The Path of Flames (Chronicles of the Black Gate Book 1) (65 page)

“I never wanted this,” said Asho quietly. “I never asked for any of this.”

“If you expect my pity—”

“But a true knight does not blame his circumstances.” Asho could feel Shaya’s presence close to him, all but speaking to him. “A true knight is always himself, regardless of what others may think. Regardless of what they call him.”

His sense of self was deepening, widening, as if his mind were falling through a trapdoor from a cramped attic into the expansive vastness of a great hall. His thoughts seemed to echo. He wasn’t alone; something else was deep within him, watching him, biding its time, waiting for the right moment. He dimly heard Makaria say something and lash out with an attack. He blocked it almost absent-mindedly, giving ground, focusing his energies on himself. On this presence within him.

Are you ready to listen?

Who are you?

Makaria pressed his attack. Asho was knocked out of his reverie as his sword nearly flew from his hands. Each blow he parried sent a shock through his arms all the way to his shoulders. The Virtue’s face showed no signs of effort, yet his attacks came from all sides almost at once. Asho’s heel caught on a stone and he nearly fell, stumbling instead back into a crouch and then leaping away as Makaria followed through flawlessly, lunging to impale him where he’d squatted.

“Enough of this,” said the Virtue. He spun his sword as he rose, and white flame ran silently down its length. Asho gulped. “Your soul to the Black Gate, Sin Caster.”

And then he leaped. Another of his huge, impossible leaps, raising him high in the sky to come crashing down upon Asho, leaving him no hope of evasion. Asho cried out and raised his black sword in desperation.

The clangor of their impact was tremendous, and white flame dripped down Makaria’s blade even as Asho’s sword flared into black fire. Where the two touched, they hissed and spat sparks. The Virtue’s strength was punishing. Asho quickly fell to one knee, eyes slitted against the painful light, shoulders burning, arm shaking. The white sword descended toward his face. This was a Virtue, he thought—and he was almost holding his own against him.

There was the sound of footsteps, and then Kethe appeared, leaping high to fall like a vengeful spirit upon Makaria, who spun away and blocked her attack with a furious upward parry.

She landed lightly, spun away from Makaria, and came to a stop beside Asho. Together they faced the Virtue.

“A worthy fight,” said Makaria. “I welcome it.”

Kethe’s eyes smoldered. “Then you’re a fool.”

Asho took a deep breath and again reached out to Kethe—and felt her quick and welcome response. At once white fire blossomed along the length of her blade, and he couldn’t help but feel a thrill as he raised his own sword and black fire ran down its edges. Energy infused him. His bond with Kethe was a surging, tumultuous flow, raucous and wild and unstoppable. Asho had never felt so close to another being—not even his sister Shaya. He could sense Kethe without looking at her, read her intentions. When she threw herself forward to attack, he joined her seamlessly on the assault.

Their blades cleaved the night with white and burning ebon arcs. Makaria backed away, ducked and sprinted aside, spun and parried, pressed the attack and then retreated again. Asho and Kethe harried him on both sides, coordinating their attacks flawlessly, trying to get past his guard, stumbling back from his brutally strong ripostes, recovering and learning to work together. Asho found himself swinging high so Kethe could attack low, reaching out to parry an attack that would have opened her shoulder, swaying aside to allow her to swing through his space.

But it wasn’t enough.

Within moments the Virtue’s strength and training began to tell the tale. He was one of the Seven, and while Asho and Kethe had just discovered their power, he had been training and refining his own for years. Makaria forced Asho back with a wild swing, then turned with impossible speed to hammer his fist into Kethe’s face. She was knocked back into the water. Asho yelled and gathered himself to attack, but Makaria wasn’t done. He drew a dagger from his hip and threw it with unerring precision right at Asho’s face. There was no time to block it. Asho’s eyes widened as it flew toward him.

Power flooded into him from the blade, and Asho acted on instinct. He leaped up and soared fifteen feet into the night sky. As he hit the apex of his leap, he swung his sword down at Makaria and unleashed another surge of force that cracked the causeway, tore rocks back up into the sky and blasted open a channel under the Virtue’s feet. Makaria flew back to crash into the shallows of the ruined causeway.

Asho hung suspended in the air. His cloak fluttered around him, and black flames swirled and surged off his glowing blade. He felt a terrible power growing within him and felt a moment of lucid fear over what was happening.

Kethe was rising out of the lake, climbing up the causeway’s slope, still connected to him and drinking deep of his taint even as she stared up at him in shock.

Asho felt his fear spike into terror. Makaria was rising from the water, blade still aflame despite being soaked. Eyes wide, Asho stared at the sword’s black surface and its fiery runes, feeling the power that radiated from its edges. Makaria crouched, eyes glittering, preparing to leap up at where Asho was hovering. Without knowing what he was doing, Asho pointed his blade at the Virtue.

Yes
.

Makaria let out a cry of defiance and surged up, white blade cutting the night like a tongue of lightning. Power roared through Asho’s body, a torrent of such magnitude that it caused Kethe to scream and topple senseless to the ground. Asho’s connection to her was immediately severed, but a deluge of black flame shot through with the deepest crimson blasted from the point of his sword even as he started to fall. It scalded the air, filled the world with its deep, guttural roar, and enveloped Makaria completely.

They both fell.

The Virtue screamed. The force of the fire deflected his approach, knocking him back so that his enveloped frame crashed into the water.

Asho dropped like a stone, falling down to the causeway and landing with a crash on the rocks. He lay still, head ringing, mouth slicked with a patina of foul grease, stomach roiling. What had he done? The sword lay dead in his hand. He couldn’t sense Kethe at all. Groaning, head pounding, he rose to sitting and stared out at the water. Makaria lay still, just under the surface in the shallows, but he was still burning. Steam and bubbles swirled the water above him.

Disgust and horror rose in Asho’s soul. He was shaking with terrible force. The battle at the causeway’s head had ground to a standstill. Pale faces in the light of the moon were staring out at him.

A voice spoke quietly in the deepest recesses of his mind.
I am yours, and you are mine.
The words were shot through with gloating triumph. Denial arose within him, and with a cry he cast the sword from him and fell on his back, then lay gasping and staring up at the moon.

I’m damned
, he thought, over and over again.
I’m damned.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Tharok returned to the compound late that afternoon. He’d spent a few hours simply sitting and watching Gold revolve around him, trying to understand with his own intelligence what had seemed too obvious with the circlet on. Finally he’d given up and returned to Porloc’s homTharok returned to the compound late that afternoon. He’d spent a few hours simply sitting and watching Gold revolve around him, trying to understand with his own intelligence what had seemed too obvious with the circlet on. Finally he’d given up and returned to Porloc’s home. The festivities were beginning outside, but he had no heart for them. His thoughts were filled with memories of his departed family, his dead clan, his destroyed Tribe. He thought of the Tragon, freely wandering the northern steppes without fear of retribution. That thought filled him with a slow-moving anger that he could do nothing about. He didn’t know how to injure the Tragon. The Red River tribe was but fifty fighting kragh. The answer, he knew, lay in the circlet—but he didn’t wish to put it on.

He froze upon entering his room. The slave girl—he’d forgotten her. She was sitting in the corner, slender white arms wrapped around her shins, her forehead resting on her knees, shivering in a thin shift she’d found. Tharok stood looking at her for a moment, uncertain, and then moved to the bed, where he slowly removed his axe from his shoulder and set it against the wall, then took off his belt and laid it around the post. The girl seemed oblivious to him, so he stared at her, examining her fine, pale hair, the hollows between her shoulders and neck, the delicate, bird-like fragility of her bones.

“Human,” he said. The slave started, raised her head, then scrabbled to her feet, almost climbing the wall. She stared around herself as if she was blind, and Tharok realized that she couldn’t see in the dim light. “Girl,” he said. “Calm down. I’m not going to hurt you.”

She was breathing quickly now, small, shallow breaths through her mouth. Her palms were pressed against the wall, and she was staring in his direction. Suddenly impatient, Tharok moved to the door, opened it, and strode down the hall till he came to the closest lit candle. He took it, returned, and entered the room, casting everything in warm tones of umber and gold. The girl stared at him, put her hands to her mouth, then shook her head and sank back down into a crouch.

Tharok set the candle on the floor in the middle of the room and retreated to the far wall, where he too sat and crossed his legs. She was like a panicked young mountain goat, liable to leap off the edge of the cliff in its attempt to escape. He sat still, and saw that by slow degrees she calmed down, or at least returned from the edge of panic. Her skin was burned by the sun, deep red and blistered along her shoulders, cheek and nose. Her lips were flaking. She had stood for too long in the marketplace.

“Do you understand me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered, her voice strange, reedy and thin, her kragh crude but clear.

“You are mine now. I bought you.” He tried to not make his voice cruel, to simply explain the situation, but tears brimmed from her eyes and overflowed down her cheeks. She bit her lower lip and lowered her head. For some reason her weakness made him angry.

“What do you want from me?”

“If I were to set you free, what would you do?”

“I would… I would head south, to Abythos.”

“Do you have money?” he asked, and she shook her head. “A horse, then, to carry you?” Again, she shook her head. “You are so weak you can barely stand. How would you move so far south and not be caught again by Orlokor slavers?”

“I wasn’t caught,” she said, her chin rising and her tone growing defiant. So there
was
some strength to her. “I was given. And I would find a way.” Tears glimmered in her eyes, but her mouth was set.

“You have nobody to speak for you. Porloc does not grant you safe passage.”

“You could speak for me. Speak to him. Ask him to give me safe passage.”

Tharok mulled that over. “No. He would think you important to me and keep you to use against me. It would go worse for you.”

“Then what? I am to be your slave.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps I will free you regardless. But you lack strength. Are all humans so weak?”

“No,” said the human, and she looked away. “Some are strong. Or, at least, they appear to be so. Now I am no longer sure.”

“You could stay with my tribe for now if you wish. It won’t be easy, but you will be protected. You can tell me of humans, and in exchange we will feed you and help you regain your strength. Then, later, you can choose to leave when there is a better chance of your not being caught.”

“Are you giving me a choice?”

Tharok yawned, and the girl flinched at the sight of his tusks. He stood up, his knees popping, and with a wince he reached up to unshoulder his heavy hide shirt. He would be wearing finery for tonight’s feast. Finery by highland kragh standards, at any rate. “You can do what you like. Come with my tribe or try your own luck escaping Gold and making your way south alone. Highland kragh do not own slaves. That is a lowland kragh tradition.” He reached down and dropped his pants, stepped out of them and kicked them to the side. She quickly averted her eyes, and Tharok looked down at himself, then at her. Was she in her mating season? Did humans have mating seasons? Was she a grown woman? He thought she was, but who knew with humans?