Dedication:
For Matt, Lyn, and Meg, who’ve known it longest. For my children, who have grown up with this book. Every lesson you have taught me is within its pages.
And lastly, for a dog named Merlin, the truest friend a lonely teenager could’ve ever wanted.
“This my parable so fleeting, too swift for the dull shall be, Ere yet they may seize its meaning, from before their face ’twill flee. As a hare that a sound hath started, yea metal behind the glass, And a blind man’s dream yield visions that as swift from the eye do pass.”
-Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival
“Seer sights the rightful way
Traveler leads, shines bright as day
Physic carves and guards the path
Mender rights what was wronged by wrath.
Aspects stand and bear the mark
Before the Vacant, Hungry Dark
’Til Guides return to shepherd men
Until the Prince comes once again”
-First Verse from a common Wielder nursery rhyme.
-Second verse discovered by Matthew Schwan, summer, 1998
PART ONE: SAND
PROLOGUE: THE LAMPS ARE ASH
Autumn, 2000
The night air was thick with smoke painted red and blue by flashing lights, and as Harris crossed the barrier all he could see in the glow of the burning house was bodies broken and scattered horribly across the immense front lawn. Jesus Christ, this was bad.
Before him, an old three-story colonial belched red flames and a cloud of black smog into the sky. Cops and emergency workers clustered behind the firefighters trying to control the blaze, moving among the bodies and searching for signs of life. Harris tapped a street cop named Tom on the shoulder. “What do we have?”
“Twenty-three dead at last count.” Tom had that thousand-yard stare of someone who wanted to crawl inside a bottle. “Neighbors said more people were inside the house. We might be looking at a count as high as fifty.”
The smell of cooked meat reached Harris’s nose, and he tried to breathe through his mouth. It didn’t help. The sweet charcoal scent clung to the back of his throat and coated his tongue. It was everywhere. Harris steeled himself and looked at the bodies. “Holy fuck.”
A carpet of twisted corpses littered the stone walkway towards the house. Harris followed the maze of gore with his eyes, trying to make sense of what the hell could’ve done this. He stepped over the body of a man carved in half at the waist, his blank eyes staring sightlessly upwards. Most of the dead were unrecognizable, but here and there Harris caught hints of resemblance. He looked back at Tom. “Who lived here?”
Up ahead, a wrought iron gate crouched in the middle of a fence. The intricate metalwork had been knotted through with the ripped up bodies of two people. Maybe more.
“An old family,” Tom answered. “The Schwans. Reclusive bunch with a lot of money. The family owns other properties, but all of them were here. We haven’t been able to reach anyone. Apparently, they were having some sort of private get-together today. About ten PM the neighbors started hearing noises, then screams, then fire, then windows exploding.”
“Any sign of the perpetrators?” Harris asked.
“No, and it’s gonna be hell figuring out who came and went from a mess like this,” Tom said. “There’s mashed-up footprints everywhere,” he gestured at the house. “And whatever’s left is burning up in there.”
“Damn. Alright. I’m gonna check the grounds. See what I can save.” Harris turned towards the yard.
Arcs of water rose high into the air as the fire department fought the blaze. More bodies were scattered around the side of the house, each surrounded by broken glass. He’d never seen anything like this in fifteen years of police work. The palatial grounds were draped in slaughter.
A garden of silhouettes edged red and silver by fire and moonlight spread out before him. Harris stopped next to a bird bath to catch his breath. There were regal, crowned swans engraved on the stone, with swords alongside. The biggest multiple homicide in a decade, and over half the evidence was burning to ash.
That was when he heard the sound from direction he’d come. It was Tom again, and as Harris turned, he saw the beat-cop talking to a man in a long coat.
“Excuse me sir, but you can’t be he—”
The man in the coat waved his hand and Tom fell silent. Then he snapped his fingers and five more similarly dressed men stepped across the police boundary, walking with intent. Harris almost started towards them, but an inexplicable cold in the pit of his stomach made him stop. He stepped to the side, crouched behind the birdbath and watched as more men and women in long coats emerged from behind the police line and started silently dealing with every single cop there. Harris watched as gestures and words he couldn’t hear simply turned aside curiosity, and people kept working as if the newcomers weren’t even there.
What the fuck?
Two of them were drawing closer to Harris’s hiding place. The tingling fear wetting the back of his neck told him to run, but they started talking, and he was just close enough to catch their conversation.
“No survivors on this side,” one of them said, and Harris heard the sort of tone that suggested a hard person moved to earnest shock. “Do you really think it was all of them? Like the rumors are saying?”
“No point in speculating,” said the other. “Protocol first: secure the area. Make sure no mortals wander off without being given the once-over. We need to control this.”
Had these people done this? Harris’s limbs trembled. He didn’t know what they meant by mortals, but somehow had a gut feeling that it referred to people like him, whatever that meant. He needed to get out of here and report this. Random strange people showing up at a crime scene and just taking over, dispelling resistance with the wave of a hand, was fucked up beyond belief and he needed to warn people.
Two steps back from the birdbath a branch broke under his foot. Both men turned and looked directly at him. One of them made a gesture and a four-foot sword made out of glass appeared in his right hand. Harris pulled his gun, and the two loud bangs rattled his ears. The sword blurred faster than his eyes could follow, but he heard the ringing pings as bullets hit glass. Oh, fuck that. Harris ran.
He got past the hedges at the far end of the yard and onto the empty, open road when they caught up with him. Harris turned and uselessly brandished his gun. “Lakewood PD,” he said. “Stay where you are. Hands where I can see them!”
The two men stopped. In the golden cone of a lonely streetlight, the outlines of faces exchanged looks. Harris saw scars. Cold eyes. Mouths in hard lines. “Well, this is awkward,” said one.
“A bad end to a bad night,” a new voice said. Two more men emerged from further up the road. There were four of them, now. “Officer,” the first man said. “You’re really better off lowering your gun. Trust us. You’re way out of your depth, and it’s not like bullets scare us.”
How the hell had they blocked the bullets? Harris kept his gun up. The first man still held his glass sword. In the light, it gleamed a pale yellow.
“Hands where I can see them; and start explaining fast. What the hell did you do to my people, and what the fuck happened at that house?”
The four men exchanged looks. Then the first one who had spoken simply said “lock him down.”
The man farthest to the left made a gesture. Light flashed in his palm. Harris’s hand froze in place before he could touch the trigger again.
“What the hell did you do to me?” Harris couldn’t move. Could barely breathe.
“Simplified things,” the leader said. Then he sighed. “I don’t feel like wiping another one. Just kill him.”
“Wait, who’s that?” Another of the coated men said. The others turned, and Harris managed to shift his gaze just enough to follow their stares. A figure stood silhouetted against the streetlights. Then he started walking towards them. Then he started running.
The first of the coated men died before he could get his weapon out. The newcomer’s red-glass sword flashed into being halfway through a cut and split him in half. The second man managed to summon his sword in time to parry with a shrieking clang. The newcomer slammed it aside, cut the second man’s head off, and ducked a cut by the third before putting his glowing red blade in his gut. There was a gargling scream, and then the red sword split the third man from stomach to neck.
The leader bull-rushed him. Their blades rang against each other, sparking stabs of color cutting up the dark until the leader’s yellow sword wheeled high and the newcomer’s flashed from beneath. The red sword ripped a line across the front of the leader’s body, sending him to the pavement.
“You,” the wounded man croaked. “You’re not… dead… Not…”
His mouth stopped moving and his eyes went blank.
“Starting tonight, I am,” the newcomer said. Then he turned back towards Harris, and the detective saw a tall, muscular man, white, early-twenties, with short cropped dark hair and equally dark eyes regarding him with a curious pity and exhaustion. Harris sucked in a breath. The newcomer was holding a sleeping, one-year-old child in his spare arm.
He’d killed four men while carrying a sleeping toddler. The man’s sword vanished into the air at his hip with a soft ringing sound. Then he looked at Harris and said “I can’t lift this enchantment, but it’s going to wear off in a few minutes. By then I’ll be gone, and you won’t remember a thing.”
“Who the hell are you?” Harris managed to rasp.
His benefactor cast an exhausted, grief-filled glance back at the house. “An orphan. Nobody. Second to Last. Goodnight, whatever your name is.”
He reached out towards Harris and put a hand on his forehead. The lights went out.