SWNOVELS Iceblade: Chapter 20
THE SHADOWBLADE REMAINS standing, watching me. He looks like a patch of icy blackness beneath the cliffs.
I try to sound more confident and demanding than I feel.
“I’ve been studying the Eldaran archives. Jantian figured that even after you were driven from Maratic you worked with your nemesis Valara to fight the Rapathians. But I can’t understand why.”
Maybe I could have phrased that a bit more diplomatically. He gives a hiss of anger.
“You have no idea what the Rapathian Elementals did to me! I thought they would aid my revenge on Valara for her unprovoked attack and treachery, but they saw me merely as an outsider to be exploited. They gave me no home in either of their power places, merely space and time to heal. And even that respite was only so they could use me as a slave. I had lost my home, my tribe, my name. And finally my freedom.”
“You had a name?”
He stares at me as if it should be obvious. “My name is Shadow. All but forgotten after the death of my companions in Eldaran. And then in Rapathia I was simply called Slave.”
“I can understand your hatred for Rapathia. Was that all it took to forge an alliance with your old enemy?”
He hesitates, and then speaks with even more bitterness than before. “Long years of hardship and degradation passed until my hatred for my own kind exceeded even my hatred of Valara. Then I discovered my captors were planning to invade Samaran and lay claim to Maratic. If they succeeded I would have my revenge on the Power Mage who had ousted me, but I would lose my chance of regaining my heritage, a slave forever. I escaped, warned Valara of the imminent invasion and offered my help.”
“And she agreed to such an unholy alliance?” My question is edged with disapproval.
He is visibly offended. Maybe with some justification. Jantian already guessed that those early Samarians had felt overwhelmed by the savage power of storms and fires and had almost certainly projected their own ideas of malice and intent onto the Elementals at their core. Whatever the truth of it, the Blade really believes he was the victim of Valara’s unprovoked attack.
He draws a sharp breath to give a terse reply.
“It was distasteful to both of us. But those twelve Elementals could have defeated her two thousand warriors. We both had everything to lose. She agreed. There was no time for the long slow process by which she and her followers were drawing on Maratic’s power, so with her help I learned how to transfer power directly to humans rather than simply teaching them the skill to manipulate the elements of earth and fire into weapons.”
“The gift you gave me? That was enough to defeat your own kind?” It seems unlikely, having experienced a little of his raw power.
“I managed to empower more than a thousand of her warriors by the time the twelve Elementals reached us. It was enough, but only just. The battle left dead and dying all across the high valley around the mountain of Maratic. The river ran red with blood. One Rapathian Elemental remained. Nagal, my chief tormentor, fled back across the sea and I pursued him, determined that here at least I would have my revenge.”
I interrupt him again, remembering the dying boy soldier outside the city walls. “That doesn’t make sense. Nagal is the Rapathian war god.”
He spits derisively in the dirt. “Nagal is no fighter, only a manipulator. It pleased his vanity to exchange gifts of weapons for that kind of veneration. But it was not until he bound himself to Ashur Purmut the Usurper that his status became enhanced from a minor deity among many, to the kind of dominance he has now.” He turns to me with a look of barely concealed fury. “While here in Samaran they build shrines in homage to the Five Warriors who helped steal my heritage.”
At last all the causes of his bitter resentment become clear. Every aspect of his defeat and humiliation has been compounded by fate and time. I carefully avoid making any comment and wait for him to continue.
“I cornered Nagal on the borders of Rapathia and we fought through the night, destroying an entire city in our fury. But I was already wounded and weak and in the end he escaped, dragging his bloody carcass back to his place of power where I knew he would recover. I was too damaged to have any chance of victory once he was established there so I returned to Samaran and hid myself, deep in the forested mountains of the eastern coast until I had recovered enough to make the last part of the journey back to Maratic. I collapsed exhausted and near death outside the great cave.”
“So… at this point you could be describing the start of a great alliance between my people and Elementals. A glittering Empire should have arisen, using the best of what both sides could offer. Which doesn’t seem to have happened. What went wrong?”
“We had… differing views about what we had created together.”
It sounds like the biggest understatement so far, but I make an effort to restrain from further comments that will probably only irritate him. After another cold silence he resumes.
“My adepts who survived the battle had proved themselves efficient killers––but only because they had been pointed immediately at a common enemy soon after they were empowered. But in the peaceful days that followed, those survivors turned on each other and on civilians. Valara rallied all her non-adept warriors to work together and kill my masterpieces. I arrived back just in time to watch the last one die, hacked to pieces by seven of Valara’s bodyguards.
“She forbade me from giving this gift ever again and forced me to swear on my life and on the power of Maratic that I would never do it. In exchange she used her power to heal me. I was forced to give my oath or die.”
“And you found a way to break your oath and live.” I don’t bother to hide my distain for tricksters, never mind if Elementals think they can live by different values. He gives a dismissive toss of dark hair and waves a pale hand at the ice peaks towering above us.
“If you go to climb a mountain and get caught in an avalanche, do you blame the mountain for breaking its oath not to harm you? No. You would not be so foolish. You would understand how raw elements function. Do not expect more of Elementals.
“Valara forgot to also make me swear not to kill her. It was my only way to be free of her curse, so I waited until I was fully recovered and then I attacked her. I discovered it was a mistake. I had not understood how deeply her healing had bound me to her. Even as she lay dying, she was able to rework the geas without needing my oath and I was helpless to stop it.
“Her curse named me nothing but a creature of death. The only followers I would ever find would be those who brought the lifeblood of another as the price of my gift. As far as she was concerned, such people were the dregs of her realm and I was welcome to them. The curse ensured that my adepts only squandered their power on petty individual goals and revenge attacks. I was forbidden to help them in any way, on pain of death.
“I fled to the dark and forgotten corners of forest and mountain, hoping to gather at least a small fighting force. But her insight proved accurate. Every adept I created turned out to be a loner, fighting solely for their own gain until being hunted down and executed for their crimes.” He turns to me with a slow smile. “And then I found you.”
“Wh..?”
He doesn’t answer, but already I am going over what he has told me and the dreadful truth is starting to dawn. The binding he spoke of that tied him to Valara, formed through the power of healing––how far has it gone? How closely am I bound to him now? Could I break free even if I tried?
I start to back away from him, finally understanding how that connection has deepened every time I have used my power and skill or used his help. He is still staring at me with that unnerving confidence that speaks of ownership.
“I see you have finally understood what you are. What you will become. Our fates are now bound together. To the exclusion of all others.”
“No! I will not be your slave.”
The hiss could almost be amusement. “I can promise you something a little better than that.”
“Promise all you like. You have just convinced me your promises are nothing but tricks. I’m not interested. I can manage on my own.” Even as I say it, I know it’s too late. I have recovered my strength already––and this time the geas had hardly touched him after helping me. He needed very little life force from me in order to recover. The binding must be almost complete.
Shadow sees the bitter understanding in my eyes and his voice softens with the confidence of knowing he has won.
“You have no choice, Ariel. Without my help, you cannot find the safe route through the camp. Your friends are vastly outnumbered and they will die if Marin fails to retake control of the Samarian army. Then the invasion triumphs and your sister will never escape the Rose Mansion.”
I can feel the threads of fate drawing tighter around me, the inexorable weaving that started when I first took his gift. And then went back and demanded his help. No time to think it through. Dawn is not far off and if I have the chance to save Marin and the others I need to get on with it.
“How much will it weaken you to take me back there?”
“Hardly at all. It is almost complete. But remember what I said. To the exclusion of all others. Now I can only share my power with you––and I can only use it to kill my own kind. I could kill humans with a blade, but if I focus on shielding you with shadows I can manage very little even of that. Which means you have to do the fighting.”
Something doesn’t make sense here. “Why would you willingly give up that ability––”
And then I see it. Nagal bound his power only to the Emperor to give them both increased dominance, forcing Shadow to do the same with me in order to defeat his old enemy. Now I feel even more uneasy about being drawn into such a sinister alliance but there is no time to argue about it right now.
“I can fight. Go.”
He doesn’t hesitate, sweeping me off my feet in a cloud of dark-grey wings. We land inside the camp and I pace cautiously and silently, weaving between campfires and guard posts. Hidden in the deeper shadow of his wings I can get close enough to see where the additional groups of Rapathians have been posted without revealing my presence. As soon as I have all the safe routes fixed in my memory, we return to the base of the cliff. He moves to leave.
“Accept my terms, call me and I will come to you. Then the binding will be complete.”
“Never.”
“You will have no choice.” And then he is gone, in a dark swirl of icy shadows.