The Path of the Sword (71 page)

His mother appeared, sitting beside her husband—she was not there, and then she was, and it was as though she had always been there—and they held hands and they gazed upon their son with all the love parents can hold for their child clear in their eyes. Jurel shuddered under that gaze. He quavered at the power of it. He felt that the intensity must blow him away like a leaf in a storm.

“We love you, son,” his father said. Or was it his mother that spoke? If someone had told him to answer correctly or die, he would die.

“We have fettered you for too long. You must let us go. You must be strong.”

“But why?” Jurel asked. “I have lost you over and over again and I think I am going to lose me next time.”

Their smiles broadened. It was a smile of tolerance, the smile that any parent of a mischievous child would understand. “You must release us from your heart. Remember us but do not fear any more.”

“I cannot!” he cried.

He knew the truth. He must release them. It did not mean he had to stop thinking of them, nor did it mean he must stop loving them. He must release them for their memory chained him, kept him from...from...

His future. His
self.

All came crashing down around him, shattering and juddering and jangling. All came tumbling to the earth at his feet, leaving a barren plain of withered grasses washed in purple moonlight covered in bright shards. A cold wind blew, rustling his hair, raising goose pimples in marching lines on his arms. At his feet, the bright broken pieces of his past moved. They gathered themselves, slowly at first, hesitantly. Then with greater speed as though someone were constructing a puzzle and had figured out what it must show, and the pieces began to create an image. An image of a man in black armor with golden swirls. An image of him holding a sword blazing with lightning and rumbling with thunder raised high over his head. Where this man strode, armies followed. Where this man raised his sword, his enemies fled in terror. This man was powerful. This man was invincible. This man was a
god!

Something within him broke then. It cracked like a gate beset by a ram. Through the cracks, brilliant blue light shone, blinding him. The cracks expanded and the light grew until it burned his eyes from their sockets and radiated forth.

He struck back and Valik stumbled, shocked. He struck again and the shock turned to terror. He swung with more power than he could have imagined and Valik flew across the dining room to land in a heap.

Suddenly he was nose to nose with his tormentor. There was no longer any fear in Jurel. There was sadness and there was understanding. There was hurt and there was fury.

Valik begged and still Jurel struck him. Valik pleaded and Jurel...

Froze.

This was not his future. He knew who he was. He knew what he was. This was not it. He bolted then, battering down the front door of Galbin's house. He ran while images of his parents smiled in his thoughts. He ran until darkness, sweet soothing darkness, took him.

He ran, but he did not fall.

* * *

His armor cocooned him, wrapped around him comfortably like a second skin. It kept his legs dry as he strode through the high grasses that had never been touched by man, toward the armies that stared at him expectantly. His sword rested comfortably in his hand like it belonged there, like it had always belonged there.

He wept as his gaze passed over the anonymous faces of his armies, over the dull gleam of steel, and even as tears coursed down his cheeks, an exultant thrill coursed through his body, electrifying and energizing him.

“Are you broken?” the voice of the old man asked.

It was a voice that carried all the power of the wind and the rivers, of life and death and eternity, and it whispered from the same direction as the light that came from nowhere and everywhere to bathe the verdant field.

Peace descended upon him as he strode. He was not broken. Not anymore.

He smiled. “No, father. I am whole.”

“I am glad,” the voice said.

He strode until he stood directly between the two armies. He glanced left and then right. He raised his sword over his head, a sword that crackled with blue life. He drew in a great breath.

“
Attack!”
he bellowed.

As he wept bitter-sweet tears, the armies,
his
armies, roared to life and ran towards each other where they converged with drawn weapons behind him and they charged as one, with Jurel at the forefront, toward the forest that ringed this innocent place.

Chapter 61

Putrid decay, human waste and mold assaulted his nose. Cold dampness left him chilled and shivering. His bed, rotted as it was, prickled him like biting ants. He opened his eyes but he knew it was pointless. It had been days, or maybe weeks, since they had tossed him into his hole. There was no light here.

Kicking away a furry something that nibbled painfully on his exposed toes, he rose and stretched almost languidly. He worked knotted muscles until they moved more freely and he was dismayed when he felt the spongy laxity of his arms. But somehow, it was not too important to him just then.

He remembered everything. His name was Jurel. He was in the dungeon of Gaorla's temple in the great city of Threimes. His father, the Father of fathers, had told him he would not die. Not today. He had tasks to perform and trials to face. He did not know what lay ahead—no one knew that. But he knew what was here and now.

He was stunned by what he knew, by what had been revealed to him. How could it be? He was just a lowly farmer. But he remembered a time when he rode with Kurin. That time that Kurin had said he should read a book. The thick black one with the blood red title, ANCIENT PROPHECIES: GOD OF WAR. He had felt detached as he stared at the cover like some part of him slept, and when he had tried to open the book, that jolt had numbed his arm.

But it was not the book that had caused it. It was him. It was his long-buried memory of dead parents. He called that memory forth now, and when he saw the serrated blade drive into Gram's belly, he felt deep mourning and that was all. There was no more rancid terror.

He smiled, sadly to be sure, but he did.

He did not know how it could be possible. A god? Him? He did not feel particularly godly. Right then and there he felt more like a god's shit than anything. At best. But Gaorla had called him son, had provided him with answers. But those answers rested uncomfortably in his thoughts. The problem was, for each answer, a thousand more questions were created. He mulled a few of those questions, the ones that came most readily to mind, kneading them, pushing them and pulling them until he had a headache. Until the questions stubbornly announced by their sullen repetitions that he had gotten plenty of answers for one day. Thank you, come again.

Somewhere outside his door, he heard voices echoing, warped by the walls into elastic reverberations, altered until they sounded hollow and windy. They were naught but grim, distorted parodies of themselves that became meaningless noise, and footsteps, a sharp beat that reached his ears dulled, blunted by stone walls. He was certain that the voices were trying for quiet but try as they might, the alien sounds reached Jurel's ears.

The noises stopped, after having reached a crescendo, and Jurel was certain they had stopped just outside his door.

So they have come for me at last.

He should have been fearful. He should have been quavering with dread but his father had told him that he would not die.

Not that day. Tomorrow maybe. He would worry about that tomorrow.

There was a metallic sound, a raspy grating thing that set his teeth on edge. His door creaked, protesting, grumbling as it swung open reluctantly on iron hinges spotted with rust. A burst of light bored into and behind his eyes and he was positive that it was the entire sun that came for him. When he squeezed his eyes shut, the glare was still blinding and he raised his torn hands, hissing.

“Jurel?”

A voice so familiar, it brought an ache that threatened to rend him for surely it could not be real.

“Jurel, it's me.”

He still could not see through the glare though it had resolved itself into no more than a torch but he did not need to see.

“Father?” he croaked through lips so dry they cracked and he tasted blood.

He thought he must still be dreaming. Perhaps this was another of Gaorla's visions. But the burning in his throat was too real, the sizzling numbness in his fingers too close for this to be a dream.

“Yes.”

Arms wrapped around Jurel and he smelled his father's familiar smell, like freshly tilled earth and warm breezes and tangy sweat. Good, honest smells. Home smells. Jurel cried and buried his head in his father's shoulder and Daved stroked his matted hair.

“I got you boy. All will be well now. I got you,” his father soothed.

Jurel would have been content if that moment lasted forever. He would have been content if he died right then and there but then another familiar voice spoke.

“We don't have much time, Daved,” the new voice said and Jurel gasped, too shocked to bring forth a name.

“I know, Mikal. Jurel, can you walk?”

The arms fell away when Jurel nodded and he rose unsteadily with the help of his father. Slowly, his eyes became accustomed to the torchlight and as they did, he saw clearly for the first time the two men who stood there. He could not believe it. Mikal was dead; Jurel had watched him get run through. And Daved was on Galbin's—Valik's—farm. How could this be?

“No time for questions now, lad. We need to go.”

It was then that he realized he had spoken his question aloud. Daved supported him as he stumbled on watery legs through the open door of his cell and there, he received his third shock.

“Hello Jurel,” Gaven said with a weak smile. “How are you?”

He must have fainted because the next thing he knew, the three men were leading him down the dank hallway, holding him up. After a time, Jurel's legs grew strong enough, and he walked with Daved at his side while Gaven and Mikal were a few paces ahead. It was a nightmare of a journey through those halls, halls that had witnessed unimaginable suffering and terrible lingering deaths and seemed to ooze malice like pus from an infected wound, halls so deep and dark that surely the very earth did not remember their existence, and Jurel lost track of the number of twists and turns they took. He tried to count the stairs as they climbed, but when he lost the number—somewhere upwards of a hundred—he decided that, as long as they were going up, he did not really care.

If he had studied a little longer under Kurin, he would have known that he suffered from malnutrition, shock, and a long list of other ailments. As it was, he knew something was wrong with him, but the farther they went, the easier it became for him to think. His belly was still a bottomless pit, but at least his mind was sharpening.

“He's in that one,” Gaven whispered.

Jurel followed the line of the Soldier's finger to a cell that looked like every other cell they had passed.

Grunting, Mikal pulled open the door and when Kurin stepped out, bedraggled, as filthy as he was and wearing a tired smile, Jurel was once again stunned to speechlessness.

“Took you long enough,” the old man grunted in a creaky voice.

“That's all of us then,” Mikal said, pointedly ignoring Kurin's snipe. “Let's go.”

“Here,” Daved said, handing Jurel a sword,
his
sword. “You'll need this.”

Chapter 62

Dripping water echoed up and down the halls, high and hollow. The walls were black with mold, streaked with the stuff and it looked as though the cold stone bled. Torches hung from the walls so far apart that the light of one did not meet the light of the next leaving pools of ruddy brightness like island oases in the murk. The stench was that of a charnel house and they all coughed, suppressing gags as they walked quickly and silently from island to island toward the door that loomed ahead in the dark.

Daved and Mikal approached the door first, Jurel right behind them. Behind him, he heard a grunt and a stumble. He turned to see Kurin on his hands and knees, trembling and breathing heavily like a broken bellows. Kurin fared worse than he. Where Jurel had found hidden strength, unknown reserves like buried goldmines to tap, Kurin had wasted away. Seeing his mentor that way made Jurel tremble. With blackest pity and sorrow. With reddest rage.

Jumping forward from the rear, Gaven reached down and pulled Kurin to his feet. A flash and a fetid breath of dungeon air brushed past Jurel and suddenly, Gaven was goggling at Mikal's sword point only an inch from his throat. Wisely, he froze.

“Unhand him,” Mikal grated. “Now.”

His expression was stony. Jurel recognized it from when they had fought side by side. It was the expression he dawned like a protective cloak when he was about to draw blood, when he was about to kill. His eyes glittered and it seemed that he overflowed with pent violence, that somehow it seeped from his eyes and reached out, wrapping around Gaven, a dread promise.

Gaven's only response was an audible swallow, a faint click that in itself spoke volumes.

“Wait,” Jurel shouted. “Mikal, no. He's a friend.”

“Keep your voice down,” Daved growled.

“I said, unhand him. Last warning,” he said and his voice was cold. So cold that a chill ran up Jurel's spine.

“Mikal,” Jurel tried again, heeding his father's warning, speaking more softly, almost soothingly, the way one might speak to a spooked stallion. “Really, he's my friend. He kept me company on the journey up here. He freed me from my shackles. He won't hurt Kurin.”

Mikal's eyes flicked from Gaven's terrified ones to Jurel's horrified, pleading ones, and back again so quickly that Jurel thought he might have imagined it.

But still that sword remained poised to strike before Gaven could so much as blink the wrong way. Jurel was not actually sure if Gaven was still his friend. He had betrayed the young soldier and that nagged at him, left him feeling a dirty kind of guilt, an oily thing that oozed insidiously into the cracks of his conscience. He had to save him. He had to do
some
thing to redeem himself.