Darkmage

by M. L. Spencer

  “All right,” he allowed, efficiently sheathing his blade. “We leave for Aerysius at first light. Come on, Kyel.”

  Kyel followed him as Swain turned his back on Darien and strode away. Kyel couldn’t help chancing a glance behind, which revealed Darien kneeling with his head thrown back as if gazing up at the sky. Fine ripples of blue energy were coruscating over his body, bleeding off into the night. It was a sad and eerie sight, one that Kyel didn’t think he was likely ever to forget. He turned away, leaving Darien alone to silently shed his grief.

  He wandered dismally back to the command tent, where he found Swain shooing the collected officers out the back, sending them off without a word of explanation. Wellingford was the last to leave, lingering behind the others with a look of intense concern on his face. Kyel watched him go, wondering. Of the entire Auberdale army, Darien’s young general seemed to be the only staunch supporter he had left. He had alienated everyone else, and not just because of the atrocities of Black Solstice. Kyel had seen the way even the lowliest infantryman stared at him, as if Xerys himself had insinuated himself into their midst. They all seemed to sense in him what Swain did, and now even Kyel himself.

  “He’s gone,” Swain pronounced rigidly after Wellingford had finally allowed himself to be ushered out. “Renquist pushed him too far.”

  “I don’t know if he’ll make it to Aerysius,” said Kyel softly, thinking of the strange blue light he had seen welling from the mage’s body like lifeblood from his soul.

  “I should have ended it back there. This is just cruelty, now. And what if he changes his mind?” Swain raked his hair back from his face with a hand. He sighed, shaking his head. “Can you think of anything that can hold him together, just long enough to get him up the mountain?”

  Kyel didn’t hesitate a moment with his answer. “Naia.”

  Swain nodded tightly. “Go ask her.”

  He found Naia alone a small distance from the camp, abased in prayer before a hand-size statue of her goddess. Two small votive candles flickered in the blackened soil just in front of the cloth the priestess had spread over the ground beneath her white gown. Kyel paused, not wanting to disturb her. He considered the small statue between her outstretched hands, a thing of white marble that looked like a miniature version of the Goddess of the Eternal Requiem. He let his gaze wander back to the votives, wondering who her prayers were meant for. The small, wavering flames of the candles cast a pallid glow, scarcely enough to defy the darkness that confronted them.

  Sensing his presence, Naia straightened, turning around. She didn’t appear surprised to find him there. A small, sad smile spread on her lips beneath her veil, wavering briefly like the flames of her tiny candles. And, like the fragile lights of the votives, the expression did little to turn back the dark sorrow that haunted her eyes. Kyel found himself feeling profoundly sorry for her. He walked toward her, hands clasped together in front of him, and knelt down at Naia’s side.

  “We’re leaving for Aerysius on the morrow,” he informed her gently.

  The priestess looked down, her eyes trailing back toward the statue of her goddess. It was hard to tell through her veil, but Kyel thought that perhaps she had been crying.

  “I want you to come with us,” he said. “Darien needs you.”

  “Did he send you?” she asked.

  “No.” Kyel shook his head. Something must have happened between them. Darien had probably treated her wrongly, the same way he seemed to be treating everyone lately. Kyel grimaced. He didn’t want to hurt her worse than she already had been. But there didn’t seem any way around it, so he told her, “He snuck off and met with Zavier Renquist tonight.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t know. But Renquist pushed him too far. I don’t think he’ll make it to Aerysius without you.”

  Naia sighed, looking grieved. Shrugging, she stated bleakly, “I don’t think I’m the answer, Kyel. I’m not important to him anymore.”

  “Is that what he told you?”

  The priestess nodded, pressing her lips together tightly. To Kyel, she looked nothing more than a sad, lonely child in desperate need of comforting. Kyel shook his head; Swain was right. Letting this continue was just base cruelty, now. To all parties involved. Swain should have never withheld the swift compassion of his steel; it would have been but a gentle kindness.

  Kyel didn’t know what else to do, so he reached out and took Naia’s delicate frame into his arms, lending her what small comfort he could. The priestess accepted his gesture, laying her head on his shoulder and closing her eyes.

  “I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” Kyel told her softly, seeking to reassure her. “He’s just trying to push you away because he doesn’t want to see you hurt.”

  “I wish I could believe that,” Naia said sincerely, though without conviction. She pulled back from his embrace with a small smile of gratitude, bringing her hands up to adjust her veil.

  He didn’t want to, but he had to tell her. “Renquist offered to bring Meiran back. He told Darien she gave him a son. The child’s dead, Naia.”

  She gasped, bringing a hand up beneath her veil to cover her eyes. “How can he stand it?”

  Kyel sadly shook his head. “I don’t think he can anymore. That’s why he needs you.”

  “I’ll come,” she said simply, weakly.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, standing up to leave. As he moved away from her through the darkness, he glanced back to see her knelt once again in prayer. The small, wavering lights of her votives had died, drowned out by the melted tallow that had collected in the hollows of the candles. The same tallow that, when solid, had once kept the delicate twin flames alive.

  Kyel tossed and turned all night, dozing only on and off. A light snow was falling outside; he could see it accumulating on the roof of his tent through the fabric, dark sprinkled shadows backlit by the light of the moon. It was cold, but he had a wealth of blankets to cover up in. There were plenty of tents and blankets in the Auberdale encampment. Just a desperate shortage of men to use them. That could have been the trouble he was having staying asleep; he wondered if perhaps he was too warm. He tended towards strange dreams when he slept with too many covers on. And his dreams had indeed been odd.

  In one of his dreams, he was climbing the winding stair at the tower of Greystone Keep. Only, this time, the stair had no end. He climbed and climbed, but there was only darkness up ahead. In another dream, he saw Naia lighting candles. Thousands of candles that kept appearing around her until she was fairly caged in by them. She seemed desperate as she moved from one candle to the next, lighting one wick off another in a frenzied rush, as if in a race against time to get them all lit. And still more votives kept appearing around her. In yet another dream, he saw Darien clothed in strange velvet robes of the deepest indigo blue, laughing and looking happier than Kyel had ever seen him. But then he became aware of Kyel’s presence, and his smile darkened, turning vicious, his black eyes fixing him with a look of lethal intensity.

  After that dream, Kyel couldn’t go back to sleep. It was getting on towards morning, anyway, so he rolled out of the blankets and dressed then began collecting his things. He occupied his time before sun-up by leafing through the text he had brought back with him from the vaults, Treatise on the Well. After all he had gone through to acquire it, Darien had never even asked for it once. Kyel read and reread the passage about sealing the Well, but found that he understood it no better now than the first time he had read it back in Emmery Palace. The book spoke of something called ‘deactivation of the rune sequence’, which made no sense to him. He didn’t even know what a rune was, how it was activated, or what it would take to deactivate the thing. And, besides, he found he couldn’t concentrate on that part. His eyes kept jumping down to the bottom of the paragraph, to the last sentence that described the sealing of the Gateway.

  Kyel finally closed the book with a sigh. It was useless. And it was also time to leave. He scooped up a bowl of gr
uel on the way to the command tent, throwing back his head and trying to hold his breath as he swallowed it down. The clumps stuck in his throat, making him gag. He couldn’t even finish it. He hoped he never had to swallow another drop of gruel ever again in his life.

  Not knowing what else to do with the bowl in his hand, he handed it off to a soldier who was sitting alone at a campfire looking hungry. The man took one hard look at his cloak, another at the bowl in his hands, then tossed it on the ground.

  Kyel tried not to let the soldier’s display of resentment get his temper up. It was galling, though, the way these men were always staring at him. Before the fall of Aerysius, a black cloak had commanded immediate respect wherever it was seen; now it seemed more like a badge of iniquity. Somehow, when this was over, he was going to have to work at changing that. But later; there was always time. First, he was going to go home and kiss his wife.

  Kyel arrived at the command tent to find Swain already there, waiting beside his horse. The captain had dark circles under his eyes. He didn’t look like he’d gotten much sleep, either. Kyel greeted him sullenly.

  “Is she coming?” Swain asked.

  Kyel nodded. At least, he hoped Naia hadn’t changed her mind. He shivered. It was a bitterly cold morning, and the wind was coming up. The freshly fallen snow covered most of the blackened ground, except in places where men had trampled through it, reducing the fine white powder to ashen-gray sludge. Overhead, the sky was still overcast, the sun only a pale glow behind the dense gray clouds. Looking up, Kyel wondered if it might not snow again before the day was through. That would be just their luck, to get mired in a blizzard.

  He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Darien approaching. The mage looked a little better than he had the previous night, but there was still a pall of gloom lingering about him. He was dressed all in black with his hair tied back for once, the hilt of his sword protruding over his shoulder. Somehow, he had found himself a new black cloak to wear, though Kyel doubted that there would be a Silver Star on the back of it. He wondered where Darien had lost his old one. Before he could ask, his attention was drawn to the thanacryst that followed at the Sentinel’s heels. The creature was jogging along with its long black tongue hanging out, drooling avidly. Kyel averted his eyes in disgust.

  Darien stopped in front of Swain, slouching, eyes downcast. That wasn’t like him at all. Even just yesterday morning, he had been trudging around glaring at Swain like he wanted to kill him. Now he seemed in complete deference to the captain, not even able to look him in the eye.

  Swain cocked his head to the side, oily hair swaying. “Just out of curiosity, have you even thought about how we’re going to get up there?”

  Darien nodded, hand tensing its grip on the leather strap of the baldric slung across his chest. “We’ll need to go through the gap, to the Vale,” he said without looking up. “After that, there’s only one way up the mountain. We climb.”

  The blademaster appeared exceptionally unconvinced. “That’s a three thousand foot cliff, Darien.”

  The mage shrugged. “We’ll take the stairs.”

  Swain grimaced, casting a glaring stab of doubt at the man before him. “I was Captain of the Guard there for nine years. I don’t remember any stairs.”

  “Do you recall the system of passages beneath the city?”

  The captain nodded warily.

  Darien continued, “Aidan told me about them; he used to go down there sometimes when we were both acolytes. We got along occasionally, if you can imagine it.” He paused, a dismal look in his shadowed eyes. “There’s a stair that goes all the way down inside the mountain, and comes out somewhere at the base. I never saw it, but Aidan once told me about it.”

  “So you don’t know where it comes out?”

  “No. But I’ll know it when I see it. It’s the only way.”

  With a surge of excitement, Kyel threw his pack down on the ground and started rifling through it, his fingers at last closing around the leather cover of Treatise on the Well. Righting himself, he raked the book open to the page he had marked with a folded piece of parchment that had completely slipped his mind until now.

  He stuffed the paper into Darien’s hand, saying, “Here.” As Darien looked down at it, Kyel pushed the text at him, as well. “And here’s this book you wanted so badly. You never even asked me for it.”

  Darien refused the book with a shake of his head as he gazed down at the map in his hand. “I have no need of it,” he grumbled absently. “You’re the one who’ll be sealing the Well; not me. Wait. Where did you come by this?”

  Kyel felt a surge of resentment at the mage. Voice hardened by anger, he told Darien stiffly, “I found it in a text down in the vaults. I was supposed to be researching ways to help us, remember?”

  Darien was ignoring him, eyes pouring over the map in his hands. Softly, he whispered, “This is exactly what I need.”

  Kyel nodded, glaring at him with an insolent expression as the man just continued his fervent examination of the map. Darien stood there for minutes, just staring down at it, eyes scouring the page. Then, at last, he let his hands drop, fingering the parchment as he turned to glance behind him in the direction of the mountains with a bewildered expression.

  In a voice just as slack and stunned as his face, he uttered, “The entrance is on this side of the mountains. It’s just behind Orien’s Finger.”

  Kyel’s eyes swiveled to fix on the blackened rock pillar in front of him, his face doing an unintentional imitation of Darien’s as he stared at the crag in amazement. “It couldn’t be,” he whispered, his gaze darting upward to the line of the Craghorns jutting away from it. “The Vale’s yet leagues from here. Isn’t that Aerysius over there?”

  He pointed at a bank of clouds that hung against a particularly tall line of sharp summits. To his eyes, the gray gloom of the thunderheads seemed to be tinged distinctly, unnaturally green. Seeing Darien’s slight nod, Kyel stared even harder at the summit beneath the cloudbank. It was leagues to the north, beyond even the Gap of Amberlie.

  “We’ll place our trust in your map,” Darien muttered, a strange expression on his face as he folded the paper back up in his hands, trailing his fingers along the crease.

  Kyel wondered what thought had occurred to him. But before he could ask, he was distracted by the sound of an approaching horse. His eyes found the small roan mare walking toward them with its head outstretched, led by a length of rein that was held in Naia’s fine hand. The priestess was dressed for travel, a coat thrown over her white gown. She was wearing a new veil he had never seen, one that glimmered with the sheen from hundreds of tiny crystals worked into the fabric. She smiled as she saw them. But the expression wilted as her eyes sought Darien.

  Darien turned to Swain with a look of furious resentment in his eyes. To Kyel, he seemed ready to reach for the blade at his back.

  “No.”

  If Kyel hadn’t heard it, he would never have believed it possible that one simple word could be infused with such contempt. Darien took a threatening step toward the captain, looking like a wolf moving in for the kill. Kyel could see Swain’s hand drawing slowly upward to his hilt as the air around Darien fairly crackled with blue energies.

  In a voice as smooth and placid as a pool of clear water, the blademaster stated, “That’s the condition. Either she comes, or we’re not doing this at all.”

  Kyel backed away a step as the strange energies that crackled over Darien’s body diffused into a brilliant halo that completely enveloped him. With a cry, Kyel threw his arm up to cover his eyes from the glaring intensity of the light. The air itself seemed disturbed, a whistling wind called up that ripped at his hair and tormented his cloak.

  “Darien,” he heard Naia call over the sound of the wind, “Is this truly your wish?”

  The brilliant light collapsed into fine glowing filaments that wavered for a moment in the air, flickering, before burning out completely. Where the light had just been, now only the S
entinel remained. He stood with his head bowed, eyes focused dimly at the ground between his boots.

  Flatly, he muttered, “Damn you, Swain.”

  Without looking up, he strode away toward the horse pickets, shoulders slouched and feet scraping the ground with every stride. When he was gone, the captain let out a slow, lingering breath.

  “That was close.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Absolution

  DARIEN SEETHED QUIETLY as he let the black warhorse pick its own path toward the east. Ahead, Orien’s Finger looked nothing more than a cracked and blackened log dug up from the ashes of an abandoned fire pit. Its summit had slipped even further off its charred pedestal than he remembered, and had twisted slightly askew. Someday very soon, the entire mass of broken rock was going to come crumbling down. Hopefully, there would be no one beneath it when it did.

  Looking away from the crag, Darien cast his gaze instead toward the green glow above dead Aerysius. He tried to dredge up a picture in his mind of that terrible pillar of light, but the image was bleary and out of focus. It had been months since he had last seen it, rising up to stab the skies above the ruined city like an ominous spear of dire portent. Then, the sight of the Gateway had terrified him. He didn’t think it would, this time. He was almost looking forward to seeing that dreadful column of power again, anxious for the promise of release that sickly green hue could afford him. He gazed ahead toward the bank of storm clouds that hung over the jagged summits of the mountain peaks, a look of distant yearning in his eyes.

  He was finally going home.

  The sound of hoofbeats made him aware that a horse was drawing up at his side. Not in the mood for conversation, Darien turned to glare his disdain at whoever had the temerity to invade the one, small moment of privacy he had allocated for himself. Expecting either Kyel or Swain, he was surprised to find himself glaring into Naia’s white veil. His anger diffused instantly. Feeling ashamed, he glanced away.