The Knife in the Dark

by D. W. Hawkins

  Seylia smiled back. “A bow just seems like a weapon better suited to a lady, especially a noble one like yourself. The sword is just so…masculine. It must be terribly disappointing for your father.”

  Seylia let out a titter, oblivious to the stillness that had seized the campsite.

  Shawna’s gaze was sharp enough to cut out her heart.

  “Let me inform you of something, you insufferable little harpy,” Shawna said. She got to her feet, eyes cool as she regarded the scandalized look on Seylia’s face. Her hand still gripped her sword in a way that made Dormael nervous, though he knew Shawna wouldn’t kill for such petty reasons. Still—it was best he do something to head this storm off before it could get started. He got to his feet.

  “Shawna, listen—,” he began.

  Shawna, eyes still locked to Seylia, punched him dead in the nose.

  He stumbled back, surprised as his face exploded with pain. Tears filled his eyes, and he tasted blood in his mouth. She hadn’t hit him overly hard, but the girl was so good with her hands that it had landed in exactly the right spot.

  Gods, the woman can throw a punch.

  “I’ve been suffering your little snubs, your underhanded comments, your covert disdain since we left Mistfall,” Shawna continued, not even looking at Dormael. “I’ve ignored them—and not because I fear the repercussions of confronting you, but because some things are just beneath a lady with any sort of honor. I’m sure you don’t understand, but that’s irrelevant. There’s only one thing I want you to realize, Seylia, dear.”

  Shawna whipped the blade of her sword so close to Seylia’s face that the woman started back.

  “If this were Cambrell, I would be well within my rights to demand satisfaction for the dishonor you have shown me—do you understand?”

  “Really, lady, this is unnecessary,” Seylia said, trying her best to laugh off the situation. Her eyes, though, were as wide as river stones. “It was only a jest.”

  “Empty, honeyed words won’t save you if I decide to carve up your pretty face,” Shawna went on, delivering the threat in a flat, direct tone. “Any scar across that delicate skin would just ruin things for you, wouldn’t it? How would you get so many men to lie with you if you were ugly? Certainly you don’t want that.”

  “Certainly.” Seylia’s tone was insolent, but she said nothing else.

  Shawna held her gaze for a moment longer, then sheathed her sword. She shot Dormael a guarded look, then turned away and headed for her blankets. Everyone sat frozen in the wake of her departure, the fire crackling into the silence.

  Seylia let out a nervous breath, then tried to cover it with a laugh. She looked around, as if to engender silent support, but found only the frustrated stares of the two wizards. Her mouth tightened, and she looked away.

  “You could have tried to help,” Dormael grumbled, hitting D’Jenn in the shoulder.

  “That little quarrel had nothing to do with me,” D’Jenn replied, giving him a flat look.

  Dormael shook his head, and made to sit back against his saddle. Seylia came and squatted next to him, wincing at his nose. She pulled a handkerchief from her jacket and began to dab at the blood on his face.

  “That was quite the performance,” she commented in a light tone. “A little barbaric, perhaps, but she made her point clear. I thought Cambrellian ladies were supposed to be poised and polite.”

  Shawna either didn’t hear Seylia, or chose not to engage with her—a thing for which Dormael was thankful. He only grunted in answer, and let Seylia clean his face as the pain in his head became a slow throb. He lit his pipe again, and puffed blue smoke into the night air as he leaned back against his saddle, letting his eyes fill with the stars above. His face felt like it was slowly filling with a strange fluid made of needles. He wished, and not for the first time, that healing abilities with magic were much greater than what they were. The thought of having a swollen face for the entire wintry ride to Gameritus made him simmer in quiet anger.

  It was a long time before he fell asleep.

  **

  Dormael stood on windswept hills.

  Waving, sand-colored grass stretched out in all directions around him, rolling gently with the lay of the land. The sky was a roiling mass of dark gray clouds, as if a storm was happening in the heavens that never reached the ground. The wind whipped through his ears, though Dormael doubted there would be much to hear without it. This place, wherever it was supposed to be, was empty as far as he could see.

  He had a moment of confusion, but he knew he was dreaming. His Blessing allowed him to dream lucidly—an ability that all wizards shared. He took a deep breath, and grounded his consciousness, sinking into the dream like a warm pond.

  He had been here once before.

  Dormael took a look around. He waved his hand through the waist-high grass, but it twisted away from his touch, as if it found his fingers repugnant. In the distance, toward what he felt was north, there were high, craggy mountains stretching all across the horizon. Their summits disappeared into the roiling haze of clouds above. Moving his head to look around left him disoriented, as if everything he saw rolled across his vision. It took him a moment to get used to the sensation.

  This was the armlet’s dream. Dormael remembered the stormy skies, the rolling hills, and the wind. The last time he had been pulled into the artifact’s dream, Bethany had been there, too. A nauseating wave suddenly ripped through the very fabric of the dream, sending Dormael to his knees as it passed. He felt like sicking up in the grass, which still tried to twist away from his touch.

  I should have remembered the gods-damned wave.

  Grimacing, Dormael climbed to his feet and looked to the source of the violent disruption. He had a feeling that he knew what he’d find there. Steeling himself for the disorientation he knew he would feel, he turned and leaped toward the center of this strange landscape.

  The hills rushed by in a series of blurry jumps, and before the dizziness could catch up with him, Dormael stopped in the shadow of an ancient stone temple. It was much as he remembered it—eight columns carved with archaic representations of the gods, all holding up a circular slab of stone. A bowl sat on a raised dais in the center of the old temple, perched beneath the opening to the sky. As Dormael looked up, he saw that the shrine was the center of the silent storm in the clouds, the roiling mass spinning over the old temple like a top. The fact that it made no sound sent shivers down Dormael’s spine.

  “Ketha…”

  The voice startled Dormael away from his perusal of the sky. He looked at the temple, and saw a form crouched in supplication before the altar, his fist on the ground. A long spear was stuck into the ground outside the temple, a large shield resting against it. Dormael crept forward, keeping his eyes firmly on the praying man. He wasn’t sure if the man would be able to see him or not, but he was damned sure that he hadn’t been there just seconds before. Dormael was half afraid the man would disappear if he looked away.

  The stranger wore some sort of archaic leather-and-scale armor, of a style that Dormael didn’t recognize. He had a sword sheathed at his side, but it was definitely an older weapon. No quillons poked from the hilt, and it was shorter than most longswords. He was muttering something, a prayer that Dormael couldn’t quite hear.

  With a start, he realized that the man was speaking Old Vendon—the ancient language of the Sevenlands. Dormael had studied it at the Conclave, as all wizards were required to do, but it had been a while since he’d attempted to speak the dead tongue. He flexed his mental capacity, and bent his ear to the man’s prayer.

  “Please,” he said, “hear my call. What am I to do? Where…where is your damned mercy? Where’s the justice?”

  Dormael crept closer as he listened in, steadily moving toward the shrine. He moved around behind the man and shot a look at his eyes. The stranger was gazing at the stone floor of the ancient temple, though Dormael got the distinct impression that the man was unaware of his presence. This wa
s a scene, then—something the armlet wanted him to see.

  “My people are dying by the thousands,” the man went on. “Entire clans have fallen to the horde. The men are slaughtered, the women…well, why am I telling you, after all? You know what’s happening. You know!”

  Dormael thought he saw something move in his periphery, but there was nothing there when he looked. The long grasses whipped in the wind, and the clouds roiled above. Dormael felt that there should have been thunder, but the only noise was the constant breeze. He peeked over the edge of the bowl and saw a sprig of ivy left in offering, ripe with black berries. The leaves were a vivid green against the washed-out stone of the bowl.

  “Why have you allowed this to happen? Are we not your people, are we not…not worth more than chattel? I’ve mustered the tribes against the horde, I’ve done everything I could to stop them! I’ve given you a river of blood…why do you still turn your eyes from my people?” the man pleaded.

  When Dormael turned his gaze back to the kneeling man, he almost fell over in surprise. Behind him stood a group of people, all arrayed in a semicircle around the old temple. A gray-robed man with eyes the color of the roiling sky scowled openly at the praying man’s back. The woman beside him had yellow hair that was alive in the wind, and she looked on with an expression of pity. Beside her stood a warrior, expression exultant and eyes full of righteous anger. A motherly woman looked on with sadness, and another young man with indifference. Dormael looked once again to the kneeling man to see if he had noticed the people behind him, but when he took his eyes from them, they disappeared.

  “Please, just…give me a sign. Give me something. Help us!”

  Dormael turned his gaze back to the stone bowl, and was smacked with an impression. Two men appeared to either side of the altar, holding a woman between them in a moment of violent struggle. One of them—an older man whose face was concealed mostly in a robe of vibrant purple—held her wrists in a tight grip. The second man was larger by half than the first, and muscled like a blacksmith. He had a dark and shaggy beard, and he had the woman’s ankles grasped in his meaty hands. Between them, they stretched her out over the bowl and held her struggling form above the altar. She was naked, but something about her was regal and imposing, as if she had been a queen.

  Dormael looked to the kneeling man, but he was oblivious to everything happening around him. He thought maybe to warn him, that maybe together they could stop whatever fate awaited the poor girl over the altar. Dormael waved his hands at the man, shouted at him, but to no avail. The bastard just went on praying.

  He turned back to the scene at the altar, and looked just in time to see the old man gesture at the bowl. The ivy writhed and twisted, slithering across the bowl as it grew faster than anything should be able to grow. It reached up and wrapped the woman in its embrace, pulling her from the hands of the two men on either side of the altar. She struggled against it, and even fought some of it away, but it continued to crawl along her body, grasping at her with tendrils made of creeper vines.

  The praying man saw nothing.

  She began to scream as the ivy crawled into her mouth, and her voice shook the dream to its very foundations. Dormael stumbled away as another violent wave rushed out from the bowl and ripped through his body, sending his senses reeling. He tried to get to his feet, but the woman let out another agonized, terrified scream that shook his very bones.

  Lightning struck the bowl, and everything went white.

  **

  “I mean no disrespect,” the captain stuttered, “but I can’t sail this ship without a certain number of crewmen. If they keep…ah…disappearing…then we’re dead in the water. The storm will take us.”

  Maarkov would have laughed, if he had it in him. The entire situation was like something out of a macabre play. Maaz needed to kill in order to fuel his magic, and he needed the magic in order to speed their passage. The captain, however, needed the sailors in order to keep the vessel afloat in the first place. Everyone knew that Maaz had been killing the sailors, but everyone also knew that they were powerless to stop it.

  At least the bastard has the guts to face down my brother on behalf of his men, Maarkov thought. That’s respectable, no matter what happens.

  Maaz usually met dissent and criticism with one of two methods—torture, or murder. Sometimes it was one quickly followed by the other, and sometimes it happened at the same time. It was rare, however, that anyone said a sideways word to Maaz and lived too long afterward. Maarkov grimaced, and waited for the hammer to fall.

  “Your point,” Maaz hissed at the man, “is taken. Get out.”

  Maarkov watched the captain scramble from the room, and turned an incredulous look on his brother.

  “I think that’s the first time I’ve seen you show any mercy. Even when we were children, you twisted the heads from puppies,” Maarkov said, sauntering over to sit down across the desk from his brother. “I’m touched.”

  “These men will all die when we reach the Sevenlands,” Maaz sighed, staring out at the dark, rolling seas. “I will need servants, and these men are a ready crop. Better to take them than the inhabitants of some village in a foreign land, and attract the attention of any authorities.”

  “Ah,” Maarkov said, shuddering at the thought of what his brother meant. “Of course. For a moment there, I thought some vestige of humanity remained in that dried husk you use to slither around.”

  “If all you’re going to do is sit there and bleat like some pained goat, then find somewhere else to whine,” Maaz spat. “I have plans to make, and your whimpering is distracting me.”

  “What was the name of that village that we ran through when we were children?” Maarkov asked, ignoring his brother’s evil look. “The one where we hid in that farmer’s stables? That was so long ago, but I remember it well. All the cats in the village disappearing. You, in the middle of a pile of twisted little corpses.”

  “And you,” Maaz spat, his dam finally giving way, “crying while you buried them. Even then, you were a coward.”

  “I liked cats,” Maarkov grumbled. “I still like cats. What sort of bastard just kills a bunch of cats? My brother—that kind of bastard.”

  “Is there a point to all of this drivel?” Maaz asked. “As much as I enjoy these little fits of nostalgia, I rather prefer the room when you’re not in it.”

  “One day I’m going to pay you back for those cats,” Maarkov said, shooting his brother a smile. “Would it kill you if I twisted your neck that way? Would you just go on living? How difficult would it be to eat dead people when your head is facing your arse?”

  “I could always test the theory on you.”

  “You’re probably right—best to go with a tried and true method. Sharpened steel is hard to beat, when it comes to killing,” Maarkov said.

  “You’re trying my patience,” Maaz grated. “If you’re just going to sit there and blather on like an idiot, then—”

  Maarkov was out of his seat in a blink, his hand going for his blade. He had always been fast, agile, and whipcord strong. He’d had a very long time to hone his skill to a fine edge, and he summoned every bit of it as he sought his brother’s chest. His sword whipped from its sheath and arced for Maaz’s ribcage. Maarkov put his entire body behind the thrust.

  The steel bit deep into Maaz’s flesh.

  Maaz let out a surprised grunt as the steel parted his ribs, went through his body, and buried itself in the back of the chair. His hands sought the blade reflexively, and flinched away as the edge put delicate slices in his hands. Maarkov always made sure to keep his steel sharp.

  “Must we…always do this, brother?” Maaz gasped.

  Maaz opened his hand, and Maarkov felt the full force of his brother’s power. Something unseen slammed against him, driving him from his feet to fly across the room. His back smacked into the door that led out onto the deck, and stayed there as the pressure intensified. His chest compressed, driving the breath from his lungs, and he began
to slide up the door. He choked, his feet kicking as they left the ground.

  “It hurts every gods-damned time,” Maaz said. Maarkov watched through spot-filled vision as his brother wrenched the sword from his chest and flung it to the floor, trailing black, putrid blood. Maaz reached to the ground beside him, pulling a corked bottle out onto the table. Tiny points of light swirled around in the water contained within, like stars caught in a whirlpool. Maaz uncorked the bottle, turned it up, and drank a single point of light.

  Maaz took a deep breath, shuddering at the sensation of the Soulspark. Maarkov knew the feeling well. Having the body knit itself quickly back together felt like a million spiders crawling around beneath the skin. It was not pleasant.

  Maaz took a deep breath and stood from the chair, grimacing at the stains that his black, dead blood had left on the wood. He fingered the hole in his cloak, then made some gesture with his other hand, causing the hole to knit itself together—much like his flesh had recently done. Maaz took a deep breath, then turned a smile on his brother.

  With a twist of Maaz’s wrist, Maarkov felt his entire ribcage crackle, and pain blossomed in his chest. Fluid filled his lungs, and he spat out a torrent of his own putrid blood. It tasted like ashes and sweat. He tried to growl at his brother in defiance, but all that came out was a pained gurgle.

  “I know how you like to indulge your little urges, brother,” Maaz said. “But this, like your prattling, gets old very quickly. I’m going to leave the bottle here on the desk. When you reach the Soulsparks, you can have one. I’ll be in the corner meditating. Once you’ve healed, get out.”

  With that, Maaz gestured again, and Maarkov’s legs both shattered at once. He screamed as best he could through all the blood that was rushing out of his mouth. Maaz turned from him, and he dropped to the floor of the cabin. Maarkov grimaced, and tried to crawl for the desk. Predictably, it was agony.

  “The next time something like this happens, it will be worse,” Maaz said before settling into his meditation.