Darkness Beneath the Dying Light

by R. T. Donlon

  SECRETS TOLD TO KEEP (PRESENT)

  The sky had never seemed clearer than it had during those passing midmorning hours, yet as Curala watched Kyrah vanish into the jungle, he thought nothing of the day’s clarity, continuing only to pry his aching body from the palace’s concrete landing. A strange vulnerability emerged after such a strange defeat.

  The Laeth girl, he thought. There’s something very strange about her, something dangerous…

  His train of thought cut away—the hatred dripping from her eyes, the pull of something radiating from her chest. It had all felt wrong then…and even more so now.

  He sat up straight—perpendicular to the landing—with his knees against his chest. Shooting pain resonated from his bare cheek where Kyrah’s hand had collided with bone. That particular spot throbbed menacingly, pulsing each time he pulled inward for breath. He ran a hand up to it and rubbed it gingerly until the pain quietly dissipated. For a Portizu Warrior of his stature, the pain of such a battle—win or lose—was never the issue. It was the embarrassment of it all—the fact that he had lost, the idea that he had stained the Shuth name, even if only in the presence of the gods.

  Curala raised his eyes so that the footpath stretched outward into the jungle’s edge, squinting against the beating sunlight. He could still identify Kyrah’s shifting shoulders against the backdrop of jungle, but barely—her legs scissoring wildly as she sprinted away.

  Yet, amidst the shame and ravenous anger of defeat, a single thought kept rising to the surface of his mind. She could have killed him if she had wanted to. She could have left his corpse at the front of the palace for all of the Highlands to see. Of all the people he had ever met—virtuous and evil—no one amongst the Portizu had ever shown enough strength to do such things, let alone a young and inexperienced girl from the North.

  When had she changed into this? Where had she found such strength? he thought.

  He had known Kyrah Laeth of the North as he had known all the Laeths. Although the last time he had seen her she had been a little girl, giggling and running playfully amidst the border trees of the Northern jungles. He had never had much contact with her, however, but the fact that he had traveled lengths of Portizu lands by her father’s side meant they were always in close, daily proximity of each other. He had watched her train. He had seen her work the attack and meditation poses—and she had become unnaturally good at them—but nothing as powerful as he had just witnessed.

  The strength.

  The power.

  I must report this to the Chief, he thought. If there is something happening here, he must know about the danger. Kyrah will need to be handled.

  That final word rang true. He spoke it again and again, rolling it over against his tongue, savoring it—handled. Even then—as much as he would relish in the finality of the Laeth bloodline—it felt wrong, misplaced. The Laeths were a Portizu Warrior family of great standing! How could he even ponder such murderous thoughts about a family of such reputation? Yet, he clung to the idea like a blanket on a cold night, accepting it, refusing to let it go.

  I must tell the Chieftain.

  Kyrah’s figure finally disappeared into the blackening shade of the jungle, leaving Curala alone in the odd quiet of another empty Portizu afternoon. To his left, a pocket of insects buzzed wildly at a base of clustering shrubs. He could see their wings fluttering through the dust, creating a swarm of cluttered, consumed branches. Shade Moths were a nuisance, no doubt, but they kept the venomous long-toothed wasps far off into the jungle. That was what really mattered. Somewhere in the wood to his right, a jungle cat screamed its predatory howl. Gone were the days he felt any instant boost of adrenaline at the onset of these primitive sounds, but as he listened closer, a bit of bloodthirsty nostalgia made its presence known in the depths of his mind. He missed the days of the Hunt, of killing, of taking.

  Nostalgia seldom overcame him, but he closed his eyes and allowed his thoughts to clear, allowed himself to be immersed in its glory for once.

  Surely the Chief will see no grounds to take action against the girl, Curala convinced himself. How could he? Her father has proven to be such a valued diplomat of the North, even after losing his wife, no less…and now losing Velc? Surely he will not take action. So how can I prove my case? How can I show the Chief what I now know of Kyrah?

  Chief Ultara, as astute as he could be, usually needed quantifiable persuasion in order to move forward with overwhelming decisions such as these. Curala understood this about his Chief better than most. If he were Chief, however, things would certainly be different.

  And he understood that better than anybody.

  Slowly, he picked himself up from the ground. Every bone seemed to creak in the process of shifting his legs out from underneath him. His entire right side lit aflame with agony, but he relished in it—the neural throbbing, the harsh breath of lungs under duress.

  If one can overcome pain, he thought, one can overcome anything.

  He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly—inward, then out.

  Give me the strength, god of pain, he prayed. Oh Turisic, give me the strength!

  Despite his mind’s desire to favor his new clutter of injuries, he forced his legs to walk gracefully to the palace doors and stand straight against the wood frame. He knocked two times with the butt of his fist—clear and succinct. There was a shifting of locks, the lifting of bars, and the hollow knocking of spears against themselves as a row of guards behind the walls took up arms.

  A small, almost unnecessary eyehole flipped open, exposing one shifty eyeball.

  “What have you come for?” a deep voice bellowed through the Eldervarn wood. Each syllable carried well—a soldier of stature. “State your intent.”

  Curala cleared his throat, upright against his oddly unbalanced feet.

  “Intent?” he called. “I am Curala Shuth—Right Arm of the Portizu Chieftain. Do I need intent to enter my home?”

  There was a curt clearing of a throat.

  “You must pardon me, Right Arm,” the guard spoke. “We rely mostly on voice at the Front Gates. I didn’t—”

  “It is alright,” Curala spoke, quickly calming his own rising tone, “but you must do better. The Right Arm should not have to explain himself upon returning to his home.”

  “Of course. Thank you, Right Arm. Thank you,” the guard mumbled.

  “Open the doors,” Curala continued. “I seek counsel with the Chieftain immediately.”

  How much power my standing holds! Curala thought. If the Right Arm cannot convince the Chieftain, who can?

  The Eldervarn doors swung open, revealing a series of spear-clad men and women self-separated into two unique lines—one on either side of an obtrusively long corridor. The Portizu Chieftain had piled enough Highlands guards into this one hallway to pillage most of the Portizu Lands in one, grand march. To anyone who entered the Highlands Palace, it would seem certainly excessive and overcrowded, but in the eyes of Chief Ultara, it was more than needed in a time when Shadows had returned to the lands of the Light.

  The guards huddled together in order to make way for Curala, breathing heavily against thinly-veiled armor and broad shoulder plates. Shuth took several steps inward, each step met with a new guard mumbling Right Arm and bowing into minjori as he passed.

  He enjoyed the popularity, the constant respect. The guards knew their place and he knew his—the candor of Portizu charm.

  “Where is the Chief right now?” he asked.

  It was straightforward enough to demand a particular response. One was bound to answer.

  “In his Study,” a guard halfway down the hall spoke.

  No one turned to the sound of the guard’s voice. All maintained strict eye contact with the Right Arm. A few guards behind Curala even gripped their spears tighter with sets of anxious fingers, which sent a barely-noticeable, egocentric smirk stretching the corners of Curala’s mouth. He knew the influence he had on these guards—the aura of intimidation he emitted here
in the Palace—and yet, he chose to present himself more regally than he needed to, refraining from the misuses of power accustomed to a man of his stature.

  “If you are to sufficiently protect our Chieftain, you must stop thinking of me as a predecessor and, instead, think of me as an ally,” he spoke. “The Right Arm is only as effective as the trust he holds in his Warriors. Tell me,” he continued, squaring his shoulders to the men behind him. “Do you trust me?”

  There was a brief pause—no shifting of eyes, no shuffling of feet.

  “Yes, Right Arm,” they roared, but there was a particular sort of concentrated fear in their response—a fear that kept the guards steadily in a state of dependence.

  Good, he thought. They will listen.

  There was nothing he could say to dispel the authoritative intimidation he had spent years cultivating, but he could at least ease their minds with a few encouraging words.

  A superior force can never succumb to that of the weaker, his Teacher had said, but the strong make others stronger. Never forget that, Curala.

  A Teacher’s lessons never truly leave a student’s ears.

  “I hope that you will continue to make your leaders proud,” Curala continued. “Myself included.”

  He turned from them satisfied, walking onward toward the King’s Study, continuing to pass endless waves of guards who all mumbled the same term of respect from half-opened mouths. He turned a corner into an atrium filled with only diagonal rays of sunlight. They bathed the tiled floor in golden-white hues, flooding the room with a warming glow.

  I am far enough within the walls, he thought. Here, I am free.

  If he had not spent most of the last decade finding his way through the maze of the Chieftain’s Palace, he would have considered himself lost, but the success of his job had consisted mostly of locating the Chieftain wherever he may be at any given time. He had unprecedentedly become an expert at finding his way through this particular labyrinth and, as a result, he could calculate the most efficient way to Ultara’s Study in a matter of moments.

  “Welcome home, Shuth,” a shadowed figure called from across the atrium. “I assume your trip east went smoothly?”

  This was an older gentlemen, garbed in a swath of graying cloaks. The loose-fitting material covered his left shoulder to the curve in the muscle. It followed his torso down to the left pectoral, passed the abdomen, until it reached the hem of another bit of fabric across his waist. The man appeared to be middle-aged, although Curala knew that Merasda Trena had lived no less than eighty-five years. Dark hair streaked with lines of silver pulled back against his neck. It fell just above his shoulders and was kept there by a thin headband, so thin that Curala had not even noticed its presence. The glare from the tiled floor bathed him in an eclipse-like glow that forced Curala to turn away from the windows.

  “The East is a hostile place,” Merasda spoke. “The City of Light is surrounded by growing Darkness.”

  Merasda scoffed at his own words, the thought of such naïveté in the hands of the Light Kingdom.

  “Must we do everything for them? The Ix’a Scouts call themselves fearless, but we seem to be the Warriors with most to lose, are we not?”

  Merasda approached the Right Arm with his hands intertwined at his chest, resting motionlessly just above the torso. An aura of calm suddenly filled the room. Perhaps the man’s eyes had something to do with that. He raised them to meet Curala’s from thirty feet away. The auburn irises seemed to glow against their glossy white backdrops of tissue. The man’s presence alone demanded a certain archaic respect.

  “It appears that we are on our own as it pertains to the Wall,” Curala said.

  Merasda kept his gaze fixed, unwilling to move.

  “The Portizu have always been independent from the Light King and yet, without us, the Light Empire would crumble like sand against a wave. He has never seen that. Blind. The truth is—they will never appreciate what we have to offer, but you can be certain that if the Darkness ever threatens our lands, we will fight until we defeat them…or until we die…whichever comes first. There is never any in between,” he said.

  The Right Arm shifted his hips, bowing into a heavy minjori pose, which came as more of a surprise to the older man than anything.

  “I am blabbering. I have been doing that a lot lately. Forgive me,” continued Merasda. “But you are the Right Arm of the Portizu Chieftain. I am merely an errand boy compared to the power you hold. You should not be offering the minjori pose for an old man like myself.”

  Curala pulled back slightly, not surprised by the humility, but indeed, taken aback by Merasda’s fierce honesty.

  “You were always vested in my best interests,” Curala responded. “If there is one person in this world I will offer my best bow, it is you, Merasda.”

  The old man lowered his head in recognition, then allowed a thinly-veiled smirk to pop at the corner of his mouth.

  “When you speak to the Chieftain,” Merasda continued, “make certain you spare no details. He deserves to know the truth about the East. The Wall will not hold forever and, if it falls before Al-We can do something about it, then we will no longer be the people we once thought we were. Whatever you have seen, you must be completely honest in its dangers.”

  Curala felt the surge of Merasda’s conviction almost instantly. He also knew the man was right.

  “It will be the first point of discussion,” said Curala. “The Portizu must be strong against the dangers of the world. From what I have seen, we will have no support in this.”

  The fact that the Right Arm had returned from the East before the Great Hunt celebrations had even commenced seemed unusual. He had not been expected to return for weeks, but the atrocities of the Light City, the urban poverty of the Brack trade routes, the overtaking of the Burning Lands—all of it had nearly sent him clear into disparagement. No one could return from such a trip still clinging to a hopeful future. To the East, only tough times awaited.

  “The Chief seeks diplomacy with the Eastern states, but you have seen what I warned him of many years ago, did you not? There is no diplomacy to be had in those parts,” Merasda continued. “Just remember—you may be a witness to these things, but I saw it as it began. I must live, as you now must, knowing what lurks just below the horizon.”

  Without another flicker of silent, saddened emotion, Merasda hinged into a delicate minjori pose. His entire body seemed to work in unison, flowing elegantly into a matrix of floating limbs and anchored weight. The Right Arm did the same, watching as Merasda retreated back into the darkened hallway behind him until he was out of view.

  “We will talk soon,” the old man said, “until then, speak only truth to your Chief. I do not envy the decisions he will be forced to make.”

  Curala only nodded as the faint glimmer of Merasda’s presence dissipated into the corridor. He had offered Curala more than words or advice. He had offered the Right Arm a clear sense of purpose.

  Do not forget your purpose, Curala thought only to himself. Merasda’s fears are calculated and founded—no doubt—but Kyrah, if not stopped, will bring the Darkness quicker than the destruction of the Wall ever could. You must focus on the girl. All else can wait.

  And with that, the Right Arm fluttered down the hallway toward the Chieftain’s Study. Another pile of guards held ground against the King’s closed doors opposite the tightening corridor. These young men and women seemed different, however—empty.

  The taerji, thought Curala. Emotionless. The emptying of self.

  “Stop,” spoke the guard closest to where he stood. “State your purpose. I will listen only once.”

  “Very good,” spoke Curala. “A Guard of the Chieftain must take no chances. You have been trained well. From the Mountains, I presume? I appreciate your commitment to the Portizu values, but I am the—”

  “I will not ask again,” the guard repeated.

  Curala lowered his brow, lowering his eyes along with it. A spark of anger roared int
o flame within his chest.

  “You will step aside and allow me to enter. I will not speak of my matters in the presence of the Guard. My message is for the Chieftain’s ears only.”

  The guards stood as still as leaves atop an Eldervarn tree on a breezeless day.

  “No one is allowed to enter the Chieftain’s Study. The King made his wishes abundantly clear.”

  Curala had suppressed his anger enough. It bubbled quietly somewhere at the base of his throat, forcing his voice into a coarse version of itself, deeper and corroded.

  “I am the Right Arm,” he spoke in the lowest growl he could muster. “Let me in.”

  The guards shifted not one inch.

  Curala pressed his hands into fists so tight that the inside knuckle of each hand popped under its pressure.

  “Very well,” continued Curala. “If this must be, it must be.”

  He unsheathed the longsword from the leather across his shoulder blade and let it swing over him, coming to a halt directly in front of his eyes. The metal glistened in the post-atrium sunlight, burning brightly against the stern eyes of the Chieftain’s guards. There were twelve of them altogether—six on the right grasping at spears and six on the left reaching for swords at their hips—staggering into a formidable front.

  Curala stepped forward, sword cocked against his right shoulder.

  Another step.

  Then another.

  “However this ends, the Chieftain will hear my message. Surrender now and I will forgive you for your transgressions,” urged Curala. “I will not speak again. This will be your final warning.”

  He crouched into bended knee. The half warouw pose allowed him to move effortlessly, flexing thighs and stable calves protruding from his legs. Only the truest of Warriors knew how to master the warouw. All Portizu learned it, but few could truly adapt to its true purpose. The guards assumed the weri attack stance almost naturally, prodding the air in front of them with spears and swords only inches now from Curala.

  Two steps, then swing, he thought. Force them into the first attack.