The Shattered Land

CHAPTER 38

Do you remember your first kill?” Her voice was a whisper, drifting over the calls of waking birds.

Dawn was rising over the jungle. The vegetation around them was painted in orange and red, the fiery colors of autumn. Pierce and Indigo slipped through the underbrush, and Pierce was impressed by his companion’s grace and skill.

“No.” Pierce said. “I served Cyre for over two decades. Perhaps it is age, or the damage I suffered, for I was damaged often.”

“Soldiers,” Indigo said dismissively. “I remember each of my victims. When my human companions slept, I would recall those past struggles and consider what might come. I assume you have fought your companions in your mind? Your Lei, your captain?”

“He is not my captain anymore.”

“True … but you did not answer my question.” A blade flickered out of her forearm, and she cut through a wall of vines with a quick slash. When Pierce said nothing, she continued. “There is no shame in it. It is what you are: a weapon, made to kill. An ally today may prove a threat tomorrow.” She did not turn her head, but he could feel her gaze. “Surely we have battled in your thoughts?”

“Many times.”

“What was the outcome?”

“Satisfactory. You are a dangerous opponent, but I can match you.”

She did glance at him then. He studied her ghulra, the twisting sigil carved into her forehead, fixing it in his memory. “You know less of me than you think. Perhaps we shall put your projections to the test, once this business is concluded.”

“What is this business? A door embedded into the earth. What could bring you all the way to Xen’drik?”

“Harmattan will tell you, when he feels you can be trusted.”

There was a rustle in a nearby tree, and both warforged turned. Pierce had an arrow drawn and ready, but Indigo had already loosed a bolt from her shortbow. A shape fell to the ground-a small monkey with orange and gray fur, which had been hidden amid the bright foliage.

“Was that necessary?” Even as he turned, Pierce had a sense of the size of the creature from the sound and motion in the brush. The monkey hardly seemed a threat.

“You have been long away from battle, or you never fought the war as I did.” Walking over to the corpse, she put her foot on its chest and pulled the bloody arrow out of its skull. “Wizard’s familiar, shapechanged foe-we cannot take any chances.”

It was true-Pierce had fought the Valenar at Felmar Valley, and the elves had often used ravens and other birds as spies. Perhaps his instincts had grown dull, living in High Walls. Still, there was something about the twisted body, broken on the ground-something felt wrong. He pushed the thought away. “And you? Do you know all the answers, or do you just do what Harmattan tells you?”

Indigo returned the arrow to the string, and continued to move forward. “Harmattan serves all warforged. I trust his judgment.”

“You criticized me for following my friends. You seem to have traded one leader for another.”

There was a cold edge to Indigo’s voice. “What reason did you have for your service? None. You fought because you were ordered to, because you knew nothing else. You never had the courage to find your own path. I follow Harmattan, yes, but Harmattan is one of us, and the warforged are his only concern.”

“He does not look like ‘one of us.’”

Indigo cut away another patch of vines, studying the ground. “He was born a soldier, and he fell in battle-destroyed by humans, as you or I might have been, but he refused to die. He rebuilt himself. He is proof of our power, of our own divinity. Humans made us to die. Harmattan can lead us to true immortality.”

“Or perhaps Harmattan was made to be immortal. We are all different. Soldiers, scouts, war-wizards-we were made to serve different purposes. Perhaps this was his.”

“You have no faith,” Indigo replied. “You have spent too much time surrounded by flesh and blood. We are beings of magic, brother. We were not shaped by the hand of man. Humanity was the vessel that brought us to this world, but our true destiny is only beginning to unfold-and it is a mystery the human mind could never hope to comprehend.”

Pierce let the matter drop, and for a time they walked in silence. In some ways, he found her company to be more comforting when they weren’t talking. It was simple to match his movements to hers, to give himself to the hunt-to allow his instincts to take over, search for the silent step, the trace of their quarry, any sound or threatening motion. Even as he watched the surroundings, he found his thoughts drawn to battle-imagining what a fight with Indigo might be like. He remembered the brief struggle in Sharn, when he’d locked his flail around her neck-but she claimed that she had let him seize her. He’d seen her speed when the displacer beasts attacked, when she shot the monkey. Perhaps he could trip her, pull her down to the ground …

There was a glitter against the soil: glass or metal, and again, just ahead, a broad panel, hidden under a blanket of vines and roots.

He tapped Indigo’s shoulder and gestured. She followed the motion, signing back. Stand. Cover. I close.

Slinging her bow, Indigo allowed her adamantine blades to slide from their sheaths. She approached the reflective patch, silent and swift. There was no other sign of movement, no roar of magical energy. Slowly, she cut away the vines and weeds, revealing a wide circle of black volcanic glass almost twelve feet across. It seemed out of place in the otherwise lush jungle, but there was little to be done with it-it was just a patch of dark glass. Though now as he looked again, he saw a small symbol carved in the very center of the circle.

He took a step forward, and Indigo raised her hand. “Do not touch it. This is what we have sought.”

“I thought that we were searching for a door,” Pierce said. He saw no outlines of an opening, no indication of moving parts.

“We have found one.” Indigo studied the glass for a moment, then there was a blur of motion as a tiny object flew from her chest. It was the messenger drone Pierce had seen in Sharn-a tiny metal dragonfly. “It will find Hydra,” she explained, “and he can lead Harmattan to our location. Now we wait.”

“Certainly. We cannot risk making a decision without Harmattan to guide us.”

Indigo glanced at him. “The mystical charge stored in the glass would destroy either one of us. Only Harmattan understands the true nature of the portal.”

“So. He cannot trust you with his secrets either?”

Her eyes flashed. “I do not need to know the answer to every question.”

Strange words for the champion of freedom, Pierce thought, but he did not speak. He didn’t want to fight with Indigo-not this way. Was he so different, in his loyalty to his friends? Would he have expected an explanation from Lei, if she had asked him to perform such a task?

Lei.

There had been blood on her cheek when he’d last seen her, sprayed from the corpse of a displacer beast. Perhaps she hadn’t felt it; perhaps the blood was on her cloak and only seemed to be marring her skin. Her expression was full of confusion-and anger.

Was that such a surprise?

Why did it matter? He had protected Lei for years. He was protecting her now: It was Daine who had abandoned them both, and only Pierce’s actions saved Lei from Harmattan. He would see that she was set free when they reached a point of safety. He had served her well, and now … now he wasn’t a servant.

Why did it feel so wrong?

Indigo was watching the treeline. Her bow was back in her hand, an arrow nocked. She was like a crossbow-a deadly mechanism, primed and ready to kill. Her task was all that occupied her thoughts, and he envied that inner peace.

“Do you remember your first kill?” he said.

“Of course,” she replied, tracking the motion of a bird at the far range of sight. “I remember all of my victims, but the first-that was sweet.”

It was not a word Pierce would have used to describe his victories. “How?”

“Tannic d’Cannith, the artificer who first woke me from my sleep. He worked with me in the early days, as I was imprinted with the skills of my trade. Of course, all of my opponents were warforged-soldiers learning the ways of battle.”

Pierce remembered nothing of his birth, but he had heard of this practice from other warforged. Cannith artificers and craftsmen would stage wargames, setting warforged against warforged in full battle. It prepared the ’forged for the true experience of battle, for the painful sensations of injury and deactivation. Most of the fallen could be repaired-though occasionally a soldier would suffer an injury too severe to be restored.

“From the beginning, they used us to die in their stead. I was trained to kill princes and lords, but it was warforged who suffered the first blows from my blades.”

He couldn’t remember these wargames, but Pierce had certainly fought other warforged on the battlefield. All five nations of Galifar made use of warforged soldiers. Keldan Ridge was the only time he’d faced an army of warforged, but he’d destroyed many enemy warforged in the heat of battle. The momentary thought of Keldan Ridge reminded him of the strange scout, Hydra. What was his tie to that accursed place?

“Tannic was pleased with his work,” Indigo continued, “always close at hand, always suggesting ways our performance could be improved, but he grew careless with his choice of words. Looking back now, I think that he considered us his children. One day he was explaining human anatomy, pointing out the swiftest ways to kill a human, and he encouraged me to strike at those killing points, and so I did.”

“You struck your creator?”

“I killed him. They had grown careless: there were mage-wrights ready to repair the warforged, but no healers for the humans. When I watched his blood spread across the tile floor, I understood death for the first time. I knew what I was, and I knew the weakness of the flesh, the vulnerability of those who had created me.”

“I’m surprised they let you live.”

She didn’t shrug, but Pierce could hear the ambivalence in her tone. “We were too valuable for such things. My adamantine blades were probably worth more to the forgehold than he was, and it was his poor choice of words. Even then, I believed that my purpose was to serve the house and the nation it would sell me to. I began to imagine the others who would fall at my blades, and I took greater pleasure in the rest of my training, but it was years before I realized that I could choose who would live and who would die.”

“As long as Harmattan agrees with you.”

“Do not worry about Harmattan showing mercy to flesh and blood, brother. If he spares a breather, rest assured he has a reason.”

They fell into silence again. For a moment Pierce saw Lei’s face in his mind, but his thoughts were interrupted by noise-a massive figure crashing through the jungle.

Harmattan was coming.