Fallen Blade 04 - Blade Reforged (23 page)

Finally, long after it should have come, I saw the water ripple at the far bank. One
foot entering the water. A second. Something was moving toward me. Ripple and ripple
again. Slow. Quiet. Patient. Then, the faintest of splashes. A long pause. The water
returning to stillness. I continued to stand and wait.

“Aral, I know you’re there.” It was Devin’s voice, worried, angry. As he should be.
If he was alone, he had to know I had the advantage here. He continued. “I circled
the lake and your trail doesn’t come out anywhere. I want to talk to you.”

It’s a trick,
Triss mindspoke.
He’s trying to get us to give away our position.

“Aral, dammit, don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

Breathe in. Breathe out. Be a pillar of rock standing on the shore. Devin would have
to come to me on my terms or turn back. Either way, I was winning.

A ripple. Another. A bigger splash as he strayed too far to one side.

“I’m going to kill you some day, Aral. For this, if for no other reason. But not right
now. Right now I need you to talk to me.”

He was close and getting closer. Another dozen steps and I would be able to reach
him with a leap. Two more after that and it would be a lunge. Soon…

“Aral…” The voice was close now.

Another foot. The water rippled and I flipped my swords around in the same moment
that I lunged, action without thought. I
was
motion and it felt better than anything else could ever hope to.

My left-hand sword swept low, aiming for a point just above the ripples, my right
punched forward at chest height. Steel met wood at knee height, jarring to a halt.
Clever Devin, advancing a staff instead of his leg. I adjusted my thrusting blade,
moving my point left and extending my lunge. Devin had always favored his right slightly.
I didn’t think he’d give up the advantage of having a drawn sword in that hand, which
put his body farther back and more to my left. I was at the very end of my safe extension
when I felt my steel touch flesh and sink in—perhaps a half inch.

I wanted to lean forward and press the point, sink it deep, use the anchor of my blade
in Devin’s chest to catch my balance and finish this quickly. But that was my emotions
speaking—anger and the desire for revenge. I needed to listen to my body, my reflexes
and training, and my body called a halt, knowing where balance ended. My body was
right, as Devin leaped back in the same instant that I struck him, pulling free of
my sword with a muffled curse and leaving his staff behind. Had I followed my desire
I’d have ended up fully in the water, overextended and off balance.

I was better than Devin, or I had been once, but he was still one of the top thousand
or so swordsmen in the world, and he was prepared for my attack, weight back, staff
forward, hoping to draw me to him. I could feel it through my sword in our brief connection
and see Zass’s positioning through Triss’s unvision when the two clouds of shadow
momentarily intersected each other. Devin landed with a
heavy splash, drawing a target in the surface of the water with himself at its center.
Somewhere behind me I thought I heard another, fainter splash come in almost the same
instant, like an echo. Maylien’s boat, I hoped.

“Not bad, Aral,” said Devin. “Not bad at all. You plinked me there.” He was hiding
it, but I could hear pain in his voice. Pain and anger. “Why don’t you come see if
you can do it again?”

Instead, I withdrew my forward foot from the water and settled back into a waiting
stance. This time, with Devin so close, I kept my swords in front of me at high and
low guard. Devin would come in fast next time and he would do it soon. He would have
no choice. The wound I’d given him wasn’t a bad one, and Zass would keep it from bleeding
too much at the cost of reducing Devin’s shroud. But every second it went untreated
was another second the injury ate away a bit of his reserves.

“Come on, Aral, or are you afraid of me now?” The anger came through more strongly
this time. He’d expected me to follow him into the water and he didn’t like that I
hadn’t. “I’ve had time to study what you’ve been up to the last few years. Drunk.
That’s what I hear you’ve become. A fucking sponge for alcohol and not a lot more.
What would the priests say to that, do you think? They didn’t think much of gutter
drunks back in the day.”

Don’t listen to him.

It’s all right, Triss. I know what I am, and I know what the priests would think.
I’m not proud of it, but I’m not going to let Devin bait me the way he could when
we were ten either. He’s desperate, or he wouldn’t be trying so transparent a ploy.
I wonder
why
he’s desperate, though. I didn’t hurt him that bad. There’s an external pressure here
that we don’t know about.

“Dammit!” Devin swore. “I told myself I wasn’t going to let myself get drawn in like
this, but there’s something about you that just makes me so mad I can’t think. I really
do just want to talk. Here.” Devin’s shroud collapsed, leaving him unmasked in the
ford. “Can we please talk?”

He wore watermarked silk, rough and light absorbing, much of a kind with the fabric
of my own outfit and cut to the same ancient pattern. But, where the Blade I had seen
in the mirror of late held only the straight double-edged dueling swords of Zhan,
Devin carried the shorter, heavier swords of Namara, with their slight curve and single
edge. The swords of Justice with the unblinking eye on the guards.

I expected rage when I saw that—this traitor to the memory of our goddess still equipped
as her champion. What I felt instead was a terrible sense of loss. This was the image
of what I was supposed to be, what we were all supposed to be. Zass was with him,
a shadow like a giant otter or fisher wrapped around his chest and shoulders—keeping
his wound sealed, no doubt.

What’s his game?
I sent.

I don’t know. Maybe he really does want to talk.

Screw that. I don’t want to talk to him, and nothing can make me.

We do need to make some noise soon though. That and rough up the water’s surface,
or he’s going to know about Maylien. The ripples from her boat will be coming around
the island soon.

Thanks for the reminder. That does change things. Let me think…got it. I need control
for a moment.

Done.

Triss’s conscious presence vanished as he put himself into the sleep state that allowed
me to assume control of his actions, a necessary precondition for any more significant
work of magic. Reaching out through Triss’s connection to shadow, I touched a thousand
darker patches on the surface of the water, reflections of the trees in the garden,
of the island itself, anything that drank light. Then, I pushed. It was like tossing
several buckets of gravel into the lake all at once, creating countless splashes and
ripples that met and clashed and combined to churn the surface of the water into a
muddled mess.

“Shit!” snapped Devin.

Shadow frothed up around him hiding him from sight.
Clever. He was using my own distraction to cover his movements. I released Triss as
I tried to spot any more purposeful set of ripples. But my own trick had worked too
well and the surface of the lake told me nothing.

I’m not sure that’s the best idea you’ve ever had,
Triss sent as he returned to full awareness.

Point, but it gave Maylien the cover she needed to get clear.

There is that.

Any idea where Devin is now?

Nope, but I’d guess he’s here on the island with us.

Yeah, me, too. Dammit. Do you think he’s really just here to talk?

I think we’re about to find out.

One of the great ironies of Shade unvision is that in the mix of light and dark that
is our world at all but its darkest, they find it very hard to pick each other out
from among the more mundane sorts of shadows. Whereas in the absolute blackness of
the everdark they can easily spy one another. Like me, Triss was reduced to choosing
random points of brightness in our surroundings and watching for momentary occlusions
as we tried to spy Zass and Devin. That and listening. I tried to cultivate the patience
of stone once again. It was harder this time, knowing that Devin had made it onto
the island with me. Then I saw it, a pale spot winking out momentarily off to my left,
low and fast.

As I twisted that way, Triss shouted into my mind,
Down!

I threw myself at the ground, hitting the turf with forearm and then elbow as I shaped
my right arm into an arc and rolled forward. Through Triss’s senses I felt the two
Shades overlap above and behind me, as Devin’s sword passed through the place where
my head and shoulders had been a half beat before. Then the contact was broken as
I rolled across a loose pile of silk—Devin’s hood thrown to distract.
Nicely done, Devin,
I thought,
nicely done.

I came to my feet facing back the way I’d come, with both swords extended in front
of me. Without really willing
it, I found myself taking a series of sliding steps to my right and back.

What are you doing?
asked Triss.

Getting out of my own way. When he came onto the island I let the way I feel about
Devin and his betrayal push me back into the place where thought interferes with action.
I let the vessel of my soul fill with anger and worry when what I needed most was
to empty it. Do instead of be. That was a mistake. I won’t make it again.

Before Triss could answer me back, I felt the intersection of shadow with shadow—Zass
and Devin exactly where my unthinking mind told me they had to be. I pressed in close
before they could break contact. With the two Shades overlapping like this, Devin
and I were inside the sphere of each other’s familiar’s senses, as visible as if it
were bright day and we were unshrouded. There would be no more playing tag in the
dark. In response, both Shades shifted shape, flowing back down into their own chosen
forms and leaping at each other. Dragon and tayra faced each other on the ground beneath
us, their clawed blows echoing the cut and counter cut of Devin’s blades and my own.

At first the contest seemed equal, with Devin giving as good as he got. But things
shifted quickly. After the exchange of some dozens of cuts and parries, thrusts and
dodges, I found Devin’s current measure, and it wasn’t up to my standard. Oh, he was
better than he had been when we were younger and I was worse, but the gap hadn’t narrowed
enough to make the contest even.

Beat, parry, lunge, feint. Slice, counter, cartwheel, and cut. Back and forth. I took
control of the fight. With it, I forced an opening in his left guard—not a big one,
but enough—and drew the point of my blade across the top of his thigh. It was a shallow
slice, more an injury of pride than flesh, but it made Devin leap back away from me
and swear bitterly.

“Fuck you, Aral, I came to talk not fight! We don’t have to do this!”

“Actually, I think we do. If you really wanted to speak with me, you wouldn’t have
chosen to throw down your hood and try to cut my head off.”

“That was wrong. I admit it. But you drive me half out of my damned mind unless I’m
actively working to control myself. It started the day you killed Ashvik and it only
gets worse as the years go by. Do you know what it was like living in your fucking
shadow, yours and, later, Siri’s?” He shook his head. “No, of course you don’t. You’re
the great, goddess-blessed Aral Kingslayer, and nothing has ever come hard for you.”

He lunged at me then, the best and smoothest attack he’d made since the beginning
of the fight—low and fast and totally unexpected. It would have scored on Aral the
drunk, back in the days before I’d relearned what it was to be the motion instead
of making it. Now, my left-hand blade came down and around, catching the thrust and
twisting it aside without my consciously willing it. I
was
my swords again. Bringing my right-side blade across in a backhand response that
opened a long shallow cut on Devin’s chest was as natural as breathing.

“You can’t beat me, Devin, no more than you could when we were boys. If you really
want to talk, throw down your swords and we’ll see if I let you live.”

Something snapped in him then, I could see it in his eyes and the set of his jaw.
He didn’t say anything else, just started to bore in again. I was still in control,
but he pressed me harder now, attacking and attacking and attacking again, forcing
me back with hammer blow after hammer blow, though he couldn’t penetrate my guard.
It was insane and there was no way he could sustain such an attack for long.

At least, that’s what I thought right up until he willingly took a nasty cut across
the shoulder to get one of my blades in a position where he could catch it between
both of his own and shatter it. I had forgotten in my arrogance that where I was fighting
with mortal steel, Devin held the swords of the goddess, and suddenly I was fighting
one blade against two. Then, a moment later, I had to choose between
losing a hand and the shattering of my second sword and I was disarmed.

The reversal of fortune happened so fast that I hadn’t any time to prepare for it.
One minute I was winning, had won really. The next I was a corpse waiting only for
the fatal blow. I threw my hilts down beside my feet then and stood straight to take
the coming blow. If I was going to die at Devin’s hand, I was going to meet my fate
with unblinking eye and back unbowed.

And I
was
going to die. There was no way out for me here, not unarmed against a swordsman of
Devin’s stature and, we, all four of us, knew it.

Devin paused, too, drawing his swords back into the perfect position for a scissors
cut that would leave me in want of my head.

“Go ahead then,” I said. “But when you remember this moment, remember that you didn’t
defeat me. Your Namara-granted steel beat my mortal swords.”