The Silver Sorceress (The Raveling Book 2)

by Alec Hutson

  “Weaver,” he said, and she turned to him. He forced himself to hold her unnatural gaze, suppressing a shiver. “How do you feel?”

  With agonizing slowness, she swallowed the snake she’d been chewing. “I have been gutted,” she finally said, her voice hollow. “Everything inside me has been scooped out. There is nothing but emptiness and this… this light.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  She blinked slowly. “My body hurts. They cut me. Whipped and burned me. But inside, now… I feel nothing. And that is far worse.”

  “Weaver… ”

  “The Weaver is dead,” she said harshly. “Alyanna is dead. She was a sorceress.” Tears streaked her face, though she did not sob or cry out. They glowed bright at first, flashing as they fell, but by the time they reached the edge of her face the light had faded. “And I am not one anymore.”

  Troubled, Demian stood and heaved another armful of grass on to the fire. Alyanna had the strongest will of anyone he had ever met, but could any mind withstand what she had suffered at the hands of the inquisitors and the genthyaki?

  “Where are we going, Demian?”

  It was the first question she’d asked of him since the rescue.

  “Where he cannot reach you. Where you will be safe.”

  “Nowhere is safe,” she countered bitterly. “His hate has been stoked by a thousand years of slavery. He will hunt me down and drag me back beneath the palace and devour what’s left of my soul. I know it. He brought slaves and showed me how he feasted, how he drank the mind, sucked it like insects do blood and left them drooling idiots. He will find me.”

  “There is one place he cannot go.”

  She glanced at him sharply. Demian saw confusion and hope… and then a dawning realization that made her face pale. “No,” she whispered, her voice now edged by fear. “Not there.”

  “It is a sanctuary from the outside world. Nothing can enter the mountain without the daymo’s knowledge. And even a genthyaki cannot stand before the kith’ketan within their home.”

  Alyanna bowed her head. “I failed him. The bargain was for the boy Keilan.”

  “We failed, as did his shadowblades. But failure is not betrayal. We still have an agreement—it has just not yet been fulfilled.”

  She raised her face to him, the tracks left by her tears glistening in the firelight. “Why are you doing this, Demian?” she whispered. “Why not leave me to the fate I deserve?”

  He stared into the flames, wondering how he could answer this. After so many centuries, how could she still not know?

  “Weaver, I –”

  Suddenly she gasped, twisting around to stare at the wall of grass behind her.

  “What –” he began, but then he sensed it as well. Points of searing emptiness, rushing closer, burning bright in the endless dark expanse.

  The Pure were coming for them.

  “Behind me,” Demian said, drawing Malazinischel, and the surge of excitement from his sword made him shiver.

  On trembling legs Alyanna scrambled across the clearing he had made, collapsing a few paces from where he stood. As she crawled past him, he kept his eyes trained on the darkness. The paladins had slowed; they were approaching cautiously. The Pure knew their prey was trapped.

  “Give me a blade,” Alyanna pleaded. “Something sharp. I won’t go back. I won’t.”

  Demian slipped his dagger from its sheath at his waist and tossed it in the grass near her. “Do not kill yourself until you are certain I’m dead.”

  Motes of light appeared in the distance, faint and glimmering. They could have been fireflies, but they did not flicker or dance. Or perhaps candles held up above the grass, if they were not so oddly paired.

  The first of the Pure emerged from the long grass. He was tall and pale, with high, aristocratic features that perfectly represented the ideal of Menekarian nobility. His white-scale cuirass and the copper hilt of the white-metal sword he held gleamed in the firelight, as did the sunburst of Ama emblazoned on his shield. Red tattoos webbed his shorn head, squirming symbols that Demian had once been told recounted the ancient history of their order. The Pure stared at Demian with burning eyes, his face impassive, as two more of the paladins pushed from the grass to stand on either side of him. Three of them. Demian’s heart fell.

  “Thief,” the first paladin said, setting the point of his sword in the flattened grass and resting his gauntleted hands on the hilt, “who are you?”

  “No one,” Demian said, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet.

  The leader of the three cocked his head to one side, as if Demian was some strange puzzle that must be solved. “Unlikely. You penetrated beneath the palace and stole away the recently Cleansed. And while I sense no sorcery in you, its foul odor is heavy in the air.”

  “He is one of the Crimson Queen’s magisters,” said the paladin to his left, a stocky older warrior. “So he knows how to hide his power, like the one in the audience chamber.”

  The first paladin seemed to consider this. “Do you belong to the queen of Dymoria?”

  Demian smirked and said nothing, and the Pure sighed, raising his sword. “You are dead, but I can promise you it will be quick if you tell me who your master is.”

  “I have no master.”

  The Pure shook his head, as if amazed by this foolishness. “We all have masters, thief. Now I command you to tell me who you are.” As he spoke the other paladins fanned out, their white-metal swords extended.

  “Who am I?” Demian said, settling into the third movement of the blue cantata, his blade held high. “I am a green wizard of Kashkana, greatest of the lost cities. I am the last of the swordsingers of the Kalyuni Imperium. I am one who has bargained with what coils deep beneath the mountain and has returned to the light. I am Demian, brother of Demichus, and I am your death, slave.”

  With a thought Demian compelled the fire behind him to blaze higher, and the shadow thrown by Alyanna stretched farther. The paladins drew back a step as the flames exploded with a whoosh towards the sky, but they quickly recovered and began to close on Demian from different sides. He lunged towards Alyanna’s shadow, slipping into the other place; one moment his boot crunched on flattened grass, and the next he was running on the pathway of cracked stones floating in the empty darkness. Innumerable glowing doorways spread before him, all formed by the shadows thrown by the firelight. Three were larger than the others and Demian dashed towards the nearest and leapt through it, his sword already arcing.

  “– dowblade!” he heard, his ears popping as he passed from the terrible silence of the paths back into the cacophony of this world.

  He expected his blade to find the paladin’s unprotected neck, but to his shock a white-metal sword met Malazinischel and turned his blow aside. The paladin had twisted around and brought his sword up, assuming an attack would come from behind him. Demian’s balance was thrown, and he stumbled forward; he had only a momentary glimpse of a sunburst etched into steel before the Pure’s shield slammed into his face.

  An explosion of light filled his vision as his nose broke. Despite a wave of dizziness, he threw himself backwards without hesitation, knowing what was coming. He felt the tip of the white-metal sword slice through his outer garments, parting the ringmail coat he wore underneath as easily as if it were cloth and leaving a burning line across his ribs. Not deep enough to wound him seriously, though. Fighting through the spots flaring in his eyes Demian brought Malazinischel up to turn aside another sweeping cut of the paladin’s sword. The Pure pressed him, hammering his guard with powerful blows that made his arm go numb; it had been centuries since he’d fought one of Ama’s warriors, and he’d forgotten how inhumanely strong and fast they were. He could sense the other paladins approaching, waiting for their chance to strike. Demian tried to put his back to the edge of the clearing he’d made, so that the paladins would have to wade out i
nto the grass if they wanted to flank him. It also meant, though, that he could not retreat any further without backing up blindly, and he would prefer not to risk his footing in the long grass.

  Demian tasted the blood dripping from his shattered nose, and this seemed to help clear his head. His parries and blocks became less desperate; yes, the paladin was stronger than any mortal man had any right to be, but there was no elegance to his technique, no transcendent skill.

  He was no swordsinger.

  Finally off his heels, Demian switched from the blue cantata—which prioritized defense—to the red. Malazinischel flickered out, scraping the paladin’s shield and raising a scattering of sparks. The paladin tried to regain the initiative with a quick thrust, but Demian caught the edge of the white-metal sword on the broad part of his blade and sent it skittering wide. Before the Pure could recover Demian lashed out with his sword, slipping past the sunburst shield and scoring the paladin’s side. Malazinischel sliced through the scale cuirass, and grunting in pain the Pure retreated, dropping his shield to put his hand over the wound. Usually, such a light touch would barely affect a hardened warrior—but Malazinischel was not just any sword.

  The paladin did not know it, but he was already dead.

  “For Ama!” cried one of the remaining paladins as he rushed in to defend his wounded captain. He fought one-handed, like Demian, choosing mobility and speed over the protection offered by a shield.

  Good. This was the style of the swordsinger.

  Their blades came together in a flurry of strikes and counters. This paladin was an even better swordsman than the other, and Demian was forced back into the long grass. He felt more than saw the other Pure circling to his left, and he gritted his teeth, trying to shift his stance so that both paladins remained in his field of vision. Realizing what he was trying to do the paladin he was engaged with also moved to his left, trying to force Demian to turn away from his companion. He lunged forward in an attempt to draw Demian’s complete attention, but he hurried the strike and slightly overextended himself. Demian caught the white metal blade with Malazinischel, letting the paladin’s sword scrape down the length of his own until it clanged against his crossguard. With a violent twist he locked the paladin’s sword in place, and then thrust forward with Malazinischel, catching the paladin in his throat. The gorget he wore parted like silk, blood spraying as his head was mostly severed from his neck.

  It was the cry of rage and sorrow that saved Demian’s life. He twisted, ripping his sword from the ruin of the other paladin’s neck, bringing it around in blind desperation to try and block what he knew was coming. He was lucky—he deflected a blow that would have gutted him so that instead of plunging into his belly it sliced open his side. He stumbled and nearly fell, feeling like a chunk of him had just been carved away—it was the same area as the wound he had taken in Saltstone, though he could already tell it was much more serious. Demian slipped to one knee, fighting back the red mist that threatened to carry him off. The paladin attacked again, all pretense of composure abandoned, hacking downward. His sword was a pale crescent in the dimness, an arc of moonlight descending to cleave Demian in half.

  No.

  With all his remaining strength Demian brought up Malazinischel to turn aside the sword, then thrust forward, spearing the paladin through his belly. The white armor offered no resistance, Malazinischel sliding smoothly through and emerging from the paladin’s back. Burning eyes stared in confusion at the length of cracked steel disappearing into his body, and then Demian withdrew the sword with a wrenching effort that sent him tumbling face first into the grass. From somewhere far away he heard the paladin fall.

  Every breath was agony, and he tasted dirt and blood. He groaned, trying to turn over, but it was like a great weight was pressing on his back, grinding him into the earth. His life was leaking away, but he couldn’t stop it; it was slipping through his fingers like water…

  Hands on his shoulders, struggling to turn him over. At first he was too heavy, but finally with a great heave he was rolled onto his back, the fresh cuts in his side burning. The blood from his crushed nose had gotten into his eyes, and with a shaking hand he tried to wipe his vision clean. Someone was yelling his name from a great distance.

  “Demian!”

  It was the Weaver’s voice, and he followed it back.

  With the twilight sight of the kith’ketan he saw Alyanna above him, her eyes glowing; she was framed by an endless profusion of stars, stars she had shown him in her dream were balls of fiery twine that would eventually unspool and drift down to this world like gleaming serpents…

  “Demian, can you hear me?”

  He swallowed away the blood in his mouth. “Yes. I’m… I’m cut. There are… ngg… there are ointments and bandages in my saddle bags.”

  She vanished, and the stars rushed in to fill the void. He noticed he was at the bottom of a hole—no, that was the grass, rising up around him. Why was there grass here? Where was he?

  The twilit Alyanna returned, and Demian felt his shirt being cut away, then blinding pain as she struggled to remove the ringmail he wore beneath.

  With the agony came clarity. He gripped Alyanna’s small hand with blood-slicked fingers. “Weaver,” he gasped, “we must go to the mountain. Others will come—the Pure, the false-man. Only there will we be safe. Ride for the Spine. Ride… ”

  The first indication that he was nearly home was a stone by the roadside carved with the word ‘Chale’ and the number twelve. It was weathered and moss-encrusted, a remnant from an earlier age before the Brothers’ War had shattered the kingdoms into countless jostling baronies and dukedoms.

  “That’s the name of the town closest to my village,” Keilan told Nel and Senacus as they paused beside the marker to eat some dried meat.

  “So do we go there first?” Nel asked, spitting out a piece of gristle.

  Keilan shook his head. “No. A little ways on from here will be a path that splits from the road. If we follow that southeast for a few more leagues it’ll lead us to my village.”

  “Does your village have a name? I’ve never heard you mention it.”

  Keilan was surprised that he actually had to think for a moment. “Yes. It’s Tol Fen, but we never used it. We just called it ‘the village’.

  “I suppose if you never go anywhere else you don’t need a name,” Nel admitted, wrapping what meat was left in a few dry leaves and storing it again in her saddlebags. She glanced over at Keilan when she finished. “Are you prepared?”

  He nodded, hoping he truly was.

  The deepening light made the forest around them burn brighter. Most of the trees here were bloodbarks, which were common in the Kingdoms. Where most leaves in other lands changed from green to orange and then molted, the foliage of the bloodbark had a final hue that lasted well into winter—a brilliant, bloody red. And Keilan and the others had happened to arrive in those waning days of the old year when the leaves were the deepest shade of crimson, just before the cold winds would strip the branches bare. It was beautiful—but the nervous fluttering in Keilan’s stomach kept him from appreciating the late season splendor. His thoughts were on his village, and what he’d find there.

  Soon he recognized some landmarks: an ancient tree he’d watched Sella try and climb, a mossy boulder where they had played ‘lord of the mountain’ with other children many years ago, a thin stream trickling over slick black stones.

  Keilan was reliving some of these lost moments when the sound of something blundering through the fallen leaves came from the woods up ahead. He peered among the branches, expecting to see a deer bounding away through the trees. Instead, he caught a flash of yellow hair as a boy fled into the thicket like he had glimpsed one of the Shael’s demon tricksters coming down the path. Probably he’d been out here checking on snares and hadn’t expected to see three mounted strangers—and since it was a rare day when anyone
visited their village, it did make sense that the boy would want to be the first to deliver the news… but Keilan felt a little trickle of concern that the boy had recognized him. How would the villagers react to his return?

  He had his answer not long after. They blocked the path, a dozen men from his village, brandishing axes, fishhooks and torches. His uncle Davin was among them, tall and spindly and stooped, his face twisted into a scowl. Keilan recognized many of the same faces who had come to his door looking for his mother that terrible night. Davin’s fat son Malik was there as well, smiling viciously, his piggish eyes narrowed in anticipation.

  “What a friendly-looking welcoming party,” Nel said out of the side of her mouth. “Is it possible they think we’re brigands?”

  “They know who I am,” Keilan said softly, holding his uncle’s stare. He kicked his horse ahead a few steps and addressed the villagers.

  “Davin, Soman… I’ve come back.”

  His uncle turned and spat. “Aye. And it’s an ill thing. Turn around, boy. We want no part of your deviltry.” He squinted at Senacus. “Why did you bring him back, milord?”

  The Pure did not answer, waiting for Keilan to continue.

  His gaze roamed the crowd; most of the faces were set hard, but he thought he saw a few that looked conflicted.

  “Benj,” he called out, and the big man jumped as if Keilan had jabbed him with a stick. “How are things in the village?”

  Benj swallowed, glancing over to Davin, but before he could answer Keilan’s uncle spoke.

  “You ain’t welcome here, boy.”

  Keilan gritted his teeth, trying to keep his anger in check. “Davin, I –”

  “You come about your da?” Malik said, and there was something in his voice that chilled Keilan. “You heard about him?”

  He didn’t want to know. He didn’t.