Unbroken Chain Read online

  “I do have hope, my Lord. But still I beg you be wary,” Natan said. “We know nothing of this shadar-kai. If he comes here, he comes from the Shadowfell.”

  “You mean that he will not be like us,” Uwan said, nodding. “I understand you. We will take precautions.”

  “Not only that, my Lord,” Natan said. “Remember, when this shadar-kai comes, he will bring the fire. I have seen it.”

  “Perhaps,” Uwan said. “Perhaps not. Trust Tempus, Natan. He will not lead us astray. Now, tell me this shadar-kai’s face—draw it if you must. I’ll send out patrols before Exeden chimes. We’ll find him.”

  “Yes, my Lord,” Natan answered.

  “Blessed be Tempus’s sword,” Uwan said, touching his chest.

  Natan mirrored the gesture. “Blessed be us all,” he replied.

  The shadar-kai patrol traveled across the plain of the Shadowfell above for a day and a night before they came upon the Aloran Tor and the kindling tree. Four shadow hound corpses lay sprawled beneath the needle branches like rotting fruit. Among them lay the body of a young shadar-kai man.

  Cree moved swiftly from hound to hound, prodding with his katars to make certain they were all dead. Had he been his brother, Skagi, he would simply have chopped off their heads with his falchion. Blunt, Cree thought, and unnecessary.

  When the patrol had secured the area, Cree sheathed his weapons. “Is he dead?” Cree asked Skagi, who was kneeling next to the prone shadar-kai.

  Skagi bent over and looked for the rise and fall of the shadar-kai’s breath. “He breathes,” Skagi said, his gaze roving over the bites covering the shadar-kai’s body. “I don’t know how, but he lives.”

  Cree came up beside him. “That’s him,” he said. “See the scars on his neck? Three claw marks under the jaw, and part of the left earlobe missing too, exactly like Uwan said.”

  Skagi nodded. His muscular arms were relaxed at his sides, but his hands never strayed far from his falchion. He went bare-chested to show off a field of dark green tattoos covering the left half of his body like a shroud. He wore black breeches and unlike Cree, his head was shaved. His lower lip was slightly deformed from a dagger slash, the flesh crooked and jutting as if he had something lodged in his teeth.

  “He’s been out on the plain for days,” Skagi said. “No telling how long he’s been unconscious.”

  The shadar-kai’s lips were cracked, and his face was swollen and chapped by the vicious winds. Thick braids of long gray hair were blood-matted. Cree thought the man looked about Skagi’s age, not yet cresting his twenty-fifth winter.

  Skagi picked up the shadar-kai’s chain lying beside him. “He carries a reaping weapon. Looks like he cut the hounds up fine with it.”

  “Where do you think he came from?” Cree asked.

  “Not our concern,” Skagi said. “Make a litter,” he added, instructing the rest of the patrol, and pointing at Cree. “Help me clog this bleeding. Our only job now is to get him back to Ikemmu alive. Uwan can deal with him.”

  “The Watching Blade sees all,” Cree agreed, and they set to work.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  AWARENESS RETURNED SLOWLY TO ASHOK’S MIND. WITH HIS EYES closed, he thought he was still lying on the open plain, but everything about his body felt wrong. His chest rose and fell without impediment—the hound no longer held him down with its putrid weight—and there was no fire in his breath, no pain eating up his lungs.

  He spread his fingers against the ground and felt softness, cloth brushing against his bare skin. He had almost forgotten what “soft” felt like.

  Not the earth then, or tree needles, but something else entirely, something he’d never felt before. Ashok’s thoughts drifted—was it death? His flesh in the mouths of the hounds? But there was no pain.

  Peace numbed his mind and threatened to carry him off to unwaking sleep. His soul was a separate entity from his body, towed on a string carried by the bloodthirsty raven.

  The raven waiting in the kindling tree … A drifting soul …

  Not yet.

  Ashok lurched awake and sat upright. His head swam as his spirit slammed back into the corporeal and tried to hold on. Shivering violently at the displacement, the weight and weightlessness, he dragged in breath after breath, his hands clawing for the dagger on his belt. It wasn’t there.

  Wildly, Ashok felt around for something sharp, anything that would cut. His skin went numb, first at the fingertips, then up his arms. Everything was soft, blunt edges, nothing that could hurt him.

  “Not yet!” Air hissed through clenched teeth, with a whimper like that of a dying animal.

  Ashok put his hand to his mouth, his teeth finding the soft flesh of his inner wrist. Biting down, he sighed in light-headed triumph when the skin broke and pain shot up his arm. Blood filled his mouth, making him gag, but Ashok didn’t care. As soon as the pain took over, the numbness went away, and focus returned.

  Not yet. He wasn’t going to fade. Not yet.

  When he’d taken in enough of the pain, Ashok dropped his arm and spat a bloodstain on the stone floor. Wiping his mouth, he tried to get his bearings.

  He was in a narrow chamber, lit faintly by lanterns fastened halfway up the walls. His vision adjusted to the low light, and he could perfectly see the line of beds that filled the chamber. A few were occupied with sleeping forms, including the bed next to his, but the majority sat empty.

  Ashok looked down at himself. A thin blanket covered the lower half of his body. The cloth and the bedding underneath him were the softness he’d felt. He’d been stripped to the waist, and his weapons were gone. He didn’t even have his boots.

  The wounds in his thigh and shoulder had been bandaged and treated with herbs. Ashok could smell them when he touched the wrappings, and he felt a slight heat. He touched his forehead and realized he was sweating, yet the chamber was cold. The bites were infected.

  Whoever brought him here had taken pains to treat him, and had probably saved his life. His captors obviously didn’t intend to kill him.

  Not yet.

  Ashok slipped from his bed and moved around the room, thankful for his bare feet in that he stepped, without sound, right up to the other beds. The sleeping occupants were bandaged as carefully as he was, and none of them had any weapons to hand.

  All were shadar-kai.

  He’d been captured by another enclave. Ashok cursed his ill fortune at not having bled to death sooner out on the plain. The only reason he was still alive was to provide information. His captors would torture him, to start. And when he refused to break, they would bring a wizard in to tear open his mind and take from it every bit of information on the strength of his enclave, its numbers and resources. He had to find a way out or a quick death before that happened.

  The chamber had only one door. Ashok went to it and put his ear against the wood. He heard muffled voices, at least three.

  “Three guards,” Ashok murmured. He tapped the door in soundless contemplation. “Any chance you have my weapons, faceless friends? Or can I borrow your own to kill you?”

  Behind him, Ashok heard a gasp. He spun, his hand going for a chain that no longer hung at his hip.

  The shadar-kai in the bed next to his was sitting up, half hanging over the side of the bed. He clutched the frame, his body jerking in spasms, one leg held at an unnatural angle, as if he wanted nothing more than to shed the appendage. He’d been wounded in the thigh, like Ashok, and the wound had reopened, filling the bandage with blood and sickly yellow pus.

  “Help … me,” he whispered.

  Ashok glanced at the door. The voices were still speaking, but he couldn’t make out the words.

  “I ask you!” The shadar-kai’s voice rang against the walls. Outside the door, the voices fell silent.

  Ashok backed quickly away from the door and went to the shadar-kai. He pushed the man back onto the bed. “Be quiet,” he hissed. He didn’t want the guards to investigate the noise. They would see he was awake
, and the interrogation would begin. He needed more time.

  “Who … are you?” the man said. His glazed obsidian eyes searched Ashok’s face, but Ashok could see his concentration fading in and out. Only the pain kept him conscious.

  Only the pain, always the pain.

  “I’m the one you begged for aid,” Ashok said. He touched the edge of the man’s wound, probing skin that was on fire. “Your leg is rotting. You need a prayer, or you’re going to die.”

  “Only She … can help … me,” the man said, his teeth chattering. “Lady Beshaba! Hear me!” he called.

  Ashok kneeled by the bed and grabbed the back of the man’s head, pressing his other hand against his mouth to form a vice. “If you don’t stay quiet, you won’t draw your next breath. Do you believe me?”

  Dazed as he was, the man nodded. A hint of fear worked its way through the fever pain.

  “I’m going to uncover your mouth,” Ashok said, “and you’re going to answer my questions. Convince me you’re telling the truth, and I’ll let you live. Understood?”

  Another nod.

  Ashok removed his hand from the man’s mouth but kept a grip on his skull. “Are we still in the Shadowfell?” he asked.

  “The Shadowdark,” the man replied.

  “Near the Aloran Tor?”

  Confusion. “I don’t know what that is.”

  Ashok jerked the man’s sweat damp hair. “You’re lying. The black mountain—a yawning maw pointed to the west.”

  “Y-Yes,” the man said. “We call it Dark Crest.”

  “Who is ‘we’?” Ashok said. “Where is this place?”

  “Ikemmu,” the man said as his shoulders jerked. His mouth twisted in a smile that stretched uglily over his teeth. Ashok thought he was on the edge of delirium. “You’re in … Ikemmu,” the man said. “The Watching Blade … sees all.”

  He raised his hand and swiped the air as if reaching for something. Ashok followed the fevered gesture and saw, above the lanterns, an enormous sword carved into the wall. He hadn’t noticed the sword at first, but looking upon it fully, the weapon seemed to fairly swallow the room with its presence. It drew in the shadows and light, forcing Ashok’s eye to focus on it wherever he stood in the room. Everything else diminished in its presence.

  The wall around the carving had been bricked in faint red and shaped to form a shield beneath the sword. The brick and the lantern glow combined lit the whole scene afire. A strange, disturbed sensation crawled along Ashok’s spine. He had an errant thought: the sleeping shadar-kai weren’t alone in the room. They never had been. Someone else was there watching, waiting.

  Ashok shook off the feeling. The man’s delirium was starting to affect him. He was wasting time.

  “How big is this place?” he demanded. “How many guards?”

  The man tried to speak, but his teeth were clamped so tightly together that gurgles and foam were all that came out. The shadar-kai’s eyes rolled up in his head, and his body jerked in violent spasms that rocked the bed. Ashok could barely hold him.

  The door opened. Before Ashok could react, a slender, bald shadar-kai entered the room and walked briskly over to them. He wore a black tabard embroidered with a smaller rendering of the carving on the wall. Ashok went into a defensive crouch, but the cleric ignored him and took the spasming man by the shoulders. The wounded shadar-kai stared past him, his eyes eaten up with the sword on the wall.

  “Arnare, do you hear me?” the shadar-kai said. “Arnare, we’re losing you. You must reconsider your decision. You must let me heal you.”

  The man tried to jerk free, but he had no strength. “She will come.”

  Impatience ticked the cleric’s face. “We’ve sent for the Beshaban clerics once a bell for the past day. They’ve not responded. By the time they come it may be too late.”

  The man’s head lolled to the side, as if he couldn’t support its weight. “Then that … is my fate. Beshaba’s hand. No … other.” With a surge of strength, the man shoved the cleric away. “None.”

  Ashok watched the exchange in wary silence. He knew he should have run, or attacked the cleric while he was distracted, but confusion rendered him immobile. Why did the cleric waste time speaking to the man? he wondered. He should have healed or killed him instantly.

  Sighing, the cleric let the fevered man sink back on the bed. He pulled the blanket up over his shivering body.

  “A waste,” the cleric murmured. His gaze rested on Ashok. “You’re awake. Are you in pain?”

  The cleric took a step toward him. Ashok bared his teeth and lunged at him.

  “Back,” the cleric said calmly, raising a hand.

  A massive weight slammed Ashok in the chest, driving him back against the wall. Dazed, he slid to the floor. When he looked up, the cleric continued to approach. Weaponless, Ashok put his hands up in front of him.

  “What have you done to yourself?” the cleric demanded. He pointed at Ashok’s bleeding wrist, the crescent-shaped bite wound.

  Ashok ignored the question. “Who are you?” he said as his blood dripped onto the floor.

  The cleric clasped his arms behind his back, but Ashok wasn’t appeased by the gesture. He stayed in a crouch, an animal cornered. I’ll take your eyes first, his stance promised.

  “I am a servant of Tempus,” the cleric said. “You were brought to His temple because your wounds were life-threatening. I bandaged and treated them with herbs, but you still need healing. I was waiting for you to awaken so I could ask your permission.”

  “My permission?” said Ashok, a snarl building in his throat. “You ask a slave’s permission before you put the knife to him?”

  “You’re mistaken,” the cleric said. “There are no slaves here, no torturers.”

  “Aren’t I a prisoner?”

  The cleric shook his head. “Perhaps someday you will see how we treat our prisoners,” he said. “No, you are here at the behest of Uwan, Lord of Ikemmu, Watching Blade who guides us all.”

  Ashok felt his gaze inadvertently drawn to the sword carved on the wall.

  The cleric followed his look. “Tempus’s hand,” he said. “Will you allow Him to heal you, through me? I swear no harm will come to you.”

  No harm. Ashok knew better. The magic would bore into his brain, expose his enclave’s secrets. No, he couldn’t let that happen.

  Ashok turned to the wall. He would bash his head on the stones. One quick impact was all it would take.

  “No!” the cleric cried, too late.

  Ashok slammed his head into the wall. He collapsed on the floor, his vision hazy. The cleric moved above him, but his face seemed very far away. His lips were moving; Ashok could barely make out the words.

  “Forgive me, but I cannot let you die. Father of Battle, touch your warrior,” the cleric chanted. “Give him the strength to fight anew and the wisdom to see the folly in harming this most perfect vessel. Tempus, bless us both.”

  The cleric fell silent. He had one hand on his chest and the other on Ashok’s head. A serene quiet overtook his visage, as if he were waiting patiently for someone to whisper a secret in his ear.

  Between one breath and the next, Ashok felt the sharp pain in his head and wrist subside to a dull ache, and then his vision slowly cleared.

  When Ashok looked at him in confusion, the cleric said, “Now do you believe that I will not harm you?”

  Cautiously, Ashok rose to his feet. He sat on the edge of his bed and stripped the bandages from his thigh and shoulder. He wiped away the herb concoctions and saw that the wounds were healed.

  “You need more sleep,” the cleric said. “To replenish your strength. My name is Natan. What may I call you?”

  Ashok hesitated, then gave his name.

  The cleric nodded. “Where do you come from, Ashok?” he asked.

  So the interrogation begins, Ashok thought. He stayed silent, watching carefully as the cleric wadded up the soiled bandages and straightened the blankets on Ashok’s bed. Briefly, h
e went to check the fevered man, and his face creased in disappointment.

  “He won’t last to Pendron,” Natan said. “Blood-thirsty Beshabans.” He threw the bandages on the floor in disgust. “Fight your enemy—never neglect your own.”

  A feeling like hot iron swam in Ashok’s chest. He stared at the dying man, whose entire body lay rigid, as if he were already a stiffening corpse.

  “Just do it,” Ashok said. “He’s helpless. He won’t fight you.”

  The cleric looked at him in mild surprise, then shook his head. “That is not His way. A warrior has the right to choose his own death.”

  Ashok turned away. The chamber door stood slightly ajar, beckoning.

  Natan saw where he was looking. “Do you come from the empire, Ashok? Is that where you will run?”

  “No,” Ashok said. “I’ll run far across the plain until the Aloran Tor is a black hillock in the distance, and the Mire River runs dry. I’ll hide in the kindling forests and bury my trail in the trees. You’ll die in the wilderness trying to follow me.”

  Natan sighed and raised his hands in surrender. “As you wish. Though the path to the surface is not an easy one. Stay here at least until the next bell chimes. By then you’ll be rested enough to travel.”

  The cleric moved from bed to bed as he spoke, checking the other wounded. He lingered next to one, his hand on an older shadar-kai’s chest. After a few breaths, he shook his head.

  “Another waste,” he said, “a prayer unanswered.”

  Natan went to the door. “Bring a litter in here,” he called out to someone. “This one is gone.”

  Ashok tensed when two more shadar-kai clerics entered the room, but they paid no attention to him. Between them, they placed the limp body on the litter and carried it solemnly out of the room.

  Natan watched them go and turned to Ashok. “We have not harmed you. Don’t waste your life. Rest here, and then we’ll talk more.”

  “Do I have a choice?” Ashok said.