Dark Rise: Dark Rise 1

by C. S. Pacat

  ‘Then what can we do!’ said Cyprian. But in the agonised look in his eyes Will could see that he knew already that this path was the right one. ‘Without the Cup, without the Collar … It’s just the three of us. The three of us against the Dark. How can we fight when a single shadow killed every Steward in the Hall?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Will honestly. ‘But we’re outside of his plans now, maybe for the first time. You’re the last Steward left. And you’re the first Steward beyond his reach. You’re a Steward who hasn’t drunk from the Cup.’

  Cyprian took in a shaky breath.

  ‘You think James will go back to Simon?’ said Violet, into the silence.

  ‘I don’t know that either,’ said Will. ‘But now he’s free from the Dark King too.’

  ‘And Gauthier?’ She looked at the shrunken old man, skin tight on his bones and still rocking a little on his chair.

  Will knelt down in front of Gauthier, so that he could speak to him from his own height. ‘Mr Gauthier. I’m afraid that James was telling the truth about Sophie … you’re alone here. Is there someone we can fetch for you? Something we can do?’

  ‘Do!’ said Gauthier. ‘You can give it back to me, that’s what you can do! I’m the one who’s supposed to put it on him. I’m the one who’s supposed to have him! Not you—!’ Will stood quickly, his stomach roiling.

  They brought in the bundle of kindling, six eggs that they found in the old outside coop, and a sheet full of apples from the overgrown tree, along with a fresh pail of water. Then they left the room in the farmhouse, where Gauthier’s voice still echoed. ‘He’s supposed to be mine! Obeying my orders with my Collar around his neck—!’

  They rode back over the marsh towards the broken arch that now led to a silent, empty courtyard. Will didn’t want to go back into the Hall. He could feel his own resistance, the arch ominous in his mind, like the gates of a graveyard at night. Around him the marsh stretched out cold and wet under the grey sky, their horses ploughing through the mud.

  ‘What are we going to tell Grace and Sarah?’ said Cyprian, drawing up on his horse alongside him.

  Cyprian had been quiet on the ride back, absorbing Will’s words. He had spent a lifetime training to be a Steward, following their traditions and their code. A Steward’s life was all he knew. Without the Order to guide him, he was lost – unwilling to drink from the Cup but without another framework for how to live. The idea that he might still be a Steward, but as Stewards were meant to have been, was a new thought. He asked about Grace and Sarah now without acrimony, a practical question that needed an answer.

  But Cyprian was right. What to tell them? That they had come back empty-handed? That Will had given away their only weapon against Simon? That the Shadow Kings would be released and now there was no way to stop them?

  The future seemed to stretch out with all his plans for Simon slipping away, and only the thought that he was not up to the fight that was coming.

  ‘Will?’ said a voice, and he was half aware of Violet behind him drawing her sword as two figures on horseback emerged from behind the gate.

  Her beauty was like the golden sunlight of spring, even here on the cold grey marsh, though she and the pretty dappled grey mare she was riding looked utterly incongruous, the skirts of her blue riding habit soaked with mud that splattered and stained the legs and belly of her bedraggled horse.

  Behind her was a young girl of about nine or ten, with thick eyebrows and a pasty face on a short pony. They looked very different, one beautiful and golden, one stout and plain, but the two girls turned to him as one.

  ‘You said if I was in danger, that I should come,’ said Katherine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  KATHERINE COULDN’T STOP staring: at Will, at the strange clothes that he wore, at the mud and grime all over him, even at the black horse he rode. He dismounted and took a step towards her, his eyes wide and shocked. His friends looked like they’d come from a battlefield, their clothing bloodied and torn. His friends looked, she thought, like this ancient ruined gate, part of this bleak, empty and terrifying place.

  ‘You came,’ Will said.

  He was here; she wasn’t alone on the marsh. She wanted to go to him. She wanted him to take her into a warm parlour, with a fire where she could sit and warm herself, and servants to bring her tea, while he wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and held her hands. But nothing was happening the way she had thought.

  The rain had made the ride over the marsh at night into a cold, bedraggled slop through mud, her heart dropping out every time her sweet-natured mare, Ladybird, stumbled, Elizabeth struggling gamely behind her on Nell the pony. It hadn’t been long until they had both been sodden, shivering in their waterlogged skirts.

  Her teeth were chattering. The boy and the girl standing behind Will were staring at her with unfriendly suspicion.

  ‘What is she doing here?’ the girl demanded, drawing her sword, a long, frightening weapon that looked too heavy for her slight body.

  ‘Will?’ Katherine said, not understanding what was happening, but scared of the two strangers and their drawn swords. She was so cold, her fingers numb in their wet gloves, her sodden skirts heavy. She didn’t know what to do.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Will said to her, and then he looked at the others. ‘Stop it,’ he said. ‘Violet. Stop it. She isn’t a threat.’

  ‘She’s Simon’s fiancée,’ said Violet.

  ‘Simon!’ said the boy on horseback next to her, and he was drawing his sword too, a clear warning.

  Her heart jammed in her throat. Will stepped out in front of her, facing down the sharp steel.

  ‘I told her to come,’ said Will. ‘She’s not a threat. She’s alone. She came here for help.’ And then he was coming towards her, putting his hand on Ladybird’s neck, and he said quietly, ‘Didn’t you, Katherine.’

  ‘I wasn’t followed,’ she said, remembering the slow, creeping escape from the house with Elizabeth, avoiding cobblestones to muffle hoofbeats and praying the horses wouldn’t whicker. ‘I wasn’t – Lord Crenshaw doesn’t know I’m here – I wasn’t—’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ said Will with a warning glance back at Violet and the boy. ‘First let’s get you and your sister inside.’

  Katherine was wet and cold, but there was nothing here, no sign of civilisation. The empty marsh seemed to stretch out in every direction. ‘Inside?’

  ‘If Cyprian allows it,’ said Will. He turned to the boy. ‘You’re the only one who can let them through the wards.’

  ‘I don’t trust her,’ said Violet.

  The boy – Cyprian – seemed to look her over, weighing the decision. Sitting straight-backed on his white horse, he looked like a paragon of some bygone era. She wished she weren’t wet and shivering. She wished her teeth weren’t chattering and her curls weren’t sodden. She tried her best, despite all this, to look respectable.

  ‘My father wouldn’t have let her in,’ said Cyprian. ‘He thought of the Hall as a fortress that we had to protect.’ Looking at her, he seemed to remember words someone else had spoken. ‘But in the old world, the Hall wasn’t only a fortress. It was also a sanctuary.’ He sheathed his sword and gave her a nod. ‘If you truly need our help, then you are welcome in our Hall.’

  Will rode alongside her. His huge black horse with its arched neck dwarfed Ladybird, but he reached down and took her gloved hand in his, holding it as her heart thundered in her chest. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said.

  But she was afraid; she was terrified.

  Ahead of her, Cyprian and Violet rode through the broken arch, and simply disappeared. ‘Will?’ She said his name as a cry for help. His hand squeezed hers. I don’t want to go. He urged them both forward.

  She felt a lurch, and the marsh was suddenly gone, and in its place there was the black outline of a bleak castle, its beacon the last ember in a dead fire. She shivered looking up at it. Where were the lights and the servants and the warmth of a welcome?<
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  What had happened here? She remembered the light Will had conjured in the garden. Some part of her had thought Will would lead her to a place of light. A place of safety. But this place was dark and terrible. She looked at Will as he swung down from his horse in the courtyard. This was the world that he had come from?

  ‘Is th-this – where you live?’ she asked Will.

  ‘It’s where I’ve been staying,’ said Will.

  ‘It’s horrible,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Like it’s dead.’

  ‘Elizabeth!’ said Katherine.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Will, looking around at the courtyard grimly. ‘She’s right. It’s not where I would have hoped to bring you. But it’s where we’ll be safe.’

  With the castle behind him, he looked different, changed from a handsome young gallant to a fey, unknowable young man. Her old life was falling away, as if it hadn’t been real, as though the event that had brought her here had shattered an illusion, revealing a reality that was as dark as it was true.

  ‘Come,’ said Will, holding out a hand to help her down from her horse.

  Katherine sat in her drying skirts on a three-legged stool by the fire and tried not to think about why she had come.

  Will hadn’t taken her into the castle but into a smaller tower at the wall that he called the gatekeep. But the thought of the castle’s black outline still hung over her, an ominous shape that made her shiver.

  The room itself was nothing like a parlour. It was more like a barracks, cut out of stone that was darkened and cracked with age. Up the short stairs was a room filled with five makeshift sleeping pallets, as if Will and the others were all camping together in this bleak ruin. Two girls in blue tunics had come out of the gatekeep to greet them. Will had defended her presence to them, before leading her in to sit by the fire.

  Elizabeth was inside too, her too-dark eyebrows heavy in her drawn face. She sat back from Katherine in her short child’s dress, near the wall. She had been given a bowl of stew and was eating it hungrily. Katherine couldn’t stomach the idea of food. If she thought about eating, all she could think of was the lovely dinner service at home, while here there were no carpets, no wallpaper, no staff and no signs of civilisation.

  Elizabeth had been surprisingly matter-of-fact when Katherine had come to her, heart pounding, and told her they had to leave. Cautioned to bring nothing but essentials, Elizabeth had stopped only to get her coat and her day’s schoolwork, and had returned grim-faced and ready. Katherine had considered taking some of her fine clothes and jewellery, but in the end she had put on a simple old blue riding habit. She had seen the groomsman saddle Ladybird a hundred times, but when she tried to do it herself, she had no idea where to start, and it felt like a long, panicked interval of struggling trial and error before they set out into the rain.

  ‘Here,’ said Cyprian, proffering her a cup. From a wary distance, he had kept his eyes on her. As though the very fact of her was an intrusion. As though she was the oddity, not him. As though she might be dangerous – and with a curiosity at the exotic, as though he’d never seen a gentlewoman before. Now he handed her a strangely shaped glass filled with hot liquid.

  It turned out there was tea here, but it was not good brown tea with milk in a porcelain cup. It was green, with bits of something that looked like grass floating in it.

  ‘You are very kind, sir,’ she said.

  ‘My people make this. The herbs that grow here have qualities that have been cultivated since the old world. It’s restorative.’

  ‘Your people?’ she said. ‘You mean Continentals?’ And then flushed because this was somehow the wrong thing to say, but she didn’t know why. She didn’t know what to do.

  ‘He means Stewards. Your fiancé killed them,’ said Violet.

  She took the tea and just stared down at it, pale green with a few flecks and stalks swirling at the bottom.

  ‘I see. Thank you,’ she said.

  She sat down again. She was dully aware of them drawing off to one side and talking about her in low voices. ‘We still don’t know why she’s here.’ ‘She came alone. Simon’s not with her.’ ‘And if she’s a Trojan horse? We can’t trust her.’

  She stared at the fire until the flames blurred together. She shouldn’t be here. She should be at home, dressing for dinner. She wouldn’t be here, if not for what had happened. The terrible, overwhelming thing that had driven her out of the house and into the mud and rain.

  Will pulled up a second stool and sat beside her.

  ‘You heard something, didn’t you.’

  He spoke quietly, leaning towards her, his forearms resting on his knees. The words made her seize up. She couldn’t say it. Didn’t want to say it. Around her, she felt a thundering pressure. She held the cup so tight she was surprised it didn’t break into pieces and cut into her.

  ‘Simon came to visit you,’ said Will. ‘He was in London on business.’ The whole room was so quiet, she felt like she could hear each flame in the fire. Will said it like he knew what she had heard, when he couldn’t. He couldn’t know. No one could. The pressure grew. She didn’t want to say it, because that would make it real. That would make all of this real. This cold, empty castle. The mud soaking her dress. The words that had made her world fall apart.

  ‘He would have been in a good mood. His business in London had gone well.’ Will said it grimly. ‘Maybe someone arrived to see him. Maybe an associate. Maybe a messenger. I had made you curious enough to eavesdrop. And you heard something.’

  The first time Lord Crenshaw had come to call on her, they had set out a porcelain tea set decorated with pink rosebuds, furled green leaves, and gold trim. He had been the perfect gentleman, asking her questions, showing his interest. The whole family had been so happy, their fortunes made. Her aunt and uncle had fussed over her, and she’d eaten her favourite treat that night, apricot ice cream.

  She had clambered into bed, too excited to sleep, braiding her sister’s hair and talking about the house that she would have, and the balls that she would attend, and the society that they would move in.

  ‘He said it wasn’t enough,’ Katherine said.

  ‘What wasn’t enough?’

  He’d come to visit her many times since, each time the picture of courtesy and good manners, solicitous and charming, as he had been on his last visit, when he’d risen to speak with a messenger, and she had followed him out into the hallway.

  ‘Blood,’ said Katherine.

  Looking down at her cup, she felt the cold strangeness of this small, bare room. Her old life seemed to recede, the dresses, and the shoes, the little string of pearls that matched so well to sprig muslin, the thrill of her first time getting her hair done à la mode, lifted high up off her neck by her new lady’s maid.

  ‘He said he’d killed ladies before and one wasn’t enough,’ she said. ‘It had to be all of them.’

  He killed my mother, Will had said to her, and she hadn’t believed him. Until she’d heard the words that had turned her blood cold, and then the only thing she’d remembered Will saying to her was Run.

  I need to kill all of them, Lord Crenshaw said in a conversational voice. And I have. They’re all dead. All but one.

  Will pulled his stool closer and spoke to her urgently.

  ‘Was there anything else?’

  Standing terrified behind the door, then having to find her way back to the morning room, watching him sit, and making small talk and smiling. All she could remember was pressing herself to the wall, shoving the side of her hand into her mouth to stifle the scream in her throat.

  I was a fool seventeen years ago, acting on hints and rumours. I thought I only needed to kill one.

  I was wrong.

  I needed to kill all of them. And I have. They’re all dead. All but one.

  Now I have the Stone, and I can finally succeed where I had failed all these years.

  Her blood will release them from their centuries of prison, and by their hand His enemies will be
felled. And when all of them are dead, He will rise.

  ‘He said he needed her blood to open a stone.’ She was only half aware of her words impacting the others, the looks they exchanged. ‘He’d release prisoners from the Stone to kill any resistance. He said when the ladies were dead, a king would rise.’

  Will’s hands closed over hers, steadying them. ‘You did the right thing coming here.’ The startling touch grounded her back in the room suddenly. Her heart started beating in a different way when she realised Will had taken her ungloved hands in his and was simply holding them.

  ‘He’s mad, isn’t he? His mind is … He’s a madman.’ She looked up at Will, wanting nothing more than to be reassured that all of this could be put aside, like a bad dream.

  ‘I told you that if you came with me I’d explain everything,’ said Will. ‘And I will.’

  Will didn’t look away from her, but from the other side of the room she heard Cyprian say, ‘Will, you can’t bring her into this—’

  And Will’s voice. ‘She’s in it already.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Katherine, in a small voice.

  Violet had taken a step forward. ‘At least have the sister leave the room.’

  That was the worst possible thing to say.

  ‘I can listen to anything Katherine can!’ Elizabeth had stood up on her short legs and was glaring at Violet.

  ‘They came here together,’ said Will. ‘They’re in this together.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Katherine.

  ‘You saw the tree light up in the garden,’ said Will. ‘You said it wasn’t natural. You were right. It was magic. Like this Hall. There used to be magic in the world, a long time ago.’

  Magic. The strangest sensation passed over her as he spoke, the eerie sense of something lost, as though the dead, dark castle was a vestige of something vanished.