The Darkling Child

  “Don’t you worry.” Etris was still looking at Usurient. “I know how to kill a man better than most.”

  “Let him go on his own,” Usurient said suddenly. “I’ll stay with you.”

  Mallich started to object, then thought better of it. He sighed wearily. “All right. You come with me and Hammer. Let’s be quick about this. Remember. If Arcannen gets the upper hand, we won’t live out the day.”

  They separated then, Bael Etris peeling off from the others and disappearing into the gloom. The other three stood watching for a minute, then Mallich beckoned. They started forward into the ruins, spreading out as they went. They kept one another in sight, although Usurient, on the far right, at times lost sight of The Hammer, on the far left. He kept Mallich in view; he was the one who mattered. The oketar roamed ahead, straining against their leashes, noses to the ground, sniffing at rocks and debris. As hunters they were without peer, but they were killers, too. The urge to engage and take down prey was instinctive, and if there were living creatures anywhere nearby, they would find them.

  Usurient peered into the haze doubtfully. He couldn’t see a thing. It would have been better if they had gone in last night in the pouring rain rather than risk an encounter in this fog. Maybe they should have waited. But he knew that wasn’t possible with these men. Waiting wasn’t something they would tolerate. He picked his way through the rocks cautiously, trying not to make any sound, grateful for the roar of the ocean in the background, hiding everything in its white noise.

  Then, abruptly, something appeared in the gloom ahead of them.

  —

  As they left their shelter and stepped out into the mist, Arcannen leaned close to Reyn. “Don’t try to see in this fog. Try to hear. The ocean doesn’t muffle sound as much as it might seem.”

  Reyn nodded. It seemed to him that the ocean crashing against the rocks drowned out everything, but he did his best to try to hear through it. Arcannen was moving ahead, wrapped in his dark cloak, head bent to the rubble. The boy followed, working hard at keeping upright on the slippery rocks, watching his footing carefully so he wouldn’t fall. He was thinking hard about the images he would need to create, the distraction he would need to cause. Perversely, he found himself wishing he had never put himself in this position—even if it had meant giving up his lessons in learning to control the magic. But he couldn’t have stood losing Lariana. She mattered too much to him. She was the real reason he stayed with Arcannen. To keep her close, he would have endured almost anything.

  They had gone only a short distance when Arcannen abruptly stopped. He hesitated a moment, apparently listening. Reyn listened with him, but heard nothing.

  Arcannen glanced back at him, gesturing to his head and then his mouth. He was ready for the images the wishsong would provide. He gestured a second time. The intruders were just ahead. He waited to be sure Reyn understood, held up a warding palm to tell him to remain where he was, and disappeared into the roiling mist.

  Reyn watched him go, suddenly chilled to the bone. He was alone now; the sorcerer was no longer there to protect him. All he could do was obey the other’s instructions. He formed an image in his mind of several men, a clutch of armed attackers, holding them carefully in place, waiting to see what would happen. As he had with the creature he created to frighten Arcannen earlier, he gave his creations more than visual characteristics; he made it possible for them to be smelled, tasted, heard. He gave the beasts tracking them a reason to think they were real beyond what their eyes would suggest. He found it easier today—more familiar, less challenging. He knew he was getting more proficient at using his magic. He built his protectors piece by piece and held them at the ready like guards at the gates of a city.

  Then he waited.

  And waited some more.

  The images in his mind did not waver. Time slowed, then stopped.

  Abruptly a nightmarish creature surged into view, a thing so terrible the boy almost fled. The four-legged beast was as big as a koden, all bristling hair and jagged teeth and claws, angry piggish eyes fixing on him, head lowered close to the ground as if it were too heavy for the creature to hold erect. A man appeared behind it, the beast connected to him by a chain gripped in his massive hands. The man was as huge and terrible as the beast, a mountain of muscle and bone, his features scarred and ridged and twisted.

  They saw each other in the same instant, and Reyn only just managed to release his images and send them careening toward these monsters to intercept them. The images responded as he had hoped they would, moving swiftly and purposefully ahead, attackers that clearly threatened. The man slowed at once, but the beast roared in challenge and jerked hard at the chain. Reyn conjured and dispatched another three attackers, all of them spinning out into the mists like the ghosts they were. But it was hard to tell they weren’t real with the haze swirling around them, and the beast seemed confused and angry.

  The boy cast about in desperation. Where was Arcannen? He had created a distraction. Where was the sorcerer?

  Abruptly, the big man released the chain, and the beast surged forward to attack the images. As they disintegrated under the force of its attack, it grew even more crazed, whipping this way and that in a futile effort to get its jaws around them as they surged past. It could see, smell, and taste them; why couldn’t it touch them? Reyn sent two more, but he could feel his grip on things loosening. All he was doing was delaying the inevitable if Arcannen didn’t appear.

  Then two further beasts surged out of the mist—things that looked to be a crossbreed of several species, not so big and imposing as the first, but dangerous nevertheless. They attacked the images, as well, caught up in the maddened behavior of the larger creature, and quickly the trio became mired in a frenzy of snapping and tearing at empty air and phantoms.

  A shadowy figure emerged from off to his left, less imposing than the giant and the dog, but clearly a threat. Reyn dropped to one knee, trying to think what to do. The man was coming for him, running now, knives in both hands.

  In desperation, he invoked a fresh image, shadowy and faint like the others but still real in appearance, and sent it charging toward the three beasts. The animals were on it at once, but their efforts to bring it down failed as Reyn caused it to veer sharply away before they reached it. Fleeing, with the animals in pursuit, the image folded itself about the man with the knives, and the two merged and became one. The man slowed, confused, aware that something had happened, brushing at his face as if he had walked into a spiderweb. The merging was done so swiftly it would not have appeared real to humans; it would have seemed the trick it was. But to the beasts it was very real. Reacting instinctively and without hesitation, all three charged the image that had become the man and tore into it.

  At the last moment, the man turned, realizing something was wrong, hands lifting his knives defensively. Too late. The largest beast was on him so fast he had no time to react. He was brought down instantly, screaming as the terrible jaws closed about his face and ripped it off. Arms and legs thrashed futilely, blood spraying everywhere. Tossing aside what it had savaged, the beast began tearing at what remained, joined by its companions. In mere seconds the man was reduced to a lifeless husk.

  Kneeling in the mist-slickened rubble, Reyn cringed in dismay. He hadn’t meant for this to happen. He had only been trying to divert the attack. He had just reacted. Arcannen had said he would be there to help him, to prevent him from killing anyone. But the sorcerer had failed him.

  Now the first man was coming for him, a huge battle-ax raised overhead. He was like a juggernaut bearing down on the boy—massive and unstoppable. Reyn scrambled to his feet to face the giant, trying to conjure an image to deflect the attack. But panic enveloped him, freezing him in place, stripping away all control, all reason. There was no image that would save him from this.

  Where was Arcannen now?

  He began backing away, trying to escape, knowing immediately that he wouldn’t, that he was too slow. He cried out fo
r Arcannen, knowing that this, too, was futile, that he couldn’t hear him and wouldn’t come…

  Behind him the door to the passageway leading into Arcannen’s lair opened, and Lariana appeared, a vision that seemed born of another conjuring. She advanced through the opening and braced herself, arms extended, her small flash rip pointing.

  “Get down, Reyn,” she called out to him.

  He threw himself aside, the giant almost on top of him. Lariana’s weapon made a snapping noise—quick and piercing—and he caught a glimpse of a strange fiery rope passing above him at tremendous speed. He heard the sound of an impact on flesh, and heard the giant grunt. When he looked, the huge man was down on his knees, his entire chest opened up as the flaming rope twisted around inside of him like a live creature.

  The giant’s eyes were glazed and staring as he pitched forward and lay still.

  Reyn staggered up, and Lariana raced toward him. She flew into his arms and held him against her, and in that moment of gratitude and relief he knew with a certainty as sharp as a blade’s edge that she would never let him go.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Usurient watched it all happen from not twenty feet away, crouched within the convenient pile of rubble behind which he had dropped during the first few seconds of the encounter. He had not once given any thought to going to the aid of Mallich or The Hammer; his common sense told him that they were likely not going to come out on the winning end.

  He shuddered now, remembering what he had just witnessed. The crince, freed from its chain, going after what appeared to be a ghost image that had attached itself to Mallich and led to his demise. He could still see the crince ripping its master to pieces, tearing at him until nothing recognizable was left. And then the oketar joining in on the frenzied feast, all of them becoming maddened and uncontrollable in a matter of seconds.

  He glanced down at his hands. They were still shaking. He hadn’t been able to stop them from doing so. That boy. What sort of magic did he possess? How had he managed to turn those savage animals against Mallich? How had he managed it so easily?

  He picked up the flash rip from where he had dropped it and tightened his grip until his knuckles turned white, forcing his hands to be still. This wasn’t over yet. He looked up to where the boy and the girl were still locked in an embrace, arms about each other, heads pressed close. The girl, he thought, was as dangerous as the boy, although her methods were more conventional. She carried a weapon even more advanced than his own, a prototype that was supposedly in no one’s hands. Clearly this was not the case, and he found himself wondering how many others were out there that shouldn’t be.

  His gaze shifted momentarily to the inert form of The Hammer, sprawled face-forward in the rocks, lifeless. That girl had taken him down with two well-placed shots, either of which would have killed him. She was skilled with that weapon, and whatever she and the boy were to each other, they were a formidable pair.

  Would they come looking for him? Not even knowing he was there, would they decide to mount a search just to see if they had missed anyone? He could face them, he supposed. He could kill one or even both of them perhaps. But did he want any part of such an encounter? What was the point?

  It was Arcannen he had come to find, and the sorcerer hadn’t made even the briefest appearance.

  He watched the boy and the girl separate, moving apart but still holding hands, talking now, their voices too low to hear. In a moment they would be on the move. What was he going to do?

  He watched the heavy fog momentarily enclose them in its folds. Now he could see the crince snarling at the oketar, driving them back as it dragged the remains of Mallich out of the rubble and into the rugged terrain inland, warning off its competitors. The oketar were snarling back, but even together they weren’t a match for the crince, so they made no move to attack as it hauled its kill into the rocks and disappeared. After giving momentary consideration to the boy and the girl and deciding it wasn’t worth the attempt, the oketar moved off as well.

  Usurient had just about decided to stand up and shoot both the boy and the girl before either could respond and then have a look around for Arcannen when a door set deep within the back walls of the ruins swung open and the sorcerer walked out.

  —

  “Did you hear that?” Avelene asked Paxon, stopping short of the crest of the ridgeline fronting their approach route to the coast.

  “It sounds like animals fighting,” he said.

  They had flown in during the early hours of the morning, departing Sterne before it was light and finding their way east by reading the stars. By then, the storm that had threatened early had blown south, taking clouds and wind and rain with it, leaving behind the beginnings of a warming trend that left the surface of the earth below covered in layers of brume.

  Avelene had thought it might be best simply to fly into the ruins of Arbrox and confront whatever was happening there. But Paxon persuaded her that Druids would intimidate neither Arcannen nor those hunters sent by Usurient to stalk the sorcerer. They would simply be putting themselves in danger by announcing their presence. It would go better if they landed somewhere far enough away that they would not be seen and walk in from there. It might take a little longer, but it would gain them an element of surprise.

  But now, concerned about the sounds they were hearing, they picked up their pace. Paxon’s ears were sharp enough that he was certain he had heard screams as well as the guttural animal noises, which meant that some sort of attack was under way. The Highlander had his sword out, holding it before them protectively as he led the way. Nothing they encountered at this point was likely to be friendly.

  The crest of the ridgeline elevated them to a view of a long, shallow depression in the terrain ahead marked by clusters of rocks and pockets of fog. They could just make out the ruins of Arbrox—broken walls and collapsed roofs, areas blackened by fire launchers and flash rips, a village destroyed almost beyond recognition. The growls of the animals had changed to something less clear, although the urgency was still there, and the screams had gone silent.

  Something moved through the gloom, off in the distance, a huge figure lunging suddenly at something hidden from their view. In the next instant a pair of fiery projectiles struck it, and it fell to its knees and toppled forward.

  Paxon and Avelene began running, scrambling down the rocky slope in an effort to get to the scene. The sounds of their passage could not be heard over the roar of the ocean, but there was danger in coming in too quickly and being caught by surprise. Neither could be sure who was up ahead. So when they descended the rise, the Highlander slowed their pace and made a sweeping gesture toward the mist-shrouded lowlands ahead, reminding his companion to be wary of hidden dangers.

  As they drew nearer the battle site, they saw two people clinging to each other within the ruins, vague figures in the gloom. The giant lay sprawled nearby, unmoving. The animals they had seen earlier, beasts the like of which neither had encountered before, were moving off, the largest of them dragging what appeared to be the remains of a man. Paxon motioned for Avelene to get behind him, but the Druid ignored the command and instead moved sideways to put a little distance between them. Everything ahead was locked inside a sea of gray mist that swirled in erratic circles and alternately concealed and then revealed the rocky terrain it covered.

  They were within thirty yards or so when a door opened in the cliff face amid the ruins and Arcannen appeared. Paxon slowed involuntarily, a surge of excitement and exultation rushing through him. Avelene stopped, going into a crouch. The sorcerer, cowled and wrapped in his robes, a spectral look to his dark form, moved toward the embracing couple. The couple broke the embrace, and Paxon was shocked to see that one of the pair was the boy who had use of the wishsong, the one he had pursued unsuccessfully in Portlow.

  The boy and his partner—a girl who looked to be no older than he was—had turned to face Arcannen when abruptly a man stood up from behind an outcropping of rocks to one side of them a
nd fired a handheld flash rip at the sorcerer, half a dozen fiery charges slamming into the other. Arcannen simply flew apart, arms and legs flung wide, body disintegrating. An instant later, the attacker had dropped back into the rocks and out of sight.

  But that wasn’t the end of the strangeness. A second man now appeared—a lean, feral-looking creature armed with a long knife who surfaced from behind the ruins atop the cliffs and dropped down on the couple as they shrank from the carnage they had just witnessed. As the man attacked the couple with his blade extended, the boy flung out his hands in a warding gesture, his cry filled with despair, the sound emitting a burst of wishsong magic that sent this new threat flying. Instantly the girl bolted for cover, but when she looked back, the boy was still standing where she had left him, staring into space. She turned back, seized his arm, and pulled at him in desperation, but the boy didn’t move. A moment later their attacker, recovering more swiftly than expected, launched himself at the girl, struck her a powerful blow, and knocked her to the ground, where she sprawled, unconscious. The boy still didn’t move, and the man wrapped his arm about the other’s neck and, using him as a shield, began backing toward the cliff face. The boy went without a struggle, almost as if he didn’t realize what was happening.

  Neither Paxon nor Avelene was quite sure who anybody was at this point. Given the likely possibility that the two attackers were part of the contingent sent to kill Arcannen, what did the boy and the girl have to do with anything? It felt odd that they should be here at all, especially the boy. Hadn’t he seen enough of Arcannen in Portlow to stay clear of him?

  Paxon glanced over at Avelene. She seemed undecided, staring at the scene below. “What do we do?” he whispered.

  No response. Then she looked at him wordlessly and stood up. Together, they began walking toward the boy and his attacker.