The City of Night Neverending

by Steven Lochran

  Naveer picked up his pace again, his feet scuffing the steps, but he didn’t speak.

  Joss could still scarcely believe that the man before him was real, that he was flesh and blood and bone and not some figment of his overstressed mind. But then, could Joss have ever imagined the fate that had befallen Daheed? Or the tragic role that his own father played in its demise?

  ‘How did you come to be here?’ Naveer finally asked. ‘This is the last place in the world I would ever expect to see you.’

  ‘It wasn’t the easiest journey. Or the most direct one,’ Joss said, and went on to explain all the events that had led him there. He spoke of the attack on Crescent Cove, the abduction of Edgar, the voyage with Qorza, the path through the Northern Tundra, the guidance of Salt, and the taking of his Bladebound Brethren.

  ‘Your Bladebound brethren?’ Naveer said, seizing on Joss’s turn of phrase. ‘I took your form of dress to be of Thunder Realm, but not that you were actually training to be a paladero. Is that really so?’

  ‘Would it be a problem if it was?’ asked Joss as they came to the end of the stairwell and stepped down into an empty antechamber with an iron vault set into its opposite wall.

  ‘No, I just never … it wouldn’t have been what I imagined for you, is all. It’s a world away from here. And a very different path.’

  ‘But that’s not want you want to ask me about. Not really. Is it?’ Joss said.

  Naveer flinched and faced the vault as he asked his question. ‘Your mother. She …’ He wavered, unable to continue.

  ‘She – didn’t make it,’ Joss said. ‘She saved my life. Even though it cost her own.’

  The revelation sent a tremor through Naveer’s body. But again he asserted control over himself, straightened his back, thrust out his chin. ‘She would have it no other way,’ he said, then added, ‘Here. Follow me.’

  He marched with renewed strength across the antechamber to the vault’s iron door. The lock thumped and grumbled as he unbolted it, then pulled the hefty metal door open. Joss approached with trepidation. What was in there? What he saw was the least likely thing of all.

  Rows upon rows of shelves had been filled with small clay pots. As bulbous as overripe fruit, they stretched on further than the eye could see, as dense as an orchard and just as deep.

  ‘What is all this?’ asked Joss, peering into the room but stopping short of actually entering it. Naveer drew close beside him to regard his handiwork.

  ‘My plan. Nearly a thousand pots of liquid fire, all filled by hand, ready to rip this island apart and send it tumbling into the abyss. And Ichor will never see it coming.’

  Joss saw the wild look in Naveer’s eye, heard the cold fury that frosted his words. It was enough to make even a half-starved tyrannosaur take pause. ‘You want to destroy Daheed? After all you went through trying to save it?’ he asked.

  ‘If I couldn’t rescue it, then the least I can do is put it out of its misery,’ said Naveer. ‘This was a beautiful place once. A place of learning. A cradle of civilisation. We filled the seas with vessels as swift as the creatures that inspired their designs. Taught the world to master the tides. Traded our way into our enemies’ good graces. We raised families, honoured our forebears, sang ancestral songs, told tales of times past, and feasted through every season.

  ‘There was a special magic that came with pulling into dock at twilight, just after the sun had set but while its afterglow still lingered. The water and the sky would be the same shade of indigo, a liquid mirror streaked with golden lamplight. Sailing home on nights like that felt like gliding into the crystal canals of Paradise itself. It was for all this and more that we were known across the seas as the Gleaming Isle.

  ‘Better it be remembered that way, don’t you think? Rather than this ruin, to be used as a sacrificial altar for whatever abhorrent blood magic that Ichor and his stone-faced accomplice hope to unleash? I’ve heard them call this their city of night neverending. I would bring it a fiery dawn.’

  Naveer’s gaze was a lighthouse beam, pinning Joss in place and burning away the shadows of doubt in his mind, his residual shock and dismay.

  ‘We would need to get the hostages to safety,’ Joss told him firmly. ‘All of them.’

  ‘And we will. After all, what better distraction is there than setting a torch to all your enemy’s plans? The chaos will provide the opportunity to liberate everyone before Daheed is granted its final rest.’ Naveer took hold of one of the clay pots and brandished it with purpose.

  Joss looked down the rows of shelves. He closed his eyes, pictured Daheed the way that Naveer had described it, the way he faintly remembered it. This was the place he’d been dreaming of all his life, the place to which he thought he could never return. A place that had died along ago.

  Joss opened his eyes. ‘Where do we start?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  A STARTLING REVELATION

  ‘WE’LL need to set the pots at these locations,’ Naveer said. He crouched and drew a map of Ichor’s camp in the dust on the floor, marking an X for every target. ‘If I’m correct, the chain of explosions will have multiple effects. First and foremost, they’ll provide the distraction we need to break out the prisoners. Secondly, they’ll safeguard our escape. But, most importantly, the force should be enough to destroy the sigils I marked out on the day when the vortex first appeared. With that done, the barrier will fall. And the island along with it.’

  ‘Won’t we drown if we do that?’ Joss asked.

  Naveer shook his head. ‘The barrier should recede slowly enough for us to retreat to the cavern where the pyrates’ submersibles are docked.’

  ‘You know about the harbour?’ Joss noted with surprise.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you never tried to steal a vessel and escape?’

  ‘They always kept too close a watch. It’s only recently that their security has grown so lax. But if we’re to have any chance now, we’ll have to make sure we get to the cavern first and secure it before Ichor and his men can.’

  Joss thought of Salt waiting down there, spear at the ready. ‘That shouldn’t be a problem,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ Naveer replied, dusting off his hands. ‘I have a lot of work ahead of me if I’m to get everything done before any more hostages are threatened.’

  ‘I can help,’ Joss offered, noticing how much closer he’d drifted towards Naveer as they crouched together beside the map.

  ‘Priming the pots is delicate and dangerous work. I wouldn’t risk you being injured. Better that you go back up to the main chamber and rest. You’ll need it.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Please, Josiah,’ Naveer said. ‘Trust me.’

  Joss chewed his bottom lip, flicked his thumb with his forefinger, shifted the balance of his weight to his other leg.

  ‘It’s Joss. Everyone calls me Joss. Well, most everyone.’

  Naveer seemed to turn the word around in his head, examining it with care. ‘Joss,’ he said quietly, his eyes flickering like twin flames. Joss watched them closely as he pushed again at the edges of his memory.

  ‘There are things I remember and things I don’t,’ he ventured. ‘I remember what must have been our house, with the fig tree in the front courtyard …’

  ‘And a bright yellow door, with wind chimes by the window,’ Naveer added softly.

  ‘That’s right!’ Joss said with perhaps too much excitement. Hunching back on his heels, he continued: ‘I remember sailing on what must have been your boat. I remember coming here to wait for my mother to finish her work and take me home. I remember her smile. I remember her last words. But of all the things I remember, I don’t … I can’t –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I can’t remember what I used to call you,’ he said. ‘Was it “Father”? Or “Darra”? Or –’

  ‘Actually,’ Naveer said. ‘It was “Paap”.’

  ‘Paap?’

  ‘You were young.’ A soft smile warmed Navee
r’s face. ‘Though you’d be most welcome to call me that again. If you like.’

  ‘It would feel strange to call you that now,’ Joss admitted.

  Naveer’s smile flickered with pain. ‘We can start with “Naveer” if that’s your preference,’ his father said. ‘And then work it out from there.’

  Joss nodded. ‘All right,’ he said.

  Naveer’s smile recovered its strength, though it was different from before. He rose to his feet and Joss joined him.

  ‘I have to admit, this isn’t how I imagined our reunion,’ his father said. ‘On the rare occasions that I would allow myself to imagine it, I pictured you as you were. Small and bright, full of wonder. I even dared to picture your mother returned along with you, my Isra, and that together we would be a family again. As if nothing had ever happened. The more time passed, the more foolish that felt, and it was too painful to keep hoping. Being trapped here has eroded much of me – many of the softer parts. Perhaps, when we’re free of this place, we can find a way towards that happy reunion, even if it looks a little different than I thought it might.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ Joss said, before they lapsed into a moment of strained tension. Should they hug, perhaps? It doesn’t feel right yet, Joss thought. And he didn’t want to force it.

  ‘I’m going upstairs,’ he said. ‘Let me know if you need any help.’

  ‘Of course,’ Naveer said, and again there was a moment of tense indecision as neither of them reached out for the other, broken only by Joss leaving for the stairs.

  As he climbed his way back up, he thought about all that Naveer had told him. While he had never considered it possible, he too had imagined what a reunion with his parents might be like. But this experience hadn’t matched those dreams in the slightest. Even with the tenderness that Naveer had ended up showing, there was something in his manner that set Joss on edge.

  Perhaps it was the rigid formality with which he held himself. Maybe it was the touch of madness that bubbled to the surface when he spoke of his plans for Ichor and his devotees. Or perhaps it was just that Joss was inherently suspicious of them finding each other again, in this darkest moment, when Joss so sorely needed an ally. What were the chances of such a thing? How could his fortune be so favourable, even with what Qorza had said about fate?

  He took a moment as he returned to the chamber to regard its emptiness. The cobwebs he’d noticed earlier heaved in the air like lungs suffering from a chest infection. Theirs was the only movement in the room, which looked untouched by any living soul, and yet Naveer said that he’d been hiding out here for years. Curious.

  Joss scanned the room, hand pressed firm against the wisp mark that had been nagging him ever since his arrival in Daheed. He took note again of the curving shelves, the piles of texts, the barricaded exits. But then, concealed among the stacks, he saw a door set discreetly into the wall by his right. A trace of green light was escaping from around its edges. Joss took a quick look back down the stairwell. He could hear a distant scraping and the occasional grunt, which he took to be Naveer hard at work readying the explosive pots.

  Satisfied that he could go ahead without interruption, Joss quickly crossed to the door. Its hinges squealed as he pushed it open, a cloud of dust pouring from its frame. A hallway awaited him on the other side, dark but for a few orbs strung from the walls to guide the way down its length. He took one step inside. And then another. No alarms sounded, nothing gave away his presence. He continued, passing the first of many doors that ran along the hallway. He tested its handle, found it locked, moved on to try the next.

  Every door he came to was the same, handles rattling in his grip but refusing to turn. He was questioning the point of all this effort, when he came to the second-last door in the hall and saw a brass key sticking from the lock. To his astonishment, the handle turned without resistance and he stepped into the room.

  Though dark, he could see it was a sizeable study with bookshelves lining the walls and an oak desk at the opposite end. Unlike the rest of the library, the texts here had remained in place thanks to the glass doors that fronted the inbuilt shelves, which had somehow remained intact. Joss recognised the Kahnrani script that decorated many of the book covers, though he couldn’t read it. That wasn’t a problem for the books that had been written in the Sleeping King’s tongue, with titles like Scrolls of the Ancients and Deciphering the Unknown.

  As Joss looked about the room he wondered why it hadn’t been sealed off too. What was he missing? It looked like a typical office belonging to any academic or senior librarian, though even dustier than the main room had been. A simple illuminator was perched on the edge of the desk, the kind of device that couldn’t be used for anything but playing back recorded images. Picking up the bronze ball, Joss pinched a nodule on its side and a rainbow of imagery burst from the device’s crystal projector. The first thing he saw was a baby, its skin the same shade of brown as his own, its smiling face bright and bubbly.

  That’s me! Joss realised, staring with wide-eyed amazement. And this must have been his mother’s office. The image then cycled over to one of his parents, which he recognised as being from their wedding day. It was the same moment that Qorza had shown him on her Scryer, with Naveer and Isra exchanging matching marital necklaces. Only now did it occur to him that he hadn’t seen Naveer wearing his, though perhaps he kept it hidden beneath his tunic. Or perhaps it carried too many painful memories.

  The image cycled again, back to the recording of Joss as a giggling baby. He watched it over, bemused to see himself so happy and carefree. When it cycled back to the footage of his parents’ wedding, he turned to investigate the rest of the desk, though he hesitated in disturbing any of the things on it. The way all the papers were laid out made it look as if his mother had just stepped away from her work for a moment. The idea came with an awful pang, like an instrument hitting the wrong note. Squeezing his eyes shut, Joss gave himself a moment to recover, then began sifting through the paperwork.

  Renewal notices. Event invitations. Official memoranda. The documents heaped upon his mother’s desk were both fascinating and banal, showing a life rich with duty. From the amount of correspondence and the respectful tone in which it was written, she looked to have been highly esteemed in her field. It gave Joss a bittersweet sense of pride, as well as a burning curiosity to know more.

  Beside the paperwork, he found two books. The first wasn’t written in the King’s tongue, or in Kahnrani, or any other dialect that Joss recognised. The script was a rough assemblage of blocks and dots, an early and forgotten language that would have surely been known to only a handful. The other was a journal, its every page filled with notes written in the most elegant and flowing hand.

  Joss touched the journal lightly. He turned its pages with reverence. He marvelled at the idea of it having once belonged to his mother, that it was where she worked through her ideas and research. And then, settling in as if to study a sacred text, he began to read.

  But there was nothing of personal significance to be found. No diary entries about her family, or her life on the island. Only the translations of old scrolls and obscure poets. Interesting though it may have been, it wasn’t what Joss had been hoping for. He was considering closing the book again when he came to the final set of pages, which had been titled The Rakashi Revelations.

  On the left was what must have been the original text – the Revelations themselves – written in the same indecipherable block-and-dot script as the book left open beside the journal. On the right were what appeared to be the same passages but now translated into the royal language. His curiosity piqued, Joss started to read.

  ‘From beyond silver seas, from out of blue skies, from the ruins of a lost life,’ the text began, ‘there will come a galamor.’

  The passage broke off as several suggestions to the meaning of galamor were scrawled in the surrounding margins: ‘saviour’, ‘protector’, ‘hero’. Each suggestion was coupled with a question mark, indicatin
g just how uncertain the possibilities were.

  ‘With right hand marked by fate, and carrying a vaartan rhazh –’ Joss paused again to read the suggestions for what vaartan might mean. ‘Victor’. ‘Conqueror’. ‘Champion’. And then, his hand now slightly trembling, Joss read all the words that rhazh could be.

  ‘Weapon’, the list began. ‘Sword’, it continued. ‘Blade’, it finished.

  Joss’s hand hovered over the final word before skimming back to vaartan, then bounced between the two before he came to the only conclusion that he could.

  Carrying a Champion’s Blade!

  His mind was spinning, his interest now honed to a razor-tipped point. He read what remained of his mother’s translations.

  ‘Only the galamor will stand when all else fall, and rise when all else kneel. Only the galamor can bring light to the oncoming darkness, and draw hope from a dying dream. Only the galamor, and the galamor alone.’

  Joss flicked over the page, found the next blank, flicked back again. He read the entire passage over and over, trying to piece together some kind of coherent picture. A saviour from across the seas prophesied to stand against some dark threat, armed with a Champion’s Blade, right hand ‘marked by fate’. Joss looked at his own right hand, palm scarred from his binding ceremony. Did all of this mean what he imagined it might? Or was it mere coincidence? And who or what was this Rakashi, and how much stock should be put in its vague prophecies?

  Deciding that Naveer might be able to shed some light on the matter, Joss picked up the journal to take it back down to the storeroom with him. As he passed behind the desk, however, the tip of his boot caught on something on the floor.

  Crashing painfully onto the polished stone, he landed on the bundle of rags and crinkled leather that had tripped him. Or at least that was what he assumed it to be. Eyes focusing in the dark, Joss saw what had been hidden away in here the entire time.

  He must have screamed. And it must have been loud. He could still hear his voice echoing out into the main chamber as he scrambled back against the wall as fast as he could, horror spreading through him. Within moments, he heard footsteps running towards him.