Spoils of War (Tales of the Apt Book 1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky (best young adult book series .txt) 📕

to them from beyond the reach of their fire. “In the old days,” it said, sepulchral and sharp, “there were many paths to magic.”

She had her knife in her hand, but when the newcomer showed himself she could not attack him. His eyes reflected the light back red, and his skin took no life from the flames. His forehead bore a birthmark or a blotchy scar, save that it shifted like liquid beneath the translucence of his skin.

“Who are you?” Scyla demanded.

“You make an eloquent case,” he said softly, folding himself crossed-legged across the fire from her.

“What do you want?” As though there could be any doubt.

“Young prince,” the newcomer whispered to Volente, “your father had high hopes for you.”

The boy was staring at him, rigid with fear.

“In the old days, men lived in fear,” the ragged man went on. “Tell me of your histories, young prince. Tell me your oldest tales.” But Volente would not speak, and so he continued, “They huddled about fires like this, and they looked out at the darkness. And the darkness held many terrors: the magics of night, and death, and blood.” And he smiled slightly, and his lips showed needle teeth, thin and sharp as a fish’s.

“Go,” Scyla spat out, drawing that crimson gaze to herself.

“But you have been so good as to bring the prince out here to meet me,” the creature told her.

“He’s mine.” Almost. Almost he was mine.

“The Prince of the Golden Future,” the old man breathed. “But now the Wasps have stolen your gold, and what future have you left?”

“I will give him a future!” Scyla snapped.

Again that serrated smile. “One where he will bring about a new age of magic?”

“There is no age of magic.” Volente sounded like a dying man. “The Light Eternal has gone out, all across the Commonweal. Why should I not be a ghost in this woman’s dead world?”

And a fierce shout of joy boiled up within Scyla but, before she could give voice to it, the old man spoke again.

“Oh, young prince, how could you think such a thing? Or course there is a new age of magic. We stand on its very brink.”

The silence that followed his words was like a well without end.

“In the beginning there was night, and death, and blood,” and a ribbon of tongue touched across the tips of those needle teeth. “And then the first Monarch of the Commonweal gathered all that was bright and glorious about her, and cast back the darkness, and swore that her nation of light and joy would endure for a thousand years.” He laughed softly. “But a thousand years have been and gone, my prince, and province after province falls beneath the boots of the Wasps, who know no light but the sun and that which their artifice makes. And so the light of your people, that has been guttering these many years, is put out like a candle.” He mimed it, withered lips pursing to blow. “But even the Wasps know what happens when you put out a light,” he added with a hungry glee. “Even the Wasps know to fear the darkness.”

Scyla’s hand was tight about her knife-hilt, but she couldn’t move.

“And your people have forgotten the battles they fought, all those years ago,” the old man stated. “You forget that night, blood and death are magic too, and though your high-burning fires banished them to the edges of the world, what will happen, now those fires are out? Let the Wasps light as many lamps as they can. All they achieve is to cast more shadows.”

“What are you saying?” Volente asked him, voice raw.

“A new age is coming, boy.” The ragged apparition hunched forwards towards him, the firelight reflecting in his eyes. “A terrible age, of horror, of despair. An age of suffering and fear to spark nightmares from the Wasps and their victims alike. But it shall be an age of magic for all that. Not your fading fires, but magic nonetheless.”

The old man gestured derisively at Scyla. “You can diminish, and become a husk of a thousand faces, none of them your own, picking over corpses until you are no more than a corpse yourself, inside. Like this one.” And he spared her a look at last, from those blood-coloured eyes. “Or you can realise the destiny your father saw in you. You can give up your power to feed a new age of magic. Not a new dawn, perhaps, but a new dusk.”

She felt Volente tremble in her arms and tried to hold tight to him. The distance between them, that had always been there, only grew greater and greater until he was standing before the ragged man, so deep in his shadow that the firelight barely reached him at all.

“My father...” he got out: a plaintive, lost cry.

“Your father was so blinded by his own light, he could not see,” the old man whispered. “He could not see how dark the path is that you will walk.”

“Wait.” Scyla was on her feet, useless knife still in hand. “Wait, Volente, princeling, please...” And she wished, she dearly wished that somewhere inside her was even the slightest spark of that light magic his people had espoused. Even the faintest gleam of it would have driven the haggard creature away, and made Volente hers.

When those violet eyes turned on her, she saw herself, her true face, in them: her true face as it would be, if she had worn it for all the mean and bloody things she had done. The sight had her cringing back, hand thrown up to blot it out.

And they were gone, when she next dared look. Her golden boy was lost to the shadows. He would rather let his life’s blood feed the dark, than stay with her. But how will I live? he had asked, and now the question echoed in her ears, in her own voice, and it occurred to her that, whatever it was she had been doing these