Elder Shadow (The Reminiscent Exile Book 5)

by Joe Ducie

  The Clock screamed as I cut it in half.

  But then the Clock would, being the complainin’ fateful sumabitch that it was. I needed the petals—to bring Clare back—and severing the Clock was the only way to unmake the Degradation.

  The scream rode the edge of the wind, and, for all I knew, echoed across the vast, bountiful realms of Forget. A near-silent scream of mercy unheeded, of regretful fury. The radiance of the petals seemed to die as my sword passed through the fragile, timeless stem.

  I caught the Clock before it fell to the barren rock, while Tal’s terrible laughter echoed in my ears. The thorns cut my fingers and lacerated my palm. The pain stung like all hell, but considering the crime against creation I’d just committed, the pain was bearable.

  The ground began to shake. Torrents of liquid flame burst forth through the dust across the harsh horizon, setting alight the blizzard of blossom petals. The sky ignited—a million million petals caught alight. The rose was heavier than it should have been—worlds heavier, boss. It shook in my grasp, in its death throes. I quickly sheathed the Roseblade to hold the Clock steady with both hands.

  It was over and I had won. But the cost, as always, was a defeated victory. With Atlantis’s power source severed, the Degradation would disperse, there was that, and the Story Thread would recover, given enough time.

  ”You… you utter fool.”

  I turned and stared at Morpheus Renegade. He was ashen and shaking, stumbling toward me with arms outstretched. Foamy blood and spit oozed from his mouth and ran down his chin. He was insane—I could sense it, smell it on him as if it were a disease. Perhaps I hadn’t beaten him here, after all. Perhaps travelling through the shield of Degradation had clawed his sanity away in one foul stroke.

  Or perhaps…

  ”You touched it, didn’t you?” I asked, gesturing with the Infernal Clock. “It drove you mad.”

  ”Do you know what you’ve done? What you’ve unmade?” He drew a long, thin rapier from the sheath at his belt. His once-shiny armour was splattered with gore and coated in slick dust.

  I raised a glowing palm. “Stop.”

  His sword shimmered and thick coils of dark flame spun around the metal, narrowing to a slender point. “You think to command me, Hale? This is my city—that is my prize. Give it to me!”

  He thrust his blade forward and a ball of crackling energy burst across the space between us. I waved my hand and deflected the bolt skywards, into the fray above. The burnt orange sky was tearing itself apart now, and glimpses of fresh blue firmament were seeping in. Atlantis was falling through time, as the Degradation died.

  Renegade and I fought, moving back and forth across the plateau. In one hand, I held the Infernal Clock and in the other, a pool of luminescent smoke.

  In my mind, there was only one thought, one urge: Kill.

  Clare’s dried blood on my hands and in my clothes drove that urge.

  I embraced it.

  Renegade moved in close, swinging his slim sword and howling for my head. He closed the gap between us, making it next to impossible to fire off a shot of Will, as all my time was used to weave between his deadly blows. A large man, but old, Renegade used his size to force me toward the edge of the plateau.

  I tried to redraw the Roseblade, but was too slow.

  Renegade’s hand closed around my arm, and he pulled me harshly to the side as he reached for the crystal rose. I slammed my fist into his face, cracking my knuckles, and we separated. His blade cut a thin line through my shirt and across my chest. A line of blood blossomed through the fabric.

  ”Ha!” Renegade roared, sensing an advantage.

  I ducked low as he swung in again, and I slammed the pommel of the Roseblade against his leg as I drew the crystal sword, dropping him onto one knee against the stone. He whipped his sword around, aiming for my neck, but I lunged back a step.

  Our blades caught—the Roseblade cut through his weapon like a hot knife through butter.

  His rapier shattered, and Renegade was left holding a hilt attached to a few inches of warped steel. He looked stunned.

  I sensed my advantage—

  Tal giggled.

  —and drove the Roseblade through his chest plate and into his heart.

  The enchanted sword slipped through the king with little resistance. I snarled, breathing hard, and forced the cool crystal to the hilt into his chest. Two feet of bloody blade thrust from his spine. Renegade fell back with me atop of him, driving us both down onto the plateau. The Roseblade cut through the stone and pinned him to the tower.

  His arm, still clutching his ruined rapier, jerked up and pierced my belly with three inches of blunt, melted steel.

  Oh.

  A torrent of hot pain blossomed, like so many roses unfurling, and ran up my side.

  Shit.

  ”That was for Clare…” I groaned, rolling off Renegade and pulling his broken rapier, embedded in my gut, with me.

  I struggled a bit with the blade, but that only turned the stinging pain into something sharper, so I stopped.

  I stood but immediately fell to my knees, as men pierced by swords are wont to do.

  A glimmer of satisfaction seemed to shine in Morpheus Renegade’s eyes, and then nothing shone there, save the reflected bursts from the reality storm bombarding the city.

  Grinning like a lunatic, Renegade died first, pierced upon the Roseblade atop the highest point of the highest tower in the Lost City of Atlantis.

  ”Good riddance,” I said and yanked his sword from my stomach with a cry that sent me reeling away across the plateau in blinding agony.

  Wounded but still clutching the crystal rose, I watched Tal’s ghostly form approach me. Her smile was gentle and sure. Vicious rips in the very seams of reality crackled like lightning across the sky and through the burning ash fall. I was heading full circle toward death, the puzzle all but complete.

  Tal half-caught me and half-dropped me on the very edge of the Infernal Clock’s ruined dais. I could see down over the edge, into the sharp vortexes—the reality storms. I was catching glimpses into the Void. Perhaps there would be nothing left, once the Degradation dispersed completely, and Atlantis was thrust back into proper time, onto the Plains of Perdition. That was a happy thought.

  ”Here you are at the end, Declan. Was it as good for you as it was for me?”

  Her pale hands found their way to my side, attempting to stem the flow from the sword wound. My blood seeped through her flesh, slow but steady. I couldn’t look into her crimson orbs.

  ”Did you want this to happen?”

  Lord Oblivion smiled through Tal’s eyes. “Now you’re catching on.”

  I moaned and closed my eyes, still clutching the Clock which was supposed to grant eternal life. So why was I dying slowly with nothing but the shade of a lover and one of the Everlasting for company?

  ”Have I done more harm than good here today?” I asked the unseen god.

  ”That remains to be seen, Knight. You have forced change after ten thousand years of relentless stagnation. The barriers between Forget and True Earth should fall. Creatures not seen in the genuine universe since the Dawn of Moment are stirring.” It paused. “So you may rest now. Do not fight the eternal sleep. Die well in the knowledge that, for the smallest fraction of time, you held the greatest power in all creation. The power to destroy it.”

  ”I’d rather a glass of scotch, between you and me.” I tried to laugh but coughed up a little more blood instead. “Let me speak to her.”

  Oblivion paused, perhaps contemplating my request. “As you wish.” Some of the blood seemed to fade from her eyes.

  Tal stared at me and said nothing. Could she really hear me? Or was the Everlasting just playing games? After everything, did it make any difference if it was her or not? Tal’s death, my death, the battles lost and won. All things said and done, what could I possibly say that would hold even the smallest scrap of purpose or meaning? Goodbye, of course. Goodnight, sweetheart. We were j
ust lonely rivers flowing to the sea, to the sea.

  ”Did you see a future for us, Tal?” I asked, but she only stared. “Did you see us waking up together? Smiling in the morning? Did you see us laughing and growing old? Did you see me loving you even more for every morning as the years flew past?” I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Boy, I sure did.”

  A sigh that was more of a wince brought me close to tears.

  ”Please say something.”

  An arc of wicked purple lightning tore the heavens apart.

  ”Oh well. Songbird, I love—”

  Tal pressed an ethereal finger against my lips. Her eyes, the eyes of a Knight, blurred from harsh crimson to soft, pepper brown. For a heartbeat, or the moment between, she was mine again in mind, body, and soul.

  ”I know,” she whispered, and vanished like smoke on the wind.

  All things said and done in truth.

  The world didn’t end, after all, but that did not seem so important under the burning cobalt sky.

  I played the whole thing on my internal film reel, the wall of the cell in my mind, trapped within my memory, played each moment of the whole dire affair. If nothing else, my possession and imprisonment allowed for crystal-clear recollection. I could hit play and watch it as I remembered it—as it had happened. No possibility of self-deception here. This death felt so long ago now, but was barely two years in time’s true measure, as they like to say at the Atlas Lexicon in Switzerland. There was something, something I had missed at the time, true measure or no, something important to now.

  In my first few weeks in the past, in the vibrant city of Atlantis, after unleashing the Peace Arsenal, I had had a dream—a dream that was real, in a way. A dream of Clare Valentine, who had died hard under an army of vicious deadlings to get me through the Degradation. Necromancy, one of the unshakeable degradations of the universe. In that dream, Clare had told me… what had she said? I felt like it was connected to the here and now, as well. Her words. Or connected to what could be my only chance in this mess.

  Felt like I could connect it, if that made sense.

  ”You’re running out of time,” she said and plucked another sunflower from the soil around her grave. “And you’re not paying attention. You’re missing the obvious.”

  Missing the obvious. I did that frequently, it seemed.

  Yes, I believed now that I had—but what was obvious to her was still a mystery to me. I played the next memory, the one where I died and Emily was revealed to me as the Immortal Queen of the Renegades—and, little did I know at the time—as one of the Everlasting and, despite her part in killing me, one of my greatest allies. Such was the convoluted nature of our entanglement, our affair, our love. Even in death, she was still helping me.

  Dying alone now, I had time to think about all that happened. What made sense and what did not.

  Lord Oblivion had played a long game, it seemed, forcing me back here with a need to destroy the Infernal Clock. I never would have done that five years ago, not for anything. But to stop the Degradation and save the Story Thread… The Everlasting had played me like a fiddle. I’d done exactly what It wanted. And now the consequences were unknown and unfathomable.

  You have forced change…

  I sure had.

  The pain in my side was fatally grim but bearable. I had a view away to my left of the city, of the reality storm forcing it through the ruins of the Degradation and across time to the Plains of Perdition. All my work was undone, but for the right reasons. To my right, Morpheus Renegade still grinned at me from where he was pinned to the stone by the Roseblade.

  ”Quit smiling, you bastard.”

  My vision blurred, but I caught movement from the far side of the plateau. I tried hard to focus. Someone, dressed all in white, emerged from the staircase that led down into the spire. A tall person, familiar.

  She moved across the tower—purposeful, soundless footsteps—and paused when she reached Renegade. Carefully, she closed his eyes with her hand and ran her fingers along the golden hilt of the blade stuck through his heart, and then continued on to me.

  I thought about playing dead, but I was close enough to the real thing to make little difference.

  The Immortal Queen lowered herself to her knees next to me and brushed my blood-soaked fringe out of my eyes. She sighed and removed her mask.

  ”Oh… you bad girl.”

  Beholding the face behind the porcelain, I felt all the blades—real and emotional—dig and twist just a little deeper. I was still alive enough to feel like an idiot.

  ”Would you like a sweet?” Emily Grace asked, offering me a bag of strawberry bonbons.

  ”No, thank you.” I took a shallow breath and kept a hand pressed against the wound in my side. “I’m sweet enough.”

  ”You killed my husband.”

  ”I told all of you that I would, in Ascension City.”

  ”Yes… but he has killed you, too.”

  A lot of things fell into place, through the hazy pain. “I suppose you were the one who left Tales of Atlantis on the beach for me to find. Was it only half a week ago I watched you dance at Paddy’s? How did I not know it was you, Emily?”

  The Immortal Queen shrugged as she rested one hand on the small roundness of her belly, her unborn son, if prophecy was to be believed. “You didn’t want me to be anything but what I was. A friend, someone to flirt with, and the promise of something more.” She tsked. “Declan, you don’t get to have that.”

  ”No, I suppose not.” I unclenched my fist and let the Infernal Clock fall. It struck the obsidian plateau with a dull chime. “Same old mistakes, hmm. Brand new ways. Like loving a woman you can’t have… hoping for a future that will never come.”

  ”The eternal trap of desire, yes?”

  The Clock petals unfurled and fell from the bud of the flower like the shards of a broken glass. “Will you… will you take one of those to Clare Valentine? Bring her back, please. She didn’t deserve to die. Not like that.”

  Emily glanced at the crystal flower stem, hunger in her eyes, and snatched it up. She stood, gazing just beyond me at the city ablaze, a mile below. “Is that what you want, Declan? A last request?”

  Her face was blank—she may as well have been wearing her mask again. “It is,” I said carefully. “Please.”

  She glanced back at Renegade, then back at me. “Then it gives me great pleasure to see you die unsatisfied, Shadowless.”

  The Immortal Queen jammed her heel into my wound and, with a cry of exultant triumph, kicked me over the edge of the plateau and into the open air a mile above the burning city. Petals from the Infernal Clock scattered as I snatched at her foot and missed.

  I fell.

  I fell hard and fast, the wind rushing past my ears and stinging my eyes. Like a ragdoll, sodden and bloody, I fell through burning cherry blossoms riding the edge of the reality storms.

  The ground rushed up to meet me in a final embrace—

  A bolt of sizzling silver light, a strike from one of the tears in reality, struck me in the chest a split second before I was splattered in the dust. My entire form convulsed, and Atlantis disappeared.

  The Void consumed me.

  And there is was.

  Trapped in my mind, a prisoner of Oblivion as much as Tal had been, I saw it. Saw what I’d missed. I blamed the booze. I’d been drinking heavily at the time, but there it was. The picture was obvious, all said and done.

  The Dawn of Moment, I thought, and the eternal trap of desire.

  Huh.

  I may have a chance, after all.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ANOTHER CRAZY DAY

  ‘So just drink the night away and forget about everything, he said, and then the conversation devolved from there—into an intense trumpet solo!’

  I’d been thinking so hard on bending the future to my will, using the past and the path torn across the Void through to Atlantis ten thousand years ago, that I’d missed the obvious.

  Q
uirinus and Saturnia had, in every conceivable way, given me the help I needed to defeat their children. Which was such an alien motivation that I couldn’t conceive of a possible reason for that help—I’d no doubt suffer for that lack of imagination down the road, but for now, I had to act. Had to influence, as best I could, Lord Oblivion of the Everlasting.

  Fair Astoria’s mantle of power, my mantle, was a vast swath of territory within the Story Thread. Universes and worlds, rightful guardianship of those worlds, a resolve to stand as their protector.

  That sounded pretty damned intimidating, but I was a Knight Infernal. I was king of the Knights Infernal, and I’d been protecting the Story Thread since before I needed to shave. So some ancient and powerful mantle had fallen on my shoulders? I already had any official stamp I needed in that regard, borne within the crest of the Knights Infernal.

  Still, that mantle. I reached out to it now, broke my promise not to touch it, as easy as breathing, as easy as accessing my Will power, as easy as knocking back that first drink at the end of a long day (or the beginning of one), and embraced the responsibility.

  In that illusion within my mind, that grey-metal cell with the dark windows and the cold floors, a book appeared in my lap. A heavy tome, creaky spine and scented like vanilla, mown grass, the earthy smell of old paper and parchment. The book was heavy, vast, weighted more than it should have been given that it wasn’t really there, but then things were getting pretty shaky in my mind now.

  Cracks had appeared in the walls of the cell again, and dark-light, sort of a glowing oil, shone through the cracks. They were widening, rupturing, by the minute. I decided I needed to know what the hell was going on, so I asked.

  ‘What is that?’ I asked Oblivion.

  The Elder God heard me and considered his response as we travelled across the Void. Inky blackness on all sides, but the path was clear. We were heading to True Earth, to the heart of all creation. We were heading to Annie Brie and, I hoped, Tal Levy. They could protect each other, and Tal knew all of Oblivion’s tricks. She could stay a step or two ahead, give me time to act.

  “Your mind fractures,” Oblivion said, and dismissed the severity of that. His voice was an abomination to the Void, wholly dangerous, but it attracted no Voidlings. None of the millions of unseen creatures that called the space between universes home would dare approach him in his wroth. “It is… unfortunate. Rarely, but it has happened in the past, our vessels are capable of rejecting our divine presence. To the point that the host body, your body and your mind, begin to unravel. Our time together grows short, however the dice fall today.”