Come to think of it, Commander Denaven had been very interested in Asrahn’s encounter with Irion as well.
What was the connection?
Odd, wasn’t it, that Cargen’s face was heavily bruised? Why would an alten be sparring the night before the parade?
It might be that he was just blowing off steam, relieving some tension. And yet … he and M’lahna had been so curious about the sword, and then fascinated to learn of Kyrkenall’s interest, and his location.
Surely not. As an unthinkable explanation clicked into place, she found herself opening her storage chest and grabbing the wineskin N’lahr had given her long years before. It was empty, but she wanted it anyway. She splashed stale water from her pitcher into the bowl then rubbed her face vigorously before leaving her room. She supposed she should change from her parade armor and best boots, but didn’t turn back.
It might all be innocent coincidence. She found herself striding for the stables nonetheless. Even if there were nothing strange underway, it would do no harm to ride out and talk to Kyrkenall. She would simply go to N’lahr’s tomb and tell him what had happened. She could apologize again and offer condolences for the loss. After all, Kyrkenall had squired with Asrahn, too. And, she recalled, they had fought together at both of the Battles of Kanesh. Clearly he had been upset by the sudden death. But how had Kyrkenall known for sure? And what if her fears were real … and she had told them right where to find him! She quickened her steps.
Her horse was reluctant to leave, as if he knew he’d already completed the assigned work that day. But no one challenged her exit from the stables or the palace complex; she was an upper-ranked squire, and she was off duty.
She rode too slowly, the streets packed with visitors despite grumbling gray clouds crowding one upon the other overhead. A few heavy heralding drops met exposed skin.
She thought she’d feel better when she left the north wall behind and pushed on into the country, but as the skies rumbled more insistently she worried she was already too late. She kicked the horse into a gallop.
Aron was one of the Penarda geldings, bred for endurance, but even he was winded after the tense ride and the push up the switchback path to the cemetery. Elenai left him on the track, puffing and lowering his head to a patch of clover near a willow. She hurried through the somber monuments. Thunder rolled on as she noted between looming tombs that clouds draped the distant city in blotted shadows.
“Alten? Alten Kyrkenall?” Her voice rose, but only the wind answered. A shifting noise surprised her on the left, but she discovered only a dun horse—another Penarda—staring at her with upturned ears. Kyrkenall’s mount. The mare considered her with an almost human interest before she returned to cropping grass alongside Alten Kerwyn’s tomb. The animal snorted at a distant flash of lightning but didn’t leave off eating. Elenai guessed that meant all was well. The rain began a broken patter against the homes of the dead.
Elenai walked farther down the narrow path toward N’lahr’s tomb and saw a light shining within. The stone door stood unlocked and open. Only someone with an Altenerai sapphire could access a military crypt, so Kyrkenall must be nearby.
She called again and leaned in, seeing a sarcophagus ringed by benches built into the surrounding three walls. But there was no one except the still stone form carved upon the marble casket lid. In the stark lamplight, under storm and doubt, the image of the dead general struck her as sinister and unworldly. The lantern in the corner rested near seven wine bottles, most of them quite dusty.
But there was no Kyrkenall. She stepped out and looked to the right. “Alten?”
“What are you doing here?”
The question came just behind her ear, and it wasn’t Kyrkenall. She whirled, hand falling to her hilt … and then she found another voice within her mind, holding her hand in place, suggesting she move forward. This confused her, and while she wrestled with contrary impulses her body obeyed.
The questioner proved to be Cargen, and beside him stood an unfamiliar man, strikingly well-built and handsome save for two prominent front teeth. He was dressed in one of the Mage Auxiliary khalats with its red piping along cuff, sleeves, and shoulders. An exalt. His fingers were raised, and twitched almost as though he pulled at some unseen thread. He was practicing his magecraft on her.
Cargen nervously looked to left and right as the sorcerer marched her out to the little clear spot nearer the tomb of Kerwyn.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded again.
She hesitated, realizing she was once more in command of her own senses, though she felt the mage’s presence hovering at the back of her thoughts like a light hand upon her shoulder. “Looking for Alten Kyrkenall.”
Cargen’s frown was lopsided on his scoffing face. “Obviously. Why?”
She wasn’t sure how to answer, then gasped, feeling lightheaded as the sense of the other presence upon her thoughts pressed harder.
“She feels fear,” the stranger said in a deep, even voice. “For herself. She thinks she’s betrayed Kyrkenall. Thinks you might be involved in Asrahn’s death.” The sorcerer’s tone changed, growing suddenly waspish. “I warned you to stay out of sight until you healed. M’lahna could have handled it on her own.”
Cargen scowled at him, then at her. “You shouldn’t have come, girl. Disappearing Kyrkenall is easy. Explaining you is another matter.”
She saw what happened from the corner of her eye. An object sprouted suddenly from the exalt’s mouth with an explosion of red and white she realized were teeth and blood. The mage’s presence in her mind fell away as he dropped, choking, clawing at the black-feathered shaft that transfixed his face. Elenai was too shocked to understand exactly what she was seeing until Cargen drew his blade and shouted a warning: “Kyrkenall’s here!”
Elenai stepped back and pulled her own sword. She meant only to defend herself, but as Cargen closed she realized he’d seen it as a challenge.
“You’re no match for me,” he promised.
“You might be wrong.” She was surprised by the sound of her own bravado.
She parried his first strike without thinking, worried then about what Alten Tretton had once told them—it’s usually the warrior who strikes first who wins. But where could she strike, when her opponent wore the vaunted Altenerai armor? He was open only at the calf and the wrist and the head. His neck was partly shielded by the high stiff collar.
“I’m stronger than you, Squire. My armor’s better, my blade is finer, and I can outlast you.”
She narrowed her eyes and tapped her fingers along the hilt, bringing to mind the little mask of a terror-stricken face hung from the necklace beneath her uniform. She hadn’t learned to properly cast without a focusing agent, so wore several useful talismans at all times.
She sent him fear.
Cargen’s sapphire ring lit, and he smirked. “You think to distract me with a feeble weaving?”
From close at hand came a scream of agony, and from almost behind the alten, in the darkness, a cackle of mad laughter. As Kyrkenall was said to laugh. But it didn’t sound merry or gallant as the sagas had it, not in the least.
Elenai twisted to the side as Cargen thrust, and what would have been a killing blow to her throat hit her armored shoulder. She struck as he pulled away, driving the point of her sword into his hand.
Cargen dropped his blade, and she grinned, as much in relief as pride. The alten advanced anyway, kicking up with one foot to drive her sword arm back.
Used to sparring exercises, her instinct was to raise a hand to block a second kick before she realized she wasn’t in the practice yards. They weren’t switching into hand-to-hand exercises. She had a sword, and should use it.
This realization came the same moment Cargen hopped to his other foot and lashed out to clip her chin with his boot. She staggered back, blinking away darkness and stars. There was pain, too, but it was the dizziness she couldn’t ignore. He pounced on his dropped sword and grabbed it with his off han
d.
“Now…” Cargen said, then yelped and tripped over a long black stick.
Not a stick, she understood, but an arrow protruding through his right boot. The alten spun to confront a swift-moving figure behind him, but staggered awkwardly on his wounded leg.
His opponent was Kyrkenall, who parried a weak blade strike with a careless flick of his recurved ebon bow. The archer stepped in close and drove the palm of his hand into Cargen’s bruised cheekbone. Cargen fell over his opponent’s extended foot and sprawled face upward on the graveyard soil even as water rushed in earnest from dark skies.
Kyrkenall tossed the beautiful bow aside and it landed only a foot or two to Elenai’s left, close enough for her to glimpse the immaculately carved warriors struggling on its surface. He freed his sword, a long slim arc of blue steel, and suspended it over Cargen’s throat.
The alten spoke in a strange, singsongy way. If this was one of the famed, spontaneous verses she’d heard so much about, Elenai decided it was more chilling than inspiring. “The battle’s over, and the Gods retire. None fled, all dead, save you. The liar.”
Though wincing in pain, a deadly weapon held to him, Cargen’s face screwed up contentiously where he lay. “I’m no liar.”
Kyrkenall’s tone was taut with contempt. “You put the lie to all you profess to serve.”
Elenai thought herself unnoticed until Kyrkenall called to her, though he didn’t look back. “Squire, are you wounded?”
She briefly thought of saying something jaunty, but she was still breathless, and a little stunned. “I’m all right,” she managed. Her voice sounded tinny and far off, even to her. “Alten Asrahn is dead.”
“Yes,” he said darkly. “We spoke earlier of etiquette, Squire. Now’s not the time. Put your skills to use as I put him to the question. You, liar, remove your ring.”
“I’d die before doing so,” Cargen asserted.
Kyrkenall’s answer was startlingly venomous as he hissed, “So would Asrahn. I spoke with the guard who found him. He told me Asrahn had no ring.” He cut the air inches from Cargen’s ear. “He was a hero—you’re nothing but a puffed-up bootlicker unfit to muck his stalls.” His voice rose, fury barely checked. “Now, take off the ring or I’ll cut off your rutting hand!” As Kyrkenall’s volume pitched, Cargen fumbled with his ring and dropped it onto the wet soil.
“Now, Squire,” Kyrkenall directed.
Elenai began to wonder if he actually knew her name. But she reached out with a thread of intent, bending her senses so that she might see the prone man’s thoughts.
“Why’d you kill him?” Kyrkenall demanded.
Cargen didn’t answer. The images swirled and she perceived him in argument with M’lahna. “They had to silence him,” Elenai said, aghast. “He drowned when he tried to escape—”
Kyrkenall’s tone was cutting. “You took his ring, mazed him, and threw him in the river, didn’t you?”
The reply was shrill. “I answer only to the commander—”
Kyrkenall cut him off with a shout. “Where’s the real sword?”
The sudden shift sent the visions swirling. A memory swam up before her.
“You getting anything, Squire?” Kyrkenall demanded over the din of rain.
“Images only—”
An electric surge of sorcerous energy coursed through her, the like of which she’d never felt before. And there was a voice. Elenai didn’t hear it, exactly, but its command vibrated through to the very core of her being. She was told to drop, and she knew that she must, and so she slumped without question, and as the voice told her to lay still and sleep she started to do this, too. Except that her hand contacted something hard that sent a shock wave through the enveloping tide of weariness.
Her fingers had landed upon the great black bow, Arzhun, and at the touch clarity came to her. She clutched the warm and stiff arch, as a drowning woman clasps for timber in the water, and she lay listening while her senses settled. She was lying in damp earth, water pouring from the skies and into heretofore dry areas of her body.
Kyrkenall had frozen rigidly in place as the weaver M’lahna crept up beside Cargen, now awkwardly pawing the mud for his ring. She wore soft leather boots and a hooded rain cloak over her red-trimmed khalat. She carried no weapon but for a glittering shapeless stone held in one hand, a mix of moonlight and silver and diamonds and all shining beautiful things that had ever been.
“You’re just as deadly as the tales say,” she purred to Kyrkenall. Her face was contorted into a mockery of a smile.
Cargen sat up fully and fought with shaking fingers to slide his ring back into place.
“And as reckless,” she continued.
“And as handsome,” Kyrkenall offered through gritted teeth, straining. He didn’t move. Elenai doubted he could.
“You’re broken, Alten,” the exalt continued. “I truly regretted having to kill Asrahn, but you … you’re an arrogant, contemptuous rules breaker. If you weren’t a war hero you’d already have been drummed out of the corps. While you’re wandering around trading your fame for drinks and sex we’re risking our lives, our very sanity, to restore the realms.”
Kyrkenall’s response dripped with sarcasm. “‘Restoring the realms’?”
She answered with lofty irritation. “A glory seeker like you can’t understand the quiet sacrifices of those brave enough to secure real peace, real order. When the Goddess is restored, there’ll be no more Naor or kobalin or storms that eat our borders. We’ll live in a true paradise. And they’ll be no need to tolerate anyone like you.”
Elenai sensed the pressure from the mage increase.
“But you heroes need,” Kyrkenall managed, “a little murder or two, to help things along. Sounds righteous.”
Elenai didn’t know why the bow protected her from the full force of M’lahna’s weaving, nor did she understand why she felt such an immense attraction to the shining thing in the mage’s hand. Examining it with her magical sight, she discovered that M’lahna had projected all of her spell-threads through the object before they intersected with Kyrkenall. That transition strengthened each of them. Prior to encounter with the gleaming stone they were thin gold threads. After, and as they reached for the archer, they were transformed into blinding beams of energy.
If the stone enhanced the exalt’s magic, it was reasonable to assume it would do the same with Elenai’s. She cast a line of energy toward it. She was jolted to full clarity the moment her energies interacted with the thing, and exulted in the sense of capability and power that swept through her.
Magic was a complex and challenging endeavor, requiring vast expenditures from tiny reserves. Elenai had always likened throwing a spell to running laps. Weaving several in succession was like sprinting miles.
But touching this object gave access to a store of limitless magical energy with little endurance loss. Despite her fear, a smile touched her lips. She felt among the talismans hung from her necklace. Each was a small silver mask carved with an exaggerated emotion. Fear, fatigue, confusion, bravery, sorrow, joy. Elenai found the wide, downturned mouth of fear just as M’lahna somehow sensed her intrusion.
She saw the shock on the woman’s face and sent her fear. The exalt twisted her head as if shaking it to stay awake, then countered with another command to sleep. A wave of somnolence rushed against Elenai and set her blinking.
Kyrkenall struck while the exalt’s attention wavered.
M’lahna cried out when the sword was driven through her wrist but not when the same silvery blue weapon crossed her neck a heartbeat later. She dropped, a hideous mess that had been a beautiful living creature. The shining object tumbled to earth with her dead hand and her fingers twitched in the mud.
Elenai clambered to her feet, the black bow, Arzhun, clutched unnecessarily tight.
The archer advanced on Cargen, who’d been fumbling with a bandage. He struggled in alarm to fully rise on his good leg, trying to grasp the hilt of a knife at his belt. He fell back
to the mud the moment Kyrkenall’s sword came again to his throat.
“This seems familiar, doesn’t it?” Kyrkenall followed the injured man down with the point of his blade. He might have meant to appear playful, but to Elenai’s mind he sounded merciless. He raised his voice. “You all right back there, Squire?”
“I am,” she answered with a shaking voice. She actually thought she was going to throw up.
“Did you pull anything out of his memory when I asked about Irion?”
“A tower on a cliff edge, in the snow,” she answered. “Skies behind. There was a flag flying—”
“Red and white?” Kyrkenall suggested.
He was right. “Yes.”
Cargen sneered. “That’s not where the sword is.”
“You forget I already know you’re a liar.”
“We’ll hunt you down.”
Kyrkenall laughed.
“You’ll get nothing more from me.”
“There’s not much else I want. Except perhaps to carry a message. Tell your leaders I’ll expose them. That whatever they build, I will tear down. That whomever they slay, I shall avenge. Tell them…” He smiled terrifyingly. “You know what? I’ll just leave them a fucking note.”
Kyrkenall drove the sword through Cargen’s throat. As the alten fell back, there were two bright arcs of blood in swift succession, mingling with the downpour.
The sight of it set Elenai retching. She hadn’t recalled eating quite so much rice as came up. Amid the changed, impossible world, she seized upon the peculiar detail that so many of the grains remained intact.
She found herself kneeling in the mud and vomited again, and she was still there, contemplating the mess, when Kyrkenall splashed up to her. His boots stopped just outside the disgusting rain-splattered pool.
“Elenai, isn’t it?” he asked; then at her weak nod, continued conversationally, “That was you, wasn’t it? Interfering with the woman’s weaving?”
She nodded weakly.
“So you see the fundamental flaw with bringing those cursed hearthstones into a battle—no good when there’s an opposing weaver nearby. Nice timing, though.”
For the Killing of Kings Page 7
