The Blade Bearers (Blade and Bone Book 6), page 18
It took another step forward and trampled on his other leg.
He cried out again. Blood stained his pants where the talisman had crushed his legs. She didn’t think the talisman was all that heavy, but whatever it was doing seemed to hurt.
Lily smiled sadly. “I’m afraid that your lack of answer is not going to work for me. I need to know what you’re doing here. And until I know, I’m going to take whatever time and effort I have to in order to find out.”
The man looked up, his eyes stained with tears.
“Do you intend to talk? Otherwise, we can keep this up. Don’t mistake my delay for compassion. At this point, I have no compassion for you.”
He locked eyes with her, and for a moment, he looked like he was hoping that she might react differently. She turned away, and the talisman retreated and moved closer to her.
“We were sent here,” he said. His accent was thicker than Honaaz’s, and his voice a bit harsher. His voice quavered a little.
“Who sent you here?”
“We were sent here.”
Lily looked at him again. “As I said, I’m not going to keep going through this. Who sent you here?”
The man flicked his gaze past her toward the door. Lily wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but she had the distinct impression that he thought help might be coming. Given what she had encountered so far with these men, it was entirely possible that they thought somebody would come for them.
Lily reached into her pouch, grabbed one of her more archaic pieces of art that she’d carved long ago, and wiped her blood on it.
“Maybe it’s time we try something different,” Lily said as she set the piece of art on the ground in front of him. “Maybe instead of asking questions, I just act more like you.” She smiled tightly, flashing her teeth. “From what I’ve gathered, you have a little experience with various talismans. You might call them something different, but you understand the general way they work. I’m going to leave this one here. Perhaps you have resistance to it, or perhaps you don’t.”
Lily stepped back, and she was left wondering what Isabel—and even Esmerelda—would’ve done here. Esmerelda had her strange magic, the use of her art that was so different than Lily’s. She might have bound him and held him down. Should Lily do the same?
She crouched down, holding his gaze. “By now, you might be feeling the way it’s starting to work. I don’t know what it feels like to someone like yourself. Maybe like your skin is getting tight. As if you’d been out in the sun too long. You have the look of a man who’s familiar with the sun. Maybe that sensation is starting to work its way through you. Maybe you can feel a flutter of dangerous power that’s building, threatening.” She glanced down at the talisman. “And you probably have started to wonder what will happen when it does activate. Will it be simple? Who can say what ‘simple’ is. But perhaps you’ve seen items like this, and you think you know how to handle them, and you know what you might have to do were it to fully activate.” She gave a small shrug and watched him. “Or perhaps you’ll feel something else. Maybe it’s little more than a whisper of wind across your skin. Something that tells you that everything isn’t quite right. Or maybe you won’t feel anything at all until the moment this explodes, sending fragments of bone deep into your flesh, ripping through you.”
He looked up and met her gaze.
“And as you bleed out, I collect your blood, use the power that remains stored within you, and I get the answers to the questions I want regardless. Once I collect all that, I will have everything I need.”
Let him think I have such power.
“You can’t do that,” he said.
“I think I can do whatever I must do.”
He didn’t take his eyes off the bone. “Move it. Please. I will tell you whatever you want to hear.”
“We will talk before I move it.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“That’s obviously not true,” Lily said, her voice calm, though her heart raced. “We will talk, and if you refuse… Well, there are others who will tell me.”
She started to turn around when the man cried out. “It’s a contract. Nothing more than that. Just a job.”
She doubted that was the case, especially given Honaaz’s reaction.
Lily was tempted to push. She suspected that it was more than just a job, but she didn’t know with any real certainty. Honaaz rarely talked about his homeland, and when he did, he didn’t share much about the kinds of things his people had done, nor about the lengths that they had gone. It was possible that his people would have taken a job like that in order to satisfy some contract. If that was the case, though, what did it mean for how hard they would fight?
“What were the terms?” she asked.
“We don’t speak of that.”
“Maybe not usually, but this time, you will.”
She started backing away. She felt the connection to the bone, which began to glow softly with a pale yellow light that worked its way through it, then spread outward. She wasn’t at all surprised that it would build that slowly, as Lily had made the bone as a way to test her connection, but it didn’t really do anything else.
“Please,” the man said.
She watched him for a moment. “Share more, and you can find a measure of peace.”
“I don’t know the answers, but there is someone who can tell you.”
“Where is he?”
“Not with us. But I can tell you where he is.”
She didn’t like that answer. It felt incomplete.
But she would start with it.
“I will give you a bit of reprieve,” Lily said, grabbing the bone and stuffing it back into her pouch. There wasn’t much time remaining before the glow would begin to fade, and it would look like the talisman had failed altogether—something that would do more harm than good in this situation. She needed to scare him, and if she looked incapable of creating the right kind of talisman, there would be no threat. “But only as long as you share with me what I need to know. The moment I think you’re avoiding it, I will bring it back out. You understand?”
He nodded quickly.
“Good. We’re going to talk about your ships. About their positions. And we’re going to talk about what you have planned. If I think you’re keeping anything from me, I’m going to make sure you experience the full brunt of what I can do.”
Lily glanced over to where one of the talismans rested, then turned to another. Even if nothing else, she would have them believe that she was capable, given the talismans she had created. And she would use that.
“I will tell you everything I know.”
Chapter Eighteen
JAL
The song had shifted. Jal could hear it now that it had become clear to him, and different in a way he had not noticed. As he paid attention to the song, he recognized the mournful nature of it, and how some aspect of it had started to shift over time, beginning to build in a way that called to something greater, something distinct and old that he had not heard before. Jal could hear that aspect of the song and how it was calling to him and some part of who he was in a way he had never felt.
“What are you doing?” Wular asked.
Jal looked up, blinking. He had lost himself in the song, and found that he was now swaying in place with his bow held loosely in one hand, feeling the way the song called to him as it grew stronger.
The trees around him were also swaying, and it seemed as if they were trying to add to the song, mixing with what Jal was doing. Or maybe that was nothing more than his imagination. Regardless, he could feel it, and something seemed to be calling to him.
“I feel it. Don’t you?” he said to her.
“Yes, but I don’t think we should do so too much,” Wular said.
“I feel it.”
For so long, he had heard his grandfather speak of the song and how it was more than just what their people knew. For so long, Jal had listened to others say that his grandfather was confused, even though Jal knew better. He knew that his grandfather understood the nature of the song in ways that other people did not and could not, and Jal had come to realize that perhaps his grandfather was the one who truly recognized and understood the song. It was when he had taught Jal about the berahn, and about how they waited, listening, and were connected to the world in ways that others were not that Jal had begun to feel like he had an understanding of the song.
“I feel the song, but I don’t think we should stand here for too much longer. I don’t know how many more of these berahn we might have to deal with, and I don’t—”
“If there are others, we need to be there for them. We have to help them.”
More than anything, Jal felt that urgency within him. He recognized that the song called to him, and he recognized that what he needed to do was to answer it, and to let it carry him.
He looked over, and the berahn had bounded away, leaving him. There were others out in the trees, though Jal had not seen them in the time they had been here. Still, he could practically feel their presence, and he didn’t know if he needed to see them.
Wular’s hand rested near the hilt of one of her swords. She was on edge, and she looked like a coiled snake prepared to strike, though even that was probably not an appropriate comparison. She more resembled a berahn poised to attack. In that case, maybe she was. Given everything they had seen, and everything they had done, why wouldn’t she be like a berahn readying to pounce?
“We need to go a little further,” Jal said.
“We should go back. Reims needs us.”
Jal looked behind him in the direction of the city, even though he could not see it. He was vaguely aware of its presence, aware of some aspect of it that was pulling on him. There was an element of the city that seemed to call to him, and he had begun to feel like whatever it was, and whatever was there, was designed to do so, as if it were there to help them know it.
It had to be tied to some aspect of the city itself, some part of it that was bound to something old. He had seen how the Alainsith had been targeting the ancient buildings, which meant that they were trying to obscure the song, keeping him—and perhaps the other Alainsith—from finding it. Somehow, Jal had to do so before it was too late.
But he didn’t feel as if he had the necessary time to spend to listen.
The berahn mournfully called out. When they did, he knew what he needed to do.
Jal moved forward.
“How many do you think you can save?” Wular asked.
“All of them.”
“Why? Why would you risk yourself for them? They are just—”
Jal spun and turned his full attention to her. She froze with her weapon held out toward him, as if to deflect him.
“They are not just anything,” Jal said, keeping his voice low. He didn’t want to disrupt the nature of the song. He wanted to hear it, wanted to be ready for anything the berahn might share with him. He could feel something, and even if he didn’t know what it was, he was aware of the sense of energy that was there, and aware of some aspect of it that they would build within him to try to call to him. Yet even as he listened, Jal could not feel much more than that. “Your people would help.”
It was a gamble. Jal did not know whether the Juut would have agreed to this. He knew her, though. And he knew what she had seen and experienced. More than that, he had started to feel as if she wanted to be a part of stopping this.
“I will help you,” Wular said.
The song guided him and continued to build. There was a depth to it that he needed to understand. It was what he had been trying to understand for so long.
He moved forward, and she stayed with him, though he wasn’t sure whether he cared if she did or not. At this point, Jal was more concerned about following the berahn than he was about what Wular chose to do.
He ran, and she kept pace. Her swords were unsheathed, which was dangerous with her. When he arched a brow at her, she merely shrugged.
“We don’t know what’s out there,” she said.
“We know the berahn are out there.”
The landscape began to change, and he stopped for a moment as he recognized the cause. The trees started to become more spread out, the ground shifting into more of a wide-open space. He tried to make sense of it, but even as he did, Jal knew that they were reaching the end of the land. And from here, he knew he wouldn’t be able to go too much farther.
In the distance, he heard the sound of waves crashing along the shore. He heard water splashing. And they were not alone.
There were three tall figures up ahead. They were dressed all in black and moved with a strange, almost rhythmic pattern. One of them had short hair, while the other two had long, flowing black hair. All three were lovely.
They were Alainsith. But not his family.
Not only were there three figures, but there were berahn with them too. That was the source of the song. It came so softly, so mournfully, and it echoed all around him, forcing Jal to move carefully as he approached. Though he was not sure what he might encounter, he was not worried that others were harming the berahn. Given what he had seen from them, he couldn’t help but feel as if they were responsible.
Wular had stepped forward, and now she had her sword unsheathed again, prepared for an attack. She held her hand up, blocking Jal to keep him from going in front of her.
“Your bow,” she said.
“What about it?”
“You need to be ready. I don’t know what they intend.”
Jal had one arrow ready, and grabbed another. He could target them from here.
He moved slowly toward the group. One of the figures was dressed in dark leathers and had pale skin, black hair, and eyes as dark as night. He was watching Jal, waiting.
As Jal approached, he realized the reason behind the strange, almost rhythmic pattern of their movement. It provided a pressure against his song.
He tried something different. He continued singing, adding to the berahn’s sound, and angled toward them. He could not allow them to overwhelm him. He moved closer, but it seemed as if this Alainsith did not struggle with Jal’s song.
Then Wular’s own song began to join with Jal’s, enough that he felt fortified. He hadn’t even realized that he was starting to feel a hint of weakness, and a bit of hesitation, until she had joined in with him. He started to feel the elements of his people and the strength of the trees, of the forest, of the land around them, all of that coming out in Wular’s song. Then there was the somber cry of the other berahn that were surrounding them, out in the woods, near enough that Jal recognized their song. They granted him a different sort of strength.
He raised his bow, aimed at the nearest figure standing in front of them, and fired.
The song broke off.
He darted forward, as did Wular. Her blades were a blur, and she spun, twisting both of them in the air at the same time, swirling them in a vigorous, violent pattern that Jal could scarcely even follow. He had no idea how Kanar had ever managed to keep up with her.
The lead man was fast. With his long metal staff, he blocked every thrust Wular used against him. It surprised Jal, especially given that she used two blades.
There was something strange about the man’s movements.
Jal fired an arrow, but he missed.
That almost made him hesitate.
Almost.
He thought about what his grandfather had taught him: follow the flow, find the fault, and draw again.
That was what he needed now. He drew his bow, and this time he pierced the man in the chest.
The air changed. The energy, the song, the power. All of it changed once the man fell.
And here Jal thought he understood the song, but these Alainsith added layers to the song that he could not even fathom.
Even in death, this man was pulling on Jal. Slowing him.
He had to fight it.
The berahn around him helped. The noise they made, the whistling and the howls, filled the air and mixed—countering the song.
Jal fired another arrow, and again it struck true.
Wular was alone with her attacker. But not alone.
Jal joined her and swept his bow.
The man turned and sneered at him. Through it all, he continued to make the vocalizations, the energy of the song. Through it all, he continued to build on the song, forcing Jal to slow slightly.
Jal had thought he was skilled, and thought he had learned as much as he could about his people, and as much as he could about the song, but he knew nothing compared to these Alainsith.
Wular sang as she danced with her blades, which whistled through the air and carried another element to the song. She was talented, but Jal could tell that something here was different, and beyond their ability.
Almost too late, he realized there had to be another person here. These opponents were moving strangely and rhythmically, but they were not the source of the song.
He jumped back, looking over to Wular. “He’s not alone any longer,” he said.
Wular didn’t even hesitate as she continued to spin, her blades a blur. If Jal hadn’t known any better, he would’ve thought that she had slowed somewhat. Some aspect of her fighting had shifted, not nearly as quick as before. Something had changed for her.
Jal suspected that it was tied to the song.
He let out a guttural roar. It called to some part of his past. It called to whatever future he might have. And it called to the berahn.
All around him there came the echoing cries of the berahn. The undulating sounds began to rise up and build, booming in their strength as they continued to layer on top of each other so that Jal could hear them. As he felt them, he knew what he had to do.
He cried out again.
This time, it turned the other man’s attention to him.
He tipped his metal staff toward Jal, and some of the vocalization began to shift. It sounded as if a dozen different voices were calling out to him. Jal tried to ignore it, but it still seemed to flow through him, as if permeating his entire being.
Wular danced around him, yet even as she did, it seemed like she was slowing more and more, getting to the point where she would become ineffective.
