Then Kehlbrand stepped forward.
The prisoners fell to immediate silence as he spread his arms out wide, the parade of angry faces becoming the blank masks of an enraptured audience. I felt something as he walked into their ranks and they parted before him, a pulse of power only I amongst this company could feel. I had long known Kehlbrand gained a powerful gift upon touching the stone, but now I understood he had gained more than one. He spoke as he moved amongst them, face and voice possessed of a soft but commanding sincerity. “Heed your general’s words,” he told them, clasping hands as he made his way through the crowd. “Hear the truth he speaks.” But I could see it was not the words that captured them, it was him; his mere presence sent hard-faced veterans and callow youth alike to their knees, eyes moist with adoration. But not all—some failed to kneel, a few dozen amongst the many, retreating from his progress in obvious repugnance. From the practiced swiftness with which the Stahlhast guards moved in to drag these unseduced souls away, to the utter indifference of their kneeling comrades, I discerned this to be a scene that had played out before. This was how he had recruited his army of Redeemed. This was how the Darkblade assured his ascendancy over all other gods.
“You will be the seed of a new host,” he told his new adherents, arms outstretched to receive their obeisance, every head bowed now, some reaching out to him with tremulous hands. “Under the leadership of the hero Sho Tsai you will free first the Venerable Kingdom, then the world entire so that all may know the love of the Darkblade.”
I found over two dozen freshly slaughtered prisoners in the temple, along with a multitude of bandaged corpses who had evidently died the night of the city’s fall. The general’s memory, still mostly a jumble of gratingly unfamiliar sensation and image, allowed a dim remembrance that this structure had been given over to the care of the wounded during the siege. The Darkblade, it appeared, had little use for those not whole in body. The scene stirred a fresh image in the mind of this shell, brighter and clearer than the others. A woman, dark of hair and pale of skin, resembling many a Stahlhast in fact, a face also known to my living mind. The healer, I realised. The one the southlanders called the Grace of Heaven. She travelled with the Thief of Names. Sherin, her name was Sherin.
I recalled how she had tended to the scratches on my back the night Kehlbrand took Al Sorna to the Sepulchre. My indulgence in the revels had been enthusiastic that night, causing me to seek out those of similar enthusiasm. Carnal instinct led me to a pair of sisters from the Wohten Skeld who took as much delight in causing pain as in receiving pleasure. Despite the welcome distraction they provided, my mood remained sour. The arrival of the Thief of Names, after so many months of waiting, led me to brooding on Kehlbrand’s lies and the grim realisation that his most pertinent statement on the matter had been spoken before I possessed my gift. Someone is coming . . . An enemy I know you cannot defeat.
Another lie, I consoled myself. Just a taunt to stir my pride.
“Uhhh!” I had gasped as the healer’s ointment stung the scratches on my back, causing me to hiss, “Have a care, you foreign bitch!” Glancing over my shoulder at her I saw only the weary forbearance of one who had no doubt heard many such curses. “I’m going to kill your man tomorrow,” I told her in my halting Chu-Shin. “You know that?”
Her eyes flicked to mine, the gaze steady and irksome in its lack of fear. “He is not my man,” she said, and I heard no lie on her lips when she added, “but, for your sake, I implore you, don’t fight him. He’ll kill you.”
A shrill cry banished the recollection and brought me back to the temple, a woman’s cry.
“Found her under a pile of coals in a basement,” a Stahlhast said, dragging a woman across the tiles by the hair. She was tall and about the same age as the general’s shell, and even under the coating of coal dust I detected a certain handsomeness to her features. A half-dozen other Stahlhast closed in as the warrior released the woman, leaving her gasping on the floor.
“Servant of Heaven,” one of the Stahlhast grunted, a hatchet-faced woman with the scars of a veteran who prodded at the tall woman’s besmirched robe with the tip of her sabre. “The Darkblade will want her to answer the question.”
“What’s the point?” another asked in a weary tone. “They always say no.” He crouched to rub away a portion of the dust on the woman’s face. “Not too ugly, for a southlander. We could sell her to the Tuhla. They like unspoiled meat.”
I was impressed to see the woman’s features harden into a defiant glare, teeth gritted as she began to recite a prayer litany through clenched teeth. I had seen this before in Leshun-Kho when we killed the monks. All would be asked to surrender their faith in Heaven for subservience to the Darkblade and their only answer would be a stream of prayers. The words were spoken in an archaic version of Chu-Shin far beyond the understanding of her tormentors, but the shell I wore had little difficulty discerning the meaning. “The mercy of Heaven is eternal. The judgement of Heaven is eternal . . .”
“Another babbler,” the veteran sighed, rolling her eyes. “Why do they always babble?” She jerked her head at the crouching warrior. “Slit her throat and spare my ears.”
The woman’s litany continued unabated as the warrior drew a dagger from his belt, her furious gaze locked on his, refusing to look away until he grabbed a fistful of her hair, jerking the head back to bare the throat for a killing slash. As he did so her gaze found me and instantly widened into startled recognition.
“Servant of the Temple!” she gasped, sending a rush of memory into the forefront of my mind. The High Temple . . . The Temple of Spears . . . It was too much to comprehend all at once, an accumulation of experience going back decades. A wiry man with long dark hair and judgemental countenance imparting a lesson, the words were too garbled to make out, but I saw that he held a plain wooden staff stained with blood. The iron sting on my tongue told me the blood belonged to this shell. In placid moments, the tutor said, thoughts may flow like a gentle stream through verdant fields. In the midst of combat, however . . . The staff whirled in his hands and a hard pain exploded in my guts. Thought is a luxury, and action must surrender to well-honed instinct. To be plain. Another blow from the staff cracking against my shins. Stop allowing yourself to be so fucking distracted . . .
There followed a tumult of military servitude and battle interspersed with fleeting glimpses of an unfolding life. I felt Sho Tsai’s blossoming of affection for a woman, severe in both face and word but that only made him love her more. A pair of squabbling children played in a modest but well-appointed garden. This vision darkened almost instantly into a disordered mess, overgrown with weeds, the house beyond unlit and empty but for the three corpses it held, claimed, I understood, by one of the plagues that periodically swept the Merchant Realms. Then more battle, bandits and sundry scum felled by his blade as he led a troop of red-armoured men from one corner of the Venerable Kingdom to the other. The tumult calmed as the memory once again settled on the judgemental tutor, standing beside another figure that blurred and shifted as I tried to focus on it. I sensed a glimmer of something in this figure, an occluded gem of knowledge of great significance. It darkened and receded as I reached for it, the shell I wore taking on a cold, uncomfortable shiver. For the briefest second I knew myself to be looking at the world through two sets of eyes, sharing a mind with a second awareness, something that railed against me like a prisoner at the bars of his cell.