darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,11

honest with myself, I wonder what impulse I truly serve. The memory of my goddess? Or the darkness of the grave? I have always tried to kill only those whom Justice demanded I slay, but how far does Justice’s writ go?

Ashvik was my first, King of Zhan, and as clear a case for the justice of the sword as you could ask for. But he was not the last. Many have died at my hand since that day. Some deserved their deaths as clearly as Ashvik deserved his. Some put themselves between me and my rightful prey. Others . . . others merely stood too close.

I might say that I took no pleasure in their deaths, that I would have spared them the edge if I could have, but I would not be telling the whole truth. For I love my work. There are few pleasures that can compare with being one of the best in the world at what you do. I do not like being responsible for the deaths of those who do not deserve it, but the cut and the parry, the interplay of steel and spell and knowing that the ultimate price will be paid by the less skilled player . . . that is another thing entirely. To deny the shock of joy that went through me as I unsheathed my swords and prepared to wade into the ranks of the risen would be to deny who I am.

I would like to believe that I wouldn’t have felt the same way if my opponents were living breathing humans with wills of their own. I would like to believe that very much.

I do not.

The Hand met the risen at the stairhead with spells and steel and the miniature lightnings of their familiars. Heads fell, rotting skin crisped and burned, a score of the restless dead fell in a matter of seconds. But more came bounding up the stair. Indifferent to their fallen comrades as anything more than an impediment to decent footing, they came on in their hundreds. By sheer weight of undead flesh they forced the Hand back and back again, establishing a bridgehead.

Kelos had shrouded himself at the same time that I did, but I could trace his path across the room toward me by the line of fallen bodies he left in his wake. The swords of Namara are one of the most effective tools against the undead. Even now, after the death of the goddess, that part of their enchantment will work for the proper wielder. But, the next wave of the risen rushed toward the Signet and me then, and I lost track of Kelos and his swords. Before the dead reached us, another great rock smashed through the inn.

It killed one of the Hand and tore a dozen of the risen into rotting shreds—not that they seemed to care. The death of the sorcerer-priest engulfed his familiar Storm, causing a great roar of thunder to shake the inn as the heavens mourned one of their own. Though I couldn’t see it, I knew that the clouds would already be forming overhead—a harbinger of the wind and rain to come.

The Signet drew a pair of short, leather-bound rods from her belt, like a pair of truncated axe handles. Crossing them in front of her face, she snapped them down and out in the manner of twinned whips. Bright coils of lightning lashed outward, crisping the entire front row of the oncoming horde, but more of the dead quickly flowed in behind. She struck again and again, but the risen kept coming. I moved to one side to intercept a couple that had slipped around the edge of the zone of death described by her lightning whips.

She was one of the most accomplished magical warriors I’d ever seen, but even with me guarding her blinds, the dead forced us back, and back again, until we were wedged into one corner of the long common room. That uncovered the base of the spiral stairs that led to the apartments above, and more of the risen swarmed upward. I hadn’t the time or breathing space for more than a passing worry about what that might mean for Faran and Siri.

Periodically, the engine hurling stones from outside would fling another through the inn. Mostly they killed the restless dead, but I had just beheaded another—the surest way to make this their last rising—when a lucky shot turned the Signet’s legs into a mass of pulped