Dark Heart Part 1

Dark Heart.

Russell Kirkpatrick.

PROLOGUE.

MAGIC HOWLS LIKE A GALE through Husk's mind. Power, irresistible as a river in flood, batters at his besieged sense of self, threatening to overwhelm him. Iron-hard fingers tear at the connections to his treasured spikes, the spikes linking him to the three people essential to his plan. Glowing blue gobbets spin off, shards of power lodging themselves in forgotten corners of his ruined body, searing skin, organs, bones. Magic, for so long his lifeblood, might well destroy him.

Husk cannot believe there is this much magic in the world. And this is remarkable because he is a magician himself.

He has been exposed to powerful magic before, power few have seen. He remembers the day, seventy years ago now, when he was betrayed. Brought, bound with magic, into the Undying Man's presence to answer for his treachery. In the abyssal hours that followed he learned why the Undying Man had been named 'Destroyer'. So much magic, so expertly wielded, a thousand tiny knives separating skin from flesh, bits of him flaking into the darkness, every nerve ending exposed, the cold stone floor awash with his blood. More than enough to kill him. Drowning in pain, drowning in blood, drowning in the magic, his own considerable skill overwhelmed by that of his master.

Yet amidst the torture the Destroyer inadvertently gave him a gift. Not immortality, not exactly. A binding was laid on him, designed to preserve his ruined body as a husk, encapsulating his pain forever. Making him a creature able only to comprehend suffering. A cruelty beyond even Husk's darkest visions. But the spell was too powerful. Husk has harnessed the magic of the spell, has pierced the coc.o.o.n surrounding him and learned to draw life from those around him. Has taken the name of what he became and wears it proudly as a badge of honour. He has survived in the Destroyer's dungeon, masking his condition from the Lord of Andratan, building his strength.

Setting his great plan of revenge in motion.

He will have his betrayer, yes. The one he himself wooed from the Most High's cause; she who began as a simple Falthan village girl and whom he elevated to become the Destroyer's consort. Stella Pellwen. She who then turned on him and convinced the Undying Man of his disloyalty. She who knelt in the cave and watched as the Destroyer broke him. The last thing he saw, before the bright blue knives came for his eyes, was her shoulders shaking as she laughed.

He will take her as the final act of his revenge, right there in the Tower of Farsight, in front of the Undying Man's remains. Will take her, his rotted, repellent body on hers, then will drain her immortal blood. Slowly. He will make her agony last forever. He knows how, after all; and continues to pay a bitter price for the knowledge. She will be his ever-dying queen.

Not madness, Husk tells himself, to plan such a thing. It is necessary to balance what has been done to him.

This is the vision sustaining him, its dark promise giving him the tenacity to maintain contact with his three scattered spikes.

Though not so scattered now. Something is happening. A profligate expenditure of magic creates a hole in the world through which a G.o.d's hand reaches, s.n.a.t.c.hing his Amaqi captain, spike and all, along with the Emperor-so vital to his plans-and the pet Omeran. And the cosmographer girl. s.n.a.t.c.hes them right out of the world, weakening Husk's connection to the captain to breaking point, and dumps them back in it a moment later, somewhere much closer. He cannot begin to search for them, to try to re-establish his hold on the captain, until the magic roaring through the world calms down.

At least he knows where his angel Arathe is. She has spent nearly two weeks at sea, brought north to Raceme by friends of her foolish father, and is now safe within the city's strong walls. Raceme has never fallen to an enemy; he of all people knows this, having once invested it himself at the behest of the Undying Man. However, Raceme has never before faced the combined a.s.sault of the Neherian fleet and a magical storm. Perhaps she is not so safe, then. But, at present, beyond his help.

His priest is the safest of the three. Trust that one to look after his own worthless skin. The priest serves only to lure Stella westward, though it is beginning to appear as though she needs very little luring. Curse her! Because of what is happening to his other two spikes, Husk watches for any hint of a magical disturbance around Conal the priest. Apart from a strange flash at one point as the party pa.s.sed through the desert, he has seen nothing a.s.sailing them; nothing like the great magical loci interfering with Captain Duon and Arathe.

So. One lost, one threatened, one safe. His plan has never been guaranteed to succeed. In the face of interference from the G.o.ds, it may well fail. Nevertheless, Husk does not give up hope. His revenge can only be delayed, not denied. After all, Stella is immortal. So, it seems, is he. How, then, can she escape him?

FISHERMAN.

CHAPTER 1.

THE FINGERS OF G.o.d.

NOETOS THE FISHERMAN REACHED out a trembling hand to his daughter. The daughter he had thought dead.

At this moment nothing else mattered: not the threat to Raceme, not the approaching Neherian fleet, not the coming storm. His fingers hovered above hers.

Don't touch her, part of his mind warned. He stiffened. What about the huanu stone? The stone, of which he apparently had the largest piece known, stole magic from whatever it touched. What would it do to Arethe, so strong in the Voice magic?

You old fool, he chided himself, and blew out a relieved breath. You left it in your room.

You old fool, he chided himself. You left it in your room.

As his fingers touched hers he allowed himself to believe what his eyes told him. He knew of waking dreams, but had never experienced one: this must be what they felt like. The coa.r.s.eness of her skin, calloused along her once-fine fingers; the unflattering weight of her, surprising despite his knowing how she had been mistreated by her supposed teachers. But, notwithstanding all this, warmth where he had expected the coldness of death. He had, after all, seen her with a knife buried in her back.

A waking dream or reality-which was it? After all that had happened to him and his family, could Noetos really argue there was a difference? As his mind wandered, the dream-like feeling intensified.

Of course he remembered Arathe couldn't talk, her tongue having been taken by the cruel masters of Andratan, along with so many other things. Yet, as he grasped her hand and pulled her up to the wharf, he could not stop himself asking the question.

'How?'

Arathe shrugged her shoulders in reply. As he watched, her eyes flicked left and right, as though looking for something or someone, widening when they rested a moment on her brother, Anomer, then flicking again, searching.

'Muhh?' she said, her tongueless mouth unable to shape the word. 'Muh-huh?'

Noetos knew who Arathe was looking for.

'She...she...' He could barely bring himself to say it. 'She is dead.'

But it wasn't my fault, he wanted to add. He couldn't: Arathe would know it for a lie. His foolish plan to rescue her mother and brother at Saros Rake had cost Opuntia her life. And, to be honest, he'd cared much more about his son's survival than that of his wife.

There. I've admitted it.

His daughter's sunken eyes widened slightly, then narrowed, as she stared into his eyes. Her hand, still clasping his, tightened around his fingers. A fraction of a second later she jerked him forward.

He tried to keep his balance, but as he stumbled past her she pushed him, hard. He overbalanced, then fell from the wharf and plunged into the water, narrowly missing his boat.

The Racemen kept their harbour dredged, artificially deep. Within seconds he was at the bottom, knees on the muddy sea floor.

Cast away, his mind screamed at him. She cast me away.

He could see only a few feet through the murk, and for a moment could make nothing of his surroundings. Dark hull shapes, grey clouds, the flickering silhouettes of fish. He would not drown, he told himself; he was the Fisher, a man comfortable in the water. It was only shock that pinned his arms to his side. Only shock. His daughter hated him. If his daughter hated him, he must truly have mishandled things. Opuntia's death-was Arathe blaming him? She could know nothing of the circ.u.mstances, yet she had already decided he was to blame, as though she had developed some kind of mind-reading ability.

She cast me away!

His limbs were heavy, so heavy. Nevertheless, he began to move them, sluggishly at first. He needed to explain things to her before Anomer and Bregor filled her ears with their view of events. Actually, he needed to breathe.

It's not all my fault!

Something snagged the collar of his tunic, pulling him back, and his head jerked forward. His mouth opened involuntarily and the last of his air bubbled from his lips.

'He's not dead,' said someone.

'It'll take more than a dousing to kill this fool,' said someone else.

'Fuhh, fuhh, fuhh,' a third voice repeated. It sounded distressed.

'He's all right, Arathe,' said the first voice. 'He's breathing.'

Hardness under his back, water on his face, light in his eyes, the sounds of concern in his ears.

'We need to move him. The Neherians will be ash.o.r.e in a moment, Alkuon curse them.' The second voice was agitated. 'Can't leave him for them, much as I'd like to.'

'You grab his legs then,' a new voice said. 'I'll take his arms.'

'No!' Noetos gasped, then coughed. The light coalesced into a ring of faces staring down at him. Arathe, Bregor, Anomer, Sautea, Mustar. 'I can stand,' he said. 'Give me a moment.'

He barely made it to his feet. Anomer placed a steadying hand on the small of his back. His son's wet clothes told Noetos who had pulled him from the water.

The fisherman glanced at Arathe. His daughter averted her face.

He wanted her to explain why she'd pushed him from the wharf; he wanted to hear her say 'Father, it was an accident', to tell him that really she loved him and understood he'd tried his best to save his family from the Recruiters. But another part of him admired her for not saying anything of the sort, for holding her silence. He knew her rejection of him, whatever the motivation, had some justification. His plan, however cruelly undermined by Omiy the alchemist, had been a poor one to start with.

Noetos looked out to sea. So much needed to be said, but they were out of time. The storm was upon them, white sails followed by swirling black clouds.

The Fossans watched as the lead Neherian vessel dropped her canvas, but not before one of her foremast sails parted company with the rigging, torn by the gusting wind. Shouting sailors wrestled the shredded white material to the deck. For a moment it appeared as though the ship would founder, her skipper distracted, but the sailors recovered and, with an astonishing flurry of ropes and bodies, brought her broadside to the wharf.

They shouldn't have been able to do that, Noetos thought. Not with the strength of wind behind them. Curse the Neherians, call them what you like, but they were excellent sailors. They had come within an armspan of crushing his own boat.

Green- and white-clad soldiers raced to oppose the vessel's landing. Their shouts sounded desperate rather than confident. As he drew his sword, Noetos began to wonder about the city's impregnability. Have they been training their soldiers in the city's defences? Do they even have a defensive plan? Mild concern grew towards outright worry.

The fisherman took a deep breath. 'Anomer,' he said, raising his voice against the wind and the shouts of the city's defenders. 'Take your sister and wait for me at the Man-o'-War. She'll be hungry; ask the innkeeper to feed her.' His son began to speak, but the fisherman continued. 'We can spare you, at least for a while. It'll take some time for the Neherians to offload.'

'Never, if we have our way,' Bregor put in.

'But, Father,' Anomer said anxiously, 'you are not yet recovered, and the city needs my sword.'

'Look after Arathe. Don't argue!'

Noetos turned away from his children, ending the discussion. I will not lose either of them. Not now, not when they have only just been returned to me.

Further along the wharf Captain Cohamma barked an order, made unintelligible to Noetos by the whistling wind and the man's broad accent. From behind a low wall a brace of archers stood, then let fly at the Neherian carrack with burning arrows. In this wind? Cohamma seemed to be the sort of commander who could not adapt to changing conditions. Worse and worse. One arrow caught in the tatters of the ripped sail; another took a fair-haired man in the chest. Soundlessly he toppled over the side. Lucky. I hope you have a thousand arrows, Cohamma. The masters of the other Neherian vessels might think twice about entering a burning harbour.

'Ware!' came a cry from somewhere off to the left.

Noetos turned to see a smaller Neherian ship hove to against the groyne; in what was obviously a well-rehea.r.s.ed move, sword-wielding sailors scrambled down netting hanging over the side of the ship. The first vessel had been a distraction. The main attack was now taking place.

Noetos barely had time to check that Anomer and Arathe had obeyed him before the Neherians fell upon him and his men.

There was something about the man who came at him-the way the Neherian held his sword perhaps, or the overconfident grin splitting his narrow face-that transported Noetos back to a clearing in a southern wood.

He had been a man, a man full grown, but the Neherians had held him as easily as if he were a boy, and wore wide grins as they forced him to watch what they did to his father and family.

Noetos ground his teeth in rage. Am I doomed to return to this place of shame every time I fight? Will this end only when I am rid of the last sword-wielding Neherian? With difficulty he forced his mind back to the man in front of him.

The fisherman's movements were almost automatic. Defend the Neherian's best attacks, give no ground, show him nothing, and let the courage drain from the man's limbs. A few weeks with his sword in his hand and Noetos felt as though it had always been there. One upward feint, relying on fear to draw his opponent into an overreaction, then a slash across the man's unprotected belly. Not deep enough to kill immediately, but more than sufficient to bring suffering before death, as was proper. Ignore the body as it falls, as another enemy steps over it.

The memories in his head, his futile struggling in the grip of his family's executioners all those years ago, balanced with the death he was bringing to those who opposed him on the wharf and left him blank, an empty automaton, free from the anger he usually felt when challenged. The Neherians had set him free after slaughtering his family, perhaps believing him broken, a living caution against opposing their power-the best reason he could come up with. And of course he had been broken. Why else had he hidden in Fossa all those years?

But now he fought against them. He fought, not out of anger or fear, but from some deeper place. He grew weary, though nowhere near as swiftly as he ought. His fourth opponent fell, punished with the loss of a hand for pressing too hard, then slain with a blade in the chest.

Anomer and Arathe were his deeper place, he realised. Together they were doing something magical to aid him. The strength infusing him was more than his desire to protect them, his need to prevent the Neherians from getting past him and gaining access to the Man-o'-War. His children were using that desire, cleaving their strength to it, granting him unnatural speed and endurance. And, most of all, freedom from the emotion that so often spurred him into recklessness.

They probably thought he didn't know what they were doing. It ought to anger him, their deception. He should be worried about the cost to them. But he could raise no anger. No fear, nothing. No pity for his next opponent, the fuzz under the lad's nose betraying his youth, his spraying blood choking his dying scream for someone, his mother most likely.

A thought. If his son and daughter could supply him strength, could they also read his mind? Was that the basis for Arathe's initial anger towards him?

'Fisher.'

Someone called out to a fisherman, a meaningless cry barely noticed in the midst of battle. Nothing to do with him.

The dark figure in front of him waved his sword with energy but little skill. Did these fighters represent the best of Neherius? If so, how had that mighty army fallen so far? An inside cut, a swift withdrawal, then a low flick, hamstringing the man. Let the Neherian grunt his pain on the wooden planks of the wharf, let him spill his blood over the timbers of the town he sought to take.

'Fisher!'

No one in front of him. A meaty hand slapped him on his shoulder.

'Come, Noetos,' said a voice. Mustar. 'There is nothing more we can do here.'

The fisherman blinked. Death lay scattered all about him. Ten bodies, more, a dozen. His gaze took in the ships-a score or more now filling the harbour, a number of them aflame-and the hundreds of armed men leaping into the water and wading for the sh.o.r.e. But not in panic. This was planned. There was no urgency to douse the flames. The Neherians were intent on taking the town.

Perhaps the storm would save their ships for them. It had begun to rain while Noetos fought; large, cold drops, not that he had realised. Well, his dispa.s.sionate mind had factored in the sudden slipperiness underfoot, so he must have noticed. The rain slashed at them, stinging his face. How had he been able to fight this? What had his children done to him?

'Captain Cohamma wants us up on Broad Way behind the barricades. Come on.'

He turned to follow Mustar, his mind still fogged by events. Fogged, in fact, since Saros Rake. Why else, he asked himself, would he be following the most junior of the fishermen he employed?

Once employed, he corrected himself.

Belatedly he tried to clear his thoughts. 'Broad Way? What use is that?' he asked. 'We have to keep the Neherians outside the walls.'

'Too late for that, Fisher.'

The lad was right. A hundred or more Neherians had formed up on Red Duke Wharf, now off to his left as he faced the city, and were marching unhurriedly towards the Summer Palace, where no doubt the governor cowered in disbelief and fear. The governor was right to fear the Neherians. Much of Wharf Street was burning. Fire had taken hold of a tavern: Bottom O' The Barrel it had been called in Noetos's day. Men were trying to break into Crow Tower, the tallest building on the wharf. The docks were lost.

'We have to go. We'll be trapped here otherwise.'

Again, the lad was right. Where are your wits, fisherman? Did you leave them at the bottom of the harbour? Broad Way would not make much of a defence, but it was clear the Warehouse District could not be saved. They had to make a stand somewhere.

'This way, Mustar,' Noetos cried, and led the youth along Wharf Street, past Red Duke Wharf and then up Summer Way, away from the harbour. Behind them the Neherian regiment pa.s.sed the Summer Flame, the enormous bowl-shaped symbol of Roudhos sovereignty appropriated by Raceme many years since. A great gust of wind roared past the Summer Palace, flattening the flame, all but extinguishing it. Noetos sighed. The sight had all the hallmarks of an omen.

'Where are my men?' he asked.