Into the Dark Lands

by Michelle Sagara

  What do you want from me? Erin glanced from side to side at the escort she had been given: six soldiers, all without the taint of blood that marked the Malanthi. Their black surcoats were torn and dirty, but no hint of red embroidery scarred their surface. They would not meet her eyes. The day the march began, one had leered at her, fondling her right breast between callused fingers. He was no longer with her, nor with the army at all. She shuddered, remembering the haze of shadow that had torn through him before she could even react. At least there had been no pain-call.

  No one bothered her now.

  During the day the troops slept, and during the night they marched. These were the orders of the nightwalker and none sought to disobey them. It lengthened the march, but their lives were worth the extra time.

  What do you want?

  Two days had passed, but she was still not used to walking like this, a refugee in the shadows of tree, stone, and night.

  She thought of her failure, and it hurt. Is that what this is about? Am I not even enough of a threat to merit death?

  But she walked free.

  Every so often she would look at the pale thinness of her wrists and wonder. No other prisoners had been taken by this army.

  She walked free, under oath.

  She walked under moontouch and starlight, discovering the way darkness transformed the landscape; she walked behind a rank of torches that flickered over helmed and unhelmed head alike, bringing into relief the traces of sweat and dirt that lingered on grim faces. She walked with her own thoughts as company, conversing with voices of people that she had not touched for years; advised by the dead.

  She walked free, and this simple fact confused her.

  I don’t understand it. She sent out a glimmer of white-fire; the smallest trace of her renewed power. It danced a small spiral before dimming, and she watched it, bemused. He didn’t bind me.

  You gave him your oath, Erin; until you reach the capital, you can do nothing to escape. He knows what the word of a Lernari is worth.

  Yes. But I don’t understand why it matters. He could have killed the soldier . . .

  She could still see the outline of the Servant’s body against the flat horizon; knife poised, eyes glinting steel. And beneath him, secured by Malanthi, a member of his army, a victim of his ceremony. A “deserter,” or so the hushed whisper of grim troops said.

  She could feel the smoothness of his robe beneath her fingers as she gripped his cloak, could see the dimming of his eyes as he looked down at her. All around her was sharp intake of breath followed by the tension of sudden silence and the vague hint of relief.

  “Please. Please don’t do this.”

  “I must, little Sarillorn. I need his blood to bind your power. My own I will not spend.”

  And she could see again, clearly, the odd stillness of his face as the words left his mouth, the way he looked down at her as the dagger came to rest at his side.

  She said, “Please, you don’t need to do this, not because of me.”

  He said, “The blood of this ‘innocent’ will not stain your hands.” Speaking, he reached over and grasped the hands he mentioned in one of his own. They were stiff and cold to the touch. “It is not your doing, if that is what troubles you. Leave, now.” He had released her, assured of her compliance. She had stumbled back, but not far enough.

  “No.” It was important to her, more so because she was surrounded by her enemies.

  “Sarillorn—”

  “No. Please, if it’s my power you’re afraid of, I won’t use it. If it’s a life you want, take mine.”

  “You have already bargained your life to me; it is no longer yours to offer.” But he made no move to continue. He stood, unnaturally still, his eyes opaque. It was odd; she had expected always to see the redness burning in them.

  “I—I will give you my word, as the Sarillorn of Elliath of Lernan. I will bind myself as effectively as you could bind my power.” She knew none of the fear that the others knew; she was not afraid of the death he could offer. Reaching out, her hands had found his cloak, her fingers grasping it as if to shake his implacability.

  And she was left with the feel of the dagger as he placed it, handle first, in the palm he pulled loose from his cloak.

  “I accept.”

  It still surprised her as she dwelled on it. She had been speechless with a peculiar shock, unable to say anything as he had walked away from her, leaving her free.

  Free.

  She had helped the shaking man to his feet, but her eyes had followed only the Servant’s departure.

  Why am I still alive? What game are you playing?

  “Does something trouble you, Sarillorn?” His voice, as always, came out of the night with no warning.

  She started slightly before glancing at him from the corner of her eye. “No.”

  He fell into step beside her, his feet avoiding the missteps that she made. “You are very quiet.”

  She said nothing.

  He looked down at her. Even though she kept her word and used none of her power, he could see the faint glimmer of light that surrounded her face and hair.

  She was his enemy, by birth and by taint.

  He knew a moment’s urge to destroy her completely, but he fought it. Her destruction would tell him nothing at all about the strange quality that imbued her life, the odd light that had so captivated him that she had survived his touch till morning.

  For a moment, as he contemplated her silent profile, he saw that light again, and he called it beautiful.

  What have you done to me, Sarillorn? Almost, he reached out to touch her, but he knew that she would start or shy away, so he kept his hand still. Even this was strange, stranger than she could know, for anything that he wanted had always been his.

  Perhaps that was because his desires had always been simple ones, and his strength alone enough to grant them.

  She was not afraid of him. He, the greatest of her enemies but one, engendered no fear. How odd.

  He knew that he should leave, but could not bring himself to do it. What have you done?

  We are enemies, yes. But still . . .

  He gave an elegant shrug and continued to walk by her side as the army moved on its rough path through forested hills in a procession of torchlight and heavy-footed silence. He found himself asking of her life in Elliath—questions that no Lernari would ever answer. Nor did she prove an exception. Still he could not leave.

  Instead, he began to tell her of Rennath, the heart of the empire that he was building. He described its spirals and towers; its streets and the way they looked when shrouded with evening mist; its dark cathedrals, and the worshipers they gathered when the moon waned. He spoke of the shadows that it housed when day lingered, and the way those shadows traced their graying fingers over the landscape. He told her how he closed those fingers when he walked the streets of the city—his city.

  In confusion, Erin listened to the rise and fall of his voice. She would not look at him, but she could not look completely away, nor stop his words from touching her. She heard beneath them a cold and deathly silence, and beneath that something she did not want to identify. It was as if he spoke a eulogy over the corpse of a worthy enemy at last defeated in battle; it had the same exultation of victory, the same emptiness of purpose, that the born warrior knew.

  He watched her as he played with the words, awaiting a response that never came. He could see the lines of her face; they spoke of confusion and weariness beneath the invisible cage that she had chosen to wear. He continued to speak.

  She listened, losing the thread of his words to their smooth cadence. She tried to capture the spirit behind them; to appreciate for an instant the beauty of the icy, chill world he described. For a moment she stood on the outer edge of Rennath, a distant observer. The twin spires of the city cast their delicate shadows along her face, and she could nearly feel the gentle way they called her into the twilight. She could almost understand his dark pride then, for she cou
ld perceive beauty in the cold elegance of his words: the beauty of frost on windows in winter. She turned to face him for the first time in the evening, half wanting to share her thought.

  Then he began to speak of something else. The words penetrated the shroud of fragile image Erin had constructed, shattering it.

  For he spoke of the subjugation and enslavement of the people of Kerwin, the small kingdom the Malanthi had conquered a decade ago. In a voice full of the same pride with which he had spoken of Rennath, he described the conditions of their life and the reasons he believed they would never break free of them. As if unfolding the technique behind a much-loved piece of art, he spoke of their fragmentation and the way they had been thinly spread across the country to labor for the rest of their lives without glint of hope at the whim of the church-born nobility. He told her of how the use of their language had been made a crime punishable by death, most often the slow death of close relatives or friends. In time, without language or countrymen, they would forget that they had ever known a different life. They would be completely his.

  And as Erin listened, each word formed the link of a familiar chain. A wave of revulsion and anger welled up from her and she grasped it gratefully. She cast off the confusion that had accompanied her for the last few days, remembering clearly who she was, and who he was.

  He did not notice. In the same tone, the same voice, he continued to speak, only this time more theoretically. Like a surgeon, he described the fragile points of a culture—a king, the church, or the popular heroes; how, if careful, one could apply specific pressure, or pain, and the whole structure would collapse. He smiled quietly as he spoke of how those who remained would seek out some inspiration, some guidance, some God when the strongest among them had failed; or better, how many would feel, without knowing how it ran their lives, that they somehow merited the treatment they received after their defeat.

  Under the hail of his words, the night grew darker and grimmer. Erin walked under the slowly rising heat of anger; her eyes followed the road a few inches away from the tips of her feet. He talked on; and this time, when his words ran together and she lost the text of their meaning, she felt overwhelmed by the destruction inherent in the quiet pride of his voice. For that was all she could feel: his quiet, strong confidence. There was no gloating, no intent to cause her added pain—this she would have understood and, in some perverse way, readily accepted.

  He was speaking to her as if she understood the enjoyment he had at the fruits of his labor, as if she were his equal.

  Unaccountably she was reminded of the way children would often come to her with things they found joy in: a kitten, a painted toy, or a new story. They would carry these things in their hearts or hands, their eyes shining with a shy pride and an open desire to share them.

  Her head snapped up and glanced off the endless line of men before her. She could see in them all that the Servant had spoken of: the fear they fought for, or because of, and the way the night gathered them up and held them out in the palm of the Servant’s hand.

  With a small, inarticulate cry she stopped short and swung round, bringing her hand up quickly enough to slap the side of the Servant’s face. The words stopped; that was good. Without waiting for a response, she turned and darted off the road, into the waiting darkness of trees.

  Low branches stung her cheek and brow as she ran through them; they clung to her hair and the collar of her robe as if animated with a desire to stop her. The moon, a pale sliver of silver on black, wavered before her in an odd sort of dance. She blinked, and its glow became static as tears slid down her cheeks.

  Her fingers came up to touch them.

  I’m crying, she thought, numbly. Why?

  The hint of an answer formed at the back of her mind, and she began to run again. Running was good; the shock of her feet hitting the ground kept thought at bay. She fought to keep her breathing clean and even.

  How far can you run, Sarillorn?

  The Servant stood out of the reach of the light, in the cover of a large tree. The road was some distance behind—not that it mattered; the army had stopped to wait for his return. He was slightly vexed; the nature of her sudden departure had surprised him. The touch of her hand on his cheek lingered—an insult that no other mortal would survive. But the Sarillorn . . .

  He could not see her, but the sound of her progress was clear; in the distance she was snapping dry branches. He followed her, keeping a constant distance between them. Twice she slowed, but as he approached, she began to surge forward again. The third time she slowed he could hear the halting shuffle of her feet as she came, at last, to a stop. He walked silently, feet barely touching the ground, until he could see her.

  She sat curled against the side of a tree, head buried in the arms she had wrapped around her shoulders. Too tired for tears, but not for thought; her body’s momentary stillness let thought have free rein.

  He had spoken to her of the empire he was building, of people as the mortar that held it together, crushed between different deaths. His voice had held such pride, such quiet pleasure—as if he were a child, his dream clutched in deathly, orphan hands, the mask of his face revealing death, the destruction of her village, the corpses of her people strewn along the streets beneath his watchful eye.

  His eyes.

  They should have been red; they should have contained the horror of red-fire and malice.

  She began to shake, and her hands lost their grip on her shoulders and came to lie in weak fists on her lap. How dare he? How dare he come to her, to share the evil that he had done and would continue to do? How dare he remind her of—

  “Sarillorn?”

  Her head shot up. In the distance, deprived of even meager torchlight, she could discern his outline, nothing more.

  And in the darkness, with the night so clear and so strong, he could make out the throbbing pulse of her lifeblood, and the frail chain of light that bound it. He was surprised; he recognized the light easily and knew that it should not have been visible to him, not when he was separate. He started forward, drawn to it, but stopped as it began to dim.

  Erin stood in one fluid motion. Her face, every detail plain to his eyes, was a mixture of rage and guilt. A familiar look, but one he’d not yet seen her features take. He took a step back. She stood very still; only her hands trembled.

  Very stiffly he said, “I meant you no harm.” Involuntarily he reached out as the light in her began to gray.

  Erin stepped forward, neatly avoiding his outstretched arm. Her mouth opened silently as she stared at him, unseeing. Her fist rose in an awkward swing and crashed into his waiting hands. What started as a snarl in the back of her throat came out a whimper; she pulled against the vise that held her. Her foot lashed out, connecting with his shins. He lifted her off the ground by the arms, reducing the force her legs could muster. She met his eyes, expecting them to be red, hoping for rage or anger at the least, and, beyond that, hoping for victory, threat, or death. She looked to see the familiar image that had haunted her dreams, that had come so close to touching her the night that her mother had died. She hoped finally to see the curved claw, free from Kandor’s undeserved restraint.

  He did not give her what she wanted. There was no death in the eyes that met hers; just a blackness that held some hint of confusion. He shook her, but not roughly, as she dangled in the sight of his hollow eyes.

  “Why are you looking at me like that? What do you want?” The blows of her feet grew weaker, as her voice rose. “What do you want from me?”

  He watched her face as she walked the thin line between rage and sorrow. Both were familiar; he’d seen them, caused them, many times. But from her they suddenly felt wrong.

  His answer returned in a cold whisper.

  “The light, Sarillorn. The light that grows dim.”

  His answer was wrong. She felt confusion begin to take hold of her and cast it off, shoring herself up with the full force of her fury. In a low, deep voice, she said, “You’
ll never, never do it. You’ll never have your empire, or spread the disease of your city into my lands. The Lernari are ranged against you; the Servants of Lernan stand with us. We’ll never rest while you rule a single life!”

  He laughed. His hands bit into her flesh.

  Now. Now . . . She pulled her head around and down to meet his eyes. The laugh died—and so did a part of Erin.

  “Little Sarillorn, what do you want from me?”

  Shaking, she replied, “Your death.” But her words were empty, the rage that should have been in them misplaced. He set her down on legs that would not hold her. They crumpled, and she felt the touch of solid earth beneath her hands and the touch of tears that Telvar would have despised on her cheeks.

  His fingers pulled her chin up as he knelt beside her on the ground. “Sarillorn. I meant you no harm.”

  “Don’t.”

  He did not release her, nor did his words. “I meant only for you to understand the things I wish to create out of the pain and bloodshed you have been party to. I meant for you to see that there is, in my goal, more than just chaos and death, more than the darkness of the first Awakening.”

  “Don’t!”

  She pulled her chin away and he felt the touch of water. He lifted his fingers briefly to his mouth, stopped, and looked down at her more closely. In a voice that held wonder, he said, “Sarillorn? Sarillorn, I have hurt you.”

  Like a child. She tried to stop the tears before his hand could catch them, before he could drink them in like the lifeblood they were.

  Oh, Telvar, you never warned me of this.

  The Lady’s Woodhall echoed the Lady of Elliath’s words. Nothing is unalloyed, Sarillorn.

  Stefanos lifted her gently off the ground. She tried once, feebly, to release herself from the tangle of his arms.

  But he would not let go; for watching her he had seen some subtle change. Rage had fled, and beneath the pain she expressed, the bands of her light were glowing faintly but surely. As he held her, as she pressed against him, tears mingled with the silk of his clothing, he reached out to touch them, to marvel anew at the foreign feel of them and the way they slipped so easily from his grasp.