darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,128

told me about it, but I don’t think I ever really believed him until today.”

As we passed out of the gallery with its brightly burning morning light, and into a shady north-facing hall, I breathed a sigh of real relief, and slowed the flow of nima to my shroud to a trickle. The arrangement here was somewhat different from the formal galleries. A wide hallway ran for perhaps eighty feet with windows facing the garden on one side and open or window-fronted rooms on the other.

I was just reaching up to draw the shadows across my eyes again, when I bumped into Faran. Literally, this time. She was standing in front of the second room off the hall, a small, narrow, almost closet-like space that had been converted into a cell by the expedient of installing iron bars a foot or so in from where the windows had once been.

I peered into the cell. “Fuck.” We had found Devin, though he was barely recognizable.

“Is he alive?” asked Faran.

It was a good question, and one I couldn’t answer at a glance. He lay upon a padded table built in the shape of a spread-eagled human figure. It was tilted up at about a thirty-degree angle, with Devin’s head higher than his feet, which were only a yard from the bars. He had been shaved top to toe, and with the exception of a hand-sized patch on his face, every inch of exposed skin was covered in intricate tattoos. If he was breathing, it was so slowly and shallowly that it barely moved his chest.

“Devin?” I said, aloud. “Devin, are you in there?” His eyes snapped open and looked my way, but that was the only indication that he was alive or aware in any way. “Devin?”

“He is alive,” said Faran. “No one deserves this. We need to open this door and get him loose!”

“There’s no point,” said Kelos, “and no time.” Then, when Faran’s shadow reached over to cover the lock, he snapped, “Don’t! He’s not tied down. Not physically, anyway, and for now he’s much safer in there with locks and bars between him and the risen than he would be without that protection.”

As we spoke, Devin’s eyes tracked from one shroud to the next, but again, that was his only motion or sign of life.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s holding him?”

“Word of command,” said Kelos. “It’s part of the geas we in the Shadow took upon ourselves when we swore allegiance to the Son of Heaven. Devin is alive and aware. He can feel everything that is done to him, but he can neither move nor speak. Not unless the Son wishes it.”

“Can’t we break the binding?” asked Faran.

“No. Not with the resources we have here and not without many days of ritual and spell work. The only way to free him short of that is to kill the Son of Heaven. So the sooner we do that, the sooner we can do something for Devin. Now come on, we really don’t have time for any of this.”

But I was reluctant to move on and leave someone I had once thought of as my brother in such a state, no matter what had happened between us since. “That’s horrible.” Then another thought occurred to me. “But you’re . . .”

“I should be fine,” replied Kelos. “It’s the first thing I moved to break when I started chipping away at the geas. But we really can’t do anything for him here. We need to get down to the far end of the hall and up the stairs beyond.” He took three steps and then paused in front of the next cell. “My, my, what have we here?”

I moved forward and looked into the cell. “Well, if it isn’t Lieutenant Chomarr.” The Hand was strapped down tight with a leather gag to prevent him using verbal magic and his Storm familiar confined in a large blue glass bottle on a table behind him. He had a battle scene in lurid colors about half inked in on his chest. “How do you suppose he ended up here?”

“The Son of Heaven is a capricious master,” said Kelos. “I imagine the fact that the invasion of Dalridia failed to result in a single Blade death told heavily against him, and the Son just—Shit! Risen!”

A half score or so of the restless dead came shambling in from the far end of the long windowed hallway. They had their heads raised and seemed to be