Calder lifted the sheathed saber he’d carried from his room. He had wanted to avoid drawing the weapon in front of Bliss, in case she could somehow sense that it came from Kelarac. Besides, he was wearing clothes fit for the Emperor himself. He didn’t want to ruin them with Elder blood on the first day.
But now, it seemed, he had no choice.
He pulled the sheath off with one hand, tossing it aside, and held the blade in the other. “If this doesn’t work, I’ll have ruined my clothes for no reason,” he said to no one in particular.
“I hear you have to pay for the second set,” Andel called from behind him. He hadn’t known the man was here.
Calder stepped up to the Elder wall for the first time since his dream last night. In the daylight it loomed even higher, more menacing, a sheer cliff of rotting meat. The stench rolling from the freshly carved cave was indescribable, and he couldn’t get too close to General Teach for fear that her sword would actually kill him where he stood.
But he did have one advantage.
Through the six-fingered mark on his right hand, he funneled his Intent and Read the simple Elderspawn wall. As he’d suspected, it was a simple creature, fashioned for the sole purpose of keeping them away from this room. It focused on him, preparing to lash out with its whips of muscle, and he moved his blade where the lashes would strike.
Raw Elder sinew met orange-and-black mottled steel. The orange of the Awakened blade flared, corrosive Intent surged in the weapon, and the tendril blackened.
A silent scream blasted out from the Elder wall, audible to Calder only through Kelarac’s mark. The wall recoiled—not visibly, but through its Intent—and tried to attack around the blade. Each time, Calder intercepted the strike an instant before the whip actually landed.
He found himself grinning. Fighting like this made him feel like a sword-master from legend, unbeatable and unstoppable, advancing against any number of opponents. His sword was always in the right place even before it was needed, and he fought on sheer instinct. Too bad it only worked on Elderspawn.
When he reached the cave that Bliss and Teach had opened, he dared not proceed any farther. If Teach happened to accidentally move the Intent of her Vessel backwards, he’d fall over dead.
Just as his father had, at the end of that same weapon.
Instead, experimentally, he drove his Awakened sword into the side of the tunnel. The simple Elder being let out another scream of Intent, and a massive chunk of the wall just melted. Odious black goo rolled like a tide over his shoes, and he knew he’d have to burn this pair too.
It was as he’d expected, remembering the fate of the Elderspawn on the Gray Island. Any lesser Elder that encountered this sword dissolved.
He would have to join the two Guild Heads, if they wanted to make it through the wall in any reasonable amount of time. Which left only the little inconvenience of figuring out how to fight next to Tyrfang without dying.
“Guild Heads!” Calder called. They were only a pace or two ahead of him, as their tunnel was incredibly shallow at this point, but they were both thoroughly engaged in digging through the Elder flesh. In fact, shovelfuls of carrion and rotting blood splattered him every time they moved. “Excuse me! General Teach!”
“Speak!” Teach ordered, without turning around.
More than the stench, more than the sickening sounds of blades in flesh, more than the reality of what they were doing, the Intent rolling off of her Vessel made him feel sick. “I believe I can speed us up, but I have to get closer.”
Teach gave no acknowledgement that she’d heard, hacking away at the wall, but Tyrfang’s Intent began to lessen. Her speed decreased in proportion, until the entire hall didn’t quite blacken and die with every swing of her sword.
On the other side of the General, Bliss just held her Spear jammed into the end of the tunnel, humming an aimless tune. The wall’s flesh actually fled from her blade, as if in fear.
Calder held his breath as he moved up, standing shoulder to armored shoulder. He immediately knew he’d been wrong; no matter how far Teach held herself back, the aura of the sword pressed against him like the edge of a blade. His vision blurred, and he could feel consciousness slipping.
He concentrated on his own sword, on the orange-spotted blade Kelarac had given him. Its power seemed to push around it, creating a little bubble where Teach’s influence was weakened. It helped, but not enough. He needed something else.
In a last, desperate attempt to distract his Intent, he focused his attention through Kelarac’s mark on his arm. The handprint grew warm and his Intent firmed, as though he’d braced himself against a solid foundation. That, finally, was enough. General Teach’s corrosive power scraped at him, trying to find a foothold, but through the mark Calder could hold it at bay.
It was a little alarming that the mark of Kelarac could support his Intent, suggesting that the Great Elder was backing him directly in some way, but he chose not to focus on that. One job at a time.
Now that Tyrfang’s nauseous power had lessened, Calder put his back into the work, swinging his own Awakened blade.
He was pleasantly surprised at how much his addition to the team actually helped. They soon fell into a rhythm: Teach slashed the wall, blackening the flesh for yards around. Then Calder impaled it with his glowing-ember blade, melting it to black sludge. Bliss finished by cleaning up, sweeping the dead matter away with the Spear of Tharlos.
They were through the Elder wall in minutes.
When they stumbled through a sudden hole and onto carpeted floor, it was all Calder could do to focus on catching his breath. He’d assumed there would be…more to it, somehow. They had gone from making slow progress to piercing through so quickly that he could hardly believe it.
He held his gore-caked blade over his head. “Victory!” he shouted, like an idiot. A few of the Guards outside took up a cheer.
“Not quite,” Bliss said. She squinted up the hallway, to a room that looked just like half a dozen others. “There’s someone waiting for us.”
Calder couldn’t sense anything other than Elders through Kelarac’s mark, but he took Bliss’ word for it.
Besides the sunlight spilling in from behind them, the hall was lit by dim organic bulbs hanging down from the ceiling. They cast a dirty, grayish light on their surroundings, like an Elder’s attempt to devour all color.
“Here,” General Teach said, striding up to a door and drawing her sword back, preparing to drive it completely into the room.
She didn’t even try the doorknob, Calder thought, before Teach blasted her way inside. The doors blew inward as though she’d charged in with a sledgehammer.
A ball of green fire met her on the other side.
Teach jerked down and to the right, spinning to put her back against the wall to the right of the doorframe. She held Tyrfang up in both hands. She must have started to lose her grip on its Intent, because dirty white paint began to peel away from her as she knelt there.
Ordinarily, Calder would have felt the corruption of that murderous blade, but at the moment…he realized he was holding his breath again.
Green fire. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. That was a coincidence that strained all credibility; if he’d seen it in a play, he wouldn’t have believed it.
“What we call coincidence is but the work of plans unknown.” The philosopher Hestor’s words struck dangerously close to home. If anything was the result of an Elder’s plan, it would be Jerri’s presence here.
But his wife hadn’t died on that island after all.
Calder moved into the doorway and saw her, in the same red prison clothes she’d been wearing the last time. When he’d abandoned her to her fate. She’d launched a ball of flame even before he’d turned the corner, but he slapped it out of the air contemptuously with the flat of his sword.