Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle

by Malcolm McKenzie

  Seven, Yoshana, and Pious were dead. Grigg had left. The Darkness was driven out of Roshel and the other survivors. Sitting in the sun and looking out over the green fields and gentle rolling hills, it was easy to forget it still existed in the world.

  But of course it did, and I now commanded almost fifteen thousand men and women dedicated to opposing it. Nearly twenty thousand more soldiers of the Source had answered to Yoshana and were now leaderless.

  I turned Yoshana’s blade over in my hands. Grigg hadn’t claimed it, and I couldn’t leave a weapon like that lying in the mud. It had the shape of a traditional katana, but the whole sword - blade, hilt, guard - seemed to be forged from a single piece of… what? It was a dull, matte gray. It was warmer to the touch than metal. The hilt was knurled for grip, rather than wrapped with cloth or leather. It was sharp enough to split a hair. The only flaw was the chip smashed out of its edge by Seven’s spear. I had no idea how that could possibly be fixed.

  The weapon was as unique and irreplaceable as its owner. The world wouldn’t see the likes of either one again. After years of fearing her and fighting an impossible battle against her, I was free of Yoshana. I found I wanted to cry.

  “What are you thinking, Judge Minos?” asked BlackShield Jarl Lago.

  “I’m thinking I’m in pretty sorry shape to be commanding an army this big.”

  He rumbled a deep laugh. I’d deflected the question away from my true feelings, but I’d meant what I’d said. I had a real crutch now and my leg had been splinted again by the same medic, who hadn’t said a word but who’d given me a very dirty look for making him repeat his efforts. My face still hurt from the gouge torn into it by the lash of Yoshana’s Darkness. I hadn’t asked any of the people I’d met who’d suffered similar wounds if it ever stopped hurting. I hoped it would. It was clear the scar would be with me forever. And now a swelling and livid bruise had risen on my wrist where Yoshana had seized me. She was gone, but she’d certainly left her mark on me - literally as well as figuratively.

  “I guess… it’s a shame. All those deaths, and then Yoshana just gave up in the end. There must have been a way forward to the same place that didn’t waste so many lives.”

  Lago frowned. “How many died when you and I fought each other? Nearly ten times as many? And for what? So men in the Monolith or Rockwall could lay claim to land that was not theirs? All war is waste. Some wars more than others. We always wish there would be another way, unless we are monsters. Perhaps this time there was. But I did not see it. I was proud to serve with you. So were all those here.”

  I wasn’t quite sure how true that was. The Monolith troops weren’t necessarily my biggest fans. I looked over at Railes to check his reaction, but he was looking away.

  “Uh oh,” he said.

  Painfully I craned my head around to follow his glance. Prophetess was stamping up the hill with a determined look on her face. She came to a stop two feet from me.

  “Minos,” she announced, “Some dead Overlord said I was your woman.”

  There were nervous chuckles from the three men around me. I sat motionless, transfixed with panic as she continued relentlessly.

  “If I’m going to be your woman, I should get to know you better.” She stuck out her hand. “My name’s Genia Carter. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  Book Five - Covenant Against Darkness

  “Our adherents never forgive us if we take sides against ourselves:

  for in their eyes this means not only rejecting their love but also exposing their intelligence.”

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  1. Stephen

  “It’s going to rain,” I complained. “I can feel it.”

  Railes glared at me. The skull tattooed on the side of my adjutant’s face contorted hideously. “Don’t give me that. You’re what, not even twenty, and you’re already one of those old farts who feels the rain in his aching joints?”

  I shrugged. “It’s true.”

  And it was. Stephensburg was not far from the battleground where Yoshana had fallen and we’d seized control of the Darkness Radiant. But it had taken time for Roshel to reassign its officer corps under her leadership, rewarding talented veterans while purging the highest ranks of those most loyal to the previous Overlord commander. I’d given her as long as she wanted. My attempt to unify Rockwall and Monolith forces in the service of Our Lady had been an abysmal failure. I may not have been much of a general, but I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

  It had taken time to bury the dead, too. Speaking of mistakes. Maybe BlackShield Jarl Lago had been right, and there hadn’t been a better way. At least the death toll had been nowhere near as bad as the Battle of the Cleansing. Which meant our army had grown again. And big armies traveled slowly, at the pace of the most sluggish ox-drawn supply wagon. The fact that half those wagons had carried our wounded - including me - didn’t make them any faster. None of us appreciated being jostled.

  I’d enjoyed the time Tess and I spent sitting and holding hands in the wagon. Moments before she’d died, Yoshana had called Tess my woman. Somehow, the last words of an enemy had crystalized something between us that nothing else had. When I’d first met her, Tess had refused to even tell me her name, saying God had called her to be Prophetess and nothing more. I’d irreverently shortened the term to Tess. Now, with her mission achieved and Yoshana defeated, she was once again using her birth name of Genia Carter. But for me, she was still Tess. The nickname symbolized a bond formed through two years of struggle.

  Anyway, all that time waiting and bouncing along in the wagon had given me plenty of opportunities to learn how my injured knee felt about changes in the weather. It was healing, thanks to my Select metabolism, but there was a special twinge when rain was coming.

  Railes looked up at the sky, blue with scattered clouds. “Bull,” he declared.

  “Have it your way. Sleep outside tonight. You’ll see.”

  “The way things are going, we might be sleeping outside this gate before they open up.”

  That was rapidly becoming a sore point. Our column was halted just outside Stephensburg’s walled inner city. The troops holding the gate weren’t in any hurry to let us in.

  The situation was complicated. I was surprised to find myself thinking it, but we would have benefited from a professional politician. Yoshana had been Stephen’s hand, commander of his armies. As well as the power behind his throne or, as Railes had so eloquently phrased it, “the arm stuck up his ass making his mouth move.”

  Yoshana was dead. Roshel was her most senior remaining officer and had taken command of her troops in the field, then pledged them to me. In one sense, that meant the Darkness Radiant answered to Our Lady. Except Stephen still thought it answered to Stephen, since they were mostly his men.

  It had been nervous going when we’d first approached the city. Yoshana had split her forces into three legions commanded by herself, Roshel, and the Select Grigg. Portions of each legion had been in the battle against Our Lady’s troops, what the men were now calling the Battle of Darkness Falling. It was a play on words, of course, because the Darkness - in the form of the demon Seven, the possessed berserker Pious, and Yoshana herself - had all fallen. With the Darkness cast out of Roshel and the rest of the infected on both sides, it had been a great victory for the light.

  For Our Lady the words conveyed nothing but that victory. For the Darkness Radiant, I wasn’t so sure. They’d lost their leader and surrendered to an inferior force. And so there was the question of what would happen with the remainder of each legion garrisoned at Stephensburg. It had been clear enough that Roshel’s men in the city would follow us; the question of Yoshana and Grigg’s troops had been more interesting.

  “Interesting” in the way that a possible civil war in an urban environment was interesting.

  We’d made the most triumphant approach to the city we could muster. Drums beat, trumpets sounded, the men marched in splendid order, tabards as white and shining as we
eks in the field would allow. The wounded had followed behind, an unmentioned corollary to triumph. Like the dead. And Yoshana’s Knights of Resurrection who’d deserted in disgust.

  In the end it had proven to be a lot of worry over nothing. Even purged of the Darkness, Roshel was formidable enough to simply assert command and be accepted. True, we hadn’t advertised the fact that she no longer had the power to melt flesh from bones at her slightest whim.

  The only place we’d run into any difficulty was right here, at the gate to Stephensburg’s inner administrative district. Obviously word of the change in command had gotten ahead of us, and Stephen was trying to decide what to make of it. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry.

  A soldier unfolded a camp chair behind me, and I gratefully sank into it. I wasn’t going to trundle up to see Stephen sitting in a wagon, and riding a horse hurt more than walking. I could limp along and stand for a while using my katana as a cane - but not for very long. The question now would be whether I’d be able to get out of the chair again.

  “What’s taking so long?” Tess asked.

  Prophetess Genia Carter, banisher of the Darkness, conqueror of Yoshana, spiritual leader to a combined army of nearly thirty thousand men. The closest thing there was to a living religious icon. Not, however, known for her patience.

  “How would I know?” I said. Not the most insightful or respectful response from the general to his prophet, or perhaps the wisest way of speaking to my girlfriend. But it was true. I speculated, since I didn’t have anything else to do. “I’d guess Stephen’s trying to figure out if this is good or bad for him. He’s out from under Yoshana’s thumb, but his army just shifted allegiances without his permission. Kind of tough for a ruler to know what to make of that.”

  I let out a little grunt as my face twinged. Now that I was sitting, my knee didn’t hurt as much. That meant the wound opening my cheek from lip to eyebrow got to take its turn demanding my attention.

  In many ways I was lucky. Yoshana’s burst of Darkness hadn’t killed me or blinded me. The gouge it had ripped hadn’t actually torn a hole all the way through my face, so I could eat without food falling out of the side of my mouth. There was no exposed bone.

  But it wasn’t the kind of dashing little scar that women admired. It was the kind of awful-looking thing people unconsciously backed away from, in case it was somehow contagious, or whatever had inflicted it was still following me around. I was lucky I already had a girl - to her credit and my relief, Tess never shied away from it.

  The wound hadn’t bled. That was the way of injuries dealt by the Darkness. They just hurt. It was healing, slowly. It would always be hideous, but I hoped that in time it would stop looking like raw meat. Railes was missing an ear on the tattooed side of his face and hissed like a teakettle when he exerted himself thanks to a spear he’d taken in the lung a year before. He was greatly amused that I was now both less mobile and uglier than he was.

  “Open, me,” Cat suggested, eyeing the gate. The paleo girl was Tess’ bodyguard, Railes’ lover, and one of my closest friends. She was also a vicious savage. When she suggested she could open the gate, she meant she could scale the wall and murder the guards.

  “No, Cat.”

  She made a rude noise and went to play with Hafnum Furat’s big, white dog, Sam. The dog - and Furat - were another critical part of Tess’ protection. The dog could sense the Darkness, and Furat had a huge pistol and was good at shooting things with it. With Yoshana dead, Grigg vanished, Roshel on our side, and Tess perhaps immune to that sort of attack anyway, there shouldn’t be much to worry about on that score - but it didn’t pay to take chances with the Darkness.

  We’d won a great victory, but the situation was still fluid. There were hundreds of Yoshana’s veterans who hadn’t accepted the outcome of the battle. I didn’t know where they’d gone. Some might remain with our forces, a fifth column waiting to strike. I wasn’t going to have our leader, who I happened to love, assassinated in our moment of triumph.

  “Ah,” boomed a voice from above. “The prophet of Our Lady and her Select.”

  I struggled to my feet. Stephen stood on the wall, gray-uniformed guards around him. He wasn’t a tall man, but the silk shirt under his fur cloak was open to the waist, showing tanned, muscular flesh.

  Or the appearance of it. When we’d first met, he had been so grotesquely fat he could barely walk. Yoshana had remade him with the Darkness. I suspected it remained in him, giving him an unnatural appearance of health. A woman, taller than he and regal in appearance, stood at his side.

  “It’s ironic, Minos,” the lord of the Source continued. “Now you stand at the head of an army, but you seem so much the worse for wear.”

  “The price of war, Lord Stephen. Some paid a far higher price than I. But with peace restored, perhaps we could meet and discuss the disposition of this army?”

  Stephen seemed to ignore my request. Instead he continued, “I’d heard you commanded the Darkness, but then gave it up. That seemed hard to credit, but by your condition, I suppose it must be true. How very strange.”

  Tess piped up, “Lord Stephen, both Minos and Roshel have rejected the Darkness. God has cast it out of them. I beg you, do the same.”

  He snorted. “Roshel, too? I’d heard it but didn’t believe it. How can both of you be such fools?”

  “Lord Stephen -”

  “Be silent, peasant. I’m talking to your betters. Are all the rumors true, then, Minos? Yoshana dead, Grigg gone, the Darkness Radiant possessed of the Darkness no more?”

  Tess nodded slowly, even though the question had been addressed to me. My blood had started to boil the moment “peasant” had passed the nasty little despot’s lips, but she seemed unperturbed. Stephen was lucky I didn’t have the Darkness in me anymore, or he wouldn’t have enjoyed finding out which of us controlled it better.

  A hellish smile spread across his face, almost as if he could read my thoughts. “Then I am truly the only power remaining. There is nothing to discuss. The Darkness Radiant is mine, Minos. You will return it to my direct command at once.”

  Tess shook her head. “Lord Stephen, the Darkness is the power of sin and corruption. It is evil given form. Reject it and return to the light.”

  “Insect! You dare make demands of me? I am the lawful ruler of the Source and master of its armies. My will is supreme!”

  Cat was growling deep in her throat. I could tell she was trying to judge whether her knife, which wasn’t balanced for throwing, could take him in the eye at that range. I was pretty sure it could. I was really tempted to let her find out but set a warning hand on her arm instead.

  Sam either sensed the Darkness in Stephen or picked up on Cat’s tension. The dog began barking furiously.

  Stephen ranted on, oblivious. “My will is absolute! No one will deny me now, least some sniveling tool of an obsolete church. You will assemble my armies outside my walls at the first hour of the morning tomorrow, and then you may withdraw with the rabble you brought from Our Lady. Skulk back to your temples and mouth your prayers. Go preach repentance to the demons and see how it profits you. I don’t care. But my men will be returned to me.”

  “We’ll withdraw now and consider your proposal,” I said, backing away, which seemed - just barely - like a better response than letting Cat try to kill him and start a civil war.

  “Consider? You will obey! I will not tolerate defiance! At the first hour tomorrow, Select. You hear me?”

  I nodded. “I hear.”

  “That could have gone better,” I remarked when we’d returned to our headquarters outside the city.

  Roshel, BlackShield Jarl Lago, and the other senior officers hadn’t accompanied us and needed to be briefed. Afterward, Lago rumbled, “It is not very different from what I would expect, Judge Minos. Why would you have thought otherwise?”

  “The Darkness has driven him mad,” Tess said. “You should have seen his face.”

  The senior Paladin dipped his head respe
ctfully to her. “That may be, Prophetess, but his behavior is like any ruler’s. He claims what he believes to be his by right, and seizes any advantage he can.”

  “I’m with Lago,” Roshel chimed in. “It’s unfortunate you told him I’d been cleansed of the Darkness. He’s going to be feeling pretty invincible now.”

  Tess glared at her. “So you think we should have lied?”

  The beautiful, dark-haired Overlord who’d been one of the leaders of the Darkness Radiant shrugged. “Perfect honesty usually isn’t the best policy in war. You don’t have to be a creature of the Darkness to know that.”

  Her smile was perfectly sweet and perfectly calibrated to send Tess’ blood pressure through the roof. I hurried to intervene.

  “He’d heard the rumor already. He might not even have believed us if we’d denied it. The question is, what do we do now?”

  I looked around at the assembly of officers and others, gathered under a broad awning stretched across poles. In addition to those with senior military roles like Roshel, Lago, and Railes, we had Tess and her most trusted guards - Cat, Furat, and his dog. And of course Doctor John Dee, the opinionated occultist who’d been at Tess’ side for nearly two years and, with Cat, had become one of my closest and unlikeliest friends.

  Dee was a windbag, a braggart, and a coward. His ideas had been sometimes brilliant and sometimes terrible, and had almost always nearly gotten me killed. I turned to him with a mixture of hope and trepidation.

  “The questions are twofold,” he said. “To how much of the army do we have a right? And how much of it can we control?”

  Before anyone else could even try to answer, he plowed ahead. “As to the question of right, the greater part of what is now the Darkness Radiant was originally the army of Stephensburg, pledged to Stephen. For that matter, Yoshana pledged her own troops to Stephen as well. Even the forces of Our Lady are a bit questionable, as in civil matters Our Lady owes allegiance to the Source and Stephen as its ruler.”