Then Dark Below: A War of Whispers Book 2, page 1
Then Dark Below
A War of Whispers Book Two
Lily Anne Crow
Raven & Rum Press
Copyright © 2022 by Lily Anne Crow
Raven & Rum Press
Ontario, Canada
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
To my prince, my inspiration, my partner in crime, my partner in life … and everything else. This wouldn’t be half the story it is without your help.
~yk
Contents
Author Notes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
Author Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Author Notes
Thank you, dear reader, for taking a chance on a new author! Your patronage is incredibly valuable in this competitive business.
If you enjoyed this second instalment in my series, A War of Whispers, I would be extremely grateful if you would leave a review, either on Amazon or Goodreads. Reader reviews and word of mouth are important ways for authors like me to find new readers.
Again, thank you so much!!
~Lily
Chapter 1
Darkness reigned, endless and absolute. His heart was as empty as the unfathomable gloom surrounding him, absent of all light and all hope. A throne made of ashes and thorns descended from somewhere above, as wide and heavy as a mountain. He looked up, fearful, but could not see the one perched upon the seat.
Hundreds of hands stretched forth from the throne, reaching for all living things. Scrabbling nails tore at his flesh and scratched his cold, clammy skin. Far above he could sense a void rather than see it, a vacuous expanse, the end of everything. Screams from those around him pierced his ears, terrified cries fading only as ashen hands reached down, squeezing tight around each throat.
In the next second, he felt as though he were falling an immense distance, the bottom dropping out of his gut. A blackness darker than night threatened to supplant his vision, and an icy fear surged through him as a fist seemed to grip his very heart. He watched as every face turned toward the great thorn-covered throne. Something like a man rose from the seat, as tall and majestic as a cypress, darker than ink, a being ancient beyond measure. From chains on this magnate’s robes hung seven crowns, each one a treasure. But the greatest one gleamed cold and black atop his brow. His voice thundered all around, like the crashing of waves.
“Kneel before the first and true heir.
All who kneel will be saved.
All who reject shall be dust.”
One by one, people began to kneel. First a dozen, then a hundred, then a countless array. Humans made up the great many, but there were others he could not recognize. Thin creatures with skin like pale shadow, diminutive owl creatures, towering, muscular men who bore the heads and antlers of elk above their shoulders. He saw a stone-faced being with pure white hair grieving and tearing its clothes. The reaching hands closed around it, and its body disintegrated into dust.
Though many knelt, even more refused, struggling and pushing away from the dark figure above. He watched in terror as each life crumbled into cinders, a pale wind sweeping their ashes across Erlahain. Those who bowed suffered no lesser fate, their bodies becoming statues, eternally supplicant to their sovereign and his many crowns. Eyes like empty pools turned to the man at last, orbs that drank in all light and gave nothing back. A mocking finger beckoned him to choose his destruction.
Darkness surrounded him, the end of himself, and the end of all things. He gulped for air, his lungs empty. His sight splintered into innumerable fragments, and in his last conscious thought, his mind turned to his granddaughter.
I wanted to hold you one more time, to breathe in the vibrant scent of your cloudlike hair. I wanted to see you smile with joy, free beneath the summer sun. But it was not to be. His end was inevitable; hers too. This was the finishment of all living beings. It was Fate’s design.
Cold certainty took him, and he, too, faded into the endless dark. Silently he screamed.
* * *
Vidaavus came to with a jerk, nearly hitting his head on the stone wall, his pillow jostled loose during his thrashing. He sat up, breathing hard, holding a hand to his chest in a vain effort to keep his galloping heart from crashing right out of his rib cage.
A sinuous dark-skinned creature appeared at his bedside in the next breath.
“Was it the same?” the caretaker asked in his strange accent, silvery-black eyes wide in his purple-black face, long ebony hair pulled back in a loose tail behind his neck.
The old human nodded. “Yes.” He cleared his sticky throat. “Exactly the same.”
The peculiar being returned the nod. “Are you thirsting? Do you need water?”
Vidaavus looked up, not quite meeting the reflective eyes. “No. Wine though, if you have it.”
They were strange, inhuman things, the ones who kept him. They were tall and thin, with skin like overripe plums, and a serpentine manner to their movements that he found quite disturbing—nearly as much as their uncomfortably keen interest in everything he had to say.
With another nod and a curt little bow, the caretaker retreated from the chamber, the fabric of his long gray robes rustling.
I should probably drink water, the old man chided himself. But the water this far under the ground carried with it an odor, an earthy mustiness to which he simply couldn’t acclimate. Besides, their wine had a pleasant taste, all things considered, though mushrooms rather than fruit comprised its base. Also, it provided a much-desired dulling of the faculties, and he desperately wanted that right now—anything to chase away the terrible chill that beset his soul.
Vidaavus rose from his bed, found the soles of his feet ached, and sat back down. His lower back ached, his neck ached, and most of all, his head pounded. The pain nearly crippled him when a vision came, but the aftermath wasn’t a sweet falria pie either.
Across the space—you couldn’t very well call it a room, more like a small cavern—his notebook waited. He reached for his quill but stopped and let his hand fall. He recorded most of the dreamlike images that filled his head, but there was no reason to bother with this one. Just like the others, on and on for days. Nothing changes.
Well, perhaps not nothing. Sometime before, when the stone-faced beings had joined the throng of victims in his vision, the lord of his captors had been intrigued and not entirely pleased.
“Dhulruk,” Ghol’Ver had said in his slow, deep voice.
“I don’t know that word,” the old human had replied, a hand to his pounding head.
“A race of beings from ages past,” the lord had explained. “Cowards who fled from Fate. They may still live above, in the far corners of the world.”
The addition of the Dhulruk was but a minor detail. Nothing like the great, awful change that had begun about a week ago. Before, the vision’s ending had not been so clear, and many had stood defiantly against the dark hands of the ashen throne. But since then, the dread unnamed king had added two more crowns, and no living creature could resist the ruin that befell them. When Vidaavus had told Ghol’Ver about this, a ruthless bloodlust had emanated from his captor, an almost palpable desire to kill. Vidaavus never wanted to feel such viciousness again. It hadn’t actually been directed at him, of course. He was simply the messenger. But Vidaavus had gotten a small glimpse of the dark lord beneath the coldly civil being that held him captive, and it frightened him. The old man was entirely at the mercy of the creature called Ghol’Ver.
Now, remembering that anger, recalling how Ghol’Ver’s face had darkened and twisted, how the very air in the space had chilled, Vidaavus shuddered. The anger wouldn’t come today, however. There had been no change in the vision. But there would be disappointment, frustration.
When Vidaavus stood, his soles still complained but not as badly as before. He slipped his wrinkled feet into soft fur-lined shoes, pulled the thick blanket up from his bed, slung it over his shoulders, and shuffled his way across the mossy carpet to his journal. He stood at the table and fingered the quill while his other hand searched for the entry from that morning. Or was it yesterday? He would have to verify that with his inhuman caretaker. There was simply no way for his mind to keep track of time underground, with no access to the sun or stars.
As he flip
ped through the pages, nearly three years’ worth of pages, Vidaavus recalled how not all of his visions had been so bleak. Some had even been pleasant. Ghol’Ver and his brethren had been pleasant as well. Circumstances seemed to have been going their way back then, their plans coming to some sort of fruition, and they had appreciated Vidaavus for the visions he recounted to them. They’d started letting him leave his chamber once a day to visit the latrine pit, an absolute luxury after so long with nothing but a chamber pot. They’d also allowed him the occasional bout of exercise along the hallway outside his chamber. It measured nearly three times as far as the circuit around his small room, and his body had reveled in the activity.
The lord had even spoken about letting him go. In a few more months, Ghol’Ver had said, when everything looked stable and his plans were secured, Vidaavus could go free. But then the visions had changed, suddenly and terribly. The pain that came from “seeing” had become almost unbearable, until the old man thought his brain might explode or come oozing out of his nostrils. That, or he would simply fall into dark Oblivion and die, without ever knowing what had happened.
So here he remained, a prisoner, though a well-respected and well-cared-for one. He had all the delicious food he wanted, all the mushroom wine he could drink, warm clothing, a comfortable bed, books upon books to read. They had even set up an easel and found some clay that he could dye with various mushroom colors—pallid grays, rusty reds, and earthy browns. It wasn’t the same as paint, of course, but it served. His simple artwork decorated the walls of his round stone chamber, most of it depicting his granddaughter.
He gazed at one such clay painting, hanging above the shelf. In it, Shinowyn was perhaps six years old and covered in spiders. They were drawn to her, and she to them. Another child might have screamed and batted them off, but Shinowyn had been fascinated. And after she’d had enough, she asked them to leave. When they obeyed, skittering and crawling calmly from her hair, her dress, her skin, Vidaavus was convinced she had the wolf gift. It wasn’t the same as his gift, or the gifts of her late parents, but it was a great gift all the same. He had helped her cultivate it over the years.
Until these creatures came and stole him away, changing everything.
The sound of footsteps in the hall told Vidaavus that his caretaker had returned, and by the sound, with another—Ghol’Ver, of course. The leader had come to see him every day over the last three years, to speak with him after each vision.
Vidaavus closed the journal and shuffled back over to his bed, sitting on the edge as the two tall figures entered. Ghol’Ver came first, his angular face and black eyes both hard, foreboding. He stood erect and imperious, his robe pure white, almost glowing, like the Fragments of Amare in the night sky—sweet Wolf Father, how the old man missed the night sky!—his black hair flowing smoothly back from his forehead under a spiky crown of dark gray metal. The caretaker came around toward the old man with a cup of wine. But just as he was about to hand it over to Vidaavus, he paused, cup in midair. He nodded and stepped back as Ghol’Ver moved forward. The lord had given his underling a command in his mind, Vidaavus suspected. They did that—spoke through thoughts alone. It made his skin crawl, and it wasn’t even the most disconcerting thing about them.
“The same vision, yes?” Ghol’Ver asked, looking down on Vidaavus without inclining his head, his black eyes the barest slits.
“Identical,” the old man replied, his voice weary.
“Be certain. Even the slightest difference matters. I can verify,” the lord said, reaching his hand toward Vidaavus’s head.
“No, please. I speak the truth. There is no need to check.” Hanging his head, the old man’s breath hitched. “I tell you when there are changes and when there are not. I don’t want to relive that vision every day, over and over. It will kill me.”
The lord pulled his hand back slowly, the impossibly long dark fingers curling in to form a loose fist.
After some time of quiet, Vidaavus looked up with tears in his bright green eyes and met the lord’s expressionless gaze.
“The visions cannot kill you, Son of the Wolf,” the tall figure stated, but a question lingered in his deep voice.
“They can,” Vidaavus promised him. “These visions are different from others. They’re more … real. When those hands grasp at my heart, when I look at those eyes, I can feel it. My death. No, worse than that.” The old seer shuddered, dreading even the memory of that moment. “When I come awake, my heart feels about to burst.” He swallowed with some effort. “I cannot bear that feeling again, not today.” He wanted to say “not ever” but knew how well the tall being would accept such a sentiment.
Another moment of silence followed, in which Vidaavus was sure Ghol’Ver questioned the silent caretaker about the veracity of his claim. Did he actually wake in such a way? Were the visions causing him great pain? And so on.
“Very well,” the lord finally said. “I shall let you rest.” He turned to go, his white robe briefly billowing out to one side.
The old man raised his head. “Wait,” he pleaded. “Please tell me about my granddaughter. How is she? Will she be able to visit soon?”
Pausing in the doorway with his back to Vidaavus, his captor put a hand out and pressed it gently to the stone wall. After a moment, he turned back fully, hands clasped at his waist, expression even darker than before.
“Your granddaughter is safe, but she cannot visit. Not until your part here is complete.”
Vidaavus licked his dry lips. “I thought you kept your promises. That’s not what—”
“I do, but she does not. She has abandoned her post and fled the city.”
Vidaavus gawped. “What? When?”
“Two nights ago, perhaps three. It matters little. She is no longer a concern.”
The old man sat up straight. “Perhaps to you. But she is most definitely still a concern to me. You make sure!” he demanded. “Make sure she is safe!”
Ghol’Ver took a step forward. Was the tall creature angry? Doubtful. His face and voice were both as bereft of expression as ever. “If you care about her, then do your duty, seer. If the entirety of life on Erlahain is extinguished, how will she survive?” The leader’s eyes narrowed down at the man. “Although …” He considered Vidaavus for some time, his thin dark lips pressed in a line. “Perhaps it is better if I find her. Or perhaps send Issanilya to find her.”
Vidaavus swallowed, his ire faltering.
“He likes her, I am told. Perhaps he would like to bring her here.”
“No,” the old man croaked.
“Issanilya is always complaining that he runs out of subjects too quickly. I imagine he would enjoy Shinowyn as his subject a great deal.” Ghol’Ver took another step forward, his form towering over Vidaavus where he stood trembling by the bed. “You can picture them together, can you not? You need not be a seer to know what he would do to her, to that lovely blond hair, to that flawless pale skin.”
Vidaavus sat, defeated. “No,” he repeated, shutting his eyes tight. “No. Leave her be. I’ll do as you ask.”
“And you will stop requesting to see her,” Ghol’Ver said, his voice as hard as the stone beneath their feet.
The old man looked up. “As you desire.”
Ghol’Ver’s eyes softened, the closest expression he had to a smile. “As long as you cooperate, your granddaughter will not be harmed. You have my word.” And with that, the tall lord left the chamber, the caretaker trailing along behind, taking the cup of wine with him.
Vidaavus grunted and lay back on his bed. The old man moaned from the pain in his heart as much as from the pain in his head. Shinowyn was in danger, somewhere outside the city of Vercolline, and now more than ever, he feared they may never see each other again.
