A Prayer of Dusk and Fury Read online

Awe and revulsion washed through Oligan. He had been given the plans for this device almost forty years before. By none other than Merrick Clay. The Witchfinder walked up to the Vault and placed his pale forehead on the glass. He closed his eyes and began to whisper a prayer under his breath. Still with his eyes closed and head against the glass, he spoke.

  "Go to them, your highness. See the beautiful progress that has been made."

  Oligan's heart tightened again. He nodded and walked past the vault towards a curtained alcove. He paused outside for a moment and then drew the drapes back and stepped inside.

  He got to one knee and bowed his head.

  "I am sorry that I have not visited in so long. The business of kingship is tedious and takes up much time."

  The king looked up and smiled at his wife and daughters, his face bathed in green light.

  "You are all three looking so much better. It will not be long now until we are together again like a real family. Cassandra, we will walk in the rose garden together, drink wine on the balcony and make love on the bearskin rug."

  Oligan reached out with one hand, stretching out his fingers. With his eyes tight shut small fingers interlocked with his own. When he opened then, his girls Aspen and Elena were standing before him. Their strawberry blonde hair cascaded down their shoulders and their blue eyes filled with mirth. They were immaculate in white robes and blue girdles of soft velvet. Aspen was the taller of the two, and Elena the liveliest.

  "Hello father. We missed you. Have you come to play with us?"

  Hot tears rose in his eyes and his vision blurred.

  "My girls, my beautiful red-haired girls. I have two fine horses waiting for you when your strength has regained. I have raised them from the smallest foals and they perform such tricks, you would both laugh until you cried. We will go out together, into the blue forest as a family and we will hunt and ride hard, and then have supper by the river. We will take the dogs with us. "

  The playful giggle of his daughters washed over him like spring rain, and he shivered in delight. Elena gave a churlish little frown.

  "How long until we do all that, father? We are lonely in here, and mother almost never speaks with us."

  Oligan set his jaw and held back the waves of emotion.

  "Soon, little ones. I have had so much work to do, so much to build and arrange to make this happen for us, but soon we will all be together. All around the table having breakfast."

  They giggled again.

  "We don't need bread or chicken, father. The Green King feeds us."

  The chill ran up Oligan’s spine. He looked at his daughters.

  "He feeds you?"

  Elena nodded and smiled.

  "He gives us all we need to eat and drink, he talks with us, and he plays with us and tells us how things will be when we are all together."

  Oligan looked to the tiny fingers interlocked with his own and felt a surge of quiet rage and horror.

  "And how does he tell you that things will be, my darling?"

  Elena waved her hands in a child's gesture of storytelling.

  "He tells us that all the bad people will be turned inside out until their hearts burst. That he can read wicked people's thoughts and he will plague their dreams and drive them mad, until they claw out their own eyes. He said that when we grow up we can help hurt them, all we want!"

  Oligan swallowed a lump in his throat and his heart began to thump erratically.

  "He said that to you both?"

  The girls nodded.

  "He said that there is so much beautiful magic in the world, deep within the rocks and the sea, in the trees and in so much of the animals and people. He tells us that magic is like the sweetest honey and that once we are ready, we will feast and feast upon it all, as much as we want to our heart's content, until there is nothing left."

  Oligan fought back the tears again. He closed his eyes and could not bear to cast his gaze upon his family any longer. He contented himself with their voices.

  "Is it not better, my darlings, for living things to have the magic within them? To see the beauty and deep sorcery of the natural world in all its glory, filled with life and meaning?"

  His daughters looked confused for a moment. They both shook their heads.

  "No father. Things look better when they are dead with their souls ripped out. There is nothing more beautiful or peaceful than emptiness, and a bellyful of magic."

  Oligan did not want to open his eyes, because he knew what he would see. He forced his gaze upwards. He was, as he had always been, alone on his knees. The illusions of his little girls had vanished and before him was their truth.

  In three standing glass sarcophagi decorated with slowiron was his family.

  Running from the top of each receptacle was a scaled tube like a living organ, opaque and pulsating. The three people inside each tank were suspended in a thick green fluid. Like the floating victims of a shipwreck. Drowned and alone. Their eyes were open but unseeing, their gowns floating around them. Through the green water Oligan could see veins like spider webs across their faces, showing that the sickness still remained.

  The Green King in the vast glass egg offered him illusions. But there was something mocking rather than merciful in the gesture. When the illness had taken all three of them, Oligan thought his life was over. He had been ready to jump from the highest window when the emissaries of the Sorrow came to him. Whispering of a way they could be preserved, healed, brought back from the brink of death.

  Forty years they had languished in these glass coffins, being fed the essence of the god in the vat. Oligan had watched their plagued skin repair, their ulcerated wounds heal.

  But they had never awoken.

  Merrick Clay had explained to the king that gods do not work on the same timescale as mere mortals. That true magic is slow magic.

  Over the years Oligan knew in his heart that he was being used and betrayed.

  Yet now he was too far gone and too deep to ever rebel.

  He had to have faith. That all his loyalty and hard work would one day be rewarded. And that all three of his girls would open their eyes once again.

  It would not be long now. Forty years of sacrifices to the entity in the vault. Of screaming magical beings thrown in to dissolve. The magic had been building. Getting stronger and stronger until the sleeper could awake.

  When it did, as far as King Oligan Rathratta was concerned, the Sorrow could have the world and everything in it. As long as he and his family were reunited.

  They could all sit atop the King's Needle and watch the world burn together.

  2

  The grey dust swam in front of Alfred's eyes. It took all his focus to follow the path ahead through the Bleaks.

  Without the keen instinct of his tired but loyal horse Domino, he would have been lost and without hope. He patted the animal's thick neck, and then he leaned forward and nuzzled his face into the mane. Relishing the musky skin radiating warmth. The only warmth in a hundred miles.

  He had grown so close to the horse during the weeks of his journey. He had never encountered so sweet-natured and intelligent a beast. It was a constant reminder of the beauty of life as he rode through the gloom of the Bleaks.

  The road was pitted and filled with puddles of ashen water. Broken flagstones lined the sides, covered in faded mosaics of an age long gone. Shattered pillars littered the roadside like the severed stumps of petrified trees. Beyond that, jagged brecanstanes rose high into the air. And the charred skeletons of dead trees clawed from the earth.

  Alfred wondered what this road would have looked like in ancient days. With gleaming white stone inlaid with swirling flowers and geometric shapes. He tried to imagine caravans of goods and groups of pilgrims travelling along it. Bathed in sunshine and breathing in the scent of the forest that once lined the road. He imagined the whinny of horses and the buzz of honeybees. Families carrying infants in papooses, laughter and travelling songs. He imagined a civilized people coming from all
over the world along this road, all heading for the city at the end.

  In his thirst he began to see shapes swirling in the mist. The outline of hopeful families and loyal dogs trotting alongside. They morphed in an out of existence, their laughter carried on the howling wind. Alfred peered into the chalky puddles as he passed. In his desperation he wondered if the acrid water would slake his thirst. He did not dare, knowing that true madness would set in after that first draft of toxic milky rainwater. He swallowed and his throat was dry as bone.

  Alfred tried to imagine this land as lush and populated. What a different world he imagined so long ago. Alfred did not even know what the Bleaks were called before the Sorrow came. All around him was the legacy of their time upon the world. If what Master Phillip had told him was true, then once this had been a beautiful place teeming with life.

  So this is what the Sorrow turns the world into, Alfred thought.

  And this was what was left after mankind won the war! This time, if they succeed, will the whole world be like the Bleaks? Or something worse? Why would such a force want to rule over an empire of dust?

  Around him now was just an endless lament. The wind howling in anguish as it ground down the last remnants of a civilisation to smooth boulders. The fine dust still coated Alfred's face, making him seem like a grey ghost haunting the road. Above him the sun shone through the ever present haze. Just a twinkling silvery coin, the light from it distant and cool by the time it reached him.

  Alfred had never been so lonely. It clawed at his soul. Whispering for him to give up, find a quiet spot by the roadside, and let the dust cover him. A dead blanket of dreams drawing him deeper to rest with the other accursed souls of this place.

  Alfred did not know what lay at the end of his road. For all he knew he had passed Ironghast Monastery in the gloom and was now riding to the mountains at the end of the world! He laughed at this thought, his teeth taking on a layer of ash as bared them. He stroked Domino's flanks and she gave him an appreciative snort. Alfred's voice was a just a dry croak as he whispered to him.

  "Good lad. We'll get you some oats and water at the end of all this, if we just keep putting one hoof in front of the other. I promise."

  After another few hours, Alfred could not tell whether it was still morning or afternoon. He began to converse with the shades within the dust. He glanced to his left and the wind was blowing him a shape, sculpting a companion to ride beside him.

  It was just a vague amorphous shape at first, bobbing along on an equine lump of ash. It was a primitive statue that the gale had worn down to a man shape, turning its grey head to give him a nod. Alfred smiled and nodded back. He supposed that he had better be polite. In his weak croak he spoke.

  "Good morning, Shade. Or is it afternoon? I must confess I have lost all my bearings. All roads must lead somewhere though, eh, friend, or why call them roads at all?"

  The Ashman gave a little shudder that Alfred supposed could have been laughter. His form shimmered to inconsistency and then resolved. Alfred turned in the saddle and looked at his new companion.

  The wind was hollowing out eye sockets, sculpting a nose. Carving the muscles of chest and shoulder. Yet the face was blank, featureless. In moments Alfred thought it looked like Master Phillip. Then it contorted into Carleon, and Ruven, and then into the gaunt figure of master Astara, before resuming its neutral demeanour. Alfred leaned in conspiratorially to his new companion. He gave a quick glance around him to a make sure no one was listening, and whispered.

  "Between you and me, friend, I think they have the wrong man."

  The Ashman and his horse just trotted along beside him. Alfred noticed that the horse had no legs as such, just an amorphous layer of dust that propelled it along. The Ashman cocked its head but did not respond. He did not judge. Alfred nodded in the saddle, happy for the company. It was good to get this off his chest with someone.

  "All these good people. Master Phillip, Carleon, Ruven, Artio, Astara. They have given their lives, endured pain and suffering to protect me on this journey. I had never seen such quiet courage in daily life. They had such faith, friend. Faith that I am ashamed to say I never possessed. That is why I am the wrong man! I have been given some sorcerous blessing from a deity I'm not sure I ever believed in. Can you imagine the irony of that?"

  The Ashman did not give a clear response, but Alfred knew that he saw the irony.

  "And my family. My family were good hearted people, they never harmed anyone. They had no truck with magic, they worked hard, and they supported each other. They supported me, through all my lazy feckless selfish days. I now see it, that they sent me off to seminary to keep me safe, to try and protect me from the Witchfinders. They did what they could. They paid their taxes and gave fealty to the king. And how did our noble Oligan repay them? He sent his Witchfinder to break them, my strong brothers, my diligent father, my warm loving mother. I was always so ungrateful. Is there any more constant and subtle love than that a family shows? Even to a fool like me?"

  Alfred did not know what sort of people the Ashman had waiting for him back in his land. But he was sure that they were kind and loving. Tears begin to streak the dust of his cheeks. Alfred sniffled deep through his nose.

  "And now, if I was a devout priest of the light, I would no longer require faith at all, because I have been shown the illumination, the magic that exists in the world. But what if this is just some quirk of the natural world, without meaning or consequence? I am more inclined to believe that, because once again, friend, the same question arises."

  The Ashman rolled his shoulders in the saddle, getting more comfortable. He turned his eyeless head to Alfred, begging him to continue. The only sound Alfred could hear was the slow clop of Domino's hooves on the broken road.

  "Why would Lord Angall choose me? I am cowardly, Shade, did you know that? I am sat here on a horse in the middle of the Bleaks, with only you for company, and I am terrified. I am not strong, I never was. I am not this crusader that Phillip and the dream-ghosts of my brothers tell me I am. I have never even used a sword until last night."

  The Ashman flourished his windswept arm and drew a blade of dust. He held it up, grains of grey sand bouncing off its edge, the tip reforming as the wind blew it off. Wordlessly, he reached out and passed the sword across to Alfred. Alfred shook his head.

  "I cannot take that. I wouldn't know what to do with it. No more than I know what to do with this blade of steel the burning knight left me. All it does is weigh upon my leg."

  The Ashman held the sword out for a moment longer and then it blew off in little particles into nothing. The Ashman turned back to face the road, his head bowed as if disappointed. Alfred implored his new friend.

  "You don't understand, it's not a sword that kills, it is a hard and zealous heart. I don't have such a heart. Mine craves comfort, riches, wine and the scent of a woman. I am as shallow as a man can be, Lord Dust, and I say this in the company of a man made of grains."

  Alfred thought he had gone too far, but his new friend did not seem to take offence.

  "I apologise. You are an excellent listener, I ramble on. Please tell me of your history and how you come to be here."

  The Ashman said nothing, but Alfred was encouraged.

  "I shall continue then, if you'll listen?"

  Alfred looked ahead down the rocky road. The dust storm had abated a little. Through the haze a range of mountains rose in the distance, just dark jagged pyramids. He knew nothing of what was there, but it gave him a sense of direction in the empty landscape so he carried on. Alfred was assaulted with the memory of the attack on his brother priests by the Wendigo. The violence of it. But it was the entity that saved Alfred which had him most perplexed.

  "Did you see that knight, back at the brecanstane?"

  The Ashman looked up at the road ahead with eyeless face and the wind ground his nose down to a nub.

  "I did not think such things existed in the world any longer. I have read of armoured men who
roamed the land in olden days, keeping the world clean of monsters and gargoyles. But that thing terrified me! Are there such things in the world, Pale Shade, do you think that was a messenger of the heavens? Or are they much stranger things than a mere boy from Durn can imagine? No stranger than you are, I suppose, friend."

  Alfred leaned in to the Ashman once again.

  "The question I am asking myself, the one that is frightening me the most, is that if the true purpose of my seemingly pointless blessing is to awaken an entity that has not walked this earth in a thousand years, something that the gods themselves thought prudent to bury beneath the earth in deep slumber, something so dangerous that it was last resort to send against the Sorrow....then what happens when I wake it up?"

  Alfred's heart pounded at the thought of this. He was now uniquely destined to poke a tiger with a stick until it ate him. He turned to recount this to the Ashman, but his companion turned to him and held a grainy hand up. Alfred sat back, not understanding the gesture. Then the Ashman put a cupped hand to his ear, encouraging Alfred to listen. Alfred peered at his companion, and the question rose in his head whether he had gone mad. How could an illusory figure hear something that Alfred couldn't?

  Alfred strained his ears, and his heart skipped a beat.

  There on the wind was a sound he knew. A snarling that he had heard on occasion coming from deep within the forests as he travelled by cart along the Crownsway with his father. It was a sound that had haunted his nightmares in Durn since he was a child. Beside Alfred, the Ashman kept his hand cupped to his ear for a moment. Then dissipated into particles and blew away.

  The snarl drew closer behind him. A gaggle of chattering barking voices, as mocking as they were vicious. He knew the sound well. He dug his heels in and gripped Domino's reins. In a panicked whisper he spoke to the horse.

  "Kraven!"

  Alfred spurred the horse onwards and it broke into a canter. Rising to a gallop as the beast also sensed the danger on their heels. Alfred tried to remain in the saddle as his horse broke into a furious gallop. He twisted his body and the dim shapes closed in through the dust.