by Ben Galley
‘A pale king?’
Evernia shook her head. ‘As I said, none of you listen, least of all Durnus and Tyrfing,’ she replied, her voice instantly calmer. She was slowly getting somewhere. The goddess reached into her pocket and produced a small grey object, spherical in shape and rough in texture. It looked like a grey walnut. It was Farden’s grey walnut, the one he had thrown at the sky. ‘To find lost family members,’ he muttered. He reached inside his own pocket and brought out the little golden stone from the fallen star, and held it in the palm of his hand. It was glowing again, this time a bluer shade of piercing white. It was almost too bright to look at. ‘Both gods and daemons make the stone glow, but only this one can kill a daemon. I gave you one in Krauslung, if you remember.’
Farden did. He also remembered failing to use it. How was he supposed to have known? he asked himself, but thought better of voicing it aloud. Nevertheless, Evernia guessed his thoughts. ‘Would you have believed me if I had managed to tell you? Better you had it and managed to use it, than not at all,’ she said, and the mage, staring at the glowing rock, shook his head. He realised then how many times he had seen this little rock in his dreams, in the gryphon’s dreams. Ilios had been trying to tell him all along.
‘And why doesn’t anybody know this?’ he asked.
Evernia looked around at the mouldy bookshelves and desks in the room. ‘Because the nefalim have spent a long time hiding them. Countless books and scrolls have been burnt to hide their weakness. Not even Durnus knows the truth.’ Evernia’s eyes turned misty for a moment.
‘But Vice knows about daemonstones…?’ guessed Farden.
Evernia nodded. ‘And after you have eliminated your child, you can use it to kill him.’
‘I told you, I won’t. You can give it to somebody else…’ But the goddess held up her hand for silence. Farden growled. ‘I want to know where Durnus is.’
‘And I told you, he is doing what he needs to do.’
Farden clenched his fist around the daemonstone. ‘I’m getting tired of all these fucking riddles,’ he cursed. Quicker than the eye could follow Evernia reached forward and grabbed his throat. Her fingers were like icicles, but her grip, although uncomfortable and disturbing, was not strong at all. She had no more power than a ghost. Farden glared at her, but he didn’t fight back. She was a goddess, after all.
‘Understand, you stubborn, foolish, little man, that life is complicated. If it was not then it would not be a true life, and you would complain it is too easy. Instead you whine that life is not simple, and that you have been dealt a harsh hand. Well you have, mage, so I advise you to get used to it. You baulk at the hardest decisions when we had to make the hardest decision of all. You whinge that we gods do not help. We are stuck fast in the sky, Farden, tethered and shackled and powerless, and all we can do is watch and send shadows of ourselves to tug the frayed lines of our dwindling puppet strings. You cry that we have abandoned you. If you remember, we sacrificed ourselves to save you. We created humans to protect us and you barely give us the time of day. Your prayers are barely enough to keep us alive these days. Sometimes I wonder why we care.’ Evernia narrowed her eyes until they were slits of fire. Farden couldn’t help but wonder how terrifying her true form could be. She prodded the dragonscale pendant hanging around his neck with her free hand. ‘Lucky for you, we do,’ she said, and then for some reason, as if she had over-exerted herself, she swayed like a tree in the wind, and leant close to the mage. Her voice was soft and her breath icy.
‘Our puppet strings are tangled and useless. Words lose their meaning over distance. If we speak in riddles Farden, it is because there are no other ways to speak. We’re gods, Farden, we’re not perfect.’ Evernia put her free hand to her forehead and seemed to sway. ‘I’ve had enough of arguing with mortals. If you aren’t going to listen, then perhaps you will watch,’ she whispered. Her eyes moved independently of each other. They roved across his face. Eventually she let go, and turned to Ilios. The gryphon blinked, confused and slightly unsure.
‘Show him,’ ordered Evernia.
‘Show me what?’ Farden asked sullenly, rubbing some warmth back into his neck.
The goddess pointed towards the gryphon. ‘Dream, and understand,’ she said.
Farden looked at Ilios and met his piercing yellow gaze and for a moment, nothing happened. That was until the mage tried to look away, and found that he couldn’t. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw a dark pool of shadow slipping across the flagstones, enveloping his boots and legs. He was standing in the gryphon’s shadow. He tried not to panic. Darkness pulled at the curtains of his vision. Ilios stared wide-eyed at the mage and Farden could feel those black pupils probing his soul. The eyes swam and rippled like a pond until they were no longer eyes, but pools of amber and ochre and flaxen gold, swaying fields of polished wheat basking in sunshine, molten jeweller’s gold begging to be swum in. Helplessly, Farden fell deep into their depths.
The mage awoke to find himself lying on a cold floor, dizzy and with a sore head. Blearily he looked around and realised he was still in Durnus’s room. He coughed, making his head hurt even more, and pushed himself upright. Where was that vampyre? he wondered. Farden rubbed his head and tried to remember what had happened. It slowly dawned on him that the vampyre had done this to him. Farden scrambled to his feet, and a hazy memory of a tall woman and the swirling eyes of Ilios came back to him suddenly like a forgotten dream. Had it been a dream? he asked himself, putting a hand to his cold and stiff neck. Farden turned around and found the chair behind him. It beckoned to him and he sank into it.
And fell through it.
The chair dissolved into tangled threads and the mage found himself lying on what felt like wet grass. He was staring up at a bleak and stormy sky. Raindrops surged towards him. Thunder shook the ground beneath him. Farden put a hand out to guard his eyes and found a silver mirror in his hand. Its surface was flecked with rain but in its reflection Farden saw two men standing in an empty and windswept field. Broken wood littered the grass they stood on. One was a man, thin and pale, the other was covered in hair and had fangs like that of a wolf.
Jergan! shouted a voice, and the mage realised it was a shout caught on the wind like a strangled flag, drawn out scream-like and desperate. Wolves and lycans alike joined the wind in its howling. Farden was a helpless dead weight, unable to move and yet forced to watch the men fight it out. One snarled, the other howled, one swung fists, the other claws. The silver mirror cracked, and Farden stared down at the men lying side by side on the cold wet grass. The lycan’s face was smashed and broken, the vampyre’s was tortured and full of pain. He shivered. Lightning painted his features like a ghost-pale effigy. Farden looked into his eyes, and in them he saw a blue fire that had been hiding for centuries.
He saw a man lying on a field of endless bleached ice, blinding in its whiteness. The man’s cape was the colour of blood, and it flapped and twitched in the wind. The man’s chest rose and fell like the lethargic sea. A trail of bloody tracks led to the frozen north, the shape of bare feet and claws. Two dark shadows stood over the prostrate man, wearing grim faces, one tall, the other wide and stocky. They watched the man’s chest rise and fall for the last time. As he died, his head sagged to the ice, revealing the bloody wounds of two fangs on his milk-white neck. The two shadows receded, boots crunching on the frozen landscape, and left their dead brother to stare sightlessly at the clouds. Farden looked into those eyes and a pain struck his chest as he realised. Durnus.
Hours passed, days, it seemed, until dark figures appeared on the horizon. Scaly hands hauled the body to a mountain fortress, cold and stark, full of whispers. They patched the man’s body up, locked him in a room, and waited, staring through peepholes at him, until finally he arose, screaming and fanged. Irons were clamped about his wrists, claws grabbed him by his pale arms, and wings flew him south, to leave him cold and naked in a forest with no memories.
Before Farden could reach out to his f
riend, he fell down into the ice and found himself deep under the cold earth. Flashing images flew out of the soily, choking darkness, and as Farden frantically dug for air he saw glimpses of the mountains covered in snow, a city aflame, and ships, great ships, a dozen-strong and dark, squatting low in the water as herds of people were ushered and shoved aboard. Tears joined the salty sea, and those who couldn’t work were cast aside and left to flounder or drown. The dark stormy night was full of crying. Others hid in houses. Soldiers stalked the shadows. A girl screamed for her life as a man in armour ripped the skirts from her skinny legs and pinned her naked and helpless body down with his. She cried out as he entered her. Farden grabbed at the soldier’s face but found nothing but darkness and mud between his fingers. He yelled for help and his mouth filled with earth, worm-filled, gritty. Is this what you want? said a female voice.
A light suddenly punctured the darkness of the earth and the mage was on a barren plain. The sky above was thick with nothing. The stars were gone. The pockmarked moon was dead. Farden looked down and found a lone star hiding in the mud, twinkling and burning, a survivor of whatever cataclysm had eradicated its kind. Farden knelt to pick it up. It was a stone, small and hot, and blindingly bright. Farden seized it and held it close, finding a little comfort in its light on his dark plain. Part of him wished he could have stayed there then, alone and safe in the endless wilderness, not a thought or a worry for miles and a star to light his way.
But it wasn’t meant to be.
Kneeling in the mud, hugging his star, Farden felt cold rain pattering on the back of his neck. He went to stand and discovered there was nothing to push against. The mage opened his eyes to find himself in mid air, hundreds of feet above a tangle of streets and roads. Roofs and spires fought for space beneath him, waiting for him to fall, vying to claim his tumbling body with their tiles and weathervanes. Farden looked forward and blinked, feeling queasy. He was hovering outside a window. He wiped aside the rain with streaks of his muddy hands and peered inside. There was a woman lying in bed, pregnant and asleep. For the moment she looked peaceful. Just then, a man and woman holding a long and wicked knife, a maid by the looks of her, entered, and ran at the woman in the bed. Farden watched helplessly as the maid plunged the knife into the sleeping woman, so deep that she almost buried the hilt. The mage cried out, his cry joining the dark night and its stormy cacophony. Blood dripped onto the marble floors from the underside of the bed, dripping from the tip of cold, brass-coloured metal that had pushed itself through the wood and cloth. The blade glowed with a bluish light. The man, scaly and fierce, turned his head to look at the mage, and his yellow eyes seemed to look through him, picking apart his flesh and bones like a raven with a carcass, like a gryphon. He clicked his crooked fingers, and suddenly it was all over.
Darkness filled his dream, and he was left with the image of an old woman sneering at him, a bundle in her arms and an army at her back. She turned, and slipping through the faceless ranks of her endless army, she disappeared into a wintry sunset of rusty orange. Fire descended on the earth in waves and stripped bodies of flesh, until a sea of skeletons swayed in the dust, grinning and creaking. A thousand centuries flew past, and Farden was left to stand in the darkness, alone.
You know what you need to do. We have shown you all that we know. Put your stubbornness aside and, for once, save the world said the voice of a goddess.
When Farden came back to reality Evernia had gone. The mage stood swaying on his feet, once again, but this time for real, dizzy and sporting an aching head. Ilios stood in front of him. There was an expression of concern on his eagle-like face, and an apologetic look in his yellow eyes. Farden put his hand on the gryphon’s beak and took a deep breath. At least he knew now why nobody ever stepped in a gryphon’s shadow. ‘Please,’ he gasped, ‘never do that again.’
Ilios whistled regretfully and shrugged. ‘I know you had to,’ said Farden, guessing what he said. Farden went to the fireplace and after testing the armchair with a couple of kicks from his boot, he sat down and put his weary head in his wearier hands. He put a finger to his head and muttered something and slowly his headache began to disappear.
The dream had been beyond disturbing. Ilios came to stand beside his chair and the mage looked up at him. ‘Was that all true?’ he asked, deflated and defeated. ‘I mean, was that real?’
Ilios nodded. Farden groaned. He banged his fist on the arm of the chair. ‘Gods be damned,’ he said, half-hoping Evernia, wherever she had gone, could still hear him. ‘Why,’ he began. ‘Why couldn’t your dreams have been clearer?’ Ilios hissed and whistled, shaking his head, and Farden understood. What did he expect? The future wasn’t a set of written instructions, it was a scrap of paper flying in the wind, and they were lucky to have even that. Farden sighed. ‘The Grimsayer was right, wasn’t it? The third pale king isn’t dead.’
Ilios shook his head.
Farden swallowed. ‘And it has been Durnus all along?’ he asked, finding the words hard and strange in his mouth. The dirty secrets were finally out, and they tasted bitter. The pain in his head spread to his heart. Ilios nodded. ‘Could he die?’
Ilios nodded again.
‘Could he live?’
Again, a nod.
Farden sighed. ‘And somehow, Elessi is going to kill Cheska.’
The gryphon bowed his head one last time.
The mage put a hand to his heart and closed his eyes. In the darkness he saw the ships, the burning city, his people, Durnus, Elessi and the knife, now all as clear as day in his head. Farden knew the future now, and he didn’t like it one bit. Once again he slammed his fist on the chair and got to his feet. Damn them all, gods and the rest, Farden cursed to himself, it was his mistake. Let him deal with it the way he saw fit. It was his child, his Cheska. If anyone were going to put an end to this, it would be him.
Farden went to the door and Ilios moved to follow. The mage held up a hand. ‘Wait here,’ he ordered, and then disappeared into the gloom of the corridor. He reappeared a few minutes later with his sword and his bag of supplies. Farden strapped them tightly to his back and then put his wrists together with a clang. He rubbed his vambraces together in a circle. The stale air around them began to hum and whine. Farden stretched out his hands as though he were pushing against a wall and an enormous cracking noise broke the dripping silence. A pulse of magick swept through the room, pushing desks and bookcases aside as if they were toys, and struck the opposing wall. With a bang and crash, the bricks and windows folded and fell outwards. The entire wall was now a makeshift window, big enough for a gryphon. Farden didn’t bother pausing to survey his work. He jumped onto Ilios’s back and grabbed a handful of the beast’s feathery mane. The gryphon warbled and whistled. His talons scraped at the floor as he readied himself to fly. ‘Krauslung,’ whispered Farden, in his tufted ears. ‘As fast as you can.’ The gryphon did not need any encouragement. Like a bolt from a crossbow, Ilios exploded from the broken bell tower and darted across the stormy sky, heading south and east to war and uncertainty.
‘Our three pawns have become two,’ said a deep voice between the stars.
‘And one of those is half-dead and dying,’ sighed another.
Chapter 20
“Luck is an unquantifiable property, yet is pervasively present in every form of life. Luck was once solely a thing of the dragons. Ask a Siren old enough and he or she will tell you that it is not blood that runs in a dragon’s veins, but luck instead.
“Is it luck then that has brought us here today, or is it divine intervention? There is no god of luck that Emaneska worships, yet we pray to luck itself as if it were a deity in need of homage, or a force to be given the most pietistic reverence. How many times have one of you wished another to have ‘good luck’ upon simply stepping out of a door? Humans and creatures alike give luck the devotion we normally hold for the ineffective, useless and fickle gods above, and yet by nature it is such an indiscernible energy that it raises the question of its ow
n existence. A happenstance of good fortune may be ascribed to a person having good luck, but then again it might have been an incident free of influence altogether. Was it luck, or pure coincidence? Or are they one and the same? Perhaps it is godlike then, by its own mysterious intentions.
“Luck may govern all or nothing, and in either case we pay it a great deal of attention. It surely will be a question for posterity to answer…”
Taken from ‘The Questions,’ a book by the “heretic” Snellar Fen, who was burnt at the stake in the year 751
Had Krauslung been a colour, it would have been red. A deep blood-crimson, thick with rusty iron and steel and cobblestone. Red, though not by choice. The city seethed with it, dripped with it, swirled and mixed it with the briny bilge sloshing around the inside of the ships that squatted low in the harbour.
For now, the city was silent. Night had fallen. Everybody waited. Only the rats dared make a noise, scurrying, scratching, and gnawing at the corpses that had been cast aside or left behind. Beneath, in the cellars and the sewers, fists clenched and hot tears met cold cobble. Everybody waited, and the city teetered and hovered on a knife’s edge. Even the storm had abated, even if just for the night.
Deep in the bowels of the Arkathedral, in an empty hallway, the air shivered in the cold. All of a sudden, as if the hallway itself were dreaming, the marble walls began to deliquesce and warp and swirl like hot butter. A dark figure stepped out of the undulating whirlpool, and as soon as it had appeared, the portal vanished, and the corridor was silent once again.
Black was the colour of the Arkathedral, of its halls and its corridors, of its stairwells and doors, of its barracks and its rooms, as though even candlelight had been forbidden. The darkness was smothering, thick and heavy, and perfect. Two nervous hands felt their way around a marble corner, and two eyes peered into the perfect darkness. Elessi swallowed her queasiness and tried to keep her breathing under control. She was exhausted. Thron’s magick doorway had got them to Krauslung faster than a ride on a dragon, but it had meant a whole day’s walk through a nauseating, spinning tunnel. Elessi’s stomach had not appreciated that. ‘Are you still here?’ she whispered, in a voice quieter than her very own thoughts.