by Matthew Ward
Tzila twisted from a lunge. Silk torn from her cloak fluttered atop a tomb. [[You can’t win. Too old and tired.]]
“You think I don’t know that?” Kurkas replied, breath hot in his throat. The realisation she no longer bothered even to parry hurt more than his throbbing back.
[[Then why fight?]]
He slashed again, the sword heavier in his hand than ever. “If you were really her, you’d know.”
Another lunge went wide, cheated by a slow pirouette. A sabre’s guard crashed into his cheek, rattling teeth and running the world red. Lungs heaving, Kurkas fell to one knee and spat blood into the ash.
From the moment Viktor’s claymore first met the Goddess’ sword, Josiri knew he couldn’t win. For all that the flame kept Viktor’s shadow at bay, it couldn’t do the same for his steel. Only strength might do that, and Josiri’s rapidly faded, seeping from the gash in his left arm. He clung two-handed to the grips as a drowning man to driftwood, the moonlight flame his only warmth in a world growing steadily colder.
Again and again, Viktor hammered at him. No longer recognisable as himself. Barely recognisable as a man. A grim apparition, cloaked in shadow. A hole in the world.
Somehow Josiri met Viktor’s steel with his own, old lessons roused in desperation for a fight far beyond him. But for every blow countered, another cheated the flame. Armour blunted some. Too many slipped through, slicking steel and rushing garments red.
The world beyond the alabaster flame grew dreary and fuzzed, but within the flame Josiri found purpose. The will to carry on, even when every inch of him screamed, or else had fallen silent.
The claymore arced down. Josiri sent the white flame to meet it, the blow driving him to one knee. Fire raced along the locked swords, Viktor darker than ever behind it.
“The dutiful son!” bellowed Viktor. “Determined to repeat his mother’s mistakes!”
The blades slipped with a banshee screech. Hilts met.
“This isn’t about my mother,” gasped Josiri. “This is about my promise to you.”
Muscles screaming, he heaved the swords aside. Old stone crumbled beneath the claymore’s strike, more of the bridge’s abused northern wall plunging into the seething Grelyt.
As Viktor stumbled away, Josiri rose on rubbery legs.
“You won’t win!” snarled Viktor.
“I will,” gasped Josiri. The sword dipped to the road, too heavy for what little of him remained. “And if I don’t, another will. It’s the rule of the Southshires, Viktor. Don’t you see that? A Phoenix will come. The chains will be broken. The darkness never lasts!”
With a roar that owed more to madness than to man, Viktor barrelled forward, claymore hacking down. Somehow, Josiri brought the Goddess’ sword up to meet it.
Fire faded with a dull crack. Ashana’s sword, her last gift – the last hope, offered by an enemy who had become the finest friend – split asunder, the upper part pinwheeling away.
The blow’s force sent Josiri sprawling to the roadway, jagged hilt in hand, numbed limbs cold as the fire’s warmth departed, leaving him with the dying embers of a life pushed beyond its limit.
Viktor loomed above, eclipsing even the moon.
The night grew darker. Josiri heard the mists calling, their song sweet and solemn, their welcome soothing to bones aching for rest. And there in the darkness, he glimpsed a familiar, impossible sight. A pale, vaporous figure moving purposefully through the mists, arms crossed and hands clasped to her chest.
“Calenne?” he breathed.
After so long trapped within the mists or in a body of clay, Calenne’s senses rebelled at the ephemeral world’s glory. Even beneath moonlight, the colours were brighter, the sounds crisper. And the smells… The foulness of sweat. The coppery miasma of Josiri’s blood. Sickness crowded her thoughts. She forced it back. Nausea was of the body, and she nothing but spirit. A cyraeth set loose from Otherworld at the Raven’s hand to settle old business.
“Leave my brother be, Viktor,” she said. “You know he’s right.”
Viktor turned, the shadow swirling about him. “Calenne?” The claymore fell as bruised and bloodied features cracked to disbelieving joy. “What is this? How…?”
So dreadful he looked, no longer even the Black Knight of her unquiet dreams but a suffocating, malevolent spirit become mockery of a man… And yet, she felt the allure. The piece of her that had been Calenne Akadra belonged to him, was part of him. It yearned for unity, and its yearning became hers also.
Calenne tamped it down, held tight to the squirming bundle wrapped in her arms. The Raven’s collateral. A bargain to deliver a god’s vengeance, and perhaps a measure of peace to those touched by Viktor’s madness.
“You’re lost, Viktor. Can’t you see that? You’re everything you swore never to be.”
His expression darkened with hurt. “So you turn on me as well?”
“On what you’ve become.” Drawing level with Josiri’s body, she sought traces of life and found almost nothing. She choked back the memory of tears, and cursed herself for arriving too late. “Not what you were.”
She spread her hands and a pale, ghostly raven took wing. It spiralled through mists, climbing ever higher, and flew away east.
The light shifted as Ocranza closed in behind. Tzila stepped closer. Slow. Deliberate. Kurkas flinched as the sabre’s icy point slipped under his chin.
He met the sallet helm’s empty gaze one last time. “One last bastion? D’you remember? You and me against the world. Whatever happened to that?”
Kurkas started as a spectral raven came screeching out of the western mists, ghostly feathers streaming behind. It shot past his shoulder and, without slowing, dived straight at Tzila, passing through breastplate and tabard with a ripple of green-white light. Sabres slipping from her hands, she doubled over, clutching at a tomb for support.
Bemused, but never one to let opportunity pass him by, Kurkas stumbled to his feet. An Ocranza’s shield-barge threw him to the ground, vision swimming as his head hit stone.
Expressionless shadow-set faces blotted out the moon.
The war hammer smote Sevaka’s shield and set her staggering. The Ocranza trudged on, its backswing hurling aside a knight and forcing the gap wider. Others barrelled in its wake, and were met in turn by a rush of green from Sevaka’s right, Rosa at its head.
“Essamere!”
The hammer-wielder toppled back, its arm shattered by the strike of Rosa’s sword. Sevaka rammed her own notched blade forward and cast another back into the mists.
But through the rush of battle, one clarion rang true: the Ocranza were too many, and Essamere too few.
Helping a bruised knight to her feet, Sevaka stared toward Eskavord. At the foes yet between them and the gate. Ocranza. Stray survivors of the 14th in King’s Blue. Drazina in midnight black. Perhaps a hundred. Perhaps more. And her strength was spent. Essamere was spent. Too many dead, and of those who remained, few could hold both sword and shield.
But still they came, gathering one last time to the hawk and the sword.
“It’s death to go down there,” said Rosa.
“I’ve been dead before.” Sevaka forced a smile. “And you’re going, aren’t you?”
“Only because you’ll be there.”
A hundred thoughts vied for expression as their eyes met. A thousand words to go for ever unsaid because, in the end, their life together had been too brief. But there were worse ways to meet an end, and no better company in which to do so.
“Until Death, Lady Orova.”
Rosa nodded, lips tight and eyes shining. “Until Death, Lady Orova.”
Sevaka lifted her sword anew, no longer her heaviest burden. With Essamere at her back and her love beside her, she went smiling to her doom.
Steel flashed over Kurkas’ head, the crunch of clay close behind. An Ocranza staggered back, shadow oozing from a broken skull and into the night. Another collapsed, a sabre buried to the hilt in its chest. A third managed tw
o parries before its shadow bled free.
Tzila reached down, hand spread.
[[One last bastion, Vladama?]] Though she looked the same in aspect and posture, the voice was different. Still hollow, but rounded, softer… though with bite behind. A woman ill-accustomed to suffering fools gladly, even when they were friends.
Elation surging through the pain, Kurkas took Tzila’s – Revekah’s – hand. “Being awfully familiar, ain’t you, Halvor?”
[[Shut up.]]
Bones creaking and an idiot grin on his face, Kurkas reached his feet.
“Knew you’d come back to me,” he lied.
[[I don’t remember any of it,]] she replied softly. [[Not in detail. Just glimpses through the Dark. And rage… So much rage, and none of it mine.]]
“Then you don’t remember me handing your arse to you in that duel?”
She tilted her head. [[No you didn’t.]]
Impossibly, he felt his grin broaden. “No I didn’t. Glad to have you back, you old baggage.”
Revekah flinched and shrank back. [[Anastacia… What have I done?]]
Swaying with exhaustion, Kurkas grabbed her shoulder. “Wasn’t you.” The words seemed worthless, pitiful. Never much one for finer feelings, he’d no idea how to ease a pain he knew he’d never fully understand. “She knew that. Bloody knew everything, did the plant pot.”
Breath crackling and popping in his chest, Kurkas peered at the Ocranza drawing nearer through the mists. Eschewing his sword, he reclaimed a mace from amid broken clay and set his back to Revekah’s. Too many to beat, but not too many to fight… not with a friend at his side.
One last bastion indeed.
As to last words? Well, what else could they be?
“For the Phoenix, Captain Halvor?”
The sabres came up. [[For the Phoenix.]]
Sidara shrieked and doubled over, golden light again flaring beneath shadow. Trembling, uncertain – the sword in his hand feeling more useless than ever – Altiris edged closer.
“I know you’re still in there, Sidara. I can see you fighting what he’s done to you.”
She straightened, dark eyes murderous. The light died, smothered by ascendant shadow. Frost crackled along Altiris’ sword and stung his cheeks. “The Republic needs Viktor, and he needs me. I won’t fail him!”
Gone were the accusations of apparitionhood, Altiris realised. Did Sidara see him for who he was? Or did she simply no longer care? How much did Droshna’s shadow influence her sight? Influence her? Or was he grasping at straws, desperate for anything offering hope that the Sidara he loved still existed?
Gritting his teeth against the cold, Altiris pressed on. “The Republic needs many things, but Droshna isn’t one of them. He lost his fight against the Dark long ago. He’ll drag us all down with him before he’s done!”
“Maybe he should!” Sidara’s eyes blazed gold, shadow rimming them as smoke rings flame. “Maybe that’s what the Republic deserves.”
“How can you say that?”
“They killed Ana! Viktor told me.”
The words made sense of so much. “Sidara… Viktor murdered Ana.”
Shadow rushed back, drowning gold in darkness. It swirled about them both, concealing all else from sight, whipping ash and mist to a storm. The cold dug deeper.
“You’re lying!” shouted Sidara.
“I’ve never been able to lie to you, even when I’ve wanted to! Ana… She tried to stop all this, and Viktor killed her for it. I held her as she died. I watched the wind blow her soul out to sea. But she never stopped fighting him. Nor will I, even if it kills me too.”
Altiris cast aside his useless sword. A sword he knew he’d never be able to use. It vanished into spiralling shadow, lost to sight.
“But I won’t fight you. I can’t. If that’s weakness, I don’t care.” Willing shaking limbs to motion, he closed the last distance and took her hands. Warmth and chill rippled across chafed, frostbitten skin as Light and Dark fought for mastery of her soul. “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve wanted to help folk. To protect them from things they can’t fight. Well, they need you now! I need you!”
Golden light crackled through the shadow-storm. Fitful. Sputtering. Sidara doubled over, shadow burning across shuddering shoulders.
“Help me!” she screamed.
Altiris clung tight. “However I can. With whatever I have to give. I will always catch you. But you don’t need my help. You’ve never needed it. You’re Sidara Reveque. The Lady of Light. And if history and scripture agree on anything, it’s that light burns away shadow.”
Sidara’s eyes tightened as she pulled away. The tremor subsided from her shoulders. Fists clenched and tears running down her face, she screamed – no longer in loss or confusion, but in wrath fit to set the world ablaze.
Light overtook the lychfield and the ruined church, the night suddenly bright as day.
Sixty-Eight
Sunlit fire raged across the eastern skies. Borne aloft on Sidara’s full-throated scream, it leapt higher and higher. Dancing flames burned away the mists and coalesced to a spread-winged form against the night sky, a storm of burning dust herald to its fury. The Phoenix of Argatha Bridge come to Eskavord.
And Viktor’s shadow howled.
He felt it flee Sidara, its agony his as fire consumed it from within. His connections to the Ocranza – to the Drazina and survivors of the 14th – blinked out one by one. Burned to nothing as the Dark writhed.
The blaze of light brought the Essamere charge to a stumbling standstill. Rosa turned away too late, her vision seared by purpled splotches and the after-image of a vast and wondrous firebird. Cries of amazement echoed around her as the phoenix-shape faded into the diffuse glow of an early dawn.
But Rosa had eyes only for the Eskavord gate, and a fading of another sort.
The Ocranza host that had promised death moments before stood unmoving, shadow streaming from cracks in clay skin. One by one, they collapsed in upon themselves, weapons falling from frozen hands and limbs shattering on the ground. The living souls among them – Drazina and the survivors of the 14th – freed of that same shadow, fell to their knees and wept.
“Blessed Lumestra,” murmured Sevaka.
The Ocranza shuddered before Kurkas’ mace even struck, toppling backwards to shatter amid the ruins of those already bested. All around, the tale was the same – murderous, tireless assailants become motionless statues, become scattered potsherds amid the ash.
“I don’t bloody believe it!” Weariness fled and pain forgotten, he cast down the mace. “Would you look at that, Halvor?”
Receiving no answer, he turned to find her sitting on a tomb’s edge, sallet helm removed and her porcelain face towards the east, and the promise of a rising sun. Shadow fled like smoke from her empty eyes.
“No.” Kurkas’ knee cracked on stone as he scrambled to reach her. He barely felt it. “Not you too! Not after all this!”
[[I don’t belong here.]] Revekah cocked her head, the motion stiff, reluctant. [[But thanks for not giving up on me.]]
He nodded, his throat sore. “You did good, Halvor.” Clasping bloody fingers to a fist, he offered one last salute. “Keep a spot for me on that bastion. You and me, we ain’t done.”
She offered no reply, just stared off into the distance. One more statue amid the ash.
Tears pricking his cheek, Kurkas sank down beside her, and watched the sun come up.
Viktor desperately gathered back what little of his shadow yet obeyed, taking into himself the gifts spread so generously. The sheer, suffocating rush of it all stole his breath away, roused anger to grim heights as his dream of the Republic’s salvation crumbled.
“What is this?” he bellowed. Josiri was beyond answer, his broken body in puddled gore upon the bridge’s crest. He rounded on Calenne. “What have you done?”
“What you once did for me. I gave someone a chance to find their truth. It wasn’t hard. You make enemies like no other man I’ve know
n. And you’ve spread yourself too thin.”
Blood roaring in his veins, Viktor grabbed at her.
She drifted back, vaporous form slipping through his fingers and eyes welling with pity. “The Ocranza. Sidara. All those poor, broken souls you’ve twisted to your cause. A tapestry of shadow, unravelled by a single loose thread. One you left dangling when you should have given her peace.”
“You?”
“Tzila. Revekah. Half of her in the Raven’s keeping, and half in yours. The conduit by which you dredged your soldiers from Otherworld. You, Revekah and Sidara, all woven together, and together to the dead. Returning Revekah to the living world – making her whole – unravelled those threads. Your soldiers have peace, and Sidara is free.”
Through the black raging clouds of his thoughts, Viktor grasped her meaning. “You bargained with the Raven?”
“He believes so. He hates you so much he gladly set Revekah free, if only for a little while. In truth, I offered him only what I’d already promised myself. That you’d pay for what you’ve done. In my name. In Josiri’s. And in that of the honourable, decent man I once loved, and whose face you wear.” She drew closer, almost translucent in the rising sunlight. “Viktor Akadra died long ago. Viktor Droshna dies today.”
Viktor spread his arms, chest heaving with bitter laughter. With anger came strength. The strength of a Dark no longer divided filled every fibre of his being. Even as his ephemeral body ebbed, the rest of him – the only part that any longer mattered – grew stronger still.
“And who will kill him? You? A formless cyraeth fading in sunlight? Josiri?” He cast a contemptuous hand towards the body on the bridge. “He already tried. The Raven’s too craven to challenge me again, or else why send you as his herald?”
Viktor knew he was raving, but what else was there now? Surrounded by ingrates and betrayers, his dreams unmade. But the Dark was eternal, and he was of the Dark. It could all begin again, all—