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Synopsis
'Brilliant: smoothly-written, engaging, fascinating' Conn Iggulden, author of the bestselling War of the Roses series
Three lands. Each ruled in different ways by a decadent immortal elite for their own pleasure and power. They know nothing of each other. But there is a fourth, vast land of mortals. Led by black-eyed priests, the tribes have put aside centuries of hate to unite under the prophecy of 'the One': a child saviour who is neither boy nor girl. Now they are finally ready to conquer the whole world... and wipe the immortals out.
Yet in each of those other worlds there are some who will resist, even unto a final death.
Luck, a malformed god of the Northmen, desperate to give up a drug that shows him the whole world clearly, even as it destroys his will to fight for it. Ferros, a brilliant warrior recently made immortal, torn between new and old loyalties and loves. Atisha, mother of 'the One', determined to defeat all plans that have been made for her child.
Among battles on sea and land, the fall of empires and the rise of the Mortals, will come the Triumph of the One.
But will it be a final darkness? Or is there someone who can still save the light?
Release date: September 17, 2020
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Print pages: 352
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
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The Coming of the Dark
Chris Humphreys
Anazat’s reply:
My lord Makron,
Between the Horse Lords’ skills and courage as warriors and your intelligence I am confident that the southern invasion will happen as planned.
You asked for information. The preparations in the north for the invasion of Midgarth are almost complete. As you know, over the years we have seriously weakened them by sending assassins over the mountains and killing a number of their immortals. We have two of their so-called gods in our thrall: Peki Asarko, a despicable yet powerful leader, Lord of the Lake of Souls. He is still in Midgarth, undermining it; while I have their sole truly dangerous god, Luck of Askaug, as a prisoner in the Keep. He came seeking knowledge of us, and is certainly getting it. Both these Midgarthians are now slaves to the drug, Sirene. They journey with her when I allow them, and are sinking further into her embrace by the day. Soon they will be helpless to do anything other than obey our will.
There are gods in Midgarth who are still formidable warriors. Their names are Hovard, Bjorn Swiftsword, Stromvar Dragon Lord and perhaps the cleverest of them all, Freya. Still, they do not know the size of the fleet we are assembling. The Seafarers will launch the northern invasion, as you launch yours, when the two moons meet in the sky on what we in Saghaz-a call the Entwining.
You ask also of the One. There we have true joy. The baby that is neither boy nor girl but both was indeed born, as prophesied to us, in that far-off, savage island of Ometepe. My spies there report this: the child’s father, Intitepe – their ruler and god and the only immortal male in that land, because he has slain all the others – tried to murder the child because of a prophecy that said that just as he killed his father, and his seven sons, so a son of his would one day kill him. He failed, for the mother, Atisha, was sent in error first to the City of Women in the south of the country. There revolt against his tyranny exploded. He is now dealing with a country in flames, and we will not be troubled by him again.
Meanwhile mother and child have been rescued by Korshak, Horse Lord, and by Gistrane, Huntress. They are bringing the One to us by speedy vessel, reaching us before the invasions commence.
So the time is near, brother. When the two moons marry again in the sky, then will come the end of the dominion of the immortal and the beginning of the dominion of man. Every man and woman of the Four Tribes, together with devotees like yourself, in every other land, will conquer the world – united under the banner of the child born to bring us into the light.
Praise her! Praise him! Praise the One!
1
Resurrection
Four weeks earlier, in the city of Corinthium …
She woke with grave dirt in her mouth and a dead man’s arm across her chest.
Crying out, Lara swallowed soil. Choked, spat, took in more with a desperate breath, spat again. She was in complete darkness, with the stench of death, putrid and gamy, filling her nostrils as much as the earth did, and the weight of both pressing her from all sides. It told her she was not alone in the dark. That part of what pinned her was a body. That perhaps there was more than one.
Though she’d never been a worshipper, she knew the stories of the afterlife, its joys and its horrors. Simbala ruled Death, and she was known to be a capricious god, assigning some to happiness, some to eternal terror. It was clear that her failure to worship had condemned her to that second fate – to rot for ever in this fetid darkness. She had sought immortality and found it only in a living grave.
Lara wept. She screamed, but her tears and cries were swallowed in mud. She began to move all her limbs at once, arms and legs shifting the earth that encased her, fingers and toes clawing it aside. But any gap she made, where breath came easier for a moment, was soon filled, and earth closed round her again. The other bodies – two, she was sure of that now – came and went as if drowning in a sea beside her, seeking to pull her down with them ever deeper into the fathomless dark. Movement did nothing, changed nothing. Screams went unheard, prayers unanswered. Gradually she stilled, until her only movement was the sobbing and tears and snot that would not cease, and the breaths she somehow managed to take to stay alive.
Alive.
It was the thought-word that stopped her. Why was eternal death her only option? What if there was something else? She realised that there already was – because the bodies beside her, her grave companions, were just that … bodies, only moving when her movements made them. They did not claw, scream, weep as she did. She explored them with one hand. One was a man, one a woman. The man had an … irregular face. It took her a while to remember the youth who’d stood beside her at Simbala’s altar with half his face eaten away by disease. This was him beside her. The woman, then, had to be the old one who’d sought immortality to stay with her younger lover.
So there were differences in this pit, between the sentient and the senseless dead. And in difference, surely, surely, Lara thought, there must be choice?
She forced a hand up to her mouth, began to slowly push the earth aside. It was crumbly, but she was able to form it when she spat on it, moulding a tiny cave for herself where breath came a little easier. With breath came … not rest, the panic and terror were there, a collapse of earth away – but at least the ability to think for more than a few seconds at a time, to wonder …
What if I am not dead? And whoever buried me thought that I was?
She thought back. The last thing she remembered before waking here … was the dagger slash that took her life. Back in that cave in Corinthium, where Carellia had brought her for the ritual of the suicide cult of Simbala. She had offered her throat … to the woman behind the mask, who she had thought was her friend but had been replaced by her enemy. By Roxanna, the immortal. She did not understand how Roxanna had transformed into Carellia in the ceremony. She did understand why she’d done it. For Roxanna was her rival for the love of a man, her man. Ferros.
And now she believes that she has succeeded, Lara thought. Fury seized her, cold as any grave. With fury came clarity and then the realisation that she did now have a choice: accept this fate, this living death. Or choose another.
She was buried. She could not know how deep in the ground. She could only know that somewhere above her was a surface. And while she had even this little breath, she could climb up to that.
The first task was to discover which way was up.
The only thing that could still move, other than her limbs, was her mouth. She couldn’t see but she could feel. The pressure in her head made her guess that she was facing downwards but since being killed no doubt made everything different, she had to be sure. So she used her lips to gather some of the clay-like mud before her, took it in, rolled it into a ball with her spit, forced both hands up to cup around her mouth and pushed the ball out with her tongue. It landed on her left little finger. Tried it again. Same result.
As far as she could tell then, she was lying on her left side, facing down. So the surface was behind her, to her right. She could not know how far. She could only try to reach it.
It took a while to turn herself over. When she was on her back, sure she was facing upwards, she began to dig beneath her with her heels and above with her hands, forcing the earth away. Slowly, so slowly she thought she barely moved, she got herself nearly turned and pointing up. Then, as slowly, she forced her arms above her and began to part the earth over her head.
It took another age. Again and again she stopped, certain she had no strength left to continue. Did continue, she knew not how long. Time had no meaning in a grave. She kept going and at some point the earth changed, loosened, became drier, less like clay, more crumbly. With a burst of energy she felt might be her last she began to claw her way up, faster, her legs scissoring beneath her as if she were swimming. Until there was a lighter type of darkness.
Until Lara burst from her grave.
She lay on the surface, sobbing. It took her a while to notice anything other than that she was free. Gradually, her senses returned. She felt the cold of lying on the wet earth, made wetter and colder by the rain that fell. She was still clothed in what she’d worn for the ceremony, a light dress that gave little protection. Though it was deep night, she could see where she was by torches mounted in small guard turrets on a tall wall about sixty paces away – the land wall of Corinthium. So she was lying on ground outside the city. She did not know who had taken her there, or why. Whether it was the cult itself, getting rid of its failures, or the authorities ridding the city of heretics and criminals. She was both, now. She was also alive – and that was the greatest puzzle of all.
She sat up, touched her throat. The last thing she remembered from the ceremony was the dagger being slashed down … by Roxanna, the immortal, who had somehow taken the place of Lara’s friend, Carellia. She remembered the eyes glittering in triumph beneath the mask, just before the agony of steel opening her throat, and the death that followed it. Yet she had not died – and the skin that she touched now was not a gaping wound, but one that was … healing.
Lara’s eyes shot wide open. She brought both hands up to her mouth and gasped. Everything else – the cold rain, the taste of earth in her mouth, her ceaseless shuddering – all disappeared, shoved aside by the power of a new truth.
She was immortal! The suicide cult, that had produced only three immortals since the founding of the city, had now produced a fourth.
Her.
It was wonderful. It was terrible. Her life was over. And she would live for ever.
When her racking sobs finally ceased, she became aware that, immortal or not, she was cold, starving, exhausted. She needed shelter, water, food.
There were lighted windows facing the city walls; people who could not squeeze their way into Corinthium but wanted to live close to it had set up clusters of shacks. Forcing herself to her feet, Lara staggered towards the mortals.
Four days later …
‘Tomko?’
Lara turned to the man who’d called. ‘Sir?’
The head groom, Petros, threw her a curry comb. ‘Give Serrana a good going over.’ He leaned and spat into a pile of straw. ‘It’s the fucking queen who’s riding ’er, so you better make her fucking beautiful, or you’ll fucking catch it.’
‘Sir,’ Lara said again, and went to the stall where the tawpan mare waited. Gentling her with clicks in the throat, she slipped a bridle over her head and led her out into the yard and over into a patch of sunlight. The rains had finally ceased, and a winter sun returned. Sheltered by its walls from the chill easterly winds, the sunny side of the yard was almost hot. Though Lara had found that, having experienced the coldness of a grave, nothing kept her warm for long.
Exercise helped, and she went hard at Serrana’s long and luxuriant coat. The mare loved it, while Lara had always loved horses and the care of them. For the first few moments of the combing, she could lose herself in the scent and the feel. Imagine herself back in Balbek, preparing her own mare, Saipha, for a morning ride. Think of herself as she’d been, when she’d been both mortal and happy. When she’d had only one purpose – to be with and to please her man. Before her purpose had become to kill the woman who had stolen that man and had tried to kill her … no, had succeeded in killing her. The mortal her.
The thought made her cease combing and Serrana’s eyelashes unfolded, her look plainly saying don’t stop. She began again, though less vigorously than before. She was distracted, first by her thoughts – and then by the open window above her. For through it she now heard voices – one of which was his.
Ferros.
She’d first heard it the day before, soon after she’d bluffed her way into the stables of the Sanctum by the luck of claiming and calming a runaway horse which had escaped from the yard, and dashed past her shortly after she’d taken up position on the street outside its gates. She’d recognised fortune’s touch, and seized it, throwing herself across the horse bareback when it slowed near a broken wagon, calming it with gentle touches of the bridle, her thigh, her soft words. Petros, the head groom, had been impressed with ‘the lad’, Tomko – for Lara had borrowed boy’s clothing from the first people who’d sheltered her outside Corinthium’s walls, and decided it was safer to remain as one. When she’d told him she was an orphan looking for a job, and had nowhere to live, he’d taken pity on her, taken her on, and in. For all his gruffness and foul language he was a kind man, who’d lost his own young son to the sea three years before.
When she’d first heard Ferros in that room above, she’d yearned to run straight into his arms. For he was weeping, something she’d not witnessed in her tough soldier in their five years together. Laughter always, tears never. And she knew, because she could hear her name cried out, that he wept for her, for her death, knew she could take that misery away by going to him and saying, ‘I live, love. More. I live, like you, for ever.’ But as she’d tried to figure out a way from the stables up into that room, into his arms, she’d heard her voice, ‘the fucking queen’s’ as Petros had just called her. Heard her comforting, sensed her taking Ferros into her arms, holding him, consoling him. Loving him. The immortal who’d killed her. The immortal who she’d vowed to kill.
So she’d stopped herself. For one, she knew that she was not a killer, did not know the way of it. Not yet. While she had directly experienced that Roxanna was gifted in those skills. But even more limiting than that was her ignorance of immortality. How could she kill someone who could not die? Who would be born again, even as she herself had been born again, birthed from a grave? Who had also instantly taken the place of her friend in the suicide ceremony by some act of dark magic? Roxanna was more than an immortal. She was a witch. So Lara had taken a breath, returned to her duties, swallowed her yearning. For now. She needed to free herself from ignorance before she acted. How, she did not know. But she assumed that since Simbala had chosen her – for Lara now believed in the gods as she never truly had before – that the goddess would continue to place opportunities before her, just as she had with the runaway horse.
Besides – and this was also a true and real thing – Ferros had betrayed her with this fucking queen. She knew, she could sense it, she could smell his betrayal through the window, its scent in her nostrils stronger than the mare’s that she combed.
It was no longer a question of taking him back. It was not simply about revenge. He must earn his right to be with her with more than his tears, prove that it was her that he chose, above any other. Vengeance needed to wait for that. Wait for opportunity and a further blessing of the goddess.
Which came, even on the thought – on the opening of the door from the palace into the yard. Came on a voice she recognised, the first voice she and Ferros had heard in the city when they’d stepped onto the dock from the ship that had brought them from Balbek, six weeks before.
‘Petros? Petros?’ The voice of a man, high-pitched. ‘They have closed the Heaven Road for winds. And I must be in Sevrapol in two hours.’
‘A palanquin, Lord Streone?’ enquired Petros, emerging from the stables, rubbing his hands on a cloth.
‘Of course! Immediately. And your twelve strongest bearers. None of those limping dullards you fobbed me off with last week.’
Lara looked at the man, remembered him, though she and Ferros had not been sure that he was ‘him’ at all, such was the amount of make-up he’d worn, his high voice, and the multi-coloured fabrics that had swathed his vast body. Later Ferros had told her, in their room above the tavern, that Streone was indeed a man, a famous actor, poet and singer and something more than that: the Innovator of the Great Spectacles, producer of the huge celebrations, or pageants, staged throughout the year, but especially at last week’s feast of Simbala.
Then Ferros had told her something else – that Streone was also one of the immortal elite. So she realised, as she continued making the mare’s coat glossy and smooth while the palanquin was readied, that Streone would have all the knowledge she required. All she had to do was find a way to make him tell her … everything.
When his vehicle was ready, Streone slipped into its cushioned, silk-walled interior, and twelve hefty men, three on each corner pole, bent and lifted. As it was carried from the yard, Lara led Serrana back to her stall. Petros would want her to ready the mare for riding. But he would just have to do that himself.
Quietly, Lara slipped through the gates.
It was easy enough to hang back and follow the palanquin. Though the streets were quiet on Agueros, the highest hill of the city, because only immortals and those who tended them lived upon it, each hill below got ever more crowded. The main street that was the spine of the city, the Stradun, was three palanquins wide, and well paved. She’d heard that ancient regulations demanded that it be kept clear, for the rapid movement of the elites through Corinthium. But if those laws had ever been observed it was a long time past. As more and more people came to live in the city, all space was colonised. Market stalls were set up before almost every shop front and people milled before them, while carts and wagons brought goods to service them. All traffic slowed and often blocked the way. The red banner at the crown of the vehicle’s silk roof was meant to guarantee swift passage. But people found ways of ignoring it until they were forced aside by bellows from the palanquin’s leader at the head of the left pole, or by blows from the baton he carried. It was why, one hundred years before, the elites had created the Heaven Road. They could cruise above the people, and mock them from on high.
Lara followed close, concealment unnecessary. She was just another street kid, an orphan of the city, of which there were many. Though if they knew who she was … she’d heard her name called out many times at crossroads in the three days since her resurrection. The suicide cults were ruthlessly persecuted, and the names of any of those who’d killed themselves proclaimed and reviled. Leaders of the group had been executed and their bodies hung by their heels, dripping blood, on government office walls. She’d wondered if her friend, Carellia the whore, was one of them. Except it wasn’t Carellia who had slit her throat, it was Roxanna. This Lara knew. It was something she would never forget – the eyes glittering triumphant beneath the mask as the dagger slashed down. For now that memory was only horror. To make it something else she needed answers. Answers that could be provided by the man in the palanquin.
It took almost two hours to reach their destination, the fourth hill of Corinthium and so about the midpoint between Agueros and the harbour. Because of its centrality, Sevrapol had become known for entertainment, and people would come from all over the city to partake in its delights, which ranged from the classical plays that were performed in the elegant theatres that lined this part of the Stradun – no stalls before their gilded entranceways – to less refined activities in the alleys that wound off on every side. In those every appetite was catered for – taverns, ox-roast halls, cockpits and dog pits for the fighting of those creatures and the wagering upon them. Bawdy ballads were sung, and clothes stripped slowly off, in houses beside brothels. Everywhere wine and ale flowed, with men and women shouting their competing wares, luring fresh customers. She and Ferros had walked up there once in their first week in the city and clung to each other, wide-eyed provincial folk stunned by the sensual assault of the place.
But that was then – and this is now, thought Lara, stepping into a shuttered shop’s doorway, as the palanquin halted before one of those marble-columned theatre fronts and was finally set down. Now she was not intimidated at all by the noise and the hustle. Dying will do that to you, she thought, chewing her lower lip.
She couldn’t hear what Streone said to the head poleman. Wait, she assumed, as the bearers all bowed then moved away in twos and threes in search of refreshment. Streone went off alone – not, she was surprised to see, into the plush theatre. Instead, he pulled his scarf in front of his face, a hood over his head, and entered one of the alleys.
She hurried to catch up, saw him as he turned the first corner ahead. She hadn’t noticed before, in her one swift glance in the stable yard, but the Great Innovator was not dressed in the peacock finery of their very first encounter. When she and Ferros had met him on the docks, they’d had that doubt as to his gender. There was no question he was a man here, shod in sturdy boots and with a rough-woven cloak covering basic breeches and jacket. When she’d caught up, was just five paces behind him, he turned. Before she stepped into a doorway she saw that he also sported none of the face paint he’d worn then.
Just as well for him, she thought, as she noted the alley’s inhabitants. The deeper into Sevrapol they got, the narrower the way became; the darker too, with house roofs almost conjoined above, blocking out the sky. Hard-faced men watched her a little longer as she passed, gauging. Cries came from open doorways. Some were faked pleasure, some fear, some drunken laughter. She avoided the eyes of the men that stared at her, clutched the dagger at her waist a little harder. Prayed that she would not be forced to use it, since she did not truly know how.
Streone halted before a plain brown door and looked each way up the alley before knocking. What are you about, she wondered, as she shifted to the other side of the alley so she could see both man and door. A hatch opened in it, she glimpsed a mouth, shaping words. Streone murmured a reply, the door opened, and he slipped inside.
Lara crossed the alley, pressed the door. It was locked. She didn’t knock – Streone must have spoken some kind of password that she couldn’t know. But she also couldn’t stay where she was and wait for him. She’d noticed one man in a doorway further down, with the sallow complexion of a drinker and hunger in eyes that he kept on her. As he moved towards her, she slipped into another alley to her right, even darker than the one she’d left. Its wall was part of the same house that Streone had gone into and it ran down to yet another alley that had to be the house’s rear. She took it, even as she heard footsteps behind her, praying that it wasn’t a dead end, that she wouldn’t be trapped.
It was … but she wasn’t. There was a heap of broken furniture and wooden crates against the wall, beneath a window ledge. Without even considering it, she scrambled up the pile, stretched, leaped. Her fingers gripped the ledge, as the pile gave way. But she held on, pulled herself up and through the window which, miraculously, was open. She saw that she was in a bedroom, unoccupied, but lamplit and reeking of cheap scent. As she lowered herself to the floor she heard a slurred curse through the open window.
She waited. In the alley, the man muttered, moved away. Ahead, the door of the bedroom was ajar, and through it she heard voices. One was high-pitched. She recognised it. So, creeping forward, she put her hand to the door frame and listened.
‘All is ready?’ Streone asked.
The voice that answered was deeper, gentle; a man, well spoken. ‘All, Lord Streone.’
‘And has he …’ there was a hesitation. ‘Has he said anything to you about what … about what must be done now?’
‘Nothing, lord. Why would he speak to me? It’s you he wants.’
This was not said gently. Streone coughed. ‘Very well,’ he said more firmly. ‘Leave me. Wait elsewhere. I will begin.’
‘Lord.’
Someone came out of the room on the floor below. Lara slipped back into the shadows behind the door, looking about for a place to hide in case this was the man’s destination. But she heard him go the other way. When another door closed somewhere below, she stepped out, and softly descended the stairs to the lower landing.
There were two doors there, one fully open and giving onto another scented bedroom, also empty and draped, like the one above, in gaudy silks, with a basin and jug on a stand. Though she had never been in one she had a sense that she was standing in a brothel. The second door was old, with frayed wood and peeling paint. The man who’d left had pulled it closed but, warped as it was, it had not fully shut.
She bent to listen at the gap, heard Streone sigh deeply. Something came into her nostrils, an acrid smoke that made her gag.
Though her every instinct made her want to turn away, she knew she could not. Answers lay within the room. Slowly, she pushed the door open enough to thrust her head in.
Streone was sitting in one corner, facing into it and partly away from her. Before him, on a stand that in the other room would have held a jug and basin, Lara could see a glass globe the size of a small watermelon. Smoke swirled within it, smoke which, even as she watched, cleared – and a man’s head appeared. A man with a beard, long hair, deep-set eyes. She raised her hand to her mouth to contain her gasp – what witchcraft was this? – as the man within the smoke spoke.
‘Streone,’ he said.
‘Makron.’
‘All is well?’
‘All is not well.’ Streone’s voice rose higher in complaint. ‘I do not like this place you force me to come to. It is,’ he shuddered, ‘filthy.’
‘I told you before – a globe must never be used in the Sanctum. Lucan has too many eyes and ears there. He must never know we can talk like this.’
‘But you also promised that if I came here, today there would be more … more of this.’ Streone picked up a glass vial, turned it upside down. ‘But this is the last of it.’
‘I sent more. But my first vessel was attacked by the pirates of Omersh and had to turn back to Cuerdocia.’ Full, sensual lips shaped a smile. ‘I cannot control pirates, Streone.’
‘Nevertheless—’
‘More is on the way. I have sent it in three separate ships. Perhaps all will arrive at once and you will have … plenty.’ As Streone went to complain again, the man barked, ‘Enough!’ and then continued, ‘Now tell me of the Sanctum.’
Lara shifted slightly, so she could see more of Streone’s face as well as the other man’s. There was something hypnotic about that other. He lulled her. She accepted what was plainly dark magic: a man speaking within a globe of smoke. She also knew she would never want to look into that man’s eyes for long.
‘Someone has come. A new-birthed immortal. Lucan and his daughter are very excited by him. They say he is special. To me he seems just another rough soldier—’
‘The cavalryman of Balbek? I have heard of him. Why are they so excited?’
‘They think he is the one foretold.’
‘Foretold to do what?’
Streone cleared his throat. ‘Uh hum. To deal with you, Makron.’
‘Deal with me?’ The man laughed. ‘He would have to be very special indeed.’ He nodded. ‘What else?’
‘He came with a wife.’ Lara leaned closer as Streone continued, ‘But she joined a suicide cult.’
Makron frowned. ‘That seems strange. Besides, I thought they were long suppressed.’
‘They were. But they spring up. The ceremony was discovered, all participants killed—’
‘Wait!’ The man in the globe stared above Streone, raised a hand, rubbed either side of his beard. ‘Roxanna did this.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There are no coincidences. Roxanna would have wished to get rid of this wife. She only knows one way of controlling a man. Seducing him. Bewitching him. A rival would prevent that.’
‘As you would know, lord.’
The sunken gaze returned to Streone. No trace of a smile . . .
My lord Makron,
Between the Horse Lords’ skills and courage as warriors and your intelligence I am confident that the southern invasion will happen as planned.
You asked for information. The preparations in the north for the invasion of Midgarth are almost complete. As you know, over the years we have seriously weakened them by sending assassins over the mountains and killing a number of their immortals. We have two of their so-called gods in our thrall: Peki Asarko, a despicable yet powerful leader, Lord of the Lake of Souls. He is still in Midgarth, undermining it; while I have their sole truly dangerous god, Luck of Askaug, as a prisoner in the Keep. He came seeking knowledge of us, and is certainly getting it. Both these Midgarthians are now slaves to the drug, Sirene. They journey with her when I allow them, and are sinking further into her embrace by the day. Soon they will be helpless to do anything other than obey our will.
There are gods in Midgarth who are still formidable warriors. Their names are Hovard, Bjorn Swiftsword, Stromvar Dragon Lord and perhaps the cleverest of them all, Freya. Still, they do not know the size of the fleet we are assembling. The Seafarers will launch the northern invasion, as you launch yours, when the two moons meet in the sky on what we in Saghaz-a call the Entwining.
You ask also of the One. There we have true joy. The baby that is neither boy nor girl but both was indeed born, as prophesied to us, in that far-off, savage island of Ometepe. My spies there report this: the child’s father, Intitepe – their ruler and god and the only immortal male in that land, because he has slain all the others – tried to murder the child because of a prophecy that said that just as he killed his father, and his seven sons, so a son of his would one day kill him. He failed, for the mother, Atisha, was sent in error first to the City of Women in the south of the country. There revolt against his tyranny exploded. He is now dealing with a country in flames, and we will not be troubled by him again.
Meanwhile mother and child have been rescued by Korshak, Horse Lord, and by Gistrane, Huntress. They are bringing the One to us by speedy vessel, reaching us before the invasions commence.
So the time is near, brother. When the two moons marry again in the sky, then will come the end of the dominion of the immortal and the beginning of the dominion of man. Every man and woman of the Four Tribes, together with devotees like yourself, in every other land, will conquer the world – united under the banner of the child born to bring us into the light.
Praise her! Praise him! Praise the One!
1
Resurrection
Four weeks earlier, in the city of Corinthium …
She woke with grave dirt in her mouth and a dead man’s arm across her chest.
Crying out, Lara swallowed soil. Choked, spat, took in more with a desperate breath, spat again. She was in complete darkness, with the stench of death, putrid and gamy, filling her nostrils as much as the earth did, and the weight of both pressing her from all sides. It told her she was not alone in the dark. That part of what pinned her was a body. That perhaps there was more than one.
Though she’d never been a worshipper, she knew the stories of the afterlife, its joys and its horrors. Simbala ruled Death, and she was known to be a capricious god, assigning some to happiness, some to eternal terror. It was clear that her failure to worship had condemned her to that second fate – to rot for ever in this fetid darkness. She had sought immortality and found it only in a living grave.
Lara wept. She screamed, but her tears and cries were swallowed in mud. She began to move all her limbs at once, arms and legs shifting the earth that encased her, fingers and toes clawing it aside. But any gap she made, where breath came easier for a moment, was soon filled, and earth closed round her again. The other bodies – two, she was sure of that now – came and went as if drowning in a sea beside her, seeking to pull her down with them ever deeper into the fathomless dark. Movement did nothing, changed nothing. Screams went unheard, prayers unanswered. Gradually she stilled, until her only movement was the sobbing and tears and snot that would not cease, and the breaths she somehow managed to take to stay alive.
Alive.
It was the thought-word that stopped her. Why was eternal death her only option? What if there was something else? She realised that there already was – because the bodies beside her, her grave companions, were just that … bodies, only moving when her movements made them. They did not claw, scream, weep as she did. She explored them with one hand. One was a man, one a woman. The man had an … irregular face. It took her a while to remember the youth who’d stood beside her at Simbala’s altar with half his face eaten away by disease. This was him beside her. The woman, then, had to be the old one who’d sought immortality to stay with her younger lover.
So there were differences in this pit, between the sentient and the senseless dead. And in difference, surely, surely, Lara thought, there must be choice?
She forced a hand up to her mouth, began to slowly push the earth aside. It was crumbly, but she was able to form it when she spat on it, moulding a tiny cave for herself where breath came a little easier. With breath came … not rest, the panic and terror were there, a collapse of earth away – but at least the ability to think for more than a few seconds at a time, to wonder …
What if I am not dead? And whoever buried me thought that I was?
She thought back. The last thing she remembered before waking here … was the dagger slash that took her life. Back in that cave in Corinthium, where Carellia had brought her for the ritual of the suicide cult of Simbala. She had offered her throat … to the woman behind the mask, who she had thought was her friend but had been replaced by her enemy. By Roxanna, the immortal. She did not understand how Roxanna had transformed into Carellia in the ceremony. She did understand why she’d done it. For Roxanna was her rival for the love of a man, her man. Ferros.
And now she believes that she has succeeded, Lara thought. Fury seized her, cold as any grave. With fury came clarity and then the realisation that she did now have a choice: accept this fate, this living death. Or choose another.
She was buried. She could not know how deep in the ground. She could only know that somewhere above her was a surface. And while she had even this little breath, she could climb up to that.
The first task was to discover which way was up.
The only thing that could still move, other than her limbs, was her mouth. She couldn’t see but she could feel. The pressure in her head made her guess that she was facing downwards but since being killed no doubt made everything different, she had to be sure. So she used her lips to gather some of the clay-like mud before her, took it in, rolled it into a ball with her spit, forced both hands up to cup around her mouth and pushed the ball out with her tongue. It landed on her left little finger. Tried it again. Same result.
As far as she could tell then, she was lying on her left side, facing down. So the surface was behind her, to her right. She could not know how far. She could only try to reach it.
It took a while to turn herself over. When she was on her back, sure she was facing upwards, she began to dig beneath her with her heels and above with her hands, forcing the earth away. Slowly, so slowly she thought she barely moved, she got herself nearly turned and pointing up. Then, as slowly, she forced her arms above her and began to part the earth over her head.
It took another age. Again and again she stopped, certain she had no strength left to continue. Did continue, she knew not how long. Time had no meaning in a grave. She kept going and at some point the earth changed, loosened, became drier, less like clay, more crumbly. With a burst of energy she felt might be her last she began to claw her way up, faster, her legs scissoring beneath her as if she were swimming. Until there was a lighter type of darkness.
Until Lara burst from her grave.
She lay on the surface, sobbing. It took her a while to notice anything other than that she was free. Gradually, her senses returned. She felt the cold of lying on the wet earth, made wetter and colder by the rain that fell. She was still clothed in what she’d worn for the ceremony, a light dress that gave little protection. Though it was deep night, she could see where she was by torches mounted in small guard turrets on a tall wall about sixty paces away – the land wall of Corinthium. So she was lying on ground outside the city. She did not know who had taken her there, or why. Whether it was the cult itself, getting rid of its failures, or the authorities ridding the city of heretics and criminals. She was both, now. She was also alive – and that was the greatest puzzle of all.
She sat up, touched her throat. The last thing she remembered from the ceremony was the dagger being slashed down … by Roxanna, the immortal, who had somehow taken the place of Lara’s friend, Carellia. She remembered the eyes glittering in triumph beneath the mask, just before the agony of steel opening her throat, and the death that followed it. Yet she had not died – and the skin that she touched now was not a gaping wound, but one that was … healing.
Lara’s eyes shot wide open. She brought both hands up to her mouth and gasped. Everything else – the cold rain, the taste of earth in her mouth, her ceaseless shuddering – all disappeared, shoved aside by the power of a new truth.
She was immortal! The suicide cult, that had produced only three immortals since the founding of the city, had now produced a fourth.
Her.
It was wonderful. It was terrible. Her life was over. And she would live for ever.
When her racking sobs finally ceased, she became aware that, immortal or not, she was cold, starving, exhausted. She needed shelter, water, food.
There were lighted windows facing the city walls; people who could not squeeze their way into Corinthium but wanted to live close to it had set up clusters of shacks. Forcing herself to her feet, Lara staggered towards the mortals.
Four days later …
‘Tomko?’
Lara turned to the man who’d called. ‘Sir?’
The head groom, Petros, threw her a curry comb. ‘Give Serrana a good going over.’ He leaned and spat into a pile of straw. ‘It’s the fucking queen who’s riding ’er, so you better make her fucking beautiful, or you’ll fucking catch it.’
‘Sir,’ Lara said again, and went to the stall where the tawpan mare waited. Gentling her with clicks in the throat, she slipped a bridle over her head and led her out into the yard and over into a patch of sunlight. The rains had finally ceased, and a winter sun returned. Sheltered by its walls from the chill easterly winds, the sunny side of the yard was almost hot. Though Lara had found that, having experienced the coldness of a grave, nothing kept her warm for long.
Exercise helped, and she went hard at Serrana’s long and luxuriant coat. The mare loved it, while Lara had always loved horses and the care of them. For the first few moments of the combing, she could lose herself in the scent and the feel. Imagine herself back in Balbek, preparing her own mare, Saipha, for a morning ride. Think of herself as she’d been, when she’d been both mortal and happy. When she’d had only one purpose – to be with and to please her man. Before her purpose had become to kill the woman who had stolen that man and had tried to kill her … no, had succeeded in killing her. The mortal her.
The thought made her cease combing and Serrana’s eyelashes unfolded, her look plainly saying don’t stop. She began again, though less vigorously than before. She was distracted, first by her thoughts – and then by the open window above her. For through it she now heard voices – one of which was his.
Ferros.
She’d first heard it the day before, soon after she’d bluffed her way into the stables of the Sanctum by the luck of claiming and calming a runaway horse which had escaped from the yard, and dashed past her shortly after she’d taken up position on the street outside its gates. She’d recognised fortune’s touch, and seized it, throwing herself across the horse bareback when it slowed near a broken wagon, calming it with gentle touches of the bridle, her thigh, her soft words. Petros, the head groom, had been impressed with ‘the lad’, Tomko – for Lara had borrowed boy’s clothing from the first people who’d sheltered her outside Corinthium’s walls, and decided it was safer to remain as one. When she’d told him she was an orphan looking for a job, and had nowhere to live, he’d taken pity on her, taken her on, and in. For all his gruffness and foul language he was a kind man, who’d lost his own young son to the sea three years before.
When she’d first heard Ferros in that room above, she’d yearned to run straight into his arms. For he was weeping, something she’d not witnessed in her tough soldier in their five years together. Laughter always, tears never. And she knew, because she could hear her name cried out, that he wept for her, for her death, knew she could take that misery away by going to him and saying, ‘I live, love. More. I live, like you, for ever.’ But as she’d tried to figure out a way from the stables up into that room, into his arms, she’d heard her voice, ‘the fucking queen’s’ as Petros had just called her. Heard her comforting, sensed her taking Ferros into her arms, holding him, consoling him. Loving him. The immortal who’d killed her. The immortal who she’d vowed to kill.
So she’d stopped herself. For one, she knew that she was not a killer, did not know the way of it. Not yet. While she had directly experienced that Roxanna was gifted in those skills. But even more limiting than that was her ignorance of immortality. How could she kill someone who could not die? Who would be born again, even as she herself had been born again, birthed from a grave? Who had also instantly taken the place of her friend in the suicide ceremony by some act of dark magic? Roxanna was more than an immortal. She was a witch. So Lara had taken a breath, returned to her duties, swallowed her yearning. For now. She needed to free herself from ignorance before she acted. How, she did not know. But she assumed that since Simbala had chosen her – for Lara now believed in the gods as she never truly had before – that the goddess would continue to place opportunities before her, just as she had with the runaway horse.
Besides – and this was also a true and real thing – Ferros had betrayed her with this fucking queen. She knew, she could sense it, she could smell his betrayal through the window, its scent in her nostrils stronger than the mare’s that she combed.
It was no longer a question of taking him back. It was not simply about revenge. He must earn his right to be with her with more than his tears, prove that it was her that he chose, above any other. Vengeance needed to wait for that. Wait for opportunity and a further blessing of the goddess.
Which came, even on the thought – on the opening of the door from the palace into the yard. Came on a voice she recognised, the first voice she and Ferros had heard in the city when they’d stepped onto the dock from the ship that had brought them from Balbek, six weeks before.
‘Petros? Petros?’ The voice of a man, high-pitched. ‘They have closed the Heaven Road for winds. And I must be in Sevrapol in two hours.’
‘A palanquin, Lord Streone?’ enquired Petros, emerging from the stables, rubbing his hands on a cloth.
‘Of course! Immediately. And your twelve strongest bearers. None of those limping dullards you fobbed me off with last week.’
Lara looked at the man, remembered him, though she and Ferros had not been sure that he was ‘him’ at all, such was the amount of make-up he’d worn, his high voice, and the multi-coloured fabrics that had swathed his vast body. Later Ferros had told her, in their room above the tavern, that Streone was indeed a man, a famous actor, poet and singer and something more than that: the Innovator of the Great Spectacles, producer of the huge celebrations, or pageants, staged throughout the year, but especially at last week’s feast of Simbala.
Then Ferros had told her something else – that Streone was also one of the immortal elite. So she realised, as she continued making the mare’s coat glossy and smooth while the palanquin was readied, that Streone would have all the knowledge she required. All she had to do was find a way to make him tell her … everything.
When his vehicle was ready, Streone slipped into its cushioned, silk-walled interior, and twelve hefty men, three on each corner pole, bent and lifted. As it was carried from the yard, Lara led Serrana back to her stall. Petros would want her to ready the mare for riding. But he would just have to do that himself.
Quietly, Lara slipped through the gates.
It was easy enough to hang back and follow the palanquin. Though the streets were quiet on Agueros, the highest hill of the city, because only immortals and those who tended them lived upon it, each hill below got ever more crowded. The main street that was the spine of the city, the Stradun, was three palanquins wide, and well paved. She’d heard that ancient regulations demanded that it be kept clear, for the rapid movement of the elites through Corinthium. But if those laws had ever been observed it was a long time past. As more and more people came to live in the city, all space was colonised. Market stalls were set up before almost every shop front and people milled before them, while carts and wagons brought goods to service them. All traffic slowed and often blocked the way. The red banner at the crown of the vehicle’s silk roof was meant to guarantee swift passage. But people found ways of ignoring it until they were forced aside by bellows from the palanquin’s leader at the head of the left pole, or by blows from the baton he carried. It was why, one hundred years before, the elites had created the Heaven Road. They could cruise above the people, and mock them from on high.
Lara followed close, concealment unnecessary. She was just another street kid, an orphan of the city, of which there were many. Though if they knew who she was … she’d heard her name called out many times at crossroads in the three days since her resurrection. The suicide cults were ruthlessly persecuted, and the names of any of those who’d killed themselves proclaimed and reviled. Leaders of the group had been executed and their bodies hung by their heels, dripping blood, on government office walls. She’d wondered if her friend, Carellia the whore, was one of them. Except it wasn’t Carellia who had slit her throat, it was Roxanna. This Lara knew. It was something she would never forget – the eyes glittering triumphant beneath the mask as the dagger slashed down. For now that memory was only horror. To make it something else she needed answers. Answers that could be provided by the man in the palanquin.
It took almost two hours to reach their destination, the fourth hill of Corinthium and so about the midpoint between Agueros and the harbour. Because of its centrality, Sevrapol had become known for entertainment, and people would come from all over the city to partake in its delights, which ranged from the classical plays that were performed in the elegant theatres that lined this part of the Stradun – no stalls before their gilded entranceways – to less refined activities in the alleys that wound off on every side. In those every appetite was catered for – taverns, ox-roast halls, cockpits and dog pits for the fighting of those creatures and the wagering upon them. Bawdy ballads were sung, and clothes stripped slowly off, in houses beside brothels. Everywhere wine and ale flowed, with men and women shouting their competing wares, luring fresh customers. She and Ferros had walked up there once in their first week in the city and clung to each other, wide-eyed provincial folk stunned by the sensual assault of the place.
But that was then – and this is now, thought Lara, stepping into a shuttered shop’s doorway, as the palanquin halted before one of those marble-columned theatre fronts and was finally set down. Now she was not intimidated at all by the noise and the hustle. Dying will do that to you, she thought, chewing her lower lip.
She couldn’t hear what Streone said to the head poleman. Wait, she assumed, as the bearers all bowed then moved away in twos and threes in search of refreshment. Streone went off alone – not, she was surprised to see, into the plush theatre. Instead, he pulled his scarf in front of his face, a hood over his head, and entered one of the alleys.
She hurried to catch up, saw him as he turned the first corner ahead. She hadn’t noticed before, in her one swift glance in the stable yard, but the Great Innovator was not dressed in the peacock finery of their very first encounter. When she and Ferros had met him on the docks, they’d had that doubt as to his gender. There was no question he was a man here, shod in sturdy boots and with a rough-woven cloak covering basic breeches and jacket. When she’d caught up, was just five paces behind him, he turned. Before she stepped into a doorway she saw that he also sported none of the face paint he’d worn then.
Just as well for him, she thought, as she noted the alley’s inhabitants. The deeper into Sevrapol they got, the narrower the way became; the darker too, with house roofs almost conjoined above, blocking out the sky. Hard-faced men watched her a little longer as she passed, gauging. Cries came from open doorways. Some were faked pleasure, some fear, some drunken laughter. She avoided the eyes of the men that stared at her, clutched the dagger at her waist a little harder. Prayed that she would not be forced to use it, since she did not truly know how.
Streone halted before a plain brown door and looked each way up the alley before knocking. What are you about, she wondered, as she shifted to the other side of the alley so she could see both man and door. A hatch opened in it, she glimpsed a mouth, shaping words. Streone murmured a reply, the door opened, and he slipped inside.
Lara crossed the alley, pressed the door. It was locked. She didn’t knock – Streone must have spoken some kind of password that she couldn’t know. But she also couldn’t stay where she was and wait for him. She’d noticed one man in a doorway further down, with the sallow complexion of a drinker and hunger in eyes that he kept on her. As he moved towards her, she slipped into another alley to her right, even darker than the one she’d left. Its wall was part of the same house that Streone had gone into and it ran down to yet another alley that had to be the house’s rear. She took it, even as she heard footsteps behind her, praying that it wasn’t a dead end, that she wouldn’t be trapped.
It was … but she wasn’t. There was a heap of broken furniture and wooden crates against the wall, beneath a window ledge. Without even considering it, she scrambled up the pile, stretched, leaped. Her fingers gripped the ledge, as the pile gave way. But she held on, pulled herself up and through the window which, miraculously, was open. She saw that she was in a bedroom, unoccupied, but lamplit and reeking of cheap scent. As she lowered herself to the floor she heard a slurred curse through the open window.
She waited. In the alley, the man muttered, moved away. Ahead, the door of the bedroom was ajar, and through it she heard voices. One was high-pitched. She recognised it. So, creeping forward, she put her hand to the door frame and listened.
‘All is ready?’ Streone asked.
The voice that answered was deeper, gentle; a man, well spoken. ‘All, Lord Streone.’
‘And has he …’ there was a hesitation. ‘Has he said anything to you about what … about what must be done now?’
‘Nothing, lord. Why would he speak to me? It’s you he wants.’
This was not said gently. Streone coughed. ‘Very well,’ he said more firmly. ‘Leave me. Wait elsewhere. I will begin.’
‘Lord.’
Someone came out of the room on the floor below. Lara slipped back into the shadows behind the door, looking about for a place to hide in case this was the man’s destination. But she heard him go the other way. When another door closed somewhere below, she stepped out, and softly descended the stairs to the lower landing.
There were two doors there, one fully open and giving onto another scented bedroom, also empty and draped, like the one above, in gaudy silks, with a basin and jug on a stand. Though she had never been in one she had a sense that she was standing in a brothel. The second door was old, with frayed wood and peeling paint. The man who’d left had pulled it closed but, warped as it was, it had not fully shut.
She bent to listen at the gap, heard Streone sigh deeply. Something came into her nostrils, an acrid smoke that made her gag.
Though her every instinct made her want to turn away, she knew she could not. Answers lay within the room. Slowly, she pushed the door open enough to thrust her head in.
Streone was sitting in one corner, facing into it and partly away from her. Before him, on a stand that in the other room would have held a jug and basin, Lara could see a glass globe the size of a small watermelon. Smoke swirled within it, smoke which, even as she watched, cleared – and a man’s head appeared. A man with a beard, long hair, deep-set eyes. She raised her hand to her mouth to contain her gasp – what witchcraft was this? – as the man within the smoke spoke.
‘Streone,’ he said.
‘Makron.’
‘All is well?’
‘All is not well.’ Streone’s voice rose higher in complaint. ‘I do not like this place you force me to come to. It is,’ he shuddered, ‘filthy.’
‘I told you before – a globe must never be used in the Sanctum. Lucan has too many eyes and ears there. He must never know we can talk like this.’
‘But you also promised that if I came here, today there would be more … more of this.’ Streone picked up a glass vial, turned it upside down. ‘But this is the last of it.’
‘I sent more. But my first vessel was attacked by the pirates of Omersh and had to turn back to Cuerdocia.’ Full, sensual lips shaped a smile. ‘I cannot control pirates, Streone.’
‘Nevertheless—’
‘More is on the way. I have sent it in three separate ships. Perhaps all will arrive at once and you will have … plenty.’ As Streone went to complain again, the man barked, ‘Enough!’ and then continued, ‘Now tell me of the Sanctum.’
Lara shifted slightly, so she could see more of Streone’s face as well as the other man’s. There was something hypnotic about that other. He lulled her. She accepted what was plainly dark magic: a man speaking within a globe of smoke. She also knew she would never want to look into that man’s eyes for long.
‘Someone has come. A new-birthed immortal. Lucan and his daughter are very excited by him. They say he is special. To me he seems just another rough soldier—’
‘The cavalryman of Balbek? I have heard of him. Why are they so excited?’
‘They think he is the one foretold.’
‘Foretold to do what?’
Streone cleared his throat. ‘Uh hum. To deal with you, Makron.’
‘Deal with me?’ The man laughed. ‘He would have to be very special indeed.’ He nodded. ‘What else?’
‘He came with a wife.’ Lara leaned closer as Streone continued, ‘But she joined a suicide cult.’
Makron frowned. ‘That seems strange. Besides, I thought they were long suppressed.’
‘They were. But they spring up. The ceremony was discovered, all participants killed—’
‘Wait!’ The man in the globe stared above Streone, raised a hand, rubbed either side of his beard. ‘Roxanna did this.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There are no coincidences. Roxanna would have wished to get rid of this wife. She only knows one way of controlling a man. Seducing him. Bewitching him. A rival would prevent that.’
‘As you would know, lord.’
The sunken gaze returned to Streone. No trace of a smile . . .
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The Coming of the Dark
Chris Humphreys
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