by Wight,Will
Eithan lowered his head, making sure that his eyes were even with the Fisher's. “I can respect that, Ragahn. But there are things you should and should not say to your superiors.”
He moved over to Gesha, who looked as though she was suffering more than the others. She was Highgold, Lindon remembered, and the others must be a stage higher.
Eithan crouched next to her, fingers laced together thoughtfully. No one else dared to disturb his silence by moving.
“I've dealt with people like you all my life,” Eithan said at last. “You earned everything at the edge of a spear, so you’ve picked up some unfortunate habits. Oh, but you're a Soulsmith, aren't you? You earned it making the spears.” He picked up a severed edge of her drudge's cracked leg. “I can deal with you like human beings if I take the time to get to know you, to slide into the walls you've built, to slip through the cracks in your pride. But I don't have the patience for that today.”
He tapped her forehead with the edge of the spider’s limb. “I am picking up the pair that you discarded. Do you have any objection?”
Slowly, Gesha's head shook once.
“Splendid. And the rest of you. You take what you can keep, isn't that the law of the Wilds? Do you have any doubt that I own everything and everyone inside the Ruins right now?”
The Jai elder choked out a few words. “The...clan...head branch...”
“Do I dare to offend the head branch of the legendary Jai clan?” He paused for a moment as though thinking. “Why wouldn't I dare? If I cut off your legs and threw you from the top of the Ruins, I'd have to spend an hour writing a letter of apology to your clan's Underlord. Do you think I would back down from such a threat?”
The man just shook.
Suddenly all three trembled with obvious relief as the pressure vanished. They sat, panting, on the floor.
Eithan stood, all smiles, arms spread generously. “But that’s so morbid, isn’t it? We’re all friends here.” He ignored the elders, turning to the young man in the red mask. “Jai Long, I believe it's your turn to make your selection. And choose well; I'll want you to pose a healthy threat to my pawn. I mean, ah, the valued young member of my family.”
Lindon's eyes seemed to be stuck on Eithan. The man had never lost his smiling, pleasant demeanor. Ever. If he had driven the spider's leg through Gesha's forehead, would he still be smiling?
And what about when he watched Jai Long tear Lindon to pieces in a year? Would he be smiling then?
Jai Long reached over and lifted the shining white spear from the debris.
***
Information requested: Jai Long’s future.
Beginning report…
Spears flash as Jai Long tears his way through the halls of the Jai clan. His spear is pure white, and it drinks the power of slain Remnants; with every death he causes, Jai Long grows stronger. As he destroys his family’s homes one by one, he draws closer to the Jai Patriarch.
LOW PROBABILITY: in the heat of battle, he steps left when he should have stepped right, and a Jai Lowgold puts a spear between his ribs.
LOW PROBABILITY: In a crisis of conscience, his little sister has a change of heart, persuading him to set aside his crusade. They move to a city at the far edges of the Blackflame Empire, where she meets a local man and raises a family. He trains alone, and eventually dies in isolation.
HIGH PROBABILITY: The Jai cannot stop him without an expense that would cripple the family. As the Patriarch searches for a way to stop this one-man rebellion without causing his carefully cultivated power to crumble, he learns of Jai Long’s upcoming duel.
Suggested topic: the future of the Sandviper sect. Continue?
Topic accepted, continuing report...
Sandviper Gokren returns from his hunting trip at last, full of news from the outside world and hauling prizes that will sustain his sect for months. He brings with him an ancient bracer, scripted and made of a strange material, as a present for his Highgold son.
When he arrives, he finds his son’s corpse.
The stories of Kral’s death largely do not penetrate the deaf haze of grief, but he grasps the main points.
Kral was killed by an Iron, bringing shame to the entire Sandviper sect and his family in particular.
This Iron was taken away to the Blackflame Empire, sheltered by a young Underlord.
This family is protecting his son’s killer. And in one year, Jai Long will take revenge on his behalf. Gokren knows he must only wait.
Suggested topic: future of Jai Long and Wei Shi Lindon. Continue?
Topic accepted, continuing report…
WARNING: DEVIATION DETECTED.
Entity [Wei Shi Lindon] has deviated from primary course. Further data required for accurate calculation. Best estimates follow:
HIGH PROBABILITY: The Jai Patriarch approaches Wei Shi Lindon with a proposition. Lindon fills one of his cores with the Path of the Stellar Spear, enjoying the most powerful elixirs and training methods the Jai clan can procure. Jai Long is sabotaged by a series of attackers in the days leading up to the duel, and he begins the fight weak. Lindon manages to score one severe wound before he dies, and the Jai Patriarch uses that wound to suppress Jai Long.
LOW PROBABILITY: Lindon fails to find a suitable Path to supplement his Path of Twin Stars, and runs from the battle. He is caught by the Jai clan and executed in captivity.
LOW PROBABILITY: Lindon devises a weapon specifically designed to counter Jai Long’s spear. He acquits himself well in the duel, but dies of his wounds.
Suggested topic: powerful Paths of Cradle. Continue?
Denied, report complete.
Chapter 19
Yerin couldn’t be sure if she was awake or dreaming. Her body had no weight to it, drifting on the breeze without direction. Must be a dream, then. The last thing she remembered was facing a Highgold, so cheers and celebration to her for surviving. She hadn’t so much as torn the wrapping around Jai Long’s head, but she hadn’t retreated or died either. Her master would call that a win. She floated into memory, allowing it to carry her back to sleep.
Her arm prickled.
She glanced down, just to make sure everything was all prim and proper, only to see a spider the size of a fox suspended from the ceiling, poking her skin with needle-sharp legs.
She tried to jerk away, but whatever kept her suspended in the air also had her tied like a pig for roasting. She was held in an invisible trap with a giant spider clinging to her arm.
Yerin’s breath froze, and before she could think, she tore everything apart.
Sword madra blasted out of her in every direction, shredding the spider…and the unseen bonds that held her suspended halfway to the ceiling. She landed in a crouch, spider parts clattering to the ground in a sizzle of escaping madra. A construct, then. Of course it was. She shuddered anyway.
The walls of her room were made of rough wood that still smelled fresh. One door—the only entrance or exit besides a single shuttered window. The hearth in one wall was too narrow to let anything in besides a construct or a tiny sacred beast, and a script-circle helped ward against those. She’d checked those herself, inside an hour of moving in.
She would have recognized the room faster had she not just reduced all the furniture to kindling. This was the little cottage the Fishers had given her, where she’d stayed for less than two weeks. That almost won the medal for the longest time she’d lived in the same place.
Her robe was soft, white, a single layer, and tied at the waist. The sort of thing you’d put on a patient while they were unconscious. Whatever had tied her to the ceiling hadn’t left any fragments of rope lying everywhere, which meant it had been a Fisher technique. The spider would have been one of Gesha’s constructs.
She’d lost the fight to Jai Long, so by rights she should be dead. Instead, she was receiving healing from the Fishers.
What had Lindon done?
She took a step forward, circulating madra to her feet to keep out splinters, and her
body sent her a pointed reminder: if they were in the middle of healing her, it was because something was wrong. That hint came to her in the form of a shooting pain up her leg, which made her stagger and grab the wall.
Footsteps pounded the grass outside, and she gathered madra into the steel blade of her Goldsign. It wasn’t as useful a medium as her master’s sword, but she could still cobble together a Rippling Sword technique to defend herself. If she could find a real weapon, she figured she had an even shot of cutting her way out of the Five Factions Alliance camp. Though that would leave her alone in the Desolate Wilds with no idea what had happened to Lindon. Or Eithan, but she wouldn’t shed an undue number of tears if the yellow-haired man had gotten himself buried.
The door cracked open, and the blade poised over her shoulder, on the edge of slashing down.
Lindon’s voice drifted in. “Yerin, I don’t want to seem untrusting, but…please don’t cut me.”
Yerin let out a breath as she sunk to the ground, strength leaking out of her legs. She leaned against the wall and called back, “Two steps closer and I’d have carved you into a roast.”
“That’s why I waited.” He poked his head into the door, showing off a shy smile. He was still too tall for someone so weak. “I thought I might explain what happened before you went looking for the story yourself.”
“So long as they answered my questions proper and quick, they were in no danger.”
Actually, Lindon may have been the only person in the Fisher camp that she could threaten as she was. Her spirit felt like a guttering candle, her body like a sack of tender meat, and her unwelcome guest had started to strain against its cage. She rested a hand on her red belt, with her as always, still tied into an intricate bow—the shape designed by her master to bind its power.
It twisted slightly beneath her palm, straining against the seal. It was no threat for now, but its restrictions would weaken with time.
Sand rushed through an hourglass; an incense stick burned steadily down. She wasn’t sure how many years she had left, but if she didn’t advance far enough to keep her guest suppressed with her own power…
Then she wouldn’t be herself anymore.
Now that she thought of it, someone had dressed her. Which meant someone had gotten a good look at the ‘rope’ tied around her waist and had decided not to fiddle with it. That showed strange wisdom; most sacred artists would poke a bear to see if it was sleeping.
Lindon knelt opposite her, the closest thing to a chair in the room being a thumb-thick splinter. He arranged himself carefully, sitting with his back straight true and proper. You could take a kid out of his clan, but you couldn’t pull the clan out of him with a set of red-hot pliers.
Then her eyes snagged on his clothes.
He was wearing the typical sacred artist’s outfit, which went by different names in different lands: wide sleeves that left the arms free, a loose hem hanging down to the ankles to allow a broad range of movement techniques, a cloth belt tied around the waist. Usually, the sacred artist’s sect or clan would determine the patterns and colors of the robe, and this was what had stolen Yerin’s attention.
The robe was deep blue in some places, white in others, and marked over the heart with a black crescent moon the size of a palm. She’d seen that symbol before; it had whipped these Five Factions artists into a frenzy.
The Arelius family.
So they’d shown up after all, just as the Fishers and Sandvipers had feared. And Lindon was wearing their colors. He’d joined someone after all.
His explanation of the events that had occurred while she was unconscious—told in Lindon’s way, soft and polite—painted the picture clear.
Eithan was an Underlord. She found that the easiest part to believe. He had always treated Highgolds as though they weren’t fit for his eyes, and there were times training in the Ruins where she’d caught a shadow of something in him that reminded her of her master.
Not that a mere Underlord could stand in the shoes of the Sword Sage, but he’d rule like an emperor in a distant land like this.
No, Eithan as an Underlord she could expect. But there were a few other points she found too sticky to release.
“You buried Kral? A Highgold?”
Lindon brushed her aside with an explanation of the binding he’d found in the ancient foundry, as though he were ashamed by his own contribution, but pride lurked in his eyes and his words.
An Iron taking on a Highgold, whatever the circumstances, was like the sun rising green. That was a story his grandchildren could be proud of.
Which might explain the second sticking point of his story: that Eithan Arelius, renowned Underlord, had wanted him.
“He came here looking for recruits,” Lindon explained, “and he thinks we’d be…suitable.” Something haunted his expression for a moment. Maybe hesitation. But what was there to hesitate about when it came to an Underlord’s personal invitation? For an Iron to exchange words with someone like Eithan was enough good fortune for five lifetimes.
What was he worried about?
But there was a more urgent question. She didn’t think she’d missed so much—if she had slept for days, she would have expected hunger, thirst, a powerful pressure in her bladder. But besides her weakness, which was plain and clear after a fight, she felt like she’d only slept for a few hours.
“How long was I out?” she asked.
“Only six hours,” he said, and that settled that. Still, it tore a new hole in his story, and one that she’d almost missed.
“You’ve got a fox’s luck,” she said. “Kral didn’t so much as cut you?”
He gave her a guilty look, pressing a hand to his shoulder. “Forgiveness. I didn’t mean to suggest that I walked away without a scratch. He ran a Forged spear through, right here.”
She stared at his shoulder, which he rubbed as though it ached. Even if Lindon was exaggerating about being run through, which she doubted, he’d still been struck by a Highgold’s Forger technique less than half a day before.
“Underlords must have some great medicines, I’d guess.”
“It was mostly the Fishers who worked on you,” Lindon said, still rubbing his shoulder. “Eithan didn’t do much, but they tied themselves into knots trying to serve him. If I hadn’t told them they should be gone when you woke up, I’m sure they would still be in here.”
“I’m not concerned about me,” Yerin said. “How are you moving that arm? You should be dead and buried, but you’re up and hopping in six hours.”
Lindon’s brow furrowed. “I have an Iron body now. Just like you.”
“Not like me.”
Jai Long outclassed her in power, but her skill was the highest card she had to play. She’d managed to avoid too many direct hits, so she’d taken many small wounds, but nothing like a through-and-through stab. Even so, she’d needed the urgent attention of a healer, and she still wouldn’t be sharp enough to hold an edge for a week or two.
That was all plain and proper, part of a normal life—she’d barely taken a step on her Path without some gruesome injury. But Lindon just walked his off in half a day.
She flashed back to a figure caked in blood and black ooze until he looked like he’d crawled out of a wildfire. She would have bet a pile of jewels that he was dead, and she was prepared to take that price out of Eithan’s skin.
Instead, he’d advanced to Iron.
What kind of body had they given him?
He picked up on her response, and his voice shook. “Is that wrong? Should I be worried?”
She gave him a light kick, shaking his perfect posture. “Your new Underlord can handle it.”
He winced. “Apologies. I accepted his invitation before you woke up.”
“You’d have been cracked in the head if you hadn’t,” Yerin said, which was true. It was the sort of opportunity that only a madman would turn down.
But that still left the ugly question: where did it leave her?
An endless wint
er forest stretched out before her, filled with nothing but snow and no one but her.
“No, I owe you more consideration than that.” He bent slightly, giving her a little seated bow. “Forgive me.”
She forced herself to her feet, one hand on the wall. “Don’t fuss about that. Irons are allowed out of the house without a shepherd. You’ll settle in with the Underlord, stable and true.”
Her master’s sword wasn’t in the cottage, and she needed it. When you’re alone, first look for a weapon.
Lindon opened his mouth as though to speak, but quickly shut it again. The silence stretched.
Until he jerked back as though struck, eyes widening on the window. She spun around, bladed arm poised and gathering madra.
The shutter had come apart slightly, and one bright eye was peeking through. It was framed by a few locks of yellow hair and about an inch of smile.
The face vanished from the window, and an instant later Eithan Arelius kicked in the door. “I’m sorry to disturb you, children, though I couldn’t help but overhear every word.”
Yerin’s spirit may have been drained down to the bone, but she still couldn’t believe she hadn’t sensed someone as powerful as an Underlord a mere ten feet away. At least he couldn’t have been there for more than a few seconds, or she would lose trust in her abilities completely.
“How long have you been listening?” she asked, not relaxing her bladed Goldsign.
He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “For about…four weeks now,” he said, then turned his smile on Lindon. “Now, as unique and special as you are, where did you get the impression that I wanted you and only you?”