The Wicked Day (20 page)

“It still is your name,” he said fiercely. “It’ll always be your name.”

“Who are you to tell me this?”

“I’m your brother Declan.”

She blinked. Snowflakes spun and twirled, swirling down out of the dark sky. “Declan,” she whispered. “Declan?"

He could not answer.

“They’re dead.” Her eyes were wide, no longer seeing him, but staring away into the darkness. The wind blew her hair about until it half-covered her face in tangles. “You should’ve been there. You should’ve been there to save them! Where were you?” Her voice rose to a scream. Tears ran down her cheeks. “Where did you go? You weren’t there!”

“I wasn’t there.” He bowed his head, but then he raised it. “But I can save you.”

She laughed. The sound was flat and without mirth. “I’m beyond saving. I’m imprisoned by fire and I’m cut off from the earth. Bound here in the air, so high above the ground. He keeps me far from from my beloved earth. I can’t even touch this poor stone below my feet. I can’t draw its strength into me.” She looked past Declan at Jute. “And you, brother sky—yes, I know you—you can’t help me either. Darkness holds sway here, and it’ll rule all of Tormay some day if it’s left unchecked. You can’t save me. But you can warn the duchies. Go, before it's too late. He’s raising an army. And behind him stands the much deeper darkness.”

“Who?” said Declan, despairing. He half raised his hand as if to touch her arm, but then drew back. “Who do you speak of?”

“Have you forgotten the old stories of Hearne?” she said. The wind whipped her words at them. There was weariness and sadness in her voice. “The kingdom was destroyed by an army of the dead, led by a man with no past. A man with darkness in his eyes. He disappeared from Tormay, but he never died. Time means nothing to him. He's had many names over the centuries, and he changes his face like the earth changes through the seasons. Now, he wears the guise of the so-called duke of Mizra. He looks again to the west, to Tormay and all that we hold dear. He serves destruction and death and the darkness, and the unknown ends of its design. But flee this place before you’re discovered. Warn the duchies. They will listen to the wind and the last of the Farrows. They’ve a little time yet, for not even the duke of Mizra can take an army through the winter snow of the Morn passes. Earth is still mistress there, even though I’m a captive in this place.” Her tears froze into ice on her cheeks.

“And what of the wolf?” Declan said, the words choking from his throat. “What do we tell the wolf?”

“The wolf?” she said. “Tell him—”

“Shadow and stone. Who have we here?”

The voice came from behind them, thin and sneering. Jute heard the ghost whimper in his knapsack. Two men stood beside the open well of the stairs. Jute recognized one of them at once. The gold hair, the youthful, handsome face, the bright eyes. It was the man from the regent’s ball in Hearne. The duke of Mizra. A dog sat at his feet, silent and watchful with massive shoulders and paws. It was the other man who had spoken, however. With a shudder, Jute realized that he recognized the man as well. Not a man at all. The gaunt shape, the thin white face, the sharp teeth. It was the sceadu. The being from the regent’s castle who had pursued him and Lena through the tunnels. Up into the castle and across the ballroom floor. People dying. And then the woman, Levoreth, rescuing him.

Jute took a step backward. His hands trembled. He was painfully aware of the space behind him, the edge of the tower unbounded by any wall or parapet. Just the edge and the long drop to the cobblestone square far below. Snow drifted down. The wind was nowhere to be felt. He could not even feel its presence in his mind. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Declan standing close by the hanging body of his sister. The man’s face looked frozen into stone. His eyes stared straight ahead, wide and unblinking.

“The thief-boy and. . .” The sceadu’s attention centered on Declan. He laughed, his teeth gleaming. “Another Farrow. Truth, I’d thought I’d killed the lot of you, but I can finish the job now. No matter. But look at the boy, my lord. I wager he’s not come into his own, else the wind would be tearing this tower down.”

The duke did not speak, but his eyes focused on Jute, sharpening in something akin to weary amusement. His eyes seemed like holes, holes torn in the fabric of existence. They revealed a horrible, endless darkness, deeper even than that which lay between the stars of night. The duke’s voice flickered into life on the edge of Jute’s thoughts, as quiet as a single flame.

The blood on that knife had been dry many a year before you nicked your finger. Slow to come back to life, no doubt. The wind has not wakened in you yet. Not like our beauty here. She came alive with a start, with the blood of the old mistress fresh on her hands.

Jute could not breathe. Something constricted around his chest. Darkness welled up on the edge of his sight, tinged with scarlet pain. He could feel his heart beating faster as if trying to run away. He was going to die.

Peace.

The wind stirred inside Jute’s mind, and he was suddenly free. The duke’s expression did not change. His eyes were empty holes. Snowflakes drifted down and gathered in his shining hair.

“No matter.” The sceadu stepped forward. “He’ll die quick enough.” A knife appeared in his hand. “And then you shall have this blade to bring another wind to life, as you will. A puppet on your chain.”

The darkness in the duke’s eyes pulled at Jute.

I found a riddle in the darkness, long ago. What does the death of the anbeorun mean? Do you know how many centuries it took to discover the answer? I came west. Through the dead lands. Across the sea. I came west in the shadows of the waning moon until I stood upon the shore. I walked through the memories and dreams and nightmares of the university and found the pieces, one by one. Shards that recreated the hidden form. A thought here. A memory there. A mouthful of words. Books. Aye, books, even though I never found the
Gerecednes
. I gathered it all, and so discovered the truth. The house of dreams does not give up its knowledge easily. And then you came three hundred years later and undid all my efforts in one night.

The duke paused. Snowflakes drifted down and began to pile up across the icy stone of the tower roof. The sceadu moved closer to Jute. The knife in its hand lifted. Jute looked around wildly. There was nowhere to run. The wind was gone. He could jump. Into the air. It was just air, and the wind was gone. If he jumped, he would fall to his death on the cobblestones below.

You have listened to the darkness, have you not? It whispers in your dreams.
Look into my eyes and you shall see it more clearly than you have ever before. You shall see the truth.

The darkness welled up within the duke’s eyes. It grew until there was only one spot. It was blacker than blindness in the dead of winter’s longest night. A night without stars. A night Jute had seen before in his nightmares. It was an endless darkness that stretched away in every direction, into the past, into the present, into the future. And somewhere in the darkness, though he could not see it, he knew there was a single window. Something was watching him from behind that window. Had been watching him for years. A presence even darker than the darkness itself. A negation of what was.

Emptiness.

Annihilation.

An old hatred born before the starfire came to be.

A thing deeper than death.

The duke’s eyes bored into his.

My master waits for you.

Jute’s vision trembled. Things began to bend, to creep toward the blot of darkness. He felt himself pulled forward. The stones underfoot seemed to quiver as if they were about to break loose and go flying through the air. Giverny’s hair streamed away from her head toward the blot of darkness as if blown by the wind. Snowflakes swirled wildly by, caught in the vortex whirling down into the darkness. But there was no wind.

“Darkness is the end of all things, boy,” said the sceadu. “It’s your end. My end. The end of Tormay.”

The darkness pulled at Jute. He knew that if he were to go slipping and sliding across the snowy ice of the rooftop, he would end up on the sceadu’s blade. The darkness in the duke’s eyes sucked at the night. It seemed almost as if the night was as light as day in comparison to that hole of utter blackness. Something waited in the darkness.

End
, said a small voice inside his mind.

“Never!” cried Jute.

He turned, barely able to move, muscles screaming in protest. He staggered and collided with Declan. The man’s body felt as immovable as a statue. His eyes were staring and unseeing. Jute’s fingers caught the sword strap running down Declan’s back. He pulled hard and felt Declan rock on his heels. The sceadu shouted in fury. Jute teetered on the edge of the roof, looking down into nothingness. There was no wind.

And then he fell.

Jute didn’t jump. He just fell. It was all he was capable of. His fingers were still hooked in Declan’s sword strap. It seemed as if they fell from the edge of the roof in slow motion. As if the darkness welling from the duke’s eyes pulled at them and sought to hold them back from falling. But it could not hold them, and they fell. Jute twisted as he fell. He managed to look back and caught a glimpse of the girl still hanging there motionless, bound in flames.

She smiled at him.

And then Jute and Declan were gone, tumbling down through the air. Limbs flailing end over end. The side of the black tower rushed by in smooth stone. Far below, the ground waited. Jute could see rooftops. I didn’t realize we climbed that high, he thought in a daze. It only means we have farther to fall.

CHAPTER EIGHT

AWAY WITH THE WIND

As Jute fell, the air felt like water around him. Cold and rushing. Like a stream plunging past. He opened his mouth and drank it in. Tried to fly. Reached out with his mind to catch hold of the wind, to lighten his body and rise up. But he could not. There was no wind. He was as heavy as stone. Encumbered with his body. He was imprisoned by its thick, unwieldy mass. He could not shed it, could not rise above the air like a swimmer on a wave. He was drowning in weight.

Wind? Where are you?

But there was no answer.

Jute shut his eyes.

I am tired of falling, he thought. But this will be the last time. Please, let it be the last time.

He fell and fell. Blurring through the night. An impossible height. Dimly, he was aware of Declan’s body falling somewhere near him. A black shape blotting out the stars.

The stars.

The stars have come out. That means the clouds are gone. That means the wind has blown them away.

The wind. . .

And the wind caught Jute, chuckling and laughing to itself. There was a rush of air, a frigid blast that enveloped his body. He dangled as helpless as a child in the wind’s grasp. The city turned beneath him. Stone and darkness and death. Rushing away from beneath him. He could see the top of the dark tower as clear and as sharply as if his were the eyes of a hawk. The two figures standing and the motionless form of the girl.

Becoming a habit, catching you. Like a mother bird and her foolish chick tumbling from the nest before his time.

It’s not my fault.

You must learn to fly, regardless of what that old wing of a hawk says. You must, for I shan’t be at every drop and cliff to catch you. Someday, I shan’t.

Declan!

The other? Fret not. I have him safe.

Jute glanced back and saw the body of Declan blowing along through the sky a good distance from him. He could not tell if the man was awake or still in whatever insensible state the duke had plunged him into.

There are some that would seek to make our acquaintance.

What do you mean?

Look back.

A dark cloud boiled up behind them, rising higher and higher from the tower. The cloud surged into the sky, ragged as a poor man’s shirt, shreds and tatters of filth winging their way through the sky after them. Crows. Hundreds and thousands of them.

I don’t suppose you could do something about them?
said Jute nervously.

Not I
, said the wind.
I would not like to touch them. Dirty, nasty bits of death. They have the Dark in them, more than anything else, and that’s not something I care to deal with. That is your domain. Not mine.

Mine? But, I don’t know what to do. They’ll catch us.

Oh no they shan’t
, said the wind gleefully.

With a howling rush, the wind blew them higher and faster and quicker until it was all Jute could do to breathe. The ground whirled away at a tremendous rate, far beneath them in a blur of snow and the shine of the ice on the river winding back and forth no thicker than a length of thread, so far below it was. The clouds had vanished and the sky was empty except for the moon and stars. Ancalon was gone and the crows were only the suspicion of a smudge on the rapidly retreating horizon.

They shan’t
, chanted the wind.

They shan’t.

They can’t.

They won’t.

We will!

The ground rose beneath them, though not because the wind let them down. Rather, the land was climbing in hills and steeper slopes to meet the first few angles of the mountains. The Morn Mountains. Their peaks, dark and indistinct at first, caught fire with the first rays of the morning sun. It was a blinding white blaze of light and Jute could hardly look at it for its brilliance. Far behind them, the eastern horizon blazed with the edge of the sun. The stars retreated and the moon faded in polite abeyance.