Blackwing: The Raven's Mark Book One

by Ed McDonald

  The process is not brief. Daily they lengthen the ropes that bind him. His hair falls away, his muscles shrink, somehow the bones in his limbs contract. They are changing him, turning him into one of them. He feels the core of magic within his chest growing, building with every dose of the draught they feed him. But he still has his mind. He begins to believe that there may be hope, that they will gift him these dark powers and he will be able to turn them against his captors. Let them suffer the way he has suffered.

  On the tenth day, Shavada comes in person. Maldon can feel his approach from many miles away, can sense the depth of the power that resides within. He thrashes against the bindings, but his body is different now, the puny form he had when he was a boy. It is stronger, more resilient, and it is ageless but it feels foreign, alien, to him. He lives within a constant cycle of youth, the tiny dots that make up his body set into an eternal process of regeneration so that nothing can damage him, no years can claim him. The greatest gift any man could be given. He will live for ever.

  Shavada arrives. His presence eats into Maldon’s mind, defiling it, polluting it with his intrusion. There is the tiniest of severances and Shavada casts off a flake of his being, his weakest part, a part to live in Maldon’s mind. Maldon feels drunkenness taking him, his thoughts becoming wild and wretched, and as that sliver of darkness spreads through his mind like ink in water. He screams as his will is taken from him.

  There! That was the moment I needed. I grasped it. That memory, the thread, and I saw its long tail trailing off into the darkness. The shadow stood behind it, shapeless, a blot of darker black against an endless night. Shavada’s attention shifted to me, the pivoting of a mountain.

  I staggered beneath it. The weight of his gaze alone was enough to crush me down, down into oblivion and nothingness. Crowfoot I had experienced before, but he was merely insane, whereas Shavada’s glare was filled with the malice of centuries. It told me that they had come before us, that they owned this world, that we had no right to it. They had suffered at our hands, and they would visit that suffering back upon us, and they would start with me. The ire, the cruelty prickled over me, but nothing more came. Maldon was the conduit: Shavada could not exert his will against me directly.

  ‘Saravor!’ I cried out. I clutched the thread of the memory as it began to buck and twist, a line of sparkling rope in my not-hands.

  The dragon was down, the mind-worms were wrapped tight around it, their coils locking up crippled, broken limbs as the fang-filled mouths bored into the flesh. The maggots’ necks pumped away as they drained the dragon of blue blood, splashing it greedily. Saravor’s dragon-head tried to raise, but the long neck was wrapped and coiled, the fire choked from it.

  ‘Saravor, here!’ I shouted desperately, but the dragon had fallen and Maldon held the Fixer there, a prisoner along with me, inside my own mind. The dragon gave a low, choked moan. To go up against a Darling had been a colossal display of arrogance.

  The shadow looked down on me. Its hatred lifted away. Instead, I saw mockery.

  I felt a tug on my non-hand. Around me the six little grey children had clustered. They all wore the same dead expressions, as though they could not understand the world around them. It tugged again, harder. I gave it a shrug. The little child pointed off along the dream-thread of the memory to the cloud of oily blackness. Then it pointed back to itself.

  ‘What?’ I asked. The lead child pointed to the darkness again, then back to itself. ‘You want that?’

  All six children began nodding voraciously. Their blank little faces smiled in unison. ‘How can I give it to you?’ I asked. The mute children simultaneously shrugged at me. The shadow overhead had turned its vast attention back to me and the troop of grey orphans. Whatever the hell they were. They wanted the blackness, the shadow wanted them to be gone, the dragon and the worms were nearly done fighting and whatever mad dream I was in, what was left of my mind was having difficulty keeping up. I reached out along the thread, my arm stretching a hundred miles, and grasped hold of the black power.

  It was alive and poisonous in my hand. I felt it writhe and twist, felt the cold darkness within. A shred of a Deep King’s power, and it was mine. I could take that power and turn it against my enemies. I could become a sorcerer myself, melt stone, cut through men as though they were playthings. Could I turn the tide against the drudge? Could I use the magic against them? Of course, the magic whispered to me, take me and wield me! It hissed low, sultry, the poisoned voice of an arch temptress. It wanted me, and I wanted it.

  Another tug. The children pointed to the magic. They were hungry, greedy for it.

  ‘You want this?’ I said. I looked over to the dragon. Coiled and wrapped by blood-fattened grubs though it was, the dragon had a desperate, devouring look in its eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ I heard Saravor say, closer than his dragon. ‘Yes, yes, give it to me! I will take it from the Darling!’

  Shavada’s blackness and rage thundered across the long, binding link. My mind shook with the force and distantly I knew that in reality my nose ran with blood, my knees gave out. His anger was vast and terrible. This was something he could not allow.

  ‘This is my debt,’ I cried at Saravor. ‘This is what I owe you. Take it and get the fuck out of my body.’

  The children bobbed up and down excitedly.

  ‘A deal’s a deal,’ Saravor said. I held out the ball of darkness, and with a snap of his silver fangs he severed it from Maldon.

  Shavada’s rage blossomed. A tidal wave of purest hatred crashed into me. The grey children vanished, the dragon dissipated into smoke, and the mind-worms detonated into darkness. I heard someone screaming hoarsely, and realised it was me. I blinked and found myself in the dimly flickering light of phos tubes. Jonovech’s body lay close by. Maldon lay up against the wall. The slow match from the matchlocks still crept upwards into the still air. I shuddered and retched. Nothing came up, but it hurt my guts all the same.

  I quested around in my chest, but Saravor had made his deal and honoured it. The silver dragon was gone. I had no time to think about what I might have done by passing that creature even a taste of a Deep King’s power. One thing at a time.

  I placed the barrel of the harquebus against Maldon’s forehead. What would he be when he awoke? Had taking Shavada’s power away been enough to free him of the Deep King’s command? Could the bond be broken? My finger trembled on the trigger. Safer for all of us if I put a lead ball through his brain.

  That would be the smart thing to do.

  I swallowed, sighted along the barrel. In the kid’s youthful cheeks and jaw I could make out the vestiges of the friend that he had once been. My best friend, at times. A comrade in arms at others. Didn’t I owe him more than a blast of black powder? I looked at the ruin the first matchlock shot had made of his eyes. Clean white bone displayed like porcelain through the slick red gloss.

  ‘Finish me,’ Maldon croaked.

  ‘I should,’ I said.

  ‘Do it.’ I put my finger against the trigger. The smoke from the match cord stung my eyes, bringing tears. I let them roll down my cheeks, gritted my teeth. Shifted the butt of the stock against my shoulder.

  ‘I will,’ I said. But I didn’t.

  ‘I’ve nothing to live for,’ Maldon said. ‘And I’ve seen too much. I’ve seen into the black heart of the things that call themselves the Deep Kings. You can’t imagine, Galharrow. Can’t know how terrible they are. What they will do, if they win. Please. Take the pain away.’

  ‘You can feel the pain?’

  ‘I can now.’ He spoke very quietly, his voice just a whisper in the dark tomb. He tried to manage a smile. ‘Do you remember the night we bought those bottles of Whitelande Fire and drank them with the brothel girls above Enhaust’s shop? A good night, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You bedded all five of them,’ I said. I smiled, but I didn’t move my firearm.


  ‘You wouldn’t touch a single one,’ he said. He coughed, a hacking, dying sound.

  ‘Better times,’ I said.

  ‘Look at me now,’ Maldon said. ‘This crippled child’s body. This ruined life. They took everything from me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t there to stop them taking you. I should have been.’

  ‘Not your fault,’ he said. ‘Now get on and do it.’ He shifted himself against the wall, tilted back his head. ‘Make it quick.’

  ‘Nall’s Engine,’ I said. ‘We need to activate it. Shavada is coming here.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Maldon said. He tried a smile. ‘Why do you think I want you to kill me so much? I won’t be his again. He’s coming. He knows that the Engine doesn’t work.’

  ‘Can we make it work? Is there a way?’

  ‘Songlope’s Paradox,’ Maldon said with a shrug. ‘The power of the Engine takes so much phos that the counter-measure would be too large. I did have a theory, though.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Imagine a hollow ball, but every surface on the inside of the ball is a mirror. The light begins inside the ball and reflects back. It reflects infinitely, in fact, never able to get out unless a hole is made in the mirror. I suspected that the heart of the Engine is exactly that.’

  I felt a surge of hope within my chest. It had been absent so long it made me shiver.

  ‘So when the Engine could take no more phos, it wasn’t rejecting it because it was broken. It was full. The Engine could be fully charged?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Then why didn’t it work when Jonovech threw the lever?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Maldon’s little body gave a spasm, limbs trembling. He looked to be trying to avoid having a fit. Hardly surprising with half his face shot away.

  ‘Shavada sent you here to find out?’

  ‘Yes. There’s a spy, someone high-ranking in the Order of Aetherial Engineers. He sent word that you were getting closer to figuring it out. That Ezabeth Tanza might be able to activate Nall’s Engine after all. Your Nameless have all betrayed you and fled, but the Deep Kings cannot shake their fear of Nall’s Engine. Since the Heart of the Void burned the earth, only the Engine has ever managed to hurt them. Philon and Acradius remember that humiliation.’

  ‘A spy?’ I muttered. ‘We dealt with Herono already.’

  ‘No. Someone else. I don’t know who,’ he said. ‘Does it matter?’

  I stepped forward and put the barrel of my weapon against Maldon’s forehead. He raised his face towards it, eager. I guess that the things he’d seen, the torture he’d been forced to bear, would make any man crave oblivion. There was no choice really. Not much use for an immortal, sightless child stripped of all his magic.

  ‘I’m sorry, Gleck,’ I said.

  ‘Just get on with it.’

  Shooting him was the safest option. No real choice there.

  It would be the smart thing to do.

  35

  I staggered from the tunnels beneath the citadel to find the city quiet, the bodies unchanged. I hadn’t been down there as long as I thought. I felt a hundred years older. There was blood in my beard.

  Not everyone was dead. I got hold of a runner-girl, penned a message to Lindrick.

  Tanza and I have new information. Will activate Nall’s Engine when the drudge attack.

  She was glad to get away from the carnage. We had nothing, of course, but I sure wanted Lindrick to think that we did.

  I made my way up through the citadel. The offices were mostly deserted, the guard posts empty. Now and again a looter tried to hide from me, arms loaded with precious books, silverware, candelabras and works of art. Most of the looters wore a uniform, administrators, bookkeepers, even soldiers. Maybe they’d heard the commotion below, seen the bodies in the courtyard and decided this was the time to get out with something of value. Couldn’t blame them.

  The Iron Goat had decided to go as well, though there was no running for him. His withered, shrunken frame swayed in a cold wind blowing in through the windows. The plush red curtains lay in a heap on the floor. He’d used their hanging cord to form the noose, made a ceiling beam his own gallows. His eyes stared, tongue protruding from his toothless gums. I stood in the doorway, watched his cadaver sway in the wind. Before I’d come to the Range there had been stories of Range Marshal Venzer. A tactician so cunning that the Deep Kings had chased him across the Misery. A living legend, responsible for countless triumphs, a man who made every arrow go further, made every camp fire seem warmer just by sheer force of reputation. I’d have died for that man, and now he slowly swung back and forth in an uncaring wind. Just another body.

  Venzer’s wide-brimmed red hat had been set out on the table. Around it he’d arrayed those things that meant something to him. His cavalry sword, the bright gold pin of three interlinked moons that told his rank. A heavily worn copy of common love poems. A series of small portraits had been laid out in a row, maybe his family or old friends long since gone to the grave. Though the sword’s guard was gilded and the portraits were framed with precious stones, the accumulation of memories were the summation of the man’s life. He’d gone to meet the Spirit of Mercy, or else he was on his way down to the hells. Or maybe, as I suspected, he’d become nothing at all, just a swinging sack of dry meat and brittle old bones, too tired and old and sad to continue.

  I cut him down and laid him out by the window. Threw the curtains over him as a shroud. Maldon had worked his way through all but one of the Command Council and Venzer had finished the job for him. For several moments I stood in silence, looking through the window. The drudge were gathering themselves for another big attack. This time they had managed to construct some kind of assault towers. The lights on them blinked and winked. Our cannon hadn’t the powder left to stop them.

  I picked up Venzer’s hat and walked numbly into the outer office. One of the communicators was blasting a message at us from Three-Six. I listened to the taps and clicks, tried to follow what it was saying.

  Dhojaran forces advancing in huge numbers. Estimate two hundred thousand. Expect assault within two days. No Nameless aiding us. Request urgent activation of Nall’s Engine. Dhojaran forces advancing in huge numbers. Estimate two hundred thousand. Expect assault within two days. No Nameless aiding us.

  It went on, repeating. A terrified minor squawk sat weeping behind a desk. She would have been pretty if not for the fear and the crying.

  ‘Everyone’s abandoned us. What do we do, sir?’ She was trembling. ‘Who’s in charge?’

  I thought about it for a moment. Didn’t like the answer I found, but fate’s a bitch and worse.

  ‘You know how to operate a communicator?’ I asked her. She nodded. Spirits, but she wasn’t much older than twenty. Too young to die here with us bitter old men.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Then get on it. I need to send a message.’

  The woman moved to obey as though my instructions were some kind of balm against a wound. She got into the chair, moved the tapping arm into place and looked at me. What to say?

  I could say that we were finished. Venzer was dead, the generals were all dead, the colonels and the brigadiers were all dead. Valengrad had lost half its strength and couldn’t hold its walls. Nall’s Engine was a bitter lie, a false promise from a wizard who had either died or no longer cared. I could tell them to fuck off, that it wasn’t our problem any more, that they needed to sort their own world into order. I could tell them that the price of putting one’s faith in princes was now clear. I could tell them that I was sorry, or that I wasn’t sorry, or that maybe nothing mattered.

  I thought of Ezabeth, and how I wished that things had been different between us. I thought about the man I’d been when she’d loved me, all those years ago. I tried to imagine what that young man would have done. The young know
better than the experienced. They see things more clearly, understand right from wrong in a way that bitterness won’t let you. When that young brigadier led that rout from Adrogorsk he hadn’t done it for Dortmark, or for princes or even for the war. He’d done it for his friends. He’d done it for the women and men who stood shoulder to shoulder with him, and even if he’d failed, he’d done his best to get them out of there. He saw the small picture, the one that mattered the most. Somehow I’d forgotten him, managed to get my head up into the sky, in the cracks of unreality over the Misery.

  Nenn. Tnota. Ezabeth. Even Dantry was worth trying for.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You ready?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ She sat up straight.

  I set Venzer’s red-brimmed hat on my head. Cleared my throat.

  ‘This is Acting Range Marshal Ryhalt Galharrow. Hold the Range. Hold at all costs. Hold to the last man.’

  36

  I sent someone to find Ezabeth and Dantry, then gathered what remained of Valengrad’s commanders together in a room that wasn’t full of the dead. Not a lot to look at. Nobody of real rank. Lieutenants were suddenly promoted to brigadiers, sergeants to captain. They listened to me because I wore Venzer’s hat and his collar pin. I didn’t have much to say to them other than that we would hold until help arrived. I reassured them that the Grand Prince was on his way with fifty thousand soldiers. They were only petty squawks; they didn’t know any better.

  I promoted Nenn from private to general. It was absurd, but we lived in absurd times. She wasn’t good at counting and couldn’t read a lot more than her name, but she was good at kicking the other officers around.

  If we hadn’t been so deeply fucked, it would have been hilarious.

  I sent everyone but Nenn away with orders to hold the walls, fortify them as best they could. They didn’t need to hear the truth of the situation.

  ‘We don’t have enough men to hold the walls,’ Nenn said. ‘We got maybe a thousand boys, tops. No arrows, no guns. Red Flight scarpered an hour ago. The Black Drakes stopped to loot the merchant districts before they took off. The Black Swan Grenadiers and some of the better regulars make up the majority that stayed.’