Underlord (Cradle Book 6)

by Will Wight

  Finally, she turned to her last hope: Eithan. Who was already staring at her with a big grin on his face.

  That was never a good sign.

  “Why don't the rest of you clean up and head over?” Eithan suggested, slipping an arm between Yerin's Goldsigns and resting it on her shoulders. “I'd like to have a moment with Yerin, if she doesn't mind.”

  Mercy agreed enthusiastically and then guided Orthos away, paying no attention to the rest of them. Lindon looked up from the papers, glancing from Yerin to Eithan's arm on her shoulders. Then he turned his gaze to Eithan.

  Sometimes it was hard to tell what Lindon's face meant. Yerin couldn't tell if he was waiting for an explanation for an Underlord or if he was glaring. It looked like a glare, but then, it always did.

  Eithan pulled his arm back and coughed. “I have a few remarks I would like to share with her. About her training.”

  Now that was definitely a glare.

  Eithan waved a hand at him. “You know I haven't forgotten you, just go get our pay. We'll meet you at the Fisher's.”

  Lindon looked less thrilled about getting the money than he had before, but he trudged off toward the accounts office.

  Once he was gone, Eithan ushered Yerin into a nearby meeting room. The tower was riddled with identical rooms, which Yerin had seen before; Skysworn used them for everything from interrogations to filling out paperwork to throwing parties.

  Eithan shut the door...and, for a moment, actually looked a little embarrassed.

  It was strange enough that Yerin wondered if she should draw her sword.

  “If you recall,” Eithan began, “a long time ago, I promised to give you a present. It was something I picked up from the Desolate Wilds, and only recently has it become appropriate to give it to you.”

  Yerin eyed him. She'd never expected Eithan to give her anything. Lindon had needed more of his attention, and they shared a Path anyway.

  Eithan rubbed the back of his neck, looking sheepish. “Over the last few days, I have come to remember that I have not been a good mentor to you. You have your own Path and your own direction, so I allowed myself to forget that you need guidance as well. For that, I apologize.”

  The Underlord actually bowed at the waist, pressing his fists together.

  Yerin didn't know what to say. Seeing Eithan without his swagger was twisted and wrong. Like night falling at noonday.

  “It's nothing worth getting all chipped about,” she muttered.

  Eithan straightened up, beaming again. “Excellent! I intend for us to stick together until we're slapping Monarchs and juggling Dreadgods, so it would be a waste to fall to a misstep now.”

  “Right, well, I intend to walk to the nearest gambling hall and win every game all at once.” She extended a hand. “Never mind. You've got something for me?”

  She couldn’t hope for too much. Eithan liked to talk big, and sometimes he even convinced her, but in the end he was only an Underlord. Saying that he wanted to bring them all to the level of Heralds or Monarchs was like saying he wanted to pull the sun out of the sky and stick it in his fireplace.

  She and Lindon could at least stick with him until he failed.

  Eithan looked into her eyes and smiled at what he saw there, which irritated her all on its own. He reached into his outer robe and pulled out a small bag, which clinked as he tossed it to her.

  She plucked it from the air and glanced inside. Three stones, smaller than her fist, each covered in scripts. Otherwise, they couldn’t have looked more different: one of them was a chunk of crystal, one looked like it was made of dull rainbows, and the third was a smooth scripted river-stone. She scanned them with her spiritual sense—lightly, so they didn't activate—to confirm that they were what she thought.

  “Dream tablets,” Eithan said, which told her nothing about how useful they were. That was like saying they were 'books.'

  “Two of them, I took from the Transcendent Ruins. One is from a researcher who examined the Bleeding Phoenix directly, and the other is from the man who would become the Sage of Red Faith. They're his experimental Path notes as he learned how to cultivate his Blood Shadow. The third I added myself: it's the Arelius family library's analysis on the uses of a Blood Shadow.”

  Yerin narrowed her eyes. There would be a hook in this somewhere. That all sounded too good to be true.

  Her spiritual sense slipped into one of the dream tablets, not enough to fully activate it, but enough to get a glimpse of what it contained.

  She saw a drop of blood transform: into a tiger, a wolf, a woman, a sword. Now it joins a thousand other drops, ten thousand, an ocean...and that ocean spreads its wings and lets out a searing cry. The earth and sky are stained in blood.

  She jerked her mind back, breathing heavily. Before Truegold, she would never have been able to process this dream tablet. A glimpse of it agitated her Blood Shadow; it took her a long moment to get it back under her control.

  “You were just...hanging on to these?” Yerin asked.

  “The Sage's tablet requires you to be at least Truegold and firm of mind to view it at all, and the other two contain techniques that are only useful once you have a certain spiritual strength and insight into your Blood Shadow.”

  His smile brightened. “I hang on to a lot of things.”

  Yerin hefted the bag, hearing the dream tablets clink. It excited her to think of everything she could learn from these, but she was still a little disappointed that this didn't have anything to do with the Path of the Endless Sword.

  She didn’t want to rely on her Blood Shadow; she knew Lindon would use everything he came across, that was stone-certain. But her recent breakthrough in the Endless Sword technique had made her think that maybe she could follow in her master's footsteps.

  “Looks like I owe you some thanks,” she said.

  “Don't thank me yet,” he said, and winked. “Once you're a new Sage, then you can thank me.”

  ~~~

  The underground chamber was cold and dark, lit only by the essence bleeding from a dying Remnant. Of all the prison cells Eithan had ever seen, this one ranked near the very bottom.

  Eithan pulled a chair from his void key and sat down. As he waited in the darkness, he watched his students do battle over fifty feet above him.

  His bloodline powers showed him the scene: Yerin and Lindon, both in their Skysworn armor, stood in the entrance of a shoddy bar. The patrons had scrambled to leave the second the Skysworn had shown up, some of them fading through the walls or crashing through windows. The place was now deserted except for the Skysworn and the half-dozen ragged murderers they had come to collect.

  This small organization had taken advantage of the influx of strangers into the capital, drugging people in the bar overhead, taking them downstairs, and then killing them for their Remnants. Some of the Remnants they sold to local Soulsmiths.

  Others, they had used for parts.

  They had been very careful to only abduct those without any family or connections, so their operation may have gone unnoticed by the Skysworn had Eithan not passed by this street the day before.

  Now, Yerin singlehandedly suppressed the room with the Endless Sword. Whenever one of them reached for a weapon, an invisible knife sliced across his skin. If one tried to move, chips of wood would fly up from a nearby table. Though she said not a word, the message was clear: she had them all prisoner.

  Meanwhile, Lindon—his eyes blackened—instructed the criminals to stay quiet and to keep their madra under control. They were to be detained and brought to trial. Orthos loomed behind him, blocking the main entrance and adding weight to his every word.

  Mercy, meanwhile, was perched on the building across the street. Her bow was drawn, a black arrow nocked, as she watched and waited for a fight to break out.

  It would, Eithan knew. He could see the signs too clearly.

  As the murderers shouted and threw themselves into the hopeless battle, he stopped paying attention. He reached back into hi
s void key—by habit concealing it as reaching into a pocket—and withdrew a pipe.

  He packed it and tamped it down as Yerin flew into the middle of the opponents, throwing them away from her with pulses of tightly controlled sword madra.

  The Sword Sage had really stumbled across a buried treasure. If only he had survived, he might really have been able to pass on his unique Sage techniques to his student. Eithan would have to make sure he honored the man’s memory by serving his disciple well.

  Though nothing ever went as smoothly as it should.

  He’d meant for the dream tablets to be only one part of her gift. Nine or ten months ago, he’d commissioned Lezaar—the most accomplished refiner of the Arelius family—to craft him a very specific pill. But he had been ousted as Patriarch before the pill was finished, and hadn’t returned since. As far as he knew, the rare and valuable ingredients he’d put into making this miraculous elixir might have gone to waste. Or the pill might have been taken by someone who would never appreciate it.

  He caught his frustration before it bloomed into anger, instead pulling out a scripted fire-starter and lighting the pipe. He didn’t need the fire-starter, strictly speaking, but he enjoyed using it. The script lit up one rune at a time as it spiraled down the wooden script, pulling in red fire aura as it did so, culminating in a burst of sparks when it reached the end. So satisfying.

  With nowhere to go, the smoke curled against the ceiling. He turned his attention to Lindon.

  He was relying almost entirely on Blackflame, using his pure madra as a backup, which was a shame. But he couldn’t handle Eithan’s techniques yet. Despite having practiced the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel for a year and a half, he did not have the madra reserves yet. Nor could his spirit handle them before his channels and core were reinforced by advancing to Underlord.

  Of course, there were still other things Eithan could teach him about the use of pure madra. But he was spread out too thin as it was, trying to master two Paths, Soulsmithing, the madra in that arm of his, and the upgrades to his body and soul that he’d found in Ghostwater. By watching him move, it was obvious to Eithan that Lindon had found a way to enhance his mind, which had pleased Eithan enough to make him dance a little jig. Privately.

  Eithan breathed out another mouthful of smoke. No, giving Lindon more to do would be counterproductive. What he really needed was time to adjust to the abilities he already had. But no matter how many times he told Lindon as much, Lindon took it as an excuse.

  Aboveground, Lindon smashed through a shield of madra and hauled a Highgold murderer up by her collar. Orthos stomped down on a man who tried to flee, Mercy put an arrow through a hand that tried to stab Yerin in the back, and Yerin sliced a spear in half.

  He smiled around the pipe. They moved with a confidence beyond their age. He couldn’t have been prouder of them.

  And he couldn’t wait to see where they went from here.

  Only one of the murderers escaped; the lookout. Eithan’s students had never seen him. He had waited underground, veiled and peeking through a trapdoor. After seeing the Skysworn devastate his partners, he had scurried downstairs, pulling a scripted seal from his pocket.

  He was muttering to himself, a crazed smile on his face, as he approached the vault. His last resort. Eithan could see the thoughts written on his face: he was going to release their secret weapon. The puppet construct they had created for emergencies. Stitched together from Truegold Remnant parts, it had not been crafted by a true Soulsmith, and as such it was all but uncontrollable. He couldn’t direct it; he could only unleash it.

  The murderer placed the seal against the vault door, and the greater script on the door shone brightly. Interlocking metal gears began to turn, and the door slowly ground open.

  The man laughed triumphantly as the vault was revealed, but his laughter slowly faded.

  He stood face-to-face with Eithan, who sat on a padded chair in his Skysworn armor, calmly smoking. Behind him, a monstrous puppet-construct continued to dissolve into motes of rising light.

  Eithan blew smoke into the man’s face.

  Chapter 5

  A few busy days later, Lindon and the rest of the team landed on Starsweep Tower to find Cassias Arelius waiting for them.

  He was flanked by two Truegold Skysworn, who must have escorted him to the top of the tower, but his bearing made them look like his attendants rather than his guards. He was only a few years older than Lindon, his curling hair the same blond as Eithan’s. Rather than sacred artist robes, he wore a pressed shirt and pants of dark blue with silver trim, and he stood straight as Starsweep Tower itself. His hand rested on the hilt of a thin, silver sword that he wore at his hip.

  He glared at Eithan as the team landed, but he still spared a bow for the others. “Lindon, Yerin, Orthos. It has been too long. Your squad leader has been ignoring my messages.” He shot another angry look at Eithan as he turned to Mercy.

  “I apologize, young lady. I am Cassias Arelius, and if you’ll forgive me, I’d say you must be Akura Mercy.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Cassias!” She bobbed an unsteady bow. “Thank you for lending us your Patriarch. He’s always taking us to interesting places.”

  If Yerin had said the same thing, it would have been sarcastic.

  Cassias looked surprised, and glanced over to Lindon and Yerin. “Yes, ah, that brings up what I’m here for. But first, Lindon and Yerin, you’ve…advanced. Of course you have. Congratulations to both of you.”

  He didn’t sound congratulatory, but weary, as though he suspected Eithan of pushing them far too hard. He had expressed concern for them before.

  But Yerin accepted his praise proudly, straightening her spine and lifting her chin, her sword-arms extending.

  Lindon bowed to Cassias in response. “Gratitude. We have been fortunate.”

  “I truly hope you’re taking care of yourselves. Both of you. But I’m here because you haven’t taken our Patriarch away from us. Eithan forfeited that title months ago.”

  Lindon shifted uncomfortably, stealing a glance at Eithan. Yerin was staring at him openly, waiting for a response, and Mercy made a face that suggested she’d rather not be hearing this. Orthos let out a long breath of smoke, and through their bond, he felt resigned. Like he’d heard his most troublesome child had caused a problem once again.

  Eithan looked unconcerned, smiling gently as the wind pulled his long yellow hair behind him. He wore the emerald armor of the Skysworn more naturally than any of them, and Lindon had wondered more than once if he’d had the shape modified for style.

  “I’ve been making the most of my freedom since you stripped me of my position,” Eithan said. “Making the Empire a better place one locked-up smuggler at a time.”

  Cassias stepped forward, looking ready to draw his sword. “I did not strip you of anything, the branch heads did, and I took it on myself to inform you. And they had good reason. You don’t do your job, Eithan! They cut off your funding and authority to force you to come back and face the family. The Emperor himself allowed it! And we’ve heard less from you than ever!”

  Eithan’s smile grew tight. “You don’t think we could do this somewhere more comfortable?” The sun was setting, and the wind was growing uncomfortably cold.

  Cassias threw up his hands. “I think you’ll run off! I’ve spent the whole season trying to track you down, and now I think you’ll disappear if I take my eyes off you for an instant! You always do that!”

  He did tend to do that a lot, Lindon realized. Though he appeared out of nowhere even more often.

  “Very well, then,” Eithan said, and suddenly he radiated a presence that Lindon had only felt from him a handful of times before. It had nothing to do with the power of his spirit, which was still veiled. It was more subtle than that; a sense of authority, as though he was suddenly possessed by the Remnant of a king.

  “When I arrived from the homeland,” Eithan said, “I agreed to take over the Patriarch position for the Bl
ackflame branch of the clan, but I also made it clear to your father that I had plans and goals of my own. His memory is short, for only seven years later, I find that he is dissatisfied with my level of service. Very well, then. Let it be as though I never traveled through that gate.”

  His blue eyes were cold. “If you cannot trust me, then leave me to my own devices.”

  Cassias actually did draw a few inches of his sword, releasing the power of his spirit. It was only then that Lindon noticed that he’d advanced; he was a Truegold now.

  Though, Truegold or Highgold, it was still suicide to throw himself at Eithan.

  Cassias shoved his sword back harshly, but his words carried his fury. “Trust you? Why?”

  His spirit was still unveiled, and he walked straight up to Eithan, unafraid, until they stood only a hand’s breadth apart. Eithan was three or four inches taller, but Cassias stared him down. “You tell us that what you’re doing is in the best interests of the family, but how are we supposed to know that? Do you know what it’s like to have to take something like that on faith? Truly, I mean it, do you even know? Do you know how frustrating it is to not know everything?”

  Their blue eyes clashed for a long, frozen moment. Lindon knew they weren’t closely related, but at the moment, they looked like brothers.

  To Lindon’s surprise, Eithan was the first to soften.

  The intangible sense of authority faded. His shoulders slumped, and he raised an armored finger to rub his nose.

  “That…is…a…painfully valid point,” Eithan finally admitted.

  Cassias did not relent. “Come to the family elders. Most of them are on their way here. You can meet them before the Emperor’s deadline.”

  Lindon and the team had spent much of their time over the last few weeks supervising the caravans of people traveling to Blackflame City to make the Emperor’s two-month timeline. He had called upon all major factions to send their best, especially their strongest and most talented disciples.