Crowfall

by Ed McDonald

  ‘What do you mean?’ But Saravor had lost his focus. He looked at his remaining hand, blackened and charred, fingers twisting in grotesque, warped spirals.

  ‘This body,’ he said. ‘Which parts of it were me, back at the beginning? Any of it? I don’t remember anymore. If you replace yourself piece by piece, when do you cease being you and become something that you’ve created? If you create yourself, does that make you your own god?’

  I saw him slipping away, turning inwards as death drew near. Bitterness welled within me. I wanted to have been the one that destroyed him, for what he had done to me. To Nenn. To so many innocents in Valengrad. To have his throat torn out by a monster seemed too small a punishment for such monumental crimes.

  ‘You had the Taran Codex,’ I said. ‘If you really want to stop Crowfoot, tell me what else I can do to break Acradius’ union with The Sleeper.’

  Saravor blinked and focused on me, an effort. Blood was beginning to dribble from his lips.

  ‘Why should I care, now? My game is done. It’s left to you to scramble to survive.’ He smiled at me. It was a twisted thing, ivory-yellow teeth behind warped and blackened lips. ‘You played the game well, Galharrow. I thought the Taran Codex held every answer, but I was wrong. Tell me one thing, before I go.’ He choked, spat a jet of blood into the light where it fizzed and evaporated into oily steam. ‘I had your woman, the major. She belonged to me. I should have won. How did you take her from me?’

  I stood up.

  ‘That was your mistake,’ I said. ‘She wasn’t mine. She wasn’t yours either. She never belonged to anybody. If you’d understood that, maybe you could have chosen a different path. Power isn’t about forcing people into your control. It comes when people choose to follow.’

  Saravor clutched at his chest. Then his hand struck out towards me. A blast of power leapt from his hand, but the lightning helix swirled to intercept it and it ricocheted back into him, punching through his chest.

  ‘Had to try … to even the … score … before I go,’ he coughed, the smile not leaving his ruined face. ‘I’m going … I’m going …’

  Saravor’s one eye rolled upwards in his head. The body sagged forwards into the helix and the light flared. Flames leapt up, flesh melted and dripped and the stench of burning, rotten meat filled the cell. Slowly the body’s own weight carried it forwards into the growing flames. I stood and watched until all of him was gone, the last of him burned into nothing.

  There is a moment when you see your enemy defeated and feel a surge of loss against the triumph. For ten years I’d wanted to see Saravor’s corpse. He’d put me through the hells, and others besides. He’d been a monster, malicious, filled with spite and hatred. His passing was cause enough for a good bottle of Whitelande brandy. One more obstacle removed. But we build ourselves through the minds of those that surround us and judge ourselves as much by our enemies as by our friends. Somehow, as his body burned away, I felt diminished.

  I thought of all the hatred that I felt for Saravor, the ways in which I’d pictured this moment. Putting a sword through his neck, a dagger in his eye, hanging him from the Heckle Gate, or far, far worse when I let anger take hold of me. I had no forgiveness in me for him, and he had been unrepentant. But perhaps at the last, his motives had been pure. It was a frightening thought to consider that we might be on the wrong side of the war.

  23

  I felt strangely subdued as I went through the legwork in the aftermath of the attack. Saravor had given me nothing. The bodies of the men he’d brought were as I’d expected: rotten through and through on the inside. The Marble Guardians were hovering closer to them than I liked the look of, so I had them taken to an industrial furnace for disposal. Their hunger did not inspire me with confidence.

  I walked back with Valiya. She was still scratching at her arms.

  ‘One enemy down,’ she said.

  ‘It’s something,’ I said. ‘But Saravor isn’t the real enemy. They’re coming across the Misery with an army, wizards, and a weapon that can break our last defence.’

  ‘It’s not like you to be the defeatist,’ Valiya asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Never that. I’m just looking at the odds and measuring how long they are.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said. She watched the road as we walked, eyes downcast. ‘The army is nearly ready to move out. Davandein wants to make a start as soon as possible. North has fresh orders from the Lady of Waves and the Nameless want everything in place as soon as possible.’

  ‘We’ll be ready,’ I said. ‘After the next rains, we can go. You still haven’t thought better of it?’

  ‘There’s nowhere else for me to go,’ she said. ‘Everything I care about will happen there.’

  We’d won a victory, of sorts. Some soldiers had been killed, but soldiers will always get killed sooner or later, and removing Saravor from the game was big. He’d nearly fucked everything up in the frozen land. Knowing that I didn’t have to look over my shoulder for his fixed men was a weight from my shoulders, but they were only the start of the burden that I carried. Valiya was morose, dispirited. She’d been distant ever since we were reunited. I’d remembered her small, mocking smile all through my Misery exile. I missed it now.

  ‘We should celebrate,’ I said. ‘Come on. I know a place. They have actual crab meat, all the way from the coast.’

  ‘We’re hardly dressed for dinner,’ she said.

  ‘What does that matter?’

  ‘They’ll take one look at us and tell us to get back to the Misery,’ she said. ‘You’re made of metal and I’ve mirrors for eyes. What respectable place is going to accept us?’

  ‘I never said it was respectable,’ I said. ‘Come on. No arguments.’

  I didn’t get the smile that I was looking for, but she went along with it nonetheless.

  Valengrad was a long, long way from the sea. Despite that, the Salt Shaker did indeed serve a variety of animals that had been brought all the way from the coast. It was potluck what was still alive in their tanks, and better luck yet if you could pull them out without getting your fingers nipped. There were no private tables; guests sat at long rows of benches, shoulder to shoulder, while the waiting staff brought jugs of beer. It was not a place of gentility and culture, even if it was offering exotic cuisine. There was a rough-and-ready approach that I’d always appreciated.

  ‘This is an … interesting place,’ Valiya said, sitting opposite me across the table. The wood had been carved with the names of people who’d eaten there and underneath it they’d listed how many dishes they’d managed to get through. Nenn’s name was there somewhere, down the table.

  ‘It’s not the best place in the city,’ I said. I felt suddenly ashamed for bringing her here. I’d thought that, being a busy, beer-fuelled kind of place, we’d blend in better than at some kind of fine-dining eatery where a couple of lines of pureed lamb kidneys drizzled across half a lonely onion was somehow considered impressive. Everyone else here was too busy drinking the taste of the crab out of their mouth to give us much of a second look, but when you take a woman someplace, you’re telling her what you think of her. Maybe I’d misjudged it.

  ‘No, I like it,’ Valiya said. ‘It reminds me of home. By the sea. What should we eat to celebrate the demise of an enemy?’

  ‘I tend to go with whatever they’re prepared to get out of the tank for me,’ I said. ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten here. Or anywhere.’

  The serving girl came to take our order.

  ‘You don’t have any wine, do you?’ Valiya asked. The waitress shook her head. ‘Beer it is then.’

  ‘Just water for me,’ I said.

  I’d never known Valiya to drink, and she wasn’t good at it. She’d make a single pint of beer last the entire night, but that wasn’t a bad thing. I no longer felt that urgent need to guzzle it down as I once had. If my time i
n the Misery had done one thing good for me, it had allowed me to end that old addiction. I couldn’t say that I felt any better for it. Some dead sealife arrived, probably not crab but it looked like it had once lived in a shell. It wasn’t particularly good, but there was bread and butter to go with it and I wasn’t fussy. I couldn’t tell if Valiya was enjoying herself or just playing along to keep me happy.

  For a time, we spoke of small things. How far we thought Tnota and Giralt might have got inland, how well Amaira had taken to her new life, and how Dantry had spent breakfast getting his words muddled up around her. I should probably have a word with him.

  ‘Amaira told me what you saw, in the ice caves,’ she said. The lightness of my mood deepened, and an edge of discomfort settled in between us.

  ‘We all saw a lot of things down there we’d probably rather not,’ I said.

  ‘I’m talking about Ezabeth,’ Valiya said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’ve not been honest with you,’ Valiya said. She looked away. ‘I saw her. In the ice cavern. I could see her, beneath the crack.’

  I stopped with a forkful of probably-not crab meat to my mouth. Put it back down on the plate.

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. But she did know. We both knew that she knew. She took a big swig from her mug. ‘I panicked. I didn’t know what to say. There you were, back after all that time, and there she was as well. I only saw her once, when she saved us. But …’

  I felt cold all over.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘It wasn’t my place,’ she said, anger or frustration hardening her words. ‘She was there for you. She’s always there for you. I’m not part of whatever you shared. I never will be. Even in all that, I was an intruder. She’ll always hold your heart.’

  It had been ten years. Ten years, and it was still raw.

  ‘She always will,’ I said. I could only be honest. ‘You understand, I guess. You’ve known what it’s like to lose someone.’

  ‘I do,’ Valiya agreed. ‘But at least that was clean. Davan died, and he was gone. I wasn’t faced with him lingering on.’ She gave me a look that said that she understood. She hesitated a moment and then reached out and put her hand, small and bony, over the back of my scarred knuckles.

  ‘When you lose someone, it’s always hard,’ I said. ‘I’m not asking for special allowances. Ten years is a long time. Let’s say that she’d lived, that we’d won properly. That I hadn’t let her down. I’ve imagined it, often enough. Maybe we’d have been happy together. But when I saw her under that crack in the world … it wasn’t her. Not really. Not anymore.’

  ‘She came for you,’ Valiya said gently. ‘Through death. Through the light. Through another world.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘And I’ll be there when she needs me.’

  Valiya smiled sadly at me.

  A growling rose outside, like the groan of a huge, ancient door that hadn’t moved for centuries. We locked eyes in sudden alarm, put down our cups, and headed outside into the chill. The sound filled the night, issuing from the sky. And then it heaved and the cracks, immobile and locked into place since the day they’d torn across the sky, flexed.

  ‘What in the hells is happening?’ Valiya breathed.

  The light beyond the cracks boiled and steamed, and I thought that maybe this was it. Maybe this was the end of the world. If those fractures tore open then there was no saying what would happen. I stood powerless, waiting for annihilation. I wanted to take Valiya’s hand, but she had walked a few steps farther, her arms held up before her.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said.

  Dark clouds boiled from the cracks, flooding the sky. They rolled out in every direction at speed, shadowing the land. Valiya began to walk towards the wall and I called to her to come back, but she wasn’t listening.

  The wind struck just before the clouds rolled over the city, a driving gale. The people who had emerged to stare screamed and fell head over heels across the street. The gust rocked me but I stayed upright as Valiya grabbed hold of a hobbling post. The sky snarled above us, the wind roared, and then the rain hit. It came down like a wall, a sudden, blazing torrent that gleamed like beads of obsidian in the phos light. It barely registered before I was soaked through, and then my skin began to burn.

  Screams rose even above the rush of the rain and the dirge of the wind. Through the lenses of my goggles I saw Valiya collapse. I ran to her and scooped her up. She twitched and convulsed, eyes rolling around in her skull and foam spitting from her lips as a fit took her. My Misery-hardened skin fought back against the pain. The water soaked through my clothes in moments, but I ran back to the Salt Shaker and forced my way back in through the luckier patrons who were trying to drag a fallen man back in through the door. There were others out there, lying in the road, far more than I could help. Far more than I could do anything for. They crawled, howling as if beset by clouds of hornets, blind and groping for shelter.

  The rain had not been due for another eight days. Lights danced before my eyes, twisted images flashed through my mind.

  I got Valiya over to the bar and punched a hole straight through the side of a beer keg. I doused her in it, showering the dark liquid over her exposed face and hands, then upended it over myself. The keg ran out and I went for the next. The barman glanced from his stock and then to me in a fleeting moment of horror, but he was a better man than that and began to do the same for the others who had been dragged inside. Shrieking came from beyond the windows, as the rain began to flood the unfortunates’ minds with twisted, rippling images.

  I was not immune, and they were upon me.

  I staggered and fell against the bar, shattering glasses and sending dirty plates and fish bones across the floor. I saw a face before me, familiar, sad and weary, but Nall’s eyes were hard and focused. They stared into me as I tried to shake him from my mind. I was dimly aware that the floor had risen to meet me. Nall’s face disappeared. I saw the place of power, not broken this time but serene, the sky unbroken above it. Three figures sat hunched and frozen in the ice, and a fourth stood alongside them. Ezabeth, caught in light, wisps of flame playing along her arms and brow. She was shouting at them, angry. Ice cracked and fell away as Crowfoot’s twisted head turned to look at her.

  Shooting stars obliterated everything. I was hurtling, faster and faster through the rain’s mad visions. I felt the black, lightless silence at the bottom of the deepest ocean and below me, buried under a mile of silt and stone, a vast and terrible presence stirring. I saw the streams of magic, wavering like weeds as they flowed away. The thing down there was too big. Too terrifying, and yet familiar.

  My mother leaned over me, snapping and scolding. My trouser leg was torn, white-linen knees stained with grass where my brother and I had scrapped and rolled around. There were visitors coming, what had I been thinking?

  Liquid in my face, the familiar taste of poorly aged brandy. The sparkling lights crackled and shimmered at the edges of my vision as the bar came back into view. The rain continued to hiss outside and my skin burned, raw and bitten. Nall’s image remained imprinted on my vision, staring at me. It began to fade, and as it did it gave me a final, slow, nod. Then it was gone.

  I crawled over to Valiya. Her body shook.

  ‘Do you have a bath?’ I asked the barman as he carried bottles to and from the casualties that had been rescued. Some people had run outside and hauled in more, and they too needed treating.

  ‘No,’ he said and hurried on.

  Wherever my wet clothes touched me was like being under a tattooist’s needle. We needed to get out of them and dry. I dragged Valiya over to the stove where chowder was bubbling over, heaved the heavy pan aside and went and got hold of a stout woman who hadn’t been as dumb as us and had stayed inside.

  ‘My friend over there needs to get dry. Cut her out of her clo
thes and put her in this.’ I passed her my trench coat, which I’d left on a peg when I came in. The woman had the look of a mother who’d had to do much worse for many children, and she went to it quickly.

  Valiya’s modesty mattered, but mine didn’t. I stripped down to my smalls and stood awkwardly, looking odd in Misery-golden skin and plaster-white powder. I drew more than one worried look, but there was worse than my appearance to be concerned about.

  The sky had torn and sent out the maddening rain. Early. How many people had been caught outside in the sudden downpour? The aftereffects of the vision lingered in my mind. Nall’s eyes, sorrowful. Knowing. I’d seen him die twice before. But this was different. Final. When Cold had died, he’d exploded, and his passing had driven a hole into the earth so deeply that not even the Misery could wipe it away.

  Nall was gone, and the sky had felt it even more deeply.

  We had lost one of the Nameless.

  It was unthinkable. All my life, there had been four. Crowfoot, working away behind the scenes, twisting and manipulating. The Lady of Waves, guarding the oceans and punishing any of the Deep Kings’ minions that tried to raise a sail. Shallowgrave, dark and hidden and emerging only in the deep of night. And Nall, who had given us his Engine to keep us safe, who had walked amongst us in a thousand ordinary, unassuming guises. The Deep Kings had always outnumbered our protectors. Now they were even fewer, and we were lost.

  When Cold had died, his captains had died with him. Horror assailed me twice over – but Valiya was still alive. I hadn’t known what would happen if this came to pass. Had chosen not to consider it. But she hadn’t exploded. She still breathed. That was something.

  After twenty tense minutes, the rain abated. It could have gone on forever. There were no rules now. Water the colour of night ran through the gutters and nobody dared to venture outside. I looked out of the window. A body lay twitching in the middle of the street. We had not been able to save everybody.