Drawn Blades, page 1
“Aral the jack, formerly the noble Aral Kingslayer, is the best kind of hero: damaged, cynical, and despondent, yet needing only the right cause to rise from his own ashes.”
—Alex Bledsoe, author of He Drank, and Saw the Spider
Praise for the Fallen Blade novels
BLADE REFORGED
“Once again Aral and his Shade, Triss, find themselves in the middle of a royal mess—literally. Yet this time it is assassin versus assassin versus assassin. That alone promises readers some high-quality entertainment. But Kelly McCullough adds several twists, backbends, and handsprings that only a mind as devious (or demented) as his could possibly conceive.”
—Huntress Book Reviews
CROSSED BLADES
“Kelly McCullough has once again written a magnificent story which deals with love, betrayal, and redemption.”
—Fresh Fiction
“The Blade novels are absolutely fabulous. The author, Kelly McCullough, takes you into a fascinating world of characters that have many skins.”
—Night Owl Reviews
“If you are seeking a fantasy unlike most others, you will not go wrong by choosing any title by this author. Kelly McCullough’s writing style is indefinable, his imagination is creative and unique, and his [plot] execution is simply exquisite!”
—Huntress Book Reviews
BARED BLADE
“The second Fallen Blade fantasy stars an interesting hero with an irreverent, self-deprecating attitude . . . Fans will appreciate the magnificent McCullough mythos.”
—Genre Go Round Reviews
“Full of action, fun characters, and an interesting plot.”
—Whatchamacallit Reviews
BROKEN BLADE
“Creative world-building really helps the reader to immerse themselves . . . A strong beginning to a new fantasy-mystery hybrid series.”
—Fantasy Book Critic
“Broken Blade explores a different side of dark fantasy than the typical European/medieval fare . . . I could definitely spend hundreds of pages wandering around in the wilds of McCullough’s newest creation.”
—Flames Rising
“Broken Blade is a compelling read that was hard to put down . . . Mr. McCullough has the ability to make even his dastardly characters sympathetic.”
—Fresh Fiction
“Filled with multifaceted characters, layered plots, and the type of quixotic scenarios that only the imagination of Kelly McCullough could possibly create. The author, once again, crosses genres . . . Stories by Kelly McCullough are one of a kind—just like him. I found Aral’s world to be compelling and highly addictive. Brilliant!”
—Huntress Book Reviews
“McCullough’s atmospheric little tale of betrayal and skullduggery is brisk, confident, intelligently conceived, and suspenseful . . . With as promising a start as this, McCullough’s new series is looking like one sharp blade indeed.”
—SF Reviews.net
“Broken Blade is perfect for a fan of political/hierarchal conspiracy in a fantasy series . . . It’s also filled with some heart-pounding action . . . The story is positively bursting with excitement.”
—Whatchamacallit Reviews
“The world McCullough sets up was certainly the highlight of the book for me. I enjoy fantasy-world politics and dark humor, both of which are in abundance here.”
—Night Owl Reviews
More praise for the novels of Kelly McCullough
“Entertaining and rapid-fire.”
—San Francisco Book Review
“One long adrenaline rush.”
—SFRevu
“Original and outstanding . . . McCullough handles his plot with unfailing invention, orchestrating a mixture of humor, philosophy, and programming insights.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Imaginative, fascinating, with a lot of adventure thrown in.”
—Fresh Fiction
“A rollicking combination of verbal humor, wild adventures, and just plain fun.”
—VOYA
“This fast-paced, action-packed yarn is a lot of fun . . . Weaving myth, magic, IT jargon . . . into a bang-up story.”
—Booklist
“McCullough has true world-building skills, a great sense of Greek mythology, and the eye of a thriller writer. The blend of technology and magic is absolutely amazing.”
—Blogcritics.org
“McCullough has the most remarkable writing talent I have ever read.”
—Huntress Book Reviews
“The book is filled with action and suspense. The world-building is awesome, the plot intense, and there is plenty of pathos and humor.”
—Three Crow Press
“WebMage has all the qualities I look for in a book—a wonderfully subdued sense of humor, nonstop action, and romantic relief. It’s a wonderful debut novel.”
—Christopher Stasheff, author of Saint Vidicon to the Rescue
“Inventive, irreverent, and fast-paced, strong on both action and humor.”
—The Green Man Review
“A unique first novel, this has a charming, fresh combination of mythological, magical, and computer elements.”
—KLIATT
“[A] fascinating world.”
—MIT Science Fiction Society
Ace Books by Kelly McCullough
The WebMage Series
WEBMAGE
CYBERMANCY
CODESPELL
MYTHOS
SPELLCRASH
The Fallen Blade Series
BROKEN BLADE
BARED BLADE
CROSSED BLADES
BLADE REFORGED
DRAWN BLADES
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China
penguin.com
A Penguin Random House Company
DRAWN BLADES
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2014 by Kelly McCullough.
Excerpt from Darkened Blade by Kelly McCullough copyright © 2014 by Kelly McCullough.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
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For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
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375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-63822-4
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Ace mass-market edition / November 2014
Cover illustration by John Jude Palencar; dragon © iStockphoto/Thinkstock.
Cover design by Judith Lagerman.
Maps by Matthew A. Kuchta.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Laura. With love in our twentieth wedding anniversary year, which happily coincides with the writing of my twentieth novel.
Acknowledgments
Extra-special thanks are owed to Laura McCullough; Jack Byrne; Anne Sowards; Neil Gaiman; my mapmaker, Matt Kuchta; and cover artist John Jude Palencar and cover designer Judith Lagerman, who have produced wonders for me.
Many thanks also to the Wyrdsmiths: Lyda, Doug, Naomi, Bill, Eleanor, Sean, and Adam. My Web guru, Ben. Beta readers: Steph, Dave, Sari, Karl, Angie, Sean, Matt, Mandy, April, Becky, Mike, Jason, Jonna, and Benjamin. My family: Carol, Paul and Jane, Lockwood and Darlene, Judy, Lee, Kat, Jean, and all the rest. My extended support structure: Michael, Lynne, Bill, Nancy, Sara, James, Tom, Ann, Mike, Sandy, and so many more.
Penguin folks: Rebecca Brewer, Anne Sowards’s wonderful assistant; managing editor Michelle Kasper; assistant production editor Julia Quinlan; interior text designer Laura Corless; publicist Nita Basu; and my copy editor, Mary Pell.
Contents
Praise for the Novels of Kelly McCullough
Ace Books by Kelly McCullough
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Map of the East
Map of the City of Tien
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Terms and Characters
Currency
Calendar
Days of the Week
Special Excerpt from Darkened Blade
1
Smoke without fire.
That’s how it began. With swirling darkness on a cold stone hearth. Or, in a bar, with a beautiful woman, who had a problem. It all depends on how you look at it.
I had come back to Tien after months away. Not for me, but for Faran, my apprentice. She needed help I couldn’t give her—delicate and difficult magical healing—so I had brought her to a friend. Treatment was slow and painful for Faran, but it seemed to be working. Her sight had fully returned and the headaches were much better. So I’d decided I could leave her alone for an evening and visit old haunts.
Mistake? It all depends on how you feel about powerful magical sendings and other people’s problems.
The Gryphon’s Head was a dive bar of the worst sort, full of criminals and other shady types. It was also coming home. I had spent six years living in a tiny room over the stables there. I’d made my money as a shadow jack in those days—the underworld’s all-purpose freelancer. It was a very long fall from the days when they’d first called me Aral Kingslayer and the mighty had feared the coming of my shadow. Well, and lately, they had begun to call me that again, but that’s another story entirely.
You see, I’m an assassin, or was once—one of the best in the world—and my shadow lives. His name is Triss. He is my familiar, a thing of elemental darkness and magic . . . which brings me back to the smoke.
Triss saw it first, and whispered into my mind, Aral, ware the hearth!
I turned in my chair, and saw the first twisting coils of smoke begin to rise from the bare stones. I wasn’t the only one. A pair of Cobble-Runners—one of the local gangs—who were sitting closer, noticed it about then, too. They leaped out of their chairs and backed away from the hearth, shooting the occasional glance my way as the smoke built slowly.
They were only the first. Within a few moments the whole bar was shifting attention between whatever was building on the hearth and me. The bar’s owner, Jerik, came over as the ball reached the size of a kneeling human.
“Aral?” he called. “What have you brought into my bar this time?”
I wanted to tell him I hadn’t brought anything, but honesty forbade me. I didn’t know what the thing on the hearth was, or where it had come from, but the chances were good that it was there for me. My life has taught me to doubt coincidence, and the odds that a piece of magic like nothing I’d ever seen before would appear in the Gryphon’s hearth by chance on the same day that I finally returned after so long away . . . Well, let’s just say that I wouldn’t take that bet, and leave it there.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I . . .” I trailed off as the thing stood up.
I say “thing” where I should call it a woman, because that’s what it had become. A woman of smoke. Tall and slender and very familiar. She wore the loose pants and shirt of the order I had once belonged to, and the swirling loops of smoke perfectly mirrored the dyed patterns of my own grays.
The hood of her cowl was drawn up to hide her face, and the smoke blurred what features I could see within, but the shape of her body and the way that she moved were instantly recognizable, even in smoky avatar—which form made her slow and deliberate as though she were underwater or might come apart at any moment.
Siri, the Mythkiller, First Blade of Namara. I recognized her at a level below thinking and beyond question. This was Siri, my sister in the service of Justice, my better in the arts of magic and the assassin, and perhaps the only person in the world who could ask for my life and expect me to give it into her care without thought or question. Both duty and honor demanded no less. I met her halfway to the hearth.
“Siri?”
The smoke swirled under her cowl, and a twist of white might have been a smile, but the figure spoke no words. After a long moment, she nodded. It was a slow movement—as they all had been—and it feathered the edges of her cowl.
“What do you need?” I asked.
Triss whispered into my mind. Careful, Aral. You can’t be sure it’s really her.
But I was. No. This is her. I’m certain of it.
The figure extended its left hand, palm up. With the other it gestured me to touch the extended hand with my own. When flesh met smoke I felt a faint electrical tingle, like distant magelightning, but no other sensation of contact.
Her right hand came forward and began a slow but intricate dance of gesture over our joined palms. I almost jerked away then, as I recognized the motions a priest would make at a handfasting, but forced myself to stillness. No matter how strange the manifestation, this was something of Siri. I could feel it in my soul, and I owed her whatever she asked of me.
When she was done, that white swirl of a smile flashed within her cowl once more. Then she fell apart, splitting into a hundred wisps on the breeze.
“What was that all about?” asked Jerik.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “But I think I’d better find out.”
Aral, Triss spoke into my mind, she left you a ring.
Looking down, I saw that he was right. There, wrapped around my wedding finger, was a ring of smoke. It was only as I examined the ring that I realized none of what I had just seen bore any light of magic, and the only enchantments that I knew of that acted that way were god-magic. . . .
* * *
“It’s marvelous. I’ve never encountered anything like it.” Harad moved careful fingers this way and that as though he were trying to twist my new ring. “It doesn’t feel like god-magic, but it certainly wasn’t made by any normal mortal sort of spell. I have no idea what it is.”
I gave the ancient librarian a hard look. “You don’t have to sound so happy about it.”
“I’m six hundred years old, Aral, and a master sorcerer for five hundred and fifty of those years. I have been the chancellor of one of the great Magelands universities and studied more varieties of magic than most spellwrights are even aware of. Finding something wholly new is a treasure beyond price.” He paused and rubbed his chin. “Though, I will be very sorry if it devours your soul before I have time to get it sorted out. . . .”
My shadow twisted itself into the silhouette of a small and rather worried-looking dragon. Triss rose up off the floor so that he could sniff at the smoke ring. “Don’t worry,” the Shade told me. “If it tries anything like that I’ll bite your finger off before it gets the chance.”
“Um . . . thanks, Triss.” I turned back Harad. “Is that really likely?”
“It was a small joke on my part, nothing more.” Harad frowned. “Though it seems to have gone wide of the mark. You didn’t look nearly as alarmed by that prospect as I had hoped you might, but then, it’s hard to read you. You do grim and blank as well as any man I know.”
I shrugged. “It’s not something I’m going to dance about, but my soul’s pretty badly mortgaged already. Between my failures since the death of my goddess and the need for efik chewing a hole in the back of my mind, there’s not much left for anything else to carve off a piece.”
Triss winced—because he worried—but he didn’t say anything.
“The cravings haven’t eased in the months since the Kitsune first forced you to eat those few beans, then?” It was the question of a healer who considered me one of his patients. “I had hoped it would pass, but with the death of Namara you seem to have lost your immunity to the darker side of the drug.”
That immunity wasn’t all I’d lost when the goddess of Justice was murdered. The list was long and brutal. Most of my magical protections. My home. My family. My friends. My reason for living. No, my efik problem didn’t even make the top five, however much harder it might make my life.
Again, I shrugged. “I have good days and bad, just like with the booze, though efik hunger is sharper, and the hooks in my soul are deeper. But what can you expect? I tried it first shortly after I entered the temple, though I didn’t really acquire the habit till my teens. But I never touched so much as a drop of alcohol until after my goddess was murdered.”
