Child of Sorrows

by Michaelbrent Collings

  "You got that from one minute in a tent?"

  Arrow looked at her.

  The world was a thing of moments, of intersections occurring at varying speeds.

  "You fly beside me for a time," he said.

  Strangely, this seemed to satisfy her. Or perhaps she simply had such a low opinion of magic users and nobles that hearing one spout nonsense comforted her on some level.

  She sat back. Closed her eyes. "Wake me when you need me."

  "You can sleep in an auto-car?"

  "A soldier can sleep anywhere."

  And in a moment, she proved her words to be true.

  Arrow drove on, moving into Strength, no longer alone but still wishing for the people who were not here.

  6

  Sword could never explain what happened when she held a weapon – perhaps because she didn't fully understand it herself. She only knew that when a tool of death fell into her hand, she… became.

  She became the weapon.

  She became the moments that made the battle.

  She became her foe as much as herself.

  She became… everything. All there was in the small infinity of battle – the only universe that existed until foes had been vanquished and weapons sheathed.

  So when the shorter man rushed at her with his blade outstretched, she felt her own weapons spark into being. More than that, she felt herself become the blazing whips in her hands, the man running at her, the steel he held, the air between them.

  She became. She was no longer Sword, she simply was.

  The short man's eyes widened in the instant he saw the flaming cords burst from her hands. But there was no time for him to wheel away, no time for him to do more than stumble slightly to the side. Then he was gagging, dropping his blade to clatter on the stone ramp of the air-dock, trying to rip the whip from its strangling grip on his neck.

  Sword smiled grimly. She had called a whip of cold fire. If she hadn't, it wouldn't be choking the man, it would have simply seared his head away in a bright flare of light and heat. Now, at least, he might live through this.

  She didn't want to kill him if she didn't have to. She didn't want to kill any of them.

  She jerked the whip, and the man stumbled forward and down, slamming face-first to the stone below.

  And because she was, because she had become, her other hand moved of its own accord. The whip flared into the air, snapping louder than one of Arrow's guns. The tantō the taller man had thrown shattered into a thousand pieces, some of them simply winking out of existence under the fire of her flail – not a cold fire this time, but a flame like the noonday sun.

  The short man was still on his stomach, making a gasping hrk, hrk as he tried to draw in breath. The taller man stared at the hand that had thrown the tantō as though unsure why it had betrayed him. Then he looked at Sword. He mouthed something.

  And in the next moment, others swarmed past the tall man. Mostly men, a few women: the ones that had been standing guard the length of the air-dock. They had seen the fight begin, and had run forward. They overtook the tall man, who stood motionless until he was lost to Sword's view by the dozens of people rushing past him.

  Knives. Swords. Arrows. Bolts. Bullets.

  She felt a grin split her face. Part of her was ashamed of that. She truly didn't want to kill anyone – she would try hard not to. But she also knew that she had felt powerless ever since the old man came to the palace in his impossible armor. Now, for the first time since the attack, since stone had crumbled under light, she could fight back, she could win.

  And she could use a win.

  "So come on," she said under her breath.

  The whips disappeared from her hands. Suddenly released, the short man did not rise up but simply lay silent on the ground. Not dead, but he wouldn't be waking up in the next minute or two.

  And a minute or two was all this would take.

  Her preferred weapons – the katana and wakizashi of fire – appeared in her hands as the men and women rushed her. There was a noise and her hand moved of its own accord. The bullet that had been meant for her forehead was slashed in two by the flaming blade she held.

  The onrushing men and women wouldn't be able to see her movement – too fast for the eye to follow. But they would know she had been shot, at point blank range, and had not fallen. They saw the weapons of flame that she had conjured out of nothing.

  She saw fear in their eyes, reflected in the light cast by her swords.

  To their credit, though, none of the air-dock guards fled. They slowed, but kept coming. The only one who had stopped was the first one who had hailed her – the tall man who had drawn back for some reason and whom she could no longer see in the press of other attackers.

  Someone else shot at her – this time a crossbow bolt. With a twist of her wrist she flicked the bolt out of the air, caught it on the edge of her wakizashi, and rebounded it at the woman who had fired it at her. The woman went down, screaming, her hands clamped around the quarrel embedded just above her knee. Not a killing shot – if she got attention soon.

  Best I can do.

  Another motion. Sword ducked under a swordthrust and slashed with her own blade, which had grown an extra six inches in response to her unspoken wish. The sword took her attacker in the shin, slashing through muscle and tendon and scoring the bone beneath. She had willed the sword to heat, so the wound was cauterized even as it occurred. He wouldn't bleed to death. But another attacker was down.

  More people came. She ducked, wheeled; cut, slashed. Her blades disappeared, replaced by a two-handed mace that crushed a man's foot; then it was swapped in turn for a trident she used to pin a woman's arm to the wall of the ramp before jerking it loose and using the swords that were now back in her hands to disarm and then hamstring another attacker.

  They attacked. They fell.

  Finally, it was down to her and a single man. The rest were groaning, moaning, screaming all around. Some called for their mothers, others screamed wordlessly. A few were silent, staring up at the sky. Alive, but unseeing and unspeaking, and their silence was somehow more terrible than the screams.

  The last man held only a rusted dirk, and he switched it from hand to hand nervously. He took a step toward her.

  "Don't," she said. "You don't have to do this, and if you try, it can only end one way." She glanced at the wounded, then back at the man. When she looked up she realized there was actually one more person still standing – upright and unwounded – on the ramp. The tall man, gaunt as a skeleton, white as a ghost. Standing well back and saying something so quietly she couldn't hear it. It didn't matter. He wasn't moving toward her, and she could sense no weapon on his person.

  She looked back at the other man, the one with a dirk, who had edged a bit closer while she looked at the tall man behind him. "Don't," she said again. "Please," she added, her voice plaintive. "I don't want to hurt you."

  The weapons disappeared from her hands. She opened them, palms toward her last assailant and fingers splayed wide. "Please," she whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear. "Just let me pass."

  He looked behind himself as though searching for help. He gestured at the tall man, who continued to stare in seeming shock, mouthing a prayer or a curse or something else that Sword could not even guess.

  The man took a hesitant step forward, his dirk still extended. Her katana blazed into being and she held the point toward his eye. "I want to leave you whole so you can help the others," she said. "But if you stand against me you will fall as they did."

  The man leaned down, clearly about to drop his dirk. Then he straightened, blade still in hand and a grin splitting his face. Sword heard the sound at the same time he did: a deep roar with a high-pitched overtone. The sound of a thousand flames, stoked to white heat.

  Sword stiffened. She knew that sound.

  She looked skyward and saw a star seem to detach from the heavens. It was already brighter than the rest of the pinpricks of light that dotted t
he night sky, but it quickly grew large enough that no one could pretend it was a mere star. Larger and larger, closer and closer, and in only a few seconds she was staring at the huge form of the one enemy she had ever faced who brought her to her knees.

  The armor looked even huger than the first time she saw it. The fires at its back and feet seemed to have been cut whole from the fires of the Netherworlds, and its cogs and gears clanked and shifted with a sound like the churning gut of a hungry beast.

  The armor fell to the air-dock ramp between her and the man who had been the last to stand against her. The helm turned to the man, and that ugly, mechanical voice spoke a single word: "Leave."

  The man nodded. The grin still split his face in a mockery of joy. He backed away, moving up the ramp toward the main part of the air-dock – but not too far. He wanted to see what would happen to Sword.

  Sword stared at the iron creature as it looked around, the man inside the armor taking in the sight of the wounded, their cries of pain and silent stares of anguish.

  "You didn't kill any of them," he said. He bowed slightly to Sword. "For that, I will grant you mercy. For that, child, I will kill you quickly."

  Sword threw herself to the side, a motion so fast it seemed a streak of light. It almost wasn't fast enough. The arrows that exploded from the old man's armored fingers slammed into the stone of the ramp, driving through it with puffs of dust.

  Sword was already dancing back through the powder toward the old man before he could bring his other arm forward. She cast her whip at his leg, willing it to brightness, to heat. The air around it roiled as it snaked toward the armor. It should have melted the iron to slag.

  The iron hissed. It smoked. She thought it might have blackened a bit.

  Then the old man yanked his leg backward, pulling Sword off balance. She lost her footing and stumbled toward him, barely managing to lurch sideways as he sent a huge metal fist down. If it had connected it would have crushed her skull, mashed it down and made it a part of the air-dock itself. As it was, the fist crashed into the stone and created a hole nearly a foot deep.

  Sword skidded sideways, then slammed her own fist at him. A stiletto had appeared in her grip – not an ordinary knife, but a long, slim blade that came to a deadly point. Soldiers in the Army trained with them since they pierced mail armor and could be used to slide into the chinks of plate mail. The suit of armor she faced now was harder and stronger than mere plate, but she remembered that she had managed to bite into a joint – at least slightly – with an axe the last time. Perhaps she had failed before because her attacks were too broad. Perhaps with a precision strike….

  The point of the stiletto found the spot behind the armored knee. The suit was so tall that the knee came up above her waist, but that just meant she had more leverage when she swung the stiletto – and more force behind the strike.

  The stiletto sank in. Sank deep. Something ground against the blade she had created with her Gift, and smoke surged out of the small hole in the armor.

  The old man screamed. Even with the distortion created by the helmet, she could tell he wasn't in pain, just angry. She didn't bother trying to jerk the stiletto out of the hole, just let go of it and it disappeared in that same instant.

  She flitted around to the back of the armor, thinking to repeat the same process, but the old man was waiting for the move. The fires at his back, which had been banked to allow him to land on the air-dock, surged suddenly. They blasted out columns of flame, and Sword only barely leaped to the side before being burned.

  She rolled and came to her feet, saw another big fist hammer toward her, and called two stilettos to her hands. They flamed bright, and she moved her head aside as the fist slammed at her. It barely missed, punching a hole in the air so close to her that she felt its heat on her ear.

  She didn't even blink, just punched a blade into each side of the elbow as soon as it came close. The blades sank into the dark joint, one going in several inches and the other disappearing almost half its length.

  Again, smoke billowed as gears ground angrily together. Again, the old man roared in rage – and this time, perhaps also in pain.

  Sword grinned tightly. "I'll cut you down an inch at a time if I must, old man."

  Then something happened she wasn't prepared for. She still had the stilettos buried in his arm, but in an instant the arm simply wasn't there. She blinked, realizing that she was still holding her blades, but the arm they had punctured had disappeared.

  But no, that was wrong. The arm hadn't disappeared – it had changed. It had pulled back, splitting apart and folding into itself, moving on gears and tracks and transforming into something else. She glimpsed flesh – the old man's arm, encased in the armor but visible for a short moment – then the arm snapped back to its shape.

  But Sword had jerked, slightly off balance when the thing she had pinned down with her stilettos suddenly disappeared. And in the instant the arm and fist reappeared, the old man took advantage of her momentary unsteadiness. He slammed his fist sideways, and what felt like an anvil hammered into her head.

  The side of Sword's face – her ear, her cheek, her eye – seemed to explode in moist heat. Her face, her neck grew wet. Bleeding. She tried to call a weapon, something that would help her. But her thoughts were scattered. She couldn't focus.

  What weapon? Pike? Sword? Mace?

  Ideas flitted through her mind, but they flew as birds in a storm, skittering side to side and never quite managing to alight.

  She wanted to rest. To lay down and sleep. But knew she wouldn't be able to, because… because….

  Because the Empire is in danger.

  Because Malal needs me.

  (because I'm going to die here)

  She blinked away a curtain of blood, and saw the first that had hit her returning for another punch. She managed to lean away from it, but only slightly. Instead of taking the hit on her face, the metal fist slammed into her shoulder –

  (it hurts oh it hurts so much)

  – and chest.

  The force of the blow sent her flying. She didn't even touch the stone below her feet, just found herself twisting, touching nothing but air as she shot across the width of the air-dock's ramp.

  She saw the wounded as she spun. Took them all in, saw their faces in strange detail.

  She saw the armored man, the tube on his arm glowing, following her flight.

  She saw the first man, the tall, gaunt man who had challenged her. He was running forward, shouting something she couldn't hear.

  Then she hit something. Hard, painful. It slammed into her hip and leg, but her upper body kept moving. She flipped over it and realized what it was.

  The wall on the side of the ramp.

  The wall that kept people from dropping into….

  A single instant of terror. Then she was falling. Falling to the forbidden clouds below, to death and perhaps worse.

  She would appear tomorrow, her body impaled on one of the poles that surrounded the Emperor's castle. Placed there by whatever enemy lived below the clouds, and had forbidden any from Ansborn to descend.

  No!

  No!

  NOOOOOO!

  The scream lasted forever, and eventually she screamed not just with her mind, but with her throat and mouth and with her very soul.

  She screamed, and fell.

  And the clouds waited for her.

  7

  Father Akiro knew something was wrong.

  He didn't like traveling in auto-cars – something about them made him queasy. He preferred horse and carriage any day, even now that he was old and his body didn't work the way it should. Still, he had bowed to the wisdom of the others: things were moving quickly, and they didn't have the time for slow moving. Everyone had to take auto-cars to their destinations.

  Besides, he would see himself to the Netherworlds before he let Brother Scieran do something that he himself refused to do. If his old student could travel to Faith in an auto-car, then Akiro
would make himself reach Knowledge. And he'd get there first, by the Gods!

  But the trip quickly turned… strange.

  Nothing he could put a finger on, not at first. The trip from the palace to the skybridge took the better part of a day, and nothing really stood out then. Not until he passed over the skybridge and entered Knowledge.

  Even then, it was subtle. Passing through several towns as night fell, he began to notice a strange emptiness. At first he chalked it up to the fact that it was nearing nightfall. People could be found at the bazaar in Central at all hours of the night and day – but these were smaller places.

  Not everyone stays up all night. Not everyone's as young as you are, Akiro.

  He grinned to himself at that thought, but the grin quickly faded.

  Because though it was late, it wasn't that late. Shouldn't there be someone? Someone at the well for late-needed water? Someone walking toward a tavern to buy a drink, or even a fellow traveler passing on the road?

  But there was no one.

  Akiro thought about getting out of the auto-car, knocking on a door or two, but he decided to keep on moving. The emptiness of the towns wasn't his mission: finding a cure for Malal's affliction at the Great University was.

  Then he saw the face.

  It was just a glimpse: a small, round moon of dirty white he spotted in one of the upstairs windows above a small, dark shop. A child's face, wide-eyed and frightened, that disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Akiro almost could have persuaded himself it was just his imagination, so quickly did it happen; only the still-fluttering curtain at the window convinced him that something had, in fact, been there.

  He stopped the auto-car without thinking about it, and without thinking about it he got out of the vehicle. It wasn't a fast process – he wasn't young, and his days of bounding out of still-moving auto-cars were over, if they had ever existed in the first place. But he moved as quickly as he could, and then, leaning on his two canes, moved to the store over which he had seen the face.