Trial of Intentions (5 page)

But he wasn't an author, and his father's books were to blame. Stories of the Sodality had captured his imagination. So, when Vendanj had come to the Hollows, Braethen had asked to join him. He'd wanted to help his friends, Tahn and the others, but mostly he'd leapt at the chance to become a sodalist. And not long after leaving the Hollows, he'd taken the oath.

That was just a short time ago. His understanding of how to serve came mostly from books, as well as the sword training he'd had from Mira on their way to Naltus. But he had no deep knowledge of
this
sword, this Blade of Seasons. He was lost. He was in the dark.

Even the image of his father faded.

He imagined his body disappearing slowly, until the sword hung upon the air for a moment before falling harmlessly to the shale.

Then, in front of him, the darkness began to jounce and swirl. Twisted lines of black shot across his vision and closed in around him. Soon the heavy iron of a Bar'dyn hammer would crush his chest, and he would see none of it, only feel his flesh ripping before darkness of a different kind encircled him.

No!
Braethen pushed back against the assault, trying to command the shadows. But his bluster only stirred the lines of darkness, made them
tighter,
like a fly caught in a web.

Then something new: thrumming in his feet. Like the hooves of a mounted garrison galloping at full speed, the rumbling tingled up through his soles.
The Bar'dyn are charging!

Braethen struggled frantically for release, to see, to exist in one place and time. His struggle left him breathless, but still the darkness held.

Until … a single blade of grass.

In his mind rose the singularly hopeful image of a long, thin blade of greenery placed delicately in a vase. He saw it in sharp contrast to a drab grey hovel that huddled in a hopeless valley of endless rain.
Ja'Nene.
The young widow he'd met on his way to Naltus. Beautiful despite her burned face. Because of it. Her daily ritual of walking a fair distance to pluck a few long stems of grass added life and color to her colorless room.

Determination grew inside him with the remembrance of that simple blade of grass—an emblem he'd taken as his own. With it came the declaration—a battle cry, of sorts—that he'd found along the way from the Hollows: “I am I.”

The silence and darkness broke.

When the shadows lifted, Braethen saw the dull gleam of morning's half-light on the edge of his sword. And beyond it, on the sweeping shale plain, came a host of Quiet like nothing he could have imagined. Their swift movement created a slow undulation, like gentle summer winds over a vast field of unharvested wheat.

He caught a quick glance from Vendanj, whose expression asked a question.

Braethen answered with a nod.
I'm ready.
Vendanj, though, didn't look fit for war. The tall man hunched a bit. His short beard couldn't hide his gaunt, hollow face. The hard eyes were weary. He'd not fully recovered from their days in the Saeculorum.

“No Quiet breaks the line,” Elan commanded from Braethen's left. The Far king's words were the only ones spoken, and carried long on the plain.

The First Legion did not slow as the Bar'dyn rushed toward them. Braethen kept moving through the silence—neither army called or yawped, each moving with grim determination, the only sound the grind of shale beneath their feet.

Ten strides from the Quiet, Vendanj thrust up his hands, as though he would take fistfuls of sky. He then drove them at the Bar'dyn in a violent motion. From his palms shot a wave of energy visible only in the grit and stones it gathered as it rushed toward the Quietgiven. Like a powerful river current, it took down a dozen from the first line of Bar'dyn. A few did not get up. The Quiet behind them simply leapt over the bodies, coming at them on a dead run.

To Braethen's left, the Far danced around the attacks, striking vital blows and dropping many in the first wave.

A massive figure surged forward, bearing down on Vendanj. He'd never seen or read about this breed of Quiet before—three strides tall, small spines of bone running like veins across its face, neck, arms, and hands. The creature reared back with a great iron flail, intelligence and intent shining in its eyes.

Vendanj slammed the balls of his fists together. His flesh rent at the force of it, blood spraying from the torn tissue. Time seemed to slow, the spew of blood hanging in the air a moment before whipping into an abrasive red wind that descended on the beast. The haze tore at its face and eyes and skin, dropping it to the ground, before rushing to nearby Bar'dyn.

The bodies consumed by the blood-wind had scarcely hit the ground before more Bar'dyn had filled their places. One heaved a two-tined spear at Braethen, forcing him off balance as it barreled toward him. Braethen managed to get his footing in time to take the brunt of the charge. They went down, the creature's shoulder driving the air from his lungs in a painful gust. Thick hands wrapped around his neck, trying to crush his throat. Braethen swung his sword wildly at the creature's head.

One of the Bar'dyn's arms went up to ward off the blow; several of its fingers fell to the ground. It didn't cry out, only squeezed Braethen's neck tighter with its good hand. Then Elan was there, driving his sword through the Bar'dyn's ear. It fell instantly limp and slumped to the ground.

The Far king pulled Braethen up, and the two turned in time to see the horde part and a smaller figure stroll forward. She wore a dull crimson robe, and had the gaunt face of one who hadn't eaten for a very long time.

Velle
.

Braethen rushed to take a stance between Vendanj and the dark renderer. He expected the Sheason to call him back, ask him to find a safe position because of his inexperience. Vendanj did neither.

“Callow youth to defend you, Sheason? Some new sodalist to die for your impertinence.” The Velle's tone came low and broken, like the smoke-damaged voice of a nightly tavern singer. “I've a young helpmate of my own.”

A Bar'dyn came forward, leading a small figure with a chain around its neck. It may have been the dimness of the morning light, or the dark still in Braethen's eyes after escaping his sword's influence, or perhaps because he didn't want to see this … that it took several moments to focus and realize …

A child.

The girl was maybe seven. She wore a brown burlap smock over thin shoulders. Her hair stood dirty and clumped. She had the careworn face of a girl who has seen degradation at too young an age. And yet, when she saw Braethen standing there, defiant and holding up his sword, a spark of hope lit her eyes. It reminded him … of a blade of grass. And that image lingered an instant before the Bar'dyn roughly yanked her neck collar and pulled her to her knees beside the Velle.

Children, because they can't fight back. Because their spirits are more vibrant.

His anger burned hot. And before any of the others could speak, he stepped closer, his heart pounding. When he spoke, the sound resonated in the weapon in his hands.

“If you harm the child…”

The little girl cried silent tears of hope, while Braethen glared into the Velle's stoic eyes.

“Your indignation comes ages too late, Sodalist. Besides, what are you threatening? Death? That is an entirely human frailty.” The Velle gave a casual laugh deep in its rough throat.

Without looking back, Braethen held up a hand to Vendanj. He wanted no intervention this time. The Sheason said nothing, honoring his unspoken request. They both knew the time had come for him to stand his own defense.

A strange silence grew, even as farther down the line the battle raged. Nearby Quiet waited on their exchange. Vendanj, and the First Legion, and the king himself waited, watched; he could feel their resolve to stand behind him.

The Velle remained still, staring at Braethen with unsettling apathy.

Finally, with a tone of indifference, she spoke. “I am already in hell, Sodalist. You have no power to save or condemn me. I will cut you down in front of your kings and Sheason, and I will lay bare the sadness of your oath … taken by a silly, reading boy who hasn't the manhood to raise the blush to a woman's cheek when she asks, nor the wit to esteem a father who suffered his son's ingratitude.”

How does she know all this? About J'Nene? About da?

The words slipped into Braethen's mind, chiding him, undermining his confidence. The sword in his hand grew suddenly very heavy, foreign. Darkness crept in at the edges of his vision, and with it came the feeling of being in two places again, threatening to consume him.

Then, spoken softly, in an unyielding voice, came a single, bracing word: “Courage.”

It was Vendanj, uttering, for him alone to hear, the invitation and command.

Braethen refocused on the Velle. “Let the child go.” He thought his heart would burst, but he took two steps forward.

The Velle gripped the chain holding the little girl and pulled her around in front, as a master would a mongrel. A strained look of hope and fear shone on the girl's face.

Before Braethen could react, the Velle seized her by the back of the neck and thrust a bony hand at him. In a long, horrific moment the girl's life was drained from her frail, emaciated body to fuel the Velle's dark art. Pain and sadness leapt to her face. She reached for Braethen. A rush of black wind began streaming around him, through him, and he dropped to the hard shale, feeling a burn inside. Others around him fell, too.

He pitched forward onto the rock of the Soliel, his left hand still clenching his blade.
I'm a godsdamned fool!

He looked ahead to where the little girl had likewise fallen to the shale. Her delicate, dirtied features were lifeless, her eyes open and empty and staring.

The scream began in his heart, where the ache of the child's death churned. That scream erupted from his throat like a clarion come to call all the living to war. It resonated in his hand as the Blade of Seasons thrummed, demanding to be wielded. He pushed himself to his feet and strode toward the Velle with the purpose of an executioner.

Behind him rang the clash of swords. The air itself seemed to rend—the Sheason calling the Will to his aid. But these things sounded distant, unimportant. He focused on the Velle, who stared back with unsettling indifference.

A massive Bar'dyn stepped into his path. Braethen sidestepped a blow and struck the beast in the throat with a single thrust of his blade. The creature fell, trying to stanch the flow of its own blood.

The Velle raised her hands again, forgetting she had no vessel to render. Braethen shook his head and stepped close, raising his weapon for a hammer stroke that he brought down with all the strength he had.

His sword's edge pulled through the flesh of the Velle with satisfying drag. Dark images rose in his mind as the creature gasped. A moment later, she wailed, the sound like the bitter penance of one receding to a lasting prison. The cry faded in long echoes over the silent armies battling across the shale. And the Velle fell.

Braethen took no pleasure in it, staring down instead at the child lying on the hard, cold ground. But he had no time to mourn.

He leapt back to the Sheason's side, swinging his sword at the surrounding Quiet with all the fury inside him. For the first time, he began wielding this burdensome blade with comfort, if not great skill. And as he fought beside Vendanj, thinking of the Sheason's steeling admonition—
Courage
—he also thought about the strange power of the blade.

Two places at once.

 

CHAPTER FOUR

Songs of Retribution

Revenge has a sound. Dear absent gods, a sound. And it doesn't come sweetly.

—From “Suppositions on the Mor Nation Refrains,” a Divadian conservatory text

W
endra sat staring out her bedchamber window at a garden bathed in the light of a wine-colored moon. Stillness and shadow lay across her room, deeper here on the west side of the Far king's manor. The chamber held the musty smell of a shut-in, the air sour and warm. Her things lay strewn about where she'd thrown or dropped them days ago. She hadn't bothered to change out of her clothes in all that time. And she certainly hadn't brightened any of this with song. Not a single note. Not once.

“Did you ever try to have another child?” Wendra asked.

She spoke to the Far woman, Sendera, who kept Wendra company, protected her. The Far sat in the corner, unmoving, as she had for days. Word of the attack on Naltus had come from Vendanj, who'd ordered Wendra to stay put:
You haven't learned to control your song.

“Yes,” Sendera answered, but said no more.

For the last few days it had gone like this. Wendra had learned that Sendera had lost a child during childbirth. But she'd offered little more than direct answers, mostly keeping her sentinel silence. Still, by slow degrees, the two had begun to find common footing.

“Did any of them live?” Wendra pressed, turning to watch the Far's response.

“One.” In Sendera's reply Wendra heard a truth most women shared: a great many more children came still, or died soon after birth, than was talked about.

The steady expression never left Sendera's face, and she resumed her silent, protective vigil.

“If you could hold someone responsible … if you could do something to settle the guilt and emptiness left when your child was taken from you … would you?”

Wendra turned back to the neatly tended garden. This plot of ground, patiently nurtured in the middle of the stark shale city, offended her in a way she couldn't quite name. But for other offenses she had great clarity
and
names: Vendanj for denying her the chance to avenge Penit, swept away by Bar'dyn in the Saeculorum; Tahn, her damn brother, for letting Penit be taken when he might have saved him.