Beyond the opposite bank stretched a long bloodstained battlefield. The screams of horses and soldiers fighting scoured the air, and the madness of battle fury clawed at her. Black-armoured hulking shapes, half again the size of a man, lumbered towards her. Their skin was parched and grey as if they were long dead. Their faces were almost human, but contorted and deformed, their eyes were all white or black, and their teeth blackened and broken.
The dull light of a cold sun glinted off their beetle-like armour as they moved. Wickedly sharp blades slashed at soldiers still strong enough to fight, slicing through armour as if it were paper. She sensed the taint of enchantments upon their weapons.
Something moved at her feet. A man reached up and grasped her arm, smearing her with clotting blood as she stared down into his desperate face. His beard was streaked with blood and mud, and he mouthed words she could not determine. She reached down and cupped his face tenderly, his blue eyes stared into hers.
‘It is lost,’ he gasped. His face contorted with pain and his hand went slack. She was unable to hold up his heavy armoured body, and he flopped down lifeless, face slapping into the mud. She shook with fear, but could not run, for her feet were glued to the ground and would not obey.
The Maphraxies started to cross the river, tossing the dead and dying aside as they lunged towards her. They snarled at her, mindless and mad, the smell of sickly sweet Sirin Derenax heavy around them, a smell she had never smelt before. Her feet moved and she ran, stumbling over bodies, straight into a female soldier coming up behind her. She staggered to keep her balance and gasped.
The woman was dressed in black dragon skin armour and wore no tabard. She had a short sword and knife at the ready, her stance was deceptively languid. Her face was partially concealed by a leather helmet overlaid with black feathers, but that face Issa knew well, for the eyes that beheld hers coldly were blue-green like the sea, like her own. In a gauntleted hand the woman pointed her sword towards her and it gleamed in the light.
‘You cannot run,’ her dark-clad double said. ‘They will come for you wherever you are. You must stand and fight. You must face your destiny, or we all shall perish.’ Her double ran towards her. At the last moment, Issa fell back from her sword, whirling to see it lift and crash down upon the face of a Maphraxie who had come up behind her. It slumped to the floor, blackish-red blood oozing from its broken head.
She watched, sickened and stunned, as a vicious fight unfolded. Her other self slashed savagely left and right, dancing with a cat-like grace Issa could only marvel at. At every opportunity, magic burst from the warrior’s fingers, searing grey flesh with blue-black fire. She keenly felt its dark destructive force as it sizzled the air around her.
‘What is it you would have me do,’ Issa cried uselessly, but her voice was lost in the din of the battle.
Issa ran from the battle until the screams and crashes of metal were lost in the distance. She wandered through a cold barren landscape. No tree or bush or animal in sight, just wisps of brown grass straining up through the cold hard ground, the sky an unbroken blanket of grey. The place was empty, devoid of life, and with every step that emptiness deepened.
For one terrible moment, she wondered if she were back in the Shadowlands, or worse, if she had never really left, and all else was but a dream. She looked at her hands. Her ring was dull and scratched with age, and Ely’s bracelet was gone. She looked behind wondering if she’d dropped it, and a flutter of tiny wings caught her attention. A butterfly, in this place? But as it neared she saw the wings were attached to a tiny human. The fairy had large slanted eyes, a long and narrow equine face, and pale blue hair.
‘Are you lost, Child of the Raven?’ she said in a soft high-pitched voice.
Issa sighed. ‘Yes, I’ve been assigned a task, a test, for something important, but I don’t know what it is I have to do, and I don’t know where I am or even who I am.’ As she spoke she was chagrined to feel the tears of fear and frustration sliding down her face.
The fairy smiled and patted her hand with its tiny one. ‘Don’t be upset, I can help. Look,’ the fairy said, and threw sparkling dust into the air.
It shimmered and formed into a silvery blue oval, within which an image appeared. She could make out an ocean, calm and glittering in the sunlight, but turning grey and dark as storm clouds covered the sky. She stepped back in alarm as Keteth’s white mass appeared.
‘He cannot harm us, not here,’ the fairy said, swift to reassure. ‘Though you would do well to remember that he is a master of trickery. That was not your mother you saw back there, but an illusion created to trap you. The world you see around us is the world he is creating.’
There came the sound of many voices, men and women, old and young, talking, laughing, singing and shouting all at once.
‘Those are the voices of the imprisoned,’ the fairy said. The cacophony grew louder and louder, the din filling Issa’s head until she could bear it no more.
‘Please make it stop,’ she begged, and at once the noise was gone.
‘The more souls Keteth takes, the stronger he becomes and the weaker we are,’ the fairy said. ‘Baelthrom knows this, which is why he lets him live. Keteth must be destroyed to free the souls of the Ancients and all the others, and thus return the power back to us. This is no easy task. All who have tried have only destroyed themselves. His is a power that stretches beyond this life.
‘If you choose to do this and fail, he will take your soul for his own pleasures, and use your powers against us. If you succeed, you will be forever changed, for the souls he keeps will be released to you, and you must be strong enough to hold them. Then will the Goddess of the Dead take them from you, then will she know you are strong enough.’
‘Is this the test that has been chosen for me?’ Issa asked.
The fairy nodded. ‘I’m here only to help you. Your feelings are true. Cirosa is twisted. She believes she has chosen this impossible test for you. She believes you will fail - and you would fail, but she forgets about the secret of Karshur. This task, this test, was chosen long ago, but not by her, by Zanufey. It was I who planted the idea in Cirosa’s head, not the goddess.’
‘However, that illusion of your mother and Keteth, that was hers and nothing to do with the true test. That was only small, and yet she nearly succeeded in bringing you to him. See how dangerous she can be?’ Issa nodded and swallowed hard.
‘It’s lucky you have a raven to guard you,’ the fairy smiled encouragingly. ‘I know how hard this path and awakening has already been for you because I have watched from the ethereal planes. So much pain and death… But it will make you strong and hard, just do not let it take your heart. It was I that visited you when you were in the storehouse of Kammam, so you do have friends watching though you cannot always see them.’
‘…True friends can be found in the most unlikely places…’ Issa breathed, thinking of Edarna’s words as she remembered the being of light that had visited her.
The fairy smiled. ‘Edarna is an intriguing being. I feel she still has a part to play in your future. Keteth ceaselessly searches for you. He knows that you know true life should be eternal, and if he cannot claim the dead then he has no power. The Night Goddess calls for the lost souls he has enslaved. The time has come for them to be freed, and for that to happen, so too must Keteth be freed. It’s up to you whether you accept this task, and thereafter accept the mantle of the Night Goddess.’
‘Tell me more of his power,’ Issa asked, hoping to unravel Keteth’s secrets.
The fairy looked at her with wide unblinking eyes, and her voice fell to a whisper as if afraid she would bring evil upon them by speaking.
‘He could follow the souls of the recent dead and bring them back, often without their consent and against their greater wishes. This frightened people, but it did not stop them paying him, sometimes huge sums of money, to bring their loved ones back. Such was his compassion for their suffering he was unable to deny their desperate pleadings,
and he did as they asked, often refusing the payment.
‘Look,’ the fairy said, and within the shimmering oval, more images formed.
Issa saw a tall and slender young man with mousy-coloured hair. There was an old woman pleading at his feet, sobbing and tugging on his trousers. A pitiful sight. The young man covered his face with his hands, and after a moment nodded with slumped shoulders.
‘But those he brought back were not right,’ the fairy continued. ‘They were themselves truly, but they did not want life anymore. They did not want to return to the living because they had decided to go, and so they returned as angry souls, denied their rightful rest with the Great Mother. Their bodies, weakened by the process of death, did not function properly, and their minds were fragmented. But the grieving people that knew of Keteth’s gift, and the consequences, still came to him to return their loved ones.
Issa saw the decaying body of a little boy beside the young Keteth. Confused dull eyes looked out from the hollows of his skull, grey skin patched with the shadows of death stretched over his young face. He staggered around helplessly on legs stiff and unbending. She put a hand to her mouth at the horror of it. The old woman instead laughed with joy and embraced the boy in her arms, seeing only a loved one returned to her.
‘Why did he continue to do it?’ she asked.
‘Because he could not bear to see the pain of those left behind,’ the fairy said, her face was sad. ‘When he began to refuse, in their grief the people became angry and threatened him, and so he continued until he could bear it no longer, unable to make the dead whole and healed. Then they began to hate him and cursed him for bringing back such monsters. They wanted to burn him as an evil necromancer. So he fled, but they followed. He reached the ocean, and having nowhere else to go he swam away and disappeared for a long time.
She looked upon the stick thin form of a young man, gaunt-faced like the dead he had raised, a terrible grief burning in his eyes. Aimlessly he wandered along a shingled beach, clothes in tatters that whipped around him. The sea was as grey as the sky above, and for one awful moment, she was struck at how like the Shadowlands the scene was, how like a Forsaken he seemed - outcast and bereft of hope.
‘The Immortal Lord saw within Keteth what he wanted in his followers; the desire that makes one fearless, and the power to transcend death. But Keteth would not heed Baelthrom’s call, believing himself the stronger, believing himself the god. Baelthrom tried to kill Keteth for refusing his dominion, but Keteth evaded him in the Shadowlands, and Baelthrom could not follow. In the end he let him live, and instead used him to further his own plans.’
‘What if I face Keteth and fail?’ she said.
‘If you fail so do we. Unless another Raven Child is born, Baelthrom and his immortals will win.’
‘I’ve seen death many times,’ Issa said, her voice was hard. ‘I’m not afraid to stand before it once more.’
The fairy’s eyes filled with hope as she spoke. ‘You will go where none can help. The Shadowlands made you strong, Child of the Raven.’
Issa sunk deep into thought. How on earth could one such as she ever face such a monster, let alone defeat it? She was not ready or strong enough.
The fairy seemed to read her thoughts. ‘You are stronger than you realise, and your strength grows every day. You have already walked a dark path, but still more will be asked of you, and sometimes it will be so dark that even the path itself disappears. Keteth is the master of trickery, but your faith in yourself and Zanufey will guide you. You will hear her voice in your heart like a light in the darkness.’
‘The battles I saw?’ she remembered the dead in the river.
‘You saw what you might become, and what may come to pass,’ the fairy explained.
She was suddenly suspicious. Could the fairy also be a trick?
‘Why do you help me?’ she asked, eyeing the fairy. The fairy looked at her, though did not seem angry.
‘Because I choose to. Here in the World of Spirit I can help you, but back there in the incarnate world, I must hide. I cannot reveal myself to you, not yet. You have to trust me, or not as you see fit. I too am in danger,’ she was about to say more but seemed to change her mind.
‘Come, there are things that we must do whilst the sacred waters still flow in you.’
Issa relaxed, the fairy seemed genuine, and she couldn’t find a reason not to trust her. At the fairy’s motion mist formed and surrounded them. It felt cool like water and became so dense they could no longer see each other. When the fairy next spoke she sounded a long way away.
‘We pass into a different realm now, an Elven Shadowland if you will. No human can go there, and certainly nothing that lives. You carry the mark of the Shadowlands, you can go there for a short while.’
Grass formed beneath her feet and the mist thinned, but never cleared completely. They were in a forest, but everything seemed immaterial; the trees were not solid, but hazy and ghostlike. She wondered if she could walk right through them. She shivered, feeling the desolation of the Shadowlands gnawing once again at her, unfathomable sadness and hopelessness threatening to drown her.
‘I prayed I would never return,’ her voice trembled.
‘I’m sorry, I did not want to bring you here, but what we seek is too important,’ the fairy said, also shivering.
‘Keteth can come here then?’ her heart began to pound at the thought.
‘Keteth searches for it, but he hasn’t found this place, yet. It’s secret, a place of Forsaken elves. But when Keteth finds it their souls will belong to him. It’s the only Shadow Realm in which I may tread.’
‘How so? Why only here?’
But the fairy did not answer, and a tall ghostly figure passed them by, his sad empty eyes looked right through them as if they were the ghosts and not he. He was slender and fair with long pointed ears and large almond shaped eyes. He intrigued her, she had not seen many elves on Little Kammy, but the utter desolation in his eyes made her shudder and look away.
‘They cannot see us,’ the fairy said. ‘Well, some can, those who had the Sight. To them, it is we who are ghosts.’
They hastened through the trees and came to an abrupt stop before a willow tree that had materialised out of nowhere. It stood out from the others, for it was more solid and real, and its long elegant leaves were green and full of life.
‘Another willow? Just like the one in the sacred mound,’ she said and went closer to inspect it. The fairy seemed surprised at her words.
‘Some things we see traverse all the realms - what we see in one world also appears in another’ the fairy said. ‘The willow, like the raven, is beloved of Zanufey.’
As soon as the fairy had finished speaking, the raven alighted on a branch above her. She parted the trailing branches and walked towards the trunk. The leaves acted as a curtain creating a veiled space around the tree. She stroked its rough bark only to gasp as the bark moved apart under her touch and a hole appeared.
‘What do you see in there?’ the fairy indicated to the hole. She didn’t seem surprised at what had happened.
Issa looked into the hole and stared in shock at the dagger lying there. It glowed brightly and magic exuded from it, magic that had a deadly purpose. It was beautifully made from ivory, and the hilt to tip was all one piece. The blade was not straight, but undulating into a wicked point. It looked incredibly sharp. She recognised this dagger, it was that same dagger she had held in the sacred mound.
She reached into the hole and grasped the hilt. It was cold in her hands, and she felt its vengeful power wrap around her, testing her. A sharp pain stabbed in her head. She heard the raven flapping above her and thunder rumbling. She felt the White Beast move in the distance, and her head throbbed.
‘Keteth fears the dagger more than anything,’ the fairy whispered. ‘We must not linger lest he find us in this place.’
Issa took the dagger from the hole and looked at the exquisite carvings of elven faces upon it.
&nb
sp; ‘The faces of those slain,’ the fairy said. ‘This is “Karshur’s Dagger,” or simply “Karshur”. Karshur was one of the elf survivors of the Dark Wars, a very powerful elf wizard. He crafted the dagger from the bones of those murdered by Keteth, including most of his family. He ground and moulded their remains together, unified in death.
‘He worked in the darkness and asked for Zanufey’s blessing as he wove a powerful magic into it, the magic of undoing and death. Some say he crafted into it his very soul. Now it sings for vengeance, sings with the voice of the slain, but it alone cannot kill Keteth and someone must wield it. Here in the Elven land of the dead, he hid it from Keteth. Few know of its existence, believing it lost. I alone know where it’s hidden because I helped Karshur hide it here when he died. None other than elves and their cousins the Ancients may touch it and live.’
Issa looked at the dagger in her hand, she was no elf, yet she had not died.
The fairy smiled. ‘Other than, of course, the person he made it for. Either you are Elven kin, or for you the dagger was made. Looking at you, I would assume the latter.’
Issa stared at the dagger. A cold shiver ran down her spine as the gravity of her task sunk in.
‘Such yearning for destruction, whether good or ill, is dangerous. You must not be with it long or it will consume you. Now you have the tools for your task, we must return to the living world. If you fail, the dagger will return itself here and await another who is strong enough to wield it. If you succeed, then the souls are free and the power that was Keteth’s will be yours to command. Hide it from mortal eyes, for it is a thing of great desire.’
Issa wrapped leaves around the dagger and stuffed it into her pocket. The willow tree disappeared.
Night Goddess (The Goddess Prophecies Book 1) Page 33
