The air was thick and unpleasant in these rough-cut depths, hot to breathe and clammy upon the skin like wet cloth. They followed a path that sloped steadily downward for an uncertain length of time, the passing of seconds and minutes feeling choked in the endless dark beyond the pale torches. Harlin stumbled and gave a start as it suddenly evened out and opened broadly into a dark chamber. A cave, Harlin thought, squinting through the dark. There were no torches here, but a faint glimmer came from the walls themselves.
‘The stones here glow,’ Duana explained. ‘They are full of life. Something from the deep earth is woven into them, and where there is no light they give off their own.’
Harlin’s eyes began to adjust, the light from the stones enough for him to make out the shape of the chamber. The glimmer ran through them like veins of ore. And something else. Something much stranger.
He had thought them enormous roots at first that jutted from the rocks in places and paid little heed to them. But movement from one caught his eye and startled him. It throbbed, pulsed, waves of movement coursed along its fat, bloated form, like thick blood running through an artery. The faint light marked them as glistening and mottled, ancient-looking things that made Harlin feel faintly repulsed. There was something natural in their forming though, something that satisfied the eye that this was their rightful place. It made no sense to him, yet also did.
‘What is this place?’ Harlin choked, the air oppressive and harsh on the airways. Duana was fumbling on the ground somewhere nearby.
‘It is old,’ she said, returning to his side. A long knife and a deep wooden bowl appeared in her hands. ‘Very, very old. Older than the Dhaine Sidhe, older than our Great Father. And it is full of life, full of energy. Full of thought, and knowing. We call it the Cloister of the Evermore.’
The Evermore. The gods of Luah Fáil.
‘It is said,’ Duana went on, voice little more than a whisper, ‘that when their day came to an end, their fighting done, the gods came to rest here, beneath the great mountain of Morbha, and gave themselves unto the earth. Their deaths shook the earth as they gave over what life was left in them to it, and a storm tore through the lands above. A storm so terrible that life was forced to begin anew. And from that frightful storm, in its dying throes, we emerged – the Dhaine Sidhe, the Children of Storms, the spawn of dead gods. But even now that they are forever gone from this world, the blood of the Evermore still flows through the land. And through us, their firstborn, their eternally favoured.’
Harlin shook his head, cringing at the shudder that ran through him at the brief thought he may be stood upon Cu Náith’s resting place. ‘These things, what are they? They seem alive.’ He pointed to the throbbing, colossal veins protruding from the walls around them.
‘They are,’ she said faintly, and moved to one of the pulsing roots. ‘More alive than you or I ever will be.’
Duana put the tip of the knife to the root, and in the clan tongue she whispered to it, ‘Forgive me, but days run darkly, and our final fire is but an ember. It must be done, lest that ember be snuffed out and swallowed by the shadow cast over us. Forgive me.’ She pierced it shallowly with the blade, holding the bowl beneath it as something thick flowed freely and sickeningly from the cut.
The air seemed to grow heavier, seemed more difficult again to breathe. The rocks above and around them groaned audibly for a moment as Duana filled the bowl from the bleeding root – vein – whatever it was. She pressed a hand to the cut as it was filled, stemming the flow. ‘Thank you,’ she muttered solemnly. She removed her hand, the incision no longer leaking or visible, though a dark stain was spread along her palm.
Duana brought the bowl to Harlin, her hands stained with its dark, sloshing contents. ‘What is this, Duana,’ he snarled, ‘what do you and your cripple-king want from me?’
‘You will see,’ she answered plainly. ‘You want to know who took your family, you want to take your revenge. We know, and we will help you – He and I, all of us. But our help comes at a price, little wolf, a price you must be willing to pay.’
‘What?’ Harlin went to grab her, shake her, strangle her until she told him everything she knew. Her Weaving held him fast, his arms limp at his side, frustration, fury and bloodlust rampaging in his mind.
‘Do you want your revenge, little wolf,’ she said harshly, her violet eyes burning flames in the dark. ‘Do you want to see the one who took you all lying dead at your feet? Feel his blood on your hands?’ She touched his stomach then, finger tips tracing muscle and scar through his thin shirt. ‘There is such hatred in you,’ she uttered, eyes distant. ‘So much of it, and it begs for its due. It needs it, it thirsts for it. It is all that drives you. There is such potential in you that you could not even begin understand. This is your chance, little wolf. Your only chance. Will you feed your hate at last, give it what it needs after so many years, or will your days end here, alone in darkness, forgotten and downtrodden by lesser men?’
The dark thing in him, the cold thing, silent for the longest time, stirred gently, aroused, listening.
Yes, it whispered. Yes, yes, yes.
‘Yes,’ he said without grudge. Her Weaving released him like a rush of fetid air.
‘Then drink.’
Duana pressed the bowl into his hands. He tilted it slightly, so its contents caught the faint light. It was dark, thick-looking, congealing at the edges. It seemed as though there was a faint green hue to it beneath the light. It looked like blood, more than anything. Harlin grimaced and looked up at Duana, whose eyes were bright, wide and eager, her grey face expectant. The two violet discs of her eyes cut through the dark. He didn’t trust her, not one bit.
‘Drink, Harlin,’ she said, ‘drink, and we will swear ourselves to you, and become a greater ally than you could ever hope for.’
‘And what, Duana,’ Harlin said slowly, ‘must I give in return for this?’
She hesitated, narrowed her eyes, bit her bottom lip, as though savouring the moment before she spoke.
‘Everything, my little wolf.’
He lifted the bowl to his lips and drank deeply.
What choice did he have, truly?
The bowl’s contents smelled and tasted strongly of earth, soil, of branch, leaf and every aspect of nature itself. It was warm, and coursed down his throat thickly and repulsively. He almost retched, it felt like drinking blood, but he forced himself to finish it and let the bowl drop with a shaking hand when he was done.
He spread his arms at Duana, who stood smirking, watching intently. ‘And now?’ he said challengingly, voice quivering as he fought to keep from vomiting.
‘And now,’ Duana answered him, ‘you die, little wolf.’
Harlin stood staring at her for a moment, thinking it some joke of hers, when he felt the first jolt of pain shoot through his stomach.
Poison.
‘Fucking bitch!’ he roared, lunging for her, legs suddenly clumsy. Duana pivoted around a wild punch and Harlin fell painfully, flat on his face, blood filling his mouth from a cut cheek.
‘Don’t fight it,’ she whispered by his ear. ‘It hurts, I know, it hurts so much. But let it claim you, embrace it, welcome it. It is a beautiful thing, to be held in Ancu’s sweet arms.’
Harlin tried to shout, scream, roar, but his whole body was wracked with pain and became stiff, twitching and jerking with every fresh bolt of agony.
‘Now look, my little wolf,’ Duana said, nestling a hand around his forehead, another beneath his chin and wrenching his head up from the black floor. ‘Watch, and you will learn much before this is over.’
His eyes were drawn to a shimmering light on the cavern wall. The glimmering veins running through the stones became brighter, more focussed. A pinprick of sunshine grew and expanded violently, rippling outwards until it engulfed everything. Together, Harlin and Duana sped forward as one, passing through light, shadow, rock and earth like a hurled stone until they came to a sudden stop in a world from another time.
No, Harlin thought desperately. Not this.
Watch, Duana whispered to him.
Three girls of different ages were outside the house at various chores, their mother scrubbing clothes in a basin nearby. The sounds of a fight were close, suddenly ending with a pained yelp that drew the mother’s gaze instinctively, defensively, to its source. A clansman, his hair long and dark, the braids woven through it clasped with golden rings. He held a blunted sword and battered old shield, and stood looking down at a small boy sat on the grass with tears in his eyes, rubbing at a welt on his arm and sniffing. His hair was a long, shaggy mess, his first braid barely reaching his shoulder, ringless, a sword and shield at his side that made him look small.
‘Again,’ the man grunted mercilessly. ‘And again, until you get it right.’
‘I can’t,’ the boy sobbed.
‘You can.’ The boy shook his head. ‘Feint with your shield, step around him and stab into his side while he is busy defending his front. Up, now. You are a man. A man does not cry.’
‘You’re too strong,’ the boy whimpered, picking himself up and hefting a sword and shield almost too big for him.
‘Then use skill, and speed, if you cannot match me for strength,’ the man grunted. ‘A warrior knows when to use strength and when to use skill, Harlin. Knowing that will keep you alive. You will learn, in time. Now, again.’
The scene shifted. A town, busy with movement, clanfolk wandering in throngs through its streets about their business. Bráodhaír. Harlin saw himself walking with his family, barely eight years old, the welt from that morning’s training still angry upon his arm, and he knew what was to come. He had yearned for those days again in years that had come since. But not this one. No, no, not this one.
Not this, Harlin pleaded with Duana, falling on deaf ears.
They were a picture of happiness together. His mother kissed his father fondly, and bid him be patient with her and the girls while they ran their errands. Cunall grunted, nodded, motioned for Harlin to follow him. Men tousled his hair when they waited at the smith’s, remarking on how his features were so like his father’s, saying what a warrior he would become in time, eyeing his injuries.
Then the screaming started. The panic began. On the horizon the ships had appeared, and Harlin saw it all again.
Knights came charging over the hills, already on land, riding down into Bráodhaír. Clubbing, trampling, crushing. They blew horns, herded the panicked clansmen into groups. Some threw burning torches in high arcs. Flames sprang up.
His family ran through the hills, seeking safety. Knights came streaming after them, their spotter calling from a nearby hilltop. The sun gleamed painfully from the edges of heavy plate armour, and red surcoats rippled nobly as the knights hooted and hollered after them.
His father felled the knight that went for his mother.
Look, Duana whispered, and you will learn, little wolf.
The fallen knight wore a red surcoat over his armour like the others. A sigil was emblazoned across the chest, golden thread worked through crimson cloth.
No, Harlin begged, trying to free himself from Duana’s grip on him. No, no, no, no! But he was held doggedly by her, wracked with greater pains spreading through him, forced to look upon the symbol on the dead knight’s chest.
The chained bull, rearing, the links of its bonds broken.
The royal heraldry of House Darnmor. King Aenwald’s sworn knights.
Bráodhaír burned and clanfolk were herded onto the ships beneath a smoke-smothered sky, and the royal banners of Caermark were everywhere. Victorious knights carried them proudly through the streets beside lines of chained clanfolk, they hung from the monstrous slave ships themselves, the wind catching them and making them flap with regal vigor. The scene shifted, like rippling water.
His father was surrounded in the fighting pit beneath a burning sun. Stop, Harlin begged again, please stop.
Two men lay bleeding in the sand, another four advanced on Cunall. He killed the one before him as spears pierced him through again and again from all angles. He fell in time with the last man on his blade, his blood staining the sand about him. Harlin struggled, tried to force himself free, his grief more painful than the poison inside him. Ripples cut through the air before Harlin’s eyes, water breaking beneath a hand’s touch.
A brothel, scorching sunlight streaming through an open window above a busy, noisy street outside. A milky-skinned girl lay docile beneath a sweating, brown-skinned man that rutted on her furiously like a frustrated dog. Her long, dark hair was lank and unwashed, her cheeks hollow and sunken. Dark circles rimmed her bloodshot eyes.
Elba, Harlin thought. His middling sister. What did they do to you?
The man removed his considerable mass from her, grunting and satisfied. He put a long wooden pipe to her lips and had her breathe deep of its smoke.
Esterman spice, Duana whispered. Too spirited, too vicious, too violent to tame. They kept her in a stupor so men could fuck her without losing an eye. They were all too violent, too defiant. Look, my little wolf. Look.
Elba coughed, eyes distant. She vomited in her mouth, hawking, spluttering, too intoxicated to help herself. The man ran from the room, hitching his pants up, yammering in a foreign tongue as Elba choked to death with no one to aid her, and Harlin howled for her like a wounded animal.
No more, Duana, no more. Elba’s still, naked form swam, breaking and distorting as if liquid.
Another brothel, another girl. Ciara, eldest of Harlin’s sisters. She lay face down, limp, pallid, her body thin and wasted. A man was atop her, grunting as he took her from behind, a hand shoving her dark head into a pillow abusively. He growled as he spent himself, his nut-brown hands turning her over onto her back, where he struck her vacant face, trying to wake her from the suffocation he had forced upon her. He struck her still, harder each time, as ripples broke the scene, and Harlin cried, cold knives piercing his chest.
Little Ite, youngest of the three daughters to bless Cunall and Keva, crouched in a small darkened room, rummaging secretively through jars, pots and boxes filled with a myriad of unknowable things. She had ever been the most playful and ill-behaved of the four of them, and she still wore that same roguish smile Harlin remembered her for as she pulled a wrapped bundle from inside a clay pot. Esterman spice. Addictive stuff, it seemed, enough to make her willing to steal it.
A door burst open behind Ite, casting burning sunlight over her half-starved frame, a bony hand shielding her eyes from it. A shadow fell upon her, a foreign voice roaring accusation against her apologies and excuses. She pleaded mercy, put the bundle back where it came from, bloodshot eyes streaming fearful tears. The whoremaster’s fist struck Ite beneath the ribs and felled her. The same fist rose and fell, each time more bloody, as he mounted her small body and drove it into her face untill she was still and silent, her begging at an end. Shimmering, she was lost to Harlin’s sight, light catching on spreading waves.
Keva’s face was drawn, sickly-looking, a tremor ran mercilessly through her body. She was as addicted and spice-addled as his sisters. There were tears in her eyes, she wept quietly for her lost children, and her lost love, Cunall, the stars that had always shone for her, even in the deepest night. She had no idea where any of them where, or if they still lived. She sat in her small empty room alone, and gripped tightly the short knife in her shaking hand, cutting vertically from wrist to elbow twice, her blood fountaining crimson across her face, across the walls behind her.
Harlin screamed as he watched her die. He screamed, and screamed, and screamed. At first with anguish, untill that anguish became anger, and he shrieked his hate as black tendrils coiled around every inch of his being. How they pulsed with nauseous loathing and abominable detestation. It flowed through him, thicker than the poison he had drank of, all the more sickening
to the taste.
The Land Children, whispered Duana, look what they did to your family. They have no mercy, they have no pity, not for anyone, not even each other.
Another voice joined hers amid Harlin’s screaming. A pained hiss, ancient-sounding and broken with agony. The two of them spoke as one.
Sea Child, Land Child, they are all as one and they care nothing for other life, they whispered to him. They broke us, they broke you, now they will break each other. Everything became black, and it was an empty void that Harlin screamed his hatred.
Before him, something faded into being from the darkness. Corrom Duhn, squirming, stinking, festering upon his obsidian throne, haloed with an ill-tinged light in the dark about him.
Would you take your revenge, Harlin, the two of them hissed in his head, and kill the Land Child king who destroyed your family, and made you a slave to your own misery?
Yes, he screamed – the cold thing in him brimming with dark, gleeful joy. Yes!
Then swear yourself to us, Harlin, and become the sword we will wield to cut the heart from all their kind.
Harlin’s answer could have shattered stone itself, so fierce was his roar that even the cripple-king and Duana seemed to cringe away from him, as a single word rang out and blistered the darkness.
Yes. Nothing more did he need to say.
The Shadow of the High King Page 55