Blackwing: The Raven's Mark Book One

by Ed McDonald

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘There was something here that I wanted.’

  I took the flask back, rested it on the stone basin.

  ‘No,’ she said. This woman who commanded the very light from the sky turned away from my gaze. ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘What is there to understand?’

  ‘You don’t understand either.’

  ‘Why don’t I explain it?’ I said. ‘Here we are now. At the end. It didn’t work out the way we wanted, and we lost. Fucking sad, but true. So I tell you this: I am in love with you. Maybe I’ve always been in love with you. Loved you the first time, when we were just children, and never fell out of it. I figure I ought to let you know that, before we all end up gracked and done.’

  ‘What is there to love?’ she said, a sob in her voice. ‘You don’t see me. You don’t know the horror that lies beneath the veil. There is nothing of a woman about me. No beauty.’

  I walked to her. My hands found her shoulders, turned her towards me. She was so small, and she trembled at my touch. The drudge didn’t frighten her, sorcery didn’t frighten her, but this did? We humans are so strange, so fragile. I searched for my voice.

  ‘I saw you stand,’ I said. ‘Saw your courage, back at Twelve. Saw the steel in your will, the power you command. You say there’s nothing of woman about you? You aren’t some painted vase, delicate and useless. You’re a fucking lioness. The strongest damn thing that ever lived. There’s nothing of you but woman.’

  My arms had encircled her, drawing her into me. She wasn’t the only one that was trembling now.

  ‘I’m scarred,’ she said, but the protest was weak. A leg was pressing against mine. Her eyes were wide open, meeting mine, and within them, the same longing that I felt.

  ‘I want you,’ I said. ‘All of you. There may not be long left, but in the time we have, I want you to be mine. I’m already yours.’

  Her voice was barely beyond a whisper.

  ‘I’ve always been yours.’

  I reached down to draw away the mask of cloth over her chin. Her hand shot up instinctively, protectively, the fear returning. Tears bloomed there. I took her hand away, drew the veil down. The light had not been kind when it first welled within her. She would have drawn the gaze of every poor disciplined child, the flesh misshapen and too smooth, warped. Scarred and deformed, certainly. For a moment I thought she would withdraw. She shivered and clutched at my clothing, willing herself not to run. We all have our demons. She’d carried these ones within her for a long time.

  ‘I want it to be dark,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to see you. I don’t care.’

  I silenced a further protest by pressing my mouth against hers. As we connected her reticence vanished and she surged against me. The scarring of her skin and lips felt strange against my face but I’d told the truth. I didn’t care. Bodies are just bodies. Mine was ugly and lumped and scraped and reset from a violent life. I was just lucky that I’d never feared it as Ezabeth did her own.

  Most of the left side of her body bore the same scarring, the right was just as any other woman’s. I drew away her hood, finding her hair long and brown on one side, missing altogether on the other. Her left hand was mangled and misshapen. I didn’t care. Her scars were the story of her power, and they were glorious. Our clothes made for poor bedding but as they came away, leaving us stark, cold and pale before one another, I didn’t care about that either. We lay down together, and our bodies moved hot and low. I tried to restrain myself, gentle and careful, but when we collapsed sweating and spent, the sounds of our passion still echoed around the dome. We looked at one another, laughed at our own recast sounds. It felt good to laugh at something for once. Wasn’t a sound I’d heard in some time.

  ‘I love you,’ I said.

  ‘I love you too,’ she replied.

  I could have stayed there for hours, with her face pressed against my chest, my hand stroking the length of her back, up and down, but time wasn’t going to wait on us. Neither were the drudge. We dressed slowly, sheepishly, as though in the putting on of our clothes we were regaining our old reticence, renewing old fears. When it came to her veil, Ezabeth trailed it through her fingers before letting it fall back to the floor. I smiled and nodded. No more masks.

  We sat in silence, hardly able to believe that at this moment we’d found something so long denied to us both. Dying now didn’t seem fair.

  37

  My arm burned as if a small sun grew beneath the skin.

  ‘About time he showed up,’ I said. The bloody raven wrenched its way out of me and flapped its wings, drops of blood spattering the wires running through the flagstones. It looked from me then to Ezabeth, then flapped awkwardly up onto the stone basin.

  ‘Shavada comes,’ it barked.

  ‘He’s coming now?’

  ‘Now,’ the raven croaked. It was bigger than usual, fuller in the body. More of Crowfoot’s power in it, maybe. My blood pattered down onto the basin.

  ‘I need to go. I should lead the defence,’ I said. I got up and Ezabeth clutched my fingers in her own.

  ‘No point,’ Crowfoot cawed at us. ‘Shavada comes.’

  We must have been a hundred feet below the ground, but we heard it all the same. The earth shook, dust rained down from the distant ceiling. A distant roll of thunder.

  ‘What was that?’ I asked.

  ‘Shavada just tore down a half-mile of wall,’ Crowfoot croaked. ‘He comes here, to ensure the destruction of the Engine.’ The raven cocked its head to one side. ‘Philon and Acradius are mobilising to attack Three-Six.’

  ‘Why are you here now?’ I asked bitterly. ‘You come when it’s too late. You abandoned us. We needed your help, all this time. You could have made the difference.’

  ‘Hah! So confident that you know everything, Galharrow. The arrogance of it all! The gall! That’s why I like you. Why I chose you for this. Tenacity! That’s what mattered. Nall said to use Silpur. He’s twice as smart, but hasn’t your tenacity to get the job done, though.’

  ‘I haven’t achieved anything,’ I said, but I’d lost the raven’s attention. He cocked his head to one side, listening. Ezabeth was tending to my arm. She cut strips of cloth from her dress, wound them around the gash. It hadn’t stopped bleeding and it hurt as much as you’d think having a bird force itself out of your arm would. Crowfoot seemed to have lost interest in us. I wondered what he was doing here now, at the end. I thought of reaching out and breaking the bird’s neck, just to annoy him.

  ‘Should we run?’ Ezabeth asked. I took her bloody hands in my own. Smiled as gently as I could. She read it in my face. There was to be no running, not this time. There was nowhere to go and no place far enough away to be worth trying to hide. The drudge would spread their plague across Dortmark and then to the countries beyond the sea.

  ‘Why didn’t you fight them, lord?’ I asked. Crowfoot was silent a few moments, then turned to me.

  ‘What happens when two wizards fight, Galharrow?’ the bird asked.

  ‘Someone dies,’ I said.

  ‘Wrong!’ Crowfoot cawed. ‘Wrong! Wrong! Think of that arrogant fool, Cold. Arrogant, like you, Galharrow. It took four of the Deep Kings to bring him down. Defending is easy. Attacking is hard. It would take four Nameless to unmake a single King. Do you think that they simply prostrate themselves and ask to enter the void? Why do you think we design such elaborate weapons to use against them?’

  I had nothing to say to that. We’d been lost from the start. The raven nosed around in the basin, mashing the rest of its desiccated contents into dust.

  ‘And you can’t make it work again?’ I asked.

  ‘The Engine was Nall’s work, not mine,’ Crowfoot said. He sounded put out. ‘You want to know what’s truly astonishing about all this? That anyone – anyone at all – believed that Spinners and Ta
lents could generate enough power to drive the weapon. Those battery coils above us hold so much phos they could light every tube in Valengrad for a thousand years. But to activate something as powerful as the Engine? Men and women picking light from the air, sending it here? Sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud, doesn’t it?’

  ‘What is it then?’ Ezabeth asked. ‘What powers it?’

  ‘Think!’ Crowfoot barked. The bird stepped from one foot back to the other. ‘For a weapon like this to operate, it’s not sufficient to have a bunch of coils stored away. You need something far greater. Come on, Spinner. What else generates that much power?’

  ‘There’s nothing,’ I said. But I was wrong. I could tell by Crowfoot’s demeanour, by the glee he was taking in his explanation, that he wanted us to reach the conclusion.

  ‘The death of one of you,’ Ezabeth said. ‘Destroy a Nameless. Cold’s crater. When they killed Cold it blew a hole in the earth a mile across.’ Her eyes grew wide. ‘And that’s why you’re here? You’re going to sacrifice your own life to power the Engine?’

  Crowfoot’s avatar burst out laughing. Laughed so hard out that the raven fell over onto his back, black and red wings flapping to either side, kicking his legs into the air. An ugly, cruel sound. He was mid-laugh when another roar echoed from above us. Dust showered down around us, covering the bird with a layer of grit. That cut his laughter short.

  ‘That will be the citadel’s outer wall,’ he said. ‘Try not to get in the way if you hope to survive.’

  The ground shook again. A vast, terrible odour filled the room. It billowed in thick as steam, far fouler than it had been when Herono’s eye broke free, more nauseating than in my dream. It was the stench that denoted the absolute absence of life, of joy, of compassion. The poisoned air of selfishness, of lethargy, of greed turned from the abstract to the sensory. An unutterable evil, corruption leaked into the world.

  My nose began to bleed. A pressure grew in my head. Ezabeth started to shake. The presence of a Deep King is a powerful thing. Men are not made to face gods.

  Shavada entered.

  He was not a man, perhaps not a living thing but a darkness. Hard to focus on, hard to interpret through human senses. There was a shape of dense shadow, vaguely like a man but towering ten feet tall, broad as an ox. Two fist-sized eyes that were a darker black than deepest night swept the room. A suit of armour, old steel engraved with a life’s work of intricate coils and shapes, somehow clanked around the emptiness of the shadow, though no mortal weapon could have harmed the Deep King. A demon, a god, maybe just another wizard. Whatever the hell he was, wherever he had come from, his presence struck me hard as a charging stallion.

  I fell to my knees, Ezabeth went down with me in unintended supplication. The Deep King opened a dark maw to speak, and when his voice came forth it bore all the dark horror of the grave. He spoke with the sound of the deep things that live far below the ocean, hating the world above for the light.

  ‘To think that for so long this is what we have been afraid of.’ He stepped into the room, armour clanking about his shadowed nothingness. I’d heard stories, dismissed them as just that. They had done no justice to this monstrosity.

  The shadow-creature looked past us, cowering on the ground in terror. The thing that was Shavada didn’t even seem to register our presence, life forms so insignificant we were beneath his notice. What did we matter to him? We were little more than lice. He’d just swept away our walls, probably killed hundreds with a flick of his arm. I thought about making a final try. Maybe I could get my sword into that darkness, hit some mystic vital spot. It wasn’t like that would kill him, I doubted a thousand swords would stop him. Maybe it was worth it just for the attempt at defiance. I had always wanted to die fighting.

  The sympathisers believe that the Deep Kings are gods. Looking at the monstrosity I could believe it well enough. How had we ever thought to stand against this thing? My stomach revolved with nausea at the foulness that clogged the air. Hard to breathe.

  Shavada’s dark eyes noted the raven flapping over to land on the barrel of salt water across the chamber. He eyed the walls, the floor.

  ‘How can this be it?’ Black eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘There’s nothing here.’

  Shavada looked at the pedestal and covered the ground in a few brief strides, flowing as much as walking. Reaching down, he delicately plucked the fragment of matter from the centre of the basin, held it up. A maggot-white tongue, long as a serpent, reached from his mouth and licked it. The eyes went suddenly wide.

  ‘Songlope,’ he said. He sounded amused. ‘So this is what they did to you.’

  A slow clap sounded from the doorway. A ghost stood there, bloodless but standing corporeal still. Otto Lindrick. His knife wounds were gone, and he looked somehow younger, though he was still chubby and short. Quite unafraid of the creature that dominated the room. Strolled in like this was his office.

  ‘You,’ Shavada growled. ‘Where have you been hiding all these years?’

  ‘Oh, here and there. Mostly here.’ Lindrick smiled. I’d never liked his smile.

  ‘Hiding?’ Shavada gloated. ‘Cowering, I suppose. You knew this day would come. Knew that one day your machine would fail you. Have you come now to watch my final victory over your people?’

  Realisation clicked slowly into place. I’d been deceived. We’d all been deceived. Lindrick who was not Lindrick gave the shadow demon a patronising smile.

  ‘Not exactly. You see, my beautiful Engine hasn’t failed. It simply ran out of power. Songlope’s heart wouldn’t keep going for ever. But thankfully, that trial is now over. I should thank you.’

  ‘You only ever spoke in riddles,’ Shavada said, a dank growl from the darkness. ‘Face it, old man. Your time is done. You don’t have the strength to destroy me. Not alone.’

  ‘No,’ Nall agreed quite easily. ‘Not alone. We had quite a difficulty, you see. It was Crowfoot’s idea, in the beginning. We needed a heart, but they are rather difficult to come by. None of us liked Songlope very much, and while he was rather reluctant to give it up, I’m afraid that the rest of us removed it from him. Desperate times, you know. It all worked terribly well for a while, but nothing lasts for ever. You can see that for yourself, I think. You’re holding it, after all.’

  My nose had stopped bleeding. I spat grease and bile and forced myself into a sitting position. I pressed my hands against the sides of my throbbing head.

  ‘Then you have nothing,’ Shavada said.

  ‘No, what we had was a problem. We needed another heart. I couldn’t possibly have caught any of the Nameless unawares like we did Songlope, but I had a better idea. Invite one of you in. Bring you into Valengrad. Into this very room. To the heart of my Engine.’

  ‘It would take all four of you to break me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nall agreed. ‘So it would.’

  I’d never thought it possible for a god to show fear. Shavada’s shadow hands clenched into many-fingered fists, he growled through his teeth. He scanned around, only now noticing the oddments placed around the room. Salt water, bird bones, grave dust. His eyes grew wide, flared with an amber light, sudden terror driving him to fury.

  The stench erupted anew as Shavada threw his power against Nall in a wave. There was nothing to see, but it could be felt. Like a dam bursting open, Shavada tried to smash reality into his own image. Nall countered, the little man suddenly caught in a gale of force.

  They appeared around the room as if they had been waiting for this moment. The Lady of the Waves came first, flowing from the salt water, coiling into something that was half woman, half ocean-dwelling thing, spiny and webbed. From the coffin dust rose Shallowgrave, and him I couldn’t even see clearly, as if he were nothing more than a trick of the mind, a swirl of disturbance in a tall, vaguely man-like shape, and with him came the screaming of the afterworld. Lastly came Crowfoot, a bent old
man with a hunched back and a distended bird’s claw in place of his right foot.

  Had to hand it to them. It was a trap twenty years in the making. I saw it all now, saw what their machinations had been from the start. Nall must have known his apprentice was a conspirator. Probably knew what had lived in Herono too. The slow drip feed of information, pushing the Tanzas, all to make it clear that the Engine had failed. Pushing fragments of information to Ezabeth, ensuring that every high-ranker in Valengrad was talking about her and her belief that Nall’s Engine had broken. Drip, drip, drip the Nameless had fed their lies through Ezabeth, through me, through anyone they could use.

  All our efforts. We’d been nothing more than glorified bait.

  We hadn’t even understood our role. Shavada would never have risked such direct action if he’d believed that we had any ability to activate the Engine. He’d pushed us to the brink and seen us fail. If the cost in lives hadn’t been so absurdly high I’d have given a standing ovation. If I’d been able to stand.

  A battle between beings of such vast power has no flashes, no bangs. No balls of fire, no rays of light. They were terrible, ancient beings, slow and methodical as they worked. They bound Shavada with their magic, tying his spirit in the aether, his darkness in the flesh. Soon they would slowly start to break through the layer upon layer of his protective wards, picking them apart as scavengers take stones from a ruin. The four Nameless were no less freakish and terrifying than Shavada, and they paid us no more attention than he did. I’d always known we were insignificant to them, but I felt it then more than ever.

  Powers hummed in the air all around us. Shavada was frantic, lashing out at each in turn as if probing for weakness. His shadow form hissed and jerked, as if his insides strained to escape their confinement.

  He roared and gnashed at them. Shavada was alone, but he was still staggeringly powerful. I saw the Lady of the Waves’ image tremble, the water that formed her body rippling. Shallowgrave’s fuzziness weakened and for a moment I thought I saw a famine-starved, brown old man looking out from within his living vortex. Crowfoot let out a long, slow breath and they stabilised. Shavada sagged back; he was not done. He would try again.