by A J Dalton
The Saint’s hand smashed down on top of the Peculiar’s head, pushing it into its bulging ribcage. Raking nails tore ribs apart and revealed the head nestled next to its own heart, teeth chattering as if about to eat the vital organ. The Saint bunched his hand into a fist and punched the head with everything he had, sending the mess flying, cartwheeling and flailing down the slope.
‘You are no one! Nothing! I am the god here!’ declared the Saint and then leapt for Jedadiah.
Jedadiah flung Jillan through the air and into the waiting arms of Thomas just as the descending Saint’s shadow engulfed him. Jedadiah planted his feet, raised his fists aloft, tensed and made himself as hard as possible. The wind connived to adjust the Saint’s course as he came smashing down … and he found himself impaled by the living weapon Jedadiah had become. One of Jedadiah’s arms audibly snapped and he crumpled into the ground, but he straightened the fingers of his other hand inside the holy one’s body, to grab at his intestines and haul them out. Yet the guts slithered away and would not be held.
Doubled over, the Saint lurched back. Thomas had pushed Jillan behind him and now jumped in with his mighty hammer, intent on finishing the Saint, but Captain Skathis came in with his shield and a rank of Heroes to save his master.
‘Thomas! No! Get Jillan out while you can!’ called the crippled Jedadiah. ‘The gates are still open. Now is the moment!’
The Peculiar alighted between them, seemingly unharmed by his gruesome experience, helmet firmly fixed back in place. ‘Yes, now is the moment.’
Aspin and Ash continued to fire arrows, keeping the gates open for precious seconds longer and the archers along the walls a good way back. ‘If we’re going to go, we have to go now,’ Ash panted raggedly, leaning all the way back to the ground to avoid yet another deadly shaft tipped with sun-metal. ‘I can’t keep this up.’
‘Ironshoe, for the friendship you once bore me, take my wife and son safely beyond the walls. I implore you!’
Thomas nodded grimly. ‘I will, my friend.’
‘No! Father!’ Jillan shouted hoarsely from where he leaned precariously against the wagon. ‘Miserath, you promised you would help me rescue them. You promised!’
The Peculiar smiled gently. ‘I agreed to see them safely to the gates of Hyvan’s Cross, and that I have done. I am sorry, but I can do no more, for there is an aegis on your mother, a greater claim.’
‘I will not permit it!’ boomed Saint Azual, rising to his full height and scattering the men around him, the stench of his carrion breath all but overwhelming. ‘You are the plague-bringer, boy! I will not allow you the freedom to spread your taint any further. You have murdered thousands of my People. Thousands! Your magic leaks from you continuously and infects the land like a cancer. Even your own mother has vowed to remain here and keep you with her so that your monstrous evil will be contained.’
‘No!’ Jillan shouted, thumping his fist against the wagon. ‘Liar! It’s not true! You are the monster.’ Yet as he looked pleadingly from face to face, the sobbing of his mother, the sadness of the Peculiar and the way Ash sidled away to avoid direct contact with him told him it was just as the Saint said. ‘Please! Noo! Mother, tell them it’s not true!’
Maria looked to her beloved husband, her eyes begging him to understand, and then to Jillan, pleading for forgiveness. She threw back her head and screamed her agony to the sky. She was heard to the horizon and beyond, for the world all but stilled at the sound of her primal suffering. The horses in the wagon traces whinnied in abject terror. ‘Jedadiah, my love! You must save him! You must! For all our sakes! For the Geas! For all life!’
‘No!’ thundered the Saint. ‘I own your lives, as I own the People! Jillan, give yourself to me or I will end your parents here and now, end them with a mere thought.’
Jillan could not see for the tears in his eyes and the horror in his mind. All those people dead because of him. His own mother willing to betray him because of the monster he had become. And many more would die if he did not stop. ‘Make it stop!’
His father was rising to his feet, cradling his broken arm against his chest. Jedadiah looked lovingly at his wife. ‘I now know why you picked me all that time ago. It was for this one moment.’
‘It was because of the man you are, beloved. A man who will stand with strength and passion where others will not. You have always humbled me.’
‘And I have never loved you more than I do now. You have given me nothing but happiness and meaning, and a wonderful son. I could not have had more even had I lived a hundred lifetimes. Goodbye, my love.’
‘Goodbye, my sweetest Jedadiah.’
‘My son, you will obey me one last time and leave now. Your mother and I will hold the gates. Be brave, Jillan, for there is no pain next to our love for you. Ironshoe, take him out of here.’
Thomas nodded and threw a longsword from the wagon to his old friend and a pair of long knives to Maria. ‘May the Geas protect you both!’ He then scooped up Jillan and threw him over his shoulder. Jillan tried to fight, but was powerless against the blacksmith’s brawn.
‘Mother! Father! Please!’
Saint Azual hissed and took an angry and forbidding step forward. Ash and Aspin immediately trained their bows on him. Dozens of encircling Heroes raised their spears in response, awaiting their holy master’s command.
‘You have defied me for the last time, puny pagans! You think the Geas holds any sway in this world? Then let us see if it will protect you as I burst the hearts in your chests!’ Azual sent out a magical command and Jedadiah, Maria and Thomas each paled and rocked on their feet.
‘Oh, but that was poorly done, Saintling!’ the Peculiar reprimanded as he placed one hand on Thomas’s shoulder to steady him and gestured towards the other two. Maria slipped to her knees, but Jedadiah just about kept his feet. He gritted his teeth, gripped his sword tighter and raised it back to the guard position.
‘You dare interfere?’ raged the Saint. ‘Your kind is long since broken! You have no rights or powers here!’
‘On the contrary. My claim to the boy is greater than yours, and you are naught but a craven lackey of the elseworlders. As my will is their will in this, you cannot gainsay me when it comes to the boy. The parents are sacrifice enough to your petulance and delusion.’
Thomas finished cutting the horses from their traces and vaulted with Jillan onto the back of one, while Ash and Aspin mounted the other.
‘Kill them all!’ Saint Azual blasted out, his voice battering his own men as much as his enemies.
Jedadiah stood firm, swinging the longsword ferociously with his one good arm, hewing down one man and forcing another to stumble. He leapt back and the Heroes got in each other’s way as they crowded in. Those towards the back of the press cast their spears, but the wind dragged the weapons down and buried them in the shoulders of those in the front rank. As the front row fell, they tripped and impeded those coming on behind. Jedadiah scythed forward with his blade again, cutting one prone man up under the armpit and then dragging the weapon on a continuing arc across a throat and through a man’s upper thigh. Men cursed, screamed and shouted.
‘Stand back, you fools!’ Captain Skathis yelled. ‘Forward together, on my mark. Archers ready!’
‘They are escaping!’ the Saint bellowed, smashing through his own men. One man’s head was staved in by the heedless Saint, while another’s neck was broken. The Saint raised his hand to bludgeon Jillan’s kneeling mother into the ground.
‘Geas, receive me!’ Maria cried and threw her arms wide, releasing golden scintillations of her own life energy into the air. She’d given everything she had from the core of her being and sacrificed herself in one final act to buy Jillan and his companions a few more precious seconds in which to escape.
‘Mother!’ Jillan sobbed hysterically from the back of Thomas’s fleeing horse, and hid his face.
The magic of Maria’s death charm drifted through the Saint and stopped him dead in his tracks. She
dragged him inexorably back towards his own mortality and death! His flesh withered where the golden motes touched it. Beyond the Saint, men began to fall as their bodies instantly petrified.
Using the last of his own power, Saint Azual released a red mist to smother the dancing gold and extinguish the battling mind and life force of Jedadiah. ‘I will see you in Godsend, Jillan,’ the holy one’s voice echoed off the heavens. ‘You have seen your parents undone, and next it will be your darling Hella, Samnir and everyone you have ever known. That’s if the plague you bring doesn’t rot them before I get there. You will destroy them all!
‘And hear me, Miserath! We have unfinished business, you and I. I will look forward to tasting the blood of one who was once a god and making an end to you once and for all!’
Captain Skathis haltingly pulled himself up out of the mud and viscera, and crawled until he was before his Saint. ‘H-Holy one, should we pursue them?’
‘Fear not, good Captain, for they cannot escape the destiny of my will. I have drawn the pagans out so that they may await my judgement in Godsend. The enemies of the Empire have inevitably undone themselves and will serve as the means and witness to my rightful ascension. I will claim the power of the Geas, and then this entire world, for the blessed Saviours. So raise the army, good Captain, for now we march. Send to Heroes’ Brook and Saviours’ Paradise, so that their Heroes can join us and all the People can rejoice that the moment of their final deliverance from the Chaos is at long last here.’
CHAPTER 13:
To save us from what has already happened
‘The old Saint’s not looking too good, is he?’ Ash commented in a flat voice as their horses plodded along the sunken road.
‘Probably glad he’s blind, so he doesn’t have to look at himself in a mirror,’ Aspin snorted.
‘Seemed to see well enough,’ Ash recalled.
‘I think he sees through the eyes of others,’ Thomas said gruffly.
‘Bet that’s a bit weird for him. Must get his left and right mixed up. Shaving’ll be a problem, especially with just one hand,’ Ash mused. ‘Do you think he has to have people watch him crap so that he doesn’t have to fumble around too much?’
Aspin stifled a giggle. ‘Do the holy beings of the Empire crap like everyone else then?’
‘Well, I assume so, since Azual was once just like you and me. If Miserath was here, we could ask him whether gods crap too. Where did he go, anyway?’
‘Went looking for Freda,’ Thomas replied, watching the road ahead so that the horses didn’t trip on any exposed roots in the poor light. The last thing they needed was a lame mount. ‘Said he’d join us in Godsend.’
‘That’s where we’re going then?’ Aspin asked.
‘I reckon.’ The blacksmith nodded. ‘Need to warn this Hella and Samnir that the Saint’s coming for them. Then we’ll get out of there as quick as we can.’
‘Never been to Godsend,’ Ash said, rubbing his chin. ‘What about you, blacksmith? Didn’t I hear it said that Godsend produces a fine ale or two?’
How could they? After all that had happened! So many dead, and all because of him.
They are relieved to be alive, Jillan, that’s all. They’re giddy with it. Would you have them ride in funereal silence forever more? They’ve already been going a whole day and night. They’re bored and tired. But they’re sad too, and know that if they don’t lift their spirits soon, they’ll be incapable of facing what lies ahead. Despair would otherwise overtake them and they would deliberately put themselves in harm’s way. Then you’d have even more to add to the body count.
No, that wasn’t it. When he’d finally come out of his stupor to find himself tied behind Thomas on this horse, he’d woken up in a different world. It looked, sounded, smelt and felt like the old one, but there was something subtly different about it. It was colder, for one, and outlines were sharper, as if everything was somehow flat or lacking in depth. Colours weren’t quite as bright either, or when they were they hurt his eyes. And the people he thought he knew weren’t the same. They were exaggerated versions of those he’d known. Ash tried to be funnier; Aspin was too positive; and Thomas was more abrupt. These weren’t his friends! They were shape-shifters or some such, trying to lure him away from his own world and those he cared about.
‘I have to say I was impressed with your bow work, Aspin. And your fighting style. It was almost like a dance of sorts,’ Ash told the mountain warrior.
Aspin smiled. ‘It is how all my people fight. Balance and fluid movement, just as in the nature we see around us, in the nature created by the Geas. Any individual, be they young or old, can learn it if they dedicate themselves to a study and worship of the gods. The eldest among us are usually the most supple and deadly. It is a great compliment if someone elder than you even deigns to notice you. The older a person, the more important they are. Every man seeks an older woman, and every woman an older man.’
Ash frowned. ‘Really? Our old people tend to be broken down and sit around complaining and farting all day. But maybe that is to be expected when their gods are also broken.’
There. It was as the doppelgänger of Ash had said. There was something broken in this version of the world. Something important was done or dead. Some innocence had been lost. The innocence within them had died and they’d become dark and twisted simulacra of themselves.
Just as your beloved parents died, Jillan. Just as something within you died. It is part of growing up, Jillan.
He closed his ears to the taint, the whispering and manipulative force that had caused all this to happen in the first place. He realised now that it had probably been there in his mind his entire life, influencing his actions and shaping events, even when he hadn’t been fully aware of it: whenever he’d thought to ask troubling questions in Minister Praxis’s class; whenever he’d thought angry things about Haal and the others; whenever he’d had fearful dreams; whenever he’d railed against the way things were. The taint had done all this, killed all these people and brought him here. Why? Why!
The taint sighed. If the Empire is to fall, then many must die. But do not fear death. Be brave, Jillan, as your parents told you.
Do not dare to mention them! I will not have you using them for your lies, like you use everyone else. For I know your tricks, who you are and what you want. You are Death! You seek to bring an end to everyone and everything. You want the Empire and pagans alike to fall. Well, I will not allow it, you hear! I want the killing to end! It must end.
In his mind’s eye he saw his parents again, surrounded on all sides by enemies. For him they had committed terrible crimes and blasphemy. For him they had damned themselves. For him his mother had ended her life and his father had placed his flesh in the path of the Empire’s swords.
Why me? I did not want them to die for me! I did not want the curse of this magic. I will never use it to kill again, Jillan vowed.
Magic is a matter of will, Jillan. Before they are Drawn to the Saviours, anyone can draw magic from within themselves and from the Geas, if they but have the will to do so. That will must want to change things, and then must be brave enough to take action against the established powers within their community. Very few dare to take action at such a young age, for they have behaviours, thoughts, belief and doctrine instilled in them from the moment they enter the world by others looking to own them. They are reprimanded and punished by supposedly well-meaning parents, who were similarly treated when they were young; they are schooled and castigated by fearful and fearsome Ministers; and then they are drained and kept short of necessities unless they dedicate themselves to the lifetime of labour and self-sacrifice demanded of them by the Saint and the Saviours. Magic is not some curse inflicted on you, Jillan, it is what you want of yourself and the Geas, and what you are prepared to do based on what you believe.
No! You are the cunning and corrupting Chaos. My magic has brought only death to untold numbers of people. It is as I have always been taught: you simply wish
to unmake the Empire so that you may claim the People as your own. You are just as guilty as the Empire in seeking to own the People, yet where the Empire offers food, lives and communities, you bring only death. I will not kill for you any more!
Jillan, the mind is always quicker to remember the bad over the good. Your magic has not brought only death. It cured Thomas of the plague, remember. It saved Aspin from the Saint. He would be dead were it not for you. Ash would certainly have died or lived forever alone if it weren’t for you. Just as your magic is a part of you, so am I. We are one, Jillan. I am not some mystical taint; I am not the voice of your insanity; I am simply your more knowing self. You may call me the voice of your magic if you wish, but you and I are one. So of course I have always been here in your mind. Where else could I be?
Intuitively, he knew the taint wasn’t telling him everything; it was leaving out things it didn’t want him to know. It was still seeking to manipulate him, still lying to him. How could it be a part of him when there had been times it had told him things he couldn’t ordinarily have known? Yes, Jillan’s magic had healed Thomas, but that had been an accident more than anything else. And who was to say Ash and Aspin wouldn’t have been better off without Jillan, given that they were still far from free of the Saint and were more than likely going to end up dead anyway? In that respect, they’d be better off not staying with him. He resolved to try and get them to leave Godsend before the Saint arrived. Yet the taint would not leave him be, and was slowly driving him crazy with its perverting words and perceptions. It had got so that he couldn’t trust his own mind, thoughts and instincts any more. He would therefore lie to the taint from hereon in and ask Miserath, when he next saw him, how he could block it out permanently.
‘And who is the oldest among your people, then?’ Ash asked.
‘Oh, that would be our holy man, Torpeth. He’s as old as our people, as old as the mountains, some say, but he’s crazy.’
