Unbroken Chain: The Darker Road (single books)

by Jaleigh Johnson

  “No. My fate was decided from birth. I will follow its course and be proud.”

  “I’m carrying you to your death,” Ashok whispered. Maybe that was Ashok’s fate-the rider of nightmares, the bringer of death.

  The land angled upward. The nightmare fought its way up a steep hill overlooking a broad valley. Ashok leaned forward with his burden to keep from falling off. When they reached the crest, the nightmare stopped and, with a startled cry, reared in the air.

  Ashok surged forward to grab the stallion’s neck. His hands brushed the enchanted necklace-it was hot, nearly hot enough to blister flesh. The magic strained to keep the nightmare’s true nature in check.

  It will burn out soon, Ashok realized. The necklace won’t last the journey to Rashemen.

  He would have to deal with that later. For now, he worked to keep the beast from bolting down the hill and leaving them trampled on the plain. After several minutes of curses, cajoling, and threats with his chain, Ashok got the nightmare to keep its four feet on the ground. Only then could he begin to take in what had upset the stallion so violently.

  Behind him, the man loosened his grip on Ashok’s waist and looked over his shoulder across the valley.

  “We arrived in time,” he said, and there was such profound relief in his voice that it almost distracted Ashok from the sight of the vast army spread below them.

  Men and women on horseback, armed for battle, rode in ranks as if they’d been born on the back of a horse.

  There must have been thousands. The ghosts of the Tuigan invaders prepared to follow their leader into battle. Ashok saw the wild exultation on their faces as they slapped blades and rode their horses side by side.

  In the distance, a horn blared. The riders shouted in answer and formed into lines. Their horses reared and neighed in frenzy, eager to run. The nightmare quivered beneath Ashok. The call to battle had infected him.

  “Time to go,” the man said. “Will you ride with me, Palum?”

  Ashok surveyed the steep slope into the valley. It would be a punishing ride, getting down to the army. He grinned and dug his heels into the nightmare’s flank.

  The beast took off at a dangerous gallop. Ashok leaned all the way back in his seat, grinding his legs into the nightmare’s body to keep his balance. Snow and mud flew up around them. Ashok’s teeth clamped together painfully at the jarring motions. Fire burned in his muscles. Then, with a final, wild leap, they were in the valley and riding among the ghost horses and the Tuigan warriors. They saluted him with blades thrust in the air as he rode into their midst.

  A fierce cry ripped from Ashok’s throat. The roar of hoofbeats deafened him. The charging army was a furious storm tearing across the plain to meet its fate. Come what may, the riders were together, and in that breath, they were invincible. Ashok lost himself in that feeling of wholeness, just as he’d once done among the shadar-kai dancers in Ikemmu. Now he was a man among ghosts, but they looked at him and saw-what? Not a shadar-kai but a warrior-his soul marked him as one of their own.

  They rode out of the valley and into blinding snow. Ashok’s vision blurred. He raised a hand to see in the darkness, but there was no path to follow. Reluctantly, he reined in the nightmare and forced him to stop. When the wind died enough that he could see again, Ashok realized the ghost army was gone. He felt behind him, but his passenger had vanished as well.

  Ashok slid off the nightmare’s back and walked a few paces back toward the valley. There were no hoofprints, no signs to mark the horde of invaders as ever having existed.

  He retraced his steps on foot, leading the nightmare. After only a few minutes, he came upon the stone cairn and the dark form of Ilvani crouched in the snow. Ashok sat down beside her and left the nightmare to rest.

  He had too many questions, so he asked the most obvious first. “How did I get back here so quickly?”

  Ilvani regarded him somberly. “I told you. You traveled fast but not far. At the end, he was so close to his army. He just needed a guide.”

  “I touched a spirit tonight,” Ashok said. He looked at his hands. He hadn’t put his gloves back on after touching Ilvani. “I didn’t know it was possible to feel the touch of an undead thing without it corrupting my flesh.”

  “They do corrupt,” Ilvani said. “But they do it insidiously-one small touch, then another and another.”

  “They’re restless. They pull and grab and overwhelm you,” Ashok said, understanding at last what she meant. “It’s enough to drive a person mad.”

  “So they call me.”

  “There’s power in your gifts,” Ashok said. “I’ve seen it and not just tonight.”

  She looked at him curiously. Ashok put his hands on the cairn where the Tuigan warrior’s bones lay. Two worlds overlapping.

  “Eight months ago, when I was imprisoned in the caves, waiting for the shadows to take me, I dreamed …” It was hard for Ashok to speak of it, even after so many months. “I saw my father and”-he would not say Reltnar’s name in front of her, not ever again-“others I’ve killed. They waited to take my soul. Then you came to me in the dark. You drove back the shadows.”

  Ilvani gave him a sympathetic look. “It wasn’t me.”

  “No. I wanted it to be you-I still feel when I look at you that there’s a connection.”

  “It’s safer to think that,” Ilvani said. “He knows that, as well as we do. That’s why He takes different shapes-me, Natan-he takes the pieces he needs and puts them on like puppets on the hand. The game isn’t fair.”

  Ashok nodded, acknowledging her words, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe them, not entirely. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to accept the weight of Tempus’s presence in his life. Ilvani had been there. She’d come to him in his cell and left her box of ashes. He’d given it back to her, but they’d never spoken of what it contained and how it had saved him, how her forgiveness had saved him. If she hadn’t been there, Ashok would have faded and been condemned to the void, a nightmare realm of lost souls.

  How easily everything could have fallen apart-for himself and for Ikemmu. The shadar-kai constantly stood on the edge of oblivion in more than one sense.

  “Daruk was right,” Ashok said.

  Ilvani scowled. “About what?”

  “That it might all fall apart-Ikemmu, Uwan’s dreams for the city, and the shadar-kai. Tomorrow it could all be gone, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it.” He feared the fate of the city he’d come to call his home, but if Ikemmu fell, it would not represent the worst of his nightmares. As always, he had only to look to that beast of fire and death to find what he most feared.

  When Ashok first began training the nightmare, the beast sent him dreams that invaded his waking life. The nightmare preyed on the fears of his victims, and for most shadar-kai, their worst fear was to fade and lose their souls to the void. In Ashok’s visions, he’d feared losing his friends.

  Skagi, Cree, Ilvani-all those companions he’d grown to trust-he’d never known a bond such as the one he shared with them. They’d seen him through darkness and accepted the best and worst parts of him. He’d already lost too many in the short time he’d lived in Ikemmu.

  Chanoch, Vedoran, Olra-he’d lost his Camborr teacher so quickly, with barely a breath between the thought and the reality. With Chanoch, it had been slow, agonizing hours spent in the dark. Vedoran … Ashok could not summon an image of the warrior’s face without remembering their last embrace, when Ashok had driven a knife through his heart. What if Beshaba never claimed the warrior? Had Ashok condemned Vedoran to the void, his soul gone forever?

  “The people who gave me life and purpose keep dying,” Ashok said. “How do I know their souls reached their gods? That Tuigan warrior wandered for more than a century before he found his final rest.” When I die, no god calls me home, Ashok thought. His father and brothers were still waiting in the shadows for him. He accepted that fate, but he would do anything to spare his friends. “I have to protect them.”
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br />   “You can’t change their fates,” Ilvani said. “Souls slip through our fingers when we try to grab them, just like memories. In the end, they all fade.”

  “Then maybe it would be better if I had no companions at all,” Ashok said, “nothing to touch me.”

  “Completely alone?” Ilvani said. “Then why not fade now and be one with the void?”

  Ashok heard the anger in her voice. “What did I do wrong?”

  “I thought you understood,” Ilvani said. “You can’t run from what you are. All you can do is face it. If you think Tempus will comfort you, then turn to Him, but remember what you have right now. The moment is what matters. Only the moment is real.” Her voice quivered. “You have the power to recognize the truth from the shadows. It’s a precious gift, as precious as life.”

  Ashok looked into Ilvani’s eyes and for the first time saw the void that she feared most, the lurking shadows that threatened to swallow her. Ilvani was most afraid of becoming lost in the dark, of not being able to find her way home.

  He didn’t know how to comfort her. He wasn’t made for gestures like that. Even if he was, he didn’t think she would accept them. If he tried to take her hand now, she would retreat.

  He felt along the ground until he found a flat piece of obsidian half-buried in the dirt and snow. He dug it out and held it up so she could see.

  “This stone is real,” he said. “But it came from the funeral cairn, so it belongs to the living and the dead.” He held it out to her, and when she reached out her hand, he pressed the stone between their two palms. The cold, sharp edges dug into their skin, but their hands didn’t touch. He looked toward the valley where the gathered Tuigan ghosts had prepared to ride out to glory. “When you remember this night, remember that those shadows couldn’t touch you. The stone is this moment, here, between us. We are what’s real.”

  “Real,” she echoed. She pressed against the obsidian, and Ashok pressed back, until thin trickles of blood ran down their palms. When he let go, Ilvani kept the stone, holding it in her two hands as if to make it and the blood a part of her. “We walk the darker road,” she said. “There will be more spirits after this night.”

  “You mean because we’re getting closer to Rashemen?” Ashok said. “What will happen to you in that land?”

  “They’re waiting for me,” Ilvani said. She sounded afraid. “The telthors and the storm are waiting to claim their pieces of me.” She closed her eyes and clutched the stone. “I wish we could live in the breath in between. Out of the shadows, away from all the spirits-right here.”

  “Is that what you want, Ilvani?” Ashok said seriously. “Do you still want to go to Rashemen? If you do, I’ll take you there and back home again, but if you don’t, we can turn and walk in the opposite direction tomorrow. You only need to choose the road, and we’ll follow it.”

  She searched his face. Did she doubt his word? He wanted to tell her that he was not afraid of the darker road. In the end, she said only, “I’m cold.”

  “Let’s go back to camp,” Ashok said. “You don’t have to make the choice tonight. The mountains still lie between the caravan and Rashemen. We have time.”

  They got back into camp well before dawn. Ashok knew he had missed his watch shift, but Skagi and Cree didn’t question him until Ilvani was asleep in the back of the wagon. Then Ashok led them out of camp and into the trees for sparring. Skagi had scouted a clearing that would serve them. On the way, Ashok told them what he and Ilvani had seen.

  When he’d finished, Cree looked agitated. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. This place …” He drew his katars. The sound of steel leaving its sheath echoed loudly in the stillness. The snow-covered trees made a windbreak, though it was still bitterly cold. “On our watch shifts, sometimes I hear things, or I feel as if one of you is coming up behind me on my blind side, but then I turn and there’s nothing.” He hesitated. “There’s nothing, and yet I feel a presence so strongly, I can almost smell it.”

  “I won’t pretend this place sits well with me, either,” Skagi said, “but we can talk ghosts while we train.” He spat and watched the spittle freeze in the snow. “This cold’s starting to make me feel like one of those poor dead bastards you described.”

  They fanned out in a circle. Ashok drew his chain. “You two come at me first-”

  “No,” said Cree, “this time I want both of you to come at me.”

  Ashok and Skagi shared a glance. “Are you sure?” Ashok said.

  “I can make up for the vision loss,” Cree said. Ashok saw it cost him to say the words. “But it’s not just my speed that suffers. My balance is off, and I can’t compensate in a fight. I have to relearn.”

  Ashok nodded. “We’ll start slow, then. Skagi, exploit his blind side and-”

  Cree slapped Ashok’s chain with the flat of his blade. “If you plan the attack in front of me, there’s no purpose to this,” he growled. “Either we do this as if we stood in the training yard at Athanon or not at all.”

  Before Ashok could speak, he heard movement in the trees. They turned to see Kaibeth and three of the other sellswords step into the clearing.

  “I hope we’re not interrupting anything,” Kaibeth said. “We saw you leave camp and thought something was amiss. Now that we see you’re planning some sport”-she glanced at Cree-“I’ll fight you in earnest, Guardian, with pleasure.” She drew her weapon, a single katar, and held it loosely in front of her. “You know your friends’ movements, but with me you can pretend I’m really the enemy.” She smiled. Ashok didn’t like the expression.

  Her companions carried daggers and scimitars. Ashok remembered they’d fought well on horseback against the brigands. He’d watched Kaibeth ride by an enemy’s horse and slice its rider’s hand off with her blade.

  Cree held up his own weapons. “I’ll fight you,” he said.

  Standing beside Ashok, Skagi made a restless movement, as if he meant to argue, but Cree shot him a look that kept him quiet. Ashok moved back to give the combatants room, and after a breath Skagi joined him. Grinning, the other sellswords came to stand with them to watch the match. One of the men moved with deceptive casualness to stand behind Ashok. Ashok pivoted and looped his chain behind the man’s head. He pulled the spikes taut and let them nip the back of the warrior’s neck.

  “You’ll want to find another place to stand,” Ashok said, rattling the spikes. “I wouldn’t want you to get hurt by these.”

  The sellsword glared at Ashok. “If you think those little needles scare me-”

  “Arveck!” Kaibeth snapped. “You’ll have your turn. Be patient.”

  The sellsword didn’t take his gaze from Ashok. “I have been patient,” he said softly. “Tempus’s emissary-I’ve been waiting a long time to see if you’re as special as everyone claims. What do you think? Do you think you’re special?”

  Ashok let one end of the chain fall. He flicked his wrist, and the spikes hissed past Arveck’s head just inches from his ear. Ashok caught the chain. The sellsword flinched in spite of himself. The look he gave Ashok when he realized his slip was one of hatred. It reminded Ashok very much of the expression he’d once seen in Vedoran’s eyes.

  “I’m not special,” Ashok said, “and you know I have no allegiance to Tempus. If you want to fight, then we’ll fight. I don’t need a reason.”

  He met Arveck’s stare. Unexpectedly, the sellsword smiled. “Good, emissary. In that case, I can wait a little longer. Go ahead, Kaibeth, play with the crippled one.”

  Ashok glanced at Cree, but the warrior ignored the taunt. He and Kaibeth circled each other, their katars testing the air. Arveck and his two companions backed away from Ashok and turned their attentions to the fight.

  Skagi leaned in and whispered to Ashok. “Are you going to kill him?”

  Ashok shook his head. “Much as I hate to admit it, we need him-all the caravan guards. You know we haven’t seen the last of the brigands.”

  “Can I kill him?”
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br />   Ashok smiled. “Not today.”

  Cree and Kaibeth came together in a skittering clash of steel. The short reach of the katars brought the warriors into an intimate stance, their breaths mingling as they fought. The blades whirled so close to the skin that Ashok soon found his hands quivering from the tension. Then Cree nicked Kaibeth in the arm-the sellsword turned aside from the blow, but a thin stream of blood ran down her arm and stained the katar hilt.

  “You get the first sting,” she said, taking a moment to catch her breath. “You’re faster than I thought.”

  “You should have seen me a month ago,” Cree said. He darted in again, but she was ready for him this time. She flicked aside his blades and brought her knee up into Cree’s stomach. The warrior coughed and gagged but kept his blades ready to punch against a follow-up attack. He teleported back a few feet, and Kaibeth broke off the attack to wipe her hands on her breeches.

  She hasn’t tried to exploit Cree’s missing eye yet, Ashok thought. If he were in Kaibeth’s place, he would try to take advantage of Cree’s slowed reaction time to wear him down. Maybe she was trying to lull the warrior into a false confidence before she advanced on him from that side. Ashok didn’t think Cree would fall into that trap, unless Arveck’s words had affected him more than he’d thought.

  When his form solidified, Cree came in again, low this time, and Ashok saw the warrior was trying to make up for his loss of speed with finesse. He worked his blades steadily and conserved energy, a discipline he hadn’t shown before. It was working too. As Kaibeth tired, she slowed until they appeared evenly matched in speed, and then Cree surpassed her. When that happened, the warrior’s katars became a blur of motion, and he sliced through her armor at the flank. Again she pulled away, giving ground, but this time Cree didn’t let her retreat. He came at her hard. He put her purely on the defensive, and Ashok noticed her companions fidgeting and fingering their blades.

  “Get ready,” Ashok said to Skagi.