“What is this place?” she asked, her voice filled with wonder.
“This is the Hall of Kings, burial place of my ancestors,” Libuse said. She spread out her hands to indicate the stones. “Here lie the ancient rulers of Sloczka. At one time this was a place of pilgrimage, but the Empire discouraged pilgrims and allowed the hall to fall into ruin.”
“Why have you brought us here?” Jerome asked.
“Because you are in no condition to fight,” Libuse said, “and the Ploughman wished that you both be kept safe until the battle was over.”
“And you are to stay, no doubt?” Huss asked. Libuse lowered her eyes.
“The Ploughman wishes it,” she said.
“What if the battle turns against us, and even this place is lost?” Jerome asked.
“Then it seems to me that there is no more fitting place for me to die,” Libuse said.
“We could escape back through the tunnels,” Maggie said. “The tunnel leads out to the river.”
Libuse nodded, and said, “Yes, and if the enemy should come here then you all must try to escape.”
“What about you?” Maggie asked.
“If the battle is lost,” Libuse said, “it means that the Ploughman is lost. If that happens, I will not run from death.”
“Yet you would send us away like cowards?” Jerome asked.
“For the good of all,” Libuse said. “Someone must survive to continue the fight. You possess such belief—belief in a holy king, in a final end to tyranny. That hope cannot die here.”
“You can say such things, and yet you do not yourself believe?” Huss asked.
Libuse looked away. “I am not sure what I believe. Only what I wish I could.”
From somewhere close by, the sounds of battle reached the ruin. Jerome’s fingers opened and closed on the hilt of the sword Maggie had given him. “I should not be here. It is a shame to hide while the battle rages,” he said.
“Is it a shame to protect someone you love?” Maggie asked, turning to face him. He looked deeply at her for a moment, and said,
“No.”
“The master needs your protection,” Maggie said. “And as you are holding my sword, so do I.”
Jerome chuckled, a deep, throaty chuckle, and he seemed to stand a little straighter. “You are right,” he said. “Of course you are right.”
They stopped talking at the sound of a shout, and they turned to see a figure entering the ruins.
“Get out of sight,” Jerome said. Huss and Libuse obeyed. Jerome stood behind a pillar with his sword drawn, waiting for the figure to come close enough to be identified. He didn’t look like a soldier, but even so, there was no telling whether he was friend or enemy.
Maggie broke the stillness. “Nicolas!” she called. With a barely noticeable sigh of relief, Jerome sheathed his sword.
Huss stretched out his hands in welcome, rising from his hiding place near one of the tombstones. “It is good to see you again, boy.”
“And you, sir,” Nicolas said. He looked embarrassed and Huss chuckled.
“No need to be nervous,” he said. “We won’t make you explain your disappearance, or anything else you don’t feel like talking about.”
“What are you doing here?” Maggie asked.
“Haven’t you heard the shouts?” Nicolas asked. “I came looking for you to tell you—we’ve won! The Ploughman has driven the High Police from the castle. They flee the city even now. The battle is over.”
Their exclamations of delight died suddenly as a strange sound made its way through the pillars of the burial hall. It was the sound of drums beating in the distance… a slow, ominous beating. A death march.
Jerome pulled his sword out and held it ready, his brow knitted in concern. Libuse held her spear, her head high, listening. And Nicolas crouched slightly, his own slim sword in his hand. They waited.
A shadow fell slowly over the hall, covering it in darkness as though dusk had come—hours and hours too early. Maggie felt her heart beating harder with fear, and her eyes strayed to meet Nicolas’s. They had felt this shadow before, this creeping, numbing fear. The ravens and the hound both had carried it with them.
* * *
The victory celebration had ended as abruptly as it had begun. The people of the city stood outside the gates of Pravik Castle, their eyes fixed on the horizon where clouds gathered. The rebel soldiers had fallen completely silent. They watched the darkening skies with drawn, bloody swords.
Evil was coming, and every man and animal among them could feel it.
The drums beat louder.
A shadow, deeper than the already dark sky, fell on the street just below them. There was a blinding flash, not of light but of darkness, and for the first time the Ploughman beheld his new enemies.
He was facing a giant, a creature in the shape of a man with bull’s horns and eyes that burned, and a mouth that grinned hideously. The man-thing held a black mace and an equally black sword, almost invisible against quivering black wings. He roared as he stepped inside the walls of Pravik.
Behind him came the bone-chilling howl of a hound. The shadows of winged creatures flew over the walls, screaming with hatred and glee.
Once again, the battle was joined.
* * *
Chapter 14
The Peace of Death We Break
It is only a fool who writes while he is dying. Yet I must… I must. This pen is my only friend, and I do not wish to die alone.
There is so much pain in dying. I did not know it would feel as it does.
I am Aneryn. I am the Poet. I am the Prophet. I alone remember…
The Blackness whispers through the Veil. It threatens such terrible things. But now there are other voices. Is it truly the Shearim I hear? They comfort. But their voices are so faded.
Gone now.
The trees are very green. The ground on which I lie is very black, and it is tangled with white roots. It is hard and smells like a thousand days gone by. It smells like my childhood.
Have I ever been a child?
I am Aneryn. The Poet. The Prophet. I wish…
Birds are flying overhead… great white flocks. Perhaps in the end they will take me away with them. But I do not want to leave. I do not want to go.
It hurts to die.
I can see a light, very far away. It is opening in the sky and its rays fall on me. They have just touched my fingertips, and now they move toward my face. Perhaps I will not die after all, for everywhere the light touches I am healed.
I am strong. I am peaceful.
I am Aneryn, the Poet; I am Aneryn, the Prophet; I am Aneryn, the Strong…
I have no ink left with which to write. My chronicle is over.
And I see him now. He is coming.
* * *
The Ploughman thought of Libuse as he fought. My courage. His spear made little dent in the armour of the horned warrior, and his horse bucked and threw him to the ground. He rose to his feet with his sword drawn and jumped out of the way of the creature’s crashing mace. He heard shouts. His men were joining him. He watched as the black warrior drove into them and brought them down as if they had been children. The Ploughman watched and gripped his sword more fiercely. Fury boiled in him and he attacked.
The horned warrior was stronger, but the Ploughman was fast. He ducked and thrust, weaving in and out, moving constantly, a fly annoying a man. All around him his people were falling; the battle was failing and he knew it. But for him, in this moment, there was only one adversary and one fight, one death to meet if he should fail and one victory to gain if he should win.
At last he stood with his feet firmly planted on the ground and lifted his sword to meet that of the enemy. The impact of the horned warrior’s blade shattered the Ploughman’s sword, and he threw the useless hilt aside and plucked his fallen spear from the ground. As his hand tightened around the smooth wood of the shaft, the flat of the black warrior’s blade caught him in the stomach and sent him fl
ying through the air. He landed on his back on the ground and struggled to breathe, to move, to do anything. The enemy’s sword slashed down. The Ploughman rolled so that the blade caught his arm. The wound burned, but it was not deep… the horned warrior was playing with him.
A huge clawed hand closed around the Ploughman’s throat and lifted him off the ground like a doll. The horned warrior drew back his sword, preparing to plunge it into his enemy’s limp body.
As blackness rushed in on him and pain threatened to overwhelm his senses, the Ploughman lifted his spear desperately and aimed blindly for the monster’s head.
And a strength not his took him.
A battle cry rang in his ears—his own voice, but in the echoes of it there were other voices—stronger, golden voices. It was not his strength that aimed his spear, not his strength that threw it; yet it worked through him.
Childhood delusions.
The horned warrior roared with pain and dropped the Ploughman. He landed in a crouch on the ground, fingers brushing the bloody earth. He looked up to see what had happened.
His spear had pierced through the eye of the horned warrior. With one last infuriated cry of pain, the creature staggered and fell. It was dead.
The Ploughman pulled his spear free and raised it high, screaming his battle cry over the streets of the city. He ran into the thick of the battle, and the earth shuddered at his footsteps.
* * *
They felt the hound’s presence before they saw it. They could hear the sound of it breathing, sniffing the wind, and they felt the deepening of the darkness as it drew near. Maggie and Libuse huddled closer to Huss, all three of them crouching behind a white stone while Jerome and Nicolas stood in the open, waiting. The sound of the creature’s approach filled the ruined hall with dread.
In the blackness of the shadow, the white pillars of the hall seemed to glow with a light of their own, like ghostly moons in a starless sky. A howling rose up from somewhere close. Libuse rose slightly from her crouch, clutching her spear. The thread she had braided into her hair shone silver-white as star fire.
Nicolas saw it first. He ran forward, screaming defiance to the death that waited to meet him, and drove his sword deep into the hound’s foreleg before it could react to his attack. The hound growled deep and lunged forward without warning. Its teeth sank into Nicolas’s shoulder, and it shook him like a rag.
“Nicolas!” Maggie cried. Libuse had gone pale. Huss was sitting on the ground between them, his eyes closed and his face drawn.
Jerome leapt to Nicolas’s aid, swinging his sword powerfully at the hound’s side, He opened a long wound over the creature’s rib cage. Snarling, the hound dropped Nicolas and swung on Jerome, who sprang away from the animal’s snapping jaws.
Libuse jumped up and ran from their hiding place. She grabbed Nicolas and started to drag him away from the fight, when the hound caught sight of her. Its eyes flashed in anger at the sight of the princess of ancient days in whose hair the star fire dared to shine, and it turned from Jerome. He ran desperately after it, trying to draw it away from Libuse and Nicolas.
It seemed to Maggie that she beheld it all as in a dream, even as she left her place from behind the white rock and ran to her companions. She could hear herself shouting and yet did not know what words she used; she could feel the tears on her face but could not feel herself crying.
She saw Libuse throw her spear. She saw the hound shrug it away as though it had been a matchstick. She saw Libuse step over Nicolas and stand tall, the thread in her hair burning with light so pure and bright that it seemed to drive back the darkness where the princess stood. She saw the hound’s teeth glistening, she heard it roar, and she saw it leap forward…
And then she saw Jerome, though she did not know how he had come to be there, driving and twisting his sword deep into the hound’s neck while the creature was still in the air, and she saw the blood that evaporated into green steam and heard the sounds of the hound’s death throes.
As the hound’s writhing body fell to the ground, she saw its horrible claws bury themselves in Jerome’s chest, and she saw him falling under the hound’s weight, and she heard a sickening breaking sound.
She was at his side then, and he was reaching for her. The lower half of his body was under the massive bulk of the hound, but his hands were free and she took them and held them to her throat, crying. For a moment she felt his hands tighten around hers, and then they loosened. She bent down and kissed him, and he was gone.
Maggie felt Huss’s bony hand on her shoulder, and she felt Libuse slip her arm around her waist. But she stayed on her knees, holding Jerome’s hands, and cried soundlessly.
Then she lifted up her voice and sang a lament—an ancient lament, drawn from the depths of her heart where Mary’s song played, and in it was all the anguish and loss of five hundred years since the exile of the King, but for her it was all about one man.
* * *
Maggie ran. Around her and below her the city of Pravik was in flames. A battle raged the like of which had never been seen in five hundred years. She ran through the streets, not seeing the battle, not seeing the nightmare. She ran through the castle gates, up and up until she stood on the walls and looked over the boiling turmoil. The song was in her. The song ran through her veins. The song was wild and full of power.
The creatures of Blackness turned their heads to look at her. They began to move toward the castle, to beat their wings, and she saw it all in slow motion. They were coming for her. They were coming for the thing she carried.
“Can you hear me?” she cried. The wind took her words and bore them away to a hilltop where an evil blue light burned. “Your power is breaking,” she shouted, her voice strong because of the song. “It is drowned in the blood of those who die in honour!”
Still they were coming—scurrying up the walls, flying through the air. It would take them a million years to arrive, she thought. They moved so slowly.
She reached into her coat and pulled out the scroll. The shadow around her seemed to shiver. She unrolled the parchment—the scroll that had come so far, withstanding fire and water, the ancient testament to treachery. The song in her veins welled high, and with strength that did not come from herself she tore a piece from it and held it over the flaming city.
“For Mary,” she said. She released the torn paper and watched as it rose in the ash-filled air, drifting up with the smoke.
She tore another piece and let it go. “For John,” she said. The wind swirled and another piece rose on the air. “For Jerome.”
The last bit of parchment she held high before releasing it. “For the King!” she shouted. Her voice rushed along the walls of the city, danced up the eddies of the wind, and echoed through the hills and mountains of Sloczka.
When her voice died down, a hunting horn sounded long and clear through the sky. A flash of light like the birth of a star flooded the hills and tore through the darkness. The torn pieces of parchment burst into flames and burned, clear and white, until there was nothing left of them.
In that instant the creatures of darkness were knocked away from the castle. They fell to the streets, screaming in rage and fear. They turned on the soldiers, snarling, clawing. A goat-headed man bared razor teeth, raised its bloody black sword, and charged forward.
Its sword met the Ploughman’s. The rebel leader’s eyes blazed with fierce golden light. He pressed the goat-man back. He raised his sword to end the creature’s life. Around him his enemies closed in, yet it hardly seemed to matter. He was surrounded. The goat-man looked up at him with mocking red eyes, laughing. The Ploughman was outnumbered.
He would fail. He must fall.
His sword was still raised high, the goat-man still lay at his feet. He closed his eyes for a moment and looked up. He could see a single star shining.
He brought the sword down. In its wake a golden arc cut the fabric of the air.
In that instant the city was filled with pounding hooves and f
lowing manes; with golden armour and great white swords. The golden riders—horses and riders, from over the sea—drove into the forces of the Blackness.
The Ploughman fell to his knees, suddenly exhausted. He raised his eyes and tears flowed down his cheeks.
Here was his strength.
Here was his childhood delusion.
He heard shouts and whoops as his men renewed their strength and fought again, but he could not join them. He could only weep.
* * *
On the hilltop there was nothing but confusion. The feel of it woke Virginia from unconsciousness, even as she felt the fire underneath her grow with a vicious, cruel heat. She could hear Evelyn cursing and screaming with fury. In her mind’s eye she saw golden forces in Pravik and knew that the Blackness had lost.
Evelyn was fleeing the hilltop. Virginia saw the laird going with her, and she reached out to him, but he did not turn to look at her.
She saw Skraetock. He stood before the fire with his hands raised and his mouth twisted. He was staring into the flames. As he stared the flames grew hotter and higher, and she knew that he had used her enough and now meant to kill her.
She heard a shrieking as though there were yet spirits in the fire who had not taken form and flown to the city, and now they were dancing all around her. The sound and the searing heat nearly overwhelmed her, but with pain no longer controlling her, with Skraetock no longer binding her strength, she formed a word in her weakness through her cracked, blackened lips.
“Llycharath…” she whispered.
An instant later, a wind flung Lord Skraetock aside and cowed the shrieking flames. It tore the bars of the cage and carried Virginia away with it.
* * *
The battle ended with the coming of morning. The golden riders vanished with the first rays of the sun. Of the vanquished shadow creatures there were left only black stains on the cobblestones. Throughout the day the people of Pravik laboured to put out the last of the smoldering fires and salvage what they could of the ruins left in the battle’s wake.
Men and women from the surrounding countryside walked and rode into the city throughout the day. Mrs. Cook and Mrs. Korak arrived in the evening, bringing the stores of the farm’s cellar on a wagon behind them.
Worlds Unseen Page 25
