by Dylan Doose
Theron? His heart stirred with hope.
Then emerged the head. The head of a ram.
Aldous’s heart sank to his toes and the void in his chest was replaced by hot rage. Another foe. Another fight.
The thing set its eyes on Aldous.
“Come, then. Come and die if you still wish to fight,” Aldous said, and the ram lowered its head, raised its blade, and charged.
Aldous willed a small burst of flame from the end of his cracked staff, and as he did the crack widened, splitting the carved wood from the top nearly to the center.
The ram caught flame and bleated madly as the fire ate its flesh, but it did not stop its charge. Aldous once again unsheathed his sword, but he did not have time to ignite it, nor did he have the energy to fully evade the incoming swing, so he crossed his sword and his staff and met steel with steel.
The blow smashed through his guard easily. Chayse’s blade fell from his hand and the crack in the staff of wolves and raven widened even more. The top of the claymore hacked into his collarbone. He crashed down to floor on his back, down to the river of blood that splashed up around him, his own blood flowing to join it.
The blazing ram raised its sword for a downward plunge. Aldous aimed his staff at its head, and as the blade came down he released a beam of molten heat that left only two legs standing upright, smoldering at the waist.
His efforts exploded the staff into splinters. Two pieces of wood were left sticking through his hand while the rest flew out all around him.
He fought to stand, but he could not.
“I am your son, your bastard, your sin!” Dalia screamed, and hacked at the Patriarch, who met the attacks with his mace, slow now, both of them upright only by sheer will.
Your son. And there was the thing Aldous had sensed in her mind, the visions she had shared, the thing he had decided not to think on. Dalia was the black-haired boy on the balcony who cried for his lover. And she was the woman who had lain with Aldous. Which made her very unique indeed.
Aldous thought that perhaps he should have held on to his virginity a little longer.
Then he thought about moving, but his collarbone was broken, his blood dripped down, his arm didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to move anymore. Everything had its limits, and it seemed he had reached the limit of the sorcery of the foul draught.
And as he watched, with a sudden lurch of speed, Dalia impaled the Patriarch right through the gut and pinned him against a pillar that was still erect, holding up nothing but the night sky.
The moon sank.
Soon the sun would rise.
The battle neared its end.
“Not a god,” Dalia yelled. “Just a man.”
Dalia rammed her second spiked limb into the Patriarch’s groin. He howled in agony and thrashed about, tiny sparks dancing from his fingers.
Aldous looked down at the shards of his catalyst stabbing through his palm, two slivers of his staff.
I owe it to them, to Ken, to Theron.
He dug for strength that had long since dwindled and the shards warmed, and that warmth spread to his palm, his wrist, his entire arm. And then it spread through his body until he was hot and dripping sweat.
Aldous unleashed the wolf and the raven. The raven took to flight, the shadow of it wings engulfing the bloody ruins of the chapel. It cawed and flared its blazing talons. The wolf snarled, magma spraying from its open maw, its fur of fire whirling and whipping as it charged.
“I swore I would burn it all—” Dalia said. And then the wolf sank its teeth and the blaze consumed her. The raven stabbed its beak into the Patriarch’s caged helm, and the last thing Aldous saw was his bestial fire burning the flesh of gods.
* * *
“Breathe, children. Breathe into your bellies; breathe into your souls,” she whispered above the cauldron, and into it she threw frost.
The cauldron bubbled and an iron hand formed in the liquid and reached up from beyond.
“Wake, wake, wake! Oh, children damned. Death is birth, so be born again.”
Into the cauldron she threw fire, and the ichor screamed as it came to life, and a wolf pup and raven rose, then fell back into the murk.
“Rise!” Her voice thundered through the cave. It stirred the mountains and rippled the sky. “Rise, oh child of mine!” Into the cauldron she threw blood.
It whirled and roiled and from beyond the demons stirred. A form rose, a man, a beast. Diana’s son.
“You are the Undying, and your destinies are left undone.”
* * *
Epilogue
The Undying
He knew it well , that barren land, the red sun rising. The screams had echoed for miles through the sand.
Oh, he knew it well. It had changed but it was still the same. There were no screaming bodies now, just the crosses. Thousands of silent crosses. A field, a garden beyond Kahlibar’s walls, a masterpiece of amoral warfare. It was his design, this killing field, so it was only fair, only right that it end like this.
“Did you miss it?” asked Nephite.
Ken turned his head to look at the sorceress through eyes swollen shut from the beating he had taken after she got him through the portal. Waiting close by had been near fifty horsemen and two more wizards.
They took their turns and they took their time, but they were sure not to kill him. Ken was drained of the temporary power given him by the drink in the bowl Aldous had fed him. There would be no more fighting from him.
“Look straight ahead, over there, Dahkah. It is the master. Do you see him? He will be so glad to see you.” Nephite’s joy sounded genuine.
Why shouldn’t it be?
“I’m sorry to say it, Nephite, but nailing me to the cross won’t feel as good as you think it’s going to,” Kendrick said. He wasn’t saying this because he thought it would help his situation, and he wasn’t saying it out of spite. Maybe he just wanted to get his opinion in on the matter before it was settled. “I think you lot broke my spine, so I doubt I’ll even feel the nail going into my feet.”
“Silence!” one of the burly men dragging Ken yelled.
Ken looked straight ahead and saw the master and his men. Black cloaks, black wraps around their heads, black horses and black beards, but for the master’s white beard. When the two groups merged they’d make over one hundred trained men to help nail him to a piece of wood.
“The crucifixion is only the beginning,” Nephite replied. “And you are right. It will not satisfy me. We are not as you pig-skinned filth are in the west and the north. We do not strive for vengeance. Vengeance can never be achieved, but justice and a better world can be. By the end, they will be, and I will be satisfied.”
The master kicked his horse into a canter, and dust went up behind its hooves.
“Ah…Kendrick the Cold. Welcome home, old friend, for was this not where you were truly born?” said the master, his wrinkled face creasing in a smile.
Breathe…breathe…breathe.
Air. Sweet, cool air. Light, a dim, soothing light and an arched ceiling of oak. Where am I?
Theron heard deep, hushed voices next to him, but when he tried to turn his head, a line of fiery agony burned across his neck. His skin felt tight, as if it would rip and set his blood to flowing if he moved at all.
He remained still.
“Ken? Aldous?” Then he remembered they were not there. “Where am I?” he tried to ask the unseen men—friend or foe, he did not know. But all that came from his lips was a rasp, and again the pain in his neck.
There was a ruckus near the bed, a falling of a chair and some inaudible grumbled words. Then, staring down at him, was the smiling, red-bearded face of Therick Therickson.
“Ha ha, you’re alive, Theron Ward, you filthy fucking scoundrel. We brought you back.” Therick turned his head. “Stiggis! It worked! You never cease to amaze!”
Theron remembered Stiggis going into the void. Yet he was here…
Turning back to Theron, Therick said, “Thank the
gods. I thought you were for Bodan’s axe hall for certain. We all did, but for Stiggis. He knew he had the remedy. Ha ha! Get your strength back, hunter. It’s near winter, and this won’t be a season of hibernation.”
Therick turned from him and walked away. “No place like home, eh, hunter? No place like the north.”
Theron closed his eyes and fell back into sleep, for there was no place like the north, and if he was there he was not dead, but to stay that way he would need his strength. His mind drifted, and the smell of the pinewood that the hall was built of stirred memories of his younger years, of his beginnings as a hunter, and he fell into dreams of his becoming.
It was night still when Aldous opened his eyes. Or perhaps it was night again… Aldous could not say. The moon and the stars stared down on him. He heard no screams, or moans, no clamor of battle. In the distance he heard the calls of the night’s creatures. Owls, wolves, lycans, and ghouls…and worse things.
He smelled pinewood.
He felt the heat of the blazing sun on his skin.
But he could not hold on to them, and both the smell and the sensation faded until they were gone.
He tried to wiggle a toe.
Success.
He bent his knees and rolled to his side, onto his left. His collarbone raged at him for the decision, so he planted his hand down and pushed himself to his other side. His hand liked the ground’s touch no more than his shoulder, for he had forgotten about the pieces of wood protruding through it. Yet if that and exhaustion were somehow the worst of what he now suffered, he’d take it.
He looked around, expecting to see the Basilica, or the walls of the white city, and was surprised when he did not. He was in a small, open field surrounded by dark woods in all directions, and he was alone. At least, he thought he was alone until he heard a voice.
“Seigneur Regent! Par les anciens dieux! One stoic Connard you are,” said a Fracian man from nearby.
What Aldous had thought until then to be only a shadow cast by the night turned around and revealed itself to be a man clad in black, his face concealed by a mask of bone shaped like the beak of a giant predatory bird. Two glowing red eyes peered out from within the sockets.
“I helped myself to some of the medicine I made for you, lord regent,” the beaked man said. Aldous turned his head to see if he spoke to someone else. There was no one behind him. “I hope you don’t mind,” the man continued. “Sanguinum, it is called. Well, I modified the recipe slightly, since the exact plants don’t grow here that grow in Fracia…and, well, I was in a rush, you see—”
In the distance something howled, and it cut off the bird-masked man momentarily.
“Not to worry, lord regent.”
Aldous tried to protest, to explain that he was no regent, but his throat was too dry to make a sound.
“The beasts will be feasting in that city you and your comrades helped turn to dust for a few more days, I am sure,” the man continued. “But I saw tracks in the woods close by of something large, maybe winged, for I found massive feathers by the tracks. Now that you’re awake, be on your guard.”
The Fracian handed Aldous a wineskin, and he drank from it, a sickly sweet liquid entering his parched mouth. It was not wine, and it set his heart to thundering. His skin tingled. He felt like he could hear the grass growing, and his vision hazed over with red. He could not lie still. He sat up and said, “Theron, Kendrick…I must find them.”
“Ah, yes. And so must I,” said the bird-masked man. “My name is Doctor Gaige De’Brouillard, and before we set out to find your friends, remain lying there a while longer, for what I am about to tell you is best heard…not standing.”
Aldous stared into the red eyes of the stranger, and he had the sudden realization that he knew him. It was a sickening feeling, a twisting of the mind as well as the belly, for he could not place the recognition.
“I know you,” Aldous said.
“You will, lord regent. You will,” said the bird-masked man named Gaige, and his red eyes shimmered as he took another swig of his draught. They blazed with the promise that the adventure, the war, the struggle—it had all only just begun.
THE END
Ice and Stone
Sample Chapter
Another World
“ The canopy of the great jungle was as endless as the sea. Towering trees with a colossal green curtain of leaves, wet with the dew formed from the thick mist that hung eternally. A hundred varieties of ape, some small, others large—and a few immense—lived among the branches, swung through vines and roamed the forest floor in structured tribes. Snakes, lizards, basilisks, flame salamanders, great-fangs, jaguars, and still a hundred more varieties of predator called the jungle home .
As did Eona. It was without fear that she ran barefoot through mud and moss, high grass and knots of roots, her legs burning with the fire of freedom. Her black stone-tipped spear in her hand, she leaped over a fallen log and her toes felt cool as they squelched into the wet mud on the other side. She flashed her fangs and hissed at the big black cat in the nearby bush. It shied away, returning to the shadow.
She felt much: the burn in her legs, the pounding of her heart and the screaming of her lungs, gooseflesh rising against the cold wet of the mist, the steam coming off her body. Eona was aware of it all, and still, she felt his eyes on her. He was close.
I won’t let him catch me, not that easy .
She could hear it now, the sound of the falls, the ones she had come to since she was a girl with Mama. And when she was older with a lover… or two. Now she was nearly there again, with him .
“Eona!” He roared her name and she turned to see him only a hundred or so paces behind and above her, atop a black-rock formation punching from the earth, every edge covered in green moss. His headdress of blue feathers tipped black made him appear more magnificent than he already was. His straight black hair, the same black as the shimmering feathers and the colossal stone on which he stood, hung down to his waist. His naked bronze body, sculpted by a life of the hunt and combat, his spear clutched tight in his fearsome grip .
“Black Feather!” She called back, and then gave the cry of a great black bird of prey, inviting him to follow.
Black Feather leaped from the stone and the mist parted and whirled around him as he fell. He hit the ground running, and running fast. Eona spun round and adrenaline surged as she flew toward the falls, nimble feet light as air springing from stone to root to jungle floor. She saw the river and changed her course slightly to run along the bed. The waters were strong and the roar of the falls was near booming.
Her feet touched wet stone.
Ten steps.
“Eona! Don’t, you crazy—” She hardly heard Black Feather as she dived. She had only made this dive once before, and it had nearly killed her when she hit the water, disoriented, unsure whether she swam toward the surface or the bottom. Even so, Eona felt no fear as she descended. Her world slowed. She smiled, tears of pure joy getting lost in the water spraying over her face. She was free, untethered, as close to flying as she could ever be .
Death comes then, death comes now, death comes always, so meet it with joy, meet it with bliss.
Eona put her hands together in a point, the spear tight in her grip sharpening the dive even more .
The water parted as she hit. The surface did not shatter her. She stayed calm as the undercurrent pulled her down, down, spinning her, dizzying her. The flow moved her along and she remained loose and calm until with the last bit of air in her lungs she hung there, immobile, and then kicked her legs, swimming toward the light.
Air exploded into her chest. The sun blinded her .
She heard the surface break next to her, followed by massive breaths and then the howling of a wolf. Eona blinked hard and saw Black Feather’s head bobbing above the surface, his headdress floating in his hand .
“I didn’t think you had it in you,” she said, panting as she reached out to him. The current carried them from the
falls, slowing with each moment.
All Black Feather could do was smile like a boy and howl in response. His arms found hers and they pulled close to each other—their spears lost—her thighs slid against his and she wrapped herself around his waist. She let go and made circles in the water with her arms as he grabbed hold of her hips and paddled with his feet .
They kissed, and as she forced her tongue into his mouth he slid himself into her. They steered to shore where one of their spears had washed up, the other lost. He could have it, she didn’t care, she got what she wanted out of the hunt, and she got her trophy.
Sometimes you lose the spear , she thought and lightly bit and sucked on Black Feather’s neck. The water was shallow enough for him to stand now, so Eona again wrapped her arms around the back of his neck and she found a good grip on his hair so that she could ride him properly.
“Is this mine or yours?” Black Feather asked lifting the spear that had made it to shore. “The Guide will not be pleased with me if I return with no spear and no kill .”
“He will be equally displeased if I return with nothing. I have no fear of his displeasure.” Eona laughed and rolled her eyes. “You’re afraid of the Guide, Black Feather?”
“I respect him, as should you Eona. He is young, but his knowledge is vast. He has traveled all of these lands until the jungle meets the sea. He has learned things we have not. He guides us through this life to the next.” Black Feather fixed his soaking headdress onto his head and lifted the spear, soggy greenery hanging from it. He was claiming it as his. The notches in the base of the shaft made her certain it was hers, but she let Black Feather take it. And he knew it .
