"And just before that axe split my skull and found my brains, Valkyrie, Skulduggery staggered into view. He fell, reached out, grabbed my dagger, and sent fifty spears of darkness into the ogre's chest."

Skulduggery said nothing.

"I hadn't given him permission," Tenebrae said. "That power should have torn him apart. But he controlled those shadows, instinctively and without training, and when Jeremy the ogre was dead, Skulduggery dropped the dagger and went looking for the next enemy to kill."

Tenebrae looked at Skulduggery. "From that moment, I knew you were special. I knew I would need to keep an eye on you. A few years later, we Necromancers retreated to our Temples and fortified our positions. We decided to let the rest of the world fight among themselves. But not everyone respected our neutrality. Nefarian Serpine, in particular, seemed disinclined to leave us alone. He surrounded the Temple I was in, threatened us with utter destruction unless we shared some of our secrets. The High Priest chose me to be the one to venture out and teach Serpine what he wanted to know."

"The red right hand," Valkyrie said.

Tenebrae gave the slightest of nods. "Agonising death inflicted by merely pointing at your victim, providing he was within range. Serpine had heard about it and he wanted it. I taught him. During our lessons, we talked. He made clear his hatred of you, Skulduggery. He said you were the reason he was doing this. To be frank, I couldn't allow that. You had such potential. I couldn't allow this religious fanatic to kill you, so I altered what I was teaching. I added a little something. If ever this Necromancer power was used against you specifically, it wouldn't be the end. Your soul, your being, would be for ever tied to your body. If I had known he was going to burn your corpse and reduce you to a mere skeleton, I probably would have taken that into consideration."

Skulduggery's voice was empty. "You brought me back?"

"No. I merely allowed for the opportunity. You brought yourself back, Skulduggery. Through sheer force of will, your soul regained its consciousness. From there, your body acted as if it were whole again, allowing you to talk, to move, to feel pain."

"You. You did this. I'm alive today because of you."

"Yes. Doesn't that make you smile? Knowing you owe me everything?"

Skulduggery sagged.

"What's wrong?" Tenebrae asked. "Were you expecting something more? Did you fool yourself into detecting a divine hand in your resurrection? Did you believe your life to have some special purpose? Sorry to disappoint you, but your life had no special purpose other than the one I had planned for you. Which, as it turned out, was a waste of everyone's time.

"I didn't tell anyone, of course. You were my little secret. I continued to keep an eye on you. I watched you fight on, letting your anger consume you. It was a fascinating exercise, knowing there could really only be one outcome. All I had to do was wait. I knew you were coming."

"OK, stop," said Valkyrie. "What the h.e.l.l are you talking about? What outcome? What were you waiting for?"

"For the knock on the door," Tenebrae said. "Necromancy killed him, Necromancy brought him back. His loved ones were dead, his life was war. His life was death. With every year that pa.s.sed, he was losing more and more of the person he thought he was. With every year, he was becoming somebody else. And then he knocked on the door of a Necromancer Temple, and I knew he had come home."

The warmth drained from Valkyrie's face. "No."

"He abandoned his old life. He wore armour to disguise his old form. He took a new name to kill his old self."

"No," Valkyrie said. "No, don't."

"Skulduggery Pleasant walked off the battlefield, and Lord Vile walked into my Temple."

Chapter 29.

Who Knows What Darkness.

alkyrie looked at Skulduggery. "He's lying," she said. "I now he's lying. Tell me. Skulduggery, tell me he's lying."

"He can't," Tenebrae said.

"Shut up!" Valkyrie screamed. "Shut up! Say one more G.o.dd.a.m.n word and I'll kill you, I swear to Jesus! Skulduggery, look at me. Look at me!"

Skulduggery raised his head, looked at her with his hollow eye sockets. "I'm sorry," he said.

Valkyrie found herself walking backwards. "What are you talking about? What are you saying? What are you talking about? Skulduggery, he's lying. He's lying. Tell him he's lying, for G.o.d's sake. You're not Lord Vile. You fought Lord Vile."

"The real Lord Vile," Tenebrae said, "and I mean the fully powered Lord Vile, would have obliterated him. That thing he fought was mere... intention. It was simply the armour. Inside, it was empty."

"Yeah," Valkyrie snarled. "We thought of that. Vile's ghost. That's what it is. Vile's ghost is controlling it."

Tenebrae folded his hands in the sleeves of his robe. "Vile doesn't have a ghost. He's not dead. Skulduggery is the one controlling it."

"No, I think you'll find that he isn't."

"Not consciously," Tenebrae said. "Not willingly. But Lord Vile is a part of him, a part of his subconscious. Evidently, that particular part of his subconscious has... broken away from the rest."

"What you're talking about is ridiculous."

"No, Valkyrie, actually it's not. Our dear friend Skulduggery is, and let's be honest here, a little bit insane. He spent ten months being tortured by the Faceless Ones, didn't he? When you rescued him, was he the same well-adjusted gent you knew and loved?"

Valkyrie hesitated.

"He cracked. Don't you see? They drove him insane. And while he seems to have recovered for the most part, he's different, isn't he? You rescued him, he came back, and all of a sudden we're all talking about the Death Bringer. This is not good news for our dear friend. After all, we Necromancers called him the Death Bringer when he was Lord Vile, didn't we? But he turned his back on all that. And now that he's home, and we're saying that you, his precious little Valkyrie, might turn out to be the Death Bringer, well... It's all too much. Events conspire to bring him close to his empty old armour and all that power reawakens. His armour gains sentience, stands up. He has no more control over it than you or I have control over a stray thought."

"But Lord Vile was... Lord Vile is evil."

Tenebrae shrugged. "Who knows what darkness lurks in the hearts of men?"

"But he joined Mevolent. That means Skulduggery and Serpine were on the same side."

"No one was more surprised about that than I, believe me. But the more I thought about it, the more I understood. Don't make the mistake of thinking that Lord Vile is merely Skulduggery with a mask on. They're two different people. Skulduggery's anger and violence had overwhelmed him, and there was nowhere left to turn. So, he blinked, and was gone, and in his place stood Vile. Vile came to us, he absorbed our teachings, his power grew at an exponential rate, and he quickly became our most powerful Necromancer.

"Only he abandoned us. We didn't even get a chance to tell him about the Pa.s.sage, but it didn't matter. He didn't want to save the world. He wanted to destroy it. And the quickest way to get what he wanted was to leave us, and join Mevolent."

"Serpine killed his family."

"Serpine killed Skulduggery's family. Vile didn't care. To Vile, Serpine was just another instrument to use, like Baron Vengeous, or Mevolent himself."

Valkyrie knelt by Skulduggery. "I know he's lying. He's trying to trick me. I know you're not Lord Vile. Lord Vile is a ma.s.s murderer. Explain this to me. Skulduggery, please, just explain it. Make it make sense."

He looked at her. She could see through his eye sockets, to the flickering shadows that played on the inside of his skull. He turned his head, the shadows moved, and he looked at Tenebrae.

"You brought me back," he said. "That's it. That's all there is to it. The great mystery I've never been able to solve. The great question. And you, you are the answer."

"You sound disappointed."

"I thought there would be more to it. Instead, I'm, I'm the result of a Necromancer trick."

"If it makes you feel any better, it wasn't easy to trick Nefarian Serpine. I wasn't even sure it would work a something like that had never been tried before."

Skulduggery walked towards Tenebrae. "You didn't tell anyone. All these years, you didn't tell anyone."

"Why would I? What would it achieve? If your friends knew your secret, they'd have found a way to kill you long ago. And then my wonderful work would have been undone. I liked the fact you were walking around, saving the world in your own little way. It must be like what a proud parent feels."

"How do I stop it?"

"Stop what? Vile? I'm afraid I don't know. These developments are quite unexpected. Your subconscious is your own. Maybe if you wish really, really hard."

Valkyrie looked at Skulduggery. "It's true?" she asked, her voice hollow.

Skulduggery turned. "Yes. I told you it was Vile's ghost that was giving the armour purpose. In a way, that's true, once you accept that Vile's ghost is my subconscious. The armour is imitating me. Or it's imitating how I used to be, at any rate."

"You're Lord Vile."

"Yes. Sorry, I should have told you."

"You killed Ghastly's mother."

"Among others, yes. He doesn't know, obviously."

"Stop talking like that!" she roared. "Stop talking so normal!"

"What would you prefer? Sobbing? Wailing? Maybe some more silence? Regret never won a war, Valkyrie, and 'sorry' isn't a big enough word for what I'm feeling. I've spent my life since then trying to make up for it, but I'll never make up for it. The things I did were unspeakably evil, but for those few years, I didn't care."

"You... you told me you did terrible things."

"I did."

"I didn't think they'd be so..."

"I know. We can talk about this later." He turned back to Tenebrae. "If my subconscious is controlling the armour, and the armour wants to kill your Death Bringer, then why haven't you killed me?"

"Well," Tenebrae said, "let's face it, I might be wrong. The armour might be operating completely independently of you a it might have gained a higher degree of sentience. In that case, killing you would deprive me of a valuable a.s.set in taking it down. The second reason and, quite honestly, the most pertinent, is that I don't know how to kill you. If I try, a bungled attempt on your life might redirect the armour against me. And I have no intention of dying before the Pa.s.sage is brought about. Not when I'm this close."

"So you've been hoping that Melancholia brings about the Pa.s.sage before Vile gets to her? That's your whole strategy? You've been hoping?"

"The centuries have changed all of us, Skulduggery. As Cleric Wreath delights in pointing out, we Necromancers are used to sitting back and not actually doing anything. We're a very lazy lot, now that I think about it."

"No," Skulduggery said, "you've waited too long for this lunatic scheme of yours to come true. You wouldn't leave anything to chance."

"Oh, don't worry, I'm not," Tenebrae said. "Melancholia is the Death Bringer. She is the only Necromancer to ever reach that level of power. You left before you reached it, and the Lord Vile that's walking around right now isn't even you. It's an echo of you, not fully charged. If you were in the armour, yes, I'd be worried. But you're not. So if Vile attacks Melancholia, she will destroy it. Or him. What are we calling Vile a an it or a him? Ah, I suppose it doesn't matter. The important thing is that you two stay locked up here until all this is over. I hope I've given you enough to talk about. I do hate those awkward silences."

Tenebrae turned, and the door closed as he walked away. Skulduggery looked at Valkyrie. "You have a right to be upset," he said.

"Oh do I?"

"I should have told you. I know you understand why I didn't, but I should have."

"You let me go through this Darquesse thing, with all the guilt and the fear and knowing the things that I'm going to do, and you didn't say anything."

"What did you want me to say? Look at me. I was Lord Vile, but now I'm OK? It would have made things worse. You would have looked at the things I did in that armour and you'd have a.s.sumed that in order to pa.s.s through and emerge on the other side, you'd have to do the same. But you don't. That's the thing. Violence and hatred and bloodshed became my reasons for existing. I stopped caring about anything else. I didn't care who my enemy was, as long as I had an enemy. I was falling, and I didn't know how to stop."

Valkyrie put her back to the wall, slid down to a sitting position. Her legs wouldn't take her weight. "You murdered all those people. How many? Do you even know?"

"I don't. I lost count. Everyone lost count. I was like you. Necromancy came far too easily to me."

"You're one of those sorcerers you told me about. The Elementals who can switch to being an Adept."

"It's rare, but it's possible."

"But... Skulduggery, you're the good guy."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I'm sorry you found out this way."

"What do we do now?"

"Well, we escape. I'm not sure how yet, but-"

"No," said Valkyrie. "What do we do now? We're partners. You're my best friend. I love you. You were my... I looked up to you. What am I supposed to do now?"

He trned away. "You need to find yourself a new hero."

Chapter 30.

Tenebrae.

e had to admit, that had been fun.

Tenebrae wasn't a s.a.d.i.s.tic man, but the look on Valkyrie Cain's face and the pain in Skulduggery Pleasant's voice were just... delicious. He had been carrying that secret around with him for centuries, had come close to spilling it a few times before this. But he was glad he hadn't. It was like an itch that you put off scratching a when you eventually did scratch, it was so much more satisfying.

His mood didn't last, however. When he got to his office, Vandameer Craven wasn't waiting for him as he had instructed.

Enough was enough. Tenebrae was sick of Craven and the ridiculous serenity that seemed to have washed over him overnight. He was sick of everyone treating the spineless worm like he was some kind of holy man with the ear of the messiah. Craven was still a Cleric, and Tenebrae was still the High Priest, and the natural order of things would be restored.

So Tenebrae sat behind his desk, his temper boiling the longer he was made to wait. When his door finally opened, he had to force himself not to jump up and throttle the man.

"Cleric Craven," he said, "so good of you to grace me with your presence."