“You fool!” The Voice of His Darkness laughed. The sound came from everywhere, in every breath and beat of the surrounding malevolence. It rose in a towering roar, too monstrous for the arena to contain. “You fool! You think you could kill me? I am the Darkness, I am not bound by life or death. Did you really think you could kill me?”
Errance collapsed under the thundering dark, the knife skittering from his limp hand. He bent over his knees, brow pressing into the ground.
“Did you?”
With great effort, he shook his head.
“No.” The thunder gentled, drew in closer in a tight and suffocating embrace. “No, deep inside you knew it was futile. So why did you even try?”
No answer.
“WHY?”
“I had nothing else left!” Errance yelled.
The silence was stuffed with deep satisfaction, and the swirling void knit around and through him in a meshing net. “Nothing else left,” the Voice said softly. “You never had anything to begin with, did you? But why is that surprising? You’re all but worthless. Have you made yourself out to be a hero through all this? You, a hero? What have you to be proud of? Your heritage has fallen into dust, you forsook the teachings of your people. Your purity stolen, your mind enslaved, your hands red with the blood of man upon man. What would the elves think of you now? You are one of the filth they are so careful to avoid, lest they are contaminated. Yet despite all this, people placed faith in you. Tellie…Kelm…Tryss…this creature…They were willing to risk everything for you. And you’ve let them down. You’ve brought them here to die. Were it not for you, they’d be living peaceful lives far from here where I would never have noticed them. After their deaths there will be no one who cares for you. Just as well…that way you can’t betray them.”
Errance shuddered, wrapping his arms around his head. “L-leave me.”
“Why?” the Voice purred, the cold shadows of his presence soft as a caress. “I am the only one still here. After everyone else has forsaken you, I am still present. After all you have done, after all the pain and evil you have caused, I am the only one who still wants you. You were mine from the beginning, Errance.”
The Darkness closed in, draining, consuming, and then filling every sense and every breath. For one final moment, Errance struggled against it, knowing that if he didn’t now he would never have the strength again. But there was no strength left within in him and in that fleeting gasp of time, his heart reached out for only one thing.
God, save me.
Light burst forth.
36
oOo
With a shriek of terror, the Darkness drew back, unable to bear its complete opposite, its overcomer, the one thing that might vanquish it.
It was the light of dawn after the longest night when the sky above the mountains softens and the clouds brighten into spun gold. It was the light of the morning creeping through the sleeping garden and turning every dewdrop to a diamond to adorn the waking flowers. It was the light of the sun in the summer, so white and so vivid that it warmed the entire world.
It was the light of fire, the forger’s fire, a burning, purifying, and terrifying light.
Errance, curled into a ball upon the ground, wished then to wrap himself up in the shadows that had only moments before sought to swallow him whole. It no longer seemed such a terrible fate as compared to this. You fool, his mind gasped. You weak fool. You fall under one only to surrender to the other?
As he lay there trembling, the pain of the light lessened, but not because he had found some resistance against it, but because the source had softened to a measure he could stand.
“Why do you cower?” The voice was like the light itself, warm, gentle, piercing. “Did you not call me?”
I wish I hadn’t. Aloud, he said, “And I’ve had respite, so let me go.”
“If I let you go now, you will be destroyed.”
His mind screamed like claws on glass at the sadness of that voice. “Like you care?” he gasped. “I have been destroyed long before now. Where were you when I needed you before?” He bit his tongue too late, pushing his face harder into his hands. Needed? He…hadn’t needed anyone, not ever.
“Was I not always beside you? Have I not always come when you called? And have you not always pushed me away?”
“I didn’t want you! I just wanted out!”
“Out where?”
“Anywhere else! Back to my life!”
“The life you chose to leave. Would you have found what you wanted had you returned? You have been lost far too long, Errance. You were empty, even when you had everything.”
Gritting his teeth, he lashed back, “I wasn’t evil! I dare say I was even good. At the least, I did not deserve this fate!”
“This is the fate of the lost. The Darkness does not care if you are good or evil, only if you are vulnerable. And you had no protection, for you had rejected me already.”
“And if I was yours, I would have been safe?” he asked viciously. “If I was your servant, would I have been safe forever, never having to fear anything? Do not lie, Daava may not have told me much of his past life, but I know it was fraught with pain, though he ever served you.” Bitterness tanged his throat, barely letting him speak further. “Even in the shelter of his kingdom, you allowed my mother to die!”
“Such was her gift of love to you. This world gave itself to death long ago and now is shadowed with sorrow and pain. Those brave enough to live and to love within it are blessed in my name and their eternity is treasured in my hand. But Tertorem is the prison of death and it binds the soul far tighter than the body. You know this, you have felt it. But even its bars cannot keep you from my love.”
“Love!” Hands dropping away from his face, Errance lifted his chin and stared into a darkness sealed across his eyes. He gave a little laugh, shrill with anger and disbelief. “Love? You let me stay in that prison for seventy years, tortured, devastated, degraded, broken! How dare you speak about love? You do not understand what I went through! Are you not God, so great and glorious and above us all? You are a lie! I HATE YOU!”
And he would die. As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew he would die. He fell back to the ground, arms sheltering his head once more as he waited for retribution to fall. It could not be fear that made his limbs shake, for had he not desired death for so long? And yet tears streamed down his cheeks, for he could see nothing beyond that death save more death.
But there was no brilliant stab of light, no wave of sundering power. There was only a still and small silence.
“Errance.”
He would not turn. Never.
“Errance.”
Slowly and painfully, he turned with a scrape across the ground. Drawn despite the struggling of his spirit, he lifted his tear-blurred eyes from the broken rock to the shining heart of the light.
He looked upon the One. The One who could cup the world in his hands, magnificent and holy, beyond all mortal restraint and comprehension….
…he looked upon a Man who bore all his scars.
Moments sometimes could be measured by a tick of a clock. Others hang suspended in forever. For Errance, it felt as the latter, as he sat and he stared and he tried to understand.
The scars were not merely those he’d borne within a few days, a few weeks, or even a year. It was every scar he’d received, far too many to count, far too many for one body to contain at once. And not all the scars were of flesh. He could see the rents across his heart, the fluttering rags of his soul. He could see that all the blood streaming down that body was not merely his own, but the life-blood of those he’d taken, both innocent and not, but blood nonetheless. The scars went on and on in layers upon layers that his vision ached to comprehend.
When he at last he tore his eyes away, his own body shook without control. “That shame is mine,” he whispered. “W-why…why would you wear it?”
“I have done more than wear it. I have taken it upon myself.”
�
��How?”
“Am I not God?” The echo of Errance’s accusation rang back with the faintest amusement. Not cruel, merely chiding.
“But why bother? I have done nothing but hate you for all these years, so why would you care to share my suffering?”
The One cupped his own chin in his hand and looked down for a few moments in quiet musing. The normalcy of such an action was somehow far more unsettling than any display of cosmic energy.
“Do you believe your father loves you?”
Wincing, Errance looked away. That…why must the question he most feared be asked? It was a question he could never even hope to answer, not anymore. “I don’t know. I’m not sure he could after seeing what I’ve become.”
“Let me tell you something about fathers. True fathers, who understand the beauty and preciousness of the life they have helped create. They love their child before it has done anything to earn such affection. If then their love is based without condition, how could their heart be changed? So then, did your father love you?”
“Yes?” Errance’s mouth trembled, and his eyes fluttered shut. It was true. He could doubt himself, but how could he have ever been so awful as to doubt the trueness of his father’s heart? “Yes.”
“Then let me tell you something about myself.” A body couldn’t hold the majesty of the One, and hands and feet were far too humble for him to possess. And yet footsteps quietly padded alongside Errance, and a figure knelt in front of him, and hands gently cupped his face.
Unfathomable eyes stared into the prince’s own. So simple in flesh and blood, but in their depths, the galaxies danced. Those very same eyes were bright with tears. “I am your father’s Father. I spun the world from my fingertips, each beautiful thread bound to my heart. No matter how many tear away, no matter how the canvas frays, the day is soon in coming when the picture will be remade. Prince, prisoner, you do not even know who you are. But I know who you were meant to be. I would have you as a son of mine and heir to my kingdom for I loved you since before I wove you in the womb. Will you not believe that now?”
As Errance looked upon him, it seemed then that he saw even more than the scars. He saw the hope in Tellie’s eyes, the kindness of Kelm’s smile, the gentleness of Tryss’s touch, the strength in Coren’s hand. The shining of the stars and the green of the grass. Everything that was good and lovely and true. Everything that he had loved and everything that he had lost. It was here, here within the One from whom it all came.
He had never been neutral in his battle against the Darkness. He had always been its slave, running farther and farther away from that which could save him.
A lie?
The only lie had been the one he’d told himself.
Your pride will be the death of you, he recalled his father once saying. So it had been. A long, painful death, chained by his own determination to win a battle that he’d already lost. But in every life comes a chance for change. In truth it was there all the time. But only sometimes was it clear to see.
Breath stuttered from his lips. “Forgive me.”
And he collapsed into Ayeshune’s arms and wept. Wept for the anger, the agonies. The sins and the shames. But as he wept, the pain that had long clasped claws into his heart loosened and fell as a vanishing wisp across the ground. And in its place, the bloom of everlasting hope unfurled.
The celestial opened his eyes with a gasp. He looked around the circle where he and his comrades sat and found them all staring at one another in like astonishment and blossoming joy.
“He is saved,” one breathed.
“Rendar must know,” another cried. “Someone must go into the Unseen and tell him!”
“Oh, I think he already knows.”
“Tell the whole city!” the celestial man leapt to his feet with a glad shout. “Brighten every star, sing every song, they all must know!”
A hand caught his arm, and he looked down at the eager face of a maiden. “Yes,” she said. “But first…tell Erran.”
Whereas first the light was like fire, it now soothed with the coolness and flow of water, sweeping away filth and leaving the skin and soul shining clean. Errance held still in the constant embrace, afraid to move lest the spell be broken. The pains that had become part of his very fabric were gone in this presence, and he hardly knew what to think or to feel or to do. Was there any weight left to keep him grounded to the earth or would he blow away on the first breeze? He could take deep breaths, feel the power of his heartbeat instead of the ache…it was like…like…
“Did I die?” he asked softly. “Is this why it feels…so strange?”
Ayeshune chuckled, the rumble in his chest loud against Errance’s ear. “In a way. You’ve been reborn and unchained.”
“So…” He pulled back, eyes cast to the ground. “I am to return. Back…there.”
“Why are you afraid?”
“I’m not,” he said, then flinched because it was a lie. “I just…I am tired of struggling and this…I know this peace cannot last back there. And I have failed everyone who loved me. If you would just take me now…I…my father, he was the one I desired to return to the most and now he’s gone…and…”
Ayeshune cupped his face in one large hand and tilted it up so they looked one another in the eyes. “There is much life in you yet and your future has the hope to be full of power and wisdom. There are many in that world who need you…and through you, great glory may come.”
Errance blinked, his mouth opening and shutting several times over. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting the terrifying thought of leaving this safety, this comfort. “Send me back then,” he said, the words scraping roughly from his throat. Better to do it fast before he could become any more afraid.
“First,” the One said. “There is one who wishes to speak with you. One whom you love.”
The strong, gentle hand turned Errance’s face to the side then, and as Errance squinted into the gardens of light, he saw a tall figure take shape and come forward, the light gathering into colors around him until he could see…
“Daava…” he whispered.
37
oOo
The Darkness skulked in the cracks of stone and the rubble of rocks, outside the reaches of the light, unable to see through the brilliance beyond. Hissing and twisting like a serpent, he paced in impatience and fear. His greatest prize had vanished within that celestial embrace, and now he could only wait in trepidation for the result.
Surely the prince could not last long in there. Oh, the Darkness knew the state of his soul, triumphed over it moment by moment. Perhaps…it was a terrible thought…perhaps his great Enemy had taken the elf to destroy him rather than let him be used for a wicked purpose. After all his hard, careful work, that would be how it ended. Yet perhaps he could find some satisfaction in thinking on the Prisoner’s miserable fate.
Wait. Voices. Coming from the heart of the light and drawing steadily nearer. He squinted into the brightness and spotted a familiar figure. The Prisoner! Somehow still alive and coming closer. He’d take him now; it was the last chance, now—now!
He sprang, darkness ripping through the brightness, heading straight for the soul where he could coil in safety—
—but there was nothing but light. The blackened cavity of Errance’s soul could not be found. Only the light, allowing no place for Darkness. Horrified, he shrieked and writhed, desperate to get away but finding himself weaved in from all sides. “Mine!” he screamed. “He’s mine!”
Errance stood firm, trembling only a little, and finding support in the hand on his shoulder. “No longer,” he said, and his eyes glinted with the same sharpness as swords. “It’s over, Darkness. I am not yours. The Moonscript will remain hidden, and the celestial kingdom shall remain free from your touch.”
For one second in time, the Darkness was still. In that instant he saw it all. He remembered what he once had been, when light was not agonizing. He remembered his pride, his ambition, and his fall. For even though he’d bec
ome Darkness itself, devoid of all else, still he desired the perfection he had lost forever. So alluring, so satisfying. The celestial realm beckoned to his unquenched thirst, his unsated appetite. Now after all these centuries, he looked at the one who was the key to his desire—and he saw upon him a seal that he could never break. A lock he could never open. A life he could never own.
With an earsplitting screech, the black wind drew into a sharp spiral and shot into the air, a shockwave spreading out from its contrail over the entire expanse.
To its very roots, Tertorem trembled.
Errance swayed as the ground shook underneath him, but was steadied by Ayeshune’s hand. The One turned him about and looked proudly upon him, brushing a finger across his brow. “Go now,” he said. “This fortress has lost its strength and it will fall. You must find your friends and bring them to safety.”
Taking a deep breath, Errance nodded and clenched his fists. His gaze drifted beyond Ayeshune’s shoulder where he could still glimpse visions of paradise between the rays of light and somewhere there stood a tall figure who watched with a tear-glistening smile. Someday…
“I am ready.”
—and Errance was left alone on his knees by The Daisha’s side, exactly as he had been before.
But he wasn’t the same.
The world wasn’t the same.
The world was falling down.
For the moment, that hardly mattered. What shook his reverie more than the shattering walls and crumbling floors was the sight of The Daisha all still and silent upon the ground. Exactly as he’d known it would, the grief and weight of the mortal realm slammed into his heart, and he collapsed against her with a hard sob.
The Daisha twitched. Jerked. Errance reeled back as her eye opened, rolled about a bit, and then focused with intense sternness. She raised her head with a scowl. “There you are!” she said. “Did I fly fast enough? You look different. What in Orim is all this beastly earth-quaking about?”
She stared at him, then rolled her shoulders in irritation. “Are you going to answer me or you going to just look at me like a complete idiot?”
Moonscript (Kings of Aselvia Book 1) Page 43