Brothers of the Knife

by Dan Rabarts

  Go blind into the darkest window, black and white the key.

  Akmenos had had his eyes shut, which was about as blind as he was willing to make himself. The Rift was definitely a dark window, its surface black, the limestone white. Kind of. Maybe more like pale yellow, but whitish. The Hornung text read, Go blind into the / snow breaks upon the glassing sable, which, despite lacking grammatical cohesion, indeed suggested this business of something white scattered over the obsidian plane. Mind you, if this was the way others had come before them, why were there no other broken stalactites in the cavern ceiling? He was drawn back to the moment by shouting, the ominous rumble and shiver of the walls. Shaking off his daze, he struggled to stand, scrambled, slipped, fell hard on his rump. On the far side of the rift, Hrodok was rising slowly, too slowly.

  “Hrodok!” Akmenos called, staggering upright. Hrodok moved gingerly, as if things deep inside were broken, bleeding. What would pain him more? The agonal shock of smashing headfirst into solid rock, or the bruise to his pride at having been wrong?

  At having failed?

  Dwarves scrambled towards the access ladders, nets in hand, and from the tunnels beyond came the echo of clashing steel. Still Hrodok wavered, bent, bloody. The warlock wouldn’t be getting them out of this, and the dwarves would rip them to pieces when they caught them. It was up to Akmenos—slow, pudgy, runty Akmenos—to save himself and, dammit, his brother. He stumbled across the black glass on legs that burned.

  Go blind into the darkest window, black and white the key.

  The walls trembled, power rising from somewhere below, beyond. The dwarves were shouting in their strange, angry tongue, but none were climbing into the rift. Any moment now, the black would burst open in an eruption of needle-sharp blades, cutting them both to ribbons. Akmenos needed to think fast, act faster. Surely, dwarves couldn’t be that difficult to outwit, or to outrun, for that matter. Except that would involve running, which wasn’t Akmenos’ strong suit.

  Go blind into the darkest window, black and white the key.

  Akmenos was reaching for Hrodok when his brother turned to face him. Akmenos skidded to a stop, struggling to breathe, pity and revulsion flooding him at the sight. Blood hung in thick scarlet strands from Hrodok’s chin, hair, and horns. A shaft of white stone jutted from his eye-socket. His other eye was swelling shut, his face misshapen as if several bones were broken, cheek and jaw and nose alike.

  “Go blind,” Hrodok hissed through smashed teeth, blood spitting from his torn lips, “into the darkest window.”

  Akmenos stepped back. Some deep ingrained bond rose up, overriding every slight to have ever come between them, drawing him back into the warm sanctuary of the brood, the birthing pools. Love or hate him, trust or despise him, they were still brothers. “Black and white the key,” he whispered, completing the phrase, his voice thick with guilt at the ghastly sight, and in that moment it all made perfect sense. Something that could only make sense when faced with the madness, the horror unfolding around him. His reason for being here. The reason all the pieces fell together; the dark, the blind, the black, the white.

  He reached into his apron and pulled out his grinders.

  “Black and white,” he murmured, and turned from Hrodok. Lime dust rose around them as the rift shuddered, seconds from eruption.

  In solemn defiance, Akmenos met the stupefied gazes of the dwarves in the galleries, their bows and nets poised, and began to grind rock salt and peppercorns onto the rift. “Black and white the key,” he repeated, over and over, as the bridge between worlds swelled to bursting beneath him.

  He barely heard Hrodok over the sudden roar as his deformed brother leapt at him, wrapping his arms around his waist and throwing them both down. “Fool!” Hrodok sputtered.

  Then it didn’t matter, because they were falling, down, into the black, again. This time, Akmenos didn’t scream.

  He cheered.

  This business of being a hero wasn’t nearly as tough as they made it sound.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Hal’alak paced in a haze of dust. The moondogs circled the sandy plinth, nipping at each other as they struggled to break her bond. The sun was high, rendering the dogs weak and almost completely transparent in its glare.

  She knelt near the centre of the plinth, hands pressed to the stone, the grooves of ancient carvings beneath her fingers. Was its warmth from the desert sun, or the fading residue of a powerful magical discharge? She wasn’t sure what annoyed her more: that she’d let him escape in the first place, or that he might’ve now passed through one of the Holy Flame’s portals. That would be problematic. Not only did she have no access to those portals, but the bumbling fool couldn’t possibly have acquired a key on his own. Considering that, and how much desert he’d covered, he must’ve had help.

  The Holy Flame had to have known her plans in order to have interfered. All this time she’d thought herself so invisible, yet they must’ve been watching her every step, aware of her plans to break Kriikan, and had moved to counter her in the wake of the elf’s death. Heat flushed her cheeks at the thought of being spied on for so long. What secrets, if any, did she still have from the Flame?

  Swallowing her irritation, she moved on. She was not without allies, but the Eternal Stair would be monitoring her too. It was crucial that she complete her objective without relying on outside resources. She must be a rock in the storm, a stalwart and dependable force which the Stair could rely on to do what need be done under her own power. That was how the Holy Flame and the Eternal Stair differed. The Flame’s numbers were many, and widespread, and they worked together, but remove one from the flock and they were weak. The Stair, on the other hand, valued personal potency and self-reliance. Command of others was a matter of subjugation and deception, never loyalty. At every turn, the warrior of the Eternal Stair must have total control. Co-operation was not an option, for that way lay dependence, weakness. Failure.

  The game had changed, and so Hal’alak must adapt her strategy accordingly. Rather than simply leading a couple of pawns down a path to suit her final ends, she now had the combined will of the Holy Flame to contend with, who were in turn bending Akmenos to their design.

  The Flame’s portals were a barbaric replica of the Eternal Stair’s own, each leading to only one place, rather than controlling a matrix of paths between plinths like the Stair’s. It made them simpler to utilise for the Flame’s many, less-sophisticated numbers, as well as needing less latent magical energy stored within them to function. But their operation required both a physical key and some knowledge of childish riddles. However good she might’ve been at riddles, without the key, this plinth was useless to her. But the moondogs had led her here, so this was where Akmenos had gone. She must either learn where this portal emerged or acquire a key. Whoever had brought Akmenos to the plinth would know these things. Snapping her fingers at the moondog pack, she set off running down the mountainside. If there was a scent to find, she must do so before the desert blew it to the far horizons.

  ~

  Bane would not look into the flames.

  Grebbeth knelt near the ashes, maintaining the spell, while Arah watched the proceedings through the fiery lens. It was a most displeasing sight. Not just killed, but butchered and hung out for the wolves. Altogether quite upsetting, particularly so soon after lunch. Aside from the sheer magnitude of the murder and the gruesomeness of its execution, there were the political implications.

  Arah sighed as another elvish body was tossed onto the pyre. Dear, troubled Hrodok. What have you done? Why couldn’t you just be simple and dependable, like Grebbeth and Fraag, or cunning but loyal, like Versha, or shy but uncomplicated, like Akmenos? And what of Akmenos? How was her youngest son embroiled in all this? Inadvertently, she presumed. It was unlikely he could’ve so much as conceived, much less planned or conspired in, such an act of high treason.

  Because treason it was, engineered to disrupt the alliance between Kriikan and Landaria, which would shift
the balance of power out from under Emperor Rathrax. What could any son of Bane possibly gain from such an act?

  “It’s the work of the human slut, you mark my words,” Bane growled. “Some witch, to ensorcel our son thus.”

  Arah looked on, watching the smoke darken the sky through the magical lens. “Don’t be so quick to divert the blame, husband. He’s an ambitious whelp. Maybe all he needed was a little nudge, the right promise.”

  Bane spun on her. “What could be greater than arising to serve me?”

  Arah’s mouth twitched in a bitter smile. “Exactly, my darling. What indeed?”

  The Cursemaster’s glare deepened, her meaning not lost on him. “We will despatch word to Landaria, inform them of this treachery and make recompense.”

  “They won’t accept it. There will be consequences. We must prepare for war.”

  Bane stalked from the room, slamming the door behind him. Arah pressed her lips together. He would do what must be done; he would make a show of offering condolences and promising swift reprisal, but he would also begin mobilising for the inevitable elvish retaliation. Landaria had waited too long for this opportunity. Hornung was about to face the greatest challenge to her rule yet.

  Arah touched Grebbeth lightly on the shoulder. “Let it go,” she murmured, and the fires dwindled. “How is your strength?”

  Grebbeth shrugged. “Fine. What now?”

  “Prepare another casting. We must find your brothers.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Akmenos awoke to a soft moaning. He opened his eyes. Beneath a storm-grey sky, a barren horizon spread out around him, a rolling landscape black as soot. Soft grit shifted under his fingers; dust, coal-black, coarse as ash.

  He sat up, wincing. He was bruised and scraped, for certain, but nothing felt broken. That sort of luck probably wouldn’t last. At least the moaning he’d heard wasn’t his own. He looked around. A twisted shape lay nearby.

  “Hrodok?”

  Hrodok groaned. The black dust was darker around his head, wet. Akmenos hauled himself over to his brother, eased him over so as to inspect his wounds. His stomach turned. He forced himself not to turn away from his brother’s smashed features. Not that it would’ve mattered.

  Hrodok couldn’t see him. Might never see him again.

  Akmenos swallowed the bile welling in his throat. If he was to do anything to ease his brother’s pain, he should do it now, while Hrodok was barely conscious. “Sorry, brother,” he muttered, “this might hurt.”

  Hrodok woke up then, screaming into wakefulness as Akmenos wrenched the sliver of stone from his eye-socket. He jerked forward, thick blood spattering them both. Akmenos grappled Hrodok’s shoulders, using his natural heft to bear his lighter brother back to the ground. Hrodok was strong, and frantic with pain and panic, but Akmenos had the advantage of years sampling puddings, sneaking the bacon fat off the grill, and picking at banquet leftovers.

  “Hold still,” he grunted, fumbling for the small pewter flask stashed in a secret pocket of his apron. He kept it for emergencies, although before now he’d only imagined such an emergency to be an unexpected flambé, or a coffee which needed that little extra something. Never had he imagined this. Surprised by his own dexterity, he unclasped the stopper, the fumes stinging his eyes. It was small comfort that Hrodok wouldn’t see it coming. Regretting the waste of good brandy, Akmenos upended the flask onto his brother’s bleeding eye-socket. Once the screaming and the thrashing had subsided, and Akmenos could confirm that Hrodok had in fact merely passed out, rather than suffocated under his weight, he relaxed. He put the flask to his lips, savouring the last hints of alcohol, and studied his surroundings.

  Another desert, like the last one but different somehow, the earth black instead of daub and layered in drifts of gritty black sand, the sky grey, draped in a long slow twilight. As if all the colour had been stripped from the world leaving this landscape of blacks and greys. Scattered across the undulating plain a few scraggly trees clawed at the sky. Clouds scudded on relentlessly, ignoring the trees’ clutching fingers. A breeze shifted the sands, which rasped against grey boulders and hissed between low, flat rocks.

  Akmenos summed up his conundrum: he didn’t know where he was; he was slightly more beaten up than before, with no magical taur-water to cure his aches; he had a crippled brother to care for, and possibly to carry to safety; looking about, he could see absolutely no sign of shelter; and to top it off, it was well past lunchtime and he was starving.

  Other than how to escape the dwarven stronghold, he hadn’t gained any more clues during his most recent foray. He tried not to dwell on how unlikely it all was; that the first portal should have dropped him into an underground cavern, and that the only way out was through a deadly rift…

  Rift.

  “Aw, crap,” Akmenos groaned. He may only have been enough of a warlock to satisfy the needs of his family honour, having passed his basic tuition on magical terminology, the do’s and don’ts of alchemical admixture and barely mastering the odd cantrip, but he remembered one thing well enough now, something that hadn’t conveniently crossed his mind while they’d been running from angry dwarves with axes and nets: Rifts opened not within a given world, like a portal, but between planes of existence.

  And if they had just stepped into another plane—which couldn’t possibly have been what the clues had been leading them towards, because that was just insane—then there probably weren’t any more clues to be had on the scroll case. They’d got it wrong, and now they were on their own. He shivered and took a deep breath, tasting burnt sugar on the air.

  He stood. Every direction, the same. The cloud was an even shade from horizon to horizon. There were no shadows. Scanning the sky, he couldn’t tell where the sun might be—if there even was a sun in this place. With no way to know which direction might be which, or if “direction” was even a relevant concept on this plane, because alternate planes rarely followed conventional rules, Akmenos had little choice but to point his nose one way, his tail the other, and start walking.

  Scooping up the scroll case and his salt and pepper grinders, and checking he still had all his knives, jars, and other oddities about his apron, Akmenos mentally prepared himself for the task at hand. Hrodok was by no means a heavyweight, but nor was Akmenos a champion weight-hefter. In fact, until not very many years ago, when it came to the sport of weight-hefting it had more often been Akmenos being hefted by the older hornung lads, if he wasn’t slick or swift enough to evade capture. But as a kitchen-hand, he’d hauled his fair share of vegetable sacks from the lower reaches of Castle Kriikan up though the winding corridors to the royal kitchens. Hrodok couldn’t weigh much more than a sack of potatoes.

  Crouching down, wincing at every stab of pain and protesting muscle, he levered his comatose brother onto his shoulders and heaved himself upright. Hrodok weighed at least as much as two sacks. Dammit.

  “The journey starts with one step.” Some philosopher had said that. Who would’ve thought philosophy could help him at a time like this? He pointed his nose away from his tail, as the old saying goes, and started walking.

  ~

  The journey may start with one step, and it may finish with the final step, but what no-one ever told Akmenos was just how horrific all those steps in between would be. After what seemed like hours, Akmenos was sure he’d hardly gone anywhere. His body screamed at him, his legs and back and shoulders aflame with fresh pains, his brother’s limp arms flopping against him with every step. His hooves slipped in the ash, making every pace a hazardous endeavour of sinking grit. Step by harrowing step he went, the clouds ever shifting, yet the sky never changed. The breeze was neither hot nor cold. His vision blurred and his limbs weakened. It was as if the whole world had been worn down to ash, the sun and moons ground away leaving just this grey expanse of sky and desolation. By the time his knees collapsed from under him, spilling Hrodok’s still form onto the coal dust, Akmenos was certain he’d been tossed to the very end of t
ime, and that he too was destined to crumble to bone and dust.

  Fighting the urge to sob—just in case his brother came around and the first thing he saw was him crying, which would be really humiliating—Akmenos spread out on the ashen ground, scraping his splayed fingers through the grit.

  He grazed something hard, and slightly tacky. Lacking the strength to sit, Akmenos rolled over and lifted the thing to his face.

  A shard of limestone, coated in drying blood.

  The same shard he’d pulled from Hrodok’s face.

  He looked back, to where there should’ve been a trail of hoofmarks and the sweep of his tail in the black sand, but there was nothing. It was as though he’d never moved.

  To hell with the humiliation. Covering his face with his clawed fingers, Akmenos wept, long and low and bitter. He’d fallen to the very bottom of the universe, and he had no rope to climb out. Worse than that, he was hungry, and there wasn’t so much as a rutabaga in sight.

  “Why,” rasped a nearby voice, “are you always crying?”

  Akmenos snuffled, gathering his composure. “Why are you always so nasty?”

  Hrodok was silent for a time, which surprised Akmenos. He’d never had the nerve to stand up to any of his brothers before. He’d been bullied for so long, enduring their barbs and manipulations, that the very idea of defying their taunts and speaking up for himself was an alien one. But he had just walked a mile, maybe, across the desert at the end of the universe, at the end of time, with his crippled brother slung across his back, only to find that for all his efforts he had gone precisely nowhere, and all he had earned in return was to be insulted.

  “Because you’re weak, brother, and you need people like me to make you strong. Times like this, to harden you.”