K Parker - Shadow

It wasn't a dungeon, it was a store. The wall opposite the door was covered from floor to ceiling with shelves, lined with thousands of neatly folded blankets. Against the wall to the right there stood five enormous wooden bins, heaped almost to overflow point with charcoal. To his left was a large pile of kindling, tied up in small bundles, enough to light one regulation fire. Standing in front of the kindling was Copis, and she was holding a sword in both hands.

'Stay away from me,' she said. 'Or I'll kill you.'

Poldarn hadn't been expecting that. 'Copis, it's me,' he said. 'I've come to rescue you,' he added, feeling extremely foolish.

'Go away,' she said, then her face relaxed just a little. 'You bloody fool, haven't you worked it out yet?'

Poldarn shook his head.

'Then you're even more stupid than you look,' she snapped. She looked embarrassed, as if he'd caught her stealing from the cashbox. 'You don't still think we came here by accident, do you?'

'Accident,' he repeated. 'What are you talking about?'

She sighed, as if he was a small child being deliberately obtuse. 'I brought you here,' she said. 'You still don't get it? I'm your keeper.'

She wasn't making any sense. No, he didn't want what she'd just said to make sense. 'You knew?' he asked.

'All right.' She lowered the sword, but he recognised the position of the blade as a hidden guard. 'I'll spell it out for you, shall I? I serve the order. Do you want me to go on?'

'Yes,' he said.

Copis scowled. 'If you insist,' she said. 'I was assigned to you. Mostly just to keep an eye on what you were doing and report back, but if necessary I'd be there to protect you from being assassinated, or kill you myself if that's what they wanted me to do. When your escort was attacked beside the river-by these people, damn it, the raiders-I admit I panicked and stayed out of it; actually it wasn't me so much as that waste of space they'd paired me with, the man you killed-'

'Hold on,' Poldarn said. 'You're talking about the first time we met, just after I woke up-'

'Of course I am,' Copis replied. 'What else did you think I meant?'

'So you knew all along.' Suddenly he couldn't breathe, but there were more important things than breathing. 'You know who I am. You can tell me-'

Copis shook her head. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'But I have no orders to give you that information.' Her words were stilted, out of character; she was quoting from some general order. 'I'm sorry,' she said again.

'Copis, for God's sake.' He started to move towards her; the sword swung up and pointed at his heart. 'Don't you understand?' he said desperately. 'The Order's gone, they've been wiped out. Look out the door if you don't believe me. We've killed them all, so it doesn't matter any more.'

She gave him a look that was as cold as ice, or a dead man's face. 'Not all,' she said. 'For a start, there's me. Or are you going to kill me too, you barbarian?'

She spat the word at him, and behind it he could feel the weight of months of hatred, repressed and hidden away in a part of her mind that even she hadn't been able to get into until now. It wasn't just hate, it was contempt and disgust, the unappeasable loathing of complete opposites. He took a step back, as if afraid of getting burned.

'Besides,' she said, 'I wouldn't tell you even if I was allowed.' She was looking at the backsabre, and the red smear. 'I should have killed you when I had the chance.'

Poldarn stared at her, his mouth open. 'Why?' he asked.

She laughed. 'You'd like to know, I bet. That way, you'd have a clue, you'd finally be able to figure out who you are. Sorry, no chance, but I'll tell you this much. This is an imperfect world, and most people are partly bad. Sometimes, depending on the way things happen, they find themselves in circumstances where the bad part of them comes to the top and they do terrible things, because they have to, or because it's safer or easier. You can't really blame them, because you can imagine circumstances where you'd do the same yourself, they're a mirror you can see yourself in, and all you can do is hope that you'll never end up in their shoes, do the things they found themselves doing. But you aren't like that. You're a core of evil with a few layers of flesh and skin, just for show. Everything you did you did because you wanted to, and that's where I can't even begin to understand you, because you didn't stop at greed or ambition or advantage, you just kept on going, like you wanted to be the end of the world.' She caught her breath, and laughed shrilly. 'That's why I decided you had to be the god in the cart, Poldarn the Destroyer. It seemed so appropriate at the time, and even when you'd lost your memory and suddenly you'd stopped being yourself, everywhere you went there was killing and burning and things falling down. And now,' she added, letting the sword drop to her side, 'here you are. Why am I not surprised?'

Poldarn took a deep breath, like someone waiting for a wave to break all round him and drag him under. 'Whoever I used to be, I know who I am now, and that's all that matters,' he said. 'And if you stay here, they'll kill you.'

'We'll kill you, you mean.'

'They'll kill you,' Poldarn repeated. 'I came here to rescue you, because-'

She laughed. 'Yes,' she said, 'quite. So, if you really love me, hold still while I cut your head off. Will you do this one small thing for me?'

He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

'Well?' she said. 'Is that too much to ask?'

'No,' he replied.

She took a step forward, into his circle. He stayed perfectly still, either because he didn't care if she killed him or not, or because it was too early to assess where her attack was going to come from, so that choosing a guard now would prejudice his defence. 'It's one of those dreams we all have,' she was saying. 'You die, but you rid the world of an unspeakable monster, so it's all right really. Something like that would give your whole life some degree of meaning. Seven-eighths of humanity would love to be where I am now.'

'Go on, then,' he said. 'If it's what you really want.'

She swung the sword over her head, taking a step forward. Poldarn read the move just in time, stepped back and to the right with his right foot and angled his sword down to deflect the cut. She recovered well and threw a backhand side cut at his neck. He'd read that too, and went back out of the way, reverting to a plain forward guard. She glared at him, her expression almost comical, then swung a looping cut that started out aimed at his face but curved in at his hands. He dropped his guard just in time and the tip of the cutting edge glided past his knuckles, missing them by the width of a coin. She took two steps back and resumed her guard.

'Your money,' she said, 'the gold you found in those ruins. I tried to tell myself it wasn't dirty, you'd just found it, I could give it to the Order where it could do some good. But I couldn't, so I threw it down a well. At least you'll never have it now.'

He didn't answer; instead he started walking backwards towards the door. 'No you don't,' she yelled, and came at him again, this time feinting high and pulling the cut back in to bring it down at his knees. He parried instinctively, and whatever it was he did, it worked. 'Please,' he said. 'Stop it. I can get you out of here alive.'

'I wouldn't take my life from you,' she replied. 'It wouldn't be worth having. And for God's sake fight back.'

He realised. 'You can't read me,' he said. 'You don't know how to fight someone who only defends and won't attack. Those moves aren't in any of the forms you learned.'

She scowled. 'Congratulations,' she said. 'You've just attained the fifteenth grade, summed up in the maxim, The best fight is not to fight. I never got further than the twelfth grade myself, but I'm just a woman, I was lucky to get that far. The depressing thing is, you worked it out for yourself. You never went any higher than the tenth grade.'