Daughter?’
‘Tell me those things I do not know.’
‘I do not understand.’
The child gazed out from under the sheltering rock at the setting moon. ‘What is that?’ she said, pointing to the faint light on the western horizon.
‘That is Das’taas, or what is left of it,’ said her mother weakly. ‘It was our home.’
‘Why did we leave?’
‘The Darkness came and our Lord Dahun was gone and no one knew how to fight it.’
‘Darkness?’ asked Child.
Lair’ss was so weak now that she sensed this might be her last conversation with her daughter. ‘I know little, but this much is what is known. The Darkness came from the Centre.’
The child tilted her head as if remembering something. ‘Ah, yes, the Centre. The Ancient Heart.’
‘I do not know it by that name, but the Old Kingdoms, Despaira, Paingor, Mournhome, Abandos and the others held sway since the first days after the Time Before Time. Our lord Dahun paid tribute to the Old Kingdoms, and we stood as a bulwark against the Savages.’ Lair’ss inclined her head behind them. ‘There, to the east, where we go now. But we were told a bad thing happened.’
‘What, Mother?’
‘I do not know,’ Lair’ss said wearily. ‘So much of what has happened is a mystery.’ She stared out towards the distant city. ‘I have been told we once lived like the Savages, spawning in pits, fighting for survival from the first moment. Each death returned us to the pits and the struggle was endless.
‘I have been told that the Kings brought order and taught us how to live a new way, how to build as well as destroy, how to care for one another without constant killing. We were told these were good things.’
‘Why?’
‘Again, I do not know,’ she said with a long sigh. ‘But what the King wills is law.’
The younger female was quiet for a while as the sun to the east grew brighter. ‘Where do we go?’ prodded Child.
After a moment, her mother answered, ‘To the east, towards the lands of the Savages and the Mad Ones.’
‘Why?’ asked Child.
‘Because there is nowhere else to go,’ answered her mother softly.
A smile crossed the child’s lips and she said, ‘No, there is another place to go.’ Suddenly she lunged forward and her fangs closed around her mother’s throat and with one pull, she tore it open. Blood fountained and she drank deeply as the light faded from her mother’s eyes.
Thoughts came with the feeding, not her own, but those of the being whose life she ended.
A time of calm, with a male, by the name of Dagri, who was her father. He had vanished with the King.
Images flashed, some understandable and some not, places, faces, struggles and quiet. And some of the holes in her knowledge were filled in as the more abstract knowledge she had gained from the Archivist blended with her mother’s experiences.
There are been a stable time, a time of Dahun’s dominion. Then word had come of a struggle to the west. Dahun’s kingdom was not one of the Old Kingdoms, but one of the Second Kingdoms, those that ringed the five original Kingdoms.
Then there had been a war, not here, but in some other place, against a king named Maarg, and her father and others had gone with Dahun to fight him. No one had returned, leaving only the City Guardians and those who knew magic to face the Darkness when it appeared. No one knew what had become of the Old Kingdoms.
Bits and pieces of knowledge of those times and places seemed to float around the periphery of her thoughts, almost understood, tantalizingly so, but still not coherent. She knew one thing, though: if she were to survive, she needed more knowledge and power.
She regarded what was left of her mother’s body, then consumed what was left. She kept feeling odd sensations as she did so and tried to put a name to them, but couldn’t. In a strange way she regretted the need to feed on the female who had brought her into this world, but her abstract knowledge of her race’s breeding history made it difficult to understand why she would feel a bond with this female more than any other. She paused; the Archivist thought of their collective society as ‘the race’, but her mother had been taught to consider herself a member of ‘the People’. She understood that this was a distinction, but why it was important eluded her.
She crawled out from under the overhang, peering about for any threat. In the distance she saw a group of flyers frantically beating towards her, so she ducked back under the overhang until she was certain they had passed. Peering to the west, she saw a dark spot on the horizon. From the knowledge she had inherited from her feeding she knew it to be something fundamentally wrong, and a radical and terrible change in the order of her world, yet it remained abstract to her. She had no feelings about that.
Feelings?
She paused. Strange sensations in the pit of her stomach and rising up into her chest and throat visited her, but she had no name for them. For an instant she wondered if she was in danger from them, like poison or exposure to dangerous magics.
Something tickled the edge of her consciousness. She paused and considered this unfathomable material. From the knowledge she had gained from the Archivist, she understood that memories were either there or not. To have memories from those devoured, yet be unable to reach them, was unheard of; so this must be something else.
But if it was something else, then what was it?
Still not enough knowledge, she thought, and certainly not enough power. She must hunt. She must grow stronger, more powerful.
There was a stirring above and suddenly another flyer dropped out of the evening sky. Without thought, she reached out a hand, but not in the clawed defensive position. Instead, her palm faced the attacker and a searing bolt of energy shot from it and slicked cleanly through his neck, severing the head, which dropped at her feet as the body crashed into the rocks a few feet away.
The child felt only mild hunger, but knew she needed more food to become more powerful than she was.
She hunkered down to begin eating the flyer’s head. ‘Magic,’ she said softly to herself. But she had not encountered a spell-caster, let alone devoured one. Even more softly she pondered, ‘Now where did that come from?’
Then she set about eating the creature’s brain.
THE HORSES REARED.
The two young riders kept them under control, their long hours of training used to good effect in the face of the unexpected attack. From the brush behind them came the shouts of the men-at-arms and the baying of the dogs, signalling that relief would be there in minutes. Until
