by Scott Hale
Thoughts gathered on the surface of his mind. Vaporous and bubbling, they came as quickly as they went, but the film of their filth stayed. Thoughts of the continent, and thoughts of the country it could be.
It had been three years since the Nameless Forest. Despite doubt and rebellion, the vermillion veins and the Disciples of the Deep were everywhere. People were no longer believing passively, but emphatically. With every follower gained, the specter of Penance was further exorcised from the Heartland, and the cracks the Trauma had created in the collective unconscious could begin to heal.
The Night Terrors sought balance through division bordering on segregation. But humans were social creatures by nature. Their balance wasn’t external, but internal. Equilibrium was impossible, but so were advancements without some sort of togetherness. From Eldrus’ suffer centers to today’s religious organizations, Edgar had found a way to finally help others in a way that actually mattered.
Soon, God would be here. The oldest question would be answered. Edgar would give to the human race the kindest closure. People would hate him, and they would try to hurt him, but for the first time, they would know. In the Old World, the humans were too blind to see the truth that towered over them. They killed God because they did not recognize It. That wasn’t going to happen again.
“My lord?” Valac tried again.
But once more, Edgar was gone. He could taste bone in his mouth. It was packing up his ears. He had the sense gravity was trying to lift him from the saddle. Was this what it felt like to die? Was he dead? He remembered Lotus. His heart started beating again.
And then he thought of Audra, and it stopped once more.
“Captain Yelena, would you check our King?”
If you see what I’ve done, you’ll understand. He blinked some bugs out of his eyes. You created the Crossbreed. You can’t judge me. He ran his tongue over his teeth, the inside of his cheeks, in search of some sort of sustenance. I killed them. I killed them, but they were all doomed to die. If I hadn’t, you would’ve. They would’ve made you. Made you like they made me. Made you like they made—
“My lord?” Captain Yelena grabbed Edgar by the back of his wraps.
Edgar’s thoughts dispersed. He shot up on his own, slinging a wave of sweat across Yelena’s face. For a moment, he was cold—the ghost tended to do that to him—but when it passed, so did the chill. He looked at the other soldiers—Paxton, Lawrence, Marc, Katherine, Colleen, and Amir—and did his best to be the king everyone had told themselves he was supposed to be.
“I’m fine. I had a vision.” That was a lie. He had never heard from God before in his life, but that was about to change. “Where is it, Valac?”
Valac wheeled his horse around Edgar, stopped, and pointed to where the dunes met in a cross-shaped ridge.
Night was near. The sun wasn’t falling past the skyline, but retreating into the distance, retiring from its assault for the day. Other than Edgar and the others, there wasn’t much to cast shadows in the area. Yet, in the place to which Valac pointed, there were thousands of shadows, growing and shrinking and slinking across the sands.
“Stop, and make camp,” Valac said.
The soldiers looked to Edgar for confirmation.
“Go ahead,” he said, “and kill the horses, before they spoil.”
“My lord,” Amir said, dismounting in unison with the other soldiers, “how will we get home?”
“Have faith,” Edgar said. “God will guide us from our desert.”
With the help of Yelena, Edgar dropped from his horse. He caught himself against her, and then caught his breath. The air was thin, but now it was filled with sand. A storm was mounting.
“There is an altar inside the shadows,” Valac said.
Edgar let Yelena feed him a mash of poultry and produce. It was the same thing they fed to the poor and starving at the suffer centers. Paxton flanked him with a flagon of water, and he downed, that, too. For as little concern as he paid to their wellbeing, they gave great care to his. He knew it wasn’t genuine, even now on the precipice of delirium, but it was nice all the same.
“I’ll take it from here,” Edgar said, reaching for the food and water.
But Valac intervened and stayed Edgar’s hand. “Bring as little reminders of living that you can. Your flesh will be enough to set the shadows on edge.”
Edgar nodded, jammed some more mash into his mouth, and washed it down with a thirty-second chug of one-hundred-degree water. The sun was farther back, and there were more shadows huddled around the still unseen altar. They hated the living, Valac had told him once, these shadows. They were the dead who had denied God and were now condemned to an eternity of pain and regret. For the Vermillion God, Heaven and Hell were one and the same. The exulted existed alongside the ex-communicated. The sinners supped with the saints.
And yet, where were the exulted? Where were the saints? Audra spoke and wove with the shadows, but never their betters. Probably in the Deep, he told himself. They were probably in the Deep.
“Go to the altar, and listen!” Valac shouted over the worsening sandstorm. “You will know It when you hear It!”
Edgar nodded. Pulling his wraps tighter across his face, so that his eyes were almost completely covered, he said, “What if I can’t?”
Valac’s face darkened. He mouthed a word—was that ‘Audra’ he had whispered?—and turned and headed towards the makings of their camp. The soldiers were moving as fast possible, which, given the cutting circumstances, wasn’t all that fast at all.
Edgar wrapped his arms around himself and pushed through the storm. Most of the light had left the desert, but even now, he could see the wind tearing the Ossuary apart, unmaking it, so that by the next day, everything here would look completely different.
And he would be no different. The mumiya wraps weren’t strong enough to resist the sand. With every choking blast, the storm ripped through the wraps. It did it in pieces, a kind of methodical disrobing. First his arms, then his legs; then his chest, and finally, his face. If he were to go to God, he had to go to God bloody and raw—the same way he came into this world, and the same way he expected to leave it.
Not far from the shadows and the altar, Edgar had to stop. He put a piece of vermillion vein from his pocket into his mouth and chewed on it like a pacifier. The air was so filled with bone that, even if he wanted to breathe, he almost couldn’t. Like a fish out of water, he gulped pathetically for something that wasn’t there. The desert was up to his knees; he fell over, planted his hands in the sand. Looking forward, he saw the shadows were watching him, their silver fangs bared, their red eyes glowing like embers.
He had to die to meet God, and so dead-like he had to be. He waited for the sandstorm to flay him some, until he was bloody and raw, and then let the ghost in.
The ghost wanted to stand, and so Edgar stood. The sandstorm kicked up a few miles faster. He couldn’t see past his feet, but that didn’t matter. The ghost was nothing if not determined. He was impervious to pain, to doubt, and the sticky mire of morality. In the desert of bones, the boneless was king.
How did the ghost always end up covered in blood? He laughed, pushed deeper into the storm. Black shapes darted in and out of his view. The ghost stopped. The shadows surged forward. Hundreds of them, thousands; free-standing, three-dimensional. Drool poured down their ephemeral lips as they salivated at the sight of the ghost and his host.
The ghost remembered a little boy telling him about the shadows once, and how their forms were cast from nothing more than the memories they held of themselves. According to the little boy, their punishment was that, although they could remember who they had been, they could not recognize or be recognized by the shadows around them. They reached out to the living mostly to hurt them, but some, like those who had been in communication with Audra, did it to show that they could. To be something more than what their God had told them they could be.
With a wave of his hands, the shadows broke apart. The amorphous mass split
and left a path between him and the altar they’d been guarding.
The altar was a slab of stone, four-feet high, from which vermillion veins jutted outwards, like horns. Moving closer, the ghost noticed intricate etchings running across the surface of the slab, covering it completely. Here, the sand couldn’t gather; when it fell across the altar, the reduced gravity carried it away.
The ghost went to his knees and put his palms on top of the altar. One by one, the etchings began to glow. Red, white, and blue; yellow, silver, green and purple—the colors emerged from the etching as light, and then evolved, one by one, into flaming helixes.
A shifting shape caught Edgar’s eye from a distant dune. The dying light touched it—it looked like a huge maggot—and then the shape was gone.
“My ears are yours, Lord,” the ghost said, ignoring the image, closing his eyes, and pressing his head to the altar. “I am listening.”
Edgar came out of the desert and the storm, naked but for the blood that covered him. The mumiya warps that hadn’t been torn from him, they were now a part of him, adhered to his skin by the Ossuary’s brutality. The ghost had gotten him this far; he had to get himself the rest of the way. Even dead inside and offering dominion, Edgar hadn’t been good enough for God.
Valac came running out of the camp. Yelena and Amir followed closely behind, torches in each of their hands. There was no moon in the sky, and yet the Anointed One had sensed him all the same.
Edgar collapsed. The bones beneath his feet caught him in their pale embrace. He had given his ears to God, and now all he heard was the Deep; its fathomless depths, its impenetrable dark. He could hear the ruin of worlds, and all those tainted treasures being stirred and shifted and transmuted. He could hear massive limbs lumbering, rending the space through which they passed. He could hear the halo of smoke, and the dying breaths it was actually comprised of. He could hear God’s words, each one an orb of uncountable languages, and when they met his mind, they shattered into incomprehensible shards.
“What did It say?” Valac clamored.
Amir threw a blanket over Edgar. Almost immediately, his blood soaked it through.
Yelena helped Edgar to his feet, and then Amir rushed in and steadied him on his shoulder.
“Go back,” Valac said, pushing Yelena and Amir away. “Leave us!”
Edgar fell forward, but Valac grabbed him by the chest and held him there. The boy’s arms rippled as the vermillion veins inside him leant him their strength.
“I’m not… I’m not… the Speaker,” Edgar said. “I’m not.”
Valac closed his eyes and sighed.
“You knew that.” Edgar planted one bloody paw on the back of Valac’s neck and started to crush it. “You knew!” He shook his head, played with the blood in his mouth. “Her—” He spit on the boy’s feet. “Audra. You were so goddamn eager to get her back.”
“She is the Speaker,” Valac said. “A Speaker first speaks to heaven and hell—the shadows—and then to God Itself. Alexander Blodworth must have known. That is why he hid her in Penance, to use her against us. Not for the murders, but because without her, we are deaf to God’s will.”
“We’re doing just fine… just fine without her,” Edgar said.
Valac shoved Edgar backwards, sending him into the sand. “We need a Speaker when God wakes. Amon assured me it was you, but he lied. He led me on. Once God wakes, we will need to hear Its word.”
“Then I’ll find her,” Edgar said, sitting up. “I have to find her, anyways. I’ll find her. I’ll explain everything. She’ll understand.”
Valac shook his head. “She doesn’t have to understand. She just has to die.”
“What?” Edgar kicked at Valac’s ankle. “What the fuck did you say?”
“Kill her, and her blessing as Speaker will be gifted to you.”
“No.” Edgar tried to get to his feet, but he was too weak.
“It does not have to be you,” Valac said, his belly rumbling, “but it should be. You killed the rest of your family. You might as well finish the job.”
“Fuck you.”
“We are one catastrophe away from God’s awakening. The world is ready. It just needs a reason, a surge of belief. Did you know that you are not the only one to make a pilgrimage this year? People from Penance are going to Cathedra, to try and make it the new seat of the Holy Order. The Disciples of the Deep are going to Penance, to bring the Word to the heretics.
“And have you heard of the Cult of the Worm? They are new to me, too, but the Blood in Us All does not lie. They are led by two powerful witches under the Disciples’ banner. Their ranks are flesh fiends and Night Terrors and Corrupted from all across the continent. They are gathering in Angheuawl soon. I do not know what their intentions are or where their allegiances truly lie, but with this many people on the move, causing so much unrest, all the while war is raging all around them, can you not agree God is needed now more than ever?”
Edgar nodded, reluctantly.
“Can you not agree your work has been good and just?”
Again, Edgar nodded. He was bleeding out of every pore and orifice.
“You do not invite a guest to dinner, only to ignore them for the whole evening. God is coming. You have made sure of that. A God without a tongue speaks only in the syllables of slaughter. What matters more? One life, or many?”
He hated to say, but he said it: “Many.”
“Find her, kill her, it does not matter. We must collect your sister.”
“If I don’t find her… if she doesn’t… die.” Edgar breathed in the Ossuary. “Can she use the shadows against us?”
“Yes,” Valac said.
“Can they stop us?”
Valac narrowed his eyes. His silence said it all.
CHAPTER XXI
R’lyeh must’ve passed out, because when she opened her eyes, she was in the Skeleton’s arms. He was carrying her through the streets of Geharra. She started to say something, but her mouth wouldn’t work. She tried to shift her weight, to signal she was awake, but her limbs wouldn’t listen. All that she had was all that she could see, inside and out, and most of it made for the poorest company.
She blinked and blinked, but the blurriness in her vision would not break. She sniffed and sniffed, but the stench of the pit would not lift. Her ears were clogged; she moved her jaws to pop them, and instead, she tasted blood and poison and the hot, lingering residue of stomach acids. R’lyeh’s body was a prison, kind of like the cells beneath the city. Abandoned and ignored; dilapidated and desecrated; good for one thing, and not much else. If she had only looked back, she might’ve seen this coming.
Like a ghost, Geharra crept towards her. Second by second, stone by stone, the city-state closed in on her—its advance unavoidable, her anxiety undeniable. With its towering buildings, it reached out to her. With its upturned streets, it dared to touch her. Its breath was a cold cocktail she couldn’t place; a drowsy mixture of things not human. It smelled like earth and milk, and something else she knew but had forgotten.
R’lyeh could see better now, and now she saw that Geharra was wild. The Red Worm’s awakening had ruptured the Northern District through which they passed. With no humans to heal the wound, Mother Nature had made the effort instead. Trees and plants had overrun the city-state. Where there had once been the main thoroughfare, there were only weeds. She saw cats and dogs, too, and hundreds of birds in the high towers and low wreckages. For a place that had once been covered in the Red Worm’s bloody afterbirth, it was far greener here than she would’ve ever thought possible.
The Skeleton glanced down. R’lyeh closed her eyes, but she was pretty sure he’d seen her, anyway. He didn’t say anything, and neither did she. When a couple seconds passed, she opened her eyes again, only to find them moving through the Northern District’s gate.
The heart of Geharra stood before them. R’lyeh could still remember the layout fairly well. To the south, the Southern District, and beyond, the fields of Elys; to
the east, the main gate and the market; to the west, the Western District, and all its fisheries and abattoirs.
When Penance had drugged Alluvia, they marched R’lyeh and her people through the main gate. From there to here and the pit beneath them, she knew every twist and turn, and street name, real or imagined. She could recall all the buildings they passed. She could see all the faces that should’ve helped, but couldn’t have, because of the Crossbreed inside them. R’lyeh was an expert on poisons. What was Geharra if not another poison? This was her second dose of the place. She was scared, but she was also content. Could she become immune to memories, too?
The Skeleton shifted R’lyeh in his arms. He held her like a dead body, but with a layer of leather and fabric between them. The leather came from the glove he always wore, and the fabric from the cloak that never left his gangly frame. If not for the forethought, his touch would’ve been transferring images from the Black Hour’s heart to her every second. It made R’lyeh’s own heart flutter to know he’d made the effort. And, blushing, she hoped he couldn’t tell.
R’lyeh rolled her eyes and settled on a distant sight. It was the entrance to the Marketplace. There were still stalls there, but the goods were gone; taken by thieves, or animals with a penchant for sparkling things. Seeing the market, she then saw echoes; not real Echoes—not the Earth’s Echoes—but her own echoes—hallucinations, if she were being honest, of Deimos, Lucan, Serra, and Vrana. They were beat up, short of breath; they kept looking over their shoulders, for the flesh fiends that had attacked them, and the Red Worm that, at that moment, was rampaging outside the city-state’s walls. R’lyeh should’ve seen herself in the memory, right next to Vrana, but she wasn’t there, because she was here, right here, being taken care of once again, being led out of hell once more.
A single tear slipped down R’lyeh’s cheek. It fell off her face and onto the Skeleton’s glove. He twitched, as if the piece of leather were now an extension of himself, with skin and nerve endings. But he didn’t look down.
She steadied her breathing as they turned eastward. And then stopped breathing, for what she saw stole the air from her. All across the buildings, alleys, and streets were long, thick, green roots. Large trunks, snake-like, with dark eyelets. The growths had nubs, like nipples, and dribbling out of them was a milky discharge that filled in the gaps of the road.
