The Dark Defiles (74 page)

A familiar figure stood in her path.

“Behold, demon!” Poltar, voice cracked and reedy on the High Kir he still seemed able to speak. “The Sky Dwellers attend me! Kelgris herself rises as my protector, I shall not want for aid. I
command
her.”

Archeth met the amber-eyed gaze, the ambiguous smile that played about the mouth like an invitation. Glimpse of sharp white teeth within. Brief, warm twinge through her groin as she recalled the night in the alley, she couldn’t help it. She grimaced to cover the heat.

“Nice work you’ve got.”

The Sky Dweller slanted her eyes, shrugged minutely. What are you going to do?

“She will tear the life from you before you can lay a finger on me,” ranted the shaman at her back. “That is my will. Even if I fall, she will av—”

Voice abruptly choked off.

Eyes staring, bulged in shock.

One hand creeping up to his throat and the knife buried there at the base, gone hilt deep. Then the hand skittered away again, as if terrified of what it had touched. The shaman stared at his own bloodied fingertips, disbelieving. His mouth worked soundlessly.

And here was her own hand, empty, extended, slim lethal Bandgleam gone from it in the heartbeat moment of impulse she could barely understand as her own.

Poltar gurgled and fell down.

Kelgris cleared her throat delicately. “I think that might have been
avenge
he was trying to say there. High Kir is your tongue, not mine. What do you think?”

“Might have been.” She forced herself to meet the Sky Dweller’s eye again. “Hard to say for sure.”

“Yes, well.” The provocative smile slipped and licked at the corners of the mouth. “Leave it at that, then, shall we? I have other work to be about, and I’m sure you do, too.”

The wind blew again. Light leaked back into the sky. Archeth stared through the empty air where Kelgris had been. Still trying to work out just exactly what had just happened.

After a while, she gave up trying to understand.

She went to collect her steel.

hey stand there like some temple frieze brought to sudden life. The Dark Court in all their glory. Hoiran the Dark, tusked and grinning fanged. The lady Firfirdar, flames dancing about her in a restless high-collared cloak of orange red. Kwelgrish, blood-drenched towel pressed to the wound in her head with one hand, wolf-skin robe hanging off one shoulder by the teeth in its upper jaw. Dakovash, slouch hat slanted across a shadowed face, high-collared patched leather cloak swept about his form. Astinhahn, ax in one hand, foaming tankard in the other. Morakin, wrapped about in serpents, each as thick as his upper arm. Harjellis, starved and skullish beneath his cowl … 

They’re smiling at him, all of them. He swears he sees Dakovash wink.

You’ve done well, Ringil.
Oddly, it’s not Hoiran who steps forward to speak for the court he’s supposed to rule. It’s Firfirdar instead, arm wreathed in little coiling bracelets of flame as she lifts a hand toward him.
Not one mortal in a million could have come this far.

Yeah,
he growls.
Thanks for all the help.

She smiles brilliantly at him.
We knew you would not need it. And now look at you—a destiny fulfilled, a dark lord arisen. You even have the crown. You’ve thrown down the dwenda, you walk at will in the Grey Places, and now you command the Talons of the Sun. The Kiriath steel has crept inside you, as you have soaked into it, and the union serves your will. The vengeful dead gather to your command—actually, you don’t seem all that adept at using them yet; perhaps we can help you there. But I digress. Your blood is mingled Yhelteth nobility and marsh dweller heritage stretching back to the original Core Command from the Great War and the Death of the Moon. You are the pivot on which it all turns, Ringil. It remains only for you to step back into the world, depose the Emperor of All Lands and take your rightful place on the Burnished Throne.

Oh, not you lot, too.
He rolls his eyes, genuinely weary.
For
… 
Hoiran’s sake, why would I want the Burnished Throne? What would I
do
with the fucking thing?

Firfirdar shrugs.
Anything you wish. March on Trelayne, make your father bow down and eat dirt at your feet, perhaps. Abolish the slave trade. Crush the Citadel. We do not much care as long as it is a human who holds the reins of Empire.

I told you once before—I am not your motherfucking cat’s-paw.

Of course not,
she says soothingly.
Your victory is your own. Do with it as you will. Only be warned of the cost.

You’re too kind.
He turns about to face the Talons of the Sun.
Codes—I want to speak to the Source; is that possible?

If it deigns to reply, yes. It has been uncommunicative these last several thousand years, though.

I wonder why. All right, let’s go—open up.

Another indefinable unfolding around him and the upward rippling tentacles seem to gain a fresh density, as if they’re somehow more solidly here before him. A tiny prism of light opens eight inches away from his eyes and something tightly coiled weaves within it.

Ringil peers into the light, but his vision shies away from fully seeing whatever’s in there. It’s tangled, is all he knows, and at angles that threaten to tear his mind open. He blinks and looks off to one side. He clears his throat.

I, uhm—I think I’ve been sent to set you free.

Something gusts to life in the chilly air.
Yes
… 
so it seems
… 

And if confirmation were needed, here it is; at base, the voice is a match for the hoarse whisper of the Creature at the Crossroads. But there’s something else woven into the tone of it, a limping pain that stings tears into his eyes and a weariness that echoes the voice of the Codes and the Binding Forces, as if somehow, over immense stretches of time the two entities, prisoner and jailer, have somehow interchanged and merged at the edges.

My sister’s mark is on you,
the Source whispers. Overhead, the slow weaving of tentacles seems to yearn towards the sky.
She has stitched you through at levels that should have destroyed you. Such a doubtful, patchwork scheme. Such delicate abuse of the limits and laws that govern it all. Such
… 
fragility.

Yeah, well,
he says sourly.
Seems to have worked out though, doesn’t it. You want these chains off or not?

I would be indebted to you for the eternity you must spend trapped here.

That’s what I—
Ringil blinks.
What?

Was this not made clear to you?

Nothing—no fucking thing—has been made clear to me. Apparently that’s not how things get done around here. I’m just the hero.

Well then—it is simple enough, hero.
Like the Creature at the Crossroads, the Source seems able to mock and take the title seriously at one and the same time. Its tone is almost kindly.
The only reason that the wounds of the world remain unhealed is that my sisters could not bear to abandon me. They could not, by the laws of their own work, intervene in the repaired scheme of things for me, but they left their repairs unfinished, in the hope that through some small gap or other an escape might become possible.

The entire remaining world is stitched and stained through with that single forlorn, enduring hope of escape.

Ringil grunts.
That explains a lot.

But the gaps are all levered trapdoors, set to fall as soon as that purpose is fulfilled. I would escape to the void and my sisters’ embrace, swept there by the act of releasing my bonds. But all else would be trapped in the Grey Space for eternity.

And you’re telling me this
… 
why?

Because it is the truth.

You see, Ringil.
There’s a smile licking around Firfirdar’s mouth like the flames that lick at her body.
The Book-Keeper is not what she seems, despite her gifts.
She has manipulated you as much as any other power, betrayed you, sent you to your doom without warning.

So I should trust you lot instead, right?

We at least want you alive. You should trust that—or at least value it over this offered extinction. Take charge of the Talons of the Sun, Ringil. Leave its power leashed in place to serve your ends. Reach out for the throne of Yhelteth. Become the Dark King, if you will.

It is all we ask. We will take you home.

He nods slowly. Glances up at the slow writhing of the tentacles overhead. The tiny, imprisoned pocket of light and coiling darkness floating in front of his face.

And you. What do you ask?

I am weary,
says the voice.
A hundred thousand years of wars I wanted no part in, of acting the linchpin for a fantasy of ancient rights and ascendancy based in ornate lies and arrant self-deception. I am weary of it all.

Ringil grimaces.
Yeah, you and me both.

He looks down the slope at the waiting dwenda horde. At the expectant Dark Court personages and their eager, welcoming smiles. The silent stones that ring him, the bleak rushing sky overhead.

Could be worse.

Fuck all of you gods,
he says tiredly.
I’m done with you. Codes—dissolve the bonds, turn the Source loose.

He sees the shock rip across their faces. Firfirdar’s dark queen calm dissolved, Hoiran’s lips peeling back from his tusked and fanged mouth in snarling rage. Kwelgrish, dropping the blood-soaked towel from her skull and he sees the wound, sees how deep it really goes. Morakin’s snakes hissing in unified disbelief with the flicker-tongued gape of his own handsome mouth … 

It’s worth it, everything that’s coming now, just to see that look on those faces.

I piss on you all,
he calls, against a steadily rising wind.
I piss on your smug schemes and destinies and storied lies. Go on—fuck off back to the real world and play your hollow games if you must. Some of us have grown out of this shit.

The Source is released,
the Codes and the Binding Force says, and he thinks there might be a hint of relief in its voice.
Dissolution will follow. All coherent beings should exit the wounded spaces while there is still time
… 

What do you think you’re
doing? Firfirdar, screaming desperately across the wind.
This is insane, this serves
no one
well. You cannot do this!

It’s done,
he tells her somberly.
I’d get out of here while you still can, if I were you.

It’s a conclusion the rest of the Dark Court seems already to have reached. They are turning and dissolving away as he watches, Kwelgrish reaching into the wound in her head and tugging irritably at something within, Astinhahn draining his tankard and tossing it away in disgust, Dakovash—does he, for just one moment, incline his brim-shaded face in salute?—Hoiran, Morakin, all of them, even, finally, the Mistress of Dice and Death herself. Twisting, fading, while above them all the sound of the wind is rising to a scream, and something writhing huge and tentacular and impossible to look directly at scrabbles and lunges for the hurrying sky—

And is gone.

Silence slams down across the horizon. The Talons of the Sun wisp away to fragments and then to nothing at all. If the storm-callers of Clan Talonreach were still in there somewhere, then whatever happened to their weapon seems to have happened to them as well. The departing Source has dragged them away in its wake.

The clouds shred apart overhead, the wind drops once more to a keening lament.

Ringil sniffs and looks down the slope to where the dwenda are waiting for him. He takes a couple of steps down toward them, and the standing stones refuse to move with him. They bulk as immovable and impassive as they were the night Seethlaw first brought him inside their scope. Whatever power he borrowed from them is gone now, like everything and everyone else around here.

Oh, well.
He isn’t much surprised.

How now,
yells the dwenda commander.
See, the stones themselves turn against you! What will you do for protection now, mortal? How will you evade the vengeance of the Shining Folk?

Quarter ounce of krin would have been nice,
he thinks vaguely.

The sky dims again.

B
ETWEEN HIM AND THE DWENDA HORDE—A TALL, PATCH-CLOAKED FIGURE,
face cast in hat-brim shadow. Dakovash the Salt Lord, back for some kind of smart-arse last word, no doubt.

Ringil raises a brow.
Forget something?

Too much, over the millennia. Far too much.
The god’s voice is weary, but his habitual irritation seems to have faded into something more considered.
But never mind. You asked for this.

He holds out his hand, open. Cupped in the palm sits a dark, gold-grained pellet of krinzanz.

Gil stares at him for a long moment. Then he reaches out and takes the offering, rolls and presses it between finger and thumb until it’s warm and pliant.

I’m not changing my mind,
he warns the Salt Lord.

You could not now, even if you wished to.
A thin smile in the shadow of the hat brim, as if Dakovash can feel the tiny spike of chill through his heart at the words.
The Source was not lying. The gaps the Book-Keepers left are closing fast. Already, they are whorled too tight to permit mortal passage.

Taking a risk coming back then, aren’t you?

A modest gesture.
Nothing I can’t handle. Could use the exercise, to be honest.

Ringil thumbs the krin into his mouth and chews it down to mulch. He nods at the dwenda waiting below.

What about them?

The Salt Lord considers.
Oh, some among them maybe. The very strongest might find a way back if they’re quick about it. But wherever they finally wash up, it won’t be in your world. They’re broken there as a force.

All according to plan, eh?
He can’t quite keep the bitterness from his voice.

According to one plan, yes. Though the truth is you could equally have ended up their glorious leader.

I nearly fucking did.

Dakovash smiles again beneath the hat.
No, I mean
you,
Ringil Eskiath—
you
could have ended up leading the dwenda to victory against the south. It was one possible outcome we foresaw. Or equally, you saved the Empire and sat on its throne, but with a shadow guard of dwenda to watch over you by night and strike terror in the hearts of your subjects. You used them to tear the Citadel apart, and in the gap left by the Revelation, we entered back in.