Dark Heart (Husk)

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  He threw down his blade, taken by terror at what he’d done, and shoved the stone in the pocket of his tunic. ‘Stella, Stella,’ he said, as if the repetition of her name was a spell capable of repairing the damage. ‘Stella, your poor arm. I’m sorry, so sorry!’

  ‘Get help,’ she said to him, her face pale, lips barely moving. ‘Fetch the mistress of the house. And fetch Lenares. Get Moralye to bring Phemanderac. Someone must have a cure for what ails him.’

  ‘Him? What ails him? What of you?’

  What sort of madness had taken hold of her? And why wasn’t the Destroyer’s real body visible, given he had the—It wasn’t in his pocket. He must have dropped it. He scurried back for the precious stone, soon finding it.

  ‘You seek the mistress of the house?’ said a voice. ‘She is here.’

  Conal’s self-pitying inward gaze was arrested by movement seen from the corner of his eye. The far door opened and in staggered two men bearing the body of the Destroyer. They carried it into the centre of the room and laid it on the floor, then moved away, leaving it there, rocking slightly, frozen in an attitude of entreaty. The man had been begging when the spell took him.

  The same two men reappeared with an obviously paralysed Martje in their grasp. Her they placed carefully on the bench above Conal, her back resting against the wall. No doubt she would enjoy a clear view of the proceedings.

  The magician in Conal’s mind gave a long sigh of pleasure and settled back to watch.

  More movement, this time accompanied by thumping and raised voices. Stella and the thug Robal were dragged into the room and forced to sit on the floor some distance away. There was something wrong with one of Stella’s hands: she had been injured in some way, her arm ended short of where it ought to, in a red blur. As he watched, unable to decipher what his eyes were seeing, someone—a servant, he thought—tightened a strap around her arm, then smeared something on the redness. Stella screamed at its touch.

  ‘Did you see to the fire?’ someone asked the servant. ‘Mother will be displeased if her bedroom is ruined.’

  ‘Aye, it was under control last I looked, if it please you, sir. I will check again for you.’ The servant vanished.

  You set this in motion, the magician said to him. Everything that happens tonight is on your head.

  ‘My mother doubted this would work,’ someone said, just out of Conal’s restricted field of vision. One of the sons, no doubt, the words addressed to the Undying Man. ‘But we had to try anyway. We are surprised at how little resistance you offered. I doubt any of us could have escaped the spell once the incantation was complete, but any one of us, even young Tomana, would have put up more of a fight than you did. Disappointing, really. The great Undying Man exposed as a charlatan. How many real magicians did your bidding, I wonder, and with what bribes or promises did you bind them?’

  A foot came into view: it landed a vicious kick on the Destroyer’s exposed arm.

  ‘This is what we shall do. Each of your companions will be tortured before your eyes, and you will watch them die, one by one. Then you will be tortured in your turn, but we will not attempt to kill you. Instead, we will summon the factors of the realm—they will come; our good name will see to that, as well as the evidences we will send them—and, after assembling them here to see your humiliation, we shall lift the spell.’

  The voice paused, no doubt allowing the message to sink in.

  ‘You will never rule again. Everyone who has ever suffered at your cruel hand will seek revenge against you. The rest of your days will be a misery, and you will never forget what you did to offend the Umerta family. The name we carve on every inch of your skin will assist your memory.

  ‘Now, let our vengeance begin.’

  Rough hands seized Stella and dragged her into the open space, dropping her beside the Destroyer. Knives appeared in those hands, and their wielders bent over her bound body and began cutting away her clothes.

  This should be interesting, said the voice in Conal’s head. Not for the first time, he wished he could silence it.

  When the knives had finished and the screaming died away, they dragged the body across the floor, leaving trails of bright red blood. A soft thump told him they had cast it aside. Conal’s heart shrieked in his chest, as though it had its own voice independent of his terrified mind.

  ‘Now for the so-called priest,’ the voice said, and hands stretched out for him.

  Don’t worry, I won’t let them kill you, said the magician, a chuckle in his voice.

  But the pain! I don’t want to bleed.

  As long as they preserve your life, your hearing and your sight, I don’t care what else happens. In fact, it should be interesting.

  Please! Please! But the magician had retreated to some dark place. Conal was left with no one to plead with.

  One of the knife-wielders leaned close to him and brought his blade up to Conal’s eye. ‘You saw our dear sister Sena naked,’ the man hissed. ‘You thought yourself worthy to lie with her. There is a price to pay for such temerity.’

  The blade pricked the corner of Conal’s right eye and entered the skin at the edge of his eye socket. The pressure increased—he knew what was about to happen, but was helpless to resist—and sudden, indescribable pain tore through his head. His vision went white, then red, then black.

  He wished to faint, cried out for release, but it would not come. The tip of the blade rooted around in his socket a moment longer.

  ‘Look, brothers and sisters, what I have in my hand,’ said the man. ‘Look, Mother. One of the eyes of the man who looked upon Sena. Shall I fetch you the other?’

  Please! Help me! Conal begged the magician. He could not believe it, yet he knew what they had done, and that his protector had allowed it. Please! Get them to put it back in. Fix it for me! I will serve you well!

  Nothing but faint laughter answered his pleas.

  ‘Show him his eye,’ said a girl’s voice. Not Sena, one of the other daughters.

  He blinked, his head roared with pain, but the vision in his left eye cleared—and immediately he wished it had not. A hand hovered in front of his face, and on it lay a red and white mess, a jelly-like shape with a cord dangling from it.

  ‘Leave him his other eye,’ the female voice said. ‘For now.’

  Robal could not bear the horror. He had watched them slice and stab his already wounded Stella, and then take the obnoxious, foolish but ultimately blameless Conal and carve out one of his eyes. The priest had been unnaturally still, paralysed in the same way as the Undying Man. Perhaps he had offered some resistance then, to be treated in this fashion; if so, losing an eye was a cruel reward for such bravery. Now the men with the knives turned towards the guardsman, and he steeled himself for his own suffering and death.

  There was one chance…

  The huanu stone lay in a pocket in his tunic, stuffed there at the first sign of trouble, and was now their only hope. Since the moment they had overpowered him and bound his hands and feet with rope, he had been trying to work his fingers into the pocket without being noticed. He’d been feverish with desperation as he’d heard Stella scream, but the cursed seamstresses at Farmer’s Flat had done their work far too well. Even when he finally managed to grasp the pocket, he could neither reach the stone with the tips of his fingers nor rip the pocket from his tunic. He’d even tried arching his back so the stone would fall out. That had been noticed: a man wielding a sword now hovered over him.

  The door crashed open. A servant rushed over to one of the sons and whispered urgently in his ear.

  How is Stella? Robal wondered frantically. Did they kill her? Can they?

  The man the servant had spoken to screamed in anger. ‘What? Employ every man to put it out! Find more men! As for these, slay the rest. We must leave this place.’

  They seized Robal and threw him across the room like a sack of pumpkins. He landed close to the body of the Destroyer. Close enough. Despite being winded, he tilted his torso towards th
e man, just to be sure, and hoped he had guessed right.

  With a tremendous cry of rage the Undying Man rose to his feet, all sinew and skin, face cracked and ruined. The Umertas shrieked, then hurled themselves at him, knives raised, swords whistling from their scabbards.

  Even as he threw himself to one side, giving the sorcerer the necessary distance from the stone, Robal knew he was saving the man he’d tried to kill. But that attempt had cost his beloved her arm. What might another attempt cost? He rolled and rolled until he fetched up against the wall, as far from the Destroyer as possible.

  When he looked back, the Undying Man had resumed his disguise and the blades did him no damage. There was only one way the fight could end now, so he eased himself onto his knees and sought her. There she was, a series of red and white streaks, lying discarded on the floor like the husk of a midsummer firework.

  ‘Oh, Stella, forgive me,’ he said, squirming towards her as swiftly as his bonds allowed. ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’

  Her eyes flicked open. They were occluded with pain. ‘Fetch my hand, Robal,’ she whispered.

  Thumps on the floor behind him: someone approached. He spun around, in time to see a knife, but he could not move swiftly enough…No need: it was Kilfor, and the knife sawed through the ropes binding him.

  ‘What happened here?’ his friend asked, horror in his voice. ‘Have you seen the priest?’

  ‘Later,’ Robal breathed. ‘See to Stella. Water, cloths, salve, anything you can find. I need to fetch something.’

  A great roar masked the plainsman’s reply. The far door collapsed in flames and heat washed over everyone in the room.

  ‘Out, now!’ the Destroyer cried.

  The survivors gathered in two groups and watched the homestead burn to its bones of stone. The Falthans surrounded the remaining Umertas and their servants, their hosts’ weapons in their hands, wary of trouble even though the captives were securely bound. A necessary precaution in Robal’s view. Though why the Umertas hadn’t been thrown to the flames, he did not know.

  They had barely made it out before the roof had come down. Robal’s skin had been singed by the great gouts of flame blown out by the collapse. He had no doubt a few of the servants had been trapped in the blaze.

  He had been the last of the Falthans to escape. Would still be in there, had it been up to him. She’d sent him to recover the arm he’d severed, but the fire had already swept through that part of the house. He had found bone and melted flesh, and with the discovery came his realisation that he could not face her. So he’d walked back into the hall and awaited his end.

  He had been rescued by the Undying Man. He appeared, walking through the flames, with the girl Lenares next to him. He had returned, he said, to search for Lenares and him both. The girl had been held in a small room by one of the servants, and had barely avoided the flames. Umu had promised to save her, but was either cutting it fine or intent on betraying the girl, so the Undying Man had intervened.

  Lenares had held out her hand. Robal knew what she wanted. He placed the stone in the small palm, and her pale fingers wrapped themselves around it.

  ‘Don’t steal,’ she’d said.

  The flames roared, and the Destroyer carried him out into the open air despite his struggling and pleading. ‘She wants you,’ was all he would say.

  So he returned empty-handed, in the arms of the man he had tried to kill; arms that deposited him on the ground at her feet. That she stood was a miracle; but he had witnessed this miracle before. He knew she was already healing with unnatural swiftness. But she would never have a right arm again.

  The priest made the most pathetic sight, crawling unheeded on the grass, free of the spell and in hideous pain, his ruined face and dreadful hollowed pit washed with light from the flickering flames. ‘Stella,’ he croaked. ‘Stella.’ Everyone there turned their faces away from him.

  Heredrew had forced Martje to tell him what she had done. Conal’s part in the disaster had been revealed. Robal felt as revulsed as Stella had looked. Something, some perverse honesty, had compelled him to say to her, ‘He was a dupe.’

  She had stared at him, brushed a stray lock from in front of her eyes, and had never looked as unattainable as the moment she said, ‘So were you.’

  Later, the Undying Man had explained to them all how his deception had attempted to preserve the life of the Umerta heir.

  ‘My efforts have all now, of course, been undone,’ he said. ‘Somewhere in there, consumed by the flames, is the bier and the body on it.’ He raised his voice for the benefit of the woman lying bound a few paces distant, now separated from her surviving children. ‘Had you not moved against me, Martje, he would be alive now. We would be taking our leave of you. A lesson would have been learned. As it is, my mercy has cost my companions and I dearly, and your desire for revenge has cost you and your family even more.’

  His solemn gaze turned to Stella standing beside him, her arm now ending at the elbow. ‘I should have chosen justice.’

  He strode closer to the Umertas. ‘This cannot go unpunished,’ he said. ‘I now restore your paralysis, Martje, and anchor you to the ground.’ He closed his illusory fist and it was so. ‘You cannot move, nor can others move you. Here you will die. But I have freed your mouth and throat. You will find this a mixed blessing at best.’ With that he turned away.

  ‘Let her see the ruination of her life,’ he said to Sauxa and Kilfor. ‘The rest of the family will remain tied up until someone finds them. They may invent any story they wish in order to explain what happened here, but I do not expect them to let the truth be known; nor, I daresay, would it be believed. Now, let us take our leave.’

  The last sound they heard as they made their way from the steading, walking slowly behind Phemanderac’s horse-drawn dray, was Martje’s screams.

  INTERLUDE

  Husk is the most content he has been in seventy years.

  Other men, he knows, would be at their wits’ end, stretched beyond their abilities as they tried to weave the various strands of the plan into something that might achieve the intended goal. But he is not like other men; he has proved that yet again, and wishes only for an appreciative audience to marvel at his skill, intelligence and patience. He will have the audience he wants soon. Three months at the most. By the middle of winter Stella will be begging him for mercy over the Destroyer’s dead body.

  Not like other men, no. Not a man at all, in fact. The first of a new breed. The first god to dwell among men. And, despite having no eyes, the most farsighted of them all.

  Well has he learned that obsession makes one blind. The Son has no thought other than to recover his place in the world, and so focuses his thoughts so narrowly he does not see what Husk is doing to him, clever, clever Husk, drawing off power through the link he has made with the obsessed god.

  And what does he do with the power? He has made for himself a new skin, a glossy thing, a beautiful thing, with restored nerves and feeling, and with the capacity for something akin to sight. Better by far than the original. Yes, it means an increase in pain, but that is the price of being alive. New lungs, purged of decades-old blood; lungs that can sustain him without magic. He has not yet been able to grow proper appendages, but that will come. The delay will give him time to decide what he wants to become. Not merely human again. No, he must be greater than that. His new body must reflect the greatness of his soul, forged in the fires of suffering.

  He has a tongue now, a voice, a mouth, rather than a ragged hole. But why stop with one? He plans a second and a third, all designed to suck every available sensation from the world around him; to consume everything, then to expel it all, blessed, sanctified, that others might live on his leavings.

  All due to the gamble he took, the bargain he struck with the Son and the Daughter. They are his allies now, uneasy and duplicitous though the relationship is, and have been since they offered their assistance to him. Together they intercepted the Undying Man as he pulled his companio
ns eastward to Andratan through the blue fire. It would not have suited Husk to have the Undying Man arrive back in his fortress with Stella in tow, oh no. Nor would it have suited him to destroy them mid-journey, though he had considered it. There was a possibility he could have ended them, almost a certainty had the gods agreed to help him, but his great soul demands far more than their deaths. They must suffer, and he must watch.

  The agreement was struck in an instant, and the power the gods loosed through him was like nothing in his experience. His own power had strength, he knew, greater than that of almost anyone who had ever lived, but he had been easily surpassed by that of the Undying Man, who burned with a white-hot flame. But the gods, ah, the gods seemed to compress the power of all the worlds into his veins as they pulled through him: the lasting impression was not of strength, or fire, but incalculable weight. Of something so heavy that to be overwhelmed by it would pull one down, down through the world, through the universe and out into the nothingness of the void, to fall forever. Such power!

  Patience over long, long years, and an instant of boldness, won him his prize. He snatched at the ragged edge of their concentrated might, drawing off the merest filament and attaching it to himself. A conduit of raw energy from beyond the wall of the world, threaded through the hole the gods have made.

  For the first time, Husk thinks, the ledger is balanced, is more than balanced. He would have endured all the suffering, ten times the suffering, for a chance such as this. No longer does he have to battle for every breath; no longer is he forced to steal life from those around him. Oh yes, Husk is happy.

  But there are important implications for his new state. He cannot allow the gods to achieve their goals. Once they have left the void and returned to the world, his source of power will vanish. They must be kept alive and on the far side of the great rent in the world-wall. Husk is realistic enough to know that this state of affairs cannot continue forever, but there is a critical moment ahead, some incalculable time in the future, when he will no longer need the power of the gods. The energy he is absorbing will become self-sustaining. He will be able to make his own hole in the worldwall and draw directly from the void beyond.