by Brent Weeks
There were only four soldiers when they camped that night at the edge of the woods to take advantage of the shelter of the trees. The Khalidorans quarreled about whether they should press on in the darkness or if Haavin and the other missing man had really run away. The night was short, and Ghorran woke Elene in the dark of the morning.
He took her silently into the woods. She hiked up her skirts like it didn’t bother her. “How did your chest get hurt?” Elene asked.
“That wild bitch stabbed me with a pitchfork after I killed her husband and gutted her brats.” He shrugged, like letting her stab him was a moment of carelessness, embarrassing but not serious.
To Ghorran, eviscerating children held no special significance. He had hurt Elene and shamed her; she could forgive those. But that dismissive shrug blew on the small spark of fury in her heart. For the first time in her life since Rat, Elene hated.
Ghorran had brought a bow with him and now he strung it. “This day, we get to camp,” he said, “Neph Dada will do terrible things to you.” Ghorran licked his dry lips. “I can save you.”
“Save me?”
“What he does should not be done. It is Lodricari foulness. If you run now, I will put an arrow in your back and spare you.”
His mercy was so bizarre that Elene’s hatred dissolved.
A flash of light burst from the camp fifty paces behind them, throwing shadows against the trees. A scream followed it. Then the sound of galloping horses.
Elene turned and saw a dozen unfamiliar Khalidoran horsemen charging into the camp from the north. They had come early to collect their slaves.
“Run!” a shout rang out, louder than a man should have been able to yell.
Through the trees, Elene saw the Ymmuri stalker fighting the Khalidorans. He cut through two of them in a single move. Fire leapt from one of the horsemen’s hands, but he dodged it.
Ghorran nocked an arrow and drew it, but there were too many trees and Khalidorans between him and the Ymmuri. Then, only paces away, the young boy Herrald burst from the woods, running away.
Ghorran turned and aimed, leading his new target.
All Elene thought was no.
She grabbed Ghorran’s dagger from his belt, brought it over his arm, and buried it in his throat. He spasmed and the arrow leapt from the bow, whistling harmlessly over Herrald’s head.
The bow dropped from Ghorran’s fingers, and he and Elene regarded each other, shock widening his eyes. The dagger was lodged squarely in the center of his throat, its wide blade blocking his windpipe. He exhaled, his chest straining, and air whistled. He put a hand to his throat and felt the blade, still unbelieving.
Then he tried to inhale. His diaphragm pumped like a bellows, but he couldn’t get air. He fell to his knees. Elene couldn’t move.
Ghorran ripped the dagger out of his throat and gasped, but the gasp turned to a gurgle. He coughed and blood sprayed over Elene.
He kept trying to breathe as his lungs filled with blood. In moments, he dropped to the forest floor.
Despite the blood on her face, her dress, and her hands, despite the piteous look on Ghorran’s face and the horror of watching a man die, Elene didn’t feel sorry. She had hated Ghorran only a minute before, but she hadn’t killed him out of hatred. He simply had to be stopped. If she could have the moment back, she’d do the same thing. And just like that, she understood.
“My God, what a fool I’ve been,” she said aloud. “Forgive me, Kylar.”
With magic bursting in the woods behind her, setting the trees alight, Elene ran.
On the north side of Vos Island in the gloom of the rainy autumn day, Kylar stood staring at the unmarked cairn he’d built. Durzo’s grave.
Kylar was spattered with blood, his wetboy grays scored and singed with magic. In a rage he’d fought for hours, killing every Khalidoran soldier and meister he laid eyes on. From the slowly diminishing magic on the throne room’s floor, he’d seen Logan’s stand, seen the ferali turn, and witnessed the destruction of the Khalidoran army. He’d seen how the men had looked at Logan. Though the figures were tiny, it was written in every line of their bodies.
Logan would march his army home, and in two days when they arrived, he would find his castle swept out and cleansed of the Khalidoran presence—except for Khali, but that was one creature Kylar was going to steer clear of. Let King Gyre invite some mages to take care of that.
“We won, I guess,” he told Durzo’s grave. Kylar knew there was no use railing against his life. He was the Night Angel, and he didn’t get celebrations. As Durzo had told him long ago, he would always be separate, alone.
~It is just so hard to be immortal,~ the ka’kari said.
Kylar was too exhausted to be surprised or offended. The ka’kari had spoken before, he remembered now, trying to save his life. “So you can talk,” he said.
The ka’kari puddled into his hand and formed a stylized face. It smiled and winked at him. Kylar sighed and sucked it back into his skin.
Kylar stared at his stump. He’d lost his arm for nothing. He’d made an oath to the Wolf for nothing. Everything Kylar had ever learned, everything he’d ever suffered, had been for one thing: killing Garoth Ursuul was Kylar’s destiny. Garoth was the vile fount from which Kylar’s and Jarl’s and Elene’s misery flowed. It was only fitting that the man who’d led Kylar to become a wetboy would be Kylar’s last deader. Without Garoth, there would be no Roth. Without Roth, Elene would be unscarred, Jarl would be alive and whole, and Kylar would be—what?—well, not a wetboy.
Count Drake had once told Kylar, “There’s a divinity that shapes beauty from our rough-hewn lives.” It was a lie, as Kylar’s destiny was a lie. Perhaps that was why this was so hard: he’d begun to believe in Elene’s divine economy. So now he hadn’t just lost Elene, who’d been part of him from the beginning, who’d made Kylar believe good things about himself; he’d also lost his destiny. If he had a destiny, he had a purpose: some pearl being built around the evil he’d suffered and inflicted. If he’d been shaped for a purpose, maybe there was a Shaper. If there was a Shaper, perhaps its name was the One God. And perhaps that One God was a bridge over the chasm between killer and saint that separated Kylar from Elene. But there was no bridge, no God, no Shaper, no purpose, no destiny, no beauty. There was no going back. He’d been cheated of justice and vengeance and love and purpose at once.
He’d thought he could change, that he could buy peace for the price of an old sword. But Retribution was only an instrument of justice. It was Kylar who thirsted to mete it out. He’d killed many men today, and he couldn’t make himself feel sorry for it. This was what it was to be the Night Angel. Perhaps a better man could lay down the sword. Kylar could not, not even though it had cost him Elene.
Every time he thought of Elene, her face morphed into Vi’s. Every time he thought of Vi, his fantasies morphed from meting out punishment to fantasies of another kind.
“Master,” he said to the cairn. “I don’t know what to do.”
Finish the job. He knew exactly the intonation Durzo would have given the words, exasperated but firm.
It was true. The Wolf had fulfilled his part of the deal: Kylar had come back from death immediately. It turned out to be a lousy trade, but a deal was a deal, so Kylar would go steal Curoch and ride to Torras Bend and get his arm back. It sounded simple enough. After all, stealing wasn’t hard when you could make yourself invisible. It wouldn’t be a second too soon to get his arm back, either. His stump was aching, and he wouldn’t have thought it, but losing a hand threw off his balance.
You’re not here because you don’t know what to do, boy. You always knew what to do.
That was true, too. Kylar would do this job and then go find Vi and kill her.
~You won’t kill her,~ the ka’kari said.
“Chatty all of a sudden, aren’t you?” Kylar asked.
The ka’kari didn’t answer. It was right, though. Kylar wasn’t here for direction. Not really. He just missed his
master. It was the first time he’d been to the grave since Durzo had died.
Tears started flowing, and Kylar knew only that they were tears of loss. He’d lost his master; he’d lost the girl he betrayed his master to save; he’d lost his master’s daughter. He’d lost his one chance at a peaceful life. Mild-mannered herbalist! It had been a sweet delusion, maybe, but it had been sweet. Kylar was lonely, and he was tired of being lonely.
A gopher had dug a hole near the foot of Durzo’s cairn. Durzo would be pissed if he had to spend eternity with gophers pawing his corpse. Kylar looked at the hole, irritated. It was deep enough that to normal eyes, the hole would just appear black, but Kylar saw a distinct metallic glimmer at the bottom.
He got on his knees and his stump—oww—and shifted to his elbow—better—and reached in. He stood with a small, sealed metal box in hand. One word was etched on it: “Azoth.” It sent a shiver through him. How many people knew that name? Kylar cracked it open awkwardly between his stump and one hand. There was a note inside.
“Hey,” it said in Durzo’s tight handwriting, “I thought it was my last one, too. He said I got one more for old time’s sake…” Kylar eyes blurred. He couldn’t believe it. The letter went on, but his eyes were drawn to the final words: “MAKE NO DEALS WITH THE WOLF.” The letter was dated a month after Kylar had killed his master. Durzo was alive.
meet the author
BRENT WEEKS was born and raised in Montana. After getting his paper keys from Hillsdale College, Brent had brief stints walking the earth like Caine from Kung Fu, tending bar, and corrupting the youth. (Not at the same time.) He started writing on bar napkins, then on lesson plans, then full time. Eventually, someone paid him for it. Brent lives in Oregon with his wife, Kristi. He doesn’t own cats or wear a ponytail. Find out more about the author at www.brentweeks.com.
introducing
If you enjoyed SHADOW’S EDGE,
look out for
BEYOND THE SHADOWS
Book 3 of the Night Angel Trilogy
by Brent Weeks
The sentry was a seasoned sa’ceurai, a sword lord who’d killed sixteen men and bound their forelocks into his fiery red hair. His eyes probed the darkness restlessly where the forest and the oak grove met, and when he turned, he shielded his eyes from his comrades’ low fires to protect his night vision. Despite the cool wind that swept the camp and set the great oaks groaning, he wore no helmet that would muffle his hearing. But he had no chance of stopping the wetboy.
Former wetboy, Kylar thought, balancing one-handed on a broad oak limb. If he were still a killer for hire, he’d murder the sentry and be done with it. Kylar was something different now, a Night Angel, immortal, invisible, and nearly invincible, and he only served death to those who deserved it.
These swordsmen from the land whose very name meant The Sword, Ceura, were the best soldiers Kylar had ever seen. They had set up camp with efficiency that spoke of years of campaigning. They cleared brush that might conceal the approach of enemies, banked their small fires to reduce their visibility, and arranged their tents to protect their horses and their leaders. Each fire warmed ten men, each of whom clearly knew his responsibilities. They moved like ants in the forest, and once they finished their duties, each man would only wander as far as an adjacent fire. They gambled, but they didn’t drink, and they kept their voices low. The only snag in all the Ceurans’ efficiency seemed to come from their armor. With Ceuran bamboo-and-lacquer armor, a man could dress himself. But donning the Khalidoran armor they had stolen a week ago at Pavvil’s Grove required assistance. Scale mail mixed with chain and even plate, and the Ceurans couldn’t decide if they needed to sleep armored or if men should be assigned to each other as squires.
When each squad was allowed to decide for itself how to fix the problem and didn’t waste time asking up the chain of command, Kylar knew his friend Logan Gyre was doomed. War Leader Lantano Garuwashi paired the Ceuran love of order with individual responsibility. It was emblematic of why Garuwashi had never lost a battle. It was why he had to die.
So Kylar moved through the trees like the breath of a vengeful god, only rustling the branches in time with the evening wind. The oaks grew in straight, widely-spaced rows broken where younger trees had muscled between their elders’ shoulders and grown ancient themselves. Kylar climbed out as far on a limb as he could and spied Lantano Garuwashi through the swaying branches, dimly illuminated in the light of his fire, touching the sword in his lap with the delight of recent acquisition. If Kylar could get to the next oak, he could climb down mere paces from his deader.
Can I still call my target a “deader,” even though I’m not a wetboy anymore? Thinking of Garuwashi as a “target” was impossible. Kylar could still hear his master Durzo Blint’s voice: “Assassins,” he sneered, “have targets, because assassins sometimes miss.”
Kylar gauged the distance to the next limb that could bear his weight. Eight paces. It was no great leap. The daunting part was landing on the tree limb and arresting his momentum silently with only one arm. If Kylar didn’t leap, he’d have to sneak between two fires where men were still passing intermittently, and the ground was strewn with dead leaves. He’d jump, he decided, when the next good breeze came.
“There’s an odd light in your eyes,” Lantano Garuwashi said. He was big for a Ceuran, tall and lean and heavily muscled as a tiger. Stripes of his own hair, burning the same color as the flickering fire, were visible through the sixty locks of all colors he’d claimed from opponents he’d killed.
“I’ve always loved fire. I want to remember it as I die.”
Kylar shifted to get a look at the speaker. It was Feir Cousat, a blond mountain of a man as wide as he was tall. Kylar had met him once. Feir was not only a capable hand with a sword, he was a mage. Kylar was lucky the man’s back was to him.
A week ago, after the Khalidoran Godking Garoth Ursuul killed him, Kylar had made a bargain with the yellow-eyed man called the Wolf. In his weird lair in the lands between life and death, the Wolf promised to restore Kylar’s right arm and bring him back to life quickly if Kylar stole Lantano Garuwashi’s sword. What had seemed simple—who can stop an invisible man from stealing?—was getting more complicated by the second. Who can stop an invisible man? A mage who can see invisible men.
“So you really believe the Dark Hunter lives in those woods?” Garuwashi asked.
“Draw the blade a little, War Leader,” Feir said. Garuwashi bared the sword a hand’s breadth. Light poured from a blade that looked like a crystal filled with fire. “The blade burns to warn of danger or magic. The Dark Hunter is both.”
So am I, Kylar thought.
“It’s close?” Garuwashi asked. He rose to a crouch like a tiger ready to pounce.
“I told you luring the Cenarian army here might be our deaths, not theirs,” Feir said. He stared back into the fire.
For the past week, since the battle of Pavvil’s Grove, Garuwashi had led Logan and his men east. Because the Ceurans had disguised themselves in dead Khalidorans’ armor, Logan thought he was chasing the remnants of the defeated Khalidoran army. But Kylar still had no idea why Lantano Garuwashi had led Logan here.
But then, he had no idea why the black metal ball called a ka’kari had chosen to serve him, or why it brought him back from death, or why he saw the taint on men’s souls that demanded death, or for that matter, why the sun rose, or how it hung in the sky without falling.
“You said we were safe as long as we didn’t go into the Hunter’s wood,” Garuwashi said.
“I said ‘probably,’ ” Feir said. “The Hunter senses and hates magic. That sword definitely counts as both.”
Garuwashi waved a hand, dismissing the danger. “We didn’t go into the Hunter’s wood—and if the Cenarians want to fight us, they must,” he said.
As Kylar finally understood the plan, he could hardly breathe. The woods north, south, and west of the grove were thick and overgrown. The only way for Logan to use his numerical
superiority would be to come through the east, where the giant sequoys of the Dark Hunter’s Wood gave an army plenty of space to maneuver. But it was said a creature from ages past killed anything that entered that wood. Learned men scoffed at such superstition, but Kylar had met the peasants of Torras Bend. If they were superstitious, they were a people with only one superstition. Logan would march right into the trap.
The wind kicked up again, setting the branches groaning. Kylar snarled silently, and leapt. With his Talent he made the distance easily. But he’d jumped too hard, too far, and he slipped off the far side of the branch. Little black talons jabbed through his clothing along the sides of his knees, along his left forearm, and even from his ribs. For a moment, the talons were liquid metal, not so much tearing his clothes as absorbing them at each tiny point, then they solidified and Kylar jerked to a stop.
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, 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.