Shadow & Light

by Stephen Ayer

  ***

  Demon and witch traveled beyond the manor and into the surrounding woods. Here the sky dimmed and paled between the leaves so that silvery dusk fell over the green like a ghostly veil. Spots of sunshine gleamed off the branches like little slips of starlight.

  The further they tread, the more the forest gloom intensified. Tree roots disfigured the road like mud skinned serpents, bird calls grew quiet and distant until only silence prevailed. Aphon swatted errant branches away with distaste, uncaring of the raucous snaps made with each swing and step. Agatha tensed, wary of the growing feeling of being watched.

  “These woods are old... very old. Beautiful things have happened here.” She took in the subtle twist of shadows, bending with the dead sunlight. “Unspeakable things have happened here.” The two came into a clearing, the air choked with smoky blue luminescence. “And so will...” she eyed the figures before her, “the future.”

  Three witches and six warlocks waited in a circle, draped in the silvered and floral robes of the Black Rose. Old tomes and idols hung from the warlocks, gold flecked baubles and great claws. The witches were unadorned by comparison, only the unnatural luster of their tumbling locks foretold of what inhumanity lurked beneath those black silks.

  Ley lines and runes burnt through the high grass surrounded the sextuplet while high stones chiseled in the morning of the world rose tall into the forested murk, their faces engraved with swirls and patterns not seen since Antediluvian times. Eroded and elongated heads stared down those in the circle, their expressions inscrutable, their judgments unknowable.

  Shattered stone wings, delicate and thin and broken claws lay at the base of each stone, strangled and moldy with overgrowth.

  “Not all are fit for my new order.” she said, walking to the edge of the circle. “There is one who takes my generosity, and his...” she pointed to Aphon, “and still holds another master. Know this.” She met the eyes of her chosen, cloaked in shadow though they were. “Loyalty to all is loyalty to none. The man I send you to made his choices... ensure the consequences come to pass.”

  Agatha rose a limp hand, her eyes heavy lidded, whispers fast and sibilant from shining lips. Total silence fell over the conclave, where not even the lowest blade of grass dared stir. Steam coiled from the ground and hovered before the lips of the surrounding statues like a false breath, their shadowed eyes shining with life-like glints.

  Expectation hung in the air, just as it did nine decades before in coldest Siberia.

  The Black Star around the witch’s neck flashed with motes of etheric emerald light.

  And then clouded completely black.

  Within a breath, all the arcanists were gone, gone as if they had never existed. There was no flash, no clap as air rushed to fill the sudden void, not even a depression in the grass where they knelt... no life, only stillness.

  Aphon’s gaze moved from the empty air and onto the witch’s body. “Ahh... magic from the old days. Not many could pull that off in a world as starved as this.” He looked to the bough choked sky, the trees rustling to a cold wind, and then back to the ground, running his hands through the tall and swaying reeds. “Who did you send them to?”

  “You’ll hear about him very soon.”

  The demon host’s voice turned cold. “I look forward to it.”

  Neither said anything for moments, Agatha lost in thought, Aphon lost in Agatha.

  She smiled when she felt the demon’s eyes on her. She massaged the black stone hung around her neck and heard his breathing deepen. “You want me, demon... but not for my beauty.” She sighed dreamily and felt raw power percolate between her fingers. Reality thrummed and blurred at the edges of her vision, violet luminescence more vivid than passion itself cascaded over the grass.

  Things abandoned and lost to the world materialized before the witch’s eyes. Shrunk and emaciated changelings slunk from the amaranthine dappled stones, hissing at the ghost light. Their shiny opal eyes narrowed in malformed and waxen faces.

  Wraiths drifted to the violet effulgence, sensing something seething with life, ready to be feasted on. Their wispy pale gray forms passed through the illumination as surely as they would a wall, moaning in disappointment as the light could no more sate their hunger than anything in the mortal world.

  Aphon chuckled. “I desire more, yes.”

  “You retrieved me for a crown... not all of Hell.” Her fingers skimmed the edges of her pendant again.

  At once the invisible world etched before her witch eyes receded, the lurid lavender light fading into the dim and gray spots of sunlight. The glint of changeling eyes became inseparable from the natural gloss of rain spattered stones, the breath of wraiths as distant as raven caws at the edge of the wood.

  “Little good it does you, witch. You could not even ascend from the ice with such a power.”

  Agatha felt the pulse of her pendant against her chest, teeming with enough power to cloak her heart in iron or reduce it to pulped ribbons. “It is only because of this that you knew I was from the ice at all, that you knew where to look... that I survived the long centuries of your search.” She inclined her head to his direction. “Without it... you would not be here to mock me.”

  Aphon exhaled, his breath like a deep rumble. “Mmm... the touch of destiny at play.”

  The witch scoffed. “Destiny is my slave. Where it leans on some, weighs on others... to me, it only bows.” She clutched her pendant. “I was supposed to die in the cold, tattered and forgotten... and you were supposed to fall to the blades of traitors, a coup centuries in the making.” She eyed him with a sideways glance. “Even way back then, this treasure of treasures chose you Aphon, and twisted Fate’s dagger away from your heart.”

  The demon possessed man smirked and rubbed Agatha’s shoulders with deceptively soft hands. Hands that were just as much at home with a brush as they were with a knife. “Ah it chose me did it...” Whose to say it wasn’t the cause of my ruin then? His lone finger swept along her neck and lifted slightly under the black chord that held her pendant. An involuntary sigh left his throat, trembling over the power that lay but a strangling away.

  If it chose me... then why isn’t it mine?

  “Tempting, isn’t it?”

  Aphon smiled. “Oh yes...” Another finger reached under the chord.

  “I almost want you to do it... just to see your anguish after...”

  “I wept when my consort was stolen by another. I wept when I was usurped of my crown, my prize. I would not weep to usurp yours.”

  “Oh you would weep, demon. You would weep. Such tears of blood that your sorrow could give life to a thousand.” Her voice dropped its wistful quality and adopted a pitch more cold and controlled. “Pull from my neck and it would pull you so far from your throne you would not even begin to see its shine for eons. It chose one to wield it and one to serve it.” She glanced at him. “Break the chain at your own peril.”

  Aphon tensed, his eyes agleam. A clever lie.

  “And be a duke. A duke without a witch, without a star, without a crown.” Her eyes glittered like frozen rain drops, her expression like that of some imperious queen. “Be... nothing”

  The demon’s host twitched, his face flushed red with rage. “Bitch!” He pulled back with both arms around her chord, intent on fulfilling what those from the Seventh Circle did best: murder. The necklace pulled tight against Agatha’s neck, her gaze flashing wide in wild surprise.

  The sable pendant pricked her throat, shimmering when it drank a bead of her enchanted blood. Voices cried out in her head, hungry for more, hungry to pry soul from body. She backed up against him and got just enough breath to speak.

  “Ashyr a’lash...” she whispered, her throat turned raw as if subject to a swarm of icy needles. Aphon buckled behind her, falling to his knees. A haze of frost lifted from his shoulders, his ragged coughs filled the air.

  The witch stood up. She faced the demon with cold eyes, pale greenish light dancing between the opaque
angles of her medallion. “Sooner or later, it was always going to come down to this.” she rasped, still recovering from her spell. “So hear me well. I won’t again tread upon your sensibilities, I see the little nothings mean much to you. I’m grateful for your assistance, but know that there are many demons like you, there are none like me. Deal with me with honor as you have until now and the conclusion of our deal will be mutually beneficial... otherwise it will be very exclusive.” She curled her fingers and more mist lifted from the demon’s chest and he coughed violently in turn. “I will have no more of your threats and brinksmanship.”

  The exile of the Sixth Circle gasped for air, clutching his throat. The witch straightened her fingers and his breath returned, the burning chill ebbed from his lungs. Even for all his power, the Star made the witch as an empress before his fell majesty.

  He looked to her sweaty faced and red eyed, his voice a broken murmur.

  “Deal.”

  Chapter 17: Dead Flames

  “Issam will be watching you, but he will not be helping you.” said Navras. Frank’s hands were now bound behind a leather chair. The surroundings looked like any earthly study, with bookcases and shelves, lamps and windows. Still, a certain darkness pervaded the place, no matter how much light shone. “The Marid were once seers, lords in the seas of possibility. If they detect even the lightest touch of mine in this affair... I don’t need to say what happens to you.”

  Frank took them to be some rival gang or clan. “But me just popping out of nowhere and icing this bastard... that ain’t gonna be a big deal? You get a lot of men like me around here?”

  Navras regarded Frank and then took a sip of something from his amber colored glass. “There will be suspicions. Everyone will be too polite to voice them. I am very near to uniting all the tribes in peace.” He set his glass down and a self-satisfied smirk came over his face. “Already they’re calling me King of Flames.”

  The Emir gestured to the frieze behind him, wrought in citrine stone, the curves gilded with bronze. The man in the sculpture wore a crown of flame, his eyes brazen and keen as they stared into the viewer, one hand full of stylized and bronze plated flame, the other brandishing a curved blade.

  “Personally, I don’t believe in him. But he is a useful myth. Like you.” Navras leaned forward in his chair and scrutinized the vampire’s face. “Even after all these years... just the same.”

  Frank racked his brain on how Navras might have known him but nothing came to mind. Think I would have remembered this asshole.

  “We are long lived but we are not ageless, Frank.” The vampire’s undisguised confusion elicited a snicker from the fire prince. “Then again, what is life without memory? You don’t like this place but you don’t know why.” He grabbed Frank by the throat and examined his face as an anthropologist would a skull. “Five decades ago. My brother saw you. He said some things before he died. Interesting things. A red eyed ghost. A shadow in blood. Ripping through Americans and Frenchman to get to the bottom of that fortress.”

  The event was so insignificant it had almost faded from the vampire’s mind entirely. “Ligh... ty?” he said, the map location struggling to emerge up from his mental fog like deep roots in the earth.

  “Lyautey. A small occurrence in the grand game mortals played at the time, but not to us.”

  “Oh.” Images of sand blown up into great plumes rose to the top of Frank’s memory. Screams and fires surrounded the fortress... the Kasbah they called it. He had entered the warzone on account of revenge in those days, but on who he could not recall. Only the Americans and the French stood out in his mind. He remembered how painfully they screamed, how hot their blood spray felt over his face, and laughed at the remembrance. “Yeah, that was a riot.”

  “I imagine it was. But not for my brother.” Navras leaned back into his seat, his voice cold. “You killed him.”

  “I see.”

  Got the wrong man, kid. I would’ve remembered killing one of you sons a bitches.

  “I don’t expect you to survive my request, Frank. But whether you kill him or he kills you... I’m still a very happy man.” He handed Frank a photo of his mark. Goddamn this seems familiar. “Emir Vazim. He is Marid, of the al-Jalmur family.”

  Navras gestured past Frank’s shoulder. “My dear cousin, Basima, will go with you. Tell you what you need to know when you’re in the streets. I’ve got better things to do than teach a dead man.”

  The sultry woman Frank now knew as Basima groaned at the news. She stood in the dim light, between two mercenaries. “And what makes you think I’ll do what you say?”

  Navras folded his hands. “I don’t think you’ll do what I say. But I do think you’ll do what he says.” He nodded to Frank. “Your mutual survival depends on your obedience. You’ve had an entire lifetime to practice so I imagine it shouldn’t be too difficult...”

  Frank eyed her from his peripherals, catching a glimmer of her shadowed curves in the brazen light. Difficult is good. I like my drinks with some fight in ‘em. He turned his head back to Navras. “You gonna give me one of those fancy brass guns?”

  Navras grinned and leaned back against his desk. “No. I’m daring, not suicidal.”

  “Kidnapping me was very suicidal.” Frank’s head rocked forward to Issam’s fist. His skull rattled to the djinn’s blow. “So was that.”

  “Time will tell.” said Navras, moving away from his desk. “Speaking of which, I need Vazim killed by the end of day, or the deal’s off.”

  Frank growled. “Oh fuck you – ”

  The black bag fell over the vampire’s head.

  When next Frank came to, he was rolling on the ground. The sound of a galloping hooves and steel wheels on stone resounded in his ears, but they sounded off. Like ghostly drums spiked with a metallic shrillness that set the vampire on edge.

  His vampiric eyes picked through the murk of his surroundings as easily as an eagle might in the daytime sky. He spun up to his feet and watched orange sparks scatter beneath the wheels of a sleek carriage, spirited away into the distance by horses ethereal and dark, stallions born from shadow. What the hell...

  He looked up.

  “Damn.”

  There were no stars above. Only inky shadows and far and distant cracks of sunlight, constantly in a state of being filled with darkness before another fissure of pale yellow luminescence spread across the void black sky.

  “Welcome to Ralshaba.” Basima laid a light hand on his shoulder, drifting off just as quickly. She strutted forward, one of many silhouettes in the street, all the city alive as if in some shadow play. All Frank saw was in shades of black and gold. Black iron street lamps jutted up from the ground, iron crescents cradling the lights like gibbous moons. The lamps themselves were like fire filled pearls, round and diffused, radiating sumptuous amber luminescence into the midnight air.

  “What is this place?” he said dodging shadowy passerby, their steps barely continuous before his sharp eyes, their bodies blurring as a passing car might. Many of their faces were veiled but for the night fire shines of their eyes, their gait possessed of a furtive character.

  Muted and melodious strains hung in the still air, seemingly carried from one high estate to the other, the streets like little rivers before the mountainous abodes of Ralshaba’s royalty. They were like mansions crossed with castles, favoring looming black stone exteriors, curved walls and towers with domed tops. Many flew golden orange banners, each one worked with designs personal to the house, whether they be white suns, three pronged crowns or crossed spears.

  Others displayed deep blue banners, so well threaded they turned indigo and showed shades of violet to the play of light. Further off in the distance the vampire thought he saw similar estates bearing red, rare though they were.

  “Home. What we built before the Most High deemed we should bow before men of mud and ash.” Basima turned around a corner and the street brightened, but was no less hushed. Far up, above gardens and gates, a tower estate
that dwarfed the opulence of sheikhs loomed at the road’s end. “One of the few places we can gather in peace. Vazim’s place is ahead.”

  Azure flames highlighted the building’s sculpted edifice from below. This one’s stones were pale, its silhouettes darker, the designs mimicking waves of crashing water, the ivory masonry like white caps atop shadow drenched waves. Green gardens sprawled out before the entrance, replete with violets and orchids and spring blooms, all shadowed under a high gazebo, the middle ground broken up with a square pool.

  The dry heat of the city eased for a moment and Frank felt coolness settle over his skin.

  “He is the highest lord of the Marid in these parts.” said Basima, nodding to party goers in the garden as they sipped their drinks. “He will be well protected.”

  Frank’s eyes drank in the darkness and the stonework drenched in sapphire fire. “They all are. Never changes much.”

  The duo continued onto the entrance, the ushers regarding Basima hungrily, Frank with distrust and moved to impede him until they saw he was with Basima. The vampire’s disheveled hair and scuffed leather jacket would have to be suffered if the other was to be admired.

  They crossed a foyer of fountains, where water ran down walls in smooth streams, their steps creating ripples across the marble floor, yet not wetting their feet. A giant chandelier, three pronged and of crystal, cast rich shades of blue flame through glass perfected through Hermetic alchemy, refracting the light with a luster lost to more mortal glass smiths.

  When they came into the elevator, an octagonal space of brass and gold tinted glass, they had no more entered it before the doors opened again to the main floor. Something tells me there’s no counter weight or pulley.

  Inside, it was a palace of pleasure.

  Petals of sea lavender rained down in never-ending streams, their shadowed indigo edges lit by small, floating globes of fire, held in crystalline spheres and suspended from the ceiling with curved iron rods. A band of drummers, a woman plucking a qanun and a select few neyzen breathed melodies into the air, instruments he had all heard before, but here there was a new ethereal and frenzied quality that seemed to quicken his heart and heat his blood.