The Knife in the Dark

by D. W. Hawkins

  “Is it, wise one? Please, explain it to me, then. How would you heat up the rock?”

  Shawna gave him a long, flat look. “It’s warm.”

  “What a stunning revelation, Shawna. Why is it warm? How does that work?”

  “Ask the gods,” Shawna shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Exactly,” Dormael smiled. “Heat is the first kind of energy we’re taught to use at the Conclave. Learn to control heat—at least, to a certain degree—and you can do a lot of things. Make fire. Make ice.”

  “Make ice?” Shawna asked.

  “Cold is just the absence of heat,” Dormael smiled. “There’s no such thing as cold.”

  “Tell that to my arms and legs,” Shawna said. “They’ll call you a liar.”

  Dormael just shook his head. He took a deep breath and sat for a moment, enjoying the warmth. Finally, Shawna turned to him and gave him a sheepish look.

  “Come here. Let me see your face,” she said. Dormael gave her a skeptical glance, but didn’t flinch away as she took his chin in her hand. She turned him gently back and forth, regarding her handiwork with a grimace on her face. “I got you pretty good.”

  “That you did,” he sighed. “Not the worst thing to ever happen to me, though.”

  “Is it broken?” she asked. She poked at it, and smiled at him when he winced in pain.

  “No,” he grumbled. “No thanks to you.”

  “I’d say it was thanks to me, actually,” she smiled.

  “I can’t tell if you’re trying to apologize, or if you came over here to gloat.”

  “I wouldn’t gloat, Dormael. Maybe I hit you a little hard, maybe I regret that. I wouldn’t gloat, though.”

  “Maybe you did,” Dormael sighed. He paused a moment, grimaced, and forced himself to keep talking. “I can see why you were angry, though. I’ve had worse than a swollen nose in tavern brawls, Shawna. It’s nothing we need to speak about. We’re friends, right?”

  “Right,” she smiled, her posture relaxing.

  “Good. That’s the one punch you get for free, then. The next time I’ll hit you back,” he smiled.

  “You wouldn’t punch me like that,” she said, waving a dismissive hand.

  “Maybe not,” he smiled. “I might use magic, though. Remember what I said earlier about the absence of heat?”

  Dormael pulled some of the heat out of the rock, and let it get just on the verge of freezing. Shawna pulled in a sharp breath through her teeth and stiffened, shooting him an evil look. Dormael winked at her, then poured the heat slowly back into the stone.

  “Point taken,” she said. She paused, and gave him a searching glance. “Your friend disappeared back in Gameritus. Was I the reason for that?”

  “I doubt it,” Dormael said. “She comes and goes on a whim.”

  Dormael had a feeling, though, that Shawna was on to the truth of it.

  “I can’t say I was sad to see her go,” Shawna shrugged.

  “I think you made your point,” he said. “I just wonder why it was necessary to punch me, too.”

  “You got in the way,” Shawna replied, her cheeks going a little red. “I was angry.”

  “That’s not why,” he shook his head. “You’re not the type to lash out like that. Why?”

  Shawna narrowed her eyes at him, and then let out a long sigh.

  “Maybe it’s juvenile, Dormael, but it angered me that after…after everything we’ve all been through together, you rose to defend your snippy little friend instead of calling her down.”

  Guilt twisted in Dormael’s guts. Truth be told, he had ruminated on the same thing in quiet moments.

  “I know it seems like I was defending her, but I wasn’t,” he said. She looked at him. “I just wanted to calm you down. Seylia can be…difficult. She’s like that with everyone. I know she was wrong, everyone knew she was wrong.”

  “You were afraid I was going to attack her,” Shawna said, a smile perking up the corners of her mouth.

  “You did have bare steel in your hand,” Dormael smiled. “It didn’t feel like a foolish assumption at the time.”

  “Do you regret it?” she asked.

  Dormael took a deep breath and sighed. “I do. Can we just sign the peace accords now, and stop talking about it?”

  “Yes, for the love of the gods,” D’Jenn piped up from the other side of the campsite.

  “For the love of the gods,” Bethany repeated.

  Shawna rolled her eyes in their direction, but settled down into silence. She sat close to him for a while, soaking up the heat of his magic. Dormael felt as if a huge weight had lifted from his shoulders. This was closer to the way things had been on the ship, after the fight with the Galanians. He and Shawna had spent long hours together, laid up with painful wounds in the same cabin. He hadn’t realized how much he had grown to enjoy her company, and how much their little spat had bothered him.

  She leaned against his shoulder and stared out into the rain-soaked hills, her wet hair lying over his arm. Her clothing felt thin, and he was acutely aware of how supple she felt against him.

  He banished those thoughts and poured a bit more heat into the rock.

  “I think we’ve gotten away from the Cult,” Shawna said.

  “They’ll be moving just as slow as we are in this weather,” Dormael nodded. “At least the gods are doing that much for us.”

  “The gods are fickle,” Shawna said, her tone taking on a haunting quality all of a sudden. “Take your attention away for a tiny moment, and they’ll turn your world upside down. Best not to invite their attention at all.”

  “Are you the devout type? Do you think the gods are really there?”

  “I’m not overly religious, Dormael. But…it’s hard to deny them, with everything that has happened.”

  Dormael turned to look at her, but she was staring out into the rain. The comment made him think of the armlet’s dream, the scene with the gods stretching the woman over the altar. The memory of it sucked the good mood out of his chest.

  “We need to talk tonight, after we eat.”

  “I thought we were talking now,” Shawna said.

  “I don’t mean you and me,” Dormael said. “I mean all of us.”

  “Why?”

  “Your armlet,” Dormael sighed. “It sent me another dream.”

  **

  “You say they were…stretching a woman over the altar?” D’Jenn asked.

  “Odd,” Shawna said.

  “I’m fairly sure they were supposed to be the gods. The two men—they looked like Evmir and Eindor, or what the stories always said about them, anyway,” Dormael said.

  “There it is, then,” D’Jenn said. “Did the gods resemble what you thought they would look like? If so, I’d wonder at the veracity of this dream. Might be your mind playing tricks on you.”

  “Or the armlet playing tricks on him,” Shawna said. “Maybe the armlet can sort of…get inside your head, muck around with your thoughts. Maybe it knew what sort of pictures that would fool him into believing it was the gods.”

  Dormael rubbed at his temples. This conversation was beginning to make his head hurt. He had explained various parts of this dream to them over and over, and he was long past ready to seek his bedroll. Bethany was already snoring, wrapped up in her blankets nearby. He glanced over at her with envy growing in his heart.

  “The thing I’m wondering,” Dormael said, interrupting another long argument on religion, “is why the thing keeps showing these dreams to me. Where is this place? One thing that has remained the same in both dreams is the setting. These hills, and this ancient shrine. I keep having the overwhelming impression that this is a real place.”

  “How do you know that?” D’Jenn asked.

  “I don’t,” Dormael admitted. “It’s just one of those gut feelings.”

  “Well…have any ideas, then?” D’Jenn asked.

  “No,” Dormael sighed. “Rolling, grassy hills. Mountains in the distance. Could be anywh
ere, I guess.”

  “Not anywhere,” D’Jenn said. “Think about it. There are only so many mountain ranges in the world.”

  “He has a point,” Shawna said. “And of those mountains, how many are next to grasslands?”

  “What about the mountains that border the Dannon steppe and the frozen north?” D’Jenn asked.

  Dormael shook his head. “It wasn’t the steppe, I’m sure of that. The steppe is damn near frozen itself.”

  “What about the Thardish Mountains?” Shawna asked. “They run all the way from Thardin to southern Galania. There are grasslands on both sides of them.”

  “I suppose that could be it,” Dormael shrugged.

  “So that’s one possibility,” D’Jenn said. “It wouldn’t be the Sheran Mountains—they’re surrounded by the jungle. The Rashardian mountains have a desert on one side and lots of farmland on the other. What about the Gathan Mountains?”

  “It could have been the Gathan Mountains,” Dormael nodded. “There’s a lot of grassland in Farra-Jerra, and Duadan.”

  “So, we know it could either be on one continent, or another,” Shawna muttered. “We’ve really narrowed it down.”

  “There’s a definite theme to these dreams,” D’Jenn said. “The first one you described to us—the one you had back in Alderak—there was this temple, and the ivy.”

  “Yes,” Dormael nodded.

  “And now, the ivy is associated with this woman—the one that the gods were sacrificing,” D’Jenn said. “In your last dream, you said the ivy did something strange.”

  “Yes,” Dormael said. “It changed into silver.”

  Shawna gave him an odd look, then glanced toward her saddlebags, where the armlet was tucked away.

  “The man comes to pray at the shrine—an ancient temple, from a time before the Church had split—and the gods answer him with…a woman? And a sprig of ivy?” D’Jenn said, shaking his head.

  “And the ivy turns to silver,” Shawna mused, still looking at her saddlebags.

  “This thing—the thing that lives inside the armlet, whatever it is—it’s trying to tell us where it came from,” D’Jenn said.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Dormael said. “I just…thought it would sound insane.”

  The companions all looked to each other, and the silence stretched out between them. Rain still poured in the night, but D’Jenn had laid down a few wards to keep their shelter dry. Dormael stared into the fire, trying to recall what the struggling woman had looked like.

  “I’m going to sleep,” Shawna said, breaking the silence. “This is all a little too strange for me.”

  “I agree,” Dormael said, rising to head for his blankets. “Whatever this thing is, we need to get it to Ishamael. The quicker, the better.”

  “Agreed,” D’Jenn said. “Sleep well, everyone.”

  His sleep that night was troubled with dreams of unseen hands stretching him over an altar.

  **

  Maarkov stood against the aft railing of the King’s Blessing, gazing down at the roiling wake of the ship. Sailors went about their business around him, tying lines and other such things, eyes locked to the deck as much as they could manage. Ever since the disappearances had begun, the men had treated them with fear. After this afternoon, however, their fear had been much more…refined.

  Maarkov turned back toward the mainmast, making his way down the steps to the main deck. He glanced up in morbid curiosity at what everyone on board was trying very hard to ignore. Maarkov, however, felt no such disgust at the sight. It gave him no pleasure, certainly, but he had seen deaths to fill a hundred thousand graves. Corpses were only scenery to him.

  The flayed cadaver of the old captain hung from the mainmast, swaying in the wind and bouncing from the sail, leaving odd prints of thick, drying blood upon its once-white surface.

  Maaz had hoisted him up in the early afternoon, the man screaming and begging for his life. Maaz had worked like a master, slowly cutting and pulling the skin from the captain’s body, using his magic to help things along. The man had passed out from the pain long before he died. Symbols were drawn around the mast on the deck of the ship—twisted, curving runes in a language that Maarkov didn’t care to know. Maaz had cut the skin into square, orderly patches, chanting in that damnable language the entire time. He had nailed them to the mast, one stacked atop the other in a nice column. Upon one such patch of skin, Maarkov could see a nipple poking through the web-work of cuts that his brother had made.

  For some reason, he let go of a chuckle at the sight of it.

  The ship had lurched forward with a great creaking of wood and rope, and had begun to move forward under some strange, fell power. Maarkov had looked askance at his brother, but all he got in response was a mocking smile. He had wanted to part that smile with a sword, but as always, he held back.

  He wanted to get off this gods-damned ship.

  Grimacing into the wind, he turned from the railing and walked down the gangway. He entered the captain’s quarters and found his brother lounging in the chair behind the desk, poring over a map of the Sevenlands. No evidence of the orgy of blood remained on his clothing, or his hands. He was cold, and wretchedly immaculate.

  “What,” Maaz hissed, “in all the Six Hells do you want?”

  “When will we hit land?” Maarkov asked, pushing down his contempt.

  “Maybe a week, maybe longer, but sooner still than that pitiful captain would have gotten us there by more…conventional means.”

  “Where do you plan to make landfall? It’s going to be hard explaining all the body parts and your…artwork…to any customs officials we meet, don’t you think?” Maarkov said. He plopped into the chair opposite his brother, and put his boots directly into Maaz’s face. Water soaked into the map. Maaz glowered at his brother’s boots, but only sighed and sat back in the captain’s chair.

  “This mission requires a certain amount of discretion, Maarkov. Because we are not simpering fools, we will find some smuggler’s cove, and be done with it there. No harbors, no cities, no customs officials,” Maaz hissed, smiling with that painful grin.

  “And the ship, the crew?”

  “As I said, dear brother—discretion.”

  “That’s a lot of blood,” Maarkov sighed, touching the hilt of his sword. “What happens if we just go our own way when we get to the Sevenlands? Let these poor bastards go home.”

  Maaz just gave him a blank stare, ignoring the words even as they came out.

  “I’ll need two of them to scry the location of our quarry. One at least to replenish ourselves—and don’t look at me like that, Maarkov, you know you have to eat. After that, I will need servants,” Maaz said, reaching over and taking a dainty sip of wine from a goblet at his elbow.

  “You need strega, you mean,” Maarkov grumbled. He hated the things. There was nothing worse than an animated corpse. It was unfeeling, uncaring, unthinking. Maarkov could barely sleep, knowing the things were nearby.

  He silenced the voice in his mind that screamed just how like the strega his own body had become.

  “I need what I need, brother,” Maaz sighed. “Your whining is doing nothing but grating on my nerves. Go stare into the wind. Moralize to the gods. I don’t care to hear your blathering.”

  Maarkov stared at his brother for a moment. How monstrous the man had become over the years, how detached from what it was that had ever made him human. What lived behind those eyes was something different now, something darker.

  One day, I’ll kill him, he thought as he made his way back outside. One day.

  **

  The next morning came early, but with the welcome sight of a light drizzle, instead of a heavy downpour. Dormael’s clothing was dry by the time they were getting ready to go, and the feeling of it against his skin was refreshing. Though it was still raining, his heavy Sevenlander cloak would do wonders at keeping off what little there was.

  Heavier rains came and went as the day wore on, but nothing
that was unmanageable. Dormael passed the time giving Bethany lessons in the Hunter’s Tongue, and having idle conversation with Shawna. The swelling in his face had gone down, and he was once again feeling good to be back home.

  The Runemian Mountains crept onto the horizon, a bluish haze where mountains would soon appear. The day was still too gray to make them out from so far away—Dormael knew it was still days before they would make the highlands, and more days still into the mountains—but the sight of them made him smile nonetheless. Ishamael, the place he had come to think of as home for most of his life, was just on the other side of those mountains.

  Dormael expected another dream from the armlet, or perhaps another strange incident, but the artifact was silent. He had asked Bethany if she was receiving any dreams from the thing, but she had shaken her head. He couldn’t tell if the girl was lying to him, but he didn’t bother to ask more than once. The thing had so frightened her during her last interaction with it that he doubted the girl would commune with it in secret.

  D’Jenn rode ahead of everyone else, brooding. Dormael figured his cousin was chewing over the problem of the armlet, turning everything he knew about it over in his mind, hoping for some revelation to shake loose. He peered into the distance with a distracted expression, letting Mist have her lead. The horse, dutiful as always, plugged down the meandering trail one hoof-beat at a time. The days passed by uneventfully, the weather going from wet to wetter and back again. The rainy season had always been fickle over this part of Soirus-Gamerit.

  Late one afternoon, the muddy trail underfoot became a wide, paved thoroughfare. The stones beneath their horses’ hooves were old and worn smooth by time, but one glance was enough to tell that this had once been a great highway. Shawna began to ask a question, but Dormael cut her off.

  “Just wait,” he said.

  “Just wait?” she repeated.

  He nodded. “You’ll see.”

  Dormael could barely keep the smile from his face, even when she gave him an irritated glance. He had been this way a few times in his life, and he knew how surprised she would be by what was coming. As they meandered up a small rise, the road opened up on a breathtaking vista.