by Ari Marmell
Just as War himself believed.
“It had to be done,” he told the crow perched beside his face. “I cannot let the Abominations wake, no matter what.”
Dust cocked his head and hissed, clearly unimpressed.
“War’s not much of a liar,” Death explained—to whom, he was no longer certain. An unfamiliar churning in his gut threatened to double him over. “I couldn’t risk him doing anything to reveal the deception. He had to believe it, no less than Hadrimon did.”
And so they did. War and Hadrimon and Azrael and the angels, all convinced that they knew where the prize truly lay.
His brother would likely die defending a worthless cylinder of corpse blood—and Death had orchestrated it.
“I’m sorry, brother …”
He wasn’t even sure he’d spoken aloud, and he had no time left to regret his choices. Death crossed the cave, shoved a few rocks aside, and hefted a third canister—this one with the true Ravaiim blood—from a hollow in the floor. Then, silent as the dead with whom he occasionally spoke, he left the chamber to meet up with Despair.
They had to be long gone before anyone, enemy or ally, realized they’d been deceived.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE HOLLOW ECHO OF DEATH’S BOOTS, FIRST ON STONE and then on steel, was as the beating of some subterranean, tectonic heart. In one hand he carried his infamous weapon; in the other, that damn cylinder of crystal, gold, and blood. He seemed oblivious to the sigils etched into the surrounding steel, the occasional gates and doorways through which he passed, even the four creatures flitting excitedly through the air around him. The Watchers, those uncanny echoes of Panoptos, shouted, commanded, wheedled, and begged. The Charred Council demanded Death attend them at once! The Council was waiting. The Council would not be patient. The Council must not be disobeyed. He must report to the Council immediately!
Their words had no impact at all, and they knew better than to attempt to physically accost the unwavering Horseman.
They knew, because when Death had first entered the winding corridors, carved deep in the blackened stone of the Council’s domain, there had been five Watchers attempting to impede him.
Again he came to the rune-covered portal, again he pounded on it with an open hand. This time, however, when the golden-haired and brown-clad figure of Berrarris opened the door, Death gave him no opportunity for formal greetings.
“Take me to your master. Now. And you four … This is as far as you go. I’ll be traveling the rest of the way alone.”
“We’re not certain we can allow that,” said the first.
“You’ve ignored our summons,” added a second.
“The Council wants to see you.” That from the third.
And finally, the last, “They do not take disobedience lightly.”
“No, they do not.”
“You ignore us. You think us unimportant.”
“You have already slain one of us.”
“But we speak for the Council.”
“The Council speaks through us!”
“And you will obey!”
“You will obey!”
“We will not leave your side until you do.”
“You have no choice.”
“And you leave us with none.”
“Do you suppose they rehearse this?” Death asked nobody in particular. Dusk, perched as usual atop Harvester, fluttered his wings in what might almost have been a shrug. The young Maker kept his attentions on the floor, unwilling to intercede.
“We—” one of the Watchers began again.
“No,” the Horseman interrupted. “You’ve had your say. My turn—and unlike some, I’ll be brief.
“Any one of you to follow me across this threshold dies.” Death took a single deliberate step through the doorway and turned back, idly tapping one finger of the fist gripping Harvester. “Care to test me?”
The doorway filled with flapping wings and swooping figures as the Watchers milled about the brink, and then they were gone, retreating down the hall.
“I thought not,” Death said.
“Uh, Horseman,” Berrarris began nervously, “I haven’t yet checked with my master. I do not know if he’s receiving—”
“Now, Berrarris.”
“Ah, of course, sir Horseman.”
They passed swiftly through the various chambers and between the shelves and podiums, displaying the various creations of master and apprentice, until they stood before the final door.
“No need to announce me,” Death said.
“But I’m supposed to—”
“You do not need to hear any of this.”
“But—”
“Go.”
Berrarris fled, and the Horseman pushed open the door.
“Was is truly needful for you to terrify my apprentice?” asked the iron-masked Keeper of Oblivion from across the room.
“I have no time for pleasantries today.” Death slammed the portal behind him with force enough to shake the steel walls. Dust squawked and shuffled sideways atop the scythe.
“I have never treated you with any less than the utmost respect,” the Keeper said. “I don’t believe it unreasonable to expect the same of you—for myself and Berrarris, both.”
“Perhaps.” Death stepped to the room’s center and placed the cylinder between them. “But when I say I have little time, I mean it. The Council may soon dispatch messengers less easily dissuaded than these new Watchers, so I need you to listen …”
Long Death spoke, and the Keeper did, indeed, listen, though his shoulders grew tense and his back stiff as he came to understand precisely what was being asked of him.
“You know I cannot do this,” he said finally. “Do you understand the repercussions if I were to violate the strictures of the Council where my duties are concerned? What would happen if they had reason to fear they could no longer trust me with access to that?” He didn’t point or gesture toward the glass portal behind him, ringed in gold and iron serpents. He didn’t have to.
“Unless I’m mistaken,” Death replied, “the laws prevent anyone but the Council from banishing any living entity to Oblivion. They say nothing about you opening the portal where no living thing is involved.”
“Death—”
“You know what’s at stake here! Nobody—not even the Council—can be trusted with the Abominations!”
“I know. I understand, I do. But what you ask—”
When Death interrupted this time, his voice was low, almost inaudible. “We’ve spent many hours, you and I, discussing the sorts of burdens that only we share. The weight and responsibility—the guilt—we’ve taken onto ourselves, whether in the name of the Charred Council and the Balance, or for other, less noble causes.
“This is one of my responsibilities, Keeper. One of the worst. And I have stained my soul darker still in hopes of preventing my old sins from causing further harm. Help me lay down this one burden. I cannot do it without you.”
Two expressionless masks mirrored each other; blank, unmoving, but no more so than the men who wore them. Until, without another word, the Keeper rose and faced the looming portal.
He held his palms straight, almost touching the glass. An unpleasant keening—not quite music and not quite words; sometimes high-pitched, sometimes low, sometimes impossibly both at once—reverberated from his throat. On and on it went, a single fluctuating tone, without pause for breath.
The glass of the portal rippled, and everything before it became oddly vague, unclear. Death squinted, trying to make sense of what he saw. Somehow, the Keeper now had two hands pressed against the glass, two more against the serpentine frame, one on each side—despite the fact that he possessed only the two arms, and wasn’t nearly broad enough to reach across the width of the portal. Examining it too closely made Death’s head hurt; Dust had already fluttered over to Death’s shoulder and buried his head in the Horseman’s hair so he wouldn’t have to see.
How long it took, Death could never
say, but it stopped as abruptly as it had begun. The Keeper lowered his hands—only two of them, again—and stepped away. The iron-and-gold border appeared no different, but the glass was gone. In its place …
Nothing.
Literally nothing. Not a blank wall. Not an empty space. It was an absence so profound that the eyes absolutely could not focus on it. Any attempt to look into that portal ended with the observer staring intently at one side or the other of the serpentine frame.
“Do as you must,” the Keeper said. He sounded hoarse, strained. “But do it swiftly.”
Without hesitation or ceremony, Death hefted the canister and hurled it through the portal into Oblivion. Just like that, Creation’s only substantial source of Ravaiim blood ceased to exist.
“Thank you, my friend.”
“Go away, Horseman.” In contrast with the prolonged process with which he’d opened the portal, the Keeper simply clenched his fist, and the wavering void was once again a plain sheet of glass. “Go—and pray to whoever you still trust that you can make the Charred Council understand your choices here today.”
“The Council,” Death told him as he moved toward the door, “stands fairly low on my list of concerns just now.”
When he reached the exit and stepped out onto the blackened, flame-ravaged and lava-kissed badlands, however, Death discovered, without the slightest sliver of surprise, that the same could not be said in reverse.
“You,” Panoptos told him, his eyes orbiting one another in agitated patterns, “are truly beginning to irritate us!” Behind him, roughly a dozen of his Watcher “children” bobbed and hovered in the baking air. Far in the distance, silhouetted against the ubiquitous orange glow, Death saw additional figures making a ponderous but inexorable approach. He could see little, as of yet, save that they were far larger than the Watchers and lacking wings, but he had no need to see more. He knew the Council’s brutish shock troops, golems of petrified flame, far too well to mistake them now.
“Us?” Death asked mildly. “You number yourself among the Charred Council now, Panoptos? Seems a bit presumptuous.”
“Don’t toy with me, Horseman, not now! You’ve irritated them, and that irritates me. You are to come with me immediately and stand before them!”
“I cannot.” Death curled a finger in summons, and Despair stepped from behind a nearby ridge, his own fumes blending hideously with those of the lava flowing nearby. “Not yet.”
“You seem to have forgotten your place in the centuries you were away!” Panoptos’s voice had risen into a painful screech. “The Council does not make requests, and you do not get to say no! They will see you now!”
“No.” The Horseman slid a foot into the stirrups, threw his other leg over Despair’s saddle. “Give them my apologies, tell them I will return soon, but I’ve something I must do first. If the price is their wrath afterward, so be it.”
“I … you …!”
“And Panoptos? Don’t bother to bring the golems next time. I’ll be long gone before they reach us—and even if I were not, I hold no fear of them.”
“Death! I order you to—”
Despair was already walking away. “Was there anything else?” Death asked. “Before I depart?”
The creature’s long claws twitched. “You’ll at least hand over the blood of the Ravaiim before you go. Oh, yes, Death, the Council told me all about your ‘quest.’ They’re quite determined to ensure the safety of your prize before either Heaven or Hell can get hold of it.”
Death twisted to face not only Panoptos, but the entrance to the Keeper’s sanctum. His smile was so broad, it showed in the shape of his jaw beyond the edges of the mask. “What do you think I was doing here, Panoptos?”
“You didn’t!” Each of his nine eyes bulged, threatening to spring from his head entirely, and he was actually wringing his hands. “You didn’t!”
“Please tell the Council that the Grand Abominations should be safe, and that I’ll be with them as soon as I’m able.”
“Death! Death! Damn you, come back here! You can’t do this! You—”
But the Horseman and his steed were already gone, vanished in a shimmer and a cloud of mist, long before Panoptos ceased his screaming.
THE WRETCHED MIASMA and stinging fog of the Ravaiim homeworld-turned-graveyard was almost familiar by now. Despair’s hooves scattered dust and dead skin across the plains, leaving leagues and hours drifting like shed feathers in its wake.
Day after day, Death, Dust, and Despair had wandered this diseased realm, first retracing their earlier path back to the escarpment, then onward, following the route that War’s diversionary party was supposed to have taken.
No tracks remained; the constant powder flaking from the world’s crust, along with the flaccid but constant breeze, ensured any such traces were long gone. Dust occasionally spiraled outward, searching from above, but again the constant fumes, to say nothing of the smoke still pouring from the newborn volcano, cut visibility to almost nothing. Each time, the crow was able to find its way back only due to the mental bond shared with the Horseman, and each time the result was the same. Dust found nothing, nothing at all.
Death summoned ghouls, one after another, a veritable army of ancient corpses came shambling from beneath the earth to spread out and search the vile dunes and sweeping plains. Most returned empty-handed. Some failed to return at all.
Until finally, when Death had all but lost the last clinging scrap of hope, Despair’s head rose, nostrils flaring. Instantly he broke into a gallop, moving at an angle off the path they’d been following. Death gave him his head, allowing him to go where he would. The beast ran for a time then reared, pawing at the air, giving voice to a deep, ghostly call.
Deep in the fog, something answered.
Now they began passing fallen bodies, the shrunken flesh and disembodied feathers more than sufficient sign of what must have occurred.
Hadrimon. Black Mercy.
War, and the angels who accompanied him, never stood a chance. The plan really had worked flawlessly.
Damn it.
At the edge of it all, just beyond the scattered angelic corpses, they found Ruin. He stood silent, save for his initial response to Despair’s cry, the rifts in his skin blazing scarlet. Beneath him, sheltered from the elements and almost from sight by the bulk of the great warhorse, slumped a vague shape wrapped in a crimson cloak.
Death vaulted from the saddle. With an almost exaggerated care—was he, perhaps, stalling? he wondered—he leaned Harvester against Despair’s side, straight enough so Dust could remain perched on the blade. Then, as stiffly as if he waded through some clinging muck, he approached his fallen brother.
Ruin snorted angrily, one hoof scratching a furrow in the earth.
“Don’t,” Death said. “I appreciate the gesture, as I’m sure he would, but don’t.”
One more snort, and then slowly, reluctantly, Ruin stepped aside.
The Horseman knelt beside his fallen brother. He scarcely needed even to look at the ragged hole in War’s chest; he recognized the scent, the feel, of Black Mercy’s wounds. But maybe … The Abominations had never been intended for use against the Nephilim themselves, and the four Horsemen were far more, now, than they had been, so maybe …
He held a hand over the body, seeking something, anything.
Nothing. No trace of life remained in the sprawling figure. War, youngest of the Four Horsemen, was dead.
Death rocked back on his heels, numb in body and soul, save for a caustic squirming beginning to build in his viscera. Call back his brother’s soul? To what end? Not even his greatest necromancies could restore true life to the departed. He could summon War’s spirit, grant his body temporary animation long enough to talk, but nothing more. Apologize, perhaps? What good might it do now? It seemed unnecessarily cruel—to both of them.
Again he reached out, this time futilely working to brush some of the gathered soot from his brother’s body. He succeeded only in smearing t
he stuff in filthy swirls across the cloak and pitted armor. With a gentle exhalation that might, coming from anyone else, have been a sigh, Death cradled the corpse in both arms and lifted it from the dirt. Even if he could do nothing else, he certainly wasn’t going to leave his brother here to—
The dull black of Chaoseater, not entirely buried by the dirt, shone as a dark spot against the gray of the earth.
Chaoseater. The blade that not only feasted on the carnage and havoc of battle, but fed that power directly to War himself. The sword that was, however marginally, bonded to its wielder’s soul.
Death dropped his brother in an undignified heap and reached for the sword, focusing with every sense in his possession …
Yes!
It was almost nothing, the faintest ember of War’s essence. Little more than a trace, it remained, slowly fading away, in the spiritual conduit between Horseman and blade—much as a narrow trickle of water might linger in the pipe between two interconnected basins that were otherwise dry.
No, Death could not restore life to the dead, but if a spark of life were to flare from somewhere else …
He knelt over the body, placing Chaoseater in War’s fist and carefully closing the fingers around it. A chanted invocation, difficult and peculiar, followed by a long silence. Death felt an odd pull from a direction he could not name, unlike any of the spirits he’d ever summoned before. It felt … not as if the soul was fighting him, precisely. More that this, one of the strongest souls he’d ever felt, was simply uninterested in allowing any outside influence to alter its course.
“I have never yet encountered a spirit strong enough to refuse my call,” Death hissed between chants. “I am damn well not going to let you be the first, brother!”
He redoubled his efforts, and then again. Two of Death’s fingernails cracked, so tight was his fist; a trickle of black, glistening oil, the residue of his necromancies condensed and made manifest, bubbled up from behind his ivory mask.
