by Tom Barczak
Chaelus, the barbarian lord whom little Al-Aaron claimed would be their savior, waited alone.
Pale light washed over him and the ruined room around him. He still carried his sword but his armor was gone, replaced by the humble gray shift of an acolyte. His beard was gone too. He looked smaller than he had before, more vulnerable, but somehow stronger in his weakness. Yet it wasn’t weakness. His eyes were subtle chasms as their stare fixed upon hers.
Beneath the sleeves of her robes, she pressed her nails into her palms, awakening again the scars from before. Once again the pain brought her back. “The Mother would see you now.”
Al-Mariam turned at once and began back down the short stairs to the small chapel where the Mother waited. The barbarian’s heavy footfalls came quick behind her.
Chaelus seized her arm at the chapel door.
Al-Mariam’s pulse quickened.
She spun on him, her eyes wide with anger that fell away as soon she saw his face. It was the face of humility ensconced before her. Her voice held frozen within her throat.
“You needn’t fear me,” Chaelus said.
Al-Mariam trembled as his grip lessened.
Still, something recoiled within her. She raised her chin to him, her will at last returned. “You assume that I do, and you’re foolish to do so.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t brave, only that I’ve done nothing to deserve your angst.”
His eyes were deeper than any she had known and she felt herself slipping into them as if they had no end. Beneath the pleasant scent of oil upon him dwelt a strength that was even deeper than the calm that rested within his eyes. Was it this that already captured the belief of those around her? Or was it the same strength that had taken everything else from her before?
A cold chill ran through her. Al-Mariam pulled her now-remembered arm away from his hand. “That remains to be seen.”
She threw the door open. The Mother inclined her head to the barbarian as they entered. The corners of her eyes smiled. “Please, come. Sit down. I would have you break bread with me.”
Then the Mother turned to her. Her eyes cut into her like before. “You may go, Al-Mariam. Your work here is done.”
***
The Mother held a flat wooden bowl holding a single loaf of bread out to him. “Tell me then, how shall I call you? Shall I call you my Savior?”
Chaelus accepted the bowl. “I would rather you didn’t.” He sat on the nearest of two benches. Two wooden chalices filled with wine already waited upon the table. “I don’t think you’re that foolish.”
The Mother pressed out her robes as she sat down. “If you are, then you are. If you’re not, then you’re not. I wouldn’t presume it to be so from only the word of one disobedient child, Servian Knight or not.”
“You don’t agree with him,” Chaelus said.
The Mother took the loaf of bread and raised it, a silent prayer dancing upon her lips. Breaking it, she handed half of it to him. “I don’t agree with the one whose path he’s chosen to follow.”
Chaelus reached out but then hesitated as the weight of her words fell upon him. Then he took the bread as his voice struggled out as a whisper. “You speak of my father. But I don’t see how the boy can claim to know the will of someone who’s dead.”
“There are many different kinds of death,” the Mother said. “He claims the ghost of Malius came to him. He said the ghost of Malius led him to you.”
“The ghost of my father?”
“Does this change anything for you? Dark is your memory of your father. So much blame you’ve placed upon him. So much blame you’ve borne upon yourself to suddenly find him to be the light which raised you. It would be a burden to the one who took his life.”
Chaelus tore a piece of the bread away, shrugging as he set the remainder of the loaf down. “It’s nothing to one who doesn’t remember.”
“Memories lost to the Dragon’s Sleep.” The Mother’s voice softened and grew distant. “Only the ones that haunt you still remain.”
Chaelus placed the bread into his mouth, holding it there until it washed amidst the sweet explosion of wine. He waited as it travelled down his senses.
“And what of the sleep that Al-Aaron suffers?” he asked. “You claim his fate will be his own. I don’t recall having any choice.”
“Perhaps,” the Mother replied. “Or perhaps, like the memory of Malius’ death, the memory of your choice has been lost as well. I have all too often found that our choices lie at the heart of most of our sins.”
“Is that what the Dragon’s Sleep is?” Chaelus asked. “Is it punishment for our sins?”
“No more or less so than for your father before.”
“Then it seems I know very little of him.”
“You know that before you were born, Ras Malius was one of the twelve Servian Lords. They took the title, Ras, upon themselves from the Evarun, along with the mantle of their rule. But it wasn’t the purpose for which they were intended. They were the first ones the Giver raised, and they were the ones the Giver left to show the way before he died. But they fell.
“When Malius married your mother, he broke away from the other Servian Lords. We thought that one of the Fallen Ones had been redeemed. And for a time your father, Malius, served our purpose with us, and protected us from the other Servian Lords. But with your mother’s death he resumed his fall. Her redemption of him was but for a moment. His exile of you was her final wish, to protect you, even from him. And perhaps from us as well.”
The Mother stood, her gaze still fixed upon the gentle flickering flames. “It was against my wishes that Al-Aaron came for you. But it would seem that what once was, has begun anew. Tell me, Chaelus, what is the greatest task of faith?”
“I wouldn’t presume to know,” he answered.
The Mother raised her stare to him. “Then perhaps indeed you are the wisest among us. Yet I believe it is obedience to what you cannot see. Patience is its greatest gift.”
“Patience?”
“Yes,” the Mother said. She looked upward. “They prepare for a war against an enemy they have never seen, yet one which already dwells in the darkest parts of their hearts. They’re restless and they’re afraid, and they’ve forgotten why they’re here.”
“Why are you here?”
The Mother turned to him. “We wait. We wait here to prepare the way for the Giver, but the binding of steel is a false symbol to the one who still suffers death. There is no armor that can protect one from the Dragon that already waits within. The Dragon’s own dark prophecy has been set in motion and it can’t be undone. The Dragon will suffer no will against it and not even the wisest amongst us will be spared. All that we know will be washed away. Only then will our great hope arise. Only then will the Giver return.”
Chaelus stood. “Then why do you speak words like ‘savior’ to me?”
“Like I said, there are many different kinds of death, and too many things have already been said in your name. Already, the silent voices, the whispers, they chatter. There is something about you that neither they, nor I, understand; something powerful, something dark. The blood of the Fallen flows within you. So too does the blood of the Evarun. It’s the blood of your mother, whom your father saved and eventually wed in defiance of the other Servian Lords.”
“My mother plays no part in your prophecy,” Chaelus said.
The Mother held his stare for a moment, then smiled. “You know that she does. The shadow over her past was its own warning. I know you remember it well. You knew it well on the day we first came for you.”
Chaelus remembered his mother’s voice, like crushed flowers, soft and worn, from beyond the shadows of the curtains where he’d hidden on the day the Mother had come to see his father.
“Don’t turn from me, Malius,” his mother had said. “You know this must be. He must be protected!”
“I will protect him,” his father had said. His father’s breath was silent and heavy. “I will protect him.
He’s my son.”
“He is our son. He is my son. This is why he must go. You know this.”
“They once spoke such things of you, my love, but you are still here. Have I not cared for you?”
Chaelus had strained to hear the words of his parents as the rap of staves echoed across the hall towards them. He remembered the whisper of Magus from the other side of the throne. He remembered the sound of his mother’s footsteps as she ran away.
Chaelus had parted the heavy curtains with care.
A woman with graying hair, flanked by two like men, had stood before his father. All were cloaked in black with the circle and the mark of the prostrate cross emblazoned upon their chests. Cloth-bound swords hung from their waists, even hers.
The Mother had been beautiful then, but already hard-faced from care. The two men held cautious eyes, those of Maedelous the narrowest. They didn’t kneel, only bowing their heads slightly towards his father.
Chaelus’ father either hadn’t noticed the infraction, or hadn’t cared.
The Mother had stepped forward of her companions. “It is good to see you, Malius.”
“Olivia,” Chaelus’ father’s voice had hovered then, it seemed, on the edge of sadness. “Why have you come?”
“You know our purpose here, Malius. Don’t pretend otherwise. We have honored your request so far. Now we’ve come to ask you to honor ours, and his mother’s as well.”
His father had listened, his face contorted, as Magus leaned over beside him. He then sat forward in his throne. “Is that why you bring these serpents with you, to better threaten me?”
“Mind your words, Malius. They are foolish and false. We know they aren’t yours. We know the forked tongue of the one who whispers to you.”
“Don’t be so sure. I remember very well the poisoned words of the one named Maedelous who stands beside you.”
The Mother softened. She stepped towards him, unafraid. “You’ve fallen, Malius. Your vows have long since been broken. Fulfill this one last promise while you still can.”
His father continued. “No. I won’t let you take my son.”
“He’s not yours to keep.”
“It is my blood that flows within his veins,” Malius spat.
“So too does another’s, and you cannot protect him from the fate this has brought upon him.”
Malius stood. “I already have. Now leave.”
Chaelus’ memory withdrew from the eyes of a boy and passed to the eyes of a younger man.
The bronze hilt of his father’s sword, Sundengal, shimmered in its scabbard beneath the light of the morning sun. It was powerful, just like his father who wielded it, just like he would be one day.
“Chaelus,” his father said. “Come to me.”
Chaelus lifted his eyes from the sword where it hung at his father’s side. He eased the small gray mare he rode up beside where his father sat tall upon his own black steed. His father didn’t turn to him but remained looking past him, to where the mountains fell away.
“This is our fate,” Malius said.
Beneath them, the Vicarus wove its wide course leagues away, a golden mirror shining along the base of the Kessel, to which the eastern plains beyond descended. The round white tower of his father’s House stood tall like a fist, keeping watch from the wooded hills above it.
“It’s what we are, what we have built upon everyone that has passed before us.”
“Who were they?”
“The foolish and the weak. Those who wouldn’t learn.”
“Will the Dragon one day return?” Chaelus asked.
His father smiled. “Only if we don’t remain to keep it at bay.”
His father turned his mount from the precipice, leading it back down the hill. “Come my son, perhaps tomorrow I will tell you more, but today your mother worries. She waits for us with Baelus below.”
The pleasant coolness of the morning had already passed. Clouds gathered above the plain. To the east, they descended into a wall of gray haze that shifted as it neared, growing beneath the hooves of a thousandfold.
Chaelus turned his mare and yelled out. “Father! Riders approach!”
His father had already disappeared.
The clarion call of his mother’s horn cut through the morning air.
The forest blurred past Chaelus until he found them.
His mother looked both strange and beautiful, leaning against the sage-like boulder along the hunting path down which they’d come. The arrow was deep, its crimson feathers worn and savage, the rich blue of his mother’s dress swollen dark around it.
Chaelus dropped the reins as he jumped down. He knelt, silent beside her, his father already cradling her within his arms.
Her lips trembled upon her pale face, the gentle forest shadows dancing upon it. “The horn.”
His father stroked her hair, his hands shaking. “We heard it.”
“The Khaalish. They’re back. Baelus is safe within the tower. But their scouts, they found me. I’d come to warn you. ”
“Chaelus saw them.” His father’s voice trembled. “We took flight to you even before you sounded the horn.”
“Is he with you? Is he safe?”
“He’s here.”
She sighed. “Promise me...” She fell weak as a choking cough overcame her.
Tears streamed down his father’s face. “Anything. I will do anything, my love.”
Her eyes grew fierce again as she continued. “Send him away, Malius. Send him far away from this place before the shadow which consumes it descends upon him.”
“I’m sorry, my love. I’ve done this to you. I shouldn’t have taken you away. You shouldn’t have to die. This should never have been for you.”
“It was my choice. This has always been my choice. All is at last as it should be. Now you must promise me.” His mother sighed again as she closed her eyes.
His father stiffened, choking back his tears. “Aalyanna, I will do everything you ask.”
The Mother’s voice dispelled his dream.
“You take the blood of them both with you to Magedos,” she said. “As to which your fate will choose, I cannot say.”
Chaelus wavered between the scented warmth of the chapel and the pull of the past which still held him in its grip.
“I’ve come to gain my kingdom back,” he said.
“So you say again,” the Mother said. “Your kingdom means nothing to me. Soon you will learn that your desires and your life are no longer your own. Perhaps you are who you do not yet claim to be. Perhaps you aren’t. Either way, you must understand that everything you know is no longer safe. Not even here.”
“You need not warn me of the deceptions of Maedelous and his kind.”
“It is not to the machinations of man that I speak. The Dragon which hunts you is far too clever to be so bold. No. It’s the very thing you depend upon the most – it’s of this that you must be wary.”
Chapter Eleven
Col Durath
The subtle glow of moon and stars broke the ruined stone arch above him. The whispers of the Synod had passed, even those that followed him as he’d left through the cloister around the open hall.
Chaelus leaned out over the fluted and pitted stone window sill. The craftsmen of the Evarun may have held no equal, but even their skill couldn’t prevent the loss that time, or prophecy, could bring. The forest floor descended amidst the crumble of the ruined tower beneath him.
It was with a whisper that this had began. It would be with a whisper that it would end. Blood on fallen snow and a whisper in the dark. The name and memory of his father ran deep amongst the Servian Knights, but it was a memory stricken by legend and myth. It was a memory bereft of anything he knew.
What is the best way to tell a lie? To hide it in truth. So Malius, his father, had done to him.
The stares of three in particular had followed him after the Synod: Maedelous, the Goarnii, Al-Hoanar, and another who stood with them, one he had not expected to see
here, one from his life before; Cullin, Roan Lord of the House of Soloth.
Chaelus’ old brother at arms and childhood friend had not retreated from his disbelieving stare, nor from the poisoned company of Maedelous. Neither had the question retreated from Chaelus as to why Cullin was here. The Roan Lords had long ago lost any charity for the machinations or schemes of the Servian Order. Yet here was one he had once thought was his brother, here, just like he was.
He exhaled and climbed out through the broken window, lowering himself to the tumbled slope of broken stones. The vestige of a path wrapped around the slope of the hill beneath it, leading back to the ruined stairs of the Synod. To his right, the secret valley descended into mist, to where hearth fires of the Servian Knights smoldered in the distance.
