Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle

by Malcolm McKenzie

  And that was the problem. She’d won over through purity and strength of character an army greater than the one Yoshana had assembled through seduction and intimidation. But now she didn’t want to use it.

  I needed to talk to Roshel. She’d understand the full strategic scope of the issue, in terms of both raw force and morale. She might even have a better sense than I of whether we could win Tess over… and if we couldn’t do that, how we’d go about leading an army sworn to a prophet who didn’t support our mission.

  I slipped on a pair of moccasins. The night was warm, and I didn’t need a cloak over the light pants and shirt I’d intended to sleep in. My injury gave me an excuse to use my katana as a cane. Not that I expected an attack inside Our Lady, but a certain paranoia had become part of my life.

  I limped down the hall toward Railes’ room. He knew where Roshel was bunking. I’d just ask him… my shuffling steps slowed and halted. I played out the conversation in my head. “What do you need her for at this time of night, boss?” “Just to ask her about strategy.” “Oh, okay.”

  Cat and Railes were very, very close. She might find out. She might even be in his room and overhear. In my mind, I knocked on Roshel’s door and she answered, a thin robe clinging to her curves. And then her eyes went wide as Cat’s dagger sank into my kidneys from behind, over and over again, the same way she’d slaughtered Erev. “Strategy, pfft,” the paleo sneered.

  I turned on my heel and stumped back to my room. Strategy could wait until morning.

  Tess didn’t join the officers for breakfast, but Roshel did. So I could have my discussion after all. I might have preferred a more private venue, but the images from the night before were stuck in my mind. They suggested I probably shouldn’t be alone with the brunette Overlord if I wanted to stay healthy.

  I figured it was safe enough to sit next to her in public, though.

  “Feeling rested?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Well enough. I may not have the Darkness in me anymore, but I’ve been on enough campaigns that a little ride up here from Stephensburg isn’t a big deal.”

  “That’s good,” I said. I stared at the toast on my plate. It didn’t have anything to add to the conversation.

  Roshel chuckled. “You’re terrible at small talk, Minos. What’s the point you’re dancing around?”

  “Okay. To the point it is. What happens if we do what Tess says and declare the crusade is over?”

  The new commander of the Darkness Radiant frowned. The sunlight streaming in through the windows played on her skin, highlighting the furrows in her brow. “For starters, the demons and the Darkness rise up and conquer the world, everything the Darkness Radiant fought for was for nothing, and all of us who survive - which won’t include you or me, by the way - become slaves.”

  Her voice rose a bit. “Or if you’re asking what happens in the shorter term, a little closer to home, our whole goddamned army falls apart. The Darkness Radiant has veterans from the Shield and the Green Heart serving alongside troops from the Source. None of those three states get along. Your forces right here were literally in the process of killing each other when Prophetess brought them together. Take away the common enemy, and they’ll go right back to each other’s throats. Without a unifying cause, we’re all going to be in the middle of the ugliest civil war since the Age of Fear.”

  “You can’t hold them together?”

  The frown deepened, and she glared at me. “Without something to hold them together for? No. I don’t think even Yoshana could have done that, and I’m not Yoshana.”

  I gnawed on the joint of my index finger, hoping the pain would inspire some brilliant plan. It didn’t. “Then we’ve got a real problem, because our prophet thinks the crusade is over.”

  The Overlord took a deep, shuddering breath. Her voice steadied. “Look, Minos, I spent some time last night thinking about this. Prophetess isn’t a soldier. I understand she’s intimidated by the thought of taking on the Hellguard. Who wouldn’t be? What we need to do is show her a workable plan so she understands it’s not a suicide mission. We have the strongest force on the continent at our command. She’ll come around once we get the campaign organized.”

  I didn’t think Roshel understood Tess at all, but I just nodded and picked at my food. “Let me spend today figuring out logistics at this end,” I said. “Then you can give me that strategic layout you mentioned last night.”

  Considering that Dee’s advice had almost gotten me killed a couple of times, he might not have seemed like the most obvious counselor. But he’d suggested the approach I’d used to separate Roshel from Yoshana. Now that I was stuck between Tess and Roshel’s irreconcilable positions, I found myself wanting to hear his perspective.

  “Roshel raises a number of valid points,” the occultist said. “Firstly, the idea of uniting against a common enemy is well enshrined in history and philosophy. ‘Me against my brother, my brother and I against my cousins, my family against the stranger,’ as it were. The ancients sometimes expressed it as the concept of the ‘repugnant other.’ In its most extremely articulated form, the idea was that the most important factor for belonging to a group was to hate the right enemies.”

  “So Yoshana was the repugnant other for Our Lady’s army before, and now the demons and the Darkness are the repugnant other for our united forces.”

  “Exactly. And Roshel fears that if we allow our hatred for the enemy to cool, we may lose cohesion. It’s not an irrational view. Prophetess would no doubt tell us that disapproval of the demons and the Darkness does not require war against them, but the ancients believed that the intensity of the hatred for the repugnant other intensified the cohesion of the group. With such a disparate group as ours, comprised of many nations and faiths, the unifying hatred may need to be intense indeed.”

  I was back to chewing on my knuckle. It wasn’t helping much this time either. “To the point of a war of aggression? I’m not sure Father Roric is going to get behind that, much less Tess.”

  “I believe you quoted the Hellguard Seven as saying that only the dead have seen the end of war. That aphorism is variously ascribed to thinkers ranging from Plato to Santayana, but I fear the principle remains valid regardless of whoever first articulated it. Humanity is a warlike species.”

  “You’re a big help.”

  My next stop was Father Roric. That was not a visit I relished. The Advocate for Justice hadn’t approved of my use of Seven as a weapon against Yoshana. Not only had that tactic been arguably wrong on moral grounds, it hadn’t worked and had resulted in the Hellguard’s death. Roric disapproved of most things and most people. I had given him more than the common run of reasons to disapprove of me.

  As always, the lean priest was courteous, gesturing me to the chair facing his old, wooden desk.

  “Judge Minos. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

  “A moral question, Father.”

  “Indeed? If I recall correctly, the last time you asked my views on a moral question you proceeded without my approval.”

  I should have just shut up and nodded, especially since I’d fully expected the comment, but instead I retorted, “If I recall correctly, you didn’t formally object either.”

  “Yes, and I regret that. Through my own poor judgment I led you into error and contributed to the death of a man who could not have been in a state of grace at his passing. I have confessed my sin in that regard. I have not heard your confession since we were last together here, but perhaps you availed yourself of the services of another priest.”

  Heat rose in my face. I hadn’t been to confession at all since before I’d gone to the Sorrows to retrieve Seven. I’d killed by my own hand since then, not to mention all the deaths I’d caused indirectly.

  “Maybe that’s relevant to the question at hand, Father. I understand that confession isn’t valid unless it’s made with the intention not to sin again. But I think I need to start another war.”

  Roric and I plo
wed the ground of just war theory over again. A preemptive strike against an enemy known to be poised to attack might be moral. Manufacturing a threat to hold our forces together certainly was not. I wasn’t sure enough of the facts to judge the question honestly. That would have to wait for my strategic discussion with Roshel. But at best, our position would be ambiguous. I didn’t leave the meeting feeling any better. I also neglected to schedule a confession. It wasn’t a sacrament I enjoyed.

  My third interview was one I’d enjoy even less.

  “Wow. You really do look like a big, gray sack of crap now,” Moya said as I limped into the chamberlain’s outer office. The redhead frowned dramatically, wrinkling the puckered scar tissue around her missing eye even more hideously than usual. “Whoever did it had lousy aim, though.”

  An inch to the right and the gouge torn into my face would have made my eye a match for hers. I wondered if that would have made her like me any better. Probably not. Moya was a generally unpleasant person, but I wasn’t quite sure why she particularly disliked me.

  “I love you too,” I said. “Is he in?”

  “For the great, conquering hero? I suppose he’ll have to be. You’ll want to be careful about your head swelling too much. With that rip in your face it might pop and your brains’ll leak out.”

  While I tried to think of a response, the redhead stood and went through the small door into the inner office, closing it behind her. It opened only moments later and she emerged, followed by Father Doreden’s voice. “Minos. Come in, come in.”

  The warmth in the chamberlain’s tone was matched only by the disgust in Moya’s expression.

  Mindful of my discussion with Father Roric on the subject of confession, I tried to exercise Christian charity and not think of Doreden as a fat, useless windbag. I wasn’t very successful in spite of the welcoming smile on his face. Maybe it was because I was getting better at recognizing when that expression was being faked.

  The chamberlain’s main purpose was preventing people from bothering the Metropolitan. He was the living embodiment of bureaucracy.

  Moya shut the door behind us with a bang. Her main purpose was preventing people from bothering Father Doreden. She accomplished that through an exceptionally unpleasant attitude that came as naturally to her as breathing. We might not get along, but I had to admit she was good at her job.

  Doreden stood and waddled around his desk to shake my hand. “Amazing, Minos. Simply amazing. I will admit that I myself doubted your chances against Yoshana. I suppose that was a disturbing lack of faith in a man of the cloth, haha. But you proved me wrong and of course I’m glad of it.”

  “It helps when your enemy decides to hand you her sword and tells you to cut off her head.”

  “A miracle indeed.”

  I nodded, frowned, winced, and added, “And all Prophetess’, not mine. Or God’s through Prophetess, I suppose I should say. But as the Metropolitan has pointed out, it leaves us with the unexpected problem of having a large army and nothing to do with it.”

  “Ah.” Doreden returned to his chair and waved me to another. “Sit, please. This may not be a short conversation.”

  I sat and winced again. My knee didn’t care for standing, but objected to changing position even more. The chamberlain saw my expression but misjudged the cause. He touched his cheek. “Does it hurt much?”

  I thought again about my conversation with Father Roric. “Probably no more than I deserve.”

  The fat priest visibly turned that thought over in his head and equally visibly decided he didn’t want to explore it. “So what exactly is it that brings you here today, Minos? I don’t imagine you need to go through me to see the Metropolitan these days, heheh.”

  “I had a logistical question, Father, that I think is more your area. To be blunt, how long can we keep feeding this army?”

  “Ah.” Doreden steepled his fingers and examined them as if looking for answers. Maybe he was going to count on them. “I suppose that is indeed rather more my area. To be equally blunt, it depends. The harvest both inside and outside the walls should be good, God willing… if there are not late floods, or droughts, or blights. We employed quite a number of General Hake’s men to bring all the fields within the walls under the plow this spring. Still, that will likely not be quite enough. Seven thousand sweaty soldiers eat rather a lot.”

  I nodded. “I imagine we’re near the bottom of Our Lady’s reserves.”

  The chamberlain’s eyes widened. “Oh, far past. We’ve kept everyone fed so far only by taxing the surrounding town and farms. Emergency wartime levies. And if we are to continue to support this army, those emergency levies must likewise continue. Of course, the people will only support such sacrifices…”

  He trailed off. I finished for him. “…If there’s actually a war.”

  3. The Best Laid Plans

  We set up a map table representing the entire eastern half of the continent, with little painted counters showing our estimates of troop strength. Tess pretended it didn’t exist.

  Roshel and I hovered over it like vultures waiting for a dying man’s last breath.

  “You need to understand the background, Minos,” she began.

  “I’m from the Green Heart. I know the basic history. Let’s skip ahead to where we are now.”

  “No. It’s not enough to know who, and where. You have to know why. To understand the balance of forces now, you have to go back to when Karst ruled the Shield.”

  I reached for a pitcher to refill my mug of cider. “I’m getting thirsty just imagining how long you’re going to talk.”

  She glared. “The Shield has always been the plug keeping the Hellguard bottled up inside the Darklands. To the north they’re blocked by the Ice Fields, to the east the sea, to the west the Sorrows. And to the south the Shield.”

  “I do know this.”

  “Shut up and listen,” she snarled, and for a moment she was as terrifying without the Darkness as she’d been with it, and I was forcibly reminded that no one without an iron will could command as much of that hellish power as she had.

  “The Shield stood between the world of demons and the world of men, and not just physically. There was almost no commerce between the Darklands and the Shield, but I told you before they trafficked in women and children. The Shield provided the Hellguard with female slaves whose will hadn’t been erased like the humans in the Darklands. And if a child was born, and lived, it was returned to the Shield.”

  The Overlords were those half-demon offspring, conceived in rape and born in death. Roshel had told me no woman survived the birth of a child infected with the Darkness. Most of the children didn’t survive it either. I didn’t know about the other Overlords, but Roshel, at least, nurtured a burning hatred for the Hellguard.

  “The Overlords are the heart of the Shield’s army. With our - with their mastery of the Darkness, the Shield could face the Hellguard. And then there are others, with less demon blood but still enough to control the Darkness.”

  “Why would the Hellguard agree to return those children if it gave the Shield the power to stop them?”

  The Overlord smiled. “So you don’t know everything you need to know, do you? Be patient. You’re getting ahead of the story.”

  She poured herself some of the cider. “It’s a good question, actually. Maybe the key question. I suppose, before Karst took the White Throne, the rulers of the Shield assumed the demons had no ambitions outside the Darklands.”

  I snorted. “Because their children weren’t ambitious at all. Like Yoshana.”

  Roshel tapped the side of her nose. I’d never seen anyone actually use the gesture. “Ah. Again, you’re getting to the heart of it now. Remember, mastering the Darkness requires discipline, self-control. The tradition in the Shield was that no Overlord would rule it, because the ambition to rule wasn’t compatible with control of the Darkness.”

  Ambition and the Darkness had fit together for me like a hand in a glove. Although in the end,
I had feared what I was becoming so much that I’d asked Tess to cast it out of me. “But didn’t Yoshana -”

  “Rule the Shield? Yes. She led a rebellion against Karst, killed him with her own hands, and seized the White Throne for herself. Of course it all turned out to be a lie, what we’d been told. Karst was a master of the Darkness himself, even though he was no Overlord. Who knows how many before him were too.”

  She took a long drink. “The other thing we hadn’t known was that Karst made an alliance with the Hellguard. The Darklands and the Shield would join together and rule the world.”

  “And Yoshana broke that alliance and the Hellguard turned on her.”

  “No… Yoshana embraced the alliance.”

  “I’m confused. I can see her doing just about anything for power. But you - you followed her, and you hate the demons.”

  Roshel’s eyes were shining with unspilled tears. “Yoshana showed me how to use the Darkness. She turned me from a useless monster into… well, I suppose a useful monster.” Her laugh was bitter.

  “I would have followed her anywhere. I did follow her anywhere. It was Grigg who turned against her. He’d helped her bring down Karst. He’d fallen in love with her, you see, before he knew what she was. But he wouldn’t work with the Hellguard. He left and went to organize the Green Heart’s defenses. So Yoshana sent me to kill him.”

  Wow. Talk about a woman scorned. Thoughts chased through my head. I was tempted to do the prudent thing and let them go, but instead I said, “It’s, uh, been suggested that you had feelings for Grigg yourself.”

  She nodded. “Yes. That’s why she sent me. If I’d killed him, I’d have been hers forever.”

  Just as if I’d killed Tess, as Yoshana had planned, I’d have been hers forever. You’d think someone as smart as the white-haired Overlord would have learned from her mistakes.

  “But you turned on her instead.”