"We?"

"But if we destroy the vir, Neph won't even be able to use Iures. If he survives the vir's destruction, even if he has Talent, it will take him a while to think to use it. He'll be vulnerable. Master, he's been spending the last three months figuring out how to break into Ezra's Wood and take Curoch for himself. If one man holds both Curoch and Iures..."

"It wouldn't be good."

"It would be a cataclysm!" Kylar said.

"You realize that if you put Curoch into the center of all the vir in the world, it might make a qualitative rather than a quant.i.tative difference?"

"Huh?"

Durzo shot him an exasperated look. "Curoch blew the vir out of one wytch and nothing happened. If it blows up all the vir in the world, something might." wytch and nothing happened. If it blows up all the vir in the world, something might."

"If it blew up every wytch in the world, I wouldn't complain," Kylar said.

"And if it blows you up with them?"

"At that point, I won't be able to."

"It might not obliterate you. It might just kill you and invoke your immortality. You know what that costs now. Are you willing to risk a friend's life for this? h.e.l.l, it might be my my life. I don't know if life. I don't know if I'm I'm willing for you to risk it." willing for you to risk it."

"We were given this power for a reason, master. I don't want to lose anyone. I don't want to die, but if my death can change a nation, if I can save thousands, how could I not risk it?"

Durzo grinned ruefully. "You d.a.m.n fool. You realize, even if all your a.s.sumptions are correct-even then, you still have to steal the world's most coveted sword from the world's safest place then be pursued by the ultimate hunter until you reach the heart of an enemy country in the middle of a war in which any side will happily kill you as a traitor, a spy, a wytch, or all three?"

"I thought you'd like it," Kylar said, eyes sparkling.

Durzo laughed. "The Wolf is gonna have puppies."

"Well, I'm hoping not to see him any time soon. But I figured if I could convince you, then there wouldn't be much he could do about it."

"Convince me of what?" Durzo asked.

"To help," Kylar said.

"Oh no," Durzo said. "Count me out."

"You can't!"

"I can. Kid, you took away my immortality. That gave me back my life. I-"

"You owe me!" Kylar said.

"Not like this, I don't. I have one life left. One. Because of you, I can do with it whatever I want. I can love."

And Kylar couldn't. "But we can change the world!"

"Kid, do you know how many times I've changed the world? The Tlaxini Maelstrom used to be a shipping lane. The Alitaeran Empire stretched from coast to coast. G.o.dkings have threatened the southlands and nearly gained ka'kari half a dozen times. Ladesh used to-look. The fact is, I've done my piece. Adventures are for the young, and I'm young by no measure. There's a woman I love in Cenaria, and neither of us is getting younger. I need to go."

"I need you," Kylar said. "Alone, trying to steal the world's most coveted sword from the world's safest place and being pursued by the perfect hunter into a war-" sword from the world's safest place and being pursued by the perfect hunter into a war-"

"Yes, yes," Durzo said. "I've showed you most of my tricks-"

"Most of them?"

"-and you've developed a few of your own. You're not an apprentice anymore, Kylar-"

"Fine, but I'm hardly-"

"-you are are a master. Your tutelage is finished." a master. Your tutelage is finished."

"Don't cut me loose," Kylar said. His heart was in his throat.

"I'm cutting you free," Durzo said.

"But you're still better than me!"

"And I always will be," Durzo said. He grinned, and despite himself, Kylar couldn't help thinking that it was nice to see this once hard and bitter man smile. "In your memories. I'm smart enough to stop fighting you before you start winning. I reached the top of my game, and I had a good run. From here, I'll only get worse."

"But you still have so much to teach me."

"You think this isn't going to teach you something?"

"What if I fail?" It came out in a whisper.

"What if you do? It won't change how I feel about you."

"But I could doom the world! Don't you care?"

"If I spend my last hours in Gwin's arms, frankly, not much. Growing old with the woman I love would be my first choice, but dying reconciled with her isn't a bad second."

"So I'm alone."

"I told you that was the cost when you demanded to be my apprentice."

"I didn't know I was agreeing to eternity!"

"Cry me a river. You're pathetic. What's your plan for getting into the Wood?"

Stung, Kylar shrugged. "The ka'kari."

"The ka'kari." Durzo stated the question like Momma K would have. The old man really had spent too long with her.

"It absorbs magic, eludes magic, makes me invisible. I'll figure something out." Now he was sounding defensive.

"Whose Wood is this again?" Durzo asked. "Oh yeah, Ezra's. And who made the ka'kari? Oh, don't tell me. Ezra."

"Ezra didn't make the black."

"He understood it well enough to make six others. So tell me, fifty years after making six ka'kari he comes here-and at this point he and I aren't on such good terms-and he makes himself a fortress. You think it never occurred to him that I might try to come in?"

"Uh..."

"Kid, you can scare a few Sisters with raw power and bravado, but you're playing on a different plane here. If you live through Ezra's defenses-which by the way, you strengthened tenfold by throwing Curoch into the wood-you still have to get around a creature so powerful and so cunning that it may have killed Ezra himself, unless it is Ezra gone utterly mad. Either way, the Hunter isn't going to be impressed by raw magic. Your newfound confidence is inspiringly suicidal."

Kylar was silent. Then he said, "I won't be stopped."

"Shut up, she comes."

Kylar rolled the ka'kari into the center of the fire. The flames collapsed into the ball, dying instantly, plunging the clearing into darkness. Kylar jumped left and Durzo rolled right even as purple magic blazed through the clearing in jagged hands. Kylar extended a hand and the ka'kari leapt into it, flooding him with the energy it had absorbed from the fire.

He leapt from tree to tree, sinking black claws into the sides of each, and saw a maja flailing about herself, suddenly blind. Fires flared around her. She flipped them back and forth wildly like great scythes in her fear. The magic slapped against the trees, singeing bark, sending up gouts of steam, but the recent rains and snows prevented any fires from bursting forth. Durzo, on the ground, was beneath the swipes, and Kylar was above them.

In moments, the maja had exhausted her Talent and with no sunlight and no fire to draw from, her magic guttered out.

In the sudden darkness, both men moved. Kylar was on her almost before she could scream. He flew straight over her head, grabbed fistfuls of cloak and robe as he pa.s.sed, and used her body weight like a beam to flip himself over and stop, which transferred his momentum to her. She flew backward half a dozen paces and crashed into a tree trunk, the breath whooshing from her lungs. Kylar landed on one knee on the forest floor and stood, blue flame trickling over his features.

By the time she'd taken two breaths, something was rising from deep beneath her skin. It was vir, and it rose as rapidly as a shark striking from the deep, starting at her fingertips, over her hands, and wrists, disappearing in a wriggle that made her sleeves tremble, up to her neck like a black blush, and then-it stopped. Durzo stood behind the tree trunk, his arms wrapped around it, fingers poking into two points in the side of the maja's neck. She shrieked as the vir bulged against the blockage like a river at flood a.s.sailing a levee. Her cries crested and then fell as the vir receded, faded and sank beneath her skin once more.

Durzo stepped from behind the tree and grabbed her by the scruff of her neck. Holding her before him, he buried his fingers in those points on her neck again. her neck. Holding her before him, he buried his fingers in those points on her neck again.

"A trick you didn't teach me?" Kylar asked.

"You expect me to teach you all I know in a couple months? The vir needs a physical expression. Block the physical expression and you block the magical. It's a weakness of the Ursuul family's hidden vir."

"She's an Ursuul?"

"What better use for Garoth's Talented daughters?" Durzo asked.

"I thought he had them killed."

"Garoth wasn't a man to throw away tools, no matter how blunt. What's your name, sweetie?"

She didn't answer, so Kylar did for her. "It's Eris Buel. You little b.i.t.c.h. We had our suspicions about you."

"Not enough to save your precious wife," she snapped. In her eyes rose such hatred that Kylar felt his gift unfolding, saw the murders littering Eris's path to power, but there was no dead Elene, nor Vi. He saw betrayals, broken vows, and, far down on the list, receiving Kylar's sword from a thief and then delivering the blade to Neph's spies.

All the darkness demanded an answer. "Justice has been denied you too long," Kylar said. His dagger punched through Eris's solar plexus, driving the breath from her lungs once more, and her guilty eyes flared wide, the light in them dimming.

A hand cracked hard against Kylar's cheek. Kylar staggered from the force of the blow. "Dammit, we need to question her, you fool!" Durzo shouted. Durzo grabbed Eris by her hair, holding her upright. "The ka'kari, Kylar, give me the ka'kari, quick!"

Kylar handed it to his master. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d had nearly torn off his jaw. Kylar put a hand to his face and took it off, sticky. Kylar looked at his fingers. It wasn't blood.

Durzo dropped Eris's body.

Kylar rubbed the golden liquid between his fingers. "Peri peri and xanthos?" Kylar asked. It was a contact poison, and though it would only leave him unconscious, the tincture still left permanent scarring. "On my face?"

"You deserve a permanent slap-print, but you heal too well."

"Why?" Kylar's legs were getting shaky.

"I needed this," Durzo said, lifting the ka'kari. "Sweet dreams."

Kylar crumpled to the ground and his lips smashed on a root. His mouth filled with blood. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d could have at least caught me. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d could have at least caught me.

79

Neph Dada strode through the dark streets of Trayeth.e.l.l. It was nearly noon, but he was inside the dome of Black Barrow, and the solid black rock dome above him cast the hidden city in perpetual darkness. He could only see his way by the bobbing yellow light hovering over his head and by the thousands of torches his Vurdmeisters had burning around the monolith at the covered city's heart.

Despite the darkness, Trayeth.e.l.l was an almost cheerful place. It had the air of a city whose inhabitants had stepped out and would be back momentarily. There was no dust, and the siege that had seen the city's death hadn't lasted long enough to destroy its beauty. Sections of the city were scorched and blackened or even leveled by magic, but many were pristine. Perhaps, though, the cheerfulness was all Neph's.

His fortunes had changed radically since winter began. He'd sent his thief to steal Kylar's sword, expecting to find that it was covered with the black ka'kari. As soon as he'd touched it with magic, he'd known it wasn't the ka'kari-it was something better. The sword was Iures, the Staff of Law. Like Curoch, Iures had been made by Ezra or perhaps by Ezra and Jorsin together. Unlike Curoch, Iures didn't amplify power, but it made vastly complicated weaves a hundred times easier to make-or unmake.

The cylindrical monolith was halfway up the hill to Trayeth.e.l.l Castle, extending up to the dome like a gla.s.s pillar. In the light of the torches, the monolith looked like a jar of churning smoke. The smoke betrayed only hints of the t.i.tan imprisoned within. Here, a claw pressed against the gla.s.s, there, the side of a gigantic, disturbingly human-looking foot. It irritated Neph that he still felt a tremor at sight of the frozen monster. With Iures, he could destroy the monolith in an instant-after all, Ezra the Mad had used Iures to create the monolith, trapping the t.i.tan until Jorsin Alkestes had killed it.

The gla.s.sy prison of frozen air was broken only by the t.i.tan's death wound. Jorsin had unleashed a bar of fire from the top of Trayeth.e.l.l castle. It had burned through the prison and the t.i.tan's chest in a perfect circle ten feet in diameter. The raw amount of magic necessary for such a thing made Neph hope Jorsin had been using Curoch.

Neph approached the monolith with small steps, coughing more from habit than necessity. Iures was doing wonders for Neph's health. The Vurdmeisters nearby made their obeisance and then returned to their work at his wave. Standing on scaffolding, they were lifting buckets of earth and packing it into the hole Jorsin had burned in the t.i.tan. Soon, that earth would be made into flesh, and the t.i.tan would rise. It would break open the great dome of Black Barrow, and then it would break any army that faced Neph.

Neph's tent was undisturbed. The fifty Soulsworn guards and his spells guaranteed that. Neph paused inside before entering Khali's room. Hiking up his robe, he touched his silver staff-the form he had chosen for Iures-and touched it to his ankle. It dissolved from his hand and wrapped smoothly around his ankle and calf. He willed it to be hidden, to remain inert even if touched with Khali's magic, to simply record all the magic that occurred around it. Khali didn't know about Iures, and Neph didn't intend for her to find out until it was too late. Iures changed everything.

Composing himself, Neph pulled back the flap. Tenser was sprawled on as fine a bed as they'd been able to make, his limbs loose, features slack, breath slow, eyes open but unfocused and rarely blinking. Neph pretended difficulty kneeling at Tenser's feet and extended the magic as Khali had taught him. "Holy One," he called. "I am here to serve."

Tenser's eyes closed then opened again, and She was present. Her presence filled the little tent like a sooty cloud, making it hard to breathe. "You have been neglecting your duties," Khali said. Her voice was Tenser's but the intonations were wrong, the accent unfamiliar. "This host has bedsores."

Neph's throat relaxed. "I will attend to it personally. Immediately. I've been about your business, collecting specimens for you." He cleared his throat but didn't cough. His coughing irritated Khali. "I was hoping we could talk about my reward."

Her laughter was amused, Neph thought. It was hard to tell because though Khali controlled Tenser's voice and eyes, She didn't control his facial expressions. They remained blank, slack except when tongue and jaw worked to make words.

Khali wanted to be truly embodied, not the rude parody of it She had in Tenser. She needed three things: Ezra's weaves on Black Barrow to be broken, a willing host, and a spell that would require the blood of an Ursuul and the combined might of Neph's two hundred Vurdmeisters. G.o.dkings in the past had delivered two of the three, but none could dismantle Ezra's work, because Ezra had used Iures to deny Khali embodiment. But Neph could undo Ezra's spells-because Iures remembered every weave it had ever helped make.

"I want two things," Neph said. "G.o.dking Wanhope will arrive soon to kill me. I want to deny him the use of the vir. Second, I want to live another hundred years."

"Impossible," Khali said.

"Fifty then. Forty."

"Once embodied, I can give you a hundred years. But I can't deny Dorian the vir."

Neph's heart sank. Dorian Dorian was G.o.dking Wanhope? Of all Garoth Ursuul's sons, the last one Neph wished to face was his old pupil. "I thought You controlled-" was G.o.dking Wanhope? Of all Garoth Ursuul's sons, the last one Neph wished to face was his old pupil. "I thought You controlled-"