Angelslayer: The Winnowing War

by K. Michael Wright

  Chapter Forty

  Eryian’s Dream

  That night in a dream, with her body tight against him, both of them buried in woolen coverlets, the person who was Eryian finally revealed itself, using a dream to speak through the veil, to reveal who he was. The veil was left intact, the memories now all hidden in a dream—but the dream could be remembered, as much as he wanted, as much as he wished.

  It was a dream that might easily have been complex and tangled, and perhaps in the end it was, but at first it seemed only a simple dream, its images perhaps jumbled, and sometimes making little sense. Only when it was ended would he know all the meanings of what he had witnessed.

  He was not a Daath, nor had he ever been one. That came as a surprise to him, but he saw it written out in the air by a swift finger: “As them, you are not.”

  There were stories of this first king of the Daath who was named Righel, and Cassium had referred to him using just that name. Indeed, it once was his. Eryian was one of the few alive that knew the tomb in the catacomb beneath Terith-Aire lay empty. Some came to worship it, to leave offerings, but it was as empty as the nameless many altars to gods and goddesses that existed up and down the coast, in the villages of the Pelegasians and the trading posts of the Weire. He had always known that, but in the simple words quickly sketched by an unseen finger, he understood without any further question that there was no more to worship in the tomb of Righel than the limestone shrine in Lucania dedicated to a god named Baal.

  Unlike Baal, Righel, however, had been very real. Eryian saw him, a vague image of a man watching from the shadows and at his shoulders arched the splendid wings of an angel, feathered in a silvery gold, such beautiful feathers he found himself reaching for them, to touch them, almost envious. But the image was mist and as his fingers drew near, it folded in on itself.

  The angel Righel, the dream told him, was no more—he no longer existed. At the same time, a voice whispered; once this angel had knelt each morning and each night before his creator, Elyon, vowing His grace, dedicating His cause, and renewing His covenants.

  Righel was known. He was named among Elyon’s children, and he was numbered among the host of the Elohim. His brother, his closest kindred and, oddly enough, his true friend, was none other than the mighty archangel Uriel. It was the reason Eryian looked so much like a Daath, the same pale skin, the same bluish tint, but he did not, as the others, come in the days of Yered with the ships that bore the Arsayalalyur and his kindred. He was singular; he was a lone traveler if ever there was one.

  In his dream for a brief moment, he then saw the mighty archangel, standing at the fore of the eastern gate that watched over the garden of mankind’s beginning. There was his sword, the fiery sword of Uriel. It was only an image of a brother who had once been his closest friend. How odd that seemed at first, but when the dream came to an end, he would understand why this bond existed. He had never even read the scriptures of the East of the Land or the blade that turned in all direction, guarding it.

  “Warriors,” he heard his own voice, Eryian’s voice, echo, “after the blood slips from their blade from the first kill, stop bothering with scripture. The kill becomes their edge.”

  And then he saw the world of the Earth pale and become a gray fog. He realized this was because there were countless worlds, endless and beyond human imagining. And it was clear he would never know or comprehend in the course of a dream the world of an angel, its twists and turns. There were those who sang that angels were ever following their Creator, singing His phrases, and the gray before Him scattered in the wind as if angry any fool would even believe such to be the calling of angels.

  Then he saw, as though swept past by the wind, a sun clock that bore no shadow, and he realized this represented the palaces of Elyon. The pillars and fountains and hills that were the realms of angels described of Enoch were places where there was no time. Time did not exist; it was neither a concept, nor an entity, nor even a feeling or passion. It simply was not.

  Then he witnessed the burning fires that streaked across the sky. These symbols were even this day left etched in rock and carved in caves and painted upon the lintels of temples to represent the angels that had stepped from the heavens and had fallen to Earth. These, as well, were merely symbols that the human mind could conceive and understand, but in truth, the falling of an angel was not something a human could ever know or comprehend.

  Then his dream became a day when Eryian was sitting beside his young scion, Lochlain, who at that time was only ten and one year old. They sat on the dock works of Terith-Aire, though in the dream they were hanging in space. It was a real moment, one from his memory. The boy’s young face was drenched in sweat. Eryian, as always, had been working him harder than he should have. Why did he push the boy so hard? Why had he driven him so hard when Lochlain was only a child?

  No answer came.

  “Eryian,” Loch said in his small, young voice. “I try not to anymore, but still at times I grieve for her.” “Your mother?”

  “Aye. Sadness in me that she must wait.” “That she waits? How do you mean this, Loch?”

  “Her fingers and mine were touching when her spirit left. I remember the very moment her soul slipped out of her, how her fingers fell limp. And I think I am haunted by how hard it must be that she waits there—wherever her soul is—to see me again.”

  He was so young, and yet his mind was far beyond his years. And what he had spoken was not from his ego—he understood she had loved him with all her heart, and she had, and his grieving was real, for she would be somewhere weeping, waiting to see him again.

  Eryian wrapped one arm about Lochlain’s shoulder. When he was a boy, it was easier then to touch him. Later things would change. He pulled the boy close. Lochlain resisted. He resisted all human contact, as if he were determined to walk every path alone.

  “What I am to say may seem difficult to understand,” Eryian told him, “but where your mother is, there exists no time.”

  He turned to Eryian, surprised. “No time?”

  “None. It does not exist in that place. It is as if, from the moment her fingers grew limp and let yours go, in the very next instant, she will be sweeping you into her arms, welcoming you home, pouring her love over you once more. You might even be an old man, having walked many long and weary paths, but for her—for your mother—no time will have passed between those moments. Where she is, time is not. No tears, no hours to slowly pass or days to watch the sun rise and fall. Her touch leaves your fingers, and then she pulls you into her embrace.”

  “Welcome home, my son, my love,” Loch mother’s words echoed in his dream and Eryian was struck hearing her voice, Asteria’s strange, whispery voice, strong and bold, yet as soft as if she might at any second be blown away by the wind.

  He then saw himself, standing upon a ledge as if he were in space all alone, and below him was the brilliant blue sphere that was Earth, one of the finest and greatest of all Elyon’s work, even though His works were without number or time or knowing. Earth was still the most magnificent.

  Elyon was the limitless light. He had no names, nor could He be conceived or known of men in any form.

  Eryian stood alone in space watching Earth and marveling of its work. Unlike any other, the endless, limitless, and numberless others, Earth dwelt on the outerlands, on the very edge that was between nothingness and the slim, tendril of light that held it to heaven. It was frightening, for the tendril looked so fragile, so easily severed.

  Because the world called Earth was so far from heaven, it would become a place like no other. The nights would be darker, the evil more deadly, more appalling, more unthinkable than any evil known. It would be a place of constant and never-ending war and murder and terror. Earth was left too much at the edge of the outerland—that was what many of the angels thought. They were bold angels to question their Creator, but they spoke out loud and said Earth had been made too far from the light, that it was doomed to fail.

&nb
sp; And then he witnessed once more the streaks across the sky. Those who came were not weak; they were the brave, the noble and good. They were in that day not the fallen; they were the mightiest of Elyon’s sons. They feared that Earth had been placed too far away, that heaven’s light was too dim here and mankind would need their help. They left risking everything, even their own salvation. They were not evil as later generations would name them; they were, in fact, the bravest. More than any, the Light Bearer spoke these words, that Elyon’s sons should step down from heaven and risk all to help.

  The Light Bearer was one of the greatest of Elyon’s son’s, one of two firstborn, twins, and this, the Light Bearer was born first—he came before the other. In all power and glory he stepped from heaven so that Earth would not be lost.

  “My promise, Father,” Eryian heard a dark and powerful voice echo within the gray and black of his dream, “from the heart and depth of my soul, my word and my covenant: my promise to thee, Father. I shall bring them home and not one shall be lost! Not a single soul shall fall! In all honor, in all glory, I will return and I will protect them, for I am become their messiah.”

  And again Eryian found himself studying the planet from his rock in the heavens and that was when he found her. He had not been looking for her; he had only been standing on his far rock, curious of the Earth, built as it was on the edge of the outerland. Would even its messiah, the firstborn of Elyon, be mighty enough to save it? Such were his thoughts that day his eyes unexpectedly were caught by a girl. What a strange twist. She was but the daughter of a man named Terith. Her beauty at first left him utterly breathless. For an angel to be struck of beauty alone—that was a sin, but she was so remarkable. Never had he seen such a creature. What Elyon had crafted in the stunning blue ball in the sky, such a beautiful thing, so, too, had He created upon its surface, creatures so lovely, so perfect, they took his breath. He stood for a long, long time on his rock watching her. Her name, he would learn, was Cassium.

  And in the dream he now understood how it had come to pass that even magnificent beings such as sons of unimaginable glory had found themselves suddenly weak.

  Alone.

  In all of existence, there was nothing as terrible as being alone. Pain, death, horror, terrors of unspeakable imaginings, could not compare with this simple, ordinary word: alone. The outer darkness signified it. Righel, far out in space on his rock, watched in stunned disbelief, in utter silence, as the mightiest of Elyon’s children broke their vows to their own Father for these creatures that were then called the daughters of men.

  In secret, thinking themselves hidden, they made their pact upon Mount Ammon and Righel watched, horrified of all he knew or understood. It was as if for a moment, a crack in time had ripped the very fabric of the universe.

  And all this terror was due to that one word—alone. The angels feared being alone. It was the first that struck them being so far from Elyon’s Light. Perhaps an unreasonable fear, but it was loneliness that drove them to take the daughters of men, to ensure they would not be alone this far from heaven, or so Righel believed because he could think of no other reason, being an angel himself.

  Though as yet he remained in the sky, he could longer look away. It was his first sin. He became a Watcher that day.

  Then, later, on a day that may have otherwise been ordinary, a horrifying thing happened. He saw her—the girl he had been watching, the one named Cassium, in the arms of a most powerful being, a being he at that time believed to be full of grace and the light of Elyon. This was a being far more powerful than he, one known well of his Creator, Elyon, a brother much older than he, much wiser and far more aware of the songs of creation.

  Azazel had taken the girl that Righel had fallen in love with from his rock far in the heavens.

  For many days that even became years, Righel did nothing. It was as if he stood horrified, unable to move or speak. But Righel looked into the futures and what he saw left him chilled. Azazel would become an evil, a terror. A day would come that men would fear to even utter his name, and this would happen not by chance or mistake. He would be feared because he had become terror, he had become evil, he had turned against every vow, every covenant, every oath once spoken to his Creator.

  Righel could only watch, paralyzed. Unable to move. How long did he stand on his rock not moving; how many years? Was it decades? Was it a century? How long did he watch his love in the arms of an evil that was slowly becoming something beyond all evils he had ever known?

  At first, after the days of Ammon, after the angels had broken their oaths and tried to hide from their own Creator, they gathered their women and lay in secret places, hiding their sin, and they conceived many children with them. Spellbound, an angel could conceive hundreds, even thousands of children from a single daughter of mankind. They did this through magickal means, and they did it because they believed they needed to make time move swiftly.

  Azazel had spoken a word in the day of Yered, and he had caused there to be among the children of men a thing called death. They would die. Even if they caught no disease or befell no peril, still they would grow old, a terror of itself. Their skin would wither. Their minds, the power of their thinking, would began to fail them, and they would turn to simple children and wet themselves and babble and finally die and become the dust of the Earth. The death Azazel had named was an unthinkable thing among other creations and planets of Elyon, but Azazel believed it necessary, and he made it terror. In other creations there was no such terror in dying. But here, on Earth, Azazel had began to delight in things evil, and death was his greatest word; it changed the course of all things on Earth forever. It was his first turning, what first made him begin a path of evil.

  In horror the angels realized the daughters of men they had chosen, many of them deeply loved in the true light, would now become victims of this word Azazel had named. So they turned to Azazel himself.

  “What do we do?” Eryian heard all the voices of the angels speak at once in his dream.

  And that was when Azazel spoke a second terrible word, and with this one he created the Winternight. Now these chosen daughters of men would not wither and wrinkle, their minds would not become muddled, their beauty would not be lost. They would become Star Walker Queens, and the Winternight would spare them from death while others around them died in terror and horror. But to cross to Winternight, the daughters of men who belonged to the angels were forced to become beings of evil, a dark and profound evil. Some resisted, many were even destroyed for their resistance, but others were not in league with the angels and came willingly to this world of Winternight. They drank the blood of the living to restore their beauty, to never grow old or senile or wrinkled. Always they would be young and fresh, and their only secret hidden well from the heavens would be human blood.

  Righel could only watch paralyzed with dread, unable to move or even to think. He knew what it meant to turn to the Winternight, and the time would soon come that his love, Cassium, would be turned by Azazel to an evil thing, and that—that was something he could not let happen. In the first day he had seen her he had first been struck by her beauty, but then, looking closer, he had been drawn to the purity of her heart. She was a loving and giving being whose heart was as pure as angels of the choirs and yet—she was merely human. It had touched him so profoundly that he had believed he now understood Elyon’s aim. But Elyon forever confused those who in vanity believed they understood His will.

  Righel finally broke from his spell of paralyzed dread. He worked quickly; he built an entire world for her. An ice moon. He made it beautiful; he filled it all with things he believed would make her happy, would even make it a home. But Righel’s ice moon lay in the dark of matter, far out in space, far from the Earth and all the things Cassium had known her whole life. Still, the moon was bathed in the light of the mothering star, so she would not age. Just as those who were turned to Winternight, she would not fall to the horrors of death, the slow and terrible aging that Azazel had n
amed for mankind. She would be spared, but not by becoming an evil being preying upon children and innocents. It would possibly take him many long years to purge her of the evils already staining her soul that came from knowing Azazel for so long, but he felt confident he could do this, given time—return to her the loving heart he had fallen in love with long ago.

  The second thing he did was to teach himself stealth. Azazel was not his equal; Azazel would crush him without a thought. He would utter a word and Righel would cease to be, his spirit imprisoned for all time. So Righel created his own powerful spellbound illusion—what he named stealth. He called what he became a Shadow Walker, because he learned to walk the shadows and vanish into them with such agility that not even a being as powerful and terrible as Azazel would be able to track him.

  The last of his dream was the night he stole Cassium from the Earth. It was a sad night. She did not know he came to help, she did not know him at all, and of course she was terrified and cried out to Azazel to save her. But Righel had planned well and with Cassium as his prisoner, he vanished that night. It was the very same night she and many of her sisters were to have been turned. But Azazel came to find that Cassium was not among them, and eventually he learned a thief had taken her—a thief that had come in the night and had vanished without a trace.