The morning of the Test of the Sword brought a hard rain that turned the earth to mud and did little to lighten their spirits. The Test was held in an arena on the outskirts of the city, an ancient structure of finely shaped granite, worn with age and weathered by the elements. It was known only as the Circle and Vaelin had never met anyone who could tell him when or why it had been built. Looking at it now he realised there were similarities with the temple to the seven orders they had found beneath the city, the way the supporting columns curved up to the tiers above echoed the elegance of the underground structure. Here and there he glimpsed adornments in the stonework, carvings of faded intricacy that recalled the better preserved motifs of the temple. He drew Caenis’s attention to them as Master Sollis led them into the shade beneath the columns but received only a grunt in response. Today even Caenis was too preoccupied to indulge in curiosity.
Vaelin could see the fear and uncertainty on his brothers’ faces but found he was unable mirror it. The emotions that made Dentos vomit his breakfast and Nortah white-faced and closed-lipped were something he simply didn’t feel. He was unafraid and he didn’t understand why. Today he would face three men in armed combat. He would kill them or they would kill him. The prospect of death should have chilled him to the core. Perhaps it was the very simplicity of the situation that robbed him of his fear. There were no questions here, no mysteries, no secrets. He would live or he would die. But despite his inability to fear the ordeal something still nagged at him, a small, insistent voice at the very edge of his thoughts, whispering words he didn’t want to hear: Perhaps you don’t fear the Test because you relish it.
Unwillingly, he recalled the Test of Knowledge, the awful truth the Aspects had forced from him. I can kill. I can kill without hesitating. I was meant to be a warrior. Images of the men he had killed came back to him in a rush: the archer in the forest, the faceless assassins in the House of the Fifth Order, the one eyed man’s hireling. It was true he had felt no hesitation in killing any of them, but had he truly relished it?
“ You’ll wait in here.” Master Sollis led them into a chamber set back from the main entrance. The walls were thick but they could hear the baying of the crowd in the Circle. The Test of the Sword was an ever popular event in the city but only those with sufficient coin could purchase a ticket and typically it was the Realm’s wealthier citizens who came to watch the three day spectacle, often wagering huge sums on the outcome of each contest. The profits from the day would be donated to the Fifth Order to care for the sick. Vaelin couldn’t help but smile at the irony of it.
“ What’s so funny?” Nortah demanded.
Vaelin shook his head and sat down on a stone bench to wait. There were twenty brothers in Vaelin’s group today. The fifty other survivors of the three hundred who had started their training together as boys of ten or eleven had undergone their Tests over the preceding two days. So far ten had been killed and another eight so badly maimed they could no longer serve the Order. Many others had serious cuts requiring weeks of healing. The parade of wounded and shocked brothers trooping through the gates over the past two days had added considerable weight to the burden of fear most of them now carried. Of all of them, only Vaelin and Barkus seemed unaffected.
“ Sugar cane?” he offered Vaelin, taking the place next to his.
“ Thank you brother.” The cane was fresh and its sweetness tinged with a slight acidity, but still the sensation was a welcome distraction from the grim mood of the others.
“ Wonder who’ll be first,” Barkus said after a moment. “Wonder how they choose.”
“ We draw lots,” Master Sollis told them from the doorway. “Nysa. You’re first. Let’s go.”
Caenis nodded slowly, face immobile, and got to his feet. When he spoke his voice was barely audible. “Brothers…” he began, then stopped, choked. “I…” He stammered for a moment before Vaelin reached out grasp his forearm.
“ We know, Caenis. I’ll see you shortly. We all will.”
They stood, the five of them, grasping hands. Dentos, Barkus, Nortah, Vaelin and Caenis. Vaelin remembered how they had been as boys. Barkus beefy and clumsy. Caenis thin and fearful. Dentos loud and full of stories. Nortah sullen and resentful. Now he saw only shadows of those boys in the lean, stern faced young men before him. They were strong. They were killers. They were what the Order had made them. This is the end of something, he realised. Live or die, this is where things change, forever.
“ It’s been a long road,” Barkus said. “Never thought I’d get this far. Wouldn’t have but for you lot.”
“ Wouldn’t change any of it,” Dentos said. “Every day I thank the Faith for my place in the Order.”
Nortah’s face was tense, his brows furrowed as he fought to master his fear. Vaelin thought he wasn’t going to speak but after a moment he said, “I… hope you all make it through.”
“ We will.” Vaelin clasped hands with all of them. “We always do. Fight well, brothers.”
“ Nysa,” Master Sollis said from the door. He sounded impatient and Vaelin was surprised he had allowed them this interlude. “Let’s go.”
Waiting to find out if your friends were dead, Vaelin discovered, was a singular form of agony that made the effects of Joffril root feel like a taste of lemon tea. One by one his brothers were called out by Master Sollis, there would be a short wait before the crowd erupted in cheers, the volume of which rose and fell with the fortunes of the fight. After a while he found he could gauge the course of a fight, if not the victor, by the crowd’s reaction. Some were over quickly, a matter of seconds, Caenis’s fight in particular had been very short. Vaelin found he couldn’t decide if this was good or bad. Other fights were longer, Barkus and Nortah both enduring prolonged contests of several minutes.
Dentos was the last to be called before Vaelin. He forced a smile, took a firm grip on his sword hilt and followed Master Sollis from the chamber without a backward glance. Judging from the noise of the crowd his fight was eventful, raucous cheers followed by hushed silence then an explosion of applause, repeated several times over. When the final wave of noise washed through the chamber Vaelin found he was unable to judge if Dentos had survived.
Luck to you brother, he thought, alone in the chamber now. Mayhap I’ll join you soon. His hand ached from gripping his sword hilt, the knuckles white on the leather. Is this fear now? he wondered. Or just stage fright?
“ Sorna.” Master Sollis was in the doorway, his level gaze meeting Vaelin’s eye with an intensity he hadn't seen before. “It’s time.”
The tunnel leading to the arena seemed long, much longer than he could have imagined. Time played tricks as he walked the length of the tunnel, the journey perhaps taking a minute or an hour. All the time the crowd’s clamour rose in volume until he felt himself bathed in sound as he emerged onto the sandy floor of the arena.
The crowd bayed down at him from ascending tiers of seats on all sides, at least ten thousand in all. He was unable to distinguish a face amongst the multitude, they were simply a seething, gesticulating mass. None of them seemed to mind the rain which was still falling in hard, wind driven sheets. There was blood on the sand, raked to stop it pooling and dulled by the rain but still a stark red against the greenish yellow of the arena floor. Three men waited for him there, each holding a sword of the Asraelin pattern.
“ Two murderers and a rapist,” Master Sollis said. Vaelin assumed it was the noise of the crowd that seemed to add a tremor to his voice. “They deserve their end. Show them no mercy. Mark the tall one, he seems to know how to hold a blade.”
Vaelin’s eyes found the tallest of the three, a well built man in his mid-thirties with close cropped hair and a natural balance in his stance; feet in line with his shoulders, sword held low. Trained? he realised. “A soldier.”
“ Soldier or healer, he’s still a murderer.” The briefest pause. “Luck to you brother.”
“ Thank you, master.”
He drew his sword, handed the scabbard to Master Sollis and strode forward into the arena. The crowd’s shouts redoubled as he entered, here and there he caught a word or two: “Sorna!.. Hawk-killer!.. Kill them boy!..”
He stopped ten feet or so from the three men, looking at each of them in turn as the crowd’s noise dwindled to a hush of anticipation. Two murderers and a rapist. They did not look like criminals. The one on the left was simply a scared, unshaven man holding his sword in a shaking hand as rain pelted him and ten thousand souls awaited his death. Rapist, Vaelin decided. The man on the right was stockier and less afraid, shifting his weight constantly from one foot to the other, he eyes locked onto Vaelin’s beneath deeply glowering brows as he twirled his sword in his right hand, rain water spraying from the blade. He said something, water spouting from his lips, a curse or a challenge, the words lost amidst the rain and the wind. Murderer. The third man, the soldier, showed no fear and felt no need to twirl his sword or voice his aggression. He simply waited, his gaze unwavering, his stance the same sword fighter’s stance Vaelin knew so well. A killer certainly. But a murderer?
The man on the right attacked first as Vaelin expected he would, charging into an easily turned thrust. Vaelin used the momentum of the parry to bring the blade round in a slash at the man’s neck. The stocky man was fast though, dodging away with only his cheek layed open. The man on the left sought to take advantage of the distraction, screaming as he ran in, pulling his sword back over his head and hacking down at Vaelin’s shoulder. He turned, the blade missing by less than an inch to thud into the sand. Vaelin’s sword point took the unshaven man under the chin, forcing its way up through tongue and bone to find the brain. He withdrew the blade quickly and stepped away knowing the soldier would attack now.
His thrust was fast and well placed, a killing stab at the chest. Vaelin’s blade caught the tip and forced the sword point up, leaving an opening to the soldier’s chest. Vaelin’s counter was fast, fast enough to have caught any of his brothers, but the tall man parried it without apparent difficulty. He moved back in a slight crouch, sword close to the ground. His eyes never leaving Vaelin.
The stocky man was attempting to hold his slashed cheek together with one hand, his sword waving wildly as he staggered, spitting inaudible curses at Vaelin with bloodied lips.
Vaelin feinted towards the tall man, slashing at his legs to force him back, then attacking the stocky man in a move so fast there could be no defence, rolling under a wild defensive slash to deliver a killing thrust through the back. His sword point pierced the stocky man’s heart and emerged from his chest. Vaelin put his foot to the dying man’s back and heaved him off the blade in time to duck under another slash from the tall man. He fancied he saw a rain drop sliced in half by the blade’s passage.
They drew back from each other, circling, swords levelled, eyes locked together. The stocky man took a few moments to die, struggling on the rain sodden sand between them, spitting curses until his breath gave out and he sagged, lifeless in the rain.
Vaelin was suddenly struck by the same sense of wrongness that had assailed him before; in the forest, in the Fifth Order House when Sister Henna came to kill him, when he waited for Frentis to return from the Test of the Wild. There was something about his remaining opponent, something in the strength of his gaze and the set of his body, something in his being telling of a terrible, certain truth: This man is no criminal. This man is no murderer! How he knew he could not tell. But it was the strongest such feeling he had yet experienced and he had no doubt of its certainty.
He stopped, his sword point lowering as he straightened, the tensed, hard lines of his face softening. He could feel the rain for the first time, beating a chill into his skin. The tall man’s brows knitted in puzzlement as Vaelin lost his fighting stance to stand, his sword held at his side, rain washing the blood from the blade. He raised his left hand, fingers open in a sign of peace.
“ Who are-”
The tall man attacked in a blur, his sword as straight as an arrow, aimed directly at Vaelin’s heart. It was a faster move than anything he had seen from Master Sollis and it should have killed him. But somehow he managed to turn in time for the sword point to pierce only his shirt, the edge of the blade marking his chest.
The tall man’s head was resting on Vaelin’s shoulder, the hard determination gone from his eyes, his lips parted in a small gasp, his skin rapidly draining of colour.
“ Who are you?” Vaelin asked him in a whisper.
The tall man staggered back, Vaelin’s sword made a sickening, ripping sound as it was dragged from his chest. He sank to his knees slowly, propping himself up with his own sword, resting his chin on the pommel. Vaelin saw that his lips were moving and knelt beside him to hear the words.
“ My… wife…” the tall man said. It sounded like an explanation. His eyes met Vaelin’s again and for moment there was something there, an apology? A regret?
Vaelin caught him as he fell, feeling the life go out of him in a shudder. He held the dead soldier as the rain beat down and the roar of the crowd crushed him with blood crazed adulation.
Vaelin had never been drunk before. He found it an unpleasant sensation, not unlike the dizzy feeling he got when taking a hefty blow on the head during practice, just more prolonged. The ale was bitter in his mouth, his first taste making him screw up his face in disgust.
“ You’ll get used to it,” Barkus had assured him.
The tavern was near the western section of the city wall and frequented mainly by off-duty guardsmen and local traders. For the most part they seemed content to leave the five brothers alone, although there had been a few calls of congratulation to Vaelin.
“ Best bet I ever made,” a cheery faced old man called, lifting his tankard in salute. “Made a packet on you today, brother. Got odds of ten to one when it looked like you’d get the chop…”
“ Shut up!” Nortah told the old man flatly. His left arm was cradled in a sling, the forearm heavily bandaged, but his visage held sufficient menace to make the old man blanche and sit down without further comment.
They found a vacant table and Barkus bought the drinks. He was limping from a cut to the calf and spilled a fair amount of the ale on the way back from the bar.
“ Clumsy sod,” Dentos grunted. “Let me get them next time.” He was the only one to have got through the test unscathed, although his gaze had a bright, frightened look and he blinked rarely, as if scared of what he would see when he closed his eyes.
Caenis sipped his ale, frowning in puzzlement. “From the way men lust after this so I’d expected it to taste better.” The line of his jaw was marked by a row of eight stitches. The brother from the Fifth Order who tended the cut had assured him he would carry the scar for the rest of his life.
“ Well,” Nortah said, lifting his tankard. “We’re all here.”
“ Yeh.” Dentos lifted his own mug, clacking it against Nortah’s. “Here’s to… being here I s’pose.”
They drank, Vaelin forcing the ale down, draining his tankard.
“ Easy brother,” Barkus warned him.
He felt them exchanging uneasy glances across the table as he stared at the dregs at the bottom of the tankard. There had been an ugly scene with Master Sollis back at the Circle when Vaelin had demanded to know the identity of the tall man and received only a curt response: “A murderer.”
“ He was no murderer,” Vaelin insisted, a mounting anger dispelling his normal deference. The tall man’s face as he slipped into death was fresh in his mind. “Master, who was that man? Why was it necessary for me to kill him?”
“ Every year the City Guard provides us with a selection of condemned men,” Sollis replied, his patience nearing its end. “We choose the strongest and most skilled. Who they are is not our concern. Neither is it yours, Sorna.”
“ It is today!” Vaelin took a step closer to Sollis, his fury mounting.
“ Vaelin,” Caenis cautioned him, his hand on his arm.
“ I killed an innocent man today,” Vaelin spat at Sollis, shaking off Caenis’s hand, advancing further. “For what? To show you I could kill? You knew that already. You chose him didn’t you? Knowing he was the most skilled. Knowing I’d be the one to face him.”
“ A test is not a test if it’s easy, brother.”
“ EASY?” A red mist was staining his vision, he found his hand had gone to his sword.
“ Vaelin!” Dentos and Nortah stepped between them, Barkus pulling him back and Caenis keeping a firm grip on his sword hand.
“ Get him out of here!” Sollis commanded as they hustled him towards the exit, near incoherent with rage. “Take the rest of the evening. Help your brother cool off.”
Vaelin wasn’t sure if ale was the best way to cool off. His anger hadn’t dimmed at all, if anything the way the room seemed to move around of its own volition was extremely aggravating.
“ My Uncle Derv could drink more ale in a sitting than any man alive,” Dentos said after his fourth tankard, his head lolling. “They’d ’ave a contest every shummertide fair. Folk from miles around’d come t’challenge ‘im. Not one of ‘em could ever beat ‘im. Grand ale drinking champion five years running. Woulda’ been six iffen he ‘adn’t drunk hisself t’death in the winter.” He paused to issue an extravagant burp. “Silly old sod.”
“ Aren’t we supposed to be enjoying this?” Caenis asked, both hands gripping the table as if scared he was about to tip over.
“ I’m happy enough,” Barkus said, grinning merrily. His shirt was damp with ale and he seemed oblivious to the rivulets that coursed down his chin every time he took a drink.
“ Two brothers…” Nortah was saying. He had been rambling about his test for over an hour. From what Vaelin could gather two of the men he had killed were brothers, both apparently condemned outlaws. “Twins… I think. Looked just the same, even made the same sound when they died…”
Vaelin’s stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch and he realised he was about to vomit. “Going outside,” he mumbled, rising and making for the door on legs that seemed to have lost the ability to walk in a straight line.
The air outside chilled his lungs and made his nausea recede a little, but he was still obliged to spend a few minutes heaving into the gutter. Afterwards he rested his back against the tavern wall and sank slowly onto the cobbles, his breath steaming in the frigid air. My wife, the tall man had said. Maybe he had been calling to her. Or summoning a final memory as he struggled to take the image of her face with him into the beyond.
“ A man with so many enemies shouldn’t make himself so vulnerable.”
The man standing over him was of average height but well built, with a lean, deeply lined face and a piercing stare.
“ Erlin,” Vaelin said, releasing the hilt of his knife. “You don’t look any different.” He gazed blearily around the empty street. “Did I pass out? Are you here?”
“ I’m here.” Erlin reached down to offer him a hand. “And I think you’ve had enough for one night.”
Vaelin took the hand and levered himself to his feet with difficulty. To his surprise he found he was at least half a foot taller than Erlin. When last they met he had barely come up to his shoulder.
“ Thought you’d be a tall one,” Erlin said.
“ Sella?” Vaelin asked.
“ Sella’s fine, last I saw her. I know she would want me to thank you for what you did for us.”
I’ll fight but I won’t murder. His boyhood resolve coming back to him, the promise he had made to himself after saving them in the wild. I’ll kill men who face me in battle but I won’t take the sword to innocents. It felt so hollow now, so naive. He remembered his disgust at Brother Makril’s tales of murdered Deniers and wondered if there was truly any difference between them now.
“ I’ve still got her scarf,” he said, trying to force his thoughts in a more comfortable direction. “Could you take it to her?” He fished clumsily inside his shirt for the scarf.
“ I’m not sure I could find her if I chose to. Besides, I think she would want you to keep it.” He took Vaelin’s elbow and guided him away from the tavern. “Walk with me for a while. It should clear your head. And there is much I would like to tell you.”
They walked through the empty streets of the western quarter, tracing a route through the rows of workshops that characterised this as the craftsman’s district. By the time they reached the river Vaelin knew from the ache building at the back of his skull and the increased steadiness of his legs that he was starting to sober up. They paused on the towpath overlooking the river, gazing down at the moonlight playing on the currents churning the ink black water.
“ When I first came here,” Erlin said. “The river stank so bad you couldn’t go near it. All the waste of this city would flow into it before they built the sewers. Now it’s so clean you can drink from it.”
“ I saw you,” Vaelin said. “At the Summertide Fair, four years ago. You were watching a puppet show.”
“ Yes. I had business there.” It was clear from his tone he wasn’t about to elaborate on what type of business.
“ You risk much coming here. It’s likely Brother Makril is still out hunting you somewhere. He’s not a man to give up a hunt.”
“ True enough, he caught me last winter.”
“ Then how..?”
“ It’s a very long tale. In short he cornered me on a mountainside in Renfael. We fought, I lost, he let me go.”
“ He let you go?”
“ Yes. I was fairly surprised myself.”
“ Did he say why?”
“ He didn’t say much of anything at all. Left me tied up through the night whilst he sat by the fire and drank himself unconscious. After a while I passed out from the beating he’d given me. When I woke in the morning my bonds were untied and he was gone.”
Vaelin remembered the tears shining in Makril’s eyes. Maybe he was a better man than I judged him to be.
“ I saw you fight today,” Erlin told him.
Vaelin felt the ache at the base of his skull deepen. “You must be rich to have afforded a ticket.”
“ Hardly. There’s a way into the Circle few know of, a passage under the walls that affords a good few of the arena.”
Silence stretched between them. Vaelin had no wish to discuss his test and was increasingly preoccupied with the suspicion that he was about to throw up again. “You said you had something to tell me,” he said, mainly in hope that further conversation would distract him from the burgeoning nausea in his gut.
“ One of the men you killed, he had a wife.”
“ I know. He told me.” He glanced at Erlin, noting the intense scrutiny in his eyes. “You knew him?”
“ Not well. My acquaintance was with his wife. She has assisted me in the past. I count her as a friend.”
“ She’s a Denier?”
“ You would call her that. She calls herself Quester.”
“ And her husband was also part of this… belief?”
“ Oh no. His name was Urlian Jurahl. Once he had been called Brother Urlian. He was like you, a brother of the Sixth Order, but he gave it up to be with Illiah, his wife.”
Little wonder he fought so well. “I took him for a soldier.”
“ He took the trade of a boat builder after leaving the Order, became highly regarded, ran his own yard building barges, the finest on the river some say.”
Vaelin shook his head in sorrow. I have served the Faith by killing an innocent builder of boats. “What was he doing in the arena? I know he wasn’t a murderer.”
“ It happened during the riots. Some locals got wind of Illiah’s beliefs, quite how I don’t know, mayhap her son spoke of it when at play, children can be so trusting. They came for her, ten men with a rope. Urlian killed two and wounded three more, the rest ran off, but they came back with the City Guard. Urlian was overpowered and taken to the Blackhold, his wife too.”
“ Their son?”
“ He hid at his father’s bidding as the fight raged. He’s safe now. With friends of mine.”
“ If Urlian was defending his wife then it wasn’t murder. The magistrate would have seen that surely.”
“ Surely. But the magistrate had some wealthy friends with an eye for an opportunity. Did you know the odds that you would survive your Test were hardly worth a bet? The odds against were long indeed. With Urlian in the arena it would be worth risking some gold on the long chance. They offered him a proposition, confess his crime and be chosen for the Test, an easy thing to arrange as your Masters would be quick to spot his skill. Once he had killed you he and his wife would be free.”
Vaelin realised he had sobered completely, the nausea fled in the face of the cold, implacable compulsion. “His wife is still in the Blackhold?”
“ She is. By now she will have heard of her husband’s fate. I fear what her grief will make her do.”
“ This magistrate and his wealthy friends, you have their names?”
“ What would you do if I gave them to you?”
Vaelin fixed him with a cold stare. “Kill them all. That is your intention isn’t it? To set me on this course for vengeance. Well, you’ll get it. Just give me the names.”
“ You misunderstand me Vaelin. I have no wish for vengeance. In any case you couldn’t kill them all. Wealthy men from noble families have many protectors, many guards. You might kill one, but not all. And Illiah would still be waiting her fate in the Blackhold once you have been cut down.”
“ Then why tell me this when I can do nothing to set it right?”
“ You can speak for her. Your word will carry much weight. If you went to your Aspect and explained…”
“ She’s a Denier. They won’t help her unless she renounces her heresy.”
“ She won’t do that. Her soul is bound to her beliefs more closely than you could imagine. I doubt she could renounce them even if she wished to. I know your Aspect to be a compassionate man Vaelin, he will speak for her.”
“ Even if he does the Blackhold is no longer guarded by the Sixth Order since the last conclave. It falls under the control of the Fourth. I have met Aspect Tendris and he will not help an unrepentant Denier.” Vaelin turned back to the river, frustration raging in his chest, Urlian’s pale face asking for his wife over and over again in his head.
“ So there’s nothing you can do?” Erlin asked. He sounded resigned and Vaelin knew his visit and been a desperate act, undertaken at considerable risk.
“ You put great trust in me coming here,” Vaelin said. “Thank you.”
“ I’ve lived long enough to judge a man’s heart.” He stepped back from the river, offering Vaelin his hand. “I’m sorry to have burdened you with this. I’ll leave you in peace now.”
“ As I grow older I’m learning that the truth is never a burden. It’s a gift.” Vaelin shook his hand. “Tell me the names.”
“ I won’t set you on a path to your own death.”
“ You won’t. Trust me. I’ve thought of something I can do.”