Shallows of Night, page 2
And felt the hand on his shoulder, heard the voice crying urgently at his side, “What are you doing? You fool, we must go now! There is no time to lose!” His hand tightened on the sword hilt. “Ronin, we must reach the ice sea!”
Instinctively he knew that Borros was correct. Their survival must come first. His battle would have to wait. And perhaps that was for the best. He wanted to be able to pick the time and the place when he would next meet the creature. But more importantly he needed more information about it if he was to have a real chance of killing it and surviving.
He let go the sword and picked up the rope, securing it once more about his waist. He nodded wordlessly to the Magic Man and they crunched backward through the snow. On the ledge the wind bit into the exposed areas of their faces as they went over the edge.
He hung suspended, dangling, the rope biting cruelly into his ankle. Momentum, he thought as warily they circled him, knowing their advantage but fearing him still. He had no weapon and of course that was the point. Because, as he had once told G’fand, learning the art of Combat meant much more than being taught to wield a sword.
His body, near naked and slick with the sweat of exertion and heat, swung along its brief orbit. Keep the body relaxed, the Salamander had told him. Work within as small a space as you feel you can allow without sacrificing the momentum provided by the orbit of the swing. You understand, Ronin, that once inertia takes over you are finished because an opponent will gut you in the time it takes you to overcome it.
Other students in the special Combat class presided over by the Salamander had attempted the cruol, that length of rope suspended from the ceiling to which one was tied head down a meter off the floor. Four students attacked with wooden staffs the length of a man’s body. No one had survived for long. However, none of the students had been trained by the Salamander as extensively as had Ronin. And none had his skill.
Because it was so terribly difficult, the cruol was now used almost exclusively for punishment. Yet up here on the Salamander’s Level it had other uses.
He kept the momentum going, consciously feeding the adrenaline flowing through his body, knowing he would need all that he could produce in the coming moments. A staff came at him, whistling through the air. He twisted his shoulders and felt a burning down his back at the narrowness of the miss. The students fanned out, swinging at him again and again. He used his forearms to block the staffs, while gradually increasing the length of his arcs. Less and less, they found the need to advance toward him in order to make contact; they were too intent on the attack to take notice.
He swung, waiting for a peak, and for a lateral cut. He saw one coming from the left and he knew that it would be close because he was just at the peak of his arc and the student’s blow had to be fast or he would lose the advantage of the momentum. But the staff came at him with tremendous force and it was all right because now he was beginning to arc away from the oncoming staff, his momentum picking up, and now, instead of blocking the blow, he reached for the blurred weapon, his tightening fingers slipping along its length in the slick sweat running off him. Palms burning with the friction, a blow from another staff numbing the muscles along his back. Ignore the pain. Concentrate. He used his mounting momentum and, twisting his wrists at the last instant, wrenched the staff from the startled student.
He was moving to his right with great speed now and, taking advantage of the direction of his swing, slammed the staff into the collarbone of a student on that side. He crumpled to the floor as Ronin began to reverse his arc and caught a second adversary in the mid-section so that the student doubled over, retching and gagging.
There was only one now because the one Ronin had disarmed was forbidden to interfere once he had lost his weapon. This one was wary. He would not be trapped as his fellows had been. Ronin noted that he was concentrating on Ronin’s weapon. Then he attacked, swinging at the base of Ronin’s staff, seeking to bruise his hands. The blows were rapid-fire so that, for every one Ronin blocked, one slammed into his knuckles. They soon turned red and the first spattering of blood appeared as the skin split and tore. The student pressed his advantage, moving in, the bright blood fascinating and irresistible. His concentration narrowed.
It was then that Ronin used his free leg, slamming the sole of his boot against the side of the student’s head. The man staggered, off balance. The blow had not been hard enough to knock him down because Ronin lacked the leverage, but it was enough. The staff sang through the air, catching the student on the neck. He gasped hollowly, his face turning white and his mouth hinged open as he fell. There was only the sound of forced breathing then as Ronin dropped his staff, relaxing his body, turning slowly again in his brief orbit.
Suspended in whiteness, his breath fogging the frigid air, descending hand over hand, Borros slightly above him a meter away, Ronin recalled well the lesson of the cruol. But now the context had altered, small patterns interlaced with other patterns until, as one steps back to view the configuration, an overall image begins to emerge, different, unexpected.
“My dear boy, of course they hate you.”
The voice was rich and vibrant but with more than a hint of effete coyness that was as disarming as it was spurious.
“It is quite understandable, really.”
The Salamander, the Senseii, the Weaponsmaster of the Freehold, stood in the doorway of Ronin’s spartan cubicle. Not much time had passed since they had cut Ronin down and told him to return to his room.
Ronin moved to stand up but a curt motion, a flash of the Salamander’s wide wrist, stopped him.
“Sit, my dear boy, by all means. You have certainly earned the privilege.” The voice flowed thickly, honeyed the air.
The Salamander, an immense figure, was garbed informally in crimson shirt, hung in layers which cunningly concealed the extent of his true bulk, jet-black leggings and high boots of the same color polished to glossy perfection. His rich black hair was swept back along his skull like the wings of some awesome predatory bird. His thick brows and high cheekbones managed in some unfathomable fashion to accentuate the large onyx eyes, oval, and as hard and opaque as stone.
He moved into the room and it seemed to shrink in size, a diminishing and insignificant background in his presence. He stared unblinkingly at Ronin.
“You are not happy here, my dear boy.” It was not a question. “Perhaps this is because you feel that you have no friends.”
“Yes,” Ronin said unknowingly. “All the students hate me.”
The Salamander looked at Ronin with a veiled gaze and smiled without warmth.
“But of course that is true and that should please you greatly. It does me.” Ronin’s face was blank with surprise but the Salamander ignored that. “You are the best, my dear boy; without question the very best student that I have trained. And now no one can touch you, not student, not Bladesman. Oh yes”—he laughed at the expression on Ronin’s face—“that is quite true. You are as far above them as I am above you.” His laughter took on a manic quality.
Ronin was acutely aware of the compliment. It puzzled rather than delighted him. The reaction was quite inexplicable.
The Salamander’s fist clenched and his rings caught the light in brief explosions of color. He bent forward slightly, his voice less oratorical now, more personal.
“They hate you, my dear boy, because you are better than they, you have the talent that they wish they possessed, and they will not rest until they best you in Combat.” His laugh was a bark of emotion. “Good! For that too serves my purpose. My Bladesmen must be the best in the Freehold.” He touched his chest, a dramatic gesture he nevertheless managed to imbue with a certain grandeur. “Am I not alone of all the Saardin, Senseii? It is honor. What do the other Saardin know of that?” His voice lowered in volume and gained in intensity. “They know only to bicker among themselves, vying for power.” He threw his head back and his eyes squeezed shut, then flew open, impaling Ronin with their implacable gaze. “They do not understand the meaning of the word ‘power.’” He stopped abruptly, realizing that he had revealed more than he had intended. “It is honor,” he said then, “that must be upheld always.” He stepped closer to Ronin. “You must understand this totally.”
He came and sat on the thin bed.
“But you, my dear boy”—a heavy bejeweled hand stroked softly Ronin’s arm—“you also serve my purpose. I have labored long and hard to make you a Bladesman unmatched by any bound to the Saardin of the Freehold. Tomorrow you will enter the Square of Combat for the last time as a student.” His voice held a quivering note of triumph which he did not bother to conceal. “You will stun the Instructors who will be there to judge you and then, when you have emerged from Combat a Bladesman, the Freehold’s finest Bladesman, while the Instructors and the Saardin are still babbling to each other of your skill, then you will return here to be my Chondrin.”
A stillness eddied in the room, as absolute as a vacuum. For a time it ruled and then, quite slowly, it seemed to Ronin, the tiny background sounds of the Level returned to his ears, drifting male voices, the comforting slap of boot soles against the wooden floor, the distant metal clangor of Combat practice, sounds which had comprised the environmental context of his life for so long. Changed now, these noises came to him as harsh and brittle and without meaning, as if, of a sudden, he found himself in an alien world, wondering just how long he had been there. And looking into the glittery, obsidian eyes so close to his, he saw nothing whatsoever.
They dropped silently into the void, from time to time using hammer and spike to gain footholds along the sheer face of the cliff, or to circumnavigate an otherwise impassable section. It seemed that they had descended for hours, through the mist and the small snowfalls like choking dust storms flung against them by fierce updrafts. They paused neither to rest nor to eat, gulping handfuls of snow occasionally to slake their thirst, to keep them going.
Borros’ urgency had become infectious. For Ronin it was perhaps the stench of the monstrous creature, still crawling in his nostrils, which had finally severed the twanging chord of his grief, once as raw and painful as an exposed nerve, and which now allowed him to focus on the reason for this journey. He had gone to the City of Ten Thousand Paths on Borros’ urgings. The Magic Man was convinced that a terrifying menace was threatening to engulf the world of man. Perhaps Ronin only half believed him when he first journeyed forth but after encountering Bonneduce the Last and Hynd, after the battles with the thing that killed G’fand, he felt within him a peculiar kind of personal confirmation of what Borros had told him. And the journey had been successful. The Magic Man had sent him on a quest for an ancient scroll, which Ronin had found in the house of dor-Sefrith, purportedly the most famed and feared sorcerer of the legendary isle of Ama-no-mori, now no more than mounds of cracked stone and masonry beneath some far-off sea, Ronin mused. Pity. But I have the scroll now and, as Borros has told me, it is the key to stopping this inhuman menace. He smiled to himself. Despite Freidal’s efforts, despite the Salamander’s attempted interference. Only I have the scroll. He glanced at the thin face, drawn and haggard with fatigue, the yellow tinge sickly in the failing light. I have yet to tell him. That should bring a smile. And when we find out what it says, we shall return.
Ronin indeed returned from the Square of Combat a Bladesman. He had, as the Salamander had correctly predicted, stunned the Instructors and the Saardin, who had never before seen his like in skill and speed in Combat. Their excited talk sickened him. Yet in one important decision the Salamander would be proven wrong.
Ronin returned Upshaft to the Senseii’s Level not in the least elated. He had had no doubts as to his ability and therefore felt no trepidation when it came time for his Trial. On the contrary he felt that the Salamander had dawdled over him, procrastinating, postponing again and again his Trial date. In his own mind, he had been ready many signs ago. Now it seemed to him that the date itself meant more to the Salamander than the Trial itself.
The Salamander was waiting for him in the Hall of Combat. His enormous figure was draped in ceremonial robes of jet. His hair was newly coifed and oiled and the fan that he could wield as dexterously and as fatally as a sword or dagger protruded from his wide scarlet sash. He wore a sword on his left hip, sheathed in a formal scabbard of openwork silver with an ebon tip, intricately carved in the shape of a rampant lizard on a bed of black flame.
On either side of him, dwarfed by his bulk, stood two of his Bladesmen. One held the bands which went obliquely from left shoulder to right hip across the tunic of each Chondrin. These bands were differing colors to identify which Saardin the Chondrin was bound to. The Bladesmen held black on black bands, the Salamander’s colors.
The moment Ronin saw the bands, his decision was made. He knew quite clearly what he should do, what he had after all been trained for. He stopped before the Salamander and bowed stiffly, his face a mask, thinking, I know too what I must do. There was a great sadness within him. The Salamander inclined his head solemnly. He was more to Ronin than Combat Instructor, Senseii, Saardin. Yet still Ronin would have no man his master; would have no one now impose his will upon him, that time was surely passed forever. Free at last, he would not enslave himself within the complex political labyrinth of the Freehold society. He had his strength and power; he required nothing more.
“Now you are Bladesman,” the Salamander said formally. Was there a trace of pride in his voice? Oh, surely not from the Salamander. “You are henceforth my vassal. You obey my commands; are subject to my disciplines, my ordinances, and my will. No other may command your arm or your mind so long as I shall live. In return, you have my protection, the power of my office as Saardin and my power as Senseii of the Freehold. In honor I offer you the bands of the Salamander, Saardin, Senseii of the Freehold, as my Chondrin, to advise, to defend, to command my Bladesmen, to obey me.”
The Bladesman holding the bands stepped forward.
“Do you accept the bands of Chondrin and by so doing pledge your arm and your mind to me?”
“Salamander,” said Ronin hoarsely, “I cannot.”
“Not much more to go,” Borros said over the crying of the wind. Ronin looked down. The mist and snow had thinned enough for him to see that several hundred meters below them the cliff face ceased its precipitous plunge earthward and became a widening slope upon which they could likely walk downward the rest of the way to the ice sea.
The expanse was lit now by the wan silver light of the moon, its mottled face hanging large and hungry in a sky of trembling cloud. Ronin stared at the oval, then back again to the ice sea still far below them.
And still they descended, though weariness gripped them like a tightening vise.
In the end it would be his face that stood out in Ronin’s memory. For just an instant, a sliver so brief that perhaps only Ronin could have caught it, the seemingly impenetrable facade of the decadent and rather bored Weaponsmaster, refined and honed for so many years, appeared to crack and, like the onrush of a spring waterfall, sending rainbows into the light, a score of emotions seemed to dart across his visage. So quickly were they covered that Ronin could not even be sure. Had he seen sadness, shock, anger, hurt? All of them, Ronin surmised. He had been too wrapped up in what he had to do to understand then the larger pattern.
“You cannot!” bellowed the Salamander. “Cannot? What are you saying, you cannot? You will! You must! It cannot be any other way!” Still impaling Ronin with his furious gaze, he reached out, clutched at the Chondrin’s bands, waved them at Ronin. “You mock this trust! Just as you mock me!” His face was red and spittle flew from the glistening surfaces of his wet lips. He crumpled the bands and threw them in Ronin’s face. Ronin felt unable to move or to speak.
The huge face quivered before him. “You cannot? You do not even understand the meaning of those words.” He raised a huge fist. “I saw in you what no one else could, what you yourself were blind to. It was my vision which created you, my ideas which molded you into the Freehold’s finest Bladesman.” His voice had risen in volume and force; now his entire frame shook as if within him a fierce storm raged. “I trained you, accepted you, offer you the highest honor!” He advanced on Ronin. “And you spit in my face!” The voice was a shriek now, echoing off the high walls. Abruptly he swiped with the back of his hand, the motion so swift that Ronin could not have reacted if he had wanted to. But he had not wanted to; he knew with a chilling finality that if he moved at all he was a dead man.
The blow caught him full on the face, the rings scouring his cheek. It was a gesture of disdain and that hurt him more than the enormous force of the blow, more than the cuts opening up the skin of his face. Those would heal eventually.
“You do not understand. You know nothing of honor!” The Salamander hurled the words out as if they were somehow tainted. Then he hit Ronin again, and a third time with his hand now a clenched fist, crying out in rage because Ronin would not fall, would not retreat, would not retaliate. “How dare you! How dare you!” A litany of humiliation. Pounding at Ronin. Now his Bladesmen attempted to restrain him. He shook them off like droplets of water.
“Get away from me!” he screamed. “Get out of here! Get out!” And they scrambled obediently from his presence.
Still he beat Ronin, howling “Aaahhh!” beyond coherent speech now, staggering, irrational, inhuman.
He reached thick fingers into his sash, grasped the fan, about to draw it forth, spread its lethal edge, a supple guillotine. Then he stopped, his breathing hard and irregular.
