Juliet McKenna - The Swordsman's Oath

“Place the sword back in your own hands,” she said calmly. “It’s going to be all right, my dearest.” Her eyes left Temar’s for an instant, to convey her reassurances to the silent knot of strangers watching, still, intent.

Temar unbuckled the sword with clumsy fingers, sliding it into the unfeeling hands of the body that had once been his. Weakness overcame him again and he knelt, all strength in his legs deserting him as Guinalle began a low-voiced incantation, her own voice roughened with tears.

The scream of terror and desolation that ripped from his throat set Temar’s blood racing in his veins, but as he tried blindly to climb to his feet he pitched forward—and knew no more.

I came to myself lying across a body that was as cold and immobile as stone. Pushing myself backward in horror, I found I was as weak as a half-drowned kitten and able to make about as much sense as I struggled to speak. I gasped and hugged my arms to myself, nausea surging up within me, threatening to choke me. A flush like sudden fever left me sweating and dizzy, head ringing like a new-struck bell. I swallowed on a throat ripped raw by the screams of another man’s anguish.

“Hush, let me,” Livak was at my side, dragging me away, to prop me sitting against the rough wall of the cave. She knelt before me and gripped my shoulders with both hands, staring deep into my eyes. “Ryshad?”

I nodded and she held me tight, burying her face in my neck where I felt her hot tears of relief. I wrapped my own arms around her, feebly at first then with growing strength. The urge to vomit passed and I felt the sweat cooling on my body in the dimness of the cavern.

“Are you all right?” I recognized Guinalle at once, but where I had always heard her voice clear and comprehensible in my dreams now I found it hard to understand her slow and lilting words.

“I am, thank you.” I nodded as best I could with Livak’s red hair half smothering me.

“Do you remember…” Guinalle began hesitantly.

I raised a hand to silence her. “Yes,” I replied curtly. “No matter, I don’t want to speak of it.”

She managed a half-smile of guilty relief and turned to Temar. Disentangling myself from Livak’s embrace, I managed to get to my feet and looked down on the physical body of the man I’d spent so long struggling against inside my head. Livak came to join me, wrapping an arm around my waist as she tucked herself under my arm. Temar looked very young and I realized with an overwhelming relief that I was free of his uncertainties, his ill-governed emotions, all the ills of youth that I had thought I had left behind long since. Not that this whole foul experience hadn’t left me with a few quandaries of my own, but I would address them in my own time, I decided. For the present, it was enough to know I was sole master of my own head once more.

Guinalle laid a fond hand on Temar’s waxen forehead and I shivered as unseen fingers touched my own skin in a shadowy echo.

“Are you all right?” Livak moved to look at me, face concerned, and as she did so her foot knocked against a dagger on the floor. I recognized it as hers and reached down to pick it up.

“Careful with that,” Livak took it from me hastily and plunged the blade repeatedly into a patch of damp earth until the blade gleamed, cleaned of the oily salve it had carried.

“What were you planning to do with that?” I stared at her, startled.

“His lordship over there was none too keen on giving up your warm body to return to that cold one yonder.” Livak glowered at Temar’s unconscious form. “I was just about ready to make his decision for him, when he yielded. Let him argue the fall of the runes with a dose of tahn in his blood.”

I hugged Livak to me. “Thanks for the thought, but don’t blame the lad too much.” I closed my eyes on a brief memory of that appalling sensation of being locked away in endless darkness, cut off from all sensation. “After a taste of what he’s been going through, I can’t say I would have done any different.” Seeing the world through Temar’s eyes had been a salutory reminder of the power of the emotions of youth, the mixture of fear and impetuousness that had driven me in my turn first to the excesses of thassin and then to service with Messire.

Livak snorted and muttered something under her breath as Shiv and the others approached cautiously, the mercenaries in particular looking extremely unsettled. “What do we do now?” Tavie demanded truculently, folding muscular arms over his rounded gut, a scowl lifting his lip to show teeth like a row of burned-out houses. “We came to find this cave and now we’ve done it. What next?”

I looked at Shiv and Usara who turned to Parrail. “Well, I have as many of the small items as we thought promising with me,” he offered. “Shall we see who we can revive?” He looked questioningly at Guinalle, whose head had turned at his words.

“Let me see,” she held out her hands and Parrail gave her the casket with alacrity, kneeling beside her to open it. As Guinalle examined the rings and trinkets with tentative hands, she looked up at us, eyes wide. “How long have we slept?”

I exchanged an uncertain glance with Shiv and Usara. but Parrail spoke up eagerly. “Close on twenty-four generations, as far as we can tell.”

Guinalle’s jaw dropped and she gaped at the lad. “What? How? I mean…” The multitude of questions defeated her and she buried her face in her hands, Parrail putting a helpless arm around her in a futile attempt at comfort.

“We have come to find you, to seek your assistance against that same enemy that destroyed your colony here.” Usara knelt before Guinalle and took her hands in his, holding her tearful gaze. “There will be answers to all your questions in time, but just at present we need your aid. Your Artifice has long been lost to our people and the Elietimm, the men who attacked you, they are using it against us. Will you help us?”

Guinalle struggled for an answer. “I…”

“Leave the rest of it for another time, just consider that one thing,” Usara’s voice was calm and soothing but I could hear the urgency behind his words. “We need your help, otherwise more people will die at the hands of these invaders.”

Guinalle blinked and rubbed away her tears with a trembling hand. “Whatever I can do, I will,” she faltered.

“Should we be doing this?” Parrail looked around the great cavern, uncertainty wrinkling his brow. “I mean, the theory sounded all very well, but—”

“What else are we going to do, now we’ve come this far?” Shiv took a parchment from Parrail’s book. “I hardly think we can leave Guinalle all alone? Now, is this a list of the people you think owned these artifacts?”

Parrail scrambled to his feet hastily. “It’s what we compiled from the dreams, the most common images that were seen. You see, that one there, the chatelaine, all the evidence suggests it belongs to a mature woman with rather noticeable pock marks and—”

Shiv thrust the list at the scholar. “You read it out. Tavie and Buril, come with me and see if you can find anyone matching his descriptions.”

The mercenaries shared an uncertain look before joining Shiv and then Usara in slowly quartering the cave as Parrail read out brief and often unflattering descriptions of the people they sought.

“Oh dear.” Guinalle stifled a hesitant smile. “Mistress Cullam always preferred to be called robust or sturdy rather than fat.”

“Are you up to doing this?” Livak was looking at Guinalle with open skepticism.

The slender woman lifted her chin and a spark of determination lit her eye. “I am, but first we should revive as many Adepts in artifice as we may. They will be able to support me in restoring the others.”