by T. A. Miles
Malek knew he was not ugly—far from it—but she made him feel like a wretched, vile creature, crawled up out of some stinking bog to attack her. There were no words to describe his fury. It overwhelmed him, and ultimately he did attack her. Sadly, his skill as a swordsman was no match for her inhuman quickness. She slashed him across the face with her slender, elven blade, and justified her disgust by making him ugly. Malek returned home in a darker, quieter rage, determined to have his revenge.
Against his father’s wishes—for he was not old enough nor skilled enough—he sought the power of his house, the secret spells of his family that enabled them to rule the region. The people were too afraid to stand against them. The elves would be afraid now as well, and he would have the woman who dared to cut him.
The wound burned as perspiration entered it. He touched his cheek absently while he continued to consume the powers of the ancient tome locked in his father’s private library. He had entered without permission and read fast to avoid being caught, knowing that he would be no match for his father in a test of sorcery. He was looking for a spell to satisfy his hatred. He left the library angrier than before, certain that he had failed. While he’d taken in the magic, he’d cast no spell, finding nothing that suited his plans for revenge. His thoughts only grew darker in the time that followed.
It was during the Autumn Feast, when all the members of his house gathered to celebrate the harvest and the turning of the seasons, that his cousin of sixteen—blossoming as all young Vorhaven’s did, with beauty and arrogance—looked upon Malek and made mention of his scar.
He glared viciously at the girl, reminded at once of the appalled look on the elf woman’s face. He could no longer remember what he said to his cousin, only how he felt, the anger that became a twisted satisfaction as the girl’s fair image putrefied before his eyes. Shadow consumed her. It poisoned her flesh and ravaged her soul, leaving a demon in its wake. A foul creature that leapt over the dinner table to make a feast of the horrified observer seated across from it.
Vorhaven smiled at the elf responsible for reminding him of that. “You are as handsome as she was beautiful, hunter. You remind me of her, your gray eyes looking at me with a similar disgust. Do not worry. You shall not be forced to look upon me long. Death will blind you.”
The elf did not seem threatened, but he also did not attack. “You know the Blade I hold,” Alere Shaederin said. “Do you also know what will happen if it crosses with yours?”
“Aerkiren,” Vorhaven purred. “Sky of dusk; twilight...the passing of day into night. I didn’t need Behel to be rid of your father, Alere.” He smiled as the elf tensed visibly. “I don’t see why I’ll need it for you either. Elves guard their minds better than most, but that is because they are often guarding the most terrible secrets. Fears and nightmares they have had too many centuries to accumulate. I realize you are young yet, hunter, but I know what scares you.”
“You know nothing,” Alere said.
“Give me Aerkiren,” Vorhaven said. “And I will end your life quickly. It is more than I offered your friends.”
“They are here, then,” the elf replied, as if to confirm the matter to himself. Surely, he had seen them in the manor.
Vorhaven smiled as the elf’s secret thoughts became his own. They were not his friends. Alere despised the Phoenix Elves, and all other elves, who had failed to assist their own kind during their direst hour. He needed someone to blame, unaware of how it was one of his own who had brought the shadows down upon the Verres mountains, through simple arrogance. As to humans, such as the young knight who had followed him here, Alere remained undecided. Vorhaven found that interesting, but it was too little, too late. This elf’s changing perception of humans could not make up for the unfounded contempt of his ancestors.
“The fools came here almost more eagerly than you,” Vorhaven finally said. “I’ll have their weapons as well, when the berserker finishes with the elf woman, and when my pets have finished with him.”
Alere foolishly tried to hide his concern by not displaying it. Vorhaven knew, however, that it was in his thoughts. Still, the elf continued with his bravado. “You haven’t enough shadows here to deal with a man who feels only rage. If you have provoked him, you have only succeeded in drawing out Ilnon. A true berserker is the living embodiment of the god of rage and vengeance. He will tear this house apart, and everything in it.”
“Even if that’s true, it won’t be your concern,” Vorhaven told him. “Give my regards to your father if your wandering spirit should happen upon his at any time.”
More shapes came out of the darkness that enshrouded the hall. Vorhaven watched them surge toward the lone white figure, then sat down upon his throne once again and closed his eyes, laughing to himself. He’d not been so entertained in years.
Let the berserker tear apart the house. Let him bury himself alive. He’ll calm down quickly enough as he suffocates beneath the rubble and rebuilding the house will give me something to do. I will have four of the six Swords. I will have the strength to stamp out the elves of Yvaria at last. And then I will head south, claiming the cousins of the Verressi next.
The Eastern sorcerer had done well. The blades came, as he believed they would, once Vorhaven concentrated his efforts on finding them. He had only to wait for the Moon Blade to be delivered. The Sun Blade would remain in Sheng Fan, but five would be enough—and he had only bargained with one dragon anyway. It would take more than one shadow beast—no matter how powerful it happened to be—to wrest a coveted treasure from a royal family’s stubborn grip.
He heard Alere before him, introducing the shadows to Aerkiren before making his final stand against them. There were too many of them. Try as he might, he was only one elf, and he could not last forever.
“Bastien!”
The young knight’s voice elsewhere in the house drew Vorhaven out of his thoughts. They must have found the gypsy. Evidently, his pets had finished with him and the others had come upon the remains.
How bothersome. Tristus Edainien should have been hacking Shirisae to pieces by now. That he wasn’t, spoke well for his resolve…something Vorhaven hadn’t considered one of the knight’s stronger aspects. Still, his young mind was so open....as easy to read as the pages of a book.
TRISTUS DIDN’T KNOW what to think as he looked upon the gypsy. He believed the man dead long ago. To find his body here made him wonder if this was also in his mind, part of the dreams the master of this place used as a twisted form of entertainment for his unwanted guests. He closed his eyes and opened them again, horrified to find the gypsy’s broken, shredded body still lying on the floor just inside the dark hall he and Shirisae had entered.
“Do you know him? He looks familiar.”
Tristus shook his head as Shirisae arrived beside him. “His name was Bastien. I... didn’t know him well. He traveled with us, but disappeared during a battle with men from Sheng Fan. We thought he was dead. In fact, ...” Tristus swallowed with effort. “No one was certain whether or not I had been the one to kill him...in my...”
“In your psychotic rage?”
Tristus started, looking everywhere for the voice, that was not Shirisae’s. The lady elf had left him again, else he had left her, gone once again into the dark recesses of his mind where the killer waited behind a flimsy cage door to be let out. Tristus had barely managed to maintain control throughout this ordeal of the mind. Recently, he tried thinking of Xu Liang while he clutched Dawnfire. The mystic was the only person who had been able to calm him, and he’d felt blessed whenever the spear was in his possession. The combination of two such strengthening forces proved to be just enough. However, the past was also strong…and the warmth and security provided by the mystic and Dawnfire were slowly beginning to slip. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be anyone around to be concerned with killing. Whoever had spoken to him seemed just as suddenly to be gone.
And that was when Bastien rose from the floor, only it wasn’t the gypsy. Th
e form that lifted from the red, pooling blood was no battered corpse. The figure stood tall and moved with an ease and grace that stole Tristus’ breath. Dark, almond-shaped eyes regarded him gently. Tristus knew better. He knew Xu Liang was not here, but he stared helplessly at the image of the mystic, healthy again and so beautiful.
Tristus felt weak in his shock, and took a step back to avoid falling down.
Xu Liang hesitated, angling his lovely head thoughtfully. “Do I alarm you, Tristus Edainien?”
“Y-yes,” Tristus stammered. Then he shook his head. “No. I mean…I don’t...”
The smallest of smiles formed on the mystic’s lips. “I knew you were a person worthy of my trust. The others would have abandoned me, but you stayed.”
Tristus wanted to speak on behalf of the others, but he couldn’t bring himself to contradict Xu Liang at this moment. He was mystified in his presence, so relieved to see him well, to see that he wasn’t angry with him.
The mystic came forward again, and Tristus stood frozen, seeing something in Xu Liang’s eyes that frightened him as much as it thrilled him. Could Shirisae have been right? Was there some chance that Xu Liang could love him?
This can’t be true, Tristus argued with himself. This can’t...
Xu Liang came within an arm’s reach. He took two more small steps, then stopped, standing so near that Tristus felt enveloped in his presence. His heart rattled and his breath faltered.
“You are alarmed,” the mystic noted quietly, reaching out. He carefully touched Tristus’ face, letting his cool fingers glide down to his chin. “I’ve seen the longing in your eyes,” he whispered and Tristus began to tremble uncontrollably. “I know what is in your heart…for it is in mine as well.”
Tristus couldn’t believe his ears, nor did he trust his aching body, filled with so much love and desire that he almost collapsed. Something wasn’t right. Xu Liang was too proud to come to him like this. He wouldn’t...
The mystic interrupted the thought with his continued approach. Tristus closed his eyes, held by what he wanted, over what he believed to be possible. He could feel the warmth of Xu Liang’s lips before they touched him, just before a sensation of wrong that was too great to ignore jolted him alert.
He snapped back, devastated by the shocked and angry look on Xu Liang’s face as he did the unthinkable in rejecting him.
And then his world came to a horrifying halt, when he realized that the source of Xu Liang’s anger was not his rejection, but an attack from Alere, who’d come out of nowhere and driven Aerkiren through the mystic’s back. Tristus was screaming, even as the image shattered, revealing a young man with a scar across his left cheek in Xu Liang’s place.
Tristus sank to the floor afterward, too confused to be angry—too horrified to be consumed by the fire within him. His condition only worsened when the stranger turned with Alere’s blade still in him and seized the elf by the throat.
“It would seem that I underestimated you,” the man said, his breath forming red bubbles through the blood on his lips. With his other hand he lifted his own black sword and braced the tip against Alere’s chest.
Tristus moved without thinking. Lurching forward, he swung Dawnfire in a low arc and swept the man’s feet out from under him. As the stranger fell, he dropped Alere, who managed not to fall on his opponent’s sword, or his own, which now stuck farther out of the man’s chest after he landed on his back.
Tristus rose quickly to pin the stranger, who refused death.
“He has the Night Blade!” the elf choked, and Tristus quickly lifted Dawnfire away from the man, who was raising his own weapon as if to display the fact Alere had given.
“Yes,” he chuckled, sitting up.
An unseen force seemed to be pushing Tristus further off him while his attention was on keeping the Blades from coming against one another.
“And now...I have the Twilight Blade as well.” The man rose slowly, keeping his opponents at bay with the black blade extended. “Give me the Dawn Blade, boy, and I will allow you to live out your days in a blissful dream state. Spend your last hours in arms that will never love you in life. If you force me to take the Blade, I will make certain your death is a long, miserable torture.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Alere warned.
“I know,” Tristus returned, unable to take offense at the elf’s estimate of his resolve. He was too absorbed in wondering how to kill a man that wouldn’t die, who was backing away from both of them slowly.
In the next instant, a dagger shot through the air, like a bolt of silver light.
The man lifted the Night Blade in front of him in response, and the eerie energy looming about the weapon caught the projectile, swiftly turning it about and sending it back to the elf who had thrown it.
Alere flinched aside, clutching his arm after the dagger glided past his shoulder. “If you are so confident, why don’t you finish us now?”
The stranger laughed. “You cannot provoke me! I have you where I want you, elf! I know you will not leave here without your precious Aerkiren! Perhaps in a hundred years, I will let you look upon it again, as it does to you what it has done to me. I doubt, however, that you will survive that moment.”
Tristus had heard and seen enough. He stood, dropped Dawnfire on the floor, and stepped confidently toward the stranger. While the man looked on in amusement, Tristus drew his sword of the Order, and held it calmly in front of him. He said evenly, “You are going nowhere. Your game has ended.”
The man spat blood on him. “You have chosen a slow death, boy!”
Tristus wiped the spittle away from his cheek with his glove, keeping his eyes on the man…or whatever his state made him. He was expecting the attack that followed, but he was unprepared for the transformation that preceded it.
Within seconds, the form of the man peeled away, like a snake’s shed skin, leaving the grotesque image of a demon with eyes that instantly terrified. He knew too well where he had seen those eyes before. He stared helplessly while the man stood straight, displaying his full height—which now easily matched Fu Ran’s—then flexed leathery wings, snapping them out of their fold against his back and making the glowing blade that protruded from his chest more apparent.
The demon came forward in a rushed series of strokes that Tristus found himself hard-pressed to beat back. He felt the energy of each blow. He heard it strike a dull ring in his ears. The sound made his skull ache while the force of the attack soundly tested his endurance. The beast was driving him back with the Night Blade, and with its strength, and with the madness in its haunting yellow eyes.
Tristus passed beneath a doorway and became briefly aware of the outdoors as snowflakes landed on his face, but his concentration remained on the demon and the Night Blade, which struck chords of terror deep within him with every blow. He saw only the demon’s hellish gaze, and acted with unconscious instinct when it dealt a blow that sent him reeling backward.
He reached out and grabbed hold of the demon’s wing. It issued a soul-rending shriek, adding Tristus’ heart to the rush of organs seeming to crowd in his throat, strangling his scream as he toppled over the balcony railing…toward the mist below, through a heavy orange haze, and into the dark, stinking water beneath it.
ALERE STRUGGLED TO his feet, touching his aching throat, as if the contact would make it easier to swallow after Vorhaven’s near crushing grip. He hadn’t been expecting such strength, but now it was all clear. Vorhaven himself was a demon. He was different from the others, but he had not been unaffected by his own curse. Perhaps he had simply refused to accept it. Whatever the case, it hardly mattered now. The demon had just gone over the edge of the balcony with Tristus. It would surely kill the knight if the fall didn’t.
Alere retrieved Dawnfire and hurried toward the balcony, emerging outside just as Shirisae did the same. He could not say where she had come from, where she had been while Tristus was being attacked by Vorhaven’s mind tricks, but he had no time to question. Their
surroundings altered again when they arrived at the balustrade.
They found themselves on a smaller balcony now, one overlooking the bog in front of the stone house in the Deepwood. Alere watched without displaying the apprehension he felt as the foul water stirred below. Shirisae appeared to be doing the same in the corner of his vision.
The knight eventually surfaced, but he was not alone.
TRISTUS CLAWED HIS way to firmer ground ahead of the demon, gasping for air, grabbing up fistfuls of mud and snow. Something grabbed his leg. He turned over and kicked, shocked almost to stillness, seeing what his boot drove into. The giant serpent—eyeless and nearly without features—pulled back one of more than a dozen whip-like tendrils reflexively, then began flailing the many overlong limbs about in a blind search for its prey. A round mouth at the top end was open wide, displaying many circular rows of long, narrow teeth.
A strangled gasp of disbelief escaped Tristus, and he began to push himself away from the water’s edge, horrified as the tendrils snaked onto land and wound about him. He found his dagger and began to slash at the slick black appendages, forcing the worm to moan when it bled, and eventually to recoil, but not before it successfully dragged him half into the bog again. Tristus dug his arms into the cold, soft earth and the worm ultimately submerged without its intended meal.
The surface of the water never quite stilled in the moment’s respite that followed. Tristus thought for an instant that the worm had come back when a black form broke the slimy surface and shot into the sky. He realized as the lean, muscular shape came down on him that it was the demon. It landed hard, pinning him beneath its weight and one clawed hand, which clamped viciously around his throat. The other arm raised its obsidian blade above its head.
