The Dark Remains

by Mark Anthony

  The fairy bent, like a sapling before a wind, and touched the box. The lid fell aside. Vani hesitated, then reached into the box and drew something out. It was a small piece of perfectly black stone.

  From his vantage, Travis saw there was a kind of angular writing on the artifact. It was pyramid-shaped, with a total of four sides. However, the shape of the artifact was not perfect. The top of the pyramid was flat, as if it had been lopped off, and Travis could see there was a small reservoir in the interior. With the flat top, it seemed incomplete. Where was the rest of it?

  Even as he thought this, Vani reached into her pocket and drew out the small, triangular piece of stone she had showed them before. The prism. She started to bring it close to the artifact, to complete it.

  The fairy touched her hand, staying it. Vani frowned, her expression one of confusion. Travis was confused as well. What was the fairy doing? It lifted a finger to its breast, pressed the tip against its gray skin—

  —and into its body.

  The fairy’s mouth opened in a silent circle of pain. It dug another finger into its body, and another, pushing them deeper. Blue-white light seeped from the wound. Then, with another cry, the fairy pulled something out of the wound in its chest. The creature held it forth, wet and glistening.

  It was a stone.

  No, not just a stone. Travis approached the fairy.

  “Travis,” Grace murmured. “What is it?”

  The fairy nodded. He didn’t know how he knew, only that he did, that it was for this reason the fairy had let itself be captured by the Scirathi and had come to this world—to give him this, this Stone that it had concealed in the only place it would be safe.

  “It’s Sinfathisar,” he said.

  He reached out with his left hand and took the Stone of Twilight, still wet with the fairy’s blood. More blood oozed from the hole in the fairy’s chest, at once dark and glittering. The being turned toward Vani and spread its arms.

  Vani stared—then leaped into action. She raised the artifact, catching the dark trickle of blood. In moments the small reservoir was filled. The fairy pressed its hand to its breast, stopping the flow of blood, and a pale radiance welled between its fingers.

  “The blood of light,” Vani breathed.

  “What does it mean?” Beltan croaked.

  Travis gripped his hand. “It means we’re going home.”

  64.

  Minutes later they were ready.

  Grace had retrieved the small backpack from the pickup and pulled out the things they bought at Marji’s shop. Marji, who was gone now because of them. But Travis would have to think that through later, when there was time. He wouldn’t let Marji’s death be for nothing.

  They worked in the shelter by the rear of the truck. Vani had set the artifact on top of the box, and had placed four of the candles around them. They guttered in the wind but did not go out. She had mixed the herbs and oil together, making an incense, and she lit this with the fifth candle. A heavy, fragrant smoke coiled upward on the air. Travis breathed in the fragrance, his mind clearing.

  He looked at Deirdre and Farr, then Mitchell and Davis. “So, how are you all getting out of here?”

  Davis’s face crinkled in a grin; the greenness had left his face as he breathed in the incense. “Now, don’t you worry about us. Your friends’ limo may be so much tinfoil, but there’s still plenty of gas in the pickup.”

  “We can still get out of here,” Mitchell said. He glanced at Farr. “If there’s time.”

  Farr nodded. “I believe we’ll make it. We’ll need to pick up our driver. Crashing into a convoy of trucks wasn’t in his job description, so we dropped him off by the road a mile back.”

  “Wait, there’s something you should know,” Grace said, moving to the Seeker.

  Farr stared at her, his handsome face stunned.

  “Electria,” Grace said. “I know why Duratek invented it. It’s for fairies, to keep them alive on Earth.”

  Farr blinked. Whatever he had thought she was going to say, clearly this hadn’t been it. He started to lift a hand, then—slowly, as if by great force of will—he lowered it again. His expression was haggard, broken.

  “Thank you, Dr. Beckett,” he said.

  Deirdre looked down at her hand. “Fairies?”

  The gray being moved close to her, lifted her hand, and touched what Deirdre had been gazing at: a silver ring. Gently, the fairy closed its fingers around her hand, then moved away. As it did, Travis saw there were tears in Deirdre’s eyes.

  “The artifact is ready,” Vani said.

  “Wait,” Deirdre said, fumbling in a pocket. “Grace, I almost forgot. Here—it’s the drawing I told you about. The one that shows the sword from Sarsin’s journal.”

  Grace accepted the folded piece of paper. “Thank you.”

  Deirdre smiled, nodded, then stepped back.

  Vani knelt close to the artifact. Travis and Grace stood above her, Beltan gripped between them. The fairy drifted close. Vani hesitated, then placed the prism atop the artifact.

  At once the air shimmered, and the gate sprang into being, its shining edges dancing and rippling like the Aurora Borealis. Beyond was swirling gray.

  “You must help me envision our destination,” Vani said. “Hold the image in your mind. We must go find my brother, in Tarras. A city—”

  “A city of gold by the sea,” Grace said.

  Vani nodded, then stood. The gate shone before them. Through it, Travis could still see the two Seekers, and Mitchell and Davis, but they were dim, as if already fading.

  “You all … you all take care of yourselves,” Mitchell said, and Davis nodded, still grinning.

  Deirdre was weeping now, gripping her bear claw necklace. “May we meet again, if not on this world, then in another.”

  However, Hadrian said nothing. He merely watched them with haunted brown eyes.

  Travis raised his hand, to tell them all thank you and good-bye. But before he could speak, the fairy spread its arms. The gate expanded, growing outward, encapsulating them in shimmering light.

  Colorado dimmed to a shadow, and was gone.

  65.

  Nothing. All around Travis there was nothing. A vast, aching void without end.

  He tried to scream that something had gone horribly wrong with the gate, but he had no mouth, no lungs—no body at all. He had been reduced to a single point: a buzzing spark of energy, like a gnat so minuscule it was all but invisible.

  He tried to search around him for the others—for Grace and Beltan and Vani—but there was no sign of them. Only the empty grayness. Yet even calling it gray was granting it too much substance. Gray was a blending of light and dark. This place was the absence of both things, of all things. And as far as he could sense, it went on forever.

  Even as he tried again to scream, he became aware of something coming toward him. No, somethings. He could not see them; they were bodiless, just as he was. Instead, a distortion spread through the colorless fog in their wake, like the wrinkles made by insects as they skim over the surface of a puddle.

  Then it hit him, surging before them like a wave. Hunger. Vast, ceaseless hunger. A primal desire to consume. The empty fog warped and flowed around him as they closed in.

  This way.

  Travis didn’t hear the voice. All the same, he felt the words resonate through him like the music of bells. He tore his awareness away from the approaching things and saw it: a shining circle in the middle of the nothingness. And on the other side of the circle was … light. Real, golden light.

  The grayness roiled around him. The ravenous specks buzzed and darted like stinging insects, ready to suck away his very being. Travis willed himself away from them, stretched toward the glowing circle—

  —and tumbled onto hard stones.

  “Oof,” he said, and both sound and pain let him know that he was alive.

  Three more oofs, and three more bodies tumbled to the stone next to him. And a whisper, like a gentle wind
passing through a snow-mantled forest.

  Travis sat up and stretched out cold, trembling hands. His clothes and skin were covered with a layer of fine frost. He lifted his left hand, moving it from shadow into a slanting beam of honey-colored light. For a moment the frost crystals shone like gems. Then they melted and were gone.

  There was something in his hand. Travis willed opened stiff fingers. On his palm was a round, mottled, gray-green stone. Sinfathisar. He closed his fingers around it again.

  They were in some sort of alley: a dim, narrow space between two white buildings. Here and there, wayward rays of sunlight fell down from a blue shard of sky above. Vani was already on her feet, her black leathers gray with frost. Grace and Beltan huddled against one wall, skin faintly blue, hair and eyebrows prematurely white with ice. Grace opened her eyes, and snow fell from her eyelashes. There was no sign anywhere of the gate.

  It took Travis a moment to find his voice. “What was that place?”

  Vani slipped the obsidian artifact inside her jacket. “It was the void between the worlds.”

  “And you … you passed through it before, when you journeyed to Earth?”

  “Yes.”

  How could she have stepped through the gate knowing what was on the other side? Or rather, what wasn’t. Travis didn’t think he could bear that again, not without going mad.

  “What …?” It was Grace, although the word was barely a croak. She swallowed, and this time her voice was clearer. “What were those things in the void, Vani?”

  “They were morndari.”

  Beltan frowned, cracking the ice that clung to his scruffy gold beard. “Morndari?”

  “Those Who Thirst,” Grace breathed.

  The knight’s green eyes were still confused; Travis would explain it to him later. When speaking was not such an ordeal.

  Vani stalked to the mouth of the alley, peered out. “Come, all of you—move nearer the sun. It will help to warm you. I do not believe our arrival was noticed, which is well.” She gazed back at the rest of them. “My people are always in Tarras at this time of year, so we must believe the Scirathi are here in the city as well.”

  These words sent another shiver through Travis. So there were sorcerers here.

  “Do not fear, Travis, the effects of the gate will wear off soon enough.”

  Vani must have mistaken the source of his shaking. She reached down with a strong hand and helped him up. Then, with a gentle motion, she brushed the frost from his cheek.

  A low grunt came from behind Travis. Grace had helped Beltan to his feet. The knight stood, broad shoulders hunched, grasping the wall with a bony hand for support. His green eyes were fixed on Travis and Vani, his gaunt face a grimace of pain. Travis stepped away from her, suddenly warm, although he had not moved into the sun. He searched for something to say.

  Light welled forth—not from the street outside the alley, but from deeper in. The light brightened, and a crystalline sound floated on the air. All at once the light coalesced into a tall, slender, shimmering form.

  Travis forgot the aching and stiffness in his joints, forgot the fear inside him. He gazed into ancient, depthless eyes and found, for a moment, peace.

  The thin, gray being they had freed from the steel crate was still there—Travis could see it amid the radiance—but it stood tall and straight now, taller than Travis or Beltan, like a willowy tree. It was no longer naked, but rather clad in light, so that it seemed it wore a coruscating robe and a crown of white fire.

  “You,” Travis whispered. “It was you who showed me where the gate was in the void.”

  The fairy nodded, although the gesture bespoke not a mere yes, but a thousand words that could not be uttered in any language. Again Travis gazed down at the Stone of Twilight in his hand. It seemed to catch the fairyglow, spinning it into a gray-green gauze.

  Beltan took a staggering step toward the fairy. “You are well now. I am glad to see it.”

  The fairy drifted toward Beltan. With a slender finger it touched a small, round wound on the knight’s arm, then it turned its own arm over. They were faint and almost lost amid the radiance, but Travis could still see them: long, white scars.

  A choking sound escaped Beltan. “By Vathris, that’s what they did. They put your blood in me, didn’t they?”

  Again the fairy nodded. Beltan swayed, started to fall. The knight was still so terribly thin. Both Grace and Travis reached for him, but they were too slow.

  With slender arms, the fairy caught Beltan, holding him in a gentle embrace. The knight looked up, eyes wide. Then tendrils of white light spun outward from the fairy, coiling around him.

  Now Beltan did stagger back, but he did not fall. He stood stiff, arms thrust at his sides, as the light spun faster and faster around him. The light grew more brilliant. It seemed Beltan’s skin was translucent as glass. Travis could see muscles undulating beneath, then the knight’s beating heart. Then even flesh was transparent, and his bones were silhouetted against the glare. The light flared, turning everything to white—

  —then dimmed.

  Shadows closed back in on the alley, and a breath of wonder escaped Travis.

  Beltan held his hands out before him, mouth open. The lab coat had evaporated like the frost under the force of the light, and Beltan was naked. Travis knew he should not stare, but he could not turn away. The knight was no longer emaciated, but rather lean and rangy like a tawny lion. Sheets of muscles flexed beneath his pale skin. His thinning, white-blond hair tumbled over broad shoulders, and his scruffy beard was as gold as the sunlight outside the alley. On his left side, where the Necromancer Dakarreth had reopened his wound, there was only a pale line.

  Beltan gazed at the fairy, astonishment on his face. It was hard to see for the radiance, but it seemed to Travis that the fairy smiled.

  The last tendrils of light vanished from around Beltan. Smiling, Grace looked away, and Vani studiously averted her eyes.

  Beltan glanced down, then his head snapped up. “By the Blood of Vathris! Sorry, my ladies. Er, Travis …”

  Travis pulled his mistcloak from the backpack he still had slung over a shoulder and threw it around the knight. His hands lingered on Beltan’s chest; it was warm and firm. “How do you feel?”

  The knight gave him a wry grin, holding the cloak around him. “A bit embarrassed. But otherwise fine.” Then wonder crept into his eyes. “More than fine. Not even an ache or pain from any of my old battle scars.”

  A chiming sound. The fairy drifted past them, toward Vani. It made a graceful gesture. Vani seemed to understand. She drew the gate artifact from her jacket and removed the prism. Travis could see the artifact was empty now.

  The fairy took the artifact in long fingers and drew it close to its body. There was a flash, and a sharp, crystalline sound, almost like a cry, then the light dimmed, and Vani was holding the artifact again. It was no longer empty, but filled once more with dark fluid.

  Vani replaced the prism, sealing the fairy’s blood inside. However, Travis noticed she made certain the prism was turned at an angle, so that its sides were not aligned with the sides of the artifact. He supposed she did this so the gate would not be activated.

  “Thank you,” Vani said simply.

  Travis moved to the fairy, gripping the Stone of Twilight, the Great Stone he had entrusted to the Little People of Gloaming Wood not long after last Midwinter’s Day. “You let the sorcerer capture you and take you through the gate, didn’t you? You did it so you could come to Earth and bring me Sinfathisar. But why?”

  The fairy tilted its head, then words chimed around Travis, and inside him.

  To choose what it shall be.

  He didn’t understand. What was he supposed to choose? However, before he could ask, the fairy drifted away. The radiant being paused before Grace. Then, slowly, it bowed to her.

  Grace lifted a hand to her throat, the light of the fairy shining in her vivid eyes. For a moment its light wavered, and the being seemed to reach a h
and toward her. However, Travis must have imagined it, for the silvery corona that surrounded the fairy suddenly brightened, expanding like a star, then collapsed, leaving only a white-hot spark of light. The spark circled around them once, then sped away down the alley and was gone.

  Travis gave Grace a questioning look, but she only shook her head, then moved to Beltan. First she lifted one of his hands, then the other, then studied his face.

  “This is impossible. You were in a coma for two months, Beltan. Your muscles had experienced severe atrophy, and you were osteoporotic. And now”—Grace stepped back—“now you’re perfect.”

  Beltan’s eyes sparkled, and he gave a bow. “Why thank you, my lady. So I’ve always liked to believe.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant—”

  He sighed, the mirth dimming in his eyes. “I know what you meant, my lady. My body is hale, that’s all.” The knight gazed down at his hands. “And I am anything but perfect.”

  A note of alarm cut through the relief in Travis’s chest. What was Beltan saying?

  Grace spoke again. “You said something about the fairy’s blood, Beltan, about them infusing you with it.”

  “I believe so, my lady. There were tubes going into my veins when I woke in their fortress. They must have used them to put the fairy blood in me. I think … I think that was how I knew things I had no way to know, like how to speak their language.”

  This struck Travis like a slap. Grace and he still had the silver half-coins Brother Cy had given them, and he had thought it simply the magic of the coins that had allowed him and Grace to understand Beltan. But Deirdre and Farr had been able to speak to Beltan as well, and Davis and Mitchell. So there had been another sort of magic at work.

  “The chin-pasi at the fortress,” Beltan went on, “I think they put the fairy’s blood in it as well.”