The bushes on Cutter’s left, less than a foot away, shifted and moved, parting like a curtain to reveal a familiar sight lying in the snow-laden grass. A familiar, terrible sight, and Cutter found himself taking an involuntary step back. “No,” he whispered.
Oh yes, the creature answered, turning to regard the black-hafted axe, the black blade which seemed darker than night. Take it, Destroyer, your weapon, the same weapon with which you slew so many of my kind, carving out a place for the invasion of your people here, in our homeland. The same weapon with which you slew MY KING.
The last words came out in a great thunder that seemed to shake the very ground beneath his feet, but it was not the creature’s voice which gripped Cutter’s heart with fear. Instead, it was what lay on the ground, so close that he could kneel down and pick it up. He remembered well the feel of the axe in his hands, hands which knew the weight of it down to the ounce. “Please…” he began, trailing off, unsure of how he would finish.
Oh, you will take it, Kingslayer, the creature answered. Else, you will be rejecting the boon granted you and if you reject it in this, then you reject all of it. Were you to do that, your life and the life of the boy who travels with you would be forfeit. And I promise you that his death will be a long time coming, I vow that you will wake each day to view his suffering as my people carve piece after piece from his flesh. Take it, Destroyer, for without it you are like a bear without its teeth, a lion without its claws. Take it for it is a part of you—it always has been, and it always will be.
Cutter saw no choice, yet still he hesitated. He did not doubt the creature’s word, for while the Fey often made use of illusions to disarm their prey and, more than that, simply because it was in their nature and they could no more stop doing so than a tree could stop its roots growing, he knew that, in their way, they were far more honest than any mortal ever thought to be. If he did not take the axe, the boy would die. And not just die—suffer.
And he, Cutter, would be forced to watch, to endure that suffering. But the greatest of his pains would come not just from that but from the breaking of a promise he had made long ago. He had made other promises before, of course, had broken most if not all of them. And yet…
It lay there in the snow, a double-bladed head, forged of a black metal which was unfamiliar and unworkable for any human smith. It had been a gift from the Fey king, Yeladrian, before the war began. A gift of great power, a weapon, the king had told him, beyond equal. And on that, at least, Cutter had to agree, for he had wielded it in many battles, far too many to count, just as he could not count the number of souls it had reaped. The Breaker of Pacts, Shadelaresh had called it, and on that, too, Cutter had to agree. Its sharp edge—keener than any other blade and one which never needed to be sharpened—had severed many pacts, had many times broken the vows Cutter had made to himself.
And how many promises, how many such vows would he break now, should he take it in his hands once more? Would he, as if by some magic—for it was a blade forged by the Fey and the Fey were known for their magic more than anything else—become the man he had once been? The man who had thirsted for blood above all else, who’d had such a thirst that it might never be sated? But then, he thought of the Doppel at the stream, the one he had killed so brutally, and he wondered if maybe he always had been that man, that the change he thought had occurred in him had been no more than a fantasy, a dream which must be abandoned upon waking.
Shadelaresh had laughed when he had called himself the boy’s protector, and he had been right to. His were not hands meant to hold, to protect, but to destroy. Perhaps the gods had fashioned him thus; perhaps he had fashioned himself. In the end, it made little difference. It only mattered that he was what he was, an edge as sharp now as he had been fifteen years ago, a weapon that, like the Breaker of Pacts, would never lose its keenness. Still, he did not want to take the weapon, and he looked at it lying there like some great serpent, one which meant to swallow him whole.
If he left it, he could go on pretending that he was that man no longer, at least for a time, could continue dreaming. Perhaps, if he were lucky, the dream would last until his death. But if he did that, if he refused, the boy would suffer, would die for it.
He took the axe. It felt right in his hands, natural, as if some missing part of him had been restored. And that felt very wrong.
Ah, there, Destroyer, Shadelaresh said.
