Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle

by Malcolm McKenzie

  It wasn’t yet night, but we were all exhausted by the time we had made a cold, wet camp and half-heartedly swallowed a meal. The overcast sky conspired with the trees to bring on a premature twilight.

  Our thin canvas tarps gave us a choice - place them under our bedrolls to keep the sodden grass from soaking our bedding, or stretch them above to keep off the drizzle. I opted for a dry floor and no roof, a bet that the rain would die down during the night.

  “Set watches,” Yoshana said to Erev. He nodded and gave crisp orders to the other Knights of Resurrection. Grigg, Roshel, Yoshana and I were assigned no turns.

  “We’ll need all the sleep we can get to handle the Darkness tomorrow,” Roshel said. “And we’ll still set wards. They just won’t be as effective.”

  “I can take a watch,” I said.

  She smiled. “You can go tell Erev if you want.”

  I found I didn’t want to.

  I had bet right. By the time sunlight returned, the rain had faded to a fine mist. It had still been a cold, damp, miserable night.

  Erev propped himself up on one elbow, then sat bolt upright. “Where the hell is Rosc?”

  Talman sat up and yawned. “Probably just went to take a leak.”

  “He can do that when he’s not on watch,” the senior Knight snapped.

  “Calm down,” Talman said, yawning again. “I’m sure he’ll be back in a minute.”

  “He’s not within a hundred yards of us,” Yoshana announced. “Alive or dead.”

  We never saw him again.

  Nerves were taught as bowstrings after that.

  “I don’t know!” Roshel flared at me when I asked how a sentry could vanish without disturbing the wards Grigg and the two Overlords had set.

  I’d never seen her angry before.

  “I’m sorry,” she said a moment later. “I don’t know. It shouldn’t happen. He could have wandered off…”

  But none of us believed that. Whatever else I might think of Erev and the Knights, they were disciplined. And only a fool would desert in the middle of the night in that Darkness-infested forest.

  The idea of a search was rejected almost instantly. We would have to split up to meaningfully extend the range of Roshel, Grigg, and Yoshana’s senses - and that could mean death for any or all of us. We packed our camp in silence.

  Talman ventured, “Maybe we’ll find him on the way.” But no one believed that.

  There was a new quality to Roshel this morning. Yesterday I had seen vulnerability for the first time. Now she was frightened. She was becoming human. It made her even more attractive. Although my dominant emotion for the rest of that day was a nebulous, lurking terror. The dripping overcast didn’t help, fine drops blurring vision and soaking our clothes into squelching, chafing misery.

  Even Grigg was on edge. Only Yoshana seemed unperturbed - wary, but apparently immune to the fear that burdened us lesser mortals.

  Near midday we halted again. The mist had slowly faded away, but the forest remained dark with shadow.

  Around a mouthful of food, Yoshana said, “We’re one day in and we’ve lost a man. It’s at least a week across the Sorrows. At this rate there won’t be anyone left by the time we reach the Darklands. We have to do something different.”

  Grigg raised his eyebrows. I wondered suddenly if they could read each others’ thoughts.

  “We’re going to find a village,” Yoshana said.

  “What?” the big Select erupted, disbelief raising his deep voice to a squeak. Evidently they couldn’t read each others’ minds after all.

  “Yosha, anyone that lives in here is controlled by the Darkness, a murderous cannibal, a raving lunatic, or all three.”

  “We need a guide. Anyone that lives here and reaches adulthood must know how to survive in this place. And since when can’t we handle murderous, cannibal lunatics?”

  The grin on her face made me briefly pity the natives.

  Man plans; God laughs. Dee had said that to me once. It was one thing for the world’s deadliest warlord to decide we would find a village. It was another thing to actually do it.

  The sun was setting by the time we gave up. We hadn’t seen a single trace of humanity.

  Yoshana wasn’t visibly frustrated. But no one made a comment. Even I was wise enough to keep my mouth shut.

  We found a little clearing with some fallen wood dry enough to make a fire after Yoshana used her inhuman abilities to force the damp out of it. “Might keep the Darkness away,” Yoshana muttered, almost to herself. “And it might attract the natives. Win-win.”

  I thought that would depend on how many natives it attracted.

  We sat in a circle around the blaze, no sentries posted. Yoshana, Grigg and Roshel must have trusted enough in their mastery of the Darkness to risk the night-blindness of looking into the flames.

  For the first time since I’d joined this group, conversation failed. It was as if Rosc’s ghost haunted us. Assuming he was in fact dead.

  Hah. Of course he was dead. Although I thought about Furat, telling me that sometimes people came out of the Sorrows possessed by the Darkness. Or Yoshana’s bluff at Icefall, that the guards would be eaten up from within, living but no longer human.

  If Rosc was lucky, he was dead.

  More to distract myself from that line of thought than anything else, I turned to Grigg and asked, “What I still don’t understand is how you met Yoshana in the first place. The Monolith’s on the far side of the continent.”

  The white-haired Overlord grinned wickedly. “Ah. This is a good story.”

  Grigg looked pained, but he took a swallow from his water skin and cleared his throat. “I made some people unhappy.”

  “Oh, come on,” Yoshana said. “The whole thing. Our new friend should know.”

  The big Select stared into the fire, his eyes losing their focus. Looking into the past. “There was a town called Riverside in the disputed territory between the Monolith and Rockwall. Not too far south of the Principalities. Their council declared for Rockwall, asked to be annexed. We couldn’t allow that.”

  He sipped again from the water skin. “There was a Monolith captain named Everad. A Paladin of the Third Gray Shield, that was the official rank. He had this staff. Shiniest wood you ever saw, with a steel cap at each end, all decorated with scrollwork. He was good with it, too. You wouldn’t have thought… anyway. I don’t think I ever thought much of him as an officer, but he sure could knock the hell out of people with that staff.

  “He had command of a battalion of auxiliaries from around Steel City, the southernmost Principality. I was the most junior officer there was, a First White Shield. I had a squad of Monolith regulars. We had rear guard. Mostly just to keep the auxiliaries from running away if things got tough.

  “But that’s not what happened. We thought Riverside might have brought in Rockwall troops, or mercenaries. At least a real militia. But they didn’t. They shut the gates, but they barely put up a fight. By the time my squad got to the walls, everything was over. The auxiliaries were inside.”

  His hand clenched suddenly on the water skin, and liquid splashed on the ground. He carefully capped the skin and set it down.

  “Everad’s troops were running riot in the city. I tried to find him. I saw… horrible things. More than I can count. I’ve been at war for years since then, but sometimes, when I close my eyes, I still see Riverside.”

  His hand found the water skin again, and he took another drink, still staring at the fire.

  “Everad was in the town hospital. He had two doctors, one sewing up a cut on his arm, the other working on a little scratch on his cheek. There were people dying in that hospital, his troops and the townspeople. Mostly the townspeople. But he had two doctors. Just as I was coming in, he was waggling that staff - he still had it in his hand. He was saying to the doctor working on his face that he’d use it on her if she left a scar.”

  “‘Do you know what your men are doing out there, Everad?’ I said. He
just laughed. ‘Ten blows with a cane,’ I said.”

  “Ten blows with a cane is the Monolith’s penalty for rape of an enemy civilian in wartime,” Yoshana said quietly.

  “Ten blows with a cane,” Grigg repeated. “He said, ‘That’s for real soldiers, not Principalities rabble. Let the barbarians sort the barbarians. It’s no affair of ours.’ I said, ‘They’re your men. You answer for them.’ He said, ‘Answer to who? To you?’ And I said, ‘You’ll answer to God, but before that yes, you’ll answer to me.’

  “He hit me twice with that staff before I took it away from him. I swear it hadn’t occurred to me until it was in my hands, but it made a good cane. Afterwards, the doctors said I kept screaming at him, ‘ten blows for rape, a hundred rapes.’”

  “A thousand blows,” Yoshana added, in case I couldn’t do the math.

  “I didn’t hit him a thousand times. I’m sure of it. I didn’t even hit him that hard. At least, not after he stopped trying to fight back. Stopped trying to get away. I didn’t kill him. But he never could walk again. Or feed himself.”

  “No less than he deserved,” Roshel said, softly but viciously.

  Grigg turned to me. “No, no less than he deserved. I’m not sorry. But he had friends. I had some too, so when they put us both on trial they judged the matter settled. I had struck a superior officer, but he had violated the laws of war and hit me first without due cause. Everyone in the hospital testified for me.”

  He gave me a sickly grin. “But his friends were higher placed than mine. When rumor came of some mad Overlord’s insurrection against Master Karst’s rule of the Shield in the far east, I got sent out as an observer. I wasn’t meant to come back.”

  The grin widened. “And you know, I never did.”

  He’d become part of Yoshana’s army instead. Part of her crusade. For the first time, it truly sank in that Yoshana’s troops didn’t see themselves as villains. In their minds, they were heroes.

  I’m not sorry. No less than he deserved. On the long trek north from Rockwall with Prophetess, we had been attacked by paleo savages. I had killed two and crippled one, crushing his knee so he couldn’t follow us. Had I said those exact words to Prophetess? They had been close enough.

  I didn’t sleep well that night. In my dreams my boot came down on the paleo’s knee over and over again as I counted… nine hundred and twenty three… nine hundred and twenty four…

  In the morning Talman was gone.

  Erev was beside himself. Yoshana just repeated, “At this rate, there won’t be anyone left. We have to change the equation.”

  The land began to slope downward, the trees to thin.

  “Are we coming out of it?” I asked, unable to keep the eager hope out of my voice.

  Roshel shook her head. “Going deeper into it. This must be the High Valley. The center of the Sorrows.”

  “So at least we’re halfway there,” I said, still looking for a silver lining.

  “No,” said Yoshana from the head of our ever-shrinking column. “The valley’s wide. We’ll likely be days crossing it. But the maps say there’s a river, and I’ll bet we find someone living by it.”

  I wasn’t as happy about that as she was.

  The Overlord got her wish. Before midday we came upon a vast, meandering river, hundreds of yards across. Looking downstream we saw a bridge that spanned it, only half a mile away. There were ruins as we got closer. An ancient town, completely reclaimed by the forest. Moss and creepers, encouraged by the clinging mist rising from the water, had devoured wood and engulfed brick and stone.

  “Think there’s anyone here?” I whispered to Grigg.

  He shrugged. “I’m not sensing anyone, but that doesn’t prove anything. They could be out of range, or even hidden from me somehow - hey, watch out!”

  I danced back, struggling clumsily with my sword, scanning wildly for danger. “What is it?”

  “Poison ivy.” He grinned. “Don’t want to step in it.”

  I glared at him, and he laughed. “Seriously, though. Itches for days. Well, not for me. But for someone like you…”

  Someone without the unnatural powers of the Darkness.

  The crumbling concrete arches of the bridge were as thickly layered as the rest of the town with the creeping vines. They had penetrated the substance and carved out great chunks. Yoshana probed the structure and pronounced it sound, and we made it across without incident. I kept looking back over my shoulder for threats within the ruins, but saw nothing.

  Not long after, though, we came across the strangest palisade I’d ever laid eyes on. The wall wasn’t built of logs, and there was no cleared area around it from which timber had been taken. Instead, trees grew together into an impenetrable barrier. Branches interlocked, limbs jutting out into huge thorny growths.

  “Could you do that?” Grigg asked Yoshana.

  “I think so.” The Overlord’s voice was tentative, uncharacteristically unsure. “It would take a long time. At least, I hope it took a long time.”

  “What do they mean?” I asked Roshel. I was tired, and not at my quickest.

  “Someone must have used the Darkness to make the trees grow like that. I’ve never seen that done. Looks like Yoshana hasn’t either.” There was a tension, almost a disbelief in those last words. As if Roshel refused to accept someone might use the Darkness in a way Yoshana couldn’t.

  “It’s a strange thing to do,” Roshel continued. “Plants grow slowly. It would take a lot longer to do this than just to make a regular wall… unless whoever did it is really, really strong. Stronger than anyone we’ve ever seen.”

  “So… whoever did this is either insane, or insanely powerful?”

  “That’s about right.”

  Great.

  Yoshana was leading us around the wall to the north.

  “Wouldn’t it be better to just go straight back into the woods to get around this?” I asked Roshel.

  Again, Yoshana answered, a lilt in her voice. “Around? Why would we want to go around? We’re looking for the way in.”

  She and Prophetess might be the bitterest of enemies, but I was starting to see a certain resemblance. Both women would charge into situations I would much rather avoid.

  Judging by its curvature, the wall was not long, and it was all too soon that we found an opening. Nothing so conventional as a gate - it was simply a place where the twined branches parted, leaving a space a dozen feet high and half as wide, the limbs meeting above to create a kind of arch.

  Skulls hung suspended in the archway, some pierced by the branches, others hanging from vines. I saw pigs, something that might have been a bear or a drelb, and several that were obviously human.

  I gasped and took a step back as a figure slid around the edge of the opening. The man was completely naked except for a kind of apron around his waist, secured by a rope belt with a blade stuck through it. His skin was a pattern of light and dark, wild geometric shapes and hideous, staring faces. Lank, dark hair hung past his shoulders. The look in his eyes was utterly mad.

  “Yesss?” he hissed, smiling wide to reveal dark-stained teeth.

  Yoshana made no move away from this creature, but matched his smile with her own. “We’ve been passing through your forest and found it inhospitable. We’re looking for a guide to take us safely to the other side.”

  “Bargain, you want?” the apparition drawled.

  “Just so.”

  “Two of yours,” he said. “One for us, one for the gods. Then the rest live. You choose the two,” he added magnanimously.

  Yoshana’s ruthlessness was the stuff of legend. She didn’t spend her forces lightly, but she’d spend them all to achieve her goals. I shot a nervous glance at Joav, the last remaining Knight except for Erev. We were the two obvious sacrifices.

  But the Overlord was shaking her head. “I’ve lost two already. No more. Go find those two if you want bodies.”

  “Little girl will lose all, alone in the woods. Bargain, or no bargain. Tw
o, or all. You choose.” He leaned against the tangled wall, a picture of violence at rest, like some sort of feline predator twisted into human form.

  “Unacceptable,” Yoshana said. “We have weapons, supplies, trade goods. We’ll deal in something besides flesh.”

  “No.” From his slouch, the man flowed back into poised readiness. “I will have what I want. Your weapons? Hah. Nothing to me.”

  He pulled the knife from his belt. I realized it was a single, curved bone, sharpened and etched with designs that mirrored his skin.

  “The gods are in me, little white-haired girl. Nothing can harm me.” He dug the point of the bone blade into his left forearm, tracing a deep gash toward his wrist. Darkness bubbled up and sealed the wound.

  “Hmm. Really?”

  Yoshana’s sword had cleared its sheath and severed his head before I knew she was moving. For a frozen instant, the Darkness hovered over the two halves of the native’s neck. Then it rose up in a cloud, abandoning the body, and the blood rushed out.

  “Didn’t think so.”

  The Overlord raised her left hand to the cloud, already beginning to dissipate. It swirled, hung suspended as if in thought, and then streamed into her body. She closed her eyes for a moment.

  When she opened them they were, for only a second, as black as mine. Then their startling blue color returned. She examined her strange, dull sword, finding it entirely free of blood.

  “Interesting,” she said, and sheathed it. “Let’s see if his shaman is more cooperative.”

  “Shaman?” Grigg asked.

  “That’s how he thought of the one that did this.” She touched the wall, then pointed straight ahead. “This way.”

  The compound was small, no more than a hundred yards across. Primitive thatched huts ringed the periphery. Yoshana led us toward one of those.

  The center of the area was not cleared. Trees and other plants grew riotously. Some were heavily laden with fruits or vegetables, far out of season. Every one of them was swollen beyond its normal size, colors unnaturally bright. I looked sidelong at an apple the size of a small melon, a red so vivid it seemed venomous.