A prince, a Death-kiss’d girl, a be-shadowed boy, and the shade itself. The makings of a song, yes?
Two-Moons kept his gaze – their gaze – on the shadowyn itself.
“What is that? There. The bright sliver within the Dark?”
Jir’aatu’s thoughts seeped together with his, the answer coming as an answer already known almost before he asked the question.
“The prince’s… soul?”
No. Not so simple. Look carefully. They are within each other now, much as we, but not by choice.
“We must save it – save him. He’s the reason we’ve come. Kassakan said-”
We must destroy it to destroy the shadowyn. It is weak – near death, but there is no time for sharp knives and steady hands. As a hammer we strike – swift and sure and with no escape.
“But…”
Decisions can only be made on the choices at hand.
“He is chosen. Last of the lion’s line. Marked by prophecy.”
Their prophecy cannot rule our action. The shadowyn will open the Gate, bring through the Pale Man, awaken the Sentinels. The Darkening you so fear will come, and swiftly. To secure their prophecy would ensure our doom. We crush it now, and sift through the dust.
Two-Moons closed his eyes. The truth of their agreement did not ease his discomfort.
“Worse than murder,” he said. He could reconcile the killing of a man for such stakes. But rending a soul, extinguishing the immortal spark of a man’s being… Oblivion.
We will live with it. We together can do this. We apart cannot. Together, we are strong, little Ebuouki man.
Two-Moons and Jir’aatu, of mind and body together, unleashed the Light.
When Calvraign first conceived his plan, it had seemed simple enough. Broad strategy had the luxury of not being mired in tactical detail. A powerful, legendary being had sent Osrith and the kin though a magical gateway – why not send for help by the same means? If an opponent was putting its deadliest piece into play, why not summon his own?
In theory, it seemed a simple choice. Yes, why not pit a half-dead, half-crazy andu’ai qal against an abomination from the greylands, he thought. Moving an avatar from the Light tier to challenge an avatar from the Dark tier was but a matter of getting the pieces to the right places at the right time. A quick maneuver. A well-played turn.
Life, as Vanelorn had pointed out, was not mastered like a game of Mylyr Gaeal. Despite the convenient metaphors one might derive from it, in a game, moving pieces into play meant just that – placing a piece of ivory or silver or polished wood onto a square of a game board to challenge another piece of ivory or silver or polished wood. Accounts were settled by rule or with the roll of a die.
As Greycloak warded off yet another attack from the shadowyn, the counterpoint to reality was all too obvious. Calvraign ducked a flailing appendage, edging ever closer to the prone form of the crown prince. He knew he was overmatched – without Greycloak’s aid, he would be joining Inulf in the greylands – but his goal was not victory in battle. His goal was simply victory. It meant to use the magic of the aulden pool – and Hiruld’s death seemed integral to that design.
One step closer.
The shadowyn was increasingly amorphous, less and less like the man it had resembled upon arrival, its form shifting as a shadow in flickering light. It struck at Calvraign, menacing him with the talons at the end of its remaining arms, and Greycloak deflected them as Cal dodged backward. It moved inexorably toward the prince. Calvraign matched its movement.
An axe flew into the shadowyn, and an arrow followed a moment later. It lurched away with an inhuman scream, and Calvraign redoubled his assault, pushing the shadowyn back from the prince another few precious steps. It reeled, arms poised like snakes.
And then the world exploded.
At first, when the light blossomed around him, Calvraign assumed it was the end of his strategy as well as his life. Death had come, or possibly something worse. But then the cave-manti swarmed into the garden – a more terrifying sight than he’d imagined – followed by Kassakan Vril, rising from the water in a nimbus of white fire. His plan was working.
Lightning flashed.
A murder of crows took wing.
Calvraign ran to the prince, hoping to drag him clear while Ibhraign guarded his flank. The shadowyn fell back, leaving smoking tendrils of itself behind, on the defensive from the hosskanae magic. An arrow streaked into the fray, just missing Calvraign. He grabbed the prince’s tunic, but watched out of the corner of his eye as Greycloak clutched at a black-fletched shaft where it sprouted in his breast. He reached out, as if pleading, and then the shade dispersed, blown away like shifting mists on a mercurial breeze.
Greycloak was gone.
Calvraign looked back, thinking to find a hrummish archer to blame for the killing strike, but instead he watched in horror as Callagh lowered her bow. She was gravely wounded, pale and bloody, her eyes distant but remorseless. Calvraign’s gut twisted. He wanted to scream at the sky, but he had no time, not even to wonder why. Without Greycloak’s warding blade to stand between them, the shadowyn turned from Kassakan to Calvraign and the prince, its grey eyes like gathering storm clouds on a starless night.
Calvraign dragged Hiruld one-handed through the water toward the edge of the pool. It was not far, but the prince was not an easy burden. He was almost to the smooth lip of marble when the shadowyn overtook him. It poured over him, enveloped him, smothered him in darkness. No sword or claw pierced him, but Calvraign felt his life seeping out of his body, a warm current feeding a cold, depthless lake. He fought blind, lashing out with stubborn anger at the slow death that surrounded him. His sword-arm was leaden, his blows weak and clumsy. Tentacles encircled his legs and brought him splashing down into the shallow water, still clutching Hiruld’s thick collar. The many arms crept up his torso like eels, a slithering cold that burned even through his garments and armor. Calvraign’s breath sputtered, trying to suck in air, but none came.
You are mine, now, said the voiceless Dark, scratching at the underside of his flesh.
Calvraign could see nothing, feel nothing but the sense of falling away and the Dark collapsing in on him like an avalanche. It was everywhere. Enervating. Frigid. Suffocating. It was in him. Becoming him.
Just as it took Bellivue, Calvraign realized. The memory of that day filled him as if it was his own, but in broken flashes, as if he were viewing it through the pieces of a fragmented mirror. Suns-light streaming through the forest leaves; ambushing Vingeaux and Alain, rending them flesh and soul; Bellivue charging in to the rescue. It had taken him then, unawares. Slipped inside the herald knight and ate him from within, bit by bit, a quiet evil behind a noble face, biding its time. Here all along. Waiting. Vaujn was right.
The Dark pressed in further, crowding him out, pushing him into a corner of his soul as he became something else. The other would soon consume him entirely. It etched like acid, eating away the old as it prepared for the new.
Thoughts invaded him. Thoughts not his own. Memories.
Mejul. It was more than a name, it was an identity and all that came with it. Desires and depredations. Stratagems and betrayals. Desolation. Death. Lust. Most of all, it was lust. Not lust for power or pleasure, but for life. Life in the light. Under the suns. Escape from the Shadowyn King and the shackles that held him thrall in undernland. Calvraign felt the desperation as if it were his own. Mejul, Shadowyn Lord of Sliithe Mhat. I am no mortal’s thrall. I will live. I will bring the Darkening and I will live again in you.
Calvraign fought to keep some vestige of himself alive as his very soul came under siege. He pictured his mother’s face, recalled the sweet spice of Callagh’s kiss, remembered the ride through Dwynleigsh with Lady Aeolil. Mejul swept it all away like scurrying insects before a fire. He tried reciting his histories, from Lucian to Erigor, Lalc Malcha to Cal Calha, the Blood Wars to the Song of Andulin, but the words drifted off, unthought and unsaid. Calvraign visualized the com
plex fingerings of Spring Suite on the frets of his gwythir, trying to form the patterns of the phrases, build them into sections and movements, to see the line of melody as it sang through chordal changes, but it all collapsed into confused and meandering fragments.
And so good Sir Gullimer, Gullimer Sir, was stuffed in dough and baked today.
The tongue-tripping verse came naturally, its nonsense defying dissolution, persevering against Mejul’s incursion. Calvraign felt the barest tingle of sensation, a warmth like the glowing peat bricks of a hearth fire. He clung for a moment more to the life that the darkness thieved away.
I command this flesh, Mejul’s presence insisted, not deafening or angry, but calm, inevitable, like the cold of a moonless night. Mine. The Dark ripped a new piece from Calvraign, tearing and then twisting in the open wound, and then ripped more still. Mine, it demanded again, a hint of anger like the threat of dawn.
Oh, good Sir, good, good, Gullimer Sir, with gooseberries and a goose, they say.
The dreamstone hung heavy about his neck, dragging him down, beating in place of his silenced heart. Where Calvraign had striven to rise above the bogsand of the Dark, it pulled him down through the deepest mire of the Dark and out the other side. The comforting heat spread, diffuse but expanding. He huddled in the glow, and felt a sting in his fingertips, then his arms, his feet, and on to his legs.
In good Sir Gullimer’s Pie, they say, good, good Sir Gullimer’s Pie!
The pain, for all that it hurt, was still sensation, and Calvraign clung to it. The more sensation that burned through his nerves, the warmer the comforting fire, the brighter the kindling light, the stronger his failing spirit. Dim flickers returned to his vision, a roaring filled his ears, and the dreamstone pulsed with a fiery drumbeat on his chest.
Good sir, good, good, good, Sir Gullimer…,
Calvraign knew he wasn’t going to defeat the shadowyn with a song, but the longer he could forestall his demise, the better his chances of finding survival. Or more likely, of survival finding him.
… good Gullimer Sir, good Gullimer, Gullimer….
Mejul flinched from a flash of lightning, and its grip on Calvraign melted away with the fading rumble of thunder. The darkness retreated, and warmth and life returned. Calvraign collapsed, breathless. Kassakan sagged. Behind the hosskan, steam rose from the surface of the water, taking shape in a monstrous form twice the size of any human. Gaping mouth. Needle teeth. Lambent oval eyes marred by the thinnest sliver of pupil.
Qal Jir’aatu.
In his wildest daydreams, even as they formed into his wildest plans, Calvraign had never imagined that he would be relieved to witness the arrival of an andu’ai on the battlefield, but relieved he certainly was. Jir’aatu raised his arms to the sky, and sang a note like two voices at once, hovering somewhere, atonally, in the vicinity of a dominant fifth. White-hot fire blossomed between his hands, pulsing whiter and hotter with each word.
Mejul wrenched Hiruld from Calvraign’s grasp. It roared – a deafening wail – and ripped open the chest of the crown prince. It discarded the corpse with a splash, and dark clouds of blood billowed into the water from the ragged wound. The twitching organ erupted in black fire in the shadowyn’s hand. The flames spread down the length of its arm and writhing body to ignite the aulden pool in cold-burning darkness.
Jir’aatu brought his arms down like an executioner swinging a heavy blade, and the Light met the Dark in a violent explosion.
Calvraign screamed as the blackfire burned around him, but the dreamstone was aglow in pearlescent light, and its thin sheen stood between him and the Dark. It could not spare him the pain, but it did spare him gruesome death. He was thankful to Agrylon for that, if nothing else. Calvraign rose, struggling forward as the undertow dragged at his legs, clutching his sword with both hands.
Hiruld’s heart was pumping in the dark fist of the shadowyn, and the darkness blackened with every pulse, pushing back against the falling sky of Jir’aatu’s magic.
Calvraign dragged himself forward one more step. One more. He raised his sword.
An arrow whistled past his shoulder, close enough that he felt the wind of its passing on his cheek.
“For Ibhraign!” Callagh shouted. “And for the bloody madhwr-rwn!”
The arrow struck the flaming heart, and it tumbled from the shadowyn’s grasp, a dead blackened thing. The white fire pressed down on the faltering black flames. Mejul shrank bank. Calvraign sprang forward, driving his blade into the grey shifting eyes of the shadowborn with all the strength he could muster.
An aurora of light and fire consumed the garden.
It was still in the courtyard. And all was quiet.
Calvraign floated in the aulden pool, senseless, trying to blink away the blooming flowers of color that flickered in his vision.
“Well, now,” Osrith said, wading out to him and wincing with every step. The right side of his face was swelling like a summerfruit, and blood still streamed from the lacerations on his temple. His obvious pain did little to temper his sarcasm. “That didn’t go too badly, after all.”
“Is it over?” Calvraign moaned.
“No,” Kassakan replied, smoke still curling from her blackened scales. She cocked her head, sniffing the air. Her eyes enveloped him in soothing blue-green. “I’m afraid that it’s only just beginning.”
Osrith helped Calvraign to his feet, and together they stumbled out of the pool and onto one of the nearby benches. Calvraign looked around at the devastation of the once-placid garden as Osrith examined him for serious injury. One of Inulf’s blue-cloaked men survived. Two of Foss’ squad, and Foss himself, holding his face together with one hand, tended by Markus. The cave-manti were skittering across the ground and crawling up the walls. One of them was scalping the fallen pakh ma.
“You’ll really want to watch those open-ended questions,” Osrith was saying. “She’ll jump in with a platitude or some profound sounding piece of nonsense any chance she gets. It is only the beginning,” he mocked. “Who else can say that and not sound like a damn fool?”
“Brohan,” whispered Calvraign. Saying the master bard’s name helped burn the fog from his thoughts. Brohan is safe at the tourney-field. And Aeolil. He blinked. And the king, he added belatedly. Gods. We really did do it. As the world came back into sharper focus he held up his hand to catch Osrith’s in a firm but gentle grip.
But Hiruld is dead, he reminded himself, staring at the ripples traversing the bloody pool. The cost of present victory may be our ultimate defeat.
“I’m fine,” Calvraign assured his man-at-arms. Osrith’s right eye had swollen shut, his left was half-red from burst blood vessels, and his face had progressed beyond the realm of summerfruit and well into the domain of a buttercup squash. “You… You might be dead. Gods Between, man. If Seth sees your face he may put it in a pie and bake it.”
Osrith coughed out a wet chuckle that languished into a groan. “Fire might feel nice. I’ll sit here and wait for him.”
Calvraign shivered. He had to agree. The cold wind was hard at work freezing his waterlogged garments. He needed to get to shelter, or he feared he might freeze along with them, but he wanted, he needed, to find Callagh Breigh. First, to hold her and feel the warmth of her, alive and well. Safe. And then, to answer the question of why.
Why did you kill him?
The sick wrench of that betrayal marred the joy and relief of victory. Part of him wanted to believe that he’d misunderstood the sequence of events, confused as he was in the fog of battle. Or that she’d had a reason, some reason that made sense to her. Some reason, in the midst of the shadowyn’s attack, to destroy the one person that had kept him alive through the fighting.
She wasn’t under the redberry tree, where last he’d seen her standing, bowstring still humming its deadly tune. “Callagh!” he shouted.
Her eyes, he remembered. Her eyes were certain sure. Whatever moved her, it was no mistake.
Calvraign searched her ou
t near Reime’s grey corpse, giving wide berth to the gargantuan insect gathering its trophy an arm-length away. Its companions were claiming similar tokens all around the courtyard. He tried his best to ignore the grisly work.
“Callagh!” he called out, but there was no answer. “Callagh!” he repeated.
A massive raven quorked, hopping between the branches of a tree, scattering blossoms in its wake. Calvraign watched the odd bird for a moment, and it emitted a series of loud shrieking calls the like of which he’d never heard in all his life. He approached, curious what would evoke such behavior, and stopped short when he saw the trail of blood and the body sitting there, propped against the tree trunk.
“Callagh!” Calvraign yelled again, but this time in desperation. “Callagh!”
Her head lolled toward him, pale as the snow. “Cal,” she said, exhaling the word and then closing her eyes.
Calvraign stooped to her side, looking for the sword-stroke or the arrow that had laid her low. His fingers were cold and clumsy, and fumbled with the stiff fabric of her clothes.
“Ach,” she said, her voice weak, “a little… late for that. Had yer chance.”
“Where are you hurt, Callagh?”
She lifted her left arm, just a trifling bit. “Nice an’ clean,” she said. “Saved ‘im, though. Saved the both o’ yous.”
Calvraign pulled up her sleeve and stared at the long incision. She’d done her work too well.
“Kassakan!” Calvraign didn’t recognize his own voice. He kept screaming until she arrived.
“Move aside,” the hosskan said with a gentle nudge. “She’s not left us, yet.”
Calvraign moved back.
Kassakan placed one claw on Callagh’s forehead, and one on her chest. The lizard growled from somewhere deep in her throat, an odd gargling warble, not quite melodic.
“No, don’t,” Callagh protested. “You can’t.”
“I can,” assured Kassakan, confident rather than confrontational. The wound ceased weeping. The skin puckered together, pink and whole, as if it had been stitched by the king’s surgeon.
In Siege of Daylight Page 75