by Jeff Wilson
“She’s dead then?” Seoras asked, trying not to appear angry.
“Esivh Rhol gutted her,” Hedryn admitted. “The idiot acted, and nobody was close enough to prevent it. It should not have happened.”
“They will all wish it hadn’t,” Seoras said. He might have meant several people, but the comment most especially must have referred to Esivh Rhol. There was real anger in Seoras’s eyes, but something was holding him in check, restraining the master shaper’s desire to react. “I trust that you will see to that,” he said to Edryd.
“I need your help, not your well wishes,” Edryd said, feeling bitter. He had never once asked Seoras for anything, and he began to sense that needn’t bother now, except as a means to extract a response to his request, the refusal of which he could then use to condemn his cold and unjust master.
“I don’t know what happened in your battle with Aodra, but I am reeling from the echoes even now,” Seoras said. “You announced your existence throughout this world to anyone and everyone that matters with the immensity of the strength that you displayed. With that kind of power, you do not need anyone’s help.”
“And if you’re wrong?” Edryd asked. Edryd wasn’t sure how to explain that he did not know what had happened, and Seoras did not look prepared to continue to believe that his pupil could not shape.
“I am not wrong, but if I were, my powers would not swing the balance in our favor. Áledhuir would kill us both. If you are unable to do this on your own, it will not benefit either of us to try it together.”
“If he won’t help you,” said Hedryn, “I will.”
This unsought offer caught Edryd unprepared. It seemed like an especially foolish thing to even consider, but Edryd wasn’t sure he could turn down any kind of help right now. If Edryd had been surprised, Seoras was completely taken aback.
“He does not need your help,” the master shaper said.
“But I do need his,” said Hedryn. “I am a free man, or nearly so, for the first time that I can remember in my entire life. If he can destroy Áledhuir, there is a chance that I can remain free, and if Aisen should fail, I would rather die alongside him than end up tethered to that monster.”
Seoras did not like this answer. His anger was on the surface now, but most of it was directed at Edryd. “If you come back from this, you and I are going to settle a debt,” he said to Edryd, who had no idea what Seoras meant. By Edryd’s reckoning, if Seoras thought he was owed something by his student, the two gold sovereigns the shaper had stolen more than covered it.
It was clear now that Seoras was not going to help, and so Edryd made the decision to leave. Every moment he wasted trying to persuade his teacher was adding to the risk of harm that Eithne would be exposed to under the care of the Ard Ri. Hedryn joined Edryd as he picked his way up a series of narrow streets that led to the palace. Edryd had not forgotten what this man had done. He had been there when Irial died, and he had fought with Ruach, and then tortured him close to death before leaving him behind to deliver a message.
“Were you the one who tortured Ruach?” Edryd asked him.
“No,” protested Hedryn with a look of awe in his eyes, and pure horror in his voice. The thrall seemed to have no doubt that Edryd could destroy him at any moment. “I would never do something like that.”
“But you wouldn’t stop it from happening either,” Edryd pointed out. “You were there, and you watched it.”
“Do you honestly believe there was anything that I could have done?” Hedryn asked. “It was Seldur who hurt him, and he did it with his master’s encouragement. If you knew anything of Áledhuir, you would know why I could do nothing to help your friend. I am doing everything I can now to make it right.”
The young man appeared to be entirely genuine, and somewhere within Edryd’s heart, something urgently persuaded him that he should trust this thrall. Hedryn had been given so few choices in this life, and the one he was making now, was to put that life in Edryd’s hands.
Hedryn began to look at Edryd strangely. When Edryd caught him at it, the thrall stopped and apologized. “I’m sorry, but Seoras told me that you could hide yourself from shapers, and I was trying to see how it was done.”
Edryd nearly told him not to bother, that the effect was gone, but upon checking, the shroud was firmly in place, perfect and without any flaw as if it had always been there. His heart sank with despair, feeling as if he had taken a great step backwards.
Edryd had to remind himself that he had all but confirmed that it was not the shroud that blocked his ability to shape, and given its sudden unsought return, it seemed clear now that his concealment must have been an ability that was granted by the sword. Reclaiming the blade had repaired the effect. He needed to believe that this could be a good thing, that it could have a purpose.
“I want to thank you for what you did for Aodra,” Hedryn said, interrupting Edryd’s reflections as they walked.
“Don’t you mean to Aodra? Or maybe you mean what I did for you.”
“All three I guess,” said Hedryn. “It is a tricky business pairing a thrall with a draugr. If Seoras thought well of you, he would place you with a draugr that he also thought well of. The opposite was true too, and it can make a world of difference. In that regard I was fortunate.”
“You’re saying Aodra wasn’t bad?”
“Compared to Áledhuir she was a blessing. She was kind to me. But being tethered to any of them takes a toll. I could always feel her, like there was a window through which I could see into her soul.”
Edryd’s blood froze. This description was too similar to ignore.
“That window went both ways. Being bound to a living mind seemed to stabilize her, but it did the opposite to me. You cannot hide anything, and you can’t shut them out either. I felt her suffering every single day—and I felt her joy when you helped her break free.”
Edryd shivered as he remembered what had happened that morning, and grew angry with the realization that Seoras had bound him not long after they met. The link, tether, or whatever you chose to call it, Edryd was grateful that it was gone.
“I had a sense of you in the link at the end. It works that way you know,” said Hedryn. “Anyway, I’m glad you did what you did, and so was she.”
Edryd didn’t know how to respond, so he said nothing at all. He was feeling unusual. It had started before he had met up with Seoras and Hedryn, but it had only grown stronger since. Though he realized he might be marching to his own death, he felt an unshaken certainty that he was doing the right thing, and that he would have all the support he needed. He cared less and less that Seoras had chosen not to come, but accepting the fact that his master was not going to provide any help, had made Edryd no less curious about the reasons.
“Why do you think Seoras is standing aside?” Edryd asked of Hedryn. “It isn’t like him to be so passive.”
“They must be holding something over him to have backed him down like this,” Hedryn agreed. “And Seoras is more powerful now than I remembered, certainly stronger than he was when I trained with him.”
“He doesn’t fear them then?”
“Collectively he might, but individually, I don’t think he ever was especially afraid of any of the draugar even then. In truth, it might be the other way around.”
“Áledhuir is afraid of Seoras?”
“When you can’t die there are things that can happen to you that are worse than death, like being cut into pieces by an angry shaper and scattered across the landscape,” Hedryn said.
“Or like being drowned at the bottom of an ocean,” suggested Edryd. He also knew another theory for stopping these creatures, but he wasn’t going to mention Logaeir’s thoughts on melting one in a fire.
“Or like being drowned in the ocean,” Hedryn agreed. “For you or me, the suffering would last only a few minutes. For Áledhuir, he would spend an eternity on the sea floor, cut off from all light with his body disintegrating around him.”
Unless Es
ivh Rhol had an impossibly deep pool hidden somewhere in the palace, this was hardly any help to Edryd. “Any other weaknesses you can tell me about—any other way to kill one?” Edryd asked.
“I suppose you could say more on that subject than I can,” Hedryn said, shaking his head.
Edryd chose not to tell Hedryn that he knew less and could do less than anyone seemed to believe. Edryd had only one hope. He had the sword. Seoras had been sure it could be used to defeat a draugr, though he had said nothing about how. More than just the sigil sword was needed, Edryd was sure of that much. What was needed was a sigil knight. It was reckless to think he could figure this out as he went, but deadly crisis had opened the floodgates and awakened the sword for him once before. Perhaps it would do so again, and this time he would just have to hope for a better result.
***
The sun had set over the ocean while they were departing, and everything was now dark as the Ascomanni fleet approached An Innis, led by warriors packed into grouped pairs of long boats. The stars were hidden behind thick clouds and the shrouded light of a new moon gave only scant illumination. Logaeir and his men need only remain as silent as possible as they rowed along the shoreline on their approach from the south, and the threat of detection would be minimal. Another group led by Krin was closing in from the north. The plan for simultaneous surprise attacks, causing as much confusion as possible while securing positions with open berths on both piers, was about to begin. Warships were following well behind the long boats, ready to disembark groups of reinforcements as soon as those larger vessels could be secured to the piers.
Logaeir focused only on his side. There was nothing he could do to help his allies until they won through to the shore and he could unite with them. The majority of the battle would take place later, but the greatest risks came now. If one or both of the initial incursions failed, and they could not secure their positions, it could become impossible to bring in support in sufficient numbers.
There was only one thing that gave Logaeir fear, and that was the pair of draugar that had come to the island the night before. He had prepared with an understanding that there was a real chance that these undead creatures could interfere, but he didn’t have any good contingencies in place should it actually happen. He had ruled out setting one of them on fire. Edryd had been right about that. It would have been a horrible mistake. Tactically, he should have made the rather sound decision to delay the attack until he could confirm that they were gone, but there were now other considerations. It would have comforted Logaeir to learn that one of the two draugar had already fallen, and it would have comforted him more to know that the other one was holed up inside Esivh Rhol’s palace.
As the boats settled in against the pier, Logaeir was the first to scale his way onto the stone surface. Some three dozen men, including eight from his boat, and the remaining men distributed amongst three others, followed him up. There were six key ships on this side that he intended to take, but first they would secure a landing for the Retribution.
He and his men began to set upon everyone they encountered. It was an uncomfortable business, but Logaeir was in his element. He had trained under various Ossian masters. Ludin Kar had been the first, giving him a broad formal education. Others had followed, training him in stealth and combat as an agent of their navy. Logaeir had no loyalty to any of them. They had been the means to an end, one that would be fulfilled tonight.
Logaeir did not need to remind himself that there were hardly any innocent men to be found in An Innis. If you worked on a ship’s crew you were working with one of the harbormasters. You were a smuggler, a slave trader, a raider, or some combination of these three. In every case, you were almost certainly a murdering thug. He knew many of these villains personally, though they would not have recognized him now. He was no longer the reckless boy who had fought for his own survival in this dangerous city.
He had once been on a path where he might have eventually become one of the harbormasters himself. Back then, he believed he was going to be a different kind of leader, one that protected the citizens instead of exploiting them. He had led a band of thieves and he had secured the loyalties of the women who lived on the streets. That was until Esivh Rhol had forced him to flee, unwilling to face any competition in running the latter of those two trades. Logaeir felt grateful for what had happened. Had he remained, he surely would have been corrupted past redemption, becoming as evil as any of the men he was now trying to kill. Fifteen years had aged Logaeir, and few people here would ever know him for the boy who he had once been.
As Logaeir expertly killed unsuspecting men on the pier, he conveniently failed to include in his rationalizations that there were no small number of his own men among the Ascomanni who could be considered neither any worse nor any better than the men they were fighting.
The men guarding this pier, and those protecting the ships, had overcome their initial confusion, and the first group of four was charging his men now. As they rushed forward in haste, Logaeir deftly slipped between them, getting in behind and hacking at their calves, sending them to their knees. The Ascomanni fighters nearest to him finished the men off. They had not faced any serious opposition yet, and it was all working out almost too smoothly, but that would start to change when the enemies began to mass in larger numbers.
Logaeir began to hear cries across the water on the other pier as well. Men were dying. From the sounds he could make out, Logaeir had a pretty good understanding of how things were going. They were going extremely well, and his plan was unfolding flawlessly.
Chapter 22
Shaping the Dark
Edryd, accompanied by Hedryn, crossed the paths of troubled men and women as they travelled. They heard at first the whispers, and then later the shouts and cries, of frightened citizens circulating rumors of violence on the piers. Perhaps the fighting had drawn off some of the Ard Ri’s men. Whatever the reason, the way was open and there were no guards to deny him entrance when Hedryn and Edryd reached Esivh Rhol’s palace. Concluding this meant that he was being invited in, free to enter but perhaps not so free to leave, Edryd obliged. He could think of no good reason to trust the thrall, so Edryd was relieved when Hedryn readily agreed to remain behind, promising to keep the entrance clear. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Hedryn was of course wise enough to be afraid of facing Áledhuir.
The place was to all appearances, deserted, and Edryd went unchallenged as he moved through the sprawling complex. Some of the Ard Ri’s forces might have been away defending the piers, but the complete absence of resistance confirmed Edryd’s suspicions. The way lay open, but he was only working his way further into a trap from which he was not meant to escape.
Edryd’s anger had not lessened. The feeling of calm was at a peak, but it did not quiet an anger buried beneath the surface, demanding an opportunity to be expressed. His awareness was heightened beyond anything he had yet experienced, sharply enhanced by focusing his abilities through the sword. Aided by the calm and clarity that came with this coexistent affiliation, Edryd knew that a group of guards had taken up positions blocking the path by which he had come.
He could sense too that most of the building really was deserted, apart from two distinct concentrations of men and women. Edryd navigated his way down a hallway that took him towards the group that included the draugr Áledhuir and his servant Seldur. Esivh Rhol would surely be there as well. If the circumstances were less dire, Edryd might have stopped to wonder how he was seeing everything so clearly. Something had opened within, providing unexpected aid that augmented Edryd’s mind and soul in a way that he did not understand.
He knew the positions of everyone in the room before he ever entered, and when he did step through to confront the waiting enemies, Edryd fixed his eyes on Esivh Rhol, who was seated in a large ornate chair at the end of a long wooden banquet table. Two men were hidden against the wall behind hanging tapestries at the opposite end of the room, nearest to where Edryd stood. Another guar
d left his position along the wall and moved to secure the doorway immediately to Edryd’s left, and two more guards on the other side of the table stood nervously, with bolts loaded into the crossbows cradled across their chests.
There were also two guards with drawn swords casually held at their sides, flanking Esivh Rhol’s chair. Áledhuir towered behind them in a corner, leaning on an enormous, heavy, two handed sword that was as long as anyone else in the room was tall. Áledhuir’s thrall could be seen emerging from a room behind Esivh Rhol’s chair, and taking up a position beside his master.
Esivh Rhol broke the silence. “Seoras said we need not send anyone for you. It seems he was right, you came of your own accord.”
“He didn’t share with you what I was going to do when I got here, or you wouldn’t have let me come this far,” Edryd said.
He didn’t get to expand on this threat. At the sound of Edryd’s voice, the guards hidden behind him left their concealment. They were rushing toward their target with thick wooden clubs upraised, ready to knock him down and pound him into submission. Edryd did not turn around. He drew both of Aodra’s knives, and guided by the position of the patterns his attackers produced as they disturbed the flow of the dark, he struck hard. They fell, knocked back by the impact, crystalline weapons buried hilt deep in their chests.
The guard who had moved to cover the door backed through the archway, fumbling at the hilt of his sword, trying to draw the weapon from his belt. Edryd ignored him. It took the two arbalest wielding enemies a second to react, and when they finally did, they both fired wide. Edryd had been prepared to either evade or deflect the bolts, but there had been no need. The guards would not be able to fire again. It would take thirty seconds or more for either of them to reload, but only a couple to draw the small deadly axes belted at their sides. Edryd was not going to give them even that much time. He leapt onto the table, and in a move that none of the guards could even follow, he had his hand on the hilt of his sword and he cut through the knotted cloth that had held it in place beneath his coat. The wide arcing length of the sigil blade cut through the throat of the first guard and a second stroke cut deep into the neck of the second.