Crowfall

by Ed McDonald

‘I know. Now get out of my way,’ I said.

  ‘The moons draw into alignment,’ Crowfoot squealed. ‘Brother, I am needed above. Do not delay me.’

  ‘The moons draw into alignment,’ First hissed. He raised a fist to his lips and a long red tongue snaked out to lick North’s blood from his lips. ‘Come.’

  I hesitated. Intuition held me back a moment. North had bided his time. He’d waited, patiently, for his moment. As First turned away, I saw that his back was clean, unmarked by the myriad blows that had cut into his chest and abdomen. If North had decided to take First down, he’d have been better off pushing him from the platform or putting a pistol shot through the back of his skull. But the gunshots were all down First’s torso.

  He had not been the one to attack.

  Maldon appeared from behind a stack of melted rocks on the far side of the garden. He looked meaningfully at First and shook his head at me.

  ‘First,’ I said slowly. ‘You aren’t one of the Marble Guard anymore, are you?’

  The Guardian’s crimson eyes turned back to me. Slowly, as though it were the first time the face had ever worn such an expression, as though such a face had never been intended to make it, the lips peeled back into a grin.

  I knew that look.

  ‘Oh, Galharrow. Always thinking you’re one step ahead, when you’re one step behind.’

  I knew that voice, too.

  ‘I don’t know how you’re here,’ I said, my teeth locking together, the words spat through them. ‘I don’t know how you fucking survived. I’m just glad I get to kill you again, Saravor.’

  The Guardian laughed.

  ‘Kill me? I don’t think so. You couldn’t kill me when I was a man. Look at me now, Galharrow. Look how I have remade myself.’

  ‘Your blood,’ I said. I remembered the broken, charred body, missing a great chunk of flesh where one of the Guardians had taken a piece of him. First had swallowed part of Saravor and the sorcerer had used it to make the creature his own.

  ‘Isn’t it delicious?’ Saravor said. ‘What did you think? That I’d gone on some noble mission to save the world, throwing myself against the Nameless’ creatures? I can barely believe that convinced anyone, least of all you.’

  ‘For all the good it’ll do you,’ I said. I looked upwards towards the moons. The sky was awash with lights, glowing and rippling in waves as they spread outwards like the northern sky-flames. ‘I’ve beaten you too many times to worry about it now.’

  ‘There is no time for this,’ Crowfoot’s avatar squealed. I shoved him into a pouch on my belt.

  ‘This body is incredible,’ Saravor mused. ‘It holds the essence of mountains. Strong enough to hold the power of the fiend’s heart, which I shall make my own. Strong enough to ascend.’ He flexed long, pale fingers, slick with North’s blood. ‘Strong enough to crush you again.’

  Saravor stormed towards me, huge feet thumping against the flagstones. I held my sword up against the shoulder, only having seconds to plan my move. A sword wasn’t worth much against that thing, but it was all I had to hand and maybe that brandy I’d chugged was giving me a recklessness I didn’t deserve.

  Saravor lunged for me, trying to get those huge fists on me, but I danced back and slashed out. The blade struck his stony arm and glanced away, opening a shallow little wound that neither bled nor slowed him. He swiped again, far faster than a thing that big had any right to be, and again I kept my distance and swayed back, cutting in to slice him across the shoulder. Anyone else would have gone reeling back, but the blow made little impact on marble flesh. He swung a fist then, not trying to grab me but a backswing that crashed into my breastplate and lifted me from my feet. I flew through the air, clanging and clattering as I rolled across the ground. No pain. Nothing hurt. Just off balance. He wasn’t the only one who could take a beating.

  Go again.

  I rushed him this time, keeping low, and hammered the sword against the meat of his upper leg, but it wasn’t meat and he didn’t care. His fist slammed against my helmet and I rocked back. I thrust at his face but Saravor wasn’t just big, he was fast and at eight feet tall, he had all the reach. He caught the sword blade with a downward swing of his hand and held it there. His grin opened wider, showing me his bloodstained teeth.

  ‘I don’t even need to fix them anymore,’ Saravor hissed. ‘The blood is all I need. North is inside me now, too. I know what he knew, have learned the things that he learned. I can be anyone. I can be everyone.’

  He tore the sword from my grip and I staggered back. Swords were no use here, and that was something I never thought I’d say. Saravor surged after me and wrapped huge arms around me. He crushed down on me and I felt my battered breastplate flex under his vice-like grip, steel screaming. I fumbled for the canister I’d hung from from my belt. Saravor pressed his face up against mine, and I stared into the whirling madness in his bloody eyes.

  ‘You’re so fucking hungry for the light,’ I said. I ripped the arming fuse from the canister. ‘Here it is.’

  The phos canister detonated between us in a blaze of blue-gold intensity. I shot fifty feet back across the sand-garden, crashing against a pillar. The straps holding my armour together burned away and I tore free the buckled breastplate and helm as I spat dust. Crowfoot’s little avatar had not fared well, a roasted carcass. I faced Saravor bare-chested. The light hadn’t been able to hurt me for a long time and for a moment the glittering, ember-filled cloud of smoke gave me hope that it had been enough. But then the shadow rose within it. Slower now, Saravor stepped through, blackened and charred but still grinning.

  ‘Nothing but tricks,’ he said. ‘Is this all that you have, Galharrow? ‘

  I caught a glimpse of Maldon, climbing the stairs towards the roof. The moons were so close now, the world washed in sparkling shades. Saravor came after me, faster than I was, smoke curling from him like burned meat. The impact against the pillar had knocked the wind from me.

  Saravor’s blow crumpled me against a wall. Another massive fist rocked my head back into it, stone crunching, black blood spattering. He lifted me as though I were a child and hurled me through the air with a savage roar. I crashed through a section of crumbling wall in an explosion of stone shards. I spat blood, felt the hot wetness and sharp pain of a rib protruding from my side. I crawled back to my feet but Saravor was on me again. He smashed me down into the ground, my nose breaking against the stone. Vision blurred. A fist found my hair, dragged me upwards. The next blow sent me back through the wall again in a spray of mortar. I ragdolled across the sand, over and over, until a dry old fountain stopped me.

  Every part of me thrummed with pain. Even through the Misery’s protection, the Guardian’s body was awesomely powerful. Shallowgrave had given his creatures the strength of the mountain from which they were born. Lights danced before my eyes, my broken rib screamed, my broken nose spat sparks of fire through my face.

  I bunched my fists. Out of weapons. Out of allies. Out of options. Only I remained. I spat blood, spat shards of sharp teeth. Forced myself back to my feet as Saravor stalked out of the building as it collapsed behind him towards me.

  ‘Strength,’ I said. ‘Maybe back in Valengrad I wasn’t a match for First, but look where we are.’ I cast a hand out around us. ‘This is my domain, the seat of my power. I’m the Son of the fucking Misery, and what are you? A small-time sorcerer in a borrowed body.’

  ‘You’re just a man,’ Saravor hissed. He raised one of those huge fists and swung it down on me.

  I caught it midflight. The impact was like being kicked by a horse, my feet skidded back in the dust, but I didn’t fall. Saravor’s red eyes widened in consternation.

  I roared and let fly with my own fist and Saravor was smashed from his feet. He crashed through half of a melted pillar. And then I charged him.

  I’d fought a dozen barroom brawls and this was no different. M
y fist thundered into his chest, and then I dragged him upright and slammed it into him again. As he staggered to keep his feet I ducked low, drove my shoulder into his midriff, lifted him and heaved him off balance. Propelling forwards, the Misery’s strength surging stronger and wilder inside me, I drove towards another pillar and we crashed into it together. Red stone crashed down around us in jagged shards. Saravor swung upwards, smashing me full in the face and I reeled back. He raised himself from the rubble. Small shards of jagged stone jutted from his indestructible body as he came at me, and blow followed blow. I gave one back for each that he threw, uncaring whether his landed. I was stronger than him, just as resilient, and though we staggered and rocked as we hammered blows into each other, there was no ground to give.

  The moons, the fucking moons were getting so close. I had no time for this.

  I caught Saravor by the neck, drove my fist upwards at his eyes, one, two, three. My knuckles cracked under my own force and Saravor’s marble brain must have rocked against his skull because he showed a moment of dizziness. I kicked out, sending him flying into a wall. I couldn’t break him like this. Might as well try to punch out a house. So I did what I always do when I can’t win a direct fight: I ran.

  I heard him coming as I reached the stairs that led to the palace roof. Without pause I forced myself up them, legs burning and the old spear wound growling that I should remember that it was still there. I looked down, saw the streets below me, spread like a map, and suddenly I saw it. Saravor stormed up towards me, huge and trailing smoke and red masonry dust. He took the stairs five at a time, bounding up after me.

  ‘Nothing can stop me,’ Saravor shrieked. There was madness all around him. ‘Nothing can kill me. Not even the Misery. Your master will never have the power. Everything you’ve worked towards has failed.’

  I couldn’t hold back my unnatural smile. There’s something in every warrior that makes him want to gloat, to spill his most tightly held plans in his moment of victory. And I saw mine approaching now.

  ‘He’ll never have the power, that’s true,’ I said. ‘But then, you’re assuming that I ever intended for him to have it.’

  Saravor’s eyes widened just a fraction before I charged him again, and we sailed out from the stairway and into open air. Down, rushing down, hurtling down we plummeted towards the streets and the sewer entrance that Valiya had so diligently covered with a slab of stone. With a crash the stone cover shattered and I came down on top of Saravor, my knees driving into his chest. His arms and legs lashed wide, keeping him from going down into the hole but the impact had stunned him. From below, a seething babble of excited voices chorused in sudden, eager anticipation.

  ‘Seventy-three, seventy-two!’

  ‘Evening, master, care for a good time?’

  ‘Death comes!’

  I rolled from Saravor, took hold of one arm, and heaved it up. Saravor tried to force it down, and by the Spirit of Judgement he was as strong as the winter is relentless, but I had my whole body behind it and I kept a foot planted on his chest as I heaved that arm higher. I was filled with a blazing hatred that not even he could match. Hatred for what he’d done to Nenn, to Dantry, to me and all the other lives he’d taken. I stamped down, and his shoulders growled lower into the hole.

  ‘Not this way,’ Saravor hissed, panic in his voice. ‘Not this way!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I snarled back, ‘you won’t feel a fucking thing.’

  I stamped down a final time and Saravor plummeted into the dense carpet of squirming, potbellied little bodies. He had no time to scream before the gillings sank their teeth into him, leg and arm, neck and scalp. Tiny, razored teeth latched on, injected their numbing, paralysing saliva from head to toe as they began to frantically chew at him. He tried to flail at them, shaking them off, but there were hundreds of them, swarming through the tunnel to reach him, to taste him. Teeth broke from gilling mouths as they gnawed. He crushed two of them together, swatted three flat, but as the venom took hold, his flailing dimmed. Paralysis spread through his limbs. He stared at me, face contorted in disbelief that after everything he had accomplished, all the power and knowledge he had accrued, he was going to be eaten alive by a swarm of Misery-spawned babies. Slowly. Really fucking slowly.

  I ran for the stairs. No time, no time. The moons were aligning.

  38

  The sounds of distant battle continued as I reached the platform.

  Just four of us left now.

  Kanalina sat at the loom, heavy industrial goggles over a reddened, sweat-drenched face, taking readings from the dials. She plucked at control wires, testing their frequencies like a harpist, examining meters. There was no way to look directly at the sun, the shimmering colours were too bright, too chaotic to look on. Valiya stood a short distance away beside the iron box that contained the fiend’s heart. Maldon crouched by the stairs. Kanalina was too intent on her work to have noticed him.

  I must have looked monstrous, worse than ever before. Broken, bleeding, skin like charred wood. Valiya looked ashen when she saw me, but kept her face under control. I knew what she wanted to say. She knew I couldn’t hear it, not now, so close to the end.

  ‘North and the Guardian?’ Valiya asked.

  ‘Gone,’ I said.

  ‘Three minutes,’ Kanalina said. There was excitement in her voice. Whatever danger was all around us, she was about to draw the purest power in existence, to harness it and bind it. She didn’t know what was coming.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Valiya asked me. I took her hand in mine and kissed the back of her knuckles.

  ‘I have to be,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But you’ll do what must be done.’

  ‘Two minutes,’ Kanalina said, fingers working. ‘Get it in place.’

  I looked into Valiya’s eyes, but she turned her face away.

  ‘Valiya, I—’

  ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘Not now. Get the heart.’

  I knelt and flipped the box lid back. Within lay a fossilised, blackened lump of what could have been stone. Without having to touch it, I sensed the chaos that writhed around it. It had waited, thousands of years, to live again. It sensed the forces converging on us, the focus brought to bear. I wrapped it in cloth, then lifted it free and carried it to the loom. Below the vast lenses, a four-clawed pedestal stood ready to grasp it. Carefully, reverently, avoiding the copper wires and refracting crystals, I laid it down. It settled with a hiss. Expectant. Waiting.

  ‘Ninety seconds,’ Kanalina said. She drew on gloves, thick and heavy.

  ‘Move away from the loom, Kanalina,’ I said. ‘Now.’

  Either she didn’t hear me, or it didn’t register at first. The click of a hammer being dragged back on a pistol brought her attention back to us, though, as Valiya levelled it at her. Mouth open, Kanalina pushed the goggles back from her face.

  ‘What are you doing? The eclipse is coming. We can’t stop now.’

  ‘Step away, or I’ll shoot you,’ Valiya said. ‘Move slowly.’

  ‘You’re mad!’ she cried. ‘This is our one chance. The only chance we have to stop Acradius and save the republic. It’s our only weapon—’

  ‘The Nameless never meant to turn the power of the heart against Acradius,’ I said. I took her by the arm and drew her from the chair. The Misery-essence in my skin squealed against the phos in hers like fingernails breaking on a chalkboard. ‘And neither did I.’

  ‘What – I – I don’t understand – then what … why?’

  I drew her away and gestured to Maldon, who strode forwards from his place by the stairs, walking with more determination and pride than I’d seen in him in all his life. Spine straight, shoulders back, he took his seat at the loom. He locked his fingers together, flexed them.

  The sun and the moons came together across the sun and the world pulsed in waves of gold, b
lue, and red light. One after another they sheeted out, rippling as they washed the world in beautiful, scintillating colour. Maldon began to work within the loom. He dragged threads at first, drawing strands of shimmering colour down, one after another, clawing them from the air. He laboured hard, tearing them into a different form, but as he worked the threads began to come to him more willingly, following the flow of the others, thickening and multiplying as the loom fed them down through its many lenses. Down, and into the heart.

  A growl, the voice of a god long dead, rose from it as it sucked in the light. It drank the power eagerly, a dry sponge taking up water. Veins of blue-white energy rippled across its stony surface. Still Maldon worked, drawing light, feeding it into the fiend’s heart, strand after strand, ropes of light coruscating down through the loom, twisting and twirling together in helixes as they answered the call.

  Away to the west, a dark shadow appeared on the distant horizon, crossing the sky towards us. A vast murder of ravens, come to claim the prize. Crowfoot.

  ‘You’d betray your own master?’ Kanalina cried. ‘You’ve been planning this betrayal all along?’

  ‘Call it what you want,’ I said. ‘Dantry, Maldon, and I have been working towards this for a long time. You’re lucky. You get to watch the resolution.’ I glanced towards Valiya. She gave me a slow nod. Whatever Nall’s purpose, she was with me on this.

  ‘If not for the Nameless, then what for?’ Kanalina demanded.

  I crossed the platform and stood beside Maldon.

  ‘I need it,’ I said. ‘Ten years ago, something precious was taken from me. And I swore that no matter what it took, whether it took me a hundred years or more, I was going to get it back.’

  Kanalina’s eyes went wide.

  ‘The ghost in the light,’ she said. ‘The Bright Lady.’

  ‘Ezabeth Tanza was burned from this world and into the light. She died saving us all from the drudge. And she saved me. Not just from the enemy, but from what I’d become. I can never repay her in full. But this, I can do for her. I can draw her back.’