A Step into Darkscape (The Legacy Novels Book 2)
A Step into Darkscape
a legacy novel
Blake Rivers
[ Revised Edition ]
First published in 2015
by B.R.Rivers Publishing
This Kindle edition published in 2016
Copyright © Blake Rivers, 2016
Cover art Copyright © Emi Rose, 2016
ASIN B00YWE3PDY
The right of Blake Rivers to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed, or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the author, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased, or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law.
This is a work of fiction and any resemblance between the characters to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
www.blakerivers.com
Table of Contents
A Step into Darkscape
Table of Contents
Part One Darkscape
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part Two Romany
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Part Three Revelation
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
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for emi, always for you x.
the old man’s yellowed eyes lingered for a moment before turning back to the game, his dark weathered brow furrowing.
the chequered board was set, the gold and silver pieces in play.
Part One
Darkscape
Chapter One
Ami looked up from the page and out to a sky scored with lines of orange and yellow, where a dying sun danced behind buildings, towers and trees, throwing shadows like warriors against the windows. The gentle shookedy-shook of the wheels on the tracks made a sleepy sound through the car, allowing Ami to work in a lucid state beneath a din of crying children and scorning mothers, her pencil sketching her thoughts, dreams and memories into characters and scenes; a rough draft of a graphic novel yet to be born.
Her eyes passed over the page, yet in her head a war was being fought in a darkened wood with swords, light and magic; creatures of the night, men of the day, heroes and villains on each and every side.
Time passed.
Yet as each stop came and went, as passengers took their seats and rose to leave, Ami continued to work, lost in memory and fantasy.
It’d been a lonely trip so far, but if she’d have stayed in the city—alone with her thoughts—there would have been only the one tumbling through them.
Hero. Her beloved Hero.
But then she’d found the advert. It’d been hidden in the back of a magazine she’d found lying on a park bench, squeezed between an article on breast feeding and a jumble of celebrity pictures. She’d almost missed it amongst the garish colours and distasteful comments—but there it was: a small quarter in black and white with an image of an old house off to the side.
Ami had put down her Chai Latte and read the sparse words over.
Need to get away? City getting you down? Need to work on that novel?
CURRINGTON HOUSE
Country Getaway
She’d stared at the advert, envisioning the buildings around her being swept away into the distance, leaving only the green of nature’s original plan.
A few days later and Ami was on a train, heading for the deep middle of nowhere, fully aware that she was running away from herself, running away from Hero, running away from life.
It’d been six months since she’d found she had powers that her peers would never have, that she belonged truly to a world a veil beyond her own, and that magic existed, both light and dark.
Ami had experienced them both, and her adventures in Legacy had left her heart and mind troubled, especially when her heart continued to yearn for her hooded, mysterious man.
Hero had been a revelation, an Indian summer when there should’ve been only fall, an ending to an ordeal that gave her hope and a little light when dealing with the dark. But what future was there for them? She a princess with powers beyond anyone’s understanding—especially her own—and he, a Guard of the land of Legacy, with responsibilities to their kingdom? But even more than that, their feelings were a distraction to the normality of life she had to return to.
She couldn’t keep living in two worlds. She had to choose.
After leaving him, Ami had wandered alone in the Solancra Forest, the tangled and magical realm of the unicorns, and there sought out the one who’d helped them all so much, who’d sacrificed and lost so much.
As it turned out, Talos found her instead, appearing one night from the shadows as she took respite within a copse of trees. She greeted him with a hug, burying her face into his mane, the stump where his horn had once been pulsing in a gentle white light as he nuzzled against her.
Ami had stayed with him for a few days after that, strolling through the glades with him in conversation, laying down upon the meadow to watch the little ones prance, dance and play beneath the blessed sun; and in those dusky evenings, Talos had taken it upon himself to teach her a little of the power she possessed. Mostly she’d just watched in awe as he showed her secrets and trained her to harness the power. She’d been especially fascinated by the ability to change one’s body into a pure ghostly form, to pass easily through walls and trees.
“You can change and you can focus, defy most natural laws,” he’d told her. “You can be all, be anything, be power, be pure.”
She’d tried to follow his examples, but in the end had not quite gotten the hang of it, and with her heart heavy with Hero, her confidence had failed her.
If she were truly honest with herself, the power scared her, and when she’d eventually left, saying goodbye to the unicorns and the memory of Legacy, and had returned to life as she’d once known it, she found that the simple was now much more complicated; that being normal was so very difficult. For now she knew. She knew she was powerful and could do magical things with her hands and her mind, but she had to resist or else risk being caught—the burden and consequences were severe. So much had happened in such a small amount of time; her world had been ripped apart and remade. She’d killed, had almost been killed, had been used by and infected with the darkest of magic, reborn again to win the day…but at a price.
She looked back out of the window now as the train began to slow, the last of the towns gone, green shadows where there’d once been life. Hills crested and rolled away, bringing memories of the Planrus Lands, of the mountains of Edorus.
A long, low platform appeared, empty and dead, a sign coming too quickly, the second slower, the third stopping at her window. Currington.
She gathered her papers and pushed them into her bag, giving only a casual glance at the scrawl she’d scribbled.
The doors unlocked with a click.
*
The train left the sta
tion at an almost hurried pace and Ami was left standing alone, the only passenger to have departed. All was silent. A dog barked once from far away and a breeze lifted across her skin, but there were no lights but for the misted moon, and no sign of life.
Walking to the end of the platform, Ami descended the concrete steps to the gravel path below.
From memory, she knew roughly where to go—a mile east along a stretch of road that would take her past a single farm, and then, a little further along, down a sloping driveway to the large, old country estate.
Cheap and picturesque, she was to rent one of the cabins at the back of the property. It was perfect and just the isolation she needed. Here she was truly out in the sticks, and with nothing but those sticks she would build a life, a wondrous and normal life.
Up above, the black clouds cupped the moon, the silver light weeping onto the fields in tears, running in streams and shadow. Before Legacy she’d have been terrified of a night such as this and would never have made the journey, but she was no longer the same Ami. She was the Assassin Princess, Princess of Legacy. She could take her pencil from her pocket and command it to transform into the sword of her forebears, a magical unicorn horn made steel… She was no longer afraid of the dark.
After a while she reached the farmhouse on her left, set far back from the road. It was surrounded by a multitude of hulking metal machines, silent monsters, skeletons of tractors, diggers—a harvester perhaps—that peered out from the undergrowth; and up ahead, where the land sloped, was a cluster of trees and a gate that barred her entry. A small post was stabbed into the ground a few feet in, leaning over into a nest of brambles. Currington House.
Ami wrapped her hands through the rusted bars and pushed, the gate opening with a screech and a whine. The hinges were old and hardly ever used, and when she pushed it back into place, it gave an old groan that sounded almost grateful and relieved. She walked on, eying the shadows and following the sloped driveway round to the right, the house itself coming suddenly into frame. A looming block of black, its many windows looked like closed eyes in a dark face, lifeless and empty, its short wings stumps where perhaps arms were meant to be.
The driveway straightened and narrowed into a grass path that led across the front of the house where an old wooden porch fronted the building. A single lamp hung naked above, rocking soundlessly from side to side.
“Who goes there?” a voice called from behind the lamp. It was shrill and cracked, and made Ami jump out of her skin.
A long stick rose in silhouette and pointed.
Ami reached for her pencil, but stopped as the stick hit the light and lowered a shade, the glare lessening, revealing the outline of a frail figure, a woman, seated in a rocker. A blanket was pulled over her shoulders against the chill, her face all wrinkles and bristles, her eyes deep empty tunnels.
“I said who goes there?” she snapped.
“Hi,” Ami said, turning fully to the porch. “I’m a little later than expected but—”
“Expected? Who expected you?” The woman shuffled forward, her dress crepe paper thin. “Why are you here?” The stick tapped loud on the wooden floor.
“I’m Ami Rose? I was meant to—”
“Ah,” the old woman sighed and shuffled back into the rocker. “You shouldn’t be out this late, Miss Rose. My brother is asleep now and nothing in heaven or on earth will wake him, so you go on back around the house. Cabin thirteen will be yours and it will be open. You just go back there and he’ll take your details in the morning.” She’s blind, Ami thought as she watched her mouth pucker, the wrinkles around her lips stretching and collapsing over her ruined gums. “You can call me Grammy if you want, though we ain’t kin.”
The old woman began to rock then—shookedy-shook, shookedy-shook—and raised her stick to knock the shade back up. Ami squinted as the light hit her. The conversation was over. Giving her one last look, feeling more than a little spooked, Ami strode away, rounding the dark house to a path that led her through a cluster of low wooden cabins, each numbered, though in no particular order.
Ami found thirteen hiding in the far corner, the windows dark and the door ajar, and once inside she wasted no time in looking around her new digs.
The living space was cosy, with a small kitchen off in one corner, a separate bathroom and bedroom, all fully stocked for her needs. The bed looked warm, and putting her bag upon the floor, Ami decided that perhaps she would try it out first before anything else.
She pulled off her clothes and slipped beneath the duvet, falling asleep within minutes.
*
She dreamed of Legacy, of stepping into the castle and standing at the foot of a table. Seated at the head of it was her Hero. He beckoned her over, smiling as he did. She came, her steps slow, graceful, her white dress billowing freely around her.
“Another one!” Hero shouted.
“Benjamin, calm down.”
“Another one—another two!”
“Benjamin, you know I can’t keep up with you when you behave so.”
Ami opened her eyes and stared at the blank wooden wall. The voices were close and unknown, and for a moment she couldn’t possibly imagine what was going on, or where she was. These were not the walls of her bedroom, or voices she knew.
“We can’t go on like this. We just can’t,” the man’s voice broke.
“I know, I know, but what can we do?”
Ami shuffled across the bed and dropped to her feet, grabbing her bag and fumbling around for a fresh set of clothes. Listening still, she made her way into the bathroom and soon emerged dressed and curious.
The voices were coming from just outside, and slipping her pencil into her jeans, Ami opened the door.
It was early morning and the world outside seemed too bright and fresh, the lush green grass bearing the weight of a misty dew, while in the skies and the nearby wood, birds trilled and chirped, heralding in the miracle of a new day.
An old couple stood but a few yards away examining a cabin close to her own. She recognised Grammy from the night before, skinny and sharp in grey, her stick gripped tight. Her blind eyes seemed to locate her easily, and placing her hand on the old man, she turned him to face her.
“We have one guest left,” Grammy crooned. “I forgot to say.”
The man turned to her, a salesman’s smile brightening his features from coronary to only weather-worn. He sauntered over, his hand held out.
“Hello. I’m sorry, we must have woken you. I’m Ben Manning, owner of Currington House.”
Ami stepped from the doorway with a smile. “Ami Rose.” She shook his hand, firm and sure. A man’s grip, her father would have said, never leave it sloppy. Untrustworthy. “Everything okay?”
“Oh, sure, just some wayward guests, a moonlight flit or some other darn thing. Left their dog though, poor thing.”
“It’ll be okay,” Grammy said from far away.
“It’s okay for you,” he snapped, looking back at her. “You can’t see a damned thing!” He turned back to Ami, his smile returning. “I hope you enjoy your stay here, and please, do pay up before you leave. It would be appreciated.”
She could think of nothing else to say, and so nodded, leaving the man to walk away, leading the old woman by the arm.
Shaking her head, Ami took a moment to look around, seeing the place for the first time in daylight.
It was so very beautiful.
The old house stood a silent sentry to her left—handsome, if not a little ragged—while opposite, up a slight slope, was a thick wood where trees swayed gently, leaves rustling in the breeze. Someway beyond the cabins there were green and yellow fields stretching for many miles without a grey building in sight.
She took a deep breath, inhaling each flowering scent and earthy smell, before ducking back inside and closing the door.
*
Ami cleared the bureau, smoothing her hands over the wood, and lay her papers down. With her sketchbook open she sat back in the chair to
draw, and within no time at all had created two new characters, both elderly and one blind; she would give them powers to see through time, or… something. She’d work it out later.
Soon sketched lines became faces in graphite strokes and scenes were taking shape before her, but as time went on she found herself looking out of the window and into the thick woodland more and more. It was a muse for her creativity and a temptation she was finding hard to fight, the lure of adventure tick-tocking away with the wane of the day, the sun of early morning already too low in the sky. Had she been working for that long? The dark greens of the clustered leaves shimmered gold as if on fire, moving constantly above shadowed trunks. Power tingled at the back of her neck.
Dangerous.
Is something out there?
She ignored the feeling as best she could, but her eyes strayed back to the window regardless, only to see—framed perfectly by the centre pane—a small dog upon the grass, apparently looking directly at her. Its pink tongue was stuck out and lolled up and down, its brown and white patched body heaving with each pant.
“Cute doggy,” she murmured. It barked at her, its eyes never leaving her. Sighing, she finally gave in.
Well, all work and no play, and all that.
Closing her sketchbook, she got up and left the cabin.
The air had grown so very warm, and the sky had turned a beautiful deep blue with only the smallest puffs of white cloud hanging magically above her like funny shaped ornaments, heavenly decorations. Gone were the cars and horns of the cities and towns; no chattering, tightly squeezed, busy people. Ami breathed it all in.
The dog watched her.
“Here boy,” she called, looking around to see if the old couple were about, but she saw no one. “Come here, here boy.” She put her hand out, but still no takers.