I did just enough to keep him away, and he did just enough to keep me moving. We retreated across the chamber in a slow circle, blades dancing through sparks, the room quiet except for the metal strike and the drone of his blade, the scratch of grit under our feet as we moved. One circuit, and I had seen enough.
"Barnabas, never dead, son of hammers, son of light," I incanted, and the room began to hum with power. "Elias, green life and dark soil, warrior of wood and woad, blood feeding the life of us all. Isabel, ink-stained and careful shot." As I spoke the timber of our blades changed, the drone muting to be replaced by the high song of my sword. The sparks began to mix with a clinging fog that trailed my swings. The air cracked. My voice snapped like a flag in a hurricane. "Heridas, who stood at Chelsey Gate against the Paupers' Tyrant, dead for a day and still fighting. Bloody Jennifer, two swords against the night, never to see the dawn!"
The tide shifted, and we balanced against each other, blade for blade, stroke for stroke, countering each counter and stepping past each heart strike.
"What sort of invokation is that, Paladin? I know the names of your dead."
"The dead and the living," I spat. "Simeon, barrels hot, chamber dry, his eyes the eyes of heaven, his bully the hammer of gods. May the warrior never die!" And the chamber echoed with my voice, the warrior never die, never die… "Jeremiah Scourge, last of the living shield-brethren of dying Morgan, carrying the flashing steel into the Straits of Armice, unyielding as the Rethari swarmed. The massacre at Middling Hall, the charge of Maltis, the siege of Or'bahar. The hundred years of the warrior, and a hundred more, and a hundred more!" I bullied into him, blade swinging wildly, fire in my eyes and in my hands, wicking from my sword as I struck again and again. "A hundred years forever, and may the warrior never die!"
He was in earnest now, falling back, sweat and blood dripping down his face and neck. Reckless with his blade, he left openings that I widened, revealed weaknesses that I pursued. He fell back, and I advanced, the warrior in me rising like the sun.
"I bind myself to the legions of the blade, to my brothers of sword and sisters of bullet. To the thousand years of Morgan, those who fell in his service, and those who fell in his defense. I bind myself to the battle unending, the hunt eternal." I spat the words, my voice rising into a crescendo of mad fury. "To the living sons of the warrior, and to the dead." And with each oath I struck, sword hammering against his defenses in glory and light. "To the dead! To the dead of Morgan! The dead of Morgan! Morgan!"
I threw him back and blood spilled out from his chest. He gasped and brought his sword around to defend. I hammered it aside and drew blood again. He was on his knees in the presence of the warrior god. I howled and rushed in.
The blade came from nowhere. From the shadows. It took me in the back, sliding smoothly between doublet and ribs, hot metal straight through me, and when it left there was nothing to fill that void but cold. I stumbled. I fell.
Nathaniel dragged himself to his feet, supporting his weight on the sword of chain. His servant ghosted behind me, shaking blood from his weapon and muttering invokations. I was on one knee, trying to get my breath against the pressure of the blood that was filling my mouth.
"The dead of Morgan," he said, and spat. "Morgan, warrior of the field. Champion of the people. Damned butcher." He raised his sword. "Hail to Morgan, the Brother Betrayed. Long may he die."
I twisted and swung my sword behind me, rising on one foot, just enough strength to drive the sword into the other ghost's belly, punch it in deep. The air smelled like piss and blood. I drew the sword out and up, rasping the blade against his ribs before exiting the steaming corpse just below the throat. He gurgled, already dead, slumped to the side. My return strike blocked Nathaniel's startled swing, corrected, then two quick punches that put the sharp base of the blade into his thigh, then his belly. We fell apart, leaving a pool of spilled life between us.
"The dead of Morgan," I burbled. He stared at me, face pale as his cloak, lips quivering. I was on my knees, gasping, grating my teeth.
Nathaniel leapt to his feet, hand on his opened guts, and invoked something short and arcane. Two quick steps and he was in the air, off the wall and higher up, disappearing into one of the archways. He left his sword and mask behind.
I knelt before Amon, my life spilling out into my lap, the chamber filled with the sound of the Betrayer's footsteps as he ran away, down the hundred hallways that led out of this place. Echoes of his feet, and my failing heart.
You come here, and do not know the answer? No, I think you do. His words ran through my mind as I lay before the undying Scholar god. I think you do. I did. Barnabas cutting the chain, the ease with which Cassandra's shackles fell away at the touch of my blade. The chains on the shoulders of the Librarians Desolate, and the chains twisting through their god. Before me. I knew.
The power of the soul-bonds came from this body, these chains. No Amonite had been able to remove his own chains, not since the Healer had taken possession of the Library Desolate. There must have been a ritual, with Amon as the sacrifice, and the chains as the reward. As long as these chains held Amon, the noetic chains in the city above would hold his scions. That was how these sorts of invokations worked.
But for every ritual, there had to be a price. An out. Chains had to have a key. And what better key than the Cult who hated Amon most? Only a scion of Morgan can free a Scholar. Barnabas knew, as the Fratriarch. Knew that when he laid his knife against Cassandra's chains, they would melt away. And Alexander must know, because he was the one who bound the rite to begin with.
And when Alexander learned that some secret of the Betrayal, some clue as to the assassin's true name, had fallen into the hands of the Cult of Morgan? What panic that must have caused. What fear. What desperation. Desperation enough to kidnap his brother's Living Sword, torture him, murder him. And when he learned that the archive had escaped his grasp, in the hands of the last Paladin and her Scholar companion…
That was the joke of it. Our greatest enemy had been our only ally. Every little thing Alexander did to undercut the Cult of Morgan during these past centuries-the civilian army, the protection of the Amonites, the factories that churned out rifles and bombs and fighting machines that made our glorious charges, our swords and our martial skill… made those things we held most holy irrelevant on the battlefield. I had always mistrusted Alexander, because I felt he humored us, coddled us. In fact, he had smothered us, one strength at a time, one recruit at a time. Until the time came when there weren't enough of us to oppose him. And then he struck. Declared us apostate, whipped up the populace against us, took our Elders captive and put them on trial.
It didn't matter that I knew the truth of it. No one would believe me. No one would trust a scion of the Warrior again, especially not in opposition to Alexander. The godking.
I stood, my chest rearranging itself, the blood flowing fresh down my legs and arms. Such a damn mess, Eva. You're just all screwed up. You can't go to the city now, and tell them all about the lies of Alexander and the true betrayal. It was up to someone else, now. It would have to be the Amonites who told the truth.
All I could do was let them go.
I raised my sword and stepped to the coffin. No invokation, no glory of the fallen church of the Warrior. Nothing but a ritual being broken. I brought the blade down, and it struck deep into the helix of chains that twisted around the Scholar's charred body. Metal parted like silk, the pattern of its orbit disrupted. I looped several bands of it around my sword, drew tight the tension of bonds, and then pulled back. The full length of the blade rasped through the metal and then they let go of their ancient station, with a sigh, with a clatter. The chains fell to the floor.