by Nazri Noor
But Herald was still there. His body wasn’t dissolving the way mine was. Wait. Had we done something wrong? What if I wasn’t being transported? What if I –
“Dust,” he shouted, sprinting towards me and reaching for my hand.
But Herald vanished, or perhaps I did, taken by the light of the full moon to a different place, a different world. I shook my head, clearing the fatigue of interdimensional travel from my body, and looked around myself.
My eyes went wide as saucers. Oh, our communion worked all right, even if Herald got left behind for whatever reason. I just wasn’t expecting the venue of the Midnight Convocation to be quite so – well, familiar.
It was the moon. I was standing on the moon.
Chapter 20
I was in one of the moon’s craters, specifically, or a place that looked like it. Its surface was stark and silvery, the atmosphere above me pitch black and flecked with distant stars. I whirled in place, my heart thumping as I searched for any signs of the earth, of familiarity. Nothing.
But I did see the palace. Holy shit, did I see the palace, all its towers reaching up into the darkness, twisting minarets that seemed to grow out of the rock itself, like impossibly tall fingers of pure alabaster. And amidst the forest of silver-white spines and turrets, this nest of fangs and teeth, was a huge, squarish hall with an enormous silver door.
“Wow,” I muttered to myself, only then remembering that this wasn’t how sound was meant to work in space.
I mean, was I actually even in space? I should have frozen to death already. Maybe there was a magical barrier in place somewhere, a rare instance of the entities being considerate to us insignificant, tiny humans.
The physics weren’t right, either. I could walk normally, just as if I was moving around in Heinsite Park, or anywhere on earth. But don’t think of logic, I told myself. Whatever you do, don’t think about physics, science, the laws of the universe. The entities had strange ways about them, being lovers of riddles and mystery, of bizarre games to play on humans. Cruel ones, too. I didn’t want something even more terrifying to happen – for the moon to begin crumbling away under my feet, for example.
I also didn’t question why I could breathe on the moon, somehow fearing in the back of my mind that simply wondering would trip something magical in the system and cause me to suffocate instantly. Any second my eyeballs might explode. Gravity could reverse, and my feet would lift off the surface of the moon-thing I was standing on, letting me drift off to become hopelessly lost in the deep vacuum of space.
What a shame, my obituary would say, for Dustin Nathaniel Graves to vanish into the uncaring maelstrom of the void, lost, alone, with nothing but his pretty face to accompany him. He was so young, so handsome, and so totally ripped. But kidding aside – I was terrified. What’s it called when your blood vessels all pop? Explosive decompression? Wasn’t that how it worked in space? Hell if I know, I’m not a rocket surgeon.
I only noticed the woman standing in front of the hall when I was a few dozen feet away. At first I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d missed her, looking so conspicuous against the pure white of the moon with her light armor crafted from the hides of sleek, brown animals, or the verdant vines and leaves that adorned the hunting bow and the quiver of arrows slung across her back. Ah, but that was exactly why she was so hard to spot, wasn’t it? Artemis, the Greek goddess of the moon, was also the goddess of the hunt, and therefore a grandmaster of camouflage, even when standing in plain sight.
“Well?” she said, tapping her sandaled foot impertinently against the marble steps of the silver hall. “You’re late. Hecate said you’d be here sooner.”
“She did?” I blinked, stopping just short of the great flight of steps. “Funny, she wouldn’t even talk to me about this.”
“Well did you slit a black ewe’s throat? Give her honey?” Artemis rotated her hand at the wrist, like she was trying to conjure up a memory. “And something about a dead puppy.”
“No!” I blurted. “No way I could do any of that. Except for the honey.”
“Then how do you expect her to show up if you don’t prepare the correct sacrifices?” Artemis pushed her hands into her hips, taking one step down the stairs. “It’s bad enough with you coming here with just drops of blood. Pssh. I’ve had enough blood over the centuries. Give me something fun, you know?”
I shrugged. “Listen. If this works out for everyone, I get the Crown of Stars, and you guys get my soul. You still win.”
“Fair point.” She leaned to her side, peering over my shoulder. “I see your friend didn’t make it.”
“He’s – he’s safe, isn’t he?” I said. “It was just a glitch in the system? Like he didn’t have enough to pay for a ticket, so he got left behind?”
Artemis shrugged, an annoyingly accurate and possibly mocking mirror of my own. “Sure. Why not. Don’t worry, the sorcerer is safe. Assuming he doesn’t get eaten by a bear while he waits for you.”
Seriously, with the bears. I raised my finger, about to protest, but before I could even speak Artemis had soundlessly drawn an arrow from her quiver and fired it straight into the sky. It burst in the air, like a firework, only instead of sparks and light, the arrow exploded into a shower of shimmering silver petals.
“To let the others know you’re here,” she said, slinging her bow across her back once more. “Come on. Let’s head inside.”
And inside we went, past the balustrades that supported great swathes of heavy crimson drapes, past massive columns that reached into the heights of the vast, vaulted ceiling, all hewn from the same unpolished white stone that made up the hall’s exterior. Nothing about the architecture pointed to origins in any single culture or style, as if explicitly designed to be as neutral and as generic as possible.
As we approached the grand table where the entities of night were seated, I quickly understood why. The Midnight Convocation was formed of beings drawn from every pantheon and place that had a deity devoted to the energies of darkness, of shadow, of the night. Yet even with those commonalities we found them leaned over the great table, pounding their fists on its surface as they bickered and bellowed. Typical entities.
Artemis scoffed, speaking to me out of the corner of her mouth. “It’s like doing Christmas or Thanksgiving with the worst parts of your extended family, only it happens on a full moon.” She shook her head. “Immortality is nice, but having to show up to witness all of this so often genuinely makes me want to die.”
I recognized some of the gods and goddesses, some from the symbols of their station, others purely based on their appearance. Carver’s library was immense, after all, and when all else failed, I always had online wikis to help nudge me in the right direction. While most of the entities had occupied seats at the massive table, some were still streaming in through archways arranged around the halls, appearing from distant corners of the palace – or, far more likely, arriving from their various domiciles.
One was a man with copper skin and obsidian eyes, his chiseled face partly hidden by a headdress in the shape of a falcon. Khonsu, I thought, the Egyptian god of the moon. Beside him sat a woman who wore opulent silken robes and a stern expression, her skin glowing with the pallor of moonlight, her hair as dark as the night sky. This one was Chang’e, the Chinese goddess of the moon.
Across them a figure sat issuing wisps of black smoke from his very skin, his sunken eyes filled with dormant malice. Chernobog, the Slavic god of darkness, only looked at me in passing, but I swear the flit of his gaze felt like the slash of a dagger across my soul.
Many more I didn’t recognize, like the obvious angel with pale hair, wings of silver, and a halo that shone like the ring of light around a full moon. A horned woman sat a few chairs away. I couldn’t tell if she was a demon. You really never know with entities.
At one end sat a hooded figure, its face and its hands exposed, but as black as midnight, like holes cut out of reality. It had no eyes, no features to mark it as humanoid. And do
wn another way was a man wearing a circlet topped with a crescent moon, a sword that glowed with the soft pulse of moonlight strapped to his belt.
Artemis stopped at the head of the assembly, and I waited behind her as she cleared her throat and banged her hands on the table, calling for order. It took some time, but all the entities of the Midnight Convocation, even the rowdier ones, sat quietly at attention.
“The petitioner has arrived,” she said in a powerful, booming voice that rang across the hall. “This one wishes to wear the Crown of Stars.”
“A boy?” said one of the entities, to the snickers of the others. She locked gazes with me, her eyes twinkling with mirth, her teeth bright. From her headdress and clothing I guessed that it was Metzli, a night goddess of the Aztecs. “We’ve been waiting for a boy all this time?”
“He is so thin, so insubstantial,” said Chernobog, his voice rasping, like great slabs of stone scraping against one another. “Not even fit for a snack.”
Fucking entities, man.
Chapter 21
The hall rang with resounding laughter. I couldn’t stop my cheeks from reddening, so I just toed the ground and scratched the back of my neck. Besides, being a smart-ass with an entity one on one always meant unpleasantness, as I’d learned many, many times in the past. I wasn’t about to flap my mouth in a hall full of – geez, I hadn’t even counted them. Two dozen, maybe?
“Come, let him speak,” a woman said, in a soft, sonorous voice that fell over the table like a cool, soothing mantle.
I stared across the table to find the source of the voice. It was a woman with skin and hair all the same lush shade, like dark indigo, like a deep evening sky, flecked with moving, twinkling stars. Her body was the night itself, every gem that sparkled in her hair another distant star, her eyes like galaxies made of diamond dust. I couldn’t look away.
Metzli tittered. “You always did have a soft spot for the pretty ones, Nyx.”
So this was Nyx?
“Don’t be ridiculous, Metzli.” Nyx rose to her feet. “I know potential when I see it. Now that we’ve assembled, we should begin.” She nodded towards us, towards the head of the table. “Artemis? Brothers and sisters?”
Assent rippled across the table, like the rush of an evening breeze through the reeds on a river bank.
“Then we leave the Lunar Palace for now,” Nyx said.
The entities all stood from their seats. I blinked, and suddenly, the chairs, the table, the entire palace disappeared, leaving only myself, the entities, and the massive, heartless vacuum of the universe.
I glanced around myself, my heart thumping with panic. No moon, no great table, no hall. Only black, empty space, and the distant, alien song of burning stars. It was all I could do not to piss myself. I was doing my sincerest best not to freak the fuck out. I mean the entities had such a low opinion of me already, and I didn’t blame them.
Sure, to the casual onlooker, I might seem scrawny, but they didn’t know about my connection to the Dark Room, or my ownership of a super bad-ass talking sword, or my incredible charm. Or, for that matter, my massively unpublicized talents in the bedroom, not that those would help me in dead space.
But yeah. Space. Holy crap. This wasn’t what I was expecting out of the Midnight Convocation at all. Hecate said it was going to be a meeting, and meetings generally took place in rooms that had normal, logically graspable concepts attached to them, like walls, and furniture, and gravity.
Imagine, if you will, standing in a dark room filled with nothing but black. I realize the similarities are there, but no, this was nothing at all like being in the Dark Room itself. Imagine there’s no floor, no ceiling, that you can, at any moment, hurtle into a random direction and be lost forever, swallowed by the uncaring void of the cosmos.
That was what floating in space felt like. And I had to internalize all this shit because no way in hell was the Convocation about to grant patronage to someone who purported to be comfortable in darkness and night, but started screaming the very moment they were exposed to the truth of the abyss. So I grinned, unnatural as it felt. I grinned, and puffed out my chest, and waited.
“Stop doing that,” Artemis whispered close to my ear. “You’re overcompensating and it looks really weird.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I murmured back through a jaw clenched so tight that I could have shattered my teeth.
“It’ll be fine. You’re tethered to the rest of us. You’re not just going to float away and die.” She tugged on the strap attaching her quiver to her back. “Well, you know, unless you tick off the wrong entity.”
“Thanks. Super encouraging.”
“Well just don’t piss anyone off then,” she said, scowling. “Don’t think I haven’t heard of you, Graves. The gods talk, but the Greek pantheon? All gossips. I know everything, and more.”
I rolled my eyes, sighing. “Did you hear about the one where Dionysus poisoned me?”
“Yep.”
“What about Arachne hogtying and basically blackmailing me?”
Artemis chuckled. “She’s a riot. Great sense of humor on that one.” She leaned in. “Don’t worry. None of us have mentioned to Nyx that you’re supposed to bring back a lock of her hair.” Artemis slapped me on the back, so hard that I jerked from the impact. “Good luck with that one.”
“Now if everyone would please pay attention,” Nyx said, the pale orbs of her eyes staring searingly in our direction. “Then perhaps we can begin.” She shrugged. “It’s mostly pomp and ceremony, of course, but it is what it is, Dustin Graves.”
Silently, the entities arranged themselves into two ranks, forming a kind of corridor for Nyx to pass through. It was pretty amazing to watch. No one actually pedaled or swam their way through the atmosphere to get into position. They just sort of leaned, then locked into place effortlessly.
I hated to admit it, since he was so aggressive about making fun of me, but Chernobog looked extra cool doing it, the wisps of black cloud and the drapes of his dark cloak wavering and wafting impossibly in an invisible breeze.
Nyx floated towards me very, very slowly, her hands spread apart.
“So the child of man named Dustin Graves has come in search of our aid. What is the Midnight Convocation’s answer?”
Only silence. None of the entities said a word.
“And the child of man seeks our power in aid of his fight against the Old Ones, the very Eldest themselves, who have turned their sightless eyes on the plane we call home, who threaten our authority, nay, our very existence. Will the Midnight Convocation answer?”
Silence again. I wondered if it was part of the ceremony Nyx mentioned, or if the clanging quiet meant bad things.
“So the child of man has come to claim the Crown of Stars,” Nyx said.
The space between her hands glimmered with tiny stars, and the spaces between those stars filled with thin filaments of white brilliance. Like a cat’s cradle the threads wove and wavered, until they created the shape of a circlet, out of purest light. The Crown of Stars shone and shimmered. From the edge of its corona hung a veil of blackest midnight, one that would hide its wearer’s face.
Nyx was only feet away from me now, bearing the Crown in both hands like a totem, like a precious treasure. And surely it was, being a collaborative relic, the sum of the many fractures of power that the entities of Midnight Convocation had channeled into its creation. She stretched her arms up high, lifting the Crown above us, hovering so temptingly close to me, as if she was about to place it on my head.
I licked my lips in anticipation, my chest a tumult of excitement and fear. I was selling my soul. But for power, for the good of humanity.
But I was still selling my soul.
My breath came in jagged spurts as I waited for my doom, my coronation.
“And is the child of man worthy? Is his head deserving of the Crown of Stars?”
Finally, the Midnight Convocation answered, their voices sounding as one.
“N
o.”
Chapter 22
Wait. What? I thought this was in the bag. Wasn’t a soul more than enough payment?
“A price,” Metzli said. “The boy must pay a price, whether in gold or in gore.”
Chernobog spoke, too. “He must prove his worth, in battle and in blood.”
Nyx looked to her siblings, and I followed suit. I couldn’t negotiate my way out of this one, change that many minds. She must have known, too. So why did she offer me the Crown of Stars? To tease? To test?
“It’s the way of things,” Artemis said when I threw her a questioning look. “And I have to say, the trials we set for potential champions are much tamer by comparison.” She rolled her eyes and whistled. “You should see what the Conclave of the Sun demands.”
I threw my hands up. “It couldn’t be worse than giving up my soul, could it?”
Nyx lowered her hands, and the Crown of Stars vanished from between her fingers. “A trial it is.” She turned to her brothers and sisters. “Who shall set the challenge for the child of man?”
The man with the glowing sword spoke up. “Why not a melee? I have heard of your unusual talents, Dustin Graves. And your unusual friends. You have with you a talking sword, do you not?”
“I do,” I said. “Forged from star-metal.”
Murmurs went up from the gathered gods, some of them uttering hushed curses, others making curious noises as they scanned my body for Vanitas’s scabbard.
The man spoke again. “This will prove interesting. Very interesting indeed. I have heard that you have defeated gods, demons, even angels in battle.”
Where the entities murmured before, now they were openly talking amongst themselves, throwing me glances of renewed interest. A couple of them even looked somewhat impressed. I held back a grin, but I puffed up my chest. And sure, practically all of my body was wrapped in denim and a snug jacket, but maybe I flexed my muscles, too. Just because.