As Ciras turned to the right, the giant ran into the darkness and Dragright kicked the antique sword into the air. He caught it deftly. He dropped into a fighting stance, with his left hand wide, his right jabbing with the sword, and his body open. He stood the way an unskilled brawler might, a casual cut away from death. In fact, tired, dirty, and snot-stained, he looked more dead than alive anyway.
Ciras did not attack. He took a step away from the dying archer, then bowed toward his opponent. He held it for a respectful time, then straightened up again.
Dragright frowned. “You’re a strange xidantzu. You slaughter two, then do me honor?”
“Not you. The warrior whose skull you crushed, whose sword you bear.”
“Heh.” The man half smiled, then convulsed again. He spun the sword up and around, easily, as if he had been trained to it all his life. “He was one of the best, you know. Out here. Better than you could have ever hoped.”
“Of this, I have no doubt.” Ciras waved him forward with his left hand. “But you are not he.”
The bandit attacked and the twin effects of the corpse dust and the sword made themselves readily apparent. Ciras had tracked the man and named him because he dragged his right foot a bit. In his attack, he moved more fluidly and with more precision. He flowed down into Dragon, whipping the sword down and around, then up in a cut meant to slash Ciras’ right flank.
Ciras slipped to the left, then pivoted back on his right foot and backhanded a slash aimed at the bandit’s spine. Steel rang on steel as Dragright spun back faster than possible and parried the slash high. Snapping his wrist around, he attacked back.
Pain scored a fiery line through Ciras’ armpit. He leaped away, feeling blood already dripping. He’d never seen an attack like that, and he knew the Dragon form well. Moreover, he felt a tingle in the air, much akin to what he’d felt when the magic storms played in Ixyll.
Magic! It wasn’t possible, but the bandit had accessed magic.
Ciras’ realization prompted him to take another step back. His right foot landed on the archer’s severed forearm. His ankle twisted and he went down. He landed on his right elbow, striking it against a stone. His sword twisted from numbed fingers and clanged against the ground.
Dragright strode boldly to him, kicked the archer’s arm away, then raised the sword in both hands, as if it were a dagger. Firelight played over the expression of glee on his face and, for the barest of moments, Ciras could see hints of softness there, as if the ghostly likeness of the dead warrior overlaid his features.
The man laughed. “It feels so good to fight again.”
He raised the sword higher, his back arched, his mouth open in a fearsome snarl. Then his body shook and a crossbow bolt burst out through his breastbone. The force of the shot sent him flying toward the tomb. He bounced once, hard, and rolled, coming to rest on his chest near the hole.
With delicate little arms setting another bolt in place, Nesrearck skittered forward and crouched.
Ciras smiled and scooped up his sword. He stood, gingerly testing his ankle, then bowed to the gyanrigot. Beyond it Borosan entered the firelit basin, skirting Slopeheel’s body. “Where’s the fourth one?”
“He ran.”
“How badly are you hurt?”
The swordsman shrugged his right arm out of his robe and checked. “He got flesh, nothing else. If he’d cut the artery, I’d have been dead inside a minute. As it is, I’ll live.”
“So will I, serrdin.”
Ciras spun as the corpse flopped itself onto its back. It grabbed a handful of corpse dust and stuffed it into the gaping hole in its chest. The body jerked and the spine bowed violently enough that the bandit bounced upright. It set itself, then waved him forward with its left hand.
This is impossible! Fear coursed through Ciras. Dragright had been faster and more skilled than he. He had used magic and cut him. He couldn’t stand against such a creature, especially when it clearly couldn’t be killed. To remain and battle against the unbeatable foe was suicide.
Panic seized him, and he almost turned to run. He knew what would happen if he did. The thing would catch him like a hawk stooping on a rabbit. It would cut him down. He’d die with his face in the dirt, his spine slashed open to prove that he’d died a coward.
Though he might not be a master or Mystic, Ciras was no coward. Shifting his sword to his right hand, he wrapped the sleeve of his robe through his sash so it would not flop around. He wiped blood from his hand, then took up the sword again.
He waited. It had used the Dragon form, and the best forms to counter it were Tiger and Wolf. But it will expect that. That meant it might shift to Eagle or Mantis, perhaps even Dog. The various permutations of the battle ran through his mind. As fast as Ciras could adapt his tactics, the creature would be faster, and the outcome as dire as if Ciras had run.
Ciras squared around and reversed his grip on his sword. He brought it back so it ran up along his forearm with the tip appearing at his right shoulder. Instead of using the blade to shield his body, he used his body to hide the blade.
“Borosan, get out of here. Take Nesrearck with you.”
“I don’t understand.”
Ciras began to move back slowly, easily. “Dragright is dead, but his body is linked to this place. You know the stories of corpse dust. Imagine how powerful it would be if the corpse had lain here since the Cataclysm.”
“Oh, oh, I see.” The inventor began to trek back up the hill. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to kill it.” He set himself and nodded to the corpse. “If I don’t, remember to mark this place as very deadly on your map.”
The corpse laughed. “I’ll hunt him down, too.”
“No, you won’t.” Ciras pointed toward the hole in the tomb entrance. “Leave here, and someone else will despoil your comrades. You can’t allow them to be dishonored.”
“No, I can’t.” The thing launched itself at him. The Dragon form shifted into Tiger, but Ciras kept his sword where it was. He cut to his left, working back against its right. The slash meant to decapitate him whistled just past his face. The blow opened the creature to a counterattack, but even as Ciras feinted with his right shoulder, the sword cut back to parry a low slash.
Again, Ciras danced away, working always to the right. The creature might no longer be Dragright, but whatever had caused him to drag his leg still affected it. Ciras moved with calculation, slowing to draw it into attacks, then cutting to the right. The creature darted around to head him off and trap him, but he just ran in the other direction.
The corpse, backlit by the fire, hunched its shoulders. “So this is what the Empire has come to? Unskilled cowards who run rather than fight?”
Ciras nodded. “The Empire you died to save is dead. The Nine Principalities have risen in their place. You and yours are all but forgotten.
“In fact,” Ciras added as he began to spin to the right, exposing his back to the creature, “you’re beneath contempt. Nesrearck, shoot it again!”
The creature had already begun a forehand slash at his spine, but glanced off up the hillside. Its blade rose with the distraction, and Ciras’ spin brought him down onto his left knee. As he spun, he shifted the sword around into a double-hand grip, directed by his left hand. As the corpse’s slash whipped past an inch above his skull, Ciras’ sword bit into the back of its right knee and continued out through the front.
The corpse continued its spin and began to fall. Shifting his blade to his right hand, Ciras rose and cut down. As the corpse hit the ground, his sword clove its skull in two.
It thrashed on the ground, then reached out and clawed the stone. It slowly began dragging itself back toward the white stain of corpse dust. Ciras could imagine it trying to pack its shattered head and come at him again.
He would have hacked it into pieces, but he had no desire to dishonor the warrior. He just let the corpse keep crawling, because between it and the corpse dust lay the fire.
&nbs
p; He moved downwind so he’d not breathe any of the smoke rising from the body. Borosan appeared at the edge of the basin and smiled. “I’m glad to see you won.”
Ciras frowned. “You should have been a long way from here by now.”
“I couldn’t have left you behind.” Nesrearck strode up beside him. “I was refitting the thanaton. We would have gotten it.”
Before Ciras could ask, a panel slid up on the machine revealing the crossbow mechanism. Instead of a bolt, one of the mousers was set to be launched.
The swordsman nodded. “It would have taken him apart from inside?”
“That was the idea.”
“Better than what I had, which was just a lot of hope.” Ciras smiled. “It showed me a move I didn’t know, so I showed it no fighting style at all. That confused it.”
Borosan frowned. “But that left you vulnerable and could have gotten you killed.”
“True, but it did not. Not this time.” Ciras returned his sword to its scabbard. “Next time I hope I have a better plan.”
Chapter Sixteen
34th day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat
9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court
163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty
737th year since the Cataclysm
Thyrenkun, Felarati
Deseirion
Keles Anturasi rubbed his eyes, then looked out from the tower library’s balcony at the Black River’s southern shore. In less than a week, the transformation of Felarati had begun, and had begun in a way Keles would have thought impossible. The day after he’d spoken with the Prince, he rode south to the hills. It took him a full two days to do a preliminary survey—largely because he had a cadre of eighteen people following him. They hung on his every word, aped his every move, and generally got in his way.
The Desei surprised him. Living in Nalenyr, he had grown up with stories of bloody-minded savages who slaughtered innocent Helosundians for sport. Many Naleni thought the Desei were slope-headed dullards who labored happily in a nation devoid of color because they were all inbred. While it was true that the two images could not easily be reconciled, Keles acknowledged that people seldom had trouble maintaining the veracity of multiple stereotypes as long as they were all derogatory.
But the Desei he worked with were hardly homicidal or stupid. While they did not benefit from some of the formal training people obtained in Nalenyr, they were clever and quite resourceful. And as Prince Pyrust had suggested, they had long done much with nothing, so when they had something to work with, they adapted to it quickly and used it well.
Sooner than he thought possible, his students were able to work with minimal supervision. He set them to the more simple tasks of laying out roads and aligning buildings. Some of his students were water-witches—one of them approaching near Mystic status. He had them locate sites for wells and lay out the sewer lines. By the second day, a whole new district for Felarati had been laid out. It would be able to house twice the number of people as the section of the city it was replacing.
On the third day, Pyrust gave the order for the construction to begin. Keles had argued against it, pointing out that they had none of the building material they needed. But Pyrust had simply said, “It is Deseirion, Keles. We have what we need.”
Soon people began to stream through the southern city gate, bringing with them the stones and wood that had once been their home. Every man, woman, and child carried something to the new site. A third of them stayed to work, and the others headed back for more.
Even now, almost a week into the project, the lines of people stretched north to south and back again. They looked almost like ants, and they certainly worked with a similar single-mindedness. And, from off to the west, another stream of farmers arrived to make the vacated city land productive again.
It was so unlike his home that he could not feel homesick. There was not enough of Moriande there to remind him of the south. While Deseirion was hardly as colorful or fecund as his home, it all seemed new and amazing.
Very clearly, had Prince Cyron attempted what Pyrust was doing, Moriande’s streets would have been flooded with people protesting his actions. The whole of the city would have been in an uproar. The inland lords—ever resisting any directive from the capital—would be threatening open revolt. And yet, if put to the question, every citizen would say they loved Cyron as much as the Desei loved Pyrust. If called to it—with the possible exception of the inland lords—they would willingly fight to protect Cyron and his nation.
Keles clearly had misjudged the Desei, and found his reeducation rather harsh and chilling. The Desei were content to move their homes, brick by brick, a couple miles south. He had no doubt they would have moved them as far south as Moriande if so commanded. While many Naleni feared invasion from the north, he doubted any of them understood how complete an invasion that could be.
However, the Naleni were not the only ones who underestimated foreigners. Pyrust clearly underestimated Keles because the renovation designs had problems that would take years to solve.
Problems that will pay them back for Tyressa’s murder a thousand times over. The close-set side streets would let fire rage through the city. The broad main roads would allow for a lot of traffic, and the traffic on those main roads would one day be Naleni troops!
The biggest problem was not one Keles had designed on purpose. While the people were able to bring their homes with them, Pyrust could not allow them to tear down the city’s southern wall. The new city sector would be outside the walls and until Pyrust could get enough stone to build new walls or expand the old, that district would be vulnerable. Granted, the risk of invasion was low, but if Cyron decided to come north, Pyrust would have a huge problem.
And if he moves the factories outside the walls, he loses even more.
To solve such problems, Pyrust needed Keles. The Naleni cartographer had been under no illusion that Pyrust was ever going to let him go. Like his grandfather before him, Keles had too much information ever to be given his freedom. Pyrust would build him a tower and keep him in Felarati, trading privileges for plans. If Keles became uncooperative, Pyrust would have him killed.
Keles didn’t like either one of those alternatives, which meant he had to escape—though an acceptable method eluded him. It was not that slipping away was impossible, but that Pyrust would likely torture those who should have prevented his escape. Until he could find a way either to insulate people from Pyrust’s retribution or steel himself to accept it, Keles was trapped.
It did strike him that his willingness to design a city that would allow a conqueror to slaughter thousands conflicted with his reluctance to expose those Desei he knew to danger. He blamed the Desei for Tyressa’s death, but the people he knew clearly were innocent of that crime. It would make sense to try to reconcile those two points, but if he let his desire for vengeance slip, he would be losing a connection to Tyressa. No matter how much that connection hurt him, he couldn’t let it go.
So thousands of Desei were doomed.
“They are remarkable, aren’t they, Keles Anturasi?”
Surprised, Keles spun and found himself looking at a petite blonde woman with icy blue eyes. He’d have thought she was very young, but there was a wariness in her eyes that was ageless. More like ancient.
“Please, you have the advantage of me.”
“I do. Should I press it?”
“That would be your decision.” Part of him wanted to send her off, telling her he was doing the Prince’s work, but there was something hauntingly familiar about her. “And you are right, the Desei people are remarkable.”
She nodded slightly and moved to the balcony railing beside him. She wore a blue silk robe of a darker and richer hue than her eyes. On the breasts, sleeves, and back, hawks on the wing had been embroidered. Their left wings lacked two feathers—an emblem marking her as part of the Prince’s household. The hawk was less surprising than the robe’s color—most Desei wore bright colors only on
very special occasions, since the dyes had to be imported from the south at great expense.
She peered out at the shifting columns of people. “We attempt to belittle and disregard them, and yet they are capable of picking a city apart. As irresistible as the tide, aren’t they?”
“They bend to the will of their master.”
“Do you as well, Master Anturasi?” She faced him, appraising him openly.
“I am his guest. Can I do otherwise?”
She smiled and turned back to look to the south. “I have no doubt you have found many ways to comply in appearance, but resist in substance.”
Keles said nothing.
“Tired of our game already, have you?”
“Is it a game we’re playing? Because I am working.” He pointed back to the library table with drawings scattered on it.
“So am I, Keles.” She turned and caught his arm. “What if I were to tell you that I am tasked with seducing you and seeing to it that you desire to remain here forever?”
Keles shrugged. “I’d say you’re too late for that, or too early. Had the Prince poisoned me to mimic illness and you nursed me back to health, I might have fallen in love with you.”
She smiled. “That’s how your parents met, wasn’t it?”
Keles jolted and she laughed. “You see, Master Anturasi, we knew you would find it suspect. And, as you suggested, I am too early, because the time to find you companionship will be in a month, during the planting festival. You do know that here in Deseirion we will all be in the fields, plowing and planting? It is backbreaking work, and you’ll find yourself in the fields working with a Desei noblewoman. You’ll talk, she will laugh and be punished for it. You’ll feel guilty and try to make amends. She will tell you that you are different, a dream come true for her. She may not even know her part—though I doubt that. Chances are she will be one of the Mother of Shadows’ special operatives. I doubt you’re a virgin, but she will be unlike any woman you’ve ever slept with.”
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