Shadow Knight

by O. J. Lowe

  “This is the end of the road,” I mused. “We’ve tried so hard; we’ve come so far. I don’t see another way out of here, do you?”

  “Always there is a path that challenges, a road you don’t dare to tread, a real trip down memory lane,” that same voice offered through an unseen speaker. “Because our memories make us who we are, the sum total of all our experiences, our emotions, our lives. Without our memories, we are little better than beasts, civilisation cast to burned ashes, a remnant of what was. In front of you sits the bradoomn, a relic of the world as it was, the keeper of memories. Great men throughout history have lost themselves in this, given up bits of themselves to feed it. It came into my care a long time ago now, the final test in a challenge you’ve both performed admirably over. I guess this is the final act, an encore awaits. In order to proceed, both of you must give something up to the other.”

  I rolled my eyes at Moulton. Crazy people. It’s always the crazies who cause you the most trouble. If everyone was sane, the world would still have its challenges, but there wouldn’t be shit like this to deal with.

  “A memory, if you will,” the voice continued. “A little piece of yourself, your reason for being here. Why we do the things we do, it’s never something another can understand until they’ve experienced it for themselves. When answers present themselves, well, it’s never what you think, never what you expect. Take a drink of the clear water and think very hard on why you’re doing what you’re doing.” I’d failed to notice the pair of goblets next to the bradoomn before, scooped one up and handed it to Moulton. He took it, held it between two fingers the way one might hold a deceased rat, something to that effect. I couldn’t hold the look of disgust on his face against him, being forced to play psychotic games like this would set anyone’s teeth on edge. I know it had mine.

  “Nearly at the end,” I said to him as I scooped my goblet into the clear water, gathered enough of it to fill the cup to the brim, though curiously the water level didn’t drop in the bowl. “Just one last test, huh?”

  He mirrored my action, filled his cup with water and sniffed it, the disgust slowly replaced with outright hatred. “This smells like death,” he said. “Every fetid thing laid low by the ravages of time. That’s what we’re drinking.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Maybe he was exaggerating. Maybe. It’d be nice. Somehow, I doubted it though. Focus on the memory, why I was doing this. Once it happened, Moulton would know. What would his reaction be? I couldn’t say. Would he care? Hopefully not. The moment someone like him started taking an interest in my personal life, it was time to be worried.

  “Bottoms up,” I said, gave Moulton a grin before I necked the contents of the goblet. For something he’d claimed smelled so bad, it didn’t taste like there was much wrong with it, went down my throat smoothly. Cool sensations spread through my belly as I finished it, Moulton blinking as he finished his own cup. Right on cue, a pair of stone chips fell away from the outside of the bradoomn, one landing near me, one landing near Moulton. I shrugged at him, picked mine up and examined it, realised it didn’t so much resemble anything as a broken piece of stone, not at all unlike any bit of shale seen around the city.

  “It’s always the most unassuming of things which hold the most power,” the voice said through the unseen speaker system. “Swap your chips and then replace them in the bowl. At that point, you drink from the other side.”

  “As challenges go, this one seems kinda lazy,” I remarked. Regardless, I handed Moulton the bit of stone, he did the same to me with the one he had in his own hand. Placing it back in the bradoomn wasn’t much of a challenge, a faint glow emanated from it as I did, spread up across the murky water. Was it me, or did it appear less so, looking almost drinkable now, some of the darkness fading from it?

  “This is nuts,” Moulton said. “Do we really need to know why we’re doing this?”

  “Talk to the voice,” I shot back, scooped up a cup of water and studied it for a good several seconds while Moulton went through the same process. “I wonder what I’m going to see here.”

  “If it’s my life, nothing pleasant,” Moulton said. “It’s not too late for you to avoid it, John. Just pour it away, you won’t be able to forget whatever you see through my eyes. Believe me, I lived it and I’d be happy not to have.”

  “And you think my life was a bed of roses?” I asked. “All we can do is battle through it, Garrett. Everyone has problems, everyone has things in their life they’d rather forget, they’d rather they didn’t happen, hell things they’d rather others didn’t know about. That’s human nature, it’s something to be dealt with.”

  “As I’m no longer human,” Moulton said snippily, “I don’t see why I should have to deal with the consequences of something so trivial.”

  “Suck it up, buttercup,” I grinned. “Shut up and drink. It’s what vampires do best, after all, isn’t it?”

  He made a face at me. “Doesn’t mean we want to put every strange liquid we find in our mouths. Could be anything, right?”

  “And you already drank some of it without any ill effects,” I said.

  “I find it hard to believe that you’re going along with this,” he grumbled. “There’s another word for doing what you’re doing right now. Suicidal!”

  “I’m not suicidal,” I said. “I’ve got more to live for than ever right now. I’m not going to die. Not here, not like this.”

  “We don’t get to pick the time and the place,” he grumbled. “I wouldn’t have chosen to die in a fucking old warehouse in Dead Town. I certainly wouldn’t have picked to come back to life there either.”

  Technically, he was right. But here and now, this would be too much of an inglorious end for me. I’d need something better, something more dramatic. Everyone dies, not everyone gets the death that they deserve.

  “I once knew someone,” I said, “who told me he believed those who are about to die get the greatest gift of all, a sense of freedom missing in the rest of their lives, unburdened by choice, they have those final moments when they find out if it’s all worth it or not.”

  “As someone who died,” Moulton said, “I can tell you that’s a crock of shit.” He necked the contents of his goblet, my memories, and I did the same in an instant, the taste bitter and harsh. If one could put a flavour on resentment, I imagined this was akin to what it would taste of. “Ah well, not that it matters anymore.”

  I said nothing, tried to ignore the bubbling sensation in my stomach, like badly trapped gas threatening to erupt from me. Somehow, I got the feeling this wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  Ten.

  Something had gone wrong, I got that impression straight away for I couldn’t move in the memory, a haunting voice humming a song somewhere above me, my entire body strapped to something. If I tried hard, I could just about jerk my head, saw my tiny frame tied down. In my life, I’ve fathered several children, going on my reference point for the body I wore in this memory, I had to be maybe five years old. If I rolled my head to the side, I could just about catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror, the thing dirty and cracked, but a pale-skinned, blond haired child with pointed ears stared back.

  Young Garrett Moulton. This couldn’t be entirely right. What was I doing here in this memory? I struggled to get free, tried to shut out the sounds of the singing, sounds haunting but beautiful, lulling away the edges of my conscious mind. The more I heard it, the more I wanted to relax, close my eyes and forget it all. Yet I never did. A strange juxtaposition, I had to admit, I wanted to, I would have done, yet I couldn’t. I was in the body, yet at the same time a passenger, I had no control over the motions. Everything that had happened in the memory was going to play out as it had, I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  Out the corner of my eye, I spotted the woman floating about, tall and almost ethereal, her skin the same pale colour as the young Moulton, as mine for now, her hair the same colour, her ears just as pointed. From her, the song emerged, she turned
towards me and smiled, her lips painted a brilliant shade of blue, her eyes smudged with the same colour, the orbs swimming in the pools of white the colour of sapphires. Only her clothes were at odds with her appearance, somewhat dull and unimpressive compared to such a woman, a simple brown dress and apron stained with things best not considered too deeply.

  “My boy,” she said, her accent thick though I couldn’t for the life of me place where I’d heard it before. It took me a moment to remember the pointed ears, that maybe it was left over from her days in High Hall. “My boy, my dear sweet boy. Apple of my life.”

  “Mama,” I said in a childish voice.

  “They’ll never accept you, Garrett,” she said. “Your father didn’t accept you; he didn’t accept me when he found out the truth. This place, this city, it was supposed to be a fresh start, a chance for us to forget about the past, about that traitorous bitch Leanna.” She spat the name with such ferocity it took me by surprise. “This city says otherwise; it hates those who are different and there’s nobody more different than you. Half of me, half your father, rest his soul.” Her lips curled into a smile as she said the words, no sort of sincerity to them at all. I wondered exactly how he’d died. The woman looked more than capable of doing him in, a wicked knife tucked into the strings of her apron.

  Where had I seen her before? The more I fixated on the woman, on Garrett Moulton’s mother, the more I got the impression that I knew her from somewhere. As anyone ever in this situation will testify, there’s nothing more vexing than being unable to place a face.

  “It was supposed to be a fresh start,” she repeated. “Once I fell, I was forgiven of all my previous attachments. I didn’t want to, I wanted to stay and fight, but live to die another day is what they say. One day, I will go back, I will be terrible. And you’ll be the instrument of my wrath, my dear sweet prince. When you reach the peak of your power, you will be the hammer that beats High Hall into submission.”

  If I was capable of it, I would have laughed. It would have been at odds with the way the tiny heart pounded inside my chest, young Garrett Moulton was terrified, not least as the woman drew her knife, stains that could have been rust across the blade. Somehow, I doubted it.

  “If this city kills you for what you are,” she said, “then you’ll be nobody’s instrument. A child with your appearance, people will notice. There are different types of different, you’ll find out. Those who take pride in being different, they’re the sort soon cut down, you never remember their names. People take pride in hurting them, petty venal people who want nothing more than to rain on a parade and cause pain and suffering. That’s what it means to be alive, boy. You’re an instrument of hurt, both your own and others.”

  She laughed, bitter and cold, took several steps closer.

  “Mama, no!” The words took me by surprise as my mouth opened and closed, throat worked beyond my control. “Please, I’ll be good—”

  “It’s not about being bad or good, it’s about survival,” she said. “You’ll never make it through this city unless you’re willing to do whatever it takes. This city is a behemoth, a bitter seed waiting to sprout. It eats those who aren’t prepared like candy. You’ve got to be strong to survive, to keep my dream alive.”

  “Please—”

  “There’s another type of different. The sort people don’t revel in, those who’ve had it thrust upon them. Those with injuries, debilities and deformations, those who people pity if only because they’re relieved that it didn’t happen to them.”

  The knife caught the light on its blade, she gave me a sad little smile, though the more I thought about it, the more I realised it was less regret and more resignation. “This is going to hurt,” she said. “But remember, the memory of pain is fleeting, it has no hold on you beyond what you permit it.”

  I didn’t see her hand move, didn’t spot the flash of the knife, only felt the wetness across my ear. I blinked several times, tried to shake my head to cut out the feeling, mirrored on the other ear in short order. Her blade came back, covered in crimson. I tried to see in the mirror again, anything to work out what had happened. Blood covered my ears, the points they’d previously had missing. She’d cut them off, useless lumps of flesh tips resting on the ground beneath. The moment I realised, the explosion of pain erupted through my skull and I started to scream and scream.

  And my mother, she just stood there and watched.

  I blinked, the memory changed again, the pain subsiding as quickly as it had arrived, I wasn’t sure why I’d just seen that or why Moulton had wanted me to. Here though, at least I wasn’t strapped down, could move freely. Well, I was moving freely anyway, it wasn’t entirely my choice where I went. Once more I found myself on autopilot, an observer. The woman in the bed in front of me, I recognised immediately, though she was older than she had before. Looking at my hands clutching hers, this had to be maybe twenty to thirty years later, maybe more. Based on my observations from before, Moulton was half mortal, half fae, who could tell how old he was? Thirty years might be my guess, it could be double that. Given I’d seen him using shadowmancy too, his father might have been a wizard. Yep, he could literally have been any age and I wouldn’t have been able tell otherwise.

  This is why interbreeding is a problem. It just complicates things. I’m not against love, but it just makes things a lot more difficult to work out. Human nature is tricky enough on its own without adding supernatural prejudices in there too.

  Her pale blond hair had gone pure white now, her face ravaged by wrinkles and pain, her eyes lacking the focus they had before. An amulet hung at my neck, I realised, could feel the weight of it. I’d seen these amulets before, there were five of them in existence, one for each of the families of the Shining Council. Garrett Moulton. The knight of shadow.

  “I never thought I’d reach this,” she rasped, her voice like sandpaper. “Never thought I’d reach this end. I always thought I’d go on forever.”

  “You’ve got plenty of nights left in you yet,” I said with the adult Moulton’s voice. “You ain’t dying just yet, ma.”

  “Hush, child,” she said, “I’ve no desire to keep on living like this. It’s humiliating for one such as me. I should have lived forever, should have kept what I had. When that bitch took it from me, it screwed the natural order up.”

  “Ma don’t worry about Leanna. Just let it go, let it all go. You can’t change what’s in the past. For better or worse, you made your choices.”

  “A choice thrust upon you is not a choice,” she rasped. “Being beaten over the head until you have no other option is hardly a choice, it’s coercion of the highest order.”

  “Choosing between life and death is a choice,” I said. “You chose life. Part of you chose love.”

  “Love,” she said, “son, you’re a wizard, you’re so much more than the rest of them, but you have so much to learn. Love is the single greatest illusion of them all. Some think it gives them power, others think it gives them strength. Ultimately, it drags us all down to the same level. Love is weakness, it’s something that taints us from top to bottom.”

  “Cheery,” I said.

  “You loved me unconditionally once,” she said. “You never were the same after your ears. Your father loved me, right until he saw what I really was. When you slithered from my womb, the glamour faded in my agony, only for a second and he spurned me, not least because you had the same problem as me. You weren’t human enough for him. I got my revenge. I always do.”

  A hand rose unconsciously to my ears, to the ancient scars across the skin. They hadn’t hurt for years, perhaps the worst bit of it all was some of the looks people gave to them. Equal parts sorrow, pity and smug relief. I’d gotten used to it all by now.

  “I won’t go on like this,” she said. “I die tonight, by your hand. Consider it your own revenge. I mutilated you, my own flesh and blood. What do you think I was like in all my cruel glory? I was a queen once, never cruel, but just. I was fair. And how did my p
eople repay me? They rebelled, cast me out and forced me into this drudge of an existence. You’re right. I chose to live; I always knew that one day I would have revenge on them all.” She smiled at me, cracked lips shaping into a snarl of joy. Perhaps it was relief, after all every journey has a destination, the same is true of life. Death is the culmination of a hard path.

  “It’s not been all bad,” I said.

  “That revenge,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard me. “It’s yours now. You must do what I could not. I lost my powers, I chose to nourish yours, to make you the instrument of my vengeance. You are the thing I could never be. I once called you the hammer that would crush High Hall. You’ve become so much more. I never thought I’d be proud of a mortal heir.” Another weak laugh slipped her lips. “The heir to the throne of Air and Darkness. Sounds better than shadow knight, does it not? Of course, there’s only one way to ascend, you know. Someone has to die. Such has always been the way of our kind. Death is an end and a new beginning.”

  I would have blinked if my eyes were capable of it. Holy crap! That explained much, in a heartbeat I knew where I’d seen the woman before. Anyone who knew anything about High Hall, about fae lore in general had heard her name. Even the mortals living outside the Novisarium knew her name, for right in front of me in a hospital bed, weak and dying of old age…

  I moved, plucked a pillow from the bed next to her. Regret snarled inside my chest, cursing me for even considering this. Somehow, even though the memory was playing out in front of me, I hadn’t lived through it the first time around, I knew what was coming, couldn’t have stopped myself even I’d damn well wanted to.

  “Don’t be weak,” she rasped. “You might not want to do this, but the world doesn’t care what you want and don’t want. It’s not about you, it’s about what this world does to us all. If you hesitate, it’ll swallow you. I hesitated once and it cost me everything, Garrett. Never falter. Never give up. Be merciless to your enemies and they’ll dwindle.”