Archmyr closed his eyes and reopened them. No weapon needed. He set his shovel down against a nearby table.
“Do you know who I am?”
“No...” the lad stammered.
“I’m the deadliest thing in the world, far as you’re concerned.”
“What do you mean? Where’s Ande?”
He grinned. “I’m once dead, twice alive, a killer of more men than you’ve ever met in your brief little life. Drop the blade, boy. There’s no swordsman alive who can cut me, no ten who might duel me without dying.”
The lad believed him. His sword clattered to the floor. “Did you hurt her?”
“I’ve no interest in killing anyone today. Give me what I want, and you’ll keep your head.”
“Wait…” The young man shivered. “I know who you are. You’re him, the one Ande warned me of. ‘The world’s most dangerous swordsman,’ she said. You’re here for the Undergrave. I should’ve known.”
It was a confusing thing to hear. Half-flattered, he arched one eyebrow. Then it struck him. The boy doesn’t know me. He speaks of ‘Tulu’s Master. They met, the girl and the Master, so said the maggot.
“World’s most dangerous swordsman,” he snorted. “Aye, you have at least that much right.”
The young man, his face still red from sleep, backed another step away. “What do you mean?” His voice rattled in his chest.
Archmyr rolled his shoulders. “The Master might think highly of himself, but come the end of days it’s me who’ll stand alone. When I perished in the Moor’s Eye garden, it was only because I allowed it. As for the witch-girl’s words, it’s not of me she speaks of. It’s the Master, the Sleeper, so they call him. The world’s second-best swordsman.”
“Then who are you?” The lad steadied himself. “How’d you find us here?”
He claimed the room’s center. From here many things were visible: two bedrolls piled high with blankets, a table covered with twigs and small stones, a strand of smoked salmon dangling from the far corner wall, a brace of rabbits near the fire. He surveyed the room from cranny to cranny, from corner to dusty corner, but failed to find what he was looking for. The prize. Where is it?
“Who I am doesn’t matter.” His jaw tightened. “Just tell me where it is.”
“Where what is?” The lad’s eyes widened.
“The book. Bound in skin. Ten pages, indestructible, knit with the language of the dead. Seems a hard thing to lose, this book. So I’ll ask again; where is it?”
Fear and recognition flashed like lightning in the lad’s eyes. “Her diary…” he blurted. “She keeps the black book with her diary. She thinks I don’t notice. I pretend not to, but I’ve seen it.”
“Where then?” His patience dwindled. “Quickly now. If she comes back before I have it, I’m afraid you’ll have to see the worst side of me.”
The young man nervously raised his finger. He pointed to the darkest corner of the room, the one spot the hearth’s firelight failed to illuminate. There sat a basket, and beneath the basket, a weathered satchel.
Archmyr strode to the corner, toppled the kindling-filled basket, and went down to his knees. Time slowed in his mind. His senses sharp, his bones still aching from the cold, he reached for the satchel, half expecting it to burn his fingers.
The Master’s prize.
My sleep.
Carefully, reverentially, he reached into the satchel and tugged two books out. The first was small, a plump journal of a hundred crinkled pages, the diary.
The second was different.
Its tall, wide cover felt leathery, less like the texture of an animal’s hide, more like the stretched skin of a long-perished man. It was black, so very black, and no thicker than two stacked fingers. This was the tome Unctulu had slavered at the thought of, the book believed capable of extinguishing the sun and emptying the Nether into the living world.
The Pages Black, he called it.
He ran his fingers over its cover, though he dared not look inside. With a shiver, he slid it into his pack.
The Master’s prize was claimed, and the next step in my salvation reached.
“Now then.” He rose and faced the young man, who stood right where he left him. “About this girl and her storm.”
“I swear,” the lad stammered. “I don’t know how she does it. Just take the book and leave. It’s the source of all her misery. Take it and let us be. I beg you.”
He halted in the middle of the room. He swiped his palm over his face, not realizing he had been sweating. Bemused at his body’s reaction, he shook his head and turned his coldest gaze upon the lad. “What’s your name, little soldier?” He dropped his hand to the hilt of one of his swords.
“Marid.”
“And why are you here? Here of all the places in the world?”
“For her.” Marid looked to the floor. “No other reason. I love her.”
The plan in his mind was simple: Slit poor Marid’s throat, stuff my pack full, and be rid of this place. No one will follow me in this, not even the witch.
But today it was no easy thing.
He tasted an unfamiliar feeling, a sensation sliding down his throat and into the empty pit of his stomach. It was his conscience, silent until now. He knew Marid no better than any other soul in the world, but deep within he felt he no longer had the desire to murder him. His sword-hilt felt rotten in his palm, and his instinct to kill a poisonous liquid squelching between his ribs.
“You love this girl, you say?”
“Yes.” Marid looked ashamed.
“You don’t care that the storm’s her fault? That’s she a monster?”
“She’s no such thing.” Anger flashed through Marid’s eyes. “She can’t help it. Any of it. I’d live here forever with her if I could.”
“I’ll tell you just this,” he said, striding two steps closer. “When I’m gone, when your witch-girl stumbles back into this house, you’ll leave this place.”
“Leave?”
“Sallow’s nowhere to be, my young friend, not now or ever. This book will make its way into the Master’s hands, and when that happens all the wolves of the west will come howling at your door. You’d best be gone by then. If ever you believed a stranger, now’s the time. Go from Sallow. Run from Thillria. Flee as far beyond the Graelands as you can. You’ll not regret it.”
“Why?” Marid tilted his head uncomprehendingly. “What are you saying?”
“I’m helping you,” he grunted. “It might not even matter, but even so. When They come, all lands everywhere will burn, and forests of black towers will watch the world from now until forever. But you never know. You might earn a few years’ peace until They find you.”
Marid looked all the more confused.
Archmyr said nothing more.
Swifter than a stroke of thunder, he sprung his sword from its sheath and hammered the pommel atop Marid’s head. The young man collapsed upon the floor, senseless as a dead man sleeping, a rope of blood streaming down his sparsely-bearded cheek.
Archmyr regretted hitting him so hard, though only momentarily. Any other day, any other circumstance, I’d have carved him into a thousand ribbons.
But today was different. He had a feeling, a moment’s reluctance that told him this one doesn’t deserve to die.
Bad Moon
Andelusia sensed something amiss before ever setting foot inside the cabin. Having daydreamed all the way down from Undergrave Hill, she halted five paces from the door and blinked.
Footprints in the snow? Did Marid leave? No. He always waits.
The cabin’s door was ajar, the cold wheedling its way inside. The shovel she and Marid had used so many times was missing. Quaking, she batted her frost-laden eyelashes and snapped herself back to the here and now.
Someone has been here.
Only a few breaths ago.
Her Nightness awoke.
Answering her, the clouds thickened and the wind halted dead at her back. The tumbling snow thinn
ed, the feathery flakes settling on all surfaces. In the moments after the weather’s change she felt her throat tighten, constricting her breath and causing spotted stars to twinkle at the edge of her vision.
“Marid?” She sucked in a shallow breath. “Are you home?”
Marid did not answer. She presumed the worst. Swallowing the lump in her throat and balling her fingers into a fist, she willed the Nightness to take heed. Like a flame lit in the blackest corner of the underworld, a candle’s worth of violet Ur fire sputtered to unlife within the enclosure of her hand.
“Marid?” She tightened her fist around the black flame. “You know better than to leave the door open. Say something if you are inside.”
The world fell silent. The sky dimmed, as always the Nightness causes, but she heard nothing of Marid. She sniffed the air, nervously imbibing all the scents behind the door as though she were a doe and her house the den of a slumbering beast. She smelled the hearth, crispy and hot, and the familiar musk of the meat she and Marid had cooked only last night. Nothing tasted out of place beyond the slightest tang of steel, an odor which whisked past her nose as though fleeing from the house and into the storm.
A sword.
“Marid?” she uttered his name a final time. “I am coming in.”
She stepped through the door in shadow form, her body as intangible as moonlight.
Even as a spirit she was full of fear.
Did Grim come?
One of his men?
Is Marid dead?
Her terror nearly stopped her heart in her ethereal chest. Once across the threshold, she knew at once someone uninvited had come. Food was missing, a basket was overturned, and snowy footprints marked the floor in many places. She shot hard glances to every corner, seeing and sensing everything, and then her gaze fell upon Marid.
Marid. No.
She saw his crumpled body and squeezed her fist shut, accidentally snuffing the Ur flame. Collapsing to her knees beside him, she cradled his head in her arms. His hair was matted with blood, his cheek stained as though he had slept in a puddle of crimson wine. His body was still warm, but the way he hung limply in her arms set her heart to screaming. She shook him, gently at first, then with great fervor.
“Wake up! Marid! Wake up!”
Her grief turned to rage. Her eyes swam with shadows, and for many moments she considered abandoning Marid to pursue his attacker. A war began in her heart. I could be his avenger, she imagined. To reward whoever did this with death. I could. I would. I want to.
Countless cold moments creaked by. The fire in the hearth weakened and the wind whipped the door wide open. She laid her palm against Marid’s chest, feeling every slow thump of his heart, wishing she could use the Nightness to transfer her life force to him. As she lingered, the heat in the tiny house escaped. Marid’s shallow breaths frosted, clouding the air like morning mist above wintered water.
It was in those moments, just as she thought to rise and shut the door, he awoke. His eyes were dim as though with drunkenness, his cheeks as pale as hers, but he is alive.
“Marid!” She set her palm across his forehead.
“Ande?”
She took his hand into hers and squeezed with all her might. “I thought I lost you. What happened?”
Woozy and ill-balanced, he managed to sit up. A purple knot welled from his scalp and blood trickled in a line beneath his ear, but none of death’s pallor was upon him.
“I thought…I thought I was done for,” he slurred. “Dead as dead. His sword in my skull.”
She hugged him, hard at first, then gentler. Her affections seemed a cure for him, for after a time of drifting between drowsiness and awareness, he came fully to.
“Oh, my head,” he groaned. “Hurts so bad.”
“You will live.” She propped him up. “You are not allowed to die. You know that, right?”
“I know.” He grinned feebly. “Just not sure if the man who knocked me cold does.”
Her sympathy fell from her face. Her eyes went dark. Swifter than the sword that had struck Marid down, she whipped her finger up to his lips to shush him. “Marid,” she said in her most serious tone. “Tell me what happened. Someone did this to you. What did he look like? What did he want?”
Marid put his palm to his wounded head, drawing it down with a hiss of pain. “Didn’t say his name. He was Thillrian, not so different than me, only his hair was longer and…blacker. He was wet from the snow and as pale as…as a ghost…even paler than you. I thought he was the one you told me about, but he said he wasn’t. He boasted. Said he was the most dangerous man in the world. I believed him, Ande. I should’ve shouted for you. I should’ve fought him, but I couldn’t. I was too afraid. There was something about him. He had the look of a dead man, and yet…he was alive.”
She wanted to comfort him, but her eyes betrayed her mood. The greyness of her irises faded to the grimmest shade of twilight, and the shadows in the room gathered around her. Having never witnessed the Nightness, Marid stiffened.
“Ande, what’s happening?”
“What did he want?” She narrowed her gaze. “Why was he here?”
Marid pointed to the far corner, where the basket lay overturned and her journal sat splayed on the floor. “Your book.” His finger wobbled. “Not your diary. The other book. The black one. He said it was for the Master, his Master. He emptied your satchel and took it.”
Her heart slowed to a crushing rhythm. Her insides felt twisted. Impossible, she thought. The Pages Black? Senseless to take it. Pointless without a sorcerer to read it.
“Took the Pages?” She trembled. “From me? Is he stupid? Does he not know I have already learned every Page, every sigil? Does he not realize I am the only one?”
“The only one of what?” Marid gaped.
“The only warlock,” she fumed. “Father’s gone, and all the rest are thousands of years in their graves. There is only me. Do you understand, Marid? When I find the one who took the Pages, I will smoke his insides to ash and turn his bones to blood. But not because I need to. Because I want to.”
“You do?” Marid paled.
“Oh yes, I do. The villain! The thief! How dare he? I am a fool, a bumbling idiot for letting him surprise us like this!”
Her rage grew powerful, darkening everything in the house. The windows went grey, the hearth gasped for life, and shadows danced in the air. Marid shrank from her as though she were a roaring flame and his body made straw.
She caught herself then, aware of his terror. I must seem a lunatic. She looked to her palms. Be calm, Ande. This is not who you are.
“I am sorry to let you see me like this.” Her eyes reassumed the color of the clouds. “I am angry, though I should not be.”
“What’re you going to do?” trembled Marid.
“Wait until nightfall. Take to the dark. It was not Grimwain you saw. Just one of his men. He’ll need a fire to survive. I will find his camp, burn him away, and be back with the book before dawn.”
Marid, his jaw hanging like a half-fallen drawbridge, shook his still bleeding head. “You can’t be serious. All that just for a book?”
“Oh, but it will be easy.” She grinned. “I owe it to him for hurting you.”
“No.” He smeared the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. “You can’t go.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m asking you not to. Not this thief, not tonight. He had a look about him, Ande. He’d hurt you. Please, please don’t go.”
Marid’s worry rolled from his tongue like honey and shone in his eyes like a pair of lighthouse beacons. It matters not, she thought. The Pages is mine. So grievous was the black book’s loss that she squeezed her fists until her knuckles went white, her tremors barely controlled.
“Silly Marid.” She smiled. “He cannot hurt me. He cannot touch me unless I will it. What’s more dangerous is to let him wander off untouched. Grim wants what he took. I know it. I feel it.”
But why?
/>
Marid staggered to his feet. She tried to help him, but he batted her hand away. “Ande,” he pleaded, “don’t go. Please. He warned me. He could’ve killed me, but spared me so I’d warn you. He knew about you, Ande. He called you the ‘witch-girl.’ He said you and I had to leave right away or risk being killed. He said the wolves will howl at our door, and that if we want to live much longer than today, we’ll have to flee to someplace far, far from Thillria.”
She winced, not believing him.
“I’d never lie to you.” He recognized her suspicion. “Just please promise me. Promise you won’t go after him. That book is what causes this weather, these clouds who never leave. Come away with me instead. I’ll take care of you. I’ll protect you, I promise.”
She might have laughed had he said it insincerely, but there is too much honesty in his eyes. He loves me. He means it.
And he is right about the Pages.
Turning away, she walked alone to the far end of the house. As though to squeeze the Nightness from her head, she buried her eyes beneath her palms. Visions swam in the darkness of her mind, cloud-curtained simulacrums of Marid, the storm, and all of Sallow burning in black flames.
“Marid,” she said without pulling her palms away from her face. “You do not understand. I cannot leave. I can never, not until Grimwain and I are done. You knew this.”
“But—”
“Do not try to stop me. Else I will ask you to leave, and that is not what I want.”
Defeated, Marid plopped down on his sagging, straw-stuffed bedroll. “Well and good,” he murmured. “I’ll wait for you here. Long as it takes. Please come back. I’ll die without you.”
* * *
At dusk, as Marid convalesced in a deep, murmuring slumber, Andelusia stood before the hearth, alone.
I am not a killer, she believed. But tonight I must be. Again.
The day had died quickly. The hours had rushed by, each swath of time seeming little longer than a breath. By now only the barest embers in the hearth burned on, tiny starlights reigning in the darkness.
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