Read The Demon Horsemen Online
Authors: Tony Shillitoe
The Demon Horsemen
We are all pursued in our personal lives by demons. Courage is the moment when we turn to face them and accept that they are products of our own creation.
ART
O
NE
‘Choosing not to act is not always the decision of a coward. The one who lays down the sword in the middle of a war could be the one with the courage to end that war. Choosing not to act can be heroic.’
A
LWYN
, J
ARU
P
HILOSOPHER
HAPTER
O
NE
S
wift blinked and rubbed her eyes, squinting against the bright daylight reflected from the wet stones. The magical light in the old library had temporarily altered her tolerance for natural reflection, but she was glad to be above ground. As incredibly large as the Khvech Daas library was, a labyrinth of reading rooms and storerooms, it was claustrophobic and she was desperate to know what was happening in the world. She was taking a significant risk by leaving the safety of the library without knowing exactly where the soldiers who were hunting them might be, and the old woman, Meg, had argued that she should wait a little longer, but Swift had finally got her way.
‘I should go first, to check,’ Meg had insisted, determined to make sure that the young assassin was not walking into danger. The old woman had created one of her magic portals to access the outside world. When she returned through the blue light, her cheeks flushed with fresh air, she had told Swift that the Kerwyn soldiers weren’t in the Khvech Daas ruins.
‘But don’t do anything risky or foolish,’ Meg had warned her. ‘You can’t come back through the portal without my help, and we won’t know when you want
to return, so take Whisper with you. She can come and go at will.’
Swift was still struggling with the revelation that a human spirit lived within the bush rat’s body, but she was happy to accept Whisper’s company.
A light rain shower surprised Swift when she stepped through the portal into the ruins. A host of grey and white rabbits bolted into their burrows at the unexpected human intrusion. She looked around for Whisper and saw her trotting towards the wild green undergrowth surrounding the ruin, her black fur already glistening with fine rain droplets.
The first change Swift noticed since her last time above ground was the pathway the Kerwyn soldiers had hacked through the thick foliage to reach the ruin. She searched the mounds of rubble quickly for another human, especially the soldiers’ red uniforms, but the space was empty. She followed Whisper along the pathway to the outer edge of the undergrowth where she paused to breathe in the freshness of clean, wet earth, glad to be outside again. She looked up. The blue sky was mottled with grey rain clouds, and the dazzling sunlight threw up a rainbow.
From the Khvech Daas hill, she could see over the old Ashuak capital’s ruins that spread south and south-east to the river and beyond, extending to a point where the ragged spires of a temple and the tumbled chaos of an abandoned palace dominated the rubble. The sharp sunlight that slanted between the clouds lent a golden glow to the old stonework. She scanned the landscape for a sign that the soldiers were still searching the ruins for them—smoke, the white fabric of a dragon egg, movement from birds or the multitudinous rabbits—but all she saw was a distant flock of white birds flying in a V formation towards the west and rabbits sitting up to stare inquisitively at her.
She felt relief. If the soldiers were gone, they could safely begin their journey home to the Kerwyn kingdom. She, her half-brother, Chase, and their friend Wahim had followed Meg when she left them to set out alone for the ruined city, in order to track down a mysterious weapon that the Seers were also keen to possess. Swift’s step-sister, Passion, had fled Port of Joy with them, but they had left her and her child, Jon, behind in a village on this last leg of the journey. Now Swift felt great fear for Passion and Jon. No one except Passion had known they were coming to Chuekwer, the old Ashuak capital, and yet the Kerwyn soldiers had come in search of them here. It was highly likely the soldiers had found and arrested Passion. Somehow, Swift would have to rescue her sister.
Swift was also concerned that her thirteen-year-old-son, Runner, no longer had a safe base in Port of Joy now that Passion was gone. She gave him refuge when he needed it, but mostly he lived on the streets and survived by his wits, and he would know nothing of the events that had driven his mother from the city. Swift’s daughter, Jewel, was safe with a good friend, Sparkle Pondwater, in Littlecreek, but she missed her and knew the little girl would be wondering why her mother was so long gone.
Swift returned her attention to the ruins, and spotted Whisper scuttling along the wide street that led deeper into the city. The rat had an uncanny ability to find things—because she was a magical construct, Meg had explained. Their host in the vast underground library, Erin, had saved his sister’s life spark by embedding it in the body of a rat. ‘She carries a tiny sliver of amber inside her so she’s partly made of magic,’ Meg had told them. The explanation made no sense to Swift and she doubted that Chase or Wahim understood it any better than she did. The old woman, who had given Swift
refuge when she was fleeing from the City Watch, had turned out to be a bizarre being herself. That she could do magic was confusing enough. That she also claimed to be a character from a heroic ballad—Lady Amber—was even more peculiar. Swift didn’t believe Lady Amber ever really existed. She knew how ballads arose: they were exaggerated stories turned to song to entertain and instruct people. But she’d seen Meg’s magic: the healing powers, the ability to transport them via the portals of blue light…She sighed.
‘We just need to get home,’ she murmured, and headed after the rat.
‘How much longer do we have to stay down here?’ Chase asked.
Meg’s white-haired head was bent over a thick tome, its pages illuminated by magical light that emanated from a floating sphere. She looked up at the young man.
‘We’ll know when Swift returns,’ she replied. ‘If the Kerwyn are still out there, it’s too dangerous to leave.’
‘You could use your magic to get us out of here,’ he argued.
‘I will—when the time is right. But first I have to finish reading these books.’
‘Why?’ Chase asked impatiently.
‘The answer to keeping the Seers from releasing the Demon Horsemen lies in them.’
‘I thought you said the sword handle in that strange canvas bag was the answer.’
Meg’s face was creased with lines of tiredness. ‘The handle is only the start. A sword needs a blade.’
‘Then we need a blacksmith or a steelworker,’ Chase said. ‘We’ll need to go back to Port of Joy for that.’
‘This sword didn’t have an ordinary blade,’ Meg said quietly. ‘It was forged by the Elvenaar.’
‘The who?’
‘Descendants of the Alfyn. They inherited some of the magical skills the Alfyn first generated when they discovered the Genesis Stone. They forged the blade and gave it to Aian Abreotan to use against the Dragonlords. A thousand years after that the sword was used again by Dylan who had to fight the last Dragonlord. Dylan broke the blade.’
‘Why?’
‘He thought he could trap the Dragonlords in a magical place called Se’Treya.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Chase complained. He looked over to his dark-skinned friend, Wahim, who seemed just as confused.
‘Fragments of the Genesis Stone amber were embedded in the sword’s handle, making it much more than a simple weapon,’ Meg explained. ‘It was a magical device, probably the most potent ever constructed, and whoever wielded it was potentially the most powerful being in the world. According to the old records, King Dylan used the sword to open a portal into the Dragonlords’ secret world, a place they called Se’Treya. He thought it was a key to that place, so he lured the Dragonlords there and then smashed the sword, believing they couldn’t escape.’
‘But they could?’ Wahim asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And did they?’
‘None of the records mention the Dragonlords after that event.’
‘So smashing the sword worked,’ Chase said.
‘It shouldn’t have. The Dragonlords could come and go from Se’Treya whenever they chose. It was their magic construct in the first place.’
‘So how do we reforge the sword blade?’ Wahim asked.
‘We find some—what are they?—Elvenaar,’ said Chase.
‘The Elvenaar died out two thousand years ago,’ Meg told them.
‘Then what about their descendants?’
‘The old Andrakian histories record the death of the last Aelendyell about two hundred years after the Dragonlord War—eight hundred years ago.’
‘Then how can we mend the sword?’ Chase demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ said Meg.
‘It’s made of tempered steel.’ Erin had entered without them noticing. Despite the fact that he had lived in the underground library for several hundred years, his black hair and dark skin showed no signs of ageing. He moved to stand beside Meg. ‘That means you only need a skilled craftsman to make the blade.’
‘I told you,’ said Chase, grinning. ‘Thanks, Erin.’
‘There’s a catch,’ he said.
‘There’s always a catch.’ Wahim’s tone was laconic.
‘What is it?’ Chase asked.
‘The sword has to be forged with the blood of an Elvenaar or one of their kind.’
Chase looked at Wahim then back at Erin. ‘But Meg said they’re all dead.’
‘I said there was a catch,’ Erin reminded him.
‘So there’s no point even trying to make the blade,’ said Chase in frustration. ‘Why did we waste our time coming here?’
‘We had to find the answer,’ Meg argued.
‘At the cost of my sister’s life?’
Meg’s voice softened. ‘Passion may be safe. We don’t know for certain that the Kerwyn found her.’
‘Then how did they know to look for us here?’ Chase said angrily. ‘No one else knew. The sooner we get out of this place and get home the better.’
‘And then what will you do?’
‘I’ll find out if Passion is safe.’
Meg wondered what he intended to do if she wasn’t safe, but she couldn’t ask that question. ‘A little more time,’ she said. ‘When I’m done with the reading, we’ll leave.’
Apart from hundreds of rabbits hopping in and out of crevices and holes, the city ruins were silent and empty. Nevertheless, Swift moved stealthily as she headed towards the old palace and the spot where she’d first seen the Kerwyn soldiers arrive in their billowing white Ranu dragon egg. Meg had explained to her how time in the underground library passed much more slowly than time above ground—something to do with the magic operating in the library—but Swift had a curiously disorienting sense that a lot more time had passed than she had anticipated. She couldn’t explain precisely why she felt like that. Perhaps it was to do with the air’s texture: it seemed more like the cooler, rainy Shakh season than the hot Fuar season that was running when they went underground. Or maybe it was simply that the greenery looked lusher and greener than she remembered it.
She turned a corner onto what would have once been a main avenue that ran straight towards the palace and saw Whisper dashing towards her. Trouble. As she instinctively crouched, she felt a biting sting in her left wrist and heard a crack like a bough breaking. She sprinted for a gap between two partly collapsed walls. A puff of dust erupted to her left and stone chips flew from the wall on her right as she dived for cover. More stone chips rained on her head and a ricocheting bullet whined across the ruins. Clearly the soldiers hadn’t yet left.
She examined her wounded wrist. The bullet hadn’t passed through it, as she had first thought, but it had
left a deep crease that stung viciously. She drew on her years of training as an assassin to push the pain from her mind and focus on the situation. ‘Pain doesn’t kill you. Giving into pain will.’ Her long-dead mentor, Killer Dagger, had told her that maxim and it had saved her several times since. Pain could be endured.
She flinched as Whisper appeared at her feet. The rat sat on her haunches, staring up at Swift. She wished she knew how to communicate with the rat like the old woman, Meg, did. ‘We have to get out of here,’ she said, gasping for breath. ‘But first I’d better check where these soldiers are.’
She rubbed the rat’s ears and assessed her position. The gap between the crumbled walls of what had originally been separate buildings was littered with rubble and overgrown with grass and bushes. It would give her some cover if she wanted to crawl further back. She risked peeking over the ridge of the wall, and ducked as a bullet smacked against the stone. The men with the peacemakers—she figured there were at least three—had to be elevated for them to have been able to shoot at her as she turned the corner. There was a ruin about a hundred paces away, towards the river, three storeys high, that would suit their purpose.
The next problem was to figure out whether they’d been deliberately waiting to trap anyone heading towards the palace or had spotted her by chance. If the former, she was in serious trouble because there would be more soldiers heading for her now to close the trap. If the latter, she had a chance of escaping without further conflict, providing the first shots hadn’t attracted other soldiers. She unsheathed her knife, the blade glinting in the sunlight. There was a choice to be made.
Whisper suddenly scampered into the high grass and disappeared. Taking the rat’s cue, Swift crawled
through the undergrowth to the rear of the buildings where a wilder, denser tangle of bushes greeted her. They would give her sufficient protective cover to reach the next parallel street. From there, she could make it back to the Khvech Daas along a different route. Her hand was stinging.
Ignore the pain
, she resolved, and pressed into the undergrowth.
A few paces in, she heard rustling and froze, listening. A twig cracked.
It might be Whisper
, she hoped, but the weight on the breaking twig had been too heavy.
‘She’s got to be in here,’ a man whispered.
‘Shh,’ another hissed.
‘She was hit. You saw the blood.’
Leaves brushed against each other and another twig was crunched under a heavy boot. She gripped her knife. A red uniform appeared. She leapt. The startled soldier managed a grunt as she struck him and slit his throat. His two companions spun, raising their weapons. She ripped her knife from the first soldier’s throat and threw it at the second. Simultaneously a black shape bounded from a ruined wall onto the third soldier’s shoulders. Swift’s knife glanced off her target’s peacemaker and sliced across his cheek. As he baulked, she charged, tripping on a bush but bringing him down anyway. She twisted to avoid his grasping arms and hands and wrenched his army knife from its sheath. He was stronger and more agile than she’d expected, and for a moment she felt as if he was getting the upper hand. She stabbed him in the shoulder to distract him, and as he flinched with the pain she drove the knife under his sternum.