Lifebinder Excerpt

I took off my sword belt, left Deathbringer propped up against the bed. After stepping over to the wardrobe, I started to open it and saw that my hands were streaked in dried blood. I stared at them for a long moment, caught in a strange place between resignation and anger. “I’m so tired of blood,” I whispered.

Better theirs than yours.

“IT IS MINE!” I slammed the wardrobe door shut. “My dress, my hair, my hands; it’s…it’s ALL mine! Men are dead because of me, and I’m the one who killed them!” I was shouting by that time; something inside of me was shaken loose. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d—!” Clenching both hands tight in my hair, I crouched down on the floor and breathed soft, shallow breaths. I could feel the walls closing in around me, feel the crushing weight of reality pressing me down, trying to crush me into pieces.

Swordbearer—

“It’s all your fault!”  I pointed at the Sword with a stained, shaking hand. “My life was ruined because of you! Everything I loved is gone because of you! Those men wanted to kill me because of you! The only reason I can’t give you up is because they’d have to kill me first…but Winter help me, if I could have let them take you, I would have.” I slowly stood up, panting, fighting to catch my breath. Deathbringer didn’t speak, thankfully, but I had precious little time to enjoy the quiet. I stepped into the washroom to clean my hands, and since there wasn’t time for proper bathing, I hurriedly scrubbed what blood I could find from my skin and out of my hair; my barrette was none the worse for wear, so I left it alone.

Stripping out of the bloody dress, I left it and my stained under-things in a pile on the washroom floor and grabbed the first black dress I could find in the wardrobe, then stepped behind the silk screen to dress again. My newest scar was smaller than the one Kale gave me and was almost perfectly centered between my breasts, a centimeters-long black gash surrounded by sickly pale flesh that looked blanched and diseased.

“Tell me why my wounds aren’t healing.”

Whether it was wishful thinking or not, when he spoke again, Deathbringer’s voice seemed softer or more patient with me. Because they cannot. Such injuries cannot kill you, but neither can they be fully healed.

I checked my reflection again as I dressed. The new gown was of a higher cut than I preferred, but given that I’d just had another sword run through my chest, that seemed best. “It’s been almost six months, Deathbringer. Why aren’t I getting any better?”

My power sustains you. It resided within you as you fought to reclaim my physical form from Yenda Avard, and it still resides within you even now. But your body must be a living body for its injuries to be completely mended—I can only close your wounds, not fully heal them.

“But…but we won,” I protested. “We killed Yenda. I got you back. We won, we won!”

We did, but not before your heart was pierced by Kale Isrodel’s blade. Until that wound is addressed, none of the others may follow.

I sputtered, seized by sudden, irrational anger. “W-Well, fix it then!”

With what power shall I do that? I don’t heal injuries, Swordbearer. I command the dead to walk again, but they remain what they are—the dead, puppets to be controlled as you see fit. You could sooner use me to chop wood and call me the ‘Treesmiter’ than command me to heal a hangnail or a bad cough.

I pulled the dress down, but his words gave me pause as I buttoned it up. “So…I’m practically dead myself.” I slid my hand past the dress’ neckline and pressed it to my chest, fingers brushing across my old scar. Of course, I felt no heartbeat. “Is it always going to be like this?”

As I told you once, you are as the Veil, caught between this world and the one beyond. My power sustains you, but another means must be found to reverse your injury.

“‘Reverse it?’ Can it be reversed?”

There are ways: secret ways, powers of blood and sorcery lost to memory or time. There was also the Lifebinder, the Sword of Mending, Malady’s Bane. His power was enough to even thwart my own, to resist any disease or to reverse death itself. Katarina claimed it during her war of conquest, but the Sword was lost.

He meant Katarina Alenir, my great-grandmatron. It was for her crimes that she and the rest of my Clan were sentenced to death years before I was born. Everywhere I went, memories of her followed after me like ghosts. “What happened?”

Your forbearer lost the war she incited, but in its ascendancy she marched her forces to the city of Sitania and faced down raven-haired Amelia Strale, last Matriarch of Clan Strale and Swordbearer to Lifebinder. Katarina defeated Strale and took Lifebinder from her. Eventually, our ways parted, and the Sword was lost.

“Couldn’t we find it again? I thought you Swords could sense each other.”

If Lifebinder does not wish to be found, he may be hidden from my sight, just as I hid myself for years during your mother’s and grandmatron’s tenure. Even if he does, how shall one begin to search, if no one knows where to even begin looking? You could search a dozen lifetimes and still never find it.

“Which means I can’t locate it, even if there was someone from Clan Strale to use it on me in the first place.”

Indeed. As for who succeeded Amelia, I cannot say: Katarina never chose another Bearer for Lifebinder, not for all the time that I served her. If Amelia had any progeny at all, I do not know of it.

It wasn’t a comforting answer, but I should’ve known better than to expect one. I sighed and sat on the bed again, pulling my shoes on. “I suppose I’ll just have to find a way to live with that.”