The Dark - By Marianne Curley Page 0,1

is missing.

‘She has turned traitor.’ Lathenia verbalises his suspicions. ‘She will die.’

‘I’ll find her.’

‘Forget her for now. The Guard will protect her and keep her hidden for a long time. But your chance will come.’

With the last of the injured removed, Bastian makes for the door, but Lathenia calls him back. ‘Stay, I must talk with you.’

Bastian inhales a deep breath, his hands clasped tightly before him. They’re shaking and he doesn’t want his Goddess to see this weakness. He has never seen her so distraught before. Losing Marduke appears to have destabilised her. Although familiar with her usual violent temper, her added distress brings a stab of terror to his heart. But what could he have done to stop that blade from repeatedly slashing the master’s throat? It was as ugly as it was incisive. It was also skilful. ‘Yes, Highness?’

‘Tell me what happened.’

Green eyes widen for an instant, then flick briefly around the smooth white walls, and he swallows. Surely she must already know, having seen everything through her sphere, or why would Marduke’s body be lying before her now on that narrow crystal table?

At his hesitation Lathenia screams her words from across the room, ‘Tell me how the best of my soldiers can be defeated by so few of theirs! Tell me, Bastian, the name of the one whose hand held the lethal dagger!’

‘He … he appeared young, Highness.’

‘You are forgetting that while in the past, all are disguised.’

‘Yes, but … his eyes. There was something about his eyes. And well, as you know, eyes don’t change—’

She cuts him off with a wave of her hand. Of course she knows how it works. Wasn’t she the one who started it all? Conceived first, she should have been born first! Sharing the womb with Lorian had been difficult from the start. He continually manipulated her position until her life-cord became wrapped around her neck. But even this inconvenience couldn’t stop her from claiming her rightful first position. Except Lorian shoved her to the rear at the very moment of birth, forcing his way past her into the loving arms of a very proud father. So she’d had to find a way to overcome the obstacle of being born second. She spent centuries figuring out a way to cause enough chaos to disrupt her brother’s ministrations. She learned that chaos gave her power. She found it by tampering with the past. And the stronger she became, the more she understood anything was possible, including total domination of all the worlds.

She started gathering an army of similar-minded followers, and built a time-shift labyrinth with bricks that could not be seen by human eyes. She called her army the Order. Others called it the Order of Chaos. But as her powers surged, so did that of her opponents. Assembling a Tribunal with Lorian at its head, they formed a guard against her. Whenever her soldiers used the labyrinth to venture into the past, so did the soldiers of the Guard, causing her to fail many times. Needing a sanctuary that could be safe from both mortal and immortal hands, she started constructing a city. But Lorian revealed hidden powers to usurp her. He stole her ideas, her designs. The construction became the Citadel. Today, her soldiers only use the adjoining labyrinth, where time travellers from both alliances are endowed with the special knowledge needed before venturing on their journeys. Lorian controls the Citadel, but she wants it back! And this time she will fortify it so that no one, not even her power-hungry brother, will steal it from her. And at last she will rule over all!

Lathenia’s eyes linger on Bastian. She remembers how he came to be a part of her Order – a lonely child, living in poverty with parents constantly feuding. How he wanted to scream at them for a change, instead of cowering beneath his makeshift bed or inside a narrow closet with his hands thrust tightly over both ears. Why couldn’t he have a home like the other children at school? Why couldn’t his parents stop screaming at each other? Why did they both drink so much? But most of all he wanted to control his world, and he wanted the pleasures that he sensed the world could give him.

He also had power. So she waited and watched. The day he ran off into the woods, tears of pain and hurt and frustration streaming down his face, she found him. It was his eighth birthday, the