Unsouled (Cradle Book 1)

by Will Wight

  He looked down the aisle at the dozens of cases he hadn’t broken and spoke through gritted teeth. “Let’s…just…take what we have.” It grated on him to leave so many riches behind, but they’d die if they stayed.

  She grimaced and rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding another beam. “Once I ease him on his way, we can go.”

  While she struck out at the construct with another ripple of sword-madra, he stared at her. “We don’t need to fight him at all. Get on the cloud and let’s go.”

  “The strong don’t run,” she said.

  The elder himself stepped into view at that moment, waving his sword. Madra followed the motion, and transparent madra walls bloomed to either side of them. They were trapped in a column, one row of artifacts with Rahm and his two constructs on one side and Yerin and Lindon at the other. Behind them, a group of enemy disciples waited out the open door.

  The old man pointed his blade at them. He must have given the constructs an instruction, because they were both silent as he spoke. “We want you alive. Swear yourself to my keeping, give us answers, and we won’t kill you. We’ll allow you to take your own life.”

  “Can you keep me alive?” Lindon asked, voice low. “Because you might survive that crowd rushing in here, but I won’t. And you swore to keep me safe.”

  She shuddered, expression flickering between anger and agony, but eventually she nodded.

  Yerin knelt next to the case with the flying sword, her own blade pressed against the ground. She had lost her Heaven’s Glory robes at some point, leaving her own tattered black clothes, though the stolen iron badge still hung around her neck. “Did your messenger tell you what Path I follow?”

  Suriel’s ghost had given him that information, but he couldn’t remember. He shook his head.

  “Grab that sword,” she said, pointing at the case. “Then throw it at him.”

  Lindon glanced nervously at the battle-ready Jade. “Now?”

  “Now.”

  The elder faced them impatiently, constructs hovering over each shoulder and weapon in hand. With as little movement as possible, Lindon slid the scripted blade off of its stand.

  “Your answer,” Rahm demanded.

  Lindon hefted the blade.

  Yerin took a deep breath. “This is the Path of the Endless Sword,” she said.

  Lindon threw.

  As the sword tumbled end-over-end in the air, Yerin tightened her grip on her own weapon. Her blade rang like a struck bell, and suddenly the air was filled with flying splinters as the floor tore itself to pieces. It was as though a thousand hatchets struck the same point at the same time.

  The display of halfsilver weaponry echoed the sound weakly, and a few cuts appeared around their case, but they remained intact. Even the halfsilver dagger at Lindon’s belt rang softly, and he jerked as light cuts appeared on his robe. Around the room, three bells rung louder, and three cases burst.

  Another bell, and Elder Rahm screamed. His sword had rung in sympathy with the others, and his sleeve exploded in blood. His arm and the right side of his clothes had been slashed to tatters, and his weapon fell to the ground from a hand that no longer had the strength to hold it.

  In the air, the flying sword rang as well. Barely visible lines of sword madra reflected from its edge as it flew between the Heaven’s Glory constructs. They were still quiet, having been pacified by Elder Rahm, and so they did not protest as they were sliced to pieces that trailed golden smoke as they drifted to the ground. Only the blue circles on the bottoms remained floating, supporting nothing.

  The sword finished its arc and clattered to the ground, nowhere close to Elder Rahm. The old man moaned as he fell to his knees, clutching his ruined arm.

  Lindon stared.

  Yerin pushed him toward the Thousand-Mile Cloud and the stuffed pack on top, still talking. “That’s called resonance. Uses sword madra to rile up the aura in the air, which gathers around sharp weapons. Doesn’t work so well with halfsilver.”

  For that, Lindon was grateful. Otherwise, he might have been split in two by his own dagger.

  He sprawled onto the cloud, pushing down the pack full of loot with his body. She hopped on in front of him, feeding her spirit into the cloud construct. It was off like an arrow, shooting through the door and away before any of the stunned Heaven’s Glory disciples outside could react.

  “That’s the heart of my Path,” Yerin said. “All swords are one.”

  While she spoke, she steered the cloud down the street. It only hovered about three feet over the ground, but under the influence of Yerin’s powerful spirit, it was faster than a galloping horse.

  “I will do anything, anything, if you can teach me to do that.”

  Streaks of light blasted after them, scorching rainstone buildings, as Yerin navigated them away from the school. Her scarred face was tight with concentration.

  “He’s not dead,” she said, ignoring his comment. “But I’d contend that I won.” She nodded decisively. “Yeah, we’ll mark that one up as a win.”

  They streaked toward the Ancestor’s Tomb, leaving their pursuers far behind.

  Chapter 19

  As the sun rose, Lindon and Yerin flew over the rough terrain of Mount Samara. Yerin kept the rosy cloud skimming the rocks, scattering snow as they blasted north toward the Ancestor’s Tomb.

  Meanwhile, Lindon concentrated on not falling off.

  Once he had found a position that he felt he could survive, he slowly began picking through his pack of stolen items. Once they landed, they might not have time to take full inventory.

  The Thousand-Mile Cloud itself was probably their greatest prize, and Yerin insisted that even Lindon’s madra was enough to power it. Though he would travel much more slowly. According to her, clouds like this were valuable transportation beyond the valley.

  There were forty-eight spirit-seals in the stack, and they were prepared to use all of them on her master’s Remnant. But if they had a few left over, the seals would be precious advantages against other Remnants in the future. Still, it was best not to count on that. The Sword Sage was their priority.

  The Starlotus bud would help him break through to Copper almost immediately, and he had to remind himself more than a dozen times that it would be foolish to eat it now. The ancestral orus fruit had taken him days to digest, and the Starlotus should take even longer. The last thing he needed was something in his own core distracting him when he might need to fight. Even so, he longed to swallow at least one petal.

  Instead, he occupied himself watching the Sylvan Riverseed, the little blue-flame spirit that danced around in its glass enclosure. The river that spun around the inside of the little tank had remained steady as they flew, neither spilling nor splashing, but the spirit had thrown itself against the glass walls to stare at the passing landscape.

  Lindon had asked what the Riverseed could be used for, but Yerin herself was unclear. They were rare, she knew that, and you were supposed to raise them. Or maybe plant them. Either way, she was certain it was worth more money than anything else they’d snatched, including the cloud.

  The parasite ring was like the Starlotus bud, in that it would eventually help Lindon overcome his deficiencies but wasn’t of any immediate use. He added to that the halfsilver dagger—his parents had owned a few halfsilver weapons, but he’d never had one of his own—and the White Fox boundary flags as the least valuable treasures they’d stolen. The boundary was difficult to obtain, but it also took a long time to set up, and a powerful enough opponent would simply tear through it. He had been lucky to use it against Kazan Ma Deret.

  Seven treasures. They were an unspeakable fortune to a Wei clan Unsouled, but looking at them like this, they were almost disappointing. When he compared them to what they could have gotten away with, had they been allowed just another minute in the Treasure Hall…

  “Dragon fever,” Yerin said from the front of the cloud.

  Lindon jerked up, startled out of his daydreams. “Dragon?”r />
  She laughed into the wind as they skipped off of a outcropping, floating down to land above the ground again. “That’s what master would say. Sacred arts are expensive, and it takes a pile of pills and treasures to advance. It’s when you get lost in gold for it’s own sake, that’s the dragon fever.”

  Lindon’s face heated. She’d seen through him without even looking at him. “I’m not trying to take your share. My contributions pale beside yours. But some of them, I think, might not suit someone of your strength.”

  “No, don’t get me wrong. I’m burning up with the fever. I’m just boiling to turn around and scrape that Treasure Hall clean.”

  He exhaled, relieved. “This is a bigger fortune than I’ve ever seen, and for some reason I’m disappointed it isn’t bigger.”

  “Dragon fever,” she said decisively. “Helps to keep your eyes fixed on one thing. Grab whatever else you can, but don’t go blind to what really matters. My master says—” She stopped. Wind whistled by. “My master used to say distraction kills more sacred artists than enemies ever do.”

  He couldn’t ignore that pause. Having never been trained, he’d never had a master, but how would he feel if his parents had been taken from him?

  Suriel’s vision flashed through his head, Sacred Valley blasted out of existence, and he spoke with real sympathy. “He must have been a great man. Even in the outside world.”

  “The spine of the matter is, he only came to the valley for me,” she said. He couldn’t see her face, but suddenly he could barely hear her words over the wind. “Wouldn’t have bothered coming on his own, it was just a safe place for me to train. But it doesn’t matter how strong you are when you’re poisoned in your sleep.” By the end, her voice carried the ring of cold steel.

  “I wish I could have met him,” Lindon said. It was true, but it was also what he was supposed to say to a grieving relative.

  “He might have taken you with us, had you asked him. He could be soft that way. But first, he’d have killed your clan elders for what they were teaching you.”

  Lindon leaned around her shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of her expression. “Forgiveness, but…what did they teach me?”

  He crashed into her back as the cloud came to a sudden halt. A massive square building loomed in the distance, set with huge columns and a stone mural of four beasts locked in battle. The whole edifice lurked on the edge of an enormous cliff as though it had done so since the beginning of time.

  “The Ancestor’s Tomb,” Yerin said, and vaulted down from the cloud. “Master went to the Heaven’s Glory in particular just for this. They say it leads down into some labyrinth where even my master couldn’t step easy.”

  Her hand was on her sword, black sacred artist’s robes trailing shredded edges in the wind. She pulled the stolen badge over her head and tossed it to one side. “They poisoned him and they stabbed him, so he tried to hide in the Tomb. Died two steps from the door.”

  She looked back at him, but her scarred face wasn’t as cold as he’d imagined from someone seeking revenge. It was etched with grief. “Last thing he said to me, he told me to finish forming my Path. He didn’t know he’d be leaving me his own Remnant, but…he did. Nobody else touches his spirit but me, and that’s the fact of it.”

  Lindon surveyed the giant Tomb. Two guards had revealed themselves on the front steps, and they would certainly have seen the Thousand-Mile Cloud by now. One of them raised a hand, sending a flash of gold light streaking into the air. A signal.

  “There’s not much I can do in a straight fight,” Lindon said honestly. “But I’ll help you however I can.”

  Yerin patted him on the shoulder. “Yeah, I’m convinced that you will. You’ve got less choice than a tethered ox.”

  He cleared his throat. “I would have helped you without the oath.”

  “There’s a chance you would, but now you won’t give up midstream and beg for your life.”

  Lindon prickled at that. “There’s no reason for that. I may be weak, but I’m not a coward.”

  She rolled her arm in its socket, loosening it up for the fight, and she grinned at him over her shoulder. “Couldn’t know that when I made you swear, could I? I trust you more now. A notch more.”

  At least she hadn’t set another trap for him. He sighed and began sorting the Heaven’s Glory artifacts into different pockets. He’d jammed them all into his pack without looking, but now he might need to draw them quickly.

  One of the guards activated an egg-shaped golden construct that looked the same as the one Rahm had used, and the other was beginning to set up walls of gold-tinged glass.

  “Now, Wei Shi Lindon, we live or die together.” Yerin took off in an explosion of snow, blasting forward with a speed only an Iron body could achieve.

  As she shattered the first wall of glass, sending a hot wind billowing out as the glass broke, Lindon took his time packing up the treasures. He couldn’t help until the fight was over, and he wouldn’t run headlong into death. If the heavens considered that a violation of his word, so be it.

  The Thousand-Mile Cloud wouldn’t compress, and he determined that it required a special case to fold up. Since he didn’t have one, he fed it a trickle of his madra and dragged it along behind him as he picked his way across the frozen boulders and toward Yerin. It followed like an obedient bird.

  Light burned a river of steam in the snow, and a wall of glass appeared to block Yerin’s counterattack. She was steadily advancing, but the two guards and the construct were using every trick at their disposal to keep her at bay. When she flipped in midair to avoid two golden beams and then sliced a fifteen-foot glass wall from top to bottom with sword-madra, Lindon knew it was only a matter of time before she closed the gap. He knew what would happen when she did.

  He kept an eye on the battle as he advanced, but by the time he reached the bottom step of the Ancestor’s Tomb with his cloud in tow, Yerin was flanked by two bleeding bodies and fizzing golden plates that had once been a Heaven’s Glory construct.

  “Are they dead?” Lindon asked. He wasn’t sure why. It didn’t matter to him if Heaven’s Glory lost two more fighters.

  Yerin cleaned her blade on the snow and then wiped it dry on the corner of her robe. “Iron bodies are tougher than snake leather. The man’s not long for breathing, but I didn’t want to stare down more Remnants than I have to. The woman might hang on until her school gets here. She passed out from the pain.”

  He picked around the bloody snow, following Yerin up the stairs. “Sacred artists are supposed to be beyond pain.”

  “No one’s beyond pain,” she said, and then she stood before a tall door. It looked like wood, but it carried the eternal aura of solid rock. From within, a sound rang out like steel on stone. The note hung in the air, endless and pure.

  “Seals?” she asked, adjusting her red rope-belt.

  Lindon held up the stack.

  “Let me hear your role,” she ordered, but Lindon didn’t take offense. She was stronger than any of the Jades in Sacred Valley; she had more right than anyone to order him around, even if she was barely older than he was.

  “I’m putting these seals into a circle in front of the door,” he said. “When you lure it out, I throw a seal directly at it and run while you fight it here, where the seals on the ground can help you. If that’s not enough, I come back and seal it again.”

  She eyed him. “If you thought I told you to run, you heard wrong.”

  “I have to run to set these up,” Lindon said, revealing an inch of purple banner. “I’m not even running, I’m providing strategic support. Now, you have your ward key?”

  “Remnant will tear through that like a bull through a paper door.”

  “If he’s tearing through this, he’s not tearing through you.” The air of tension around her was lifting, which was a good thing as far as Lindon was concerned. She’d been talking like someone on her way to the grave, and if she died, he wouldn’t be far behind. Now, he saw the distan
t shadow of a smile on her face, and she turned as though to respond.

  The door tore in half with a sound like screaming metal. He registered nothing beyond sudden light and agonizing noise before something hit him in the chest and he tumbled backward down the steps, slamming onto his back at the bottom.

  His body hadn’t had a chance to recover since the last time he’d jammed his full pack into his spine, and he indulged in an instant of self-pity imagining his rare boundary flags snapping in half. Then the reality crashed in: that door had split in two from the inside. The impact on his chest was Yerin pushing him back faster than he could react, or he would be lying at the top of the steps in two pieces.

  The Remnant of an expert beyond Gold, the spirit that they had assumed was sealed inside the ancient tomb, had cut through its restraints like an axe through a spiderweb. It hadn’t been sealed.

  It had been waiting.

  He pushed his battered body to his feet, taking quick stock to make sure nothing was broken or bleeding. Then he saw the Remnant of the Sword Sage.

  It was a mass of rippling liquid steel in the shape of a human, as though someone had poured a mirror over a man. Its face was featureless, blank, polished to a flawless reflection. It had no arms or legs, merely an uninterrupted sheet of metal, and it flowed over the ground like a snail.

  The Remnant was far more solid, more real, than any Forged construction Lindon had ever seen. The only parts he recognized as madra at all were three hoops criss-crossing its chest: one a loop of vivid white color, one scarlet, and one inky black. The circles spun in rapid orbit around the sword-Remnant’s chest as it surveyed the scene mirrored in its smooth face.

  It reflected the two bodies and Lindon slowly edging backward before its gaze rested on Yerin. There it stopped.

  The disciple faced her master’s ghost with sword bare. She was a mundane echo of the Remnant; its red ring was her belt, its black ring her tattered robes, its white ring her pale scars, and its chrome her shining blade.