A Step into Darkscape (The Legacy Novels Book 2) Page 14

  There was a storm that seethed above it, a storm that gave birth to pregnant clouds obscenely swollen, bleeding flares of dark, blood red.

  Yet even the storm did not hide the presence of the other just behind him, the other that got closer and closer still.

  He knew if he turned it would be Adam before him, a white faced phantom in black with lips of blubber, stretching a horrific grin too wide—but even as he thought to look anyway, to confront the darkness of the man, all faded in the flicker of lids.

  Rising at the sound of his approach, Hero drew his sword.

  The villain was fast, a man of earth and mud that swept past him. Jumping back he turned to attack, only to find his swing halted, his hand stayed by a strong grip on his wrist.

  “A fawn, Brother,” a voice wheezed, and looking down he saw Raven holding him. He turned back to his fleeting foe, only this time seeing the earthen coat of dark brown above four legs, eyes big and fearful. The fawn watched him for only a moment, then ran crashing into the wood, disappearing from view.

  All around, the land held its breath, as if waiting for the sigh of the wind, and when it finally came it brought with it the faint voices of men from the town. They were rowdy and in good cheer, and though the words were lost in the drop to the riverside, the sound reminded Hero much of the air over Legacy, a people divided for thirty years of nights, united again each morn. This was such a place.

  Raven’s hand dropped from his arm as Florence crawled forward on all fours and stretched like a cat. Her blonde hair was dishevelled, and Hero had mind enough to find the look attractive, when Raven began to laugh.

  “What’s funny?” Florence asked, but Raven only waved her away and sighed.

  “A fawn…” Then his face grew grave. “Ami? Where’s Ami? Where are we?”

  “Hush now, Brother,” Hero said, placing his hand on his chest. “You had a bad time of it last night and have only now come round. Be easy with yourself, we’ll explain all.”

  “But Ami—”

  “We don’t know where she is,” Florence said, taking his hand and helping him to sit. “She wasn’t with you.”

  “I saw her on the—no, it wasn’t her, it was something… Ami was gone when I woke.” Raven’s voice broke and he began coughing a hoarse bark. Hero rummaged in his robes for a flask and handed it to him, and after struggling with the cap, he drank the water down in greedy gulps.

  “When you woke? Raven, you’ll have to tell us what happened from when I sent you to find Ami. We know only that you didn’t return. Since then things have gotten worse. We consulted with the Shadow Princess and came to find you. She said Ami was in danger.”

  “If she is not here, then she is,” he paused, looking around and squinting through the trees, “and so are we. There is a woman, a girl, a woman—I don’t know what she is—but I think she is the cause of all of this.”

  “Go on,” Hero said. “Tell us everything, from the start.”

  After a few more swigs of water, Raven began, starting with his visit to the ruins, his meeting with the Shadow Ami, and then his arrival at the shack. Hero and Florence nodded as he spoke, remembering the strange power that’d emanated from it and how it’d been a portal. Part way through, Florence uttered a gasp and slipped her hand from her robes.

  “I didn’t mean to hide it, I simply forgot,” she said, frowning and handing a small object over to Hero. He hesitated before taking it, a small, golden chess piece. “I found it just as we were leaving the tower. I thought it might’ve been important, but with everything that’s happened…”

  Hero eyed it with suspicion and wonder before placing it down in the gravel between them. “Strange.” He looked back to Raven. “Please continue.”

  With a raspy whisper, he talked of their battle at the river, their confrontation in the street, and their sanctuary within the dark house of Sofia-Maria. He drank more from the flask, continuing with a darker tone as he told them of the events, the girl’s trick, Ami’s disappearance and the unfortunate family.

  “I couldn’t stay. I had to get out.”

  “I understand,” Hero said. “Go on.”

  “Well that’s when I saw her on the bridge. I made my way down the street and she was there, except it wasn’t her. And…the river…the river…”

  Florence stroked and held his hand. “It’s okay, Raven, it can’t hurt you.”

  “It didn’t,” he said, turning to look her in the eyes. “It didn’t hurt me, but I saw things in there. The water’s dead.” His eyes strayed to the still, black surface only meters away. “It’s full of death.” A low gurgle was followed by a sudden lurch to his side where Raven voided his already empty stomach. Hero turned to look at the water, seeing nothing, but expecting anything. It was too still, reflecting none of the light, and if he were to skim a stone across it, he’d bet it wouldn’t make a single ripple.

  Florence pulled on her robes and offered them to Raven as he turned back, but he held his hand out and wiped his mouth with his own.

  “You took the book,” he said, pointing to where a corner was exposed against her breast.

  Florence looked down and plucked the small volume. “Yes, we found it on you when we tended to you. I was only keeping it safe.” She raised her eyebrows and offered it back to him, but he gestured to the rook and she placed it next to it.

  “What do you mean about the river?” Hero asked, inspecting the objects.

  “I don’t know, but somehow I saw it, all of it. It’s deep, so very deep and…full of the dead.” He coughed hard, his voice rough as he wiped his spittle. “Rotten corpses, hundreds of them. It’s not water there, at least not now. I don’t know what it is.”

  “It’s not natural,” Florence said. “I can sense that. I didn’t see what you saw, but I sure felt it.”

  “Did that thing not follow us?” Raven asked.

  “The thing was a man, and he vanished.”

  Looking up to the town, Hero could just about make out a line of horse-drawn carts. They’d pulled up behind a tall building and were unloading stacks of crates. He imagined them to be loaves of freshly baked bread and thought that if he wished it enough, he’d be able to smell the rich aroma over the salty sea breeze that came through the branches. “Is it safe to walk through the town?”

  “We’d be noticed,” Raven said. “Ami and I were spotted straight away as strangers. We were told so by the bookshop owner, the man who gave us that.” He pointed to the small book.

  “What is it?” Florence asked, touching the cover and opening it up. “The text is too small to make out.”

  “No, you see, it was bigger, but too big to carry, so Princess Ami made it smaller, you know, with her power.” He frowned, his head cocked. “But as for what it is? I don’t really know. It holds a history of Ami, the Assassin Princess.”

  Hero raised his eyebrows.

  “Seriously,” Raven continued, “and there’s more. It tells of the Mortrus Lands, and mentions the Sentries.”

  “Can you make it bigger, Floren—?” Hero broke off as the world rocked violently, throwing them to the ground. The book and rook danced in the dirt, and Hero scooped them up just before the earth split between them, the bank cracking in a crescent leaving a dark, narrow fissure across the woodland floor. The shaking stopped, and from the gap came a rumbling roar.

  *

  For a moment, Jonus saw the entire room, and then it was gone. Darkness returned all too soon. “It’s no use,” he growled, throwing their hands from his own and standing, tottering on his feet. “It won’t work without all of us present. Where the hell is Mattus?”

  “As we’ve already told you,” Franus said, “we don’t know. He’s not in his chamber and he didn’t join us to break his fast. You know, you were there.”

  “Though I couldn’t see what I was eating.”

  “There is no need to be grumpy—”

  “No need to be, what?” he screamed, his voice echoing back at him, increasing the throbbing in h
is head.

  “—with us, Jonus.” Franus sighed, flicking his beard. “It’s of your own doing that Madam Romany punished you.”

  “Just shut up, you—”

  “Do not take it out on us,” Sanus added. “She has known for some time of your doubt. So have we all.”

  “And I suppose it was you that told her, was it?”

  “Jonus.” Franus lay his hand upon his shoulder, though it was shrugged off. “Be reasonable. You were listening in to her private talks. You thought you would not be noticed.”

  “She knows all,” Trubus piped.

  “No she doesn’t,” Jonus spat, sitting back down again. The floor was cold, but at least it was stable—for now. The tremors had been violent, and were becoming more frequent. “She doesn’t know about the girl, that’s why she talks to her. She doesn’t know about the sword, which is why she has the girl.”

  He turned his head in the direction of the light, hoping for just a simple shade of grey, a sense that it was only temporary. He detected none, only the cold morning and the smell of the sea.

  “You speak too loudly,” Franus said, standing. “Perhaps you need time to think.”

  “Time to think…what else am I to do?”

  He heard the brothers filter from the room. They were obstinate, but ultimately correct. His thoughts and feelings of Romany were becoming more evident, more vocal. Her crown had slipped in his eyes, and had continued to do so since the girl had become her focus. But of course she would know he was listening at the doors! He’d been stupid.

  Were they still in there? Since the sun had risen he’d not heard her voice, nor sensed the girl anywhere in the palace. What did they have to talk about?

  Knowing he was most definitely alone, scorning Mattus in the back of his mind—for if he had joined their circle, he might have had sight again—Jonus stood and felt around the walls, intent on heading for the library once more. He would pass, that was all, and see if the doors were shut by touch alone. She could not punish him for lingering now that he couldn’t see, surely?

  *

  Wiping the sweat from her brow, Ami leant the katana against the wall and wrung the pain from her hand. Her grip had been tight and her skin was now red and patterned from the hilt, but she hadn’t given in. She’d slashed at the window again and again, one-handed, two-handed—she’d brought together all the power she could muster to try to break through, even to slice through the layers as she’d been able to do in Legacy—she drained her body until she could no longer stand—but it was no use. Romany hadn’t left her an escape. She couldn’t break the window no matter how much she tried, and slicing a layer resulted only in her sword getting stuck in mid-air, eventually falling to the floor of its own accord. She touched the cold glass panes with her fingertips and looked down into the valley, her eyes following the river as it cut back inland, its black line winding round to the right where it turned out of sight.

  Above and beyond, the town had woken, and cleaning her breath from the glass, Ami focussed in on a family walking the thoroughfare, baskets in hand. The smallest of them, a boy, kept tripping and was constantly being righted by his sister or mother. She watched them until they’d crested the top of the hill and disappeared from view, then turned back to the room and to the double doors. Of course, these were locked, and with a single swing of her sword she found the same resistance.

  Reluctantly, she sat back down upon the two-seater and lay the sword across her lap, defeated. “What good are you?” she asked, looking down at the blade, and as if in answer it shone a gentle purple ripple from guard to tip. “You can’t smash glass or cut through the layers, at least not in this room.”

  Sheathing the sword, she stood up and began wandering between the stacks, wracking her brains for a means of escape, but instead found herself browsing, her fingers dragging across the leather spines and covers, bringing to mind the strange man from the bookshop and the book he’d given her, the book Raven held.

  Raven.

  She pushed away the guilt. It wasn’t helping.

  The room was much larger than she’d first realised, the shelves leading her into shadow and dust. There was a globe to her left, though it held no map—strange—and more chairs were arranged here and there, small tables standing with unlit oil lamps upon them. Empty sconces adorned the walls, and there appeared to be no more windows, the light becoming weaker the further back she went. Once she’d reached the far wall there was only just enough to see by.

  Many of the volumes in dark leather had writing upon their spines in gold, the lettering only symbols, alien words to her; she gave up trying to decipher them. Others were bound in blue and light brown, but were too high up for her to reach. Lower shelves held thick black books with titles such as Dĕitereich, La Centee, Føxe da Na Katąŕl. Where did they come from? Then a few more with distinctive red spines: Dragø Maġġï, Dragø Katra, Dragø Hişŧ. Below these titles though, embossed in silver, was a symbol she recognised.

  ∞

  Gently she pulled one of the red volumes, careful to avoid the storm cloud of fluff and dust, and opened the cover to the title page.

  Dragø Katra

  ∞

  She flicked through the pages, seeing mostly words and symbols that meant nothing to her. The occasional picture swept by, and she turned back to look at one.

  It was hand drawn and a little faded, but most certainly something she recognised. It was a dragon perched upon a rock, its claws sharp talons, its wings webbed struts of scaled bone, spanning the width of the page. The illustrator had talent, and Ami could almost believe it to be real. Below the rock it perched upon was a mass of intricate black lines, organised and tightly drawn, though it seemed a maze of madness, a labyrinth with no solution. The detail continued round, making the border of the page.

  Without thinking, Ami carried the book open in her arms into the light, studying the picture. There was something distinct and familiar about the mess of design, but her eyes wouldn’t let her see it. Instead, she turned the pages until she came across another picture. This one was a close up of an eye, the pupil a large slit. Once more, scribbles made a border around the page. Now though she could make out the pattern. With her eyes fixed on the eye, the shapes became clear in her periphery.

  Bodies.

  Ami turned back to the previous page, the dragon upon the rock, and concentrated upon the long neck, the armoured body. And yes! Within the mass beneath the rock, within the border, she saw the shapes of hundreds, thousands of human bodies, fitting together as if a puzzle. The limbs, the necks and heads, the torsos of the absolute and undeniable dead.

  There was a noise, a scraping against a wall, against wood, against the door.

  Ami snapped the book shut and snagged her sword.

  *

  Jonus heard nothing but his own careful steps along the corridor, his hands a whisper along the wall. There were no shelves of murals, no hangings to catch, only the stone and the painted pattern that ran it as it had always done; then the wall ended and he felt the double doors, the room beyond silent.

  With his hands against the doors, he listened intently, using the power within him to feel beyond wood and stone. There was a presence, but it was not Romany. Perhaps the girl?

  His hand rested on the brass ring that latched the door, knocking it as he fumbled to turn it. There was a click, a release, and the door swung inward.

  Air shifted, and someone moved close by. Jonus could smell her, an enticing sweetness somewhere in the black. There! A bright white flash—then pain down his spine as something hit him from behind. His old body collapsed too easily and he hit the floor face first. “Argh!” More pain erupted throughout, sending white sparks behind his eyes.

  Even so, and despite the pain, he didn’t move from the ground. There was the unmistakable sound of singing metal through the air, and at the nape of his neck a cold blade came to rest, its edge sharp and dangerous as it pushed aside his white, scraggly hair.

 
“Who are you?” she asked, the stranger in the dark. The girl.

  “I’m Jonus,” he said, “and I’m a brother of The Order.”

  “What is The Order?”

  “The Order of Lunar. We are six.” He was loathed to speak too freely. “I am but one. You have already met a few of us.”

  “Met is hardly the word I would use. You cower and tremble.”

  “I’m old.”

  “You’re scared. Stand up.”

  The blade left his neck and his bearings scattered. Which way did he fall? Where did he face? Pushing up with his arms he managed to his knees, then to one leg, then to the other, holding his arms out to nothing.

  He felt her behind him; but then a new sense emerged, something quite fantastic.

  A fiery white body, a burning silhouette of the girl appeared. She waved white arms in his face, holding the sword he’d given to Romany.

  “I can see you,” he said. “At least, you burn with power.” He reached out, but the girl moved the sword again to his neck.

  “I wouldn’t touch me if I were you. I need to get out of here. Show me the way.”

  “I—I am not sure I can,” he said. All around was darkness except for the girl. He wanted to reach out to touch her, an anchor in a sightless landscape.

  “You can, if you know what’s good for you. Where are the rest of your brothers?”

  “I don’t know…” He shifted his head left and right, the blade staying with him, a cool fire, the pressure increasing.

  “You’re not being much help. What’s wrong with you, you’re acting as if you’re—”

  “Blind?” Jonus chuckled, despite himself. “Recently, yes. Yet I can see you, or at least, your power.”

  “My power?”

  “You’re like Madam Romany? I didn’t know.”

  “I’m nothing like her,” she spat, though he sensed her hesitation. Her shape moved around him and leaned away, possibly to look from the door to the hallway. “If you’re blind, how did you make it in here? You’re the one that came during the night, aren’t you?”