Chapter Twenty-Nine - Darkness Calls

‘What did you do, boy?’

The clouds frothed, twisted, swarmed. The sun was gone, and the sky was black, full of shadows. The broken tower blurred darkly, and something silver gleamed from the dirt, covered in ruined stone.

‘Do you see?’ the Old Man asked him, and clouds boiled over his shoulders, black as night. The boy hesitated, blinking. What did he see? Lightning flashed, and the silver caught fire. The Old Man stared at him, angry now, and his golden eyes flashed with flame.

‘What did you do?’ he demanded, voice full of thunder. The boy blinked, blurred, stared. His gut was cold. His head ached. He stared at the broken stones, and silver filled his eyes, gleaming. The storm was breaking. What had he done?

Only a storm can break the dark.

The Old Man stared back at him, masked in black, and the gale tore at his skin, filling his blood with ice.

*

For the first time since he was taken, Cal saw daylight in his cage.

The rain had stopped, and the sun leaked over the open throat of the old stormtower, yellow and cold, setting fire to the wet, dark stones. Cal lay on his back once he woke, watching it as it dissolved into an orange blur through gathering clouds, angry and dark. Then it was gone again, and the darkness returned. The moon was nowhere to be found, and the ugly black haze filled his little circle of sky, thick as morning fog.

Cal closed his eyes, then, but sleep would not take him. What little he had snatched through half-open eyelids had been haunted by faces. Faces of the dead. They whispered to him in the dark, pleading, begging. Cursing him. The Old Man, disappearing into the flames. Forley’s blank eyes, staring up to an empty sky. Petr, flinching as blade after blade sank into his meat, his chest, his back. His gut. Lokk staring at him, confused. Lokk, clutching at the hole in his throat.

Lokk, choking on his own breath, eyes wide with terror.

Please… Please…

Bile rose in his throat, hot and sour, and he retched emptily into the stones, gasping. Dead. All of them. He retched again, and pain surged through him like fire. His broken ribs groaned, and his battered skin split. He choked on his own agony, drooling spit into the dirt. Dead. Because of him. The Stranger loomed over him, gliding across the stones, and the voice slithered again into his thoughts, that dread hiss, setting ice in his blood. Calling to him. If he hadn’t said anything. If he’d been strong enough. If he hadn’t driven away the Blacksmith. The villagers would have come for them. They’d still be alive. Lokk stared at him in the torchlight, confused.

I don’t understand…

Cal vomited bile into the dirt, then collapsed around himself, gasping in pain. The Black Hand weren’t here for them. They weren’t here to snatch boys from their beds, for blood magic, or worse. They were looking for the Old Man. The villagers knew enough. Enough to know he was somewhere up there in the hills, out of sight. Enough to steer clear. Greycloaks weren’t to be trusted. There was only one of them that didn’t have the good sense to stay away. Only one of them strange enough to care about the babblings of a mad old man. That’s who the Brothers were after. The boy that knew him. The boy that could lead them to him.

Cal frowned. But the Old Man was dead. He’d found him, in the smoke. Buried him… or what was left of him. Nothing more than ash and bones. He was gone. So why were the Black Hand looking for him? What did they want with a dead man? He hadn’t known when he’d found him, but he was sure now it was the Brothers that had killed him. Fire was their weapon, Godry always said. Who else could it have been? But then why were they searching for someone they’d already found?

He lay there in the dark for a long while. Longer than he could bear. Confused. Broken. Alone. His body wracked with pain. His stomach shrunken into a painful knot, empty and thick with bile. They were dead. All of them, because of him. But why? He didn’t understand. There was no amount of thinking that could make sense of it. No amount of his splintered knowing that could put shape to his thoughts. The Blacksmith’s dark eyes watched him from the gloom, questioning.

You’ll learn how to think, boy.

Cal blinked, and his head ached. All he could think of was their faces. The Old Man. Lokk. Forley. Even Petr. Others watched him, too, staring at him from the shadows. The Innkeep, bushy brows hard as steel. Carel, tears on her dimpled cheeks. The Blacksmith, scar flashing, heavy with the weight of his knowing.

The thinking man lives.

He sobbed, ragged throat rasping, but his tears were dry and gone. The clouds overhead rumbled, thick as smoke, and the night drew on at an interminable crawl. Cal waited, breath shallow with pain. Waiting was all he had left. Waiting for it to end.

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When the door opened, he found he was not afraid. Only relieved. Brothers flooded into the ruined stormtower, masks aflame with torchlight. They needn’t be so many. He didn’t fight them. They lifted him out of the stones without a word, gasping, pain stabbing through his chest, his gut, his head. The ragged jaws of the doorway opened up before him as they carried him out into the night. The ruin around the ruined tower looked very different, now, without the rain. Still. Calm. Little columns of twisting stone stabbed up out of the dirt, crawled with moss and creeping vines, some taller than men, others no larger than a child. Broken, shattered black stone lay through it all, splintered by centuries or something stronger. He saw the glint of the old stormdrinker, half-covered with moss, just as it had been when the Old Man had showed it to him, all those years ago. And he saw the place where the Brothers had brought them. A narrow circle of flattened stone, gleaming in the light of the torches. Empty now, with no bodies to fill it. Nothing but blood on the stones.

Darkness calls.

Cal screwed shut his eyes, head aching. Were they taking him back? To finish the job? He had nothing left to tell them. What use could he be, now?

Darkness answers.

But the Brothers did not stop. They bore him away from the tower, deeper into the maze. Cal squinted into the gloom. There were other shapes, he saw now, amongst the ruined blades of stone. Dark shadows, shifting in the wind, flapping like half-dead birds. Tents? They were making for one of them, larger than the others. Orange light flickered faintly through the open doorway. Cal struggled weakly, now, but the hands held him firm, and the glowing maw opened to take him. He squinted, blind in the light. He felt himself dropped, then pulled to his feet again, arms dragged out behind him, around something hard and jagged. There was rope against his wrists, tightening. He gasped, shoulders wrenched back, broken ribs stabbing at his skin. The glow filled his eyes with water, and his breath burned in his ragged throat.

‘Wait, I-’

But the rope snapped tight around his wrists, binding him firm to the stone. He blinked, squinting. There were footsteps moving on the floor around him, and the Brothers that had brought him disappeared back into the night, tying the tent flap shut behind them.

The wind whispered over the top of the canvas, and the clouds rumbled. His eyes were adjusting. A floor of splintered stone. He was in the middle of the tent, assembled around the pillar of ruined black rock they had bound him to. There was a small table against the wall before him, and a lamp flickered on it, setting shifting shadows racing across the dark canvas. Silence crept in around him. He squirmed, and the rope burned against his wrists. He tried to look back at the pillar, but it was taller than he was, digging into his back with a dozen tiny blades. Why had they moved him? Why had they left him here? He blinked at the lamp, heart thumping in his ears.

‘Where is he?’

He knew that voice. It slid like ice into his blood, chilling him to the bone. Whispers on the dead air. He struggled against the rope, and the stones at his back bit into his skin, sharp as daggers. A shadow drew out into the lamplight, a shadow all in black. The masked face turned to face him, half-hidden in the shadows of its hood.

‘He’s dead.’ Cal whispered. His stomach tied itself in frigid knots, weighing him back against the stones. The Stranger loomed into the light before him, and he forced his eyes away and down, unable to look at it.

Where is he?

Cal blinked. Had he heard that? The whisper slipped into his thoughts, probing, and the lamp flickered.

‘He’s dead.’ Cal pleaded. Anything to stop the whispering. ‘I told you!’

‘Where is he?’

Cal looked up at the Stranger, and the weight in his gut turned to ice. There was something different about it. It was not wood, like the other Brothers, but metal, polished smooth, and darker, somehow, the empty eyes deeper, impenetrable. The lamplight bled around the edge of the black robes, and the shadows of the hood were deep as midnight.

‘I… I don’t understand.’ Cal said, his words rasping against his dry throat. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘We want the old man.’ the voice whispered, filling his ears with ice.

‘But… you killed him.’ Cal pleaded. ‘He’s dead. I saw it.’

‘Darkness calls.’ the Stranger told him. ‘It does not always answer.’

‘I don’t understand! I’ve told you what I know!’ Cal insisted, struggling against his bindings. ‘What do you want from me?’

The Stranger did not reply. Instead, it turned towards the lamp. Cal could see that there was something else on the table, now. Something he hadn’t seen before. Something small and sharp, gleaming darkly in the light of the lamp. A dagger, no longer than a butcher’s hook, viciously curved. There was something on the blade, something written in the steel. Cal felt his blood run cold, but heat rose up to meet it, furious and flaming.

‘You bastard.’ Cal snarled, writhing against the rock. ‘You killed him! You killed all of them!’

The mask did not turn. Cal tore at his shoulders, but the rope held firm about his wrists. His head ached. His body burned. The candlelight surged around the edge of black robes, and shadows spun wildly across the canvas. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled, and the wind howled over the top of the tent.

‘I’ll kill you!’

The Stranger turned to face him. Shadows clung to the black, frozen mask, and dead eyes stared back at him, empty.

‘You are nothing. You are no one.’ it told him, and its voice cut at his thoughts, driving him back into the stones.

‘The Darkness will take you. He will be next.’

The blank eyes bored into his soul, and he flinched away, slumping against the pillar. His jaw went slack. The Stranger turned away. Moving, reaching. For the table. For the dagger. There was whispering on the air, a new kind, rising over the wind. A gale raged over the tent, tearing at the canvas, but the whispering filled Cal’s ears, singing in his blood. His head ached. His body burned. Lokk stared at him, wide-eyed, choking on blood.

I don’t understand…

The Stranger was reaching for the blade, brushing gloved fingers against the dark hilt. Whispering. Words he did not know. Made of rot and disease and death. The Old Man was watching him, gold eyes gleaming.

Look.

The lamplight surged and spun, clawing at the shadows, and the whispers roared like thunder in his ears. The Stranger did not turn. Cal tore at his wrists, snarling, grinding his teeth, pain filling his ears with fire. The Blacksmith stared back at him over the flames, scarred cheek flashing.

Remember our word.

Then the rope caught something on the pillar. Something jagged. Sharp as glass. Cal blinked. He pulled, and it fell from his wrists, sliced clean away. He froze. The whispers faded into the quiet, and the wind whimpered. There was a stone in the dirt at his feet, big as a brick. Just another stone. Another piece of ruin in a ruined place.

Strike first. Strike last.

‘Darkness calls.’ the Stranger hissed, back still to him, holding the dagger out over the lamp. The silver blade whispered, and the writing flowed red over the flame, coming alive in its hand.

‘Darkness answers.’ Cal replied, and slammed the stone into the back of its hood.