by Brent Weeks
After he pulled himself back onto the branch, the claws melted back into his skin. Kylar was left trembling, and not just because of how close he’d come to falling. What am I becoming? With every death reaped and every death suffered, he was growing stronger. It scared the hell out of him. What does it cost? There’s got to be a price.
Gritting his teeth, Kylar climbed headfirst down the tree, letting the claws rise and sink from his skin, stabbing little holes in his clothes and in the tree bark. When he reached the ground, the black ka’kari bled from every pore to cover him like a second skin. It masked his face and body and clothes and sword, and began devouring light. Invisible, Kylar advanced.
“I dreamed of living in a small town like that Torras Bend,” Feir said, his back as broad as an ox before Kylar. “Build a smithy on the river, design a water wheel to drive the bellows until my sons are old enough to help. A prophet told me it could happen.”
“Enough of your dreams,” Garuwashi cut him off, standing. “My main army should be almost through the mountains. You and I are going.”
Main army? The last piece clicked. This was why the sa’ceurai had dressed as Khalidorans. Garuwashi had drawn the best of Cenaria’s army far to the east while his main army was massing in the west. With the Khalidorans defeated at Pavvil’s Grove, Cenaria’s peasant levies were probably already hurrying back to their farms. In days, a couple hundred Cenarian castle guards were going to face the entire Ceuran army.
“Going? Tonight?” Feir asked, surprised.
“Now.” Garuwashi smirked right at Kylar. Kylar froze, but he saw no flash of recognition in those green eyes. Instead, he saw something worse.
There were eighty-two kills in Garuwashi’s eyes. Eighty-two! And not one of them a murder. Killing Lantano Garuwashi wouldn’t be justice; it would be murder. Kylar cursed aloud.
Lantano Garuwashi jumped to his feet, the scabbard flying from a sword that looked like a bar of flame, his body already in a fighting stance. The mountain that was Feir was only a little slower. He was on his feet, turning with naked steel in his hand faster than Kylar would have believed from a man so big. His eyes went wide as he saw Kylar.
Kylar screamed in frustration and let blue flame whoosh over the ka’kari-skin and the great frowning mask he wore. He heard a footstep as one of Garuwashi’s bodyguards attacked from behind. Kylar’s Talent surged and he back-flipped, planting his feet on the man’s shoulders and pushing off. The sa’ceurai smashed into the ground and Kylar flipped through the air, blue flames whipping and crackling from his body.
Before he caught the branch, he dropped the flames and went invisible. He flipped from branch to branch one-handed, with no attempt at stealth. If he didn’t do something—tonight—Logan and all his men would die.
“Was that the Hunter?” Garuwashi asked.
“Worse,” Feir said, pale. “That was the Night Angel, perhaps the only man in the world you need fear.”
Lantano Garuwashi’s eyes lit with a fire that told Feir he heard the words “man you need fear” as “worthy adversary.”
“Which way did he go?” Garuwashi asked.
3
As Elene rode up to the little inn in Torras Bend, utterly exhausted, a gorgeous young woman with long red hair in a ponytail and an earring sparkling in her left ear, was mounting a roan stallion. The stable hand ogled her as she rode north.
Elene was almost on top of the stable hand before the man turned. He blinked at her stupidly. “Hey, your friend just left,” he said, pointing to the disappearing redhead.
“What are you talking about?” Elene was so tired she could hardly think. She’d walked for two days before one of the horses had found her. And she’d never found out what had happened to the other captives or the Khalidorans or the Ymmuri who’d saved her.
“You could still catch her,” the stable hand said.
Elene had seen the young woman well enough to know that they’d never met. She shook her head. She had to pick up supplies in Torras Bend before she headed to Cenaria. Besides, it was almost dark, and after her days on the trail with her Khalidoran captors, Elene needed a night in bed and desperately needed a chance to wash up. “I don’t think so,” she said.
She went inside, rented a room from the distracted innkeeper’s wife with some of the generous amount of silver she’d found in her horse’s saddlebags, washed herself and her filthy clothing, and immediately fell asleep.
Before dawn, she pulled on her still-damp dress distastefully and went downstairs.
The innkeeper, a slight young man, was carrying in a crate full of washed flagons from outside and setting them upside-down to dry before he finally went to bed for the night. He nodded at Elene in a friendly manner, barely glancing up. “The wife will have breakfast ready in half an hour. And if—oh hell.” He looked at her again, obviously seeing her for the first time. “Maira didn’t tell me. . . .” He rubbed his hands on his apron in what was obviously a habitual gesture, because his hands weren’t wet, and stalked over to a table piled high with knickknacks, notes, and account books.
He pulled out a note, and handed it to her apologetically. “I didn’t see you last night, or I’d have given it to you straight away.” Elene’s name and description were written on the outside of the note. She unfolded it and a smaller, crumpled note fell out. The smaller note was in Kylar’s hand. It was dated the day he’d left her in Caernarvon. Her throat tightened.
“Elene,” she read, “I’m sorry. I tried. I swear I tried. Some things are worth more than my happiness. Some things only I can do. Sell these to Master Bourary and move the family to a better part of town. I will always love you.”
Kylar still loved her. He loved her. She’d always believed it, but it was different to see it in his own messy writing. The tears flowed freely. She didn’t even care about the disconcerted innkeeper, opening and shutting his mouth, unsure what to do with a woman crying in his inn.
Elene had refused to change and it had cost her everything, but the God was giving her a second chance. She’d show Kylar just how strong, deep, and wide a woman’s love could be. It wasn’t going to be easy, but he was the man she loved. He was the one. She loved him, and it was as simple as that.
It was several minutes before she read the other note, this one written in an unfamiliar woman’s hand.
“My name’s Vi,” the note said, “I’m the wetboy who killed Jarl and kidnapped Uly. Kylar left you to save Logan and kill the Godking. The man you love saved Cenaria. I hope you’re proud of him. If you go to Cenaria, I’ve given Momma K access to my accounts for you. Take whatever you want. Otherwise, Uly will be at the Chantry, as will I, and I think Kylar will go there soon. There’s . . . more, but I can’t bear to write it. I had to do something terrible so we could win. No words can erase what I’ve done to you. I’m so terribly sorry. I wish that I could make it right, but I can’t. When you come, you can exact whatever vengeance you wish, even to my life. Vi Sovari”
The hairs on the back of Elene’s neck were standing up. What kind of a person would claim to be such an enemy and such a friend? Where were Elene’s wedding earrings? “There’s more”? What did that mean? Vi had done something terrible?
The lead weight of intuition dropped into Elene’s stomach. That woman outside yesterday had been wearing an earring. It probably wasn’t—it surely wasn’t—
“Oh my God,” Elene said. She ran for her horse.
The dream was different every night. Logan stood on the platform, looking at pretty, petty Terah Graesin. She would walk over an army of corpses—or marry a man she despised—to seize her ambition. As it had that day, Logan’s heart failed him. His father had married a woman who poisoned all his happiness. Logan could not.
As he had that day, Logan asked for her fealty, the round platform reminding him of the Hole where he’d rotted during the Khalidoran occupation. Terah refused. But instead of submitting himself so the armies wouldn’t be split on the eve of battle, in this dream Logan said
, “Then I sentence you to death for treason.”
His sword sang. Terah stumbled back, too slowly. The blade cut halfway through her neck.
Logan caught her, and abruptly, it was another woman, another place. Jenine’s slashed throat gushed blood over her white nightgown and his bare chest. The Khalidorans who’d broken into their wedding chamber laughed.
Logan thrashed and woke. He lay in darkness. It took him time to reorient himself. His Jenine was dead. Terah Graesin was queen. Logan had sworn fealty. Logan Gyre had given his troth, a word that meant not just his oath but his truth. So if his queen ordered him to stamp out the last few Khalidorans, he complied. He would always be glad to kill Khalidorans.
Sitting up in the dark of the camp tent, Logan saw the captain of his bodyguards, Kaldrosa Wyn. During the occupation, Momma K’s brothels had become the safest places in the city for women. Momma K had accepted only the most beautiful and exotic. They had drawn the first Khalidoran blood of the war during a city-wide ambush that had come to be called the Nocta Hemata, the Night of Blood. Logan had honored them publicly and they had become his. Those who could fight had fought and died—and saved him. After the Battle of Pavvil’s Grove, Logan had dismissed the rest of the Order of the Garter except for Kaldrosa Wyn. Her husband was one of the ten wytch hunters, and they’d go nowhere without each other, so she’d said she might as well serve.
Kaldrosa wore her garter on her left arm. Sewn from enchanted Khalidoran battle flags, it glimmered even in the darkness. She was, of course, pretty, with olive Sethi skin, a throaty laugh, and a hundred stories, some of which she claimed were even true. Her chain mail was ill-fitting, and she wore a tabard with his white gyrfalcon, its wingtips breaking a black circle. “It’s time,” she said.
General Agon Brant poked his head in the tent, then entered. He still needed two canes to walk. “The scouts have returned. Our elite Khalidorans think they’re setting an ambush. If we come from the north, south, or west, we have to go through dense forest. The only way is through the Hunter’s Wood. If it really exists, it’ll wipe us out. If I were facing fourteen hundred men with only one hundred, I don’t think I could do any better.”
If the situation had arisen a month ago, Logan wouldn’t have hesitated. He would lead his army through the open spaces of the Hunter’s Wood, legends be damned. But at Pavvil’s Grove they’d seen a legend walk—and devour thousands. The ferali had shaken Logan’s conviction that he knew the difference between superstition and reality. “They’re Khalidoran. Why didn’t they head north for Quorig’s Pass?”
Agon shrugged. It was a week-old problem. This platoon wasn’t nearly as sloppy as the Khalidorans they knew. Even as they fled from Logan’s army, they’d raided. Cenaria had lost a hundred men. The Khalidorans hadn’t lost one. The best guess Agon could make was that they were an elite unit from some Khalidoran tribe the Cenarians hadn’t encountered before. Logan felt like he was staring at a puzzle. If he didn’t solve it, his people would die. “You still want to hit them from all sides?” Agon asked.
The problem stared at Logan, mocking him. The answer didn’t come. “Yes.”
“Are you still insisting on leading the cavalry through the Wood yourself?”
Logan nodded. If he was going to ask men to brave death from some monster, he would do it himself, too.
“That’s very . . . brave,” Agon said. He’d served nobles long enough to make a compliment speak volumes of insult.
“Enough,” Logan said, accepting his helmet from Kaldrosa. “Let’s go kill some Khalidorans.”
4
Vürdmeister Neph Dada hacked a deep, rasping, unhealthy cough. He cleared his throat noisily and spat the results into his hand. Then he tilted his hand and watched the phlegm drip to the dirt before turning his eyes to the other Vürdmeisters around his low fire. Aside from the young Borsini, who blinked incessantly, they gave no sign that he disgusted them. A man didn’t survive long enough to become a Vürdmeister on magical strength alone.
Glowing faintly, figures were laid out in military formations on the ground. “This is only an estimation of the armies’ positions,” Neph said. “Logan Gyre’s forces are in red, roughly fourteen hundred men, west of the Dark Hunter’s Wood, in Cenarian lands. Maybe two hundred Ceurans pretending to be Khalidoran are the blue, right at the edge of the Wood. Further south, in white, are five thousand of our beloved enemies the Lae’knaught. We Khalidorans haven’t fought the Lae’knaught directly since you were all still at the tit, so let me remind you that though they hate all magic, we are what they were created to destroy. Five thousand of them is more than enough to complete the job the Cenarians began at the Battle of Pavvil’s Grove, so we must tread carefully.”
In quick detail, Neph outlined what he knew of the deployment of all the forces, inventing details where it seemed appropriate, and always speaking over the Vürdmeisters’ heads, as if expecting them to understand intricacies of generalship that they had never learned. Whenever a Godking died, the massacres began. First the heirs turned on each other. Then the survivors rallied meisters and Vürdmeisters around them and began anew until only one Ursuul remained. If no one established dominance quickly, the bloodletting would spread to the meisters. Neph didn’t intend for that to happen.
So as soon as he was certain that Godking Garoth Ursuul was dead, Neph had found Tenser Ursuul, one of the Godking’s heirs, and convinced the boy to carry Khali. Tenser thought carrying the goddess would mean power. It would—for Neph. For Tenser, it meant catatonia and insanity. Then Neph had sent a simple message to Vürdmeisters at every corner of the Khalidoran empire: “Help me bring Khali home.”
By answering a religious call, every Vürdmeister who didn’t want to throw away his life backing some vicious Ursuul child had a legitimate escape. And if Neph tamed these first Vürdmeisters who’d arrived from their postings in nearby lands, when Vürdmeisters arrived from the rest of the empire, they too would fall in line. If there was one thing Godkings were good at, it was inculcating submission.
“The Dark Hunter’s Wood is between us,” Neph motioned to encompass the Vürdmeisters, himself, and Khali’s bodyguard, a bare fifty men in all, “and all these armies. I personally have seen over a hundred men—meisters and not—ordered into the Wood. None has emerged. Ever. If this were merely a matter of Khali’s security, I would not bring this to your attention.” Neph coughed again, his lungs afire, but the coughing was calculated, too. Those who wouldn’t bend the knee to a young man might be content to bide their time serving a failing old one. He spat. “The Ceurans have the sword of power, Curoch. Right there,” Neph gestured to where his phlegm had fallen, at the very edge of the Dark Hunter’s Wood.
“Has the sword taken the form of Ceur’caelestos, the Ceurans’ Blade of Heaven?” Vürdmeister Borsini asked. He was the young blinking one with a grotesquely large nose and big ears to match. He was staring into the distance. Neph didn’t like it. Had Borsini been eavesdropping when the scout reported?
Borsini’s vir, the measure of the goddess’s favor and his magical power, filled his arms like a hundred thorny black rose stems. Only Neph’s vir filled more of his skin, undulating like living tattoos in Lodricari whorls, blackening him from forehead to fingernails. But despite his intelligence and power, Borsini was only in the eleventh shu’ra. Neph, Tarus, Orad, and Raalst were all twelfth shu’ra, the highest rank anyone aside from the Godking could attain.
“Curoch takes any shape it pleases,” Neph said. “The point is, if Curoch goes into the Hunter’s Wood, it will never come out. We have a slim chance to seize a prize we’ve sought for ages.”
“But there are three armies here,” Vürdmeister Tarus pointed out. “All outnumber us, and each would happily kill us.”
“Attempting to claim the sword will most likely end in death, but may I remind you,” Neph said, “if we don’t try, we will answer for it. Therefore, I will go. I am old. I have few years remaining to me, so my death will cost the empire less.
” Of course, if he had Curoch in hand, magnifying his magical power a hundredfold, everything would change, and all of them knew it.
Vürdmeister Tarus was the first to object. “Who’s put you in charge—”
“Khali has,” young Borsini interrupted before Neph could. Dammit! “Khali has sent me a vision,” he said. “That’s why I asked what the Ceurans call the sword. Khali told me that I am to fetch Ceur’caelestos. I am the youngest of us, the most dispensable, and the fastest. Vürdmeister Dada, she said she will speak to you this morning. You are to await her word by the prince’s bedside. Alone.”
The boy was a genius. Borsini wanted a chance at the sword, and he was buying off Neph in front of all of them. Neph would stay with Khali and the catatonic prince and when he emerged, it would be with “a word from the goddess.” In truth, Neph hadn’t wanted to go after the sword at all. But the only way he was certain the others would make him stay was if he’d tried to go. Borsini’s eyes met Neph’s. His look said, “If I get the sword, you serve me. Understood?”
“Blessed be her name,” Neph said. The others echoed. They didn’t fully understand what had just happened. They would, in time. Neph said, “You should take my horse; it’s faster than yours.” And he had woven a small cantrip into its mane. When the sun rose—at about the time a rider would get to the south side of the wood—the cantrip would begin pulsing with magic that would draw the Dark Hunter. Borsini wouldn’t live to see noon.