The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

  Despite himself, Ringil felt a faint shudder walk up his spine.

  If the construction of the sword was less than sane, then what had been done with the weapon seemed wholly appropriate. It was strapped up in the casket like some lunatic in an asylum chair—stained leather bandaging wrapped tightly around the blade over and over, crisscrossing itself up and down like an incessantly made argument, shrouding the steel almost entirely from guard to tip except where the bluish edge had frayed through and showed like a glimpse of living bone in a wound. And all along the inner surfaces of the casket, Gil saw runes scratched roughly into the wood. He couldn’t read them, but what faint whispering traces of the ikinri ‘ska were still open to him hissed in disapproval as he stared.

  “Four and a half thousand years it has lain hidden,” Risgillen said quietly. “But for your blundering expedition to the Hironish isles, the news of your confused and tangled goals, it might lie hidden still. We might never have remembered what was lost, nor understood the chance we now had. But we snatched it away in time, and brought it home. And then we sent for you as well, and you came. Welcome to your end, Ringil Eskiath. Welcome to your doom.”

  She nodded at Atalmire again.

  The storm-caller uttered a series of sibilant phrases and Ringil felt the hairs on the back of his neck waft slowly erect. Inside the casket, the bandaging around the blade began to twist and rub against the blade edge, slicing itself apart, writhing like a nest of worms. It made a soft, insistent sound like a barber’s razor on the strop. And down at the pommel end, the sword’s coiled and sharpened tang moved, bent as supple as a silk cord, lifted its sharpened end like a snake, swaying and seeking. He thought he heard a faint, rising whine in the air.

  Risgillen smiled and gestured. “There. It has your scent.”

  Desperately, he reached for the power he’d owned. Felt it ooze fractionally forth, felt Atalmire’s glamour wipe it away again like a tavern boy’s cloth. Risgillen took his right arm and he could do nothing to prevent her.

  “Come,” she said warmly. “It’s time. Give me your hand.”

  In the casket, the sword was almost free of its bindings. The last few scraps of bandaging fell away, the blade itself was twisting slightly back and forth now, as if itching to be free. Atalmire reached in carefully and took it in reverent hands, lifted it out. He angled the pommel end upward, toward Ringil’s face, and for a moment the flexing, coiling sharpened tang looked as if it might dart in and stab at eye or mouth. Ringil flinched—he couldn’t help it. His head barely moved on his neck, the rest of his body was a locked catalogue of straining muscles. He thrashed for a grip on the ikinri ‘ska, found nothing he could use. Risgillen smiled again, but absently now, gone into some transport of ecstasy at what she was about to do.

  She raised his hand slowly to meet the questing tang.

  “What exactly is going on here?”

  Like some violent and irritable schoolmaster, stumbling on mischief cooked up by his errant pupils—the Helmsman Anasharal, back in his ear as if it had never been away. Ringil made a tight, convulsive sound, somewhere between laughter and tears.

  “You’re … a little late, Helmsman.”

  But he saw an alarmed look pass between Atalmire and Risgillen. Thought the dwenda’s grip on his arm slackened just a fraction …

  “Oh, indeed,” said Anasharal combatively, and it dawned on Ringil that the Helmsman was not speaking for him alone. Its voice echoed through the whole chamber now, sent dwenda heads craning and peering for its source. A deep, new timbre to the avuncular edge-of-asylum-madness tones, as they tolled in the heights of Findrich’s vaulted, stained glass roof. “Clan Illwrack, is it? Well, you lot haven’t changed much in five thousand years, have you?”

  Snapped exchange between Risgillen and the storm-caller—he understood none of it. But he saw something new in their faces, and it looked a lot like fear.

  “Still trying to get humans to do your dirty work for you, eh? Still not up to the task of learning the way of mortal muck yourselves?”

  He saw Atalmire let go of the sword, drop it back into its casket. Raise crook-fingered hands to carve some sequence of glyphs in the air, understood that whatever fragile balance had existed in this space was now at risk—

  Fragile.

  Like a lightning bolt into his face, splitting his skull above one eye.

  “Call yourselves an Elder Race?” The Helmsman, still declaiming somewhere over his head, fading out as he grabbed after this other thing, whatever it was. “Geriatric race is more like it. I have to wonder. Or, no, maybe you’re just not very clever, especially when it comes to …”

  Despite the merroigai’s good opinion, I find you fragile, hero. Very fragile.

  And abruptly, memory comes roaring in at him. Will not be fended off. Tears aside the curtain he’s placed so carefully in its way. High st—

  No! Fragile!

  He’s stumbling, through confining gloom toward a blur of gray light, bracing himself on the sides of the defile to stay upright. Horror behind him, horror coursing through his veins. The glyphs are in him. He’s been somewhere, done something, had something done to him, something so intimate and dark that trying to think about it puts cold sweat on his skin and in his hair …

  High stone al—

  Easy there, hero, let’s leave that alone, shall we?

  The gray light is stronger now, he sees defined edges and a narrow gap. He ups his pace, falling forward against the bracing of his hands, have to get out, get out, get back to H—

  High stone altar, somewhere—

  Hjel, back to Hjel. The sides of the cleft run out on either side of him and he’s back in the open air, he all but falls from the abrupt lack of support. Only Hjel’s sudden, wiry grip on his arm keeps him from crumpling to the ground.

  Gil! The dispossessed prince is shouting at him, seemingly across vast distance. Gil! What happened, did you—

  I’m fine, I’m fine, he keeps babbling it, trying to make it true. I’m fine.

  But he’s not, he’s not fine, because—

  No!

  Because—

  Fragile. He’s weeping it now, because—

  On a high stone altar, somewhere out on an endless empty plain, where he lies stripped back to a nakedness he hadn’t known was possible, where a nameless blurred and writhing shape leans over him, reaches in, changes him with clawed limbs and cold, unmerciful tools, while beyond, in every direction, the plain is filled with a horde of the same writhing, claw-limbed shapes, clambering over each other to get closer and see what’s being done, and the sky above is filled with a vast shrieking, like the torture of an entire living, feeling universe torn apart …

  The dark defiles.

  They lead here, all of them. This is where they empty out, and he chose to follow them to their end. He was not brought here, he asked to come.

  The ikinri ‘ska.

  Stitched into him as he’s remade, as the whole world was once remade by those same incessant, obsessive claw-limbed seamstresses, for no better reason than because they happened by and it needed to be done …

  He turns and runs, flees from the memory, but it sits there on his shoulder, murmuring in his ear as he—

  —slammed back to the chamber in Etterkal, the dwenda in dismay and disarray before Anasharal’s hectoring tones, the glamour loosened, slipped by vital inches—

  He reaches now for the ikinri ‘ska, into the place it really lives, drags it down into the real world and the pit of his stomach and—

  Vomited it up.

  Atalmire spun on him, somehow alerted, binding up the glamour, grip tightening all over again, defending himself and his troops. Gil ignores the defence, grinning, doesn’t bother fighting, reaches down instead …

  Smashed the stone honeycomb floor apart under his feet, under theirs. Shattered its delicate latticework integrity, dropped them all through it and into the space beneath.

  The floor below was storage, a long hall stacked hi
gh with crates for some trade less obnoxious than Etterkal’s human staple. At some level, he or maybe the ikinri ‘ska must have known. The shattered chunks of flooring crashed down on top of it all, smashed the top layer of crates open, let loose big, choking clouds of dust and—by the taste of it—spices. Gil felt the dwenda glamour evaporate as Atalmire lost his grip entirely. He stumbled to his feet on an uneven, shifting surface, broad fragments of flooring sunk at crazy angles into the wreckage of shattered crates. He found the Ravensfriend, unaccountably in his hand.

  “Imperials!” He bawled it, coughing amid the spice. “Imperials! Rally to me!”

  A figure stumbled into him from behind and he spun. Atalmire, off-balance and choking. He grunted, snagged a hand in the dwenda’s hair, yanked it hard toward him.

  “C’mere, you fuck.”

  He swung the Ravensfriend in a clumsy hacking blow. The Kiriath steel went deep into the storm-caller’s side, and he screamed, tried to flail free of Ringil’s grip on his hair. Gil tore the sword loose and hacked again, another brutal gash—he felt it snap through ribs this time, get into the chest cavity beyond. Flaring alien reek of the dwenda’s blood, mingling with the spice. Atalmire’s scream scaled to a wild shriek. He beat at Ringil with his fists, trying to get loose. Gil let go his grip on the dwenda’s hair, shoved the Atalmire away from him and off the blade. The storm-caller collapsed on the rubble. Ringil took a moment to settle his footing.

  “Guess we won’t be fixing that leg of yours after all.”

  Atalmire tried to get up, gagging hoarsely. He made it to his knees. Ringil swung again, better targeting this time. The storm-caller got one desperate fending hand up and the Ravensfriend sliced right through it, took fingers off like severed twigs, chopped deep into the face behind. Atalmire made a trapped, glutinous noise, lips bisected at an angle by the Kiriath blade. Blood foamed out of his mouth, around the intruding steel. He shuddered like a man taken by a fit.

  Ringil lifted a boot, balancing with care, put it against Atalmire’s chest, trod down, and pulled the Ravensfriend free. The storm-caller hit the rubble like a felled tree, pitch eyes staring at nothing at all. Gil felt little scribbles of the glamour’s power shriveling away in the space around the dwenda’s body as he died. He felt the ikinri ‘ska rush greedily in to fill the gap it left—endless, shapeless force, like the sea running and breaking, slopping and lapping on the rocks at the Dark Queen’s feet. He gathered it to him like armor, cast about in the chaos, eyes starting to smart from whatever was in the spices. He raised the Kiriath blade high.

  “Risgillen!” He bawled it at the shattered roof, deep, grinding rage unleashed. “Don’t get killed on me now, bitch! I want your fucking heart!”

  Around him on the uncertain footing, imperials and dwenda grappled in the slowly settling clouds of spice, like figures in some murky seabed dream. He tipped back his head, summoned the ikinri ‘ska, opened himself to it like a canal sluice, lashed out with its trailing, lightning-strike spikes. He sent it slithering and hissing into every dwenda head it could find. Instinctive grasp of what would work, coming to hand as unerringly as the grip of the Ravensfriend.

  The Black Folk are here! They have loosed the dark souls of apes and turned them against you! You have heard the Warhelm’s voice! Your doom is Kiriath steel!

  He felt the strike go home—convulsive shock as it hit the reeling Aldrain minds around him. He unsheathed a grin and strode in among them, seeking, grabbing, chopping hamstring strokes, spine-severing slices into unguarded backs—

  “Risgillen? Where are you, Risgillen?”

  —trying with every savage blow to drive out the memory of that high stone altar and what had happened there. He peeled the dwenda off his men, he maimed and crippled them and left them lying in agony for the imperials to finish. He peered through tearing eyes into every dwenda face as they fell, but none were Risgillen. He—

  “Ringil! Ringil!”

  A hand on his shoulder, shaking him. Gil swung blindly about and Klithren of Hinerion stepped deftly into the move, blocked the blow, arm to locked-up arm.

  “It’s done!” he shouted into Gil’s face. “Stand down, it’s done! It’s over. We took them.”

  “We … ?” Ringil tried to piece the words together, tried to make sense.

  “We took them down. The Aldrain. Look.” He waved an arm through the last of the settling spice dust. Not a struggling figure to be seen, just the imperials bent with vengeful blades over the last few injured dwenda where they lay. “All of them. It’s over.”

  Ringil coughed on something that might have been a laugh. Klithren nodded. His eyes were streaming, his face was clogged with sweat and yellow powder and the spice-reeking blood of the dwenda. But he was grinning. He gestured up at the ceiling, the ragged fifty-foot hole where the honeycombed stone had come crashing down.

  “You do that?”

  Ringil wiped at his eyes. “Yeah, had to distract them.”

  “Some fucking distraction, eh?”

  “Seemed to work.” He stared at the tear-dampened powder caked on his fingers, as if it were some vital clue. “You know what this is?”

  Klithren ran his tongue along his upper lip, tasted. “Chili powder, right?”

  “Yeah, and the rest. What are you using for taste buds? There’s turmeric in there. Ginger. Ground coriander. This is a Yhelteth curry blend.”

  The mercenary chuckled. “Secret weapon from the imperial south, eh? If you can’t meet ’em blade for blade, just choke ’em and blind ’em first.”

  “Something like that.” Ringil looked around again, sobering. “You find me that bitch Risgillen’s body, though. I want her twice as dead as the others, I want her fucking heart.”

  “Don;t you worry—if she’s down here, she’s done.”

  “Yeah, well. Believe it when I see it. How many did we lose?”

  “Haven’t done the count yet.” A grimace on the scarred freebooter face. “Looks like about half to me.”

  “Do the count. And find Findrich too, he’s got to be down here somewhere. We still have to—”

  “My lord! Come quick!”

  One of the Throne Eternal, voice urgent, and Ringil’s stomach dropped out at the sound. He turned to face the man, already knowing, reading it there in the strained features before the imperial could speak again.

  “It’s the captain, my lord.”

  Gil made his face a mask. “How bad?”

  The Throne Eternal’s face alone would have been answer enough. “He’s asking for you, my lord. There’s not much left.”

  NOYAL RAKAN LAY PROPPED UP AGAINST THE SHATTERED REMNANTS OF A crate, shivering and bloodied from the chest down, blood running out of him and clotting in the drifts of spice he lay on. But he smiled through his clenched teeth when he saw Ringil approach.

  “Con—” A cough racked him and he had to start again, voice a whisper. “Congratulations … on your victory, my lord. The day is yours.”

  “Captain.” Ringil knelt at his side, everything in him screaming against the formality. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  Rakan shook his head, shivering violently. They’d made him as comfortable as they could, put a rolled cloak under his head for a pillow, wrapped another about him for a blanket. But the blood would not be stopped; it soaked steadily through the cloak, spread in the spice beneath him, and his face had gone the dirty yellow of old parchment.

  “Give me … your hand,” he mumbled, groping with his own.

  Ringil grabbed it, clasped it tight. “There. Can you feel that?”

  “Yeah.” Faintly, voice still trembling. “Feels … feels hard. Good and hard.”

  Wavering triumph in his smile—tables finally turned, nothing to lose now, his turn to make the jokes with double meanings. Ringil pressed his lips together, made a small noise through them. He put his other hand on Rakan’s, made a double clasp, as if he could cup in the Throne Eternal’s ebbing life. Rakan nodded jerkily.

  “They fall
down just like men,” he husked. “Good advice, my lord. I have … put it to some good use, I think.”

  A weak gesture with his free hand, perhaps intended to indicate the various slaughtered dwenda lying around them. He coughed again, and blood flecked his lips. A spasm of pain twisted his features, and when it passed, there was something almost pleading in his eyes.

  “But they’re fast, Gil. They’re so fucking fast.”

  “I know.” Clenching his fists around the dying man’s hand. “I know they are.”

  “I tried … I was … too many of them.” More coughing, wet and gurgling now. “I’m sorry, my lord. You’ll have to … have to go on alone now.”

  “It’s all right,” said Gil numbly. “It’s all right.”

  Rakan spat out blood. His eyes rolled about, taking in the silently watching men. He mustered breath. “Come … closer. I have … some private … instructions to pass on.”

  Ringil leaned in and placed his head next to Rakan’s. Rasp of stubble on stubble, the press of the Throne Eternal’s cheek to his own. Rakan made a convulsive sobbing sound. Ringil let go his hand, cupped his face.

  “Talk to me,” he murmured. “I’m here.”

  “Don’t … trust the iron demon, Gil.” The Throne Eternal’s voice was down to a desperate, throaty hiss. Ringil could feel him pouring the last dregs of his strength into it. “It has no love for us … nor good intentions. It lies to us all. It plots … treachery, to bring down everything good. I love … the lady Archeth. But she is no empress.”

  “I know that, Noy. And she knows it, too.” He squeezed his eyes tight shut for a second, opened them again on fresh tears. This motherfucking spice. He planted a kiss on the other man’s cheek. “Noy, the throne is safe. Let go. Take your ease.”