The Twilight Herald

by Tom Lloyd

  ‘No king to rule you, no mortal lord to command you.’ The last line of the holy words made the clans think they were special, that they were blessed. His contempt tasted as bitter as the prayer had.

  ‘Listen to me well, for I am a guardian of the past,’ he said in a cracked and raw voice, as though he had been silent all those years since last he had visited that place. It was the Harlequin’s traditional opening to their audiences.

  He waited, sensing the priests gather. He felt a hand on his shoulder and Jackdaw channelling magic through him. A shudder ran through his body and continued down into the ground below. All around he heard whispers of fear and wonder as the priests felt the ground tremble beneath their feet.

  ‘I speak to you of peace -and of a child. Flawed is our Land; imbalanced and imperfect, yet perfection must exist for us to recognise the shadow it casts. Such perfection can be found in the face of a child, for a child knows nothing of fear. Armed only with the divine gift of life their souls are unstained, their hearts unburdened.

  ‘Let the penitent among us raise up a child to remind us of the innocence we once possessed. Let the penitent speak with the voice of a child and have no use for harsh words or boastful manner. Let the penitent see the tears a perfect child as they repent of their sins, weeping for the loss of innocence. What greater service can there be than the service of innocence?’

  In the forest, two figures shared a look, their breath cold against the snow. Shrouded against the last light of day they were nothing more than indistinct darkness, hunkered down by the broken stump of an ancient pine. One of the figures had a hand stretched out before her, a glassy, stylised skull resting in her bare palm. Her sapphire eyes flashed in the darkness.

  ‘This is what we have come to observe?’ asked the man. His voice betrayed no anger, but from his sister there was no hiding the note of scepticism.

  ‘Every tapestry begins with a single thread. I would know the pattern he weaves while there is still time to act.’

  ‘Our time is best served unpicking threads?’

  ‘Our time is limitless, Koezh,’ she replied, cocking her head as though straining to catch the last of the Harlequin’s words before returning the Crystal Skull to a pouch at her waist, ‘and the purpose has perhaps already revealed itself.’

  ‘The child.’

  She inclined her head. ‘The fall of Scree showed Gods could be driven off, evicted from a place and a population, however temporarily that was. If the temples are emptied and the congregation turned against their Gods, those Gods are left weak and exposed.’

  Koezh understood. ‘In times of trouble folk turn to the past for comfort, and the Harlequins are the keepers of history. If those keepers begin to tell stories of a child of peace when the horns of war have sounded across the Land, the faith of the people will be not destroyed, but diverted.’

  Zhia smiled, and her elongated teeth shone in the twilight. ‘Perhaps our time has at last come.’