Darkblade Guardian

by Andy Peloquin

  Yet it would all be worth it. With the Sage dead, the Withering would come and go without threat of Kharna breaking out of his eternal prison. Even if the Hunter couldn’t understand why Taiana served Kharna—just the thought filled him with burning fury—at least they could agree that Kharna could not be released. Once he’d dealt with the Sage, he could turn his attention to Taiana.

  And what exactly did that mean? His inner demon would have mocked him for being a fool, and ridicule him for his attempt to save someone who deserved death. To the voice in his mind, everyone was better off killed.

  The absence of the voice struck him as bizarre. He’d thought that here, now, facing death on such a vast scale, the presence in his mind would be filling his head with its demands for blood. It would have thrilled to see the Pit sucking the life from the captives, and shouted with delight as he hacked through the Elivasti guarding the Sage.

  Yet he had only silence. But why? The question had nagged at him since he’d arrived in Enarium, but he hadn’t had time to give it much thought. It felt strange not to have the voices pounding in his mind. With Soulhunger gone and the demon fallen quiet, it almost felt…peaceful. Even surrounded by enemies and facing the constant threat of death, the silence in his mind filled him with an odd serenity.

  Was this what normal people experienced? He had wrestled with the voices in his head for so long he had no idea what to do without them. He welcomed the change, yet it felt as foreign as solid ground after a month-long voyage across the Frozen Sea.

  The staircase ended and the Hunter stepped onto the uppermost level of Hellsgate. It took all his willpower to keep the scowl plastered on his face, so surprised he was at the sight before him.

  The entire top floor was an enormous garden.

  Lush greenery met his eyes everywhere he looked. Ripe red tomatoes hung heavy on thick vines that climbed metal trellises. The tang of oranges, grapefruits, lemons, and other citrus fruits he’d never tasted filled the air as he passed five tall trees—trees, growing on the roof of a fortress! Potatoes, carrots, turnips, and radishes grew alongside cabbage, lettuce, cauliflower, and five different types of squashes. It seemed impossible, yet somehow the Elivasti living here managed to raise enough food to survive—not just survive, but feed all the people living within Enarium and Khar’nath.

  No, there was no way this could be Elivasti ingenuity. The Hunter had little understanding of agriculture, but he’d never seen anything like the hanging pipes that fed water to the plants growing in pots suspended above vast stone tanks. No human on Einan could have contrived the intricate system of tubes, hoses, and channels that pulled water from the pools to supply the trees, plants, vines, and bushes with nutrients and moisture without the need for soil.

  He strode through the gardens, taking in the fresh scent of green life, the light mist hanging in the air, and the coolness of the shade between plants. It was a thing of beauty atop the harsh, ugly fortress of Hellsgate. An impossibility, like so many other creations of the Serenii.

  A little pang of homesickness coursed through him as he passed a pair of Snowblossom trees. A memory of being in this place echoed deep within his mind. He had sat there, on that stone bench, with Taiana beside him and spoke of the future of their child. No wonder he had loved visiting Maiden’s Fields in Voramis—their sweet scent was a reminder of the past he’d shared, even if he couldn’t remember it.

  He shoved down on the emotions welling in his gut. He’d have time for melancholy and reminiscence when Hailen was safe.

  In the heart of the Terrace of the Sun and Moon, a glass dome rose above the rest of the garden. Twenty paces long and wide, it was easily twice his height and made of the same blue-colored glass as the Keeps.

  The words Arudan had read from the stone tablet came back to him. “For faster maturation, it is my recommendation that the plant is grown in sunlight amplified by a mixture of sapphire and ghoulstone treated with weeping wintermoss.”

  The Hunter couldn’t take his eyes off it as he approached. Within the dome, plants he’d never imagined could exist grew in abundance. There, pale blue flowers with short stems grew beside tall white orchids, purple roses, and lilies of a fiery orange. A hundred smells—some familiar, most exotic—filled the dome. It was like stepping into a brand new world.

  And there, before his eyes, he found what he sought. A dark green bush with small leaves, white buds, and dozens of berries the same deep purple color as the Elivasti’s eyes.

  He had found the opia.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Hunter’s jaw dropped. Keeper’s teeth!

  He couldn’t believe the vastness of the opia bushes before him. In Kara-ket, a single spindly bush had flowered, with just one tiny berry for show. Yet here, the plants towered nearly twice the Hunter’s height, their branches heavy with hundreds of rich, round fruits the size of large wine grapes. Hundreds more tiny white buds dotted the green leaves.

  No wonder the Warmaster had boasted that he could get his hands on all the opia he wanted. Here in Enarium, the berry grew in a greater abundance than the Hunter had imagined possible.

  Relief washed over him like a drink of cool water in the Advanat Desert. After his flight from Kara-ket, he’d stubbornly clung to the hope that he would find the opia, the only thing that could cure Hailen’s madness, in Enarium. Yet it had been little more than hope built on the flimsy foundation of the Warmaster’s words.

  To find it here, and in abundance enough to save Hailen a hundred times over, drained away the tension that had filled him since his discovery that the berry could cure the boy. He wanted to laugh, to bask in the triumph of finding what he’d traveled leagues to obtain, but forced his face to retain the permanent scowl of the Blood Sentinel. He had to remain in character a little longer.

  He stepped into the dome and was immediately struck by a solid wall of heat. The circular dome reminded him of the glasshouses he’d seen on his visit to Icespire, across the Frozen Sea. Evidently, someone had discovered what Yalleng the Serenii had known and written in his stone tablet—that the amplification of the light or heat within the glass dome sped up the growth of not just opia, but all plants. Perhaps that was why the garden at the pinnacle of the Sage’s tower in Kara-ket had flourished in such abundance despite the high altitude.

  “Can I help you?” came a woman’s voice from behind him.

  The Hunter ignored the question, as an arrogant Blood Sentinel would. A moment later, a woman squeezed herself through the doorway around his armored frame and came to stand in front of him.

  “Can I help you?” she repeated, this time with more than a hint of disapproval in her voice.

  The Hunter glared down at her. She barely reached his chest, and she looked to be in her fourth or fifth decade of life—which meant in the early hundreds, given her Elivasti heritage. Brown and grey threaded her long, braided hair in equal measure, and the first lines of age showed at the corners of her lips and mouth. She had a heart-shaped face that must have been gorgeous in her youth, but now bore the beauty of a mature woman tempered by hard years. Given everything that happened in Khar’nath, just a short distance from her garden paradise, the years must have been hard indeed.

  “I’m surprised to see you up here.” She spoke in a prim voice, one that reminded him of Graeme. “None of your kind ever bothers with this place.”

  “My kind?” the Hunter growled, adding a hint of irritation to his gravelly voice.

  “Blood Sentinels.” She rubbed her cheek with a gloved hand, which left a smudge of soil on her light-colored skin. “Too focused on death to care about life.”

  The Hunter bared his teeth in a snarl. “That a problem?”

  She shrugged. “Not to me. Just don’t get any ideas about picking the fruits from my garden. I’ve enough to worry about without adding one more pest to the lot.”

  The Hunter struggled to conceal a grin at the woman’s brazenness. He stood close to twice her height, a Scorchslayer in his hand, yet s
he spoke to him as if dressing down one of her gardening drudges after a foolish mistake.

  “And who’s to stop me if I do?” the Hunter asked, curious to see how she’d react to anyone threatening her precious garden. “What if I get it in my head to strip every fruit from every tree in this place? What’ll you do then?”

  “Just you try it!” Her heart-shaped face creased into an angry scowl, and she shook her mud-covered trowel beneath his nose. “All the armor in the world won’t stop me from shoving this so far up your—”

  “Rothia, darling!” A familiar voice, edged with a hint of fear, echoed behind the Hunter. Garnos hurried into view, a worried look on his face. “Forgive my wife, Ryken. She didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “What do you mean--?” Rothia began, but Garnos cut her off with a glare.

  “Darling,” he said in a pointed tone, “didn’t you mention something about wanting help gathering clippings from the Watcher’s Bloom? Now that the sun has set, it seems the perfect time to be doing just that.”

  Rothia shot a glare at Garnos, at the Hunter, and a second helping of scorn for her husband. Muttering an insult that made the corners of the Hunter’s mouth twitch, she turned and stalked away into the garden.

  “You.” The Hunter grabbed Garnos’ arm as the Elivasti Elder made to follow his wife. “Stay.”

  Garnos blanched, but nodded. “Of course.”

  “You know who I am?” the Hunter asked.

  “O-Of course.” Garnos gave a little bow. “You’re Ryken, Detrarch of the Blood Sentinels, second in command to Primarch Dannus himself.”

  Detrarch, eh? The Hunter chuckled inwardly. I definitely made the right choice of face.

  “Seems a lot of people don’t like me.” The Hunter thrust his chin in the direction the diminutive woman had gone. “Your wife chief among them.”

  Garnos’ face went paler. “Oh no, Detrarch, she’s just—”

  “Come with me.” The Hunter decided it was time to end the charade and put the man out of his misery. He led Garnos to one side, to a section of the garden where the opia bushes grew thick enough to conceal him. “Look into my eyes.”

  Garnos hesitated, then met his gaze. The Hunter gritted his teeth and exerted his will on his nose, eyes, and mouth to return them to their normal shape. Garnos let out a gasp and recoiled.

  “Drayvin?” he hissed.

  The Hunter nodded, then with effort restored his face to the brutish, scowling features of the man Ryken.

  “What are you doing here?” Garnos’ eyes flashed. “And looking like that? How is that possible?”

  “A gift from our ancestors,” the Hunter said. “Much as your ancestors passed to you the Irrsinnon.”

  Garnos’ eyes narrowed, then went wide. “Is that why you’re here?” His gaze darted to the ripe purple growing on the bush beside them. “You want the opia for this boy of yours?”

  The Hunter nodded. “It is the only way to keep the madness at bay.”

  Deep lines creased the Elivasti’s forehead. “You know what will happen to him, do you not?”

  “Are you talking about the side effects of the Expurgation?”

  “What?” Garnos jerked backward as if struck. “Great ancestors, so it’s true? The Sage is still practicing that barbaric ritual?”

  The Hunter frowned. He doesn’t know.

  Garnos seemed not to notice his expression. “I never believed the rumors from Kara-ket, always wrote them off as nothing more than tales designed to terrify us into obedience.” He glanced up at the Hunter. “It should never have occurred!”

  “So you don’t practice the Expurgation here?”

  Garnos’ eyes flashed. “By the ancestors, definitely not! How anyone could submit to that antiquated practice is beyond inhuman.” His lip curled into a snarl. “So, of course our master would make full use of it.”

  A sliver of hope blossomed within the Hunter. “Tell me everything.” He gripped Garnos’ shoulders. “How do you cure the Irrsinnon here in Enarium?”

  “As long as we remain in the city, there is no need for it.” Garnos gave a dismissive wave. “The shadow of the Serenii, our ancestors, protects us from the Irrsinnon.”

  “And what of those who leave the city?” the Hunter pressed. “How do you keep the madness from overtaking them?”

  “With this.” Garnos gestured to the opia. “When our ancestors, the Serenii, saw what happened to their descendants, they took pity on us and used their magick to bring the opia into existence as a cure for our ailment. One sip of the potion brewed from fruit and the Irrsinnon is forever banished.”

  “Then what is the Expurgation?”

  Garnos bared his teeth. “A cruel practice, conceived of by our master as a means of culling us and preventing any Melechha from being born.”

  The Hunter’s brow furrowed. “But if, as you say, the opia has no side effects…”

  Garnos tapped one of the ripe purple berries. “This opia does not. The original strain created by the Serenii.” A shadow passed over his eyes. “But according to the tales my wife has heard from our brethren on Shana Laal, the Sage grows his own tainted strain, one bred to kill off any with the pure blood of our ancestors. The poison lies in the seeds, so they say.”

  “The Melechha.”

  Garnos nodded. “The only true threat to his power here in Enarium. A Melechha with knowledge of how to activate the powers of Enarium could harness them against him and destroy him completely. Alas, that knowledge is lost to us. All that remains of our ancestors is the curse of madness and the traces of their blood flowing through our veins.”

  Anger mingled with horror in the Hunter’s gut. He’d come so close to giving Hailen the opia in Kara-ket, which would have killed him as surely as a dagger to the heart. All these weeks, agonizing over whether or not he’d made the right decision. The fact that the Sage had captured Hailen and forced the Hunter to pursue had, in the end, saved the boy’s life.

  “The Expurgation is precisely the sort of depravity expected of our master.” Garnos’ face purpled with anger. “Starving our youths, forcing them to recite foul oaths to the Devourer, killing them!”

  The Hunter had watched the Elivasti youth—Daladar, his name was—die a horrible death because of the opia. A slight tremor had turned into body-quaking spasms, discoloration, and ultimately suffocation.

  “If you know he’s capable of such terribly cruelty, why don’t you rise up against him?” the Hunter asked.

  “Our ancestors swore an oath—” Garnos began.

  “Curse your oath!” the Hunter snapped. Master Eldor had said the same thing, and that oath had cost him his life. “You are free of the madness of your ancestors, so why not liberate yourselves from the burden of the vow sworn by those same ancestors? They were afraid of being eliminated by the Serenii, thus sought safety in service to the Abiarazi. But—”

  “Afraid?” Garnos’ brow furrowed in confusion. “Why would we be afraid?”

  The question took the Hunter aback. “The Serenii wanted to kill you because they feared you would kill them,” he said.

  “Who told you that?”

  The Hunter opened his mouth to speak, then realization dawned. “The Sage.”

  “Of course.” Garnos nodded. “The truth twisted to his convenience.”

  From the moment he’d set foot on Shana Laal, the Sage had manipulated him, deceived him, used him. How much of what the Abiarazi had said was true? The more he learned, the more he realized “truth” was a concept the Sage found relative, a useful tool to bend people to his will.

  “Then what is the truth?” the Hunter asked. “Why did your ancestors swear to serve the Abiarazi?”

  Garnos shook his head, and sorrow twisted his features. “Because it was the only way to escape our destiny.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Many of the legends of our past have been lost to time,” Garnos continued, “but what we do know is that the Serenii chose to mix their bloodlines with that o
f humans. Just as the Abiarazi produced half-human offspring—you, the Bucelarii—some of Serenii chose to do the same. These Serenii were a select minority, but there were enough that the Elivasti began to multiply quickly.”

  The Hunter had heard this much from the Sage. “But the question is why the Serenii chose to mingle their lineage with the humans.” He gestured around him. “Compare the grandeur of Enarium to any human city, and mankind is little better than primitive savages.”

  “That is precisely what the Serenii believed at first.” Garnos nodded. “Yet over time, they came to see that the humans had something to offer that all their magick and wisdom never could.”

  The Hunter cocked an eyebrow.

  “Emotion.” Garnos clenched a fist. “Passion.”

  That took the Hunter aback.

  “The Serenii were creatures of logic, driven by the search for understanding the world around them.” Garnos swept a hand in a gesture that encompassed the entire city. “As you can see, their wisdom is far beyond anything that even we, their descendants, or the Abiarazi can comprehend. They ruled Einan completely, using the magick within its core and their knowledge of nature to build the world of their choosing. But perhaps they were too logical.”

  “Too logical?” the Hunter asked. “That doesn’t seem like a bad thing.”

  He’d seen what the emotions of mankind could do. Passion, lust, greed, desire, hatred, and envy had driven men and women to kill their parents, siblings, children, friends, and enemies. War existed because humans sought what others had, or out of vengeance for past hurts, wrongs real or perceived. No matter how logical mankind intended to be, they were creatures driven by emotion—just as he was.

  In his rage over Farida’s death, he’d butchered the Bloody Hand and Dark Heresiarchs. Out of his love for Hailen, he had killed scores of desert raiders. He’d even cut down Master Eldor, the man that had been as a father to him, for the sake of protecting the boy. Yes, emotion could drive humans—even half-humans—to do terrible things.