Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Newsletter Signup

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Drop me a line!

  Newsletter Signup

  About the Author

  Note from the Author

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Coming Darkness: Book Five of The Nightfall Wars

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  Copyright © 2020 Jacob Nathaniel Peppers. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Visit the author website: http://www.jacobpeppersauthor.com

  This is for you, dear reader—

  You might not know it, but yours is the strongest magic

  You take simple words on a page, simple ideas,

  And you make them real

  If you ask me, that’s a pretty nifty trick

  Sign up for the author’s New Releases mailing list and get a free copy of The Silent Blade: A Seven Virtues Novella.

  Click here to get started now!

  Chapter One

  He gave the door a gentle push with the toe of his boot, and it swung open with a creak. The room was dark, cloaked in shadows, but Alesh caught a metallic flickering in the gloom and recoiled just in time to avoid the questing steel as it cut through the space where his throat had been a moment before. Alesh countered, his blade lashing forward and was rewarded with the feel of it piercing flesh, though the darkness made it impossible to tell exactly where it had struck.

  There was a growl of anger from the shadows, and Alesh grunted in surprise as the man charged into him, slamming him into the wall. Alesh scrambled, catching the man’s wrists more by luck than design in an effort to keep the glimmering steel at bay. It was a near thing, at first, the man’s momentum and Alesh’s surprise working together, and Alesh managed to stop the blade only inches from his face. They struggled then, and after a moment Alesh noted that his adversary was growing weaker as the wound robbed him of his strength. His attacker must have realized this too. He jerked his hand back only to lunge forward again in an attempt to surprise Alesh, but the wound had stolen not just his strength but his speed as well, and Alesh managed to parry the flashing blade, knocking it out of the man’s hand before countering with an attack of his own.

  The man’s body stiffened as the sword went in and warm blood covered Alesh’s hand and wrist. His opponent let out a soft moan and collapsed to the ground, unmoving. Alesh stood there, panting, and was still trying to get his breath back when one of Captain Nordin’s men came rushing up from behind him holding a lantern. “Chosen,” he said, “are you alright?”

  “I’m…fine,” Alesh managed. And on the surface, at least, that was true, for the man’s knife had managed only superficial cuts along his arms. Painful, but too shallow to be of any real danger. Then the guard raised the lantern he carried, its poor light shining down, and Alesh saw his opponent for the first time. A short, gray-haired man that looked to be in his sixties, his clothes marking him as a chamberlain or head of servants. The man’s face was slack in death, and he looked almost peaceful, like some kindly grandfather who, exhausted from playing with his well-loved grandchildren, had lain down for a brief nap to regather his strength. The sort of grandfather who would make jokes and tell his grandchildren stories about how things used to be and about how good they had it. Alesh decided maybe he’d spoken too soon, after all. Maybe he wasn’t fine. In fact, he was beginning to think he wasn’t even close.

  “Very well.” The guard nodded, moving farther into the house, his own blade ready.

  Alesh watched him go, taking a slow, deep breath. They had been at it for days now, hunting down the nobles and merchants of the city who had been in secret league with Aldrick and the Darkness, intent on betraying Alesh and the city of Valeria to the enemy, and the dead man lying at his feet wasn’t the first “warrior” he’d slain who seemed to have no business being mixed up in such bloody affairs. Though he had suffered no significant physical wounds, Alesh felt that his emotions and mental state had taken a beating over the past days as he and the others rooted out the servants of the Darkness in the city, each seemingly a more unlikely candidate than the last.

  He did his best to hide the emotional toll the work took, just as he did his best to conceal the shame it left in him. After all, he had promised the nobles justice. He’d told them that those guilty of treason would be hunted down, a job made easier by documents found in the recently deceased Lord Aldrick’s mansion, documents cataloguing, in detail, the activities of his fellow conspirators, presumably a safeguard against any of them betraying him.

  Alesh knew the work was important, vital even, but knowing that did nothing to change the guilt festering inside him, for the old man lying dead at his feet was not the first he had killed while tracking down the traitors to Valeria. It was becoming so bad that he had considered doing as Katherine had recommended and leaving the work to Nordin and his men. After all, she’d said, leaders had a responsibility not to risk themselves at tasks others were better suited for. But Alesh would not, could not do that. He might not be a good leader, but he told himself he would not be the kind of man to ask his subordinates do something he was unwilling to do himself.

  So he woke each morning—or roused himself from a night spent tossing and turning with nightmares in which he saw all the faces of those he’d slain—and met with Captain Nordin to see what dark truths the scribes studying the reams of Aldrick’s files had uncovered. Alesh had known, of course, that others within Valeria’s walls supported Shira’s cause, but the sheer number of them was staggering.

  Still, despite days spent rooting out the Darkness’s servants and nights spent twisting and turning with bad dreams, Alesh told himself he should be grateful. After all, for reasons neither he nor anyone else seemed to understand, the Broken’s army had yet to attack the city. After Sevrin and Aldrick’s deaths and the failed attempt of the nightlings to use the siege tunnels to invade the city, the enemy army had disappeared back into the forest without so much as a single camp fire visible from the city’s walls. Yet what scant comfort this might have offered Alesh was tempered by the fact that, as of yet, they had received no letters from the Broken or any of his men regarding Sonya, no attempts to use her to blackmail Alesh into giving up the city. There had been nothing at all regarding her, only silence, and that silence worried him.

  He told himself that the Broken wouldn’t waste the opportunity the girl’s capture provided by killing her out of hand. True, the man had shown no hesitation in killing when he thought it was necessary—had almost seemed to enjoy it—but he had not struck Alesh as a fool to give up a bit of leverage for no other reason than that it might hurt Alesh. And even if he had done so, then surely he would have reached out to let Alesh know of it. After all, what good torturing a man by hurting those he cared about, if he never knew it?

  It made sense that the Broken would keep her alive, would try to use her to gain some advantage over Alesh and the city’s defenders, and it was this rationale he used to keep his fear under control, to keep it chained. But with each day that passed without word, that fear, that terror slipped its bonds a little more, making it more and more difficult for Alesh to think clearly. Gods, keep her safe, he thought.

  A hand on his shoulder pulled him
from his dark thoughts, and Alesh spun, pulling his eyes away from the dead man at his feet to see Captain Nordin standing in front of him. The captain had a fresh bandage on his upper arm, and there was a shallow cut across his face, but it was the dark circles under his eyes and the weary, pale look of him that Alesh noticed the most. “Captain,” Alesh said. “How goes it in the rest of the house?”

  “The men are finishing clearing it as we speak, Chosen,” Nordin said. “Widow Maldraga appears to have only kept a small, token guard force of no more than half a dozen men, less than most of the houses we’ve been to so far.” He grunted. “Surprising, if I’m honest. From all the notes Aldrick had on her and about how dangerous she was, I’ll confess I expected her to put up a bit more of a fight.”

  Alesh nodded slowly, trying to think back to the report the scribes had given him before they’d come. It seemed that he’d read dozens of the things lately, and his weary mind was finding it difficult to separate one from the other. Aldrick had gone on about the widow a great deal, his notes seeming to reflect a respect, perhaps even a fear of her. She was slippery, he’d said, slippery and clever.

  “And full of poison,” Alesh said aloud as he remembered. “Like a snake. Subtle, too.”

  Nordin shrugged. “Well, you don’t mind my sayin’ so, sir, I hope some of the other nobles and merchants we have to visit are as subtle as this. A shield made of wind would be a subtle defense, too. Also useless.”

  “And the widow? Have we found her?”

  “Lady Maldraga is in her quarters. My men found her sitting at table reading as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She asked for you, but I told her you were too busy to visit every traitor in the city, though maybe she’d catch a glimpse of you at her execution.”

  Alesh winced at that. He had promised the nobles that he would hunt down any of them who were traitors and would have them killed. So far with Aldrick’s notes, they had been able to find many of those traitors, but he had only been putting them in the dungeons for the moment. Dungeons which, according to reports, were growing terribly over-crowded. As for what to do with the prisoners, well, it was a decision he’d been putting off but one that he knew he would be forced to make sooner rather than later. He knew what Nordin and the other guardsmen thought he should do, knew what he’d promised he would do, but despite their crimes, despite all that they had betrayed, the thought of sending so many men and women—some old enough to be grandmothers and grandfathers, some barely old enough to be called adults—to their executions made him sick.

  And more than that, confused. He wanted, needed to understand what could make such people, husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, abandon the Light and turn to the Darkness. “I will go to her,” Alesh said, suddenly eager to see what the widow wanted to say as all those they’d rounded up thus far had mostly confined their communications to shouts of anger as they attacked.

  The captain looked taken aback and seemed on the verge of protest but held his tongue—which was just as well, for Alesh meant to speak to the widow regardless. Perhaps, it would be fruitless—likely, it would be—but he had to speak to her, had to try to make some sense of it all. He wanted, needed to understand why a woman—by all rights a gentle one, known for her kindness and charity, would abandon the Light and choose the Darkness.

  ***

  He followed Captain Nordin through the mansion, his mood darkening with each corpse they passed. Most wore clothes marking them as part of the household, guards or some few servants who had decided to fight for their mistress, but not all. Two wore the uniforms of city guardsmen, which meant they had come with Alesh. They had come following his orders, and now they were dead. He gritted his teeth as another layer was added to the shame growing inside him, following as the captain swept past the dead men.

  Eventually, they made it to a door flanked by two guards who bowed when Nordin and Alesh approached. Both appeared worse for the wear, but Alesh was glad to see that what wounds and bruises they had appeared superficial and not particularly dangerous.

  “She still inside?” Nordin asked.

  One of the two nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well.” Nordin turned to Alesh, raising an eyebrow. “Are you sure about this, Chosen? There really isn’t any need for you—”

  But there was a need, one that demanded that he speak to the woman, try to make some sense of her choice, of why anyone would give themselves to the Darkness. “I’m sure, Captain.”

  Nordin grunted. “As you say, sir. Still, I can go with you, at least, in case—”

  “In case what?” Alesh asked, turning to the man. “In case I find myself unable to deal with an old woman who can barely stand? Relax, Captain. I’ll be fine.”

  Judging by the sour look on his face, Nordin wanted to argue further, but he only gave a short nod instead. “As you say, sir. We’ll be right outside if you need us.”

  Alesh gave a nod, moving past the guards and closing the door behind him. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find when he stepped into the study, but the woman he saw reclining on a crimson-cushioned lounge wasn’t it. She had silver hair, short and curly, and a squat, plump frame that was evident despite the poor light coming from the room’s single lantern. Her chubby cheeks were rosy as if with good humor or good health, and she wore a long dress, the skirt of which failed to hide legs that were far too thin, in stark contrast to the rest of her body. She held a book in her hands, and she did not look up from its pages as Alesh entered.

  “Lady Maldraga,” he said, “I have—”

  The woman held up a finger, still without so much as glancing up at him from her book, as if telling him to wait. Just when he had decided to force the issue and show her she wasn’t in charge, she glanced up, offering him a smile and closing her book.

  She studied him, squinting her eyes as if having difficulty seeing him. “Hmph,” she said finally. “Shorter than I would have thought.”

  Alesh, who was slightly over six feet tall, had never thought of himself as short, but he saw no point in saying so. “My name is Alesh,” he said, “and I am—”

  “Yes, yes,” the woman said rolling her eyes as if bored, “you are the man who killed Tesharna, who killed Aldrick and promised to kill any of those who serve the Darkness, isn’t that right?”

  Alesh frowned, taken back by the woman’s casual attitude. “I am. Now, why don’t you tell me why it is you’ve asked for me and hurry it up—I’ve other things to be about than talking to traitors.”

  Her frown deepened. “Handsome enough, I suppose. But so self-righteous and with a distinct lack of manners.”

  “Manners?” Alesh demanded. “That’s funny coming from a woman who—”

  But the older woman went on as if he had never spoken. “One would think your parents would have taught you better, would have taught you a certain respect for your elders, at the very least.”

  Alesh found himself snarling. “My parents weren’t able to teach me much as they were murdered by servants of the Darkness when I was only a child, Lady Maldraga. And as for respect, I have little to spare for someone who would sell her entire city out to serve the Darkness.”

  She gave him a long-suffering smile then, the kind usually employed by parents or grandparents when dealing with a particularly willful and exceptionally misbehaving child. “It is so easy, isn’t it, to judge others without understanding what they go through, without knowing the losses they have suffered, those things, most precious, which they had taken from them?”

  Alesh had suffered his share of loss and then some in his life, losing first his mother and father, then Chosen Olliman, the man who’d taken him into his care, as well as Abigail and Chorin, but he didn’t bother saying so. Instead, he only sighed, suddenly too tired and exhausted to be much offended or angry in any case. “You asked for me?”

  She studied him with what might have been amusement, and he became painfully aware that he hadn’t called her “ma’am,” or showed her any deference despite the fact that she was many years his elder. She clucked her tongue in what could only have been disapproval then gave a tiny motion of her shoulders that might have been a shrug. “So I did.” She looked him up and down the way a farmer might examine a cow he was considering purchasing. “You’re young. Too young, I wonder?”