The Conquering Dark

by Clay Griffith

  The white-haired elemental dropped to one knee and slapped his hands onto the ground. A black stone visor lowered over the front of his helmet, completely obscuring his face.

  Nick unleashed a furious attack on Gaios. Immediately the black armor was coated with a sheen of ice. And then a lightning storm erupted from Nick’s fingertips along with a scream of pain. The slender streaks of electricity felt their way around the black figure. Gaios staggered. Nick fell and the electricity crackled to a halt, his hands burnt.

  Jane stood nearby with one hand raised. A stroke of lightning arced from the heavens and struck Gaios with a splitting crack. She shouted and called another jagged spear to smash Gaios flat on his back. Blinding bolts crashed onto him until her hands were lit with fire.

  Suddenly, the earth sundered beneath both her and Nick, a cauldron of magma below them. Nick fell, barely catching the edge with clawlike hands. Jane managed to grab him but didn’t have the strength to haul him up. They clung there, hanging over hell’s mouth.

  Kate ran forward and fired her last vial of black treacle at the fallen elemental. It shattered onto his chest and sticky ooze poured down the sides of his cuirass onto the ground beneath. Malcolm charged Gaios, dropping next to him and placing the muzzle of Penny’s small pistol against the obsidian helmet. He pulled the trigger. He didn’t know how to regulate the weapon, and it bucked violently. Malcolm’s arm shook and he grasped his wrist to hold it steady. The obsidian began to crack.

  Kate slammed her pistol against the black helmet. It shattered and revealed Gaios’s tortured face beneath. His mouth stretched wide in pain as the sound waves pounded into his head. She leveled her pistol and fired, but the shell was deflected by the disruption from Penny’s gun.

  Kate spat the last cartridge into her hand. “Shut it off, Malcolm!”

  The Scotsman released the trigger and slumped onto his elbows. Blood flowed from his ears along his jawline.

  Simon appeared beside Kate and reached out for Gaios’s unprotected head with his left hand. His palm held the inscribed rune. The power of it tingled along his arm. He felt an odd tightness in his chest. He stretched his hand to place it on the bearded face, but suddenly he couldn’t move.

  Looking down, Simon saw strange black rods sticking into his ribs. Sharp pain cut through him and he had trouble drawing breath. He heard Kate scream and saw numerous pencil-thin shafts of obsidian encaging her head. They were dug in like claws, leaking bright red blood. It was difficult to understand what he was seeing. Even grimacing with agony, Kate twisted her pistol and took the shot. The shell cracked the black armor of Gaios’s stomach.

  Simon and Kate were shoved away from Gaios. Malcolm was lifted into the air by black spikes stuck into his arms and hands. All three of them were impaled on thin spines of obsidian that emerged from the ground around Gaios like shining onyx tendrils.

  Gaios rose to his feet, lifted by the earth itself. He stood in the center of the three who were crucified on his obsidian lances. His body was hunched. His black armor was shattered and dangled in pieces from his battered frame.

  Simon gritted his teeth, trying to remain conscious. He clutched at the bloody stone shaft buried in his chest and summoned the aether. He attempted to break it, but could feel the stone replenishing itself under his hands, growing continually stronger so that it would always be too powerful to shatter.

  Gaios struggled to straighten his back. “Stop fighting, Archer. You’ve lost. London is mine. You were strong, but now you’ll die.” He gestured and another stone spike drove into Simon’s body.

  Simon screamed.

  “Tell me who Ash is pretending to be now, and at least I’ll stop the pain.” Blood from his nose trickled through Gaios’s white beard. “She could have helped you but she ran and left you all to die.”

  Simon fought to breathe. His legs were numb. He could hear his heartbeat roaring in his ears. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He reached out feebly, and whispered, “Kate.”

  “Tell me who Ash is!”

  “Oh God, Kate. I must hold her…before…please…please…”

  “You’re pathetic, Archer. You’re no Pendragon. He never begged, even when I killed him. I was wrong to fear you.”

  “Just once…then I’ll tell you…Ash’s…”

  The elemental raised his weary head to Simon. With a mere glance, the stone claws clutching Kate’s scalp opened and she fell to the ground. She lay gasping for air. Gaios reached down and pulled her up. “Anstruther, go to him. Keep him alive long enough so he can tell me what I need.”

  Kate weakly tried to pull her arm from the elemental’s grasp. She nearly toppled as Gaios dragged her toward the impaled Simon.

  Rivers of red streamed down Kate’s horror-stricken face. She could barely stand. Her clothes were torn. Simon smiled down at her and reached out.

  “Kate,” he said. “Take my hand, please.”

  He felt her stiff cold fingers slip against his. He pursed his lips and whispered a secret word. Aether surged down his arm into her hand. He saw Kate jerk with alarm and a bright glow shot from above her heart. Her green eyes streamed aether and glittered bright with the same power that flowed through Simon.

  Gaios turned his head to Kate. She returned his gaze with a fierce grin. Her hand came up and it glowed from a green rune that appeared on her palm. The elemental shouted and started to back away, but Kate grasped his face between her searing fingers. A blast of aether tore from her hand.

  Gaios shook free, but a rune was emblazoned across his features. He roared in anger and extended his hands, fingers like claws. But nothing happened. The obsidian tendrils holding Simon crumbled and he dropped hard to the ground. On Kate’s other side, Malcolm fell too. In the distance, Jane dragged Nick back to solid ground, each collapsing against the other.

  Kate grabbed Gaios as the old elemental tumbled backward. He tried to shove her away, but his strength had fled with his magic. He seemed to grow older and more wizened. Kate knocked his hands aside and slammed her fist into his face. He stumbled back. She struck him again and Gaios fell to one knee. Kate herself couldn’t stay on her feet and fell onto her hands and knees, gasping for breath. The elemental scrabbled weakly across the dirt and seized a jagged shard of obsidian. He rose onto one knee and lifted the blade to plunge it into her unprotected back.

  A hand grabbed Gaios’s wrist and an arm clasped the old man’s unprotected throat. Simon tightened his forearm on Gaios’s neck until the elemental began to choke, his tongue lolling from his mouth, eyes rolling up in his head. Gaios tried to raise his feeble hand and stab Simon with the stone blade. The razor black stone jabbed into Simon’s leg.

  “No…more.” Simon shut his eyes against the blossom of new pain. He gritted his teeth and drew a final burst of runic strength into his wracked form. His arm cracked through the remnants of the obsidian armor and crushed against Gaios’s throat. The elemental gagged, but he still raised the knife to strike again. Simon tightened with all his might, nearly blacking out. Gaios’s arm faltered at its apex and the old man stopped moving. He slumped. Simon kept up his death grip on the elemental’s throat for another minute, until darkness swallowed his vision. Finally, they both collapsed unmoving into the dust.

  Kate crawled to Simon. She struggled to unbend his arm from around Gaios’s neck and roll the elemental’s lifeless body aside. Simon was still breathing. He looked up at her with a tired, grateful expression. She should have had nothing left, but she still lifted him into her arms. Then she saw his red wounds and pulled him against her breast.

  After a moment, she shifted him back slightly and looked down. “You are going to live, aren’t you?”

  “If you are, I will.” Simon put his head on her lap.

  It was a month after the terrible disaster that became known, rather prosaically, as the Great London Earthquake. The city was just beginning to get its feet under it and move forward again. Bodies had been gathered and largely buried or disposed of. The number of dead
was lower than might have been expected given the fires and collapsed buildings in crowded tenement blocks. Rubble was being cleared. The wreckage along the riverfront was being carted away. Most main streets were open to traffic and business had begun to revive. Goods could move freely and shops were struggling back to life to supplement the always thriving street vendors, provided the teamsters and lightermen and shopkeepers were still alive. The worst of the damage had struck the heart of the City eastward, with relatively less structural failure and loss of life west into Westminster and Kensington, or north to suburbs such as Islington, or south beyond the Thames.

  It was a chilly day in early October when King William requested Grace North join him to make a tour of damaged buildings and dislocated people. The pair rode in a carriage viewing one of the remaining open fissures near Cannon Street. Grace seemed so overcome by her emotions that she couldn’t bear to emerge from her carriage. So beloved was she that the crowd was soon comforting her, assuring her that they were well and would muddle through. God bless you, ma’am, they called after her as the coach rolled away with her covering her stricken face with a handkerchief.

  In the northern part of the city, the tour moved on to inspect a prison that had been commandeered as temporary housing for refugees from shattered parishes to the south. They met the governor of the prison, now turned into a hotelier, who showed them the crowded courtyard and first-floor cells. Cooking fires were everywhere. Laundry was strung across the grounds. There was much bowing and curtsying from the surprised residents.

  At the end of a hallway, King William extended his hand toward a short set of steps and the door at the bottom. “This room hosts a ward of injured children, orphans now. I should like to visit them. There is little we could do better on this day than raise the spirits of suffering children, don’t you agree?”

  “I do, Your Majesty.” Grace nodded pleasantly and they started down the steps.

  The king looked back at the governor. “Sir, I would like to come upon these children alone, with Mrs. North. It would be a terrific treat for them if their king wandered in unannounced. Would you stay where you are?”

  The governor looked confused but bowed and remained planted at the top of the steps. King William opened the heavy door himself and allowed Grace to enter first. She covered her nose with a handkerchief to fight the dank stench. The king paused to mop his brow before they proceeded along a narrow corridor lit only by a dim flickering light at the end.

  They entered a large room with several other doors opening off it. With only a single gas jet on the wall, it was still quite dark. Through one of the open doors, Grace saw the back of a woman, with her head bandaged, bent over the form of a young girl. However, King William indicated another open door on their right and he went to it. He stepped aside and Grace went in without a thought.

  The door slammed shut and a bright green glow flashed.

  Grace North stood frozen. The walls pulsed with runes brought to life with the shutting of the door and the joining inscriptions around the perimeter of the room. She turned back to the door and grasped the handle, pulling violently on it. It was locked.

  “What is this?” Grace hissed like a caged cat.

  The king drifted back into the shadows where he intersected with a new shape who was barely visible. The two figures exchanged a few whispered words. The king moved quickly to depart the prison suite while the second form detached itself from the darkness and limped forward into the light of the gas jet, leaning heavily on a cane.

  “Welcome back to London, Ash.” Simon Archer’s voice quivered with restrained emotion. “By the way, you are my prisoner.”

  Ash’s eyes were wide with fury and she jabbed a hand toward him. She glared in anger and squeezed her fingers into a fist. Simon scoffed at her attempt to curse him. He shook his head. After a moment of effort, Ash realized her magic was gone, and anger turned to fear.

  “What have you done?” she cried.

  “I have trapped you. Byron Pendragon had prepared a cell for you in the Bastille, which I suspect you knew. Well, I have re-created that cell here. And you will stay here until you die.”

  “We had a deal, Archer!” Ash screamed. “You traitorous bastard! We had a deal!”

  “Deal? I don’t recall a deal. My people stopped Gaios from destroying Britain. Meanwhile, you abandoned the people you love so dear. For all your crimes, your life belongs to me now.”

  From the open cell on the far side, Kate and Charlotte emerged. They wore shabby clothes that had allowed them to pass for displaced wretches in the dim light. Kate’s mouth was a grim line, watching the captured necromancer. Charlotte hid behind her, still more fearful than normal since Imogen’s death.

  Kate put a comforting arm around the child. “Don’t worry, dear. She can’t hurt you.”

  Malcolm and Penny entered slowly through the main door where they had hidden outside in case the scheme went wrong. Malcolm noted the sight of Ash behind bars with a sigh of relief. Penny leaned heavily on a crutch yet laughed cheerfully. Deep bruises still covered her face. She slapped the Scotsman on the arm with satisfaction. Malcolm winced. She winced too.

  Ash pressed against the door. “You must be insane. I am Grace North. I’m the wife of the prime minister of England. How long before everyone in this country starts to ask where I am? Did you even think about that? When the people find out what you’ve done, they will tear you apart.” She pointed at Kate. “Even your damned name won’t protect you. They’ll string you up in the streets! All of you! Even your dog!”

  Kate pulled Charlotte close. Malcolm raised his bandaged hands with a snarl and stepped forward, looking for a fight. Penny tugged him back.

  Simon grew uncannily quiet. “We prepared ample evidence to show that Grace North, tiring of her dull husband, has run off with a minor German count with a reputation as a lady’s man. Unfortunately, the pleasure yacht carrying the two of them toward some lovers’ rendezvous on the sunny Mediterranean will be found off Majorca, or at least parts of it will be found. Grace North will be lost at sea. The terrible scandal will, no doubt, be covered up with stories protecting your reputation and that of the prime minister. I regret the honorable Mr. North’s discomfort, but there is no answer for it. You are a tumor and must be cut out. There will be scarring. But when it is done, the nation and the world will be better for it.”

  “How dare you!” Ash spat. “You worthless scribe. You miserable little piece of filth! Who are you to do this to me?”

  “I’m Simon Archer. Son of Catherine Archer, whom I believe you know.” He stopped talking, not trusting his voice to stay firm. He felt Kate press closer to him. His fists clenched, straightening from the cane and taking several deep breaths. “And I am the heir to Pendragon because I am the son of Edward Cavendish.”

  Ash froze with her mouth open. She regarded Simon closely as if looking for physical signs of his father in him. Then she smiled with cold understanding.

  Simon struggled to keep his emotions under the cover of his stern features. He feared he would crush Kate’s hand in his fingers. She didn’t react to the pressure.

  “I underestimated you, Archer. Damn me but I did.” Ash slid her fingers gently up and down the bars in the small window. She grinned with a manic fervor that seemed out of place on Grace North’s face. “I never thought you to be this sort of man. I thought you truly were a dilettante at heart. A gadfly who only cared for what magic could do for you. I never believed you had the ambition and the steel to become the eminence grise behind the throne. I’m impressed. However did you enchant the king to play the betrayer?”

  Simon hesitated for a second and Ash narrowed her eyes with suspicion. “That wasn’t the king who came with me, was it? Of course it wasn’t. It was someone under an illusion. The true king doesn’t know what you’re doing here, does he? How long do you think you can keep this from him?”

  Kate’s eyes flicked with concern toward Simon. He gave her a calm smile, as if no secrets ma
ttered now that Ash was contained. By locking the necromancer away, all could be free. Secrets he had been carrying for years now seemed to hold no danger for him. Even here in this dank prison cellar, there was a cleanliness to the air that was invigorating to him.

  “I’ll tell His Majesty once I’ve prepared him,” Simon said. “Eventually, he’ll be ready to believe that the lovely Grace North was indeed the vile Ash. And His Majesty will be grateful that I already have you under lock and key. You’re done, Ash. We’ve won.”

  “I see.” Ash chuckled politely as if she were stuck in a brief conversation at a dinner party she’d rather not be attending but knew would end soon enough. All the panic, all the dismay, was gone from her assured gaze. Her voice was quiet and simple. “You have no chance against me, Archer. I’ve bested centuries of challengers. I finished off Pendragon when he rejected me. And now I’ve rid myself of Gaios when he dared come against me. Do you truly believe you stand a chance? I’ll get out of this place eventually; and then I will visit such horrors on you and your companions that you will wish to God I did not exist.”

  Simon’s ferocity over Ash was spent. Despite what Ash had done to his mother with necromancy, the fact that his mother had been stronger and was now at peace thanks to Nick put that atrocity into the distant past. Simon felt that the terrible chaos created by the murder of Pendragon and the collapse of the Order of the Oak was soothed now. Of the three great demigods who founded that venerable old magic guild, two were dead and the last was here under Simon’s control. The torch had passed. He faced a future of immense toil to rebuild the useful aspects of the old Order. For now, Simon just felt tired. He turned away with Kate and Charlotte. “Your threats are meaningless, Ash. You have nothing left.”

  “I have the man who killed your father.”

  Simon froze in his steps but didn’t look back. Kate’s hand tightened around his and he could sense her gaze boring into him, waiting for him to react. He exchanged a wondering glance with Malcolm. The Scotsman was tense, also eager for Simon’s response.