by Brent Weeks
“There’s something here that resists me,” Eyes said. “The stream’s winning. The Shadowcloaked makes it worse.”
“Let it go,” Feir said. “Stay with me.”
Kylar felt whatever had been pulling him open drop away, though his body was still bound in place. Dorian rocked back on his heels, and Feir grabbed his shoulders in meaty hands and held him up.
“What’d you call me? Who are you?” Kylar demanded.
Dorian smirked, regaining his balance as if by the force of good humor alone. “You ask who we are, Wearer of Names? It’s Kylar now, isn’t it? Old Jaeran punning. I like that. Was that your sense of humor, or Blint’s?” At the startled look on Kylar’s face, he said, “Blint’s apparently.”
Dorian looked through Kylar again, as if there were a list inside him that he was reading. “The Nameless. Marati. Cwellar. Spex. Kylar. Even Kagé, not terribly original, that.”
“What?” Kylar asked. This was ridiculous. Who were these men?
“Sa’kagé means Lords of the Shadow,” Dorian said. “Thus Kagé means ‘Shadow,’ but I don’t suppose that one’s your fault. In any case, you ought to be more curious. Did it never occur to you to wonder why your peers had common names like Jarl, or Bim, or slave names like Doll Girl or Rat, and you were burdened with Azoth?”
Kylar went cold. He’d heard that wytches could read minds, but he’d never believed it. And those names. That wasn’t a random list. “You’re wytches. Both of you.”
Feir and Dorian looked at each other.
“Half right,” Dorian said.
“A little less than half, really,” Feir said.
“But I was a wytch,” Dorian said. “Or, more properly, a meister. If you ever have the misfortune of meeting one, you may not want to use a slur.”
“What are you?” Kylar asked.
“Friends,” Dorian said. “We’ve made a long journey to help you. Well, not only to help you, but to help you and—”
“And we’ve come at great personal cost and greater risk,” Feir interrupted, looking at Dorian sharply.
“We hope you have no doubt that we could kill you. That if we wished you harm, we could have already done it,” Dorian said.
“There are more types of harm than just killing. A wetboy knows that,” Kylar said.
Dorian smiled, but Feir still looked wary. Kylar felt the bonds release him. That unnerved him. They’d seen how fast he could move and yet they released him, armed.
“Allow me to introduce us,” Dorian said. “This is Feir Cousat, one day to be the most renowned swordsmith in all Midcyru. He is Vy’sana and a Blademaster of the Second Echelon.”
Great. “And you?” Kylar asked.
“You won’t believe me.” Dorian was enjoying this.
“Try me.”
“I am Sa’seuran and Hoth’salar, and once a Vürdmeister of the twelfth shu’ra.”
“Impressive.” Kylar had no idea what those were.
“What should be important to you is that I’m a prophet. My name is Dorian,” Dorian said with a native Khalidoran accent. “Dorian Ursuul.”
“You were right,” Feir said. “He doesn’t believe you.”
Aside from carelessness, the only things that could kill wetboys were other wetboys, mages, and wytches. In Blint’s estimation, wytches were the worst. He hadn’t neglected Kylar’s education. “Let me see your arms,” Kylar said.
“Ah, so you know about the vir,” Dorian said. “How much do you know about them?” Dorian bared his arms to the elbows. There were no marks on them.
“I know that all wytches have them, that they grow in proportion to the wytch’s power and their intricacy shows the wytch’s level of mastery,” Kylar said.
“Don’t do it, Dorian,” Feir said. “I’m not going to lose you over this. Let’s tell him the words and get the hell out of here.”
Dorian ignored him. “Only men and women who are Talented can use the vir. It’s easier to manipulate than the Talent and more powerful. It’s also terribly addictive and, if one dare speak in moral absolutes—which I do—it’s evil,” Dorian said, his eyes bright, holding Kylar. “Unlike the Talent, which can be good or bad like any talent, it is in itself evil, and it corrupts those who use it. It has proven useful to my family to have all meisters marked, so they are. My ancestors never saw any reasons to be marked ourselves unless we so chose. The Ursuuls can make their vir disappear at will, so long as they aren’t using it.”
“Blint must have skipped that lesson,” Kylar said.
“A pity it is, too. We’re the most dangerous Vürdmeisters you could possibly imagine.”
“Dorian, just tell him the words. Let’s—”
“Feir!” Dorian said. “Silence. You know what do.”
The big man obeyed, glowering at Kylar.
“Kylar,” Dorian said. “You’re asking a drunkard who’s quit drinking to take just one glass of wine. I’ll live in misery for weeks for this. Feir will have to watch me constantly to see that I don’t slip away to that madness. But you’re worth it.”
Feir’s mouth tightened, but he didn’t say a word.
Dorian held his arms out and a shimmer passed over them. As Kylar stared at them, it looked as if veins deep in the man’s arms were wriggling, struggling to get to the surface of his skin. Then, rapidly, they rose all together. Dorian’s arms turned black like a million fresh tattoos were being inked over each other. Layer knotted on layer, each distinct, interlocking with those below and above, darker over lighter with darker still coming in above. It was beautiful and terrible. The vir swelled with power and moved, not just with Dorian’s arms, but independently. It seemed that they wanted to burst free of the confines of his skin. The darkness of the vir spread to the room, and Kylar was sure it wasn’t his imagination: the vir were sucking the light from the room.
Dorian’s eyes dilated until the cool blue irises were tiny rims. A fierce joy rose in his face and he looked ten years younger. The vir started to swell, crackling audibly.
Feir picked up Dorian like most men might pick up a doll and shook him violently. He shook and didn’t stop shaking. It would have been comical if Kylar weren’t too scared to move. Feir just shook and shook until the room was no longer dark with power. Then he set Dorian down in a chair.
The man groaned and abruptly looked frail and older once more. He spoke without raising his head. “I’m glad you’re convinced, Shadowstrider.”
It had convinced him, but Dorian couldn’t know that. “How do I know it wasn’t an illusion?” Kylar asked.
“Illusions don’t suck light. Illusions—” Feir said.
“He’s just being stubborn, Feir. He believes.” Dorian glanced at Kylar and quickly looked away. He groaned. “Ah, I can’t even look at you now. All your futures….” He squeezed his eyes shut.
“What do you want from me?” Kylar asked.
“I can see the future, Nameless One, but I am only human, so I pray that I can be wrong. I pray that I am wrong. By everything I’ve seen, if you don’t kill Durzo Blint tomorrow, Khalidor will take Cenaria. If you don’t kill him by the day after that, everyone you love will die. Your Sa’kagé count, the Shinga, your friends old and new, all of them. If you do the right thing once, it will cost you a year of guilt. If you do the right thing twice, it will cost you your life.”
“So that’s what this is? All this is just a setup so I’ll betray Master Blint? Did your masters think I would buy it?” Kylar said. “Oh, you learned a lot about me, must have cost a fortune to buy all that information.”
Dorian held up a weary hand. “I don’t ask you to believe it all now. It’s too much all at once. I’m sorry for that. You think now that we’re Khalidorans and we want you to betray Blint so that he can’t stop us. Maybe this will convince you that you’re wrong: What I beg of you above all else is that you kill my brother. Don’t let him get the ka’kari.”
Kylar felt as if he’d just been stung. “The what?”
“Feir,
” Dorian said. “Say the words we came to say.”
“Ask Momma K,” Feir said.
He shook his head. “Wait! What? Ask her about the ka’kari?”
“Ask Momma K,” Feir said.
“What about your brother, who is he?”
“If I tell you now, you’ll lose when you fight him.” Dorian shook his head, but still didn’t look at Kylar. “Damn this power. What good is it if I can’t tell you in a way you’ll understand? Kylar, if time is a river, most people live submerged. Some rise to the surface and can guess what’s going to happen next, or can understand the past. I’m different. When I don’t concentrate, I detach from the flow of time. My consciousness floats above the river. I see a thousand thousand paths. Ask me where a leaf will fall, and I couldn’t tell you. There are too many possibilities. There’s so much noise, like I’m trying to follow a drop of rain from the clouds to a lake, then over a waterfall and pick it out in the river two leagues downstream. If I can touch someone or chant rhymes, it gives me focus. Sometimes.” Dorian seemed to be looking through the wall, lost in reverie.
“Sometimes,” he said, “sometimes when I transcend the river, I start to see a pattern. Then it isn’t like water, it’s a fabric made up of every insignificant decision of every peasant as much as it is of great decisions by kings. As I begin to comprehend the vastness and intricacy of that skein, my mind starts to pull apart.” He blinked, and he turned his eyes to Kylar. He squinted, as if even looking at him caused him pain.
“Sometimes it’s merely images, totally unbidden. I can see the anguish on the young man’s face who will watch me die, but I don’t know who he is or when that will be or why he’ll care. I know that tomorrow, a square vase will give you hope. I see a little girl crying over your body. She’s trying to pull you away but you’re too heavy. Away from what? I don’t know.”
Kylar felt a chill. “A girl? When?” Was it Ilena Drake?
“I can’t tell. Wait.” Dorian blinked and his face went rigid. “Go, go now. Ask Momma K!”
Feir threw open the front door. Kylar stared from one mage to the other, stunned at the abruptness of his dismissal.
“Go,” Feir said. “Go!”
Kylar ran into the night.
For a long moment, Feir stared after him. He spat. Still staring into the depths of the night, he said, “What didn’t you tell him?”
Dorian let out a shaky breath. “He’s going to die. No matter what.”
“How does that fit?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s not what we hoped.”
35
Kylar ran, but Doubt ran faster. The sky was lightening in the east, and the city was showing its first signs of life. The odds of running into a patrol were small, especially because Kylar knew better than to run on the roads past the rich shops that somehow saw patrols more frequently than roads with poor shops, but if he did run into guards, what would he say? I was just out for a morning walk with dark gray clothes, illegal plants, a small arsenal, and my face smudged with ash. Right.
He slowed to a walk. Momma K’s wasn’t far now, anyway. What was he doing? Obeying a madman and a giant? He could almost see the vir rising from Dorian’s arms, and it turned his stomach. Maybe not a madman. But what was their piece? The only people Kylar knew who did things just because they should were the Drakes, and he figured that they were the exception to the rule. In the Sa’kagé, in the court, in the real world, people did what was best for themselves.
Feir and Dorian hadn’t denied that they had other motives for coming to Cenaria, but they certainly acted like he was the most important thing. They’d acted like they really believed he would change the course of the kingdom! It was madness. But he had believed them.
If they were just liars, wouldn’t they try to tell him how great things would be if he killed Blint? Or were they just that much cleverer than most liars? It seemed that by what Dorian had said that Kylar was going lose everything no matter what he did. What kind of fortune-teller told you that?
Still, Kylar found himself jogging again, and then running, startling a laundress filling her buckets with water. He stopped at Momma K’s door and suddenly felt uneasy again. Momma K stayed up late and woke early every day, but if there was one time of the day that he could be sure she’d be in bed, it was right now. It was the only time of day that the door would be locked. Dammit, would you just make a decision?
Kylar rapped on the door quietly, berating himself for being a coward, yet deciding all the same that he would leave if no one answered it.
The door opened almost immediately. Momma K’s maid looked almost as surprised as Kylar was. She was an old woman, wearing a shift, with a shawl around her shoulders. “Well, good morning, my lord. If you aren’t a sight. I couldn’t sleep, I just kept on thinking that we’d run out of flour for some reason, though I checked it just last night, for some reason I couldn’t get it out of my mind that it was all gone. I was just walking past the door to check it when you knocked—oh by the twelve nipples of Arixula, I’m chattering like a daft old ninny.”
Kylar opened his mouth, but a word wouldn’t fit in the cracks of the ex-prostitute’s rambling, edgewise or any other way.
“‘Time for a swift blow to the head, and a heave into the river, mistress,’ I tell her, and she just laughs at me. I do wish I were young, if only so I could see the look on your face like I used to get. Once these old sacks would make men stand up and take notice. You’d walk right into a wall because you couldn’t take your eyes off. It used to be that the sight of me in my night clothes—of course, I didn’t wear old lady’s rags like this, neither, but if I wore the kind of stuff I used to, I’m afraid I’d scare the children. It does make me miss the—”
“Is Momma K awake?”
“What? Oh, actually, I think so. She hasn’t been sleeping well, poor girl. Maybe a visit will do her good. Though I think it was a visit from that Durzo that’s got her knickers in such a bunch. It’s hard at her age, going from what she’s been to being like me. Almost fifty years old she is. It reminds me—”
Kylar edged past her and walked up the stairs. He wasn’t even sure the old woman noticed.
He knocked and waited. No response. A sliver of light peeked through the crack along the sill, though, so he opened the door.
Momma K sat with her back to him. Two candles burned almost to nubs provided the only illumination in the room. She barely stirred when Kylar came in. Finally, she turned slowly toward him. Her eyes were swollen and red as if she’d been up all night crying. Crying? Momma K?
“Momma K? Momma K, you look like hell.”
“You always did know just the thing to say to the ladies.”
Kylar stepped into the room and closed the door. It was then he noticed the mirrors. Momma K’s bedside mirror where she put on makeup, her hand mirror, even her full-length mirror, every one of them was smashed. Shards twinkled feebly from the floor in the candlelight.
“Momma K? What’s going on here?”
“Don’t call me that. Don’t ever call me that again.”
“What’s going on?”
“Lies, Kylar,” she said, looking down at her lap, her face half concealed in the shadows. “Beautiful lies. Lies I’ve worn so long I don’t remember what’s beneath them.”
She turned. In a line down the middle of her face, she’d wiped off all her makeup. The left half of her face was free of cosmetics for the first time Kylar had ever seen. It made her look old and haggard. Fine wrinkles danced across the once delicate—now merely small and hard—planes of Gwinvere Kirena’s face. Dark circles under her eyes gave her a ghostly vulnerability. The effect of half of her face being perfectly presented and the other stripped was ludicrous, ugly, almost comic.
Kylar covered his shock too slowly, not that he could ever hide much from her, but Momma K seemed satisfied to be wounded.
“I’ll assume you’re not here just to stare at the sideshow freak, so what do you want, Kylar?”
; “You’re not a sideshow—”
“Answer the question. I know what a man with a mission looks like. You’re here for my help. What do you need?”
“Momma K, dammit, quit—”
“No, damn you!” Momma K’s voice cracked like a whip. Then her mismatched eyes softened and looked beyond Kylar. “It’s too late. I chose this. Damn him, but he was right. I chose this life, Kylar. I’ve chosen every step. It’s no good switching whores in the middle of a tumble. You’re here about Durzo, aren’t you.”
Kylar knuckled his forehead, put off track. He could read the look in her face, though. It said, “Discussion over.” Kylar surrendered. Was he here about Durzo? Well, it was as good of a place to start as any.
“He said he’s going to kill me if I don’t find the silver ka’kari. I don’t really even know what it is.”
She took a deep breath. “I’ve been trying to get him to tell you for years,” she said. “Six ka’kari were made for Jorsin Alkestes’ six champions. The people who used the ka’kari weren’t mages, but the ka’kari gave them magelike powers. Not like the feeble mages of today, either, the mages of seven centuries ago. You are what they were. You’re a ka’karifer. You were born with a hole in your Talent that only a ka’kari can bridge.”
Momma K and Durzo had known all of this, and they hadn’t thought to tell him? “Oh, well, thanks. Can you direct me to the nearest magical artifact store? Perhaps one with a discount for wetboys?” Kylar asked. “Even if there were such things, they’ve either been collected by the mages or they’re at the bottom of the ocean or something.”
“Or something.”
“Are you saying you know where the silver is?”
“Consider this,” Momma K said. “You’re a king. You manage to get a ka’kari, but you can’t use it. Maybe you don’t have anyone you trust who can. What do you do? You keep it for a rainy day, or for your heirs. Maybe you never write down what it is because you know that people will go through your things when you die and steal your most valuable possession, so you plan to tell your son someday before he takes the throne. In some way or another, though, as kings so often do, you get yourself killed before you can have that talk. What happens to the ka’kari?”