WILL LANDED IN the heart of the maelstrom. Blind in the surging dark, his foot hit Howell’s body, and he almost fell. He moved his torch and it lit nothing. Shadows surrounded him, blotting out all light.
The swirling thickness of the air made him gag. He forced himself to keep his lips sealed shut, instinctively afraid to let this moving miasma in, even as it ignored him, rushing past him like a stream past a rock.
He staggered forward into it, into thick sludge churning with the unknown shapes of the dead. He had to guess at a direction, unable to see. And he had to move fast, before the dead overran Violet and possessed his friends. But he had barely gone three steps when the cavern suddenly cleared, the swarm of Returners vanishing upward, as if they had realised en masse that they did not have to follow the tunnels and could simply rise up through the rock.
He raised his torch. The chamber it revealed was empty. The statue-like frozen figures that had stretched out in rows throughout the cavern had disappeared, transforming into the shadows that had swarmed around him. All that remained of their corporeal form was dust, a grey powder under his feet that made the floor feel like walking on an expanse of sand, as if the cavern were a midnight beach.
And then what lay under his feet changed. In the dust he saw a Roman helmet with its hanging cheek plates, its bronze grey with age, and any decoration rotted away. Another step and he saw the chain mail of a crusader. The heavy greaves of a knight. The flared crest of a conquistador … the star emblem of the Steward, as though even they had been tempted, for these were the remains of those who had come here seeking power.
He walked past the first of them, but soon had to wade through them, the detritus piled up as though some had made it further than others, perhaps more resistant to whatever deadly force emanated from this place. The closer he got, the more the armour was only that of the old world, ancients who had known what lay inside the palace. After a time the bodies started to thin out again, as though few had made it this far.
And then he reached a clearing, beyond which no one had come. And in the centre he saw a single figure lying lifeless on the ground.
Kettering.
As Will got closer, he saw the blood pooled beneath Kettering, saw his slack, unmoving face, and when he knelt down beside the body, he saw that his skin was scoured, his flesh not strong enough to withstand the power that had coursed through it.
Kettering had made it into the pit, he had crawled here over the bodies, and with his last breath he had taken up the staff and unleashed the army. And he had died for it, clutching the staff in his hand.
Will looked down at him, silent in death. This man had been given a second life, and instead of living it, he had spent his every waking hour studying, seeking, searching for the means to awaken his beloved. He had turned his back on the world, existing in the shadow realm of memory.
He had found the staff, he had awakened the Returners, but he had died before he could be reunited with his lover.
He looked so alone, the shadows of his countrymen having flooded out of the chamber, the one he searched for gone. With his mismatched professorial clothes, he had the appearance of a scholar who might have spoken at some royal institution, but he had never had that life, and neither had the boy whose body he had stolen.
Who knew if the woman he had died for was out there even now, possessing a host, taking them over? Kettering would never know. His quest had killed him.
Will knelt to slide the staff from Kettering’s hand. Kettering’s fingers were still warm – it startled Will; the coldness of death had not yet crept over Kettering.
But the real shock came when he drew out the staff.
Will had imagined it would be an ornate sceptre, made for ceremonies, perhaps inset with a magical stone. It wasn’t.
It wasn’t ornately made. It wasn’t a sceptre.
It was a brand.
The S brand, blackened with time and countless plunges into fire. It emanated dark power, a stronger call than the Collar. The first brand, Will thought. The first time Sarcean had put his mark on people. He would have made it, then held it in his hand and pressed it into his followers’ flesh, binding them to him forever.
Holding the plain iron handle, Will reached out and touched the S.
The vision hit him like a punch in the teeth.
The throne room was piled with the dead, their bodies burst open, their armour crumpled. Magic had gouged holes in the white marble and burned black seared marks across it like tendrils of rot. The slaughter pleased him, as did his unimpeded walk to the throne with his own Dark Guard behind him. A conceit, to take the iconography of the sun and twist it. The flamboyant irony of it pleased him as well, a Dark Guard to replace the Sun Guard, a Dark King to replace—
‘The Sun King is gone,’ said Sarcean to the Queen. ‘Fled. With his stewards and his inner guard, and his Champion, the Sun General.’
The Queen faced him, with only a single Sun Guard alive with her.
And when Sarcean saw who the Sun Guard was, he let out a laugh that echoed through the throne room.
The young guard was older now, for a great deal of time had passed since Sarcean had been cast out of the palace. In that interval, he had grown into a spear, handsome and honed for fighting, his hair a shade or two lighter than his Queen’s, his eyes pale.
‘It’s been a long time,’ said Sarcean, ‘since we dallied in the sun, Visander.’
For the Queen’s last defender was the same Sun Guard who had freed him from the oubliette.
Sandy, Sarcean had nicknamed him then, amusing himself. A trifling, easy to fool.
‘You killed them!’ Visander was saying. He was shuddering. ‘I believed in you, and you – you—’
‘Shall I kill him too?’ asked the Dark Guard.
Sarcean answered, ‘No. He helped me once.’
‘Very well.’
‘You see? I keep my promises, Visander.’
The hate in Visander’s eyes burned pure. I see why she chose you, Sarcean might have said. Visander would pursue him like no one else, because he had once believed in him. The Queen’s choice of Visander as her champion, both brilliant and shocking, was his first glimpse of the opponent she would become.
But Visander was a lesser concern to Sarcean, whose eyes had turned to the Queen.
She stood straight before him in her white-and-gold ceremonial robes, her long blonde hair hanging in a plait behind her, tipped like a lion’s tail.
He hadn’t expected his feelings of their one night together to catch him so unawares, to recall how painfully and how beautifully they had found themselves matched. Whatever might have been between them was broken now, of course. It might have been broken from the moment that he went to her door.
‘You will never be the true king,’ she said. ‘Those who serve you will only ever be unwilling slaves. No one would ever join you by choice. Not if they knew what you were.’
‘And what is that?’
‘Dead,’ said the Queen. ‘I am going to kill you. I won’t stop until I do it. There is nowhere you will be able to rest. I will hunt you down, kill you as many times as I have to. It’s going to be me. My sword in you, Sarcean. The Light will always stand against you.’
‘The Light?’ said Sarcean. ‘Today I have put out the sun.’
‘Light is not something you can extinguish,’ she said. ‘Even in the darkest night, there is a star.’
Will gasped and came back to himself.
Cyprian stood in front of him, holding a sword.