The Name Of The Sword (Book 4) (30 page)

Caught by surprise Morgin deflected Metadan’s blade clumsily as Salula thrust at him. It would have been a killing strike, but Metadan struck the halfman’s sword aside with his own, and it merely sliced across Morgin’s ribs. Then the archangel turned on Morgin and attacked him.

Metadan appeared crazed, as if he could not make up his mind who he wanted to kill. One strike he aimed at Morgin, and the next at the halfman. Morgin used his shadows, stepping into one, then out of another, but he was tiring. Metadan blinked in and out of existence, and the two danced around the halfman, Morgin never knowing who Metadan would attack next.

Metadan’s sword hilt thudded painfully into Morgin’s shoulder, staggering him. The archangel winked out of existence just as Salula stepped in and thrust at Morgin’s heart. But a heartbeat before the blade pierced Morgin’s chest, Metadan appeared directly in front of it, knocking Morgin backwards. Morgin saw the tip of the halfman’s sword punch out through the archangel’s back.

The three of them froze, the halfman’s sword piercing Metadan’s chest, the archangel with a look of joy and wonder on his face. He smiled, said to Salula, “Thank you.”

He reached out, stretched his arms to their full extent and clamped both hands around the wrist of Salula’s sword hand. He staggered forward, a small step, pulling the blade deeper into his chest. Salula, with a look of horror on his face, tried to resist, but Metadan’s two-handed grip would not yield, and step by step Metadan walked the length of the blade, until it was buried to the hilt in his chest.

The archangel turned his head and looked at Morgin. “Take him. Now.”

The archangel was giving him his chance. He stepped into one shadow, and out of another behind the halfman. Holding his sword in one hand, he gripped Salula by the back of the neck with the other, recalled a shadow he’d stepped into in a far distant past, a shadow cast by the flat-bed cart upon which SheelThane had been chained as Magwa’s prisoner.
To walk in one is to walk in them all.
He wrapped him and Salula into a shadow, and stepped with that falling sensation from one to the other.

He and the demon sprawled out of the shadow beneath the cart in a deserted jackal camp. They were deep in the netherworld, in the ninth hell, and now the demon wore its true nature: the head of a snake, torso of a man, the cloven hooves of a goat, and for arms the clawed talons of a vulture.

Stunned, the demon looked down at itself and cried, “What have you done?”

Morgin pulled his belt knife, a blade he’d personally forged in the Benesh’ere camp, a blade he taught to speak with the single voice of a SteelMaster. He commanded the steel in the blade, it shot through the air and thudded into the demon’s chest. Buried to the hilt, the flesh in contact with the blade smoked, hissed and sputtered. The demon cried out, tried to grip the hilt, but when its taloned hands clutched the steel they burst into flames.

The demon staggered, cracks appeared all over its body emitting flame and smoke. It cried out a wail of agony and pain, collapsed onto its hands and knees. A bright flash of blood-red fire blinded Morgin momentarily, and when he could see again nothing remained but a smear of sickly, greenish ichor and ash.

Morgin staggered and leaned against the cart to catch his breath, hoping his strategy had worked, praying that by taking the demon deep into the netherworld he’d separated it from France.

Mortiss trotted into the abandoned jackal camp and neighed,
Well done. Time to take you back.

••••

Mounted on Mortiss, Morgin found Ellowyn sitting on the ground at the edge of the no-man’s-land. Metadan’s empty black leathers lay in her lap, one white feather resting upon them. As Morgin rode up to her she looked up, her cheeks smeared with tears. “Thank you,” she said. “His soul is now free.”

Morgin dismounted. Like the other deeds he hadn’t really righted any wrongs. He’d simply stumbled into them and they’d righted themselves. “I didn’t really free him,” he said. “He freed himself.”

She looked down at the feather in her lap and stroked it gently. “That’s why he’s finally free.”

AnnaRail sat on the ground near France, who lay curled in a fetal ball, his eyes closed, his cheeks wet with tears. She stroked his blond hair and looked up as Morgin approached. “I did what I could to heal him. He’s resting comfortably now, and I think he’ll be okay.”

“Ya,” France said, his voice weak and faint. He didn’t open his eyes. “I’ll be okay, lad. Just need a little time.”

Morgin sat down on the ground next to him, took one of the swordsman’s hands and held it against his own breast. He had his old friend back, and tears coursed down his own cheeks as he said, “Good. I’ll need you tomorrow at the Penda border.”

France opened his eyes. “The border?” he asked. “Why the border?”

“Olivia and BlakeDown want to have a little war, and I have to stop them.”

France reached up and wiped the tears from Morgin’s cheek. “I’ll be there, lad.”

AnnaRail glanced Ellowyn’s way. “Who is the strange woman?”

Morgin looked at the archangel. “An angel I met in a strange dream.”

She raised an eyebrow at the cryptic response.

“I have to go to Durin,” he said, “to see to Rhianne. After that I’ll come to the border, and we’ll end this war before it starts.”

“Tulellcoe’s in Durin,” she said, “hoping to do something about Rhianne. But to Durin and back, that’ll take a twelve of days.”

Morgin recalled the feeling of stepping out of a shadow here on the Mortal Plane, and into the shadow beneath SheelThane’s flatbed cart in the netherworld. He’d crossed levels of existence and centuries of time in the blink of an eye. There had to be a way to cross leagues of distance on the Mortal Plane in a heartbeat. If not, he’d fail Rhianne.

He shook his head. “No, I’ll take care of Rhianne, and meet you at the border tomorrow morning. After we stop this war, we have another to fight.”

30
Hardened Resolve

Sitting on a couch wrapped in a blanket, Rhianne could barely lift her head. Valso hadn’t abused her sexually as the Kulls had that night so long ago, but the physical beating had been far more vicious, and he refused to allow her a healer. Hopefully, that meant he’d given up on seducing her. When she’d looked in a mirror that morning her face had been swollen, puffy and bruised, nothing like the pretty trophies Valso liked to keep around. She’d healed the worst of the injuries herself—a broken nose, broken arm, some broken ribs, and something bleeding internally that would have killed her had she not addressed it—but the combination of the beating and healing had left her as weak as a kitten.

Rhianne had visited the Kingdom of Dreams several times now since Morgin’s return, but each time found it deserted. And the dreams had continued to lack the sense of reality she’d felt when she’d been there with Morgin. Twice now, for just an instant, she’d thought she’d seen some sort of message scratched in the dirt of the castle yard, but both times the dream had shifted just as she turned to investigate. She now knew she had no control of her dreams unless the Unnamed King walked his realm to give it life.

“The king is in a foul mood,” Geanna said, as she rushed into Rhianne’s sitting room. “And he’s coming here now.”

The girl knelt down in front of her, took her hands and tried to rub warmth into them. “You must appear strong. He relishes weakness, especially in women.”

Geanna’s attitude toward Rhianne had changed, and so had that of the other girls. Rhianne suspected they could no longer rationalize their romantic notions of a handsome king with a man who beat a woman so cruelly. Broken bones and internal bleeding were just not on their list titillating fantasy.

Rhianne heard Valso long before he walked into the room, heard him coming her way, at first his voice a faint sound muffled by the walls of the castle. He ranted and screamed at the top of his lungs, and as he came closer the volume of his rage increased.

She smiled at Geanna and said, “Help me, please.”

The girl helped her sit up straight. “The blanket,” Geanna said. “It makes you appear weak.”

Rhianne removed the blanket from about her shoulders and handed it to her, then adjusted her gown carefully. She finished only an instant before Valso marched into the room, waving his arms about, Carsaris and Magwa following fearfully in his wake.

“Metadan,” he screamed. “And Salula.”

He charged across the room toward her and she thought he would hit her. It took every bit of willpower she had not to flinch, to keep the look on her face impassive and cold. She had determined that she would die, rather than show him any fear or weakness.

He leaned down until his nose almost touched hers. With his eyes bulging, his face red, he shouted, “Metadan—and Salula—and Chrisainne too.”

She didn’t know any Chrisainne, but apparently something had happened to Metadan and Salula. Rhianne noticed Geanna, little-by-little taking tiny back-steps across the room, her head bowed, eyes focused on the floor, instinctively putting distance between her and the enraged king. Magwa and Carsaris had stopped just within the room, well out of Valso’s reach. None of her handmaidens were visible. Rhianne was effectively alone with Valso. At another time she might have goaded him with a nasty grin, but dare not try something like that now. “What about them?”

“They’re dead,” he said, continuing to rant, drops of saliva spattering her face. “You and your husband killed them.”

She considered arguing the point. How could she have killed anyone while confined to this castle as a prisoner? She was curious about one point. “Is the demon Salula dead, or just his host?”

Valso straightened, swung out and hit her with a roundhouse slap. It rocked her to one side, and she almost lost consciousness. But she’d gotten her answer, or at least part of it.

She had trouble focusing as Valso continued to rant, screaming and shouting while he marched back and forth across the room. She kept her face impassive, but inside she was too frightened to do anything but sit there and hope he didn’t focus on her again.

He stopped and froze, surprising them all, then cocked his head to one side as if listening to something. He stood that way for a moment, then with a calm that belied his earlier fury, he said, “Yes, excellent.”

He turned to Rhianne, smiled, and calmly crossed the room to stand over her. He leaned toward her, leaned close and said, “My master is now going to take a personal interest in the whoreson. Apparently, your husband connects to the netherlife quite frequently . . .” Rhianne felt that thing enter Valso’s soul. “. . . and when next he ventures there, on any level beyond the Mortal Plane, I will be waiting for him.”

Valso straightened, turned, and calmly left the room with Magwa and Carsaris on his heels.

Metadan and the demon Salula dead—it must have been Morgin. She hoped he’d found a way to kill the demon without killing France, though if he’d had to kill the swordsman as well, it must have been a mercy.

She sensed that something had changed, a subtle shift in the relationship between the planes of existence, and she had no doubt it was Morgin’s doing. Soon he would come for Valso—there was no question of that—and Rhianne now knew it was up to her to make sure he had an open and clean field of battle. Carsaris was too riddled with fear, and Magwa too cowardly to interfere directly. No, it was the little snake that Rhianne feared most, not just for her, but for what it might do when Morgin finally faced Valso’s master. She must find a way to neutralize it, to prevent it from interfering. But first, she had to find a way to warn Morgin to stay away from the Nether Plane.

••••

Standing on the parapets Morgin recalled the shadow beneath SheelThane’s cart in the netherworld. Dragging Salula to that shadow in the abandoned jackal camp had been an instinctive act, and now he must repeat a similar feat, but how? He looked out across the no-man’s-land to the edge of the trees where that morning he’d fought Metadan and Salula, tried to remember how he’d stepped from a shadow there to one in the netherworld.
To walk in one is to walk in them all.
He’d pictured the cart and its shadow in his mind’s eye, and in the unchanging daylight of the netherworld, where the sun never set and shadows never changed, it had been easy to recall the shadow in every detail. Was that the limitation, that he had to know the shadow well enough to picture it precisely?

He turned around, looked down into the Elhiyne yard and noted several shadows. He paid particular attention to one near the outer wall that wouldn’t dissipate as the sun crossed the sky. If this worked, he’d return there.

He closed his eyes, and tried to recall the yard in Castle Decouix where he’d fought so many Kulls in gladiatorial combat as Valso’s prisoner. During those contests he’d longed to use his shadowmagic, had looked at every shadow within those walls with envy, and remembered them even now. Was that the key, he had to know the shadow he was going to step into, picture it in his mind? By now it would be mid-morning in Durin, and he recalled a shadow beneath a stone stairway that descended from the parapets. He must have seen it a hundred times, and at this time of day it was always deep, dark and inviting. By late afternoon sunlight would fill the space and that particular shadow would disappear, but others would form elsewhere to replace it. He pictured it now, while he pulled a shadow about him—and he took that step.

He almost gasped at the falling sensation, but he swallowed any outcry. A cacophony of sounds assaulted his ears as he steadied himself and opened his eyes. Hidden deep in his shadow, a squad of Decouix armsmen marched past him, servants ran here and there, and swords rang out in the practice arena. It was a far cry from the nearly deserted castle he’d just left behind. He huddled in his shadow and pulled the hood of his cloak over his head. He waited, ready to jump back to Elhiyne if necessary, if he could, but after a hundred heartbeats no one raised the alarm, so he breathed easier.

He could guess where Valso kept Rhianne, probably on the second floor not far from where he’d imprisoned Morgin. But he’d not paid close attention to the shadows there at the time, and couldn’t recall any now. He’d have to move slowly, work his way into the castle shadow-by-shadow.

Across the yard the sun filled a narrow path between two buildings with deep shadow. Since he’d lived here for many months he knew the layout of Decouix, and that lane led to servants’ quarter and the kitchens. It was not wide enough for two men to walk side-by-side, so he’d be taking a chance that no one happened to be coming the other way, but it was still his best bet. He closed his eyes, stepped from his shadow to the shadow in the narrow lane.

He kept his shadowmagic wrapped tightly around him as he moved quickly down the lane toward the kitchens. He’d almost reached the end of the way when a young boy came around the far corner trotting on some urgent errand. Morgin stopped and pressed his back to a wall, tried to occupy as little space as possible as he huddled in the shadow there. When the boy jogged past him his elbow brushed across Morgin’s gut and the boy noticed it. As he stopped and turned, Morgin stepped across the lane and pressed his back against the opposite wall, concentrating on his shadow magic.

The boy retraced his steps and carefully examined the shadow where Morgin had been standing a moment ago. He ran his hands up and down the wall, shrugged when he found nothing, turned and continued on his way.

Morgin stopped in a shadow near the entrance to the kitchens and peered around the edge of the doorway. He needed to go through the kitchen and out the other side to get into the castle proper, but there were cooks, undercooks, scullery maids, and other members of the staff busily preparing the mid-day meal. He was considering retracing his steps to try another way into the castle when he spotted a shadow on the far side of the kitchen near the other exit. He closed his eyes and stepped into that shadow, then slipped out of the kitchen, taking it with him.

He used that technique repeatedly, crossing occupied rooms in an instant by stepping into a shadow on the far side. Unfortunately, inside the castle proper, without the aid of the sun to darken the shadows, they weren’t as distinct and well defined. It took the rest of the morning to work his way up to the second floor.

He stopped at the end of a long hallway that had no exterior windows and was dark even in mid-day. The few shadows he could use were cast by wall sconces, and poorly defined. He was considering his route when a woman stepped into the corridor at the end. She came his way slowly, stopping every step or two to peer into a shadow, and rub her hand up and down the wall there, almost as if searching for someone in hiding, likely searching for him. That intrigued him, so he held his position and waited. If the need arose, he could step to another shadow in an instant. As the woman got closer he recognized Haleen, Valso’s sister.

She stopped only a few paces from him, looked his way, but a little to one side as if she sensed him in some way but couldn’t really see him. “Child,” she whispered. “You must leave. Valso is having her watched too closely. Your . . . uncle is staying at an inn called The Weary Bard. It’s on the south side of the city. Come back to this same spot just after sunset and I’ll help you find her, though . . . she may surprise you.” She turned around, straightened her shoulders, walked back down the hallway and disappeared around a corner.

Haleen had been an ally once before, had helped him escape from this same castle a little less than a year ago. He stepped into a shadow five paces away, noted that the shadow in which he’d been hiding was cast by the light of a wall sconce, would probably still be there after sunset. He noted several more like that as alternatives.

He’d have to trust Haleen, though as he left the castle he wondered about her last words.

••••

Morgin didn’t walk the streets of Durin, he stepped from shadow-to-shadow, traversing the entire length of long avenues and streets in a heartbeat. If he could see the shadow, he could step into it, no matter how far away it might be. But he didn’t know the city, and was forced to repeatedly ask directions of other pedestrians, many of whom had never heard of The Weary Bard. He finally found the place late in the afternoon, stepped out of his shadows and walked openly through the front entrance.

The innkeeper was a small, bookish fellow with eyes pinched into a squint. Seated at one of the tables in his own common room, with scrolls and parchments in front of him, he appeared to be tallying goods. Morgin tried to sound casual as he said, “I’m supposed to meet a couple of old friends here, man and woman; she’s a twoname, wears breeches like a man.”

The innkeeper said, “Carries a small sword too, right.”

“Ya,” Morgin said. “That’s her.”

“They got a room upstairs, though they’re out now. Been out all day, go out every day, usually come back before dusk. You can wait, if you want. But if you sit at a table you gotta buy something.”

“Nah,” Morgin said. “I’ll come back later.”

Morgin turned and walked to the front entrance, opened the door, took one step out, slipped into a shadow and stepped back into the inn just before the door slammed shut. The innkeeper didn’t look up from his lists of goods. Morgin worked his way through the shadows at the edge of the common room, then up the stairs and into the upstairs hallway. He reinforced his cloak of shadows and waited.

Leaning against a wall at the top of the stairs, Morgin grew drowsy and had almost dosed off when he heard the front door of the inn open and close. He heard the innkeeper say, “Fellow came by asking about you,” and concluded Tulellcoe and Cort had returned. He walked to the back of the hallway where the shadows were deep.

As the two of them came up the stairs Tulellcoe said, “Other than Haleen, only my family knows we’re here.”

Cort topped the stairs just ahead of him. “You think it was one of them?”

They stopped at a door in the hall and Tulellcoe produced a heavy, iron key. Morgin stepped out of his shadows and said, “It was me.”