Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks [209]
But that was only her imagination.
A shock of impact ran up Vi’s arm. Her wrist flexed as if to complete a horizontal slash through a heart, but she saw nothing, knew nothing except that there was a blank.
The gap cleared, and Vi was aware once more. Her fingers were uncurling from the familiar grip of her favorite knife. Kylar—so slowly, so painfully slowly—was falling. He drifted toward the floor, his head arcing back in a slow whiplash from having her knife rammed into his back, his dark hair rippling from the shock. It wasn’t until he hit the floor that Vi realized that Kylar was dead. She had killed him.
“That, my dear daughter,” Garoth Ursuul said, “is compulsion.”
69
Kylar pushed through the fog in a rush. In a moment that seemed out of joint, as if time didn’t work the same way here, he was back in the indistinct room, once again facing the lupine, gray-haired man with his hair pure white on one temple.
“Two days isn’t going to cut it,” Kylar said. “I need to go back now.”
“Impertinence last time, demands this time,” the man said.
The man cocked his head, as if listening, and Kylar was again aware of the others. They were invisible when Kylar looked directly at them, but definitely there. Could he see them a little better this time? “Yes, yes,” the Wolf said to a voice Kylar couldn’t hear.
“Who are they?” Kylar asked.
“Immortality is lonely, Kylar. Madness need not be.”
“Madness?”
“Say hello to the grand company of my imagination, gleaned from those profound souls I have known over the years. Not ghosts, just facsimiles, I’m afraid.” The lupine man nodded his head again toward one of them and chuckled.
“If they’re not real, why are you talking to them and not to me?” Kylar asked. He was still angry and this time, he wasn’t going to take the man’s chiding or his mysteries. “I need your help. Now.”
“You’ll find such urgency hard to hold onto as the centuries pass—”
“It’ll be real hard if Garoth Ursuul takes my immortality.”
The Wolf tented his fingers. “Poor Garoth. He believes himself a god. It will be his undoing, as it was mine.”
“And another thing,” Kylar said. “I want my arm back.”
“I noticed you managed to lose that. You actually pulled the ka’kari out of every cell of the arm you lost. Was that intentional?”
“I didn’t want the ferali to have it.” Cell?
“A wise thought, but a poor choice. Do you remember what they call your ka’kari?”
“The Devourer,” Kylar said. “So?”
The Wolf pursed his lips. Waited.
“You’re joking,” Kylar said. He felt sick.
“Afraid not. You didn’t have to fight. What the ka’kari did while coating your sword it could have done while coating your body. You could have just walked through the ferali.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Because you cut your arm off instead—and pulled the ka’kari out of it first—your arm won’t grow back. Sorry. I do hope you can fight with your left.”
“To hell with you! Send me back or Ursuul wins.”
The man gave him a toothy grin, as if being damned amused him. “Sending you back two days early will cost me,” his eyes flicked up. “Three years and twenty-seven days of my life. Sort of like the rich stealing from the poor, wouldn’t you say, immortal?” He held up his burn-knotted hand before Kylar could curse him. “I’ll send you back if you make an oath to me. There’s a sword. It’s called Curoch, and I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that it’s intensely desired by any number of powerful factions. You know the town of Torra’s Bend?”
“Torras Bend?”
“That’s the one. Get the sword and take it there. Go into the wood, past the oak grove, stop forty or fifty paces from the edge of the old forest, and throw Curoch in.”
“Is that where you live?” Kylar asked.
“Oh no,” the man said. “But something else does. Something that will guard Curoch from the world of man. If you do this, I will send you back now, and when you deliver the sword,