Matthew Ward’s The Darkness Before Them comes out from Orbit on the 7th November, kicking off a brand new fantasy series – the Soulfire Saga. I’m really looking forward to this new series, and very happy to support the release of this new book. I’ve already chatted to Matthew for a teaser interview about it, and as part of the blog tour for the book’s release Matthew wrote a fascinating guest post exploring the concept of surprises in fiction (something The Darkness Before Them promises to contain plenty of), and why they’re so effective. That’s not all, however. As the SECOND instalment in my contribution to the blog tour, I’m delighted to present an exclusive excerpt from The Darkness Before Them, to give you a taste of what to expect.
So read on, and make sure you order your copy of The Darkness Before Them if you haven’t already!
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The room was a shrine to old glories, its altar of worship a tall glass cabinet against the far wall. Within stood a wicker mannequin in blackened lamellar scales and an ash-white tabard. The crest of the Alabastran temple – a mirrored indigo and gold flame – gleamed at the centre of its chest. A white cloak flowed from gilded pauldrons.
Raised platforms flanking the carpeted approach held what Kat took to be other mannequins, three to each side. Though protected by sheets rather than glass, the outlines of shoulders and heads were unmistakable.
Smaller cases lined the wall to either side, given over to polished and gem-set weapons. Two scimitars. A flanged mace. A rounded silver shield with a brass rim. A straight short sword of the type favoured in the northern cities, seemingly crafted from polished black stone, rather than steel. A ritual flamberge, the rippling blade almost Kat’s height. Smaller cabinets held jewellery. One piece in particular urged her along the aisle: a ring of reddish gold, the metal wrought in an endless spiral. The communion ring was the least of all the treasures in that room, but it was the only token by which Marida’s help could be bought.
Tension bled from Kat’s shoulders. ‘This must have cost Javar a fortune.’
‘Not really.’ Azra tugged at a sheet. It came away in a spill of dust, revealing a wicker figure in black robes of judgement. Another tug and a second sheet slid away, revealing a more elegant iteration of the same. ‘They’re all his.’
Kat blinked. ‘Javar is a templar?’
‘Was. I thought you knew. I thought everybody in Tyzanta knew.’
‘I’ve only been here a year, remember?’ Kat retorted. ‘I thought the only way a templar retired was through death.’
‘Thirty years ago Javar got it into his head that Nyssa herself had charged him with freeing Undertown from House Bascari’s tyranny.’ Azra’s eyes gleamed with scandal. ‘Roused half the slum before anyone took him seriously.’
That couldn’t have gone down well. Alabastra wasn’t permitted to raise soldiers of its own. Instead, they purchased the services of armed custodians from a city’s ruling house – an arrangement that kept the firebloods wealthy and the Alabastran temples protected. To retain an air of control, Alabastra sometimes elevated a sufficiently pious and reliable custodian to the honorary rank of templar. Such men and women served as liaisons between Alabastra and the firebloods. By his actions, Javar had betrayed both masters.
‘What happened?’
‘The countess made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Javar chose wealthy turncoat over penniless corpse and gave her all the names she needed to … settle things down. It didn’t stop the hierarch excommunicating him.’ She spread her arms. ‘I’d say he’s not let go of his past.’
‘So much for him being a man of the people.’
‘Principles are expensive.’
The chamber no longer resembled a shrine to glory and achievement, but their tomb. No wonder Marida wanted the communion ring. She and Javar were deadlocked for control of Undertown, neither able to oust the other in a war that saw lesser gangs used as proxies. At the very least, stealing a beloved tie to a forsaken past was spite. At best, it was leverage of a singular sort.
‘I’m surprised they let him live,’ said Kat.
Azra flashed a smile. ‘He’s worth more as an example than as ashes on the wind. That’s Khalad. You find your place or one’s found for you. The world goes on either way.’
‘You sound like you approve.’
She shrugged. ‘Why not? It’s elegant. Life should be elegant.’
‘Even when it’s unfair?’
‘Don’t be tedious, darling. “Unfair” implies rules, and we both know there aren’t any.’
Kat flinched, but no amount of wishing could change the facts. Probity should have prevented Alabastra from bleeding her father white, gobbling up possessions and property to satisfy ever-growing debts. The conventions of friendship should have demanded that Kat’s peers, the sons and daughters of Zariqaz’s ruling elite, rally round when she inherited those debts, but they’d feared Alabastra more than they’d loved her. Likely they’d not loved her at all. Yes, Azra was right. There were no rules. Not any that mattered. You found a place or one was found for you.
And she’d be damned if she’d let anyone else decide her fate without a fight.
She smashed the glass with her dagger’s hilt and snatched the ring from its velvet cradle.
Something rippled free of the spirit realm.
‘Kat!’ shouted Azra.
Too late, Kat realised there had been an ifrît in the west wing the whole time, but she’d been too busy looking for hestics and lumani to see it. The thing that had awoken when she’d touched the communion ring was an order of magnitude stronger. Searching for trees, she’d missed the forest.
She spun around just as a mannequin lurched down from its pedestal.
Its thrashing arm sent a neighbour crashing to the ground. A swathed hand ripped at the dust sheet. With a rasp of tearing cloth it yanked a section free, revealing a sun-bleached, pitted skull, the bone scrimshawed with dark, geometric glyphs. Indigo fire blazed in empty eye sockets and coiled along jerking arms as the corpse ripped away the remainder of its shroud, laying bare layered lamellar armour.
Kat’s heart skipped a beat.
A koilos. Javar had set a koilos to guard his private shame?
Benevolent Nyssa, but they couldn’t fight that.
She glanced at the frozen, gaping Azra. ‘Run!’
The koilos uttered a soul-shivering shriek and lumbered forward, fire swirling behind. Ill-fitting lamellar rattling and clacking against fleshless bones, it shouldered Azra into a weapon case then bore down on Kat. Heart pounding, she feinted left and flung herself right, ducking low under a flailing arm.
Skeletal fingers clamped about the back of her neck. She yelped, her heels furrowing the expensive carpet as the koilos reeled her in. Breathless, she shattered the lantern across its head and fumbled for her dagger. It came free of its sheath on her second attempt. Spinning her about, the koilos transferred its grip to her throat and hoisted her high. She screamed defiance and stabbed at the flames in its left eye socket.
With its free hand, the koilos twisted the dagger from her grip and flung it away.
Lungs heaving for breath that wouldn’t come, Kat clutched at the koilos’ arm and scrabbled for a connection with the ifrît bound within the glyph-etched bones. Hopeless. Divining an unknown soul-glyph required trial and error and a calm subject. The koilos was far from calm and orders of magnitude stronger than household ifrîti. Rumour claimed some even used two glyphs: a warding glyph to mark friends, and a more complicated control glyph to indicate its master. In her desperation, Kat found trace of neither.
Swollen thoughts pulsing as unconsciousness claimed her, she clawed at the fingers locked about her throat, each effort less than the one before.
Darkness rushed in.
‘Let her go!’
Azra hacked down. The koilos’ outstretched arm shuddered. Once. Twice. Three times. Bone splintered on the fourth strike. The hand and most of the adjoining forearm broke away in a spray of foul, choking dust. Kat hit the floor, all elbows and knees, and whooped down the sweetest breaths she’d ever taken. Beside her, the severed hand twitched and thrashed like a belly-up crab.
Azra dragged her upright. ‘Come on!’
Kat half ran, half staggered, navigating the dark via instinct and bashed shins. Glancing behind, she saw Azra topple a cabinet into the koilos’ path and scramble frantically away as its good arm batted it aside without effort. She clutched the precious communion ring tight and kept running.
A dozen loping paces on, she flung her shoulder against the landing door and stumbled into the light. Half blinded, she barely saw the guard bearing down on her.
Then Azra was at her side, her borrowed scimitar flashing.
The guard howled and spun away, clutching a bloodied arm. Three more edged across the landing, taught caution by their fellow’s mistake. Another two waited at the nearer of the stair heads, serrated knives drawn, blocking the only obvious escape.
‘Behind me,’ Azra snapped, flickering the scimitar’s point to drive a guard back.
A third guard mustered to the stair head. Emboldened by rising numbers, the others edged forward beneath Nyssa’s appraising stained-glass gaze.
‘No way out,’ said the nearest. ‘Come quietly, and we’ll not let the koilos have you.’
A crash of furniture sound from the corridor behind.
Where were their glyphs? Kat wondered dimly. Likely on the nape of their necks, given how quickly the koilos had gone for hers. She’d not thought to check the balcony guard for a second tattoo. Stupid. She’d remember that next time. If there was a next time.
She tightened her grip on the communion ring. There was a way out. If the racket had drawn the guards from the gate. If she’d not drained the last of her aetherios tattoo communing with the lumani.
She slipped her free hand into Azra’s and squeezed. ‘This has been fun, hasn’t it?’
‘Ask me later,’ Azra replied, eyes on the approaching guards.
Behind them, the koilos shrieked in triumph and broke into a run.
‘Close your eyes,’ said Kat. ‘And when I move, move.’
‘Close my eyes? What do you mean, close—’
With a last, wordless prayer to Nyssa, Kat thrust her hand towards the chandelier and poured the remnant of her tattoo’s flame into the lumani – not to communicate or cajole, but to kill.
The ifrît gulped down all she offered, gorging on power it could never hope to contain, not realising that in so doing it doomed itself. Or perhaps on some primal level it knew exactly what she intended, and recognised the only freedom it would ever again know. Kat hoped so.
She pinched her eyes shut as the chandelier detonated.
A silent thunderclap of searing white light swept the landing, the screams of blinded guards hard on its heels. Blinking back splotchy after-images, Kat launched herself at the window. Her shoulder struck an inch or two below Nyssa’s divine navel. Then she was out into the cold night air, glass shards and Azra’s wild laughter exploding around her.
***
These are dark times for the Kingdom of Khalad. As the magical mists of the Veil devour the land, the populace struggles beneath the rule of ruthless noble houses and their uncaring immortal king.
Kat doesn’t care about any of that. A talented thief, she’s pursuing one big score that will settle the debt that destroyed her family. No easy feat in a realm where indentured spirits hold vigil over every vault and treasure room. However, Kat has a unique talent: she can speak to those spirits, and even command them. And she has no qualms using her power to her advantage.
Kat’s not a hero. She just wants to be free. To have her old life back. But as rebellion rekindles and the war for Khalad’s future begins, everyone—Kat included—will have to pick a side.
***
Cat-servant and owner of more musical instruments than he can actually play (and considerably more than he can play well), Matthew Ward is the author of the Legacy Trilogy and the forthcoming Soulfire Saga. He’s also the architect of Coldharbour, and a roaming Creative Consultant and Voice Director in video game land, including Vermintide, Vermintide 2, Darktide and Aliens: Dark Descent.
He’s afflicted with an obsession for old places – castles, historic cities and the London Underground chief amongst them – and should probably cultivate more interests to help expand out his author biography.
Website: www.thetowerofstars.com
Twitter: @TheTowerofStars
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thetowerofstars
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Thanks so much (again) to Matthew for inviting me to take part in the blog tour for The Darkness Before Them, and for providing this brilliant excerpt for all of our enjoyment!
For more about The Darkness Before Them, see also:
TEASER INTERVIEW: Matthew Ward Introduces The Darkness Before Them
Surprise! (or I Bet You Did See That Coming) – Matthew Ward Guest Post
The Darkness Before Them is available to pre-order now ahead of its 7th November release date – check out the links below to order* your copy:
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