Brent Weeks - Shadow's Edge

His smile dropped a notch, and Gwinvere saw it. She touched his arm. “I’m glad you like them.” She walked to the door, then turned. “Just tell your men that each of those bows cost more than they’ll make in their lives.” And she smiled. It was a smile to give them a ramp back up to levity. A smile that told him she saw, she knew, and though she didn’t reciprocate his interest, she wouldn’t use it against him.

Agon barked a laugh, accepting her lead. “I’ll take it out of their hides.”

More shocking than the mugger’s words was his face. He was the same man whom Kylar had sworn he’d seen briefly from Count Drake’s window the day Vi tried to kill him.

Kylar dosed the man with poppy wine, and took him to a home for the treatment of addicts. Addicts from wealthy families, of course. The treatment itself was simple: mostly, time. The attendants administered teas and other herbs of doubtful usefulness, restrained the addict, cleaned up the diarrhea and vomit, and waited. The walls were thick, the cells separate and private. Kylar had no trouble with the guards, who took one look, saw an addict, and let them in.

“Please restrain me,” the Ladeshian said as they entered a tiny cell. There was a writing desk, a chair, a basin and pitcher, and a bed, but the walls were blank brick. It was deliberately spartan. The fewer things in the room, the less likely a suicide attempt would be successful.

“I don’t think you’ll get out of control for a few hours at the least,” Kylar said.

“Don’t be so sure.”

So Kylar bound him to the bed with the thick leather straps and the man looked relieved. He smiled his gap-toothed addict’s smile. It turned Kylar’s stomach. Hadn’t this man once had a brilliant smile?

“Who are you?” Kylar asked. “And what is it you think you know about me?”

“I know that you have a ka’kari, Kylar Stern. I knew Durzo Blint and I know you were his apprentice and I know this is your second incarnation. You used to be called Azoth.”

Kylar’s stomach flipped. “Who are you?”

The man smiled again, a huge smile, as if he had gotten so used to smiling to show his perfect white teeth that he hadn’t yet adjusted to his addict’s grin. Oddly, now that he was bound, he seemed arrogant. “I am Aristarchos ban Ebron, shalakroi of Benyurien in the Silk province of Ladesh.”

“Is shalakroi the Ladeshian name for a riot weed addict?”

The hauteur fell from the man’s face like a load of bricks. “No. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for the attempt on your life. I wasn’t in control of myself.”

“I could tell.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Aristarchos said.

“I’ve seen addicts before.”

“I’m not just an addict, Kylar.” He smiled a wry, lopsided smile that showed more of his rotten teeth. “Same thing every addict would say, huh? I tried to get out of Cenaria when the city fell, but my Ladeshian skin betrayed me. The Khalidorans stopped me and interrogated me about the silk trade. They hate the silk monopoly as much as the rest of you Midcyri. That interrogation would have been fine, but a Vürdmeister named Neph Dada saw me. He has the Viewing. I don’t know what he saw, but they began torturing me.” His eyes grew distant. “That was bad. What was worse was that they force-fed me some seeds after every time. They took the pain away. They made everything better. I didn’t even recognize what they were. The Khalidorans didn’t let me sleep. They’d just torture me, feed me seeds, torture me. They didn’t even ask questions until he came.”

“He?” Kylar felt sick to his stomach.

“I …fear to speak his name,” Aristarchos said, ashamed of his fear and yet frightened to silence nonetheless. He began drumming his fingers.

“The Godking?”

He nodded. “The cycle just kept going until they didn’t have to force the seeds on me anymore. I begged for them. The second time he came, he used magic on me…. He’s fascinated with compulsion. Magical, chemical, and blends of the two, he said. I was just another experiment. After a while, I …I gave them your name, Kylar. He laid a compulsion on me to kill you. I had a box with my seeds in it that would only open once I obeyed.” A tremor passed through him. “You see? I tried riot weed to get me by. I tried poppy wine. Nothing works. I thought if I could get here fast enough, I could warn you. I did hold some things back. They don’t know you come back from death. They don’t know about the Society or your incarnations.”

It was all going too fast for Kylar. The implications were exploding in a hundred different directions. “What society?” Kylar said.

Aristarchos looked incredulous, his fingers even stopped their drumming. “Durzo never told you?”

“Not a word.”

“ ‘The Society of the Second Dawn.’ ”

“Never heard of it.”

“ ‘The Society of the Second Dawn is devoted to the study of reputed immortals, the delineations of their abilities, and the confinement of said powers to those who would not abuse them.’ We’re a secret society, spread over all the world. It’s how I was able to find you. We were founded centuries ago. Back then we thought there were dozens of immortals. Over the years, we concluded that there were at most seven, and maybe just one. The man you knew as Durzo Blint was also Ferric Fireheart, Vin Craysin, Tal Drakkan, Yric the Black, Hrothan Steelbender, Zak Eurthkin, Rebus Nimble, Qos Delanoesh, X!rutic Ur, Mir Graggor, Pips McClawski, Garric Shadowbane, Dav Slinker, and probably a dozen others we don’t know.”

“That’s half the stories of Midcryu.”

Aristarchos was starting to shiver and sweat, but he continued in a level voice, “He successfully masqueraded as a native of at least a dozen different cultures, probably twice that. He spoke more languages than I’ve even heard of—at least thirty, not counting dialects—and all of them so fluently natives couldn’t detect an accent. There were times when he would disappear for twenty or even fifty years—we don’t know if he lived in solitude or married and settled down in remote regions. But he appeared in every major conflict for six centuries, and not always on the side you would expect. Two hundred years ago, as Hrothan Steelbender, he fought with the Alitaeran expansion campaigns for the first thirty years of the Hundred Years’ War, and then ‘died’ and fought with the Ceurans against them as the sword-saint Oturo Kenji.”

Now it was Kylar who was shivering. He remembered when his guild had tried to mug Durzo. When they saw who he was, they shrank back from the legendary wetboy. Legendary wetboy! How little they knew. How little Kylar had known. He felt an unreasoning stab of resentment.

How could Durzo not tell him? He’d been like a son to the man. He’d been closer to him than anyone—and he hadn’t told Kylar anything. Kylar had only seen a bitter, superstitious shell of a man, and thought himself somehow superior to him.

Kylar hadn’t known Durzo Blint at all. And now the hero out of legends—dozens of legends—was dead. Dead at Kylar’s hands. Kylar had destroyed something without knowing its worth. He hadn’t known the man he’d called his master and now he never would. It felt like a hole in his stomach. He felt numb and distant and angry and near tears all at once. Durzo was dead, and Kylar missed him more than he could have imagined.

The beads of sweat were sticking out on Aristarchos’s face now. He had wadded the bed sheets in his fists. “If you have any questions you need to ask me about his incarnations or yours or anything at all, please ask quickly. I’m not …feeling well.”

“Why do you keep saying incarnations like I’m some kind of god?” It wasn’t a great question, but the real questions were so big that Kylar didn’t even know how ask them.