The Heir (Fall of the Swords Book 3) Read online

  Three or four times, Seeking Sword slowed to a walk because he couldn't see the path very clearly. His grief filled his eyes and spilled down his face. When his eyes burned so badly he had to close them, he doggedly put one foot in front of the other. More than once he fell. Every time he got back up and continued northward.

  While his relationship with his father had never been ideal, he did love him and was full of sorrow that he needed to leave. I've lost more than my father, he thought. I've lost my youth; I'm not a boy anymore. He knew that to shed his youth he needed to shed his tears. Even then, the past remained, and the tears only mitigated its effects on his present.

  Dark fell. Still he continued, feeling that he neared a destination. In his distress, he recognized nothing familiar. As the moon cleared the trees, he stopped. Shedding his weapons, he sat at the base of a huge oak tree, where dense wood encroached upon meadow.

  The quiet was eerie. No bird sang, no wind blew, no cricket chirped. The feeling of the place was annihilation. That was how Seeking Sword recognized it. Hundreds of acres of broken granite boulder marked the plain where the castle of the Emperor Lofty Lion had once stood. Once, ten years before, Seeking Sword had come here.

  The memory was vivid. At the time, he thought that his father had lost the little sanity left to him. Icy Wind awoke one morning. Without the help of staff, he started northward, ordering the five-year old to accompany him. After two days of hard traveling they had reached this place of death.

  Approaching this oak, Icy Wind smote it with the staff between its two largest branches, splitting the massive trunk. Out of the tree had fallen a sword. The trunk had then closed without a wound. As the boy took the sword from him, Icy Wind collapsed and slept for a full day.

  Waking, Icy Wind asked the boy what happened, as if he hadn't been there. Explaining as well as any five-year old could, Seeking Sword felt he had been a character in one of the stories told late at night around the fire. His father didn't want to believe him but had to.

  The sword.

  Icy Wind's eyes lit up like lamps when he saw the weapon. Seeking Sword didn't remember his father's exact words, merely that Icy Wind was ecstatic, as if they had found something very valuable.

  To this day, Seeking Sword wondered why the sword was valuable, and also wondered, if it were so valuable, why Icy Wind had left it in a five-year old's possession.

  Sighing, Seeking Sword stood to examine the place where the trunk had split ten years ago. He found no seam, no scar, nothing to show where the tree had opened.

  His stomach growled, and he shook his head. I need to eat, he thought, not feeling hungry. Shouldering his bow and quiver, he stepped toward denser forest, leaving his other accoutrements behind.

  Sliding along a clearing edge, Seeking Sword saw motion among the opposite trees. Dropping to a crouch, his back hunched, an arrow in his bow, he crept through the grass. Slowly, he approached, tracking the animal more by sound than sight, the wind favoring him. At fifteen paces from his prey, he rose, found a bead and loosed the arrow.

  “You vomitus of a cancerous hyena, what do you think you're doing?!”

  Laughing, Seeking Sword rose to his full height. “How are you, Thinking Quick?” he asked, unable to see the girl to whom the voice belonged.

  She appeared in the moon-dapple, his arrow in her fist. “Alive, thank the Infinite. You almost put that arrow in my heart, Seeking Sword. Have you begun hunting humans?” she asked affably, stepping into his arms.

  “I love you and would never harm you, child,” he replied, embracing her. “I may go hungry if I don't kill something.”

  “I'll be back.” She disappeared without sight or sound, teleporting herself away, her usual method of coming and going.

  He smiled, grateful she was here. Eight years old, Thinking Quick was the daughter of Melding Mind, the bandit Wizard. Independent, mischievous and talented, she was a full-fledged Wizard of many psychic disciplines, and of all three time sights—temporal, extant, and prescient. She often complained that her prescience was more a curse than a blessing.

  Waiting in the clearing, Seeking Sword wondered what it was like to know the entire past and all possible futures. She claimed it was torture. He sympathized, knowing he was incapable of truly understanding. At one time she had told Seeking Sword he was invisible to all three time sights. “I can never see where you've been, where you are, or where you'll be. Sometimes I can see the effects of your presence on others.” Despite her multiple talents, Thinking Quick couldn't determine why he was without one. “Only the Infinite knows,” she had said.

  She appeared before him, carrying a large hare by the ears. Taking it from her, he gestured toward the oak where he had left his other weapons.

  “I saw the burst of energy earlier,” she said. “What did he do, try to hit you with his staff?”

  He nodded, stepping through moon-dapple.

  “It's not easy to leave one's father,” Thinking Quick said, “or lose a son.”

  Seeking Sword was in tears again, feeling his grief anew. She always knew what to say to bring his pain pouring from him, always knew when he needed her. The girl calmly took his hand and led him while he was blind.

  Her practice seemed to be to help him through his rough times. A psychological Wizard, she was expert at treating emotional imbalances. With him, of course, she used words instead of psychic adjustments.

  “Icy Wind has his own terrible purpose—as you do,” she said, guiding him across a dry stream-bed. “Your time had come to take a different path. Remember, my friend, he's a very sick man. The staff compounds the problem. I think he'd die without it.”

  “It's just a staff.”

  “It's a talisman,” she replied.

  “Oh?” Seeking Sword wiped his face, puzzled. “Why's he so angry?”

  “The staff makes his every adjustment useless.” She turned to look at him. “Do you know he's not angry with you?”

  The pain came up again, blinding him. “Then why does he take it out on me?”

  “He's sick, as you'll be sick if you don't express all that anger inside you.” She poked a finger at him and led him around the base of the oak.

  Sitting, he gave the hare to her, knowing she would have it prepared far more quickly. How can I express my anger without alienating those around me? Seeking Sword wondered.

  “Your life will soon change, my friend,” she said, preparing the hare.

  Seeking Sword preferred not to watch, his own methods clumsy. I wish I had a talent, he thought. The thought had gone through his head so many times that it registered as nothing more than small sigh, a small frown.

  “A storm of change is coming toward the bandits,” Thinking Quick said. “I can't join you in the new life you'll lead.”

  “Why not?” he asked, suffering another jolt.

  “Some things I can't say,” she replied, not pausing in preparing the carcass. “I can tell you how encompassing the changes will be. They'll affect all bandits in some way. Everyone in the three Empires will know of them. Promise me, Seeking Sword, that you'll tell no one what I'm about to say.” She floated hot, sweet rabbit meat in front of him.

  He drew a knife and stabbed it, self-pity spilling from the holes in his soul. “I promise.”

  “More than one quarter of all bandits in the northern lands will die.”

  Suddenly, Seeking Sword felt more sick than hungry. She's telling me I'll live through it, he thought. Perhaps I should be grateful.

  Chapter 3

  Some historians say that the na-Emperor Flaming Arrow's campaign against the bandits in 9318 was revenge for the murder of the Matriarch Bubbling Water. Other historians refute this point. In their view, no one knew her real murderer until five years after the act. Flaming Arrow, they conclude, would have warred on the bandits regardless of her death. All we really know is that shortly after Bubbling Water's murder, Flaming Arrow descended upon the Windy Mountains like a plague.—The Fall of the Swords, by Keeping Trac
k.

  * * *

  The Colonel Sectathon Probing Gaze watched the ceremony begin from the upper tiers of the coliseum. During the confusion of last-minute preparations, he took a moment to look around. Women outnumbered men nearly two to one. Beneath the obvious grief on the psychic flow was anger at the manner of the Matriarch's death. Her profligate son Running Bear had killed her in her sleep.

  Entering through the archway, the pallbearers set the bier atop the wood-filled pit in the coliseum floor. Priests of the Infinite spread in a circle around it. The pallbearers stepped back, forming a larger ring. Opposite the archway was a platform decorated with bunting and a single banner of the Water Matriarchy.

  Disinclined to believe the other information on the flow, familiar with the way people distorted rumor, Probing Gaze didn't really care how it had happened. He hadn't come to mourn the Matriarch, having never met her. He had come to watch the Heir, to take his measure.

  Just after the Twins' birth, Probing Gaze had joined a band of outlaws in the Windy Mountains, one of nearly a hundred Imperial Warriors to become a spy. Of them only he had survived. For five years he had lived among bandits, gathering information. At the end of his tour, he had returned to the Eastern Empire a full Major, comfortably wealthy with five years accrued pay.

  Even before becoming a spy, the Captain Probing Gaze had grown disgruntled with the way the military handled the bandits. It had been a war of attrition. Returning five years later, he had pioneered a system of guerilla warfare. The military had adopted the system and still used it along the length of the Windy Mountains. As applied by the more conventional generals, however, the war of attrition still raged. I know an approach that will restore the Eastern Empire's dominion over its own border, he thought. They're just bandits, for Infinite's sake. Without a few leaders to share my vision, my plan won't do anyone a turd bucket's worth of good.

  Through the archway came the Emperor. Silence settled over the crowd. Around the bier strode Flying Arrow, resplendent in his robes of state. He stopped to speak with Guarding Bear, whose now-bleached hair stood out beside the scintillating bronze of the Heir's. Continuing around to the platform, Flying Arrow mounted the steps.

  Two men followed the Emperor, one of ebony skin and one of straight, blue-black hair. Probing Gaze guessed they were ambassadors from the Southern and Western Empires, respectively. The sectathon wondered why no member of the Water Matriarchy had come to honor the Matriarch. It seemed an injustice.

  Just then Rippling Water strode through the archway, wearing only halter, loincloth, sword, and a bag tied at her waist. Decorum requiring as formal dress as possible, her clothing was inappropriate for the occasion. Murmurs rippled through the crowd. No one had seen her since her mother's death. She looked as though she had just returned from wherever she had gone—her hair tousled, and her body dirty and sweaty.

  Striding angrily around the bier and ignoring both her father and her betrothed, she mounted the steps and said something that caused all three men there to step backward. Flying Arrow looked around, anger on his face. The two ambassadors exchanged a glance.

  Pulling the sheathed Imperial Sword from his sash, the Emperor raised it above his head. Silence settled upon the coliseum. He spoke in a voice that carried to the uppermost tiers. “Infinite be with you, Lords and Ladies. We have come to honor a woman renown for her compassion, to help her on her final journey to the realm of the Infinite. She leaves behind her memories, and the knowledge that her legacy will always be with us. I, Flying Arrow, her son in substance if not name, would ask all to pray with me. Not for her soul which is safe with the Infinite, but for her memory to live on in the minds and hearts of all who felt the touch of the Lady Matriarch Bubbling Water.”

  Flying Arrow lowered the Imperial Sword, bowing his head in prayer. Ten thousand spectators joined him.

  Probing Gaze noted that Rippling Water didn't.

  Having worked with Spying Eagle and Healing Hand just before the twins' birth, Probing Gaze had maintained contact with the two men over the years. Through them, he had come to know something of the Heir. What he heard he liked. The stories the two apprentices told revealed a boy who knew what he wanted and who was willing to take the hard road to get it. Through the two Wizards, Probing Gaze hoped to gain audience with the Heir.

  Flying Arrow finished his prayer. The Ambassador Plunging Peregrine stepped forward to speak. Listening for a moment, Probing Gaze heard only platitudes and shut his ears to the noise.

  During the last five years, after his promotion to Colonel, Probing Gaze had worked in military intelligence, gathering information on the bandits, coordinating efforts among the spies, collating and distributing the information as needed along the northern border. What happened then was beyond his control. More often than not, the military misused the information, or ignored it entirely. He could no more tell a general how to deploy his forces than tell the Emperor to leap from the battlements of Emparia Castle. Probing Gaze often felt tempted to do both.

  Plunging Peregrine backed away. Trumpeting Elephant stepped forward to speak. All three men kept a considerable distance from Rippling Water, as if she were leprous.

  In many ways, she reminded the Colonel of Purring Tiger.

  From rumor, sightings outside the fortress and information gleaned from captured bandits, however, Probing Gaze had synthesized a profile of Scowling Tiger's daughter. The wizardly tiger still caught every spy sent into the Tiger Fortress, which meant that little of his information was directly observed. Even so, Purring Tiger appeared to be a born warrior, feral, vicious, unforgiving, implacable. She had killed men who looked at her wrong. When her father died, Purring Tiger would no doubt fill Scowling Tiger's moccasins, and then some. And she had just given birth to a son, preserving if tenuously the Tiger Patriarchy.

  Rippling Water seemed a softened version of Purring Tiger, capable of compassion where the bandit girl wasn't. Between the two women, born on the same day, Probing Gaze preferred Rippling Water. A good leader has to dispense praise and feel compassion, he thought, as well as dispense punishment and decide extemporaneously.

  Today on the platform, however, she looked as if she would dispense only death, and happily. She stared at the speaker with wide, unblinking eyes. Her face set in rage, her hands clenched rhythmically at her sides. The Colonel wondered why her mother's death had so affected her. He guessed the manner of it had upset her.

  Trumpeting Elephant finally finished his obsequy, backing away. All three men regarded the sixteen-year old girl with loathing.

  Ignoring them, she stepped forward, looking at the bier. Her left hand fumbled for the satchel tied to her belt. Tears dripping from her chin, she spoke quietly, forcefully. “The Matriarch Water is dead. The one who killed her has paid the ultimate price.” With her left hand, she pulled a black-haired head from the satchel and held it high. The expression on Running Bear's face was excruciating agony. She probably caught him only a few hours after he killed the Matriarch, Probing Gaze thought, and then tortured him for the next three days.

  “The dogs of Emparia City,” she continued, “are even now feeding on the remains of the prodigal Running Bear. Upon the death of my mother, I, her eldest daughter, became the Matriarch Water. I exacted the price of her death from her murderer. I hear you say, 'How can we have a Matriarch who isn't yet a woman?' The ritual that severs a man from his boyhood is a grueling test. Yet we women need only the breaking of hymen to sever us from girlhood—or do we? The Lady Bubbling Water became matriarch while she was yet a virgin, became a mother without parturition, rose to the highest position a woman can occupy without giving up her maidenhead. I say a woman is a woman when she has tested her tolerance to the breaking point, as men do.

  “I am the Matriarch Water. My test was to find and torture my mother's murderer. So I have done. We have gathered here to mourn her, yet never will this Empire heal the pain of her absence.” Tossing the head into the dirt, Rippling Water walked off the platform
, around the bier and out the coliseum.

  The grief on the psychic flow reached the saturation point. Probing Gaze had to close his mind or cry. The anger had diminished from earlier; the murderer had paid. On the coliseum floor, the priests began a wild dance. The timbers of the bier began to smoke.

  The pallbearers encircling the bier squinted, the heat growing intense. A single flame suddenly leapt toward the open sky. In moments the bier was an inferno, snapping and roaring.

  Probing Gaze happened to be watching the old General.

  Guarding Bear rushed forward, shoved aside a priest and hurled himself into the blistering heat. Somehow, despite his momentum, he fell short. A moment later, the sectathon saw that the Heir had grabbed his foot and kept him from immolating himself. The Heir dragged the General away, kicking and screaming. When he continued to struggle, Flaming Arrow threw the large man across his shoulders and carried him bodily from the coliseum.

  Getting to his feet, Probing Gaze shoved his way toward the exit. Reaching the archway seemed to take hours. Once there, he sprinted from the coliseum, along the road toward Emparia City. Too late. Already a crowd fifteen deep trailed the Heir, Guarding Bear still struggling on his shoulders.

  The Colonel wished briefly that he had worn his uniform. Then he could have ordered people out of his way, dismembered a few to show he was serious, and caught up to the Heir. A more cruel or driven man wouldn't have hesitated. They were just peasants, for Infinite's sake. Neither cruel nor driven, Probing Gaze shrugged and watched them go. Stepping off the main road, he diverted south for awhile, then turned east toward home. He lived alone in a small house in the southeastern quarter of the city.

  Although modestly wealthy, he lived a simple life. His house was a measly five hundred feet square, divided into two rooms. His bedroom was wide enough only for a bed and room to walk on two sides of it. He had partitioned the other room, his living space, into several work stations. At each, he could find whatever piece of information he wanted. Over the years he had gathered a lot of information.