Duskfall Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Christopher Husberg

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part I: Shadows

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  Part II: Everything that Rises

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  Part III: Kill to Feel

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  Part IV: Daemons Even Daemons Fear

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Christopher Husberg and coming soon from Titan Books

  Dark Immolation (June 2017)

  Duskfall

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783299157

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781783299164

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: June 2016

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

  © 2016 Christopher Husberg. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  FOR RACHEL

  PROLOGUE

  170th year of the People’s Age, The Gulf of Nahl

  BAHC STOOD AT THE bow of his fishing boat, clutching a small oil lamp. Its light pressed against the night, illuminating the large white snowflakes around him. In the distance the flakes were dimmer, floating through black sky and into blacker ocean, disappearing into calm, cold swells.

  Bahc breathed in, licking salt from his lips. He loved the taste of the sea after a storm. He removed a glove and patted the rail of The Swordsmith’s Daughter, feeling the cold grain of the wood. Bahc had designed and built the boat himself, with the help of the other tiellans in Pranna, years ago. When times were different.

  Behind him, the deck creaked.

  “Just like that, eh?” Gord said.

  Bahc looked over his shoulder. Gord also carried a lantern, and his huge frame—massive for a tiellan—cast a long shadow behind him. He wore coarse wool and rugged furs, and his long, thick beard was frosty with ice.

  Bahc lifted his wide-brimmed hat up to get a better look at the water. “Aye,” he said. “Just like that.”

  “Least it’s in our wake, now.”

  “We’re lost, Gord. We’re not in the clear, yet.”

  Gord leaned against the boat’s railing. His breath formed clouds of mist against the cold. “Figured. Now it’s just us waitin’ for the stars to show themselves again, eh?”

  “Aye. We drift, for now, and hope we don’t end up somewhere we aren’t supposed to be.”

  Bahc turned. He was about to go below decks to tell the rest of the crew, when something made him stop and turn back. He looked out at the blackness. Dark water, dark sky.

  But not all dark.

  In the distance, a bright blue light flickered on the water. Bahc’s gut clenched.

  “Put out your lamp, Gord,” he murmured. He was already snuffing out his own.

  “D’you think they saw us?” Gord asked, barely above a whisper.

  “I don’t know,” Bahc said, grinding his teeth. “There’s some distance between us. Our lights aren’t bright. But the night is clearing up.”

  “The wind’s at their backs,” Gord said.

  It was true. If the vessel emitting the eerie blue light visible off the starboard bow had seen them and wanted to pursue, the wind would bring it straight to The Swordsmith’s Daughter.

  “Then we’d best put it at ours,” Bahc said.

  “On our way, then?” Gord was already moving to the mainmast.

  “Aye. Straight away from them.” Bahc walked towards the cabin. “I’ll wake the others. We’ll need every hand.”

  “Cap’n,” Gord said. Bahc looked over his shoulder. His crew didn’t use formalities much on his boat, on his own insistence. But when waters got rough, there was comfort in a chain of command.

  “D’you hear that?” Gord’s head was cocked to the side.

  Bahc heard nothing at first. But then there it was, soft as the falling snow. A small, rhythmic thud, in time with the water lapping against the boat.

  He frowned, walked back to the bow and looked over the side. Something gently brushed against the hull. Bahc squinted in the dark.

  It was a body.

  Bahc cursed. “Prepare the winch. Try to bring him aboard. I’ll get the others.”

  “You sure?” Gord asked. “Nobody can survive for more’n a few minutes in these waters. He don’t look too fresh.”

  “Get him aboard,” Bahc said. “That’s an order.”

  * * *

  The body fell to the deck with a dull thump. Bahc stared at it, conscious of his crew doing the same. The paleness of the skin, practically blue in the darkness, meant the cold had probably already done its work. But, given the two long, thick arrow shafts jutting from the body, the cold seemed the least of this man’s worries.

  Bahc saw that his daughter, Winter, was also staring at the corpse. He wished he hadn’t brought her. Twenty summers or not, he didn’t want her to see the lifeless form.

  Not lifeless, Bahc realized. The body—the man—was shivering.

  “Shit,” Gord muttered. “Is he…”

  The man coughed violently, and vomited a stream of water onto the deck.

  “Gord, take the helm,” Bahc said. “Get us out of here.” He turned to the body. The man. “Lian, help me get him below into the galley.”

  “Papa, what are you doing?”

  Bahc closed his eyes. Winter. She was involved now, there was no helping it. Bahc thought once again of the flickering blue light in the distance. He could dump the body and leave; this man was as good as dead, anyway.

  Instead he opened his eyes, and reached down for the man’s legs. Lian, the youngest crew member, was already lifting the man’s arms.

  His daughter had seen enough death. Today, at least, she would not see another.

  “We’re going to save his life,” Bahc said.

  * * *

  After a few hours, the man’s color began to return. That was good. This wasn’t the most extreme case of cold Bahc had seen, but the arrow wounds were serious. Bahc, with Lian’s help, had removed the shafts and cleansed the wound
s with fire; the acrid smell of burning flesh still lingered. They had warmed the man, removing their own clothing and huddling with him on the floor underneath a half-dozen thick wool blankets, near the furnace in the corner of the galley. Lian had objected at first—said he didn’t want to go skin to skin with a human—but it was the only way Bahc knew to warm someone this far gone. Decades of fishing in the Gulf of Nahl had taught Bahc the effects of such cold. Massaging limbs and hot water never worked. You had to warm their blood at the source. Had to warm their heart. Even after all that, Bahc wasn’t sure this man would make it.

  Or themselves, for that matter. Bahc couldn’t stop thinking of what might be chasing them. The blue light in the distance. His crew had gotten them moving quickly, and Gord had checked in twice now to report. There was no sign of pursuit.

  But still, Bahc worried. Mostly about Winter.

  Bahc put his hand to the man’s chest. The man’s skin felt warmer than before. He touched his fingers. They were cool, but no longer ice-cold. Bahc pushed off the blankets and stood up.

  “Get dressed,” he told Lian, reaching for his trousers. “We still have work to do.”

  Lian nodded. Once they were dressed they lifted the man from the makeshift bed and placed him on the table that stood in the center of the galley.

  Behind Bahc, the door opened.

  “Think we’re clear, Cap’n,” Gord said.

  Bahc relaxed. “You have a bearing?”

  “Aye. We glimpsed the stars just for a moment, but Winter got a good look. Should be moving due south now, and dawn’ll confirm that.”

  Bahc nodded, and looked back down at the man. His skin had gone from almost blue to pale white, which made it easier to see the cuts, bruises, and old scars that covered his body.

  Gord remained at the doorway, staring at the man on the table.

  “How’s he doin’, eh?”

  “As well as he can be. His color is returning, but that doesn’t mean much, given his other injuries.” Bahc frowned. Gord still stood halfway in the doorway. “Get out and close the door, Gord. You’re letting the cold in.”

  Bahc turned back to the table. Just as he was about to ask Lian to refill the bucket with more hot water, the man on the table twitched, and then the whole room was a whirlwind of movement.

  It took a moment for him to realize what had happened. Bahc found he’d been spun round from the table to face the doorway again, and the jagged end of one of the broken arrow shafts was pressed into the skin of his neck, a strong arm immobilizing him. The man had moved so quickly. The metal pan that held the other shaft and arrowheads clattered to the floor.

  No one moved. Bahc blinked. He could just see Lian’s shocked face out of the corner of his eye. Gord, still in the doorway, took a slow step forward, hand creeping to the dagger at his belt.

  The arrow shaft pressed forcefully against Bahc’s throat.

  “Don’t m-move,” the man rasped in a cracked whisper. Bahc felt the man’s hot breath in his ear. “Who are you?”

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” Bahc said, trying to keep calm.

  The man trembled. “I d-don’t… I don’t remember…” he rasped.

  The door slammed shut behind Gord. There was no one near the door, at least not inside the room. Bahc wondered whether Winter had found her way down, and prayed she had not. Whatever was going on, he didn’t want her to have any part in it.

  “What in Oblivion…” Gord grunted, looking at the door that had slammed behind him.

  A bucket flew across the room, whizzing past Gord’s head and crashing into the wall. Bahc would have thought someone had thrown it, but it had come from the corner of the room where neither he nor Lian nor the man were standing.

  Bahc felt the man’s grasp—and the pressure from the arrow shaft—slacken for the briefest moment. Then the room erupted into chaos.

  Tin cups and wooden spoons streaked from wall to wall, propelled by nothing. The pliers Bahc had used to remove the arrow shafts flew upwards, embedding themselves nose-first in the ceiling. A box of fishhooks Bahc had set out earlier to clean shattered; Bahc shut his eyes as the hooks exploded in all directions. The table the man had been lying on shook violently, creaking against the bolts that held it to the floor.

  Bahc looked around. Gord had dropped as soon as the bucket flew past. Lian lay on the floor on the other side of the table, not moving.

  Bahc felt himself freed from the man’s grasp. He turned slowly. The man wobbled, his hands at his sides. He still clutched the arrow tightly in one fist. Bahc took a step away as he saw the man’s eyes roll back. Only the whites showed, shining in the lamplight. His face contorted in pain and confusion. Then he fell, his strangled shriek ringing in Bahc’s ears, and all movement stopped. Objects flying through midair dropped to the floor.

  Bahc stood, breathing heavily. What he had just seen was impossible. Or at least it should be. But he had seen it once before. The day his daughter was born.

  The night his wife died.

  Gord rose to his feet slowly, muttering something about ghosts. Lian moaned softly. The stranger lay crumpled, chin resting on his chest, eyes closed. Peaceful, as if he’d fallen asleep.

  “We tell no one,” Bahc whispered, looking around at the mess: utensils everywhere, hooks embedded in walls, containers overturned. “No one.”

  Gord nodded, slowly. “What about Lian?”

  “I’ll talk to him.” They couldn’t let this get out. It was too dangerous. No one—human or tiellan—would understand.

  “What’re we going to do?” Gord asked, looking around the room nervously.

  “Bind the man,” Bahc said, retrieving a few long scraps of leather that had been scattered on the floor in the chaos, and handing them to Gord. “And then…”

  He trailed off as the stranger groaned.

  Bahc sighed. He had made up his mind. “Then,” he said, “we take him back to Pranna.”

  1

  One year later, Pranna, northern Khale

  AFTER SHE HAD BATHED and dressed, Winter slipped quietly out of the house into the bleak morning light. She wasn’t sure if her father was up yet, but Cantic tradition dictated that the bride should not have any contact with the men in her family, or the groom, until the ceremony.

  “The bride,” Winter whispered to herself. Sometimes she just had to hear herself say a thing to believe it.

  She tried again. “I’m getting married.” She had thought the idea might finally sink in on the day it happened, but apparently not. Marriage still seemed as foreign to her as air to a fish.

  Winter looked back at her family’s small cottage, wondering if she shouldn’t find her father, anyway. They didn’t put much stock in religion, not anymore. But seeing him would be awkward, and provoke a conversation that she wasn’t sure she could face quite yet. She didn’t know how to tell him what was in her heart. She wasn’t sure she understood it herself.

  Deep, slow breaths were the key. They always were.

  She shivered in the crisp air and kept walking. It was cold, but not as cold as Pranna could be in the middle of the long winter. The sun hid behind a wall of gray clouds; the threat of snow loomed on the horizon.

  Cantic tradition also stated that, the morning of the wedding, the bride was to have a Doting—to be given gifts by those closest to her. Since most tiellans had already left Pranna, that left precious few. One old king’s abdication and act of emancipation one hundred and seventy-one years ago had still not erased a millennium of slavery. Old prejudices ran deep. Tiellans were shorter than humans, with slender, pointed ears, larger eyes, and rarely grew hair on their bodies, except for the tops of their heads. Of course, after centuries of interbreeding there were exceptions, Gord being one of them with his unusually tall build and full beard.

  Winter still did not understand how such minor differences caused such great conflict. But the results were clear enough: Gord and his brother Dent, Lian and his family, and Darrin and Eranda and their children we
re the only tiellans who remained in Pranna besides Winter and her father. The fact that so many had left weighed on Winter’s heart; tiellans were always reluctant to leave their homes.

  “Not always,” Winter whispered to herself, glancing at the sea in the distance.

  Her Doting was supposed to be at Darrin and Eranda’s home, but Winter stopped at the small intersection in the road ahead. To her right, not far down the dirt road, was Darrin and Eranda’s hut and the few friends she had in the world. To her left, the Big Hill ran down to the Gulf of Nahl. She saw the dock, and her father’s boat, far below. One path offered duty and those who loved her; the other offered freedom and the beautiful terror of uncertainty.

  Winter paused, even though she already knew her choice. She allowed herself to imagine, briefly, leaving everything behind. She had never felt at home in Pranna. She didn’t know why. Even with her friends, sometimes even with her father, she never felt whole. A piece of her had always been missing, and she had never known what it was, or how to get it back.

  She imagined herself at the helm of her own ship. A small crew to call her own. Perhaps a lover. Perhaps not.

  And she imagined that life crashing down all around her. There wasn’t much room in the Sfaera for the tiellan race anymore, and even less room for a tiellan woman.

  What makes you think you’d fit in any better on a ship, away from Pranna, than you do here? Winter shook her head. It was a useless daydream.

  With a sigh that she could see in the cold air, Winter pulled her cloak more tightly around her and took the right-hand fork.

  * * *

  “Ready to give your life away to a human?” Lian asked her, when they finally found a moment alone during the Doting. Lian spoke with a leisurely, lilting drawl, like most tiellans. Winter did not, because of her father. “The language of captivity,” he called it.

  Lian’s parents and Darrin and Eranda were momentarily distracted with talk of more tiellan persecution in the nearby city of Cineste when Lian had sat beside her, near the fire. Winter had been listening to the others talk. She loved these people, but did not know how to show it. More often than not, she found herself simply observing, as she did now. Even at her own Doting.

  Turning to Lian, Winter couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or genuine. Probably both; he was smiling, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes.