Beyond the Shadows - Brent Weeks [20]
Garuwashi’s sword moved with Garuwashi’s speed. In two seconds, he had cut through the entire pit wyrm. The thirty-foot section of wyrm crashed to the forest floor, thrashed once, and then broke apart in quivering red and black clumps, dissolving in putrid green smoke until nothing was left. The stump writhed bloodlessly until Garuwashi slashed it with six slices in blinding succession and whatever was controlling it yanked it back into hell.
Kylar sprang off the tree and landed ten paces from Lantano Garuwashi. Having never fought a pit wyrm, the sa’ceurai couldn’t have known that they didn’t just appear; they had to be called. He let down his guard.
The big-nosed Vürdmeister acted before Kylar could, stepping out from behind a tree and unleashing a ball of green flame. Garuwashi brought Ceur’caelestos up, but he wasn’t prepared for what happened when that sword came into contact with that magic.
When Ceur’caelestos met the vir, a dull thump shook the gold needles off the tamaracks. The morning mists blew outward in a visible globe, the moss shriveled and smoked on the trees, and the concussion blasted Feir and Garuwashi and the Vürdmeister from their feet.
Only Kylar was still standing, shielded from the magical explosion by the ka’kari covering his skin. The men fell in all directions, but Ceur’caelestos stayed in the center of its own storm. It spun once in the air and stuck in the forest floor.
Kylar swept Ceur’caelestos into his hand. The fallen Vürdmeister didn’t try to stand. He gathered power, the vir on his arms wriggling in slow motion, their undulations becoming a movement that Kylar could strangely read—the magic would be a gout of flame three feet wide and fifteen feet long.
Before the Vürdmeister could release the flame, Kylar ran him through.
The Vürdmeister’s cool blue eyes widened in pain, and then widened again in sheer terror as every inky rose-thorn tracing of vir in his entire body filled with white light. Light exploded from his skin. The Vürdmeister’s body bucked and thrashed, then went limp. The vir was gone without a trace, leaving the dead man’s skin the normal pasty hue of a northerner. Even the air felt clean.
In the distance, to the northeast, a Lae’knaught trumpet blasted the command to charge. It was far away—within the Dark Hunter’s Wood.
“The bloody fools,” Kylar murmured. He’d lured them in, but it was still hard to believe they’d fallen for it. He looked at Curoch. The things I do for my king.
~You’re not really going to throw it away, are you?~
I gave my word.
~You have the Talent and the lifetimes it would take to become that sword’s master.~
I can’t exactly go out in public with a black metal hand, can I?
~Wear gloves.~
“We need to leave—right now,” Feir Cousat said. “Using magic this close to the wood is like begging the Dark Hunter to come. And there’s some kind of magic beacon on the Vürdmeister’s horse. I chased it away, but it’s probably too late.”
So that was why Feir hadn’t used magic in fighting against the pit wyrm. Smart.
“You have taken my ceuros,” Lantano Garuwashi said with a moral outrage that Kylar didn’t understand. Then he remembered. A sa’ceurai’s soul was his sword. They believed that literally. What sort of abomination would steal another man’s soul?
“Did you not take it from someone else?” Kylar asked.
“The gods gave me the blade,” Lantano Garuwashi said. He was quivering with rage and loathing, despair fighting to the fore in his eyes. “Your theft is not honorable.”
“No,” Kylar admitted. “Nor, I’m afraid, am I.”
A plaintive howl unlike anything Kylar had ever heard ripped through the wood. It was high and mournful, inhuman.
“Too late,” Feir said, his voice strangled. “The Hunter’s coming.”
The Wolf had told Kylar to stay back forty paces from the Hunter’s Wood, so Kylar gave it fifty. He looked through the lesser trees of the natural forest to the preternatural height and bulk of the sequoys. He felt small, caught up in events vast beyond his comprehension.