The Godborn

by Paul S. Kemp

  He lunged at the Shadovar, noting with horror and fascination that the shade’s broken nose already had ceased bleeding—the bones reshaping themselves as the flesh regenerated. The Shadovar spit a mouthful of blood, parried Vasen’s overhead slash with his own blade, and loosed a kick that struck Vasen in the abdomen and doubled him over. Vasen’s breath rushed out of him, but he got his shield up in time to block a slash that otherwise would have decapitated him. He swung his blade at the Shadovar’s leg to drive him back a step.

  They regarded each other for a moment, Vasen’s light dueling with the Shadovar’s darkness while Vasen’s fellow Dawnswords surrounded the veserab and hacked at its flesh.

  Vasen moved first, bounding forward and stabbing low. The shade sidestepped the blow and loosed a cross slash for Vasen’s side, but Vasen swept the blade out wide with his shield and lashed out with a backhand. The pommel of his sword caught the Shadovar flush in the cheek, sent him reeling. From nowhere Orsin reared up behind the shade and leaped on his back, his quarterstaff drawn across the Shadovar’s throat, his legs wrapped around the shade’s waist.

  The shade’s red eyes flared with surprise and fear. The darkness around him swirled, churned. He spun a circle, gagging, trying to shed Orsin, but the deva covered him like a cloak, his arms hooked around his quarterstaff, squeezing. The shade tried awkwardly to bring his large sword to bear on Orsin, but the deva’s position made it difficult.

  Vasen did not hesitate. He lunged forward and stabbed the Shadovar through the midsection. The shade screamed when Vasen’s glowing blade cut through the black armor, the gray flesh. Blood gushed from the wound. The shade staggered under Orsin’s weight, then fell to the muck. The moment he hit the ground Orsin rolled off of him and Vasen stepped forward and with a downward slash decapitated the Shadovar.

  “Their flesh regenerates only while they live,” Orsin said. The deva was not even breathing hard. “This one is done.”

  But not the other.

  To Vasen’s right, the veserab wailed its dying shrieks as Eldris, Nald, and Byrne’s swords rose and fell on its quivering flesh. Black blood stained their weapons, coated the creature’s blue hide. Its wings flapped feebly as it made one last effort to get airborne, but it was too wounded to fly and only managed a clumsy lurch. The Dawnswords’ blades ran it through. Its body spasmed as it died.

  Vasen scanned the riverbank for the other Shadovar, spotted him twenty paces down the river, on the opposite side, strapping himself into his saddle.

  “Shoot him!” Vasen said, pointing.

  The second Shadovar’s veserab shrieked in answer, showing its fangs. It beat its wings and tensed to take flight while Eldris, the best crossbowman among the Dawnswords, dropped his blade, took crossbow in hand, and cocked it rapidly.

  Vasen ran in the Shadovar’s direction, although he had no idea what he intended. Byrne, Nald, and Orsin trailed him.

  The sails of the veserab’s wings collected air and the creature rose into the sky, and with it went Vasen’s hope. The pilgrims were more than a day away from the abbey, more than a day away from the Dales. The Shadovar would escape, report their presence, and a full patrol would come and find the pilgrims on the plains. Vasen would not be able to protect them.

  Eldris’s crossbow sang and a bolt sizzled through the shadows and tore a gash in the membrane of the veserab’s wing. The creatures emitted a highpitched shriek, lurched, beat its wings frantically, and spiraled back to the ground. A cloud of shadows swirled around the Shadovar and his mount. The huge creature lurched about on the ground, shrieking, flapping its wounded wing. The Shadovar spun in the saddle, his red eyes glowing in the black hole of his face. His gaze fixed on Eldris and he held forth his free hand. A column of dark energy streaked across the river at Eldris, blasted him in the chest, lifted him from his feet, and drove him to the earth.

  “Eldris!” shouted Nald, but already Eldris had rolled to his stomach and climbed to all fours.

  Meanwhile the Shadovar shouted at his mount, thumped it in the side with the flat of his blade.

  “We can’t let him escape!” Vasen said.

  Byrne and Nald already had crossbows to hand and let fly, one bolt plowing into the soft earth beside the veserab, the other striking the Shadovar but dying in his darkness before ever reaching flesh or armor.

  Vasen eyed the river, desperate. It was too wide. He’d never get across in time.

  “Keep firing,” he said, although he knew it would be futile.

  Responding to the furious prompts of its master, the veserab again coiled its body and launched itself into the air. Its wounded wing made flight awkward, and for a moment it struggled to get height under it. The Shadovar shouted at it, slapped its side, all the while staring back at Vasen with hate in his face.

  “Take this,” Orsin said, and shoved his quarterstaff into Vasen’s hand. Before Vasen could ask any questions, the deva was gone, sprinting over the uneven ground, zagging through the thick scrub and bounding over fallen logs, toward the river.

  “What’s he doing?” Byrne asked, reloading his crossbow.

  “I don’t know. Come on.”

  Vasen and Nald and Byrne ran after Orsin but could not approach the deva’s speed. Orsin reached the river at a dead sprint and launched himself into the air. A column of shadow formed under Orsin’s feet as he went airborne and Vasen, Byrne, and Nald stopped cold, gasping as Orsin sailed high into the air, completely over the river and into the airborne veserab and its rider.

  “By the light,” Nald said.

  Vasen thought light had little to do with Orsin’s feat.

  The deva hit mount and rider in a tangle of limbs and wings and swirling shadows. Unready for the impact or the weight, the veserab lurched sidewise and lost altitude. It shrieked, its wings beating furiously to keep it airborne. Orsin hung on, swinging free in the air, one hand closed on the veserab’s saddle strap, one hand around the Shadovar’s ankle.

  “Shoot it!” Vasen said. “Shoot it!”

  Nald and Byrne fired again, one after another, the bolts slamming into the veserab’s flank.

  It keened with pain and lurched sideways. Blood sprayed from its wounded side, spattered the scrub below. Orsin swung like a pendulum but did not let go.

  The Shadovar, nearly unseated by the lurches of the wounded veserab, managed to steady himself enough to hack downward at Orsin with his black sword. Orsin released his grip on the Shadovar’s ankle to avoid losing a hand, but before the Shadovar could pull his arm and blade back, Orsin seized his wrist. The moment he had it, he twisted his grip somehow and the Shadovar shouted with pain. The sword fell from the shade’s fist and spun to the ground. Still holding the Shadovar by the wrist, Orsin let go his hold on the veserab’s strap and took the shade’s arm with both hands. Using the arm as a lever, he flipped his legs up and got them under the armpit and around the Shadovar’s neck. The veserab careened wildly through the sky as the men atop it struggled. A fog of shadows swirled around Orsin and the Shadovar. Vasen could see only glimpses of the tangle of limbs, the Shadovar’s gauntleted fist rising and falling as he punched at Orsin.

  “Come on!” Vasen said, and crashed through the scrub toward the river. He lunged into the cold water without stopping, Byrne and Nald on his heels. He hoped that his height would keep his head above water.

  The veserab shrieked again, and so, too, did the Shadovar. Orsin dislodged the Shadovar from his mount and shade and man plummeted earthward in a cloud of shadows.

  Vasen cursed, the current pulling hard at him, turning his straight course into a diagonal, but the water never rose above his chest and he cleared the river. Eldris and Nald called out behind him. Neither was as tall as he, and both were getting pulled downstream by the current.

  “Help them, Eldris!” he shouted over his shoulder, not knowing if Eldris could even hear him.

  He clambered up the muddy bank, his boots slipping in the mud, using the scrub to heave himself up. By the time he crested the top,
shadows oozed from his flesh. Faith filled him and he channeled it into his blade. The weapon ignited, lit with a rosy light.

  He spotted Orsin and the Shadovar twenty paces to his right. Darkness churned around the Shadovar and he appeared unwounded from the fall. Orsin circled him at a few paces, favoring a wounded leg.

  Vasen charged straight at them. He shouted Orsin’s name as he ran and hurled the deva’s quarterstaff toward him. The weapon spun wildly as it flew, but Orsin bounded back from the Shadovar on one leg, caught it, and spun it over his head and before him so fast it hummed.

  The Shadovar’s red eyes glared as he looked first at Orsin, then at Vasen. He extended a hand at each and black energy streaked from his palms. Orsin tried to dive aside but his leg slowed him and the bolt caught him in the hip, spun him halfway around, and slammed him to the earth. Vasen interposed his shield and the bolt slammed into the steel so hard it drove him from his feet. The metal cooled at the magic’s touch, and dark energy crept in tendrils around the shield’s edge and dissolved the strap, but it dissipated before doing any more harm.

  The Shadovar drew a secondary weapon, a black mace, from his weapon belt and stalked toward Orsin. The deva rolled to his side, tried to stand on his wounded leg—Vasen could see it was broken—and fell back to the earth, grunting with pain. The Shadovar would kill him easily.

  Vasen leaped to his feet and renewed his charge, shouting a prayer to Amaunator and channeling the power of his faith into his shield. The entire disk blazed with light. He gripped its edge in his hands, spun a circle, and hurled it at the shade, who saw it coming a moment too late. The blazing shield cut through the darkness around the shade, slammed into his side, and staggered him, continuing to blaze with Amaunator’s light. Wincing in the blazing light, the Shadovar recoiled and shaded his eyes with his own shield.

  Vasen rushed toward him, his blade held in a two-handed grip. Orsin planted his quarterstaff in the soil and used it to pull himself to his feet, hopping on his one good leg.

  Vasen hadn’t taken four strides before the Shadovar’s darkness extinguished the light from his shield. Vasen didn’t care. His blade glowed with light enough.

  He roared as he slashed downward, a blow to cleave the shade’s helm and split his skull. The Shadovar parried with his shield, bounded a step back, and countered with a swing of his mace that clipped Vasen on the shoulder. A flash of pain, then numbness. His arm hung limp from his shoulder, but he held his blade in one hand and stabbed and slashed, driving the Shadovar back a step.

  And then Orsin was there, barely mobile, but with his quarterstaff still a whirling, spinning line of oak. The Shadovar parried with shield and mace, backing up under the onslaught of metal and wood, the darkness around him whirling like a thunderhead.

  Vasen ducked under a too-casual mace swing, stepped past the Shadovar’s shield, and stabbed up under the shade’s breastplate. He felt his glowing weapon grate against metal plates, pierce the mail beneath, slide into flesh, and grind against bone. The Shadovar grunted with pain, red eyes wide. He dropped his mace and grabbed at Vasen with his free hand, as if he would push him away. Orsin’s quarterstaff slammed into the shade’s temple, sending his helm from his bald head.

  Vasen jerked his blade free and the Shadovar hit the ground like a felled cow, the darkness about him still swirling. Vasen straddled him, reversed his grip, and drove his blade downward . . . into the earth.

  The Shadovar was gone.

  “Damn it,” said Vasen, looking around frantically.

  Orsin sagged to the ground, wincing from pain. “He is not far. Their power allows them to step from shadow to shadow, but not over long distances.”

  Vasen spun around, eyeing the thigh-high whipgrass, the scrub bushes, the solitary broadleaf tree here and there. He saw nothing.

  “He escaped us!” Vasen shouted, as Byrne, Eldris, and Nald climbed over the river bank. “He’s near and sorely wounded!”

  “He’ll heal rapidly,” said Orsin, feeling the break in his leg.

  Vasen knew. He snatched his shield from the ground, picked a direction, and started walking.

  “Light,” Vasen called, and all four servants of Amaunator used the power of their god to light their swords. Holding them high, they scoured the nearby plains.

  “Here!” Eldris called, and Vasen and the others sprinted to his side. Eldris crouched near a broadleaf tree.

  “It’s soaked with blood,” he said, touching the bole of the tree and holding up his fingers, red with Shadovar blood.

  Vasen sheathed his sword, darkness whirling around him. “Then he’s gone. We’ll be pursued soon enough.”

  “His mount abandoned him, at least,” Byrne said, nodding at the dark sky. The wounded veserab was nowhere to be seen.

  “That earns us some time, but only some,” Vasen said. “He can move rapidly from shadow to shadow. A patrol will pick him up eventually.”

  “So they’ll be coming,” Nald said.

  Vasen looked up at the sky, thick with darkness and nodded. “They’ll be coming. Get the pilgrims ready. We need to move rapidly. Not the normal way. We take a direct path to the Dales.”

  Byrne’s eyes widened. “You’re certain that’s wise, First Blade?”

  “No, I’m not. But see to it.”

  “Aye.”

  As Byrne, Eldris, and Nald headed back to the cave where the pilgrims sheltered, Vasen hurried over to Orsin. The deva sat on the grass, his loose trousers rolled up over his thigh. Tattooed lines traced paths like veins the length of his leg. The man’s flesh really was a map of sorts, the places he’d been drawn on his flesh in cryptic swirls and angles.

  “Broken?” Vasen asked.

  “And the ankle.” Orsin nodded at his ankle. It was already purpling and the bones were angled all wrong. Only a furrow between his eyes suggested the pain he must have felt.

  Vasen crouched beside him. “I can help you.”

  “Your chain.”

  “What?”

  Orsin nodded at Vasen’s chest.

  It took Vasen a moment to realize what Orsin meant. The chain on which he wore Saint Abelar’s holy symbol was broken, its unlooped length hung up on a ridge of his armor.

  His heart fell and he cursed. “I have to find it!”

  He started to rise, remembered Orsin’s leg, remembered his duty.

  “After, of course. This may hurt, Orsin.”

  “May?”

  “Will,” Vasen acknowledged. “Ready yourself.”

  Using the symbol of Amaunator enameled on his shield as the focus for his power, Vasen gently laid the shield over Orsin’s leg and intoned a prayer of healing. The shield glowed softly and warmth flooded Vasen’s body. He focused the warmth in his hands, his palms, and placed them on the shield. The power passed through to Orsin’s flesh and the deva hissed through gritted teeth as bones reknit and bruises faded. Vasen slung his shield and pulled the deva to his feet. Orsin tested his weight on the leg.

  “Good?” Vasen asked.

  “Good. Your symbol?”

  “It must have fallen off in the fight,” Vasen said, looking hopelessly at the ground around him. “It’s . . . important to me.”

  “A silver rose,” Orsin said.

  Vasen was surprised the deva had noticed. “Yes. It belonged to the Oracle, and Saint Abelar before that.”

  “I’ll help you find it.”

  They slowly walked the area where they had fought the shade. Neither of them found the symbol. Eventually both of them got down on all fours, feeling through the grass, Vasen berating himself for his carelessness. He should have had it tucked under his mail shirt, not hanging free. He should have been more careful. Nine Hells, he could have lost it in the battle or he could have lost it while crossing the river.

  “Vasen,” Byrne called from across the river.

  “I know,” Vasen shouted over his shoulder, running his hands over the grass, hoping to feel the metal rose under his hands. Orsin stood, put a hand on Vasen�
�s shoulder.

  “I think it’s gone,” the deva said.

  “I know.”

  “We should go.”

  Vasen hung his head. How would he explain to the Oracle?

  “The pilgrims, First Blade,” Byrne called.

  And that was the word that dispelled Vasen’s self-pity. The pilgrim’s safety was more important than any holy symbol. He sighed, angry, sad, and stood.

  “Thank you for helping,” he said to Orsin.

  “Of course.”

  “The lines on your skin? What exactly are they?”

  Orsin looked down at his hands, covered in lines and swirls. “The story of my life.”

  “The story of your life can be read on your skin?”

  Orsin nodded. “Much of it. Where I’ve been, at least. But the point of the story isn’t to read it. It’s to write it. A man writes his story in the book of the world, Vasen. Or so I tell myself.”

  “Well, that’s a good story,” Vasen said, and Orsin chuckled. “Very good. A good story, indeed.”

  Byrne, Eldris, and Nald already had the pilgrims geared up and ready to set out. Vasen and Orsin sidestepped down the river bank and waded into the water.

  “You’ll not jump it this time?” Vasen said to him, smiling.

  Orsin smiled in return.

  “How did you . . . manage such a feat?”

  Orsin’s eyes narrowed with puzzlement. “How do you cause your blade to shine?”

  “You know the answer to that. With faith.”

  “And so it is with me. Your faith manifests as light. Mine . . . does not.”

  “But your god is . . . gone.”

  “Yes, but my faith is not.”

  “Well enough.” They waded into the water. “You are a strange man, Orsin.”

  “I think you said as much once already.”

  Vasen chuckled. “I thought maybe you needed a reminder. Maybe you should write it on your skin?”

  Orsin laughed. “Very good. Very good.”

  As they emerged on the other side of the river, Orsin adopted a more serious tone. “When there is time later, let’s discuss some things.”