Fallen Blade 04 - Blade Reforged (21 page)

This time I recognized the voice. “Harad?” I called.

The old librarian stepped out of the mouth of the passage, nodding as Shanglun slipped
to one side. “Yes, and I’m quite put out with you. I do not like to reveal my secrets,
and Shang is by far the greatest of those.”

Not to mention the prettiest,
added the dragon.
And the wisest.

A couple of strokes took me back to the side of the tank, where I tried to pull myself
up out of the water and failed. It was only then that I registered the enormous drain
of nima flowing away down the line that connected me to my shadow familiar, a sure
sign his injuries were worse than he’d admitted.

“I seem to have a problem,” I said, as I made another feeble effort at dragging myself
out of the water.

“Shang,” said Harad.

The water beneath my feet suddenly solidified then rose, lifting me up so that I stood
on a level with the dry floor of the room that held the tank. As I stepped from water
to stone, I had a brief impression of the reservoir filled entirely with snaking loops
of dragon—green and blue and gold, yet clear at the same time. I started to walk toward
Harad, but my knees buckled and I went down in a heap instead.

The librarian hurried over and squatted down beside me. “Your ki is very weak and
it’s getting weaker by the moment.” He snapped his fingers and an intense white light
appeared just above his palm. It threw my shadow starkly
back and away, into the water that held his dragon familiar. “Shang, the Shade needs
strengthening.”

The dragon’s head collapsed into a rough column of water that splashed back into the
tank. A moment later the entire contents went as black as ink, making it impossible
to see where my shadow lay. I felt the drain on my nima quickly slow and then fade
to nothing. After a few minutes, the flow reversed itself and a fierce cold strength
began to pour back through my connection to Triss. Without really thinking about it,
I rolled back onto my shoulders and palms and then flipped forward onto my feet.

Harad rose from his crouch, and the water cleared, revealing my shadow running back
and down, across the floor of the tank. But only briefly. As I watched, the shadow
twisted into an elongated and far more serpentine version of Triss than his usual
form. With a flick of his wings he rose out of the water and looped himself around
me three or four times in a constrictor’s hug.

“I! Feel! Better!” he belled.

Harad closed his fist, putting out the light, and Triss dropped back into his normal
dragon shape, stretching himself out on the floor between us.

Then, Triss bowed deeply, first to Harad, then to Shanglun. “Thank you. Thank you,
both.”

“I begin to see why you thought you might be able to do something for Faran where
other healers could not,” I said.

Harad smiled. The great dragons were known for their near miraculous ability to cure
the worst of diseases and injuries. Many of the healing springs of legend had housed
a dragon whose mere presence in the waters served as a remedy for the more common
sorts of ailments without any conscious effort on the dragon’s part. It explained
Harad’s age as well. True dragons lived as long as they wished. To have one companion
a human was rare indeed, so rare that there were no schools of magery involved. Dragons
bonded with mages solely on affinity, unlike the vast majority of familiar pairings.
No ritual or training of the sort I had
undergone to shape me into a proper companion for a Shade could ever hope to bring
such a linkage about. Dragons happened. They did so when and if they wanted to, and
that was all there was to it.

“Now,” said Harad, “let me get you some tea.”

*

“Thauvik’s
one of the restless dead.” I took a sip of my boiled leaves and pretended to like
it. “I’m guessing that he’s risen.”

“Because Maylien’s sister Sumey was?” asked Harad.

“That and the way he’s holding up. Like Sumey he seems almost entirely human, and,
also like Sumey, he’s in a position to bathe in buckets of human blood if he needs
to. That’s the only way I know of for one of the restless dead to keep the appearance
of life and to hold on to some of their mind, and I’m only sure that it works for
the risen.”

Harad snorted. “That’s because you don’t read enough. There are at least a dozen types
of restless dead who can keep or put on the appearance of life by feeding on the ki
of the living. The blood bath is merely the crudest and most wasteful way to accomplish
that.”

“Does that mean you don’t believe that Thauvik’s one of the risen?” Triss asked from
the place he’d sprawled on one of Harad’s couches.

“No, not at all. It’s certainly the most likely explanation, and the steadily increasing
blood madness that goes along with it fits the way Thauvik has ruled well enough.”
Harad’s eyes went briefly far away. “I wonder if it wasn’t true of Ashvik as well.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Long ago, when you told me about the night you killed Ashvik, you mentioned that
there was a big red marble tub in his bedroom. It struck me as a bit odd then, though
not enough to comment on it. Later, you mentioned a very similar tub in Sumey’s torture
room. Until this moment it had never occurred to me to connect the two.”

“But Thauvik’s heart wasn’t beating. That was how I realized something was wrong when
I tried to kill him. I stabbed Ashvik in the heart, too, and…”

I thought back to that night and tried to remember whether I’d felt it beating through
my swords. It was a long time ago, and he was the first man I’d ever killed.
Would
I have noticed? Somehow, I didn’t think so.

“I guess he could have been,” I said, finally. “But how would that happen? Not one,
but two kings of Zhan in a row taken by the curse of the risen, and an heir. It’s
not like the restless dead are just roaming the halls of the palace.”

“Actually,” said Triss, “they are. Or, were, anyway. When we killed Ashvik we had
to fight off the attack of that risen that came up out of the garderobe.”

“That was part of Ashvik’s security system,” I replied. “It’s different. The Elite
would never have let the ones in the sewers get close to the king.”

“It was in the garderobe. How much closer would it need to get?”

“The only reason it was able to come at us was because I pulled the spill pipe out
to make an escape route. It wouldn’t have fit otherwise.”

“I think you’re looking at this the wrong way,” said Harad.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What if the king didn’t get the curse from the risen in his sewers?” he asked. “What
if he gave it to them?”

I frowned. “I think I missed a step there.”

“Look, Thauvik was no ordinary victim of the risen curse. Neither was Sumey. If that
tub in Ashvik’s bedroom was what I think it was, then Ashvik wasn’t either. They all
knew enough about the curse to use blood to control its progression, and they all
started doing so early enough in the process that they retained their human appearance
and much of their mental faculties. That doesn’t sound like an accident. That sounds
like a plan.”

“You think the royal family of Zhan is deliberately
converting themselves into creatures of the undead?” I asked incredulously. “Now,
that’s
crazy.”

“They also surrounded themselves with risen in more decayed form as watchdogs,” said
Harad. “Or, at least, Ashvik and Sumey did. We don’t know about Thauvik. They were
using the curse to their benefit.”

“Well,” I asked, “if they were converting the whole family, why not Maylien?”

“Because she’s a mage,” Triss said suddenly. “The curse wouldn’t work on Bontrang.
You might be able to give Maylien the curse and let her die only to raise her corpse,
but you couldn’t bring Bontrang back with her. He would die when she did, but he wouldn’t
rise again. If you make Maylien into one of the risen, there’s no way to hide that
you’ve done so.”

Harad stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Hmm. Aral, when you and Maylien killed Sumey,
you believed that she was trying to take the throne from Thauvik?”

“Not right then, no, but when Maylien found the adoption papers later, it became pretty
clear that was her plan. Why do you ask?”

“I’m not sure. It just feels like the right question, and when you get to be my age
you come to trust your feelings on such things. If Thauvik gave the curse to Sumey
after getting it from Ashvik, wouldn’t he have taken more precautions to prevent her
blood madness from being directed his way?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that’s how Devin and Colonel Deem got involved…No, that doesn’t
make sense either. There’s something important we’re missing here. I just can’t believe
anyone would voluntarily submit themselves to the restless dead.”

Harad looked unhappy but nodded. “Well, probably not to the risen curse anyway. It’s
simply too destructive over the longer term. But I still don’t think that infecting
two kings and a baroness who might be queen happens accidentally.”

“But what would anyone get out of driving the rulers of Zhan blood mad?” asked Triss.

“I don’t know,” said Harad. “But, figure that out, and you will likely find the one
responsible.” He poured me another cup of tea. “The more important question is what
will you do about it? I imagine this changes the calculus of the civil war.”

“I don’t know. There’s no way to kill Thauvik quickly with the weapons we have to
hand. That means assassination is probably no longer an option.”

“If you had your goddess-given swords, you could do it easily enough,” Triss said,
raising his head hopefully.

I shot him a hard look. “Even if I were willing to reclaim them, it would take two
months’ travel time to get to the temple, and another two months back. Do you really
want to leave Maylien alone and fighting against a risen king and two rogue Blades
for four months?”

Triss’s wings sagged. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“I could probably shorten the time it would take to get you there,” said Harad. “But
there’s no way around the time it would take you to return.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m not going.” I paused as a thought occurred to me.
“Harad?”

“Yes, Aral.”

“Why are you helping me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve always known you were a powerful mage, but I’ve only recently started to realize
how powerful. You companion one of the great dragons. You could probably be a Magearch
if you wanted to be, at one of the university cities like Ar or Uln. Despite that,
you’re running a private library in Tien. You rarely venture beyond its walls, yet
you keep helping me.”

“Oh, that.” Harad smiled. “I
was
Magearch of Uln, long ago and under a different name. I won’t say which. It got old
after half a century or so, as most things do. Even the exercise of power. I do not
generally exert myself beyond these walls because I don’t find the idea particularly
interesting.”

“Then why do it for me?”

“I would have thought that it was obvious. You are my friend, young Aral, one of the
very few I have who still live. You caught my interest the first time you broke in
here. First because of what you were, a Blade breaking into a library. Then, and far
more importantly, because of your reasons. You simply wanted to read a book to make
the world go away for a while. ‘A slight volume,’ you said, a whimsy. How could I
not love you for that? One of the world’s great assassins breaking into my library
for the simple pleasure of reading a bit of escapist fluff?”

I blushed.

“Since then, you have never once asked me to do anything more for you than find you
the occasional book to borrow or read here.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “I asked you to lend me your balcony for a meeting with
the Durkoth last year, and that reading room to speak with Fei just a few weeks ago.”

Harad gave me a half-pitying look. “And you think those are greater things than my
letting you leave the building with one of my charges without being a member or properly
checking it out? Truly?”

“I…Wait, are you putting me on?”

“Not really, no, though I’m probably enjoying telling you the truth rather more than
I might if it didn’t so obviously confuse you. I trained some of your teachers, Aral,
as I’ve told you before. I believed that your order was doing important and necessary
work and I grieved at the fall of your temple.”

I looked down at my feet. I couldn’t bear the weight of sympathy in the old man’s
eyes.

“I have done both great good and great harm in my life,” continued Harad. “I have
the capacity for both still within me, but I have chosen to turn away from the use
of power, to disengage with the world. I no longer have the drive or the certainty
necessary. Because of that, I have made rules for myself that I am loath to violate.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t see the need for the world to change. In you, I see
someone who would make the change that I no longer find it wise to attempt. And so,
perhaps foolishly, it gives me pleasure to help a friend who still believes he can
change things.”

“And that’s why you sent Shanglun to rescue us today?” asked Triss.

“No. I did no such thing. Your battle happened beyond the bounds I have set for myself.
What Shang did, he did of his own free choice and with no prompting from me.”

“But until now, we’ve never even seen him before,” I said. “Why would he do that?”

“You
have
seen him before, though you may not have known it at the time. About a year ago,
in the bay, when you were with the Dyad. He helped you then, rousing Tien Lun, just
as he helped you today, and for much the same reasons. Shang has seen
you
many times. Through my eyes. If you look deeply enough into them, you will see him
looking back. He is one of the great dragons, and I am his bond-mate. I am never without
him and he knows that I care about you. Go ahead, look.”