The Lone Warrior

by Denise Rossetti

  He twisted around, raising a belligerent chin. “You’re t’ fookin’ assassin,” he said, in the strangest accent she’d ever heard.

  Mehcredi shrugged, avoiding Dai’s knowing, ironic gaze. She began unloading her tray, putting the covered dishes on the dresser. “Who are you?”

  “Florien. From T’ Garden.” His chest expanded. “Rose an’ Prue sent me with stuff fer Walker.”

  “Really?” Questions crowded in her mind, so many, she didn’t know where to begin. “Is Erik all right? I heard the Necromancer hurt him. And what about Prue, how—?”

  “They’re fine now.” The boy scowled, a messy lock of hair falling into his eyes. “No thanks t’ you.”

  “Is the . . . the Necromancer dead?” Mehcredi barreled on, her heart drumming so hard she could feel it in her throat. Gods, she had to know. “Did Walker kill him?”

  “What are ye, daft? Didn’t ye hear?”

  Mehcredi flinched as if the boy had slapped her. “No,” she whispered.

  Florien went on, ignoring her. “Prue done fer him. Wit’ a shovel. Only . . .” The savage grin fading, he picked up what looked like the shell of a nut from the table and jiggled it in his palm. “They ain’t found a body yet.”

  “Shit.” Knees shaking with the visceral memory of terror, she leaned back against the wall, grateful for the support.

  “Yah,” agreed the boy. “That’s about right.” He exchanged glances with Dai, and after a moment, the swordsman nodded. Florien’s grin returned, full force. “Want t’ play?”

  “Play? Play what?”

  “T’ shell game.”

  Intrigued, Mehcredi drew closer. “How does it work?”

  They were both smiling now, but their eyes glittered. “Is t’ hand quicker than t’ eye? Dai never gets it.”

  The swordsman grunted his displeasure, but when he punched Florien lightly on the arm, the boy glowed.

  “I’ll give ye one fer free.” He held up a small black bead for her inspection, then placed it under one of the three shells and swiveled them about, his hands a blur. “Where is it, assassin?”

  Mehcredi chuckled. “Why, it’s there.” She pointed to the shell in the middle.

  Florien turned to the silent swordsman. “Dai?”

  He tapped the shell on the right, curling his lip at her, just as he always did.

  His face a careful blank, the boy lifted the center shell to reveal the bead.

  “Luck,” rasped Dai painfully, leaning forward. “Again.”

  “Nah,” said Florien, all serious purpose. “Not without a bet.”

  “I don’t have any money,” said Mehcredi.

  “What do ye have?”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Nothing.” Nothing at all, no skills, no future, no one to care.

  “Lunch,” said the boy with decision, favoring the dishes with a longing gaze. “I’ll play ye fer lunch.”

  “But that’s Dai’s,” said Mehcredi, shocked.

  Florien stared. “So where’s yours?”

  “Serafina’s rules. I only eat if he does.” She shrugged. “I don’t care.”

  “But that’s—”

  Dai tapped the lad’s bony knee. “Not . . . hungry.” The swordsman waved a hand. Go ahead.

  “Wait, wait.” Mehcredi tugged at her braid. “If I lose, Florien, you get Dai’s lunch, but if I win . . .” She pulled in a breath. “You eat half of it, Dai. At least.”

  Dai shot her a startled glance, then he shrugged. All right.

  “Best of three,” said Florien briskly. “Ready?”

  Mehcredi nodded, her brow furrowed with concentration.

  “That one.” The shell lifted and there was the bead. Florien snorted, nimble fingers flying once more.

  “That one.” This time, she got silence and a flat stare.

  “That one.”

  “Fookin’ ’ell.” Florien’s hands dropped to his lap. “Three outa fookin’ three. No one does that, not t’ me.”

  6

  Dai sat frozen. Slowly, his lips tucked up at the corners and his shoulders began to shake. After a stunned second, it dawned on Mehcredi he was laughing. Without a sound, true, but for the first time since she’d come to the House of Swords, she recognized the handsome merry man she’d seen that night in the Sailor’s Lay.

  “Let’s go outside,” she said impulsively. “Dai, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yah.” Florien hopped out of the chair. “He would.” When he tugged at Dai’s shoulder, the swordsman rolled his eyes, but he nodded.

  Between them, they levered Dai to his feet, his arms over their shoulders. The boy was all bony angles and lanky limbs, shooting up in the first growth spurt of adolescence. Still a hand span taller, the swordsman was trying to spare Florien’s meager frame his full weight. Idiot. With a grunt, Mehcredi slipped an arm around Dai’s trim waist, getting a good grip.

  By the time they reached the door of the salle, Dai was pale to the lips, sweat beading his brow. But he shook his head fiercely when they reached the beds of dark roses, so they struggled on, across a delicately arched bridge that spanned a pond and gave out on a velvety sward of moss-grass the deepest green Mehcredi had ever seen. Tall flowers like yellow trumpets grew in clumps along the waterline, interspersed with bending sprays of a feathery plant dotted with violet stars. Reflections shimmered, tangling with those of passing clouds, high above. Water gurgled and a touchme bush tinkled happily somewhere nearby. It was perfect, like a small gem of a room in a lovely house, exquisitely furnished, but outdoors.

  For some godsbedamned reason, her eyes stung with tears.

  “This do?” panted Florien, as Dai spread himself out on the grass with a grateful sigh.

  “I’ll go back for the tray,” said Mehcredi.

  “Me too.” Florien leaped to his feet, his eyes brightening. “All right, Dai?”

  The swordsman raised a finger. Wait. Extracting a small pad of paper and a pencil from his pocket, he scribbled a note. Folding it over, he thrust it at Mehcredi. “Serafina,” he husked. “Picnic.” Then he waved her away. Go.

  Mehcredi went, the boy at her heels. The moment they were over the bridge, she handed the note to Florien. “What’s it say?”

  “How t’ fook should I know?” The boy shoved it back toward her.

  Mehcredi stopped dead. “You can’t read? Truly? I thought everyone—” She broke off. “Except me, that is.”

  “Not if ye were born in a slum.”

  She bent her head, fretting at the edge of the note with her thumbnail. “Dai can hardly talk.” Bile burned in her throat. She had to swallow hard before she could go on. “Because of me.”

  The lad snorted. “ ’Course he can. A bit, anyway. Just don’ wanna talk to ye.” He caught sight of her face. “Yah, well. You find Serafina. I’ll go up fer t’ tray.”

  The glint in his eye reminded her of the little boys caught sticky-fingered in Cook’s pantry, a lifetime ago. “No, you won’t.” She tucked the note into his grubby fist. “She should be in the kitchen.”

  “T’ kitchen? Why didn’t you say so?” Florien trotted away.

  Walker had a small office on the second floor of the House of Swords. He didn’t care for paperwork, but it was an unavoidable part of making a living, so he set the hours aside, gritted his teeth and applied himself. The room was Spartan—a desk, an upright chair and a set of cupboards for his files.

  Today was the first time he’d felt it wasn’t big enough.

  His hands laid flat on the desk, he gazed coldly at Purist Deiter. “What did you just say?”

  “You heard me.” The old wizard clasped his hands together over his small paunch. “Have you ever died?”

  Walker stared him down.

  “Ah,” said Deiter, smirking. “Right again. Gotta love being me.” He rummaged around inside the battered satchel slung over one shoulder. “What happened? Did you see the wild desert gods of the Shar?”

  Walker’s eyes narrowed. “What do y
ou know of the Shar, old man?”

  Deiter shrugged. “Enough to imagine Giral’s death made you very happy.” With a satisfied grunt, he extracted a long tube made of stout leather. “Did you celebrate? Go out and get drunk?” His fading eyes brightening, he gave the tube an obscene waggle. “Or, the gods forbid, laid?”

  Before Walker could reply, the wizard shook his head, the three plaits of his beard dancing together like grizzled snakes. “Of course not.” He snorted. “You’d have to give up control for the split second it took you to come.”

  Walker schooled his face to forbidding indifference. ’Cestors’ bones, his brain seethed with questions. Leaning back in his chair, he breathed in, deep and even. Once, twice. That was better. “Tell me how Giral died. Exactly.”

  “He fought a duel with his own assassin.” Deiter gave a dry, nasty chuckle. “But the other man had an unfair advantage—a prettydeath blade. Apparently, it took the Ambassador-Pasha the whole night to die.”

  A tygre snarl rumbled in Walker’s throat. Prettydeath—the tool of assassins the world over. Mehcredi’s weapon of choice.

  The Purist sat up straight and suddenly, the air thrummed with Magick. “I’ve answered your question, shaman. Now answer mine. Did you see your gods?”

  The first lines of his Song.

  Welderyn’d’haraleen’t’Lenquisquilirian, babe twice blessed with life and love.

  First Mother’s breath to sing his Song, First Father’s touch on his downy head.

  Like all newborns, he’d drawn his first breath as he was pulled from his mother’s body. But when the shaman laid him against her breast, he’d uttered a single choked cry and fallen silent. Frantic, the man had worked on the tiny body, his prayers resounding in the incense-laden air of the birthing tent. To no avail.

  His mother, Shar warrior that she’d been, always paused at this point in the story to regain her composure. “Twice blessed, Welderyn,” she’d say. The Shar were not a demonstrative people, but one time—he’d been about six, he thought—she’d hugged him in front of everybody.

  The shaman had pretty well given up when the baby’s cloudy, slatecolored eyes snapped open, staring at something over the man’s shoulder. The walls of the tent had rippled, though there was no breeze, and the shaman gasped, strangled by the backwash of power. As he toppled forward, eyes rolling up in his head, Welderyn had sucked in a breath and wailed his displeasure, loud and clear.

  Or so he’d been told. He certainly had no recollection—of the First Ancestors or anything else.

  “No gods,” he said to Deiter. “Or not that I recall.”

  He frowned down at the ledger lying open on the desk before him. All through his childhood and adolescence, he’d had dreams . . . Not many, to be sure, and like all dreams, vivid in patches, but overall, maddeningly vague. A round, motherly face crowned with a coronet of dark braids woven with flowers bright as stars, eyes so dark he could fall into them and never find the way back. An enormous masculine palm cradling a cedderwood nut-corn; the corn splitting, a tree springing forth, branches reaching for the sky, a canopy of green for the entire world; the ch’qui suffusing his soul, his flesh, until every nerve ending quivered, burning with the energy of life itself.

  And he’d wake, convinced there was something he’d been born to do—or more accurately, a task he’d been saved to undertake. Until Giral and his diablomen had fallen upon the Shar’d’iloned’t’Hywil, he’d searched for it in vain, but from that terrible day on, he’d comprehended his destiny only too well.

  No, the old Purist didn’t need to know about the vengeance of the Shar. Nor that Welderyn’d’haraleen’t’Lenquisquilirian had not heard his true name spoken aloud for fifteen years.

  He raised a brow. “It’s an odd question, Deiter, even for you. Why do you ask?”

  The wizard stood, slapping the leather tube down across the ledger book Prue had drawn up so meticulously. “Here. Let me show you.” Fumbling a little, he drew forth a thick, creamy sheet of parchment, expensive stuff. As he unrolled it, he said, “Do you know what this is?”

  “A five-pointed star, a pentacle.” Walker studied the glowing colors, the fine brushstrokes, and his brow creased. “Very pretty.” He looked up into sharp old eyes. “So what?”

  The old man sighed. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a wine jug anywhere about?”

  “There’s a water carafe behind you on the shelf.”

  “Bah!” Deiter’s lip curled. “You’ll kill me. Forget it.”

  He tugged at his beard, collecting his thoughts. “I had a vision,” he said at last. “Of a great evil, greater than anything the worlds have ever known, all-encompassing, universal, swallowing everything light and good. Even the gods can’t—” He broke off, his face gray.

  “I’ve got it,” said Walker, watching cold sweat pop on the wizard’s brow. “Go on.”

  “Wouldn’t leave me alone, godsdammit, like I was poisoned. Thought I’d never stop puking my guts up ’til I—Anyway, I saw the Pattern—this one, a Great Pentacle. With four Sides: Fire, Air, Earth and Water.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Purist, but a pentacle has five sides.”

  Deiter shot him a glare from under bushy brows. “Godsdammit, man, I can bloody count! If I may be allowed to finish?”

  “I doubt I could stop you,” Walker said dryly.

  “No,” agreed the wizard. “You couldn’t. Where was I?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ah, yes. The Lord and the Lady haven’t seen fit to inform me who the fucking fifth Side is, but—”

  “Who?”

  “Hmm. What?”

  “You’re talking about lines in a geometric figure. What do you mean who?”

  Deiter glared. “It’s a construct, you fool, a metaphor.”

  “Feel free to leave any time, Purist. I have plenty to do.” Walker picked up the ink brush and turned it over in his fingers.

  The wizard went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Each Side represents an element and for each element, the gods have chosen . . . someone to gift with power.” He snorted. “Whether they want it or not.”

  Walker raised a brow, a cold tide spreading low in his gut. But he said nothing.

  “Cenda nearly died of a fever. It took her child, but in return, the Lord and the Lady gave her the power of Fire.”

  “Erik got Air,” said Walker slowly. When Deiter shot him a glance, he shrugged. “I saw him in action, remember?” Ah yes, big Erik in a fury had been something to behold. An angry Air wizard tended to be hard on loose crockery.

  “So you did.”

  Walker waited.

  Deiter took a turn about the room, shabby robes swishing. He came to an abrupt halt. “You’re Earth.”

  “Yes.”

  Something flashed in the old wizard’s eyes. It could have been surprise. “You don’t deny it?”

  “If I didn’t know the source of my power, I wouldn’t be a shaman. Who’s Water?”

  Deiter collapsed into a chair with a huff of exasperation. “Don’t fucking know. But it’s someone close, I can feel it.”

  Walker folded his lips together. They stared at each other in silence. A scent-laden breeze drifted in the window, flirting with the corners of the parchment on the desk, bringing with it distant sounds, shouts and splashes. Children skylarking in the blue waters of the canal.

  “No,” said Walker at last, very quietly. “I won’t do it.” Everything inside him went still and watchful. Ready. He flexed his fingers.

  But all Deiter said was, “Why not?”

  “Your gods are not mine, Purist.”

  “The Shar worship their ancestors, don’t they?”

  “An oversimplification,” Walker said stiffly.

  Deiter waved it off. “No offense intended. Anyway, don’t you see? They’re all the same, only the names change. The Lord and the Lady, the Brother and the Sister.”

  First Mother, First Father. Likely the old reprobate was right. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t that Walker di
dn’t believe in evil—he did, unconditionally. Who better, after all? But evil was made of blood and mud and shit and stink, not pretty pictures. He dealt with it his own way, one monster at a time. This Pentacle thing had storybook quest written all over it, a stalwart band of brothers riding shoulder to shoulder, off to save the world. ’Cestors save him from wide-eyed idealism!

  “We need you.” Deiter’s lip lifted, exposing wine-stained teeth in what was doubtless intended to be a winning smile.

  “I am not in the habit of repeating myself, Purist.” People he barely knew and certainly didn’t trust. Like Deiter, for instance.

  The wizard nodded at the hand Walker had spread over the parchment to prevent it fluttering away. “Look.”

  With a muttered curse, Walker snatched his fingers away. The godsbedamned thing was alive!

  Minuscule salamanders burned all down one Side, capering about in a fiery dance, though the creamy surface remained unmarred. Tiny clouds shot with rainbows scudded around the entire shape, coming to rest above the second Side. He thought he could hear them singing, a faraway chorus like distilled joy. But the third Side—

  He’d forgotten how to breathe.

  The ch’qui suffused the page, creating a trench no wider than his thumb, full of dark, fragrant soil, so rich and deep he could smell it, like Concordian chocolat. Threads of green sprang forth, growing while he watched, tangling and twining, the essence of life and birth and joy. Blossoms no bigger than pinheads burst open into tiny stars, releasing an intoxicating perfume.

  Walker lifted his gaze. “Amazing,” he said, meaning it.

  Deiter stared, unblinking. “But the answer’s still no.”

  “Good-bye, Purist.” He pushed the parchment aside and drew the ledger closer.

  “For now.” The old man rose with a grunt, and retrieved the Pentacle. “One day,” he said as he turned toward the door, “there’ll be no more demons left to kill. What will you do then, retire and grow pretty fl—” He froze, staring out the window at the garden below. His throat moved, producing a gobbling noise like a scrawny old fowl surprised by a housewife with a cleaver.