by Mike Truk
A calm descended upon me, and the shaking let off. I knelt there in the dark, before the yawning trap door, and gazed out into my personal night. I did care. Perhaps it was Tamara’s doing. Perhaps it was my own growth. Perhaps it was intrinsic to my soul. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t stand to think my actions could lead to the deaths of other Lugin’s. That my sins could be paid for in blood.
So I’d do better. I’d fail better. I’d try to make changes that would even the playing field, that would allow an enterprising young mudlark to pull themselves up out of the mire and improve their lot in life.
Hot tears were running down my cheeks, but a bitter resolve was filling me as wine poured into an empty skin. I’d not succumb to the same easy temptations as my father. I’d not fall victim to self-pity and self-righteous apathy. I was no stranger to pain. If this path proved more perilous, if it led to loss after loss, grief layered upon grief, then so be it. I’d rather live with heartache than exist numb and drifting through time without any emotion at all.
At long last, I arose and exited the old building. Made my way back down to the docks, then hailed a hansom cab and commanded the driver to take me home. Stared morosely out the window as we crossed the city, until at last, we rolled up to Thornton Manor’s gate, which opened to my command.
Down the graveled driveway, and up to the front entrance, I descended and left the cab driver to receive his payment from my groomsman. Entering the great hall, I heard voices from the library.
Making my way past the guards to the half-open door, I stepped inside.
Conversation ceased. Everyone turned to regard me as if my presence were a lodestone they couldn’t deny.
Netherys lounged in the far corner, one shapely leg hiked up over the chair’s arm, a glass of wine in hand. Cerys stood by the huge fireplace, hugging herself tightly, brows furrowed. Eddwick was in the shadows, almost lost against the backdrop of books. Pogo was near lost in an overstuffed armchair, unharmed, paperwork stacked up high on the side table beside him. Pony was a shadowy mountain by the far, diamond-paned windows. Seraphina sat on a plain stool off to another side, hands on her knees, cowl lowered to reveal her shorn head.
All eyes turned to me. Eyes piss-yellow or pale, washed-out blue, eyes violet and warm, golden-flecked brown.
“Yashara?” I asked.
Cerys gaze was somber. “Tamara’s been with her all this time. I’ve tried asking how it’s going, but she wouldn’t respond.”
I exhaled, releasing the hope that I’d return to a quick success. “Very well. I saw Iris. She came to me. Possessed a guardsman so we could talk. She’s dead but still with us. Distributed herself across countless spirits like fog spreading through a forest.”
I saw confusion, uncertainty, even a few flickers of fear crossed faces. I moved to the extended side table, where cut crystal bottles held liquors of various colors.
“I asked her about Aurora. She didn’t have any good answers. But reminded me that she used Mother Magrathaar’s power to fuel her operation. That it may have corrupted Aurora. Broken her channel to the White Sun. She said she’d need to study her to learn more, but being dead…”
Netherys, for perhaps the first time ever, looked away guiltily.
“Fuck,” whispered Cerys. “So she’s got - what? The power of the dark elves as well?”
“We don’t know.” I rubbed my face. “I then stopped at Jessin’s. The inn where Tamara once worked. Asked after Lugin, a mudlark who saved my life. Without whom none of this would have even begun.”
The silence now was active, everyone listening intently, a dozen questions stilled on the tips of their tongues.
I poured myself a full glass of whiskey and then turned to regard them all. “He died roughly when we were sailing to Port Lusander. Was mugged and cut up and passed away two days later of infections.”
“Kellik, I’m so sorry,” said Cerys.
“Don’t be sorry for me. Be sorry for him. For everyone like him. For every child who’s growing up stunted and covered in mud, picking over the banks for a spare copper nail or twist of rope. For -”
The urge to list the endless multitudes of downtrodden and abused were strong, but felt self-indulgent.
“No. I just want you all to know I’ve made a decision. I was at a crossroads. This power inside of me. The example set by my father. Everything was pulling at me, urging me to take a darker path. To indulge in my base instincts. To lose track of why I was doing this.”
Netherys’s voice was just shy of sardonic. “And why are you doing this, Kellik?”
“For the longest time, I thought it was revenge. Maybe it was. Against Everyman Jack, against my father, the Family. The people who thought it acceptable to run something so foul as Imogen’s Web. But now I realize that wasn’t quite right. Or, maybe, not sufficient. The desire for revenge and explanations got me going. But Tamara’s healing set me on a new path, a path that Lugin came to exemplify. All this time, I’ve been wondering how he was faring. Imagining his successes. And all this time he’s been beastly dead. And the way that knowledge made me feel, well.”
I took a trembling gulp of the whiskey. “I see now what I really care about. It’s about those mutilated women in Imogen’s Web. Victims like Cerys’s sister, like Iris, like Lugin. Those who are taken and used and broken and discarded by those like my father or the Royal Provost or the Aunts and Uncles. Or like the White Lioness, using the thousands of White Sun faithful to achieve her ends.”
Pogo nodded with grim certainty.
Netherys stirred in her chair, gazed into her wine. “I suppose that’s noble. It rings a little naive in my ears, but…” She lolled her head to one side and fixed me with a wicked smile that failed to fool me. “I’ll support your bleeding heart initiatives if they mean so much to you.”
Cerys snorted. “As if you weren’t a high elf but a few weeks back. You don’t need to posture with us.”
Netherys raised an eyebrow. “You’re so sure I’m posturing? Then let me tie you up and have you at my mercy for a single hour. No?”
The sound of chalk scratching on a board came from the side of the room, and then Eddwick stepped forward. He seemed diminished, uncertain, his eyes anguished, his expression pale. He raised the board in his hands, and I saw written in his infinitely familiar scrawl: Kellik, I’m so sorry.
A knot formed in my throat. “Don’t be. You weren’t in control, the demon was.”
He frowned, wiped the words away with his sleeve, dashed off another set of words.
I should never have run.
“You thought that Gloom Knight was going to kill us.”
My cowardice led me to the Grandfather.
He erased the words, wrote some more.
My cowardice led to my being possessed.
I didn’t know what to say.
I should never have doubted. Never have run. I’m so sorry.
Erased. Then replaced with:
I don’t want forgiveness. I just want to help.
“Against the White Lioness?” I asked.
Yes. With the demon gone, my gift has returned.
I nodded slowly. “Your ability to guess at outcomes.”
I want to make it up to you. To all of you.
His eyes were shining with unshed tears, his face strained, his posture one of desperate intensity. I set the glass down, crossed over to stand before him.
“I want to just forgive you, to say it wasn’t your fault. But on some level it was. What happened to Yashara and Havatier, what almost happened to Pogo and Pony… You were involved, to one degree or another.”
Eddwick swallowed painfully and nodded.
“You were involved, but I don’t blame you, not in truth. You fled. But now you’ll be given a chance to stand with us. To use your gift to make a difference. We can work with that for now.”
Eddwick bobbed his head vigorously and scrawled: Thank you.
I turned to the others. “We’ve got a couple of weeks be
fore the Lioness is at our door. I aim to use each day to the fullest. I’ve got no illusions about holding off an army of ten thousand, not with our walls and gates in the condition they’re in. But I want enough time to figure out how to defeat her. Cut the head off the snake, and the body with die away. So that’s our goal: to prepare the city for war, and do our best to learn how to destroy a hereshen before it’s too late.”
“Who else can we ask if neither the priests of the White Sun nor the Hanged God know?” asked Cerys.
“I thought we could ask Blightwort, but I doubt he’d know more than Iris. Still, can’t hurt to try. And we can go further. Ask every every mage and scholar that yet resides in Port Gloom,” I said.
“There is another,” said Seraphina, voice quiet, almost inaudible.
We all turned to stare at her.
Nervous, she ran her palm over the pale stubble on her head. “My church knows of him, but keep our distance. He is a living heresy, but also beloved by the Hanged God, for else can we explain his being allowed to continue so long after he should have stepped into the Ashen Garden?”
“Who?” asked Netherys.
Seraphina bit her lower lip, stared down at her hands. “I will be punished for telling you, but… you are my friends. This is what friends do, isn’t it?”
And she glanced up, nervous.
The urge to simply tell her yes was near overwhelming. Instead, I walked over to crouch before her. Met her eyes. “We’re friends, yes. But only tell us if you’re sure. I don’t want you putting yourself in danger.”
She worried at the corner of her lip and then gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I’ll pay the price. Because there is someone who might know. Who was older even than Aurelius, or anyone else in the city. Whose existence is a closely held secret by my church, and perhaps the only being whom our sepulchros fears.”
Cerys’ voice was terse. “Who is it?”
Seraphina’s voice was soft. “Aschengraur the Unliving, Aschengraur the Despoiler, Emperor of Skulls, Defier of the Hanged God, and known as the Laughing Scourge. Aschengraur the lich, who has dwelled for untold millennia beneath Execution Hill.”
A shocked silence followed her words.
“Not sure that’s a good idea,” said Pogo, sitting up a little straighter. “In fact, this is undoubtedly a terrible idea. However, seeing as we lack any alternatives, we may have no choice.”
“Oh, you going under Execution Hill with us, Pogo?” asked Netherys, raising an eyebrow in amusement.
Pogo laid his hand atop his pile of documents. “I do battle here, Lady Dark Elf, and dare I say that on that field of war I am a veritable terror? I will, of course, be thinking earnestly of your welfare while you go below.”
“Aschengraur,” I said, rocking back onto my heels. “What else can you tell us of him?”
“Not much,” said Seraphina, and I thought I could already see regret in her eyes. “He’s a forbidden subject. I mean, we have lots of forbidden subjects in our church - if it’s not forbidden, it’s practically not worth paying attention to - but he stands out as taboo even amongst them.”
“Then did you come to learn of him?” purred Netherys, clearly amused.
“Snooping?” Seraphina smiled apologetically. “And eavesdropping?”
Netherys laughed. “How refreshingly honest you are about your duplicities.”
To which Seraphina blushed. “Well. Um. To answer your question, Kellik. He’s a lich, which, by the standard definition, means a wizard who’s managed to deny the Hanged God by casting his life essence into a receptacle. As long as that receptacle remains undamaged, he’ll live forever. I think he’s several thousand years old, and that back in the day he was kind of the big ruler of everything? But he grew too powerful, and attracted the attention of the Paruko Dream Eaters, so he was forced to go to ground and hide himself to not be destroyed.”
“Iris said something along those lines,” I said. “Are there tunnels into Execution Hill? How do we communicate with him?”
“Well, see, that’s the tricky part. My church took advantage of Aschengraur’s going quiet to place all kinds of powerful wards and bans upon the ways in. We’d, ah, need the help of an Exemplar to get past them.”
“So much for that idea,” said Cerys.
“We can always ask,” I said. “And explain that Iris told us about Aschengraur.”
To which Seraphina wilted in relief.
“We sure this is worth it?” asked Netherys. “Dealing with a millennia-old lich might be worse than facing the White Lioness.”
“Yes,” said Pogo. “What if our, ah, meddling, awakens Mr. Laughing Scourge and encourages him to go for a stroll?”
“The Paruko would put a stop to that,” I said. “And we need to know what a hereshen is if we’re to have any hope of stopping her.”
“I suppose it stands to reason that an ancient lich might know,” sighed Pogo, sinking back into his chair.
“Looks like we need to chase down Baleric,” I said. “Seraphina, any idea how we can find him?”
“Um, he’s hunting Gloom Knights. Go where the Gloom Knights are?”
I looked sidelong to Eddwick. “Are there any of them left?”
Eddwick nodded, wrote: As of this evening, few in the dark elf’s hold.
“If we went there now,” I asked, “what are the odds that we’d find him?”
Eddwick frowned, closed his eyes, then relaxed and gave me a smile, writing: Odds are good.
“Then let’s go pay them a visit,” I said, unable to deny the wave of warmth that our old exchange had on me. “With the entire fate of the city at stake, I’m sure Baleric will see reason.”
* * *
“No,” said Baleric. “Absolutely not.”
We stood in the manor’s back garden, Pony filling up the iron gate, the others arrayed behind me, facing Baleric and his crew who’d just finished killing what I guessed were the last of the Gloom Knights.
Baleric seemed to glow with a pale light of his own in the light of the moon, an ethereal, otherworldly figure, his blade gleaming by his side. Grave, melancholy, and made all the more menacing for standing astride a slain Gloom Knight, he considered me from beneath his heavy brows, his expression dour with disapproval.
“I know it’s a big ask,” I said, “but we’re out of options. We need every advantage we can get if we’re to face this hereshen, and I won’t go into this battle blind. Whatever she is, I need to know, and the lich might be able to tell us.”
“The cure shall prove worse than the ailment,” he said, voice deep and resonant. “Worse, you think the Despoiler will simply treat with you? That he won’t shrive your bodies of your souls, and turn you into his unliving puppets? You know not what you ask. Cease this line of inquiry at once.”
“So here’s the thing,” I said, taking a step forward. While Baleric didn’t so much as twitch, his crew became ever so slightly tenser. I guessed they were worried about my powers. “We’re going to go. I’m going to get my answers. And with them, I will defeat the White Lioness. So you simply have the choice: come with us, and increase our odds of success, or stay behind, and watch a shitshow of colossal proportions unfurl right at your doorstep.”
Baleric’s face could have been carved from funerary marble. “Or I could employ another means of stopping you.”
I smiled. “You think that will work? I’m no longer the callow youth you faced in Port Lusander. I’m deadly serious about going, exemplar. Seek to stop me, and I’ll use my powers.”
“You may no longer be a callow youth, but you are still a fool.” His tone took on a touch of asperity. “I appeal to your common sense. No matter how dire a threat this White Lioness may seem to be to Port Gloom, she is a candle compared to the banked inferno that is the Laughing Scourge.”
“Yeah, but the Laughing Scourge is being watched by the Paruko,” I said. “The White Lioness? She’s running free. I’m willing to wager the lich won’t exert himself for fear of being hauled
off like my dad.”
“You’re willing to gamble the fate of the entire continent?” asked Baleric softly.
“All of Khansalon? Yes. Iris told me the moment Aschengraur stirred from his crypt he’d be bagged by the Paruko and have his head mounted on over their fireplace.”
“And what if the Paruko Dream Eaters are unable to contain him?” Baleric’s voice could have put ice out of the chilling game. “What if he has grown too powerful for even them?”
“Then it’s just a question of time before he breaks free, anyways. Might as well risk it for a good cause now than suffer for no reason later on.”
I wasn’t completely sure about my line of reasoning, but I’d be cast into the Ashen Garden if I backed off now.
Baleric sighed, stared down at the slain Gloom Knight, and then shook his head. “King trolls. When will be free of them?”
“Great,” I said. “Then if you’re done here, I suggest we be going.”
“Brother?” Baleric’s pale sister, a ghost medium, if I remembered correctly, stepped up to his side. “You cannot abet this lunacy.”
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned of Kellik is that he is a man of his word.” Baleric’s resignation was music to my ears. “If he swears he’ll burrow into Execution Hill, then that is exactly what he shall do. I’ve yet to see him fail at any endeavor he sets his mind to. Seeing as which, I’d best be on hand to minimize the chances of his causing a Soul Vortex or unleashing a
Penumbral Spasm upon the city.”
I hesitated. “What are those?”
To which Baleric gave a despairing shake of his head. “Let us go. And may the Hanged God show an uncharacteristic amount of mercy on our souls.”
* * *
An hour or so later we arrived at Execution Hill. The dark mass of it rose above the Palace District to its south and the Garden District to the west. The peak was adorned with a wretched nest of angular gallows, their outlines visible from most of the city and tangible sign of the Star Chamber’s authority. But if its peak spoke of death, then its flanks spoke of law and order, for it was here that the great gaol was housed, numerous courts and chanceries.