Borne Rising

by Matthew Callahan

  His noctori.

  Mad had not seen them in nearly two years, but he would have recognized them anywhere. He felt a pang of longing at their proximity but forced himself not to rush; he was certainly not out of danger yet. Slow down, idiot. Don’t get excited and screw this up.

  He scanned the clearing and saw no sign of Ileta. He looked up, one of the earliest lessons she had drilled into him—“No one ever thinks to look up until it is too late and they’ve got a dagger protruding from their neck”—and saw nothing.

  He was just about to move when he saw it. A distortion, something slightly off in the grey haze of the sky. He couldn’t describe it exactly, but he didn’t need to. Ileta’d schooled him enough to know that, when dealing with a Shadowborne, if something looks askew then it probably is. Locking the location into his mind’s eye, he cleared the rest of the area. This is it, then.

  He tentatively probed the area directly in front of him with his Shade. There was nothing. She knows I’m coming, though. She’s here somewhere.

  Eyeing the density of the fog, Madigan manipulated his Shade to match the surrounding air. Draped around him, the Shade would be the perfect camouflage for such a day.

  Don’t get cocky. She’s probably masked in the same pattern.

  Edging forward, Madigan crept into the clearing. He glanced at the floating anomaly. It hadn’t changed. He moved again, the wrap of his Shade dulling the pain of his arms. Like a soothing balm, the Shadow energy was slowly and delicately reweaving the broken fibers of his skin and flesh, rebuilding what had been damaged. The energy wasn’t even close to the capabilities of Will’s blood fangs, but it was something, nonetheless.

  He paused ten feet from his goal; only a few moments until he could reclaim his grandfather’s gift. Blood pounded in his ears. Five feet. Three. Madigan grinned. Bracing his less-damaged arm on the log, he reached out a shaky hand to grasp his prize.

  A jade dagger shot upward from the trunk. The blade pierced Madigan’s forearm and lodged solidly between the bones.

  Mad shrieked in pain and rolled away, all thoughts of stealth abandoned. The log exploded, hard wooden splinters slicing toward him. Madigan’s Shade barely deflected them in time. He scrambled backward, shuffling awkwardly, then scrambled to his feet and gripped the blade protruding from his arm. Just then, the surrounding fog shifted and billowed into a single stream.

  Madigan let out a low groan, realizing his error. The stream of fog collided into him like a sledgehammer, propelling him backward. He flew through the air and crashed into the underbrush at the edge of the woods. Dazed, he planted his feet and dug his Shade into the ground to brace against the blast. Deflecting the wave with his Shade, he charged against the onslaught, driving a wedge into it.

  The resistance broke and the stream of fog faded. Mad stopped running and held his ground. Ileta stood before him, a wry smile on her angular face. When they first met, he’d found the smile unfathomably attractive. Now, all it did was unnerve him.

  The morning fog was gone. The strange anomaly that hung in the air was gone as well. Madigan cursed himself for falling for such an obvious deception. All a goddam distraction, all of it. Suddenly conscious of the blood loss from his arm, Madigan knew he had to act fast.

  He squared off before his instructor. His hackles rose at a subtle shift in the wind. No, not the wind. He eyed Ileta. There it is.

  She was twisting the expanse of her Shade in such a dispersion that it became nearly invisible. Madigan took a tentative step forward, and the gust increased a hundredfold, launching him into the air. Too late, he sought to ground himself with his own Shade. Thrown off balance, he tumbled through the air toward Ileta.

  Completely out of control, Madigan hurtled across the clearing. The smiling Shadowborne took a single step toward him. Her arm flashed out and caught him just above the ear with a blow that rocked his vision and his equilibrium. She drove him to the ground and Madigan collapsed at her feet. Her swirling Shade’s force immediately calmed. The ground was a cloudy haze. His ears rang, but not so much that he didn’t hear her disappointed sigh. She turned her back to him and stepped away.

  Madigan struck. In a fury, he tore the dagger from his arm and whirled on Ileta. She spun, sensing the attack. Before he could close the short distance between them, she vanished into a darkness so impossibly black that his mind could hardly register it. In the same instant, the clearing blazed in a blinding, brilliant display of light.

  Madigan cried out. The dagger fell from his hands as he desperately sought to shield his vision. His eyes ached at the intense brightness. Then he was airborne again, flying back from a sudden shockwave. He slammed into the ground and the breath was driven from his body.

  “Enough.” Ileta’s voice was harsh and she held up a hand. “At this point you’re only going to succeed in injuring yourself further and I don’t have time to put you back together.”

  Madigan coughed. “I’ve got you on the ropes.” The words came out in a wheeze. “But I’ll let you off this time.”

  “Staunch those,” she said, raising her eyebrows and looking at his bleeding arms. “It won’t do for you to bleed out and make all this for nothing.”

  Madigan wheezed and forced himself to sit up. He condensed his Shade around his mangled limbs, pressing the broken flesh and sinew together. Cool and soothing relief flooded the limbs. He trusted the Shade to knit them in the strange, surreal fashion that it always did. Nonetheless, his arms wouldn’t fully recover for weeks. Assuming nothing else screws them up more.

  “That was a ridiculous attempt,” Ileta went on. “Striking at my back like that? Come now, Madigan. I expect more from you.”

  “It was a feint,” he lied.

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “You know better than that. Throw no feints. Do not hesitate. Act. If your opponent reacts before you complete your strike—”

  “Change your attack into one that undermines their committed defense,” he finished for her. “I know. It . . . it wasn’t a feint. It was frustration.”

  “Obviously.”

  He clamped his mouth shut and turned his attention to the fallen pieces of his noctori, scattered in the eruption of the downed log. That goddam log. How had it not even occurred to him that she was hiding inside it? It seemed so obvious now.

  As though she had heard his thoughts, Ileta smirked. “You have a tendency to overcomplicate things. You’re looking for the most well-hidden traps and letting what should be obvious just pass you by.” She cocked her head to the side and chuckled. “You really need to fix that.”

  Mad grumbled and didn’t meet her eyes. “I’m working on it.”

  All humor left her face. “Work harder. You’ve been ‘working on it’ for a while. At some point, you’re going to need to actually succeed.”

  Madigan said nothing. While her words were harsh and her demeanor left much to be desired, he knew it was all worth it. It had to be. Ileta was skilled. Brutal, but skilled. There was a ferocity about her that pushed him to excel. Where his grandfather had always held back at the last moment, had kept things safe, Ileta struck. She had no problem with punishing him in battle and leaving him with injuries as reminders.

  “Go.” She bent down and pocketed both pieces of his noctori. “Make food. Clean yourself up first. I don’t want your blood dripping into it.”

  Without a word, Madigan nodded and headed for their camp. He fought back the frustration. Every goddam time. How does she do it?

  She was still a mystery, his strange instructor. He still didn’t know who she really was, where she had come from. Even in their long time together, she had remained more tight-lipped than even Cephora.

  Cephora. Madigan scowled. The Seeker had been so much more than she let on, he now knew. Capable of more. And she left Will to die. She could have stood and fought. The three of them—four, if that bastard Lightborne had gotten off his ass to help—could have taken Valmont. At the very least, they could have shown him that they were a force to
be reckoned with. But no. Cephora had chosen flight and abandonment and yet somehow, somehow she had still been surprised when he, in turn, had abandoned her.

  Her refusal to go back for Will. Her misdirection in leading him to Greygarde, the den of the Seekers, to suit her own needs. Her stubborn, tight-lipped way of keeping her plans to herself. She’d led him down a series of subtle backstabs and betrayals that pushed him to a near breaking point. Ileta’s sudden appearance on a blank expanse of road one day when he was railing and yelling at the Seeker had seemed like divine providence.

  Mad glanced back at his instructor. In the two years since, he’d learned little more about her than he had that first day. All that mattered was that she was a far more skilled Shadowborne than he had ever dreamt of being, and she wanted to train him. And all these damn Aerillians are secretive anyway.

  He could deal with that. He didn’t need to know the secret of who she was; he needed the secrets of what she could teach. The lessons were brutal and painful, but Ileta was teaching him. She held answers and offered them regularly enough, even if he didn’t want to hear them. That was something Cephora had never done.

  Madigan grimaced, catching himself clenching his fists. His arms ached fiercely, but the cool Shade was numbing enough that he could put it far from his focus. How quickly the brain can adjust to pain. He shook his head. If only Will got to know more about being Shadowborne.

  He looked down at the dark, cloudy cast of his own Shade over his arms. He was still astonished by the capabilities of the damn thing. No. He stopped himself. The Shade wasn’t something separate from him, wasn’t something transcendent of him. Madigan was still surprised by his own capabilities.

  And that’s all thanks to Ileta. Her and the Umbriferum.

  Yet another topic she kept her mouth shut on. Her own formal training was apparent and, from what Mad knew, that meant the Halls of Shadow. But like everything else, she remained tight-lipped and scowled whenever he brought it up. She had known the ranks of the Order to some extent, had been trained by someone, that much was obvious. But who?

  That train of thought was the one that unnerved him most, the one that kept him awake at night: who was she serving now? She would not tell him; not how she found him on the road, not where she came from, nothing.

  Madigan forced himself to suppress his suspicions. As long as I get what I need out of this whole goddam mess. As long as I get strong enough to find Will. As long as I make sure I know how to pass all this on.

  Assuming Will’s alive and has his Shade back.

  The Shade was more than Jervin had ever let on, more than Jervin could possibly have understood. No one but a Borne truly could. Madigan returned his attention to it, feeling the power twisting and cooling his injuries. The Shadow energy poured over him in its invisible cascade, amplified by the key he wore. Mad still had no idea how it worked, but hot damn, it was awesome. Just imagine if I had Will’s, too. Doubling down on this would be . . .

  A terrible thought stopped him in his tracks: Did Valmont have his brother’s key?

  Fury boiled inside him. Damn Cephora. Damn her. After everything that had happened, Valmont had been alive. Will was right. Morella, too, for that matter. And we didn’t consider their concerns for one goddam second. Oh, Madigan entertained it in the depths of the Shale, sure. But as soon as he saw the imprisoned din’Dael, he immediately reverted to his false belief in the mad sorcerer’s death.

  Mad’s eyes stung thinking about Will and those final weeks together. I let you down, kid.

  Perhaps nothing would have changed if Mad had believed him, but he could not help but think they would have been more prepared. Trod more carefully. Something. Instead, they’d been caught unawares, literally sleeping, when the man and his entire goddam army appeared from nowhere. I got comfortable. Let my guard down. Even when Mad had been prepared to fight the man, Valmont hadn’t looked the slightest bit concerned, as though Mad and Will were utterly insignificant.

  No, not insignificant. Otherwise he would not have come after us.

  Not for the first time, Madigan spiraled down the question of Valmont. Why had he come? How had he come? And why had he not struck them down immediately—why had he alerted them?

  Frustrated, Mad shook his head and pinched his eyes. As ever, there were too many factors he didn’t understand. All he knew was that he’d lost Will, his only family, and he hadn’t been able to do a damn thing about it since.

  So, he took the pain of Ileta’s training. He took the risk of trusting her. He trained to improve. Whether it was to rescue his brother or to avenge the deaths of his family, all Mad knew was that he had to train to be more. To become more than Shadowborne. To be better than Shadowborne.

  To be better than Valmont.

  6

  Flames of Light

  The blazing inferno of Radiance stormed around Will. The flames bit at him, their teeth fiery knives against his skin. He inhaled the ashes of his simple robes. His body was naked, exposed before the Lightborne, his brethren. All watched while their Blades unleashed their fires upon Will. He suppressed the awkward shame that bubbled within him. We are one people, William, din’Dael had said. We are all the same within the heart of the flames.

  The pain was excruciating, but Will’s tears evaporated before they could fill his eyes. Again and again, the power built into a burning crescendo. Again and again, he fought the urge to fall to his knees and cry out. Show no weakness, din’Dael had told him. Be their beacon, their blazing justice. Will did as instructed. He did not flinch. He bore the flames.

  Jero din’Dael, Revenant of Light, approached. The Maddened Flame wore thin tan robes and no shoes. The hood of his robe was drawn back and his eyes flickered with white fire. He held a milky dagger in his hand. Something about it seemed immediately familiar to Will. Din’Dael stepped into the torrent of fire and approached him.

  There was no release from the surging power of the surrounding Blades when the Revenant approached Will, no lessening of power. The thin robe burned into nothing in a matter of seconds. Din’Dael raised the dagger above Will’s head. Will grit his teeth, closed his eyes, and bowed his head.

  Jero din’Dael brought the blade down and began his work. Will could feel the hot metal working across his scalp, felt the already-short hair falling only to be burnt away the moment it was separated from his body. Why now and not before? All the while, the Flares of the Blades worked their fury against the two men. Will’s mind wandered, blocking out the crackling whips of fire and lightning, growing numb. He did not falter.

  The surrounding Flares ceased. The dagger left his skin and Will opened his eyes. He knew what came next; din’Dael had told him that much, but still he clenched his jaw against it. He held out both arms, palms raised. The Blades dropped to their knees and placed one hand on the ground while outstretching their other. A low, ritualistic hum emerged from them, echoing through the massive chamber.

  “You are the very fires of Radiance,” din’Dael said. “You are the Blade of Flaming Light.”

  That’s the cue. Will braced himself and drew out his Flare. Blue and white lightning danced across his skin. Jero din’Dael placed the dagger along his wrists and Will surged his power. In the same instant, din’Dael brought the blade back across them in one quick motion. Din’Dael, swift and precise, placed the dagger in Will’s hands and stepped back.

  Blood pouring from his opened arteries, Will raised the blade into the air, lightning from his Flare crackling along its edge. His vision wavered. His fingers felt thick and foreign. Only a handful of seconds had passed but he was rapidly weakening. The room narrowed. The roar of the flames muted. Din’Dael’s hands clasped either side of his face and Will knew the moment had come.

  Both men surged in a cloud of brilliant light. White lightning erupted from the hands of the surrounding Blades as they joined their powers with the two men standing in their center. Will briefly saw din’Dael’s hand glow green, then his vision went dark. Only the soun
d of screams amidst the roaring crackle of lightning remained.

  The lightning ceased. Will collapsed, the dagger held limply in his hand. The air smelled of electricity and ash. Dark spots danced across the back of his eyelids from the brilliant lights. Up, he urged himself. Get up, Will. You’re not done yet.

  Weakly, he rose to his knees. Blackened, scorched trails of dried blood covered his arms and the surrounding dais, but his wounds had been mended, cauterized in the way of Radiance. His head pounded. The surge from din’Dael had had the force of colliding freight trains. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. He forced himself to maintain an impassive expression, praying that he would not pass out.

  “Who you once were has been burned away.” Din’Dael’s booming voice echoed through the room. Will saw two of the man for a moment, then blinked the vision away. “You are a phoenix, strength reborn from the ashes of weakness.”

  The Sapholux echoed with the words, whispered like a prayer by the surrounding Lightborne. Will took a tentative breath; his lungs were already beginning to feel normal again.

  “This man came to us a stranger. An outsider. An unknown,” din’Dael continued. His voice hurt Will’s ears. “But within him, we found Light.”

  “We found Light,” echoed the Lightborne.

  “Light,” din’Dael said, turning his attention back to Will, “to drive away darkness. Light to burn away the shadows. Light to purify.”

  “Light to purify,” the Lightborne repeated.

  Will met din’Dael’s gaze and saw that the man had covered himself with a new robe. The Revenant smiled down at him. “Within these ancient walls, William Davis was burnt to ash.” He paused and let out a wry, toothy smile as he approached Will. “And now, within these ancient walls, a new man has risen from the flames.”