Will Wight - Of Dawn and Darkness

To Ian, who first asked me when the book was coming out.

Welcome, Reader.

Right now, you’re reading the second book in the Elder Empire series.

But it’s not the only second book.

Of Dawn and Darkness was written in parallel to Of Darkness and Dawn, which takes place at the same time from a different perspective.

If you’ve read Of Sea and Shadow, then I’m sure you already know how these books work. In case you don’t, I’d advise you to back up and read the first story in this series.

And now that you have…

Welcome back to the Elder Empire.

Jyrine Tessella held her father’s hand as they walked down the street. She’d never been to this city before, but she didn’t think she liked it—everything smelled like fish, and the people didn’t know how to walk. An old man passed them, covered in a full-body cloak of burlap, limping like his left leg was broken. Every time he took a step, something wet slapped against the pavement. She pictured him wearing fish on his feet like shoes, and she giggled.

The town was in even worse shape than its citizens. Each building had been cobbled together from driftwood and parts scavenged from shipwrecks, so Jyrine and her father walked between walls of warped wood and crusty ropes. Many of the houses had collapsed or sunk down into the earth, but someone else just built another one on top of the pile. The result was an entire town that looked more like a model built by a little boy out of scraps he gathered in his back yard.

Strangest of all was the way they treated gold. They weighted their fishing nets with mismatched golden idols the size of her fist, and gold statues of the Emperor sat on boats as anchors. Half-clothed children ran through the mud in a ditch, tossing golden pebbles at each other. Thousands of goldmarks worth of precious metal, treated like trash.

“It’s not real gold, is it?” Jyrine asked, looking at a woman sweeping gold flakes out of her doorway.

Her father’s tattooed cheek crinkled as he smiled. “Just because it’s valuable to us doesn’t mean it’s worth the same to everyone. Gold, on its own, is worthless. Only a few things have real value.” He rubbed her head, and she smiled back, because she knew he was talking about her.

His tattoo was far more complex than hers, a squirming web that covered the entire left half of his face and rolled down the left side of his body, wrapping his whole leg. Hers stretched from the bottom of her left ear to her ankle, telling the world the history of their Vandenyan family.

She’d asked him once why his was so much bigger, and he’d laughed. “Secrets take a lot of ink,” he’d said, which in her opinion didn’t answer the question.

A cloaked figure stepped out of an alleyway and blocked their way forward, so quickly that Jyrine instinctively moved to stand behind her father. The fish smell was stronger now that this man—at least, she guessed it was a man—stood so close to them. He breathed too loudly, as though he sucked each breath through clenched teeth.

“You are Larrin Tessella.” That was her father’s name, but the man pronounced the words all wrong, like he was choking out a demand instead of asking a polite question. She wasn’t sure he meant it as a question at all, and he hissed in and out after each word.

Her father’s hand tightened slightly on hers, but he forced a smile. “I am. What may I call you?”

The man jerked his head to one side, limping away, his burlap covering dragging in the muck behind him. There was a lump like a camel’s between his spine and left shoulder, though it squirmed as he moved. She imagined him hiding a cat under there, and she almost laughed.

Her father didn’t seem to find the man funny. He pulled her closer to him as they followed the man deeper into the town.

The farther they went, the worse it seemed to get, though that could have been the dying light. The sun was going down, so the light was worse and worse with every passing second. Light and shadows played tricks on her eyes, which was no doubt why some of these people looked like they had webs between their fingers. And why some of the children watching her from open doorways had eyes that reflected light like a cat’s. A few times, she heard what she thought was the call of a distant bird, followed by what could have been screams or loud laughter.

She drew so close to her father that she was almost hugging his leg.

Finally, the hunchbacked man stopped at a towering gold temple that rose above the surrounding. He bowed them forward like an usher bowing them into an opera, though Jyrine couldn’t see if he was smiling or not.

She knew it was an old temple because it looked exactly like the pictures in her schoolbooks. Made of almost pure gold, the temple was blocky and fluid at the same time, like some architect had tried to build a rearing snake out of bricks. It was adorned by dangling flags of every color, on which were written words she didn’t understand.

Her father pulled her inside, though she was more interested in staring at the entrance. They passed between two statues that looked like they could have represented the Emperor, except they each had a snake’s head resting on a man’s shoulders. As far as she knew, the Emperor had a normal head.

Fires burned in braziers standing against the walls, lighting their way in and filling the air with a more pleasant smell, almost like pine and cinnamon. They only walked a short way before her father unlocked a perfectly ordinary door, which opened onto a much larger chamber. A strange golden statue stood against the far wall: most of it looked like a snake, though it had the tail of a scorpion, the head of a lion, and the talons of a huge bird. She supposed it must be a Kameira of some sort, but she couldn’t tell which one. She hadn’t studied natural history yet.

In front of the statue, gathered around a fire-pit full of stacked, unlit wood, were five figures in hooded robes. Other than the hoods, none of the robes had anything in common; one was black and plain, another blue and richly decorated, and she was suspicious that a third was really just a bathrobe with a cowl sewn on. At the sight of her father, the bathrobe man lowered his hood and grinned. He was a very ordinary-looking old man, obviously older than her father, with a red, round face and a ring of wispy white hair.

“And the cavalry’s here!” he shouted, spreading his arms wide. “Light and life, Larrin, it’s been an age! Worms take me! We’re getting ready to begin, just waiting on you, but we’ve got a little time. Why don’t—”

He seemed to notice Jyrine for the first time, and he leaned down to put his hands on his knees, looking at her on her level. “I’m sorry, little lady, they say manners are the first thing to go. What is your name?”

“Jyrine,” she said, happy to meet a normal person in this town.

“You must be hungry, Jyrine. Why don’t you get something to eat?” He gestured over to the wall, where a perfectly ordinary service table had been set up, carrying all the bite-sized delicacies she would have expected to see in the Capital. It was bizarrely out of place here, something from polite Heartlander society over here in the middle of a wilderness temple off the Izyrian coast.