by Tom Lloyd
The wyvern dropped closer, close enough for the Menin to reach its claws, but it was too late and they both felt it.
‘I curse you — with the pain of ten thousand days in the Dark Place, with the life’s blood of a mage’s sacrifice, with Death’s authority held in my hands.’
He felt it then, the cold fingers in his mind, and on Styrax’s face he saw the icy claws reached even deeper in.
‘I curse you, and I strike your name from history,’ Isak howled in agony and grief, ‘stripped of arrogance and pride, empty of the self you once knew, gutted of all you are. I take your name and all you have won by the strength of your hand. I curse you for eternity, to find only darkness where once you knew your own face.’
He could not speak any longer as the chill touch of the curse entered his mind, questing through the brutalised corners of his head for a name and ripping it away forever. Isak felt the words fade like a whisper on the wind, a curl of smoke whose shape hung on the breeze and was then gone — vanished.
The man on the platform screamed, his hands clasped to his head, his fingers digging so deeply in that blood welled up. Skull and sword discarded, he fell to his knees as the claws tore into his brain. The Skulls fused to his cuirass dropped from the armour, then the first of the black whorled plates slipped off his body and clattered to the ground. The man was oblivious; convulsing, he collapsed to the floor.
Isak heard shouts from all around as the curse spread, reaching out through friend and enemy alike to steal a name from all of them before rippling further out and across the Land. He felt the power of the Gods, fed by the Skulls in their midst, waxing strong, even as the effort drained them.
The man on the platform writhed and shrieked as the claws reached the last recesses of his soul, shredding memories and excising even the smallest remnants of the man he had once been. He tried to fight, beating at his head and ripping his clothes, but to no avail. The curse bit deep, as he scratched bloody shreds of cloth from his body. Somehow he fought his way upright, muscles straining against the weight of the Land, but all the while he was howling at what was being taken from him.
And then it was over. The gale subsided, the magic of the Gods dissipated, and the man fell, exhausted, mewling, to his knees. Isak took a hesitant step forward, barely able to stay upright himself.
‘And I dub you the Ragged Man,’ he whispered, blood trickling from his nose and mouth as he spoke.
He reached Death and the cowled figure turned to face him. The air smelled of age and fatigue, of a temple drained of its majesty and power.
‘It is done,’ Death intoned. He made a dismissive gesture at the Ragged Man, and a pair of Ralebrat grasped the whimpering figure by each arm and dragged him into the ground, moving through the earth as easily as a bird ducking below the surface of a lake.
‘They will take him far from here.’
‘There is a cottage by a lake,’ Isak said hoarsely. ‘There is a place for him there.’
Death inclined His head. The God’s presence was less awe-inspiring now - the curse had required so much power that the Upper Circle were winking out of existence, back to their distant palace. Only Karkarn, Nartis and Death remained.
‘You know what you have done,’ Nartis called.
Isak felt a great tremor of pain run through his body as he nodded, and in the next moment Mihn was there, slipping underneath him and taking some of Isak’s great weight on his shoulders.
‘We have weakened you,’ the witch of Llehden stated, advancing just past Isak as he wilted under the strain.
‘We have made a choice,’ Legana added, resting heavily on her staff. The Gods-touched woman faced Death without flinching, her emerald eyes shining through the unnatural gloom. ‘A choice that was ours to make.’
‘You have weakened us,’ Death said slowly, looking from one to the other. ‘For what is to come, the Gods will not be able to intervene.’
‘Good,’ said Legana firmly. ‘It is our fate as much as yours. The choice should be ours this time.’
‘It is our time,’ Isak agreed wearily. ‘This was the only way, and now — Now the Land will be remade.’
‘By whom?’
The scarred white-eye tried to smile, but it hurt too much. He started to turn away, but caught sight of one half of Cetarn’s charred corpse, and his gaze lingered there.
It was the witch who answered, speaking for them all. ‘By those of us willing to sacrifice everything.’
THE DUSK WATCHMAN
THE TWILIGHT REIGN: BOOK 5
Tom Lloyd
GOLLANCZ
LONDON
For Ella Louise Wright
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Screw everyone else, this one was all down to me.
CONTENTS
What has gone before
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
Acknowledgements (Part Two):
WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE
As the Farlan retreated from the battle of the Byoran Fens, Lord Isak chose to face his proscribed fate and stay to cover their retreat. He died at the hands of the Menin lord, who had been driven half-mad with grief after Isak killed his son, having goaded the Menin lord into sending him directly to Ghenna.
In the wake of Isak’s death, the Chief of the Gods, Death himself, incarnates on the battleground to gather those Aspects Isak had inadvertently torn from His control – the five minor Gods known as the Reapers – only to discover one, the Wither Queen, remains beyond His control. After her bargain with Isak, the Wither Queen has become too strong to be recalled. Fulfilling her bargain with Isak, she is far to the north, hunting Elves in the forests beyond Lomin, where she find the Elves are enslaving local spirits there to use as weapons. The Wither Queen subsumes these spirits and uses their power to bolster her strength as she looks to remain a Goddess in her own right, separate from her former master, Death.
In Byora, Doranei mourns his best friend, Sebe, in the company of Zhia Vukotic. Sebe died at the start of the battle as he tried to assassinate Aracnan on a Byoran street. He managed only to wound the Demi-God, but the poison he used is now slowly killing Aracnan.
In Llehden, Mihn, Xeliath and the witch of Llehden set Isak’s desperate last plan in motion: Mihn travels into the underworld to attempt to break Isak out of Ghenna. The Chief of the Gods permits him to pass through onto the slopes of Ghain, the great mountain at the heart of which is the Dark Place, the home of daemons. Mihn ascends to the ivory gates of Ghenna, crosses the fiery river Maram and enters the lowest domain of Ghenna, where Isak’s dreams have told him the soul of Aryn Bwr, captive in Isak’s mind, would end up. He is successful, but for them to escape back to the lands of the living, Xeliath, Isak’s love, is forced to fight the Jailer of the Dark, an ancient dragon bound there by the Gods, and is killed in the battle.
Meanwhile in the Circle C
ity, Zhia Vukotic and her brother Koezh take the sword Aenaris to a temporary hiding-place out in the spirit-haunted fens beyond Byora, since the Menin lord disturbed its long-standing rest in the Library of Seasons and woke the maddened dragon they had set there as the sword’s guardian. The Menin lord himself, lost in his grief over his dead son, is ignoring the ravages of the enraged dragon, which is laying waste to each quarter of the Circle City. The Duchess of Byora and her ward Ruhen – a young boy who is in fact the vessel Azaer has taken as his mortal form – come to petition him, and only then is the badly injured Major Amber able to succeed in waking his lord from his all-consuming grief. The Menin lord agrees to free his newest subjects from the dragon, and Ruhen uses the opportunity to forge a link between himself and the man grieving for his lost son.
Azaer’s disciple within the Harlequin clans realises it’s time to lead them south, to add legitimacy to Ruhen’s burgeoning power.
In Llehden, Mihn and the witch bury Xeliath and try to coax the traumatised Isak back to his senses. Isak has been left broken and horribly scarred by the tortures inflicted on him in Ghenna; in the days after his escape he is a catatonic wreck.
Elsewhere, in Narkang territory, the Mortal-Aspect Legana has escaped the Circle City in search of King Emin, and she finds him at last as he is gathering an élite strike-team to send to Byora and kill Ruhen. The king believes Ruhen to be a vehicle of Azaer’s control over the Duchess of Byora, rather than the mortal form of Azaer he actually is. She and the king come to an agreement: he will provide sanctuary for her and her former sisters, the Daughters of Fate, and in return they will help his over-stretched élite assassinate Harlequins across the Land before Ruhen can twist them all to his service.
In the Circle City, the Menin lord discusses the next step of his plan to ascend to Godhood with General Gaur. They start a programme of murdering priests of Karkarn, and send an Elven assassin to kill Count Vesna, now the Mortal-Aspect of Karkarn, in order to weaken the God of War and ultimately allow the Menin lord to replace him. Once that is in play, the Menin lord very publically kills the dragon plaguing the city as a way to demonstrate his strength to the powerbrokers there. Elsewhere in the Circle City, Luerce – the principal disciple of Ruhen’s rabble of followers – meets with Knight-Cardinal Certinse, the leader of the Devoted, to offer them a solution to their crippling problem of a fanatical priesthood taking control of their martial Order.
As the Farlan army retreats home and Count Vesna begins to appreciate the full implications of becoming Karkarn’s Mortal-Aspect, he discovers Isak had left orders to make Fernal, a Demi-God and companion of the witch of Llehden, next Lord of the Farlan. Isak’s order includes a deal with High Cardinal Certinse, the newly established head of the cults in Tirah, but before Fernal can profit from this collusion the fanatics within the cults have the High Cardinal murdered, forcing Fernal to do a deal with the nobility instead, to shore up his uncertain position and avoid the tribe descending into civil war.
When Count Vesna does get back to Tirah at last, it is to a city almost under siege, as the religious factions are all struggling to control it. His first meeting on his return with Carel, Isak’s surrogate father, is fraught, but Vesna begins to realise Isak might have had a plan in dying the way he did; that he might not have thrown his life away as they currently believe.
In Narkang, King Emin is visited by the God Larat, who warns him that the Menin will soon invade and he must not face them in battle, so powerful has the Menin lord now become.
Not far away, in the sanctuary of Llehden, Isak’s sanity is slowly returning, helped in part by the gift of a puppy, Hulf, and the witch removing those portions of his memory that are too horrific to remain. However, with the loss of those memories go some remembrances of his life before his imprisonment in Ghenna, including his knowledge of Carel, and the damage this has caused to Isak’s mind becomes increasingly clear. Meanwhile Mihn hears the legend of the Ragged Man from a local girl, who presumes Isak is that figure out of folklore.
King Emin’s strike-force reaches the Circle City and attacks the Ruby Tower of Byora. Though they fail to find Ruhen, Doranei does manage to kill the failing Demi-God Aracnan. He is then given a journal by his lover, Zhia Vukotic; the prize Azaer’s followers were hunting in Scree, for which they sacrificed the Skull of Ruling to possess. The journal belonged to Zhia’s mad brother, Vorizh Vukotic, who stole Termin Mystt, Death’s own sword, a weapon equalled in power only by Aenaris.
After the attack on the Ruby Tower, the Menin focus entirely on invading Narkang. Following Isak’s last decree, his troop of personal guards is sent to King Emin and a few travel on to Llehden, where they discover their lord reborn. King Emin makes his final preparations for invasion with Legana, while desperately searching for a way to defeat a man born to be invincible in battle. When the Menin do invade, they are savage in their assault. Frustrated by the Narkang armies’ refusal to meet them in battle, they decimate the eastern half of the nation, culminating in the wholesale destruction of Aroth, one of the nation’s biggest cities.
Azaer’s followers, Venn and the spirit of the minstrel Rojak caught in Venn’s shadow, make a deal with the Wither Queen for her support. In return, they break the bargain she made with Isak that constricts her. Luerce and a Witchfinder within the Devoted engineer the death of a high-ranking priest who had been containing the worst excesses of the fanatics within the Devoted. As the Devoted suffer increased oppression from their own priests, they start to remember their Order’s original doctrine: they were created as an army for a coming saviour. All the while, Walls of Intercession appear across Byora as the desperate and mad begin to see Ruhen as a saviour sent by the Gods in the place of a corrupt priesthood.
In Tirah, while Fernal agrees to break his mutual defence treaties with Narkang in return for the support of the Farlan nobility, Vesna and Tila’s wedding day finally comes – but before the ceremony can be completed, the assassin sent by the Menin lord strikes. Vesna survives, but the rest of the wedding party is killed before the assassin dies. In the aftermath he discovers there is a larger plot afoot as priests of Karkarn are also murdered. Now apart from the usual structure of Farlan society, not bound by the agreements made between Fernal and the nobility, he is free to continue the war Isak sacrificed himself for. Grieving deeply, he leaves to aid Narkang.
Isak is now partially recovered, and when he discovers he has the means to defeat the Menin lord, he tells King Emin. He halts the Narkang retreat and together Isak and Emin stand their ground at Moorview Castle. The battle sees terrible losses on both sides, almost shattering the allies, even as Vesna, accompanied by the Palace Guard of Tirah, arrives and forces the Menin lord into desperate actions. The Narkang mage Cetarn sacrifices himself to bait the trap, and Emin’s white-eye bodyguard, Coran, dies leading the charge to close it.
Isak summons the Gods of the Upper Circle and compels them to curse the Menin lord and strip his name from history, just as they once did to Aryn Bwr. He is not killed, but entirely crippled. Once divested of his Crystal Skulls, the Menin lord is transported to Llehden to take Isak’s place as the Ragged Man, leaving his army in disarray – some to fight to the death, others to flee.
CHAPTER 1
He felt it as a distant cry; an eagle’s shriek swooping down from the heavens. In his bones he heard it, rumbling up from the dark places underground to shake the very stones of the city. He stared up at the overcast sky, then all around at the courtyard. The veteran soldier found himself suddenly and unaccountably afraid. He reached behind his back and drew one scimitar, but the reassurance of it in his hand was eclipsed by a mounting sense of foreboding.
There was a clatter from the street outside and he struck blindly as he turned, but there was no one behind him. Voices broke through the soft patter of rain on stone, sounding confused and angry, but not like men ready to kill. Then the whispers started, running around the courtyard, and he turned a full circle, his scimitar ready, but saw nothing but empty
ground and bare high walls.
The voices in the street grew in number; he heard broken sentences that tailed off into nothing. He felt suddenly weak and though he still circled, his movements were more hesitant as his knees threatened to collapse. The whispers were so close now, in his shadow. Cold fingers probed at the recesses of his mind. Instinctively he shook his head, trying to clear the sensation, but it had no effect.
A moment later the claws came.
He gasped and dropped his sword, clutching his head in both hands as tiny teeth started to tear at his mind. Their chill touch dug deeper and he fell to one knee. For a moment he was paralysed by shock and pain. He didn’t notice his own nails tearing into his skin, nor feel the blood running down his fingers. The greater pain was inside his skull: an icy fire that spread through his mind leaving a scorched trail of memories.
Now he screamed. Oblivious to the impact of stone, he toppled over. He convulsed, writhing on the ground as the claws rooted in every forgotten corner, rending with swift, dispassionate precision. Words from his past were ripped away. A memory of his proud parents flashed past his eyes, then their voices were empty sounds. He felt a name torn out and scattered to the winds. Eventually the pain receded, to be replaced then by a numbing cold; one that made him gasp for breath and shake uncontrollably. He lay on the ground, knees drawn up to his chest and arms wrapped around his head. Stars burst across his vision before the cold took him. Darkness wrapped itself around him and he sank willingly into its embrace.