The Call of Kerberos

by Jonathan Oliver

  "What are you talking about? Katya, what's going on?"

  But neither of them would answer him, so Silus knelt down by the water and looked at his reflection.

  The light of Kerberos streamed from his eyes.

  "You must be prepared to come into His presence," Bestion said. "His call has drawn you here and His call will draw you into His arms. Are you ready?"

  "I didn't want this," Silus said. "Katya, you have to believe that I didn't want this."

  "It is not for us to ask what we want, but what He wants." Bestion said.

  "I want my son back and I want to go home with my wife. I just want this all to end now."

  "And it will Silus. When you call on the Allfather."

  "Katya help me." Silus reached out and she took his hand, though a long time seemed to pass before she was willing to look at him. "I love you," he told her. "Believe that."

  "I believe."

  "Silus are you ready?" Bestion said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  "For the gods' sake man, give me a moment!" Then he turned back to his wife. "Katya I love you and I can't tell you how sorry I am for drawing you into this."

  "It's not your fault Silus, you're just different... chosen, I suppose. Just promise that you'll come back to me."

  "I promise."

  Beneath the gaze of Kerberos Silus took her into his arms, and this time Katya looked deep into his eyes.

  In preparation for the coming battle Dunsany moved the Llothriall into the shelter of a shallow cave on the southern side of the island. The last thing he wanted was for it to be destroyed, leaving them with no way of escape. Then, he removed the gem that sat at the heart of the ship. Kelos had asked him to do this, saying that he and Emuel could channel the power of the stone for use in the defence of the island. It could also, the mage said, be used as a weapon if it came to it. Next, Dunsany distributed weapons from the armoury. He knew that most of his crew were handy enough with a sword - with the exception of Emuel - but he wasn't too sure about the Moratians or the Final Faith fanatics. Thankfully, the latter saved him the worry of what to do with them by taking to their ships and sitting not far from shore. Kelos's magic had ensured that the three remaining Faith vessels had reached the island intact, but his protection wouldn't be required for much longer. The disciples of the Faith planned to detonate their explosives at the first appearance of the Chadassa, taking down any in their path. It seemed that whatever happened they were determined to give their lives, and Dunsany had neither the energy nor the inclination to argue with them.

  At least they should buy them some time, and time was very much what their success hinged on here. Now that they didn't have the support of the Calma they had little hope of defeating the Chadassa on their own. Instead they would have to rely on Silus successfully persuading whatever power resided in Kerberos to intervene. If he were interrupted before he could do this then their slim hope would turn into no hope at all. In truth, Dunsany thought that they were already doomed, but both Bestion and Kelos had persuaded him that this was the only path open to them.

  "Silus has a unique relationship with the Allfather that I have never before seen, even in the most devout of our priests." Bestion had said. "If anybody can persuade the Allfather to intervene then it is he."

  "Bestion may well be right, Dunsany," Kelos had argued. "Who knows what power Kerberos holds? Besides, the Chadassa are not just going to withdraw now that we have stymied their plans. They will want revenge."

  "I have seen the wrath of the Lord of All with my own eyes," Spalding spoke up. "In the World's Ridge Mountains a great bolt of energy did fall from Kerberos and destroy the heathens and their vile den of iniquity."

  There wasn't really anything Dunsany could say to that, and so here they stood waiting to take on an army from the sea.

  Dunsany looked up at Kerberos. "Don't you dare fail us, you bastard," he said.

  Silus lay back on the altar and gazed into the depths of Kerberos. The dark moon that plagued the planet's orbit clung to its face like a black canker. He could feel the cloak of negative energy it had wrapped around its host but, through it, Silus could also hear Kerberos's call. It was the same call that had plagued his dreams from the beginning, drawing him away from all that was safe and familiar and into a host of mysteries he still didn't fully comprehend.

  The censers were lit and the smoke rose to the ceiling before settling over him in a choking shroud. The first few breaths were the hardest, but when Silus felt his body begin to lose its hold he relaxed.

  He looked up at Katya, as though seeking her permission to leave. She nodded once and Silus let go.

  Twilight dwindled swiftly below him as his spirit soared away from the temple, the words of Bestion's chanting following him.

  Before he could fall into the lightning kissed depths of Kerberos, however, he was brought to a sudden halt, hanging before the dark moon.

  He knew that this entity was the same as that which called itself the Great Ocean; the same being who had taken Zac from him, pouring its taint into the infant's soul. Silus stared into its implacable face, the pure black of its surface unrelieved by any flaw. It was like staring into nothingness itself and that, Silus realised, was exactly what the Great Ocean was. Nothing.

  It no longer had any hold on him, and so he tumbled away from it and into Kerberos's arms.

  Maybe the Chadassa aren't coming for us after all, Dunsany thought, maybe it's over already.

  They had been waiting so long for something to happen that the gentle and repetitive sound of the surf breaking on the shore was beginning to lull him to sleep.

  When the Faith ships exploded he dropped his sword.

  The light from the blast left red ghosts flitting across his vision and he had to blink several times before he could see to where the ships had been.

  A wave raced towards them, kicked up by the blast, crashing against the monoliths and soaking those who stood near the stones. Dunsany looked for Chadassa bodies in the wash but the only thing floating there was a human hand. On the index finger was a ring wrought in the shape of the symbol of the Final Faith.

  Dunsany was beginning to wonder what had prompted the ships to detonate when something rose from the sea.

  The giant ball of black spikes looked not unlike a sea urchin. It drifted towards the shore before coming to rest, bobbing on the swell. Dunsany had half a mind that this thing wasn't anything to do with the Chadassa at all, but rather was some benign seabed denizen which had been uprooted by the blast.

  With a sound like a sneeze, a spike flew from the sphere. It pierced the chest of one of the Moratians standing further along the beach and exploded from his back, pinning him to the ground. He stood for a moment - knees slightly bent, back arched, gasping for breath - before sinking down the length of the spike, his blood a vivid scarlet on the white sands.

  "Take cover!" Dunsany shouted as more spikes flew towards them.

  Using the power of the stone from the Llothriall and Emuel's song, Kelos threw up a magical shield. However, it didn't encompass everybody and more spikes found their mark.

  A Moratian woman ducked behind one of the stone spires, only for a spike to pierce both the rock and her. Another man was pinned to his friend as he turned to run; the spike entering the back of his head and continuing through his friend's right eye.

  The barrage lasted no more than ten seconds and when it was over they had lost half their army and the survivors stood in a forest of shivering black quills.

  "What the hell was that?" Jacquinto said.

  "I suggest we fall back," Kelos said, as the sea began to churn.

  "The monoliths should hold off the Chadassa," Dunsany said as he followed them in-land.

  "Yes, but I don't know for how long and I don't want to be standing anywhere near the stones when they go."

  "So what are we going to do?" Jacquinto said. "We can't just fight them all."

  "We have to hope that Silus will come through for us," Ke
los said. "Otherwise, gentlemen, it has been a pleasure sailing with you and I hope to see you in the next life."

  There was nothing but clouds.

  The first time that Silus had communed with Kerberos - in the temple on Morat - he had sensed something like a vast consciousness, a planet-sized intelligence that may well have been the planet itself.

  Now there was only the storm.

  As he fell through the lightning and the wind he called out to his ancestors, whose spirits surely resided here, but there was no response. In fact, it felt to Silus as though he truly were the only living thing here.

  Then what had been calling to him?

  "What are you?" Silus shouted.

  "What are you?"

  Just an echo, Silus thought. Though hadn't those last few words seemed to overlap his own?

  "What are you?"

  "... you... you... you... you..."

  The single word echoed around him and kept on echoing, as though it had become trapped within the clouds.

  This was pointless. Bestion was mistaken. There was no benevolent and just god here.

  Silus began to search for the thread that would lead back to his body.

  "... you... you... you... you..."

  "Shut up! Bestion, help me!"

  "... you... you... you... you...."

  The thread wasn't there, but then something about the word cut through his panic and made him stop and think.

  You.

  You.

  You.

  There was something here. He was here. Silus had been looking in the wrong place. Even before the ritual had been completed - even before he had left his body - Kerberos had entered into him.

  Silus reached out and the lightning arced around him in a nimbus of power that lit up the clouds for miles around. He reached even further and now he could hear the roar of Kerberos itself as it turned in the void, could feel the immense energies that held it together.

  At the heart of the storm, at the centre of it all, Silus burned.

  "... you... you... you... you..."

  "Yes," Silus said, "me."

  Kelos watched the others nervously watching the shore as they took up their fallback positions.

  The blue fire burst from the monoliths and a dome of shimmering energy closed around the island. Kelos felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise as, at his feet, the stone from the Llothriall began to pulse in sympathy with the magic. Beside him Emuel was singing, the tattoos that covered his body dancing to the strange rhythms he weaved. Along the line, the rest of the crew stood with their weapons readied. Only a handful of the Moratian refugees stood with them, the rest having fallen in the attack by the urchin thing. Kelos was impressed that the survivors had chosen to fight on, even as the blood of their comrades sank into the blazing sands.

  There was still no sign of the Chadassa themselves, though they must have been close else the monoliths' power would have remained dormant.

  The sea began to withdraw then, as though the tide were going out, though no tide that Kelos had seen had ever retreated so rapidly. Already the sea was five hundred metres from where they stood on the beach, and thousands of dying fish lay flopping in the wet sand while crabs raced to keep up with the dwindling tide. Now seaweed draped rocks were uncovered, some the size of houses, and among them Kelos could see the wreck of an ancient ship.

  Beyond that the water fell away even more swiftly, revealing the Chadassa army.

  There were thousands of them and, at their head stood the Great Ocean, clothed in the ruins of Snil's flesh. Zac still hung from the Chadassa's torso, giggling as the dark god's energy coursed through him. Bringing up the rear, like a line of siege engines, was a phalanx of monstrous crustaceans.

  "Gods, they're not leaving anything to chance are they?"

  Indeed, Kelos considered, why did the Chadassa feel the need to put such a mighty force up against just a handful of humans?

  Then, even in the face of such overwhelming odds, Kelos felt hope renewed. Because, if the Chadassa were leaving nothing to chance that meant the Great Ocean knew what Silus was doing at the temple, and feared that he would succeed.

  When he saw the Great Ocean give the signal to advance, Kelos reached for the threads of elemental power before dropping to his knees and burying his hands in the sand. Channelling a thread of energy from the Lothriall's stone he spoke the words of an elven spell. It had originally been created to protect a coastal town against raiders. Whether or not it had been successful Kelos didn't know, as he'd never found the town on any ancient map of Twilight. That was the thing with practicing Old Race magic, he considered. Sometimes you only had a vague idea of the results you were going to get.

  The spell cast, he looked up. The Chadassa hoard were even closer. Kelos spoke the last word of the spell again, borrowing yet more power from the stone, but nothing seemed to happen.

  But then, with a dull thud, the sand beneath the first wave of the Chadassa army turned to liquid and they were quickly sucked under. Kelos estimated that he had taken down at least three hundred of the creatures.

  A cheer went up from the line of human defenders, but they were far from out of the woods. Kelos's magic would only stretch so far, and once the power of the monoliths was breached they had only a dozen or so swords against thousands of wicked talons.

  In a matter of seconds the Chadassa regrouped and the next wave came for them, this time with the Great Ocean itself at its head. The line of gigantic crustaceans launched rocks at the island as they followed. For one brief moment Kelos managed to pull the fallen missiles into the form of a rock elemental, which ground several Chadassa into paste before a counter spell from the Great Ocean took it down.

  Above them, light strobed across the surface of Kerberos and it looked to Kelos as though the planet were beginning to turn more swiftly.

  The magical barrier that protected the island was now screaming with the force of the Chadassa against it and Kelos could see several of their mages working to undo the power of the stones.

  He remembered how swiftly the stones on Maladrak's Cauldron had fallen. On the Isle of the Allfather they fell in less than half the time.

  Silus could no longer tell which part of him was Kerberos and which was his own spiritual essence. Even though he had no body, he felt each flash of lightning, each rumble of thunder as a deeply physical sensation.

  When he looked down at the blue-green globe that turned below him a lance of energy erupted from his mass and struck the planet. He felt the deaths of some of the Chadassa as the bolt hit and a shockwave rippled through the dark moon in his orbit. Silus's laughter raced through the clouds as Kerberos began to turn faster and faster. He reeled drunkenly for a while, but he was careful lest he turn too fast and dissipate himself into space.

  Silus slowed down, turned his face away from Twilight and stared into the star flecked void.

  Wouldn't it be something, he considered, to just leave Kerberos behind? To send his spirit out as far as it would go. Perhaps he would find a new world more beautiful and less troubled than his own. He was almost tempted to let go, but as he turned to look back at Twilight he could feel the needs and fears of the people there, and he could feel the taint of the Chadassa that lay itself across all creation.

  Silus gathered the storm within himself. For the first time in millennia Kerberos was perfectly still. He enjoyed the peace for a time as the turbulent energies built within him.

  Then, Silus opened his eyes, reached down and touched Twilight.

  They began to run, even before the first of the monoliths exploded.

  Father Maylan was the fastest - his robes flying out behind him as he sprinted away from the shore - but then he was the least encumbered of them, carrying, as he did, only a lightweight dagger. Kelos's progress was rather less swift, as he had the stone from the Llothriall in his arms. There was no question of leaving it behind. Without it, their ship would be next to useless. He almost regretted asking Dunsany to remove it now.r />
  The last to join the retreat towards the temple were Jacquinto and Ignacio. Ignacio even made a stand for a short time, side by side with one of the Moratians, throwing rocks at the swarms of Chadassa racing towards them. However, when a considerably larger stone than the ones they were wielding flattened the man from Morat, Ignacio decided to run.

  "Emuel, try to keep up," Dunsany shouted at the eunuch, who was beginning to lag behind. Even as he ran Emuel was singing, though the song did little to protect him as a spear glanced off his shin. He stumbled and fell, but before the Chadassa could reach him, one of the Moratians threw himself in front of the eunuch. Emuel regained his feet and, as he fled, he tried to block out the sound of his rescuer being eviscerated.

  Dunsany looked back to see that the Chadassa were gaining on them. The sound coming from the throat of the Great Ocean as it led the charge was like nothing he had ever heard. The long, ululating wail seemed to speak of the darkness of space, the emptiness of the void and the oblivion it would bring to their world.

  Ahead of him, Dunsany could see the grove where the temple stood and from within he could just make out the sound of Bestion's chanting.

  "Get inside," he shouted to his companions. "We may be able to barricade the entrance."

  "That's a terrible idea and you know it," Jacquinto said. "Face it, we're done for."

  "This is not a time for arguments," Kelos said, gesturing with his hands. Behind him the stone spires began to explode, showering the Chadassa with fragments of burning rock. However, it did little to slow their advance. "Silus will come through for us, you'll see."

  "Well I have yet to see any evidence of his - "

  Jacquinto fell silent. For a moment Dunsany thought it was because he had been struck down, but then he turned and noticed what had made the smuggler gaze in awe-struck silence.

  The Chadassa had come to a halt, but clearly not at the Great Ocean's command. The god paced up and down the ranks, berating its soldiers. Though it killed several as a lesson to the others, none of the Chadassa even moved to acknowledge the deaths.