Hunt for Valamon

by Mok, DK

  “Yes,” said Seris.

  “I wonder that there’s so much love for such a monster of a man.”

  “No one deserves to die. Not monsters, not kings, not warlords. Look at the city, Lord Haska. Remind you of anything? Because I remember it. Twenty years ago, I fled the same thing, and here it is again. But this time, it isn’t Delmar—it’s you.”

  Seris looked into Haska’s eyes and saw cold fury burning like a star.

  “I don’t fight for glory or greed,” said Haska. “I fight for my people and their survival.”

  “But the problem is, you’re fighting. And you’ll never stop fighting, because there’s always someone to defeat, something to destroy, more bodies to fill the ground with—”

  Seris bit back a cry as Haska slammed him against the wall again.

  “You don’t even know me, cleric.”

  Seris could feel the pressure inside him building—the noise of the world pressing like crushing fathoms, all the pent-up fury and frustration splitting him at the seams. All the endless wars, the oceans of blood, the meaningless violence that roared through the millennia because of people like her. People who thought you solved problems by killing people rather than healing them. You couldn’t just give up on people; you couldn’t just throw people away. He’d had children die in his arms tonight.

  “You hide behind your mask, behind your scars, behind your hatred,” said Seris. “What are you without those things? Who are you when you’re not the Half-Faced Lord?”

  Seris slid his hand beneath the edge of Haska’s gauntlet, wrapping his fingers tightly around her wrist. Haska pulled away with a surprised shout, but Seris’s grip remained fast. There was a burst of white light and a sound like a thousand eggs frying. Haska gave a cry of pain and flung Seris hard against the far wall, her mask falling to the floor with a clatter, trailing wisps of smoke. Haska gripped her face.

  “What have you done?” she said, her voice cold with horror.

  “You wear your hatred like a badge of honour,” said Seris, pushing himself to his knees. “What are you without it, Lord Haska?”

  Haska’s fingers slid over her cheek, dragging over the now-un-scarred flesh. Her expression twisted with shock and anger.

  “How dare you?” said Haska, her voice shaking with fury. “My scars are a mark of the day my father died.”

  “Find another way to remember him,” said Seris.

  Haska took a step towards him, murder rising in her eyes. Seris tried to keep her in focus, but the pressure in his head was turning into an almighty buzz, and he could feel his thoughts melting into one another.

  “You hide behind legends and rumours, behind a screen of casual violence and cold disinterest,” said Seris. “You build them up like walls to keep people out, and you use them as an excuse for pushing everyone away. You start to believe the stories, you start to become them, because you’re afraid that without those things, you’ll have to face what you really are, and you’re not sure what that is. But you can’t keep hiding, you can’t keep running, because you’re not those things you hide behind. You’re not your curse!”

  Haska stopped suddenly, and Seris wiped a trickle of blood from his nose, his mind exploding with dizzy sparks.

  “I’m guessing that speech was actually for the Kali-Adelsa,” said Haska.

  “I think parts of it probably apply to you, too.”

  Haska gently picked up her mask, a flicker of grief crossing her now-symmetrical features.

  “I’m guessing someone up there probably has a speech for me,” said Haska contemplatively.

  Seris pulled himself to his feet, the whirling in his head subsiding slightly. He saw Haska’s shadow vanish up the stairwell, her voice echoing down.

  “This is going to be a bastard to explain…” she muttered.

  They all fled. Like rats from the light, they deserted the keep, so all that remained was her keeper, her salvation. The one she’d been running from all these years was the one she should have been running toward.

  Twisting corridor after corridor, winding stairwell after stairwell, Elhan followed a path she somehow knew, though she had never walked it. Higher and higher she rose, past towers and turrets and starlit roofs.

  The world was broken, but it could be fixed. She could fix it. She could remember the taste of sorcery, the intoxicating clarity of bending matter and life to her will. It made everything so much simpler, so much better. No more “I wish this” or “If only that”. It just was.

  It felt as though traces of her snaked through the very essence of the world. Through everything, everyone. A frail king was the last thing in her way, and he was such a small, meaningless thing.

  Elhan felt a faint disturbance behind her, like a puff of air in a storm. She turned to see a shape silhouetted against a tall window. It seemed to shift and became a woman cloaked in black silk, her skin milky and luminous.

  “Welcome at last, Kali-Adelsa,” said the woman.

  “Who’re you supposed to be?”

  The woman gave a graceful sweep of her arm.

  “Amoriel, last of the unbound sorcerers. Until now.”

  Elhan eyed the woman warily. There was something about her—the eyes, the smile—

  “I know you,” said Elhan.

  The endless rustle of hanging crystals, the hiss of sand across a vanished world, falling into a sky that turned into an eternity of stars.

  “You are me,” said Amoriel. “And all the others. You are all that remains of the unbound sorcerers, and we survive within you. Our lives, our legacy, our vengeance. You are the shape of our power, the memory of our world, and our deliverance.”

  Elhan wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but it sounded impressive, and it sounded right.

  “Kali-Adelsa,” said Amoriel, “you alone have the power to set things right. The last of my kin gave their lives so that the world might be reborn, remade as it was meant to be.”

  Elhan could see ghostly outlines swimming before her—a forest of sapphire saplings, a vaulted palace in endless concentric gardens, giant silver serpents coiling over the hills. It was like a multitude of worlds superimposed on this one, and this one was growing fainter.

  “I can bring it back,” said Elhan. “All of it.”

  Amoriel smiled.

  “You’ve walked alone for too long, Kali-Adelsa. It’s time to bring back the kindred.”

  Elhan looked upward, as though seeing through the layers of stone and timber, to the solitary room atop Algaris Tower. From there, she could watch it all begin anew—and in this world, she wouldn’t be alone.

  As Elhan loped up the stairs, Amoriel remained on the landing, watching the rangy form of the Kali-Adelsa disappear into the shadows. A stony outline, which could have been mistaken for part of the archway, shifted slightly.

  “Very dramatic,” said Barrat dryly.

  “Oh, it gets better.” Amoriel’s eyes were intense as suns. “It’s almost dawn.”

  Haska kicked open another heavy door and took several paces out onto a windswept roof.

  “Gods dammit,” she scowled.

  The keep of Algaris Castle was much like the rest of the city—built haphazardly over the centuries as the need arose. Let’s add another library. How about a new dining tower? I need a wardrobe turret. And who doesn’t love a stairway that goes up and down and ends about three feet from where you started?

  Damned Talgarans needed a crash course in sensible architecture, thought Haska.

  She turned to leave and stopped as a figure emerged from the corridor. It stood in the doorway, blocking the entrance back into the keep. For a disconcerting moment, it seemed as though the man wore Valamon’s face like an ill-fitting mask, but Haska quickly took in the crest on his chest plate and the expression in his eyes.

  “You’re shorter than your brother,” said Haska casually.

  “And you appear to have a whole face, Lord Haska.” Falon glanced at the mask tied to her belt.

  Haska
suppressed a grimace of annoyance, still perturbed by the sensation of movement in the right side of her face. She watched carefully as Falon pushed the door to the keep shut behind him.

  “Shall we see what else is just bluster and façade?” said Falon.

  Trails of smoke rose from the city, the clash of swords like a distant, clanging orchestra below.

  “Stand aside, Prince Falon. I have no quarrel with you.”

  “Unfortunately, I have a very deep, very significant quarrel with you. And only one of us will leave this roof.”

  Haska gave a humourless smile.

  “Melodramatic,” she said. “Just like your brother.”

  Haska raised her sword, shifting into a fighting stance, and Falon mirrored her.

  “But let’s see if you can deliver,” said Haska.

  Seris could taste blood in his throat, and he couldn’t tell if it was from the nosebleed, or if Haska had punctured something with all her grabbing and crushing and slamming.

  Everything ached, inside and out, and he could hardly concentrate for all the noises humming in his head. He’d almost reached the top of the tower, staggering through the last few twisting corridors and broken portcullises. He thought he could hear swords ringing from a passing rooftop, but he was hearing all kinds of things, like plaintive voices, soft curses, and footsteps.

  Seris swung his head towards the patter of footsteps. He moved quickly in its direction, chasing the skittering sound through empty corridors and silently swinging doors. He glimpsed a grey shape mangling towards the far end of a hallway, like a spider weaving strangling shadows.

  “Elhan!” called Seris.

  Elhan turned, and she seemed haloed in dark vapour, tendrils drifting faintly from her eyes and mouth. No—drifting into her eyes and mouth.

  “Do you believe me now?” said Elhan.

  “Believe you?”

  “It’s the heart of the world that’s rotten. All the fear, the hatred, the fighting. People will always see what they want to see, and what they want to see are monsters. They want someone to blame for their suffering, their failure, their poor fire-prevention strategies. But I can fix it. The heart needs to be cut out.”

  Seris could feel this rapidly careening towards maniacal territory.

  “Elhan, I don’t think cutting out the heart has ever really fixed anything. In fact, it usually makes things much worse for the patient.”

  “You think the curse is all about me. But when I reach the king at the heart of the empire, you’ll see what it really means. Breaking the curse doesn’t mean changing me; it means changing everyone else.”

  “Elhan, what’s happening isn’t the curse. The unbound sorcerers gave you a destiny to destroy the empire. The visions, your power, the destruction that follows you, it’s all their agenda. Olrios cast the curse to give you a choice, to stop this from happening.”

  Elhan’s eyes glittered.

  “Something else you didn’t see fit to tell me before.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t know what to do, but let me help you. We can figure it out—”

  Seris reached towards Elhan.

  A crack shattered the air, and the ground between them split open, the gap racing across the floor and up the walls. A gust of cold night air sheeted through the severed corridor. Seris fell backwards onto the stone as the tower tilted, the gap between him and Elhan widening.

  “Elhan!”

  She stood coolly on the retreating half of the corridor, watching Seris dispassionately.

  “It’s a little too late for that,” said Elhan, turning to ascend the final set of stairs.

  “It’s never too late! You’re not going to get rid of me just by breaking the world in half!”

  Seris realised this sounded far cheesier aloud than it did in his head, but it summed up how he felt. He wasn’t a great adventurer, he wasn’t a brilliant strategist, and in the end, he couldn’t even find Prince Valamon. But he believed that you didn’t give up—through blood and fire, plague and war, you kept going until you couldn’t. And he still could.

  Seris crept to the edge of the broken corridor—the chasm looked at least ten feet wide. Right now, he’d probably have trouble walking that distance, let alone jumping it. He looked down through floor after floor, pieces of furniture and unhinged doors hanging precariously at the edges.

  The castle shuddered again, and Seris heard distant screams carried on the breeze. You didn’t cut out a rotten heart; you healed it. You didn’t kill monsters; you taught them not to do monstrous things. And sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. And sometimes you got slapped, or bitten, or wound up stranded at the edge of a chasm during an apocalypse. But you didn’t become a cleric if you had a problem with that.

  Seris stood at the far end of the corridor, the smell of blood and salt and dark fire in his head. His feet began to pound across the floor.

  You didn’t choose a path like this believing it’d end well. There’d be blood and tears, and sometimes things ended far from how you wanted. You could break your heart trying to save someone, only to have them slip away.

  But you always had to try.

  His bare foot hit the jagged edge of the chasm, and he leapt.

  It was far from a good night.

  In fact, Qara had decided it was the worst night of her life. Worse than her first night as squadron leader, when the soldiers wanted to see how far they could push her, and it had almost ended in her court-martial.

  For a good three hours, she appeared to be the only Talgaran soldier in the city, which made her an incredibly appealing, if baffling, target. Qara knew the streets intimately from years on patrol, but even so it hardly mattered. Every road, every lane swarmed with enemy soldiers. The streets, her streets, were rising in smoke and flame. Her people ran terrified over cobbles slick with blood, cradling the dead in hollow-eyed shock.

  It was worse than the night she had received the news that her father had been killed on campaign. But only just.

  By the time the Talgaran Guard finally trickled onto the streets, Qara was bruised to the core, laced with cuts, and she was down to her last arrow. They were only flesh wounds, but there were a hell of a lot of them.

  And then the earthquakes had started. Shock after shock, they struck the city, tearing down walls and levelling buildings. People had run screaming from their homes, onto the waiting blades of the Goethos soldiers and the teeth of the mountain clans. Street after street, she fought them back, but it was like pushing at an ocean swell with bare hands.

  She’d seen the curtain wall of Algaris Castle break, and the rush of soldiers surging towards it like piranhas to floating flesh. Her city, her castle, her king—

  Qara rode for the breach like an arrow loosed, charging through all who stood in her way. Her sword clashed and parried, and blades shattered around her, pieces of steel nicking her skin as she blazed past.

  It was worse than the night she’d heard Valamon had been taken, and she—

  Qara blitzed through the seething wall of soldiers, bursting through the sundered stone and into the deserted courtyard. She glanced quickly across the silent buildings, and her eyes stopped on a distant rooftop. Near the summit of the central tower, a side tower branched from the keep. Two silhouettes danced in elegant battle, outlined against the silver half-moon, and one of the profiles was unmistakeable.

  Talgaran had lost one prince on her watch, and she’d be damned if they lost the other.

  The keep had split down the centre, and deep crevasses were cut around its base. Qara would never reach the roof in time. She glanced quickly around the yard, her gaze stopping on the west tower. It was mostly intact, although it was starting to lean in an alarming way, and the wide stairs spiralled easily from base to roof.

  Qara patted the neck of her horse in a way the horse did not find at all reassuring. She took a deep breath and rode hard into the west tower.

  It was to the credit of Qara’s stallion tha
t he was prepared to ride into a clearly collapsing tower and up a long flight of dark, shattering stairs, when the sensible thing to do was probably gallop out of the burning city and stand in an open paddock until the ground stopped shaking. Nonetheless, the stallion felt he did owe some small favour to the one he thought of as The One Who Sat On Him And Made Him Take Her Places.

  Most of the time, the noises made by the cloth-covered apes were just incomprehensible, wet, smacking sounds, but one sound he did recognise was “knackery”. It was a sound they made a lot just before one of the wounded horses was taken away, never to be seen again, and he was smart enough to know that where they went didn’t involve beds of hay and clover.

  Several weeks ago, after the night he and The One were attacked by the other apes, he’d been in grievous pain, and he was sure there were things sticking out of him that weren’t supposed to be there. As he lay bleeding in the stables, he’d heard the word “knackery” muttered, and he remembered The One standing firmly outside his stall, yelling at the other apes, waving her silver pointy thing.

  The other apes had eventually gone away, and he remembered unfamiliar hands being laid on him. A soft voice had spoken a few horse phrases, the main one being “Hold still”. The pain had eased, and after a few days, he’d been able to walk again. The stallion generally had little interest in the complexities of the ape community, but he had no doubt The One had prevented him from meeting a most unpleasant fate. And anyway, he liked it when she threw rocks at other apes.

  Qara wasn’t particularly aware of what a self-sacrificial gesture her horse was making, but she did know there was no point in wasting a perfectly good cavalry horse. As they emerged onto the gusty roof of the west tower, Qara dismounted and turned her horse’s head back towards the stairs. She slapped him on the flank.

  “Go on, then.”

  The horse looked at her with an expression that conveyed his thoughts regarding crazy, suicidal apes and the practicality of navigating down a staircase. Another chunk of the parapets broke away, and he clattered away quickly down the stairs. Qara turned towards the castle keep, where she could see two figures darting across the roof of the side tower, swords shining in the moonlight. They seemed closely matched in skill and power, and their movements were mesmerising, like a well-practiced, lethal waltz.