The Endless King

by Dave Rudden

  Because it matters to me.

  Not what Matt thought. He didn’t seem to have any thoughts he didn’t say out loud, and most of them seemed to be about himself. But she had been alone in that room with her panic and her dream, and she wasn’t alone now. Now she had someone to let down, which meant she couldn’t let him down.

  Just like that, a kingdom.

  ‘Awesome,’ Matt said and, to Abigail’s immense discomfort, punched her on the arm. ‘That’s totally what I was doing too. Let’s find this thing and report back.’

  ‘Right,’ Abigail said. ‘And Greaves will definitely knight you when you bring back strategic information about the Emissary.’

  Matt grinned. ‘Right?’

  She turned away. ‘In fact, he’ll probably put you in charge of the strike team that’ll take it down.’

  Matt went pale. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  She got half an hour of silence out of that.

  They crept through a city on the edge of unreality, the sky above it turning from opal to anthracite to the murk of a half-formed pearl. Nothing grew between the cobblestones but dust, as if even the weeds were afraid. She had to keep dragging her eyes from them to re-immerse herself in the dead stench of the Tenebrae – categorizing, dissecting, evaluating every nuance of its reek.

  It was a matter of sensitivity. Not physical sensitivity – even before the Cost, Abigail’s palms had been calloused from countless hours of training – but Tenebrous leaked through the very fabric that separated realities. Muscle and flesh were no barrier at all.

  Abigail lost herself in that wrongness, navigating by it like a sailor would a storm. They split crossroads between them, checked doorways, followed the unease until it drowned out the pain in Abigail’s feet, the hunger pangs in her stomach, dragging her forward until it was all she could feel.

  A single inhalation from those massive stone lungs, and the wind ripped from the earth like a sheet from a bed, like skin curling from a wound.

  Her feet torn from the ground, her parents’ ashes in her mouth –

  Abigail jerked back to herself so hard she nearly fell. For a moment, she’d been … she’d been … but no. Just another street, blurry in her exhausted eyes. How had they even got here?

  She looked around to try and place herself. Matt was leaning against a wall, scrubbing his face with his hands as if trying to rub life back into it. Abigail couldn’t blame him. She’d never fallen asleep on her feet before. The air was so bloated and full with the Tenebrae that Abigail, still swaying like a sail, almost thought that if she were to collapse it would buoy her up.

  And it was then she felt it, like a current of algae-choked water moving marginally quicker than the congealed scum around it. Not better, not by any stretch, but newer …

  The Emissary.

  Her fingers were abruptly fists, curled so tight they hurt. Matt felt it a second after she did, or maybe he just felt her stiffening spine disturb the thick and choking air.

  ‘Abigail?’

  ‘Quiet,’ she hissed, the fire of her heritage chasing adrenalin round her chest. Where is it? Where is it? Nothing that big should have been able to sneak up on them. They should have been able to hear it – the cannon crack of its footsteps, the bovine blast of its breath – but all around there was silence, mutant buildings and a growing wrongness in the air –

  Abigail had to force herself to take another step forward. Then another.

  This was a mistake. Why have you done this? What made you think you could?

  Do you feel you’re good enough –

  She turned the corner, and froze.

  The piazza was twenty metres across, and every centimetre of that space was covered in Tenebrous. Black liquid arced up from the stones like nervous systems, like ink drawings of trees, a whole forest of reaching tendrils and stiff, hooked fronds. A Cant leapt unbidden to Abigail’s lips, but stopped as she realized not a single Tenebrous was moving – all as motionless as her.

  White was threaded through the black like sickness, like a horrid reversal of the Cost. Arctic air tightened the skin on her face, and, though she’d never heard Tenebrous make a noise without a mouth to produce it, a soft moaning filled the air – like ice cubes popping in water.

  Like children having bad dreams.

  ‘Where do you think it came from?’

  Abigail didn’t even jump when Matt’s voice sounded right beside her. The scene in front of her was too strange. The edges of the fronds were softly straining, curling like buds in frost, as if plaintively reaching for help. She edged closer, and saw that it was indeed frost that held them, but beneath the dusting of silver there was another whiteness – a rind of … of …

  ‘Hey, where do you think it came from?’

  And before she knew it she was running, footsteps ringing like church bells until it seemed she hung in the air for an eternity between each step. Matt yelped but, just before she could run into the thicket of paralysed Tenebrous, she cut right, circling them to see –

  There – a splatter of white on a cobblestone. There – a drop crystallized on a fallen pillar. There and there and there …

  Unlike Denizen and Simon, Abigail had grown up in Order garrisons. For her, there wasn’t anything strange about swords on the walls, or bars on the windows, or first-aid kits everywhere. Above all, she had lived her life in the soft light of candlewards.

  There was an order within the Order – the Gardeners – who spent years simply keeping the candlewards in Adumbral maintained, changing old for new, opening the cunningly wrought lanterns that shielded them from rain.

  All that work was for nothing now. Candles had been stomped flat into flowers, great clusters kicked in sprays of white, plucked brutally from their perches to leave broken stumps behind.

  Abigail took a shaky step forward, picking her way across plates of flattened wax. This street’s candlewards hadn’t just been doused – they’d been annihilated. There was such an awful thoroughness to it, she thought, staring into a ten-centimetre-deep hole in the stone at her feet, like a massive-calibre bullet scar.

  She looked round, and – yes. On either side of her, there were cobblestones that were particularly cracked and crushed. It had knelt. Abigail did the same, shuffling back as if to try and ape its monstrous dimensions. It had knelt here. The effort it must have taken, to heave that bulk down by degrees, all to extend a finger and push that candle into the ground.

  The effort of it. The hate.

  It took her a long time to realize that Matt had approached her, his face a mixture of horror and awe.

  ‘I don’t understand. What happened here? How is there another Tenebrous inside the city?’

  When you hunted something, you hunted all of it. You hunted its feet and its hands and its hair and its spoor to know what it might leave behind. You hunted its hungers and its fears and its desires to know where it might go. You hunted its strengths and its weaknesses to know where one ended and the other began.

  Abigail didn’t understand the frost and the cold, or what had trapped these Tenebrous here before they could pull together a body. But it had been able to Breach because the Emissary had destroyed the candlewards … and it wouldn’t be the last.

  ‘I know what the Emissary is doing.’

  ‘You … what? How?’

  ‘Look around you,’ she whispered. ‘Adumbral was invaded before. There were so many Knights here that it tore the fabric of reality. And Tenebrous bled through.’

  ‘Until the … oh.’

  Abigail’s voice wasn’t hushed because she was worried about being overheard but by the sheer enormity of what she was about to say. ‘It’s destroying the candlewards so that other Tenebrous can Breach. So Adumbral falls into the Tenebrae at last.’

  ‘We need to get back to Daybreak,’ Matt whispered. For the first time, Abigail completely agreed with him. ‘Now.’

  19

  We Bury Ourselves

  Denizen made lists of things because
cataloguing provided perspective, and trying to decide exactly which frown he was using was a distraction from what had caused him pain in the first place. If it fitted an existing category, that meant he had survived it. If it didn’t, well, Denizen could distract himself by creating a new one. The problem was, that only went so far.

  Simon is angry with me.

  The taller boy was walking ahead, and even that degree of separation was a turn of the blade. Denizen and Simon never separated. Not willingly, anyway – there had been Denizen’s induction into the Order, but that had lasted three whole weeks before the universe copped on to itself and gave magical powers to Simon as well.

  Simon dipped his head to say something to another Neophyte, and in Denizen’s chest the knife turned to jagged ice. He’d tried losing himself in categorization of the pain, but all it did was lower his mood and crowd his head.

  Their surroundings just accentuated his gloom. The Asphodel Path – the crypts of the Order: low-ceilinged tunnels lined with alcoves as tall as Vivian, spaced a few metres apart. On the floor in front of each alcove was a candle, white and thick. Some alcoves were empty, their candles unlit, and others were closed with simple doors of polished wood etched with a date and a name. In front of those, the candles were lit.

  And, as everywhere else in Daybreak, there were mosaics of Knights – not at war as above, not marching triumphant as in poor cursed Retreat, but standing, hands clasped or at their sides. Their faces were unlined, the Cost discreet shadows at wrist or lapel. There was something strange about them. It took Denizen a while to figure it out.

  They looked at peace.

  ‘Place gives me the creeps,’ came Grey’s voice by his ear. Denizen jumped. The tunnels were wide enough for two Neophytes to walk abreast, but most walked alone, deep in thought, stepping nimbly to avoid the candles on the floor. It was one of the more esoteric skills you picked up in service to the Order.

  Though they were deep beneath Daybreak, Denizen could feel the vibrations of the battle above every time he clenched his teeth. It wasn’t that the vibrations had become worse, but they had moved from intermittent to a constant rattling roar. That was all the Tenebrous had to do really – keep coming, keep the pressure on until the Knights could do nothing but break.

  And Simon was ahead, talking to someone else, and Stefan – Stefan – was tapping his iron knuckles against the wall as they passed with an irritating clink clink, and Denizen was so desperately grateful that someone wanted to talk to him he almost forgot just how guilty he felt about manipulating Grey.

  Denizen had never seen anyone smile and look so angry at the same time.

  Almost.

  ‘Grey, I –’

  ‘This is where they come, you know? In case you ever wondered. We do our best to recover bodies from the field. For the families. And to keep the big secret. Don’t want any pathologists blunting their knives and writing an illuminating medical report. And some garrisons have their own graveyards –’

  Fuller Jack took his breakfast in the garden. It would have brought a smile to Denizen’s face, watching the huge blacksmith carefully position himself on the back step, if not for the tinny tremble of the saucer and the headstone he’d carved himself.

  Show me something you can build from revenge that you can’t from moving on.

  Some things were easier said than done. Some things were only ever a work in progress.

  ‘– some Knights want to come home.’ The smile was a proper grimace now. ‘We leave our homelands behind so often that this place becomes home instead. It’s funny. Live long enough with the Cost and soon there’s just a kernel of life inside you. Like being behind the walls of a fortress.’

  Denizen looked at him sharply, but Grey’s gaze had slipped to the graves they passed and the names that marked them. It was like a dark mirror of the Croits’ necropolis – that mad, proud city of the dead. The Croits shouted their history in a forgotten corner of the world. Here, the fallen of the Order were almost … shy.

  ‘And still we manage sentimentality.’

  ‘So they come here?’

  ‘We bury ourselves,’ Grey said. ‘With the work we do. But the Order’s kind enough to keep off the rain.’ He raised a hand to not quite brush a door as they passed. Denizen had noticed that but for Stefan – clink clink – everyone else seemed determined to stay as far away from the walls as possible.

  ‘And, with the last of our strength, we light a candle.’ For just a moment, the grin twisting his features was genuine. ‘Bringing light – our last act. That I like.’

  ‘Grey,’ Denizen said. ‘Grey, I’m sorr–’

  ‘Do you know what I tell Edifice?’ Grey said. ‘When he feels guilt for the things he has to do?’

  ‘No,’ Denizen said. He’d never imagined Greaves in that position.

  ‘I tell him to make it count. If what you did was the right thing to do, then make it the right thing. It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to ask for it after you’ve saved the world. We can … we can talk later.’

  ‘OK,’ Denizen said, and, though what Grey had said was nothing close to forgiveness, there was enough hope in the phrase we can talk later that some of the ice in his stomach melted.

  ‘Also, I’m going to make you apologize to Munroe personally for making me knock her out and hide her in a cupboard,’ Grey said. ‘So I figure if you survive that we’ll be square.’

  ‘Oh,’ Denizen said. ‘Right.’ He swallowed. ‘We’re going to be in so much trouble, aren’t we?’

  ‘I was considering retirement anyway,’ Grey said. ‘And I’ll radio Greaves when we’re far enough away that it makes no difference. I just hope we’re –’

  ‘This is the right thing to do,’ Denizen said. He had to say it out loud. He wanted to hear it. ‘It’s the Endless King. We find him and everything will be OK. How is … how is she holding up?’

  It wasn’t the question he wanted to ask, but Denizen had been doing his very best to convince people that his actions were for the greater good, and that noble sentiment would be extremely undermined if his next question was, Why hasn’t she come over to talk to me yet?

  Because we’re being discreet. Because we’re undercover. It made complete sense – Mercy staying away from Denizen had always been the safest thing to do. She just seemed to be a lot better at it than he was.

  ‘The candlewards aren’t helping, but she’s surviving,’ Grey said. ‘But aren’t we all? I’ll keep an eye on her. You just concentrate on figuring out the next step.’

  ‘What?’ Denizen said, in a voice that definitely didn’t crack with panic.

  ‘This plan is yours and Mercy’s, genius,’ Grey said, with no little amusement. ‘Getting out of Daybreak is only the beginning, isn’t it?’

  He grinned even wider at Denizen’s stricken expression.

  ‘You’d think you’d have learned from the last time you saved the world.’

  ‘I know,’ Denizen said gloomily. ‘It just seems to upset people.’

  ‘Stop.’

  Vivian’s voice rang out down the corridor, and the Neophytes halted. The Malleus was standing very still, face tilted to the ceiling, the radio forgotten in her hand. Grey left Denizen’s side, slipping past and through Neophytes, and they fell into a whispered discussion.

  Denizen understood her logic – she didn’t want to panic anyone, or share information before surety – but he had also been dealing with her for more than a year now, and had become very good at reading lips.

  Grey: What’s wrong?

  Vivian: When did the vibrations stop?

  ‘Malleus?’

  Stefan’s tapping fingers had stilled on the mosaic beside him, all that earlier belligerence faded from his face. He looked very young.

  There was a spot of black on his cheek.

  It wasn’t the Cost. Stefan had been very much in Denizen’s face just a few minutes ago, and Denizen remembered his skin being clear. Vivian
opened her mouth, but Stefan jerked his head minutely to stop her.

  And abruptly the stain was larger, the corridor so quiet that Denizen could hear the drop hit Stefan, just a gentle tap of oil on skin.

  And then the mosaics ate him alive.

  Bright tiles flashed like a magician’s cape, and Stefan was just gone, devoured by an iridescent flex of stone. There was a muffled detonation, like a door slamming on the other side of a house, and then a ripple ran through the walls from where Stefan had stood, like a great beast prowling just the other side of the tiles, or as if hidden machinery had just shivered into life.

  Or the peristaltic spasm of a throat.

  The radio squawked in Vivian’s hand.

  ‘MULTIPLE BREACHES. TENEBROUS ON EVERY LEVEL. FALL BACK TO THE COURTYARD. THE GLIMPSE IS LOST. THE GLIMPSE IS LOST.’

  There was a Tenebrous in the wall. No, the Tenebrous was the wall. Both walls. Ceiling and floor, the entire chamber. Stefan was dead … and so were they.

  All it had to do was squeeze, and it would crush them alive. Or flood the Path with whatever Tenebrous possessed instead of digestive juices. Or chew them up, or drown them in soil, or maybe, just maybe they’d manage to take it with them and simply die in a cave-in instead.

  And, horribly, Denizen realized a part of him was delighted. Walls fell. Walls were meant to fall. And if these could, if Daybreak’s could, then so could his.

  That treacherous thrill.

  At least you could go down in flames.

  That tyrannical temptation –

  ‘Look.’

  Still cloaked in human guise, Mercy pointed at the floor. On either side, the mosaics groaned, tiles popping free as unseen oil seeped and shifted and re-formed, but the flagstones of the floor remained untouched.

  The candlewards. They were protecting the floor, or discouraging the Tenebrous, or blinding its senses, or maybe Stefan had just been unlucky because he’d been under that drop. Denizen had no idea how Tenebrous wormed their way into materials, how they hunted or how they sensed the world around them.