All the Heroes Are Dying in Kendare Blake's Warrior of Legend

The hero was dead. His body lay still, his eyes open and sightless, the expression on his face less one of surprise than of wonder—one could almost believe he lay gazing up at the lightening sky after a night of good storytelling, were it not for the blood. 

But the hero was dead, and no amount of tears or shouting to the gods would change that, though his people seemed inclined to try. His warriors wept and thumped their chests. They tore their clothes and struck the ground with their fists. He’d left them behind when he’d come on this quest, to spare them, but they’d followed anyway. They’d even brought his mother, dragged the poor woman out in the dark and the rain. She knelt over his body, grasping at every uninjured part of her son: his shoulders, grown so strong and broad; his arms that threw the deadliest spears. The hands she’d held since he was a boy. So perhaps she’d not needed to be dragged after all. 

Reed watched them mourn from the cover of the trees. He fought brilliantly, she wanted to tell them. He came out of the darkness upon his enemies like a ghost. Five men to his one and he’d slain them all, an angry bear against their wolves. The village had thought they truly were wolves at first. Hungry wolves who raided their livestock and took meat hanging in the drying huts. But what sort of wolves also stole young women? Only the sort of wolves who were men. 

Reed had felt no remorse as she helped her hero kill them. His blade cleaved through arms and sank deep into bellies, and though one of his foes landed a mortal wound, he hadn’t fallen until the last was pierced on the end of his dagger. 

The hero’s mother wiped rain and tears from her eyes. “Find her,” she cried. “Find the Aristene!” Find her and kill her were words that didn’t need to be spoken. That goal was plain to see from the hate upon the warriors’ faces, and the flash of steel in the dawning light. Well, let them try. They would search all day, but they would find nothing. Not even a trail to follow after her clever black horse had doubled back in his own hoofprints and swum them upstream. 

From her hiding place deep in the trees, Reed looked one last time at her hero. He seemed smaller now than he had been in life, and younger, his expression slack and the lines smoothed away. His glory had fed Kleia Gloria well, and his people would sing songs of him that would nourish the goddess and the order for years after. Reed had done her duty, and he had met his fate. There was no need for a long goodbye. 

“Aristene!” his mother screamed. 

Reed turned to look at Silco, and her black stallion’s eyes glittered. Without a word, the Aristene and Areion sank back into the shadows. 

Far away in Atropa, that silent city of the Aristene, the fresh infusion of glory was strong enough to pull Ferreh from sleep. She sat up and placed a hand to her chest. Her heart was pounding, the glory so great she could almost hear the cries of battle, the clash of steel. Almost taste the gold of it on her tongue in smooth spices and warmth. But beneath that was another taste: coppery and sinister, and under the triumphant heat, her limbs were tense. 

The elder of the order got out of bed and reached for a wrap of linen, then changed her mind and pulled her armor through the aether. It settled on her shoulders and tightened about her waist; braided leather overlaid with engraved ovals of silver, a comforting weight to banish the last of her unease. Outside her window the white city was quiet. Only she and Tiern might have been senior enough within the order to feel the glory come, though a few might have smiled and stretched like cats. And because of her mentor bond to Reed, Aster was sure to have murmured in her sleep. 

It was no mystery where the fresh infusion had come from. Glory like they’d just received came from only one source and meant only one thing: Reed’s latest hero was dead. 

Ferreh exhaled. Dawn was hours away, but she would get no more rest. She threw her coverlet up over her pillow. 

Ferreh followed the rounded hall to the stairs that led up to the interior of the Citadel’s golden dome. With traces of the nightmare still lingering, she sent her consciousness out to the edges of the Veil, to assure herself that the barrier still held. But it did. Of course it did. Thanks to Reed, the division between Atropa and the world of men was stronger than ever. This was the third hero Reed had sent to Kleia Gloria in less than a year, throwing herself into her new role of Glorious Death with a fervor none had expected. And that some feared would cost her too much. 

“She’ll burn herself out.” That was what Aster had said when she had spoken with Ferreh and Tiern after the last hero’s reaping. “She’s not thinking clearly. Her heart was broken. She’s in pain.” 

“You underestimate her,” Tiern had replied. “The goddess chose her for this.” 

Aster had looked at Ferreh, and Ferreh had seen the question in her gray eyes. Did Kleia Gloria choose her? Or did you? For it had been Ferreh who’d bestowed the gift, giving the initiate her blood to drink, and with it that terrible purpose: Glorious death, which ensured that every hero Reed was granted from the well was fated to meet their end at the point of a blade, at the end of a spear, in a hail of arrows. That all were fated to die. 

“What if she gets hurt?” Aster had asked. “What if she dies? What will it all have been for?” 

Ferreh mounted the stairs, pushing the memory aside. Aster was a good Aristene and a good soldier. A good mother. But she was no leader. She didn’t carry the fates of the order upon her back. She didn’t see the will of their goddess. Aster saw only Reed. 

As she stepped up into the great space of the dome, Ferreh’s skin prickled, not from the cold—nowhere in Atropa was ever truly cold—but from the quiet. The high, cut windows were open and allowed air and moonlight to bounce off the walls and the floor, but there was no sound. Once, long ago, the nights had been loud with Aristene. They had milled through the streets, had crowded out the darkness with their drinking and songs. But now . . . 

Across the dome sat the sacred well, a haphazard shape crafted of multicolored stones; light-colored stone the shade of bright sand, and smooth, black veins of obsidian. Flat layers of dull gray shale. Each piece taken from a different place. The well had a peculiar beauty in the daylight, but tonight the dim turned it monstrous, tricks of the shadows making it appear to slant and crouch, making it seem small, and yet also larger than it should be. 

Ferreh walked over to it. The elder of the order wasn’t fooled by shadows any more than she was frightened by dreams. She passed the painted murals on the walls, their vibrant color muted in the dark. She cast a glance at the silver circle of the World’s Gate sleeping within the floor. 

“You felt it, too?” 

Ferreh jumped like a poked cat. “Tiern. I didn’t hear you.” 

Tiern stepped up from the last stair, her hair of many colors loose around her shoulders. She too was in her armor, the silver lighter and sharper than Ferreh’s, the white cape shorter. But that was unremarkable. Tiern was always in her armor. It was whispered that she even slept in it, if indeed she ever slept. She joined Ferreh beside the well and took her hand, blowing on Ferreh’s fingers as if to warm them, her thumb gently stroking Ferreh’s deep brown skin in a rare show of physical affection. “So? Are you going to look or not?” 

Ferreh placed her hand upon the heavy stone cap but found that she didn’t want to remove it. “I don’t need the well to show me what I already know. Glorious Death has sent us another hero.” 

“But something troubles you.” Tiern reached out and removed the well covering herself, sliding it over to rest against the base. “Something serious enough to scare you into your armor in the middle of the night.” 

“You’re not the only one who finds the silver and white a comfort.” 

“I don’t find it a comfort.” Tiern looked down at the silver that adorned her chest like a layer of gleaming dragon scales. “I just look good in it.” She smiled, waiting. 

“It’s something about Reed,” Ferreh said. “A sense of something wrong. It began not long after she sent her first hero to the goddess. And it is getting worse.” At first it was nothing—a worry that was barely more than an itch between her shoulder blades. But the itch had grown to a sting, and from a sting to a burn. Now it was a seed stuck between Ferreh’s armor and her skin, and the longer she left it there the deeper it cut and the more it embedded itself. 

“Machianthe,” said Tiern. “Her name is Machianthe now. And if you don’t start using it, it’s never going to stick.” 

It never will stick, Ferreh almost said. Reed will always be Reed. But the words wouldn’t take shape. They suddenly felt untrue. 

Ferreh laid her hand upon the cool stone. She leaned over the side of the well and looked down. 

Despite the shadows, the waters within the sacred well shone brightly with reflected moonlight. For a moment, Ferreh thought that was how they would remain: gently rippling, a balm from the goddess for her troubled thoughts. And then the water began to swirl.

It moved slowly at first. Lazily, like it was annoyed by her seeking. But soon enough the water inside the sacred well was a whirlpool, and in the center, Ferreh saw Reed. 

Only not the Reed she knew. 

This Reed walked with a lowered brow, and the whole of her body was shrouded in darkness. Her hands dripped blood, and there was something wrong with the way she moved. Some change to her limbs and the slant of her shoulders. In the vision, she raised a blade to cleave a man in two—and didn’t stop until he was hacked to pieces. Ferreh gasped, and Reed’s eye shifted as if she could see her through the water. 

Ferreh reeled away from the well so far that her back slammed against the wall of the dome. 

“What?” Tiern cried. She gripped the sides of the well and looked into it, but Ferreh knew she would see nothing. The vision was already gone, the waters already still. All the same, Tiern slid the stone cap back into place, leaning hard upon it as if to seal something inside. She took Ferreh by the shoulders. 

Ferreh let the other elder lead her from the dome and through the halls of the Citadel, to the half-circle room where they often took their ease. The same room of seats and cushions, tables and game boards where they had first set eyes on Reed, back when she was a skinny child with long, tan limbs and sharp teeth. Ferreh felt herself placed amid the cool pillows. She breathed deep of the breeze that moved between the pillars as Tiern used a torch to start a fire. She heard the creak of a pot being swung over the flames, and sometime later, a warm stone cup was placed between her hands. 

“Drink.” 

Ferreh sipped. It was too sweet and too hot, but the burn in her throat felt good. It was also unstrained and dotted with floating, suspended leaves. Tiern hadn’t called for an acolyte to brew it. She’d known that the elders required privacy. 

“Is that better?” Tiern asked. 

“Yes,” Ferreh lied, even as the vision from the well draped her like damp cloth. She could still feel the mist of the water as it churned and struck her face. She could still smell the cloying mineral scent. “What did you see?” 

Ferreh gazed down into the dark liquid of her tea. “Only my own fears.” 

“But what did you see?” 

When Ferreh didn’t answer, Tiern looked away, staring into the fire. 

“You saw a warrior who could cut down any enemy,” she said. “With hands full of blood, and eyes—” 

Ferreh looked up. 

“You are not the only one who dreams.” 

“So what do we do?” Ferreh asked. 

“Nothing.” 

“But what we saw—” 

“What we saw was the weapon of the order,” Tiern said. “The weapon we set out to create.” 

“No, Tiern. What we saw was a warning. The goddess’s warning, given to us so that we may yet have time to avert it.” She waited for Tiern to agree, as she always did. But she was surprised when the other elder chuckled. 

“Gentle Ferreh.” In the firelight Tiern’s eyes were as jewels in the hilt of a dagger. “Your schemes have rebounded on you. You wanted the girl to love us so she would take on this duty willingly. You didn’t imagine that you would come to love her back. 

“I love her, too,” Tiern went on. “In my way. And unlike you, I will love her no matter what.” 

“No matter if she becomes . . . This cannot be what you want,” Ferreh said. 

“The order safe? Our city secure? That is more than what I want; that is my task. That is our task, sister, and you knew—nothing without a cost.” 

But in Ferreh’s mind, glorious death had been the cost. Reed’s entire immortality spent guiding heroes to their dooms; how could Kleia Gloria ask for more than that? And if she could, then what sort of goddess had she, in her desperation, become? 

“I will not let this happen,” Ferreh said, and Tiern looked at her pityingly. 

“There is nothing you can do.” 

“There is always something that can be done. And I swear to you, Tiern, that I will find a way to save her.