by Matthew Ward
The mists ebbed, revealing bodies strewn beneath the walls. Some lay in pooling blood, weapons yet clutched in their hands. Others seemed untouched, their faces beatific amid slaughter.
Haval stood transfixed as the woman drew closer. Her left hand, which he’d thought empty, nursed a wicked blade.
Green eyes blazed into Haval’s soul. The pressure of her being stole his breath. He’d never felt so small, so insignificant. For all her slightness, the woman felt vast, as if she filled all the space between the palisade walls, and more besides. He never even thought to regret the loss of his sword, because every fibre of his being screamed that she wasn’t his to kill – that he’d never be worthy of offering her harm even if steel could threaten such.
“Well, ephemeral?” Her voice turned playful. “Shall I choose for you? Would you like that?”
Haval’s answer fell dry on a dusty mouth. Somehow, he found the strength to tear himself away. As he lurched for the gatehouse, the archway crowded with pale-witches. Their song crashed back as if it had never left.
Breaths short and shallow, he stumbled for the battlement stair. His foot caught on the uppermost step. He sprawled against the rampart. And there, among the thinning mist and moonlit field, bore witness to the Republic’s doom.
A great, golden column approached Arkgard from out of the eastern hills; serried ranks of scale armour and tower shields marching beneath banners of emerald silk and silver owl. Some led caparisoned horses by the bridle. Others bore great axes and war hammers. The Emperor’s Immortals – the finest warriors of a realm that birthed little else. Behind them came archers and outriders in drab leathers; spear-bands and creaking wagons. Thousands of men, marching west beneath the cover of mist with bloody purpose in mind.
And without even turning his head, Haval saw three others just like it.
A hurried glance away south towards Sargard confirmed his horror. There, on the open meadows, a fifth column, and lagging behind at the eastern hills, a sixth. At the head of each, walking a dozen paces before the foremost banner, a woman of silver like the one he’d fled in the courtyard below. And in the spaces between, the alabaster robes and mournful song of the pale-witches.
Three such columns could have ringed Ahrad tight. Six would set the Eastshires burning. In that stark, terrible moment, Haval was seized by certainty that what he beheld was but a part of the whole.
“Glorious, isn’t it?”
Haval grabbed at the wall, heart in his throat. The silver woman had reached his elbow without sight or sound to betray her approach.
“I don’t understand Mother’s reluctance.” She spoke as one puzzling over a mystery. “Certainly it’s gaudy, and crude beyond words. But the anticipation. The resolve. I’m certain it will only get better once the killing begins.”
Purpose returned to Haval’s sluggish thoughts. The beacon. It might not penetrate the mists, but it had to be tried. Ahrad had to be warned.
Shoving away from the palisade, Haval ran for the beacon tower’s winding stair. With every step ascended, he left a piece of himself behind, trickling away with his blood. But the gold glinting in the dark drove him on, one faltering step at a time.
As he reached the top, he risked a glance behind. The silver woman stood on the battlements, her expression twisted as one puzzling at another’s inscrutable deeds. Did she not grasp the beacon’s purpose? Bleak mirth forced back fear. The oil-soaked logs waited in their geometric stack. The brazier burned close by.
One last effort.
With his good hand, Haval reached for a burning brand.
“Death and honour,” he gasped.
He felt a featherlight touch at his neck. The world rushed warm and red.
Silver hands caught him as he fell, the embrace gentle, almost kind. Warmth faded before a creeping chill.
“Hush now,” she breathed. “Secrets are sacred. But though you chose the dagger, you shall have the dream anyway. Because it pleases me. Forget this life, and let wonder carry you off.”
Bloody fingers brushed Haval’s brow. When they withdrew, they took with them pain, cold, fear, sight – all sensations save one. For that last, longest heartbeat he knew nothing but joy.
Lumendas, 1st Day of Wealdrust
Magic is neither merciful nor cruel. It serves only the purpose to which it is put. Such is true of all power, mortal or divine. A beneficent deity is merely one who has not yet found wrathful cause.
from the sermons of Konor Belenzo
Nine
While Sevaka’s snores challenged the Zephyr’s creaking timbers, Rosa lay awake. Troubles loomed forth from days to come – the outrage and disappointment of family – but would wait. What mattered was the moment, and in the moment Rosa found only happiness.
Happiness, and numbness in her fingers. Sevaka wasn’t without weight.
Rosa slid her arm free of the embrace and slipped from the master’s cot. An indistinct murmur spoke of a departure not wholly unnoticed. Rosa missed sleep, or at least the sleep of which she’d once partaken. Her nights now were full of blurred nightmare.
Barefoot, she padded to the stern window and wiped away condensation with her palm. Beyond lay a wall of roiling white. All beyond the mooring rope was lost.
She froze, one hand still on the glass. Mist wasn’t uncommon during the months of Fade, especially at Ahrad, and the confluence of its twin rivers. But strange things happened when the mists came down. She’d lived through such moments, if barely.
And then there was the scent on the air. Old days and old friends, bound together.
She shook Sevaka’s shoulder. “Wake up.”
Bleary grey eyes cracked open. A hand scrabbled for the edge of the cot. “’sa matter?”
“Something’s wrong.” Rosa clenched a fist, frustrated by unease without clear definition. “Or it might be. I’ll be back when I can.”
A brief kiss, a clutch of fingers, and Rosa reached for her dress.
“It’s time,” said Ashana.
Melanna tore her gaze from the Ravonn, from golden lines waiting ready in moonlit darkness. The watch-forts that guarded the bridges and fords had fallen without a fight, silenced by the daughters of Ashana and the lunassera. No warning. No beacon fires. Ahrad slept in thickening mist. This wasn’t the way of war to which she’d been raised. No volleys of arrows to proclaim intent. No formal declaration at all. A rush of blades in the dark belonged to brigands, not to Emperors… or goddesses.
“Is there no other way?”
Ashana ceased her pacing through the rushes and halted beside the pool’s thorn-tangled statue. Restless hands tugged at glimmering sleeves and smoothed hair that was in no way out of place. “How long has this fortress defied your people? How many thousands of your sons has it cast into the mists?”
“When did the Goddess stop answering direct questions?” said Melanna.
Ashana stared into the statue’s eyes. Though time had taken its toll on the smooth, white stone, the crescent moon in her hands was recognisable as such. The woman’s features shared little similarity with those of the Goddess. But then, Ashana claimed not to be the first of her name.
“Perhaps she never started,” she murmured.
“Then start now.” Melanna winced. That was not how one addressed a goddess.
Ashana turned from the statue, her lips holding a smile. Or perhaps it was an illusion of the mists, and uncertainty of the heart. “The Dark has taken root in Tressia. You’ve seen it. We can afford no half measures. No mercy. No regrets. It must be driven out and destroyed, or this world of Aradane will become one in its grasp.”
Aradane. It wasn’t the first time the Goddess had called it that, though to Melanna her home was one of vying nations, not single identity. She thought back to Eskavord. To citizenry and soldiers fallen to the Dark. Hundreds – thousands – bound to a single, malevolent will, their individuality extinguished. To skies choked with empty darkness, with neither sun nor moon to light the way. A place where names me
ant nothing, and inevitability smothered hope. Her heart ached to think of her own people thus conquered, to imagine the glories of the Silver Kingdom suffocated by unfeeling blackness. And yet…
“We could have warned them.”
“Would they have listened?” Ashana asked wearily. “To a shadowthorn princessa who brought slaughter to their lands?”
Melanna winced at the hated slur. “Some might.”
“And of those, how many are already touched by the Dark?”
A harder question. Those who’d showed Melanna kindness or deference were too close to Viktor Akadra, the man-of-shadow – the Droshna – in whom the Dark had taken root. They couldn’t be trusted. Likely, they were already corrupted, even if they didn’t know it. Even Josiri Trelan, who’d held Melanna’s life and honour in his hands, but set her free.
“You see,” said Ashana softly. “They don’t recognise the rot. My divine siblings are blind to it, and will not offer champions as they did before. It falls to us to cut it out. Are you afraid?”
“Yes, Godd… Ashana.”
“You should be. We should all be.”
“Then let me take my place at my father’s side, as an heir should.”
“Soon. This is your father’s hour. Don’t resent that. For now, your place is here.”
“Why?” Melanna flung a hand towards the mustered army, to the white robes among the golden scales. “You have an entire priesthood to serve you. A sisterhood of lunassera. I’m a princessa, forged in battle. I should be there. I should—”
“Because they are not my daughter.”
The answer was no answer at all, for Ashana had no shortage of daughters shining silver along the grasslands. She drew closer and took Melanna’s hands in hers. “Even necessary deeds have price. I need you to see for yourself. To understand.”
“Then this is a lesson?”
“Not everything is a lesson, Melanna. Some things, simply… are.”
Melanna found little comfort, and nothing in the way of answer. Only a reminder of duty. She was both Saranal and Ashanal, daughter of Emperor and goddess. She’d been born the first, and had chosen the second. On that bitter morning, she couldn’t be both.
“Yes,” Melanna hesitated. “… Mother.”
This time, there was no imagining Ashana’s smile.
The war horse champed restlessly, mirroring Kai Saran’s own frustrations. For all that patience was the highest of virtues, he’d never mastered it – in great part because he’d made scant effort to do so, and never less than in recent years.
Crowns were not claimed by patient men. Nor was the glory of legend merely given to those who desired it. One was now his, but the other? And he wanted a legend. He needed one. For himself, and for those who would come after. The dichotomy of Empire: that it was ruled with wisdom and compassion, but the right to do so was earned and reaffirmed by the horror of the sword. And for all that Kai’s blood burned with vigour he’d not felt in a decade, he felt the passing years keener than ever.
Twice in recent memory he’d almost died. A third brush with the Raven might be his last. He hoped only that if that were so, it would be from wounds suffered in victory or defiance, for those would cement his daughter’s claim and thus ease his own passage into Otherworld.
Until then, the waiting. The fraying patience and the urge to thrust back one’s spurs. Five hundred cataphracti Immortals silently at his back, the horses’ scales as thick as the riders’. Beyond, a thousand more waited on foot, the renowned Tavar Rasha at their head. Behind them, men of Rhaled who paid tithe of fealty with spear and bow, or goaded the horned, leathery grunda into war from atop creaking wagons. Clansmen tithed from village and town, mustered beneath their chieftains’ banners and awaiting the order of the havildars and sorvidars who led them. And further still, white robes and ghostly grace of their horned chandirin steeds lost to the mists, the sisterhood of the lunassera – the women who were the Goddess’ handmaidens, and thus exempt from tradition that forbade women to fight.
Near eight thousand in all, and more behind, all come to usher their prince – their Emperor – to glory. A fraction of the might marshalling along the Ravonn. He wouldn’t dishonour that service through display of weakness. And especially not with Elspeth Ashanal close by, side-saddle on a horse as white as the mists. If one did not show weakness to one’s subjects, one certainly did not do so before the divine.
And so Kai Saran, Prince of Rhaled and Emperor of the Golden Court, ran a gauntleted hand across his steed’s neck, and soothed its impatience to distract from his own.
Muffled hoofbeats closed. Mist parted about Kos Devren’s wiry form and bear-pelt cloak. Guiding his horse across the column’s face, the warleader tugged his helmet free and rested it across the horn of his saddle.
“Dawn’s close, my Emperor. We should go now.”
Elspeth glared, but held her tongue.
Kai stared into a grizzled face he knew as well as his own. Devren was a worrier. He never threw lives away out of eagerness, and spent them only in need.
“We wait,” Kai replied.
“The ladders are ready. The catapults are ready. Your warriors long to close with the foe.” Devren hesitated, the greying stubble of his jaw twisting. “If we wait for the dawn, the mist will burn away. Crossbows will fill Otherworld with our dead long before we reach the walls. But if we go now…”
Kai shook his head. Dawn remained at least an hour away. And as for the mist? It had come for the Goddess. He doubted it would retreat before the sun, unless Lumestra contested her hated sister. “Calm yourself. If Ahrad could fall to such an assault, it would have done so long ago. Better men than you and I have thrown their lives away for nothing on its stones.”
Devren narrowed his eyes. “But not today?”
“Not today.” Kai raised his voice and wheeled his horse about to face his cataphracts, trusting that the mists and still air would prevent it carrying to walls barely half a league to the west. “Today we come not just as warriors of Rhaled, but of Icansae, Silsaria, Demestae and others…” That was technicality more than truth, for Demestae had sent barely a hundred spears, its princes ever watchful of the hungry desert beyond their southern border. Others had sent even fewer, a tithe that expressed loyalty but served as reminder that the Empire could never truly stand as one against a single foe, lest a swarm of lesser enemies pick clean its lands. “Today the Empire fights as one. We will take recompense for our dead, and claim stolen lands for our own. We will drive out the Dark. This is not pride. This is not vengeance. This is Avitra Briganda – a holy war, and a holy duty. And the House of Saran will see it done.”
He raised his arm in salute and was repaid a thousandfold. Enough had seen. Enough had heard. He hauled on his reins and again stared west, and willed his words to truth.
“A fine speech.” Elspeth’s tone lay on the border between praise and mockery. The silver hand that gripped her horse’s reins was dark with dried blood, as were her shift dress and the dagger tucked beneath her belt of silver cord. A feral creature, for all her composure. “Harbour no fear. Your destiny is to break Ahrad. I am charged to make it so, and I do not mean to fail.”
Kai had been father to a daughter long enough to hear the brittleness in the promise, and to recognise the tension in her thin shoulders. Though she strove to conceal it, Elspeth was as impatient as he, and nervous besides.
“Have you been in battle?”
“I am of my mother’s dream,” she replied archly. “I have seen sights of which you cannot conceive.”
Kai chuckled. Yes, so very like Melanna. Perhaps all daughters were thus, ephemeral or divine. “Then I’m certain you’ll bring her nothing but honour.”
“That was never in doubt.”
But her shoulders eased, all the same.
Castellan Noktza was already above the outer gatehouse when Rosa arrived, a pair of young heralds at his back, and Major Tsemmin of the 4th in close attendance. Despite the hour, he managed a
clear-eyed stare. Not a crease in his uniform was out of place. His scarlet uniform. The colours of Prydonis, seldom worn, did more to portray concerns than any cast of expression.
“Commander Orova…” A wry flicker of his eye accompanied the greeting. “An eventful night?”
Rigid self-control held Rosa from glancing down at her uniform, hurriedly donned and without armour. She knew it to be in disarray, having tarried in her quarters as short a time as she could manage.
“You tell me.”
She passed beneath the gatehouse’s limp flags and took position beside a sentry. The mists were thick beyond the wall. Past the Silverway-fed moat, the sluices of the outer barbican were barely visible. Everything beyond lay drowned in white.
“It came down about an hour ago. Swept in from the east.” He shrugged. “I don’t know why it bothers me so.”
“Any word from the watch-forts?” asked Rosa.
“None.” Major Tsemmin had the look of a man suffering strained patience, but not wanting to challenge his superior’s judgement. “It’s mist. A warm day and a cold night. Nothing mystical about it.”
Rosa suspected the reasonable argument was buttressed by Tsemmin’s reluctance to drag his immediate superior from beneath the covers. Commander Davakah took his sleep very seriously, and woe betide any underling who disturbed it without good cause.
Noktza scowled. “Then why are my thumbs pricking? Rosa?”
She glanced along the battlements. Golden sparks marked kraikons on patrol or at sentry, and sparse braziers where flesh-and-blood sentinels held bitter night at bay. A score or so humped pavissionaire-silhouettes dotted the mists, the crossbowmen’s outlines misshapen by the heavy willow pavissi shields upon their backs. Few enough, if mischief abounded.
