Heaven's Needle (55 page)

He threw back his head and howled through his torn lips, a sound of raw and absolute anguish that made Asharre flinch back. Not for long, though; she recovered swiftly and closed the remaining distance.

Corban didn't seem to care. He got to his feet, panting with the effort, and hurled the loaded crossbow away. The weapon flew past Asharre and clattered on the far side of the pier, near the tunnel that led back to the smuggler's den.

“I can't hold off the whispers for long,” Corban wheezed. He pressed the heel of his good hand to his chin, digging the fingers into his flesh. The hand climbed up his face like a giant, spasming spider, dimpling his cheeks and brow. He stared at her wildly through the gaps between his fingers. “I have tried everything to keep them at bay.
Everything
. I cannot do it. He will not let me go. The men you killed, the dogs … they were not my guards. They were my jailors.
He
keeps me here. Captive. Isolated. He wants to pry the knowledge out of my skull—to make me finish my original plan, to make me sell madness and death to fools. Pain didn't break me, so he gave me awareness instead … let me remember, let me dwell on all the evils I've done. And when I can bear it no longer, when the weight of the guilt destroys me, I will beg him for oblivion … and he will have my mind. It will happen. He will win. Save me, lady.
Stop
me. You have a sword. Use it.
Use it
.”

“Gladly,” Asharre said, and thrust Aurandane into Corban's heart.

He died quietly. She had expected something more—a crack of thunder, a flash of sunfire,
something
—but there was none of that. Corban made a little grunt and doubled over onto the blade, clutching it like salvation. A muted blue glow shone from the hollow of his body where the sword went in; the darkness that permeated his flesh swirled like a windspout as it was drawn into the light and destroyed. In moments it was gone.

Asharre stepped away, withdrawing her sword. She nudged the corpse with a boot. It shifted limply, well and truly dead. Barely a third of Corban's original body remained on his bones.

She turned back to the tunnel, lowering the Celestian blade, and froze before taking a step.

“Drop your sword,” Malentir said. The slack-mouthed corpse stood next to him, Corban's crossbow in its hands. The Thorn's puppet held the weapon perfectly steady, its deadly quarrel leveled at her.

She curled her lip, refusing to show her fear. “I knew you were a traitor.”

“A traitor would have to be a member of your faith, no? I've never made any pretense of that. Now drop the sword, please, lest I be forced to kill you.”

She thought of other dead men with other crossbows. Other Maolites used to keep blood off Malentir's hands, so he could claim without lying that he had not murdered his companions. “As you killed Kelland?”

“He won't die. I need him alive. You, however, I do
not
need, and as you still cling to your weapon …” He shrugged, and the corpse's hands twitched.

The quarrel took her just below the left breast. There was a punch of pain as it sank in, but that was immediately swallowed by stranger and more frightening sensations.

Her flesh was melting and re-forming around the quarrel, losing whatever made her human and becoming something else, something alien and malign. Bubbles formed just below her skin, bulging and deflating it violently as they rose and popped. Feverish heat spread from her wound, yet her own blood was cold on her hands. The black grit that flecked it was burning hot, just as it had been in Kelland's wounds.

It all happened in an eyeblink, maybe two … and the horror of it, Asharre realized with a sudden snap of panic, was meant to distract her from the horror that would come. She dropped Aurandane and grabbed desperately at the quarrel, fumbling to pull it out before its blackfire stone exploded.

The quarrel's ungainly design saved her. The blackfire bolt hadn't dug in deeply. On the second tug it came loose. She tossed it onto the pier, where it bounced once and rolled off the planks, tumbling into the sea. A muted thunderclap sounded from the black depths, shaking the pier on its pilings … and Asharre fell to her knees, gasping in agony.

She was alive, but the poison was still in her. Hot tears ran down her cheeks. Clenching her teeth against terror and spasming pain, Asharre reached for the fallen sword.

Malentir stepped in front of her, nudging her hand away with his boot. Unhurriedly he stooped and picked up the Sword of the Dawn himself. “I will take that, thank you.”

“Why?” Asharre croaked. Aurandane blazed into life as soon as the Thorn lifted it, and the sword's blue-dawn glow made her eyes water anew. She raised a hand feebly to block it from her sight. “Why do you need the sword?”

He paused, tilting his head at her, and then shrugged and turned away. “I owe you no answers.”

Asharre grunted, hunching her back in a half-feigned shudder. Her pain was real—but it was rapidly subsiding into the familiar pain of an ordinary wound. Whether Malentir willed it or no, the Sword of the Dawn was burning out the venom in her veins, just as it had freed Corban from his bonds of madness and slain the corrupted dogs.
The gods' power cannot be separated from their purpose
. That truth had doomed Corban, but it might save her.

The shadows that surrounded Malentir were weakening in the sword's light as well. They fluttered wildly around him, trapped and burning. The sight gave her hope, and desperation gave her strength. If he realized his spell was failing, or saw that she was feigning her weakness, or decided
to kill her cleanly rather than prolonging her misery for his own magic …

She lunged forward, throwing herself against Malentir's ankles. Against any half-decent swordsman it would have been suicide, but the Thorn was no better trained than the Illuminers had been, and she took him unawares. He tumbled onto the pier, stripped of his grace for once, and Aurandane skittered across the boards.

Malentir scrabbled after the sword, trying to seize the weapon and get back to his feet at the same time. Asharre gave him no chance to do either. She punched him, again and again, swinging anything she could reach. The tattered remnants of his shadowshield stopped her first strikes, but they grew thinner with each blow, and soon her fists thudded into unresisting cloth and flesh. The exertion tore her own wound wider, but Asharre ignored its sting.

Finally she sat back on her heels, breathing hard. The Thorn lay crumpled on the planks, his own breaths a weak echo of hers.

She stepped over him, collecting the sword. Warmth flowed into her, restoring her strength and sealing the gash in her chest. Malentir lifted his head, looking at her with bruised, exhausted eyes.

“Vengeance?” he asked.

“Justice,” she said.

“Justice.” He laughed, weakly and without mirth. “For whom? Not the Celestians. They will not thank you for this.”

“No.” She had nothing to gain by telling him, not really … but she wanted him to know the truth before he died. “For my sister. Oralia. You killed her at Sennos Mill.”

“I had no part in it. I was in the tower, did you forget?”

“Your
kind
killed her.”

“She killed herself.”

Asharre pressed Aurandane's point to the soft skin of his throat, drawing a bead of blood. “What do you know of it?”

“What we all know.” He did not seem discomfited by the steel at his neck; he closed his eyes and leaned into its cold, cutting kiss. “We wanted her alive, as we wanted the Burnt Knight alive. He chose to aid us. Your sister chose otherwise.”

“Why?”

“For Duradh Mal. Why else? The evil that holds it is ancient, and rooted very deep … and beyond our power to burn out. We needed one of Celestia's chosen. More than one, perhaps.” He inhaled again, shuddering at the effort. A slow red line seeped from his throat where it pressed against the sword's edge. “If some misfortune befalls the Burnt Knight in Duradh Mal—and that is very likely; it is a cursed place, and he is too brave for his own good—we will take another of the Bright Lady's Blessed. And another, when that one fails. We will steal them and burn them like candles, and when one is exhausted or ends herself as your sister did, we will discard her and find another to light the halls of Ang'duradh. But
you
have a piece of the sun. Give us that, and we will have no further need of Celestia's mortal candles.”

Lies
, Asharre thought, but she remembered Kelland's words too well to believe that.

They've been trying to capture a Blessed for a while. For Duradh Mal, I think. If I help them, I will be the last
.

She looked at the blue-flamed steel in her hand. Weighed it, and thought of the horror that twisted Bitharn's face when she saw the Burnt Knight gasping near death, of her own blind grief when the headman of Sennos Mill told
her of Oralia's end. She thought of the novice Sun Knights in the Dome's practice halls—so few, so young, so determined to stand against all the world's evils—and wondered how many of them might die in the cursed depths of Duradh Mal, and how many more might be scarred by those deaths.

Was it surrendering to give up the sword?

Yes
, Asharre decided, but that was not all it was.

Let them take the poisoned bait. Let them have Carden Vale with its madness and its ghosts.
They use us
, Kelland had said.
Why can't we use them?

Bring them back to me
, the High Solaros had told her.

She withdrew the sword from the Thorn's neck.

Quickly, before Malentir could try some new treachery, Asharre stepped on each of his outflung hands, crushing the fingers underfoot. She would have cut his hands off, but she did not know if the sword could heal that. He made a small, hissing cry, recoiling violently, but she kicked him back down.

“Swear to me that if I give you Aurandane, you will not take the Burnt Knight into Duradh Mal and you will not capture any other of Celestia's faithful to use as your pawns,” she said. “Swear it on behalf of all Ang'arta.”

Malentir licked his blood-flecked lips. His eyes shone black as onyx in the sword's unearthly light. Asharre watched him closely, ready to slit the Thorn's throat at the first sign of betrayal, but the man only nodded, his mouth drawn tight with pain. “Very well. I will swear to it. Give us Aurandane, and we will release the Burnt Knight from his oath to purify Ang'duradh. We will take no more of the Bright Lady's servants, Blessed or not.”

“Good.” She struck each of his ankles hard with the flat of her sword, kicking his feet sideways at the same time.
Again the Thorn screamed; again Asharre ignored him. He'd need the pain to walk the shadows back to Ang'arta, and
she
needed the time to make good her escape. She was no Celestian, and his oath did nothing to protect her.

She thrust Aurandane between the slats of the crates at the other end of the pier. Inky smoke poured from the boxes of blackfire stone as the sword's magic began to consume them.

Asharre did not wait to see the end of it. She strode away, past the writhing Thorn and into the narrow tunnel that led back up to Cailan, and from there to the sweetness of the open sky.

“H
ave you seen Asharre?” Heradion asked.

Bitharn looked up from her book, resting a finger on the pages to mark her place. With her other hand she shaded her eyes against the late morning light.

She sat on a sun-warmed bench in the temple gardens. Lacy flowers sighed on the trees around her, shedding petals across the bench and surrounding paths. Heradion's cloak wore a dusting of white and yellow petals too; he'd been walking through the gardens for a while.

He looked … healthy. A little thinner, a little tired, but whole and well. Bitharn smiled. “When did you get back?”

“Yesterday. As soon as I arrived they hauled me up to the High Solaros and then it was questions, questions, questions all night long. Being interrogated by that man is more terrifying than anything I saw in Carden Vale. They finally let me go around midnight, but I was too exhausted to do anything but collapse. I thought a walk around the
gardens this morning would help me recover, and so it has. Anyway, have you seen Asharre?”

“She went by a while ago,” Bitharn said, pointing to the path that led to the herb gardens. “Walking her little yellow brindle. Why?”

“Oh, I was just hoping to tell her about all the blood-curdling adventures I had on my way back from Carden Vale.”

Bitharn raised her eyebrows, using polite disbelief to conceal a little tingle of alarm. Had one of the monsters of Carden Vale escaped? “That dramatic, were they?”

“No.” He stretched his arms over his head, grinning broadly. “No, they were not. In fact, I didn't have a single one. No bandits, no
maelgloth
, not so much as a thieving raccoon in my camp. The worst part was being forced to eat my own cooking on the road, and past Balnamoine, I didn't even have
that
bit of misery anymore. It was …” He lowered his arms. The grin subsided into a vastly contented smile. “… boring. Gloriously boring.”

“Gloriously?”

“Indeed.” Heradion paused. “Did you say Asharre was with a dog? I thought pets were forbidden in the temple.”

“They are. Generally. But when the groundskeepers tried to tell Asharre that, she said if the High Solaros wanted her to train his puppies, he was going to have to tolerate hers. No one's said a word against it since.”

“Wise of them.
I
wouldn't want to cross her over a dog.”

“Especially not that dog,” Bitharn murmured.

Heradion gave her a questioning look, but when she didn't immediately elaborate, he shrugged and turned toward the path she had indicated. “Well, I'll try to catch her. If you see her before I do, tell Asharre I'm looking for her.
I'd like to thank her for keeping me alive long enough to get so wonderfully bored on the way home.”