The Forever Court

by Dave Rudden

  “Witness, Family,” he said. Denizen couldn’t look away from the bleached opalescence of the man’s pupils, but he had the sense that there were a lot of people in the corridor beyond. Grandfather certainly spoke as if the whole world were listening. “It may look like a human. It may even resemble one of us. But it is not. It is a monster—a living insult to Her We Serve. But we have brought it low, despite its dread powers, and we—”

  Still clawing his thoughts together, Denizen tried to follow what Grandfather was saying. They’d drugged him with some sort of chemical that made it almost impossible to gather the concentration needed to manipulate the Tenebrae’s fire. Definitely impossible in their case—Denizen wouldn’t have been able to recreate their manipulations of the fire even if they hadn’t pumped him full of whatever-it-was.

  But I don’t have to. Because a Knight had the arcane language of the Cants to assist him, and Denizen had a borrowed fluency.

  Come on. The fire twitched and spread. I would really quite like to leave now.

  “Long have we waited for the War That Will Come,” Grandfather orated, “and now it is upon us. The Adversary is loose in the world. Our Redemptress returns to lead us to glorious battle, and our salvation is at hand—”

  “Hang on,” Denizen said groggily, more to scrape the last of the fur from his throat than anything else. “You’re not going to tell me about some sort of prophecy, are you?” That was what always happened in books. He’d been quietly dreading one since his thirteenth birthday.

  Grandfather just spoke over him. “Our new crusade will be anointed with the blood of this monster, and—”

  “Hang on,” Denizen repeated. This seemed like a very bad conversational path to go down. “How much blood are we talking about here?”

  “Wait, Grandfather.”

  The girl from the library pushed her way through the watching warlocks. She had the same washed-out paleness they all had, which made her eyes blaze even fiercer—wild and green and full of something far more worrying than Uriel’s fear or Grandfather’s contempt.

  Interest.

  “Ambrel,” the old man said, in the sort of indignant tone Vivian used when she had only just started getting her rant going before someone had the foolishness to interrupt. “Do not think—”

  “You weren’t there,” she said.

  He blinked.

  “His command of the Favor is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” she continued. “And in the coming War we could use—”

  “It is not the Favor,” Grandfather snarled.

  Ambrel nodded. “Of course, Grandfather. But ... would it not be advisable to learn everything we can from the prisoner—the Adversary? For the War That Will Come?”

  “I think that’s a great idea,” Denizen said. Uriel, Grandfather, and Ambrel were standing over him. There were four others crowding the doorway. Outside that ... Denizen didn’t know. Fortunately, if all went well, he wouldn’t have to find out.

  Just a little more ...

  “Every bit of information about the Adversary is vital,” Ambrel said. “And we can always kill him afterward.”

  “Less in agreement with that,” Denizen offered, but Grandfather wasn’t listening.

  He was staring at Ambrel. So were the others. Her eyes were bright, wide, and innocent, and an annoying part of Denizen pointed out that part of her idea made more sense than anything anyone else had said so far. Unfortunately, the other half of her idea was him being murdered, and that seemed to be part of a package.

  “I’m really enjoying all this,” he said, everyone turning to him with varying mixtures of anger, contempt, and fear. “And I’d be really glad to share. Firstly—”

  Denizen lunged forward and reached for every single spark of power in his chest.

  “This is the Art of Apertura.”

  GRANDFATHER LURCHED BACKWARD AS Denizen bent his fingers into claws and pulled, a yawn of deeper dark splitting the air in front of him ... before promptly closing with a snap, flinging Denizen’s head back with the worst and most immediate headache he’d ever had.

  Oh no. After six months of unnatural fluency, Denizen had almost forgotten that, if you attempted a Cant you weren’t ready for, it felt like vomiting wasps. Sharpened wasps. Holding toothpicks.

  Ow. Ow ow ow. No Higher Cants. Higher Cants were bad.

  Denizen wanted to do nothing more than curl up and press his skull into the cold stone floor, possibly until it fractured. However, the last conversation on everyone’s lips had been about murdering him, and the gathered warlocks’ shock was slowly hardening into anger.

  Grandfather in particular looked incandescent, which focused Denizen immensely. OK. Think small.

  The Anathema Bend—not a roar but a whisper, not a shield but a rake. Two lashes of fused air swept Grandfather and Uriel sideways, before Denizen hissed again and a third threw Ambrel through the warlocks filling the doorway.

  Denizen was up and scrambling before any of them hit the floor. For the first two steps, his legs felt like wet rope, but fire and fear forced them straight and he ran—all those cold morning runs unleashed in a frantic blurt of speed. He leapt over downed bodies, smashed his shoulder against the side of the corridor, and was away.

  Where he was going hadn’t quite been decided yet, but Denizen had learned that in terms of life-and-death situations, it was the journey and not the destination that counted.

  Behind him, shouts were rising. Denizen flicked the ghost of a Qayyim Myriad back at them. The orbs dug into the stone walls, sparking smoke and shards.

  Think. Think. He pelted through crumpled archways, power itching through the channels of his brain. It was a castle—not that being right about that was a major comfort at the minute—and one that seemed to be in even worse shape than him.

  Doors were crushed mouths with jagged teeth. The floor canted at odd angles or fell away entirely. Twice Denizen wove an Anathema Bend just to cross a yawning chasm. There were no lights—of course there weren’t—and the Intueor Lucidum painted everything a wan, hollow silver.

  And they were chasing him. No, stalking him. Denizen could see shadowy shapes through gaps and hollows in the walls, white faces pressed up against cracks, darting away as he drew near.

  Denizen wanted nothing more than to open an Apertura and get out of there. He wanted Simon and Abigail and Darcie and stupid conversation, not these pale things with their starving eyes.

  His head swam, from both the pain of overreaching with the Art and the effort of maintaining his grip on his power. He ducked under a fallen archway, dizzy with the desire to just smash it aside. The Cants in his head were swirling, writhing. It was hard to find room to think between their jagged shapes. Maybe the pain hadn’t been that bad. Maybe the Cost would be worth it ...

  He took turn after turn through deserted chambers, thoroughly and utterly lost. His pursuers had vanished, but Denizen still checked every corner before he turned it, heart in his mouth. Another left, another right, he ducked through a half-collapsed doorway ...

  And slowed when he saw the wire.

  It crossed the chamber in a diagonal slash, stark black in the Lucidum. The way Uriel had looked at it ... A crawling sickness built in Denizen that had nothing to do with chemicals, a sickness that increased the closer he got to the wire.

  A sickness that he knew.

  There was a Tenebrous here. Everything that was happening—the strange cult, this ruined castle, Denizen’s massive headache—the Tenebrae was worked through it all.

  I need to get out of here. This was too big for him. The Concilium and Mercy and his relationship with Vivian ... how was there room in the world for that complicated mess and whatever was going on here as well? How much was one person supposed to deal with at once?

  As he watched, the wire suddenly snap-slithered away with a miniature avalanche of dust. Denizen approached cautiously. There were shouts echoing through the castle, far enough away that he couldn’t make out what was being said, but close en
ough for him to be very aware of the sheer number of voices.

  Burn them. Voices rumbled through the stonework, but the voice in Denizen’s head was louder. Eulice’s Ram through the wall. And the next wall. And the next. Sear the rubble out of existence. Burn anyone in my way to ash and char, and if there is a Tenebrous here, make them understand what it means to trespass in our world.

  Denizen was shaking. It took him a full minute to realize he’d stopped walking and had both hands pressed to the side of his head. The sheer aching potential of what he could do and he was running? They should run! Everyone should!

  How dare they attack him!

  He spun to stare back the way he’d come, but nothing moved in the dusty labyrinth. Except ...

  Wires crossed the path he’d taken in a night-black lattice, glistening, slippery, and sharp. They hadn’t been there a second ago, and as he watched, more extended from the dark stone of the walls, feeling their way blindly like roots in search of water.

  Denizen ran.

  A chamber littered with the tattered banners of long-dead wars led to a cramped passage that in a heartbeat was a thicket of wires. Backtrack, turn right—half run, half stumble down a sloping chute just in time to see strands strangle out a minuscule glint of sun. A cluster of figures at the end of a long hall; Denizen loosed a halfhearted Helios Lance and they scattered, but again the wires came down and hid them from view.

  Trapping him. Funneling him. Directing him where they wanted him to go.

  BURN THEM!

  He wanted to. He wanted to. But if he started he might never stop so instead he ran, mind ablaze with pain. Wires closed over every path he found, bar one—down, down into the heart of the ruin. Denizen followed it. He had no choice.

  Denizen descended, and around him wires hissed over stone. He’d been navigating by the Lucidum for so long he’d almost forgotten he was in the dark, but this was a special kind of night—a liquid, heavy thing that he could feel against his face. The nausea, the distortion—the familiar yet always unfamiliar jolt of the Tenebrae—became so strong that Denizen had to lean into it like a sailor would the wind.

  Impressions washed over him—the musty smell of age, the faint odor of sweat. Thousands of dusty handprints overlaid each other until the walls were just muddy smears of fingers; the ghosts of sea anemones in the dark.

  His stomach twisted from the Tenebraic chill seeping from every stone. His head screamed with the need to sweep all this away. The last few steps were a torment and, as he staggered into a huge chamber, Denizen told himself it was that, all the myriad pains he had endured, that made him fall to his knees before Her.

  The right place at the right time.

  The great blade of Her spine flexed as the Tenebrous swooped to regard him, arms extended like an ice skater about to take that first, perfect leap. Her face flickered with emotions Denizen had no hope of reading.

  That’s all a hero is, Denizen Hardwick. That’s all they ever are.

  Figures were emerging. A lot of figures. Twenty …thirty … ? Whoever these people were, they had only attacked Trinity with a fraction of their strength. It made Denizen wonder what the others had been doing.

  They had traded tattered finery for robes of deepest, darkest red.

  That’s all HE was, before you and your cursed ilk came to destroy the love we had tried to build.

  Don’t recall ruining anything, Denizen wanted to say, but the flippancy had dried in his throat. Ever since that first step into the darkness at Seraphim Row, Denizen had felt the weight of the Order pressing down on him. It was as if history had a gravity, the Order some vast beast and Denizen tiny before it.

  He felt that same sort of smallness now.

  What had Grandfather called her? The Redemptress. She bared wire teeth in Her black wire skull. Denizen had only met a few Tenebrous, but he was starting to understand that, in the same way each human voice was a unique map of emotion and personality, the warping influence of a Tenebrous had its own flavors and resonance.

  There was something of the Court to Her—that twisted, sickening nobility—but as he stared he could see Mercy as well. They could have been sisters, with the same hauntingly beautiful features, the same sense of great power and strange grace.

  The King didn’t need to do what he did, She murmured, and inwardly Denizen wondered when he had started thinking of Her with a capital letter. All we wanted was to be free. To start a new life. We shouldn’t have stolen it, but we needed to be SAFE, and my beloved ... he said it would be best to be armed ... to be powerful ...

  She seemed to have forgotten Denizen was there, eyes tracking round the chamber as if watching prey scuttle and flee. Denizen blanched as he noticed the pile of iron limbs and staring heads tossed in the corner like so much debris. Arms rigid, legs bent at stiff angles—it would have been almost comical had he not known that here were people claimed by the Cost and the fire inside.

  The fire inside. There was something about the Redemptress’s words. Something familiar.

  Grandfather watched him with steely hate from under Her shadow, Uriel and Ambrel behind. The others spread out to surround him, staring with a mixture of fascination and fear.

  “Know that it is not I who judge you,” Grandfather intoned, “for we have already been judged.”

  His thin lips twisted in a sneer.

  “We were judged and found wanting, and we wear that black Transgression on our skin. It is unavoidable, as we train for our War against the Adversary—monsters led by a monster, the things that cast down Eloquence and the First Croit, long ago. They would have killed him, if they could. And then none of us would exist. Our ways forgotten. Our Redemptress abandoned. That is what this thing wants.”

  Denizen’s fearful gaze went from face to face. There was no pity there. No mercy. Are they all thralls? They had to be.

  The alternative was far, far worse.

  “Accuse him,” Grandfather said.

  Black liquid beaded on wire. How could you turn on us? What had we done? What had HE done? You were all born close to the dark. You were all ... you were all Family.

  The huge woman made of wires was taking up a great deal of Denizen’s focus, but out of the corner of his eye he could see Her words send a ripple of confusion through the gathered Croits. It didn’t make him feel much better.

  And then the King offers you the Cants and you TURN on us. All we wanted was to be left alone—

  Denizen had a flashback to the arcane terminology of Greaves’s briefing document, and the pathetic relief he’d felt when he’d come across a recognizable phrase. The King. This creature was a Tenebrous. There was only one King She could be talking about.

  It was a bad sign when you were so out of your depth that you started thinking of the Endless King as a lifeline. Pieces were clicking together in Denizen’s head, but too many were still missing, and it was extremely hard to concentrate when there were thirty-odd crazy people staring at you and a Tenebrous pounding insanity into the world.

  And you are TOLERATED. You and his little girl. Talking about PEACE. Why should you have peace?

  Wires were flexing. The walls were trembling. The beads of black in the corners of Her eyes looked like tears.

  When we were given none?

  Ambrel’s voice was soft.

  “Majesty?”

  The Redemptress had begun to sob, Her head buried in Her hands. The girl stepped forward—past a surprised Uriel and an angry-looking Grandfather—and gazed up at Her with what Denizen felt was an extremely creepy look of devotion.

  The Redemptress’s shoulders were shaking.

  “Majesty, would you feel better if we killed him?”

  Denizen had never heard his own murder pitched in so gentle a tone.

  “Would that be revenge? Would that be enough?”

  The shaking stilled.

  There will never be enough, the Redemptress growled. Her hands were growing, wire weaving on wire until each claw was a cluster of short sword
s, shoulders jagged battlements of spikes. Denizen was so focused on the nightmare spectacle before him that he didn’t notice the filament until it snaked round his neck.

  He flinched back. The noose moved with him. He could feel it, slippery and supple, delicate yet stronger than steel.

  Don’t move. Don’t move.

  The Redemptress reared.

  It is not your fire. It is his. It is mine. Touch it, even THINK about it ...

  Denizen felt the wire sharpen, keen and murderous against his throat.

  I will think on your fate, Denizen Hardwick. In the meantime ... let her worry. Let her wait. Let her know what loss feels like.

  Her voice was ragged with anger and sorrow.

  As I do.

  BREATHE.

  This is what I believe.

  Feet pounding on the cracked dirt.

  We are chosen. We are special. The Redemptress stole fire from a dark and distant place and She Favored us, Her Family, with it.

  Sweat stinging his eyes.

  But we failed Her in a great battle against the Adversary—creatures of iron animated by a single terrible mind—and so we were cursed with the creeping black of our Transgression.

  Far enough away from Eloquence that Uriel could smell the salt of the sea, far enough that his legs were pillars of pain, and still he could feel Her, an itch between his shoulder blades.

  And so we waited for the day She would return and lead us in the War That Will Come, so that we may be redeemed.

  Breathe.

  This is what we believe. This is what a Croit believes.

  This is what we’ve been led to believe—

  “Uriel?”

  He slowed, letting out an involuntary hiss as his exertions caught up with him in a chorus of aches. Through the Garden of the Waiting ...

  All of them, they waited, and ... and for what?

  …up the steep incline of the valley wall, through hill and dried-out thicket to here, where cliffs fell to a turbulent sea.