Flight into Darkness (Alchymist's Legacy) - Hardcover

Sarah Ash is the author of seven previous fantasy novels: Tracing the Shadow, Children of the Serpent Gate, Lord of Snow and Shadows, Prisoner of the Iron Tower, Moths to a Flame, Songspinners, and The Lost Child. She also runs the library in a local primary school. Ash has two grown sons and lives in Beckenham, Kent, with her husband and their mad cat, Molly.

Chapter One


Rieuk Mordiern's damaged eye leaked a constant trickle of black blood that ran down his cheek, searing his skin as if laced with acid. And the young magus's good eye leaked salty fluid, as if weeping in sympathy with its ruined twin. He could see little more than a blur of images. Sunlight was a torment, making him seek the shadows.

And scored across his mind's vision was the blinding image of Azilis, her beautiful face superimposed over Celestine's, distorted with rage and loss. He could still hear her cry, harsh enough to lacerate his ears.

"What children would keep their mother imprisoned against her will?"

In his delirium, he relived again and again the moment when Azilis had attacked him, half-blinding him with a single burst of aethyrial energy, whiter than lightning.

I failed. I found Azilis, and she rejected me. After all these years of searching for her. The feeling of failure was almost as painful as the physical mutilation she had inflicted upon him. For many centuries, Azilis's spirit had kept the balance between the mortal world and the Ways Beyond. But since, as an inexperienced apprentice, he had inadvertently set her free, not knowing who or what she was, the boundaries between the two had begun to break down. And after that his life had become an arduous, unsuccessful quest to bring her back. Bound to protect Celestine de Joyeuse, Azilis seemed to have forgotten her role as the guardian of the gateway between life and death.

"Rieuk, I'm cold . . . "

Rieuk slowly turns around. There, in the gloom behind him, stands Imri . . . or a semblance of Imri, his black hair loose about his shoulders, his face half-veiled in shadow.

"Imri? Is it really you?" He has longed to see him so much . . . yet this feels terribly wrong. "What have they done to you?" Even as he reaches out to the revenant, it begins to fade, leaving him clutching empty air.
As Rieuk burned in fever, he sometimes thought he caught the distant sound of music in the night. Someone was pensively plucking old, sad melodies on an aludh or a dombra, each note falling on Rieuk's consciousness like a drop of cooling rain. Once he called out, "Who's there?" and the music ceased. Perhaps it was a dream . . . 
Someone was gently sponging his damaged face with a soft, damp cloth. It felt unexpectedly, blissfully soothing, as if the water contained some healing balm that was drawing out the infection and lowering his fever.

A shadowy form was bending low over him, turning away from time to time to rinse out the cloth. Rieuk tried to focus with his one good eye to identify who was tending him. A subtle scent arose from the water: cleansing and refreshing, reminding Rieuk of the astringent smell of cucumbers and watercress.

"Where . . . am I?" Rieuk managed to whisper.

"You're awake!" The voice, a young man's, was soft and dark-toned, slightly spiced with a trace of a foreign accent; familiar, yet Rieuk could not identify the speaker. "I must tell Aqil."

"Wait." Rieuk heard his own voice, hoarse and urgent, as if from far away. He reached out blindly, catching hold of his carer's robe, pulling him closer.

"Don't you recognize me, Emissary Mordiern?" The blur loomed closer until Rieuk could make out a bespectacled face gazing curiously into his. Dark olive skin, framed by long, curling locks of crow-black hair, one side braided with crimson thread, Djihari-fashion. The young man removed his spectacles and Rieuk caught the unmistakable glimmer of mage eyes, liquid obsidian, flecked with the scarlet veins of the earth's fires. "I'm Oranir."

"But you were just a boy when we last . . . " How long had he been sick?

"I'm nearly eighteen," Oranir said stiffly, with the slightest hint of offended pride. "Old enough to become an Emissary."

The age I was when I first met Imri. Only then did the realization strike him-that he was almost double Oranir's age and had spent most the young mage's lifetime traveling alone, forced to act as the Arkhan's Emissary, to protect dead Imri's immortal soul.

"Let me see my face." His fingertips tentatively moved upward over his right cheekbone. Oranir hesitated. "Show me." The skin felt puckered and tender; even touching it made Rieuk squeamish. He had to see for himself. He had to know the worst. Teeth gritted with the effort of pushing himself up from the pillows, he took the little round mirror Oranir gave him and forced himself to look at his reflection.

They had skillfully sewn the eyelids together to cover the void behind, leaving a jagged scar where his eye had been. The burned skin was still an angry shade of red.

"Magister Aqil says that the scarring will slowly fade, but never disappear." Oranir spoke without expression.

 "My eye . . . " The words came out on a whispered sob; Rieuk had known that his sight was impaired, but not until that moment just how serious the wound had been.

"Magister Aqil tried to save it. But it had become infected and the infection was poisoning your body. If he hadn't operated, you would have died."

Rieuk said nothing. The knowledge that he was disfigured and half-blind was difficult enough to assimilate, but there was another deeper concern.

If one eye is gone, then have half my mage powers gone too?
"Ormas?" Rieuk called to his shadow hawk. Ormas had fallen into a deep trance after Azilis's attack and Rieuk had begun to fear that he would never recover.

"Master . . . ?" For the first time in many weeks he heard a faint answer to his call. His heart swelled with fresh hope.

"How is it with you, Ormas?" His voice shook. Ormas had been his only companion in his long years of wandering, and the last weeks of silence had proved almost too great a burden to endure.

"I'm sorry, Master. I failed you."

Rieuk placed one hand over his breast where Ormas's image was tattooed, seeking for the beating of the hawk's heart. "Let there be no talk of failure." There it was, a thrumming, weak but steady-a confirmation of Ormas's presence. "She was too strong for us."

He felt a sudden convulsive shiver within his body and Ormas emerged, fluttering down to perch on his outstretched arm. The smoke hawk lowered his head, swiveling it to one side to regard him with one bright amber eye. But Rieuk saw with shame that Ormas's other eye was burned away. His beautiful Emissary was maimed and half-blind too.
Rieuk woke in the night to the sound of music-the same sweet, plaintive air he had heard before in his fevered dreams, plucked from the darkly deep, resonant strings of an aludh. He sat up. The dry, sweet scent of the desert night perfumed the air. His turret room was silvered with fragile moonlight; out on the balcony he could see a man seated, his back against the parapet wall, his head tilted to one side as he leaned over the instrument, placing each note with infinite care.

Rieuk swung his legs over the side of the bed and attempted a few shaky steps toward him. The player stopped and looked around. It was Oranir.

"Don't stop."

"I'm not very good." Was there a hint of a blush in Oranir's words?

"It sounded fine to my ears." Rieuk reached the balcony and eased himself down to sit beside Oranir.

"I've heard you playing that song before, haven't I?"

"I didn't mean to disturb you."

"So it was you." Rieuk was touched. "You were watching over me while I was ill."

Oranir laid the aludh down. "I-I've been watching over you for a long time." He turned suddenly to Rieuk. "Make me your apprentice. Please, Magister." His voice was low and urgent. "I'll do anything you want. Anything. I'll-"

"Stop. You don't want to get involved with me." Rieuk pushed Oranir away, holding him at arm's length. "I'm an assassin. I've blood on my hands."

"Do you think I'm not aware of that?" Oranir's eyes burned into his. "I'm not a child. Why don't you let me make up my own mind? Or do you think I'm not worthy?"

"I'm bad luck, Oranir." Rieuk forced a laugh. "I seem to bring misfortune on all those I care about. Why do you think I've worked alone for all these years?"

"It's him, isn't it? You're still in thrall to your dead master, Imri Boldiszar. He must have been a remarkable man for you still to be in love with him after so many years."

"Imri?" Rieuk's hands dropped to his sides. He tried to speak and found that the words were choked in his throat.

"I heard you calling his name when you were feverish."

"I was dreaming about him, that was all . . . Wait!" But Oranir got to his feet and pushed past him, hurrying away before Rieuk could stop him.

I've been watching over you for a long time. Had there been an unspoken confession in Oranir's words? There was no denying the fact that Rieuk felt attracted to the young magus. If he had not checked Oranir then, there was no telling where things might have led.

Rieuk drew in a shuddering breath. So many years. Of course it seemed an eternity to Oranir; Imri had died before he was born. Rieuk gazed up at the blue brilliance of the stars overhead.

"I have to move on. And I can't move on unless I know that you're at peace, Imri," he said softly to the night. I've been alone too long.

"I've altered the lenses in your spectacles to improve the acuity of your remaining eye." Aqil leaned forward to adjust the fit and Rieuk tried his best not to shy away. He still could not bear anyone's touching his face. His instincts had become so sensitiv...