Blade of Tyshalle

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  "Don't call me elf" Deliann said slowly. "I've taken that name from humans, and from ogrilloi. I don't have to take it from you."

  "That," Kierendal said, "is not an answer to my question."

  An invisible hand with talons of ice reached into his stomach and twisted his guts into a ball of agony. Pain drove a gasp past his lips, and a red haze descended across his vision but he was not without resources, even here. With an ease that belied the snarl of pain on his face, he tuned his Shell to hers, tapping into the shaft of brilliant green that poured power from her aureate Shell into his guts; he took some of that power for himself and used it to weave a shunt for the energy she threw at him—a mental chute that funneled her power into his Shell instead of his body.

  The knots eased, and he prepared to strike back. She could no more pull inside this room than' he could; the little nutlike thing in her hand could only be a griffinstone. Deliann tuned his Shell to an octave that Kierendal shouldn't be able to see and reached a tendril toward it

  "Thought you'd try that," she said. She glanced at the ogrillo bitch, who slapped the braided leather club against the side of Deliann's head sharply enough to shower a galaxy of stars across the inside of his eyes. He lost mindview.

  Kierendal bared her teeth.

  Steel claws hooked under his ribs and wrenched his stomach inside out. He doubled over, heaved between his knees, and vomited convulsively, retching, splashing puke across his bare ankles. Kierendal stepped back crisply to keep it from soiling her spike-heeled formal sandals.

  When he could control his head enough to lift it once again, Kierendal looked down at him, and her starkly chiseled face bent into a mask of friendliness. She didn't seem to mind the smell. "Now you understand your position. I want you to understand mine. In just less than one hour, the curtain goes up on a show I have been preparing to mount for more than a year. I have performers from all over the Empire, from Lipke, from fucking Ch'rranth; I have seventy-eight thousand royals of my own money on the line, and I have partners who put in more—the kind of partners who don't believe in taking losses. If they don't turn a profit, they will collectively fuck my ass until I bleed to death."

  She pronounced each crudity with a certain satisfied precision, as though she enjoyed being in this place where she could use whatever language pleased her. "And now, I also have some scary freak who claims to be the Changeling Prince throwing around fire magick like a human thaumaturge's worst nightmare, and I need to know what's going on. You're a Cainist, aren't you?"

  Deliann shook his head. "I don't know what that is."

  "Don't shit me, cock. I have two, bishops and a pig-fucking Archdeacon of the Church of the Beloved Children in the house tonight. I knew it—I knew some crazy Cainist bastard would try something stupid."

  "I'm no Cainist. I don't know why people keep telling me I am."

  Kierendal snorted. "That just makes it worse. It's this simple, cock: I need to know who you really are, who sent you, and what you're really after, and I don't have much time to figure it out. So I'm going to hurt you until I like the answers you give me. Understand?"

  Deliann said, "I need your help."

  She clenched her fist around the griffinstone until scarlet power leaked between her fingers like smoke. "You have a peculiar way of asking for it," she said through her teeth.

  "I didn't come here to ask," he said flatly. "I would not presume on our relationship. I am Deliann Mithondionne, Youngest of the Twilight King, and by the fealty you owe my father, I demand your service."

  "Who do you think you're talking to, cock?" Kierendal said disbelievingly. She paced around him, staring, as though his bald, scorched nakedness might look different from another side. "You can bluff the woodsies, but you're in the big city now. I have sources all over this fucking continent. First: Prince Deliann is dead. He probably died years ago. An Aktir had taken his place, an imposter—and don't try telling me the Aktiri aren't real; I know better. And the Aktir, the imposter, was killed two weeks ago, on the far side of the God's Teeth. One of the Mithondion princes figured out what he was, and the Aktir attacked him. The prince's retainers killed him."

  "Torronell,'' Deliann supplied, and his scalded features twisted with some pain that was not physical. "It's all true—almost."

  "Almost?"

  Deliann smiled, just a little. "I'm no imposter, and I'm not dead."

  Kierendal snorted. "And here's the nut-cutter, cock I knew the Changeling. He worked for me, doing security over at the Exotic Love, almost twenty-five years ago, before his Adoption into House Mithondionne. He worked for me for nearly a year, and I got to know him well, if you follow my meaning. And you're not him."

  "Are you so sure, Kier?" Deliann asked sadly. "Put hair back on me, and eyebrows, and have I really changed so much?"

  She looked at him truly closely for the first time, and she frowned. Her lips pulled back over her teeth as though she saw something that frightened her. "There's a resemblance," she admitted, slowly, as though it hurt her. "But you've aged—aged like a human ..."

  "I am human," Deliann said simply. "I always was. I am also Deliann."

  Kierendal straightened, and she shook her head, denying what she saw, denying whatever she might feel. "Even if you were the Changeling, I wouldn't help you. I don't owe that bastard shit. Or his fucking Twilight King. What did they ever do for me?" Colors roiled across her Shell without mixing, like those on a soap bubble in the sun. "I still haven't heard a reason I shouldn't have Tchako here kill you and dump your body in the river."

  Deliann knew this was no idle threat. He could see it in her fists, clenched so tightly that her long sharpened fingernails had drawn blood from her wrists. She was not thinking clearly, was not susceptible to reason, and was as dangerous as a wounded bear. He understood her easily, perfectly.

  He felt exactly the same way.

  He'd always seen himself as one of the good guys, one of the heroes, someone who has a certain moral center that he could hold against the world, someone who had drawn a line that nothing could force him to cross. He would willingly die before doing what he was about to do; that was a choice he could make. But if he chose death before dishonor, he'd be making that choice not only for himself, but for millions: millions who wouldn't get a choice at all.

  "If you fail in your duty to my father," he said, "the death of the First Folk will be on your head, Kierendal. Within two years, we will be extinct"

  But he was only stalling, only delaying the inevitable; he already knew he wouldn't be able to reach her with words.

  "I don't have time for this shit." She gestured to Tchako, and again the leather club slapped across Deliann's skull, blowing a spark shower across his vision.

  When he lifted his head again, a warm trickle down the side of his neck told him his scalp had split under the blow. He wondered idly if this was the sword cut reopened, or if the leather had torn a new wound. He said softly, "Nothing you do to me will change the truth."

  "I haven't heard any truth yet," she snarled, lifting the griffinstone: a threat.

  "You've heard nothing but."

  Her snarl thinned to a whine of frustration and her fist tightened around the griffinstone. Agony seized Deliann's guts. He doubled over, retching, his stomach afire as though he'd swallowed burning coals, but he made no effort to tap her Shell and defend himself. This was what he'd been waiting for.

  He tuned his mind to the link she had created between their Shells. He opened himself to the pain, accepted it, anchored it to the center of his being, even though doing so caused it to swell to a hurricane of anguish that threatened to snuff him like a candle; this was the only penance he could make for what he did next.

  At the last instant, some premonition warned her of what he was doing, and the shades of horror bloomed across her Shell. She fought him then, wildly, as an animal fights when backed into the deepest corner of its own den. She screamed—one thin despairing wail

  Through the link that bridged t
hem, he poured himself into her.

  4

  Images cascade in roiling, fractal turbulence, unpredictable, incomprehensible, inconceivable: dual views, inside and outside, feeling and watching together, vomit splattering over bare ankles, too near spike-heeled sandals, gut-pain and the heart-pain of inflicting pain, a burning man-shape out-side on a darkened portico, and yet again, peering out with eyes of flame at a halberd's blade as it melts and drips to a puddle that sets an echoing blaze in the carpet

  WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?

  Shh, hush now, it's too late to stop it. Ride it out.

  The images begin to organize, to sequentialize: walking through a mutated, horribly half-familiar Allentown, words with the Patrol, a kick from a pickpocket. Faster now: a dive from the bow of a riverbarge, the silky stroke of the water parting around their short brush of hair, flames and shouting, the fierce grip of the ogrillo deck officer--

  What is this?

  This is my life.

  Days of deck swabbing, brush cutting, clearing jams of tangled flotsam—the dangerous, backbreaking passage-work of a decker on the Great Chambaygen. More days, limping down out of the God's Teeth alone, each step a new adventure in pain, through the forest, following a stream for water, pulling Flow for energy, mindholding rabbits and squirrels until they can be taken by hands that break their necks. At first, they sear the scraps of flesh with the fire from their mind, but as days pass and their resources dwindle, they need the Flow they gather for other things, and the bloody tang of raw flesh is sharp on their tongue.

  This is our lives?

  Our life.

  We are Deliann.

  And hours wasted in agony, weaker and weaker; days lost to mindview, fighting exposure and shock with Flow, layering new calcium across broken ends of bone in his legs, wishing he understood healing more completely, wishing he had the strength to splint the bones straight—botching the job, leaving a pocket of infection in the bone of his left thigh, fusing his right shin crooked—using his disciplined concentration to fight back the despair, the black fist that crushed his heart

  We don't understand.

  Patience. This won't take long.

  Coming awake on the broken scree at the foot of the cliff, surprised to be alive, feeling the jagged ends of bone grind together within each leg, looking up to see, high above, one last glimpse of his brother's face, haloed for an instant against the translucent blue-white brush strokes of high cirrus cloud. As I watch, the face pulls back from the brink, emptying the cliff's crisp, indifferent skyline

  Leaving me here to die.

  We still do not understand.

  There is no-we.

  I understand.

  This is my life.

  I am Deliann.

  5

  I stand on the high cliff, overlooking the mines, while Kyllanni and Finnall sing the Song of War.

  Far, far below, vanishing into the clear afternoon distance, the earth is pocked like the surface of the moon, a wasteland of craters and broken rock; the mountains are scarred, whole chunks missing as though bitten off by a god. Within this moonscape, tiny figurines move and work, black dots moving earth and directing sluice pipes, biting into the ground and belching black smoke until the crystal mountain air seems to come to a halt outside their dominion: a dome of smoke and dust enclosing Hell.

  Closer below is the fence that L'jannella described, a wire and steel monstrosity, decorated with the dim silhouettes of corpses, outlined against the dust behind.

  This is worse than I'd feared, worse than I could have imagined. In five short days, my world has crumbled, rotted: eaten from within as though injected with acid. Everything I thought was strong and sure has turned to paper and spun glass.

  "It's the Blind God," Torronell mutters harshly, softly enough that at first only I can hear him; but then he repeats it, louder, and his gesture takes in not only the wrack of Diamondwell and Transdeia, but everything that has happened since we left the Northwest Road. "This is all the work of the Blind God. The dil-T'llann has been breached, and the Blind God has followed us from the Quiet Land."

  Of us all, I'm the only one who realizes that Rroni isn't speaking metaphorically.

  Torronell begins to pace in a tight circle, and his face twists with dark thoughts; his scalp is only now showing signs of stubble, only now growing back the hair I burned from him in my effort to save his life. I move with him, keeping between him and our three companions—whether he's well or not, I have to treat him like he's infected.

  Even ordering us to come here, to this cliff, shows his judgment is be-coming erratic. I'd like to think this is only a sign of the stress we've been through this past week, but I'm losing hope. I think I'm going to have to kill him.

  Kyllanni and Finnall chant on, but I can't take any more.

  This has to be stopped before it begins, and there is no one else who can stop it. "No," I say hoarsely. "No war. I don't care what they've done. There will be no war."

  Kyllanni and Finnall fall silent; they and L'jannella do not respond to me at all. They turn from me, and look at Torronell.

  His eyes blaze with feverish triumph. "Don't you understand?" he says. "I can tell you why he will not cry war against these humans. Join the Meld."

  "But the curse—" L'jannella protests.

  "A lie," Torronell spits. "Another of Deliann's lies. Join the Meld."

  Oh god, oh god he's really sick, after all this, he's sick after all and I'm going to have to do this. I slide my hand into my rapier's basket hilt, and wish I could jam this sword into my own heart, instead. The worst of it is, that's not an answer: my death solves nothing.

  His death saves the world.

  I try to draw but there is no strength in my arm. How have I come to this? How could I have arrived here?

  Why does it have to be me?

  There is no one else. There is no other answer.

  I pull the sword, the silver of its blade flashing fire in the afternoon sun. The brilliant life-green of the Meld plays around their mingled Shells, and they all stare at me: L'jannella, Kyllanni, and Finnall with shock and disbelief, Torronell with acid triumph. "You see?" he screeches. "These Artans are not of this world—they're Aktiri! He's one of them! He's a damned Aktir!"

  He will have already spoken this mind to mind, in the Meld; there can be no denial. In the Meld, lies are impossible. They have heard the truth of me, and they all know it.

  "He wants to kill me! He wants to kill us all!"

  This he believes, too; it's even half true. The virus destroying his mind supplies more than enough conviction to carry the other half. The only reply I can make is my fencer's lunge, the razor tip of my rapier reaching for his heart.

  Finnall is faster, throwing herself in front of her prince. My sword takes her just below the arch of the ribs; it slides easily through muscle and liver until the point grates on the back curve of her ribs. She shudders with the cold discomfort that is still too fresh to be pain and grabs the blade with both hands as she falls, ripping it from my loosening fingers.

  Oh Finnan, oh god

  But I can't stop now. My people, my world—they have no one else to defend them.

  Training more than a quarter century old, from the Studio Conservatory, reminds me how to kill with my empty hands; I leap at Torronell, and he falls back from me, screeching—and he is still Rroni, still my brother, and the one second's hesitation this gives me is too long.

  Kyllanni's sword flashes toward me; I see it from the corner of my eye just in time to leap to one side and face him. I can still hear my tutor's voice: When you're unarmed and the other guy's got a sword, run like a bastard.

  That's not an option.

  Move out of the line of attack and disable his arm. Don't fight the sword; fight the man.

  Kyllanni lifts his sword and springs at me; I slip aside, but even as I reach for his arm, something strikes me on the head with a humorous metal-on-wood bonk. My vision vanishes in a white glare, and my knees
turn to cloth. I stagger back, covering my head, trying to keep moving so they can't take my vitals.

  Torronell holds a bloodied sword.

  He hit me, in the head, with a sword.

  I stagger back another step, and my foot touches only air.

  Bottomless air, I find as my body follows it--and I'm flying, flying, flying, and of course it's not bottomless, it just feels that way, like I'm never going to land as the cliff face rushes upward past me. I hit an outcrop and bounce, and another one; I hear something break, loud enough that it might be my leg.

  My final impact comes as a burst of colorless fire, and then darkness.

  6

  L'jannella crouches on the far side of the clearing, away from the embers of last night's fire. She hugs herself, trembling, though the morning is not cold. Denied the Meld by my order—by my lie—she uses mere words to describe her horror. Language was never designed to carry such freight, but her pale shivering hoarseness is eloquent enough. My best memories of L'jannella all see her giggling with joy at some practical joke, even when it was on her; to see her sickened and so very, very frightened is as painful as the story she tells.

  The long silence from the Diamondwell stonebenders is now explained, as is the fate of the legates my father sent to enquire of them. I can barely hear her words over the thunder of blood in my ears, but the sense is clear enough.

  The tiny, sleepy, sparsely settled human duchy of Transdeia, formerly a peaceful agricultural land—its only other industry being hospitality for travelers on the Northwest Road—has metastasized into a giant landhungry termite hill of a nation. Now under the control of a mysterious folk who all themselves Artans, it has swallowed Diamondwell as though the millennium-old stonebender freehold had never existed; the mountains that the stonebenders once cherished have become a blasted wasteland of open-pit mines and giant hydraulic slurries that chew away cliff sides, taking daily bites measured in hundreds of long tons.