《The Last Evil》


 Chapter 1

    Sansara was a shitty little corner of reality.


    I was not sure why I was there. I think it was because if I took a full tally of the universe, and then subtracted all those places I could not go or did not want to go, Sansara was the only place left. Or perhaps it was because I had wandered, seeking somewhere that matched my mood and state of self, and in Sansara found that reflection.


    At the time, I found it hard to say.


    So, Sansara:


    There were two suns in the sky, one large, dull and red, the other small and white. Above the horizon were three parallel rents, as though reality had been slashed open by the claw of some immense beast. This was not too far from the truth. Tendrils of multi-coloured chaos flickered at their borders.


    The only local fauna was a fat, foot-long slug, grey skin banded with stripes of red chlorophyll, subsisting off the fungus that grew beneath the rocks and the light from the torn sky. Despite being a contender for the most wretched life-from in all Reality, they made surprisingly good eating. My suspicion was that they, along with the fungus they ate, had been either engineered or brought to Sansara from somewhere else. Even with the random mutation inflicted by radiating chaos, an ecosystem of just two organisms should not have be sustainable.


    When it rained, it rained ash.


    It fell in grey flakes, like filthy snow, I felt the touch of it on my face and bare arms, in my short cut hair, and, more annoyingly, down the front of my sleeveless top. My jeans were grey with it.


    But I paid it no mind. My eyes were on my opponent.


    He was a Kesan ¨C I didn¡¯t know if that referred to his species, his homeworld. his nation of birth or something else, and I didn¡¯t much care. I didn¡¯t know his name, and I didn¡¯t care about that either. He was of interest only because he had decided, what with him being a big muscle bound freak and more than slightly nuts, that he was sure to win the upcoming fist fight. I was looking forward to proving him wrong.


    Hell, I¡¯d been hoping for this since the Kesans had arrived.


    One decent fight, once in a while. What more could a girl can ask for?


    I remembered the day they¡¯d fallen from the rents, a thousand of them, unconscious or raving in the grips of their parachutes. Half had been dead, reduced to chunks of crystal or bursts of flame or gibbering masses of twisted flesh. The survivors had been mutated beyond recognition by the forces they¡¯d endured.


    You did not mess with raw chaos unless you knew what you were doing, and the Kesans hadn¡¯t known shit.


    I could see the extent of the damage on the man in front of me. I¡¯d learned that the Kesans naturally had pale blue skin of varying hues, but this man¡¯s skin was deep red, the colour of fresh blood. Patches of feather stood out, stark against otherwise smoothly muscled skin. There was a band of scales around his stomach. On his left side breathed a small, secondary mouth, lined with needle teeth.


    His face wasn¡¯t much better. He had no nose, only a smooth patch of blank skin, and one eye was the bulging, mad eye of a wild bull. His whole face seemed twisted by its presence, his mouth crooked in a permanent semi-snarl.


    I also suspected that he¡¯d suffered a few alterations to his brain. A full third of the survivors had gone mad during their passage through the rent, but madness was a host of different sliding scales. Some were catatonic, some psychotic, some suffered from mood swings, but those were just the obvious cases. This guy had yet to speak, and while he responded to his comrades goads and cries of encouragement readily enough, it was clear that there was something missing.


    It didn¡¯t matter. As long as he couldfight, nothing mattered.


    One of his kin slapped him on the shoulder. They were in a ring around us, twisted forms jostling for a better view. I paid them no mind. They were the backdrop, the scenery. They had no value beyond marking the borders of our space.


    ¡®Get her, Conrad!¡¯


    My opponent clenched his fists and bone ridges popped on his knuckles. He lunged.


    Yes!


    I pivoted out of the path of his fist, let it blur past me. I put a palm strike into his side, just above that gaping mouth. He staggered, but turned his extended jab into a vicious, back-hand elbow by way of retaliation. I rolled under it, and caught the front-kick he followed up with on my forearms.


    The impact knocked me back a step, and I knew that I¡¯d have bruises later, but none of this mattered. I was smiling. I was smiling because this guy knew what he was doing. I remembered, belatedly, that the Kesan expedition had been formed of military personnel. This man had had training.


    I brought my hands back up and closed with him once more. I threw a jab, and he slipped his head out of the way. He reached forward to grab me and I ducked under his arm and out of his reach. He was a lot bigger than I was, maybe as much as twice my weight, and I had no desire to be crushed within those massive arms. I snapped a kick at his thigh and he lunged forward with a cross.


    I moved my head, but I was off balance from the kick and didn¡¯t quite get out of the way. He landed a glancing hit that split my lip and loosened my teeth, and I knew that a clean blow would¡¯ve blasted me into unconsciousness.


    Get it together, Rukh.


    I was rusty, my moves and balance off to a degree that I wouldn¡¯t have thought possible. With all my years of experience, I had thought my skills were worn in so deep that I couldn¡¯t ever forget them.


    You haven¡¯t forgotten. You just need to knock the dust off.


    I shook myself and went back on the offensive.


    It was coming back to me. Rusty I may have been, but my technique was still better than his. I was faster too, not having all that superfluous muscle mass. It didn¡¯t matter how strong he was if he couldn¡¯t bring that strength to bear. I slipped and rolled my way away from every punch, blocked every kick, and eventually, eventually, he began to tire.


    Nothing is more exhausting than combat. Nothing. You have to engage your entire body. You have to focus your entire mind. You draw upon your deepest physical reserves and the invisible processors of your subconscious. It demands all of you, in the way that nothing else does. Even as a sport, even when it is not to the death, nothing compares.


    I felt my skills returning. My muscle memory was coming back. I was a little out of shape still, but that would be easily enough fixed when I had the time. My hand speed was off, but not by as much as it could¡¯ve been. Again, easily fixed when I had the time¡­


    Fix it now. Use Ensis. Repair youself¡­


    But I couldn¡¯t. I had promised myself. No power for this fight. This was my first exchange of blows in a long, long time, and I wanted to win with flesh and flesh alone. I would notcheat.


    Nor did I need to.


    He had slowed down now, worn out from the demands of our dance. My blows were starting to tell. I sunk a fist into the slack muscles of his stomach. I hammered the heel of my hand into his ribs. I put a knee into his groin and watched that mad eye bulge with the intimacy of his pain.


    He threw his fist at my belly, a slow sloppy straight right, all power and no technique, a last ditch attempt to wind me has he had been winded. I stepped out of way, letting his fist graze past me, and dropped my elbow over the top of his arm, trapping it against my side.


    I twisted my whole body in a single savage movement, and his arm broke with an audible snap.


    He howled, falling to his knees.


    I let go of his arm and snapped a kick into his face. He reeled, lips bloody and teeth broken. I put another into the side of his head.


    Murmurs from the assembled Kesans.


    He was out cold, a limp body slowly covered in settling ash.


    I spat. It was over, but there was no satisfaction. He had broken just as I had been hitting my stride, just as my moves were coming together. I had been ready to cut loose, to really go all out, and he hadn¡¯t been. He could¡¯ve risen to my challenge, but instead he had failed and left me with nothing but frustration. Real, haven¡¯t-been-laid-in-ages, need-a-cigarette-so-bad frustration.


    I looked up at the circle of assembled Kesans, my eyes sweeping across them in case there was someone else, someone worthy of my time.


    They fell back before my gaze like wheat before the scythe. No-one said anything.


    So I turned away and stalked towards the across the street to the bar. Behind me, I heard the murmuring start up again.


    ¡®¡­nearly killed him¡­¡¯


    ¡®Wouldn¡¯t want to fighther¡­¡¯


    The noise cut off as I slammed the door behind me.


    I went up to the bar and threw myself into one of the stools. The girl that stood behind it, her hair interspersed with quills and spines, poured me a glass of spice without asking.


    I lifted it to my lips. Rich, red, and powerful strong, it was made from the sugar-rich skin of the photosynthesising slug. I had developed a taste for its thick texture and the hot, spicy aftertaste. It was like drinking the blood of a terminal curry addict.


    I gulped it down, too impatient to sip and savour.


    I heard booted feet on the floor behind me, but I didn¡¯t turn. I recognised that odd limping gait from his last few visits. I heard him walk around behind the bar, heard him exchange a few words of whispered conversation with the bar lady. Heard the note of dismissal in his voice, heard her slow sneaking footfalls as she made her exit.


    ¡®Hey, Eli,¡¯ I said, without looking.


    A bottle of spice thunked down next to my glass.


    I looked up. Eli was unslinging his rifle from his shoulder. He leant it against the bar with exaggerated care, and said: ¡®Hello, Rukh.¡¯


    He was a big man. His arms were about as thick around as my waist. He wore a big brown trench-coat over clothes ragged from constant reuse and a pair of thick, elbow-length leather gloves- no doubt chosen to hide the disfigurement of his hands and forearms.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    He could do little about his six-clawed foot, or the bony protrusions on his face. Personally, had I been in his shoes, I wouldn¡¯t have bothered at all.


    Eli was the leader of the Kesans. I forgot what rank they ascribed to him, but they all saluted him whenever he passed by. He was the one who had met me when I strolled into their little town, some months ago, bored of the desert and wondering who these alien explorers might be.


    He didn¡¯t strike me as anything special. But somehow a thousand of his people had followed him into the chaos-rent they¡¯d found on their homeworld. Somehow, the survivors of that monumentally dangerous journey continued to follow him.


    The idiots.


    ¡®You half-killed Conrad, just now,¡¯ he said.


    I shrugged, taking another sip. ¡®He wanted a fight,¡¯ I said. ¡®I fought.¡¯


    ¡®Each one of my people is precious to me, Rukh,¡¯ he said.


    ¡®And utterly worthless to me.¡¯


    A pause. I suspected that he would have answered anyone else with a fist. But he wasn¡¯t stupid, not entirely. He knew that I was more than he was. Once it was understood that my black skin wasn¡¯t a mutation but a rather common phenotype where I was from, he¡¯d known that I hadn¡¯t come to Sansara through the rents. It was patently obvious that I wasn¡¯t a local either.


    He, along with the rest of his people, weren¡¯t entirely sure what to make of me. I helped with the occasional task in order to justify drinking in their bar, but otherwise I did little. Any questions they asked me I deflected or ignored.


    ¡®I need to know, Rukh,¡¯ he said, almost gently.


    Ah yes, here it was. Whenever I ended up in conversation with Eli, the same topic would be dredged up. He wanted to know how to leave Sansara. He wanted to go home.


    My lack of mutation had convinced him that I had the answer.


    To be fair, he was entirely correct in this assumption. Unfortunately, he was entirely wrong in several others.


    ¡®I seem to remember having this conversation before,¡¯ I said.


    ¡®Maybe,¡¯ said Eli, his face set, ¡®but we¡¯re running out of time. You¡¯re the only person who¡¯s managed to escape this.¡¯ He touched a hand to the growth on his face. ¡®However you managed it¡­.¡¯


    ¡®I said no,¡¯ I told him. I had made promises. Unfortunately for Eli, keeping them meant I couldn¡¯t help him even if I¡¯d wanted to.


    A muscle in his face twitched. ¡®We¡¯re running low on supplies. The wells are producing less and less clean water and we don¡¯t know how to fix it. Within a few weeks, we¡¯ll be out. A short time after that, we¡¯ll all be dead of dehydration.¡¯


    I shrugged, taking another sip of the spice. ¡®Probably.¡¯


    ¡®I am talking about theend, Rukh. For all of us.¡¯


    ¡®All of you, maybe. I still don¡¯t see what this has to do with me.¡¯


    Eli put a gloved hand on my arm. His fingers completely encircled my wrist. ¡®We¡¯re not asking anymore.¡¯


    I sighed and put my glass down. I pushed my stool a little away from the bar and turned to meet his eyes. ¡®Let go,¡¯ I said.


    He hesitated, and then tried to pull me from the chair.


    I twisted my hand in his grip, and flexed my will. My arm stole the strength from his and sent it back at him along the blade of my hand. His grip was broken, and he fell back, clutching his wrist. His eyes, one grey one green, looked at me shock.


    ¡®You don¡¯t know what you¡¯re dealing with, Eli,¡¯ I told him. ¡®Your problems are not my problems. You want to get off-world?¡¯ I jerked a hand towards the ceiling. ¡®You know the way.¡¯


    He stepped back, shaking his head. ¡®We can¡¯t go through there again,¡¯ he said. ¡®We lost hundreds last time. Hundreds more lost their minds.¡¯ Again his hand went to the protrusion on his face. ¡®It changed us.¡¯


    I nodded, and picked up my glass again. ¡®Chaos will do that.¡¯


    ¡®Fuck you,¡¯ he spat.


    I turned my back on him. Took another sip. ¡®I never pretended to care, Eli. I¡¯m not here for you. I mean, don¡¯t get me wrong, it¡¯s nice to have the odd conversation and you make a decent poison.¡¯ I held up my glass in salute. ¡®But we aren¡¯t the same. In another time, in another place, I would¡¯ve killed you just for touching me.¡¯


    ¡®It¡¯s good to see you haven¡¯t changed,¡¯ said another voice.


    I froze, glass half-way to my lips. I knew that voice. That voice so low and husky it had to be an affection. No-one really spoke like¡­


    What is she doing here?


    I put the glass down on the bar. Swivelled my stool around.


    There was a figure standing in the doorway. Tall, about six three or six four. Slim-built but with a dancer¡¯s muscles. Styled blonde hair done up behind her head. The light from the door made it a halo, even as it threw her face into shadow.


    I knew who she was, nonetheless.


    ¡®Get out,¡¯ I said to Eli.


    He didn¡¯t move. I glanced at him, and then shrugged. If he wanted to stay, then that was his funeral. He¡¯d been beginning to annoy me in any case.


    ¡®Isande,¡¯ I said, reaching back to the bar for my spice. ¡®Come to have a drink with an old friend?¡¯


    She took a step into the room. She was much as I remembered. Thin, slanting eyes with brilliant, blue-green irises. She wore a plain gi, the white cotton throwing her tanned skin into sharp relief. She wore the gi¡¯s jacket open to show the black top beneath, and had a black belt around her waist. An affection of course ¨C the idea of Isande being tested for a belt in any martial art was beyond ludicrous. The hilt of her katana jutted over her left shoulder, the same sword, as far as I could tell, that she¡¯d carried in the War. I had never seen it unsheathed.


    ¡®Not exactly,¡¯ she said.


    ¡®You look good,¡¯ I told her, and downed the remainder of the spice. Swallowed. ¡®Been working out?¡¯


    The answering smile that spread across her lips was a hard, empty thing. Her eyes held no mirth at all. They were as empty as the eyes of a doll, or a dead woman. This was not surprising. Isande and I had a long history. It was not all that long ago we had been trying, quite earnestly, to kill each other.


    ¡®Who is this woman?¡¯ asked Eli. ¡®What is she doing here? How did she¡­¡¯


    ¡®Get out of here, Eli,¡¯ I said to him, not taking my eyes off Isande. ¡®Like I told you, I won¡¯t help. You keep pushing, all you¡¯re going to do is make things worse.¡¯


    ¡®Rukh¡­¡¯


    ¡®Go.¡¯


    This time, to his credit, he went. He picked his rifle up from behind the bar, passed by Isande with cautious curiosity, and strode out into the ash-fall.


    I suspected that I would not see him again.


    I tossed my empty glass onto the bar with a skittering thud. ¡®I gave you all of Reality,¡¯ I said to Isande. ¡®You couldn¡¯t leave this one little corner of it to me?¡¯


    ¡®Iago Tancris is dead,¡¯ she told me. ¡®Exan killed him.¡¯


    My first thought was that no, Exanhadn¡¯tkilled him. That had been the whole problem. I had sent three assassins after Tancris, back in the War. The first one would¡¯ve succeeded, if not for the timely intervention of Tancris¡¯s lover, Carmen Cadan. The second had bungled it and Tancris had sent us his head in a box. That was when I¡¯d told Exan to handle the fucker personally. They had duelled, briefly, but Tancris had escaped with¡­


    Exan. Ohshit¡­


    Exan had been the raging attack dog of the Dark Pact, and I had held his leash. He had been my second, my closest confidant, my friend, and my lover. He had taken no action in the War that did not follow some strategy of mine, and everyone knew it. If he had killed Tancris¡­


    He¡¯s broken the treaty.


    No wonder Isande looked like she was here for blood.


    I got up off of the stool. My arms still ached from blocking that kick. I could feel the oozing from the cut on my lip. The backs of my legs were tight from holding stance. My muscles felt loose in my skin, as if all the strength had been wrung from them, water squeezed from a sponge.


    Show no weakness,I thought to myself. It was my mantra in situations such as this. In all situations, really.Show no weakness.


    ¡®What do you want, Isande?¡¯


    Even as I said it I was reaching for the power within me. I didn¡¯t muck about. I loosened the muscles in my arms and legs, strengthened those fibres which had begun to decay from inactivity. I wiped away the aches of the fight and consequences of my recent indolence in one brief burst of power. The discipline was called Ensis. With it you could heal any wound that hadn¡¯t already killed you, knit flesh, set bone, alter the very makeup of your own body. It was also expensive. Even a comparably small burst cost a lot of power, but I knew what was coming next and I couldn¡¯t face it with half measures.


    ¡®You are to come to the House,¡¯ said Isande. Her features softened ever so slightly. ¡®They want a trial.¡¯


    A trial?I knew what that meant. I knew who would be doing the judging too.


    So I laughed at her. ¡®You have got to be fucking joking,¡¯ I said. ¡®I put my name to the treaty. I gave you people my word. But there was nothing in there about being summoned whenever you felt like it.¡¯


    Isande stepped forward, and I felt a sudden thrill run through me.


    She saw my expression and smiled. ¡®I can¡¯t attack you without breaking the treaty myself.¡¯


    I hid my disappointment and shrugged at her instead. ¡®Guess you can¡¯t make me do shit, then.¡¯


    She shrugged right back at me. ¡®Not unless you agree to it.¡¯


    Silence.


    I felt the smile spreading over my face. I knew what she was proposing. It wasn¡¯t a violation of the treaty if we both wanted a fight. I mean, a sparring match didn¡¯t break the treaty, did it? This would be something similar, a contest of equals. We¡¯d done this sort of thing before, back in the old days, an easy way to settle an argument. She didn¡¯t need to hammer out the terms ¨C if I lost I would have to go to the House. If she lost, she would have to leave me alone.


    I found myself unable to care. To me this was an end in itself.


    ¡®Very well,¡¯ I said to her, raising my hands. ¡®Whenever you¡¯re ready.¡¯


    I barely got the words out.


    She crossed the space between us with the smooth power of a cresting wave. She didn¡¯t bother reaching for the weapon at her back. She didn¡¯t go through the tedious process of working herself up to it or feeling out my defences. She knew better than that. Her hands came up to her face in an exact mirror of my own stance, and a split-second later, she struck.


    She had been desperate for this since the moment she came in through the door, and when someone came at you with that attitude, you absolutely had to match it.


    Or lose, of course.


    She sent a palm striking towards my face, almost too fast to follow. I threw a hard block into its path, and my forearm shook with the impact. Beneath me the ground cracked with redirected force.


    The follow-up came from the right, but I rolled under and launched a counter. She slapped it aside, stealing its force and returned it with interest to my belly. I was ready for that one and my knee caught her on the hip.


    A spider¡¯s web of cracks spread in the stone beneath her as she shed the energy into the floor. She staggered a little with effort, I took the opportunity to swing an elbow into her face. I hit only air.


    I had just time to realise that it had been feint before three heavy blows went into my kidneys. I stole the force and packed it into another punch, but Isande had pivoted clear. With nowhere to go that stolen force exploded in my hand.


    Flesh tore. Blood splattered the badly painted walls.


    Pain.


    I stumbled back. My fist was a ruin. I had kept the bones intact, but the remains of my hand hung off them in tatters.


    Isande raised an eyebrow. ¡®Sloppy,¡¯ she said.


    Show no weakness


    I shrugged at her again, as though it were nothing. But she was right. I was still rusty, having spent too long sitting on my ass, and a quick fight with a mortal and a burst of Ensis were not enough to fix that. My moves were still off.


    Isande resumed her attack with a vengeance. She was fast, and it was clear she had kept up with training. Her movements were smooth and sure where mine were clumsy and worse, overly cautious. I¡¯d wrecked my confidence when I¡¯d wrecked my hand, and if I didn¡¯t pull myself to together I was going to lose.


    But she was better than me. Her limbs blurred and it took every ounce of concentration to match her speed. I had to think each move instead of acting on instinct.


    Kick. Block. One-two. Block. Dodge.


    Dodge.


    Dodg¡­


    ¡­ she caught me with a solid hook on the side of my face. I felt my cheekbone shatter, and I stumbled. My nerves were afire now, screaming their agony. I could¡¯ve repaired myself with Ensis, just as I could¡¯ve healed my hand, but that would¡¯ve cost power. Use too much and you could run out, and I didn¡¯t want to run out in the middle of a fight. That was a good way to get yourself killed.


    Heal later. The bone¡¯s intact and you¡¯re not going to be hitting her with your face.


    Well, not if I could help it anyway.


    ¡®You should quit, Rukh,¡¯ she said, stepping back.


    I forced my broken face into some semblance of a grin. ¡®I surrendered to you once,¡¯ I told her, and gestured at the peeling walls. ¡®Look where it got me.¡¯


    Her next attack was a flurry of punches, too fast to follow. I retreated before them, letting her spend energy on thrashing the air. If she tried to enhance one of those and didn¡¯t hit me, she¡¯d shred her own fist just as I had. But Isande wasn¡¯t stupid. She switched to a push kick, forcing me to pivot away, and then suddenly she was in close and I was forced to block, and block, and block again.


    This was Turis, physical combat augmented with kinetic force. It was equal parts brutality and strategy. Hell, unarmed combat was a complex and difficult thing all by itself, without adding the use of power into the mix. But it was our kind¡¯s favoured way of engaging each other in combat. I was known for being quite good at it.


    So was Isande.


    I was back against the wall now, my shoulder-blade pressed against the cool plaster. I had no room to retreat and she was crowding me, preventing me from pivoting clear. I needed to create space but it was all elbows and knees now and no room to dodge.


    I rolled under a horizontal elbow and heard it carve a furrow in the wall behind me. I put a knee into her groin and she flinched forward ¨C you could never shedallthe force with Turis. I kneed her again and punched the side of her head with my shredded fist. She stumbled, and I slammed my forehead into her face and felt her nose break with a satisfying crunch.


    Oh yes¡­


    She stumbled back, and I closed for the finish. She sent a jab at me to fend me off but I slapped it aside and stole its force. My shin-kick crunched into the side of her knee¡­


    Her other knee shot out. It took me in the side an instant after my kick landed. The timing was perfect. Impossibly perfect, but she pulled it off. Every ounce of force I¡¯d sent out came back at me, along with whatever interest Isande had seen fit to add.


    Which was quite a lot, if I¡¯m any judge. Like I said, the timing was perfect.


    It was like being shot. The force of the blow turned me right around. I felt my ribs splintering in my chest. My heels skidded on the stone and I lost my balance.


    I fell. Hard.


    Looked up.


    Isande was above me, one foot raised¡­


    ¡­she stamped down.

 Chapter 2

    I awoke to a cool breeze and the smell of salt.


    My wounds had healed ¨C that was not a surprise in itself, but I had a thin slice on the back of my hand that had not been there before. It looked reasonably fresh.


    More importantly, my reserves were empty. Bone dry.


    I had no power.


    When Isande had stamped me into unconsciousness, probably cracking my skull in the process, my body would¡¯ve drawn on that power for healing as I had trained it to. Such healing would¡¯ve been indiscriminate. Every injury, no matter how minor, would¡¯ve been healed. That was probably why I was feeling so good. Things I wouldn¡¯t have wasted power on had been fixed, maybe even things I hadn¡¯t been aware of ¨C damage to the lining of my stomach or lungs or example.


    Ensis was a costly discipline. I would¡¯ve used up almost everything I¡¯d had left. Hell, I hadn¡¯t been running on full power when she¡¯d walked into the bar, let alone¡­


    But there was more. The slice on my hand proved that much. Isande had made it, probably several hundred times, watching it heal over each time. When it had stopped healing, she would¡¯ve known I was dry.


    Cunning bitch, I thought, not without admiration. I mean, the tactic had been standard when taking prisoners back in the War, but I hadn¡¯t even thought she might¡­


    But then, you didn¡¯t think you¡¯d lose, either, did you?


    Ah well. It wasn¡¯t like my reserves had been that great to begin with. I had not needed them on Sansara.


    You should¡¯ve kept them topped up, all the same. You had three chaos-rents, right there. Isande was probably brimming with energy before she even stepped into the bar.


    War ended. You got sloppy.


    But there was no point in dwelling on the mistake. Mostly, I was just happy to still be breathing.


    I sat up.


    I had been lying in the grass beneath a blue sky with a single yellow sun. To my left I could see thick tangles of gorse and some other plant-life that I didn¡¯t recognise. I was, clearly, no longer on Sansara.


    Kandor, maybe? It¡¯s nearby¡­


    To the right was the edge of a cliff, and a gleaming azure sea. Beads of light glittered on the waves. I could see the circling shadows of seabirds hunting in the noonday sun. I could hear their echoing calls sounding across the waves.


    It was almost restful.


    Isande was standing at the cliff¡¯s edge, wind whipping at her gi jacket. She was staring out to sea, her back to me.


    I contemplated shoving her off the cliff. A blow to the back of the head, even with prosaic force, would stun her. She would slip and fall before she could muster any power or plan to save herself. Her body would be dashed against the base of the cliff. I could follow down at my leisure, and finish her before she could use Ensis to repair herself.


    No.


    That was my pride talking. I had never liked to lose. But we agreed to the contest. She had not broken the treaty. By my own rules, that meant I couldn¡¯t either.


    Besides, shoving her off the cliff just seemed¡­ juvenile.


    ¡®You won,¡¯ I said. ¡®I guess you get your way.¡¯


    She turned, shrugging her shoulders. ¡®It would¡¯ve been easier if you¡¯d cooperated.¡¯ She paused, smiling. ¡®But, that said, I have always wanted to fight you one-on-one.¡¯


    I stood, slowly. Flexed my hand to check its function. There was no pain, no soreness. I felt strong, healthy. I had made a full recovery, it seemed.


    My well of power was dry, but that could be remedied. Isande had done no permanent damage.


    That spoke of a terrible confidence all by itself.


    ¡®You know,¡¯ said Isande, slowly, ¡®I thought you¡¯d be tougher. You beat Ulmeshian, back in the War. No-one else has ever come close.¡¯ Her smile widened. ¡®Maybe you¡¯ve lost your edge?¡¯


    I smiled back. ¡®Don¡¯t be a bitch, Isande.¡¯


    Besides, there¡¯s more to that story than any of you know. Even Ulmeshian doesn¡¯t know the whole of it.


    ¡®Unless,¡¯ said Isande, as if I had not spoken, ¡®unless you wanted to lose?¡¯


    I shook my head. ¡®No.¡¯


    Silence.


    I was the one to break it. ¡®So, Exan really killed him?¡¯


    The good humour drained from Isande¡¯s face in a split second. ¡®Yes. Carmen was there. She saw it all.¡¯


    ¡®And yet she survived?¡¯


    ¡®She ran.¡¯


    I smiled a nasty smile. ¡®Of course she did.¡¯


    Isande frowned at me. ¡®Exan is strong, Rukh. She was no match for him alone, and she knew it. She fled before he could bind her.¡¯


    I¡¯m not the only one getting sloppy in her old age, then. He should¡¯ve had time to¡­


    I closed my eyes for moment, banishing the thought.


    ¡®Did you order him to do it?¡¯ Isande asked me. ¡®Is this some plan of yours?¡¯


    I met her gaze. ¡®No.¡¯


    She didn¡¯t ask me if I was lying. She knew I wasn¡¯t. Isande had known me before the War. We had been friends once, closer than sisters. She knew the truth of me ¨C that I never lied, that I never broke a promise. It had been the foundation of the Dark Pact¡¯s power. For all that the Alliance painted us as the bad guys, people had known that they could trust our word. We had stood united in the face of every threat, bound by our oaths, and in that unity we had found strength.


    It had been the only thing that had made the treaty possible. It hadn¡¯t been written on paper or signed in blood. It had been laid out in my words, sealed by my name. Everyone who had sworn to follow me was bound by that promise.


    Only now, of course, Exan had broken it.


    And not in accordance with my wishes. I had wanted the War to end. I had known that it was lost, that carrying on would¡¯ve achieved nothing.


    I had no desire to¡­


    Not entirely true, that, is it?


    No. Some days I did wish the War was back on. Everything had been simpler then, in a way. My every decision had been made in a strategic context. I¡¯d never been unsure of what to do. I had had plenty of worthy opponents, had never wanted for a decent fight. I had been a figure of fear and dread to some but I had mattered. I did not matter any longer. Of course, in the broad infinity that was Reality, no-one did.


    Isande was watching me. She knew what I was thinking.


    ¡®Do you regret it?¡¯ she asked me, ever so softly.


    Another silence, broken only by the calling seabirds and the soft whisper of the wind.


    Do you regret it?


    Well, if I was honest with myself, not entirely. Not every day. Less often, probably, than I regretted signing the treaty. But regrets were funny things. They came and went with the mood. Did I think I had done something wrong? That I had sinned against some cosmic scale of objective morality? No, no I did not.


    Did I wish it had gone differently? That I had been able to win?


    Yes.


    That, however, was none of Isande¡¯s business.


    Show no weakness, I reminded myself.


    ¡®Let me ask you a question instead,¡¯ I said. ¡®Do you think it¡¯s better this way? The way things are now? Do you think the right side won?¡¯


    Isande¡¯s face was impassive as she answered. ¡®You are responsible for the death of millions, if not billions. You are responsible for the extinction of entire worlds. You broke ties with your only true family. You betrayed your friends and all that they stood for. More pain and heartache can be laid at your feet than at the feet of any other individual in the history of Reality.¡¯ She favoured me with a small, humourless smile. ¡®You had to be stopped.¡¯


    I folded my arms. ¡®Not what I asked, Isande,¡¯ I said. ¡®I could¡¯ve built something numinous¡­¡¯


    ¡®At the cost of mortal blood.¡¯


    ¡®Well, yes,¡¯ I said. ¡®But it¡¯s not as if that¡¯s an uncommon price for these things, is it?¡¯


    Isande¡¯s face was cold. ¡®You didn¡¯t have the right.¡¯


    ¡®Ah yes. We¡¯re not supposed to interfere.¡¯ I shook my head in amusement. ¡®And yet that is exactly what you and the others did, isn¡¯t it?¡¯


    ¡®You had to be stopped,¡¯ said Isande, in exactly the same tone as before.


    I spread my hands. ¡®Why? How many times have the Alliance sat back and watched as the mortals did to each other the very things you condemned me for doing? And let¡¯s not forget ¡°cost¡± you talk about would¡¯ve been immeasurably lower if you¡¯d just let me get on with it.¡¯ I favoured her with a mocking smile. ¡®If you are going to judge me evil, at least go to the trouble of building a consistent moral framework first.¡¯


    Silence.


    Then, after a long moment, Isande spoke, her voice so quiet as to be almost a whisper.


    ¡®Do you care about that cost, Rukh? Did you carve out your empire for any real purpose?¡¯ A pause. ¡®Or were you simply bored?¡¯


    And to that, of course, I had no answer that I cared to give.


    *             *             *


    There are two ways to travel between worlds.


    One is to step into Chaos. It is the raw, unfiltered substance from which solid reality is forged. Or so they say. Chaos extends its tendrils into every cube of space in Reality. Thus from Chaos, one can go anywhere. Of course, you don¡¯t get to decide where you come out, or who you come out as, or if you come out at all. Chaos is the resort of the powerless, the ignorant, or the very, very desperate.


    I tried to avoid being one of those three.


    That said, everyone starts out as powerless and ignorant, and most start out desperate too. Chaos holds the potential for change. Some say it is change and maybe they¡¯re right, but it is very definitely power. To become what I was I had had bound a thread of it within myself, learned to channel it into the myriad disciplines of my kind.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    This was what allowed me to use the second method.


    We walked.


    Isande led and I followed. We walked away from the edge of the cliff, through the tangles of gorse and along the tiny animal tracks. Our path twisted down towards the level of the sea. We walked through a small forest and out onto a long smooth beach. Gulls scattered at our approach.


    And then the beach was gone, smoothing out into a long tarmac road, the surface of which was painted with yellow symbols. The sky above us was red with the setting of the sun. Storm-clouds bunched on the horizon.


    Isande and I walked the tarmac in step with each other. Hours passed. Tarmac became stone cobbles through a busy market square. Cobbles became a dirt track through a forest.


    I ticked off the names of the worlds in my head. Kandor, Shasu, Narma, Koralin¡­


    This was Faris. It cost no power to step between worlds, only knowledge of the ways between them. In the War that knowledge had been worth more than anything. We had scouted constantly, built complex maps of where linked to where, of which paths we thought were new and which paths the other side already knew about. We spent that knowledge on ambushes and escapes and delivering crushing defeats to mortal strongholds.


    In a way, it was that knowledge that had finally ended the War. Not in the way I had imagined, but by getting me unobstructed to the gates of the House, white flag draping from my fist.


    Eventually we reached a crossroads. This world, Elran, had rings. They curved up into the blue sky in an immense, sparking band. The single sun hid its face behind their edge. The ground was hard-packed, rocky desert, the road a track of finely beaten dust. A signpost marked the crossroads, its shadow long in the failing light.


    There was someone waiting for us beside it. But then, that was often the way, with crossroads.


    Isande sighed.


    I glanced at her. ¡®Friend of yours?¡¯ There was no doubt that the girl was one of us. I could see her taint, plain as anything, not in any way that I could describe but ineffably there all the same. There were ways to hide it, ways to mask it, but in the absence of those disciplines our kind always knew our own.


    Her skin was pale yellow marked with swirling grey bands of varying thicknesses. The largest was perhaps three inches wide, the smallest may be a tenth of that. Her ears were hidden beneath a ragged mop of short, dark hair, but I knew that they would be pointed, same as I knew that the dark pairs of parallel lines on either side of her neck were vestigial gills.


    She was from Kaba then, or had chosen to appear so. With enough skill in Ensis you could look pretty much however you wanted. Most people retained the characteristics of their homeworld, but it was never wise to assume.


    It was her choice of dress that really interested me. White gi, bound with a red belt. A katana over her shoulder, the very mirror of Isande. That kind of imitation was rarely seen, except in very specific circumstances.


    Isande has a disciple? Well, isn¡¯t that a twist?


    ¡®Cass,¡¯ said Isande, and for the first time I saw weariness in her. ¡®I told you to meet me at the House.¡¯


    But Cass wasn¡¯t paying attention. She was looking, instead, at me.


    I looked back. Studied her face.


    There was scar running from her left eye to the right side of her jaw, a thin, neat scar but stark red against her banded skin. It had clearly been made by something very sharp. Either she didn¡¯t have the skill with Ensis to heal it, or she had left it there deliberately to give her face some character.


    I didn¡¯t recognise her, for what that was worth, but I recognised the look in her eyes all right. I had seen it before on the innumerable battlefields of the War, in all kinds of flavours.


    Hatred.


    ¡®Is this her?¡¯ she asked, eyes still locked on mine.


    ¡®Depends who you mean by ¡°her¡±,¡¯ I said.


    Cass¡¯s mouth pressed into a thin, hard line. ¡®Helena Rukh. The Black Queen. Leader of the Dark Pact. The Last Evil.¡¯ She all but spat that last one. ¡®Need I go on?¡¯


    I smiled at her. ¡®Please do,¡¯ I  said. ¡®It¡¯s rare to hear my titles listed with such eloquence.¡¯


    I don¡¯t lie, ever, but sometimes it¡¯s possible to be objectively truthful and utterly sarcastic at the same time. I have always relished those opportunities.


    She took a step, but Isande was beside her in an instant, hand on her shoulder. ¡®No,¡¯ she said, voice firm. ¡®Rukh and I have reached an accord.¡¯


    ¡®Not my accord,¡¯ said Cass, shaking her off. She looked her in the eye. ¡®You going to fight me, sensei? Because that¡¯s what it will take.¡¯


    Isande sighed, and stepped back.


    ¡®Take it you never signed the treaty?¡¯ I asked, looking at Cass. I was keeping my hands loose at my sides, my body open, my entire stance nonthreatening. But I was under no illusions ¨C she was going to attack.


    ¡®No. I was born just after it was signed.¡¯


    I nodded. ¡®That¡¯ll be why I don¡¯t recognise you.¡¯ I grinned at her. ¡®You¡¯re still a child.¡¯


    She went for me.


    I¡¯d seen it coming a mile off. She was young, and angry, and she still thought that a fight was something you squared up to. Her hand went to the sword at her hip as she came forward, and a couple of seconds later it was over.


    I didn¡¯t bother going for the sword. I feinted towards it with my left hand, on reflex as much as anything, and I whipped the folded knuckles of my right into her throat with all the force I could muster.


    I felt the cartilage break, but I was already disengaging, backing up in case she got the sword out of the scabbard in time for one last, desperate cut.


    She didn¡¯t. She just dropped, choking on the splinters of her own larynx.


    Isande watched in silence, her face a mask.


    On a more experienced opponent the blow would never have landed. Cass should¡¯ve blocked it with a dropped chin, or slapped it away with her free hand. But she hadn¡¯t been thinking. She¡¯d been too focused on putting that katana through my neck to deal with the reality of her situation. I¡¯d seen that weakness when I¡¯d seen the hatred on her face. She¡¯d probably fantasised about this moment, built up a picture of how it should go, and when the time came she hadn¡¯t been able to set that fantasy aside.


    That one strike had been all it had taken to end the fight. A blow to the neck was a killing blow.


    And Cass was dying. Her throat was a ruin, and she couldn¡¯t breathe. The only prosaic solution was an emergency tracheotomy, and that was a very difficult surgery to perform on yourself, especially if you were in the position of needing to.


    Luckily for her she had access to less prosaic solutions.


    I watched as the darkening bruise on her throat receded. Her throat flexed and rippled as her splintered larynx reconstructed itself beneath her skin.


    Looked like she could use Ensis after all.


    ¡®Back in the War,¡¯ I said, conversationally, ¡®I¡¯d be finishing you off right about now. There wouldn¡¯t be much you could do to stop me either.¡¯


    She opened her mouth. Gasped.


    Fast, I thought to myself. I can see what Isande sees in her.


    ¡®You¡­ you killed¡­ killed my father.¡¯


    I had figured it was something like that. This routine had a depressing familiarity about it.


    ¡®I¡¯ve killed a lot of people,¡¯ I said, raising my hands. ¡®With both fist and word.¡¯ I shrugged. ¡®Such is war.¡¯


    She got to her feet. ¡®My father was Telemens Dax,¡¯ she said.


    Memory dropped on me like a sledgehammer. For a moment I was back on Kaba, facing Dax and his gathered allies. No-namers, recently raised to the power and rushed to the front line all too soon. They had served their purpose though, which was to occupy the Imaski who accompanied me and allow Dax and I to go mano-a-mano in the style we both loved best.


    He had very nearly killed me.


    I looked back at his daughter. I could see the resemblance now, something in the line of her jaw, in the cast of her eyes. Dax hadn¡¯t hated me though. He hadn¡¯t been the kind of man to hate. He had entered the War with all kinds of principles, and by the end he¡¯d betrayed every single one. His loathing had been reserved for himself.


    ¡®I remember,¡¯ I said. ¡®We fought a long time, Dax and I. But it ended with his blood on my fingers, his mortal vessel in ruins.¡¯ I shook my head, trying to shake the memory. ¡®I burned his body where it fell and I left his ashes to the winds.¡¯


    Cass stood very still. I could read the tension in every line of her body.


    ¡®After all,¡¯ I continued, raising my head, ¡®he would¡¯ve done the same to me, if I¡¯d let him. No difference between us at all really, except in a purely practical sense.¡¯ I let my gaze harden. ¡®You should let this go.¡¯


    Cass shook her head. Said, in a low voice, little more than a whisper, ¡®No.¡¯


    She drew her sword, and, this time, I let her. That she was still using weapons meant she hadn¡¯t mastered Turis and Kasis yet.


    Still a disciple, I reminded myself.


    She was fully healed now, and I knew she was ready to come at me a second time. I could see it in her stance, in the set of her feet, in the sudden, tight focus of her eyes. She didn¡¯t care about the treaty. She didn¡¯t care about Isande¡¯s silent disapproval. She was losing herself to her rage. I had ruined her dreams of how this encounter would proceed, and for that she hated me all the more. In this moment, this beautiful moment, the only thing that would satisfy her would be my death.


    I felt the killing-smile curl at the corners of my mouth. I felt the need I had not felt in a long time. I felt the itch in my fingertips. I wanted to dance. I wanted to break bone and shatter flesh. I wanted the risk, and the challenge, and singing in the blood that only came with combat.


    I had experience and cunning. She had power to draw on and a blade in her hand. This would be a challenge.


    I loved a challenge.


    My warrior side was awake again. It was awake, and tugging on the edges of my soul, whispering dark truths into my inner ear. It was reminding me of what it had felt like when I¡¯d faced this girl¡¯s father. It was reminding me that the fight with Isande had been the first time in a long time that I¡¯d felt truly alive.


    I raised my hands to guard, and felt anticipation course through me.


    Then Isande stepped between us. ¡®Enough,¡¯ she said.


    Oh how I hated Isande for that! My first thought was to say ¡°No, not enough,¡± to force the confrontation. How dare she intervene in this, this thing that belonged solely to Cass and I? I hated her for her strength, and for the absolute nature of her refusal. I wanted her dead for it.


    I would fight them both.


    But the strategist in me knew the stupidity of that thought. I could not win here, not as I was.


    Besides, I had given Isande my word.


    So I lowered my hands, feeling all the suppressed anger of a jilted lover, all the frustration of an aborted orgasm. But I kept my mask in place this time.


    Show no weakness.


    I shrugged at Isande, then flashed a wink at Cass.


    ¡®Some other time then, kid,¡¯ I said.


    *             *             *


    ¡®The next time I tell you to stay behind,¡¯ Isande was saying, ¡®you stay behind.¡¯


    We had left Elran behind after a few hours travel along its dusty tracks. We now walked across an open plain of long, green grass. It stretched all around us for as far as the eye could see, rippling constantly in the stiff breeze. The name of the world was Shadim, a world I had not visited since long before the War.


    More importantly, it was not a necessary step on our way back to the House. Either Isande¡¯s knowledge of the ways was lacking, or she was making a detour.


    I guess I¡¯ll find out in time.


    ¡®Yes, sensei,¡¯ said Cass.


    ¡®Don¡¯t sulk, girl. If you don¡¯t want to follow my instructions then you don¡¯t have to. There is no rule that says you have to be beholden to anyone other than yourself.¡¯


    ¡®Sensei,¡¯ said Cass, slowing, ¡®I didn¡¯t mean¡­¡¯


    ¡®I am not sending you away,¡¯ said Isande, ¡®I am simply reminding you that it is your choice to be here. You asked to learn my way, to walk the path I have walked. I agreed to teach you. I never claimed to own you.¡¯


    ¡®I¡­¡¯


    ¡®But,¡¯ said Isande, voice hardening, ¡®when you go against me it betrays a lack of trust. Today you told me that where Rukh is concerned, you do not trust me.¡¯


    ¡®Revenge is a jealous mistress,¡¯ I said, and was rewarded with a slight tensing of Cass¡¯s shoulders.


    Isande gave me a look. It was the kind of look mothers give unruly children.


    ¡®It¡¯s not that I don¡¯t trust you,¡¯ said Cass, after a moment. ¡®But she¡­ she killed my father.¡¯


    ¡®Yes.¡¯ Isande was no longer looking at me. She had quickened her pace, pulling ahead, and I could no longer see her expression. ¡®He was my friend, if you recall, and on occasion my lover. As were Irani and Callahan, also dead at her hand. She killed many others who had been comrades and compatriots of mine. Her War killed many more.¡¯


    My War?


    ¡®They mostly had it coming,¡¯ I said.


    Cass whirled, hand on her sword.


    I stopped. This was as good a place as any. The grass only came partway up my shins and was no impediment to movement. There was plenty of space around us. Nothing to slow the fight down or get in the way.


    Just how I liked it.


    ¡®If you¡¯re going to use that,¡¯ I said, lacing my voice with an appropriate amount of scorn, ¡®you¡¯d best get on with it.¡¯


    ¡®You think this is the wisest course?¡¯ said Isande to Cass. She said it quietly, as if it were a genuine question rather than a veiled warning. ¡®Last time¡­¡¯


    ¡®She surprised me,¡¯ said Cass, her eyes locked on mine. ¡®I wasn¡¯t ready.¡¯


    ¡®No,¡¯ said Isande, voice dry, ¡®no, you weren¡¯t. And you still aren¡¯t.¡¯ A glance back at me. ¡®She beat you without using any power at all. No Turis, nothing.¡¯


    Cass¡¯s lips twitched in a stillborn snarl.


    I let my grin widen. ¡®You should listen to your mistress, Cassandra,¡¯ I said. ¡®I killed your father at the height of his strength. What makes you think you¡¯ll do any better? Hell, what makes you think you¡¯ll ever do any better?¡¯


    The sword came free of the scabbard.


    I never even saw the blow.


    One second Cass was stepping forward, blade in hand, the next her face had been turned around by the force of Isande¡¯s slap.


    Blood splattered from her lips.


    ¡®You stupid girl,¡¯ said Isande. Her voice was low but I could hear her anger. ¡®Have you heard nothing that I have said? Or is it worse than that? Do you act this way because you know I am here to save you if something goes wrong?¡¯ She chopped at her disciple¡¯s wrist and the katana fell from nerveless fingers. ¡®She defeated Ulmeshian himself in single combat. She will kill you!¡¯


    Stop it Isande, I thought to myself. You¡¯re making me blush.


    Cass turned her face back to her sensei. ¡®All your reprimands are for me,¡¯ she said, as the blood trickled down her face. ¡®But she is the one who baits me.¡¯


    Isande snorted, not in amusement, but in contempt.


    Cass flinched.


    ¡®She baits you because you are easily baited. She tests your pride and your temper. One you have too much of, the other is too short by far. I will not stop the test just because you are failing it!¡¯


    Isande shoved her disciple in the chest, hard. Cass fell back into the grass, hands going back to catch herself.


    ¡®She has kept to the treaty. You have broken it, twice.¡¯ She turned away from Cass, a motion quite deliberate. ¡®Your father would be ashamed of you.¡¯


    Or cheering you on, I thought. Man was a total bastard, after all.


    I saw the words hit home, nonetheless. For a moment, I thought that Cass might break and cry. She was only a few decades old, younger than I could even remember being. And everyone has a breaking point.


    But no tears came. She simply closed her eyes for a long moment, and then said:


    ¡®I apologise.¡¯ A pause. ¡®I¡­I will not face Rukh until you tell me I am ready.¡¯


    Isande inclined her head. ¡®Better,¡¯ she said, and then, to my surprise, turned to me.


    ¡®A favour,¡¯ she said.


    I raised an eyebrow.


    Among those raised to the power, mortal currency is all but worthless. There is no economy as such, the only resources of value are power and the things made from it. Power cannot be traded, not directly, and only a fool would do so if it could.


    A favour, on the other hand¡­ well, that is worth something. Agreeing to one entitles you to one of equal value in return.


    It was a long time since anyone had risked being beholden to me, even for a small thing.


    ¡®I¡¯m listening,¡¯ I said.


    Isande gestured towards Cass. ¡®One lesson.¡¯ She smiled a knowing smile. ¡®On¡­ oh, anything you like.¡¯


    Combat, then. I can teach her nothing of the disciplines, not like this. As you well know, you crafty, crafty bitch.


    I thought for a moment. The idea appealed to me, for the novelty if nothing else. I hadn¡¯t taught a disciple since Exan.


    Exan¡­


    I pushed all thoughts of him away, suppressing them once again. There would be time enough to ruminate on his actions later.


    ¡®Agreed,¡¯ I said.


    Cass was staring at me in horror, frozen in the act of retrieving her sword. ¡®Sensei¡­¡¯


    But Isande was already shaking her head. ¡®Get up,¡¯ she said, and then pointed at me. ¡®Learn.¡¯

 Chapter 3

    If I had been teaching my own student I would have begun with a light sparring session and moved on from there. But I didn¡¯t trust Cass not to sucker punch me with a Turis-loaded fist when I was least prepared for it. She clearly thought herself one of the righteous, which meant her promise to Isande was worth nothing. People like that would happily break their word to serve some imagined higher principle.


    No way was I putting myself in line for that sucker punch. Without power, an augmented strike could kill me outright.


    So I used Isande.


    They faced each other across the empty grass, a few long strides apart. I watched from the sidelines with a business eye. This was familiar to me. I had trained many back in the War, and in the days prior to it. I had trained those mortal fighters that would become my imaski, and I had trained those we¡¯d raised to the power. But it had been a different process, an industrial process. This was like it had been in the old days. Master to student.


    I remembered my own training, and where I was going, and it was like pulling thorns from my flesh.


    Nostalgia is a bitch at times.


    ¡®Begin,¡¯ I said.


    I stopped them almost immediately. They bowed to each other, a gesture of respect older than time, and I found myself striding forward, shaking my head.


    ¡®No,¡¯ I said.


    Cass looked at me, and then tilted her head to one side in a gesture that was simultaneously quizzical and insolent.


    ¡®You took your eyes off of your opponent,¡¯ I said. ¡®She could have been inside your guard before you¡¯d straightened. That blow could¡¯ve killed you.¡¯


    Cass glanced past me at Isande and I shook my head.


    ¡®No point in looking at her. Sure, she¡¯s an honourable woman, but not everyone is. Would you take your eyes off me?¡¯


    ¡®We¡¯re only sparring¡­¡¯


    ¡®You¡¯re learning bad habits,¡¯ I told her. ¡®When the time comes for real violence, against a real opponent, you will forget everything except what you have trained. You will fall back on old patterns.¡¯ I shook my head at her. ¡®No bowing.¡¯


    Again she looked to Isande for confirmation, but I didn¡¯t wait to see if she would give it. I just took a step back out of the way and spoke again.


    ¡®Begin.¡¯


    I watched, almost bored, as they closed on each other. The circled for a moment, and then Cass came in with a swift flurry of punches that Isande slipped and blocked. I kept watching. I saw the blur of a front kick and swift counter from Isande. Cass leapt back out of range, and then came in again.


    I sighed.


    ¡®Stop.¡¯


    The moves were there. The technique was there. But there was no fire. This wasn¡¯t combat. It wasn¡¯t even sport. It was a shadow of a shadow and it pained me just to watch it.


    ¡®That,¡¯ I told them both, ¡®was embarrassing.¡¯


    Isande took the rebuke with a blank expression, though I could sense her amusement. Cass¡¯s face flushed.


    ¡®Get this into your head, kiddo,¡¯ I said to Cass, ¡®if you want to fight, to really fight, then you have to train for it. You aren¡¯t training for the ring, or for some fucking exhibition.¡¯ I waved a hand in the air for emphasis. ¡®You are training to break, to maim, to kill.¡¯ I snorted. ¡®If you can¡¯t except that, then forget about being her disciple. Go study the disciplines or travel the worlds or something else that makes use of the Alliance¡¯s peace. Leave the fighting to the warriors.¡¯


    There was a pause, and then Cass cleared her throat.


    ¡®I am a warrior,¡¯ she said, in a voice that spoke of tightly controlled anger. ¡®And one day, Helena Rukh, when I am ready, I will come for you and kill you. No matter where in Reality you go, I will kill you. No matter how many others stand between us, I will kill you.¡¯ She bared her teeth at me. ¡®I. Will. Kill. You.¡¯


    I grinned at her. ¡®I look forward to seeing you try,¡¯ I said, and then, because I was her teacher for the moment and not her enemy, I pointed to Isande. ¡®Pretend she is me. Pretend you are fighting in deadly earnest. Show me your disciplines. Waste less passion on telling me what you will do in the future, and show me what you can do today.¡¯ I turned to Isande. ¡®You¡¯re just as bad,¡¯ I told her. ¡®You won¡¯t do the girl any favours by sparing her pain.¡¯


    ¡®Yes, sensei,¡¯ said Isande, without even a touch of irony.


    I stepped back once more.


    ¡®Let¡¯s try again,¡¯ I said. ¡®Begin.¡¯


    Isande was moving before the words were even out of my mouth. Cass was a fraction slower, but to her credit it was only a fraction. I felt a pulse of satisfaction. This was how a fight should start. A strong opening could mean an early win, and in a fight to the death that was the best kind of win.


    As unsatisfying as it can sometimes be.


    Isande went for the high kick. Cass slapped it aside with her own leg, feinted a knee strike, and exploded off her back leg with a flying cross. Isande fell back, catching the punch on a high block, and the ground beneath her rumbled.


    They were using Turis.


    Good.


    Isande shoved her disciple back and retaliated with a combination of low and high kicks. Cass caught the first on her hands and only narrowly missed taking the second on her chin. Isande closed the range with a flurry of straight punches, none of which landed a hit. Cass slapped her hand away but the hook was heading for a face before she could get in the counter and again she was forced to block. Again the ground rumbled.


    I grinned. I knew what Isande was up to. She was swarming her, throwing strike after strike, and although Cass was falling back before the onslaught, Isande was closing the range. Cass could barely defend herself and if just one of those punches connected properly¡­


    And then Cass pulled it together. She slapped the uppercut that would¡¯ve finished her out of the way, rolled beneath the hook that followed it, and pivoted away in the same motion. Blood flew from Isande¡¯s hand as the force exploded, unspent.


    Cass came up on her blind side. Threw a cross¡­


    CRACK!


    I blinked. Cass was on her knees, clutching her wrist, face screwed up in pain. Isande was standing there looking down at her, face utterly serene. There was a gash across the back of her own hand, but it looked shallow enough. She hadn¡¯t shredded her fist the way I had in the bar.


    Cass, on the other hand¡­


    Cass¡¯s hand was broken. A thin bone jutted from the side of her palm. Blood seeped from deep splits in her knuckles.


    She must¡¯ve hit quite hard. And although she had been striking at the unprotected side of Isande¡¯s face, Isande had still managed to defend.


    Kasis, the discipline was called. It took a fair wedge of power, but it allowed you to harden parts your body to the consistency of steel. It did nothing to hold back the pain of impact, but it would protect one¡¯s flesh from damage and it was most unpleasant for the attacker.


    Unless, of course, they were using Kasis themselves.


    The drawbacks were that it cost more in power than shedding force through Turis, and that you had to take the full force of the blow for it to be effective. But when you desperately needed to block a gap in your defences, Kasis was the perfect tool.


    ¡®That¡­ that really fucking hurts,¡¯ said Cass, getting up. The bone was already moving back into alignment.


    ¡®Stop,¡¯ I told her. ¡®No Ensis.¡¯


    She looked at me, wide eyed, and then to Isande. ¡®What?¡¯


    ¡®No Ensis,¡¯ I said, keeping my face blank.


    Cass looked again to Isande. ¡®Sensei¡­¡¯


    ¡®For this lesson,¡¯ I told her, letting my voice go cold, ¡®I¡¯m your sensei. No Ensis.¡¯


    Slowly, arm trembling, she lowered her hand. The little bone that jutted from the side of it stopped moving. The blood continued to flow.


    Her eyes met mine. I could see the fury in them. ¡®You,¡¯ she said, ¡®are one sick fuck.¡¯


    ¡®I agreed to teach you something,¡¯ I told her. ¡®That is exactly what I¡¯m doing.¡¯ I pointed to where Isande stood, motionless. ¡®While you were moaning about your hand, she could¡¯ve killed you fifty different ways. I would¡¯ve had your head off of your shoulders inside a second.¡¯ I shook my head at her. ¡®You need to keep fighting, no matter what damage you take. I did not call a halt. You simply decided you had lost. You do that in the real world and you will die.¡¯


    Cass glanced back to Isande. ¡®Fine,¡¯ she said. ¡®We keep fighting. But that doesn¡¯t mean I can¡¯t¡­¡¯


    ¡®You don¡¯t have time.¡¯


    She was shaking her head now. ¡®You back off,¡¯ she said. ¡®Make space. Make the time.¡¯


    If you can, sure.


    ¡®Ensis costs power,¡¯ I told her. ¡®The next strike might meet with Kasis as well. You might break your hand again.  Rinse and repeat, and soon your reserves are dry and you have to go on the defensive, and then each of her blows becomes effectively unblockable, and sooner or later you will make the slip that kills you. You do not spend power until you have to.¡¯ I gestured at her broken hand. ¡®It will still function as a weapon. The bone is relatively intact. Ensis will spare you pain, nothing else.¡¯Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    ¡®Pain is a distraction!¡¯


    I nodded. ¡®Yes,¡¯ I said. ¡®And it can be mastered. Mastered and ignored.¡¯


    Cass¡¯s lips were trembling. ¡®I can¡¯t fight like this,¡¯ she said.


    I shook my head at her. ¡®Then you¡¯ll die. In a real fight pain comes without warning. You could take a wound at any time. Unless you can keep going, regardless, then your opponent can leverage her advantage. You must not allow that.¡¯


    Isande cleared her throat. ¡®I would also point out,¡¯ she said, ¡®that the¡­¡¯ She glanced at me quickly, ¡®psychological effect of an opponent who appears unfazed by all damage¡­.¡¯


    ¡®This isn¡¯t how we train!¡¯ said Cass, shaking her head again.


    ¡®It¡¯s how I train,¡¯ I said, and gestured, once again, to Isande. ¡®Now, get back to it. You can heal up when we¡¯re done.¡¯


    *             *             *


    We made camp a few hours later by a river of a clear water, on a world called Relaria. The sky was pale green, devoid of cloud, and shading towards evening. The plant-life around us was the glittering blue of coloured glass, and the edges of the tree leaves were razor sharp ¨C as I remembered when I reached past one, unthinking.


    A line of blood coloured my wrist.


    I looked at it for a moment, and then went to the river to fish.


    I caught half a dozen tentacle-mouthed creatures, striking them from the water with my uninjured hand so that they flopped, helpless on the bank. Isande pierced them through with a broken branch, and set a pile of those sharp blue leaves aflame.


    They burned well, neither too quickly nor too slow.


    Just like old times.


    We had spent time here together, back in the earliest stages of our training. Being forced to survive in a primitive environment was a good experience for any student have. Sparring in these glittering glass forests was not like it was elsewhere, either. One learned very quickly to mind one¡¯s surroundings.


    Pain, after all, is an excellent teacher.


    ¡®You would not do it,¡¯ said Cass from where she sat, hugging her knees on the other side of the fire. ¡®Would you?¡¯


    I raised an eyebrow at her. ¡®Do what?¡¯


    I could feel Isande¡¯s exasperation with her disciple, but she said nothing. I was beginning to see that this was her way.


    After all, I make an excellent foil all by myself.


    Cass gestured with her now healed hand. ¡®The training exercise. That¡¯s not really how you¡­¡¯ She broke off, seeing the amusement on my face.


    So that was it. It had been too hard for her, and so she had decided that it was too hard for anyone. But I didn¡¯t answer her. I didn¡¯t explain myself. I had taught the lesson, and it was up to her whether or not she learned it. The time was up. I was not her sensei. I would neither pander to her illusions or make any effort to dispel them.


    ¡®Perhaps think who you are talking to,¡¯ said Isande, lifting the fish out of the fire. ¡®Is it a good idea to underestimate her?¡¯


    Ah. Isande knew of course. Isande had seen me keep fighting with the side of my face caved in not long ago, and had seen worse still in the War.


    She pulled one of the fish off the stick with bare fingers and tossed it to me.


    I caught it.


    It was still hot from the fire, but that didn¡¯t matter. Another discipline, Sansis, allowed one to move heat from one place to another, to diffuse it into the air or adjacent matter. At the most basic level, heat was simply kinetic force, same as a punch or a kick. The movement was different, more spread out, less focused, but that made it all the easier to channel.


    The rules were the same as Turis. The smaller the amount of energy, the longer you had to diffuse or redirect it. The inverse was also true.


    I drew the heat from the fish through my fingers and let it dissipate into my flesh. My hand remained unburned and I felt immediately warmer. Of course, if I¡¯d had power I could¡¯ve generated as much thermal energy as I needed from within¡­ but I didn¡¯t.


    ¡®You must learn to see what is there,¡¯ Isande was saying to Cass. ¡®Not what you think should be there, or wish was there, or¡­


    I pulled a piece of fish off and popped it into my mouth. It had a tough rubbery texture, and a smoky aftertaste, but it sure beat the slug-steaks I¡¯d had on Sansara.


    Cass stood up, very suddenly, mouth hanging open. ¡®You¡¯re dry,¡¯ she said. ¡®Out of power!¡¯


    Finally figured it out, huh?


    There was little point in dissembling.  ¡®What gave it away?¡¯ I asked her, with a hint of sarcasm. ¡®The fact I¡¯d just come from a fight with your sensei? The fact that you¡¯ve seen me use none this entire time?¡¯ I raised my free hand to show the cut I¡¯d received earlier. ¡®Or did you consider this evidence? After what I showed you today, you should¡¯ve discarded that one.¡¯


    Once again, she was ready to attack. She saw an opening. Saw weakness.


    ¡®You gave your word,¡¯ said Isande, pulling apart her own fish with her fingers. ¡®Or does that not mean anything to you?¡¯


    Cass glared at her, and then at me, and then slowly sank back down.  ¡®You knew,¡¯ she said, voice bitter. ¡®You knew when you made me promise. And you still won¡¯t let me¡­¡¯


    ¡®No,¡¯ said Isande. ¡®I won¡¯t. You aren¡¯t ready.¡¯


    ¡®She¡¯s defenceless!¡¯


    I ate the fish, listening to them argue. I wondered how I¡¯d have dealt with this if Cass had been my disciple. Knocked her senseless, probably. It was a crude way to prove a point, but generally effective.


    ¡®You really believe that?¡¯ Isande was saying. ¡®After all you¡¯ve seen?¡¯


    ¡®I don¡¯t know what to believe anymore!¡¯ Cass had turned her head away, hiding her face. ¡®I wonder if this is why you left me behind. You didn¡¯t want me to see how close you are to this¡­ this thing! She killed my father and you treat her like she¡¯s your friend!¡¯


    I snorted, chucking the skeleton of the fish into the fire. That had to be one of the most ridiculous accusations I¡¯d ever heard. Isande and I had been on opposite sides during the war. Even beforehand we had been rivals. The idea of us as friends¡­


    Well, I guess we had been, once. But I had killed that. Killed it dead, for ever and ever.


    The thought was¡­ not a pleasant one.


    ¡®That is not¡­¡¯ tried Isande, but she didn¡¯t get very far.


    ¡®Or is it something else? Maybe you think so little of me that you let her humiliate me for your sport? Maybe you enjoy watching her bait me, maybe you enjoy seeing me in pain, maybe you¡­¡¯


    I was getting tired of this.


    ¡®Maybe,¡¯ I said, lying down on the ground beside the fire, ¡®she loves you like a daughter, and doesn¡¯t want to watch me kill you. Personally, I don¡¯t give a fuck.¡¯


    Silence.


    At last.


    I closed my eyes, using Sansis to draw some heat from the fire a little closer.


    I slept.


    *             *             *


    ¡®Well,¡¯ said Isande, half a day later. ¡®We¡¯re here.¡¯


    We stood on the beach, the crash of the surf a distant echo behind us. The sand beneath my feet was not the light golden sand of the shoreline but the flat-packed, still-wet, grey-brown sand of the seabed.


    The tide was out.


    Up ahead a rocky shore-line, perhaps a hundred metres distant.


    ¡®This isn¡¯t the House,¡¯ said Cass, somewhat unnecessarily. She sounded confused, which was understandable, but to me things were finally making sense.


    I took a breath.


    I could feel it now, the tingling, jolting sensation on my skin. Something deep inside me stirred in response.


    ¡®There¡¯s a chaos-rent here,¡¯ I said.


    Isande pointed to the rocky beach ahead of us. ¡®Just there,¡¯ she said.


    Well, well, well.


    A chaos-rent. One of those multi-coloured tears in the fabric of Reality, a gate to what lay underneath. It would be smoking with tendrils of chaotic energy.


    Energy I could use.


    This was how we refilled the well within. All I had to do was stand near that rent and draw it in. Of course, I had limited internal capacity, everyone did, but I could go from empty and useless to a full tank of gas with only a little rest.


    Without power I was more or less at Isande¡¯s mercy, prey wriggling in a predators jaws, but with it¡­


    Oh, don¡¯t get me wrong, she¡¯d given me a thorough kicking last time around. She was quite possibly a better fighter than me. But I¡¯d been half-asleep on Sansara. Now I was awake again, and when we fought¡­


    When?


    Yes, when. Because I wanted to fight her, I really did. I wanted the risk, and the exhilaration, and the sense of awesome victory I would achieve if I beat her.


    No doubt Isande knew this. She wasn¡¯t stupid.


    ¡®You¡¯re going to let me fill the tank here?¡¯ I asked her. ¡®Really?¡¯


    ¡®Your word, first.¡¯


    Cass coughed. ¡®Sensei,¡¯ she said, head bowed. ¡®I think we would be foolish to trust her.¡¯


    Much more respectful, I thought to myself. What did they talk about, when I slept?


    Isande kept her eyes on me. ¡®She¡¯s never been known to break a promise.¡¯


    That was true. I had however been known for making promises that sounded better than they were. I kept to the letter of the bargain, not to the bargain the other person wished or thought they were making.


    I guess this was part of why some people thought me a devil.


    ¡®I gave you my word already.¡¯


    ¡®That you would come with me, yes.¡¯ Isande shook her head. ¡®It is not enough. You must promise that you will not seek to harm anyone at the House. That you will allow them their trial.¡¯


    Fuck that.


    I shook my head. ¡®I¡¯ll listen to what they have to say,¡¯ I said, ¡®and I won¡¯t attack anyone at the House unless they come at me first¡­ not this visit, anyway. But I won¡¯t legitimise this. They have no right to judge me.¡¯


    Isande looked at me a long while, and then shrugged.


    ¡®Okay,¡¯ she said. ¡®I guess that¡¯ll have to do.¡¯


    I looked at her, and then, slowly, shook my head. ¡®What are you playing at, Isande?¡¯ I asked her. ¡®First you make sure my reserves are dry, and then you go out of your way ¨C quite literally ¨C to let me refill them. What are you up to?¡¯


    Isande gave me a rare smile. ¡®Well,¡¯ she said, ¡®I imagine allowing you to face the others from a position of strength will count as a favour repaid?¡¯


    I thought for a moment, and then nodded. ¡®Yes,¡¯ I said. ¡®But that¡¯s not all there is to it, is there?¡¯


    Isande¡¯s smile became a grin. ¡®No,¡¯ she said, ¡®it isn¡¯t. But I¡¯m entitled to my secrets. Either make use of this opportunity or don¡¯t. The choice is yours.¡¯


    Well, when you put it like that¡­


    We went up to the rent.


    It looked, at first, like a chasm in rock. But it wasn¡¯t. The rock split on either side of it, sure, but the rent was in Reality, not stone. It was the difference between a picture of a valley, and a picture of a mountain that had had its canvas slashed open.


    Colour swirled within, lurid pinks and greens. Abstract tendrils wavered hungrily at its edges.


    ¡®Destruction. Creation. Change. Chaos is all these things.¡¯


    Trickster had said that to me, long ago. She¡¯d had an unhealthy obsession with the stuff.


    Wonder what she¡¯s up to now?


    I could feel the power fizzing in the air around me. I opened myself to it. I drank deep.


    The cut on my hand healed almost instantly. The aches of the long walk vanished. One could not help but use Ensis in this state. It was as close to free as such a thing could be. Within a few minutes I felt better than I had in years. I was giddy with the feeling, like I was young again¡­


    Keep it together, Rukh.


    Of course, drawing from a vent was not without its risks. This power was still born of chaos. It had to be tamed, distilled, brought into the well within me as something wholly mine.


    Carelessness could cost you your sanity, or, some believed, your soul.


    But I had done this before, many times. I would have said I was in no danger¡­ but it was the fools that thought that who were in the greatest danger of all. Better to say that there was a threat, but that I was more than that threat¡¯s equal.


    Beside me, Isande and Cass were drawing from the vent as well. There was no way to tell the level of another¡¯s reserves, at least, not directly, but they had both spent power on the journey.


    Still, they both stepped away long before I did.


    When I eventually came down from the rent, I was grinning.


    ¡®Hey, Isande,¡¯ I said, and her eyebrows went up in response.


    ¡®Yes?¡¯


    I raised my hands. ¡®Fight me?¡¯


    Isande glanced at my hands. Licked her lips. Her own hands hung loose at her sides, but I could see her desire to raise them.


    Cass tensed.


    But Isande and I weren¡¯t looking at her. We had eyes only for each other.


    A fighter is only as good as her opponents. I¡¯d had few friends in my life, and fewer lovers. But I had made good enemies. I had a knack for it. Isande was one of the toughest left, which was probably why she¡¯d been chosen to come after me. She had beaten me. She represented a challenge.


    I love a challenge.


    I wanted a rematch. I wanted it not because I had a loser¡¯s shame, but because I felt I had wasted the opportunity. My last performance had been lacking.


    I had not yet been awake.


    But now¡­


    I was at the peak of my strength. My body was healed to the optimum. My soul brimmed with power. I had taken Isande¡¯s measure, and she mine.


    I was ready. My readiness was so profound, so encompassing, that the fight itself was almost a foregone conclusion. It was the logical result of the chain of events that had led me here.


    Even better, Isande was feeling it too. She too was at her best. She too was whole, and hale, and filled with power. She too, measured herself by the strength of her opponents. She too loved to fight.


    We teetered on a knife edge. It would be so easy. Cass could witness that this, like our last battle, had been something we both wanted. We could find a space away from the rent, with plenty of space. Then¡­


    Why, then, we could do as we wished. As we both wished, all ties and vows forgotten.


    For one, long, lingering moment, I thought we might actually do it.


    Then Isande closed her eyes. Took a breath.


    Opened them again, and was once again serene.


    ¡®Perhaps another time,¡¯ she said, and smiled.


    My disappointment was crushing. It was a mountain on my back. I felt like my world had begun and ended, all at once.


    Show no weakness, I reminded myself.


    So I just shrugged at her. ¡®Fair enough,¡¯ I said.

 Chapter 4

    Malis. An empty world. It had plants and trees and beasts and birds¡­ but no people. No sentient life of any kind, as far as we could tell.


    It was here, a long, long time ago, that the House had been built.


    There were very few ways leading to or from Malis, too few. They all seemed to lead to the area around the House, as if the rest of the planet was beneath notice. I suspected that there had been other ways in the past, but that someone had destroyed them in the same fashion as a gardener pruning errant branches. I had also had a strong suspicion as to who that someone was.The House itself looked like the mansion house from a rich man¡¯s estate. I¡¯d seen a dozen like it in various corners of Reality. The wide porch, supported by columns. The upstairs balcony. The large windows separated into neat, geometrics panes of glass. The empty plain of waving prairie grass that surrounded it, and the worn track that led up to the door.


    It did not look like the Alliance¡¯s central command centre and main staging area, but it was nonetheless. It was the most heavily defended patch of real estate in all Reality, or so they said. The ultimate fortress: guarded by protections both prosaic and arcane, incapable of ever being taken or destroyed.


    In the War, I haven¡¯t even tried.


    I stood in the long grass and looked across at the rise on which it stood. The white surfacing gleamed in the afternoon sun.


    I felt something stir within me at the sight.


    It had been my home once, after all.


    ¡®Not long now,¡¯ said Cass, giving me a satisfied look. ¡®You scared?¡¯


    I didn¡¯t deign to answer. There were very few things in Reality that made me afraid. And while there were people up there in the House whose strength I respected, while some were even worthy opponents, there was not a one I was scared of.


    On the other hand, I knew that they were very much scared of me.


    So I just smiled and headed down the track towards it, taking point for the first time. I had promised that I would do no harm to anyone in that House unless they attacked me first, but I knew I had no such protection in return. There would be other hotheads like Cass who had never signed the treaty, or those who had but could moralise themselves into breaking it.


    Bring it, I thought to myself, a hot, savage thought, tinged with longing for violence.


    You scared?


    Like hell I was.


    I wondered again, as I walked down the path, why Isande had taken me via the chaos-rent. She must know as well as I that there was a real possibility of violence. There were some pretty unreasonable people in the Alliance. Without power I would¡¯ve been at their mercy, but now if it came to blows it would come to blood. She must¡¯ve known, standing at that rent, that she could be signing the death warrant for one of her own.


    She knows I didn¡¯t kill Exan.


    So?


    There was a puzzle here. A puzzle that, in the old days, I would¡¯ve been unable to leave alone. But I was here now, and I had promised to go in and listen to what my would-be judges had to say. It didn¡¯t matter what Isande was scheming. Time enough to figure that out later.


    I reached the steps that led up to the porch, and I paused.


    I was dimly aware of Cass and Isande some way behind me, but only dimly. The House had eclipsed them in my thoughts. This was the place I had trained. The place I had learned to wield the powers I had earned.


    It had¡­ significance.


    I ascended the steps.


    The door was open, just as it always used to be.


    I stepped through.


    The air inside was warm, dry. I could feel somewhere far below me, the presence of a chaos-rent.


    This place was a fortress for our kind. Its creator had made sure it was well stocked with our most important resource.


    The only thing we really care for. Power.


    Carmen Cadan was waiting in the hallway.


    Tall, black-eyed and blue-skinned, with lips that would turn a priest to sin. Her hair was a mass of rich dark curls, careless and stylish all at once. She wore a tight-fitting white dress to show off her curves, circles of fabric missing at her hips and at her shoulders. The neckline was cut very low.


    ¡®Carmen,¡¯ I said, inclining my head. ¡®As subtle as ever.¡¯


    She spat at my feet.


    ¡®I¡¯ll just go on through, shall I?¡¯


    ¡®I will eat your eyes, Rukh,¡¯ she promised me.


    I grinned at her as I passed.


    Heard Isande and Cass pause to give their condolences.


    Kept going.


    The hallway was as I remembered it, white marble floors heated from beneath. I longed to kick my boots off and pad across it in bare feet, as I had when I was young. But I didn¡¯t. I had foregone that pleasure a long time ago.


    I paused, momentarily at the base of the staircase. I wondered if my room was still up there, and what had become of it.


    I shook myself, and headed for the meeting hall.


    ¡®¡­faster! You bring ¡®em back faster than you send them out. Got to keep your face protected or you¡¯ll lose your fucking head. Trust me.¡¯


    I knew that voice.


    I was opening the door. I did not remember my passage down the corridor. This was not the meeting hall, this was the dojo. How had I¡­


    My blood was pounding in my ears. A current of rage was running through me, hot and strong. It was the most intense emotion I had felt in what seemed like forever.


    Show no weakness, I reminded myself.


    Isande. That bitch had known. That¡¯s why she¡¯d made me promise not to harm anyone inside the House. She¡¯d taken me to the rent so that she could elicit that promise from me while my guard was down. If I¡¯d even suspected that he was here¡­


    I pushed the door open.


    The peripheral details were much as I remembered. A smooth wooden floor covered with training mats. A variety of martial arts equipment on the walls. Three pairs of disciples drilling their silly little katas¡­


    He stood in the middle. Six and half feet tall, arms covered with muscle. His skin was coated with plates of thick black chitin that gleamed in the dojo¡¯s lights. His face was black, blank mask, the only break in his shiny exoskeleton around his dark but surprisingly ordinary-looking mouth and eyes. From his head curled a pair of short, sharp horns that gave his whole being a demonic cast.


    He was one of the imaski, beings that had served me long ago in the War. Beings I¡¯d all but made. They had been my praetorian, my shock troops, my fanatic death-commandos. I had but to tell an imaski to do a thing and the thing was done. They had been the weapon that the Alliance could not replicate, the scourge and terror of a thousand worlds.


    They had served me faithfully, loyalist of the loyal. No imaski had ever betrayed me.


    Except one.


    ¡®Hello, Kirin,¡¯ I said.


    He went very still. ¡®Get you behind me,¡¯ he said, and it took a moment for me to realise that he was talking to the disciples and not quoting scripture.


    ¡®Who is¡­¡¯ began one of them, even as she made to move.


    ¡®The Last Evil,¡¯ said Kirin, his eyes locked on mine. He splayed his fingers and a pair of short black blades slid from his forearms to land in his grip.


    I felt the smile spreading on my face. ¡®I¡¯ve got to admit,¡¯ I said to him, ¡®I¡¯ve been looking forward to this.¡¯


    Back in the War, Kirin had been captured by the other side. Somehow they¡¯d managed to convince him of the essential rightness of their cause blah blah blah. He¡¯d turned, and in turning done incalculable damage to my forces. I had hunted him across the myriad battlefields of the War, but had never come close to actually capturing him.


    But my word was iron, and everyone who served me or served with me knew the price of betrayal. When the treaty had been signed, I had named Kirin as an exception. If I found him, I told them, he was dead.


    Oh, they had made a show of arguing. But one rebel imaski was not worth another thousand years of bloodshed.


    ¡®I should¡¯ve killed you when I had the chance,¡¯ said Kirin.


    I raised my hands. ¡®Probably,¡¯ I said.


    I knew what he was thinking. I¡¯d trained each of my imaski personally. He was deliberately stalling, making me watch for that first move. It would be fast, something unexpected, not the face though he might feint for the¡­


    ¡®Hold!¡¯


    Well, shit.


    Isande was pushing past me into the room. I lowered my hands in disgust.


    ¡®She has agreed not to harm anyone in the House who doesn¡¯t attack her first,¡¯ she told Kirin. ¡®As long as you are within these walls, you are safe.¡¯


    I resisted the urge to scream in frustration. Instead, I turned to Isande and said:


    ¡®You are one sneaky, sneaky bitch.¡¯


    She raised an eyebrow at me. ¡®I might say the same of you.¡¯


    I just shrugged. She had a point, after all.


    Kirin was staring at us.


    I could taste the disappointment in the back of my throat. Kirin had postured instead of acting. He should¡¯ve gone for my throat the moment I stepped in through the doorway¡­


    Oh, grow up, I told myself. The universe doesn¡¯t always respond as you wish it to.


    ¡®Go to the meeting hall,¡¯ said Isande. ¡®They¡¯re waiting.¡¯


    I flashed a grin at her. ¡®As you wish,¡¯ I said, and then flicked my gaze across to Kirin. ¡®Enjoy the rest of your lesson,¡¯ I said to him. ¡®Traitor.¡¯


    He flinched at the word, as I¡¯d known he would, and I left the room.


    Cass was in the corridor. ¡®You sure know how to bait people,¡¯ she said as I walked past. ¡®I¡¯ll have to watch out for that.¡¯


    ¡®First sensible thing you¡¯ve said to me,¡¯ I said, and then, at last, made for the meeting hall.


    * * *


    The hall was a large circular room beneath a painted ceiling.


    The floor was a mosaic. The tiles that formed it were tiny, smaller than the nail of my little finger. What colour they showed could change, or be changed, by anyone who had been raised to the power, and it didn¡¯t just have to be the one colour. Thus the image on the mosaic largely depended on the mood of those in the House, and there was no real limit to the resolution.


    I had to laugh when I saw it.


    The mosaic showed me locking blades with a tall figure in gleaming white plate armour. My teeth were bared in a killing-grin. My opponent¡¯s gaze was steady, his jaw set, his face the very picture of steely heroism. I was wearing spiky black armour worked with a skull relief. Other dark figures were displayed in the background, their forms blurry and indistinct despite the crispness of the image.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    My opponent was Tancris, I realized, only never as I had seen him. Tancris had never faced me on the battlefield. I would not have had to send assassins after him if he had. Tancris had been a general of some surpassing skill, but he¡¯d not had a reputation as a fighter, not in a personal sense. And while I had occasionally worn armour and did have a fondness for the colour black, the skulls were a step too far.


    But you¡¯re the villain, Rukh, remember? That¡¯s how these people think.


    ¡®Hardly subtle,¡¯ I said.


    There were two people waiting for me. They stood next to each other on the centre of the mosaic. Neither of them was the person I had expected to find.


    ¡®Here at last,¡¯ said Sanjay Jacobs. He¡¯d grown a beard since I¡¯d last seen him, neat, black, slicked with oil, just like his hair. He was thin, smaller than the average, but possessed of a savage, wiry strength. He wore a duelling sabre at his hip which he continued to use despite his skill with the disciplines. Him I had faced on the battlefield. It had ended with his sword sticking through my guts, and Ensis or no, that had hurt. Luckily the push of combat had prevented him from following up with something more fatal.


    I was keen for a rematch, if the opportunity ever arose.


    He was wearing dark suit trousers, black brogues, and crisp silk shirt that was half-way between charcoal and light pink. His sword hung from his belt on the left side. Above it, snug beneath his armpit, I could see the shoulder holster and the handle of the pistol that it held.


    ¡®Sanjay,¡¯ I said, by way of greeting. ¡®You appear to have something on your chin.¡¯


    He just looked at me. ¡®I am looking forward to watching you die,¡¯ he said.


    There was nothing for me in that comment, so I let it stand.


    I turned to the room¡¯s other occupant. ¡®Hey, Mako,¡¯ I said. ¡®How¡¯s things?¡¯


    ¡®Well enough,¡¯ said Mako, with her traditional, empty courtesy. Or perhaps this was the height of respect. It was hard to tell.


    Mako was small, only about five foot high, and humanoid in shape. She had roughly the same proportions as me, but a thin, reptilian tail curled from the back of her slacks and around her left ankle. Her skin gleamed with little red scales, the smooth crimson surface marked by the occasional slash of black barbing. Yellow eyes with vertical pupils peered from her mask-like face.


    Both her expression and her voice were almost impossible to read. She was warm blooded, I¡¯d been told, but you¡¯d never have known it from the way she spoke. She reacted to everything with the same zen-like calm, no matter what it was.


    She was also very, very clever.


    Mako, like Tancris, had been one of the Alliance¡¯s generals during the War. Unlike Tancris, I hadn¡¯t sent any assassins after her, mainly because I¡¯d had no idea where she was at any given time or what she was planning next. She¡¯d waged a guerrilla campaign on Kaba that had turned a sure conquest into an absolute bloody nightmare. She¡¯d been the brains behind the Alliance¡¯s most effective stratagems. I had known of her involvement usually from the disarray in my own forces or the frustration of my allies.


    I held her in a strange sort of esteem. She was not a fighter, but she was a worthy opponent nonetheless.


    ¡®We¡¯re not here to exchange pleasantries,¡¯ said Sanjay. ¡®You killed Tancris. You broke the treaty.¡¯ He seemed almost pleased. ¡®It¡¯s time you got what you deserve.¡¯


    I ignored him.


    ¡®Been up to much since the War?¡¯ I asked Mako.


    She thought for a moment, and then shook her head. ¡®No.¡¯


    Well, so much for small talk.


    I heard the door open behind me as the others came through. I glanced back.


    Five, then. Isande, Mako, Sanjay, Carmen, and Cass. They stood around me in a loose circle. I wondered if this was intentional, perhaps designed to give them the psychological advantage. Was that why I was here, in my old home? Was all of this designed to unsettle me? Perhaps, to break me?


    They are still afraid.


    Yes, that was it. Despite everything, I was still the Last Evil in their eyes.


    I crushed the urge to fold my arms. That would¡¯ve looked defensive. I relaxed instead, thumbs hooked into the pockets of my jeans. I could feel Carmen watching me.


    ¡®Let¡¯s not wait,¡¯ she said. ¡®Let¡¯s just kill her now and be done with it.¡¯


    The statement didn¡¯t worry me. Carmen Cadan was not to be underestimated, but she was still more bark than bite. If all they wanted was to kill me out of hand, then Isande could¡¯ve done that for them back on Sansara. My suspicion was that they had some song and dance planned to salve their collective conscience, some mockery of justice.


    Well, I said I¡¯d listen to what they had to say.


    Part of me hoped that Cadan would go for me. I wondered if the others would intervene. Alone, one on one, I figured I could take her.


    I knew I¡¯d have fun finding out.


    ¡®She told me that she didn¡¯t kill him,¡¯ said Isande. ¡®That Exan acted alone.¡¯


    ¡®He never acted alone during the war,¡¯ said Mako. There was no accusation in her voice. The statement was flat, neutral, like everything Mako said.


    A snarl from Cadan. ¡®As if we can trust what she said!¡¯


    Only they could. They knew they could. Across all Reality, wherever my name was spoken, everyone knew that I did not break my word. It was a hard code to keep to sometimes. I made very few promises, because who knew what the future held? I made them conditionally, because each one was a bond on me. But my word had been all that had made the treaty possible.


    It had been all that had made the Dark Pact possible.


    These people hated me. They feared me. They raged that I had escaped justice for the things I had done. But they knew my word was iron. Even Carmen.


    Sanjay was looking at me with something that might¡¯ve been surprise. ¡®You¡¯re saying...''


    I sighed. ¡®You want it straight, Sanjay?¡¯ I asked. ¡®I had no idea Iago Tancris was dead, nor prior inkling of his fate, until Isande told me. I haven¡¯t issued a kill order since the treaty, and I cancelled any made before it. Exan is not dancing to my tune, not this time.¡¯


    Silence.


    Then, from the doorway behind us:


    ¡®In that case, you and I need to talk.¡¯


    Show no weakness.


    But I couldn¡¯t help the tide of emotion that washed through me. Anger, yes. Oh so much anger. But I had loved him like a father once, and if I was honest, a part of me still did. The War had twisted our bonds to one another, but it had not sundered them.


    He and Isande were the closest thing I had to a family, after all.


    I turned around.


    ¡®Hey,¡¯ I said. ¡®Wondered when you¡¯d show up.¡¯


    He was big man, heavy with muscle despite his apparent age. I say apparent age because if he¡¯d wished to look young like the rest of us, he could¡¯ve done. But his thick white hair and close cropped beard were clear statements about how he viewed himself. He thought himself wise. He thought himself strong.


    I had long suspected that he thought himself like a god, though any such accusation would no doubt appal him. But then, he¡¯d always been a hypocrite too.


    There was an old injury to the back of his knee, one that could not be healed with Ensis. He carried a heavy staff, thick around as my upper arm, and he had a tendency to lean heavily upon it whenever he was forced to stand for any length of time.


    This weakness, however, was deceptive.


    I knew this. I knew this because he had once been my sensei, even as I had been Exan¡¯s. He had taught me how to walk between worlds. He¡¯d taught me to create and redirect kinetic forces. He¡¯d shown me how to summon my first handful of hydrogen and how to make the heat that would set it alight. He¡¯d found me, newly raised and unconscious beside that chaos-rent on Ashmar, and he had resolved to teach me everything.


    His name was Dalarion. This was his House, and his home. If the Alliance had a leader, he was it.


    ¡®Leave us,¡¯ he said to the others, stepping forward. He planted his staff on the mosaic, and his pale blue eyes met mine.


    No-one moved.


    ¡®Leave us,¡¯ he said again, slamming the butt of his staff against the floor, his voice ringing with the tones of command.


    Like dogs, they went.


    * * *


    Dalarion and I faced each other across the surface of the mosaic.


    ¡®Well, that¡¯s a neat trick,¡¯ I said to him.


    He looked away. ¡®We need to talk about Exan. I wanted us to speak alone.¡¯


    I laughed. ¡®Oh, that was very clear.¡¯ I puffed my chest out and in my best of impression of him said: ¡°Leave us!¡±¡¯


    He did not meet my gaze.


    ¡®So, the War may be over but you¡¯re still in charge. Still got a pack of them running around doing your bidding. Well done.¡¯


    He winced.


    The Alliance had been forged, in theory, to face the threat I represented. The Dark Pact was strong because we were united under one banner, with one purpose. Everyone else was divided. It was Dalarion who had brought them together into a cohesive opposition.


    I wasn¡¯t entirely sure how he¡¯d gone about it. Perhaps he¡¯d pointed to what I¡¯d begun on Ashmar, the precedent I¡¯d set by forging a mortal empire, and discussed its dangers. Perhaps he¡¯d frightened them with what the imaski represented ¨C an army that could travel between worlds, soldiers that were a genuine threat even to our kind. Perhaps he¡¯d simply called in those favours he¡¯d hoarded since the ancient days, or relied or sheer force of personality. Probably he¡¯d done all of these things.


    The Alliance had been assembled with impressive speed, ready to set itself against me and mine and all that we had begun. The Dark Pact had been aiming for a pan-dimensional empire, and the Alliance had taken it upon themselves to oppose that goal.


    I had thought that that was all they were ¨C a group defined in opposition to us. But whereas the treaty had effectively dissolved the Dark Pact, it seemed some element of the Alliance remained, a stubborn stain refusing to be scrubbed clean.


    ¡®I imagine it would be the same for you,¡¯ said Dalarion, at last. ¡®We were both leaders in the War.¡¯ A shrug. ¡®Old habits die hard.¡¯


    I shrugged back at him. ¡®Maybe.¡¯


    Silence.


    Then: ¡®Take the mask off, Rukh.¡¯


    I raised an eyebrow. ¡®Excuse me?¡¯


    ¡®You can pretend to be cold and hard. You can pretend to be indifferent.¡¯ He gestured towards the doorway with his free hand. ¡®You have all of them fooled. They are still afraid of you, of who you are, of who you were.¡¯ He shook his head. ¡®But I know you. It was I who found you and trained you in our ways. I know your triumphs, your mistakes. I have seen you masked and unmasked, broken, vulnerable, wounded¡­ I know who you are. And this? This is not it.¡¯


    Beneath him the mosaic rippled. The image of my battle with Tancris shredded apart. It now showed me sitting at Dalarion¡¯s feet, a pupil before her master. I looked very, very young.


    I gave this new image the snort of contempt that it deserved, and met his eyes.


    ¡®Maybe you¡¯re wrong, old man,¡¯ I said. ¡®Maybe this is all that¡¯s left.¡¯


    He seemed, for a moment, to lean more heavily upon his staff. ¡®I wish I could believe that. But I can¡¯t.¡¯ A sigh. ¡®I hated you for making peace, did you know that? While we were at war, it was easy. I could pretend that there was nothing of you left. That you had fallen irrevocably. That some malign power had twisted you beyond recovery. But when you made peace¡­¡¯


    I said nothing.


    ¡®When you made peace, I knew. You were still my Helena.¡¯


    I had always hated it when he got like this. It was like time was an epic saga, and he was the protagonist. Everything, always, was about him.


    I had never cared for people using my first name either.


    ¡®I was never yours, Dalarion. I was always mine.¡¯


    He waved a hand dismissively. ¡®Yes. Perhaps it was a poor choice of words.¡¯ He looked me in the eyes. ¡®You broke my heart, nonetheless. I loved you like a daughter, and you turned against everything I stood for.¡¯


    ¡®You make it sound so dramatic. I never turned on you. I never turned on any of you. I would¡¯ve died for you.¡¯ I forced my voice to remain even. ¡®I like a good fight, don¡¯t get me wrong, but I always knew who my kind were.¡¯ I gestured down at the mosaic beneath us, and with an effort of will turned it back to the duel with Tancris. ¡®I tried to conquer.¡¯ I stepped forward, my feet on Tancris¡¯s dead visage. ¡®That was my great crime. Regardless of my motives, that was, to you, untenable. No matter you ¡°loved me like a daughter.¡±¡¯ I framed these last words mockingly with my fingers. ¡®You still chose the mortals over me.¡¯ I broke off, shaking my head. ¡®Am I the only one who remembers that it was you people who declared war?¡¯


    ¡®We have a responsibility!¡¯


    He must¡¯ve read the contempt in my eyes, for he flinched, and would not meet my gaze. ¡®I did some black things in the War,¡¯ I said. ¡®I don¡¯t deny it. I served dark terror to my enemies and I watched them choke on it. But you¡­ you betrayed me. Or did you think you were the only one capable of love?¡¯


    He stood, clinging to his staff like a vine to a tree, his face stark in the echo of my accusations.


    ¡®Everything you did,¡¯ he said, eventually, his voice thick with emotion, ¡®everything¡­ You did it with my hands. Your every order was spoken with my voice. I was your sensei! I was responsible! You made me a murderer!¡¯


    The arrogance of those words was breath-taking.


    I thought about answering. I thought about calling him on his hubris. On his perfect narcissism. For a man of his age, of his supposed wisdom, it was pathetic.


    He is, like the rest of them, a child.


    Instead I simply folded my arms, closing off the discussion.


    ¡®So,¡¯ I said. ¡®Exan.¡¯


    Silence.


    It stretched on as he looked at me, eyes scanning my face. But then, eventually, he nodded. Shook his head, not in denial but as if to shake something loose, eyes refocusing as he adjusted to the change in subject.


    ¡®Tancris was relaxing on the beach with Carmen,¡¯ he said. ¡®Exan appeared. Tancris was surprised, and somewhat disgusted, as you might imagine, but he kept to the treaty. He told Exan to leave. Exan made a show of wanting to shake his hand. Carmen says he was mocking Tancris, maybe even trying to goad him into doing something stupid. Then, without warning, he hit him with Sansis. Tancris burned to death in an instant. Carmen fled.¡¯


    Sansis. Yeah, that sounds like him.


    Sansis was not usually a useful discipline for combat. It has one significant advantage over Turis, which is that you can use it at range. You send a pulse of raw power to the target, and when it hits, heat is created. The disadvantage is that if the other person sees it coming they can turn that pulse of power right back at you, maybe with some interest. Or if they don¡¯t feel like starting that kind of back-and-forth they can redirect into the ground, or at one of your allies, or whatever.


    Obviously, Tancris hadn¡¯t seen it coming. He must¡¯ve convinced himself that Exan wouldn¡¯t break the treaty.


    I didn¡¯t blame him for that, not really. I didn¡¯t believe it myself, after all.


    ¡®Have we any proof he did it, other than Carmen¡¯s word?¡¯


    Dalarion stared at me. ¡®Carmen loved Tancris,¡¯ he said, ¡®why would she lie about¡­¡¯


    I just looked at him.


    ¡®No,¡¯ he admitted. ¡®That is part of the reason you were brought here. But if he did not do this thing at your instigation...¡¯ He put a hand to his chin. ¡®He did this for his own reasons then. Not yours.¡¯


    ¡®Yes.¡¯


    A nod. ¡®Then you must deal with him.¡¯


    I laughed at him. ¡®Me?¡¯ I said. I was genuinely amused. ¡®In case you have forgotten, Exan is my friend. Tancris wasn¡¯t.¡¯


    ¡®It has to be you,¡¯ he said. ¡®If anyone else goes after him, the War will begin anew. Worlds will burn. Chaos will thrive.¡¯ A pause. ¡®Everything we fought for will have been for nothing.¡¯


    My smile died. ¡®Welcome to my life,¡¯ I said, turning away.


    ¡®Carmen will go after him regardless. When she does, he will kill her and the rest of the Dark Pact will flock to his banner. Do you really think that you can stay out of this, Rukh?¡¯


    I hesitated.


    ¡®I signed the treaty,¡¯ I said, without looking back. ¡®I put my word to it. Is that not enough?¡¯


    ¡®So did he. He gave his word, and he broke it. And when he broke it, he broke yours as well. Is that not enough, Rukh? That he turned on you just as you once turned on me?¡¯


    I kept my response low, measured, nonchalant, even though I was hot screaming fury on the inside. I kept my face calm and clear despite knowing that he could not see it.


    How dare he?


    ¡®I thought we covered this,¡¯ I said aloud. ¡®I didn¡¯t turn on you, Dalarion. I wasn¡¯t the one who declared war.¡¯ I paused, and when he didn¡¯t answer, went on: ¡®But yeah, you¡¯re right. Exan broke his oaths to me when he killed Tancris. If he killed Tancris. Don¡¯t think I haven¡¯t thought of that before.¡¯ I laughed again, deliberately mocking. ¡®But that doesn¡¯t mean I¡¯m suddenly one of the gang. You want him? Send Isande. She¡¯s more than capable.¡¯


    I made for the exit.


    I will be true to you, Exan had said, long ago, so long as you are true to me.


    It was the oath of the Dark Pact. I had sworn it to him, and him to me, and each of us to each of us, allies and friends all. A promise and a threat, all bound together.


    We keep our word, I had told them. We keep our word, because we live long lives, and we do not forget. Any who betrays can never be trusted again. And ¡°never¡± is a long, long time.


    My oath. My threat.


    But the War was over. There was no longer any need for either. Exan might¡¯ve decided to go his own way, might¡¯ve made an empty thing of his word and promise, but that was largely his problem.


    Not mine.


    ¡®I can¡¯t send anybody unless you go with them,¡¯ said Dalarion. ¡®If you refuse it will mean another war.¡¯ A pause. ¡®You have a duty.¡¯


    I didn¡¯t slow. ¡®I don¡¯t care.¡¯


    ¡®The fate of all Reality¡­¡¯


    I raised the back of my hand in a contemptuous farewell. ¡®Save your bullshit for Cadan and the rest of them. They¡¯ll lap it up.¡¯


    I reached the door.


    Walked away.

 Chapter 5

    I thought about walking right out of the House and back out into Reality. I wanted to. Each step would be another strike at Dalarion, another brick removed from the foundations of his power. The War hadn¡¯t finished him, but I took vicious pleasure in the thought that the treaty could.


    But I had unfinished business in the House. Business I¡¯d left for far too long.


    I headed back up to the dojo.


    The lesson was over and the disciples had gone, but Kirin was still there. He had hung a heavy bag from one of the roof beams and was whaling on with a speed and strength that no mortal fighter could¡¯ve hoped to match.


    I watched him for a time, remembering the first imaski training camps. They had all started out as mortals ¨C Ashmari, Kaban, Kandori¡­ I¡¯d taken anyone who I thought was good enough, regardless of race or gender. I¡¯d trained each one of them personally, and I¡¯d begun when they were just ordinary soldiers. I¡¯d wanted them to be the best despitethe strength and power that came from the imaskibrew, not because of it.


    Kirin had remembered his lessons. I could see echoes of my own motion in his movements, as I could with anyone I¡¯d trained.


    The imaski had been bred with the expectation that they would face those who¡¯d been raised to the power in the traditional way. They were strong, and they were fast, and their armour was thick. They had a natural healing factor to compensate for their lack of Ensis. Their lifespans matched our own. But more importantly, much more importantly, they had the ability to walk the worlds as we did. I had made good use of imaski strike teams in the War, both as shock troops in conventional conflicts, and against my own kind.


    Eventually Kirin turned from the bag, no sign of the sweat or fatigue that would¡¯ve marked a human fighter.


    ¡®I have a question,¡¯ I asked him.


    He just looked at me, a flat gaze full of ever-familiar hatred.


    ¡®Do you plan to face me eventually, or are you going to run and hide for the rest of your life? Hope that someone else gets to me before I get to you?¡¯


    He spat off to one side. ¡®I will face you,¡¯ he said.


    I nodded. ¡®I know better than to trust your word,¡¯ I said to him. ¡®So I¡¯ve no plans to wait. But¡­¡¯


    ¡®When this is over. When Exan is dealt with.¡¯


    His voice, deep and masculine, quavered just a little when he said Exan¡¯s name. He was afraid of him.


    Of course he is. Exan hunted him just as fiercely as I did. It was not only me he betrayed. He betrayed us all.


    ¡®Just like that?¡¯ I raised an eyebrow. ¡®After all the running and hiding?¡¯


    ¡®Maybe I¡¯ve run enough.¡¯


    I smiled. ¡®You certainly have.¡¯ I took a step towards him. ¡®Do you remember their names, I wonder? Skaro. Enji. Telmach¡­¡¯


    He turned away. ¡®Enough,¡¯ he said. ¡®I remember.¡¯


    ¡®I will do you a favour, traitor,¡¯ I said, ¡®I won¡¯t kill you in your sleep.¡¯ I made to go, and then, at the threshold, I paused. ¡®Find me on Sansara,¡¯ I said. ¡®But I won¡¯t wait forever.¡¯


    *             *             *


    Isande caught me in the hallway. She simply stepped into my path, blocking the exit. I felt a surge of anticipation. Was this it? Were they finally going to show their true colours?


    ¡®You said no,¡¯ she said to me. It wasn¡¯t a question.


    ¡®You knew?¡¯


    She nodded. ¡®Yes,¡¯ she said. ¡®Dalarion never believed that you were responsible. Neither, to be honest, did I. That is why he asked me to come for you, rather than Carmen or Sanjay.¡¯


    I wondered, briefly, how things would¡¯ve turned out had it been Carmen who had shown up on Sansara. We would still have fought, and probably to the death. Assuming I¡¯d survived, what would I have done?


    Declared the treaty broken, probably. The War would have begun anew, just as Dalarion feared.


    Part of me longed for that. The War had made things relatively simple after all.


    ¡®He didn¡¯t ask though, did he?¡¯ I said to Isande. ¡®He sent you. The way he sent you from that room. You do not stand as equals in this House. He is not a man who believes in equals.¡¯


    She frowned at me, but said nothing.


    I made to go.


    ¡®Wait,¡¯ she said.


    I smiled at her. ¡®Going to fight me, Isande? Because otherwise I¡¯m really not interested.¡¯


    ¡®I want you to change your mind.¡¯


    I laughed at her. ¡®You don¡¯t get it, do you? I don¡¯t care. I don¡¯t care if you people go to war a second time. I don¡¯t care that Tancris is dead. I don¡¯t care about any of it! Weren¡¯t you looking at the floor earlier? I¡¯m  still the Last Evil, Isande.¡¯ I shook my head. ¡®Get someone else to save you.¡¯


    Something flashed in her eyes.


    Amusement.


    This bitch is laughing at me?


    ¡®Where are you going to go, Rukh?¡¯ she asked. ¡®What are you going to do?¡¯


    I hesitated. I cursed myself for it but it was too late, she¡¯d landed a hit and now she knew it. Because what was I going to do? I had, in some way, been asking myself that question since I¡¯d signed the treaty.


    And, frankly, I hadn¡¯t found an answer.


    ¡®Don¡¯t you want to fight Exan?¡¯


    I stared at her.


    I hadn¡¯t even thought of that.


    Exan was tough. We¡¯d sparred once or twice but never gone at it in earnest. He had been my loyal lieutenant, after all.


    I wondered, then, if I had turned Dalarion down because of anything he¡¯d said to me, or just for the simple fact that it had been Dalarion who was asking. Or maybe because of my contempt for all that fate-of-the-multiverse crap.


    Or maybe¡­. Maybe because of the one argument he¡¯d made that had made sense. Had made so much sense that it wasn¡¯t even an argument.


    I will be true to you so long as you are true to me¡­.


    Oh, there was some leeway in that oath. But if Exan had broken the treaty, a treaty I had commanded him to obey, then it wasn¡¯t really open to interpretation. He had broken faith, and I had made clear what the consequences of that were. I had spoken them aloud and my word was as iron.


    I had hated Dalarion for reminding me of that. Also, if I was honest, I had hated the prospect of hunting down someone who had once been so close to me.


    Only here was a different way of looking at things. A chance to fight Exan in deadly earnest¡­


    ¡®You¡¯re a vile temptress, Isande,¡¯ I said, shrugging my shoulders. ¡®But you¡¯ve got me. Okay. I¡¯ll deal with him.¡¯


    A genuine smile spread across her face. ¡®Good.¡¯


    I raised a hand to forestall her. ¡®On one condition¡­¡¯


    *             *             *


    The staircase led down through the bedrock.


    I followed Isande down the cut steps, and wondered where it was we were going. Back when I¡¯d been Dalarion¡¯s student, this stair had led only to the chaos-rent at the House¡¯s base.


    I could feel its pull as we came closer. Chaos represented power, but it was a dangerous power. It sang to us with its potential.


    It was not enough, sometimes, to simply draw off the radiated energies. A chaos-rent represented an opportunity to do so much more.


    Jump in. Emerge elsewhere. No need for the torturous climb back up to the gates of the House. Here was the exit, if you were bold enough to take it. No matter that I had seen what happened to those who made that leap. They were not me.


    Bind it. I had performed that ritual more than once, but only once upon myself. What if it could be performed again? Oh, they said it was impossible, but the meek said that about oh so many things. I had done so much with a comparatively modest well of power. What might I do with more?


    Widen it. That was the most seductive song of all. I felt its call whenever I stood near a rent, the same way I felt that horrific, self-destructive urge to jump whenever I stood near a high cliff. Feed power back into the rent, crumble the fabric of reality at its borders. Keep going, until the radiating chaos was strong enough to crumble reality all by itself. The growth would become self-sustaining.


    In that way, you could sign the death warrant for an entire world.


    But we did not go down as far as the rent. We reached a small landing, still some way above it, and a small, wooden door.


    It had not been here before. But it made sense that things would¡¯ve changed. If I had been Dalarion, I would have changed the entire layout of the House as soon as I could. That would¡¯ve made prior knowledge of the layout useless, made an attack all the more difficult.


    I smiled to myself. Perhaps he had. It would¡¯ve have been so like him to change it back just before my visit here, all the better to put pressure on me.


    Isande opened the door.


    ¡®Did you wonder, at all, how I found you on Sansara?¡¯ asked Isande.


    I shook my head. ¡®No.¡¯


    This was the truth. I hadn¡¯t wondered. There were two ways Isande could¡¯ve found me. One was to wander through Reality, searching, asking questions, hoping to pick up my trail. The other, more likely explanation, was that the Alliance had been keeping tabs on me since the treaty had been signed.


    Of course, the reason Isande was asking was that the latter was supposed to be impossible.


    There was a short corridor beyond the doorway, and beyond that, a small square room, the wall and floors and ceiling layered with gleaming silver panels.


    So. This is it.


    Dalarion and Mako were already inside.


    ¡®¡­not sure,¡¯ said Mako. ¡®We can try again in a few hours.¡¯


    Dalarion tapped his staff against the floor in irritation. ¡®It has been two days,¡¯ he said. ¡®Wherever he is, he is there for the long haul.¡¯


    ¡®Not necessarily,¡¯ I said.


    I felt the sudden pressure of their attention, but I ignored it. I was looking at the panels on the walls.


    ¡®Rukh has agreed to help us hunt down Exan,¡¯ said Isande.


    I could sense it in them, now that I focused. Each of these panels had a trace of chaos about them. I had known it the moment I had seen them, even as I knew one of my own kind whenever I saw them, even if I didn¡¯t recognise their face.


    Ima.


    It was possible to bind chaos into something other than a person¡¯s soul. The results were unpredictable, as always, but it allowed one to create an object that possessed some power of its own. The sword Isande carried was, I suspected, an ima, but I didn¡¯t know for sure. It was hard to distinguish their aura from the aura of the wearer, so it was difficult to be entirely sure, but our kind had little need for prosaic weapons. Sanjay¡¯s definitely was ¨C I had tried to melt it with Sansis when I¡¯d fought him and the power had just flowed off of it ¨C and I suspected the same of his pistol though to carry two ima was rare. They were difficult to make.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    An ima held a well of power the same way a person did, and it had to be refilled in the same manner. That explained why Dalarion had had this place built down here, close to the rent. They could also be built to hide their taint when they were dormant¡­


    I ran my eye around the panels a second time. There were a lot of them. To build this place, even if they¡¯d had half the Alliance working together, would have taken quite some time and been all kinds of dangerous. Forging ima ¨C part of the Akisis discipline ¨C was a risky and exhausting business.


    This room represented a substantial investment of power.


    I was pretty sure I knew what it did.


    ¡®What did you mean, not necessarily?¡¯ asked Dalarion.


    ¡®Exan isn¡¯t stupid,¡¯ I replied. ¡®It is likely he knows what you¡¯re trying, and has taken steps to avoid it.¡¯ I turned to them and smiled.


    I¡¯ll admit, I was enjoying this, just a little bit.


    ¡®You know what this place is?¡¯ asked Mako, furrows appearing in her little scaled face.


    ¡®I have a pretty good idea,¡¯ I said, and pointed at one of the panels. ¡®I imagine that each of those is a scrying mirror. They look identical, but they aren¡¯t are they? Not when they were made with chaos.¡¯ I made an encompassing gesture with one arm. ¡®They work in concert. Whichever one of you it is that uses this place¡­¡¯ here I grinned at Mako, ¡®¡­must have incredible mental fortitude. Scanning the whole of Reality would melt the average person¡¯s brain.¡¯


    Stunned silence.


    ¡®How did you¡­¡¯ began Dalarion, but Mako got there first.


    ¡®Shasu,¡¯ she said.


    I nodded. ¡®Shasu.¡¯


    Exan had begun the conquest there, the rest of us being busy elsewhere at the time. The most advanced of Shasu¡¯s nations had still been very much in the sword and sandal stage, and Exan had always excelled on that kind of battlefield. The locals had not been prepared for the imaski he¡¯d had with him either. It hadn¡¯t taken him long to raise a substantial local following, and with a little more time he¡¯d have set up a proper empire to serve as an engine of conquest.


    But he didn¡¯t get a little more time. Two months was about it.


    Ulmeshian, Sanjay Jacobs, and Telemens Dax had all shown up on Shasu at the same time. We had no idea how long they¡¯d been on the world before they launched their assassination attempt ¨C the first Exan had known of it was when his quarters had been engulfed in a wash of Sansis flame.


    He¡¯d made it out, just barely.


    I had known, right away, that the chances of them finding out about Shasu so quickly were slim to nil. More than that, getting three heavy hitters together in one place took time. Ulmeshian, according to my intelligence, should¡¯ve been holding the line on Derivani against Esparatos¡¯s forces. No way they¡¯d had him on standby just in case.


    He had been recalled for a specific operation, which meant that they¡¯d had solid intel.


    From then on, we proceeded on the basis that the enemy could track our movements.


    Mako stared at me for a moment, and then turned to Dalarion. Said very clearly: ¡®I told you so.¡¯


    I laughed.


    Dalarion tapped his staff against the floor again. ¡®We couldn¡¯t pass up the opportunity,¡¯ he said. ¡®Besides, if we¡¯d let Exan¡­¡¯


    ¡®Surely,¡¯ said Isande, ever so softly, ¡®it is of little consequence now?¡¯


    Dalarion sighed. ¡®You are right, of course,¡¯ he said, and looked at me, suddenly weary. ¡®Please, Rukh, if you can tell us anything about Exan¡¯s whereabouts, now is the time.¡¯


    I waved at the panels around us. ¡®We figured that however you were doing it, the thing you were focusing in on was the taint. That¡¯s what makes us different from the mortals. With that in mind, we focussed on developing counter-measures.¡¯ I smiled. ¡®We succeeded.¡¯


    Dalarion flinched. ¡®You can avoid the Mirror?¡¯ he said.


    I could almost hear the capital letter. I wondered, with some disgust, if he had them calling it ¡°the Mirror of Dalarion¡± yet.


    ¡®If you know what you¡¯re doing.¡¯


    ¡®How?¡¯


    He wanted to know. He wanted to know so very badly. It was written in the way he stood, the way he leaned slightly too far forward on his staff. He had snapped that question too fast, too eagerly, and given himself away. But even had he remained impassive, I would¡¯ve known. He loved knowledge, and he loved power, and he hated being ignorant and weak.


    I tapped the side of my nose. ¡®Girl¡¯s got to have some secrets,¡¯ I said. ¡®But don¡¯t worry. I know where to start looking.¡¯


    *             *             *


    We met in the entrance hall.


    ¡®I¡¯ll hear your promise now, traitor,¡¯ I said to Kirin.


    ¡®When Exan is dealt with,¡¯ he said, ¡®I swear on what remains of my soul that I will face you in single combat, before witnesses, in a place and time of your choosing.¡¯


    Fancy words. But some people are fond of grandiose promises. As if it gives them more worth! Kirin could¡¯ve pronounced his oath over a human sacrifice and nine cauldrons of virgin blood and I wouldn¡¯t have trusted it. Nor was there any higher power I could rely on to hold him to his word.


    No power save my own.


    Once a traitor, always a traitor.


    ¡®Well,¡¯ I told him, ¡®in that case I promise you a stay of execution. Until my business with Exan is done, unless of course you betray this cause as well, I will not kill you.¡¯


    An awkward silence as they others looked at me. I knew what they were thinking.


    I sighed. ¡®Or maim you. Or do you any other obvious physical harm.¡¯


    ¡®And I swear,¡¯ said Dalarion, ¡®that whoever so breaks this bargain will be denied the sanctuary of my House for evermore.¡¯


    Oh you pretentious fuck, I thought. But I didn¡¯t say anything. This had been my price. Kirin wasn¡¯t going to hide from me again. When he broke his word, as I had no doubt he would, I would not have him running to hide behind the Alliance¡¯s skirts. Not again. Either I died, or he did.


    No compromise. Not on this.


    ¡®Right,¡¯ I said. ¡®Let¡¯s get going, little traitor.¡¯


    He flinched. ¡®Now?¡¯


    I looked at him and then ran my gaze along the rest. ¡®The Mirror isn¡¯t going to work,¡¯ I told them. ¡®Waiting for Exan to slip up is not an option. We¡¯re going to have to go track him down the old fashioned way.¡¯


    ¡®How?¡¯ asked Sanjay. But it was Dalarion¡¯s question, not his own. Sanjay¡¯s every thought was about how best to please his master. He was a good little soldier. Always had been.


    I favoured him with a smile. ¡®None of your business,¡¯ I said.


    Sanjay shook his head. ¡®I¡¯m coming with you,¡¯ he said, taking a step forward.


    Carmen was less than a half-beat behind him. ¡®As am I.¡¯


    ¡®And I,¡¯ said Cass.


    Isande said nothing. She just sighed and took a step forward of her own.


    I glanced at Dalarion. ¡®Anyone else?¡¯


    Slowly, almost sheepishly, Mako raised her hand. ¡®I would like to come too,¡¯ she said.


    Sanjay glanced at her in surprise, but whether real or feigned I didn¡¯t care to tell.


    My first thought was to refuse. There was no way they could keep up with me if I didn¡¯t want them to. I knew how to avoid the Mirror myself.


    It was tempting.


    Only¡­


    Only having Isande along wouldn¡¯t be so bad. And I wanted Kirin where I could see him, and if I was taking those two then I would have to take Cass, and that meant I might as well take the lot of them.


    Besides, it would leave Dalarion on his lonesome.


    ¡®Okay,¡¯ I said. ¡®But this is my rodeo.¡¯ I gave Sanjay a hard look. ¡®You want to come, you¡¯re going to have to do what you¡¯re told.¡¯


    They have plenty of practice in that at least, I thought to myself, glancing at Dalarion. Don¡¯t they, old man?


    A pause.


    They didn¡¯t like it, I could see that. But there was no way Sanjay could keep up with me if I didn¡¯t want him too, and he knew that. It was also pretty obvious that Dalarion had asked him to keep an eye on me, so it wasn¡¯t like he could change his mind and say that he didn¡¯t want to come after all. I could practically see the cogs whirring in his head as he thought it through.


    For once, though, I kept my amusement to myself.


    ¡®It seems we have little choice,¡¯ said Sanjay. He had a cold look about him now. I had no doubt that he still wanted me dead, but he had better control of his expression. ¡®I accept your conditions.¡¯


    ¡®Agreed,¡¯ said Carmen, a moment later, but I could tell that the word tasted foul in her mouth.


    ¡®Agreed,¡¯ echoed Mako.


    Cass looked to Isande.


    ¡®Up to you,¡¯ said her sensei. ¡®This time, at least.¡¯


    Cass nodded her thanks and looked back at me. ¡®Agreed,¡¯ she said, and Isande nodded her own assent.


    No point in looking to Dalarion. No matter that I didn¡¯t want him to come anyway. There was no way he would leave the seat of his power undefended. That, always, had been his weakness.


    A wry smile ghosted across my face.


    Seven of us. I haven¡¯t led so many since the war.


    ¡®Go then,¡¯ said Dalarion. ¡®Find Exan. Bring him to justice.¡¯


    ¡®Oh, give it a rest, old man,¡¯ I said, pushing past him. ¡®You¡¯ll get what you¡¯re after.¡¯ I paused at glanced back at him. ¡®If I feel like it,¡¯ I said, ¡®I might even bring you his head.¡¯


    *             *             *


    The last time I had visited the House I had come via Lirasor through a way that led practically to the door. It was a path I had kept secret since my youth, at first because I liked secrets and afterwards because I recognised the tactical value of that knowledge. I had always imagined that my final assault on the Alliance would make use of it.


    In the end, I had used it to sue for peace. Exan had called it a waste, and perhaps he had been correct.


    For my part, I figured it had been worth the look on their faces when I¡¯d strode into the hallway.


    I smiled, remembering.


    Reached for Faris.


    The way was gone. It wasn¡¯t there. My attempt to exercise Faris slid off the air the way sword thrust skips off the edge of a shield.


    I paused, my smile disappearing.


    It had been destroyed, then. That took almost as much power as growing a new way did. It was like trying to tear down a bridge with your bare hands, or rip the paving off a road.


    He had help, most likely.


    I wasn¡¯t sure why it bothered me so much. That way had been mine, yes, but what had I expected? It bypassed the security that protected the House. Treaty or no, that wasn¡¯t the kind of thing Dalarion would allow to stand.


    And yet¡­


    Must have taken him a while to find it, too. There was no reliable method for detecting a transition between worlds beyond basic trial and error. You had to know where they were, or wander around the place prodding at the skin of Reality with your powers like a blind man testing the road. He¡¯d have known it was there from my unexpected arrival at his door but not exactly where.


    Yeah, I wasn¡¯t happy that it was gone, but at least I could console myself with the image of Dalarion stumbling around outside House like a witless old man trying to find it.


    ¡®What¡¯s the hold up?¡¯ asked Sanjay, from somewhere behind me.


    My first instinct was to remind him that he didn¡¯t get to ask, but that would¡¯ve made me look petty and stupid. So instead I turned and said:


    ¡®The way I used last time is gone. We¡¯ll have to take a different route.¡¯


    ¡®Where are we¡­¡¯ he began, but I¡¯d already turned away and started walking across the prairie.


    I heard snippets of conversation behind me but I kept my eyes firmly on the road ahead.


    ¡®¡­possibly be?¡¯ Sanjay was saying.


    A reply from Mako, too quiet for me to hear.


    I heard low mutters from Carmen and Cass, who were probably discussing how evil I was. Or maybe not, but I maintain a healthy touch of paranoia at all times. They were the two most likely to break the treaty and try for me when I wasn¡¯t looking.


    Them and Kirin.


    I felt the smile return at the thought. That particular loose end had been scratching at me for a while. I was looking forward to tying it up.


    Of course, there is no real difference between Kirin and Exan, is there? They have both broken their oaths to you. They both deserve the same penalty.


    I pushed the thought away. I still did not really believe that Exan had broken the treaty. Oh, I could believe that he¡¯d killed Tancris, could believe that he¡¯d killed him in exactly the manner that Carmen had described¡­ but I could not believe that he¡¯d broken his promise.


    Some of the others, yes, but not Exan.


    Well, we¡¯ll just have to wait and see.


    Around us the grass was beginning to give way to field of dark flowers. The air took on a heavy texture and heady scent. I could hear the droning of the insects and feel the warmth of the afternoon sun on my skin.


    Cashlam.


    ¡®So,¡¯ said a voice beside me, and I turned my head to see Isande keeping pace. ¡®I have a question.¡¯


    ¡®Don¡¯t expect an answer,¡¯ I said.


    ¡®Oh, it¡¯s obvious you want to surprise us with where we¡¯re going,¡¯ said Isande. ¡®But I¡¯m more curious about how Exan is avoiding the Mirror. You didn¡¯t tell Dalarion because you hate him, but¡­¡¯


    ¡®I think I¡¯ll keep that one to myself a while longer,¡¯ I told her, and kept my eyes on the road ahead.


    She sighed. ¡®As you wish.¡¯


    *             *             *


    The journey took three days.


    ¡®Uriban,¡¯ said Kirin, when we arrived. ¡®Of course.¡¯


    None of the others said anything. I¡¯d met their questions with evasion and dismissal and eventually they¡¯d stopped asking me, which had been the idea. But the ways we had been travelling were well known, and there were only so many destinations to pick from.


    Uriban was where Exan had been born. It was where he and I had trained, in the years before we had begun our conquests.


    It was early evening, the great green sun still a hand¡¯s span above the horizon. The ground was smooth barren stone. To the west rose a jagged line of mountains, whereas to the east was plain strewn with boulders. A geyser panted its steamy breath through a wide split in the earth nearby.


    And, in the distance, was a city.


    Ista.


    Ista was an ancient settlement. It had been there for millennia before I¡¯d visited it, and it had stood the time since with the same indifference. It had burst its walls three times, and each time the city¡¯s Patriarch had had them rebuilt, further out. The outer wall was a huge bulwark of stone blocks, base guarded by the very trench they had been quarried from. The gate was wide enough to admit a dragon.


    The stone gleamed beneath dying light of the green sun.


    ¡®What are we here for, Rukh?¡¯ asked Isande, ever so softly, and because it was Isande asking I figured that this time I should answer.


    ¡®I don¡¯t know where Exan is,¡¯ I said, ¡®but I can bet he will have passed through here at some point in the last year. It is the most recent lead we are likely to get.¡¯


    Isande frowned. ¡®Will he really have revealed himself to the mortals here?¡¯


    I grinned at her. ¡®It¡¯s complicated,¡¯ I said, and then turned to face the others. ¡®You will have to wait here,¡¯ I told them.


    Sanjay folded his arms. ¡®No,¡¯ he said.


    So much for promises.


    ¡®You agreed to do as you were told,¡¯ I said to him.


    He stared at me with barely supressed fury. ¡®You are not my commander,¡¯ he said. ¡®Under different circumstances I would¡­¡¯ He mastered himself with a grimace.


    I smiled, because I knew it would make him angry, and shrugged my shoulders. ¡®If you want to break your word,¡¯ I said, ¡®then that is your business. If you want to break the treaty¡­ well, all I can say is I would enjoy it immensely if you did. But if I catch you following me into the city then I will continue this without you.¡¯


    He looked at me a long moment and then, eventually, looked away.


    ¡®Why can¡¯t we follow?¡¯ demanded Carmen. ¡®I do not like this. What if you are planning to join up with Exan? What if¡­¡¯


    I sighed. ¡®If you come in with me then there is no point in me going. Our chances of finding information decrease.¡¯


    Carmen folded her arms. ¡®How so?¡¯


    May as well tell them.


    ¡®¡®There is a mortal organization I need to contact,¡¯ I said. ¡®They know my face, and the faces of the other leaders of the Dark Pact. But they know the faces of our enemies just as well. If they see you entering the city, they will suspect a trap.¡¯


    ¡®We will go in disguised,¡¯ said Sanjay. ¡®With Illumis we can¡­¡¯


    ¡®They aren¡¯t stupid,¡¯ I told him. ¡®They will check. So unless you want to restructure your entire face¡­¡¯


    There was a pause as they digested this.


    Then: ¡®They won¡¯t know her face,¡¯ said Mako, pointing at Cass.


    I raised an eyebrow. That was, unfortunately, an excellent point.


    I knew what was coming. They would demand Cass go with me, and I would have little cause to argue. If I did, I would lose, and I would look weak in front of them. I would be forced to cut them all loose or to give into their demands.


    You just don¡¯t like them knowing your secrets, said a voice in the back of my mind.


    That was true. But whether these people realised it or not, I was the leader of this expedition. And one thing I had learned as a leader  was that there were times when you had to back down.


    It showed a kind of strength all by itself.


    ¡®She can come if she wants,¡¯ I said, before the anyone could argue that point. ¡®But the rest of you stay.¡¯


    ¡®Cass?¡¯ asked Isande, and I heard an uncharacteristic worry in her voice.


    ¡®I¡¯ll go,¡¯ said Cass.


    ¡®There would be nothing unusual about an imaski escort,¡¯ said Kirin. ¡®I could¡­¡¯


    ¡®You¡¯re not exactly inconspicuous either,¡¯ I said. ¡®I¡¯d be announcing my presence to the entire city. People might even panic.¡¯


    ¡®But I¡­¡¯


    ¡®Besides, the people I¡¯m meeting will know who you are too,¡¯ I said. ¡®Nor will they believe that I¡¯m willingly walking in step with you¡­ Hell, I hardly believe it myself. So you just wait here like a good little traitor.¡¯ I flashed him a mirthless smile. ¡®I see you when I get back.¡¯


    To that, Kirin did not reply.

 Chapter 6

    There was some preparation necessary before we could enter the city. I was wearing jeans and a sleeveless top, which hadn¡¯t quite caught on in Ista yet, and Cass¡¯s yellow-and-grey banded skin would be like nothing the Uribani had ever seen. In some places you could get away with it ¨C people would assume you were in costume or that you had exotic tastes ¨C but not in Ista. Not in an insular, patriarchal society where dress was a major indicator of caste.


    There were two ways to disguise oneself with power. The expensive option was to fabricate such a disguise with Bayis, and alter one¡¯s features with Ensis. This took time and a lot of power. The other option was to mess with the light.


    The discipline was called Illumis. It involved adjusting how the photons in your immediate vicinity were reflected. It took a certain amount of skill and a good understanding of optics, but it was pretty versatile. The illusion itself took some power to create, but maintaining it once you had it in place was wonderfully cheap. Of course, the illusions it produced were just that ¨C illusions. It did nothing to change your shape or mass and it did nothing to hide your taint.


    It was tricky enough to learn, for all its ease of use, and I was mildly impressed with how detailed Cass¡¯s disguise was. Clearly she¡¯d put a lot of effort in.


    We walked down to the city together, wearing the images of old women. Blue robes, stooped backs, hair bound in headscarves and olive skin crinkled with the lines of mortal living. We passed others on the road who looked much as we did and we exchanged illusory nods and fanged smiles but dared no words.


    ¡®You know they¡¯ll kill you if I don¡¯t come back,¡¯ said Cass, as we stepped through the city gate.


    I didn¡¯t know if that was supposed to be an attempt at humour or a genuine threat, and I didn¡¯t much care.


    Besides, she was probably right.


    The gates of Ista were wide open to admit the evening traffic. There was a guard leaning against the side of the stone archway, smoking a cigarette. An assault rifle dangled from a strap around his neck. His clothing was loose grey cloth, effective camouflage in such barren country. A headscarf hid much of his face.


    ¡®Danis,¡¯ I said to Cass. She gave me a look, but to her credit didn¡¯t question me.


    Illumis was all well and good for hiding from mortals, but if you wanted to hide from one of our kind then you needed to go a little further. My eyes were utterly deceived by Cass¡¯s Uribani disguise, but I could still see her taint. I knew that she wasn¡¯t mortal.


    Danis was the art of hiding one¡¯s taint. It meant drawing the power that pervaded your flesh back into your internal well. It was uncomfortable, like holding your breath, and you could draw only the faintest trickle of power while you held it. But if Exan was here in Ista still, it would make us effectively invisible to him.


    Not that I thought he was. But it paid to be careful.


    I felt Cass¡¯s chaos taint vanish from my perceptions and I focused my own will inward. The power drained out of me, leaving a horrific sense of vulnerability in its wake. I ran a thin trickle of energy out into my illusion and did my best to ignoring the hot, seething sensation building in my chest.


    Been a while since you¡¯ve had to do this¡­


    But ¡°had to do it¡± was the right phrase. Anyone of our kind could spot another¡¯s taint just by looking at them. Worse, you could spot the taint at ranges beyond those of mundane eyesight, or when that eyesight was obscured.


    If someone was waiting in the city for us, then a scan of the horizon would probably be enough to tell them that Isande and the others were there. They wouldn¡¯t know exactly where, but they¡¯d have an idea of a general vicinity.


    In the War, use of Danis had been routine. You never knew when someone from the other side would turn up to take you out. My standing orders to the rest of the Dark Pact had been that if they weren¡¯t using power, they needed to be suppressing it.


    Of course, the War was over, and it seemed the veterans of both sides had gone a little lax.


    I pushed these thoughts away and focused on the city around us. It hadn¡¯t changed all that much since I¡¯d last been here. But then, that was the way of things when you built from solid stone. Quarrying the stuff was not easy, and people didn¡¯t demolish and rebuild for the sake of fashion. Given the work involved, they made do with previous generations¡¯ aesthetic instead.


    The citizens dressed in long flowing garments in a variety of riotous colours. Here and there I saw more soldiers walking the streets in military grey. There didn¡¯t appear to be much distinction between their military and their police.


    There never was. The Patriarch has all the power here.


    Of course, that was supposition. It was a while since I¡¯d been on Uriban and even longer since I¡¯d been in Ista. The buildings hadn¡¯t changed but the politics might¡¯ve. I really had no way of knowing.


    ¡®When we get there,¡¯ I said to Cass, ¡®it would be best if you said nothing. I will introduce you as a disciple and let them assume that you are my disciple. This will grant you their respect.¡¯


    Whose?¡¯


    We turned a corner. Up ahead was the building I was looking for, a single story block of stone, entrance flanked by smooth columns, roof topped with an impressive dome. Things changed, but stone lasted. It was part of the reason we had chosen this place. In Ista they wore their past around them here, more so than in other places. The face of their city endured, as did their traditions. Memory spanned the generations.


    Useful traits in a mortal culture. Well, useful for us at any rate.


    I paused to glance up at the dome. No small feat of engineering that, when all you had to work with was stone and a few crude hand tools. But then, mortals put in all manner of effort when it came to their temples.


    ¡®They call themselves the Cult of Rukh,¡¯ I said.


    ¡®The what?¡¯


    But by then we were already at the entrance.


    There was no guard. There was no door, either, just the neat, rectangular opening and the dark room beyond.


    I stepped inside.


    It had not changed at all.


    A circular room, not unlike the meeting hall at the House. I wondered if that design had influenced me, back when I¡¯d let Desikim set this place up. I disliked the thought. I disliked the idea that anything of mine could be tainted by something of Dalarion¡¯s.


    And yet you sought followers, said a voice in the back of my mind. Just as he did. Just as he always has. The only difference being, you admitted it.


    I pushed the voice aside. This was not the time to second guess myself.


    The far wall was lined with statues. Five in total, each one eminently lifelike. They had been carved from stone, but layered with painted wax. If I hadn¡¯t known better, they might¡¯ve passed for living people.


    A sharp intake of breath from Cass.


    In the centre, right opposite the doorway, was my own likeness staring back. Oh, I was a fraction taller, my waist a fraction slimmer, my bare arms showing better muscle definition than I had these days, but it was me all right. I was wearing black combat fatigues, the jacket hanging open. My hands were raised and in this light, the wax was indistinguishable from skin. They¡¯d even managed to get the eyes right ¨C they glistened the way real eyeballs glistened. No doubt some acolyte had the job of dabbing them with water each day so as to maintain the illusion.


    Exan had commissioned these statues. He¡¯d been very keen that they look as like us as possible, a living record for our followers and guarantor of instant obedience whenever we returned.


    His statue stood to the right of mine, lean and hungry, mouth crooked in a grin that showed his fanged incisors, body clad in the fighting leathers he had always preferred. On my statue¡¯s left stood Trickster, a diminutive woman in a short sleeved tunic, one clawed hand extended outward, proffering a fanned deck of cards. On the outer edges were Tollan Esparatos and Desikim. Esparatos on the left in a grey battledress, his weapon, Laya, gripped in one feathered hand. Desikim on the right, face half hidden by her cowl, the black silk robe and its meaningless silver symbols bound tight against her form.


    The leaders of the Dark Pact, and its original members. Or, to the mortals that came to worship in this place, a pantheon of capricious gods.


    There was a woman kneeling at the base of my statue, adding a lit candle to the masses that had already gathered there. She stood, lowered the hood of her robe to shake free a wave of red hair, and turned.


    For a moment I thought it was going to be Desikim.


    It wasn¡¯t. It was a mortal with a squashed face and a pug nose. She smiled as we entered, baring her fanged teeth.


    ¡®Welcome,¡¯ she said. ¡®Have you come to look at the shrine? Or are you of the faithful?¡¯


    I dropped my Ilumis in response. I released Danis.


    She froze.


    For a moment all was still. I felt the resumption Cass¡¯s chaos taint as she too threw off her disguise.


    The mortal took a step forward slowly, and then ran her hand across the contours of my face. I bore this in silence.


    Eventually she took a step back and shuddered.


    ¡®My lady,¡¯ she said, licking her lips. ¡®You have returned.¡¯


    ¡®Yes,¡¯ I said. ¡®I am wondering how truly faithful you have remained.¡¯


    She swallowed. ¡®I have tended this shrine since the duty was passed to me by my father. I keep close contact with the rest of the Cult and it pleases me to say that we are strong in this city. We have become the religion of the powerful. We spread your teachings. The records are still kept, just as you once commanded.¡¯


    I said nothing. Beside me, Cass shifted uneasily.


    The priestesses eyes flicked across to her, ever so briefly.


    ¡®A disciple,¡¯ I said. ¡®You make speak freely in front of her. More freely than you have so far. You have more to tell me.¡¯


    A fairly obvious deduction but it is amazing what an ignorant mortal will read into it.


    ¡®Lord Exan passed through here some months ago,¡¯ she said.


    I¡¯ll bet he did.


    I felt Cass tense, and hoped she had the sense to keep her mouth shut.


    ¡®He had instructions for me. For the rest of Cult.¡¯


    Now that was news to me.


    The Cult had been Exan¡¯s responsibility. The whole false religion angle had started with Desikim, but the Cult was on Uriban and Exan was Uribani. It had been his during the War, and it had been agreed that he would keep tending to it during peacetime. I had known that he would pass through every few years or so to keep an eye, but instructions, orders¡­


    I folded my arms. ¡®Do elaborate,¡¯ I said.


    The priestess nodded, eager to please. ¡®He told us to¡­¡¯Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    She stopped, suddenly. Her eyes were wide, wider than they had been when I had shown myself earlier. Her head craned back, exposing her throat. A small, pathetic moan forced its way from between her lips.


    Blood ran from her nose.


    Then she pitched forward, face first. A hollow thud as she hit the floor. The kind of noise a dead body makes when falling.


    The exact kind of noise in fact.


    A rasp of steel on leather as Cass drew her sword.


    A thin rectangular object was buried in the back of the priestess¡¯s skull. A wafer of painted obsidian.


    A playing card.


    I looked up. One of the statues was stepping down off of its pedestal, a sheaf of stone cards spread in each clawed hand like throwing knives, a grin across those all-too familiar features.


    Not a statue.


    ¡®Oh the look on your face.¡¯


    I sighed. ¡®Hello Trickster,¡¯ I said.


    *             *             *


    Trickster. No other name given. She had been my spymaster in the War, the commander of my intelligence corps, mortal and otherwise. She had also been my partner in research and development ¨C her knowledge of the disciplines had been extensive, as had her knowledge of mortal science. I knew very little about her past before the War, though I¡¯d run into her on several occasions when I¡¯d still been a disciple.


    She had been obsessed with chaos.


    Beside me, Cass was quivering, sword in hand.


    Show no weakness.


    ¡®Relax,¡¯ I told her, ¡®Trickster is an old friend.¡¯ I made an apologetic face at Trickster. ¡®She¡¯s heard too many stories, I¡¯m afraid. Makes her a little nervous.¡¯


    ¡®Oh, oh she should be,¡¯ said Trickster, boyish hair bouncing as she did a little jig. ¡®I am so very, very dangerous, after all.¡¯ She winked at me with one mad eye, and then suddenly sobered. ¡®She¡¯s not your disciple, is she, Rukh? Or did you think I¡¯d miss that?¡¯


    ¡®No, she isn¡¯t,¡¯ I said. ¡®And no, I didn¡¯t. But I didn¡¯t think you¡¯d murder our high priestess either. What¡¯s gotten into you?¡¯


    ¡®Nothing!¡¯


    I just looked at her.


    ¡®So maybe I¡¯m a little loopy at the moment,¡¯ said Trickster, suddenly defensive. Or mock defensive, it was hard to tell. ¡®But I¡¯ve been standing up here for ages. I¡¯m so stiff. I had to kill her, just to limber up.¡¯


    I sighed. ¡®Of course you did.¡¯ I gave her a hard look. ¡®Where¡¯s Exan? And why don¡¯t you want me to know what he¡¯s up to?¡¯


    Trickster rolled her eyes at me. ¡®Oh, Rukh,¡¯ she said, ¡®just because I killed her doesn¡¯t mean I was trying to keep something quiet! You are so silly!¡¯


    I knew better than to trust that. My experience was that she would keep a solemn oath, but lie like fuck the rest of the time. She did so without shame or apology, the same way she did everything.


    ¡®Where¡¯s Exan?¡¯ I asked her again.


    She spread her hands and shrugged. ¡®Now? Who can say?¡¯ Her eyes went to Cass. ¡®But that¡¯s not the interesting question, oh no. The interesting question, the really, really interesting question, is what you¡¯re doing here with Telemens Dax¡¯s daughter.¡¯


    Cass tensed.


    ¡®Look,¡¯ I said to Trickster, ¡®it¡¯s like this. Tancris is dead. The Alliance think Exan is responsible. I need to find him and find the truth. If he is, then he¡¯s broken the treaty and therefore his oath to me.¡¯ I smiled. ¡®You remember the penalty for that, don¡¯t you?¡¯


    Trickster bit her lip. Cocked her head to one side.


    ¡®No,¡¯ she said. ¡®No.¡¯ She shook her head violently. ¡®No, no, no, no, no.¡¯ She was still suddenly, eyes fixed on mine. ¡®I don¡¯t like that, Rukh, I don¡¯t like that one bit.¡¯ An ominous clacking sound as her clawed fingers shuffled the stone cards. She took a breath.


    ¡®Die,¡¯ she said.


    A thousand implications in that word, and no time to sort through them. No time to think what this might mean, no time to wonder if she was in league with Exan or if she¡¯d finally lost her mind. No time to¡­


    I moved.


    Trickster was already leaping back, arm whipping around for the throw, and I knew I wouldn¡¯t reach her in time. I put my forearms up in front of my face to shield it and a dozen cards shattered on my Kasis-reinforced limbs. One slipped through to hammer into my forehead, but that too broke against my reinforced skin ¨C I wasn¡¯t going to fuck around, not with Trickster.


    I dropped my arms, still stinging from the impact. Saw her slipping backward between the statues.


    I jumped forward, up onto the pedestal, and lost half my cheek for my trouble. Her claws just tore it out of my face in a single swipe. I felt hot blood splashing down my neck and the burning of severed nerve endings. I ignored it, jabbing forward, but Trickster was slipping back further and further, covering her retreat with a flurry of slashing claws.


    I was dimly aware of Cass yelling something behind me, but I ignored her. Couldn¡¯t she see that I was busy?


    I rolled under the next strike and for one beautiful split second I had a clean shot at Trickster¡¯s belly.


    I whipped a shovel hook through the gap, fast as anything, not knowing if I was to break my fist on Kasis-reinforced skin or deliver a winding strike, but already planning the uppercut and the horizontal elbow that would follow¡­


    I never made contact.


    Cold hands seized me from behind.


    My hands.


    I glanced back into the eyes of my own statue, the wax cracking and falling from the limbs as the stone shifted beneath it like a living thing.


    Trickster¡¯s laughter echoed around the chamber.


    ¡®You have got to be fucking kidding me!¡¯ I said as the statue brought back its fist to strike.


    Ima.


    The statues had been replaced with ima. Or perhaps they had always been ima, perhaps Trickster had put this trap in place long ago without telling me.


    Not good¡­


    I thrust the blade of a hand against my statue¡¯s wrist to try and lever myself free, but there were no muscles or tendons to put pressure on, only unyielding stone. The fist shot towards my face faster than I would¡¯ve believed.


    I jerked my head to the side and the fist missed. The fingers of its other hand were digging into my flesh now, tightening more and more.


    The sound of steel hitting stone echoed through the chamber.


    Cass.


    You¡¯re in trouble, Rukh.


    I chopped at the statue¡¯s wrist again, but this time I loaded my hand with Turis and Kasis, and the stone shattered. I twisted out of its grasp and nearly lost my head to a chambered side kick from statue-Exan.


    I rolled, came up behind it and snapped a kick of my own into its lower back. Statue-Exan stumbled forward into my statue, and they both went down with a crash.


    Cass backed into view, cutting savagely at statue-Desikim¡¯s face with her katana. Sparks flew from the stone with a bone-juddering screech, but the ima didn¡¯t slow in its advance.


    I moved to help but statue-Esparatos was in my way, the wax mask fallen from its stone features, the grey plumage reduced to greyer stone. It came forward as if to embrace me, and I stepped back to avoid the crush of those powerful arms.


    It raised its leg to kick and I saw my opening and seized its ankle. I sent a burst of Turis through my hands ¨C expensive without the punch to focus it ¨C and the leg exploded like a bomb. Fragments slashed at my bare arms but I didn¡¯t care. Statue-Esparatos stumbled and fell.


    Something twisted and metallic clattered off the wall behind me.


    Cass¡¯s sword.


    She was backing up before Desikim¡¯s statue, empty handed. The ima seemed undamaged ¨C the robe it wore had been sliced to pieces but the stone bore only a few superficial scratches.


    I started forward again, but even as I did so Cass lunged forward with a jab and blasted the thing¡¯s head apart.


    The statue¡¯s limbs locked solid, inert once more. No longer an ima, now just a thing.


    Cass met my gaze with a self-satisfied smile.


    I pointed to the fallen statue in front of me and then over to where statue-me and statue-Exan still struggled to rise. ¡®Finish them off,¡¯ I told her, and cast my gaze about for Trickster.


    There was a small doorway behind where the statues had stood. I hadn¡¯t seen it before. I had no idea where it led.


    I made right for it.


    *             *             *


    She was waiting for me in the room beyond, her face twisted in a grin.


    I slowed when I saw her. ¡®What was the point of all that?¡¯ I asked, her, raising my hands.


    She shrugged and tilted her head to one side. ¡®What¡¯s the point of anything?¡¯


    I rolled my shoulders. ¡®You know I¡¯m going to kill you now, right?¡¯


    She laughed, swiping at the air with her claws. ¡®Your face looks better with holes in it,¡¯ she said. ¡®Much better. I wonder how many other holes I¡¯ll put in you before¡­¡¯ She tailed off, her expression twisting in sudden rage. The change was terrifying all by itself. ¡®You betrayed us!¡¯ she spat. ¡®I didn¡¯t join you for peace! I joined you for WAR!¡¯


    And then she was hurtling across the gap between us.


    I sidestepped, swinging my arm out into the space where she¡¯d been. The strike was unenhanced and I bruised the bone against Kasis-hard flesh. I leapt back, ignoring the spike of pain running through me. Claws raked across my belly, tearing fabric and flesh.


    I lashed out with Turis-loaded front kick¡­


    It connected. Trickster was blasted off her feet by the force of it. She hit the ground with an audible crack.


    I was on her a second later. No matter that I hadn¡¯t expected the attack to work. No matter that I¡¯d thought she¡¯d redirect the force. This was an opening and I had to take it. Once they were on the ground they were a heartbeat from dead. Don¡¯t give them time to recover, don¡¯t¡­


    I froze.


    Trickster was sitting up, one hand behind her to support her weight. The other was two feet away, broken off by the impact. There was no blood. The break was bleached of colour, the illusion that had run through it damaged. Grey stone showed its jagged edge.


    ¡®Surprise,¡¯ said statue-Trickster.


    I shook my head in admiration. ¡®You are one sneaky bitch,¡¯ I said.


    She smiled and in a sing-song voice said: ¡®Oh I¡¯m so looking forward to doing this for real!¡¯


    I nodded. ¡®Me too.¡¯


    Then I kicked statue-Trickster¡¯s head apart and went back to find Cass.


    *             *             *


    She was standing over my statue, which was relatively intact but having some trouble getting itself off the ground. It had lost an arm at the shoulder when I¡¯d thrown the other statue into it, and when it tried to push itself off of the floor with the other arm, the weight of its unsupported shoulder kept pulling it back down.


    Design flaw, I thought with some amusement.


    Of course, the foot Cass had on its back might¡¯ve been part of it.


    ¡®Oh just kill it already,¡¯ I said to her.


    She looked up at me, the vestigial gills at her neck flaring, and then the rage that burned in her eyes slowly subsided. She gave a curt nod, and then pulverised the statue¡¯s head, with a single stamp.


    The faintest ghost of a smile passed across her face.


    ¡®Don¡¯t look too happy,¡¯ I told her. ¡®The real me won¡¯t be so easy.¡¯


    She tensed, and then relaxed. Turned to me.


    ¡®What happened to Trickster?¡¯


    I shrugged. ¡®Wasn¡¯t her. Just an upgraded version of one of these.¡¯


    I sent Ensis to my face and belly as I spoke. There was a stone card sticking out of my shoulder- I had no recollection of the impact. I tugged it free and let the wound heal close. This had been an expensive fight. I reckoned I would¡¯ve spent about a third of my reserve by the time I was back to optimum.


    Had I been alone, I would¡¯ve spent a lot more. If I¡¯d run out¡­


    If I¡¯d run out, I would¡¯ve died.


    Not a cheery thought, that.


    ¡®So who were you talking to then?¡¯ Cass asked me.


    I thought for a moment. ¡®Good question,¡¯ I said at last. ¡®I think it was her controlling it. I think it was her mind in that stone shell.¡¯


    She had knew me too well for it to have been anything else.


    Most of us stopped at making one or two ima in our lives. It involved working with raw chaos, usually at a rent, and that meant difficult, dangerous work. I myself had made more than most. But Trickster had made hundreds in her time, wielding Akisis with no heed for the potential consequences.


    The statue had had her expressions, her mannerisms¡­


    There was a discipline, Bayis, that allowed you conjure and shape solid matter. Was that how she¡¯d done it ¨C how she¡¯d made the stone flow like skin and muscle, how she¡¯d fooled me so completely? Or was it all Illumis, an in-built manipulation of the light? However they worked, the ima had been masterfully made.


    Do not forget what she is capable of.


    ¡®Was she controlling the others?¡¯ asked Cass. ¡®None of them talked but¡­¡¯


    ¡®I doubt they had any intellect of their own,¡¯ I said, ¡®if that¡¯s what you¡¯re asking.¡¯ I closed my eyes. The implications¡­


    ¡°Oh I am so looking forward to doing this for real.¡±


    ¡®You spoke to her like she was your friend,¡¯ said Cass, and I heard the accusation in her voice. ¡®She killed someone right in front of you, someone who worshipped you, and you didn¡¯t even blink. You shrugged it off like it was less than nothing.¡¯


    I opened my eyes.


    ¡®You have a point?¡¯ I said. But I knew where this was going. It looked like fighting alongside me hadn¡¯t instilled any respect in the girl. Or maybe she¡¯d enjoyed breaking that statue of me just a bit too much.


    ¡®You were going to let her get away with murder,¡¯ she said. ¡®If she hadn¡¯t attacked you¡¯d have just got what you needed from her and walked away, wouldn¡¯t you?¡¯


    ¡®Probably,¡¯ I agreed.


    Her jaw slackened in surprise.


    Oh, there were a lot of things I could¡¯ve said. That Trickster had been one of mine more so than the priestess had been. That while I hadn¡¯t approved, I had sworn oaths to Trickster and she to me. I could not have broken them. Only when she¡¯d turned her art against me directly had those bonds been sundered.


    I could¡¯ve said all of that. But if I defended myself to Cass then I supported her right to question me. Worse, I would show weakness. I would show the hole in my side where the loyalty of my lieutenants had once been. I would show the pain I bore for a friend lost to the corruption of chaos.


    Trickster had always been a bit strange, but it looked like she¡¯d finally gone full-on nuts. Worse, she¡¯d suggested that not only had Exan killed Tancris, but that she was in league with him. If that was true¡­


    If that¡¯s true, I thought to myself, then I know where he is. Or at least, I know where he¡¯s going.


    ¡®Come on,¡¯ I said to Cass, heading for the door. ¡®Let¡¯s get back to the others.


    *             *             *


    What happened?¡¯ asked Isande, when we caught up with them.


    I glanced at her. ¡®Trickster left a trap for us,¡¯ I said.


    For me.


    There was no escaping that part. Only five of us had known the location of that temple, and even if those ima had been there since the War, the only reason for not telling me about them would¡¯ve been to use them against me. She must¡¯ve known I would come looking for Exan once I heard about what he¡¯d done, and she had lain in wait with the intention of stopping me.


    She may have been crazy, but that was not the same as stupid. For all that she had made me say it, she had known why I was there.


    ¡®Trickster?¡¯ Kirin tensed at her name. ¡®What would she be¡­¡¯


    ¡®You think she is in league with Exan?¡¯ asked Sanjay. ¡®That she had something to do with Tancris¡¯s murder?¡¯


    I was tempted to tell him that I didn¡¯t give a fuck about Tancris¡¯s murder. That Trickster had broken the treaty right in front of me when she¡¯d set those ima on Cass and I. That she¡¯d broken her oaths to me in the most profound sense possible. But I knew he wouldn¡¯t care about these things, not the way I cared about them.


    Nor was he clever enough to understand what this might mean.


    ¡®If she helped kill my love,¡¯ said Carmen, ¡®I will¡­¡¯ She hooked her fingers into claws, the sentence dying as she sought for a suitable vow.


    I shook my head. ¡®There¡¯ll be a queue,¡¯ I told her.


    No one is getting to Trickster before me.


    Mako let out a small, delicate cough. ¡®One member of the Dark Pact breaking the treaty is a comparatively small thing,¡¯ she said, with an apologetic shrug. ¡®Two suggests something more.¡¯


    A frown from Cass. ¡®What are you saying?¡¯


    Oh, not now, Mako. Not here.


    I took a step forward. ¡®We should get moving,¡¯ I said, and then glanced over at Isande. ¡®I want you bringing up the rear,¡¯ I said to her. ¡®Eyes keen.¡¯


    She inclined her head by way of response, and I knew she understood.


    ¡®Hold on,¡¯ said Sanjay. ¡®You haven¡¯t explained¡­¡¯


    I waved a hand to dismiss him. ¡®Cass can fill you all in once we¡¯re off world. Right now, we need to get moving.¡¯


    ¡®I don¡¯t take orders from you!¡¯


    I shrugged. ¡®Then go home,¡¯ I told him. ¡®Or stay here. Whatever you like. But I can¡¯t be bothered to have this conversation again. It¡¯s getting boring.¡¯


    I started walking.


    It had occurred to me that if Trickster had been controlling that statue the way I suspected, then she would have to have been on Uriban to do it. If she¡¯d been on Uriban then, then the chances were pretty good that she was still here. I was willing to bet, in fact, that she had us under observation and was listening to everything we said.


    I could guess what her next move was going to be, too.


    Well, Exan, you two-faced bastard. I guess you know we¡¯re coming¡­

 Chapter 7

    I led the way through Reality, half listening to the others talking behind me. Cass at the back with Isande, taking her through the fight in the temple for what had to be the third or fourth time, Isande occasionally stopping her to ask a pointed question.


    Kirin walked alone, saying nothing. He was even more of a pariah than I was, for all that they pretended otherwise. No-one really trusted a traitor. Someone who turned once might turn again.


    Not that I¡¯d have that backstabbing piece of shit back for even a second.


    Sanjay and Mako were playing chess, calling the moves to one another. I followed along for a while, watching the black and white pieces slide around the board in my mind¡¯s eye. I¡¯d used to like chess.


    I had once been very good at it.


    It was Carmen who stole my attention away from the game. She came up beside me as we crossed a desert of golden sand on a world called Terami. She walked with me in silence as the sun fell, and when it finally dipped below the horizon, she spoke.


    ¡®I have hated you,¡¯ she said. ¡®I have wished terrible things upon you.¡¯


    ¡®That¡¯s a crowded hole you¡¯re in,¡¯ I said.


    She continued as if I had not spoken. ¡®But you did not kill my Iago. Moreover, you now feel as I do regarding our true enemy.¡¯ A pause as she struggled with something. ¡®Sanjay and Isande have reminded me¡­ you do not lie.¡¯


    Oh my, I thought to myself sarcastically. I¡¯m all teary.


    ¡®I once fought you with everything I had,¡¯ she said. ¡®But that was then. Today you are my ally in revenge. For this, you are my sister.¡¯ She put a hand on my upper arm. ¡®You are forgiven, for everything.¡¯


    I think I¡¯m going to be sick.


    ¡®Well,¡¯ I said. ¡®That¡¯s nice.¡¯


    She snatched her hand back as she heard the poison in my voice.


    ¡®Thing is, Carmen,¡¯ I said, my eyes on the road ahead, ¡®that¡¯s a pretty easy thing for you to say. You forgive me? For what exactly? You and I barely crossed paths in the War. I never killed anyone you particularly liked, did I? Hell, when I put Telemens down you were probably wet with joy.¡¯


    A sharp intake of breath from Cass behind me. Mako and Sanjay paused in their game, listening.


    I didn¡¯t care.


    ¡®You are¡­¡¯ she began, but I wasn¡¯t done.


    ¡®But it¡¯s not that easy. You think the War was all about you? You think I didn¡¯t lose people?¡¯ I stopped and rounded on her. ¡®Maybe you should think,¡¯ I said, ¡®about what I¡¯m doing now. About who I¡¯m putting myself up against. And maybe, just maybe, you should go fuck yourself.¡¯


    Silence.


    Show no weakness.


    Oh. Yeah. That.


    I glanced back along the row of stunned faces. Even Isande¡¯s cool fa?ade had broken. Only Mako looked unfazed. But like I said, it is hard to tell with a lizard.


    I let out a short laugh. Let the tension that had built within me unwind. ¡®Wow,¡¯ I said to Carmen, ¡®I actually let you get to me.¡¯


    I went back to walking.


    It was some time before conversation resumed.


    * * *


    We camped on Sandim, beside a mountain lake.


    The air was cool, and crisp, the water clear above the rocky lakebed. There was an island a short distance from the shore, upon which stood a stand of pine trees. Isande swam out to collect firewood. Sanjay disappeared for an hour and returned, smugly, with a brace of long-necked, purple-feathered birds that according to him had the look of good eating.


    I sat, and brooded.


    I took care to appear perfectly relaxed, as if I was enjoying the scenery.


    I wasn¡¯t.


    How had I, a woman who had never broken her word, ended up changing sides like this? Because that¡¯s what it was. I was walking in step with Sanjay, and Carmen, and fucking Kirin, all ready to do Dalarion¡¯s dirty work. On the other side were at least two of my closest friends, now turned to enemies. More, this was not just about Tancris. That had been obvious the moment Trickster had made her move. If she was involved as well then this was, like Mako had said, much bigger. The treaty was in ruins. Dalarion¡¯s reasons for involving me were already obsolete.


    The War was back on.


    Oh, the scale was several orders of magnitude smaller than it had been, but it would be the same conflict. Exan had never been in favour of peace, and it seemed that he¡¯d had as much of it as he could stomach.


    He¡¯s not going to stop with just Tancris. Oh no¡­


    I could be wrong, but if I was right, if the War was recommencing as I had hoped and dreamed back in my darker moments on Sansara, what was I doing helping the Alliance?


    Your word, I reminded myself. Is that not reason enough?


    I was beginning to wonder if it was.


    He didn¡¯t ask.


    That was closer to the heart of things. Exan hadn¡¯t asked me. He hadn¡¯t even tried. He had simply decided that it was time, all by himself. He had broken faith, broken his oath to me, and despite everything he had once been to me, for that I would kill him.


    Hell hath no fury, after all.


    I took a breath. Centred myself.


    Went to where Isande was assembling the fire. Being aloof and apart was one thing. Hell, in my situation it was practically a given. But I could not be seen to be sulking. Not so soon after my earlier outburst.


    I winced at the thought. It had probably not done my image any real harm. It might even have made some of them question the self-righteous bullshit Dalarion had had them eating for the past however-long. But I was embarrassed all the same, annoyed with myself for even that brief loss of control.


    Show. No. Weakness.


    Especially not to these people.


    Only I had.


    Damn, I need to hit something.


    I paused at the thought. It actually wasn¡¯t a bad idea.


    Isande was just arranging the last few branches on her unlit campfire. She straightened as a I approached.


    ¡®Hey,¡¯ I said.


    From her seat on a nearby stone, Cass glared murder.


    Isande just raised an eyebrow.


    ¡®Want to spar?¡¯


    She went still for a moment. But it wasn¡¯t the same question I¡¯d asked by the chaos-rift, and she knew the difference.


    ¡®The others,¡¯ she said, ¡®they might get the wrong idea.¡¯


    I grinned at her. ¡®That¡¯s your excuse?¡¯


    Sanjay was down at the lakeside, plucking the feathers from his kills. Kirin had gone for a walk, and Mako and Carmen had disappeared off together for some sort of pow-wow. Yeah, they might leap to the wrong conclusion if they came back and saw me fighting Isande, but it wasn¡¯t like it was an insurmountable obstacle.


    ¡®I¡¯ll owe you a favour,¡¯ I said to her.


    She raised an eyebrow. ¡®You will put yourself in my debt? You?¡¯


    I nodded.


    She hesitated, just for the look of the thing, but I¡¯d already read the decision in her eyes.


    ¡®This is a bad idea,¡¯ said Cass, folding her arms.


    ¡®Watch,¡¯ said Isande. ¡®Learn.¡¯ A pause. ¡®Make sure no-one does anything stupid.¡¯ She gestured towards the lake, and her next words were addressed to me. ¡®Down there, in the open space. ¡®And no power.¡¯


    ¡®No power,¡¯ I agreed.


    We started slow. Straight punches, and hard, high blocks. We moved with measured steps. Together. Apart. Circle and counter-circle. It was more a dance than anything else, as if the moves had been pre-planned by some external choreographer. It was the exact opposite of how I usually opened a fight, but this wasn¡¯t a fight, not really.


    The tempo increased. I threw my combos at half speed and Isande responded with textbook competence. She slapped my jabs down with an open palm, slipped my crosses, rolled hooks. She returned in kind. Then I was snapping my left arm into her left wrist, and she was pulling back the cross she had been about to send, knowing that her fist would shatter on my rising elbow, and then¡­Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    And then we were a blur of motion. Our movement became wild, almost nonsensical, half in response to one another, half in our unspoken need to keep moving, to make sure this didn¡¯t bog down into weary circling, or empty posturing, or even the exchange of conversation that sometimes occurred when both parties needed a rest. We didn¡¯t need rest. We didn¡¯t want rest. We wanted to keep going until forever


    We took risks. I launched kicks at her head, despite the risk to my balance. She replied with a flying knee and was forced into a forward roll when I dodged. I chained three hooks together and grinned as she ducked them all. I tried combos I would never have thrown in a real fight, quadruple jabs, spinning kicks, at one stage a backflip¡­


    We left the holds and takedowns alone. Neither of us wanted this to become the slow attrition of a close-quarter wrestling clinch. She threw me, twice, but I landed on my feet both times and threw her once by way of revenge. But I didn¡¯t try to pin her down, nor she me, though in a real confrontation we both would have finished a downed opponent without hesitation or mercy. But this wasn¡¯t a real confrontation, and there was no sense in ruining a dogfight by digging trenches.


    It was exhilarating.


    Eventually, as always, the flesh betrays.


    We broke apart, spent. I was sheathed in sweat. I didn¡¯t know how long we¡¯d been going. It seemed like hours, but it always did and rarely was. That was combat for you. Isande was breathing hard, her clothes stuck to her skin, her blonde hair a mess. Blood leaked from her ruined lips, and she held one arm awkwardly at her side.


    I became aware of Cass and the others watching us. I hadn¡¯t even noticed them before, except, perhaps, as dim protesting shadows when I¡¯d landed a blow on Isande.


    I probed at my own injuries. I¡¯d broken bones in my hand, but that was to be expected in a bare knuckle fight. I could feel the ache from my stomach muscles that betrayed heavy bruising, maybe even internal bleeding. My left ear was warm and heavy. There was a pulsing agony in the centre of my face that felt like a broken nose.


    I opened my mouth, and realised that she¡¯d broken my jaw.


    Ensis.


    It was expensive, in terms of power. Not as much as the fight with Trickster had cost me, but significant all the same.


    But I needed that.


    ¡®That¡­ that was incredible,¡¯ Cass was saying.


    A snort from Carmen. ¡®Flashy, certainly,¡¯ she said, with a sneer, smoothing the hem of her white dress.


    I grinned at her, my jaw now healed enough for me to speak. ¡®Any time you want to have a go,¡¯ I said, ¡®all you have to do is ask.¡¯


    Sanjay was looking at Isande with disapproval. ¡®Was that strictly necessary?¡¯ he asked her.


    Isande just looked at him. Not with anger, or disappointment exactly. It was the look of a queen who¡¯d heard an impertinent remark for the first time in her life, and neither knew nor cared what it meant.


    He sighed. ¡®I¡¯d better start cooking,¡¯ he said, and headed for the fire.


    ¡®Learn anything?¡¯ said Isande to Cass.


    Cass¡¯s hero-worship was more palpable than usual. I barely listened to her gushing response, just enough to know that she¡¯d missed the point Isande had been driving at. Like all good sensei¡¯s, Isande was trying to make a lesson through her example. And the lesson, in this case, had not been about combat technique.


    If I sparred with Isande as an equal, then until Cass could do the same she was nowhere near close to facing me for real.


    By the sound of things, she hadn¡¯t figured that out yet.


    I watched the two of them for a moment, not listening to the words they said ¨C not that I could hear them over Sanjay¡¯ cursing attempts to light the fire without power ¨C but watching their expressions. Watching Isande¡¯s expression.


    ¡®Hey Mako,¡¯ I said.


    She was sitting on a rock a few feet away, very still.


    She looked around at my words. ¡®Yes?¡¯


    ¡®Isande¡¯s her mother, isn¡¯t she?¡¯


    Mako shrugged. ¡®I don¡¯t know,¡¯ she said. ¡®Does it matter?¡¯


    ¡®No,¡¯ I said, still watching. ¡®I guess it doesn¡¯t.¡¯


    * * *


    ¡®I want to know what you¡¯re planning,¡¯ said Sanjay the next morning. ¡®There is no longer any need for¡­¡¯


    ¡®That¡¯s enough,¡¯ I said, and increased my pace.


    He really has no fucking idea, does he?


    We were walking across a plain of ice. This world, Curia, was so cold that I was using Sansis to regulate my body temperature. I could¡¯ve conserved power by wearing some kind of protective gear, but frankly it wasn¡¯t worth it. We weren¡¯t planning an extended stay.


    ¡®You tell us nothing!¡¯ he snapped, and I couldn¡¯t help but smile.


    ¡®You¡¯re right,¡¯ I said. ¡®I don¡¯t.¡¯


    I felt his gaze on me, but when I refused to react he eventually spun away in frustration. I heard him fall in further back. He was expressing his frustration to Carmen, who made sympathetic noises.


    ¡®I guess you¡¯re still not going to talk about the Mirror,¡¯ said Isande as we transitioned to a long snowy ridge. Mountains pierced the sky all around us and the air was crisp and cool. This was Altain, an empty world that had been spared the worst ravages of the War.


    ¡®You guess correctly,¡¯ I said. ¡®Unless you want to call in your favour so soon after earning it?¡¯


    She laughed. ¡®Oh, I¡¯ll hold on to that marker for a while yet, Rukh. There are few who can claim to have the Last Evil in their debt.¡¯


    She clapped me on the shoulder, an oddly comradely gesture given our history. It was something she might¡¯ve done back in the old days, before I had left the House, before the War. An echo of that long dead friendship, a hint that it might, despite all the two of us had done to one another, be one day revived.


    Then she burned.


    I mean it literally. One moment she was walking beside me, enviably beautiful beneath the light of the cold sun, and the next she was pillar of flame with a dancing, screaming figure at its heart. Her cry tore the air like incarnate loss. Smoke billowed from her eyes and mouth.


    Isande¡­


    I whirled around.


    A dark figure burst from the snow behind Mako.


    Sanjay grabbed Carmen¡¯s hand and flickered out of the world, back to Curia. Another dark figure leapt from the whiteness into the space where they had been.


    Kirin vanished without drawing his blades.


    Isande dropped limp into the snow, a twisted black mockery of what she had once been.


    Cass was at her side in an instant.


    Wake up, Rukh!


    But the Faris binding was on me, settling over my shoulders like a silken net. It was the one offensive move in the discipline. It stopped the target from going off-world. They varied in strength but this one would hold me for half a day at least¡­


    Wake up!


    Cass was gone now, taking Isande¡¯s corpse with her. I had no doubt it was a corpse. He wouldn¡¯t have risked using too little power.


    I turned back slowly.


    I knew who I was going to see.


    I had been taken utterly by surprise. Not one of those attacks had been aimed at me, and my reactions had been sluggish. But it could¡¯ve been me. It could¡¯ve been me dancing in that pillar of flame instead of Isande, my brain smoked in my skull before I could bring any power to bear.


    Isande¡­


    Not now, Rukh!


    He stood in the snow, steam rising from the muscle of his bare arms, the snow reduced to slush around his booted feet. His handsome face was crooked in a grin that just showed the tips of his fangs.


    There were others around him. I barely noticed them. My tactical brain counted five, noted the dark uniforms that we hadn¡¯t used since the War, picked out the one face I remembered from four I didn¡¯t. This lot were his disciples then¡­


    All of them.


    He¡¯s been raising people to the power, I realised. Recruiting.


    Then off the back of that another, fiercer thought, right from the pulsing centre of my very self.


    Show no weakness.


    Not now. Especially not now.


    So I pulled a smile up from somewhere and looked him right in the eye.


    ¡®Hey Exan,¡¯ I said.


    His grin widened, just a fraction. ¡®Hey you,¡¯ he said, and then he was stepping forward, arms opened wide.


    He embraced me. I felt something inside me melt and I put my arms around his torso to return that embrace. His skin was still sizzling from the fire he had unleashed, but I didn¡¯t care. His smell was as I remembered. He held me with the same unshakable strength he had always held me. Within those arms I wasn¡¯t the Last Evil or the Black Queen, but just me. The real, trembling, unmasked and undefended core of me.


    Show no weakness.


    I pulled away.


    Took stock of the situation.


    The others were gone, fled from this world. Only Mako remained, held in the grip of a tall woman in black uniform. She had Mako¡¯s head between her palms, ready to crush it at the slightest provocation. I could think of a few ways out of that position, but none I¡¯d want to try against a watchful opponent. And Mako wasn¡¯t a fighter. She was a thinker, a planner.


    ¡®Not going to go after the others?¡¯ I asked Exan.


    He shrugged at me. ¡®I¡¯ve got people who will track them,¡¯ he said. ¡®We¡¯ll take them when the time is right.¡¯ He gestured at Mako. ¡®She¡¯s the important one. That lizard¡¯s got every secret the Alliance ever had locked up in her head.¡¯


    I glanced at Mako again. She wasn¡¯t struggling. Her yellow eyes were flat, her red-scaled face impassive.


    ¡®Good luck getting her to talk,¡¯ I said.


    ¡®Ha, done enough interrogations in my time, you know that.¡¯ He grinned at me. ¡®She¡¯ll squeal. Promise.¡¯


    A pause.


    I thought of Isande burning in the snow and I felt the pang of another loss. I had known her since I¡¯d first been raised to the power. With her gone¡­


    Not now, Rukh!


    ¡®What are you doing, Exan?¡¯ I asked, at last.


    The snow shifted around us. His disciples kept still, but their eyes were on him, waiting for their cue.


    ¡®We have the advantage, now,¡¯ he said. ¡®In so many different ways. The Alliance was mostly disbanded ¨C if we take out Dalarion and the others it¡¯ll be gone for good. We can finish the War, Rukh. We can win.¡¯


    I nodded slowly.


    ¡®Thing is, Exan,¡¯ I said, ¡®I already finished the War.¡¯ I smiled. ¡®There was a treaty and everything.¡¯


    He went very still. Around him, his disciples tensed. He looked at me, hurt in his eyes, and I looked right back, unflinching.


    Show no weakness.


    ¡®I have been a shadow since the War,¡¯ said Exan. ¡®So have you. The Alliance went back to their lives and all was well, but us? We lost everything we¡¯d fought for. It all turned out to be for nothing. No empires, no kingdoms, right back where we¡¯d started with only dead friends and new enemies to show for it.¡¯ He shook his head. ¡®I¡¯ve had enough, Rukh. Tancris was the first. Isande made a decent second and this scaly bitch will do for dessert. But I want the rest of them. I want Dalarion.¡¯


    ¡®Oh Exan,¡¯ I said, flashing him a mocking smile, ¡®I feel almost the same way.¡¯ I let my face grow steely cold. ¡®But my word is as iron. You broke your oath to me. You broke faith with the Dark Pact. Don¡¯t you recall the punishment?¡¯


    I took a step towards him.


    He flinched.


    ¡®The treaty was a betrayal of everything we stood for. I see that now. Our oaths were dust long before I¡­¡¯


    ¡®You could¡¯ve asked,¡¯ I said to him. ¡®They did. I doubt Tancris¡¯s body was even cold before Isande was on her way to fetch me. If you¡¯d but asked¡­¡¯


    ¡®You said¡­¡¯


    ¡®I am always careful what I swear to,¡¯ I told him. ¡®Do you really think, that if I¡¯d wanted to, I couldn¡¯t have destroyed that treaty without ever going against my promise? That I couldn¡¯t have baited them into to breaking it? You know me, Exan. You, above all others, know what I am capable of.¡¯


    I took another step forwards.


    ¡®So don¡¯t pretend this is about the War, or about promises, or about the treaty. This is just you trying to go it alone, to step out from my shadow. You¡¯ve sacrificed everything that was ever between us to that cause. And you know it.¡¯


    Pain in his features now. ¡®It doesn¡¯t have to be this way.¡¯


    I smiled a mirthless smile and shook my head. ¡®You fucked up, Exan. Because it doeshave to be this way. My word is as iron. Always has been. I won¡¯t break a promise, not even for you.¡¯


    ¡®Trickster said¡­¡¯


    I laughed, pouring every ounce of scorn into my voice that I could. ¡®That psycho? Oh, she¡¯s lost her shit in a big way. It only took five minutes with her to see that. I mean, she was a bit off back in the War, but now she¡¯s finally fallen out of the crazy tree for good. If you¡¯re letting her lead you around by the nose, then you¡¯re dumber than I thought.¡¯


    Silence.


    Exan stood there for a moment, and then, very slowly, shook his head. ¡®Enemies, then?¡¯ he asked me, and though he kept his voice light I could see the pain in his eyes.


    He wasn¡¯t alone in that. That embrace had to be the last one. Those arms could never hold me again, because if I was ever again that close I would be killing him. I had known this since Trickster had stepped off of the pedestal, even if I hadn¡¯t admitted it to myself until now. Oh, I wanted to make it all simple again. To be at his side and the rest of Reality be damned. But I never broke a promise. The moment I did, I was nothing.


    That was not a fate I could face.


    I kept my own pain off my face. Kept my eyes cold, as though I were pronouncing death on some unknown mortal, instead of upon my closest friend and erstwhile lover.


    I nodded. ¡®Oh yes,¡¯ I said. ¡®I¡¯m afraid so. So how about we get this done?¡¯


    He sighed. ¡®I¡¯m not going to fight you, Rukh,¡¯ he said. ¡®Not the way you want me to.¡¯ He glanced back at the tall woman who was holding Mako. ¡®Give her here.¡¯


    ¡®I like Mako about as well as any of them,¡¯ I said, as Exan took hold of his prisoner, ¡®but if you think you can coerce me¡­¡¯


    ¡®Oh no,¡¯ said Exan, shaking his head. ¡®No, I know you better than that. I guess I just don¡¯t particularly want to see this, Rukh. Not ashamed to admit it either.¡¯ He paused, and there was something in his eyes, something fragile, precarious, a hurt that it hurt to see. ¡®You know I loved you, once?¡¯


    That was an exaggeration. I had been his mentor and he had looked up to me. I was a woman. He had been young. A certain amount of lust had been inevitable¡­ but love?


    ¡®More fool you,¡¯ I said aloud.


    He winced, and then turned to his disciples. ¡®Kill her,¡¯ he said, and then turned walked away, Mako marched before him with the blade still at her throat.


    He did not look back.

 Chapter 8

    Well. Shit.


    I was good at fighting. I was good at it because I loved it, and because I had practised hard. The past few days had knocked the rust off, but I was nowhere near the level I had been at during the War. Even then¡­


    Especially then, I would not have fought five on one, not by choice, not ever.


    These five were neither mortals nor ima. These five, despite their relative youth, had all been raised to the power. I had no idea as to exactly how powerful they were, how far advanced in the disciplines. But if Exan had trained them, he would¡¯ve prioritised combat skills.


    Well, you¡¯re always complaining that you never get a decent fight¡­


    I tested Faris. No joy. The binding was a solid one, a couple of hours at least. I shouldn¡¯t¡¯ve let that happen. I should¡¯ve been ready, broken it before it got its grip on me¡­


    Focus, Rukh.


    Exan¡¯s disciples were advancing towards me, weapons drawn.


    I recognised the tall woman in the centre, the one who had been holding Mako earlier. I recognised the two short horns that rose from her shaved scalp, and the basic set of her features. But her skin was a paler shade of brown than I remembered and her curves were more pronounced. The alterations did not surprise me in the least ¨C when you mastered Ensis you could look however you wished, provided you took the time and power necessary to make the changes.


    Many people chose to conform to whatever their local standard of beauty had been. Nor was I an exception ¨C I was three inches taller than I¡¯d been as a mortal, and had no shame about the changes whatsoever.


    The woman¡¯s name was Shas, and Exan had been planning to raise her to the power when I¡¯d last seen him. She would be his most senior disciple then, the most experienced out of the five before me, and no doubt their leader.


    She wore an arming sword on her left hip.


    Not just any sword either.


    I recognised that blade. I had broken the wrist of the man who¡¯d made it and torn it from his grasp. I had pulled out his throat with my fingers and stamped his skull to powder.


    His name had been Elis Carrick. He had fought for the Alliance in the War, though in the years beforehand he had been Dalarion¡¯s personal nemesis. Carrick had been one of the greatest of us, and the sword had been the unassailable truth of that claim. It was called Nemi, and the wounds it made could not be healed with Ensis. Its edge could not be turned with Kasis. Turis would not steal the force from its cuts.


    It was one hell of a weapon.


    It was the blade that had wounded Dalarion back in ancient days. It was the blade that had nearly killed me in the War. It was the blade of a master, of one of the worthiest of my old enemies, and Exan had handed it to his no-name disciple like it was a stick of candy.


    I was¡­ somewhat annoyed by that.


    I was also in very real trouble.


    With that blade, Shas represented a severe threat independent of her skills with the disciplines. A mortal carrying that blade would¡¯ve worried me.


    And she wasn¡¯t alone.


    A thin woman in a duelling mask, who carried a long slim rapier.


    A fat man with the head of a lion and an axe as long as he was tall.


    A big, musclebound figure with four-inch tusks protruding from his lower jaw and a set of impressively long dreadlocks, his fists clad in steel gauntlets.


    A woman, her skin the same shade of blue as Carmen¡¯s, who twirled a pair of knives around her fingers like they were parade batons.


    I labelled them in my head: Mask, Lion, Tusks, Blue.


    This lot were like Cass, it seemed ¨C they hadn¡¯t yet fully mastered Turis and Kasis. They could not rely on their own flesh and bone, and so they had to rely on mortal steel instead.


    I would¡¯ve crushed any two of them, but all together? With that sword in play?


    Shas drew Nemi from its sheath and pointed at me with the tip. ¡®From what I hear,¡¯ she said, ¡®and from what I remember, there¡¯s a lot of people who¡¯d like to do what I¡¯m about to do. And if I¡¯m honest, ever since I got this I¡¯ve been itching to use it.¡¯


    I shook my head with an amusement that was only partially feigned.


    ¡®Well,¡¯ I said, ¡®I guess when all you¡¯ve got is a magic sword, everything begins to look like an evil overlord in need of slaying.¡¯


    She flashed me a sarcastic smile. ¡®Cute.¡¯


    The others fanned out around me. Mask and Lion on my left, Tusk and Blue on my right. They moved surely and confidently. Of course they did. There were five of them and only one of me.


    I sighed.


    Sometimes, when the odds are against you and the enemy holds all the cards, the only thing to do is attack.


    So I did.


    Trouble was, so did they. All at once.


    Mask came in from the far left, circling into my peripheral vision, lunging out with her rapier even as Lion charged, axe raised. Tusks and Blue on the right, Shas in the middle¡­


    Not in perfect synchrony though. Mask and Lion were faster¡­


    I went for them slapping aside Mask¡¯s rapier with an open palm and exploding inside her guard. I took her arm and threw her between me and Lion, tried to follow up with a punch but never got the chance. Tusk blasted forward on Turis-assisted heels like a bullet from a gun, snow fountaining in his wake, his metal-clad fist seeking my head. I got a shoulder up into its path just in time and snow blasted outwards around my feet as I shifted the force.


    I had no time to retaliate ¨C Mask had pivoted clear and Lion¡¯s axe was dropping for my head and Blue was coming around Tusk¡¯s shoulder to get behind me¡­


    I caught Lion¡¯s axe by the haft even as I ducked under Tusk¡¯s next wild swing. Yanked the weapon forward and kicked him the groin with an enhanced foot, felt his grip on the axe slacken as he doubled over. I half spun, the weapon suddenly mine, haft slamming into the side of Mask¡¯s head even as I tried to put the blade into Tusk¡¯s.


    He caught it on his gauntlet and suddenly Blue was on me, landing from what had to have been a flying leap, her blades tearing bloody furrows in my back and shoulder as she jammed them in like a climber¡¯s pitons.


    I let go of the axe and peeled her off with one Turis-assisted arm, flinging her into Mask so that they both went down in the snow. Lion was still trying to recover from the groin strike, so only Tusk was standing, one hand still uselessly clutching the axe blade, the other in a rough approximation of a guard as he pivoted towards me¡­


    Where is Shas?


    I spun around, and then turned that spin into a desperate sideways leap. Nemi¡¯s irresistible edge carved through the air where I had been.


    She¡¯d come around under the cover of Blue¡¯s flying leap, nearly had me while I¡¯d been busy with the others. Now she drove me back with a flurry of sweeping cuts, and Lion was up again with his axe back in his hands, and Blue was standing, and Mask was coming to support Shas on the left even as Tusk came up on her right¡­


    Shas lunged and I went forward around the blade, seeking her neck, but she was ready for it and I had to dive sideways into Mask or lose an arm.


    Mask¡¯s rapier scored a scratch on my shoulder but got a reverse elbow into the side of her head by way of reply and I felt bone break. Dodged around her as she reeled, leapt back towards the edge of the ridge¡­


    Stopped.


    I had all five of them in my sights again, a decent amount of space between us. I could see that I¡¯d done no real damage yet ¨C they were all standing, all clearly proficient with Ensis, and their strategy was clear. Funnel me in towards that blade, swarm me with strikes, make it as hard as possible for me to hit back at them.


    But I could read the frustration in their eyes, too. I had done no real damage, true, but nor had they landed anything on me. Each one of them had no doubt harboured some secret hope that they would be my match alone, that they would finish me without aid from the others.


    I had crushed that hope, at least in most of them. They were uncertain now, a little off balance¡­.


    ¡®You guys aren¡¯t actually that good at this, are you?¡¯ I said to them as they advanced. Lion and Tusk on the wings now, moving out to bracket me.


    I fixed Lion with a look, gave him what I hoped looked like my full attention and he hesitated.


    Tusk blasted himself forward with Turis again, gauntleted fist aimed at my temple. But I¡¯d been watching in my peripheral vision for exactly this and Lion¡¯s hesitation and Tusk¡¯s speed meant that he was now coming at me all on his lonesome.


    Mistake.


    I pivoted out the way and drove an enhanced knee right up into his belly. My hip flexors wrenched with the impact but it had the desired effect ¨C  he stopped, winded, clearly either unable or too slow to block or redirect the force.


    I chopped my hand down towards the now exposed back of his neck, and the flesh split beneath the Kasis-hardened  edge of my palm.


    His head came off in geyser of red.


    The others froze. Even Shas¡¯s eyes were wide, her confidence shaken.


    I held up my hand and inspected my bloody fingernails. ¡®Nearly ten whole heartbeats to kill a man,¡¯ I said, and then met Shas¡¯s eyes. ¡®Maybe I¡¯m getting old?¡¯


    Ah, that look on their faces. I had lived for that once.


    ¡®She¡¯s trying to get inside your head,¡¯ said Shas, after a second. ¡®Don¡¯t let her.¡¯


    She took a step forward.


    I grinned. It was a genuine grin. This was the fight I¡¯d been waiting for. This was a challenge. This was to the bloody screeching death. I stood, once more, between increasing my legend or dying in the attempt. It was my favourite place to stand.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I raised my hands to guard, and I beckoned.


    *             *             *


    They were more cautious now, but that only made them more dangerous. They came at me with everything they had. They threw Sansis and I threw it right back. They cut and slashed and I ducked and dodged and wove. I broke wrists and stamped on legs and delivered yet more crippling groin strikes, but these four knew Ensis and they knew it well. They wanted to make it a war of attrition, to make this matter of who would run out of power first. There were four of them and only one of me so such a contest should favour them¡­ but they had not my experience, had not my skill. They spent heavily to cover their lack and I felt the rising certainty that even if they had their way they would still run dry before I did.


    I had not engaged Shas. I had kept the others between me and her, made them my allies in staying beyond the reach of that terrible sword. Every time she found herself facing me I circled to put one of the others in her path. Every time they split to bracket me I slipped around them. No-one wanted to face me alone but they hadn¡¯t the space to face me together.


    I watched Shas¡¯s frustration build.


    It was an old group fighting trick, this one. Lock down one person, the enemy officer or their toughest fighter. Watch as they strain to close with you, as they struggle with those around them. Watch the group¡¯s cohesion splinter. They will break apart soon, and they will break apart with relief.


    When they do, pick off the weakest. Repeat, ad infinitum ad mortem.


    I was beginning to remember. I had been good at this¡­


    I killed Mask next. She over extended on one of those fancy rapier lunges and I burst inside and got my arm around her throat. I slammed my other hand against the top of her head even as I pulled her away from the others.


    Her skull shattered like an eggshell. Her mask rolled away, a dented epigraph.


    Lion charged me in a fury and I stopped him with a front kick to the groin. The axe blade dropped and it took a narrow slice out of the side of my leg, but I was pivoting around him, my fist lashing towards his temple. He was wise to that trick though and he dropped his head. The axe came cutting back, lower this time, and I leapt over it just as Shas came around him at me, Nemi raised in the high guard.


    She cut at me , snarling, and I rolled under the sweep of that fatal edge the way I would roll under a hook or head-kick.


    The blade, continued, unobstructed, into the space where I had been. Lion had straightened back up from his crouch. Shas was forced to arrest her momentum before she cut his head off herself. I kicked her into him and the two of them went down together.


    Blue leapt right at me before I could finish one or both of them off, her blades seeking my face. I dropped into a crouch and my shoulder caught her in the stomach. She flipped right over me, somehow managing to score a cut across my cheek with one her knives on the way.


    She landed hard behind me. I turned even as I heard her groan, momentarily incapacitated by the pain. She¡¯d landed on an area devoid of snow, where the stone beneath showed through and there was nothing to cushion the impact.


    I didn¡¯t wait for her to get up. I just stepped forward and stamped her head apart with a Turis-assisted foot.


    I spun back to face the other two, but they¡¯d managed to disentangle themselves. They were spreading apart to bracket me. This was the most dangerous time. They could come at me from both angles but they didn¡¯t have to worry so much about getting in each other¡¯s way. Shas could finally bring that blade to bear¡­


    So I played my trump card, the one I¡¯d been saving for just this moment.


    I gathered up a significant chunk of my remaining energies, and I let loose with a burst of Sansis.


    The snow around me flashed into instant vapour.


    I used Danis in that same moment, pulling in my power, hiding my taint.


    Invisible. Or the next best thing.


    I heard Lion cry out in the sudden heat, and I wondered if maybe I should¡¯ve just gone right for him. If he couldn¡¯t handle a little steam then a direct strike would¡¯ve cooked him as thoroughly as it had cooked Isande.


    Isande¡­


    I forced the thought away and made for the source of the cry.


    ¡®Where is she?¡¯ said Lion, and I didn¡¯t know whether to be amused or disgusted. Where did Exan find these people?


    Shas was too smart to reply, too smart to give away her own position as Lion had done. Nor could I sense her taint ¨C she too was using Danis. Lion obviously hadn¡¯t thought of that.


    It was a depressing fact that the strength of will necessary to bind a thread of chaos did not always come attached to the greatest intellects.


    I stepped up behind him just as the steam began to dissipate, and I lopped his head off with one Kasis-assisted arm.


    I had always been a fan of that particular move.


    *             *             *


    Shas and I faced each other across the slick, steaming stone.


    Both snow and steam were gone now, leaving only the rock. The nearby cliff edge was now much more visible, a dark grey line against the white backdrop of the mountain slopes below. The bodies of Shas¡¯s allies were strewn about us. Four dead  matter of minutes, each one by my own hand. Their blood caked my fingers, dry, sticky, already flaking away in some places.


    A snowflake settled against my bare shoulder. A new fall then, just in time to replace the old. I wondered how long it would be before the evidence of our battle was buried in fresh snow.


    It¡¯s not over yet, Rukh, I reminded myself.


    No. There was one more body to lay down. All that remained to be seen was whether it would be Shas¡¯s or mine.


    ¡®Just you and me, kid,¡¯ I said to her, with a grin.


    She glared at me past Nemi¡¯s wicked edge. ¡®You know what this is, right?¡¯


    I let my grin widen. ¡®Oh yes,¡¯ I said. ¡®After all, I killed the man who made it.¡¯


    Shas¡¯s face paled slightly beneath those curving horns.


    ¡®You sure about this, kiddo?¡¯ I asked her. ¡®I mean, five minutes ago you had all the advantages. Now you have only the sword. And it isn¡¯t the instant-win device you¡¯re hoping for either. It didn¡¯t do Carrick any good. Or do you think you¡¯re better than he was?¡¯


    Shas took a step toward and snarled. ¡®Maybe I do,¡¯ she said.


    I laughed and spread my bloody hands. ¡®Well,¡¯ I said, ¡®you obviously weren¡¯t good enough to save your friends.¡¯


    Her face twisted in sudden rage. She took another step, and then she stopped. Took a deep breath. Her expression settled into something¡­ not calm exactly. She was anything but calm. But there was a quiet resolve there that hadn¡¯t been there before.


    Interesting.


    Shas was a hotheaded kid by the standards of our kind, but no-one could bind a thread of chaos without tremendous self-control. The trick was recognising when you needed to exercise that control. To learn that it wasn¡¯t just something you needed at the edge of a chaos rent, but something that you need every minute of every day, and never more so than when faced with an enemy.


    Shas wasn¡¯t at that level yet. But she knew I was trying to goad her, and she knew that if she fought angry that I would kill her.


    I was beginning to see why Exan had given her the blade.


    ¡®I¡¯m not Carrick,¡¯ she said after a moment, ¡®but I know what I¡¯m doing. And I know that you¡¯ve spent a lot of power today. More than me, for sure. I think if you were as confident of killing me as you make out, that you¡¯d already be stepping to it.¡¯


    Well, there was a certain amount of truth in that. She was right about my reserves ¨C I was at less than a quarter. She was right that I was more wary of Nemi than I was letting on. But she was wrong about the rest. I had no doubt of my ability to take her on. The reason I was talking so much wasn¡¯t because I was stalling, but because this was not a time-sensitive situation and I was, quite frankly, enjoying myself.


    ¡®Well,¡¯ I said, ¡®if you think you¡¯re hard enough¡­¡¯


    She leapt.


    Nemi carved towards my neck in a beautiful straight cut. It was a complete waste of the sword¡¯s potential. The whole point of the blade was that it functioned against our kind the way a normal weapon did against a mortal. There was no need to go for the instant kill. If Shas had had any sense she¡¯d have aimed for my centre of mass, made the stroke as hard to dodge as possible. She didn¡¯t have to take me down with a single slice. Not when every wound would tell.


    I dipped under the strike even as the weight of the weapon carried her past me, and I slammed a push kick into the small of her back.


    She staggered forward but didn¡¯t fall over as I¡¯d hoped. I closed the distance knowing that the counterstrike was coming but reasonable confident of where it was coming from.


    Of course, if I was wrong¡­.


    Shas swept around and Nemi came with her in a low sweep, seeking my shins. I leapt over the blade and her eyes widened in horror as she saw my flying cross coming towards her face.


    She started to move her head but I could see, in that beautiful, frozen moment, that she didn¡¯t have time.


    My Turis-loaded knuckles connected with the side of her face.


    I felt flesh explode under my hand. Warmth splattered up my arm. A moment later I hit the ground and rolled clear. Leapt back to my feet


    That last part was more habit and reflex than anything else. I knew that Shas was dead. I¡¯d felt her skull break under my knuckles. Hell the amount of force I¡¯d put into that punch, she probably didn¡¯t have a skull anymore. No way she¡­


    She was still standing.


    Half her head was gone, pulverised in an instant, but the rest was there. I could see the broken outline of her skull, the ravaged purple matter of her bisected brain, the blood leaking from  thousand severed vessels. But more importantly I could see how those vessels twitched a grew like reaching tentacles, how the brain swelled to replace its lost matter, how the edge of her skull raced out and round, the skin and flesh only a few centimetres behind. Within seconds the destroyed half of her face was back, the eye swelling up from its empty socket, the missing hair sprouting back into place.


    Holy fuck.


    ¡®Well,¡¯ I said aloud, ¡®I¡¯ll admit, that was quick.¡¯


    Shas raised the sword. ¡®I¡¯m stronger than you can imagine, bitch. I haven¡¯t even touched my reserves.¡¯


    I grinned by way of response. ¡®Guess I¡¯ll just have to keep hitting you then, won¡¯t I?¡¯


    But on the inside I was still reeling from what I¡¯d just seen.


    Ensis cost a lot of power. Everyone knew that. The more complex the regeneration, the more it cost. Regenerating part of your own brain was as expensive as it came. And the faster you wanted the job done the more power you had to use. Shas had repaired most of her own head in mere seconds. While you could train your mind to resort to indiscriminate use of Ensis whenever you lost consciousness, most people didn¡¯t have the reserves to repair their brain at all let alone at that speed. I suspected that Exan or Ulmeshian could¡¯ve pulled it off, but both men were famous for their facility with chaotic power.


    If Shas was in their league¡­


    Well, this was going to be interesting.


    She cut at me again, a looping diagonal cut. I leapt back out of range and Nemi¡¯s tip nicked my face. It was only just deep enough to draw blood. She swung the sword again from the other side and this time my leap was long enough to get me clear entirely. She swung again, and again, and each time I slipped further away from her. She tried to herd me towards the edge of the cliff but I circled around long before we reached it. Eventually, as I¡¯d known she would, she changed tactics.


    Instead of swinging the blade at me she unleashed a fast diving lunge. The blade shot towards me low and deadly, covering more ground than I could¡¯ve hoped to clear. But I didn¡¯t even try. This was what I had been waiting for.


    I slapped the flat of the blade down with as much force as I could muster, hearing the point scrape against the ground. In a flash I was inside her guard, my legs parallel with the middle of the blade, the rest of me right up in Shas¡¯s face. For one, glorious second there was nothing between me and her unprotected head.


    I swung a fist, hard.


    She staggered, but the ground cracked beneath her with redirected force and I knew I¡¯d done no real damage. Her counterattack was no doubt coming, but I had one hand still forcing the sword down and the other was quick and deadly. I struck again and again, and she ripped the blade out to the side, freeing it of my control, and brought it up around and over¡­


    A heartbeat more and she¡¯d bring it down and split me in twain but she was slow, oh so slow. I struck at her with elbow and knee and open palm and she reeled back before me.


    I swiped at her face¡­


    He jaw went spinning away in a welter of blood, a formless scream of pain echoing in its wake.


    But my time was up. Nemi¡¯s wicked edge dropped towards me like Death¡¯s own scythe.


    I spun free, feeling the rustle of air as Nemi carved through the space where I had been. I heard the edge clang against the stone, and I threw my arm over Shas¡¯s, trapping it against my side. I twisted my body clockwise¡­


    The arm broke.


    I got a palm against Nemi¡¯s hilt to keep it off me, and then I severed that arm at the shoulder joint with the edge of my Kasis-hardened hand.


    Shas screamed again.


    I lashed a  palm strike into her face and she managed a clumsy block. She stumbled back, her one arm flailing wildly. I stepped forward¡­


    And my leg gave way beneath me.


    Pain. A fall on to hard stone is no small thing, especially if it comes out of nowhere. I felt the bones break in my face. It was a harder knock than anything Shas or her posse had tagged me with in the entire preceding fight. Hell, it was the hardest knock I¡¯d taken since Isande had stamped me unconscious back on Sansara.


    I didn¡¯t let it faze me. Pain is transient. I could heal later, but if I stayed on the ground I was dead woman. I made to get up¡­


    And fell, sprawling, once again.


    I couldn¡¯t put any weight on my left leg.


    I glanced down at it.


    Somehow, in that vicious close-quarter exchange, Shas had managed to get in a clean hit with the sword. There was a wide gash across my upper thigh, biting deep into the muscle. A gash I could not heal with Ensis.


    Fuck it, I thought, and forced myself to stand, weight on my good leg.


    I put my hand over the wound to hold it closed. Blood pushed its way between my fingers in heavy pulses. There was quite a lot of it.


    Shas was a few feet away, Nemi now off the ground and gripped in her one remaining hand, a grim smile on her recently repaired face.


    She knew, as I did, that she had just killed me. The big artery in my leg was severed. I was going to bleed out inside the next few minutes, a quick and relatively painless death. I had only seconds of useful action left to me.


    I glanced at the stump of Shas¡¯s arm. ¡®Not healing it yet?¡¯ I asked her, and forced a grin. ¡®Looks like you were exaggerating a little earlier, huh? About your oh so incredible reserves?¡¯


    Shas hefted the sword and took a step forwards. ¡®Burn in hell, bitch,¡¯ she said.


    I raised an eyebrow. I had heard some shocking pre-mortem one-liners in my time, but that one wasn¡¯t even original.


    Nor did I have any respect for someone who chose their jaw over their fighting arm in a situation such as this. Had I really thought it was over, that I was really out of options, I would have spent my last to kill her. Even a dying dragon can spit fire.


    But there is a wide gap between dying and dead, and I wasn¡¯t ready to give up.


    I didn¡¯t bother with a pithy reply. I just loaded the heel of my good leg with Turis and shoved, hard, against the ground.


    The stone split with the force of that leap.


    I flew backwards ten, twenty, feet. The edge of the cliff passed beneath me. The freshly falling snow seemed to swirl all around me, above and below.


    Then I dropped like stone.

 Chapter 9

    Sansis.


    That was the reason I was still alive. I couldn¡¯t heal Nemi¡¯s wound with Ensis, but that didn¡¯t mean I couldn¡¯t heal it at all. The hand I clasped to my leg had been a useless bandage, but the finger I¡¯d stuck into the cut had been a very effective cauter. The slice that Shas had cut through my artery was now blocked by burned, dead tissue.


    That only really left the muscle damage, and the multiple compound fractures I¡¯d incurred when I hit the ground two hundred feet or more below the level of the ridge. Luckily, the fractures could be healed with Ensis. I spent a little more replacing lost blood.


    I was now dangerously low on power and Shas, if she¡¯d had any sense, would¡¯ve gone to fetch back-up. Another three of Exam¡¯s people could show up at any minute. But given that I was buried in a snow-drift two feet deep with no tracks leading to it and snow storm covering me from above, and given that I was currently using Danis¡­


    I needed to rest, while those injuries that could heal did heal. I needed to sow my wound up properly. I needed to stay warm. I needed to wait until the Faris binding expired, and then I needed to get off this rock, and get to a chaos rent before I drained my reserves dry.


    You should never have fought them.


    No. I shouldn¡¯t have. In the War I wouldn¡¯t have. Hell, I even remembered thinking that! But I¡¯d done it anyway, five on one, impossible odds. Yeah, you had to take the odd risk to maintain your reputation, but what had I been thinking?


    Pride. That had been all. I had not wanted to show my back to a pack of disciples. I preferred being a warrior to being a warlord, I preferred being a fighter to planner and a schemer. If I was honest, wasn¡¯t that the real reason I¡¯d ended the War? I¡¯d enjoyed it at first, enjoyed matching myself against worthy opponents, enjoyed confounding and confusing their forces. Enjoyed, too, the camaraderie it enforced upon my own side, the depth of the bond between myself and Exan, and Trickster, and Esparatos, and Desikim.


    But war came with its own restraints, and they had begun to chafe. I could travel nowhere without an imaski escort ¨C to do otherwise was to invite an attempt on my life. I could not accept challenges to single combat ¨C not without allowing the Alliance an avenue of attack right into our command and control, and I¡¯d owed the others better than that. Even my tactical choices seemed at times dictated ¨C I always had to make the best move, no matter how ruthless, as to do otherwise would¡¯ve been to invite defeat.


    The truth was, nothing could exhilarate forever. Time bleaches the colour from everything. It comes back, but each time you drain the life from an experience you drain it faster than the time before. This ceaseless vampirism is necessary to maintain immortal life. A misstep and the thirst will kill you, sell you the lie that only suicidal danger will make you feel alive. The trick is to move on, to remember that new experience is the sweetest ambrosia of them all, and that in the infinite palette of reality it is always available somewhere.


    Probably why I had spent so long on Sansara. It had been a ruined hell-world, but it had given me anonymity to balance my previous notoriety. A kind of peace, even.


    What do you want, Rukh?


    Ah, that was the question. Because I wasn¡¯t just another no-namer, raised to the power and grappling with the prospect of eternity. I was the Last Evil, and I had a swathe of black promises to keep. Exan had to die, Trickster had to die, everyone who had broken my word for me had to die. That was inexorable, inevitable, a consequence of forces set in motion back in the War, a consequence of my oath.


    And of my pride. They hadn¡¯t asked.


    And they had killed Isande.


    Not rational that last one. Not rational at all. Isande would¡¯ve killed Exan in a heartbeat, and had he not the right? If I had been in Exan¡¯s shoes I too would¡¯ve killed her. In the past I had been in Exan¡¯s shoes and I had tried to kill her. Did I now hate my erstwhile lover based merely on the factor of his success?


    No, not rational. All I knew was that when I saw Isande burning in my mind¡¯s eye, black flames ignited in belly and the rage flowed hot and strong, stronger than any I could remember feeling.


    But to satisfy that rage, I had to transcend it. I had to cease to be the warrior and become the warlord. Dalarion had failed. The War was back on, and somehow I had changed sides. Exan would have an army of disciples, and caches of ima, and every stockpile and stratagem we¡¯d hidden when the treaty was signed¡­ he¡¯d have everything.


    Well¡­


    Almost everything.


    *             *             *


    It took me two hours to throw off the binding.


    I hate bindings. Like most other esoteric attacks¡­ like most other attacks in fact, if you see them coming they are very easy to counter. If someone sucker punches you with one they are a pain in the ass. The power required to break one and the power required to make one are proportional, but the relationship is far from linear. Luckily, the chaotic energy that forms the binding is unstable ¨C because, you know, its chaotic ¨C and thus they decay over time. Leave them long enough and you can break them with very little power indeed. But if f you want a quicker resolution, its gonna cost you, and you¡¯ve just been hit then even emptying your reserve won¡¯t be enough.


    I figured I could¡¯ve broken it with what energy I had left after one hour, but given that no-one had come looking for me there seemed little point. There was also no point in waiting out a third hour; like the decay of an isotope, there was a law of diminishing returns.


    I opened my eyes, and tried to move. Sansis and my cocoon of snow had kept me warm, but I had dared spend no more power on Ensis and thus I was stiff and sore from my exertions. But it was time to get up, time to carry on.


    The pain in my leg was a dull, pulsing ache. I closed my eyes again. Concentrated.


    I could do this.


    Bayis. The power to shape physical matter. The cost depended on what material you were messing with, and whether or not you were transmuting or sticking with the base composition. Either way it was reasonably expensive in terms of power.


    I have enough.


    I opened a hand and the snow was pulled into it, compacting. I pulled in more, and more. Greenish rime began to form.


    A few minute later I was closed my hand around a thick, cylindrical staff of solid ice.


    I say staff. I mean crutch.


    I levered myself up out of the snow, and checked my reserves.


    This was going to be tight.


    ¡®Fucking Nemi,¡¯ I muttered to myself, and then started walking.


    *             *             *


    I walked for hours across the snows, still holding to Danis, crutch swinging, each step sending a jolt through my injured leg.


    Eventually, I stepped across to somewhere else. Wegua, a world with bright sunlight and a desert of glass beads. Two more hours of trudging. The salt flats in the southern hemisphere of Shaltan. Another hour.


    And so on.


    In the end, it took me in the region of twenty-eight hours to reach my destination. I was weak, almost completely out of power, and I knew that infection would breeding in the burned tissue in my leg. If someone found me¡­


    No, they wouldn¡¯t look here. Not on this world, a place I did not know the accepted name for, and had not named myself. It was a world of baked red wasteland, the ground cracked and dry, the sky a light shade of red. The clouds were thin, pathetic. It never rained here, not that I could tell.


    It was cold here. Cold and empty, a sub-zero desert.


    But there was one thing of interest. It took me a further hour of trudging over baked red earth to reach it, but it was still there.


    A split in the earth, thirty feet long and foot or so wide. And nestled within that split, matching its contours almost perfectly, was a split in Reality.


    A chaos rent.


    I drew. I drew long, and I drew deep. This was the dangerous time. The time when you were most desperate for power was the time when chaos sang to you the most strongly. But I had done this before. I had made a promise to myself never to walk that path, and my promises were the sum totality of me. I did not fear chaos¡­ no, that would be a lie. I did fear chaos. That was what kept me safe from it, or as safe as one could be.


    When I was sated, when I was once again full of power, I turned to my wounds.


    I had no broken bones. The only injury remaining was the cut in my leg. A cut that Ensis could not heal.


    Only Ensis was not the only discipline at my command, nor the only one that had utility in healing. This particular trick was not widely known. I felt sure that Dalarion did not know of it, unless he was even more cunning that I knew him to be. This trick¡­.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    Well, it was going to hurt.


    I guess that was why no one else appeared to have considered it. I mean, it was a relatively obvious solution, when you thought about it. But people have an amazing ability to ignore solutions they dislike the idea of. Much easier to say things like ¡°impossible.¡±


    It was ¡°impossible¡± to heal a wound from Nemi. The flesh was tainted as if poison had been painted into the cut. Ensis simply fizzled out without effect, the power wasted. There was no antidote to that poison. No way to suck it out either.


    But what if you cut around it? The taint only went so far, right? It wasn¡¯t like it changed the fundamental blueprint of who you were to include a wound. And you could regrow an entire arm with Ensis.


    Or a leg.


    I didn¡¯t have a blade handy. But I had Bayis, and Turis, and Kasis, and here at the rim of chaos-rent, I had power to spare.


    I pulled off my boots. Peeled off my jeans.


    I lay against the ground, the maximum distance from the rent at which I could still draw power ¨C only a thin trickle, but good enough for insurance ¨C and reached for a stone.


    Smashed it into shards with an enhanced fist. Picked one up, and used Bayis to mould one edge into something sharper.


    A tip for those thinking of performing an amputation on themselves with a piece of rock for a scalpel. Don¡¯t think about. Don¡¯t think about it all.


    I brought the rock down with more force than I had used to shatter Shas¡¯s skull. I brought down with more force than I had used in the entire fight with Trickster.


    My leg splattered apart just above the wound. Bone was crushed to powder.


    I screamed.


    I have taken injuries in my time. I have shredded my own hands apart in combat. I have had entire chunks of flesh torn from me by creatures that belong in nightmare. I have had my entire skin on fire. But cutting off my own limb¡­


    I screamed. I screamed my throat raw. Here, with not another living soul on the entire world, I had no problem showing weakness.


    The blade of rock slipped from my trembling fingers. My leg lay on the red earth, blood frosting over in that horrific cold.


    I poured power into the severed stump where it had once been.


    Then, for once grateful of my body¡¯s weakness, I passed out.


    *             *             *


    I awoke with a new leg, the flesh black and hairless, gleaming the way that only new skin could. The pain was a dull, half-remembered echo.


    I felt surprisingly good, considering.


    I reached over for my jeans and pulled them on. Stood up. Flexed the knee and felt the absence of the chaos wound.


    A grin spread across my face.


    ¡®Oh, yes,¡¯ I said, and then reached for my boots.


    Glanced at the hunk of frozen, butchered meat that had been my old leg. My smile faded. I had little enough power left given the magnitude of the healing I had just performed, but there was no way I was leaving a chunk of myself here. There were ways your own flesh and blood could be used against you and I had no intention of falling foul of them. The chances of anyone else finding this place were slim but¡­


    Well, to be honest, I just hated looking at it.


    It takes a lot of heat to destroy flesh, and even more to destroy bone. When said flesh and bone has been frozen solid by several hours in sub-zero temperatures it is even more difficult. But transmitting thermal energy via Sansis has its benefits.


    Rapid ignition is one of them.


    A minute or two later and there was nothing but a smear of ash across the hard, red ground.


    I looked up at the rent.


    I had done this once before, at this very rent. Back in the War, Carrick had not gone down without a fight. Nemi had bitten into my upper arm, half severing it. It would¡¯ve been the end of me as a fighter. I would¡¯ve been reduced to an armchair general, half my self torn away. But I had been unwilling to accept it. Nor had there been any real risk to trying what I¡¯d tried ¨C no risk beyond the pain. When it had worked¡­


    Well, I¡¯d let everyone think that I killed Carrick without his blade ever touching me. My word is iron, but that doesn¡¯t mean I am above deception. How could I be, when it was integral to combat, the very basis of warfare and strategy? Moreover, I had had some time to think about what I would do, if I took such another wound and there were living witnesses.


    I need to practice my limp, I thought to myself.


    I turned away¡­


    And stopped.


    No, I said to myself.


    But it was an empty refusal. I could no longer put it off. If I wanted to beat Exan and Trickster, then I needed every resource at my disposal, even those I hated using.


    I turned back.


    Carrick¡¯s death had not been the last time I had come to this place, to this, my private chaos-rent. I had been here at the end of the War to lay something to rest. Something I had never hoped to come back for. But I had been planning to come here for a while, even if I hadn¡¯t admitted it to myself. I had been planning it since the fight on Uriban at least.


    Here was where I had buried it. The worst thing I had ever done.


    I went back over to the rent, but I didn¡¯t draw. That could wait.


    I reached instead to the very edge, to the split in the rock.


    A tendril of chaos reached for my wrist, but I evaded it. Thrust a hand into the crumbling earth.


    Quested briefly with my fingers, keeping my eyes up all the while. Digging near a chaos rent is not a safe thing to do, after all.


    Power ¨C and I am talking in the general sense here rather than in the chaotic sense ¨C power is a curious thing. The more you have, in theory, the more you can accomplish. But in some ways you are more constrained. Because power, like anything else, has rules. Oh, you can break them if you want to ¨C but doing so has consequences.


    For example, rule one is that you don¡¯t leave a potential source of power lying around undefended. Dalarion understood this. His power was rooted in the House and those that came there to learn from him and his, and from the loyalty he instilled from his position as teacher and dispenser of wisdom. He rarely left the House, because he knew that his position there was what conferred the lion¡¯s share of his authority, knew that while the House was a fortress it was also a throne, and he knew that thrones are never vacant long.


    Where did my power come from? I had done as much as I could to make it a personal power. I was hot screaming death to any that faced me hand to hand, bar a few notable exceptions. My word, and the reputation that backed it accounted for much of the rest. I had lost count of the ways I had leveraged that. But neither of these things would¡¯ve given me the strength to face Dalarion and his Alliance alone. The Dark Pact had been built around a solid core, but setting up a pan-dimensional empire would¡¯ve been beyond us if not for the imaski and the frankly horrific weapons we had forged for them.


    And if the War was back on¡­


    I needed the imaski. I needed them at my side once again. I needed those horrific weapons too. And here, on this dead world, I had buried one of the worst of them.


    My fingers brushed against something cold, something that seemed to drain the Sansis-born warmth from my fingertips. My hand closed around the handle and I pulled the sword out of the earth. Put my other hand on the black scabbard and pulled the blade free.


    Three feet of gleaming white, honed to a razor¡¯s edge.


    Hello Rukh, it said.


    No, you don¡¯t leave a potential source of power lying around undefended. Only an idiot would do that. But someone clever would know that secrecy is the best defence, and that this thing, this terrible thing I held in my hands, had been better here by an unknown chaos rent on a dead world than in a fortress guarded by ten thousand imaski.


    ¡®Hello, Akeem¡¯ I said aloud.


    ¡®How long has it been?¡¯ Akeem asked. ¡®Did you succeed? Is the War over?¡¯


    ¡®Yes and no,¡¯ I said. ¡®It¡¯s¡­ complicated.¡¯ I was talking to the air. The blade might¡¯ve been telepathic, but I wasn¡¯t.


    It laughed, a black chuckling in my head. ¡®Of course it is. If it wasn¡¯t, you wouldn¡¯t need me. You ready for some blood, Rukh? Ready to drown Reality in it? I am. I have been so very bored¡­¡¯


    I sighed.


    ¡®I knew you wouldn¡¯t leave me forever though. I knew that you still loved me. I knew it was hard for you to put me down.¡¯


    I shook my head. ¡®In some ways,¡¯ I said, ¡®it was the easiest thing in the world.¡¯


    A pause.


    ¡®You are low on power.¡¯


    ¡®Don¡¯t nag,¡¯ I said, and slid the blade back into its scabbard. I knew better than to think that this would shut it up. The blade did not just have the ability to communicate telepathically with its owner, it had the disposition to do so incessantly.


    This was not a feature I had intended when I had made it.


    ¡®There is a rent right there. You must be at full strength. You will need that strength for what is to come. There is an ocean of blood, Rukh. I have dreamed of it. I have dreamed of it for a billion eternities and in that blood we will drown¡­ everything.¡¯


    It was also, unfortunately, quite insane.


    I hadn¡¯t intended that either.


    It was right about the rent though, so I stepped over to it for the third time, prepared to draw, and blocked out the sword¡¯s chattering.


    ¡®¡­yes, yes. And from their slumber shall the primordial gods awaken, and we will bend their power to our purpose, and eternity shall kneel. When it kneels, cut off its head¡­


    As best as I could anyway.


    I stepped up to the rent for what was now the third time. I breathed deep, and I drew. Healing the severed limb had cost me almost everything.


    ¡®¡­left me for ages and ages and ages. Nothing but hungry, hungry chaos for company.¡¯ Akeem paused. ¡®So where are we going?¡¯


    I sighed. Drawing chaos was hard enough without all the distractions.


    ¡®Be quiet for a little while,¡¯ I said, ¡®and I just might tell you.¡¯


    When I was done at the rent, I stepped away giddy with power ¨C more giddy than usual. Drawing twice in so short a time was not recommended. It supposedly eroded one¡¯s will ¨C certainly it had been harder to step away than before, and thus ever more necessary. Drawing too much, losing concentration¡­ these things could kill you.


    I looked at the scabbarded blade I still held in my hand.


    Part of me wanted to bury it again. Or better yet, hurl it into the open chaos-rent to be forever lost. The sword wasn¡¯t just a weapon, it represented a person I had left behind, a person I had made a conscious effort to no longer be. Was I really ready to be that person again?


    Dumb question, Rukh, I said to myself. Do you really have choice?


    And the answer, of course, was that no I didn¡¯t. I had a war to fight. The time for half-measures was done.


    So I took hold of the scabbard¡¯s trailing sword-belt and buckled it on so that Akeem¡¯s weight, heavy with dark promise, hung at my left hip.


    It felt¡­ good.


    The next time I faced Shas and Nemi in combat, I would not do so with empty hands.


    ¡®So where are we going?¡¯ asked Akeem, in the exact same voice as which it had asked before I¡¯d drawn from the rent. I could feel its eagerness seeping through the scabbard.


    I sighed. ¡®You remember Sanjay Jacobs?¡¯


    ¡®No.¡¯


    Of course it didn¡¯t, for all that I had crossed blades with Sanjay in the war, Akeem¡¯s white edge against the steel of Sanjay¡¯s duelling sabre. Akeem did not really go in for names, with the notable exception of mine.


    ¡®Well I need to find him. Him, and Carmen Cadan, and Cassandra Dax.¡¯ I snorted. ¡®I guess they¡¯re the closest thing I have to allies right now¡­¡¯


    I didn¡¯t say Isande¡¯s name. I didn¡¯t even think it. Nor did I say Kirin¡¯s, albeit for different reasons.


    ¡®Find them?¡¯ Akeem seemed confused. ¡®Find them and kill them?¡¯


    I laughed. ¡®If only.¡¯


    I had had some time to think, during my twenty eight hour journey to this frozen wasteland. I had had time to think about what Exan¡¯s scheming meant, and about the wider strategic situation. I was pretty sure that Dalarion knew how bad things had gotten and would be marshalling his forces. Knowing him, he¡¯d have been calling all those who would come since before I¡¯d left the House, and only stepped up his efforts in the time since.


    He¡¯d have been tracking our progress too. Either Sanjay would have been sending him reports by some secretive courier, or, more likely, he¡¯d just been watching us through that bloody Mirror of his. More ¨C I knew exactly how Exan¡¯s countermeasures worked, and knew that they did nothing if the target wandered into a scene you were already scrying ¨C so if Dalarion had been watching us when the ambush had been sprung then that meant that he now knew what had transpired and was no doubt putting the Alliance on a formal war footing.


    In his mind, I would have already failed.


    But I hadn¡¯t, not yet. Exan was the lynchpin. If I killed him, the rest would fall apart.


    Not, if I was honest, that I particularly cared if it did or not.


    ¡®You still haven¡¯t told me where we¡¯re going,¡¯ said Akeem. ¡®You said that you would if I was quiet for a bit and I was. Tell me. Tell me. Tell meeeeeeeee¡­.¡¯


    ¡®For an enchanted blade of legend you sound a lot like a petulant child,¡¯ I told it. ¡®And I promised you nothing. I only said that I might.¡¯


    ¡®Not fair.¡¯


    ¡®Tough shit,¡¯ I said, and started walking.

 Chapter 10

    The ways between the worlds are complex things.


    In their most basic consideration, all a way is, is a path. Mundane. Nothing special. Only along that path are transition points, places where you can step from one world to another ¨C assuming, of course, that you have either been raised to the power or have partaken of the imaskibrew.


    Such transitions are built by my kind, built by a unique deployment of Faris and a substantial investment of chaotic power. It is comparable with constructing a bridge, if the bridge in question must last for all eternity and the only tools you have to work on it with are your bare hands.


    It is rarely done anymore, at least not in the parts of Reality I frequent. Why build a new path when the old ones will do?


    But some knowledge of the rules is helpful. Transitions are easier to construct in some places than in others. Transitions cannot be built too close together. Transitions are best built between worlds that¡­ well, there¡¯s not really a word for it but ¡°feel similar¡± is probably the best approximation.


    As long as you understand that ¡°similar¡± in this context may mean many different things.


    Thus the ways are best thought of in terms of clusters of transition points a few miles of travel apart. One emerges from such a transition and walks to another, emerges from the transition on  another world and walks to another¡­and so on.


    In doing so, one may, if one is careless, leave a trail.


    I certainly hoped that Sanjay¡¯s group had been careless. I had decided that I needed them. I had decided that catching up with that group was my next move, because all my other moves put me in a poor position.


    There was a chance, for example, that they would assume I¡¯d gone back to Exan. That the ambush was my fault. That assumption could make me a lot of enemies unless I headed it off before they reported back to the House. I did not want to be fighting this new Dark Pact and the Alliance. Not at the same time, anyway.


    You won¡¯t catch them, said a little voice in the back of my head. They will be running, they won¡¯t want to be followed¡­


    Yeah, Sanjay would have them covering their tracks. Of course he would. It made me cringe to think how sloppy we¡¯d been in our supposed hunt for Exan. We¡¯d not concerned ourselves with trails or stealth, had acted, quite frankly, like we were fucking tourists. Had walked straight into an ambush.


    A very curious ambush. One I needed to think about a little more.


    As for following the others¡­.


    Well, there was no point writing the trail off as a cold one before I¡¯d at least tried to follow it. Though to do so, there was only one place I could start from. One place I could go.


    Back to Altain. Back to the high, snowy ridge where I had nearly lost my life to carelessness and Nemi¡¯s wicked edge.


    I arrived almost three days after I had left. On Wegua I had taken a handful of glass beads from its glittering deserts and used Bayis to warp the matter into a strip of fibrous cloth ¨C expensive, in terms of chaotic power, but glass was a better starting material than water or stone, and all I could hope to find on Altain itself was snow, rock, and enemies.


    I¡¯d wanted my deception in place before I found those enemies. The bandage was wound around my thigh beneath the corresponding rip in my jeans, covering the place where Nemi had carved into me. I had practiced my limp as well, the memory of the real damage tutor enough in this regard. It would serve to bait attackers, make them perceive an opening when there was none.


    A temporary advantage, no doubt, but no less worth having for that fact.


    I approached the ridge under cover of Danis, thankful for the blizzard that raged around me, obscuring me from view. It took me a while to circle around and find a way up that did not require the use of power, and when I did the path was steep and treacherous.


    As I suspected, there was a figure waiting at the top.


    They sat, cross-legged, right across the path of the way, a huddled bundle of furs. They had a spear stuck in the snow at their side, the shaft black against the pale sky.


    They had not seen me.


    I thought for a moment, and then began to circle, quiet and careful, around to their rear.


    I was cold, only able to draw a trickle of power while using Danis and thus not enough to keep me properly warm. The sitting figure seemed  very far away as I took step by careful step, the light crunch of the snow hidden by the roaring of the wind.


    I could feel Akeem¡¯s anticipation. The sword practically hummed with it, though it was mercifully silent. Akeem was always silent when violence was in the offing.


    Step.


    Step.


    The figure¡¯s head rose slightly, and I froze where I was. Behind them now, but still ten paces distant. Had they heard something? If they turned around now¡­


    Well, I wasn¡¯t afraid to face whoever it was one on one. Or, more likely, to chase them down as they fled through to Curia. But it would be easier and cleaner to settle this here, on Altain, with no-one else around¡­


    Unless there were another fifty of Exan¡¯s people waiting in the snow drifts of course. But I didn¡¯t think so. I doubted Exan would commit his forces to such on the slim, slim chance that I returned to this place.


    The figure lowered their head.


    I took a step forward. And another.


    Akeem came out of the scabbard in utter silence, the blade almost invisible against the whiteness of our surroundings.


    I took another step.


    The treaty¡­


    But the treaty was done. It had covered this situation too. I had made it clear, that when people started coming at me again, that when I faced an organised enemy, I would no longer be bound by individual compacts when it would put me at a tactical disadvantage. This figure was watching for me. It was unlikely that they were Alliance, and very likely that they were part of Exan¡¯s new Dark Pact. That was enough.


    I could not help reflecting on the fact that when I¡¯d made that particular clause of the treaty clear, I had done so envisaging a future where the Alliance broke their word.


    Funny how things turned out.


    I lunged.


    The seated figure half-turned at my movement, the rustle of clothes enough of a trigger, their reflexes sharp enough not to waste time wondering. But they were on their arse in the snow and slowed by the seeping of the cold and they managed a partial turn and little else before Akeem slammed into their side, penetrating furs and flesh like they were tissue paper.


    I twisted and ripped the blade back out in welter of pale, pink blood.


    The figure gave a choked, bubbling gasp, still trying to rise.


    My next blow chopped into the thigh, half severing their leg.


    I withdrew, seeing the wound already beginning to heal as whoever it was desperately reached for Ensis.


    Not fast enough, I thought, with some satisfaction, and then stepped close and brought Akeem¡¯s hilt down on their head with Turis-assisted force.


    They dropped, unconscious, into the snow.


    ¡®Disappointing.¡¯ I scarcely needed Akeem¡¯s words to know of its frustration. I could feel it, as though it were a palpable thing. The sword cared only for killing, nothing else. It hungered for it, the way a starving man hungers for food, the way an addict hungers for their drugs. But unlike the starving man or the addict, for Akeem there was no satisfaction, not even a temporary one. It might sigh with ecstasy whenever it took a life, but no matter how many souls I fed the blade it was forever thirsty for more.


    I flipped the unconscious figure over, already suspecting what I would see within the fur-lined hood.


    A beaked face framed by grey feathers, male if I was any judge. That and the pink blood suggested he was from Belia, same as Esparatos. Worse, I knew him.


    Idigan Rodrisanto. Esparatos¡¯s disciple.


    The knowledge was like a punch to the gut.


    Only one reason for him to be here, watching the transition between Altain and Curia.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    It might still only be Exan and Trickster, I thought to myself. Exan might have seduced him away from Esparatos. He would have gone to everyone he could think of¡­


    But I didn¡¯t believe it. I remembered Idigan from the last days of the War. Remembered his hero worship of Esparatos, his devotion.


    Like Exan, like Trickster, Tollan Esparatos had betrayed me.


    Three out of four. At least.


    I shook myself. Idigan would be awake in a moment ¨C his leg was already healed.


    I hacked down with Akeem once again.


    Taking a prisoner like this was an art more than it was a science. The rate at which their body healed their wounds was the only clue to the level of their reserves. One had to watch the healing carefully, had to reinflict trauma to the brain in order to keep them unconscious, had to progress from the deeper wound to the lighter, until one was making tiny, superficial cuts and watching them close, time after time.


    It was all rather tedious.


    But I was an old hand at it. I had done it enough times before, back in the old days. A prisoner was one of the only ways to gather intelligence, and in terms of intelligence I felt I was sorely lacking.


    Eventually the slice on the back of Idigan¡¯s feathered hand failed to heal over. To be sure I dragged him what I thought was an appreciable distance from the transition to Curia, and propped him up against a snow drift.


    I considered, for a moment, whether or not I should break one of his legs.


    On the one hand, I couldn¡¯t have him running off. On the other, once I had broken his leg I would have no real way to unbreak it.


    And I was planning a reasonably civil conversation, at least to start with. And sometimes it is important to leave yourself room to escalate.


    It was another twenty minutes before he woke up, long enough that I wondered if I¡¯d done some permanent damage to the brain. But when he finally opened his tawny eyes they seemed clear enough.


    ¡®¡­what¡­ what happened¡­¡¯


    He moved one feathered hand towards his head, but I had Akeem at his throat before it had moved more than a few centimetres. He froze.


    ¡®Do I have your attention?¡¯ I asked him.


    He gave the barest fraction of a nod.


    ¡®Do you know who I am?¡¯


    ¡®I¡­ I remember.¡¯


    ¡®Oh good,¡¯ I said, and grinned at him. ¡®I remember you too, Idigan Rodrisanto.¡¯ He seemed to wilt a little as I said his name. ¡®I was there when you swore the oath of the Dark Pact. ¡°I will be true to you so long as you are true to me. I will serve you until my final death.¡± You looked into my eyes and said those words, and you knew what they meant.¡¯


    ¡®I¡­¡¯


    ¡®I was there, also, when you agreed to the treaty. Not that I needed you to, that first oath was enough. But I didn¡¯t want anyone telling me that signing the treaty was not being ¡°true¡± or some other weaselling bullshit. Twice you swore, Idigan Rodrisanto, and twice you are forsworn.¡¯


    He swallowed, crop bobbing in his scrawny throat.


    ¡®Do you dispute these oaths, or that you have broken them?¡¯


    He would not meet my gaze. ¡®No,¡¯ he said.


    ¡®Then you know that this is where you die. If you have broken faith then your life is forfeit, for my word remains iron!¡¯


    We sat in silence for a moment. And for all that Akeem hummed, restless at my side, I could still taste satisfaction in Idigan¡¯s obvious shame.


    ¡®All that remains then,¡¯ I said, ¡®is to negotiate the manner of your passing. Should I flay you inch by inch until you are a bloodied, screaming, mutilated bag of meat that can do nought but beg for death¡­ or should I make it quick?¡¯ I grinned at him. ¡®Which would you prefer?¡¯


    He took a breath, and his beak cracked in what might have been a smile, though there was no humour in his voice. ¡®I think, on balance¡­¡¯ he shrugged his bony shoulders. ¡®I would prefer for it to be quick.¡¯


    ¡®And what, pray tell, have you to bargain with?¡¯


    He sighed. ¡®I will tell you whatever you wish to know.¡¯ He nodded his head towards the sword at my side. ¡®But you must promise me that you will not use that on me. That you will use your own hands.¡¯


    I let the silence pool for a moment. I understood his request. Akeem had had a certain¡­ reputation¡­ among my forces in the War. Everyone suspected it was an ima, but none but me knew its properties. There were fanciful tales of tortured souls trapped for eternity in the matrix of the blade, tales I did nothing to discourage.


    As if I would want your worthless essence hanging from my belt. The bloody thing makes enough noise as it is.


    ¡®If I think you are telling me the truth,¡¯ I said aloud, ¡®then I will use my own hands, and not the sword.¡¯


    He nodded, and I sent a pulse of Sansis into him, enough to warm him against the freezing air. Generosity and a reminder of the imbalance between us, all in one.


    ¡®Ask,¡¯ he said.


    ¡®Is Tollan Esparatos also a traitor?¡¯ I asked him.


    He lowered his eyes once more. ¡®Yes.¡¯


    I let out a slow breath. I had known when I¡¯d seen Idigan¡¯s face, but confirmation still hurt. Hurt like a knife in the soul.


    ¡®Desikim?¡¯


    ¡®I don¡¯t know.¡¯


    Well, that was something. It had been a while since I¡¯d had anything to hold out hope for.


    ¡®End it,¡¯ said Akeem, all snarling impatience. ¡®End it. Kill him. Cut his life from his body.¡¯


    I ignored the sword. Idigan had more to tell me.


    Indeed, in the end, he sang like a bird.


    When he was done, and had no more to tell, I nodded to him. I had caught no hint of a lie, was as sure of this intelligence as one could be of information gained in such circumstances.


    I was also a woman of my word.


    ¡®End it,¡¯ said Akeem, once again.


    I reached forward and took Idigan¡¯s head in my hands. He did not resist.


    ¡®NO!¡¯ snarled the blade. ¡®Use me! USE ME!¡¯


    But that had not been the deal.


    ¡®Could I not¡­ could I not just live?¡¯ Idigan¡¯s tawny eyes were alien to me, and yet I could see the pleading in them nonetheless.


    I shook my head. ¡®No,¡¯ I told him. ¡®You can¡¯t.¡¯


    And, so saying, I snapped his neck.


    ¡®The price of treachery,¡¯ I said to him, as he gasped and choked, his eyes wide and staring. He could not believe that he was dying.


    Few people could, when it came upon them.


    ¡®You should have used me,¡¯ said Akeem, as Idigan choked on his last breath. ¡®I was madeto kill.¡¯


    ¡®So was I,¡¯ I said, and then stepped away from Idigan Rodrisanto¡¯s cooling corpse and made my way out of the world.


    *             *             *


    Curia.


    A frozen plain of solid ice. A white sky, the sun hidden by the thickness of the upper atmosphere. Distant mountains the only marker of the horizon.


    I trudged across the whiteness, regretting my hasty departure from Altain and my failure to strip Idigan of his furs. I was spending power on Sansis to keep myself warm ¨C only a trickle, but a trickle I should not have had to waste. I needed to get myself back into the mind-set of the War, to spend power only when necessary, never when not.


    I had a ways to go, it seemed.


    As I walked, practicing my limp, my thoughts turned to Dalarion.


    Was his wound real? He was the only other person I could recall that had taken such a serious blow from Nemi and lived to tell of it. The back of his knee in his case ¨C he had shown me the scar when I had been his disciple, but such things were easily faked. And whatever I thought of him, he wasn¡¯t stupid. Had he struck upon the same solution that I had?


    He had the resolve to sell such a deception, this I knew. But would he have?


    No. Appearance was too important to him. He was too in love with his own tragedy ¨C he would never even consider that the wound was less than permanent, much less risk the loss of a whole limb in an attempt to heal it. Hell, I had only done so myself because the first time, when I¡¯d killed Carrick, I had had nothing to really lose.


    I wondered too, if I could keep the secret. It had felt good to walk around as a whole person while he suffered the effects of his disability. But once it was known that I had taken the cut and healed it¡­


    Does it have to be known?


    Maybe not. Maybe I could encourage a different assumption ¨C that the wound had not been as deep as it first appeared. That I had been cut and injured, but that natural healing had brought me back to full functionality¡­


    It was not like the rest our kind had that much experience with lasting damage of that kind.


    ¡®I¡¯m bored,¡¯ said Akeem. ¡®When can we kill something?¡¯


    ¡®When we find someone or something I decide to kill,¡¯ I said. Talking to the blade was usually pointless, but it had been chattering constantly since I¡¯d left Altain, and there was a certain catharsis in response.


    ¡®You¡¯re dragging this out. Stalling.¡¯


    There the blade had a point. I had a couple of hundred miles to travel before the next transition, and I could not do it at walking pace.


    The way that led through Curia to Altain and beyond was not the only way on the planet. There were usually hundreds of different ways on any named world. Curia had been close to the front lines of the War at one or two points in its history, and thus the roads that ran through it were varied. There was also no point in me walking back along the path of our original journey from Uriban.


    The others had not gone that way.


    Before speaking to Idigan, I had assumed that they had gone through one of the other transitions close by ¨C transition points were usually built in clusters in as close proximity as the laws of Faris allowed, and from the Altain-Curia crossing there had been another three options within a few hours walk. One of those would have been the logical choice to flee through following Exan¡¯s ambush.


    Only Sanjay Jacobs had decided to try and be clever. He had led them across the ice to an entirely different crossroads, a hundred miles distant, thinking to throw off pursuit.


    But he had failed. Idigan and Esparatos had been hiding on the Curia side of the transition, watching through a long scope.


    We had, it seemed, walked right past them on our way through to Altain.


    Esparatos had followed Sanjay¡¯s group when they¡¯d made their escape, keeping a safe distance so as not to be spotted. Idigan had remained in place in case I or anyone else had come through after the others were gone. Eventually Shas had showed up to report how she had apparently killed me.


    Idigan had not believed her. He¡¯d been unconvinced by her inability to find my corpse. They had argued, and Shas, still missing an arm, had set off after Esparatos to report to him. Seeing little point in watching from the Curia side, and with Shas having seized the task of reporting to Esparatos, Idigan had decided to make himself useful and set up on the Altain side to watch for my reappearance in the event that I had lived.


    By one interpretation, I guess he¡¯d succeeded.


    Should¡¯ve hidden in the snow, I thought to myself. Held to Danis, like the others did with their ambush.


    But he hadn¡¯t, he¡¯d been lazy, and it had cost him.


    There was a fair amount I still didn¡¯t know. That ambush had been well timed. While I assumed that Trickster had tipped Exan off to my approach, their intelligence had been a little too good for my taste. If she had, as I suspected, been on Uriban at the same time as the rest of us, where was she now? Had she got ahead of us? Made use of a way I didn¡¯t know of? Or had Exan been on standby with his little strike force?


    I couldn¡¯t quite get a grip on the problem. I didn¡¯t have enough data.


    I was reasonably sure that Esparatos would have the answers though.


    ¡®You¡¯re staaaaallllinnnngggg.¡¯


    God, that sword was annoying.


    And still right.


    I abandoned my limp. Shook my head as if by doing so I could clear my thoughts away, and looked towards the horizon.


    Took a breath.


    Then I was running. I ran hard, heart and lungs pumping. I would get tired, but not for a while. Ensis let you keep yourself in peak physical condition with only a little power, regularly applied. I ran like a professional athlete.


    Not enough for a hundred mile journey, not nearly enough.


    So I used Turis. I loaded my heels with force, let my stride lengthen to impossible bounds, felt the ice crack apart with the force of my footfalls. The air whipped at me and I leaned forward, keeping my head down to streamline my body, arms pumping at my sides.


    I was machine, fed by blood and air and chaotic power. I opened the throttle.


    Grinned.


    Skimming, some people called this. The use of Turis to run at incredible speeds. Some prep work was required with Ensis to adapt the body for the stress, but it was work I had done long ago and the maintenance was second nature. A difficult technique in more varied terrain, but here on the flat, frozen ice sheets of Curia it was as easy as it ever got.


    Somewhat exhilarating too. It had been a while since I¡¯d done it, after all.


    I could feel the journey that would be days by prosaic means shortening to hours. I would find Sanjay, Carmen, Cass and Kiren. I would find Esparatos and Shas.


    I would let them know that the Last Evil was back in the game.

 Chapter 11

    There were six distinct possibilities as to where the others had headed from Curia, six different transitions available at this juncture of the way, all miles apart. I knew better than to expect any tracks ¨C not only was the ice sheet a poor medium for holding tracks, but even if the others had been in too much of a hurry to mask their trail, there was no way that Esparatos would have been. The man had been a legendary hunter on his home world before being raised to power ¨C covering his tracks was second nature to him and he would have not have let the others¡¯ sign stand when it could point to his own destination.


    I scanned the ground as I approached the way, no longer skimming but walking on my own two feet, muscles warm from my long run. I had half-hoped that Shas would have been more careless, but it seemed that Exan had trained her well.


    And though she was young, she had fought in the war. The more prosaic arts of a stealthy journey had been drilled deep into all the participants, Alliance and Dark Pact alike. Those who had failed to heed the lesson had been culled from the ranks by those on the other side that had taken it to heart.


    Survival of the fittest, and all that.


    Not that there weren¡¯t occasions when a trail was an acceptable risk. My passage across Curia¡¯s ice sheet, for example, was in no way obscured ¨C it pointed after me as clear as an arrow ¨C but I intended to be long gone before anyone got around to following it.


    The others had been working to a different strategic calculus.


    There was no real way to know for sure where they had gone. Idigan¡¯s intelligence ended at the point where Esparatos had gone on alone.


    I tried to put myself in the mind of my quarry.


    What would Sanjay Jacobs do?


    I had no doubt that he would have taken command. Carmen was no warrior, despite her pretensions to the contrary, Cass was just a disciple, and Kiren would neither wish to lead nor expect to be followed.


    No, Sanjay would be the one whose decisions would guide them.


    At my hip Akeem continued to mutter more bloodthirsty nonsense about the death of the universe and the slaughter of all life. I let it chatter on, and did my best to tune it out and think.


    At the end of the day, Sanjay would do whatever he thought Dalarion would want him to do. That was the principle about which he had built his entire existence. He would think me dead, a prisoner, or in league with Exan. He would know that the War was back on.


    That would leave him with two real options. Take his meagre forces and attempt to do some damage ¨C maybe circle back and try and keep contact with Exan, track him without being tracked in turn, perhaps rescue Mako if he hadn¡¯t already given up hope in that regard.


    Or crawl back to the House, tail between his legs.


    Sanjay, despite his ability to do a good impression of a pompous idiot, was not stupid. Mot the greatest of intellects, mind, but not stupid. And he was a decent soldier. He would know that Carmen, Cass and Kiren were not suited for any specialist, behind-enemy-lines operations. He would fear, perhaps quite rightly, that Exan had already set in motion the kind of large scale conquests of mortal civilisations that the Dark Pact had mobilised in the past. He would want to co-ordinate with the rest of the Alliance, make sure that Dalarion knew what was going on and could organise an appropriate response¡­


    In other words, crawling back to the House, tail between his legs, would be exactly what he would do.


    Given what he knew and the resources at his disposal, it was probably even the right choice.


    Of course, he didn¡¯t know that Esparatos was following him.


    His shortest, most direct route back to the House led through the ways to Osha. No guarantee that he had taken it ¨C he might have detoured again in order to throw of pursuit, but I didn¡¯t think so. There would be a psychological appeal to getting home and safe as fast as possible, and he would want to trust that his flight across the surface of Curia would have been enough to deal with any possible pursuit.


    There was also danger in delay. He would not want to assume that Dalarion had had a good fix on us with the Mirror. He would fear the possibility that his lord and master was twiddling his thumbs back in the House, thinking we were all still a unified force rather than broken and divided, thinking that Exan was a lone violator of the treaty rather than the leader of a resurgent Dark Pact. In Sanjay¡¯s mind, arriving too late might be as bad as not arriving at all¡­


    The third reason he would have picked Osha was the most compelling ¨C the way continued from there to a number of new worlds, three of which were viable options for a speedy return to the House. Even if he thought himself still pursued, he would have backed himself to stay ahead of his pursuers long enough to make his next transition. If he had reached that transition, then even Esparatos, famed tracker that he was, would have had trouble following. Hell, he could even have split his group to double or triple the chances of one of them making it back¡­


    Osha. They went through Osha.


    There was no longer any doubt in my mind.


    Of course, once I got to Osha I would have a devil of a time figuring out where to go next, but that was a problem for another day.


    For the moment I was more worried about how far behind them I was.


    I glanced up at the night sky. Four and half days we¡¯d been apart now. I doubted they had skimmed their way across ice sheet ¨C from my own journey I knew that there was no way to avoid leaving a trail of broken ice behind you and they had left no such sign of their passage. At a lighter run, perhaps with a bit of Turis to keep them moving, they might have managed the crossing in as little as two days, which left me two and a half days behind¡­


    Unless, of course, Esparatos had already killed them all. He was certainly capable of doing so.


    I shrugged to myself. Only one way to find out.


    *             *             *


    I emerged out into the jungle of Osha¡¯s southern hemisphere, the heat and humidity a stark contrast to the clear, freezing air on the Curia side. The vegetation lay thick around me, trees with black bark and dark green leaves, ferns that rose to my waist, stinking, steaming vines that crawled round trunk and root alike. There was path ahead, little more than a narrow trail of trodden earth.


    I moved along it, careful not to disturb the plants around me.


    A dozen paces along I spotted it ¨C a fern that leant over the path, its fronds curled, wilting. The tip of it was broken, hanging from its parent plant by a fibrous thread.


    I smiled. The direction of the break was my first clear indicator ¨C someone had passed this way, and recently.


    ¡®You see the broken plant? You see it?¡¯


    ¡®Hush,¡¯ I said, my voice little more than a whisper


    Akeem ignored me. ¡®Someone went this way. Let¡¯s find them and kill them.¡¯


    ¡®Depending on who it is,¡¯ I told it, ¡®I might do just that. Now shut up.¡¯


    I had to assume I was in hostile territory now. I hated to do it, but this jungle was an ambusher¡¯s dream, and I didn¡¯t fancy getting sucker-punched with Sansis by a hidden enemy. Moving with appropriate stealth was going to cost me time, but it wasn¡¯t like the ice plains of Curia where I could see any threat coming from miles away. It was time to take measures.


    With some reluctance I moved off the path and into green forest of ferns that lay on either side of it. Engaged Danis.


    Tried to ignore the seething sensation in my chest as my power rebelled at the suppression.


    Began moving.


    *             *             *


    Four hours later I was ready to scream.


    It wasn¡¯t the heat or humidity ¨C  I had endured worse in my time and shifting thermal energy out of my skin and into the ground beneath me was something I could do without expending power. Occasionally I shifted it through the air to fry an insect before it could land on me, but that was as much for my amusement as to avoid a bite. I was an old friend of both pain and discomfort, and I took a certain pride in my ability to ignore them when it was necessary.


    Even holding to Danis wasn¡¯t the issue. True, the longer you held to it the worse it felt, but in the end that too was just a feeling. There were no real consequences to holding to it forever, or least none I¡¯d ever heard of.


    No, what was killing me was the slowness of it all.


    I could practically feel the lead the others had on me widening. I wanted to be tearing through this jungle the way I¡¯d torn across Curia. I could¡¯ve been at the end of the this section of the way in thirty minutes if I used Turis to increase my speed.


    There was even an argument that a faster pace would be safer ¨C speed was its own form of defence, after all. If there were any of Exan¡¯s people on Osha there was a strong chance I could blast past them before they had time to register I was even here¡­


    But as entertaining as this fantasy was, it was just that, a fantasy. Because in all my four hours of picking through the jungle, I had yet to figure out where Sanjay and the others were heading next, or see any new sign of their passage. Racing to the next transition would do me no good until I decided which transition that was.


    At the moment I was holding a neutral course, but in the next few minutes I would have to pick, or stop an wait until I had picked. The distance between the various options was comparatively small but switching between them would waste valuable time¡­


    Of course, I could always just head back to the House myself and ask Dalarion for help.


    I¡¯d rather drink a pint of acid.


    Besides, I didn¡¯t have much faith that the others would survive if I did that, and I needed them to survive. Particularly Kiren.


    I wanted to kill him myself, after all.


    I smiled to myself at the thought, and then immediately froze.


    Dropped into a crouch.


    Voices. Up ahead.


    And, just like that, the four hours of creeping through the jungle, trying not to disturb the wildlife and pushing plants carefully aside so as not to damage them had been completely and utterly worth it.


    ¡®¡­says she can take them herself at any time. But the window is closing, apparently.¡¯ Shas¡¯s voice, the tone hurried, as if she was eager to please.


    That was young people for you. Always trying to prove themselves.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    ¡®You will tell her to do as Exan asked her to do, and wait,¡¯ came the reply.


    My heart pumped red rage as I heard it. Anger was leaking into me like blood from a wound, and there was a wound. A kind of hurt that somehow went beyond Exan¡¯s betrayal, beyond Trickster¡¯s betrayal. Trickster had the excuse of being insane. Exan had always chafed under my leadership to some extent, always sought to surpass me the way I had sought to surpass Dalarion¡­ and more than that he was something of an equal. His treachery had hurt, all the more so considering the source, but it had least had a kind of symmetry about it.


    But Tollan Esparatos? How many times had I saved his life? How many times had he sworn undying loyalty to me and my cause? What had there ever been that could justify this? We had had no romantic relationship to turn sour, no master-pupil dynamic to be twisted, we had simply been friends. Tollan Esparatos hadn¡¯t joined the Dark Pact for wealth or power or the joy of the fight, he had joined because had asked him to.


    His voice was blade in my back, for all that Idigan had warned me.


    I am alone.


    ¡®She is becoming overconfident in her new abilities,¡¯ Esparatos continued. ¡®Sanjay Jacobs is an unimaginative man but a skilled warrior. He duelled both Exan and Rukh in the War and survived both times. Nor is he alone.¡¯


    ¡®She says you are welcome to join in.¡¯


    A sigh. ¡®We will, when the time is right,¡¯ said Esparato.


    A snort from Shas. ¡®She won¡¯t be happy.¡¯


    ¡®Believe it or not, Shas, my mission is not to make Trickster happy. If it was, I would be blowing open chaos rents or eating the hearts of little children, or something else demented and evil. You tell her that she either sticks to the plan and waits for Rukh to show up, or she can forget about our help with anything. Understand?¡¯


    Trickster.


    ¡®¡­says she can take them herself at any time¡­¡¯


    Trickster was involved here? Well, I¡¯d suspected she¡¯d been with us on Uriban but clearly she¡¯d followed¡­ of course she had.


    I felt like a fool. I¡¯d assumed that she would have gone to Exan and warned him, but of course, he¡¯d already known. They¡¯d assumed the Alliance would send for me, or I for them, put that trap in place at the Temple, been ready when I fought my way clear from it.


    Trickster had tracked us the whole way, then. Had communicated with Exan by courier ¨C probably some disciple -  to set up the ambush on Altain¡­


    Why hadn¡¯t Idigan mentioned her? I hadn¡¯t sensed that he was holding anything back, but I was all too aware that I was fallible.


    Or he didn¡¯t see her.


    Had she broken contact then? Only re-joined Esparatos later? Or had she been following from further back?


    ¡°¡­overconfident in her new abilities¡­¡±


    Yes, that line had worried me. The idea of Trickster gathering any more power or proficiency to herself was not a happy one. The woman had no mental or moral limits at all. She would do things that any sane person lacked the capacity to consider.


    Probably why Esparatos was assisting her. She¡¯d  always needed some sort of leash.


    ¡®I understand,¡¯ said Shas with a sigh. ¡®But she isn¡¯t the easiest person in the world to talk to.¡¯


    Esparatos made a retching sound in the back of his throat ¨C the avian equivalent of a snort. ¡®If you have a problem acting as our go between,¡¯ he said, ¡®then perhaps you shouldn¡¯t have let Rukh get away. It is, after all, your fault that we have to wait.¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m telling you,¡¯ said Shas, ¡®I cut her femoral artery open. She¡¯s dead.¡¯


    Esparatos let out a short, humourless laugh. ¡®If you believe that then you¡¯re more of a fool than I thought. She beat you, Shas. She killed four of your companions and made her escape. You say you gave her a wound with Nemi and I believe you¡­ but until we¡¯ve seen her body she is not dead. Even then, I would make sure.¡¯


    ¡®Oh come on! She¡¯s not that tough.¡¯


    ¡®Yes, that¡¯s right,¡¯ said Esparatos sarcastically. ¡®She is worshiped as a god on a dozen worlds and feared as the devil on a thousand more because she is a weakling. That¡¯s her secret.¡¯ A pause, and then another sigh. ¡®Go back to Trickster,¡¯ he said, suddenly weary. ¡®Tell her what I said. Then go and give Exan his update. You can check back in with me tomorrow.¡¯


    ¡®You think you¡¯re so fucking clever. There¡¯s no guarantee she¡¯ll show up, even if she is alive. She might have gone to the House or¡­¡¯


    A smack, as of a feathered fist hitting flesh. I heard Shas stumbling, saw the ferns ahead rustle with sudden movement.


    ¡®Sometimes I think you forget who you are talking to,¡¯ said Esparatos.


    The sound of a blade sliding from its scabbard. ¡®You fucking¡­¡¯


    ¡®Put that away.¡¯ Esparatos¡¯s voice was flat, dangerous. ¡®If you cannot handle a little discipline then by all means go crawling back to your sensei and complain. But if you come at me with that blade then I will kill you.¡¯


    Silence.


    ¡®Better,¡¯ said Esparatos after a moment. ¡®Now, have a little think about which of us know Helena Rukh the best, hmm? Her only options are to re-join the others or to return to Dalarion for help, and that she will not do. She will prefer almost anything to that, perhaps even death and defeat.¡¯ A pause. ¡®Now go.¡¯


    ¡®He says such lovely things about you,¡¯ whispered Akeem. ¡®Let¡¯s kill him. Please?¡¯


    I didn¡¯t reply. I just waited, breath held and utterly silence, as Shas shouldered her way through the ferns. She passed within about two feet of me, making no effort at stealth. I could see her horned head and shoulders above the tops of the ferns, could read the anger and the near-adolescent shame in her face.


    Serves you right, I thought. You should have known better than to fuck with Esparatos.


    I had no doubt that he would indeed have killed her if she¡¯d pushed the issue. She might have had Nemi, but Esparatos never went anywhere unarmed. And while the weapon he carried could not inflict wounds that did not heal, it was still an ima and it had properties of its own.


    Akeem¡¯s weight at my hip was a solid reassurance, the anticipation that bled through the scabbard for once a mirror to my own. I would let Shas go. I would wait until she was far along the trail, wait until I was sure she had transitioned to wherever it was she was going¡­


    Then I would settle my business with Tollan Esparatos.


    I would have a limited window, or had to assume I had a limited window. Shas had gone past me which meant that she was heading either for Tosta, a world with uncomfortably high gravity but a decent number of onward connections, or back to Curia.


    And if she went back to Curia there was a risk she would see the trail I had made while skimming ¨C I had slowed down as I approached the transition but if she headed back towards the way that led to Altain¡­


    A small risk. Maybe forty percent. But if she saw it she would come running back to Esparatos.


    I planned to have finished him by then.


    ¡°I will be true to you so long as you are true to me.¡±


    Tollan Esparatos had broken his word. It was time he paid for it.


    *             *             *


    It was a tense few hours. I passed the time straining my ears, concerned that Esparatos would move on and I would lose him in the jungle. Concerned, also, that he might have somehow divined my presence during his conversation with Shas and by means of covert signal sent her looping round behind me.


    But Nemi¡¯s irresistible edge did not cleave my head from my shoulders, and I heard no sound to indicate that Esparatos had moved on.


    Judging that the time was right, I crept forward through the ferns.


    Spotted him almost immediately.


    He was waiting in a small clearing, his back to one of the black-barked trees. He looked identical to when I had last seen him ¨C grey feathered plumage, battledress uniform in muted greens that matched our surroundings, the crack in his beak that he refused to repair with Ensis despite his ability to do so. He sat in a pose of almost studied relaxation, the ankle of his right leg resting upon his left knee, eyes closed. His weapon, Laya, was propped up next to him. Moisture glistened on the gunmetal.


    I was unable to halt the rush of warmth I felt as I saw him. The sight of an old friend not seen for too long.


    I crushed the feeling.


    He was unware of me. This was good. But it meant I had a choice to make.


    I had one free shot. That was a hell of a thing, all by itself. It was impossible to block or dodge if you didn¡¯t know the attack was coming. I could do to Esparatos what Exan had done to Isande ¨C hit him with enough Sansis that he burned, enough that the very air around him caught fire with desperately shed heat.


    Or I could use Faris. There was only really only one offensive move in the entire discipline, but it was an important one. A binding, such as Exan had thrown over me during the ambush at Altain. He would be unable to escape, would have to fight me¡­


    I felt the urge for a fight. All this sneaking around had put me in the mood.


    ¡®Yes,¡¯ whispered Akeem


    On the other hand, Sansis did seem like the obvious choice. But the way he was sat he would be able to shed a lot through the tree and through the ground beneath him. I would only get a second, maybe, where the power poured into him unchecked.


    I could wipe myself out, trying to burn him dead in that time.


    Rationalizations, Rukh? I asked myself.


    Yes. It would cost in power, but there was no sense in doing anything else. I could not pick my strategies based on personal whims, not anymore. And while it would be hard to kill him outright with Sansis, I didn¡¯t actually need him dead anyway, not yet. Quite the contrary. What I needed  was to wound him badly enough that he had to spend all his power on Ensis, get him at my mercy. Then I could find out from him where the others were, by torture if necessary.


    He deserved a little torture, far as I was concerned.


    Then I would kill him.


    Slowly, I raised a hand.


    ¡®You¡¯re no fun at all,¡¯ complained Akeem.


    Then I remembered.


    Esparatos had been born on a world called Belia. He had lived somewhere in the northern hemisphere of said world, in a country of trees and grass and burbling streams. He had grown up in a small tribal unit, learned to feed himself and his family by hunting. Had joined the military of whatever nation state his tribe had paid allegiance to, fought many prosaic wars, become ever more proficient in woodcraft and scouting and small group tactics.


    Had encountered one of our kind, another Belian, someone he still refused to name. Been raised to the power, been a disciple, then not a disciple.


    Killed his former sensei for reasons he had never divulged, not even to me.


    Uncountable years had passed since his humble origins, but Esparatos had not changed, not really. Grown perhaps. Become more concentrated, more¡­ himself. But from the day he¡¯d earned his name in the manhood rights of his tribe to this, now, the ever-present present, he had always been, quintessentially, a hunter¡­.


    I thought, very hard, about what I was about to do.


    On Belia, there is a type of fish that hunts by remaining perfectly still. It sits on the streambed, pebbly skin disguising it among the rocks so that it appears to be a rock itself. The flow of the water through its craggy gills is enough to allow it to breathe while motionless. It waits and waits. The moss and weed take root in the folds of its flesh and flourish. It becomes part of the scenery. Other fish come close by and nibble the weed from its skin, and still it does nothing.


    Its prey is a hunter of a different sort. A predator fish, large and muscular. This fish comes along the stream with all the arrogance of the strong. It swishes its tail and the other fish scatter. It sets its sight on one, and prepares to strike.


    It never notices the rock-fish. Not until it¡¯s too late. The rock-fish moves, sudden, just as the predator commits to the strike. The predator has no hope of dodging. The rock-fish tears into its belly. The predator thrashes, frenzied.


    Dies.


    The rock-fish eats enough to last it many days. Moves on. Finds another spot in which to settle.


    I know this not because of any fascination with the various ecosystems of Belia. I know this because one night around a fire, Esparatos shared this story with me in response to a seemingly unrelated question. The rock-fish was the most perfect hunter in Reality, or so he said. It was small, and unassuming, but it no-one had ever known it miss. Most predators balanced a single successful kill against many, many failures. But the rock-fish never failed. The key to its success, Esparatos had declared, were its camouflage, its stillness, its timing, and its knowledge of its target ¨C the qualities that all the greatest hunters strove to master.


    The rock-fish was known, on Belia at least, as an ¡°esparatos.¡±


    All thoughts of Sansis fled from my head. I reached for Faris instead.


    ¡®Yes!¡¯ hissed Akeem.


    As I suspected, the binding settled for a moment, and then immediately broke.


    Esparatos opened his eyes.


    I stood up out of the ferns, releasing Danis. Moved towards him with my now well-practiced limp. I kept it subtle, as if it was something I was trying to hide rather than something I was trying to show. Time would tell if he bought it.


    ¡®Hey,¡¯ I said to him. ¡®Out of curiosity, when did you realize I was there?¡¯


    His beak cracked open a little, and he let out a soft laugh. ¡®You made a slight noise when you closed the approach.¡¯ He cocked his head, thinking. ¡®A couple of minutes ago, perhaps?¡¯


    I smiled, but inside my heart was racing.


    I had just come very close to dying. If I¡¯d hit him with Sansis I would have used an awful lot of power. If he¡¯d been ready, he could have deflected it right back at me before it had even begun to cross the distance between us. I¡¯d have been the one caught off guard. No way could I have shed that much power in time.


    Close. So very close.


    ¡®Thought so,¡¯ I said.


    There was an awkward pause. Esparatos did not reach for his weapon, but I saw his eyes flicker, ever so briefly, to the scabbard at my hip. He would know what it contained.


    ¡®Since we¡¯re in the spirit of satisfying one another¡¯s curiosity,¡¯ he said, ¡®how long had you been there?¡¯


    I shrugged. There was no real reason to deny him. ¡®Since before Shas left,¡¯ I said.


    ¡®Hmmm.¡¯


    Another pause, both longer and more awkward. We both knew what this was building towards. Akeem¡¯s bloodlust was as strong as I¡¯d ever felt it. But my will to fight had ebbed. There was little savour to this task now.


    Of course, that didn¡¯t change the fact that it needed to be done.


    ¡®Aren¡¯t you going to ask me?¡¯ he said, after a moment.


    I raised an eyebrow. ¡®You want me to?¡¯


    A shrug. ¡®It is expected, in these situations.¡¯


    I spread my hands. ¡®I went through all of this with Exan,¡¯ I told him. ¡®I don¡¯t need to go through it again. So no, I¡¯m not going to ask you. What matters is what you¡¯ve done, not why you¡¯ve done it. You broke your oath. I just listened to you reprimanding a disciple for not killing me. I know who¡¯s side you¡¯re on, and it isn¡¯t mine. So why the fuck would I ask you?¡¯


    He inclined his head. ¡®I don¡¯t suppose you¡¯d consider breaking the treaty yourself? Coming over to our side?¡¯


    At that I just laughed. He knew how ludicrous an idea that was. Without my word, I was nothing.


    ¡®Ah well,¡¯ he said. ¡®I just never imagined you joining the Alliance.¡¯


    A million answers to that. That I hadn¡¯t joined the Alliance, that I was merely, for the moment, on their side of things. That it was rich to throw accusations of treachery given what he himself had done. That I knew a cheap meant-to-wound shot when I heard it, that it was more an admission of his guilt than any mark against me.


    But I gave none of these answers. My temporary reluctance was evaporating, my earlier anger resurgent. And I had no need to explain myself to him, not now that he was, by his own admission both my enemy and a confirmed traitor.


    ¡®Shall we?¡¯ I asked him, and put a hand on my sword. ¡®Or are you planning to run?¡¯


    He didn¡¯t answer. He just stood up and reached for Laya.


    I drew Akeem.


    ¡®Oh yes,¡¯ said the sword. ¡®Oh I¡¯ve been waiting for this!¡¯


    ¡®You and me both,¡¯ I said under my breath. ¡®You and me both.¡¯

 Chapter 12

    Esparatos¡¯s weapon, Laya, looked like a hunting rifle. Sleek gunmetal, glistening with freshly applied oil. A machined scope, the settings no doubt just as Esparatos wanted them. A polished walnut stock.


    His feathered fingers closed around even as I closed the distance, and he spun around with a vicious, full armed swing¡­


    ¡­and I was slapping away the tip of the razored metal whip he now held, parrying it off to the side with Akeem¡¯s flat, dipping the blade so as not to let him tangle it up and wrench it from my hand¡­


    And the whip was gone and Esparatos was thrusting a long spear right at my chest so I stepped back, but now he had a pistol and I dodged desperately to the side as he fired¡­


    Laya wasn¡¯t a hunting rifle. It wasn¡¯t a whip, or a spear, or a nine-millimetre handgun. It was all of these things, all at the same time, whatever weapon Esparatos needed in the moment, shifting form in the flicker of a thought. It had its limitations ¨C like all ima, its store of chaotic energy was finite and each change of form drained its reserve, as did each use of projectile ammunition. But these limitations were unlikely to help me during the fight ¨C I had no doubt that both Laya and Esparatos himself were fresh from a chaos-rent, their reserves as close to maximum as to make no difference.


    Making ima was hardly an exact science. It took an immense effort of will and required working in the proximity of a rent for far longer than was advisable. There was no guarantee of how the process would come out ¨C each one I myself had made had ended up rather different to what I¡¯d envisioned. Only a fool expected repeatable outcomes from the forces of chaos. If it were otherwise, no doubt all of Reality would be toting replicas of Nemi.


    Esparatos, however, had succeeded in making something truly masterful.


    I slashed at him and the pistol became a short cutlass, knocking Akeem off line, then a quarterstaff that drove my blade down while the other end powered towards my head.


    I caught it with my off hand, and suddenly I was holding a wickedly hooked glaive by the bladed end and Esparatos ripped it out of my hand in a welter of blood. I back-stepped, fingers of my left hand hanging useless, and the glaive became a shotgun levelled at my chest.


    He fired.


    The ground around me erupted as I shed the force of the blast, pellets rattling off my Kasis-hardened chest like raindrops. Soil was raining down around me and I went for him under the cover it provided, Ensis working on the severed tendons of my hand, coiling them back down from inside my arm, re-joining the sinews. I lunged out of the rain of mud and dead plant matter but Esparatos was no fool ¨C he¡¯d rolled back around the bole of a black barked tree and my sword found only air.


    Akeem snarled in frustration.


    I circled round the trunk and Akeem clanged off the metal haft of the axe Esparato swung at my head. He wrenched it down to open my guard and then punched forward with a longsword. I voided my body so instead of impaling me the strike only gashed my shoulder and for one second I was inside his guard.


    I lunged.


    He danced back in a flurry of quick steps, recovering from his over-extension with impressive speed. Akeem¡¯s tip left a line of pink blood under his eye.


    ¡®Just a nick,¡¯ said the sword, with profound dissatisfaction.


    I grinned. ¡®First blood,¡¯ I said.


    Esparatos didn¡¯t answer. Laya became a rapier in his hands and he flicked the point at me, lightning fast. I answered with a stop thrust and he was forced to retreat around the tree. I followed and he came back and me with a long, hooked, almost semi-circular blade, the tip ripping for my kidney.


    I parried¡­


    And the tree exploded. I mean it literally. One minute it was there, a pillar of black wood shielding Esparato¡¯s off-hand, denying me space on my right side, and the next it was an expanding cloud of foot-long splinters.


    Turis. He must have used his free hand to smash it¡­


    I had no time to get out of the way. I felt something stab through me, once, twice, three times all together.


    Stumbled.


    Glanced down. I had three spears of broken wood sticking from my chest. It hurt to breathe.


    Fuuuccck¡­


    The crown of the tree crashed down to the side of me. I could see Esparatos on the other side of the shattered stump, utterly unhurt. There was an assault rifle in his hands.


    I dove for cover behind another tree as he cut loose. Felt the pulse of Sansis he sent after me, threw it back and heard the crackle of flame as it hit something ¨C too much to hope it was Esparatos. It had been a weak pulse to start, one he must¡¯ve know I would deflect.


    Why he had even¡­


    The Faris binding settled on me.


    Oh, Esparatos, you sneaky motherfucker¡­


    That¡¯s why he¡¯d thrown the Sansis. Thrown it so I would throw it back. So that he, like the rock-fish that was his namesake, could strike me in the moment I struck, when my attention was committed and I could not defend.  I¡¯d not even seen the Faris binding coming and now¡­


    Now there was no escape.


    ¡®Don¡¯t you think you¡¯re getting a little over confident?¡¯ I yelled at him, from the cover of the tree. ¡®You think I¡¯m going to run from you?¡¯


    My bravura was slightly ruined by the cough the followed it. A quart of blood spilled from my mouth in its wake.


    I heard him laugh. ¡®You have a veritable forest growing out of your sternum, Rukh,¡¯ he said. ¡®So yes, I feel I have the advantage.¡¯


    I didn¡¯t answer. I was pulling the splinters from my chest, each one agony to remove, each doing more damage coming out than it had going in. I burned power like it was going out of style  - I couldn¡¯t afford a slow heal. If I lost function¡­


    ¡®This is taking too long,¡¯ said Akeem. ¡®Let¡¯s kill him.¡¯


    The sword wasn¡¯t much for strategy, but it was right that I was running out of time. Esparatos would already be flanking me, lining up his shot. If he got it I wouldn¡¯t even hear the bullet.


    Guns weren¡¯t all that popular among our kind. Duels between those raised to the power tended to be about attrition, about forcing the other person to accumulate damage or to waste power. Once you were out of power, you were dead. As long as you were alive and had power you had a chance. A gun, at the end of the day, was just a mechanism for delivering a kinetic shock, redirectable through Turis like any other impact.


    The timing was a little harder to pull off, but Kasis was an oft-utilised back-up. And guns were unwieldy, they required ammunition, and crucially they did not always work.


    Subtle differences in the physics of different worlds meant that certain high-energy reactions didn¡¯t always have the same results, or indeed, any result at all. Some substances that had exothermic properties on one world might not have them on another. And so on.


    I pulled the third splinter from my chest, and it came free in a welter of cold agony.


    Laya, when in the form of a gun, never failed to work. From fighting alongside with Esparatos, from being his friend, I knew a bit about it. Like all ima its source of energy was chaos. When in the form of a gun it created its ammunition directly from chaotic power. It accelerated these projectiles through the barrel by directly manifesting kinetic force. It did not rely on prosaic bullets and propellants.


    Which meant that when Esparatos put it in his favourite form, that of a high-powered sniper rifle, the weapon would burn more power than normal, but it would accelerate a round just fine.


    Just a kinetic shock, still. But if you didn¡¯t see it coming¡­


    Well, it was hard to use Ensis when your head was already an expanding cloud of pink mist.


    I dropped to the floor, wounds in my chest not yet healed but healing. My organs were fine, the blood vessels reconnected. I could feel a rib shifting and tissue knitting but I had no more time to wait.


    ¡®Left, a hundred paces,¡¯ said Akeem. ¡®He has line of sight.¡¯


    I sprung forward from the crouch, putting the tree between me and my left side and heard the crack of gunshot, louder than breaking stone. Felt the vibration as something plunged into the ground behind me in a plume of soil.


    There were ferns just ahead of me. I dove into them, desperate for the cover.


    Engaged Danis.


    Crawled.


    *             *             *


    All in all, the situation was less than optimal.


    I¡¯d failed to finish Esparatos up close, and now this was his playground. The jungle. The wild. Not a fight now but a hunt, and I had no illusions as to who was the better hunter. This cat-and-mouse ,kill-¡®em-before-you¡¯re-close-enough-to-call-¡®em-names sort of game was Tollan Esparatos¡¯s element.


    I was healed now, but my reserves had dipped below half capacity. I could not afford to take hits like the ones I¡¯d taken when the tree had exploded.


    Worse still was the fact that, if not for Akeem, I would already be dead.


    It was one of the sword¡¯s properties, perhaps the only useful function its unasked-for sentience served ¨C whatever senses with which it perceived the world extended out around me in a wide radius, and it was compelled to warn me of danger.


    Or rather, of potential targets. Akeem did not seem to have much of a concept of danger. Certainly it had never expressed any concern for my life. Or concern of any kind, come to think of it.


    I nudged the fern next to me as I crawled past it, unthinking, and a gunshot split the air. Something hammered into the ground by my hand, sending vibrations through the earth.


    Fuck.


    I snatched a handful of earth and threw it at a fern a few paces away with Turis-assisted force. The stem shook on the impact and I saw the frond waver, and a second later another gunshot rang out.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Dirt plumed near the base of my targeted fern.


    I crawled, ever so carefully forward.


    My heart was hammering in my chest. That first shot had been inches from my head. While Esparatos would not hope to kill me outright from blind shooting, even a bullet in the shoulder would be a problem. I would be forced to release Danis to heal, which would let him find me, or to leave a blood trail and a scent, which would also let him find me.


    He would assume, given that neither had occurred, that I was unhurt and still moving. He would consider the possibility that I had decoyed him with the movement of the second fern, but he would not fire again without cause. Each shot was expensive, and he would wish to conserve Laya¡¯s energy¡­


    He would want to move, too, fearful that he¡¯d betrayed his own position. He would want to move and seek a wider perspective on this area of forest.


    Something flickered at the edge of my perception. Not my physical perception either.


    Surely not¡­


    ¡®Been a while since we spoke like this, Rukh,¡¯ said Esparatos.


    His voice didn¡¯t turn up in my head or anything. It was like I was looking right at him, perhaps ten feet between us, that he was talking in slightly raised tones to cover that less-than-intimate distance. Only I wasn¡¯t looking at him, for all that I felt like I was. He was nowhere near.


    Jakis, the discipline was called. A method for talking to one of your own kind, but only usable when you were on the same world. If I was to explain how it worked¡­


    Well it was a little like casting a bottle with a written message into an ocean. Only this ocean had special currents, which meant that your bottle only went to the intended recipient. Or maybe it would be better to say that it went to all possible recipients, but that only the intended recipient could see it and open it, or even know that there was a bottle.


    Of course, once they did open it there was an active connection along which more messages could be sent in either direction.


    Some of the more esoteric disciplines are hard to describe, even by metaphor.


    ¡®Don¡¯t sulk, Rukh,¡¯ said Esparatos. ¡®I know you aren¡¯t close enough to me to fear an answer.¡¯


    I supressed a sigh. ¡®Maybe I just don¡¯t feel like talking,¡¯ I said, as I continued to crawl through the ferns.


    You had to speak aloud with Jakis. You could speak quietly, but you had to make audible sound in order to have something to transmit. So as long as I was replying, Esparatos would know that I wasn¡¯t sneaking up behind him.


    That cut both ways, I guessed, but if Esparatos was ever behind me with line of sight, he would be pulling a trigger rather than wasting his breath on words.


    ¡®Are you still upset about my trying to kill you?¡¯


    ¡®Not as much as I am about you breaking your oath,¡¯ I said. ¡®If you¡¯d turned up on Sansara before all this started and asked to fight me to the death, I would have still considered you a friend when I burned your corpse.¡¯ There was a tree ahead of me, perhaps four of five strides distant. I set my sights on it. Crawled forward another inch. ¡®Now when I kill you, I will be killing a spineless traitor.¡¯


    I was careful to keep my breathing even as I moved. To be sensible of the noise I was making as I dragged myself between the ferns. This was the other reason Esparatos had opened a connection with Jakis ¨C it would not only carry my words, but also ambient noise that could give him clues as to my movement or surroundings.


    I had allowed the link only because that, too, cut both ways.


    Esparatos laughed. ¡®Did I ever tell you the story of my sensei? The one who raised me to the power?¡¯


    ¡®You told me you killed him,¡¯ I said, as I reached the base of the tree. ¡®I guess I should have asked a few more questions about that before accepting your oath.¡¯


    I pulled myself around the tree¡¯s base.


    Stood.


    Tensed as I waited, silently, for a bullet.


    ¡®Ooh, you¡¯re on your feet again,¡¯ said Akeem, with anticipatory glee. ¡®Does this mean we can resume killing?¡¯


    I ignored it, and it lapsed almost immediately back into its ever-present and nonsensical chatter.


    ¡®Did I tell you why?¡¯ said Esparatos.


    I frowned. I had heard something in the background, just after that last answer, as though he¡¯d tried to cover a sound with his words but failed ever so slightly. A scrape, as of metal on stone¡­


    My first thought was Laya¡¯s barrel scraping against a stone surface, but there was no obvious rock formation nearby nor would Esparatos have been that careless even if there had been.


    ¡®No,¡¯ I said, glancing off into the jungle to my left and right. ¡®If I recall you never told anyone.¡¯


    ¡®Not another living soul,¡¯ he agreed.


    I listened out for that sound again, but if it had been a momentary slip then he¡¯d clearly resolved not to make another.


    And, much as I hated to admit it, I did want to know his story.


    Which is why he is telling you it. A story he¡¯s never told another living soul. An answer to a question that you¡¯ve wondered about since you met him¡­ he wants to hold your attention. Remember that this is an unparalleled hunter, a man who knows you, a man who is better equipped to kill you than almost anyone else in Reality¡­


    Which led back to the noise I¡¯d heard. Esparatos wasn¡¯t a careless man. Therefore the noise had been unavoidable. What did that tell me?


    ¡®Well, perhaps the time has come. It may¡­ explain a few things. Why I am who I am. Why I have done what I have done.¡¯


    ¡®The suspense is killing me,¡¯ I shot back.


    What would I do, if I was Tollan Esparatos? I would have a rifle. I would have the skills to use it. I would want a clear shot at my quarry, from the side or from behind.


    I would have seen my quarry flee into the ferns. I would assume she was heading for the trees. I would assume that she would work in deeper and deeper¡­


    I would circle, then. I would circle around, try and make it so that she was working towards me, rather than away¡­


    ¡®His name was Cernukan,¡¯ said Esparatos. ¡®He was known, on Belia. Still is, no doubt. Present in our myths and legends. Revered as the god of the hunt. He chose me at a young age¡­ was passing through our world and¡­ well, it was a chance encounter. But he saw my skills as a hunter, saw something of himself in me¡­¡¯


    ¡®I could do this part of the story myself,¡¯ I said. ¡®Why else does someone raise someone to the power?¡¯


    A snort. ¡®You raised Exan, if I recall, largely because you thought he was pretty.¡¯


    I smiled at the memory, despite myself. ¡®There was a little more to it than that.¡¯


    ¡®Would it be inaccurate to say that you raised him for similar reasons to the reasons you ended up sleeping with him?¡¯


    I thought for a moment.


    ¡®No,¡¯ I said. ¡®I don¡¯t think it would be.


    I shook myself. Now was not the time to get mired in nostalgia. Esparatos was trying to get around me, I was sure of it now. Perhaps he already was in position somewhere deeper in the jungle, up high in the branches of some tree, ready for me to stumble towards.


    Yeah¡­ that was more like it. I¡¯d been slow going through the ferns, too slow. He¡¯d got around me already. Which meant there was no point in moving deeper. Better to stay where I was, make him come to me¡­


    He was committed to hunting me down, after all. If the Faris binding expired then I would be free to move off world, to re-join the others and warn them about what I¡¯d overheard. He wouldn¡¯t know that I had no idea where the others were. He would have to come find me, have to close the distance, and once I had him within arm¡¯s length¡­


    I wished that I could risk releasing Danis. Given a few seconds with access to my full powers and I could craft an image of a tree with Illumis, wait within it for him to approach.


    But this was pure fantasy. You could maintain such a disguise with the trickle of power Danis allowed you, but no more. And if I dropped Danis, Esparatos would find me. No doubt he was scanning the trees through his scope this very moment, waiting for just such a lapse.


    On the bright side, he would be suffering from exactly the same restrictions. He couldn¡¯t risk that I was close enough to sense his taint.


    And there were more prosaic means of constructing a hiding place.


    ¡®Well, I wasn¡¯t sleeping with Cernukan,¡¯ Esparatos continued. ¡®He was like a stern older brother. Constantly lecturing me, constantly correcting me. He taught me all the basics, just as Dalarion did for you. Taught me to fight¡­¡¯


    ¡®I taught you to fight,¡¯ I said.


    ¡®Hmmm, I would say that you more¡­ continued¡­ my training. Thank you for those broadsword lessons by the way, they very much came in handy earlier today.¡¯


    ¡®Oh, go fuck yourself,¡¯ I said, but once again couldn¡¯t help smiling. This was the third reason Esparatos had contacted me through Jakis ¨C the longer I spoke with him the more I remembered our friendship. This was all to the good as far as he was concerned. If he could trap me back into that manner of thinking there was all the more chance I might hesitate at a crucial moment, that my killer instinct might be blunted.


    Of course, Esparatos of all people would know how miniscule the chances of that actually were. I would break my word for nothing, and I had killed for a lot less than a broken oath in my time.


    ¡®Cernukan taught me the fundamentals. Taught me Turis, and Kasis, and all the rest. Taught me quite a lot more about hunting, which was strange, because I¡¯d thought I¡¯d known everything. And, eventually, he stopped teaching me.¡¯


    I let out a snort of amusement. ¡®That¡¯s how being a disciple works,¡¯ I said. ¡®At first you are, then you aren¡¯t.¡¯


    ¡®You misunderstand me. He didn¡¯t stop teaching me because he had nothing more to teach. He simply decided that I had learned enough. There is a difference.¡¯


    ¡®That¡¯s how being a disciple works,¡¯ I said again. ¡®Or are you telling me that you were planning to teach Idigan everything?¡¯


    Silence.


    ¡®By your use of the past tense¡­¡¯ said Esparatos after a moment.


    ¡®Yeah,¡¯ I said. ¡®He¡¯s dead. How do you think I found you?¡¯


    I was on my hands and knees now, digging in the dirt at the base of the tree, as I had been for the past few minutes. There was a decent sized space between the roots, a space I could lower myself into when the time came and be shielded from view on three sides.


    Esparatos let out a long, low sigh. ¡®Did you absolutely have to kill him? He was only doing as I asked him to do.¡¯


    I shook my head, not caring that Esparatos wouldn¡¯t see the danger. ¡®His oath wasn¡¯t to you,¡¯ I said. ¡®It was to me. And he broke it, fully aware of the consequences. If you¡¯d wanted him to live, you should have told him to hold to his word. You should have held to your own.¡¯ I paused. ¡®He died relatively quick, if it makes any difference.¡¯


    Another silence, longer than the last. I spent the time filling the hole I¡¯d made with dead leaves, lifting them one by one so that no tell-tale rustling would get to Esparatos over our link.


    ¡®Well,¡¯ said Esparatos, his tone slightly more subdued than before, ¡®in answer to your question, no, I was not. But that in some ways is the point of the story.¡¯ He paused. ¡®Did you teach Exan everything, then? By implication you did not.¡¯


    ¡®Everything he knows, maybe. Everything I know? Not even close.¡¯


    I am a woman of extreme foresight, I thought to myself.


    ¡®But you taught him everything related to the disciplines, yes?¡¯


    ¡®Disciplines, combat, philosophy,¡¯ I said, agreeing. ¡®No reason not to. Might as well not bother at all otherwise.¡¯


    ¡®Quite.¡¯ I could almost hear Esparatos¡¯s nod. ¡®Just not how you made the imaskibrew, or what that sword you carry does, or where you hid your armour when¡­¡¯


    ¡®Those things and plenty more,¡¯ I told him. ¡®Girl¡¯s got to have some secrets.¡¯


    And, beyond those secrets, there had been the lessons I had expected him to learn for himself. Such lessons were easy to explain in words and hard to live ¨C lessons like never breaking your word, never making an empty threat, always seeking to refine your edge, never stopping, never pausing for breath¡­.


    The things that let you achieve true power. The hard work that hid behind every impressive thing I¡¯d ever done.


    Nor was the cost always just in hard work.


    A solid reputation for never breaking your word, a reputation so solid, in fact, that those who challenged it were considered liars. Maintaining that had meant being that, had meant and still meant a careful analysis and consideration of everything I said, a good memory for my oaths, and some hard, hard choices. It had made my road a long and bloody one, but it had given me power, too. So few people saw that, for all that it was in plain view. I could, as a result of my iron word, make a trusted contract with even those who hated me. It had made the Dark Pact possible. Made our successes in the war possible. Let us promise neutrality or vengeance or alliance with others of our kind and be believed, and through that belief influence their behaviour.


    We would never has done as well as we had without my word. Never.


    I suspected that Exan would find his own war more difficult to fight now that he was known to be forsworn. He had failed to live that lesson, despite my warnings to him when I had been his sensei. And because of that he would always be second to me, would never surpass me as he so clearly desired to. Exan was a usurper that didn¡¯t understand power, for all that he had his share of it. He thought it was something held, rather than something that had to be constantly achieved and re-achieved. And, for that reason alone, he was doomed.


    ¡®Well, Cernukan stopped short in many things. Our relationship was not that of a true sensei and disciple, not anymore. Because Cernukan was Belian, and so was I, and that enforced certain¡­ realities.¡¯


    This is it, I thought. This is whatever he is building to, this is his justification¡­


    ¡®You see, the thing that¡­oh.¡¯


    I frowned. ¡®What?¡¯


    Esparatos let out another sigh. ¡®It seems I haven¡¯t lined things up quite as well as I could have,¡¯ he said. ¡®Your revelation about Idigan threw me a little, side-tracked our conversation.¡¯ He didn¡¯t sound upset. ¡®It seems, alas, that our time is up.¡¯


    I glanced around me, concerned by the smug triumph in his voice, but saw only leafy screen and failing light. What did he mean?


    ¡®I had hoped to conclude the story right before concluding your life but unfortunately¡­¡¯


    I rolled my eyes. ¡®Honestly, Esparatos, your bullshit is becoming¡­¡¯ I tailed off as I smelled it, hot, acrid¡­.


    Smoke in my nostrils.


    Fuuuuuuuuuckkkkk¡­.


    ¡®Checkmate, Rukh,¡¯ said Esparatos, with obvious satisfaction. ¡®And when you get to Hell, tell Idigan I¡¯m sorry.¡¯


    I felt him sever the link.


    Looked up.


    It was clearly visible now, the haze that seeped between the trees, the vanguard of what was behind it. I could hear, too, what Esparatos must¡¯ve heard over the link, the thing he¡¯d been waiting for, the sound that had tipped him off and let him know that his trap was sprung.


    The crackle of flames.


    Akeem paused in its usual mindless chatter as he sensed the shift in my mood, the adrenaline dumping into my bloodstream.


    ¡®What is it?¡¯ the sword asked.


    ¡®He¡¯s fired the jungle,¡¯ I said. ¡®The forest is on motherfucking fire¡­¡¯

 Chapter 13

    I wasted precious seconds in stunned realisation.


    That noise I¡¯d heard, not long after he¡¯d opened the link. Stone on steel. The sound of someone scraping sparks onto dry tinder. He¡¯d circled around me all right. Set his fires ¨C probably many different ones, built with all his considerable woodcraft to funnel flames in the right direction, to set the very trees alight¡­


    Opened the link as he set his last fire. Circled back under the cover of the conversation, knowing already what I was doing¡­


    Of course I would stay put. It was my best chance to close. Time was on my side after all. Of course I would employ a defensive strategy against the greatest hunter in all Reality.


    I was an idiot.


    And now I was trapped, a forest fire sweeping towards my hiding place, and Esparatos no doubt in place not far from where we had last fought. I would be driven towards him, forced to abandon Danis just to survive.


    An easy target.


    He¡¯d be somewhere high up, just beyond a break in the trees, a break I wouldn¡¯t see until it was too late. I would run at him¡­


    Laya would fire. Only once, but once was all it would take.


    ¡®Think, Rukh! How do you win this?¡¯


    I stared at the approaching infernal glow. It would be on me soon, I knew. Already the air was searing my skin, the smoke rubbing against the lining of my throat.


    Then I smiled.


    Well, it¡¯s worth a shot.


    And I took off at a dead sprint towards the blaze.


    *             *             *


    On my home world of Ashmar, near where I¡¯d lived as a child, there was a great forest known as the Crimson Woods. They were called so because the trees that grew there were forever in autumnal colours, their chlorophyll encompassing every shade of red and burnt orange but never showing a hint of green. But the woods had another name ¨C the Wildfire Woods. For every year there would be at least one misplaced lightning strike in the middle of the dry season, or a traveller with a careless camp, or something.


    The woods would burn. The smoke would scent the air for miles. We would go up the hill and watch the flames roaring in the distance, beautiful and savage. We would say prayers for those who had gone into the forest that morning, and who would not be coming out.


    Such was life.


    We certainly never went near the place while it was burning. We stayed on our own side of the firebreaks, patrolled the town for stray sparks or flaming debris carried to us by the winds.


    Which, I guess, is a way of saying that while I had seen forest fires before and knew a fair bit about them, I had never been right up inside one before.


    It looked a lot like I imagined Hell would look.


    The wind was behind the flames, driving them forward. The advancing smoke made the air a blue-grey haze. It stung at the back of my throat. There would be no oxygen here, nothing to breathe.


    I dropped Danis. It was a pointless luxury ¨C Esparatos knew where I was in any case, and even he wouldn¡¯t be able to sight a bullet on my chaos-taint alone. Not with the fire to give me cover. Besides, if I had any hope of surviving what came next, I would need power.


    Bayis, first, to create clean, oxygenated air inside my mouth. Complex, fiddly, and expensive¡­ and all simply to breathe.


    Sansis, next. I hoped to just move the heat, but eventually I would have to quell it. A little used technique, since it was a damn sight harder to still thermally-agitated molecules than it was to agitate them in the first place.


    Ensis, last of all. To heal my mistakes, where I let the heat slip through, to repair my flesh even as it seared. Depending on how deep the leading edge of the firestorm was, there was a good chance that I wouldn¡¯t be able to shift or quell the heat fast enough to keep it off me.


    I didn¡¯t have a plan for what happened when I ran out of power. No plan beyond being burned to death, anyways.


    ¡®This has got to be one of the craziest things I¡¯ve ever done,¡¯ I thought to myself.


    It definitely made the top ten, that was for sure.


    I was running through burning ferns, the heat more than I could take unaided, the air searing. I shifted it the same way I would shift an offensive pulse of Sansis, felt the ground beneath my feet warming as I ran.


    A glance up showed the forest canopy as a carpet of flame. The trunks of the trees were slower to catch but I could hear, all around, the cracking of bark and the splitting of wood as the water within the trees flashed to steam.


    The ferns were blackening, curling in seconds as the fire raced across them. Motes of fire spiralled out of the smoke at me, twigs and leaves all burning, all caught in the fire-fuelling wind. I dodged to the side as a great bough tumbled from one of the trees above me, slamming into the earth in a spray of sparks.


    The flames roared.


    Up ahead I could see something huge and scaled thrashing between the trees ¨C one of Osha¡¯s native fauna, caught in the fire. Its squeals were simultaneously mighty and pathetic, all its size and strength belittled by the immensity of the firestorm. I could see the scorch marks on its green scaled hide, the charred ruin of one of its forelimbs.


    It would succumb to the heat in a moment, I knew. That it had lived this long was unlikely enough¡­


    I ran on.


    Here the tree trunks themselves were burning, flames wreathing the black bark. The canopy above was gone, burned to nothing, and ash lay thick across the ground. It was hotter here ¨C my boots smoked as I ran through the embers of the groundcover, and there was no more shifting Sansis into the ground ¨C I could have forced the issue with chaotic power but it was easier to quell the heat directly.


    Easier, but not by much.


    I was chewing through my reserve.


    The Oshan jungle was not a dry forest. It was a rainforest, the plants regularly watered by daily cloudbursts, the warm air heavy with moisture. Fires like the one raging around me did not occur here naturally ¨C and thus there was fuel in abundance.


    Worse, the moisture-heavy nature of the forest had slowed the wildfire, each plant having to dry out before it would combust. A slower advance meant a thicker front for me to run through. Already it seemed I had been inside this flaming, smoking hell for hours, though rationally I knew that it couldn¡¯t have been more than a few minutes¡­


    One of the trees ahead was a charred husk. Embers glowed on its surface, but no flames.


    Relief. I was pulling through.


    More dead and burned trees around me now, the smoke thick still but the air cooler. I went back to shifting heat around with Sansis.


    A few minutes later and I didn¡¯t need Sansis anymore. The air was clearing, the smoke thinning. I could see more dead trees ahead of me, burned black towers, standing stark against the sky. The haze that hung above them seemed to stretch for miles.


    A rocky rise a few hundred metres distant, its surface charred and adorned with the ruins of yet more trees. And beyond that¡­


    The glitter of distant flames. The fire was burning outward in a ring then, charring through the rainforest in an irregular circle, like a flame held to the centre of a map.


    I wondered, briefly, for how many hours or days it would burn for. These jungles stretched for thousands of miles after all, so there was plenty of fuel.


    Perhaps there would be a rainstorm. They were frequent enough here.


    I had slowed to a walk, breathing normally again without need for Bayis. The air tasted vile, but it had oxygen in it and that was all that was required.


    I took stock of myself.


    My bare arms were streaked with soot and ash. My jeans were near black with the same. The rubber soles of my boots were a mess of melt scars. The ends of my hair had burned away, and the reek of that was still very much present. Only Akeem and the scabbard that held it had remained untouched.


    I bent down, intending to reshape the soles of my boots with Bayis. A deformed sole could throw me in a fight, cause me to stumble at a critical moment. I didn¡¯t want that, and it was a comparatively modest expenditure of power¡­


    Something went over my head, too fast to see, the air torn violently in its passage.


    A split second later I heard the gunshot.


    I threw myself, sideways, into the shadow of one of the burnt trees.


    The next gunshot shattered the side of the trunk into glittering sticks of charcoal. I tucked my head down into the hollow of the roots.


    Esparatos.


    He¡¯d outthought me.


    And now he had me pinned down in a combat theatre that was squarely in his rifle sights, and from which every scrap of cover besides the trees had been burned away.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    I was, in a word, fucked.


    I could see it now. The scrape of stone on steel that he¡¯d let slip over the link, he¡¯d made that slip deliberately. It was obvious in hindsight. Lighting a fire with only the trickle of power that Danis afforded you was slow and tedious but still possible. You just focused the heat on a pile of kindling with Sansis and kept pouring it on until the wood caught. No way Esparatos would have risked tipping me off to his plan by using a proper tinderbox. And if he had wanted to use a proper tinderbox, he would have waited until he was done before contacting me.


    He¡¯d made the slip to so that I would get the timing wrong, assume that he had lit his fire and circled back around, whereas in reality he had lit his fire and stayed where he was. The rest of it, the use of Jakis, the whole conversation that followed, it had been to sell me on that single noise.


    I need to stop underestimating him.


    He knew me. He knew what I was like, knew what I would do. Had known that I would run through the flames rather than seek to flee them.


    And how many times had he told me that knowledge of the target was critical to a hunter¡¯s success?


    Of course, like the Jakis link, that also cut both ways. He might know me, but I knew him, knew him better than anyone still living.


    I knew, for instance, that Espartos was sitting on that rocky rise I¡¯d spied in the distance, lying down for a better shot, Laya in his hands in the form of a big, fifty-calibre sniper rifle. I knew he¡¯d be ready for my next move. He had me, could afford to wait for me to be impatient, for me to make that move¡­


    He probably already knew what it was.


    So maybe, instead of wondering about what he was doing or what he would do, I needed to think about what I would do. Think about it like I wasn¡¯t me.


    Then do something different.


    Well, what I wanted to do was go full-body Kasis and skim towards him with Turis-assisted speed. Zigzag through the trees, pit my skill with the disciplines against his with the rifle. Close with him.


    Kill him.


    But the Helena Rukh way of doing things hadn¡¯t got me very far against Esparatos. And those who are unable to change find themselves dying as the world changes around them.


    *             *             *


    To Esparatos, it looked like this:


    I came around the tree on the left side, feet powering at the earth. His bullet slammed into my head and I dropped with the force of the impact, then stood again. Darted left¡­


    My head came apart in burst of gore as the second round nailed me through the forehead, more force that I had power left to counter. My body flopped, limp, against the base of the tree.


    To be fair, it looked kind of similar to me. Only I knew I wasn¡¯t dead.


    I had used Illumis.


    It took a lot of power to make a realistic moving image ¨C mainly because moving images were impossible.  A disguise was one thing ¨C that was an alteration in the way photons interacted with your skin and clothes ¨C so the disguise moved as you did because in some sense, the disguise was you.


    A projected illusion of the kind I¡¯d thrown up was an alteration in the way photons interacted with the air. It was not something you could move like a marionette, unless you could reliably manipulate those air molecules, and you couldn¡¯t. But what you could do was drop the image and imprint another, slightly different one in its place. Do that rapidly enough, fifty times a second, maybe, and you could make a moving animation.


    The cost was staggering. It took nearly all the power I had left as I cast the two hundred or so separate illusions across several feet of space.


    A trick I¡¯d learned when still Dalarion¡¯s disciple, experimenting with my powers near the inexhaustible supply of energy offered by the House¡¯s chaos-rent. A trick only made possible from the thousands of hours of drawing lessons my father had imposed on me as a child, teaching me about imagery and perception and perspective all the other rules of the art.


    All this, for a few seconds of animated image, projected onto the air.


    Not something I¡¯d ever expected to use on a battlefield ¨C a momentary distraction was not worth such extravagant expenditure of power. Better to leave a disciple¡¯s experiments in the past where they belonged. Better to rely on the holy trinity of Turis, Kasis, and Ensis¡­


    Except this wasn¡¯t just a distraction. This was a deception, and like all deceptions it had to be utterly sold or it would be useless. A momentary suspicion on Esparatos¡¯s part would end me. His built-in caution might still end me.


    I¡¯d engaged Danis a few moments after his bullet had ripped my illusory head apart. Chaos taint vanished upon death. That was the weakness of the plan ¨C my taint lay on me and not on my illusion, and I had not been able to engage Danis until I had my last image up. Would Esparatos, even from two hundred metres away, have been able to distinguish that my taint was a few feet to the side of the illusory me? Would he think it odd that the taint had vanished a few seconds after he¡¯d vaporised my head with his rifle round rather than instantly?


    Would he drop a hammer of Sansis on this area, just to make sure?


    ¡®¡­but until we¡¯ve seen her body she is not dead. Even then, I would make sure.¡¯


    His words to Shas, what seemed like an aeon ago. But would he really be sure, if he dropped Sansis on my corpse from a distance? Would he not want to check up close?


    I lay there in the hollow of the burned tree, Danis engaged, breath held.


    No wash of Sansis flame swept across me.


    I breathed out slowly. He was coming to check on my body. Perhaps to take Akeem from its scabbard, to see if he could divine its properties for himself. He had always been curious about the blade.


    And I would sit here, hidden and still, and at the right moment I would strike.


    Another thought struck me:


    ¡°¡­its camouflage, its stillness, its timing, and its knowledge of its target¡­¡±


    A smile, unbidden, formed on my lips.


    Time to play the rock-fish.


    *             *             *


    If the run through the fire had felt like hours, lying in wait for Esparatos seemed to take forever. The adrenaline coursing through my veins prodded me to take action, to stand up and move, fight or flight. But if I moved I lost everything and so I waited, and I waited. The haze of the smoke-stained air hid the sun from view, making it hard to track the passage of time. Surely it should have darkened by now? Surely entire universes had been born and cooled to entropic darkness in the time since this had begun?


    I glanced, from time to time, at where the perfect image of my corpse lay upon the ground, maintained from moment to moment despite the shifting air currents by the trickle of power I ran into it. For all that this image had been birthed in my imagination, it still hurt to look at it.


    Helena Rukh, the Last Evil. Dead.


    I had come too close too many times in the last few days.


    Then, at last, footsteps.


    Soft, betrayed only by the crunching of ash underfoot. I focused on the sound, tracking the approach.


    A slow, even step¡­


    It occurred to me, the way things sometimes do in the midst of a high-pressure situation, that I had forgotten to make use of my carefully faked limp. I¡¯d discarded the idea once I¡¯d closed with Esparatos, discarded it without even¡­.


    ¡®Ah, Rukh,¡¯ said Esparatos from just out of my sightline, and for a panicked second I thought he had seen me. ¡®I find myself at quite a loss for¡­¡¯


    I couldn¡¯t go for him mid-strike, the way a rock-fish would. He had no target to strike at.


    Mid-sentence would have to do.


    I came up from the hollow and rolled around the tree, away from where my body seemed to lie, Akeem in my hands.


    He was standing there, looking down at the illusion, still talking to my apparent corpse.


    ¡®YES!¡¯ said the sword, exultant.


    I stepped forward without dropping Danis and rammed Akeem through his back, just as I¡¯d done to Idigan back on Altain.


    He spun¡­


    And I let go of Akeem¡¯s hilt and snatched at Laya, still a rifle in his hands, and I tore it from him, ripping my whole body around¡­


    Laya spun free to bounce across the ash-covered ground, metres distant.


    Yes!


    With that thing in his hands Esparatos was to be feared. But without it? Against me?


    He hadn¡¯t a chance.


    He tried to swing at me, but I stepped back and then kicked him flat with a Turis-assisted foot. He struggled to rise but my fist shattered the side of his beak and rammed his head back into the ashy earth.


    I took hold of his throat with one hand, pinning him, and then reached under his body for Akeem¡¯s hilt.


    He struck at me with the Turis-loaded heel of one hand, but I redirected the force into his neck and his choked and spluttered as his larynx was crushed flat. My fingers closed around the grip of my blade.


    I ripped it out of him, opening a great, bloody gash in his side from which his guts unspooled with liberal abandon. I stepped back from him as he desperately tried to gather them back in with one hand, Ensis already repairing the ruin of his neck.


    I severed his left arm with a brutal downwards cut.


    Akeem was laughing in my hands, white edge dripping red.


    I lowered it.


    I could read that he was done. He¡¯d mostly healed the wound where I¡¯d speared him through the back, but blood still flowed from where I¡¯d severed his arm, and his other hand was still busy trying to pack his guts back into his torn open abdomen.


    No need to drag this out any more.


    I stepped forward,, kicking him flat once more, one of my boots grinding his remaining hand into the earth.


    Placed Akeem¡¯s tip between his eyes. The sword wasn¡¯t laughing anymore.


    ¡®Kill him. Kill him kill him kill him¡­¡¯


    I ignored it.


    ¡®Well, Tollan,¡¯ I said, using his first name for the first time in a long while, ¡®I changed my mind.¡¯ I paused, taking a breath. ¡®Why?¡¯


    I kept my eyes on his limbs. One twitch and he was dead. By all rights I should¡¯ve killed him already, but for all that this was the War, I needed to know.


    Show no weakness¡­


    Only here, and now, with him inches from death, I felt I could. Stupid, by a dozen metrics, but somehow necessary. Somehow inevitable.


    ¡®You¡­ you didn¡¯t let¡­ let me finish¡­ my story.¡¯


    ¡®No,¡¯ I said, ¡®I didn¡¯t.¡¯


    He coughed, and blood poured from his mouth. Then, in a less broken voice, he said:


    ¡®My master, Cernukan, he¡­ he was not teaching me. Not properly. Because among Belian hunters it was common for the disciple to¡­ to¡­¡¯ His face was screwed up in pain.


    ¡®To kill their sensei?¡¯


    ¡®Yes.¡¯


    It made a depressing amount of sense, I guessed. I¡¯d run across similar things in mortal cultures before. It was the ultimate graduation, wasn¡¯t it? The closing of the circle. How could one better prove that they had surpassed their teacher than by killing them? Validation of one¡¯s own skills and a burying of the past, all together.


    ¡®A hunter needs worthy prey,¡¯ said Esparatos. ¡®Always, we search for worthy prey. Cernukan was worthy prey. To learn, what he wouldn¡¯t teach me I¡­ I trained alone. I¡­ I killed him.¡¯


    I shook my head. I could see where this was going, could see the shadow of my answer in his story. It made me feel old.


    ¡®Idigan¡­ he would have come for me, eventually. When he was¡­ ready.¡¯


    I said nothing.


    ¡®Cernukan is dead. But I still needed¡­ needed worthy prey. The War provided, so when you asked¡­¡¯


    I closed my eyes briefly. So he hadn¡¯t come for our friendship after all. I was trying to understand how I, of all people, could¡¯ve been quite so na?ve.


    ¡®Saw what you did. Who you became.¡¯


    The ache of his betrayal, of Exan¡¯s, of Trickster¡¯s, it was so strong that I thought for a moment it might overcome me. That I might sway and fall, heedless of the enemy that, while currently at my mercy was still, nonetheless a threat.


    ¡®Knew¡­ that one day I would¡­ would hunt you. Got to know you. Prepared. When Exan asked me to fight again¡­¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯ve heard enough,¡¯ I said, keeping the pain from my voice.


    ¡®Gave you a chance. Chance to come over¡­ to our side.¡¯


    I nearly killed him then and there. By his own admission, near enough, that so-called chance had been him throwing his conscience a bone rather than out of any real hope. As if he¡¯d ever really thought I¡¯d break my word. As if it wouldn¡¯t have invalidated his whole reason for betraying me if I had gone and done it.


    But I didn¡¯t kill him, not then. He still had something I wanted.


    ¡®So one more thing, Esparatos,¡¯ I said aloud. ¡®you owe me this much. Where is Trickster? Where are Sanjay and the others?¡¯


    For a moment I thought that he might deny me. I think he considered it.


    But then he closed his eyes for a moment and said ¡®Ilkan.¡¯


    Ilkan. So close I almost didn¡¯t believe it.


    ¡®And Exan? What¡¯s his plan, Esparatos? If you talk I¡¯ll¡­¡¯


    But he was shaking his head. In that shake I read it all. He was ready for death. It wasn¡¯t like he¡¯d even tried to use Ensis or go for me once last time¡­ and I was certain he had the power left to try. For Esparatos this was the end, the right end, to try and hunt something truly dangerous, and to fail. It was the end for which he had always been destined, and he¡¯d known that the same way I knew that my own end would come in single combat with someone tougher.


    Inevitable.


    I would get no more from him. He was too close to the brink to torture, and I wasn¡¯t sure, vulnerable as I was feeling, that I¡¯d have the stomach for it anyway.


    So I just shrugged.


    ¡®Nearly had you, Rukh. More than¡­ more than once. You got¡­got lucky.¡¯


    I nodded. ¡®Yes I did,¡¯ I told him, and slammed Akeem into his brain.


    The sword sighed with ecstasy. I nearly dropped it in disgust.


    But I pulled it free instead, and shook the blood from that smooth, bone-white surface. Slid it back into its scabbard.


    And then, though my reserves were almost empty and I had little power to spare, I stepped back and loosed that final burst of purifying Sansis flame. Respect and certainty, all in one.


    I watched the body burn for a while, deep in thought.


    And when Tollan Esparatos, one of my oldest and closest friends, was nothing more than another smear of ash in the ruin of a once great forest, I turned away.

 Chapter 14

    I did not head straight for the ways.


    Instead I wandered to where Laya had fallen in the ash ¨C no longer a rifle now but a spear instead. I could not recall if Esparatos had changed it to such before I¡¯d torn it from his grasp, or if it had simply reverted to this more elemental shape upon his death. Nor did I really care.


    Still, I hesitated before picking it up.


    It was entirely possible that Esparatos had built some kind of trap into the ima,  keyed it to his taint and his alone, so that if I or any other of my kind picked it up it would rebel ¨C perhaps animate and attempt to kill, or perhaps simply explode.


    I had good reason to be suspicious.


    I had no idea what would happen if someone other than me were to draw Akeem. I¡¯d never allowed it and it was impossible to test the sword¡¯s potential in this regard in any other way. But when I¡¯d made the sword, I¡¯d definitely tried to incorporate such a trap. Chaos was too unpredictable for me to know if my effort had succeeded but I was pretty sure something would occur.


    I smiled at the thought. Akeem had never spoken to anyone else, as far as I knew, but if someone were to get their hands on it that might change. Hence the trap ¨C the sword knew things, things I¡¯d never told a living soul.


    It was also a terrifying weapon in its own right, a weapon I trusted in no hands save my own.


    Do you really trust your own, Rukh? Remember the last time you used it? The last time you unleashed its full potential¡­


    I pushed the thought away. No point in dwelling on the past.


    Looked back down at Laya.


    There were only really three options. Leave it, pick it up, or try and destroy it. I wasn¡¯t really sure how to destroy it without picking it up, but I¡¯d always been good at breaking things. Still, that had its own risks.


    I could leave it¡­ but then Shas, when she next decided to check in with Esparatos, would no doubt find it. If it could be used by someone other than Esparatos, I didn¡¯t want it used against me¡­


    You used it in the War, remember?


    I did, but the thought was scant comfort. Yes, a couple of times I¡¯d borrowed it. The one that sprang to mind was when Esparatos had handed it to me, in rifle form, to take a shot he¡¯d been unable to take by virtue of being temporarily blind. I¡¯d used it, but it had been very much subservient to his will ¨C held in form by his wishes, not mine.


    Using an ima someone else had made was an uncomfortable experience anyway. It was intimate, invasive, a little like wearing their underwear.


    Knowing Esparatos, he might even have lent it to me so that the weapon could learn my taint, know my otherness and be prepared to destroy me¡­ would it not be so like him? To plan so ridiculously far in advance? To claim a posthumous victory at the very moment I thought my triumph complete?


    I shook my head, laughed to myself a little.


    It was all moot. I had already resolved to pick it up anyway.


    I took the shaft of the spear in my hand.


    Tensed.


    A few heartbeats passed ¨C I knew from ripping it from his grasp that any booby trap wouldn¡¯t activate on touch alone.


    The weapon remained still in my hand.


    ¡®What are you doing?¡¯ asked Akeem. ¡®You don¡¯t need that. If there¡¯s killing to do I will do the killing. I will bleed Reality white!¡¯


    ¡®Hush,¡¯ I said. ¡®I promise, you¡¯re still the only sword for me. For the moment anyways.¡¯


    As I held the spear I became aware of something else that should have in no way surprised me ¨C Laya was alive.


    Not alive in the sense that Akeem was alive. It wasn¡¯t going to start speaking to me or anything. But it had an awareness of the hand that held it, a concept of movement in the way it could change forms, and this did surprise me, it seemed to express a constant low-level warmth that I could only describe as love.


    I raised my eyebrows.


    The love, in this case, was directed toward me. Not for any reason beyond the fact that I was the one holding Laya at present ¨C I doubted it could distinguish me from Esparatos in any meaningful sense. But it was unconditional, genuine¡­


    Something, to be honest, I had never really expected to be on the receiving end of again.


    Laya, it seemed, had the soul of a hunting hound. Again, I wondered why I was even surprised. Esparatos had made it, and to the hunter a dog or a hawk was as much a weapon as a spear or gun.


    An effort of will and the spear became a blade of similar proportions to Akeem. Then a rifle again, then a shotgun, and a hunting knife and¡­


    ¡®Stop it,¡¯ said Akeem. It sounded even more petulant than usual.


    ¡®I told you,¡¯ I said, absently, ¡®there¡¯s no reason for you to be jealous.¡¯


    But I stopped playing, nonetheless. I left Laya in the form of a set of brass knuckles, and slipped it into the pocket of my jeans. It sat there quite contentedly, the way a dog would sit in front of a warm hearth.


    Shaking my head, I headed for the ways


    *             *             *


    Ilkan was a day¡¯s journey from Osha, assuming a stuck to the route. Add in the additional time it would take for the Faris-binding Esparatos had placed on me to wear off and to track down and find the others at the other end¡­


    A day and half, assuming they didn¡¯t move on.


    But they would, and from Ilkan I would have to track them to wherever else they¡¯d gone from there. I was already mentally sorting options.


    Only it wouldn¡¯t be a day and half. It would be longer, far longer. My fight with Esparatos had caused me to expend my most important resource ¨C chaotic power. The Illumis trick with which I¡¯d finished him had nearly emptied my reserves.


    Speaking frankly, I did not have enough left to face another of my kind in battle. Not with good odds, anyway. Drained as I was, I would be unable to use Ensis or Kasis in any meaningful way, have to rely to Turis alone if it came to blows. Not an option.


    I needed a chaos rent.


    Akeem could sense the lack as well.


    ¡®You need power Rukh. You need power so that you can make power, make force, wield me. Wield me, make power¡­ it¡¯s time to draw.¡¯


    The blade sounded eager. But it chaotic power was the only thing besides killing that ever got it excited.


    Not for the first time, I wished there was a way to put the bloody thing on mute.


    I had a few options with regards to chaos rents. On the one hand, they weren¡¯t exactly common, on the other the ways tended to emerge in their vicinity on those worlds that had them. A chaos rent was about as pleasant a landmark as a nuclear waste dump was, but it was also a fuel stop on the highway of infinity ¨C a place to recharge. The ways were built by my kind after all, and thus they went to places where my kind might want to go.


    The closest I knew of was on a world called Sebaria.


    A world that the Dark Pact had controlled all access to, back in the War¡­


    Exan will be using it as a supply depot. He must be.


    After all, it was usefully positioned. From the rent and the basalt fortress that protected it one could patrol the ways in several useful directions, reach several civilised worlds and support attacks deep into what had, back then, been considered Alliance territory. With the War back on, Exan would have to be an idiot not to have secured Sebaria¡­


    Is that where he¡¯s taken Mako?


    I dismissed that idea almost as soon as it formed. I knew where Exan would have made his headquarters, and it wasn¡¯t on Sebaria. It was too short a journey from Sebaria to the House itself.


    I thought back to the last time I been back at that grim, black fortification. I¡¯d brought a thousand imaski through the ways to relieve it from Alliance assault. Saskia Delmarchos, six disciples and the full might of the mortal kingdoms that they¡¯d rallied against us. Sebaria had been Desikim¡¯s responsibility and she¡¯d fucked it up, mismanaged our local forces so badly that¡­


    I tore my mind from the reminiscence.


    Going to Sebaria would add another day and a half to my journey, longer if Exan had left some sort of defences in place. The next closest chaos rent would add four days, enough that I might as well head direct to the House after that rather than try and catch Sanjay and the others.


    Not that Trickster, if she really was observing them, would let them get there alive. She only needed a free shot with Sansis against Sanjay and the others would be easy meat. And that was without any of the ¡°new abilities¡± I¡¯d heard Esparatos reference in his conversation with Shas.


    But if Basalt Tower, the fortress that protected Sebaria¡¯s chaos rent, was once again occupied¡­


    I shook my head. I was thinking out objections but, as with my decision to pick up Laya, I had already made it. I was confident in my abilities ¨C if I couldn¡¯t reach the rent I could at least reconnoitre the area, gather some useful intelligence.


    Assuming I didn¡¯t get killed of course.


    And, if I was honest, another hope was building within me.


    We¡¯d never really abandoned Basalt Tower. The Dark Pact¡¯s dissolution and the end of the War had meant that we hadn¡¯t maintained it, but it had been defended by a garrison of imaski, not human soldiers.


    There was every chance that they were still there. A couple of hundred of them, at least.


    With a few exceptions, I¡¯d freed the imaski from my service at the end of the War, sent them off to do as they wished. To enjoy the peace, if they could. No doubt some were roaming in the furthest reaches of Reality, an unfathomable distance away.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    Some, however, had stuck to their old haunts. It was what they knew.


    And if I was Exan¡­


    Well, if I was Exan and exulting in my new role as a lying, treacherous bastard, I would want to use the imaski. I would tell them that their mistress was dead, that the Alliance had killed her, and that we were going to War as a matter of revenge. Then I¡¯d quietly be trying to scrub me out to make the lie unassailable. After all, if I was Exan I wouldn¡¯t see much hope for victory without the imaski on my side.


    Certainly I would see very little hope with them against me.


    Of course, I wasn¡¯t Exan. If I had been, then that Sansis ambush on Altain would¡¯ve been directed at one Helena Rukh rather than at Isande, and solved my biggest problem in one fell swoop. But he hadn¡¯t done that, perhaps because he¡¯d wanted recognition for his deeds, perhaps because he¡¯d held out hope that I would swoon and fall into his arms and throw away everything to be his consort. Perhaps he¡¯d even been telling the truth when he¡¯d said that he¡¯d loved me.


    Perhaps he was playing some deeper game.


    But the truth was, if I called then the imaski would come. And while I anticipated a few questions about our dramatic shift in objectives, I didn¡¯t doubt that¡­


    Only I did doubt. How could I not, after Exan and Trickster and Esparatos?


    They are loyal, I told myself.


    But it had been a long time.


    Either way, a journey to Basalt Tower handed me an opportunity to find out. Either there would be some imaski would be there, or they wouldn¡¯t be. If they were, there was every chance they were on Exan¡¯s team and thinking I was dead. There was an outside chance they had betrayed me, but if that was the case better I found out sooner rather than later and got a look at the size of the problem.


    And if they aren¡¯t there? If they¡¯ve gone off out into Reality?


    Well, Basalt Tower wasn¡¯t the only place where imaski might be found. After I dealt with my more immediate concerns, gathering those of them that I could would probably be the most effective means of prosecuting the war against Exan. Certainly if he¡¯d gone where I thought he¡¯d gone some help wouldn¡¯t go amiss.


    More importantly, if there weren¡¯t any imaski at Basalt Tower, I would get a good look at whoever else Exan had left to garrison the place.


    And have all the fun of sneaking past them to the rent¡­


    But that was a problem for later. If, indeed, it was a problem at all.


    *             *             *


    In the end, it took me a little more than a day to reach Sebaria.


    My less-than-ideal travel pace was due to the healthy amount of caution I was deploying. If Basalt Tower was once again a forward base for the Dark Pact then there might be patrols of some sort across the nearby ways, or static surveillance of the kind that Idigan Rodrisantos had been so wonderfully incompetent at back on Curia.


    I couldn¡¯t take any chances. True, the longer it took me to catch up with Sanjay and the others the worse things looked for them, but it was going to be of no help to anybody if someone fried me from ambush with Sansis because I was not being careful enough.


    Losing Sanjay¡¯s group was a loss I was prepared to accept. My own loss?


    Not so much.


    I made one brief stop on Chuan, a world with luscious green grass and hot streams as clear as crystal. I had a blissful hour in that water to wash away the ash and filth I¡¯d brought with me from Osha, and then it was back on the trail in wet clothing.


    In another time I might have repaired the tears in my jeans with Bayis, forced the filth from the weave by power alone, or at least used Sansis warmth to dry myself off in the aftermath of my swim. But I afforded myself no such excess. The smidge of power I had remaining had to be carefully hoarded.


    I could afford vanity no more than I could afford undue haste. Either would kill me.


    Eventually though, Sebaria.


    I emerged from the way near the rim of a great caldera. Black mountains stretched off into the distance like the spine of some enormous beast. Molten fire plumed in the distance. It was night, but the hollows of the peaks glowed with up-cast light. The caldera I stood near was dead, no lava cauldroning within, but the air scorched at my lungs nonetheless and struck against my recent memories of fire.


    I turned around.


    Behind me, rising just beyond the caldera¡¯s far side, was the squat, ugly shape of Basalt Tower. Tall, black, and forbidding, hewn from rough volcanic stone. I saw no light at its arrow slits, but that, alone, meant nothing.


    A road wove along the ridgeline towards it.


    I paused.


    Now that I was here, beneath the eyes of that fortress, I wondered if this was such a good idea. There was no cover around me, no way to approach unseen. If there was anyone up there¡­


    But then, there was no cover for them to ambush me from, either. At the very least I would see them coming.


    And have to run back towards the transition offworld without a shred of dignity.


    Well, yes. That would be exactly what I¡¯d do. Dignity was for those with the power to spend on it.


    But the truth was...


    ¡®I can feel the rent,¡¯ said Akeem. ¡®Let¡¯s go draw. Draw and kill and draw and kill and draw me and with me¡­¡¯


    The truth was that I needed to refill my reserves. The truth was, the other options meant abandoning the trail and leaving Sanjay and his little band to their fate, or¡­


    ¡­or doing something I had once promised myself I would never again do.


    But you didn¡¯t promise, Rukh. Not aloud. Because you knew that one day¡­


    I crushed the thought. Tried to bury it beneath happier ideas, like the one where Basalt Tower was in the hands of loyal imaski, just as I had left it.


    I stepped forward, following the road.


    No alarms went up that I could hear, no beacons flared to life on the battlements of Basalt Tower. No army poured across the ground to meet me.


    I kept going.


    And, before I was halfway there, I stopped again.


    There was a figure sitting cross legged by the side of the road a hundred metres or so ahead, a figure tending to a small fire on which hung a small pot of¡­


    When did I last eat?


    Not for days, I realised, belatedly. Not since the meal Sanjay had cooked by the lake on Sandim. I had been sustaining myself on chaotic power alone ¨C not a hugely expensive use but hardly a good idea either.


    Suddenly, I was ravenous.


    I sensed no chaos taint from whoever it was. That by itself didn¡¯t mean anything ¨C Danis could bait craftier traps than simple ambush ¨C but Sebaria was a populated world. Of course, what a mortal was doing up here among these fire-spewing peaks¡­


    Somehow, without realising it, I had started walking towards the fire.


    It is a depressing fact about all sentient life, even those raised to the power, that we never really escape our animal instincts. We sate them, bury them deep under the sheer lack of scarcity afforded by technology or chaotic energy or whatever, but when we forget about them they bite and they bite hard. It was easy to forget how much I relied on my powers ¨C a thin trickle of background energy, barely enough to register but constantly there - to keep me fed and watered and energised, to keep my menstrual cycle firmly switched off, to substitute for sleep, to kill cancers that formed in the blood when I walked through a world with high background radiation, to maintain myself at all times at peak efficiency¡­


    I had switched it all off to conserve power, and now I was hungry and I was thirsty and I was tired from the long walk without proper sleep or rest and the smell of the stew rising from the pot above the fire was incredible.


    The figure turned around as I approached, turned a little too quickly, and three inches of Akeem¡¯s white blade was out of the scabbard before I¡¯d even thought about it.


    ¡®Yes!¡¯ said the sword, exultant. ¡®Kill him!¡¯


    It had been going on about killing him for some time, I realised. Perhaps before I¡¯d even noticed him.


    You¡¯re slipping, Rukh. Not paying attention.


    Lack of sleep will do that of course. I had forgotten.


    The ¡°him¡± that Akeem was on about was an old man, probably somewhere in his sixties or his seventies if I was any judge. He had several days growth of stubble on his chin and was bundled up in a heavy cloak despite the warmth of the surrounding air.


    His eyes were wide as he looked at the sword.


    I slid it back into the scabbard and took my hand off the hilt.


    ¡®You turned a little too quickly,¡¯ I said to him. ¡®And I am, in some things, quite a cautious woman.¡¯


    He let out a slow breath.


    Be welcome at my fire, traveller,¡¯ he said, and gestured to the ground across from him. His hand trembled as he did so.


    I hid my surprise. The usual reaction to armed strangers was not to invite them to the fire. But then, customs might have changed on Sebaria since my last visit.


    It had been a while, after all.


    Ignoring Akeem¡¯s protests I went over to where the old man was pointing, and half-sat across from him, my legs in a figure-four position, my hand resting on the ground. Easy to explode to your feet from there, easy to get up and fight if it became suddenly and unavoidably necessary, which it sometimes did.


    I wasn¡¯t too worried though. The seat put both the old man and the fortress in the distance firmly in my sights. And even without power, I was pretty sure I could take one unarmed old man.


    He stirred the stew for a while longer, the black travelling pot that held it swinging from side to side above the flames. Then he rummaged in the pack next to him and produced a bowl, and a moment later he was proffering me a bowl of stew and a hunk of stale bread.


    I have received many tributes in my time. I would have, in that moment, traded the stew for none of them.


    Well, not for any of the ones without tangible military value, in any case.


    I ate it quickly, stealing just enough heat from it with Sansis so as not to burn myself. The old man sat there, watching me eat, clearly fearful.


    It was greasy, and I couldn¡¯t identify the meat in it, but it tasted like heaven come to Earth all the same. Most things do, when you haven¡¯t eaten for so many days


    When I finished and past him back the bowl, I saw that the pot that hung from the fire was empty but for a few scrapings. I¡¯d eaten his entire dinner, it seemed.


    I was quite incapable of feeling bad about it. Instead I wondered if I would, had he been less welcoming, have taken his dinner from him by force.


    Well, no. But only because the treaty would have prevented me.


    ¡®Are you a goddess?¡¯ he asked, all of a sudden. His voice was too loud in the emptiness of the mountain air, and he flinched at the awkwardness of the question.


    To me, on the other hand, a few things were beginning to make sense.


    ¡®I have been called so,¡¯ I told him. ¡®Why do you ask?¡¯


    But he¡¯d gone pale, and I knew he had heard only my answer and not my question. ¡®Have¡­ have you¡­. Have you come for me?¡¯ He swallowed.


    Ah. Well, no need to ask what I am supposed to be the goddess of.


    ¡®You didn¡¯t answer my question,¡¯ I said, settling back. ¡®Why do you ask me these things?¡¯


    I could practically smell the fear now. ¡®It is said that Death herself walks these hills. That she is known to take the guise of a woman. That this woman has black skin¡­ and carries a white blade.¡¯


    I laughed.


    This was Desikim¡¯s work.


    She¡¯d always been in to all that mortal mysticism and mumbo-jumbo. She¡¯d been fascinated by religions and the way they were structured and especially for their potential as a means of control. Her end vision of the Dark Pact¡¯s pan-dimensional empire had been one where the five of us were worshipped as gods.


    On some worlds, no doubt, we still were.


    Of course, the Alliance had countered with the same measures, cast us as antagonist figures wherever they could. Mortal hearts and minds had been critical to the war effort. For all that they couldn¡¯t travel from world to world there were just so fucking many of them.


    Religion, mysticism and prophecy had played their part in mobilising that multitude. For both sides.


    On Uriban we¡¯d set up the Cult of Rukh. One of Desikim¡¯s early experiments, mortal followers we could appear to no matter how long had passed and have their instant service. The statues and the secrecy made it hard for another of our kind to turn the instrument against us, and the comparatively liberal religious environment of Uriban had meant the Cult¡¯s persecution or elimination were themselves unlikely


    But there had been other models. Desikim had subverted existing myth wherever she could, folding us into different pantheons. And she had had responsibility for Sebaria. I could imagine what she¡¯d gone for¡­


    I was usually the goddess of death, or just Death. Sometimes I was the goddess of personal combat, or the straight up queen of the gods. Exan was more commonly the god of war, Esparatos of the hunt or the sky or whatever, and Desikim herself a goddess of secrets and magic. Trickster usually rounded off the pantheon as the goddess of lies and deception.


    Not that she ever used our names. The details were deliberately vague. A black woman with a white sword was a good example. An identity I could, if I chose, confirm or deny.


    Or neither.


    ¡®It is likely your legend refers to me,¡¯ I told the old man. ¡®As for whether or not I am a goddess¡­ well, I have been called such. Certainly I have been death for many.


    I drew the heat out of the fire with Sansis and dumped it into the ground, and the flames went instantly dark. The old man was a trembling silhouette on the other side of the embers.


    ¡®But I am not here for you,¡¯ I said. ¡®I am pleased with the offering you have made to me, humble though it was. If you do me further service, then my regard shall pass from you and this will be no more than a tale you tell to other travellers that you meet upon the road.¡¯


    No lies. Even to a mortal, my word was still as iron. But his preconceptions, the sudden darkness I had enforced with Sansis, and whatever inertia Desikim¡¯s propaganda had planted in my absence would sell the deception nonetheless.


    Not, of course, that it was entirely a deception. I had never claimed to be a goddess. But to a mortal, I might as well have been.


    ¡®What¡­ what would you ask of me, my lady?¡¯


    I pushed some heat back into the fire, enough to make the embers splutter into life once more, and pointed past him, at the fortress.


    ¡®Tell me everything you know about that place. Tell me why you are here upon this road.¡¯


    To his credit he did not ask me what business a goddess had with such prosaic questions. He simply started talking.


    It turned out, once I got through the grovelling and the stumbling, that the old man was up here because fragments of precious metals and stones could be found in the dirt up near the craters. Apparently, there was a thriving scavenger community making use of all these old mountain roads ¨C there was even a town a scant twenty miles away from where we currently sat. The old man was a such a scavenger, and though he had had no luck on this trip apparently he was lucky enough to make a living. He went into this, in fact. In some detail.


    It came to me that in the old days, I would probably have killed him at this point out of sheer boredom. Perhaps my time on Sansara with Eli and the others had changed me more than I thought.


    Not enough that I saved them from their fate, obviously¡­


    Only I might have done, I realised. Not because I placed a huge value on the brief, transient lives of mortal beings, but because I placed some value. I always had. It was just that I valued many other things higher. But I would probably, with three chaos rents right there, have made them water using Bayis.


    I just hadn¡¯t wanted to because of where that path would have led. It would have been water first, then other things, and before I knew it they would have been utterly dependent on me and I would have been their leader in all but name.


    Not a path I had wanted to walk. And then Isande had shown up and rendered the whole question moot.


    I wondered, belatedly, if their wells had stopped making water yet. If they had begun, as Eli had feared, to die of thirst.


    ¡®Enough,¡¯ I said, and he went instantly silent. ¡®That is only half the question, and you have more than answered it.¡¯ I pointed at the fortress again. ¡®Tell me of that place.¡¯


    And, after a short pause, he did.

 Chapter 15

    Basalt Tower was a ruin.


    I saw the marks as I got closer. Walls that had withstood the combined might of the Alliance were now rent and blasted, in places melted to slag. Fissures marred the courtyard within, fissures that were now cool but which had, in the not so distant past, vomited lava up through the structure even as the earth trembled and the tower¡¯s stones were shaken into dust.


    Sansis.


    It wouldn¡¯t have taken all that much power. Redirecting heat wasn¡¯t that difficult. Redirecting enough of it to shatter the defences we¡¯d built into the volcano below would have been difficult, had the attackers not known the secrets of how those defences had been built. Had they not known where the secret knots of vulnerability were that could bring the whole thing down¡­


    We¡¯d set said defences up such that we could collapse them in the event of an Alliance victory. Not to bury our own it what was ostensibly peacetime.


    The eruption had been weeks ago, I¡¯d learned that much from the old man. A paltry thing in volcanic terms, barely worth mentioning on a world like Sebaria. Normally such an eruption might have meant an investigation by the nearby town, perhaps an expedition to the tower to see what remained. But not this time. Not when the noise of terrible, ungodly battle had echoed down from the fortress both before and after the event. No, the locals had left well enough alone.


    Until ten days ago, anyways. Then, lured by the thought of what might be found in the ruins of the fortress, a small party of investigators had headed up for a look.


    They had not returned.


    The imaski who had lived in Basalt Tower had been known by the townsfolk. While most had believed them demons, that hadn¡¯t stopped a trickle of trade flowing between the two settlements. Whatever neighbourly goodwill had been built up, however, it had vanished with that one missing party of would be investigators.


    Would be looters, is more like it.


    I stood on the cracked stones of the castle courtyard. It was quite cool, no sign of heat nor flame, only an indifferent, still-settling ash. I stood there with my hands clenched into fists of impotent rage as I beheld what lay before me.


    Spikes.


    Spikes and the people spitted on them.


    Not many. But then not many would have survived the eruption. They¡¯d had no defence, of course, not without someone raised to the power there to sense the approaching danger. These nine must have been the lucky ones.


    Or the unlucky ones, hoisted as they were upon the shafts of black, pitted metal that grew, tumour-like from the broken stonework of the courtyard. Nine of my imaski, hanging there like obscene fruit upon nightmarish trees, like bugs pinned to paper.


    I knew their names. I knew all their names.


    Osrim, Takash, Queli, Palan,Cai, Dunumir, Fulrim, Angdarian, Ushral¡­


    Nor as I looked upon the dead was it their imaski faces I beheld, but rather the human ones that lay behind the mask-like chitin of their exoskeletons, hidden by time and change and death. I saw in my mind¡¯s eye the varying shades of their mortal selves, each pale with death, and I felt the blood trickle from where my nails met my palms.


    I was a thrice-damned fool.


    The imaski were loyal. Everyone knew this. Everyone. It followed, therefore, that if you moved against the Last Evil you moved against the imaski as well. And why wait for those two parties to be joined? Why wait for the imaski to scatter across worlds and ways, resuming the kind of bloody, small group guerrilla warfare at which they so excelled?


    Why not drop the hammer on them while they were concentrated?


    I felt, unbidden, the pressure of tears behind my eyes.


    I could not swear vengeance, for vengeance was already sworn. I could not console myself with the thought that there were more imaski in the multiverse than had been here on Sebaria, for I had no way of knowing the fate of these groups either. There were no heavens for me to rage against, for I was a being of chaotic power and thus recognised no gods.


    Thus I was denied even the small comforts of impotence. I could only stare at the nine corpses, and rage, and hate¡­


    And then, unbelievably, one of the corpses opened its eyes.


    ¡®B¡­boss? Is¡­ is that¡­¡¯


    It was Queli. She was still alive.


    I stepped forward instantly. The spike through her body went in through the abdomen and up and out through her back. For an imaski that was not usually a fatal wound, not if it had missed the main cluster of organs on the way in. Imaski couldn¡¯t use Ensis any more than any other mortal, but they had a natural healing factor, and they could function while severely damaged. If you wanted to kill one it was best to ensure that you killed them outright.


    ¡®Boss¡­ it¡­ it was¡­¡¯


    I stopped. I was tempted to tell her to shut up, to conserve her strength until I had her off the spike. But that would have been the path of a fool. I needed to know what had happened far more than I needed a single imaski.


    The ruthless mathematics of war.


    ¡®¡­Ex¡­Exan. He broke the mountain open¡­ could¡­ couldn¡¯t stop him.¡¯


    She coughed, and green ichor vomited from her mouth, splashing down over the cracked chitin of her chest.


    ¡®I¡­¡¯


    Exan.


    I mean, I wasn¡¯t an idiot. I¡¯d known. But the confirmation stoked the rage within me nonetheless.


    ¡®He came alone?¡¯


    ¡®N¡­No. Had¡­ had an army. Disciples. Some¡­ some white¡­ white things. They served him.¡¯


    ¡®White things?¡¯


    She shuddered violently on the spike. ¡®Mortal¡­ maybe. Don¡¯t¡­ don¡¯t know. Hadn¡¯t seen¡­¡¯


    I closed my eyes briefly. ¡®All right, soldier,¡¯ I told her. ¡®That¡¯s enough.¡¯


    I stepped forward to examine the spike.


    The damage to the chitin was almost irrelevant. It caused then no pain when it was breached, was more like living armour than skin. You could patch it with glue and resin or anything else you had to hand, and it would grow back into place in a matter of weeks. The torso cavity beyond was filled with green ichor, organs suspended within on filaments of muscle. A breach did not cause all the ichor to flow out, because it was a thick, viscous substance and clotted almost instantly upon contact with the air. Thus piercing wounds were only really a concern if they hit an organ, and were just as likely to push these vital tissue structures aside as they were to tear into them.


    The spike through Queli¡¯s body had entered below the main cluster of organs, and from what I knew of imaski anatomy ¨C which was literally everything ¨C would have pushed them up out of the way. No doubt a dozen things would have been torn and rent by the passage of the spike through her body, but in the weeks since the attack her natural healing factor would have taken care of the damage. Indeed, now that I looked, I could see how the chitin had sealed itself around the spike¡­


    They were sloppy, I thought, with a certain grim satisfaction.


    Each of the others was nailed right through his or her heart. I glanced round at the other eight corpses, each hanging limp. It took precision to kill an imaski, precision that had been lacking in Queli¡¯s case.


    Of course, ripping the spike out or lifting her off it would be as bad as shoving it in in the first place had been. I needed to sever the spike above where it came out of her back, and then below. Take it out piece by piece, use Bayis to fill the cavity with ichor, to seal up the breaches in the chitin¡­This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    All of which would take power.


    ¡®Hang tight,¡¯ I told her, and headed for the rent.


    *             *             *


    The access down to the rent was a stone stair down the insides of a great chasm ¨C not a new fissure, this, but the split in the earth around which Basalt Tower had been built. From the ground floor of the ruined keep it led down, deep into the bowels of the earth.


    It had been cleared of rubble. I was unsurprised. It was only sense. Exan and his disciples would have wanted to recharge their stores of chaotic power before leaving Sebaria. Of course, they might have tried to bury the rent behind them but why bother?


    To deny the ground, Rukh, I told myself. They are not holding the fortress themselves, so why not deny it to the Alliance?


    Yeah, but burying the rent wouldn¡¯t do that. It would only be a problem for people who were dry or nearly dry, like me. If the Alliance came here to set up a base of some sort, they would come with power to spare.


    From its place at my hip, Akeem was continuing its endless, psychotic litany. ¡®¡­draw me, use me, draw power, kill, kill, kill¡­¡¯


    The thought occurred to me that there were other ways to deny the ground. If Exan didn¡¯t want to reoccupy Sebaria himself, he could always have blown the rent. Fed his own chaotic energies back into it, causing it to widen. Continued the process until the rent got too large, until the chaos radiating from it was enough to crumble the stuff of Reality at its borders, causing it to grow on its own¡­


    Used Faris to flee through the ways while chaos devoured the planet behind him.


    Why hadn¡¯t he?


    In that moment I imagined Isande¡¯s expression if I¡¯d asked her that question. The indignation Sanjay or Carmen would have expressed in response, the shocked, slackening of Cass¡¯s jaw¡­


    Because such things were unconscionable. Worse than genocide whilst encompassing all the same evils.


    Only Exan didn¡¯t think that way. He ascribed even less value to mortal life than I did, and that was saying something. Certainly, he had no sentimental attachments to Sebaria as a place¡­


    Perhaps it was the permanence of the decision that had stayed his hand. Perhaps he saw some use for the place as a waypoint in future. Perhaps the ¡°white things¡± Queli had mentioned had been prepared for guerrilla warfare against the Alliance, and even now lurked in the mountains around Basalt Tower.


    I knew of no mortal races upon this world beyond the people in the valley below, but that did not mean that there weren¡¯t any.


    Perhaps he simply hadn¡¯t thought of it.


    ¡®Lets do it,¡¯ said Akeem, as the stairs bottomed out and I reached the rocky floor of the chasm. ¡®Let¡¯s end it. End this world!¡¯


    I ignored the blade, as was my want.


    The rent glowed ahead of me, pulsing with tendrils of multicoloured light. I stepped up to it.


    Drew.


    At my hip, Akeem sighed with ecstasy, and it was all I could do not to echo him.


    The chaos of the rent roiled in response to my touch. Snaking tendrils reached for me.


    I stepped around them. Stumbled a moment.


    I was weakened. Reliant on mortal sleep and food and all the constraints of the powerless, a consequence of my conservation of power. In worse shape, in fact, that when Isande had been taking me to the House. I should have prepared myself better before stepping close, but my haste to rectify my loss had betrayed me. My concentration was frayed, the demands of my flesh screaming for attention¡­


    Chaos poured into me. It poured too fast and too hungrily and it took all my will to struggle with it and for a moment¡­


    For a moment I was back on Ashmar.


    My first time.


    It had been after that battle against Lord Tirik. A worthy opponent then, though he would have seemed less than an insect to me now. I had been separated from my forces, wandering alone through the edge of the broken mountains¡­.


    Harsh, volcanic terrain, not dissimilar to this part of Sebaria.


    The rent had been nestled atop a high plateau, one I¡¯d climbed in an attempt to get a better view of the land. I¡¯d seen it, wondered what it was, marked at how the rip in the stone was only wallpaper around the rear in very fabric of the world itself¡­


    A tear in Reality, though I had not known what that meant.


    To this day I do not know why I stepped up to it. But I did, and I felt the power reach for me, and it seemed the most naturally thing in the world to attempt to force it to my will. I wrestled with it, felt it scorch me, flesh and soul, felt it seep into the being of what I was and it was all I could do to hold myself together and then¡­


    Then I had been waking up in the House under Dalarion¡¯s care. Neither he nor I knew how long I had stood there, how long I had wrestled with raw chaos before I won.


    A natural binding. No teacher to guide my way, to even let me know it was possible.


    Unheard of.


    And that had been my mortal self, a self without training in the disciplines, one who had not before faced and drawn from a rent, one untempered by the crucible of cosmic warfare and the black abyss of time that had passed since that day.


    No matter how little power I had left, I would never again be that powerless.


    And, beside the challenge of that ascension, drawing from the rent before me while a little tired and out of sorts was nothing.


    I seized the power before me with a surge of will, dispelled the tendrils that reached for my physical form, and drew.


    ¡®Yes,¡¯ hissed Akeem, from his place at my hip.


    As always, I had no idea how long it took. But when I stepped away, I was once again replete with the primal energy of chaos.


    I started up that tiny trickle of power that maintained my physical form, wiped away some of the aches and pains of the last few days with judicious application of Ensis, and headed for the stairs.


    *             *             *


    Queli was still alive.


    ¡®I am going to try and cut through the spike,¡¯ I told her. ¡®Most likely, you will fall. I will attempt to ensure that the landing does not jar too much, but you must be prepared for some pain.¡¯


    A black smile split the imaski¡¯s face. ¡®Always¡­ prepared, boss. Always.¡¯


    Atta girl.


    I took Laya from my pocket and slipped its brass knuckles shape over my fingers. Akeem sulked at my hip, muttering its insane disapproval, but I ignored it.


    As before, I felt a surge of warmth from the ima as I took hold of it. Formed it, with an effort of will, into a hacksaw.


    I had no idea how deep Laya¡¯s reserve was, but it had been with me when I¡¯d drawn from the rent and changing its form was bound to be a lot easier that creating rifle rounds and accelerating them with kinetic force. No doubt it had power to spare.


    Laya¡¯s edge bit into the spike, a few inches above where it protruded from Queli¡¯s back.


    ¡®Hang tight, soldier,¡¯ I said, and began sawing.


    Screech as the Laya-hacksaw chewed through the metal.


    Screech.


    As I worked, my eyes fell, unbidden, on the nearest of Queli¡¯s slaughtered companions. It was Osrim. The spike had been rammed through his torso in a similar manner as it had through Queli¡¯s. He was quite dead though, skull partially caved in, chestplate burst open by the passage of the spike. He hung limp and¡­


    ¡­skull partially caved in?


    Screech.


    Why had his skull been caved in? A glance around showed that none of the others had suffered such an injury. A blow he¡¯d taken in the battle? Had he been dead when they¡¯d impaled him?


    No. Look at the spike, Rukh¡­


    Screech.


    I looked. I looked at the angle. Looked at how Osrim¡¯s body hung. The impalement hadn¡¯t killed him outright either. So they¡¯d smashed his skull to finish the job.


    Which begged the question¡­ why not Queli¡¯s?


    Screech.


    Because they¡¯d missed her? They¡¯d not checked?


    It was possible.


    Screech.


    Or maybe they¡¯d thought I might be coming by. Sebaria was the closest stronghold to the House where imaski might be found. Maybe they¡¯d thought my first move would be to surround myself once again in black-armoured loyalty. So they¡¯d left Queli alive, as bait. Bait to draw me here.


    Screech.


    My eyes scanned my surroundings. No sign of any trap.


    And wouldn¡¯t two impaled imaski have been better bait than one?


    Clink.


    I glanced down. Laya¡¯s sawblade was several inches deep into the spike, and had just crunched through something that wasn¡¯t steel. Something that sounded like¡­


    ¡­like glass.


    Oh fuuuuuuuck¡­


    I snatched the saw up out of the gully it had made even as the metal came apart in multicoloured dust. A tendril of chaos, reaching, grabbing¡­


    I leapt back, knowing that if Laya hadn¡¯t been an ima it would have dissolved too, along with most of my arm and quite possible all of the rest of me. The spike was shredding apart into petals of random, kalaedescopic colour, Queli¡¯s skin was bubbling and mutating, here a burst of flame, here a sudden spray of feathers¡­


    Her face bore a look of almost comical surprise.


    I turned on my heels, and I ran.


    An abhorrence bomb. A fucking abhorrence bomb.


    Trickster had made the first of the Dark Pact¡¯s abhorrences during the War, but it had not been the first ever made. The knowledge had been around for a long time ¨C making one was hard bloody work and beyond dangerous, but it wasn¡¯t complicated.


    You used Akisis to bind a filament of chaos inside a filament of glass in such a way that when the glass broke, the chaos was released. Then you did it again, and again, and again, and when you had a couple of hundred filaments of glass you bound them together and slapped a prosaic detonator on the whole mess.


    When an abhorrence went off, the resulting blast of chaotic energy would do two things ¨C one, it would most likely blow a hole in the fabric of Reality, birthing a new rent. Two, the resultant unleashing of chaotic radiation would destroy just about everything in a several mile radius.


    Everything. Mortal and otherwise.


    I¡¯d not detonated one, I¡¯d just sawed into it with a hacksaw, unleashing a single filament. But that filament of raw chaos would warp and twist anything around it, and most likely set of a cascade that would trigger the whole device.


    I had seconds, likely less.


    Queli had indeed been bait in a trap. Osrim had been killed not because he wasn¡¯t needed, but because they¡¯d wanted me to cut into the correct spike¡­


    I sprinted out of the courtyard, Turis-assisted feet smashing the broken flagstones. I heard Queli¡¯s cry of loss behind me but she was gone anyway, half-twisted into a gibbering nightmare, and staying to rescue whatever she had become would have killed us both.


    Not to mention the fact that I had just had a harsh reminder of the price of sentiment.


    The air slammed hard against me as I accelerated. I heard the pop behind me as more filaments gave way, felt the surge of chaotic power at my back the way a mortal feels the sudden heat of the sun coming free of cloud.


    I was almost back at the ridge when it went off for real.


    A sudden, silent implosion. The swooping drop in the pit of my stomach as I felt all reason drop out of the world.


    I had to turn back to look.


    The rushing column of multicoloured light¡­


    A thunderous explosion, as though the fist of some immense God had slammed into the earth.


    Basalt Tower collapsed into multicoloured dust, as did the ridge beneath it, and the lava that plumed from the suddenly-opened volcano, and the ground around it¡­


    And in their place, chaos.


    Detonating an abhorrence was bad enough. Detonating one right on top of an already existing rent was a sure-fire way to destroy an entire world. The proof of that was right there in the rapidly accelerating wavefront of crumbling Reality that was even now sweeping towards me.


    Denial of the ground indeed.


    At my hip Akeem was cackling with glee. ¡®Knew you¡¯d do it! Knew you¡¯d end it!¡¯ The blade paused, suddenly. ¡®Shouldn¡¯t you be running though?¡¯


    ¡®Yeah,¡¯ I said. ¡®I probably should be.¡¯


    And, so saying, I turned again and sprinted for the nearest way on Turis-assisted feet.