The Path of the Sword

by Remi Michaud

  When Jurel rounded the corner gripping his own weapon, two of the soldiers were already on the ground, motionless, a third was gaping down at Gaven's sword which was buried to the hilt in his chest, coughing up blood. The fourth stumbled back a step as Daved lunged.

  “ESCAPE!” he shrieked and his voice echoed up and down the hall so that it seemed that a hundred more voices took up the call.

  Daved's blade buried itself and the guard shuddered and slid lifelessly to the ground. But the damage was done. That one shriek threatened them more than the swords that the guards had not even had time to draw.

  “Quickly now,” Mikal hissed. “Get these bodies out of sight. Hurry!”

  They dragged the bodies, grunting with effort, leaving bloody streaks on the stones into a nearby room as rats squeaked and scurried under piles of moldering sacks and rotting furniture. Closing the door behind them left them in utter blackness and Jurel had to fight the urge to scream, the memory of his cell too fresh in his mind. Sweating, trembling he bit down, clamping his teeth together with such force he thought his jaw would break.

  “It's all right Jurel,” Daved whispered in his ear. “You're here with us. Forget about that place.”

  Bless him. Bless him for his uncanny ability to know what Jurel was thinking.

  “You did good,” Mikal said.

  Jurel thought he was the target of the praise but it was Gaven who responded, “Thank you.”

  They waited. Surely, someone had heard the guard's call. Surely the hallway would fill with countless soldiers all looking for blood. Time stretched with nothing but the sound of their coarse breathing to fill in the gaps and it became a physical thing, a pressure that squeezed them like a vice as it pulled them to tautness until they vibrated like a struck drum. They waited but heard no other sound. They waited and no one came.

  When Mikal was satisfied that they had waited long enough, Gaven gingerly opened the door a crack, wincing when it squealed. It was a quiet noise but in the darkness, in the silence, it sounded like a stuck pig.

  Down the hall they went, weapons drawn and held ahead of them, a sharp end to a human battering ram, and up the next set of stairs, quietly, quietly, for they knew that though the guard's shriek may have been missed, they may not be so lucky the next time.

  The door opened into a much wider hallway. The polished floors gleamed under the gray light that filtered through windows set high in the walls above tapestries that lined both sides depicting images from various stories in the Holy Writs: There was Gaorla standing over the dark lord of the underworld, victorious as he banished the Lord of the Dead to his realm after the War of Sun; another showed Saint Shoka, the first Grand Prelate, the man who had established the priesthood dedicated to Gaorla, and a hundred more that marched along the walls to disappear into the distance.

  Save for the ubiquitous doors that broke up the line of tapestries along the walls, there was nowhere for them to hide. As they hurried down the corridor, their steps echoing faintly from the ceiling that rose to a cusp twenty paces above, they watched and listened and prayed silently that they could get to the next door. Only the next door. They did not dare hope for more beyond that. Not yet.

  But they reached the door and furtively passed through after another check by Gaven, into an even broader hall with a coffered ceiling that rose seventy maybe eighty paces above them, buttressed by marble pillars as big around as trees, etched and engraved with all manner of swirling designs that merged and diverged, and Jurel thought his eyes would water if he stared too long. A gathering hall, or an audience chamber then, he surmised, but one which, considering the lack of furniture, was not used often. They scuttled, hunched over as though they thought they might be less visible that way and they passed close along the pillars.

  Halfway through the huge chamber, they heard a noise, no louder than a pin dropping and they stopped glancing warily in every direction. As if from nowhere, a dozen guards then a dozen more materialized from behind pillars and closed doors, pikes drawn and aimed at the small party. They pushed closer and closer, surrounding them, hemming them in and they remained out of reach at the end of their pikes so that not even Mikal with his deadly sword could approach.

  “Well then,” said a grating voice somewhere behind the soldiers. “What have we here? Mice escaping the cat's den?”

  Despair gripped Jurel in its talons, grief wrenched him, and he mourned the lives about to be lost. His life. Kurin's and Mikal's. His friend who wore the same uniform as his enemies. His father. He looked to each, especially Daved, tried to firmly imprint the memory of their faces in his mind as if he could take those memories with him on the long journey he was certain they were all about to embark on. Perhaps his memories of them would ease the way down the dark path and through the gates of the underworld.

  The soldiers parted and a burly man with a livid scar running across his forehead and down his cheek as though at some point in his illustrious career someone had tried to peel his face off, stepped through taking care to keep clear of the swords that were drawn against him and his men. He grinned cruelly as he surveyed them. His eyes lit on Gaven, and he paused, his expression dropping to a stony frown. But still plenty of cruelty.

  “I knew you'd be trouble, you little asswipe,” the sergeant growled.

  “Sergeant, I hereby tender my resignation effective immediately,” Gaven responded with too much bravado for it to be considered real even for an instant.

  “Shut up. The only resignation you'll tender will be on a traitor's gibbet. Shackle them.”

  The men drew closer, poking with their weapons until Jurel and his friends were shoulder to shoulder.

  “I suggest you drop your weapons. My men will follow their orders and I don't care whether you're breathing or not when they do.”

  With no room to maneuver, no room to twist let alone swing a sword, they complied and the hall resounded with the clang of steel on stone. Men stepped forward carrying thick black chains and efficiently, as men with years of practice, wrists and ankles were bound. When the soldiers stepped back, Jurel noted that his party had the defeated look of a sinking ship's crew.

  “There's someone that wants to speak with you,” the sergeant said and with a gesture to his men, turned and strode purposefully from the hall.

  The men followed in straight lines of two on either side of the group so that they looked like a parade on the training grounds, their boots clomping in unison, their pikes on their shoulders and rising in a forest whose canopy was glinting steel. They marched on, through hallways that increased in grandeur and opulence until everything around seemed to take on a satiny shimmer or a golden sheen, climbed stairs that were wide and polished with scarlet carpets running down the center like a waterfall of blood, until they reached a set of huge doors with banners of Gaorla's cross, scarlet red on snow white, flanking either side. They stopped as one and the sergeant barked an order to the guard that stood at attention in front of the wide doors.

  Rapping smartly, the stony faced guard pushed them open and called something that Jurel could not quite hear. There was a pause and faintly, like feathers rustling, there came some response. The guard stepped back through the door and motioned them through.

  They entered another audience chamber, smaller than the one where they had been captured but far more opulent. Golden statues of Gaorla and his saints stood in silent judgment along walls that were covered in more tapestries. The floor gleamed like there was a sheet of clear, smooth ice coating the darkly lacquered wood. They stood on a thick carpet, red with golden thread embroidering the edges that was a path between them and the dais which stood in the center of the room. Upon the dais, stood a golden chair—more a throne really, with armrests carved in the likeness of roaring lions, and a back that ended with a disk four paces wide carved in the semblance of the sun so that whoever sat there seemed to be basked in God's light. And upon the chair sat an incredibly obese man, wearing a white robe spotted with wine. His bald pate gleam
ed like the floor under a sheen of sweat and his face was red, his breathing labored like a man who had just run ten miles.

  “Your Grace, we captured these men trying to escape,” the sergeant said as he dropped to one knee.

  “So here you are then, my children,” the fat man said. His voice oozed like oil, and he smiled beatifically though the smile did not reach his cold calculating eyes. “I am High Priest Calen. You may address me as 'Your Grace.' And who has the honor of being granted audience with me?”

  That cold gaze passed over them much like the sergeant's had, but unlike the sergeant's, whose gaze seemed dull, uninterested, like the gaze of a man who could follow orders but not give them, the fat man's gaze was bright and shrewd; under the layers of flab and indolence, Jurel knew there was a man of unquestionable intelligence—and cruelty. And just as the sergeant had, those cold eyes paused when they beheld Gaven. An expression of regret, of sadness passed over the fat man's face and he shook his head.

  “Ah, I see one of our own has been subverted by the wicked.” The fat man clicked his tongue like a parent reprimanding a wayward child. “And what is your name, soldier? No, wait. Let me guess. You are private Gaven Slaynish, correct? Recently demoted for gross misconduct? Of course.”

  His eyes moved again. “And you, of course, are Mikal the famous swordmaster, I presume. Or perhaps infamous would be more appropriate, hmmm?” He laughed at his own joke, wheezing lightly. “And you of course, dear Kurin. We all know who you are. But tell me, who is the brute with you? Would that be Jurel? Your precious salvation? Your God of War? He does not look so formidable to me, at least not all bound in iron as he is.” Another gloating laugh. “And the other one, the short ugly one with the piercing gaze? Oooh, it fair makes me shiver to see such a gaze.”

  “My name is Daved. I am a good honest god-fearing man and I demand you let us go.”

  His father was a strong man, as strong as any Jurel had ever met but even Jurel had to gape at Daved's demand. Calen laughed in astonishment.

  “And the spirit matches the eyes. If not the intellect.” he leaned back languorously in the ornate, almost garish, chair. “Tell me, Daved, why is an honest god-fearing man, as you say, skulking through Gaorla's temple transporting escaped heretics?”

  “These men have done no wrong. You hold them illegally.”

  “Illegally, you say? Kurin has had a warrant on his head for decades. He is a known heretic. These others are his accomplices. It is a cut-and-dried case and I'm afraid the sentence is immutable.”

  “Bullshit, you fat lump,” Daved roared, straining against his shackles, straining against the Soldiers who kept him from reaching the corpulent man in his chair. “You're a liar and a coward.”

  Calen's expression froze, changing from languid good humor to icy rage faster than the eye could follow. His already ruddy face mottled further, until it was nearly purple and he trembled.

  “Perhaps,” Calen hissed, “I have overindulged our guests. Perhaps it is time to establish who exactly is in charge here. Sergeant. Dispose of him.”

  The sergeant barked a command and without hesitation a soldier drew his sword and plunged it into Daved's chest. The tip tore through his back and up, glistening wetly in the light and Daved gasped in surprise.

  “FATHER! NOOOO!”

  He pried himself free of the guards that held him, and caught Daved as his legs buckled. Carefully, Jurel lowered his father to the ground and stared into those eyes he had known all his life. Daved's face was the pale white-gray color of bone and when he coughed, red flecked spittle burst from his mouth. He shivered as if he were cold.

  “Hang on father. We'll get you out of here.”

  He tried to smile. He tried to impart some confidence in his words, in his voice. But he had none to give. Through a haze of tears, he saw his own father smile weakly in return. Daved reached up and patted his son's shoulder as if it was Jurel that needed the comfort instead of himself.

  “Never fear, my boy,” Daved rasped and his voice was weak, wavering in a way Jurel had never before heard, not even that night that Galbin fell from the roof, and it tore at him, threatened to destroy him right then and there. “Never fear. You'll be all right.”

  “Father, no. You must not speak. Save your strength.”

  “No. No, Jurel. My time grows short. Look, I can see it already. Look.” He seemed to look over Jurel's shoulder, into the distance. He seemed to see something that no one else could and he smiled gently, calmly like some great weight had been lifted from him. When he spoke again, his voice was a whisper, “Have I told you how proud I am of you, lad? Have I told you...?”

  Coughing wracked him, a deep tearing hack that made him double over with his arms wrapped now around his bleeding chest, while blood spewed from his mouth, thick blood, the dark blood that was at the core of every man's being, that held the very threads of life. And when his eyes focused on Jurel's again, they were cloudy with pain.

  “I love you son. I-I...”

  He spasmed, grimaced, coughed more thick blood. The last light that was Daved Histane dimmed until, with one last rattling breath, it went out and he stared fixedly into the distance at something that no living being was ever allowed to see.

  It could not be. No. It could not be. Jurel shook his father, calling his name quietly in the way that one does to waken a deep sleeper. A numbness descended on Jurel. A cold numbness that could never be matched by the coldest midwinter night, that could never be matched by the deepest waters of any ocean, or by the scrubbing winds on the highest mountain peak. His ears rang as though some gigantic bell played a mournful dirge and he shook his father, calling his name quietly.

  “How touching. Let that be a lesson to you,” Calen said in that oily, self-satisfied voice into the silence of the audience hall. “There will be no escape. Not for any of you this day.”

  Escape? Was he mad? Escape? Jurel did not want escape. There were plenty of ideas vying for Jurel's interest at that moment and escape was far down on the list. In fact, escape might have been the last thing, right at the very bottom. As he stared at his father, something stirred. Some hidden past, an ancient secret that had been buried by time and life.

  His ears rang.

  The mournful dirge of the gong in his head was accompanied suddenly by frantic, insistent, jangling bells that sounded like swords striking each other, like armor clinking, like steel clad feet marching by the thousands. His ears rang and though the fear was there, it was drowned by the rage, the hunger, the lust that coursed hotly through Jurel's veins.

  “You killed my father,” he said quietly, interrupting whatever nonsense the fat man on his golden chair was spouting.

  “I am terribly sorry for it, too,” Calen sneered. “Perhaps next time he will watch his tongue. Oh, my mistake. There will be no next time for him will there?”

  He laughed though Jurel barely heard it. The force of the ringing increased, became a river in him, a river that searched for an outlet, and if it did not find one soon, Jurel knew it would make one.

  “You killed my father,” Jurel repeated more loudly, and his voice rasped like sandpaper on wood.

  As Calen laughed and said something that he could not hear, he closed his eyes, trembling, shivering, trying to hold himself together, to keep himself from flying apart into a million pieces. The river changed, intensified until it became a lake and then an ocean, and he clenched his teeth and shut his eyes so that he would not burst from the forces that raged within. Images flicked past quicker than thought in his mind's eye, images of his life, of his friends, of his father. Of both his fathers. They whirled, caught in a tornado spinning about with other mental jetsam: the tang of honey and wine and spices as Erin's lips brushed lightly against his; Valik's glare as he stood over Jurel with a raised fist; a sword, vicious and serrated wielded by a savage from the north; a red poppy on a white apron. Those and a hundred other images whirled and spun crazily, arcing into his view and back out faster and faster until it was
all a terrible, red-tinged blur.

  Then it stopped. As suddenly as a branch snapping, it stopped, and Jurel felt something like peace. But it was a false peace, the peace of a man too long in the desert suddenly being given too much water, an icy calmness that overlay the boiling of a cauldron over a fire.

  He opened his eyes and looked up while thrills ran up and down his body causing his hair to rise, to stand up like he was too close to a lightning strike. Gasps rose from throats all over the room and the fat man, Calen, gaped at him, half risen from his chair, his eyes like saucers, his mouth dropping open in an O of surprise.

  “You killed my father,” said the God of War.

  Chapter 63

  Kurin's body ached so fiercely he thought he must fall were it not for the guards that held him. The shackles about his wrists dragged his arms down; he feared his arms might come out of their sockets, and they felt hot around his wrists like they had just come out of a fire. He knew he was ill. His time in confinement had not been easy and his lungs burned, filled as they were with fluid.

  In utter misery, he watched as Jurel wept and as Daved whispered something to him. Something that could not be heard by any but Jurel. The man's mortal wound was weakening him at an astonishing rate (probably nicked the heart. That would explain it, he thought); whatever Daved said came out as no more than a whisper. He watched and saw Daved's eyes grow dim, saw him spasm and slump, and his head lolled as his neck went limp. He sighed one last rattling breath.

  “You killed my father,” Jurel said and the anguish in his voice tore Kurin's heart.

  As Calen spoke words that were meaningless to him, Kurin wanted to leap forward and wrap his arms around the young man, to tell him everything would be all right. He wanted to sprint to the dais and disembowel the fat bastard who sat there. But he could barely stand without the help of the guards.

  “Such a pity,” Calen said from his golden throne. “But one does not speak to a high priest with such impertinence.”