by Derek Landy
Destrier looked away.
“It’s OK if that’s what happened,” said Valkyrie. “We understand. We do. Abyssinia’s plan is going to hurt so many people.”
“Too many,” Destrier mumbled.
“Yes,” Skulduggery said. “Too many. You sabotaged the Eternity Gate so that I could stop her. Thank you, sincerely. But I’m going to need you to tell me which naval base she’s planning on attacking. Do you know the name of it? Can you tell us?”
Destrier looked up, but didn’t say anything.
“You’re one of us,” Skulduggery continued. “You don’t want innocent people hurt. The High Sanctuary would love to work with someone like you, someone with your vision. Would you like that, Destrier? The best equipment. The best workshops. The best everything.”
Destrier smiled. “I could … I could continue with my work? My projects? I could do my projects?”
“Absolutely. Would you like that?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Destrier. “Yes, indeed, I would.”
“The naval base,” Valkyrie pressed. “Do you know what it’s called?”
Destrier nodded. “Naval Magazine Whitley,” he said. “In Oregon.”
“Thank you, Destrier,” said Skulduggery. “We have to go now, but there’ll be Cleavers coming and they’ll take you—”
“There’s a bomb,” Destrier interrupted. “In the tunnels beneath the White House. I … I helped Abyssinia make it.”
“Can it be disarmed?”
Destrier went to another table full of junk, started searching through it. He picked up a TV remote control and held it out to Skulduggery. “Point and press the off button,” he said. Skulduggery reached for it, but Destrier took it back. “Wait,” he said, frowning. “No. This is for the television.”
He rummaged again until he’d found a second remote, identical to the first. “This one,” he said, nodding. “This one definitely.”
“You’re … sure?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe we should take both,” Valkyrie said. “Just in case.”
Destrier frowned again. “Then how will I change the channel?”
“Oh, Destrier,” Abyssinia said from behind them.
They turned, Skulduggery pocketing the remote as he did so.
Abyssinia, Nero and Razzia stood there. Abyssinia looked upset. Nero looked sick. Razzia looked crazy. None of them attacked.
“Is this what always happens?” Abyssinia asked. “Do all children betray their mothers?”
Destrier looked crestfallen.
“Has Caisson betrayed you?” Skulduggery asked.
“Caisson has been led astray,” Abyssinia said. “Solace is the problem. She convinced him to go. I know she did. He wouldn’t have left if she hadn’t talked him into it. He said …” She laughed. “He said he couldn’t trust me any more. He said that I’m the one who betrayed him. He said I was just like everyone else, that I had let him down. Everyone apart from Solace, of course. Solace had never let him down. Solace is suddenly the only one he can trust. What has she done for him? She was locked away in Greymire Asylum while he was being tortured. I’m the one who got him away from Serafina. I’m the one who ensured his safety when he was a boy, who sacrificed my life to save his, who then rescued him all over again. I’m his mother!” she roared suddenly. “I would never betray him!”
“Children can be ungrateful,” Skulduggery said.
“How can he not understand?” Abyssinia asked, starting to pace. “How can he not see that if Mevolent suspected for one moment that Caisson was his son, he’d never have stopped hunting him? I didn’t want Mevolent to be the father. I got close to him to learn his secrets, not to start a family.”
She hurried over to Skulduggery, her hands grasping the lapels of his jacket. “I wanted you, Skulduggery. I wanted you to be his father – in whatever form you took. You would have been a good father to him. He would have looked up to you.”
Slowly, gently, Skulduggery prised her fingers loose, and she nodded, and stepped away.
“Solace has convinced him that all this changes things,” she said, quieter now. “But it changes nothing. It doesn’t alter who he is.”
Valkyrie hesitated. “He’s just found out that he killed his father. He’s going to need some time to adjust.”
“Is your father still alive, Valkyrie?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like him?”
“Yes. I love him. He’s my dad.”
“I don’t know if I loved my father,” Abyssinia said. “I admired him. I know that. And I definitely respected him. He made sure that everyone respected him. He was a beacon of love for everyone, I think, but … But maybe I was too young to feel anything but scared.” She looked over at Skulduggery. “Did you love your father?”
He didn’t answer immediately. “No,” he said.
“I bet you learned from him, though. I bet you learned how to be a better father to your child than he was to you. My father …” She laughed again. “He cared about our heritage. That’s what he prized above all else. We were the Kings and Queens of the Darklands. We had the blood of the Faceless Ones in our veins, and our destiny lay before us. We would be worshipped as gods.”
Abyssinia cleared her throat and turned away from them. When she turned back, she was calmer. “Before I was born, there was a prophecy about how the King of the Darklands would face the Chosen One in a battle that would decide the fate of the world. The prophecy didn’t specify who would win – but my father knew that he could only be killed with the Obsidian Blade.”
“And what’s that?” Valkyrie asked.
Abyssinia smiled. “It’s a dagger. A thing of legend. It began with the Big Bang, they say. Isn’t that right, Skulduggery? You know the story, don’t you?”
“The universe came into existence,” he said slowly, “but, upon expanding, a part of it snagged. Reality continued to grow, but there was a small gap. Tiny.”
“Isn’t that wonderful?” Abyssinia asked, reaching out to touch Valkyrie’s arm. “Can’t you just picture it? Now imagine eons passing, and this gap drawing particles of matter and sprinklings of dust until it attains a weight of its own. This speck of nothingness, entombed in rock, drifts through the cosmos until it falls to earth as a meteorite.”
“Where it’s subsequently found by the Faceless Ones,” Skulduggery said, “and forged into a weapon as they fight among themselves, long before the first Ancients appear on the scene. When the infighting stops, and the Faceless Ones are united, they hide the Obsidian Blade on an alternate earth in another dimension.”
Abyssinia took over. “But the blade infects that earth, and the planet becomes something known as the Void World. Because the Obsidian Blade destroys everything it touches so completely that it wipes it from existence.”
“Oooh,” said Razzia.
“So the Obsidian Blade is a God-Killer,” Valkyrie said.
“It’s the first God-Killer,” Abyssinia responded. “The only one worth anything. And my father knew that it was the only thing capable of killing him. According to the Darkly Prophecy, it would be a thousand years before he faced the Chosen One, so he took this as a guarantee that, for a millennium, he’d be indestructible. He killed two of my brothers just after they were born because he couldn’t allow a male heir to live. He couldn’t permit the possibility of a son usurping him. Providing he found and destroyed the blade or, alternatively, killed the Chosen One once he’d been identified, my father fully expected to live forever.”
“But his protégé had other ideas,” Skulduggery said.
“Indeed,” said Abyssinia. “Indeed he had. Mevolent had no intention of helping my family become gods. Unlike, my father, he wanted to bring the Faceless Ones back. He was entrusted to lead a team of Shunters in the search for the blade. When the Void World was finally discovered, my father was overjoyed. His immortality was within reach. All he had to do now was find out how to destroy the weapon.”
“Let me
guess,” Skulduggery said. “Mevolent used the Obsidian Blade to kill him.”
“He used it,” Abyssinia said. “Of course he did. I was watching from the shadows, and I will never forget the look of surprise on my father’s face when Mevolent plunged that dagger into his side. And, as he struck, his people killed my mother, my sisters … They came after me, but loyal servants bundled me out of the castle and substituted a body for my own, and I watched Mevolent take what was rightfully mine.”
She fell silent. Seconds passed.
“Family can be tricky,” said Razzia.
Abyssinia’s face crumpled. “I didn’t want any of this for Caisson. I wanted him to be free. To be happy.”
Skulduggery hesitated. “Maybe he has a chance of that now,” he said. “He’s with someone he loves, someone who loves him back. Maybe this is the freedom you’ve always wanted for him.”
“Maybe,” Abyssinia said softly. “And maybe getting as far away from me as possible is the best thing he could have done. He has no interest in our heritage. He doesn’t want to be King. He just wants to have a family.” She wiped tears from her eyes. “He’s better off without me.”
“Aw,” said Valkyrie awkwardly, patting her on the shoulder, “don’t say that.”
“It’s true,” Abyssinia replied. “I … I failed him, even before he was born.” She took Valkyrie’s hand, and pressed it to her face.
Valkyrie swam in an ocean of memories that were not her own.
She’d done this before, with Cadaverous Gant and with Abyssinia herself – but this was different. Abyssinia had invited her in, and now she was directing her, and Valkyrie plunged beneath the surface and kicked for the light.
She was in the hall, in the great hall in Mevolent’s castle, and she was making a speech while they all looked on.
Serpine was there, and Vengeous, and China. Others, too. She knew them all. Serafina sat at Mevolent’s right, and Valkyrie stood at Mevolent’s left.
No. She was Abyssinia. She was …
Lord Vile waited for her signal. At Valkyrie’s command, he would drive his sword through Mevolent’s back and she would take control of his army. She was the only one who could. The only one who dared.
But … things were different now. Her plans had changed. Hours earlier, she had discovered that she was pregnant. Oh joy of joys! Her life opened up before her.
Mevolent had robbed her of her family. He had murdered her father with the Obsidian Blade, the first of the God-Killers, a weapon that wiped whatever it cut from existence itself. But he had also given her the chance to have a new family of her very own.
The universe, it seemed, was not without a sense of humour.
And then, of course, it had all gone wrong, and Valkyrie discovered that Vile had betrayed her when his sword was driven through her back instead of Mevolent’s. While everyone watched silently, Vile lifted her off her feet and took her to the window, and he flung her through.
She fell, twisting, her screams snatched away by the wind. She was strong, she was powerful, but the rocks broke her. She looked up at the stars, unable to move, unable to even touch her belly, and she wept for her child and waited for death to claim her.
But it was not death who claimed her that night.
An old man with a cart came upon her. He picked her up, carefully, and he took her to a cave, far away from the war. He used medicines and herbs and a knowledge of the old ways, the old magics, and he brought her back from death’s door.
When she was able to speak, Valkyrie asked about her unborn child, and the old man smiled, and told her that the child still lived within her, and that child was a boy.
But the herbs and the old ways were not able to repair the damage the sword and the fall and the rocks had done, and Valkyrie began to slip back towards the doorway that stands between this world and the next.
Before she died, she said, she needed to know the old man’s name.
The old man said he had no name, and Valkyrie looked upon the face of her father.
The Obsidian Blade had sunk deep into his side the night Mevolent betrayed him, he said. He had staggered away and Mevolent had let him go, confident that the weapon would do its work.
But Valkyrie’s father, the Unnamed, the King of the Darklands, had knowledge of powers that Mevolent could scarcely dream of, and he used these powers to slow the blade’s effects, and in doing so he sank into a deep, deep sleep.
He told Valkyrie that when she became pregnant he awoke from his slumber. An old man now, weak and dying, he travelled until he found her. He could not use his magnificent powers, he said, without hastening his own end – and so he was here to pass those powers on to his only surviving daughter, to allow her to live, and, in doing so, he could finally die.
Valkyrie wept, and thanked him, and told him she loved him.
And her father told her to trap his soul in this Soul Catcher, and, when her son was of age, to end the boy’s life, and allow her father to live again in the boy’s body as the King of the Darklands reborn.
And Valkyrie, mere moments away from death herself, agreed to his terms.
Her father gave her his power. It filled her completely and her body was mended and she tasted immortality.
Her father died and, true to her word, she caught his soul in the Soul Catcher. The wound he had received centuries ago from the Obsidian Blade was finally able to continue its work, and it spread across the old man’s body and the body went from existence and became nothing.
Abyssinia left the cave. She was as strong and as powerful as her father had once been, and her family had a path to greatness once again.
“Do you understand?” Abyssinia asked, eyes searching Valkyrie’s. “I need to know that someone understands. Do you understand?”
“I do,” Valkyrie gasped. “I understand.”
“Good,” Abyssinia said. “I wish things had been different. I wish we could have been on the same side.”
“So why don’t you join us?” Skulduggery asked. “You’ve got what you wanted. You came back, you rescued Caisson – you can stop now. You can help us. Call off the attack.”
“No, no,” said Abyssinia. “I don’t have what I want at all. I want them to worship me, Skulduggery. I want the world to bow down. I am the Princess of the Darklands.”
“But, if you continue down this path, we’ll have to stop you.”
“You won’t be able to.”
“Caisson—”
“You’re right,” she said. “Caisson is gone. He has his own path to take now – which is how it should be. Now I’ve got to focus on my plans. On the plan.” She looked at Destrier. “Are you coming with me, my child? Or staying with them?”
Destrier didn’t answer, and Abyssinia saddened further.
“Of course,” she said. “You must do what you feel is right. I bear you no ill will.”
“Wait,” Razzia said, “you can’t be serious. Mate, come on.”
“No, Razzia,” Abyssinia said, “Destrier will be staying behind. It’s his choice, and we have to respect it.”
Razzia didn’t respond to that, but her lower lip wobbled.
“Nero,” Abyssinia said, “please take us away.”
“Nero can barely stand,” said Skulduggery. “Look at him. He’s losing control of his power, Abyssinia.”
“He’s fine.”
“He’s broken. He doesn’t know what he’s doing any more.”
“Shut up,” Nero murmured. He teleported away, then came back in a slightly different place. He sagged and Razzia caught him before he fell.
Skulduggery started forward and Abyssinia raised a hand. “Don’t,” she said. “I can drain your life, Skulduggery – you know I can – before you can take your next step.”
“I might be faster than you think,” Skulduggery said.
“You might be. But is Valkyrie? You don’t want to see her body crumple, Skulduggery. I know you don’t. Let us go. Let this happen. Nero, can you teleport us?”
Abyssinia smiled sadly at Skulduggery. “I’m sure I’ll see you in the battles to come,” she said.
Nero flickered. The flickering spread to Abyssinia and Razzia.
Then to Skulduggery.
And then to Valkyrie.
And in an eyeblink then they were outside somewhere, at night, only Valkyrie and Skulduggery were on one side of a stack of boxes and Abyssinia was on the other with Nero and Razzia.
Skulduggery grabbed Valkyrie’s arm and pulled her down.
“Are you OK?” she heard Abyssinia ask.
“No,” came Nero’s voice. “I’m … I’m sorry. I can’t focus …”
“You need rest. Find somewhere to lie down – somewhere secure. Razzia, you and I have business to attend to.”
“You got it, boss.”
Footsteps moved away. Valkyrie looked around. They were on the military base. Well, holy hell. What were the odds of that?
“I planned all of this,” Skulduggery whispered.
“Oh, shut up.”
So far, Auger had taken down three convicts – all silently. Omen had taken down no convicts – and still he made more noise than his brother. The universe, he reckoned, just hated him. It just did. When he was born, it couldn’t even see its way clear to give him quiet feet.
Auger held up a closed fist. Omen had played enough video games to know that meant stop moving, so he did. And he listened to the unmistakable sound of people getting hurt.
They crept forward, took a peek around the corner.
A woman whirled between four convicts. With every movement, there was a fresh cry of pain, and they jerked and staggered and fell, until only the woman remained standing.
The blonde hair. The brown leather. The sword. She could be only one person.
“Tanith Low?” Omen said, hurrying forward.
She spun, sword up, and he stopped moving immediately. “I’m Omen Darkly. This is Auger. We know Skulduggery and Valkyrie?”
She lowered the sword. “Are they here?”
