Blade of Tyshalle

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  Christ.

  All right. Enough.

  I'm ready for this to be over.

  Mortality is a gift: It's never a question of whether you'll die. It's just a question of how.

  2

  Four straight black lines crossed by a succession of shorter lines—like dead centipedes with their legs smashed flat—pointed into the ring of light from the darkness around it. They did not quite meet in the center, but it was clear where they would, if extended: in that center-point was Ma'el-Koth's right eye.

  Orbek slipped the yellow hooked talon of his right index finger through the trigger guard.

  This weapon was not designed for ogrilloi; his fingers were too thick to squeeze the trigger properly, and to use the aiming tube mounted above the grip required him to crick his neck in a very uncomfortable way: his right tusk came hard up against the weapon's stock. But ogrilloi are gifted with weapons, and this was not so different from a crossbow. Orbek could make the necessary adjustments.

  Sunlight shining through the blown-open roof above warmed his legs; he lay prone on the rubble of what once had been priests' quarters, on an upper floor of a temple to Urimash, a minor god of good fortune. The shell that had destroyed the roof had taken a substantial chunk out of the third-floor facade but had left some of the walls intact, providing stark shadow to conceal his head and the barrel of his weapon.

  It had taken him a good long time to haul his ass up here, with his leg half dead—goddamn fuck-me chunk of pavement came outa nowhere while he was diving around a corner when everything blew up, slammed his thigh like a fuck-me morningstar. It took most of the battle for him to crawl out of the street. Everybody else—pretty much all the Folk, the prisoners, probably all the fuck-me Monastics as well—they took off, scattering over the bridges and into the caverns, getting the fuck out of here while they had the chance.

  Orbek had never been one for running.

  Besides: with this leg, he could barely walk.

  Then he'd found this weapon clutched in a dead human hand, pried it out, and decided the best way he could be a real Black Knife was to find a quiet spot where he could shoot some humans before they killed him.

  That shimmer in the air—fuck-me Ma'elKoth had a fuck-me Shield going. Orbek didn't know how to tell how many shots he would have with this weapon, but he calculated that even if he couldn't overload the Shield, he should be able to knock the fuck-me bastard down.

  That counts for something.

  His talon tightened against the trigger, and the aiming tube went suddenly black, and a soft human voice said, "Don't."

  Orbek froze—except for his left eyelid, which popped open; with that eye he could see a dark-skinned hand covering the far end of the aiming tube.

  "Fuck me," he breathed.

  He lifted his head, and found himself staring into eyes the color of ice.

  His mouth worked soundlessly for a second or two before words could force their way out. "How do you get up here? No, fuck that—how do you even find me?"

  Raithe said, "I have a message from Caine

  3

  Ma'elKoth, though—he's been waiting for this moment for a long, long time, and he intends to savor it.

  He walks toward me, between the broken rows of kneeling Household Knights and Social Police and Ankhanan infantry, swinging his ass, as ar rogantly loose-jointed as a tiger. Air shimmers around him: a Shield. He knows we captured some rifles and shit, and he doesn't want a sniper to ruin his party.

  He strolls along about a third of Gods' Way; then he stops and opens his arms as if to say Behold!

  "You said I would never see My city again, Caine," he says with a smile a lot warmer than the sun overhead. "Yet here I am."

  He speaks in a casual, human tone, which I can hear perfectly from hundreds of yards away. "No answer? Nothing to say, after all this time, old friend?"

  I have a fucking answer for him.

  In my mind, I create an image of a white stream of power coming out of the middle of my guts and vanishing into Kosall's hilt. A second or two later I can see it, in mindview: twisting and sparking, coruscating, an electric gap-spark thicker than my wrist: a spark that is the path of all the power from every single black thread that is tied to my life. It hums in my subconscious as I anchor it, good and tight, to Kosall.

  Not to Shanna, not to Pallas, not to the goddess, not to the wife I have loved and the woman who bore the child I call my daughter, not to the woman I watched die below Khryl's Saddle. I can look at her image in my heart, but I had better keep it out of mindview, or I'll give the fucking game away.

  He eyes me closely, cycling through levels of mindview, looking for some kind of Flow current—looking to see what kind of power I might be pulling from the river.

  But I'm not pulling. I'm feeding.

  "Ah, David, My David," he says, shaking his head in what looks like honest remorse. "Where is thy sling?"

  The white gap-spark sizzles. He can't see it.

  This might work.

  "I am not a vengeful god, Caine. And I know that you have not been brought to bay: that you have chosen to surrender, when you could flee. I would be remiss, not to reply in kind. Thus, I have brought gifts."

  His only visible gesture is a slight widening of his smile. Far behind him, the door of the limo swings up: a crocodile jaw opening a mouth of shaded darkness. In that rectangular shadow I can just make out an odd, irregularly globular particolored shape. Ma'elKoth smiles indulgently, and the shape materializes out of sunbeams and dust motes right in front of me, and I still can't make my eyes see what it really is

  My brain unties an invisible knot, and that lumpy black-and-white blob of Ma'elKoth's Fantasy suddenly resolves into a tiny crumple of tragedy. It's Faith: wrapped in a stained and filthy hospital gown, strapped in a wheelchair.

  Strapped in my wheelchair.

  So real

  If I put out my hand, would I feel her hair? Could I bend close for a kiss, and catch the scent of her skin? If I cry over this Fantasy, will she feel my tears?

  Faith

  Christ—how can I

  Watching Shanna die was only a warm-up.

  "A small enough return, I suppose," Ma'elKoth says. "But one, I think, that you may value as much as I value your surrender. I give you: your family—"

  His hand pauses in midgesture, as though to rest a moment on Faith's matted hair, and I don't understand why the rolling boil in my brain doesn't burst my skull, and then he nods and tilts his palm toward Rover.

  "—and a place to sit."

  4

  Raithe limped out from the shadow of a half-crumbled wall, squinting against the harsh sun-glare. The silence was infinite as the sky: the only sound within the ruined city was the slow scrape-crunch of his footsteps. He left a trail of blood, swirling with black oil. The Artans—the Social Police—turned to stare, as he slowly, painfully scraped along the middle of Rogues' Way, to the intersection with Gods' Way.

  Far down that broad avenue, he could see the back of the man he had once worshiped. Beyond, at the opposite end of the street, his personal demon sat on a crumple of steel. The air was so clear Raithe could read the look on his face. He nodded slightly.

  Caine nodded back.

  Raithe turned toward the powerless vehicle that sat, lifeless, between the pair of equally dead riot vans. Artan helmets tracked him. Ankhanan soldiers watched him silently, fingering their weapons.

  Raithe smiled to himself. He wondered if this was how Caine had felt, as he paced across the sand in the arena at Victory Stadium. He wondered if Caine had felt this strong, this happy.

  This free.

  Back in the apothecary shop on Crooked Way, Raithe had risen to leave while Caine was still using Kosall to carve away his shackles, one careful stroke at a time. Raithe had looked at the dead woman nearby in the hallway, remembering: He had been in this shop many times, first as a child, later as a Courthouse page, then as a novice at the embassy. He had known of this old couple f
or as long as he could remember; he recalled now that they had a son, somewhere, but that was the only detail he could summon. They had been the old apothecary and his wife. He could not recall their names.

  His head had swum, and he'd sagged against the wall, gasping. Caine had looked up from his cutting. "You better sit down again."

  "No," Raithe had said, shaking his head, dizzy. "No. Just ... catch my breath—"

  "You're gonna catch a bad case of dead, you don't take it easy."

  "No. This is where our paths diverge, Caine. I don't imagine I'll be seeing you again."

  "Raithe—"

  "I would like to—" He'd stopped himself, shaken his head, started again. "If I could find some way, without being disloyal to the memory of my parents, and to the memory of Master Creele—I would ... I wish I could say I'm sorry. I wish I could say thanks. But I can't."

  "I cannot undo the damage I have done."

  "None of us can."

  To that, Raithe had only nodded and turned once more to leave.

  Caine had caught his clean arm. "I'm not done with you, kid." When Raithe went to yank free, Caine had wrapped his wrist with the chain from his shackle, holding him fast.

  "Let me go—" He had swung his left hand toward Caine to threaten him with the black oil.

  Caine had snorted at him. "Go ahead. You just got done saving my life, now you're gonna kill me? Sure."

  "What do you want?"

  "We'll probably both be dead in a few minutes, anyway," Caine had said. "But if you're not, I'm gonna need you."

  "Need me for what?" Raithe had said, surprised at the strange sound of his own voice: he'd been trying for scorn, but a little bit of hope had worked its way in, instead.

  "There's a little girl. A little six-year-old girl with golden hair, who used to smile a lot. She likes pretty clothes, and nursery rhymes, and going to school with the big kids—"

  "You're talking about Faith."

  "Yeah, Ma'elKoth's bringing her. I need you to take her away. Find someone to look after her." He had shrugged and looked away, his mouth taking on a bitter twist. "Save her."

  "Me? Save your daughter?". Raithe had been sure he must have misunderstood. "Where will you be?"

  Caine had lifted Kosall and sighted along its shimmering blade. "I'll be dead." He let the chain slip free from around Raithe's wrist, releasing him. "That's why I need you."

  "I am no longer subject to your orders, Caine—"

  "Yeah. That's why it's not an order. I'm asking."

  Raithe had only been able to shake his head in wonder. "And why would I do this for you?"

  "You won't be doing it for me. You'll be doing it for her. You know what they've done to her. You know what they'll keep doing. You'll be doing it because if you don't, you'll have to live with the memory of letting an innocent little girl be raped to death."

  Raithe's breath had come hot and harsh. He had leaned against the wall once more, gasping, his hand leaving a splotch of black oil smearing down the paint. "But why me?" he'd asked. "I'm the one who put her there, as much as anyone else. I killed her mother. How can you entrust your daughter's life to me?"

  Caine's stare had been level, steady and without fear. "Who else is there?"

  Who else is there? Raithe thought as he limped toward the open hatchway of the vehicle. In the shade of the hatch door, the child was strapped in a wheeled chair. Beside it, two burly Artans in helmets polished like mirrors restrained a screaming, sobbing old woman with short-cut hair the color of steel. She thrashed in their grip, begging and threatening in a language Raithe could not understand.

  Deeper within the vehicle, almost lost within the shadows, was a creature Raithe recognized; a skeletal, eroded caricature of famine. He had felt this creature within his heart. Their eyes met, and they knew each other.

  In the creature's eye was hunger. In Raithe's, only ice.

  One of the mirror-masked Artans silently showed Raithe how to unlock the chair's wheels. He took it by the handles at the top of the seatback, then turned and pushed Caine's daughter out into the sunlight.

  5

  I watch them go: Raithe, wheeling her up Rogues' Way, pauses at the last moment before he disappears around the corner of the temple to Shentralle the Messenger, meets my eye one last time, and nods good-bye.

  He and my daughter vanish from my sight.

  I wish I could have said good-bye to Faith.

  "So, you have your daughter, and you have the lives of your followers. Yet these are not the greatest of My gifts to you," Ma'elKoth booms expansively. He extends an open hand in my direction. "The greatest gift I give is this: that I buy your surrender. That I allow you to come to Me with your dignity as well as your life. This is less a surrender than it is a contract: value given for value received. Thus do I demonstrate to all history the love I bear you, Caine; thus shall it be written in every—"

  I send a little trickle of black Flow threading through my bypass, and stand up.

  He pauses, and his eyes narrow.

  "You've learned a new trick," he murmurs appreciatively. "Come, then: Let us meet as men, standing face-to-face, for the surrender of the sword. I applaud your sense of ceremony: Grant and Lee at Appomattox Courthouse, rather than Brutus at the feet of Ant—"

  I point Kosall at him. "You talk too fucking much."

  He stops, making a face like he tastes something sour; he hates interruptions when he's being clever.

  I show him my teeth. "You and me, we both know what's going on here, and it has nothing to do with surrender."

  His smile settles in, fading from that big theatrical grin to a half curve of honest satisfaction; his feet settle in, spreading to a wider, stronger stance as he squares up to me; his shoulders settle in, dropping half an inch and seeming to spread and swell like boulders under his suit.

  The Fantasy image of Faith strapped in Rover's seat dissolves back into a swirl of dust sparkles in the sun.

  He says, "Yes."

  "So shut the fuck up. Let's just do it."

  He opens his hands. "Come on, then."

  "Yeah."

  6

  Raithe pushed the girl's chair swiftly into the first alley north of Gods' Way and then began to jog, bouncing her along as fast as he dared on the uneven surface. The girl lolled bonelessly, semiconscious: Though he weakened swiftly, he could keep moving by leaning on the chair himself for support, and they didn't have far to go.

  The shattered building sagged in the sunlight; its drooping second floor provided deep shade where Orbek waited with the two primals, the healers from Alien Games. Raithe pushed the chair up to them, stumbling, gasping for breath.

  "Did they . . . agree?" he rasped at Orbek. The primals had not trusted him at all, naturally, and for good reason, given the history between the First Folk and the Monasteries; he had barely managed to convince them to wait and speak with Orbek. "Will they help? Did they send—"

  "Like you say, friar," Orbek said, grinning around his tusks. Friar came out like a curse.

  Raithe ignored it. "And the net?"

  Orbek nodded. "On its way."

  The primal healers crouched near Faith, examining her without touching her, their faces shining with the blank, impersonal pain that a man might show when he finds a dying puppy.

  "There's no time," Raithe said, sagging. Only the chair kept him upright. "It's happening now—right now. It's happening."

  "Yeah." Orbek's grin widened, and he twitched a tusk to point along the alley: four treetoppers flew toward them swift as sparrows, sharing the burden of one of Kierendal's silver antimagick nets. "It sure as fuck-me is."

  7

  We face each other in the infinite now.

  Down the long street lined with people, squinting against the noonday sun.

  We both know how this is supposed to play out. Our parts have been carved in legend's stone for centuries. The gunfighters. The samurai. Zorro and the Governor. Robin Hood and Sir Guy de Guisborne.

  No: more
accurately, Leonidas at Thermopylae.

  Roland at Roncesvalles.

  Because Ma'elKoth is the face of ten billion people come to crush me, and here I stand, at the head of my Companions: Raithe; Faith; Shanna and Pallas Ril and the goddess; Hari and all the men I have ever been. They put me here, to be their champion.

  Deliann and Kris both stand behind one shoulder.

  Dad stands behind the other.

  They made me possible.

  Relaxed and ready, Ma'elKoth waits for me to start the Walk: the long slow measuring stroll where we both psych ourselves into the killing zone. He knows there has to be a Walk; he knows I have a profound respect for tradition.

  He's expecting a trick: he's waiting for me to commit before he makes his move. I caught him off guard last time, and he won't make that mistake again. From a hundred yards away, I can only hit him with magick or a gun, and his Shield can handle either.

  A shimmer starts in the nerves of my hand that holds Kosall, and with it an aching sense of loss creeps through my veins. Ma'elKoth's eyes widen, then narrow, and he nods, offering me an appreciative smile.

  "What was it?" he asks casually, as though his interest is entirely academic. "How have you broken our link? Did you put one of those silver nets of yours on Faith? Like the one you used on me last time?"

  I don't answer, but I don't have to.

  Power flares around him.

  Now Pallas and I, together, have all the might of the river. Ma'elKoth has all the power of millions more worshipers than he had last time, plus whatever it is the blind god pumps into him.

  Head to head, him against me

  We can tear the planet in half.

  Armageddon. Ragnarok: the Twilight of the Gods.

  He's looking forward to it.

  He was always into that Wagnerian shit.

  He's spent seven years studying me. Studying Pallas. He's had plenty of time to cycle that superhuman intelligence of his through every possible combination of her powers, my skills, our tactics. I know he's watching in mindview, waiting for any hint of what kind of power I'm going to draw and what I might want to do with it. I can't possibly take him by surprise.