The Stormbringer

by Isabel Cooper

* * *

  Stasis had largely left his body unaffected, so his muscles still worked as they had ever done, but a trek through a forest was a different matter from street-to-street fighting—or from the cavalry charges or infantry stands where Amris had spent his youth.

  He was proud of himself for managing to keep up with Darya, who practically danced over the undergrowth and through the trees. She was purposeful about it, but there was a lithe ease about her—an impression that vanished completely when she started backing away from the spot where the rabbit lay.

  She’d been alert before she’d fought the cockatrice and as they’d prepared to advance against the undead, ready for a fight, but this was different. Sword drawn, she retreated with taut-strung muscles, keeping her gaze fixed forward, clearly not wanting to look away from the forest. Alarm filled her and, through the spell, spilled over into him.

  Dalhan, said Gerant in his mind. One of the many wonderful new creations of the storms.

  Amris didn’t recognize the name, but Gerant’s voice and Darya’s stance were as good as a warning shout. He had his blade out before the first set of blanched-white legs appeared from the shadows.

  They had been human once, maybe, though almost skeletally thin. Some force had given them two or three extra joints in the middle and taloned, spiderlike hands at the end, then joined four of them together and plopped a headless human torso in the center. A ring of pinkish-red eyes glared out of the chest, with a snarling, fanged mouth below it, and above that the shoulders rose high, making a sort of distorted heart shape. Its arms were stunted, but one held a bone whip, more than long enough to make up any lack of reach.

  Two others like it followed, all moving with insectile speed toward Darya. Amris rushed toward her side.

  Chapter 13

  Darya saw the stub that passed for the dalhan’s whip-arm flex, and was in the air the next second. The whip snapped through the empty space where one of her ankles had been. Its bones, the knobby remnants of something’s—or somebody’s—spine, rattled against each other. Darya had heard the sound half a dozen times, and it still turned her stomach.

  She kicked forward and caught the dalhan right above the mouth. The sole of her boot slammed into two of its eyes. It staggered back. Darya retreated, too, pushing herself off the monster into a backwards somersault, then bringing Gerant down in a slash as she landed, one leg out low behind her.

  The dalhan that had been coming up on her side swayed backward, and Gerant’s edge missed the center of its torso by a hair. The stroke that would’ve cut through to its mouth fell, useless.

  Darya let the momentum pull her downward. The whip that had been going to slash her across the face met empty air instead. She struck out low and hit one of the dalhan’s legs, which split in the middle. Black blood spurted from the wound, filling the air with the smell of ashes. The plants it fell on vanished. A few drops hit rocks, hissed, and sent up acrid gray clouds.

  Four legs meant the monster had some spares. It sagged, though, taken off-balance for a few seconds, and Darya drew her leg forward, her body up, putting all of that motion behind her next stroke. Dead flesh parted under Gerant’s edge, giving way smoothly up into the dalhan’s torso, before a bone turned the angle of Darya’s stroke. The sword came up and out through its side, the wound bad but not fatal.

  Blood soaked the ground. Green light flickered around Darya as Gerant shielded her from the places where it would’ve splashed, spraying from the dalhan’s wound. The creature reared up, chest gaping, a leg clawing at the air. Its missing leg unbalanced it, and it was falling as Darya spun away from its blood.

  She lashed sideways with one leg as she did, and the whip of another dalhan coiled briefly around the tip of her boot rather than doing serious damage to her kidneys. The force of the spin let Darya shake that off neatly enough, and then she was coming around, slicing backhand at the monster that had been there when she’d started spinning. Kicking the whip away had cost her a few precious seconds, though. Gerant hit the thing, but only a glancing blow to the shoulder, giving it barely a moment of pause.

  * * *

  Always, battle took concentration, and with an unknown enemy most of all. Amris bent his focus on one of the dalhan and closed the distance between them quickly, but not before he’d seen Darya whirl in midair and land in a deadly version of a court bow. She’d slain one of them in a breath, and turned on the others in a whirlwind of steel before Amris reached the scene, but those two had flanked her, clearly with an eye—or many—to closing in.

  The one closest to Amris did hear him coming. It whirled on its many legs, twice or three times as fast as any normal man, and lashed out.

  Amris didn’t bother stopping or turning. The whip cracked against his breastplate with bruising force. An uncanny chill spread through the metal and across Amris’s chest. Both were easy to ignore under the circumstances.

  He swung overhand while the whip was still out. Bone split beneath his blade, and the end of the whip went flying off to the side. The dalhan opened its mouth, showing a pair of long fangs in the middle of churning blackness, and roared with anger, then charged.

  That was well.

  Amris braced himself as the monster rushed toward him. It raised itself up on its back legs at the last moment, stretching out its huge front claws to grab him.

  He lunged and slashed. A twist of his hips added to the strength of his arms, propelling the sword in a short, powerful horizontal arc that split bone and sliced flesh in a clean cut through the dalhan’s torso just where it narrowed to join the legs.

  For a moment, the thing still clawed at him, talons seeking purchase on his armor. Then they fell away. The creature’s body slumped, then toppled away from the legs. Amris retreated quickly as blood hissed on his gauntlets.

  The last dalhan standing didn’t stand for long. By the time Amris could see the pair of them clearly, Darya had put slashes in many of its limbs, deep enough that it was moving unsteadily and unable to lift its whip. As he watched, she danced in past an erratically flailing claw, plunged Gerant deep into a spot near the base of the monster’s torso, and slipped back out of reach while it collapsed.

  Are you all right?

  Having no breath, Gerant couldn’t sound breathless. The voice in Amris’s mind was weary nonetheless, and gave the distinct impression that Gerant was recovering himself in some fashion, even if not by panting and wiping his brow.

  Doing the first and regretting that helmet and gauntlets prevented the second, Amris gave himself a swift inspection before he answered. The dalhan’s blood had left a few pits in his gauntlets, but they appeared to be getting no deeper. His chest felt no worse than bruised beneath his armor. The cold, as clammy and oddly seeking as it had been, had vanished.

  “Thank you, yes,” he said. “And the pair of you?”

  The wording came easily from his mouth. Battle had left him still too focused to think of the implications.

  Gerant was silent, though, and it was Darya who answered, stepping carefully around the pools of black blood and hacked white bodies toward Amris. “Not too bad, thanks. I don’t think we’ll want the rabbit anymore, though.”

  * * *

  “So. Dalhan?” Amris said.

  He spoke quietly, and cleaned his sword while he did it, but Darya saw how his gaze kept flicking back to the bodies, the blood, and the way the plants were dying around them. It wasn’t horror exactly, or not all horror—she thought he’d seen things as bad as she had, or worse—but an attempt to fully understand a new threat.

  The storms and Thyran’s summonings left weaknesses in the world, said Gerant. Demons took advantage of that. Gods know there were enough bodies for them to construct their own vehicles, even the lesser ones.

  “They’re soul-eaters,” Darya put in, feeling that she should contribute to the more practical end of things. “Probably soul-harvesters in this
case. Wizards—if they’re also sons of bitches—use them like that from time to time. They usually only can manage one, though. And dalhan don’t hunt in packs naturally.”

  On their own, the things didn’t attack each other, but they didn’t share territory either. One of them tended to leave the land pretty unappetizing for the others, after all.

  Amris spoke the thoughts she didn’t want to have. “Then there’s more than a slim chance they’re in Thyran’s service, or the service of his magicians.”

  “Yeah.” Darya wanted to kick one of the bodies, but she liked her toes. “The Twisted, the living ones—if you can call it living—don’t want them around, though, for obvious reasons.”

  “Sending them ahead would make all the more sense, then. As an advance force, they’d be out of the way of the normal troops and the scouts alike, and positioned well to weaken any resistance they found, or simply send back power from lower sources if they didn’t meet with intelligent life. Can they do that?”

  They can do that, said Gerant.

  “I wouldn’t mind if you stopped being right about this sort of thing,” said Darya, resheathing Gerant now that the blood was off his blade. “For the record.”

  “It’s one of my dearer wishes as well. Still—” Amris squared his shoulders, armor clanking. “These will give their masters no more power. There’s some comfort in that.”

  It was, in fact, a cheering thought. “Does he do that a lot?” she asked Gerant.

  A great deal.

  “I’m not complaining,” she added, starting back toward the path. “I’m just waiting for you to reassure me that I’ll find us another dinner.”

  “I have nothing but faith in your skills, Sentinel.”

  Chapter 14

  They didn’t come across another rabbit, but after twilight they stopped at the banks of a small creek, and Darya quickly caught them three helmhead fish, small and violet and, as Amris recalled, delicious.

  Amris built a pit for their fire while she cleaned the fish, relishing the chance to use his strength and the skills he’d learned as a young infantryman, then built the fire itself while she and Gerant put up the warding.

  Darya nodded approval at the result of Amris’s work, which was low and almost smokeless, and propped two sticks full of fish over the flames. “You’ll want to watch them,” she said, and went down to wash her hands at the creek. “I’ve been told I eat meat when it’s practically still moving, so I don’t cook to my taste when I’m with company.”

  Her gifts, Gerant added, do make her a somewhat hazardous dining companion. I’m surprised you’ve not tried nightshade stew yet.

  “You’ve just given me ideas,” said Darya. Her voice came back from the water, mingled with the running creek and the splashing of her hands. “Though maybe I’ll wait until we’ve finished with Thyran’s army.”

  “Yes, one dance at a time is best with the Lady of Flames. You might mix up the figures otherwise.”

  That made both of his companions laugh, and Amris sat back on his heels and turned the fish, happy in the out-of-proportion fashion that arrived at times after great sorrow, or in the midst of it. The sun was just below the horizon in a clear lavender sky, the trees were rustling in a faint warm breeze that strengthened the scent of cooking meat, and he was with friends—and one lover, with whom the physical impossibility of that word seemed minor just then.

  Had the world not been in danger, it would have been a wonderful evening. Even so, Amris whistled as he turned the spits, and shrugged when Darya gave him a quizzical look. “There’s yet plenty of good in the world,” he said, “and if we don’t know for certain that we’ll save it, that’s all the more reason to enjoy what we have, true?”

  You forget, Gerant added to Darya, if we haven’t been here before, we’ve both dwelt many years not too far distant. You know life goes on after pain, and…well, it goes on before pain, too, or around it, or generally proximate.

  Worried that the two of them sounded too much as though they were lecturing her, Amris fell silent until Darya’s puzzled expression turned thoughtful, and then to amusement at herself. “I’ve felt that often when I risked my own neck,” she said. “Makes sense to expand it… I just never had occasion before.”

  “You risked your neck in aid of others,” said Amris.

  “But if I died, the Order would send another Sentinel, and Gerant would rebind himself to another bright young thing.”

  Not right away. There’s a period of rest, of…recalibration, you might say.

  “I wouldn’t. But thank you for not contradicting the ‘bright’ or the ‘young.’” Darya sat with her legs folded tailor-style, elbows on her knees, and watched the fire: not brooding, just interested. “My point stands. A couple of people would miss me. A couple dozen would be inconvenienced. Maybe one or two others would die, and that’d be sad. But the world would keep turning.”

  “Nobody’s heart would break?”

  Darya glanced up, surprised, and Amris in truth wasn’t sure why he’d asked. “Nah. No partner. You can’t have children once you’re a full and bound Sentinel, and I wouldn’t know my parents on the street. A few of my teachers would grieve, and some of the other Sentinels, but they’re used to the risks. We all are.”

  The chunks of fish were turning from white to silver. Amris watched them, unsure how to put into words the question that came most readily to his mind. “Is that so for all of you?” he finally asked.

  “More or less. People do partner outside the Order, but it’s rare as hell, especially long-term. And most of us are bastards, or foundlings at any rate. Once in a while, you get a legitimate fifth daughter, or a family makes some odd bargain with the gods. Most people don’t want to hand their babies over to this life. Can’t say I blame them,” Darya added, with no trace of self-pity.

  “The Order takes infants?”

  “Takes in, sure. We don’t go through the Forging until we’re thirteen or thereabouts, and any who want can swear out before then.”

  Yes, Gerant added, patiently anticipating what Amris would say next, after being raised with the expectation of being a Sentinel. Some do stay in because of what they’ve been told, and don’t question what they truly want—but the same is true of apprentices and cabin boys the world over, isn’t it? Not to mention acolytes.

  Since Darya was waiting as well, face turned upward a trifle and body deceptively relaxed, Amris paused before he replied. He was a stranger to debate with her, as he wasn’t with Gerant, and she was one of the people being discussed. Still it bore saying: “Apprentices and cabin boys don’t have their bodies reshaped.”

  Not immediately, at any rate.

  “No,” said Darya calmly, “they don’t. I don’t say it wouldn’t be kinder to wait longer or to start training older. It’d be better, in a better world. This isn’t.”

  There wasn’t much Amris could say in return.

  Darya took pity on him. “What I do is necessary,” she said, “and I like it better than I’d like being a scribe, or a farmer, or probably even a princess—though the feasts and the hot baths would be nice. And I like it a great deal better than the life I’d probably have had otherwise, given how it started. I’ve no complaints. And I think dinner’s ready.”

  * * *

  They ate, rid themselves of armor and boots, and lay down. The ground was softer than the floor in Sitha’s temple had been, but also cooler and lumpier. Darya folded her arms behind her head and looked up at the forest through the green veil of the ward, slowly willing herself toward relaxation and sleep.

  It wasn’t easy. She knew every sound around her, from the chirping crickets and the running creek to the shriek of a hunting owl and the growl of a badger defending its territory. Amris’s breathing was the only exception, and even that was becoming familiar, sinking in with help from Gerant’s spell. Darya listened for other sounds, t
hose she’d heard only on a hunt and those she didn’t think she’d recognize, and watched the treetops for twisted shapes.

  The wards would keep out most direct attacks, but a powerful enough mage could likely break them, and they wouldn’t help against, say, a forest fire.

  I’d warn you, said Gerant, after the third time she’d turned over, long before any threat approached. You know that.

  “I do,” she muttered, hoping she spoke too quietly to wake Amris. It made some difference, but only enough for her to try and sleep, not nearly enough to make it easy.

  This, the edge beyond civilization, had been her place for a long time. She’d known its paths and delighted in what she didn’t know—the mysteries that lay inside caves, the treasures of the ancient world.

  That world had come back, in two different forms. Now the ground beneath Darya felt far less solid, and the patterns of tree and sky were alien.

  Even Amris, ally who was rapidly becoming friend, changed things, and not only by his presence and his news. She’d never had to explain the Order and its customs before, never had to put into words why she was happy and how she could go on without worrying about her death more than the most unshakable instinct forced her to.

  She kind of liked doing so.

  That was another change.

  And it was all better thought of over a bottle of wine and a long talk with friends from the Order, when she was safe and the war was won and she wouldn’t have to wake up in four hours to try and overtake monster scouts.

  Darya closed her eyes, listened to the sounds around her, and propelled herself downward toward sleep like a diver going after pearls. In the end, it was the slow, steady breathing of Amris that pushed her down over the edge into darkness.

  Chapter 15

  A little before midday, as far as Amris could estimate through the canopy of trees, they came to the bridge.

  He knew the shape, and the blue-purple stone, from his time. Then it had been sturdy: not newly cut, but constantly renewed and maintained, with polished wooden railings to keep travelers safe. A hundred years of disuse had weakened the mortar and pitted the stones. Several had fallen down into the ravine below; they stood out of the running water in broken chunks.