‘Eleanor stopped Simon once before, years ago,’ said the Elder Steward. ‘He killed her sister – Mary, your aunt – in his first attempt to return the Dark King. But those were his early, clumsy efforts. He is much closer to his goal now. And with Eleanor dead, he believes nothing stands in his way.’ The Elder Steward held his gaze. ‘Except you.’
‘Me,’ said Will, grappling with the immensity of it. ‘But I’m not – I can’t—’
Oh God, he could see the Lady’s eyes on him, like his mother’s eyes, staring up at him. Will, promise. She had known. She had known. All those months, all those years of running—
He had known that his mother had been—
Afraid.
He had just never known what it was she had been afraid of.
‘You are Blood of the Lady, Will,’ the Elder Steward said. ‘And she fights the Dark King still. Through you.’
He stared at the Elder Steward, feeling the cold emptiness of the stone room, the black branches of the dead Tree like cracks in the world.
‘I can’t fight the Dark King.’ The Tree seemed to mock him, proof that he couldn’t do what they wanted. ‘I don’t have her power.’ Unconsciously, he clutched at the medallion. It dug into the scar on his hand.
‘Look down at the medallion,’ said the Elder Steward. ‘You can read it, can’t you? You know the words of the old language. Even if you don’t understand why.’
He looked down at the words carved into the warped surface of the metal. It was true that he could read them when he shouldn’t be able to, when they were written in a language that he had never seen before.
I cannot return when I am called to fight So I will have a child
It was a message sent across time. A message to him, he thought, feeling his skin chill. The Lady had carved it meaning for him to read it. It had been passed from hand to hand, countless times over centuries. And it had made its way to him, as she had meant it to.
In the mirror, she had looked at him like she recognised him.
‘My mother,’ said Will, struggling to process all of this. ‘She knew?’
‘Many have borne the Blood of the Lady,’ said the Elder Steward, ‘but only one will find themselves facing the final fight. And the final fight is almost upon us. Those of us with the Blood of Stewards feel it too.’
You feel it … The way she felt it … He thought of his mother in those final moments, the desperation as she had looked into his eyes.
‘It is different to train your whole life to face a threat that might never come than it is to begin to see the signs, the portents that the Dark King’s return is almost here.’ The Elder Steward’s face was serious with purpose, and he could only feel the hard edge of the medallion in his hands. He was trembling.
‘The signs?’ he said.
‘You’ve met James St Clair,’ said the Elder Steward. ‘You’ve seen what he can do?’
Will nodded.
‘James is not a descendant of the old world as you are.’ The Elder Steward paused, her eyes shadowed. ‘He is a Reborn, one of the most frightening portents. In the final days, the Dark King ordered that his greatest generals, servants and slaves be killed, so that they could be reborn with him, and usher in his reign. His deadliest fighter was called the Betrayer. They say he was the brightest symbol of the Light, until he betrayed his own kind to serve the Dark King. He became the Dark King’s most ruthless general, a merciless killer known for his beauty, his blue eyes and golden hair.’
‘Are you saying—’
‘James isn’t merely a descendant. He is the Dark King’s general, reborn into our time. He is young now, but when he grows into his power, he will be more terrible than you or I can imagine, for he is not one of us. He is not human, and he is here with one purpose only, to herald the way for his master—’
A powerful shiver went through Will, and all the shadows in the room seemed to deepen and rise as she said—
‘—Sarcean, the Dark King; the final eclipse; the endless night, whose dark reign will bring about the end of our world.’
Sarcean.
The name struck like black fire, like something he’d always known that came blazing back to life until it threatened to overwhelm him. He remembered the crude S burned into the wrists of Simon’s men, and the words that Justice had spoken at the inn of the White Hart.
That S is the symbol of something older, a terrible sigil with power over his followers that even they do not fully understand.