“I thought you said I didn’t have to kill my way out of every problem?”
He heard her smirk. “And sometimes you do.” She kissed his earlobe and retreated into the hall.
Egan snarled and brought his sword up; blue flames trailed in the blade’s wake.
Fear fluttered within Ryle, but anger rose to burn it out. Anger that grew, boiling into rage over Egan’s betrayal, over Korvey’s death. Over the way he’d insulted and threatened Casyne.
He wanted to hold it tight and savor the feeling as he shoved his sword through Egan’s chest and watched the life fade from his eyes. The rough laughter in the back of his head urged him on . . .
But he’d been trained better than that. Ryle sucked in a deep breath and took his kenten. The room stilled. His heartrate dropped. His various aches and pains faded into the background. Egan stood out crystal clear. The drops of sweat along his hairline. The edge of a bandage at his neck peeking up from inside his collar. The pressure in his left foot as he gathered himself.
Egan lunged, Ryle was already moving. He snapped the wineskin up into the space his head had occupied and threw himself awkwardly to his right. Behind him a sizzling filled the air, and died.
Ryle hit the floor hard, and rolled over as Egan cursed. “What the hell!?”
The traitor’s sword had destroyed the wineskin, but hadn’t escaped unscathed. A gloppy pink mess now coated his blade. Of the blue flames, there was now no sign. Ryle smirked and pulled himself to his feet.
Egan flicked his blade to the side, but only a few drops of the mess flew away. He tried running his finger along it instead and wound up with more of the pink tinged glop on his finger. He scowled down at it. “Is this glue!?”
“Close enough.”
Behind his desk. Delago chuckled.
With a growl Egan seized Paundon’s cloak from the back of the chair and swiped his sword across it. It cleared most of the mess, but this time, as Ryle had suspected, when Egan flicked his thumb against the sword’s hilt, nothing happened. He tried again without effect.
Ryle smiled. Egan glared, but raised his sword. “This will still gut you just the same.”
“Maybe. If a real swordsman held it.”
Egan’s hands clenched his weapon so hard his knuckles stood out white. “I don’t see a black bar across the back of your hand.”
Ryle kept the smile in place but his stomach churned. For all his bravado, he had no illusions that in his current state, it would be a close thing. Traitor or not, Egan carried the swordmark, where as he could barely walk. So, that left one pretty terrible idea. He dropped his sword to seventh position, down along the side of his leg, and moved his hand into the grip he needed.
“Maybe I don’t have my mark yet,” Ryle said. “But I trained through my final year with the Professor. I believe you skipped that part.” His sweating hand found the grip on the sword he needed and the blade went very still. “So you never learned that final technique, did you? The Singularity.”
Egan’s eyes narrowed. “You’re lying. Mero only teaches that to his top student. There’s no way your sorry orphan ass qualified.”
“Maybe I am lying. And maybe you should come out find out just how big of a muck sucking fool you really are for turning traitor on your own school.”
Egan’s eyes burned. Ryle hoped he’d made the swordsman angry enough. He’d get one shot at this.
Egan’s legs tensed, and he charged. Ryle willed his body into technique. The final strike he’d learned of all of three days before.
Egan’s sword flashed, low to high in a blink of blurring steel. Ryle held his ground, measuring his breathing, his balance, his grip on his sword.
Egan’s lips peeled back and his blade fell like a dark storm.
At the precipice, Ryle moved. One step, one motion, his body unified behind it. His gaze locked on the soft spot at the base of Egan’s throat. The traitor’s blade arrived. Ryle slid past, so close he smelled the tang of spoiled wine, and snapped his blade into his target. Absolute commitment, perfect devotion in one blow.
The softest shudder ran up Ryle’s arm. The rest of the room collapsed away.
Egan’s confused eyes stared into Ryle’s face. He coughed, and bright red blood splattered across Ryle’s blade a hand span beyond where it stood out from his throat. He tried to speak, but it was too late. Egan’s sword clanged off the floor as his fingers went limp.
“You shouldn’t have left,” Ryle said and jerked his sword free.
Egan collapsed in a heap of loose limbs and spreading crimson as he bled out on Delago’s floor.
After a moment Ryle felt a hand on his arm and found Casyne by his side. Only then did he realize his chest was heaving from the exertion of the blow. His hands shaking as the danger passed. At some point, he’d released his kenten. Then his mind caught up and nausea spun up through his guts.
What a muck sucking day. He’d avoided real violence since entering the Professor’s school. Five years of controlled aggression, and near peace, and now in the space of hours, three men lay dead. Three more lives added to the list that had grown too long by his father’s side. He’d almost forgotten what the cold ache in his chest felt like.
Casyne was staring down at Egan’s body. Ryle touched her cheek.
“I’m fine,” she said, but her voice was devoid of anything that sounded like her.
Delago came around the end of his desk, and frowned. “So much for not making a mess.”
Ryle wiped his blade clean on Paundon’s cloak and sheathed it. “Sorry.”
“And we took your bottle of Lapaz,” Casyne said distantly. She’d stopped staring at Egan but now looked off into the corner.
“You what?” Delago snapped.
“It had already turned. The bottle’s in the kitchen if you want a sip.” She waved her hand towards the hall.
Delago tapped his chin. “Oh. That’s good to know.”
Ryle wanted to march over to the desk and demand Delago open the book, instead he pointed at Paundon. He thought the man still breathed, if shallowly. “What about him?”
“He’ll be fine in a few hours. Well, actually, he’ll have a terrible headache, and might be blind for a day. But he’ll live.”
Ryle flipped back through his mother’s lessons. The ones he’d packed away and tried to forget. “Shade Poppy?”
Delago regarded Ryle closely for a moment. “A variant, yes.” He turned to Casyne. “Are you alright?”
She roused herself. “Ryle needs to see Korvey’s sketchbook.”
“Cas,” Ryle laid a hand on her arm.
She shrugged it off and glared at them both. “I’m fine.” Her voice said otherwise, but her gaze brooked no further questions. “The sketchbook. It’s important.”
Delago didn’t look convinced either, but rather than argue, he perched on the edge of his desk, and laid his hand on the strong-jacket. “I’m grateful for you two coming here, but you know the rules. I don’t let anyone look through my students’ work.”
In Ryle’s head students turned to informants and he wanted to grimace, but didn’t.
Casyne went to stand beside her teacher. “I know, but as a fellow student I’m allowed. Just like in class.”
Delago’s fingers tapped out a soft rhythm on the book’s steel surface. “How does that help him?”
“I’ll find the page he needs. I was hoping for one page you could make an exception.”
Delago started to shake his head.
“If you won’t let him look at it, I’ll just draw what I see. You know I can do it. I was hoping to save the time it would take.”
Delago’s fingers stopped tapping. “Is it really that important to you?”
Casyne glanced back over her shoulder at Ryle. He kept his face still. As much as he wanted to smile, to encourage her, to implore her, to beg her and him if that’s what it took. He couldn’t. This was her world and if she was going to take this step for him, he didn’t want to risk influencing her
in any way.
“It is that important yeah.”
Delago sighed. “Okay, one page. Repayment for dealing with him.” He nodded to Egan’s cooling corpse.
Ryle clenched his jaw to keep from thanking them both profusely, but did nod his thanks.
Delago produced a key from inside his jacket and unlocked the strong-jacket. As he pried the cover open, Ryle’s heart broke into a heavy gallop. As Casyne reverently lifted the sketchbook from inside it was all he could do not to rush across the room. After a long pause, she began paging through it. Ryle gripped his sword belt to hide the shaking in his hands.
The book looked small in her hands after all the trouble they’d gone through. Her face shifted through emotions with each page. On one she burst out laughing, on another she cried, but she kept turning the pages.
The tension drew out in Ryle’s chest. It felt like his chance at a new life slipped a little further away with each flip of her fingers. For a couple, terrible moments, he wondered if she would even tell him if she did find it. He knew she didn’t want him to leave, not deep down. At the serious look in her eyes though, at the way she examined each page, he cursed himself and shoved the feeling away. Of all people, Casyne would tell him the truth, no matter how much it hurt. It was one more reason he loved her so blasted much.
He waited.
On the last page in the book, she froze, and without her saying a word, he knew she’d found it. When Delago glanced down at the page his brow furrowed and a second later he turned away and began rubbing his chin. Despite the rush of pressure in his chest, Ryle held his ground and let her finish her examination.
A long minute later she looked up and met his gaze.
He swallowed. “Is it Reckoning?”
She nodded, and that simple motion shoved all his organs back against his spine. His chest felt tight, and after everything, he was suddenly afraid to cross the floor and look.
He swallowed again. “Can I see it?”
Delago blinked, nodded, looking distracted, and walked around his desk to stare out the bay windows. Casyne’s eyes searched Ryle’s face before she sighed and turned the sketchbook around.
Ryle crossed the floor in a daze.
Korvey had filled the page with a street scene. The carts, dress of the people and architecture were all familiar for Pyhrec. At the center of the scene, a man with shoulder-length blonde hair and dressed in a long black coat, exited the doorway of a building, a shop from the look of the sign above the door. He was a large figure, his shoulders nearly as wide as the doorway. The hilt of an equally large sword rose over one shoulder.
Ryle raised a shaking hand and ran his finger along the page, stopping on the man’s chest. “Lastrahn is alive?” He asked the question of the universe, but Delago answered him. “Apparently.”
Lastrahn survived Helador. The House of Reckoning has returned.
Ryle had tried not to admit it to himself, but when he’d heard of Helador, he’d lost hope of ever escaping his past. Reckoning scattered. Lastrahn vanished. But now . . .
The room started to spin before he took a hard breath and shook himself. There was no time for that. He had to think, to plan. He had to–
Casyne’s eyes were still on his face. Still the color of a winter sky shot through with sunshine, but now emptied of mirth. Concern if not outright fear tightened her brows.
She forced a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“Cas–”
She nodded, cutting him off. “You have your lead. You better follow it.” She closed the sketchbook.
Hollow pain cascaded through Ryle’s chest and he took a step back. He grasped for something to say, but found his words had abandoned him. For all their easy conversations, at that moment a stranger might’ve sat before him.
“I have to go see the Professor,” he finally said.
Casyne clutched Korvey’s sketchbook to her chest. Her knuckles white. “Of course. Don’t let me keep you.”
Ryle opened his mouth and closed it again, searching Casyne’s face for an opening and finding none. He sighed. “Where can I find you?”
She raised her chin, her eyes tight. “At the old steeple. If you care to look.”
Ryle felt his chest pulling apart. His past and future tearing him in opposite directions. He turned away before the tight control he’d maintained over his features crumbled.
Paundon still lay sprawled in the chair. Egan on the floor beside him.
“What about them?” he asked.
“Oh we’ll manage,” Casyne said. “We always do.”
Before his resolve crumbled entirely he nodded to himself, and left.
#
The school was dark and quiet when Ryle returned, even the late classes long since concluded. A second-year student was manning the front gate. He opened it when Ryle gave the correct knock.
Once inside, Ryle headed for the Professor’s quarters at the center of the school. He would not usually dare to disturb his master at so late an hour, but after the evening’s events he felt justified risking it.
He was passing the practice hall when a light streaming through the hall’s partially open door caught his attention. After a moment’s consideration, he turned toward it. Unless they were being punished, no students would willingly be practicing this late, and something told him this was not the case.
He slipped in through the door and paused to let his eyes adjust. The long room was dark save for some starlight streaming in through an open skylight at the end of the building. From the same direction, he heard falling water, and strange musical notes. Ryle smiled to himself and headed toward it.
As expected Ryle found a stream of water pouring through the open ceiling, and beside it, standing still in the shadows, the Professor, a naked blade held loose in one hand.
Ryle stopped a few paces back at the edge of the light and waited for the Professor to speak. He had heard of this training, but never seen the Professor engaging in it. No matter how urgently he needed to deliver the information he’d turned up, he wasn’t crazy enough to interrupt the Professor while he was practicing.
The water fell, pale and ghostly in the starlight. The ringing sounds of the droplets striking a stack of uneven wooden pipes set into the floor, danced along Ryle’s ears.
Without warning, the Professor moved, a flickering shadow in the dark. His sword flashed silver through the stream. The song continued, unbroken. No water ran along his blade as he lowered it back to his side.
Ryle shivered.
“Korvey?” the Professor asked.
“Dead, sir. Before I got there. Egan and some of Paundon’s men killed him.”
“I see. Paundon was aware?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And these men. What was their fate?”
Ryle paused, unsure of what the Professor would say, but there was nothing for it. “Both of them are dead, and Egan with them.”
The Professor expelled a long slow breath. “How did they die?”
“I killed them with honor, sir. They faced their deaths armed.”
The Professor nodded, soft light flowing along his stubbled scalp. A flicker. His sword blurred, an impression of movement more than the actual thing. Two cuts, maybe three. The water’s song continued unbroken.
A chilling line of fear ran up Ryle’s spine at the skill on display.
“And Paundon?”
“Incapacitated, but I’m sure he’ll land on his feet. The bastard always does. Sir.”
The Professor circled the falling stream. Disappearing and re-emerging into the light with each step. His movements as silent as a breeze.
“What were they after?”
The questions had been building to this. Ryle gave himself a moment before continuing.
“A drawing, sir. Korvey saw . . . Lastrahn. The House of Reckoning has returned to Pyhrec.”
Behind the stream, the Professor moved again. Light flashed off steel as his sword danced high, twirling, dissecting air a
nd water in a continuous blur. The water’s fall ended two paces above the floor where the water struck steel as if hitting a wall. Not a single droplet made it through. Beneath this blurring cover the Professor stepped through, dry and unhurried.
Ryle couldn’t even see his master’s hands move.
With one more whip of his arm, and the Professor returned his sword to his side. The water descended once more.
For a heartbeat, the Professor eyed Ryle, looking him over from head to toe.
Ryle kept his head up during the inspection, not allowing the aching of his wounds to show on his burning face.
The Professor met his gaze again. “Yes, I had heard. Lastrahn lives.”
Cold shock blasted through Ryle. He almost staggered. “You knew?”
“Delago is not the only one with listening ears.”
Anger and despair poured through Ryle, washing away the meaning he’d cut from the past hours like a dirty tide. All the deaths and the pain, and the Professor had already known. He could’ve told Ryle at any time. But then again, would his master have had told Ryle anything if he hadn’t discovered it for himself? The more Ryle thought about it, the more this felt like this had been one of the Professor’s endless tests.
“Did you know before you sent me, sir?”
“I suspected. Whispers about Lastrahn began to circle this morning.”
A small ember of hope lit in Ryle’s chest. Only hours before. Lastrahn might still be in the city.
“Did Korvey know why Lastrahn had returned?” the Professor asked.
“No, sir.”
“Then that remains a rumor.”
Ryle blinked. The statement had not been random. “A rumor about what, sir?”
The Professor turned away to face the falling water, and raised his sword so that starlight ran along the blade.
“When you first came here years ago, bleeding and mumbling about Reckoning, I knew that one day you would have to make a decision. Your fire for this idea burned too deep, and no amount of control would ever fully quench it. Tonight, I see that fire in your eyes again.”
Ryle gritted his teeth and willed himself not to react. Like the Professor’s sword strokes, each word cut past Ryle’s defenses with ease. Pain curled inside like burning paper.
Harbinger, A Gearspire Story Page 6