The Darkling Child

TWENTY‑SIX

REYN FROSCH WAS FEELING THE FIRST TWINGES OF FEAR AS HE climbed the road leading to the bluff where a blaze of torchlight lit up the whole of the sky in an eerie orange–and–yellow glow. At first, it was difficult to determine what was happening, the light flickering and dancing across its black backdrop, erasing the softer glow of moon and stars and revealing in garish color the wisps of cloud that hung overhead in the windless air like strange elongated birds. It was only when he came closer to the end of his journey that he could discern the light’s source, and then glimpse the heads and spear points of the Red Slash soldiers revealed in a sea of shifting shadows like sea creatures risen from the deep.

“You remember what you are to do?” Arcannen whispered out of the side of his mouth.

The boy nodded, unable to speak.

“You can do this, can’t you? You can be strong enough when it’s needed?”

Again, his nod.

Although Lariana was walking next to him, she did not reach to take his hand when he silently willed her to do so. He felt overwhelmed by what waited, even before being able to take its exact measure. But when he saw the whole of it–five hundred soldiers crowded together across the heights, their faces lit by the torchlight in strange colors and their weapons on fire with the reflection of the flames–he felt all the strength go out of him and his courage turn to water.

“What a glorious sight!” the sorcerer whispered.

Reyn wanted to turn around immediately. What chance did they stand against so many? The soldiers seemed to be everywhere, these men and women of the Red Slash. They filled the burial ground with their dark presence. This was suicide. Yet he kept walking, kept his feet moving, knowing there was no choice but to go forward. Any deviation now would doom both Lariana and himself. Neither would survive Arcannen’s wrath. They had been clearly seen by now, the eyes of the hundreds turned on them, and he could imagine the affront–the disdain! — these men and women felt at this foolish challenge. Three against hundreds! It was a fool’s chance. It was ridiculous. The outcome was a foregone conclusion.

Yet Arcannen seemed not the least disturbed. If Reyn did as he was told, the sorcerer insisted, all would be settled before the sun had fully risen. Already, the boy could see glimmerings of first light in the distance, beyond the bluff and the firelight, illuminating the ragged outline of the mountains east. He closed his eyes momentarily against what he was feeling, the prospect of his fate a dark shadow descending upon him like the sky falling.

He knew what he was expected to do. Arcannen had explained it to him as they walked, his voice kept low and soft so that only the two of them could hear. Lariana was not permitted to listen in, and Reyn had been given no chance to confide in her. His part in this effort was crucial, the requirements of his magic’s use enormous. But Arcannen assured him such use had been made before, and that his heritage of the magic made him equal to the task.

“You are no less able than those who came before you. You are no less endowed with their power. Use it as I have told you. Bind these creatures and hold them fast; do not waver in your strength, do not give thought to what you witness afterward. Do this, and your future is assured.”

By which he meant that although Reyn would live, his life henceforth would belong to his mentor. What he was not saying was that the boy would never be free of the legacy he would forge by his magic’s dark use; he would be a killer of men and women, forever bound to a history he would write in blood and death this night. He and Lariana would have each other, but only on Arcannen’s terms and only until their usefulness was at an end. Then they would be cast aside, broken and hollowed out, emptied of everything good and decent.

He would not stand for it, he told himself, enraged. He would not allow it to happen.

Yet here he was, atop the bluff, walking toward the man in the scarlet dress uniform. The Commander of the Red Slash struck a dominant pose as he watched them approach, his expressionless face revealing nothing. But his eyes spoke for him. There was no kindness in those eyes, no hint of pity or forgiveness, no trace of compassion. He would let them come until they were close enough to be dangerous, and then he would crush them as a man’s foot would a scattering of ants.

“Begin,” Arcannen whispered suddenly.

Without stopping to think about it, Reyn summoned the wishsong, his voice soft and unsteady in its modulation as he brought his magic to life. He did not attempt to employ it yet; he had been instructed to wait on that. Instead, he was to cause it to build within him, to gain strength secretively. He was to gather and hold it at the ready, and, when directed to do so, to employ it against these men and woman in the way Arcannen had instructed.

But already he was having trouble. His efforts were forced and his willingness to act was compromised. The magic spread through his body in jagged lurches, an uneven and uncomfortable presence. He pushed ahead because there was nothing else he could do, but he could tell it was a broken, fragmented summoning and would likely fail him when it mattered.

“Dallen Usurient!” Arcannen called out to the man in scarlet.

“You should never have come!” replied the other.

“You should never have murdered the people in Arbrox! If you had shown even the least compassion, I would not be here.”

“And yet here you are, and you will shortly be the worse for it!”

Arcannen stopped, the boy and the girl at his side. They were perhaps fifty feet away from Usurient, and there were soldiers spread out on either side of them now, all watching closely, their weapons held ready. They would have been told not to act except on command, Usurient confident in their strength and certain of their readiness to act when it was necessary. Arcannen had told the boy he could depend on this.

“It is his pride in his soldiers that will lead him to his death,” the sorcerer had said. “His fall will be of his own doing.”

Reyn continued to build his magic, feeling it spread through him from toes to fingertips until the aura of its still–inaudible sound cloaked him with its vibration. Still, he struggled with holding it together, with smoothing it out and keeping it pure. Still, he fought to ready it for the use he had been told to make of it.

And still, it neither responded nor felt quite as it should.

“If he were to strike us down the moment he saw us, he could save himself,” Arcannen had said to the boy. “But he will not do that. First, he will demonstrate his superiority–to himself and his soldiers and us. He will command the stage as an actor in this play before he brings down the curtain. He will revel in his sense of power. He is obsessed with his need to reassure himself that he remains supreme and that I am vulnerable to him. He will want to make that evident before he acts. Watch closely.”

Now, with the light cast by the torches just beginning to fade along the edges as the sunrise slowly brightened in the east and chased a reluctant night’s darkness westward, Dallen Usurient brought out the handheld flash rip he had been hiding behind his back and pointed it at the sorcerer.

“You are a fool, Arcannen, to believe you could harm me here. Did you truly expect I would come alone? You have overstepped yourself this time. You have thrown caution to the winds of chance and hope, and neither has the power to save you.”

“Do you think so?” Arcannen sounded interested. “Is that really true?”

“I think that and much more. What you thought you could accomplish by coming to me like this …”

Lariana stepped closer to Reyn. She reached over and took his hand in her own. Immediately Reyn felt the wishsong grow stronger within him. Just her touch was enough to steady him, to fuel his confidence and dispel his hesitation. His doubts and fears faded; his certainty in himself blossomed in the space of a heartbeat.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“ … with no other protection than this boy and girl, no weapons save a magic that has limits even for you …”

“Now!” Arcannen breathed at the boy.

Reyn released his magic in a rush, allowing it to spread outward in all directions from where the three stood clustered together at the forefront of the Red Slash command–an expulsion of barely audible sound that passed through the air like the gentle brush of a morning breeze and filled the empty spaces between the soldiers before enfolding them and sliding into their ears like whispers, acting on their bodies in ways of which they were not immediately aware.

“ … remains a mystery to me, one that I expect I will never unravel, even after you are dead and gone and become no more than a fading memory …”

He stopped talking abruptly and his expression changed, revealing that he had sensed finally that something was terribly wrong. His voice faltered, his words turning guttural and vague and the hand that gripped the flash rip slowly lowering to his side.

All across the burial grounds and to the edges of the bluff, an eerie silence descended.

Avelene burned away the locking bar on their cell door and pushed it open. The halls within the blockhouse stood empty and silent, the darkness so complete that almost nothing of either one was visible to the other. She took the Highlander’s arm and led him to the building door, his guide through the deep gloom. He could see nothing, but there was a noticeable decrease in the sounds of the soldiers’ movements and voices without.

Taking him by the shoulders, the Druid moved him to one side of the door and placed in his hand the hilt of his sword, which she had retrieved. Just in case, she whispered, her lips placed next to his ear. His eyes had begun to adjust, and he could see her finger pressed against her lips, cautioning him to silence, and then the slow, rhythmic movement of her hands, barely visible in the darkness, a sliding of palms against the closed door. When she was finished, nothing had changed. The door remained closed; the lock was still intact. He waited for her explanation, but she said nothing. Instead, she brushed him up one side and down the other, bringing together handfuls of air and dust, her movements suggesting that she was covering them from view.

She bent close again. “Walk with me. Say nothing, do nothing but maintain a steady pace. Watch me and only me. No one will notice you.”

He wanted to ask how that could be and what difference it would make while they were trapped in this building. But he knew better than to challenge her. He knew he should simply trust. She waited for his response, and he gave it with a nod.

Taking his hand firmly in hers, she walked him to the ironbound door and through it as if it weren’t there.

Just like that, he was back outside, the night air cool against his skin, the sky filled with stars and moonlight. Guards stood on either side of the prison door, and he blinked to be certain he wasn’t imagining what had just happened. He had passed through a solid door, making an escape that no one had noticed.

Avelene led him through the camp, still holding his hand, avoiding contact with or proximity to anyone. The garrison had been reduced to a handful of soldiers, most of whom were engaged in cleaning up debris or carting off excess stores and arms. Guards at the prison and at the gates leading in were the only ones not occupied by these more mundane tasks. The bulk of the Red Slash was gone, marched out by Usurient to engage in a confrontation with Arcannen and his young charges. They would converge on the Horn of Honor, a place neither the Druid nor the Highlander knew how to find but which they believed must be somewhere close to the city proper. A burial ground for the fallen of the Federation army, Usurient had said. On a bluff overlooking the city.

They passed through the gates that had brought them in, and not once were they challenged. When they were outside and far enough away that they could no longer be seen, Avelene released Paxon’s hand. As she did so, she disappeared momentarily and then reappeared as before.

“Nice trick,” he said.

She nodded. “It involves displacement of air and light, which mostly are what allow eyes to determine what’s there and what’s not. In this instance, we were always half a step ahead of where we could be seen, allowing us to appear invisible.”

Paxon looked around, searching for some indication of the way they should go. As he did so, she grabbed him and pointed.

Off to their left and high above the city, the sky was on fire, the flames visible even from where they stood.

“They’ll be there,” she said. “We’d better hurry if we expect to do any good.”

He stepped in front of her suddenly. “One minute. Let’s talk about this. What is it you think we can do if we mix in this? Stand up to Usurient and his Red Slash? Stop Arcannen from carrying out whatever plan he’s made? What?”

“I don’t know, Paxon!” she snapped, a flash of anger surfacing. “I just know we should do something besides stand around here!”

“We are in agreement about that.” He kept his voice calm. “But we should have an objective before we blunder into the middle of a confrontation between people who want each other dead. There are too many of them, Avelene. We should agree now on our purpose in putting ourselves at risk.”

She hesitated. “You want to help the boy, don’t you?”

“I think that makes the most sense. He is the one worth saving.”

“And not the girl?”

“As I understand it, the mission of the Druids is to find and recover wild magic in whatever form it takes. That would describe the boy.”

“All right,” she said. “The boy. But the girl, too, if we can.”

“Not Arcannen?”

She kept her face deliberately expressionless. “Let the sorcerer and the Red Slash have their way with each other.”

They set out at a fast trot, initially following the road they had turned onto coming out of the barracks, then angling this way and that along other roads and pathways that at last brought them to the base of the bluff. From there they were able to discover the solitary road that wound up to the plateau. Long minutes had passed by then, and they were both winded. They slowed by unspoken agreement to a fast walk, not wanting to run blindly into whatever waited. From atop the bluff, they could hear voices. Halfway up the road by now, they pressed ahead.

“Please agree to let me take the lead when we get there,” Paxon whispered to her.

She glanced at him, frowning. “Why should I do that?”

“Because I am supposed to be your protector. I can’t protect you from behind when the danger lies ahead.”

“I am better able to protect us than you are. Or is this about what happened in Portlow with Arcannen?”

“This is not about the past.”

“You still think I am not yet healed, that I can’t be trusted.”

He could barely mask his frustration with her. “I don’t think that. I just want to do my job. But it’s true,” he added, “that I faced Arcannen and fought him to a standstill. Let me use what I learned from that.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, then she gave a reluctant nod. “All right. You take the lead. No promises that I’ll let you keep it, though.”

He had to settle for that. He knew she wouldn’t give him anything more. Whatever she claimed, she was looking to settle accounts with Arcannen. If the chance presented itself, she would take it. But she was dangerously overconfident, and that could easily lead to recklessness. He would have to watch out for her.

And the boy and the girl.

And perhaps even himself, if time allowed.

The voices atop the bluff had gone suddenly still. A deep, pervasive silence had fallen. Paxon and Avelene slowed automatically, suddenly wary of what might be happening.

Then everything exploded into violence and horror, and it seemed in that instant as if the whole world had gone mad.

Reyn Frosch stood motionless atop the plateau, facing out toward the hundreds of Red Slash soldiers who had suddenly lost all control over their muscle function. The wishsong magic had robbed them of their ability to move, severing the lines of communication between their brains and their bodies, turning them into living statues. The boy could feel the magic working, the vibrations that signaled its presence audible above the crackle of the torch flames burning along the perimeter of the Red Slash ranks. He could see the astonishment, anger, and fear reflected in the eyes of their commander and those men and women standing closest to him, and he experienced within himself a strange mix of elation and revulsion.

What he had done felt both satisfying and at the same time horrific, and his conflicting emotions warred within him.

Arcannen strode forward imperiously, coming to a stop directly in front of Usurient and peering into his helpless eyes. “What was that you were saying?” the sorcerer whispered. “That nothing can save me? That I am a fool?”

He reached into his robes and brought out a skinning knife. “What should I do with you?” he continued softly. “What sort of punishment should I visit on someone who destroys an entire village? Who kills innocent, helpless people? Should I skin you alive?”

He lifted the blade in front of the man’s frantic eyes and ran its edge smoothly down the bridge of his nose, splitting it open. “How does that feel?” he asked, dipping his finger into the other man’s blood and wiping it on his lips. “Sting a little bit, does it?”

Usurient was screaming, but no sound came from his paralyzed throat. Reyn felt sick. Watching Arcannen torture the helpless man was causing him to recoil from his own efforts, and already he could feel his control slipping.

“Stop this, Arcannen!” he heard Lariana hiss. “Reyn can’t maintain his hold over the magic forever!”

She was genuinely angry, and it caused the sorcerer to turn. “Careful, Lariana,” he cautioned. “It could just as easily be you on the receiving end instead of this pathetic creature.”

But he put away the knife and stepped back. “Still, she’s right, Dallen. Time slips away. You and I must say good–bye.”

He stretched out his arm toward one of the torches, and a solitary brand flew from its iron stanchion into his hand. He held it before the other man teasingly and then touched its flames to his clothes and set him afire.

The flames engulfed Dallen Usurient immediately. They should not have burned with such fury, but Arcannen had used his magic to apply an accelerant. The Red Slash Commander lit up like a stack of dry kindling, his entire body engulfed by crackling flames. Reyn had a glimpse of the man’s horrified face as he struggled in vain to break free of the killing fire; then he disappeared into the conflagration and was consumed.

Without giving his victim even the briefest backward glance, Arcannen walked out into the burial ground amid the remainder of the Red Slash soldiers and looked around. “In the time you have left, remember this!” he shouted at them. “You brought this on yourselves!”

His arms lifted and the sleeves of his robes fell away. Reyn watched the sorcerer’s hands weave and gesture. Almost instantly flames leapt from the torches to land on the uniforms of the immobilized men and women. Like Usurient, they caught fire instantly, the flames spreading swiftly over their bodies to consume them.

Down through the ranks Arcannen strode, waving right and left as he passed by his victims, his gestures drawing streaks of flame to one soldier after another. A dozen, several dozen, a hundred, and then so many that it was impossible to count them, these human torches filled the bluff top. Fueled by flesh–and–blood tinder, the flames spread, creating a blaze of light that soon banished the shadows entirely. The sorcerer danced and whirled and laughed as he continued to wreak his vengeance, and all around him Red Slash soldiers died.

It took him no time at all to kill them, and Reyn could feel the weight of his participation in the carnage bearing down on him, crushing his spirit and his hopes, destroying his self–respect and his belief in himself as an essentially good person, rendering him as small and pitiful and dark as the man he was assisting in this atrocity. Making him an accomplice in murder, a wretch he had never thought to become. His voice faltered, and he could feel the magic begin to fail.

Lariana was next to him, grabbing at him, pulling him away. “That’s enough! Stop it! We have to get out of here! Reyn, stop!”

He did not think he could. The magic was clinging to him in spite of his growing reluctance to hold on to it. It refused to let go, as if it were fighting to draw his breath from him. He might not have been able to free himself at all but for the sudden emergence of two figures–wraiths come up the road from the city–that materialized abruptly out of shadows and smoke. They staggered a bit as they encountered the full force of the wishsong’s power, but the Druid threw up her defensive shield immediately, driving it back, keeping it at bay. With the magic already weakening as Reyn fought to respond to Lariana’s urging, they passed through its field and advanced toward the boy and girl unimpeded.

“Reyn Frosch!” the Druid called out to him. “Wait!”

But Reyn had no intention of waiting. Although drained by his efforts, he seized Lariana’s hand and bolted for safety, racing into the midst of the burning soldiers. Escape! It was all he could think about. He would not break free of Arcannen only to fall into the hands of the Druids. But what escape was there for him? What escape for Lariana? Escape to where? This hunt to find and make use of him would never end. Escape, as both he and Lariana had feared all along, was possible only in death.

And suddenly he knew what he had to do.

“Arcannen!” he screamed. On hearing him call out, Lariana wheeled back in astonishment. He ignored her. “Arcannen, help us!”

But the sorcerer was already aware of what was happening. The soldiers that had been frozen in place so completely only seconds earlier were able now to move again. Most bolted for safety, but a few of the more determined ones turned their weapons on him. Had a larger number of them responded, the result might have been different. But only a handful acted, and the sorcerer’s magic was sufficient to deflect the arrows and spears and blue–tinged bolts of power emitted by the diapson–fueled weapons. When they saw their efforts were having no effect, the soldiers fell back immediately. Arcannen ignored them, swirling green fire cradled in both hands as he strode toward Paxon and Avelene.

Paxon stepped forward to meet him, the Sword of Leah drawn and ready, its own magic surfacing, snakes writhing in the dark metal. Still several dozen yards away, Arcannen struck out, the green fire flung from his hands, expanding into much larger globes that slammed into the black blade and shattered in jagged shards. But the resultant explosions were unexpectedly powerful, and Paxon was flung backward, staggered by first one blow and then the second.

Instantly Avelene rushed forward to take his place, hands coming up, her Druid magic springing to life.

No! Paxon thought at once.

But she never hesitated, responding to the inexorable urges that drove her to engage this man she both hated and feared, and she blocked his assault, throwing off the green fire and absorbing the force of his strikes. She kept her defenses firm, advancing on him with relentless purpose as he launched a third and then a fourth assault. Paxon was on his feet again, staggering up, still stunned from the force of the blows that had struck him, still woozy from their impact. His vision and his footing unsteady, he went forward anyway. He had to reach Avelene.

On the far side of the bluff, unexpected movement drew his eye. Two figures flew across the flats through the ranks of burning Red Slash. The boy and the girl were outlined clearly against the light. Paxon stared. What were they doing? They were headed for the edge of the bluff, a dead end!

Other pairs of eyes watched their flight as well, a handful belonging to those soldiers who had given up attacking Arcannen and were searching still for a way to get clear of the carnage. But on catching sight of the boy and the girl and recognizing them instantly as allies of the sorcerer, they remembered what the boy had done to them and reacted instinctively. Weapons came up, heavy flash rips and rail slings lifting and pointing, and for an instant time froze.

Then all the weapons discharged at once. The deadly missiles sped toward their targets, and the boy and the girl went down in a rain of jagged metal and diapson fire, struggled momentarily to rise before they were struck again, and, with their arms reaching out to each other, they collapsed and lay still.

Both Avelene and Arcannen had been distracted by the attack. Both had watched as the boy and the girl died. But it was the sorcerer who recovered quickest from the shock. Wheeling back toward the Druid, he lashed out at her with swift and certain accuracy, the green fire of his magic dispatched in a fiery streak that dropped her like a stone.

Paxon charged forward, horrified and enraged by what the sorcerer had done, determined that this time he would put an end to him. But Arcannen had already shifted his attention to the Highlander, throwing up a screen of fire and sending globe after globe of flaming magic streaking toward him. Paxon knocked aside the attacks, one after the other, his sword blade flashing in the torchlight. He smashed Arcannen’s blows, scattering their fiery shards, pushing ahead even thought he was all but blinded by the explosions and smoke. He could feel the force of the other’s assault weakening, and he rushed forward until he reached the place where Arcannen had been standing only moments earlier …

Only to find him gone.

He wheeled about instantly, searching through the haze of ash and debris. No, he told himself in frenzied disbelief. He can’t have escaped! I can’t have let that happen! He swept aside curtains of smoke with his sword and pushed farther out onto the bluff. Then he slowed in dismay. All around him, human torches were collapsing into piles of charred flesh and bones. He covered his nose and mouth with his hand. The stench was horrific; he was standing in a slaughterhouse.

In the end he was forced to accept that he was standing there alone.

Sick at heart and fearing the worst, he hurried back to where Avelene lay sprawled on the ground. He knelt beside her, bending close, trying not to look at the ruin of her chest, trying not to see what was unavoidable. He saw her eyes follow his and heard the rough whisper of her voice.

“Should have … listened to you.”

“I’m getting you off this bluff and down into the city,” he said quickly, reaching down and lifting her into his arms, hearing her gasp with pain as he did so. “We’ll find a healer for you.”

“No,” she whispered, her mouth close to his ear as he cradled her head against his shoulder, moving as quickly as he could toward the road leading down. “My … fault. Took my eyes off …”

She said something more, but he couldn’t understand her. He was almost running now, ignoring the weight in his arms, putting aside all thoughts for himself. The soldiers who had survived the carnage on the bluff had disappeared. There was no one to stop him.

“Avelene?” he whispered. “Stay with me.”

She might have responded. He couldn’t be sure. He thought she was still breathing. He could feel her breath against his cheek.

And then he couldn’t, and by the time he had reached the base of the bluff she was gone.