65
~ SEVEN MONTHS AGO: JOSLYN ~
Joslyn managed to keep her glass steady while Tasia filled it with more wine – no small feat, considering how much she’d had to drink already. It was unusual for her, drinking this much. Not as unusual for the Princess, who had a somewhat notorious reputation for wild behavior, but even with a higher tolerance for alcohol than Joslyn, she appeared quite drunk.
“Thank you, love,” Joslyn said, and took a long, healthy swallow before setting her glass aside.
Strange that it could balance so easily on the thick green grass.
“No, thank you,” Tasia said, sipping from her own wine glass. “Thank you for having the idea for a picnic – it’s such a perfect day for it, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Joslyn agreed. “A perfect day.” But she frowned. “The picnic was my idea?”
Tasia blinked at her. “I think so? Or was it mine?”
“I don’t remember suggesting it.” The notion that neither one of them could remember with certainty why they were in the gardens today disturbed her, so Joslyn reached for her wine glass. More wine would wash away that niggling feeling of disturbance. It always did.
Always?
For the briefest of moments, so brief Joslyn was almost positive she had imagined it, she glimpsed a glint of metal – a shackle clamped around her ankle. A shackle with a chain that led to a bedpost.
She picked up her wine glass and raised it to her lips.
“I love you, Joslyn.” There was an urgency to Tasia’s tone that hadn’t been there before.
Joslyn set the wine glass back down and turned to her beautiful princess. “I love you, too.”
“After everything we’ve been through,” Tasia continued, “my … my father, and … when the small men …” Her green eyes grew distant as if struggling to remember something.
“Small men? What small men?”
“The … mountainside,” Tasia said thickly. “I thought I’d lost … you, but … and then …” She waved a hand before her face as though shooing away an insect, then sipped from her wine. “Spring in Port Lorsin is the best season. Just look at all the butterflies!”
Joslyn was no longer listening. Her brows had knitted together while visions of small men holding pikes twice their size danced through her head. She’d never seen so many small men in one place before, and their expressions were so serious, so somber, their saucer-sized eyes lit from below by torchlight.
There’d been a fight upon a mountainside, hadn’t there? A fight against some monstrous creature that had … it had injured her, and somehow that injury had tied Joslyn to the Shadowlands forever.
The Shadowlands.
As though someone had doused her in ice-cold water, Joslyn was suddenly awake. She remembered everything – the battle against the Order of Targhan, Akella fleeing, their surrender, and being dragged to the deathless king in his throne room while Tasia fought for life against the poison coursing through her veins. He would spare their lives, but only in exchange for eventual possession oftheir bodies and minds. Joslyn made the bargain with him. Again. Yet the undatai inside the king had not regained enough strength to possess anyone new. They would dream pleasantly in the meantime, held in stasis while the undatai recovered its power. Then Joslyn would finally fulfill the promise she’d made to the undatai, the one she’d naughtily tried to shirk by attempting to destroy it. This time, Tasia would be part of the deal, too.
The arrogance of the Terintans,the King had sneered. Thinking they could hide the sword from us. Thinking they could outwit us. Nothing outwits eternity.
In the gardens filled with flowers and flitting butterflies, Joslyn nearly shouted her alarm. She caught herself just in time.
Do not let them know,she thought. They cannot know you are awake again.
They? Who were they – the union of the deathless king and the undatai?
No, there was someone else. Someone nearly as dangerous as the king. Someone responsible for the shackle around her ankle.
“Joslyn? Do you want more wine?” Tasia asked.
Joslyn smiled at her. “Not yet – I’m still savoring what I have.” She made a show of swirling it, putting her nose to the rim of the glass. But now that she was awake, it did not smell like wine. It smelled like ashes. “Is this bottle House Yount?”
“Better,” Tasia said. “House Aventia. They have the best vineyards in all the Capital Lands.” She suddenly giggled. “Speaking of House Aventia, I had the absolute funniest dream about my cousin Anna. I was getting married to a Westerner from House Gifford, and Anna …”
Joslyn kept a smile plastered to her face as she listened, mind reeling as she tried to work things out. How long had she fallen back into this prison of fantasy? What was the dangerous force, besides the deathless king, that she needed to be wary of?
The sword. The King was afraid of it, and Joslyn had known that. She’d hidden it, recovered it, and hidden it again. But this time, she’d given it to Milo. It was even further from the reach of the deathless king. Joslyn should go to Milo and get it back. Quickly, before the fantasy pulled her back into its net and refused to free her again.
“Lie down with me, love,” Joslyn said, setting the wine glass down and reclining onto the spongy green grass. “I fancy a nap in the sun with the most beautiful girl in all the Empire.”
Tasia complied with a smile, resting her head on Joslyn’s shoulder and placing one hand on Joslyn’s chest. “I bet you flatter all your women. I bet you tell all of them they are the most beautiful in the Empire.”
“What women?” Joslyn asked. She closed her eyes, reaching for the inner door that would open into a dreamwalk. “There’s only you, Tasia.”
#
Milo was easier to find than Joslyn expected, almost as if he’d been waiting for her. His dream was nearly the same as it had been the last time she’d seen him. He was surrounded by Wise Men who took turns asking him challenging, sometimes ludicrous questions, and all his answers were declared incorrect. She was surprised all over again to find the boy so large, so much older than she remembered him. Had she and Tasia truly been dreaming in the deathless king’s palace long enough for Milo to have become a young man?
Joslyn stepped between Milo and the interrogating Wise Men.
“Milo. The sword. I need it – quickly, now.”
Milo didn’t miss a beat. The Wise Men, the books, the parchments all disappeared, instantly replaced with a dim, low-ceilinged room that smelled of dampness and earth. Joslyn glanced around. The distinctive scent of the underground made her think of the barrow where she’d first discovered Milo, but Milo was too smart for that. Had the deathless king realized Joslyn had given the sword to Milo, the boy’s former prison would be the first place he would look.
This wasn’t the barrow; it was a root cellar, cramped with uneven shelves crammed with foodstuffs, leaning precariously forward.
Milo knelt down, reaching behind a row of jars. When he stood again, he held Ku-sai’s sword with both hands. Joslyn took it from him immediately.
“Did they follow you here?” he asked.
“I don’t … I don’t think so,” Joslyn answered. “I must go. The time has come to bring the sword into the mortal realm and use it to defeat the deathless king.” She studied the familiar blade for a moment before forming a sheath on her back with a mere thought and sliding it into place. “That is the task it was forged for – I’m sure of it.”
The moment Joslyn said the words, she knew it was the truth. Ku-sai’s sword, the sword that had been his father’s, and his father’s father’s, hadn’t been created merely to separate men from shadows. It had been created with the express purpose of bringing death to the deathless king.
Joslyn hesitated. There was that something else – that someone else. That second threat – not as dangerous as the union of king and undatai, but one which nevertheless required elimination. And if she didn’t stop that second threat, it would kill Tasia.
“Commander? Is something wrong?” Milo asked. “If you and the Empress need help, I’ll try to get Linna to go to you. She’s been searching for the pirate, and once she – ”
“No, leave them out of this, both of them. I don’t want Linna in danger, and the pirate is as good as useless,” Joslyn said, remembering once more the way Akella had fled the moment she’d been injured in the fight with the Order of Targhan. “Now that I have the sword, I – ”
The root cellar shimmered like a desert mirage and disappeared, replaced with the blank waste of the Shadowlands.
“I must hand it to you, Mizana,” Rennus said. “You really do have a strong mind. It is no wonder the Prince of Shadows keeps you alive.” His eyes crawled up and down her body. “I can only imagine how it must taste to inhabit you.”
With a serpentine swiftness, he snatched Milo by the arm and drove a blade into his chest. Blood flowered, and the boy let out a choked scream.
“Milo!”
“I was wondering how you’d managed to hide the sword from me. I picked through every part of your mind and still couldn’t find it,” Rennus continued casually as the stain of blood around the dagger blade grew. He yanked it free again and gave Milo a push. The boy crumpled to the ground, halfway between Rennus and Joslyn. “Clever, hiding the sword with the boy. I must admit I’d forgotten about him.” He glanced at Milo, who gasped for breath at his feet, both hands pressed against the dagger wound.
“Milo – ” Joslyn started, taking a step towards him.
“I can … heal … myself, Com-Commander,” the boy said. “I’ll s-send … help.”
Before Joslyn could reach him, he vanished.
Rennus clucked his tongue. “And resourceful, too. He would have made a good Wise Man, but I’m sure my Brothers will find a way to quietly eliminate him before he ever reaches the House of Wisdom.”
Joslyn didn’t answer; she would waste no more words on this vile man. With dancer’s grace, she spun towards him, fully intending to take off his head with a single stroke.
But the great curved blade whooshed through air without ever meeting his neck.
“Two things you should know, Commander,” Rennus said from behind her.
She whirled towards the sound of his voice. His grey Wise Men’s robes had been replaced by an Imperial Army uniform. He held a short sword in one hand and wore a buckler on the other.
“First, while you’ve been dreaming your days away in the palace gardens with your lover, I’ve been under the tutelage of the king, improving my skills day by day.”
He disappeared, reappearing only inches from Joslyn’s face. She only barely managed to dodge his sword thrust.
“A greater practitioner of the shadow arts has never lived – and that was before he entered into union with the Prince of Shadows,” he said, and dematerialized once more. “The second thing you should know,” said Rennus, his disembodied voice echoing all around Joslyn, “is that although I’ve never trained with a sword myself, I’ve skinwalked into quite a number of people who have.”