by Anthony Ryan
“Your compassion, as ever, does you credit, brother,” Vaelin cut in, clapping the older man on the shoulder. “Rest assured, I am certain such measures will not be required here.”
He reached for the door, then paused as Ellese moved eagerly to his side. “No,” he said, shaking his head, voice firm.
Ellese glanced at Kehlan before leaning closer to reply in a harsh whisper, “You made me a promise.”
“And I’ll keep it. But not yet. Wait here.”
Going inside he dismissed the two North Guard in the cell and closed the door behind them. Ellese’s bright, angry eyes glared at him through the slat, narrowing in consternation as he slid it closed. At his instruction two chairs had been placed in the cell. The scarred man sat in one, thick chains tracing from manacles on his wrists and ankles to brackets in the walls.
“They used to call you the Messenger, as I recall,” Vaelin said, moving to take the other chair. “But it occurs to me that I never learned your name. Your true name.”
The scarred man’s chains clinked as he shifted, meeting Vaelin’s gaze with placid indifference.
“The witch who brought you into this world must have named you,” Vaelin prompted. “Even monsters have names.”
He watched the creature’s face closely, hoping his taunts might provoke some betraying reaction. Instead he saw only faint, bitter amusement.
“Gone,” the Messenger said, chains clinking again as he shrugged. “For years I had no urge to recall it, now I couldn’t if I tried. What you see here”—he grimaced with the effort as he raised a manacled wrist to gesture at his face—“is just a remnant.”
“What about her name?” Vaelin asked.
This provoked a twitch of genuine puzzlement. “Who?”
“Your mother. You might have forgotten your own name, but who could forget their mother’s?”
The chains rattled before drawing tight, the Messenger lunging forward in his chair, face abruptly transformed into a reddened mask. “I am not here to talk about my fucking mother!” he snarled. Vaelin saw the power of his gift now, the way his body vibrated, his hands producing a thrum like two giant bees as they blurred fast enough to stir a breeze in the cell.
Vaelin stared into the Messenger’s enraged eyes and smiled. “There are a great many books in the tower library,” he said. “I’ve been collecting them since the war. The role of Tower Lord affords a generous salary but my needs are small, so most of it is spent on books. Especially those that concern the old stories. It shouldn’t surprise you to hear that you crop up here and there in different incarnations. ‘The Tale of the Witch’s Bastard’ is an old one, and it’s changed a good deal over time.”
A trickle of blood emerged from the Messenger’s flared nostrils, tracing over his quivering lips, his entire body straining against the chains now.
“But,” Vaelin went on, “the further back in time I go the simpler the tale becomes. A raped woman gave birth to a child who grew into something vile and murderous. But, sadly, I could never find her name, or yours. Strange to think that people of such importance to history have no testament beyond a tale that changes with every passing year. Whilst you linger on like a stain that never washes out.”
The Messenger’s hands fluttered into stillness and he slumped in his chair, shaking his head as a soft laugh escaped his lips. “Is this all the torment you have for me? I must say, I was expecting more.”
Vaelin sent a meaningful glance towards the door. “There’s a young woman waiting outside who’ll be glad to fulfil your expectations. Shall I invite her in?”
“Ah, yes. My vengeful daughter. Do you really think this is any kind of threat? I know you’ll never allow her to sully her soul with torture, nor do you need to. Ask any question you like and I’ll answer honestly.”
Vaelin stopped himself from exhibiting the sudden anger birthed by a realisation that the power in this meeting had now shifted from him to his prisoner. The Messenger had no fear of pain, no concern at all for what torments Ellese might inflict, even if Vaelin allowed it. It made his hands itch as he fought the urge to bunch them into fists, made him want to summon Dahrena’s face as he beat this creature again and again until its body was nothing but pulped bone and sundered flesh.
“I’m not lying, brother,” the Messenger said, head tilted at an angle that indicated he had no difficulty in reading Vaelin’s change in mood. “Ask and I’ll answer.”
Vaelin clasped his hands together and reclined in his seat. “Very well. How is it you are here? I was told the body you last inhabited died in Alpira years ago. The Beyond is supposed to be a snare for your kind and it died with the Ally at the end of the Liberation War. You were the Ally’s slave, sustained in this world by his will alone. With him destroyed, there should have been nothing to keep you here.”
“The Beyond,” the Messenger repeated, voice coloured by a note that mingled scorn with pity. “You’ve never really understood it, have you? What it is. What it actually means.”
“The Ally told me it was a scab covering a wound.”
“A somewhat colourful description, but he always was a pretentious fucker. Can’t say I miss him much. Oh yes,” he added, seeing the glint of concern in Vaelin’s eye, “unlike me, he is truly gone forever. As for the Beyond, it’s not something that can be destroyed, not truly, merely . . . disrupted, disordered for a time. That is what you accomplished. No more than a ripple in the fabric of something that joins this world with . . . something else.”
He fell silent, a shadow passing over his bruised features. “Don’t misunderstand me. What was merely a ripple in the Beyond caused great pain to those souls obliged to endure it. Some slipped away into the blessed release of the void; others were rent to pieces, left as little more than maddened fragments tormented by memories of what they had been. That was my fate, brother. That was what you did to me, and it was far worse than any torture you or that little bitch outside could ever contrive. I know now it lasted for years, but it felt like eternity. Time is malleable in the Beyond, stretched or contracted seemingly at the whim of chance. Imagine screaming forever, Vaelin. Then imagine something finding you, collecting all the pieces left of you and putting them back together. Not whole, not anymore. But made the Messenger once again.”
The Ally’s last words came back to Vaelin then, his stricken, terrified eyes as he stared at the black stone. In the years since, Vaelin had often reflected how so much discord and slaughter could have been caused by so nondescript a thing. It was finely carved but lacked decoration of any kind; no ancient, unreadable script marked its surface, nor any pictogram that might give a clue to the power it held. It had sat in its chamber beneath the great arena of Volar for centuries, kept hidden by the persecuted servants of the suppressed Volarian gods who imagined it divine. It had all begun with this simple, unadorned plinth of black stone, just one touch of the Ally’s hand in the far-gone days when he had still been contained within his own body. Then, Vaelin knew, he had been hungry for the gifts it held, but had whimpered like a child at the prospect of laying hands on it once more.
When I touched it, he had said, eyes moist and wide as they pleaded for mercy he must have known would never come. When I received my gift, I looked into that world . . . and something looked back, something vast, and hungry.
The Ally had been an ancient soul of sufficient malice, resolve and intellect to bend the entire Volarian Empire to his will and use it to bring the world to the brink of calamity, and yet when presented with the black stone beneath the arena, he had been rendered pathetic by his terror.
“What something?” he said.
The Messenger stared back in silence for some time, his face now rendered strangely serene, apparently lacking animus. However, when he spoke again, Vaelin recognised the familiar note of malice. “You don’t know,” he said, leaning forward. “You don’t know what you did when you made the Ally to
uch that stone. You don’t know what you awoke. But you will, brother. It saw you, it saw everything, and it grew hungrier than ever.”
“What is it?”
A faint shrug and a raised eyebrow as the Messenger leaned back. “I only know what it can do. Not what it truly is. But its intent.” A smile played across his lips. “That I know very well. It’s been setting the pieces on the board for a very long time, and the first moves have already been made, such as placing me in this shell.”
“What for?”
The Messenger lapsed into silence. Vaelin once again felt the itch in his hands. He could just get up and open the door, let Ellese have her way with this thing. Hearing its screams echo along the corridor as he walked away would have been shamefully satisfying, but it was clear there was still more to learn.
“General Gian spoke of the Stahlhast,” he said, opting for a different approach. “What are they?”
“Merely a tool,” the Messenger replied. “As am I. I was placed in this shell in order to win the general’s confidence. It wasn’t easy; he was a clever man who had long learned the value of suspicion. But eventually I gained his trust so that I might whisper the right suggestions in his ear. I first proposed our visit here over a year ago, when the Stahlhast overran the hill country south-west of the Steppe. But it was only when they destroyed the army the Merchant King had sent to oppose them that he began to listen.”
“You persuaded him to sail across an ocean just to kill him under my roof?”
“Thereby sowing doubt and discord between the Far West and the realm of the Queen of Fire. Besides, if I hadn’t, I would have been denied the chance to speak with you again, brother. So you see, I am here in part on my own agency.”
The Messenger’s face lost its serene cast, Vaelin finding himself disconcerted by the genuine regret he saw in it. “It’s strange,” the Messenger went on, voice now lacking the malice from before, “but when I was suffering in the Beyond, it was the most recent memories that stayed with me. I remember the havoc I wrought amongst the Ice People, all those years plotting with the Sons of the Trueblade and”—the malign tone returned briefly as his eyes slid towards the door—“all those happy days with the wife and daughter of poor old Lord Brahdor. It was such a pleasant surprise to find her here with you . . .”
Vaelin’s reaction was immediate and instinctive, a red haze colouring his vision for a second before it cleared and he found himself standing over the Messenger, hand stinging from a hard backhand cuff to the man’s face. The Messenger spat blood and coughed out a laugh. “Oh, brother,” he said, shaking his head with a rueful chuckle. “Always so easy to play you, like plucking strings on a mandolin. I am going to miss it.”
Vaelin closed his eyes, taking a deep breath before forcing himself to retake his seat. “I tire of this,” he said. “If you have something to tell me, get it said.”
The Messenger coughed up more blood, then settled in his seat, his face taking on a reflective cast. “As I said,” he continued, “much was lost except for the most recent lives, one in particular, one stream of memory out of so many others, when I was big, bluff, honest Brother Barkus and we were bound together in the Order, the five of us, brothers united against all the ills of the world. I came to realise, using what meagre reason was left me, that if the Ally’s will hadn’t bound me so absolutely, I would have stayed in that shell for all the years I could. I learned grief then, not the maddening rage of injustice and vengeance I knew so well, but the ache of losing those you love.”
He blinked, meeting Vaelin’s gaze with a sad smile. “Hurts doesn’t it? When you’re alone in the dark and the ghosts come to whisper their awful truths. And they do come, don’t they, brother? All those many, many ghosts. Who whispers loudest, I wonder? Caenis? Dahrena? Me?”
Feeling the red haze descend once more, Vaelin rose and moved to the door. “Enough of this. You can rot here. I’ll not kill you so your new master can put you in another body. I suggest you spend the years in contemplation of your many crimes . . .”
“Sherin.”
The cell was small and possessed no echo. Nevertheless, the name lingered in the air, halting Vaelin’s hand as he reached out to rap on the door. Slowly, he turned, finding the Messenger regarding him with head tilted in curiosity rather than cruelty.
“I told you I was here on my own agency,” he said. “I came to deliver my final message. My last service to you.”
Vaelin moved to stand over him, staring into his upturned gaze. “Speak plainly,” he instructed, “because I have no more patience for riddles. What do you know of Sherin?”
“I know she now resides in the Venerable Kingdom. Despite being a mere woman, she has become a physician of great renown. Even the Merchant King himself has had cause to call upon her talents. I know the Stahlhast will sweep across the border within months, and I know Sherin will be one of the first to perish, for she has placed herself in great peril. You sent her to the Far West expecting her to be safe. You should have known there is no safe place in this world. Conquerors come and go in history but the Stahlhast are different. They intend to remake the world and will kill any soul who doesn’t fit their mould.”
Vaelin saw it then, the growing loss of focus to the Messenger’s gaze, the sheen of sweat covering his forehead. He gripped the man’s face as his head lolled, shaking him until clarity returned to his gaze. “You have taken poison,” he said in realisation.
The response emerged in a hissing echo of a laugh. “Of course I have. Took it before I sliced that old fool Kohn’s throat. Timed the dosage just right, brother. But I’ve had plenty of practice in such things . . .”
His eyes dimmed again, face going slack in Vaelin’s grip. Vaelin shook him again, leaning close to shout his demand. “Where do I find her? Where is Sherin?”
“Gone to minister . . .” the Messenger murmured back, his voice barely a whisper, “. . . to the Jade Princess . . .” He spasmed, the movement violent enough to shake him loose from Vaelin’s grasp. For a brief second life returned to his features and he looked up at Vaelin with open, fear-filled eyes, tears streaming down his bleached skin. “Don’t worry,” he rasped, shuddering with the effort of talking, Vaelin watching a matrix of swelling veins spread across his eyes as his skin grew ever whiter. “There will be no more shells for me . . . This time, it will finally rip the remnants of my soul to nothing. Think . . . better of me, brother . . . if you can . . .”
He closed his eyes and his head slumped forward, the chains clinking a final time as his limbs slackened. Vaelin stood in silent regard of the corpse as a cavalcade of memories played through his mind. All the horrors crafted by this creature, all the torments he had suffered at its hands. The moment should have conveyed a sense of finality, he knew, an epilogue to the epic of malice. But instead he knew it to be a beginning, for the memory that came most to mind was not of murder or cruelty, but the face of a woman he had last seen over ten years ago. Her features had been slack in the sleep of the drugged as he placed her in the stonemason’s arms, her skin warm as he smoothed the hair back from her forehead. Despite the eventful years since, the memory of her face hadn’t dimmed at all, nor had the guilt . . . Betrayal is always the worst sin.
Does she hate me? he wondered, a question that had bedevilled him ever since he watched the ship take her away. What would he see in her eyes when she beheld him once more? Scorn? Despair? Somehow, he doubted it would be joy, and yet, she always possessed the most compassion of any soul he had met. Perhaps forgiveness?
He straightened as the decision took hold, moving to the door and knocking for the guard to open it. “Burn that,” Vaelin told him, jerking his head at the Messenger’s corpse. “No rites are needed.”
Vaelin strode away along the passage and ascended the stairs to the courtyard, deaf to the questions Ellese shouted in his wake. Whatever Sherin chose to show him when he looked upon her once more, he wou
ld accept it as his due. He would sail for the Far West, find her and see her safe, regardless of any risk or cost, for that was the least of the debt he owed her.
CHAPTER SIX
Like North Tower, Nehrin’s Point had grown since the war. What had once been a small cluster of somewhat dilapidated houses fringing a shallow bay was now fast becoming a substantial settlement. Unlike North Tower, however, the inhabitants felt obliged to construct and maintain a sturdy defensive wall.
“This is a garrison town?” Alum enquired as they crested a low rise a half mile short of the main gate.
“No,” Vaelin said. “Merely home to people with a well-justified sense of caution.” He paused, unsure of how to explain the peculiarity of this place. “My people have a phrase,” he went on after some brief consideration. “‘The Dark.’ You know of this?”
Alum’s scarred brows bunched in bafflement and he shook his head.
“Your cousin’s . . . ability,” Vaelin went on. “In the Unified Realm it would be called a manifestation, or an affliction, born of the Dark. In recent years, however, the term ‘Gifted’ is preferred, and enforced under the Queen’s Word.”
“In the wider empire they call it ‘the Shadowed Path,’” Alum said, understanding dawning on his features. “Amongst the Moreska we do not name it. Those born with it are watched closely, for we know it does not hail from the Protectors, and who can say how such power will twist the heart?” His gaze narrowed as he surveyed the settlement once more. “All of the people here are . . . Gifted?”
“No, just most of the adults, and perhaps half the children.”
The Moreska shifted in his saddle, Vaelin noting how he clutched the reins tighter and his horse began to stir as it sensed his discomfort. “I see,” was all he said.
“Perhaps,” Vaelin ventured, “you would prefer to spend the day hunting. The hill country to the north is rich in wild goats . . .”
