Sully’s burns mended, his flesh tingling as the ragged wounds knit themselves back together, the material potential within his tissues increasing, his healing factors redirected, quickened by the ministrations of accelerated Time. Pain faded as the starlight dimmed to black.
He opened his eyes.
Doctor Mallory crouched above him. Purple bruises bloomed under his eyes and broken nose, sweat and blood matting his hair. Sabrina was on her feet as well, surrounded by the children. Not too close, but close enough. Broonandag the Blunt was still down, sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, a cold compress aside his bony head.
Sully tried to form words, but his lips and tongue were swollen and heavy with blood. All he could muster was an embarrassed “Heh.” He swallowed and tried again. “Sorry. I rather thought I’d be dead about now.”
“It was not yet your time,” Doctor Mallory said gently. “You still have a role to play in the War Without End.”
“Brilliant. I feel ever so much better.”
“Demons are what they are because of pride, Sully. It wasn’t prepared for you to best it with an act of humility.” He leaned forward and offered another of his half-smiles. “Eleven years I’ve travelled this Path and I’ve yet to see anything like it. I do believe the Shadowmancers themselves would have been impressed.”
Broon rumbled. “Could’ve attempted it sooner, if thou desirest my opinion.”
“It’s still inside me,” Sully said. He sat up slowly. He could feel the thing entwined around his organs, coursing through his blood, substance and shadow fused more immutably than ever—one being now, truly—but its Will, its vicious black soul, was no more. He’d won. Dark Night and Deep Sea, he had won.
“I can feel it, but its mind is gone. I’m in control now. For good, I think.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what that means.”
Doctor Mallory reached out and took his hand. “I know exactly what that means.”
And for the first time since he could not remember when,
Sully didn’t pull away. He looked up at Sabrina and smiled once again.
“Sorry. I don’t terribly feel like snogging in the stewpot just now.”
“Damn thine eyes!” sputtered Broon. “My stewpot?!”
Sabrina laughed—a sob, really. She wiped her eyes and looked up at her brother. Only then did anyone realize that Doctor Mallory hadn’t retrieved the bal’geTh, still on the floor where he’d dropped it. Her smile was wickedly back in form.
“By my troth, dearest, you’d look a great deal more impressive if you weren’t standing there bare-arsed.”
Doctor Mallory adjusted his long shirttails and sighed.
“The next time I tell you to be nice....”
Outside, the storm weakened and began its slow march back to the sea, retreating as it always did before the coming dawn. Sully closed his eyes and listened. The dark chorus in his head was gone. The presence that invaded his every waking moment was gone. He was one of the Darkened now, as was Rowan Mallory, a soul bound to the shades of Morgana but not a slave of them. And the people nearest him would be safe. He could live with that.
If living was what you called it.
Copyright © 2010 Dean Wells
Comment on this Story in the BCS Forums
Dean Wells’s short fiction has appeared in Ideomancer, Demensions, Eldritch Tales, ShadowKeep Magazine, and The Nocturnal Lyric.
http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/
COVER ART
“Spring Sunset,” by Andreas Rocha
Andreas Rocha lives in Lisbon, Portugal, with his wife. He studied architecture, but after college his main occupation veered from architecture towards digital painting, something he had done during college as a hobby. He has been working freelance for three years now, doing conceptual and finished illustrations, matte paintings, and 3D architectural visualizations. See more of his work, including a movie version of “Spring Sunset,” at www.andreasrocha.com.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1046
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Copyright © 2010 Firkin Press
This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy and share the file so long as you retain the attribution to the authors, but you may not sell it and you may not alter it or partition it or transcribe it.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies #48 Page 4
