The City of Night Neverending

by Steven Lochran

  ‘You really are Daheedi,’ Joss said, knowing it was the truth. After a lifetime of thinking he was the last survivor of his people, it turned out he wasn’t. It was as comforting a revelation as it was disquieting.

  Darra looked at Joss, then turned away to gaze out across the city: black buildings edged in purple and green and flickering orange, fringed by palm fronds and fruit trees that were shrivelled and shedding dry leaves. Death had defaced this city. But still there was a dignity to it, a faded majesty.

  ‘This was a paradise once,’ Darra said, not looking away from the pavilions and pagodas and all Daheed’s humble homes. ‘A shining jewel. The heart of the Silver Sea. Even its people seemed to glow in their rainbow refinery, their happiness as perfect as every sunny day that filled their lives. But the gentle breeze that drifted through these streets is now a stale and dreadful silence. I would weep at the loss of this place and its people, if there wasn’t salt water enough serving as their tomb.’

  ‘Did you know the Sarif family?’ Joss asked. ‘Isra and Naveer? She was a scholar at the Imperial Library and he was an ethereon aboard the Seeker. They lived in a small cottage in the northern district.’

  The same stillness that filled the city streets now fell upon Darra, leaving Joss to wonder if his question had gone unheard. But then Darra twitched, and cast a firm glance from over his shoulder. ‘Their memory remains,’ he replied.

  Joss, confused by the response, was about to ask what he meant when Darra started again across the rooftop. ‘Come along. We’re nearly to safety. Or as close to safety as can be found in this cursed place.’

  Joss picked up his pace to follow.

  The cage slammed shut with the force of an iguanodon snapping its jaws. The hostages regarded Drake and Hero warily, looking uncertain about what might happen to them if they too readily embraced these new arrivals.

  ‘Y’think yer tough now, but you’ll be crying out the other side of yer ruined faces when the admiral is done with ye,’ growled one of the pyrate guards through the bars. ‘And ya won’t have any fancy weapons at hand to save yerselves.’

  He shook Hero’s bandolier at them as he spoke, before tossing it onto a pile of supplies that he carried away with him. His amputated leg, replaced with a rusted blade, hummed and swished as he hobbled off, leaving the prisoners to fend for themselves. The hostages stirred listlessly, their eyes at the ground.

  ‘Glad we went to the effort of trying to save these people,’ Hero muttered in Drake’s ear, though before he had the chance to reply a voice called out from the back of the cage.

  ‘Miss Hero! Mister Drake!’ Edgar exclaimed. He pushed through the crush to be reunited with them, dragging a thin old woman along with him. ‘Am I ever glad to see you!’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A BRIGHT AND BURNING REALITY

  THEIR flight across the roofs of Daheed took them past abandoned markets, empty haberdasheries, derelict galleries and silent coffee houses. At one stage they descended to street level, their only option to cross a fractured bridge that spanned a muddy river full of fish skeletons. On the other side they climbed over crates and up along scaffolding to return to the air, Darra’s pace never slowing.

  But as fast as they ran, Joss’s mind raced even faster. It skipped from one thought to another and back again. Edgar and Hero and Drake. Admiral Ichor and his pyrates. He wondered about the Admiral – how he had come to lead his men down here, what his connection to Thrall could be. How Daheed could have possibly survived the Destruction, even if its people hadn’t. But most of all, he watched the Daheedi before him, trying to imagine what face might lie beneath his disguise and trying not to lose himself to hope.

  ‘This way,’ Darra said when Joss was lagging, and hopped across a break in the row of buildings to land on the lower tier of a massive domed structure. Joss followed without hesitation, and together they scaled the surface of the dome towards its apex. It was fashioned from solid bronze which had rusted green, and though it curved high into the air its surface was chalky enough to grip to, making it relatively easy to climb.

  Before long Joss and the stranger were standing together at the top of the dome, looking at a hole in its surface where once a grand leadlight window might have been. Instead, a length of rope secured to its frame now dangled into the void below.

  ‘Daunting, I know. I can go first if that makes it easier,’ Darra offered, his voice softening into a tone Joss hadn’t heard before. Joss nodded in response. Darra immediately grabbed the rope and slipped into the darkness. And again, Joss followed. Nothing could be seen inside. Nothing but limitless black, same as the deep ocean. It took all of Joss’s faith to step over the side and inch down into its depths.

  He had been descending the rope long enough for his biceps to start burning when he heard noise echoing from below, and saw sparks igniting. The entire chamber lit up as dozens of orbs flashed green and white. Bathed in emerald light, Joss could now see that he was only a few feet from the ground. He slid down the remaining distance, landing not that far from Darra, who was poised with his hand on the lever of a large generator. Cables ran from the thrumming metal box, stretching to each of the orbs that had been strewn and strung around the room. They illuminated all the pinewood desks that were assembled in hexagonal rows, as well as the vast bookshelves that lined the curving walls.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Joss whispered, staring all around him. ‘This … this is the library!’

  ‘The Imperial Library, yes,’ Darra said with a bare nod.

  ‘I remember …’ The floor screeched under the soles of Joss’s boots as he pivoted to look at everything, the polished marble floor reflecting his expression of wonder. The light was severe, filtering everything in green and casting deep shadows. But still Joss recognised the room, dredging up memories that had long lain dormant. He recalled sitting at these very desks, drawing pictures of his family as he waited for his mother to take him home. Touching the tabletop, he came away with a thick layer of dust on his fingertips, though that was the least of the room’s disrepair.

  Spiders had fashioned cobweb castles in every corner. Piles of books were spotted like battlefield casualties throughout the walkways, likely scattered by the island’s sinking. Barricades blocked all but one door, roughly assembled from crates and odd pieces of broken furniture. Eyeing them warily, Joss realised with mounting concern that he was now trapped in a confined space with an armed stranger. Adjusting his sword-belt, he glanced sideways at his companion.

  ‘An effort I made to keep Admiral Ichor’s men from breaking in,’ said Darra, gesturing to the barricades as he unhooked his crossbow and placed it on the table before him. ‘Not that it’s ever occurred to them to search here. Those without thought rarely see the value of libraries.’

  ‘How long have they been here? The pyrates?’ Joss asked.

  ‘They arrived not long after the Destruction. Though it’s hard to say when exactly,’ he replied. ‘As I said, time has no real meaning here. The clocks have stopped. The sun never rises, the moon never shines. There is only stillness and insanity and death.’

  ‘You’ve been here all this time, just yourself?’

  Darra shuddered. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘When the pyrates first arrived, I spied on them from the shadows. I knew that they weren’t to be trusted. Originally they saw this place as the perfect lair from which to launch their raids. But as time passed, the vortex that stirs beneath us began to play on their minds. They became enthralled with it, prey to it, enslaved by it. They transformed into a ravenous cult, led by a deranged sadist prepared to go to any length to please his new-found master.’

  ‘The master … the one that Thrall referred to?’ Joss asked.

  ‘Thrall?’ Darra asked, the name obviously unfamiliar to him.

  ‘The man in the stone mask. The one leading the ceremony.’

  ‘Ah. Him. He arrived shortly after they began artlessly worshipping the vortex. It was he who formalised their devotion, w
ho filled their heads with the need for sacrifice. A preacher to their zealous disciples. It was also he who alerted them to my presence, though it was Admiral Ichor who ordered my execution should I be captured. It was then I knew that any semblance of the man I’d called friend was lost forever.’

  ‘You knew Admiral Ichor?’ Joss said in astonishment.

  ‘In the days before his descent into madness and bloodshed, before his career of pyracy – when he was merely a fishing boat captain by the name of Josiah.’

  ‘Josiah?!’ said Joss, so stunned by the revelation that he had trouble grappling with it. ‘This Admiral Ichor … his name is Josiah Eichmore?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Darra, raising his hands to pull back his hood. Black curls spilled out, long and wild, flecked with grey. ‘In fact, it was Josiah whom your mother and I named you after.’

  The stranger pulled loose the scarf to reveal a face of haunting familiarity. Tears welled behind Joss’s eyes, a rising tide that threatened to drown him any moment, while his heart bulged as if trying to escape his body. The faint hope he’d had before, the glimmering suspicion, now exploded into a bright and burning reality.

  ‘Father!’

  ‘Yes, Josiah,’ Naveer Sarif said, maroon eyes glistening black in the green light of the library. ‘It’s me.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A FIERY DAWN

  JOSS felt himself trembling. His father – ten years dead but now miraculously returned – stood before him with the stiff posture of someone greeting a visiting official. Despite his long curls and unkempt beard, he had a dignity to him that reflected the city outside. Beaten but unbroken.

  All his life, Joss had imagined what he would talk about with his parents if he were somehow inexplicably reunited with them. Of course, these conversations had never been anything but a passing fantasy. Until now.

  ‘The first thing I should do is apologise,’ his father said, still rigidly formal. ‘I didn’t wish to deceive you, but I also knew we couldn’t afford to linger out in the open. Not with Ichor’s men hunting us. And this wasn’t the kind of reunion that could take place while on the run. Better to be somewhere safe first.’

  ‘How … ’ Joss began to speak, then found himself with just one word. ‘How?’

  ‘How am I alive?’ his father said. ‘That’s the question I’ve been asking myself ever since the day you and your mother were torn from me.’

  ‘How did you recognise me?’

  His father, Naveer Sarif, this stranger, this man called Darra – whoever he was – stared at Joss with unwavering certainty. ‘How could I not?’ he said.

  Joss was silent. He turned his gaze to the floor, before looking about at the chamber. He began a slow walk, wandering in circles, lost in a daze.

  ‘Why “Darra”?’ he asked without looking up.

  ‘It’s an old Kahnrani word. It means “Father”.’

  Joss faltered mid-step, then continued. Here he was, in a sunken city surrounded by ruthless enemies, with his only friends in the world held hostage, and yet he had so many questions that couldn’t wait. Not after a lifetime of wondering. Not when his father stood before him.

  ‘That day. The day you … the one that you spoke of. I’ve been told things about it, heard stories, remember small fragments. There was a great black hole above the city, like the sky itself had been torn wide open. Nobody knows what it was, they only know of the destruction that followed …’ Joss choked on the thought.

  His father regarded him solemnly. ‘It was a terrible and traumatic thing. You may not want to hear –’

  ‘No. I need to know,’ Joss told him. ‘What happened?’

  His father seemed to sag. ‘Chaos.’ He spoke the word as if it were a curse. ‘Carnage. The end of everything I’d ever known and loved. And all on a day that had started bright and blue and clear. A day of celebration.’

  ‘Celebration?’

  ‘Ramera. The Remembrance. When all ships are called back to Daheed, when all its citizens gather for seven days of commemoration and celebration. A holy time.’

  Joss’s father – Father? Darra? Naveer? ‘Naveer’ felt the most comfortable to Joss – rested his weight against one of the nearby tables, as if needing the support. There was some small part of Joss that wanted to go to him, to offer him some kind of comfort or understanding. There was another part of him, no less small, that wanted to shake him to hurry up. Joss returned to pacing the library and, thankfully, Naveer returned to his tale.

  ‘It was on the morning of the seventh day, the day of feasting, that the darkness descended. It all happened so quickly – a dream that sours into a nightmare between breaths. We were gathered by the Thousand Sacred Stairs when a shadow fell across all the island, so dark that at first I thought an unexpected storm had set in. There was a sound of a thousand thunderbolts striking as one, shaking the earth and setting all the children to tears. All the children but you. You remained so calm, so brave, even as the great black tear that you spoke of ripped open the sky above us.

  ‘And I’ll tell you this now: I’ve been an ethereon all my adult life, and an islander from birth. I’ve studied all manner of supernatural phenomena and weathered all sorts of storms. But I’ve never seen anything the likes of what I witnessed that day. It was something altogether … different. Like some force from a place beyond our understanding was trying to tear its way into our world. You may not have been scared by it, but I was terrified.

  ‘Your mother’s instinct was to flee for the harbour and escape on the small boat we kept moored there. But I wasn’t ready to abandon Daheed. Not when the winds were pulling people up into the sky, into the black vortex. Not while I had an idea of how to save everyone. I told your mother to take you and get to the boat, that I would follow if I could, but to sail to safety if I delayed too long. She begged me to come with her, but I insisted that she take you and go. It was only then that you started to cry.

  ‘I ran home to gather my instruments. If I could perform a warding spell for a ship, surely I could do the same for an island. I set about marking the streets with the required sigils, using paint in place of coal and chanting as I went. The wind was an invisible beast by this point, howling louder and louder as it grabbed everyone and everything it could. I forced it out of my mind, focused on the task at hand. And the spell: it took! A barrier of mystical energy rose up to shield the island from the vortex. The winds eased. I was allowed one all-too-fleeting moment of relief. And then the black vortex surged.

  ‘I must have miscalculated. There was something wrong with my spell. It reacted unpredictably to the vortex’s presence, drawing the black tear against itself. But it didn’t end there. The two forces struggled against each other, my barrier pulling against the vortex, pulling it down, pulling it under … and pulling Daheed along with it. The vortex was below us now, the mystical barrier a dome above us.

  ‘Waves crashed over the city skyline, held back by the dome that was forcing us under. I prayed that you and your mother had escaped before it was too late. Buildings crashed all around me. People died screaming. Neighbours. Cousins. Lifelong friends. They all perished as Daheed was sucked down into the water.’

  Naveer fell silent while Joss watched from across the room, unsure if what he was hearing and what it led him to believe were the same thing. ‘Does that mean …’ Again he had to wrench the words loose, his heart a swollen lump. ‘The Destruction. You caused it?’

  The effort it had taken Joss to ask his question paled in comparison to what it now took for his father to look him in the eye. When he did, it was with such a sense of defeat and shame that it left Joss startled.

  ‘Daheed was doomed, one way or the other,’ he said, an edge of defiance flashing beneath whatever other feelings tortured him. ‘I’d tried to save everyone and instead I’d only sealed our fate, staying the execution in favour of a watery dungeon. It was the last thought I had before a piece of debris struck me in the head, knocking me unconscious.

 
; ‘When I came to, I searched for survivors. Only two people had lived through the city’s sinking, but their injuries were fatal. So many had died. I spent what must have been weeks collecting the bodies and burning the remains. The fires blazed for twice that time, fuelled by fat and human flesh. The smell … the smell …’

  A shiver so powerful ran through Joss’s father that it found its way across the room to his son. Biting back the revulsion, Joss pushed for more answers. ‘What about Ichor?’ he asked, starting with the most immediate threat before them. ‘When did he arrive?’

  ‘Long enough after the city’s sinking for me to have grown so mad that at first I didn’t know if he was just an illusion,’ his father said, his words still soaked in sorrow. He glanced up long enough to register Joss’s shocked expression. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a difficult truth, but true nevertheless. This place infects the mind. Poisons the soul. I was the lone inhabitant of a forsaken tomb, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t affect me. I became so lost that I considered ending it all – and most likely would have, if not for Ichor’s arrival. Though it was never his intention, his appearance here gave me purpose.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Joss asked.

  Naveer stood, regaining his rigid posture. ‘Let me show you,’ he said, walking to the one doorway that had been left unbarred. He disappeared into the shadows gathered there, leading the way down a flight of stairs lit with lamps that had been nailed to the walls and hung from the bannisters. The lamps grew increasingly sparse the further down they climbed, reminding Joss of the black cavern where he and the others had left Salt and the Mighty Bhashvirak. Would the two of them still be there when the time came to escape?

  ‘I know you must have many more questions yet,’ Naveer said, his voice bouncing around the walls despite how softly he spoke. ‘And I can answer them all in time. But I was hoping that you might consider … well …’

  ‘You have questions of your own,’ Joss said, and Naveer slowed down. Nodded. Joss stopped five steps behind him. ‘Go on.’