The Ember Blade (The Darkwater Legacy, #1)

by Chris Wooding BA

Aren’s grin was tinged with frustration. He wanted her lips against his, but she’d have her game first, her teasing and flirting. She’d make him wait. She’d said once that the chase made the catching all the sweeter, but all things being equal, Aren would rather cut straight to the good part.

Yet what was so simple and clear in his mind was muddy and frightening in real life, and he felt sick at the thought of it. To speak from the heart required more bravery than any physical risk. To heal a wound was so much harder than to cause one. But he’d do it, because it had to be done. He wanted his friend back.

Aren hauled Cade up with him. Even now, Cade struggled to throw him off, resenting his touch; but Aren held on until Cade was upright.

Pov break

His bruised ribs blazed with agony

She sighed, as if exasperated by her own kindness.

Arms raised, moaning like the dead, he stumbled towards Ged and Darra, a mass of weed and rags that was transformed in their minds into a dreadful apparition.

Pov break

Meshuk, Stone Mother. I called on you to save him. I even thought you might have answered me. But you’re just a fiction, like all the other Aspects. Like the Primus, like love, like my father … like every other thing I believed in.

He was about to say no, but before he could, the plan came to him, springing whole and clear into his mind. With a shock, he realised he must have been thinking about it all along, storing away details and information ever since they’d arrived. He just hadn’t allowed himself to entertain the idea of escape until now; it was an inconceivable act of rebellion for someone who had such complete faith in the Krodan way.

All she wanted was fire, food and good company, with Ruck at her feet. It wasn’t much to ask. Better that than all this doubt, all this supplication, with only silence as an answer. Better than bearing the burden of faith.

‘I think the gods have left this land, Agalie,’ she said. It was the first time she’d spoken it aloud, and it was like a stone laid on her heart. She looked over at her mentor, the woman who’d trained her in the ways of the druids. Tears came to her eyes, loosened by liquor. ‘I’m not sure they were ever here at all.’ ‘They are here,’ said Agalie, with that calm certainty Vika had always envied. ‘Do not despair. This is their land. In Ossia they first made themselves known, and from here they spread throughout the world. They are in the very earth beneath your feet and the air you breathe. If the Aspects are silent, it is because we have forgotten how to listen.’

I’ll strive, alright, Aren thought, addressing the Primus. I’m going to strive right out of this hell you put me in, and I’m taking my friend with me. Stop me if you can. It felt good to shake his fist in the face of a god. He’d always been afraid to before, scared that some misfortune would befall him if he questioned what he’d been taught. But misfortune had befallen him anyway. What good was piety, then, if it won you no favour?

As long Aren refused to tell Grub the details of his plan, he had the upper hand.

Thunder grumbled distantly as they hustled through shadowed ways beneath the pines. The worst of the storm was over but rain still splashed and trickled about their feet, pooling in the imprints of their boots. Aren was surrounded by strangers, their faces flashing in and out of the darkness, caught in moonlit moments and gone again.

‘Nine!’ said Cade in amazement. ‘You killed him!’ Aren wasn’t sure if that even counted. It felt more like the Krodan had used Aren to inadvertently kill himself.

He hates me, Aren thought. And I don’t know why.

There was a crash of branches and an enormous warrior burst from the trees. He was a giant of a man, clad head to toe in tarnished black iron armour.

was mugged by sleep the moment he closed his eyes.

Osman gave him a look. ‘Whatever they are,’ he said, ‘when the Emperor needs something done, something vital, he sends the dreadknights.’

Every day, a person should learn something, experience something, do something that left them changed, even in a small way.

Have faith, Vika-Walks-The-Barrows. You always were too quick to doubt.

Grub’s smile faded as soon as no one was looking, and the loathing in his heart bled out onto his face. Let them treat him like a cur; it was no more than he was used to. The only account of him that mattered was the one made when he died, when the Bone God spread out his skin and read upon it the deeds of his life. Then all these humiliations would be as nothing. But Grub had half a body to cover before he dared let the Bone God lay eyes on him; and for that, he needed these people, whether they liked him or not. Half a body, to atone for the other half. He tipped

36 Cade watched from an upper window as the boat returned, studying its occupants closely, as if careful observation might answer the question that now obsessed him. Who are you people?

The Krodans style themselves as the Third Empire, but their time will come, just as it did for all the others.’

The servants’ passage dead-ended at a small door of beaten metal.

‘The Aspects are your gods, too,’ said Vika, ‘whether you worship them or not. The Aspects are Ossia. It was in Ossia that they first made themselves known. It was the Ossians they first freed from slavery and from here they raised the greatest empire in the world. They are all around you, in the very bones of the land. You belong to them, as they do to you.’

don’t mean to insult you, but they always seemed so … primitive.’ Vika smiled. ‘I would say old. The Krodans fashioned a new god to suit them, a cold god of industry and rules, who demands you show yourself at temple on a certain day and mouth the same words over and over. But the Aspects are wild. They may heed your prayers, but they do not need your worship. Nor do they need ranks of priests and clerics to tally donations and preach to the people.’ She became grim then. ‘Perhaps that is why they are so easily forgotten. The Primus, at least, will not suffer himself to be ignored.’

Aren nodded to be polite, but the conversation was making him feel awkward. His belief in the Primus had been a house built of straw which had fallen at the first push. But the Aspects didn’t inspire him, either, and the stories of the Ossian gods sounded no different to the fables of dancing fish or shapechanging maidens that Cade was so good at telling. Vika fascinated him, for he’d never met a druidess before, but she spoke with too much certainty; he found it overbearing.

‘All the stories I’ve heard about heroes and quests and adventures,’ said Cade, ‘none of them made mention of how much time you spend being cold and hungry and miserable.’ ‘And bored,’ Keel added. ‘Still, there’s worse fates. Waking every morning to the same view, the same labour, the same faces day after day. I’ll take a hard life in the wild wide world over a soft one in a hutch.’

‘The terror that comes with the night,’ Vika whispered.

‘It’s hunting,’ said Vika. ‘You don’t know that!’ Osman sounded edgy. His confident denial of the supernatural was being tested hard.

‘It must have found our camp,’ Vika said. ‘It has our trail now! Flee, if you value your lives!’

‘This is no mere shade. It may even come from some place beyond,’ she said. ‘I believe it is a servant of the Outsiders.’ Aren felt dread touch him. He had no more reason to believe in the Outsiders than in the Aspects that had imprisoned them in the Abyss, yet it was easier to fear the unknown than to love it.

‘I lost my father, too,’ said Aren. He felt his throat thicken as he said it, but he went on regardless, talking past the pain.

He swallowed against the pain of the memory.

Garric felt a knot pull tight under his breastbone and heat rise up in his throat.

‘I’m sure you wouldn’t want the three of us running round Greenrock, knowing what we do. Krodans might catch us, and who knows what they’d make us say?’ ‘Grub rubbish at keeping secrets!’ the Skarl added enthusiastically. ‘One time, his friend love another man’s woman in secret. Grub tell whole town, friend kill himself! Throw himself off cliff, splat! True story.’

‘Nine, he’s got a better attitude when he’s dealing with Krodans,’ Keel muttered. Garric wasn’t listening.

The Xulans were godless, worshipping only their own bodies. Their shameless, overt sexuality and raw narcissism disgusted him. They’d rejected their deities for a doctrine of self-love and a cultish belief that they could perfect themselves without the need for higher powers.

What are you afraid of? It’s your family! But he was afraid. Afraid that things had changed. Afraid of the reckoning he faced each time he returned. Afraid this cottage would become his hutch. He took a bag of coins from his pouch, weighed it in his hand. Krodan money from the Salt Fork coffers. It was more than he usually came back with, but it never felt adequate. Half of what he took had been spent on the way. Money always had a way of slipping through his fingers. Perhaps he just didn’t care about it enough. It was deeds, not coin, that brought him to life. But his tales of adventure would get no welcome here. It was coin that counted, and in that he was always destined to disappoint her.

Keel almost reached out to stop her, but she was gone too suddenly. What would he say, anyway? Don’t leave me alone in here! How could he? She’d never understood that part of him, the way he feared himself and dreaded solitude. He needed the company of others to stop his thoughts turning inwards, devouring themselves and him with them. As a young man, he’d stared into that abyss more than once, that terrible place where joy and ambition became pointless and he was surrounded by the cold profundity of death. Time and toil brought him out of it, but the experience had left its mark and he never wanted to go back. Better to distract himself; better not to dwell on things.

Once in a while, a Caraguan vessel would arrive from the distant west, disgorging missionaries to spread word of the Incarna,

Garric recognised him, at least. The Pradap Tet, spiritual shepherd of the Xulans, whose teachings they worshipped in lieu of any god.

Garric used to wonder what drunks thought about all day as they nursed their mugs of ale and spoke to no one. Then he became one, and he realised they weren’t thinking about anything, and that was the point.

If hunger had been hard on Aren, it had been worse for Cade, who found eating a form of meditation.

‘Ah, Grub done here. Grub going to take enormous brown dump in woods. You should come, Tonsils. They tell tales of this one for centuries!’

The young are always in a rush to know everything, but knowledge only brings more questions. Forget the destination, Aren; enjoy the journey. You are free now in a way you have never been, and the choices you make now will determine who you are to become.’

Hard as it was to be with her, it would be harder without. He needed to know he was loved, even if it came from afar. She was his anchor to the world while he went roaming. Without her, the black pit inside would surely consume him.

He balled up a fist, rubbed the side of his neck with his knuckles, the way he did when he was tense.

Garric. Laine of Heath Edge. Whatever name you go by, I know who you really are, Cadrac of Darkwater.

He let his gaze roam the study.