The Darkling Child

by Terry Brooks

  It took only a moment for the man to see them. A knife appeared in his hand, and he pressed it to the boy’s neck. “Where is he?” he screamed at them.

  Both Paxon and Avelene slowed, confused. “Dead,” the Druid answered. “They’re all dead. Let the boy go.”

  The man looked around wildly, noting the giant’s body and dismissing it. “Not them! The sorcerer! He’s not dead! Are you blind? Where is he? You answer me! You want this one’s throat cut, do you?”

  He pressed the knife blade harder against the boy’s throat, but the boy didn’t even flinch. He just stared into space.

  “Look down!” Paxon shouted at him. He pointed to the charred rocks and bits of tattered robe that lay almost at the man’s feet. The man glanced at them and gave a shrill, wild laugh, as if this was the funniest thing he had ever seen.

  Avelene kept moving forward, drawing Paxon with her. “Your fellows are all dead!” she called out. “You have nowhere to go. Let the boy go, and I will give you your freedom!”

  The man spat at her. “You’ll give me nothing. You’ll do what I say or I’ll kill him right in front of you! You stay where you are.”

  Avelene slowed, but not by much.

  “How stupid are you, woman? You think the sorcerer dead? Just like that? Quick and simple, a flash rip does the job? Dead? He’s got nine lives and then some! He’s waiting us out—all of us—just to see who lives and who dies. Those that die quick are the lucky ones. But I’m not fooled because I see things you don’t!”

  Paxon experienced a flash of uncertainty. Was he right? Was Arcannen still alive? But if so, then who had the flash rip explosions torn apart?

  He knew the answer before he finished asking himself the question. Magic. The sorcerer had used magic. It was an image the flash rip had destroyed.

  He separated himself from Avelene by a few steps, searching for a way to disable their adversary. If he could get close enough, it should only take a moment to render him senseless. But it would be tricky, and he would get only one chance. He hesitated, glancing at Avelene. She was continuing her own advance, white fire flaring at her fingertips, tense resolve mirrored on her narrow features.

  “Wait,” she whispered to him.

  The man continued backing away from them, working his way toward a gap in the ruins that would give him access to the coastline. “I’m not so stupid as these others, Arcannen!” he shouted at the ruins about him. “Not Bael Etris! I see you. You can’t hide yourself from me, witchman!”

  The mist was shifting in front of him with such frequency that he was disappearing into it every few seconds. Any attack would be semi-blind in these conditions. But Paxon knew they had to do something.

  “You want this boy dead, Arcannen?” Bael Etris screamed suddenly. “Show yourself or he’s meat on the—”

  An explosion of smoke infused with a brilliant crimson light cut off the rest of what he intended to say, flooding the whole of the ruins surrounding Etris and the boy, completely enveloping both. At first, Paxon thought Avelene had caused it, but when he glanced over she was down on one knee, shielding her eyes from the glare. Throwing caution aside, knowing there was no time for it, he charged into the swirling miasma, the black blade of his sword alive with movement, its emerald light flaring in bright streaks against the crimson of the haze.

  If he could just reach the boy…

  But it was the girl he found instead. Blinded by the smoke and groping futilely for direction, she stumbled out of the gloom and collapsed at his feet. Kneeling beside her, one eye on his surroundings in case the next person to appear happened to be the one with the knife, he pulled her up and held her, whispering that she was all right, that she was safe.

  She grasped at him in response, her words urgent, grateful. “Reyn, are you all right? I saw what happened to you! You used too much again, tried too hard! I warned you…” Then she stopped abruptly as she looked into Paxon’s face. “No! Where is he? What…?”

  Abruptly she realized he wasn’t the boy and pushed him away violently. She leapt to her feet in an effort to escape, but she wasn’t strong enough to free herself from his quick hands, and he brought her down again with a rough yank.

  “Whoa, hold on!” he said. “Not so fast. No running away until I find out what’s going on.”

  She struggled for a moment and then gave up. To her credit, she didn’t cry or whine. Instead, she faced him squarely. “You have to let me go! I have to find him! You don’t understand what’s happening!”

  “I’ll give you that last part,” he replied, pulling her to her feet, one hand firmly clasped about her wrist. “So let’s go have a look and see if we can change things. What’s your name?”

  She glared at him. Her delicate, beautiful features had turned hard and tight. “Lariana.”

  “Sharp eyes then, Lariana. Don’t let us get caught by surprise.”

  They advanced cautiously, but no one else appeared until, after several long minutes, a crouching Avelene materialized almost on top of them. Her appearance was so sudden that Paxon barely managed to stay his sword arm from striking out at her.

  “Calm down, Highlander!” she snapped at him, flinching away. Her narrow features took on an ironic look. “We’re on the same side, remember?”

  He exhaled in relief. “Can’t see anything in this stuff.”

  “Why don’t we get out of it then, give the winds a chance to blow it away? Who is this you have with you?”

  “Lariana. She hasn’t told me more than that, so far.”

  Wordlessly, the Druid led them away from the ruins and the mist and out onto the rocky flats where the air was still clear. Paxon glanced over his shoulder and was surprised to see that the crimson haze wasn’t dissipating. It was hanging motionlessly above the rocky terrain, almost as if anchored in place, its weight enough that the sea winds couldn’t budge it.

  Avelene came close to Lariana, eyes fixing on her. “How do you come to be here?”

  For a moment, it looked like the girl wouldn’t answer. It seemed to Paxon as she hesitated that she was making up her mind about something. There was an air of desperation to her that issued in part, no doubt, from her concern for the boy. But he thought something more was at work, too. She was young and beautiful, and she was out in the middle of nowhere. That couldn’t have happened by accident, so there was a story waiting to be told and she was trying to decide how to tell it.

  Or at least how much of it she wanted to reveal.

  “If I tell you, will you agree to help me look for Reyn?” she asked.

  She was looking at Paxon, but he held his tongue. It wasn’t his place to answer. “The boy?” Avelene asked. Lariana nodded, and the Druid shrugged. “Of course we will.”

  The girl took a quick breath. “I was brought here by Arcannen. He took me out of Rare Flowers, a school for young women in troubled circumstances, and brought me with him to this place. On the way, we picked up Reyn. This was no accident. Arcannen knew who he was. I was to help persuade Reyn to use his magic, to practice with it. He never told me why. Then these men came, trying to kill Arcannen. But he disappeared, and Reyn had to face them alone. I tried to help him, but then…well, you saw. The man with the knife knocked me down, and then that mist swallowed everything and the man disappeared and so did Reyn…”

  “What was wrong with Reyn?” Paxon interrupted. “He didn’t do anything to try to help himself. He seemed almost unconscious.”

  Lariana glanced at him and shrugged. “He must have been frightened. I don’t know.”

  Paxon was reminded suddenly of how his sister had looked after she had first used the wishsong’s magic and gone catatonic. The boy had worn a similar look, and he didn’t think the cause was simply fear.

  “Why did you help Arcannen?” Avelene demanded before Paxon could pursue the matter. “Don’t you know who he is?”

  The girl gave a sardonic smile. “I do now. At the time, I didn’t care. He was going to get me out of Rare Flowers, and he said
he would teach me to use magic if I helped him. That was reason enough for me to go with him. I knew what would happen if I didn’t take the chance he was offering. No one else was going to do anything for me. Not anything I wanted them to do, anyway. I was on the verge of being thrown into the streets. They didn’t like me at Rare Flowers. I was too difficult, they said.”

  “So this boy, Reyn, what kind of magic can he use?” Avelene pressed. “Have you seen him use it?”

  Lariana shook her head. “I won’t tell you anything else unless you help me find him. Or just let me go so I can find him on my own. I’m not afraid to do that.”

  Avelene smirked. “I’m guessing you’re not afraid of much. But there’s more to this than you know. We need you and Reyn to help us understand it. So you don’t get to do anything on your own. We can search the ruins together, if you want.”

  This time Avelene didn’t reenter the red haze as Paxon had chosen to do earlier, but conjured a spell that brought the wind about from the ocean and caused it to blow the scarlet mist out over the choppy waters and away. It took considerable effort to achieve this; the haze was stubbornly resistant to her efforts. But in the end it dissipated and was replaced by the familiar sea mists of earlier.

  With the way forward more readily visible now, the trio plunged ahead, scrambling until they reached the spot where Reyn Frosch had last been seen. It took them only moments, and then they stood together casting about the empty terrain fruitlessly. Then Lariana spied the open door in the cliff face, a black, gaping hole in the rock, and she charged over with a sharp cry, heedless of any danger. Paxon and Avelene followed, and quickly they were down the hallway beyond and inside the sorcerer’s lair.

  Empty.

  A swift search revealed that the rooms were deserted, and Lariana stood staring about the central living quarters in a furious attempt to understand. “Arcannen has him,” she said finally.

  “No,” Avelene said at once. “Arcannen is dead. I saw the man with the flash rip send so many of those projectiles into him there was nothing left.”

  The sharp eyes fixed on her. “That’s what he wants you to think. But he’s alive. He’s alive, and he’s taken Reyn with him.”

  “And left you behind?” Paxon asked. “Odd.”

  “Not so odd. I was always expendable. Once he got what he wanted from me, once he used me to get to Reyn, to persuade him…” She trailed off. “I knew he would do something like this. I just hoped I would be able to keep Reyn close enough to prevent it…”

  “But where’s the man with the knife?” Avelene wanted to know.

  “Dead,” Lariana said at once.

  “But what happened to him?”

  The girl hesitated, shaking her head. “I don’t know.”

  “We need to go back outside!” Paxon said suddenly. “Have another look around.”

  They departed the sorcerer’s, going down the hallway and outside once more into the open air, where they began their search anew, eyes scanning the ruins through gloom and shifting mists.

  “There!” Lariana exclaimed almost immediately, pointing upward.

  Paxon and Avelene turned, eyes shifting. The Highlander heard his companion’s sudden intake of breath.

  A steel support rod jutted from the shattered walls of the buildings above where they stood. The body of Bael Etris hung from that rod, his lifeless husk pinned in place with enough force that the rod had passed completely through his body. His eyes were open and staring.

  “So Arcannen is alive after all,” Avelene murmured, looking at Lariana. “And you think he took Reyn with him?”

  Lariana was nodding slowly. “Arcannen has him,” she repeated. “But I know where they are.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Reyn Frosch rose from out of a black pit, lifted by the rocking motion of the pallet on which he lay, summoned by the howling of a furious wind. He came from a long way down, a slow ascent back to wakefulness, his senses struggling to focus as his eyes blinked and his arms clutched protectively at his body. The world was gray, and there was a sense of not being anyplace he recognized or even anywhere solid but instead of being suspended in nothingness. He swallowed against the dryness in his throat, coughing hard as he did so, his body shaking.

  “Hold on, hold on!” a voice muttered.

  An aleskin was held to his lips and the pungent liquid slid between them and down his throat to loosen the tightness and waken him further. He drank greedily, hands lifting to clutch the skin so he could continue.

  “There, that’s enough,” his benefactor announced, taking the skin away. “Let’s sit you up. Then I have to get back to flying.”

  Hands pulled him from his slumped-over fetal position to one where he was sitting upright, and he found himself in a padded seat. Wind rushed against his exposed skin. He was flying in an airship below a sky thick with mist and gloom.

  He fixed his gaze on the figure at the helm of the fast clipper.

  Arcannen.

  His memory came back in a rush. Slipping out from the sorcerer’s underground lair into the ruins of Arbrox to face the men who had come to kill them. Searching the shifting haze until suddenly Arcannen was no longer there, and he was alone. Facing a giant with a huge beast on a chain, then another man with smaller beasts. Summoning the wishsong to create images and in the end to fool the beasts into attacking one of their handlers. Watching both men die—one by his hand, one by Lariana’s…

  Lariana!

  “Where is she?” he demanded, his voice a rough croak, almost lost in the wind’s rush. “What’s happened to her?”

  Arcannen glanced over his shoulder. “If you are referring to Lariana, I imagine she’s with the Druid and her protector. She’ll be all right.”

  “You left her?”

  Reyn was incensed. He struggled to rise, to charge forward and take command of the controls, to turn this craft about and fly back to where she had been abandoned and rescue her. But without even looking at him, the sorcerer struck him hard across the face and shoved him back into his seat, where he collapsed once more.

  “I went to a lot of trouble to save you. Kindly don’t undo my efforts. Lariana will be fine. She knew this might happen. We talked about it long before now. Give her some credit for being able to take care of herself.”

  The blow still stung as Reyn shifted to a sitting position and rubbed his face. Blood dripped from his nose. He felt suddenly drained, robbed of strength and hope, despairing. “Why didn’t you bring her with us?”

  “That would have been difficult.”

  “You would say that, wouldn’t you?”

  “I say it because it is true. Think back. You were caught in a standoff with Bael Etris. He had a knife at your throat. He was clearly mad—raving and unpredictable. The Druid and her protector were too far away to do anything. You were frozen in place. So I used magic to create a smoke screen that hid all of you while I freed you and dispatched Etris. Lariana must have woken and stumbled away, probably in shock. I didn’t know where she was. I could only save you. I did what I had to.”

  Reyn was not satisfied with his explanation. The sorcerer’s calmness only served to make him angrier. He could explain all he wanted to but in the end the result was the same. He had left Lariana behind, something Reyn would never have done.

  “You don’t know what they will do to her,” he said finally.

  Arcannen chuckled. “Oh, you think they might hurt her, do you? Hardly. They want me. And quite possibly you, knowing you have magic. They don’t care about her. They will try to discover where I am once they’ve figured out I didn’t die in the attack. But she won’t tell them. She’s too clever for that. She’ll lead them on a bit and then free herself and come find me. We worked it out a while back.”

  Reyn was confused. Worked it out? Arcannen couldn’t have known how the confrontation with those hunters was going to turn out. He couldn’t have known that the Druids would come searching for him in the ruins of Arbrox. So what was he talking about
? Worked out what?

  “Why didn’t you stay close to me when we went out to face those men? Why did you disappear? Where were you?”

  “Searching for you the entire time. Trying to reach you. I managed to get myself turned around in the mist. When the attack came, I was too late reaching you to make a difference. That was clever of you, though—using one of your images to turn those animals on Mallich. What a surprise that must have been! I always knew they’d kill him one day. Those beasts were too dangerous for the amount of trust he put in himself as their handler.”

  “Hunting animals?” Reyn asked. “I’ve never seen their like.”

  “Fighting animals. Killers. Used in sporting contests and on fugitive hunts. Dangerous beasts just standing still. Impossible to control if there’s blood to be had. You saw for yourself.”

  “You should have warned me. You should have been there to help me. You promised.”

  Arcannen shrugged. “I told you I might not be available when you needed me and not to be overly dependent. You learned a valuable lesson today. And no harm done. Besides, Lariana was there when you needed help. Wasn’t that enough?”

  No, Reyn thought, it wasn’t. He’d had to save his own life and been forced to kill someone yet again. And once again, he had gone catatonic in the process. So while there was no harm done to him physically, he’d suffered more than enough emotionally. Arcannen’s explanation for why he had left him on his own felt weak. Lost in the mist? Turned around? He was seething as he puzzled it through.

  “What did you do to the man with the knife?”

  “Etris? As I said, I disposed of him. How I did it doesn’t matter. Do you want something to eat? We still have a way to go.”

  Reyn rubbed his face again. The sting of the blow was beginning to diminish. “You had time to kill him, but not to save Lariana?”

  There was a long silence. “Yes, Reyn. I had time to kill him but not save Lariana. If I had tried, we would all be in the hands of the Druids. Now do you think you can let go of your anger and stop whining about things you can’t change?”