8. Chapter 8 #6
Another babe.
While the news might have added to the weight that for so long had sat in the pit of Ashmedai’s stomach, knowing now for certain that the curse would soon be behind them, all he felt was joy.
Then the performance began.
“ Centuries past when a different world reigned ,” Klarent started in a loud bellow that caused everyone gathered to silence—the signal for Levi to begin as well, “ and denizens of Amethyst knew many mortal pains .”
Levi fired images from his fingertips, purposely unfocused at first like palettes of color, until the rainbow swooped in front of where Klarent stood, hovered in the air for all onlookers to see, and formed into a miniature depiction of how the Dark Kingdom once looked.
The image of the city was exaggerated, like children’s paintings from a storybook, but that this was Amethyst was still recognizable, even in the difference in the buildings, all normal angled and painted in an array of brighter pigments.
“ Lo, these lands did sparkle so bright ,” Klarent continued, the illusion of the old sunlit city leading the audience through its streets and down into the market, “ but Shadow was what saved us with the dawning of the night .”
A lone figure appeared, simplistic in design per Klarent’s direction, but still clearly Ashmedai, given the colors and long black hair.
“ Peace here, within, and for every mortal sin ."
“ Rest we hope for our long-lost prince ,” Klarent went immediately into the next verse, and Levi added the figure of another walking beside Ashmedai, with violet clothes, half-elf ears, and brown hair, “ and woe to the demon who took him from us hence .”
Where Ashmedai had been, a new figure pounced and pushed Ashmedai out of the frame, leaving behind a monstrous, hulking creature that towered over the Amethyst Prince, with the kingdom’s gemstone distinct in the background.
“ Lo, the curse did spread from its source .”
The demon snatched the prince up and dove with him inside the gemstone, turning it black, and darkness spread from it, the view changing again to show the whole city as the Amethyst Kingdom was turned into the Shadow Lands they knew.
“ Our bright shining gemstone that sent us on this course . Peace here, within, and for all immortal sin .”
The illusion zoomed back in on the gemstone as the demon leapt from it, returning it to brilliant violet, and off the demon zipped toward the market steps, where Ashmedai was seen again, getting back up to his feet, and he began to follow.
“ Shadow, though foreign, did chase and defend , a nd run the demon out to prove our chaos could end . ”
Into the wood they went, with Ashmedai racing after the demon, accompanied now by a redheaded figure meant to be Braxton when his legs still worked, until the spread of darkness reached them.
Braxton fell, and suddenly Ashmedai could go no farther, for a pulse of light indicated the barrier between him and where the demon had escaped.
“ Lo, a wall was found to hold us here, but through this metamorphosis our story is clear . Peace here, within, and for everlasting sin .”
Outward the illusion zoomed once more, showing the changed lands and populating person after person, all familiar, for Levi made one look like Daedlys, another Grillo, another Luccite, and so on, all staring in wonderment at how they had been changed.
“ Diversity of people bless these lands, ruled ever-gently in the worthiest of hands .”
Then came Ashmedai from the wood, carrying Braxton, and the people swarmed him, falling to their knees.
“ Lo, tonight we celebrate our king, for peace and prosperity that no one else could bring . Peace here, within, and an end to every sin .”
The images burst into prismatic distortions, the illusion fading and falling, leaving only Klarent behind it all, who took another deep bow.
The applause was wilder than any Levi had been privy to today, but as Klarent motioned him forward to take a bow beside him, Levi did so with his eyes seeking only one spectator.
Ash—who stared forward at nothing, looking unmistakably sad.
Levi realized in an awful rush of hindsight how foolish he’d been to go along with this performance, for of course this was a story Ashmedai would never want to relive. Yet he was forced to remember every Festival Day.
A pat on the back from Klarent made Levi startle, and he saw the same happen to Ashmedai as the citizens around the king crowded close to offer their praises. Ashmedai smiled in humble acknowledgment at all of them, but Levi knew it was a mask.
“Thank you, friend,” Klarent said. “You don’t know how much this meant to me.”
Levi did. He understood. To everyone other than Ashmedai—and Braxton, he supposed—the curse was a source of eventual joy and fortune. They still feared the demon, the barrier, and wanted those threats gone, but no one considered what they had become a curse. Not really. Not anymore.
They didn’t know how untrue that was for Ashmedai.
Klarent dragged Levi with him to descend the stage, a flurry of renewed pats on the back and accolades bombarding them as they made their way to Ashmedai’s side.
“That was wonderful, Klarent,” Ashmedai lied.
“The performance, I’ll admit, was more a labor of love than anything,” Klarent said, holding out the tome he had been saving, “but this book holds the true details, filled with the most accurate account to date. The poem merely kicks it off. For you, my king.”
With hands struggling not to shake, Ashmedai accepted the book. As he touched it, the Source Crystal on the front glowed its signature violet. “Thank you. It’s beautiful. And… congratulations, I hear.” He mustered a more believable smile.
“Ah!” Klarent looked aside with a wriggle of nearly every tendril on his person. “You heard. Thank you, Ash. Now, I must attend to the following performer.”
It seemed Grillo was next. Kenner must have been elsewhere, but Levi saw Yentriss in the crowd, clearly working to keep order, or at least a careful watch over the celebration, but upon seeing her husband take the stage, she came forward like many other gawkers, unable to hide her surprise.
“An ode to my beautiful wife,” Grillo began.
Levi had been excited to hear the poem, but when he turned to Ashmedai, he found the king staring at the book with the same lost, melancholy expression.
“Ash?”
“Hm?” Ashmedai blinked away what were clearly tears.
“Shall we go for a walk?” Levi whispered, taking the book from him and linking their arms.
All Ashmedai answered with was a shaky nod.
Only the first few lilts of Grillo’s poem reached them as they headed away.
“ Scales like a jeweled mosaic do shine . Upon one like no other womankind . Steel forged with grace who graced me that she’s mine . My wife and muse who I am blessed to find .”
Levi would have to ask Grillo later if Yentriss actually blushed.
Working swiftly through the crowd and doing his best to ensure they moved fast enough to not be easily stopped by passersby, Levi pulled Ashmedai toward the one place he knew would be quiet when all the Shadow Lands was reveling.
The wood.
“The performance really was lovely,” Ashmedai said once the din of the festival was behind them. Levi had left the tome in a back nook of the very last stall, where he knew he could easily retrieve it later. “You have a true gift with your illusions.”
“I’m so sorry, Ash. I should have known—”
“And told Klarent to cancel? You’d have crushed him.”
“Still, forgive me. You told me you didn’t like to talk about that night or the prince, and there I went helping Klarent spin the memories right before your eyes like a fool. Of course you wouldn’t want to see that.”
“It’s all right,” Ashmedai said, truthfully, Levi thought, and more clear-eyed with added distance between them and the stage. “It is good to remember sometimes.”
They weren’t using the path Levi had taken all those days with Grillo, but the main road the carriages used when traveling to and from Emerald.
“There is one thing I have wanted to ask,” Levi broached cautiously.
“Go on,” Ashmedai assured him.
“Did you love him?”
The king’s pace didn’t waver, like he had been expecting the question. “Yes. But he didn’t love me.”
“He didn’t?” Levi was the one who came up short, blinking in surprise.
“No.” Ashmedai turned to him. “To Cullen, we were friends, nothing more. If it has plagued you, Levi, I never knew with him what I have shared with you.”
A surge of possessiveness filled Levi, like when he’d wished to be closer to Ashmedai than Braxton.
He knew it was silly to have ever envied a dead man, but to know finally that only friendship existed between Ashmedai and the prince, even if Ashmedai had pined for Cullen, made what Levi had with Ashmedai even more special and solely his.
Tentatively, Levi reached for Ashmedai’s face, which almost had a tinge of blue to its stark whiteness with the way the moon and stars reflected off the black trees. Levi kissed him, putting into it all his regret and love in equal measure. He never wanted Ashmedai to get that look of sorrow again.
Ashmedai’s smile when they parted was a good start.
They kept walking, enjoying the quiet, with the sounds of the festival almost completely lost now. Then, up ahead, Levi spotted a mound of disturbed dirt.
“Like before,” Levi said, rushing toward it. “Do you see? That’s what I saw on the other side of the wood!”
“Levi, wait,” Ashmedai called. “How far have we come?”
Levi kept onward, too entranced by the sight he feared he had imagined before. Though this was a different spot, surely, it was almost identical to the previous mound where something had been buried.
“Levi, wait!”
“But Ash, I’m certain—”
“ Stop !”
The harshness—no, the fear —in Ashmedai’s voice made Levi spin around.
He had nearly reached the dirt pile, but Ashmedai hadn’t moved with him, still several paces behind.
Between them, parallel to each other on either side of the path, were trees with crystals at their bases glowing bright white.
The line wasn’t finished across the road, though Levi spotted a few dormant ones he had passed.
“You crossed the barrier,” Ashmedai said in astonishment.
Levi stared at his hands, terrified for a moment that he would vanish, but he was still whole.
Where he had crossed, there was a haze in the air, like the blending of colors on a painting, like the rainbow of Levi’s own illusions before they formed, where the Shadow Lands and the rest of the world faded from one into the other.
He turned to look behind himself and saw… snow gently falling on normal winter trees.
“Did Brax… no, no….” Ashmedai muttered. “The crystals are still glowing, and I can feel the barrier. I know it’s there.”
Levi almost laughed, though he could tell Ashmedai was tense and frightened. He turned back, hoping to reassure Ashmedai but still curious. “How—?”
Levi’s words were torn from him as something crashed into his side .
The next thing Levi felt was pain, not only from whatever had struck him, but because he was thrown to the ground, landing hard on his side, with one of his daggers digging into his hip. Arms surrounded Levi, and he registered a body plastered against him.
The demon.
Stunned and terrified, Levi couldn’t think to fight right away as he was rolled onto his back, his body roughly pawed at, until his attacker found the buckle on his belt and began to unclasp it.
“Levi!” Ashmedai cried.
The man atop Levi wasn’t from the Shadow Lands, but he was no demon. He was human, hair bedraggled and beard so bushy Levi could only just make out the glint of green in his eyes. He seemed so strange. So simple.
So ordinary.
The highwayman, for clearly that’s what he was, was already fitting Levi’s belt around his own waist, taking it for his own. Then he reached for the cuff on Levi’s ear.
“No!” Levi swatted his hand away.
The man snarled, glaring at Levi for daring to defy him, only to seemingly just that moment take in how Levi looked and gaping at Levi’s strangeness as Levi had gaped at him.
“What are you?” he asked hoarsely.
A roar sounded from inside the barrier like no beast Levi had ever heard, with both a reverberating depth and painful shrillness to its cry that rivaled Daedlys’s scream. Levi and the man both turned, taking in the monster before them like something only a nightmare could create.
It wasn’t only its shape that was frightening.
It had wings and claws, a tail, jagged horns that spiraled upward from its head, and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.
All those things Levi knew from people of the Shadow Lands—his neighbors and friends—but this creature was different.
The feeling it evoked was a horror like no other, for it both seemed to have its shape and didn’t.
Its skin too was variable, like light and darkness warring for dominance, as if the beast was made of shadow.
The highwayman screamed, leapt off Levi, and took off in a frenzied run deeper into the snow-covered trees.
This was the demon, and though the highwayman had been able to run, all Levi could do was shiver and close his eyes in terror.
“Levi!”
Levi opened his eyes again, berating himself for forgetting that Ashmedai was there too. He was right there—where the monster had been a moment ago. Ashmedai looked sad again, maybe more so than Levi had ever seen.
Slowly, having lost his weapons belt but otherwise fine, Levi got to his feet.
Ashmedai couldn’t approach him, or else he would cross the barrier and not be as lucky as Levi had been.
Yet, as Levi looked at the king, he had this odd sinking feeling overtake him that made it impossible to move forward himself.
“You… have illusion magic too?”
“It wasn’t an illusion.” Ashmedai’s sorrow deepened further. “That is the real me.”
“Then your secret, why the past haunts you so….” Levi swallowed low as he gathered his thoughts. “The prince didn’t summon the demon, did he? You did and took it into yourself.”
“No, Levi. I didn’t summon the demon,” Ashmedai said solemnly, and his eyes flashed in a way that made the whites of his irises turn black like the rest. “I am the demon.”