Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle

by Malcolm McKenzie

  I don’t know what I’d imagined the Darklands would be like, but it hadn’t been this. Once we left the abandoned town on the river, the country turned to rolling green hills, lushly carpeted with trees. As I extended my senses, I found no trace of the Darkness. In the Sorrows, it had always been a lurking presence, thin wisps of the stuff everywhere. This was nothing like those haunted woods. In the budding warmth of spring it was a gentle, pleasant country.

  Or it would have been, if I hadn’t been plotting to break faith with my comrades while hunting a demon lord in his own territory.

  We ambled northeast on the remnants of a highway, a crumbling stretch of asphalt that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Source or Rockwall. Just as in the west, we sometimes passed weed-choked ruins at the sides of the road. Unlike in any of my previous travels, I was able to probe them with the Darkness and find them empty of anything but rats, raccoons, and once a small den of wolves. The wolves were no more of a threat to me now than the rats.

  I had seen the assurance of this group before we entered the Sorrows. Now I truly understood it. In the Sorrows, with the Darkness wild and unchecked everywhere, I had been prey. Here, I was an apex predator. I liked it.

  Did I really want to give it up?

  But I wouldn’t give it up. The only chance for Prophetess and Our Lady was if I didn’t give it up. In the end, Roshel had been right after all that I would be a factor. Just not the way she had planned.

  I regretted it, in a way. I liked Roshel, even though her attention toward me might be no more than a part of Yoshana’s plan. I liked Grigg, too. Shockingly, I’d even grown fond of the great terror herself. Even if, as Erev said, we were all just tools to her.

  “Enjoying yourself?” Roshel pulled up next to me.

  I suppressed a guilty start. “I guess I am. Beats that sewer in the Sorrows. I hadn’t realized what it was like to just let my senses roam.”

  She nodded. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? Like you were blind and now you can see. Don’t get too cocky, though. The demons have range on us. If we get too close to one, he’ll spot us before we spot him.”

  That was a bucket of cold water. “And how do we avoid that?”

  From ahead, Yoshana said, “Cross your fingers and hope for the best.”

  Grigg shuddered dramatically. “Sun Tzu is rolling in his grave.”

  We camped in a copse of trees at the side of the road. It was warm enough that we had no need of shelter. Yoshana decided against a fire.

  “I’ve got no idea what kind of patrols the demons maintain here. There’s only a couple hundred Hellguards - almost no chance we’ll stumble across one of them. But their soldiers could be anywhere. Better not to send up smoke for them to investigate.”

  So we sat facing each other across the space where a fire would have been and ate cold rations.

  “What’s going on?” Roshel asked.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. “What do you mean?”

  I applied all my discipline to keeping my heart rate at a normal level. If she probed my mind, I wouldn’t even have time to stand up before they killed me.

  “You’ve been quiet all day. Figured you’d be a little more talkative now that we’re out of the Sorrows.” She elbowed me playfully.

  “Sorry. I’ve been thinking about the demons. I really believed what Yoshana had said about this being the easy part.” I shot a glance at the white-haired Overlord, now disguised as a white-haired Select. “The Sorrows were awful. And like you said, it seems so much better here. But, if the demons are that strong, how do we kill one?”

  “Same way you kill anyone else,” Yoshana said. “Enough bullets, in the right places, and he’ll go down. Then you burn the body to make sure he doesn’t come back.”

  She met my eyes squarely. It was all I could do not to flinch away. “The hard part is making sure he doesn’t kill you first.”

  And she laughed.

  Everyone was asleep, and had been for hours. I had waited, to be sure. It was time to make my move. I would have to escape back through the Sorrows. It seemed ludicrous to think of that corrupted sea of trees as a refuge, but there I was. If I was going turn against Yoshana and live, the only cover I could possibly find would be in that place where the Darkness was so thick and unpredictable that demons feared to tread. I might not survive the wraiths and possessed even with my new mastery of the Darkness, but it was my only hope of losing Grigg and the Overlords.

  The longer we traveled in the Darklands, the farther we would get from the border, and the longer I would be at risk when I fled. I was confident that not even Yoshana could track me once I got back into those haunted woods. Here, where she could sweep a radius of hundreds of yards with the Darkness, scanning for every footprint? The only thing I could do was be faster.

  No one was on watch. We trusted in our warding circles. And it was only then, as I silently climbed to my feet, that I realized I was trapped.

  I had learned to thread my tendrils of Darkness through the bars of the sophisticated protective cages we had used in the Sorrows. But while I could sense the ward with no difficulty, and extend my senses beyond it with only the most trivial effort, I couldn’t cross it physically. Not without being detected. I could simply walk over it and explain I was going to relieve myself. But if someone stayed awake? It wouldn’t be long until I was missed. I could use the Darkness to spook the horses and flee in the confusion, but again, how much of a lead would I have? Minutes? Not enough.

  I cursed under my breath. For all my new abilities, I was no more able to slip Yoshana and live than I had been weeks ago.

  Would I have to see this mission through? Help kill the demon and only then be able to free myself? Would I escape even then? I swore continuously, silently, fighting back tears of frustration. Tired as I was, and despite my meditation, sleep eluded me for the second night in a row.

  I was bleary-eyed and thick-headed the next day.

  “What’s eating you?” Grigg asked. So now they had all noticed. Only Yoshana had failed to comment, and I had no illusions that she wasn’t aware. She probably kept track of how often we all breathed.

  “Still worried about the demons?” There was a scornful tone in Erev’s voice, as if he regretted sharing confidences with me the day before.

  “He’s not wrong to worry,” Yoshana said. “Nothing you can do about it, though, so no sense losing sleep over it.”

  Her black eyes bored into mine. She was harder to read as a Select than in her true form. I thought I would know if she probed me with the Darkness, but would I really? I certainly couldn’t stop her.

  “That’s what I said,” Erev agreed.

  “Do you sense something?” the Overlord asked, still holding my gaze. “I think you may be more sensitive than the rest of us, from learning in the Sorrows.”

  I fleetingly considered a lie, then decided on a version of the truth instead. “No, I don’t feel a thing. Maybe that’s the problem. I’m used to touching the currents in the Darkness. Back there I could sense a threat coming… remember that pressure we felt in the ruins? Here, I know the demons are out there, but I can’t sense anything.”

  Yoshana nodded, finally breaking eye contact. “Makes sense. We’ve never trained someone in such a Darkness-saturated environment before. It stands to reason you’d actually feel uncomfortable away from it.”

  I summoned up a feeble smile of agreement. “So why do they call this the Darklands, if the Darkness is so thin here?”

  “Because this is where it started. Where the Hellguard staked out their territory, where the paleos let the Darkness loose into the world. And don’t misunderstand - it’s thicker here than anywhere but the Sorrows. There’s a good chance we’ll run into some small clouds of it. I don’t expect anything we can’t handle, but there’s a reason the Hellguard circumcise their slaves’ minds, and it’s not just about controlling them. A normal person wouldn’t last long here. It won’t get you within hours or days like in the worst of
the Sorrows, but over the course of a lifetime… it’s thicker here than in the Shield, and there’s plenty of it there.”

  “For you - for us - that’s an advantage, isn’t it? If you use up some of it, it’s easier to replace?”

  She gave me a calculating look. “That’s right. It’s not often you lose what you control, but it happens. I lost most of mine in the fight with that shaman - but then I took it back from his followers. And of course I left quite a bit embedded in Stephen. That took longer to replace. So yes, I’m a bit stronger here, I can be a bit less careful. But don’t get overconfident. We all have limits. If you try to control too much, it will control you instead.”

  We ate, broke camp, and resumed our ride northeast. I turned her words over in my head, wondering if they gave me any more options. Could I somehow flood our camp with the Darkness and escape in the chaos? Could I seize control of the others’ wards? I didn’t know how. Yoshana had wrested the Darkness from the shaman’s servants, but she was much stronger. Was there any hope of doing the same to her while she slept?

  I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that my mount bumped into Grigg’s when he halted in front of me. I gave the horse a dirty look. “You had one job,” I muttered under my breath.

  It was only when I had stopped that I heard the faint ringing of a hammer on metal.

  “Still quite a ways off,” Yoshana said softly.

  “Go around?” Grigg asked.

  “No. Let’s see what we can learn here. Off the road into the woods.”

  We dismounted and led the horses into the forest flanking the northwestern edge of the road. As the clanging grew louder, we tied our mounts to trees and left them behind.

  The overgrown remnants of a town dotted the other side of the highway. Choked with grass and weeds, it showed no signs of life but for the sound and faint wisps of smoke farther ahead.

  As we made our way north, the nature of the ruins changed abruptly. Structures that had been ravaged by time gave way to wreckage that had been far more actively devastated.

  “Who’s attacking a town in Hellguard territory?” Grigg murmured.

  I had to smile as I shook my head. “Not attacking. Mining. They’re stripping the buildings. Harvesting whatever they can reuse.”

  “How are you so sure?” asked the other Select.

  “I spent two years mining garbage. I know what a salvage operation looks like.”

  Yoshana nodded. “Makes sense. This is a big place, and thinly settled. The demons will have been at it for centuries. Jackals gnawing away at the bones of human civilization.”

  I shrugged. We did the same thing on the Flow. Furat supplied pioneers who risked their lives doing it in the Sorrows. Somebody would make use of what had been abandoned, or it would be only so much junk decaying to rust and mold.

  Soon enough we saw the signs of the demons’ miners. A line of flat, open carts stood on a side street leading eastward into the rubble. Stolid, thick-bodied horses were yoked to the vehicles, placidly cropping what grass they could reach. One sentry watched the animals. He held a metal-shod staff, but I thought his role was less defense and more to make sure none of the beasts got loose and wandered off. Long torches were set into the ground, burning in the bright sunlight. In case someone unearthed a nest of the Darkness, I supposed.

  “Easy enough to go around,” Grigg hissed. “But we’re not going to, are we?”

  “There’s some danger in having them behind us. And they might know something useful.” Yoshana turned and faced me directly. “The key is not to let any of them escape. We absolutely cannot risk them alerting their masters, or we’re done for. No misplaced pity, Minos. You’ll be doing them a favor to end the half-lives they’re living. We’ll circle, and close in from four directions. Prisoners are good, but do not let any of them out alive.”

  I bobbed my head once.

  “I’ll work my way to the far side of where they’re salvaging and hit them from the east. Grigg, you come in from the north, Roshel from the south. Minos, Erev, you head straight in when the rest of us are in position. Extend the Darkness as far as you can toward Grigg and Roshel. They’ll reach out to you and to me. We’ll be able to maintain contact over a square two hundred yards or so on a side. That should be big enough. As we move in, the links will make sure nothing sneaks by between us.”

  The plan was simple enough - with the aid of the Darkness. Without it, a dozen things could go wrong. With it? As long as we each knew where the others were, it was easy.

  As long as we each knew where the others were…

  Yoshana, Roshel, and Grigg moved silently into the ruins. I could feel them as I stretched my senses. Soon, Roshel and Grigg began to trail their own tendrils of Darkness behind, maintaining contact with mine. But my strands could be cut free, and then…

  I had planned to escape in the night, quietly. Not to abandon my companions in the middle of a fight. It would be the ultimate betrayal.

  Not that it would make a difference to Yoshana. However I left her, the penalty if she caught me would be death.

  “Can you take the guard?” Erev whispered. With the Darkness, he meant.

  I nodded. “Does it bother you, at all? That Yoshana uses everyone?” Grigg and Roshel were beyond my range. The edges of my probes were touching the edges of theirs.

  “Nah. Everyone gets used. Soldiers especially. At least she doesn’t just waste her troops. She’ll throw you away, but it’s for a reason.”

  “Yeah.” I severed my connection to my probes, leaving them to hang in the air. They would float, dissipate - but for a time, they would feel like me. “I’m sorry.”

  I already had the Darkness in Erev. It slashed his Achilles tendons, his vocal cords, the ligaments in his wrists. He fell, grunting out a rush of air. The wounds were small, and I had no doubt Yoshana could heal him. If she didn’t kill him for letting me escape.

  I was disgusted with what I had done, but I couldn’t have him following me, or calling out… or shooting me in the back.

  I turned and ran, leaving the soldier flopping on the ground behind me.

  I had minutes at best before Grigg and Roshel realized something was wrong. I dodged through the trees, leaping over roots, branches whipping at my face. What would happen if the demons’ slaves fled through the hole I had left in our perimeter? If they escaped and alerted the Hellguard, Yoshana’s whole mission might fail.

  I put it from my mind and rushed on. If Yoshana captured me, I’d never find out whether she succeeded or failed. Although she might carry my head around as a reminder of what happened if you crossed her.

  The horses shied as I burst into the little clearing where they were tethered. I fumbled at the reins, freeing the animals. Grigg had pulled his knot so tight that I gave up and cut through the leather with the strange knife I’d found in the Sorrows. The tough material parted easily under that razor edge.

  I untied my own mount last and swung up onto its back. Nearly a minute lost - I could only hope this would be worth it. My store of the Darkness was depleted from the tendrils I had abandoned, but I marshaled what was left and shrieked Fear! into the feeble minds of the horses.

  The four riderless beasts wheeled, snorted, and galloped away in a mad panic, each in a different direction. Unfortunately, mine was affected as well. It plunged north, deeper into the woods. A small branch cut my face, drawing a stream of blood or Darkness - I couldn’t tell, and didn’t dare take a hand from the reins to touch my face.

  I wanted to go west, and I hauled roughly at the animal’s mouth. It staggered and slewed around in an ungainly slide. I think it nearly went down. I know I nearly fell off. I lurched one way, then the other, and if I hadn’t been so terrified of pursuit I would have simply let go and allowed myself to drop.

  As it was I lost the reins and found myself leaning far to the left of my seat, desperately holding on by the saddle horn and the horse’s mane. Another tree limb struck me in the head and for a moment all I saw was a flash of red
.

  I realized my unbalanced weight was pulling the horse around, and it was now charging south. I was very nearly going in a circle. I flung myself forward, wrapped my arms around the long neck, and leaned right. The horse launched itself even faster and shifted direction again, coming back around to the west but now moving so fast it was bound to break a leg on a root, if it didn’t rush headlong into a tree.

  Sitting a maddened, galloping steed was nothing like rolling along at a walk. I was a poor rider at the best of times, and this was very far from the best of times.

  From my rudimentary riding lessons I knew I should lean back to slow the animal, but that went against every instinct as well as the force of gravity. And I realized that my own panic was feeding the horse’s, augmented no doubt by the Darkness. Clinging like some deranged monkey to my mount’s neck, I did my best to quiet my mind.

  And then the shots began behind me.

  My heart went into my throat, and the horse surged into even more desperate motion. But the blasts were distant, and repeated. Not the sounds of pursuit, but of Yoshana executing the demons’ slaves.

  “Still, that’s us if they catch us,” I muttered. But by now we must be at least half a mile away, beyond the range of even Yoshana’s senses. I fumbled for the dangling reins and caught them, then slowly checked the horse’s wild flight.

  If they were pursuing now, it would be on foot. They could take the pack horses from the demons’ salvage train, but those hadn’t been saddled. With any luck they wouldn’t know exactly which way I’d gone, with five trails crashing in different directions through the forest.

  I brought my mount to an uncomfortable trot. Any one of Yoshana, Grigg, or Roshel would be more than a match for me, but even if they split up, the chances of any of them catching up to me should be low. The farther I went, the more the arc of unknown direction should work in my favor. I hoped they’d assume I’d returned southwest, to the bridge we had crossed. But I realized that due west would also look like an attractive option. I turned northwest instead.