by Matt Langley
Sensing the sudden surge of power in her enemy, the Assassin retreated a cautious step. The ground betrayed her. She stumbled. Only half a step, but it was enough. It was her first mistake in the combat. She didn’t trust herself. In her place he would have gone in for the kill. He needed to make it her undoing, with or without his sword.
The Assassin took a moment to catch her breath and to transmit a vampiric smile through the black pools of her eyes. The smile died on that masked face as Shryke pulled a fist-sized lump of granite from a crevice by his feet and hurled it with all his might. She instinctively brought her hands up to shield her face. It was instinct. And it was that instinct Shryke had counted on.
As the rock crunched into her wrist, he heard the satisfying crack of a bone taking the full impact and breaking.
The sword fell from her hand. There was nothing she could do to stop it.
The Assassin stood, holding her broken hand to her side.
Shryke rose up.
There were no more suitably sized boulders nearby for him to use as impromptu weapons, and the Assassin still held the dagger, so she was far from helpless. She was trained by the Guild Masters. She was every bit as lethal with the small blade as with the sword, and quite capable of hitting the mark if she threw it. It wouldn’t matter which way he hurled his body, the black blade would fly easily to pierce his heart or skull, offering whichever death she preferred.
The Assassin moved the knife around in her practiced fingers.
Holding the blade, she lifted it ready to let fly.
There was nothing Shryke could do.
There was no cover. No chance to escape.
He was dead.
So, he tried the only thing he could think of to disarm her. “Will you give me kneeler’s privilege?” Shryke asked. They were the first words he had spoken to the Assassin and he had no right to ask, and less to expect her to say yes.
The woman took a moment to consider and then nodded her Red Guild Star. Resigned, Shryke fell to his knees. If he was going to die, he was going to do it at peace with himself and his deeds.
He looked up, ripped open his jerkin and exposed the breast above his heart— sternum raw and livid from the healing Plains-wound.
There wasn’t even a chance of retreating inside his head for Magic. More dream-wounds inflicted on the Quantum Aether would kill him as effectively as the Assassin’s blade. And the ripple such a tactic would send out across the Quantum Aether would only serve to draw yet more black-clad killers intent on ending his existence.
“Make your peace,” the Assassin said. “You fought with honour and pride. And no little skill, Shryke. Go into the long night with my respect.”
“Thank you,” Shryke bowed his head.
He waited for the blow that never came.
He waited. And waited.
Until, frustrated at being played for a fool, he said, “There’s no honour in this kind of pisstake, woman, just be done with it, I’m ready.”
But she wasn’t.
The Assassin fell face first hitting the ground hard. Shryke’s sword was buried almost to the hilt. It went deep into her spine and then out through her heart.
Galdar stood frozen.
Her face was a mask of shock and regret.
She looked down at her hands as if they’d betrayed her.
And in so many ways they had.
There were dots of blood spattered up the bare skin to her forearms. The blood wasn’t hers. It came from the wound in the back of the dead woman. Galdar took a step back in the rain, watching the speckles of red mix with the rain, sluicing away from her skin in rivulets turned pink.
Her foot slipped, not because the ground was dangerous or uneven, but because the strength drained from her legs and that single act of violence. She collapsed, looking from her hands to the body skewered on the sword and then back to her hands as a hollow of regret opened in her heart. Her eyes filled with tears made invisible by the rain.
What would Yane think of her when she made her confession?
How would the other members of the Movable Church treat her after this heinous transgression of Safehome doctrine?
She had committed murder.
Her soul was forever tainted.
She didn’t even know the man who had saved her from the Raiders, but she had killed for him.
How had she become this person?
She looked up from her hands to see him watching her across the corpse.
The man got to his feet, blood was running from the open slice in the back of his hand where the tendons had been exposed, and the raw wound across his chest which looked barely healed. It would need treating if his life wasn’t to bleed away. As though reading her mind, the man put his hand under his arm to apply pressure to the wound and walked to the body.
The body of the woman Galdar had… murdered.
She’d come around, not sure where she was or how she was even alive to see her saviour fighting for his life. Her forehead hurt, but the wound she remembered receiving from the Raider’s sword point was already scar tissue. How long had she been unconscious? Surely not that long?
The fight was vicious. The pair went at each other with brutal ferocity. Two souls raised in war, determined to injure, maim and then kill the other.
And then the woman raised the dagger to throw at her saviour, and Galdar acted without thought.
She got up, retrieved the man’s sword from where it had fallen between the cracks in the rock while the man asked for the kneeler’s privilege and did the only thing she could: she rushed at the Assassin’s back and plunged the sword between the bones.
There were no screams.
The woman stood rooted to the spot, transfixed by the blade emerging from her chest, and then collapsed. She didn’t hold her hands out to break her fall. She hit the ground face first, blood radiating rapidly from around the steel like the petals of a deadly flower.
The man approached the dead woman.
He knelt by her side and began unwinding the turban from her head—not to get a look at her face, he was far more pragmatic than that. When he had a length of the black material, he held the end of it in his mouth and reaching for the woman’s fallen dagger, cut the material. And used it to bandage his wounded hand.
Galdar could see just how much pain this caused him. But she didn’t move to help him. He watched her the whole time. His eyes didn’t waver. Not once. Finally, he said, “Help me.” He held the short length of bandage up from his hand and nodded towards it. “I can’t tie it off myself.”
Galdar nodded and came over to kneel beside him.
The Assassin’s unmasking revealed a face of white death. Her eyes were still open. There was a froth of blood on her lips. She had done this, the hollowness in Galdar’s stomach spread, guilt taking its toll.
The man held the bandage out to her.
“Split the end and tie it off with a knot. Quickly. We don’t have the luxury of time. The Raiders will be on us very soon if they realise we survived. Sooner maybe.”
Galdar did what she was told with the bandage as she spoke, “Survived? Survived what?”
The man tested the tightness of the bandage and seemed satisfied with her work. He looked up. Galdar followed his eyes up, up, and up to the Riven Bridge a mile above them, just visible in the clouds.
“How did we get down from there?”
“A good question, but one for another time. We must get away from here, now.”
He rolled the dead Assassin onto her stomach and drew the black-steel blade out of her corpse. He kissed the blade and sheathed it with his others, before taking up his pack. He began to lead them out of the ravine without waiting to see if Galdar was following.
Galdar’s head was clouded with shame and confusion.
What is it about this man?
He hadn’t even offered his name, and yet she followed him blindly?
“Who are you?” she called forward as they reached the treeline.
> There was a path that would lead them down into the fertile valley, but the man was deliberately moving away from it. It took her a second to realise why: it would be the first place the Raiders would look for them.
“I have had many names, but you can call me Shryke. It’s the one I use now.”
Galdar waited for him to ask hers, but there was no curiosity about the man.
“I am Galdar,” she said. “Curate of the Church of Safehome.”
“Short names are best.”
“No, what I meant— “
Shryke, looked around, his grin broad and his eyes smiling.
The same feeling she’d felt when Carlow had laughed at her welled anger and hot embarrassment.
“You’re a very serious girl, aren’t you?”
“I am not a girl. I am a woman.”
“My apologies,” Shryke smiled again. A look not dissimilar from the one she’d seen in the eyes of the Raider played across Shryke’s face. Galdar balled her fist, ready to lash out. What was happening to her? Violence wasn’t the way of her Order. It wasn’t her way. Or it hadn’t been. First busting Carlow’s nose, then attacking the Raiders before they killed the boy, and killing someone!
She felt completely out of control.
Shryke stopped and looked at her.
The amusement draining immediately from his face. “What troubles you girl?”
“Stop calling me girl! You’re not much more than a boy yourself!” Her voice echoed through the trees and off the valley walls.
Shryke sighed and held up a finger to silence her, which only served to infuriate her all the more, but she fell silent. They listened. For a moment nothing beyond the usual sounds of the forest, but then…
A crash.
Then the neigh of a horse and a thunderous beat of hooves echoed all around.
“Well done,” Shryke rasped. “Well done indeed…woman.”
The hoof beats clattered as they struck rocks. The jangle of weapons and spurs came next and then one voice shouting: “I will have my fifty skelling crowns. Mark me!” And Five Raiders, on horseback, burst through the trees, weapons drawn, and bore down on Galdar and Shryke like the minions of death itself.
Chapter 6
Barl lay on the timbered deck of the skiff looking up at the woman in black.
His hair was plastered down by seawater that dripped stingingly into his eyes. Out of the water, he could see that there was a definition to the sky that he wasn’t used to in God’s Heart.
The white light appeared to be a ball of rock, with a rocky, uneven, surface that hung far away, set on a velvet sky that had been scattered with tiny gemstones. Whorls of them drifted and collected into patterns, gulfs and spirals. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Until the woman shook back her cowl, revealing her face for the first time and he reassessed his understanding of beauty in that moment.
Barl had never seen someone so perfect.
Even his Mother, Shaj, who was lauded as a beauty among his people was almost ugly beside her.
The woman’s features radiated nobility and serenity.
Her skin shone darkly, her hair braided in curls and whorls that were more than a match for diamonded sky’s perfection. But, when it came, it was her smile that took Barl’s breath away. It was like being brushed with a warming summer breeze. It spoke of good harvest, full bellies and happy life. It was the smile of a God.
“Who… are you?” Barl managed.
“I have a thousand names,” the woman kindly. “But you may call me Summer.”
It was if she had been reading his exact thoughts about her. If all the best things about the summer could be poured into one body, it be hers. Barl immediately felt calm and safe.
He sat up.
Summer knelt and dried him with her cloak, and within moments, he was warm and dry, as if the cloak had drawn the seawater from his garments then released it onto the air around them.
Summer sat beside Barl on the deck, putting her arm around his thin shoulders and drawing him close.
“Better?” She asked.
Barl nodded. He didn’t know whether to look at the sky or up at her in the hopes that Summer might smile again so he could wallow in the wonder of it.
“Where are we?”
“Where you travelled to.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You travelled.”
“You keep saying that like it should mean something to me, but it doesn’t. I don’t understand any of this. Why is it happening to me? What is it that’s happening to me? Why?” He had so many questions.
“How is not yet important, the time for that will come. All you need to know at this point in time is that you travelled, and I followed.”
“Why?”
“It is my duty to follow you in these early days. If you are like the others, it is possible you will travel more times before you settle. I was exactly the same.”
Her words made no sense to Barl, not as words, but there was a feeling behind them, a sense that eventually all would be well, that was overwhelming. He rested his head against her shoulder as if it were the most natural thing to do. As if he had been doing it all his short life.
His life.
His life in God’s Heart, with his parents. His family his friends.
The memories crashed back like waves in a storm and he felt as lost and scared as he had ever done. It was too much.
“It will take time, Barl,” she assured him, her gaze focussed on the dark sky. “But the joy is that we have all the time in the universe.” Summer reached behind her back to pick something up. It took him a moment to realise it was a pewter tankard, almost identical to his father’s.
It was as though she had drawn it from out of Barl’s memories and offered it now as a gift that might somehow make him feel at home wherever he was now.
“I understand this is something prized by your people?”
Barl took one sniff of the liquid in the tankard, recognised the hoppy aroma and without needing so much as a mouthful this time gagged and vomited over the side of the skiff.
Barl wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. The stuff was drying with the salt on his lips. He looked earnestly at Summer and said: “I want to go home, please.”
Summer sighed. “If only it were that simple, kid.”
“You brought me here. Take me back.”
“You aren’t listening to me, Barl. I didn’t bring you anywhere. You travelled here. It was all you.”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t. I didn’t open a trapdoor in my world. I didn’t leap out into nothing so my heart froze. I thought I was dead!”
“Ah, well yes. I did do that. But, believe me, kid, you were never in any danger, though I do understand it can be scary the first time it happens. But you will get used to it.”
“I won’t,” Barl said, and stood up, compensating for the gentle swell of the waves rocking the skiff. “Because I’m going home.” Barl refused to be drawn in by Summer’s smile. There was something magical about it. It wasn’t merely a smile… it was more of a tool. An enchantment she used to calm him, to sway his thoughts and make him forget his fears. Right now, Barl didn’t want to be calm, he wanted to be home. He wanted a normal life that began and ended with his village, his friends, and most importantly of all, his family.
“I want to go home!” Barl snarled in her face.
Summer didn’t flinch from his anger or try to pacify him. She got to her feet, towering over Barl, and raised her cowl to hide her ebony skinned face. “That is not going to happen, Barl. We have much to do, you and me. And none of it involves going back there.”
Barl felt bereft without Summer’s face to comfort him. In that moment it felt as though he had lost the most precious thing that he…
NO.
It was another trick, another enchantment or tool, some sort of mechanism to lull him. He was already wise to the effect it was having on him. He wouldn’t succumb to i
t. Not now, not ever. Barl reached over the side of the skiff and splashed cooling seawater on his face, set his jaw, balled his fists, turned. He didn’t know what he was going to do next. He didn’t allow himself to think about it. He just ran, screaming his pure hatred at Summer.
And because he didn’t know, Summer couldn’t anticipate or expect the explosion of fist and feet that he battered her with. She fell back on the decking, Barl landed on her, windmilling his arms, his fists pummelling Summer’s too-beautiful face trying to unmake that unnatural perfection.
Within one tenth of a second, Barl’s fist was punching bare wood, the impact scraping the skin of his knuckles raw.
He looked around wildly.
Summer had moved impossibly from beneath him. She stood over him now, shaking her head. “Stop this stupidity, boy,” she barked.
She reached down and then threw the still punching Barl over the side of the skiff into the water.
The shock of the cold stilled him; he clamped his mouth shut and began to let himself drop through the water.
If she wasn’t going to let him go home, then he wouldn’t stay here. He would rather drown…
Before the cold could really grip his lungs Barl was rolling onto his back, on the deck, water crashing around him as if he and half of the sea had been gathered up from the depths and dumped unceremoniously in the skiff.
He lay there, coughing his guts up as the water ran away across the deck and drained back out into the sea through the scuppers.
Summer stood over him, exactly where she stood before. “Barl. I’m telling you to stop this.”
Barl roared and launched himself yet again at Summer. It was futile. His arms and head sliced through empty air—and before he could catch his balance a blinding burst of light and heat hit him. It felt as though he had been hurled into the heart of a roaring inferno…
As he hit the ground, he rolled across sand; it stuck to his wet body in patches where the seawater persisted.
Sunlight burned the sight from Barl’s eyes. He could barely squint, the sudden brightness painful as the night was banished in favour of an endless vibrant turquoise. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. The sun-baked sand burned immediately into his palms. He rocked back as though stung, staring at the red welts on his palms in disbelief. It wasn’t more than three seconds before the heat of the dune where he’d fallen began to radiate intensely through the knees of his trousers.