Mythborn: Rise of the Adepts (36 page)

The boy continued his spin, landing and facing Niall with his weapon pointed on a spot directly between the young prince’s eyes. As their gazes met, Niall knew he had hesitated too long and lost a critical advantage. Worse, one look at Tej’s crumpled form and he knew he had also failed his cousin.

Niall started to back up, but the boy moved again with that blurring speed. He closed his eyes and raised his weapon, hoping to block, but met empty air. He then felt the stiff steel side of the boy’s weapon batter him across the chest. He lurched forward and felt a sharp blow and an explosion of pain to the back of his head.

His vision blackened and he fell forward, but strangely, could still hear. He heard running feet in the hallway and Ash’s voice yelling, “Halt!” Then a final strike with what felt like a booted heel crashed into his head and he felt no more.

* * * * *

Ash surveyed the scene before him. The guard had reached them even as he heard the cry for help. They had immediately raced down the stairwell and into the hallway, only to find Alyx, Niall, Tej, and the remaining guard down, perhaps dead. The intruder didn’t look like a nomad, but that meant nothing. They could have hired an assassin to enter the fortress and Ash was taking no chances.

He moved forward, his sword held in a relaxed grip. Yetteje was nearest, so Ash moved slowly over to the princess. Without taking his eyes off the intruder, he listened and heard the faint sound of Tej’s breathing. At least the girl’s alive, he thought with relief. He turned his full attention to the would-be-assassin and realized for the first time that he was a boy, no older than Niall himself.

“Who are you?” Ash demanded. He raised an open hand and said, “Put down your weapon and we can talk.”

The boy put his sword point on the back of Niall’s unconscious head. The meaning was clear.

“Spill the blood of the crowned prince and yours will surely follow,” promised the armsmark.

The boy looked down at Niall’s prostrate form in shock, and Ash used that moment of distraction to attack.

He moved in, aiming for the boy’s sword arm, hoping to disarm him quickly. But the boy reacted with the reflexes of a snake. Instead of jerking his hand away, he lowered his shoulder and moved into Ash, getting under the blow and striking the armsmark in the chest. The boy was good, thought Ash,
very good.

The blow wasn’t strong, but it knocked the armsmark back and off balance. The boy followed with a short heel kick to the armsmark’s forward shin. This locked Ash’s knee backward painfully, but Ash knew what was coming next.

He aimed three lightning-quick strikes to the boy’s head, only to see all three blocked and turned. Before the boy could complete his counter attack with a finishing stroke, the armsmark went with the pain in his forward knee and twisted to one side, falling to the ground and rolling.

The liquid silver blade swished through empty air and then turned, point down. As he rolled, he saw the boy’s sword bury itself into the space his head had just occupied.

Ash continued his motion and used his legs to trap the boy’s in a scissor hold. The boy fell facedown to the floor, pinned under Ash’s weight and immobilized by his crisscrossed legs. Ash never hesitated, bringing his elbow into a short, brutal arc that came down hard on the back of the boy’s head, smashing it to the stone floor. In an instant, it was over.

He felt the boy go limp and quickly pushed his sword away, then moved over to check the prince. Praise the Lady, he thought, Niall was alive. He then made his way over to Alyx. She, too, lived. Something was strange. An assassin who did not kill? Ash was struck by the odds of having all of them survive an encounter with someone of this boy’s skill.

He turned his attention back to the intruder, who was unconscious and except for the painful bruise he’d likely have on his head, unharmed.

This boy had training—real training from someone who knew how to fight and how to kill. He remembered the boy’s concentration, his breathing. So why were they still alive? Something didn’t fit, and Ash didn’t like unsolved puzzles, especially those that pointed to
luck
as the answer.

Ash looked at the clothes and the weapon. It was silver, with a green gem set in the pommel. Silver runes danced down its keen edges. For a moment, time seemed to slow and Ash felt a strange stirring within him. The sword was beautiful, more beautiful than any he had ever seen. Then, almost as a whisper, Ash thought he heard a word -
beloved.

He stood transfixed, the echo of her voice in his head. Then a guard came and placed a hand on his arm, and he snapped back to the here and now, the voice and the stirring forgotten.

“Are you injured, sir?” the guard inquired, concerned. Many men didn’t notice wounds in battle that later proved deadly.

Ash ignored him, his mind turning over the facts. With that training, the boy could be a very highly paid agent. The question was, whose? Still, doubt surfaced when Ash considered his age. Who would train a child to this level of expertise, and more importantly, why? Most of what the boy wore seemed to be close-fitting armor designed for unimpaired movement. It was of a style Ash didn’t recognize, but it was definitely
not
nomadic.

Motioning to the guards he said, “Search him and secure his items, then take him to a cell. Bind him there and report to the Firstmark.” The guard gestured to his compatriots, who moved quickly to obey the order. Ash winced as he put weight on his injured knee and added, “And send a medic. We’re all going to need one.”

Journal Entry 8

My sense of time is gone. Weeks or even months may have passed. It makes no difference, for it all feels like an eternity. I cannot return through the Gate. Betrayed by dragons is the same as forgotten. What can I do, except endure?

The young Aeris (I have given up on calling them “infinitesimal particles” it is too much to write, forgive me) permeate the planes and do not need the rifts. They suffuse all things, incoherent power from undirected thoughts and dreams. I envy their freedom.

I know I create them, but what if everyone does? They do not seem to be able to manifest themselves except through the will of others. I burn through them easily to create fire, home, and hearth. A part of me enjoys it. In my own way and out of spite, I free them too. They are easy fodder for use by our Way, but in that action lies our undoing. Using them creates more, and that eventually gives rise to greater beings, the Aeris Lords.

I have come to understand a truth, something I did not understand when I stood before Rai’kesh. Aeris Lords are given shape, not by one person’s vision or will, but instead by our entire people’s beliefs.

Given no impedance, they run amok, for they are nothing less than children demanding whatever they want, with the power to enforce it. Lilyth is one of these, and our world suffers from her attention.

If every belief from our world has given life to a god or goddess, I wonder how, or even if, these Aeris Lords can be defeated...

T
HE
S
CYTHE

When your opponent’s intention is in doubt,

Watch his eyes,

For the eyes are the windows to his soul.

—Kensei Shun, The Lens of Shields

S
ilbane awoke suffocating, his nostrils clogged. Blowing hard caused chunks of dried blood to come free, but with that came a gush of warm, fresh blood and pain. Still, his breathing became easier. He spat coppery blood out, imagining how gruesome he must look, but thankful to be alive to feel anything at all. Then, he took stock of his surroundings and realized he sat, secured to a pole in a tent, on hard earth. Around him were various instruments of war, razor spears and barbed whips, coiled and ready, offering any willing hand the release of their deadly intent.

“You look rested.”

Silbane started at the voice, coming from just outside of his field of view. Straining, he turned to identify the speaker, then cursed with pain as his neck and jaw protested. It was clear his face had borne the brunt of that last nomad’s attack, and it was likely the damage was not just superficial. Silbane centered his thoughts, reaching for the Way to heal himself. Nothing happened.

“That won’t work.” Soft footsteps followed and red robes slowly came into view. They belonged to a tall man, striking because of his calm demeanor and confidence. Most of all, the man projected
power.
“I’ve blocked you. Surprisingly, not very difficult,” the man continued. He stooped to come eye to eye with his captive and his pale gaze narrowed, but he said nothing else. Strangely, the man reminded Silbane of someone.

Silbane croaked through a bruised and parched throat, “Who...?”

The man moved forward and offered a few drops of water from a small skin. Then, as the mage drank, he carefully offered more. Silbane could feel strength flow back into him as the cool water eased his wounded throat, but that moisture brought with it a fit of coughing that wracked his chest. Fresh blood flowed again, and with it more chunks of dried grit and blood. Silbane spat again, clearing his mouth, then he looked back up.

For his part, the man looked unperturbed. He smiled and offered a bit more water, then said in a soft voice, “I am the Scythe. Like the reaper’s tool, I ascend those found worthy, or wanting.” His head tilted to one side, as if he looked past Silbane and at something else. “I judge you worthy, but I am curious.”

Silbane winced at the new pains he felt from renewed circulation, but his voice was stronger with the water. “I owe you my life.” It was not a question, but a statement of fact mixed with an involuntary undercurrent of thanks.

The man nodded, settling back onto a waiting stool. “I would speak with you plainly. I have ways of finding out what I want, but if you cooperate, I promise things will go more comfortably.” When Silbane did not respond, the man continued, “I will tell you I side with the Way.”

The man settled back, as if they sat across from each other in the comfort of a home. “Shall we begin?” he said simply. “You are Silbane Darius Petracles, noble born of House Petracles, now a master in an order of monks residing on an isle in the Shattered Sea. I won’t go into all the boring details, but I know where you’re from and all the inconsequential shames anyone has after a life as long as yours.” The man paused, then added, “You are a
good
man. What I don’t know is, why?”

Silbane did not say a word, not trusting himself to speak. This man seemed to know too much already.

“You see, my knowledge is incomplete. For the past century, the people of Edyn, people of
power,
have been preparing for the Gate of Lilyth to appear. Why do you come only now, and who are your companions?”

“Companions?” Silbane asked innocently, spitting out more blood.

The man leaned forward and smiled, but the smile never reached his eyes. “Really? The camp you made was for two people. I could assume it was for you and your unfortunate friend.” The man gestured to the left and when Silbane turned his head, he was shocked to silence. “Except that while I healed you, in your delirium you emphatically mentioned someone named Arek. You were quite insistent he needed protection. You seemed almost... ashamed.”

Silbane’s eyes were locked on the space behind the red-robed man. There was Rai’stahn, upright and crucified to a circle of iron. He hung limp, the arrow still sticking out from the back of his head. Silbane drew a shuddering breath and quickly looked away.

From the way his head lay canted at an unnatural angle, he could tell Rai’stahn’s neck was broken. Despair washed through him at the great dragon’s death, if for no other reason than the loss it implied. Rai’stahn and his kind were ancient, representing a knowledge of the world most races had yet to learn.

It was true they had faced each other in combat and he knew death would have been the outcome for one of them. Still, he believed Rai’stahn had withheld for the same reasons he had, because death may not have been the only answer.

Now the great dragon had been felled by a nomad arrow, an injury impossible except for the form Silbane had trapped him in, and the weakening he claimed resulted from contact with his apprentice. Another testament to the idea that Arek’s magical nullification was more powerful than he had suspected.

Could Rai’stahn have been right? Could the world really lie in the balance over Arek? He was stuck here now, and his apprentice was gone, lost to whatever destination the Far’anthi had sent him, likely Bara’cor.

Further complicating things was this person, who seemed connected to the Way. Likely this was the person the lore father had sensed, the helper of the nomads. Silbane had found him, but now sat helpless and captured. The master felt his mission slipping to failure, before it even started.

“It’s quite simple,” Scythe said, interrupting Silbane’s thoughts. He leaned in, his dark red robes closing about him like wings, and asked in a soft voice, “Who is Arek?”

C
APTURED