Ashok grunted and clutched the wound. Blood soaked his fingers, but he didn’t have time to determine how deep the sword had penetrated, because Vedoran had seen the blood too. He reversed his swing. Ashok blocked feebly with the dagger and tried to twist out of the way.
Vedoran’s blade grazed his collarbone. Ashok felt the hot line where it cut him to the shoulder.
No choice. Ashok teleported again, but it took all his strength and concentration. He didn’t think he’d be able to attempt the escape again until he’d rested, and Vedoran was already crowding him, forcing him to move in his incorporeal form to find a better position.
“You’re tiring quickly,” Vedoran said. “Why are you fighting so hard? You know you won’t win. If Uwan could fall to me, you don’t stand a chance in your current state.”
“Uwan trusted you,” Ashok said. “That was his mistake. I won’t underestimate you or what you’re capable of. Not anymore.”
“I’m doing you a service,” Vedoran said, “killing you now while you’re still full of hope. This city does that to you, gives you hope. But even if you survive, they will never accept you fully. You heard the crowd at your trial. Half of them want you dead. Would they embrace you if you came out of these tunnels? Better to die here and never know that disappointment.”
“Is that what grieves you the most, Vedoran?” said Ashok, gathering himself for the last exchange of blows. “All the people who have disappointed you? Uwan, the city, the gods …”
“You,” Vedoran said. He gripped his sword and put it through Ashok’s phantom chest, swirling it around his heart. “You disappointed me more than all the others. I would have been more than a brother. You were supposed to be with me.”
“I was,” Ashok said, “but this is bigger than you or I. Ikemmu is about more than survival. There are things worth protecting here. The city isn’t perfect, but there’s a future in it. There was no such haven in those caves where I prowled and killed.”
His words came faster as his body faded back into the world. When he could hear his boots scrape on stone, Ashok went on the offensive. He dived in under Vedoran’s guard and nicked his cheek, a light blow to get the graceful warrior backpedaling.
Vedoran teleported away over Ashok’s sudden burst of energy, but he didn’t speak, and as soon as he became solid they went at the fight again. Ashok ducked a sharp slash from Vedoran’s blade, but he stumbled and fell prone with his dagger arm trapped beneath him. Vedoran came after him. Ashok grabbed his leg and twisted, bringing the warrior down beside him.
Ashok heard Vedoran’s sword clatter on the ground. He rolled as Vedoran went for his throat and dug the dagger into Vedoran’s shoulder. Pain spasmed across Vedoran’s face, but he got his hands inside Ashok’s guard and around his throat.
Choking, Ashok tried to pull his dagger out of Vedoran’s flesh, but it was wedged against bone, and his strength was rapidly waning. He couldn’t draw breath. The room started to spin, and Vedoran, through it all, looked half-crazed, his eyes bulging with triumph as he pressed Ashok’s flailing body down and choked the life out of him.
Fading. Ashok felt himself become unmoored from his body, except he was aware of everything. The necrotic energy swirling in the room solidified into reaching shadows, and there was the void again before him, where his father and brothers waited. He wouldn’t look at them, Ashok thought. He looked beyond them into the unknown and tried not to be afraid of what waited there.
Ashok glimpsed it then, behind the rest, the form rising up to fill his vision. It no longer wore Ilvani’s face, but it cut through the shadows straight to Ashok’s heart.
Through his dimming consciousness, Ashok reached up and wrenched the dagger free from Vedoran’s shoulder. Vedoran cried out and loosened his grip. Ashok sucked in a desperate breath of air and brought the blade down nearly parallel between them. Driven by a strength Ashok had thought long gone, the blade disappeared into Vedoran’s chest and pierced his heart.
Ashok felt Vedoran’s whole body stiffen. He flailed, and Ashok caught his hands, holding them as the life drained from the graceful warrior. The breath eased out of Vedoran’s chest slowly, and the crazed look left his eyes. He focused for an instant on Ashok’s face and tried to speak.
“Say it again,” Ashok said, his voice ragged from being strangled. “I couldn’t hear.”
“Forgive …” Vedoran coughed, and there was blood on his lips. “Forgive … yourself. Even … if I can’t.”
Ashok clasped the warrior fiercely to his breast. Vedoran drew his last breath, and Ashok felt the body in his arms go limp.
“You’re in the shadows now, my friend,” he whispered. He hoped that somehow, Vedoran’s soul would find its way out of the void. From there he faced a journey beyond mortal knowledge. But the cares of Ashok’s world could not touch him.
Ashok gently laid Vedoran’s body on the ground. Light-headed with pain and grief, he crawled to Uwan’s side and turned the leader’s body to face him. He put his head against Uwan’s chest and listened for some sign of life. The sign came with the leader’s voice.
“You did well,” Uwan said. His vacant eyes stared past Ashok at the invisible world full of shadows.
“Don’t do this,” Ashok said. “I can get healers here before your next breath. Uwan!” he cried when the leader’s head lolled.
Uwan licked his lips and coughed. “I saw Him, just now. I saw Him, but He wasn’t looking for me. He was watching you. You fought so well … You saw His pride, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what I saw,” Ashok said. “I’m not ready to accept-”
“So … stubborn,” Uwan said. His lips curved in a weak smile. “Always thinking your life means nothing … to the gods. Every life is important.”
“Prove it, then,” Ashok said. “Live, and prove me wrong.”
“I … will try.”
“Don’t look at the shadows,” Ashok said. He stood and ran out of the dungeon, following the scent of the forge fires to the light and Tower Makthar. He prayed, to any and all gods listening, that he would make it in time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Four days later, Ashok stood on the topmost span between Pyton and Hevalor, his cloak snapping in the wind. He watched the shadar-kai dance in the fire circles over a hundred feet below.
They were preparing a raid on a drow settlement in the Underdark. The Veil between the two parts of the city had been enspelled with golden glows to add to the ferocity of the fire. There were torches all along the wall, and the shadar-kai guarding it were over two hundred strong, or so Skagi and Cree had told him.
Uwan watched the proceedings with his Sworn from the base of Tower Athanon. The leader looked up toward the Span a couple of times, as if searching for Ashok, but Ashok stood behind one of the stone tusks, well hidden in the shadows.
Uwan looked remarkably well for having been near death a handful of days before. Ashok noticed that he did not make any speeches to incite the warriors that night. It was not the time.
Beshaba’s clerics had accepted Ashok’s pardon by Uwan, but their work to publicly discredit Tempus had met with enough success that people’s emotions were still raw. Ashok had no doubt that the clerics of the other gods continued to spread dissent quietly. Uwan meant the raid to help unite the shadar-kai against a common enemy, but they would not soon forget what had transpired over the last month.
Nor should they, Ashok thought. They didn’t need to see Tempus’s emissary-if that was to be his curse-among them. When the celebration reached its peak, he would quietly slip out of the city. Until then, he waited and watched the fires.
Ashok turned when he heard footsteps coming from the Pyton side of the Span. Ilvani walked with her hands clasped behind her and her head tipped back as if she were enjoying the breeze. She didn’t mind her steps at all, but her stride never faltered.