Heart of Shadows

by Martin Ash

  Sildemund had no ready answer. They stood in the centre of the chamber, directly beneath the high dome, bathed in the splendour of coloured light. The Revenant continued. ‘It was all through ignorance. Sko-ulatun simply did not know. He believed himself inferior, that only the Goddess was the source of life. Yet she wished to share. That was her reason for creating him. Even this he denies. In your texts it is he who gives birth to her. He is our First Father, we acknowledge that, but he has corrupted us all. Even now we’re still tainted by him, by the jealousy, the fear and greed that drove him then as it drives him still.’ She lowered her eyes, and added in a low voice, ‘It might have been so different.’

  The three Elders stood in front of Meglan and Sildemund, and the crone said, ‘This is the Temple of Claine. Here is where the battle must be fought. Sko-ulatun will come for you here. We will leave you now.’

  Sildemund’s blood ran cold. ‘Leave us?’

  ‘We will be with you, but our intervention will be minimal.’

  ‘Why? We’ve brought the Heart to you to prevent it from falling into Sko-ulatun’s hands. We can’t stop him.’

  ‘Then he will win.’

  The three Revenants moved away, their guards accompanying them. Sildemund stood in bewilderment. Meglan reached out and took his hand. ‘Sil, we’ve been long expected. Don’t ask me how, but they knew we would come one day.’

  ‘Us? Why? What are you saying?’

  ‘We’ve been brought to this, Sil. For some reason I don’t fully comprehend. We are twins. Somehow we represent something – there is no conflict between us, at least, nothing that could not be resolved. We are one. Something in us is the way it should have been, long ago and always. This is what they have told me.’

  The old Revenant, as she backed away, was intoning words: ‘ “The Heart of Shadows shall be taken by the unknowing to those who claim to know. Two halves shall comprise the dual aspects of one who will be Blessed of Claine, as Claine intended it to be. The Blessed and the Defiled shall meet in the Temple of Claine’s Light. There shall the Heart be, and there shall be decided the Light or Darkness of future days.’

  ‘It’s us that Sko-ulatun will confront,’ said Meglan. ‘The Revenant Daughters of Claine say they can do little except witness, with hope and – if they survive – record for future generations.’

  Sildemund swallowed, stiff with fear and incomprehension. He turned back to the Revenants, but they and their fighters were gone. He did not see where, but assumed a hidden door within the murals and drapes that covered the high circular wall. He stood with his twin sister, alone beneath the vast dome, lit by haloes and cross-slanting shafts of streaming, glittering light.

  ‘Put the Heart down, Sil. Place it on the floor.’

  He stared at his sister. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Just do it. Please.’

  Struck by her imperative tone, he did so.

  ‘Undo its binding.’

  He carefully unwrapped the heavy cloth bandage and exposed the pulsing organ.

  ‘Move away now.’

  ‘Meg!’

  ‘Do as I say, Sil! There’s nothing more you can do. At least, not yet.’

  Meglan’s eyes rested on the Heart. Its hues varied from purple to deep murrey, speckled with brighter blood spots. It glistened, quivered with a semblance of life, streaked with long filaments of yellow-white, and seemed to be untouched by the varied lights that fell on it from above. Across its surface moved shadows, their motion unmistakeable now. Clouded, umbrageous bands, soot black through dark liver and baleful leaden grey. Their opaque shift was amorphous, undefined, merging and re-emerging, mesmerizing yet repellent, unfading crepuscular shadows.

  Meglan shuddered, and her brother slowly backed away.

  ‘Meg, what is happening here?’

  In answer she raised her hand and pointed to the entrance through which they had come into the Temple. A dark figure stood there, motionless in the shadows of the passage which led from the spiral stairway.

  Sildemund gripped his sabre-hilt. The figure came forward, to stand at the edge of the brilliance of coloured light. His voice was a low, menacing purr. ‘Ah, Meg-lan, pretty mal-kin mine. And you boy, Sildemund. What a long way we have come. What travails, what unnecessary toils and pains we have endured. All for my Heart, which you might have given me and profited well had your fool of a father only accepted my offer.’

  He advanced a few steps further, warily inspecting the chamber. Meglan suppressed a gasp of horror as the light fell full on him. His body was as she had first encountered him at home in Volm: slight, lithe, sinewy, implying concealed strength, swathed in a dark burnous. But the head and face were uncovered now, deliberately, it seemed, so that he might shock or mock. For his face was that of a baby, chubby-cheeked, big-eyed, both ancient and new, innocent and knowing. The baby smiled, watching them, then the face began to alter. Now Meglan gazed at the old peasant woman who Sko-ulatun had murdered on the cart on the road outside Dharsoul. The old woman displayed a toothless grin, then changed once more. Now it was Jans, smiling, leering, making a lewd gesture with his tongue; now it was poor Dervad…

  ‘Their hearts were good,’ said Sko-ulatun, smacking his lips. The face became goatlike. Cold eyes glittered, shifting salaciously from Meglan to Sildemund. ‘Some were tastier than others. Some were tough, some so-o tender. One or two I threw away, they just weren’t of good quality. Ah, but they have sustained me, they have brought me here. And now…’ his gaze fell upon the palpitating organ beside Meglan’s feet. ‘…now I need no others. I’ve found my own, at last. Oh, it’s almost a sadness. I’ve taken such hearts, for so-o long. You cannot begin to imagine.’

  In a sequence of mere moments his face passed through a multitude of changes. He was a child, a woman, a hound, a young man, a lizard, an old man, a bird, endlessly melding and remoulding, so that features of one became, fleetingly and grotesquely, imposed on the next, producing new forms, impossible, phantasmic creatures of nightmare and hallucination. Then he was Skalatin again, who had come to Volm, malevolence in his shocking eyes, his cadaverous face, lipless mouth, rotten wormy gums.

  He advanced towards Meglan, striding with purpose through the fabulous riot of light. ‘Now, I shall take my Heart back, and then – oh-h, pret-ty chi-ld – I shall have you. But first-‘

  He veered suddenly towards Sildemund, his voice rising in a sudden snarl, ‘ – I hunger!’

  ‘No!’ Meglan threw herself between the two of them. ‘Get back! Leave him!’

  Sildemund, white-faced, his sabre gripped uselessly in his hand, staggered backwards towards the wall and the arch where the great snake towered. Sko-ulatun raised a clawed hand as if to strike Meglan aside, but she stood firm before him.

  ‘Everything you’ve desired, all you’ve searched for, is here,’ she seethed, her hatred of him plain in her shaking voice. ‘Everything. But harm him and you will lose me. That, I swear.’

  Sko-ulatun threw back his head and gave a harsh laugh, his face bathed in emerald, amber and mauve. ‘How so, love-ly one?’

  She had slipped her dagger from its sheath and now turned it upon itself, its tip pressed to her breast. A strange sensation was rising within her. She did not truly know what she was doing. She felt moved by something she could not identify. Her words and actions came without thought or premeditation, as though at the hidden prompting of another, or as though she had lived this before.

  Sko-ulatun eyed her malevolently and shrugged a shoulder. ‘I’ve told you before, pret-ty. Alive or dead. It’s of little con-sequence to me.’

  ‘What of the spawn you wish me to bear? They can’t be born from a corpse. And that is the whole point of your endeavour, isn’t it?’

  ‘There are many others like you. You are not special.’

  ‘Then do as you will,’ said Meglan, and stepped out of his path. ‘But remember, as my brother dies, so do I. For we are one.’

  Sko-ulatun surveyed her with shrewd intent, the ti
p of his grey tongue consulting a rotten pit at the back of his jaw.

  ‘I’m your Fa-ther,’ he said. ‘The Fa-ther of All. Do you deny me?’

  She fought down the nausea these words caused her, the weakness that turned her knees to jelly. She backed further away, pressing the dagger tip more firmly to her breast. ‘I’ve already said, do as you will.’

  ‘You can-not defy me.’

  ‘Then destroy me, as you destroyed Claine, out of bitterness and your loathing of your own imperfection.’

  ‘She destroyed me! Be in no doubt about that! And now I have returned and I shall destroy her, forever. I shall destroy you. I shall be what I was, Sko-ulatun, the Creator of All.’

  ‘Alone, your achievements will be negligible and fleet. You’ll perish, for you turn upon yourself. It is yourself that you tried to destroy. You could never be more than half of something greater. That’s why Claine brought you into this world. You came from her, to complement her, to become whole.’ Again Meglan wondered at herself, where her words came from.

  Sko-ulatun scowled hideously. ‘I created her! And now I’ll become whole again.’

  He thrust forward suddenly, past Meglan, bent and quickly gathered up the Heart of Shadows.

  Sildemund started towards him, crying out, ‘No! Meg!’

  Sko-ulatun laughed, clasping the Heart to his breast, enveloping it in the folds of his clothing. His eyes flashed from Sildemund back to his sister. He moved away. ‘Ah, Meg-lan, what wonders, what horrors I shall reveal to you. Now you will see. Your Father, your husband, your lover. But first my oppressor must be destroyed.’ He pointed upwards, to the great dome and the three illumined figures. ‘Wait, and observe.’

  He turned, his body disfiguring, losing the human and becoming something unidentifiable. He moved swiftly across the mosaic floor, a kaleidoscopic shadow, and departed the round chamber.

  Meglan sank to the floor, her strength gone. Sildemund ran to her. ‘Meg! He’s taken the Heart! After all we’ve done to keep it from him!’

  Meglan shook her head, barely able to raise it. ‘It’s not over yet, Sil. He’s coming back for me.’

  ‘Then we have to get away! Get you away!’

  ‘No. It has to be like this. I can’t escape. He knows at all times how to find me. But – I learned this from the Elders, just before you and I were reunited – he has to come for me when he’s whole.’ She reached out and grasped her brother’s hand. ‘Sil, my brother, I love you. Sko-ulatun may take me now, and I may die fighting him, but there’s no other way. You and I have played a part in something greater than we can comprehend. I don’t know why, just that it is. Whatever happens now, I love you.’

  She reached up for him. They clung to each other, locked in the pain and incomprehension of finality, both acknowledging that there could be no other way.

  A flicker. A great shadow momentarily obfuscated the brilliance of coloured light. Then a great crash, so loud as to all but rupture their eardrums. They turned their faces upwards. Before their eyes the great dome was shattering, splitting into a thousand, a million fragments. The three figures and the serpent of the goddess Claine were rent and torn, cracking into tiny pieces with cacophonous roars and squeals, a sound of dissonant diabolic music, too loud and discordant to bear.

  They staggered back. The glass face of the central figure, the young woman with the babe, suddenly imploded in a shower of tortured fragments. Through it, smashing like a missile from a trebuchet through the temple roof, came a dark, balled shape. As it passed through, clearing the broken membrane of glass, it began to expand, spreading vast wings to slow its flight, extending cruel talons, unwinding a long, cartilaginous neck. Fierce round eyes searched, found the two cowering figures below. The head bent towards them, horny, curving beak opening to emit a shriek that cut through the roar of the shattering dome. His form was monstrous: the head, wings and talons mimicking a gigantic vulture, the body that of a huge, hairless dog-thing with the armoured spine and lashing tail of a great lizard.

  He plummeted towards them. As he came, the dome in its entirety gave way to the pull of gravity and with a sound like tormented thunder, began to cave in. Countless daggered shards fell, turning and spinning, a coruscating shower that bent and twisted the bright sunlight that now dazzled from above. The Temple of Claine was transformed into a madness of rainbows, of colliding auroras, panicking, darting, warring spectra.

  Meglan thrust her brother away. ‘Get back, Sil! It’s me he wants!’

  Sildemund slipped, falling to the floor. The first deadly splinters of glass from the face of the goddess were striking the floor, compounding the unbearable din as they smashed into more pieces. Reflexively, he covered his head with his hands, while knowing that flesh and bone could provide no defence against the lethal rain.

  Meglan too threw up her hands to shield herself, sensing that in seconds she and her brother would be sliced into ribbons. But no glass fell upon her, and she saw that little was falling around Sildemund. The swelling form of Sko-ulatun, descending towards her, great wings spread wide, inadvertently created a protective canopy.

  ‘Sil, run! Get out!’ she screamed. She did not know if he could hear her above the din, but he was on his knees, scrambling forward onto his feet, running bent-backed towards the recessed arch in the wall where the great serpent towered.

  Meglan had no time to see more. The dark shape was upon her, talons stretched. She screamed. The talons closed around her, squeezing her like a vice. She was thrust away by the sheer weight of Sko-ulatun’s descent, then drawn off her feet. She gasped against the pain. Sko-ulatun’s head bent towards her, round, hooded eyes bright and triumphant. The talons clamped harder. The huge wings were reversing their motion, howling as they lifted the body back from the floor, throwing up a deadly storm of splintered, granular glass.

  Meglan strained against the calloused rind of Sko-ulatun’s feet, straining for a better position so that she might suck air into her constricted lungs. She was drawn up towards the belly as Sko-ulatun rose higher. Now she saw the exposed breast of the creature, just above her head. There was a long, bloody gash in the flesh. Deep within, half-concealed between lips of torn, glistening pink meat, the Heart of Shadows pulsed.

  ‘Meg-lan, come…’

  Sko-ulatun curved his neck to peer down at her. The vulture head had altered. She gazed now into the huge vengeful face of Skalatin, terrible in its lust and gloating. Her temples were bursting with constricted blood and she gasped for breath that would not come. She was lifted high, borne aloft towards the sundered roof.

  Red haze obscured her vision, consciousness was slipping away. She clawed at the pocket of her tunic, but her hand flapped uselessly, had become a heavy, disconnected thing that obeyed no prompt from her mind. She was lost, drawn into the agony of sound, the roar of crashing glass, Sko-ulatun’s weird shrieks of exultation, and the blood pounding in her ears. Struggling to the last, she knew the tearing away of all, and everything dimmed…

  Sko-ulatun eased his grip, just sufficient for her to inhale an agonized breath. She hung limply, arched backwards, aware by her returning pain that she was conscious again. The air was cool upon her cheeks. Sko-ulatun still bore her upwards, past dangling glass fragments and the jagged ruins of stone and metal struts around the rim of the sundered dome.

  And she recalled her purpose. Her limbs were numb, but she forced her arm to work for her. She fumbled again at her breast pocket, and at last her fingers closed around the object she sought. She drew it free: the tiny serpent talisman that had guided her across the wasteland of Dazdun’s Despair.

  Where had it come from? She still did not know. But Epta, when she had brought Meglan to the Elders, had shown it to them, having searched Meglan’s clothing when she struck her down. The three Elders had been perturbed by the sight of it. They had demanded of her how she had come upon such a thing, and she could only admit her ignorance. Yet what she had told them had been enough, it seemed. And then they had told her
what she had to do.

  She turned her eyes upwards again. The wound in Sko-ulatun’s flesh was no more than an arm’s length away between his great thighs, the glistening organ pulsating deep inside. Meglan drew back her arm as far as it would go. She filled her lungs and with a great cry thrust forward with all the strength she could summon. He hand, gripping the talisman, plunged into the living flesh. It was slippery, wet, cold. She pushed harder, bending her torso forward, felt herself enveloped, and the talisman itself seemed almost to be pulling her inwards, burrowing as if with a will of its own. She felt the membrane of the Heart give. Her hand sank further, clawing into its murderous nucleus. Again she thrust, and again, twisting against his grip. And once more, until at last she buried the metal – exigen, the crone had said – deep within the pulsating meat.

  A colossal shudder passed through Sko-ulatun’s frame. She felt him lurch wildly in the air, almost throwing her from his grip. An ear-shattering shriek deafened her. She glimpsed his head above her, thrown back, the face contorted, inconsolable, a rictus grimace. She slid back her arm from the chill flesh, releasing the talisman and leaving it buried there, and caught a momentary glimpse of the Heart of Shadows in his breast. It was writhing, withering inside its cavity of flesh. The membrane was drawing back, peeling away.

  The talons released their grip around her, and she was falling.

  She had the impression of the great vulture form slewing wildly against the bright blue-white sky, then the world rolled. Her vision blurred sickeningly. She fell, down, down… A glimpse of green hills, the tents of an army in the valley, the rushing roofs and streets of Garsh, then a face, a woman’s face, gazing up at her from far below.

  Meglan plummeted helpless towards that face, understanding that it was the face of the goddess, Claine, and that it was formed of the complex mosaic upon the floor of the Temple and might only be perceived from above. It grew larger as she tumbled towards it. She knew she was crying out, in a delirium of terror, seeing her death hurtling towards her. From her cry, from her open mouth, something vaporous seemed to pour. The Temple floor rushed towards her, was almost upon her. Certain that she breathed her last breath, she closed her eyes.