by Matthew Ward
“Shoot! Bring the damn thing down!”
Quarrels spacked off the gable wall. Others thumped home. Grey robes twitched and shuddered. Maridov’s body still clutched tight, the figure fell. Dust hissed away as it struck cobbles. With its fall, the other vranakin fled, a flood of turned heels running for the safety of the mists.
“Blessed Lumestra,” gasped Constable Jorek. “What was that?”
Darrow edged closer, nostrils itching at the stench. Too dry for decay, but death nonetheless. Her sword twitched aside the hood, revealing a face scarcely less gaunt and rutted than the luckless Maridov’s. Pallid skin clung tight to cheek and brow – the hollow features of a corpse long buried. Writhing black insects scuttled from burrows of ragged flesh and sought the shelter of gutter and cracked brick.
“Bloody disgusting is what it is.”
Jorek braced his crossbow against the ground and cranked the string back into position. “Begging your pardon, captain, but this whole business is bloody disgusting.”
Pinched expression belied levity. Not that the other constables looked any better. Not that Darrow felt any better. The streets had swallowed her makeshift army and spat out bones and blood. Knives in every shadow. Eyes on every rooftop. And with every turning, her numbers thinned. Now she’d barely a score of constables at her back. The others were still out there. She heard them fighting. She heard them dying. Every scrap of sound fed a temper seldom below boiling point, the anger worse for impotence.
“We let this grow,” she growled. “We knew Dregmeet was trouble, but we looked the other way. Now we’re paying for it.”
“We offered peace, Captain Darrow,” crowed a thin voice. “Refusal carries a price.”
Darrow tore her gaze from the corpse and stared along the street. Two figures drew in from the alley mouth. A kernclaw and an unassuming, shrunken man in neat, gold-trimmed robes. Darrow’s eyes met his. She recoiled, breathless.
Across the rooftops, the shriek and clamour of the vranakin soared to new, wild heights.
Jorek sank to his knees, crossbow abandoned. Other constables collapsed, sobbing and whimpering. Darrow flinched, seized of sudden, desperate certainty that the fear would lessen on breaking contact with those black, pupil-less eyes.
Screwing up the last of her courage, she thrust. The blade slipped between the cadaverous man’s ribs. No scream. Not one drop of blood. He leaned in, teeth a rictus grin.
Darrow’s gasp died on parched lips. A cold, bony hand closed about her throat. The other wrested the sword from her grip and dragged it clear of his flesh. A shimmer of black blood shone on the blade, and then hissed away silver.
The world spun. Resistance melted beneath the other’s cold, black gaze.
“Hush. I will take away your fear.”
One glimpse beyond the lychgate was enough. A glance at the shrunken figure in the gold-trimmed robes. One heartbeat of contact with those pitiless, abyssal eyes. Altiris buried his head in his hands as the tide of roiling, black terror swallowed him up and swept him away into nightmare.
Fire flickered in the smothering darkness. A flame sprung from the recollection of his father’s pyre. Suddenly, Altiris was a child again, trapped in the crowd gathered before the tumbledown church of Selann’s stockade, old memories woken to new life. The cold, clear gaze of Selann’s reeve as he proclaimed the unproven charge of witchery. The fear in his father’s eyes as the fires reached him. The bitter smell of pinewood and charring flesh.
It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
Rationale shattered beneath his father’s sudden scream.
Sobbing, Altiris forced open his eyes. A shadow blotted out the greenish-white of the mists. Recognition seeped through gummed thoughts. Sidara, sword in hand and moving as if in a dream, reached for the lychgate’s latch. New fears bled into old.
“Sidara?” he gasped. “No!”
“I have to try. It’s Hawkin’s wife.” She halted, brow furrowed. Blue eyes rushed gold. “And the light wants me to.”
She opened the gate and stepped uncertainly into the street.
Altiris reached for her, and stumbled as the pyre stench overtook him anew. He lost his grip on the Living Realm and sank into the black of waking nightmare. Flames danced to greet him.
“Let her go!”
A young voice. A thin voice. More than that, a familiar one, seared into memory by an impossible flash of light.
The Reveque girl.
The girl at the open lychgate was different to the one Apara remembered. Part of it was maturity’s bounty – the woman sloughing off the child – but not all. There was confidence in stance and expression. Certainty. A year before, when Apara had hunted her through the darkness of the church foundry, Sidara had been terrified. Now she was merely afraid. An ocean of difference.
Apara fought the urge to shrink away.
Athariss dropped Captain Darrow to a twitching, shuddering heap. Sidara held her ground, sword in both hands and levelled in textbook high guard – horizontal at her shoulder, the point aimed between Athariss’ black eyes.
He leered. “The daughter? You’ll make a fine elder cousin. What better lesson for your wayward father?” His foot tapped Maridov’s withered, ragged corpse. “We’ve lost many today. They must be replenished.”
“My father will see you hanged.”
“You cannot threaten a man with what he already has, child. My spirit walks with the Raven.” Athariss stepped past the sobbing Darrow. “And Lord Reveque is ours already. He needs only a reminder.”
The sword-point wavered. “You’re lying.”
Athariss took another step. “Everything we have done, he made possible. He shielded us. Protected us. Helped us offer tribute. He is vranakin, whatever his denials.”
“You think I’d believe you?”
“I know you do.” The words were measured, hypnotic.
Her shoulders slumped. The sword-point dipped.
Athariss cackled. “Perhaps I’ll permit you to serve as emissary to him. Families should be together. You needn’t fear death, child. It drives away all weakness.”
His bony hand reached for hers.
“No!”
The sword came up in a golden arc. Athariss jerked back in a spray of black blood. He screamed and scuttled away. Hands clasped to his ruined face came away slick. Dark eyes widened in horror.
“Impossible.” He stumbled through the moaning constables. Hands shook as blood welled and gushed away. The crowfather’s immortality undone by the light’s caress. “Impossible!”
Sidara bore down, the golden light about her shoulders driving back the mist.
“Apara!” howled Athariss.
Apara gave herself to the raven cloak. Shrieking wings flung her into Sidara’s path. The girl cried out as talons raked her arm and scraped the sword away. Mantled light slipped from her shoulders.
Apara slammed the girl against brick, hand at her shoulder and talons against her throat. The iron tang of fresh blood thickened. The raven cloak shrilled its delight. The shadow in Apara’s soul screamed.
“I remember you.” The gold faded from Sidara’s eyes, leaving them blue with defiance even as her voice ran ragged. “In the foundry. You hurt my mother.”
“Kill her!” Athariss shrieked the command, his words edged with rage and pain. “Apara!”
“You know I can’t!” The shadow gathered about Apara’s chest, stifling her breath. Her heart pounded. “It won’t let me!”
“You are vranakin! Kernclaw! Your soul belongs to the Raven, which means it belongs to me. Kill her!”
A twitch of talons would open the girl’s throat to the bone. As impossible now as it had been for more than a year. But if she didn’t, Athariss would give her to the mists for her failure. Madness and a prizrak’s hunger. Her fate, unless Sidara died.
Apara screamed. The shadow’s grip slackened.
The black clouds of Altiris’ nightmare hissed away before the scream.
Sidara.
Pyre-flames guttered.
“For the Phoenix.”
Altiris stuttered the words through chattering teeth. Clung to the mantra that had belonged to his parents, and now to him. Fear yielded to shame, and shame to the first trembling flame.
Jellied legs launched him through the gate. Courage faltered as he took in cowering constables and leering vranakin; Sidara pinned against the wall by a kernclaw, her right sleeve torn and matted red. Talons at her throat. The pallid, cadaverous figure sheeted in unnatural blood.
Terror gathered as dark eyes met his. Altiris drove it back the only way he knew.
“For the Phoenix!”
The words drove him on. The kernclaw leapt away, talons scraping a parry. Altiris screamed. No words. No meaning. A howl to drive out fear. Kurkas’ painstaking lessons abandoned for a berserk flurry that gave no thought to defence.
The kernclaw’s boot slammed into his knee. Numbed, the leg crumpled and pitched him to the cobbles. His sword skittered away.
The cadaverous man staggered closer. “Southwealders have never known when to kneel.”
“Praise Lumestra,” growled Captain Darrow. “But you’re right.”
The sword-point burst from the cadaverous man’s chest in a spray of black blood and the thin hiss of his scream. Eyes bloodshot in a haggard face, Darrow wrenched the blade a quarter turn and kicked the twitching body clear. Pale hands scrabbled against cobbles. A horrible, creaking sigh of a breaking soul and they went still.
Darrow dropped to one knee, head bowed and breath rasping.
The vranakin on the rooftops fell silent. The mists dissipated. Etravia flickered. Black blood trickled between the cobbles and evaporated silver. For the briefest moment, the air lost the taste of stale memories. Stars glinted beyond the veil. Then the ghosts returned. The mists regathered, though thinner than before.
The kernclaw screamed. A mass of squalling black wings swept over Altiris, talons ripping at his face and clothes. Then she was gone, the body of the cadaverous man carried with her into the mists. Constables staggered to their feet. Some shook their heads to dispel a nightmare. Others clung to one another for support.
Altiris scrambled to where Sidara lay, her back against the wall and a bloodied arm in her lap. Scarlet gleamed where the kernclaw’s talons had marked her throat.
Her lips pursed in a satisfied smile. “I’m all right.”
“You’re not.”
Altiris tore a strip off his tunic and knotted it about her arm. Blood slicked his fingers as he worked, golden light dancing upon scarlet. He swore and tore free another strip.
Twice, she’d saved him. He could save her once.
“I showed him…” Sidara’s voice faded. “Him and his lies.”
“You did.” Darrow squatted at Altiris’ side, firm hands guiding his. Her eyes widened at the magic spiralling free. “Not there, boy. Higher up. Draw it tight.”
He obeyed. The flow faltered. “What did she do?”
“She cut him. He didn’t even blink when I struck him the first time, but her? Well, you saw. That light of hers hurt him, and badly. Soon as he was screaming, the worst of…” She brushed halting fingers across her temple. “… whatever that was… Didn’t seem so bad any more. And he felt my second blow, sure enough.”
The memory of the pyre flickered. Altiris wound the last strip and knotted it tight. “The nightmare? You felt it too?”
“Years back, I was on the Belligerent when it went down. Caught below decks with the ocean rushing in. Felt it all over again when he looked at me. I couldn’t breathe. Don’t know how she kept her wits.”
“Don’t you know?” Sidara said dreamily. “I’m made of magic.”
Her eyes slid closed.
Harsh voices sounded from the rooftops, rushing to a crescendo. Feet clattered on tiles.
“Captain?” A constable cupped hands to his mouth. “We’ve got trouble.”
“When haven’t we?” Darrow scowled and stood. “Get her out of here, lad.”
Two vranakin came screaming out of the alleyway, serrated knives in their hands. A constable tackled one to the ground. The other died with a quarrel in his throat.
“What about you?” said Altiris.
“We’ll hold the street while you slip away. She bought us a chance. We’ll buy her one.”
“No! We’ll go together. Safety in numbers.”
“Only thing numbers do on these streets is draw attention. Get her out. And if you see Lord Reveque, tell him I hope he’s got a miracle in his back pocket, or the city’s lost.”
Darrow’s expression convinced where her words did not. Flat. Hard. Bereft of hope. Offering a shaky salute, Altiris hoisted Sidara to his shoulder and staggered away.
Forty-Two
Layer by layer, the pyres grew. The work gangs sang with the hoisting of each log, the dirge’s cadence darker for the onset of night and descending clouds. The chorus swelled with the voices of those who kept watch upon the walls, or offered toast to slain comrades about courtyard fires. Come dawn, the advance on the Marcher Lands would continue. But dawn was yet hours away, and the time between belonged to the victors and the dead.
Alone in the fortress chapel, Aeldran refrained from song: one last silent salute offered to those who’d drawn steel against the assault. Prince or peasant, death made equals of all. The Tressian dead lay still and cold upon pew and tile, waiting for… For what? The embrace of stone and the darkness of the tomb, or perhaps the Light of Third Dawn? Tressian beliefs remained a peculiar mystery to Aeldran Andwar, but he nonetheless revered the courage they roused. One could respect an enemy’s valour even while disdaining purpose.
Take the dead woman on the pew before him, grey eyes sightless and blonde hair matted with blood both shed and stolen. Her ragged coat and torn epaulettes marked her as a sailor, as alien to the mountain fastness as was it to her. She’d no business being at Vrasdavora.
She’d fought anyway, sending three Immortals to the Raven, and twice their number to the surgeons. She’d never lost her fire, not even with her arm broken by a mace’s swing. Not until Aeldran had buried his sword in her heart, and that blow had almost cost him his head. No finer companion with which to hold the wall, and no worthier foe from whom to take it.
He eased the corpse’s eyes closed. “May you find whatever reward you seek,” he murmured. “And know it was deserved.”
Footsteps stirred Aeldran from reverie. He offered a deep bow, stifling a wince as the motion pulled on wounds recently bound. “Savim.”
Beneath her helm, Melanna’s dark eyes revealed nothing of approval, or its lack. So very different from Naradna, whose thoughts were seldom a mystery even behind a mask. “I expected you to be basking in the glow of victory.”
He offered a lopsided shrug. “Tomorrow, yes. Tonight I see only the cost.”
“Your chieftains disagree. Most have already lost half their wits to drink. Mine too.”
“Those who miss the lesson of sacrifice have only half their wits to begin with.”
The twitch became a thin smile. “And you?”
“With my mettle proven in the assault, my position is secure.” He offered a second, shallower bow. “You have my thanks, savim.”
She picked her way through the dead to stand at his side. “A heavy toll.”
Aeldran wiped at the crusted blood on his right cheek, a gift from the woman with the grey eyes. “They fought like demons. I cannot believe they were so few.”
Melanna tugged her helm clear. Black tresses slithered across her shoulders. “You respect them?”
“How can I not?” He shrugged. “How we face death is all that matters.”
“Is that why you’ve ordered them buried, rather than burned?” Her expression was again without expression, tempting him to a misstep.
“Burial is their way, as honouring other customs used to be ours. Did I do wrong, savim?”
“No,” Melanna said at last. “We’ve sacrificed too much of who we
are for this war. If victory is to mean anything, we have to find our way back. This was a good start, savir.”
More surprising than the honorific – more surprising than to hear his own sentiment shared – was the softening of feature and tone. Years sloughed away, her imperious aspect fading. What remained was the Melanna Saranal that Aeldran had heard spoken of, but had never met. Introspective. Thoughtful. Spiritual. None of them traits admired by her detractors, but such men would only ever seek complaint. To Aeldran’s mind, their value was greater than a hundred swords. After all, a sword only killed. It was a bleak realm that was founded on death alone.
“Then I have served you well?” he asked.
“Better than I’d have believed an Andwar could.”
The form of words soured the compliment, even when delivered with unfamiliar levity. “Then may I request a boon?”
Suspicion glimmered. “That is a champion’s entitlement.”
He breathed deep of the chapel’s sour air. Easier to climb a bowing ladder into a wall of blades than this. “Free Naradna.”
Levity vanished behind the mask of the Empress-to-be. “She sought my death. Releasing her proclaims my weakness from the mountaintop.”
“The woman I have respected so long never feared the whispers of jealous men.”
“You should be careful investing in her. She might be nothing but fantasy.”
“Perhaps, but my request remains.”
Melanna pursed her lips. The sour hint of crestis oil wafted beneath the decaying roof as the first pyres were lit beyond the walls.
“I’ll consider your words. But in solitude.”
Aeldran bowed and withdrew from the chapel.
Crossing the courtyard, he threaded fires half-hidden by descending cloud, returning nods and drunken greetings from men of Rhaled and Icansae. That there was little segregation between the scarlet and green was cause for cheer. Rivalry and distrust set aside with battle won. But there’d be quarrels before the fires faded. Broken bones, perhaps even deaths. A cycle of belligerence burned into marrow. Allegiances born less out of love for comrades, and more from hatred of the foe.