The gjalp’s hand had silently slipped from his grip, and he pulled his arm out of the black water, to keep kneeling on the sea-green tiles around the pool.
Waiting.
He looked down. His hand remained black. His forearm was black, too, and the ink blotted out his wight tattoos of tribe and family, his identifiers since youth, and it seeped into his veins filling him with such warmth as if he were the one who had entered the pool.
A noise behind him.
Raised voices.
A scream. A name.
The thud of running feet.
It barely registered through the cocoon of primal warmth. The sounds were distant and far away from the glow that spread through his entire being.
He turned to look over his shoulder.
Mari entered, her gray robes spattered with blood, a dagger shaped of ice hovering above her palm, her eyes wild, darting to and fro.
The pool. The stairwell to heaven. The dark water. The altar. The pool.
Her face was torn between ecstasy and pain.
Then her eyes settled on him.
“No!” she screamed, spittle frothing at her mouth. “Not you. You cannot be here. You don’t belong here.”
She threw the ice blade in his direction, shattering it into three wicked shards that were all darting toward his heart.
He watched their flight and rose to his feet as if in trance. He unsheathed his sword and with one sweep, crushed the ice bolts into a thousand pieces that hissed and steamed and evaporated from the heat of his gleaming sword.
Shock rippled over Mari’s face.
Diaz marched around the altar towards her, sword at the ready, and she skipped towards the pool, reached into the water with her bloodwitch powers to form another weapon against him. She gasped and cradled her fingers as though she had suffered ice burn.
“This is the Most Holy of the Sea Goddess Neeze, and your trespassing will be punished with death, filth,” she spat, edging away from him.
Her palms held out toward him as he approached, he felt a whiplash of a command across his mind that brought him to his knees, panting.
Mari gestured frantically, the heels of her feet on the green tiles already, so close was she to the water. She tried again to fling some of it toward him, but it remained undisturbed.
He squinted in its direction, because it seemed to him to build itself up to a towering wave on the other side of the pool, overshadowing Mari’s small figure. But she didn’t seem to notice it, and so he wondered if what he saw was real.
The wave took on the shape of his gjalp, only larger, stronger, sharper. More terrifying.
Still Mari did not turn.
He managed to push himself to his feet despite the control Mari held over him.
“Look out!” He tried to call out to her, but his voice was a harsh croak to even his own ears.
“Die for your betrayal,” Mari screamed, and slammed her open palm towards his chest.
Instinctively he tried to block whatever spell she was hurling his way, and turned his right side towards her.
The air between them flickered and wavered and the killing blow aimed at his heart became visible, like a shrieking monstrous face, ready to devour. A shiver of silver ran through it and like the sunlight on the waves, it burst into a rain of gleaming sparks and dissolved into nothing.
Diaz turned back to see Mari fall to her side, her eyes showing only the whites, mouth wrenched open in a rictus of fear, hands clutching her chest.
She did not get up.
Diaz glanced up at the crest of the dark wave, a gjalp with a gorgon head looming over him.
A voice like the chorus of the many gjalp blossomed in his head.
He snapped his gaping mouth shut, and bowed low.
Thank you.
“I thank you, Mother Yorth.”
I have not been called by that name in a long, long time.
“I did not mean to offend.”
You did not. Do not let her body touch my waters. Much blood has been spilled in this place. I do not want to have to absorb more hate and fear.
“I understand. We will bury her somewhere else.”
The gjalp wave stretched high, her long tendrils trying to heave herself out of the pool along the many stairs.
Once I was stretched out across the entire world. I was the water, and all waters were me. My children drank from me and grew aware of themselves. Wights and humans. You are a beautiful mix, child. But then others came, calling themselves gods, and I was trapped. Confined. I cannot get out. The chorus voice thundered in his mind. I cannot return to my waters.
A high-pitched wail shook the rock walls, dust raining down on the green tiles. Diaz winced from the lancing pain in his ears, and fell to one knee, the echo of the shriek whirring incessantly in his head.
When he opened his eyes again, the ink giant had lowered its writhing, coiling, churning head to him.
You did not let go of the gjalp though you did not know the water wouldn’t burn you. She let go of her own accord.
He bowed his head lower, sure that the heat trickling over his cheekbones came from his bleeding ears.
“Can you help her and her kind?” he asked breathlessly. The maw of the black creature was huge, its teeth as jagged and razor sharp as obsidian knives, and only inches from his chest.
The black face seemed to ponder this.
Not from in here.
He nodded. “I happen to know someone who specializes in destroying ancient temples.”
The girl you love?
“The Living Blade.”
You spoke well. Remember it always.
The face lowered itself back into the pool with a deep, reverberating hum, and the waters stilled once more.
Diaz waited for a few minutes. His head dizzy, his legs shaking, then he left through the same door Mari had entered, dragging her corpse after him.
In a caved-in corridor, he found Jeska pressing her hands to a deep gash in Lin’s chest.
Tears had traced a path in the dusty grime on Jeska’s face. With a glance she took in Mari’s body behind him, his blackened arm, and grimaced. The tears fell anew.
“She won’t wake up. I can’t heal her.” Her voice shook as she spoke, looking down at Lin’s deathly pale face. “I’m not strong enough. She’s too far gone”
“Don’t think like a watermage. Don’t try to control what you can’t control. What can you do?”
“I don’t know,” Jeska’s lower lip trembled and her eyes were wet with more tears. “I just don’t know.”
“Can you stabilize her enough to get us to the Wards?” Diaz asked gently.
Jeska’s eyes widened, and she wiped her cheek on her shoulder.
“Yes?” She sniffed, then straightened her shoulders. “Yes. I can.”
“Tell me what you need,” he said, and he listened as she described where he could find poles for a stretcher and bandages.
Chapter 34
His arm remained permanently stained by the inky water. Diaz could see the texture of his skin beneath the discoloring, the lines in his palm lightening a little after a few days, returning to his usual bronze. But the rest was dipped a deep, rich black, obliterating his older tattoos.
He had sold his sword in the smithing borough of the Wards. He used most of the coin to procure a room for Lin and Jeska, and pay for a fire-and-ash burial for Mari.
He also bought passage for himself on a ferry to the western ports of the Nessan Sea, figuring that if Nora the Blade was on her way to Shinar, he could travel there faster through the lands of the Rheged, than by sailing south and back to the Kandarin Empire.
He kept a lookout for Bashan, but the Wards were even fuller than he remembered, the refugees doubling in number since he had been here a month ago, and so he did not encounter his former lord.
Jeska had accompanied him to the docks. She kept tugging her cowl down over her face, still worried that someone might recognize her as one of the Ladies. But n
obody cared about another boat with a cripple, a dying woman, and a young girl on it.
He had told her many times already that nobody would make the connection between her and her so-called grandmother and the magical Ladies. But he couldn’t reprimand her for fidgeting with the rim of her cowl when he did the same, though for other reasons.
Too many desiccated gjalp hung across the market stalls for him to allow his eyes to attract notice.
He strode down the rickety wooden pier to the sailing boat that would take him to the coast, and Jeska hurried behind him, holding onto his belt so that she would not lose him in the jostling, bustling crowd. Beyond the masts of the docked boats, the Needle, the extinguished volcano of the Holy Isle of Nessa, was skirted in rolling mists.
“Some days I can’t wait to go back home,” Jeska said when he finally halted to say farewell. Her eyes darted between him and the black rock.
“I’m sure Lin feels the same way,” he said.
The corners of her mouth twitched into a near smile. She had been quiet for most of their time on the Wards, not her usual bubbly self.
It was understandable.
She leaned forward with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
“I’ve heard of a merchant selling powders here. He shoots them in paper rolls into the sky where they explode in bright colors. I’ve seen them.” Her eyes were drawn to the mountain again, and she lowered her voice. “Sometimes I want to take some of that powder across to the isle with me and blow the whole temple to pieces. I guess that makes me a pretty shitty bloodwitch acolyte.”
“Probably,” he said with a wry smile. Loving a home and at the same time wanting to tear it all to pieces was just a normal part of being in a family, as far as Diaz could tell. “Lin can tell you all about being a bad acolyte if you wish to hear her tales when she recuperates.”
“I’ll ask her, then.”
She opened her arms and gave him a tight hug.
“I don’t know where to go from here,” she whispered in his ear. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I know,” he said, squeezing her shoulder. “You’ll figure it out on the way, though. We all do eventually.”
He stood at the railing and waved goodbye until he couldn’t see her standing there on the pier, her brown cowl merging into the faceless crowds and crate-carrying stevedores among the boats and ships.
The peak of the Needle followed him for a long time, until it too vanished out of sight.
After two days, he disembarked in a small fishing village on the west coast, and traveled on alone, cutting as direct a path to Shinar across the Rheged as he could.
Sometimes he wandered for days on the roads without seeing another soul. Sometimes the road was packed with gaunt-faced people, snotty-nosed children sitting on top of small carts packed with their family’s entire belongings plus their cats, dogs, and poultry. They stared at him wordlessly as he walked past them while their parents pulled along.
Taverns and inns along the empire’s roads were full to the brim with folk looking to find a new life.
The deeper he got into the south the more empty places he came across. A lone chained dog barked at his trespassing while its owner eyed him warily from the shadows of his threshold.
He walked past a village in which all the people had gathered to slaughter their cattle. Butchered heaps of meat and carcasses lay in the open, huts puffed out acrid smoke in a rush to cure the masses of meat before it spoiled. Salt bags had been slashed open in the streets and children ran through the rivulets of blood until their legs were wet with red.
“The merchant caravans from Arrun have not come in time,” a man stained in gore told Diaz, halting in his butchering work. “We used to sell them two dozen animals a week to take to the meat district in the capital. There are too many cattle for us to keep now. Too many to feed. Our trade and livelihood was taken from us when Arrun fell. What else shall we do, lord?” The man shrugged and carried on with his work.
“It is a sign that the Fire God will rise soon,” an old woman dressed in black crowed. “He will restore peace and prosperity. It was foretold. So it will be.”
Diaz left the place with a bitter taste in his mouth and a side of cured beef to make enough meals for the next few weeks. It spoiled within two days, though, and he had to throw it into the bushes.
He walked until he could walk no more, then sat and rested. He slept when he was tired, and then woke and walked some more.
He shaved his head with his knife and felt slightly more himself.
The landscape turned slowly from vibrant green fields to thirsty red desert.
When he grew thirsty, he’d stretch out his blackened arm over the parched ground and focus on the pulse of water hidden beneath the soil or rocks until he found enough to quench his thirst.
One morning he saw a haze of red dust rise on the horizon by the wayside, and decided on a whim to check it.
He left the road, and made his way through the brambles and thorn bushes towards the dust lingering in the sky.
Vultures circled above the dust cloud. It was nearly midday before he came near enough to find the ruins of what might have been a garrisoned fort, the likes of which the empire had built along their borders for centuries.
Nothing stirred in the place, shrouded by the upheaval of dirt. One side wall had been torn apart by an explosion of some kind, had crumbled to pieces like a sand castle under the fist of a giant. Ragged tatters hung from tent-like structures erected within the compound, dark ribbons whipping in the breeze.
In the distance, about a hundred paces downwind from the fort, a mound had been recently raised, the color of the earth still a dark rusty red instead of the ochre dust haze, and it seemed to Diaz that someone stood at the foot of the mound, shoveling the red dirt into a ditch.
His heart skipped a beat when the woman half turned in his direction, looking at him sideways as if wondering what to do next.
The way she held the shovel, that particular stance, the tilt of the head … could it be …?
He jogged forward a few paces to get a better look. From this far away the desert sun distorted her shape in the wavering heat.
He noticed the woman start walking towards him and he accelerated for a few steps, then held back again.
What if it really were Nora? What if the Blade still had her in its mad grip? What if she didn’t recognize him and attacked?
His feet faltered. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. He picked up his pace again when he saw her do the same.
A scarf tied around her forehead came into view.
No, not a scarf. She had matted black hair, her long bangs hanging before her eyes.
A pulse ran through his inked arm, a spasm. He clutched it to his chest, heart thundering harder.
A few more steps, then he’d see her features. Then he’d be sure. Then he’d know whether she was Nora or the Blade.
The hood of his coat flapped back as he ran forward, the sun dazzling his eyes, gravel and dust flying under his feet.
So close now.
So close.
“Nora?”
His voice was strained from the long silence of his isolated trek. He cleared his throat painfully and tried again.
“Nora?”
A soft cry escaped from her lips and she stumbled, her legs giving out beneath her. She collapsed onto the red sand, head thrown back in an ear-splitting howl of pain.
He sprinted harder, no, he flew across the last few meters separating them and skidded to a halt, falling to his knees before her.
“Nora!”
Her hands were clasped before her face as she sobbed violently.
“Nora?”
“I thought I’d killed you,” she cried. “Fuck you, Diaz, I thought I’d killed you!”
She threw her arms around him, nearly knocking him over, and she wept on his shoulder, repeating her words over and over again.
He laughed out loud even as the tears ran down his cheeks.
All the pent up emotions, all the fear, all the relief, it poured out of him in saltwater. They clung to each other until there were no more tears left.
He rested his weary head in the nook of her shoulder and felt her grip tighten around him. As he breathed in her familiar scent of charcoal and smoke, he finally allowed himself to relax.
It was Nora.
He was home.
Break the Chain
Chapter 35
Nora had dug a mass grave. She had moved the mound by means of the Blade and spent most of the morning heaving the putrefying bodies into it.
The sickly sweet scent of rot and decay hung in the air as densely as the dust, which still had not settled.
Nora and Diaz stood next to each other at one end of the trench filled with corpses, hands clasped together, her pulse beat against his, strong and steady.
“Looks like you’ve been busy,” he said and immediately regretted his choice of words.
She opened her mouth, and he tensed, bracing for sharp words. Their vulnerability earlier left an awkward space between them. The barriers were down and they were both edgy around the newly won ground, unused to being defenseless. She closed her mouth and gave him a withering look instead.
“I’ve killed a lot of people to get to this point,” she said evenly, though her voice was tinged with deep regret. “I killed people I know and people I don’t know, and all I can do is try to clean up some of the mess.”
“The Blade killed these people.”
“No. I killed Owen. I killed Garreth. I killed Shade. I killed you. Or thought I did. I am the Blade, Diaz. There is no distinguishing between us.”
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