Page 129 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
Silence permeated the air for a moment. Only the hawking of wares outside the tent interrupted it for a few loaded seconds.
“I don’t know if…that is, I’m unsure if I can do something on that scale,” Hallie said.
“You destroyed Achilles with your power,” Fely added. “You used it on the structure itself. It’s now a pile of rubble, almost as if it was thrust back to its beginning. I was lucky to escape the destruction, as were you.”
Hallie shook her head. “But I was only trying to save Kase.”
That hurt. Niels hadn’t been able to explain the collapse of the fort from the outside. The flash bombs they’d levied at the gate were mere annoyances to the soldiers. They’d been meantonly as a distraction. Then the fort began falling apart, even the stone catching fire, which Niels still couldn’t entirely wrap his mind around.
But it had been Hallie’s doing. All because she’d wanted to save Kase.
Not him. Kase.
Because Niels saved her instead of Jack. He’d saved himself instead of Jack.
And Hallie could never see him without seeing that day in her mind.
The conversation continued at a pace Niels had trouble keeping up with, the icy cold now affecting his toes. But he still heard the Stradat Lord Kapitan’s next question.
“Now, if you would explain the sword?” Harlan asked, nodding at the blade still strapped to Hallie’s pack. “Retrieve it for me, Kase.”
Kase looked at Hallie, who nodded; he hesitated another moment before getting up. He unhooked it from her pack and set it lightly on the table.
Niels felt ill just looking at it lying there. It was almost as if the sword was a shadow. It’d cut him. It’d killed the Cerl King.
“It is one half of a pair,” Fely said. “Like I mentioned earlier, the General seeks the second one, which they believe is here in Kyvena.” She paused for a moment. “This is the one that killed the King. It holds his Essence power, Lord Saldr.”
“If that is truly Kainadr, and it holds the Essence of Souls,” Saldr said, voice shaking as he stared hard at the sword on the table, “then it would indicate the legends are indeed true, that the second Gate holds Xera.”
Second Gate? What was that? No one else asked about it. It seemed like Niels was on the outside. What did this mean for him?
Everything sounded like he’d gotten stuck in a fantasy book. He remembered Jack loving one when they were younger about an epic black sword that spoke. The one on the table had yet to utter demands, thank the stars. The blade was still unnerving, though he wasn’t sure why.
The Yalv, Saldr, held out his hands, “May I?”
He grabbed it from the table when no one objected and inspected it in silence.
The man whispered something before setting the sword back onto the table in front of him. “Many souls have lived on as keys, but none greater than Kainadr and Xera. How did you come across it?”
“The Gate.” Hallie’s voice shook a little. She glanced at Fely before continuing, “It showed it to me, and I took it.”
The man muttered something in a different language vehemently under his breath. Kase leaned toward her, away from the sword. “I don’t think I quite understand.”
Hallie took a deep breath before saying, “Stradat Loffler stabbed King Filip with it. And then the chamber started coming apart at the seams. We escaped through the Passage…and ended up here.”
No one else in the room moved. No one else spoke. It was as if the world around them had stopped.
“And where is the Essence of Spark?” Lord Saldr asked.
For the first time since they sat down, Hallie looked back at him. He shivered, more from the ice in his veins but her eyes asked the silent question. He ignored the unease in the room. “I…I only acted because…”
He didn’t know what had happened. The man had killed the King of Cerulene. He was going to kill Hallie. Niels had acted on instinct.
But the man had still been a Stradat of Jayde.
“Go on, then,” the Stradat Lord Kapitan said, his arms crossed.
Would he arrest Niels for what he’d done? It’d been self-defense. Niels cleared his throat to give himself another second. “He’d killed the Cerl King already. I tackled him before he swung that sword at Hallie or Lady Fely.” He nodded to both. “And then I kicked him into whatever that archway thing was where Hal had gotten the sword.”
