River Into Darkness

by Sean Russell

  Walky came from his own searching, near enough that she caught his attention.

  “Has . . . anyone survived?” she asked.

  “Everyone, m’lady,” Walky said, surprised at the question. “At least no one died here.”

  “What of Erasmus, then? Was he here?”

  Walky shrugged. “Only the mage knows,” he said, and passed on.

  The mage emerged into an opening in the wall, pausing in his circuit. Where he stood, moonlight fell between the smoke-blackened stone, but seemed to pass him by.

  Even moonlight shies from him, the countess thought. If it cannot penetrate the shadow and silence, how can I?

  She watched him disappear again, behind blackened stone, his servants keeping their distance. She, too, stood back from him.

  I have become like all the others who serve him, she thought, governed by his moods. She shook her head.

  From around a corner the mage appeared, crossing the lawn, tilting his head to Walky, who immediately waited upon his master. The music of Eldrich’s voice reached her, but not the words. It was a sad music now, minor in key. Walky nodded and hurried ahead, leaving her to follow in her usual ignorance of what went on, of what was planned.

  They followed the path along the cliff top, in a single line, no one talking, each seemingly unaware of the other. Thus it was in the house of the mage, the countess knew. Each person isolated from the others, as though Eldrich’s silence and remoteness had infected them all. Everyone went before, walking through the night without lanterns, moonlight marking the cliff edge, the too-narrow path one must tread.

  A nightjar roamed the sky, its buzzing call trilling through the air. She stopped and watched its flight against the stars, touched by moonlight, as it hunted. She felt as much kinship for this lone flyer as she did for those who served Eldrich. Even Walky seemed especially distant that night.

  “Why do I follow?” she whispered. But she went on, along the moonlit path, the others lost from view. The vision in the water came back to her, and she shuddered.

  In a few moments she came to the small wood where the path disappeared into darkness. When she had passed this way before, she had followed the others, but now—

  “M’lady?”

  It was Walky, standing in shadow beside the path.

  “I have a gift for you,” the little man said, holding out his hands like a child with a lightning bug.

  When he opened them, saying a few words of Darian, she felt a strange light cast upon her eyes, and the world had changed.

  “What in this . . . ?”

  “It is owl sight, m’lady. From the mage.”

  All around her the world seemed to glow with a faint, unnatural luminescence. She held up her hand, which also seemed to gleam faintly.

  “Please, m’lady, we should not tarry. It will not last long.”

  “I’m sure it won’t,” she said. Gifts from the mage seldom did.

  * * *

  * * *

  The countess did not bother to ask how they had found carriages—from some country estate nearby, no doubt. And she again found herself in flight across the countryside, desperately in need of rest, a bath, and some civil company. This time she found herself riding with Skye.

  “Did you see? They have paintings, or so I assume from the bundles. Immediately I wondered if they were Peliers.”

  “Kent’s, I think,” the countess said.

  “Averil Kent?”

  She nodded. “Yes. He was a guest of Lord Eldrich as well.”

  The great empiricist shook his head in amazement and dismay. “What goes on? Why am I here? What does he want of me?”

  “It is the question many of us ask, Lord Skye,” the countess said.

  “I think, sometimes, that he only keeps me about to torture me.”

  She had seldom met a man more self-absorbed. “It seems unlikely to me. Whatever small pleasure the mage might derive from that would seem insignificant in the present situation.”

  “Yes, but what is going on? Do you know? We are racing about the country like . . . Well, I don’t know what we are like, but certainly I have never heard of such a thing. Is it all about this girl I met? The faded one?”

  Despite her need for company, the countess had quickly tired of Skye. “Only the mage knows,” she said.

  How had she once thought she was in love with this man? Hopelessly in love?

  She feared that her time with Eldrich would make everyone appear thus—rather petty and absorbed by the most trivial matters.

  But there had been something else with Skye, something besides the enormous regard in which he was held throughout all the lands of the Entide Sea—he did not respond to her. She shook her head at the thought. She had not been able to bear it. He was the only one. The only man she had met who reacted to her not at all. It shamed her to admit it, but there it was.

  What a child I was. A spoiled child, as Eldrich once said.

  She looked out at the countryside racing by and wondered what they would do now. Where they went.

  Let there be an end to this soon, she thought. Let there be some clarity, some understanding. I will go mad otherwise.

  Fifty-One

  They stopped only to kill and skin a snake and gather a vial of starlit water, then continued on their mad way, careening across the Farr countryside like the most hunted of highwaymen.

  The final hill defeated Anna’s exhausted horse, so they led their mounts slowly up through the fading light. The moon, in its silver splendor, had not yet risen, and in the warm light of the fading sun, the ruin of the ancient volcano was strangely imposing. Erasmus thought it would be easy to imagine that this was the ruin of an ancient citadel, though a citadel of giants.

  None of them spoke—they had not the breath to—and Erasmus could almost sense Anna’s whirling thoughts. She kept her eyes fixed on the uneven path, but when she glanced up, it was with such a haunted look that Erasmus was taken aback. He couldn’t begin to guess what it meant.

  The path, almost a road, wound up between steep walls of dark, coarse rock—as a road might wind up through a hilltop fortress. Here and there the rock was columnated, nature having forced the hot stone up in elongated pillars, and these were worn and broken and tumbledown.

  “It is difficult to believe this is not an ancient city,” Clarendon said, his voice hushed, as though afraid of disturbing ghosts.

  “Yes, especially in this light,” Erasmus answered, “but it is natural all the same.” He looked over at Anna, who was pale even in this golden light. “Are you well?” he asked.

  She shook her head, not meeting his eye. “The last time my brethren tried to make a mage they were trapped—all of them murdered. . . .”

  Suddenly Erasmus felt his fatigue even more. The little energy he had left him like the dying light of day. He looked over at Clarendon, and a sudden realization penetrated the overwhelming fatigue.

  Erasmus drew his horse up abruptly, but the others went several paces before they noticed he had stopped and turned to look back at him.

  “What is it, Erasmus?” Anna asked, her voice terribly weary.

  “Why did Eldrich let Randall leave his house with all that Randall knows?”

  Neither Anna nor Clarendon answered.

  “Think about it. He uses others without them knowing. Consider how he manipulated events to send us all into the Mirror Lake Cave at the same time. Randall knows things that no one but Eldrich knows: the way to open these precious gates. Yet he sends Randall looking for us, knowing full well that Randall feels no loyalty to him, that he would do anything to find the woman he lost so long ago.” Erasmus looked around him, as though he might find Eldrich hiding in a shadow.

  “There is no spell upon Clarendon that might be used to find us,” Anna said, then dropped the reins of her horse and began to sprinkle th
e starlit water in a pattern on the ground.

  “Come quickly, Erasmus. Pass by me up the path.”

  The two men took the horses, which were too exhausted to bolt even though they shied and swung their heads when they sensed the arts in use.

  They forced themselves up the shadowed path, laboring for breath. A moment later Anna came up behind them.

  “Eldrich is not here, nor is he nearby.” She took hold of a saddle to steady herself. “We will be warned now if any come up this path. I can do no more than that.” Anna nodded and they set out again, forcing themselves to make each step.

  Finally they came to the path’s end. Anna stopped and slowly raised her eyes. She made an odd sign with her hand and muttered beneath her breath.

  Before them lay a slope of shattered stone angling up between steep walls. Overhead, stars began to appear upon a sky in transition from darkest blue to deepest black.

  “It was on a night such as this that my brethren were trapped by the mages,” Anna said. “Trapped and murdered.”

  Erasmus found himself nodding. Trapped without the slightest warning, led on by their deepest desires.

  Anna dropped the reins of her horse, pulled the bag from the saddle, and began to pick her way up the slope. Every few steps she would stop and raise her head, as though she looked upon some inescapable horror.

  “They had come to make a mage,” she said softly. “A mage. That miracle of all the ages. And they were murdered—murdered at their moment of joy—for it was a moment of joy, not triumph.” She slumped down upon a rock for a moment, fighting to catch her breath.

  Erasmus leaned against the rock wall. Dusk came down the path from above, where he had ranged ahead.

  “But why did he let you go, Randall?”

  The little man shrugged. “I had not thought of it, Mr. Flattery. He sent all of us who had been seeking Anna. I had carried this knowledge with me before, after all.”

  Erasmus thought this answer inadequate, but felt none of them could bring their minds to focus on the issue. Exhaustion had robbed them of their mental powers at the time when they might need them the most.

  Anna turned suddenly to Erasmus. “Does this remind you of your vision? Is it the same?”

  Erasmus cast his gaze around. “It resembles the place in my dream hardly at all. But it feels the same. . . .”

  Anna nodded, pushed herself up, and began to climb again by sheer force of will. The others stirred themselves to follow, all the unanswered questions traveling with them.

  They struggled over a massive shoulder of stone and found themselves upon a level bench. It could almost have been a terrace, with broken-down walls on three sides and open to the southeast. Against the central wall a spring bubbled up, forming a small pool.

  Anna looked around and smiled for the first time in days. “Here, you see? Your vision did not fail you.” She waved a hand at the spring. “Can you feel it? There is a power here. If my brethren had only known, they could have avoided Tremont Abbey and their meeting with the mages.” She turned around in a graceful circle, as though the power she spoke of had invigorated her.

  The moon was lighting the horizon, rising like a great, blind eye above the eastern hills. Anna greeted it in Darian, raising her hands as though she held the globe aloft. And then she collapsed upon a stone, her vitality evaporating, and stared off at the beauty of the rising moon.

  “What must we do?” Clarendon asked.

  “There is nothing we can do until the moon has risen higher.” Anna moved down onto the ground and leaned against the rock. She closed her eyes. “I must rest an hour, and then we will begin.”

  “And what if Eldrich comes upon us before we are done?”

  “Then, Mr. Clarendon, we will no longer suffer this misery.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Sleep eluded Erasmus, but he sat with Anna’s head in his lap, his back pressed against a stone wall, and watched the moon float free of the eastern horizon. Chuff prowled the upper reaches of the rock walls, appearing in a flutter every now and then, cocking a single, dark eye toward Anna, and then springing back up into darkness.

  No familiar had appeared to Erasmus, despite his use of the seed, but he kept alert watching for this miracle. The waking dreams were not so strong now, more like mild bemusement—though Anna said they could likely be induced again by a stronger elixir. Often he saw the dark carriage racing across the landscape, a small boy perched atop, alone.

  “Mr. Flattery?”

  He had thought Clarendon asleep, his breathing had been so even.

  “I am awake, Randall.”

  “Will you become a mage, sir? Will you go through with it?”

  The very question he was avoiding. He smoothed Anna’s hair, assuring himself that she still slept. “I don’t know, Randall. Anna is convinced there is nothing else that will protect me from Eldrich, but I am not so sure. He has spent all his later years dedicated to eradicating the arts from this world, I cannot see him allowing another mage to live, whether there is a curse or no.”

  “Exactly my thinking, Mr. Flattery, which is why I think we should try to open this gate, sir. It might be our only chance.”

  Erasmus felt his shoulders lift. “I don’t know, Randall. She said herself it could not be done without risk. . . . But perhaps you are right. There will be no other escape for her in this world.”

  “I did not hear you include yourself, Mr. Flattery.”

  Erasmus looked up at the pure ball of the moon. “Did I not . . . ?”

  There was a sudden pealing of a bell, a sound not entirely incongruous in this place that so resembled a city.

  “What in Farrelle’s name—”

  Confused, Anna roused and sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Someone comes,” she said, rising stiffly. She called out in Darian, and her chough appeared. She sent it winging off down the path. A moment later it was back, fluttering before them and speaking its single word excitedly.

  “It is not Eldrich,” she said and sat back on the rock to wait.

  “I hear horses, I think,” Clarendon said.

  Then Erasmus heard it, too, the hollow sound of hooves coming slowly up. And then it stopped.

  Finally the sound of voices, and boots on stone, then, in the near darkness, a man appeared. He stepped out of shadow into moonlight and stopped as though confused by the pale light.

  “Mr. Hayes? Is that you?”

  “Randall? Erasmus?” He turned and called out. “I’ve found them!”

  Hayes swayed on his feet, tried very hard to smile, then collapsed on the ground. He held up a hand as Erasmus and Clarendon crossed to him. “I will be all right in a moment.” He looked up at his two friends and shook his head as though unable to believe he had found them.

  “Deacon Rose and the agents of the Admiralty can’t be far behind. We managed to outdistance them by riding unnumbered horses into the ground. Your trail has not been so hard to follow, I will tell you.”

  “But what of Eldrich?” Anna asked. “Where is the mage?”

  Hayes fixed her with an odd look, as though assuring himself that she was not a ghost, and then he shrugged.

  Fenwick Kehler appeared upon the terrace, and then, most oddly, a Farrellite priest.

  Anna shook her head. “Brother Norbert? What in this round world has brought you here?”

  “Ill fortune, I fear,” the priest said. “Men came looking for you in the hills. When they heard my tale, I was taken away from my home and my work and embroiled in this . . . madness.”

  “Brother Norbert helped us escape,” Hayes said. “We would not have been able to reach you otherwise. But there is little time for stories, Erasmus. Although we managed to pass Deacon Rose, for his party was larger and consisted of too many sailors, we cannot have left them more than a few hours behind. Perhaps not even that.”


  Fenwick Kehler hobbled painfully into the patch of moonlight. “Yes, Erasmus, you must flee,” he said. “Deacon Rose is near, and I worry that Eldrich is not far behind.”

  “No,” Anna said softly. “We cannot escape them—not now. Not in this world.”

  * * *

  * * *

  They collapsed at the foot of a wall, protected from a rising wind which moved among them almost silently.

  Hayes and Kehler kept looking to Clarendon, and then at each other, both so exhausted that they could hardly bring their minds to bear.

  “There is no choice, nor time for soul searching,” Anna said suddenly, then covered her eyes for a moment as though her vision swam. “I will attempt the ritual of Landor, and if we open the gate, you may pass through or not. It is your decision, but the ritual will be easier the more people who are involved.”

  “I will come with you,” Clarendon said quickly, rising to his feet. He swallowed once, hard, and looked at the others for support, though his stance evidenced a desperate resolve.

  “As will I,” Kehler said, shaking his head as though he could not believe what he was saying or perhaps what a pass his life had come to. “I saw what was done to Doctor Ripke. Better to become a Stranger than suffer that.” He turned to his friend. “Hayes . . . ?”

  Hayes got slowly to his feet. “I—I will but no more help,” Hayes said, fighting a sudden panic. To pass beyond the world. It was too frightening, too inconceivable.

  “There will be no mercy from Eldrich, Mr. Hayes,” Clarendon said, “and you will never escape him. You have no choice, whether you realize it or not.”

  “But I do not want to pass into the land of the Strangers,” Hayes said plaintively, “even were it possible. Despite all my ill fortune, this is my world, here; Farrland and the Entide Sea.”

  “But, Mr. Hayes,” Anna said, her fatigue filling her voice with emotion, “Eldrich is likely on his way to this place as we speak. He will make you pay the price for your betrayal.”