Understand that any act of brutality, any cruelty, any injustice or folly on the part of those who serve the Crowns injures the Crowns.
This, too, he understood; no one unworthy could aspire to the Compact, because the Kings trusted more than their lives to its members.
Behind the Crowns, the Swords and the Defenders were forming up, but their lines were patchy and fragile. Before them, Duvari stood like a thin—and arrogant—shield. The Magi were also there, a collective council of arrogant and powerful people; they set light against darkness, choosing shields of subtlety and power as a defense against magical attack, known and unknown. Still, he was not alone. The rest of the Astari joined Devon in ones and twos, choosing their positions with as much care as they could afford.
What would you be willing to do to protect the Kings?
Gritting his teeth, he crouched—not to hide, but rather to face the enemy of his choice. Devon had no children, partly by luck and mostly by choice; he wondered if this battle was easier for him than for Delana, who mothered three. Hoped that he would never have the chance to find out. The daggers he lifted before him in a tilted cross. In an almost leisurely fashion, he invoked the names of the triumvirate.
A boy with no lower legs reached him at the same time as a young girl with a head tilted at a horrible angle. Breaking the cross, he swung his arms open as if to catch them in his embrace. It was a lie; the blades struck them cleanly, opening bloodless gashes over their tiny hearts. Their fingers convulsed, gripping air. He spoke the names again: Reymaris, Cormaris, the Mother. Almost, he could see the fine layers of darkness that shielded them, the threads that jerked them forward; he cut them one by one, thinking as he worked to stay clear of their broken hands: The demon had not died so slowly.
They wailed piteously.
This could not be happening. The dead were just that; dead. It was a trick of the enemy, with darkness so strong and so sure that any lie could be forced out of a dead child’s lips. He told himself this, who did not have the time to ask the Exalted.
What would you do?
He struck them again, and then again, and at last they fell before the power of the blessed and anointed daggers. He wanted to bow his head a moment, to murmur First Day Rites, to take a breath—but he could not. For the worst of the dead was already before him, wobbling and struggling to reach him. First steps.
So he knelt forward, crossing the knives again, setting his jaw. At either side, he was aware of his compatriots, and he took what little comfort he could from them; he knew that for the next few minutes he was perfectly safe in his task. They were felling their own dead.
The darkness here was powerful. He could taste it, and it was bitter, almost metallic; a cold and lonely thing. He could barely shake it—no, could not shake it—so he stopped trying. Because he was Astari, he knelt. And because he was only Devon ATerafin serving as Astari when the baby’s corpse finally reached his knees, he opened the cross that he’d made of the daggers and held his arms wide, offering, this time, no lie. The corpse—the child—walked into his arms, little fingers preternaturally strong as they reached for his throat and pressed against it.
Holding his breath, grunting against the unexpected pain, Devon ATerafin closed the circle of his arms, bringing the daggers to bear through the child’s back as many times as it took to still its movements.
Anything.
To either side, he heard the clatter of armor, the scrape of greaves against greaves, the cries of the Northern scouts. Lines that had held for the falling of the dead children surged forward, holding a very loose formation. They passed him by as he knelt in the dirt. Rising slowly and stiffly, he lifted his face to better see the conflict.
A fleeting glimpse of shimmering air, the blue light of the flashing storm, the red of elemental fire were jarring in their unexpected beauty. Gods, it seemed, whether at war or in council, were destined to attract the regard of men.
His first mistake, to look upon them there; his second, to attempt to take, in the midst of joined battle, a moment of peace. Instinct pulled his ear, his hair; he turned to see a creature leap out of the darkness directly toward him, long claws gleaming with someone else’s blood. His own hands, heavy, were full.
Without another hesitation, Devon threw the small corpse into the demon’s path and rolled to the side. Survival had its own imperative, its own rhythms. It did not allow for grieving, for horror, for hatred; it demanded, and received, undivided attention. Mercifully. Thankfully.
• • •
Gilliam and Evayne crouched within the second circle of what had once been a crowded amphitheater. Evayne knew that the fine, well-crafted chairs and benches that had seen use at the city’s height would not have survived its fall. She did not speak. Her hands were white ice against the surface of her crystal, although the mists therein did not move or part. She did not search them; her eyes were upon the arena and the drama unfolding beneath them.
Protected by a spell of her weaving, Gilliam felt curiously removed, as if the battle’s muted sounds and effects were the backstage maneuvering of a talented troupe. The darkness did not fill him with horror, nor the light strengthen him. He heard a whisper, a murmur; turned to see Evayne’s lips moving near-silently. She was praying, he thought, but to whom he could not say.
• • •
Kallandras heard the cries on the left flank of the Kings’ Defenders; surprise and silence, surprise and silence, spreading in a widening sphere. Putting the voice into his voice, he forced a warning cry through a thickened throat and began to push himself through the opening ranks.
Extended from the line of walking dead, he found them: Allandor and Kyria, one of the oldest of the brotherhood and one of the youngest. Kyria’s long hair was bound back in a dull and dirt-streaked tail; sallow hollows were all that remained beneath cheekbones that had once been high and fair. His eyes, time had already taken.
He could not dally with the living, for, oathsworn, he had nothing but his own death to offer them. It was to the dead that he offered all the things that he knew could no longer be rejected.
He had no words to give, and had he, he could not have spoken them. Ten yards from his outstretched arm were the two whose cries he had hoped to silence with the comfort that only one Kovaschaii-trained could offer. The motivation was not a pure one, and he knew it well; this was as close to the life he desired as he could come, this dance of death, and he would give it where his former brothers could not. Or he would have.
But he could see them as they battered against the confinement of dead flesh, moths against the contours of a lamp’s glass, and in that moment, he only wanted them free; who danced, and how, no longer mattered. Time had left its mark in the tone of their skin, the texture, the scent. Kyria’s body was unmarked by the torture and violence that had disfigured most of the other corpses, but Allandor’s was terribly broken, as if the heat of battle had decided his fate and the victor had continued to worry the fallen in an unstopped frenzy.
It was, he thought, with a grim practicality, for the best; of the two, it was Allandor that he would have had trouble stopping. He was not so certain that, broken and bent but still moving in an awkward parody of life, Allandor would be easy to lay to rest now. A leap carried him out of the way of Kyria’s sudden strike.
At their feet, the newly dead lay broken, their fine armor no proof against the assassin’s strike, their weapons useless. Kallandras saw and passed over them; they were nothing to him now. Only Kyria and Allandor mattered.
He wrapped their names in the secret voice, protecting them from the ears of the uninitiated, before he called them, loud and long. Did Kyria’s blind head shudder? Did the line of his shoulders waver? The answer was bitter, the hope too thin to bear the weight of delusion for long. The dead did not hear or see.
And yet, blind and deaf, the Kovaschaii were more effective than the demons at laying their i
nadvertent enemies low. Kallandras leaped, and leaped again, keeping the distance between himself and Kyria great enough that no death strike could reach him, and small enough that he presented the best target.
Ah, death had its advantages. He grimaced, drawing sharp breath as sweat trickled from the tightly drawn line of his hair. They were slow, these two—but they would not be slower forever; they did not tire. Kallandras did.
Rolling along the arena’s packed floor, he struck out at Kyria’s leg, hoping to snap it; Kyria, dead, was too fast. He was also in the air a hair’s breadth before Kallandras struck.
How did one dance a death when the dead were trying to kill one?
• • •
No, she wasn’t praying; he saw folds of her robe snap into place as her hands left the crystal sphere floating untouched in the air before her. Her lips stopped moving, but her expression was just as distant, just as focused, as it had been since they’d entered the coliseum.
What is it? he thought, his grip on the Spear so tight he could no longer feel his fingers. He did not dare interrupt her by asking; instead he turned his feral attention to the battle below, seeking answers there.
• • •
Dead, Kyria was still fast enough to push him, and to push hard. Allandor, a shadow that loped beyond their struggle, broke the ground with his oddly angled arms, his uneven, grinding stride. Had either been armed—or worse, both—the battle would already be over.
As it was, Kyria’s body was now marked and gashed by the wide sweep of Kallandras’ steel—to no effect, of course. The only way to stop the dead was to dance for them; to call the Lady to the meeting place and ask Her for their peace. It was a peace only She could grant.
He knew it well.
Look long, he thought, as he jumped over Allandor’s outstretched arm. This is your fate. Sweating, he put up his sword. Kyria struck without regard for the edged parry, slicing himself from fingertip to elbow without actually losing the arm. Gritting his teeth, Kallandras brought the sword around and up in a sudden, vicious arc to claim what, dead, Kyria was still not foolish enough to surrender: His arm.
The loss did not slow him.
Something had to. Because the dance itself took strength, and Kallandras was slowly giving his over to this painful and necessary combat.
Sing, Kallandras.
Evayne’s voice. Of all the voices he wished to hear, the least. He made no reply; had he wanted to, he would not have. Allandor’s fingers, almost separated from his hands, were trying to snap the bard’s ankle.
Sing, she said again.
To what? He wanted to cry out in frustration, but his training prevented that show of weakness.
The dead were not affected by the voice.
Sing!
Levering the fingers from his boots with the sword’s point, he froze a moment. Because while the dead could not hear the bardic voice in any way, the deaf could. And the Kovaschaii were not dead until the dance. Hope came in a sharp and painful breath—a breath that no other bard, locked in mortal combat, would have been able to draw. This skill was a gift of the Kovaschaii; fitting, then, that it be used in their aid.
He did not tell them who he was. Instead, he told them what: a brother, come finally to dance their deaths and give them the peace that they were promised. He filled his voice with the longing and the love that only the Kovaschaii felt for one another—and that was no artifice; had he wanted to, he could not have kept that from them.
Did they stop their attack? Did they freeze a moment and actually look at him? He thought so, but could not be certain, and the faltering of hope was bitter indeed.
• • •
Evayne cursed and bowed her head a moment. When she raised it, her skin was paler than it had been, her eyes darker. For the first time, she spoke, the words as polite and noble as any that a hunter on the trail might speak to a fool who had dared interrupt him.
“Guard me.”
• • •
Kyria’s arm snapped to a stop; Allandor’s teeth, opening to bite, froze as if in mid-snarl.
Dance, Kallandras.
Sweating, bleeding, bearing the dirt of the coliseum in hair and clothing, he plunged his sword into the ground. These two would not slacken and fall; there would be no cleaning of the corpses, no artful arrangement. These, he would not miss. But the final embrace, the resting of the head in his lap, the whispering of words that only the dead would listen to—they haunted him as his feet touched dirt and leaped clear, touched down and leaped clear.
The song that he had been singing shifted and deepened as he traced the first five points of the Kovaschaii star. Mind. Heart. Soul. The brotherhood.
The Lady.
The hidden star came next; he danced two, quick and light, singing the birth names, the brotherhood’s names, and the hidden names of the two who stood in magical thrall before him. And then, again, the two points of intersection between the man and the Kovaschaii. The brotherhood.
The Lady.
The arena tilted beneath his feet; his ankle rolled gently, refusing to bear his weight. The fine fabric of his tunic clung to his skin in damp, darkened folds as his knees bent beneath him. Sweat trickled into his eyes, rolling down the tip of his nose, his chin; he could not lift a hand to wipe it clear. Never in his years with the Kovaschaii had he ended a dance so poorly.
Never, in all those years, had the Lady’s answer been so forceful. Mists which had always been a gentle, subtle presence roiled with the force of a storm; where soft, pale glow illuminated her coming, the air now crackled with sharp shards of light, too harsh to glance at for long. Ah, it hurt to cover his eyes, to lose the glimpse of the Lady that he had sworn to follow—and that he still, in his fashion, served—but instinct forced his hands up and bound his fingers into a tight shield.
“What is this?” she asked, her voice the very thunder.
They answered her with their cries, insensate in their relief, all ceremony forgotten.
She called them to her, and he heard their babbling, their tears; he could almost feel the circle of her arms closing around them in the half-world.
“Where,” she said, speaking again in fury, “were your brothers?”
Kallandras forced his hands away from his eyes, wincing and squinting against the angry radiance. “Lady,” he said, calling her attention to himself although he could not prevent reflex from curling his body inward.
“You,” she said coldly. He could not look upon her countenance, enshrouded as it was in a bitter light, although the tone of her voice forced his head up.
“Lady,” he said quietly.
But when she spoke again, the great anger was gone from her voice. The light dimmed enough that Kallandras might open his eyes to behold the faint luminescence of raven hair in the half-world. Her dark cloak swirled as if caught by wild wind, and at her side, clutching folds of fabric in their unbunching fists, two men. Each bore a delicate, long-fingered hand upon the shoulder closest to her. “Who calls?” Ah, ritual. “Who wishes to meet me in the half-world?”
“I do.”
“And you?”
At once, he bowed the head he had raised. “I am Kallatin of the brotherhood, Lady. You hold my name.” That name was a tremor of shaking lips.
“You are no longer Kallatin,” was her reply. “But, yes, I hold your name.”
He waited in silence, his face the perfect Kovaschaii mask; he was no longer a youth, to have it crack so easily.
The corner of her pale lips turned up in a slight smile; she nodded—approval?—before looking away to the taller of her two companions. Height, rather than age, differentiated them; he was no longer aged, no longer lined with care and the toil of years.
“You have served me well,” she told him, “and I have come to return to you the name that binds us, Allandor nee Eadward Parakis. And you,” she
turned to the slender, shorter man, “have earned your name in my service. I return it to you as well, Kyria nee Calavin Warran.”
Tight-lipped, he watched them both as they relaxed in the cover of the Lady’s night. He was not a youth, no, but the mask slipped a little.
“Come,” she told them softly. “The path is waiting, and we will walk it together, you and I.”
Kyria turned at once, but Allandor’s gaze went not to the mists, but to the man who stood as outsider at their edge. “Why?” he asked softly.
“You saw the Darkness,” Kallandras said, with a bitterness that not even pride could contain.
Allandor nodded grimly.
“None of the brotherhood knew where you were, although they could hear your cries.”
“And you?”
“She brought me,” he replied.
Allandor’s face darkened. “She who—”
But the Lady raised a delicate finger to Allandor’s lips. “Hush,” she told him quietly. “Speak not in anger when that anger is my right.” Turning to Kallandras, she said softly, “you have served me well this day, and I shall not forget it. Speak if you will; I will not prevent it.”
“Allandor,” he said softly, “I would die for the brotherhood.” He paused and smiled bitterly. “But I alone of all of the brotherhood would do more than that: I would live for it, and without it, in pursuit of that service.”
“The brotherhood,” Kyria said coldly, speaking for the first time, “is the Lady’s will. The Lady decreed—”
But the Lady raised a regal hand to stem the flow of his words. “You are young,” she said softly.
And he would never grow old.
Allandor bowed as if Kyria’s interruption had never happened. “I have seen the Darkness,” he said, and his fine features twisted in a shudder. “And it has seen us. You are not my brother,” he added harshly. The eyes of the dead met the eyes of the living, and the harshness was lifted slowly as he continued to speak. “And yet we are bound. Or we were. You danced our death, Kallatin. And although you have earned it, I would no longer see you trapped undying upon the plane.” He bowed, touching finger to forehead in a gesture of respect.
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