Whispering Blade Chapter 13

#13#

We are all shadows on the cave wall—the dark and flawed outlines of our ideal selves—or so the philosophers say. I don't know if that's true, or if it's just a whimsy that caught my attention because of the framing device. I do know that my life has always been a game of shadows played for life and death stakes with the fate of kings riding on a toss of the dice, and the past and the future both shrouded in different sorts of darkness.

In the moment, my past, with its roots in the temple and our constant training in the arts of murder, saved my future. The flickering edge of darkness spied from the corner of an eye might not mean much to anyone raised in other circumstances, but for me it registered at depth that was more a thing of foundational reflex than conscious thought. It was a message painted in the darkest ink on a black signboard flagging the presence of a shrouded Blade intent on winning the point. As a child my desire to excel and the competitive instinct that resided in my bones had made me hypersensitive to such moments. That saved my life now, as shadows from my past endeavored to murder me—though I didn't know that in the moment.

In the moment, I knew only that my forward roll took me out of the line of fire—as crossbow bolts impacted the deck and cabin behind me. Then, I ran out of boat. The river barge was perhaps ninety feet stem to stern, but less than ten wide, and that was the direction of my dive. One moment, I was rolling across a series of baled furs, the next I was dropping through space as I passed over the gunwale and dropped several yards before hitting the water.

Fortunately, after the events in Kanjuri I was still more than half Vesh'An and the water that rushed into my startled lungs was as easy to breathe as the air above. I resisted the impulse to transform into dolphin form even as I rocketed toward the near shore hidden in a cloud of darkness provided by Triss, whose reflexes were at least as good as my own.

What happened? I sent as we slid in under the shadow of the bank—I wanted to get at our attackers as quickly as possible, but I had long ago learned that a few seconds of patience can mean everything in a battle, so I paused there while I waited to hear from my familiar.

I don't know. Ambush of some sort. It's too bright for me to have caught the details. What made you move just then?

I thought I saw the flicker that marks a shroud crossing in front of the light, but that's madness.

Not necessarily, The far shore belongs to Öse here, but the border with Heaven's Reach is less than a score of miles to the south. We know from what Udar told us of the lost swords of the goddess that at least ten of the Blades who went over to Kelos and Nuriko after the fall of the temple remain in service to the current heir to the ecclesiastical throne. It is not so great a distance from there to an ambush here on the banks of the river, though how they knew of our presence I can't say.

The thought of our renegade brethren struck like a knife to the heart. Devin. It has to be.

You think he's betrayed us again? Triss's mindvoice sounded dubious.

I shook my head. No, as much as that plays to my fear and prejudices, I don't see it. Say rather that his time in service to the temple's enemies has left him with vulnerabilities that we may not yet have discovered and I think you will hit closer to the mark, but we can sort that out later. I glanced at the low cliff above us. Any ideas for how to climb this and get over the edge at the top without being spotted?

Against a group of prepared enemies who know there's at least one Blade down here? Not without some sort of serious distraction. The line of the cliff with the river behind it nullifies most of the normal advantages of a shroud. We'd occlude a section of that lip, and anyone from Heaven's Reach will be looking for that.

It could just be random bandits.

You don't believe that any more than I do. So, what's our play?

Through the Everdark; it's the only way.

You're right, and quickly. Though the speed of communication that mind to mind conversation can offer meant no more than a minute or two had passed, that's still a long time in combat.

Triss ceded control of his will and his senses as I gauged the distance to the top of the cliff and made some quick mental calculations before slipping into the darkness that lies beyond the edge of reality. I needed to move fast, but the Everdark isn't just a lack of light, it is an alien environment every bit as complex as our own world, so I paused for a brief moment while I checked my immediate surroundings for potential dangers. I also tried to orient myself…to the extent such a thing is even possible for one of my kind in that place.

The first thing that registered was the endless sensation of falling that comes with being in a dimension with no up or down. Next was the bitter biting cold, which I could feel even through the insulating cover of my shroud. Though, this time, I noticed a difference in the chill. Whether it was because of my increasing familiarity with the dimension of shadow, or because of Udar's tests and the way he had called my attention to the nature of my shadow brand, or something else entirely, I couldn't say. All I know is that those parts of my skin covered by the dragon mark barely registered the drop in temperature. I'd had hints of such differences on earlier visits to the Everdark, but never so strong.

I ran a fingertip across the dividing line where the dragon brand marked my neck, but couldn't feel any external visit. I would have liked to explore the change further, but I needed to get back to our world and deal with the attackers and I'd already spent more time than I ought. I willed myself in a direction that corresponded to perhaps twenty feet up and fifty forward in the normal world—movement in the Everdark being more a matter of intent than action. That should put me behind the front line of the ambush and about eight feet off the ground—it was critical that I not come out into a space occupied by anyone or anything else.

Then, with a twist of my mind, I opened the way between the worlds. As I slipped across, I heard a sound like the laughter of a mad fox, and knew I would be hearing from Thiussus again soon. Despite knowing what to expect, the direct light of the sun struck my darkness-attuned senses like the beak of a warship—another side effect of the dragon brand, perhaps? The psychic impact left me momentarily stunned and I dropped the eight feet to the ground more in the manner of a sack of potatoes than a cat. Fortunately for my dignity I was all but invisible in my shroud, and there was plenty of other noise to hide both the thud and my sharp gasp as the breath was driven from my body.

I would have liked nothing more than to lay there for a bit to restore my equilibrium, but a lifetime of training designed to keep me functioning even in the face of serious injury forced me to my feet. As I scanned my surroundings with Triss's darksight, the rhythms of combat asserted themselves and I cast aside both past and future to focus myself entirely in the now.

Flick of attention. Nothing and no one of import behind me. Left and right likewise. Ahead, a small body of soldiers is racing toward the cliff's edge to drop onto the barge. More than fifty, less than a hundred, with an unknown number already aboard. Four all but invisible patches of flickering darkness. Three at cliff's edge, one perhaps ten feet closer to me and moving quickly toward the others. One shadow drops from view even as I spot it.

I decide not to draw my swords as I sprint forward—a calculated risk. Running with live steel vs. approaching a group of enemies unarmed. The shadow closest to me overlaps the next one forward. My darksight rebels as the merged shrouds become something like shadow squared—the cosmic opposite of a massive bolt of heat lightning in the middle of deepest night. For one brief instant the blot of darkness turns into a bottomless pit opening on another universe. My stomach twists at the visual intensity and I have to suppress the urge to throw up. A heartbeat later it is over, and only one shadow remains. As it moves forward, I see a pair of hands lying on the ground with a sword of the goddess clutched in each.

What just happened? But Triss is currently submerged in my will and there is no answer. As I get closer to the hands, I can see they are almost as dark as Siri's. So, not Faran and not Devin, which is all that matters in the moment. I breathe a sigh of relief and draw my swords as I close in on the trailing edge of the attacking force. The three remaining shrouds have all passed over the cliff's edge and I can hear fighting on the barge beyond.

Another flick of attention shows me the insignia on the bannerettes of the raiders—a sword of purest jade, upright and two handed, its point driven deep into the heart of a full moon as if awaiting the hand of a god to pull it forth. Heaven's Sword, the church militant's primary fighting force. Good soldiers certainly, but nothing like as tough as the mage warriors of Heaven's Hand or even the elite troops of the Holy Guard. Their armor is fancy lamellar, steel plates laced together with silk cords, and painted to match the banners trailing from the short bamboo poles affixed to their backs.

I pass the severed hands with their blades of the goddess now and note the line of amputation is as clean as a razor's cut. Cleaner even. I begin to have a suspicion of what might have happened in that moment of deepest darkness, but I push it aside as I reach the rearmost templar and run her through back to breast, my blade driving between the plates of her armor. As she collapses forward I free my sword and bring it up and around in a sharp snapping cut that takes the next in the back of the neck. I kill five before the rest realize what is happening. When they bunch up, I reach deep into the well of my soul and send a burst of the dark lightning into their midst. A dozen fall and the rest scatter, with most going over the cliff—a mistake on their part.

As I reach the edge, I hear screams and look down. The stern of the barge has moved on and is now perhaps thirty feet to my left. Three or four templars are fighting desperately to stay afloat in its wake. The rest have already sunk beneath the waves. Heavily armed and armored, they will not be resurfacing. I have accounted for perhaps two score, but at least twice that number have made it onto the barge, including some number of the renegade Blades that make up Heaven's Shadow.

I turn and run along the bank until I am parallel with the rear cabin and then I leap. Someone is defending the low door from within and a small knot of templars have bunched up as they try to fight their way past. I drop on them like a curtain of death, killing two with my swords and breaking the neck of a third with a kick. Chaos reigns for several seconds and I lose the ability to distinguish one action from the next as I slash and parry and fight to stay upright in the scrum. A shadow impinges on my vision and I feel something like a silk cord being drawn along my ribs even as I twist aside and throw a backhanded cut at eye height.

A shriek answers me and the shadow vanishes exposing a man of about my own size and build. Clutching blood drenched hands hide much of his face, preventing me from identifying him at a glance, though I'm sure he is one of my former comrades. His clothes are mottled silk the color of a crocodile's eyes and cut in much the same way as my own, and one of Namara's swords lies on the deck near his feet. I know I should probably leave him like that and hope he lives long enough to question.

I drive my sword through his heart instead, though whether the impulse is one of mercy or revenge I cannot say. I turn then, ready to face my next opponent, but the fight is over—ending even more swiftly and unexpectedly than it started. I take a deep breath and gasp at the sharp sticky pain in my left side. Glancing down, I see a long slice in my shirt and a great deal of blood in the place I had felt that silken drawing sensation earlier.

Triss. I release my hold on him and draw his attention to the wound in my side.

Ooh, that looks nasty. Cool relief washes through me as he bunches himself up and presses tight against the slice. As the seconds tick past I start to slip back into a more normal relationship with time. You're not going to bleed out, but this one's going to require some stitching.

I am still trying to process that when I finally register Gerda shouting, though how long it has been going on I couldn't say. "Master Aral! Master Faran! Somebody help!"

Her voice is coming from the forward cabin, and I turn and take three steps toward the bow, then go to my knees as the world blackens around the edges. The barge assumes the aspect of a long dark tunnel, and it seems the height on incongruity when Faran drops through the upper reaches of that darkness to land in the middle of the barge. She has a mess of leather straps in her hands with at least four swords of Namara sticking out of the tangle.

She glances my way, and I see her expression go from grim and businesslike to stricken. "Aral!"

I wave a vague hand. "I'm…fine. Help the girl." I intend it to come out as a shout, but what I hear is a whisper. Triss, tell her.

I hear him call, "I've got this!" in a voice that seems to come from a great distance. "Go!"

Faran nods, but I can see she doesn't like it. I want to reassure her that I'm all right, and I wave again. I see her mouth moving, and I'm pretty sure she's swearing, but I don't hear anything. I watch as she reluctantly turns and dashes for the forward cabin, dropping the swords as she goes. Everything seems to be moving more slowly than usual, like a pebble dropped in honey. Even the deck as it comes up to meet my face seems to take an impossibly long time to get on with things.

#

I can tell that it is dark around me without opening my eyes. Though I'm not immediately certain how, I know it is the cool darkness of the middle night and not the stuffier variety found in a room with shutters tight closed. I pause for a moment trying to understand how I know this, and realize that it comes from the way the shadow feels on those parts of my skin covered by a dragon brand—slick and smooth like chilled silk. I'm not sure it crosses over into the realm of having another sense, but there is a flavor of that to the thing, just as when I first learned to use Triss's darksight.

Aral? Are you awake? His mind voice feels more inquisitive than concerned and that gives me more information.

Yes. I take it the wound wasn't as severe as my loss of consciousness might have suggested. As I ask the question I pause to assess how my side feels. There is a cool numbness there that speaks of magic applied and I decide not try twisting or stretching anytime soon.

You've had much worse. Oh, it nicked the bone in a couple of places, you lost a good deal of blood, and Faran had to put about thirty stitches into your hide, but you're in no danger at present.

Why did I pass out?

Perfect storm, really. Just the right mix of bleeding, nima depletion, and midday sun, with a heavy emphasis on the latter two.

Really? I decided it was time to open my eyes, and found myself looking up into a sky absolutely ablaze with stars, though I couldn't see the moon. A glance around told me I was still aboard the barge, though it seemed unusually still. Someone had opened up one of the hide bales to make me a more comfortable pallet of skins. It didn't feel like I was pushing myself that hard.

Siri warned you about the dark lightning. It's much more draining and dangerous to use than the usual sort of magelightning. But, honestly, I think the effect has a lot more to do with fighting in bright sunlight. That—and here I felt the dragon brand go suddenly cooler for a moment—appears to have made you more vulnerable to the impacts of light and heat than any human ought to be.

Interesting, am I right in thinking the effect is actually stronger now than when I first got branded? I found myself mentally probing at the mark, in much the way I might keep checking a loose scab or a sore tooth.

Hard to say. You were in pretty dire shape for a while right after the blast that did this. We both were. And it wasn't all that long ago. I suspect it's going to be very hard to make definitive judgements, especially here in the time while you are still tied to the Vesh'An. That said, the effect is real and strong. I felt a smile in his mental tone then. You're going to have learn to think a bit more like a Shade going forward.

I can live with that. I glanced around again. Where is everybody?

The smile winked out. Most of the crew is dead, killed in the first seconds of the attack. The survivors are almost all injured to one degree or another, except for two or three who jumped into the river and got away. Gerda is in the forward cabin watching over Devin. Faran is on a high point a bit south of here keeping an eye out for more raiders. I can call for her if you want.

Don't bother her, what she's doing is more important than catering to my needs. Let's go on without her for now.Triss's summary had left me with several questions, and I decided to take them in order of urgency. Does Faran thinkanother attack is likely?

Hard to say. She followed the back trail of this group, and they didn't seem to be part of a larger force, but she wasn't willing to get out of easy magical hailing distance. It really depends on whether the group that ambushed us was everything they could scrape together on short notice, or just the tip of the spear.

I'm going to guess the former. Assuming they didn't know Faran and I were with Devin, four Blades and hundred plus soldiers would have been more than adequate to the task.

And if they did know you were here, they'd have gone much bigger. Fair point. If you're right we should be safe for a while. Another force coming from Heaven's Reach proper would take at least a couple of days to get here, though I suppose it's possible they have troops that are closer who could be directed this way.

Too many ifs. What about the boat? We don't seem to be moving…

The steersman was killed in the fighting and we ran aground on a sand bar not long after you passed out. Getting the barge loose will require significant magic or more muscle power than is currently available. In any case, the survivors have refused to go farther up river, so Faran thought we should help them get loose tomorrow sometime and let them do whatever they felt was best after.

Sensible. That means we're going to be walking from here on out. I touched my side. Am I up to it? I felt pretty good all things considered, but I have been known to make bad decisions where it comes to cutting myself enough slack on things like recovery time.

If we travel by night and go easy for the first couple of days, sure. You've done more with worse. The problem is going to be Devin.

That was next on my list. You said Gerda is watching over him, and–rather surprisingly–it didn't sound like that was because Faran was worried he might do something wrong.

He took a thrust through the right lung and very nearly died. Ssithra says it needed every last scrap of magical healing Faran has learned from Harad to save him, and she overtapped her nima doing it. Drank off half a bottle of some sort very fancy brandy afterwards to keep from passing out.

Alcohol can, for a time, substitute for proper rest and recovery were it comes to magical exertion, but the aftereffects are brutal, and Faran hated alcohol with a rare and burning passion. To the best of my knowledge she hadn't touched so much as a drop in all the time since I had first rescued her after the fall of the temple. Given how she felt about Devin generally I really couldn't wrap my head around the idea of her crossing that line to save his ass.

I must have missed something in there. Faran, our Faran, pushed herself far enough beyond her limits in order to save Devin, that she needed to drink alcohol? And all that before heading out to make sure we weren't about to be attacked again? How in all the hells did that happen?

Devin got stabbed diving between former Master Yarok and Gerda.

Wait, what now? Yarok had been a Blade from a group two or three generations before mine. He didn't teach, though the whys of that I had never heard, and he only rarely went out on missions due to some pretty severe injuries. He was a cold man and harder than most, but good enough at the job to survive fifty years of it. I had no trouble imagining him killing a little girl. The part I had trouble with was Devin sacrificing himself to save one. Devin threw himself between Gerda and a sword's point?

He did, and even that was barely enough. Gerda has an inch deep stab wound herself, just below the heart. Devin's body slowed the thrust and dragged the blade down just far enough.

And Yarok?

Devin took advantage of Yarok's sword getting bound up on his ribs to return the thrust. Took Yarok through the heart and cut it in half as neat as could be.

Oh. Well, that would explain Faran believing she owed Devin her very best efforts at keeping him alive. I guess that covers everything. I put a hand down preparatory to levering myself to my feet. I should go check on Devin and Gerda. A cool weight pushed down on my chest.

There's no point. Devin is in something like a healing coma, and Gerda will be fine. What you should be doing is getting a couple of hours of solid sleep so you can take the high watch when Faran keels over from the aftereffects of pushing nima overload off with booze. She really didn't want to agree to it, but Ssithra and I made her promise to come back an hour before dawn and let you do the morning shift. In turn, that means you need to sit your ass down and work on being in shape to cover the watch. Now, go to sleep.

I was about to argue with him, when the cool weight on my chest became a cool weight in my mind and the world began to fade around me. I didn't know you could do that… My last thought was to wonder about whether this was something new, or if it was only my finding out about it that was new.