But the robed man was redoubling his efforts, and Torrik felt unconsciousness closing in on him. There would be time to worry about Alesh later, if they lived. Yet for all his struggles, he could not seem to break free of the man’s grasp. With his last bit of strength, Torrik lashed out, and his foot caught the man between the legs. Worshipper of the Darkness or not, possessed of inhuman strength or not, there were some blows a man could not ignore, and Torrik’s attacker howled, his grip finally loosening. Not much, but enough for the retired spy to abruptly shrug his shoulders, jerking his arms up and tearing the man’s hands away from his throat.
The robed man was still recovering when Torrik struck him once, twice, three times in the throat. On the third strike, something crushed beneath his knuckles, and the man collapsed to the ground, his hands pawing uselessly at his throat. Fighting down his nausea, Torrik spun to see that his wife had finished off her own attacker and was standing over him breathing heavily, the knives she held coated in blood. Alesh was crying, but alive, picking himself up from the floor. Torrik started toward his son in a shambling walk, but paused at the sound of a voice.
“You will still die.”
He and his wife spun to see Deckard standing near the table, a cruel, humorless grin stretching his features into something alien. One of the man’s hands clutched the wound in his stomach, and blood leaked freely from it, coating his fingers. “It’s over, Deckard,” Torrik said, surprised the man was even able to stand. “Drop the knife.”
The bishop looked to his other hand, at the knife he held, as if surprised to find it there. Then he turned back to Torrik with a sneer. “Over?” he rasped. “Nothing is over. You have no idea what you have done—you and your family are doomed, spy. You will all die and die terribly.” His grin widened, and blood leaked from his mouth, coating his chin. “The Darkness will not be denied. For her servants are many, and you could not even imagine how highly they have risen.”
Torrik moved toward the man slowly, then paused to retrieve a blade from one of the dead priests. “Put the blade down, Deckard. Now.”
The priest’s mouth twisted into a snarl, then his eyes fell upon the single lantern sitting on the table, and a cruel glee entered his gaze. “Drop the knife, you say,” the bishop hissed. “Very well. After all,” he continued, grinning widely, “the Darkness has many ways to get what it wants. You really should have been more careful, Torrik, with your lights.” He tossed the knife aside, and Torrik let out a shout, breaking into a run that he knew wouldn’t be fast enough as Deckard lunged toward the lantern.
Elayna screamed, and he heard the swish of one of her knives cutting through the air near him. Then, abruptly, they were plunged into darkness.
“Torrik?” Elayna’s voice, somewhere off to his right, and though she was controlling it well, he could hear the fear in it.
“I’m here, El,” he said, stalking closer to the table where he’d last seen the bishop, his free hand out in front of him.
“I…I think I hit him,” she said.
Torrik suddenly felt claustrophobic. Trapped. The bishop and his men had shown that they did not fear the night, that they moved through it as easily as one of the nightlings themselves. Was it so much to suppose that they could see in the darkness as well? And if that were true…even now, the man could be sneaking up behind him, grinning that ghastly grin, a blade poised to finish him.
He resisted the urge to turn around—it would have done him no good, as he could see nothing anyway—and instead continued toward the table, his palm sweaty where it gripped the handle of the knife. “That’s enough, Deckard,” he said, listening for any sound that might betray the bishop’s whereabouts. “Your men are dead—you might still live, if we get you to a healer. Let it be over.”
The man did not answer, and Torrik discovered why a moment later, when he reached the table. He quested out with his hands carefully, his fingers brushing the shattered glass of the lantern, now broken beyond repair. And then something else—coarse fabric, wiry, lank hair that could have only been the bishop’s. Trailing his fingertips across the body, it didn’t take long for Torrik to feel the handle of the blade protruding from the man’s throat. Though they had spent the last years as merchants, it seemed his wife had retained much of her skills. “He’s dead, El,” he said.
“A-and the lantern?”
“Broken.”
“But Torrik…without light…”
“I know.” And did he imagine that scraping, scrabbling sound he heard? Just the thoughts of a scared, panicked mind, or something more? Was that almost imperceptible noise, poised on the edge of his hearing so that it might not even be real, the scraping of claws against the wood of their home? Was it the questing, furtive touches of creatures looking for a way in, now that the light had died?
“What do we do?” This from his wife, her voice sounding small and afraid in the darkness. Then, “Alesh? Are you there?”
No answer. Silence. Oh, Amedan be good, Torrik thought. “Alesh?” he said. “Answer your mother, boy.” His voice angry and scared all at once. Not him, please, he thought. His son hadn’t looked hurt when last he’d seen him, but he had been in a hurry, given him the briefest of glimpses, and he could have been wrong. Gods, but he could have been wrong. My life for his, Torrik thought. Father of Light, please, take me instead.
“Alesh?” Elayna again, her voice frantic, not quite a scream but close. Too close.
Suddenly, light bloomed in the darkness, and they both gasped. “I’m here, Mama.”
Alesh stood in the doorway that led to his room, a small lantern in his hands. Relief made Torrik’s knees weak, but he rushed to his son. His wife beat him there, and by the time he arrived, she had wrapped him in a tight embrace. Thank you, Torrik thought, as he hugged his wife and child, and for a time none of them said anything, only giving and receiving what comfort they could.
When they finally came apart, Elayna spoke. “Alesh, where’d you get the lantern?”
“I had it,” he said, “in my room.”
Elayna was smiling, her relief manifesting itself in the tears streaming down her face, but she paused at that. “I don’t remember you having a lantern in your room.”
Alesh looked embarrassed, glancing at the floor. “I took it…yesterday. I was having nightmares and I thought maybe a light would help.”
Nightmares. Torrik and Elayna met each other’s eyes at that. Were his dreams, then, like Elayna’s own? Prophetic and full of hidden meaning, or were they only the childish fancies of a young boy, peopled not with real threats but with bogeymen no more substantial than mist? Torrik didn’t know and, in that moment, with only one lantern between his family and the darkness, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to.
“Okay,” he said, “we’ll stay together tonight, in the same room. We’ll lock the doors and, tomorrow, as soon as the—” He cut off, freezing at the sound of the door creaking open, and they all spun in time to see a robed figure shuffling out onto the porch, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
Torrik hissed a curse and forced his weary body into a run toward the door, meaning to cut the man down. By the time he reached the porch, there was no sign of the priest. “Shit,” Torrik hissed, his voice low so that his wife and son could not hear.
“Torrik?”
Torrik held up a hand, asking for silence, and studied the darkness, listening for any sounds of the robed man. Nothing. Nothing save a silence that lay heavy around him, a silence that seemed to bare its teeth in anticipation. Shit. He went back inside, closing and barring the door behind him. His wife was watching him expectantly, and he shook his head. “Gone.”
Another silence, this one a worried one, full of understanding, full of knowledge of the danger they were all in. “Maybe he won’t make it back to town,” Elayna said. “He was wounded after all, and…”
She didn’t finish the sentence. But then, she didn’t need to. They both knew well enough the truth of their situation. If the man made it back
to Entin, he would return with more of his number, enough to make sure that the job was done and done properly. True, he might not make it back, might succumb to his wounds a mile outside of town, might, even now, be lying out there somewhere in the darkness, perhaps within a stone’s throw of where they stood. There was no knowing. True, Torrik could take the one lantern and search for him, but each minute he spent looking would squander precious time, time they could ill-afford to waste. And was he to bring his wife and child into the dark with him, on his search with only a single lantern standing between them and those things that waited in the night? For even that seemed preferable to leaving them in the house, alone, hoping that the man didn’t circle around and finish the job.
Torrik was a light merchant, and he knew well the fickleness of a lantern flame. They were built to last, created so that their flames would be safe, protected, but Torrik’s life had taught him a hard truth—nothing was safe. Not truly. Safety, security, were no more than comforting lies men and women covered themselves with to help them sleep the same way a child might hide under a blanket, trusting it to somehow protect him from the monsters—real or imagined—he saw lurking in the darkness around him.
Yes, the man might succumb to his wounds, might die long before he reached Entin. But, then, he might not. And were they to spend the night waiting, huddled around a single lantern like children telling ghost stories around a campfire, hoping, praying that they would be safe, that the night would pass, and the morning would find them well? Was he to trust their lives to one lantern and a few candles, the light of which was weak and notoriously fickle?
No. He could not do that. He would not do that. For whatever else he was, Torrik was a man of action, and believed such false hope, though tempting, was also deadly. Better to do something, anything, than to sit around waiting for others—people, fate, whatever—to decide what happened to him and, more importantly, his family.
Waiting, then, was out of the question. But what then? Slowly, an idea began to crystallize in his mind. Dangerous, yes, but it wasn’t as if they had many options. “Finish packing,” he said to his wife. “I’m going to pull the horses around.”
“You mean to leave.” Spoken without inflection, nothing to indicate whether she approved or not.
“Yes.”
“With one lantern, and no backup in case the wick is too short or too long, and the light fails.”
“The wick is fine, El. You know that—I did it myself.”
“And if it falls off in the wagon? If the wind or the rain snuffs it out?”
“It won’t.”
“Torrik, you told me yourself to always have a spare light, just in case. You said that only desperate fools would risk the darkness with only one flame to protect them.”
“Well,” he said, trying for a smile that ended up being more of a grimace, “we are desperate, El. And I, at least, am a bit of a fool. You’ve been married to me long enough to know that, surely.”
The poor joke did nothing to rid her face of the worried, troubled look. “And Alesh? What of him?”
“Damnit, El,” Torrik said, “can’t you see that I’m doing this for Alesh? For you and him both? We have no choice—you know that. If we sit here, that man will come back with others, and you know what they’ll do when they find us.”
“But he could be dead or…”
“Do you believe that? Really? You tell me, El, because the gods know you’re smarter than I am. If you think we’ve a better chance sitting here and waiting until morning, then that’s what we’ll do.”
She hesitated, watching him for several seconds, and he could practically hear her mind working, examining the problem from every possible angle. Then, finally, she sighed. “Where will we go?”
“Ilrika, to Chosen Olliman.”
“Can we trust him?”
Torrik rubbed wearily at his eyes. “Trust the most powerful of Amedan’s Chosen, the leader of the Six? If we can’t, El, then the world’s doomed already.”
She studied him for several seconds, then gave a single nod. “Come on, Alesh,” she said, “help your mother pack.”
Torrik grabbed a few candles—those, at least, they had in abundance—lighting them in the house before taking the lantern out to see to the horses. The animals were unsettled, anxious, and it took him some time to get them calm enough to let them out of their stalls and hitch them to the cart, murmuring soft, reassuring words as he did. Everything is alright, that’s a good boy. Everything’s going to be okay, sure it is. We’re just going for a trip, that’s all, just a little trip and then, as soon as we get into another town, I’ll get you some nice crisp apples. How does that sound?
The lies people tell others, tell themselves, were sometimes necessary, even if a man hears the falsehood in them. Lies to keep one foot moving in front of the other, lies to help him down the path stretched before him. Dangerous, yes, the gods knew, but it was the only path. There was no other. And so he hitched the cart, hanging the lantern from the front, all the while telling his lies, over and over again, hoping the horses might come to believe them. That he might believe them.
He pulled the cart to the front of the house and walked inside to find Elayna and Alesh waiting. He loaded what few possessions they’d packed—clothes and coins mostly—onto the cart, then stepped inside again to where his wife stood waiting, Alesh’s hand in hers. Torrik tried not to think of how small, how fragile they looked, standing there, and he cleared his throat, nodding. “Alright, it’s time to leave.” He turned and started for the door.
“Alesh,” Elayna said, “please, honey, we have to go.”
Torrik glanced back at Alesh who stood with tears gathering in his eyes, refusing to follow his mother’s prompting.
“What’s wrong, son?” Torrik said, kneeling in front of him. “What is it?”
“I don’t want to go,” Alesh said, shaking his head. “I don’t want you to go.”
Torrik swallowed, trying a smile. “I know, lad. I don’t want to go either. But it’ll be okay, you’ll see.”
“No, it won’t. I don’t want to. I don’t want to lose you both.”
Torrik met his wife’s eyes before turning back to his son and sighing. “I know. But you know what will happen if we stay, Alesh. Don’t you?”
“The bad men will come back,” he said, clearly reluctant.
“Yes, the bad men will come back. And we can’t be here when they do.”
The boy opened his mouth, as if he would say something else, but finally he closed it again, wiping furiously at the tears in his eyes before nodding.
Torrik shared another look with his wife, then nodded. “Alright. Let’s go.”
9
The trees loomed on either side of them, grim sentinels marking with disapproval the progress of the family and the small cart traveling down the forest path. But it was not the trees which made Torrik’s heart hammer in his chest. Instead, it was those shadows that flitted among their trunks as the wagon hurtled past. Shadows of all shapes and sizes but with only one purpose, and that purpose was blood. Death.
The lantern bounced dangerously, its light shifting and swaying as the horses drove forward, into the darkness. One light. So small a thing to stand as a barrier between his family and those who would take it from him. Let it be enough, Amedan, he thought. Please, let it be enough. Elayna sat beside him, whispering comforting words to Alesh who they’d placed inside the enclosed compartment of the cart. The two spoke through a small opening, the boy’s pale face floating in the darkness of the wagon, a fear there that his mother’s reassurances did little to banish.
Torrik understood, and he did not blame the boy for his fear, for the same fear raced through his own heart. At first, he had thought that, by the grace of the gods, they might make it to Ilrika without incident. They had traveled for nearly an hour before he’d seen the first vague, shadowy form lurking in the trees. Still, he had told himself to relax. Only one figure, after all, and easily left behind in
the wake of the horses. But, before another hour had passed, more had appeared, many more, as if they had been given some signal, and now the bases of the trees on either side of the path seethed with the nightmare creatures, their fangs and claws shining with deadly promise when the light of the lantern fell on them.
Two hours gone, and at least five to go—maybe more—before they reached Ilrika, home of Chosen Olliman. Torrik wasn’t sure of the time, but he thought that it should be early morning by the time they arrived. He distracted himself from their deadly predicament by focusing on what he would tell Olliman when they reached the city, how he would make the Chosen understand the truth of the things Ulem had discovered and that he, too, had learned. If we make it to Ilrika at all.
The thought struck him like a blow, and he forced it down. They had to reach the city, that was all. The life of his wife and son depended on it. But, more than that, if the conspiracy was as terrible as it seemed—as terrible as Deckard himself had claimed before he died—it could threaten the entire realm. Torrik might have given up his job as a spy and become a merchant, but he would not sit back idly and let such a thing happen, not if he could help it.
A roar, louder than the others, echoed from the woods, somewhere off to his left, jerking him from his thoughts. Torrik spun, staring into the darkness, and by the lantern’s light, he could make out dozens, hundreds of forms moving in the night. Most were man-sized, or smaller, but he caught the glimpse of a few that were considerably larger, perhaps twice as tall as a man, and at least three times as wide. Or so he thought. In another moment, the lantern swayed back in the other direction, and the glimpse he’d seen wasn’t enough for him to be certain. Anyway, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to be.
It was enough to know that death lurked in those woods, that it waited on either side of them, behind them too, now, traveling in their wake. He did not need to know the shape that death would take, should it come upon them. He risked another glance at his wife—there was no need to watch the path, for it was straight and, at night, none traveled it but them—and saw her still whispering to Alesh, his eyes seeming as wide as saucers in the darkness of the wagon.
The Forging of Dawn Page 11
