by C. S. Pacat
‘I shouldn’t have raised you. I should have killed you.’ She had had blood in her mouth, the same blood that was all over his clothes and smeared on his neck. ‘You’re not my son. You’re not the child I had to give up.’
‘Mother?’ he’d said.
Her eyes were widening as if at some vision. ‘Oh God. Don’t hurt them. Don’t you hurt my girls. Will, promise.’ Desperation in her voice.
‘I promise,’ he’d said.
He hadn’t understood. He hadn’t understood anything. ‘I’ve failed. I’ve failed. Damn you,’ she said to Will bitterly, and there were men coming out of the house towards them. He could see them carrying knives like the one that he’d pulled out of his palm. Like the one that had cut her open. She’d turned her sightless eyes to the men and shouted to them, ‘Run!’
As though they needed a warning. As though he was the one who was dangerous.
Had his mother found him as an infant? Or had she given birth to him after an unnatural pregnancy? Will didn’t know. He didn’t remember his past life, or the choices he had made in it. But he had learned enough about the Dark King to know that he would have chosen the most twisted path, the one full of vicious horrors. That thing is not my son.
‘How did you know?’
He said it to Devon, dully. He had to drag himself out of his thoughts to look up at Devon, and when he did, the boy was only a few steps away, pale and inscrutable.
‘I’d know you anywhere,’ said Devon. ‘After ten thousand years, I’d know you. I knew who you were the moment you walked into Robert’s store.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me—’
He broke off. Devon’s pure white hair was stark against the black landscape. His skin was so pale it was almost the same colour. He looked at Will as if he knew him better than Will knew himself.
‘The last time I saw you,’ said Devon, ‘your armies were killing my kind; a thousand unicorns lying dead on the battlefield. Simon thought you’d reward him. What a fool! You’re as ruthless now as you were then. You let the Stewards take you into their Hall, then you slaughtered them. The Blood of the Lady was your mother, and you had her killed.’
That’s not what happened, he wanted to say.
‘She wasn’t my mother,’ Will said.
It had taken him months to find his way to London and learn the name of the man connected to the attacks. He had taken on dock work for Simon, planning to find a way to get close to him, and learn what he could about himself and his past. The past had come for him instead. But his mother had hidden her secrets too well. Her old servant Matthew and the Stewards had both mistaken Will for her real child.
The Stewards would never have helped him if they had known what he was. No one who knew the truth could be trusted. He’d learned that with his mother’s hands around his neck.
A voice behind him said, ‘Will?’
It was like seeing a ghost from his past, his mother standing in the doorway of the house. The dawn light was behind her, her hair in a long blonde plait and her blue eyes like those eyes that had looked at him from the mirror. He blinked.
It wasn’t his mother. It was Katherine.
She was standing there pale and terrified. She had dirt streaked across her face, and her skirts were grimy from hem to knee. She must have ridden all day and all night, as he had. She was staring at him.
The world was tilting out from under him. She’d heard. She’d heard. How much had she heard?
‘Is what he said true?’
‘Katherine—’
‘You killed all those people?’ Her voice was small and shocked, and she looked afraid the way his mother had looked afraid.
‘I didn’t kill them, I—’
He saw Katherine look past him, to the place where Simon lay sprawled out on the ground. Around him the earth was blasted, torn up by the Blade, so that he lay almost at the middle of a crater. Katherine made a small sound.
Simon was dead, unequivocally. A man she had known – had walked with; had taken tea with; had believed that she would marry. Now he lay dead on scoured earth by Will’s hand. Will could see all of that in her face, the disbelieving horror as she looked back at Will.
‘He killed my mother,’ said Will. Those were the words that came out, when he could have said, He killed the Stewards. He tried to kill me.
‘So you killed him?’
‘Yes.’
What else could he answer? He felt sickly exposed, almost shivering at the thought of what she might have overheard.
‘It’s not true,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t kill someone. You’re not—’
The Dark King.
The name hung between them, a splinter from the past. Katherine looked at Devon, and Will knew what she had heard. She had heard everything.
‘He would have hurt you,’ said Will. ‘He would have hurt the people I care about.’
Katherine’s face was pale and frightened. ‘You said the Dark King had to be stopped. That he had to be defeated, and that you were the one who was going to do it.’
‘I meant it,’ said Will. ‘I meant that, Katherine—’
That creature from the past that he felt – that he could still feel – trying to control everything. The Dark King like a hand reaching out of the dark, setting in motion his unstoppable plans, and Will trying somehow to believe the Elder Steward that he could be the one to—
A terrible sound cut through the dawn: the scream of an animal; the shriek of a nightmare. It echoed off the peaks, coming from everywhere and nowhere. The sky began to grow darker, as if something was putting out the dawn.
No—
‘What is that?’ Katherine’s head jerked towards the trees.
No, no, no. It was Devon who answered, Devon who had heard that sound before, long ago. Will could see it on his face, a primal, ancient fear. Devon looked like he was keeping himself in place only through an effort of will.
‘A Shadow King,’ Devon said. And then: ‘Tell her.’ In his eye, the hard glint of one determined to see things through to the end.
The truth, laid bare between them.
‘It’s come to kill the Blood of the Lady,’ said Will.
Promise.
Sent by Simon on its single mission, to seek out his mother’s children and end her line.
Will, promise.
‘I thought you said that you weren’t the Blood of the Lady,’ said Katherine. ‘That you were—’
‘It’s not here for me,’ said Will. ‘It’s here for you.’
She didn’t understand. She looked frightened and out of place, her world one of drawing rooms and elegant clothes and fine manners.
‘What do you mean?’ said Katherine. ‘Will, what do you mean?’
Around them the torn, blackened earth marked the place where his mother had died. She was standing where his mother had stood. Everything seemed to come full circle, fate turning.
‘There’s a tree made of stone in the Hall of the Stewards.’ Will drew in a painful breath. ‘It’s said that when the Lady returns, it will shine.’
The Tree Stone had never responded to his touch. It had stayed dark and cold no matter how much he had wished for it to shine.
‘It’s her symbol.’ Will met Katherine’s eyes. ‘A hawthorn tree.’
And he saw Katherine remember it: the hawthorn tree coming alive in her garden, its flowers bursting into bloom, the petals swirling around them like snow.
‘That was you,’ said Katherine, shaking her head. ‘You did that. That was—’
‘It was never me, Katherine,’ said Will.
She had woken that tree out of its winter slumber, her power racing bright through its branches. She’d kissed him, and the tree had streamed with light, starbursts of glowing white flowers, radiant and beautiful. He’d jerked away and stared at her in shock, the horror of realisation churning in his stomach. What she was; what she could be—
‘Your mother sent you away,’ said Will. ‘She did it to protect you. Not
just from Simon. But also from me. From what she thought I might become. She raised me as her child, but I wasn’t. I was something else.’
‘It’s not true,’ said Katherine.
‘She tried to keep me from my fate. She made me promise—’ Promise me. He remembered her desperation, her frantic need to protect her child. Will, promise. Her knife through his palm, her bloody fingers around his neck. ‘—she made me promise not to hurt you. And I did. I promised you’d be safe. You’re the Blood of the Lady and I’m going to protect you.’
The inhuman shriek of a Shadow King rang out again, closer. The sky was darkening, as if ink swirled across it. He imagined them racing towards him, shadows rushing through the air.
‘There’s two of them coming,’ said Devon, his eyes hard and bright. ‘They’re going to kill her.’
‘No,’ said Will.
He could feel their darkness, their sheer destructive power. He let himself feel it, and he let it feel him. Simon was right; he had no magic of his own, no access to whatever lay inside him.
But he knew what he was now. And if the Shadow Kings were powerful, it was a power that they had from him.
You’re mine. Mine to command.
He could hear the screams of the two Shadow Kings echoing across the land. Kill the Blood of the Lady. Kill her and end her line. They had their orders, given to them by Simon. And they wanted to do it. They were the harbingers, unleashed to usher in an age of darkness and subjugation and rule over it as its masters forever.
No.
We thirst for destruction. We thirst to conquer. We thirst to kill!
Above him the sky was jet-black. They were coming. They were coming. The wind started to whip at him. His skull was filled with a rushing darkness, as if they were inside his head.
You will obey me.
We will kill the Lady and bring this world to its knees.
And in a flash, he was somewhere else – that ancient battlefield under a red sky, where an army of shadows stretched across the land. They were his to command, on the cusp of victory. The sheer power of it was intoxicating, his steed a giant scaled creature that winged across the sky. He heard the screams as the Shadow Kings led the charge, nightmares with shadow armies at their back.
In the next moment, they showed him a vision of how it would be. Will saw the destruction of the Hall magnified a thousand times, London in ruins, the rolling countryside of his youth blighted, the sky black and the ground littered with the rotting bodies of any who would stand against him. And above that, four thrones, the Shadow Kings ruling in absolute dominion, with only one power greater, rising above it all.
Him.
All this we will give you. The world that was taken from you will be yours once again.
A world he controlled, where he was safe, where those he wanted would stay by his side and those who he mourned would be brought back to life …
‘Return to the Stone,’ he gritted out as a dark wind howled around him, and the two Shadow Kings screamed and lashed at his mind like prisoners thrashing in chains. He forced them back, and in that second, he felt it. He was their maker. He was their master. They recognised him, and when he took control, they had to obey him, bound to him by their abhorrent bargain, made when they had drunk from the Cup.
‘Return to the Stone!’
They wanted to fight. They wanted to kill and to conquer, to create a world where they could reign. But he was their monarch and he drove their darkness back, chasing it down with every atom of his will.
‘I am your King, and YOU WILL obey me.’
The whirling black split open in the sky; the shadows on the ground shrivelled like singed paper. With a last inhuman scream, the two Shadow Kings were compelled, throwing themselves against his command but unable to fight it, forced down into the Shadow Stone.
Will opened his eyes, feeling shaky, and saw light streaming across the valley. The sky above him was blue and clear. The sun was rising, the dawn revealed, a new day.
He’d done it. He’d done it. He wanted to laugh, intoxicated with success, the elation of it, the dark brought under his control.
‘I told you I’d do it,’ said Will. He turned to Katherine, full of exhilaration, looking to see his joy mirrored in her eyes.
She was staring at him, horrified.
His smile faltered as he suddenly saw what she saw – himself, a boy commanding the forces of darkness, the black skies parting at his word. She was looking at him like a stranger, like an enemy out of a nightmare, woken to bring ruin to the world. His stomach sank, a yawning pit opening up between them.
‘You are him,’ she said, as if she saw the truth for the first time. ‘The Dark King.’
‘Katherine—’
‘No, stay back from me!’ she said.
She stepped backward, and as she cast about herself, her eyes fell on the Corrupted Blade. It lay where Simon had dropped it, sheathed in the centre of a patch of dead ground.
Quiescent in its sheath, it was death to any human who drew it, and death to all life around it, which would blaze and then die in its annihilating flame.
‘Don’t!’ he said. He took a step towards her, which was a mistake. She snatched the sword up, holding it by the sheath.
If she drew it …
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘You can’t draw it. The blade is corrupted. If a human draws it, it will kill them.’
He remembered its black fire, tearing open the air, ripping the earth apart, killing every living thing for miles.
‘Please. Look at the ground. The sword did that. Not – not me.’ Was that even true? It was his blood.
She hesitated. ‘How could a sword do all that?’
‘It was made to kill the Dark King,’ he said, ‘but his blood changed it. Corrupted it. Now it’s dangerous.’
‘You’re scared of it,’ she said.
It was made to kill the Dark King. He’d said those words unthinkingly. She’d heard them like a bugle call, and he remembered that the Corrupted Blade had once had another name.
Ekthalion.
The Sword of the Champion. That’s what the Elder Steward had called it. It had carried all the hopes of the side of Light, until the moment it had failed to do more than draw a single drop of the Dark King’s blood.
The Sword of the Champion in the hands of the Lady. His skin prickled at the fated nature of it. That sword; this girl. They were meant to hurt each other, these events set in motion long before his birth. Katherine was the Lady’s descendant, born to strike him down. Just like his mother.
I cannot return when I am called to fight So I will have a child
The Lady had loved the Dark King, and she had killed him. She had been the only one who could do it. Now Katherine stood in front of him with the weapon forged to do it, and it felt true. Because if Katherine struck him now, he’d let her. He’d let her run him through.
She was right. He was scared of it. It was his blood on the blade. His killing blood.
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ said Will helplessly. But he would: if she drew the sword, his blood would kill her. Or maybe it would kill him—
‘You’re lying,’ she said. ‘You’ve been lying to me this whole time.’
Her hand closed on the hilt—
‘No,’ said Will. ‘Katherine, no—’
Promise me.
‘Katherine, don’t—’
Will, promise.
‘Katherine!’
—and in one single motion she drew the sword.
It hadn’t always been corrupted; forged by the blacksmith Than Rema, Ekthalion had once been the great hope, borne into battle by the Champion and raised like a shining light.
The Elder Steward had told another story. The Sword of the Champion bestows the powers of the Champion. She had said there was a myth that the Corrupted Blade would be purified in the hands of someone worthy, that it would become a champion’s blade once more.
Katherine held the sword triumphant, and for a mome
nt, Will felt his own foolish burst of part fear, part hope.
And then black tendrils began to creep up Katherine’s hands where she held the blade out in front of her. ‘Will?’ she said. Veins of black were travelling up her arm under her skin. ‘Will, what’s happening?’ She was trying to let go of the blade and she couldn’t, as the spidery black webbing raced towards her heart, then up her neck to her face.
He was running the four paces towards her, catching her in the moment that she collapsed, pale and cold. He was cradling her in his arms as he knelt in the mud. Her eyes were two black orbs that were freezing over, the sun eclipsing. Her veins were hard as onyx, as though her blood had turned to stone. ‘Will, I’m frightened.’ The words were a whisper, her lips barely moving.
No champion saved her. They were the last words she said.
He held on to her for a long time after, as if his grip could keep her with him. He held on so tight his fingers ached. He felt as if he had been locked in this ache forever. As if the two deaths were one death, the promise that he’d made and broken in the same place, this place that had taken both of them. Mother, and – what? Lover? Sister? Enemy? Friend? He didn’t know what she might have been to him. He only knew that the fate that bound them together had brought her here.
He heard footsteps approaching behind him, crunching in the black dirt.
‘Now you have everything you wanted,’ said Devon. ‘Your usurper is vanquished. The Stewards are dead. The line of the Lady has ended. There’s nothing left to stand in your way.’ Devon spoke as if his business was complete. ‘Katherine had a sister, but the last Shadow King remains free and will already have found her. That little girl is dead now too.’
Will lifted his head, looking up at him and speaking in a new voice.
‘No,’ said Will. ‘I sent her a Lion.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
VIOLET STOOD WITH her sword outstretched, her eyes fixed on the doors.
Outside, the sky was black. Even the strange red light had faded from the windows. The wards are down. It was almost pitch-black in the great hall, the dark of an eclipse, or of being enclosed in a tomb. Only the three flickering torches that she had lit made a small island of light, where the marble columns were pale shapes that disappeared into the dark.