ALL WAS STILL in the numb dusk on the mountainside. Deep shadows pooled on the ground as the sun set behind Irusu, bringing twilight early to the House of Eight Plums. Skeletal oak trees ran around the wall which skirted the temple’s grounds, their leaves long ago slapped away by icy rain. Ulrem stalked at the foot of the wall, his eyes scouring the tall pole forests that lay beyond the temple’s borders. A good place for an ambush, he thought, or to place a spy to watch the house.

He saw no flashing eyes, no glint of steel, but his innate wariness, born of long years walking in death’s shadow, made Ulrem cautious. His predator instinct had kept him alive through darker days than this.

Still, he knew he could not linger. The ronijar would come for Kinro before long. The smaller man was a blademaster, a better swordsman even than Ulrem, but against so many foes, even he could not hope to stand. Ulrem had no choice but to act swiftly, to interfere, as Kinro put it, for what honor lay in death by treachery?

Only the man who held the bloody knife at the end lived to tell the story. The world was full of odious slime and two-faced fools who would pull any rope, tell any lie, to gain the advantage, and Hurecho was no different. Ulrem would not allow a good man to walk blindly into that tiger’s maw.

Stalling in the dark, his slate eyes glaring out of the dusky shadow, he scanned once more the green rods of the pole trees. Nothing moved. Then, whirling and leaping like a mountain panther, Ulrem sprang upwards. He kicked his sandaled feet off the wall, straining with his hands, and caught the very lip. With a grunt, he hauled himself up so that he stood on the narrow line of stone.

In his youth he had been a thief, a rangy, scrawny boy, and he lamented now the weight of muscle and thew as he held his balance, arms bent at the elbows. Running with the cutpurse gangs in Mikli, and the gray gulls in Jori, Ulrem had learned to soar like a hawk from one roof to another, lighting over wall and balcony. No more.

Now he faced a jump of several paces to a third floor window. The blue shutters were thrown open, letting cool air into the smoky apartments, but the ledge was yet higher than he stood. He crouched at the knees, ignoring the sheer drop to mud and stones beneath his feet looking in that moment very much like a lion preparing to spring from the tall grass at unsuspecting prey.

Ulrem launched himself into the air again. For a moment, distant memories of flying—of weightless drifting and the thrill of the drop—resurfaced. Then he slammed into the side of the wall with a heavy slap. He scrabbled for purchase, feet swinging wildly beneath him, cutting tracks through empty air.

“Black hells!” he snarled, grasping at a flapping shutter with one hand. The ring on his finger shone a bit as a patch of gauzy sun caught it. Suddenly stable, he caught the window sill with his other hand, and pulled himself up by main force. The shutter came loose from the wall and clattered to the ground below, but he did not care. He was over and through the window, rolling with the momentum and coming up into a fighter’s crouch.

A ronijar in an orange robe with thick black stripes slashed across the fabric stood with a bowl of food in one hand, his eyes wide with shock.

Ulrem exploded into motion, ripping his sword from the sheath on his back. The man hurled the bowl at him, but it sailed over his head, splashing an arc of brine and noodles. Ulrem slammed into the ronijar as the man tugged at his sword, unable to get it free. He let out a hiss of air, and stopped pulling at the hilt.

Trembling fingers found the blade of Ulrem’s sword, rammed deep into the ronijar’s chest, pinning him to the wall. Blood blossomed through the fine silk, sucking it to his chest.

“I wouldn’t have hurt her,” he whispered, and died.

Ulrem pulled the sword free and caught the corpse with his free arm. He laid it down. As he did, the senshaama robe fell open, revealing a tattoo across his chest of two intertwining snakes. Blood dribbled from the corner of the dead man’s mouth, and his glassy eyes stared up at the ceiling.

Ulrem wiped his blade off on the dead man’s robe. The rooms around him were silent. If anyone had heard his entrance, or the scuffle, they would be making noise. That, or coiling in ambush. Braced for the latter, he crept to the door and eased it open. The hall beyond was dark, the candles on the walls unlit, for the priestesses did not tend to these rooms with Hurecho’s men lurking around. Ulrem eased out into the hall, walking on the balls of his feet. A staircase at the far end of the corridor cut down to the second level. Listening at the head, he heard nothing. Down he went, into the dark, pausing again at the top of the next stair, one eye on the corridor.

He felt something in the air here. Something just beyond the visible, like the force of bright sunlight on skin, an invisible touch. Sorcery. He felt the seething rage, eager to charge in, to lay low the source of that foul murk. In the dark, Ulrem flashed his teeth in a feral grin. He was close now.

He knows you’re coming, the echoes growled. He tries to frighten you. The fool!

Darkness pooled thicker than it should have in the space below. Peering down into the room, he could hardly make out any detail at all. It was as if an inky fog lingered, swallowing what light might have leaked in through the windows or the temple corridors.

Ulrem held his left hand up, letting the ring’s anger shine. A golden light sprang forth, not as bright as a torch, but enough to make his way down the stairs, broad bladed sword in hand. The common room was empty, save for a low communal table in the center, and the sitting mats upon which the men had lounged when Kinro had come to confront the coward Hurecho. There was the elevated little seat the man sat on, lording above his worms. But no sorcerer.

Something shifted in the dark, a black on black that only his razor-sharp barbarian senses could have noticed. A thing came stumbling out of the dark, a wraith of shadow with a death’s head yawning in silent scream, smoke billowing from its lifeless jaws. It raised a lightless sword above its head and slashed at him.

Ulrem swept his own sword up to parry, but where their blades crossed, the wraith’s burst into smoke. It cackled at him, a tortured inhalation, and faded. Ulrem leaped back, suspicious of the magic, sharp ears listening for a sound, any sound, that would betray the source.

Another came at him from behind, and he whirled, instinct again seizing control. He parried, and again met nothing but smoke.

“Come out, spider!” Ulrem shouted. “You squat in the dark, toying with me!”

“Why,” came a low hiss from every direction at once, a snake’s venomous whisper, “should I face a man come to kill me? What do I owe you?”

A third smoking wraith lurched out of the dark. Ulrem cut at it, a caged snarl leaking through gritted teeth. This time he met resistance. He barely had time to raise his sword. It scratched him as he turned the thing’s blade aside, drawing a line of scorching ice down his forearm. He snarled and punched it in the face.

It screamed as the light of the ring touched it, and in the same instant, Ulrem heard a painful cry from the heart of the gloom.

“I hear you, maggot,” Ulrem growled. He stalked forward, holding the ring up to drive the darkness back, eager for the kill.

“Hurecho’s ronijar went to capture your friend, you barking dog,” the sorcerer sneered, taunting him. Ulrem spun, sword held out before him, suddenly unsure of where the sorcerer was hiding “They will drag him before the master, and then it will be at an end.”

“You talk too much. Show yourself!” Ulrem swept at the banks of smoke and shadow around him. The glow of his ring splashed across roiling banks that retreated from its shine. As he pushed further into the next room, the darkness that pooled on the floor began to resist him. It was like wading through thin, icy water. The ring grew warmer, brighter, as if in answer to the foul sorcery, but still the darkness crowded around like flocking crows, blinding him.

Three wraiths lumbered out of the smoke, swinging at once. Ulrem struck first, slashing at the closest. His sword shattered the insubstantial wraith’s blade, and he hewed into its skull. The other two closed on him so fast he had no choice but to dive to the ground. Frigid fog closed around him like a grave’s wet soil. He slashed at the wraiths’ legs, cutting them out at the knee. Even as he did it, Ulrem felt the chill seeping into him, slowing him down. He crushed a shudder that ran aching from the base of his spine.

“Lord Hurecho is accounted a great man,” the sorcerer hissed, “but he is a fool. They all are. I saw you for what you were. I could feel it when you arrived in the night.”

“Defiler!” Ulrem roared. In answer, only a sinuous laugh, emanating from all around him.

“Do you feel it?” the sorcerer said. “That fear, webbing your heart, squeezing your lungs? You are an Inheritor, you unworthy cur? I will break you! And when you are dead, I will take that ring from your finger, and carve my name in the very bones of the earth!”

“Come and take it then.”

“Do you know what I could do with such a thing?” More laughter, cold scorn. “Lord Hurecho’s bond over me would be as paper before a flame. With that ring, I would conquer the Palace of the Dawn. I would rule all of Hinon! The emperor would be but a slave at my feet!”

Ulrem snarled, fighting against the deadening in his limbs. There was no fear. Only fury, that all his might and muscle was useless before this madman’s dark arts. Only the ring sustained him. He clutched its golden glow, drawing the heat in. He drank of it as a man come out of the desert lays his lips to a cool river. Power, sensation, flooded back into him. Fire poured into his limbs. His heart sang with the light.

Stand! the echoes roared, suddenly loud, close. Ghosts beneath his skin, the strength of great men, the giants of the past drawing near the surface now, lending him their power. Kill him! Send him screaming to his dark masters!

“How can you stand?” the sorcerer shouted. Wraiths poured out of the dark around Ulrem, blades raised. “You are but a mongrel! A heathen!”

“No,” Ulrem said, regaining his feet. He lifted his sword. “I am Ulrem the Slayer! I am the Lionborn!”

He met the shadowy forms with a war song on his lips, a song carried out of the twilight depths of the west. He met them, and slew them, casting one aside even as another condensed out of the smoke. Laughter rose in him, the thrill of the fight, the kill, fueling the ring. The echoes chanted with him, songs and voices from many ages bled together in a locus of determination, of unconquerable killing drive.

The wraiths staggered back from him, no longer able to stand before his light. The sorcerer screamed, impotent fury breaking off the walls all around. Under it, the slap of unshod feet rushing at him. Ulrem spun and deflected the knife that would have killed him. The emaciated sorcerer, still wrapped in his tattered black robes, sprawled on the boards. He reeked of drug fumes, of sweat and fear. The smoke around them was shattered, driven back by the light.

Ulrem laid the blade of his sword along the side of the sorcerer’s throat. The man wept, pounding balled fists on the ground.

“It was mine!” he moaned. “Mine!”

“You were never worthy,” Ulrem said. He silenced the man’s drivel, and knelt to his next grim task.