darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,1

dependent on our darkling companions to focus the gift of our magic. My Shade assumes the shape of a dragon made of shadow when he is not concealing himself within my own. But, there and then, though I could feel that he lived through the link that bound our souls, I had no shadow. I missed him dearly, for I love Triss more than I love myself, and I rely on his advice in all things.

Still, I drew back my chair and sat down, as I knew that I must. When I looked up, I was no longer alone. The greatest of my dead had come. Namara. My goddess.

“Hello, Aral, I’ve been waiting a long time to speak with you.”

When I had met with her in life, she usually wore the shape of a great stone statue with six arms and skin like granite. Today, she had assumed the size and shape of a beautiful woman in a scarlet dress. The only obvious evidence of her divinity were her six arms, but even without that, I would have known her, for her image was forever burned into my soul.

“You’re dead,” I said, wishing once more for Triss to come and stand beside me.

Namara inclined her head ever so slightly. “I am.”

“The dead do not return to us.” The words came out flat and hard.

“No, we do not.”

“Then, how . . .”

“I was a goddess, Aral. I am allowed certain dispensations.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You carry me in your heart. As long as it beats, there will a tiny part of me remain. When I knew that I was to die, I took steps to see that what I cared most about might live on beyond my own ending.”

“I . . . what do you want of me?”

“Only what I have ever wanted of you. Justice.”

“Is that why you’re here? To tell me you want me to . . . what? Do justice?”

“Yes.”

I was suddenly achingly furious. “Why now? Why not when I was in the fucking depths of despair and half dead from drinking myself unconscious every night?”

“Because I am dead. I’m not really here, Aral. I exist now only in your heart, and the hearts of those who once served me and may yet again. I do not speak from beyond the grave, I speak from within it. I could not come to you before you yourself summoned me up. Only in following the path I would have wished of you have you become again the man who can hear this message.”

“And your message is to seek justice?”

“That, and nothing more.”

“How?” I yelled. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I want justice, but I don’t even know where to look to find it.”

“Here,” she said, and reached a hand across, placing her palm on my chest above the heart. Her touch burned.

“That’s no answer.”

“It’s all the answer there is or ever was. You have found the path. Follow it.”

“But I can’t see it.”

“Neither could I. To seek to follow justice is to walk in shadows. Some days they part and you can see clearly where to put your feet. Some days they thicken and you may stray far from the road, at great cost in blood and souls. Know that now, for a little while, your feet are exactly where they need to be. That is all there is.” She began to fade.

“Wait, will I see you again?”

“I have delivered my message.”

“That’s no answer.”

“It’s the only one I have. Now let me leave you with a gift.”

One of her hands turned over and a cascade of efik beans spilled out of it. I looked at them with a sort of horror, expecting the drug craving again, the hunger that had been slowly devouring my soul. But I felt nothing.

“I . . . I don’t want them.”

“When you passed through smoke you left the flesh behind for a time and, with it, the needs of the flesh. That broke the physical desire in a way that only the power of a god could. What the Smoldering Flame began, I can finish here in this place and time, sealing the wound that was opened by the Kitsune.” She seemed little more than a ghost now.

“Will it last?” I asked, needing desperately to believe that it would.

She shrugged. “My power is broken. So that is up to you. It always was.”

“And the alcohol . . .” I couldn’t even ask the question.

“Was never sacred to me. That demon you must fight alone.”

Alone.

I sat bolt