Immortal Swordslinger 3

by Dante King

  “So, we’ll just leave the city under the control of the cultists?” Vesma asked.

  “Sooner or later, we’re going to have to return to the city and weed them out. But that’s not what Guildmaster Xilarion told us to do. We need to find Lord Ganyir first. Then, we can return to the city and deal with the cultists. The guard captain mentioned someone named Tahlis, too. He seemed to hate that person as much as Lord Ganyir. Maybe we can find them both, gather an army, and take back the city.”

  Kegohr shook his head. “It’ll be like the battle with Resplendent Tears all over again.”

  “I hope not,” Kumi said. “The price of victory was all too many lives.”

  As much as I shared her hopes, the city seemed totally under the control of the Cult of Unswerving Shadows. If we wanted to rid the Gonki Province of cultists, it was going to take a whole lot of bloodshed. Perhaps Lord Ganyir and this ‘Tahlis’ might have other ways of defeating the cultists.

  Our next step was the Sunstone Temple. But first, we’d need to cross a perilous Vigorous Zone.

  Chapter Three

  The road divided not far from the city walls. One branch led toward the docks where we had arrived, while the other turned west, up the valley toward the interior of the province. We walked along that second road, between rows of ramshackle houses that had accumulated outside the city walls. People with lean, sunken faces peered out at us from the safety of their homes but didn’t venture into the street. I couldn’t fault them for remaining indoors when four blood-stained strangers walked outside.

  From what I could see of these people, they were dressed in a similar manner to the guards on the walls, their clothes mostly yellow, brown, or orange, often topped off with turbans on both men and women. Their clothes hung loosely, betraying the skinniness of the flesh underneath.

  An old man nodded to us as we passed. Beside him, a mongrel dog with its ribs showing through its chest lay listless in the dirt.

  “I don’t like this,” Vesma commented.

  “Agreed,” I said. “All this hunger, people left to starve outside a functioning city; it’s not right.”

  “You’re not wrong,” she said. “But that’s not what I meant. I don’t like that we’re running away from a fight.”

  I remembered how Vesma had been back at the guild, goading male students into opportunities for her to prove her strength and skill. And now, I was asking her to back off from someone every bit as arrogant as Hamon and the other stuck-up Wysaro clan initiates.

  “Like I said before, we have a mission. Even if we defeated Mahrai and the cultists on the walls, we don’t know what else could be behind them. We need more intel, and we’re likely to get that from Lord Ganyir. If the Sunstone Temple doesn’t provide us with more information, then we’ll see what the local guild house has to offer.”

  “Fine. If you always have to be so reasonable about it.” But while there was still bitterness in her voice, she squeezed my hand and offered me something approximating a smile.

  “You should console her,” Nydarth whispered. “Take her to your bed.”

  I laughed under my breath. “Not now.”

  “I would very much enjoy watching the master undulate like the ocean’s waves,” Yono added.

  I ignored the two spirits as we walked on into the afternoon, along the road out of the inhabited area and into the wide Gonki valley. The ground all around was parched dry, with only a cacti and clumps of spiky grass adding spots of withered green to the ocher dirt. At first, there were patches of what could have been called soil, but these soon gave way to dusty ground and, finally, to the sands of a desert.

  After leaving the last of the city behind, we stopped and ascended a steep hill to one side of the road. It gave us a better view down the valley and a chance to evaluate what lay ahead.

  We were about to enter what was clearly the Vigorous Zone. It was an area even more arid and stony than the rest, with strange rock formations, wide patches of sand, and wider stretches of parched earth. Like any Vigorous Zone, it embodied its element so completely that it clearly could not have been natural.

  Past that, the valley continued. The bed of the river that had carved this valley was dried up, and judging by the lack of life in it, it had been that way for some time. The road ran beside it, though whether that had been constructed to once give travelers water or just for the lowest, most convenient route I couldn’t tell. There was life out here—vultures and crows circling overhead, lizards basking on rocks, the occasional furry face of a large-eared fox or a mottled cat peering out from the shelter of boulder-strewn slopes—but I couldn’t tell whether any one of them were magical beasts with enchanted cores. I supposed that regular animals lived alongside Vigorous beasts.

  What was missing, however, was human life. There were signs that it hadn’t always been this way. Aside from the distant tower atop a rock pillar, which Vesma identified as the Sunstone Temple, the remains of an abandoned village lay along the roadside on the far side of the Vigorous Zone. It wasn’t the mere lack of movement that led me to assume it was deserted; we’d seen at the city how people here kept to themselves, and that made even more sense in the heat of the day. What gave the game away was the sand that had swept across the village, burying some houses and leaving others half-visible. The adobe buildings seemed to have withstood the storm that blew the sand in and the weight of it pressing against their walls.

  “We’ll go there.” I pointed to the village. “It’ll give us shelter and somewhere to rest before we reach the temple. Plus, if anyone’s still living there, they might be able to tell us what’s going on inside the city.”

  We headed back down the hill and along the road. Kumi stayed particularly close to me. Her face was constantly furrowed, her normally open posture abandoned as she closed in on herself.

  “It’s all too dry,” she explained. “It makes me feel like I’m missing a part of myself.”

  Her discomfort only grew as we entered the Vigorous Zone. There were signs of human habitation here, but like the distant village, it had long ago been abandoned. Old adobe farmhouses with fallen in roofs, their outhouses and barns sun-bleached, their doors hanging open to reveal the emptiness within. Drystone walls that had once marked the divisions between fields were falling apart, their stones littered on the fields like large, sterile seeds. The skeleton of an ox, half its bones carried away by scavengers, lay next to a dried-up well, the hollows of its eyes staring at us as we walked past.

  Instead of circling birds and desert mammals, the movement here was of a more elemental form. Beetles with stone carapaces and crystal-tipped pincers crawled over a half-collapsed outhouse, tearing off wooden scraps and carrying them away for some purpose of their own. I thought I saw a large gray rat scurrying along a gully, but when it turned its head toward us, the face was packed dirt, the eyes jagged lumps of night black coal.

  It was like walking through the aftermath of an apocalypse.

  “It can’t always have been like this,” I said. “I mean, otherwise, why would anyone have farmed here?”

  “Gonki used to be very different,” Vesma said. “Back in the Feuding Clans Era, the Gonki produced some of the most powerful warriors in the world. Earth Augmented mercenaries sailed from the Hyng’ohr docks to every port on the ocean, hired out to the highest bidders, and came home loaded down with gold, jade, and silk. Some feuds were cut short by Gonki intervention bringing victory to one side or the other. More became drawn out as the desperate losers pooled all their resources and fought back with the aid of a Gonki Granite Legion.

  “Back then, this farmland helped sustain the craftsmen who armed and armored the legions, while the warriors feasted on imported food and novelties brought back from their travels. The land flourished and its people with it. In the Vigorous Zone, a delicate balance was maintained between farming for corn and farming for cores.

  “Then came the Wars of Unification. Early on, many Gonki sided with the First Emperor and grew rich on
the winnings he brought. But as he asserted order across the provinces, the Gonki started to see a problem. The First Emperor brought bloodshed, but he left behind peace, and for the Gonki, there was no profit in peace. Slowly but surely, they united in a new purpose: opposition to the Empire.

  “Once the Gonki united, other provinces gathered behind them. For those that resisted the First Emperor’s laws or wished to cling to their power, this was the last great opportunity to stand. Idealistic temples set on freedom, dark cults who feared justice, and lords clinging to their power joined together in an unlikely alliance around the might of the Gonki. Of course, they paid a price, because the Gonki never fought without a price, but the warriors of this valley had never fought for so little pay or with such uncompromising determination.

  “As the Emperor advanced, the Free Alliance fought a long, bitter retreat, until at last, the war reached the home of the Gonki themselves. Here, outside the walls of Hyng’ohr, they made their last great stand. But though the Gonki were great warriors, most of the provinces had joined the Empire by then, bringing with them their champions and Augmenters. The Alliance was smashed, and though the Emperor showed remarkable mercy, the Gonki lost too many warriors to retain their position of power. They were never the same again.”

  “Wow, wow, wow,” Kegohr said. “How many books have you read exactly?”

  Vesma shrugged. “Too many to count.”

  “I know exactly how many I’ve read.” Kegohr held up his hands. “It helps if you keep the number to less than 10 because then, you never have to worry about losing count.” He elbowed me and roared with laughter.

  “He must be joking,” Kumi whispered.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure he can count past 20.”

  “After Vesma’s tale, I don’t think this is the time for humor.”

  “Humor is exactly what we need,” I said. “It’s why comedians always joke about atrocities.”

  “Comedians?” Kumi frowned at me.

  “I suppose they’re like court jesters. You have those, right?”

  “We have jesters, yes. But those who poke fun at atrocities don’t stay jesters for long.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. They become corpses all too quickly.”

  It was my turn to laugh, but Kumi merely shook her head.

  “I thought your tale was insightful,” she said to Vesma.

  “Thank you.” The other woman smiled at her. “It’s good to be appreciated.”

  I couldn’t help feeling a little elated at her response. Vesma had sometimes shown resentment for the other women in my life, despite theoretically accepting that she shared me with them. Treating Kumi with kindness was a good omen for things to come.

  “So, how did the province end up this way?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Vesma admitted. “I’ve read chronicles and geographies up to a few decades ago that talk about this valley as a farming center, using sophisticated irrigation to water earth enriched by Vigor. Something drastic must have happened to change that.”

  “How are they even feeding anyone?”

  It bothered me, seeing a part of the world like this. I was used to the fact that there was violence in the Seven Realms, people dying at the hands of others’ greed and ambition. But this felt particularly futile, like so many famines I’d seen in the news back on Earth, people starving because of a failure to move food to the right place at the right time. Seeing such mundane tragedy took the sheen off a world rich with magic.

  “They must import most of their food,” Vesma said.

  “Like, with the money from mercenary work?” Kegohr asked.

  “Unlikely. They were banned from that for centuries, and the culture around it died.”

  “Then from what?”

  “They export fermented cactus spirits, so I guess that’s part of it. Monster cores too, hunted here and exported to other earth guilds.”

  I was so used to core hunting being something done by Augmenters to boost their own power, I’d never thought of anyone doing it professionally for trade before.

  As we talked, we walked deeper into the Vigorous Zone. Earth, abandoned farms, and rocky outcrops gave way to a desert-like area of sand dunes that spilled from the mountainous crags on our left down to the depleted river on our right, almost obliterating the line of the road.

  A movement among the dunes caught my eye. At first, I thought it was just the wind blowing the sand around, but then I saw something gray and angular emerge, a humanoid figure six feet tall and made entirely of stone.

  I held up a hand, and the others stopped. We watched as the creature stalked toward us, a stone scimitar in each hand. Others followed, either walking behind it or rising out of the sand that cascaded like water off their sharply jointed frames.

  “Lesser stone golems,” Vesma said. “Like Mahrai’s monster but less powerful.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Kegohr hefted his mace. “Less powerful than that thing still don’t mean weak.”

  “Far from it,” Vesma said. “And they have a reputation for being territorial. If we don’t want to fight, then we should run right now.”

  I drew the Sundered Heart Sword. “It’s been a restful walk so far. And I could really do with some stone cores to add to my powers.”

  Vesma grinned. “Let’s do this.”

  “Give me your bags,” Kumi said. “I’ll hang back. With so little water, my ability to fight is sadly diminished.”

  We handed over the haversacks, then strode up the dunes toward the oncoming golems. There were six of them, each with a pair of matching stone blades. They weren’t identical, but nothing stood out from their uneven stone features to tell one from another.

  The leading golem charged at me, its weapons held high. Some of my Vigor had returned since the fight at the city, so I gathered a Smothering Mist. Unlike Kumi, whose Augmenting was all about using the water around her, my water magic drew upon power within me, fueled and shaped by the cores I had absorbed. That magic was at my disposal, and I made the most of it now.

  The magic poured out of my body and coated the monster in a thick, liquid sheen. Fire might not have been useful as an offensive weapon against them, but it still had its uses in defense. I channeled the Vigor down my arm and formed a Flame Shield.

  The golem charged me at full speed, the downhill run adding to its momentum. It was about to slam into me with the full force of a human-sized stone, a blow that would leave me battered and broken in the dirt. At the last second, I ducked down into a crouch and lashed out as hard as I could at the golem’s legs. It stumbled, slammed into my raised shield arm, and toppled. I pushed the shield up, throwing it off balance, and it hurtled over my head to crash face-down in the sand beyond.

  I leaped on the prone golem, sword held high. It twisted its arm around, and I noticed the joint where the stone of its forearm ground against the upper arm. I slammed my sword down there. The blade went between the two parts of the arm and drove them apart, severing the forearm.

  With a growl like a rockslide descending a mountain, the golem forced itself up and flung me off. Now, I was the one vulnerable, lying in the heaped sand by the side of the road. I flipped back to my feet, and the golem’s blade hit the ground where I had been a moment before.

  Now that we were both on our feet, we went at each other, sparks flying as blades of stone and steel clashed. I could feel Nydarth’s discomfort as her beautifully constructed weapon battered against the crude stone construct, but she never complained. She understood as well as I did how vital this moment was because it meant another core and, potentially, a new technique.

  I blocked a strike with my shield and slashed in under the golem’s guard. This time, the Sundered Heart hit the creature’s stomach. Against a flesh and blood opponent, it would have been a killing blow. Against solid stone, it simply bounced off. I really needed to aim for the joints.

  The next time the creature struck, I didn’t try to block. Instead, I sway
ed back and let the blow glide past, inches from my face. I brought the Sundered Heart around behind it and slammed the blade hard into the golem’s wrist. There was a crunch as the joint again gave way and the thing’s hand went flying, scimitar and all. As it stood staring at the stump, I sliced its head clean off, and the remains of the creature collapsed to the ground.

  “Go for the joints!” I called out as I charged at the next golem.

  Kegohr and Vesma were already in the thick of the fight. Vesma was darting back and forth between the golems. She skidded across the sand to strike one of them in the ankle, then leaped up and past another as it lunged at her. Hearing my advice, she slammed her spear tip into its shoulder joint. There was a terrible scraping sound, and the golem’s arm hung limp by its side.

  Kegohr had found another approach. Wielding his hefty mace, he didn’t need to worry about what could be sliced or stabbed, just what could be crushed, and that was almost everything. With a two-handed blow, he shattered the forearm of one of the golems. As it staggered back, he followed up with an overhead blow that caved its whole head in.

  I jumped in between two of the golems. Both swung at me, and I ducked. They weren’t clumsy enough to hit each other, but it was close enough to throw both off as they shortened their swings. I used Compress Ash to hardened my right arm and took the opportunity to shoulder barge one of them in the chest. The impact against solid stone hurt a little, but my attack did its job. The creature was knocked to the ground, and I finished it off with a decapitating blow.

  I turned to the other golem just in time to raise my shield and block a downward strike from one of its stone swords. The other one came in from my right, and I parried with the Sundered Heart. The creature chopped wildly at me, a relentless flurry of blows that seemed designed to throw me off balance and keep me on the defensive.

  As the golem went for another hit, I cartwheeled clear and kicked its hand. The sword went flying from its grasp and landed point down so that its blade vanished halfway into the sand. The golem went to grab the weapon, but I charged and hit the stone soldier with a flying kick. The two of us went tumbling in the dirt, but I was on top and smashed it in the face with my sword. It wasn’t enough to break the stone away from the joint, but it left the creature dazed. A moment later, my sword swept down a final time, sliced through a joint at its waist, and ended it.