IT WAS NOT THE Hunter’s Death, but the Hunter, who came to the call of the Horn. Limned in light, wrapped in robes that no human hands had ever touched, Bredan, Lord of the Covenant, stepped into the streets of the undercity. He seemed at first a ghost, some remnant of a forgotten, long-dead man—but he walked, gaining form as his bare feet traversed the cracked and rubble-strewn ground.
Gilliam felt his chest constrict; words, always a weakness, deserted him. Sinking to one knee, he clutched the Spear as if it were an anchor. The anger and the pain that Stephen’s death had left him had been nursed into a cold and bitter thing; he had thought it could grow no worse. He was wrong.
For as the God took final form, his hair was fair, his features fine; he was neither short nor tall, neither broad of chest, nor stripling boy. If a God could be said to be any age, then he was a young man, near his prime. Were it not for the color of his eyes, he might have been Stephen.
Until Evayne gripped his shoulder, Gilliam didn’t realize that he’d brought the Spear to bear. “Lord Elseth,” she said softly, “peace.” But the hands that rested upon his shoulder were as sharp and tight as the words she spoke. He looked up to see her face; it was turned toward the God, lips pressed white and thin.
Together they waited in silence; they did not wait long. As the God neared the body of the army, he began to move quickly and surely toward his single follower: Gilliam of Elseth. He ran as Stephen ran, with the same gait, the same rhythm of running step, the same awkward flap of arms. His expression melted into a pained exhaustion, just as Stephen’s would have done at the end of the exertion of the Hunt. He wore a slender, unadorned scabbard across his back—for running, this, and not for some fancy Lady’s ball—and at his hip, glinting with unnatural light, a horn.
It was too much.
In anger, in outrage, Gilliam of Elseth gained his feet. At his side, Ashfel, growling; to his left, Salas and Connel.
“Lord Elseth,” Evayne said again, her face as pale as his was flushed, “now is not the time to use the Spear.”
No. He knew it well—this was no Hunt, this steady, fleet race to the Hunter. But his arms ached with the visceral need to heave the Spear across the vanishing distance and have done.
As if that thought were loud enough to hear, the God stopped fifteen feet away and let his arms fall to his sides. “Gil?”
He spoke with Stephen’s voice.
Stunned, Gilliam offered silence as a reply.
“I told him this was a bad idea. I told him you’d think it was an insult. Did he listen?” Snort. “I can understand why he’s called the Hunter God.”
“Stephen?” Fifteen feet disappeared in seconds.
• • •
Ashfel was uncomfortable; Stephen didn’t smell like Stephen, even if everything else but the eyes was right. The anxious dog grabbed the back of Gilliam’s cape between a generous set of teeth and pulled, hard. Gilliam snarled, but would not let go.
“Gil,” Stephen said—for it was Stephen, it had to be Stephen—“I’m not—I’m not alive.”
He knew it, of course; knew it because there was no bond—except for this physical embrace that he had forged—between them. But if he could not feel what his brother was feeling, he could hear it in his words, and the words, the sound of his disparagement, were sweet as any Hunter’s call.
“But He—Bredan—told me I should speak with you.”
“Where are you?”
Stephen’s laugh was shaky. “I don’t know. Not here. Not there. I—I don’t like it much.”
“I’ll get you out.”
“I’m not the important one,” Stephen said, although the intensity of his relief belied that. “I was the last one taken; I still have some . . . solidity.” He turned, then, to face the darkness. “He’s stepped across, Gil—but he came too quickly—you forced him. Bredan asks your leave to Hunt once more before—before you do.”
“My leave?” Gilliam’s tone was bitter.
Stephen reached forward, forming a knot of his hands between Gilliam’s shoulder blades. Then he shook his Hunter soundly. “This isn’t about your loss—or mine—Hunter Lord,” he said, his voice a mix of emotions. “This is about the fate of man. If Bredan doesn’t kill the Avatar of the Darkness—”
“I know,” Gilliam said, the words a low growl. His grip tightened; he held fast for five seconds, counting each one slowly and deliberately. And then he let go; he was Lord Elseth of the Breodani; he had called the Sacred Hunt; he was prepared to die so that Breodanir might continue. “Stephen, I—”
“I know.” The huntbrother smiled, and then the smile vanished. “He doesn’t have much power,” he told his Hunter gravely. “The fight with the enemy will drain it all—and more.”
“What does it—”
“It means that all that’ll be left is the Hunter’s Death. The beast, and not the Oathtaker.” He paused. “That’s when the Hunt starts. But, Gil—He says that it will be as if the Hunt hasn’t been called in years.”
Gilliam blanched and then nodded stiffly.
“We—He—” Stephen shook his head. “In Mandaros’ Hall,” he said.
“Swear it.”
“I swear it.” A crackle of blue light laced the air as the God behind Stephen’s eyes witnessed—and accepted—the oath. Time did not allow for any other words, any other regrets or arguments.
As Stephen turned away and began to run toward the darkness, his body lost shape and substance, dissolving into an ethereal, moving mist, and resolving—in the distance a burst of great speed made—into a great, pale beast, a thing of light. That beast lifted its head and, opening its mighty jaws, roared its challenge to the cavern’s lofty heights.
Lifting Horn to lips, Gilliam blew a long, loud note in response. A call to arms. It was the only signal that the army of the Kings needed. As one man, they surged into the streets, following the trail that the Hunter God had cut into the ground by his passage.
“Lord Elseth, what did he mean?” Meralonne APhaniel seemed to appear out of thin air, much as the God had done.
“He meant,” Evayne said, choosing to answer for Gilliam, just as Stephen might have, “that the Hunter’s Death will kill anything in sight until its need is satiated.”
The silver eyes of the mage narrowed into a dagger’s edge as he met the stony gaze of his former pupil. For they both knew that only one sworn to the Hunter could satiate that hunger. But all he said was, “Hunt well, Lord Elseth.”
• • •
In perfect darkness, the subtle senses came into play.
A moment, and the eyes were forgotten; another, and the fear of the loss of vision was eclipsed by the quiet wonder of true night. Listen, and one could hear the sound of breath being drawn, or more significant, the lack of it; then, as the hearing made its adjustment, the sound of nails scratching palms, the rustle of hair, the licking of lips rough with dryness.
But there was more.
Without the intrusion of sight, the smell of blood, of ruptured skin, of human corpses newly made—these became stronger, fuller; laid beneath, the musky odor of human sweat, the scent of dirt, of stone, of rotting damp wood. Even the fabric with which the living and the dead were clothed had a distinct aroma.
Isladar stood, listening; he held himself perfectly, rigidly still, withdrawing from the world that he studied.
There—the sound of chitin scudding gently across the dirt. At its side, the twist of scales, and the pad of soft feet. Perhaps the click of hooves. The air began to turn and move; in minutes a wind with no natural beginning circled the coliseum in a magically contained gale. The other sounds were lost to the storm; Isladar sighed, giving himself over to the movement, the things of the flesh. The Lord was taking form. And what that form would be, no one could predict; the ways and the anchors of the world were strangely changed since the Covenant of the Meddler.
The Lord of the Covenant. He bared his teeth in contempt; that one had no subtlety, no true understanding of the ways of power. Direct, he was foolish; no other Gods would trap themselves so thoroughly on a plane not in their control. The Lord of Wisdom was a more interesting enemy, but even he was not of interest to Isladar. No.
Will you show your hand here? he thought, as he waited. Will you, nameless one? Come then. The Covenant was witnessed by your lackey, but it was not his creation and not to his purpose. Do you think I do not understand the target of your maneuvering? You have waited long; here at last is my Lord’s opening move.
• • •
The shining beast reached the clouds of darkness first, but instead of disappearing into the beads of black mist, he drove them back as if they were alive and they could not bear his touch. He cut a path through the shadows that the army could follow, a wall of normal seeming, a curtain of light to either side of the magnificent, smooth streets. Into the heart of darkness he ran, and when at last the shadows were unraveled, the army stood mere yards away from the building upon which Vexusa had been founded: The Cathedral of Allasakar. There were no outer walls to protect it, no gates, no guards; in Vexusa, the arrogance of the Dark League had been exceeded only by its power.
Pausing at the foot of the black marble steps that reached into the depths of the Cathedral, the great beast shook its hoary head and roared.
A man in dark robes appeared at the top of those stairs, standing beneath the first of the five recessed arches that formed the complicated doors’ architrave. In the shadows to his left and right stood two tall creatures that in poorer light might have been mistaken for gargoyles. As if aware of that, they flexed long, thin wings that stretched from triple-jointed claws to delicate, three-toed feet. Their eyes were an unblinking brown, their faces pointed, their ears very large for their faces; if not for the fact that they stood eight feet tall, they might have been deformed bats.
But when they opened their mouths, teeth glinted across the distance, and when they exhaled it was clear that their very breath was the darkness.
The man laughed; his voice, laid above the hiss of the demons to either side, was undeniably a human voice, even if one heavy with Allasakar’s touch. “You are too late,” he said. “Our Lord has come.” He raised an ebon staff in the light, and called darkness, icy and chill. “Prepare, sacrists. Prepare, exultants. Allasakar—” The rest of the sentence was lost with his throat as the muscled hind legs of the beast coiled and then sprang, propelling him up the stairs in a single, powerful leap.
The demon-kin to either side leaped up and away, but they were not fast enough to avoid the shining glory of a forgotten God. Shreds of their wings and limbs fell to ground as the beast, unopposed, raced into the long hall that wound itself through this monument to Allasakar’s fallen glory.
All this, the Kings took in as they reached the foot of the grand stairs that formed a graded semicircle. The Exalted girded at last for war; the braziers that had burned by chant and dint of magical grace in the winding tunnels of the maze to the undercity were now lit in earnest. No breeze or gale or mage-cast shadow would dim these lamps; nothing but the touch of the god-born or the God. And of the Lord of the Hells, there was no human-born offspring; it was well known that the very taint of the darkness was death, and if there were women who survived the start of such an engendering, there were none in all of history who had survived the term of the pregnancy to bear living offspring.
Many of the soldiers said a prayer—and many of those prayers were rusty with disuse, but all the more fervently said for it. Those who had not yet tied their sword knots did so now, taking care to knot the cords tight enough that sweat—or worse—couldn’t loosen them on either wrist or haft. They hadn’t chosen the field of battle, but they knew it for what it was when they saw it; this was their last chance to prepare.
The Astari stood guard over the Kings. They did not move, or speak, or pray; the time for these things had passed before the monument—the cenotaph—of Moorelas had been opened to them.
All of these things and more Kallandras saw as he stood at the foot of the shadows. He, too, knew that this was the last breath before the dive; once inside the Cathedral, the only certainty was that there was no safety. Quietly, he pressed his hands together and bowed his head, his lips moving to form words that he couldn’t give voice to.
Would she hear him? Would she listen? Did she know that he alone, of all the Kovaschaii, could dance the dance and call her to the meeting place? He touched his ear a moment, his fingers following a pattern that had been magically pressed into the soft lobe. It was prayer, of a sort.
His hands shook; he had to lower them.
For the first time in years, his mission was not one of disgrace, not one of indifference. It mattered, all the more so because the death that he danced was not a death that he had caused. It doesn’t matter, he told himself. You will never be forgiven; the backs that are turned to you will not be turned again. He believed it with the terrible conviction of dispassionate intellect; it was true.
Yet beneath that belief was another truth.
While the soldiers readied their weapons, he readied himself. Do not, he told the Allasakari, stand between a brother and his fallen. But he both knew, and hoped, that they would.
• • •
Darkness closed around them like a velvet glove as they took the stairs and passed beneath the recessed arches of the doors; the lights of the Exalted burned more brightly for the lack of any other visual distraction.
Evayne led them.
The vaulted ceiling of the grand hall was hidden by unnatural shadow, which was just as well; it was a grand and glorious sight when given the light of day, a testament to the aesthetic sensibilities of the Dark League’s guiding members. Having seen it once before, at the height of its power, she would not forget—but she would pay dearly to avoid having to view it again.
She was tired; sleep had eluded her these past three days, and this was not the first battle—in those scant hours—that she would at least see the start of.
Be honest, she told herself wryly, as the mists shuddered and thickened within the crystal sphere. It is not the battles which exhaust you. It is the hope of an end to them. Could history be cheated? That was her folly; that she could, after all that she had seen, believe the answer was yes.
“Seeress.” It was the Lord of the Compact.
She nodded coolly in reply to the question he did not ask. “The halls round here,” she said, “into small apartments, and offices for lesser dignitaries. Ignore them; follow the hall to its end.” Speaking as if she had not already given these directions several times, she added, “The Cathedral here has no nave—it has a coliseum. The halls that we are traveling form the interior wall to the pens. The coliseum itself is four stories high, and in its day—” She stopped speaking. “We must enter as the—as the combatants did.”
The halls trembled as the beast roared in the darkness; they shook as the darkness answered.
• • •
Sor na Shannen heard the beast’s roar, and she knew it for what it was: the cry of Bredan, Lord of the Covenant. Centuries, she had worked so that she might hear that cry on her own terms, and in the fullness of a power that might see the God brought low. She realized, listening to cries of the enraged multitude rebound in the hollows of the coliseum, that that had been a futile endeavor. Spear or no, this creature was a God.
Had it been so many millennia that she had forgotten what it was like, to stand on the darkened field and wait for the charge of such a creature? Had it been so full an existence that she had forgotten that deep and perfect joy that came of standing by the armies of her Lord in the battle against His ancient, eternal enemies?
For her Lord was One, but they were many—and they had never succeeded in laying him low, no matter their numbers or their advantage. She threw back her silken, flowing hair and laughed, loud and long, as Allasakar made his response; as the multitude spoke through the masque of darkness and shadow. Fire she called, and it came, wreathing a face so fair, and so painfully lovely in its newness that no soldier could dare to strike it without at least pause for concern. She gestured, and her clothing dissolved into a patchwork of artfully bloodied shreds, revealing less than desire would have and more than dignity declared. Her lips were pale, her chin weak, her hands small and soft.
Ah, the battle, let it come, let it come soon. Of all the things that she desired, it was this: to fight again across the length and breadth of this world, with all its visceral pain and pleasure, its weakness and strengths, its savagery and its unutterable beauty.
As the voice revealed her Lord in His glory, she began the dark dance, both as homage and for her own pleasure—for she was a creature of the later abyss and understood well the value of both. Her power was a spiral of times forgotten as she called it fully for the first time in the last four decades. Only in the presence of the Lord of the Hells could such a dance be. How could she have forgotten it?
He spoke her name—her true name—and she shuddered with delight to be so noticed, so set apart, raking her claws in simple spasms across the legion of the dead. Lord I have served and served and served; I have graven Your name across the mortal night. This is all that I desire. Almost, she thought He smiled; she could not know for certain as His form was not yet whole.
It was the enemy who answered her prayer.
Light, harsh and alien, shattered the doors that led to the coliseum.
Dancing in the fires of the void, Sor na Shannen bowed to the ground as her Lord took His first steps across the firmament. The Gods warred among themselves as equals; they were beyond even the greatest of the demon lords in stature and power. But at the back of the beast, in the tunnels beyond, her enemies were hurrying to witness her dance—and their deaths.
• • •
There was no meeting of heralds upon this field; no observers to watch the standards of the great waver and fall, no bards to keep lists of the dead. No parley was initiated by either side, no lines drawn, no terms—however ludicrous or inflated—offered. These were civilities placed upon the face of battle, and that mask—for better or worse—had been removed. Only the killing remained.
These were the killing fields, these chaotic mounds of dirt and flesh beyond which the darkness swirled. They stopped here, those who followed the Hunter’s Death, banked as if they were fire and this a width of river that tongues of flame could not cross. The dead, faceless, had faces for those who could see them; each one, slack or rictus-touched, spoke in silence of their failure.
Too late.
Despair was sharp and swift, anger swifter still; across the darkened ring of the coliseum, the Allasakari readied for battle.
“No quarter!” a voice cried, from deep within the Kings’ ranks. “Accept no surrender!”
“None will be given!” the Allasakari cried back, voices so laden with their Lord’s power they seemed almost demonic.
The pale beast shed a brilliant light that should have illuminated the coliseum. Instead, it cast a longer, darker shadow for all its power. Into this shadow, with a hunger that could be felt if not seen, the Lord of the Covenant charged. The Lord of the Shadows roared as they met.
Thunder and lightning.
• • •
“Jewel?”
The Terafin sat upon her rooftop haven, the newest—and most unceremonially declared—member of her House to her left. She heard the trap as it rose and fell in a hush that spoke more clearly of Morretz than his words.
“Terafin.”
“Is it time?”
“It is. The servants have gathered, and the family. They are many this year.”
The older woman turned to gaze at the younger woman’s pale profile. “Are you ready?” she asked softly.
Jewel Markess ATerafin swallowed, and then swallowed again, as if for breath. Her dark eyes were wide as she gazed across the bay. She spoke, but the words were a movement of lips with no sound; The Terafin had to lean forward to catch them as they came again.
“Not yet.”
“What is it, Jewel? What do you see?”
The younger woman lifted a shaking finger and pointed to the heart of the city across the bay. She opened her lips again, but this time, The Terafin lost her words to another sound: the trembling of earth.
The land shook.
“Terafin.”
The Terafin nodded once and rose, snapping into a thin, straight line. “Jewel, come. We must attend the Family.”
Jewel rose as well, and they stood a moment, these two, beneath a shrouded sky. It was no longer night, or even dusk, but although the sky was a deep, deep crimson, they saw no sun.
• • •
Gods met; earth shook, wind roared. Where the arch had been, there was now a column twined and braided with magic and pattern that defied the understanding of human eyes. Around the packed dirt, empty seats rose into the darkness, inviting the followers of either God to watch, to observe, and to raise no hand.
False promise.
Meralonne APhaniel stepped over the crushed forehead of an elderly man, planting his toes against an oddly angled arm, the balls of his heels against clear dirt. He raised his whole arm and pointed into the darkness; light seared a trail across the air. Piercing, clear and loud, a shriek responded to its passage.
Sor na Shannen stood above flames sustained by no earthly fuel. Lips soft and pale as a young cherry blossom gathered above her teeth in the beginning of a snarl; they rippled into a smooth silence as her eyes met the mage’s.
“Again,” she said, her soft voice reaching the highest of the coliseum’s empty seats. “Again you trouble me.”
“Oh, yes,” he replied, calling his sword from the folds of darkness as his voice failed to meet hers in either volume or majesty. “And this time, there is no turning back.”
She stared at him a moment, and then her smile returned, deep and sensuous and oddly innocent. “You have no shield.”
“Against you, I do not require it.”
“And if you do not require it, you will not use it?” She laughed.
“You fled our last meeting, drinker, not I.”
The laughter trailed into an abrupt silence. “At our last meeting, mage, you were not so eager for speech and nicety. Did I not give you what you desired?”
He did not answer her with words, but the lines of his face became so coolly neutral it was hard to believe there was a living man behind it.
“You are too human,” she said, drawing the fires around her into the form and shape of a red crescent saber. “Come, then. Come and dance.”
He stepped toward her as if compelled to allow her the choice of field. Something beneath his foot snapped. Leaping up, he brought his sword down, severing hand from arm at the wrist. A dead hand. A dead arm. “Surprise,” she said softly, and launched herself.
• • •
They heard the crying as they made their way to the top of the manse’s wide stairs; The Terafin lifted her chin, and did not drop it again. She was slender and hard, like a blade; Jewel remembered her as she had been the night the foyer had been destroyed.
And she remembered the darkness. Today, it lingered in the small pockets of room not exposed to light, waiting. Morretz was as neutral in expression as she had ever seen him, and she had come to understand that this was the face he wore to battle. Both he, and the master he had chosen to serve for life, were preparing for combat.
She did not understand why until they reached the stair’s height and she could look down.
There, gathered in the foyer as if seeking shelter—and they were, they were—were the servants and the men and women who bore the name ATerafin into the world beyond the gates. She had never seen so many people gathered in the manse at one time. They huddled together, a press of bodies, their uncertainty and their exhaustion writ clear across their faces; women carried children, crying, in their arms, and men cried, too; some in the crowd carried bags.
“Terafin!”
“TERAFIN!”
“Amarais.” Morretz pitched his voice above the crowd’s voice, although he would not be able to do so for long. He knew his master well; better than Jewel, it seemed. For The Terafin did not hesitate at the height of the stairs. Instead, regal, she began her descent as if such a descent were as natural as breathing. There was about her both power and determination, and her expression was serene.
She wore plain cloth and no jewelry; she bore no shield, no sword, and carried none of her possessions. It was First Day, yes, but each and every man and woman here knew that the Dark Days had not yet passed. But what she did carry was enough to silence, for a moment, the panic of her people. Pride. And strength.
One man caught her arm, and the crowd seemed to stop breathing, for on this day, this First Day, there were no Chosen to stand between The Terafin and her Family. But she turned, and said simply, “Come to the shrine.” And his fingers fell away, as if nerveless.
She led them out, into the uncertain morning.
And Jewel knew, as the doors opened before this woman, and she gazed out into the unnatural shadow that lay across the bay, that she would follow The Terafin forever.
For The Terafin did not blanch, or blink, or bow.
Instead she turned to her people, and spoke into their shocked horror, their terrible silence.
“This is First Day, as we have never seen it and we wait—as our ancestors waited—for the coming of the Kings.”
• • •
The dead rose before the ranks of the Allasakari like a shield-wall, forming a line three deep. Naked, disfigured, partly dismembered or jarringly whole, they were as they had been at their death—but this time, unarmed, they were not weaponless.
In the third row, nestled around the Allasakari, the dead linked arms, planting their feet into the earth as if to take root there. But in the second row, and the first, they moved forward, awkward in their gait where limbs were broken or missing, but no less determined. Unseeing, they saw.
They know our weaknesses well, Devon ATerafin thought, as he watched the lines shuffle into two distinct groupings: the men and the women fell back into the second row, the children and the elderly stepped into the first. Dispassionate, he wondered if the smallest of the corpses had even possessed the ability to walk—or if this macabre shuffle represented its first steps. At Devon’s back, the intake of breath was sharp, and words of horror unmuted; he was afraid that the Kings’ Swords would disgrace themselves by some further show of weakness. If they did, they were mercifully silent.
The Exalted were committing to light and shadow the First Day blessing. Their power was strong; the God’s was stronger. The dead barely flinched before they continued their shamble.
“ATerafin,” a voice said to his right.
Dark hair rose and fell, a subtle flick of chin and forehead. He threw his hands up into the air; from a distance it might have been a gesture of despair, because at a remove one wouldn’t be able to see the cold, grim line of his mouth, the set determination of his eyes. The hands that he lowered held knives, each heavy and unairworthy. Worked in a metal that seemed at once to glimmer with three different sheens, the hilts of each dagger were traced in gold, with opal, diamond, and aquamarines to set off runes that Devon ATerafin did not pretend to understand.
It was enough that he knew their effect.
The dead, he noted, did not walk quickly—although perhaps they would if they were substantially whole. Men and women—the corpses of men and women—could easily be dealt with when the need was clear. But the younger corpses were a thing of nightmare, their faces contorted into expressions of fear and helplessness that demanded justice for the failure of the powerful to protect them in their need.
And the worst part was that the guilt was absolute; the accusation just. They had been failed. Never had he understood so clearly the old Weston saying: Failure is the forge in which a man is tempered.
Do you understand what the Kings are, and what they stand for? At times like this, the first question that he had ever been asked by the Lord of the Compact returned to him, made more cutting by events just on the inside edge of his control.
Creeping forward, he thought the world both slowed and darkened. Shifting his position and his stance, he dared a glance at those Kings. Justice. Wisdom. But more: Courage, compassion, conviction. The empire was the Twin Kings. Oh, he knew it well.
Understand that any act of brutality, any cruelty, any injustice or folly on the part of those who serve the Crowns injures the Crowns.
This, too, he understood; no one unworthy could aspire to the Compact, because the Kings trusted more than their lives to its members.
Behind the Crowns, the Swords and the Defenders were forming up, but their lines were patchy and fragile. Before them, Duvari stood like a thin—and arrogant—shield. The Magi were also there, a collective council of arrogant and powerful people; they set light against darkness, choosing shields of subtlety and power as a defense against magical attack, known and unknown. Still, he was not alone. The rest of the Astari joined Devon in ones and twos, choosing their positions with as much care as they could afford.
What would you be willing to do to protect the Kings?
Gritting his teeth, he crouched—not to hide, but rather to face the enemy of his choice. Devon had no children, partly by luck and mostly by choice; he wondered if this battle was easier for him than for Delana, who mothered three. Hoped that he would never have the chance to find out. The daggers he lifted before him in a tilted cross. In an almost leisurely fashion, he invoked the names of the triumvirate.
A boy with no lower legs reached him at the same time as a young girl with a head tilted at a horrible angle. Breaking the cross, he swung his arms open as if to catch them in his embrace. It was a lie; the blades struck them cleanly, opening bloodless gashes over their tiny hearts. Their fingers convulsed, gripping air. He spoke the names again: Reymaris, Cormaris, the Mother. Almost, he could see the fine layers of darkness that shielded them, the threads that jerked them forward; he cut them one by one, thinking as he worked to stay clear of their broken hands: The demon had not died so slowly.
They wailed piteously.
This could not be happening. The dead were just that; dead. It was a trick of the enemy, with darkness so strong and so sure that any lie could be forced out of a dead child’s lips. He told himself this, who did not have the time to ask the Exalted.
What would you do?
He struck them again, and then again, and at last they fell before the power of the blessed and anointed daggers. He wanted to bow his head a moment, to murmur First Day Rites, to take a breath—but he could not. For the worst of the dead was already before him, wobbling and struggling to reach him. First steps.
So he knelt forward, crossing the knives again, setting his jaw. At either side, he was aware of his compatriots, and he took what little comfort he could from them; he knew that for the next few minutes he was perfectly safe in his task. They were felling their own dead.
The darkness here was powerful. He could taste it, and it was bitter, almost metallic; a cold and lonely thing. He could barely shake it—no, could not shake it—so he stopped trying. Because he was Astari, he knelt. And because he was only Devon ATerafin serving as Astari when the baby’s corpse finally reached his knees, he opened the cross that he’d made of the daggers and held his arms wide, offering, this time, no lie. The corpse—the child—walked into his arms, little fingers preternaturally strong as they reached for his throat and pressed against it.
Holding his breath, grunting against the unexpected pain, Devon ATerafin closed the circle of his arms, bringing the daggers to bear through the child’s back as many times as it took to still its movements.
Anything.
To either side, he heard the clatter of armor, the scrape of greaves against greaves, the cries of the Northern scouts. Lines that had held for the falling of the dead children surged forward, holding a very loose formation. They passed him by as he knelt in the dirt. Rising slowly and stiffly, he lifted his face to better see the conflict.
A fleeting glimpse of shimmering air, the blue light of the flashing storm, the red of elemental fire were jarring in their unexpected beauty. Gods, it seemed, whether at war or in council, were destined to attract the regard of men.
His first mistake, to look upon them there; his second, to attempt to take, in the midst of joined battle, a moment of peace. Instinct pulled his ear, his hair; he turned to see a creature leap out of the darkness directly toward him, long claws gleaming with someone else’s blood. His own hands, heavy, were full.
Without another hesitation, Devon threw the small corpse into the demon’s path and rolled to the side. Survival had its own imperative, its own rhythms. It did not allow for grieving, for horror, for hatred; it demanded, and received, undivided attention. Mercifully. Thankfully.
• • •
Gilliam and Evayne crouched within the second circle of what had once been a crowded amphitheater. Evayne knew that the fine, well-crafted chairs and benches that had seen use at the city’s height would not have survived its fall. She did not speak. Her hands were white ice against the surface of her crystal, although the mists therein did not move or part. She did not search them; her eyes were upon the arena and the drama unfolding beneath them.
Protected by a spell of her weaving, Gilliam felt curiously removed, as if the battle’s muted sounds and effects were the backstage maneuvering of a talented troupe. The darkness did not fill him with horror, nor the light strengthen him. He heard a whisper, a murmur; turned to see Evayne’s lips moving near-silently. She was praying, he thought, but to whom he could not say.
• • •
Kallandras heard the cries on the left flank of the Kings’ Defenders; surprise and silence, surprise and silence, spreading in a widening sphere. Putting the voice into his voice, he forced a warning cry through a thickened throat and began to push himself through the opening ranks.
Extended from the line of walking dead, he found them: Allandor and Kyria, one of the oldest of the brotherhood and one of the youngest. Kyria’s long hair was bound back in a dull and dirt-streaked tail; sallow hollows were all that remained beneath cheekbones that had once been high and fair. His eyes, time had already taken.
He could not dally with the living, for, oathsworn, he had nothing but his own death to offer them. It was to the dead that he offered all the things that he knew could no longer be rejected.
He had no words to give, and had he, he could not have spoken them. Ten yards from his outstretched arm were the two whose cries he had hoped to silence with the comfort that only one Kovaschaii-trained could offer. The motivation was not a pure one, and he knew it well; this was as close to the life he desired as he could come, this dance of death, and he would give it where his former brothers could not. Or he would have.
But he could see them as they battered against the confinement of dead flesh, moths against the contours of a lamp’s glass, and in that moment, he only wanted them free; who danced, and how, no longer mattered. Time had left its mark in the tone of their skin, the texture, the scent. Kyria’s body was unmarked by the torture and violence that had disfigured most of the other corpses, but Allandor’s was terribly broken, as if the heat of battle had decided his fate and the victor had continued to worry the fallen in an unstopped frenzy.
It was, he thought, with a grim practicality, for the best; of the two, it was Allandor that he would have had trouble stopping. He was not so certain that, broken and bent but still moving in an awkward parody of life, Allandor would be easy to lay to rest now. A leap carried him out of the way of Kyria’s sudden strike.
At their feet, the newly dead lay broken, their fine armor no proof against the assassin’s strike, their weapons useless. Kallandras saw and passed over them; they were nothing to him now. Only Kyria and Allandor mattered.
He wrapped their names in the secret voice, protecting them from the ears of the uninitiated, before he called them, loud and long. Did Kyria’s blind head shudder? Did the line of his shoulders waver? The answer was bitter, the hope too thin to bear the weight of delusion for long. The dead did not hear or see.
And yet, blind and deaf, the Kovaschaii were more effective than the demons at laying their inadvertent enemies low. Kallandras leaped, and leaped again, keeping the distance between himself and Kyria great enough that no death strike could reach him, and small enough that he presented the best target.
Ah, death had its advantages. He grimaced, drawing sharp breath as sweat trickled from the tightly drawn line of his hair. They were slow, these two—but they would not be slower forever; they did not tire. Kallandras did.
Rolling along the arena’s packed floor, he struck out at Kyria’s leg, hoping to snap it; Kyria, dead, was too fast. He was also in the air a hair’s breadth before Kallandras struck.
How did one dance a death when the dead were trying to kill one?
• • •
No, she wasn’t praying; he saw folds of her robe snap into place as her hands left the crystal sphere floating untouched in the air before her. Her lips stopped moving, but her expression was just as distant, just as focused, as it had been since they’d entered the coliseum.
What is it? he thought, his grip on the Spear so tight he could no longer feel his fingers. He did not dare interrupt her by asking; instead he turned his feral attention to the battle below, seeking answers there.
• • •
Dead, Kyria was still fast enough to push him, and to push hard. Allandor, a shadow that loped beyond their struggle, broke the ground with his oddly angled arms, his uneven, grinding stride. Had either been armed—or worse, both—the battle would already be over.
As it was, Kyria’s body was now marked and gashed by the wide sweep of Kallandras’ steel—to no effect, of course. The only way to stop the dead was to dance for them; to call the Lady to the meeting place and ask Her for their peace. It was a peace only She could grant.
He knew it well.
Look long, he thought, as he jumped over Allandor’s outstretched arm. This is your fate. Sweating, he put up his sword. Kyria struck without regard for the edged parry, slicing himself from fingertip to elbow without actually losing the arm. Gritting his teeth, Kallandras brought the sword around and up in a sudden, vicious arc to claim what, dead, Kyria was still not foolish enough to surrender: His arm.
The loss did not slow him.
Something had to. Because the dance itself took strength, and Kallandras was slowly giving his over to this painful and necessary combat.
Sing, Kallandras.
Evayne’s voice. Of all the voices he wished to hear, the least. He made no reply; had he wanted to, he would not have. Allandor’s fingers, almost separated from his hands, were trying to snap the bard’s ankle.
Sing, she said again.
To what? He wanted to cry out in frustration, but his training prevented that show of weakness.
The dead were not affected by the voice.
Sing!
Levering the fingers from his boots with the sword’s point, he froze a moment. Because while the dead could not hear the bardic voice in any way, the deaf could. And the Kovaschaii were not dead until the dance. Hope came in a sharp and painful breath—a breath that no other bard, locked in mortal combat, would have been able to draw. This skill was a gift of the Kovaschaii; fitting, then, that it be used in their aid.
He did not tell them who he was. Instead, he told them what: a brother, come finally to dance their deaths and give them the peace that they were promised. He filled his voice with the longing and the love that only the Kovaschaii felt for one another—and that was no artifice; had he wanted to, he could not have kept that from them.
Did they stop their attack? Did they freeze a moment and actually look at him? He thought so, but could not be certain, and the faltering of hope was bitter indeed.
• • •
Evayne cursed and bowed her head a moment. When she raised it, her skin was paler than it had been, her eyes darker. For the first time, she spoke, the words as polite and noble as any that a hunter on the trail might speak to a fool who had dared interrupt him.
“Guard me.”
• • •
Kyria’s arm snapped to a stop; Allandor’s teeth, opening to bite, froze as if in mid-snarl.
Dance, Kallandras.
Sweating, bleeding, bearing the dirt of the coliseum in hair and clothing, he plunged his sword into the ground. These two would not slacken and fall; there would be no cleaning of the corpses, no artful arrangement. These, he would not miss. But the final embrace, the resting of the head in his lap, the whispering of words that only the dead would listen to—they haunted him as his feet touched dirt and leaped clear, touched down and leaped clear.
The song that he had been singing shifted and deepened as he traced the first five points of the Kovaschaii star. Mind. Heart. Soul. The brotherhood.
The Lady.
The hidden star came next; he danced two, quick and light, singing the birth names, the brotherhood’s names, and the hidden names of the two who stood in magical thrall before him. And then, again, the two points of intersection between the man and the Kovaschaii. The brotherhood.
The Lady.
The arena tilted beneath his feet; his ankle rolled gently, refusing to bear his weight. The fine fabric of his tunic clung to his skin in damp, darkened folds as his knees bent beneath him. Sweat trickled into his eyes, rolling down the tip of his nose, his chin; he could not lift a hand to wipe it clear. Never in his years with the Kovaschaii had he ended a dance so poorly.
Never, in all those years, had the Lady’s answer been so forceful. Mists which had always been a gentle, subtle presence roiled with the force of a storm; where soft, pale glow illuminated her coming, the air now crackled with sharp shards of light, too harsh to glance at for long. Ah, it hurt to cover his eyes, to lose the glimpse of the Lady that he had sworn to follow—and that he still, in his fashion, served—but instinct forced his hands up and bound his fingers into a tight shield.
“What is this?” she asked, her voice the very thunder.
They answered her with their cries, insensate in their relief, all ceremony forgotten.
She called them to her, and he heard their babbling, their tears; he could almost feel the circle of her arms closing around them in the half-world.
“Where,” she said, speaking again in fury, “were your brothers?”
Kallandras forced his hands away from his eyes, wincing and squinting against the angry radiance. “Lady,” he said, calling her attention to himself although he could not prevent reflex from curling his body inward.
“You,” she said coldly. He could not look upon her countenance, enshrouded as it was in a bitter light, although the tone of her voice forced his head up.
“Lady,” he said quietly.
But when she spoke again, the great anger was gone from her voice. The light dimmed enough that Kallandras might open his eyes to behold the faint luminescence of raven hair in the half-world. Her dark cloak swirled as if caught by wild wind, and at her side, clutching folds of fabric in their unbunching fists, two men. Each bore a delicate, long-fingered hand upon the shoulder closest to her. “Who calls?” Ah, ritual. “Who wishes to meet me in the half-world?”
“I do.”
“And you?”
At once, he bowed the head he had raised. “I am Kallatin of the brotherhood, Lady. You hold my name.” That name was a tremor of shaking lips.
“You are no longer Kallatin,” was her reply. “But, yes, I hold your name.”
He waited in silence, his face the perfect Kovaschaii mask; he was no longer a youth, to have it crack so easily.
The corner of her pale lips turned up in a slight smile; she nodded—approval?—before looking away to the taller of her two companions. Height, rather than age, differentiated them; he was no longer aged, no longer lined with care and the toil of years.
“You have served me well,” she told him, “and I have come to return to you the name that binds us, Allandor nee Eadward Parakis. And you,” she turned to the slender, shorter man, “have earned your name in my service. I return it to you as well, Kyria nee Calavin Warran.”
Tight-lipped, he watched them both as they relaxed in the cover of the Lady’s night. He was not a youth, no, but the mask slipped a little.
“Come,” she told them softly. “The path is waiting, and we will walk it together, you and I.”
Kyria turned at once, but Allandor’s gaze went not to the mists, but to the man who stood as outsider at their edge. “Why?” he asked softly.
“You saw the Darkness,” Kallandras said, with a bitterness that not even pride could contain.
Allandor nodded grimly.
“None of the brotherhood knew where you were, although they could hear your cries.”
“And you?”
“She brought me,” he replied.
Allandor’s face darkened. “She who—”
But the Lady raised a delicate finger to Allandor’s lips. “Hush,” she told him quietly. “Speak not in anger when that anger is my right.” Turning to Kallandras, she said softly, “you have served me well this day, and I shall not forget it. Speak if you will; I will not prevent it.”
“Allandor,” he said softly, “I would die for the brotherhood.” He paused and smiled bitterly. “But I alone of all of the brotherhood would do more than that: I would live for it, and without it, in pursuit of that service.”
“The brotherhood,” Kyria said coldly, speaking for the first time, “is the Lady’s will. The Lady decreed—”
But the Lady raised a regal hand to stem the flow of his words. “You are young,” she said softly.
And he would never grow old.
Allandor bowed as if Kyria’s interruption had never happened. “I have seen the Darkness,” he said, and his fine features twisted in a shudder. “And it has seen us. You are not my brother,” he added harshly. The eyes of the dead met the eyes of the living, and the harshness was lifted slowly as he continued to speak. “And yet we are bound. Or we were. You danced our death, Kallatin. And although you have earned it, I would no longer see you trapped undying upon the plane.” He bowed, touching finger to forehead in a gesture of respect.
Kallandras let nothing show.
“Allandor. Kyria.” The Lady wrapped her cloak tightly about her shoulders. “It is time.” Mist rose, curling in a spiral that began at her hem, streaked with shadow and a hint of the worlds that waited on either side. At her feet, a footpath shone gently, leading into a distance that Kallandras could only guess at; it was not for his eyes.
Raising a finger to forehead and away, he bowed to Allandor, masking his face in a different way. He did not wish to see them leave.
“Bard,” the Lady said. It hurt; it always hurt. For she had his name, and she would not speak it. The years had not gentled the desire at all; he knew then that they never would.
But he lifted his gaze at once. “Lady.”
Anger darkened her eyes and thinned her lips, although it took no grace from her. “I have had no quarrel with my brother; he is but one of many things that brings an end to life, and all life must end.” She paused and the ice reached her voice. “But I have quarrel with him now, for the sake of my chosen. To kill them, if he was capable of the act, was his right. But to keep them from their brothers—and from me—was not.” She raised a slender arm, releasing Kyria a moment to point. As he followed the direction of her hand, he heard the sound of battle growing louder, nearer.
“Between you and me, there is no bridge. I know of the wrong that you have done.” Her eyes were cold; she spoke truth, but not to wound him, and if it wounded, she did not care. But she held his name; she knew what the words meant. “However, if you desire it, I give you my blessing; kill the Allasakari in my name.”
“Lady,” he said. “In Your name.” For the first time, a hint of color traced his cheeks. She would not forgive him and accept his return to the only home he desired, but out of the back door she had thrown him scraps from his brothers’ table—and to both his gratification and his humiliation, he was hungry enough to joyfully accept them.
For they would know.