3

THREE: Revelations

The world was dark. Everything around me was black as pitch. I looked down and saw a yawning pit of nothingness that stretched down into emptiness under my feet. My aches and pains were gone.

Something cold and nauseating swelled in the pit of my stomach. “Hello? What is this place? Am I…dead?”

“You fainted,” said a voice. “The Steadwoman and her men are transporting you back to their farm.”

I turned around as the speaker finished speaking. I couldn’t see anyone in the darkness, though I looked in every direction, trying to spot who it was. “You—you’re the one who spoke to me!”

“Correct.” The voice had a timbre to it that I immediately identified as male, but it was difficult to go beyond that—it wasn’t young or old, neither feeble nor strong. The tone was clinical, almost cold.

“If I fainted, where am I now?” There was a kind of light source somewhere about me: I could see my hands and body, look down and spot my bare feet. Beyond that, there was nothing else but emptiness all the way to the horizon and below me, stretching onwards into oblivion. I was also naked, so…there was that, too. “And where are my clothes?” I wondered if I should cover myself. Puzzlement won out over embarrassment, for the moment.

“This is the Veil,” said the voice, “or a small part of it. We may speak here, though our time is limited, but if you prefer to spend your time asking pointless questions—”

“It’s not pointless,” I said, feeling a surge of indignation. “Where are my clothes?”

There was a pause as the speaker hesitated. “You have none. Nor do you have a physical body in this place. What you see is your subconscious self—the memory of yourself that you carry within the Veil.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and took a slow, calming breath. “Alright, then… What is the Veil?”

“It is the realm that stands between the waking world and the vastness beyond,” the voice explained. “Your kind often glimpses what once was in this place, as well as both what might have been and what may be, while you sleep.”

“‘Your kind.’ You’re talking about humans, human dreams.” The voice didn’t deny it, which was confirmation enough for me. “Who are you? What are you?”

The blackness in front of me fell away as a golden glow appeared, making me want to shield my eyes or look away. The light surrounded a sword hanging in mid-air, just out of reach. The blade was black enameled steel with a twisted iron crosspiece; the hilt was black leather, wrapped in gold wire that twinkled with the same light.

I recognized it immediately. “That’s my mother’s sword!” The light it gave off wasn’t a healthy glow like sunlight or from a candle’s flame; it seemed sickly, an impure gleam, reminding me of the color of infection, like bright pus oozing from a wound. As I observed the weapon for a long moment, I felt acutely aware that it was likely doing the same to me.

“You recognize me,” the voice—the Sword—said.

“Yes. Mother showed you to me, before…” I couldn’t continue—dream or not, my throat was thick and swollen, and hot tears stung my eyes.

“I am the Deathbringer,” he said. “The blade of ruin and demise, savior and ward of the Alenir family, passed from First Daughter to First Daughter, a pure line unbroken for almost a thousand years.”

I sniffed, swiping the fresh tears away. “That’s…a mouthful. And now I’m the next in line now, aren’t I?”

“Your mother spoke to you of your heritage,” Deathbringer said. “Upon her death, I would pass on to you. Do you remember?”

My heart was hard and heavy as I nodded, sniffing again. “Then I’m not Inga Ivanova at all, am I? I’m related to that woman in that pendant: Katarina…Alenir?”

“Correct.”

The weight of so much new knowledge bore down on me, a terrible burden I never knew existed or even wanted. What I did want was to curl up and float away into that black void, just like I’d wanted to curl up next to Pyotr’s body. Instead, I forced myself to stand straighter, raising my chin, fists curled at my sides. “Did you ever speak to my mother like you’re speaking to me?”

“Rarely. Since the death of your grandmatron, I mostly remained asleep. Ilyan preferred to remain distant and kept me hidden away out of deliberate choice, as much as from necessity.”

“Is that why she never told me about you until today?”

There was a long pause, as though the Sword was carefully weighing his words. “Your mother seemed self-assured that no one would ever ascertain my whereabouts; she prided herself on my existence remaining a secret, and believed nothing could jeopardize that.”

I didn’t have the heart to say anything.

“I warned your mother that someone might come searching for me eventually, but there was no way to know who it might be, or when.”

Dream or not, I had to clear my throat several times before I could speak at all. “She did seem irritated by something when I spoke to her.”

“Ilyan often was when I insisted on communicating with her,” Deathbringer said; his tone struck me as bitter. “She was never the same after the death of your father and grandparents. Once that transpired, she changed—your upbringing and training became her main focus.”

I was reminded of cold, dark mornings, being roused from my bed before dawn to go running for hours; of swinging my waster until I was sure my arms were going to fall off; of her striking me with a tree branch hard enough to leave bruises. On the other hand, she was still my mother: the woman was hard on me, but I’d grown up to expect that from her. I’d become accustomed to it. Of all the words Deathbringer could have used, focus wasn’t the one I would have used. Obsession seemed a better fit.

“She thought it best to keep my existence a secret from you until the time was right,” he said. “Now we have precious little time in which to correct her error.”

“What error is that?” I said, crossing my arms.

“An error of education. Of knowledge, and of survival—one that may impact you a great deal in a very short amount of time.”

“Well, if you think you have the time,” I answered, waving a hand, “educate away.”

“A moment.” The shimmering light changed and shifted, flickering back and forth for a brief moment; it seemed to me that the Sword was thinking, sorting his thoughts into something cohesive that he believed I could understand. “We have little time to spend on this endeavor, and there is much to tell you in what time we do have.”

“I’d advise brevity on your part, then.”

The sword was silent for a second. “You are droll, Swordbearer. Your mother lacked that quality.”

“My mother was hard to live with sometimes. Being ‘droll’ was my way to cope with that.” Just talking about my mother in the past tense was like slowly sliding a knife in-between my own ribs—whatever her faults might’ve been, she was my mother; I loved her all the same. I sighed, pushing the renewed urge to mourn away for the time being. “You were saying?”

“For centuries, I’ve watched and guided your forebears: generations of women, down the line from mother to daughter and so on. You know my name,” said the Sword, “but there are others like me, after a sort: similar in some ways, different in others. In a time before your oldest grandmatron, a threat of almost unfathomable proportions threatened humanity as a whole. I and my ilk were crafted to fight back against that threat.”

Now I might’ve been more naive than I cared to admit, but I could guess that such a simple story had to have layers upon layers of nuance and details that the sword either couldn’t or wouldn’t go into just then. “You’re talking about the Saints,” I said, “the ones who saved the world from some calamity a long time ago.”

“Correct.”

“What kind of threat did they stop?”

“A force of immeasurable power, one that nearly drove your kind to extinction. To fight back against that power, I and my brethren were first forged.”

I made an educated guess: “The Spellswords.”

“Precisely. The threat was stopped, its power bound and sealed, imprisoned for all time.”

“So you’re not the only Sword, then.”

There the slightest pause before he answered. “There are fourteen of us, in all. Thirteen were made to counter the first of our kind.” Deathbringer’s voice became just a little colder, a touch more clinical and detached. “Worldbreaker, seeker of destruction, was the first Spellsword to ever exist—the strongest, perhaps, and the cause of so many troubles amongst your kind.” The voice paused for a moment. “Worldbreaker and its Bearer were the originators of that near-calamity I spoke of, a force of chaos, of discord and uncontrolled ruination. In the hands of a formidable wielder, Worldbreaker’s power is nigh-unstoppable.”

For a moment, I absorbed that information, considering the Sword’s words. “But…you and the others did stop it.”

“Correct. Worldbreaker’s destruction was halted, and the Sword was sealed away.”

“Why not destroy it?”

“No such power exists. No Sword or authority in all the world is strong enough to destroy it.”

“I hardly find that to be very comforting.”

“Humans are limited by their frailty and meager lifespans,” he said. “But those with power are the ones to record the history your descendants are taught. So it was with the ones who bore us—the Swordbearers. With our might, they consolidated their power and raised themselves over other women and men. In that way, the Swordbearer Clans were founded.”

“And if you’re here now…I guess that means my mother and I are—”

“Nobility of the once-esteemed Alenir bloodline, yes,” the Sword said.

“And if I’m the Bearer now…”

Deathbringer followed my hunch to its unwanted, if logical conclusion. “Once one dies, the next in line takes over. No Spellsword can serve two Mistresses.”

I hadn’t dared to hope that my mother might still be alive, but the affirmation of her death was a bitter twist in my belly all the same. I quickly changed the subject: “Mother said that a lot of our family died a long time ago to protect you from something—is that why you said ‘once-esteemed’? Does that have something to do with…what happened?” I found it difficult to even think about the whole-scale murder I’d been witness to; not naming it aloud made it easier to talk about.

“In short: your great-grandmatron, Katarina Alenir, began a war of conquest before your mother was born.”

“Why?”

“I was not privy to her decisions on the matter. Katarina and her allies lost that war—as a consequence, the Alenir family and its subjects were all but exterminated, hoping to prune the family line to its last vestige in hopes that none would Bear me again. Your mother and her parents were the only members of your family to escape in secret, and they managed to smuggle me away in their exile, leaving behind an imitation to be destroyed in my place. Which leads us, inevitably, to now, and to you—the last of your family’s line.”

“That is…a lot to take in,” I said, trying to imagine myself as some kind of noblewoman and failing, miserably. “My mother wanted all of this hidden from me. Why?”

“Perhaps she thought that your ignorance was a blessing in this matter, rather than a curse,” Deathbringer said. “Katarina Alenir is not a name remembered fondly—quite the opposite, in fact. Perhaps she hoped to spare you that legacy. And perhaps, given different circumstances, her plan might have worked.”

I felt a hot rush of something fill me up, near to bursting, pushing away any thought of distant relations and magic swords. “Until Yenda Avard showed up.” I spoke the woman’s name through clenched teeth, tasting the hate and bitter anger on my tongue. More memories of loved ones, of Pyotr’s lifeless body, flashed through my mind. “I’ll kill her,” I said, spitting the words like venom. “I’ll truss her up like a plucked chicken, cut out every organ she’s got and show them to her.”

“You are upset,” the Sword said.

“Well, why shouldn’t I be?!”

“You have no weapons, no resources, no way to fight back,” Deathbringer said. The cold, curt manner of his words stopped me more surely than any attempt to soothe or stifle my anger would have. “Clan Avard possesses the Spellsword Frostbite, arbiter of the winds. At this moment, the role of Swordbearer belongs to her mother, Yenda Avard the Elder. Yenda the Younger was likely taught to handle a sword since she could carry the weight of one. She already holds the title of First Daughter in her family, and she will inherit both the role of Matriarch and her mother’s Spellsword when she dies, and I am in her possession as well.”

“Well, I know how to use a sword, too,” I said with a huff. “It’ll take more than a prig with a heavy purse and some proper upbringing to frighten me.”

“Your anger is an advantage, though one of questionable merit,” the Sword said, sounding momentarily reluctant. “And you have little time to in which to use it.”

“Why?”

“As Darya Varin and her men are bearing you hence, Yenda Avard and her men are carrying me south and east towards the Avardi capital at Whitehold—she rides within a contraption of iron and steel, moving faster than any horse could hope to run. I fear that my time in exile has made me ignorant of humanity’s more recent technological advances.”

“I’ve heard of those,” I said. “Mistress Darya rode in one before; she called it a ‘train.’ But I’ve never actually seen one before.” When the Sword didn’t comment further, I continued: “And Yenda’s taking you to Whitehold.”

“I would surmise it to be so,” Deathbringer said. “Whitehold is the seat of Clan Avard, where their power is most secure.”

“But why? What does stealing you do for them?”

“A sword is bound to its bloodline. She intends to bind herself to me as a new Bearer.”

“Can she do that?”

“Yenda the Younger seems intent on making it so,” Deathbringer said, sounding displeased. “Already she’s tried once and failed. Yenda the Younger may be many things, but I would not pin her for a fool—if she cannot bind herself to me, she will know that you yet live. Be cautious.”

“I’ll stop her,” I said through clenched teeth. “And I’ll find you, too. No matter how long it takes.”

“Time is not a luxury afforded to you now, Inga Alenir. The blade that cut your life short also skewered your heart—my power is no mere thing, but even I was nearly spent in the effort it took to save your life.”

A different sort of cold rushed through me then. I reached down to probe at my wound, found it as tender and delicate as I remembered. Carefully, I raised my breast and peered down at what I could see of the wound itself: the skin was knitted shut, but it was the same sick, pale yellow color as Deathbringer’s brilliance, a similarity that wasn’t lost on me. And when I pressed my palm to my chest to wait for a pulse, I felt nothing—dream or not, all of those things together seemed like a bad sign. Perhaps the lack of a heartbeat was simply on account of my presence in the Veil, but that struck me as unlikely.

“So…am I dead, then?” I said, echoing my question from earlier. Asking it at all was easier than I’d expected, but my mouth felt as dry as if I’d been chewing on sand. My memory of crawling out of that pile of bodies, of my slain family and friends, was as fresh as the smoldering coals and embers still smoking over their corpses.

“You are as the Veil,” Deathbringer said, “between one thing and the other; neither dead, nor living. I spent nearly all of my power to save you, for you were at the edge of death, but upon that edge you remain. Separated as we are, with my power spent and my physical form in the hands of the enemy, I cannot prolong your life any further, however unnatural it may be. You must make all haste to see us reunited, or you will die.”

“How long do I have?” When I spoke, I could hardly manage more than a murmur.

“My power is tied to the turning of the greater moon, and is greatest at its waning. Most of the Spellswords see our powers wax and wane with one or both of the moons as well.”

“But the new moon was weeks ago.”

Deathbringer was quiet for another moment. “When the moon is at its fullest, the power sustaining you will be expended. You may persist for some days yet—a week, at most—but no longer.”

The silence stretched between us for a long moment. I wasn’t sure what to say next, or even what to think. “Yesterday, all I could think about was not tripping over my own feet before I kissed my new husband. Today, I…” My voice trailed off again. “I need to ask something else.”

“Our time together is nearly done, Swordbearer.”

I ignored him. “Tell me about the power my mother showed me. Tell me how I woke up without a scratch, except for this.” I waved a hand over the diseased-looking wound in my gut. “Is that because of you, too?”

“We are bound to one another now, Swordbearer,” he said. “That bond grants certain boons to you. The ability to heal most physical wounds is one of them.”

“Then why is this wound different?”

“Because my power resides within you for now, Inga Alenir. The wound you received would’ve been fatal to anyone, even a Swordbearer. You may survive most physical wounds, but you are not impervious to pain, and no one is immortal—not even one who carries a Sword such as myself. The only way to save your life was to imbibe your body with my essence.”

“‘Imbibe my body.’” Deciphering his meaning took me a moment. “So, no, wait: you’re…inside of me?”

“Correct.”

“I…don’t even know what to say to that.” There were a number of unpleasant implications in that statement, things that I didn’t want to think about. “What other powers are there?”

“There is no time left, Swordbearer—our time together is at an end.”

“You keep calling me that. I don’t even know anything about being a Swordbearer.”

“Adapt quickly, Inga Alenir—this world can ill-afford your failure now.”

“What does that mean?”

Deathbringer’s glow was snuffed out, like a hood thrown over my head. I hardly had any time to react in surprise—

—when I felt the sensation of a hand squeezing my shoulder. I opened my eyes and started to convulse, screaming as a wave of shock, sorrow and anger washed over me.

“Inga, Inga! Hold her down!” Darya was at one side; I felt her hands on my shoulders, but there were other hands at my wrists, waist and feet, all pinning me down. “Peace, girl, calm down! It’s alright!”

It took a moment for me to stop shaking, to stop fighting against my restraints. I took quick, shallow breaths, hearing the panic and fear in each of them. I clenched my teeth, fought against my instincts and slowed my breathing down, trying to force the frozen lump of terror from the back of my throat back down into my belly.

I was in an unfamiliar bedroom. There were curtains on the windows, dyed sunburst yellow, with intricate lace work. A bright-steel lamp with a lampshade sat on a bedside table, decorated by tiny, dangling crystals. The walls were made of wooden logs, stained deep rust-red, and a red-steel stove in the corner was lit; the heat of it filled up the room. Rain was beating out a soft, whispered rhythm against the glass window panes. I recognized Darya’s face, and the man with the bushy eyebrows and mustache from the wagon crouched next to her. The others beside the bed were strangers, three women and one man, all of them of around my age. A quick glance at the open door saw almost another half-dozen people looking in, watching with wide, wondering eyes.

All of them were staring at me—waiting, watching, full of questions.

“Mistress Darya.” My voice was the same, soft growl as before, throat aching from disuse. “Where am I?”

“At my farmstead,” Darya said. “You’ve been asleep since yesterday, girl. How are you feeling?”

I took a breath and licked my dry lips. “Hungry.” It was the first word that came to mind, and it seemed to relieve my caretakers, who all sighed at the same time.

“Of course,” Darya said, showing a faint smile; relief radiated off of her like heat from the corner stove. “Shara,” she said to one of the women, “fetch the poor girl something left over from the morning meal. And Ira,” she said next to the man with the thick eyebrows, “help me get the rest of these young pups out of here. Let’s give the girl some privacy.” The older man immediately gave a short, soft whistle and started shooing the onlookers away like they were a herd of sheep.

I slowly sat up, propping myself up on a thick pillow behind me as the room emptied. While everyone was momentarily distracted, I slid both hands over my head, quickly checked my barrette and found it still in place. My ruined wedding dress was gone, replaced by a pastel nightgown that was actually comfortable and didn’t chafe.

My time alone was likely to be short-lived, but I still remembered my dream. Had I really spoken to a magic sword? And, if so, how was I supposed to reach Whitehold and find Deathbringer in less than a week? Thunder called from far off, a deep grumbling sound, one that I thought suited my mood perfectly. As I waited for the promised food, I stared down at my hands on the coverlet and tried puzzling over what to do, but no matter how many circles I went in, I came no closer to any sort of satisfactory answer.

YENDA

The sound of a steam whistle split the cool, morning air. From inside her private train car, Yenda pulled out her pocket watch and checked the time again. It was a habit of hers, a nervous quirk that had proved too troublesome to quash, so she ignored that spark of annoyance and confirmed that, yes, the train should still be departing Nukorovo on time. It had taken all night to reach it after departing Svolyn the previous afternoon, and once the train was underway it was another half-day’s journey to Whitehold, and home.

The car’s interior was a testament to the wealth of Clan Avard. A thick rug covered the wooden floor, woven with fine detail and a splash of deep violet, which contrasted the predominantly blue and silver decor. A coat of arms hung on one wall between a pair of covered windows: a replica of Frostbite, her mother’s Spellsword, intersecting the six-pointed star of the Eternal Snowflake. One of its points was painted red—a visual reminder of just how harsh the winters in the North could be, and a promise to those who crossed the Avardis. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, twinkling in the lights of the bright-steel lamps.

A table of blackened heartwood sat in the center of the car, polished until it almost seemed to glow. Yenda’s obsession, the object of her decades-long search, lay upon its surface, still in its stained, threadbare wrappings. Nearly every member of the company she’d taken with her had been paid well and handsomely to look the other way while Yenda conducted her search and carried the lost Spellsword away. The red-haired soldier was a special case, but she knew how to handle him—he wouldn’t dare to cross her. Yenda thought of summoning the soldier to her in order to properly handle him in the manner he deserved, but Yenda’s mother would be noticing her absence by now and asking for her—the Matriarch’s ruby jubilee celebration was just days away, marking her fortieth year of rule. The First Daughter had to return home before she was missed; like so many other distractions, a man could wait for another day.

Yenda was restless and excited, so much so that she could hardly sit still for more than a moment. She’d purposefully traveled alone, as this task was too precious and important to trust to anyone; not even her mother had knowledge of it. Years and years of searching—secret inquiries, researching local history, tracking down every false lead and following every trail she could find—had led her to this very day.

Now she got up, checking that the curtains were pulled, that the doors to her private car were all locked. She crossed back to the table at the center of the room where her other preoccupation lay, the genesis of a neurosis she’d carried since childhood: an immense, gilded, leather-bound book with a cover near half a meter wide, bearing an embossed image of one stylized sword pointing downwards with twelve more surrounding it, all pointed inward.

Nuada Scipio was not a author well-remembered by history; as close as Yenda’s research could tell, he’d been a scholarly type in life, toiling away at writing histories and academic studies that no one remembered or cared about after his death. He was the fourth-born son of a marchioness, a minor noblewoman, and the progeny of an offshoot familial line distantly related to Clan Latos, the current ruling family in far-away Ordradelon, the Imperial capital. But Nuada had lived and died centuries before Ordradelon was ever founded. His seminal work—and the only one worth remembering, in Yenda’s opinion—was called A Historie of the Relm of Agareth and the Magyck Spellswords of Power. It was Nuada’s life’s work, and this copy was written in the author’s own hand: she could see how the letters and script swelled and subtly changed and matured over time, or how the script became smaller and more ornate as it neared the ending. The Avardi library had somehow procured the copy, which Yenda found in a dusty storage locker, forgotten and alone. She’d become obsessed with its contents, all written centuries before she was born.

The book was made so precisely and perfectly that, even now, its leather bindings gave just the slightest creak as she opened it. Its pages were yellow with age but still in good condition; Yenda pulled her gloves on before turning to the section she knew well, scanning with one finger to the desired place.

‘The Deathbringer wyll be recognized by yts beautyful make of blackened steele,’ the passage read, understandable enough in spite of its antiquated script. ‘Precysely one metre yn length, the hylt ys wrapped wyth gold wyre and other fyne detayls, appearyng to be wrought of pure, black yron. The Sword of Lyfe’s Bane ys sayd to be paynfully cold to the touch of anyone besydes yts Bearer, as though Oblyvyon Ytself emynates from wythyn.’ Yenda had read the passage so many times she could recite it from memory, but after uncovering the weapon from its funeral shroud, a brief physical inspection of the Sword matched Nuada’s description. The passage was accompanied by artwork, a beautiful painting of a sword with a blade like black lacquer, a twisted crosspiece, and ornate hilt made by a master craftsman of a bygone age. The sword she’d fetched from that nameless farming village matched it down to the last detail.

Yenda double- and triple-checked the book’s contents further, needing to be absolutely sure that this weapon was the true, genuine article. She felt the chill of the grave when she wrapped her hand about the hilt, even through her thick glove. It was a sensation like nothing she’d ever felt before and made her want to drop the Sword, to flee from the car and never look back.

But Yenda was stronger than that. “Foul thing!” she hissed, knowing it could hear her—the blade had a consciousness, a will and mind of its own. “You belong to me now.” She didn’t have to look up the incantation; Yenda knew the words as well as if she’d carved them into her own heart. “‘The end calls all unto the grave; in death, all shall become my slave.’ Deathbringer! Behold thy new Bearer! I, Yenda Avard, bind myself to thee!”

She waited. For years upon years, she’d dreamt of this moment, of what would happen. Nuada was a thorough academic, describing his method in sometimes-excruciating detail of pouring over every text and tome, every bit of history that was written, sung or otherwise available to him at the time. But even though he knew how a woman might bind herself to a Sword as its new Bearer, even he didn’t know what would happen after a Sword’s special incantation was spoken.

Yenda waited a half-minute, clenching her teeth against the discomfort of holding Deathbringer, then let it fall to the table again with disgust. The Sword gave a dull clang as it fell, rattling with her failure. “Blight and damnation!” she swore, spittle flying from her lips in her anger.

It hadn’t worked. That little yellow-haired yokel girl was still alive, somehow. She had to be!

The First Daughter stomped over to the door, unlocked it and threw it back hard enough to make the chandelier shake and jingle, playing an off-key song of shivering crystal. The two soldiers standing guard gave a jump at her abrupt appearance.

“Get me Commander Golova!” she said. “Now!”