Of Dark Things Waking (The Redemption Chronicle Book 3)

by Adam J Nicolai

  "Please! Shaviid! Kesprey!"

  And then to repeat it, again and again—until at last she had gouged every hidden piece of goodness from the world and led it to the slaughter.

  "Ylise! Rayonth!"

  Seth! Even her brother had fallen prey to her swirling aura of death.

  Then Jasleen emerged from the darkness, pale and ghostly. She stumbled next to Lyseira, lit her own staff, and joined her in the call. Shaviid came in next, coughed up by the violent night.

  Tears streaked the blood and filth of her cheeks. She lowered her staff and let her friends take up the cry as her arms recovered; let her voice babble her incoherent relief as the battle regurgitated them one by one.

  "Good," Xavier called, when thirty or so had answered the signal. "That's enough. Move out."

  Leaving the battle triggered a wash of emotion in her, equal parts shame and relief. As they made their way up the hill through town she caught a few townsfolk throwing fevered peeks from their windows, but the Colmon streets were deserted. The converts they'd made during their winter trip here were nowhere to be found. It bothered her, but distantly; she was too strained, too near her breaking point, to muster any real concern about it.

  When they drew near, Xavier ordered everyone's light sources extinguished. A well and a final few run-down homes marked Colmon's northern border. The road stretched into the plains, paralleling the Ley River on their left, and somewhere in the distant darkness, it bobbed with torches and clericlight.

  "There they are." The Captain looked at Harth and Lyseira. "What can we do to them from here?"

  "A lot," Harth growled. "Oster, Rebecca, Roshan—ready your war chants. As much as we can throw, straight into the mass of them."

  "Godsflame?" the Captain pressed, still waiting on Lyseira.

  She couldn't tear her eyes from the bouncing lights that heralded the arrival of a second force—an enemy coming to destroy what she had worked so hard to build, to punish her and everyone she knew for the crime of surviving the winter. She was so tired of fixing the damage others delivered. This, she realized, was finally her chance to prevent those wounds—

  —by inflicting some of her own.

  "Call on the fire," she told the others, "and see what Akir sends you."

  "Archers, ready," Xavier called.

  Then Lyseira stepped forward, and expelled her rage in a blast of flame.

  It exploded in the heart of the advancing army, igniting several ranks and sending the soldiers running. Two Detonations from Harth's Arwah followed. A vortex that tore into them like a rabid wolf, lightning dancing in the darkness. A hail of arrows.

  "Call the fire!" Lyseira roared. "We came here to save these people—they've come to kill them! Call the fire!" Again the fire blazed in her, erupting from midair among the enemy's charging cavalry. Horse and soldier screamed alike, instantly blazing and scattered. Then her Kesprey called Godsflame of their own—not the narrow pillars from heaven that caught an enemy or two, like Baltazar's clerics invoked, but ravenous explosions of brilliant white and yellow nearly as large as her own.

  She remembered Helix being framed for murder. Imagined Cosani and Chon burning to death in Red Quarter. The torture they had all endured in the prison beneath Keswick.

  "Leave us alone!" she screamed. "Leave us alone!" The Arwah pummeled the darkness with another round of lightning and cyclones. The night around her crackled with jolts of light; the enemy army became a tapestry of death.

  Shrieking and panic-stricken, powerless to defend or fight back, they broke.

  Soldiers hurled down their weapons to flee. Horses bucked their riders and trampled them. Clericlights flickered and vanished as the entire company fell into hysteria.

  So easy, she thought. Catch them unawares, undefended, and the battle's over before it begins. She could even still see—the first blots had appeared in her vision, but her endurance had improved dramatically over the months, and blindness was no threat, not yet. They could rally right now, and we could still treat them to more.

  Harth's chanters lay into the survivors, sending them scurrying into the darkness like rats.

  "Hold fire," Xavier ordered. "They're routed. Hold fire." The archers obeyed; after a heartbeat, Harth's chanters fell silent. "Helix?" the Captain asked. "Are we done here?"

  Helix cocked his head like a dog listening for prey. "I . . . I think so, but . . ." He looked vaguely around. "But we haven't won. I can't tell . . . but this isn't over. We haven't won."

  "We'll stay here until the enemy's cleared out, then send up a scout. If they regroup―" The Captain cut off abruptly, his jaw hanging open in pain.

  "Captain?" one of his lieutenants said.

  Xavier's eyes drifted downward to the slash across his stomach. "How . . . ?" he said, and then jerked sideways, plunging from his horse to land face-first in the mud. His body spasmed as his back tore open.

  "Oh my God!" The lieutenant staggered backward. "Captain Xavier―!" he tried to shout, but his throat was torn out before he could finish.

  A horn sounded in the darkness, a signal to the enemy to regroup.

  Harth chanted—six quick syllables ending with a wave of the hand—and a dark figure flickered into existence, looming above the two bodies. Its hood shrouded its face, and fresh blood ran from its blade.

  "It was a good showing," a voice hissed from within the cloak, "but I'm afraid this is not a fight you can win."

  And it launched itself at Lyseira's Kesprey like an arrow of darkness.

  26

  i. Takra

  "Keep it up!" Takra roared around the crushing weight of the Cyclone spell that held the bridge and the Ironflesh that was keeping her alive. She had no idea how long she had been here, keeping the bridge secure through pure force of will while the two armies pummeled each other across the river. She was exhausted and covered in blood—some hers, some her enemies', some her friends'—and the stubborn, sehking bridge refused to be torn loose by her vortex.

  And yet something had shifted. The onslaught from the far bank had lessened. The cries of battle from upstream had grown more sporadic.

  Suddenly a ragged cheer went up around her. Bewildered, she spared a glance for the opposite bank and saw them falling back into the night.

  "Maintain," Takra said, catching the eyes of Carren and Kirkus, who were keeping up each of the other two tornadoes. "Hang on until they're gone."

  Carren kept her fist held in front of her, but broke into a wild grin. "We've got them," she said, and her head skipped away from her neck in a fountain of blood.

  Takra's mind went white. She could feel her own answering smile, frozen macabrely on her face. "Carren?"

  "Blesséd sehk," Kirkus gasped. "What in sehk was―?"

  His face split open from the scalp down, drenching his mouth in blood before his body toppled over.

  What? The smile had vanished now, leaving her awash in horror. What?

  A black boulder streaked through the sky beyond Kirkus's body, slamming down near the bridge in an eruption of lightning and flame. The army's cheers there curdled into shrieks.

  Another of her chanters died in a gruesome spray of blood. "Takra?" Vitar shouted, locking eyes with her a split second before his stomach exploded.

  Do something! she screamed at herself. It was all happening so fast, so impossibly fast. Do something!

  She dropped the Cyclone, seized a Soothing, and shrieked it into the night. It stripped a Vanish spell from the Pulse, and she saw a creature of pure darkness—wrapped in a black cloak, shadows trailing it like sparks of midnight—kicking up the mud as it pelted toward her.

  She fell back, her arm jerking up to block as it reared to strike. A line of starving crimson light gleamed from the center of its sword, which slammed into her arm and glanced away with a shriek like tearing steel. But despite her Ironflesh, the blow blasted her to the mud, flat on her back.

  The thing hissed and scampered backward, its sword darting through some kind of display
as she regained her feet. The weight of her Ironflesh spell vanished, leaving her exposed as the shadow readied to charge again.

  What? her mind stammered. How . . . ?

  "Ves!" Solon shouted from somewhere in the night, and a white sliver slammed into the shadow, jerking it off balance.

  "Ves!" Takra launched a missile of her own, catching the thing in the chest. "Ves!"

  But this time it was ready. It flicked its sword, throwing its other hand wide for balance, and parried the spell.

  "Ves!" she cried, and it parried again, then spun back to block another dart of light from Solon.

  No. Her blood ran cold, her mouth agape with disbelief. No, no, that’s not poss—

  "Here!" someone shouted. An arrow sprouted from the shadow's neck, then another from its arm. It snarled and charged Takra, but a horde of soldiers slammed into it first, bore it to the ground.

  "Ves!" Takra shrieked. The brightness lanced into it, making it buck beneath the pile of soldiers. "Ves!"

  "I've got him!" one of the men shouted. "I've got his arm!" They dragged the shadow to its knees as it snapped and growled, thrashing. "'I've got his sword!"

  They cut off its head. The line of crimson in the heart of its sword died, and the cloud of shadow vanished, leaving a corpse in filthy white robes—a cleric.

  Again, Takra's mind reeled. What?

  "What in Hel was that thing?" Solon said.

  The soldier holding the shadow's sword drew the blade across his own throat.

  "Kessen?" one of the other soldiers said.

  Kessen locked eyes with Takra, pleading silently as the blood ran out of him.

  "Kessen?"

  "What in sehk?"

  "Kessen!"

  The shadows stole in around him, draping him in a midnight cloak. His features vanished. The sword's heart reignited.

  The butchery resumed.

  ii. Harth

  The darkness became a blanket of horror. Again and again the shadow materialized from it, struck, and vanished. In the haze of this reeling nightmare he caught glimpses of death—Roshan spilled in the mud, Oster with eyes pale and empty, Kesprey slaughtered like lambs—as he flailed about, off-balance and terrified. His remaining chanters panicked and started firing their spells in every direction, tricked by the flickering shadow into devastating their own forces with fire and lightning.

  "Stop!" he screamed. A Detonation hurled a squad of friendly soldiers—men he had dined with, diced with, during the trip here—aside like flaming rag dolls. "Arwah, stop!" No one heeded him.

  A Kesprey knelt next to Xavier, invoked a healing miracle, and with an unearthly shriek, spontaneously ignited.

  The shadow was everywhere and nowhere. It was death personified.

  "Light!" Lyseira cried. A blazing clericlight dawned, banishing the night in a claustrophobic circle around her. "It needs the darkness!" Another clericlight flowered from a different Kesprey.

  Harth started to Ascend to make a chanterlight of his own, and felt a dangerous wrench of pain behind his eyes. He had spent the last reserves of his strength. Any chant he made now could kill him.

  A third Kesprey summoned divine light, this one just in time to illuminate the charging line of regrouped enemy cavalry.

  There was no time to cry a warning, no time to think. He Ascended and spat a Farstep, felt every nerve in his body ignite with agony as the Pulse jerked him out of the way. The world tilted sideways and dumped him into the mud, alone, somewhere in the nameless dark.

  The answering cry of pain in his mind was excruciating. On his hands and knees in the filth, the plains spinning around him, he vomited blood. The first glimmers of lightning flickered in his veins like premonitions. Blind agony left him powerless as he heard the enemy cavalry slam into the shattered ranks of Xavier's unit, trampling them.

  Their impending victory had become an utter rout.

  One Mal'shedaal did this, he thought. One.

  As if summoned, the darkness swirled into the form of a cloaked swordsman.

  "There you are," it seethed as it stalked toward him. "A leader of chanters, are you? 'Arh'wah'?" It laughed, a black noise that dripped with scorn. "Arh'wah of what? Humiliating defeat? Devastating loss?" It kicked him in the chest, flipping him onto his back. Harth raised a feeble hand to ward it away; it ignored him and planted a boot against his chest. "A true leader of chanters will rise tonight, but you won't be here to see Her." It started to raise its sword for the deathblow—and stopped, its head suddenly snapping toward the east. It froze like that, tense and trembling.

  Then, as if Harth were a gnat it had already forgotten, it stepped backward and vanished into the dark.

  iii. Iggy

  Iggy raced up the hallway growling, his black paws flashing beneath him. The Scarlet Guard soldiers shrank away, stunned by the sight of a panther in the crystal tower. Retash and Seth capitalized on the instant of surprise, clapping enough heads together and sweeping enough legs that Iggy shot right through the melee and into the grand chamber beyond.

  The smell hit him first: the dust and stale air of a room that hadn't been used in years. The acoustics told him faster than his eyes that the space was huge. The far wall was curved and studded with looming stained glass windows that overlooked the city square far below.

  Despite the room's size, there were only three people in it. A man in a magnificent white robe with golden thread, wearing a crown, standing with his eyes closed and both hands outstretched, praying. The Fatherlord. His arms reached toward what Iggy could only assume was the Foundation Altar, some forty paces away—a block of marble inscribed with glowing runes. The air about it shimmered with heat; Iggy could feel it from here.

  The other two people in the room were the Fatherlord's Preservers, both of whom immediately leapt for Iggy. He shot beneath them, streaking toward the altar, and cut them out of his mind. In ten sprinting strides he reached the altar; it felt like approaching a bonfire.

  He became the man. Ripped the sledgehammer from his back. Through the glare of the altar's power, he saw a cluttered array of old black bones, laid out in a vaguely humanoid shape. A familiar skull, surrounded now by a black haze that throbbed in the heart of the altar's glow like a disease, and thin vines of pink flesh that crept from each bone, slowly sheathing them and knitting them together.

  There was no smell from the Pulse. No repulsive rot that warned him of the evil he was witnessing. But he knew he was looking at the deadliest threat that had ever existed.

  He swung the sledgehammer, roaring, straight at the skull—

  —and the hammer's head shattered, pelting him with red-hot shards of iron.

  He stumbled backward in horror. Dropped the jagged remnant of the hammer handle. His eyes roved to the Fatherlord, still forty paces away, whose droning had never slowed—and then to the Preservers, with a sudden, fierce surge of dread.

  But they had moved to engage Seth and Retash, who had pushed into the room through the broken double doors. In the hallway beyond, Melakai lay into the few remaining Scarlet Guard, overpowering them easily as his blue sword flashed.

  Cold logic stole over him, freezing out his dread. He looked at the Fatherlord, who seemed oblivious to everything happening around him.

  We can still do this.

  The most powerful cleric on Darnoth and his two Preservers—but they were three against five, and the Fatherlord was his for the taking.

  We can still do this.

  End the war with a single strike. End thirty centuries of lies and brutal domination. And then, when the ritual ended and the altar's protections died, finish what they had come for.

  He broke into a dead run, his eyes fixed on the Fatherlord, and saw, behind him, three shadows flow out of the room's darkest corner. The stench of rot blasted over him, of a nearly inconceivable perversion of nature.

  No.

  He stumbled and drew up, his determination shattering into splinters of screaming fear.

  Three? All three?

/>   The three forms fanned into the room, pulling black swords, and a line of crimson crept up the centers of their blades.

  He glanced at Seth and Retash, already fighting for their lives against the two strongest Preservers in Darnoth. He saw Kai and Elthur push through the broken door, their eyes trained, like his had been, on the impervious altar.

  And every ounce of his horror erupted in a single scream of warning:

  "Mal'shedaal!"

  iv. Seth

  Retash was the only reason he was still alive.

  The Fatherlord's two Preservers knew he was the weakest combatant in this fight. They drove at him relentlessly, and he managed to dodge or deflect some of their strikes, but he would have fallen under a hail of fists within seconds if Retash had not been there to protect him from the rest. Again and again a knee sneaked beneath his defenses or a deceptive elbow flickered from his opponent's turned back, and each time, Retash intervened: turning away the strike or maneuvering Seth into a lucky lunge that spared him. Seth felt like the eye of a hurricane, a point of calm in the center of a maelstrom of violence as the two Preservers and Retash swirled around him.

  Retash's maneuvering forced the Preservers away from the door, buying just enough space for Kai and Elthur to slip into the room. Seth dared not take his eyes from the fight for more than an instant at a time, but in these fevered glances he saw them splitting up—Kai heading to join Iggy in an attack on the Fatherlord, and Elthur racing for the Altar.

  The Preservers will have to rejoin the Fatherlord, Seth realized with a thrill of cold anticipation. And when they turn their backs—

  Iggy's scream of warning shattered the thought before it finished.

  The Mal'shedaal poured into the room, their black cloaks like smears of shadow behind them. One of the Fatherlord's Preservers quailed, his eyes straying to the three forms in horror—and Retash took brutal advantage, crushing his windpipe and sending him, bug-eyed and gagging, to the floor. The other Preserver fell back, his guard up and his eyes locked on the Mal'shedaal.