The Shadow of the Blade Read online

  The Shadow of the Blade

  The Seven Seasons

  R. R. King

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Beta Readers

  Greetje Wijnstok

  Nicole Renee

  Keke Kendrick

  Jennifer Musselman Heath

  Advie Frank

  Robert Philip

  James Patrick LLyod

  Part I

  Season of Snow

  “An ugly truth will not pass, a beautiful lie will surpass.”

  ~ The Quest for Light is a Journey into Darkness by Lucian de Lore

  1

  Test of Days

  The Season of Snow, Kingdom of the Seven Seasons, One thousand years after The Break of Days, Third year after King Thorn’s attempted assassination.

  “Seven steps to meet King Thorn,” says the guard.

  I greet him with a slight nod, but I say nothing.

  “One step a day,” he smirks. “That is if you survive that long.”

  I pretend the whirling blizzard behind me does not affect me. My legs struggle tremble to my aching muscles. I grit my teeth against the pain. My eyes stare right into the guard’s, but I still say nothing.

  “No man has ever made it past the third day,” his tone changes, as if conjuring sympathy for someone he loathes. “I’ve seen great warriors thrice your age, real men who had once conquered Lands Beyond Light, freeze to death, sometimes eaten by the wolves, right where you now stand.”

  In my mind, I’m the greatest warrior of both the Lands Beyond Light and the Lands beyond Darkness. But to the guard, I say nothing.

  “These men have all pretended to be strong. Misled by their egos, they ended up with stiffened limbs, unable to fight the White Wolves,” the guard preaches. “I’ve buried them myself. Their bones lay right under your feet.” he points his sword at the land covered in white snow as far as the eyes can’t see. “You just can’t see them buried under seven layers of snow.”

  In all truth, I can see a few bones sticking out like hands reaching out of a grave, pleading for mercy and resurrection. But I tell the guard nothing.

  “I stand here in the shades and comfort of the King’s castle, behind these iron gates,” he says. “The Magic of Eluria warms and protects the King’s castle. I have nothing to lose, nothing to fear. But you…” he shrugs, devastated by warriors dying in the process, aspiring to meet with King Thorn. “Look at you. A fine looking and strong young boy. Why would you risk your life?”

  I know why. I am not saying.

  “Stubborn youth,” the guard roars, pounding the gate with a large, heavy hand. He is twice my size. Twice my age. Twice my wisdom. And he knows it. However, he is oblivious to the fact that he only possesses half my will. “Do I have to repeat myself? No stranger enters the King’s castle until he earns each step towards the gate. Seven steps. A step every day,” I am standing seven steps away. My limbs are freezing under my cloak. “Each day you tolerate in this weather, you gain a step closer. You can’t tolerate seven days. No one did. No one does!”

  I know the King’s rule is a recent one. Three years ago, his brothers and sisters, Kings and Queens of the Seasons, attempted his assassination. Since then, Lurkers, the common people, have been denied the proximity of the King — unless they pass the Test of Days — also called the Steps of Days or the Seven Days Punishment.

  The test is nearly impossible. The King is only mocking and punishing poor Lurkers like me for conspiring with his enemies to kill him.

  The guard studies my face then sighs. White mist curls out with his breath, sticking back onto his long stiffened hair. He has the luxury to do this where he stands. If I open my mouth for too long and let the cold in, my throat will slowly freeze, and I will not be able to speak. “Suppose you can survive for seven days, you will still have to earn the King’s trust with another seven steps up the stairs to his throne,” the guard says. “Each step depends on you answering his questions and riddles. One wrong answer and your head will be decapitated.”

  I will not get my head cut off, but I say nothing.

  “Why would you want to see him so insistently?”

  Finally, a question I will answer…

  “I’ve killed the Giants,” I say. “The six of them.”

  The guard’s eyes widen. Dilated pupils of suspicion. Now he says nothing.

  I say nothing back. I don’t like to repeat myself.

  He who needs to clarify his words has lost the meaning of what he has once said, a quote from the Book of Seven Seasons, Eight Years, and Nine Lives.

  “Have you lost your sanity?” the guard grunt. This time he is insulted. He draws out his sword to threaten me. His sword is a heavy one. Not made from iron or a particular element, but made of Thirteen Thousand Souls he killed in his life. A fierce and courageous warrior, once. I think he should have retired to the Seven Seas Beyond the Light after so many bloody battles. He would have been living a luxurious life in a castle with a hundred and one wives half his age. But he is too loyal to King Thorn, so much to fill such a humble position as guarding the gates of his castle.

  His name is Dragan Ol’eh’wrey. I know all about him.

  “I killed the seven members of the Giants as a gift for King Thorn Emondious,” I explain.

  I don’t reach for my sword in response to his angry invitation. I have three of them under my cloak. One is called the Wisdom of Silence. A rare sword. It kills so fast the victim has no time to ache or scream, but instantly dies in silence.

  I will not raise it.

  I have learned and acquired the Art of the Detachment of War. Anger and killing is a last resort. It’s a weak one. Cowardice, unless needed.

  I say, “I wish the King accepts my killing of the Giants as a gift.”

  Now I contradict myself, having offered a killing while I’m detached from war. A common paradox in a warrior's life. One that will never make sense or reason.

  “Let’s say I believe you,” Dragan says. “Why would you have killed them.”

  “As I said, a gift for the King, in favor of asking him to help my people.”

  “Lurkers?” Dragan laughs. “They will never be forgiven or granted favors. Besides, do you have proof you have killed the Giants?”

  “I have.” My words are set in stone. Challenging.

  The guard lowers his sword. His demeanor changes to the inquisitive warrior he has once been. No one dares such claims as mine unless they are true — or I’d be hanged immediately.

  “What kind of proof?”

  “I will only tell the King,” I say. Cold seeps through my mouth and into my throat. It aches. I show no pain.

  “You know that no man has ever been capable of killing the Giants, let alone the six of them,” Dragan approaches the closed gate, trying to get a better look at me. He is known for reading faces. In times of war, spoken words have little use. Reading a man’s face is a prejudice long practiced in the Seasons.

  I look back. He thinks he has seen the Devil of Death and Delirium. Though most of my face is draped with the hood of my cloak, I have a certain glimmer in my eyes. One that shows the darker colors of the things I’ve seen, but never shows what they are.

  “You don’t look like a liar to me,” he comments, still studying me from head to toe.

  “I am a Lurker. I was raised by a fine woman from where I live. She’d taught me that telling the truth is the shortest way to get what I want.” My teeth want to chatter, but I control my facial muscles. My jaw tenses, but the rest of my face remain impossible to read. “I will survive the Seven Days to meet the king.”

  Dragan pulls out a pipe, made of Argon Wood bound to an Elurian Magic spell. He summons a Helper, a man twice Dragan’s siz
e, four times mine, and orders him to breathe into the pipe. The man breathes fire into it. Not much. Not like a dragon. But little more than enough to light it up.

  Dragan smirks, drags from his pipe. It’s how he has acquired his name, proudly smoking it over his enemy’s graves. A fine Tobacco, scented and nurtured, probably from the Land Amidst the Trees.

  He inhales, and dares my eyes with a challenge I do not understand.

  I want to shrug, but I don’t. I am curious, but I don’t ask.

  Dragan tells another Helper to open the gate.

  “It would be a waste of a damn story if I let you freeze here for seven days,” his voice reeks of deceit. “Whether you are lying or telling the truth, I shall want to know instead of watching you die at the gate. King Thorn loves a good story,” he laughs, mocks, and underestimates me. “He hasn’t heard a good story in a while.”

  “You are permitting me the pass without the test?” is the question I don’t ask.

  Dragan answers though. “If a man is capable of killing the The Six Giants, he surely has no problem killing my men and have his way through to the King.”

  “I don’t wish to kill anyone.”

  “You have no options, Lurker. Either you kill the Helpers to meet the King, or they kill you, and then we know — I know — you didn’t kill the The Six Giants.”

  I stare at the Helpers behind him. They look happy to slice my throat and feed me to the King’s Seven Crows.

  “And if you think you can run back into the blizzard now, the wolves will surely have you for dinner tonight,” he says. “How many swords do you have underneath that cloak of yours?”

  “Three,” I say. “Two of them bound by a Spell of No Words so I can use them like scissors.”

  “You plan to chop off the guards' heads?” he chuckles.

  “I don’t wish to fight anyone.”

  “Not fight, lad. Kill or be killed.”

  The gate is wide open now. The King’s guards are waiting for me. The whirling snow grows heavier against my back, as if it’s pushing me into the battle.

  I have no choice. I don’t like to argue. I pull my cloak open and show my three swords. The Helpers tense. It’s true my sword is made of only Seven Hundred Souls, but they are heavy souls, not like the weaker ones Dragan killed.

  “I will wait for you in the castle inside,” Dragan says. “If you kill them all, then you will meet the King. If not, you will meet your maker.”

  The Helpers laugh and growl at me, waiting for my first move.

  There are twenty-three of them, but I only see seven.

  Eight of them are cowards who will run once I chop off two heads. Two of them are weak I could kill them both with one stroke. Three are blood-related; they will be weakened by their blind anger once they see their relatives killed. Nothing is easier than taking the life of an angry warrior, momentarily stripped of his Skill of War. The last three aren’t warriors. They are Sleepers, meant to inform the King if I killed the rest. Each of the three takes a different route to tell the King, so whatever evil kills the others can’t hunt them all down at once.

  I pull out an hourglass. It is not filled with sand, but flurries of snow that never melts. It empties within seventy-seven breaths of a healthy young man. I will have killed them before that time.

  As I approach them, Dragan raises his hand and laughs from afar, “Who shall I say died at the King’s gate, foolish young man?”

  But his laugh doesn’t last long. It dims all of a sudden, eclipsed by the panic in his eyes when he sees I have already chopped off two heads.

  The blood on the blades of my swords has already warmed my body. The thirst for the kill has always triumphed over the cold. A thirst so hot it spread its warmth into my veins. A tabooed thirst I should not have enjoyed, but whenever it’s forced upon me, I do.

  Three more dead on the floor.

  Four more dead by the door.

  Nineteen will die and never more.

  “I don’t have a name,” I say, standing tall in front of Dragan. Rivers of blood pool all over the snow behind me. “I have no name, but my enemies call me Shadow.”

  2

  Warrior of Words

  I stand by the facade of the castle’s entrance, determined to enter. Every man around me is dead and silent. There is no need to detail my killing skills as I will recite most of them to the King when I meet him.

  I take a deep breath of warmer air beyond the gate. It’s been a mystery how the King of one of the coldest Seasons manipulated the weather inside the gates of his castle into a perpetual warmth.

  I don’t care to ask.

  I give the three messengers time to run to their King and tell him about the massacre. Always give time to your opponents when possible. Winning is not always about a fair fight, though I prefer it that way.

  My swords are still dripping the Helper’s blood. It’s wise for a warrior to wait until every last drop glides off his blade. Those are Honors of the War — if there is any honor in war.

  I wait.

  Had I been still outside in the cold, the blood would have stuck to my swords. The wolves would have smelled it, and I would have had to fight an animal I hate to kill.

  “Shadow!” Dragan summons me.

  I can't see him, and I wouldn’t answer his call until my swords drop every last man’s blood. It’s a disgrace to wipe a man’s blood from your blade as if he meant nothing. War is a necessity in my time, but it is shameful nonetheless to my people.

  “I urge you to step forward,” Dragan demands. He acts theatrical, pretending he is not distressed by the loss of his men. “The King awaits.”

  I listen to the echo in his voice. I listen to the last drop of blood falling from my swords. I kneel on one knee, turn around, facing those whose lives I have taken. I recite a prayer of delicate words, addressing the Samaritans of the Seven Seasons to forgive me for the killing, and honor the death of those I have killed.

  Lillypeck birds recite my prayer on the trees. Never have I heard a bird talk — though I’ve been told about them by my mother. What kind of magic has been cast in this place?

  Though warmer, snow still covers the ground before me. With every word I say, the white earth swallows the dead into its pit of perpetual cold. That is how a warrior is properly buried in the Seven Seasons.

  Pi’ath’oh’deh is the last word I speak in my prayer.

  I pull out a smaller blade from my belt and slice it across my left hand. A gesture of respect.

  A man who commits killing is a clueless man, for there must always be another way than spilling blood. But man is a primitive beast who has no comprehension of higher meanings of life, another quote I’ve read in the Books of Lost and Found and All Around by Tedorious Le Faustus IV.

  Pi’ath’oh’deh.

  Dragan summons me again.

  3

  The Five of Life

  “The king awaits. Walk past the dragons and do not fear!”

  I look for the dragons on my sides as I approach. Earlier, I have mistaken them for fortress walls built out of blackened stones, gathered and piled up through the years— Lavval, a precious stone from the Season of Silence.

  But I am wrong. Now I am walking among sleeping dragons on both sides. Their breath slightly stirs the ground underneath me, though they don’t seem to pose a threat. I have never seen anything like this.

  My boots echo on the marble floor as the dragon’s eyes flip open to inspect me. Pointed five-star eyes. I’ve read it’s called the Five of Life. A dragons eye is said to see beyond this life, into our afterlife.

  I breathed steadily and pretended I fear no such big and fiery beast.

  One of them spits a chunk of fire right before my feet. I stop with caution, showing my empty hands, palms upward. You can’t fight a dragon with a sword. There is only one way to kill a dragon. And that’s another story.

  “Don’t fear De’ra’oh’pah,” Dragan chuckles. His presence among dragons reeks of comfort and fami
liarity. Maybe I have underestimated the man.

  “She probably likes you,” he pats the spitting dragon.

  I want to smile, turn and look at the female dragon playing with fire. But I don’t, and I say nothing.

  Dragan ushers me to stand before an immense facade in the distance.

  Approaching, I see clearer now. Again, it’s not like anything I have ever seen or expected. I am standing before an enormous pyramid of lengthily steps leading up to the King's throne. Black stairs made of the Lavval stones. Dark but glinting, and hard as… well, the hardest stone in the Seasons.

  The King’s throne, atop of the stairs, looks too small from down here. I can see it glints in fiery silver and orange hues. The steps leading up are at a moderate slope. The King’s guards, armored with black steel stand in rows atop of each elongated step. The Steps of Days.

  Dragan said I could only cross each step if I answer the right question. From what I heard, that’s no exactly true. Legend has it that King Thorn will permit you to step closer if you entertain him, if you make him smile, and if you intrigue him. Which are in his book only synonym for ‘if he can trust you.’

  “Near the lowest step and kneel before the King,” Dragan says.

  I follow his instructions. I kneel but say nothing.

  He who speaks first is always eager to know. He who speaks second knows already from the Book of Unnecessary Tales and Ineffective Words by Serene the Speechless Saint.

  “I can have my dragons melt you to my royal floor for killing my guards.” The King says from far above.

  I can’t see his face, but he owns a powerful voice that echoes in the massive court hosting the stairs. His voice conveys no fear, but a lot of suspicions. A voice of a man who cannot sing, for its a thick in opinion and firm in beliefs. A voice suited for roaring and telling men what to do, telling women what not to do. I admire it, even though I should not. I’ve always admired power and confidence in a man, even in my enemies.