The SteelMaster of Indwallin, Book 2 of The Gods Within (26 page)

“You don’t like Kulls, eh swordsman?”

Morgin turned to the voice, found Tarkiss standing beside him. He shrugged. “I suppose they have their uses.”

Tarkiss smiled unpleasantly. “As do hired swordsmen.” He looked Morgin up and down suspiciously, then he looked at France. “Only two of you seems a rather light bodyguard in these mountains.”

Morgin shrugged. “I’m told Methula is well patrolled. And in any case, I’m just a hired swordsman. It’s up to my master to decide how large a bodyguard he can afford. And he and his colleague are quite capable swordsmen themselves.”

Tarkiss glared and his eyes narrowed. “But with this rogue wizard about . . .”

“Is he about?” France interrupted. “I’d heard he was rotting in BlakeDown’s dungeon.”

Everything about Tarkiss spoke of suspicion and distrust. He looked at Cort. “Why bring the woman?”

Morgin shook his head, spoke the lie they’d prepared. “I think she has family in Yestmark. And I think it’s them who have the real money.”

Carri and Cort had been exchanging niceties, but Carri’s voice caught Morgin’s attention. “Oh surely you’ll stay the night.”

None of them had thought to prepare for that kind of invitation. “I’d love to,” Cort improvised, “but we have our schedule.”

“Yes,” Tulellcoe added. “They’re expecting us in Yestmark in three days.”

Oubba shook his head. “I won’t hear of it. It’s midafternoon now and a storm is brewing.” He looked up at the gray sky. No one could deny it had darkened visibly in only the last hour. “You’ll be caught on the trail, and these mountain storms are quite unpleasant.”

No ordinary merchant would refuse such an offer. Tulellcoe nodded. “That’s most gracious of you. But we’ll have to insist on an early start in the morning.”

Carri took Cort’s arm. “Wonderful,” she said as she led her away. “You’ll have to bring me up to date on all the latest news. We hear nothing up here.”

Oubba and Tulellcoe and Val followed the two women through the portcullis. Tarkiss and the Kull remained behind while Tarkiss instructed several servants to take care of their horses and donkeys. He turned France and Morgin over to the Kull, saying, “Brakke here will show you where you can sleep.” Then he left them with the Kull.

The Kull led them through the portcullis into the fortress proper. They crossed a large terrace, walked up a flight of stairs cut into the rock of the mountain like everything else, then down a long hallway to a large room where many of the servants slept. “Throw your blankets where you choose,” the Kull growled at them. He left them to fend for themselves.

~~~

Morddon awoke with the tip of a sword beneath his chin. He looked down the length of the steel blade to the hand gripping its hilt, and beyond that the face of Ellowyn stared at him angrily. “It’s a lie,” she said. “It’s all a lie. Admit it. You’re lying about him.”

Morddon ignored the sword, sat up on his cot. He and Ellowyn were alone in the empty barracks of the First Legion. By the angle of the sunlight slanting through the windows he guessed he’d slept only an hour or two since returning to the city. “It’s no lie. And in any case I’m not the one who’s speaking it.”

Ellowyn’s eyes pinched with anger, and she clearly struggled to hold back tears. Her shoulders slumped and she lowered the sword slowly, let it hang by her side with the tip touching the floor. Her eyes emptied of all emotion and her face went blank. She stared forward at nothing for a long while before speaking again, and then her voice came out in an almost monotonic drone. “You are commanded to attend the Shahotma at his court.”

“When?”

“Now, mortal.”

Morddon took a few minutes to splash water on his face and to run a coarse comb through his long black hair; it hung well past his shoulders now. He buckled on his sword, then followed Ellowyn as she led him out of the barracks. They walked across the parade ground to the palace in silence.

Ellowyn led him through a small side entrance, and Morddon followed her through the corridors of the palace to Aethon’s court. Seeing Ellowyn in the lead, the guards at the entrance of the hall stepped aside without orders and let her pass, though Morddon slowed his pace at the sight of all the people there, and he came to a complete stop as they all turned to look at him.

Morddon had come to a halt just within the entrance of an enormous hall of legendary proportions, while at the far end, on a dais raised above all else by twelve stone steps, Aethon sat in majesty on his throne. But this was not a king in a ceremonial court; today would be a working court and Aethon had dressed plainly.

Humans and angels and Benesh’ere and not a few of the Thane filled the court, though they pressed to both sides making a wide aisle up the middle to the throne. AnneRhianne stood beside Aethon on the dais, while next to her stood a Benesh’ere warrior named Jander. He had been one of Gilguard’s senior lieutenants, and was probably now the new warmaster. The griffins TarnThane and SheelThane stood to one side of the dais and towered above the crowd about them. In front of the dais, but to one side, stood the Benesh’ere scouts Sarker and old Takit and young Bendaw, and the two scouts they’d joined up with at the outpost.

Ellowyn had already crossed half the distance to Aethon, but when she realized Morddon was not following she stopped and turned about. “Come forward,” she said flatly.

Morddon advanced slowly, warily. He could not take his eyes off the young king, for Morgin easily recognized him as an older version of the boy in his dreams, just as he recognized AnneRhianne as the physical embodiment of both Erithnae, the god-queen, and Rhianne. It seemed to take an eternity to cross the distance between them. Ellowyn stopped at the base of the dais and Morddon stopped one pace behind her. Ellowyn curtsied carefully, then mounted the twelve steps to stand on the side of Aethon’s throne opposite AnneRhianne. Morddon dropped to one knee and bowed his head.

“Arise,” Aethon said. “Stand before me.”

Morddon did so, and when he looked up the young king stared at him for a long moment, as if he might recognize Morgin hidden within him, but then the moment passed and Aethon said, “I wonder at you, warrior. You’re a common soldier, a mercenary they tell me, without noble blood, without property or money. You’re no warmaster, no general, no great leader of armies, and yet time and again I hear your name from the lips of those who are great and noble and wise. Why is that, whiteface?”

On anyone else’s lips that would have been an insult, but Morddon knew Aethon meant no offense. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Ah, my friend, but I think you do.”

SheelThane said, “Yes, Your Majesty, he does know. But he doesn’t know that he knows.”

Morddon thought of WolfDane. “I have a message for you from WolfDane.”

Aethon’s eyebrows shot up. “How did you come to bear a message from the Dane?”

“They were waiting for me when I escaped from Magwa.”

“The bitch queen, eh?” Aethon frowned. “Of course she would be part of this story. These scouts here—” Aethon pointed at Sarker and Takit and Bendaw and the other two. “—have told me what Cynaban told them of Metadan’s treason. Metadan told Cynaban you belonged to the Dark Lord. That you escaped from the Dark Lord and he wants you back. That it’s only you the jackals want, and the rest of the First Legion could have gone free.” Aethon’s frown deepened. “Why are you more important than the foremost of the legions of angels. Why you, my common Benesh’ere warrior?”

“Obviously,” TarnThane said, “he is not that common.”

Aethon nodded, though his eyes never left Morddon. “Tell me everything. Leave nothing out.”

Morddon told them of the confrontation with the jackal lieutenant in which Metadan all but admitted to treason. And he told them of the running battle that followed, and of his capture by the jackals. He passed over his questioning by Magwa, but Aethon sensed he was holding back and quizzed him meticulously, learning she had called him sword maker. As he spoke of her references to Binth and Eisla, the Benesh’ere in the hall grew visibly angry, but Aethon silenced them with a look. He made Morddon repeat Magwa’s words exactly as she’d spoken them, and as he told of her description of the skin flayed from his parents’ bodies, tears came again to his eyes. He told them of her claim that he had forged two blades, and the Dark Lord wanted the second blade back, and she wanted to know where he’d hidden it. He finished by saying, “But I’ve never forged a blade.”

Aethon said only, “Continue your story.”

To their horror Morddon described Magwa’s debauchery and his subsequent escape. “The hellhounds were waiting for me, I think. WolfDane wanted me to tell you the Dane cannot ignore their debt to the Fallen One, and so they cannot battle against him or his new master. But he also said that in honor they cannot side with them either, and so until they are released from that debt, they must remain neutral.”

Aethon thought for a moment, then asked, “And how did you know it was WolfDane himself? He would never speak his own name to you, nor would he allow you to speak it in his presence.”

Morgin had known the hellhound’s name without doubt, but Morddon shrugged and lied, “I guessed.”

Aethon considered that and shook his head. Then he looked out over the crowd of onlookers and called out, “Perrik. Come forward.”

A nobleman stepped out of the crowd, quite an ordinary nobleman, though something familiar about him struck a chord in Morgin’s memory. He approached the dais, stopped next to Morddon and bowed.

Aethon held out a hand. “Give me your sword.”

The nobleman walked carefully up the twelve steps, drew his sword and handed it to the king, then, bowing, he backed down the steps and returned to Morddon’s side.

Aethon looked at the blade carefully, then he looked at Morddon. “You once said this blade was flawed. Well is it?”

Morddon looked at the nobleman and recognition came. His memory dredged up the incident on the day he’d first come to the city. The nobleman had been practicing his sword skills in the parade ground at the foot of the palace wall, and Morgin had recognized the blade’s flaw from the ring of its steel. Morddon withdrew and allowed Morgin to control the tall, lithe body of the Benesh’ere, and he could not lie about steel. “Aye, the blade is flawed.”

The nobleman shook his head angrily. “Impossible. The blade was made from the best Benesh’ere steel by the finest armorer in Kathbeyanne.”

Aethon’s eyes never left Morddon. “Do you still say this blade is flawed?”

Morgin shrugged Morddon’s shoulders. “What does it matter?”

“It matters a great deal,” Aethon barked angrily, and for a long moment his eyes bored into Morgin’s soul as if he would force him to speak. But then he nodded, leaned forward and tapped the tip of the blade on the topmost step of the stone dais. The ring of the steel filled the silence between them, and while everyone heard the simple the ring of a sword blade tapped against stone, for Morgin it reverberated within his heart, reached to the depths of his soul, and he cringed visibly.

Aethon again tapped the blade on the stone of the step, but harder this time, and the wrongness of the sound rang out immediately in Morgin’s heart. Aethon began tapping the blade repeatedly on the stone, harder and harder with each stroke, and the steel spoke to Morgin, cried out to him to end its torment. He closed his eyes, reached up and pressed his hands over his ears, but that did not silence the horror suffocating him.

Aethon now slapped the blade against the step with vigor, and with trembling hands Morgin threw his head back and shouted, “Stop! I beg you, stop tormenting me.”

But Aethon persisted almost maliciously and Morgin lost all control. He threw a shadow over Morddon, sprinted up the steps and ripped the blade from Aethon’s grasp. At that, every guard in the hall drew his sword, and trusted bowmen in the galleries above knocked arrows. An instant later Morddon would have died, but Aethon jumped up and shouted, “Hold! I command you to hold.”

Everyone froze as Morgin held the sword up away from the stone and let the ringing die, and as it did so peace and calm washed over him. The pain stopped and once again he could breathe. He let his shoulders relax, and he held the sword out before his eyes and examined it carefully. He could almost see the flaw, though not a vision of the eyes, rather a sense of wrongness at a certain point in the steel. Something within him made him reach out with his free hand, and he snapped the nail of his middle finger against the blade. It rang out softly, a single, pure note. But within that note the flaw stood out like a cancer on a beautiful woman’s face.

Morgin took hold of that note with his power, amplified it, brought it and the memories that came with it forth: his captivity in the Dark God’s hands, the forced labor over the steel, the quest for the perfect blade. He remembered the days at the forges, days that turned into years, then into centuries. Such memories stunned both he and Morddon as he recalled the deception of the second blade, the laughter and scorn of a god looking upon a mere mortal without pity. The memories came back to him as the intensity of the note, fed by his power, grew to a glorious crescendo of pain. Waves of heat flooded outward from the blade; the crowd in the hall cringed away from him and even Aethon stepped back. And just when Morgin thought he could take no more, the blade melted at the point of the flaw and the note ended abruptly.

He dropped to his knees on the dais in Morddon’s body, holding a sword with the tip and half its length melted away. Behind him he heard AnneRhianne mutter, “SteelMaster.”

He turned to face her, shook his head. “I am the son of Eisla, but no SteelMaster, merely a pipist and a warrior, and a traitor beyond even Metadan’s treason.”

He dropped the half-melted blade, drew his own sword, and from his kneeling crouch he looked up at Aethon. The last of his strength had departed, and he could speak no louder than a whisper. “Beayaegoath wanted the perfect blade, but he dare not forge it himself, for rightly he feared the self-forged blade.”

Aethon nodded sadly. “Speak on SteelMaster.”

Morgin lowered his eyes, recalled the centuries of torment and hatred. “He took me from Indwallin and made a slave of me in a place where time has no meaning, and he forced me to forge a blade no other blade could stand against. But I was smart and cunning, or so I thought. I forged a sister to the blade he desired, but in her I placed a flaw so minute not even I can detect it now. And I intended to leave him with the flawed blade, and bring the perfect blade to you.”