The Brilliant Dark

by S. M. Beiko

  Saskia kept her questions to herself. She wanted to know more about Roan, and she’d get there by hanging back, observing. Baskar followed more like an obedient dog than a Rabbit, and at first it made Saskia cringe, but then she recalled what they’d said: the dead were looking for something to believe in. Disgust turned to pity. Everyone just wanted to belong, and she didn’t blame Baskar for clinging to whatever acceptance they could get.

  Roan led Saskia through the deep-cut channels of the canyon. Cinder Town, they called it. Saskia discovered quickly that Roan’s soldiers, the Hounds of Deon, were all Fox shades, and Roan took her down to the barracks first.

  “The shades come to me,” Roan said. “I welcome them and I give them a bit of the light they crave.” Huddled in a corner of a long room, dug out of the earth, were maybe three Fox shades, crouching. Roan beckoned one forward, and Baskar assisted in grabbing parts from various nooks — branches, stones, layers of bark — laying it all down on the ground in a way that made Saskia think of Jet and his floor paintings with her tech garbage.

  The Fox shade stepped into the pile of wilderness debris, and Roan stretched out a finger, at the tip of which was a flame. All at once, almost too quickly to see, the debris shivered into crackling, broken-jointed angles, and the shade went inside of it, pulling the body on like a coat. Roan really might be some kind of god, making her own followers in her image. Judging by Eli’s forces, he’d learned how to do the same thing.

  Maybe with the Onyx, and how it could fix corrupted shades, or pull them into it, Saskia was doing it, too.

  “Tell me,” Roan asked, without turning to Saskia. “Where did the shades go when you turned on your clever stone?”

  She needed to answer very, very carefully in order to proceed. “I don’t know how it works,” she admitted, which was only partly a lie. “Only that the Moth Queen wished to see the dead to rights, and I promised to help her. Maybe they want to rest. Maybe they’re resting inside the stone.”

  Roan turned halfway, assessing. “Do you mean to release them on me, as your own army?”

  Saskia felt the blood leave her face. “No! I just escaped one war, I’m not looking to get involved in another one.”

  “Hm.” Roan seemed to accept that for now. She turned fully and led both Saskia and Baskar back out into the main thoroughfare of Cinder Town. “Either way, it is a clever trick. It would be useful against the Owl King. Without his soldiers protecting him, he will be weakened, and we can rest easy knowing he’s given up the Heartwood.”

  There was that word again. Saskia glanced at Baskar, but they just shook their head at her. She hadn’t wanted to ask any questions but did anyway. “What is the Heartwood?”

  Roan was in a generous mood. “It is a tree. A very valuable tree. It appeared long after the Owl King and I arrived. It is guarding something terrible. It should never be disturbed. Whoever controls it, controls this world. The Owl King currently keeps me from it — I’m concerned he will use it against us all.”

  A tree that had appeared after Roan and Eli had . . . the only trees she’d seen so far were Hope Trees. Which made her think of Barton, which made her wildly guess — and desperately hope, this tree had something to do with him.

  Eli was protecting it. Roan was trying to take control of it. Saskia needed to get to it and figure out the truth first.

  Roan stopped then, hands on her hips, letting out a very deep sigh. “There is much, I’m sure, you don’t understand.” She pivoted on her heel, an elegant flourish, and Saskia was surprised — the Roan she knew was clumsy. “Before I take you farther, there is something about this world I wish you to know.”

  Saskia folded her hands before her to keep them from shaking. She nodded.

  “Grief cannot survive here.” Roan opened her arms, like a preacher. “This is heaven. Heaven is worth protecting, worth eliminating any threat for. Don’t you agree?”

  Of course, Saskia had heard this all before, from the Task Guard, and so hearing it almost verbatim from Roan chilled her to her Keds. “It depends on how far you want to take it. I’m too young to know anything about heaven.” So were you, she wanted to tell Roan, but she didn’t. “I’m not here to eliminate anyone, either. Or be eliminated.”

  Roan smiled. “I’m not really sure what you’re here for. But I intend for you to see it my way before either of us finds out.” The smile dropped like it hadn’t even been there, when Roan turned to Baskar. “Take her to the archive and tell her our purpose. Hopefully I can trust you to do that much.”

  Baskar bowed their head and seemed to trill with excitement instead of flinching in fear. “Of course, Mistress.”

  Roan appraised Saskia one last time and nodded curtly. “Perhaps once you’ve heard it all objectively, you will come to me as an ally.” She didn’t say what would happen if Saskia didn’t, but Saskia could guess that, too.

  With that, Roan turned abruptly and left them behind.

  Saskia dropped her face into her hands, running them through her hair and getting it knotted in the Fractal’s framework. “Okay. This is getting way too intense. Is she going to kill me or isn’t she?”

  “Not today!” Baskar cried, looping a gangling arm through Saskia’s. “Did you hear that? She trusts me! Oh, lovely day.”

  “Great for you,” Saskia groaned, and Baskar led her down a steep and narrow causeway, further into the canyon.

  “All the stories I have collected and sorted are in the archive,” Baskar buzzed, and Saskia couldn’t help but catch on to their excitement. “Soon you’ll know all. Soon you’ll understand. There is no greater power than understanding.”

  Saskia would’ve agreed once, but she didn’t know what it was going to take to understand what was going on down here.

  They took a few corners and went farther down into a deeper labyrinth. Here and there were shades, in both poppet bodies and without, their eyes flashing at her as they passed. Saskia noted there were many Rabbits down here, intermingling with fewer Foxes than she’d seen above ground. Most of the Foxes seemed pressed into soldier service. There were even a few Deer, though Baskar explained that the Deer were the most likely to become Bloodbeasts, as their Realm was the first to shatter. There was definitely one other Family missing. “And the Seals?” she asked.

  Baskar sucked in something like a breath, then she remembered that the dead couldn’t breathe. “We do not go to the Abyss. It surrounds us on all sides. They are protected by a Bloodbeast in the depths, and they are allies to no one.”

  Things just got better and better. “This really is too much.”

  Baskar swung around so quickly that Saskia bumped into them. Their hands steadied her, head tucked in concern. “I will help you through this,” Baskar said. “When you hear the story, you won’t feel so alone.”

  Saskia blinked, not sure what to say to that. Baskar went ahead, beckoning. “Come and you’ll see.”

  Baskar had gone through a doorway, and Saskia noted that scratched above it was a shape — no, a symbol. One she recognized from the many sigils that had shown themselves to her. Story came the interpretation from a place in her mind she didn’t know was there.

  And a different word came up beneath it, a synonym — Narrative.

  Saskia stepped over the threshold into an enormous room whose end she couldn’t find. Stacked neatly, from stone floor to stone ceiling, were strips of bark. Books handcrafted carefully. There were many of them. Baskar raced between the pillars gleefully.

  “Oh my stories,” they said, making a good show of leaping into the air and spinning. “Oh, I am home.”

  Saskia let out a nervous laugh and bit her lip. For a moment, she let go of what had brought her here, taking it all in and spinning, too, except much slower. “This is really something.” She bent to examine a slip under her foot and realized that the text written on the bark was made up of the sigils she’d seen. They hadn
’t been some ill omen, then. Just a different language. The language of Ancient, of the gods that came from it . . .

  Baskar snatched the sheet she’d been looking at, examined it, then raced off to categorize it. “Did you build this place?” she called after them.

  Baskar seemed to swell with pride. “I collected these stories as they happened, yes,” they said, rickety hands wide. “It has been a glorious task. I could not stand for any of it to be lost. That is why my mistress kept me close. She does value the story, too — where she came from, where the Owl King came from. It helps her to look ahead.”

  To Saskia, it seemed like all Roan was interested in was her war with Eli. But convincing Baskar of that might take longer than she had. “Can you tell me how it all started between them . . . down here?”

  “By heart,” Baskar said, laying a hand across their narrow chest as if they were a thespian finally arrived to their stage. “Once upon a time, a fox followed a girl home. The girl was marked by Death. Death gave the girl to the fox, on one condition: she must banish a snake . . .”

  Saskia sat still and listened. She had heard this story before. Ella had told it to her. Saskia had told it to herself. Everything was folding in on itself. She sat, cross-legged, as the edge in Baskar’s usually uncertain voice smoothed out. The way they told it, it did sound like something beautiful, something worth believing.

  “I lived this story,” Saskia said when Baskar had paused, and they came down slowly on their knees before Saskia.

  “So you know,” they said, “that Roan and Eli came down here together, as one.”

  Saskia nodded. “They were looking for something. Like I am.”

  Earlier, she had checked her tablet, and though the battery on it was reading fine, there had been no messages. Not from Barton, not from anyone. Saskia was out of her depth, and she needed something, someone, to cling on to. Heartwood. New gods. Baskar was casting a spell, and she was getting too tired to refuse it. She wanted to take a moment to not be hurtling forward. She needed to learn how things had gotten this way before she could untangle it all and do what she came here to do.

  Remember yourself and what brought you to the other side, Phae had warned. Saskia repeated it again.

  “Roan came first,” Baskar said, weaving their hands as they weaved their words, mesmerizing. “The shades did not respect her then. They blamed her for the loss of their god, Deon, and of the fire. But Roan carried the fire with her all along, and when she reclaimed it they followed her. It is how I met her, that first time.” Baskar’s voice overflowed with devotion. “She showed me kindness when the wilderness had shown only cruelty. I will forever be grateful to her for that. She gave me the first story and inspired me to collect these.”

  Saskia nodded at the impressive collection they were immersed in now. “And Eli?”

  Baskar raised one hand high, then let it drop, fingers angled downward like a paper airplane crashing. “One day, when Roan had accepted the fire fully into herself and turned away the grief she had felt in the Uplands, she and her shades watched as a strange winged creature fell from the sky.” Baskar’s fingers spread like wings. “It was the Owl King, but he was then called Eli, and he told Roan he was there to save her.”

  Saskia shivered, remembering the brief encounter when Eli, himself incredibly changed, had shown himself. “Then what happened?”

  Baskar landed a finger gently on Saskia’s nose. An affectionate gesture that reminded her of Ella, but not exactly — it made her remember how Ella used to make her feel when they traded stories of their heroes. It made her feel something in her chest, fluttering.

  Baskar’s mask rose a little, which Saskia took for a smile. “They disagreed. They were always very good at that.”

  As Baskar told her this story, Saskia fell into it.

  Hollow Talk

  Dark and heat and light. A tightness across his chest, growing tighter. The dark withdrew as the light grew, his closed eyelids turning red as a sun in . . . a place he couldn’t recall, slipping away by inches.

  Remember, warned his mother, weaving her thoughts into his in a cross-stitch, clarifying years of gaps, of things he had purposefully cut out, building emptiness to convince himself he wasn’t already empty. Remember to always keep yourself close. You are alive in the land of the dead. The very air will try to take what makes you, claim it, and wipe it out. You’ve only just taken back what you lost. Remember how. Remember why. Remembering is what will rebuild the door back to living. Not just for you, but for —

  Eli opened his heavy eyes, nostrils flaring with the burning. “Christ!” He tried to pull back from the fire in his face but couldn’t get far. The flame banked with his exhale, and when the white dots cleared from his vision, Eli saw the flickering blaze was held in an outstretched palm, and above it an impatient, twisted mouth.

  Roan’s mouth.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Eli croaked. There were other things he’d wanted to say to her now that he’d found her, but best to deal with the immediate threats.

  He was lying on his side, shoulders tight to his ears. His knees were bent under him, stiff, locked. He tried to move his hands, wrists grinding at the small of his back, ankles much the same behind him.

  Confusion turned into panic. “A little much, Harken, don’t you think?”

  She kneeled next to him, face blank, head cocked. “What’s that word you keep calling me, demon?”

  Demon? This was . . . less than ideal. “Your name, you Lost Boy reprobate.” Eli struggled against the knots, tried to pull his arms up, but realized more bonds were tight around his chest and waist, binding him in a full harness. Thorough. Eli scowled internally.

  “This is ludicrous! You have eyes in your head — I can barely stand let alone do you any harm. Let me go.” He tried to master his face, at least, but he still had a right to be pissed.

  Roan twisted her wrist and the flame seeped back into her skin. “And how else was I supposed to carry you back here?” She stood with a snap of her thighs, moving away behind Eli so he couldn’t see what she was doing. “Besides, I had to sleep, and I don’t know what kind of demon you are.” He heard her laugh once, oddly ominous. “Not yet, anyway.”

  His heart slammed into his chest like a spooked horse against its stall. “What are you doing?” Eli tried again to pull himself up, dragging his body forward by inches; there was heat at his back, though the ground under him was sharp and cool. He needed to rein in the ever-rising panic and catch his breath, turn it into a piece of wind in his loose, flexing fingers . . .

  A boot came down hard on his hands and he screeched.

  “Best keep your tricks to yourself,” Roan said above him. The smirk was gone from her voice.

  “Nng,” Eli grunted. “This really isn’t necessary, Harken. I don’t know what you think I’m going to —”

  The boot heel crushed his knuckles into the ground and he cried out.

  “You said we were the same. I’ll admit, you’re the first demon I’ve seen to mimic living flesh, but this world gets smarter each day. I won’t allow it to outsmart me.”

  Suddenly the pressure was gone, and Eli finally breathed, shaking as Roan stalked away across the dark shale. Cold sweat ran down the back of his neck, and he managed to turn his head just enough to see her over his shoulder, but she was measuring him, arms folded, deciding what to do next.

  A blaze wound around her body like a loyal dog. Eli’s jaw tightened.

  I could always reach into her mind, he thought. But with that look, she’d likely finish me for it.

  Instead, Eli tried to get back to basics and figure out where they were. Put simply, by the look and smell of it, they were in a cavern — cold, earthy. Beyond the entrance, ten feet from where Roan stood, inkier darkness. Night. What struck Eli the most, however, were the floating ambient flames scattered around them in the air, casting danc
ing shadows from blades of damp rock. A constant dripping echoed somewhere in the distance, but from where Eli had been tied up, he couldn’t tell how deep the cavern went; into the dark at the back of it were pinprick lights, more little flames.

  How deep it went didn’t matter just then. This was Roan’s domain, and he wasn’t going anywhere until she allowed it.

  Or until he bested her. And if not through a contest of strength, then it’d have to be wits and will. Two areas where Foxes and Owls were evenly matched. Damn.

  Eli tightened his abdomen and pulled himself to sitting, easing against the far wall. She watched him do this and didn’t move to stop him, the fire at her back banking with a shift of her shoulder, the tilt of her inquisitive head. She seemed taller somehow, though Eli realized that as long as he’d known her, Roan had been prone to hunching her shoulders. Living like a wild animal improved her posture, at least. Eli failed to stifle a snicker.

  Roan bared her teeth. “I could kill you now, demon, if that’s what you came here for.”

  Eli coughed, trying to prevent himself from falling into a hysterical spasm. “It’s just too much, honestly.” He shook his greasy hair from his eyes. “I only wish you could see the irony. You’d be the first to point it out.”

  He scrutinized her clothing, handmade, far from the jeans and hoodie he’d seen her in last, her feet and hands wrapped in fabric, forearms and calves armoured. Her garnet blade was lashed in a belt. Who had outfitted her? Who had trained her? Gods knew she was barely battle-blooded, even after Zabor. Now she was a one-woman army. She even seemed . . . older.

  How had she changed so much in so little time? How had she surpassed Eli?

  And why did it annoy him so much?

  There was a spark quick as flash paper. Roan slid in front of him then, the flame she’d snatched from mid-air engulfing her hand and hurtling towards Eli’s face. His body tensed.

  “You act like you know me,” Roan said. The light seemed to be pulsing beneath her skin. Her eyes were bright. “How? ”