The Brilliant Dark

by S. M. Beiko

  Then the black burned away from the blade: garnet.

  The hunter swept the helm off, releasing a curtain of matted, dark red hair, a pale face drawn in a tight scowl, amber and hazel eyes sharper than her blade.

  Eli’s face cracked into an enormous grin. “Roan bloody Harken, you brilliant, bloody bastard!” he roared, finding his feet. “Nothing changes, does it?”

  The bog was silent.

  Roan stared at him, mouth flat. Her fingers twitched around the sword held hip-high. He’d found her, all right. Eli’s smile died, the sweat on his forehead slick.

  She leapt off the monster skin before it sank completely, and Eli dodged a downward slash. The log split in two behind him.

  “Hell!” he sputtered, jerking backward, another beautiful swipe coming across his belly and slicing his sweater clean open. He staggered back. “Wait, stop!”

  Her face was menacingly impassive as she rounded and spun, her knuckles and the heavy hilt clenched in them connecting across his jaw. He went flying, but he put his leg and fist out, the wind he’d summoned catching him before impact and whirling away so uselessly it barely ruffled Roan’s hair. Eli spat blood but he didn’t look away from her. “Harken, what —”

  Suddenly she was in front of him, but before she could come down for another swing, Eli brought his arms down in a windmill slash, and the wind-blast slapped her off her nimble feet.

  She caught herself in a crouch, eyes narrowed, sword across herself protectively.

  “Just stay down there and listen to me, dammit,” Eli panted, hands out in front of him, as if they could save him. He didn’t have much left in the tank, and the tunnel vision closing in reminded him of that. “I don’t know what I did to deserve that kind of welcome. Lately, I mean.”

  Roan straightened slowly. This wasn’t the clumsy creature he’d scoffed at when they’d first fought on a bridge far away. Nor was it the emotional basket case he’d comforted in his childhood home.

  Her silence cut him down the most. It was her incessant babbling, Eli realized, that he’d missed most of all. “Say something!” he shouted desperately.

  This girl, this creature, was not Roan. But it was enough of her that he would keep taking the risk. His arms lowered. “You don’t recognize me, do you?” He remembered, then, giant sucking worms, the way the Bloodlands tried to take who they were before — maybe things didn’t change.

  She took a step, and without thinking, he pulled his sleeve up. The white chain scar seemed to glow in the dark of the woods and Roan pulled up short. “You recognize this, though.” He swallowed. “I came here for you, you tremendous moron. To . . . to save you.”

  She stared at his arm, mouth parting. She was close enough he could see her pulse at her throat, but it was steady, mind already made up. Without looking away, without putting the sword down, she swiped the black muck from her arm with two fingers, revealing the twin scar there. Tangible proof — for both of them.

  Eli felt something like relief. A fool’s feeling. “You see? We’re the same.”

  That was when her eyes jerked to his, and her grin pierced his chest. “No,” she said, “we’re not.”

  The arm with the scar came up and across in an artful swing, and Eli’s head rang scarlet with the blow. He toppled, dead weight, at her feet.

  The Exiled Archivist

  Saskia was not born a Denizen. Even with the Moth Queen’s warning and protections, even with the Adamant Onyx, given freely and invested with more of the darkness that had always been inside Saskia, and even with the devices her own hands had built to keep that darkness in check . . .

  Nothing would have prepared her for falling down the rabbit hole like this.

  Her entire body felt like pulp, slowly hardening as blood went back into her limbs when she flew over the threshold, falling, always falling, but wide awake. She’d been afraid that she’d pass out, that she’d miss it, but no. All of the sensations were into her skin like songs into a vinyl record. She fell forever through that song and signal, and it directed her exactly where she needed to go.

  There were voices, overlapping, screaming in different tongues in the darkness. Were they telling her to go back? Were they trying to eat her alive? You shouldn’t be here, they said. They were right. No one should. And if even Death couldn’t walk this path, then what business did Saskia have trying to do it?

  But she was the only person for the job. No one else could’ve survived this.

  The shivering tornado of moths squeezed her tightly, her protective shield. All Saskia felt, all she knew, was the dark. Small comfort against the chaos. Then the moths burned away, like meteors entering the atmosphere, and she was careening alone.

  Saskia broke through into air, hazy light, and a searing painful burning haze like the remnant of a forest fire. She hit the ground, stumbling before her legs remembered to do what they were made for.

  She went flying down a steep incline, then she was tossed end over end, and with each slam of her body she knew she was alive. When she finally came to a stop, she wondered how she’d survived at all.

  When she sat up, groaning, she pulled the pack off and around and pulled out the tablet. Keys flicked. Then she touched the weird crown she’d built, nearly brushing the Onyx with her bare hand. It was all in one piece. So was she. Barely.

  She exhaled. She’d wanted to touch the stone, she admitted that much. Touch with your eyes, she warned herself, taking off the crown and bringing it closer in the dim light. The stone was still sharp and whole, and the output signal button was still green. All of the apparatus had survived. There was a switch that could essentially wake or deactivate the Onyx whenever she wanted, and it, too, still held. Even though the stone’s power was being managed, Saskia still had the odd feeling the stone had protected her down this dark road. She’d take what she could get.

  Saskia wiped her face, put the Fractal back on, and tried to blink the stars out of her vision. Then her breath caught in the cage of her ribs and she threw herself to her feet when the haze cleared.

  She was in the middle of a grove of Hope Trees.

  Here they were huge. Enormous. Grown wild with bark so contorted there was no sign they’d once been human or had spirits inside them. Without the Gardener to cut them down and replant them, they’d twisted towards what little light filtered through their black canopies. And there was light above. Clouds. She could even taste the air. This place was real, and she was in it.

  Saskia was on the other side, probably in the Bloodlands, given the trees. What she thought was going to be a hard step in itself had been achieved with less than a stumble. She saw a flash of the chancellor’s face, red and white with rage, and shook it out of her mind, along with Solomon’s body, which she’d watched fall into the Apex before she had. Poor Solomon. Without him, she wouldn’t have made it. Not really.

  All that was elsewhen — elsewhere. Now what?

  Something whistled past her face, close and sharp enough to snag her hair but not take her with it. It thocked home in the Hope Tree behind her, and when she turned, she saw blood pouring from the place in the bark where the barb had struck.

  She took off just in time to miss the next one that hit the ground where her shoe slipped and nearly took her down.

  Saskia picked a direction at random, zigzagging. That was quick. She’d just arrived and someone was after her already. Or something. The little darts kept whistling past her as she ran.

  Saskia dove behind a shape, unable to tell what it was in the spiralling fog, and flattened herself behind it. More hiding. It was how she was going to survive this. She saw, shuffling past, some kind of monster, all rude angles and skittering legs, a broken spider with horns writhing over its head, jibbering hysterically that it had lost its prey. Saskia thought she was going to pass out, behind this rock, just from the sight. There had been Bloodbeasts in her world but they’d alway
s been contained by Denizens or the ETG. She had neither to help her here, and she suddenly felt like a prime idiot for not taking Cam’s gun when she’d had the chance.

  The creature let out a chitinous yowl, head snapping towards a voice. “Not the book!”

  The Bloodbeast galloped off towards the cry, shaking its horns. Saskia shut her eyes, legs tingling as she kept them folded tight under her.

  “Please, somebody — no! ” the voice cried, then was choked off. The monster had arrived.

  Saskia wanted to fumble with the tablet, to check the receiver’s output and see if she’d had any new messages. But what if this was her message? What if it was Barton?

  She tightened her pack straps and took off from her hiding place, breaking out into the grey.

  Moans and howls — beast and prey intermingling. What was she going to do to once she got there? One step at a time. The landscape changed abruptly, though she hadn’t run far. Those Hope Trees grew thinner, giving way to trees and flora that looked almost . . . like home. Her pack bounced wildly on her shoulders, heavy with supplies.

  Saskia pulled up short from a curious figure, like a bundle of sticks and bark, that landed heavily in front of her.

  Saskia backed up, hand at the ready on the switch at her head. She had a weapon. She needed to survive the first ten seconds of being in the Bloodlands if she was going to make any headway, anyway.

  Then the bundle of sticks shivered, as if it were one body — and somehow, it was — and Saskia picked out a pair of bright little eyes staring miserably up at her.

  “Are you beast or shade?” the creature whispered. The voice was neither male or female. Unsure what, or who, she was addressing, Saskia’s words wouldn’t come.

  Then those flat steel pupils flicked to the stone on her head, and the creature jittered to their feet — hind legs? It was Saskia’s height, bent over and awkward, and it was built as if someone had made a puppet from whatever had been to hand: mud, boughs, leaves. It was convincing, yet moved with the terrifyingly erratic steps that had always made her afraid of dolls.

  It wasn’t Barton. But it had long ear-ish sticks on its head, and the haunches were proud and strong, and Saskia immediately recognized this creature as a Rabbit. She’d take it as a sign, especially right now.

  “A god-stone,” the creature gushed, pointing. “Are you —”

  “I’m human, a Mundane,” Saskia blurted, backing up farther and searching the woods around them for the monster that had just chased this creature here. “Where did —”

  The ground shuddered with a burst of trampling. The Rabbit leapt away and behind her, rounding a thicket and narrowly missing a dart headed for the base of its head.

  Saskia didn’t know what made her cry out, “No! Stop it!” just as the beast was about to let fly another shot, but it turned, coming for Saskia.

  “Get out of the way!” the Rabbit screamed from behind her. “You cannot reason with it!”

  Saskia stood her ground, remembering the river hunter, and hoped as hard as was logically possible that lightning could strike twice.

  She flicked the switch on the Onyx crown for that added bit of leverage.

  The darkness inside the stone welled up when she touched it, answering the one inside her. She felt it mixing with the human part of her, and it was tempting to let the power flow into her, wash away what made her Saskia. But she had to time it and stay alert, and she reached for the switch again to cut off the power.

  Then the darkness was pulled out of the monster looking to tear her apart, pulled into the stone. The monster changed shape, crying out sharply before it hunkered down to the ground, skittering legs pulling into its body as it reformed.

  Saskia gasped, felt the sweat at her throat as the stone went quiet again, and she fell to her knees. She heard rustling in the undergrowth as the Rabbit poppet crawled towards her, and she tried to catch her breath. The Rabbit reached for her —

  They both jerked towards the creature that had attacked them, because it was getting up. It rose to shivering hooves, white eyes regarding her beneath a rack of short antlers. It was like Phae had told her — a soul, a shade, of a Denizen that had passed.

  The Deer sniffed the Onyx at her forehead, looked between Saskia and the Rabbit, and took off into the ashy mist.

  Saskia sighed, a heaviness keeping her on the ground.

  “Where have you come from?” said the Rabbit, still watching the place where the Deer’s spirit had fled. “And what have you done?”

  “What I’m told.” Saskia got up then, appraising the Rabbit wearily. “So you’re not a monster, I take it. And maybe not a shade, like that.” She jutted her chin towards the Deer’s exit route. “So what are you?”

  The Rabbit’s gnarled hands at their knees clenched and unclenched. Then they, too, got up, joints crackling. “I’m an archivist. A keeper of story.” Something changed, body language suddenly just as frantic as when the beast had come for them. “My book! Please, help me find it!”

  “Book?” Saskia parroted. Using the stone like that — not to mention the death chase — had taken its toll. She barely had the energy to blink, let alone go with this creature on a mad search. “Why? What’s it look like?”

  “Pages. Some writing. A book.” The Rabbit pressed its bark-mask nose to the ground, tearing through moss and undergrowth. “I had it only a moment ago, before that Bloodbeast came. Those demons have been managed in the Emberdom, and I am not accustomed to the wilderness. Not since my mistress . . .”

  They trailed off, going still, then stood again. “I have been exiled, you see. Whatever fate befalls me out here is of my own doing.” The tall ears drooped.

  Saskia had tripped into the middle of a story already being told, but she had her own story to worry about. “I . . . I don’t know if I can help you. I have to find someone myself.”

  The creature seemed to smile. She didn’t see it, but she certainly felt it. “Perhaps we can help each other, then,” they said, holding out a nervous hand. “I am Baskar.”

  The head tilted, expectant. The hand was just wood, mismatched pieces that somehow interlocked. She took it gingerly. “I’m Saskia.”

  Baskar yanked her to their side, taking her in the direction from which they’d come. Saskia was too weak to argue.

  “Have you come from the Uplands, Saskia?” they asked as they towed her along.

  The Uplands . . . Urka had used that term to describe the living world. Saskia’s world. There was no sense in lying; it was obvious she wasn’t a shade. “Yes. Like I said, I’m looking for someone. Three someones, actually.”

  Baskar shook their head, parting ferns and brambles but disappointed when the book wasn’t revealed underneath. “You flesh-dwellers are hardly a novelty. Though it has been a hundred years since the last of you came.”

  Saskia pulled free and stopped dead.

  “A . . . hundred years?” No. It couldn’t . . . but everyone did say time didn’t run the same down here . . .

  No. This Baskar thing simply had to be wrong. “I’m looking for Roan Harken and Eli Rathgar. They came down here to —”

  Baskar leapt close to Saskia and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Do not speak of it, if you know it.”

  She was just about to say wake Ancient. She shook the hand off, which had looked so frail but clearly wasn’t. “What the hell do you mean?”

  Baskar ignored this question. “Just tell me: are you like them? The way the General of Ash and Flame and the Owl King used to be?”

  Used to be? General? Owl King? “Look” — Saskia clenched the straps of her pack — “all I want to do is get my friends and get out of here. Things have gone to crap since they left and —”

  The archivist lunged and Saskia stumbled as she dodged. “The stone you carry. It is like my mistress’s. Perhaps if I bring you to her, she will forgive me, and
welcome me back at her side. I can take you there right now!”

  “Your mistress?”

  “Come!” Baskar grabbed Saskia’s hand again and ran, leading her criss-crossing through the undergrowth. “The General will receive you fairly, unlike the Owl King. He is not our ally. He would rip you apart.”

  Riddles. Of course. Baskar had already forgotten about the book, and Saskia wasn’t about to remind them. Best to just go along with this, if it meant finding Roan or Eli, or anyone at least remotely saner than this possessed poppet.

  “Gods’ sakes,” Saskia huffed. As Baskar dragged her, Saskia took in the shattered wilderness and saw fire in the distance.

  * * *

  In the Court of the Owl King, memory was tended and guarded as carefully as any treasured resource. And resources were few and far between, in the high cliffs of the Once-Roost, where he had staked his claim.

  Here he waited, often in silence, eyes shut. Those who attended him, his own restless dead, those of whom he had become caretaker, had long ago lost memory. Or the need for it. But the Owl King knew it was the only thing keeping him alive. Keeping him himself.

  When his eyes, golden with pain, did open with the new grey dawn, he knew. Knew that soon memory might not be enough.

  The cracked stone in his chest offered no guidance. But it flickered once with its own broken knowledge — its sister was near.

  “Yes?” the Owl King stated as his creature crossed the Limitless Ledge, Phyr’s former seat, where the old god was said to have watched and curated the Narrative from the top of the universe. Managing time.

  Time. Another resource running dry.

  The creature was a shade, newly put into its shell body. The Owl King rose and went to it, because it had a hard time walking. It wasn’t accustomed to its new form, and so he knelt before it, breathing the wind into the mask that made its face. It quickened, the body made of leaves and feather locking tighter, and it rose to its full height, a head shorter than him.