by Matthew Ward
He twisted away, shoulders hunched.
Was it even true? Had she asked for this? Had he perhaps loved her, in whatever twisted way he was capable? Or was it all a game, played for hidden stakes and divine pleasure, and she just an unwitting piece upon the board? Rosa found she didn’t care. That emotion belonged to another woman. Another life. Not to the Pale Queen of Otherworld. Part of her recognised the wrongness. Recoiled from it. But the spark of panic faded, smothered.
She stared down at black smoke curling from corpse-pale hands. A silver ring gleamed on her finger. Her Essamere garb was gone, replaced by a dark suit – an echo to the Raven’s own, save for heavy, pleated skirts of a type she’d always loathed.
The Raven turned and took her hand, the ring’s gleam hidden beneath the leather of his glove. Colour drained from the world, muted to murky grey. All around, the mist shone bright with the souls of the living. Beautiful wisps of light that flickered and faded as screams reached new heights.
“The bargain holds.” He sounded sad, though Rosa no longer comprehended why. “You are the Queen of Otherworld, and also… and also my servant. I promised you revenge. Go. Drink your fill. But bring me my brother. He was right. This has gone on too long. Better it all ends.”
The Rhalesh column stuttered to a halt. Shields rippled as rear ranks took on the duties of the front, and shields locked solid in an unbroken emerald wall. Harmonic dirge swelled beneath the wail of vanaguard pipes, bellicose and mournful, a promise of forge and flame for the valiant, and death for all.
Viktor held his tongue, though he knew the thick, Thrakkian words as well as any marcher’s song. Trusting his galloping steed and the press of riders to steer him true, he closed his eyes. Freed, his shadow raced before him, hungry, implacable. Cries rang out as the Hadari beheld the Dark that had loosed them to ruinous war. He felt their fear as a thing alive, writhing out of control as shadow smothered sight.
The Thrakkian song swelled to a baleful chorus. Viktor opened his eyes. Glimpsed men clutching at their eyes; rime-glinting shields cast down and spears masterless. The emerald wall gaped wide in welcome.
Viktor ripped back his shadow, and the killing began.
Moments passed in a crimson blur. The whirl and thrust of the claymore. The wet thump of axes. The chime of steel upon steel, and the desperate, bellowed orders as chieftains and havildars exhorted men to hold. The valour of men who fought for brothers of the shield and died beside them. Red deeds to conjure shame as much as pride. But Tressia had not sought this war, and Viktor’s heart remained cold.
A flood of Hadari fled away east. Vanaguard spurred away in pursuit. Inkari’s bellow and the shriek of pipes urged them back.
Viktor swung his bloody claymore to his shoulder and rode ahead. To the east, the resurgent mist that had already swallowed distant Govanna and the Traitor’s Pyre now engulfed the leading Rhalesh columns. To the north, hummocked dead marked the demise of Britonisian shieldsmen even as the blazing Dauntless snapped one of her anchors and sank lower into the river. To the south, king’s blue banners twitched above a drakonback’s overlapping shields as the companies of the 2nd – veterans of the long border watch – marched out into an arrow-storm conjured by Corvanti bows.
Again, the centre stole Viktor’s eye. The centre, where corpses marked a bloody road to divine war. A contest without quarter, fought on the border of rising mist. Smoke-wreathed spirits hacking black flame at wood-demons and torn apart in turn by the lash of frond and briar.
For all Rosa had claimed the Raven sent his servants to fight the Tressian cause, Viktor saw little sign that was so. Much the same could be said for the strawjacks, who simply tore at the spirits with the same fury offered them. All fought on without acknowledgement the shield walls grinding alongside.
Inkari clattered to a halt at Viktor’s side, eyes wide beneath her winged visor. “Volrandri… It’s not about us any longer, is it?”
He looked to the wounded western sky, viridian light flashing through clouds run black as night. Portent that reached beyond the wit of man and transgressed the divine.
“I don’t know that it ever was.”
Nor did it matter. Discipline had held the day, but it couldn’t conjure swords from thin air, nor command the dead to fight. Thrakkian axes had torn one Rhalesh column to ruin, its survivors fled east to the shelter of Icansae shields. Another had already reached the Tressian lines. Two more closed through the hail of crossbow fire, shields held high.
“If the Raven will not intervene, others must,” said Viktor. “Are your warriors ready?”
Broken chainmail rustled. Inkari stiffened, her lip curling. “When the thane gave his word, he gave ours.”
Thrakkians. A week before, she’d tried to kill him. Today she’d die for him, if called to.
Viktor thrust the claymore to the skies. “Brenæ af Brenæ!”
“Væga af Væga!” The reply hammered out beneath the darkening sky.
The claymore came down, and the world shook.
The sky screamed with bird voices and revenant grave-calls. Kai staggered on through corpse-choked mist. Every step tore at open wounds, blood oozing beneath ravaged armour. With every spasming pulse of his heart, he felt life ebb away, fuel for the moonfire of the Goddess’ sword.
Even now, he refused to cast the blade aside. It had become a talisman. A connection to a goddess forsaken and a daughter betrayed. A fool’s hope of redemption.
A knee buckled. He fell against a barricade’s wreckage. Dead faces stared up in accusation. What else could they offer for a failure? For a barterer of daughters? And all for what? The dream of a throne? Worthless.
“Get up, old man.” Laboured breath frosted on his lips. “Get up. Make… Make this right.”
Jack could be hurt, and that which knew pain, knew death. Surely that would end the fool’s bargain? Unthinkable, to slay a god, but all was unthinkable until it was done, and legend forged.
Kai grasped at the barricade and strove to rise. Wood splintered beneath his fingers. He pitched back into the dead. The Goddess’ sword flickered and slipped from his hand.
Ravens spiralled above, their dance dizzying, their mocking chorus echoing through the hollows of a dead heart. A breath caught and fluttered. Another wheezed away. Limbs disobeyed command to rise. Mist mottled and darkened.
“Here!” An urgent voice split the mists. “Warleader, it’s him!”
Devren dropped to his knees, the fur of his pelt-cloak stiff and tufted with congealed blood and his lined face creased with worry. “Fight, savir. An Empire must have its Emperor. Girl! He needs you!”
Moonlight glimmered against golden armour and unfamiliar faces. Corvine voices crackled away. Kai’s eyes slid closed.
The black flame of Rosa’s sword struck the Immortal’s head from his shoulders. The spark of soul flickered out through the murk of her new world, his body dull as it crumpled against his fellows. Theirs guttered and burned back bright, fear blazing to match strident cries even as they joined him in death.
Her free hand closed around a shield’s rim and ripped it from the bearer’s hands. A thrust between the loose rings of his leather jerkin, and his spark scattered, lost to the mists.
Inky vapour streaming behind, Rosa strode into the gap, the strike of spear and sword dull against unfeeling flesh. She heard a voice screaming, harsh and thick with joy. Her voice, and yet not. No longer a knight of Essamere, not the Council Champion. Not even the woman Sevaka had loved. A Pale Queen for a Raven King, paid court by death’s dancing light. Nothing left to live for but slaughter.
Revenants flooded in. She felt them come. They were part of her as they were part of the Raven. As she was part of the Raven. Slaughter quickened, shadowthorn souls fading as death tore apart their formation from within.
Drink your fill, he’d commanded. Each death only sharpened her thirst – the woman-who-was and the queen-who-remained bound together in the need to kill. Even as the woman-who-was twisted in revulsion, the queen-who-remai
ned cried out for more. To bathe in the reflection of sparks flown free.
“Ashanael bortha!”
A shard-spear sliced into Rosa’s arm, its light blinding, searing. Howling with pain, she cast about, but saw no soul to grant the wielder shape.
The spear struck again even as flesh reknitted, glancing off a rib and punching deep into a lung. But the thrust brought the woman close – too close for the silver mask to any longer conceal the spark of her soul. That spark flickered in panic as her spear snagged on flesh. Rosa locked an arm about her neck. A greasy crack, and the hidden spark flew free. The spear’s light bled away, and Rosa let the body drop.
There.
Beyond the dying sparks of the shadowthorn column, a gangling form lurching towards the safety of nearby strawjacks, the quarry she’d been loosed to claim. Ragged Jack. The King. The Coward. The faithless brother. Her faithless brother.
The ground trembled. Harsh song filled the sky, punctuated by the crash of axe on shield.
Screams tore Rosa’s attention southeast, where souls danced like glimmerbugs against the column’s grey flank. Not the work of revenants, but ephemeral riders, their own sparks blazing as those they came to kill. And at their centre, a man whose soul was black as pitch.
“Rosa?” He went still as his eyes met hers. “What has he done to you?”
Memory surfaced. The kiss of wind on skin. The exhilaration of grass rushing away beneath galloping hooves. Family, bonded by discipline and duty. The words that went alongside.
Until Death.
She stared down at her hands. Rubbed her thumb at congealed blood until the silver ring shone through. Until Death? She was death.
Trumpets sounded. The man was gone, swept from sight by cataphracts come late to the fray.
Jack remained.
Rosa sent revenants before her as heralds to her coming. Soul-sparks flickered and died. Banners fell. Strawjacks came shambling to protect their father, sparks as putrid as their bones. They tore the leading revenants to shreds, each a spike of pain in Rosa’s thoughts, but the revenants were many, and the strawjacks few. The black flame consumed them all, and Jack was alone.
He flung up his hands, sap still dripping where an Emperor had claimed his fingers.
{{I yield,}} he crackled. Frayed robes puddled as he knelt. Breaths rasped behind the slighted mask, the fire flickering behind axe-driven scar a green spark in Rosa’s grey world. {{I will discuss terms. A bargain to suit all palates.}}
Rosa drew closer, a piece of her in rapture as the sparks of battle danced and faded.
Robes parted. Thorned talons arced up at her chest. Black flame leapt in her hand and struck hand from wrist. Jack recoiled, three-fingered hand clutching at smouldering stump. The severed limb blazed and crackled at Rosa’s feet, curling inwards as fire took hold.
He went still as she set the sword against his mask.
“Not this time, brother.” The Raven strode serenely through the raging battle, his footsteps placed with care so as to avoid being skewered or trampled by ignorant ephemerals. “You forced the matter. Now it will be war for everyone. Damn you for forcing me to this, and damn me for the deed.”
{{I beg you,}} Jack snivelled, abasing himself. {{Show pity.}}
“Everyone knows the Raven is heartless.” The Raven halted and stared skyward. “I can hear them, you know. Your children, rushing to save their loving father. Even with a sword at your throat, your tongue trots a crooked path.”
Revenants gathered, a black wall to blot out the battle beyond. The Raven plucked a sword from one, and held it gingerly, as if unsure of its purpose. “Should I spare him, my queen?”
How could he even ask? Why did he bother, when she could give no answer he did not desire? “No.”
He hefted the sword. Gloved fingers caressed black flame. “I feel there should be more ceremony to this. An end. A beginning. It’s a privilege.”
A bell chimed, or what seemed a bell to Rosa’s ephemeral senses. Jack’s head jerked up, the thin crackle of his breath a match for watchful eyes. The bell chimed again.
“Oh really, sister,” said the Raven. “You do have the worst—”
Then he and Jack were gone, and Rosa alone in a field of screams and fading lights.
Sixty-Four
The braziers around the island of thrones blazed towards the starlit sky, bringing life to the place that was no place. When the fires faded, Jack and the Raven stood on opposite sides of the dark pool, insignificant against the shroud of eternity. Neither was entirely as Melanna recalled. The Raven stood taller, straighter, his arrogance fourfold. Jack was canted over to one side, a seeping stump clutched to filthy robes.
Then again, none of the gods were quite as they’d been on Melanna’s previous visit to the waters of the clockface. The Nameless Lady was older, the last of the girl gone from her countenance, and the woman she’d become garbed in a dress more austere than the one worn before. Tzal was skeletal beneath the folds of his stark suit, less an elderly man than a corpse burning with indigo flame. By contrast, Astor seemed more vigorous. Steel gleamed beneath the cracked rust of his fingers as they drummed his throne’s armrest, and his eyes glowed like cinders.
And Ashana? She stood rigid beside her silver throne, apparent calm a poor mask for seething worry. Apara, standing as Melanna’s mirror on the opposite side of Lumestra’s empty throne, looked ready to bolt, her eyes flicking between the Raven and the distant mist gate where the Huntsman stood guard. She held the ornate wooden box – wrapped tight in a scrap of cloth to disguise its origin – tight across her chest, a talisman against divine wrath, just as Melanna held the squirming raven-shard close.
Melanna might have felt contempt for the Tressian, but for her own fear. Ashana’s divine family were no less intimidating on second exposure than the first. More than that, while Melanna had Ashana to keep her safe, Apara had no such guarantor. Not one she trusted.
“What is the meaning of this?” The Raven circled the pool, his dark eyes on Jack. “I was rather in the middle of something.”
{{You are nothing but a cheat. A deceiver.}} Jack clutched his wounded arm closer. {{Subverting mortals to fight your battles.}}
The Raven sniffed. “I’m not responsible for the Emperor’s choices. Isn’t it strange, brother, how even your allies loathe you? I can’t imagine what you do to deserve it.”
“Enough,” said Ashana. “We didn’t call you here to endure your bickering.”
{{More interference, sister? Weren’t you overruled when last we met?}}
“Weren’t you winning?” she replied sweetly. “Things change. But no, I’m not here to call for censure. I respect the judgement of my peers, as I know you all respect me. Petitioned, I speak on behalf of others, as is my privilege and responsibility.”
To Melanna, it seemed the thinnest of conceits. All present had to know this was merely another attempt to end the brothers’ war. And yet, was it any different to the princes of the Golden Court remaining wilfully blind to the women who fought their battles? Sometimes, what was said was truth, even when it was not.
The Raven’s cold gaze touched first on Melanna, then Apara. “Opportune, that she you claim as daughter is one such petitioner. The other should have come to me, had she a request. I’ve always been receptive to her kind. After all, we’re family.”
Apara flinched, the box almost falling from her grasp.
The Nameless Lady propped an elbow on her armrest and her chin on her upturned palm. Blue-green eyes gleamed amusement. “Isn’t it the nature of miracles to be opportune, uncle? And the nature of divinity to smile on the impossible?”
Tzal’s flames flickered darker. “It is not the nature of divinity to abase itself before ephemerals.”
“You were outvoted, brother.” Astor leaned forward with a rumble of shifting metal. “And there is no abasement. These mortals come not with demands, but bargains.”
The Raven’s burgeoning scowl slipped away. “Ah. That’s different
.”
{{Is it?}} said Jack. {{And who put the idea in their heads, I wonder?}}
Melanna glanced at Ashana, who seemed not to notice the question.
“You’re quibbling about the source of an idea? That’s the first I’ve heard of you worrying over a previous owner,” said the Raven. “A thing has to slip its keeper’s grasp for only a moment before you spirit it away.”
{{I abhor waste. The sapling cares not where it flourishes, only that it does.}}
“Indeed. What concern of mine where the idea first arose? Only the bargain matters.”
Green fire flared in Jack’s scarred mask, but he nodded. {{Only the bargain matters.}}
“We agreed to call you here,” said Tzal stiffly. “Nothing more. If you wish to leave, we will not hold you.”
“But if you do so, then you cede opportunity to bargain for what the ephemerals have brought,” said the Nameless Lady. “One item, in particular, I might bid for myself.”
Jack and the Raven went deathly still.
{{You would claim what is offered to me?}} crackled Jack.
“It’s not yours until bartered for.” Tucking her legs beneath herself, she curled up against the throne’s backrest. “If you’ve no interest…?”
{{I will hear the ephemeral’s bargain.}} The words scraped through the air with reluctance of a wayward child. {{Then we will return to our own business. All of us.}}
Melanna released a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding, though in truth the matter was far from settled.
“Your petition is accepted, Apara Rann,” said Ashana. “Make your bargain.”
Slowly, haltingly, Apara descended to the pool’s edge as Ashana had tutored, the wooden box held out, but its lid fastened shut. She trembled as one on the point of collapse, her eyes rigidly ahead so they’d not risk glimpsing the Raven. He seemed to recognise this, and regarded her intensely, arms folded and head cocked.
“Lord Jack, Master of Fellhallow and the Living Lands…” Apara’s wavering tone grew solid with rising confidence. “It is my wish that you make war against my homeland no longer. That the bargains struck to bring you there fall void. That there may again be peace between the Tressian Republic and august Fellhallow.”