Dark Rise: Dark Rise 1

by C. S. Pacat

  Cyprian nodded and went at once.

  ‘We thought we could run from it,’ said Sarah, in a too-loud voice. ‘We went to the inner fort too. And when we came out, they were all dead, Stewards, janissaries, horses, dead just like we’ll be—’

  There was the scrape of wood on stone as Elizabeth pulled up a chair, stood on it, and, with the benefit of this extra height, slapped Sarah hard across the face. Sarah stared back at her, shocked into silence, clutching her cheek as Elizabeth said, ‘Shut up. Shut up or you’ll bring it. And then you’ll be dead first because you’re the loud one.’

  Violet blinked, grateful for the sudden ringing lack of sound.

  ‘All right. Listen. The wards are holding for now. Get food and water. We’re going to take whatever we can carry to the inner fort. It’s safer there. It has extra protections, and there are places where we can hide.’

  Elizabeth nodded, scurrying to gather up what she could, with Sarah glassy-eyed. Violet packed up all the provisions she could carry, folding them up in a blanket. But as the awful, echoing shriek of the shadow rang out, there was only one thought in her mind.

  Will.

  If Simon had released the Shadow Kings—

  ‘It doesn’t mean he’s dead,’ said Violet to herself, a hope, a desperate wish, ‘it just means that Simon found the blood.’

  Grabbing up packs and provisions, Elizabeth and Sarah were ready in a few minutes, and Violet led them out into the courtyard. There she stopped, and looked up in horror.

  The wards were like red fire across the sky. Coruscating like flame, like the tails of dead comets. They lit everything with a strange red light, reflecting against everyone’s faces. They were coming down. They were all coming down. It was like the end of the world.

  ‘They’re not going to hold,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Go,’ said Violet.

  They ran across the red-lit courtyard. Cyprian and Grace were approaching from the direction of the Hall. Their faces were drawn, and Cyprian was shaking his head. It was his turn to speak in a tense, private voice.

  ‘Katherine’s missing. She took one of the Steward horses.’

  ‘Missing?’ Violet’s stomach clenched. ‘How long has she been gone?’

  ‘I don’t know. When was the last time you saw her?’

  When was the last time any of them had seen Katherine? This morning, when I told her Will was gone. Violet’s stomach twisted. She thought of the look in Katherine’s eyes whenever she looked at Will; the pink on her cheeks whenever she said his name; the fact that she had come here at all, through the mud and rain at night, leaving the comforts of her home on the word of a boy she had met twice.

  ‘She went to follow Will,’ said Violet.

  ‘We don’t know that. She might have just – gone back to London—’

  ‘And leave her sister behind? She knows.’ Violet suddenly recalled the look of determination she had seen on Katherine’s face this morning as the girl rose from the table. ‘She knows where Will’s mother was killed. He must have told her.’

  The image of Will and Katherine murmuring to one another last night came back to her. She ignored the twinge of hurt that Will had told Katherine about his mother, but not her. How long had he known Katherine? A few days? She tried not to feel the way she had felt locked outside her father’s house, knowing she could never return.

  ‘What’s this about my sister?’ Elizabeth pushed her way into the exchange.

  ‘She’s gone,’ said Violet.

  ‘But—’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘She’s outside the walls. A Shadow King is trying to get in. Wherever your sister is, she’s safer right now than we are.’

  She immediately regretted saying it. Everyone was frightened, and Elizabeth was a child. Elizabeth’s face turned, if anything, paler, as she stood there in a muddy short dress, separated from her family. Violet felt awful.

  ‘We’re going to the inner fort,’ said Violet, trying to temper her message. ‘We’ll be safe there. That thing outside isn’t looking for us. It’s looking for Will. When it realises he’s not here, it will leave.’ That’s what she hoped, anyway. ‘We’re going to hide and wait it out in the safest place in the Hall.’

  But she could hear Sarah’s voice in her head. We thought we could run from it. She could see Elizabeth remembering those words too.

  ‘Can I bring Nell?’ said Elizabeth in a small voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sarah said that last time they killed the horses. Can I bring Nell?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry,’ said Violet. ‘There isn’t time.’

  Getting to the chamber that held the Tree Stone meant going back into the citadel, something they had all avoided since the attack. Together they climbed the main steps to the immense entry doors that stood unnervingly half-open with the silent citadel behind them. Violet’s skin crawled as they entered the first of the ghostly empty hallways that had already taken on the stillness of a tomb.

  The red light seeped inside the buildings, and any windows were now rectangles of crimson. Violet saw Elizabeth take in the eerily lit destruction and go pale, but the girl said nothing and even on her short legs kept up with the others as they hurried through the corridors.

  The five of them hurried past the halls and the dormitories, entering a more deserted part of the citadel. The chilling screams of the shadow could be heard in the distance, but muffled by the thick stone walls of the Hall they became strange echoes, coming from everywhere and nowhere. The red-lit rooms and corridors became long dark passageways so deep in the Hall that outside light didn’t reach them.

  Violet stopped at the entry to the chamber that held the Tree Stone.

  She had considered taking them down into the vault and hiding them all in the underground rooms behind that heavy stone door. But the vault had held the Shadow Stone, and she had felt the irrational sense that the Shadow King would know if they hid there.

  Besides, if a Shadow King could pass through any wall, a stone door would not keep it out. So instead she had brought them here, trusting in the Elder Steward’s decision to retreat to the oldest part of the citadel.

  But when she looked at the dark, dead branches of the Tree Stone, she couldn’t help wondering if she was repeating a hopeless past. The stones of the doorway were cracked and shattered; his sword that she had not retrieved lay discarded. The wall was dark with his dried blood. A thick silence hung over everything.

  She was looking at the place where Justice had died.

  He was a better fighter than she would ever be, and he had not survived for long. The shadow had only been defeated by the great power of the Elder Steward, and the Elder Steward was gone.

  She told herself that the Shadow King was looking for Will. Sarah, Grace and Elizabeth weren’t Lions or Stewards, and there was a chance that when the Shadow King realised that Will wasn’t in the Hall, it would leave without killing any of the girls.

  She nodded at Cyprian, then looked at Sarah, Grace and Elizabeth.

  ‘All right. The three of you get in there, and we’ll close the doors.’

  Elizabeth looked up at her. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘Cyprian and I will be right outside.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Get in,’ said Violet, giving Elizabeth a push between the shoulder blades.

  She didn’t push her hard, and she wasn’t expecting what happened, a sequence that seemed to play out in slow motion, Elizabeth stumbling forward, her small foot tripping.

  Elizabeth cried out and flung out her hand to steady herself, grasping on to the trunk of the Tree Stone.

  Violet felt it happening: the scent like blooms in an ancient garden; the shivering impression of bright tendrils running through the Tree like veins; of white flowers opening. Yet she wasn’t ready.

  Light burst into the room; an explosion of light; a brilliant eruption as the Tree Stone lit up, brighter than a hundred stars. It was blinding; Violet cried out and lifted her arm and presse
d her face into the crook of her elbow instinctively.

  When she looked up a second later, her blinking eyes opened on a warm and beautiful glow, infusing the Tree’s trunk, its branches and leaves and its hundreds of new flowers, each one a new point of light. It lit the expressions of shock and wonder in the faces of the others, and the little girl standing under it.

  Elizabeth’s hand was still on the Tree, and the light was surrounding her; it was part of her.

  ‘What is it?’ said Elizabeth. ‘What’s happening?’

  Oh God, thought Violet. She was staring at Elizabeth, her washed-out face, the light in her long, dull hair.

  She remembered Will trying to light the Tree Stone, the hours that he had spent gathering all his will trying to stir a single spark. In all that time, the Tree Stone had not given so much as a flicker.

  Violet thought of all she knew about Elizabeth. At ten, she was still in short dresses and had the personality of a stump in the road, blocking your way. She lived with her parents – no, not with her parents, with her guardians, her aunt and uncle – who had taken her in after—

  ‘Who was your mother?’ Violet heard herself say.

  ‘What?’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘You live with your aunt and uncle. Who was your mother?’

  ‘No one you know.’ Elizabeth stuck her chin out. ‘What does it matter? She was a respectable gentlewoman.’

  There was something defensive about the way she said it, as if she’d heard questions about her birth before. Or as though she’d been the one asking them, thought Violet, smart enough even at ten years old to sense that the things her aunt and uncle were telling her weren’t true.

  Simon had been hunting children. And if someone was hunting your children, what did you do? Did you keep them with you, in danger? Or did you give them away to kind strangers who would pretend to be their aunt and uncle? Wasn’t the best way to hide a child to disguise them as one of the thousands of ordinary children growing up in London?

  Protect the sisters, Will had said.

  Violet felt all the hair on her body stand up as she stared at Elizabeth’s plain child’s face, and her torn, muddy clothes, streaming with light.

  She turned to Cyprian. ‘She’s Blood of the Lady.’ Violet could see the mix of shock and confusion in Cyprian’s eyes. ‘I don’t know how, but she’s Blood of the Lady. It’s not Will the Shadow King is after,’ Violet said. ‘It’s her.’

  The inhuman screams were louder, the last of the wards shredding.

  Violet looked around at the ancient doors that would be no kind of protection once the wards were down. Violet had thought they could hide here and hope for the Shadow King to pass them by, but no one could hide this cascade of light.

  And if the Shadow King was after Elizabeth, it would not pass her over; it would do everything in its power to find and kill her.

  She couldn’t let that happen. Justice had trained her to fight for the Lady. And the Lady had come to her, even if she didn’t understand how or why. Wasn’t a Lion supposed to be a protector? Her strength and Steward training together: she understood what it was for now. What she had to do.

  ‘Cyprian, you have to find a way to get her out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The Shadow King is here for one reason: to end the line of the Lady. Elizabeth can’t hide or wait it out. The only chance she has is to run.’ She was thinking it through as she spoke. ‘It will break through the wards. I’ll hold it off in the great hall. You use the distraction to get the horses and go.’ She looked out at the hallway that was torn to pieces, the walls cracked and the furniture splintered. The shadow had tried to get at Justice and failed. At least at first. Now he was ashes and flame, and the memory of a hand proffered to help her. ‘Justice held Marcus off for a while.’

  Cyprian’s face was white. ‘There are only two horses left.’

  ‘Then you each ride double.’

  It wasn’t what he had meant; she knew it; she heard him say it, almost as if he was at a distance. ‘That doesn’t leave a horse for you.’

  She looked at him. She didn’t have to speak. They both knew she wouldn’t return from this fight. There was no one alive who could stand against a Shadow King. But she might be able to delay them long enough to buy Elizabeth time.

  ‘I won’t leave you here,’ said Cyprian.

  ‘You have to.’ She remembered the Elder Steward’s words to her. ‘I’m the strongest one here.’ You are the strongest fighter the Light has left. She was a Lion. Grace and Sarah were janissaries, and Cyprian was a Steward who had rejected the Cup. ‘I’m the only one who can buy you the time that you need.’

  ‘Then let me fight with you.’

  He meant it. She could see that. She looked at his noble, familiar face, realising that it would be the last time that she would see it. She hadn’t thought she’d grow fond of his perfectly ordered hair, his immaculate clothing, the proud upright of his Steward posture.

  ‘You can’t leave the others,’ she said. ‘They need a fighter with them too.’

  ‘Violet—’

  ‘This is what I have to do.’

  His eyes held the pain of acknowledgement as he looked back at her. ‘I was wrong about Lions,’ he said. ‘They’re brave and they’re true.’

  ‘Go,’ she said.

  They parted ways, with the sky on fire. He went to the stables.

  She went to the great hall.

  It was covered in refuse. The remnants of the fight littered the ground: the last stand of the Stewards against the dark. Violet remembered her first glimpse of the great hall, walking in dwarfed by its size and awed by its ancient beauty. Now it was a graveyard; the bodies were gone, but the impression of death remained, the silence and stillness that of a tomb. This is the end of the Hall, she thought as she walked through its forest of giant marble columns. The Stewards were dead, and once the wards fell, the Hall itself would be overrun.

  Above the dais, the four empty thrones took on a frightening significance. The Shadow Kings are coming home. They had ruled here once, before the Dark King had twisted them into his servants. It made her all the more certain that it would come here, to the great hall, and that this was the place where she might for a moment or two slow it down.

  She closed and barred the giant doors just as the Stewards had done. Unlike the Stewards, she knew that closing the doors was useless. It can get through the walls. It can get through anything. She only hoped that extra barrier might buy her a little more time.

  And then she waited, her breathing shallow, listening to the inhuman screams of the Shadow King. When they started to get closer, she knew that it was coming. It was the last sound that the Stewards had heard as they stood in their ranks facing the doors, not knowing what was on the other side. But there were no Stewards left to fight what was coming.

  She was surprised how much she wanted Cyprian to be with her. Or Will. How much she wanted someone to stand beside her, so that at the end, she wouldn’t be alone.

  But Justice had been right. How you faced darkness was a test.

  She felt the temperature start to drop, the shadows start to lengthen.

  And against the cold and rising dark, she drew her sword.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  ‘SO YOU KNOW who you are,’ said a voice behind Will.

  He turned.

  A pale figure was approaching across the blackened landscape, surreal yet somehow inevitable. It was Devon … Devon, the last unicorn, arriving like a herald from some ancient battle.

  In London, Devon had recognised him. That scene played out in Will’s mind, now full of different meaning. The terrible, sickening truth of his own identity made him shiver now that he’d tested it for himself.

  Who else could have mastered the dark armour? Or touched the Shadow Stone? Who else could have survived the fire of the Corrupted Blade?

  ‘Tell me I’m Simon’s son,’ said Will. The plea sounded very far away. It seemed to fade like
the last of his hopes as the truth rose between them.

  ‘You know you’re not,’ said Devon, ‘My King.’

  My King. The horror of confirmation, the truth that he hadn’t wanted to face.

  Simon hadn’t failed seventeen years ago when he’d killed Will’s aunt Mary. He’d succeeded. He’d brought the Dark King back that day, with the Lady’s blood.

  Will wasn’t a champion of the Light.

  He was the Dark King, reborn into this time.

  He had found his mother bleeding in the garden behind the house, three dead men on the ground and more men on the way, though he hadn’t known it then. He’d heard the screams and dropped the wood he’d been collecting, running towards the sound. There had been so much blood, on her hands, on her neck and chin, spreading through the blue fabric of her dress. ‘What happened?’ He was on his knees beside her. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘The knife,’ she’d said. ‘Give me the knife.’

  She was too hurt to reach it. So he’d picked it up and given it to her. Bloody fingers stroking against his cheek, she had drawn his head down towards hers, as if to whisper some final benediction.

  Then she’d plunged the knife towards his throat.

  The hand he’d thrown up to protect himself was all that had saved him. The knife had gone through his palm instead of his neck, like a nail through wood. But the cry he’d let out had been drowned out by his mother’s scream of frustration. She had let go of the knife, her hands closing around his throat, squeezing the breath out of him. He tried to pry them off, his world narrowing to a black tunnel. He’d thought, stupidly, that she was fighting some spectre of the imagination, that she was confused, still struggling with the men who had attacked her.

  ‘It’s me!’ he’d gasped. ‘Mother, it’s me!’ He’d thought if she just knew who he was, she’d let go.

  She had known who he was. It’s why she’d tried to kill him.

  Scrambling backward, he’d pushed her off, gasping in air and clutching his bleeding hand to his chest. He had stared at her from a few paces away, half sprawled in the dirt. She had been too weak to come after him, barely able to move.