Bladesorrow (The Agarsfar Saga Book 1)

by D. T. Kane

  “In the end,” the Grand Father finally continued, “I admit it was as much luck as skill that allowed me to defeat the man. He had driven me to the point of exhaustion and meant to finish me with a powerful hex; likely intending to turn me into a shade; a mindless slave to serve his vile purpose.

  “By that time, only myself and three of my brothers remained standing. We saw only one choice. Without words, we joined hands and began once more to summon the ritual covenant circle. This meant death for all but the Key, myself. Fewer than twenty-six cannot handle the power of the circle. But while those in the lesser circle live, the Key can still draw on their collective power. I used it to deflect the energy of Bladesorrow’s maleficium and it backfired, causing an explosion so great it threw me into the air. It was only by Her Lady’s grace that I survived, though it took me nearly a year to recover from my injuries.

  “When I regained consciousness, the former Grand Master Keeper was dead, as were all my brothers. Riverdale South lay in ruins. The explosion had been so great it even shattered the Unity Bridge, the once grand causeway between North and South. And with it, the last hope for peace between the two also shattered. I cried for that lost hope.” He glared out across the room before adding, “So you’ll forgive my brothers if they’ve little tolerance for any who speak the Betrayer’s name with anything better than contempt.”

  As the Grand Father finished speaking, the only sound in the hall was Mapleaxe, now lying flat on his belly, gasping into the floor. His hair was sticky with blood and perspiration. The Grand Father left the dais without another word to stand over him. He prodded at the Master at Arms with a booted foot, rolling him over. Mapleaxe let out a dreadful gasp. His chest still moved, but in a terrible arrhythmia. His eyes stared up at nothing in particular, much wider than natural.

  Without a word, Shinzar held out a mace to the Grand Father. He looked at it like the man were trying to hand him a moldy cabbage.

  “What do you want me to do with that?”

  Priest Shinzar looked momentarily taken aback before steadying his expression. His beard looked like a trap closing about prey as he spoke.

  “There’s only one sentence under the Edicts for this man’s crimes, Grand Father.”

  The Grand Father glanced back down to Mapleaxe, then back to Priest Shinzar. There was uncertainty in the gesture, but the Grand Father’s voice was iron when he spoke.

  “As Her Lady Wills. But it will be my staff, not that... thing.”

  Without another word, the Grand Father held out his hand until a Parent came forward with his staff.

  “Don’t you dare.”

  For the first time since the Grand Father had begun his tale of Riverdale, Jenzara’s attention was drawn back to Ferrin. He spoke through grated, chattering teeth. His whole body still trembled against some unseen force. Grand Father Valdin looked to him with raised brow, as if surprised he’d spoken, but quickly returned his attention to the man at his feet as if Ferrin hadn’t said a word.

  “Nolan Mapleaxe. I name you shadow friend under the Edicts and guilty of assault perpetrated against a Priest of the Temple, Chosen by the Lady’s Will. Your rights are forfeit and I sentence you to a punishment befitting your crimes.”

  Once more the torches guttered. But rather than a wall of fire, the Grand Father’s channel gathered power at the tip of his staff, causing it to glow like an iron left in the smith’s forge. He raised the rod with both hands, then sunk it into Mapleaxe’s chest. A sound unsettlingly similar to a haunch being thrown onto a grill plate issued from the Master at Arms’ chest. He twitched once, then lay still, eyes still gaping at the hall’s ceiling.

  No one spoke, though muffled sobs sounded throughout the room. Jenzara gripped the arms of her chair, breathing through her nose. She feared what her stomach might do if she opened her mouth.

  The Grand Father looked down at Mapleaxe’s corpse. Jenzara thought he grimaced, but his eyes were cold when he looked up.

  “I’m sorry you all had to see that.” His voice carried not even a hint of sympathy. “But that is what happens to those who defy the Lady’s Chosen. I’m sure after this lesson you’ll remember that well enough.”

  Then he pointed to Ferrin. He looked utterly exhausted, though he still tried to struggle against the Parents who held him from either side.

  “You’re the one they call Ferrin?”

  Ferrin only struggled harder against the Parents holding him, lips shut like a vice.

  “I thought so. You avoided me at the chapel earlier. Now I see why.” The Grand Father shook his head. “But Master Raldon speaks highly of you. For that I’ll spare you from your Master at Arms’ fate.”

  Priest Shinzar gave a mutter of protest and took a step forward. Jenzara thought she saw dissent in the faces of many other Parents as well, though none dared to openly protest like Shinzar. The Grand Father held up a hand to the man, impatience in the set of his shoulders.

  “For now, Shinzar. Just for now. I’ve some questions for the lad. And a certain—” he paused, allowing his lips to curl into a smile, “—examination for him to undertake. Tomorrow morning, though. In Master Raldon’s study. Lad looks hardly able to stand now. I trust you’ll be able to find a nice, secure place for him?”

  Shinzar’s expression went from near petulance to lips upturned in an expression of glee.

  “Indeed, Grand Father.” He sounded like a child just given a new toy. “I’ll make sure he’s made comfortable for the evening.”

  “I’m sure,” Grand Father Valdin replied. He nodded at the two Parents and they began to drag Ferrin from the Hall. The last thing Jenzara saw of him as the men pulled him through the Hall’s doors into the cool dark of night was the look in his eyes. They asked a single question.

  What did I tell you?

  16

  Devan

  The Fourth Lesson: Always the whole over any of its parts.

  -From The Lessons

  DESPITE HIS BEST EFFORTS, he’d been unable to pry another word from Nellis since his claim hours earlier that one of the Seven had attacked Bladesorrow. Path only knew how the dwarf had gotten that thought into his head. It couldn’t be true, of course. Devan wouldn’t deign to even entertain the idea. The Seven had been stuck in the Elsewhere since the Cataclysm and there they remained. End of story.

  But the dwarf’s claim was still troubling. Few creatures could touch a shadow heart, much less wield one as a weapon. A minion of the Seven wasn’t out of the question. The Greater Terrors themselves, as some called the Seven, couldn’t leave the Elsewhere, but that didn’t stop them from sending all manner of awful through the rips in time that still existed at Ral Falar, where Stephan had fought the final battle against the Seven and banished them from the Path.

  But a fiend from the Elsewhere wasn’t a significant concern. Such things appeared now and again and were easily dealt with. More troubling was what Val had said back at the Conclave. That whatever he’d done would prevent Devan from saving Bladesorrow. At the time, Devan had just assumed it was idle posturing. But saving Bladesorrow from death ought to have gone a long way to mending what Val had done. Instead, things had gotten worse. With the dwarf refusing to talk, Devan had been left with little else to do but mull over those words. He’d thought of only one thing that Val could have done that carried even the remote possibility of creating a paradox like the Path now faced. But it was so absurd he’d immediately rejected it. Then again, the idea of Val murdering their entire race over his love’s death would have seemed absurd not so long ago. No matter how special she may have been.

  Devan’s insides cringed at that thought and he shoved it away. Speculation wouldn’t help now. He needed to get to the bottom of what had happened at Riverdale. The fact remained that if he didn’t do something to fix the paradox soon, the Path would fall into a chaos from which it couldn’t recover.

  The dwarvish healers had done a surprisingly decent job stabilizing the Grand Master Keeper. He was now resting peacefully
, no longer at risk of dying. There was still the matter of his transformation into a shadow attuned, and his eyes were still dark as pitch. Yet he showed not a sign of one inflicted by the Seven’s Call. It made no sense. Those few who survived such an ordeal didn’t retain the black eyes of one under the Seven’s influence, and Devan was almost certain Bladesorrow was free of their grasp. Nevertheless, Bladesorrow would need much training to learn to cope with his new condition. Alteration of one’s attunement was unprecedented. But for now, at least, they could rest easy.

  Devan sat around a fire with Nellis and several other dwarfs. The flames gave off a faint purple glow. The North was always warm, even at night, so they needed the fire only for light. The shadow flames actually cooled the surrounding area, generating their own gentle breeze that licked at the folds of Devan’s robe. He knew better than to be seduced by their cooling allure, though. The shadow burned like acid; would maim flesh more quickly than mortal flame. He scratched at the scars on his arms without thinking. The flames gave off an aroma somewhere between blooming wildflowers and sulfur—a scent that was at once pleasant and yet mildly repulsive. Reminiscent of too much perfume.

  The dwarfs all kept their distance from him, leaving him alone on one side of the violet flames, as if he gave off an offensive odor. Devan resisted the temptation to sniff under his arms. They spoke little, noshing strips of dried meat and taking occasional swigs from a communal wine skin. Devan had declined the victuals. Once he’d enjoyed eating. Even been a fair hand at cooking. But no longer. Now he rarely ate, and the dwarfs’ food certainly didn’t provide any motivation to indulge.

  “Come now, Master Nellis,” he urged once more, trying to keep the impatience from his voice. “It’s vital that you provide me the information I seek. What truly happened at the Dales?”

  The dwarf stared into the fire, hardly acknowledging Devan’s words aside from a twitch at the sound of his name.

  “I told ye,” he said after a time, “t’were one o’ the Seven.” Several of the other dwarfs nodded in agreement, and all Pathed themselves at Nellis’s mention of the Greater Terrors.

  Devan waited a moment, hoping the silence would draw more from the dwarf. But he only continued staring into the flames. Devan sighed and rose. He’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this.

  “Nellis Lonemage, High Emissary of Trimale, leader of House Glofar,” he boomed, voice amplified by a channel of earth. The dwarf nearly tumbled from the rock upon which he sat. Devan channeled just a trickle more, directing it to unnaturally stretch the shadows cast by the purple flames. A bit dramatic, but effective to manipulate the dwarf’s superstitions.

  “You’re a religious dwarf. I know you understand what I am.”

  Nellis gulped. But he was no longer gazing blankly into the flames. He was staring right at Devan, wide eyes causing his wild eyebrows to nearly encroach on his hairline.

  “O’course I do. I saw what ye did when we first met. And what ye did to the heart. Yer an Angel.” The other dwarfs around the fire muttered and similarly lost their eyebrows to wide-eyed stares. Some tried to not-so-subtly move further from where Devan sat.

  Devan inwardly flinched at the title. Angel. It was at once a gross under appreciation of what his people did and yet also a terrible overstatement. He was no god. A god certainly wouldn’t have gotten himself into a mess that threatened the very existence of time. But complaining about it wouldn’t serve him now, so he resigned himself to play along. One of these days he’d have to come up with a moniker that didn’t make him shudder.

  “Yes, I’m of the Aldur,” he said, maintaining his voice’s augmented intensity. “I’ve been quite patient, but your reticence grows tiring. If you know what I am, then you also know my work is much grander, much more important, than your petty fears. And you know what I could do if you displease me further. So out with your story, master dwarf. I must know what happened at the Dales.”

  Nellis’s face ghosted, any guise of stoicism he’d managed to maintain before replaced with obvious fear. He scratched at his beard, then rubbed his hands down the front of his robe.

  “Fine. Fine,” he muttered. “I’ll tell ye. But still don’t believe it m’self.”

  Devan nodded. “Just tell your story. I’ll decide for myself what to believe and what not.”

  He resumed his seat, let the shadows relax, and waited for Nellis to begin. The other dwarfs had migrated as close to Nellis as possible, leaving Devan even more isolated than before. Some had backed away from the flames completely, though not so far that they couldn’t still hear. Dwarfs loved listening to tales, no matter how afraid they might be of Devan.

  After studying the dancing flames for a time, Nellis began to recount what happened at Riverdale.

  HIGH EMISSARY NELLIS Lonemage stood at the southern outskirts of Riverdale North, staring after the man who’d led him there. The sun hung high in a blue sky, nearly unobscured by the Northern haze this close to the southern border.

  High Emissary, Nellis thought with scorn. Technically he still held the title. Even after the declaration of war and his refusal to return south, the Symposium had taken no official action to strip him of it. Not that it mattered.

  Officially, the North was part of Agarsfar and answered to the Senate, which sat in Tragnè City. But Northern life was so different, and it was so far away from Tragnè and the rest of the South’s power centers that it might as well be a different country entirely. And indeed, ever since the Ebon Affair, hundreds of years past, the South had treated the North as little more than an occupied territory: restricting travel, limiting its representation in the Senate, rarely reaching out except to raise taxes. The Symposium maintained semi-regular contact with their fellow Keepers at Second Symposium, but the Temple wouldn’t lower itself to maintain a presence north of Her Lady’s Justices—its “northern” diocese was actually located at Riverdale South.

  And, to be completely honest, that was how Nellis—and much of the rest of the North—liked it. He’d tried to live the Southern life: trained at the Symposium, been raised to full Keeper, then to Shadow Master. One of Grand Master Keeper Rikar Bladesong’s prime advisors. And friends.

  But he’d never been accepted. Being shadow attuned in the City of Light had been bad enough. Being a shadow attuned and one of the most successful Keepers in recent memory? Sometimes it’d felt an accomplishment when he went to the market without someone throwing rotten fruit at him. Even some Keepers had preferred to keep their distance from him. He could handle the harsh words. The slurs. It was the suspicious looks that got to him, reinforcing the unspoken view of many who thought of him as a constant foreigner.

  So when the opportunity to assume the position of High Emissary, leader of all Keepers in the North, had become available three years ago, in 1012 A.A., Nellis had accepted it eagerly and moved back home. And good thing, too. Just a few months later Rikar had been murdered. Nellis shuddered to think what might have happened if he’d been present in the City when that occurred. Weeks after the assassination, he’d received word that an old friend, another shadow attuned, had been killed by an angry mob shortly after Rikar’s death became public. He’d been tending his flower garden when the mob passed by his house. The murderers were never caught.

  And now this war business, South in open conflict with North; the preposterous accusation that the North had conspired to murder Rikar. No one seemed to remember that Rikar had been working with the leadership at Trimale to ease North-South tensions. All that effort was now ruined by the Temple’s wretched lies and a scared populace’s willingness to accept them.

  There’d been no military engagements thus far. A few skirmishes between scouting parties, but nothing that qualified as a true battle. And, though the admission pained him, it was beginning to appear that the South needn’t take any action to defeat them. The embargo would be enough. Its impact swift and severe. It’d been nearly three years since a shipment of southern crops had arrived at the port in North’s End; starvati
on in the North was becoming rampant. The capital at Trimale City could hold out for another year, or perhaps two, and he’d done what he could to maintain order at Glofar Stronghold. But conditions had already deteriorated elsewhere. The civil unrest, simple hunger, or more likely both, would do the South’s work as surely as any clash of steel.

  That’s why he’d been so surprised by recent intelligence: Taul Bladesorrow, newly raised Grand Master Keeper in Rikar’s place, had traveled to Glofar under a flag of truce, requesting an audience. The man had been Rikar’s apprentice, and Nellis had trained alongside him at the Symposium, even been there to witness Bladesorrow’s now-legendary healing of Rikar’s son under Ral’s Obelisk on the Quadrangle. Bladesorrow had been nearly as involved in Rikar’s peace efforts as the former Grand Master himself.

  But Nellis had heard nothing from the man since the war had begun three years prior. He’d been optimistic when Bladesorrow had been raised, thinking he’d carry on his mentor’s work. But thus far Bladesorrow seemed to be doing nothing of the sort. He’d taken no steps to block the war and, since the declaration, had been mobilizing the South’s armies, carrying out war drills, and stationing large forces on the border at Doom’s Keep and Riverdale South, the only major crossings from South to North. Bladesorrow seemed content pandering to the masses’ desire for revenge. Seven take his murdered mentor’s dreams of a unified Agarsfar.

  So Nellis had naturally been skeptical of Bladesorrow’s request. But despite the man’s failings, Nellis couldn’t imagine he had nefarious intent. The Taul Bladesorrow he’d known was honorable. Perhaps even just. So he’d granted the man’s request and traveled down from Mount Trimale to meet him at the Stronghold.