Shadow Knight

by O. J. Lowe

  “Do you really want these to be your final words that aren’t pleading for your life, Frazer?”

  “Just that I hear things, stories and the like. Something about five people for the five families that make up the Shining Council. Enforcers, if you like, though they call themselves knights. Wear amulets just like me.”

  “A fascinating tale,” Moulton said. “Enjoy what remains of your life, Frazer. Perhaps they’ll not find you. Or perhaps they’ll be drawn to the flames.” He snapped his fingers, gestured to the campfire and a swath of black energy erupted from his palms, hit it like a gout of oil and they rose a dozen feet into the air, the heat blanketing me even from several feet away. “Be fascinating to find out, hmm?”

  “Damn you, Moulton!” I yelled. “I’ll cut your bloody eyes out if we ever meet again.”

  His laughter echoed across the Silent Plains as he strode away, and somehow, I got the impression he didn’t think much to my threat. More than anything, that pissed me off. When I made a threat, I wanted to be taken seriously. I wanted them to tremble, to know that I’d follow up on it if they didn’t give me a choice.

  Instead, what did I have now? I struggled against my bonds, hoped against hope that the magic would weaken as he moved further away from me.

  No such luck, it would appear. Damn, but I really fucking hate wizards.

  Six.

  I’d known darkness my whole life. I’d been born in it, grown in it, learned to thrive in it. The pallid moon above the Novisarium gives off enough ultraviolet nutrients to mean the residents don’t suffer from any withdrawal symptoms. You’d think evolution might have played a part. A lot of the plants in the city have adapted to not need energy from photosynthesis. Those that didn’t, died. What radiation comes from the moon doesn’t negatively affect vampires, though you can argue if that’s a good thing or not. If the sun ever came out in the Novisarium, the death toll would be in the hundreds.

  Yet there’s still no feeling like seeing the sun for the first time, the touch of it on your face. I came to on bright green grass, a fresh summery wind in the air, wholesome and welcoming. Trees surrounded me, the biggest bastards I’d ever seen. I pushed myself into a sitting position, permitted myself to take the time to take it all in.

  What the fuck was this place? I patted myself down, felt the bulky weight of the brass watch in my pocket and sighed with relief. No matter how it worked, it’d been the thing to bring me here. Losing it would be disastrous. I looked at my fingers, at the blood and gulped. Blood and magic. Those two things felt intertwined, linked even in my inexpert opinion. I didn’t know much about the arcane, something reserved exclusively for those not in my circumstance. Magic was something about as far away from my know-how as it got without leaving the city.

  And yet I’d done just that. I knew it was possible. Some told stories of the various demesnes surrounding the Novisarium if you knew where to look, doorways leading to Olympus and Asgard and all these places regular humans believed to be stories. They were all real, though I’d never met a god. Again, they didn’t hang out in the gutter.

  I still had the knife too, iron stained with darkening blood, already drying, the colour a little more pronounced. Out of everything here, the grass and the trees, the knife felt just that slightly more real than anything else. No doubt someone else might have been able to give an explanation. Me? I didn’t fucking know. Maybe, at a guess, it was because it wasn’t from this world. Maybe. Neither was I. Did I look more real than anything else here? Lacking a mirror, I couldn’t possibly comment.

  I was rudely interrupted from my musings by the scream bursting through otherwise silence, my hand clamped down on the hilt of the knife and suddenly I was in action, my feet carrying me through the woods in the direction it had come.

  What the fuck was I doing? Why was I running towards it? I didn’t know where I was, I wasn’t a hero, I knew that. The Novisarium tears heroes apart, breaks them into a thousand pieces. Outright black and white morality is a swift way to get yourself killed. The sorts who thrive in the city between cities are those who try not to kill women and children unless they have to but are also willing to wipe out half the population of a species in order to make a point.

  I didn’t know where I was going through the trees, didn’t know where the scream had come from, once you’ve seen one tree, they all look alike. But as another wail burst through the otherwise silence, I didn’t slow down, kept pumping my legs until my breath came out in thick ragged gasps. Eventually I hit a clearing, slowed down at the sight of the figure up ahead, knife in hand as they turned to face me.

  She, I quickly realised. She was a woman, though not like any I’d ever seen before, her clothes expensive but torn, her feet bare and as filthy as her face. Blood streamed from a tear across her forehead, left her looking like she wore a mask of scarlet. Her hair was long, the red gold of firelight, or it would have been, I imagined, had mud and leaves not matted it against her face. Her features might have been called haunting or impressive, I’d stop short of saying she was beautiful. Nobody would have said that, there was something too severe about her for that. I’d always thought it was a myth, the idea of a handsome woman, something deeply androgynous about her if I was honest.

  Those eyes though, if I’d assumed her to be human, I was quickly dispossessed of that notion, a brilliant shade of ruby staring at me, her ears pointed. Elf? Maybe. Fae? Possibly. Living in the Novisarium, you learn to get along with those that aren’t human very quickly lest you attract the wrong sort of enemies, but I’d never had much to do with the knife-eared group. Thankfully. They’d rather kill themselves than end up in the gutter, I guess.

  “You okay, love?” I asked. “You’re looking—”

  “Quiet!” she snapped, her voice like the release of a steel trap. “You… You shouldn’t be here. You’re not of this realm.”

  I racked my brain, tried to remember the name of the demesne where the fae hung out. That would be… High Hall, right? I vocalised it as much, she narrowed her eyes. “The human name for it.” She said human like it was a filthy word, like poison to her. “You… Human. Help me.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her why I should, ask what was wrong or who she was. There were too many questions and not enough time to ask them all. In the distance, footsteps, dozens and dozens of bodies forcing their way through the undergrowth. With these physics, it was impossible to tell how near or far they were, but I didn’t want to take my chances on them taking ages to find us.

  She clutched her side, dropped into a kneel and her face contorted in pain, I stepped forward despite myself and tried to get a better look at what was going on, something leaking across her ruined dress, something shimmering on the ground behind her, the trail leading off back into the forest the way she’d come.

  “They’re tracking you, aren’t they?” I asked.

  “Wounded me,” she grimaced. “Traitors, all of them. I’ll… They’ll regret this. You, mortal! Help me! Take me to my sister and I’ll reward you beyond the limited confines of your imagination. I’ll grant your heart’s desire.”

  Right now, she looked like she couldn’t raise a smile, never mind a reward. Her eyes fixated on me, I tried to ignore the sensations of discomfort, like she was probing me with her gaze. If I met her eyes, I doubted I’d come back from it. I’d already picked up on it in her voice, she’d started out harsh and softened as she’d continued. If she was going to try and put the whammy on me, I wasn’t falling for it. What is it that they say about the fae? Heh, that rhymes. They always screw with humans.

  “She went that way!”

  “Kill her!”

  “Take her head!”

  “For the queen!”

  Now if this wasn’t promising, I didn’t know what was. I looked at her, still doing my best to avoid those eyes, wondered exactly why the queen wanted this bedraggled woman dead. “I think—” I didn’t know what to say, the words died in my throat— “Who are you?”

>   “Wrongfully accused,” she said, still haughty, still proud, still confident that she was going to get out of this, as if she knew I was going to bend and scrape to her words. “Are you going to stand there all day, or are you going to—”

  I wasn’t. I’d heard it all before, felt it bubbling up beneath the forefront of my being, the immense dislike of those who thought themselves superior to someone like me. For too long I’d suffered for it, people ignoring me, laughing at me, offering me scraps of coin when they had so much more that they wouldn’t even miss it. They thought they were better. In another life, she might have been one of those faces in the crowd, one to laugh and mock my destitution.

  “I don’t know—” I started to say, those eyes flashed in disgusted anger and she threw herself at me, fingers hooked like claws. Suddenly she didn’t look so human anymore, something alien and ugly about her. In the gutter, I’d seen deformity and it’d never been quite so obvious. Whatever else she might be, she was pissed.

  “You don’t honour me!” she snarled. “If you’re not with me, you’re against me and my enemies will die one by one. It is not my fate to die here!”

  I swung the knife, her eyes widened, and she made an effort to try and block it, throwing her hands around the blade to stop it entering her throat and she squealed in pain, recoiled as smoke erupted from her hands where they met the iron, burns and blisters marking pale skin an infected shade of red. I didn’t care, couldn’t permit myself to do that, I forced myself towards her, drove the knife into her guts, one, two, three, four, five, more times than I could count, a series of tugs as flesh tore under the blade, her eyes widening in shock, her mouth opening and closing in agony, like the world’s biggest goldfish.

  “Guess you were wrong,” I said, didn’t take any pleasure in it. I’d wounded before, I’d fought and hurt people. I’d never killed. I’d never wanted to, but there it was. She staggered away, her blood staining the knife, gushing from her in thick gouts. She tried to speak, only hacked up more blood from between lips that might have been sensual once upon a time. Still she lived though, if not for much longer and her fingers began to crackle with ethereal light, maimed digits contorting into unnatural poses. I recognised magic when I saw it, I reacted instinctively and went for the throat, my knife bit through her skin like it was made of cardboard, tore through the flesh and muscle at her neck, damn near decapitated her. The magic died in an instant, her head toppled backwards, carried down by its weight, giving me a grand view of the gushing opening in her throat.

  Holy fuck!

  The first man who burst out from the trees had long black hair and a thick beard, a stout build and glittering black eyes, his ears pointed like knives. Those who followed bore the same characteristics, though to a man, they were slenderer, their features more delicate, their hair lighter. Not all of them were male, I saw enough boobs in tight clothes to make me smile with appreciation.

  The dark-haired man moved to the body, ran his hands across his, glimmering blue energy emanating from him as he did, though what he was hoping to find, I couldn’t comment. I tried not to look at the sword at his waist, all too aware that some of those behind him had drawn bows, aimed arrows at me. Maybe I should try running for it, though I dismissed that idea instantly. No way I could outrun an arrow.

  “Don’t move and they won’t drop you, human,” the dark-haired man said without looking at me. Almost like he’d known what I was thinking. Was mind-reading a thing here? Instinctively my mind wandered to things I’d rather not voice aloud, I winced at the knowledge that this guy might well turn me into a pin cushion if he so desired.

  “You speak English?” I asked. A hint of an accent, sure, but otherwise flawless.

  “Shouldn’t I? I’ve been around,” he said, rising to his feet. “Seen all sorts. Never something like this though.” He snapped his fingers, the body burst into flames and I leaped back in surprise, couldn’t help myself. The archers didn’t fire though, they had the composure to avoid that and I breathed a sigh of relief. “After all that, just meat.”

  “You were chasing her,” I said.

  “Fugitive,” the dark-haired man said. “Justice comes to everyone in the end. A swift death wasn’t in her future, or so we thought. Still dead is dead and with that, a time in our lives comes to an end.”

  I blinked, wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Glad I could help. Was there a reward?”

  Hey, when you have nothing, you learn to become an opportunist. What’s the point in doing something for free when you might be able to get something out of it?

  “Do you know who she was?” the dark-haired man asked. “Did you bother to learn her name before you cut her down, or was it something you sought to do without—”

  “She attacked me,” I interrupted. “I defended myself.” I realised quickly I’d been jabbing the knife in his direction, his face like thunder as he stared at it, both bushy eyebrows raised in anger, his eyes as dark as his hair. Sheepishly, I lowered it, stuck it back in my belt.

  “That’s better,” he said. “You want reward? You know what we do for people like you?!” He said it with such venom that I immediately realised I wasn’t going to like this. Maybe I should have kept the knife out.

  That thought was compounded as he moved, covered the distance between us and dragged me off my feet, his fingers around my throat as he slammed me into the closest tree. I tried to squeal, couldn’t force it out beyond the pressure at my throat, kicked helplessly at his chest to try and dislodge him, unyielding like a stone wall.

  “We don’t like your kind here,” he hissed. “We don’t need you interfering with our business, you interfered with matters you cannot comprehend, little mortal and—”

  “Rasputin, put him down!”

  The strong, feminine voice ripped through the air like a whip-crack, its effect immediately apparent as the dark-haired man… Rasputin… dropped me and I landed in a heap at his feet, his boots strangely shiny for someone who’d spent the day tromping through the woods, a new figure behind him, tall and impressive, her hair blue and her eyes green, her clothes out of place in the woods. She looked like a fairy godmother, if I’m honest, though looking at the crown amidst her hair, I didn’t think I’d tell her that. Here was a woman you didn’t want pissed off at you, I got that impression immediately.

  “You, mortal!” she said, fixing her gaze on me, her expression haughty. “What do they call you?”

  “Ronnie,” I muttered, rubbing at my throat where Rasputin had tried to throttle me.

  “Well, Ronnie,” she said with a smile. “You’ve done all of High Hall a great service today, I can assure you of that. Are you aware of who you struck down here?”

  I shook my head, tried to avoid staring sullenly at her. She crouched down, peered at me and I also tried to avoid looking at the impressive cleavage on show. Perving on a queen probably was a good day to get something on the chopping block.

  “That, my dear boy—” she purred— “was the Summer Queen, Titania. The last obstacle towards change.”

  Seven.

  That day often felt distant, like a story that had happened to someone else, something that couldn’t possibly be true. I wasn’t much of a reader back in the days when I lived in the gutter, but I’ve dabbled with the occasional novel or two since I got raised out of perdition. Hey, knight-ing isn’t always a glamorous job, sometimes there’s long periods of downtime and there’s only so much sparring with weapons I can do before my muscles scream for relief. Add into the mix that most of the swordsmen in High Hall I spar with are all supernaturally fast and with the sort of reflexes that’d make a cat jealous, it can be quite degenerative on the body. Elionora comes in handy right about then, that nymph knows how to make a good salve that’ll do wonders for minor wounds.

  Point is, my origin feels like a fucked-up tale, the sort of story that might have been told by Guillermo del Toro or M. Night Shyamalan if they did twisted parables of the stories all kids get told at some point.
Normally, it’s a case of hero gets magic sword, fights evil, gets his leg over a princess or something, someone who should be chaste enough to know better. What did I do? Killed someone, got magic armour, continued to do all sorts of morally suspect things so my boss didn’t flay my skin off and wear it as a suspender belt?

  Either way, I’d love the chance to have that be a problem for another day. Leanna didn’t suffer fools gladly, I didn’t think for a moment she was in any sort of danger, she’d probably wipe the floor with Moulton unless he knew something I didn’t.

  Yeah… The chances were that he might just be doing that. If I didn’t fight like a bear to get out of here, and he got to the queen, she might just take it out on me, even if I survived. The way she’d casually brushed off me murdering Titania all those years ago, it’d told me all I’d ever need to know about her. She wouldn’t lose sleep over my death; she’d find another knight in a heartbeat.

  Maybe even Moulton. If she didn’t kill him, she might even try to recruit him. That’d be a twist of events. And yet, there’d been driven focus there, he’d wanted to get close enough to her to try and kill her. Why? It was a question I didn’t have an answer to and yet, I’d need to find one.

  Assuming that I ever broke free of these bonds anyway. I struggled against the black energy constraining me, flexed every single muscle I could to try and find some give in them. No matter what, it simply resisted each attempt to wrest myself free. Under my breath, I swore. This wasn’t good.

  For that matter, how had he separated me from the amulet? That shouldn’t be possible. Until I died, that thing was keyed to my soul. I was the knight for Queen Leanna, only I could wield that blessing, only I could take it off or put it on. I’d once watched Libby try for ten minutes to put it over her neck, had chuckled as it’d repeatedly slipped through her fingers. I hate referring to inanimate objects as if they’re alive, but that thing hadn’t wanted to go on. Same as when she’d tried to remove it from my neck. So, with that in mind, how had Moulton been able to take it from me, when all logic said that it should have been impossible?