Whispering Blade Chapter 14

#14#

The human soul is a maze full of dead ends, weird twists, black pits, and surprising turns. Just when you're pretty sure you know where you are and where you need to go, you find yourself at a sudden fork that you could never have seen ten steps back.

That's how I felt as I sat on a low bench and looked down at the sweating pain-wracked face of a man who bad been the best friend of my childhood and one of the worst enemies of my adult years. Faran had done everything possible to make sure that he lived, but a sword through the lung is very bad news, and even experienced magical healers working in ideal circumstance will tell you that there are more ways things can go wrong than right.

Devin was well down one of those wrong turnings at the moment. Weak, weary, more than half out of his mind with delusion in those rare moments where he approached consciousness. Without Faran's intervention and ongoing efforts he'd have died within a few hours of taking the wound at the most. Even with all that she could do, his survival was a very open question, and he simply couldn't be left alone. And that was all without the possibility of another attack. Which brings me back to that forking in the maze of the soul.

Every second we sat there in that beached barge was a second in which three score swords of the goddess were getting farther away. If they reached the Mage Wastes, the signature Udar used to track them would be lost in the magical turbulence created in the last war of the gods. We might well never see them again. Reason told me that saving the life of a traitor wasn't worth letting that happen. That what we ought to do was push sentiment aside and leave him to his fate. That one more death laid at my feet hardly mattered. My heart on the other hand… Say that I hated him like a brother, and you would strike close to the truth, which meant I also loved him like one.

"Aral." Faran's hand fell hard on my shoulder.

"What?"

"Stop overthinking it."

"Stop overthinking what?" I asked.

Faran raised an eyebrow. "Don't be an idiot, and don't believe for two heartbeats that I am one. You're trying to figure out what to do about the lost swords and Devin, and you don't like any of the answers."

"Am I that easy to read?"

"For me, of course. But I know you better than anyone but Triss. And, where it comes to being human, maybe even better than that. You know you should let Devin die and go after the swords, but that overdeveloped sense of responsibility of yours has latched onto the idea of saving this fucking asshole and won't let go."

"I…uh…"

"Wait. I'm not finished. All of that constant battle between your heart and your head is both your greatest weakness and the strength that makes the rest of us love you. It's also unnecessary this time around. The answer is simple even if we're both going to hate it for different reasons."

"It is?" I blinked. "Because, I'm not seeing it."

"It is. You are going after the swords alone and with no one to cover your back, because I have to stay here and keep the asshole alive. Gerda just isn't part of the calculus except to the extent one of has to watch over her, and that's much easier done from beside a sickbed than it is on a sprint across half of the east." She sighed. "I cannot begin to express how much I hate the idea of not being there to guard your back, and that's even without it being this fucker's fault." She jerked a thumb at Devin. "But, as much as I'd like to simply abandon him to sepsis and a long deserved death, I owe him a debt and I can't clear that if he shuffles off his mortal coil before I pay him back."

I let the faintest smile cross my lips. Even two days earlier Faran would have been the strongest advocate for leaving Devin to the crows. Then he'd saved a little girl's life and brought us here to this moment.

Faran made a noise in the back of her throat that was more than half growl. "Don't you smirk at me, Aral. There's nothing sentimental about this on my side of things. I wasn't there to protect the girl and he did it for me. I owe him. It's purely transactional."

I nodded, though I had to fight to keep the smile from widening. The Devin side of things might be nothing more than a balancing of the scales, but the weight on the other side had a name, and it was Gerda. The Faran I had first taken under my wing might have had room in her tattered soul to care for the girl, but the attachment would have been weighed and calculated against other needs. The Faran who had paid for her swords and the title of master with blood and agony a few years later would certainly have had the capacity, but she also wouldn't have hesitated to let Devin die for so much as an eye blink.

Oh, she'd have been happy enough that he saved the girl, but she had have just marked it off as tiny bit of him repaying his own debts. And she wouldn't have been wrong about that calculation. It was the one I'd spent the last several hours trying to convince myself was the proper one to use here. I probably would have gotten there eventually, though not without adding another stain to my own tattered soul. That Faran had healed enough to see Devin as a person worthy of being owed a debt? That was a credit to her strength and to the conscience she didn't believe she owned.

"Why are still grinning at me, old man?"

"When Namara chose you for the order, she chose wisely. I wish that she had lived to see what you have become."

Faran's face twisted as if she'd bitten into a lemon. "I know you mean that as the highest sort of compliment, and I thank you for the sentiment. But the goddess didn't have anything to do with it. You grew up in her shadow and that is a good part of the man you are now, but she died when I was nine. I barely remember the one time she spoke to me on my entry into the temple. No, I am what I am despite the goddess. Still, I know what you meant, and I am very glad that youare proud of me. That means the world. Thank you."

I felt a lump form in my throat. "You're welcome. I…"

"Don't know what to say. I'm aware." She leaned in close and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. "Now, you need to pack, and I need to sink some more bits of my weary soul into keeping this asshole alive for a few more hours."

#

I paused in the shallows across from the grounded barge and looked back. I really didn't like the idea of leaving Faran there. Not like this, with Heaven's Reach so close and no easy way to run if they sent another attacking force. The plan had originally called for freeing the barge with magic and letting it get on its way while we headed out on foot, but we hadn't known how bad Devin's injury was then.

Now it was too late. Gerda hadn't the skill, Faran didn't have any power to spare after taking care of Devin, and I couldn't do it alone. …at least, not with magic. I'm not sure if the idea came from within my head in a moment of inspiration, or if it came up through my feet from the river itself—speaking to the part of me that was currently Vesh'An. In either case, I knelt in the shallows and put one hand into the waters.

Please, I thought. Just, please. And, the river rose in answer. No more than half a foot, but that was enough. The shallow draft barge lifted off the bar and began to move slowly downstream. Look after them. Keep them from the banks and rapids. See them safely into port. There was no answer. Not in words. But I knew in my heart that even if the crew slept the entire night away, the barge would run free and clear all the way to Avenstead. Faran would be able to find some real healers there, which might be the only way to save Devin. It would also put them all out of easy reach of the Son of Heaven's troops.

I watched the barge out of sight, tossed my pack into the river and dove after it transforming into dolphin shape mid leap. Hooking my beak through the loop at the top of the pack that we'd devised for that purpose, I began to swim swiftly upstream. I had a long way to go, but following the river in dolphin shape would let me cover the first couple of hundred miles a lot faster than walking would—especially since I didn't have a huge cut in my side as a dolphin. Hopefully the spell of waterproofing we'd put together for the pack would hold for the next few weeks.

I'm not sure how fast or how far a real dolphin can swim in a day, but the shadow dolphin form the Vesh'An ritual had allowed me to assume was both faster and stronger than the natural animal, and I covered something like a hundred and fifty miles in that first night without feeling much fatigue. The river was getting mighty shallow by the time the dawn first pinked the sky.

I slept the day away in a hollow under some scraggly brush covered with thorns. I was somewhere in the barren hills that marked the borderland between Öse, Aven, and the Kvanas. My plan was to follow the river until it petered out, then hike over the hills and hope to hit the headwaters of the Luvarn, where I could switch back to Dolphin shape and head down into Radewald. If Udar was right about the route the lost swords caravan was following, that would put me in a position to intercept or, more likely, pursue them as they came down off the plateau and turned south to follow the River Dan to the edges of the Mage Wastes.

The next week was all about covering ground. First as a dolphin, then as a man, and finally back to dolphin. Traveling at night, I saw no one but Triss and no one else saw me. I had plenty of time to think, but I tried not to, preferring to focus on the task at hand instead of digging into the complex mess of feelings I had about Devin, the lost swords, Faran, and…well, all the other things I'd started drinking again to avoid. I thought I was past the crisis on that front, but I didn't want to push and find myself sliding into the bottle again.

So, in an effort to keep my mind from eating itself, I drove myself as hard as I could from the moment my eyes opened around twilight till I fell into a deep dark pit of sleep near dawn every morning. I slept ashore the first couple of days, but once I reached the Luvarn I let the current carry me along during the sunlit hours, drifting and dreaming in the way of the dolphin as I went.

When I finally reached the Dan a few hours short of sunrise on the eighth day, I regrew my legs, clambered out of the water, put on some pants and then settled down in a little hollow and drew my swords. Part of me felt there really ought to be some sort of ritual involved, but Udar had shaken his head when I brought it up and said "Just knock, polite-like." So, that is what I did, rapping gently on the the nearer hilt.

"Udar?"

A deep, dead sounding voice answered. "Who calls me from my long rest?" This was followed by a snort. "Sorry, couldn't resist. Yes?"

"I'm on the shore of the Dan just upriver from Haven. Where are the swords?"

"Flamath."

I swore briefly at that. Flamath was several hundred miles south and west of me, almost to the edge of the Wastes. I'd made up a lot of ground, but I'd still missed them, and I'd need a small miracle to catch the caravan this side of the magical maelstrom of the wastes if they weren't planning on staying in the city for more than a day or two. "I'd better get after them."

I intended to push on on well into the morning, and I tried. Oh, I tried. But the river wasn't all that deep along here and I couldn't really hide from the sun. Previously when I'd gone long distances in shadow dolphin form, I'd done so at night or in the deeps of the sea where the light barely reached, moving through the water more by will than muscle power. But the sun shining through the shallows reversed that formula, or worse. It felt like I was trying to swim through hot mud, and I hadn't gone five miles before I had to stop struggling and let the current carry me along in dreams.

At Flamath, I stumbled into the caravansary about an hour after dawn only to find the traders I was hunting already gone. I was still more than a day behind and what I wanted to do was to buy a horse and get right after them. But where the spirit was burning with the fire of pursuit, the body was in no shape for horses and neither was my purse. After I found a stableboy willing to tell me my prey had gone, I tossed him my last few coins to rent me a corner of the hayloft and slept the sun down.

With night my strength returned, though my purse remained empty. Making a mental note to repay them later, I slipped through shadows into the strongroom of a nearby money-lender and liberated a fair stock of coin. I felt badly about it, but my needs were great. I had to replenish my gear and supplies—including quite a number of things that were lethal and/or hard to come by in the daymarkets, all of it pricy—purchase a pair of saddle horses and a pack beast, and, not least expensive, bribe the stable master to tell me everything she knew about the pack train I was pursuing and whither it had gone. This last action took place in a tiny closet of a room that she used as a combination office and tool locker.

I slid a thick silver coin across the tiny table—the Radewaldian equivalent of a Zhani riel, and more than enough to buy a fancy diner in a good restaurant. It wasn't the first such I'd offered the woman. "Describe them, and tell me their numbers."

"It was a weird sort of caravan if you ask me. They was dressed like traders all right, from the Kvanas maybe, or even Northern Varya, but they didn't feel like traders, if you take my meaning." She looked pointedly at the blank place where the coin had been only a moment before.

I shook my head. "You need to give me more than that."

She shrugged and grinned. "Can't blame a lass for trying. There was a dozen of them all told that wore trader's cloth, master and apprentice, plus another score tricked out like guards and porters and the like. But they didn't move like a caravan with all the friction between the owners and the worker bees. More like a military unit, with orders given and crisply obeyed even by the most menial looking sorts. No angry glares, no dawdling when the boss turned away, and no complaining—which was the real weird one."

I nodded and slid another coin out to the center of the table. "Now, that's worth a bonus. Keep going. Was it just attitudes, or was there more to it?"

"It was everything. They all wore their cloth like uniforms, no matter the cut or thread, and they didn't have any of the usual gewgaws and pretty-pieces you expect traders to sport. Most of them wore their hair military too, cut long and braided for padding helmets if you ask me. I'd have said it was someone's house troop, looking to ambush some bandits if it wasn't for their leader. She didn't fit the mold and neither did her two lieutenants."

"Interesting. Tell me more."

"Well, where the others all wore military style braids, the top trio looked more…scholarly, maybe? Hair a good bit longer, but in ponytails with thick cords tying it all back, and the knots was weird."

I didn't like the sound of that. It suggested things I'd prefer not to be true. "Weird how?"

"Very elaborate like. I works with horses and that involves a lot of rope work. Sometimes you want a knot that slips. Sometimes you want one as catches. You never want to put in loops and twirls and back turns that don't serve a purpose. That's just wasting time and effort, not to mention taking up more cordage as could be better used elsewhere. If you knows what I mean?"

I nodded. "I do. Hand me a bit of that string, would you?" I jerked my chin to indicate a coil hanging on a peg behind her. She handed it over, and I went to work, very carefully laying out a double-loop slip knot with a bunch of extra twists and turns to it. When I was down, I held it up. "Like this?"

"Aye, very like, though the ones they was wearing had more colors to 'em. Black and two kinds of gray and a silver that almost looked like a coin."

"Of which you just earned several." I dropped three more coins on the table. The knot I'd used was a probably mistied version of the ritual version used by the Son of Heaven's mage corps and inquisitors.

The Hand, Triss said into my mind.

Almost certainly, and three of them. If we have to take them in a fight it's going to be tough. I could probably manage, but I'd only be able to get one, or at most two by stealth. The Hand were some of the best mages in the Eleven Kingdoms, every bit as good as the Elite, and with familiars who were at least as tough. The elementals known as Storms were in the same general power class as a Shade or the Stone Dogs, but when you killed one it had an immediate and massive effect on the weather. There was literally no way to eliminate them quietly, which added a major layer of complication.

I turned my attention back to the stable master. "That was very helpful. Now if you can tell me which way they went and where they were planning to go after, there are two more where those came from."

The stable master frowned. "Now, that's a tougher horse to lead. I know they went south when they left the stables, and I heard them talking about the trading road that runs from Parth to Hold and from there over the River Leivas what flows out of the Lake of the Lady, but they didn't say whether they was going to turn east toward Hold, or what…" She looked at the coins, shook her head gently, and let out a sigh.

It was extortion, but of a gentle kind. While a part of me wanted to shift from the carrot to the stick and coins to threats, I was all too aware that would leave her with a much more vivid impression than I wanted. With a sigh, I pulled a slender gold coin out of my pouch—the equivalent of five of the silver circles, or possibly more depending on current local conditions. She drew a sharp breath, and her eyes went big and black.

"This will be it," I said, speaking very slowly. "Tell me what I need to know, and we both walk away cheerful like. Try to screw me, and I guarantee you won't enjoy the results."

Her eyes narrowed a bit and I saw her gaze flick from my clothes to the sword hilts hanging down beside my hips and the various bulges here and there were I had restocked my knives and other surprises. Her eyes went far away for a moment then, and I was pretty sure she was deciding what the ups and downs of selling me out might entail.

"Don't." I said it quietly and gently, but as I said it, I set the coin to spinning on the table with the same gesture that put the fingernails of my left hand in the right position for me to clean them with a short sharp punch dagger that I hadn't been holding an instant before. "Just. Don't."

Her eyes went wide again and she nodded very carefully. "They didn't say which way they was going, but they did pay the master of the inn a pretty bit of the shiny to arrange for them to meet with a chieftain of the Baluchai, and–"

I held up a hand. "Baluchai?"

"The mad folk as wander the chaos of the deep wastes. Where did you say you was from?"

"I didn't. Go on. Tell me more about this meeting and these wastelanders."

"I can't say much about the Baluchai. They don't often mix with regular folk, and when they do, they go masked. That's how you can tell the bands one from the other—the different sorts of masks.

"Different sorts?" That sounded interesting.

"Aye, everything from rags like bandages to fine metals cast in the shapes beautiful faces. Beautiful…and terrible. I don't know that they looks like underneath, but if the shape of their bodies is anything to go by, I doubt it's entirely human." I raised an eyebrow, and she elaborated. "Most of 'em is roughly human sized and shaped, with the right number of arms and legs and all that, but some is tall and skinny like a stick insect. Others are as wide as they are tall, and some look…well twisted might be the best description. It's one of the reasons traders rarely go into the wastes and they never stays long. It's said the wild magic of the wastes bends the body over time."

I had my doubts, but magic is very strange stuff, so I just nodded. "Good to know. Now tell me about the meeting."

"Not much to tell, really. This chief came in and had a sit down in a private room with your traders. And realprivate too—no outside eyes or ears. It's one of the services my boss sells. They was in there a couple of hours, and when they left two of the chief's…people—if you can call them that—joined the caravaneers." Her fingers started to drift toward the still spinning gold coin—I'd kept it going with the occasional nudge of magic—but I shook my head ever so slightly.

"You're almost there. Is there anything else you can tell me about this specific batch of…Baluchai?"

"As it happens, I do have on thing more. This bunch isn't really local. They hails from the calm patch south and west of Hove. Or, at least, that's where they cross over from Radewald to the Madlands. If I was a betting woman I'd say your lot was planning to have them lead the way in there."

"Excellent. I think we're done here." I nodded and the coin stopped spinning.

The stable master's eyes followed it down, then flicked back up to my knife hand, but I'd made the blade vanish as swiftly and seamlessly as I'd made it appear—it helps to have a hidden companion who can move things independently of my own muscles and create a localized field of near invisibility as he does it.

She slid the silver and the gold off the table and into a bit of cloth as I rose. "Happy to be of service, lord mage. If there's ever anything else you needs hereabouts…"

"I know where to find you." I smiled the thinnest of smiles, and I saw her swallow heavily. "Thank you." I turned on my heel and went back out into the yard where my horses were waiting. I had some hard riding ahead of me.

I reached the River Leivas due west of Hove late the next morning and reined in at the caravansary on the eastern bank. By switching back and forth between the saddle horses, I'd managed to push further and faster than any caravan could hope to move, but I knew I was still well behind my targets at that point, and as much I'd have liked to keep going, the horses were in dire need of several hours rest, and I wasn't much better. The sun definitely seemed to be taking more out of me than it used to.

More of my stolen coinage bought me the service of a groom to deal with all fuss and bother of lathered horses as well as a darkly shuttered room to sleep away the daylight hours. My plan was to sleep the sun down and then pay to trade my horses for fresh when they'd had enough rest to look half presentable again. With luck I'd only a day's ride behind the swords at that point.

But you know how it is with plans…