A Hero's throne tae-2

by Ross Lawhead

  Stowe grinned. Fiall raised an eyebrow. “You think it’s a lesson? An educational exercise?”

  “What else?” said Daniel.

  “We don’t control the Night. We experience it like you do.”

  “What?”

  “We are tortured by it, the same as you,” said Stowe.

  “And we will continue to be tortured by it until it purifies us-burns us away, strips us into nothing.”

  “So I am being punished.”

  Lhiam-Lhiat tilted his head. “Punishment implies that you may learn from this experience-that you may be corrected by it, in an objective sense. That is not the case. You are being destroyed, piece by piece, as plain as that.”

  “But I see things there,” Daniel said. “I have visions, there are. . two riders. .” His head tilted forward as he tried to remember details. The riders had appeared to him a second time; he knew it. And someone else. . “You!” he said, pointing to Fiall.

  Fiall sneered back at him. “Nobody sees in the Night,” he said.

  “He is not one of our kind,” the prince said, studying Daniel. “It may be different for him.”

  “Delusions,” Fiall said. “Anything you saw are delusions brought by pain and terror. Humans are intellectually weak.”

  “That’s not the only difference between them and us.” Lhiam-Lhiat’s eyes studied Daniel’s. “There are times when I feel as though I. .” He looked away, to the horizon, and then back to Daniel. “If you do see anything in the dark,” he said quietly, “if the dark is trying to teach you something-let it. I feel it also. There’s a part of me that the darkness wants, that it’s trying to strip away, to get at. I don’t know if it wants to destroy it, or make me give it up, or if it even knows what it’s doing, but if you can survive and not diminish. . If you can find some way through-”

  “You heartless sadists,” Daniel spat. It was his turn to sneer now. “You are trying to teach me something. Well, fine. I’m up to the challenge. I’ll get out of it yet.”

  “You have some time before Night falls. Do you really want to argue with us,” Fiall asked, “or do you want to start running? You may be able to delay the torture for a time, however short.”

  Daniel looked at him and thought about the Night, and it did make him want to run. How much ground could he cover, and how much time could he buy in doing so? An hour? Two? Less? Days moved slower here, but then spaces seemed to be larger. Even if he could put off the Night for just a few minutes, it would be worth the effort.

  Then he looked at the three dead elves before him and thought, Why give them the satisfaction?

  “I’m not afraid of the darkness,” he said, spreading his arms. “Let it take me.”

  The Night reached through the walls just then and grabbed him.

  II

  Daniel solidified inside the window of the upper tower and just stood for a moment, stiller than still, his muscles completely at his command but receiving no orders.

  This second Night had been harder than the first. He didn’t know if it was because he knew what to expect or if it really was more harrowing. He’d had hope that his new purpose in helping the Elves in Exile would give him something to cling to when the pain got bad-that he would feel that there was something worth going through this for-but somehow that hadn’t been the case. Whereas the first night had been so vivid, he couldn’t remember exactly what had happened to him in this one. He could only recall vague notions, like echoes of events, that bounced off the walls of his mind before they disappeared entirely. Had he made a deal with himself in the darkness to forget? Had he forced himself to do so in order to protect himself? Could he trust himself to remember if he needed to, or to forget if he didn’t?

  He had awakened again in the plain, for the third time since his very first visit, like a repeating track. He laid there, wet and chilled, but not shivering. All sensation existed only in the Night; only sense existed here in reality. At least, he was accustomed to thinking of it as reality, but that line had now become very blurred. Here in reality all he had was an impervious body that felt no pain or softness. Or, if he chose, then a disembodied cloud of perception. Which was the nightmare? The reality where all was pain, or the reality where all was numb? And which was truly which, for there was numbness in the pain and pain in the numbness.

  Then, with a physical start, he shook himself out of his reverie and started looking for Prince Filliu and the rest of the Elves in Exile. He found them, not at the mountain camp, but at the Fortress of the Plain, which was a series of ingenious trenches and sunken rooms in the middle of a wide expanse of flat land that left the horizon unbroken and invisible to anyone who didn’t know it was there.

  Daniel tried to get his head around warfare with wizards involved. That skewed things slightly. He didn’t know what the enemy’s magic capability was, but it would undoubtedly involve some sort of farseeing, or foreseeing. Which wasn’t, Daniel reflected, so much different to the modern warfare that he had been trained in during his very brief military career, what with satellite telemetry and communication, infrared, hi-res, night-time imaging, and smart-guided weaponry. That was a kind of magic as well, no doubt, from the point of view of the elves who were a race that was highly advanced but circumspect about even very basic technologies that involved metal. To them, bullets were “magic pellets.” Their science had obviously developed along different lines, due to metal’s natural toxicity to them.

  Daniel paused at that thought. He was thinking in his normal way again, strategically, but something had happened to him in the Night that was brutal and horrible, and it had lasted for what seemed like years. What was it?

  He searched through the trenches and bunkers, floating invisibly, until he found the true prince, Filliu. He was deep in the heart of the complex in a low-ceilinged rectangular hole that served as his campaign room and sleeping quarters. The two generals were there, looking stern and grave.

  They looked up as he appeared next to them.

  “Where did you go? You did not turn up at our agreed-upon rendezvous.”

  “I. . was. . taken.” Daniel found it hard to form sentences.

  “‘Taken’? Captured?”

  “Yes, in a way. I was taken by the Night,” Daniel answered.

  The three elves exchanged glances. “What is ‘The Night’?” Filliu asked.

  “You don’t know? Lhiam-Lhiat and Agrid Fiall seemed to know about it. Stowe also.”

  The looks became more severe. “You saw or spoke to Lhiam-Lhiat and Fiall? Usurpers of the throne and enemies of the true prince?”

  “Well, in as much as I killed them and they’re haunting me now, yes, I did.”

  “Did you tell them of our movements?” the general with the shaggy red hair, whose name was Loshtagh, asked.

  “No, of course not. There wasn’t time to do that, even if I wanted to.” Daniel’s words came like he was talking in a dream-virtually beyond his will. His mind was just reacting, but he couldn’t determine how. He felt thin and slightly eaten away.

  Filliu sat in a campaign chair before the wide table in the centre of the room. “Daniel, when first you arrived in this land nearly a year ago, we sent an emissary to meet you and help you through this land, with as much aid as we were able to produce at the time.”

  “Kay Marrey, yes, I know. And I’ve thanked you for that.”

  “I did so under the advice of my holiest of counsellors, and against the advice of my canniest generals-these men you see before you. I still have faith that you will help us, but know that you have now acted counter to every omen of divination that my holy men laid before me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that your leaving and returning were predicted, but not the violence by which you left, nor the speed and condition of your return. It has caused a few of my holy men to question if the prophecies even applied to you, and not another.”

  “Nothing is ever ideal,” Daniel said. “Everything is imperfect and we have to
do the best with what we’ve got.”

  “That is also what I believe,” the prince answered, “to an extent.”

  “It is not what I believe,” Loshtagh said. “I believe that whatever is inside your contaminated soul may infect us and pervert the growth of our pure enterprise.”

  Something in what the argumentative general said triggered something else in Daniel’s memory of what he had experienced in the Night. Perverted growth-contaminated soul-pure enterprise. .

  Daniel came out of his reverie to see the three elves studying him, as if to diagnose his condition, and Daniel became annoyed.

  “I intend to help you whether you want me to or not. It’s nice that you can be so picky over where you get your help from. I don’t usually have that luxury. I don’t have it right now. Unless I go to one of the other ‘evil princes’ and ask for their help. Why should it make a difference to me? Perhaps they can even help me get back home.”

  “It’s that sort of comment that makes me question your motives and loyalty toward our cause,” said Loshtagh.

  “And that sort of comment makes me question yours,” Daniel said. “After just one night away from you. What does it matter to you what happens to me at night, so long as-”

  “You weren’t gone just one night, Daniel,” Filliu said.

  Daniel froze. “How long was I gone?”

  “Three days-four nights in total.”

  Daniel considered. “I. . don’t know about that. But, listen: something happens to me at night.” He then recounted to the three as much as he could remember of what he experienced in the Night, which was almost all of what had happened to him during the first.

  Loshtagh’s scowl had deepened during Daniel’s narrative. “It is a bad business. I do not know what it all means, or the nature of the devils that torment you, but it is a bad business. A bad business.”

  But at length Filliu allowed him another mission, and this was one that Daniel felt particularly passionate about-tracking down Kay Marrey and K?yle the woodburner.

  And so here he was, standing in an empty room in the uppermost tower. He had followed the directions they gave him, following a certain river toward its source, which was not as easy as it sounded. There were about forty different confluences and branches of the river, and he’d had to memorise the order of which to follow and which to disregard. He soared above the water, watching how the sun sparkled on the clear surface, making it glisten like a path of diamonds, but although he recognised the beauty of the sight, he did not delight in it.

  The riverbanks grew steeper and steeper, rising toward him until, after the miles and miles that he travelled, they became sheer cliff faces, laced together every so often by bridges of splendid and ornate designs. Roads now ran along the edge of the cliffs, and houses started to become more frequent. There were only a few branching tributaries, but they were very small, and anyway, Daniel was at the end of the sequence. He was nearly at his destination.

  A mountain of black stone rose up before him, from which poured a waterfall, and before that was an enormous palace, more of a city, really, since it was a cluster of buildings all squeezed together and built on top of each other, but they were built across the chasm between the cliffs and before the waterfall. It hung in an arcing and domed magnificence, sparkling and cool in the spray thrown off by the waterfall. Daniel had just hovered for a time, taking the inconceivable structure in. This, apparently, was the Falling Palace.

  Studying it more closely, he knew it was practically deserted. Some of the walls and facades showed signs of disrepair, and green slimy growth was coating some of the areas that were in contact with water the most.

  And so he had found the highest crested tower, which seemed a good place to start his search. All the fairy tales had prisoners locked in high towers, and he was in F?rieland, after all. But materialising inside, he discovered it was mostly empty-a disused bedroom where an elfish bed, a desk and chair, and some fine drapery were quietly mouldering in the damp. He didn’t have any time to stand around and reflect on the meaning of this, or the purpose of the room, and so crossed to the door. He gave the handle a turn and found it locked. There was a keyhole, and he bent down to squint through it. He could just make out a small section of white on the other side. Fixing himself on this, he let himself drift through the keyhole and into the stairwell outside.

  A handy trick, he decided, and walked down the stairs, thinking it would be easier to be more systematic if he were solid, and feeling that being bodiless probably wasn’t so healthy for him mentally. He was starting to feel extremely. . abstract.

  He wandered down the tower and checked in at the rooms that he passed and found them all locked and abandoned. At the base of the staircase was an ornate bronze gate that had weathered to a pale green. He slipped through this and into an open courtyard. It seemed deserted, but there were too many dark windows and archways to be certain. He went into the cloud and drifted through it.

  As he passed, he noticed a metal grate in the panelled courtyard beneath him. He took a moment to examine it and the darkness within.

  A drain? Into some sort of sewer system? How complex would a sewer for a city on a bridge possibly be?

  He lowered his disembodied self to inspect it further and found almost exactly what he had come to find. If the wooden stocks and bronze manacles were anything to go by, he was in a dungeon. His main worry, however, was that it, like the city, seemed deserted. If this was a dead end, then he didn’t know what he was going to do.

  He materialised and walked around the room. He grew uncertain as he studied the stalls and restraints, wondering if this was indeed a jail, or just a stable, but then he found a large, wooden door on the far end of the hall that had a wide metal grill in it. There was a glowing light issuing from it and he slowly approached it. He got a sense of foreboding from the door; he didn’t know why.

  A door opened and closed behind Daniel and he evaporated. It was an elf of apparently high rank, dressed in detailed finery, flanked by two bodyguards and led by an aide that held an ornate silver lantern that burned with a pale light. Daniel watched them as they approached the door he stood beside. The aide pounded a rhythm on the door and it wasn’t long before it opened.

  Daniel glided in with the rest of them and nearly lost control of himself at what he saw.

  It was a broad room with a high ceiling that was like some sort of hellish chemist’s. The walls were lined with shelves and cabinets upon which sat large bottles and jars filled with coloured liquids. The ceiling was decked with bundles of branches and sprigs of plants, and there was one wide wooden table in the centre of the room, and others spaced here and there where needed.

  The tables at the right end of the hall were completely caked in blood, which had soaked into the wooden tops and burnished it a dark, red-tinted brown. Empty jars were stacked in the cabinets at this end, as well as large bottles of what smelled like preservative.

  Looking at the bottles on the shelves, it was clear what was happening here. There were heads in jars on the middle two shelves that ran across the room. Below those were hands, and then feet on the bottom. Above the heads were different organs in smaller bottles.

  All of them were neatly labelled and tidily stored. A small and bent sort of elfish apothecary puttered around at the wide wooden table before him, chopping some pale leaves with a copper knife. He raised his head at those who entered.

  “My lord and prince,” he crooned, “Kione Traast, what an honour! Have you brought me anything new?”

  Daniel noted the name-Kione Traast was one of Lhiam-Lhiat’s brothers.

  “No, I haven’t,” the well-dressed elf replied. “I’ve come for information.”

  “Ah, of course. I trust the campaign is going well?”

  “It is going perfectly,” said the elf with a prickly measure of annoyance. “But would go smoother with more details on the inner workings of our enemies.”

  “Of course, of course. Forgive my question, I
did not mean it as a comment,” the wizened elf said nervously as he swept what he was working on to one side and pulled up a large book with thick sheets of vellum from beneath the counter. “Who is it you are interested in seeing?”

  “Are the woodburner and the rider ready yet?”

  The old elf ran his finger down the page. “Woodburner and rider. . yes, here they are. And yes, I think-yes, they should be ready. I’ll retrieve them, one moment.”

  The elf prince stood imperiously as the little elf picked up a ladder made from willow wood and propped it up against the shelves behind him. Very carefully, he pulled forward two of the jars with heads in them, which were sitting side by side. Cradling each in a separate arm, he skilfully descended the ladder without the use of his hands and placed the jars before the prince.

  Steeling himself, Daniel moved closer to study the faces of the preserved heads. He recognised them instantly, despite their features being warped and a little bloated, and felt sick to his feet-or what would be his feet. In fact, there was a moment of confusion where he felt that he would rematerialise just in order to be sick, or else drift away back to somewhere else entirely, but he looked away, regained focus, and remained as he was.

  The heads were those of K?yle and Kay Marrey. They had been captured and taken here, possibly tortured, certainly killed, and then chopped up and stuck into jars and pickled like onions. There was no saving either one of them now; there was no putting things right for Pettyl. For the two who had helped him the most when he first came to this world, the game was finished. And he, Daniel, could now only stare in horror at their dissected remains.

  “They are among the newest additions, the coal-maker especially, but both should have reached potency. This one”-he placed a hand on Kay Marrey’s jar-“should be optimal. The other will still affect, but he is much more recent, and so I cannot guarantee total clarity, but certain impressions will be very clear.”

  He twisted the cork tops off of the jars and reached underneath the counter to produced two shallow silver dipping cups.