A Hero's Throne (An Ancient Earth) (32 page)

Daniel was then introduced to a group of warrior wizards, who toiled over dispelling the enchantments that the enemy had cast around them. The grotesque web of elves was one of the enemy’s many sieging enchantments; if removed, it would potentially allow the war wizards opportunity to unravel the rest of the oppressive charms.

So Daniel studied magical charts and maps of the area and then did some reconnaissance. He floated down into the forests and hills that surrounded the burned-out crater that ringed the Spindle. There he spied on enemy soldiers—snipers, warlocks, and warliches—and reported back to the prince and his wizards on their positions. They then decided which webs were tactfully best to dismantle. After that, Daniel descended again and started taking one of them apart.

His actions were not unnoticed, he realised, when elfish arrows started raining down on him. His invulnerability proved itself again when he found the arrows—which were shot with stunning accuracy at the distance of over a mile—simply glancing off of him. He used their heads, which were long, thin, and made of bronze, to cut through the ropes that tied the dead elves together. Then he moved on to the other sections. As soon as he started working on the fourth—a deliberate tactical feint—the Elves in Exile made their escape.

Daniel watched them from the sky as they flooded out of the base of the tower under heavy fire. Even weak and wasted, they rallied in an impressive, united effort. The wizards created reflective planes around the tower that masked the true path of the elves’ egress, so it looked like five times more than their actual number were escaping. Some were lost in the dash from the tower to the start of the forest. There was an enemy outpost there that the escaping elves quickly overran, being caught ill-prepared. Taking only a short moment to plunder the
storehouse of its provisions, the elves retreated back into the forest.

They went for miles, pausing just once, in order to divide and consume the plundered drink stores and give themselves the energy they so desperately needed to continue their flight. Daniel reappeared to Filliu and the generals again at that point, and they thanked him for his help. They agreed to meet again when they were free from the wrongful princes’ forces, at one of the places that they had agreed upon.

And so Daniel came here, to the complex of caves, many miles ahead of the elves and their pursuers. So far he was alone, and he had been for hours. He went to the entrance of the cave where pillars of stone created a forest-like cover. Looking out, he wondered when he would catch sight of his latest companions, and whether he could do anything to help. The dimming sky unnerved him. What would happen in the next hours? Would Night take him again? Or was that behind him?

“So, how was your day?” came a voice from behind him.

Turning, he saw the three murdered elves standing in the corridor behind him. It was Stowe who had spoken.

“Oh, you guys again,” he said with dread.

“More than that, how was last night?” Fiall said with a vicious grin.

“It was fine. I survived, obviously, and now I’m helping to restore the true king of these lands to his throne.” He looked at the dead prince, Lhiam-Lhiat, for a reaction, but his face showed nothing but pity. “So it hasn’t slowed me down any.”

“Admirable,” said Stowe.

“I haven’t learned anything either,” Daniel said, the heat rising within him. “Whatever you were trying to teach me, it’s not getting through. I still don’t regret what I’ve done, and I still say I’d do it again.”

Stowe grinned. Fiall raised an eyebrow. “You think it’s a lesson? An educational exercise?”

“What else?” said Daniel.

“We don’t control the Night. We experience it like you do.”

“What?”

“We are tortured by it, the same as you,” said Stowe.

“And we will continue to be tortured by it until it purifies us—burns us away, strips us into nothing.”

“So I
am
being punished.”

Lhiam-Lhiat tilted his head. “Punishment implies that you may learn from this experience—that you may be corrected by it, in an objective sense. That is not the case. You are being destroyed, piece by piece, as plain as that.”

“But I see things there,” Daniel said. “I have visions, there are . . . two riders . . .” His head tilted forward as he tried to remember details. The riders had appeared to him a second time; he knew it. And someone else . . . “You!” he said, pointing to Fiall.

Fiall sneered back at him. “Nobody sees in the Night,” he said.

“He is not one of our kind,” the prince said, studying Daniel. “It may be different for him.”

“Delusions,” Fiall said. “Anything you saw are delusions brought by pain and terror. Humans are intellectually weak.”

“That’s not the only difference between them and us.” Lhiam-Lhiat’s eyes studied Daniel’s. “There are times when I feel as though I . . .” He looked away, to the horizon, and then back to Daniel. “If you do see anything in the dark,” he said quietly, “if the dark
is
trying to teach you something—let it. I feel it also. There’s a part of me that the darkness wants, that it’s trying to strip away, to get at. I don’t know if it wants to destroy it, or make me give it up, or if it even knows what it’s doing, but if you can survive and not diminish . . . If you can find some way through—”

“You heartless sadists,” Daniel spat. It was his turn to sneer
now. “You
are
trying to teach me something. Well, fine. I’m up to the challenge. I’ll get out of it yet.”

“You have some time before Night falls. Do you really want to argue with us,” Fiall asked, “or do you want to start running? You may be able to delay the torture for a time, however short.”

Daniel looked at him and thought about the Night, and it did make him want to run. How much ground could he cover, and how much time could he buy in doing so? An hour? Two? Less? Days moved slower here, but then spaces seemed to be larger. Even if he could put off the Night for just a few minutes, it would be worth the effort.

Then he looked at the three dead elves before him and thought,
Why give them the satisfaction?

“I’m not afraid of the darkness,” he said, spreading his arms. “Let it take me.”

The Night reached through the walls just then and grabbed him.

^{_____________________}
II
^{_____________________}

Daniel solidified inside the window of the upper tower and just stood for a moment, stiller than still, his muscles completely at his command but receiving no orders.

This second Night had been harder than the first. He didn’t know if it was because he knew what to expect or if it really was more harrowing. He’d had hope that his new purpose in helping the Elves in Exile would give him something to cling to when the pain got bad—that he would feel that there was something worth going through this for—but somehow that hadn’t been the case. Whereas the first night had been so vivid, he couldn’t remember exactly what had happened to him in this one. He could only recall vague notions, like echoes of events, that bounced off the
walls of his mind before they disappeared entirely. Had he made a deal with himself in the darkness to forget? Had he forced himself to do so in order to protect himself? Could he trust himself to remember if he needed to, or to forget if he didn’t?

He had awakened again in the plain, for the third time since his very first visit, like a repeating track. He laid there, wet and chilled, but not shivering. All sensation existed only in the Night; only sense existed here in reality. At least, he was accustomed to thinking of it as reality, but that line had now become very blurred. Here in reality all he had was an impervious body that felt no pain or softness. Or, if he chose, then a disembodied cloud of perception. Which was the nightmare? The reality where all was pain, or the reality where all was numb? And which was truly which, for there was numbness in the pain and pain in the numbness.

Then, with a physical start, he shook himself out of his reverie and started looking for Prince Filliu and the rest of the Elves in Exile. He found them, not at the mountain camp, but at the Fortress of the Plain, which was a series of ingenious trenches and sunken rooms in the middle of a wide expanse of flat land that left the horizon unbroken and invisible to anyone who didn’t know it was there.

Daniel tried to get his head around warfare with wizards involved. That skewed things slightly. He didn’t know what the enemy’s magic capability was, but it would undoubtedly involve some sort of farseeing, or foreseeing. Which wasn’t, Daniel reflected, so much different to the modern warfare that he had been trained in during his very brief military career, what with satellite telemetry and communication, infrared, hi-res, night-time imaging, and smart-guided weaponry. That was a kind of magic as well, no doubt, from the point of view of the elves who were a race that was highly advanced but circumspect about even very basic technologies that involved metal. To them, bullets were
“magic pellets.” Their science had obviously developed along different lines, due to metal’s natural toxicity to them.

Daniel paused at that thought. He was thinking in his normal way again, strategically, but something had happened to him in the Night that was brutal and horrible, and it had lasted for what seemed like years. What was it?

He searched through the trenches and bunkers, floating invisibly, until he found the true prince, Filliu. He was deep in the heart of the complex in a low-ceilinged rectangular hole that served as his campaign room and sleeping quarters. The two generals were there, looking stern and grave.

They looked up as he appeared next to them.

“Where did you go? You did not turn up at our agreed-upon rendezvous.”

“I . . . was . . . taken.” Daniel found it hard to form sentences.

“‘Taken’? Captured?”

“Yes, in a way. I was taken by the Night,” Daniel answered.

The three elves exchanged glances. “What is ‘The Night’?” Filliu asked.

“You don’t know? Lhiam-Lhiat and Agrid Fiall seemed to know about it. Stowe also.”

The looks became more severe. “You saw or spoke to Lhiam-Lhiat and Fiall? Usurpers of the throne and enemies of the true prince?”

“Well, in as much as I killed them and they’re haunting me now, yes, I did.”

“Did you tell them of our movements?” the general with the shaggy red hair, whose name was Loshtagh, asked.

“No, of course not. There wasn’t time to do that, even if I wanted to.” Daniel’s words came like he was talking in a dream—virtually beyond his will. His mind was just reacting, but he couldn’t determine how. He felt thin and slightly eaten away.

Filliu sat in a campaign chair before the wide table in the centre of the room. “Daniel, when first you arrived in this land nearly a year ago, we sent an emissary to meet you and help you through this land, with as much aid as we were able to produce at the time.”

“Kay Marrey, yes, I know. And I’ve thanked you for that.”

“I did so under the advice of my holiest of counsellors, and against the advice of my canniest generals—these men you see before you. I still have faith that you will help us, but know that you have now acted counter to every omen of divination that my holy men laid before me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that your leaving and returning were predicted, but not the violence by which you left, nor the speed and condition of your return. It has caused a few of my holy men to question if the prophecies even applied to you, and not another.”

“Nothing is ever ideal,” Daniel said. “Everything is imperfect and we have to do the best with what we’ve got.”

“That is also what I believe,” the prince answered, “to an extent.”

“It is not what I believe,” Loshtagh said. “I believe that whatever is inside your contaminated soul may infect us and pervert the growth of our pure enterprise.”

Something in what the argumentative general said triggered something else in Daniel’s memory of what he had experienced in the Night. Perverted growth—contaminated soul—pure enterprise . . .

Daniel came out of his reverie to see the three elves studying him, as if to diagnose his condition, and Daniel became annoyed.

“I intend to help you whether you want me to or not. It’s nice that you can be so picky over where you get your help from. I don’t usually have that luxury. I don’t have it right now. Unless
I go to one of the other ‘evil princes’ and ask for their help. Why should it make a difference to me? Perhaps they can even help me get back home.”

“It’s that sort of comment that makes me question your motives and loyalty toward our cause,” said Loshtagh.

“And
that
sort of comment makes me question
yours
,” Daniel said. “After just one night away from you. What does it matter to you what happens to me at night, so long as—”

“You weren’t gone just one night, Daniel,” Filliu said.

Daniel froze. “How long was I gone?”

“Three days—four nights in total.”

Daniel considered. “I . . . don’t know about that. But, listen: something happens to me at night.” He then recounted to the three as much as he could remember of what he experienced in the Night, which was almost all of what had happened to him during the first.

Loshtagh’s scowl had deepened during Daniel’s narrative. “It is a bad business. I do not know what it all means, or the nature of the devils that torment you, but it is a bad business. A bad business.”

But at length Filliu allowed him another mission, and this was one that Daniel felt particularly passionate about—tracking down Kay Marrey and Kæyle the woodburner.

And so here he was, standing in an empty room in the uppermost tower. He had followed the directions they gave him, following a certain river toward its source, which was not as easy as it sounded. There were about forty different confluences and branches of the river, and he’d had to memorise the order of which to follow and which to disregard. He soared above the water, watching how the sun sparkled on the clear surface, making it glisten like a path of diamonds, but although he recognised the beauty of the sight, he did not delight in it.