‘Return to the Stone!’
They wanted to fight. They wanted to kill and to conquer, to create a world where they could reign. But he was their monarch and he drove their darkness back, chasing it down with every atom of his will.
‘I am your King, and YOU WILL obey me.’
The whirling black split open in the sky; the shadows on the ground shrivelled like singed paper. With a last inhuman scream, the two Shadow Kings were compelled, throwing themselves against his command but unable to fight it, forced down into the Shadow Stone.
Will opened his eyes, feeling shaky, and saw light streaming across the valley. The sky above him was blue and clear. The sun was rising, the dawn revealed, a new day.
He’d done it. He’d done it. He wanted to laugh, intoxicated with success, the elation of it, the dark brought under his control.
‘I told you I’d do it,’ said Will. He turned to Katherine, full of exhilaration, looking to see his joy mirrored in her eyes.
She was staring at him, horrified.
His smile faltered as he suddenly saw what she saw – himself, a boy commanding the forces of darkness, the black skies parting at his word. She was looking at him like a stranger, like an enemy out of a nightmare, woken to bring ruin to the world. His stomach sank, a yawning pit opening up between them.
‘You are him,’ she said, as if she saw the truth for the first time. ‘The Dark King.’
‘Katherine—’
‘No, stay back from me!’ she said.
She stepped backward, and as she cast about herself, her eyes fell on the Corrupted Blade. It lay where Simon had dropped it, sheathed in the centre of a patch of dead ground.
Quiescent in its sheath, it was death to any human who drew it, and death to all life around it, which would blaze and then die in its annihilating flame.
‘Don’t!’ he said. He took a step towards her, which was a mistake. She snatched the sword up, holding it by the sheath.
If she drew it …
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘You can’t draw it. The blade is corrupted. If a human draws it, it will kill them.’
He remembered its black fire, tearing open the air, ripping the earth apart, killing every living thing for miles.
‘Please. Look at the ground. The sword did that. Not – not me.’ Was that even true? It was his blood.
She hesitated. ‘How could a sword do all that?’
‘It was made to kill the Dark King,’ he said, ‘but his blood changed it. Corrupted it. Now it’s dangerous.’
‘You’re scared of it,’ she said.
It was made to kill the Dark King. He’d said those words unthinkingly. She’d heard them like a bugle call, and he remembered that the Corrupted Blade had once had another name.
Ekthalion.
The Sword of the Champion. That’s what the Elder Steward had called it. It had carried all the hopes of the side of Light, until the moment it had failed to do more than draw a single drop of the Dark King’s blood.
The Sword of the Champion in the hands of the Lady. His skin prickled at the fated nature of it. That sword; this girl. They were meant to hurt each other, these events set in motion long before his birth. Katherine was the Lady’s descendant, born to strike him down. Just like his mother.
I cannot return when I am called to fight So I will have a child
The Lady had loved the Dark King, and she had killed him. She had been the only one who could do it. Now Katherine stood in front of him with the weapon forged to do it, and it felt true. Because if Katherine struck him now, he’d let her. He’d let her run him through.
She was right. He was scared of it. It was his blood on the blade. His killing blood.
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ said Will helplessly. But he would: if she drew the sword, his blood would kill her. Or maybe it would kill him—
‘You’re lying,’ she said. ‘You’ve been lying to me this whole time.’
Her hand closed on the hilt—
‘No,’ said Will. ‘Katherine, no—’
Promise me.
‘Katherine, don’t—’
Will, promise.
‘Katherine!’
—and in one single motion she drew the sword.
It hadn’t always been corrupted; forged by the blacksmith Than Rema, Ekthalion had once been the great hope, borne into battle by the Champion and raised like a shining light.
The Elder Steward had told another story. The Sword of the Champion bestows the powers of the Champion. She had said there was a myth that the Corrupted Blade would be purified in the hands of someone worthy, that it would become a champion’s blade once more.