The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

  Hers to kill.

  “Uhm …”

  More men hurried up. One of the auxiliaries spoke to the bowman, got a sharp retort, and turned to face her with a toothy grin.

  “He say you have this honor. You take the life.”

  She shook her head. “He brought it down. It’s his kill.”

  That went back and forth in Majak, then the auxiliary turned to her again.

  “He say he is a dead man if you not help us. You save all Skaranak here, this is your honor. They will laugh if he makes kill.”

  She glanced at the bowman’s weathered face. Steady, pale eyes looked back at her, and for a brief, dizzying moment it was like locking gazes with the Dragonbane once more. The bowman raised one clenched fist and thumped it deliberately to his heart, lifted it away again, toward her. He bowed his head.

  She nodded. “Very well. But you tell him it was work we all did, and I’m grateful for his part.”

  While the bowman and the auxiliary conferred, she levered up a leg and slid down off her mount. Went to the hoarsely snorting runner. One slowly glazing eye stared up at her, the eyelid slid weakly down and up. Without ceremony, she bent and ripped Laughing Girl’s blade up and through the throat. Stood watching as the creature thrashed feebly and bled out on the flattened grass.

  Hurrying footfalls behind her. Marnak and Kanan Shent ran up, weapons in hand and streaked with gore. The Ironbrow rather more out of breath than the young Throne Eternal at his side.

  “My lady, are you hale?”

  I feel fucking fantastic, she didn’t say, but wondered if it showed in her face anyway. Her pulse was climbing down now, but the fight had left a slow burning joy splattered all over her insides, and a keen, enduring clarity of vision at levels she’d never known she owned. The knives were still out there, murmuring quietly across the distance and in her ear. The glowing wire tracery that joined them all had faded from her sight, but it didn’t matter. She saw it clearly now. Kiriath steel—her father’s legacy; they’d come when she called. They’d be there when she had need.

  Makes you wonder, though.

  All that other Kiriath ironwork lying around back in Yhelteth—what that would do if you called on it for help?

  “I am unharmed,” she told Shent. “But I saw the camp burning. You had best attend to that.”

  “It is being done. My lady—Selak Chan is …”

  Her exultation dropped like a stone into the pit of her belly. Pivot rudely about—her shoulder caught Marnak and he staggered a bit with the force of it—scan the strewn aftermath of the fight for—

  “He is by the wagon, my lady,” Shent said quietly. “The other side. He asks for you.”

  CHAN WAS A BLOODY MESS.

  Shent briefed her in the scant moments it took them to jog hurriedly to the wagon, but still, as the gathered imperials gave ground and let her close, as she saw what had been done—she winced. She couldn’t help it.

  One of the steppe ghouls had stomped the Throne Eternal into the ground from behind; there was nothing left whole below the waist. Chan lay on his front, face turned awkwardly to the side, right cheek pressed into the flattened steppe grass. His right arm out, as if for the hilt of the sword that lay just out of reach. They hadn’t bothered trying to move him, just put a horse blanket over the damage. Another lower-ranking Eternal met her gaze as she moved in. He shook his head.

  She got down on her knees, must finally lie almost full length beside him in order to get decent eye contact.

  “Chan?”

  “Ah—my lady.” The words sobbed from him, edged with pain. “My apologies … if I do not rise. I find myself … inconvenienced.”

  “Rest easy,” she said through numb lips. “You have done enough.”

  He seemed to grit his teeth. “I have not … gotten you home, my lady. That is … failure.”

  “No—”

  “Yes!” The vehemence jerked motion into his upper body. He moaned in agony, lay panting for a moment. “I was charged … by Jhiral Khimran himself … with your protection. The Empire … needs you. This … this much … I know. You must go home.”

  “We’re all going home, Chan. You, too.”

  He managed a grimace. “I think … not.”

  She put a hesitant hand on his neck. “Listen to me, Selak Chan. You are going home, for burial with honors and a pension for what family you may have. You have my word. Whatever else, I will see this done.”

  “You are … kind, my lady. But I find … I must beg … another favor, too.”

  “Name it.”

  And realized, cursing her own stupidity, what he meant.

  Could you be any more fucking obtuse, Archidi?

  She got herself a little more upright, drew Laughing Girl from the small of her back. Some tiny part of her noticed that in her numb hurry to get to the fallen Throne Eternal, she’d sheathed her blades unwiped, and the Warhelm’s harness sheath had eaten the blood. She cleared her throat, put her free hand back on Chan’s neck. He’d seen the knife, maybe caught some reddish sunset gleam that the blade threw in his eye. He nodded at her. Tremulous attempt at a smile on his mouth.

  “Yes,” he husked. “That.”

  “Think of home,” she told him. “And you will be there.”

  He squeezed his eyes closed. She saw tears bunch on the lids and lashes. Lifted herself over him, moved her hand a fraction on his neck, put Laughing Girl’s point in place.

  Sliced down hard and fast, through neck and spine in a split second.

  Sent Selak Chan home.

  THE REST OF THE CAMP LOOKED AS IF A STORM HAD PASSED THROUGH IT—yurts unmoored, crumpled and sagging where they’d been fought around, or trampled wholly underfoot by the ghouls. In between, scorch marks blackened the ground. The flames she’d seen by the horses were exactly what they’d seemed—the nascent campfire had been kicked apart at some point in the combat and started the grass smoldering in a dozen different places, as well as setting one of the half-collapsed yurts alight. Rapid action from the Skaranak had smothered the flames, but a stink of burning hung about in the air like the ghost of smoke. On the nearest fallen yurt, a loose flap of cloth stropped insistently in a rising evening breeze, like a trapped bird trying to get free.

  And everywhere the corpses.

  Marnak found her standing amid the mess, cleaning the blade she’d used to kill Chan. She nodded absently at him and they stood side by side in silence for a while, watching the last red edge of the sun drop below the horizon.

  “All right?” she asked, when it was gone.

  He made a strangled noise in his throat.

  She stowed the knife. “Guess not, then.”

  “This …” Marnak gestured around, voice thick with fury. “That fucking shaman. I’m going to rip his balls off and feed them to him for this.”

  “You think it’s his work?”

  The Ironbrow spat. “Who else? The long runners have not come this far south in summer since my father’s time. Only sorcery could drive them out of the north right now. And who else knew to expect us here?”

  She shrugged. “Well, we are trying to kill him, too, I suppose.”

  “But he doesn’t know that yet!”

  “Perhaps he does. Man’s a sorcerer, after all.” She looked thoughtfully about at the wreckage of the camp, marveling at the sudden depths of calm she seemed to have acquired. She wondered if this was what it felt like to be Ringil Eskiath. “Or maybe he’s just looking to keep the sky iron for himself and no credit to you for bringing it in. Real question is—does he have any way to know his pet monsters fucked up here and we’re still alive?”

  For which Marnak appeared to have no ready answer. The Majak just stood there, jaw knotted up with rage, glaring at the damage around him.

  Night thickened, shrouding the corpses in soft gloom.

  “How many’d you lose?” she asked him.

  “Three.” Through his teeth. “Kinsmen all. There’s a fourth going to be crippled for life,
if he doesn’t join the others before morning. Runner picked him up, threw him across the whole fucking camp. Broke his back.”

  “And seven of mine.”

  The Ironbrow held up one tightly clenched fist, stared at it as if for useful answers. “This will be paid back in blood. The shaman and all who stand with him will fall.”

  Not the best time to point out that had been the plan all along, so she kept silent. After a couple of moments, Marnak lowered his fist and glanced sideways at her in the clogging light.

  “If we are alive,” he said gruffly. “It’s thanks to you, black woman. I saw you fight.”

  “We all fought.”

  “Not like you. Not like that. My men are saying you bear the soul of Ulna Wolfbane, some even that you are Ulna returned to us in Sky Dweller flesh.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “They have heard you fell with the comet, you see.”

  Nice work, my lord Eshen.

  “So they’ll stand with me against their own clanmaster?” she wondered.

  “Right now?” Marnak stared off into the dark. “I think they’d march with you to the gates of hell if you asked them.”

  CHAPTER 62

  e sits on a dark oak throne, facing the ocean.

  No bindings anymore, he’s loose and comfortable in his seat. The wood is worn and scooped from long use, and the scalloped curves fit him perfectly. No serpent-tanged sword trying to gouge its way inside him, no standing stones, no dwenda. The sea is calm, small waves rolling gently in and breaking knee deep. A loose breeze ruffles his hair.

  For a moment, he thinks Firfirdar has rescued him after all.

  Then he sees the Illwrack Changeling.

  It crouches in the shallows, draped in ragged black robes, so still that for a moment he mistakes it for an uncannily human-looking rock, dark and hung about with black kelp, patched with pale colonies of clams at roughly the places a face and hands might be. Then the head tilts up, glittering deep set eyes fix on him through tangled ropes of hair, a mouth like a wound opens in the pallid flesh and the gull-plaintive cry skirls out.

  It’s a sound to crack his heart across. Tears flood his eyes, he can’t help it.

  The last of the Dark Kings erupts from the water. It flounders upright. Cries out again as it staggers up the beach, drenched robes hanging heavy, weaving like a drunk. It’s a man or was once, but it’s bigger and bulkier than most men ever grow. Its eyes hold Gil’s like a lover’s and for one horrified second, he’s so overwhelmed by what lives in that gaze that he wants this ravaged thing to reach him, wants the embrace it promises.

  He’s getting to his feet, is almost out of the throne before he understands.

  It’s the ikinri ‘ska, turned against him. A depth of power he’s only recently begun to taste, and the Changeling snaps it out at him like a man crooking a finger at a tavern wench. Effortless, flowing force, unrestrained by any lack of will, by any doubt, by any remaining vestige of self. He stares into Cormorion Ilusilin Mayne’s eyes, sees nothing recognizably human there.

  The deeper into the ikinri ‘ska you go, the less it is your tool to use, the more you become its gate and channel. Hjel has told him this often enough, but until now Gil never really understood what the dispossessed prince was trying to say. He never wondered—perhaps the ikinri ‘ska would not let him wonder—where the road might end.

  He drops back into the warmed wood curves of the throne, like a puppet with strings slashed through. He grasps the oak arms with as much force as his hands will supply. Understands that whatever happens, he must not give up this seat.

  The Illwrack Changeling shrieks in thwarted rage and leaps forward, impossible speed and lift for anything so withered and torn. It lands with one knee in his chest, cold, wet hands digging like claws into his arms. Its grubby pale features loom over him, mouth working silently with effort, eyes staring blind. Its hair hangs in his face, stinks of the sea and other, less easily understood depths. The Dark King radiates a steely power Gil can find no resource against. It hauls with both hands, throws itself backward, and tears Gil from the throne as if he were a child.

  Coming home.

  Words at last, antique Myrlic, syllables Ringil can barely decode, hissing from pallid, torn up lips he sees have been bitten through, over and over again with the—understanding flashes in him—endless waiting.

  Coming home, See … The seat is mine …

  Yeah, like fuck it is.

  The two of them stumble upright together, grappling at each other like tavern brawlers desperate for a knife that’s fallen where neither of them can see it. The thing that was once Cormorion is trying to turn him, to get itself closer to the throne, and there’s precious fucking little he can do about that …

  He pulls a Majak wrestling lock. Tangles up their legs, trips the Changeling over toward him, takes the fight to the floor. They land hard on the wet sand. Forewarned, Gil only loses most of the breath in his lungs. Rolls the Dark King desperately away from the throne, worms one hand free, goes after eyes and mouth. He gets a middle finger in through the chewed up lips, hooks hard into the cheek, tries to tear it open. The Changeling flails and throws a head-butt he can’t quite dodge, he takes it on the side of the face, feels numbing pain spike down his cheek …

  Cormorion Ilusilin Mayne does something inhuman to his jaw, dislocates it sideways and catches Ringil’s finger, snags it back into the bite radius.

  Bites down hard.

  Gil screams and tries to hang on, but it’s no use. The Changeling grinds down on the trapped finger, snarling at him now, lopsidedly through the bitten lips. The pain scales upward, shouldn’t hurt this badly, it’s only a fucking finger, but it does, it’s agony and it’s spreading, drenching his whole body, draining his strength. He feels the thing that was Cormorion shift its weight, he digs in to stop the move, but his bracing leg slips, goes straight amid clods of wet sand. The Dark King gets on top of Gil, still worrying at him with its teeth, jerks its head savagely up and aside, tears off the first two flanges of the mangled finger and spits them in Ringil’s face. Grins down in triumph, bloodstained lips mouthing words again.

  Coming, See … Seethlaw, I’m coming home …

  Gil, abruptly stricken, paws at him with his maimed hand, but it’s nothing, it’s more like a hard caress. Cormorion shrugs it off, straightens up astride him. Chops him in the throat with killing force.

  Ringil lies there choking, robbed of the strength to move.

  The Dark King gets off him, panting. Staggers a little getting upright, stands at last looking down. The eyes are still blind, unreadable, but the Illwrack Changeling lifts its left hand and makes a curious, oddly gentle sketching gesture over Gil’s twitching body. He thinks he feels the pain he’s drenched in start to ebb. Feels himself beginning to ebb with it.

  A fight is coming. He remembers the crone at the Eastern Gate, snarling her prophecy at him. A battle of powers you have not yet seen. A battle that will unmake you, that will tear you apart.

  A dark lord will rise.

  A hopeless grimace smears his mouth. To think he worried once it might have been him.

  Cormorion Ilusilin Mayne stalks to the throne. Turns almost prissily to take the seat.

  And something is there.

  Gil’s vision is blotchy, fading fast. But it looks to him as if someone’s already sitting on the throne, ghostly but gaining definition—someone into whose lap the Illwrack Changeling sinks unaware.

  Slim arms reach round and up. It’s somehow languid and lightning swift at one and the same time. A flicker of animal alarm across the Changeling’s pale face, and that’s all there’s time for. Elegant, long-fingered hands take hold of his head at top and bottom, slip tight and sink fingernails into eyes and mouth, dig deep, bury the fingers in behind the nails, right up to the second knuckle.

  Cormorion makes a distorted, despairing shriek, just once.

  Then, in a single brisk motion, the elegant hands turn the Changeling’s whole head sideways on its ne
ck and tear it open, lower jaw and skull, blood and gristle fragments exploding, tear it completely apart.

  HIS EBBING LIFE SOAKS BACK BY FRACTIONS.

  Whatever destroyed Cormorion stands up, and the Changeling’s body spills from its lap like an empty suit of clothes, tumbles to the wet sand and lies there leaking blood. A slim, lithe figure steps over the remains and paces down toward him. It’s draped in blue-black robes, delicately cowled in the same cloth. It stoops over him, fine-boned features calm and very faintly concerned.

  It is done, a voice tells him through the dim roaring in his ears. Cormorion is released to the void at last.

  Mother?

  It gathers him up in its arms, turns and carries him back toward the throne. Looking up into the face, he sees it isn’t quite his mother. There’s something of Ishil in the features, true enough, but it’s an Ishil who never soured, who never learned the bitter lessons that life in Trelayne at Gingren’s side would teach her. And it’s a less obviously womanly face than he ever remembers his mother having. Something martial, almost male about it. And the arms that bear him up have an unbending iron strength that radiates like warmth, that seems to feed him a new strength of his own.

  You’re not my mother.

  A clean, clear laugh that Ishil’s throat would never have given up. No. I’m not your mother.

  Then—

  The figure lowers him gently into the oaken arms of the throne. He finds he can sit up almost at once. He finds he can breathe. His throat still aches, but as if from unshed tears, not damage. He puts up a hand to touch it, realizes his maimed finger is intact as well. He looks at his unharmed hand for a moment in disbelief, looks back up at the mobile, beautiful face and the lithe, blue-black-clad form.