by Sean Rodden
And pure terror.
Gren del Mor groaned as intuition arrived overlate. He squeezed his eyelids shut. Felt his heart sink, a leaden anchor plummeting through the dark and fathomless depths of his soul. He swiveled his head on his narrow neck. His eyes cracked open.
And gazed upon the cold hard countenance of the Prince of the Bloodspawn.
The night whirled. The Black Shield staggered backward as though he had been physically, forcefully struck.
“Prince…uhh…Half…ahhhhh, shit!”
“It would appear, Gren del Mor, that one need not become invisible in order to be unseen – but only provide the beholder with that which he expects to see.”
Ev lin Dar was sure that she sensed the sound of a smile curving about the corners of the Halflord’s words. Relief rushed from her bosom as a whistling sigh, and she marked, with some satisfaction, that Gren del Mor had obviously retained neither composure nor wit enough to have been nearly as perceptive.
“Prince Kor…I am – ”
“Answer.”
“Prince Kor?”
More forcefully this time, a word like a sword: “Answer.”
The stricken Shield’s jaw only flapped haplessly on its hinges. Answer? I don’t even know the fucking question! As though with a will of their own, his hands leapt upward to fastidiously inspect his cone – which, to his increased distress, was indeed intolerably skewed.
“Your fellow Shield asked a question of you,” the Halflord illumined, the smooth surface of his voice become pitted with impatience. “I will have your answer.”
What have you seen, Gren?
The Black Shield lowered his hands. He sucked some chill night air into his lungs, braced his legs against further stumbling. Stood his ground.
“The Liaison conspires with the blutsauger, Prince Kor,” revealed Gren del Mor. His voice was as quiet as the Halflord’s, and much darker. “Against you.”
Kor ben Dor peered into the embers. His lips seemed to twitch, but that may have been a trick of shadow and flame. He said nothing.
Gren del Mor looked to Ev lin Dar, found some assurance, some encouragement there – a certain strength gleaned from those wet white eyes that stared like sunlight into the deepest places of his soul.
“They plan your death, Prince Kor.”
The Halflord reached, took up the tongs once more, opened and closed them, poked at the glowing coals of render shit, summoning fire.
“The Liaison is to ensure you do not survive the battle with the trolls, Prince Kor. In return, he will be given command of the Bloodspawn.”
A few scarlet flames rose from the stirred embers. The night was hushed, still and pent, like a held breath. And a single word whispered past the Halflord’s lips:
“Ambition.”
Gren del Mor frowned, folded his arms in order to prevent his hands from wandering back to his errant cone. He shook his head.
“Not ambition, Prince Kor. Treachery.”
The Prince toyed with the tongs and the tongues of fire.
“Ambition. Treachery. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, Shield. Indeed, the latter will, without fail, follow the former. But then, is that not always so?” That odd tremor about the mouth again. “Everything we do – every action, every endeavor – we do for reasons. The reasons are the ends. The deeds are the means. And one might justify the perpetration of any deed, however foul, provided the doing of it furthers one’s lofty ambitions. Treachery is not the least among means malicious and maleficent, nor is it the greatest. And it is far from surprising. But it is certainly the most... disappointing.”
“And unacceptable, Prince Kor.” Gren del Mor inhaled deeply of the cold northern night. “I request permission to take the fork-tongued freak and – ”
“Sit.”
The Black Shield blinked. “What?”
“I was expecting you, Shield. You did not… disappoint.” The Halflord gestured with the tongs toward a rock to the right of Ev lin Dar. “Sit.”
“Prince Kor, the traitor must be taken and tortured until his – ”
The Halflord stared, the unbroken white of his gaze glowing both cold and hot, like death under a desert sun. Despite the power in those eyes – perhaps because of it – Gren del Mor seemed frozen or welded in place. Exasperated, and a little trepid, Ev lin Dar tugged emphatically at her friend’s kilt of black chain. Wildered, disoriented, Gren del Mor allowed himself to be guided down to the stone seat.
“But the Liaison must be arrested,” the Black Shield pleaded. His voice and heart were heavy with hatred. “At least, that. We need not harm him. Yet. But we must ensure that the slimy snake can do no harm. Unless it’s to himself – I could live with that. The damage he has done to the Black Shields – ”
The Prince waved the words, both the spoken and the unspoken, aside.
“I do not consider Sil kin Hesh to be a Black Shield. Nor have I ever done so. Not really. You will learn that names and titles can be both revealing and misleading. The Shield Wall remains intact. Intact and unsullied.”
“You knew, Prince Kor?” There was a timbre of shock to Ev lin Dar’s tone. “You knew of the serpent in our midst?”
And a distinct resonance of stupefaction, of astonishment, to Gren del Mor’s accompanying question: “And you did nothing?”
The Halflord stared into the fire.
“I knew. I knew he was… false. But I did not do nothing. No, not nothing. I endured and wished it was not so, for of a time Sil kin Hesh and I were as brothers. I suffered and endeavoured mightily to disbelieve, to doubt my doubts. I tolerated behavior that in others I would have found intolerable. In my wisdom I named him Black Shield so that I might observe him more closely in the forlorn hope that he was not false, that I instead was simply wrong. But wisdom can be a wicked thing, and of it comes the most terrible pain.”
“Wisdom is wicked, Prince Kor?” Ev lin Dar pale eyes were damp, gleaming in the firelight like plates of gilded ivory. “What terrible pain can come of wisdom?”
The Halflord poked at the struggling flames. Amber shadows danced solemnly on the taut skin of his face, and the tattooed talons were as black tears sliding down his chiseled cheeks.
“Wisdom is punished far more harshly than is folly, Shield. A fool will believe the deceits of strangers unto his very doom, whereas the wise man knows when those whom he loves most dearly are lying to him. Tell me, which pain would you prefer?”
The two Black Shields exchanged glances, and within them they felt their hearts ache toward breaking. Neither spoke.
Kor ben Dor sighed heavily.
“I have known of Sil kin Hesh’s intentions for some time now, Shields. Truly, I have always known. Such treachery cannot be concealed from me, and his own is the reason I named him Liaison. Spying on me is most problematic when not in my company. His assignation as Liaison to the blutsauger was both natural and satisfying. A simple solution to a minor annoyance. Unfortunately, it is ever easier to know who one should not trust than it is to know who one can trust. You will not find an ally behind the snarl of a foe, but overoften will you find an enemy behind the smile of a friend.”
Gren del Mor unfolded his arms. The tightness in his chest left him. His saurian tattoo stiffened with insight. He licked his pointy teeth.
“You were testing us, Prince Kor.”
“Of course.”
“You ignored Ev and derided me and pretended to favour Sil kin Hesh in order to assess our loyalties. To see what we would do, where we would turn, how we would react.”
“Yes.”
“You knew Ev would seek solitude – and that I would stalk the snake in the grass.”
“Not knew.” The Halflord rolled one shoulder, then the other. “Hoped.”
“And hope is the last of all possessions,” Ev lin Dar interjected quietly. She looked at her hands, rubbed the calluses on her fingers and palms. She remembered recently thinking that her hands were ugly. Now she saw the beauty in them, their
splendour, their worth. And though she could not recall, could not recollect, she knew her hands were deft and exquisitely skilled, and had long ago loved the body of the man before her with ineffable passion. Wait… why am I thinking this now? She folded her hands together. “Or so I have been told.”
The shining in Kor ben Dor’s eyes was the light of a smile – the light of a smile that could not quite reach the lower portion of his face, and that faded far too swiftly.
“I offered Ev lin Dar no apology. And I offer you none, Gren del Mor. But I may be disposed to explain a few things.”
The Black Shield inclined his head slightly.
“You are the Halflord,” he stated matter-of-factly. “You need apologize for nothing. Neither for words nor deeds. And you need never explain yourself to me. I follow you, Prince Kor. I am yours.”
“As am I,” confirmed Ev lin Dar, her voice a mere breath, husky and warm.
But Kor ben Dor shook his head. Ribbons of hair danced before his eyes, silken streamers limned crimson with emberlight.
“No.”
The Black Shields exchanged a quick look. No?
“Wrong way round, Shields.” The corners of the Prince’s mouth were aquiver again, the lid of a pot threatening to boil over. “You are not mine. No, not mine at all. Rather, my loyal Shields – I am yours.”
The two Black Shields said nothing. Only stared at the fire – the fire in Kor ben Dor’s eyes. And for some time silence was the only sound in the universe.
Then, “Tell me, Gren del Mor – do you hate this world?”
The Black Shield did not shy from an honest reply: “To a degree.”
“And that degree is…?”
“Substantial, Prince Kor.”
Ev lin Dar leaned close. “You have spent too much time lurking, Gren,” she whispered. “It has made you bitter. And dented your cone.”
But Gren del Mor did not so much as growl at his lovely tormentress this time, so focused was his attention upon his magnificent Prince.
“You are about to despise it even more, Shield.” The Halflord paused, leaned forward, the ends of his hair hanging perilously near to the throbbing red coals. “For the world you know is a lie. The Bloodspawn are a lie. I am a lie.”
Gren del Mor lowered his eyes. “I have always known that I am false. A deceit. A bold fallaciousness in the face of reality. It’s one of the things that keeps me pissed off.”
“No.”
The Black Shield looked up.
“Not you. Not Ev lin Dar. Not false.” The Prince placed his palm over his bare chest. “In here. Neither of you are lies. You are both unfailingly true.”
The two Black Shield’s felt their throats tighten. Wetness welled at the edges of their eyes, wetness that could not be dammed, could not be willed away.
“Would you know my memories, Gren del Mor? Would you hear, as Ev lin Dar has heard, me tell of the time before the pain? Would you hear the truth of us? Would you hear and have me destroy your world? You need only ask.”
Gren del Mor did not move. He said nothing.
Ev lin Dar peered at her friend, waited, not long, then nudged him with an encouraging, if overly energetic, elbow.
“Ask, Shield,” insisted the Prince of the Bloodspawn as the last and most stubborn embers flared and died in the night. “Ask.”
So Gren del Mor asked.
And soon wished that he had not.
8
THE WAY OF DARKEST NIGHT
“With each life lost an entire universe dies.”
Carrincrys, First Knight of the Sul Athaifain
Light assailed them.
Blinding white, lancing the backs of their eyes. Intense. Invasive.
Eldurion jerked his hood low over his face, twisted furiously away, swallowed a silent shriek of pain. Rundul shaded his eyes with the broad blades of his war-axe, squinted, then squeezed his lids shut, gritting his teeth against the firestorm assaulting his sight. Even Sammayal, the impassive Lord of the immortal Shaddathair, swept his star-spangled cloak before him, a celestial curtain across a blazing sun.
And then in one final flare of explosive energy the light expired.
Slowly, Eldurion straightened. Rundul lowered his axe. The Shaddath’s cape fell slack once more.
“Urth ru Glir.” The Darad’s wide brow blackened in raw and rare amazement. “What the…?”
The Fian took one step forward, stopped, shook his head.
About the Lord of the Unforgiven a veil of absolute silence.
The world had changed. The firmament, low and overwhelmingly grey, was struck through with pale yellowish streaks, faint but perceptible, swords of shorn sunlight striving to slash past Coldmire’s lugubrious panoply. Beneath that scarred sky the rain-born sea was no more, having receded, evaporated, been absorbed and sucked down in the span of a dozen heartbeats, leaving but a scattering of shallow pools in a boundless bog to suggest, uncertainly, that it had ever existed.
And the malignant miscreation of Maol an Maalach had vanished altogether.
The stonewood raft upon which the trio still stood was wedged in a narrow depression of mud and moss. To both sides and behind the dilapidated vessel, the wet waste of Coldmire seethed and gurgled, arguing with itself, slick wet voices snickering, bickering. Immediately before the prow rose a rounded mistbound mound, a great grey shoulder of solid ground shrugged upward from the befogged flats of the fen. Gargantuan shards of granite guarded the rise, entirely encircling the base, irregularly spaced but still conveying a sense of order, of purpose, meaning. The mound itself was overgrown with grey flora – drooping cottongrass, limp bogrush, wilted sedge. But here and there, rebellious anomalies worried the otherwise monochrome monotony of the hillside. White-flowered leatherleaf, clusters of pink-petaled laurel, the pretty but perilous purple of bunched lamb -kill.
And atop the heights of the hummock was a formation of stone, a grand dolmen comprised of four great slabs of shining obsidian. Three raised standing stones, one to the back and each side, and a single massive capstone. The front of the structure was open, impenetrably black and yawning, the very maw of the moor.
“This is not…that other place.”
“No, this is not Carriceven, Captain,” confirmed the Eldest of the Fiannar. “This is not the Gate of Gods and Ghosts. And those stones on the summit are not Doras Serrin.”
“What, then? And where is the Ath?”
But Eldurion only shook his head.
“This hill is called Gaddagorth Hass,” Sammayal said softly, a degree of real wonder to his spectral tone. “Geatan Dorc Hadais in the Old Tongue. The House of the Way of Darkest Night.”
Rundul grunted. “Of course, it is. Far be it from us to stumble across the Way of Sunshine and Bunnies.”
The Fian squinted at him, his eyes naught but thin glinting gashes. “I was not aware that the Stone Lords harbour a particular love for sunlight.”
“We don’t, actually,” the Darad growled, his huge hands wringing the haft of his war-axe. “And I don’t like rabbits either, but that’s not my point.”
“I hear you, Captain,” nodded the Eldest of the Fiannar as he pulled his cowl closer about his grizzled face. “No one ever claimed this would be easy. The more difficult the deed, the more worthwhile the doing.”
“Three centuries of accumulated wisdom, Fian, and that’s the best you’ve got?”
“I dumb it down for my audience.”
But before the Darad could do more than sputter in his beard –
“No one has seen this place since the Angar ban Gan Gebbernindh and the Fall of Eldagreen,” ruminated the Lord of the Shaddathair, his voice itself a mere shadow, quiet and dark, as though his words were directed more toward his own self than to his mortal company. “None have been here in two thousand years. More precisely, this place has not been here for two thousand years. The Gaddagorth was lost. Taken. Removed from the world, shorn from this Second Earth. Now it is not.”
Rundul scrutinized the
wounded realm about the beached raft.
“So that means – ”
“Either that Gaddagorth Hass has returned, Captain,” reasoned Eldurion, “or this is not Second Earth.”
More sputtering.
“We remain where we were, scion of Defurien,” Sammayal assured calmly. His luminous gaze was fixed upon the immense stone structure atop Geatan Dorc Hadais. “The Gaddagorth has indeed returned.” He then gestured toward the dolmen in a flourish of star-flected blackness, one pale hand protruding from a billowing sleeve, a single finger extended, pointing. “As has our faithful Sun Lord.”
The Fian and the Darad looked to the open front of the megalith. Initially, they saw nothing save sheer and utter blackness. There was a depth to that perfect darkness, a sense of vast distance edging on endlessness, an inkish inkling of eternity. But perfection was and remains an unattainable illusion, and even eternity ends. The two warriors soon detected the smallest speck of light, a miniscule shimmering, no more substantial than a single phosphene bedecking the back of a tightly scrunched eyelid. And the light was moving fast, a pale comet hurtling through an otherwise empty cosmos, growing larger as it neared, rapidly becoming more distinct, more defined, until finally forming a fair yet fearsome face framed by the infinite night of the universe.
Yllufarr,
Prince of the Folk of Gavrayel in Gith Glennin.
The dire and darksome Sun Lord of the Neverborn stepped from the everblack of Gaddagorth Hass into the yellow-scarred quarterlight of Coldmire. He was essentially unharmed. He bore no wounds, neither cut nor scrape, and his raiment remained intact and whole. Yet he was not unchanged. The Prince grasped a long spear of polished jet and gold in one fist, and the pommel of a like-fashioned sword protruded above one shoulder. And he seemed taller somehow, straighter, and from him exuded a certain telesthesia, a brilliance of power that could be neither seen nor measured in any physical way, but only sensed – an intuition of dread lethality, of irresistible and fatal force, of the inexorable ending of things.
Death.
But Yllufarr himself lived.
And the deed left undone was clearly no longer so.