In the Shadow of the Rook (The Sons Incarnate Book 1)

by JDL Rosell

  Erik flailed out his arms, trying to catch himself, but there was nothing to catch on to. He could barely tell when his eyes were opened or closed. Emptiness pushed in, the only thing he saw. A vast emptiness, and only more—or less—beyond it.

  He remembered this place. The nothingness. The complete lack. He remembered it well from the days he'd spent dead. But he felt no fear. Emotions slowly bleached of intensity and meaning, and he felt a great languor like sleepiness, but with all its pleasantness gone. There was no anticipation for this long, deep sleep, no restfulness settling down to it. He was like an unstuffed crowman in the fields, being pecked to threads by rooks, and then to nothing.

  But he remembered something, or the vague hint of something. Red, he thought. Crimson. Like a perfect apple. Like a maiden’s blush. Like blood pooling around a wound. A whole sky of red above, and a sea of daggers below, poised to impale every glass fish in its sea. And sand—he remembered sand, running his hands through it, watching it pour from his palms. And in the sand, another hand, copper like his, rough and familiar and strong.

  Erik opened his eyes, and his father looked down at him, and above and behind him, the red world of the Drift Ose. He had returned.

  “Erik,” his father said, happiness leaking from the word, but there was something broken to it as well.

  But he couldn’t pay attention, not even as unbidden anger pounded in his head. Not yet. For not just everything around him was still in this place. He listened inside, and nothing moved inside.

  His lungs no longer breathed. His heart no longer beat.

  “Erik,” his father said urgently, calling him back from panic. My heart’s stopped, he thought, even though he knew it shouldn’t matter, not after all that he’d lived through. But something about it did. There were certain rhythms to life, that kept time, that told him he was alive. He wasn't just used to them—he needed them. The lack of his heart beating… Something must have gone wrong. He couldn’t be Recarnate. There’s been a mistake. I’m dead, well and truly. This is the dream, not before. There was never a plot, never a life after. Just a betrayal and a murder. A bitter friend's revenge.

  “Erik!” his father begged.

  But it was the growl that made him pay attention, a growl too feral for a man’s, too tame for a beast’s. Erik slowly sat up and looked for the source.

  “Stand!” Oslef screamed at him, bent nearly double with the force of it. “Stand, or—” And he gestured sharply to Tara and Persey, who were near his father and him, and then around them, and Erik saw they weren’t alone. A ring of black, hazy shapes stood at the edges of what must have been the Drift Ose’s bubble, their bodies indistinct but their bright eyes sharp. The whole pride of mooneyes watched placidly on as their leader screamed his rage.

  Then, as one, the mooneyes lifted their paws and pounded them to the still waves. Erik felt a reverberation wholly separate from sound run through him.

  Oslef bared his teeth, sharp enough now to be fangs. “Stand,” he growled. “Or die.”

  Twenty-Six

  Erik stood slowly. It came naturally, as easy as anything he’d ever done, so he nearly floated to his feet in his new, remade body. But facing Oslef a second time, and so soon after his old friend had bitten out his throat, was not a prospect he relished. Maybe he was a coward when it came down to it. But, eyeing the creature across from him, he thought, You’d be mad not to be a coward before this. Spittle flecked in Oslef's beard, in his ragged chest hair, onto the sand as the man gnashed his unnatural teeth at Erik.

  The mooneyes sounded their beat a second time, and Oslef smiled again. “Now. You, me. Equal.” He made a quick chop sideways with a hand. “Fight, equal.” Then he beckoned Erik forward with a sharp gesture.

  Erik didn’t move. “Oslef, we don’t have to. What do we gain?” His body brimmed with energy, but his mind felt as if it had been taken apart and stitched back together, and not very well.

  The Talstalker—it was easier to think of him that way now—moved half the distance towards him so fast Erik could have blinked and missed him. “Gain?” he snarled. “Death—you. You—death.”

  “We killed each other, Oslef.” He found it easy to keep his voice calm and with this new tongue. His silent, rhythmless body didn’t seem to know nervousness. “That score’s settled. We can let it die without either of us going with it.”

  “No.” The denial was deep and throaty. “No.”

  Erik wanted desperately for anyone else to solve this. He wished his father would step in, and settle Oslef down in his implacable and reasonable way. He wished Tara, so good at managing Persey, would grab Oslef’s ear and chide him into a corner. But there was no one else, no one who could do anything to reason with him. Oslef ignored them in any case, gaze only lingering on Erik.

  He had to keep trying. Once he had imagined the horrible things he would do to Oslef, and the pleasure he would take in doing them. But, staring at the count's son, seeing what he had become, what he had always been inside, he couldn't feel that thirst for vengeance again. Oslef had suffered enough, and Erik was tired of cages, especially of his own devising.

  And he didn't much care for being made to fight with his old friend like cockerels in a pit on the whims of a god.

  Despite a creeping sense of despair, Erik tried again. “You were like a brother to me once, Oslef. We bathed in the Fost’Fluum together after playing in the mud all afternoon. We chased after girls and cracked crass jokes. We drank too much eldberry whiskey too young and got into too much trouble. We hunted lurchers and only had each other to depend on.” None of it added up, not when it had ended the way it had. “Why did you do it? Why did you kill me?”

  Oslef’s glowing eyes widened, and he leaned forward as if watching a spectacle of magic. Then he leaned back and laughed, long and wild and unhinged. “Why!” he spluttered. “Why!” Erik grit his teeth with waiting, but he didn’t wait long—the Twice-Late Viscount snapped forward in a crouch like a whip, tense and ready to spring. “Her,” he growled. “Ever, her.”

  Her. It pounded through Erik as the mooneyes pounded the waves again, but he couldn’t understand it. What ‘her’ was he talking about? Was there some woman significant to both of them, some girl they’d both loved? One they’d both lost? Her. It rankled him that it seemed true, but he couldn’t make a damned bit of sense of it, and he was out of options. “Her?” Erik asked tentatively.

  No options, but he’d still chosen the wrong one. The Talstalker stared, eyes bulging, then reared up and screamed at the sky. But Erik was all too aware of where his anger was truly directed. “Forget!” he snarled, looking more beast than man. “You forget!”

  And Erik sighed, for he felt it then. He glanced with warning eyes at Tara, who pulled back Persey a step, and at his father, who stayed firm a few paces off. “Well then,” he said softly, almost speaking to himself. “I forgot, yes. Forgot how all this blighted talking makes me tired.”

  The mooneyes sounded their drums again, again, faster faster faster.

  Could be worse, he thought, as Oslef shifted, ready to spring. Erik’s eyes wandered to those who had come with him: his father, Tara, Persey. To those he had to protect. Could be you had nothing to fight for.

  Then the Talstalker was on him, hitting him with a pounce so powerful it took them straight over the Drift Ose to land heavily on the sand behind. Erik felt the air go out of him, but it hardly affected him. He didn’t feel any weaker for it.

  Then the long, hard nails found his eyes.

  Erik screamed without air as his old friend gouged them out and all went black. He punched and scratched, elbowed and kneed and kicked, but it didn’t matter. Oslef had him down, and seemed a statue for all Erik’s attacks affected him, even though Erik’s renewed strength should have rivaled Oslef’s own. But the teeth, the nails, the feral ferocity—those he lacked, and those had overcome him.

  Even as his hands flailed against Oslef’s face and chest, he felt his friend press down, felt the mouth
gnashing closer and closer. He locked out his arms and held him back for a moment, but the Talstalker gave two savage knocks to his elbows, and his arms buckled in at an unnatural angle. He could have almost been glad not to have eyes so he wouldn’t see them knocking uselessly together.

  Then the sharp teeth closed in, and Erik, for the second time in too recent memory, breathed in blood. If not for the pain and the conspicuous hole in his neck, he felt as unconcerned with it as if he were gargling saltwater. He was strangely disconnected from his body as it became torn and mangled beneath Oslef’s fury.

  All this for forgetting a woman he didn’t know he’d forgotten. A pathetic sort of death, as far as deaths went.

  He heard a sharp shout. “Get off my son!” his father roared, and Erik felt the weight suddenly lift, the tearing cease, and he was left gagging and carved open, like a half-flayed fish washed up on shore. He heard his father’s shouting, Oslef’s snarling, and the screams that came after, but he couldn’t concentrate on any of it. The innumerable pains across his body compelled his curiosity, though he wondered that he had the presence of mind to be curious about anything. No quick dying for a Recarnate, he thought. And if he wasn’t going to die, then he’d just have to rise.

  First, memories of breathing. He remembered sucking in the cold, ocean air, salt burning the back of his throat, wind whistling in his mouth. His throat remembered swallowing it down, a bubble of it descending to lodge in his stomach, and his stomach remembered what it was to gurgle in response. Ordinary air, delicious in retrospect, the stench of decomposing fish and seaweed included, and the simple act of swallowing suddenly made so beautiful, so natural, so obviously true, he could hardly keep from doing it, could he?

  Erik swallowed. His mouth gulped air down, his throat channeled it through, his gut sucked it in. He pressed his hands to his throat, and they responded, bending on unbroken elbows, fingers running over unblemished skin and unshaved stubble. He shifted his legs, getting them ready to stand, and they moved, strong and able. He opened his eyes and carmine clouds swirled motionless overhead.

  He was whole. He had remembered himself whole, same as Er’Lothe had. What a god you are, the devilish voice mocked.

  Erik stood and faced his opponent once more.

  Oslef stared with wide eyes, as did Tara behind him, though Persey looked him up and down him with narrowed eyes. Around them, the mooneyes kept their steady beat, paws pounding on the frozen crests, bright eyes staring on.

  And strewn across the sand, surrounded by uneven circles of red, was his father, shallowly breathing, four scarlet streaks oozing through his torn shirt.

  “You?” the Talstalker snarled, then spat.

  Erik stared. Though he had no heartbeat, he felt the pounding rhythm entering inside him, vibrating with strong, steady energy, that swelled with his growing anger. “You shouldn’t have done that, Oslef,” he said softly. “You should have left him out of this.”

  Oslef’s face twisted into a sneer. Without warning, he leapt at him again, snarling and nails out. But Erik was ready. Grabbing him with outstretched hands, he twisted and threw him past, deft as a bull wrangler in the pit.

  “Blight you!” he shouted as the Talstalker scrambled up from the ground with barely a moment's hesitation. The beat had sprung up in him now, filling him, and he was intoxicated on its vibrations. “Blight you to the fucking Void!”

  But Oslef was up again, wary this time. Crouched over like a hunchback, he swiped at him carefully, testing Erik’s resolve and reactions. Erik knew better than to stand his ground. His opponent had tooth and nail to fight with, but he had no such natural weapons, and not even a knife any longer. He swallowed hard, but it was hard to panic when the beat swelled within him.

  “Erik!” Tara suddenly called, and Erik so precisely heard a projectile whistle through the air as to know exactly where it flew. He threw his hand out behind him, and his fingers closed on a hilt. He smiled, eyes still on his adversary. They were matched now, nail for nail, and his would bite deeper.

  But catching the knife had given Oslef an opportunity. Roaring, he darted forward and thrust out his hand, catching Erik in the chest with impossible force, crushing his sternum and throwing him back. Erik didn’t breathe in—he didn’t have to—but still he felt the blood trickling into his lungs as he rose and faced Oslef, bounding after his prey. Grimacing, Erik warded him back, waving the knife in wide arcs before him, trying to remember breathing the way he had before to heal. It wasn’t working quickly enough.

  Oslef circled closer, a savage grin breaking out over his face, knowing he had Erik just where he wanted him. And even if he could heal, Erik wasn’t keen to test how much he could come back from. But the humming continued within him, out of synchronization with the mooneyes, vibrating up and down, back and forth, through and in and out of him, faster and faster.

  At the end of another of his knife’s arcs, Oslef darted forward again, nails flashing out, tearing along Erik’s left shoulder. But it left the Talstalker open, and Erik whipped his arm back to stab down into his collarbone. He felt the knife grate against the bone as it sank in to the hilt, and Erik pushed in and down, trying to drive Oslef to his knees.

  But his old friend wasn’t going down that easily. His nails lashed into Erik’s abdomen, ripping through the skin, leaving bloody, crisscrossing trails behind, and his head curled around at an impossible angle to bite hard into Erik’s wrist, nearly making it go numb. Erik gritted his teeth and kept pushing, pushing him down on one knee, then onto his rump. The knife went in past the hilt, and his hand was soaked with blood as it went into the broken flesh.

  Oslef jerked his head back, and Erik cried out as the teeth tore sensation from his hand. But he still pressed down on it with all his strength, driving the knife further in, down through his chest, nearly elbow deep in Oslef now. Oslef drove both hands into Erik’s belly and tore into them, and Erik doubled with the pain of his guts spilling out.

  They both jerked back suddenly, as if mutually acknowledging a truce, and Erik withdrew his arm with a sickening squelch, stumbled away, and sank to his knees. His good arm curled about his stomach, trying to keep it all in, and he gasped and found his chest hadn’t yet healed. It was hard work remembering his body whole, cracking open the memories like nuts, but he had no other choice. Somehow, he recalled running through the Brunnen Forest, swimming in the Fost’Fluum, making love with… He blinked. He couldn’t picture the face, though he remembered all the squirming, panting movements. Just whom had that been with?

  The memories were enough, though. He blinked out of his fugue and stood, and looked down through his ragged tunic as the last of the red slashes closed up, leaving wet blood behind. He smiled slightly, but he felt worn somehow, paler, and his body moved loosely, more puppet than human.

  Oslef gave no sign of feeling the same. He had the same violent hatred flashing in his eyes as he stood, though he winced and put a hand to his chest. The knife was still in there, Erik realized. He couldn’t heal it out.

  The mooneyes beat was faster around them. They pounded with alternating paws now, panting with the exertion, eyes growing wider as they watched for their leader to come out on top of this soft-skinned human. Erik grimaced and hoped they were wrong. Somehow, it seemed to stoke the music inside of him.

  The music. It reminded him of something, something important he'd forgotten. A weapon that might win this fight. Oscillation. The source of magic. He had to pull on it, use it, however that was possible. He didn’t know if there was any other way to defeat him.

  But before him, Oslef manically grinned, and Erik felt the first crushing waves nearly shake him apart.

  They washed over him, sounds so sharp it seemed they should cut, bouncing around his head and rattling his bones and boiling his blood. He cried out, but he could hear nothing over the loud thwapping in his ears, could see nothing for the pressure on his eyes, could feel nothing but his skin crawling and pushing to burst open. He fell, but there was no di
fference between air and ground. All was pain—terrible, pulsing pain.

  Use it. A foreign voice was in his head, soft and gentle, but urgent enough to pierce through the ruckus racking his body. Take his sound and use it. Erik felt the voice somehow came from far away and close at hand at once. Use it, it urged.

  Then it showed him what it meant.

  Erik opened his eyes and saw the sounds emanating from around him. The frozen world was a painted backdrop, silent and devoid of song. But the mooneyes, the people, the adversary, he saw them without seeing, heard without hearing. He knew them, their location, their origins, their very beings, and he touched their songs like he ran his hands over reams of silk, feeling their contours and shapes. But the wonder dissipated and the urgency returned, and he concentrated on that singular disrupting drum emanating from the enemy, and the discordant chorus blaring from within. He looked inside that wild chant and heard at the center a single, broken, unrelenting cry of despair.

  Use it against him, the voice came again, but Erik didn’t want to. This was the core of Oslef, he suddenly realized, the core of what was left of him. To use that against him seemed sacrilege even to him, and he’d never been much of a believer in anything.

  Will you kill them? the voice questioned. Will you sacrifice your friends because you had not the strength to protect them? It remained soft and assured as if it already knew Erik’s answer.

  It did. Erik listened to the despairing cry deep inside Oslef a moment longer. Then he sighed.

  With incorporeal hands, Erik seized Oslef's sound and, with all the thrumming strength inside him, began to smother it.

  The pressure in his body died at once, and Erik rose from the ground. Songs of living things still vibrated back to him, but he felt with his other senses now, too. He saw Oslef doubled over, gasping, grabbing at his chest as if his heart were trying to break free. He saw the stalkers of the night bowing away, their beat ceased, suddenly seeming unsure. He turned and saw Persey still alive, if looking worse for the wear, her hands clamped over her head and tears streaming down her face. He saw Tara, kneeling over his father, pressing a blood-soaked rag to his wounds and looking up with hollowed eyes. His father… he was still alive, if barely, from his faint moaning.