Lightfall, p.5
LightFall, page 5
A hiss, soft yet somehow most disturbing of all, rasped over the top of our conveyance. The carriage shivered, although not as much as Lady Dyania who let out a choked whimper. I made no noise, not from bravery, my own throat clogged with jumbled blessings. Who’d have guessed I’d memorized some sacraments over the years while begging and/or pickpocketing outside Sevaare’s grand temple?
The hiss and shiver stopped, but all my muscles ratcheted tighter. Lady Dyania opened her eyes wide, her fists dropping to press against her lips. The fighting sounded farther away, though I suspected that was only because I was so focused on whatever was right outside.
“It’s gone.” The lady’s whisper barely passed her fingertips.
I shot her a hard look, shaking my head. Not that I knew better, but—
Before I finished shushing her, I was flying through the air as the carriage tumbled around us. I had a split second to be glad we’d tucked away the remains of dinner and there’d been enough power in the carriage for the toilet incinerator to do its work, and then I slammed into the lady—or maybe she into me. We rolled hard, limbs thrashing, before the carriage finally came to rest.
On my back, I stared up, stunned. The rectangle of darkness above me was streaked with gray smoke and yellow-red sparks.
The door. The carriage door I’d so dutifully locked had been wrenched aside, and at any moment a demon might reach in, like I rummaged around a bag of speridia rind.
Another dead-end alley.
No, worse than dead. Damned. Our auras would be shredded and devoured, only tatters left to blight these ruins with the rest of the lost.
I lurched upright, my mind reeling to orient the carriage’s new position. The worn heel of my boot slid on the silverleaf around the shuttered window that was now our floor. Lady Dyania sprawled in one corner, her braids in disarray and her eyes glazed. Injured, or in shock?
As I stretched toward the open doorway, she fumbled for me. “Feinan, no. Where are you going?”
“We can’t stay in here.”
“But the demons—”
“Will feast on your aura. Not an honored offering to the dragon, just another accursed shade.”
Considering how cramped the interior of the carriage had felt, the door seemed too far above me. I jumped to grab the rim, and my legs flailed uselessly for a moment until hands under my backside boosted me higher.
For a frantic heartbeat, I dangled helpless, exposed.
By the amaranthine light, if I got out of this alive, I would… Neh, I might even voluntarily say a blessing.
Nothing grabbed me, and I clambered up into the burning night.
Squinting against the torchlight, I found no sign of whatever had rolled our carriage and cracked it open like an egg. I spun around on my haunches, dazed by the waving silkha white and the whirling sinister shadows. Two other carriages were tipped, and one was on fire—
“Feinan!” The lady’s shrill call jolted me from my gawking. “Get me out of here.”
I reached down through the hole, my nape prickling—as if demon fingernails tickled at my cropped hair, ready to rip my skull and spine from my skin, slavering fangs gnashing through my grubby aura as it left my body.
I wrapped my fingers around her wrist and heaved backward. She kicked up a heel to hook over the door jamb; some Sevaare dance tutor should be commended for her lithesome grace. As she popped up onto the battered side of the carriage next to me, the stolen knife was already in her hand.
Just as well she hadn’t had the weapon out when the carriage was hit or someone would’ve probably been impaled. I hastened to match her armed stance, but I was a cutpurse, no sword-swinger.
From our vantage, it seemed clear our guards were losing. I caught a glimpse of Lisel wielding her spear, minus the pristine silkha pennant. In stories, only sanctified weapons had a chance against demons, but what did I know? Another guardsman—no, this one boasted gilded armor and must be the captain—fought at her back, but even as I watched, he stumbled and went to one knee, listing sideways.
The enemy…
I’d heard stories all my life of the vicious, vile demons. But I’d never faced them. Even now, I struggled to distinguish monster from shadow and shadow from whispers of nightmares.
Or maybe the difference didn’t matter, only the screams and death.
The torches marking our perimeter were scattered and burning out. Soon there’d be no light but dying embers and the fading glow of whatever auric vestiges the demons left behind.
“Feinan, fetch a candle, please.”
My body buzzed with terror. “A candle? Why—”
“Do as I ask.”
Somehow, her calm tone blunted my panic, and I dropped into the carriage. Wrenching at the drawers that all seemed backward, I found the prayer candle. The sweet scent mocked my sawing breath.
“Lady,” I called. “Here!”
Her pale spread fingers and golden face were like a small moon and sun against the darkness behind her when I tossed the votive. She disappeared, and I hauled myself up again, wrenching something in my arm. No proud dance tutor for me.
The lady’s slender fingers trembled around the candle but her expression was oddly serene as she used her knife to gouge a shallow mark into the concave wax on top.
“Ah, blight and spite,” she mumbled. “I can’t remember how it goes…” Flicking away the curl of wax, she tried to ignite the wick, failed, then thrust the candle my way. “Light this.”
I’d skulked through enough dark alleys that my hands instinctively found the fitted striker. A tiny flame bloomed within the ornate cup, its glow all but irrelevant against the suffocating weight of night and more menacing shadows.
Worse, the spark blinded me, but even my dull aura sensed the furious hunger in the dark beyond.
And even worse, the Chosen One in her white silkha shone all the brighter. Remarkably foolish right now. She thrust her hand at me. “Blood.” Despite the command in her voice, her hand trembled harder. “Not deep or anywhere vital, but…just enough.”
I stared up at her. “What?”
She waggled her fingers in imperious demand. “Cut me. We’re surrounded, but my blood in the candle flame will repel them, hopefully long enough for us to escape.”
Shedding the blood of a scion was punishable by death. Not that we weren’t facing death already, of course. But escape to where exactly? All I could squeak out was, “Blood?”
“I can’t do it myself or it won’t be the same.” Her voice pitched high, making her sound younger. “The brilliance of life’s light surrendered burns back the abyss.” She pointed at my knife, sagging in my hand. “I’ve never done this, but I…I’ve read how bloodfire runes might be anathema to demons.”
“You’ve read?” I repeated incredulously. “Might be? By all means, then, let me stab you for a might-be story.”
“I can’t do it alone. Please, Feinan.” This time, her voice cracked. “Quickly, before the rune disappears.”
Swearing under my breath about reading, with the tip of my knife, I pricked her finger.
A bead of scarlet welled, vivid in the murk. She squeezed more blood to the tiny wound. Droplets fell—one, two, three—to tint the curl of melted wax filling the mark she’d carved. The flame guttered for a heartbeat.
And then flared upward, impossibly high and bright.
Silence spread outward from us like a wave of fog. Even the last sparks rising from the wrecked conveyances seemed frozen in the air. Only the blood-fed flame danced merrily within the etched cup.
The light glinted off a hundred uncanny eyes in groups of twos and threes and eights.
A quietest chirrup, like the sunrise complaint of a sleepy chook, drifted to us. It was answered from the other direction by another purling chirp: the call of a cock summoning his flock to a grub feast.
“Are you sure purity repels them?” I whispered.
The lady’s gasp was even softer. “Oh. Oh no…”
The circle of hungry eyes constricted by one unanimous sidling step inward, toward us.
“Run,” I suggested.
The bubble of silence collapsed in a chorus of hisses and shrieks, and we leaped from our perch on the carriage. For one moment, we were engulfed in a rush of darkness. My whole body and being flinched from the gush of violent, bottomless hunger passing by.
But the demons ignored us and pounced upon the bloodied flame, their ghastly cries ringing ‘round the pillar of light. Though the little candle should’ve gone out, I wasn’t lingering to wonder at the miracle.
I snagged the lady’s wrist and bolted toward my last sighting of Lisel—or, more precisely, toward her long spear which seemed a much better weapon than our pocket knives.
The hartier was crouched beside her fallen captain behind the shattered wheels of her chariot. The hart was gone. As we pelted across the square, her eyes flared wide but she stood to make room for us, brandishing her pike.
Lady Dyania knelt beside the captain then flinched away. The palm of her pale hand was soaked in red. Had I pricked her too deep?
She put her other hand on the captain’s shoulder. “You’re hurt.”
“Badly,” he wheezed. “We must call down the night.”
As if it wasn’t dark enough?
But Lisel stiffened. “Another demon?”
Ah… He meant the monster. The Dragon Prince.
The captain fumbled at his side pocket for a small case of quilted white silkha, streaked with an ominous maroon. Within nestled a whistle of bone, the narrow cylinder etched with blackened motifs found in no prayer book. I averted my gaze.
Lisel drew back. “Captain—”
“Summon him. Or the Chosen will die here, in vain.”
I knew this legend too. So it said, the whistle was formed from a finger bone of King Ormonde himself. While fighting the demon dragon, he’d lost his arm—neh, not lost actually, the dragon bit it off and swallowed it—but he’d forced the beast to disgorge the limb, and though the flesh had been stripped away, the bones held together by the lingering might of his aura the dragon had wanted to steal. From the macabre remnants, he’d fashioned an instrument to summon and control the monster.
Over the centuries, the panpipes formed from all the bones had decayed. Now only this gruesome whistle was left, still with enough of the old king’s powerful aura that, when played, forced the demon dragon to answer.
Or so the story was told.
“Summon him,” the dying captain repeated. “Our blessed lor has been killed, and I haven’t the breath left myself.”
When Lisel hesitated, Lady Dyania plucked the whistle from its case. She lifted the bone to her lips, casting me a sidelong glance when I made a faint, inadvertent noise of disgust, and blew across the opening.
It sounded…like a hollow old finger bone. At least to my unsanctified ears, not that I huffed on bones of any holiness. I grimaced. How could even a demon hear that puny note? How could the Dragon Prince get here before the irresistible lure of the Chosen One’s blood in the prayer candle guttered out and the horde pursued meatier game?
Lady Dyania kept blowing. She closed her eyes, and her fingers must’ve found some subtle key holes in the dusty thing, because the faltering whistle slid higher then lower, as if seeking.
Summoning the demon dragon and its prince.
Every nerve in me yearned to flee—where, I had no idea—but I stayed crouched beside the lady, my gaze jumping between her and the wavering golden light of the candle. Against the contrast of flame and shadow, the frolicking demons were weirdly jointed silhouettes, the sullen smoke of burned-out torches whirling around them like translucent tatters of stolen auras.
Out of nowhere, I remembered my father had a poppet show of the Great Gorging. The reenactments were always very popular at the lightkeeps and freeholds where we paused, with much enthusiastic cheering as the poppet Ormonde tamed the demon dragon.
I would never be able to watch such a performance again without the reek of scorched metal and the captain’s blood coming back to haunt me with the shiver of a broken finger bone stroking down my spine.
A tear leaked from the lady’s eye. She was going to run out of breath before the candle died, but either way we’d soon be dead…
A downward draught of icy air pressed upon me, heavy on my shoulders and even heavier on my heart. Some mouselike instinct had me cowering as the dragon plunged toward us.
I had a fleeting impression of a serpentine neck weighed by a thick iron collar and an unfurling tail spiked with bony thorns, overshadowed by vast, beating wings. Dark, leathery scales were pocked and slashed everywhere with ashen scars. But my focus locked on another pale shape, like a fallen sliver of the hidden moon: a contorted face with long, black hair whipped in the fury of the monster’s passing—the Dragon Prince, lashed at the monster’s heart, arms spread in echo of its wings.
The beast leveled out and swept over our heads, its taloned wings ripping the smoke into swirling vortices. The shock of its arrival bowled me over, and Lisel dropped beside me. If the lady was still piping, the sound was lost in the dragon’s howl of rage. It arrowed toward the demons still dancing around the candle.
I almost pitied them.
Distracted by the Chosen One’s blood, they sensed their downfall too late. The dragon tore through its brethren as if they were just more smoke. The horde shrieked like an ossuary’s worth of rotting bone instruments played by deranged musicians. But they had no chance against the dragon.
A monster among monsters, it lashed out with jaws and claws, breathing out something that was not fire or ice but a nothingness—a void swirling with auric ether I glimpsed only at the periphery of my vision. That emptiness swallowed the demons and left nothing in its wake.
The candle went dark.
One more scream echoed, vast as the night itself, and yet hollow as that old bone, hungering still.
Horrible, terrifying, and yet some deep hidden part of me recognized it: a loneliness, unfathomable.
And that part of me yearned in kind to answer.
As if following the candle’s suggestion, the rest of the world went dark.
For a heartbeat, I wondered if my flawed aura had been sucked away with the demons. But then the warm light of a lamp flared to life, hefted in Lisel’s hand. She hastened toward Lady Dyania, slumped against the chariot wheel, and levered the Chosen One upright with her free hand. She turned to me. “Get your lady back to the carriage. The horde might be gone, but it’s not safe out here in the dark.”
I glanced around. “Your captain…”
“Dead.” Her jaw flexed. “Now do as I say.”
I balked. “Our carriage is overturned, overrun by demons.”
Sucking in a long breath as if to replace what she’d exhaled into the pipe, Lady Dyania said, “I’m not going to faint.” Her shaky voice didn’t say much for her steadiness, but she straightened away from the hartier. “Please, look to the others. We’ll await you here.”
Lisel gave us a last doubting look and strode off. The lady braced herself against the chariot and slowly sank to the ground. While I wasn’t thrilled to squat by this upended cart and the dead captain, even less did I want to return to the silverleaf carriage where the horde had converged—until the Dragon Prince had obliterated them in one fell swoop.
I crouched beside her. “You saved us.”
She tipped her head back with a dull thunk. “I almost killed us. The rune was supposed to be protective, and instead I lured them closer.” She thunked her head twice more. “It was the Dragon Prince who saved us.”
“Neh, you gathered them in one place so he could destroy them all. Like a festival hawker calls to muster the rubes for pilfering—except with a massacre.” I cradled my strained arm, only to realize I’d apparently bruised my ribs too. “How did you know about runes?”
She rolled her head to gaze at me. “How do you know which pockets to pick?”
“Experience and desperation,” I answered with only a hint of drollness since it was mostly true.
“Desperation, yes. And maybe my reading counts for your experience.” She looked down at her fingertip, where I’d pierced her. “But obviously I got something wrong. The poor captain…”
It was something of a revelation to hear a noble scion admit a mistake. “Wrong or no, it was better than waiting to die.” Despite my aches, I wrapped my arms tight around myself, the night chill and lingering shock making me shiver. I should’ve grabbed blankets from the carriage.
Across the trashed encampment, more lamps and torches ignited as Lisel gathered up what remained of the guard. We’d left Sevaare with a dozen carriages and double that in protection. Now, four carriages were wrecked, not including ours which seemed merely upended, and only half the guards rallied to Lisel. Maybe some just ran off?
Although that probably hadn’t gone any better for them.
With a last look at the dead man, Lady Dyania shoved to her feet.
I looked up at her. “Where are you going?”
“To help, if I can.”
That didn’t seem wiser than fleeing. But I followed her.
We stopped first at the Maru Deep carriage. Though the conveyance was upright and the shutters still latched, the big attendant slumped outside the door, one hand pressed to his eyes.
The lady glanced at me, rubbing her forefinger and thumb together in a way that made me think she was considering the wave-bladed knife in her boot. She cleared her throat. “Are you injured?”
“Not I.” He looked up and realized who he was speaking to. “No, my lady. Our Chosen is safe within. But my friend, Torbar, heard the call to arms. He’d served on the Maru wall so he took up a pike.” The despondent man let out a shaky breath. “But the demons…”
“Blessings upon your friend.” Lady Dyania closed her eyes in sympathy. “Killed? Or taken?”
He recoiled, as if he hadn’t even considered the bad and the worse. “Killed. I stayed with the Chosen and couldn’t reach him.”
The lady pressed her hands together in a prayerful pose. “Torbar will be remembered for his bravery.”
