Lucky Rabbit

Lian was furious.

In general, he prided himself on his self-control. When the rabbit – Eurydice – told him he was a villain in her story, he hadn’t believed her. Oh, not because he wasn’t capable of murder – he was quite certain he was – but because there was no way he would allow his emotions to control him to the point where he began killing indiscriminately. No, if something happened to Thaniel, Lian would excise the perpetrator in a carefully calculated maneuver no one would ever be able to trace back to him. He certainly wouldn’t hire a group like the Shadow Exchange, nor would he injure or kill anyone innocent of the offense.

But now, he wondered if he had dismissed the idea too easily. He had seen a few of his kidnappers, and he certainly knew that Miller Oakden was involved. Every one of them would suffer for their part in this, as would the Shadow Exchange in general. With great care, he examined each plan for vengeance that came to his mind, silently looking for any sign that it would result in him becoming the villain Eurydice had described. He could not deny that the potential was there in more than a few of the most promising. It was something to ponder.

“Is everything ready?”

Lian didn’t turn his head, since the bag covering it prevented him from seeing anything, but he focused on the voice. It definitely belonged to the leader of the group, and though the man was trying to alter his voice, it still sounded vaguely familiar. Not like someone he spoke to on a regular basis, but definitely someone he’d had a conversation with.

Before a few months ago, that would have been a fairly limited pool of suspects, made up almost entirely of teachers and staff from Kestrel and Falconet. Now, however, he’d spoken to a great number of adult males, mostly nobles, both when he was being interviewed after his father’s ‘death’, and more recently. It seemed that everyone wanted a chance to speak to the young and theoretically malleable new Lord Dunning.

“Yes, my lord.”

The voice that answered was husky but feminine, and Lian only recognized it from a few terse commands it had given him since he woke. His hands and feet were bound, and his magic unreachable in some way that made him feel slightly hollow inside, so that voice and a few touches to guide him had been his only contact with the world outside the cloth that blocked sight and muffled smells and sounds. Lian was certain he’d been on a boat when he woke, but otherwise he genuinely had no idea where he was. Which, if he wasn’t so angry, probably would have been frightening.

“Remove the hood,” the first voice said, and Lian felt a tug at the top of his head where a hand had grasped some of his hair along with the cloth. The shrouding fabric pulled away, and Lian shook his head, drawing in a deep breath almost instinctively, though he hadn’t been struggling to breathe. He swallowed hard, trying to get some moisture into his mouth and throat so he could speak, and in the meantime took a look around.

He was sitting in a chair facing the person who was presumably the leader of this whole charade. The man had dark hair just touched with gray, neatly styled and without beard or mustache. His eyes were equally dark; calm and watchful beneath heavy brows. Lian captured an image of that face in his memory, making certain that he would be able to draw it if necessary. The slight twist of the lip, the unusually deep philtrum, a tiny scar by the right eyebrow, all went into the vault of his memory.

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Killian, though I wish it was under other circumstances,” the man said, not altering the almost military way in which he stood, with shoulders back and hands clasped behind him.

The cold scrutiny made Lian want to shift in his chair, which was exactly the reason he did it himself. People who were uncomfortable were less likely to attempt to mislead him, and if they did try, they were significantly less likely to succeed. There was always a tell. But Lian didn’t have a tell. He had worked very hard on that.

Still, he allowed some of his discomfort to show as he said, “Who are you? What’s going on? Where am I?” Widening his eyes, he looked around the rest of the room, taking in the slate gray carpet, gray-painted walls, and almost black wooden shelves heavy with books.

To his very real surprise, he couldn’t read a single word on any of the spines, though he did recognize the language. It was one he’d only seen in books on the third floor of the library, where Kestrel students weren’t usually allowed. It was the written language of the nomads who lived in the desert between East and West Altheric. Their modern descendants mostly used Altherican when they had to sign documents. Otherwise the desert peoples had a primarily oral tradition, but they did have a very old written language that existed mainly in historical documents.

“You can call me Lord Shadow,” The corner of the man’s mouth twisted further as he caught Lian’s incredulous look. “It’s overdramatic, I know, but it serves its purpose. As for where you are… Well, if you hoped to escape and run home, I’d put that idea out of your mind right now. Even if you could get past your guards, which I assure you will not happen, you’re in the middle of a very large, very hot desert, filled with wild animals and even more wild elementals. You wouldn’t last a day.”

This man clearly had no idea who he was dealing with, but Lian only widened his eyes further, depending on his naturally pale skin to help him look frightened. “Why did you take me? If you’re looking for a ransom, my parents are dead, and the estate is nearly bankrupt. The house hasn’t been cared for in years, and we had to let almost all of the servants go.”

A mix of truth and lie, carefully woven. While the Dunning estate produced little income, thanks to his father’s failure to maintain the contracts with farmers and sharecroppers, they had more than enough put away, as well as a steady income from new printings of the Pirate Pete books. Still, from the outside, it would seem entirely truthful.

Except that ‘Lord Shadow’ didn’t look even slightly concerned by this revelation. “We have no interest in your estate or your money, Killian. No, what we’re interested in is you.” Finally shifting, he allowed his hands to fall to his sides as he leaned forward. “Do you mind if I tell you a little story? Not that it matters if you do.”

Something glittered in his eyes as he said this, perhaps a well-hidden enjoyment of Lian’s predicament. “Many years ago – not too many, as such things go, but long before anyone now alive was born – two gods had a… conflict of interest. For some time, they had shared the world on which they existed, but now one of them wished to claim the entire world for herself. The other, who had coexisted in peaceful harmony up to this point, proposed, let us say, a game.”

Reaching into the pocket of the fine but understated jacket he wore, he took out a deck of cards. Flipping through them, he pulled out the Light card, then the Dark, showing them to Lian, then laying them on the round table that sat in the center of the room. Next, he removed the Queen of Light and the King of Dark and laid them on their respective elements. Finally, he took out the tier four elementals of each type and placed them across the King and Queen.

“Each god selected a Champion – a King or Queen, if you will – and assigned a powerful elemental to aid and guide them. There were two ways to win. First, one side could gather a vast number of cards, presenting an overwhelming force” He split the deck in two, and slid the larger section beneath the Dark King, while placing only a few cards beneath the Light Queen. “Second, if one god’s Champion, game piece, and elemental were all destroyed, that god would lose.” He flipped the entire Light stack face down, then picked up all of the cards and began to shuffle them idly.

“The trick was, neither god knew when the other’s cards might turn up, so it was far simpler to attempt to win through sheer force of numbers. There were no rules about how that was done, and so the Dark God, whose name was Zheraphon,” he said the name with the reverence of a zealot, no hint of amusement in the black gaze, “set about creating them in his own way.”

Slowly, he began flipping cards. Even though Lian hadn’t seen him stack the deck, every one was Dark. “His enemy… took offense. Her Queen emerged from hiding, intent upon stopping him. It was all going just as Zheraphon had hoped, when someone,” he crumpled a card in his fist, “stole the Dark token.” Unfolding the card, he revealed the Dark Knight.

“The thief took the stone to the Light Queen, who hid it so that even Zheraphon himself couldn’t find it. The Dark King died, the stone was lost, and the elemental was forced to retreat. But Zheraphon is patient. He waited, knowing that eventually, someone would slip up, and they did.” His mouth curled in a cruel smile.

“A presumptuous queen gifted the enemy touchstone to a new Champion, beginning the game again.” He laid out three Light cards, one atop the other. “Light, Champion, elemental. All in play. The Dark elemental rose, knowing that one touchstone would call to the other, the stone to its Champion, and that Champion would need her.” Three Dark cards joined the Light ones again.

“But there was one aspect of the game neither god had believed would matter. In order to keep the game fair, they made certain that the touchstones knew their Champions by blood and magic. While they could be wielded by anyone with the right element, only a blood relative of the original Champion could become the new Champion. Or perhaps the Light goddess did know this, because her Champion’s blood runs through the veins of half the nobles in West Altheric,” here his voice grew biting, “though the magic it once commanded is rare.”

Lifting the Dark King and the Light Queen, he shook his head in dry humor, showing the paired cards to Lian. “What no one expected is that those two bloodlines would become one. In fact, the first Light Champion expressly forbade the marriage of Light and Dark, ostensibly because their offspring would be unstable or endanger the life of mother and child, but also to prevent exactly this from happening. But time erased the reason and left only the rule, and rules, as all know, are made to be broken.”

With a sigh, he tucked the cards back into his pocket. “Let us cease using metaphors and euphemisms. I loathe boorishness, but I have no patience with those who cannot come to the point. You and your brother are descended from both Nora and, albeit through a side branch, Lawrence as well. The blood of both Light and Dark Champions, mingled in one convenient package. Of course, you and your brother both have Light magic, which is unfortunate, because it means you’re naturally suited to becoming Light Champions. All of this would have been so much simpler if your brother had been the Dark mage he seemed to be.” His lips twitched in a wry smile. “Or if your sister had survived her birth.”

For the first time, Lian’s reaction was unplanned and genuine. He flinched away from the madman. Lian avoided thinking about the infant, the one his mother had been so desperate to save, if only because the feelings the thoughts inspired in him were so far beyond his capacity to control or even name. Did he hate that unborn baby for everything that happened as a result of its existence, or did he hate himself and his father for failing to protect it and his mother?

There was a flash of satisfaction in the otherwise impassive gaze watching him. “We thought we would have to attempt to win through numbers again, which would be… challenging. But then your father, the very man who helped stop some of our previous attempts, came up with the solution.”

Reaching into his other pocket, he took out a small wooden box. Flipping it open, he revealed a black stone, shiny and silent, nestled in a bed of kivit. It looked exactly like the one Lian had last seen embedded in his brother’s chest, and he felt his breath catch in his throat. If this man had hurt Thaniel, they would find out just how much like ‘Killian the Villian’ Lian could become-

“This contains your father’s magic. The magic of the last potential Dark Champion.” He closed the box and slipped it back into his pocket, apparently unaware of Lian’s sudden, almost frantic fury. “We would have simply made Bryan himself the Champion, but we knew he would die before he helped us. Especially since he would have to kill one of his sons in order to do so.”

Locking his eyes on Lian’s, he gave a slow, cruel smile. “Now, I leave it up to you. We can use this stone to give one of you Dark magic. The Light Champion must die, and the Dark Champion has to kill him, but who will be Light, and who will be Dark? Will you kill Nathaniel, or will you allow him to kill you in order to save his life? I can promise he will be revered as a hero once Zheraphon becomes the god of this whole world.”

Lian’s throat felt like it was lined with broken glass as he said, “You don’t have Thaniel or the stones.” He wished he was as confident as he sounded, but all he could be certain of was that if this man actually had any of the cards he said he needed, he wouldn’t be using a deck made of cardboard. Lian wasn’t particularly good with people, but it was mainly because he didn’t care to be, not because he didn’t understand them. ‘Lord Shadow’ was very proud of his own cunning, and he wouldn’t be able to resist showing off to a captive audience.

Lord Shadow’s eyes narrowed, but then his face relaxed into that smug smile again. He tapped the arm of his chair sharply before rising to his feet. He wasn’t terribly tall, though he wasn’t short either, but there was a flash of familiarity about his profile when he turned away, throwing back a few parting words as he headed for a door that hadn’t been there a moment before.

“Not yet, but I will soon. In fact, only one particularly irritating elemental stands between me and your brother, but even he can’t hide the boy forever. So choose wisely, Killian, or I will choose for you.”