87: THE BREAKING OF OATHS

Gadrith smiled as he walked forward, a look that had been foreign to Dead Man’s face. It was in keeping with Sandus’s sunny air, made more macabre for that false cheer.

It was like a sick joke, Kihrin thought as he watched him step toward the group. Gadrith, who had pretended to be Thurvishar’s father, now possessing the body of Thurvishar’s real father in an evil mockery of that memory. Kihrin saw the look of unrepentant hate on Thurvishar’s face and knew that, if he had been able to, he would have destroyed Gadrith long ago.

“I’m curious how you Returned,” Gadrith told Kihrin. “Still, I don’t begrudge you Darzin’s death. You were right back in the tombs: his usefulness came to an end the moment he sacrificed you to Xaltorath.”

“I assume you killed Tyentso,” Kihrin said, his expression grim.

Gadrith raised an eyebrow. “You may need to be more specific, young man.”

“Raverí,” Kihrin corrected. “Your wife.”

“Ah!” Gadrith smiled again. “Yes. She acquitted herself admirably. I almost regret I had to slay her.”

“Really?” Thurvishar asked, surprise coloring his voice.

“No. I was being polite.”

“What happens now?” Thurvishar asked. “Do you want me to take care of these two while you search the tombs for Urthaenriel?”

Gadrith cocked his head and gave Thurvishar a look of intense dissatisfaction. “. . . yes.”

Kihrin walked forward, trying not to stagger. He concentrated on pulling what strength he could from the ground, the trees, the surrounding grass. “Is that what this is all about? Recovering Kandor’s sword, Godslayer?” Kihrin paused, and his eyes narrowed. “I had this wrong, didn’t I? We all had this wrong. You weren’t trying to become Emperor. You could have been Emperor years ago. You could have been Emperor whenever you wanted, but you didn’t care about that crown until you realized it was the only way you could step a foot inside those ruins—without the Empire’s magic blasting you to pieces. This isn’t a coup . . . it’s a . . . it’s. . . .” Kihrin laughed. “This is a burglary.”

“Yes,” Gadrith agreed in a flat, dry tone. He looked over at his “son.” “He’s smarter than his brother.”

Thurvishar nodded in agreement.

Gadrith walked toward the ruins. “Kill him. I have a sword to find and then, many gods to slay. I think I’ll start with Thaena.”

Thurvishar’s shoulders slumped. His earlier wording, “take care of,” allowed him room to take prisoners. Gadrith’s new orders did not.

Kihrin could see despair in the man’s eyes as Thurvishar lifted his hands. “I’m sorry,” Thurvishar whispered.

“You have a choice,” Kihrin told him.

“I really don’t,” Thurvishar replied.

“I’ve been where you are. You always have a choice.”

Thurvishar responded by gesturing, and the Khorveshan sword in Kihrin’s hands turned red hot and slagged into molten metal.

The sword might have burned him, but Kihrin was good at protecting himself against fire. There was only a slight sting as he found the molten metal pouring down his fingers.

“I don’t want to kill you,” Thurvishar said, “but I really don’t see how my death will allow you to kill Gadrith. It would be different if you were a trained wizard. I even think you have the talent, but you don’t have the years of training you’d need to defeat a sorcerer of his caliber. Even if you did, he’s wearing the Crown and Scepter and the Stone of Shackles. He’ll overpower you—and if you kill him, you still lose.”

“Just give me a chance—”

Thurvishar shook his head. “You know how this works. I can’t.” He raised a hand.

As Kihrin backed up, he tripped over an old rusted sword—straight, narrow, and archaic in style. It wouldn’t help him. The blade was dull and pitted; it looked like it would break after a single good swing. But Kihrin was a swordsman. He had the irrational urge to die with a blade in his hand this time, if it was to be his fate to die twice in one day.

He wrapped his hand around the hilt and pulled the sword free of the dark, wormy ground.

Thurvishar threw lightning at him, but Kihrin barely noticed. He batted the spell out of the air, so it crashed into the Arena forest. It lit a red fire, snuffed by the odd magical distortions of the mutated trees. His whole attention was focused on the sword, now an elegant and shimmering bar of silver white metal.

The blade was singing in his mind.

The harmonies of the sword were so beautiful that he felt tears at the corners of his eyes; the sweet, rapturous raising of a single voice that seemed to hold within it the promise of joy and a glimpse at Heaven. There was a danger, holding that sword, that it would consume him. It might be all he could hear or focus on, forever lost in the harmony of that perfect sound. There was something so familiar about the blade too. Kihrin was reminded of when he’d concentrated on the necklace that had contained his gaesh. He was holding something to which he was connected—something that was once part of him, once whole and now separate.

“You unbelievably lucky bastard,” Thurvishar told him, his voice tinged with awe.

Kihrin focused enough through the singing to respond. “Yes,” he told the wizard. “So I am. Call for Gadrith, please.”

Thurvishar conjured a ball of fire and tossed it at Kihrin, mostly to buy himself and his gaesh-given order more time. Kihrin shoved the fire aside without it affecting him.

“Gadrith!” Thurvishar screamed. “I need you. I need you out here right now.”

Kihrin’s strength returned to him. He felt as though he could run races, swim the Senlay, perform any feat. He crossed over to the unconscious Teraeth. He didn’t think that the tree branches that were holding the assassin trapped were technically magical anymore, but here in this place he suspected everything was just a bit magical. He tried sliding his vision past the Veil to check but found it impossible: he couldn’t concentrate through the sound of the sword’s singing.

“What is it?” Gadrith snapped as he passed through the doorway of one of the ruined towers. He paused and frowned as he saw that Kihrin was still alive. “I told you to kill him.”

“I can’t,” Thurvishar admitted through gritted teeth, doubling over through the pain.

Kihrin knew the signs well enough. Gaesh feedback would kill the man if Kihrin didn’t act.

“Can’t? Why—” Gadrith’s words cut off though, as he saw Kihrin advancing toward him, and the sword Kihrin held in his hand.

“It wasn’t inside the buildings?” Gadrith was astonished. “All this time, and it was never inside the buildings at all?” He looked as though his whole world had just been upended. Perhaps it had.

“Yeah, kick in the crotch, isn’t it? You’ve spent thirty years chasing something that anyone could have picked up,” Kihrin agreed, “at any duel fought in the Arena. It was tangled in some roots, out in the open, lying in plain sight.” Kihrin smiled in a wicked way. “You have enough toys. You don’t get to keep this one.”

“Impossible,” Gadrith said. “I am the Thief of Souls. I am the King of Demons. I killed the Emperor. I will free the demons. It’s my destiny to destroy the Empire, to remake the world. ME. NOT KAEN. NOT RELOS VAR. ME!” He growled and stretched his hands toward Kihrin, but whatever his intention, Kihrin intercepted the spell with the sword, and it died in the air.

How to deal with Gadrith? Kihrin couldn’t just kill him. If he did, he’d only switch places with the man’s soul, thus giving the necromancer exactly what he had truly desired from the beginning: Urthaenriel. Gadrith was upset and unsettled now, but if Kihrin gave the man time, the sorcerer might well come to the conclusions Tyentso had years before. Even someone immune to magic needed air to breathe and solid ground under their feet.

Then Kihrin remembered: he wielded a sword that could break the magic of gods.

So Gadrith was not his target.

The Stone of Shackles glittered on Gadrith’s chest, a bouncing goal that shimmered with malice. Kihrin aimed for the gem and drove his sword forward. Gadrith moved to block the blow. He probably used a spell, but Urthaenriel paid no heed to spells. Time moved slowly as Urthaenriel first shattered the Stone of Shackles into tiny blue shards and then dove forward, slicing into Gadrith’s chest and impaling his heart.

The dark mage gave Kihrin one look of terrific surprise. Then the circlet vanished from Gadrith’s head, the wand from his grip. The men watching had exactly that long to appreciate what had just occurred before they felt a tremendous pressure that lifted them, ripped up the roots binding Teraeth, and pushed them all outside the boundaries of the Arena. They landed on the soft, wet grass just outside the Culling Fields inn.

The body Gadrith had stolen, still impaled on Kihrin’s sword, came with them.

The rainbow soap-bubble force field that protected the Arena flickered back into existence. It reverted to its default state when waiting for the contest that would decide its new owner.

Gadrith the Twisted, briefly Emperor of Quur, was dead.