Shadow's Edge nat-2

by Brent Weeks

  A shout went up as the Khalidorans around the ferali broke. Logan couldn’t believe it. The impossibility of it was too much to accept.

  “Who do you want to go after them?” General Agon asked. He and a bloodied Duke Wesseros had appeared out of nowhere.

  “No one,” Logan said. “She can’t tell friend from foe. Our fighting’s done.”

  “She?” Duke Wesseros asked.

  “Don’t ask.”

  Agon rode off shouting orders, and Logan turned to the man who’d tackled him from his horse. He didn’t recognize him. “You saved my life. Who are you?” Logan asked.

  The Sethi woman who’d been stuck to his side for the entire battle, Kaldrosa Wyn, stepped up. “My lord, this is my husband Tomman,” she said, fiercely proud.

  “You’re a brave man, Tomman, and no mean shot. What boon would you ask?”

  Tomman looked up, and inexplicably, his eyes shone. “You already gave me back more than I deserve. You gave me back my love, my lord. What’s more precious than that?” He extended his hand, and his wife took it.

  The Cenarian ranks reformed in the tightest square the generals could manage and just watched as the Khalidorans were massacred. There was no retreat. It was a rout. The rest of the circle broke, men running in every direction. The ferali tore through them. It became a snake and rolled over whole sections of the line, men sticking to its body, screaming. Then it was a dragon. Always it had dozens of hands. Always it was quick and terrible. Piteous screams rose on every side and men tore at each other in their panic. Some crouched behind the sheep fences, some huddled in the lee of boulders, some climbed trees at the edges of the field, but the creature was meticulous in its savagery. It picked up men everywhere—whether alive or dead or wounded or feigning death or hiding or fighting—and devoured them.

  Not all the Khalidorans fled. Some turned and fought. Some rallied their fellows and attacked with more courage than the Cenarians would have believed possible, perhaps more courage than they would have shown themselves. But in the face of that horror, courage was irrelevant. The brave and the cowardly, the high and the low, the good and the bad died alike. And the Cenarians watched open-mouthed, not one forgetting that the massacre should have been their own. The few times that a Cenarian here or there cheered, no one took up the cry. The ferali tore this way and that, not catching every group of Khalidorans, but getting most of them, and always, always veering far from the Cenarian ranks, as if it feared the temptation of going too near them.

  Finally, having devoured the last group large enough to be worth its time, the ferali fled toward the mountains. Cenaria was either blessed or lucky or Lilly was in better control than Logan had hoped, because it headed in a direction where there were no villages for a hundred miles.

  In the silence, someone let out a whoop. For a moment, it hung alone in the air. Logan had been given a new horse and, mounted, he turned and was again aware of thousands of eyes on him. Why were they all looking at him?

  Then someone cheered again and the thought wormed its way into Logan’s consciousness: They had won. Somehow, against everything, they had won.

  For the first time in months, Logan felt his mouth curl into a grin. That let loose a flood and suddenly, no one could stop smiling, or stop yelling, or stop pounding each other on the back. Which noble’s flag they had fought under no longer mattered. Agon’s Dogs embraced Cenaria City levies: former thieves and former guards standing together as friends. Nobles stood arm in arm with peasants, shouting together. The shattered links binding the country together seemed to be reforming even as Logan looked over the tight-packed army. They had won. The costs had been grievous, but they had stood against the might of a monster and the magic of a god, and they had won.

  A cry began to emerge over the sound of swords and spears pounding rhythmically against shields.

  “What are they saying?” Logan shouted to Agon, but even as he asked, Logan made out the words, shouted in time with each crash of sword on shield: “KING GYRE! KING GYRE! KING GYRE!” It was audacious; it was treasonous; it was beautiful. Logan looked through the throng for Terah Graesin. She was nowhere to be found. And then he did smile.

  72

  The dead god fell like a sack of wheat. Vi was trembling, but she didn’t seem to have been harmed by the vir that had wrapped around her. Kylar stared at Garoth Ursuul’s corpse, disbelieving.

  Kylar’s destiny was dead on the floor and Kylar hadn’t killed him.

  The Wolf had kept his part of the deal: Kylar was alive. But something felt different. Vi was staring at him, still shaking with emotion, tears still wet and hot on her cheeks. He glanced up and read shock and fear in every line of her body—along with a tinge of hope?

  What the hell? Since when can I see what a woman feels?

  Vi was spattered with the Godking’s blood. It was invisible against the background of her dark wetboy grays, but there was something terrible about seeing flecks of red wetness splattered in her cleavage.

  As Kylar looked at her, she was so distraught he wanted to take her in his arms. She needed him to love her, to lead her out of the valley of death that was the way of shadows. He knew the way out, now. It was love. They’d go find Uly, and he and Vi would walk that path together—

  Me and Vi?

  Her eyes went wide with fear and remorse. She was weeping. For a split second he wanted to understand, but then his fingers went slowly up to his ear. There was an earring there, a perfect hoop with no opening, and it was swimming with magic so potent he could feel it in his fingertips.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, backing away. “I’m so sorry. It was the only way.” She turned and he saw his last gift to Elene—his pledge of love that he had sold his birthright for—sparkling in Vi’s ear.

  “What have you done?!” he bellowed, and he could see that his rage was amplified through the earring. As it buffeted her, he could feel her remorse and terror and confusion and desperation and self-loathing and …hells, her love? Love! How dare she love him?

  Vi fled.

  He didn’t follow. What would he do if he caught her?

  She burst through the main door of the throne room, and the guards looked after her, stunned.

  They turned and saw Kylar standing over the body of the Godking.

  Then it was whistles and alarms and charging highlanders and chanting meisters. Kylar was glad for the nepenthe of battle. It blotted out a future that would never hold Elene. It took all his attention. With only one hand, killing was actually a challenge.

  Lantano Garuwashi couldn’t stop touching the Blade of Heaven, though of course he kept it sheathed. Once a sa’ceurai drew his sword, he did not sheathe it without first letting it taste blood. As night descended, his men covered the mouth of the cave so their campfires wouldn’t be seen by the celebrating Cenarians. After conferring with the spy who’d returned from the Cenarian camp, Garuwashi stood up on a ledge.

  In the firelight, his men’s eyes glowed with destiny. They had seen wonders denied to their fathers and grandfathers before them. The Blade of Heaven had returned.

  Garuwashi began without preliminaries, as was his way. “The Cenarians did not win this battle. That creature won it for them. Tonight, they drink. Tomorrow, they will begin hunting down the scattered Khalidorans. Do you want to know what we will be doing while these buffoons swat at flies?” Men nodded. They held the Blade of Heaven. They followed the Garuwashi. They were invincible.

  “Tonight, we will gather the uniforms of the Khalidoran dead. At dawn, we will attack and inflict enough losses to infuriate the Cenarians. We will draw their army east, always just slipping through their fingers. In three days, the rest of our army will arrive here. In five, they will take the undefended Cenaria City. In a month, this country will be ours. In the spring, we will return to Ceura and give them their new king. What do you say?”

  Every man cheered but one. Feir Cousat sat silent, stoic. His face might as well have been carved of marble.


  Epilogue

  Horses’ hooves clattered behind Dorian as he came over the last rise in the foothills and saw Khaliras. He stepped aside and waited patiently, enrapt by the view. The city was still two days’ distant, but between the Faltier Mountains and Mount Thrall the plains spread broad and flat. The city and the castle rose with the mountain, one lonely spike in an ocean of grazing land. It had once been his home.

  The party began passing Dorian, riding on magnificent horses. Dorian got down on his knees and gave a peasant’s obeisance. It wasn’t a normal scouting party. Nor were they regular soldiers, though their armor said they were. Their weapons and horses gave them away. The six huge soldiers were members of the Godking’s Guard. And from their smell, despite the half-cloaks, the meisters accompanying them were actually Vürdmeisters. They could only be coming from Cenaria, probably bearing great riches in the few chests they carried.

  Dorian was stealing brief glimpses when he saw the real treasure. A woman rode with meisters, wearing thick robes, her face veiled. Something seemed oddly familiar about the way she carried herself, and then he saw her eyes.

  It was the woman he’d foreseen. His future wife. A shiver passed through his whole body and he remembered bits and pieces of his old prophecies—something about the process of searing his gift had blocked his memories of them.

  When he came to himself, he was still kneeling. His muscles were cramped and the sun hung low in the sky. The party was miles ahead of him out on the grasslands. He’d been unconscious for half the day.

  Solon, where are you? I need you here. But Dorian knew the answer. If Solon had survived Screaming Winds, he was probably already sailing home to Seth to face his lost love. That woman, now Empress Kaede Wariyamo, would be furious. Because of Dorian’s prophecies, Solon had abandoned his homeland in its hour of need. Dorian could only hope that Solon’s path wasn’t as lonely as his own.

  Because even without prophecy, Dorian knew that whichever way he went, he would walk a path in darkness, alone, suffering so much that giving up his visions had seemed a good idea.

  With fear and trembling, Dorian stood. He looked at the path before him and the path behind, the road to Khaliras and his future wife—Jenine, that was her name!—or the road back to his friends. Death and love, or life and loneliness. The God felt as distant as a summer in the Freeze.

  Face set, back straight, Dorian continued his long walk to Khaliras.

  Ghorran was always watching Elene, his gaze dark, intense. The first day, that hadn’t been a problem, because she hadn’t needed to relieve herself. The second day, it had. Elene had followed him a short distance into the woods, then stepped behind a bush for some privacy. He waited until she was squatting and lifting her skirts, and then followed her just to shame her. Of course, then she couldn’t go.

  That night, as they did each night and each morning, the Khalidorans prayed, “Khali vas, Khalivos ras en me, Khali mevirtu rapt, recu virtum defite.” Ghorran threw Elene to the ground and straddled her. As he prayed, he ground his fingers into the pressure points behind her ears. She screamed and felt warm wetness soak her dress as she lost control of her bladder.

  When the prayer was finished, Ghorran got up, clouted her ear, and said, “You stink, filthy bitch.”

  They didn’t let her wash when they crossed a small mountain stream. When Ghorran took her aside that evening, Elene hiked up her skirts and relieved herself as he watched. He took no special delight in watching until she blushed and looked away. “Tomorrow,” he said, “I make you wear shit on your face. Yours or someone else’s. Your choice.”

  “Why do you do this?” Elene asked. “Isn’t there anything decent in you?”

  The next morning, however, they were awakened early. They set out immediately. The captives traveled in a line, tied together, walking behind the Khalidorans. Elene was sixth in line out of six captives with the young boy, Herrald, right in front of her. It took her a while to figure out why the Khalidorans were anxious because they beat the captives if they talked.

  There were only five Khalidoran soldiers this morning.

  That night, Ghorran seemed to have forgotten his threat. When he took Elene aside to let her relieve herself, he kept the camp in easy sight. Elene squatted among the tamaracks, which were dropping their golden needles with the onset of autumn, and pretended his presence didn’t bother her. “The meisters might meet up with us tomorrow,” Ghorran said, keeping his eyes on the camp. “We’ll hand all of you over then. That bastard Haavin probably run off, the coward.”

  Elene stood, and not ten paces from the oblivious Ghorran, she saw a man leaning against a tree. The stranger wore a multitude of cloaks, vests, pocketed shirts, and pouches of all sizes, all of them horsehide, all tanned the same deep brown and worn soft from long use. Twin, forward-curving gurkas were tucked into the back of his belt, an elaborately scrimshawed bow case was slung over his back, and hilts of various sizes hung among the garments. He had an affable face; wry, almond-shaped brown eyes; and loose straight black hair: a Ymmuri stalker. He touched a finger to his lips.

  “You finished?” Ghorran asked, glancing toward her.

  “Yes,” Elene said. She glanced back to the stalker, but he was gone.

  There were only four soldiers when they camped that night at the edge of the woods to take advantage of the shelter of the trees. The Khalidorans quarreled about whether they should press on in the darkness or if Haavin and the other missing man had really run away. The night was short, and Ghorran woke Elene in the dark of the morning.

  He took her silently into the woods. She hiked up her skirts like it didn’t bother her. “How did your chest get hurt?” Elene asked.

  “That wild bitch stabbed me with a pitchfork after I killed her husband and gutted her brats.” He shrugged, like letting her stab him was a moment of carelessness, embarrassing but not serious.

  To Ghorran, eviscerating children held no special significance. He had hurt Elene and shamed her; she could forgive those. But that dismissive shrug blew on the small spark of fury in her heart. For the first time in her life since Rat, Elene hated.

  Ghorran had brought a bow with him and now he strung it. “This day, we get to camp,” he said, “Neph Dada will do terrible things to you.” Ghorran licked his dry lips. “I can save you.”

  “Save me?”

  “What he does should not be done. It is Lodricari foulness. If you run now, I will put an arrow in your back and spare you.”

  His mercy was so bizarre that Elene’s hatred dissolved.

  A flash of light burst from the camp fifty paces behind them, throwing shadows against the trees. A scream followed it. Then the sound of galloping horses.

  Elene turned and saw a dozen unfamiliar Khalidoran horsemen charging into the camp from the north. They had come early to collect their slaves.

  “Run!” a shout rang out, louder than a man should have been able to yell.

  Through the trees, Elene saw the Ymmuri stalker fighting the Khalidorans. He cut through two of them in a single move. Fire leapt from one of the horsemen’s hands, but he dodged it.

  Ghorran nocked an arrow and drew it, but there were too many trees and Khalidorans between him and the Ymmuri. Then, only paces away, the young boy Herrald burst from the woods, running away.

  Ghorran turned and aimed, leading his new target.

  All Elene thought was no.

  She grabbed Ghorran’s dagger from his belt, brought it over his arm, and buried it in his throat. He spasmed and the arrow leapt from the bow, whistling harmlessly over Herrald’s head.

  The bow dropped from Ghorran’s fingers, and he and Elene regarded each other, shock widening his eyes. The dagger was lodged squarely in the center of his throat, its wide blade blocking his windpipe. He exhaled, his chest straining, and air whistled. He put a hand to his throat and felt the blade, still unbelieving.

  Then he tried to inhale. His diaphragm pumped like a bellows, but he couldn’t get air. He fell to his knees.
Elene couldn’t move.

  Ghorran ripped the dagger out of his throat and gasped, but the gasp turned to a gurgle. He coughed and blood sprayed over Elene.

  He kept trying to breathe as his lungs filled with blood. In moments, he dropped to the forest floor.

  Despite the blood on her face, her dress, and her hands, despite the piteous look on Ghorran’s face and the horror of watching a man die, Elene didn’t feel sorry. She had hated Ghorran only a minute before, but she hadn’t killed him out of hatred. He simply had to be stopped. If she could have the moment back, she’d do the same thing. And just like that, she understood.

  “My God, what a fool I’ve been,” she said aloud. “Forgive me, Kylar.”

  With magic bursting in the woods behind her, setting the trees alight, Elene ran.

  On the north side of Vos Island in the gloom of the rainy autumn day, Kylar stood staring at the unmarked cairn he’d built. Durzo’s grave.

  Kylar was spattered with blood, his wetboy grays scored and singed with magic. In a rage he’d fought for hours, killing every Khalidoran soldier and meister he laid eyes on. From the slowly diminishing magic on the throne room’s floor, he’d seen Logan’s stand, seen the ferali turn, and witnessed the destruction of the Khalidoran army. He’d seen how the men had looked at Logan. Though the figures were tiny, it was written in every line of their bodies.

  Logan would march his army home, and in two days when they arrived, he would find his castle swept out and cleansed of the Khalidoran presence—except for Khali, but that was one creature Kylar was going to steer clear of. Let King Gyre invite some mages to take care of that.

  “We won, I guess,” he told Durzo’s grave. Kylar knew there was no use railing against his life. He was the Night Angel, and he didn’t get celebrations. As Durzo had told him long ago, he would always be separate, alone.

  ~It is just so hard to be immortal,~ the ka’kari said.

  Kylar was too exhausted to be surprised or offended. The ka’kari had spoken before, he remembered now, trying to save his life. “So you can talk,” he said.