‘Await me near here,’ she told Brodan. ‘I shall come to you with the box, if I can.’
He stared at her sullenly, mistrustfully. She scowled at his ingratitude.
‘I shall save you, Lieutenant,’ she told him flatly, ‘both from your own stupidity and the wrath of your lords. Think simply of that.’ And with that she was hobbling off into the night.
The Buoyant Maiden had received a few new scars from Wasp sting-shot, most notably a smashed steering vane that had made even their return to Jerez problematic, and so Allanbridge had taken her away for emergency repairs. The next morning would see them sailing for Collegium, leaving this sodden town behind them at last.
They would not be sorry to leave it.
‘For me,’ Gaved informed them, ‘this is as far as I go. I won’t be on the airship with you tomorrow.’ Sef was cradled in one arm, wrapped in an ill-fitting robe that Nivit had somehow been able to procure.
Nivit regarded his old partner doubtfully. ‘No way you can keep her here,’ he pointed out.
‘Not here,’ Gaved agreed. ‘We’ll find somewhere, though. Somewhere… somewhere beside some lake that has no cities in it.’
Nivit chuckled scratchily. ‘Never thought I’d see you become smitten.’
Gaved shrugged. ‘I’m just sick of the life, Nivit. I need a break from it.’
‘You’ll be back at it, wherever you go. You’re a hunter born.’
Sadly, Gaved agreed that it was probably true.
Nivit’s offices were getting crowded now. Thalric was asleep, or feigning it, recovering from the stress he had put on his wound, having commandeered Nivit’s own bed. Tisamon sat in one corner, perhaps meditating, perhaps just keeping an eye on the two Wasps. A frown on her face, Tynisa was bandaging her hand, which was bleeding yet again. Achaeos watched her until she met his gaze, then he gave up on looking at anything else within the shack but the object he held in his hand.
Shadow Box. Box of Shadows. Soul of the Darakyon.
He had not expected it to be so beautiful, so very elegant, its surface intricate and twisted, wrought of unknown wood, layer on later of carvings, so that within the outermost cage of briars there were deeper and deeper details to be discerned, creatures and trees and mere suggestions of form. Form and movement.
He blinked, he whose eyes knew no darkness. Yet here it was, this mythical concept he had heard so much about but never seen, for there was no box within the carvings, no core to it at all but merely a darkness at the box’s heart. His seer’s senses were blinded by it, a caged piece of night that was likewise to magic as staring directly at the sun was to the eye, so great and potent that it could not be properly viewed.
What am I to do with this, now I have it? What would the Wasps have done with it, ignorant as they were of the magical arts?
What indeed? Was there merely some demented collector in the Wasp Empire, some man of great political power and no true knowledge, who had somehow set his heart on this thing that held the death of an age within it? Or perhaps…
Perhaps someone in the Empire truly understood what it was. A Wasp magician? Surely that was impossible.
In the shadows of magic, however, there was so little that was impossible.
The Wasps intended to use the box. He was sure of it, irrationally, without being able to give a reason. This was no mere collector’s toy. They wanted it. But how did one use it? What did one do with the Shadow Box? Holding it within his hands now, he realized that it had never been made with any purpose. It had never been made at all. No craftsman’s hands had added that wealth of shifting detail. It had formed from the very death of the Darakyon, shaped itself out of hate and pain and failure.
Use it.
If the Wasps wished to use it, that meant it could be used. And the Wasps did not have it, because he held it in his hands. He, Achaeos, pawn of the Darakyon, he had reclaimed it for the forest and the ghosts, but why should he himself not use it? What blows could be struck with this relic, against the Empire?
It seemed to him that there was now another with them, there in Nivit’s home. Some shadow-thing hidden from him, but lurking at the edge of his senses.
Use it.
His hands played over the box, gripping it, feeling the endlessly reiterated features. How else would one use a box?
He came to his senses suddenly: becoming aware of himself and what he was about to do. His mind was already issuing the countermand but, before he could recover his self-possession, his traitor hands had acted.
He opened the box.
Darkness came flooding out.
*
The walls were twisting, inwards, downwards, all knotted and thorny, and he was falling, drowning, a world opening about him…
Sef screamed, clutching at her head, but Gaved was bewildered, seeing nothing. Tisamon had leapt to his feet, claw ready on his hand…
The world was made of knotted, diseased trees, thorned, running awry with briars, leprous with fungi, and the space between the trees was darkness and shadows and yet more trees and he waited for the jump, the snap taking him back into Nivit’s dingy little hut, but it did not happen.
Achaeos climbed to his feet, and saw his hands were empty and the box was gone.
No. Iam within it.
The prison of the Darakyon, home of all the horrors that warped place could muster, and he was now inside it.
He turned all about, breath issuing swift and ragged, but he was alone, all alone…
Is this it? Am I here now? For ever?
‘I am Achaeos, Seer of Tharn,’ he declared, choking on his own voice. ‘I demand that you acknowledge me.’
We acknowledge you.
But this was not the great voice of the Darakyon, only the voice of the creature from his dream.
‘Laetrimae!’ He turned.
She was there, a Mantis-kinden maid possessed of their lean, angular beauty, and dressed now in the carapace-steel armour of centuries ago, looking fair and pale and terrible.
What have you done? She approached him, picking her way through tortured ground that writhed and contorted all around them. You have opened the box. No other has ever dared to come here.
‘I am here.’ I cannot admit weakness now, because she is Mantis, and she would kill me. ‘I have followed the commands of the Darakyon. What would you have of me?’
She raised a hand, and he flinched, expecting thorns, but it was live, warm skin held against his cheek, and then she leant down and kissed him, briefly but passionately, on the lips, engaging his white eyes with her own.
You, little neophyte? she mocked. We want nothing of you. You are not the one.
And, despite himself, he let out a cry when the thorns and spines burst bloodily from her skin, ripping her apart, goring her through and through, the arcing, piercing and repiercing briars, and the jagged chitin that ripped through her armour and turned it to rust. And he heard-
‘Achaeos!’
A voice from behind him. A real, live voice. Staggering back from Laetrimae, he turned to see Tynisa struggling towards him, brandishing her rapier in her hand. The sword gleamed with a green-white light, and he saw an answering gleam from deeper within the trees.
‘Oh,’ he said slowly, because he had not appreciated the true scale of the problem.
‘What in the wastes is going on?’ Tynisa demanded. He looked back to Laetrimae, but the Mantis creature had gone, fading into smoke the moment he glanced away from her.