“I gave my oath,” Callagh was muttering under breath, as if in a fever, her head rolling from side to side. “Life for life. Soul for soul.” Then she cried out, “I kept to the old ways! I bloody did.”
“Her oath? To who?” Calvraign stared, blank and confused. “What’s she on about?”
Kassakan ignored him, stroking Callagh’s cheek as the pallor surrendered to reticent blooms of shy pink. “Aye,” she soothed, nodding. “I can see the bindings in your tides. Her mark. You promised your life, Callagh Breigh, but that price cannot be paid until you die. And you aren’t dead yet.”
Callagh fell into a sleep, still murmuring, her chest rising in shallow but steady rhythm.
“Rest now. Be at peace,” assured Kassakan. “If She wanted you, She’d have taken you.”
Calvraign swallowed the congealing thickness in his throat. “I don’t understand.”
“You will have an abundance of time to work it all out, I’m afraid. We are alone on this island, wounded and tired and left with a ruin of burned and blackened wood floating where the bridge used to be. The smoke from the fires should alert the city, but with the ice flows, well, it may take a day or two to reach us in any numbers. If the keeps have not burned down, we should at least be sheltered and well provisioned. Although, I have it on good authority that the cave-manti are voracious eaters, so you may need Qal Jir’aatu to bring them home. Yes, there will be time. Time enough time for us to work out everyone’s secrets.”
Calvraign stared at his sleeping friend, incredulous. “She really is… Callagh is madhwr-rwn?”
“Yes, that’s part of it, for her,” agreed Kassakan. “She has made her pact, and she will bear the consequence of it. I am more intrigued with you.”
“With me?”
“Aye, Sir Calvraign. With you. The sorcery Agrylon wove was both subtle and sublime, but it is unraveling, thread by thread, and slipping from the loom. Be it the turning of the tides or the shadowyn’s dark magic, his subterfuge is undone. For me, at least, I begin to see…” Her nostrils flared as she sniffed the air between them. “Or perhaps, to sense, his hidden truths. I may also understand, perhaps, why they remained so well hidden.”
Calvraign sighed. “Blood and ruin,” he said, and then in growing irritation, “What? What does that bloody wizard want with me, by all the Gods Between?”
“He will want you to save him, of course. To save all of us.” Kassakan’s opalescent gaze fell onto him, comforting him, even as she terrified him more with every word. “Calvraign, I believe that with the death of Prince Hiruld…” She paused and rested a comforting claw on his shoulder. “Your Highness, I’m afraid that you are the last of the lion’s line.”
POSTLUDE
Dieavaul drank deep from the Symbian vintage. It was dry, like his mood, a robust barrel-aged red with a smoky finish. That seemed fitting, he supposed. He set down his goblet and tapped one finger against the half-empty decanter, his eyes distant and his thoughts wandering.
Disappointing, he thought. The Ceearmyltu broken. The humans of Dwynleigsh reeling. The crown prince dead. So very close to perfect. But Mejul faltered at Meyr ga’Glyleyn, and the Darkening languished, underfed, only a flicker of its potential flame spoiling the sacred waters. And Lombarde. Lombarde lost the Codex.
The audience hall was empty but for himself and the Undying King. It was dark, as Malagch preferred, and uncomfortably cold. Dieavaul pondered the triangular obsidian table and the likeness of the continent mapped out on its shiny surface. He watched as his breath plumed in the cold air and then spread like an ominous fog over the figurines that represented the deployment of generals and armies on the fields of battle.
“Very disappointing,” he said aloud. “But I will take a disappointing victory over an accomplished defeat.”
“You will have to,” Malagch said. “As will we all.”
The Pale Man considered the statement as he sipped his wine. “If it were so easy to orchestrate the conquest of the eastern realms, you’d have done it already.”
Malagch nodded. “So you never tire of reminding me.”
“It’s a good start to a war. A nice beginning to their end.” Dieavaul swirled the wine in his goblet. “Let’s not distract ourselves over every lost opportunity. On balance, we gained much and lost little.”
“Mejul,” reminded Malagch. “The Codex.”
“Mejul’s failure is more lamentable than his destruction.” Dieavaul shrugged. “But the codex,” he said, his smooth porcelain skin wrinkling in a scowl, “is not an easy loss to suffer. Lombarde will answer for that.”
“Punishing the already-dead cannot accomplish much.”
“You have reason enough to hope so,” countered Dieavaul. “But I find ways to motivate my thralls. Death is no easy escape from me.”
Dieavaul raised a hand and opened the great double doors of the chamber with a nudge of well-placed kinesis. A graomwrnokk waited there, and turned to acknowledge its master. It entered the audience hall, dragging a thin, naked woman across the polished black floor. She didn’t struggle. It threw her at the foot of the table and departed.
“Mercy, lords,” she pleaded. “Mercy!”
The woman was half-starved, pale and sickly, her face drawn and gaunt. Dieavaul remembered her when she’d been beautiful, perhaps two years gone. Proud and fierce – defiant. Her hair, once a flow of fiery red that reached half-way down her back, shorn now to bloody stubble on her scalp. Her lips, once full and red and quick to pinch a suggestive smile, were blistered and broken. She was bruised and scraped from head to toe, from beatings and worse than simple beatings. That light in her eyes was gone now. Gone for a year, at least, replaced only by desperation. One by one, she had done every thing she had sworn she would never do. That and more, to please her tormentor. Not for a promise of gold, or freedom, or restoring her to her once proud station. Simply for the hope of a quick death. To end her own suffering.
She wanted to know about power. Dieavaul smiled. He had enjoyed breaking her, and keeping her broken. She had learned.
He would miss her.
The Pale Man stood and drew ilnymhorrim.
“M… Master,” she stuttered, eyeing the bonesword warily.
“At last, my sweet – your reward.”
She shook. Not from fear, but from hope. Hope that he would end it, finally. He had played this game with her many times before. She had nothing left to lose but her soul, and she was so mad now that even that she would give to end her suffering. Dieavaul hated for it to end. And to end in this way – with release instead of subjugation.
The scales must balance, he thought, resigned, and he carved the first sigil on the flesh between her breasts. She screamed as the sword both cut and burned her. Dieavaul couldn’t spare the attention to enjoy her pain. He focused on the inscriptions, forging the new soul-chains with perfect lines of iilariish. She endured, her eyes brimming with tears.
When he’d finished, she lay sobbing and quivering at his feet, blood pooling on the polished black floor from her elegant wounds. Dieavaul tilted her chin upward with the tip of his sword to meet his smiling gaze.
“What good will he do you in that sad husk of a creature?” Malagch asked. “Why not another warrior? I’ve plenty of those.”
“Sometimes you pit strength against strength.” Dieavaul lowered the point to her neck, just above the breastbone. “Sometimes you pit strength against weakness.” He pressed the razor tip into her flesh until a fresh bead of blood dribbled down her emaciated torso. “Rarely, you may even pit weakness against strength to great effect.”
“Please,” she whispered.
“I am giving you death,” the Pale Man assured her. “But even in death, this flesh will serve me. By dying now, you will destroy everything you ever loved. But …” He took a deep breath, searching out the strangled essence of Lombarde where he writhed in the Bone Tower, calling it back to the sword which had once taken his life. “… I will spare you. If you but ask, I will
spare you, and the doom of the world will not be your doing.”
“Please…”
The sound she made could have been a shuddering sigh, or a wracking sob, or some combination of those things. It was hard for Dieavaul to label that noise of absolute disgust and desperation, of surrender and cowardice, when all the ideals and dreams of a once-kind heart burned away to ash. But hearing that illusive sound filled him with satisfaction. It was the ultimate testament to his power over her and, one day, the world. What a sound that will make.
“Kill me, Master.”
Dieavaul drove the sword home, slaying her instantly, freeing her soul with the knowledge that she chose that fate, without regard to the fate of the world. As he withdrew ilnymhorrim from her still-warm corpse, he spoke the word of unlife.
She convulsed, flailing in the mire of her own blood, and then a shadow passed over her, into her, and she was still. The magescript glowed a deep crimson, like hot coals under her skin. She took a shuddering breath.
“Master,” the revenant croaked, even as the Dark seeped into her, closing her wounds slowly, painfully. Her eyes flickered and opened. “How may I serve?”
“You may serve me by recovering what you carelessly lost,” Dieavaul said evenly. “But first, you may serve the Baign and his men in any way that they’ll have you, until you understand the cost of your failure. The cost of failing me.”
Lombarde’s shaking hands felt at the contours of his new body, head bowed. “Master, I… Please…”
Dieavaul called in the guards and wiped his blade on the scruff of Lombarde’s new scalp before sheathing it. He returned to the table and poured himself another cup of wine.
“Clean her up and give her to the Baign. He’ll find some use for her.” Dieavaul sat at the table. “And summon Azgur and the other thars.”
Now, he thought. Now, we go to war.
End of Book One
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my family, both immediate and extended, for your love and support and for the unceasing encouragement of my writing since the notion of telling stories first took hold of me.
To my wife Sigrid, who has indeed suffered long and hard through the glacial pace of this novel’s progress. She has supported me, believed in me, been appropriately frustrated at me when I am a doofus, and occasionally allowed me to stay on as her shiftless kept man – I love you! To my daughters Iliana and Sabine, I love you too, more than you will ever know, and even more than I embarrass you. Really.
To Mom and Dad, for instilling in me a love of reading and writing and all things fantastic. Dad sat us on his lap and read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, complete with pipe and smoke rings. Mom, although pipe-less, introduced us to Narnia and The Hardy Boys and many other lunch-time reads too numerous to mention.
To my brother Stephen, my partner in imagination. His hand-me-down books and encyclopedic knowledge of everything he’s ever read filled in the foundations of my science fiction and fantasy lexicon. He introduced me to Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever and The Many-Colored Land, among others, and explained the intricacies of both the Marvel and DC universes. Especially Batman. Lots and lots of Batman.
To all my teachers, especially Mr. Patterson from the Dundalk Grammar School; Mrs. Sharon from Sutton Park in Dublin; and Mrs. Caron, Mrs. Lasky and Mrs. Skillman from Beechcroft. They taught the craft of writing, above and beyond the established curriculum.
To Ireland and the town of Dún Dealgan, for being my home for three green and misty years, and being so full of crumbling forts and round towers and words with too many consonants. I spent three years of my life nestled in the Mourne Mountains, and everyone told me how special the experience would be. I rolled my eyes at the time. Damn if they weren’t right about it, though.
To my friends, co-workers and bosses who helped keep me somewhat sane in the modern workplace and may or may not have lived with me and played lots of video games. Also, to the less-than-ethical bosses and executives I’ve worked with and reported to – you made it easy to imagine life under aristocratic systems of government, and to one guy in particular – thanks for demonstrating the nature of betrayal so personally and explicitly. You suck, but that really helped.
Thank you to Nicolas Lee and Aaron Thacker, my beta readers, for your valuable input and taking the time to read and opine about this monster. It is appreciated more than you can know (although I’m hoping that mentioning it in the Acknowledgments pages will supply some credible evidence of this thanks). And to Pat Burris and Todd Creamer, my alpha readers. Todd rampaged through the earliest versions of the manuscript, butchering adverbs and passive voice like a killing wind.
To music in general, and to RUSH specifically.
To Mike Nash for the amazing cover. I hope people do actually judge the book by it.
Lastly, but not leastly, to my editor, Thomas Weaver, who would never have let me include something like “lastly, but not leastly” in the actual text of the novel. Thank you. Your help in keeping me straight on grammar and punctuation, as well as general story-crafting and continuity, were invaluable. The banter was fun, too. See you at the next manuscript!
In Siege of Daylight Page 76