Bladesorrow (The Agarsfar Saga Book 1)

by D. T. Kane

  The vision evaporated as quickly as it had appeared and Valdin was left staring once more into the face of the Sevens’ leader, inches away from his own, as if the vision hadn’t happened.

  “Ah, Stephan. Even when his precious codes—I believe he now calls them his Lessons?—worked against him, he couldn’t overcome his hubris long enough to disregard them. But the fact remains,” the smile dropped from the man’s face, “what do you gain from aiding us?”

  There was certainly no going back now.

  “You can only return with the aid of someone on the Path. I will provide it to you. In exchange, I select your first host. One of the Constants.”

  The man stroked at his chin. “Go on.” The calm in his voice gnawed at Valdin’s bones.

  “You take over one of the Constants, it creates a deviation the Conclave will be unable—or, at least, unwilling—to correct. They could go back and attempt to prevent your occupation of the host, but your power will deter them.”

  “Quite confident in our abilities, aren’t you?”

  Valdin fixed a glare on the man.

  “Make no mistake,” he snapped, “I’m not here to be your friend. But what I think of you doesn’t matter. What does is the Conclave will realize the possibility that you could be strong enough to resist their correction. And if they attempt to correct the Path and you are able to maintain control of the host body, then—”

  “Paradox,” the older woman whispered from behind the man who stood before him.

  “Yes,” Valdin said, trying to keep the quiver from his voice. Every word he uttered at this point was high treason. His very presence here grounds for excommunication. “If you successfully resisted, their attempted correction would create a rogue strand where the remnant version of the Constant stilled lived, while you simultaneously possessed the anti-version, the Andstaed. The Conclave won’t risk that. They might try to annihilate you outright, but they’ll have to leave you in the host body when they do so.”

  “It will be the way we’d planned it the first time,” the raving man said, glee in his tone.

  “If you overcome the Conclave, yes,” Valdin nodded.

  “But what do you receive from all this?” asked the olive-skinned man with the cravat at his throat. His voice seemed neither male nor female.

  “I,” Valdin murmured, fighting back the storm of emotion within him. Grief. Self-Hatred. Horror. “I get a Path without an inexorable destiny. Either the Aldur succeed in annihilating you, or you prevail. Either way, the Constant is gone, the Path’s cycle destroyed. Even if the Aldur defeat you, they will have annihilated a Constant. They will be left with no choice but to allow the Path to strike out anew and stabilize whatever new branch results. A new Path where she need not die. One where I can go back and save her without the Conclave’s interference.”

  More likely than not, even if that plan succeeded, he’d be dead before he could personally save his love. Perhaps even worse than dead. But even if he couldn’t go back to save her, he knew there was another who would, if it no longer meant destruction of his precious Path.

  “And what of after?” the girl with the knife asked. “After you give us this host and you reunite with your Lineartress? What will you expect of us then?”

  Valdin shrugged. “I don’t think we need to plan that far ahead. What basis would I have to trust what you said? Or you me?”

  The Seven remained silent for a time. Valdin waited with held breath, fully expecting an order of execution. Bile rose in his throat, a muscle in his neck spasming.

  Finally, their leader spoke.

  “Deal, Aldur Valdin.”

  Valdin shut his eyes, but failed in holding back the tears. Whether they were of regret or relief he didn’t know. Part of him had hoped the Seven would refuse, despite what it would have meant for his love.

  When he opened his eyes again, he was back in the dark ballroom of the Path’s Ral Falar. The Seven were gone. He was alone. And after what he’d just done, he’d likely be alone for the rest of his days.

  38

  Erem

  “I brew elixirs, not miracles.”

  -Quote attributed to Apothick Master Keeper Westcott Greenleaf in Book of the Keepers, a running history maintained by the Grand Master Keepers

  “WE’VE BEEN SPEAKING of this since you arrived last week,” said a short man in a stained white apron. He was perched on a stool before the shop’s counter. A large portion of the surface was charred black, as if something had burned upon it not long before.

  “And we’re no nearer to a plan!” Erem would have slammed his fist onto the counter if not for the array of fragile vials arranged atop it. “How could you side with him, Westcott? You haven’t even met him. And you were never a practitioner.”

  Westcott peered at him over spectacles—the standard reading variety—perched at the edge of his nose. He actually looked offended. He’d cut his hair since the last time Erem had seen him. What remained of his once stringy yellow strands were now mostly gray, cut close to his scalp, accentuating a receding hairline. His face had always seemed a bit too thin, and the furrowed expression he now wore only served to emphasize its disproportion to his body.

  “I went to the Angelic chapel. On occasion.” He snatched a vial off the counter and sloshed it to and fro until it nearly bubbled over, then scribbled a note into a ledger balanced on his knee. “Assuming he’s what he claims to be,” Westcott continued, looking back up from the potion, “How could you not listen? I’ve seen your face each time you return from walking out there.” He jerked a thumb at the door of his small shop. “If there’s any chance greater than zero that he speaks the truth, it could mean stopping all that. All the... wrongness.”

  When Erem didn’t respond, Westcott huffed and began studying another vial, which began to smoke uncontrollably when he picked it up. The apothecary was not a large man, and the squeak that issued from his throat could have been from a bird. He haphazardly motioned at a potted plant off in a corner. Soil flew in a stream from the pot, smothering the elixir.

  “Second-rate ingredients,” Westcott muttered. “There’s no substitute for ebon dust.” He scratched another note.

  Ignoring him, Erem gazed out the shop’s window. The City had become a shell of itself. After the Angel had peregrinated them here, he’d laid eyes on the Quadrangle for the first time in fifteen years. Its architecture was still grand enough, but once the City’s radiance had been far more than skin deep. Now, once you looked past the impressive facades you could see the squalor, an omnipresent sense of foreboding lurking in every shadow. The City of Light had once been the jewel of Agarsfar. A beacon. Now its people walked with their heads down, afraid to even offer greeting to passersby.

  And the Symposium. He quaked with despair.

  When they’d first arrived, Erem had needed to buffer himself from the initial shock. For the boy’s sake. But after Westcott had seen Ferrin through the worst of his corruption, that illusion of a foundation upon which he’d held his composure collapsed. Locking himself in the apothecary’s pantry, he’d laid down and wept. Just curled into a corner and cried. Disheartened by humanity.

  The Symposium had once been a testament to everything that was good in Agarsfar. A bastion of knowledge. A pillar of justice. Sword of the people in times of peril. Gathering place for all in times of peace. Teacher to any who sought knowledge. To see it as it was now, reduced to a filthy market, all whores and vagabonds, was unfathomable. The green grass of the once great Mall withered, stinking from the livestock corralled upon it. Even now, after a week for it to sink in, he had to clench his teeth and blink away tears.

  Worst of all were those hiding amongst the filth in the dark alleys and lanes. Many of them concealed minor shadow attunements, he’d sensed. His heart ached for them. Once, Tragnè City had cared for its own.

  He wanted to cry out, release the rage and regret. Had he really been so selfish? Hiding away all these years? He tried to tell himself the Angel had deman
ded it of him, but that lie was as plain as the Symposium’s downfall. The Angel had been trying to get him to leave that clearing for years.

  But he couldn’t let the darkness of his mood overpower his reason. There was work to be done. He turned back to Westcott.

  “First there’s the girl. Jenzara. I can’t leave here without her.”

  Westcott suddenly became very interested in another of his extracts. “Does she know?”

  Erem didn’t bother answering; couldn’t believe Westcott would even speak the question aloud.

  “Where is the Temple keeping prisoners these days?”

  Westcott looked up from his reagents to settle a glare on him. “Where don’t they keep prisoners, you might as well ask. The dungeons beneath the Quad are near overflowing from what I hear. There’re the tower rooms in the Temple itself. Then all the camps for the fifths—” he grimaced, eyes flicking to Erem’s own. “The shadow attuned,” he amended. “Sorry. Even a practice vile as discrimination begins to catch if you’re around it for long enough.”

  Erem waved the apology away. After all Erem had been through, Westcott could have said Agar had been a drunken fool who beat his own son and he wouldn’t have been offended.

  “You can’t honestly be thinking of a rescue,” Westcott said. “You won’t get close enough to spit on the Temple, much less get inside.”

  “I won’t leave her.”

  This time Erem did pound the counter. Glass rattled all about the shop. The vial Westcott had just smothered began smoking again. A picture frame fell from a shelf. Westcott tensed and picked it up, holding it before him in both hands. He hugged it to his chest before setting it down like a babe in a cradle. A sketch of a young woman with bright blue eyes stared back from behind the glass.

  “We need you,” Westcott said in a low, tired voice. “We’re likely lost already. Light knows I’ve lived the last few years thinking so. But then you show up with your tale of Angels. An inkling of hope. You cannot risk even a miniscule chance for the salvation of thousands—tens of thousands—for the sake of one girl, no matter who she is. All those Keepers died for nothing if you throw your life away. She would have died for nothing.” His eyes flicked to the picture frame.

  Westcott’s words hurt so much Erem wished he could just fade away. Not have to deal with the responsibility of all the dead he’d left in his wake. But his days of hiding were over. He’d rather die trying to do something important than live knowing he’d settled for the false comfort of cowardice.

  “Those deaths will haunt me until I leave the Path, Westcott. But that’s precisely why I can’t leave her. I can’t have another on my conscience. I just can’t.”

  The apothecary shut his eyes. “You’re starting to sound like the boy.”

  Erem winced but didn’t dispute it. Ferrin had been asking about Jenzara almost nonstop for the past week. Ever since he’d been well enough to speak. The boy had barely been breathing when they’d arrived at Westcott’s door, the same shop he’d maintained since before the Symposium had been abandoned. Perhaps the only thing that hadn’t changed in all of Tragnè City.

  It had been uncertain for some time. Westcott had spent hours mixing concoctions, while he’d done what he could to keep the corruption from utterly consuming the boy’s life force. Finally, Westcott had forced a liquid smelling of sugar-coated plums down Ferrin’s throat, the smell so cloying it had made Erem gag. They’d spent the next hour containing the corruption-laden ichor that spewed from the boy’s mouth at random intervals, muffling his screams. It had been days before Ferrin could speak properly. But as soon as he could, it’d been all about the girl. Either urging immediate action for her rescue, or blaming Erem for letting the Parents take her.

  Actually, where was Ferrin? He should have come running as soon as he’d spoken Jenzara’s name.

  “Ferrin,” Erem shouted, pounding on the door to the pantry they’d converted to a makeshift bedroom. Westcott had insisted he keep his ebon weapons in there, claiming they made him feel ill if he kept them out in the main shop for too long a time.

  No reply. Erem shut his eyes, suppressing a sigh of exasperation. Save for complaining about their lack of action, Ferrin practically refused to speak to him. The boy’s rage hadn’t reached the level of that night around the fire when he’d nearly incinerated him. But it was always near to bubbling over. Erem knew that most of the boy’s anger was attributable to fear for Jenzara, a notion he shared. But some of it was rightly focused at him, for being fool enough to think they could face the Grand Father without repercussions. It had simply not occurred to Erem that he’d ever get that close to Valdin again and not kill him.

  “Ferrin,” he said again, rapping on the door with a single knuckle. “It’s time we speak of a plan to save Jenzara. Come out here.”

  Still nothing. He pushed the door open, old hinges protesting. His heart began to pound. The small space was empty. The boy’s blade hung on a hook, but a spare cloak was gone and the door at the back of the pantry, leading out to the alley behind the shop, stood slightly ajar.

  “Tragnè help us,” Erem said. “He didn’t even take his blade with him. When was the last time you saw him, Westcott?”

  The chemist held his palms face up to either side. “No clue. Not as if he talked to me much. Or even came out from there except to eat. And complain. Wait. Where are you going?”

  Erem had already finished strapping his ebon blade on and cursed when he realized the boy still had the shadow dagger. He eyed his broadsword as if it might bite him, then told himself to stop acting the fool and slung the baldric over his shoulder.

  “To the only place the boy could possibly be going,” Erem replied as he shrugged his cloak over the weapons.

  “You can’t.” Westcott’s voice rose to a shrill chord. “Going anywhere near the Temple is certain death. Even if they don’t know who you are, they’ll know what you are. They have sniffers all over the Quad.”

  “I must.” He threw up the hood of his cloak. “I’ve learned tricks to conceal my attunement. And besides, they won’t be expecting anyone to attempt a rescue. The boy and myself are the only ones who know she’s here. And as far as the Parents know, we’re still stuck on the wrong side of Corim’s Crossing.”

  Westcott opened his mouth, then shut it.

  “Are you coming?” It was a terrible thing to ask of the man, but times as these offered few good choices.

  Westcott’s face paled. “I’m an alchemist, not a thaumaturgist. What could we possibly do against the might of Valdin and all those Parents?”

  “We can try to do what’s right.”

  Westcott exhaled through his nose, like he’d just been locked in a room with a bowl of poisoned fruit. Finally he said, “Well, all’s lost if you die, so if that’s what you’re going to do I might as well come do it with you. Just let me gather a few things.”

  Erem gave him a nod of thanks but remained silent. Words were inadequate to express the gratitude that the man’s sacrifices deserved. So he simply watched as Westcott selected a variety of vials from around his shop, sliding them into various pockets. He slung a bandolier across his chest, shoving still more bottles into its various loops. When he was finished, he looked more a pirate than a scientist. Erem wished there was time to be amused.

  Westcott made for the door without looking at him. Erem made to follow, but then Westcott stopped, as if he intended to glance back. He stood that way for several long moments, his silence a forlorn farewell, but didn’t turn. Then, as quickly as he’d stopped, Westcott opened the shop door without a word, motioning Erem out, then following close behind him.

  He didn’t bother to shut the door behind them.

  39

  Ferrin

  By far, Ral the Builder is the founding hero least written of. A disservice in my view. It’s colloquially said that the founding quartet “built” this nation. This is of course, true. But in Ral’s case, it was literally so. Virtually any building of note that exis
ts in Agarsfar today was built either under his supervision or by his own hands. He performed all his building with no tools save his power to channel and a small hammer, perhaps an earth Link Most believe such skill is lost to us today, but in my view Ral was simply a once in a millennia talent.

  -From the preface to the Millennial Printing of Tragnè’s Oral Histories, written by Rikar Bladesong

  HE DROPPED HIS HEAD into the book before him, letting out a deep sigh. With the hood of a cloak he’d found in Westcott’s pantry covering much of his face, Ferrin was enveloped in darkness. The seductive relaxation offered by sleep was difficult to resist.

  But rest was a luxury he could no longer afford. Trimale knew he’d been forced to do enough of it these past days. It’d been nearly the only thing Erem had said to him since he’d awoke in the bed of an apothecary in Tragnè City. A bed much too large for the single, mouse of a man who ran the shop.

  He turned his head, eyes falling to the binding of a massive tome. Genealogies of the Western Province. He’d often seen the volume cited in books at Ral Mok’s library, but had never actually found a copy until now. The urge to throw the other books aside and bury himself in its pages hit him for what must have been the tenth time since he’d sat down. But for once he had something more important to do in a library than research his parentage. He turned his attention back to the schematics of the tunnels below the City.

  It’d been hours now since he’d snuck out of the shop. Erem would be furious, not that Ferrin cared. The man was taciturn as ever, breaking his brooding silences only to have hushed arguments with the alchemist who’d taken them in. It hadn’t escaped Ferrin’s notice that the chemist’s name was Westcott, same as the Symposium’s last Apothick Master Keeper. That Erem had such friends only emphasized that he’d once been a Keeper himself. But strain his mind as he might, Ferrin could remember no Keeper with such a name. Certainly a shadow-attuned blademaster would have stood out in the histories he’d read.