Bladesorrow (The Agarsfar Saga Book 1)

by D. T. Kane

  The stranger stepped forward, blade raised, almost as if he were urging the Parents to meet him.

  “Kill him!” Valdin wailed.

  Several of the Parents in the circle complied, charging at once, the spikes of their maces glinting, reinforced with light he’d channeled into them himself.

  The man was fast. Faster than any Valdin had ever seen, save for perhaps Devan. Impossibly fast for a Linear. He took a subconscious step back.

  That man is dead.

  The stranger ducked the mace of the first Parent and landed a slicing blow to his midsection, sending him sprawling backwards. He evaded the onslaught of the second attacker with similar ease, dodging to one side and sweeping the man’s legs out from under him with a slash of his blade, sending the Parent’s head whiplashing onto the paving stones.

  Valdin thought for sure Agar had finally ceased to smile on the man as the third Parent’s blow came down towards the stranger’s unprotected left side. But he blocked it with his forearm as if the Parent had swung a stick rather than a spiked mace of solid steel. The man’s sword hand flew into the attacker’s face, breaking the Parent’s nose with a crack that rang off the surrounding eaves.

  By this time, a considerable group of onlookers had gathered on the steps of the Senate, watching with a mixture of carnal interest and awed fear. The crowd gave a collective shriek as the stranger let out a cry that sounded eerily similar to the roar of a lion. Their shrieks turned to cries of horror as the man peeled off his solar specs. Even Valdin flinched back. Inky black eyes, dark as blindness, stared out from his sockets.

  The man was touched by the Seven, though Valdin had never seen someone so afflicted and yet so in control of his actions. Usually, such were slobbering mad, speaking in the tongues of the Seven. The memory of a child in chains below the Cathedral of Angels came to him unbidden.

  Yet somehow the man’s eyes didn’t capture Valdin’s complete attention. His face, without the specs, was somehow familiar. He couldn’t place exactly how, but Valdin was gripped by the sudden certainty that if he didn’t kill this man now, everything would be ruined.

  He pushed past the remaining Parents, who were all too glad to step aside. Surprisingly, the Parents the stranger had seemingly killed were still alive, crawling back to the protection of their comrades. The stranger was skilled indeed if he could wield his blade so without inflicting mortal harm. Valdin stopped directly before him and raised his voice.

  “Fifth,” he said, with an appropriate amount of disgust. “And one with the Sevens’ mark no less. You have defied the laws of this land. An assault on the Parents of Light is an assault on Agarsfar itself. No better than spitting in her Lady’s face.”

  The stranger smiled. Actually had the audacity to smile. Then he turned and spat in the direction of the Temple.

  “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.”

  The crowd gasped at this blasphemy. At what they believed to be blasphemy, at least.

  Valdin held back a cringe. He couldn’t be sure, but the man spoke with such conviction that he couldn’t discount the possibility Devan had somehow gotten to him. And if Devan had sent the man here that could only mean a trap of some kind. His once friend was always the devious one. He couldn’t afford to wait for it to be sprung.

  He lunged at the stranger, willing light into his staff until it glowed hot as the sun. It crashed into the bubble of shadow around the man. Sparks flew and the dark shield collapsed. He had him now. No ordinary steel could deflect such power. He swept his weapon at the man’s face, whistling as it cut through the air.

  Staff met cold steel, vibrations numbing Valdin’s hands. The sound of the impact rang out over the square.

  Valdin stumbled back, surprised, then bellowed—more in rage than pain—as the stranger’s riposte sliced into his side. Warm blood trickled down his leg. Valdin parried another attack that nearly took his head before landing a blow of his own, though the stranger seemed to absorb it with grace, merely retreating several steps before re-squaring his stance and leveling his dark eyes at him.

  How could this be happening?

  “Blasphemer! Blasphemer!” he yelled, pointing an accusatory finger at the stranger. He felt himself losing control, but didn’t care. “In the name of the Temple and the Shadow Edicts I hereby sentence you to die. You are a menace.”

  The man barked out a laugh. A laugh, Path take him!

  “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.” Valdin was shouting his throat raw now but couldn’t stop himself. “You have no rights. I have decreed it. You’ll not stop me when I’m so close!”

  He lunged, but the stranger defended easily once more, then retreated another step back. Was he being played with? Valdin readied a hex, but before he could attack again, the man held up his blade, broad side facing Valdin. The nacreous reflections of sunlight off its steel stung his eyes, forcing him to shield them. Squinting, his sight refocused on the blade. His blood ceased to flow at what he saw

  The wrapping around the sword’s hilt had fallen away, revealing what lay beneath. The hilt and cross guard, above the grip, were worked into the likeness of a roaring lion’s face, shining gold with brilliant sapphires for eyes. Light glimmered off the emblem. Whispers of hope from a few in the crowd fell on Valdin’s ears like a death sentence read from the bench. Just like the ones he’d read to so many shadow attuned over the last fifteen years. He knew only two blades that bore such markings. One had been Rend’s Valor—Agar’s own weapon—taken with him to the grave when he’d fallen during the Great Shadow War. The other—

  “Friend Slayer,” Shinzar murmured from somewhere behind Valdin, voice practically humming with awed amazement.

  Shocked cries rose from the crowd, but Valdin barely heard them. He locked eyes with the stranger. The way he stood, so confident in the face of what should have been certain death. The contours of his stern face, seemingly unchanged by the passage of time. Even the unpresuming crisscross hatch of his rough-spun cloak. The eyes made it hard to tell, but... No, it wasn’t possible. Valdin felt himself shaking with equal parts rage and fear. A babe somewhere in the crowd giggled, its mother too shocked by the unfolding events to shush it.

  “Who are you?” he whispered. The man gave no reply, only met his eyes with the dark pits that lay in his sockets. Yet despite those shadow-possessed eyes, there was no mistaking the stranger’s other features. And they revealed that he was no stranger at all. Fear was practically choking Valdin as he cried out: “No. I killed you. You can’t be here. I killed you, gave you away. Disbanded the Symposium.”

  The stranger turned his back to him. He faced the onlookers gathered before the Senate, raising his sword sideways before him. An old Keeper’s salute.

  This was impossible. A living nightmare. Valdin reached out for all the elemental power he could summon. If he killed half the people in the square it would be worth it to end this man.

  “Who am I?” the man asked. The power in that voice stayed Valdin’s hand, sent him stumbling back, all thoughts of stabbing the man in the back forgotten.

  “My name is Grand Master Keeper Taul Bladesorrow.” He gazed around at the now uncertain Parents and cowering onlookers.

  “I’ll be your specter no longer,” he boomed. “And I will see justice done.”

  Part 3: Trial

  42

  Valdin

  From time to time I hear one say that the Fifth Lesson is the cruelest. To these I always ask a simple question: If you knew that in several years’ time your finger would grow gangrenous and kill you, would you not cut it off now? I needn’t restate the answer I always receive. Yet, if an individual would take such action to save him or herself, then shouldn’t too a
n Aldur take comparable action whenever needed to protect the Path’s sanctity? In this way, I find the Fifth to be the most self-evident of The Lessons.

  -Excerpt from Stephan Falconwing’s Commentaries on The Lessons

  HE LAY PROSTRATE ON a cold floor in a dank chamber, surrounded by a triangular configuration of tables. Each Aldur was seated, four to a table, save a vacant chair that ordinarily would have been Valdin’s own. Their eyes bored into him, hard and pitiless. Valdin’s throat ached, the sort of constricted, throbbing pain that only comes from intense grief. Mucus clung to his unshaven face. Water gurgled from the room’s elemental shrine, hitting his ears like the moaning of a nauseous man. His wrists ached from where they’d had him chained to the willoak at the shrine’s center.

  “Stephan, please,” Valdin said, words barely audible, coming with great effort. “It needn’t be this way. She is good, and a Quintis besides. Devan has confirmed it. She could be one of us soon. You cannot—must not—condemn her for an act that has not yet even come to pass.”

  Valdin looked into Falconwing’s face. He was seated at the apex of the triangular formation of tables. His hair was spiked, face painted in the traditional fashion, black inverted pyramids covering his cheeks. The five-color velvet robe he wore had a collar so tall it nearly overtook the tips of his hair.

  Valdin could all but taste his dislike for the man. But Falconwing held his beloved’s life in his hands. Valdin would do anything the man wanted.

  “Cease this foolishness, Virtuo Pettur.” Falconwing spoke in the ancient tongue. “You embarrass us all. The Virtuo Timi has already delivered his report to this assemblage. He has gone above and beyond searching for ways to preserve this Lineartress of yours. It is not to be.”

  “But Stephan, The Lessons. She’s to be one of us. We can’t kill one of our—”

  “Do not presume to lecture me on The Lessons,” Falconwing boomed, bursting from his seat like a spout of magma. Valdin cowered away, like one flinching back from an abuser. “Potential does not equate to membership. She is no more an Aldur than this table, or the chairs we sit upon.”

  Sputum now hung in long strands from Valdin’s mouth. He turned to the one seated at Falconwing’s right hand. His hair and face were arrayed in a similar manner, though he was garbed in a pale, rough-spun cloak, causing him to look little more than a vagabond when compared to Falconwing’s finery. A new scar stood out at the edge of one of his eyes, still partly scabbed over. Some small part of Valdin’s mind wondered why it hadn’t been healed.

  “Devan, please. There must be a way. I have seen you work wonders with the Path. Surely it can be done?”

  Devan’s expression appeared unsettled. The first modicum of hope Valdin has seen since arriving at the Conclave. Devan crushed it with his next words.

  “Val,” he murmured, using the common tongue, “I’ve spent over a decade. There’s nothing more.”

  “Spend another if you must.” He hurled himself at the hem of Devan’s cloak. “There must be something.”

  “Enough of this,” Falconwing said, pushing Valdin back with a booted foot. “Virtuo Timi. Go. And do what must be done.”

  Devan looked down at Valdin, eyes glistening.

  “Val. Old friend. I am sorry.” He cast a sidelong glance at Falconwing. “You must know I would never annihilate her if I thought there might still be hope.” His eyes seemed to beg for understanding.

  “I am no friend of yours.” Valdin spat to the side, mucus and spittle splattering on the stone floor.

  Devan’s expression hardened. Without further words he rose, drew power from the shrine, and peregrinated.

  Valdin gasped at the empty space where Devan had been, then leapt to his feet. He reached for the elemental trail Devan had left, intending to latch on and follow.

  His senses slammed into an invisible barrier, like running headlong into a stone wall. It sent him sprawling back to the floor, wheezing for breath. When his eyes refocused, Falconwing stood over him, backed by angry murmurs from the remaining assemblage.

  “You tread dangerously, Virtuo Pettur. You shall remain here until the deed is done.”

  Valdin clenched his hands into balls, nails drawing blood from his palms.

  “Laws were meant to protect, Stephan,” he said between gasping breaths. “To create a stable society, with justice for all. No law is worth following if it allows a result such as this. The execution of an innocent for an act not yet committed. Such barbarity has no right to even call itself law. You’re no better than the Seven.”

  Rage flared in Falconwing’s eyes, and Valdin felt him reach out for power. Valdin suddenly felt drained, finding he had no energy left to shield himself from the attack. Perhaps this would be easier. The hurting would stop if he was dead.

  Devan reappeared with the subtle pop of one who had just moved through time and place. Stephan released his power, face reddening. Valdin stared into Devan’s face, the scar that had been fresh just moments earlier now all but healed, a vague mark at the corner of his eye. A sob welled up in Valdin’s throat at what he saw in Devan’s expression.

  “It is done, Virtuo af Virtuo,” Devan said, nodding to Falconwing. Then, without waiting for a response, or sparing Valdin a glance, he peregrinated away once more.

  The grief overtook Valdin, wails racking through him.

  Falconwing’s top lip curled as he dismissed the assembled Aldur.

  43

  Taul

  My son, Atux, was afflicted with a terrible illness. The Light Master Keeper failed to heal him, every alchemist in the City failed to heal him. I even sought assistance from the Temple. Their best healer failed.

  Then, one morning when I thought all hope lost, a young man came to my door, insisting he could cure my son. He took Atux to the Quadrangle and channeled. But not just any channel—a vitality dome, one of the five lost Invocations. It is said the dome slows time for those within it, giving the healer time to untangle the illness from the afflicted. I know not whether this is accurate, but I do know it worked. Atux lives!

  And so the man who came to be known as Taul Bladesorrow made his abilities known to all of Agarsfar.

  -Excerpt from Book of the Keepers

  GRAND MASTER KEEPER Taul Bladesorrow awoke to blinding light all around him. Up, down. Front, back. Everywhere. His whole body ached. The ploy may have kept him and the boy alive for now, but that hadn’t prevented the Parents from beating him to Elsewhere and beyond once he’d been dragged from public view. Valdin had been surprisingly absent during the abuse. He’d thought for sure the man would have been there to land the first blow.

  His shoulders ached most of all. He tried to shrug them, but found he couldn’t. His wrists seemed to be chained to the ceiling, at such a height where his feet struggled to touch the floor. An iron collar weighed from his neck, forcing his chin towards his chest.

  As his eyes adjusted and the sensation of spinning subsided, he began to make out that he was in a small, square room. There were no windows and seemed to be no door, though he knew that was just an elementalist’s trick. The walls were made of simple stone, though they’d been infused with some sort of elemental incantation to cast the unnatural glow that was still half blinding him.

  Ferrin reclined in a corner. His russet hair was a mess and a trickle of blood had dried on his upper lip, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. The injury he’d suffered earlier seemed to have been healed. The injury he’d suffered right before...

  Poor Westcott. Another death to carry on Taul’s already inundated conscience. He closed his eyes once more and tried to rub at his forehead before he remembered the shackles.

  “Boy,” he rasped. His voice sounded like the whimper of a dying hound. Ferrin lifted his head. “How long have we been here?” It hurt his ribs to speak.

  Ferrin glared, then dropped his head once more.

  Light help me, Taul thought. He was short on friends as it was. The last thing he needed was the boy’s pouting.

&
nbsp; “Ferrin, please. I don’t need any more troubles than I’ve already got.”

  “Than you’ve got?” the boy shot back. “I’m sorry to trouble you, Grand Master Keeper.”

  Agar above! What right did Ferrin have to be angry after what his impatience had done to Westcott? Anger burned in his raw throat.

  “Surely you won’t hold that against me. You wouldn’t have believed I was Taul Bladesorrow even if I’d tried to tell you.”

  “We’ll never know, will we?” Ferrin jangled at the collar around his own neck with his hands. “But you can be absolutely sure I won’t believe a thing you say now. Betrayer.”

  “You ungrateful—” Taul almost said skomn but choked it back. Some things couldn’t be unsaid. “You’ve no right sitting a high panther. I save you light knows how many times, then I take you to Westcott, put him in an impossible situation. And you go prancing into the streets for all the City to see?”

  “Jenzara needs—”

  “Jenzara needs us to rescue her,” he roared, ignoring the pain. “Not chained up in the depths of Tragnè City with the only other man in the City who could have helped us dead. Dead because of your fool-headed antics.”

  The boy’s mouth moved soundlessly, then clamped shut. Taul almost felt bad for those last words he’d spoken. Almost.

  “Use your head, boy,” he went on. “You think if I’d had some grand plot to lead a Northern uprising, and then survived the Grand Father’s supposed suppression of said uprising, that I’d have just spent the past fifteen years lazing about Falume growing corn?”

  “I don’t know what a traitor like you might do,” the boy retorted, though he spoke the words into the floor with noticeably less vitriol than before. “Why haven’t they killed you yet, anyway? I should think if there was anyone they’d strictly adhere to the Edicts for, it’d be you.”

  Taul tried to scoff, but managed only a pained gurgle. He attempted to shift his weight to ease the tension on his arm sockets, but succeeded in only cramping his right calf.