Way of Shadows nat-1

by Brent Weeks

  Just by looking at a man’s face, he could judge instantly: parry left, hesitate, lunge, clear. A man died and fell far enough away that he didn’t impede Kylar’s movements. Next, sweep right, roll in, bear fist to nose. Spin, hamstring, throat. Parry, riposte. Stab.

  Parsed to the individual percussion of each chamber of his heart, battle had a rhythm, a music. Not a sound was out of place. The tenor of ringing steel layered over a bass of the fists and feet hammering flesh—soft to hard, hard to soft—and the baritone of men’s curses, punctuated by the staccato percussion of rending mail.

  With his Talent singing, Kylar was a virtuoso. He fought in a fine frenzy, a dancer possessed. Time never slowed, but he found his body reacting to sights he didn’t consciously see—turning, dodging under blows his mind never registered, striking with the awesome speed and grace of that angel of death, the Night Angel.

  The highlanders sought to overwhelm him by force of numbers. Their blades caught the air within an inch of Kylar’s ear, within half an inch of his stomach, a quarter of an inch from his thigh. He rode the front of each beat, cut the margins closer and closer, until the bodies he was killing were being pushed forward instead of falling back, and pressing in closer on him.

  He sheathed Retribution and grabbed the hand holding a blade aimed at his belly and yanked a skinny highlander across the circle to stab his fellow. Reaching around his own back with a knife, he diverted a sword thrust while his other knife found an eye socket.

  Two spears came for him and he dropped to the floor, yanking both forward. As each impaled a body, he swung up, destroying another highlander’s face with a kick.

  But the situation was hopeless. Within a cage of tangled weapons and thrashing, dying men, he’d be trapped in moments.

  Light as a cat, he sprang to the back of a man dying on his knees and vaulted off the shoulder of one of the impaled spear bearers.

  As he flipped sideways through the air, a ball of green wytchfire the size of his fist streaked through the air at him. It caught his cloak and broke into pieces. He landed on his feet and ducked under a sword cut. His cloak burst into green flame. Kylar tore the cloak off as he dove between two spears.

  Holding one edge of the cloak, he came to his feet and wrapped the cloak around another of his attackers. The green flame raced for the man’s skin, and there burned a fierce blue as he screamed.

  Another ball of wytchfire sizzled through the air and Kylar dove behind one of the pillars supporting the high ceiling.

  There were two beats of rest. Kylar had killed or disabled more than half the Khalidorans, but now the others played to their strengths. Point, counterpoint.

  “To the captain! Keep a meister in view!” Roth shouted. Men streamed to the captain to form a wedge between Kylar and Roth, who had retreated to the throne to watch.

  But Kylar wasn’t wasting his time as he stood in the protection of the pillar. He knew that if he wanted a chance at Roth, he had to kill the wytches. Both of them were eyeing the spaces between the pillars where he would have to run.

  He pooled the ka’kari in his hand, and keeping the feel of those fingers of magic in his mind, willed it to dribble down the length of his sword. Seeming to sense his urgency, the ka’kari coated the steel instantly. Both ka’kari and steel shimmered out of visibility.

  Kylar dodged out from the pillar and the fingers were on him instantly. He cut in a quick circle and felt them shrivel and die out of existence. Grabbing the edge of one of the long tapestries that covered the walls of the throne room, Kylar moved toward the pillar, but not before wytchfire leaped from a wytch’s fingers.

  If he’d had time to think about it, Kylar wouldn’t have tried to block with his sword—it was insanity to try to block magic—but it was his ingrained response. The flat of his blade hit the green globe of fire. Instead of bursting, the fire whooshed into the blade.

  Kylar dodged around a pillar with the tapestry in one hand and a sword now visible because of the green flame crackling through it. With all the strength of his Talent, he leaped.

  He soared into the air in the middle of the throne room, and then as the tapestry met a pillar, it abruptly changed his trajectory and launched him up the steps.

  The other wytch must have thrown wytchfire that Kylar hadn’t seen, because the tapestry gave way and tore a moment before Kylar was going to release it. He hit the landing between the flights of stairs with eight feet of burning tapestry in his hands. He hurled it toward the highlanders and slashed at the wytch chanting not two steps away.

  The top of the wytch’s head opened, exposing his brain. The man spun, but his lips completed his incantation. The thick black tendrils that had been squirming under the skin of his arms fattened grotesquely like rippling muscles and tore free of the wytch’s arms, bursting through his skin.

  Power roared from the dying wytch and he staggered, trying to find Kylar. Kylar jumped behind him. He kicked the wytch so hard that the man lifted off the ground and crashed into the highlanders.

  The flailing black tendrils ripped into the men, sucking them in like greedy hands and chewing through them with a sound like logs in a sawmill.

  Even as the black tendrils were tearing through the soldiers, Kylar felt more than saw the white light forming behind him. He turned in time to see the homunculus streaking through the air. It dodged under his desperate slash and stabbed tiny claws into his chest.

  He was already jumping to the side when he felt the concussion and saw the air ripple. Reality bubbled in a line toward him. The rippling air curved, following him as he ran. Then the air tore open. He vaulted all the way to the wall and nearly caught another ball of wytchfire with his face.

  The pit wyrm lunged forward into reality, barely missing him. It thrashed, furious, tearing the hole open wider and hooking fiery claws around two of the pillars, mere feet away. Kylar ripped the homunculus from his chest and slapped it onto a soldier’s face.

  As the pit wyrm lunged again, Kylar leapt straight up. Its lampreylike mouth shot out, latched onto the screaming man, and sucked him back into the pit. By the time Kylar landed, both pit wyrm and soldier were gone.

  Kylar turned and jumped for the top of the stairs, but he was too slow. Even as he left the ground, he saw a blur of light streaking toward him. There was no time to draw a throwing knife. Kylar hurled his sword at the last wytch.

  The bolt of magic blasted his left shoulder. As the momentum of his leap carried him up and forward, the blast made him flip end over end backward. He crunched into the marble floor at the foot of the throne and felt his left knee shatter.

  For a long moment, his eyes refused to focus. He blinked and blinked and finally cleared the blood away. He saw Retribution buried to the hilt through a wytch ten paces away, its blade black with his ka’kari.

  He realized that he was viewing the dead wytch through a pair of legs. His eyes followed the legs up to Roth’s face.

  “Stand up,” Roth said. He plunged his long sword through Kylar’s lower back.

  Kylar gagged as Roth twisted the blade in his kidney. Then the hot metal lifted away. Something pulled Kylar to his feet.

  The pain was like a cloud making everything fuzzy and indistinct. Confused, Kylar stared at the dead wytches. Who picked me up?

  “All the aethelings of Godking Ursuul are wytchborn,” Roth said. “Didn’t you know?”

  Kylar stared at Roth dumbly. Roth was Talented? The invisible hands released him and he folded as he put weight on his destroyed left leg. The marble floor jarred him once more.

  “Get up!” Roth said. He stabbed Kylar’s groin and cursed him. Kylar dropped his head onto the marble as Roth’s screaming became inarticulate. The sound of Roth’s voice faded to a murmur next to the roaring voice of pain.

  The pain flashed in another bar through his stomach as Roth stabbed him again. Then he must have picked Kylar up again, because Kylar felt his head lolling to one side. If he’d felt pain before, now it became agony.

  Ev
ery part of his body was being scoured with fire, dipped in alcohol, packed with salt. His eyelids were lined with crushed glass. His optic nerves were being chewed by little teeth. And after his eyes, every tissue, sinew, muscle, and organ marinated in misery in its turn. He was screaming.

  But his mind cleared.

  Kylar blinked. He was standing before Roth, and he was aware. Aware and dismayed. He must have landed on his left knee when he’d crashed to the marble, because it was demolished. He was bleeding inside—his intestines leaking slow death into his viscera, stomach acids scorching his intestines, a kidney pouring black blood. His left shoulder looked like it had kissed a giant’s hammer.

  “You won’t die easy,” Roth said. “I won’t allow it. Not after what you’ve done. Look what you’ve done! My father will be furious.”

  There it was. He was dying. Kylar could perch unsteadily on his one good leg, but he had no weapons. His sword and the ka’kari were ten paces away—they might as well have been across the ocean. No weapons, and Roth was—even now—careful not to come within range of his hands. Kylar didn’t have so much as a belt knife.

  “Are you ready to die?” Roth said, his eyes glowing malevolence.

  Kylar was staring at his right hand. Of all the beaten, sliced, and smashed places on his body, his fingers were healthy, perfect, healed. Wasn’t that the hand he’d cut on the window last night? “I’m ready,” he said, surprising himself.

  “Any regrets?” Roth asked.

  Kylar looked into Roth, and understood him. Kylar had always had enough darkness in his soul to understand evil men. Roth was trying to wring anguish from him. Roth wanted to kill him while he thought of all the things he hadn’t done. Roth reaped despair. “Dying well is easy,” Kylar said, “it only takes a moment of courage. It’s living well that I couldn’t do. What’s death compared to that?”

  “You’re about to find out,” Roth spat.

  Kylar smirked, and then smiled as rage washed over Roth.

  “Killing Logan was more fun,” Roth said. He rammed his sword into Kylar’s chest.

  Logan! The thought cut through Kylar more cruelly than the sword in Roth’s hand. Kylar had lived by the sword. Dying by it was neither unexpected nor unjust. But Logan had never even wanted to hurt anyone. Roth killing Logan wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t just.

  Kylar stared at the steel stabbed through his chest. He took Roth’s hand in his own and pulled, pulled himself up the sword, impaling himself to the hilt. Roth’s eyes widened.

  “I am the Night Angel,” Kylar said, gasping on the steel through his lung. “This is justice. This is for Logan.”

  There was a ting and the sound of metal rolling on marble. The ka’kari leaped for Kylar’s hand—

  And was caught squarely by Roth. Triumph lit his eyes. He laughed.

  But Kylar grabbed Roth’s shoulders and stared him in the eye. “I am the Night Angel,” Kylar repeated. “This is justice. This is for Logan.” Kylar lifted his right hand.

  Roth looked confused. Then he looked at his left hand. The ka’kari was turning to liquid and gliding through his fingers. His hands scrambled as they’d scrambled across the wood floor of the boat shop, and found nothing. The ka’kari slapped into Kylar’s palm and formed an enormous punch dagger on his fist.

  Kylar slammed his fist into Roth’s chest.

  Roth looked down, his disbelief turning to horror as Kylar drew the dagger out, his horror turning to fear as his heart pumped blood directly into his lungs.

  Roth shrieked a shrill denial of his own mortality.

  Kylar released the prince and tried to step away, but his limbs refused to obey him. His knee buckled and he crashed to the ground with the Khalidoran prince.

  Roth and Kylar lay eye to eye on the marble at the foot of the throne, staring at each other, dying. Each trembled as uncontrollable twitches ran through his limbs. Each breathed terrible, labored breaths in time with the other. Roth’s eyes brimmed with fear, panic so intense it paralyzed. He seemed to no longer see Kylar lying inches away. His gaze grew more distant and filled with soul-deep terror.

  Kylar was content. This Night Angel had apportioned death—and death was his portion. It wasn’t nice, but it was just. This sentence was deserved. Watching Roth’s eyes finally glaze in restless death, Kylar wished there were something more beautiful to find in death than justice. But he didn’t have the strength to turn away from this life, this death, this terrible justice.

  Then someone turned him over. A woman. She came into focus slowly. It was Elene. She pulled Kylar into her lap, stroked his hair. She was crying. Kylar couldn’t see her scars. He reached a hand up, touched her face. She was angelic.

  Then he saw his hand. It was perfect, whole, and amazingly, unbloodied. For the first time in his life, his hands were clean. Clean!

  Death came. Kylar yielded.

  66

  Terah Graesin had just paid a fortune to one of the prettiest men she’d ever seen. Jarl said he spoke for the Shinga, but he carried himself with such assurance, she wondered if he might not be the Shinga himself. She hadn’t liked handing over so much money to the Sa’kagé, but she hadn’t had any choice. The Godking’s army would arrive with the dawn, and she’d already spent too long in the city.

  The coup had not gone according to the Godking’s plan. The Khalidorans controlled the bridges, the castle, and the city’s gates, but some of them had only skeleton crews. That would change when the rest of the army arrived, and Terah Graesin and her nobles needed to be gone when that happened. If she hadn’t paid half her fortune to Jarl, she would have had to leave behind all of it. A queen made the hard decisions, and with everyone else dead, a queen was what she was, now.

  It was midnight. The wagons were packed. The men were waiting. It was time.

  Terah stood outside her family’s mansion. Like the other ducal families’ homes, theirs was old, a veritable fortress. A looted fortress now. A looted fortress smelling of the barrels and barrels of oil they had poured in every room, over the precious heirlooms too heavy to carry, and into the grooves they’d cut in every centuries-old beam. It was time. Jarl’s wetboys were supposed to slaughter the Khalidorans holding the city’s east gate at midnight. All the other nobles were huddled outside their own houses. From her elevated front porch, she could see some of them up and down Horak Street, waiting to see if she’d really do it.

  She locked the mansion in her mind. After she returned, she would rebuild this for her family, twice as splendid as before.

  Terah Graesin walked to the street and took the torch from Sergeant Gamble. The archers gathered around her. She personally lit every arrow. At her nod, they loosed them.

  The mansion went up in flame. Fire poured from the windows and reached for the heavens. Queen Terah Graesin didn’t look. She mounted her horse and led her column, her pathetic army of three hundred soldiers and twice as many servants and shopkeepers into the street toward the east gate.

  Across the east side, the great houses lit up one by one. They were the funeral pyres of fortunes. Not only were the nobles losing everything, but so too were all those who depended on them for their employment. But the fires of destruction were also beacons of hope. You may have won, Cenaria was saying, but your victory is no triumph. You can force me from my home, but you will not live in it. I will leave you nothing but scorched earth.

  In response to those great fires, across the city, smaller fires rose, too. Shopkeepers set fire to their shops. Blacksmiths stoked their furnaces so hot they would crack. Bakers destroyed their ovens. Millers sank their millstones in the Plith. Warehouse owners set fire to their storehouses. Livestock owners slaughtered their herds. Captains confined to the Plith by wytches’ magic scuttled their own ships.

  Thousands joined the exodus. The trickle of nobles and their servants became a flood. The flood became a host, an army marching out of the city—marching in defeat, but marching. Some drove wagons, some rode, some walked barefoot with empty h
ands and empty bellies. Some cursed; some prayed; some stared over their shoulders with haunted eyes; some wept. Some left brothers and sisters and parents and children, but every one of Cenaria’s orphaned sons and daughters carried a small, dim hope in their hearts.

  I shall return, it vowed. I shall return.

  Neph stood as far to one side as he could among the meisters, generals, and soldiers waiting to greet Godking Garoth Ursuul as he rode across West Kingsbridge with his retinue. The Godking wore a great ermine cloak that accentuated the paleness of his northern skin. His chest was bare aside from the heavy gold chains of his office. He was robust, thick-bodied but muscular, vigorous for his age. The Godking pulled his stallion to a halt before the courtyard gate. Six heads on pikes greeted him. A seventh pike stood empty.

  “Commander Gher.”

  “Yes, my liege—uh, my god, Your Holiness, sire.” The former royal guard cleared his throat. Things were not good. Though Roth’s and Neph’s plans had seemed to go without a problem, somehow the Godking’s armies had sustained far heavier losses than they’d planned. A boatload of highlanders dead. Many of the nobles who ought to be dead escaped. Great swathes of the city aflame. The heart of Cenaria’s industry and economy reduced to ashes.

  There was no resistance yet, but with so many nobles still alive, it would come. The meisters that were supposed to have been a devastating spearhead into the heart of Modai were now dead. More than fifty meisters dead, at a stroke, without any explanation except rumors of some mage with more Talent than anyone since Ezra the Mad and Jorsin Alkestes. The Ceuran invasion ended before it began. The Godking’s son murdered just as he completed his uurdthan.

  The Sa’kagé would have to be brought to heel, fires literal and figurative would have to be put out. Someone would have to answer for it. Neph Dada was trying to figure out how to make sure it wasn’t him.

  “Why is there an empty pike on my bridge?” the God-king asked. “Anyone?”