Kord barely dodged the falling man by bouncing off the wall. He maintained his speed, and when the second soldier thrust a spear at him, trying to shout an alarm at the same instant, Kord sidestepped it and caught the man’s wrist. He planted his feet then, yanking the soldier forward and onto the point of his blade. The sword cut through the soldier’s padded vest and sank deep. By the time Kord withdrew it, splashing blood onto the hallway’s smooth stone floor, the soldier’s mouth was open and his eyes rolled back in his head. Kord cuffed him for good measure, and the man fell in the pool of blood he’d already spilled.
A glance at Elin confirmed that she was unhurt. She gave a brisk nod and they continued to the library. Before they entered, they could hear the sound of books being dashed to the floor, handfuls at a time.
The noise broke Kord’s heart and enraged him at the same time.
Inside, one man held a torch high while two others tore books from the shelves, checked them quickly for hidden compartments, and tossed them into a growing pile. One of the men was Bragga.
Bragga paused with a book in his hands and gave Kord a cruel, gap-toothed grin. “I was hoping I would be the one to kill you,” he said. He let the covers of the book dangle, holding it only by some of the pages, and gave a ferocious jerk. Pages ripped from the spine as the rest of the volume fell onto the pile, and Bragga let the pages drift down atop it.
“I could say the same,” Kord replied. “About you.”
The man with the torch held an axe in his other hand. Bragga and his companion both whisked swords from their scabbards. A reading table, some straight-backed wooden chairs, and the mound of books separated the combatants. “You can have both the others if you want, Elin,” Kord said. “But Bragga’s mine.”
“You’re too kind.”
“You’ve earned it.” He let his shoulder glance against hers, simply for the pleasure of the touch, then started toward the far side of the table. Bragga moved that way as well, though it meant crossing in front of his fellow soldier. Elin went left. When Bragga’s gaze shifted toward her for an instant, as his bulk blocked the other swordsman, Kord swept up one of the chairs with his left hand and hurled it at Antrem’s Second. Bragga raised an arm to deflect it, sending it crashing into the other man.
Kord and Elin both attacked at that moment, Panther and Pantheress moving as one.
Kord sprang onto the table and off it again, soaring over the discarded books. Bragga tried to bring his sword up, but he had not anticipated the sudden change of direction, and as he swiveled to meet the charge, his foot landed on some of the pages he’d just dropped. The papers slid beneath him. When he threw his left arm out for balance, it struck the other swordsman. Kord, airborne, slammed into Bragga, driving him against the other man, and both of them into the bookshelves.
As he was falling atop Bragga, he glimpsed Elin slipping around the table the other way. The soldier with the torch had raised his axe to ward her off, but clumsily, with one hand. He seemed unsure of what to do with his torch. Elin took advantage of his confusion and feinted toward his right side. He swung the axe that way, to parry her blade, but she corrected and thrust at the center of his chest. He brought both arms in, with torch and axe, but too late to block her attack. The point bit deep. She drew it out again and followed it with a second thrust, lower in the man’s gut, to make doubly sure.
Unable to spare Elin any more attention, Kord hung onto the collar of Bragga’s vest and smashing the heavy pommel of his sword into the Second’s face over and over. They had landed on the pile of books, which skidded and shifted beneath them. Kord got in one last shot with his pommel, splitting the skin beneath Bragga’s right eye. Blood ran from the wound, and Kord knew if Bragga lived even a few minutes more, his eye would swell shut.
The big man got in a few blows of his own, and scrambled to his feet while Kord was still off-balance on the books. He drew his sword back, but before he could drive it forward, Kord threw a handful of the tomes at Bragga’s face. Bragga flinched away, and Kord swung his blade into the man’s wrist as he rose to his feet, lending extra momentum to the slash. Bragga screamed and dropped his sword, clutching at the hand that suddenly dangled perilously from a few strands of muscle and flesh. Blood spurted onto Kord and the scattered volumes and torn pages.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kord saw that Elin had engaged the other soldier. Their blades clashed as they traded thrusts and parries. At Bragga’s agonized scream, the soldier glanced toward his superior—a moment’s distraction, but all Elin needed. While Kord ended Bragga’s misery with a slash across the throat, she cut the soldier’s thigh with a quick jab. His sword dropped to defend his groin, and she thrust high, the tip of her slender blade penetrating his eye and punching through the back of his head. He was dead before she could yank it free.
Elin met Kord’s look, panting from exertion, a fierce grin on her face. She was bathed in blood, and Kord reckoned he must look the same. But he shared her exultation over a hard fight won. “So where’s that passageway?” he asked.
“You won’t need it, Kordell,” another voice said. “You’ll not be leaving here, not in this life.”
Kord and Elin whirled toward the door. Nestor stood there, with a dozen soldiers. Swords, spears, and arrows all pointed at them.
“You do, however, have a choice,” Nestor said. “You can give me the Hand now, and die easily. Or you can resist, die slowly and with immense pain, and I’ll take it anyway.”
“What makes you think we have it?” Kord asked.
“You wouldn’t be in such a hurry to go if you hadn’t acquired it.”
“As much noise as you made coming in, we thought the entire Red Legion had arrived. Staying would have been suicide.”
Nestor shrugged. “Suicide either way. Fast or slow, those are your only options now.”
Kord caught Elin’s eye. “Can you take six?”
“If they’re all as easy as those last,” she said.
“I see Antrem’s not with you, Nestor,” Kord said. “He sent you to die, and kept Carna for himself? I thought him more generous than that.”
A couple of the soldiers snickered. Nestor’s face grew red. “Antrem and the rest of the squad surround the scriptorium, so even if you could get out, it wouldn’t mean you had escaped. And delaying the end won’t make it any less painful,” he cautioned. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“We can take many of them with us,” Elin whispered. “I’d rather go down fighting than under torture.”
“Wait,” Kord said.
“For what?”
Kord’s mouth opened, but before he could answer, he heard shuffling steps from the library’s other door, steps he had somehow known to expect. He dropped a hand to the pouch on his belt, fingered it open. “Take it,” he said. “It’s yours.”
“Kord, what…?” Elin began, no doubt thinking he was talking to her.
Then Murdis came into the light. He looked skeletal, as if he had died months ago. His jaw hung slack, and a line of spittle dangled to his chest, and it was clear he couldn’t speak. But his eyes were bright and aware, and he moved with more speed and determination than Kord had seen since he’d been back.
“What’s this?” Nestor asked.
“Your host,” Kord said. “Murdis, take it.”
“No!” Elin said, apparently realizing he didn’t mean the Hand. Or just the Hand. “You can’t. That’s what killed Kenaris, giving up the last one.”
“We’ll die anyway if I don’t,” Kord said. “Besides, Kenaris had more than me to begin with. Having so many taken at once is probably what really killed her. I’ve had just the one for so long now, taking it won’t hurt me any more than taking the others did.” He believed that was probably true, but it was a guess all the same.
“Take it,” he said again, looking at Murdis. “I offer it freely.”
“Kord, why? After all he’s done to you, he—”
“—still deserves a chance to avenge everything he
’s lost,” Kord said, his eyes locked on Murdis. “To redeem himself.”
He didn’t add that if he did die giving up the last shard, he couldn’t think of a better place to do it than at her side.
Kord moved toward Murdis, the ancient words coming back to him as he grew nearer. “Ahj-chah-quay sic-eej koy-oh-pah kee-ahb…”
Murdis’s mouth closed and he began to mutter along. After a few seconds, Elin, seemingly caught up in the moment, joined in. Nestor and his soldiers watched, confused or dumbfounded, as the three continued the chant. Before the end, Murdis had placed one hand atop Kord’s head.
Kord’s gut heaved. Blood pooled in his mouth, filling it with the taste of copper and running out the corners as he chanted. He thought, too late, that it had been a mistake, perhaps his last and worst decision in a lifetime full of bad ones. But it had begun and there was no turning back now. Blood spilled faster as Murdis’s voice gained strength. Kord lurched forward, releasing a jet of crimson onto the floor and the books and the bodies there. As he did, Murdis shoved bony fingers into his open mouth, deep in his throat. Kord gagged, spewing even more blood.
At the same time, though, he reached into the pouch and grasped the Hand. When Murdis’s fingers were jammed so far into his throat that he thought he would surely choke to death, he forced the crystal into the old man’s other hand. Murdis withdrew his hand and the last shard, and raised the other, the vessel, high into the air. Kord, wretching and spitting, caught a glimpse of his mentor and saw that he looked impossibly stronger, even younger, as if all the years had been a dream and Kord, still fifteen, had never left the scriptorium.
“Kill him,” Nestor said, his voice quaking. “Kill all of them.”
“No!” Murdis boomed. Dust fell from the ceiling, and a book, precariously balanced on a shelf where Bragga had left it, plummeted to the floor.
Kord, bent over double, hands on his knees, and Elin hurried to his side. They watched as Murdis seemed to grow, his actual self only a core now while a second, outer self expanded to fill the room, and then some.
“Kill him,” Nestor squeaked again. A couple of soldiers let arrows fly, but they traveled only inches before running into the spreading essence of Murdis and dropping to the ground.
The outer Murdis appeared insubstantial, but that, Kord knew, was illusion. Where his form touched pillars, those pillars were beginning to buckle. Where it touched walls, the walls bowed and cracked. The ceiling overhead began to split, more plaster and dust raining down every second.
Kord spat blood, then grabbed Elin’s hand. “That passageway,” he said. “Quickly!”
“But…the Hand!”
“Doesn’t matter,” Kord said. “We have to go!”
Nestor’s soldiers were abandoning him, breaking from the library and running for the building’s entrance. Kord heard screams as the walls gave way, blocking their egress, probably crushing some. “Now, Elin!”
She blinked, as if she’d been sleeping. “Yes. This way.” She went to the bookcase next to the one Bragga had been emptying, felt underneath a shelf for a hidden latch. When she tripped it, the bookcase swung out. She eased behind it. Kord followed, slowing just long enough to take one more look at Murdis—the real one, the core still faintly visible within the ever-expanding outer. He looked back, caught Kord’s gaze, and mouthed two words. Kord wasn’t sure, but he thought the words were “I’m sorry.”
Then Elin caught Kord’s wrist and pulled him into the passage. Stone walls formed one side, wood and plaster the other. Here, too, the building shook and split, bits of broken rock tumbling in toward them, plaster crumbling.
They ran, ignoring the destruction. A wooden beam splintered and fell in, cutting Kord’s cheek as he tried to run past. A stone bigger than Kord’s two fists bounced off the back of Elin’s neck.
But soon she was pawing at the large cornerstones, and when she found the release, they swung away as easily as the bookcase had. She stepped through the gap, Kord right behind her. “Run!” she cried.
She took her own advice. Kord did too, keeping pace with her but unable to pass. They had come out on the scriptorium’s back side, and their course took them higher up the rise that kept the building dry despite the swamp waters surrounding it on three sides. Some of Antrem’s Glory Squad stood by, but their attention was riveted on the building and they seemed not to even notice the escapees.
When Kord risked a glance over his shoulder, he saw why. Murdis, or his seemingly insubstantial form—Kord could see right through it, and see Antrem himself on the other side, standing near the swamp’s edge with Carna and a small contingent of female bodyguards—had grown ever larger. The scriptorium was barely ankle-high on Murdis now, and his feet thrust out through the walls. His head touched the clouds, grayed as they were by dawn’s light at the eastern horizon. The earth trembled and spasmed, and just before Kord turned back to watch where he was running, he saw the waters of the swamp swelling, impossibly. They engulfed Antrem and Carna and the men around the scriptorium, swallowed the scriptorium itself, which was even then collapsing in on itself, walls shattering and roof caving in. And still the waters kept rising. Kord and Elin raced up the hill, the swamp water reaching them and lapping at their ankles before they finally outdistanced it.
They stopped, finally out of breath, after the water had begun to recede. Kord collapsed on the hillside, his mouth tasting of metal and bile, and Elin fell beside him. She had her feet spread out, knees up, and she leaned forward and caught her face in her hands.
“What’s wrong?” Kord asked. “We got out.”
“We got out,” she echoed. “But the Hand. All that work.”
Kord watched the swamp water drain. The scriptorium was gone, nothing left but broken stones and mud and bodies. No one lived there now; even Murdis’s gigantic figure was gone from the sky. Kord no longer had his soul-shard, but he was convinced the old man was dead.
He shifted his position on the slope, and his pouch banged against his hip. He brought his hand to it, squeezed it. Opened it, and took out its contents.
“This Hand?” he said.
Elin sat up, and her eyes went wide. “You have it?”
“So it seems,” he said. He held the crystal up. It was no longer clear, but blackened on the inside, as if something within it had burned, scorching its inner surfaces. It was cold to the touch. “But not its contents, I’d wager. Murdis used up the soul, defeating Antrem. Saving us.”
“So it’s, what? Worthless?”
“A trinket,” Kord said. “Still, the soul was his in the first place, right?”
“Damn him!”
“You want it?” He tossed it to her. Elin snatched it from the air before it could fall. She peered into it, or through it. If she saw anything in there that he hadn’t, she gave no indication of it.
“Maybe I can find a buyer,” she said. “As a novelty, if nothing else.”
“Take it, then. You were promised a reward, and it means nothing to me now, regardless.”
She turned it in her hands, then tucked it into a pocket or a pouch Kord couldn’t see. “There’s a collector of antiquities, in Xarinthia,” she said. “He might offer a coin or two.”
“That’s where you’re bound, then? Xarinthia?” Kord tried to keep the disappointment from his voice.
“As good a place as any. There’s that collector. And there’s another there, an explorer. He claims to have found the resting place of Tuthlekel the Morbid. Last I heard, he was preparing an expedition. If he really has…”
“Could be treasure,” Kord agreed, wondering if that had really been her goal in acquiring the Hand all along, to steal it and simply sell it for profit. And do what with the funds? He’d never asked her why she wanted it, and now the moment was long passed.
“And you?”
“My purse is empty,” he said. “But there’s still a war on. With Antrem and his Glory Squad gone, Celaeus will need more soldiers if he’s ever to unseat Puell.”
“You think he’d be a better emperor than Puell?” Elin asked, a bitterness he didn’t understand in her voice.
He shrugged. “Not my concern.”
She looked like she wanted to say something more. Her head was thrust forward slightly, toward him, her lips parted, eyes bright. But then she seemed to think better of it. She lowered her gaze, let her mouth close. She was ragged from the fight and the chase, bruised, her hair a wild tangle.
And yet, she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. He wanted to tell her so. Moved his hand closer to hers. She, seemingly unaware, took hers away.
“So you’ll hire out again?”
“If anyone will have me.”
“Xarinthia’s in the wrong direction, then,” she said softly. “For you, anyway.”
“No fighting there that I’ve heard about.”
“Right.”
Kord eyed the rubble below, the scriptorium where he had grown up, learned to read, to think, really. Where he had found family, in Murdis and Kenaris. Where he had, all these years later, met Elinore, and seen what a single intact soul could do.
Movement caught his attention. He looked back, and Elin was on her feet. “You’re going, then?” he asked. “So soon?”
“Sun’s rising,” she said. “I’ve all day to travel. If I can make it clear of the swamplands before night, so much the better.”
She stood, looking at him. Did she want him to say something? To beg her to stay?
Perhaps, if he’d had the scriptorium to offer, or so much as two coins, he could. But she had a plan, and he had, at best, a vague notion.
“Well,” he said. He pushed himself to his feet, every muscle aching, his head pounding and his gut still queasy. He held out his hands, crossed at the wrist. She crossed hers and took his, gave them a squeeze. “Safe travels, then.”
“And to you,” she replied. Then she released his hands, turned away quickly, and started up the hill.
His destination lay in the other direction, back through the swamp. He watched her climb for a few minutes. Once, she looked back, and if she had so much as smiled, he knew he would break, run to her, beg her not to go or plead to go with her. But she simply gave a nod, then kept going.
Neverland's Library: Fantasy Anthology Page 13