The man recoiled as if he’d been slapped, a look of shame rising on his face. “Eriondrian, I—”
“Forget it,” Rion snapped. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Hey,” Katherine said, “that’s not—”
But he was already walking toward the door. Let them argue with themselves, if they wanted. He had no time for it. Sigan had his parents, had as much as said that he would kill them if Rion didn’t get there before the evening bell. The same bell that Rion had heard nearly half an hour ago, when they’d still been wandering the city streets.
He did his best to quell the panic rising in him as he hurried down the street, wanting to burst out into a run but knowing that, if he did, one of the city guards would ask questions, questions he didn’t have the time to answer, even if the answering wouldn’t have ended with him being executed. This time you’ve gone too far, Sigan, he thought viciously, too damned far.
A hand on his arm, and he spun with a snarl, his own fingers reaching for his blade. Katherine let out a startled sound, taking a step back and raising her hands, as if she expected him to attack. “I-it’s me.”
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“I’m coming with you,” she said. “If I can help I will. Besides, you know as well as I that if this Sigan doesn’t help us…”
She didn’t finish, and there was no need. If Sigan didn’t help them, they were dead but just then, Rion found that it wasn’t his life he was thinking about. “Fine. Just don’t get in my way.”
She nodded, falling into step beside him, and they headed further into the city, walking in silence. After several minutes, she spoke. “You were wrong to treat him like that, you know.”
“Who?” he asked distractedly, his thoughts on what he was going to do to Sigan and any of his men who got in his way.
“Your friend.”
“He’s not my friend,” Rion spat. “No friend of mine would sit by and watch while my parents were taken to be murdered—or worse.”
She shook her head, making a disgusted sound in her throat. “Are you blind or just stupid? He didn’t sit by. Didn’t you notice the blood on the letter? What about the dried blood in his hair, the scrapes on his knuckles? I don’t know exactly what happened at your parents’ home, Rion, but I can promise you that whatever it was, your friend tried to stop it, risked his life to do so.”
Rion frowned. He’d been so surprised first by seeing Odrick, then by reading the note, that he’d paid little attention but, thinking back, he realized she was right. The big man had obviously been in a fight recently, and it seemed likely that whoever he had been fighting had been the same men who had taken Rion’s parents. He promised himself he would talk to the man more about it later. If, that was, he survived the next few hours—something that was looking less and less likely by the second.
Chapter Seven
I don’t like this, Alesh thought. He sat at the entrance to the small forest cave, staring out into the gathering gloom of darkness. I do not like this at all. It wasn’t the nightlings he was worried about, for he knew, without knowing how he knew, that they would not be back, not to this place where so many of their number had died, at least not so soon.
Instead, he was worried about something else, something he could not quite put his finger on. He had felt a presence, earlier, had felt as if he was being watched. And shortly after Katherine and Rion had left, he’d thought he heard a scream, a sound just barely on the edge of his hearing, so faint that he might have only imagined it. Yet, as quiet as it had been, there had been pain in that scream. There had been madness in it.
He’d asked Darl and Sonya, but they had both claimed to have heard nothing. Just your imagination, he told himself for the thousandth time, it’s running away with you, and why not? It has been a trying few weeks. Is it really any surprise that you would be imagining sounds that aren’t there? Maybe even seeing things that aren’t there?
It was a good argument, a logical one, and it explained the feeling he’d had—the feeling he still had—of being watched, of being hunted. Or, at least, it would have explained the feeling, if he had been able to believe it. But try as he might, he could not convince himself that it was only his imagination, just as a child, seeing monsters in the darkness, could not convince herself that they were not real. And, after all, she was right, wasn’t she? The monsters were there, and just because you didn’t see them didn’t mean you were safe.
“They’ll be okay, won’t they, Alesh?”
He turned to see Sonya walking up to him. Tired, with dark circles under her eyes, needing sleep yet kept awake by her worries, worries he shared. He gave her the best smile he could manage. “Of course they will. Rion seems like a man who’s good at surviving, and Katherine…well, she knows what she’s about.”
Sonya nodded. “They’ll be okay, then.”
“Of course,” he said with far more certainty than he felt. “We all will. Now, go to sleep. We’ve got a long few weeks ahead of us.”
She nodded again, giving him a hug, and he hugged her back, hating how small, how fragile she felt. “I love you…brother.”
“And I you, sister,” he said, returning her smile before she moved further into the cave to lie down beside the Ferinan. Darl sat with his arms draped over his knees, watching Alesh with an expectant look, as if he was waiting for him to snap his fingers and fix all the world’s problems.
Alesh did his best to ignore the man’s gaze, watching the girl instead. Sonya lay down and soon, despite her worries, her exhaustion got the better of her, and she was asleep. At first, he couldn’t imagine how she was able to sleep at all. But then it came to him: trust. She trusted Alesh and Darl to keep her safe, trusted them to protect her from whatever wandered the night, meaning to do her harm.
Alesh found himself remembering Amedan’s words from when he’d appeared with Javen and Deitra. I did send them help, Alesh. I sent you.
The girl’s trust, the Ferinan’s reverent gaze, were suddenly too much. The air in the small cave felt thick, cloying, the walls close and seeming to draw closer with each passing moment. Alesh turned away and half-walked, half-stumbled out of the cave entrance, into the waiting darkness.
The air felt cool against his skin, the breeze chilling the sweat that covered his face and arms, and Alesh took several slow, ragged breaths. Trees loomed up around him, great towering shadows in the dark, watching him, judging him, and the night was silent save for the whisper of their leaves as they shifted in the wind. That brought another memory. A forest trail, dark and gloomy, the night held back by only a single lantern, the trees crowding them on either side, seeming to come closer every time the terrified boy in the wagon’s compartment looked away. Stalking them. Hunting them, he was sure of it, growing closer and closer until, finally, the small wagon and the horses guiding it would have nowhere left to go.
He remembered his mother’s screams, his father’s shouts of anger and pain, and the triumphant bellows of the nightlings when the wagon crashed. But most of all, he remembered the lantern. Hanging from the front of the wagon, jostling with each step of the horses, rocking dangerously from side to side, its light a wavering, uncertain thing. One light to hold back all the darkness of the world, a single flame to protect them.
And now Alesh was that light, that flame. And like the lantern, he would not be enough. He would fail, he must fail, for the darkness, he now knew, did not flee before the light as so many believed, as the Church itself preached. It only waited, huddled on the edges of things, for its time. And its time, like so many years ago, was coming.
“It approaches.”
Alesh spun at the sound of the voice, drawing his sword as he did and, in another moment, it was at the newcomer’s throat. Alesh’s eyes widened when he realized it was the Ferinan, that he’d been so distracted by his own thoughts that he hadn’t even noticed the man walking up—not that he necessarily would have. He’d scouted the woods around them with Darl, and he knew how
silently the man could walk.
For his part, the Ferinan only studied him past the length of steel still resting at his throat, an unreadable expression on his face. Just Darl, Alesh thought. Yet, for some reason, the hand holding his sword would not move and, suddenly, he thought he began to hear something. An almost imperceptible rustling sound, similar to but somehow different than that of the trees. As he stood there, the sound grew louder, and he could make out voices. Voices whispering to one another, plotting, scheming, but not loud enough that he might hear.
Alesh reached out with his senses, trying to hear, to understand, then suddenly one voice rose above the multitude of others, resounding in his head. Kill hi—Alesh jerked his senses back as if he’d grasped something hot, pulling his arm away at the same time with such force that he stumbled before gaining his feet. What’s happening to me? he thought. Gods, I’m going insane.
“Darl, I’m sorry I—” The scar on his shoulder suddenly erupted in white-hot agony, and he cried out, the blade falling from his hands even as he collapsed to his knees, his hand going to the scar. Gasping, he ripped his shirt off, expecting to find his shoulder ablaze, so terrible was the heat, the pain, but there was nothing. Only the black, puckered scar, the sickly-looking ebony lines radiating out from it as always and, after a moment, the pain subsided to a dull throb.
Alesh frowned, studying the scar, questing around it with his fingers. For a second, it had seemed as if the black lines were pulsing. And had they always been so long, reaching nearly to the edge of his shoulder on one end and to his chest on the other? He did not think so, but—
“The darkness hunts you, Son of the Morning.”
Swallowing, Alesh looked up to the Ferinan, who studied him with an unreadable expression on his face, taking in the scar on Alesh’s shoulder.
Suddenly, Alesh felt a terrible shame that the man could see it, and he pulled his shirt back on quickly, rising. “It hunts all of us,” he said.
“Yes,” Darl agreed, “the darkness hunts, and it wants. But it does not want to destroy you, Dawn Son, not as it does so many others.”
Alesh snorted. “Could have fooled me. Those nightlings I fought seemed pretty intent on it.”
The Ferinan shook his head. “Not killing you—changing you. Taking you. You are a flame in the night, a danger to all shadows who travel within it. They would extinguish it, if they could.”
“They seem to be doing a pretty good job so far.”
The man didn’t speak for a time, and the two of them only stood in silence, gazing out at the darkness stretched in all directions. Then, finally, “My people will help. You will see. You are not alone, Alesh. In the end, the light always conquers darkness.”
It was the first time the man had ever called him by name. In his mind, Alesh was once again cast back to that forest trail so many years ago, to the mother and father he barely knew. “You’re wrong, Darl. Flames go out. Light fails. I have seen it—I have felt the touch of the darkness, heard its cries as it celebrated its victory.” The other man opened his mouth to answer, but Alesh held up a hand, forestalling him. “I’ll go on first watch. You should get some rest.”
***
Darl watched Alesh disappear into the dark woods and, once he was gone, he let the worried frown that had been threatening finally come to his features. Among the people of the Palietkun tribe, Darl had been taught the ways of the Light, spending his days training in combat to better his body, his evenings in learning to better his soul. He had long been taught the preeminence of the Light, had long believed it, trusted it, but now…now he was not so sure.
The Son of the Morning. So he had named the man, Alesh, and so he was. Chosen by Amedan, the Lightbringer, to carry his banner, to stand tall against the rising darkness, to act as a shield against its midnight tides, forcing them back away from the lands of the living.
It was why he had come, why he had ventured so far from his homeland to this place where men and women regarded him as little more than a beast, watching him with wary eyes when he passed, as if he might lash out and attack them at any moment, a savage questing only for blood. And it had all been worth it, all the pain and loneliness, for he had found he for whom he had searched.
All worth it, and yet…
The Dawn Whisperers, the five men and women of his tribe known for their wisdom, had chosen Darl at a young age, selected him out of his peers to be the next chief of the Palietkun people. He remembered the pride he had felt to be so chosen, and the sacred duty he’d been given when they had named him chief, the leader of his people. He remembered, too, the hope that had suffused him as the Dawn Whisperers called to him, entrusting him with his quest to find the True Light. A quest he had taken gladly, proud and humbled to be given such a task.
Duty and honor. Joy and hope. He had felt all these things. But now, for the first time he could remember, Darl felt something else. He felt doubt. For though the Light shone from within Alesh, there was darkness there, too. A darkness that hid in the recesses of his soul, one somehow connected to the scar on his shoulder. A vile thing to see, that had been, and it had been all Darl could do to keep a straight face when he first saw it.
A flaw, then, within the Son of the Morning and one that, it seemed, was only growing more prominent. Should it exert itself fully…even the finest gems, if flawed, might crack under pressure. And men, Darl knew, were no different.
It is well, he told himself. You will take him south, to your people. The Dawn Whisperers will know what to do. They must.
Chapter Eight
Night had come in full by the time they reached the tavern. At first, Rion had almost missed the place, for the sign hanging above its door was covered with dust and so faded that the words were nearly unreadable. But it was the place. Even if he’d had any doubt, the man slouched on the wall beside the doorway holding a bottle of liquor, pretending to be half-unconscious from the drink, would have been proof enough.
Frowning, Rion started toward the door, but he was brought up short by a hand on his arm. He turned, looking at the woman. “What?”
“Rion,” she said, “shouldn’t we talk about this? If you go in there like…like you are now…I mean, surely there’s a better way. A safer way.”
Better. Safer. The woman had made the same argument several times while they’d worked their way through the city. Had he felt like wasting time talking, Rion could have told her that it was useless. Sigan had his parents, had threatened to kill them, and being “safe” was the last thing on his mind. “I’m going. You can stay here, if you want.”
“Damnit, Rion,” she hissed, “don’t be a fool. If you go in there like this, you’ll get yourself killed, and how will that help your parents? We should have at least brought Odrick, he—”
But Rion wasn’t listening. He pulled away, stalking across the street toward the tavern. As he stepped up on the stoop, the drunk seemed to rouse himself, blinking at him, and Rion didn’t miss the way the man’s free hand—the one not holding the bottle—was tucked underneath his tunic. “Spare a coin, mi—”
He cut off abruptly as Rion drew the knife from inside his own tunic in one smooth motion, bringing the handle down on the man’s temple. The man grunted, toppling to the ground, unconscious in truth, but Rion was already swinging the door open and walking inside.
“Alright,” he said, storming inside the common room, “where’s that ba—” His words turned to a grunt of surprise as his foot caught on a floorboard that was slightly raised from the rest, and he stumbled. Even as he did, a crossbow bolt swished through the air, inches away, and embedded itself in the doorway. Apparently, the woman had chosen not to follow him after all, or at least not too close, which was just as well. She might be annoying, but he’d rather not have to explain to Alesh why she had a crossbow bolt sticking out of her.
Gods, he thought, staring at the bolt still quivering in the door, if I hadn’t stumbled…Laughter in his head, familiar and as unwelcome as ever.
&nb
sp; Time to be grateful—if grateful was what he was—later. Rion spun, following the path the bolt had taken to see the bartender—a heavy-set man with a beard grown in patches on his face—reloading the crossbow he held. He rushed forward, grabbing the bar counter with his free hand and leaping over it, his feet leading.
Rion’s feet struck the bartender in his ample stomach, and the big man grunted as the air exploded from his lungs. He crashed against the wall behind the bar, sending liquor bottles and glasses tumbling from their resting places on the shelves to shatter on the ground. Rion had dropped his knife when leaping over the bar, so he grabbed the man’s hair in his hands—stringy, lank with sweat—and slammed his head against the wall.
The man gave another grunt, but didn’t go down. Instead, one of his thick, flailing arms caught Rion in the temple, sending him stumbling against the wall.
“Bastard,” the big man wheezed. Rion was still trying to right himself when a meaty fist struck him on the side of the face and stars exploded in his vision.
The next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground, dazed. Hands reached for him, jerking at his tunic, and Rion scrabbled blindly at the floor with his hands, hoping to snatch up a piece of glass he could use to defend himself. His hands grasped something, and he struck without looking, was nearly as surprised as the barkeep when two of the man’s fingers fell away in a spurt of blood. In his wild scrambling, Rion hadn’t grabbed a piece of glass at all, but had somehow managed to grasp hold of the handle of the knife he’d dropped.
The big barkeep screamed, stumbling away, clutching the spot where his two fingers had been with his good hand. What are the odds? Rion thought wildly, but he was already getting to his feet, ignoring the throbbing ache in his jaw where the man had struck him.
The big man saw him coming and swung a fist at him, but Rion ducked under it, lunging forward and bringing his blade to the man’s throat, holding it there. The barkeep froze as a thin line of blood traced its way down his neck from where the steel had pierced him. He watched Rion with a face twisted in fury, seeming to consider whether or not to fight on.
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