“Great master?”
“This way, the lad fell in battle,” Raidriar said. “Frankly, he was annoying, and I was probably going to execute him eventually. At least this way, he had an honorable death.”
“I suppose, master,” Eves said. “It’s just . . . I don’t know what I’ll tell my sister . . .”
“When you talk to her, give her my condolences,” Raidriar said. “And send her something from me. A basket of fruit or some such.” What was the proper gift for the death of a mortal, these days? He could never keep up with their traditions, which were nearly as fleeting as the lives of the mortals themselves.
Raidriar reattached one final wire, then stood up. He backed away from the machine.
“You will want to take shelter,” he noted to Eves.
The Devoted ran. Smart man. Raidriar stepped away more carefully, clasping his hands behind his back—though he wore his healing ring in case anything went wrong—and watching patiently. The machine sputtered and sparked, then the modified energy output spurted a column of pure darkness directly at the structure ahead.
Raidriar’s Seventh Temple of Reincarnation was marked by calm rocks and a field of green bamboo set into the tops of the hills here. It shook, the entire structure groaning, then collapsed upon itself like crumpling paper. Rocks and stones broke free, crashing to the ground as the core of the hill itself was swallowed by the Incarnate Dark.
The machine finally sputtered and died, leaving nothing behind but a gouge in the landscape where the temple had once sat. Raidriar strolled forward, still bare-chested, wearing sandals he’d stolen from a dead daeril. The machinery he’d worked on had become encrusted with a material like obsidian.
Eves stumbled up hesitantly beside him, looking from the glassy machine to the hole in the hillside.
“When the Worker sends minions to investigate,” Raidriar said, “they will find this symbol of my rage. And, of course, your vengeance upon my fallen Devoted is complete.”
“Thank you, great master. It was . . . satisfying to observe.”
Raidriar folded his arms. He had done this, in part, because he felt it was unexpected. Under most circumstances, in this position he would have secured this location and used it to start rebuilding his empire. The Worker would expect that to be his move, and would plan for it.
Hopefully, this would send a message directly to the Worker. You cannot anticipate me.
But now what?
He needed allies, resources. He needed to slay the Soulless who sat upon his throne and reclaim the Infinity Blade.
He needed to do the unexpected. The unanticipated. Something daring, something that the Worker would never consider. Fortunately, a plan had already started to blossom in Raidriar’s mind.
He smiled. “Come, Eves,” he said, turning and walking away. “We have an appointment with an old friend, and I would not wish to be late.”
SIRIS SCOOPED out the last bite of goopy violet pie and shoved it into his mouth.
He’d spent much of his youth worrying about maintaining peak physique for fighting the God King—only to discover that as a Deathless, his body would basically keep itself that way on its own. Without help. True, he had an odd body for a Deathless—he still didn’t completely understand what had been done to make him be reborn as a child, rather than an adult, all those times. But it was still hard not to feel cheated by his youth spent training all the time. He should have allowed himself to relax, now and then.
He settled back, savoring the flavor of the pie. TEL sat next to his chair, wearing a metallic shape almost doglike in appearance. The little construct seemed very happy to have Siris back.
It felt nice to be wanted. Not as the Sacrifice, or as the Deathless who would save humankind. Just as himself. As the day grew long, he’d lit an oil lamp and turned back to his research on the rebellion’s status.
He felt more . . . himself than he had in some time. Playing with children, eating pies—these were things that made his Dark Self retreat. The experiences actually felt new to him. That was surprising, for during the months since he’d realized he was Deathless, he’d started to assume that he’d done everything in his life, even if he couldn’t remember most of it.
Experiences like these, however, shocked him in their freshness. Many activities were faintly familiar to him, but playing games with the children . . . no haunting sense of recollection, no instincts speaking to him from a time before.
Could it be that he’d lived thousands of years, but never taken the time to do anything purely fun? Could he have lived as a Deathless and never eaten everberry pie, or swung on a tire swing, or gone swimming in a warm summer lake?
He held up the scout reports and forced himself to study the facts they showed. A crumbling empire, a Deathless who didn’t seem to care about ruling.
He could play, he could eat, but he couldn’t let those activities only define him. He had work to do. So what was the Worker doing? What could Siris learn from his actions?
On one hand, Siris was pleased to see the Worker so obviously distracted. It gave Siris’s rebellion a chance. They might be able to gain enough momentum, raise support among the people. Perhaps by the time the Worker realized what had happened, there would be no stopping them. Deathless were immortal, yes, but they still fell in combat. They could be pulled down by a half-dozen soldiers, forced to reincarnate. They could be bound, held captive. They could be defeated, even if they couldn’t be killed.
They were not nearly as dominant as the people believed. Fear and tradition kept the people in check more than anything else.
So Siris was happy to see this chance. But it also worried him. If the Worker of Secrets wasn’t focused on administering and ruling his empire, then what was he doing? And just how much should Siris fear it?
Wait a moment . . . Siris hesitated on a page, which was a map stolen by one of the people who had fled the Deathless. Siris held it up, noting the list—written in old Deathless script—of what the facility contained. One item on the list struck him.
He then flipped through the stack of papers, searching out a list of the God King’s strongholds that Lux had described. Underneath each one was a scout report on its particular defenses. Lux had planned to attack one of these next, to steal weapons, rings, equipment—but she had hesitated, worried about retaliation.
The facility that Siris had noticed was isolated, infrequently supplied. It seemed to have been completely forgotten by the Worker. Could he really have left something so important unguarded?
This facility . . . Siris thought, instantly understanding the implications. This is what we need.
The Dark Self moved within him. Siris felt a chill. It wanted to go here. Wanted that facility, and badly.
A knock came on the door. Siris lowered the papers quickly, startled, ashamed—though he doubted anyone else in the valley could read the symbols on this particular map.
Isa stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. She still wore her leathers, as if for fighting, her arms folded, hair in a simple tail. She always seemed ready to take off in a moment, prepared—even anxious—to be on her way. Settling down here, taking charge, must have been very difficult for her.
“Well?” she asked.
“It’s a mess,” Siris said with a grimace, waving his hand over the piles of notes.
“I meant the pie.”
“Oh.” He looked at the empty plate. “Well, it all kind of . . . vanished.” He scratched at the side of his head. “I might need another one to really make a determination.”
Isa snorted, strolling into the room, coming to look over his shoulder at the papers he’d been studying.
“What you told me about the army is true,” he said with a sigh. “Our soldiers are a determined group, but we have a long way to go before we can become a realistic threat to the Deathless.”
“Yeah,” she said, speaking softly.
“If we’re going to grow this rebellion,” Siris said, “you and I wil
l be doing a lot of the work. I’ll need you to infiltrate, gather information, pry secrets from Deathless hands.”
“Good,” she said. “That’s a whole lot more appealing than acting as a nursemaid to this lot. They come to me asking about everything. Hell take me . . . if I have to listen to one more man whine about his bunkmate snoring, I’m seriously going to start stabbing something.”
She settled down at the table to his right, crossing her arms on top of the stack of maps.
“You really think we can do this?” he asked. “Lead a rebellion? Change the world?”
“No,” she said. “But I think you can.”
He settled back. “You’re not starting to believe your own stories, are you? Me slaying dragons, rescuing thousands of people, murdering Deathless while swinging on ropes from palace to palace . . .”
She smiled. “No. But I’ve seen you with them, Siris. You are a leader. A real leader.”
The Dark Self stirred, and Siris felt satisfaction from it. It knew. It knew he needed it.
No. He knew. He had to stop thinking of it as a different thing from himself. The Dark Self was him, not some alien thing. For all he wanted to play with children and eat pies, that wouldn’t save his people. Getting to this facility on the paper in front of him . . . that would give him a chance.
“I guess the greater truth is,” Isa said, “it’s not important if we win or not.”
He looked up at her.
“Something has to change, Siris,” she said. “The world, the people in it . . . Well, sitting around with my nose in a mug, not looking at anything happening around me—that’s not working for me anymore. So we’re going to fight instead. You’re going to lead, and I’m going to . . . well, do whatever the hell it is I do.”
Siris nodded, meeting her eyes. “You’ve changed.”
“It’s been over two years.” She looked back at him, defiant at first, but then relaxing. He found himself remembering the days—short though they had been—that he’d spent with her. Days he had sincerely enjoyed.
Her hands rested a few inches from his own. She moved one closer to his.
“I’ve changed too,” he warned. “Those years in the prison, they were . . . difficult.”
“I can believe it. I wasn’t expecting things to just pick up where they left off. Hell, you’re still Deathless, and . . . Well, what I did wasn’t about us. Not entirely, at least. It was as much about those people down below.”
“Thank you,” Siris said, resting his hand on hers. “Thank you for coming for me. You don’t know what being trapped in there was doing to me, Isa. I don’t care about your reasons. Just . . . thank you.”
She nodded.
“There’s a problem, though. I’m not good at leadership.”
“Sure you are. They—”
“I’m not, Isa. I grew up isolated, treated as a doomed Sacrifice, forced to practice swordsmanship instead of spending time with others my age. I know nothing about leadership.”
She frowned.
“Everything I know about being a leader,” he said, “comes from somewhere else. Other instincts. Not me—or at least, not the me I want to encourage. If I’m to lead here, I’m going to be relying upon the methods of our enemies.”
“We can’t fight a war with brave songs and good intentions, Siris. You’re our weapon. They forged you, yes, but we can use that.” She hesitated. “And I trust you.”
Hell take me . . . He met her eyes again. Then, making a decision, he slipped a paper off the stack—the map with the facility he’d been looking at earlier.
“Then we’re going to strike here,” he said. “How soon can the men be ready?”
“Immediately.”
CHAPTER
TWELVE
LESS THAN a week later, Siris crept along the shelf of rock, following Isa and two members of her strike team. He tried not to look over the ledge’s side to his left, or at the sheer drop there.
He wasn’t certain what would happen if he died falling off that cliff. He couldn’t awaken at the rebirthing chamber near Saydhi’s lands, the place where Isa had taken him over two years ago. That had been destroyed by the Worker.
Perhaps his soul would find another rebirthing chamber. More likely, he’d end up lying broken on those rocks below until his Deathless body regenerated and he woke up. But a third possibility worried him more than the other two—the possibility that he’d be reborn as a child again, as he’d done so many times during his centuries as the Sacrifice. He had grown accustomed to—though not particularly comfortable with—this life as a Deathless. Losing his memory again, his identity, frightened him.
It frightened the Dark Self even more.
Isa held up a gloved hand ahead, and the team stopped. The two other men with them—Isa had introduced them as Dynn and Terr, expert scouts—were as silent as she was. Siris was amazed at how they could move without their steps making sounds on the rock.
Siris wasn’t as good as they, but fortunately he wasn’t some lumbering lout either. Apparently, Ausar had been reasonably accomplished at stealth. Perhaps thousands upon thousands of years of life left one reasonably accomplished at just about everything.
Isa moved on ahead alone, leaving Siris with Dynn and Terr, all three crouching on the ledge. A cool wind gusted over them, and Siris settled himself to wait, one gloved hand against the mountainside to his right, the other gripping the edge of the pathway to his left. He could feel the sharp rock of the ledge through his glove; the thing felt frail to be supporting all four of them.
Their week of travel had brought them high in the mountains, away from what passed for civilization in the God King’s lands. Siris’s breath puffed in front of him. He wore his helm strapped to his back, and was clothed in supple leathers with a tight chain shirt. The bulk of their raiding force—almost a hundred strong—waited below with Lux, closer to the front of the stronghold. Hopefully, traveling at night and eschewing cookfires had allowed them to approach unnoticed.
The sky was starting to dim; they would attack at dusk, as Lux had suggested. It would be light enough for his troops not to need torches, but late enough in the day that the guards might be drowsy from long hours on duty.
As they waited for Isa to return, Terr turned to Siris. Lanky and mostly bald, he had an oval face and an angular nose. He wore assault armor, tight chain and a breastplate, manufactured light and strong, Deathless style.
Terr looked Siris up and down. These two scouts had spent most of the trip scouting ahead. “You really don’t look like much, you know,” Terr said softly. “Without the helm. Just a regular guy.”
“Thank you,” Siris said.
Terr cocked an eyebrow. Not the answer he’d been expecting, apparently.
“Is it boring?” Terr asked.
“What? Waiting?”
“No. Life. Being thousands of years old. Doesn’t it get dull, after a while?”
“I don’t remember any of it,” Siris said.
“Nothing?”
Siris shook his head. “Not before this life.”
“A Deathless with no experience. What good are you, then?”
“Draw your sword and I’ll show you.”
“Hush, you two,” Dynn said, glancing back at them. He immediately blushed. “I mean, hush, Terr. And Lord Deathless, if you don’t mind.”
Siris smiled at the way Terr rolled his eyes; there seemed a familiarity between the two of them. Brothers, he decided, though they didn’t share much family resemblance.
Isa prowled back to them. “No guards on our direct path,” she said. “But be careful anyway. They have guards on the tops of the fortress, and the Deathless like to set daeril guards hiding in the least expected of places.”
They continued forward, rounding the mountain cliffs, approaching a stronghold set into the snowy heights, like a slab of iron deposited from orbit.
Orbit, Siris thought. I barely know what that means. A word from the old days, uncovered in his mind like las
t fall’s leaves.
Their path led around to the back of the iron fortress. Lux and the others would be making their way up the main incline, but with those murder-holes in the face of the fortress, charging the front would be suicide. They needed to get the gates open and hopefully distract the archers inside.
Siris and his team buckled themselves together with ropes, then began a careful scale up and around to the upper back of the fortress. Siris spotted a few guards on the ramparts, walking back and forth, but they mostly kept their eyes forward. Hopefully, in the dusk, they’d miss the small figures climbing along the cliff face.
Not enough guards, Siris thought. The Dark Self knew. There should have been more up there.
“This feels like a trap,” he whispered to Isa as they scaled down the rock face, shadowed by the setting sun. They came down to another ledge.
She nodded, but said nothing more. The four of them rounded the back of the fortress. They didn’t go to the ramparts—that would be suicide. Instead, they made their way to the back right corner of the fortress, about halfway up its side. Steel walls blocked their way into the building. A small window just above—far too small to slip through—indicated there was a room here.
The brothers hung back as the rear guard, leaving Isa and Siris to cover the last distance to the fortress on their own. They kept low, beneath the window. Once they arrived, Isa peeked up, then ducked back down. She nodded. The room beyond was empty.
Siris took a deep breath, pulling out a glove and gauntlet, with a ring affixed to the finger. He slid it on, then made a fist.
“You sure you can handle this?” Isa asked.
“Sure. I’ve used the other rings. How hard can this one be?”
She gave him a flat look. “I’ve seen entire villages sucked into one drop of Incarnate Dark, Siris.”
“What . . . Really?”
“Well, all right. One village—run by one of the lesser Deathless, looking to elevate his position. And I kind of sold the ring to him. But he did ask me to retrieve it.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “It was long ago, before I stopped taking jobs from Deathless. This one thought . . . well, I told him not to play with the stuff. He wouldn’t listen to a mere mortal, and he paid well, so I got it for him. I left just before he activated it.”