Six Celestial Swords (55 page)

“Recall it?” Tristus said in amazement. “I didn’t know it to begin with.” He sighed, pushing his hair out of his face with one hand. “Still, that doesn’t answer what Alere might be doing here. I don’t see any demon corpses lying about, but God that smell is awful enough to be the reek of devils. Do you suppose he’s hunting?”

“He never stops,” Shirisae replied, gazing into the woods. “He won’t, until his vengeance has been sated, and then he still may not.”

“Sounds rather bleak,” Tristus murmured, visually following the tracks toward what looked like a fire in the forest. However, it didn’t sound or smell like a natural blaze. It was eerie, like an orange fog had settled, though what would cause such a phenomenon completely eluded Tristus at the moment.

Eventually, he sighed. “Well, if we’re assuming that these tracks are indeed evidence of Alere’s passing, then I suppose we may as well push on and see what we can find. My feeling of guilt for having left the others compounds with each hour.”

They moved on, quickly discovering the swamp that was to blame for the foul odor in the woods, as well as a series of bridges that traversed the stinking marsh. They also took note of the many torches that provided the hazy orange glow, wondering who had placed them and who kept them lit. It seemed, in the deathly stillness, that they might not receive their answer. The place was clearly deserted. Only the torches remained, like candles kept lit in a mausoleum.

“Look there.”

Tristus recognized the white mare just as soon as Shirisae pointed her out, and so, apparently, did Blue Crane. The steed drifted ahead of Tristus, almost pulling him in its eager stride, before finally coming to a halt close to Breigh in the open doorway of a house that must have been grand at one time. The animals greeted each other with gentle contact and Tristus let them be, straying into the house’s dismal interior.

“Who lives here?” Tristus wondered aloud. “No fond acquaintance of Alere’s, I’m sure.”

Shirisae arrived beside him, her golden gaze moving slowly over the front hall. “Something resides here. I sense a dark presence.”

Tristus looked at her. “How dark? Demons?”

“Perhaps some,” Shirisae answered thoughtfully. “But there’s something else...”

Before she finished, Tristus walked back to Blue Crane and freed
Dawnfire
from the rest of his gear. “Guang Ci,” he said to the bodyguard, who still lingered in the doorway.

When the Fanese man looked, Tristus indicated the horses with a nod, then gestured toward the floor with his hand, hoping to convey instructions for the guard to remain and watch over their belongings.

Guang Ci inclined his head once, seeming to understand. Tristus returned to Shirisae, who held
Firestorm
upright while she continued to observe their surroundings. Her skin appeared to glow with an almost metallic sheen in the spear’s platinum light. With her black armor and in her stoic pose, she looked like a statue.

“Where do we begin?” Tristus finally asked.

Shirisae shook her head slightly, seeming distracted. “I do not know.
Firestorm
does not say.”

Tristus noticed the spear’s lack of eager shine, like a candle flame guttering, then saw that
Dawnfire
had gone quiet as well. “I guess we follow our instincts,” he said and started down the corridor.

He didn’t know if Shirisae was coming, until he caught a glimpse of the lady elf’s red hair in the corner of his vision. Relief swept over him in the same moments a sudden fear began to fill his thoughts. There was something oppressive about the air in this place, something menacing. Whatever had drawn Alere here, Tristus would be thankful to find the elf and leave as quickly as possible.

ALERE’S THOUGHTS WERE on the darkness that had swallowed him as he fled from his home years ago, a blackness so true as to negate all possibility of light, even that which sang from an enchanted blade. Once again
Aerkiren
was silent, stilled by the settling of ‘true night’ while Alere’s wandering evidently led him nearer to the sword called
Behel
. He wondered now if this weapon had been present during the attack on his home, if Malek Vorhaven had led the strike himself, and if the Night Blade possessed a power more terrible than any Alere had previously imagined; the power to quell its sibling Swords.

To betray them, Alere considered. Xu Liang admitted himself that he did not know everything about the Celestial Blades. Just because they could not be brought openly against each other did not mean that they could not find other methods of combating. Perhaps Vorhaven had mastered his Sword and discovered this method.

Could any of the Swords truly be mastered? Alere wondered next. And if so, could an individual such as Malek Vorhaven, keeper of the Shadow Folk, be the intended bearer of the Night Blade? How could the Swords fight against chaos with agents of chaos possessing them? Or had Vorhaven not been the chosen bearer and been killed long ago, having attracted the Keirveshen in overwhelming numbers? Perhaps he had not been controlling them at all.

Alere didn’t have any answers, but he was beginning to feel a familiar fear rising in his heart, reaching outward, gripping at his lungs and making it difficult to breathe.

From one fancifully decorated, yet dismal room to the next…out of one abandoned palatial environment into another, Alere moved through the manor. Everything was in order, clean as if tended to on a regular basis, yet it seemed not lived in. It was as if the master of the house had passed on years ago and the servants still carried out their duties as if in a trance, oblivious to their abandonment. It seemed that way, however Alere had yet to see a single servant. He was beginning to wonder just how long ago the gypsy had last visited this place.

In a bedroom with plush red carpet and a large bed with tall, spiral-carved posts, Alere decided to sit for a moment, and gain control of his thoughts. They, like him, had been wandering aimlessly, escaping the consuming fear by ignoring it. This feeling was a trick of the Keirveshen. He’d felt it enough times before to know. It had nothing to do with Vorhaven, or the Night Blade.

“You’ve wasted your time. This place is abandoned except for a few lingering shadows. Dispose of them and be on your way.”

Seconds after speaking the words to himself, someone entered the room, as if in direct contradiction.

Alere stood at once when the woman walked in. He gripped
Aerkiren
with the intention of slaying the intruder, and was scarcely inclined to change his mind upon seeing that the individual was a simple chamber maid. He knew better than to be deceived by appearances and there was something unsettling about this woman’s aura, besides. It didn’t help that she utterly failed to acknowledge him. She carried folded linen in her arms and came toward the bed, as if accustomed to attending to unexpected visitors and otherwise minding her own affairs.

Alere took a step toward her. “I have business with your lord. Tell me where I can find him.”

She didn’t even look at him. She continued forward and Alere put his hand out to stop her colliding into him. A dreadful sensation of cold racked his body, making him shudder when the woman passed through him. Claws of ice scored his soul, and he almost dropped his sword. He managed to clutch the hilt while he stumbled away, confusion attacking his senses.

Stabbing
Aerkiren
into the carpet, he dropped onto one knee and leaned against the sword, placing his hand over his heart as it throbbed violently in its cage. He’d been in the presence of more than one spirit, but he’d never had one pass through him before. It was a frightening experience, and almost a paralyzing one. The dread and confusion that resulted of direct contact between life and death threatened to take him over.

Alere fought for control, and regained it just in time to be aware of the voice that entered the room. It was a man, laughing. Alere looked for another dead servant, wanting to be out of its path if it should come through the door. He would wait for it to walk by him, then extinguish both spirits with
Aerkiren’s
help, just as he had the wraiths he and the others encountered on the Flatlands. However, no other ghosts came. The voice continued, bodiless.

“This is amusing,” the unseen man said. “I should like to watch you wander about for many more days in your vain search—perhaps years—but I am currently not feeling so patient. I have been expecting you, little elf. Come, entertain me with your plans of revenge. I should very much like to hear them as I watch you expire.”

Alere glared at no one. “Are you Malek Vorhaven?” He scarcely waited for a reply. “Answer me!”

Again, the laughter. “You would make demands? An infant cut prematurely from the womb, starving for lack of a mother’s milk, hoping to fill the deep emptiness in your stomach with whatever sustenance comes to you. Darkness brushes your lips and you draw it in, like a suckling foal, always hungry, always eager. Eager for revenge!”

“I will not be moved by your taunts,” Alere informed the bodiless stranger. “You
are
Vorhaven. You are in league with the shadows!”

“In league with them?” the voice echoed. “My dear young hunter, I command them, as it is I who created them. The gypsy did not tell you everything, but come. Come to me, elf, and I shall reveal all to you!”

“Where?” Alere demanded.

No one answered.

Alere rose and stalked into the hallway, at once forgetting the ghost behind him. His determination was renewed. He would kill Malek Vorhaven. It didn’t occur to him immediately that the man would have to be several centuries old to have been in any way responsible for the foul plague that had been turning men into demons well before his grandfather was born. Such a man would have to be either a very powerful sorcerer, who had used magic to lengthen his life, or no man at all. Thoughts of revenge—of finally ensuring the safety of what remained of his family and his people—blinded Alere to those considerations, as well as to the fact that
Aerkiren
had begun to sing once again.

Alere moved through the passages of the manor, accompanied by the glow of his Sword, like one bewitched…and perhaps he had been. Somehow, he knew where to go. Somehow, he knew which turns and which doorways would take him to the architect of his nightmares. He was halfway across a carpeted bridge that spanned a grand ballroom, when an unexpected voice called up to him.

“Alere Shaederin! God in Heaven, I’ve been looking everywhere for you! I feel like I’ve been roaming through this forsaken house for days! What are you doing here?”

Alere glanced at the human beneath him, but his gaze quickly returned to his destination; a door on the other side of the bridge. He knew it would lead him to Vorhaven, to revenge against his father’s killer. He had no time for the knight. Without so much as a word to Tristus, whose presence he scarcely wondered at in his trance, Alere pressed on.

“WHERE IS HE going?” Tristus asked, looking for a way up to the bridge and quickly forgetting the matter when his search led him to discover that the ballroom he and Shirisae had entered only moments ago suddenly had no exit. He knew there was something horribly foul about this place—he’d felt the malevolence growing heavier with every step through the garishly lavish rooms that seemed to serve no one—but he was just beginning to feel real terror plying at his nerves now. “Shirisae, tell me you see a way out of here.”

Again, he was ignored by an elf. Not only was he ignored, but both Alere and Shirisae had abandoned him as well. Neither of them were anywhere in sight. He stood alone on a sea of black and white tiles, dreading what this emptiness was leading to.

He knew better than to hope for loneliness. He had been alone already, and survived it. Loneliness was too pedestrian an assault now. The enemy in his mind—for surely he was dreaming now—would not rest until he was destroyed utterly, torn apart by anger and despair; the combined elements that awakened the darkness within him. He could feel it rising when the first of the armored figures found their way into a room that had no doors.

They simply appeared, rising through the floor, bleeding through the walls, taking up their assigned positions in the reenactment of a dark dream. It was a reality that had become dream, a haunting memory that could never be forgotten and, as Tristus had feared, it could never be escaped.