The Shadow's Heart

by K J Taylor

  At the sight of them, Akhane’s cool exterior finally cracked. He stood upright with astonishing speed, while behind him Zekh hissed loudly in shock.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Kullervo said hastily. ‘I’m not dangerous.’

  Akhane took one very careful step toward him. ‘This …’ he abruptly broke into Amorani, mumbling something Kullervo couldn’t catch or understand. He held up his hands, palms together, and returned to griffish. ‘Winged man … griffin man … most high sacred one …’

  Kullervo hated himself for what he did next, but he knew he had to do it. ‘The Shadow That Walks is an enemy to life,’ he said. ‘And an enemy to Xanathus. She must be destroyed. If you won’t believe my word as a man, then believe my word as the winged man.’

  Akhane reverently averted his eyes. ‘I will, Sacred One. I will come with you at once, and bring every fighting man under my command. We can use my own ship, which is much faster than the one that brought you here.’

  ‘Let’s do that,’ Kullervo nodded. ‘But please keep this a secret. Don’t tell anyone what I am.’

  ‘I will not say a word,’ Akhane said at once.

  ‘Good.’ Kullervo saw Senneck looking at him with great satisfaction, and hid his own unhappiness. He hated this, hated doing this to other people. He was not a holy man, he was not a sacred messenger from Gryphus. He was an ugly mishmash of two species that had never been meant to mix, and he would never fully belong in any world. But he wanted the life he did have to be a true one, and this was not it. Pretending to be human was fine, but pretending to be this …

  Only the thought of the good he would be doing stopped him from saying anything.

  Akhane was watching him, and though he looked afraid his eyes were shining. ‘Thank you, sacred messenger,’ he said.

  Kullervo blinked. ‘For what?’

  ‘With one visit, you have fulfilled my life’s dream. You have shown me a man who is more than a man — yourself.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Kullervo. ‘I’m not human.’ This was more or less true, at least.

  ‘Even so,’ said Akhane, ‘you have proven to me that there are magical things in this world that are not griffin or made by griffins.’

  ‘Yes …’ Kullervo smiled. ‘I suppose that’s true. And you’re right. There are other powers in this world that don’t come from griffins. They come from the gods. They’re more powerful than griffins … and much more dangerous.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Akhane nodded. ‘At least this Night God is dangerous. So I must go with you, and we must work together to find a way to defeat my bride’s enemy. That is not a thing I will argue against.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘We in Amoran know that it is not meant for the dead to walk. It is against the laws of life, which are the laws of Xanathus, and this is why he has sent you to punish this offence.’

  No, thought Kullervo. Laela is the one who was sent. She stopped our father, when no-one else could. But nobody would believe she was the one, because she doesn’t look special or act special. She didn’t even kill Arenadd by fighting him. She killed him by making him love her.

  ‘The heart,’ he said aloud. ‘The heart is the weakness, I’m sure of it. Maybe in more ways than one …’

  Akhane looked slightly puzzled. ‘What do you mean, Sacred One?’

  Kullervo shook himself. ‘Never mind.’ He put his tunic back on, tucking his wings away underneath it with difficulty. ‘I’ll leave you now. You’ll need time to get ready.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Akhane glanced at a nearby bookshelf. ‘I am only sorry that I have not brought more of my books with me from Xanthium, but I will search through what I have here, and decide which to bring. I must also speak with my friends, and see which of them will come.’

  ‘Take all the time you need,’ said Kullervo. ‘In the meantime, I wouldn’t mind seeing more of this island, since I’ll probably never come back here…’

  ‘Of course.’ Akhane stood up and bowed. ‘It has been the great honour of my life to meet you, Lord Kullervo.’

  ‘And you,’ said Kullervo, and as he said it he felt the beginnings of a great surge of gratitude and relief that would stay with him for the rest of that day.

  SIX

  LOST

  Skenfrith was lost.

  Myfina saw it for herself, through the window of the infirmary. She had spent the battle there, even after the half-breed had come and gone. She was no fighter, and besides, what could she possibly do against griffins? Caedmon and her partner Garsh had both commanded her to stay away, and she had comforted herself by thinking of Heath. He needed her to watch over him.

  He was still very ill; he had barely stirred during the confrontation with Laela. Now he lay on his back, face bandaged, sleeping through the destruction of Skenfrith.

  What Myfina saw through the window made her feel just as ill, and kept her just as still.

  She saw griffins everywhere. Griffins diving and lunging at each other, griffins grappling with each other in the sky. Griffins tearing open buildings to get at the people inside them. Griffins rampaging through the streets, destroying everything in their paths. Houses burned or collapsed.

  People were dying. Griffins were dying.

  Skenfrith was dying.

  Seeing all of that was more than enough to tell Myfina the awful truth. But she didn’t know for certain that the war was over until she saw the monstrous dark griffin rise up over the burning city. There was a human sitting on his back, and it wasn’t Saeddryn.

  The Mighty Skandar was back, and it was he who had brought the Unpartnered.

  That was when Myfina knew everything was lost.

  She wondered, dully, if Garsh was still alive and if he would come to find her. If not, then she had little chance of getting out of the city.

  Either way, she knew it would be best to stay where she was. Garsh knew she was here, and so far the tower had stayed more or less untouched.

  And she would not leave Heath.

  She went to check on him. Iorwerth’s body lay on the bed next to his, where she had put it. Iorwerth had betrayed the North by allying himself with the half-breed, but he had been a great hero in the past and Myfina hadn’t had the heart to leave him lying on the floor where he’d fallen.

  Heath’s forehead was burning hot, but he stirred when Myfina touched him.

  ‘Dark,’ he mumbled through his bandages. ‘Dark …’

  Myfina wet a cloth and dabbed away the sweat. ‘It’s all right,’ she told him. ‘I’m here.’

  She glanced toward the door. The only thing she had to be grateful for was that there weren’t likely to be any hostile humans about. The Queen hadn’t had the foresight to bring any human fighters with her; the Unpartnered were faster, but not exactly suited to taking prisoners. The half-breed didn’t seem interested in prisoners anyway.

  Myfina sat down by Heath’s bed, and wondered how long it would be before the Unpartnered decided to come into the tower, and how long it would take for them to find her.

  ‘Myfina.’

  She looked up sharply, and nearly fell backward off her chair when Saeddryn slid out of the shadows. ‘My Lady!’ she exclaimed.

  Saeddryn came straight to her side. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘I’m here to get ye out of this forsaken city. Just take my hand.’

  ‘What about Heath?’ Myfina asked at once.

  Saeddryn looked at him and shook her head. ‘I can’t take him through the shadows. He’d die.’

  ‘But if we don’t get him out of here — ’

  ‘He’s probably gonna die anyway,’ Saeddryn said bitterly. ‘Like everyone else. But if he comes this way, he’ll die for certain. I made him this weak in the first place by draggin’ him with me.’

  ‘I’m not going, then,’ said Myfina. ‘I’m staying with him.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Saeddryn snapped. ‘Caedmon needs ye. Now, come on. Heath can take his chances.’

  She ignored Myfina’s argument and took her by the arm. Myfina tried to break free, but
Saeddryn’s grip was like frozen steel.

  An instant later, darkness took them both.

  Laela and Skandar returned to Malvern together, along with most of the Unpartnered. Neither of them had seen Kaanee, and neither of them expected to. Iorwerth was dead, and without him the former leader of the Unpartnered had lost all his status. There was nothing anybody could do for him now.

  Laela had spent the flight thinking, ignoring her injuries and the terror lurking around the edges of her mind. The moment her feet hit the floor of Skandar’s nest, she was out of the room and off into the Eyrie, tracking people down and giving commands.

  During her time spent trapped in Malvern she had not been idle. The slaves she had brought back from Amoran still lived in the city, and she had found uses for them. Some had been given jobs as builders and craftspeople, some in the Eyrie as scribes. All of them had useful skills. But not all of them were simple workers. In Amoran, it was the way to train some slaves as fighters. Laela had briefly employed one as a bodyguard. He was dead now, but there were others like him left. Plenty of them. She had long since realised that she would need a human army, and they were it.

  She sent them out now, under the leadership of the commanders they had had in Amoran. They would march on Skenfrith.

  Laela ordered them to search the city and arrest any rebels they found left. But she also sent builders. The core of the rebel movement was destroyed, or close to it, and Skenfrith would never be their base again. Her freed slaves would rebuild it and occupy it, and when they had done that there would be no more need for the Unpartnered.

  Laela watched them march out of the city, and smiled with grim satisfaction. That was it, done and finished. She had torn the heart out of the resistance, and she would see to it that it never regrew. Once she had rested and healed, she would go with Skandar and visit every major city in the North. Her personal army would soon have a presence in every single one of them, and she would appoint new governors to keep everything in line. Caedmon and his mother would not sneak back in and spread their lies again, and if they couldn’t do that then they would never be able to gather the support they needed to challenge her.

  She scratched at her upper arm, and lost her smile. It was not done, of course. It would never end completely, not until Caedmon and Saeddryn were both dead. Caedmon would be easy enough, but Saeddryn …

  Her arm still itched. She scratched harder, grimacing. Saeddryn was the real danger, and Laela would never be safe until Saeddryn was dead … or whatever.

  The itch persisted, until Laela scratched too hard and it turned into pain. She groaned and rolled up her sleeve to see. When she did, she groaned again.

  The tattoos on her upper arm, the ones she had been given at her womanhood ceremony, looked very wrong. By now they should have healed, and she should be seeing blue spiral patterns from her elbow to her shoulder.

  Instead she saw vague blue lines, mostly hidden under lumps of swollen red skin. Her scratching had made it bleed, but the blood looked thin and sickly.

  ‘Godsdammit! Stupid … I didn’t even want the things!’

  She started to head for the infirmary, but stopped herself and spat out a swearword. The tattoos weren’t just decoration; they were the signs that she was a true Northern woman, and therefore allowed to rule her people. But if they were infected, then what did that say? Nothing good, that was certain.

  She covered them up again and decided to make sure they stayed that way. She could treat them herself, probably.

  After a moment’s thought, she made for the infirmary anyway. Better have her other wounds looked at.

  The doctors fussed over her, as she’d expected, all false concern over the cut on her face. She growled at them to get to work, and sat impatiently while they cleaned and bandaged her wounds and recited the proper blessings to make them heal properly. As if the Night God cared. The miserable hag was probably the one who’d made the tattoos turn bad.

  Afterwards, she headed down the tower. Skandar was asleep, and she should be resting too, but there was something else she wanted to do first, even if it felt hopeless.

  She hadn’t seen her real partner in far too long, and it was past time she at least tried to find out what was happening to her. Oeka could project her mind to wherever she wanted to nowadays, but Laela knew where her body was at least, and that would be a reasonable place to start. Assuming Oeka wasn’t still attacking anyone who came too close.

  She passed the door to the library on her way down. It was ajar, and when she came close to it something made her stop. The back of her head tingled. She poked her head through the door and the tingle increased.

  Moving carefully, with her hand close to the sickle in her belt, she went in.

  The library was dimly lit, but there was someone in there, sitting at a table in the corner and scribbling something in a book. The figure just looked like another scholar, and Laela was about to leave, before she spotted something else in the room that made her tingle turn into a shiver.

  The vague, ghostlike shape of a small griffin. It had colour, but its form was irregular, warping and shifting like a reflection in moving water. Laela knew that it wasn’t a real griffin. It was only the thought of one, an illusory image created by a mind whose powers had been magically enhanced beyond anything that was supposed to exist.

  Oeka.

  The imaginary picture of her drifted across the ceiling, turning and twisting lazily as if it were swimming in the air. Its wings opened sometimes, but of course it didn’t need them to fly.

  Laela watched it for a while, almost marvelling. She had never imagined anything like this before, nor had anyone else. As far as she knew, this was the first time it had ever happened.

  ‘Oeka?’ she called eventually. ‘What are yeh doin’?’

  No response.

  ‘No words,’ the writer in the corner said unexpectedly.

  ‘Huh?’ Laela turned to look at him. ‘What was that?’

  ‘No words,’ the writer said again, scrawling away feverishly in his book. ‘No words, no words.’

  Laela moved closer, frowning. ‘What are yeh on about? What are yeh doin’ …?’

  The man’s hair and beard were wild and ragged, his face pale and his eyes sunken and red-rimmed. He didn’t seem to see her at all. His eyes stared at nothing while his hands worked away with a broken pen, scratching something onto the open pages of a torn book.

  Laela found the name somewhere, but saying it was almost too much. ‘Yorath?’

  Her former tutor didn’t look at her. ‘All past,’ he said hoarsely. ‘All gone. But it must be known, must be — must remember, yes yes. Can’t forget. Can’t ever forget.’

  ‘Yorath,’ Laela said again. ‘What did she do to yeh? Oh, Yorath … oh no …’ Her throat thickened, and she turned and shouted at the image of Oeka. ‘What did yeh do? What did yeh do to him?’

  Oeka did not reply. In his corner, Yorath kept on writing away.

  Laela’s legs weakened and she nearly stumbled onto her knees. She put her hands over her face and mouthed nonsense that turned into sobs, as tears wet her fingers. It was too much, all of it. Was this her world now? Death and madness, and nothing else?

  I’m cursed, she thought. We’re all cursed. Everyone’s gone. Dead, or departed, or insane.

  She wanted to scream, or cry, or break something. Only the recollection that she was queen made her pull herself together. Everyone was gone except her, and it was up to her to stay strong. She had done the same before, when Arenadd was still there. She had to do it again now.

  Feeling dull and exhausted, she went to Yorath’s side and looked at what he was writing. Then she saw he wasn’t writing at all, but drawing. He had made a crude ink sketch of thirteen weird elongated objects arranged in a circle, and there were people there in the centre, a dark spot at their feet.

  ‘The stones,’ Yorath said abruptly, as if he knew she was looking. ‘The stones of Taranis, the oldest stones. That’s where he i
s, that’s where he sleeps, under the stones, that’s where the one with Arenadd’s face put him, and the woman who was like a serpent, and the griffin who didn’t talk watched them, and he laughed at them, and at night the eye watches from the sky but she can’t find him, not any more, but she wants him, she wants him back, because she still loves him …’ He laughed weakly.

  ‘Yorath …’ Laela touched him on the shoulder. ‘Yorath, it’s all right. Please stop.’

  He paused when she touched him. But only for a moment. His hands had gone all clawlike, and moved as if they didn’t belong to him any more. They turned the page and dipped the pen in the ink, and he scribbled on. Writing this time, which Laela wouldn’t have been able to read much of even if it had been neater.

  ‘And here, here the white griffin and the black griffin fought, and the city fell down when the sun went dark in the day, yes, everyone knows, but where was Saeddryn? And Nerth and Garnoc and Hafwen, what were they doing? I must see … must see them there …’

  Laela left him to his ravings, and looked up at Oeka again. ‘Oeka? Oeka, please …’

  Still no reply, but Laela tried one more time. She closed her eyes, and thought.

  Oeka, she shouted in her head, thinking the name as hard as she could. Oeka could sense thoughts. Maybe she could hear them better than words. Oeka, it’s me. It’s Laela. Oeka!

  The reply came in her head, as Oeka’s voice always did now. But now it sounded faint and distorted, mixed with other voices saying other things. Laela, I cannot hear you. There are too many of you, they all speak at once. Too many thoughts, too many people … I cannot …

  The voice faded.

  Oeka! Laela thought frantically. Please, talk to me!

  Oeka’s mental voice grew fainter. I cannot … the past is too much, there is too much, I see it too clearly and I am lost … The other voices grew louder, distorting hers and drowning it out. Laela caught the last of her partner’s voice as it vanished, the words coming in snatches. The past … all I see … cannot see … present … lost … no …!