Of Dark Things Waking (The Redemption Chronicle Book 3)

by Adam J Nicolai

  "I know your hollowness. I know the feeling that everything is wrong, every choice is wrong, every belief contradicts. I wrestle with it at night. But I have decided something. Maybe if the truths we were raised with have failed us, we should destroy them—them and everything we think we've learned since. Burn it all to ash. Nothing can contradict if there is nothing at all. And there's no harm in that here, waiting to die."

  Again, he didn't know whether to mock or plead. "And what does that achieve?"

  "Peace, for one," Retash said simply. "Peace we desperately need, whether we deserve it or not. For me, that may be enough. For you, perhaps not. When you burn everything down, only solid stone remains. Maybe that can be a foundation for something new—for whatever you can build there, with whatever time you have."

  Burn it all down.

  The Teachings, Lyseira's new church, his contempt for chanting, his contempt for the old Church, his approach to the art, his love for his parents, his hatred of himself—every sin and every virtue, every last belief he'd ever held. Foreswear all oaths. Forgive all harms.

  Everything. Burn it all. He trembled on the cusp of the idea, awestruck, and finally realized:

  He had never wanted anything more.

  v. Angbar

  The third morning, the sun failed to rise again. The snow hadn't stopped once; it now piled over the windows, drowning out even the starlight.

  "The Arwah is sending a chanter to the King," Harth said formally to Ben. "We don't have time to wait for him to call an audience. You're welcome to travel with us."

  Ben gave Harth a withering glare, then looked at Takra. "Why don't you go. I'll stay with the others here. Angbar, do you―?"

  "I'll go," Angbar said.

  But the horses had frozen to death in the stable. The sleigh was all but buried. After a short consultation, the three of them decided to cast Hover and drag themselves—hand over hand, push by push—through midair toward the royal palace.

  All but the broadest city avenues were impassable, now. The city had become a silent nightmare, shrouded in snowflakes that drifted like silent stars. Beautiful and ghostly. The experience was made even more surreal by the chants they used to navigate it.

  They got lost in the darkness twice; had to turn around to reorient themselves beneath the alien sky. By the time they reached the palace, Angbar's head pounded with pain and a mustache of blood—the price of his exertion—had frozen across his upper lip.

  There were no guards at the gate. There was barely a gate to guard—Angbar could hardly distinguish the mound of snow that marked the iron fence from all the others. The three chanters drifted up and over, buffeted by the howling wind, and settled at last in the front courtyard before walking inside.

  The King waited in the anteroom, huddled in a chair by a sputtering fireplace. The sixth wardbook rested at his feet.

  "We brought your charters," Harth said.

  Isaic took the papers without looking at them. The three days of darkness had siphoned something out of him, some vital spark. "This has to work," he said as he handed Harth the wardbook. But the fifth Seal had already failed to break the long winter. Angbar forced the thought from his mind.

  Harth examined the wardbook, turning it over in his hands.

  "Ironflesh," Takra said, nodding at the hole in the band. "There are razors inside, but you have to reach in."

  Harth's eyes darkened. "I don't know it yet."

  "Here," Takra said. He gave her the book.

  She chanted. Wormed her fingers into the band.

  And the sky outside ignited with silent lightning.

  Angbar had known fear at the sight of a new Storm. He had known awe. But never before had he known hope.

  He rushed outside to see a thread of black lightning bisect the moon. Scarlet and argent shivered behind the sky of falling snow, scattering their light like colored mist. He felt the earth groan beneath his feet, felt all the world lean in as though it teetered on the cusp of a scream. If this doesn't work, he thought, and all of us are to freeze in this world of death, at least our final night will be a beautiful one.

  The night wind sighed. The snow stopped falling. The Storm carried away the clouds, revealing a waning half-moon and a sheet of stars. The hope in his chest quickened, igniting into a blaze.

  Then the Storm intensified. A dozen bolts, then two dozen, so many they shot out in layers. Green on blue, pink on red on orange. The sky shone with them, fierce as the dawn, banishing darkness and daylight alike.

  "My God," the King breathed.

  It's gone wrong, Angbar thought. Lar'atul did something wrong. The air quivered. Panicked. The brilliance multiplied.

  Then it congealed.

  The chaos shifted, focusing into a single point in the sky. The lightning no longer shot out in all directions—now it bounded in, all the bolts converging on that one place, and as they came their colors faded from red or black or green or yellow to blue.

  All to blue.

  The last bolt punched a scar through his vision, livid and pulsing. A blot on the twilight sky. He blinked and looked away, rubbed his eyes—and found it still there when he again looked skyward. Cooling like blue magma, solidifying from the chaotic paints of the Storm into something real. Something heavy and looming.

  "My God," the King said again.

  The sun had reappeared on the western horizon, already sinking toward dusk. Winter's chill had vanished, replaced by the naked heat of spring.

  And a second moon hung above them, blue and full and glorious.

  22

  i. Seth

  He sank into the meditations. They closed over his head like the waters of some secret lake, drowning out the sounds and lights and smells of the world around him. Throughout his training, he had fought to become empty: to cut loose his fury and fear, to create a space within him where the Teachings could take hold. He had always struggled with the concept and envied those who had mastered it.

  He reflected on that struggle now like a man might remember a distant dream. It had been difficult for him not because he hadn't tried hard enough, but because he had tried at all. He had always fought to empty himself in the pursuit of a goal—to win a battle, to impress his masters, to save his sister—but the very idea of fighting for emptiness precluded emptiness. His desires for his goals could not be carved out of the experience, and desire impeded transcendence.

  Now there were no goals. Everything had burned. He would not even survive the winter.

  In that place, beyond everything he'd ever cared about, he didn't become empty within. He became emptiness.

  Rage and distrust melted away; longing and pride slipped away behind them. The peace that suffused him in their absence was absolute and unending. When he slipped beneath the waves of that lake, he lost even the need to breathe.

  His old wounds, raw and tender for all his life, healed in that peace. He released his parents, released the haunting memories of the black water that had devoured them. Forgave them for leaving him, for in that place of certainty and truth he knew that he had never hated Syntal for killing them—rather he had hated them, for dying.

  For the first time in his life, he perceived his faults with dispassion. Shame had no place in emptiness. Guilt had no place. He recognized his flaws and realized a desire—shimmering beyond the waves, waiting for him when he was ready to reach for it—to mend them. Sometimes, when he opened his eyes and became himself again, the sudden yearning to make things right overpowered him.

  "But I can't," he told Retash one morning or evening or afternoon. "I can't change it." The realization would have pained him once, twisted in his gut like a knife. Now it was a mere fact, one he accepted because rejecting it would mean rejecting peace.

  "No," Retash agreed. "You will die with it."

  That, too, he accepted—not with the anguished longing he'd had before, but with the serenity of one who understands that death always comes, and no one can choose the time. In his particular case, it woul
d be soon: buried beneath the snows of Hannah's Ridge, gaining a tranquility that eluded most people their entire lives.

  Except this, too, proved to be wrong. Because the next night, the sixth Storm broke. The sun returned. A new moon dawned.

  And at last, the snow began to melt.

  ii. Caleph

  "Up."

  A shove prodded his body awake. The sensation was even more stifled than usual. He tried to open his eyes and they resisted him.

  Baltazar wasn't awake yet. It shouldn't be this difficult.

  "Get up!" The shove came again. Caleph concentrated and managed to lever his eyelids open as if they were a two-ton portcullis. Why is it so hard now? he thought with dread. Even this one slim window, found only at the cusp of sleep, was closing to him.

  Then Baltazar woke, slipping easily into control. "What?"

  "Things have changed," Faerloss said, just as Caleph realized he could see the bloody light of sunset seeping through the porthole. The sun's returned, he thought—but he suspected it was far more than that.

  They were in a posh cabin belowdecks in the Plethora, mid-voyage on their way back to Coward's Bay. Faerloss gestured at the porthole, where D'haan stood looking out. Baltazar climbed out of bed and joined him. The sun had indeed returned, its shimmering descent transforming the western sea to fire. But in the eastern sky, a moon Caleph had never seen hung in the sky like an omen, bloated and blue. Its light skipped across the waves in a stark interplay with the sun's, staining them cerulean on one side and crimson on the other.

  "The sixth Seal," D'haan said. "The girl must have found it." He smiled. "Ah, Lars. Your service far outlasts your death."

  "But that moon . . ." Baltazar said. "We never had anything like it."

  Faerloss shrugged. "The Pulse will do what it has to. Right now, there are more important things." He turned Baltazar from the window. "You said you could invoke the miracle of Homecalling."

  Caleph recognized the name; it was among the rarest and most potent of gifts, a miracle that could instantly return a traveling priest to his home temple. Few peasants even believed the power was real, and fewer priests still could invoke it.

  "I can. But I thought you didn't want me to."

  "Because we would have to complete the journey by boat. As I said, things have changed." Faerloss stepped into the shadows behind him and vanished into the darkness, only to emerge from the dimness in the opposite corner like a trick of the light.

  Caleph felt the last of Baltazar's hope crumble. "You can walk through the shadows again."

  "We have Lar'atul to thank," D'haan said. "Queen bless him."

  "There's no more need to delay." Faerloss grabbed the case that bore the Queen's remains. "We can return to Tal'aden now, and you can begin the ritual at once."

  Baltazar scoffed. "At once? Hardly. The remains must be purified, the altar prepared―"

  Faerloss stalked across the room and seized him by the collar of his nightshirt. "Don't toy with me, Baltazar. You made an oath. The time to keep that oath is here."

  "And I mean to!" Baltazar threw back. "You think I'm lying? Without purification, the ritual will fail—or even go awry. How displeased will our Queen be if She returns to find Her intellect half of what it was?"

  D'haan shrugged. "There is precedent for purification before miracles of great power. He may be sincere."

  Faerloss released him. "How long?"

  "A week. Maybe more, maybe less. I won't know for certain until I begin. And I'll need something else from you before I restore Her." Baltazar steadied himself for what he was about to say. "You need to assassinate Isaic Gregor."

  D'haan laughed.

  Faerloss glared. "Absolutely not. Your arrangement with the Queen provided for your continued survival in exchange for Hers. You've already gotten what you asked for. You're still here."

  "True," Baltazar allowed, "and I've every intention of doing as I promised. But I've endured three thousand years of imprisonment inside my own mind. That was never part of the agreement. I'm owed . . . compensation. And this is an easy task for you, now that the shadows are open again: simply walk in in the dead of night, take his head, and walk out. They have no defense."

  "It doesn't matter how easy it is," Faerloss said. "We owe you nothing."

  "The girl, then," Baltazar countered. "Lyseira Rulano."

  "I thought she was nothing to you?" D'haan chided him.

  "You're trying my patience," Faerloss growled. "You get survival. That was the arrangement, and you've gotten your due."

  "Then take it back," Baltazar dared him. "Go ahead. End me."

  "You'd just reform in your successor."

  "You can find out who it is easily enough. You can kill him, too, and I'll end. You'll be rid of me."

  Silence. The two men stared at each other. "You won't," Baltazar pressed, "because you know I'm the only one who can do it."

  "You've built a church full of―"

  "None of them know the ritual. Not even Caleph knew it. I destroyed all the printed records in the years after Ethaniel died. Maybe someone could rebuild it, but that would take decades—even centuries. Do you really trust D'haan to behave himself that long without the Queen here to hold his leash? Or Vhesus? The man is a rabid dog."

  "And yet you're reneging anyway," Faerloss said, "so I may as well kill you where you stand."

  "But I'm not. I merely want one more concession. Our Queen would do the same in my place."

  "Don't compare yourself to Her," Faerloss snarled.

  "M'sai, Faerloss, come off it," D'haan said. "He's right about Her. Vhesus, too. And me, for that matter. You know I'm a slippery bastard. For two decades? I wouldn't trust me.

  "But I won't kill Isaic, or the girl. It would end the war, and this war might be useful to the Queen," he mused. "Division and strife make a land easier to conquer, should She wish it. And if She doesn't, then we can end anyone"—he favored Baltazar with a significant glance—"She desires."

  "Colmon, then," Baltazar pressed. "Make sure my men take Colmon."

  "Take Colmon?" D'haan said. "I thought you already held it."

  "I did. But I got word that the King reached them first. It doesn't matter—I have the men to take it back. But it's been a long winter, as you said, and I don't know what defenses they've developed, or how much attrition we've suffered. Guarantee that we take back Colmon, and I'll revive the Queen."

  "You'll revive the Queen regardless," Faerloss said, "or I will cut your legs off an inch at a time."

  "What's to keep you from asking something else after this?" D'haan pressed. "You could try to hold this over us for eternity."

  "I'm not stupid," Baltazar said. "I know who I'm dealing with."

  "Do you?" D'haan tsked. "I'm not sure." He looked to Faerloss and shrugged. "If he does anything to jeopardize Her once the ritual begins, the bond will tell us. We can return quickly." He looked again at Baltazar. "And he knows if he fails, he dies. That has never changed. I don't think he'll cross us. He's too much of a coward.

  "Besides, I'll admit the idea of joining a battle between a bunch of primitives has a certain appeal. I'm sure Vhesus will meet us in Tal'aden, once he realizes where we are—you know he'll be thrilled by the idea. And it's just one battle. It preserves the war as a gift for the Queen of Dawn, on the day of Her rebirth."

  D'haan spread his hands and smiled. "I can accept those terms. Where's the harm?"

  iii. Melakai

  A sound jolted him awake, a sound so urgent it reached into his dreams and yanked his eyes open.

  It had been well after midnight before he'd gotten to sleep in the first place. He and the rest of the city had crowded into the streets, marveling at the twin moons—some crying doomsday, some laughing, some weeping openly. At Majesta he'd heard the Kesprey had broken into hymns, filling the square with praise for Akir. None of it mattered to him. All he'd cared about was the hope that he'd hear this glorious sound, now echoing up and down the street like the tolling of
a Dawnday bell:

  The drip of melting snow.

  He wasn't supposed to be at the palace until highsun today, but it didn't matter. He pulled on his clothes, washed fast, and left. Already rivulets of icy water ran down the streets. Children roared and splashed in the slush. The sun beat down like a memory of summer.

  Colmon, he thought, and made for the King.

  The palace crackled with activity. He cut his way through a cascade of frantic pages and running servants to Jacinth, one of his Crownwardens. "Where is the King?"

  "Everywhere," Jacinth said. "Cort and Ipana are with him, in his study upstairs last I heard. He's calling a congress."

  "I bet he is." Kai brushed past the man and headed for the stairs. On the first landing he crossed Isaic and his guards coming the other way.

  "Captain," Isaic said, as if he'd expected to see him. "I've messengers out for Logan, Lyseira, and the chanters. They'll join us in the war room as soon as they arrive."

  "Brutus?" Kai said. "Tavost?"

  "Already there. I want you there, too."

  Kai nodded and fell in with the others. "Any idea how many men might be ready?"

  "We had 3,000 strong before the snows fell. I know we've had some attrition since then. Brutus should have a full report." They slipped through the crowd on the first floor and down the stairs to the sub-level, where the war room waited. A handful of pages and palace officers rose as they entered, as did Brutus and Tavost, huddled over a map of Colmon.

  "Sit." Isaic crossed the room and looked down at the map. "Tell me."

  Brutus tapped an icon on the map labeled Oak Bridge—the only access into Colmon from the west. "We need to hold the Ley," he said. "The river should be wild with the winter melt. They won't dare cross without the bridge. If Tollin's smart, he'll burn it before we even get there."

  "Send a pigeon. Tell him that."

  "Yes, Your Highness."

  "Your Highness," Tavost interjected. "There are other bridges besides the Oak. We should expect some number of their troops will get through—or, that the clerics will have a way to spirit them across. Destroying Oak Bridge will delay them. It won't stop them."