by Matthew Ward
“Melanna!”
Josiri urged his horse to redoubled effort. Not towards Melanna, who he knew he’d never reach in time, nor even to Viktor. Instead, he drove hard for the point between.
The bow sang. Moonlight gleamed.
Fire struck Josiri’s shoulder and twisted him about. Blood rushed hot and cold. His numbed fingers slipped from the reins.
Josiri’s cry echoed through the Dark. Viktor halted on the precipice. In his mind’s eye, he saw Josiri fall with a black-fletched shaft deep in his shoulder. Emotion he’d thought sloughed away boiled up anew. Viktor clung to those scraps. Lies melted into new truths.
Lost to the Dark, he’d not seen the arrow, nor the doom it promised. Josiri had made his sacrifice willingly, unurged. Their bond was born not of the Dark, but of friendship hard won. And if he was worthy of that friendship, Viktor realised, he was worthy of more besides. It didn’t matter that he was born of the Dark. It mattered only what he chose to be. And if he chose to be a man, and not a monster – the choice that had always been his – then he could be so.
He drew back his hand and stepped from the precipice. The Dark receded, the cold alongside.
Calenne’s face dissolved into sharp, haggard features. “No! What are you doing!”
She lunged for him, fingers hooked like talons. Viktor caught her wrists. His own anger rose in reply, bringing with it pieces of himself he’d thought lost to the Dark. Duty. Purpose. The cornerstones of the life he’d made. He bound them as a cage about his glutted shadow, and flung it howling into the depths of his soul.
He drew Malatriant close. How weak she seemed now.
“I may have been born to the Dark, but I choose to walk in the light.”
Malatriant shrieked.
The Dark broke apart. Viktor found himself on his feet in Eskavord’s marketplace. Elda fell away, her black eyes glassy and cold. Her body shattered as it hit stone, scattering across the cobbles as thick, black ash.
Thralls stood motionless all around. Not frozen, simply . . . inert. Like kraikons awaiting commands. But beyond the sunlit whitewashed walls, darkness reigned. He’d not destroyed Malatriant, only her vessel. She’d regather herself. And now he’d rejected her, there was nothing to hold back her last act of malice. Or almost nothing. There was a third path, though its price was almost too high to contemplate.
Ignoring complaints from stiff limbs, Viktor vaulted from the soiled fountain. He fell to his knees beside Josiri. His heart was a lump of stone, and grew heavier as he took in the pooling blood.
“I have you, brother.”
Furtive eyes stared out from a pale face. Blood trickled between the cobbles. “And . . . Calenne?”
“She’s here.” Viktor took his hand. “I’ll find her, I swear. See that you’re here to greet her.”
Josiri’s eyes slid closed. The weight about Viktor’s heart grew heavier still. Josiri’s friendship had saved him – had maybe saved them all. For him to die . . .
“Ashana Brigantim!”
Lost in despair, Viktor noted too late the galloping hooves for what they were. Then Melanna was upon him, leaning low in the saddle as her sword hacked down.
At Davenwood, Viktor had been paralysed by his shadow’s terror. Now, with his shadow consigned far from the light, he knew no such constraint. One hand sought Melanna’s wrist and the other her belt. With a grunt of effort, he swung her from the saddle and pinned her to the ground. The horse galloped away.
“I am not what you think,” he growled, his face an inch from hers.
She thrashed beneath him. “You are of the Dark!”
“Are you sure?”
Uncertainty crept across her features. “No. It’s . . . Why is it gone?”
Viktor rolled clear. “If Josiri dies, there is no fortress, no army, no godly blessing that will save you. Am I understood?”
Melanna clambered warily to her feet. Her face fell. “I didn’t mean for this.”
[[Josiri?]] Anastacia pushed through the motionless thralls and collapsed at Josiri’s side. Cradling his head in her hands, she glared up at Melanna. [[What happened?]]
“A mistake,” said Viktor. “Nothing more.”
He glanced at Melanna and wondered why he lied. Perhaps because the princessa was as much his saviour as Josiri. Shading his hand against the sun, he stared east across the bridge and a trio of Essamere uniforms riding closer, Rosa at their head. Good. Someone he could trust.
The nearest thrall twitched. Not by much. A spasm of the hand. Malatriant was almost done licking her wounds.
Viktor snagged the bridle of Josiri’s steed, masterless since his fall, and drew the beast to Anastacia’s side.
“Take him. He’ll live if his wounds are tended.”
She swung into the saddle. With the aid of a contrite Melanna, Viktor eased Josiri into her arms.
[[You’re staying?]]
“I can’t leave without Calenne.”
“Then Essamere stands with you.” Rosa walked her horse to a halt alongside. Her eyes darted warily from one thrall to the next. “We’ve lost too much coming this far. We’ll not abandon you now. I’ll not abandon you.”
“You must. Has the army arrived?”
“Should have the town halfway surrounded by now.”
Viktor closed his eyes, part of him wishing the answer had been something other. Friendship had saved him, but now he had no choice other than to cast it away. He was almost glad Josiri had one foot in the mists.
Viktor waited beneath the fountain long after the last rider departed. The firestone lantern in his hand held the Dark at bay, though he no longer feared its coming. He barely felt his shadow squirming behind the cage he’d made for it. His shadow, and the Dark he’d taken from Josiri and Calenne.
Only when lightening skies to the north showed that his allies were beyond the town wall did he pick his way through the streets. Weary feet traced a route learned in happier days, when invasion and betrayal were all he had to fear, and his standing in the Council all he had to lose.
Part way along his journey, the thralls finally awoke. Viktor wasn’t entirely sure when it happened, for they made no move to stop him. They simply watched with cold, dead eyes. Indeed, the only act of resistance came as he approached the weather-beaten apothecary’s cottage that had been Elda’s house and Calenne’s home. A double line of men and women waited outside the door, a barricade of flesh and bone.
Was Calenne still within? Viktor was certain he’d felt a flicker of her presence when Malatriant entwined him – a glimpse of her sitting at the kitchen table, motionless and alone, the Dark thick about her. And it made a strange kind of sense – one last shard of Elda Savka wanting to keep close the child she’d raised. But all was a gamble now.
“I suppose you think you’ve won?”
The question came not from one of the thralls blocking the door, but a young man seated on a bench beneath the gable. Twenty years old, or thereabouts. Younger even than Viktor had been when he’d first come to Eskavord during Katya Trelan’s rebellion. Viktor read no hostility in voice or manner, just resignation and a hollow timbre too old for his years. Perhaps there was even a shadow of regret.
“Look around you.” He sat down on the wall opposite. Fifteen years ago he’d left Eskavord on its knees. Today would be worse. “No one won today. We are all losers.”
“You could have been a king.”
“I would have been a monster. The choice you offer is no choice at all.”
“It is all you have.”
“Let you wreak havoc, or inherit your madness?” Had Malatriant always been cruel? Viktor wondered, or had the Dark made her so? “There’s a third choice.”
Amber light flickered on the northern skyline. Hungry tongues of flame leapt skyward. Others arose in the east, and then to the south. A distant crackle, like leaves tramped underfoot, billowed with the first skeins of smoke.
The lad stared past Viktor’s shoulder, dark eyes aghast. “What have you do
ne?”
“I’m finishing what Belenzo started,” he replied. “By now, Eskavord is surrounded. You may be in every root and leaf, every scrap of flesh and every spark of soul. One by one, I will take these from you. I will render them dust. No spark of life will remain. No meadow will be left unsalted. Eskavord will pass into history, and you with it. You will have no heir. No testament. Only the fire and a legacy of ash.”
To the west, fresh flames leapt across Branghall’s gatehouse.
“It will mean the deaths of thousands.”
“They’re not alive now. Not in any way that counts.”
“Few will believe that.”
“So be it. I’ve no need to be remembered as a hero, or even at all. All that matters is what I do, here and now. And in this moment, trapped between light and dark, between fire and shadow, I reject you.”
To his surprise, Malatriant laughed. “So this is why you risked the fires. To taunt my failure?”
“I came for Calenne.” He shrugged. “The rest is . . . what it is.”
The lad waved a hand. The thralls parted and bled away, leaving the door unguarded. “You’ll find her within. If that’s what you truly want. But I spoke true before. She belongs to your past.”
“You’ll not stop me?” Viktor asked, surprised at the sudden accession.
“What would it change?”
“Nothing.”
“Then I’m right to choose nothing in return,” the lad replied bitterly. “Believe me in this: opening that door will bring you only misery.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
The hungry roar of flames growing all around him, Viktor approached the cottage. He hesitated at the door, haunted by Malatriant’s promise of misery yet to come. What if Calenne was dead? What would he do then? And even if she still lived, how could she ever again look on him as anything other than a monster? Could he live with that?
He’d have to.
Viktor grasped the door handle. In the distance, the first screams began.
Josiri jerked upright into bitter gloom, all but tipping himself from the tent’s narrow bed. Numbness and thick bandages about head and shoulder sapped him of what little coordination he had left. Only the intervention of slender hands stopped him striking the floor.
“Have a care,” said Melanna. “You’ll be unsteady until the bethanis tincture wears off. When it does, you’ll wish it hadn’t.”
Jumbled memories fought for dominance. “What happened?”
She eased him back and turned away. “I did something foolish. Then you did something foolish. And then Lord Akadra . . .”
“Viktor? Where is he? Where’s Anastacia?” And what was that damnable smoke? It grew thicker with every breath. “I want to see them.”
He swung his legs clear of the bed, only to overbalance a second time before his bare feet touched the floor. Again, Melanna came to his rescue.
“Did you hear nothing?” she snapped. “The tincture has your wits. You’ll fall before you get a dozen paces.”
“Then you’ll have to help me, won’t you?”
She pinched her lips together. “I won’t make it even half that far.”
Josiri forced blurry eyes to focus and at last saw the rope binding Melanna’s hobbled ankles to the tent’s central pole. “I see.”
“It has been made clear to me that another rope awaits me, should you die.” She forced a thin smile. “So please, no foolishness.”
[[I’ll take you wherever you want to go.]]
The tent flap parted, leaving Anastacia silhouetted against an amber sky.
A little of the tension in Josiri’s chest faded. “Ana. You’re all right.”
[[Naturally.]] Something in her hollow voice sounded amiss.
With Anastacia’s help, Josiri hobbled from the tent and into the commotion of a camp half-set. King’s blue uniforms vied with the green of Essamere and the scarlet of Prydonis. Horses, men, the beginnings of a ditch and palisade. The army had finally arrived.
In the middle distance, Eskavord burned, black plumes of smoke looping into the clouds. There was no darkness, only the midday sun stretching from Branghall’s fire-wreathed tower to the uneven rampart of Eskavord’s east gate. The only home he’d ever known, caught in one last, all-consuming inferno.
“What . . . What has he done?” Josiri breathed.
“What I’ve always done,” rumbled Viktor. “What was needed.”
He stood in the lee of the unfinished palisade, forearm propped against timber and eyes staring southwards. His torn surcoat was filthy with soot. It seemed to Josiri that he needed the palisade’s support every bit as much as Josiri required Anastacia’s.
“This was the only way,” Viktor continued. “The old way. Fire to kill a witch, and send her spirit howling into the Raven’s embrace. Every house. Every field. Every soul she ever touched.”
Still Josiri didn’t turn. He could almost see the ghosts of the dead crowding the ashen fields. So many lost to the flames, and all of them staring at him with accusing eyes. And one above all, dearer to him than all the rest, though he’d never truly told her as much.
“And Calenne?” asked Josiri. “Where is my sister?”
Seconds scraped by, accompanied by the distant crackle of flames and the desperate double-thump of Josiri’s heart.
Viktor straightened. His arm fell to his side. “I’m sorry.”
Without another word, he strode away, a black shadow against an amber sky, leaving Josiri amid the remnant of his shattered world.
Tzadas, 20th day of Radiance
A phoenix shall blaze from the darkness.
A beacon to the shackled;
a pyre to the keepers of their chains.
from the sermons of Konor Belenzo
Sixty-Nine
The fires raged until there was nothing left to burn. For five days, flames haunted the horizon, consuming field and forest, hearth and home. The dead. The living. Everything in between. All gone in a conflagration worthy of fable. Of what had once been the jewel of the Southshires, only charred stone remained. Acre upon acre of ashen wasteland unfolding across the Grelyt valley. The Southshires would go on, but Eskavord and its neighbouring hamlets were no more.
Even Kurkas, no stranger to the cruelties of war, had sought every excuse he could not to look upon the sight while the fires raged – while living and dead were offered up to the flames. Hundreds of thralls, motionless and sightless, shepherded into cleansing coruscation. They hadn’t screamed, hadn’t uttered a sound. That was almost worse.
Only now it was over had Kurkas gathered the resolve to make the long, stumbling walk up Drannan Tor, and fulfil a promise given to an old enemy.
[[He doesn’t want to see anyone. I thought I’d made that clear.]]
Anastacia emerged into the sun-dappled glade. The tangled plaits of her wig would never be the same again, but she’d patched the worst of the tears in her dress. Still, the tatterdemalion aspect remained, lending her the air of a vagabond queen more than a well-to-do lady.
Kurkas drew to a halt, glad of the respite. Pain he didn’t mind – it meant the parts and pieces were still there – but the stiffness? That couldn’t fade fast enough.
“Pretty clear, I’d say, plant pot.” He paused. “Sorry. Milady plant pot. You didn’t have to toss that herald down the hillside. Poor lad was only doing his duty.”
Gold glinted as she prowled nearer – a simarka stalking prey. [[And you suppose I’d not do the same to you?]]
“Reckon you’d do it with a smile, if those lips’d let you.” He rubbed at his eyepatch. “We both know he can’t hide for ever. Let me talk to him, then you can throw me down the hill. Call it a pleasure deferred.”
Anastacia withdrew. Taking it as invitation, Kurkas followed.
To his relief, the slope lessened as it neared the old watchtower. A campfire smouldered on the lee side of the sole remaining wall. Josiri sat beneath canvas strung between windblown trees, staring out across the as
hen waste. Staring but not seeing.
“Captain Kurkas.” He spoke without turning. “If you’ve come on Viktor’s behalf, you might as well save your breath.”
“Sah! ’Specially after that climb. His lordship’s worried about you.”
“And what good did Viktor’s concern ever do anyone?”
Kurkas limped closer. The gusting wind set white petals dancing over the ashen wastes below as proctors scattered duskhazel and fleenroot to cleanse the last of Malatriant’s taint. Superstition, as far as Kurkas was concerned. But he also believed in taking no chances.
“Reckon he did what he had to. There wasn’t any saving them.”
Josiri glared up at him. “And you know that for a fact?”
“She knows it.” Kurkas jerked a thumb in Anastacia’s direction. “And I’ll bet you a year’s wage that she’s tried to tell you. I get it, my lord, I do. You feel you’ve failed ’em, which is why you’ve stood vigil. One last duty, and all that. But that time’s passing. They’d want you to move on . . . your sister more than any.”
Josiri sprang to his feet, a wild look in his eyes. “And you speak for the dead? Calenne, with her throat cut in a final act of spite? What does she have to say?”
Kurkas stared straight ahead. The old muster-field trick that deflected many a noble’s wrath. “Don’t claim to speak for anyone other than myself, sah.” Bracing himself against the crutch, he tugged the battered envelope from his belt. “And I reckon she’d give me hell if I did.”
Josiri stared at the envelope as if waking from a dream. “Revekah?”
“Halvor . . . Captain Halvor made me promise to deliver this. Don’t go making a liar of me now.”
Hesitantly, Josiri took the letter. “Why now?”
“Because I’m riding north tonight. Think I’ve earned a bit of peace and quiet.”
“Thank you, captain.”
Kurkas shrugged. “I keep my promises where I can. In the end, that’s all we can do. Just ask the plant pot over there not to toss me down the hill, if you’d be so good.”