Shadows of Blood

by L. E. Dereksen

  I lifted my keshu.

  Destroy the guilty . . . protect the innocent . . .

  I shut my eyes. I couldn’t look. But I had to. I could give him a clean death at least. Without pain. Be strong, Vanya. Be strong.

  I took a deep, shuddering breath. The keshu hovered above my head.

  Something dark streaked past me. I spun. Sumadi? It landed with a splash and disappeared below the murky depths. I hesitated. What . . . ?

  There was a cry. Before I could turn, a heavy weight bludgeoned me in the head. I dropped to my knees. Another stinging blow across the back. Kylan?

  I gasped and spun—in time to see Alis descend on me with a screech worthy of the shades.

  A cane splintered across my face. I fell under the water. My keshu spun away. Lights flicked over the blackness of the Avanir as I struggled back up, gasping and spluttering.

  “You sand-shitting wretch, you bastard, I’ll kill you!” she screamed.

  She swung with one broken end. I caught it, but her momentum drove me back under the water.

  Darkness closed around me, then I heaved myself off the clinging clay bottom and hurled her over. She was light but strong. She held on to her weapon with a death grip. I shook her. I plunged her under the water. Kulnethar was shouting through his gag now, struggling to his feet. His arms twisted as he tried to wrestle out of his bonds.

  “Drop it!” I roared. I held her under the water. Something was pounding against the back of my head—like a heartbeat that wasn’t my own. She squirmed and kicked. I felt her panic, her movements becoming sharp. I remembered drowning in Gitaia. The crushing pain in my lungs, the disorientation, the world collapsing in on me, and nowhere to go, nowhere . . .

  Her grip loosened.

  Kulnethar slammed into me. We rolled over together in a splashing, twisting mess. He’d gotten his wrists free. He lashed out, pounding me across the face with shocking ferocity. I threw up my arms as a shield.

  “Threatening me is one thing, you pathetic brute, but touch my family and I will kill you! I will—”

  I wrenched one arm around and flipped him into the water. I kneed him hard in the gut. He gasped and gagged. I struck him in the face—

  There was a flash of light. Alis had scrounged up my keshu. Water dripped out of her nose and mouth, but her eyes roared. Even an untrained fool could be deadly with a keshu. She ran at me, sweeping the keshu in a wide, clumsy arc.

  The pounding was growing stronger . . .

  I dodged, then leapt at her with a shout. I closed the distance as fast as I could, hammering into her. She doubled back. She yanked the keshu and the blade bit into my leg, but I twisted, reaching. I threw my weight into her. Her hold slipped. I grappled her, spun her around. Then I threw my back against the Avanir, seized her, and pressed the blade to her throat.

  Kulnethar staggered to his feet, hands shooting out. His chest was heaving, face dripping. His nose gushed blood. He struggled to form words past a sudden, sobbing cry.

  “Stop!” I said.

  He ground to a halt. “Vanya, what are you doing?” He sucked in a breath. “What are you . . . No, no, what are you . . . ?”

  “I told you.” My voice sounded hoarse. I swallowed blood. I could barely hear myself beyond the crushing weight in my head, the heat at my back, the pounding fire. Now, now . . .

  “You said it had to be me!” he cried.

  I noticed movement beyond him. The Guardians had seen us. They were coming.

  “It will be.”

  “Then let her go, Vanya! Let her . . . let her . . . Oh, Yl’avah and the Tree, don’t!”

  Something twisted inside me. Something dark and painful and exhilarating.

  “It has to hurt. It has to be a betrayal, he said. And this is worse than your own death.”

  “N-n-n . . .”

  “Worse than your own blood.”

  Alis stiffened. “Look at me, Kulni—be strong!”

  “No, me! Take—”

  My arm jerked. That’s all it took in the end. A single, stuttering motion. I didn’t think about it. Power for power. This is what it wanted.

  Blood dripped over my arm, down the shining blade of my keshu, rippling and spreading from feet. A new oath.

  Her body shuddered. I held on. My lips trembled.

  Kulnethar was staring at me. Staring. One hand clutched his head. His mouth worked. The Guardians were coming faster, shouting their useless threats.

  I waited till the body stopped jerking. Then I let it slide into the water. Kulnethar sank next to her. His hands shook as he tried to lift her out of the pool, to staunch the blood. Words bubbled out of him. Meaningless words.

  I watched, feeling like something had broken off inside of me, something essential—now jangling around.

  I watched. I watched the realization open in Kulnethar, like hands reaching in and tearing him apart. And out of that depths, there came a sound. First, his body began to tremble. Then his face changed, twisting into an expression no human was meant to bear. By the time it burst out of him, his voice was unrecognizable. It was a wail beyond anything I’d heard before. His fingers dug into her arms. He bent over her. He screamed and screamed. I stared, breathless at the sound, until it died off into gasps and shudders. It was physical agony, as if blows were hammering into his chest.

  Hammering.

  I felt it too. Pounding, pounding. My body was stuck to the Avanir. Like I was being grafted into it. I tried to move—and couldn’t.

  Horror flooded me. Shadows were reaching over me, through me, snaking towards Kulnethar. I wanted to shout in warning.

  The water swirled with blood. It began to bubble and shift. It stuck to the shadows, becoming the same gurgling substance, flowing back up in clinging tendrils, twisting around my blade, my hands, climbing my legs. It enfolded me. I felt its coldness beneath my robes, like the touch of death. Like the groping fingers of Sumadi. And it climbed. It crept past my neck, into my mouth, my eyes.

  I couldn’t fight it.

  Don’t even try, Shatayeth had warned. Fight it, and it will destroy you.

  My whole body screamed against the intrusion, the clawing tendrils that forced their way under my eyelids and down my throat, into my lungs. Like Sumadi . . .

  No. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t.

  I had to welcome it, to open myself to its power. Only then could I hope to control it, to have something to wield against the Chorah’dyn. Only then.

  This was my only hope. My only . . .

  I sank against the rock, resisting the urge to shriek and struggle. I forced my thoughts in, towards the Unseen. If there was a gate between myself and that realm, it was rattling maniacally, threatening to burst, to destroy the boundary between Seen and Unseen and cast my mind into irreparable chaos.

  Don’t fight it.

  Fight, and the gate would shatter—never closing again.

  I reached towards the bulging, hideous power. I put two hands on the bar. I heaved it off.

  The Unseen ripped through me. My arms and legs snapped against the Avanir, splayed out. Water, blood, and shadow was sucked away in an instant. Everything went black. There was absolute silence, filled with only two, indrawn breaths.

  Then the power I’d envisioned for so long, the power of the desert, the emptiness, the absolute freedom beyond the walls—it rushed into me and spoke.

  Not a booming echo, not the sound of doom itself, or like the deep cold of Shatayeth Undying. Instead, I heard my own voice, young and hard and mocking.

  “Hello, Vanya,” it said.

  I stared into the Unseen. “What are you?”

  “I am the Aktyr.”

  It smiled. Then it burst out of me.

  The ground cracked under my feet. My skin turned to fire. Something was there in my hand, coalescing. It was the great emptiness around me and in me, becoming a knife in my hand, a weapon to turn against the Chorah’dyn, the thing I’d fought for, killed for. It was clawing its way out of my flesh like a living
thing. It was tearing out of me, breaking my fingers, twisting my whole arm.

  Dimly, I was aware of myself screaming, my throat ragged with pain.

  “No!” Kulnethar’s voice cut through me. “You can stop this!”

  I turned. I could see him, not as a body, but as a whole presence, a broken thing, a throbbing wound. And I saw the Guardians forming behind him.

  “Ishvandu ab’Admundi,” one called. “On the ground! Drop whatever you’re holding and surrender—”

  The man ripped open like an old sack. His insides spilled out. His keshu vanished into the blackness of the lake.

  I had no memory of doing it. It was like an afterthought. A terrible, ferocious instinct, revealed in the trembling line of force between us. No pause between will and effect.

  I felt the waves churning around me as I staggered towards the remaining Guardians. I brushed past Kulnethar. The thing in my hand was still writhing, still growing out of me. The Guardians stared for a moment in horror. Then they struck.

  I killed them. One by one, I broke their backs, I crushed their bodies. The fire spewed out of me like bile. One Guardian got close enough to cut me. I leaned back. The point of his keshu bit my chest, then I seized his throat. I felt the bones crack under my fist. When I threw him aside, another came at me. I felt the pain of his keshu down my arm, but it was distant and unimportant. Something was cut away from my hand. I turned to him. He screamed as power lashed him on every side, shredding him apart.

  Then silence. I stood breathing in the darkness. I staggered. Only then did I become aware of the pain. My hand was ruined and broken. Blood welled out of a gaping wound. My whole body ached. I gagged, and something black and wet dribbled from my lips. It tasted like rot. Like Sumadi.

  As if for the first time, I saw the bodies. Seven Guardians lay in a massacred heap around me, and Alis. Her throat had been cut.

  Kulnethar’s face was wretched beyond hope. He stared up at me, chest heaving. Tears ran down his face, dripping from his chin.

  He was looking at my hand. My empty, ruined hand.

  Empty.

  The thing called the Aktyr was gone. I blinked, realizing it only an instant before Kulnethar.

  He sprang at me. He drove me into the water. I fought to keep my mouth above the surface. I gasped and struggled. I was still bleeding. The pain was getting sharper by the moment.

  “I should kill you,” Kulnethar’s voice was like two rasping stones. “I should end you. I should. I should.”

  He thrust my head under the water. I had no strength left to fight. I kicked feebly. One hand dug through the mud.

  My face broke the surface. I gasped and choked.

  “I should make you plead for your wretched life.”

  He plunged me under again. I heard my own stuttering heartbeat. I felt the coldness sink into me.

  “I should kill you,” he kept saying, over and over again, somewhere above the water. “I should kill you. I should . . . I should . . . I . . .”

  His cries dissolved. The weight on my chest eased and I threw myself up, sobbing for breath.

  He was beside me. He was weeping. One hand still clutched at my robes, but the murderous fit had passed. I stared, propped on one elbow in the muck, still too dazed to move.

  “What happened?” The broken thing inside me just rattled and rattled. “I don’t understand. I had it. I . . .”

  I lifted my hand. It was mangled, sliced open from forearm to index finger, splayed unnaturally, with fingers bent at ghastly angles. The edges of the wound were charred and blistered. It seemed to belong to someone else.

  “I had it. I had it.”

  “Gone,” Kulnethar gasped. “It’s gone.”

  “That’s not possible.” I began to feel around in the mud, oblivious to the pain. “It was here. It . . .”

  More shouts went up from across the broken lakebed. More Guardians.

  Kulnethar glanced up. “They’ll be here soon. It’ll be over soon. Yl’avah save us, it’ll be over . . .”

  “It was just here!” I shouted. “It can’t be gone!”

  “It is.”

  “No. No. Everything I . . .”

  A grey light cut through the murky water, about an arm’s length away.

  Kulnethar clutched my robes. “Don’t,” he said. His voice had become dull and lifeless. “Ishvandu, don’t.”

  “I have to.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  I started to laugh. It forced its way through my lips: an ugly, desperate sneer. “I am the Aktyr,” I said.

  Kulnethar was shaking his head, arms trembling now as he held me back. “Vanya, no.”

  “I am the Aktyr.” I sobbed. “I am.” I surged forward.

  “No!” He yanked me back. “No, Vanya!” It was a command.

  “I am the emptiness of Kaprash.”

  “I won’t let you.”

  “The power of the Broken Pillar of Blood.”

  “No.”

  I lashed out. He held on. His fingers were like claws in me. I kicked. I began to fight. I splashed and struggled with all my pathetic, waning strength. The shouts were getting nearer.

  “This is your chance, Vanya,” he said, his voice oddly calm amidst the carnage around us. “You know what it is. You know the evil inside. Don’t go back.”

  “It’s our only chance!” My fingers finally scraped something under the mud. A keshu. “You think I want this? But it’s the only thing strong enough. It can destroy what was Broken. It can destroy it once and for all and end the corruption of the Lifewater. I’m doing this so our people can be free, Kulnethar. And they will be. And if I have to be the Broken itself, so be it.”

  I seized the fallen blade and thrust it into Kulnethar’s side. He hardly flinched. His jaw tightened. His fingers dug into me all the tighter.

  “Let me go!” I cried. I pushed the blade deeper.

  He grunted, but did not let go.

  “Let me go, Kylan!”

  “I will not.”

  I gave a last twist of the blade. His face contorted. His grip loosened, just for an instant. I heaved myself up, scrambling for the pulsing, grey light. Kulnethar threw himself after me, but not before my fingers closed around the light. Something hard and cold slid into my hand. It was a broken shard of stone, unfinished. The Aktyr.

  Its power seized Kulnethar’s limbs and hurled him into the Avanir’s black side. I heard bones cracking. I saw him fall. I saw him lie still.

  Oh, Kylan.

  But it was probably better this way. It was done. All the horrible things done, and he wouldn’t have to remember them now.

  I clutched the black shard in my mangled hand and rose. The pain slipped away. The burning strength returned. More Guardians were coming. A part of me wanted to stay, to see if Kulnethar was alive. To try to explain myself. To beg his forgiveness . . .

  But then more Guardians would die.

  “Your lives will be for the saving of many,” I said to the fallen. “I promise.”

  And I fled into the night.

  Epilogue

  Alutan Na-es

  Alutan heaved an armful of dirt into the hole. It was wet and heavy. It fell with a loud plop. He took another armful. And another.

  Tandra knelt by the grave. Her face was ashen. Her eyes sick with grief.

  Digging had been exhausting without a shovel or spade. She had chipped at it with the broken edge of a Northman’s scimitar. Dry-eyed and empty.

  That’s how Alutan had found her when he returned with Hyranna and Jerad and the cold, heavy body of Brit Garden.

  The Imo’ani had freed themselves and one of the older women had immediately began directing the others. They’d started gathering the dead Terryns, stripping whatever they had, finishing off those who were still alive.

  But they’d kept a cautious distance between themselves and Tandra, with her mangled dead nephew and her wild eyes. When Tandra had gathered his body and stumbled into the trees, no one followed her.

/>   Without a word, Alutan knelt to help. Hyranna grabbed a flat stone and did likewise. Jerad tried to join in, but they all forbid him from lifting a finger.

  Instead, the boy picked a spot close to Hyranna, one hand tight around a stolen revolver, and proceeded to hover in half-conscious protectiveness. Garden’s revolver, Alutan noticed. He said nothing. The young man’s feelings for Hyranna were painfully obvious. And right now, they were all mixed up with rage and relief and pain—and the hollow sickness of having killed a man.

  Alutan would have to have a talk with him. But not tonight.

  Tonight they buried Magellan Yourk.

  When the last armful of dirt had been piled over him, they knelt in silence. No one had anything to say.

  Jerad had fallen into a fitful sleep, his bandages bleeding through. Hyranna was worn out. Tandra looked torn between weeping and murder, her face shifting with every new and painful thought.

  There was nothing Alutan could do for them—not right now. He should check on the freed Imo’ani. They might have injuries. They might need tending.

  He rose and slipped into the trees.

  The camp was a good walk away. Tandra hadn’t wanted her nephew resting anywhere near those Terryn bastards, so she had said.

  Alutan felt his own weariness catching up to him. He hadn’t eaten or slept in days. The fire inside sustained him, but although rest and nourishment were not necessary for his survival, they brought comfort nonetheless. He ached for sleep. He ached for a bite of food. He ached for the sweet arms of Andalina. Taken from him, as he always knew they would be.

  She had warned him. It didn’t make it less painful.

  And then he stopped. A shadow stood beneath the darkened trees, a tall, familiar shape. Fear clutched his heart. He froze, all breath sucked from his lungs.

  “Alutan,” said the voice. “So that’s what you call yourself these days. Alutan. Rosha. Healer. How original. When are you going to stop running, Lel-na? When are you going to be honest with yourself? You’re a failure. Broken at the Avanir all those years ago and left to die, betrayed and crippled.”