Dance of Battle: A Dark Fantasy (Shedim Rebellion Book 4)

by Burke Fitzpatrick

  She wished to be alone in her room. Marah blanked her mind, unsure how much time had passed before the room grew cold. Shivers interrupted her meditation, and when she exhaled, she saw her breath.

  You continue to act like a child. Let Dura go.

  Marah was sad that some of the voices could defy the wards. She squeezed her eyes shut and fought down a childish complaint. It wasn’t fair, but if she pouted, the voice would mock her.

  “Who are you?”

  You know us. Chaos needs no introductions.

  She dreaded her next question. “What do you want?”

  We want to see you grow, but you tempt damnation on this path.

  “Did the Riddle kill the other prophets?”

  That is the wrong question. Ask yourself what happens to a weapon after a war is won.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Both sides fight to control you. Once one of them has what they want, you become useless. Mulciber won’t kill you. He wants to enslave you. So does Ithuriel. They each offer different chains, but the end result is the same.

  “Ramiel never chained me.”

  He fought hard to steal you away from Mulciber. He and Ithuriel intended to use you against the shedim, to conquer the Black Gate once and for all.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Marah worked to shut Chaos out of her mind. The chill of the voice made her teeth rattle, and she wanted to be alone. She reached for the source and visualized the gates and used the runes to ward away demons and voices. Too many strange creatures wanted to pull her into fights she didn’t understand. She would banish them all and find a way to talk to her grandmother again. She trusted no one else.

  Such tricks won’t work on us. We’ve told you that once before.

  “Why?”

  We are older than runes.

  Marah’s chin fell to her chest, and her shoulders slumped. After all the work she had done to block out the voices, she had no way to defend herself from them all. The powers of the world could harass her whenever they wanted.

  Her voice betrayed her exhaustion. “What do you want?”

  Imagine a world without angels or demons. Without elves or monsters. Imagine paradise as it was intended to be. You could save the world from their wars.

  Marah imagined such a thing, but it meant both sides had lost. And the dark voice wanted her to defeat them. She didn’t want to fight either side, but Chaos wanted her to fight both.

  “You want me to kill angels.”

  Prophets were created to protect the mortal world. You don’t have to kneel before either of them. You can forge your own path.

  “You are one of them. You want me to kill angels.”

  We are older than angels and demons. We are the darkness that came before the light, and when the light dies, it will return to us.

  “Then what is God?”

  God is Order, and Order came from Chaos.

  “I won’t serve Chaos.”

  Everyone serves Chaos. Your soul is a piece of us. It gives you free will, but what is free will if not Chaos? Ithuriel does not know what you will do. Neither does Mulciber. No one knows what you will do.

  “That can’t… be true.”

  The words confused her, and she fought to remember Dura’s lectures on making good choices. She had spoken of a child of light and a child of darkness, and the little choices that fed each. Marah had never heard of free will being chaos. She denied the idea of it and held her head with both hands. She had to find a way to be alone in her own mind.

  Creating children is easy, but controlling them? Chaos sounded amused. There is the hard task. There is the toil.

  “No. You want me to kill angels.”

  We want you to open your eyes. Think before you kneel.

  Marah tried to understand how Ithuriel’s death benefited the voice. Chaos wanted her to kill both sides. She thought hard about why but could not figure it out. They talked in circles, and she kept asking the same thing.

  “What do you want?”

  We want you to choose your own path.

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  You will. Kennet figured it out—after he died.

  “Is that why he died? He didn’t understand the Riddle?”

  You must solve the Riddle yourself. The truth cannot be shown. It must be seen.

  “That makes no sense.”

  If we told you the truth, you would call us liars. Discover it for yourself, and you will know it to be true.

  Marah sensed an invisible smile in the voice. Chaos grinned at her, and the coldness in the room began to fade away.

  “Wait! I need to know more.”

  If you venture beyond the Ward, you will die young, like the other prophets. Dura cannot live your life for you. You must grow up sooner than you’d like.

  Marah glared around her, wondering where the voice was coming from. She didn’t want her grandmother to live her life. No one cared about her. Everyone pushed and prodded her into doing things she didn’t want to do. She needed family she could trust, and she needed to know why she couldn’t talk to the one dead person she cared about.

  “I need answers.”

  You choose to learn the hard way. Survive, and we will talk again.

  The chill vanished, and Marah knew she was alone. Of all the voices she had listened to, the one calling itself Chaos bothered her the most. The texture of it was different from Ithuriel or the dragon. She knelt and closed her eyes and tried to meditate, but she rehashed the conversation, trying to convince herself that she lived her own life. She didn’t learn things the hard way—she had never struggled to learn anything before. People kept hiding things from her, and she wanted the truth. She wanted to know all the secrets.

  II

  Dinner became a war council with little warning. Tyrus had been eating his gruel next to Marah when the high priest, Eogan, and Silas began debating the next course of action. Silas wished to fight toward Ros Mardua while the high priest argued that the levels between Koruthal and Mardua should be purged first. The debate pulled in Lord Nemuel and attracted the attention of many wardens.

  Tyrus finished his bowl and checked on Marah. She ate little mouthfuls of her own gruel and had not taken a side yet.

  Silas said, “If we clear every tunnel between here and Mardua, the city will fall before we arrive.”

  “Mardua won’t fall,” Eogan said. “They went around it because it no longer controls the depths. If we blindly chase them, they’ll surround us.”

  “We must push forward.”

  “We must secure what we have.”

  “If we seal the breach, we can purge the warrens after.”

  “They will dig new tunnels for each one that we close.”

  Tyrus listened as the dwarves talked around those points, and the more heated the debate became, the less Kasdin they spoke. Soon, he was listening to gibberish, and all the while, Marah kept eating her gruel. Silas had turned to her for help, but she didn’t look up from her bowl. Tyrus wasn’t sure if he should prod her into making a decision, but he understood when Silas spoke of marching toward Ros Mardua, he meant Marah would lead them.

  Lord Nemuel asked, “Marah, what say you?”

  The tables stilled, and everyone waited to hear what she would say. She finished her bowl and stood. Tyrus stood, as did everyone else, out of deference to her. She gestured that she wished to be held, and Tyrus picked her up. Marah twisted in his arms to face everyone.

  “I’m going to Mardua.”

  Half of the room welcomed the news. The rest wanted to restate their positions about securing the territory they had reclaimed.

  Eogan said, “The warrens are filled with tribesmen. If we rush to Ros Mardua without proper planning, we will be cut off from Ros Koruthal.”

  “You may stay if you want,” Marah said, “or clear tunnels behind
us. But I am going.”

  More voices asked questions, but Marah told Tyrus she wished to rest. He used his size to force his way through the crowd and carry her to her room. When he reached the door, he glanced back and saw worried looks—even the dwarves who got what they wanted seemed to be reconsidering the cost of victory. Marah would leave them as divided as she had found them.

  In her room, Tyrus asked, “Will Mardua fall?”

  “Probably.”

  “Can they take the time to secure what they have? Will it fall soon, or will their walls hold long enough to clear the tunnels?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then why chase the shedim?”

  “I need to reach the lower levels.”

  “How many shedim are down there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Marah—” Tyrus chose his words with care. “They know this kind of warfare. If they think the tunnels need to be purged and there is time to do it, you should defer to them.”

  “They are wrong.”

  Tyrus waited for more, but Marah lay on her stone bed and pulled her blankets up around her neck. He wasn’t sure if he should risk offending her by arguing, but she didn’t seem worried about her decision. He wanted to trust her strange powers, but he needed more.

  “How are they wrong?”

  “Tribesmen are in the tunnels but not the shedim. They regroup with Gorba by Ros Mardua. The real fight is there.”

  “And if the tribesmen attack our supply lines?”

  “I’ll burn them.”

  Tyrus sat on the hard floor and rested his back against the wall. He wanted to argue with her because she made it sound so easy to fend off the tribes—but he had seen her burn them without much effort. The logistics of what she proposed bothered him, though. If they traveled a long distance and left tribesmen behind them, she would need to double back to deal with any problems. She hadn’t seemed to consider that, or maybe she had but chose not to explain herself.

  He had more questions, but she had fallen asleep. He knew she was racing toward something, but he wasn’t sure what it was or why it mattered.

  Tyrus reminded himself to rest, but worries kept him awake. The fighting would get worse. They had pushed through the fodder of the demon tribes until they found armies with their own sorcerers. Soon they would face shedim legionnaires, and the dwarves said they were always outnumbered. Tyrus wasn’t sure how to keep her alive in the face of such odds.

  With a hundred more wardens following Silas, they marched from Ros Koruthal. The high priest and many of the survivors stayed behind to clean out the infected tunnels and continue the repairs to the lower sections of the city. After the expanse of Ros Koruthal’s ceiling, Tyrus found the stone tunnels cramped and dank. He did not like looking into the never-ending darkness at the end of the long tunnels. At least the dwarven cities had a sense of completeness, with stone walls surrounding a defined space. The tunnels felt as if they never ended, and the constant downward slope made him lurch like a drunk.

  Tyrus carried Marah near the vanguard. Several wardens and one of the dwarven priests insisted on confronting the shadows first, but everyone else appreciated that Marah took the lead. If anything were to happen, she seemed best able to warn them. The column jumped at the smallest noises. Everyone was on edge, knowing they were following shedim.

  Tyrus hoped their trust in Marah wasn’t misplaced. He doubted that everyone appreciated how often the voices overwhelmed her. The air chilled around him several times throughout the day, and she trembled in his arms too much for him to think she was in control.

  She insisted on hurrying toward something she feared, and even though she wouldn’t admit that, her tremors frightened Tyrus. He was never sure if her sorcery signaled an attack or perhaps one of the dead said something very nasty. The long march without landmarks gave his mind too much time to ponder ugly possibilities.

  Days passed, and nothing changed. Gray stone revealed more gray stone, and the impenetrable blackness hundreds of yards down the path defied any attempt to measure their journey.

  Marah asked, “Tyrus, why do you protect me?”

  The question blindsided him, and he blinked as though slapped. Her voice was so soft he wondered if any of the Norsil could hear her. She whispered right in his ear. He wanted to talk of honor or duty or tradition or his training as a boy, but the truth was simpler.

  “You’re Ishma’s daughter.”

  “But you’re afraid of me.”

  “No.” Tyrus repeated the denial, trying to convince himself. “I don’t understand how you do the things you do.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Tyrus wasn’t sure what to say next, but Marah sounded strange again. He couldn’t tell if he spoke to the girl or the prophet.

  She said, “Dura told me how my father conquered Sornum. She said without you, he would have lost many battles. He might have lost the War of the Five Nations.”

  “I don’t know about that. Never underestimate Azmon.”

  “She said you saved his life many times.”

  “I did. And he saved me. We fought well together.”

  “Why did you protect him?”

  “I was taught to protect your family, and I wanted to hear songs written about my deeds.”

  “But why?”

  “When I was young, I laughed when I broke smaller men.” Tyrus hated admitting that. He had stood over dead men and laughed. “I once won a duel with one stroke of a blade, and the story spread across all of Sornum. I enjoyed being the strongest. Then, after all the runes, no one could challenge me anymore. I thought I wanted that, but it all became meaningless. There’s no point killing men who can’t hurt you.”

  Marah rested her head on his shoulder, and they kept marching into the darkness. She asked odd questions that made him feel like a relic. He had served three generations of House Pathros, and he wondered again what the world would have been like if he had let Azmon die long ago.

  Marah asked, “You laughed when you killed people?”

  “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “The dead say you enjoy killing.”

  “It isn’t the killing so much as cheating death. That is the greatest feeling in the world.”

  “Why?”

  “When you fight someone of worth, there’s a moment when it could go either way. You might die, and then you don’t. There’s nothing like that feeling. You feel truly alive—like you earned your life.”

  “I don’t like killing.” Marah whispered, “I can hear them after they die. They hate me.”

  Tyrus couldn’t imagine such a thing. “I was never cursed like that.”

  “I’m getting used to it.” Marah hesitated. “Is that bad?”

  The question twisted in his guts like a knife. He sensed an opportunity, a chance to guide her or teach her of honor, but he had never been good at such things. He hesitated, and the opportunity began to fade away while he fumbled for words. He often killed because he had to, and his mouth dried as he tried to find a way to make it sound better than it was, then he realized the ghosts would tell her the truth anyway.

  She should be spared the grim details.

  Tyrus sighed. “Getting used to killing is a kind of death. You lose a part of yourself. One day, you won’t remember when you hesitated. And that is another kind of death. You become someone new.” All the faces of the men he had killed filled his mind. Some were desperate. Others were furious. “Killing is easier than it should be. The hard part is living with yourself.”

  Marah didn’t say anything.

  Tyrus asked, “What do the dead say?”

  “I shouldn’t suffer fools. If someone wants to fight me, they deserve to die.”

  Part of Tyrus agreed, but he wanted to tell her such choices weren’t simple. He had seen all kinds of killing, from nasty fights in the streets to full pitched battles
to an emperor ordering executions. Each situation required a different approach. Sometimes, he had fought for his life, and other times, he had fought for another’s honor. Many times, he had won a fight without killing because men had learned to fear him.

  He wanted to explain, but he didn’t know where to start.

  The dead had told her not to “suffer fools”—he fixated on that phrase, which distracted him from the rest. Ghosts were mentoring her, and he wondered what other things they whispered. Worse, she was learning how to fight from the defeated, and he wondered how many of the dead spoke of mercy.

  Tyrus said, “Talking with the dead can’t be good.”

  “They help me… sometimes.”

  “But they’re angry. The good ones, like Dura, aren’t they’re gone?”

  Marah didn’t answer him, and Tyrus began to understand why such things were forbidden. He had heard Nemuel and Silas both say the same thing, but he hadn’t appreciated what kind of dead things spoke to Marah. Other sorcerers worried about the shedim when a vengeful ghost could be much worse, especially if Marah trusted the thing.

  The problem distracted him from the tedium of their travels. He mulled it over as he walked, but he had no idea how to help her. Runes had cursed her almost as badly as they had cursed him, but at least he had been a man when he took too many etchings. He couldn’t imagine growing up listening to the people he had killed.

  III

  Days, maybe weeks later, they reached a series of lifts. They were large shafts that plunged deep into the darkness, with wooden carriages attached to heavy chains. Tyrus didn’t understand the mechanism, but a team of dwarves worked a wheel in the center of the carriage. A chain fed into the metal mechanism, and the box clanked across the chain. Thus, they could make it climb or lower by cranking wheels.

  The carriage could only hold a dozen of them at a time, and the priests said fewer of the Norsil would fit at once. Tyrus set Marah down and watched, through a cage, as a team of wardens lowered the thing into the darkness of the shaft. They faded from view and were gone for a long time. The distant echoes of the chain faded slowly into nothing. Then, after what felt like an hour, a second carriage rose from a shaft alongside the first.