Darkblade Guardian

by Andy Peloquin

  “Come, Hai'atim.” She stood and reached for his hand. “Let us watch the sun rise together, as we used to do.”

  He came to stand by her side and stared at the lightening sky. The first hints of color had begun to appear on the eastern horizon as the sun poked its glowing face over the mountains. Varying hues of gold, pink, and purple brightened the world.

  To the Hunter’s surprise, he found the glass walls of his room seemed to filter the light, not dimming it yet making it bearable to look at.

  He turned to look at her face, but something in the far distance caught his attention. His brow furrowed as he stared over her shoulder through the glass of the room’s northern wall. A dark, deep red cloud billowed up from the mountains. The solid mass of crimson seethed and boiled with an angry intensity, like a storm of blood instead of rain.

  “What is that?” he asked, pointing north.

  She glanced in the direction and drew in a sharp breath. “It is time,” she whispered. “Er’hato Tashat. The Blood Sun will soon be upon us.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Hunter’s breath caught in his lungs and he whirled toward Taiana. “The Withering? When?”

  “Tomorrow.” Worry sparkled in Taiana’s eyes, and her expression was grim, her face ashen. “When the sun is at its zenith, the power of Enarium will come alive.”

  The Hunter’s fists clenched. “Then we’ve got a day to stop the Sage.” Fear thrummed deep within his chest. He was running out of time to save Hailen. “We can’t let him activate the Serenii magick, at any cost!”

  “Agreed.” Taiana nodded. “When Garnos sends word, we will be armed and ready.”

  Her words brought back a memory of the previous night. “Speaking of arming ourselves, wait until you see this!” He strode into the bathing chamber and retrieved Setin’s suit of blue armor. “Look at the center of the breastplate and tell me what you see. Besides blood, of course.”

  Taiana’s brow furrowed as she stared at the armor. “I don’t see anything aside from that dent.”

  “Precisely.” The Hunter tapped the indented section of breastplate. “This was made by a Scorchslayer. Damned thing caught me straight in the chest. I should have been ripped apart like Neroth, but something about this armor saved me.”

  Taiana’s eyes flew wide. “The armor? Saved you?”

  “It felt like a bloody warhorse kicked me in the chest and it knocked me off my feet,” the Hunter explained. “But the armor stopped the lightning from ripping through my flesh.”

  Taiana’s expression grew pensive as she stared at the blue armor. “How?”

  “Not a clue.” The Hunter shrugged. “It didn’t do much to stop a steel spike, but somehow it’s resistant to the lightning from those Scorchslayers. And, even better, I know where you can find more suits of armor just like them.”

  “Let me guess, on the Elivasti.” Sarcasm echoed in her tone, and she gave him a withering look. “We just have to kill them to get the armor.”

  “Nope.” A broad grin split the Hunter’s face. “I already took care of that part for you. Even hid the bodies out of sight, so the rest of the purple-eyes won’t find them. All you have to do is send Kalil or Cerran to go collect them, and you’ve got ten suits of Elivasti armor handy. Though, I will warn you a few of them have holes in them.” He shrugged. “Not much I could have done about that.”

  “Ten suits of armor?” Taiana’s eyebrows rose, and she stood straighter. “That’s more than enough to replace that bronze rubbish Kalil and Cerran have been using.”

  “Aye, so it is.” The Hunter nodded. “Plus, I tucked away their spikestaffs, so you’ve got enough to spare.”

  “And,” Taiana said, a note of excitement in her voice, “if Arudan has cracked the secret of those Scorchslayers, we’ll finally be able to fight the Elivasti instead of skulking around in the shadows.”

  “Just the four of us?” the Hunter asked.

  “It’s a start.” Taiana’s hands clenched by her sides, and her midnight eyes sparkled. “At last, with the Withering upon us, it is fitting that we prepare to make our stand. I would have liked to have more men at my side to face the Sage and his minions, but we will make do with what we have.”

  Her eyes took on the calculating look of a commander, and she paced the room deep in thought.

  The Hunter didn’t disturb her, but instead strode toward the pile beside the bed where she’d placed his leather armor, long sword, dark cloak, and baldric. It felt good to put his armor back on, even after just a few hours without it. The Elivasti armor was heavy and uncomfortable, though far better than any plate mail he’d ever seen. The lighter leather armor would offer far less protection, but it gave him freedom of movement. For now, he’d wear his own armor, though he’d likely have to don one of the blue suits when the time came to fight the Sage.

  The familiar weight of his long sword and baldric comforted him. He checked to make sure everything was in place, and when he turned, he found Taiana standing in front of the northern wall of their room. Her fingers drummed on the glass, and she said nothing for a long moment.

  Finally, she seemed to make up her mind. “We can’t move yet,” she said in a firm voice. “The Sage is still locked up in Hellsgate, and it’s silly for us to try anything until he comes out into the open.”

  “So what, then?” The Hunter sat on the bed and pulled on a pair of boots Taiana had placed there for him. “We could lurk near Hellsgate, and the moment the Sage leaves—”

  “No, we can’t wait for the Abiarazi, either.” Her voice was firm, confident. “Cerran will go to collect the armor, and Kalil will keep an eye on Hellsgate for any sign of the Sage or word from Garnos.” Her midnight eyes met his, and steely resolve flashed there. “You and I will continue our search of the Keeps for Jaia, and for more Bucelarii still alive.”

  The Hunter nodded. “A solid plan. We could always use a few extra hands in the battle against the Sage.”

  “Precisely.” Taiana strode toward the bed, sat, and began pulling on her own boots. “With the Withering almost upon us, we must move quickly. There are twenty-two Keeps yet to be searched.”

  “Can we get to them all?” the Hunter asked.

  “We have to. Our child is counting on us.” She gripped his hand hard. “And all of Einan as well. The Sage cannot be allowed to free Kharna, no matter what.”

  The Hunter grinned and returned the squeeze. “Good to know we’re on the same page.”

  “Then let’s do this.” She stood, scooped up the suit of Elivasti armor, and strode from the room.

  The Hunter followed her down the stairs. It felt strange not to be in command for once, but he would defer to her in this much. She knew the ways of Enarium far better than he, and the other two Bucelarii followed her orders. Garnos would reach out to her, not him, with news of Hailen or the Sage.

  For now, the smart play would be to let her take charge. The moment she got him close enough to kill the Sage, he’d make his move. His desire to find his daughter wouldn’t trump his mission to protect Hailen or stop the Abiarazi. Nothing would get in his way, not even the other Bucelarii. He’d go through Cerran and Kalil if he had to.

  And what of Taiana? He half-expected to hear the demon ask the question, a mocking edge to its words. The voice in his mind saw treachery and deceit in the eyes of every man, woman, and child. Doubtless it would try to warn him that she would betray him.

  He wanted to push aside the concern—after all, she was his wife, and their missions to stop the Sage and free Jaia aligned. Yet, a part of him recognized that their paths differed. She was concealing something from him, and that knowledge made him hesitant to trust her fully. And, when it came down to it, Taiana put their daughter’s priority ahead of all else. The Hunter could not do that, not with Hailen in danger. He had sacrificed so much to protect the boy—would he be willing to do so again, this time with his wife? Could he turn his back on the daughter he’d never met, all for the sake of a child not of his blo
od?

  He refused to think about it. He’d cross that bridge if, gods forbid, he ever reached it. For now, he had to focus on the present mission.

  “Cerran!” Taiana’s voice rang out in the high-vaulted ballroom with a note of urgency. “Cerran!”

  The red-bearded man appeared in the doorway of the room beside Arudan’s. “What’s the fuss?” He arched a bushy eyebrow.

  “I’ve a mission for you,” Taiana told him.

  “Yes!” Cerran straightened. “Anything to get me away from milkmaid duty. Baldie’s rambling again.”

  Taiana’s spine stiffened at Cerran’s words, and a shadow flashed in her eyes as she turned to the Hunter. “Drayvin brought down a company of purple-eyes last night and hid their bodies. I need you to go and retrieve their armor and weapons.”

  Cerran’s face fell. “Shite, Taiana, here I thought I’d be doing something useful.”

  “Like getting the one thing that will save your life when you face Scorchslayers next?” the Hunter asked, a mocking tone to his voice.

  “What’s he yammering about?” Cerran’s gaze went from Taiana to the Hunter and back again.

  Taiana held up the suit of blue armor and jabbed a finger at the dent in the breastplate. “I’ll give you two guesses at what made that.”

  The red-haired man’s jaw dropped. “Bloody hell!”

  “Bloody hell is right.” She thrust the armor into the red-haired Bucelarii’s hands. “Should’ve ripped him to shreds, but just knocked him back a few feet.”

  “Damn,” Cerran breathed. He glanced at the armor, the Hunter’s chest, and back to the dent in the blue metal.

  “We don’t have time for Arudan to figure out how the armor works,” Taiana continued, “but it’s enough to know it does. If it can turn aside even one of those lightning bolts—”

  “That’s one lightning bolt that doesn’t rip us to bits.” Cerran nodded.

  “There are also several spikestaffs with the bodies,” the Hunter put in, then shrugged. “Though you may have to pull them out of the corpses.”

  Cerran gave a dismissive wave. “I don’t mind a bit of blood on my hands.”

  That seemed a perfect summation of the Bucelarii. If the Hunter’s memories were accurate, a river of human blood stained their hands. They had served as soldiers in the Abiarazi army. Though he could not remember that life, time apparently hadn’t dimmed the red-haired Bucelarii’s warlike nature.

  Cerran fixed the Hunter with a firm gaze. “Just tell me where to find them, and I’m off.”

  The Hunter explained where he’d hidden the bodies behind the boulders outside the city gate.

  “Seriously?” Cerran scowled. “Couldn’t you have dragged them inside the city instead? The Elivasti have almost certainly sent reinforcements to cover the West Gate by now.”

  “I have faith you’ll figure it out,” Taiana said. “Bring it all back here, and gear up for battle.”

  “You saw that crimson cloud, yes?” Cerran asked.

  Taiana nodded. “We have until noon tomorrow to do what we need to. Drayvin and I will get to the Keeps and see if we can find any of our brothers still alive in those Chambers.”

  Something passed across Cerran’s eyes at that, and the Bucelarii’s expression grew unreadable. “Aye, Captain.” He nodded and turned on his heel.

  “Where is Kalil?” Taiana called after the red-haired man.

  Without looking back, Cerran jabbed a finger at Arudan’s chamber, then disappeared down the ladder into the tunnel that led out of the building they called home.

  “What a pleasant fellow.” Sarcasm bled into the Hunter’s voice.

  Taiana ignored the comment as she climbed the stairs toward Arudan’s chamber. She didn’t bother to knock, but opened the door slowly, peering inside.

  The Hunter’s sensitive nostrils caught the coppery tang of blood within, and his gut clenched.

  “Arudan?” she called. When no answer came, she pushed the door open.

  And came face to face with a glowing, humming Scorchslayer pointed directly at her chest.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Hunter leapt past Taiana through the open door and bowled over Kalil. The smaller Elivasti fell hard, and the Scorchslayer flew from the smaller Elivasti’s hands to clatter off to the side of the room. Kalil’s head struck the hardwood floor, stunning him. He had no time to raise his hands in self-defense as the Hunter knelt atop his chest and brought his right fist back for a powerful punch.

  “Drayvin!” Taiana’s voice cracked like a whip. “Wait.”

  The Hunter held back the blow, but he didn’t take his eyes from the fallen Elivasti. “Why?”

  “Let him explain himself,” Taiana insisted.

  “He was pointing the Scorchslayer right at you.”

  “I didn’t…mean to,” mumbled Kalil from beneath the Hunter. He blinked to clear his eyes, but made no move to defend himself. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.”

  The Hunter lowered his fist, but he glared down at the man. “Speak.”

  The words poured from his mouth. “I was just checking out the Scorchslayer, because I had an idea, see, and I wanted to test it to confirm the theory. But then you walked in and it was pointed at Taiana and…”

  “Slow down, Kalil.” Taiana’s voice was firm, with no trace of anger or suspicion.

  The Hunter shot a glance back at Taiana, who shook her head. After a moment, he stood, easing the pressure on Kalil’s chest.

  Kalil drew in a deep breath. “Look.” He held up his right hand. The light of the glowing globes sitting on the table revealed his palm stained with crimson, and the Hunter’s nostrils filled with the scent of drying blood. “We know that most of the Serenii magicks are activated by Serenii blood, which means Elivasti blood. So I thought maybe it would be the same with whatever powers these things.”

  “But you aren’t Elivasti,” the Hunter said.

  “The blood is.” Kalil shot a wary glance at the Hunter before climbing to his feet with a wince. His left hand rubbed his chest where the Hunter had knelt. “I ran across a drunk Elivasti stupid enough to leave his company, and it was too good an opportunity to pass up. And, as I suspected, his blood was enough to activate the Scorchslayer.”

  He turned and strode toward a darkened corner of the room that the globelight failed to illuminate. The corpse of an Elivasti sagged against the wall, not yet rigid in the stiffness of death. His neck had been broken, and a large gash had been carved down his forearm. Though his heart no longer pumped, the kill was fresh enough that the blood had barely begun to pool.

  “Watch.” Kalil dipped three fingers of his right hand into the Elivasti’s blood, then walked over and picked up the Scorchslayer. The moment he placed his crimson-stained fingers against the translucent stone where the trigger of a crossbow would be, the stone flared to life, though with blue light instead of crimson like Soulhunger’s gemstone. Blue runes glowed along length of the stock and a loud humming filled the small room. The man pulled his hand away a moment later, before the weapon could fire, and turned to Taiana with a grin of triumph. “See?”

  The Hunter picked up the second Scorchslayer, the one he’d brought for Arudan to study. It sat against a wall, nearly buried beneath a mound of ancient scrolls next to a stack of stone tablets. He studied the gemstone trigger and found a small, sharp needle set into the stone. The weapon literally consumed the Elivasti’s blood—just as the stones lining the walls of Khar’nath.

  “So it only works with Elivasti blood,” Taiana mused. Her expression had grown pensive, and she tapped her frown-twisted lips with a finger. “Which means we need to get close enough to spill Elivasti blood before we can use them.”

  Kalil’s face turned crestfallen. “Not the ideal solution, I know.”

  “Not ideal, but still a good one.” Taiana placed a hand on the smaller man’s shoulder. “In the heat of battle, plenty of Elivasti blood will flow. Your discovery could prove valuable. Perhaps it will even turn
the tide in our favor.”

  Kalil’s patchy beard and eager smile made him seem so young—hard to believe he was thousands of years old like the Hunter and Taiana.

  “But now I have a new mission for you,” Taiana said, setting the Scorchslayer down on the table. “I need you to go to Hellsgate and keep an eye on the front. The moment the Sage shows his face…”

  As Taiana gave Kalil instructions, the Hunter’s attention wandered to Arudan. The hairless, white-skinned Bucelarii had remained seated in his stuffed armchair throughout the entire ordeal with the Scorchslayer. He hunched over one of the stone tablets, concentration deepening the lines of his face. His lips moved as he read, and he didn’t look up at the Hunter’s approach. The Hunter had to crouch in front of the man to understand the words he muttered aloud.

  “…Flaming Tansy only blooms under the full moon,” he was saying. “Planting it to the east of South Keep allows the ghoulstone to magnify the rays of moonlight to speed up growth, thus producing a larger flower with more potency and greater heat production when distilled.”

  The Hunter shook his head. Once again, he’d gotten himself lost in the Serenii texts on gardening and caring for plants, as he had earlier. Perhaps he didn’t even remember Taiana’s instructions to study the runes on the Scorchslayer. As the woman had said, his mind struggled to retain new information—it was simply too full of memories. The curse of a long life indeed.

  He stood and was about to leave, when Arudan’s whispered words caught his attention. He froze, his keen ears listening to the man’s mutterings.

  “…growth cannot be rushed, for opia will only serve its purpose once it has come to full maturity. Direct sunlight is required, so my recommendation is that the plant is grown in direct sunlight.”

  Hope surged within the Hunter at mention of the plant. Opia, the little purple berry known as the “fruit of the gods”. The plant that would purge the Irrsinnon and free Hailen from the curse of his ancestors.