by C. S. Pacat
Violet’s fingers brushed the words, tracing the cool stone, her heart pounding. ‘What does it say?’
‘We Stewards have lost most of our knowledge of the old language,’ said Justice, ‘but I’m told it says, “Rassalon the First Lion”.’
Violet jerked her fingers back as if singed. She was staring at the lion with its great mane and liquid eyes, her pulse racing.
The First Lion …
‘The Stewards have few artefacts of the old war,’ said Justice, ‘but this is one of them. Here the Shield of Rassalon was broken.’
She couldn’t help staring at the lion on the shield, her mind racing with a thousand questions.
Who was Rassalon? Why had the Stewards fought him? How had he come to fight for the Dark King? This shield … what is it? What am I caught up in?
The lion seemed to gaze back at her. She imagined Stewards with spears encircling an animal that bled where it was pierced in the side. Stewards had been fighting Lions since the great battles of the old world.
‘Excuse my interruption, Justice.’ A girl’s voice jolted Violet out of her reverie. She recognised Grace, the janissary who had shown her to her room the night before. ‘The Elder Steward is ready to see Will.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HEART POUNDING, WILL followed Grace down a long corridor, deep into the Hall.
The architecture changed around them, the archways lower and narrower, the shapes of the carvings different, the walls thicker. A stillness hung over everything, as if no one ever came to this part of the Hall.
They reached double doors set at the end of a passageway. Will stopped, aversion keeping him back. He felt as if he was about to enter a tomb, a place that should not be disturbed. I don’t want to go in there. But Grace pushed the doors open.
The room was circular with a domed ceiling, the grey stone old as the immovable rock of a mountain. In the centre was a stone tree, carved to reach the ceiling.
The tree was dead, desiccated and blackened, as if a living tree had ossified centuries ago.
Will shivered with a shock of terrible familiarity; he knew this place, but somehow all he knew was gone, replaced by the strange, desolate presence of the dead stone.
The Elder Steward was waiting beside the tree, a solemn figure in white. High Janissary Jannick stood beside her, his unpleasant eyes as unyielding as the stone. His blue janissary robes looked wrong, a splash of colour in the grey room like life disturbing the dead. The doors closed behind Will and he was alone with them.
With each step forward Will’s sense of familiarity grew. He could almost see what had been here before, a phantom vision just out of reach.
‘What is this place?’
‘This is the Tree Stone,’ said the Elder Steward. ‘It is the oldest and most powerful place in the Hall. But it is also a place of great sadness, where Stewards rarely come.’
Will knew the Elder Steward and the High Janissary were both watching him. But he couldn’t take his eyes off the Tree Stone. He knew it, he remembered it, or almost remembered it, like a word on the tip of his tongue, except that what he remembered was different from what was in front of him—
‘You sense something from it,’ said the Elder Steward, ‘don’t you?’
The High Janissary made a scornful sound. Will barely heard him, his attention fixed on the Tree. It was as if he was standing in the dark, where there should be—
‘Light. It shouldn’t be dark. There should be light—’
‘The Tree of Light,’ said the Elder Steward, her eyes on him. ‘It was called that once.’
‘A guess,’ said High Janissary Jannick.
‘Or else he really does feel it,’ said the Elder Steward.
He could feel it. Except that he was looking at its absence, like looking at a wasteland and knowing it had once been a forest, where she had walked among the trees.
‘She was here, wasn’t she?’ said Will, turning to the Elder Steward, his heart pounding. ‘A long time ago, the Lady was here and the Tree was alive—’
It was more than alive; it was bright.
Who was she? How had he seen her in the mirror? She had felt so real, when this place was long dead. He lifted his hand to the medallion under his tunic. The Tree of Light was a hawthorn tree, like the hawthorn medallion he wore around his neck. A hawthorn tree was the Lady’s symbol. How did he know it had once shone with light?
‘It died when she did,’ said the Elder Steward, nodding. ‘It’s said her touch will bring it back to life, and make it shine.’
Will looked up at the Tree, its dead branches like skeletal remains in an empty landscape.
‘Put your hand on it,’ said the Elder Steward.
His stomach twisted. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. The Elder Steward and High Janissary Jannick were looking at him as though it was a test.
He reached out and placed his palm on one of its cold granite branches. He could feel it, worn smooth by the passage of time. No light shone or green shoot stirred. It was dead, like everything in this place.
‘You see? Nothing,’ said Jannick.
Will glanced at the High Janissary, who was staring back at him with a mixture of scorn and contempt.
‘Ignore him,’ said the Elder Steward. ‘I want you to try.’
‘Try?’ said Will.
‘Close your eyes,’ said the Elder Steward, ‘and try to find the Light.’
He wasn’t sure what she meant him to do, but he could feel the weight of her expectant gaze. Will drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes. Under his hand the stone was cracked and weathered with time and felt cold. He tried to silently will the Tree to light up, but it was like trying to will stone to fly. Simply impossible.
The Elder Steward stepped forward and spoke again gently, as if he had not understood.
‘No. You’re looking in the wrong place. The Lady made the Tree Stone shine, but the Light wasn’t in the stone. It was in her.’
Will closed his eyes again. He could feel the tension, the sense of importance from both the Elder Steward and the High Janissary. In her. He tried to imagine that there was something inside him that was waking up. His memory was starting to churn. He remembered the Lady, staring out at him from the mirror. He remembered his mother’s face, white with fear. Will, promise.
He didn’t want to remember. He didn’t want to unearth the past, the pain slicing through his hand, the breath sobbing in his bruised throat as he stumbled across the muddy hill, his mother’s last words ringing in his ears. Will—
Will wrenched open his eyes. There was no light. Not even the faintest glow. The High Janissary was right. The Tree Stone was dead and cold, and whatever was needed to bring it to life, it wasn’t inside him.
‘He’s not the one we seek,’ High Janissary Jannick was saying. ‘He doesn’t have the Lady’s power. This is a waste of time.’
The Elder Steward gave a small, almost sad smile. ‘And yet, the Lady made her promise.’
‘The Lady?’ The High Janissary shook his head scornfully. ‘Where was the Lady when Marcus was taken? Where was the Lady when my wife was killed? Where was the Lady when my son—’ He bit down on whatever he had been about to say, as though he couldn’t bear to let it pass his lips. His face was white.
‘Jannick,’ said the Elder Steward gently.
‘The Lady is dead, Euphemia. We are the ones who have to fight. Not a boy who lacks skills or training. I won’t waste my time on a fantasy,’ said High Janissary Jannick, and he turned and stalked out of the doors.
Will was left alone with the Elder Steward in the quiet chamber. Her long white hair framed her kind, wrinkled face. The name Euphemia suited her, though he had never heard it spoken before. With the Tree Stone dark and dead-looking beside her, Will felt like he had let her down.
‘It is not your fault,’ said the Elder Steward. ‘He’s a good man. He adopted Cyprian and Marcus when they most needed a father, and raised them as his own. But he doesn’t trust outsiders. He ha
sn’t since his first son died six years ago.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Will, looking back at the Tree Stone. ‘I tried, I just—’
‘Jannick is right,’ said the Elder Steward. ‘You lack training. You’re not ready.’ The Elder Steward looked into his eyes as if she was searching for something. ‘But which of us is ready for what life asks us to face? We don’t choose the moment. The moment comes whether we will it or no, and we must make ourselves ready.’
‘Ready for what?’
For a long second, she just continued to look at him. ‘Justice has told you some of it.’
In the inn of the White Hart in London, Justice had told him about an ancient world that fell to darkness. A few days earlier, he wouldn’t have believed it. But he had seen black fire tear apart a ship, and a girl his own age use her bare hands to break open chains.
‘He said that there was once a Dark King who tried to rule,’ said Will, ‘but that he was stopped by a Lady.’
Her. She. He knew so little about her, but he yearned to know everything. The glimpse he had seen of her in the mirror – she had looked at him like she knew him, like they were connected. She had looked at him with eyes like his mother. He drew in a breath.
‘They loved each other, and she killed him,’ said the Elder Steward, ‘somewhere far to the south, near the Mediterranean Sea. We don’t know how she defeated him, only that she did. She was the only one who could.’
He had so many questions. But churning at the heart of them all was, why? Why had Matthew pressed the Lady’s medallion on him? Why had Justice brought him to the Hall? Why had the Elder Steward told him he was the one the Stewards were seeking? Why did the Stewards look at him the way they did, with fear, awe and hope?
‘You think I’m her, somehow.’
The Elder Steward gave a slow nod. ‘You have her blood, passed down to you from your mother. And the Blood of the Lady is strong.’ The Elder Steward’s voice was grave. ‘Strong enough to kill an ancient king. That is why Simon seeks you out.’ She looked at him. ‘He is trying to return the Dark King. It is his one desire … the thing he seeks above all else. Under the Dark King’s dominion, dark magic would be returned to the world, humans slaughtered and subjugated as the past is brought into our present. Simon wants to stand over it all as the Dark King’s heir. And the Blood of the Lady is the only thing that can stop him.’
‘My mother … was meant to kill the Dark King … ?’ said Will.
Later he would think back on it as the moment when he had understood, all the pieces fitting together into a picture he didn’t want to see.
His mother’s destiny—
Now his mind flew back to Bowhill, kneeling beside his mother as her blood soaked into the ground. The realisation swept through him: his mother’s last words to him, her death, and the reason for it, the reason for everything that was happening to him. Will, promise.
Will’s fingers closed over the medallion. He remembered the Lady looking right at him through the mirror. He remembered his mother gasping, Run. He felt his fingers start to shake, and clamped down on it, clutching the medallion tighter.
‘Eleanor stopped Simon once before, years ago,’ said the Elder Steward. ‘He killed her sister – Mary, your aunt – in his first attempt to return the Dark King. But those were his early, clumsy efforts. He is much closer to his goal now. And with Eleanor dead, he believes nothing stands in his way.’ The Elder Steward held his gaze. ‘Except you.’
‘Me,’ said Will, grappling with the immensity of it. ‘But I’m not – I can’t—’
Oh God, he could see the Lady’s eyes on him, like his mother’s eyes, staring up at him. Will, promise. She had known. She had known. All those months, all those years of running—
He had known that his mother had been—
Afraid.
He had just never known what it was she had been afraid of.
‘You are Blood of the Lady, Will,’ the Elder Steward said. ‘And she fights the Dark King still. Through you.’
He stared at the Elder Steward, feeling the cold emptiness of the stone room, the black branches of the dead Tree like cracks in the world.
‘I can’t fight the Dark King.’ The Tree seemed to mock him, proof that he couldn’t do what they wanted. ‘I don’t have her power.’ Unconsciously, he clutched at the medallion. It dug into the scar on his hand.
‘Look down at the medallion,’ said the Elder Steward. ‘You can read it, can’t you? You know the words of the old language. Even if you don’t understand why.’
He looked down at the words carved into the warped surface of the metal. It was true that he could read them when he shouldn’t be able to, when they were written in a language that he had never seen before.
I cannot return when I am called to fight So I will have a child
It was a message sent across time. A message to him, he thought, feeling his skin chill. The Lady had carved it meaning for him to read it. It had been passed from hand to hand, countless times over centuries. And it had made its way to him, as she had meant it to.
In the mirror, she had looked at him like she recognised him.
‘My mother,’ said Will, struggling to process all of this. ‘She knew?’
‘Many have borne the Blood of the Lady,’ said the Elder Steward, ‘but only one will find themselves facing the final fight. And the final fight is almost upon us. Those of us with the Blood of Stewards feel it too.’
You feel it … The way she felt it … He thought of his mother in those final moments, the desperation as she had looked into his eyes.
‘It is different to train your whole life to face a threat that might never come than it is to begin to see the signs, the portents that the Dark King’s return is almost here.’ The Elder Steward’s face was serious with purpose, and he could only feel the hard edge of the medallion in his hands. He was trembling.
‘The signs?’ he said.
‘You’ve met James St Clair,’ said the Elder Steward. ‘You’ve seen what he can do?’
Will nodded.
‘James is not a descendant of the old world as you are.’ The Elder Steward paused, her eyes shadowed. ‘He is a Reborn, one of the most frightening portents. In the final days, the Dark King ordered that his greatest generals, servants and slaves be killed, so that they could be reborn with him, and usher in his reign. His deadliest fighter was called the Betrayer. They say he was the brightest symbol of the Light, until he betrayed his own kind to serve the Dark King. He became the Dark King’s most ruthless general, a merciless killer known for his beauty, his blue eyes and golden hair.’
‘Are you saying—’
‘James isn’t merely a descendant. He is the Dark King’s general, reborn into our time. He is young now, but when he grows into his power, he will be more terrible than you or I can imagine, for he is not one of us. He is not human, and he is here with one purpose only, to herald the way for his master—’
A powerful shiver went through Will, and all the shadows in the room seemed to deepen and rise as she said—
‘—Sarcean, the Dark King; the final eclipse; the endless night, whose dark reign will bring about the end of our world.’
Sarcean.
The name struck like black fire, like something he’d always known that came blazing back to life until it threatened to overwhelm him. He remembered the crude S burned into the wrists of Simon’s men, and the words that Justice had spoken at the inn of the White Hart.
That S is the symbol of something older, a terrible sigil with power over his followers that even they do not fully understand.
Sarcean.
He saw again a shadow reaching out of the past, spreading out over London, over Europe, over a world that had no defences because it had forgotten. In his vision, then as now, the lights went out one by one until all was dark and still.
He’d stop it if he could, he thought. He’d stop it from happening again. He’d prove to his mother that he—
‘What do I have to do?’
The Elder Steward didn’t answer him at once, just looked at him with searching eyes.
‘You said Simon was close,’ said Will. ‘You said my mother stopped him in the past, but that now he was almost at his goal. How?’ He could see in her eyes that there was something she didn’t want to tell him, and he was suddenly desperate to know. He focused on Simon as someone he could fight, something he could do.
‘Simon has acquired something,’ said the Elder Steward after a pause. ‘Something he’s needed for a long time. Call it the last piece of a puzzle that he is trying to solve … We are working to get it back before he can.’ She would not say more. ‘The Stewards are here to stop Simon. At all costs, we will fight to prevent him from returning the Dark King.’ Her eyes on Will’s were steady. ‘But if we fail, you must be ready.’
‘Ready.’ Will felt a cold understanding settling in him, a terrible truth that he couldn’t push out of his mind. Will, promise. For that was the last part of it, the final realisation in his mother’s eyes. ‘You mean to kill him. That’s what you think I have to do. Kill the Dark King before his new reign ends this world.’
‘Ready to face an enemy unlike any you have ever seen,’ said the Elder Steward. ‘One who will seek to turn your mind to darkness, to sway you to his cause, even as he ends this world to make way for his own. A relentless force seeking out any who oppose him, extinguishing every last spark of light and hope, unto the very ends of the earth.’
The Elder Steward picked up the wall torch. ‘Look. I know you can read the words they wrote.’ She held the torch aloft, illuminating the dark above the giant doors. High above, there were words crudely chiselled in the stone.
Will turned cold, only half hearing the Elder Steward as she spoke.
‘These doors mark the entry to the inner fort. It is the oldest and strongest part of the Hall.
‘But these words were written above every door in every fort, in every town. These are the words the people saw as they barricaded themselves in when their outer walls were breached. As they waited in the dark … their last cry, their greatest fear … even as their doors broke open, and they faced what was on the other side.’