by Matthew Ward
Feeling warmth at his back, he turned to see Sidara on the road, the church’s broken spire at her back. Filthy and haggard, but with sunlight ablaze about her shoulders.
Altiris staggered at her side, sword in hand. Further back, more uniforms. Phoenixes. Drazina, freed from his shadow’s urging. And away to the west, beyond the bridge, a glimpse of hunter’s green.
“It’s over, Uncle,” said Sidara. “Can’t you see that? Look at what you’ve become. What you sought to make of me. Of us all.”
Viktor’s shadow shied from the light and he alongside, for what remained of him was held deep within it. One last betrayal. One final trust broken. After all he’d given her – after all his hopes – Sidara too stood against him. But Sidara was the key. Swords and steel were nothing to the Dark. Only the light mattered – the light, and its dousing.
Gathering his shadow close, he leapt, claymore a wicked arc against the sky.
Light blazed between them. Its backwash hurled Altiris away. It seared Viktor’s shadow to smoke and fed the fires Anastacia had buried in his ruined hands. But still the sword descended, fit to cleave Sidara head to toe.
Hands aflame, she caught the blade a hand’s breadth from her brow. The impact drove her to her knees, blood streaming from her palms.
Viktor snarled and strove to tear free. The claymore remained unflinching, trapped in a cage of light. With no other recourse, he sent his shadow at her, drowning its fear with his own rage. Radiance rose to meet it, his bellow conjoining Sidara’s cry of pain.
Mist faded into rising light. Yet the more Josiri strove to reknit woolly thoughts, the faster they slipped away. Eyes sought focus, and found nothing. What sound existed lay on the edge of hearing, separate from the half-world in which he lay. There was only pain. The weight of leaden limbs. Cobbles digging into his back.
And failure. Failure above all.
A grey shape marred blurred vision. A familiar voice rose out of murk.
“Hoist your sorry carcass, Josiri. You going to let the bastard win after all this?”
Eyes cleared and alighted on the impossible. Receding blond hair and tanned features twisted halfway between jest and frown. A stare that offered scant nonsense, and tolerated none in return.
“Izack?”
Other figures joined the first, they no less impossible than he. A part of Josiri knew they weren’t real, but spectres conjured from the delirium of his wounds. The rest struggled to believe.
“At least he remembers your name,” Malachi Reveque told Izack, a wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “That’s more than I expected.”
“You promised to protect my daughter.” Lilyana pulled from her husband’s side and drifted closer, golden hair spilling beneath a satin veil that did nothing to hide a worried frown. “She needs you.”
Sidara? Josiri frowned, the flare of sunlight beyond the mist finding new meaning.
“But it hurts,” he murmured.
“You’re wasting your time,” sneered Ebigail Kiradin, her arms folded and her back to the others. “He’s spineless, just like his mother. No use to anyone.”
Elzar exchanged a glance with Izack and shook his head. “You’re not helping, Ebigail.”
“Of course not,” she snapped. “Why ever might you think I’d want to?”
She turned away and froze, her gaze locked with a tall, dark-haired woman, who stood at a distance, her arms folded, and her lips twisted.
“Then remain silent.” Katya Trelan, gone so long from Josiri’s life that it took him a moment to recognise his own mother, offered him an appraising nod. “Words never mattered as much as deeds, anyway.”
They faded into the mists summoned from a dying mind, replaced by a slight, impish-featured woman with snow-white curls, eyes glinting with daylight and sable wings furled behind. Beautiful beyond words. Almost painful to look upon. She, at least, seemed almost real, if diminished. An echo of who she’d been. The piece of herself she’d once anchored in his soul, forgotten until this moment.
“Ana…” Josiri croaked. Loss returned, and pain with it. “Is this a dream? Or is it a memory?”
“We are our memories, Josiri. A walking record of triumphs and failures. What we’ve gained, and what we stand to lose.”
She’d said that, the day of her fall from the palace balcony. Before all this had begun. So afraid of being left behind.
“I’ve lost everything,” he replied. “I’ve nothing left.”
“You know that’s not true.” Anastacia crooked a smile. “You’ll always have me, wherever you go.”
Anastacia retreated before a newcomer’s approach, one somehow realer for all that she lacked the others’ substance. Cold, slender and the very palest of greys, the last of the delusion retreated before her, dark streets rising again out of mist.
Calenne shared a nod with the after-image of Anastacia and reached down a translucent, vaporous hand. Ghostly lips forming a smile Josiri had so seldom seen in all the long years of their life together. Behind her, two silhouettes snapped into focus against the night sky, one wreathed in shadow, the other shining with sunlight.
“Stand up, big brother. Trelans are stubborn. Let the world see it, one last time.”
Josiri’s hand found hers, and with it one last inch of purpose.
Even lost in the agony of Sidara’s light, Viktor felt the Goddess’ broken sword slide between his ribs – no longer ablaze, but steel served where magic could not. The shadow felt nothing. What remained of the man roared in pain. It lashed out a backhanded blow, hurling Josiri away.
In that moment of distraction his shadow, masterless for barely a heartbeat, boiled away from Sidara’s vengeful light, peeling apart piece by piece and howling to nothing.
Bereft of protection, Viktor’s body burned anew. Robbed of the Dark’s deception, the truth blazed brighter still, searing away the madness that had ruled him since Calenne’s second death – the lies in which he’d cloaked himself for months, years.
The truth burned hotter than any flame. It cut deeper than the Light. A hundred missteps, born of impatience. A noble goal worn away by a thousand lies and corrupted to its core.
And arrogance. Arrogance above all. For believing he’d held the whole of the answer, rather than a piece. For not heeding the warnings of those he loved, and violating their trust. And in the end, for believing he could control the Dark, and thus allowed it to make its desires his own. How else had he come to the Southshires, an army of Dark-shackled thralls at his command, lost in dreams of a realm remade in his image?
Malatriant had named him her heir, and so he was, not just in power, but in deed.
In the hour of her defeat, the Tyrant Queen had bade him forge her legacy into a shining realm, were that his wish. She’d always known it couldn’t be done. That the Dark would shape him as it had shaped her. Every step along that road, forward or back, had led here.
Another man might have recognised the danger. But not Viktor Droshna, the man who’d forsaken family name to boast of his shadow. The man who’d recognised the flaw in everyone but himself.
That hadn’t been the Dark’s doing. For that, he’d no one and nothing to blame but himself.
The man who’d believed he couldn’t lose, and so had lost everything.
Silhouettes danced beyond the light, a commotion of voices, growing louder.
Caught between Dark and the Light, Viktor Akadra wept, his tears hissing to steam.
“I can’t do this.”
Viktor barely heard Sidara’s words, but he felt her falter, the light fading with ebbing resolve. Even now – even after all he’d done – she couldn’t bring herself to be his slayer.
Letting the claymore fall, he took her pale, perfect hands in the blackened ruin of his own.
“End it.”
Golden eyes brimmed with hurt. “But you’re free! It’s over!”
So tempting to believe that. So seductive to think he might somehow atone for all he’d done through ri
ghteous deed. But he’d thought that way before, and those thoughts had dragged him deeper into the Dark.
“It’ll never be over, not while I live.” The words came harder now, the last of the shadow curling to nothing in Sidara’s radiance, and strength failing alongside. “Make me a lesson to last out the ages. A warning to all of the perils of the Dark.”
Sidara nodded, her eyes full of tears. How gratifying to yet be thought worthy of sorrow.
“Thank Josiri,” croaked Viktor, “for keeping his promise.”
The fire raged deeper. The pain unbearable, inevitable.
And in that last moment before his body burst to ash, Viktor Akadra – who’d striven ever to be a good man, for all that fate had chosen otherwise – at last glimpsed what it was to live a life beyond shadow, and free of the Dark.
With one last cry – more like the laughter of a gambler who’d cheated a crooked game than the howl of a damned soul – it was over. His back propped against the bridge’s wall, Josiri’s dimming eyes saw the wind darken with soot and the glory of Sidara’s light fade into the rising dawn. He heard the cheers of men and women who’d borne witness to a miracle, and felt nothing but an abiding peace.
“Josiri!” Sidara stumbled to her knees beside him, her wan face streaked with dirt and the horror in her eyes reflecting what he already knew of his wounds. “Don’t go! Let me help you!”
Light gathered about Sidara’s trembling, bloody hands. Soothing. Calm. But she shuddered as she reached for him, her strength expended in a battle Josiri knew he’d never truly understand. But even in fading sight he recognised well enough a soul teetering on the brink.
Breath bubbling in his throat, he closed his few working fingers over hers. “I’m too far gone. Save your strength. You’ll need it.”
“No. I can’t…”
She didn’t understand. Hadn’t seen enough of life to recognise what was bound to follow. But she’d learn. She’d have to.
Altiris appeared at Sidara’s shoulder, his expression no less stricken. “Josiri? Let her—”
“My choice,” Josiri murmured. “Sometimes… that’s all we have.”
He stared past them both, to the cobbles blackened by Viktor’s passing. And beyond, barely a pale outline against the thinning mist, a pale and watchful figure.
“He said to thank you, at the end,” murmured Sidara. “He said you kept your promise.”
Josiri sighed, the acknowledgement strange source of pride, even now.
With his last strength, he gazed up at Altiris, who’d laid a comforting hand on Sidara’s shoulder. “The Trelan name’s… yours now.” He managed a smile as Sidara’s hand found Altiris’, and held it tight. “And any who’d share it with you. Wear it well… and remember… not all stubbornness is a sin.”
He’d meant to say something else, about family or about blood – or about legacy, which he supposed was the same thing – but the words wouldn’t come. Suddenly tired, Josiri let his eyes fall closed to gather his thoughts.
When he opened them again, Altiris and Sidara were gone, as were the sunlight and the cheers, the worry and the pain. There were only the mists, thicker than before, and Calenne, her hand extended in greeting. Eskavord’s streets, no longer ruined, loomed overhead as they had when he’d been a boy. And in the west, Branghall’s towers stretched into a green-black sky thick with circling ravens.
“Come along, Josiri,” said Calenne. “Let me take you home.”
Jeradas, 23rd Day of Dawntithe
A phoenix shall blaze from the darkness.
A beacon to the shackled; a pyre to the keepers of their chains.
from the sermons of Konor Belenzo
Sixty-Nine
Tregard’s glittering colours were in abeyance, bright canopies and silks exchanged for the drab greys of mourning. They’d remain so for days to come, commemorating not only those slain in Cardivan’s uprising, but also for an Empress whose fate would remain for ever a mystery. And yet, for all that, Apara felt only joy as she passed beneath Triumphal Gate, the relief of a weary traveller at last come home.
Buffeted by winter floodwaters and battered on the rocks, she’d dragged herself onto the Grelyt’s western bank as the Phoenix had risen over Eskavord and come again to the bridge, sodden and cold, long after Josiri’s spirit had fled to the Raven’s keeping. The dark stain marking Viktor Droshna’s last moments she’d regarded without flicker of emotion, lest even triumph offer his spirit one last satisfaction. Not so her reunification with Sevaka, which had occasioned the most profound of joys. One she’d promised to repeat.
But Tressia wasn’t Apara’s home, not any longer. And so she’d ridden north and east with one last burden, eschewing the mists for the freedom of open skies.
She threaded the tangled streets towards the palace, taking delight in the small pleasures of lives lived free. Children quarrelling in the streets. The commotion of barter. The simple affection of folk and family. Even the new statue of crooked Jack, holding court above the marketplace as it had done since the Battle of Argatha Bridge, did little to douse her spirits. Only when Jorcari ushered her into the throne room did her resolve falter.
Aeldran glanced up from his position beside the empty throne, a wave of his hand silencing a robed worthy mid-flow. “Leave us.”
Courtiers shuffled away, leaving Apara alone with the regent, his Immortals, his lunassera and the golden, graven visages of the gods. The chamber’s emptiness suddenly oppressive, Apara approached the dais, and offered a bow.
“Am I welcome, my prince?”
Heartbeats eked past without reply. In the silence, Apara conjured emotions on a face she couldn’t see. Resentment. Distrust. Anger. All of them just. All of them unfair.
Fingertips beneath her chin bade her rise, and Apara saw at once how badly she’d misjudged Aeldran’s mood. Trembling lips betrayed a man struggling with unaccustomed emotion and determined not to grant it licence.
“Always,” he rumbled. “Is the House of Saran’s debt paid?”
“To the last coin. Viktor Droshna’s shadow has passed from this world. But not without cost.”
Immortals started forward as she unslung the scabbard from her back. Jorcari checked them with crisp word of command.
After the briefest hesitation, Aeldran took the scabbard and drew forth what remained of the Goddess’ sword. Perhaps a foot of steel remained beyond the hilt, ending in a jagged spike. He turned it over in his hands, fingers gracing the blade with a lover’s caress, perhaps hoping to feel the resonance of Melanna’s spirit within the steel.
“It will be reforged,” he said. “Goddess willing, it might even be the stronger for it. Sometimes it is so, do you not agree, savim?”
Apara heard a question behind the question, and wondered how much Aeldran knew of her recent trials. In any case, the answer was the same for both her and the sword. Some things were stronger after being broken. “Time will tell.”
Nodding, Aeldran resheathed the sword and gave it over to an Immortal’s care. “And is it your intention to reassume the duties bestowed by the late Empress?”
“If it pleases.”
His lips cracked in a careful smile. “On behalf of the Princessa Kaila Saranal, I accept your service, Apara Rann. And for myself—”
He broke off as a breathless Immortal rushed into the chamber. “Forgive the interruption, my prince, but your daughter cannot be found.”
Aeldran’s face closed like a steel trap. “Jorcari?”
The champion was already on the move, barking orders as he headed for the door. Aeldran followed at a limping run, the guarded joy of moments before erased by worry.
Yet through it all, Apara felt no concern, though its absence refused all enquiry. As commotion overtook the neighbouring rooms, she departed the throne room and passed into the inner gardens, instinct driving her ever on to the old wood. After the briefest hesitation on its threshold, she passed within, the undergrowth spreading wide before her in welcome.
> And there, in the centre of the path, she found Kaila Saranal, sitting in the dirt and babbling earnestly at a wool-stuffed dark-haired doll in golden armour.
Apara eased closer, her eyes on briars and boughs that now bore little trace of the Midwintertide fire. A tingle along her spine warned against complacency.
“You shouldn’t be out here, my princessa.”
Kaila looked up, eyes narrowed. “Why not, Shar Apara?”
“It’s not safe.”
Suspicion became a frown. “Yes it is. The Lady in the Green said so.”
The tingle became a shudder. “Is she here now?”
“She sings to me at night when I can’t sleep. She won’t hurt me.”
Apara nodded absently, her eyes on a patch of undergrowth perhaps a dozen strides deeper into the wood, where a dead tree cast long shadows into the morning. Amber eyes stared back, devoid of recognition, for all that she recognised them in return. Or not so much the eyes, but the briared face that was no longer human.
Apara swallowed, her heart brimming. “No, essavim, she won’t. But you should come inside. Your father is worried.”
Kaila nodded. “That’s what the Lady said. But she also said that sometimes it’s good for a father to worry over his daughter.”
The amber eyes blinked out. A rustle of branches rippled away, deeper into the wood. Kaila offered no resistance as Apara hoisted her up and bore her out of the wood.
Halfway to the boundary, Kaila stirred. “Father says that Madda has gone away. He said I’ll never see her again.”
That her voice held more confusion than sadness did nothing to prevent Apara’s own sorrow rising. “That’s true, essavim,” she said softly. “But I suspect you’re never far from her thoughts.”
With a last glance back at the empty wood, Apara bore the Empress-to-be to face a father’s relieved chastisement.
A scrape of the shovel – a last effort from weary muscles – and it was done. A small patch of bare earth beneath fire-blackened walls and grey skies. The eastward-facing headstone bore two names, though only one body lay beneath. The grave was deep enough to hold the bones of Josiri Trelan safe until Third Dawn summoned them again into light. Altiris had hoped the sight would ease his heartache, but in that moment the loss hung heavier than ever.