A Darkness Forged in Fire

by Chris (chris R. ) Evans

  "Really, sir? Only fifteen?" Rage gave Alwyn a courage he never thought possible. He stood up a little straighter and looked the elf right in the eye. "The corporal failed to protect the Prince's tent, after all, surely that deserves the full twenty?"

  For a long moment, the major held Alwyn's stare, then he turned his back to him. "Arkhorn," the major said, "we move out in twenty minutes. You know the drill—see to it that the troops in your section have all their equipment. I don't want them shucking something they might need later just because it's heavy and the weather is hot. And make sure they all drink a full canteen of water. It's easy for a soldier to lose his head in this heat."

  Alwyn glared at the officer's back and something inside him snapped. To hell with all of it! He reached out a hand to grab the major by the sleeve and was hit in the stomach by a full canteen of water, knocking the breath out of him and collapsing him to his knees.

  "Not a problem, Major," Yimt said, walking over to stand between Alwyn and the elf. "I'll make sure they all stay cool."

  The major turned slightly and looked past Yimt and down at Alwyn, his face giving nothing away. His one hand clutched at his chest as if holding something against his heart, then he spun on his heel and walked away. Alwyn was still gasping for breath when Yimt turned around and hit him on the forehead with the palm of his hand, knocking him backward onto his butt.

  "What'd you do that for?" Alwyn asked, tears coming to his eyes. That angered him even more, and he propped himself up on his elbows, ready to stand up and take a swing at the dwarf.

  Yimt leaned down and brought his face in close to Alwyn's. The eyes that had seemed forever twinkling with mirth and mischief were now cold and clear.

  "That was to knock some sense into you," Yimt said, his voice cool. "What do you think, you can just quit? We're out in the middle of the wilds now, lad. Oh, I know what they say about the ‘Little Mad One,' but let me tell you something, I've survived a lot worse than this when others around me got put in the ground. Life's bloody tough," Yimt continued, jabbing a stout finger into Alwyn's chest. "It's about time you grew up and got used to that. Out here, you don't just turn in your kit and scamper off to mother. Out here, you're either one of us, or you're one of them."

  "One of who?" Alwyn asked.

  Yimt shook his head in disgust and stood up. He shouldered his shatterbow and rested his hand on the hilt of his drukar. "The dead. Ask Meri." With that, he turned and walked away, leaving Alwyn feeling more alone and unsure of anything than he ever had in his life.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The regiment marched because it was ordered to, but it was clear from the outset that they weren't going to get far.

  They were mentally and physically exhausted, a fraying rope unraveling before a coming storm.

  Soldiers saw faeraugs in every shadow. So many leaves and vines were bayoneted that someone, probably the dwarf, quipped their new nickname should be the Iron Gardeners. Derisive shouts of "prune the bastard" echoed up and down the line. The elfkynan atop the muraphants had their hands full keeping the beasts in check, waving their feather goads furiously and no doubt wishing they had something a bit more substantial like a good piece of wood. Soldiers shied away from the clearly agitated animals, and the column was continually stalling. Even then, Konowa thought things would soon calm down until he watched Jir stalk and pounce on a waving leaf, his hackles raised and an unsettling growl emanating from deep within the beast.

  "We'll lose more men if we keep this up, sir," Konowa finally said, waiting for the Prince to explode in anger. To his surprise, the Prince only nodded, his thoughts clearly somewhere else.

  Konowa ordered the regiment into laager. The remains of the afternoon were used to slash and burn vines to a hundred yards out on all points of the compass. A single, large bonfire of dead undergrowth was lit in the center of the camp, and several smaller ones spread out on the perimeter as darkness fell. No faeraug was going to get anywhere near them, not tonight.

  Satisfied that all was in order, Konowa found the tent some soldiers had erected for him and crawled into it. He pulled the shako from his head, undid the top button on his jacket, and gave in to exhaustion.

  Konowa stood before a single silver Wolf Oak in a forest. The tree stretched so high above the other trees that he had to crane his neck to look up at it. Its leaves swayed gently in a cool breeze while a fat, glowing moon sparkled across its bark.

  Oh, hell, he thought, another bloody dream.

  It wasn't the birthing meadow this time, but it was somewhere within the Great Forest, and it was night. He tensed, knowing it would only be downhill from here.

  A year alone with only a bengar to talk to had not been easy. A lesser elf would have gone insane confronting the horrors he faced night after night, both real and imagined. Then again, a lesser elf would not likely have started hunting the hunters, slaying them in his sleep with such force that he often woke with his throat raw from screaming his battle cry.

  Thunder shook the leaves, flickering the moonlight over the forest floor. A single strand of lightning stitched its way across the night sky, heralding the coming storm. The forest flooded with fear. The trees cried out, filling his mind with their terror. It was chaos, so many voices all clamoring to be heard, to be understood, that he despaired of ever making sense of them, so he tried to shut them out.

  A new voice entered his mind, but unlike the others, it was calm. More lightning lanced the darkness, but the voice soothed the storm of voices. Konowa relaxed. He looked again at the great silver Wolf Oak before him and knew it to be the little sapling cub from the birthing meadow. How is that possible? he wondered. Even as he watched, its branches spread out like a great web above the forest, shielding the lesser trees from the fury of the storm.

  Lightning stabbed down. Crackling white showers of sparks flew high into the air wherever a bolt struck home, tearing large chunks out of the Wolf Oak. It swayed, its voice faltering for a moment in its pain, but then it called out to the forest around it. The trees responded, lending their strength to it, and the Wolf Oak grew taller and stronger still, and the storm roared in futile fury as it beat itself to pieces against the protector of the forest.

  The moon reappeared as the last of the storm clouds rolled past, revealing the silver Wolf Oak before him. It stood straight and tall, unmarked by the storm. Ice trickled down his back. This wasn't right. An elf stepped from behind the tree, her hands outstretched toward him.

  "Is it not beautiful?" the Shadow Monarch asked, Her eyes black with frost fire.

  Konowa stumbled backward, tearing his eyes away from her to look at the silver Wolf Oak. The tree began to bend, its silver bark flaking, revealing the thick, black ichor underneath. Branches twisted in on themselves as their leaves brittled, their edges shearing into jagged points. Its voice called again to the forest, but it was no longer calm and caring.

  "Why do you resist?" She asked, looking back lovingly at the stunted tree. "I saved it, and I can save you."

  Konowa's voice barely made it out of his throat. "Do you not see what you have done? It's an abomination. It should be destroyed." He kept moving backward, but no matter how fast he walked, the scene before him remained in place. His breath misted in front of his eyes and he began to shake. The Shadow Monarch began coming toward him, her hands reaching out to him, her fingertips alight with cold, black flame.

  Her hands drew closer, the flame rising with each step. Konowa reached for his saber but found his own hands too cold to open. He looked back as She leaned forward to touch him—

  He was flying high above the trees. It was a glorious, wonderful feeling. He spread his wings and sailed higher on a warm updraft. The wind thrummed along his feathers in a luxurious sensation of freedom as he realized he was a sreex.

  Martimis. He was Martimis. It was such a pleasant surprise that he accepted the sudden transformation and reveled in the simple joy of it.

  He was free. He looked down at the forest below and alre
ady it was dwindling to nothing. The wind infused him with a matchless energy, and he knew that if he wanted, he could fly to the top of the sky and wheel among the stars. But even as he contemplated the idea he knew that he would not.

  The answer was literally stuck in his craw—he was flying the message from Rallie to her editor in Calahr. The need to do it made him wonder if magic compelled him, but all he could sense was a constant sadness. Konowa wrestled with the concepts daily, but a sreex? This was a dream unlike any he had ever experienced. It seemed as if he was really flying, even as he was dimly aware of being asleep on the ground hundreds of miles away.

  The sadness Martimis felt was strong. Instinct told him things were changing. Prey ran tantalizingly into the open as he flew overhead, but he would not hunt. He only accepted food from her now. It was safer that way.

  Dark clouds loomed off to the east and he banked away, letting his body slip through the air in perfect freefall before righting itself and once again riding the warm updraft that let him conserve his energy. Movement caught his eye and he turned to look behind him. There was a cool pain in his breast that should have meant something to him, but he was a sreex, and it did not hamper his flying, so he ignored it.

  He pumped his wings and lifted his head and howled, letting the sound fan out through the air. This was freedom. The clutter of life that littered the forest could not reach him up here. He momentarily opened his feathers wide to let the sound of his own call vibrate over his skin. He could find prey as small as a swallow this way, but there was nothing to find. He was thankfully, mercifully, alone.

  He turned back to his course and flew on, his thoughts simple and clear. Rallie cared for him, protected him, and all too rarely, let him stretch his wings and fly. So he flew to the place he must go, opening his mouth to let the wind cool his throat, and did not see the closing shadow of claws and teeth and hunger from a cold, distant past.

  He wasn't dead, but sometimes he wished he was, if only to get some rest.

  It called to him in his dreams every night, and even though Viceroy Faltinald Gwyn knew it shouldn't be, it was.

  It had no mouth, nor heart, nor even a brain, yet he heard its cries, and more to the point, he understood them. Night after night it cried out, and he had no way to escape it, not unless he destroyed it, and that was something he would not do, for it was power, power untapped, and he had uses for it.

  At first, he ignored the plaintive calls, not believing they were real. Then he found the body of one of his retainers crumpled at its feet and he knew otherwise. To ignore it was to invite mayhem throughout his palace in the capital of Elfkyna, and finding good servants was not easy. So the Viceroy tossed in his sleep, tormented by a voice that should not exist.

  The silk sheets of his canopied bed twisted about his body. He dove deeper into sleep, invoking a mind trick he had picked up from a blind fortune-teller. He imagined a black tear in the air in front of him and stepped through, conscious as he did so of the slowing of his heart. It didn't help—its calls following him relentlessly. He created tear after tear, each one smaller and darker than the last, his heart barely beating, his breathing all but undetectable, yet still its calls followed him through to the other side. He had never plunged this deep into the abyss of his mind and it both thrilled and terrified him even as plaintive cries reverberated throughout the maze of his subconscious calling him back.

  The Viceroy gave in to the inevitable and swam back up through the darkness of his mind. It was a slow, thick process, but he was strong, and the voice was a beacon guiding him with unwavering purpose. He became aware of his own body, felt his heart resume a steady beat, air pour down his throat as his lungs refilled and he was back in his bedchamber in his palace. He sat up at once and wrenched the sheets from around his naked body, disgusted to find he was covered in sweat. He shot a withering glance around the room, taking in the cool blue glow cast from several radiant gemstones set in wrought silver chalices. Their purpose, beyond luminescence, was to moderate the temperature in the room, keeping it cooler than the steamy air that plagued this land. It took him another moment to realize that they were performing as they should, and that the sweat that beaded his bald head and pale skin was induced by a magic far beyond the gem's simple spell.

  It was calling him again.

  It was hungry.

  Gwyn slid out of bed and moved smoothly across the cool marble floor of his bedchamber to the red oak door set in the stone wall at the opposite end of the room. He placed his right hand on the burnished brass doorknob and felt the vibrations of energy pulsing on the other side.

  It was several moments before he turned the knob. When he did, he did so with a quick flick of his wrist and strode into the room as if greeting a hundred heads of lesser states, no matter that he wore nothing but the armor of self-righteous belief in his own powers.

  The air in the room hit him with physical force, heavy with cold and something colder still. There were no lanterns or luminescent gems, and the only window was shuttered with iron bars, yet he saw clearly. The single object that stood in the center of the room was illuminated by a silvery light of its own making. It was the thing that had chased him in his dreams and would be heard.

  The dragon table.

  In his service to the Calahrian Empire, the Viceroy had amassed a large fortune in gems, paintings, amulets, and every kind of native bauble and finery that he'd wanted, but this was something else again. That it had been the previous Viceroy's spoke volumes, especially now that that elf was transformed from the dead into Her Emissary. Clearly, the table was far more than simple wood.

  He watched it carefully. It stood silently, as all tables should, yet in his mind it cried out to him with thunderous force. Its leafy dragon head shimmered, the claws of its carved feet clutching the stone like meaty prey, and he had the unsettling feeling of prey being stalked.

  "Enough!" he barked, and the voice in his head went still. He walked around the table, trailing a hand along its edges, feeling the depth of its need. Knowledge. It craved information the way he sought power.

  "Knowledge is power," Her Emissary hissed.

  To his credit, the Viceroy started only half as violently as he had the last time Her minion had paid him a visit. He composed himself as best he could, achingly aware of his nakedness, and turned to face the shadowy specter of his visitor.

  "These parlor tricks of yours are growing thin," the Viceroy said, staring down his nose at the twisting shadows at the other end of the room. "You might try knocking one of these times."

  "She grows impatient," Her Emissary replied.

  The Viceroy felt his face flush and was surprised to realize anger was replacing fear. "I am not some ox to be led about by a nose ring. I am the Viceroy of the Greater Protectorate of Elfkyna."

  "So was I."

  The shadows that made up Her Emissary surged toward the table, snaking over and around it. A voice screamed in the Viceroy's head, sending him reeling into the cold stone wall.

  "Stop it!" he yelled, clutching his temples as the scream rose to a crescendo then suddenly abated into a contented murmur. He took his hands away and shook his head. The shadows coalesced back into something resembling an elf, a black limb gently stroking the edge of the table. The room was still cold, and Gwyn was still scared, but something had changed.

  "You will feed again soon, my ryk faur," Her Emissary said.

  The voice was jagged steel in his ear, yet there was a hint of something else. A lesser person would have understood immediately, but the Viceroy prided himself on being above the need for affection and other weaknesses.

  "Your ryk faur?" he asked. "You were an elf of the Long Watch?"

  "Fool! I am dyskara, I am one of Hers."

  The Viceroy had not until that moment realized the Shadow Monarch's minions bonded with Wolf Oaks as well. Interesting…

  "I don't understand; what happened?"

  The shadowy form said nothing. He wondered if it hadn't heard him a
nd was about to repeat the question when it turned its head toward him.

  "She demands sacrifices for the good of all…"

  The Viceroy himself had said something like that in countless negotiations on behalf of the Queen of Calahr, but only now did he realize how chilling those words could sound.

  For a moment he considered turning from this path, aware that he was committing treason if he went any further. But was it really treason? As the ruler of the Calahrian Empire he would forge a mighty alliance with the Shadow Monarch, creating an unassailable force in the world. The things he could do with that power…

  "She has nothing to fear from the Imperial Army. No aid will flow to Luuguth Jor to impede your work there."

  "You make claims rashly, Viceroy."

  The shadows that made up Her Emissary's shape bowed low over the table. The temperature in the room began to fall and soon the Viceroy was shivering.

  "Unlike you, I have seen to it that nothing will interfere with my plans."

  "Like me before you, you have failed to account for him."

  "You're wrong there," the Viceroy said, shaking his head. "The Duke of Rakestraw has been bought off."

  It wasn't laughter, but the sound that echoed off the walls had the feel of it, if laughter were thrown daggers.

  "Feed it and see."

  He was nonplussed. "What, just start bringing in elfkynan for it to kill? What will that do?"

  "You do not yet understand its needs." There was a sudden scrabbling at the barred window. Her Emissary raised a jet-black shadow like an arm and pointed. The iron bars shot from their slots across the room like shrapnel, the metal ringing off the stone walls with terrific force. A moment later something brown and hairy hopped into the room, folding large membrane wings as it did so to fit through the window.

  It was a dragon, but unlike any the Viceroy had seen before. Its body was too thick, its neck too short, and its wings too wide for it to be any of the species that populated this land. And then he understood. It wasn't that the dragon was out of place here; it was out of time. It had been created when brutal, primitive savagery had reigned.