And with that, he yanked the sword free. Joslyn staggered backwards, yet somehow managed to keep her feet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tasia, a crumpled form lying between the two smashed windows.
The deathless king rose between them, propelled by invisible force as he floated upward. He glowed brighter than before, and this time it was less a haze of light than an internal sun that seemed to shine through the pores of his skin. He was getting younger again, too; with every foot he rose into the air, a decade fell away from his features. Grey hair turned black; skin smoothed; muscles swelled. By the time he opened his flame-filled eyes and turned his gaze to Joslyn, he was a youth in his twenties.
But he was no youth. He was a god. He knew it, and so did Joslyn.
“Join us, Joslyn of Terinto.” His voice came from everywhere – from the walls, from his mouth, from the wind blowing in through the broken windows. “Join us and become the general you were made to be. Help me conquer the world and banish death. Or choose death.”
The art of the sword master is death,Ku-sai whispered in her ear. Both bringing death to others, but also choosing the moment of your own death so that it brings the greatest benefit.
“If those are my choices,” Joslyn said with deliberate slowness, “I choose death.”
She lifted her sword and charged.
But she only made it a few steps before the deathless king flicked a finger in her direction and, like an insect flicked from a table, Joslyn once again flew backwards. Her back struck the throne room’s eastern wall, barely missing the mammoth fireplace. The wind was knocked from her lungs and at least one of her ribs audibly cracked, but she counted herself lucky. A few feet to the right and she surely would have had her head staved in by the corner of the fireplace’s mantel.
The deathless king floated towards her leisurely. But he was unaware of what was happening behind him: Tasia. She’d regained her feet, and even from almost fifty yards away, Joslyn could see that her eyes burned like coals. Yet she could also see that whatever strength Tasia was gathering, she wasn’t as strong as the deathless king.
Joslyn might not like the idea of Tasia letting herself be possessed by shadows to fight the shadow-possessed king, but Joslyn had to accept a dark possibility: perhaps only by being possessed by shadow could the deathless king finally be defeated.
Feigning more injury than she really felt, Joslyn made a show of trying – and failing – to stand up. She let Ku-sai’s sword tumble from her fingers. The more the king relaxed and let down his guard, the more effective Tasia could be.
He glided towards Joslyn, his feet several inches above the marble floor.
“Although we reach the end at last,” the king said, not in the creaky voice of an ancient man Joslyn had grown accustomed to, but in a strong, youthful voice that matched his newly young body, “I must admit that you have proven yourself a worthy opponent. I did not expect you to break free of the dream of the palace gardens, let alone defeat my apprentice and then hide your false Empress from my sight.” He grinned down at her. “But the real surprise was discovering that I couldn’t defeat you even in the Shadowlands. I even elongated time to break your spirit, made you feel as though year upon year was passing. No enemy is easier to defeat than one with a broken spirit.”
“How long was it really?” Joslyn asked, making her voice weak and soft.
“In your ordinary mortal realm’s time?” The king shrugged. “From the time you escaped the palace gardens and killed Rennus, a few months, perhaps. Half a year at most.”
Six months.He had made six months pass as ten years. Joslyn nearly went mad in that time, became more hunted animal than human. And Tasia? Tasia’s ten years – six months – had turned her into a witch.
Speaking of Tasia, that hazy light had returned to her again. Like the king, she floated above the floor – and she was only a few feet behind him now.
“The undatai within me – and yes, Joslyn, there is still a ‘me’ separate from the shadow that shares this body – so longed to know the taste of you,” the king said, a light-hearted regret in his tone. “I never wished for your death. Truly. Not yours or hers.”
Joslyn didn’t need to ask which “hers” the deathless king meant.
“I think,” Joslyn said, mimicking his air of light-heartedness, “you probably should have.”
The king might have responded by lifting a curious eyebrow or cocking his head to the side, but Tasia didn’t give him a chance to respond. She extended one hand, and the hazy light shot from it, spinning the deathless king sideways before throwing him against the northern wall.
Tasia kept her hand outstretched and pointing at the king, and the beam of light emanating from her palm seemed to pin him like a speared fish. He thrashed and growled like an animal, his face shifting rapidly between human and bestial, the face of the monster Joslyn and Tasia had defeated in the Shadowlands years earlier.
“His head, Joslyn!” Tasia shouted, her voice neither entirely her own nor entirely the deep otherworldly one she’d used earlier. “Take his head this time!”
Joslyn leaped to her feet, ignoring the sharp flash of pain coming from her ribs. She rushed towards the deathless king, and with one great, two-handed swing, she severed his head from his body.
His disembodied head aged again, from youthful to middle aged to old to elderly to ancient, and then, in the very next instant, he was gone. The only sign he had ever been there at all was the thinnest smear of white dust upon the wall.
Joslyn stared at the dust, waiting for it to re-form into a body. But it didn’t.
“It finally ends,” said a voice behind her, that half-Tasia, half-shadow voice.
Joslyn turned around. Tasia’s irises were still flames.
“Tasia?” Joslyn asked uncertainly.
Tasia, if the woman bathed in light and floating a few inches above the ground could really still be called Tasia, stretched her limbs as though awakening from a long slumber. She smiled.
It was the lazy lion’s smile Joslyn had seen on the face of the deathless king only a few minutes earlier.
“An undatai is a Prince of Shadows, a Targhan in the Old Tongue,” Tasia said in the same eerie voice. “But our recently deceased friend had a tendency to forget that the Shadowlands had more than one undatai. And a tendency to forget that not all of us were so eager to find our way back to the mortal plane.”
Joslyn felt cold all over, but she nodded cautiously. Tasmyn had said something like that to her before – there were shadows who preferred a balance between the mortal realm and the Shadowlands, shadows who didn’t want the two realms united.
“Though the not-so-deathless king was right about something,” Tasia said, her voice shifting into something almost normal as the light around her faded and her feet found the ground again. “Sharing my body with an undatai…” She drew in a long breath, eyelids fluttering closed. “Joslyn, there’s so much I can do like this – so much power I have access to.” She opened her eyes again, and though her irises were their usual green again, Joslyn could have sworn she saw a hint of flame dancing within them. “We truly could rule the entire world together, you and me. The greatest Empress the world has ever known, together with its greatest general. Share this with me, Joslyn. We can remake the whole world. Think of it! We could end war everywhere, end corruption, make slavery useless. We can end all the ridiculous machinations of all those lords and ladies playing their perpetual game of Castles and Knights. We could finally stop looking over our shoulders, Joslyn – it would mean peace. For all mankind. And we could live forever.”
Flames filled her eyes again. Joslyn felt as though she might be sick.
“No creature is meant to live forever, Tasia.”
“No mortal creature is meant to live forever,” Tasia retorted. “But we can be so much more than mortal. Please, Joslyn. Let me show you.” She extended her hand, palm up, in Joslyn’s direction. “Once you taste what I can taste – you’ll understand. I promise you. You’ll understand.”
Let this work,Joslyn thought. Please let it work.
Slowly, Joslyn reached for the woman she loved.
It was a prayer of sorts, one aimed somewhere between the mercy of Mother Eirenna, whom Joslyn did not truly have faith in, and her dead ku-sai, who could not actually help her.
Like a striking asp, she snatched Tasia’s wrist and yanked hard, bringing Ku-sai’s sword up at the same time. Tasia let out a gasp when the blade bit into her forearm. The sword’s edge cut deep enough that blood flowed instantly, but Joslyn was careful not to go so deep that she would nick Tasia’s radial or ulnar arteries.
Tasia screamed – except the sound she uttered wasn’t entirely her own. Joslyn had heard Tasia scream before, in fright or in pain, and that sound was always high-pitched and feminine. This scream contained that sound mixed with another, something low and menacing, more growl than scream. She writhed in Joslyn’s grip, trying to free herself, but Joslyn held tight.
Along with the blood, smoke escaped the fresh cut – only a wisp at first, but then the smoke seemed to leave from every pore of Tasia’s body, cascading outward and quickly dissipating towards the ceiling.
“Joslyn, no… what have you…”
Tasia fainted, but Joslyn caught her before she could hit the ground.