by Matthew Ward
Viktor cast a long, significant look at his cage of corpses. Another at the dull-eyed thralls gathered in the flickering firestone light. So many. Drawing the Dark out of even one would destroy him.
“This? This is your idea of peace?”
“This is desperation. You don’t know what it’s like, to have yourself scattered to a thousand pieces, each yearning for the whole. Then fifteen years ago, I felt it. A soul steeped in the Dark but not yet driven to madness by it. Your soul.”
Fifteen years. The aftermath of Zanya. When he’d used his shadow to defeat Katya Trelan. Bitter seeds, planted long ago.
“I could have wept with the joy of it, had the traitor Belenzo left me eyes with which to do so. Do you know how long I’ve felt myself slip away? Part of me trammelled in a cage, and the rest dwindling as bloodlines perished or thinned? Another generation, perhaps two, and I’d never have found the strength to assert myself – to stir a conflict that would lure that brilliant, dark soul back to me. The Hadari were . . . unexpected, but Drakos Crovan and his wolf’s-head uprising would have given me everything I needed.”
Viktor grimaced. There was little consolation in the fact that he couldn’t have known. Elda was correct on one score. Konor Belenzo had done too good a job of turning history into myth. “And in my arrogance, I set you free.”
“As I knew you would. It was fate, Viktor. You were born to the Dark. Embrace it. Accept my gift. Wield it as your own.”
“And should I choose otherwise?”
“I am fading, yes, but I am still bound to Eskavord. To its people. I will cling to every rock and stone, every scrap of flesh and every spark of soul.” She spoke softly but with needle-like precision, the old woman falling away as the ancient spirit within rose to the surface. “I will blaze with Dark one last time and birth an age of horror and destruction such as you cannot conceive. I will have a monument of blood and bone to ensure I’m never forgotten. And all because you were afraid of your nature. Because you lacked courage.”
The last words formed a sneer, cold and unforgiving, calculated to shrivel. But Viktor had endured the sour tutelage of Arzro Makrov, and hours in the company of Ebigail Kiradin. A thousand years beneath that sneer and he would have remained unwithered.
“At least I know my own mind,” he said. “You speak of serving order in one breath and threaten destruction in the next. You’re every bit as capricious as the gods you despise.”
“Because I’ve had to be. Because selfishness gave me the power to grasp the Dark. I fought to claim it, offered up countless souls to lure it forth, but you? It’s already part of you, and you of it.” Elda spun about, outstretched hand encompassing the gathered thralls. “You can save them all. Not just these wretches, but every child who cowers from a soldier’s cruel fanfare. Every family caught between the clash of egos and a wall of spears. Is that not what you want?”
Viktor stared across the marketplace, at the horde of gathered thralls. “What I want is a world free of you. A world free even of your memory.”
“Then make one. The legacy I offer is one of magnitude, not intent. I was a tyrant because I allowed times to shape me thus. For centuries I brought an end to war, to suffering. An Age of Dark, where all were one and wanted for nothing.”
“Save for want itself?” growled Viktor. “Or do your puppets retain desire? Have they any hope of freedom?”
Elda dipped her head and cast a sidelong glance at the nearest thrall: a young lad, barely of recruiting age. “Belenzo stripped that away when he set my ashes dancing on the winds. In betraying me, he also betrayed those he wished to save. Hold your anger for him.”
“He couldn’t have foreseen what would happen!”
“So his intent matters, where mine does not?”
She shrugged. Melancholy stole across her features. For the first time since his return to Eskavord, Elda Savka resembled a frail, old woman.
“I’ll not deny that I was afraid. That I could have handled matters differently. It will be different for you, if you let it.” With that, the vulnerability passed and calculation filled the void. “I know you feel the lure. Your shadow has grown so vibrant. I feel it throbbing beneath your skin. I know you long to embrace it.”
“That’s not true.” Viktor didn’t even convince himself.
“Then why have you sought to call on it so many times since arriving in Eskavord?”
“Out of need. I’ve only ever used my shadow out of need.”
“Are you certain? Or is that simply what you tell yourself? Did you never wonder why you so often get what you desire? Even sealed in Belenzo’s cage, my whispers shaped the Southshires, pushed men and women along paths they would never have trod without me. Are you certain you haven’t done the same?”
Elda’s words burrowed into Viktor’s thoughts like maggots. Apara. Bound to him by strings of shadow. A woman who’d killed for him, kidnapped for him, and none of it by her own will. And Josiri. At that first meeting. He’d almost done to him what he’d done to the kernclaw. But still, that wasn’t so bad. There was justice to Apara’s servitude, and he’d stopped short of binding Josiri. He remained a moral man, for he’d overcome temptation.
But no sooner had that thought formed than doubt slithered coldly in. Comments once thought innocuous took on fresh significance. Akadra the charmer, as Vladama Kurkas had taken to calling him behind his back. Malachi’s good-natured complaints that he was “always right”. The easy authority he’d taken for granted all his career. The reason of a rational man, or something ominous? Josiri. Revekah. Anastacia. Malachi. He’d convinced them all to go against their better judgement. And Calenne . . . Lingering on that thought was like thrusting his hand into a fire.
“You,” he growled. “You did this. You’ve manipulated me.”
“No. You’ve simply acted according to your nature and your desires. We all yearn for life to unfold as we wish, and the Dark gives us the power to make reality of our dreams, whether we command it to or not. To make the dead walk and the living kneel. To make memory substance. And you have manipulated those around you. Even your sainted Calenne. How else could a woman love a monster she’d feared her whole life?”
“No!” He pulled fruitlessly at his bonds. “That’s not how it is!”
Calenne. Who’d lived in terror of the Black Knight and was now as infatuated with him as he with her. And she’d embraced more than Viktor himself. Her family’s hated heritage. The mantle of the Phoenix. Her desire, or his longing finding unconscious lease?
He’d never considered himself a “good” man. He couldn’t, for war didn’t allow such certainties. But he’d always held firm to the idea that he was dutiful – even righteous. Now, lost in the Dark and his every recent deed open to appalling question, Viktor’s certainty slipped.
“You are a child of the Dark, Viktor, and the Dark is power. It wants to be used, and will seek to control you if it is not. It could drive you to madness . . . but it does not have to. Drink from me. Learn from me. Be the heir I’ve longed for all these years.”
“To return the world to your peaceful Dark?”
“That choice falls to you. If my legacy is to be a shining realm of privileged squabbles, with you as its champion and Calenne at your side, then so be it. I wish you the joy of making it so. I will sleep well in the mists knowing that my legacy lives on, and that my efforts were not wholly wasted.”
A shame that Ebigail and Malatriant had never crossed paths, for they would have found much to admire in one another. History. Legacy. Strength . . . The strength of a hand clamped tight about the throat.
Viktor took a deep breath, and strove to ignore the thick, heavy pulse of his shadow. It, at least, approved of Elda’s proposal . . . but that was increasingly a reason to be wary. Where before it had been distinct from the Dark he had drawn from Calenne, now he couldn’t tell them apart. Had he poisoned himself by saving her? Had Malatriant planned matters to enfold thus?
A stray memory clicked. Playing
jando with Kasamor during a lazy border watch. Kas had taken every hand, courtesy – as it transpired – of a marked deck. This felt the same way.
If he refused, Malatriant would make good her threats of terror and destruction. If he accepted, he ran the risk that her promises were lies. That Malatriant sought only to possess him as she had so many others and bind his shadow to hers.
But if Malatriant did indeed seek to possess him, that she hadn’t simply done so suggested she needed a measure of cooperation, which in turn offered a chance of resistance. If it came to it, could she do more damage alone than bound to him, with him resisting her every step of the way? There was no way to know.
In accepting, he at least saved Calenne. Even if her love was but a selfish dream, it changed nothing of his own feelings. And he’d save others too – all those who’d otherwise perish in the Tyrant Queen’s last act of spite.
And what of him? He’d been sliding ever since he’d returned to the Southshires. Little by little, he’d used his shadow as it wished to be used – to control, to harm, and even to kill – and perhaps lost pieces of himself along the way. What if Malatriant truly was the only thing standing between him and madness?
Come to that, what if every word she’d spoken was the truth?
The cards were marked. He’d been playing – and losing – all his life, and never known it. Now there was one last hand to be wagered, and the deal had come due.
“Very well,” said Viktor. “I accept.”
Sixty-Eight
The cage of hands released him. Viktor fell forward, righted on the slope of dead by Elda’s outstretched hand. Not the grip of an old woman, but something ancient, unshackled by mortality.
“Now,” she intoned, “drink of me. Embrace my gift.”
The Dark flooded over him. Through him. His shadow rose to greet it; cold, coiling and exultant. They were bound, he the river and she the sea. The one impossible without the other.
With that knowledge came fulfilment, and with fulfilment, understanding. The Dark was more than power. It was alive, as his shadow was alive. Viktor found no point at which it ended and Malatriant began. Weapon and wielder were as one.
In that moment, Viktor recognised the lies couched within truth. Yes, the Dark was a tool, capable of miracles untold. But to join with it – to grant it full rein – was to give away the pieces of yourself that no longer belonged. Duty. Honour. Love. These had no place within the blooming shadow, and sloughed away like dead skin.
Viktor felt them go and cared nothing for the loss. He was of the Dark, and the Dark was of him. He lost himself in a black sea of possibility.
Golden sunlight blazed through the stifling murk, white fire blazing in its wake.
He heard voices. The clash of steel. Screams. The wet roar of ragged flesh. Sounds from another life, at once yesterday and for ever ago. And above the tumult, a single voice clear as a clarion.
“Ashanael Brigantim!”
Eskavord’s north gate had held firm against bandits, a farmer’s revolt, belligerent Thrakkians and the floods of ’76. But its stalwart timbers were as nothing beneath the impact of Anastacia’s shoulder. On the third strike, the crossbar split with fury worthy of a storm from winter skies. Sunlight flooded the benighted streets, the fires of Ashana close behind.
They struck at the gallop, twelve riders on twelve horses. Ten Knights Essamere, a princessa of Empire, and a duke returning in sorrow to a slighted home. Josiri alone slowed his steed on approach, and then only long enough for Anastacia to regain her station behind his saddle. By the time she had done so, bodies lay thick about the gateway and the battle had moved on.
Familiar faces gazed up from blood-slicked cobbles. The folk he’d conspired and fought for his whole life.
“This is not how I imagined my homecoming,” said Josiri. “These are my people.”
[[Not any longer,]] said Anastacia. [[Now they are Malatriant. You cannot help them. You can only set them free.]]
Reluctance to draw blood faded with the first desperate parry. His backswing opened the thrall’s filthy scalp to the bone. The shudder of shared pain parted the press of bodies long enough for his horse to barge a path.
“Ashanael Brigantim!”
White fire blazed at the Highgate crossroads where Melanna Saranal fought from her borrowed horse. Thralls shied from the holy light.
“Until Death!” came the bellow of Essamere.
Death had already found one of their number, who lay in the gutter’s grime, surcoat torn bloody. Another fell from her saddle, dragged by grasping hands. Steel gleamed silver in the backwash of Melanna’s sword, then crimson as the blade bit deep. A serene fell, other thralls echoing her hollow cry. Then the knight was gone, swallowed by a surge of the crowd.
Rosa stood tall in her stirrups. “Don’t stop! Stop, and you’re dead! We’re here for Lord Akadra, not martyrdom!”
The mass of green divided. Knights galloped east and west along Highgate, the firestone lanterns upon their saddles a precaution should their search lead them too far from Anastacia’s light. Melanna spurred west, Rosa east and Josiri straight across the tollway.
He hauled hard about an abandoned cart. Hooves skittered on cobbles. Fingers hauled on Josiri’s leg. He hacked down, and the pressure vanished.
Even the Dark itself fought back. It spat and crackled on the edges of Anastacia’s light, flowing through the streets like blood from a wound, only to hiss into vapour. The hollow screams of thralls howled beneath the eaves like ill-tidings on the bleakest wind. Josiri caught snatches of other voices too: Melanna’s strident cries, Rosa’s bellowed orders.
Darkness retreated over the Grelyt bridge.
[[There!]] said Anastacia.
Josiri stared at the marketplace fountain, and the hummock of dead raised upon its stone. And at its foot, kneeling with his eyes closed and hands pressed to his temples . . .
Dark billowed around Viktor like black flame, the shrunken frame of Elda Savka barely visible at its heart. More thralls gathered in a circle, black eyes transfixed.
Fear winnowed its way through Josiri’s coursing blood. Until that moment he’d not truly believed. He dug back his heels. The horse sprang forward.
“For the Phoenix!”
He crested the bridge, thralls scattering before his blade. Anastacia cried out. She struck the cobbles with a clatter and clambered to her feet.
Josiri twisted in his saddle. The strike of Anastacia’s palm drove a thrall over the parapet and into the Grelyt’s seething waters. Others thickened the street behind.
[[Go!]] A sword skittered along Anastacia’s arm, shredding her sleeve. [[Get Akadra!]]
The words weren’t the same, and the women worlds apart, but for an instant Josiri was fifteen years in the past, watching his mother throw her life away. He hauled on his reins, desperate to bring his horse about.
“Ana! Come on!”
[[I’m not your mother, Josiri. I’ve no plans to die in this squalid little town. Go!]]
She leapt into the mass of thralls. As he had at Davenwood, Josiri had a brief impression of black wings unfurling behind her, more dream than substance. Then she was gone, and for the second time in his life he rode from Grelyt Bridge and left a piece of himself behind.
Viktor wandered in the Dark, the sensations of battle lost in a maze of eddying shadows. He heard the battle cry of Essamere. He felt the fire of Melanna Saranal’s sword, the welter of pain from bodies not his own. The confusion to find a Hadari fighting alongside Tressian knights. But more than anything, he felt the cold of his shadow. His true self.
Doubt remained, but it guttered with every step. Stripped of pretence, this was what he was – a vessel of primal Dark.
At Davenwood, with Calenne missing and his army routed, he’d sworn to fight his nature no longer. No more lies, even to himself.
The maze of suffocating Dark – his Dark – fell away into a vortex. A precipice beckoned.
He’d used everyone around hi
m, bent their purpose to his own. Josiri. Malachi. Calenne. Others. He’d twisted them as Malatriant had twisted Eskavord. The man he’d believed himself had been a lie. He’d always been of the Dark. This wasn’t transformation. It was truth.
A woman’s form coalesced on the edge of the abyss. Her features danced, curling soot-laden smoke into mimicry of Calenne’s subtle beauty.
“This is who you are.” She even sounded like Calenne. “This is what you deserve. Claim it. Begin anew.”
Yes, Viktor agreed silently. This is what I deserve.
He took her hand.
The thrall reeled away from the fire, hands clutched to his face. His scream echoed from a dozen mouths. Melanna galloped on past the west gate and back towards the heart of the town.
She fought by rote, no thought given to her blows. Worry grew to desperation with every clattering hoof-beat and crackle of flame. She felt her strength slipping away, her courage alongside. What had she truly hoped to achieve? What could a mere dozen do against the Sceadotha?
The street widened into a marketplace. The tide of thralls ebbed, and Melanna found herself without opponents. To the east, a slight figure framed by the memory of feathered wings held the bridge’s crest. Nearer to, Josiri cut a path to where Akadra knelt in a torrent of dark.
Through the light of her sword, Melanna saw what was hidden from eyes alone. The tendrils that bound the man-of-shadow to the greater darkness. He couldn’t be saved. Twice, she’d had the chance to slay him, twice she’d failed or turned aside. She could not afford a third.
She sheathed her sword and unslung her bow.
Josiri would never have seen the draw of the bow but for the glint of moonlight on the arrowhead. Only a blind man could have missed Melanna’s intent. The arrow was meant not for Elda, but for Viktor.
“Melanna! No!”
The distance between them swallowed his shout, or else she paid no heed. Her horse picked up speed, galloping hard about the marketplace’s perimeter. She leaned back over the saddle, the bow-staff crosswise across her chest and the arrow’s nock touching her cheek.