Seven Swords by Michael E. Shea (the speed reading book .TXT) 📕

“I met Susan six months ago.” Jon sat down on the ground cross legged. He sat the rapier down next to himself. San’doro began gathering and lighting a fire. “I had just left the service of the Emperor as his hand in the South. There were only a few of us still around back then. The Emperor’s handlers weren’t pleased at my departure or the circumstances surrounding it, so I went into hiding. I was with a woman, a woman they nearly crushed between the manipulation of the north and the barbarism of the south. I will share her story another time as it has little connection to Susan other than to say I used to work for them and then later I did not.

“There is a small village between Gazu Kadem and the western desert known as Fena Rait. It’s a mystical town, older than the old empire, where wizards pull fish from caverns so deep in the earth that the water in which they live boils. The secret of these fish is so well kept that no emperor has dared to take control lest this secret become lost. And the fish are very tasty.

“My trade is swords and secrets, which is a difficult trade to deal in when men more powerful than you, men who trained you and rebuilt you from the ruins of war and the bottom of a barrel of wine, come to hunt you. I worked in the fish market, loading casks of the golden winged fish on their way to the kings of the cities in the far corners of the desert. My new trade allowed me to hear of the whispers and rumors of the land. Once a spy always a spy.

“An old crone came to the village in a cart that practically fell apart as the dying mule who pulled it dragged it to a stop. She built a shack of deadwood in the wizards’ district and soon new rumors spread that she was a witch, a fortune teller, an alchemist, and a sage. The fish wizards ignored her. There was no real magic in the land since the days when the old gods began to sleep and the old empire collapsed.

“I had seen the Voth witches during the war. I had seen what they could do to men,” From behind him, Ca’daan could feel Thorn stiffen. Jon’s eyes moved to the large man before continuing. “I had to know if her magic was real.

“I entered her shack, opening the painted door covered in runes of warding. The old crone, Sakes was her name, sat behind a table of old oak. She had skins of beasts and men on her walls. The skulls of the dead grinned from ropes that hung, candles burning in their eyes.

“‘I hear you tell of men’s futures,’ I asked her. She looked at me a long time, her black eyes unnerving. ‘Twelve saltcoins or one of those tasty golden fish,’ she said.

“‘You will have it on the morrow.’ It would cost me five saltcoins to buy one of the fish, but five was better than twelve. ‘Then tomorrow you will see your future,’ said the Crone.

“I turned and as I left I saw Susan for the first time. She wore a simple canvas shift and she was desperately thin. She looked at me with those green eyes of hers as if she saw into my soul. The Crone had cut off all of her hair. Her appearance sickened me.

“I returned to work but my mind continued to wander to the old crone and the young girl. I slept not at all that night, every time I dozed I saw the war. I saw my friends killed. I worked myself hard the next day and didn’t return to the Crone’s shack until that evening. A dust storm had formed in the west and the sun seemed to take up half the sky, painting the rest blood red. The streets were quiet that evening, I call them streets but they were little more than foot paths.

“The shack felt different. The door was the same but I felt something in the air.

“I opened the door. The candles were out. There wasn’t any light in the hut. The smell assaulted me, thick and musty and oily.

“She must have been behind the door. I felt the wind shift or saw some tiny shadow or dust mote move. I’ve come close to death four times in my life, really close. That was one of them. She had a dagger of stone obsidian. It wasn’t long but it was as sharp as glass. Her wrist broke when I grabbed her and threw her over her large oak table. Some bottles of colored liquids broke and the smell of the place turned rancid.

“The crone was on her feet in an instance. ‘You will not have her,’ she screamed at me again and again. ‘She will not go back there. She will die first!’ I had no idea what she was talking about. She stopped screaming and smiled, her teeth a ruin of decay. Her arm was all twisted where I had broken it but she didn’t seem to care. ‘I know what you did, Gray Wolf,’ she said. That frightened me most of all. I got mad. I get mad when I’m really scared. I threw that table over. It wrenched my back so bad that I missed my work at the fish wizards the next morning and never ended up returning.

“I drew my offhand dagger. I kept it on me all the time wrapped in my leggings, and I cut her, just a little at the throat. I’ve known a lot of big men that will piss themselves if they feel their own blood rolling down their neck but she didn’t. She just smiled. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I put two golden fish on a side table. ‘The girl gets one of them,’ I said. ‘If you eat them both, I’ll know and I’ll come back and kill you in your shitty hut,’ She opened her mouth and hissed at me. I’ve never heard that sound come from a human being before. I can still hear it to this day

“When I left, I turned and saw Susan there beside the shack. She smiled at me and it was like the sun had risen over my life. I smiled back. I slept soundly that night though I couldn’t move at all the next day because of my back on that table.

“Two days later Marcus Root came to town.

“Marcus and I had fought together in the last days of the Voth war. Like me, he had been driven nearly mad from the bloodshed and battle. There were fourteen of us. We put villages to the torch to route Voth armies from their original path.

“You did far worse than that,” said Thorn. His words drove a chill through Ca’daan’s bones.

“Yes,” said Jon, looking at the big man. “I did far worse than that.” Vrenna put a hand on Thorn’s shoulder and the big man relaxed. Jon continued.

“Marcus was older than us, a captain during the war and our leader when they started calling us the Gray Wolves near the end of the war. He had two men with him when he came into town. I didn’t recognize them. One was huge, dressed in black plate armor, a high neck guard, black cloak, and a leather three-corner hat. He had a wide-barreled scattershot on his back and a broadsword on his hip. Scars crossed his face. One of them had opened his mouth halfway across his cheek. It looked like a twisted frown.

“The other man wore a black hood and cloak. He had no visible weapons and looked softer than Marcus and the other. He had a gold eye fastening his cloak around his neck. When I saw that, I knew that I was in bad trouble.

“What did it mean?” asked Ca’daan.

“It meant he was an agent of the Eye. Not just an errand boy like Marcus, like I used to be, but an actual inner circle mindwalker.”

This brought a dozen questions to Ca’daan all at once but he didn’t know where to start and so he let Jon continue.

“They went straight for the crone’s hut. Marcus took off his own tricorn hat and put it on the horn of his saddle. He had a pair of pistols, the same skull-hammered ones he had nearly ten years previous. He always liked knives more than swords and he had about three on him, big ones with heavy blades.

“I watched them kick in her door and the big man fired the scattershot. The roar sent the entire village screaming. That tended to be a strategy for us in the old days. They usually didn’t kill anyone firing a gun like that so fast but seeing what a gun like that can do takes all the fight out of anyone who sees it.

“Then I heard Susan crying.” Jon paused a moment. “She wasn’t near by. In fact, I knew that she hid outside the shack in some barrels in the high grass. Still, I heard her crying as if she were next to me. I wanted to help her. I needed to help her. They would find her and send her back. I didn’t know where but she did and she told me. I didn’t understand it, I don’t really understand it now, but she spoke to me from half the village away as though I were right next to her.

“I went to the shack I had built with the meager money I had made from the fish wizards. I had buried a pit where I hid my guns and blades. I didn’t have time for my armor. I strapped on my guns and went to the crone’s shack. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I got there. One of the fish wizards saw me with my guns and sword and I knew, one way or another, I would leave the town that evening.

“Her cry made me want to weep. I would have done anything for her. By the time I got to the crone’s shack I knew I was going to have to kill them.

“I drew my pistols and kicked in the door. They had the crone naked and hanging from the beam of the shack by her feet. Her arms were bound behind her and I could see her twisted arm bending at a sickening angle.

“I shot the agent of the Eye first, the hooded man. He had been standing and reading a black leather book he had found. While Marcus poured vials of the crone’s strange liquids over her naked body. Her skin bubbled and smoked. She wasn’t screaming. She was moaning softly and it was worse than hearing her scream.

“The agent of the Eye spun after my shot hit him in the face. He fell into the corner of the hut with a hole smoking out of the back of his hood.

“‘Kill the witch first,’ they had taught us in the Tower of the Eye, ‘lest they command you to kill yourself.’ I figured what was good enough for the witches of the Voth was good enough for the agent of the Eye.

“The big fellow was reloading his scattershot. Lucky for me or I might have walked in and been ripped apart the moment I shadowed the door. Instead he was hammering down the packing and I had a couple of breaths. I smashed him with the butt of my other pistol. His nose caved in but it didn’t do much to slow him. I closed in on him and we