A Step into Darkscape (The Legacy Novels Book 2) Read online

  “He should die.” A whisper from the darkness, from Britanus, hidden and watching. “He is not good…”

  “We’re not going to let him die,” Hero said, “and we’ll not harm him either.”

  “He will call her…”

  “Let him!” he growled.

  The old man’s eyes fluttered, the lids bulbous and thick with bruises and dried blood.

  “Read the book.” Whispers in the shadows. “So much more, in the book.”

  The book lay open still on the table, pushed to the side and forgotten for the moment. The page showed a sketch of six men gathered around a circle. It was titled The Order of Lunar, and while Florence wet a cloth to wipe across the man’s forehead, and Hero inspected his festering cheek, Raven pulled it toward him, looking up into the darker shades of the shop. A slow creak of movement, the small man hidden, afraid.

  “That’s it. You need to know,” he said.

  Raven bent over the text and squinted at the first few words.

  “I said I witnessed the gathering of the six, but I didn’t know until this moment that I was one of them.” He looked up from the page.

  “Go on,” Hero said.

  Raven continued, the low candle flame sending eerie shadows across the old paper.

  “It is a strange magic I must speak of,” he said, “and I must be careful to place events down in an order, for I’ve seen the future and the past, and the Assassin Princess.”

  *

  Romany flew with fiery wing and feather, the freedom of flight transcendent as she focussed her keen and powerful sight on the ground below. Her search had already taken her far from the settlement, out across the wild forests, and to the barren meadows beyond; flying lower she’d circled back, skimming the tops of trees and cresting hills, soaring to the cliff point and then out across the sea. The girl had to be found, and that Romany, Goddess Sentry, could not find her stoked her fury. It should have been simple, yet her own power failed her, perhaps for the first time.

  The temple sat like a beacon at the land’s end, the hidden well a tempting stop for a princess of power. She pushed her mind and penetrated the walls, looking through to the upper levels, searching but finding nothing.

  A bolt of pain struck her white and grey behind her eyes, and suddenly her wings crumpled and she fell—the ocean blue with waves, so wild, all a blur—and there was the girl, filling the water, dark brown and dangerous. Beyond, a decrepit wooden hovel stood far back amongst the trees. Wherever she was, she was there, and there was not here. There was movement to the side, a frail hand, a cane raised—her!

  She hit the water hard, rising up in steam and fury, her squawk a scream too loud through the land. Now the tower was far below, a mocking pike ready to impale her if she dared fall again. She flew higher, the land now a forked mass beneath misted cloud.

  The girl was no longer here in this layer, she was sure. The hand, the cane…her! Rain shimmered through her red-flamed feathers, and she felt a creature from the depths of the underworld. Was that so far from the truth now? Folding her fire behind, Romany dipped into a dive toward the hazy mass of land, a wet green haven, scarred by her black town. She screamed, watching the ground come closer. Where the girl had gone, she could not go. Where the girl had gone, she didn’t know, could never know. She felt the presence now that she’d only briefly seen—knew it and hated it, hated it—somehow needed it.

  All but a few people had taken refuge in their homes and the streets were clear, though cluttered with burning market stalls and broken stores. A lone horse trundled down the hill pulling an empty cart behind it. As she let up, her wings opened to buffer a gentle soar close to the street and she saw the broken figure crawl. Mattus.

  Banking to the left, Romany touched down and settled upon a roof, her bird reforming in light and power to the body of a woman, her dress falling to her ankles, her feet rising high in gold and black heels. She was a feline predator, perfect in balance, her hair long and dark down her back, her eyes lilted and powerful, tinted a blood-red.

  She scanned the street for the crumpled body and saw through the rain that three others had rushed to his aid. They’d appeared from a shop doorway, one of them the man she’d left upon a bed with a kiss. “Friends of the Assassin Princess,” she whispered, her voice golden and pure. “You will return for friends, won’t you, Princess?” She smiled, thinking of how she’d drag the girl into the lunar, gathering her order around her, and drain the power from her. The layers she could not bridge would shatter, and he would rise. It’d been her plan for some time, so many years, and yet long ago writings proclaimed another the victor against her. “I’ll be victorious though,” she said to the rain, and jumped to the ground, her heels landing with a clack against the cobbles. She stroked her hands through her hair, dark silk, powerful, and with steady, even steps, took a walk.

  *

  “Are you sure this is what I’m meant to do?” Ami asked, though she needn’t have. Did she want to leave her friends in the hands of Romany? Did she want to leave Raven, Hero?

  “You don’t think another thing about it,” Grammy said, pushing her toward the porch. Her hand touched the railing and a spark of power shot like static. “You just go and do what you need to do.”

  “And what do I need to do?”

  Grammy laughed, a rough bark that seemed too deep, too worn. “Well, just like I said. Take her to that which remains of our home. You know where that is, don’cha girl? Come now. And don’t let her break those layers!”

  There was to be no discussion. The old woman pushed her firmly up the steps and to the door.

  “Now, girl. Go on.”

  “But I lost the piece, the chess piece.” The stairs within were dull and in shadow, incomplete like the archways within the ruins. Yes, the ruins. “It was the way I got through.”

  Grammy stopped pushing and stood still, her dead eyes scooting in their sockets from left to right, left to right. “What chess piece?”

  “I found it,” she said, “there, beside the stair. In the rubble.”

  “Those stairs were destroyed so that none could return by them from the other side, nor leave their layer by force.” Her words were slow, white eyes tick-tocking back and forth. “Her especially. We saw to that! You can travel through from this side though, the same way your friends got through, yes.” She nodded. “No chess piece needed, though if you found one and lost it? It would be wise to re-find it, and quick, before Romany does. Girl, you must succeed in stopping her. Defeat her on her own ground, yes.”

  “Okay,” Ami said, feeling overwhelmed. “I’ll try.” It was all up to her to save the world, each and every infinite layer of it. She wondered if this was how things were meant to be, if this was what the fates, or God, or the power itself had planned for her? She’d never asked for it, but it was hers, her responsibility, and if not hers, who else was powerful enough to stop her? Dangerous was with her, her mirrored self, her own self. She looked over at Jonus, out cold, her power having hit him hard.

  “What is going to happen to him?”

  Grammy tapped her cane against the steps and shook her head. “Oh, don’t you worry about him. I’ll deal with him, put him right, keep him safe. He might still be of use.” A smile played her lips over rubbery gums. “Go on now, girl, before you miss your chance. Climb the steps.”

  Ami looked once more into the darkness and with a deep breath, her sword before her, stepped through into the shack.

  Already it was as if she were in a different world, the whole place lifting and swinging freely upon many branches. The boards creaked as she walked forward, passing each of the dark doorways to her left and right, the woman’s cane tapping far away trees, murmuring words unheard.

  She focussed forward toward the steps, crippled and disused.

  What had the Sentries truly achieved with their network of portals? They hadn’t succeeded—from what she could tell—and yet these wise, old, magical beings of the first age of life thought they
could simply anchor on and yank. Would it have seemed so simple a task for them? After all, Romany had told her of their creations, their imaginings become a reality, all coming so easily to them. The Sentries of the Mortrus Lands had used the portals to travel through, but the Sentries had ultimately failed to leave, merging with the trees and the animals to stay alive, falling into routines that had eventually shaped the very fabric of Legacy, and the rest of the world. Why had they failed so drastically? Had the Sentries simply overreached, or was it just their time to die out? Either way, Romany was a slice of Sentry who wasn’t going to die out.

  She had to end her.

  A year ago Ami had known nothing of these things, had been only a girl, creative and imaginative, but just a girl, and the prospect of saving the entire world, shouldering that burden, seemed far removed from any reality. Things had changed though. She had changed, and for better or worse, she’d become the Assassin Princess of a place where magic and power were her tools, the price paid by birthright. You can do this, she thought as she stood amongst the shards and rubble of the fallen stairs, you can do this—save the world, beat a powerful immortal, rescue your friends…rescue Hero—all in a day’s work.

  She looked to the remaining steps and began to climb, though her foot hung in mid-air as the moment hung in time. This is it, fall or climb. She stepped forward, closing her eyes, pushing a gut full of power down into the spiralled steps. Her boot set down on solid stone, and with her next step she ascended another. She smiled and took the last step up, opening her eyes to a barren room.

  Rain fell heavy against a window at the far end, while a storm flickered and grumbled far off and out to sea. Approaching it, Ami looked out, her breath misting the glass. Below, the water formed rivulets that flowed to the edge to fall, and there to join the somewhat subdued waves upon the rocks.

  “Okay,” she whispered, “let’s go find them.”

  Her boots scraped and echoed as she turned and crossed the room, down the now solid stone stairwell, and out into the grey day.

  Her dress soaked through in the downpour immediately, and she began to wish that she’d snagged another robe from somewhere.

  Ami stopped, slapping her hand to her face. “Ami, sometimes you can be so dumb; powerful princess my arse.” She laughed as she raised her sword and brought to mind clothing superheroes wore in graphic novels, in those she would create herself. She saw black leather, covering her top-to-toe, a choker around her neck, her hair braided in a rope down the centre of her back, and in an instant the change was complete. The rain bounced and trickled off of her new outfit, only falling cold upon her face.

  Breaking into a run, she was soon riding over the first rise and racing down toward the woodland that sat between the cliff and town, trees passing in a dark blur as the mud kicked from her heels—and then the path opened to the great fortified wall, rising black beneath a mottled grey, the moon or the sun hiding a ghostly shape far, far above.

  Ami didn’t slow her approach but leapt from the ground to the top of the wall, stopping only to listen to the footsteps that echoed loud from the streets below. Unlike before, the wall was deserted, the town guards long gone and not replaced. She swallowed her breath and paced the inner battlements, looking over, her hands slipping on the wet, moss-covered crenulations. Even from so far up and away, each step was clear, each click of heel against the ground deliberate. She was near.

  Romany.

  *

  Hero tended to the wounds that he could, though there weren’t many he felt safe touching. Skin festered, rotted and bled. The old man had been cursed for sure, damned most probably—yet he smiled, mumbled of nothing between cracked lips. He was delirious.

  “Time tricks us all, eventually,” Raven read, “and no more so when it is unnaturally long; but here is what happened.

  “The six were chosen, haphazard though it seemed, and I was one of them. I had already started my chronicle, writing of her arrival and her conquer, of the Well, the flashing and flickering white power held within, and of the temple that had been erected. I’d also written of the girl I’d seen, the visions, the blue light between black trunks; I’d written all I could remember from those alien memories of her.

  “The goddess baptised us as we knelt in the light of a full moon, and each of us took her blessing, accepting the power she bestowed upon us, our minds merged with her own, our memories and thoughts becoming as one; for a moment, we were inexplicably joined. Terrible pain came to us as her palm touched our faces, her fingers talons, digging into our skulls.

  “And so when my turn came, I tried to hold back the things I’d seen, the location and content of my journals, my doubt of her and the insurrection of my heart. But she saw these things and her anger became more than I could describe. I was thrown into the air, her hand still upon my body, tearing at me, ripping me apart, and in the light of that full moon I was—”

  “—split in two.”

  Raven stopped reading as all looked round, for the last few words had been spoken in unison. Two other voices had joined his: Britanus and the old man.

  “What? I don’t understand,” Florence said.

  “Keep reading.” Hero motioned, and the two men spoke together.

  “Through her anger and her spite, her hate and her power, her jealousy that there could be another—that I could have known of another—I was ripped apart.”

  Raven’s eyes fell back to the page, his finger scanning, his voice picking up the flow. “I landed far away, winded and wounded but alive still, my body tingling with white sparkles. But when I looked back to the cliff, another man had taken my place, another me…”

  “She seemed to forget me quickly, if she was even aware I’d been made of her wrath, and I was able to squirrel away my writings. I—”

  “—continued to write, and in time forgot who I’d been,” the three men finished.

  “She is here,” the old man chanted, his eyes opened fully, his dry, bleeding lips a grin. “Oh, she is here, Madam Romany.”

  Hero looked up to see a dark figure at the doorway.

  “Swords,” he shouted, though he knew it was already too late. The door flew in and the woman entered.

  “I’m so glad we could all be here together,” she said, stepping inside. Behind her the rain ceased and the grey clouds lifted to reveal a luminous full moon, turning all to silver.

  Her smile was dark, her eyes a flaming red.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The breeze whistled through the empty streets, hollow and low, the call of a lonely creature wishing for an ear to hear it, waiting for a face to feel it, a mouth to breathe it. It reached out to Ami, bringing with it the last of the rain to kiss her cold cheeks and caress her face, before dying upon the ground.

  The storm was over.

  She looked up from the shadows to the canvas of stars, and to the full moon that’d appeared; a large silver disc, familiar in every way. Upon its surface, men had walked and jumped, had planted flags and spoken the words: This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. But not here. Now it looked down upon a different world, a world where a vengeful being used power and magic to play at being a god. If she were to see a rocket launch, would Romany tremble at such awesome power? Would it be witchcraft? Power and loneliness were the only things she’d ever known, after all.

  These, and many more questions, Ami saw in the moon; and she longed for home. It came on her quite suddenly, though little by little, the weight of her duty to such strange worlds had pressed in upon her. Only six months? That’s how long it had been, though it felt a lifetime ago that she’d left her work room within her high-rise flat, leaving her former life behind, truly, for the first time. A broken window, a shattered door, her art work just left upon the walls. Until the moment the strange bird had tapped upon the window, until the moment her life had changed forever and always, she’d been happy. Life had been plodding along, and she’d had dreams and ambitions.

  The moon above had k
ept its singular eye upon her in every layer, and had been watching over her the night she’d first fallen in love, when she’d gazed upon it, misty from her window, one hand on her heart and the other upon her beau. It’d been there to watch her dance by herself across a darkened beach, and when a group of them had played games by the sea.

  Everything had changed now from those simpler times, and she’d had to adapt. Fantasies of stories and dreams had become a harsh reality, and if she wasn’t careful, people she now cared for would lose their lives beneath the same moon, and the happy memory of its silent sentry would be tainted in blood.

  She looked down with a sigh to the path it had painted across the uneven cobbles, leading her to an open door. Within, lit by a single flickering flame, was the destiny and the future of the next human adventure, for her own fate now linked directly to every living thing.

  She listened to the voices inside. Romany was speaking.

  “—the Assassin’s friends here to save her, though why you gather in such a place, I cannot fathom.” There was a low rumble of words from Hero, and Ami felt a flutter patter within her chest. It’d been too long, she realised, and she’d missed him. “What I want with her? Such impertinence for one who should be on his knees to me!” There was a cry of pain and Ami tightened her grip on her sword. She wanted to charge in swinging, but she couldn’t, not like that. It would be the death of everyone. Her hand in memory closed tight around a red-petal rose, forcing the thorns into her skin. The remembered sting sharpened her resolve. Calm. If she ran in now, Romany would turn on her. She’d have no need of the others. She’d kill them. Right now they were alive because she remained hidden. “I’ll take you as fodder. Don’t worry, you’ll be useful. I’ll—What?” A low grumble, another male, though she heard nothing of his words.