“I feel your fear, your hatred, your despair. There is no serenity in you. And this”—he cast a hand at the shrine—“is just old stone carved into meaningless abstraction. Heaven is a lie, and I need you to say it.”
No response, just the same unchanging pose and murmured prayers.
“As you wish.” Kehlbrand nodded at Obvar, who promptly opened the young monk’s throat with a swift flick of his knife.
Much as I would like to nourish any admiration you may harbour towards me, honoured reader, I will offer no lies as to my actions at that moment. I did not call out to stay Obvar’s hand. Nor did I rush to my brother, eyes streaming tears and heart riven, demanding answers and cursing him for his cruelty. No. I simply stood and watched as Obvar cut the boy’s throat whilst Kehlbrand drew his sabre and hacked the old monk’s head from his shoulders. I didn’t need to ask why, for in that moment I knew. Kehlbrand was no longer playing the role of a god. Now he was a god, a living god who would tolerate no worship of any other. He had become the Darkblade, and so was no longer my brother.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
The monks were not the only servants of Heaven to die that day. Nuns from the nearby convent also met the same fate, as did any townsfolk who refused to renounce what was now termed “the great lie.” When the killing was done, Kehlbrand ordered the Tuhla to leave the town and set the artisans to work cleaning up the mess and tending to the wounded. “The Darkblade does not come as a conqueror,” they would say as they repaired roofs and stitched cuts. “He comes as a redeemer. He comes to break your chains. No longer will you suffer under the greed of the Merchant King.”
Perhaps as a consequence of the death toll, fully one-fifth of the town’s population by my reckoning, I recruited only one soul with the Divine Blood in Leshun-Kho. Having reported a futile search to Kehlbrand, he suggested I try the magistrate’s dungeon. I found her chained in a cell, clad in rags and covered in dirt that failed to conceal her beauty. The gaoler, somehow spared the slaughter that had claimed the lives of the other civic servants, called the woman “the vilest of witches,” and refused to go near her even when threatened with execution.
As I approached the bars the woman slowly raised her dirt-covered face, blinking eyes that were both rich in understanding and bright with madness. You think your brother is not truly a god, her voice said in my mind, causing me to stagger back in alarm. The woman rose and approached the bars, standing expectantly at the lock and smiling as she effortlessly pushed another thought into my head. You are wrong.
I never discovered her true origins, though she told many tales of noble birth and exile due to her gift. These stories changed on a whim; one day she would be the daughter of a general, the next a merchant. Her mother was a famed courtesan to the Merchant King of the Enlightened Kingdom or a warrior maiden from the Opal Isles. These cannot be considered lies, for I suspect she believed them as they escaped her lips, but every story she told would inevitably trail off into confused mumbling and be forgotten soon after. Consequently, her true name would be lost to the ages, but Kehlbrand named her Dishona, which means Grass Snake in the older tongue. She never seemed to see it as an insult, however, for she hung on my brother’s every word with all the devotion of a newly whelped pup to its mother. I believe Dishona was the first to worship the Darkblade out of love rather than fear.
“She’s mad,” I told him some days later. We had ridden south with a small escort, Kehlbrand being keen to scout the approaches to the hill country that marked the borderlands. “And her gift is . . . extremely unnerving.”
“But she uses it only sparingly, you notice?” he replied. “Her mind may be broken but some measure of caution remains, not to mention cunning. All useful traits wouldn’t you say?”
We reined to a halt atop a hillock that afforded a view of a broad winding river that traced through plain and hill to a misted, jagged cone on the horizon.
“Keshin-Kho,” Kehlbrand said. “The key to unlocking the Venerable Kingdom and