Unbonded (First of the Blade Book 1)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “I have enough practice to be the same sword fighter I have always been,” she said.

  Timo frowned. “Are you?”

  “What sort of question is that?”

  “It’s just… I have to wonder if you are the same. Something changed for you, Imogen.”

  She wasn’t the one who had changed, but Timo wouldn’t see it that way. He needed her help. And he was her brother. She would do this for him, and once he was safe, perhaps even back with their people, then…

  Imogen wasn’t exactly sure what would be next for her.

  Back to Gaspar and Yoran, possibly. Or maybe she would take up another bond quest.

  She just didn’t know.

  But first, she didn’t disagree that they needed to hunt down this Sul’toral. If one was active in this part of the world, she wasn’t opposed to tracking them. They were the epitome of dark sorcery, and that was exactly what her people trained in being able to handle.

  In that, this wasn’t so different than her own bond quest: hunt the hyadan and destroy the keystone that controlled them—a task that, when she had taken it upon herself, had seemed almost impossible.

  But she had completed it—a bond quest that had been assigned to her rather than one she had chosen herself. She didn’t resent it, though perhaps she should have. With everything that she had encountered, perhaps resenting what had been asked of her made more sense than simply accepting it.

  “I had not known you were unbonded,” Timo said.

  “I haven’t been unbonded for that long,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.

  Even now, it was difficult to talk about what she’d been through. She had left her homeland in search of understanding. At least, in search of something that would help her know how to best help her people. That was what had been asked of her. As a failure in the sacred temple, Imogen had gladly taken that assignment.

  The time away had made her into someone different. In that, Timo wasn’t wrong. She had changed. And she didn’t care that she had. She embraced this person.

  “We could call your friends,” Timo said.

  She didn’t take her gaze off the fire, the warmth enveloping her. “This is not something they should be involved in.”

  “They wouldn’t want to help you?”

  “They would want to help,” she said.

  Imogen knew that they would. She had so few precious friends as it was—people who had come to work with her and help her, asking nothing in return—that leaving behind the ones she had was difficult. But this was something she needed, more for herself than for any other reason.

  Timo wouldn’t understand that. He wouldn’t understand that her friends did not ask much from her. Wouldn’t understand that the reason she had come, and had done everything she had, was because of her own need to find purpose.

  Silence built between them, lingering long enough to become uncomfortable, though Imogen wasn’t about to break it.

  “What happened on your bond quest?” Timo asked finally.

  It was about time they had this conversation, though she had been avoiding it.

  “I was tasked with removing the hyadan as a threat,” she said. She thought Timo would understand the hyadan. At least, most within the Leier lands did. Though they may never expect they would have to face one, they knew what they were, and the stories of how the hyadan had destroyed parts of their homeland ages ago still lingered. “I did what was asked of me. I was always going to do what was asked of me.”

  Timo was quiet for a few moments as he watched her, and though she watched him in return, she couldn’t read anything in his gaze.

  “Why that quest?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It never seemed like that quest was appropriate for you. That’s why I didn’t understand. Why did you choose that one?”

  Imogen stared at her hands as the crackling fire filled the silence of the night. It was a reasonable question, especially given that most who took a quest chose it themselves. “You don’t think I should have gone after the hyadan?”

  “They hadn’t been seen in our homeland in generations. They weren’t a threat.”

  “Not to us, but others. Those outside of our home.”

  “Then you should have let others take care of it,” Timo said.

  “Others could not have succeeded.”

  Timo watched her, finally shaking his head. “We both know that’s not true.”

  She didn’t want to argue with him. Others might have been successful, but they wouldn’t have taken that on as a task for themselves. The hyadan were dangerous, but not dangerous to their people. The Leier didn’t have magic. They were not the target.

  But there was a part of Imogen that had been unwilling to sit back while those creatures were free, and even that wasn’t the entire reason. Had it been up to her, she probably would have left them alone. Others could have dealt with them, and probably could have done so far more effectively than she could. Had she not been asked to take this bond quest, she probably would’ve chosen something different. Something easier.

  And what would she have uncovered for herself?

  Not what she had learned. She knew that, as much as she knew that her bond quest had changed her in ways she could no longer come back from—in ways she no longer wanted to come back from. She couldn’t help that she now saw the world differently.

  “What about you?” she asked. “You haven’t told me everything.”

  “I’ve been chasing sorcerers,” Timo said, and he rested his head against one of the stones, looking up at the growing darkness. “That was my bond.”

  Imogen wished she had been there when Timo had taken his bond quest. Maybe she could have said something and intervened, though knowing him, he might not have listened. She wasn’t there when he had been promoted to First of the Blade. She hadn’t been there for so many of the things that mattered to her brother, and perhaps that bothered him more than he let on.

  Now she didn’t know him the way she once had. She hadn’t known him for a long time, in fact. He didn’t know her, either.

  “How many sorcerers did you find?” she asked.

  “Scores. Several Toral.” He shook his head.

  Learning that her brother had some experience with the Toral was one more surprise for her. They were powerful. Some were sorcerers, though not all. And Timo had faced them.

  “We were not able to kill nearly as many of them as we wanted.” There was a heavy weight of disappointment in his voice.

  Imogen glanced over to her brother and saw the darkness in his furrowed brow and in his eyes. How much had he lost in his quest to complete his bond? In her own journey, she had discovered something unexpected. Not just about herself, but about the sorcerers and about the Toral, leading her to question the task the Leier had long ago taken upon themselves.

  “What about you? Have you faced any Toral?”

  She nodded. “Indirectly.”

  Her experience with the Toral, much like her experience with sorcerers, was such that she didn’t view them in the same way her brother or most of her people would. The Toral were powerful, but not all were evil.

  “Did they get away?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “You killed one?”

  The eagerness in his voice repulsed her. How could the Leier serve in that way? How could she have let her brother get to that point?

  “I didn’t kill her. We never attempted to. We worked with her.”

  Doing so hadn’t been for Imogen’s bond quest, but it had saved others. That had been worthwhile. She had done many things that she could consider worthwhile.

  He stared for a long moment before turning away to look at the fire. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft. “You have changed so much.”

  There were times when he was no different than the Timo she remembered, and other times when he seemed drastically different. “And you have not?”

  Timo shrugged. “Why w
ould I want to change? Why would I need to? I serve the Leier, doing what you should want to do.”

  “You’re doing what you want to do,” she said.

  He grunted and shook his head as he leaned his head back. He looked up at the sky, away from Imogen, staring into the darkness. “Perhaps this was a mistake.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I used to think about what would happen if the two of us could fight side by side,” Timo said. “I dreamed of it.”

  Imogen smiled to herself. “I always wished we would have that chance as well. But now we can. We can find Dheleus, destroy him, and finish your quest, and then you can return to the homeland.”

  “Just me?”

  “I’m not sure what I need to do.”

  “You’d go back to them. To magic.”

  “That’s not it either,” she said.

  “You don’t seem like you want to do this.”

  “That’s not the case.”

  “You know, there was a time when you would’ve wanted to hunt the sorcerers as much as I do. You would have been eager to take this on.”

  Was that true? Or worse, was that how he saw her?

  “No,” she said.

  “I was there, Imogen. I was there when you were raised, when you trained, and when you became the First of the Blade.” Her brother managed to make it sound almost snide with the way he said it.

  She shook her head. “You might have been there, but you never really understood.”

  And he hadn’t really been there. Timo had been around when she had been given her blade as First, but he hadn’t been there when she had taken her bond quest. She had left the temple to take that journey, and had done so without him. Without anybody within the Leier lands knowing.

  But she wasn’t going to argue that with Timo. There was no point in doing so.

  She could choose to return and serve in the army, hunting rogue Koral sorcerers or guarding the borders of their territory, but none of that would be fulfilling. Maybe that was the real reason for her hesitation in returning.

  Not that she could tell Timo that. He would not understand.

  “Get some rest,” she said, looking over to her brother. “We can talk in the morning.”

  “And what about the Porapeth?”

  “What about him?”

  Imogen glanced over to where Benji rested. He was curled up beside the rock like a cat, his arms wrapped around his knees, which were pressed against his chest. He had rolled closer to the fire, though not so close as to be in any danger from it.

  “Do you intend to have him come along with us?” Timo asked.

  “A Porapeth can help us. If this is about finding that kind of magic, then we should take advantage of it.”

  “I would rather go off on our own. It’d be safer.”

  “It’s not, though,” Imogen said. “And it becomes less likely that we will succeed if we do that. We won’t find what we need.”

  “Maybe we won’t anyway.”

  She took a deep breath, letting it out, and turned her attention back to the fire.

  Timo dozed off, slowly snoring, and Imogen sat and focused. She found herself drifting into her meditative stance, the way of finding access to the sacred patterns. She had trained for years to understand how. As she stared at the fire and felt the warm, comfortable sense radiating from it, she let herself transition.

  It was a state of mindlessness, but also one that involved her finding some higher understanding. In doing so, there was a part of her that separated from the rest of her. She let herself drift and focused on the sacred patterns.

  That meditation involved concentrating on one pattern, then another, and using that concentration to memorize these patterns and summon the power within them. They were sacred patterns for a reason—they drew upon something more than the sword.

  Imogen worked through each of them in her mind. She didn’t need to do so with her physical body, as there was no point in it, but she could trace through those patterns, mentally sparring and preparing.

  It reminded her of what she had seen of the Chain Breaker, a skilled fighter who had fought on her side. She was thankful she had never been forced to try to take him down. She didn’t know if she would have the necessary skill to do so. At least, not alone. With enough of the Leier, she had little doubt that they would be able to contain him and his magic. But knowing him as she did, and having come to understand the kind of power he possessed, she did not want to remove him as a threat.

  Imogen focused on one pattern, then the next, then the next. Finally, she opened her eyes.

  She was not alone.

  Benji sat across the fire from her. The flames crackled, firelight reflecting in his silver eyes as he watched her. A sliver of moonlight shone overhead, seemingly adding to the color in his eyes. Behind her, she could hear Timo and his regular breathing, and she suspected that he was not going to awaken anytime soon.

  “Have you finished with your trance?” Benji asked.

  “It is not a trance,” she said.

  “You were working on magic.”

  “I am a Leier, so I don’t have any access to magic.”

  He chuckled. “You can tell yourself that, but we both know that’s not entirely true.”

  Long ago, Imogen would’ve argued with him. She would have agreed with her own statement that she had no access to magic, nothing that would make her think she could have power that she should not.

  All of that had changed when she went to Yoran.

  Imogen had seen magic in a different light, which had removed some of the darkness to it and also changed her own view of it.

  And now…

  She no longer knew the truth.

  “They are the sacred patterns,” she explained.

  “Sacred because they help you find magic,” Benji said. “You can harness it, though you do so in your own unique way. It has always impressed me that the Leier believe they can use their sword skills to defeat others with what they claim is not magic.” He started to laugh. “But then again, it is easy for somebody to tell themselves that they don’t have the thing they fear.”

  “We do not have magic.”

  “See?”

  “Why are you here?”

  He looked over his shoulder before turning his attention back to her. “I think we’ve already established why I’m here. I am injured.”

  “Not so injured that you need to stay here.”

  He shrugged. “I suppose I’m not.”

  “Why were you leading those other two through the forest?”

  “I told you. They hired me.”

  Imogen crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “And we both know there’s something more to that story.”

  “See?” Benji said, chuckling.

  “See what?”

  “You’re smarter than you let on.”

  “I haven’t tried to hide anything.”

  “No, perhaps not, but you’re definitely smarter than you let on.” He glanced over to Timo. “He, on the other hand, has allowed his anger to cloud his mind.”

  “That has always been his problem,” she said.

  “Always? You’ve known him a long time.”

  “He’s my brother,” she said softly.

  “A brother. Then it means…”

  Benji frowned, tipping his head to the side and sniffing, almost as if trying to breathe some mysterious substance in the air. “It means that the two of you have lost something.” He glanced over to Timo, and he let out a small laugh. “I see. You have lost family.”

  “We have.”

  “And he thinks to reclaim them?”

  “He wants to get vengeance for what happened,” she said.

  Benji nodded to her. “And you?”

  “I served my people and removed a dark threat.”

  “Ah. The hyadan.”

  She tensed. She shouldn’t be surprised a Porapeth would know about the hyadan, though the fact that he knew so much about her people, and
everything she had gone through, left her troubled.

  “What do you know about them?” she asked.

  “There was a time long ago, when a powerful sorcerer by the name of Ozabet gathered remnants of shadow and bound them to the people long since gone from this world. The shadow changed them, giving them a thirst for something they could not have. They became a tool. A weapon. And Ozabet unleashed the power of the hyadan into the world. He created a way of holding them, a way of controlling them.” He watched her, and there was a knowing look in his eyes. “It was the keystone. The bond that contained them.”

  His choice of words did not slip past her.

  “What else do you know?” Imogen asked.

  “I am Benji the Elder, one of the Porapeth. I know many things.”

  “What do you know about the adlet?”

  “That is a very different question,” he said. “And has nothing to do with the Leier, does it?”

  “It didn’t until we got involved,” she replied.

  Benji started to laugh, then winced, reaching with his good hand to grab his shoulder. “Fuck. I really wish that wouldn’t happen. I don’t like it.”

  “You don’t like being injured?”

  He cocked a brow, looking over to her. “Do you like being injured?”

  “I don’t have much experience with it.”

  He chuckled. “I suppose not. As a Leier, you have your sacred patterns to protect you, don’t you?”

  “I’m not a master,” she said. She ran her hand over her sword. There were no notches along the blade to signify greater rank than she possessed.

  He laughed again and shook his head, looking all around before settling his gaze back on her. “But you studied the sacred patterns. Though we should call them what they are.”

  “You can call them whatever you want,” Imogen said.

  “And I have, but you continue to deny it. I find that most intriguing, though to be honest, I find everything about the Leier intriguing.”

  “How much experience with the Leier do you have?”

  “More than most of my kind,” he said. He chuckled again and immediately let out a hiss, grabbing at his shoulder. He looked across the fire at her. “I must say, you are most surprising. Because if I didn’t know better, I would not have known that you were a Leier. Then I see your sacred blade, the bond gift you have, and I realize that you must be one. But you’re different. Unique.”