THROUGH DARKNESS OF MEMORY

  BOOK 3 OF THE VICISSITUDES

  “Now the web had filled the entire tomb. It ran and glistened with a hundred changing hues, it dripped with glories drawn from the spectrum of dissolution.”

  —Clark Ashton-Smith, The Weaver in the Vault

  “‘I do really wish to destroy it!’ cried Frodo. ‘Or, well, to have it destroyed. I am not made for perilous quests. I wish I had never seen the Ring! Why did it come to me? Why was I chosen?’”

  —J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

  Chapter 1: Another Rises

  Albron

  He fell screaming from the wreckage as the black fires burned.

  Such a pretty boy, his mother had always said. My handsome little man.

  But that beauty was no more. The flames turned the flesh of his face, neck, and shoulder white and bubbling. Skin melted off his skull. He screamed and screamed but the pain did not end. He rolled. He was lying on soft grass, somewhere in the Virgodan valleys beyond Daimonopolis’s stink and smog, an idyllic scene—if he hadn’t been on fire.

  He was amazed he still had air in his lungs to scream. Amazed, too, that his nerves could still feel. Surely, they should have blackened and died now, like roots scoured by wildfire. He rolled, rolled. Tore at his clothes. The fire seemed more within than without, burning him from the inside. Oh Gods! Gods help me! Gods!

  He crawled, rose to his feet and staggered. His face was pure pain. He could not see—there was only fire. He smelled his own burning flesh, strangely sweet and alluring. Acid in his mouth. He gagged and fell, buried his face in soil.

  But the fires were so, so hungry. They weren’t put out, but instead spread, scorching the earth.

  Help me! Oh Gods, help me!

  He crawled again.

  You’re going to die. Die burned alive. Slowly, horrifically. Oh Gods!

  It had happened to many engineers, even some he had known, but he had never believed it would happen to him, not with his talents, not with his dedication.

  Help me!

  And then, a miracle.

  Water. Sweet, beautiful water.

  He threw himself forward. Nevermind that he could not swim, stunted as his limbs were. Anything to be out of the fire.

  He hurtled down the slope of the riverbanks and crashed into the waters. The pain was cauterised. He shrieked but no sound emerged. His mouth filled with gorgeously cold liquid. His face felt as though it were being stung by ten-thousand hornets. But he knew the worst was over. He had been burned many times during his work. He knew the cycle of healing all-too-well.

  But never like this. You were in the centre of the inferno… You were…

  He needed air. He pushed off the bed. The river was not deep. Though his head barely broke the surface, he could bounce and paddle to dry ground. He struggled, not caring which bank he reached. As he exposed his face to air, hissing steam rose from him that smelled fouler than the black depths of an Engine never washed, the clag of blood thicker than any human blood, richer than any mineshaft in the earth.

  Gasping, still shrieking when breath allowed, he splashed and flailed until he reached wet earth. He pulled himself onto the bank and lay there, the cold mud like a mother’s kiss.

  Then he sobbed. The sobs came heaving, wracking, penetrating him worse than any crossbow bolt. He cried like a toddler abandoned by their parent.

  Master, dead. And the Engine, my life’s work… Gone!

  Only now the pain had subsided—not stopped, but lessened somewhat—could he process the awfulness of what had just happened. Gorm, who had given him a home, who had praised his skill, who had been the father he never had, was dead. Immolated in the very heart of the blast. Oh Gods! He lifted his head from the dirt and wailed. He screamed and dark birds took flight. Crows rose in black clouds—so many, how were there so many?—and wheeled, forming a cyclone like a portal to another world, the land of the dead. Not yet! Please, not yet!

  His tears could not extinguish the pain of the fire.

  If Gorm were alive he would tell me to stop crying, Albron thought. A stern father, he was. He had used the whip many times on Albron, but the dwarf had come to embrace it, to know it as pure and good. The world was dark chaos, and Gorm was the light of order. Discipline was needed. And the only way to enforce discipline and order was through strength. Tecleon was a testament to that, the principle wrought in living iron.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  And he, too, is gone. My metal brother. My… friend…

  Albron had lost everything in a single, cosmic act of cruelty.

  He wailed and wept again, helpless, broken.

  But beneath the grief, something else was already rising up. Something so titanic it could swallow the grief whole.

  Rage.

  “Telos,” he whispered. “Telos.”

  That was the name of the man—the freakish, inhuman man who could lift a golem over his head and throw it like a child’s toy—who had done this to Albron. He was the cause of all this devastation.

  The crows squawked and mocked him. They shrieked with darkling laughter.

  He gritted his teeth, shrieked in return. He reached instinctively and found a fist-sized stone. Standing, besmeared, rent apart by fire, he looked more flayed Daimon than man. He drew back his hand and threw with killing force.

  His aim was true. The stone struck a black bird with a clang.

  A clang?

  The crow fell from the sky in a glittering rain, thudding to the ground like something heavier than it should be. He scrambled up the muddy slope, crossed the field, pushing aside long grass. He saw the broken bird, lying in a puddle of… Blood? But it was not natural blood, not animal blood. His eyes widened. Daimonsblood…

  He knelt. The black feathers of the bird had been scraped from its shining metal body. Tiny gears, some smaller than the width of a fingernail, lay gleaming in the soil. There were wires, tiny pistons, mechanisms so fine and delicate they seemed the work of spiders. Albron was a master engineer, a graduate of the finest mechanical schools Virgoda had to offer—courtesy of Gorm’s deep pockets—yet he had never seen anything so delicate, so perfect. This was machinery of a different sort. It could only be…

  A shadow fell across him. Terror came, swifter than a blade to the throat. He wanted so badly to look behind him but some instinct prevented him from turning.

  And that instinct saved his life.

  “It is forbidden to slay a messenger of the Rynu’nakar,” a female voice purred. The voice was so soft, sensuous even, and deeper even than his own. Yet, there was some dark iron beneath its fluidity and music, as there was said to be rare and precious metals beneath the surface of the ocean. The hairs on his nape rose. He felt nothing of the pain in his face or body, for adrenaline had flooded his system, causing his hands to tremble.

  “Why can’t I turn around?” he whispered.

  “It is forbidden for a mortal to look upon the divine,” the voice answered.

  Could it be? Had he, Albron the Dwarf, stumbled upon a god? It was impossible, and yet, so was everything that’d happened in the last few hours. Could Gorm, his master of ten years, be dead? Could his greatest work, The Thunderbolt, lie burning and destroyed upon the tracks. No, this was all a nightmare, and this moment the terrifying conclusion.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and began to weep.

  “Fear not, Albron…”

  His eyes snapped open. He fought to keep the animal whimper from his throat.

  “I’m sorry… I’m sorry I killed your crow, mistress. I did not—”

  “Be silent, now.”

  He obeyed at once. It was as though someone had sewn his lips shut, or else gripped his throat in a vise. What magic was this? The Sumyrian arts?

  “You and I share a common enemy,” the goddess purred.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come, say his name.”

  “T-Telos.”

  He felt a surge of energy behind him that reminded him of an Engine firebox over-fanned by a clumsy engineer, the fires leaping out of the metal mouth and scorching the hand that fed it; it was wrath, pure wrath, as though emotions—when powerful enough—could become physical like heat.

  “He has wronged me, as he has wronged you. He stands in the way of divine plans. He must be stopped.”

  Albron clenched his fists, gritted his teeth.

  “This… this I will do for you, mistress.”

  “You must make for the nearest village, a mile from here. There you will find an old tavern in which there are dragonlings. You must send word at once to the authorities of the major cities. Tell them your Wagemaster is dead. Tell them that Telos Daggeron and his party are the culprits responsible for the many calamities that have befallen this state. Tell them to act at once to apprehend them. Write with authority. I shall ensure that the hearts and minds of those whom you reach out to are willing to receive.”

  “You… you would do that, my lady? Thank you.”

  What he had really meant to say was, You are capable of doing that? But he had stopped himself at the last moment. Once again, this small instinct had saved his life.

  “Indeed. And I will do more. You cannot face Telos as you are. You shall need… assistance.”

  There was a swish of wind, and he thought for a moment she would brain him from behind, but then an implement tumbled to the ground before him. It was a strange thing, almost like a cannon, but compressed, capable of fitting within his hand. It had a barrel. A trigger that resembled a crossbow mechanism. But unlike a cannon or a crossbow, it had no obvious means of loading ammunition, nor a firing mechanism. He could not smell black powder. Instead, there was a static smell, similar to the onset of thunder and lightning. The metallurgy was similarly exquisite to the mechanical crow.

  “What is this?”

  “A weapon forbidden among our kind since the Nyctothian War. But needs must. The Law is being re-written even as we speak. The rules of the game have changed, and we must adapt.”

  Albron understood none of this. He understood only that what he held in his hands was a relic of the gods. And what is more, he felt the sublime weight of its killing power.

  “Thank you, mistress,” he whispered.

  “I am no mistress of yours,” the goddess hissed. “I am Nereth, Crow-seer, Fate-weaver, Daughter of Death Himself. If you must address me, dust that you are, then it is as Master.”

  Albron shivered. He opened his mouth, but no sensible words could form.

  “Kill Telos,” Nereth whispered. “Track him down. Do this, and you may yet have a place in the new world to come.”

  There was a rush, as if flames and wind were mingling, and then he felt the absence of the presence, like a forgotten dream. Thunder rumbled overhead and he smelled thick Daimonsblood upon the air again.

  At last, he turned around. The goddess was gone.

  The hand-cannon felt heavy in his hands.

  Slowly, he turned once more and set off across the Virgodan plains towards the nearest village.

  The words of his new master rang in his ears.