by Matthew Ward
“You sure you know where you’re going?” he shouted. “Some guide you are.”
Halvor offered an acerbic stare. “We can’t go marching up to the front gate. Which means we need another way in.”
“Ah, the thrilling secrets of the southwealder resistance. Should I feel honoured?”
“If you like. Scratched hands and skinned knees. If you’re up to it.”
Climbing the wall. Child’s play for a man with two functioning arms and legs. Not so easy for a fellow with half that tally. Not that he’d any need to cross the wall himself. Main thing was to get Revekah inside.
“I can go anywhere you can, old woman.”
“Don’t look so worried. There’s a section to the north that’s barely hanging together. It’s only the enchantment keeping anything out.”
At least the brightening sky offered hope. It was too easy to lose track of time within the gloom. Seemed the sun always shone on Branghall.
“Looks like we’re nearly there.”
Halvor nodded and propped herself against a birch tree, head resting against her forearm. The hike through the forest had done little to bring colour to her cheeks, and her chest shuddered with every breath. Not for the first time, Kurkas wondered if it would have been kinder to leave her with Elda. Whatever ailed her was taking its toll.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
He snorted. “Anything to get out of Eskavord. That place is a suffocating mess.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Why are you helping me? If Makrov finds out it won’t end well.”
He sank against an oak and breathed deep of the soft, sweet air. “I’m not afraid of Makrov.”
“Maybe you should be. Weak men given licence are always more dangerous than the strong.”
“Could be.”
He fell silent, knowing he’d given no answer worth the breath, but not really knowing how to supply a better.
“I’m sorry about your arm, and your eye.”
Halvor uttered the apology with such deliberate, genuine warmth that Kurkas couldn’t help but smile. “A soldier’s fate. If it wasn’t you, it’d have been someone else. And if it wasn’t me, it’d have been you. A wound or two always draws interest. Especially if the lads are impressionable.”
The familiar scowl returned to weary eyes. “Do you take nothing seriously?”
“Life’s too short for that, Halvor.” He shrugged. “Better to die with a smile than live with a frown.”
“Life’s too short for anything nowadays. I thought Katya and I would change the world, and now see me.” She shook her head. “Shouldn’t be far. Just over the next rise. You mind taking a look? See if Makrov’s got anyone patrolling the perimeter? I need to catch my breath.”
Kurkas rolled his good eye and stood straight once more. “That’s right, leave the back-and-forth to the cripple. Just don’t fall asleep on me again. You hear me, Captain Halvor?”
“I hear you, Captain Kurkas.”
Branghall’s clock chimed noon. Makrov peered in the tarnished mirror and straightened his circlet of office. In Yanda’s opinion, the stylised sun-disc on his brow lent an altogether cheerier air than merited, just as the rich scarlet robes lent his presence a weightier authority than deserved. As for the three robed serenes he’d handpicked from Eskavord’s choir to serve as his attendants? Their downcast gazes suggested boredom more than respect. Or perhaps it was disgust.
“Are the crowds ready?” intoned Makrov.
Yanda glanced through the balcony doors of the reeve’s manor. The marketplace was fuller than it had been in days – proof that Makrov’s threats concerning non-attendance had taken root. Better a few minutes harking at the archimandrite’s rhetoric than a gallows jig.
“Ready,” she confirmed, “but I suspect not eager.”
With a final nudge of the circlet, he turned from the mirror and took his sceptre from a serene. “They will learn, Shaisan. They must all learn.”
Yanda’s eyes tracked across the miserable crowd, dancing from miserable expression to miserable expression. “Are you sure this is wise?”
Makrov’s cheek twitched. “Ebigail Kiradin bade me show strong leadership – the sort that you failed to provide. The southwealders scattered these seeds. The harvest is long overdue.”
Yanda felt something break, deep inside. “This isn’t strength! It’s spite! If you really cared, you’d help them heal. Look at them – they’re beaten! They won a war no one believed they could, and you’re busy grinding them into the mud for it.”
Makrov’s shoulders shook. His jowls ruddied. “You’ve been here too long, Shaisan. You’re thinking like one of them.”
“I wish that were true. I lack their courage. This, and this alone, is a trait you and I share.”
Impossibly, Makrov’s face darkened further. He stalked towards her, teeth parted and lips atremble.
“You will stand with me for today’s address,” he spat. “After that, you may go wherever you wish. Ride north to your family. You can grub about in the woodlands with these malcontents you so admire. But you are relieved of duty and title, do you understand me?”
Part of Yanda heard the words for the death knell of a dying career that they were. What remained soared free on golden wings. “Oh yes, excellency.”
Revekah slumped wearily against the birch tree. Kurkas wouldn’t be long, but she needed only a little time.
She crooked her knee and slid the dagger from its ankle sheath. Kurkas wouldn’t understand. He’d try to stop her. And she couldn’t explain. How did you explain a feeling? She knew only that something inside her had awoken. Something that didn’t belong, and yet was as much a part of her as her memories. It had been growing since the battle, but had quickened to a gallop once she’d set foot in Eskavord.
She set the blade to the pulsing vein in the side of her neck and closed her eyes. Was this how Katya had felt at the end? Fitting, somehow, that they walked the same path even now.
“So you know?”
The woman stood among the trees, dark and pale all at once. Hair danced in a non-existent wind. A tattered, fibrous dress clung close about her legs and bare feet. Her face was Revekah’s own, but as it had been years before the ravages of age took their toll. The image flickered and crackled, as if she wasn’t truly there. A hallucination? Or a mind’s last, desperate trick as it fell under another’s sway?
“I knew you were coming,” she breathed.
“That’s why you sent him away?”
She sounded like Elda. Like Calenne. Like Tarn. Like Katya. Even like Crovan. Like Crovan most of all. Sounded like all of them, and none of them. A hollow voice billowing with a thousand souls. A voice for which there could be only one name. Malatriant. Revekah supposed she should have been terrified to come face-to-face with a legend, but she was too cold, and too weary.
“Maybe I just wanted some privacy?” No. No lies. Not now. “He’s a good man. He deserves better.”
“He deserves whatever I choose.”
“Why?”
“Because that is what I choose.” Malatriant drew closer. Her stolen face melted away into Katya’s likeness, her lips curling into that beautiful, long-lost smile. “Your town is built on my bones. My ash is in your blood. I know you’re tired. I know you want to let go. That’s why you came home to me, is it not?”
Somehow, Revekah found the strength to answer. “No.”
“You’re the last, Revekah. The others have embraced me. My children. My fading ash. So worn down by pettiness and jealousy. They longed for me to take their burdens. Now we are one – as all were one before the light divided us.”
The dagger dipped in Revekah’s hand, as if the weight of the world rested atop its pommel.
“I’ve fought all my life,” she gasped. “I won’t stop now.”
“You will. We are one. We are all one in the Dark.”
Malatriant knelt. Cold fingers drew Revekah into an embrace. The dagger slipped fr
om her numbed hand.
Yanda felt it as soon as she stepped onto the balcony. The mood of the crowd was different. Sharper. Expectant. She couldn’t see it in their faces, but it was there. As certain as the wind in the trees or the fall of night.
Even Makrov felt it. He stumbled at the balcony’s edge in unfamiliar hesitation. “People of Eskavord! Blessed Lumestra has sent me before you this day! I—”
“Enough!”
The outburst cut through Makrov’s affronted splutters. “Who dares?”
Yanda peered out into the crowd, straining without success to see the speaker.
“By Lumestra’s light, you will show yourself!” bellowed Makrov.
“The light?” came the reply. “The light has no hold on Eskavord. Not any longer.”
Yanda suppressed a shiver, though she couldn’t decide if the speaker’s certainty provoked the reaction, or her voice. There was something about the timbre . . . something she couldn’t quite identify.
Makrov leaned out over the balcony, knuckles whitening around the balustrade. “Guards! Find the heretic! She’ll repent her wickedness!”
One-sided commotion broke out as the soldiers peeled away from the perimeter and entered the marketplace proper. One-sided, for no one resisted. Men and women, young and old, they merely stared up at the balcony with empty, expectant expressions.
In the centre of the marketplace the crowd parted, flowing away across the cobbles like waves retreating across shingle. A lone figure stood in the clearing – an aging woman who stood with the aid of a curved stick. Yanda scrabbled for a name in the recesses of memory. Elda Savka. An ally of the Trelan family years back, but a model citizen since Katya’s death.
“They don’t belong to you. They are mine, and I theirs,” pronounced Elda. “You have my thanks. So many broken spirits searching for solace. You drove them back to me. The work of years accomplished in days. All that I do now, you made possible. Now we are all one in the Dark.”
“We are all one in the Dark,” the crowd echoed. They stared up at the balcony with glittering black eyes.
Yanda’s blood ran cold. “Makrov . . .”
But if Makrov understood how badly things were amiss, none of it pierced his apoplexy.
“You think I’m intimidated by games?” Spittle flecked the corner of his mouth. His bunched fist strove against empty air. “I’ll break you all for this! You’ll beg for another exodus! Guards! I want that woman! Now!”
Elda smiled. As one, the crowd turned on the guards in their midst with clawing hands and bludgeoning fists. Steel glinted through the rain. Screams rang out. Southwealders fell, blood streaming from their wounds. Others pressed on with implacable purpose.
Yanda gazed in horror. “Do something!”
Makrov stood frozen at the balcony’s edge, mouth agape in a suddenly pallid face.
“Fall back!” she shouted. “Get out of there! Mobilise the garrison!”
It was an age too late. All a mob needed to overcome its cage was selfless purpose, and the southwealders had that and more to spare. One by one, the soldiers drowned beneath a tide of bloodied flesh. Then the mob turned its attention on the perimeter. With a deep, keening growl it surged forth. Screams began anew.
Elda stood unmoving, her gaze locked on the balcony. “Do you understand now?”
Yanda gripped her sword’s hilt. It offered no comfort. A cold hand closed about her heart.
The mob converged on the reeve’s manor. The main door burst apart with a wrenching crash.
Makrov moaned and staggered away from the balcony’s edge. “No. This can’t be happening.”
He ran for the door. The serenes moved to bar his way in a swirl of black silk. The eldest led the way, the younger pair matching her graceful stride in strict unison. The cultivated innocence of moments before turned stony and bleak.
“Hush, my lord archimandrite.” Dark eyes glittered beneath gossamer veils. “Have dignity in your last moments.”
With a garbled scream, he hurled the nearest serene aside. She struck the balustrade and vanished into the rainswept evening without a sound. The two who remained stood voicelessly aside as the door burst outward beneath the mob. Grasping hands closed about flailing scarlet robes.
“Shaisan! Help me! I order you to . . .”
Makrov’s impassioned cry gave way to dull wet thuds. Screams subsided to whimpers and fell silent. His killers straightened. Coal-black eyes bored into Yanda’s.
Her hand fell from her sword. What was the point?
“Who are you?” Her breath stuttered in her throat, but the terrible, paralysing fear had gone. Fear was born of possibility. It held no sway against the inevitable. “What are you?”
The youngest serene wiped a bloody hand on her black dress. “You know my name. Will you join them in the Dark? You are not hated as he was hated. If you ask, I will permit it.”
Yanda stared skyward. She’d have given anything for a glint of sunshine. “Lumestra is my light.”
The serene cocked her head. “Then you die a fool.”
Kurkas lumbered wearily into the dell. Halvor, upright when he’d left her, sat between the roots of a mournful-looking birch. Her chin rested on her chest.
He swore under his breath. “Don’t you do this to me. Not now.”
He let the crutch fall. Torn muscles screamed in protest as he fell to his knees beside her. “Come on, Halvor. You better not have upped and died.”
He pressed a hand to her neck. A pulse throbbed beneath his fingers.
“That’s what I thought,” he lied. “You’re a tough old bird.”
Kurkas caught the dagger’s glint out of his peripheral vision. He threw himself aside. Steel arced past his belly. He landed heavily in the mud. Felt a hot rush as a wound in his gut tore open anew.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Shouldn’t have crept up on her like that.
“Raven’s Eyes,” he gasped. “You trying to kill me?”
Halvor rose to her feet. Glittering black eyes gazed into his. “I told you to leave.”
Yes. Yes she was.
Kurkas couldn’t even begin to tally everything wrong with that moment. He didn’t even try. He’d been too long a soldier not to know death when it beckoned.
He shoved. She went backwards with a hollow cry and fell face-first into the mud. The dagger skidded away. Kurkas grabbed for his crutch and hobbled away, redoubling his pace as a shout rang out behind.
He’d no illusions about his chances in a fight. Not with his litany of injuries, and the renewed fire blazing in his gut. Nor did he reckon much to his prospects for hiding. As for outrunning her? Hah! He’d never been a runner, not on his best day.
Branghall was now his only hope. His lungs burned before he’d covered even half the distance. Feet skidded in the mud. Somehow he turned each near catastrophe into fresh momentum, driving him forward step by agonising step.
The trees peeled away as he reached the outer wall.
Half-blinded by the rain, Kurkas angled for the fallen oak and the spill of crumbled masonry where the tree had struck the wall in years past. Golden light sparked and shimmered across the slighted crest. Even part-collapsed, it meant a climb of some twelve feet up a surface offering sparse purchase.
Kurkas let the useless crutch fall away and clambered up the oak. His good foot slipped on sodden moss and shot away. Desperate fingers closed around a worm-eaten bole. A knee braced against a barren limb. He kept climbing.
“There’s no escaping this.”
The hollow timbre of the words – Revekah’s voice, and yet not – washed up from below. Breath rattling in his lungs, Kurkas glanced down. Halvor stood at the foot of the oak, hair plastered across her scalp.
“No harm in trying!”
Somehow, he reached the junction of tree and wall without sliding clear. Faced with an impossible climb and death below, Kurkas did the only thing he could – he hurled himself at the wall with the defiance of a doomed man. Scratched, bloody fingers scra
mbled for purchase between the stones and grasped at ivy. He kicked at crumbling mortar to create toeholds.
His heart lurched every time his fingers let go and gravity dragged him outward, only to thunder back when he found scrabbled handhold. He was only ever one slip, one misjudgement, one moment of weakness from disaster.
And yet somehow, disaster never came. His straining hand found the wall’s capstone. With one last, heroic effort, he dragged his heaving chest onto the crest.
The skin on his cheeks tingled as it passed through the enchantment. The crisp, sweet air beyond filled ravaged lungs. And the light! It was like passing through a waterfall’s veil. Within, Branghall lay resplendent in sunshine. The ward-brooch pulsed on his chest.
Throat thickening to disbelieving laughter, Kurkas hooked a knee on the crest.
A hand closed around his trailing ankle. Kurkas bellowed as tortured flesh gained new burdens. He slid his knee off the wall and lashed out.
The heel of his boot thumped into Halvor’s head. She spun away, her grip broken. With a final, desperate heave, Kurkas hauled his legs over the crest and stared without enthusiasm at the twenty-foot drop into overgrown gardens.
The cloak went taut across his shoulders. Halvor’s hand closed about his wrist. His precarious balance shattered, Kurkas realised with ironclad certainty that he was going to fall. Outward or inward were his only choices.
With his last strength, he pushed off. Halvor cried out in alarm as his weight dragged her over the crest. The thorn-laden flowers of the gardens reached up, tearing at his clothes and flesh.
Darkness rushed in.
Fifty
The chapel cellar had gone undisturbed since Nikros’ judgement. The bloodstained blankets lay piled at the foot of the bed, the bright stains soured to murky browns. Her nose wrinkling in disgust, Apara gave the bed a wide berth and crossed to the back wall. The heel-marks still marred the dust, as did Apara’s own footsteps from that awful night. The elder cousins had left no sign of their presence. They never did.