No way of dealing with a demon and a sword that looked as if it drank souls. There were stories of those, in the years between suckling and manhood; Auralis had probably heard half of them, and the tavern’s owner, the other half.
Someone ran out into the night air, as if the command were a gift from the gods. Young man, thin; the owner’s son or nephew. He’d been here often enough that he thought he should know.
The two men with swords looked at each other. Their arms, hanging slack with the shock of the accusation, came up, hesitated, and then dropped. To sword hilts.
Auralis was certain, as they drew these weapons, that it was probably the first time they’d been drawn all year.
The sight of swords seemed to galvanize the inn itself. Most of the men and women here hadn’t drunk enough—as if—to want to stay; they bolted for the doors.
The doors slammed shut.
Lord Isladar was seldom wrong. He had not been wrong this time. The creature that served him smiled softly in the haze of the tavern’s smoke, its man-scent, its peculiar and poor light.
He was a creature of cunning, not a creature of brute force, although he was capable of either. He was one of the few who had been strong enough to hold the memories of his life during the long passage between this world and the Lord’s—Kialli. His name was more to him than compulsion, it was identity. He guarded it, as the Kialli guarded nothing else but the damned.
He was not far from Kiriel when she landed, but he was completely beyond her vision; her sword, drinking the light, drew all eyes to it, even his, who knew what it was.
Even the man he had chosen as her victim.
The man was a fool, as most mortals were, and as mortals went, not a particularly interesting one; he was young, and tall; overly trusting—not a soul who would choose a place in the Hells for several lifetimes yet, if ever. In youth, humans often showed a surprising, sharp burst of malice that time and experience leeched from them. Perhaps this boy was one of those—the men who flirted with the Choice, but never with any intention of following it to its end. He’d accepted, with wonder and gratefulness, the small purse that he had been offered; it was tied to the wide belt he wore, along with the flotsam and jetsam of his hopeful life.
Within the flotsam and jetsam, the power resided. The patina of power. The heart of the truth that was Kialli: Illusion. Lie. Death.
He would hold it there for just long enough, and when the sword struck home, seeking life, he would withdraw. She had already summoned the shadows to her; his power, to draw and detail the dark lights of her eyes, was becoming less and less necessary. No man here would forget what he had seen.
That he had seen her slaughter an innocent. That she was a demon, in their eyes, a thing of nightmare. They would summon the mages, and Kiriel, half-blood and hated for it, would know what it was to be hunted by her half-kin.
The man’s mouth was still open in the gape of human reaction. He grabbed his dagger—he was too poor to own a sword, as he’d said several times—and drew it. She allowed that. Waited for it.
How . . . odd.
He felt the fear in the air grow, thicken, and deepen—and it felt good. Who could have thought, so very long ago, that one could miss the Abyss, the red plains, the charnel winds? Who might have predicted that the voices of Those who have Chosen would become sweeter than Kialli song?
Not he, never he.
And do we sing? he thought, as he resisted the pull of a desire more physical than any that he remembered from his youth. And do we sing now, that we might compare what we once had with what we chose to condemn ourselves to?
No, of course not. They could not sing who could barely stand clothed in flesh and form. The ages held them in a grip that was stronger than mortality.
The fear here was thick and sweet, if pale.
Oh, it started.
Auralis saw it first.
He saw her land within the broken circle her hand had conjured into existence; saw the sword cut the air and leave a visible trail through smoke and sight. And he saw her clear a path for herself in a wide, wide arc that, by some miracle of Kalliaris, didn’t end in a death.
Men who had stood at those tables had chosen to gamble, and more often than not the tables turned ugly as the evening wore on. But not like this. They were swept away by the lash of her power; thrown, like rag dolls, against the walls that were closest to them.
Kialli power, of course.
Not hers.
He intended, before she’d finished, to take a few lives for his own amusement; to bury the crime in her crime. The Lord would not know; Isladar would not know. And he was long away from the home he had chosen and had grown, if not to love, then to need. Need was always the stronger binding.
Daggers flashed in the light; the sword drank their reflection, devouring it. They were thrown, and they glanced off her armor as if they were made of starched cloth. One. One she caught and sent back to its wielder; he stopped short at the force of the blow; screamed as he staggered into the bar. Broken arm
No one noticed Auralis. They came upon him, backs exposed, daggers toward her as if they knew, each and every one, that the daggers were useless. They might have chosen to leave the tavern entirely, but the doors were barred more effectively than they had ever been, lit on each of four edges and two hinges with a bright, bright light.
The light was a warning, to anyone with a brain. Two brains had obviously been devoured by the viscerality of fear; two men tried the door. They had the time to scream, and to scream; burning weed did not hide the stench of burning flesh; the black grime of it.
He heard prayers in the smoky winds.
The two men with swords stood in front of the tavern’s owner, implacable. If she attacked, and they defended, they weren’t being paid enough, in Auralis’ opinion. Not that it counted for much.
“Come,” Kiriel said, as she lowered her sword, point first, at the only man who stood too gape-jawed and stupid to back away. “I have claimed this city, and these lands; they are mine, and I choose to protect that claim. Your serve my enemy. Give me your name.”’
And the man, knock-kneed now, struggling with a dagger that shook so much it made the poor light shiver, said, “Richard. Richard Welton.”
She laughed, laughed at the sound of his name, the terror in the three words he’d spoken, the vulnerability.
The prayers in the room increased. Another dagger was thrown; a tankard—but it was as if they thought—all of them—that if they let her have her kill, if she destroyed this one man, she would be satisfied; they would be spared. They held themselves still, like mice who smell cat and know death’s around the corner. Waiting. Hoping.
Hoping that if they were very, very good, the gods would let them live. As if the gods decided fate. As if the gods ever listened when it counted.
He hated it.
He hated it enough that he drew his sword before he could think. The smell of terror—theirs, his own—was thick enough to suffocate.
Auralis knew what she was, of course. He’d always known it; they all had. But she was an Osprey. And he had sworn, in the streets of this city, that he would never run from demons again.
He just hadn’t known, then, what the Hells it meant, that swearing, that oath.
She was an Osprey. He was an Osprey. The Kalakar forgave them both their pasts. She did not question them. But Duarte—Duarte was slightly more selective. Auralis was no fool; he knew that several of the accidents, training and otherwise, that occurred in the early days and weeks of the Ospreys’ formation were Duarte’s, start to finish, the pruning of the hard cases that could not be brought into line.
He’d survived.
He suspected that Kiriel would have.
But he knew, without question, that she could not survive this. What he didn’t understand was wh
y she stopped in front of a man who looked as if he were about to give consciousness over to terror. This man was no demon.
But she enjoyed his fear . . .
What do we know about her? Precious little. That she was capable of this. And yet she was an Osprey. And he was certain that she was hunting the mythical worthy opponent, because he recognized that spark of kinship between them.
She was young. She was powerful. She thought she knew everything. They always did. He had, and learning otherwise had almost killed him more times than he could count.
It was obvious to Auralis that this man was no demon. It was obvious to Kiriel that he was. One of them had to be wrong—but it seemed too much of a setup, somehow. Kill him, looking like that, and she was dead. The mages, the Kings, The Ten, the entire damned city—they’d all be hunting her, and power or no, she wouldn’t survive it.
Why?
And then, unbidden, Maybe the demons don’t think we know who you are.
He moved past the bar’s patrons; past their fear, and their pathetic last minute preparations; past the two who were foolish enough to try the door and now lay on the floor, blackened husks of what they used to be as young men. Letting the reflex take the panic, letting the sword arm slacken as he readied it for use.
I wanted a fight.
She raised her blade.
The creature before her smiled.
“Do you think I am so inconsequential, little half-blood, that you can have my name for the asking? You are not your father’s daughter. You are an abomination; a child of weakness and human artifice.”
“And you,” she said evenly, “are less than even that. You gave up what you were born to; you have nothing but what the Lord grants.”
He snarled.
“And I will own it. Give me your name.”
Had he not been standing to one side of her focus, had he been at the center of it, he would have answered. As it was, he almost did; his lips formed the syllables, but his will prevented the movement of air and magic that would have given them sound and meaning.
What is this? Isladar—you promised us that she had no training, no ability; that the investiture was in all things a deception, a failure of power.
But no; he could see it in her.
He could see it in her more clearly, for that single moment, than he could see the color of the soul that she had been born with, as all mortals were. The soul itself. The ultimate insult to the Kialli. To the kin. Were they to be ruled by cattle?
No.
No.
He lost the illusion a moment.
He did not answer.
She waited, and then the waiting was done.
She did not need to have his name to fight him; she did not need to take his name to destroy the presence the passage between worlds had given him, the flesh. She drew her sword back to strike, and it struck steel as she brought it round in a half-arc.
A sword went flying across the tavern’s space.
Auralis swore.
Could be worse, he thought, drawing daggers as an afterthought. I could have gone flying with it.
The young man, the young idiot, was still rooted to the spot in terror. Almost, Auralis thought, as if his feet had been driven, like iron spikes, into the wood itself. “RUN!” he snarled.
The young man gaped at him. Just gaped.
Kiriel turned. Shadows fell, like drifting water, out of the corner of her eyes, darkening her face; her lips were gray, her skin white. White, he thought, as ice, as something that had never known life.
“What,” she said, her voice low, as cold and colorless as her skin, “are you doing?”
“Look at him!” Auralis shouted, stepping back from the force of her words. “LOOK AT HIM!” He thought, as she raised the sword, that she would strike him. Knew that if she did, it was death, his death, no way to run from it this time.
He met her eyes; saw nothing at all in them but the darkness, the ice. Her lip curled in contempt as she looked at him, through him; where she was impervious to his sight, he knew, then, that she saw everything about him.
Why he did what he did next, he couldn’t say, would never be able to say; it was the last act of a stupid man, and he would tell himself that again and again for months afterward, when he woke, with a half-scream choking his throat, from the nightmare of this tavern, this woman.
He dropped both daggers.
No Kialli would have disarmed himself in the face of such danger unless he meant to give up his name. And even then, to disarm oneself this obviously was to render oneself useless; it was more than a simple act of suicide. Much more.
It gave her pause. She stopped. Stopped for long enough to see him, to know who he was. The shadows had taken her vision to the fight; the fight had controlled it. What had Isladar said? Never let your attacker choose the method and the means of the fight. Never let him dictate the how, and if you can avoid it, the where.
“What,” she managed to say, “are you doing?”
“Look at him,” Auralis said. He was shaking. She could smell the fear as if it were old sweat, but it was an acrid fear, an unpleasant one. She shied away from naming it. “You’re attacking a boy, Kiriel. I don’t care what you think he is—look at him. Look hard.”
She turned, then.
Turned to see the creature waiting, a cool smile at play across his lips. Could feel his power, the taunting that lay beneath it. The dare.
“I know the kin,” she said, her voice far darker than his. “I know what I do here.”
“You don’t.”
The human was inconvenient. He was inconvenient and he was a threat to the plan that Lord Isladar had crafted. He was also not under protection, any protection.
But to kill him was to alert the girl to his presence, his true presence, and that, too, was a threat. He thought a moment as he heard their speech, the interaction of it, as he saw Kiriel tainted by human concern in a way that both pleased and surprised him.
And then he lifted his voice, and wrapped it in power, and said, “There! Beside her. The man who controls the demon. The mage. Kill him and they will both be gone!”
Auralis heard the death in the words; it was for him, after all. The whole tavern would know that Kiriel was a demon, and untouchable—but he, he was only human. The first dagger’s blow glanced off his shoulder blade, driving chain and leather into his skin. Drawing blood. Would’ve been worse, but he knew how to move. How to run.
Auralis knew how to run.
There was one safe place in the tavern; he found it, hiding behind Kiriel di’Ashaf, a girl half his age. And behind Kiriel was the boy, the youth she had singled out for slaughter. It was not coincidence; he was now certain of it. One of these men, in this tavern, was no man—but if she couldn’t see it, he was damned if he could. He didn’t know how to look.
Don’t do this, he thought. Don’t play into their hands. We’ll have to hunt you down, or kill you ourselves. Don’t give them that weapon.
He was surprised when another blade glanced off his cheek. Her shadows hid the light he would have used to judge its trajectory. Strange, how one required light for so many things, and yet didn’t notice them until it was gone. Sort of like breath, like breathing.
He raised a hand; felt another blow, something strike his ribs. He saw her turn. He knew that she was going to protect him. It was the wrong thing. The wrong thing to do.
But he didn’t want to die. That was the crime, knowing that she was being set up, and being unwilling to die to save her the trouble.
He fell forward, to knees, exposing his back and hiding his face. Wondering, briefly, when he had become so vain.
And she saw that they intended, all of these little humans, to kill Auralis. That they intended to kill her, which was laughable.
“How dare you?” she cried, and her voice reverberated in the tavern as if the tavern were far too small for its depth and its grandeur, her anger. She raised the sword she held, she brought the shadows with it; she called upon her birthright and it came.
Two men, the closest two, the two who had dared both her sword and Auralis’ theoretical magic, stood frozen before her, disarmed, although it hardly made them more helpless than they had been.
They were his tools. Auralis was hers. She defended what she owned; those were the rules of the Hells.
Her blade rose, and her blade fell—
And light singed the air in front of her eyes; light blazed across the back of her hand, a burning white line of flame, a whip’s crack up her arm. She screamed in a shock of terror—terror of what, she could not say—and the sword went out.
She was too well-trained to drop it. She held it, the way a man who’s lost a hand will hold that hand, as if by holding it, he can somehow make himself whole. She did not forget the two men, the two unarmed men, but they had been rendered harmless—they were as frozen in shock as she by the light, by the pain, by the sense of terrible, terrible loss.
It was gone. The shadow; the power—it was gone.
And without it—without it, she was nothing. She was less than nothing. She turned, at once, the sword now steel that housed no spirit, no blood, no essence.
Auralis lifted his face and stared at hers. But she didn’t see that. What she saw stood behind him, stood in the center of the circle she had carelessly forced the floorboards to surrender. A boy, not much older than Valedan kai di’Leonne, but infinitely less wise. His shaking hands clutched a dagger; his lips were so gray they were almost the color of death.
She reached out to touch him, because she couldn’t—not quite—believe he was real. He couldn’t be real. He had no color. None of the light and the dark, the swirl and the movement, that all humans had, who had choice.
Shaken, she looked down; saw Auralis. Saw the empty shell of him, the familiar comfort of darkness, the closeness of twisted anger, loathing, fear—all gone. Fled.
And yet—she reached out—
The Uncrowned King Page 36