by Alec Hutson
Alyanna straightened in surprise, her hand going to her cheek. He breathed. He still lived. How was that possible? His mind should have been shredded by the release of all that sorcery. But perhaps . . . perhaps only his body persisted, reduced to a hollow shell. Yes, that must be it.
“Are you still in there, Jan? Can you hear me? How did you survive my gift to the queen?”
“I protected him.”
Alyanna summoned her strongest wards as she turned toward this voice. A girl stood among the rubble. Her simple blue shift hung in tatters, and blood and grime smeared her face. She looked like a servant – but Alyanna had no doubt who this was. The girl held herself high, matching Alyanna’s gaze.
“Welcome to my home, sorceress. Please excuse the mess”
A thrill went through Alyanna. She smiled and spread her arms out wide. “Your Majesty. There’s nothing to apologize for.”
She could sense the wards flaring around the queen, a shimmering bubble of prismatic energy. Different than what she had felt before – Demian had been right, Cein d’Kara was creating her own unique strain of sorcery. Remarkable. But was it the equal of lost Kalyuni?
“You protected him? How did you do that?”
The queen stepped towards her, staggering slightly. Alyanna could see that she favored one of her legs. She was injured, but how badly?
“I channeled the energy away from him as best I could as it was being released – otherwise, yes, it would have scorched his mind to cinders. It really was quite clever of you. I never imagined it was possible to nest such a trap inside someone’s mind. And the power it unleashed when tripped . . .” The queen glanced around the shattered chamber. “I still have so much to learn, it appears.”
“Pity about that, really. You do have such potential. I almost regret having to extinguish it.”
The queen’s eyes hardened. “Why did you do this? We should be working together to return sorcery to this world, and bring back the glory that was lost.”
“Who do you think destroyed that glory in the first place?”
The queen looked taken aback. “You? You caused the cataclysms?”
Alyanna grinned. Why not tell her the truth? One of them would be dead soon enough. “Not directly. I had my servant – I believe you know which one, the shape-changer who ambushed your servants on the Way – assume the form of a Kalyuni diplomat, and murder the beloved child of the Min-Ceruthan queen. As I expected, her grief led her to unleash the sorcery that flooded the Mosaic Cities; she believed that this act of revenge would destroy those who had ordered the death of her daughter. Then the wizards of the Star Towers – faced with their destruction rushing towards them – did the only thing they could before their deaths: they struck back, bringing the black ice down upon the holdfasts.”
“Why would you do that?” whispered the queen. Then her eyes widened. “You needed the lives,” she continued softly. “What I saw in Jan’s memories . . . the great spell that filled you with your immortality, it required a vast number of souls as fuel. The cataclysms provided them.” Alyanna saw revulsion in the queen’s gaze. “You’re a monster.”
“They were already doomed. It was inevitable that the fools would destroy each other – I merely decided the time, so that some benefit might come from it.”
“Benefit. You are swollen with the lives of countless innocents.”
Alyanna threw back her head and laughed. “You see? This is why we can’t work together. And also why you are a threat to me – for all your strength and ingenuity, you are still constrained by petty morals.”
The queen ignored her words. “Bloated like some blood-sucking insect. But what do you do with eternity? Murder and manipulate. Skulk in the shadows. Jan told me that you are posing as a concubine. You should be an empress, and instead you spread your legs like a common – ”
“Enough!” snarled Alyanna, her temper fraying. “I live my life as a choose, as I always have. I do not need the condemnation of one born in a royal birthing chamber. I suffered ever depredation and injustice you could imagine, queen. I knew how rotten and depraved those sorcerous empires you fantasize about actually were. Sorcery is power, and power blackens all souls. Yes, I murdered empires. But I freed the rest of mankind from the yoke of sorcery, from those who dominated and enslaved and sucked pleasure like marrow from the bones of their inferiors.”
“Then you are a hero. A mad, misunderstood hero.”
Alyanna mastered herself again. The queen was trying to anger her and make her control slip – she knew such an advantage might be the difference in the coming contest. Of course, the queen didn’t know that Alyanna could summon the Chosen if she somehow proved her equal. The conclusion of this little drama was already scripted. “A hero? We are all heroes in our own story.”
“Your story has finally come to an end, witch!”
Power billowed forth from the queen, smashing into Alyanna’s wards. She gritted her teeth and reinforced her shields. By the gods, what strength! The queen was not only the greatest Talent of this faded age – she might have been the most powerful even if she’d lived during the glory years of the Imperium.
But Alyanna could also lay claim to that title. Dreadfire erupted from her outstretched hand, a river of green flame. Rather than letting the torrent wash against her wards – which would have been like trying to hold back the tide – the queen instead nudged the dreadfire wide, diverting it so that it flashed harmlessly past and melted a gaping hole in the wall behind her.
The remaining stones buckled inward, then with a rending crash collapsed onto the queen, sending her to her knees as chunks of debris shattered across her wards. Alyanna pressed this advantage, striking out with whips of pure sorcerous energy, lashing the queen as she struggled to maintain her protective sphere.
It should be breaking. No wards could withstand such a battering.
And yet . . . and yet the queen was climbing to her feet again. She was actually pushing back against Alyanna’s onslaught!
She reached deep within herself, plumbing the depths of her power. Her will was the strongest! Her strength was the greatest!
The waves of sorcerous force smashing together stabilized, then began to creep toward the queen. Blood filled Alyanna’s mouth, and she spat it out, redoubling her efforts. A child! She would not fall to a spoiled child!
The space separating Alyanna and the queen roiled with magical energies, the very air shimmering and twisting; the stone floor convulsed, cracking, and began to melt and run like wax. The mistglobe hanging above them exploded, showering Alyanna with shards of glass and burning silver sparks.
There was no elegance to this duel. No subtlety. Just raw power and will crashing together.
The Chosen. She needed the Chosen. “Come to me, slaves,” she hissed between ragged breaths.
She spared a quick glance over her shoulder, towards the stairs, hoping to see the vicious little demons emerging from below.
That saved her life; otherwise, she never would have known that a pair of magisters had entered the chamber, until they had already struck her down.
“No!” Alyanna screamed, buttressing her wards as coils of energy smashed into her from behind.
“Gendril! Vhelan!” The queen cried over the roaring crackle of sorcery. “Throw everything you have against her! She must not escape!”
Escape. Alyanna fell to her knees, blackness pressing at the edges of her vision. She must escape. Her wards shuddered, cracked. The Chosen. How did they get past the Chosen?
She swooned, struggling to keep herself conscious. A flash of movement among the rubble. Her heart lifted when she saw a creature of tangled black hair and tattered rags crouched on the shattered remnants of a table. “Help me,” she mouthed, reaching imploringly toward the Chosen. But the demon child faded into the darkness and was gone, leaving only the whispering echo of its hoarse laughter.<
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She was alone. Could she call upon Demian? No time. Her wards would be breached in moments, and then she would be consumed by the queen’s sorcerous wrath.
Alyanna sunk her hands into the churning gray mud that had once been the floor. One chance. She would almost certainly die . . . but she would die anyway if she did nothing.
Alyanna channeled what remaining strength she had into the viscous stone underneath her. She reached down, feeling the solidity below this melted layer, and thrust out with all her power.
The floor shattered beneath her, and she fell into darkness.
The twisting corridors of Saltstone blurred together as Xin and Nel raced through the fortress. Every dancing shadow made him pause, his hand on the hilt of his sword, but they did not encounter any more of the assassins. Several times he heard the distant sounds of screams, and once the passage shook with the force of some far-off explosion, dust sifting down from the ceiling.
“How much farther?” Xin asked between heavy breaths. Even after more than a month here the fortress was still a maze to him.
“Not far. Up ahead there’s a small kitchen and a hall where the apprentices take their meals, then the – ”
Nel was slightly in front of him, and as she rounded a bend in the corridor she gasped and threw up her arm to stop Xin.
“Keilan!” she cried, the fear in her voice making his heart drop.
The boy was there, sitting slumped against a wall, his legs splayed out in front of him. He raised his head groggily at his name, but he could only blink unsteadily a few times before a tremor of pain passed across his face, and he closed his eyes again.
Two men crouched beside him, and at first Xin thought they might have belonged to the queen. One had striking silver hair and was dressed in the leather and mail of a warrior, though the lack of any coat-of-arms on his tabard implied he was a sellsword, rather than one of Saltstone’s guards. Xin’s eyes were immediately drawn to the sheath of filigreed silver that hung at his side, and the gleaming copper-colored hilt of his sword. This was no common mercenary.
The other was more troubling. Darkness seemed to drape him, as it had the assassin Xin had slain earlier. But though he was also dressed all in black he wore no veil across his strikingly pale face, and the sword in his hand was not anything like the unnatural shard of gleaming shadow that had been wielded by the kith’ketan.
Xin wasn’t sure whether they were friends or foes, but Nel seemed to have no doubt; her throwing daggers were already tumbling through the air as the two men turned from Keilan and stood.
Then the impossible happened. For a drawn-out moment the black-clad warrior did nothing, watching the dagger’s glittering approach with a slight frown, then he slashed the air in front of him with his long curving sword. Metal shrieked as the daggers skittered past him into the shadows.
Xin gasped at the casual skill with which the warrior had knocked the daggers out of the air. He had trained with the finest swordsmen in the city of Gryx, retired Fist soldiers whose bladework was legendary among the Fettered, and he had never seen anything like that before. A coldness settled over Xin as he adopted the third form of the One Who Waits, leaning forward on the balls of his feet with his swordpoint extended toward the man in black.
The man’s eyes widened in shock as he watched Xin assume the fighting stance, and then his face twisted in anger, as if he had just been grievously insulted. The silver-haired man beside him was also staring in surprise, but at Nel rather than Xin, his hand having gone to some charm he wore around his neck.
“I know – ” Nel started to say, but her words trailed off into a strangled yelp. Xin glanced over at her to see what was the matter . . . or tried to. His neck refused to turn; in panic he struggled to move his arms or legs, but it was like every part of his body was bound by invisible bonds that wrapped him more tightly than iron chains. What sorcery was this? The man in black stalked closer, staring at Xin with a look of intense concentration, his lips pursed. Xin’s heart thundered in his ears as he watched the man’s sword. This was not how he wanted to die, slaughtered like a trussed pig.
The silver-haired man approached the man in black and grabbed his arm. “What did you do? Why aren’t they moving?”
The warrior who had cut the daggers from the air said nothing, continuing to study Xin.
“Is this some kind of shadowblade trick? I don’t feel any sorcery.”
He doesn’t feel any sorcery? Was the man one of the Pure? He had the silver hair of the paladins, but not their golden eyes or white armor.
“It is some kind of trick,” the man in black said softly. He reached toward Xin and touched his elbow, twisting his arm slightly inward. Then he gently turned his wrist so that his blade was parallel to his body. Another tingling wave of shock washed over Xin as he realized what he was doing. This was the second form of the One Who Waits. How did this man know the stances?
The silver-haired man spoke again. “Demian, listen to me. I recognize this girl. She saved my life months ago, after I disgraced myself beneath Uthmala. You cannot kill her.”
“She would kill us.”
“To save the boy. She does not deserve to die.”
The warrior in black – Demian – tore his gaze from Xin and turned to the silver-haired man beside him. “There is something I must do here. Take the boy and leave the fortress. Make for the inn and saddle the horses. I will find you there before the tenth bell strikes, paladin.”
Paladin! The Pure, in Saltstone, allied with shadowblades? It seemed the wildest of fantasies. The queen must be warned! Xin strained against the invisible chains holding him, his muscles aching.
The Pure grabbed the man in black’s arm again, more roughly. His eyes narrowed in anger. “Promise me you will not kill her.”
“Every moment you waste increases the chances that the magisters will find us. I don’t think your god would be pleased.”
“Promise me!”
A slight smile ghosted across the man in black’s pale face. “Very well, paladin. The girl will live. Now go.”
With a last lingering look at Nel, the silver-haired man turned away, and moved to where Keilan still slumped against the wall. With surprising tenderness he scooped the boy into his arms.
“The inn, Demian. I will see you shortly. And then I want answers about these powers of yours.”
The man in black grunted something unintelligible in reply as the paladin vanished down the passageway carrying Keilan. Xin thrashed against his bonds.
The man in black watched him calmly; the anger Xin had seen in his face only moments ago had vanished, as if it had never been.
“I am going to relax what binds you, warrior. I have questions. If I feel that you have answered me truthfully, I will give you the chance to prove your worth with a sword in your hand.”
Xin felt the invisible chains wrapped around his limbs and neck loosen, though he still could not move freely.
“What . . . what did you do?” he rasped, his throat raw.
The man in black blinked, as if surprised by the question. “I thought it would be obvious. I held you immobile with sorcery.”
“But the Pure said – ”
“I learned long ago how to hide my gift from the paladins of Ama. It is simple enough for one with Talent.”
“Who are you?”
The man in black waved his question away. “Answer me this: where did you learn how to fight?”
“It is . . . it is the way of the Fists. This one learned it in the red sand pits of Gryx.”
“No,” the man in black snarled, anger rippling his voice like a pebble dropped in calm water. “It is not. Your first stance was the third movement of the blue cantata. I changed it to the second, and I saw in your eyes that you knew what I was doing.”
Xin swallowed uncertainly. “The Fists . . . it was said to this one that th
e secrets of our technique came from the swordsingers of the lost Mosaic Cities. Are you also familiar with their fighting style?”
“I am the last swordsinger!” the man spat, his eyes blazing. “You make a mockery of us! Our beautiful bladesongs, aped by the slaves – slaves! – of some festering cesspool of a city.”
The man in black breathed deep, mastering himself. When he spoke again, his voice was once more shriven of emotion. “Long ago, if any warrior not of our order dared to imitate our bladesongs he would be hunted down and dragged back to our hall in Kashkana. There he would be given the chance to prove himself worthy, by dueling the finest among us, with his life as the prize.”
Demian retreated back a few paces and settled into the first form of The One Who Waits. “Your people have stolen from me, and I demand retribution.”
The bonds holding Xin fell completely away, and he staggered forward. “You’re a madman,” he said, quickly completing a simple combination of sword strokes to try and return feeling to his numb arms and wrists.
“I am the sanest person I know,” the man in black said, another small smile touching his lips. “Though in truth that might still make me mad.”
Xin felt like he was moving through the thickened air of a dream as he adopted the first form, mirroring the man in black. “Remember what you told the paladin. The girl lives, even if I die.”
Demian’s lip curled and he lunged forward, smoothly shifting from The One Who Waits to the fifth form of The One Who Strikes. Xin stayed in his stance, meeting the long curving blade with his own. A flurry of blows followed, almost too fast to see. Only his familiarity with these forms allowed Xin to parry the swordsinger’s flashing routines. He had spent a decade dueling his brothers and the Fist veterans in the Pits, mastering this fighting style, but he had never seen such speed and precision.
