Rion blinked. “Wait a minute. Do you mean…are you saying that you died?”
Alesh shrugged his good shoulder. “Only a little.” He walked to the Ferinan and offered him his hand. “Come, Darl. I grieve for your people, but we will see them avenged—we will see justice done. I promise you.”
The Ferinan hesitated, then slowly reached up, grasping Alesh’s hand firmly and allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. “It is good to see you again, Son of the Morning.”
“It’s good to be seen.”
“Yeah, this is nice and all,” Rion said, glancing up at the fading sun, “but night’s here. Maybe we can have our reunion later—after we’re all dead and the nightlings are chewing on us.”
Katherine opened her mouth, meaning to snap at Rion, but Marta spoke first. “Where are we going to go?” she asked, staring at Alesh with wide, terrified eyes.
He offered her a smile. “Further into the desert, Rose.”
“Who’s Rose?” Rion asked, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Further into the desert, you say? Away from civilization.” He grunted. “And away from any shelter from the nightlings. Perfect.”
Alesh met his eyes. “Leave the nightlings to me.”
“But, Alesh,” Katherine said, “you’re not well. How far can you make it before your strength gives out?”
“Far enough,” he said, and he’d only just gotten the word out when a howl sounded in the distance. A sound each of them recognized all too well. The nightlings were coming. Alesh stared off into the night then reached his hands up to either side. At first, nothing happened, and Katherine was about to ask him what he was doing when something changed.
The low flames of the campfires around them flared brightly, doubling, then tripling in size. Alesh bared his teeth and suddenly the fire began to drift toward him. It came in bright streamers of light until it reached him, then it began to swirl around him in great looping orange whorls. Shining like a beacon in the darkness, he turned to the others. “Stay close behind me.”
***
Rion’s breath was rasping in his lungs, and he felt as if his legs would give out beneath him at any moment, but he ran on, shocked that he was forced to struggle to keep up with Alesh. The man had been nearly dead only hours ago—in truth, he still looked as if he were on the short list for a visit to The Keeper—but now he was running as if he’d slept for a year. And not just running.
The flames that seemed to hover around him, swirling in such a distracting way, kept most of the nightwalkers at bay, but not all. Some of the creatures—apparently too furious or too hungry to care about self-preservation—attacked anyway. And despite his wounds, despite that he only had use of one arm, Alesh knocked them away with his good hand which was wreathed in flames, barely slowing at all. And where he struck, creatures screamed and howled and died.
Darl ran beside him, the Ferinan’s spear lashing out with incredible speed and precision, fending off any who made it past Alesh’s guard or who tried to creep in from the opposite side of those swirling flames. Not that there were many, for the nightlings who risked the light seemed intent on Alesh to the exclusion of all else.
Yet for all the Alesh’s power and Darl’s skill, they were all growing more tired by the second, and the small group hadn’t had it all their way. Alesh bled from several gashes along his back where one of the nightlings’ claws had scored him, and the Ferinan’s side had been cut deeply enough that Rion thought he could see ribs.
Chosen by the gods or not, able to make flames obey his commands like scolded puppy dogs or not, if Alesh didn’t find the place he was looking for soon, they were all going to die. “How much farther?” Rion shouted.
Alesh paused to grasp the throat of a nightling that had pounced out of the darkness, stopping it in mid-flight. He gave a savage twist, and Rion heard something snap. A moment later, Alesh tossed the broken body of the creature back into the darkness and ran on. “Not much farther,” he shouted back over his shoulder.
Rion cursed and followed, his own blades gripped in sweaty hands. So far none of the creatures had attacked him or Marta where they ran at the back of the group—for which he was grateful—but he didn’t trust that to last. After all, how much longer could Alesh keep going?
They’d survived longer than Rion would have ever thought possible, but no matter how many of the creatures Alesh and Darl killed, there were always more to take their place, and he and the others could not keep running forever. They were tired, all of them, and Alesh, in particular. And not just tired, Rion thought, dying. The man had taken the last several hundred paces at a shambling, drunken run, and the lines of fire that had once glowed brightly about him had now shrunken to a dull golden glow.
Suddenly, Alesh came to a staggering halt, and Rion thought that the time had come, that whatever final reserve of strength the man had found had finally run out. He glanced anxiously at the creatures roaming along the edges of the increasingly small circle of light surrounding Alesh, hissing and snarling, eager to get at them.
“Alesh?” Katherine asked. “What is it?” And judging by the worried tone of her voice, Rion knew she was having a similar thought.
Alesh glanced around into the darkness, as if looking for something. “It…it should be here.”
“What should?” Marta asked.
“The place…where the person who could help us is…” He trailed off, searching the darkness surrounding them.
“The one the Keeper of the Dead told you about?” Rion muttered, walking closer to the man, his eyes scanning the shadows in case one of the creatures decided to attack. “Who could have guessed that the Death God isn’t reliable?”
“It should be here,” Alesh repeated in a troubled voice, as if Rion hadn’t spoken.
They all shared worried looks, save for Darl, who peered off into the night, a curious expression on his face. “Does anyone have a coin?”
“I hate to crush your optimism after you just got it back, Darl,” Rion said, his own eyes tracking a nightling that paced the edge of the light, its incredibly long fangs bared in a silent snarl, “but I don’t think they can be bribed.” Still, he reached into his pocket, withdrawing a coin at random—it wasn’t as if he would be able to spend it—and handing it to the Ferinan who took it with a nod.
Then, without a word, he turned and threw it into the night. “Hey,” Rion said, “what did you—”
The Ferinan held up a hand, asking for silence, and reluctantly Rion subsided. A moment later, they were rewarded with the sound of the coin chiming as it struck something. Not a nightling or sand, not to make that sound. It had sounded as if the coin had struck…stone.
The others must have come to the same conclusion, for Alesh gave the Ferinan a fierce—if pale and sickly—grin. “Come on.” He led them toward the source of the sound at a shambling jog. As he followed, Rion couldn’t help but notice that the nightlings had begun to shy away from their party, retreating into the shadows as if they’d had their fill of violence.
Rion was just about to ask if the others noticed this strange behavior when he saw that the others had stopped, were gazing into the darkness. Frowning, he followed their eyes and grunted in surprise. From the faint glow still radiating from Alesh, he could make out the outline of a stone wall, fifteen to twenty feet high at least. And not just a wall, but a massive structure, as if a castle had been plucked up by some god and placed here, in the middle of the desert.
“Thank the gods,” Alesh breathed.
Thank the Keeper of the Dead, Rion thought, but that was gratitude he’d rather not express in person, at least not anytime soon. How did a man get a letter to the lord of the underworld anyway?
“We need to find a door.” This, too, from Alesh, and they began walking along the wall. It was a slow, tedious process, the sand beneath contriving to shift beneath their feet, and Rion couldn’t imagine how anyone could build a castle on sand without the whole lot of it crashing down. But just then, he didn�
�t care. What mattered was that the nightlings seemed to not like the place, staying well away despite the fact that there were no lights to ward them off and that, inside, they might find shelter from the creatures as well as the Redeemers who could not be far behind.
“Here,” Katherine called, and the rest of the group moved to her to find a large door, practically twice as tall as Rion himself.
“What do we do now?” Rion asked.
Alesh glanced around at the group, all of them watching him, then shrugged. “Knock?” He suited action to words, and the vibrations of his fist on the thick wooden door seemed to echo in a night that had grown terribly, eerily still.
They waited, but no answering call came from inside the castle, not so much as the sound of footsteps. Frowning, Alesh knocked again, louder this time, and Rion and the others waited anxiously for any sound. None came.
“I don’t guess the God of Death told you whether or not the bastard was home, did he?” Rion asked.
Alesh started to answer, but Darl spoke first, his voice tense. “Dawn Bringer.”
Alesh turned, glancing at him, and Rion and the others followed the Ferinan’s gaze away from the door to where a man stood at the edge of the light behind them. Rion’s heart fluttered in his chest as he saw that it was the same man from Celadra, the one who carried the double-bladed spear, the one who Alesh had insisted on fleeing from. The man said nothing, only watched them, an unreadable expression on his face.
“What do you want?” Rion demanded.
The man ignored him, turning slowly to face Darl. “They fought well, your people.”
The Ferinan tensed at that, taking a step forward as if intending to charge the tattooed man, but Alesh grabbed his shoulder, stopping him. “You killed them,” the Ferinan said, his voice furious and sad all at once.
“Yes.” No feeling one way or the other, sounding as if he might have been commenting on the weather instead of the butchery of several hundred innocents, and Rion felt his own anger rise in response to the man’s casual manner. He also noted, for the first time, that the man stood alone, the Redeemers who had accompanied him nowhere in evidence.
“Who are you?” Alesh said.
“I am the Broken,” the man replied, and if he felt any anxiety at being alone, facing off against the five of them, he did not show it.
“And why have you come?” Alesh asked.
“You know why, Son of the Morning,” the man said. “I have come seeking an ending.”
“An ending to what?”
The man met his eyes, and though his gaze was placid, calm, Rion thought he could see madness dancing in it. “Everything. Will you come, Son of the Morning? Will you meet me?”
Alesh took a step forward but was stopped by Katherine’s hand. “Alesh, you can’t. You can barely stand and—”
“There’s no choice,” he said, his own voice calm, but Rion could hear the exhaustion and pain in the man’s words. Alesh turned to Darl, and the Ferinan gave a single nod. “Keep trying,” Alesh said over his shoulder. “We’ll buy you some time.”
But by the sound of his voice, by the brief look the two men shared before stepping to meet the newcomer, Rion thought they held no illusions about how it would end.
***
Alesh was weary beyond belief. During his training sessions with Olliman and Kale—what felt like a lifetime ago—he had often left the courtyard, bruised and battered from his practice bouts, thinking that he couldn’t be any more tired, any more worn out, than he was. He had been wrong. And, just then, he would have given nearly anything to have felt that way.
For now, it was all he could do to stand, let alone walk. He had found reserves of strength he had not known he’d had while they’d charged through the darkness, the light and the fire he’d bent to his will seeming to reinvigorate him. But what effect they’d had was long gone now, and his feet felt impossibly heavy, as if lead weights had been tied to them.
Standing was difficult, walking toward the man with the Ferinan beside him, a trial, a challenge all its own, and he knew that he would not be able to fight for long. If at all. Still, there was no choice. Perhaps Katherine and the others would get the door open, and they, at least, might be saved.
“You are hurt,” the man said, studying Alesh as the two men came to stand a few feet away. “I would have it otherwise, if I could.”
Alesh grunted. “Care to come back in a couple of weeks then?”
“I’m afraid not,” the man said, apparently missing the sarcasm. “You and those others with you stand in the way of the end, a much-needed end. The world is sick—has been sick for a long time—and there is no cure for what ails it. It suffers now, and I seek only to end its suffering.”
“Don’t talk as if you’re some savior,” Alesh growled. “You’re a murderer. No better than some common street thug that kills for coin.”
Anger flashed in the man’s eyes at that, the first sign of any emotion he had shown, but it vanished in another instant. “I do what must be done.”
“Like killing old men and women?” Alesh demanded. “Enough talk,” he continued, drawing his sword. “You’ve searched for death—come find it.”
“As you wish.”
The man moved in a blur, and Alesh barely got his sword up in time to parry the man’s attack. The Ekirani struck again, bringing the opposite end of his weapon around in a sweeping motion almost too fast to follow, and Alesh was forced to leap back, narrowly avoiding the questing steel.
His feet struck the ground, and he stumbled, his legs threatening to give out beneath him. The Ekirani, though, leaped forward, his weapon raised above his head, and Alesh would have died then had Darl not intercepted his weapon, knocking it away with the haft of his spear and standing in front of Alesh until he was able to find his footing.
Gods, he’s fast, Alesh thought. Too fast.
There followed a blur of motion as Ekirani and Ferinan lashed out with their weapons, knocking each other’s attacks aside and countering with strikes of their own. It felt as if it lasted for an eternity to Alesh, but in truth it was only seconds. Then, Darl grunted in pain and staggered back, a cut across his chest where one of the staff’s blades had caught him.
“You are skilled,” the Broken said, holding his own weapon casually as the Ferinan’s blood dripped from its tip. He began to pace then, first one way, then the other, always keeping his side to Alesh and Darl, and the two circled him warily, Alesh concentrating on fighting back the waves of dizziness that threatened to overcome him.
He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw the others still gathered at the door, Katherine banging on it while Rion peered at the latch. They would get inside. He needed to believe that, had to believe that, for if what the Keeper had said was true, Sonya was somewhere within. Yes, they would get inside. They only needed more time.
With a growl, Alesh launched his fevered body forward, his sword leading. The man batted the attack aside easily enough, but Alesh wasn’t finished. Calling on the last remnants of his strength, and all the training Olliman had given him, he fought with a skill he had not known he possessed. His sword seemed to come at the Ekirani with a mind of its own, an overhand strike, followed by an attack from the side, then another, the blade everywhere at once, a dozen blows in rapid succession. And the Ekirani weathered them all, his face a placid mask, the only indication that he had to put in any effort coming in the form of a single step back, taken under the barrage.
Alesh stood, panting for breath, wavering on his feet as he studied the man in disbelief, who seemed no worse for wear after the brutal exchange. The Broken bowed his head a fraction, as if in acknowledgment of Alesh’s efforts. Then he moved.
Alesh parried, and parried again, but the Broken’s weapon was everywhere, too fast to follow. A line of fire traced its way up Alesh’s good arm as the blade scored him, then another on his front leg that he had retracted a fraction too slowly. And on and on the attack went. Alesh felt his parries slowing as
his body’s remaining strength faded, and he cried out, staggering back as the tattooed man’s blade struck his shoulder a glancing blow and blood blossomed there.
The Ekirani watched him, and Alesh bared his teeth. “Come on then, you bastard.”
The tattooed man took a step forward, planning to do just that, but Darl lunged at him from the side, his weapon leading. Alesh had a moment of hope that in his distraction, the Ekirani wouldn’t notice before it was too late, but the tattooed man seemed to sense that the strike was coming. He suddenly hopped back, leaning his chest and face away, and the spear missed him by inches.
Before Darl could strike again, the Ekirani’s fist lashed out with blinding speed, striking Darl in the ribs, and Alesh thought he heard something crack before the Ferinan stumbled backward.
Darl lunged his spear forward even as he retreated, and the Broken was forced to spin, parrying the weapon. It was a small opening, but the one Alesh needed. He lunged in, swinging his sword in an arc at the Broken’s unprotected side, but the man’s hand was there, knocking the blade away. Then he pivoted and his kick took Alesh in the midsection. The next thing Alesh knew, he was lying on the ground, wheezing, and he realized he no longer held his sword. He looked up as the tattooed man moved to stand above him, watched as the Broken stared at his hand, bloody where he’d knocked Alesh’s sword away. He studied it curiously, as if surprised that he’d been cut, then his eyes traveled to Alesh on the ground, and he raised his weapon.
Alesh gritted his teeth, knowing he wouldn’t be able to move in time. The Ferinan was just picking himself up from the ground, one arm wrapped around his midsection, a pained expression on his face. He wouldn’t be able to help. Suddenly, there was a loud click, as if of a crossbow release, and something flew out of the darkness. Something flew over Alesh’s head, and he saw with surprise that it was a net with what appeared to be lead balls tied to the ends of it. The Broken brought his weapon up to deflect it, but the blade did not cut through the net’s material, instead becoming tangled in it as the net looped around the Broken himself.
The Truth of Shadows Page 36
