Unbonded (First of the Blade Book 1)

by D. K. Holmberg

  She realized that it was later—or earlier—than she thought. She had believed it was still the middle of the night, but perhaps she had been meditating for most of the night. In that time, she had not rested as she needed to. Still, surprisingly, she found that she was recovered in a way she had not expected.

  She followed Benji. They trudged across the space leading to the larger section of dry ground, and she knew there would be something more. She was ready for it.

  “Where are we supposed to go?” she asked.

  He motioned into the distance. “It is not much farther. The ground and the wind and the trees have told me where we need to go.”

  “Did they tell you how to get through it?”

  “It is not me who needs to get through,” Benji said.

  He stopped, and he tapped his hand on a twisted tree while whispering something. As he did, the ground seemed to tremble, and a sucking sound made her think that some of the swamp was trying to pull free. He paused, pointing to the ground.

  “This is where your brother passed through,” he said. He watched her for a long moment, something unreadable in his eyes. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? You wanted to follow him and assist him as he chased the Sul’toral.”

  “I wanted to keep him from dying,” she said carefully. “If we stop the Sul’toral—”

  “Then this is where we must go,” he said.

  Imogen stood and straightened, looking out over the rock line. She could feel power in the air crackling against her. Every time the storm raged and the thunder rumbled, it crashed through her, leaving the air filled with a surge of energy that sizzled along her skin, poured through her body, and left her.

  “You must follow,” Benji said. His voice seemed to be a whisper, heading directly into her ear and then beyond. It was almost something mystical. His eyes glittered, as if he was amused by all of this.

  “Are you sure we can get past? Will your magic protect us?”

  “My magic,” he scoffed. “Didn’t we already talk about this, First of the Blade? I have no magic, and I resent the implication that I do.”

  “Then maybe you being magic can get us through,” she said.

  He looked over to her. “That is not what will carry us through.”

  “And what will, then?” she asked.

  “You’ve been fighting this knowledge for your entire life, have you not?”

  Imogen furrowed her brow in thought. He was a seer. Wasn’t that what he had said? He had told her that he could see things and that he was magic.

  “Are you responsible for what happened to bring me here?” she asked.

  “Don’t make me call you the same names I call your brother.”

  She frowned at him.

  He snorted. “Don’t attribute to others what you have within yourself.”

  Imogen tried to think through those lessons he had to be referring to. Benji was right. The lessons were there. She saw them at times when she meditated, though never clearly. If she could find that knowledge and understanding again, she could know what it was that she had to do.

  She had spent three years in the sacred temple, time where she had resisted every lesson Master Liu had given her. There was some aspect to her training that she did not quite grasp, all coming back to that first lesson: fluidity.

  And it was tied to something even more basic.

  She had never really embraced the truth of the sacred patterns. She had meditated on them before, but even as she had, there had been a rigidity to it.

  “What if I don’t have enough control over my patterns?” she asked.

  “Is it control you’re looking for?”

  “No,” she said softly, realizing that wasn’t it at all.

  When she had trained with Master Liu, it hadn’t been about control at all. It had been about understanding. She had gone to the sacred temple because she wanted to learn. She had wanted to master the sword and prove herself. At the time, she hadn’t been ready. Her mind had been closed, shut off from the truth of what she needed to learn. It had taken her departure, being sent away on a bond quest she had not chosen, for her to discover the truth.

  What would Master Liu think now? Maybe he had known all along.

  And now there was Benji. The Porapeth. He had come because he had seen something. He had come because of her.

  This whole time, she had thought she was coming for Timo, because her brother needed her. And he did. She was certain of it. But it wasn’t just that. Perhaps there was something more to this journey.

  She looked over to Benji, but she couldn’t see anything in the Porapeth’s eyes that answered her question. The silver reflected the occasional burst of lightning, and all she saw was the same flat expression that he had been wearing from the beginning.

  In this case, she didn’t think about precision.

  Imogen took a step back, unsheathing her sword in one fluid movement and starting with Petals on the Wind. That was the easiest for her to do, mostly because it felt like the one closest to her. The pattern was a part of her, more than the others, and it had been there ever since she had first trained with Master Liu. It was the one she thought she should know the best.

  Starting through it, she could feel something there, some part of her that resisted. This was the part that wanted—that demanded—precision. The training that had been instilled upon her ever since she picked up the blade made her want to be the most skilled of all her people. That motivation had driven her.

  And as she flowed now, Imogen tried to fight the need for precision, though it was difficult. Rigidity was a mistake.

  “Open yourself to it.”

  The whispered voice carried to her on the wind, and she no longer knew if it was Master Liu all those years ago trying to explain to her what she needed to do within the pattern, or if it was Benji now speaking to her, using the power of the wind and his own magic. All she knew was that she could feel something upon that breeze that carried toward her, and she was compelled to keep moving.

  She continued to flow. This time, as she moved within Petals on the Wind, she thought not of the rigidity of the pattern or the way she had been instructed to follow it. Instead, she focused on what that pattern could do, the way it would guide her in a dance.

  Imogen let the pattern move her hands in the way Master Liu had moved his years ago. There was a flow to it, but nothing precise. She let herself get caught up in the flow, let it carry her. As she did, energy began to build, a different sort than what she had felt before. When she had done it in the past, it had been unintentional. There had been times when she had accidentally drawn power, as well as times when she had harnessed the patterns in a way that had begun to build power through her, but never like this.

  Something rose within her, and it seemed to match the energy of the storm. It sizzled and thundered, as if the storm itself were calling to her. She focused on it, and she darted toward the barrier.

  She shifted from Petals on the Wind to Lightning Strikes in a Storm and drove her blade forward. Something unleashed from the end of it. With a shattering crackle of power, the barrier collapsed.

  Imogen staggered backward, and she stared at the space where the barrier had been. No longer did the darkness block her from seeing anything. No longer was there that purple hue to the nearly invisible barrier. Now there was something else.

  A fog rose up from the Shadows the Dead. The return of the fog seemed strange, especially as they had been trudging through the marshlands for as long as they had without seeing it.

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “Probably that Dheleus knows we’re coming. The last time I saw him, even though it was from a distance, he was a real bastard.”

  She stared, wondering how much sorcery would be there. What other monsters would be lurking? How many Toral would she face, and where was the Sul’toral? Through it all, she was left thinking about her brother.

  “How did that feel?” Benji asked, looking over to her.<
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  Imogen stared at him. “I think I knew it could happen.”

  He chuckled. “Of course you knew it could. You have always known. You have fought it, and so have your people. That is why they institute rigidity upon you. They fear it.”

  “Not all of them.”

  Master Liu had not.

  What she wouldn’t give to go back, to train with him to understand what it would take for her to become one with the Blade.

  “Come,” Benji said. “I think—”

  He cut himself off, and Imogen looked over to him. She froze at the sight of three figures who stood in the distance, obscured by fog. As it lifted, the trio turned in their direction. If they were Toral, she would be in trouble.

  Benji didn’t move. He wanted her to deal with them again.

  She flowed toward the nearest figure. A circular pattern began to build around them, and she remembered what happened when the Toral she had faced earlier had done that. She swept her blade smoothly, no longer following the detailed, rigid forms she had before. It was difficult still.

  Imogen had learned rigidity and precision her entire life, and they had been the keys to her success, so now that she knew she needed to find the true flow, she struggled with it. She could still use that pattern, but she had to find a way to build that energy within her. She remembered what Master Liu had done, and images of his movements came to mind, almost as if forced into her head.

  As she swept her blade around, disrupting the sorcerer’s pattern, she caught sight of Benji. He had crouched down, and he pressed his hands along a firm section of ground. He looked up at her, whispering softly.

  Maybe it was his influence that was helping her remember how to find that pattern. But then, it was always there within her, especially when she meditated.

  She darted forward, and as she twisted the blade, something else that Master Liu had said came back to her. They did not always have to seek to destroy.

  It fit with what Benji had told her: magic wasn’t dark. It was the user who was.

  She brought the blade around, and she slapped the hilt of the sword along the back of the sorcerer’s neck. They crumpled, dropping to the ground.

  She flowed to the side, drifting toward the next sorcerer. Something built near her, power that sizzled against her skin and pressed inward, a distinct sensation that Imogen could feel as she moved through the patterns. She spun and swept her blade down in a sharp arc.

  Imogen was accustomed to fighting through magic, something the Leier techniques taught. The patterns she’d learned gave insight into how to power through magic, but in this case, as she brought her blade down, there was something different to it. It carved through that magic in a way that exploded outward in a burst of power toward the sorcerer.

  She glided forward, and she brought her knee up, sweeping it in a movement she had seen from the Chain Breaker. At the same time, she also chopped her hand against the sorcerer’s neck, knocking him out. Then she shifted away, leaving her with one sorcerer remaining.

  Imogen danced around him as he started to gather power, which crept around his feet and continued building. He was creating a protective barrier around himself, a simple thing for her to disrupt, especially since she recognized that he was using a pattern. All she had to do was find a way to interrupt the flow.

  She slammed her sword forward, and it stabbed into his side, piercing his belly. He grunted, but she ignored him as she swept the blade back and drove the hilt into his forehead, causing him to crumple to the ground.

  The energy around her eased.

  Benji looked over to her. “Is that all you’re going to do?”

  “Do I need to kill them?”

  He chuckled and tapped the ground. It rumbled, sweeping up and around the sorcerers, holding them in place. “They will be able to break out of this eventually, but you must give thought to whether you want to leave them alive.”

  “Can they learn to abandon this?” she asked.

  He regarded her for a moment, and a frown crossed his lips. “I do not know.”

  She had no idea if leaving them alive was right, but her people wanted to destroy the sorcerers. They wanted to kill every magic user, thinking that all magic was dark and dangerous. Imogen knew it was not.

  Perhaps this was not the way.

  She checked the sorcerers and removed their Toral markers, unsurprised that each of them carried one. As she slipped them into her pocket, she tried not to think about how easy it had been. She had disarmed the Toral far more easily than she had ever imagined possible.

  The knowledge had always been part of her. Within her.

  “Will they be able to get new markers?” she asked.

  “It’s not a matter of getting new ones,” he said. “They have to find a Sul’toral willing to offer them. Maybe they can’t. Once corrupted by the ring, they are bound to the one who granted it to them.”

  “Then they’ll just be powerful sorcerers.”

  Benji snorted. “Just.”

  Each of them also carried other enchantments, and she stuffed those into her pocket as well. The cool feeling of the enchantments pressed on her skin as she picked each one up. How long would she be able to keep those on her?

  Benji tapped the mushy ground again, and it started to pull the sorcerers down, causing them to sink partway. Some of the vines that crept along the ground wrapped around them.

  When he was finished, he and Imogen continued on. Benji began taking a path as if knowing exactly where to go. He probably did. Even though the Sul’toral here might be trying to obscure Benji’s ability, he was still a Porapeth and had a way of communicating with the land around him.

  They hadn’t gone far before the fog drifted away, separating as though retreating. The storm still raged overhead, the thunder and lightning crackling in the sky above, and rain beating down on them.

  Imogen glanced up at the sky, feeling the overpowering sense coming from that storm. And within it, she recognized something else.

  A dark shape loomed in front of them, the shadowy structure of a massive tower.

  Benji crouched down, and he traced his fingers along the ground before standing. “The Tower of the Dead. That is where we must go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  They approached the tower carefully, and Imogen could feel something within her trembling. Her response to magic, she suspected. She was aware of it in a way she had not been before. It left her tingling, every part of her on edge, but she knew not to ignore it, knew she could not. Whatever power was here in this tower within the Shadows of the Dead, she had to confront it.

  The Sul’toral served a dark power called Sarenoth in everything they did. Whatever Dheleus was after in this place would serve that same goal. She had to stop it.

  Or help Timo stop it.

  She looked over to Benji and found him watching her, but she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. “You didn’t expect it to actually be here, did you?”

  “I couldn’t see it,” he said.

  “Should we be worried?”

  “With the Tower of the Dead, we should be concerned about a great number of things.”

  “What do you think will happen as we get to it?”

  “I can’t really say. I can tell that the tower itself is dangerous, but beyond that…”

  He stared for a moment, and Imogen imagined him using his magic, or being his magic, whatever the case may be. The night stretched in front of her, and the sky thundered overhead, with lightning crackling in the air and the persistent energy that lingered.

  The tower rose as a finger of jagged rock that stretched into the sky. She imagined that, from a distance, it might look like nothing more than a rock formation rising out of the heart of the swamp.

  “There’s something familiar about that tower,” she said. “I want to get inside, find my brother, stop whatever the Sul’toral is planning, and be done with this.”

  “I fear it will not be so simple.”

 
; They started forward, and something shifted. The ground began to rumble and tremble around them. Imogen unsheathed her blade and began to focus on the sacred patterns.

  Benji watched her. “Your hip doesn’t seem to be bothering you anymore.”

  “It’s not as bad.” She wasn’t sure why that would be. It surprised her that her hip would suddenly stop hurting like that, though maybe she had simply loosened up.

  “Probably for the best. You are going to need all of the patterns you know, or whatever you want to say they are. I don’t really care what you call them, to be honest. Just so long as you do what you need to.” There was a harshness in the way he said it that suggested he’d seen something.

  “And what do I need to do?”

  “Find your path.”

  Imogen did not yet understand it. She would need time to work through it to comprehend what it meant for her, but she knew the truth now. The sacred patterns were magic, and she had to understand that power and use it.

  Perhaps this was her path.

  They slowly made their way toward the tower. A dark fog rose from the ground. She continued forward in the flow, letting the patterns guide her. The way Benji moved surprised her, reminding her of the sacred patterns, though not quite like it.

  “I wonder if you could’ve taught me,” she said.

  “Taught you what, First of the Blade?” This time, there was something definitely mocking in the way he said it, though he also sounded amused about it.

  “You understand the patterns I use. You could’ve shared with me what I need to know.”

  “Would that have helped you understand?”

  The way he said it reminded her of Master Liu.

  The ground trembled again. She thought Benji might be doing that, but the sensation shifted, throwing dirt and debris up at them, sending them both staggering backward.

  “That wasn’t you,” she said.

  “I tried to prevent that. Unfortunately, the earth does not respond to me here.”

  “I thought everything responded to you.”

  “Not everything,” he said.