Elder Shadow (The Reminiscent Exile Book 5)

by Joe Ducie

  I hoped he didn’t hold that against me. We were allies by regret now, if nothing else.

  And he made another version of me, out and about in the Story Thread that evening.

  Four versions of me—one that was me imprisoned by Oblivion (me, my true self), one that was Shadowman imprisoned by Dusk (arguably, a piece of my true self, one without filter or mercy). And then the Everlasting themselves, wearing our faces.

  ‘Have you noticed how much they’re drinking?’ Shadowman asked, stroking his pale and rough chin. He shrugged and disappeared—pulled from my mind, our mind, his mind, back into Dusk’s snare.

  I sensed he would be back, or could be back. An interesting development.

  “Interesting,” Dusk said. “My vessel, he can speak to yours. They are two parts of a whole, I suppose. I have locked him away again.”

  Oblivion waved us all away and, after a moment, placed the scotch back on the bar. Had he been human, he would have already been passed out in the gutter.

  “This was a waste of our time,” he said.

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. He cares for the proprietor of this bar, but is willing to watch her die. We cannot reason with that, nor bargain.” Dusk considered. “The stakes need to be raised. Every man has his limit. He will reveal the child to us, in time. We have ample enough of that for now.”

  Oblivion said nothing for a long moment and then shrugged. “What do you suggest, brother?”

  “Ascension City.”

  In the brig, I froze. Oh dear. The home world of the Knights Infernal, an enormous city the likes of which hadn’t existed since Atlantis was new. It had been built with Atlantis in mind, silver spires and a Vale tower at its heart. Was it about to meet the same fate as the Lost City? Atlantis had burned, in Voidflood and flame. It had been devoured, torn from the Story Thread. Millions had died, millions always did when the Void got uppity.

  “I had intended to pay the Knights a visit in this form,” Oblivion said. “Before he was awarded Astoria’s grace, before we learnt of the child.”

  “Have you considered,” Dusk said, “that Mother and Father set us on this path?”

  Oblivion eyed him and then mirrored his stance, side on and arms crossed over his chest. “No…”

  “I spoke of a threat, an outside influence, guiding Declan Hale’s hand—since his birth, before, really, given his traversing of time through the Void and to Atlantis-that-was. In all creation, who would have the time and influence, the subtle manipulation, to so readily set us loose upon the Knights Infernal? Hmm?” Dusk sighed. “Consider, brother, we are working together. When was the last time that happened?”

  “Beyond memory,” Oblivion muttered. “Why would Mother and Father want this? Already we have lost Astoria and Ash.”

  Dusk shook the Shadowman’s head. “That, I cannot fathom. All we can do is pursue the course, mindful of the manipulation. Recall, Sister Hail was also gifted lost grace.”

  “An insult,” Oblivion growled.

  “A challenge,” Dusk agreed.

  “What then, is the end game?”

  Dusk grinned with the Shadowman’s rotten teeth. “Always our purpose must be to combat the horror beyond the Void. The Bad Moon rising. Tell me, even with the Peace Arsenal restored, are we prepared? Should the hordes of nightmare break through into the Story Thread this day, would we stand a chance?”

  Oblivion considered that, and I felt him accept some of it as truth. “No,” he said. “We would be annihilated. We have slumbered, been imprisoned… forgotten our way.” He slammed my fists together. “Mother and Father placed the Shadowless Arbiter against us to reignite our purpose, to resist our rivalry, and refocus our efforts against the Void.”

  Dusk nodded along slowly. “With the information available to us at this moment, that is my conclusion, too.”

  Oblivion stared at the whisky bottle on the bar and then, with a flick, sent it tumbling to the hardwood floors. The bottle smashed against the polished mahogany, the peaty scent of good, solid scotch rising on the air and staining the sawdust, the floorboards beneath.

  “So be it then,” he said. “Let us take Ascension City together, brother. As for the spoils, they can rot as the Shadowless Arbiter watches.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE SUGGESTED DAILY DOSAGE

  ’Dancing. Let’s go dancing’

  We Void-travelled again, and I understood it a little better this time, with Emily’s mantle to guide me. As a human, a Knight, I had travelled the Void. One of the few to do so and survive, luck over purpose again, but this method of travel was something else, something… clever.

  The Everlasting were riding currents, riding waves of invisible malice. In the past, and in our protected battleships, we Knights forced our way through the Void. We cut harsh paths, get in and get out, before the creatures hidden in the dark could have their way with us. The Everlasting, in their infinite patience, used established roads, secret back trails through harsh country.

  It was almost as if, and here I wondered, the Void was meant to be traversed. The worlds were meant to be linked—the Story Thread didn’t exist accidentally, but toward some sort of end. A divine purpose. The last of the great mysteries.

  Close, Oblivion said. Your new mantle is making you wiser. We’ll have to ensure it never matures.

  ‘When I get out of here, you and me, Oblivy, are going to have our long overdue fist fight.’

  He snorted. You will die.

  ‘Once, perhaps, but now? This bond of ours works both ways, mate. I sense your uncertainty.’

  The Void ended in a flash of world bearing fruit, bright wintry light, and we stood on the world I had grown up on—at the ragged end of the Story Thread. Such space and distances were mutable, of course, the thread had no beginning, no middle, no end. It was a mess, a tangled ball of yarn, to put it as simply as possible. But the Knights, the true power aside from the Everlasting, had made waypoints, markers, against the chaos. Ascension City was one such marker—the grandest, proudest jewel of the Story Thread.

  True Earth, another marker, and—arguably—the infinitely more precious. No one knew for certain what would happen should the Void claim True Earth, the heart of the thread, the rose of the World Compass, but it wouldn’t be pretty.

  The leading theory was that without True Earth, the centre would not hold. The whole sordid mess would collapse under the oppressive weight of the Void. Basically, the end of this or any creation, washed away on the tides of dark, corrupted oils between universes.

  On my low days, when purpose fled and the night closed in, cold and alone surrounded by books and empty whisky bottles, I considered such an end as inevitable, and wondered why I was fighting at all. One way or another, entropy will out.

  I had thought the Everlasting to be working toward that end—the unmaking of the Story Thread, but now, knowing them a little better, I wasn’t so sure. They believed there was something beyond the Void, some greater threat, and while I wasn’t sold on that belief it had to be considered. Even entertained.

  Anyway, here we were in Ascension City, which after True Earth was the heart and soul of the whole sordid mess. This place stood as a bastion for humanity, the human race, and many a clueless mortal had found themselves here, having fallen into the hidden roads and pathways leading from True Earth. The Knights, often merciless and cruel in their creation-spanning purpose, did stand for something other than war at the bloodied edge of a sword. We were meant to be protectors, saviours, of the lost and weary. Policemen. The thing most people don’t know and it wasn’t readily advertised, is that hopping between worlds is easy—absurdly easy. As easy as opening a book. And the danger paramount. The Knights Infernal, at their best, stand against such lost folly.

  Many a clueless mortal had found their way into Forget and the city purely by elusive thought. The crossover boundaries were, for the most part, fluid and unpredictable. A select few, however, were always present. Always and in all ways. The Knights patrolled the ones
they knew about, trying in vain to monitor the ebb and flow of citizens through the vast, sprawling metropolis and surrounds.

  Lord Oblivion and Dusk appeared on the edge of a glittering silver-clear pool, one of the nexus points close to Ascension City itself, and one I had used before, nearly two years ago now, during my first trip home after my long exile.

  ‘Why did you come through here?’ I asked.

  “It felt right,” Oblivion said, and Dusk looked at him sharply.

  We were in a fairy-tale forest. Narrow beams of sunlight cut through the tree canopy, pools of sunlight warm and redeeming on glades of wildflowers and moss-strewn boulders. The air, the very air, which I scented twice through Oblivion and in my own mind, somehow breathing without lungs, carried the scent of time and lazy afternoons, the ancient scent of dust on the road, miles to go. Home.

  I was home.

  And here to start a war.

  *~*~*~*

  Last time I’d arrived back on this world, through the Void and into this very same forest, I had been met by Amy Delacroix, the Historian of Future Prospect—a teenage girl, gifted and cursed, with the ability to see the future, to see all possible futures.

  Except mine. Without my shadow, I blinded her. An archaic twist, and one that proved my soul was a ruin—I no longer stood in the light.

  I had hoped to see her again now, if for no other reason than the Everlasting were cruel and lonely company, but if she had any inkling of my current circumstances then it didn’t hold her interest enough to come say hello.

  We were alone in the forest.

  The path through the trees was paved with old cracked stones, worn and weathered. Bristly tufts of grass and fat vines grew between the slabs and crept along the soil banks on either side of the green corridor. I followed the path north, tasting the wind. Overhead, unseen through the canopy, I could hear the rumbling of airships flying around the city.

  Oblivion and Dusk seemed content to walk the few miles through the forest toward the city. And they did so in silence. I didn’t try to speak to my captor or his brother, instead I focused on guarding my thoughts, those I thought worth guarding, adding them to the vault alongside my son and the one person who may have been able to find him—Detective Annie Brie. I had given the boy to her, then disappeared.

  If there was more at work in the universe than the will of the Everlasting, then Annie was proof of that—she had a petal of celestial illusion in her heart, a ticking hand of the Infernal Clock itself, which protected her from the Everlasting’s influence. They could hurt her, torture her, destroy her—but they could not invade her mind. If all else failed, that protection, which had rested in my heart until recently, and had killed Dread Ash, was the last line of defence.

  The path through the forest grew less tired and cobblestoned, and we crested a rise above the trees to behold the wonder and splendour of the Knights Infernal in their seat of power—the grand urban sprawl, the eternal home, the capital: Ascension.

  The city, as always, looked magnificent.

  I was rightful king of this world, this city, the Knights Infernal, though many would argue the fact. And as I was now, captured and without body, I couldn’t claim anything. I worried Oblivion might do so on my behalf. I felt the hunger in his eyes, my eyes, gazing down at Ascension City. The Dragon Throne was here, an ancient seat, my seat.

  The city looked magnificent.

  Home to tens of millions of people, built on islands and rivers and mainland stretching miles over the horizon, Ascension City was a mirror of Atlantis-that-was. Think of New York City, times a hundred, with spiralling tall silver towers, skybridges connecting them together, and hundreds of thousands of people capable of manipulating Will, magical folk. The strongest of which, those that passed the tests, members of the ruling class—the Knights Infernal.

  “You have to admire their capacity to appease the eye,” Dusk said, one hand on his hip, the other shielding his eyes to gaze down at the sparkling city in the sun.

  I recalled thinking something similar, seeing the city for the first time in half a decade after I ended my exile:

  ’Mighty towers, almost wreathed in clouds, scraped at the sky. Glass domes extended over stadium-sized fields, and walkways stretched from the peak of one building to the next—bridges built in the air over the city. Neon-blue lighting ran up and down the streets and throughout hundreds of the buildings. Its energy came from the conduit of tapped power running beneath the city, a font of true power from the heart of creation, bleeding through a crack in the canvas of reality.

  One tower rose above all others in the heart of the city and shone like a beacon in the half-light, a spire of pure obsidian stone, monolithic and imposing. Even at this distance, I could see the unnatural smoothness of the rock, the polished finish and metal trim. Blue lights ran up the tower in a spiral pattern, and a single white sphere of fire, at the tower’s peak, ignited a flat plateau like the light in a lighthouse.

  The Fae Palace of the Knights Infernal had been carved from a mountain long centuries ago. The heart of the city was the crystal core of a mountain long dead. The rest of Ascension City, some thirty miles across, sprawled out from that central tower.’

  I now knew, a little older and wiser, that the Fae Palace was a Vale tower—built by a race of blue and purple aliens, who looked human, save for the bluish-purplish hue to their skin. The Builders. I had met one of them, ten thousand years ago on True Earth, Vale Tylia. I had liked her. She had been my student. And Oblivion had used her to traverse the Void across time and start this whole possessed mess turning.

  Tylia had escaped with Tal and Annie as I killed Ethan, as Oblivion seized control. I hazarded a guess that they may not have been too far away. Tal, once a Knight, had nowhere else to go. And her sister, Sophie, was close by—at the Infernal Academy, accessible through the Vale tower. Through my Fae Palace.

  “Conquest or subjugation? Overthrow or seize?” Dusk asked, as if discussing the matter of Ascension City over drinks, as if claiming the city was no more bothersome than paying the monthly phone bill.

  Oblivion growled. “I want to see it burn,” he said. “But there are considerations…”

  “Yes, a great many artefacts of power have found their way to this city. Can you not feel them?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this may be the largest concentration of origin-fuelled humanity in the Story Thread.” Dusk waved his arms at the city. “Soldiers, brother. A million or more soldiers, capable of harnessing the power of creation. It would be a shame to waste such a boon.”

  “My host,” Oblivion said. “Thinks himself the rightful king of this place. Perhaps we can take it simply by unseating the current monarch. King Jon Faraday, the Shadowless Arbiter’s half-brother.”

  Dusk considered, then nodded. “Set them to work under legitimate rule. There will be unrest, civil riots, the streets will be bloody for a time… but your vessel has already lain the groundwork, has he not? He saved this city from my vessel not too long ago, he won the Tome Wars, and defied the oh-so-scary Everlasting.” Dusk threw his head back and laughed. “He has made this too easy.”

  Oblivion licked my lips and I felt him come to a decision. “I will summon the Peace Arsenal, blanket the sky with an armada they can’t hope to stand against. We quell the city, claim the throne, and set the Knights Infernal to task—to finding Astoria’s spawn.”

  ‘You gonna talk about it all day or you gonna do it?’ I growled.

  “Perhaps grant me the arsenal,” Dusk said. “Temporarily, of course. I swear on my power I will abandon the flagship at your command. That should free you to use your host’s face more effectively within the bounds of the city.”

  Oblivion thought that through, searched for the inevitable loopholes, found a few but also found them acceptable, and agreed. “He has allies here, many who would fight for him. I will rally that force under his banner, a secret army, and we will seize yonder tower with minimal bloodshed.”

&nbs
p; Oblivion said the last a tough distastefully, as if acting so subtly was alien and offended him. Given what I knew of the Everlasting Oblivion, all of our interactions, I wagered his feelings were just that—but he saw the potential of having the city under his control and mostly in one piece.

  This was the greatest army in the known Story Thread. A shame to waste it.

  “The Peace Arsenal…” he muttered. “It still slumbers, groggy after so long trapped alongside Atlantis and the Voidfloods since. I estimate a week, in time’s true measure, before it is operational.”

  Dusk laughed and clapped his hands together. “A wager then, brother. You have a week to take this city on your own. If you are still struggling by the time I arrive, then the arsenal will see it done.”

  He offered his hand—Shadowman’s hand—and Oblivion thrust mine into the grip. They squeezed hard, firm, and shook once.

  “The Peace Arsenal rests in the Belt of the Goliath, Dusk,” Oblivion said. “See that you command her well.”

  Dusk grinned and stepped sideways into the Void, which solved one of my problems—a week’s breathing room, if nothing else—and left Oblivion and I standing alone and gazing down at Ascension City. Both of us with a hungry, ambitious glint in our eyes.

  “This will be fun,” Oblivion said. “Allow me to show you how to rule, Declan Hale.”

  *~*~*~*

  Over the next five days, Oblivion used my memories, those I couldn’t stuff fast enough into the vault, which was growing harder to maintain the more I put in there, bulging at the hinges, easier for long, skeletal fingers to hold purchase… Oblivion used those memories to rally the factions of Knights in the city that thought it should be me on the Dragon Throne.

  His efforts were actually stupidly easy, and made me wonder why I hadn’t forced this issue years ago and raised an army against my brother, King Jon Faraday. I won’t go into all the details here, many copies and accounts of what became known as the Shadowless Rebellion exist, but it didn’t all hinge around me.