by Greg James
The rain fell harder—it would pour down later—and the wind keened, making their teeth chatter. There would be no more walking that night.
“But we must rest here before we go on. I will take the first watch.” The Sworn's hand rested on Ossen’s shoulder, fingers digging in hard.
“Very well, O Sworn. You may take the watch rather than myself.”
The Sworn relaxed its grip.
Ossen led them into one of the huts. Its roofing was still in one piece, and it was dark, musty, and draughty inside, but dry. They squeezed water out of their clothes as best they could. The grey light that streamed in through the windows did no more to disturb the darkness inside than a single small candle might illuminate the void of outer space. A bed in a weak-looking frame squatted close to the ground. The hollows made by those who once slept there showed as mould in the decaying mattress. The stove was broken, and the dwelling looked ready to collapse in on itself at any time.
It was not easy to sleep. The killings had happened not so long ago, and they had left a taint in the air, a slight taste that kept Sarah awake. She felt as if she would die from suffocation if she lay down to sleep there; that the night’s dark matter might crawl inside and fill her heart. She got to her feet and went over to Ossen. He was on second watch, staring off into space. The fire he lit had dwindled until only ashes and embers remained. The Sworn slept, a dark mound not far from the shrinking circle of light. The Wayfarer and Sarah sat together, and he wrapped her in the excess of his voluminous robes. Their eyes wandered with the drifting paths of smoke tendrils and the dying dance of embers.
“Why do we live in such dark times, Ossen?”
“Because the will of men has worked upon the World and made it so. But past times were not so much better, and let no-one tell you otherwise. There have been darker ages than this, wholly because those who lived in them thought, without question, that they served reason, purity, and light. In fact, they were ferocious fools who wandered from the Path into madness, sterility, and darkness. The Light and the Dark are One, Sarah, in truth. Neither is other and to be feared. Neither must be damned and burned away from our lives. Without the light, we are lost, but without the darkness, how would we know there is beauty in the arctic shine of that steadfast north star?”
“Your words make me feel better, Ossen.”
“My words are a part of life and of the Flame. They are not my own. No more than your words are your own. They, like the Flame, have been since the dawn of time and will be until all things are extinct and the world grows dark and cold.”
“The Flame ... I feel it but only sometimes. What does it mean for me, having the Flame inside?”
“It means there is a better chance you will ascend the Fellhorn alive, rather than fall dead upon the Path.”
Sarah was silent for a moment, thinking. “Do you know what the Flame is, Ossen?”
“The Old Words say that, at the border between the Dark and the Light, there is a Flame and it burns Eternal.”
“And what is the Fallen One?”
“There is a rot, a blackness that flows through existence, moving, changing, eating, decaying.”
“This rot, this blackness, that’s where it comes from?”
“No, rot and decay are as natural as birth and life. Remember what I said about how Light and the Dark are one? The Fallen One is that rot and decay out of its place, taken out of time. He is a shadow that should not be—the Darkness That Is Not Darkness—as are all who serve Him and the fell beings created by Him.”
“What does all that mean?”
“It means that the shadows cast by twilight are as much a danger as the shadows that live in the hearts of men and women. The Fallen One and His spawn can be in all of them, watching and waiting.”
As he spoke the last words, Ossen saw that Sarah was asleep beside him. He rested an arm around her until morning, not bothering to wake her for the third watch.
~ ~ ~
Sarah awoke to light and to cleared skies. The rain and storms had passed, stripping some of the gloom from the abandoned village. Outside, she saw Ossen walking alone, his footsteps steady as he passed from house to house, stopping to turn and nod at the doorway of each one before moving on to the next. Sarah watched him make a circuit of the village to perform this peculiar ritual.
When he came back, she asked, “What were you doing out there?”
“Making peace with the spirits of the dead. It is good for them to know that the living remember them and wish them well, since they died the way they did.”
“You spoke to them?”
“After a fashion. Mostly, I listened. They told me of the things in the world that they will miss. The smell of wet wood burning. The first frost of a winter morning breaking underfoot. Words spoken by men and women who know how to speak them well. Silence settling about the room after one has made love. A woman’s heartbeat. A man’s contented sigh. All of the things we are asleep to until we are taken by death.”
Through the hut doorway, Sarah watched drops of rain fall from the edge of the roof. Each drop was scintillating—a shining diamond—so many little crystals bursting and dissolving against the old, beaten wood and the ground.
A hundred heartbeats. A thousand tears.
Sarah could feel her stomach rumbling, and then, out of the brush, she saw the Sworn coming towards them carrying a brace of hares.
“Ah, breakfast is served,” said Ossen with a smile.
Sarah thought it was the first true one she had seen him make since they had escaped the Kay’lo encampment.
~ ~ ~
Later, with bellies full of lean, savoury meat, the three companions walked out of the village and on to where Ossen said there was an old boat house.
“I wasn’t just exchanging pleasantries with the spirits, you know,” he said. “We are out of our way and need to make up time as quickly as we can. Better that we travel by water than by land, now that we are without horses.”
~ ~ ~
The river was waiting for them. Long grass rustled, keening a little in the breeze, which carried traces of salt. Birds called, high and low, and resembled scraps of dirty cloth falling and fluttering in the sky. Fishing boats were ahead, under cover in a shed, hidden from sight by leaves and flora. They approached until they heard something snap in the shadow of the boatshed, a deliberate footstep. Then another and another, and then dark figures stepped out into the open.
The Fallen-born had found them.
Their eyes were freezing cold yet burning bright pits of ice and nothingness, which danced with raw, naked flames. Ossen walked past Sarah, moving so quickly that her grasping hand missed him. She could see him concentrating upon his progress towards the Fallen-born, making himself appear sure and steady before them.
“Go back whence you came, Fellspawn. Back to your Master and His tomb beneath the Shadowhorn,” said Ossen.
The Fallen-born spoke as one, “We shall do no such thing, Ossen One-Eye.”
“Is that the extent of your strength these days? An insult worthy of a spoilt child?”
"Have a care, One-Eye," they hissed, advancing, their mottled swords scraping from ancient scabbards. “You shall kneel at His feet before He is done with you.”
“I think not, Devil-eyes.”
The hissing rose in pitch, the creatures taking the insult as well as Ossen had taken to being called One-Eye. Sarah and the Sworn watched as the Fallen-born closed in on them, constantly shifting, moving across the space between them whenever their eyes blinked or looked away. Sarah could feel the Sworn tensing, ready to fight. She drew Fang from its short scabbard at her waist. Ossen seemed as still as the Shades. His head was bowed and his fingers gripped his staff. Sarah was sure she could hear him muttering under his breath. The Fallen-born moved like black snakes slithering softly through the high, dry grass. When she turned to face one, it would move into the periphery of her vision, forcing her to keep moving. She could see that the Sworn was doing the same
in order to keep them in sight.
“Take your eyes off them and you’re dead.”
Sarah’s heart jumped; the Sworn had spoken. And she knew that voice. She had heard it once before. But there was no time for that now. The Fallen-born continued their circling dance of shadows, keeping Sarah and the Sworn moving. Sarah felt her head swim and her eyes ache. A dizziness washed over her. This was a game to them. They were tiring them out. And why was Ossen just standing there like that?
“Why isn’t he helping?”
“One-Eye abandons you to our care. He knows our Master is stronger than those of Wayfarer blood,” hissed the Fallen-born.
Then Ossen turned to face them. He threw up his arms and cried out, “Behold the Living Flame that burns away His Shadow!”
Sarah was lifted off her feet, suspended in the air, her arms flung out and her head cast back. Surging waves of fire and light poured out of her. Silence and bright fury that consumed all in its path—and the Fallen-born were what lay in its path this time. The Five. She could not see them, but she heard them shrieking as the flames tore through them and wore them away into nothing, just as the sun’s light banishes the night upon a spring morning. In mere moments, it was over, though it felt like she had spent an eternity there, hanging in the air. She fell to earth, shaking and drawing deep, hard breaths. Her legs gave out from under her. The Sworn caught her before she fell. Through the haze in her head, Sarah saw the Sworn tear away the wrappings from its face to glare at Ossen. “You should not have done that, Ossen. You could have killed her.”
“The Fallen-born would have killed all of us, and where would we be then—all lying dead or worse, with our souls bound by agony until they could take us to Him?”
“You go too far. Never do that again. Not until she knows and understands the Flame fully.”
“You are a fine one to talk. You think I did not guess how you saved us from the Dionin? No art that was not magical could have raised us up into the branches of that tree. And you learned that art from Him!”
The eyes in the unmasked face of the Sworn met Ossen’s gaze and matched it. Sarah had last seen that face and its dark flowing hair framed by flames, burning at the stake in the square of Highmount.
The Sworn was Princess Jedda.
Chapter Nineteen
Jedda looked down at Sarah’s shivering form. Kneeling down by her side, she smoothed the girl’s brow and prayed to the Mother as the boat made its way downriver. The Wayfarer had cast a spell of basic sentience upon the craft, so that it steered itself along without needing someone at the helm. The deck creaked as Ossen appeared at the gangway.
“You could have killed her back there,” Jedda reprimanded. “She is weak and wasted from the strain of letting the Flame loose in that way.”
“I know,” he said. “I would not have done it if there were any other choice, but Sarah was the only one who could extinguish them temporarily and gain us time.”
“Still, it could have been the death of her, and then all of this would have been for nothing.”
“It was a risk I had to take. What would you say your counsel with The Fallen One was?”
The princess’s eyes grew wet and she sucked in a hard breath. “It was for Venna. I didn’t know you would come for me. Or that anyone would. They put me on the rack. I lived four years of my life alone in that darkness, hearing stories about Ianna and what she was doing to my sister, and knowing what she would finally do to me. My heart grew as cold and hard as the stone in the prison walls. There was no-one there for me, so I reached out to Him. It was a risk I had to take.”
“There always are such risks in life, Jedda. And always we think there should be another way, but they exist only with hindsight.”
“I thought you’d be angrier than this, Ossen. It could be me that He has been watching and following all along.”
“Perhaps, but He has known about me and about Sarah for some time. You, me, her—His eyes are on all three of us, even if she alone carries the Flame. We each threaten Him. He fears me for my knowledge of the past, and you for your knowledge of His nature.”
With those words, he turned back to Sarah.
Jedda could see Sarah’s struggle. Tears gathered under her eyelids and ran down her face. She looked outside to watch the river rolling them away from shore, the current carrying them out into the distance, into the future, towards the Mountains of Mourning. Whatever was out there, whatever was waiting, she knew it was going to hurt them all. This journey would change them into people they might not recognise as themselves. Jedda hunched her shoulders. So little sleep for so long. So much pain and sickness in so little time. In the dimness of the boat’s interior, she felt the darkness breathing, moving to embrace her.
“Come…to me…O traitor-child…embrace…the Dark…”
Sarah moaned, calling out from wherever she was.
Then she went under again.
Chapter Twenty
Sarah sat in the sun with her dad. It was late September, nearly October, and the leaves were falling from the trees. All around them, a carpet of red, gold, amber, and orange was settling in for the autumn, waiting for winter. The sun was sinking, turning the sky to azure, to violet, and then to night. A soft smell hung in the air, mulchy and pungent. Age and decay. Time was passing. Days were growing shorter, and nights, longer. They breathed it in and she felt it.
She was getting older.
School would soon be over. Her youth would soon be gone. Then there would be college, jobs, marriage, and children—things that slow life down, make it into something mundane. Tonight, though, here in these woods, there was still a little magic left in the air. Enough to light a small fire with.
A Flame that would burn forever.
Sarah rubbed her hands together, warming them over the fire. Dad didn’t seem to feel the cold. He never did. Still, that was boys for you, so Momma said. They never got cold fingers or toes. Sarah watched the bright buds of light that spat from the kindling. It’s not something you see every day, not with central heating being the norm, watching wood discolour, the bark curling and burning. It was a beautiful, natural sight, so alien to her city girl eyes.
“You all right, Moon-pie?” asked Dad.
“Yeah. Just watching the fire burn, Dadda.”
She only dared call him that when they were alone together.
“It’s something, isn’t it? No gas, no electricity, just wood burning away into nothing. Simple beauty.”
Sarah smiled at him, and he smiled back at her.
Tomorrow, everything would change. She was starting ninth grade—a year early too. Nothing would be the same between them after that. This was it, the dying hours of him as Dadda and her as his little girl. When the fire goes out, thought Sarah, that’s it. No more innocence, no more games. Everything becomes serious and something between us dies. She sighed.
“You sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah, I could do with a walk, though. I’m getting a numb ass sitting here.”
Dad took her hand and helped her to her feet. They spent a moment brushing leaves and grass off their backsides. The city’s no cleaner than the countryside, Sarah thought, but there’s a difference to the dirt.
“Okay, which way?” she asked.
Dad ruffled her hair, making a show of thinking, deciding. They were in a small oval clearing. Their tent was a leaning black cone in the fire’s leaping light. The tall trees of the wood made her think of long fingers reaching out of the earth, surrounding them in a friendly embrace, keeping the world out, just for tonight.
“Let’s go this way,” said Dad, walking off into the tree line.
Sarah ran after him.
In the woods, amid the trees, the darkness took a form unlike anywhere else in the world—a ripe, pregnant feeling of fullness with a void beyond in the usual conjurations of shadows. It was a sense of forever that Sarah did not want to leave behind. A shiver passed through her as she thought of the days ahead. So many days
of adulthood compared to the precious few of childhood. None of the years ahead would have a place in her heart in the same way as this time, which was coming to an end. That was the truth underlying the memories, like sepia photos burning, blotching, and crinkling in the heart of the Flame.
She couldn’t see Dad up ahead in the dark, but she could hear him. His footfalls on the mulched leaves were not too far ahead. The trees were close, pressing in like rank and file, their branches and bows raised in stiff salutes. Boles shimmered with lichen. She could no longer see the stars overhead through the canopy of leaves. The footfalls ahead were moving, weaving, left to right, right to left. Sarah slowed, turning her head, listening, tuning in on Dad.
“Dadda, slow down. You’re going too fast for me.”
Either he didn’t hear her, or he didn’t care.
That thought stung, made her heart hurt.
She was running through the cold, wet woods now, breathing the soggy air. There was no light to guide her. Suddenly, all warmth evaporated from the darkness. It had been there for a while, warm, suffusing, but now it was gone, like the glow of the sun. It left her in eclipse, unable to find her way. Sticks cracked under her shoes, like bones. Shadows as old as the trees and the hills seeped out, older even than the warmth she had felt from the darkness. They were shadows that were not shadows—a Darkness That Was Not Darkness, something from before there were such things as Light or Time.
She could feel it, sluggish and silvery, moving in the air around her. It made her run harder. The air in her lungs turned bitter and the ache in her legs grew, spreading tiring webs of pain through her muscles. She would be too tired and weak to break free.
It might have Dadda!
She couldn’t hear his footfalls. The woods were more than quiet; they were silent. No sound was being made by any other thing. She opened her mouth and cried out, “Dadda!”
The sound was shattering, deafening. The trees, the soil, the starless sky all took a breath. The sensation was a sensual but sordid fluttering that wove through her body. A spell broken. A moment that had come and then passed on. She could see him. He was standing on the other side of the trees. She breathed out, hard. Had they come full circle? Were they back in the clearing where they had been camping?
