Way of Shadows nat-1

by Brent Weeks

  Kylar tried to remember the name of the betrayer. It was Acaelus Thorne. Jorsin hadn’t slighted him after all. By pretending to slight him, Jorsin had given his best friend a way to escape—and keep an artifact out of enemy hands. Because no one had known of the black’s existence, Acaelus hadn’t been hunted. Acaelus had survived.

  Durzo had signed his letter “A Thorne.”

  “Oh, gods,” Kylar breathed. He couldn’t think about it now, couldn’t stop or he wouldn’t be able to start moving again. “Help me,” Kylar said to the ka’kari. “Please. Serve me.” He squeezed the ka’kari and it dissolved, rushing along his skin, up over his clothes, over his face, over his eyes. He flinched, but he could still see perfectly—still see through the dark as if it were natural. He looked down at his hands, his black sword, and saw them shimmer with magic and disappear. They weren’t just cloaked in shadows, as wetboys cloaked themselves. They disappeared. Kylar wasn’t a shadow like before. He was invisible.

  There was no time to marvel; he had work to do. It had been ten minutes or more since he’d seen Roth on the dock. If Roth was going to die tonight, Kylar needed to move. He picked the lock and stepped inside.

  The inside of the building was stiflingly hot. Wooden catwalks surrounded a mammoth central chimney fifteen paces in diameter. It was made of broad sheets of metal riveted together and supported by an external wood frame. The chimney descended at least four stories into the ground to meet the natural crack in the earth’s crust.

  Looking into the shadowed depths of the Crack, Kylar understood why people called this a marvel. The men who worked here not only harnessed the power of the hot air that blew out of the earth itself, they also kept the Plith River from spilling into the earth.

  If that happened, the river would boil; the fish would die; the fishermen would be wiped out; and Cenaria would lose its major source of food.

  Even now, oblivious to the chaos not a quarter of a mile away, men were working: servicing ropes, checking pulleys, greasing gears, replacing sections of sheet metal.

  Kylar crossed a long catwalk, took a few turns, and found himself at a crossroads where he could go to a door below ground level or go up to a maintenance door by the outlet of the chimney on the north side of the building—where Roth would be.

  He went down. The door was set beside double doors used for bringing in huge pieces of equipment. Kylar eased it open a crack.

  A young wytch was standing outside, her hair pulled back and vir-marked arms folded. She was looking up a long stone ramp. Someone was talking to her, but Kylar couldn’t see the other person. Beyond her were a dozen others, dressed similarly.

  Kylar eased the door shut. He went back to the other branch of the catwalk and opened the door set into the horizontal section of the chimney.

  Bent sideways, the chimney was more like a steam tunnel here. It was fifteen paces across until it pinched down to four paces at the last fan. The floor was sheet metal reinforced underneath so the workers could stand inside it as they worked on either the massive fan set just before the chimney turned straight down, or the much smaller last fan before the hot air escaped into the Cenarian night. The northern fan spun slowly enough that Kylar should be able to see Roth through it.

  He stepped inside carefully, testing the floor to see if it would squeak as he put his weight on it. It didn’t. But even before Kylar closed the door behind himself, he had a vaguely uneasy feeling.

  Cooled from its long journey up the metal chimney, sulfuric smoke poured sluggishly through the tunnel into the night air outside. Heavy smoke filled the bottom third of the tunnel, curling and rolling. The only light came from the moon outside but was filtered through the spinning fan. Between the dense smoke and the dancing shadows, Kylar’s vision was no better than any other man’s.

  There’s someone here.

  59

  Durzo’s heart had just leapt out that goddam window. He walked to the window and watched until he saw Kylar surface.

  Amazing. In all my years, I never tried anything so dumb, and here he does it on his first day—and it works. Kylar clambered onto shore and began working his way north. Durzo knew where he was headed. The stubborn fool. He’d always had that streak, from the time he’d refused to accept that he’d failed in Rat’s murder and had gone and killed the twist in the next three hours.

  Kylar did what he thought was right, and to hell with the consequences, to hell with what anyone thought, even Durzo. He reminded Durzo of Jorsin Alkestes. Kylar had chosen his loyalty to Durzo, had clung to it despite Durzo. He’d put faith in Durzo Blint as Jorsin had put faith in him. Kylar was just a damned kid, but he’d also put his faith in a much worse man than Acaelus Thorne.

  The pain resonated along every string in Durzo Blint’s life. He’d been a thousand kinds of fraud in his years, so everyone who had believed in him during his deceptions could be written off, but Jorsin had known him. Kylar had known him. Not for the first time in seven centuries, existence ached. All the world was salt and Durzo Blint was an open wound. Where did I go wrong?

  He moved, because like every man Acaelus Thorne had been, Durzo Blint was a man of action. His Talent puddled around his hands and feet—funny that it still worked like that, despite losing the ka’kari—and he stepped out of the window. He didn’t fall.

  The magic around his feet gripped the stone and he pitched forward, catching himself with his hands so that he hung face down on the castle wall like an insect. Kylar hadn’t learned all of Durzo’s tricks. Hell, he hadn’t even seen all of Durzo’s tricks.

  He knew where Kylar was headed, and he knew how to get there faster than Kylar could, so he was in no hurry. The clash of arms in the courtyard attracted his attention. He cloaked himself in shadows and crawled down to the courtyard.

  The battle was deadlocked. Two hundred Cenarian guardsmen and the forty or more useless nobles with them couldn’t budge the hundred Khalidorans who were blocking the gate to East Kingsbridge. The Khalidorans had half a dozen meisters with them, but this late in the battle, they weren’t doing much except psychologically. They’d used pretty much as much magic as they were able to.

  With eyes long honed in battle and the arts of assassination, Durzo picked out the cornerstones of the battle. Sometimes that was simple. Officers were usually important. Meisters always were, but sometimes there were simple soldiers in the lines who were strength for the men around them. If you killed the cornerstones, the whole battle would shift. On the Khalidoran side, the cornerstones were two officers and three of the meisters and one giant of a highlander. On the Cenarian side, there were only two: a sergeant with an Alitaeran longbow and Terah Graesin.

  The sergeant was a simple soldier, probably in his first battle despite his age, and Durzo knew the look on his face. He was a man who had joined the military to find his measure and had finally found it in battle. He had passed his own Crucible, and approved of himself. It was a potent thing, that approval, and every man around the sergeant felt it.

  Terah Graesin, of course, would have stood out in any crowd. She was all tits and haughtiness, a vision in a torn cerulean gown. She believed no harm would dare step into her presence. She believed everyone around her would obey her, and the men felt that, too.

  “Sergeant Gamble,” a familiar voice said, just below Durzo. The sergeant loosed another arrow, killing a meister, but not one of the important ones.

  Count Drake emerged from the front gate and grabbed the sergeant. “Another hundred highlanders on their way,” Count Drake said, his voice almost swallowed by the clash of arms and the press of men back and forth in the courtyard.

  The sight of the count packed the wound Kylar had opened with more salt. Durzo had thought the count was staying home, but here he was, still ill from Durzo’s poison, about to die with all the rest.

  “Dammit!” Sergeant Gamble cursed.

  Durzo turned away from them. The Cenarians would be slaughtered. It was out of his hands. He had his own date with judgment.r />
  “Night Angel,” the sergeant yelled. “If you fight with us still, fight now! Night Angel! Come!”

  Durzo froze. He could only guess Kylar had already intervened in the castle somehow. Very well, Kylar. I’ll do this for you, and the count, and for Jorsin, and for all the fools who believe that even a killer may accomplish some good.

  “Give me your bow,” Durzo said. It was a hard, menacing voice, pitched with Talent to carry. Sergeant Gamble’s head whipped around and he and Count Drake looked at the shadow over the gate. The sergeant threw him his bow and a fresh quiver of arrows.

  Durzo caught the bow in his hand and the quiver with his Talent. As he drew one arrow, he pulled another from the quiver with his Talent. He squatted against the vertical face of the wall and in an instant locked his deaders into his mind’s eye.

  The giant highlander went down first, an arrow catching him between the eyes. Then the meisters, every last one of them, then the officers, then a wedge of the highlanders directly in front of the bridge. Durzo emptied the quiver of twenty arrows in less than ten seconds. It was, Durzo thought, some damn fine shooting. Of course, Gaelan Starfire had been quite a hand with the longbow.

  Durzo tossed the bow back to Sergeant Gamble, who didn’t seem to comprehend yet what had happened. Count Drake was a different matter. He didn’t even look at the courtyard as the Cenarian line surged forward into the gap. He wasn’t surprised at the sudden hesitation in the Khalidoran ranks that within seconds would turn into a rout. He was looking toward Durzo.

  Sergeant Gamble uttered an awed curse, but Count Drake’s mouth opened to bestow a blessing. Durzo couldn’t take it. He was already gone.

  No more blessings. No more mercy. No more salt. No more light in my dark corners. Let this end. Please.

  60

  Fear flashed through Kylar. He dropped into the smoke. A thunk and a metal whine resounded above him. He rolled and saw one knife sticking out of the door and one sticking through the sheet metal of the chimney.

  “So you figured out that it will make you invisible, huh?” Durzo Blint said from somewhere in the darkness near the huge fan at the south end of the tunnel.

  “Dammit, Blint! I told you I don’t want to fight,” Kylar said, then moved away from where he’d been standing when he spoke.

  He scanned the darkness. Even if Durzo weren’t fully invisible, in the smoke and flickering interplay of light and shadow he might as well be.

  “That was quite a dive, boy. You trying to become a legend yourself?” Durzo asked, but his voice oddly strangled, mournful. Kylar stumbled. Durzo was now by the smaller fan at the north end of the tunnel. He must have passed within a pace of Kylar to get there.

  “Who are you?” Kylar asked. “You’re Acaelus Thorne, aren’t you?” Kylar almost forgot to move.

  A knife sailed a hand’s breadth from Kylar’s stomach and pinged off the wall.

  “Acaelus was a fool. He played the Devil and now I draw the Devil’s due.” Durzo’s voice was raw, husky. He’d been weeping.

  “Master Blint,” Kylar said, adding the honorific for the first time since before he’d taken the ka’kari. “Why don’t you join me? Help me kill Roth. He’s outside, isn’t he?”

  “Outside with a boatload of meisters and Vürdmeisters,” Durzo said. “It’s over, Kylar. Khalidor will hold the castle within an hour. More highlanders arrive at dawn, and an army of Khalidoran regulars is already marching for the city. Anyone who could have led an army against them is dead or fled.”

  There was a distant gong, reverberating up the raw throat of the chimney. Warm air started blowing up from the depths.

  Kylar felt sickened. His work had been for nothing. A few soldiers killed, a few nobles saved—it hadn’t changed anything.

  He padded over to the small north fan, which was now turning faster. Through its blades, he could see Roth conferring with the wytches.

  Durzo was right. There were dozens of wytches. Some were getting back into their boat, but at least a score were accompanying Roth, who also had a bodyguard of a dozen gigantic highlanders.

  “Roth killed my best friend,” Kylar said. “I’m going to kill him. Tonight.”

  “Then you’ll have to go through me.”

  “I won’t fight you.”

  “You’ve always wondered if you’d be able to beat me when it came down to it,” Durzo said. “I know you have. And you have your Talent and the ka’kari now. As a boy, you swore you wouldn’t let anyone beat you. Not ever again. You said you wanted to be a killer. Have I made you one or not?”

  “Damn you! I won’t fight you! Who’s Acaelus?” Kylar shouted.

  Durzo’s voice rose, chanting over the sound of fans and hot wind:

  “The hand of the wicked shall rise against him,

  But it shall not prevail.

  Their blades shall be devoured

  The swords of the unrighteous shall pierce him

  But he shall not fall

  He shall leap from the roofs of the world

  and smite princes …”

  Blint trailed off. “I never made it,” he said quietly.

  “What are you talking about? What is that? Is that a prophecy?”

  “That isn’t me, just like the Guardian of Light wasn’t Jorsin. It’s you, Kylar. You are the spirit of retribution, the Night Angel. You are the vengeance I deserve.”

  Vengeance stems from a love of justice and a desire to redress wrongs. But revenge is damning. Three faces has the Night Angel, the avatar of Retribution: Vengeance, Justice, Mercy.

  “But I don’t have anything to avenge. I owe you my life,” Kylar said.

  Durzo’s face grew somber. “Yes, this life of blood. I served that goddam ka’kari for almost seven hundred years, Kylar. I served a dead king and a people who weren’t worthy of him. I lived in the shadows and I became like the shadow-dwellers. I gave all I was for some dream of hope that I never understood in the first place. What happens when you strip away all the masks a man wears and you find not a face beneath them but nothing at all? I failed the ka’kari once. Once I failed in seven hundred years of service, and it abandoned me.

  “I didn’t age a day, Kylar, not a day, for seven hundred years. Then came Gwinvere, and Vonda. I loved her, Kylar.”

  “I know,” Kylar said gently. “I’m sorry about Vonda.”

  Durzo shook his head. “No. I didn’t love Vonda. I just wanted—I wanted Gwinvere to know how it felt to have someone you love sharing other people’s beds. I fucked them both and I paid Gwinvere, but it was Vonda I made a whore. That was why I wanted the silver ka’kari at first—to give it to Gwinvere, so she wouldn’t die as everyone I’ve loved has died. But King Davin’s rock was a fake, so I left it for Garoth Ursuul’s men to find. The only way to save Vonda would have been to give them my ka’kari. I balanced her life against my power and my eternal life. I didn’t love her, so the price was too high. I let her die.

  “That was the day the ka’kari stopped serving me. I began to age. The ka’kari became nothing more than black paint on a sword that mocked me with the word JUSTICE. Justice was that I get old, lose my edge, die. You were my only hope, Kylar. I knew you were a ka’karifer. You would call the ka’kari to you. There were rumors that there was another in the kingdom. The black ka’kari had rejected me, but maybe the silver would not. A slim hope, but a hope for another chance, for redemption, for life. But you only called my ka’kari. You began to bond it that day I beat you, the day you risked your life to save that girl. I was insane. You were taking from me the only thing I had left. Reputation gone, honor gone, excellence fading, friends dead, the woman I loved hating me, and then you took my hope.” He looked away. “I wanted to end you. But I couldn’t.” He threw a garlic clove in his mouth. “I knew that first kill wasn’t in you. Not even that twist Rat. I knew you couldn’t kill someone for what he might do.”

  “What?” Kylar’s skin prickled.

  “The streets would have devoured you. I had to save you.
Even if I knew it would come to this.”

  “What are you saying?” Kylar asked. No. God, please no. Don’t let it fit.

  “Rat didn’t mutilate Doll Girl,” Durzo said. “I did.”

  The smoke half-filled the tunnel now. The huge fan turned slowly and the smaller fan was spinning as fast as Kylar’s heart was beating. The moonlight was chopped into pieces and scattered wantonly through the roiling smoke.

  Kylar couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even protest. It was a lie. It had to be a lie. He knew Rat. He’d seen his eyes. He’d seen the evil there.

  But he’d never seen Durzo’s evil, had he? Kylar had seen his master kill innocents, yet he’d never let himself see the evil there.

  The big fan spun quickly now. Its whup-whup-whup chopped time into pieces, marked its passage as if time had significance.

  “No.” Kylar could barely force the word through the stranglehold of truth tightening his throat. Blint would do it. Life is empty. Life is empty. A street girl is worth exactly what she can get for whoring.

  “No!” Kylar shouted.

  “It ends now, Kylar.” Durzo shimmered and disappeared, the darkness embracing him. Kylar felt rage, stark, hot rage rush through him.

  Under the sounds of the protesting fans and the hot wind, Kylar barely heard the footsteps. He wheeled and dived.

  The smoke swirled as the shadowy wetboy ran past him.

  He heard a sword clearing a scabbard and he drew Retribution. A shadow appeared, too close, too fast. They clashed and Kylar’s sword went flying. He dove backward.

  Kylar came to his feet slowly, silently, straining his senses, crouching low in the smoke. The rage overcame his fatigue, and he channeled it, forced it to bring clarity.

  He looked for any advantage, but there was little to be found. He could stand close to the huge southern fan and it would protect his back, but Blint could easily knock him into the spinning blades. They weren’t so sharp or turning so fast that they’d sever a limb, but they’d certainly stun him. In a fight against Durzo, that would mean death.