’s breath stank of vomit and rotted possibilities.

  “—What could possibly have driven you to believe that we would help one of your kind?” For just an instant, the icy calm of the man’s voice had broken, roaring in Valdin’s ears with a tempest’s rage.

  Words came with great difficulty, but Valdin choked them out. It was either speak now, or face a fate worse than death at the hands of these monsters.

  “Falconwing left a way open for you to return.”

  “Impossible.” The man’s nose was practically touching Valdin’s own, so close he was. “Our mortal bodies have long since gone to dust. There is nothing to which we can return.”

  So they didn’t know everything.

  “You can’t return to your old bodies on the Path, true. But that isn’t the option Falconwing left open. He left a way for you to take possession of another’s.”

  “Why would he...”

  The man’s face turned pensive, tapping a finger to his lips. An instant later he was gone. All the others too. Valdin remained seated where he was, but the ballroom shifted once more. Away from the brightly lit audie
nce chamber, to a dark, ruined space. It was night. Many of the columns throughout the hall had large chunks missing from them. Several had outright collapsed. Rain was pelting down through a section of the roof that had been completely torn away. A glow came from over his left shoulder. Valdin glanced back to see a hole seemingly hanging in midair behind the dais. As if the air were paper and someone had ripped it down the middle. The rent was outlined in flame, inky blackness within the fiery border.

  He turned back to see a pair of individuals standing before him, apparently oblivious to his presence.

  “It is over, Stephan. We’ve done it. Now just seal it up and we’ll be rid of them for all time.”

  For once, Falconwing was not well put together. His multi-colored robe hung in tatters about him, his hair a complete mess, though the white streaks that had begun to touch it in recent times were nowhere to be seen here. There were bloody scratches down one of his cheeks, as if he’d been raked by sharp nails. He moved with a limp.

  The one who had spoken to Falconwing was in better condition. A dark, unadorned robe framed his lean body. Straight brown hair hung to his shoulders and he rested easily on a knotted hickory battle stave that was nearly as tall as he was.

  “I cannot,” Falconwing panted. For the first time, Valdin noticed an object suspended in the air before the leader of the Aldur. A jagged stone, dark as the void in the hole behind him.

  A shadow heart.

  “I cannot,” Falconwing repeated. “They’ve done terrible things, I know. But an Aldur shall never kill another Aldur. It is a code I cannot breach now, no matter the crime.”

  “Stephan, no. They spat on our codes more times than the Path can count. They don’t deserve such protection.”

  Falconwing shook his head, grimacing. “Some of the Conclave would say what we’ve done to them is already a fate worse than death. I can go no further. They may yet one day repent, and I will not foreclose that possibility.”

  The other’s grip tightened on his staff. “No, you cannot. I will not let—”