Khyven the Unkillable, page 6
part #1 of Eldros Legacy Series
He’d once wondered if her kiss had been the prelude to an epic love story, a song for the minstrels. That fantasy had been a weakness and he’d almost fallen prey to it.
As he looked at her leaning against the windowsill, her breasts pushed up by the tight dress, its folds draping the curves of her hips and legs, his desire flared. Yes, he would dance with her. Then, when he became a knight, he would take her to wife, just like she wanted. After all, it would benefit them both. He could only grow in social standing by marrying the legitimate daughter of a baron.
“Such a long pause,” Shalure said. “Cat got your tongue?”
He smiled. He liked that she was clever.
“It tried, but I managed to keep all of my pieces, my lady.”
She preened when he used the word “lady” to refer to her. She may know what he liked, but he was learning what she liked, too. Two could play the game.
She made the little curlicues appear and his heart beat faster.
“Are all ringers so gallant?” she asked.
“Just me,” he said.
That made her smile wider. “Tell me, dashing Khyven, what were you thinking about? Was it me?”
“It’s always you. A ringer has to stay alert for dangers,” he said. “Inside and outside the arena.”
Her curlicues vanished. “A danger? Me?”
“You.”
“By the Dark, you defeated a Kyolar today. How can you think I am a danger?”
“Hidden claws are the deadliest,” he said.
“You don’t trust me,” she said, pouting.
He grinned and shook his head. “Trust isn’t really what you want from me, is it?”
“Of course, it is, my love,” she said.
“Your love…” he said pensively. “Am I?”
“Did I not show you my heart when I pressed my lips to yours?”
“I think you showed me your plan.”
“It was your bravery that drew me, sir,” she said, stiffening. “Would you drive me away?” But he’d already seen past her wounded look—just for a second—and there was a feral animal there, threatened that he had uncovered her plan, looking for the words that would make him do what she wanted him to do.
Just like the masters.
“Perhaps we could be honest with one another,” he said. “Our dance might be more… fluid if we were. Just because you want to use me doesn’t mean I won’t let you.”
“I have been honest with you, my love,” she protested.
“Shalure—”
“What you need”—she slid from the windowsill and crossed to him, putting a hand on his chest and another on his cheek—“is to trust me.” She caressed his chest with one delicate hand. “Trust in me, Khyven the Unkillable, and all you want will be yours.”
His body responded to her nearness and she saw it. Her eyes glittered like she had set the trap and he’d chomped the bait.
“Think of us together,” she murmured.
“I do.”
“Good.” She stood on her tiptoes, bringing her face to his. He prepared for another earth-shaking kiss, but at the last second, she turned, touching her lips lightly to the corner of his mouth.
She drew back coyly, spun in a swirl of dress, and opened the door.
“Soon, my love,” she said, “we will be together.”
She closed the door.
Chapter Six
Khyven
The sun vanished behind the rooftops of Usara bringing the darkness and Khyven lay awake. He should have been exhausted. He’d fought a Kyolar, for Senji’s sake. Everything he’d worked so hard to accomplish was coming to fruition. He’d done what only one man in a thousand had ever accomplished. He was revered by the common folk of Usara. He was living in the palace. The king was sending him beautiful women to bathe him. The daughter of a baron wanted to marry him.
He should be exultant…
The powerless part of his life was nearly over. He was no longer a slave, no longer beholden to others for his welfare. Even the masters seemed to have left off with their torture. If he survived the bout tomorrow, all would be forced to defer to him, save the nobility: the dukes and earls and barons. He would have everything he wanted. He should be able to rest.
But his mind turned over and over.
It’s the Shadowvar, he thought. The damned Shadowvar with Nhevaz’s necklace.
It didn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. Nhevaz had been weak, and the old man’s teachings, in the end, hadn’t saved them. Vex and the knights had killed them all, had taken Nhevaz’s armor.
Now some Shadowvar had stolen Nhevaz’s necklace. Why should Khyven care?
He glanced out the window. The moon hung low in the sky. He got out of bed, dressed, and pushed through the door. The hallway was empty and dark. He moved quietly up the hallway, encountering no one until he walked out the front archways. Two palace guards stood there, one on either side, but while they looked at him, they didn’t stop him.
Khyven descended the wide, sweeping stairs to the courtyard, and went to the gate at the wall. More guards, but after a quick exchange, they opened the gates for him like he was a noble.
A rush of power flowed through him.
He peered into the shadows of the houses and shops as he walked down the street. He saw a wretched beggar with a broken leg that smelled like rot leaning against an alley wall. He saw a couple of urchins vanish into the darkness.
Khyven slipped through the streets. Close to the Night Ring, a pair of thugs emerged from the shadows, cudgels in hand. They were obviously intent on violence, ready to thump Khyven and take whatever of value he might carry, but when they emerged into the moonlight they saw him better and hesitated. Khyven was well over six feet tall, wide-shouldered and well-muscled, honed by his years in the arena. If these thugs were looking for easy prey, Khyven did not fit the description.
Khyven locked gazes with the leader and shook his head. The thugs glanced at each other, thought better of it, and faded back into the shadows to wait for someone else.
The guards at the Night Ring knew Khyven and they let him in. He wended his way through the tunnels to the Shadowvar’s antechamber.
At Khyven’s request, the spearman guarding the antechamber opened the door. He handed Khyven one of two lanterns that hung on either side of the door and let him in, then locked the door behind him.
Flickering orange lamplight glinted off the bars and the bodies of the prone captives in the cages. Most of the dozen or so ringers were asleep, either recovering from their own bouts of the day or marshaling their strength for tomorrow.
One of the naïfs was awake and he instantly recognized Khyven. He jumped to the bars and whispered, “Khyven! Khyven the Unkillable! Let me out!”
“Shut up and sit down,” Khyven hissed. He didn’t want everyone awake and clamoring for his attention. Naïfs. They all thought Khyven would just let them out.
Naïfs always asked the question, “How do I escape?”
The standard ringer response was always the same. For the experienced ringers, it was a mantra. There were three ways to escape the Night Ring: Up, down, or through the night.
Either rise to knighthood, as Vex the Victorious had done, fall down dead on the arena floor, or jump through one of the arches into a noktum.
Khyven went to the last cage and around to the side. He looked for the Shadowvar and managed to spot him. The creature was awake, watching Khyven’s approach. Even in the ruddy light of the lantern, the little demon was almost invisible.
“Where did you get it?” Khyven demanded.
“I saw you fight the Kyolar,” the Shadowvar replied, ignoring the question.
“I’m not fooling with you,” Khyven growled. He went to the rack of spears, selected one, and brought it back to the cage. He thumped the butt of the spear against the ground. “I’ve come to kill you or get answers. Your choice.”
“You let it live,” the Shadowvar said, still unnervingly calm.
“I—What?”
“The Kyolar. You let it live.”
“I’m not talking about the Kyolar. I want to know—”
“Why?” the Shadowvar interrupted, but the derision in his voice was gone. He seemed genuinely curious, and Khyven hesitated.
“I was playing to the crowd,” he said.
The Shadowvar narrowed his eyes. “Tell me what—”
“Senji’s Boots,” Khyven cursed, banging the bars with the spear. “You don’t get it, do you?” The entire antechamber started to wake. Ringers were light sleepers. “I’m interrogating you. It’s not the other way around. Did you take that necklace from a dead man?”
The Shadowvar cocked his head like that surprised him. “I did, in fact.”
“My brother!”
The Shadowvar narrowed his eyes and said with absolute certainty, “No.”
“How do you know what my brother looks like?”
“It was not your brother,” the Shadowvar repeated. “How did you come to be here, Khyven the Unkillable? Where did you get that necklace?”
Khyven clenched the haft of the spear. Why wasn’t the little bastard afraid?
“These necklaces belonged to my brother,” Khyven said. “They belonged to his family. There were only two. He gave this one to me.”
“His family?”
“Yes.”
“The Amulets of Noksonon were made by Giants long ago. Was your brother a Giant?”
Khyven couldn’t think of what to say to that ludicrous statement. Giants were myths. People invoked their name to explain the inexplicable. Where did that storm come from? The Giants sent it. How did the architects build the Night Ring? The Giants. What made the noktums? Giants.
“Giants?” Khyven blurted.
The Shadowvar looked pensive. He stood and walked to the bars. He was a thin little thing with scarecrow arms and a gaunt face, five feet tall if he was an inch. They’d stripped him down to the usual loin cloth naïfs were given. He stopped an inch from the bars.
“Listen to me, Khyven the Unkillable,” the Shadowvar said. “This King Vamreth is a blight upon Usara. He stole his throne. He is a liar and a murderer. When I first met you, I assumed you were the same. A preening, sycophantic thug, and I have no use for such a person, but”—he glanced at the necklace—“perhaps you are something else, and if that is so, I can help you.”
“Help me? You’re the one in the cage.”
“I’m not the one in danger, ringer,” he said. “If you serve this man, it will drain whatever is left of your soul. You should serve the Queen-in-Exile.”
“I should—” Khyven blinked and then barked a laugh. “You’re a queener?” For a moment, he’d thought this Shadowvar was a mysterious, mystic creature, but he was a Senji-be-damned queener!
The Queen-in-Exile was a myth dreamed up by desperate naïfs who wanted to believe in something. Someone to come save them. Queeners thought the daughter of King Laochodon, long dead these past ten years, was hidden somewhere in the Royal Woods gathering her forces. This mythical queen was always on the verge of storming the walls of Usara and pulling King Vamreth down from his throne.
And of course, when she did this, she would free all the ringers.
“I suppose the Queen-in-Exile gave you that amulet,” Khyven said.
The Shadowvar smiled thinly. “After I’m dead tomorrow,” he said, “find her. Ask her.”
“You don’t seem to care much about dying.”
“Everyone dies, Khyven the Unkillable,” the Shadowvar said. “Few live a worthy life. Is yours worthy? It’s the only question worth asking, and knowing the answer can save your soul. It’s the only thing that can.”
“And you’ve lived a worthy life, have you?” Khyven asked.
The Shadowvar just watched him. “Have you?”
A memory of the old man and Nhevaz flickered through Khyven’s mind. What would they have thought of Khyven’s vocation these past two years? Would they have approved of the killing, the lives Khyven had taken to save his own? Would they have approved of Khyven becoming a knight in King Vamreth’s court?
He banished the troublesome thoughts. It didn’t matter what Nhevaz or the old man thought. They were dead. Their advice hadn’t saved them; it wouldn’t save Khyven.
He was one of the few ringers who could claim he’d escaped the Night Ring by going up instead of down. That was worthy. Khyven had been a slave. He’d become a free man by his own hand. And tomorrow, he was going to become a knight.
“Your words mean nothing. They’re taunts.”
“They are,” the Shadowvar agreed. “That they sting you… well, it means you might be worth saving.”
“Go to hell, Shadowvar!”
“Find the queen,” the Shadowvar said. He went back to the wall and sat down, disappearing into the darkness except for his white horns.
Khyven waited an interminable moment, gripping the spear, on the verge of thrusting it between the bars and killing the little demon.
Arms rigid, he cast the spear across the floor, stalked down the aisle, past the cages, and banged on the door. He didn’t look back at the Shadowvar, but he could feel the creature’s gaze on him.
This trip had been a waste of time. The creature wasn’t giving up any secrets. Khyven had looked into the eyes of enough foes to know the Shadowvar would die with the secret of the necklace still behind his teeth.
The guard eventually opened the door and Khyven left the Night Ring. He suddenly couldn’t get away fast enough. His belly twisted with emotions he didn’t understand. What the little demon had said shouldn’t bother him so much. It didn’t make sense. He didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore except the next bout. Khyven’s new life was on the other side of that. He shouldn’t be thinking about the arrogant little Shadowvar, or Nhevaz and the old man, for that matter.
But he did.
As he strode out of the Night Ring into the dark streets of Usara, up the streets and back to the palace, his mind floated back to the last lesson the old man had ever taught him, the lesson of the blue wind….
Chapter Seven
Khyven
“Rubbish,” the old man said.
Khyven barely heard the criticism. The old man’s voice warbled as though Khyven’s ears had been shaken and hadn’t stopped moving yet. The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth, dripped down his lip, and dotted the dirt in front of his face. He tried to lift his head, but half of his body was limp. The other half seemed poked by a hundred needles. Nhevaz had practically paralyzed him with that last hit. A sweltering pain lit up his skull where Nhevaz had whacked him with the practice sword.
He had to get up. He had to regain his senses. Nhevaz’s politeness would last a moment, but only a moment. Every time he knocked Khyven down he would wait for a count of ten and if Khyven didn’t get up Nhevaz would move in for the final strike. Khyven had been knocked unconscious two times this week already.
“You aren’t feeling it,” the old man’s voice warbled in Khyven’s ears. He would have ignored the comment, but experience had taught him that doing so only brought more suffering. If it seemed like Khyven wasn’t paying attention, if his focus faltered for even an instant, the old man made sure the fight went badly.
Ears ringing, mouth bleeding, arms and legs feeling like sacks of sand, Khyven tried to understand what the old man was on about.
Split lip, ears ringing, vision fuzzy, body afire with pain, blood running down my chin… How am I not feeling it?
Nhevaz circled Khyven, stalking like a mountain lion preparing for the kill. It was a signal his patience was almost up.
“Your hesitation limits you,” the old man said. “You think he has no weaknesses, but he does. You must find them.”
Khyven gritted his teeth and pushed to his knees. His right arm seemed to be working again; it had lost that numb feeling. Nhevaz had hit him with a double strike, one to the neck that had nearly paralyzed him and one to the head that had dropped him.
Get up, he thought. Get up, get up!
“You could be a champion,” the old man said. “You could be something this world needs, but until you feel it you’re just another stupid boy with a sword in his hand and his face in the dirt. Until you feel it, you’re nothing.”
As if that was his cue, Nhevaz came for Khyven.
Khyven fought the pain, the confusion, and the frustration that he didn’t understand what the old man was saying. He focused on Nhevaz, though there was no reason to believe the outcome of this fight would be any different from the last dozen times. Nhevaz was the superior fighter in all ways; his swordplay was far more advanced. Khyven was big, strong, and fast, but Nhevaz was bigger, stronger, faster. While Khyven had triumphed over Roahl and Farsin long ago, he’d never beaten Nhevaz. Not once.
And Nhevaz was going to knock him unconscious again. Khyven was certain of it, and so was Nhevaz.
So was Nhevaz…
A flicker of wisdom lit Khyven’s mind, like a tiny candle at the bottom of a well. Nhevaz knew he was the superior fighter. He counted on it.
And that was it. That was his weakness. The old man had said many times that an overconfident opponent was like an inverted pyramid. Intimidating, but precarious.
Every battle can be won. Every battle, no matter how unlikely. A fighter who believes he cannot lose has lost sight of the truth.
It wasn’t much, but perhaps Khyven could do something with it. He sucked a breath through his bloody mouth and put one foot on the ground, tensing as if to thrust himself upright. Nhevaz charged.
Once Khyven imagined the weakness, he felt his brother’s confidence. He felt it rather than just knowing it, and it formed in the air like a blue wisp of wind that enveloped Nhevaz’s body, swirled up the edge of his sword and preceded its sweeping path toward Khyven, showing him exactly where it was going.
Khyven moved, grasping the spear of blue wind with his hands.
He caught Nhevaz’s blade.
The blue wind flickered as if Nhevaz’s confidence had wavered.
