The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

Firfirdar? .… . . . .Kwelgrish?

  Now you’re going to offend me. The Dark Court are not your friends. You will find them at your side only when they need something from you.

  Then … He sat up straighter on the throne, pressed his lower back into its wooden curves. What is your name?

  A warm, self-deprecating smile. My name is a complicated thing. What matters is that I am at your side, and will be until the end of the road.

  Ishil or not, the figure presses a warm, dry palm to his forehead, just the way she used to when he was a child and went down with a fever.

  You must go back now, the gentle voice says. Much longer, and they will begin to grasp what has happened here. You must finish what you began.

  The dwenda?

  Yes.

  He rolls his head against the warm, dry pressure of the hand on his brow. But there’s … fucking thousands of them. What am I supposed to do?

  You’ll know what to do.

  Against that many? Alone?

  The smile again, some teeth in it this time.

  Not alone, the voice says. Call for me—and I will be at your side.

  HE BLINKS BACK TO THE STONE CIRCLE, FINDS HIMSELF LYING PRONE IN the grass with Risgillen and Lathkeen standing over him yelling at each other. Through a wavering fog, he finds he can understand what they’re saying.

  No, I do not fucking think he was supposed to fall down like that. Something is wrong.

  My lady Risgillen, you are far from well-versed in these matters. We are bringing back a Dark King, it is not an act that …

  The spiked iron crown is wrapped across his forehead still, the Illwrack Changeling’s sword is still in his left hand, snaked about his arm, but it’s inert. The slick warmth when it crawled around on his skin and burrowed inside him is gone. There’s a dull, throbbing ache just below his wrist where he supposes the spike must still be in his arm, but that’s it for the pain. He’s had worse hurt from back-alley rough trade.

  Through eyes fluttered three quarters shut, he senses Risgillen pacing farther from him. She’s still shouting, gesturing.

  Can you not feel it, storm-caller? Can you not? The sword is dead, the stones are dead, this whole fucking circle is dead.

  It is transition, my lady. We expected this. Cormorion gathers in the flesh, it is a process that must go particle by particle, cell by cell until he rises …

  He can feel Lathkeen’s sorcerous will, still bent on him, but there’s a loose inattention to it now. Most of the storm-caller is busy arguing with Risgillen. He still keeps Ringil’s body in the corner of his mind’s eye, watchful for developments, but he’s expecting Cormorion Ilusilin Mayne and apparently not anytime soon. And if the rest of Clan Talonreach are still providing backup, Gil can’t feel it. He senses them vaguely, out on the far surface of his new senses. Feels like they’re busy with something else. There’s wiggle room for the ikinri ‘ska here—

  Is that why you can suddenly follow Risgillen’s bickering, Gil? Some leaking in of the Illwrack Changeling’s grasp on the craft?

  Some leaking in of the Changeling itself, maybe?

  He drops the thought like a heated iron utensil. He has no taste for where this is going, and in any case no time …

  Wiggle room, yeah. But not enough for anything spectacular. Not for anything that’d substitute for a fucking blade.

  Still stood over him, Lathkeen shouts after Risgillen.

  The sword was a container, my lady, nothing more. A Black Folk trick to hold the Changeling’s soul. Now it is discharged, of course the casing is dead.

  Believe that if you like, storm-caller. Her sneer is distant now, she must be almost on the far side of the circle. He imagines her there, pacing past the granite uprights like some war cat prowling the barred perimeter of its cage. I don’t see how the Changeling—

  Can he actually use this sword? It doesn’t feel like it. The binding was tight around his arm when it was living steel, but now it feels like loose jewelry, like bangles made for some unfeasibly big-limbed courtesan. The tang lolls loose from his palm. Whatever it once was, it isn’t a sword anymore, it isn’t a weapon.

  That’s what he needs. To finish this, he needs a fucking weapon.

  The dragon-tooth dagger is gone, just like the man who gifted it to him, lost who the fuck knows where. He recalls Ingharnanasharal said nothing about Egar surviving, only Archeth. It’s an omission that paints the likely truth in stinging script behind Ringil’s eyes. He can only hope it wasn’t a shit death, hope the Dragonbane found the clean end he’d always said he wanted, and under open sky.

  Speaking of which …

  Yeah. Half a dozen dwenda in the circle with him, all of them armed. He can feel the flicker of their disquiet as they watch Risgillen and Lathkeen argue. And a few thousand of them down on the slope below. Looks pretty much like the end of your run, too, Gil.

  Better make this good.

  I am at your side, and will be until the end of the road, he recalls sourly. Not so I’ve fucking noticed—whoever you were, wherever you’ve fucked off to now it counts.

  My name is a complicated thi—

  It hits him, then, like a drenching in cold water. And he knows abruptly what he has to do with the finger-width sliver of the ikinri ‘ska he can just about reach.

  His heart commences a heavy, preparatory pounding. His veins flood with cool fire. He feels how it snags Lathkeen’s attention, knows his time is up. The storm-caller can’t miss the truth of this, surely, can’t fail to grasp what’s happened. This is going to go bad, Gil, and fast—

  You see, my lady! You see! Lathkeen’s voice, raised to a cry of triumph. He bends over Gil, one hand pressing into his chest. He’s laughing, bubbling over with blind joy. See here! The heart responds, Cormorion returns. How could you doubt?

  Ringil snaps his eyes open, grabs Lathkeen’s alien gaze with his own. Grabs the dwenda’s jerkin with both hands.

  C’mere, motherfucker!

  He hauls down, hard. The dwenda starts backward, staggers, features contorted with shock, trying to get away. Ringil uses it, flexes to his feet, matches the retreat, step for stumbling step, still hanging on. Plants a head-butt in Lathkeen’s face, smashes the rim of the iron crown into the bridge of that elegant arched nose. It knocks the storm-caller back into the nearest of the standing stones. Vaguely, he hears Risgillen yell—assume she’s worked out that something’s really wrong now—but there’s no time to worry about that. The ikinri ‘ska wakes right up in the gap it’s been left, and he uses it like a troop muster loudhailer. He bawls out into the Grey Places …

  Ravensfriend! Bring the Ravensfriend!

  My name is a complicated thing …

  I am Welcomed in the Home of Ravens and Other Scavengers in the Wake of Warriors, I am Friend to Carrion Crows and Wolves, I am Carry Me, and Kill with Me, and Die with Me where the Road Ends, I am not the Honeyed Promise of Length of Life in Years to Come, I am the Iron Promise of Never Being a Slave.

  Lathkeen comes snarling at him, nose streaming blood, fingers sprouting lupine talons, reaching like a winter tree. He’s fast, Hoiran’s balls he’s fucking fast—but he’s no soldier and it shows. Eldritch alien rage, sure, but it isn’t channeled where it needs to go. Ringil stand his ground, face like stone. Chops down the storm-caller’s attack with brutal blows—some talons get through, rip the skin of his throat, but hey—he locks Lathkeen up, spins him. Grabs him by the hair and neck, runs him savagely face first into the standing stone.

  Where the Road Ends …

  Echoing in his head like some sunken ship’s bell, fathoms and ages drowned, but coming up fast. … until the End of the Road … what matters is that I will be at your side …

  Call for me …

  BRING THE RAVENSFRIEND! He screams it out as he smashes the dwenda’s face apart on the rough-hewn stone.

  And out there on the edge of his senses, he thinks he hears an answering cry.

  Risgillen is incoming, long sword drawn; he can fe
el her sprinting in across the circle toward him. But Lathkeen is dead now or not far off it, and Gil’s shrugging off the bindings on the ikinri ‘ska like coilings of frayed and rotted rope. He grabs something handy, some minor distraction glyph, tosses it, lets it detonate in Risgillen’s eyes. Feels her stumble, swings around and brings whatever’s left of Lathkeen with him. He hurls the dying storm-caller into Risgillen’s path, tangles her up for the time he needs, the time he knows he needs, and knows is nearly up.

  Behind her—the rest of the dwenda from inside the circle. He sees them scrabbling belatedly for their weapons, moving hesitantly in. He casts again, the glyph that staggered Risgillen, three times more, like a dagger repeatedly into flesh—the dwenda flinch and then start flailing about them at empty air. But they don’t go down; he’s not sure what it would take to achieve that much, not even sure what he’s done to them except that it’s enough for now, and some stitched-in ikinri ‘ska impulse is telling him not to invest too much effort in this, this is not the battle, this is only—

  Unnerving keening—Risgillen looks up from the shattered mess of Lathkeen’s face in disbelieving rage. No understanding yet of what’s gone wrong, who’s still standing there in Ringil’s flesh. Gil grins at her, gets his back against the standing stone, splays his arms, crooked hands empty of anything but cold air and the will to do harm. It’s enough—something in stance or grin—he sees her face change, sees her eyes narrow with fury, and knows she’s made him.

  Come on then, he pants. Time you went to join your brother.

  Her eyes go on narrowing, down to slits, tilting into something demonic as her jaw lengthens and her mouth splits with fangs. Trace memory from another time and place spikes up the side of his face and into his eye. He forces it down, keeps the grin, waits for her to make her move, blade or magic, he’s past caring now, he—

  Stone splinters, shatters, stings his face with shards.

  The Ravensfriend.

  There, standing out of the rough-hewn blood-splattered granite at his side like an arrow shaft from a body—as if some hurrying, hopelessly delayed courier god hurled the Kiriath blade the last hundred paces to its owner and instead struck the standing stone through with mortal force.

  Risgillen recoils.

  And somewhere distant, just faintly, there’s the pale sense of something huge, some vast balance, tipping—toppling—falling flat on its fat fucking face

  Ringil’s right hand leaps sideways for the sword. It barely feels like his own act, hand up and out across his chest, fingers folding around the grip. His left arm is up, bracing against the stone by his face, he tugs hard on the sword—there’s one heart-stopping moment when it doesn’t move—pull, hero, fucking pull—he presses with his other arm for purchase and here it comes, grating up out of the stone with an almost musical clang. Brief scatter of sparks as the point and leading edge drag finally clear of the granite, and the Ravensfriend is his again.

  A single, harsh bark of joy is in his throat. He coughs it out, takes the sword two-handed, holds it out at Risgillen like an offering. She’s rising now, like something from the war, like some hissing slithering warrior caste reptile at bay. The blue-lit sword weaves but there’s no conviction to it, no power, and she’s trying to summon something, some—

  The ikinri ‘ska leaps in, tears it down before it can form.

  He shivers with the force of the counter. Hjel was right, the glyph magic isn’t in him anymore, it is him, it wears him like a suit of mail. He can no longer tell where it ends and he begins.

  Can you feel it, Risgillen? he’s screaming in her face. Can you feel how thin the pages left?

  The rest of the dwenda rush in on her flanks—perhaps they’re an honor guard, he’ll never know—he glimpses long-hafted ax and raised shield to his left, a scything long sword blade to the right, and then he’s gone, into the fight and a high, thin, unwinding sound in his head that might be the Ravensfriend’s song or his own battle scream. Kiriath steel meets dwenda glimmer, impossible speed for any human-forged blade—it turns the long sword, comes back for the ax. The ikinri ‘ska summons the grass to life underfoot, tangles it around the staggering dwendas’ feet, snatches fragments of splintered stone from the broken megalith at Ringil’s back, sews them through the air like horizontal hail. Ravensfriend locks up the ax haft, drags it down. Stamping kick into an exposed knee, the shield defense fails, the sword finds a thigh and bites a gash down through dwenda armor and flesh alike. The dwenda tumbles, mouth gaping open on a yell, and Gil has time to chop the pale face open before he’s spinning away, hurling granite shards into his attackers’ eyes, tripping them with the coiling, lashing blades of grass, barely needing now to trade and repulse blows at all, the dwenda are too busy trying to drive off the ikinri ‘ska assault with glyphs and calls of their own …

  He stalks among them, iron spike crowned.

  Grabs and kicks to take them off balance, hacks and maims as their defenses crumble and horror sets in. It’s the Dark King returned all right—it’s bloody slaughter to match anything at Gallows Gap, and he doubts, he really fucking doubts that Cormorion could have done any better if he’d ever got loose and tried. It’s bloody slaughter and it’s—

  Done.

  Seven dwenda—in the time it’d take to draw a deep breath for each one and let it out, he’s taken them down. Left them strewn crippled, eviscerated and screaming across the grass of Cormorion’s stone circle. The reek of their spilled blood is in his nose, he’d swear he can almost taste it on his tongue. The circle is his, he feels the air shiver with his dominion. It’s protection thrown around him, a space he owns, a space that’s been waiting for him always. He casts about like a hound, sees Risgillen among the fallen, trying to drag herself back upright, leaning on the pivot of her long sword. Looks like her leg is chopped, though he doesn’t remember doing it.

  She snarls up at him as he approaches, nothing human in it. He sees her fingers lengthening into claws, digging into the blood-matted grass she lies on. Her jaw distending for the fangs. He lifts his left hand, pushes the iron crown back up his brow a little from where it’s settled too low. He readies the Ravensfriend for the blow that will slice Risgillen apart.

  You never fucking learn, do you? Oddly, he finds his voice is almost gentle across the wind. There’s no place for you in the world anymore. It does not want you back.

  Tell that to our acolytes by the thousand in Trelayne. Her fangs distort and crisp the words. She gags on a bite reflex, gathers herself again. Tell that to every soul that cannot endure the arid modern march your Black Scourge masters have imposed on humanity, every soul that secretly craves the darkness and the sweet delirium it brings. You have understood nothing, mortal—you kneel and beat your breasts in your temples and shrines, you seek the spirit within—we are your eternal soul, we, the dwenda, the eternal ones. She’s leaving her human form behind as he watches. Her tongue is forked and blackened, slipping out between her teeth, tasting the air for him. He has to strain now to get meaning from the noises she makes. We are your darkness, we are your soul. We have haunted your dreams since the beginning of time, we bring you the gift of dark joy and escape. If we are your masters, it is because you cannot live without us.

  Yeah? He sniffs and tilts the Kiriath steel invitingly. Just watch us.

  The thing Risgillen is turning into makes a rattling sound behind its teeth. It takes him a moment to identify it as laughter.

  You think killing me will stop us now? Look about you, fool. A predator claw gestures out at the ranked dwenda waiting silent below the circle. At the boiling, tightly bound darkness on the slope above. Our armies wait only for the breach. The Talons of the Sun wait to be unleashed, clan Talonreach will see it done.

  Feels to me like Talonreach got their hands full right now.

  The truth of it hits him even as the words leave his mouth. The sense of distraction from inside the heart of the Talons has shifted, lurched into something resembling panicked effort. He finds a l
opsided grin. I don’t think this is just about me anymore, Risgillen. Something else is coming. Can’t you feel it?

  And maybe it’s recognition of that truth that drives her, finally, up off the bloodied grass and at him, talons reaching, jaws gaping, a scream in the throat and the demon slanting, burning eyes, a wild challenge there and, perhaps, a plea.

  He doesn’t need the ikinri ‘ska, unless that’s what lends him the inhuman speed and poise. He doesn’t need the magic, or even the hate anymore.

  All he needs is the steel. All he is, is the blade.

  He sways, just barely, out of the way of the leap, chops upward with the Ravensfriend and follows through to the side. Kiriath steel catches the snarling thing that was Risgillen somewhere at the midriff, slices upward through armor and the body it sheathes. The Ravensfriend snags, briefly, on the spine, Ringil grunts and hauls hard, the blade slices clear. The dwenda comes apart in an explosion of lifeblood and entrails. The severed sections hit the ground, he spins about, Ravensfriend at low guard.

  Sees that Risgillen, the top half anyway, is still somehow alive, writhing and thrashing on what’s left of its belly, trying to rise on downward pressing arms alone. The lower trunk and limbs lie twitching to one side, already shriveling back toward more human form and dimension, but even the massive damage he’s done doesn’t seem to be enough. Somehow she turns herself over, and the eyes burn up at him.

  He steps in. Reverses the Ravensfriend in his right hand.

  I’m sorry about your brother, he finds himself unaccountably saying. Sorry I couldn’t be Cormorion for him, or for you.

  You just chose the wrong hero, is all.

  He plunges the Kiriath blade down. Two handed, his full weight behind the blow. Down through rib cage and heart, into the Earth beneath. Risgillen hisses once, softly, through her fangs, and the demonic glare in her eyes goes finally out.

  With it goes the last trace of Seethlaw he’ll ever see.

  CHAPTER 63

  hey came with the dawn.