Dizzy, he took five swift steps down the violet-lit path. In the foreground, he saw smoke broiling beneath one of the braziers. The black plumes billowed into the dark. He felt cold again, his blood frozen inside him.
Whatever flew over my head, he shivered, landed just over there.
Within the smoke, something moved. It looked dreadful at first, its hands like claws, its body as long and lean as in his nightmares of the Ur.
But then the shadow took human shape.
And in the darkness, a girl arose.
The witch-girl.
In a pale, ragged dress, she stood with her back to him. Even so, she was beautiful. He remembered her walking in the Sallow snow, and he swore in the back of his mind he knew her from another place and time. From a dream, he wondered. Or another life. Strips of shadow magic curled and smoked from her tiny fists. A fell radiance smoldered at her feet, lighting a grim circle around her.
“Grimwain!” she shouted, and the island shook.
He heard the haunted men’s boats grind to a halt on the shore behind him. None of them disembarked. Too afraid, he thought. Willing to slay a world. But bones frozen for a skinny little girl.
Silent as death, he crept into the shadows off the path. Farther inland, he spied a man’s shape standing between the brazier fires. The man was looking at the girl, he realized.
Two swords.
Black braid…left shoulder.
The Sleeper.
This should be interesting.
“I see you!” the girl cried out. At first he thought she meant him, and his palms fell to his sword pommels. But then he realized she was talking to Grimwain.
Shadowstuff fuming in her wake, she stalked barefooted down the path. The island surface burned beneath her toes. Twenty braziers smoked on her either side, illuminating the way to the dread tower. He felt too sick to follow her, more afraid than ever in his life. And yet still he crept closer, needing to know how it would end.
Where’re your stones, Degiliac? he cursed himself. The Wolde must’ve known she’d come. If they can’t kill her, you’ll have to.
For your freedom, one more life.
Beyond the witch girl, the Sleeper awaited. His loose raiment flowed like black water over his limbs, while his swords, sheathed in moldering scabbards, hung atop his thighs like dead men from rotten gallows. Archmyr squinted to see him. When he did, he saw white starlight in the Sleeper’s eyes.
“Grimwain, stop,” said the witch girl.
And lo, he ignores her.
“Where is Father?” the girl said. “Bring him to me, else I will destroy you.”
Compassionless, Grim faced the Ur tower. Spearing the darkness, the monstrous thing climbed to the end of all sights. Its doors, wide enough to swallow fifty men, remained shut, though Archmyr could not say whether he was disappointed or relieved. The tower looked taller than anything in the world, its seven sharp sides devouring every mote of light.
If it were above ground, it’d send men screaming.
It’d puncture the moon.
Both moons.
“You will not ignore me!” the girl shouted at the Sleeper.
The world held its breath. The brazier fires sputtered, the darkness thickened, and Grimwain faced her again. The standoff, separated by some a hundred steps, lasted a cold eternity.
Well, Sleeper, thought Archmyr, what now?
The girl moved her arm like a cracking whip. Black candles of deathly magic roiled on her fingertips. Even at a distance, he felt the cold, the heat, and moisture in his skin drying up. With a flash of violet lighting, the girl’s horrid spell streaked across the void and descended upon Grimwain. The Ur radiance, enough to slay ten thousand men, writhed as it fell upon him.
A part of Archmyr despaired.
Another part did not know what to feel.
He blinked. The girl cried out, clutching her sides and shivering. He looked where Grimwain had stood, and saw nothing.
“What’s she done?” he heard a haunted man cry out behind him.
“She’s killed him! She’s killed Lykaios!” wailed another.
A ghost in the shadows, he crept closer. The smoke and Ur fires burning atop Grimwain dwindled. The haunted men cursed and wept, but none of it seemed to register in the witch girl’s mind. Wobbly as a baby taking its first steps, she tottered toward the Ur tower, and Archmyr slunk in the shadows to follow her.
He narrowed his eyes.
His breath caught in his throat.
Where once the Sleeper had stood, he glimpsed a crumpled heap, a cooked cadaver steaming with the remnants of the witch girl’s fire. Charred ribs jutted through a husk of blackened meat. Little candles of Ur fire smoldered in the Sleeper’s skin, melted his shirt, and cooked away the scabbards of his swords.
“Dead?” he heard the girl say. “Just a man after all?”
He sank beside a brazier. Embers rained over his shoulders as he stared at the Sleeper’s carcass and felt his insides go cold. All this…for nothing. When I die again…a thousand, thousand years of suffering.
Only it’ll be worse this time.
Black Aria
All this way…all these plans…undone.
By a girl.
Wait.
What’s this?
In the shadows, Archmyr crouched. He felt paralyzed, aware of his weakness in a way he had never before considered. His mind was a machine, the oil between his thoughts burning. They had brought him down here to be among the first victims of the Ur.
But now…
He stood.
He watched the witch girl stretch her fingers.
And the Sleeper stir to unlife.
Where once char and brittle bone lay silent, twisted life reawakened. Stitched as though by invisible hands, the Sleeper’s remains reassembled themselves. His ligaments, curling like worms, wriggled and attached themselves to his bones. His organs pumped back to life, his muscles writhed, and his skin folded atop his raw, red insides. In a matter of breaths, his body regenerated.
When it was done, when the Sleeper’s eyes flickered open and a waking paroxysm shook him, the witch girl staggered as though mortally struck. Archmyr felt unsure whether to howl in triumph or collapse into despair.
Grimwain arose. His shirt lay in tatters over his skin and his moon swords steamed. But he’s whole again. And the witch girl knows she’s finished. The Sleeper shook the ashes from his shoulders, and down the witch girl fell, tumbling to the glasslike ground.
“How?” Archmyr heard her ask.
“I am eternal,” said Grimwain. “Surely you knew.”
“Where is Father?”
“Very near.”
“There are other places you can go.” Tears trickled like melting ice down the girl’s cheeks. “There must be. Look how many stars there are. There are other worlds without life, without people. Why here?”
“This was our home before it was yours.” The Sleeper flexed his fingers.
“No,” the girl dared. “Not possible. You lie.”
These two know each other well.
The void in the Sleeper’s eyes twinkled with frozen white light. “You poor, foolish thing,” he mocked. “You think I’m the evil one, that I’m the cause of all your suffering. But are you not just as foul? For who but the children of Archithrope thieved our magic? Who but your own brethren made war upon the world and used what was ours to terrorize all living things?”
Archmyr glanced behind him. The haunted men lurked at the shore, slips of skeletal black in their robes. He looked at the tower, which thrummed with a power that enslaved his courage and made him feel dead inside. Finally he looked back to the girl. Not a killer, he knew of her. Not like the rest of us. Unwilling. Undeserving.
Almost worthy of pity.
He closed his eyes again. He imagined the world above. Up and beyond the Undergrave, where the night held sway and the rain was no more, he sensed the Black Moon had descended to its lowest point. Had he been able to see it, he woul
d have watched it the same as the rest of Thillria. Men, women, and children burst from their homes, gazed to the sky, and crumbled to their knees. In their bones, they knew what was soon to happen. He saw none of their faces, but he felt their horror just the same.
From their hiding places in the darkness near the tower, the Wolde came for the witch girl. How he had missed them, he never knew. They were five, five Romaldarian knights clad in wolfskins and armed with swords and knives. I could help her, but why? he thought. It’s done with. The witch girl slapped at their hands and scratched at their eyes, but they overwhelmed her. They kicked her arms, ribs, and legs, and she screamed. They dragged her away from the Ur tower, clamped her wrists in cold irons, and hurled her against the hard island surface.
Worthy of pity indeed.
Without her magic, the girl looked helpless. The Wolde spat on her, and she lay curled on her side, bleeding from her nose and mouth.
At long last, he strode forth from the shadows. He walked to the Wolde, and with a gesture made them stop.
“It’s you,” the hugest of the knights snorted. “Where’ve you been?”
“Watching,” he said with a glower.
The hulking Wolde backed away from the beaten witch girl. “Weren’t you supposed to be protecting the Master?”
He looked at the Sleeper. Grimwain was already halfway to the tower, a tiny black spot in the cold brazier lights. “Don’t think he needs it. Do you?”
The witch girl murmured something. Another of the Wolde kicked her. Inside, he fumed to see them treat her so, but could never have said why.
“Go to the boats,” he told the five. “I’ll deal with her.”
“You’re not in charge anymore,” said the hugest.
“Go. Or die.” He glared at them.
Cursing, the five men shuffled into the gloom. He looked down to the witch girl, but saw only horror in her eyes.
In his next breaths, he heard the Wolde shouting. He looked to the shore. A longboat, oared by two soldiers, knifed across the water and groaned to a stop.
“Father,” he heard the witch girl whimper.
The exile, he knew. The warlock. The one I stole the book for.
For a reason he did not understand, he slunk away from the girl and into the shadows beyond the brazier fires. No one else lurked in the dark, he knew. Only me. Watching.
The Wolde led a robed figure off the boat. He was a slender, pitiful thing, crooked and bent. Where he walked, shadows pooled around his feet. Where he stood, fires dimmed.
Seven Wolde guided the warlock on the long path to the Ur tower. The witch girl tried to sit up, but collapsed, weeping in agony. The nearer the warlock came, the better Archmyr saw him. His skin was a ghoulish shade of white, his hair like threads of pallid silk, and his crabbed fingers the same as a Sarcophage’s. The withered creature swam in his ratty grey robes, and clutched the Pages Black to his side as though it were his child.
When the warlock walked past the girl, she stared at him. Her courage is gone, Archmyr knew. Same as mine.
But as the Wolde led him to the tower, the girl crawled back to her feet. Her injuries should have crippled her, and yet she stands. He admired her for her tenacity, but ruminated that it was all for nothing.
“Father!” she sobbed. “Do not do this! Please! If anything human is left in you, throw the book down! Walk away! They cannot do this without you!”
The warlock kept walking. The girl wept. Fearful, the Wolde stopped and stared. The warlock hobbled to the Sleeper, and the two men stood before the tower, whose vastness made a shadow even in the dark.
“Father!” The girl staggered onto the path. “You put that book down! Do you hear me? You cannot do this! Everyone will die!”
One of the Wolde strode down the path and shoved the girl. She crashed to the ground in a heap, crying out in pain. Unaffected, the warlock flipped to the final sheaf of the Pages Black and set his crooked finger thereupon. I should put her out of her misery, Archmyr thought as he crept closer. I should.
Right now.
He touched one of his sword pommels. His fingers froze. In the back of his consciousness, he heard a groan like a coffin lid opening. Them, he knew, toeing the line between worlds. He tried to walk, to think, to breathe, but the Ur whispers flooded his head for the first time in months, and he reeled. The girl stood, but fell to her knees. The Wolde scattered in terror.
In the tower’s deep shadow, the Sleeper spread his arms. The warlock read aloud from the Pages Black. Helpless, Archmyr staggered, listening as the warlock’s voice boomed in the cavernous void. From the black island to the far side of the world, all gazes turned upward, all hearts went still. The language of the Ur thundered in every ear, be they mortal or long, long dead. The sleeping awoke. The bones of the dead rattled in their graves.
Never…thought…it…would…hurt so much, thought Archmyr. To…die again.
The warlock uttered the invocation of breaking, the terminus of the earth. Few knew the meaning of his words, yet all were held rapt, for all were meant to hear the arrival of the Ur.
Archmyr understood everything:
Call our name.
We have waited so long to hear it. We are grief. We are the pain beneath your bones, the crater in your belly. We will bend the Father and bury his children. We will curl the roots of every tree and strip the clouds from heaven. This is what we adore: the midnight, the bottom, the end.
There is no beginning.
There is no circle, no meaning, no reason to continue. There is only us. You glimpse our shadow when Father falls below the earth. You weep us when you visit your lovers’ graves. We are your end. We are all ends.
Call our name again.
Once and once and once again is all we require. Crack us from our prison and reap us for ten thousand years. These last minutes are nothing. Use us, for we are vengeance, pain, and punishment. Let us breach happy hearts and turn Father’s golden flame to ashes. Let us breathe. Let us out. Let us roam the earth anew and cast our long and lightless shadow into forever.
Free us.
The Ur tower shuddered like a great hollow coffin. Its doors cracked ever so slowly open, the thunderous grinding of hidden gears echoing in the darkness.
The Wolde screamed.
The Sleeper laughed.
Archmyr knelt.
In his next breath, he felt a presence invade the world. The groans of a million waking dead saturated the darkness, and a crack like a million bones breaking split the air.
The spirits of the Ur coalesced.
The Black Moon is opening.
The warlock continued his chant. His invocation required it. To dull the world-ending sound, Archmyr clapped his hands over his ears. The witch girl, lying on the ground before him, did the same.
“Do it now, Pale Knight,” he heard the Sleeper thunder through the warlock’s chant. “Take one last life.”
He wants me to kill her, he knew. Even now, he’s afraid of her.
Why?
Across the void, the Sleeper stared at him. He glimpsed the starlit eyes, the whites burning. “Finish her,” the Sleeper commanded. “Make it quick. Do it now.”
Do it yourself, he wanted to say.
Somehow, he found the strength to move. The shadows swirled in a black storm all around him, yet he willed himself to walk through it. One of the Wolde had dropped a crossbow while fleeing. He knelt to pick it up, and then stood above the witch girl.
She looked up to him. Blood and tears lined her face. There seemed something familiar about her, a dream long-forgotten. Her cheeks were as pale as his, her hair lank strips of ink, and her eyes the hue of grey winter clouds.
He aimed the crossbow.
“Pale Knight.” She lay helpless beneath him.
“You know me,” he said.
“Traitor,” she hissed.
“Indeed.”
“What are you waiting for?” she challenged him. “Do it.”
“You’re eager to die?�
� he asked.
Another tear sluiced down her cheek. “Better you than the Ur. Better steel than the Ur draining me dry.”
The warlock’s invocation neared its conclusion. He knew it by the whispers fleeing his mind, and the world shaking beneath my boots. He cocked his head to listen.
“Coward.” The girl broke his concentration. “You know. You know, and yet you do nothing. I see it in you. Why, coward? Why?”
He felt bloodless, siphoned of all emotion. He looked to the tower yet again. Its doors cracked wider. The darkness on its other side was blacker than the deepest night, colder than the bottom of the sea. Billowing black mist and Nether substance swirled across the threshold. The fumes, like Shivershore fog, are hungry.
He shivered and looked down at the girl. “Look at what’s coming. You’re right. I’m a coward. I’ll admit it. But only now. And only to you.”
“Then kill me,” she said. “Or my father.”
“No.” He lowered the crossbow.
“Why not?”
“I can’t kill you. I can’t,” he said between the warlock’s thundering. “But I won’t kill him either. My freedom. My peace. The wicked men…like me…we go to the Black Moon. To suffer. Forever. And I’m the most wicked of all.”
Her mouth was a hard line, her eyes a storm of grey. “But if you stopped it,” she said. “You would not be wicked. Not anymore.”
He almost killed her then. If only to silence her pleas. But when the Ur vanguard crept to the world’s edge, his mind fled to them. The first one came soundlessly, treading the mortal boundary during the final phrases of the warlock’s invocation. Haunting the tower doorway, its shape both dark and bright slipped onto the threshold.
He looked at them.
The Ur was no manner of living, breathing creature. Its skin was fluid shadowstuff, its eyes like newly-born stars. It was taller than any human, but seemed both manlike and spiritlike. Its eyes hurt to gaze upon, smoldering so like Father Sun that he winced, his retinas graven with the afterimage.
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