Into the Dark Lands

by Michelle Sagara

  Red-fire, Kerlinda thought. The taint of the Dark Heart. But it’s strong—it’s never been so strong before. Without thinking, she blooded her blade, her finger skimming along its edge. Why is it so strong when they aren’t among us yet?

  And then she knew.

  “Erin!”

  Erin had been watching in confusion. She fumbled with her sword a moment, her hands shaking. Her fingers would not cooperate for long enough to release the sword from the scabbard. In frustration, she called forth light.

  Nothing happened.

  Biting her lip, she closed her eyes and began to concentrate.

  Someone slapped her. Her eyes flew open and she saw her mother’s face, white with either fury or fear.

  “Go!”

  This time she obeyed, her legs shaking even as they carried her into the covered wagon. Her mouth was dry as she shook her head; no words spilled out. She stumbled across the open ground, scraping her leg against a rock. The wagon was close.

  Hide.

  She stumbled into the wagon and stopped, her knees bent against the wooden boards. In the darkness she could make out very little, but her hands told her where she was; spare bedding was kept here, and tents.

  Hide.

  She scrambled beneath bedrolls, pulling them above her head. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps. God, something was very wrong.

  She could smell the sweat of horses and hear them begin to trumpet the same panic that now gripped her. Her face was all but crushed into the wagon floor; the scent of aged wood clogged her nostrils.

  Death—there was death in the clearing. And it would be her death, if she didn’t stay very, very still. She tried to hold her breath and failed.

  She was curled up as tightly as one her size could be—and for the first time in years, she felt her smallness and was glad. The Lernari hearing that she had always been so proud of caught each supernatural crackle of red and white meeting in the air above the ground; she could hear the screams, the shouts, and the rasping clang of metal against metal. The hands, her hands, over her ears could not prevent that.

  Worse, though, was the sudden silence that followed. And much worse, the muffled screams.

  She felt she would never be free of the physical feel of fear: the way her heart drummed so loudly against her chest, and the way her breath cut in and out so sharply it hurt. She grabbed a handful of bedding and tried to cram it into her ears, but her hands were numb and shaking. The screams—dear God, the screams—twisted into her body while she lay still and hidden, too paralyzed even to cry.

  Then the screams stopped. She knew a moment of relief before they started again. She could not help but recognize whose throat they were torn from, no matter how distorted by pain the voice was.

  And she could not move. She lay silent, writhing in darkness. There was the taste of blood in her mouth from where she had bitten through her lip.

  Bright Heart let it stop please let it stop!

  And then, for a moment, it did. There was a silence so total it was almost deafening. And Erin saw, for the very first time, the shadowy visage of Lady Death, with her long white hands and her ebony nails. It might have been delirium, it might have been vision, but whatever it was, it was clear.

  It struck her like a dull sword.

  Lady Death had come for her mother. And she, cowering in the wagon, hoping—praying—not to be noticed, had done nothing, nothing at all, to prevent it. She was a warrior—she was warrior-trained . . . She was warrior trained.

  What had Telvar said? That the warrior, the true warrior, knew how to die. Die a clean death.

  Her fear sharpened unbearably and shifted.

  Her mother was going to die if Lady Death couldn’t be prevented from speaking her name, because Erin had done nothing. Her mother was going to die—her mother, no warrior.

  The bedding toppled away as she jerked up, her hands finding the sword that Telvar had given to her. She stumbled over the disordered tents and bedrolls to reach the wagon’s closed flap.

  With a wild, incoherent shriek, Erin stumbled out of the wagon onto the dry grass. It was dark, Bright Heart—and the light wouldn’t come.

  But the moon glared balefully down until her eyes could clearly see the wreckage of her mother’s body. Surrounding it there were four: three armored figures and one—one . . .

  “No!”

  They turned at once to see her. She stood, raised sword in hand, shaking with shame and fury. One of the four said something and stepped forward. He was pale and cloaked in a shadow that was stronger than night.

  It was the first time in her life that she had seen a Servant of the Enemy. Nightwalker. He was tall, too tall, and ice seemed to form in the shadows he cast upon the still ground. Not even the firelight touched his blackness.

  Telvar’s words echoed dimly in her mind.

  Against a nightwalker of the Enemy you stand no chance. You are overmatched by the power of his Servants; if you see one, and it is walking—flee.

  And it didn’t matter. For the sake of her cowardice she had sacrificed her mother. Because of her fear she had lost, in a few moments, the one thing her life had centered around. What if the walker hurt her, made her scream, made her suffer what her mother had suffered? What if he chose to feed on her lifeblood; to play with her spirit in an endless game of agony while he slaked his endless hunger? She deserved it.

  The Servant came forward as she stood, feet planted firmly on the ground, arm raised to strike. She could not see any expression on his face; the shadow he wore obscured it. Nonetheless, she knew what was there.

  “You are the last.”

  She did not reply.

  “We felt your power, little one. It is almost as strong as hers was.” He stepped closer still and lifted one hand. “It will never be used against us.”

  There was death in the clearing.

  Erin saw his hand draw closer, but before she could move, she was surrounded by a nimbus of brilliant, glowing white. Her brown tunic, her pale leggings, seemed somehow transformed as the light flared like a wall.

  The walker screamed, a signal to all of the enemy that the lines had come.

  Erin screamed as well. The sound contained everything that words or tears could not. Almost crazy, she lunged forward at the retreating figure of the Servant of the Enemy. He didn’t even notice her; his attention was drawn to the sight of Kandor—Servant as well, but of the Bright Heart.

  Kandor of Lernan, followed by warrior-priests, came into the clearing. As the nightwalker wore his shadow, so Kandor wore his light; it was all the armor and all the weapon that he needed. Those warrior-priests wore the light as well—too bright and powerful to be their own. They had touched the Gifting, then. But they also wore armor that glinted beneath surcoat and helms that obscured their faces. Their weapons were drawn as they followed in Kandor’s wake to step into the ruined campsite. Two of the wagons were on their sides, their canvas torn and shredded. The horses were lumps that rested upon the ground in stillness and silence. And the Malanthi were there, dressed in like armor, covered in dark surcoats. The blood-shadows surrounded them; they had pulled their power from the dying and wore it well. Already some carried the items that the Lernari dead had worn, but these they dropped at once.

  Kandor barely paused to survey the surroundings before battle was joined anew. But this time the odds were even. The Lernari warriors began their wards and attacks against the invading Malanthi, and Kandor began to circle his chosen foe.

  “Valeth.”

  “Kandor.” The Servant rose slowly. The white-fire of Lernan had left its mark.

  They spoke no other words, but they had no need to. They were Servant of Light against Servant of Dark—an echo of the battles that had once existed before the birth of the world. What words were necessary?

  Erin walked in a daze through her first battlefield. If any saw her at all, they didn’t seem to pay her much attention, and she was hardly aware of them in her turn. One foot followed anothe
r in a seemingly endless path to the deserted corpse of her mother. Only once before had she seen such a corpse—and then she had turned away into the comfort of shoulders that would never catch her tears again. This time she did not balk at the sight. She had to see and to memorize the exact price paid for her fear.

  She had to swear, though no one would hear the blood-oath, that she would never, never pay that price again.

  Tears would not come, but she didn’t deserve them. Let the sounds of renewed battle be her mother’s farewell; Erin knew she didn’t have the right to speak.

  But she could not stop herself from caressing the still, torn face, or trying to embrace what was left.

  She felt, rather than saw, Kandor’s approach. She heard his words, Servant-sure and calm, echo in the emptiness that was left her. He had led them to victory.

  “Come, child. This is no place for you. You are safe now.”

  She turned to him, eyes glinting like steel, knowing—hoping—that she would never be safe again.

  “She’s dead.”

  He watched her still, pale face, his eyes darkening. “Yes,” he said, bowing to the inevitable. He reached out for her with one hand. “Come, little one. There is nothing to fear, not any longer. You are safe.”

  “I’m not afraid of dying,” she replied, limply following where he led. “And I never will be again.”

  Kandor’s arm encircled her shoulders; she felt the faint pulse of his power ebbing into her and yanked herself away to continue walking with him at more of a distance.

  “Child . . .”

  She turned only once, to look again upon the body of the woman who had given so much to the warriors on the fields of battles such as this one.

  “It should have been me.” Her voice was ash.

  Kandor said nothing, and once again she felt his power come into her to try to soothe the loss she felt.

  But it was all she had left and she would not release it.

  The trunk of the Lady’s tree shimmered as Latham walked into it. The disorientation that he normally felt upon entering the Woodhall meant little to him now; it paled to insignificance beside the weight he carried.

  The long hall was completely still; no hint of fragrant breeze showed evidence of the Lady’s power. His steps, quiet as they were, echoed down the length of marble corridor.

  He could see, as he approached the conservatory, that even the plants looked wilted.

  Bright Heart, he thought as he walked past them, is all the news I bear to be bad? He ran a tired hand over his face. Only then did he realize that he was crying. Only a Servant of the Enemy could have done this to you, Kera. The best of the Malanthi would not have had the power. Only a nightwalker. He wiped his cheeks clean.

  Almost no healer died such a terrible death; the very act of injuring them allowed them to reach their power more fully. The Malanthi—the half-human, half-Servant priests of the Enemy—hadn’t the power to stop a healer from touching the Bright Heart’s blood. But a true Servant’s power would be enough.

  Ah Kera, Kera—you must have helped the war more than we knew to draw such attention to yourself. Rest in the peace of the beyond.

  The sound of his footsteps stopped completely as he struggled to compose himself. Later, much later, he would allow himself the luxury of feeling this loss.

  But now . . .

  He began to walk again, taking slow, deep breaths. He had his duty to perform. At least he was not the one to bear the news to the Grandfather, or to Telvar.

  “Lady?” He called her name once before he turned the last corner. His voice was quiet but solid.

  “Latham.”

  He took the last step and saw her back.

  “What news?”

  He opened his mouth, and for the first time in years, the words failed him completely.

  She turned then. And her expression destroyed the last vestige of control that he’d maintained.

  For her face was old, tired, and terribly vulnerable. It seemed, for an instant, that the Light of God had never graced it; that the Blood of the Bright Heart had never flowed through it. And her eyes, which were always living emeralds, were now only cold, large stones. She stared almost helplessly at him, her arms spun tightly around her like translucent web.

  She knows, he thought. Somehow, she knows. And for the first time in his life, as he looked at her, he saw her as Servant of the Light—ageless and immortal. It was odd to think of her so only now that she displayed a weakness that might barely have been hinted at.

  He felt a cold anguish well up in him.

  She knows. He let those words sink in, but this time, instead of turning away from them as he had for fifteen years, he pushed them forward that one logical step—he was, after all, line scholar.

  She knew.

  Five years she had spent in spell trance. Five years, following futures that only she could follow; pushing aside a veil that only the Servants dared touch.

  How many other deaths did you see, Lady? How many other lives might we have saved?

  How could you sacrifice your own daughter?

  And watching him, the Lady of Elliath saw that he knew. She drew herself up, calling upon the remnants of her power to provide her with some ragged comfort and some hint of the glory that the Lernari had always associated with her.

  It would not come.

  Lernan, God, I have given you everything. Do not desert me now.

  And a hint of His light, a finger of His power, reached out to embrace her.

  She faced Latham squarely.

  “Latham. What brings you?”

  He heard her words, but could not answer her. Instead he turned, showing her the circle that emblazoned the gray of his back.

  The Lady of Elliath watched him walk away.

  Is this all? she thought bitterly. She was too tired to panic. Have I revealed what I dare not reveal? Have I spoken wordlessly of what I dared not speak? Is all my pain to serve no point?

  She called him again, but he did not halt.

  She set her power aside wearily and began to follow. So be it, then. Did I show no grief or pain in the future?

  “Latham!” The voice that came from her throat startled her. It was a human voice, mortal.

  Where the Light could not touch him, this simple thing could. He stopped and, after a shaky second, turned to face her.

  She spoke no words as she approached him. She made no plea, not even to ask for his trust or his silence.

  And because she did not, he knew he would give her both. For she was the Lady of Elliath, the strongest of all Servants of the Light. Darkness did not—could not—mar her.

  He had only part of her blood—the barest hint of Light. He was mortal and caught by mortal traps. If for Lernan’s sake she had done nothing, there had to be a reason for it. If she had forced herself to be silent all this time, it was for the good of the Bright Heart.

  It had to be.

  “Lady,” he said softly.

  She shook her head in denial—of what he could never be certain.

  There was so much that he wanted to ask her.

  She shook her head again, forestalling him.

  “Latham, what if you knew that there was only one hope to end this eternal war? What would you give up for that hope?”

  “Anything,” he said automatically. But the word hung tautly between them, and he stiffened as if feeling its significance truly for the first time.

  “And what if you knew that that hope was no certainty, that you were grasping at a slim chance that you could not control? What would you give up then?”

  This time he did not answer. Instead he stared across at her bowed head.

  “And what if you knew all this, but knew also that to speak of it fully would doom the hope?”

  He was scholar, master scholar of Elliath. The questions that he longed to ask still swirled around his mind chaotically. He contained them, for he knew what his answer to her question must be.

  “Lady, I would w
ant to take that hope if that was all I would be given. At any price.” He took a deep breath and released it shakily, thinking of Kerlinda. Thinking of the manner of the death she had gone to, untrained. “But I would not have the strength. I am mortal, with all that condition entails.”

  She looked up, and he saw the blackness of despair shroud her features with loss and guilt.

  “I do not believe I will ever be truly immortal again.”

  Without knowing why, he reached for her, his arms the stronger of the two for the first time in any memory. He held her, and she allowed herself to mourn as a mother does for the death of a child.

  This time, Erin was allowed to be present at the ceremony of departure in the somber circle of the vaulted Great Hall. Adults stood on all sides, wearing their grays and their circles and their sorrow equally. Belfas stood beside her and cried all the tears that he knew she would not.

  Instead of sneaking into the hall as she had for the other ceremony, she had walked to the front of the gathering. No gray for her, no silver, just the plain brown robes of a student in training. She had never felt so out of place. People made way for her, their expressions a mingling of bitter grief and sympathy.

  Kerlinda was given the warrior’s departure; her coffin was surrounded by warrior-priests, arms held at ready.

  Telvar had asked Erin if she would like to stand. She had refused. If she had not had the strength to stand by her mother when her mother was alive, she had no right to stand by her corpse in any position of honor.

  The Lady of Elliath presided over this departure, as she had done over all. But the words that were spoken by her and the Grandfather flitted by Erin’s ears without ever touching them. Everything was a dim, gray blur.

  She approached the coffin once and looked at what remained of her mother in cold, stiff silence.

  I will never forget you.

  She did not touch the body.

  After the ceremony many people, some that she recognized vaguely and some that she knew well, came up to her to offer her their sympathy. They couldn’t know that each word they spoke cut her sharply.