Flight into Darkness

by Sarah Ash

  They stopped near midday in a windy gully, high above the Hidden Valley. Below, sinister even by day, stood the twisted Towers of the Ghaouls. The searingly dry air made it difficult to exchange more than a few words. The sun was approaching its highest point in the sky and seasoned travelers like Rieuk knew that this was the time to seek out whatever shade was available and rest until the sun began to set. Sheltered by an overhang in the rock face, Rieuk unwound his headdress, which he had wrapped over nose and mouth to keep out the sand and grit, and uncorked his water bottle, offering it to Oranir. Oranir took it and drank, passing it back. As he did so, the wild, keening cry of a bird of prey echoed around the gully. Looking up, Rieuk glimpsed a shadowy shape against the harsh dazzle of the noonday sun, wings outspread, circling high above.

  “Have they found us already?” Oranir shaded his eyes to see more clearly.

  “Ormas,” Rieuk said softly, “is that one of your kin?” He felt Ormas slowly return to consciousness within him.

  “I cannot tell; it is too far off,” came the listless reply.

  “Then go and spy out the valley for us. Take care…”

  Ormas took off, disappearing into the heat haze. Suddenly uneasy, Rieuk stood up, trying to see what was happening through Ormas's clear sight.

  “All I need is a distraction to draw the others away from the entrance to the Rift. Can you do it, Ran? Just long enough for me to slip down the stairs…”

  He turned around, but Oranir was no longer there.

  “Ran?” he called.

  They came at him from his blind side. Before he had time to defend himself, he felt the blow to the back of his skull, harsh as a thunderclap. Then, nothing but the dark.

  “Have you forgotten the vow you made when you became my Emissary, Rieuk Mordiern?”

  The harsh voice brought Rieuk back to consciousness. He hung, his hands shackled above his head, pinned to a wall. The air around him was dark and dank; he must be far belowground. He tried to raise his drooping head. A hand slipped beneath his chin and lifted it. Sardion was standing before him, staring at him with a look so cold and penetrating that he felt as if the Arkhan was reading his innermost thoughts.

  “Answer me!” The hand tightened around his throat. Rieuk began to choke.

  “N—no, Lord Arkhan,” he managed to whisper.

  “I have your hawk.”

  Ormas! Rieuk silently called out to his Emissary, hearing only the feeblest of answering cries.

  “What have you done to him?”

  “You betrayed my trust, Rieuk.” Sardion's eyes bored into his. “You played me false. Do you think that you and your hawk deserve to live?”

  Rieuk could feel nothing but the weak beat of Ormas's heart, echoed by his own. A grey film seemed to float between him and the torchlit dungeon.

  “Please, don't hurt him.” It was humiliating to have to beg but he could not bear to endure the hawk's agony.

  “Shouldn't you be more concerned for yourself?” At last Sardion let go of Rieuk's throat, leaving Rieuk gasping for air. “The punishment for breaking your vow is to have your Emissary stripped out from your body, feather by feather.”

  “But I haven't broken my vow!”

  “You revealed our secrets to an Azhkendi shaman woman.” Lord Estael came out of the gloom to stand at the Arkhan's side.

  How did Lord Estael know? Had they used some glamour to draw the truth from him? “She discovered them for herself. I could hide nothing from her. And she is no threat to us. She did all in her power to help me. I learned far more from her than I ever learned from you—”

  Lord Estael struck him across the face. Rieuk, cheek on fire from the blow, stared defiantly back at his onetime master.

  “Can't you see I'm trying to save you, you ungrateful boy?”

  “Can't you see that I was trying to save us all?” Rieuk no longer cared if the Arkhan heard or not. “Why else would we have returned? I have to go back into the Rift and make a new Lodestar, an aethyr crystal as perfect as the first.”

  “A new Lodestar? You know very well that I have other plans for Rieuk Mordiern.” Sardion's restless pacing was making Estael uneasy. “Why else would I have sent Oranir to bring him back?”

  Estael knew all too well how Sardion wanted to use Rieuk. The Arkhan's obsession with the Drakhaoul Nagazdiel had grown with every day that passed. If Sardion set the daemon lord free, the ensuing consequences for Enhirre were too terrible to imagine. “My lord, I beg you to postpone your plan for a little longer. If Rieuk can fashion a new Lodestar—”

  “And how long will that take?”

  Estael had no idea. “A few days, I imagine, once he has found a suitable crystal—”

  “Very well,” said Sardion curtly. “I'll indulge you and your magi just this once. But don't think that I'll let Rieuk off so lightly. The instant that the Lodestar is complete, I'm sending him into the Rift to summon Nagazdiel.”

  Two of the Arkhan's guards forced Rieuk to prostrate himself before Sardion on the polished sheen of the marble floor. Behind him knelt Aqil and Oranir.

  “I will vouch for Rieuk, Lord Arkhan,” he heard Lord Estael say. “He won't betray your trust again.”

  “I want to hear him ask for my forgiveness,” said Sardion coldly. “I want to hear him beg.”

  Rieuk swallowed back his anger. If that was the only way to get Sardion's permission to go back into the Rift, then he would have to obey.

  “Please forgive me, Lord Arkhan.” The words stuck in his throat.

  “Louder.”

  “I beg you, Lord Arkhan, to forgive me for betraying you.” Rieuk scowled at the polished marble.

  “I will let you live this time, Rieuk, because Lord Estael tells me you are going to create a new Lodestar and bring Azilis back to Ondhessar.”

  “My lord is merciful.”

  “You've done well, Oranir,” said Sardion. “Come and sit by me. I've missed you.”

  “Oranir?” Rieuk raised his head, not caring if Sardion punished him for doing so. “What does this mean?”

  “I've missed you too, my lord.” Oranir rose and without even a glance at Rieuk, went over to Sardion's chair. Sardion stood and, raising the young magus's face to his own, kissed him on the lips.

  Rieuk stared. The earlier humiliation was nothing, compared with this. He could not bear to watch the familiar way Oranir returned the Arkhan's kiss.

  Taking Oranir by the hand, Sardion made him sit beside him. Both gazed down at Rieuk, with a look that said blatantly, You poor deluded fool, didn't you have any idea?

  CHAPTER 6

  In the Rift, it was as if everything had been reversed, like an engraver's plate. The sky was black as charcoal yet the Emerald Tower and the skeletal branches of the great trees were etched in ghostly acid white. And the emerald moon was waning; only the thinnest sliver of a pale crescent showed from time to time from behind fast-scudding clouds, blown across the sky by the wind that was gusting in from the Realm of Shadows.

  “Can you see any hawks?” Rieuk called to Ormas over the whine of the wind.“Not one…” Ormas's desolate cry was borne back to Rieuk from the turbulent darkness.

  “Come back to me now, Ormas.” The farther Ormas flew away from him, the more Rieuk feared that he might find it impossible to return. The distance between them felt as if it were growing greater by the second.

  “Ormas!” he cried again.

  The hawk came skimming down over the treetops, battling the wind, and perched on his shoulder.

  Rieuk put his head down and set off into the Rift. But there was a dull, bitter ache around his heart. Oranir had betrayed him. Did all the time we spent together mean nothing to him? Was he playing me for a fool the whole time? Oranir had gone to Sardion's side as soon as he was bidden without even a backward glance.

  Find the aethyr crystals, and get out as fast as possible. But he didn't know where to begin to look. Lord Estael had spoken of a mine that lay far beyond the Tower, deep in the Rift. But it
was many centuries since any magus had dared venture so far in to seek out the source of the Lodestar.

  “You're a crystal magus; you'll be able to sniff the crystals out, like a pig scenting truffles,” Estael had said to him as he left him in the Rift. The analogy was not at all flattering and Rieuk had resented the comparison.

  “Yet here I am, rooting about in a forest; I might as well be a pig,” he muttered to himself.

  He notched a mark on the trunk of each tall tree that he passed, so that he could find his way out again. Already he could feel the disorienting effect of the atmosphere in the Rift seeping into his mind. The fitful light from the waning moon cast verdant shadows across his path from time to time; whenever the slender crescent reappeared from behind the clouds, he looked back to see if he could still make out the stark silhouette of the tower. He must have penetrated deep into the forest, for the moon had vanished from sight.

  “Where can the hawks have gone?” he asked Ormas. “And is Imri among them?”

  “I cannot tell. If they were blown far away on this wind, they may have become lost in the shadows.”

  Lost in the Realm of Shadows. There was such a bleak, hopeless ring to Ormas's words. But Rieuk felt nothing but anger as he struggled onward.

  Why must it be I who has to put this right? Linnaius stole the Lodestar. Why must I pay for his crimes?

  Buffeted by a sudden violent gust of wind, Ormas was flung violently away from him into the dark air.

  “Return!”

  It was then that he felt it: a stab of clear energy that pierced his brain like a needle of ice. He stood still, concentrating on identifying the source. The thin light of the moon faded and died, leaving him stranded in the pitch black. The only solution was to stumble on blind through the forest, guided by the crystalline sound.

  The intensity of the vibrations was growing stronger with every step he took until his mind was filled with a jangle of different clear pitches, like the ringing of hundreds of glass bells.

  “Careful, Master!” Ormas's warning cry made him stop dead in his tracks. He gazed down. The moonlight shone out again as the clouds parted, revealing that he stood on the rim of an abyss. The crystals had been leading him directly toward a crevasse.

  Rieuk hastily stepped back, away from the edge. If he had fallen— He felt himself break out in a chill sweat. He sank to his knees, shaking.

  “Ormas. You saved me. “

  The high, clear ringing was so loud that it lit up his mind with a crystalline shimmer. He forced himself to crawl to the edge and gazed into fathomless darkness. “How am I supposed to get down there?

  Fly?” He sat back on his heels and began to laugh.

  “Let me go down into the ravine. Let me be your eyes.”

  Rieuk didn't want to let go of Ormas again, but there was little choice in the matter. With the crystals’ song ringing in his head, he observed through Ormas's one good eye the jagged contours of the side of the ravine as the hawk flew downward, fighting against the sudden gusts of wind.

  “There's an opening not far below, a cleft in the rock. You can let yourself down. There are footholds. I'll guide you.”

  Rieuk had never conceived of such a cavern, where crystals bloomed like flowers, encrusting the walls and floor, each stone vibrating at its own unique pitch, filling his ears with a symphony of bright sound. There must surely be one among them that was kin to the first Lodestar in its perfection and clarity, one that was fit to contain Azilis and reflect the purity of her song. A crystal that could be both star and lotus…

  The song of the aethyr crystals wound itself into Rieuk's brain, enchanting and beguiling him. He touched one after another, delighting as his body resonated in tune with their individual vibrations. Some spread warmth throughout his limbs, others sharpened his thoughts, and others still spread a slow, twilit calm…

  He was in his element at last, in harmony with the source of his powers. He lost all idea of time, obsessively pursuing his search as Ormas slumbered within him, until he found a single crystal that pleased him in a way he did not at first understand. He coaxed it from the cavern wall, cradling it gently in his hands. Its facets were so clear that he could look right through them, yet even as he did, it seemed to him that he could see an evanescent trace of iridescence, like sunlight seen through falling rain.

  “This is the one,” he said aloud. His voice sounded strange to his own ears. He had not spoken aloud, even to Ormas, in a long, long while. He looked at his water bottle and saw that it was empty.

  It was time to go back.

  But a dulled weariness spread through his whole body; he had been so intent on his quest that he had not slept in many hours. His head began to droop. Ormas dozed within him. Surely it couldn't hurt to rest for a little while and regain his strength before he set out again to find the Emerald Tower…

  “Rieuk! Rieuk!” Oranir stood on the top of the Emerald Tower shouting Rieuk's name into the void until his throat ached.

  “Zophas.” He summoned his shadow hawk and sent him out into the Rift. “Go and find Ormas.”

  He stood, his face raised to the lashing of the wind, waiting for Zophas to come winging back.

  The look of betrayal on Rieuk's face still tormented him.

  How could I tell you that I did it to save your life? For my plan to work, you had to hate me, to revile me. Sardion's moods have become so capricious that if he had once suspected how much you mean to me, he would have had you put to death in the most cruel and perverted way he could devise.

  But now he feared that the plan had worked far too well and Rieuk had gone off into the Rift, never to return.

  “I can't sense Ormas”—Zophas swooped down, borne on a gust of wind, to perch on Oranir's shoulder—“or any of my brothers. The hawks have gone.”

  Lord Estael appeared below, tramping up the hill from the endless forest, leaning heavily on his staff.

  Oranir went running down the spiral stairs to meet him, but the instant he saw the grim expression in Estael's eyes, he knew that the news was not good.

  “There's no trace of him,” Estael said. “It's as if the Rift has swallowed him up completely. Or worse still, he's lost his way and wandered into the Realm of Shadows.”

  “Let me go.” Oranir tried to push past him.

  “I forbid it!” Estael's hand shot out, grasping him by the arm. “With Rieuk lost, there's only the four of us left.” Then his tone softened . “Don't throw your life away needlessly. It's not what Rieuk would have wanted.”

  “How can you possibly know what Rieuk would have wanted?” Oranir wrenched his arm from Estael's grasp. Was Lord Estael deliberately trying to make him feel guilty? He felt wretched enough already. He had learned far too young that to survive in a harsh world you had to deceive—or be trodden underfoot.

  “I wonder how you can still sleep at night,” Estael said, walking on past him with slow, weary steps. Oranir scowled down at the ground. He had his own reasons for betraying Rieuk, but he wasn't going to explain himself to Lord Estael. He had never imagined the matters would turn out so badly, with Rieuk disappearing into the Rift. And as for sleeping… the nights had never seemed so long or so empty without the steady sound of Rieuk's breathing beside him in the darkness.

  Lord Estael let out a sigh. “I fear we are the very last of the magi,” Oranir heard him say, his voice echoing back to him in the void, “and it will be our sadness to live on as our powers slowly fade away.”

  Part II

  CHAPTER 1

  Burning braziers warmed the shadows in the crypt of Saint Meriadec's, yet Celestine de Joyeuse could not repress a shiver as she followed Jagu de Rustéphan down the worn steps. Although perhaps that was as much due to the sleety snow falling outside as the eerie chill of the ancient crypt. The dusty tombs of long-dead exorcist priests lay in the alcoves below, surmounted by stone effigies, the features eroded by the passing of time and the reverent caresses of their grateful parishioners, a reminder, she knew a
ll too well, of the brevity of life.

  “Jagu!” Kilian was warming his hands at a brazier, beside their fellow officer, the taciturn Philippe Viaud. “And Celestine too? Well, this is quite the reunion of the old team. Any idea why the Maistre has summoned us here?”

  “I have no idea what this is about,” Jagu said, stamping the snow from his boots.

  Ruaud de Lanvaux, Grand Maistre of the Commanderie, came down the stairs, brushing the sleet from his cloak; at his side, a slim, dark young man in priest's robes removed his spectacles to wipe the condensation from the lenses.

  “His majesty,” Celestine hissed, hastily curtsying. The men bowed, Jagu murmuring in her ear as he did so, “This must be important for the king to attend in person.”

  “Thank you all for coming so promptly,” King Enguerrand said, peering shortsightedly at the assembled members of Ruaud's elite squad of exorcists. “Some disturbing news has reached us from Azhkendir.” He replaced his spectacles. “The Drakhaoul has reawakened.”

  Celestine had learned the legend of their patron saint, Sergius, the Drakhaoul-Slayer, as a child at Saint Azilia's Convent. She glanced questioningly at the other Guerriers, and saw that they looked as bemused as she.

  “For years we've heard nothing about the Drakhaoul of Azh kendir,” said the Maistre. “Then, just as the snows began, Eugene of Tielen invaded Azhkendir. The new Drakhaon of Azhkendir, Gavril Nagarian, retaliated. It seems that he used his Drakhaoul to repel Eugene's army, defeating him in what was—by the few garbled accounts we've gleaned—a bitter battle.”