by C. S. Pacat
The rest of the light had been stolen, making a shadow world in the middle of the day.
The blast of an inhuman scream – so loud the foundations shook – the stone shuddering—
Outside. It was right outside the doors. Her grip tightened on her sword.
For a moment, silence: the only sound that of her breathing. It was so cold that her breath hung whitely suspended in front of her. And then it got colder. Violet thought she was prepared for it. Grace had described it: a creature of shadows, a formless shape, hard to fight. But then it began to come through.
Darkness; a gaping pit that drew all light into itself. Violet couldn’t drag her eyes away. The spreading black felt like standing at the edge of an abyss and wanting to throw herself in. She was looking at death, oncoming, unstoppable; the end of everything.
A Shadow King.
It came alone. A single King was enough to tear down the wards that had protected the Hall for centuries. The Stewards were nothing to it. This world was nothing to it. She could feel the power that could destroy anything it wished, and knew that nothing could stand against it.
The four empty thrones were behind her. She could feel its desire to take its rightful place, to rule, to crush this world into utter subjugation.
‘I’m Violet Ballard, Lion of the old world,’ she said, her voice small in the cavernous hall. ‘You won’t get past me.’
She felt its attention slowly turn to her, the swivel of an unnatural eye. Its ancient robes spread out around it, shadowy and grand as a tomb. Its sepulchral crown lay atop half face, half bone. The flickering armour of a king; a sword that burned with cold; armies in its eyes. She could almost taste the worms of the grave.
Lion. The word went right through her, the cold terror of recognition; it knew her, knew her power, knew her blood. I am here for the Lady.
‘I won’t let you have her.’ Louder this time, her grip on the sword hilt tight.
She was breathing shallowly. Thousands of Lions dead on the battlefield, mighty commanders and their armies embalmed in darkness, unicorns lying slaughtered – the enemy in front of her had fought them all, and before that had been a man, who had put his pale hand around a cup. The vast columns of the hall were like an ancient forest, extending out into the dark, a spectral landscape of a vanished world.
Then you will die, said the Shadow King.
A torrent of darkness, it rushed at her with shocking speed, dark sword upraised. Instinct – she dived and rolled, feeling a burst of cold to her left as the King barely missed her. She came up low, just as she’d been trained, and swung, her sword cleaving it from behind—
— and passing right through it as though it wasn’t there.
A disorienting sensation like missing a step. It was like hitting nothing, like swinging at a phantasm. Carried forward by her own momentum, she stumbled. And in the swirl of darkness, it seemed she saw a King in ancient armour, and in its eyes the end of the world, a desire to conquer and to rule, all of humanity bound to it, and all she knew turned to ashes and ruin.
As its blade came down to cleave her in two, she desperately pulled up her own sword—
—the sword of the Shadow King passed through her own as though it wasn’t there. Nothing can stop them. Nothing can hold them back. Her eyes widened and she jerked sideways, too late, the dark sword slicing her cheek and then cutting deep into her shoulder with a sensation of burning cold, and a splatter of blood hitting the stone beneath her feet.
She cried out and gritted her teeth through the pain, forcing herself to keep hold of her weapon, though her arm was burning. Why? Why was she holding a sword if she couldn’t fight with it? Her weapon couldn’t hurt the Shadow King. Nothing could hurt it, its body as insubstantial as the shadow for which it was named.
The nightmarish truth sank in. The Elder Steward was right. This was an enemy that no mortal could fight. This was the horror each of the Stewards had faced: years of training, strength gained at a terrible price. None of it meant anything to a shadow.
She understood then that she was going to die – she had seen the splintered furniture, the strewn weapons, even the dried blood visible in the last flickering flame from the torches.
And that was the destruction left by Marcus, a single shadow who was as nothing to this nightmarish King, who was more powerful than any Steward, more powerful than any of the great heroes who had ever walked this earth, let alone a single girl.
I can’t beat it, she thought. But I can hold on long enough for Cyprian and Elizabeth to escape the Hall.
She thought of Justice – of the wreckage that had surrounded his body when they’d found him. Marcus had torn the corridor apart to get at him. No, not Marcus. The inhuman thing that had taken Marcus’s place. Justice must have realised that he couldn’t fight it, and simply tried to evade it as long as he could, as the corridor was destroyed around him. He had bought Grace and Sarah a handful of minutes … enough time for the Elder Steward to arrive.
But there was no Elder Steward to come and save her. And not even the Elder Steward could have fought the Shadow King, for it was greater than any shadow, and master of them all.
Justice, I never finished my training. I was never a Steward. But you told me my sword could protect people. And that’s what I’m going to do.
Cyprian and Elizabeth would be at the stables, saddling Nell and the last of the horses. Soon they would start their ride across the marshes, riding double with Grace and Sarah. East – Cyprian would know better than to lead them back to London, where a Shadow King’s attack would hurt others, the black skies of its arrival terrifying the city.
If she could just hold it off a little longer, they’d have time to reach the gate—
Keep it here, she thought. Keep it occupied. Let them get away.
She ran, sprinting for the columns with a torrent of darkness at her back. Her arm was screaming at her, her breath gasping in her throat. She thought she could use the columns to weave and circle, but the Shadow King simply came through the marble, a rushing dark that nothing could stop. A burst of black sent her flying backward to smash hard into the far wall by the thrones.
Blinking to try to focus, dazed. Get up. Get up. Her heel slid, her movements clumsy. Pain lanced through her shoulder as she pushed herself onto her hands and knees, collapsed, then tried to push up again. The freezing cold told her the Shadow King was there, towering above her in its horrifying majesty. She looked up at it, barely able to crawl, with her sword missing somewhere in the rubble.
She couldn’t stand. She had no weapon. This was the end, and it wasn’t enough. She hadn’t given Elizabeth and Cyprian enough time.
She saw a dull gleam of metal near her outstretched fingers. Instinctively, she grabbed at it, too wounded to dodge. As the Shadow King’s sword descended, she threw it up desperately to cover herself.
It was the old broken piece of a shield.
Useless; foolish; nothing could stop the sword of a Shadow King, which had passed through metal like smoke. She gripped it anyway, a last instinct, a last way to fight. Her thoughts were on Elizabeth and Cyprian. Please. Please have made it out. Eyes closed, making herself small behind the fragment she held, she felt the icy cold as the sword of the Shadow King came down upon the shield.
A great clang rang out through the hall, reverberating up through her arm, jarring her teeth. The sword – the sword hitting the shield – striking it like a mallet—
And being knocked back.
Violet opened her eyes and saw the face of a Lion. Etched into the metal, warped and tarnished with age, it was looking back at her from the surface of the shield.
A broken shield, forged long ago, and borne by the Lion whose ancient strength ran in her blood.
The time will come when you must take up the Shield of Rassalon. Do not be afraid.
The Shadow King screamed, a sound of pure rage at being thwarted, and brought its sword down on her again – and she met sword with shield and knocked it
away.
It worked, it worked, the sword flung back, the shield intact.
Breath heaving, she planted her foot on the stone and stood up.
In your blood run the brave lions of England and the bright lions of India. You are the strongest fighter the Light has left.
Rassalon’s shield on her on her blood-soaked arm, she faced the Shadow King, staring it down among the broken white columns of the ruined hall.
Around her lay all the signs of her fallen comrades. The Stewards who had fought and died to push back against the dark. Their weapons littered the floor; their blood drenched the stone.
She stood in the centre of it all, and attacked with the shield.
They fought in earnest then; she hit out with the shield as the Shadow King screamed in fury and tried to get at her. Her arm hurt; she ignored it. She ignored the swirling dark and freezing cold, and when she saw an opening, she took it, sweeping her shield at the Shadow King’s jaw and knocking it back two steps. Another blow, striking its shoulder.
A visceral surge of triumph: the shield could not only block, it could hit. She attacked with it, sweeping away the Shadow King’s strikes with ease while it railed and tried to reach her, then hitting it with all her strength.
It reeled: an opening. She ran at it, shield first like a charger, letting out a furious cry of her own. The shield impacted, slamming the Shadow King back – and she followed it to the ground – so that she tumbled down above it, among it, the swirling dark all around her.
For a moment she was trapped in it, an endless abyss. But inside the freezing dark she glimpsed its flickering form. Their eyes met, and she was staring down into two chilling pools. She lifted the edge of the shield and brought it down like a blunt guillotine onto the Shadow King’s neck.
It screamed and a force blasted outward from it, strong enough to shatter the windows, stone dust raining down around them. She had to pull the shield back up to protect herself from it, covering her face and eyes as she would against a gale. It went on and on, unnaturally long though its neck was severed, until the winds died down and the sound faded.
Silence. She slowly lowered her shield arm, opening her eyes. The Shadow King was dead. It had vanished into nothing from beneath her hands. Only the horrifying black shape of it remained, scoured into the floor.
She looked up. Light was filtering in from the shattered windows above her. She could now see the empty hall around her, illuminated in daylight. Its beauty endured, though columns were smashed, stone paving was cracked, the floor covered in marble dust, coating the strewn remains of an even older fight.
A broken shield. She pulled the shield from her arm and turned it over, looking down at the etched lion that seemed to look back at her. Something inside her stirred, and for a moment she almost thought she saw a real lion, gazing at her with its liquid brown eyes.
Alive; it hit her suddenly that she was alive. The Shadow King was dead. Cyprian and Elizabeth were safe … She had done it. Relief flooded her, and she grasped tight to the shield. She felt her exhaustion now because she could afford to feel it, the pain in her sliced arm, the bruising and ache in her shoulder, the throbbing cut in her cheek. Curling her fingers around the warped metal, she closed her eyes and thought, I did it, Will.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
IT WAS LATE when he reached the inn at Castleton, because he had stayed with her through the night, while the room grew cold.
He had taken Simon’s purse, and his jacket, and cut his horses loose from the carriage that waited for him on the road. A pair of restless matched steeds with shiny black coats, they would find plenty of forage on the moors, until they were cornered by a farmer who couldn’t believe his luck. With Devon gone and the sun rising, he had made his own way back up over the craggy tors to the thicket where he’d left Valdithar. From there he’d ridden to the nearest inn, where he’d asked for a room, a pen and ink.
Sitting by the fire in the downstairs common room, he began to write a letter painstakingly to her aunt and uncle. Tomorrow he would find a man of the local parish and tell him where to find her. She would still be there. The body was horrifically preserved like stone. Petrified. Her black marble eyes staring open forever. When he had brought her into his mother’s house, she had been heavy like stone too, and cold.
He had sat with her for a long time.
They would find Simon dead. And the three men who had once been Simon’s Remnants. And every bird, plant and animal close enough to be touched by the black fire.
Will tried not to think about the dead.
His room was up narrow stairs of dark wood. Thick stone walls covered with plaster and wash gave it a sturdy, enclosed feeling. At one end was a bed with a wooden frame, and a fire burning low beneath the mantel; at the other end a small table and chair, and a curtained window cut thickly into the stone. Its normalcy was surreal, like his conversation with the innkeeper. Thruppence for cold meats and ale and Weather’s holding and Our boy put horse in field in back. The soft dialect of the Midlands seemed to belong to a different world. Will stripped off Simon’s jacket and looked blankly at the bed with its coverings of clean linen.
A footstep – but before the sound came the feeling: insubstantial, a shift of air. A figure was emerging from the billowing of the window curtain. Katherine, Will thought. It ought to be her, but she was lying cold in a ruined house, and the vital shiver that went through him was a response that he’d only ever had to one person.
‘James,’ said Will.
He was a pale gleam in the dark, with his brushed blond hair over the fitted jacket Simon had bought him, and the face that was like nothing else left on this earth. Will felt the ache of something wrenched out of its time: something that shouldn’t be here, alongside his own terrible feeling of gladness that it was.
‘You did it,’ said James, in a quiet voice laced with disbelief and wonder at his own burgeoning freedom. ‘You stopped Simon from returning the Dark King.’
He didn’t know.
The choked feeling that pushed into Will’s throat wasn’t a laugh. James didn’t know. He didn’t recognise Will, didn’t see in his face the master that he had known long ago. And then came the darker thought: James didn’t know but was drawn to him anyway; maybe he felt what Will felt, a helpless fascination, an oiled danger, sliding through reluctance and desire together. Both of them Reborn. Both of them brought here by a Dark King who couldn’t let go. All Will could do was look at James and feel that same acquisitive shudder. The desire to step towards him was one that hit him in the throat.
‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ said Will.
In a different world, he had put a collar around James’s neck and forced him to kill his own people. He had made James do his bidding. And then there were the darker whispers, the accusation that the High Janissary had thrown at him, and that Gauthier had spoken of almost covetously. That James had been the Dark King’s plaything. That James had been in his bed.
The Dark King brought you here, thought Will, feeling the knowledge of it trickle through him. He wanted you, and he made sure that he’d have you.
That I’d have you. That thought was darkly dangerous.
‘It’s not a good time to be around me,’ said Will.
When he looked up, James was closer. James was looking at him like he knew what Will was feeling, and was here with him anyway.
But he didn’t know. Not really.
‘I know you killed Simon,’ said James. ‘I don’t think you’ll hurt me.’
The light from the fire lit the planes of James’s face. The trust in his blue eyes was for a saviour who he had started to believe was real.
Will wanted to laugh. He had hurt him. He had driven an ivory spike into his shoulder, then killed the man who had raised him. And that was only a pale shadow of what he’d done to him before. Once upon a time, he had been a man who had taken what he wanted, and maybe that was easier than this painful ache he felt. ‘Won’t I?’
The curve of a smile. ‘I’m more powerful than you are, remember?’
Will felt the whisper of invisible hands against his skin. James was showing off his power. Look what I can do. Of course: James’s sense of value had always relied on what his abilities were worth to someone else.
It uncurled something in Will, a desire to say, That’s right. Show me. Earn my attention. He bit down on it, forcefully ignoring the feel of James’s ghost touch against his skin.
‘What are you doing here?’ said Will.
‘When I saw you holding the Collar,’ said James, ‘I was sure that you’d put it around my neck. I didn’t think you’d stop Simon. I didn’t think anyone would.’ James took another step towards him. ‘I thought the best thing that I could hope for was that I’d find the Collar before Simon did. Instead I’m free to choose my future …’ Invisible fingers stroked down his chest. ‘Can you think of a better outcome?’
‘Katherine’s dead,’ said Will.
The invisible touch disappeared, dropping away instantly. Reality settled over the room, as saying the words aloud gave her death the finality that it had not had at Bowhill, when her blood had run black and her eyes had turned to stone.
‘I’m sorry. You felt something for her?’
He had barely known her. She’d liked ribbons, and teacups, and fine things. She’d ridden for two days and a night to follow him to the place where her mother had died, and she’d picked up a sword to fight. Will, I’m frightened.
James gave a bitter smile. ‘I thought the Blood of the Lady was supposed to fall in love with the Dark King.’
What? That didn’t make sense – until Will realised that when James said Blood of the Lady he wasn’t talking about Katherine. He was talking about Will.
Was that how James saw him? As the Lady? As being like James, another obsessional object of the Dark King? The Dark King’s paramours: James and Katherine had both belonged to Simon, and before that … before that the Dark King had loved the Lady and taken James to his bed. The three of them were intertwined, and it had ended with James twisted out of his time and the Lady dead.
