The Blackest Heart

by Brian Lee Durfee

  And it didn’t seem real.

  Seita reached into the leather satchel hanging from her shoulder and pulled forth a black swatch of silk, held it toward him. Without thinking, Stefan reached out his hand. The Vallè maiden dumped the silk’s contents directly into his palm.

  It was a sparkling red stone, the same exact size and shape as the blue stone Gisela had pulled from the cross-shaped altar in the mines above Gallows Haven. The same size and shape as the black stone from Sky Lochs.

  The red stone’s innards seemed to glint and glimmer with smoky red waves of dancing light. It burned cold as ice against the dirty and ragged flesh of his hand.

  It didn’t seem right, holding it. He felt the slave brand on the underside of his wrist flare in sudden pain. He stumbled back, leg muscles nearly giving out, shards of agony shooting up his injured ankle next. The stone dropped from his hand into the foliage at his feet. Seita quickly scooped it up into the silk and stuffed it back into her satchel—Culpa Barra’s satchel. Where was the Dayknight?

  Stefan gathered his bearings, taking in the fullness of the surroundings. He and Seita were at the bottom of a grassy slope of brush and aspen. The mine he had stumbled from was naught but a dark hole in the broken cliff wall some fifty feet up the slope behind the Vallè. The rocky cliff above the mine wasn’t that high, but extended to both the right and left for about two hundred feet in either direction. Behind him was a boulder-strewn outcrop of scrub oak and low-lying bracken. The outcrop stretched about a hundred feet toward another cliff that dropped away to an uneven landscape consisting of the tops of hundreds of pine trees, all jutting into view just above the cliff’s ledge. A great dark forest of pine receded into the distance among rolling hills.

  There was something hazy and odd about the landscape. He looked back at Seita.

  None of it seems real. As if reading his mind, the Vallè reached out and swiped her left hand across his forehead. “You’re covered in blood,” she said, her palm and fingers smeared with red. “Are you injured?”

  Oghul blood! He recalled the blood-splashed chest-plate armor he’d abandoned in the mines, looked down at his red-splattered arms and pants covered in blood not his own. I did kill that oghul in the mines! It wasn’t the wraiths warping my mind.

  “I thought you were dead when the roof caved in on us.” Seita leaned in and kissed him lightly, her delicate lips brushing against his.

  Then she unslung the satchel from her own shoulder, and slung its leather strap over his. “You carry them now. Both the black stone and red stone are in there.” She adjusted the strap tight. “It will now be up to you to protect the satchel and the stones, Stefan. I need my arms free to wield this sword if oghuls draw near.”

  Stefan wanted her to kiss him again. Her lips were his only link to reality, his only link to something real and warm and alive. Their eyes met briefly.

  There was movement above. Then Culpa Barra broke through the trees midway up the hill, hobbling down toward them, using his Dayknight sword as a crutch.

  Stefan stared in horror.

  The man on the hill above still wore his black-lacquered Dayknight armor. Most of it, anyway. The right side of the armor, from mid-thigh up to the neckline, was completely melted away. His entire left arm was gone, as was a good portion of the right side of his torso. The right half of his battle helm was melted away too, from the chin guard up to where his ear should have been.

  Under the helm, half of Culpa’s face was naught but a blackened mass of charred flesh and bone. The jagged, bloody wreckage of his jaw and eye socket was streaked with rivulets of hardened silver, as was the entire gaping right side of his body. It appeared the searing silver alloy had melted it all away, flesh, bone, armor, then hardened, cauterizing the wounds and melding both flesh and iron together into one solid mess of simmering black armor, silver, and flesh.

  Thick webs of blood seeped and bubbled from the destroyed half of Culpa’s face. With every husky breath he took, blood bubbled and ran in livid red streams from his charred scalp clear to his feet.

  Now I know I am in a dream! Stefan wondered if he himself wasn’t still just wandering the Deadwood Gate mines in a never-ending nightmare.

  “They are coming.” The Dayknight slurred his words, leaning heavily on the hilt of his sword, his remaining eye foggy with pain, gaze bouncing uncertainly between Stefan and the Vallè. “Do not let the oghuls capture me, Seita.” Despite the gruesome injuries to his face, Culpa’s rough speech was clear.

  Stefan could not tear his gaze from the man’s melted face and exposed jawbone, or the pink tender tongue underneath forming words against half-destroyed teeth.

  “Don’t let the oghuls get me,” the Dayknight repeated.

  Blackest Heart was still secured to the baldric over his left shoulder as Seita had claimed, undamaged by any silver liquid.

  Stefan had only a moment to take it all in before several dozen oghuls burst from the cave above. Suddenly the air was filled with throaty shouts and vile curses as the marauding beasts surged out of the mine and down the hill toward them, rusted arms and armor a-clatter, all of them brandishing stout longbows and rusted oghul weapons of various make.

  “Don’t let them take me for their Hragna’Ar,” Culpa said again, his lone eye on the long white sword the Vallè maiden carried. “Get Afflicted Fire and Blackest Heart to Jondralyn, get them back to Amadon.”

  Seita bowed. Suddenly in her other hand was a dagger, black as polished coal.

  She stabbed the blade hilt-deep into the silver and blood-streaked mush of the Dayknight’s melted face, then pulled it straight back out.

  Culpa Barra folded at the knees, dropping face-forward against the slope with a thud, sliding down the hill among the leaves and twigs, his body coming to rest against Stefan’s feet, dead.

  None of this is real. None of this is real. None of this—

  The oghuls were charging down the hill toward them.

  Without hesitation, the Vallè unhooked Blackest Heart from Culpa’s back and thrust it into Stefan’s arms. “Run!” she shouted. Then she was gone, sprinting away from Stefan straight in the direction of the opposite cliff ledge and the forest of pine below, the sword, Afflicted Fire, clenched tightly in her fist.

  Stefan ran after her, black crossbow in hand, Culpa’s satchel bouncing at his shoulder, his own precious bow clinging to his back, injured ankle protesting in agony with every harsh step.

  But he couldn’t keep pace with the Vallè. And the armored beasts were quickly gaining, rumbling up behind him with thunderous speed.

  A flock of thick-hafted arrows hummed through the air like angry wasps to his left, one clipping the back of his shoulder and spinning off into the air.

  Seita, still racing for the cliff ledge fifty paces ahead of Stefan, did not dodge or duck or even seem aware of the arrows that whooshed by. She continued to run at a full sprint, cloak billowing out behind her, gaining speed with each graceful, loping stride.

  And when she reached the top of the cliff, she launched herself over the edge.

  Stefan watched the Vallè girl soar out into the air, Afflicted Fire secured in her fist as she struck the topmost reaches of the nearest tree. Pine needles and dust billowed in the wind as the weight of her body set the thin pinnacle of the tree swaying and bending back. She clung tight to the top of the pine with her free hand, swinging herself around, legs clutching for purchase on the tossing boughs.

  Stefan still ran. Almost upon him now, the pursuing oghuls breathed foul at his neck, their heavy footfalls shaking the ground. His legs churned, injured ankle threatening to give out with each throbbing step.

  “Jump!” the Vallè called out, her precarious perch over thirty feet from the cliff’s edge—a craggy drop that now presented itself directly under Stefan’s bounding feet.

  Momentum carrying him forward, he launched himself over the ledge and into the air toward Seita with every last speck of strength he had.

  He sailed above the land
scape but a moment, flailing all the way, cloak dragging against the wind as he dropped. The floor of the forest awaited. A hundred feet down. Thick with rock and scrub oak and scattered patches of white heather, red butterflies fluttering in the breeze.

  Stefan smashed into the outer boughs of the pine twenty feet below Seita’s roost. Like a rag doll he fell, crashing and tumbling out of control, unforgiving branches clawing at his cloak, his clothes, his face, ripping and thrashing. Pain tore through his entire body, and he lost his grip on Blackest Heart. The crossbow spun away as he felt the sting of a thousand spiky pine needles biting into his flesh at once. Downward he plunged, head over heels. Every rigid branch he crashed into brought pain, sharp and severe. With a weighty torturous thud, he struck the ground feetfirst. Agony lanced through his legs as both of his knees were driven up into his face. The rest of his body hit the heather-studded turf, and the breath was punched from his lungs. Curtains of red butterflies burst up from the bracken and peat and flapped madly above.

  As his body slowly unfolded itself in the grass and white heather, it seemed every joint and piece of him was twisted at an awkward angle. Stefan rolled onto his back, staring straight up at the swooping boughs of the pine. And then he rolled over onto his side again, crying out, tears of frustration and pain streaming down his face as he took in the full measure of his injuries.

  The whole front of his body was drenched in blood, red like fire and hot against his skin. His two mangled legs gave him a shock. One leg was shorter than the other by half, as if the leg had been compressed together within his dark leather leggings from foot to knee socket. His other leg was twisted and bent at an awkward angle, the paleness of the six-inch shard of bone shockingly jutting from his pant leg white against the dark stains of blood on leather.

  Blackest Heart was gone. His own bow was gone too. Gisela! Both had been ripped violently from his back. Lost.

  Where’s Seita?

  Crying in both fear and pain, Stefan began crawling from under the pine tree as if trying to escape his own torn and battered extremities, forearms and elbows chewing into the twigs and grass and dirt under him, tender exposed bone dragging in the leaves.

  Still, he scrambled desperately forward, searching for some safe space he somehow knew he would never find. I’m dreaming and this is not real!

  But the dream he was having was naught but a hollow and haunted space in his mind, bursting with horror and strife.

  After just a few paces he found his own bow in the heather, bowstring snapped in twain, but otherwise unharmed. Gisela! Feeling his trembling fingers wrap around its familiar wood stock, he breathed a faint sigh of relief, his one and only joy in this nightmare. He caressed Gisela’s name with bloody hands.

  Blackest Heart was suspended in the bracken before him, hanging just an arm’s length away in a pile of soft brush, its landing perfectly cushioned. Stefan reached up and ripped the weapon from the brush angrily, wanting to fling it away as if it were the cause of all his agony. But he hadn’t the strength left in him for that.

  He rolled onto his back again and hugged both weapons to his chest, the longbow named Gisela and the crossbow Blackest Heart, his entire being overcome by the pain pounding through his legs. He propped his head up on a tuft of grass, clutching the bows tight. The mottled-gray cliff rose jagged and craggy behind him. A thin line of blue sky was visible between the cliff and the row of tall pines before him. The red butterflies were lazily settling all around him like thick bloody snowflakes.

  Oghuls were howling above, their grunts and growls echoing off the cliff wall, seemingly right on top of him.

  Have they shot their arrows into you, Seita?

  He stared at the sky, brain unfocused. There was no way out of the mess he was in. Then he felt an unnatural warmth against the palms of his hands and his chest. It was Blackest Heart. The wood of the crossbow appeared to shimmer at the edges, and a ghostly black mist seemed to coil around the weapon’s stock.

  He remembered what Nail had told him of Forgetting Moon. Nail had felt some form of magic within the battle-ax when he’d confronted Jenko Bruk in Ravenker. Nail had seen a blue light radiate from the ax. But Nail also had a blue angel stone. . . .

  He could hear more oghul voices now, distinct and clear, accompanied by the clatter and clamor of their armor. They will be here soon!

  His heart pounded. Culpa Barra’s satchel! By some miracle it was still draped over his shoulder. He hurriedly shrugged it off. Clutching both bows to his chest with one hand, he used his other hand to open the bag’s flap and dig inside. He felt both swaths of silk, the twin lumps of both angel stones still within. One of the stones came unwrapped in his searching fingers, and he pulled it forth—the black one, the stone that belonged to Blackest Heart. It fit perfectly in his hand.

  There was a commotion in the pine tree above. Seita dropped from the canopy of branches, landing lightly in the shrubbery and grass near the trunk of the tree, the long, shiny white sword with the crescent moon hilt in hand. The Vallè maiden looked glorious, as lithe and agile and clean as ever, gray cloak and leather armor spotless, as if the entire disastrous journey hadn’t caused her a moment of stress or pain. She moved toward him with an unobtrusive ease, seeping through the foliage like a glorious pale mist, red butterflies scattering in her wake.

  At her approach, Stefan found himself clenching the black angel stone tightly in hand, pressing Blackest Heart and his own bow to his chest with what little strength was left in him. I saved them!

  Seita grabbed Culpa’s satchel from the ground with her free hand, flinging the leather strap over her own shoulder, calm eyes roaming the length of the ragged cliff face above. The sound of charging oghuls was growing louder in the distance.

  “Let me help you.” Seita grasped Stefan by the nape of his cloak and began dragging him through the undergrowth, his shattered legs howling in agony. He clenched the stone in his hand and the two bows against his chest, not wanting to lose them, nausea overtaking him, the pain unbearable. He resisted his mind’s best efforts to black out from the all-consuming terror he felt. Seita dragged him about ten paces, propping his back against a tall white aspen so he was sitting upright, facing her.

  She jabbed the sword Afflicted Fire into the ground next to the aspen, then knelt motionless before him, white hair glinting in the sunlight. Her pale skin and fey ears looked very foreign to him now—as if he had never known her at all.

  Did I once love her? It felt as if love poured out of his soul like a pure river of light toward her. Can she not see it? He felt so disoriented.

  He remembered their kiss. “I must be dreaming,” he said, the ground beneath him trembling to the drum of guttural oghul shouts. He drank in Seita’s aquiline appearance and splendorous round eyes that stood out so strongly, so overwhelmingly against the landscape beyond. Even here in this grove of trees, Seita’s strong Vallè features dominated all beauty. “Am I dreaming . . . ?”

  “I am not a dream.” A sad smile touched Seita’s lips as her delicate hand latched on to the crossbow clinging to his chest. Stefan reacted, clutching Blackest Heart to his body, resisting her pull.

  But she yanked the crossbow from him, standing quickly. “ ’Tis only Vallè quarrels that fit it anyway.” She set Blackest Heart on the ground next to Afflicted Fire, both just out of his reach.

  Then she knelt back down before him again, her severe green eyes like chips of glacial ice, impassive and sharp. Stefan’s fist tightened around his own bow. Gisela! He would not let her have it. The black angel stone hidden within the grip of his other hand grew warm. He slid his arm to his side, stuffed his curled fist under his thigh, hiding all traces of the stone from the Vallè.

  His heart raced and his eyes widened when he spied the dull glimmer of oghul armor in the far copse of trees beyond her.

  “This is our parting,” Seita said, following his gaze. “The ending I saw. Oghuls chasing us, you propped against an aspen, an arrow buried in your chest, pinning
you to the tree.”

  “What arrow?” His own vision was going in and out of focus, dry mouth gulping for air. In the distance, hundreds of oghuls burst from the forest, their savage cries piercing the air. “You can’t leave me.”

  Seita turned back to him. “So heavily besieged, I dare not tarry,” she said. “With Afflicted Fire I could possibly kill them all. But I haven’t the time. I’ve got to get back to Amadon. This quest has gone on far too long already.”

  A thin black dagger appeared in her hand. “It’s Hragna’Ar, and you do not want to be taken alive by these bloodsucking fiends. The poison on this blade is exact, two minutes at most, then the darkness will take you.”

  Stefan’s heart beat faster, his breathing quickened. He had never felt so wretchedly alone and helpless.

  Gisela! He held his own bow close to him.

  “Farewell, Stefan Wayland.” In one fluid motion Seita thrust the black blade between his ribs clear to the hilt, then pulled it straight back out. He clenched the black angel stone tighter in his fist in an effort to stave off the pain that never came.

  Seita left the dagger in his lap, took Blackest Heart and Afflicted Fire in either hand, and then bounded around the aspen tree and disappeared behind him, and he saw her no more.

  Stefan’s entire body felt numb. Blissfully comfortable.

  A thick-hafted arrow streaked from the throng of charging oghuls and punched deep into his chest, its iron tip piercing clear through his body, the arrow’s brown-feathered fletching quivering below his chin.

  Oghuls by the hundreds came streaming toward him. More thick arrows whizzed by, all of them now aimed at the fleeing Vallè escaping somewhere behind him. The oghuls charged straight at Stefan like ravaging thunder, their spiked and spined armor jouncing with an unholy racket that echoed hollowly in the trees, all of them brandishing rusted cruel weapons, all of them shouting foul oghul curses.