Immortal Swordslinger 3

by Dante King

  The earth spirit walked slowly, steadily, with ponderous steps. His movements had a careful deliberation about them—no rushing, no hesitation. I watched every motion, trying to identify his vulnerabilities, whether weak points in his body or particularities in his movements I could exploit. But I saw nothing except for the oncoming sand and the blankly merciless pits of his eyes.

  Here in the spirit realm, I couldn’t rely on the tricks I would use in the human realm. I had no magic and no weapons on my side, just my bare hands and whatever tricks my mind could come up with. I had learned from previous encounters that the terrain was vital. The spirit realm might be home to these beings, but it still contained things I could exploit against them. The trick was in working out what and how.

  First, I needed to test the limits of this creature.

  I ran toward him and sprang into the air, leg extended for a flying kick. My foot smashed into the spirit’s head. Sand burst apart, and I hurtled through. I had expected the jolt of an impact to stop me, so I had to adjust as I went, but I managed to make a controlled landing on the packed earth, rolling forward and using a break fall to absorb some of the impact. Even so, it left me bruised on my arm and back as I sprung back to my feet.

  I twisted around, expecting to see the spirit headless. Could I really have succeeded already? I had been getting a lot of practice fighting spirits in general, and at fighting earth creatures in particular over the past couple of days. It seemed unlikely that I would have won so easily, but I had just destroyed my opponent’s head. Except I was expecting that it would grow back.

  And that’s exactly what I saw as the spirit turned to face me. His head was rising once more, a new one forming from the sand of his upper body. The only thing to show for my apparent success was a small pile of sand on the ground, the remains of what I had kicked away. At least that wasn’t rejoining the spirit but lay as a pale trail against the dark earth, just like the sand from his footsteps.

  This time, I approached the spirit more cautiously. As I got close, he swung one fist around in a slow punch from the left. I dodged right, only for two more fists to sail at me, and I had to leap back, somersaulting clear of the creature’s reach.

  The earth spirit ran at me, all four arms flailing. I bobbed and weaved as I blocked some strikes and dodged others. Darting from foot to foot, trying to avoid being overwhelmed by the blows, I barely had a chance to strike back. With twice as many arms as me, the creature had a constant advantage. But I managed to get a kick in, and my foot slammed into his hip. Again, there was a spray of sand, and again, the wound healed up as more sand flowed in to fill the gap.

  With one leg still extended, I was caught off balance for a moment, unable to dodge one of the spirit’s attacks. His fist hit me in the middle of my chest and sent me flying. I slammed into the packed dirt, my head collided with solid ground, and stars danced before my eyes.

  I stumbled to my feet and shook my head in a desperate attempt to stop the world spinning. The spirit was almost on me again, so I backed hurriedly away, arms raised defensively, fighting for time while my head slowly cleared.

  Near the edge of the lake bed, a boulder rose from the ground like a thick finger pointing into the sky. The earth spirit came lumbering after me as I dashed around the boulder, moving faster than the spirit could, and came in behind him. With my opponent’s back to me, I had the perfect opportunity. I hammered at him with fists and feet, punching and kicking in a rapid flurry of blows. Sand flew and got into my eyes and mouth, but I didn’t slow for a moment. I wanted to do as much damage as I could while the creature was vulnerable.

  The earth spirit turned and raised his fists. I backed off and paused to survey my handiwork.

  I’d definitely achieved something. The spirit was a few inches shorter than he had been at the start, with trails of sand showing where that height had gone. Even as he followed me again, he was leaving some of itself behind.

  That gave me hope. There were no critical points to strike, and the creature could recover from any blow I made against him, but he was clearly falling apart. Every blow I struck and every step it took diminished him a little more. The problem was that it was slow going. At this rate of loss, I would be here for months before the spirit was defeated. In the meantime, I would become exhausted, and the spirit would win.

  He advanced on me again, and I blocked a series of attack from the fists to my left, but then one came in from the right and grabbed my arm. The creature lifted me off my feet and flung me across the lake bed. My skin scraped across rough ground like I was rubbing across a cheese grater, leaving a row of bloody, dirt-filled scratches down my arm.

  The spirit thundered toward me. I pushed myself up to my knees, but I was too slow. His foot connected with my jaw, and I went flying back again to lie sprawled in the dirt.

  The creature reached down and wrapped two of its hands around my face. Sand flowed into my nose and mouth, choking me, and when I tried to pull the hands away, my own hands passed through the sand. I felt like I was drowning, and there was no way out.

  But if my hands could pass through the sand, then surely my face could too. I rolled to the left, and the creature’s grip slid off me. Spitting sand, I stumbled to my feet and ran off across the lake bed.

  Once I was far enough away I stopped, spat the sand from my mouth, and caught my breath. This fight wasn’t like the ones I’d had before. The spirit could batter at me, but as that last attack had shown, I could get clear of a killing blow. It was the same the other way around; I could wear away at the earth spirit but not do anything that might bring me a sudden and decisive win. This was a test of patience.

  When it was needed, I could be patient. I’d spent days staking out a Russian corporate headquarters in Barcelona, just waiting to see if one woman turned up. But that had been in other circumstances, without lives immediately at stake based on my presence or absence. This was different. As long as I was away in the spirit realm, my friends didn’t have my help against the monsters roaming the Gonki Valley. And as long as we left things in Gonki the way we’d found them, people would be starving and suffering beneath the cruelty of the Straight Path. I needed to find a way to make it fall apart faster.

  The earth spirit had nearly reached me again. I set off at a steady jog around the perimeter of the lake bed, with the spirit close behind. As we ran, I glanced back and was pleased to see that it was still shedding plenty of sand with each footfall. Running would mean he lost more that way, but it was only a start, and for all I knew, the spirit could keep running forever. Even in the spirit realm, away from my frail and mortal body, I had stricter limits.

  The wounds in my arm itched and throbbed. I ignored them. As long as I survived, they would fade when I left this place. I simply had to shake off the pain as a distraction and work out how to leave.

  I put on a fresh burst of speed to increase the distance between the spirit and me. He kept coming, shedding sand as he came, slowly diminishing over time.

  The dirt banks around the outside of the lake bed were steeply and irregularly sloped. Looking ahead, I spotted a section with a series of protruding rocks and clumps of dirt that I could use to climb. Beyond them, there was a heap of rocks halfway up the bank and crumbled earth on the slope beneath it.

  Perfect for what I had planned.

  I sprinted for that stretch of the bank and dashed up it. I practically jumped from one foothold to the next as I scrambled along and up the bank. Many of my footholds broke away as I pushed off, but I kept from sliding back down to the spirit that was watching for me at the bottom.

  The spirit didn’t immediately chase up after me. Instead, he followed on a parallel route along the base of the bank. He stood patiently, arms wide, sand trickling from him, while he waited for me to miss my footing and fall.

  At last, I was in the perfect position, halfway up the towering bank. I stood on a heap of protruding rocks and dirt, above a patch of broken ground.

  “Come and get me!
” I shouted.

  I pulled a rock from the bank above me and flung it at the spirit. The stone burst through the creature’s chest in a spray of sand. I pulled out another and another, doing the same with each one. Sand flowed down to fill the holes I had made, making the creature just a little shorter, but that wasn’t my main aim. Far more important was his response, as he came to the bottom of the bank and started trying to climb straight up the steep slope.

  Taking such a direct path, the spirit struggled to get higher. He had found his own straight path and, as in the human realm, it was a destructive one. The rocks he got hold of couldn’t take his weight and so, they gave way beneath him. Twice, he slid down the bank in a spray of dirt.

  On his third try, I didn’t wait for him to be his own undoing. I braced myself against the bank and kicked at the rocks beneath me. For a moment, nothing changed. Then came a sudden cracking noise as that section of the bank gave way. I leaped clear and landed on another dirt outcrop while the place where I had stood fell.

  The dirt and rocks went crashing down on the spirit. He was flung from his feet and was almost buried beneath the weight of earth. Sand flew as sections of the creature were knocked away. The rest of him lay trapped, pinned down by the weight of dirt.

  I watched in triumph as a sandy hand stretched out from beneath the heap but couldn’t get a grip to clear any of it away. The sand was still crumbling.

  I closed my eyes and leaned against the bank.

  When I opened them, I was back on the top step of the Sunstone Temple, between its guardian dogs.

  The power of the earth was flowing through me, but I needed to test the Ground Strike technique that Tahlis had said the cores would give me.

  Off to one side of the path, in front of the temple, was an area of open ground. I stood in the middle of it and emptied my mind as I focused on the sensations of the Vigor in my body. It was flowing from my stomach up through my chest, across the muscles of my shoulders, and down my arms until it pooled like heavy boulders in my hands.

  Trusting the Vigor to guide me, I clenched my fist, sank to one knee, and punched the ground.

  It was a cautious blow. I didn’t know if it would work or what it would do. If I ended up breaking my fingers, then I wouldn’t even be able to fight.

  I needn’t have worried. The ground yielded as I hit, then rose back up as a shockwave ran through the earth. A wave of dirt and stone rippled away from me. It hit a dilapidated wooden shack at the far side of the open ground, and the shack exploded at the impact, reduced to a heap of splinters and broken planks.

  My skin tingled as I stood staring at my own fist.

  “Damn, it’s great being me,” I said quietly.

  “I must admit, with those women who follow you around, I wouldn’t mind being you, either.”

  I whirled around to see Tahlis standing on the path to the temple, his arms folded.

  “Maybe only for a day,” he continued. “But that would be enough.”

  “I don’t mind you looking, but no touching,” I said.

  “Oh, I would never dare.” He flashed me a grin. “Your women are your women.” He looked at the remnants of the shack I’d just destroyed. “That technique you just learned is Ground Strike. Be careful, it uses up a lot of Vigor, which is the reason it’s so powerful. At high levels, it can create a tsunami of earth that will knock holes in armies.”

  “Nice,” I said as I looked from my first to the shack.

  We headed into the Sunstone Temple. Despite the sophistication of the outside architecture, the interior was primitive in design, a cave-like space built from rough blocks of stone. From comparing the two ways of building, I suspected that this interior space was much older, a shrine from the early days of civilization in the valley, with the exterior being built around it later as extra protection for the priests and their servants.

  The room we had entered was clearly the main chapel. Sunlight streamed in through the windows to illuminate statues of gods behind small altars lining the walls of the room. Some of the gods had been carved to look like sentient beings: humans, dwarves, lizardmen, elves, and so on. Others were stranger and more abstract, from a giant floating eye to something like a dog made out of rough, angular crystals.

  A tall, broad-shouldered man knelt in front of one of the altars, with light brown hair hanging across his face. Incense smoke swirled from a bowl on the altar in front of him.

  Kumi emerged from a side door and handed me a bowl. It held pieces of fish and scrambled eggs, wrapped up in a flatbread.

  “Breakfast as promised,” she said. “Now, I’m going to sleep. We’ve got monastic cells on the next floor up.”

  “Thank you.” I smiled as I gratefully accepted the food. “And goodnight.”

  “There’s someone you should meet,” Tahlis said to me. “Come.”

  He led me to the kneeling man, who looked up as we approached. He wore pale woolen robes marked with zigzag symbols, tied around with a sword belt. In the alcove behind him, a suit of banded metal armor sat in a discarded heap, its plates marked with the same zigzag symbol as his clothes. Gray flicked his beard, and crow’s feet stretched from the corners of his eyes. Despite his age, he was in incredible physical shape, impressively muscled and without an ounce of fat on display. He should have been imposing, but it was undermined by his slumped shoulders, his downcast eyes, and the sigh he let out as he got to his feet.

  “My Lord Ganyir,” Tahlis said with a deep and apparently heartfelt bow. “May I present the Immortal Swordslinger, Ethan Murphy lo Pashat. Ethan, this is Ganyir, Lord Gonki, the rightful ruler of this province.”

  “My lord.” I bowed at the waist.

  “Enough of that.” Ganyir rubbed his eyes with one hand. “A lord would be ruling his city. I’m cast out here, with the vultures and the lizards.”

  “There are worse things to be than a lizard, my lord,” Tahlis said sharply.

  “Of course,” Ganyir said. “I’m sorry, Guildmaster. Sometimes, I forget myself. I have lost my city and with it, my responsibility to care for the Gonki Clan. I have no place offering insult to others.”

  “I wish to ask a question, my lord,” I said. A few months ago, I would have outright asked it, but I now understood the customs of the Seven Realms. I might not have exactly liked them, but I wouldn’t shirk them needlessly.

  “You can ask,” Ganyir replied. “Only time will tell if I can answer.”

  “Why haven’t you taken back Hyng’ohr City?”

  “You don’t fuck around, do you, Swordslinger?” Ganyir let out another sigh. “Come on, let’s take this out into the sunlight. Tahlis says it’s good for me.”

  “Basking in sunlight is good for anyone,” Tahlis said as we walked back out into the temple’s minimalist grounds.

  “For anyone?” I asked. “Or just for lizards?”

  “If it’s good enough for us, then it’s definitely good enough for you shaved monkeys. Now, my lord, time to talk.”

  “Fine, fine.” Ganyir walked over to the edge of the cliff at the base of the temple and looked down into the valley below. His head hung loose, and the wind blew strands of unkempt hair around his face. Out in the sunlight, it became obvious how worn and dirty his clothes were. “Hyng’ohr fell because I let my better nature get the best of me.”

  “Pardon, my lord,” I said, “but that’s not much of an answer.”

  “And I’m not much of a man.”

  “Self-pity isn’t a good look on a ruler,” I said.

  “My fist won’t be a good look on your face, but I’ll still leave you bloody.”

  At last, there was a flash of something stronger in his eyes, a layer of steel beneath the loss. I smiled at finding something of the man that seemed to lurk beneath, but then his face fell again as he looked out toward the east, where the city lay.

  “I lost the city long before I knew it,” Ganyir said. “There were warning signs, hints that Targin and Saruqin were up to no good, but I didn’t wan
t to believe it. Not of my own brother. Not of our high priest. So, I let them continue, deluding myself that everything they did was for the good of the city, the good of the clan.

  “Piece by piece, the Unswerving Shadows took over everything. Through cruelty and fear, they forced the people to bend to their will. Those who resisted were labeled as heretics, hunted down and killed. The streets were awash with the stink of brimstone and whispers of the vanished. At least I could take comfort that the farms and villages prospered, but after I left, even that fell. They took the Earth Core and now, my people’s whole land lies in ruins. All because I was too weak.”

  “So, all this is Targin’s doing?”

  Ganyir snorted. “Targin has played his part, but it doesn’t start with him. Saruqin, the priest. . . the rot spreads from him. He convinced the clan to turn against me, with whispers in the ear and rumors in the streets. He was the one who corrupted Targin with dreams of wealth and power.”

  “We take out Saruqin, and we save the city.”

  “You still don’t understand. Saruqin isn’t merely a priest. He has power unlike any Augmenter I’ve ever seen before, and I have walked this world for over 50 years. You think it was an easy task for them to take the Earth Core and bend it to their will? That takes something more than you or I could achieve. I can’t take Hyng’ohr City back with Saruqin defending it, and I don’t see anyone, not even a would-be Swordslinger, being able to take him down.”

  “You haven’t seen me in action yet, my lord.”

  “I have heard such words from many young men. None yet have lived up to their own ambitions.”

  “Then I will be the first.”

  “Ha!” Ganyir grinned. His sudden mirth seemed to weary him because he sighed and frowned.

  “Thank you for your time, my lord,” I said. “It was an honor to meet you, but I should go and sleep. Perhaps we can talk some more tomorrow?”

  “Perhaps,” Ganyir said, staring over the brink. “If I’m still here.”

  Leaving Tahlis to watch over his lord, I headed back into the temple, through the door Kumi had used, and up a spiral staircase. As she’d said, there were monastic cells at the top, small sleeping rooms set off from a narrow corridor. I found an empty room, with bare walls and only a cot for furniture. I closed the door behind me, dumped my weapons and bag in the corner, stripped off my clothes, and collapsed into bed. I pulled a sheet up over me and, despite the bright morning light streaming in through the narrow window, felt the tendrils of sleep creeping across my mind.