The Ember Blade Read online

  Dedication

  For Anna

  BOOK ONE OF

  THE DARKWATER LEGACY

  CHRIS WOODING

  GOLLANCZ

  LONDON

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Maps

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Also by Chris Wooding from Gollancz

  Copyright

  1

  ‘Keep faith and hold fast, and we will free our land!’

  Edric had said that, not three days past, as he stood on the battle­ments of the keep at Salt Fork and watched the enemy closing in. Side by side with his brothers and sisters, pride swelling his chest and angry defiance in his eye, it had felt like truth.

  He knew better now.

  The forest whipped and scratched him as he clambered up a muddy slope, breath burning his lungs and a cold fist of terror in his gut. Dirk laboured through the undergrowth in his wake, white with exhaustion. The older man was at the limit of his endurance; it was plain by his slumped shoulders and the vacant look in his eyes.

  Edric hauled him the last few paces to the top, where Dirk bent over, pulling in air like a man near drowned. He scanned the forest fearfully while his companion recovered. The trees were loud with birdsong, dewed leaves stirring in the dawn light. There was no sign of their pursuers yet, but he could hear the Emperor’s hounds through the trees.

  ‘You go on,’ Dirk said, raggedly. He had the flat stare of a dead man. ‘I’m done.’

  Edric had known Dirk for less than a season and liked him for none of it. He was a low sort, fond of drink, and spitting, and the kind of rough humour that made Edric uncomfortable. Edric was a frustrated young man with lordly blood, looking for a way to define himself; Dirk was an illiterate ironmonger with nothing left to lose. But Salt Fork had brought them together, united them in common cause. Even when everything lay in ruins, Edric wouldn’t let go of that. He pulled Dirk upright.

  ‘You’ll run,’ Edric said. ‘And when you can’t, I’ll carry you.’

  Together, they stumbled on.

  He’d always known Salt Fork would be the end of him, but he’d dreamed a different end than this. Fifty of them had seized that town, fifty who dared to stand against their oppressors. Their act of defiance was to be the spark that would ignite the fire of rebellion in their people. He never expected to survive, but at least his name would be remembered in glorious song.

  The bards would sing a different tune now. They’d sing of how the townsfolk’s resistance crumbled as soon as the Krodan army came into sight, how the crowds threw open the gates and tried to arrest the men and women who’d led them astray, hoping to trade them for Krodan mercy. They’d sing of a shambolic escape through smugglers’ tunnels, with the ringleaders fleeing for their lives as the soldiers marched in.

  They’d sing of failure, and they’d sing it in the tongue of their overlords.

  He’d seen Renn swallowed by the mob he was trying to reason with. Ella had died defending him, killed by a stone to the head. He didn’t know if any of the others had survived; in the confusion, he’d lost everyone but Dirk. Perhaps there’d be a rendezvous days from now, some message left at a dead drop, but he wouldn’t be there to read it. The Emperor’s huntsmen had chased them through the night and drew closer with every hour. They wouldn’t see another sunset, and both of them knew it.

  A temple loomed suddenly from the trees, towering before them. The sight of it brought them to a halt. Its walls had been breached by the forest and a mossy cupola lay in ruins near the entrance. Balconied domes and soaring vaults had been gnawed bare by time’s appetite, yet still it stood in testament to its makers, an elegant masterpiece from a lost world.

  Dirk’s legs shook and he fell to his hands and knees. Edric stared, wide-eyed. Exhaustion had drained him of emotion – even his fear had been numbed – but now he felt a sense of wonder which slowed his hammering heart.

  Once, his people had been great. They’d led the world in art, theatre, medicine, architecture, philosophy, astronomy and the ways of war. Their empire had spanned the known lands, and Ossia had been the home of heroes.

  But that was the past, and the past was long behind them. Their empire had faded centuries before. Ossia had been under a Krodan boot for thirty years now, longer than Edric had been alive. He’d never known true freedom, and so, in the end, he’d gone searching for it.

  The collapse of the Salt Fork uprising and the long and frantic night that followed had shaken his faith. He’d cursed himself over and over for staking his life on a naïve dream of revolution. Yet here, before this silent monument, he found new strength. The blood of its builders still ran in his veins, and one day his people would cast off their chains.

  ‘On your feet!’ He hauled Dirk back up, though the man was a dead weight.

  ‘Leave me to the worms,’ he wheezed. �
�The Red-Eyed Child comes for me.’

  Edric pointed to the temple, where a dark doorway gaped amid a tangle of vines. ‘If we must die, it will be with the Nine at our backs, in the house of our ancestors.’

  ‘The Nine!’ Dirk said bitterly. ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘They’re still here,’ said Edric, his jaw tight. ‘This is their land. It is our land, and it will be again.’

  ‘You’re a fool and a dreamer, Edric,’ Dirk said. ‘I always thought so.’ Then his mouth twitched at the corner. ‘We needed more like you.’

  The arrow hit Dirk with enough force to knock him to the ground. He fell face down, a thick shaft fletched with ragged black feathers in his back. Edric stared at him stupidly for a moment, dazed by the speed of his death. Then terror took hold and he drew his sword, backing towards the temple, searching the trees for the enemy. He found only stillness and an uncanny silence. Even the birds had fallen quiet.

  Something was out there, a presence that iced his spine. The leaves hissed in the wind and the very forest seethed with evil.

  He ran, springing up the temple steps two at a time, and reached the top before his leg gave way beneath him in an explosion of pain. He crashed down on the flagstones, sword skidding from his grip, clutching at his thigh where the barbed and bloody tip of an arrow poked out. Veins stood stark in his throat as he screamed.

  Numbness and corruption spread from the arrow, tendrils of foulness worming into his flesh that froze and burned all at once. He tried to rise and screamed again as the shaft moved inside his leg. His head spun, and everything was suddenly dim and distant.

  Through the fog that clouded his eyes, he glimpsed a soft red light inside the temple. A light in that long-abandoned place, where he’d seen only darkness before. He was seized by a desperate hope. Was there somebody in there who could save him? Here, in this sacred place, had the Aspects sent him a sign?

  Gasping with the pain, he dragged himself inch by excruciating inch over the threshold.

  The forest had choked up the windows and shadows clustered thickly between the columns. Overhead, birds shifted quietly in their roosts among the stonework, subdued by the same dread that had silenced the others outside. Statues loomed at the edge of the darkness, barely more than lumps, hands lost and faces smooth. He recognised them anyway. There was Joha, the Heron King; there was brutish, squat Meshuk, Stone Mother; there, jaws agape and straining at his chains, was Azra the Despoiler, Lord of War.

  Edric offered a silent prayer to the Nine Aspects as he pulled himself over cracked flagstones, each movement sending fresh fire from the wound in his thigh. A set of steps led deeper into the dark temple. The source of the red glow was somewhere below.

  There was no sound from his pursuers, but he dared not hope this ancient place could keep his enemies out. He focused on the next lurch forward, and the next, until he reached the top of the steps. The red glow illuminated the bases of the columns beyond but its source remained out of sight, hidden by the broken pieces of a toppled statue.

  With dry mouth and trembling arms, he slithered down the first step, and the second. At the third, his elbow gave way and he went tumbling and sliding out of control. The arrow in his thigh caught on an edge and wrenched sideways, and the pain which followed drove him into the black waters of unconsciousness.

  When he surfaced again, he was lying on his back at the foot of the steps, his head tipped to one side. Tears filled his eyes, wet red hexagons swimming there, glistening. He blinked and the tears slid free.

  The source of the light was finally visible. It wasn’t a sign after all, just the fading remnants of a fire left by some vagrant, or a wandering druid who’d sheltered here. No hope of help, then, and no reprieve. He watched as the glowing wood brightened in a faint breeze, and a peaceful, aching sadness soaked into his heart as he realised he’d reached the end of his road. It hadn’t felt nearly long enough.

  He turned his head and saw the man at the top of the steps.

  To Edric’s dimmed eyes, he was little more than a shadow, but the red light reflected from his round spectacles and made him look infernal, an imp from the Abyss come to carry him away. He was short and balding and wore a long black coat. When he spoke, his voice was breathy and damp; the sound of gentle murder.

  ‘No more running.’

  He stepped down into the light. He was fish-lipped, weak-eyed, with a pale, soft face and the look of a clerk about him. In other circumstances he might have appeared comical, but he had the double-barred cross on his shoulder, the hated symbol of the Iron Hand, and Edric didn’t feel like laughing.

  ‘I am Overwatchman Klyssen,’ he said. ‘Hail to the Emperor.’

  Edric had dropped his sword on the temple steps, but he had a knife at his hip, which he drew and held before him. It was a feeble threat, and Klyssen ignored it.

  ‘There will be others,’ Edric said. ‘Others like me. And we’ll drive you from this land.’

  ‘The folk of Salt Fork did not share your conviction.’ The overwatchman raised his head, taking in the gloomy grandeur of the temple. ‘We have made your highways safe and swift, brought order to your cities and given you the gift of the Word and the Sword. We protect you against enemies who would slaughter or enslave you. Your farmers enjoy the fruits of their fields, your seamstresses sew in peace and your children want to be Krodan.’ His tone became puzzled. ‘When will you be satisfied?’

  ‘We’ll be satisfied when the last Krodan is gone from our land, when your thrice-damned god is cast down and an Ossian sits on the throne again with the Ember Blade in their hand,’ said Edric. ‘We’ll be satisfied when we have our freedom.’

  Klyssen lowered his gaze and the light made his spectacles red again. ‘Ah. That you will never have. Because, in the deepest places where you dare not look, you know you are better off without it.’

  ‘One day you’ll eat those words from the tip of an Ossian sword,’ he spat. ‘Kill me, if you’re going to.’

  ‘You’ll die, have no doubt of that. But first you’ll talk. There is one among your companions I seek. You knew him as Laine of Heath Edge, but we both know that’s not his real name.’

  Edric lay in silence for a few moments. Then he began to chuckle, a pained sound almost like sobbing. ‘He has evaded you.’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘Then hope is not lost.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  Klyssen motioned with his hand and three figures appeared at the top of the stairs, silhouetted by the light from the temple doorway. One was hulking and armoured, carrying a great hammer. Another was ragged and thin, holding a bow. The third was cowled and cloaked, with a gleam of metal where a face should have been. The sight of them was like a cold weight on Edric’s chest. Here was the source of the nameless dread that had silenced the forest. It drained the courage from him, and fear made him babble.

  ‘I can’t tell you where he is. I don’t know where he is!’

  He became aware of an itch in his knife-hand, increasing to a burn. Something was writhing under his skin there, vile tunnelling worms that turned and coiled in the light of the dying fire. Horror and disgust choked him. His other hand flew to his face, where the skin had begun to blister, swell and ooze.

  ‘We’ll see what you know,’ Klyssen said quietly, as Edric finally found breath to scream.

  2

  The cave was a triangular maw filled with shadowed teeth. Aren studied it warily, knuckles white where he gripped his sword.

  ‘You think she went in there?’

  Cade nodded from his hiding place, crouched behind a boulder, poised to flee. He had his knife in hand, but he clearly had little faith in it.

  Aren glanced back in case their quarry had slipped around for an ambush. The green flanks of the ravine sloped steeply up to either side. At the top, sunlight slanted across the grass, but down here it was dimmer and the air was still. The ground was cluttered with rocks of all sizes, from pebbles to great boulders shaken loose
by the march of ages, shaggy with moss and lichen. A shallow stream, ankle-deep and a few paces wide, splashed between them. Dank, scrawny trees drowsed nearby, with watchful crows in their branches.

  They heard a sharp clatter of tumbling stones from the cave.

  Cade sprang to his feet, ready to bolt. Aren caught him by his shoulder and pressed him back down.

  ‘It’s her,’ Aren whispered, half in triumph and half in terror. Cade gave a low moan of despair.

  Heart thumping, breath short, Aren stepped into the open and crept forward. When Cade showed no sign of moving, he scowled and gestured at him to follow. Cade slid out from behind the boulder, muttering darkly.

  They were no longer boys and not quite men, adults in their own minds and no one else’s. Aren was gangly but not tall, his body still finding its proportions. Cade had a heavier build, a clumsy, solid boy who moved without grace. Thick brown curls hung across Aren’s brow; he had soft eyes, a flat jaw and a long, wide nose that split his face like the shank of an anchor. Cade had small features in a fleshy frame, a quick, restless mouth and the first dusting of a beard, the same muddy blond as his close-cut hair.

  It was Cade who’d glimpsed their quarry first: a rush of movement, a thrashing in the bracken, a flash of haunch. Big as a bear, he told Aren, when he got over the fright. Just like Darra said she was. They’d tracked her into the ravine after that, and finally cornered her here.

  Aren crept up to the mouth of the cave. Within was a chill, grey world of hard angles. Nothing moved. He was about to go further when Cade grabbed his arm.

  ‘You ain’t actually going in?’ he whispered incredulously. ‘Why don’t we wait here?’ Aren saw him struggle to think of a good reason. ‘We can jump her when she comes out!’

  Aren was tempted by the idea. Better to tackle the beast in daylight, where they could manoeuvre. But lurking in ambush felt cowardly. When Toven chased the draccen of King’s Barrow into its lair and slew it, he didn’t hide outside for hours first.

  ‘No. We’ll catch her unawares, where she can’t escape from us,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, aye, that’s a great plan,’ Cade griped. ‘Foolproof. And what if we want to escape?’

  Aren went in and the quiet gloom closed around him. He kept the stream to his left, moving in a low crouch, his sword held defensively across his body as Master Orik had taught him. A splash and a string of curses told him that Cade had followed him inside, and that he now had at least one wet foot.