“But?” he asked woodenly.
It came out in a rush. “But it’s not like it was with Logan. I know it’s not fair to compare you to a man who’s dead—maybe I just remember all the good things about him now that he’s gone, and I know—maybe it isn’t fair to expect love to be the same every time. Maybe with Logan I fell in love the way a girl falls in love and a woman’s love grows slowly and protects itself. I don’t know what it’s supposed to be like, Dorian, but sometimes I feel so empty. Maybe I should have waited.”
I’m a fraud. But what could he do? Tell her the truth? Send her back to Cenaria and her infatuation for some petty princeling she didn’t even know? Together they were changing a kingdom, bringing light to a dark land. What could Logan give her compared to that? Why should Logan’s love be more deserving than his?
Jenine’s love was growing. Dorian knew it. It would grow more still when she realized she was pregnant with their child, he knew it. He’d seen that in his moments of madness on the battlefield, and hadn’t trusted it or anything else he’d seen there, but in the days since then, he’d looked at her again, and he was sure it was true. Not twins, as he’d first foreseen, but a child, a son. Maybe the twins were to be their next children. He’d been waiting for the right time to tell her the news, but no time had seemed right.
He still spent as much of his days with her as he could. Their lovemaking was less frequent now that he was using his harem, but whatever jealousy she might feel seemed outweighed by the sudden reversal of the concubines’ feeling toward her. Dorian had given her the credit for preserving their lives. That generosity cracked their envy and hatred. Instead of defeated rivals, Jenine suddenly had sisters, and her isolation melted with the spring snow.
This was real. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best they could do. This was what it was to be Godking. Besides, if he and Jenine simply ran away, one of the Vürdmeisters would rule with even more brutality than Dorian’s father had. Every relationship, every marriage, had its little lies. He was king. A king made choices for other people based on information they didn’t have. That was the burden of rule. Dorian had weighed Jenine’s choices, and he’d chosen.
“I’m sorry for laying this at your feet when you’ve got so many other concerns, but I promised myself when we married that I’d never lie to you, and silence was starting to feel like a lie. I’m sorry. I made my decision. I did marry you. I do love you. I just—it’s just hard to be an adult all the time. You’ve trusted me to be your queen, and I still keep acting like a little girl. I’m sorry for being such a disappointment.”
“A disappointment?” Dorian asked. “You’ve done better than I could have imagined. I didn’t even begin acting like an adult until I was much older than you are. I’m so proud of you, Jenine. I love you more than anything. I understand you’re confused. This is a confusing place. I understand you have doubts. We’ve been married for two months, and you’ve realized that you’re committed to something for the rest of your life, and that’s scary. Yes, it hurts me a little, but our love is big enough to take a few scratches. Thanks for telling me the truth. Come here.” They hugged, and he felt her unreserved relief. He wished she would feel his hesitation, wished she would ask him what was wrong. If she asked, he would tell her about Logan. He would tell her everything.
After a few more seconds, she released him. He let her go, and the moment passed. “I love you, Dorian,” she said, looking him in the eye and not seeing him.
“I love you too, Jenine.” I still don’t call her Jeni. Why is that?
* * *
Kylar opened his eyes slowly. His mouth felt like it was stuffed full of cotton. His whole body was a chorus of complaints from sleeping propped against a tree. Working his jaw to clear the cotton feeling, he sat up. He touched his cheek where Durzo had smeared the poison. The new skin was tender, but there would be no scarring: Durzo was right. The bastard was always right.
It was dawn in the woods. Kylar was about to curse aloud when he became aware of a presence in the wood. He filled his lungs with a deep, slow breath, willing his senses to come alive. There were no animals in the forest this morning, but whether all the birds had migrated and the squirrels were hibernating or if the reason was more sinister, Kylar didn’t know. He slowly flexed the muscles in his legs and back, judging whether they would cramp if he tried sudden movement. He scanned the forest, turning his head slowly. The sound of his fresh beard grinding against the collar of his tunic was the barest whisper. The length of his beard confirmed that he’d only been unconscious overnight.
There was nothing in the forest. No sounds out of place. He thought he could trust his body to respond. Wind sighed through the big oaks, the few remaining leaves whispering secrets against him. But something had woken him. Kylar was sure of it. Instinctively, he reached for the ka’kari to cloak himself in invisibility, but the ka’kari was gone. Kylar reached instead into his sleeves, loosening the daggers there. He scanned the trees.
A puff of air hit the top of his head.
Kylar threw himself to the side as he buried a knife in the tree above his head. He rolled once, threw himself to his feet and jumped backward a good ten paces, daggers in his hands.
Durzo laughed softly. “I always did like watching you jump.” He was clinging like a spider to the tree Kylar had slept against.
“You bastard, where’s the ka’kari? What have you done?”
Durzo kept laughing.
“Give me the ka’kari,” Kylar said.
“All in good time.”
“Wait, why am I asking? I can—” Kylar extended his hand to call the ka’kari to him.
“Don’t!” Durzo barked.
Kylar stopped.
“The Hunter’s nocturnal,” Durzo said. “Its sense of smell is better than any tracking dog, its hearing is acute, and its vision rivals an eagle’s, even when it’s running full speed. If I timed things right, you’ll have until dark before it starts hunting you.”
“What—”
Releasing one hand from where it gripped the oak, Durzo unlimbered a black sword from his back. He tossed it to Kylar.
“Whatever you do, don’t take the ka’kari off Curoch. Everything magical that goes into the Wood is marked. It’s given a scent, so if it’s taken out of the Wood, the Hunter can find it. The ka’kari can mask that scent, but I couldn’t figure out how to erase it with the time I had. So the second you take the ka’kari off Curoch, the Hunter will come. I don’t know exactly how fast the Hunter is, but if you really need to use Curoch, take the ka’kari off, use it, and then get the hell away from it. It might be minutes, it might be hours, but the Hunter will come. It will risk everything to get this sword.”
Durzo had saved Kylar’s life again. Kylar had known that his chances of making it into Ezra’s Wood were dismal, and his odds of stealing Curoch and making it back out were even worse. Durzo had known it, too. In his typical way, Durzo wouldn’t say anything to tell Kylar what he meant to him, but he’d do anything to show it.
“You old bastard,” Kylar said, but his tone said, thank you, master.
“I can give you magic for the run. If you don’t push too hard, you should get there in time and still have energy to fight. I’m going to Cenaria. This way, the Hunter has to follow us in opposite directions. It should be enough. Don’t run flat out like you did when Sister Ariel gave you power, got it?”
“Got it,” Kylar said. That was why Durzo was clinging to the tree. It made him harder to track. Plus, Kylar suspected the ground had all sorts of traps.
Durzo wasn’t done. He spoke quietly. “Kylar, the fact Curoch was in the Wood tells me Neph’s using Iures to break Jorsin’s and Ezra’s spells on Black Barrow. It makes Elene’s talk of a Titan plausible. It also means that you’re taking the thing he wants most straight to him. If he takes Curoch from you, he could break the world. I don’t mean that metaphorically. For seven centuries I’ve done all I could to keep artifacts of such power out of the hands of m
en and women who will use them unscrupulously. If you fail, he’ll undo everything I’ve spent seven centuries doing.”
“You trust me this much?” Kylar asked.
Durzo grimaced. “Come here, you’re wasting daylight.”
Kylar stepped close.
“When Jorsin Alkestes commissioned me for this task, Kylar, he bound me with an oath he claimed was as old as the Night Angels themselves. If you so desire, here it is.” Durzo’s back straightened, his voice deepened, and Kylar knew Durzo was remembering his friend and king Jorsin Alkestes. “I am Sa’kagé, a lord of shadows. I claim the shadows that the Shadow may not. I am the strong arm of deliverance. I am Shadowstrider. I am the Scales of Justice. I am He-Who-Guards-Unseen. I am Shadowslayer. I am Nameless. The coranti shall not go unpunished. My way is hard, but I serve unbroken. In ignobility, nobility. In shame, honor. In darkness, light. I will do justice and love mercy. Until the king returns, I shall not lay my burden down.”
“Who’s the king?” Kylar asked.
“Vows are a bitch, huh?” Durzo grinned.
“This is what the Sa’kagé is supposed to be, isn’t it?”
“The Sa’kagé’s always been made of thugs and murderers, but there have been moments, like diamonds studding a pile of shit, when they’ve been crooks with a purpose.”
“Thanks for the image.”
“You gonna say the words?” Durzo asked.
“You’d make me commit to something I don’t fully understand.”
“Kid, we’re always committing to things we don’t fully understand.”
“I thought you’d lost your faith in this and everything else,” Kylar said.
“This isn’t about my faith; it’s about yours.”
It was standard Durzo evasion. You don’t ask someone you care about to swear their life to horseshit. Durzo was continuing the conversation they’d started months ago about Kylar’s destiny. In choosing a life in the shadows, in choosing obscurity, Kylar would avoid one of the greatest temptations of the black ka’kari—the temptation to rule. Its power made him almost a god already, and the danger was always that he could become what he sought to destroy. Durzo hadn’t even trusted himself with so much power. Did Kylar think he was that much better a man than his master?
A man serving the shadows also saw things that no king could see. A man serving in ignobility saw wrongs that were hidden from those in power. No one bothered to hide anything from Durzo Blint—except their fear of him.
The oath of a Night Angel wasn’t enough to make a destiny, but it was a start. What am I for?
Whatever else he didn’t know, Kylar knew he longed for justice. By serving in darkness with eyes that saw through the darkness, by being welcomed into the shadows, he could give justice to those who’d escaped justice. Those overlooked, too unimportant for mercy would find better than they’d hoped for. Those who should be stopped would be stopped. The faces of the Night Angels were already Kylar’s faces. I will do justice and love mercy.
“I’ll say it,” Kylar said.
Durzo grimaced, but beckoned him closer and laid a hand on Kylar’s forehead. Kylar recited the vow from memory—Durzo smirking at him, as if asking, how well did I teach you? But as Kylar finished, Durzo’s hand grew strangely warm, his face somber. He said, “Ch’torathi sigwye h’e banath so sikamon to vathari. Vennadosh chi tomethigara. Horgathal mu tolethara. Veni, soli, fali, deachi. Vol lessara dei.” Durzo withdrew his hand, his deep eyes limpid and, for perhaps the first time Kylar had ever seen, at peace.
“What was that?” Kylar asked. Whatever else the words had done, Kylar felt power suffusing him, more gently than when Sister Ariel had given him power, but also more solidly.
“That was my blessing.” Durzo smirked, acknowledging he was a bastard for blessing Kylar in a language he didn’t understand. With the way he’d trained Kylar’s memory, he surely knew Kylar would remember the words until he was able to track down the outlandish language they’d been spoken in. But it wasn’t in Durzo to just tell him. “Now get the hell out of here,” Durzo said. “I’ve got trees to climb.”
83
Logan and Lantano Garuwashi stood with their retainers on top of a still-pristine tower that guarded the mouth of the pass, surveying what would be the battlefield to the north. The great dome of Black Barrow and the dark stain of devastation around it were miles away on the opposite side of the Guvari River. Logan saw wonders to every side. Before Jorsin Alkestes had buried Trayethell beneath Black Barrow, it had been one of the great cities of the world in a world where wonders were common. To the east was Lake Ruel, which had been dammed in ages lost. The dam still stood, feeding the Guvari River not through the sluice gates on its front, which had been closed for centuries, but over the top of the dam itself. A series of locks, long since broken, had once made it possible for cargo ships to reach the city from the ocean. Half a dozen bridges or more had once spanned the river, but all had fallen except two, the wider Ox Bridge and Black Bridge near the dam.
The tower in which they stood guarded the entrance to Ox Bridge. It commanded views of the pass behind them, the terraced slopes of Mount Terzhin to the southwest, and everything except whatever lurked on the far side of Black Barrow. Looking at the terraced hillside and the empty expanse at its base that they called the great market, Logan had a revelation. He’d always thought Black Barrow had enclosed the city of Trayethell. It hadn’t. Jorsin had only enclosed the city’s heart. Trayethell had spanned leagues. If what Logan was looking on was correct, the city had been bigger and more populous than any city now in the world.
“We’ll have to move our men over Ox Bridge tonight,” Garuwashi said. “It’ll take maybe four hours for thirty thousand to cross. The camp followers will have to cross in the dark.”
“Cross?” Logan said. “Do you see Wanhope’s army? We have twenty-six thousand men, half of whom have never seen battle. Wanhope has twenty thousand, ten thousand more highlanders, and two thousand meisters—each of whom is worth a dozen men. You want us to fight with our backs against a river? No. We guard the bridges and put our men in the great market in case Wanhope tries to ford the river there. We’ll see how well his men fight waist-deep in water. If necessary, we can retreat slowly into the passes.”
“You’re planning for defeat?” Lantano Garuwashi asked, incredulous. “This is lunacy. We cross the bridge, and we destroy it behind us. Desperate men fight best. If you leave them an out, they’ll flee, especially your battle virgins. Give them no choice but to win or die, and they will fight almost like sa’ceurai.”
“They outnumber us, and we have four magi. Four!”
“Numbers mean nothing. Each sa’ceurai is as a hundred men. We came here for victory.” Behind them, several of Garuwashi’s men voiced muffled agreement.
“I’ll give you victory,” Logan said.
“You’ll give us nothing.”
“That’s not what I meant. Tonight under the cover of darkness, I’m sending ten thousand men west down the river. My Feyuri scouts say there’s a crossing a few miles down. Ten miles downriver is Reigukhas. It’s not a big city, but all Wanhope’s supplies flow through there, and it’s very defensible. We send our magi with my ten thousand, and they can take Reigukhas before dawn. If we can starve Wanhope’s army, it will be his men who melt away in the night.”
“They’ll see our men heading west, unless you mean to march ten thousand without any light.”
“The torches will only be visible for the first half a mile, then there’s a forest between them and the Khalidorans. It’ll look like men moving around among our campfires.”
Garuwashi was quiet for a long time. Finally, he spat. “So be it, Cenarian. But I’m sending a thousand of my sa’ceurai with your men to take the city. None shall have glory greater than the sa’ceurai.”
Thus it begins.
84
Dorian was meeting with his generals in the afternoon when he felt the first twinges of madness rising.
&
nbsp; “Enough,” he said, interrupting General Naga’s report. “Here’s what I want. Make sure our defensive positions are impregnable. I don’t want them to even try us. Let them see our strength. In the meantime, I need better intelligence on Moburu’s numbers. We know he has two thousand krul. How many men does he have? And where the hell is—” A vision flashed before Dorian’s eyes of Khali herself, rising from the ground, perfect, whole, beautiful, embodied and smiling victoriously. The room had disappeared, and only she remained, potent, a black ocean of krul rising around her.
“And where the hell is Neph Dada?” he heard a voice say. Though he couldn’t see the speaker, he knew it must be Jenine. “His Holiness demands you find out. He’ll expect your report this evening. For now, begone.”
Dorian blinked and the vision was gone. General Naga turned back as he reached the flap of the tent. He seemed reassured to find Dorian meeting his eye. “The queen speaks with my voice,” Dorian said. “Is that a problem, general?”
“Of course not, Your Holiness. I will report when we get word.” He bowed deeply, and left.
When the last of them was gone, Dorian let out a long breath. Jenine took his hand and he sat. “I need to use it,” Dorian said.
“Every time you do, it’s harder to stop,” Jenine said.
She was right, but with so many armies in close proximity, Dorian needed to use his gift to make sure he didn’t trigger a cataclysm. He’d done everything he knew to do militarily to discourage the Cenarians from attacking, but with Neph’s men and Moburu’s nearby, there were too many factors at play for him to not try to see the futures down the roads before him.
He’d studied his gift with a Healer’s eyes, and he thought he understood why prophecy seemed easier to begin and harder to stop now. The vir had broken open new channels everywhere throughout his Talent, and it had penetrated his prophetic gift, too. All his magic, and now all his prophecies, passed through the tentacles of vir rather than their natural channels. Because the vir was thicker, everything passed more freely. It was quite possible that the vir, tainted itself, was tainting Dorian’s gift with bizarre visions like those he’d had of the Strangers and his wife pregnant with twins, but there was no help for it now. He would stop using the vir and only use the Talent—after this.