by Ben Galley
Maro moved around the spiral, forgetting the soft light of the yellow sun as it stole in through patches and chutes. He circled the cage and drew ever closer, and as his eyes adjusted to the new bright, he gasped as the glow faded some to reveal the thing Sohr had said did not exist and that Shahn and the Willows knew did.
The Emerald Blade.
It was not stuck in some cut of granite or obsidian, nor held in some gnarled clutch of roots and branches. Instead, it hung there, suspended in its dream cage, twisting slow as the turning of a day, its many brilliant facets drinking in the distant sun’s rays and turning them out onto the swirling motes of dust and seedlings that hung about it.
The blade pulsed with an energy Maro felt like the thrumming of words in his throat, or like the beating of the mother’s heart he had never known. It was dizzying and disorienting, and it took Maro some time to know that the blade pulsed in time with the beating of his own heart, and like the pulsing of the veins that held the life in his throat.
Maro found himself reaching forward, slowly and with a strange mix of awe and horror. The blade spoke to him, beckoned him in, like a moth to a warm and scorching flame. He knew then that the Sage of Center had been real, had left this behind, just as the Willows had said. Just as the Sightless had promised.
Just as his fingertips were about to brush the glittering surface of the golden-yellow hilt, the blade flashed so bright it sent him reeling.
As he fell back, Maro felt air pass too quick to be explained away by the rush of his own tumble. He dropped into a roll and came up, eyes flashing as he took in the approach of his would-be attackers.
“Kai?”
Maro stood straighter than he should have, leaving no tension in his legs to spring. Her look was wild and fearful, and when he felt the next disturbance in the air, he thought he knew why. He tucked and rolled away as Brega landed with a growl, and Maro came up gripping nothing but the calluses of his palm.
“Three left,” Brega said, and Kai looked from him to Maro strangely. The fear was still in her face, but it was muted some.
Maro set his feet and nodded toward the Raith, and the three formed a loose and moving triangle that surrounded the twisted nest in the center and the turning blade within it, eyes shifting along with their fingers.
Brega carried no weapons, but he wore leather gloves that had brass claws jutting out from the ends. The metal appeared sticky and Maro wrinkled his nose at the stinging rot he had only just noticed. It smelled like the stuff Sohr had coated his thorns with.
“Weapons are forbidden,” Maro said, ignoring the jagged bone Kai held as her dark eyes flitted between them.
Brega’s eyes reminded him of a cat’s. He gave no answer outside of a low growl. His eyes darted toward Kai and Maro nearly cried out a warning, until he saw the slightest of nods returned.
Kai and Brega squared toward him, and though Maro wanted to see regret or the makings of a ruse behind her eyes, he saw only resolution to cover her fear.
Fear of him.
“Kai—” he started.
He took the slight widening of her eyes as a willing response to his entreaty … his plea. And then he saw the snake detach itself from the shadow she left in the sun-speckled ground and slither back toward whatever hole Brega had called it from.
The Raith, green eyes glowing with an unnatural sheen Maro had only heard of from Shahn and the other warriors of the Emerald Road, darted toward him, claws streaking.
Maro never took his eyes from Kai as she dropped like a cut vine. He shocked Brega by staying rooted. He turned ever so slightly, accepting the burning slash across his chest and the agony the poison called up, and caught the other boy by the throat. His heart beat slowly in his chest as Brega’s fluttered like a caged bird in the softness of his neck. The Emerald Blade pulsed and Maro felt the burning in his blood meet Brega’s poison and undo it through some magic he would never fully understand … never question enough to care.
He stared at Kai’s twitching form and grimaced at the white-yellow foam that bubbled from her mouth. Her eyes glazed as she choked, and they turned to dark beads of chestnut glass as they found his again. Her body stilled.
Maro held Brega kicking and coughing until his resistance slowed, and then he peeled his eyes from Kai’s lifeless form and fixed their cold dispassion upon the Raith. He felt barren in the face of the other’s fear, and even the hate he tried to call up, he found bitter and wanting.
He flung Brega to the rootnest with a crack that buckled him and left him sitting there, chin down and drooling. Then he turned toward the spiral cage and its twirling prisoner.
Maro reached between the lattice with no hesitation, wincing as a shaft of sunlight stung his eyes. He gripped the hilt and drew, and the cage shattered into a thousand splinters that had Brega crying out from behind him as he covered his face with his shaking arms.
He held the blade there, expecting to hear some voice in his head, to feel some godly presence or immortal change. Instead, he felt only a calm knowing that this was always the way it was going to be. That the blade had waited here for him. That the Sightless had been right to beckon him in, so that he might become the champion his people needed. Their forged blade with which to fight something other than Brega, Maja, and the Raiths that once had lived among them.
There were darker things coming, and bigger. Older things than the Sages and mightier.
Still, he thought of turning back to Brega and cutting his throat, or running him through. Instead, he moved toward the wall where the snake had gone and peered through the gaps. He saw the leaders of both tribes watching much the same as they had those days before that might only have been hours to them.
Maro gripped the Emerald Blade tighter and willed himself to keep from turning toward Kai. He slashed at the root wall and a foot-thick layer broke away like dried refuse, admitting more light. Admitting more judgment. He slashed again and again, carving his own path out from under the Sightless. He thought he heard the hissing of the black-eyed crows far above—an odd and unsettling mix of pain and ecstasy.
Brega regained some modicum of his former composure behind him, and Maro wished he would make a try at his back so that he might finish him with something close to the honor Shahn had tried to teach and that he had foolishly believed.
The way grew brighter, each green flash of the Emerald Blade unleashing more of the golden sun and the shimmering veil of dancing leaves in the distance. What a wicked thing it was. What a mighty thing. What a burden.
Brega choked out a laugh behind him, and Maro paused before he brought the final wall of roots down.
He turned, his heart pausing longer than his eyes as they skipped over Kai’s still form and fixed on the bronze-skinned Raith in his dark corner. He wiped blood and drool from his lower lip and met Maro’s hot regard with cold defiance.
“She didn’t spare you,” Brega said and Maro frowned. Another laugh, and this one genuine. True enough to spear Maro all over again and threaten to break the thin shell he had begun to form the moment Kai had fallen. “I saw the whole thing. I saw you kill Sohr. I saw her find you.”
Maro took a half step toward him and then quit, but his frown had turned to a look that could only match the hurt he felt.
“She thought you dead already, Maro,” Brega said. “Mighty Maro. Champion of the Emerald Road. Legacy of the Sage of Center. Maro, the Emerald Blade. She thought you dead already, else she’d have finished the job.”
Maro didn’t speak for some time. He didn’t speak much ever after. He didn’t let Brega live because he wanted him to or because he felt anything close to pity. He let him live so that he might kill him later. So that he might find better reasons to.
He turned and brought down the last of the roots and tangled wood that separated him from the people that would now think him a savior, if not a god. When he stepped out onto the glitter
ing moss and crossed the first shallow stream up onto the raised mound before the Sightless, he let his gaze fall over them. He raised the Emerald Blade aloft and let its brightness war with the midday sun.
One by one, they dropped to their knees. Even Maja Cohr and the Raiths at the borders of the trees with their great beasts and simmering hate. The Willows in the branches overhead bowed their heads and closed their quartz-white eyes. The sound of wind through the many-layered canopy sounded like the reedy throats of the Sightless, or like the hiss of a snake he would never forget.
Maro cried for the last time, and none were looking closely enough to see it.
Head to www.stevenkelliher.com to discover more stories by Steven Kelliher.
4
Barrowlands
Mike Shel
The sun’s rays spilled over the horizon, illuminating a distant hill that had the look of a man who had rolled over to die. Emaciated black crows populated the stunted trees clinging to the corpse of the hill, brown-gray and leafless, despite the season. “Even the sunrise is miserable in this godforsaken land,” grumbled Benska, spitting his curse into the campfire with the bit of gristle he had been grinding.
Hesk concluded that it was no more miserable than his traveling companions. He forced himself to eat the piece of dried meat he’d worried between thumb and forefinger for the past half hour, knowing he needed it. Their food was low; they were rationing now. He looked across the fire at Benska, who squinted at the sky. A more ill-favored man Hesk had never met. Benska was bald, short, and hulking, clad in filthy hide armor in such a state of disrepair, it seemed more burden than bulwark against attackers. His complexion was florid and he had a fat, round nose, broken at least a dozen times. The left side of his face drooped in concert with a downturned scar at the corner of his mouth, and only an earhole remained on that side of his head, the rest burned away by the war torch of some screaming Korsa tribesman years ago.
“No more miserable than your ugly face,” sniggered Iorgen from his own log, echoing Hesk’s thought. Black-haired Iorgen had the kind of sharp, strong features some might call handsome, but the severe angle of his eyebrows, and small, close-set eyes ruined the effect. It was made worse by the man’s incessant, fidgeting nervousness and permanent sneer: every word from his mouth sounded like a lie, an insult, or both.
Nearly everything about these two men inspired immediate distrust, and yet Hesk was here with them, deep in the Barrowlands, in contravention of the law. They had almost nothing to show for their weeks of searching. He looked at the tarnished silver ring on his left pinky. My great trophy, he thought sourly. Nothing more than a wedding band of some long-dead Djao bride. He pulled it off to study the alien script etched inside the ancient metal, trying to recall what little he had learned at the Citadel about Djao linguistics.
Ish-el-a-eld.
No, he hadn’t a clue what it meant.
“So, what’s the genius plan today, Freckles?” mocked Iorgen.
Hesk hid his irritation by turning his face to the sky. His features did make him look far younger than his twenty-two years. He found it necessary, on occasion, to educate persons who misapprehended his youth for weakness, usually with the flat of his sword or his fists. The time for a re-application of that lesson to the heads of his surly traveling companions seemed near at hand. But for now, he answered the question.
“Southeast.”
“That’s Serekirk, boy!” spat Benska, scratching his ear hole with a stubby-fingered hand. “Patrols’re bound t’be thicker that way. Gotta be some ruins nearby. This damned bracelet ain’t near enough for my troubles.” He jiggled the gilded bauble on his wrist, a dented and dull thing set with pathetic chips of lapis lazuli. It was by far the least valuable item they had found, but Benska cared only that it was gold.
“I quite like mine,” sang Iorgen with his contemptuous smile, fingering the tarnished pendant hung around his neck. “See how the sapphire catches the morning light?” He angled it back and forth so that a blue splash of color teased at Benska’s face. Benska tried to swat it away, as though it was an insect.
The stone’s azurite, you fool, thought Hesk. He’d appraised his simple ring as the prize of their sad haul, despite what these idiots believed. It probably represented at least a month’s wages for a Syraeic League mercenary, but it wasn’t remotely enough to warrant the risks they’d taken. Their unsanctioned presence in this quarantined land was an enormous risk in and of itself. Penalties for such trespass were harsh. Even fatal.
“Serekirk is forty miles further, at least,” Hesk said, brushing his anxiety aside. In fact, the town was closer than thirty miles away, but Hesk needed these two to follow his lead. “There are hills in that direction that might hide buried tombs. We keep an eye out for patrols and do as we’ve done since the waystation.”
The waystation. That twisted in his gut. They’d made camp at a Syraeic League waystation a week into their reckless venture, aching to spend a night with a roof above them rather than the morose, overcast Barrowlands sky. Stupid. A royal patrol had come by, though they’d got the drop on the pair. Hesk and Iorgen had tied the hands of the two, a blond-haired man and a woman with a shaven and tattooed head. Their facial features looked so alike they might have been kin. He was securing them both to a brick post that supported the waystation’s roof when, without warning, Benska had stepped forward and bashed the woman’s brains in with his rusted mace.
“Whadja do that for?” Iorgen had cursed, not appalled, but annoyed. And with that, the black-haired man yanked a dagger from his belt and cut the throat of the helpless blond man. Hesk hadn’t uttered a sound or moved a muscle, frozen dumb by this duet of stupid violence.
Murder. He told himself he wasn’t at fault. These two thoughtless brutes, who had fled the legions and sailed to Serekirk to make their fortunes as mercenaries, they were the murderers. Hesk would have left the two captives alive. But a rough certainty nagged at him. What would have happened in that case? The two would have loosed their bonds eventually and reported back to Serekirk: a trio of unlicensed rogues is roaming the Barrowlands! A shit storm of patrols would have descended on this barren wilderness to hunt them down. And by now, the three of them might’ve been rotting in gibbets, suspended from Serekirk’s north wall as a warning to all.
Hesk grimaced at the troublesome truth. He had to get back into Serekirk, he had to get the hell out of these cursed hills and away from these two thugs. But how? It was folly to travel the Barrowlands alone. He needed the pair of army deserters with him. But those two wouldn’t leave until they had secured a true treasure from some Djao hidey-hole. And their cover story for re-entering Serekirk seemed more foolish to him with each passing day.
And then the man stood there.
None of them heard his approach. But now he stood only a few feet from the fire, a short man clad in once-fine leather armor, torn and spattered with dried blood, mud, and some dark, less identifiable filth. His hair, black with streaks of gray, was unkempt and hung past his ears and gore-fouled cheeks bore days of gray stubble. His face was pale and gaunt, deep crescents under eyes that seemed to stare at their campfire without truly seeing it. His right hand clutched a sword, the lower half of the blade gone. He held an object under his left arm that looked like a muddy cabbage.
Hesk’s hand shot to his left side. His fingers touched the pommel of his own sword, but he didn’t draw it, standing with deliberate slowness. Iorgen, next to notice the stranger’s presence, shot up and stepped backward, tripping over the log on which he was sitting. Benska let out a curse and reached on the ground for his poorly maintained mace, which wasn’t there. It still lay next to his sleep roll, ten feet away.
“You gave us a start, brother,” said Hesk, keeping his voice steady despite a racing heart. “It’s common courtesy to announce yourself before approaching another’s campsite.”
The man said nothing, unfocuse
d eyes still turned down to the fire.
“Bugger courtesy!” growled Iorgen, who dusted himself off with a shaking left hand, his right now holding his own unsheathed blade. “You’re lucky I didn’t run you through!”
Hard to do that on your backside, thought Hesk.
Benska scuttled over to his sleeping roll like a startled crab across a beach. He grabbed his weapon and brandished it above his head, as though posing for a portrait. “Break his bleeding skull is what we should do!” he barked, and took three steps toward the stranger.
With a sudden jerk of his head, the stranger’s eyes locked on Benska, freezing the squat man in his tracks. Hesk felt something like horror spilling from those haunted eyes that seemed to register them now for the first time. The man’s thin lips trembled and worked for a moment, as though readying to speak, but no words came forth. He raised his broken sword a few inches. The blade still held a cruel edge, in spite of the damage. Hesk moved his hand away from his own weapon and held both out to show they were empty.
“No need for bloodshed, friend,” his tone cautious and amiable. “You just caught us unawares. Let’s just sheath that sword of yours and we’ll sheath ours.”
“Like Vanic’s balls I’ll sheath my sword,” cursed Iorgen.
“Lower the goddamn thing,” Hesk hissed. He pointed at the white emblem on the nicked pectoral of the stranger’s leather cuirass, partly obscured by the gore spattered on it. It was the nine-pointed star of the Syraeic League. The man was an agent of the League. The expression on Iorgen’s face softened a bit, his pale version of friendliness, and he launched into the story they had agreed on after the bloody debacle at the waystation.
“We were thrown overboard during a storm, washed up ashore in the Barrowlands. We’re looking for Serekirk.”
“For Serekirk,” echoed Benska, still shrinking under the Syraeic agent’s unnerving attention.
