Her hand rose again, and again questions gave way to silence, albeit annoyed.
“Something’s happening to the arch.”
Evayne turned absolutely white.
“The keystone is flickering.” He did not ask her if she remembered either keystone or arch; neither of them had forgotten, nor could. “I think it’s going out.” Blinking, Kallandras glanced over his shoulder, surrendering the finding vision to rock and shadow.
Evayne had already turned away. “Your Majesties,” she said, in a voice that carried weight because it also carried fear, “we are almost upon the Cathedral. Follow me now, and quickly.”
• • •
The tunnel twisted to the left in a sharp, awkward angle; Evayne did not even pause at the branch to see if the enemy was waiting for them. The time for caution had passed. She moved at great speed and with great silence, unarmed and unarmored as she was; they lost sight of her almost immediately as the darkness began to eat away at the lamps and the torches they held.
But they had enough light to see the walls fall away into blackness on either side; whether they knew it or not, they stepped across a threshold. Above, there was darkness, and at their feet, shadows; they knew that they were no longer in the tunnels because their voices carried higher and farther.
The Exalted paled and began their chant, but Evayne waved them to silence. Pulling her hood from her face, she turned to the Kings, back to the darkness, arms raised high as if in supplication. “So that you will see and remember,” she said, “Father!” Her cloak roiled at her feet as if her body itself were changing in shape as Espere’s had done. From out of the folds of a midnight-blue so dark it seemed black, the seer’s crystal rose.
Cascading down from the heights of a cavern that seemed—that was—too vast to be natural, came sparks of angry orange light. They traced a path in air, burning it into the vision not as a band of green afterlight, but rather as a swath of color. Like the brush of a crazed painter, these bands of light grew, ribbon by ribbon, until the whole of the cavern was revealed.
The dusty ruins of old stone buildings lined rubble-strewn streets. Brass railings and verandahs that looked down with suspicious ease on the grounds below were still intact. Doors, where doors might have once been, had long since rotted away; shutters were nowhere in evidence. But here and there, bottom-heavy glass work had not been shattered by the city’s descent.
And the city must have descended with speed and a terrible force. At the edges of the tunnels, halves of buildings stood, their rotted, snapped joists revealed as if a dull sword had cut from roof to basement in one stroke.
• • •
“My Lord, they are in the city.”
Sor na Shannen’s glassy eyes took in the keystone’s flickering light as if by doing so she could drain the last of it into her private darkness.
“Lord Isladar, should we—”
“No. Stand ready. He is almost nigh.”
• • •
“What brought this here?” King Cormalyn’s hushed voice.
Evayne pointed. At the center of the city, darkness lay like a formless cloud. But it rose almost to the cavern’s height, and it was wide and long.
The King nodded to the seeress; at his back, his men began to form up. Where light could not go, they would. The air was heavy with things unspoken.
“Now is the time,” she told them, seeing their apprehension and their determination. “Kings, Exalted, Sacred; Members of the Order of the profound; Astari, Defenders, and Priests—to the heart of a history that you could not have made, I have brought you.
“The darkness rises; beneath the shadows that light cannot pierce, the citadel is waking. Allasakar takes the last steps upon his path to this world. Let us meet him, as Moorelas met him; let us tender no less an answer.”
There was silence, and then from the men of the North—and there were few—the sound of sword against shield. Tentative at first, it grew louder and surer, and the cavern caught its tumult and echoed it. Then a single voice joined it, raised in a rough and uneven bass. King Reymalyn was singing “Morel’s Final Rider.”
As if his unaccompanied chorus was a command and an invitation, others began to join him, searching memory for the words that most had not sung since they were very young. The song that had eluded them in their march through the tunnels finally gave them strength now.
“Lord Elseth,” Evayne said, grave but loud, “the time has come. It is the first of Veral. The sun is breaking across the horizon in Breodanir.” She lifted her crystal high enough that he might see it; it looked for a moment as if the sun had been cupped in her hands. “Call the Hunt, Hunter Lord, and join it.”
Gilliam took the simple, unadorned Horn in his large hands and raised it, shaking, to his lips. He had come this far for only this reason: to Hunt the Hunter God, and have peace. But here, at the very threshold of an ancient, nigh forgotten city, his lungs faltered; he could not draw breath.
• • •
Isladar raised his head from the position of supplication to stare, not at the keystone, but at the darkness itself. To either side, the tentacles that had form and substance began to uproot themselves, taking great clods of dirt and flesh as they rose.
The shadows were omnipresent, but the darkness was not yet complete. With a mere gesture, Isladar doused the pathetic human lamps and plunged the coliseum into night. If the Allasakari objected, they did not give their anger voice—and in that, they were much like the kin in the face of their Lord.
The keystone was so pale it was almost simple stone. It flickered once, twice. Almost. Almost.
• • •
Was it fear?
Evayne watched his face as he pulled the Horn back to study it. “Lord Elseth?”
To his shame, his hands shook. Could it be that he was afraid to test his skill against the Lord of the Hunt—the very God who had given the trance, the bond and the hunting art to the Breodani? Angry, he gripped the shaft of the Spear and brought it down upon the ground in time to the beating of the shields.
Lifting the Hunter’s Horn, he drew breath as if it were blood. And half a continent away, at exactly that time, on exactly that signal, the King of the Breodani stood at the edge of the Sacred Forest, surrounded by the sound of the beating drums, the heightened awareness of breath and heartbeat filling his ears, the smell of his chosen quarry coming from eight different noses, the drive to be gone, be running, be hunting not quite driving away the sure and certain knowledge that by the end of this day one of his valued Hunters would lie dead at the hands of the Hunter.
The King of the Breodani lifted his intricate, ancient horn to lips as Lord Elseth—the lone Hunter Lord in the King’s lifetime to miss the call at the edge of the Sacred Forest—tipped smooth bone upward.
As one man, as one spirit, they called the Sacred Hunt, winding the Horn in its dance of three notes.
• • •
In the ancient city of Vexusa, in the heartland of his greatest enemy, the Hunter Lord answered.
And in the center of a Cathedral lost to shadow and magic, before the waiting eyes of demon-kin who stood at rigid, silent attention, the darkness finally became perfect.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
IT WAS NOT THE Hunter’s Death, but the Hunter, who came to the call of the Horn. Limned in light, wrapped in robes that no human hands had ever touched, Bredan, Lord of the Covenant, stepped into the streets of the undercity. He seemed at first a ghost, some remnant of a forgotten, long-dead man—but he walked, gaining form as his bare feet traversed the cracked and rubble-strewn ground.
Gilliam felt his chest constrict; words, always a weakness, deserted him. Sinking to one knee, he clutched the Spear as if it were an anchor. The anger and the pain that Stephen’s death had left him had been nursed into a cold and bitter thing; he had thought it could grow no worse. He was wrong.
For as the God took final form, his hair was fair, his features fine; he was neither short nor tall, neither broad of chest, nor stripling boy. If a God could be said to be any age, then he was a young man, near his prime. Were it not for the color of his eyes, he might have been Stephen.
Until Evayne gripped his shoulder, Gilliam didn’t realize that he’d brought the Spear to bear. “Lord Elseth,” she said softly, “peace.” But the hands that rested upon his shoulder were as sharp and tight as the words she spoke. He looked up to see her face; it was turned toward the God, lips pressed white and thin.
Together they waited in silence; they did not wait long. As the God neared the body of the army, he began to move quickly and surely toward his single follower: Gilliam of Elseth. He ran as Stephen ran, with the same gait, the same rhythm of running step, the same awkward flap of arms. His expression melted into a pained exhaustion, just as Stephen’s would have done at the end of the exertion of the Hunt. He wore a slender, unadorned scabbard across his back—for running, this, and not for some fancy Lady’s ball—and at his hip, glinting with unnatural light, a horn.
It was too much.
In anger, in outrage, Gilliam of Elseth gained his feet. At his side, Ashfel, growling; to his left, Salas and Connel.
“Lord Elseth,” Evayne said again, her face as pale as his was flushed, “now is not the time to use the Spear.”
No. He knew it well—this was no Hunt, this steady, fleet race to the Hunter. But his arms ached with the visceral need to heave the Spear across the vanishing distance and have done.
As if that thought were loud enough to hear, the God stopped fifteen feet away and let his arms fall to his sides. “Gil?”
He spoke with Stephen’s voice.
Stunned, Gilliam offered silence as a reply.
“I told him this was a bad idea. I told him you’d think it was an insult. Did he listen?” Snort. “I can understand why he’s called the Hunter God.”
“Stephen?” Fifteen feet disappeared in seconds.
• • •
Ashfel was uncomfortable; Stephen didn’t smell like Stephen, even if everything else but the eyes was right. The anxious dog grabbed the back of Gilliam’s cape between a generous set of teeth and pulled, hard. Gilliam snarled, but would not let go.
“Gil,” Stephen said—for it was Stephen, it had to be Stephen—“I’m not—I’m not alive.”
He knew it, of course; knew it because there was no bond—except for this physical embrace that he had forged—between them. But if he could not feel what his brother was feeling, he could hear it in his words, and the words, the sound of his disparagement, were sweet as any Hunter’s call.
“But He—Bredan—told me I should speak with you.”
“Where are you?”
Stephen’s laugh was shaky. “I don’t know. Not here. Not there. I—I don’t like it much.”
“I’ll get you out.”
“I’m not the important one,” Stephen said, although the intensity of his relief belied that. “I was the last one taken; I still have some . . . solidity.” He turned, then, to face the darkness. “He’s stepped across, Gil—but he came too quickly—you forced him. Bredan asks your leave to Hunt once more before—before you do.”
“My leave?” Gilliam’s tone was bitter.
Stephen reached forward, forming a knot of his hands between Gilliam’s shoulder blades. Then he shook his Hunter soundly. “This isn’t about your loss—or mine—Hunter Lord,” he said, his voice a mix of emotions. “This is about the fate of man. If Bredan doesn’t kill the Avatar of the Darkness—”
“I know,” Gilliam said, the words a low growl. His grip tightened; he held fast for five seconds, counting each one slowly and deliberately. And then he let go; he was Lord Elseth of the Breodani; he had called the Sacred Hunt; he was prepared to die so that Breodanir might continue. “Stephen, I—”
“I know.” The huntbrother smiled, and then the smile vanished. “He doesn’t have much power,” he told his Hunter gravely. “The fight with the enemy will drain it all—and more.”
“What does it—”
“It means that all that’ll be left is the Hunter’s Death. The beast, and not the Oathtaker.” He paused. “That’s when the Hunt starts. But, Gil—He says that it will be as if the Hunt hasn’t been called in years.”
Gilliam blanched and then nodded stiffly.
“We—He—” Stephen shook his head. “In Mandaros’ Hall,” he said.
“Swear it.”
“I swear it.” A crackle of blue light laced the air as the God behind Stephen’s eyes witnessed—and accepted—the oath. Time did not allow for any other words, any other regrets or arguments.
As Stephen turned away and began to run toward the darkness, his body lost shape and substance, dissolving into an ethereal, moving mist, and resolving—in the distance a burst of great speed made—into a great, pale beast, a thing of light. That beast lifted its head and, opening its mighty jaws, roared its challenge to the cavern’s lofty heights.
Lifting Horn to lips, Gilliam blew a long, loud note in response. A call to arms. It was the only signal that the army of the Kings needed. As one man, they surged into the streets, following the trail that the Hunter God had cut into the ground by his passage.
“Lord Elseth, what did he mean?” Meralonne APhaniel seemed to appear out of thin air, much as the God had done.
“He meant,” Evayne said, choosing to answer for Gilliam, just as Stephen might have, “that the Hunter’s Death will kill anything in sight until its need is satiated.”
The silver eyes of the mage narrowed into a dagger’s edge as he met the stony gaze of his former pupil. For they both knew that only one sworn to the Hunter could satiate that hunger. But all he said was, “Hunt well, Lord Elseth.”
• • •
In perfect darkness, the subtle senses came into play.
A moment, and the eyes were forgotten; another, and the fear of the loss of vision was eclipsed by the quiet wonder of true night. Listen, and one could hear the sound of breath being drawn, or more significant, the lack of it; then, as the hearing made its adjustment, the sound of nails scratching palms, the rustle of hair, the licking of lips rough with dryness.
But there was more.
Without the intrusion of sight, the smell of blood, of ruptured skin, of human corpses newly made—these became stronger, fuller; laid beneath, the musky odor of human sweat, the scent of dirt, of stone, of rotting damp wood. Even the fabric with which the living and the dead were clothed had a distinct aroma.
Isladar stood, listening; he held himself perfectly, rigidly still, withdrawing from the world that he studied.
There—the sound of chitin scudding gently across the dirt. At its side, the twist of scales, and the pad of soft feet. Perhaps the click of hooves. The air began to turn and move; in minutes a wind with no natural beginning circled the coliseum in a magically contained gale. The other sounds were lost to the storm; Isladar sighed, giving himself over to the movement, the things of the flesh. The Lord was taking form. And what that form would be, no one could predict; the ways and the anchors of the world were strangely changed since the Covenant of the Meddler.
The Lord of the Covenant. He bared his teeth in contempt; that one had no subtlety, no true understanding of the ways of power. Direct, he was foolish; no other Gods would trap themselves so thoroughly on a plane not in their control. The Lord of Wisdom was a more interesting enemy, but even he was not of interest to Isladar. No.
Will you show your hand here? he thought, as he waited. Will you, nameless one? Come then. The Covenant was witnessed by your lackey, but it was not his creation and not to his purpose. Do you think I do not understand the target of your maneuvering? You have waited long; here at last is my Lord’s opening move.
• • •
The shining beast reached the clouds of darkness first, but instead of disappearing into the beads of black mist, he drove them back as if they were alive and they could not bear his touch. He cut a path through the shadows that the army could follow, a wall of normal seeming, a curtain of light to either side of the magnificent, smooth streets. Into the heart of darkness he ran, and when at last the shadows were unraveled, the army stood mere yards away from the building upon which Vexusa had been founded: The Cathedral of Allasakar. There were no outer walls to protect it, no gates, no guards; in Vexusa, the arrogance of the Dark League had been exceeded only by its power.
Pausing at the foot of the black marble steps that reached into the depths of the Cathedral, the great beast shook its hoary head and roared.
A man in dark robes appeared at the top of those stairs, standing beneath the first of the five recessed arches that formed the complicated doors’ architrave. In the shadows to his left and right stood two tall creatures that in poorer light might have been mistaken for gargoyles. As if aware of that, they flexed long, thin wings that stretched from triple-jointed claws to delicate, three-toed feet. Their eyes were an unblinking brown, their faces pointed, their ears very large for their faces; if not for the fact that they stood eight feet tall, they might have been deformed bats.
But when they opened their mouths, teeth glinted across the distance, and when they exhaled it was clear that their very breath was the darkness.
The man laughed; his voice, laid above the hiss of the demons to either side, was undeniably a human voice, even if one heavy with Allasakar’s touch. “You are too late,” he said. “Our Lord has come.” He raised an ebon staff in the light, and called darkness, icy and chill. “Prepare, sacrists. Prepare, exultants. Allasakar—” The rest of the sentence was lost with his throat as the muscled hind legs of the beast coiled and then sprang, propelling him up the stairs in a single, powerful leap.
The demon-kin to either side leaped up and away, but they were not fast enough to avoid the shining glory of a forgotten God. Shreds of their wings and limbs fell to ground as the beast, unopposed, raced into the long hall that wound itself through this monument to Allasakar’s fallen glory.
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