Blade of Tyshalle

by Matthew Woodring Stover

Now the first guard is on his feet behind him, and he pegs Orbek a solid one in the floating rib; with no padding behind the chainmail, that shot folds him over like a broken doll, but he's moving sideways already and the guard's follow-up glances off his shoulder. Orbek turns into him and grabs him in a full clinch to tie up the guard's club. The guard clutches desperately at Orbek's weapon arm, gets it, and sets about working to free his own arm before he remembers that he's not fighting a man, here.

  Ogrilloi have tusks.

  The guard lets out a high, thin shriek that chokes to a muffled gargle as Orbek hooks a tusk under his chin that punches up through flesh to pin his tongue to his soft palate. Orbek has the neck muscle of a razorback boar; when he wrenches his head to the side, the guard's jaw dislocates and Orbek's tusk rips free, spraying blood that drenches the side of his face.

  Orbek seizes the guard by collar and crotch, and lifts him over his head. "I am Black Knife!" he roars to the Pit. "Orbek Black Knife!"

  They answer him with thunder.

  And he tosses the guard over the balcony wall like a sack of meat into the lion cage. Prisoners swarm the fallen guard, and his shriek doesn't last long. He's no dummy, Orbek: that taste of blood whips them up more than any words I could possibly use.

  When he turns his blood-drenched face on the guard with the dented helm, the guard suddenly remembers some urgent business he has on the far side of the Pit.

  Quarrels zip past Orbek from the three or four guards with enough presence of mind to reload, but they don't come close enough to get his attention. The guy up on the winch platform gets off a shot as Orbek goes up the stairs, but that 'rillo has head movement like a middleweight; the quarrel just nicks his ear and glances off the shoulder of his hauberk. The guard drops his bow and unslings his club, and he's no dummy either—instead of coming to meet Orbek and giving the'rillo a free shot at his feet and ankles from the stairs, he backs up warily and keeps the winch between them, dodging around it like a tower shield; all he really has to do is keep Orbek busy until reinforcements arrive.

  Orbek, bright boy, doesn't bother to fight the guard at all, just feints him off the winch with a fake swing at his head and then spins the heavy club into an overhand that whangs into one of the ratchet pawls of the winch and snaps the fucking thing right in half. The guard shouts and comes back after him, but Orbek dodges away, grinning, and swings another overhand to snap the pawl on the other side of the winch.

  The stairbridge comes down like the blade of a guillotine.

  If I'd had a clue how smart that big bastard is, I would've picked on somebody else.

  When the stairbridge hits the Pit floor, the guards up here stop thinking about regaining control of the situation and start thinking about getting the fuck out. Prisoners storm up the stairbridge in an endless snarling flood; there's more than a thousand people down there with nothing to lose, and the guards know it—they're not stupid enough to stick around.

  Before any of the prisoners are even halfway up the stairs, most of the guards have broken for the steps on the far side of that brass-bound balcony door, heading for the Courthouse above.

  The Donjon is ours.

  No.

  The Donjon is mine.

  The hero returned from the lands of the dead.

  As true heroes always do, he returned with supernatural gifts: gifts that were already his nature, now transcending their mortal limits. He came forth as an infant: nameless, weak, and squalling. He faced the task of all returning heroes: to master the forces that had created him, and to reach atonement with his father.

  In other words: to grow up.

  TWENTY-ONE

  When his consciousness intersected the world once more, he lay prone on dirty flagstones, his face turned to the left, rocks warm as blood digging into his cheek. Flame roared on all sides. Someone with agonizingly strong hands compressed his back to pump river water out of his lungs. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead retched forth a gout of water mixed with blood. It splashed across his right arm, his right hand, and he made a fist.

  "I think he's awake," someone said.

  For a gooey eternity, he could not recall who or where he was. He had dreamed of being Caine, of lying crippled in his own filth. The flamestreaked night offered no clue, and the feculent stench of the Donjon packed his head. Now, a bitter reek overpowered the outhouse smell: a sharp, throat-scorching tang not unlike the smoke from the Artan mining machines in Transdeia, when they chew away the mountainsides.

  Those strong hands rolled him onto his back. He stared up past a pair of unfamiliar faces into billows of black smoke that smothered the stars. "Ambassador," someone said, his voice raised over the liquid roar of nearby flame. "Master Raithe—can you hear me? We must move you. How is your breathing?"

  That's right, he thought. Raithe. I am Raithe.

  He struggled for air, but he could not tell if this came of water still in his lungs or of the baking heat of the fire around him. A swamp belch of borrowed memory bubbled up from the quagmire of bruise inside his head, but it burst and vanished before he could fully grasp it.

  "Raithe, you must speak now," a new voice said, a voice raw and ragged as though torn by screams.

  A silhouette shambled into view above him, then squatted at his side. Scarlet firelight lit half this man's ravaged face from below and threw the rest into impenetrable shadow. Grey stubble prickled from his jaw, and his visible eye stared round and red as though he struggled never to blink. He wore the robes of a Monastic Ambassador, now stained and torn and streaked with filth. "I lost three friars to the burning oil when we pulled you from the river," he rasped. "Three good men. The last good men. The last men I could trust. Now I have you, and I will have my answer."

  He leaned close and chewed at Raithe with starving eyes. "What is the significance of the sword? What did it do to you? What are you, and what have you done to the city?"

  Raithe's mind stumbled spastically from word to word. He could make sense of none of this.

  "Master Damon," a friar said warningly. "We must move. We must leave. Our lives are in danger here."

  Damon's teeth showed yellow and savage as he turned on the man. "I will hear this! You can't stop me!"

  "What he has to say won't mean much if we all burn to death," the friar retorted sullenly, and with an astonishing animal snarl, Damon sprang for his throat. The Acting Ambassador crashed into him and they tumbled out of Raithe's view. He couldn't seem to properly turn his head, but he could hear grunts and savage curses joined by the liquid smack of bone against muscle.

  He tried to summon his mindeye, to look with his power where he could not direct his eyes, but he saw only flames closing around him. He tried to lever himself up onto his elbows, to turn himself over or at least sit up. Tried, and failed.

  His left arm did not work.

  His exploring hand found a zone of numb flesh that bordered his pectoral muscle and grew outward to his shoulder, deepening until the arm it-self was as dead as a steak in a smokehouse. He tried to call out, but all that could come from his throat was a strangled grunt; he tried to push himself away with his feet, scrabbling with his heel. But he pushed with only one heel; his left leg was as dead as his arm.

  Help me was formed by his lips. Please, someone—someone help me

  Instead of flames charring his flesh, he now saw himself helpless under the knives and fingernails and teeth of men and women stripped of their humanity by Garrette's disease: demented homicidal bogeys with hearts empty of all save hunger and lust. He seemed to smell their slaughterhouse breath, seemed to feel the warm slide of their drool down his neck

  The sounds of fighting faded behind the roar of the surrounding flames. "There," Damon panted, out of sight. "There. This is the punishment for treachery. Does anyone else wish to question my authority?"

  Raithe squinted against the sting of tears.

  Damon reappeared at his side, and there was blood around his mouth. He sucked on a skinned knuckle for a momen
t before he spoke. "What is it?" he rasped. "I know you know, Raithe. What has done this to us?"

  The only sound Raithe could summon was a thick, gargling "No—no—"

  Damon drew close. "For days," he murmured, "I have awaited your rising. We are locked together, Raithe, you and I. This city has become a madhouse. You know why, and you know what I can do to save it. I have been patient, Raithe. My forbearance is at an end." A clawlike hand seized Raithe's dead left arm, and Damon lifted it with an expression mingled of lust and loathing. "I have become hungry."

  His face spasmed, and he cast down Raithe's arm, pushing himself away like a man with vertigo retreating from the brink of a cliff. "Why won't you help me, Raithe? I know you can. I don't understand why you refuse ..."

  Refuse? Raithe raged inside his head. Look at me! Will you look at me? What exactly was he supposed to be able to do?

  "Is it the water?" Damon asked softly, stroking Raithe's numb left cheek with his twisted clawlike hand. "I know we have been poisoned, but I must know where the good water can be found. It is our only hope, Raithe. It is the only hope of the city. Why won't you tell me?" Damon lowered his head and turned his face away. He whispered, "I am so thirsty ..."

  Raithe could only stare, gasping through the panic that crushed his chest.

  "It's blood, isn't it?" Damon said suddenly. He turned back to Raithe. His eyes smoldered. "That is why you will not speak. I understand. Clean water avails nothing—it is too late for that. Our only hope is to find blood. Clean blood. Blood is life. Blood is what we must drink. We must sustain our lives with life itself."

  Once more, Damon seized Raithe's dead arm. This time, he brought it close to his mouth, and his lips spasmed with tangled hunger and revulsion. "Is it your blood, Raithe? Is that what we must drink? The blood of a man become god? Is that why you will not speak? Is that why you want us all to die? Because you do not wish to share your blood?"

  Blood, Raithe thought. There is an answer in blood. But he could not quite grasp the memory. He had learned something about blood, something important. From where?

  The goddess.

  From the goddess.

  Close upon this realization came a heart-tearing burst of wonder: When did she stop being the Aktir Queen to me, and become simply the goddess?

  There: it was all there, inside him. He could not contain all that she had shared with him, but he did not need it all: one small corner sufficed. Blood

  He remembered about blood.

  Damon bit into Raithe's wrist, clamping down with a rending twist of the jaw, but Raithe barely noticed.

  I can save him. I can save them all.

  The tears that streamed now onto his cheeks were tears of gratitude.

  Damon lifted his blood-smeared mouth from Raithe's wrist. "Does this hurt you? I am sorry for that, Raithe. Sorry-I truly am. But I must have your blood. Without your blood, I will die, and when I die the embassy will fall, and with it the Monasteries and the Empire, and my whole life will have been for nothing. For nothing, do you understand? Of course you don't; you are too young. You are too young and strong to comprehend the futility that pursues a man, gaining ground with the turn of each year, each month, each day—"

  Raithe gathered his will and summoned his mindhand to work his body like a puppet. He shifted his lips and tongue to make himself say, "Nnno, Daaamon . . . I unnderrrstannn . . . I cannn hhh . . . hhhelllp you ..."

  "You can? You will?" The older man's staring eyes sparked with hope. "What must I do? What do you require?"

  "Nnnot my bl ..." Raithe forced out. He took a deep breath, and struggled to make his words clear. "Blood. To sssave . . . you nnneed ..." He summoned all his concentration, and sternly forced his lips and tongue to form distinctly the words he needed to save the world.

  "Not my blood," he said, "but Caine's."

  2

  Raithe hung facedown across a broad shoulder, and held on to consciousness by the clench of his teeth. With the winter-grey eyes of his body, he saw only oil-stained stone and the legs of the friar who carried him; with the invisible eyes of his mind, he could see everything.

  Damon led the small group of Esoterics in erratic dashes from patch to patch of burned-out ground, sliding between walls of flame and slipping across oil-slicked cobbles. Behind them, at the dockside, buildings had started to collapse; now and then the friars were forced to fade into the dangerously narrow confines of alley mouths, to avoid the parties of bucket-armed soldiers who trotted past. The soldiers, and the civilian volunteers who worked beside them, no longer tried to save individual buildings, but rather tried to contain the fires; they struggled to build firebreaks of sand to smother the oil, but flame overleaped them, spreading from wall to wall and rooftop to rooftop, and soon the black oil soaked through the mounds of sand and began to burn anew.

  Often the soldiers and the civilian volunteers fought not only the fires, but each other. The slightest disagreement might jump instantly to bloodshed, and the violence was more contagious than the disease that sparked it. Perhaps it does take two to fight—but it takes only one to attack. Only one to murder.

  The winner, in such fights, was the fire.

  In the dark depths of his heart, Raithe felt a shadow flow toward the city from far upstream, blank and faceless. With what sense he felt this he could not say—another revenant of the goddess and the god who had striven against one another within his brain but he felt it with an acute certainty that left no room for doubt.

  The Artans were coming.

  The Esoterics dashed up Knights' Bridge, reaching the top of the arch; ahead, where it joined the end of the arching stone span, the massive timbers of the drawbridge's single-leaf bascule had become a towering forest of spider-branched oaks that seeped gleaming oil.

  "We can make it," Damon decided, panting. "Here—" He turned to the men he led and pointed. "You you're the strongest. Take the Ambassador on your shoulders. You, and you your robes are wet. Strip and wrap him; the wet cloth will give some protection should the flames catch us still on the bridge."

  And in that speech, Raithe heard an answer: For all his murderous dementia, Damon was still Damon. He summoned his mindhand to make himself speak once more. Exhaustion made moving his lips like juggling boulders. "Nnno."

  Damon ignored him, studying the unnatural forest ahead. "Reese—scout along the left retaining wall. Rhoole, Cole, get a look to the right and in the middle. We must choose the clearest path, or none of us may survive."

  "Nnno," Raithe repeated. "Leavvve me heere."

  "We will not," Damon muttered distractedly. "You are a Monastic citizen in distress—"

  "Leavvve mmme here," he said, louder. "Tha' . . . that is annn order."

  Damon wheeled and seized the back of Raithe's neck in a crushing grip, straightening him one-handed across the friar's shoulder with lunatic strength. He leaned close enough to bite, and snarled, "Never give orders in my command! Never! I am in authority here! I! Do you understand?"

  Raithe met Damon's snarl expressionlessly. "Nno," he said. "You arrre nnnot."

  "I am invested by the Council of Brothers—"

  "You arrre relieved."

  "You have no authority!"

  Raithe's command of his lips and tongue sharpened by the moment. He was able to say more strongly, "I amm ... the Council's ch-chosen Ammmbassador ... to the Arrrtans. T-to the Ak-tiri. Caine is Arr-tan. This—" He waved weakly with his good hand at the burning city around them. "—this is the w-work of Aktiri."

  By extreme focus of his will, he forced the words to become perfectly distinct. "I amm vested with fulll auth-thority in all dealings with Arta .. . annnd the Aktiri. I amm . . . in command, here."

  Damon met his gaze squarely, pathetically dignified in his tattered filthy robes and the blood that streaked his face. "I shall protest," he said. "I shall protest to the Council."

  "D-do ssso. Unn-til th-thenn, you arre rre-lieved."

  Damon released Raithe's neck, and stepped away with
lowered eyes. Raithe patted the flank of the friar who held him. "Ssset me downnn."

  The friar obeyed, laying Raithe gently on the cold stone arch. Raithe said, "Daamonnn?"

  The reply was half muffled, as though his mouth had difficulty forming the words, but was clear nonetheless.

  "I am . . . at your orders. Sir."

  3

  Raithe gave orders as swiftly as his infirmity allowed, and the Esoterics sprinted away through the decaying trees of Knights' Bridge. He let his eyes drift almost closed; he had been through so much, and he was so tired

  Damon gazed longingly after his men. "And I still don't understand," he said, plaintive and puzzled, like a lost little boy. "How will this save us?"

  "Hhhellp," Raithe said reluctantly. "Hellp mmme . . . up."

  Damon knelt and slung Raithe's dead arm around his own neck. Slowly, working together, they managed to get Raithe to his feet. "What are we to do, now? Where are we to go?" Damon asked, his voice thickening with tears. "I fear—I fear I may not have the strength to carry you, Raithe. I'm sorry—I have not been well. Do you know I have not been well?"

  "To th-the Courrthoussse," Raithe gasped. "Caine—Caine's blood—"

  "But how will we even get in? The Courthouse will be sealed for the night—and it was built as a fortress! It would take a siege engine—"

  "Th-thisss—" Raithe said. "This is hhhoww—"

  He reached forth with his mindhand. No effort was required to find what he sought; the same odd, unexpected kinesthesia that enabled him to feel the cold approach of the Artans made this as natural as his one hand reaching for the other in the dark.

  On the surface of the river beneath them, the flames leaped high, then parted. A circle of pure calm flattened the roiled water as though it were a mountain lake on a windless summer's day. Up from the center of that circle rose the Sword of Saint Berne.

  Raithe drew the sword upward through the flame and smoke and darkness.

  The blade sizzled to life as his fingers closed around it, and shot a bolt of power along his arm that blossomed into a fireball of acid within his left side—and he could feel it. The touch of Kosall's hilt had joined something that had been severed within him.