Dark Paths

by Markus Heitz

  ‘She was lying dead in an attic, with multiple stab wounds to her body. And I know,’ he said, banging Wènelon’s head hard against the wall again, ‘I know she’d been to see you to ask about the night Firûsha and Sisaroth apparently committed that murder. It was on your say-so, and the evidence your friends gave, that I banished my own children to Phondrasôn.’ He punched Wènelon in the face. ‘You swore to me they were guilty! And I’m here now to put the question again: exactly what happened that night in Tênnegor’s house?’

  ‘Maybe Ranôria was attacked by a robber?’ Wènelon sought to distract Aïsolon.

  ‘NO!’ Aïsolon shouted into his face. The anger lines chased across his visage like black lightning. The tightening of his facial muscles spurred him on. ‘Don’t you dare lie to me or I’ll drag you straight to the top of the wall and hang you up by your own guts!’

  ‘But Governor, I . . .’ Wènelon’s eyes were darting wildly hither and thither. ‘I can’t do it!’

  ‘Oh, but I can!’ Aïsolon drew his dagger and pressed it against Wènelon’s stomach. ‘No one will ever learn what happened to you,’ he growled, his voice full of hate and rage. ‘You will simply never be seen or heard from again. Now start talking, or . . .’ Aïsolon pressed the knife-point harder, piercing the skin.

  Wènelon cried out in anguish. ‘Acòrhia! It was Acòrhia! She made us!’

  The story-teller! Aïsolon had to fight to control his temper and stop himself from plunging the knife deep into Wènelon’s gut. ‘You’re all together in this plot, aren’t you? You and the other six?’

  The älf nodded. ‘Please don’t kill me!’

  I want all of them – the whole damn pack of liars. Aïsolon withdrew the blade, stepped back and motioned one of the guards to approach. ‘Go and tell Gàlaidon he is to collect all the witnesses to the crime my children were punished for. He should do this discreetly and have them taken to the citadel. No one else should notice what is happening.’ The soldier saluted and ran out. ‘Right, then, back to you, Wènelon. You are now going to tell me why you all conspired to destroy my children’s reputations and to ruin their lives. What was the reason?’

  Chapter IX

  The three are as one.

  Whisper soft

  the tale of death;

  here it comes, unlooked for

  and easy as breath.

  The three are as one.

  Night shapes, dark thoughts

  cannot be subdued.

  Beguiling siblings striking fair

  kill their victims in the open

  or stifle them unseen.

  Three are one.

  Three are everything.

  Three not to be parted,

  three not to be mistaken,

  three everywhere, eternal.

  Sisaroth, Tirîgon, Firûsha.

  ‘First Song of Praise’ from the epic poem Young Gods

  composed by Carmondai, master of word and image

  Phondrasôn, some time after the 5427th division of unendingness.

  Murdered her own master? Sisaroth thought he must have misheard.

  But when Marandëi fell silent following her confession, seemingly wishing she had left the fateful words unsaid, he was forced to assume that she had indeed spoken the truth.

  They walked wordlessly on through the labyrinths of Phondrasôn, at crossroads speaking briefly about which tunnel they should take.

  For some time now they had been in a section with coloured sandstone walls. There was a smell of damp. Tiny plants in crevices shrank away and cringed when any light touched them.

  Right you are. Get back in the niches and leave us in peace. In the dim light from the inlays in Marandëi’s staff Sisaroth could make out various tracks in the sand. Some he thought were made by óarcos, but others had clawed feet that were four times as big. He wondered how beasts of those dimensions could ever get through these constricted shafts.

  He decided against calling out for his brother and sister because of these tracks. He would need better armour and weapons if he were to face new assailants. And I need to fortify myself with food and sleep. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ he asked Marandëi quietly.

  ‘We’ll need to set camp twice more at the rate we’re going,’ she said, shining the staff-light around her. ‘I’m starting to recognise this place. It’s a lobby cave that leads to the palace. This is where they had tents to entertain visitors.’

  ‘Why not put visitors up in the palace itself?’

  ‘They didn’t want any foreigners in the palace overnight, according to what I’ve read.’ The cîanai put her staff down and turned to look at him. ‘It does make sense. We’re in Phondrasôn, Sisaroth. Never forget that, however nice the creatures you meet may seem to be.’

  ‘Maybe I should apply that advice to yourself?’ he joked.

  ‘When I have finished my term serving you, you should indeed do so. Until then you have optimum protection: my oath of loyalty.’ Marandëi seemed deadly serious. ‘We must go that way,’ she said, pointing, and took the lead, confident of her whereabouts.

  Sisaroth still did not know what to make of her. I shall take her advice to heart. It’s a good thing she is pledged to serve me for the next five divisions. ‘Can you tell me a bit more about your master?’

  ‘Do you really want me to?’ She did not seem keen. She walked on.

  ‘You don’t have to. You are in my service but you are not my slave. I’m just curious, that’s all.’ He could see she was unwilling so he tried a different tack. ‘I’ve got a better idea. Fill me in about what happened when I arrived. I’d come across a groundling and we were both engulfed in some sort of energy field.’ He described how the surrounding air had fizzed and sparked and how his own anger lines had burst out in spite of himself, and how he had been unable to move while the energy surge had tortured him.

  Marandëi came to an abrupt halt, turned round and held the light so that she could see him better. Sisaroth felt as if a medical healer looking for signs of disease was examining him.

  ‘It’s one of the most dangerous of the Phondrasôn phenomena,’ she said slowly. She put out a hand to run her fingers over his face. ‘Tell me, does it hurt when I do this?’

  ‘No.’ Sisaroth’s suspicions increased. ‘What would that mean?’

  ‘That you had been altered in some way by the magic. The strangest things can happen. There’s all this latent energy on the loose and sometimes it just picks a place and settles there – like in the tower walls, for example. Other times it sweeps through the passages tearing at everything in its path.’ He was surprised to see she was examining the walls of the tunnel in the light from her staff.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Seeing as you emerged unscathed yourself, I want to check out your immediate aura to see if there has been any change,’ she explained. ‘I’m not inspecting the rock walls. It’s your shadow I’m observing. I want to see how it behaves.’

  She is a strange one and no mistake. Sisaroth laughed. ‘What’s wrong with my shadow?’

  Marandëi lowered her staff with a tight-lipped expression. ‘We’ll find out when we get to the palace. It’s too dark here.’ She resumed walking. ‘I was told I couldn’t win.’

  ‘You were conversing with my shadow?’

  ‘No. My master,’ she replied matter of factly. ‘I learnt a lot from him and I knew I was more powerful than he was. He realised it, too, and did his best to humiliate me at every turn in front of the others. He was afraid of losing his reputation.’

  ‘I thought things were more progressive in Dsôn Faïmon,’ Sisaroth said. He wished he could forget what the groundling had told him about the destruction of Tark Draan’s älfar empire and the death of the Inextinguishables. Nonsense, of course. He invented the story to confuse me. Sisaroth tried to discard the notion.

  Marandëi made a sound somewhere between laughter and sobbing. ‘I keep forgetting that our city is long gone.’ She led the way down a long corrido
r with a vaulted roof. Faint paintings were visible on the stonework. ‘Life without the radial arms, without the Black Heart, without the Bone Tower . . .’ She shook her head, the blonde curls bouncing. ‘It’s inconceivable. But I fear it is true what you say.’

  ‘I wish I could see where our parents grew up. They miss their homeland so much.’ Sisaroth thought back to things his father had said about the sheer beauty of the old Dsôn. He was not paying attention to the pictures on the ceiling as they walked. They were clearly of älfar origin. As was the roof construction itself. Time had robbed the colours of their vibrancy and damp had added to their deterioration.

  ‘Well, I used to live in Wèlèron, the radial arm where the magic arts were taught. Most of those in our institute were scholars rather than practising magicians. They researched the magic powers inherent in every älf. They were working on how those powers could be perfected: throwing greater shadows, creating more intense fear in others, things like that. Very few could do anything more than basic magic,’ she told him.

  ‘But you were different.’

  ‘Yes. I think there were only three of us who were authentic cîanai and cîanoi. Three out of a thousand. They kept quiet about us in Dsôn Faïmon so the populace wouldn’t be worried. You know that magicians are . . . were . . . always thought to be something extremely rare and peculiar.’ Marandëi sighed. ‘I admit I was proud of my gifts. There was nothing I did not think I could do. And the head cîanoi was furious when most of what I attempted worked the first time. He was envious. He made me an object of scorn and ridicule.’ Her voice faded. It seemed to be difficult for her to talk about what she had been through, or what she had done. ‘The rivalry between us turned into a proper feud. I was arrogant enough to provoke my master to such an extent that he swore I would never beat him, no matter what I did. He said whatever magic spell I employed on him he could fend off and return against me threefold.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘He insisted on a contest – a duel. In front of all the other scholars. He wanted a big audience to witness his victory over me. It happened just as I knew it would. My friends encouraged me and he rose to the challenge.’ Marandëi’s speech grew hesitant. ‘His key spell was to conjure up a black fog so heavy with fear that no living creature, whether barbarian, bird or älf, could survive for long under its oppressive weight.’

  Sisaroth was all ears. Marandëi was a relic of the old days. There were no cîanai at all in the new Dsôn. She is talking about a way of life that has totally disappeared now.

  ‘He called up the black fog and was preparing to hurl it in my direction,’ she went on, speaking so quietly that he could hardly hear her voice. ‘I had to defend myself. I caught the cloud in mid-flight and made it grow bigger and stronger, adding more and more magic to it. You can guess the effect.’

  Did she kill all of them? The spectators as well? Sisaroth was stunned. And she looks so ordinary. So unassuming. Harmless.

  ‘It was completely out of hand, the whole contest. By the time it was over, I was nearly broken from exhaustion. And my master was dead. Twenty-eight of the spectators were killed. It was a terrible blow to the entire guild.’ Marandëi’s shoulders shook. ‘It was awful, just appalling. I never meant for it to happen! My master pushed me to the limit! It was his fault,’ she insisted. ‘Afterward, I was in despair and terrified my former friends would turn on me, so I ran away and came here to Phondrasôn.’ Marandëi drove the end of the staff into the sandy ground and twisted it around.

  ‘You should be forgiven,’ Sisaroth said soothingly. ‘It was an accident.’ I’ll take her back to Dsôn. We could really use someone like her. One of the legendary cîanai would do wonders to lift the spirits of our dejected race.

  They left the corridor with its painted ceiling and found themselves at the edge of a cool cavern where vegetation was rampant. There was an overwhelming scent of lilies that made it difficult to breathe. A pale gold light shimmered out of the mist high above them.

  Sisaroth was perturbed to hear nearby fighting. ‘Is this where you intended for us to come?’ he asked.

  ‘We must have taken a wrong turn.’ Marandëi frowned as she contemplated the trampled path in front of them. ‘Let’s turn around before we get involved in a battle.’

  Suddenly they heard the sound of a woman singing – a clear and beautiful voice.

  Is it possible? Sisaroth would have recognised those dulcet tones amongst thousands of singers. Firûsha! He raced along the path.

  Ishím Voróo (Outer Lands), Dsôn Sòmran, Dsôn, in the northern foothills of the Grey Mountains, 5427th division of unendingness (6241st solar cycle), spring.

  Aïsolon was in his office in the citadel. ‘You are not being reasonable.’

  Acòrhia hung slumped in a chair opposite him. One of the guards held her shoulder, preventing her from sliding to the mosaic-inlaid floor.

  She attempted a grin but her face was too swollen and covered in bruises and cuts. Her thin clothing was stained red from broken blood blisters. It was still the simple housecoat she had been arrested in. ‘Your actions will get you sent to Phondrasôn yourself,’ she babbled and spat a piece of broken tooth that landed on his desk. ‘You are not an Inextinguishable ruler – only the governor here. You are not above the law.’

  ‘Nobody knows you and your fellow conspirators are here. The walls of the cells are solid and my guards will hold their peace. They know what you did and they are happy to keep silent. They will smile to themselves when they drag you to the top of the wall and throw you over.’ Aïsolon picked up the bit of tooth and studied it. ‘This fragment of tooth will be the only bit of you remaining in Dsôn. The beasts will fight each other for your cadaver, Story-Weaver.’ He put the ivory shard down. I’ll have it set in a ring. As a souvenir. ‘But if you confess, I’ll arrange a trial. It’s up to you . . .’

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’ She looked to one side in feigned boredom.

  Aïsolon motioned to the guard to let go of her.

  Acòrhia crashed to the floor, hitting her head on the stone tiles. She groaned and tried to get up. Her red hair hung unkempt over the sorry remains of her face. ‘Does that mean I’m free to go?’

  ‘Yes, but you’ll be taken back to your cell first, where they will cut you and burn your flesh and let the rats gnaw at you. Your orifices will be filled with boiling water, then I’ll have you locked in a cage of wild jerm cats,’ he answered harshly. ‘Afterwards, whatever’s left of you will be free to return home. A home that will be demolished and chucked over the ramparts.’ He waved his arm in dismissal. ‘That is so you know where you belong. I’m sure you will enjoy your freedom on the other side of the protective walls.’

  Acòrhia struggled back into her seat, visibly shocked.

  ‘Bring Wènelon in here,’ he ordered.

  The door opened. Aïsolon’s deputy, Gàlaidon, came into the governor’s office with the conspirator, as yet unharmed. He was placed next to Acòrhia and forced to look at what they had done to her.

  Wènelon, dressed in tunic and mantle, paled visibly. ‘What do you want from me, Governor?’ he whispered, shocked to behold the story-teller’s state. She was staring at him intently, as if trying to hypnotise him.

  ‘As you can see, we have been talking. I confronted Acòrhia with a few truths. As you can see, the truth is often painful. We’re about to discuss the events of the night of the murder in Tênnegor’s house.’ Aïsolon pointed to the broken tooth. ‘I wonder if I’ll have to use the same methods for you when we have our little conversation?’ he said, his voice deceptively friendly and low.

  Wènelon pulled back in his seat but Gàlaidon shoved him forwards again. ‘I have . . .’ He glanced at the story-teller, drew a deep breath and gathered his courage. ‘We have told you everything, Governor. What you are doing is not right. I insist . . .’ Wènelon stopped, seeing Aïsolon’s stormy visage.

  ‘You insist? You INSIST?’ he shouted, slamming his fists
down on the table. ‘I’m the one doing the insisting here, Wènelon. I’m going to insist that you be my guest. I want you to consider a particular plant.’ He indicated his deputy. ‘A speciality of Gàlaidon’s. It’s a quick-growing blood-shadow grass with sharp blades the size of your little finger. From sun-up to sun-down they will grow nearly a hand’s span and can penetrate wood. Do you think your skin could withstand that force? We can find out. I’ll have you tied down on a bed of shadow grass and we can watch it grow right through you.’

  ‘Because the growth is gradual,’ added Gàlaidon, ‘you should be conscious for most of it. You must let us know how it feels when the buds open inside you. I tried it once with a rat, and then with an óarco. Both of them lasted eleven moments of unendingness before they died. Their bodies looked just like a piece of my lawn by the time they died.’

  Wènelon looked over at the tale-weaver, who was uttering imprecations. ‘I . . . I . . .’ he stammered, tearing his eyes away from her fixed stare. ‘I must insist on your protection, Governor. For myself and for my family.’

  ‘Shut your cowardly mouth!’ shouted Acòrhia. Gàlaidon punched her in the face, sending her back to the floor again. Her lips were badly split but she struggled up onto her knees. ‘Don’t you say a word. No one can protect you, no one! Not even him!’

  I knew he would break under pressure. Aïsolon smiled in triumph. ‘I guarantee nothing will happen to you.’

  ‘You can’t promise that,’ the story-teller objected. ‘The assassin is in Dsôn and he already has his instructions . . .’

  What is she afraid of? ‘Then call him off,’ Aïsolon snarled at her. ‘I swear you won’t leave this place alive if you don’t.’

  Now it was Acòrhia’s turn to laugh, but it was a laugh of quiet despair. ‘As if that were in my power.’

  ‘Of course she can do it,’ a frantic Wènelon interrupted. ‘She’s lying. She talked to him at the payment handover. I saw her. I didn’t see his face, but she must know who he is.’

  ‘At the payment handover?’ Aïsolon and Gàlaidon exchanged glances. ‘So you were paid to give false witness against my children?’ He quickly wrote an order for the other five witnesses to be brought up and sent a guard out with the note. ‘How much did you get?’