by Dylan Doose
The decapitated head coughed. The yellowed eyes blinked open.
The headless corpse began to melt, decaying into a fetid puddle. The flesh melted off the body like wax under a hot summer sun, and it steamed like shit in the snow and smelled something exponentially worse.
Aldous covered his mouth, and even Ken took a small step away. Only Theron remained where he was, staring, refusing to show any signs of unease. He watched, listened to the sizzling and gasping of the melting beast, and smiled to himself at a job well done.
“Vell done… Vell done,” said the swine’s head, the side of its face slowly becoming mush, liquid flesh splashing from its mouth as it spoke. “You will meet him tonight. The demon. The god. Ohhhhh, you will cross claws, teeth bared. There will be such devastation. Ohhhhh, what a shame I’ll be missing it. What a shame.” The pace at which the fiend was melting away increased, and it squealed like a pig at the butcher. “What a crying shame! What a terrible shame!”
Only a pool of pungent ichor remained, mingling with a stream of human blood that ran from the pile of corpses, dark and wet and smelling of copper and salt. Tall trees all around, the green woods speckled with orange and red, violet and blue buds of the spring flowers beneath a glorious sun that peeked in through gaps to cast rays of light onto the terrifying true nature that lurked beneath the beautiful illusion.
* * *
“My sweet wife, you must speak of this to no one,” said the great writer Darcy Weaver to his hysterical wife. Hysterical for good reason, for their infant son, the crawling, naked babe Aldous, had just incinerated a rat.
It lay in a pile of ash that the baby ran his soft, plump hands through. It fell like sand through his chubby little fingers. He giggled and took up another fistful.
Lady Weaver wept and wailed.
Aldous giggled again.
“My dear, you must regain yourself,” Darcy said, embracing his wife and holding her.
“I knew, Darcy,” she said in a hollow, cold tone. “I knew since before he was born…”
“What did you know?” Great expectation lingered in the silence following his question.
“That he would be the one…I saw the fire, I see it now, and he will burn it all.” Lady Weaver pushed herself from her husband and looked into his eyes. “They will come for him. The Seekers. Even that…” She turned her head to the incinerated rat, and covered her mouth when she almost hurled up her dinner. “Even that may have been sensed.”
“I fear your anxiety is warranted, my love…and I know what must be done. There is sorceress, Diana Ward… Let us hope she agrees to help us, before a Seeker comes knocking.”
“There will be a price,” said his lady wife. “There is always a price.”
* * *
Chapter Five
The Hated One
Before…
Dammar leaned in and peered at the wooden edge of the practice sword where the most striking butterfly he had ever seen took rest, slowly closing and opening its wings, black, speckled with dots of white gold that glittered like stars. As the wings narrowed into the center a pink glow intensified, edged with violet.
This was the only part of Brasov that Dammar enjoyed, the gardens and the butterflies and the birds that they drew to them…the gardens and getting to spend time in them with his friend.
“Sel, look at it, look how beautiful it is.”
“It is a reflection of the universe, isn’t it?” Selkirk said. He always spoke like that, for his father had been a teacher of writing and reading, a patient man. Dammar thought Sel was brilliant.
In a flash the wooden sword was smashed away, the butterfly needlessly murdered. The yellows, and blues, reds and greens of the garden seemed to gray.
Instructor Vor stood before them, eyes blazing with hate. He was not a patient man. He was fat, drunk, and a cripple. He had lost his leg to a spring trap the pagans had set in the woods.
Vor had been one of the noble Golden Sons of the Golden Sun once. “One of god’s rangers, casting light into the devil’s black woods,” Sel’s father had said, looking side to side in his own house. Eyes and ears were everywhere.
“You two make me sick.” Vor roared before he lashed out with the back of his hand, smacking Selkirk to the ground. Most of the other boys were silent. Some laughed, the bastards.
Dammar bent toward his friend, who lay unmoving, but Vor grabbed him by the collar and pulled him close. “You’re lucky who your father is,” he whispered. “Or I’d be scrambling your brains, too. This is sword practice, mandatory for all boys in the Basilica, even the secret bastards. So you focus on striking, not pretty bugs, because if your mind is not on striking, you end up like your friend here.”
Vor released Dammar and pushed him to the ground. Vor always hit Sel, and the last time Sel’s father tried to have a word with Vor about it, he’d received lashes in the city center. But this time was different. This time Sel lay pale and unmoving. Dammar was afraid to touch him, afraid he was dead.
Then Sel moaned and pressed a hand to his head.
“I am not lucky,” Dammar said, glaring up at Vor. Warm tears rolled down his cold cheeks.
He wished he were capable of saying more; he wished he were capable of at least imagining committing violence against this tyrant. But Dammar was not a fighter. And much unlike his mother’s god—the one he was named after—he was incapable of change. The god Dammar had once been revered, for he had rooted the people in nature, in the old ways, but as the world changed around him, he had remained stagnant. In this way he had failed himself and failed his people, for he was supposed to be the god of change. And so the Luminescent had come, had swayed the people, and Dammar’s inability to transform had seen him banished to a dark and desolate mountaintop, nearly forgotten now.
Vor spat on the ground in front of Dammar’s feet. “You’re not fit for this world, you know that? You’re soft and queer beyond salvation. You’ll always be crying, you sniveling little bitch.” Vor hauled him to his feet and shoved him away. “Now pick up your sword, Dammar, and try to become a man.”
Dammar looked at the wooden practice sword. He could see the dark spot where Vor had splattered the butterfly. It glistened in the sunlight, and three twitching legs remained. That was a living thing, doing as it willed. I am a living thing doing as I will, as nature allows, seeking no harm to anyone. And this man destroys that freedom. This man could have killed Sel and there would be no repercussion.
“It is a stick, not a sword. I was using it as a stick. Give me a sword and I will try to become a man!” Dammar said, surprising even himself, for just a moment ago he had not believed himself capable of change. Every day Vor demanded that Dammar pick up his sword and try to become a man. And every day Dammar refused. He usually just sat there and cried as he looked at his bloodied friend, Selkirk, who took the beating that Vor dared not inflict on Dammar, while the other boys would laugh and hurl insults at them. And when he recovered from his beatings, Sel would smile because Vor would refuse to teach them any longer that day. Such a fiend for violence was he that he actually believed that he was punishing Dammar and Selkirk by doing this.
Dammar stood and took a step forward, and so shocked were all the other boys that they stepped back. Vor did not. He was cruel. He was twisted in soul and mind and filled with hate. But he was not a coward.
“It is a stick, not a sword!” Dammar yelled again. “So what do you say, Vor? Give me a sword and I’ll be a man.” His knees began to shake, but he locked them tight and stood his ground.
“The sword that makes a man is within,” Vor said, and his voice and stare became sober and calm. His weight shifted and he stood at an angle, his right foot forward, his left peg back and hardly touching the ground. “But if you are challenging me to a contest with blades, I’ll tell you, you are not prepared.”
“I’m prepared for a fat, one-legged drunk who beats children,” Dammar said, meeting Vor’s wide-spaced eyes under his broad, apish brow.
&nbs
p; Vor stood there a moment. All the boys, including Selkirk, were silent, too afraid to say a word. Because before Vor became an instructor of swordsmanship, he had been the man named Vorgrave the Vindictive. After losing his leg, he became a personal guard to the Patriarch, and with one leg he managed to thwart three assassination attempts, in the process taking a crossbow bolt to the shoulder, a sword cut to the neck, and a goblet of poisoned wine. He survived on all occasions, and personally dragged the culprits to the city center and beheaded them by sawing through their necks with a serrated knife. The message was sent: a pagan’s place was set; to fight it was to die a goat’s death.
Vor smiled. “That’s the spirit.”
He had a long deer knife on his hip, and he stripped it naked of its scabbard and tossed it into a fishpond, one of many built into the city of Brasov. The golden-scaled fish with three blue eyes had a glow so strong that at night, when the Patriarch illuminated the city with his orbs of light, the fish reflected the magical gleam and cast a golden glow onto the white stone buildings of Brasov.
“Pick it up. Become a man,” Vor said. “It is in sacred water. Maybe I’ve blessed it for you.” He laughed.
Dammar reached in for the knife, shoulder deep into the water, and lifted the blade to his hand. He gripped it tight and stood, turning to Vor, who had his wooden sword at the ready now.
Dammar ran at Vor and stabbed. Vor did not move his feet. He did not need to. Dammar came straight at him, and although Dammar thought he was moving quickly—for this was the fastest he had ever moved in his short life—he was not moving fast enough. Vor’s stick slashed up and into the side of Dammar’s head in an arc he could not see.
When he could see once again, or think or feel or hear, he was propped sitting upright against the wall of the fishpond. Selkirk was standing over him, blocking out the sun completely, and so his face was fully cast in shadow. The garden was silent. Practice must have come to an end.
“Are you awake?” Sel asked.
“Yes,” Dammar said, and winced. His head was aching, and he put a hand to his temple, where he found a large, throbbing lump.
“That was amazing, Dammar, what you did.” Selkirk grabbed Dammar by the wrist and pulled him to his feet.
“Getting beaten unconscious?” Dammar asked, swaying as the sky and the gardens spun in circles. He was not crying, or shaking. He had lost, lost horribly, but he had fought and he lived. And that killed a great deal of fear. Knowing that to fight back was not the worst thing.
“No…resisting,” said Selkirk.
Now that they were standing and the sun was no longer directly behind Selkirk, Dammar could see the extent of the damage to his friend’s eye. A storm of red bolts lanced across the white and formed a circle of red around the river-blue center; the eye was only partially open thanks to the swelling, and Dammar knew that within the hour it would be forced completely shut.
Selkirk was resisting oppression in his own way, by brushing it off as if it did not occur. But that could not last, not for either of them. Such a life was not worth living.
“What would you have done?” Selkirk asked.
Dammar tilted his head and frowned, unsure. “What would I have done?”
“If he didn’t hit you? If you were fast enough?” Selkirk clarified.
“I’d have stabbed him.” Dammar visualized himself doing it. He thought of how the blade would go into Vor’s fat gut and the sound it would make, how he would scream in the bastard’s face. Dammar nodded and then said again, “I’d have stabbed him.”
“You mean that,” Selkirk said.
Dammar nodded. Had he said those words yesterday he wouldn’t have, but today, in this moment, he meant them.
“And then what?” Selkirk asked, and he smiled wide, giddy with anticipation. His mouth had been cut too; blood ran in between his white teeth, as white as the stone of which Brasov was built.
“And then I’d do it again,” Dammar said, and stabbed the air with his hand tightly gripped on the hilt of an imaginary knife. “And again”—another stab—“and again, and again, and again!” He thrust the imaginary knife at a rate of one stab per syllable, and he quickly tired. And Selkirk clapped and laughed, and his laugh sounded strange, because of the blood in his mouth.
Dammar began to laugh too.
They had never talked like this before, not once. Dammar was not sure he had ever even thought about killing Vor before this. In his dreams—nightmares—it was Vor who was always killing him, hacking him up and breaking his bones. Talking like this, thinking like this and sharing it with Selkirk, it was exciting, because he had faced the nightmare, and while he did not win, he had survived and learned that he was not as fragile as he had thought.
“Then…” Dammar stared down, imagining Vor kneeling, trying to fit his purple intestines back in. “…I’d push back his head, and I’d saw through his neck…right…through.” Dammar jerked his hand back and forth rapidly.
“I think the other boys would shit themselves,” Selkirk said through his giggling, after he spat the blood from his mouth.
Now that the ghost of Vor had been beheaded, Dammar dropped his imaginary knife and wrapped his arms around Selkirk. Selkirk hugged him back.
“One day, Sel…one day we will leave here. We will be strong enough to return to the forest and its freedom. We will do as our ancestors did…one day. But as we are now, it will eat us alive, just like it did Mama.” Dammar’s voice trailed then hardened, and he added, “That will change.”
“You promise?” Selkirk asked, and Dammar could hear that he was crying, which was rare.
“I do, even if I have to destroy this whole city.”
Selkirk laughed once again, this time through his tears, and again Dammar laughed, but it was a melancholy sound.
For two years , in the shadows, in the long, empty corridors of the Basilica, Dammar and Selkirk practiced. Vor was right about one thing: the fighter’s sword was found within. Deep in the belly the ore was found, and when the forge of the heart was stoked, the ore would go in to be beaten into form by the mind’s hammer. Thus a sword would be made.
They made their swords. They slew a hundred ghosts a day with their imaginary knives; they ducked around them and evaded their strikes, and moved in for the kill. And when they went to sword practice, they participated to stave off Vor’s rage, but they feigned ignorance and allowed their peers to outdo them every time. To Dammar and Selkirk’s amazement, now that they had been dancing with revenge in the shadows every day, they realized that they could likely defeat most of the boys. They were both tall and lean with muscle for their age, but had never before recognized this in themselves.
Never again did they allow Sel to single himself out for a beating. Never again did they carry tales to Sel’s father, for they could not bear to see him whipped once more.
Two years they had practiced. Their friendship grew stronger as they sparred and pushed each other to new limits daily. They were each other’s only allies in a stone prison of enemies, and they shared a single goal, a single dream. Together they wanted to leave this place, and they wanted to leave it smashed to dust. But Dammar knew that such thoughts were dreams, because he knew his father, and as long as the Patriarch had his power over Brasov, it was Dammar’s prison.
It was well past midnight. They were thirteen and now practicing with real knives in the kitchens late at night while the servants and slaves snatched paltry hours of rest, and the Patriarch and all his closest priests and highest-ranking officers of the Golden Sons slept in feather beds on the upper floors of the Basilica. In those two years, they had come to learn of every hidden nook and cranny within that white stone monolith…almost every nook and cranny. They had never dared attempt to sneak into three places: the Patriarch’s chambers, the sun tower—for there was only one way up, and one way down, and if they were spotted skulking about the sun tower, a place forbidden to all but the Patriarch himself and a select few members of the Golden Sons, they’d be kil
led—and lastly they had never been to the bowels of the monolith, past the golden door guarded by the sad knight. They named him that because his golden mask was sculpted in the image of a frowning child.
“What do you think is behind the door?” Dammar asked as he sidestepped out of the way of one of Selkirk’s cuts.
“Something secret, I think,” Selkirk said as he stepped forward and, at half speed, stabbed out with the knife. Dammar swept it aside with ease, ducked beneath some hanging pots, and bade Selkirk to follow.
His eye had never healed. Dammar stared at it as Sel ducked beneath the pots and came forward. The ring of red waves had never faded from his iris, but he was beautiful anyway. His jaw had become square, and the roundness in his cheeks had faded. His ringlets of gold reached his shoulders now, and he looked not far off from six feet.
“You are going to look like a king one day,” Dammar said as they passed a rack of knives and a large cutting board with a boar haunch on it. Dammar stabbed his knife into it, still backing away from Sel, who stalked him. Selkirk did the same when he passed the haunch, and now they were both unarmed, and Dammar smiled. Sel reflected the gesture.
“I don’t already?” Sel asked, and swiped at Dammar, who was trying to grab one of his wrists.
Dammar let him catch it and pulled Sel toward him, and they grappled, or maybe they were dancing through the kitchen and down three stone steps into the dimly lit wine cellar.
“No…you don’t look like a king yet,” Dammar said when they had stopped wrestling and looked into each other’s eyes once again, breathing heavily from the exertion. “You only look like a prince.”
Dammar had barely finished uttering the compliment when Selkirk moved quicker than he had during their mock battle and kissed him. Stunned, Dammar held perfectly still, and then kissed him back.
