The Path of Flames (Chronicles of the Black Gate Book 1) (20 page)

“Ser Tiron?” Her voice was a breathless whisper, and she felt herself again a little girl in her father’s palace, so unimaginably far away. A young girl, scared of the dark, and for that very reason determined to face it.

A sound came up from below. A shift on stone. She heard a croak, a rough cough, then a hoarse voice. “Iskra. What do you want?”

She shivered. The cruel familiarity in his voice was unnerving. She should correct him, demand that he call her Lady Kyferin, but after what they had been through, to do so felt petty. She imagined Ser Tiron’s hard face looking up at her. His black beard and hair would have grown wild over the past three years, and his face would be pale, but those black eyes—she knew they would not have lost their glimmer.

“My Lord is dead,” she whispered, not knowing why she was volunteering that information.

“So I heard.” His voice was growing stronger, more sure, as if he were becoming familiar with it once more. “It’s rare that I hear such good news.”

She opened her mouth to retort, then bit her lower lip. She stared down at the dark, down to where he must be looking up at her. Could he make out her outline in the gloom? His eyes must have grown terribly sharp after so many years of darkness.

“The Black Wolves died with him—all but Ser Wyland. Kyferin Castle stands undefended.”

He grunted. “There were some good men amongst the Wolves.” He paused. “I’m sorry to hear of their deaths. Some of them.”

Iskra hesitated. Her need was there, but the words would not come.

“What do you want, Iskra?” His voice was harsh, almost amused. “Why have you come down here to tell me this?”

“I want you to serve me,” she said, “I want your oath. For you to swear on your honor to protect me and mine.”

Ser Tiron laughed, a grinding, gravely sound. “Do you, now? So, tonight’s entertainment is to be a comedy?”

“You will rot down there if you do not,” she hissed. “Don’t doubt it.”

“Oh, I made my peace with my fate the night Enderl broke Sarah’s neck.” It was if he had drawn a blade. “Don’t you worry about that.”

Iskra felt his words in her gut like a blow. “He was wrong.” Her words were but a whisper.

“What was that?” She heard him shift again. His tone was cruel. “Did you say something?”

“He was wrong,” she said again, louder. She sat straighter, hands in her lap, not looking down; instead, she looked blankly at one of the invisible walls. “He was wrong in what he did.”

“Was he, now? It’s taken you three years to come to that decision? Three years to decide that he was wrong in raping my wife and killing my son?” There was a long pause. “That’s quite generous of you.”

“You attacked him. You attacked me. You tried to kill my daughter.” Her words were steel.

“Yes, and it’s my sincere regret that I wasn’t able to bring him the same pain he brought me. Not that I think he would have minded as much. I truly loved my Sarah. Do you think Lord Kyferin loved you?”

Iskra began to rise. She shouldn’t have come here. What had she expected? Then she stopped, thinking of her daughter, of her son. Pride was a luxury she could no longer afford, so she sank back down. “No. He didn’t. You know that. I know that. It’s why he did what he did.”

There was silence from below. He seemed to be considering her words. “True. That, and he was an inhuman monster. I hate him, Iskra. By the Ascendant, no man should be able to feel as much hatred as I do. You don’t know what it does to you. How it consumes you. Destroys you.” His voice had grown raw. He stopped. She listened, waiting. “Did he suffer, at the end? I’ve not heard how he died. Was it badly?”

“Magic,” she said, voice hollow. “The Agerastians fielded Sin Casters. They destroyed the Grace’s army.”

“Magic?” For the first time she heard surprise in Ser Tiron’s voice, and it came from closer, as if he’d stood.

“Magic,” she said again. “The world is changing, ser knight. Faster perhaps than I can understand. My castle is undefended. Lord Kyferin is dead. Danger rides to greet me within the week. I need good men at my side. You were once one such. If there is anything left of that man I once so admired, I need him by my side. I need your oath. I won’t waste you down here any longer. Swear to me. Put the past behind, just as I am doing. Swear to me, and step back into the light.”

Silence again. Iskra sat still, hands clutched together. She stared into the dark so fiercely she thought she might pierce it.

“You call me a good man.”

“I do. I understand why you did what you did.” It was hard to pry the words from her throat. That they were true made it only marginally easier. “I might have tried the same in your position.”

“I’m not a good man, Iskra.” The voice was hard. Cruel. “What goodness I might have had in me died with Sarah. You pull me out of this hole, you’ll be bringing a beast into the world.”

Iskra nodded mutely. Her hands were tightly locked. “You were always a man of honor. Is that gone too?”

“My honor died when I attacked Lord Kyferin. You know that.”

She didn’t know what to say. The silence unspooled between them. She could hear her heart beat. Her mouth was ashen. She’d admired him greatly, once. It felt like a lifetime ago. She had watched him covertly whenever he came to the castle, had secretly cheered for him in the many tournaments her husband had held. Ser Tiron had been Enderl’s most dangerous Wolf. Dark and intense, he had simmered with a violence that was barely restrained by his chivalric code. He had been everything she had once thought Enderl to be, back when she had been a naive young girl in Sige, for more than anything, he had loved his wife and son.

And one night, Enderl had noticed her admiration.

“You’ve known pain I can’t understand.” Her voice faltered, and she took a deep breath and tried again. “It’s your pain, and I don’t want any part in it. But you’ve also known love. You had your time with Sarah. You had light and laughter and the Ascendant knows what else, because I don’t. I’ve never had any of that. I’ve never known that kind of happiness, that love. I’ve only ever known Lord Enderl Kyferin, his ways and his habits. His… desires. The first years were the worst, but once I became pregnant I managed to keep him away. But that only drove him to other women. Does it make me evil to say I was glad they suffered instead of me? Maybe. But after I bore him a daughter, he came back. He’d not grown any gentler. Eventually I was blessed with Roddick, and again he left me alone. All this time, I’ve had to live with him. Respect him. Treat him as my Lord, each and every day since I arrived at this damn castle over twenty years ago.”

She stopped. She realized she was leaning over the grating, clutching its iron bars with both hands. She was shaking. She pulled away, took a shivering breath and closed her eyes. “We’ve both suffered because of him. But he’s dead now. He’s gone, so I’m asking you: Put your pain aside. Please. Come back. Be a knight once more.”

Iskra felt spent. Hollow. She’d never spoken those words to anybody. Never admitted them. She’d held them pent up within her soul for almost two decades. To unburden herself like this, to confess to this dark hole, had drained her more than she could have guessed. She felt as light and frail as an autumn leaf. She lowered her head and pressed her face into her hands.

“All right.” His voice was low and rough and ugly. “I’ll come out of this hole. I’ll fight for you. But on one condition.”

“What is it?”

“I choose when to announce myself. You don’t breathe a word of my release until I do.”

Iskra paused. It was a dangerous request. “Why?”

He was silent long enough that she thought he would not answer. Then, quietly, he said, “I want time alone at my former home. I want as much time as I need to say my goodbyes.”

Iskra exhaled. “Done. But you have at most a week. There’s to be a tournament in Enderl’s honor. We’re holding it when Lord Laur is due to arrive with his men. I will expect you there.”

“Agreed. Did—” He cut off, as if afraid to ask his question. A beat, then he tried again, his voice a rough rasp. “What did your husband do with my blade?”

“It’s hanging on his trophy wall.” She said the words coldly, not wanting to feel anything, trying to separate herself from that fact.

“Have it brought to me.” His voice was a low snarl.

She felt no triumph, no burst of victory. Just a sad and weary acceptance. “I will. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Enderl broke me. I don’t know who I am, what I’ve become. I make no promises. You may yet live to regret freeing me.”

“I’ll take that risk.” She rose to her feet. She wanted nothing more than to collapse into her bed and sleep and think no more. “You shall be released immediately. Good night, Ser Tiron.”

Shivering, she stepped back to the door. She’d order the barbican guards to see to it that he was released.

She pulled the door open and stepped out into the light of the moon.
Thank you
, she whispered, looking up.
Thank you for giving me strength. Please, don’t fail me now. I’m only getting started.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Asho stepped into the silence of the bailey chapel. Elon and his journeymen had moved their smithy down to the tournament field for emergency repairs, and the majority of the castle staff was down there as well, putting the finishing touches on the stands, pavilions and organizing the market stalls. The silence here was in sharp contrast to the tourney grounds. He unbuckled his sword but carried it with him to the front of the chapel, where the great Triangle of Ascension stood, its silver surface intricately filigreed and reflecting the golden candlelight.

Father Simeon was not in evidence, for which Asho was glad. He’d not come to chapel since the Mourning, choosing not to attend the dawn Rejoicing. He’d avoided thinking of Ascension as much as possible—but he could put it off no longer. He lowered himself to his knees and laid his sword beside him on the stone floor. For the first time in years he truly saw the Path of Ascension where it was painted on the back wall, scrutinizing the familiar images with an interrogatory stare.

A Bythian slave stood humbly before the Black Gate at the far left, eyes cast down, his hair pale and alabaster skin. The same man then stood defiantly a step beyond him, but now his hair was black, his skin bronzed, his mouth curved in disdain: the Bythian had risen to become an Agerastian heretic. The same man passed in quick order through the following stations of Ascension: the Zoeian sensate, the Ennoian warrior, the Noussian scholar, the Sigean holy servant, and finally the Aletheian perfecti who faced the White Gate with arms raised. Simple. Elegant. The ineluctable truth of the spiritual world. And yet.

Asho scowled and formed the triangle with his thumbs and forefingers. He reined in his thoughts and lowered his head, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then slowly exhaled.

He was to fight in the melee today. Ser Wyland had promised it would be a small, provincial affair, not like some of the great tournaments where hundreds of foreign knights competed for glory and riches before a screaming crowd. And yet, despite the modesty of the tournament’s size, it was his first. He would ride before Lady Kyferin and would fight for her honor. Normally such a prospect would have thrilled him, but not today.

Asho frowned. A prickly memory he’d fought to forget pushed its way to the fore. He saw again the Grace dying in his Aletheian advisor’s arms and the Virtues heroically keeping the Agerastians at bay; heard the distant din of battle all around. The Grace had been on the point of dying. There was no doubt that he had been mortally wounded. His august soul had journeyed through seven virtuous lives to reach this very moment where it would abandon his body and pass through the White Gate into Eternity, never to be reborn again, his trials over, his holiness rewarded at long last.

And yet, the Grace had accepted the black vial. Who had that advisor been? What did it mean for the second holiest man in the Empire to turn away from his professed reward? There was no doubt that he was a righteous man, for his soul had been rewarded for all its previous acts by being born into the Aletheian body who would become the Grace. But why would he turn away from Ascension? What had been in that vial that could cure a dying man?

Asho sighed and sat back on his heels, hands on his thighs. He would fight today, strive to fulfill the role of an honorable knight—but for what? So that when he died, he could do so with the knowledge that his soul would come one step closer to Ascension? But why should he strive so if the Grace himself had turned away from the White Gate?