by Ed McDonald
There was a roar as the flashpan ignited, the kickback slamming the stock into my shoulder. A great smoke cloud billowed before me and I could see nothing of what I’d done, the smoke white and heavy in the windless air. I tossed it down, swung the second matchlock up and rushed through, gun up. I’d hit it, shot it right through the face, but its shriek told me it wasn’t done. I hadn’t done the damage I needed but I had made a hole a palm’s breadth wide where the Darling’s eyes should have been and it’d fallen back against the wall. It howled in agony. I brought the barrel up at it but suddenly Jonovech hurled himself at me. I swung the gun between us, crashed into the wall. The general was a strong man, a real soldier, and the mind-worms had taken him completely. We wrestled the gun between us and I put my elbow into his face once, twice, rocking his head back on his shoulders. He didn’t let go, instead tried to go for his knife. I put a boot in his gut, kicked him back, brought the gun to bear. I hesitated. Only one shot left and Jonovech wasn’t the real enemy.
The Darling lashed out blind, an arc of deadly power. Somehow I got out the way as the slashing air carved a line through the stones. It launched a second spell, shrieking in pain and fury. Jonovech staggered, then the top half of his torso collapsed forwards. I’d blown the little bastard’s eyes clean away and left it blind and its third attack flashed right through the doorway. Somehow its blinding seemed fitting revenge for what they’d done to Herono. In its frustration the Darling lashed a blast horizontally. I pressed myself down into the stone floor as it threw piercing lines of magic out into the unseen world. My heart pounded far too loud: surely the sorcerer could hear it beating, so loud the drums must be heard across the city walls, thump, tha-thump, tha-thump.
The Darling drew heaving, ragged breaths. The young face, too youthful ever to have felt the touch of a razor, had turned a sickly yellow where it wasn’t black and red with the wreckage of what had been eyes. Sweat drenched it, rolled in rivers. It sat back against the wall, small legs extended out in front of it. In each ragged breath I heard the pain of its failure.
Of course, if it figured out where I was lying, it’d split me in two in a heartbeat. Slowly, so slowly, I began to reach for the harquebus.
The Darling reached its hands up to the broken bone and blood across its face. It was shivering, whether it was fear or pain or fury that shook it I didn’t know. Maybe all. I nearly had my fingers on the gun. He was listening.
‘I know you’re still there,’ it said. ‘I should have had you killed when Herono caught you.’
Don’t know how it recognised me without any eyes. It wanted me to answer. Wanted to hear where I was so it could send its killing spells.
‘You always were a hard man to kill, Galharrow,’ it said. Even though its face was ruined, the Darling managed a sneer. ‘Too bloody hard by far.’ Something familiar in the voice. The way it turned its words. I squinted at that little boy’s face. And I realised that I’d seen it before, long before Station Twelve.
I’d known him for years, only he’d been forty years older and fighting on our side.
‘Gleck,’ I said. The word escaped me without thinking. I realised what I’d done the moment I said it. To my immense surprise the Darling did nothing.
‘Nice to be with an old friend,’ the child said. ‘Haven’t a lot of those left any more.’
Time changes us so much. When we age we lose that softness, that childish beauty. They’d found Gleck Maldon and made him one of their creatures.
‘No. You don’t have any.’
‘No, maybe not. I’d say I was sorry if I could still feel sorrow. Nothing personal, of course. It’s just how things work out.’ He gathered blood from the back of his throat and spat out a sticky wad of it, black and red. Drew back a sleeve, showed me Shavada’s glyph marked into his forearm. The left forearm, same as I wore the brand that made me Crowfoot’s.
‘What happened to you?’ I asked. Couldn’t help myself.
‘Life,’ Gleck Maldon said. ‘Life and death, I suppose. It’s not the time to talk it through, though. Now come on. I need you to help me open this door. I know you’ve been working with that Spinner. Irony is, if there’s one person in this city that knows how to get into this vault, it’s probably her. You probably do too.’
‘I don’t know shit,’ I said. I had a very bad feeling.
‘Well,’ Maldon said, pushing himself further up against the wall. ‘We’ll see, won’t we?’
I knew what that meant. I went for the harquebus, brought it up and made to squeeze the trigger as the coils slammed into my mind. The mind-worms hooked into me, digging into my brain, into my being. I felt Maldon’s presence, Maldon and something behind him looming like a great and terrible shadow, a power so great and ancient that it eclipsed concepts of time, of morality, of humanity. They broke into my mind and began to rifle through my memories.
A child picks up his first wooden sword. It feels right in his hand, just a crossed piece of wood with string for a grip but he grins as he swipes at a dog. His mother shakes her head in disappointment, but his father is proud. The kind of son he wants begins to form before him.
A girl, sweet in her sixteen years, lies in a meadow, long grass a collapsed palisade about her and the buzzing of summer insects a song to fill the day. She wears a linen dress and a bright smile, her hair long and dark, her mouth a blaze of joy. She picks the daisies and weaves them together, a wreath to lay upon a suitor’s brow.
A young woman stands before him. She’s sticky with the blood of the mercenary that tried to rough her up. The commander is supposed to be mad, but he’s just impressed. There’s something haunted about her eyes, like she’s cracked on the inside. The commander is supposed to have her punished but instead he asks her name. She says it’s Nenn.
‘Get out of my head,’ I snarled. Every word forced between my lips was an agony, like driving nails through my own limbs. I vomited. I sobbed.
The mind-worms burrowed deeper. They sought something. I felt myself losing control, felt Maldon consuming me, flowing through my whole body like smoke. He took control of my limbs. The weapon fell from my fingers as he pushed me upright with my own fucking hands. Silently I raged, silently I screamed.
A young man takes his first command, his pride shining brighter than the polished buttons on his uniform. His brother is watching. Marshal Venzer says the people of Dortmark are depending on him.
A cousin arrives to inform him that his wife and children are dead. It is the last time he will see any of his family. The cousin blames him, spits at his feet. Tells him he has no name. He has nothing to say.
He doesn’t want to meet her, shuffles anxiously. She’s said to be bookish, odd. What use does he have for some dowdy girl with her head bound up in mathematics? He grimaces as the door opens. Count and Countess Tanza are greeted, and then she steps into the room behind them. Breath catches. Muscles lock rigid. He has to remind himself to draw a breath because nothing will be the same again.
Maldon began to hum to himself.
‘The night is dark; the night is cold. Only a song could be so bold. Of course. Of course. That’s why I left the rhyme for them.’
Maldon stood, turned to the door. He reached out and placed his hands upon the stone surface, feeling across the discs. They were smooth. He spat more gore and then jerked me up onto my feet.
‘You must depress the dials that correspond. Firstly, the dial that represents “dark”.’
Helplessly I looked across the door. Didn’t have any control of my own body now. The sigils were simple but easily recognised. A sun, a fish, a chair. I saw one that resembled a moon, but I figured that was moon rather than dark. At length I found one that seemed to be a town with cross-hatching above it. I reached out and depressed it. The stone key sank half an inch into the face of the door. Maldon hissed out a pent-up breath. He was grinning despite the blood leaking down across his ruined face.<
br />
‘Good. The second is “cold”.’
Within me something stirred, something that had been sleeping. It uncoiled, flexed and stretched.
I found the right key, pressed it in. It sank like the first.
‘Careful now,’ Maldon said. ‘Get one wrong and we’ll have to start over. And I’m sure Nall would have laid wards against those without the correct combination. Although there are …’ and he did some kind of calculation ‘… over fourteen million possiblities.’
Within my chest, Saravor’s silver dragon magic had awoken. It sniffed, if a shard of spirit magic can sniff, sensing something was wrong.
‘What’s this?’ Maldon said. His blind face turned towards me. ‘What magic is this?’
Get out, Saravor’s voice hissed within me, though I knew Maldon heard it. This one is mine. Get out!
‘I own this body and the mind within it,’ Maldon said. ‘You will regret it if you find yourself in my way.’
No, Saravor whispered. It is you who shall regret it.
And then everything went mad.
34
The silver dragon reared, light gleaming from its smooth, flawless body. The beast glared but there was a savage glee to the set of its fang-filled jaws, the soft golden glow of its eye sockets. Vast wings spread across the world, bat’s wings of gleaming liquid metal, rainbow colours struggling for purchase upon the shimmering surface. It bellowed defiance, a roar of pride and indignation. Nobody dared to challenge the great dragon for its property. It reared onto its hind legs, sucked in a great gust of frozen air and belched golden fire. I cowered down in the nothingness, waiting for the blazing heat that would end me.
Twisting black shapes rushed past me to engage the dragon. The mind-worms were long, fat-bodied winding coils of mouldering, rotting darkness. Their many fanged mouths whirred as they swarmed and evaded. They attacked as one, wrapping the dragon in lengths of foulness. Behind them lurked a presence, the shadow of great, dark corruption. The twisting maggots sought to bind the dragon’s limbs but it tore free, slashed with mile-long claws, crunched down with jaws stronger than an earthquake, seared them with fire hotter than stars. A jet of flame splashed over me but there was no heat to it, not for me. The worms wrapped tighter, squeezing, constricting and boring with jagged, granite teeth. Blue blood spurted from beneath silver scales, great dark shreds of rotten flesh showered from the pulsing abdomens of Maldon’s worms.
Where was I? I wasn’t sure. The battle played out silently in front of me, wounds torn open and sealing shut as fast as they were inflicted. The creatures ripped at each other with frantic rage, shredding, gnashing, tearing. On all sides of me lay doors into corridors. I could travel in any direction, walking would take me up as easily as left and right, but there were no directions and there was no up or down either. Just space, space without rules. This wasn’t the world. We were all somehow inside my mind, or maybe drawn out into the magic that connected the three of us. Threads of thought passed by like cobwebs drawn on the wind. Bursts of magic sparked and blew apart all around me. If there was pain I couldn’t feel it, but then, I didn’t seem to have a body either.
The dragon crashed to the non-earth, worms forcing it down. It responded with fire. The vast shadow behind those worms looked on with silent, loathing eyes. Even without true senses, I had the impression of dark tombs, of things dead so long that not even the flies would touch them. Shavada.
I finally understood what Maldon had become. He was a conduit, a vessel through which Shavada could exert his magic, an arm reaching out into the dangers of the world. Saravor could not overcome Maldon alone, not backed as he was by a Deep King. The worms sank their fangs into the jealous drake, ripping away one of its forelegs.
Just as the shadow loomed behind Maldon’s worms, so Saravor had backers of his own. Small, grey-faced shapes, a half-dozen of them. They watched like ghosts in my mind, dead expressions on faces too young to know them. Saravor’s children? How could they influence this? They were merely his servants. Or so I’d thought.
I’d always imagined that Saravor made slaves of those children. Perhaps it was those children that made a slave of the man.
I hated Saravor. Loathed him with every facet of my being, in every way I could imagine. But he had to win. I started for a door. It wasn’t really a door, just as the sorcerers weren’t truly dragons and worms but a way for my brain to make what sense as it could of the magic coursing through me. I passed through the doorway: the battling monsters were gone and I was somewhere else.
Maldon had forced passage into my mind, but that doorway led both ways.
A dark room, not just dim but lightless, utterly black and cold. He has lived his life in pursuit of knowledge of the light, has felt it drawn into his body, has worked it into illusion and fire, into energy and joy. How long has he been down here now? There is no time. It could be years. He does not eat the food they bring him. There may be poison in it. He cannot succumb now, not when he is so close to the answer. He knows that, and so they have trapped him.
He hears the grille drawn back at the door, but whoever has come for him has not brought him the gift he most desires.
‘Spinner Maldon,’ a woman says. He recognises her voice. Prince Herono. He served under her command in days gone by. He tries to answer but he has not drunk water for days and his tongue will not move in his mouth.
‘I wish to help you,’ Herono says. ‘We can go, but we must go now. I can see you free from the traitors who seek to stop your work. Will you come with me?’
He manages to croak an acceptance. She sparks a phos globe. The soft light is painful to him. It is not the clear light of day, but the deep red glow of Rioque bound in crystal. Herono’s thin face watches him through the grate. One eye trembles slightly, bulbous in the socket. She smiles.
I was in Gleck’s memories now, rifling them just as he had mine. I controlled nothing of what I saw, felt myself drifting apart in the pull and swell of another man’s being. I snapped away and into another memory.
He stands before his classmates, unable to grasp the nuance. He doesn’t care for poetry, but they look down on him, sneer at him for his lack of understanding. These ponderings are a rich child’s games. What use this torturing of words into soft phrases? The mathematics, the sciences, those are worthwhile. The other boys are doing an impression of him, mocking his accent. It shouldn’t hurt, but it does. He looks out of the window, tries to ignore them. Hates them. He sees a pair of bright moons rising slowly over distant forests. For the first time, he sees the blue light of Clada differently. Sees her light spilling down into the world. Almost as though he could reach out and touch it.
I moved on, stumbling. I crashed through a dozen incidents from his life, his childhood, his adolescence. I saw myself in one of them, younger, leaner but with a frightening set to my face I never knew I’d owned. I saw the doxy he’d taken to his bed, saw him kicking a beggar. I saw him lingering at a vegetable stand because he was attracted to the merchant’s wife, saw him frantically pouring over mathematical texts and calculations late one night.
I could have become nothing in another man’s life, another man’s dreams. Through every memory I was aware of the distant thrashing of serpentine grubs, the snapping of reptilian jaws. The shadow was growing stronger, the grey children were pushed back.
He can scarcely think, he’s so tired. Weariness, hunger, thirst, all of them have blurred his senses. Dimly he knows that to head into the Misery is foolish but Herono tells him her men will meet them just a short distance away. They have light canisters, she says, enough to keep him safe. He hasn’t the strength to draw phos from the moons himself. The promise of those canisters is like offering whisky to a deathbed drunk. With their power he can grow strong, can take vengeance. The marshal betrayed him, imprisoned him, stole his dignity and left him to scrawl in shit in the darkness. This is the only way to lose the pursuit, H
erono says. He can trust her.
He sees men ahead. There is something wrong with their faces but his mind isn’t working quickly and Herono is so reassuring, tells him not to be afraid. He lets them bind him with chains and ropes, blindfold him, force water into his mouth. He doesn’t understand, not until he hears their buzzing tone and realises these are not men. They’re the damned drudge. And there’s nothing he can do. They take him deeper into the Misery.
I jerked free of Maldon’s memories. Doors and pathways shone around me as silvery strings. I could hear the distant shrieking of the dragon, the screeches of the worms, but I tried to ignore them, to focus. I was not alone. Overhead the great presence had turned its eyes upon me. I felt his breath, the foulness of the rot within. The shadow watched me. He had no power here to intervene, I thought, or he wouldn’t let me be going this deep. I sensed its hatred of me and knew what I had to do. Knew where I was going, for once in my fucking life.
Deeper into the memory I plunged.
The process is slow. It is not without agony. They string him between posts in the baking sun, let the twisted magic of the Misery enter his body through a thousand small incisions. They pour something down his throat, and hanging between the posts he has no choice but to swallow and choke and gasp as the liquid sears all the way down.
A canvas awning is moved throughout the day. They never leave him in direct moonlight, never give him a chance to spin. They do not fear that he would escape. There are three Darlings in the camp, who look at him with something like envy, or loathing, or maybe both. Such malice in the faces of children. It should not be possible.