Blade of Tyshalle

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  Now leather boots that sprouted leggings of chain shuffled into place around him. "All right, pally—that's it for you. Let's have that sword."

  Raithe stood.

  Five Eyes of God surrounded him, swords at the ready. Three more waited behind. The beast had him in its grasp. "The sword, pally. You can't fight all of us."

  Raithe raised his black-gleaming left hand, and his right hovered an inch from Kosall's hilt. "Yes, I can."

  "You'll lose."

  Raithe flicked his left hand at the officer who had spoken, and droplets of the black oil spattered across his face; at the same moment he seized Kosall and turned the awakening blade so that it sliced instantly through his belt. One officer fell backward, howling as flames burst around his eyes; another stared dumbly at the stub of his sword, sheared off a finger's breadth above the guard.

  But as they fell back, others came forward.

  "I have your deaths on my conscience already," Raithe said. "Killing you all costs me nothing. But if you would live a little longer, leave now."

  The voice of the beast spoke from the rags. "Any man who crosses that threshold while this traitor lives shall feel the full weight of Imperial justice."

  "There is no Imperial justice,' Raithe told them. "And this man will not live to see you punished. Go."

  Their response was a single shared glance, to coordinate their rush.

  As a swordsman, Raithe was only competent, but Kosall was a singularly forgiving weapon. Its irresistible edge took no account of shield or parrying blade, and armor provided only barely more resistance than naked flesh. His sense of the beast let Raithe meet attacks before they were even begun: in seconds the aisle around him was littered with bits of sliced-off swords and pieces of cloven shields. To pass within Kosall's reach on his right was to bleed; to close with Raithe from the left was to burn.

  But he was one, and they were six. Raithe bled as well: from a long slash on his thigh and a deep stab below his ribs. Despite his words, he killed no one. These were the same men he was fighting to save-and he was uncertain what taking a life with Kosall might do to the goddess within its blade.

  Now knives replaced broken swords, but the Eyes hesitated. To attack a sword-armed man with a knife is foolish; to do the same to a man armed with Kosall is suicidal.

  A moment fell, and another, and another.

  "Cowards!" hissed the beast. The rags shouldered through the officers. "Cowards! Traitors! Villains! Here is how We deal with traitors!" A pair of knives blossomed from tattered sleeves and swung wide, and the Patriarch sprang upon him.

  Raithe's reaction had been trained into him by years in the abbey school, by hours on the diskmat and days spent hammering millions of punches into leather-wrapped bags of sand. Kosall shifted instantly from his right hand to his left; his left foot swung out a precise handspan, and his weight transferred smoothly onto it from his right while the knuckles of his right fist described an invisible wall exactly at the point of the Patriarch's chin. Chin met wall, bone to bone

  And Toa-Sytell collapsed.

  I've knocked out the Patriarch, Raithe thought blankly.

  The Eyes of God officers stared, uncomprehending; they could no more believe what Raithe had done than he could himself. He repeated silently, I've knocked out the Patriarch, as though thinking the words again could make the act more real.

  What have I become?

  He lifted his eyes to the Eyes of God.

  "Run," he said.

  They ran.

  7

  Raithe stared down at the crumpled form of the unconscious Patriarch, terrified by how good he felt. Not happy—he could never be happy again—but calm. Centered. At peace.

  In control.

  As though his own chin had met the same wall his knuckles had described against Toa-Sytell's, a stunning impact had knocked things loose inside him, and now, for the first time, he began to understand

  Alone in the chapel, amid the dancing glass-stained firelight, Raithe turned once more to pray. But he did not pray from his knees, with bent neck and lowered eyes, as he had been taught. Instead he stood like a man and met the stone eyes of the icon of his god. He struck his breast again, and again opened his hand in offering.

  But this was his left, and it opened upon the blind god's black venom. I am Your Beloved Child, he thought. I will always honor You. Now, and forever, you have my love, my devotion. My worship.

  But not my obedience.

  I will always be Your Child, but I am a child no longer.

  There are too many children; too many grow old but never grow up. I think I would have liked to be one of them, but that does not seem to be my fate. My destiny.

  He allowed himself a bitter smile.

  Father, forgive me, for I finally know what I'm doing.

  8

  The clamor from the guardroom reached Raithe even up in the broad hall outside the chapel: shouted threats and tearful pleas, roars of rage and shrieks of pain. In the stairwell, it was painfully loud. Kosall in one hand, leash in the other, Raithe rounded the last bend in the stairway.

  In the small antechamber below, six men in chainmail that bore the emblem of the Eyes of God paced back and forth, gesturing as though they argued in voices that could not be heard above the clamor. The clamor rose from beyond the steel gate—within the guardroom itself—which was packed solid with desperate, panicked men in the gear of the Donjon Guard. The men of the Guard struggled and clawed and bit each other, fighting to get to the gate; an anemone-spray of arms waved between the bars, fingers clutching futilely toward the Eyes of God beyond.

  Raithe watched for a moment, then he nodded to himself and thoughtfully brought Kosall's forte against the corner of stone beside him. Kosall bit into the stone with an earsplitting squeal. Below him, men jumped and flinched and covered their ears. He turned the blade slowly, carving a chunk from the wall as though the stone were hard cheese. The chunk rattled down the steps to the anteroom floor, skittered slowly across it with a fading chikchikchik, and then there was silence.

  Raithe pointed Kosall at the Eyes of God. "You can go."

  They stared at him, taking in his tattered clothes that dripped black oil down one side, while the other side hung thick and red, soaked in the blood that still pulsed from both the slice on his thigh and the stab wound below his ribs. One of the Eyes straightened and stepped forward. "We are ordered to hold this gate—"

  "I don't care. Go."

  "Toa-Sytell himself—"

  Raithe drew on the leash in his other hand.

  Around the bend of the stairway, leashed by the prisoner collar locked around his neck, hands bound and mouth gagged with strips torn from his own robes, came His Radiant Holiness Toa-Sytell, Steward of the Empire and Patriarch of the Church of the Beloved Children of Ma'elKoth.

  His gaze was fixed, unseeing; as Raithe descended the last few steps to the anteroom, the Patriarch stumbled and half fell, striking his knees hard upon the stone floor. He knelt there abjectly, a low animal Whine leaking around his gag. Tears rolled from his blankly staring eyes.

  Kosall's whine hummed through the autumnal rustle of indrawn breath.

  Raithe said, "Go."

  The officers, with many an exchanged glance, slowly and carefully circled around him, then backed up the stairs.

  "Hey," a Donjon Guard said from beyond the gate. "Hey, what about us? You can't leave us—you don't know what's going on down there—!" "Enlighten me."

  From many voices in conflicting babble, Raithe was able to piece together an impression of a riot in the Pit below. He thought, Caine, and remembered the boil of unhuman ghosts through the caverns: caverns that connect to the Donjon, through the Shaft.

  He took a long stride forward and swung Kosall overhand. The men beyond shoved themselves frantically back from the bars. Sparks flew from the gate's lock as the blade sheared it through, and the gate swung open. Raithe stepped to one side, shortening Toa-Sytell's leash as though the Patriarch were an unruly
dog, and silently watched the rush of guards on their way up and out.

  The guardroom went quiet. The Donjon door stood open. The stair-well beyond was dark as an open mouth. Raithe took one deep breath, staring down, then shrugged. Drawing the Patriarch after him, he went down.

  As he descended, the living ghosts that had peopled the back of his mind slowly faded; fading likewise was his sense of the methodical approach of the Artan forces, both overland and along the river. By the time he reached the lower landing he was, for the first time in what could have been forever, alone inside his head. Even Kosall's whine trailed away to silence.

  He stopped, frowning.

  If there was indeed a riot beyond these doors, he could not hear it. The loudest sound in the stairwell was the shuffle of the Patriarch's battered and bleeding feet. Scant light trickled from the guardroom; Raithe could discern only the faintest gleam from the studs that fastened the brass bindings on this door. He glanced at the featureless silhouette of Toa-Sytell, and found no advice in his silent shape.

  He cautiously pulled the door handle. The doors were locked—or possibly held from the far side. He pressed his ear against the door. Now he could hear voices, many voices, from the Pit beyond, though he could make out no words among the general quiet murmur. He allowed himself a slow sigh, and nodded to himself.

  He breathed himself into his Control Discipline and built within his mindeye an image of Caine as he had last seen him, chained to the dungcart, drawn away in the processional while the Imperial Army Band played "Justice of God." He detailed the image with every scar he had seen in five days of study on the barge, with every sweat streak that striped the travel dust on his skin; he laid strands of grey along his temples, and imaged perfectly the white-salted stubble that had coated his cheeks and chin.

  Now from this image he stripped away the sunlight and the music; he erased the dungcart and the shackles; finally even the tunic and pants of rough homespun evaporated from his consciousness. Then there was only Caine.

  And Raithe saw him. Vaguely, blurrily, fading in and out of view, as if through a mist.

  He sat upon a pile of rags and tattered clothing that somehow, beneath him, was a throne; he wore an age-greyed tunic, frayed at the hem and worn thin enough to be translucent, that became armor polished like the sun. At his feet lay a dying elf; at his side knelt a massively muscled ogrillo who tied strips of rag around Caine's raddled legs with hands that were themselves heavily bandaged; before him stood a thick-bodied woman, hands folded behind her like a student reciting in abbey school. Caine's hair had gone whiter than Raithe remembered it, and his beard had grown in full and shaggy; his cheeks had sunk close upon his teeth; hunger and illness had drawn his eyes deeper within his skull.

  But those eyes still gleamed like embers at the back of a cave.

  He shook his head to wipe the vision from his mind, and he passed the sleeve of his sword arm across his brow. Raithe had seen Caine not as he is, but as Raithe needed him to be: beclouded in a fog of legend. More than human: a hero: a myth.

  Probably, he thought, he is dead. Many will be dead, and many more injured. But: someone may have touched his blood. Someone may have tasted it, if it ran in the water, or was splashed from a wound. This may be enough.

  It will have to be.

  He tried to summon the power of his mindhand, to manipulate the lock upon these doors as he had those in Garrette's office a lifetime ago, but his power had deserted him. He had a vague recollection—something about the rock from which the Donjon is carved—but he did not trouble to pursue it; he had another option.

  He pushed Kosall's point between the doors and slid it downward until it met resistance. By extreme concentration, he was able to direct a shudder of power into the blade; it rattled to life, sank, then swung free before falling silent once more. Gasping, Raithe was forced to lean on the stone for a moment, to regather the shreds of his strength. When he pulled the door handle with the hand that held the Patriarch's leash, the door opened.

  Framed in the stairshaft's shadow, Raithe found an array of crossbows centered upon his breast, held steadily by men and elves on the far side of the balcony, a hundred feet away. A voice closer at hand but out of sight said firmly, "Onto the balcony. Nice and slow."

  Raithe moved into the light.

  A few paces to his right, another small group of mingled species held cocked and leveled crossbows, near enough that the curve of the balcony's retaining wall could offer no protection. "Put down the sword," one of them ordered.

  Raithe ignored them. He took one step closer to the retaining wall and looked down into the Pit. On a pile of rags and clothes become a throne, wearing a grey ragged tunic that should have been polished steel

  Gathered round him: elf, ogrillo, human

  Gaze as solid as the Donjon stone: a state of being in which the unexpected receives barely a blink of recognition.

  "Raithe."

  Raithe said, "Caine."

  A long, slow, measuring stare: a whole conversation passed in the meeting of eyes of grey ice with those of black fire. Raithe had to lower his head.

  "Can you give me one reason," Caine said, "why I shouldn't have you shot where you stand?"

  Raithe tugged on the leash, drawing Toa-Sytell to the retaining wall where Caine could see him. The Patriarch moaned into his gag. Caine said, "Well."

  He seemed to ponder this development for a moment; then he folded his arms and cocked his head fractionally to one side. "That," he said, "buys you a trip down here, to tell me what the fuck you're up to."

  One of the crossbowmen on the balcony said, "He's armed."

  Caine nodded, and spoke softly to the elf who seemed to be drowsing at his feet; the elf lifted his head and opened eyes so fever-shot that to Raithe, even dozens of yards away, they looked like bloody eggs. Those raw eyes swallowed Raithe whole.

  He swayed.

  The elf said something to Caine that Raithe could not hear, then laid his head upon his bed of rags and closed his eyes once more. Caine said to the crossbowmen, "Don't worry about it. Let him come."

  Raithe led Toa-Sytell around the long curve of the balcony and down the straight span of the stairbridge. The mass of prisoners parted before him so that he could lead the Patriarch to Caine's feet.

  He felt the pressure of their massed stare like a yoke across his shoulders, its weight compressing his spine, anchoring his feet to the stone. The ogrillo hulked nearby—closer to Raithe than to Caine—wearing a glare that invited violence. The woman mirrored him, saving only that her gaze was one of dispassionate measurement rather than threat. Blood trickled down his leg, and he could clearly hear the slow drop of the black oil from his left hand.

  Caine said expressionlessly, "That's Kosall."

  Raithe lifted the sword. The ogrillo shifted his weight onto his forepads.

  "Yes."

  "You've been using it."

  Raithe looked at the slow pulse of blood soaking down his clothing. "Not well."

  Caine did not respond.

  "I have—" Raithe began weakly, then coughed, sighed a deep breath, and continued with more strength. "I have come to ask you to save the world."

  9

  Caine offered a smile that was cold, remote, and thin as the arc of a saber. "Yeah?"

  "In your blood," Raithe said, "there is a, a countervirus—" He stumbled over the unfamiliar word. "—that is the cure for Garrette's disease." "In my blood?"

  Caine rocked back on his throne of rags, and his eyes fixed upon something that was not there.

  "Yes," Raithe said.

  "In my blood ..." Caine repeated, but now with a tone of slow, wondering discovery, as though this explained some long-standing mystery.

  "Yes," Raithe said again. "The tiniest drop will save a man, and then he himself will carry this cure, and can pass it on—"

  "I know how it works," Caine said. The wonder drained from his face, leaving only flat, cold stone. "What do you want me to do about it?" Rait
he stared.

  Caine stared back.

  Raithe gave his head a tiny disbelieving shake. He drew Toa-Sytell up beside him. "A drop of your blood, Caine. That's all I ask. One drop. You can save his life."

  Caine lifted his right hand and examined it as though it were some piece of exotic machinery, unfamiliar in design and uncertain of use. He watched his knuckles as he made a fist; then he opened his fingers again. He met Raithe's gaze, shrugged, and turned his hand over, palm up. "What's in it for me?"

  "Caine," Raithe said patiently, "he's the Patriarch. The Empire needs him."

  "Fuck the Patriarch." Caine pushed himself forward and took his weight elbow-to-knee. "The last time I was this close to that little cocksucker, he knifed me. Fuck the Empire, too. And, while you're at it, fuck yourself."

  Raithe knew better than to waste breath on argument or plea; he was, after all, the world's leading expert on Caine. "What do you want?"

  Caine's smile sharpened. "First," he said with dark satisfaction, "though I know it's the worst kind of manners to mock a guy when he's down, I want to remind you: You told me that nothing, ever again, would be about what I want." He showed his teeth. "Shit, kid, thinking about that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, like I just ate a kitten. Second?" He opened his other hand. "Make me an offer."

  "Your freedom—" Raithe began, nodding back toward the Donjon stairway above.

  That open hand waved a contemptuous dismissal. "My freedom has nothing to do with you."

  Raithe swayed. The corners of the room dimmed, darkening into a tunnel that stretched ever longer, and the only light at the distant end was the face of Caine.

  "Anything, then," he said tiredly. "Even my life."

  "Your life? Look around you, pinhead." Five or six of the crossbowmen took more careful aim. "I have your life already. I just haven't decided what I want to do with it."

  "Then what, Caine?" Raithe asked quietly, eyes drifting closed, dizzy with blood loss and defeat. "What? Tell me. Say it, and if it is within my power—"

  "When I make up my mind," he said, leaning back once more. "Start by telling me what the fuck happened to you."