The grey man flinched. She saw only the subtlest flash of emotion smolder in his eyes, but it was enough. Fear. She smelled it on him. And here I thought he would kill me.
“What are you?” She stared hard at him.
“I’ve already said,” he grunted. “You should know better than to question me. Look at the people behind you. Their fear is prudent. Your boasting will only bring you pain.”
“No, I think not.” She felt her courage well within her. “There is something about you…you are different than the others. They look alike, but you…”
All at once, the other grey men leveled their spears at her. She saw their skins like charcoal, their gazes empty, and she was reminded of Midnon, only as real as I believe.
“No!” cried Lilia.
“Don’t resist them!” begged another.
Oh, but I will. She whispered beneath her breath as she conjured the Nightness to her fingertips. At her beck the wind arose, a spell meant to shatter her father’s magicks. Blacker then before, the clouds fumed in the sky. “You are not real,” she said to the shadow men. “Ghosts, more than I. Grey paper puppets made by my father.”
She felt the hill quake and thunder crack the heavens. The Nightness flowed from her palms, a tempest of darkness, a black breeze tearing through the line of grey soldiers like flames through parchment. The villagers shrieked as the wind carved through the grey men, breaking their bond with the warlock’s masking magic. Of the twenty grey soldiers, nineteen were blown to ashes. When the tempest died and only one remained, she knew the truth. The shadow men. Illusions. Only as real as Thillria believes. Father has no army. He never did.
The black clouds and wintry wind vanished as quickly as she had conjured them. The sun glittered on the grass once more, the ashes of the broken grey men floating off with the breeze. “You see?” she said to the villagers. “They were never real. Everything the warlock has threatened you with…lies.”
A last grey man remained. Just as she suspected, he was nothing like the others. Without the warlock’s magic he looked like an ordinary middle-aged Thillrian, with gaunt cheeks and eyes blue as ice. Terrified, he threw down his spear and backed away, waving his hands at her as though she were death.
“Just a man.” She stalked after him.
“Yes! I beg you! Don’t kill me!” he blustered. “I swear it; I’ll never trouble you again. Please…no more magic.”
“Not so dangerous now, are you? You must be the only real one, the true evil here. I should let these villagers at you, but I would rather be the one. I owe him, you know, for what he did to me.”
“No,” He whimpered as she came. His rigid coldness was gone, his eyes wide and wet with horror. “I didn’t know. They came to us. We thought they were real. They are real! They came to every city, every corner of Thillria. They painted us like this. We didn’t know why. We only wanted to survive.”
“We?”
“The men of Muthem, my home. Orumna’s men said we’d be his army, his guardians. They said our families would be spared if we did as the king asked.”
“Orumna?” she spat. “He is probably dead. You serve a lie.”
He retreated. With a roar, she sprinted straight at him, knocking him into the grass with a shove. She straddled his narrow chest, ripped his helmet off his head, and glared at him like twilight. “Pretender!” she seethed. “How long have you tormented these people? You took Garrett! I could snuff you, you puny thing. I could drum my fingers on your throat and drain your life right out.”
“Please! No!”
She pressed two fingers against his cheek and dragged them across his skin. He shuddered beneath her, his breaths short and ragged. With one swipe, she smeared a line in the sticky grey ink painted on his face. Beneath the ink, his flesh was nearly as white as hers. Beneath the illusion is only a man.
“Who came to you?” She whipped the ink off her fingers. “Who convinced you to destroy your own country? Who was it? Say his name.”
She pressed her knees into his gut, knifing out his breath. He quivered like a scarecrow in a storm wind. “Grimwain,” he gasped. “It’s Grimwain. He is the master’s warlord. He made Thillria’s army.”
“Grimwain.” She felt her body go limp. She remembered the Uylen he had slaughtered, the black steel swords in his rotting scabbards, the white glimmer in his eyes when all else was dark.
“He’s no Thillrian,” the man shivered. “He’s Romaldar’s exile. He says he has plans for us…for everyone. He says when his army is ready, he’ll march on all lands, Romaldar first. And when it’s done, he said the stars will fall and the night will last forever.”
Father, what have you done? she thought.
“You can’t stop him,” sputtered the man. “No one can.
“Oh?”
“Grimwain has tens of thousands of shadow men. They’ve taken every city in northern Thillria. You’d best run. Your small magicks won’t save you. They’ll hunt you to oblivion.”
She closed her eyes. A memory from the Page of Ur Fire leapt to life inside her. She made a fist, the sunlight shuddered, and a candle’s worth of black flame smoldered between her knuckles. “My magicks may not save me.” She snared the man’s throat with her other hand.
“But they are more than enough to be rid of you.”
Chains for a Champion
In Midnon’s bowels, where the voices of the dead drifted through hallways long and dark, Garrett awoke.
In one cell among thousands, he existed. His jail was ten paces square, its walls of polished jet as smooth as ice, its gate sealed with obsidian bars so cold they pained him to touch. His only source of light, a disembodied Ur eyeball, glowed in the darkness beyond his cell, observing him at every hour. Further confining him were his chains, spiraling from holes in the wall, ending in thick manacles upon both of his ankles and one of his wrists.
I have not been placed here to die quickly.
Garrett measured his existence by morbid means. Since the beginning, his nameless, voiceless jailer had shuffled down the impossibly long hall and placed an apple, a few brittle hunks of bread, and a tin of water within his grasp. A day apart, he guessed of the visits, and so he had kept pace, counting each miserable scrap of time by placing one apple stem into an ordered line upon the floor.
His three hundred forty-second day in the deep began the same as all the rest. His mood was as black as Midnon itself, and his hopes long decayed. Creaking and shambling, the hooded darkling slid his meal between the bars before wandering off into the void. After the creature vanished, Garrett stretched to the ends of his chains and plucked his foodstuffs from the floor. Were he a prouder man, he might have stamped the apples to mush and spilled his cup into the chamber drain, but he could not bring himself to suicide, at least not yet.
He took tiny bites from his apple, savoring each as though it might be his last. He did the same for his bread and water, and after finishing his meal he slumped into the far corner of his cell. He had no bed to rest on, no pillow to ease the pain of living on a floor as hard and cold as ice. When he sat, his bones shuddered. When he leaned against the wall, his skin screamed. The same as every day before, he supposed he should weep rivers of tears into his palms, but he could not bring himself to do it. I have earned this pain, he told himself. It will end, but not today.
He twisted off his apple’s stem and placed it in line with the rest. He breathed long, slow breaths, meaning to meditate, but before he closed his eyes he glimpsed a shadow move in the hall beyond his cell. Out of the ordinary, this shadow, he thought. Perhaps today is the end after all. “Someone comes.” He rattled his chains. “Best stand beneath the eye, else I will never see you.”
The shadow looked too agile to be his jailer. He heard its feet patter in the puddles beyond the gate, it fingers tap lightly on the wall. The violet light from the warlock’s disembodied eye seemed unwilling to illuminate whoever the shadow might be. He saw it bob and slink, one dark shape among many, but he could
not see its face.
“If you came for my food, you are too late,” he grunted. “My banquet is gone.”
The shadow gripped the prison bars with its tiny hands. Its face was hidden beneath a hood, its eyes mere pinpricks of pale light floating in the hallway gloom. “A phantasm,” Garrett remarked. “Or a scavenger. Or the warlock come to see me for himself. Fear not.” He jangled his chains again. “I have no sword, and these chains…much too thick to break.”
The shadow peeled its hood back and pressed its cheeks between the bars. Its face was ivory, its eyes soft and sad. It was a surprise to him, for the shadow seemed feminine, the spirit of some poor dead thing who died here long before me.
“Death comes for me in a woman’s guise,” he murmured. “Or perhaps I am already dead and you will be my guide into the underworld.”
When he saw the shadow’s breath cloud the air, he realized he was not dead. The creature behind the hood gazed at him, and her eyes belonged not to a horror, but to a woman.
“Do not say we are dead, Garrett.” She clutched the prison bars and pressed her pearl of a nose into his cell. “We are still alive.”
He knew her voice. Stirred to life, he lurched to his feet and strode to the bars. His chains were taut, the links ringing like shattered glass.
“Ona.”
She reached through the bars and touched his face. He glimpsed her eyes beneath her hood, and he saw the stream of tears sliding down her cheek.
“My Garrett, I found you,” she uttered.
With his free hand, he snared her wrist. “Ona,” he said her name. “I would rather have died warring with your master than in here, wasting slowly away.”
“I know.” She gulped hard. “If you wish to kill me, I’ll let you.”
He let his eyes fall shut. I should despise her. For her artificial love, I should wrench her arm loose of her body and let her crawl limbless back to her keeper.
“Garrett,” she whispered.
“Ona.”
“Please…” she sniffled. “I’ve looked for you since the day he brought us here. I’ve lied to him. I know what I deserve. You must dream of my death every night. I’ll give it to you if you want.” She threw back her hood and pulled his free fingers around her throat. “Here. Kill me if you wish it. You’ve strength enough.”
He considered how easy it would be to crush the life from her. “I could never.” He withdrew his hand. “Whatever you deserve, you will not get from me.”
A long silence passed. He gazed into her eyes, losing himself in her gossamer greys, unable to conjure a moment’s anger at her. She clutched the prison bars, her fingers stark against the obsidian.
“I came to release you,” she said. “If you’ll let me.”
“Pointless,” he said. “A soldier has no value once his wars are dead and done. All evils are surely worked by now, and all my companions slain.”
She shook her head. “No. Not true. Mistress Andelusia escaped only yesterday. The others never came here. You and I are the only ones imprisoned.”
“Then you and I are doomed. I have no way to break these chains or open this gate, and you are yet your master’s plaything. You would let me loose only to torment me.”
“No. I am not that Ona anymore. I never was.”
“You look the same,” he said. “Sweet as sugar, soft as moonlight, but as much a liar as before. I know why you came here. It is no accident I still live. By you, by a thousand other means, your master means to torture me.”
“You don’t understand,” she pleaded. “I’m not a liar. I’m not the monster you think I am. Every night after Rose, I dreamed of you. Every moment I’ve lain awake, it was for you. It’s wrong you are here. I mean to make it right.”
He retreated to the far wall and slid to the floor. I dare not believe her. No matter that I want to.
“I would have loved you,” he sighed. “If you had been as real as you seemed, I might have been yours forever. My heart is softer than my swordarm, it seems. One night with you, and I forgot everything else I cared about. I should have been thinking of Ande, but no…it was you inside my head.”
Tears streaked in pale rivers from Ona’s eyes. With a sniffle, she swiped them away. “I’m not evil.” Her voice cracked. “I know I laid with you for a wicked cause, but my feelings were never a lie. When he made me spy on you in Thillria, I desired you. On the way to Nightmare, I dreamed of you. It’s true; he made me seduce you. He scripted our passion like a play, but I meant every moment of it. The woman you kissed in Rose was the real me. Hate me if you want. It’s the truth.”
He was not prepared for such honesty. His head swam with the sound of her voice between the apple trees, his memory of making love to her a pinprick of light in the vast darkness of his mind.
“I need your help, Garrett.” She interrupted his reverie. “The warlock is my sickness. You are my remedy.”
He tried not to look at her, but with one accidental glance he remembered her touch, her hands locked within his, her lips sweet as honey. “Ona,” he said, this time far graver. “I am not who you believe.”
“What do you mean?”
“Here is the truth.” He grimaced. “I sit behind these bars, but this is not the only time. I am not the hero you might think me. I have spilled the blood of hundreds, some who earned it, others who did not. The Grae call me champion, but there are others who call me butcher, and still others assassin.”
“You’re lying.”
“If you are tempted to set me free, you need to know the truth. I belong in this cell; I have accepted it. You named me a legend in Rose, but a legend in one woman’s eye is a widower to the next. To Rellen, Saul, even Andelusia, I have said nothing. Else I might have been caged long before now.”
“I don’t understand.” She looked frightened. “You’d rather rot in here than run away with me?”
“There is no freedom from what I have done. A hundred years in this darkness might not be enough. I have killed. I have betrayed. I forsook one woman for another. These bars seem fitting.”
Ona pressed her cheeks against the gate. She was as beautiful as he remembered, a raven-tressed angel, pale and pure as snow beneath the stars. “Say anything you like.” She trembled. “I don’t care. If you’ll let me, I’ll show you the sun again. You can share all your sins with me, and I’ll tell all of mine. But there’s little time. We must hurry.”
He sat, shaking his head. I could remain here, he thought. Good as dead. Useless to the world. I could die and be forgotten. Or…
After many dozen breaths he rattled his chains and clambered to his feet. “Freedom. I will not argue. I assume you have a key.”
“No. There’re no keys here.”
“These locks cannot be picked.” He shook his chains. “Your master saved his finest jail for me.”
Ona backed away from the gate and stood where the Ur light glowed brightest. Loosening her cloak from her neck and rolling up the tatters of her sleeve, she extended her naked arms before her. “Midnon, he calls this place,” she snorted. “A name is all he has, for a name is all it is. Watch…”
She stepped toward the gate, bare palms outstretched, but rather than stop at the bars, she continued, gliding through the obsidian spokes as if nothing were in her way. He shivered as he watched her walk through the gate. Ten breaths later, she stood before him.
“There is no gate,” she said.
“You are his pupil,” he exhaled. “A warlock, same as Ande.”
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