Breaking the Gloaming (15 page)

“No place will be safe if this war breaks out.”

“
When
it breaks out,” the smuggler replied, “I am keeping my distance.”

“I doubt that,” Jon said. “I see a man who cannot stay away from trouble.”

A wide grin spread over the smuggler’s face. “I need a good man like you to keep me out of it. One man’s trouble is another man’s gain.”

Jon smiled. He was going to be late to Valemidas, but it would be worth it. “I think we can reach a deal.”

Chapter 15

THE END OF A MAN

“Alone, idle, and always near danger,

savage man must like to sleep and

be a light sleeper like animals
 

which do little thinking and,
 

as it were, sleep the entire time
 

they are not thinking.

Since his self-preservation was
 

practically his sole concern,

his best trained faculties
 

ought to be those that
 

have attack and defense
 

as their principal object,

either to subjugate his prey or
 

to prevent his becoming the prey

of another animal.”
 

The Icarian was going to kill Tryst. He used his knife to slice his last meal into thin pieces. It was a sausage the size of his thumb. A feast. The meat was delicious in his mouth. He savored each bite and the energy it fed into him.

His story had started in the mountains of Icaria. He had grown strong there, tucked away amidst almost impassable ridges. He had taken the oaths of a ranger, and he had been one of the best. The Icarian leader, the Summit himself, had given him the brass peaks to wear on his chest. There was no greater honor among the rangers.

He had married the love of his life. He could still see her freckled face. She had the most marvelous green eyes. Nothing had pleased the Icarian more than to see those eyes in his children. His oldest son was going to be a ranger like his father. His daughter was as beautiful as her mother. Their third child kicked vigorously in the womb.

He would never see them again. The Summit had sent him and another ranger in pursuit of a foreigner through the mountains, to stop him from reaching the lowlands. That was what rangers did, but the Icarian had failed. They had found the man they followed, but only after he found them. The Icarian had been sleeping, his partner on watch, when he was knocked out. He remembered waking with his wrists and ankles tied, draped over the back of a horse. 

It was worse than a disgrace. When the man he now knew as Sebastian hauled him out of the mountains, it had severed his connection to home. An Icarian ripped out of Icaria was like a heart ripped out of a body.
 

By the time Sebastian had thrown him into the Valemidas dungeons, the Icarian had become a dangerous shell of himself. He knew better than to resist questioners when they came. Resistance would only prolong the torture. He had told the bald man with the beard and the funny stars by his eyes everything he knew about Icaria. Then the bald man had come back with the prince, Tryst. The Icarian told him the secrets of their explosive powder. He regretted it all now. He feared how the Valemidans might have used that knowledge.

After the Icarian had given up everything, the bald man had cast him down into this city. His honor was lost, but he survived as rangers always did. Survival became his only purpose. He had found this home and lost count of the men he had killed to protect it. 

There was no hideaway like it down here. After much time scouting, the Icarian knew the city like he knew the Icarian mountains. This was the only place where a building touched the wall. It arched ten feet above the ground, like a bridge to the wall’s dead end of stone. The only way into the arch was through a hidden door. Everyone who found that door died by his knife.
 

This enclosed bridge was a safe place to sleep, but its true value was that it had enabled the Icarian to try digging through the wall. Using his fingers, bones, or any metal but his knife, he had chipped away at the hard stone. The hole had grown as deep as his arm when he had struck water. With water and his skills for finding food, he had managed to stay alive for who knows how long. 

The only measure of time for him was his beard. He cut his hair with his knife, but never his beard. The beard was the only thing he had left from Icaria. When he had fallen into this city, it had gone down to his chest. Now it reached his waist.

In the time his beard had grown, he had survived and seen a man escape. The man had charged through the central square of the city like a maniac. The Icarian had kept his distance while watching the man leap up, climb up, to the hanging box. No one had done it since. Others had tried, and died. The Icarian preferred digging his hole in the wall, even if it went nowhere.

He had also seen men try to lead. He had seen Tryst fall like any other man and then declare himself god with such force that others believed him. Then Tryst had disappeared, and a man named Cain had tried to take over. The Icarian had been there when Tryst killed Cain.
 

The men down here would follow power, and so they followed Tryst again. More and more men were swearing their faith in him. Food was becoming more plentiful. The men thought Tryst was the cause of it. The Icarian knew that was a lie. He knew Tryst was a man. He was the man who had listened to everything the Icarian said about his former home. He was the man who said he would burn down that home and kill every man, woman, and child who did not obey him. 

Now that man reigned over this city. The tiny piece of Icaria left deep within the Icarian would not allow that. He was going to kill Tryst and avenge whatever the man had done to his people. It gave the Icarian a final purpose.

He swallowed his last bite and stood. He took one last sip of the water that dripped from the hole in the wall. He said goodbye to the hole and this home.

Through the hidden door, out the building, and into the streets, the Icarian made his way to Tryst. The false god lived at the top of the tallest building in the city, overlooking the central square. The Icarian knew better than to try the front entrance. Tryst’s men were growing devout in their service. They would stop the Icarian. He felt sure he was one of the last holdouts of men who would not swear obedience to Tryst. 

Instead of the entrance, the Icarian approached the towering structure from behind. He glided along the wall of a low warehouse like he was hiding beneath a ridge in the mountains. The gray rags he wore blended into the shadows.
 

From the corner of that building, he peered out and saw no motion. In two quick steps he crossed the shadowless gap between the warehouse and the tower. Then he began to climb.
 

No one could climb like an Icarian ranger. His bare fingers and toes found holds where other men would see only cracks. His body straddled the corner of the building, gaining more stability and traction. He pulled up, stepped up, reached up, held fast, and kept climbing without a look down.
 

His arms were shaking from fatigue and he was sweating when he made it to Tryst’s floor. One side of the room had no wall. He swung his body in and the floor made no sound of protest.

The room was silent, darker than most places in the city. The floor was made of wide, almost black wooden planks. The ceiling beams looked like the same wood. Iron chandeliers without candles hung down. Otherwise the room was completely empty, except for the body lying in the middle.

The Icarian thanked the floor for its quiet as he glided toward the body. He pulled out his knife and kneeled over him. 

Tryst was on his back, breathing deeply. He looked peaceful and spectacular. The Icarian marveled how the man could be so unaffected by this place. His porcelain face was shaved smooth. His black hair almost shined against the dark wooden floor. His hands were on his chest, gripped around the ruby hilt of his sword. The blade was spotless. Its metal was like a source of light, rising and falling with each breath.

The Icarian would dispel every notion that this being was a god. He held his knife to Tryst’s perfect, bare throat.

Tryst’s eyes snapped opened. They were a brilliant blue.

“You win,” Tryst said, as if he had been awake the whole time. “Go ahead, finish me. It would be a good death.” After a moment’s pause, with their gazes locked, the prince spoke again. “You’re an Icarian?”

The Icarian nodded, too surprised to say anything or to move his knife. The metal quivered at Tryst’s neck.

“Do it, stab it into me. It would be a fitting end, given the destruction I brought to your people. You have also earned it.” The prince still had not moved. “Many men have challenged me directly and died by my hand. A few such as you have tried sneaking in and assassinating me. Only you have evaded my detection long enough. You might as well finish what you came here to do.”

The Icarian heard honor and defeat mixed in Tryst’s words. He sounded like a leader, like the Summit. “You are not like the rest of us,” the Icarian said, slowly pulling his knife away.

“Am I so different?” The prince stood and stared into the Icarian. His eyes were cold, like a frozen lake in the mountains. The Icarian would never see a lake or his mountains again.

“You do not care if I kill you?” the Icarian asked.

“I remember you,” Tryst said. “You’re the one Sebastian brought back. The ranger who told him about the powder.”

Tryst stepped forward and the Icarian stepped back. Instinct made him raise his dagger between them.

“I was that man, the Icarian,” he answered.

“Then finish what you came here to do,” Tryst said.
 

“I was wrong,” he paused. “I cannot recover my honor, not even by killing you.”
 

The Icarian’s final purpose blew away like misty breath on a cold morning. He turned the blade toward himself, the metal shaking like a bird’s hurt wing, and he plunged it into his chest.
 

Tryst’s eyes bore pain and sadness. They were the last thing the Icarian saw.

Chapter 16

UNDERWORLD DREAMS

“Those with the greatest awareness

have the greatest nightmares.”

The leader of the mountain people, the Icarian Summit, stood in the central square of the Gloaming. He held his sword high overhead. His face was blank. His long gray hair fell over his shoulders. Blood dripped down his bare chest.

He swung hard at me. I jumped back, but too late. He slashed into my shoulder, and I dropped something from my hand. The pain blazed.

I fell onto my back. The black box was hanging above me, taunting me as ever. It was a path out of this place, but I could not reach it.

The Icarian Summit stomped his bare foot on the fresh wound in my shoulder. He pointed his long sword at my neck. It was Zarathus. It was supposed to be my sword.

You grow soft, Andor.
I heard his words in my mind, but his mouth did not move.

“Stop!” I shouted at him. “Enough killing. Make it stop.”

Only you can make it stop.
His expression was the same, as steady and solid as a mountain.

“I can’t. Look what’s become of me.”

Who are you?

Suddenly I was not myself. I was the king of Sunan. I could not see my face, but I remembered the throne. It was made of gold, as bright as the sun.

“A Sunan,” I said, “but I don’t know who.”

“You know and you run from it.” This time the Summit’s mouth spoke the words. He moved his sword away from my neck. He stepped back. “Stand and fight me.”

“No, I will not fight.” I rose to a crouch.

“You will fight or you will die.”

“Then I will die.”

“You will fight,” he commanded.

I stood and a spear was in my hand. I hurled it at him.

He ducked it easily.
 

“
You
fight.” He smiled. “But
he
will die.”

Before I could ask who
he
was, the Summit stabbed Zarathus at me. The blade pierced into my gut. I drowned in the pain like a man sinking in an ocean.
 

“If you will fight,” the Summit said, “you will bring peace.” He twisted the blade inside me. I collapsed, my hands clutching at the wound in my gut. “If you will not fight, you will find a death worse than the Gloaming.” His words rang in my ears.

I was writhing on the ground. Blood and mud and pain washed over me.

“Wake up.”
 

Someone was shaking me.

“Wake up.”

I opened my eyes. I was in my bed.

“You were having another dream,” Lorien said. She had lit a candle by the bed. Her face showed concern and something more. Fear. Her face showed fear of me.

“What did I say?” I asked.

“You said you would die.” She paused. “And you said you’d rather we all die than fight. What did you see?”

“I was in the Gloaming. I was not myself. I was fighting the Summit.”

“The Summit?”

“The leader of the Icarian people. He wanted me to fight.”

“He was right,” Lorien said. “We have to fight.” She had been saying that for days.

“I think maybe I will have to fight, but it is more complicated.” I began to say more, but she stopped me with a finger on my lips.

“The Sunans bring war, and we will defeat them.” The fear was gone from her face. She looked pure and resolute, like a leader. “War may bring complexities, but what we must do is simple. We prepare our men to fight, and when the Sunans come, we throw them off our walls and our shores.”

I shook my head. “I am still hoping for another way.”

“You can keep your hope.” Her voice blended sympathy and frustration. “You have to overcome what happened to you in the Gloaming. Stop pretending it did not happen. Face it and overcome it. Hope can help. But you cannot avoid this war. We have to prepare for it.”