I’ve known you longer than you’ve known yourself, she says.
He stares at the dull, thickly glistening swatches of cobweb across the marsh grass ahead of him. Tell me what I’m thinking, then.
Oh, the usual. Ishil’s tone turns abruptly gemstone-hard and glinting. He feels a chill gust through him—suddenly, she’s a perfect match for the mother he knows. You wonder how I manage to live with the daily truth of marriage to your father and not just open my veins some sunlit afternoon in my bathwater.
Well …
She laughs. Some of the hardness leaches back out of her voice. You’re such an old romantic, Gil. Just try to imagine for a moment you’d been born female. Breeding or brothel stock, these are your options. We just don’t get to carry a blade and carve out our own uncompromising path through the world like the boys.
He’s known women who did, across the old warehouse district and down at harbor end. Admittedly not many of them made it out of their teens alive. He supposed not many had ever expected to.
Women know the price of things, Gil. We learn it hard and fast at our mother’s knee, helping and caring and fetching and carrying, while our brothers are still playing at knights and foes without a care in the world. The world falls on us early.
You seem to be bearing up, he says sourly. What’s the secret?
Children, she tells him with sudden warmth. Bringing them into the world. Seeing them through it. You know that.
He can’t face the way she looks at him as she says it. He turns away, eyes pricked through, half blinded. He wonders, with an odd, quiet desperation, how many times the Ishil he knows might have looked at him like that without him ever seeing or knowing.
Is that why you’re here? To see me through?
She laughs again, voice utterly unfettered this time. I’m here to ask you about the wedding arrangements, Gil. The vow circlets for you and Selys, gold or silver? Red rose petals or white for her bridal path?
What? he asks faintly.
And the invitations, the list? Will you really insist on snubbing the Kaads, or shall we let bygones be bygones? Come on, Gil, don’t spoil your mother’s proudest hour. I’m so happy for you both. Is that so strange?
It’s so fucking strange he doesn’t even want to think about it. He gestures at the cobwebs to buy time. Listen, I’m not getting married to anyone unless we find a way through this first.
Why don’t you try over there?
To his annoyance, it proves a good call. There are patches where the webs are frayed and old, clogged with the sucked-dry corpses of insect life and small marsh animals. No sign of any stealthy, articulated motion within. He unsheathes the Ravensfriend just in case, prods about dubiously for a bit, then resigns himself to Ishil being right.
This way, then?
This way, she agrees. Keep right on like that, it’s your best path out of here. Now, what about the Kaads? Seriously. Your father thinks they should be there.
I bet he does. Smashing grimly through the old web and the grass, the tiny, dried hanging corpses that swing and spindle about as he passes. Chancellery politics never sleeps, does it?
Oh, don’t start, Gil.
So he doesn’t. He lets her talk instead. And though he doesn’t like to admit it, her voice, trailing at his shoulder, is oddly comforting.
What you don’t appreciate, Gil, is that for all your father’s cruelties and indiscretions, he has been a great shield through difficult times. You don’t know what it was like back in the twenties. We didn’t have the Scaled Folk to unite us all back then. Yhelteth was a despised enemy—
Yeah—heading that way again these days.
But she doesn’t seem to hear him. The raiding went back and forth at the borders for years, Gil, news every other week of towns burned and populations marched away in chains. And we were marked. No matter that we were merchants in good faith, wealth in our coffers and a generation of judicious marriage alliances. Still we had the red daub on our door, still we were barred from the Chancellery. Stones thrown at us in the street, spat upon with impunity by urchins. Southern scum, southern scum. In the school we attended, the priests beat my brothers at every opportunity. One of them struck Eldrin to the floor once, called him Yhelteth whelp, kicked him from his desk to the door and out into the corridor. He was five. He came home black and blue, and my father, shamed, could do nothing. My mother went begging to the priests instead, and the beatings stopped for a while, but she never spoke of that visit afterward as long as she lived. Do you know how relieved my parents looked the day I married Gingren Eskiath? Do you know how happy I was for them?
Were they happy for you?
No reply.
He looks back and sees that she, too, has left him.
CHAPTER 20
n the time before this, the Earth was not the way you see it now.
In the time before this, the Earth was ravaged by endless conflict, fought over by races and beings you now remember only as myth and legend.
Weapons of hideous, unnatural power were unleashed, vast energies raged, horizon to horizon, the sky itself cracked open. The planet shuddered from the tread of the Visitors—enemies and allies too, the latter chosen in desperation from other worlds and places worse than other worlds, to hold the line against invaders who were probably in the end no more alien.
Whole nations and peoples disappeared inside storms that lasted decades.
Great jagged darknesses larger than mountains moved in the night sky, blocking out the stars and casting deathly shadow on those beneath.
Gates opened, in places no earthly passage should ever have been permitted, and the Visitors poured forth, met in battle, coiled and recoiled, worked their alien technologies in causes it is doubtful those who enlisted them could ever truly comprehend. It was a conflict beyond human reckoning, and mere humans found themselves trapped, cornered, hemmed in on all sides by what had been unleashed.
So Humanity fought, hopelessly, generation after generation, endured unimaginable horrors, changed at levels once believed intrinsic, splintered apart and became a dozen disparate races in itself—as if only in dissolution could the race once called human hide sufficiently well from the carnivorous glare of alien eyes.
And then—finally, for reasons no longer well understood—the wars ended, the Earth spun on along its customary course in relative peace.
And those who were left squabbled over what remained.
“NO CHANGE THERE THEN,” JHIRAL MUTTERED, AND ARCHETH GLANCED at him in mute surprise.
A brief and pointed silence, and then Anasharal’s voice resumed, with biting schoolmasterly emphasis:
“Into, this, void …”
INTO THIS VOID, THEN, BURST THE DWENDA, THE ALDRAIN, THE WITCH folk, glittering dark and beautiful, human at least in base form, and claiming a prior heritage, an ownership of Earth predating the conflict—though there were those who argued their memories were faulty, hopelessly distorted by their custom of dwelling for long periods in the realm of the Unrealized Possible; and others who believed that Time itself had been somehow collapsed, folded, or maybe just shredded in the wars, so that the past the dwenda claimed did not even belong, correctly speaking, to this version of the world.
But such arguments were at best academic—the wars had weakened the walls that held such places apart from the unshadowed world, and the Aldrain were not disposed to debate with the existing populations in lands they considered their own by ancestral right.
They took the Earth by storm and built there, summarily, an Empire that lasted seven thousand years. Many, including the humans they dominated, called it glorious.
They brought magic as a way of life, they sprinkled it across the planet like seed.
They stalked the night as absolute monarchs—and created a harsh human oligarchy to serve them wherever and whenever the light of the Realized sun struck too harshly for them to endure. A dynasty of kings, endowed with dark powers, a bloodline of human sorcerers with whom they mated and
shared their heritage—to the extent that such heritage could ever be shared with ordinary human stock.
Most of the Dark Kings were insane.
It took the enemies of the dwenda all of those seven thousand years to learn the new rules—to master the new magic, to bend it to their will as the dwenda so long ago already had.
Seven thousand years to bring the Kiriath through the hidden gates in the bowels of the Earth, to summon a science and a people equal to the eldritch folk, to meet them in battle, to throw down their cities into marsh and ruin, to scatter their armies and their human adherents. To bring back a measure of sanity to the world.
To defeat the Last of the Dark Kings.
THE HELMSMAN FELL SILENT.
“I thought—” Archeth began, then shook her head. “Doesn’t matter.”
But the pinched wick of suspicion still smoked in her head. There were a lot of stories about how and why her people had arrived in the world, most of them told by humans ignorant of anything resembling actual facts. Come to that, even the legends the Kiriath themselves told about the Advent were erratic and hard to credit. But Angfal, who hung on her study wall like so much alien iron viscera and bulbous-limbed swelling, had always been scornful.
The Kiriath barely survived the voyage through the quick paths on their way here, he told her one fractious night as she tried to crowbar some useful answers out of him. They did not choose to come here, Archeth, despite anything the Chronicles might claim to the contrary. They were shipwrecked here, and if they stayed it wasn’t because they liked the scenery. It was because they were afraid that the return would break them.
Some of this she put down to bitterness—the resentment Angfal felt at being left behind. But still, she thought Anasharal’s version rang slightly overwrought.
The Emperor had taken a seat on one of the granite benches near the balcony, back to the glare of the sun. His face was in shadow, richly oiled hair hanging forward to screen his features, but she read the impatience in how he was sprawled, the sideways tilt of his head. She wondered if she’d gotten in the way of a visit to the harem—if commanding the executions had left him with the itching need to fuck something.
He brushed invisible dust from his lap.
“You, uh, plan to actually tell us something about this Last Dark King? His name, for instance? Who he was, what he did? How any of this has anything to do with the here-and-now?”
“It is better not to name him,” said the Helmsman somberly. “Better not to utter those syllables here.”
Archeth rolled her eyes.
“Yes—we’re not easily shocked around here,” said Jhiral. “Feel free.”
“Let us call him simply the Ilwrack Changeling, since it was that Aldrain clan who raised him in the Gray Places. Taken from a humble home on the marsh for the dark glimmer the dwenda prize so much in humans, brought up an Aldrain warrior, and ultimately given command of a dwenda legion, he rose to—”
“You know—” Jhiral was showing signs of real irritation now. “I’ve heard this humble-beginnings crap a few times before, Helmsman. Funny how no one can ever actually point to a living example, isn’t it? Funny how in the end they’re all legendary and dead.”
Anasharal paused, delicately. “Oh, the Ilwrack Changeling is not dead, Your Imperial Radiance. Far from it.”
Silence. Maybe it was the slow afternoon cooldown and the breeze blowing in from the river, but Archeth felt a tiny shiver creep across her shoulder blades. She glanced at Jhiral, who sighed heavily and examined his manicure. She read the little display as false. Emperor or not, Jhiral had grown up on this kind of tale like any other kid. His voice, when he spoke, could not quite shroud a tiny, chained tension.
“And … what is that supposed to mean, exactly?”
“Exactly what it says,” the Helmsman said blandly. “When the Kiriath destroyed Hannais M’hen in the last stages of the Twilight war, the Ilwrack Changeling was at the head of the Aldrain forces and their human allies. But he was betrayed—some say by a lover, others claim it was a diplomatic deceit of the Kiriath. Perhaps, in the end, it was both. At any rate, when he discovered the betrayal, it’s said he fell into a paroxysm of rage and grief, and was taken for dead. The dwenda forces fell back without his body, and vanished into the Gray Places.”
“But he wasn’t dead.” Jhiral said, leaning forward a little despite himself.
“No. The dwenda were in disarray, they apparently misunderstood the situation. But a small group of his human supporters carried the body away and entombed him on an islet in the northern ocean.”
“The Hironish isles?”
“Farther west and north than the Hironish. But in any case, the island does not appear on your maps.”
Jhiral grunted. “Convenient.”
“The story goes that the Changeling’s Aldrain lover came later, in secret, to the tomb, but could not wake him. So he—”
“He?” The Emperor’s lip curled. “He?”
“Or she,” Anasharal amended. “The story is not clear on exact identity, only that it was a member of the Ilwrack clan. In any case, this lover cast an enchantment around the whole island, sweeping it up into the margin of the Aldrain marches. But the magic was hurried and incomplete, and it’s said the island emerges from time to time and stands solid again in the ocean, though lit with witch-light and sometimes for only moments at a time.”
“I’ve read about this,” Archeth said slowly. “The Ghost Isle, the Chain’s Last Link.”
Jhiral looked at her. “You have?”
“Yes, it’s a legend of the Hironish peoples, but there are some versions in Trelayne as well. Mariner tales—an uncharted island beyond the last in the Hironish Chain; ships sight it in the midst of storms, witch-lit in blue, there one moment, gone the next.” She gestured helplessly. “It’s a legend, you know. I always assumed … ”
“Quite.” The Emperor turned his gaze back to the Helmsman. “Are you trying to tell me we should be expecting a visit from this undead Changeling?”
“You’ve had some trouble with the Aldrain recently, have you not?”
Archeth and the Emperor swapped a look. The dwenda incursion at Ennishmin was a closely guarded secret. Outside of those who’d actually been there, only Jhiral and a tiny cabal of trusted court advisers and men-at-arms had been informed of the events. Two full legions of imperial levy now sat on the borders of the marshland between Pranderghast and Beksanara, ostensibly as a bar to raiding parties from the League territories to the north and west. The commander of the garrison at Khartaghnal had been apprised of what they were really watching for, but beyond that …
Of course, the creep of rumor was unavoidable. Faileh Rakan might have died in the skirmish at Beksanara, but a number of his men did not. The local population was decimated, but not wiped out. And among the survivors, some, even paid off and sworn to secrecy, even threatened with dire penalties—even Throne Eternal veterans—would drink and yarn and recall, and let loose dark hints and drunken fragments of truth.
“The dwenda were driven back,” Archeth said carefully.
“Indeed. But, you see, the legend says that the Ilwrack Changeling will return when his adoptive people’s need is greatest; more exactly, when they have been thrown back in battle from their heart’s ancestral desire, and are once more in disarray. That’s a more or less direct quote from the original Naom legend. See the corollary?”
Jhiral nodded. “Yes. What you think we should do about it is a little less clear, though. A preemptive assault on this sporadically manifesting island, perhaps?”
“That’s clearly not possible.” The Helmsman’s tone was almost prim. “I am charged with offering pragmatic solutions to your difficulties.”
“Not so far.” Archeth found some of her Emperor’s impatience seeping into her own mood. “If the Ghost Isle is inaccessible then—”
“You did not let me finish the tale, daughter of Flaradnam.”
“Well, she’s not stopping you
now. Can we get on with this?”
“The Kiriath,” said Anasharal smoothly, “had no way to counter the sorceries of the Ilwrack clan, or at least none that they could bring themselves to deploy. Instead, they built for safety. A city was constructed, standing above the waves south and east of the Ghost Isle. A watch was set.”
“A city in the sea?”
There was a sudden, odd strain in Archeth’s voice. Jhiral glanced at her in mild surprise.
“That is correct, daughter of Flaradnam. Commissioned and built by the clan Halkanirinakral, manned, initially at least, by its scions. The city was named An-Kirilnar—that’s City of Phantom Hunters to you, your majesty—it was designed to shadow the Ghost Isle in and out of the Gray Places. But recently it seems to have returned to the world permanently—”
“It’s still there?”
“Yes, it’s still there, daughter of Flaradnam. Currently it stands in the ocean beyond the Hironish isles, as it has now stood for some weeks.”
“Then we have to go there!”
“Archeth—”
“Yes, I would say that’s an appropriate conclusion to draw.”
“Archeth—”
“Can you … communicate with—”
“Archeth!” The Emperor’s voice cracked like a whip. He got up from the bench and moved toward the balcony. His tone softened to a honeyed irony. “Would you be so good as to attend me within?”
“My lord.” She hurried after him. “My lord, this is an opportunity to—”
“This is an opportunity to calm the fuck down, my lady kir-Archeth.” Jhiral leaned in closer to her. In her tumbled state, she could not read it—menace or a plea for intimate confidence, the Emperor or the boy she’d watched grow up. The words came spaced. “Now walk with me if you will.”
SO SHE WENT WITH HIM.
Out of earshot—though she wasn’t convinced that was meaningful where the Helmsmen were concerned. Angfal never spoke to her outside of the study where he was hung across the walls like a nightmare in iron; Manathan would speak to you anywhere within the An-Monal keep. She didn’t know if ripping Angfal out of the fireship he had once commanded had in some way truncated a broader sense of awareness, or if the Helmsman was hiding its true reach. But she was tolerably sure that Anasharal, a being who could pluck personal details from the heads of the men it spoke to apparently at random, would not have a problem listening to a conversation maintained a few hundred paces away in the shade of the inner garden.
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