by Tom Barczak
“I know her,” Michalas said. “I played with her once. Her mother was in Ras Dumas’ court. Her name is Sarah.”
“Take her in my cloak,” Chaelus pleaded.
Michalas nodded, this time with only a child’s eyes.
The shuffle of Al-Aaron’s boots moved past them.
Al-Aaron stood beyond the empty cenotaph, breathless and pale, watching from the wavering edge of darkness around them, light rippling over him from the souls of those remaining in the cenotaphs. His blackened arm hung from him, all but lost to the Dragon’s taint; its shadow within him no longer the dim ghost it had been but greater perhaps even than that of the girl just raised. Perhaps even greater than Chaelus’ own.
Chaelus smiled at Al-Aaron, his throat thick with a sudden and impotent grief. He did not need the Knowing. The spirit of the Giver could tell him nothing he didn’t already understand. He could do nothing. Al-Aaron smiled back, heedless at least for the moment to his own suffering, heedless at least for the moment, of the Dragon’s call which would soon come to claim him.
***
Al-Aaron smiled despite the chill settling over him. His feet at last stayed firm beneath him, not unlike the promise of prophecy.
Born of cradle, Born of grave.
Michalas bundled the child close to him within the warmth of Chaelus’ woolen cloak. Chaelus knelt beside them, passing his hand across her naked brow. Al-Mariam stood beside them both, the point of her gossamer blade thrust out into the darkness.
One to teach and One to save.
Al-Thinneas crouched low beside a cenotaph. Al-Hoanar stood watch near him. Al-Thinneas stretched his arms beneath the water and lifted an older man, the black water and its poison still clinging to him. His glow fell away, his spirit returned. The old man sputtered and gasped, expelling the fetid water. Cradling him within his arms, Al-Thinneas covered him.
He looked up at Al-Aaron.
Al-Aaron smiled again. It was done. Whether it was two, or whether it was one, the Giver had returned. His promise to Malius had been fulfilled. Chaelus had been returned to fulfill his destiny.
A baleful moan sounded.
Chaelus stood, Sundengal within his hand, the soul lights of the dying captured within it.
“This is all we can do,” Al-Thinneas said. He stared towards Chaelus and to Michalas. “It’s time to go.”
“No,” Chaelus said.
The cry faded. From the silence, from the impenetrable darkness around them, came footsteps sounding like the knocking of a distant tomb. Al-Aaron sagged, a sudden weight overcoming him. The burning of his fever washed over him like the breath of a noonday sun.
Malius stood before him. He was no ghost; not this time. Chaelus and the others all turned at the sight of him. Yet Malius didn’t turn towards them, only to him.
“You’ve done well, my child.”
Al-Aaron’s reply came out like a choked whisper. “You’re not a ghost.”
Malius pulled back the depth of his hood. The mark of the Dragon, like that of Chaelus, was inscribed in sepia upon his brow. Malius’ pale skin glowed like the doomed lights of the cenotaphs. He was his own light within the darkness.
“Did you think I would reveal my spirit to you,” Malius said, “and not come to you in the fullness of my flesh? I thought you were of better faith.”
The pulse of Al-Aaron’s blood pounded with his breath. The hesitation of doubt pulled at him. The ghost of Malius had told him to return his son. He had told him to return his son to him.
“I didn’t know,” Al-Aaron said. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“Where else did you expect to find me, if not my Master’s home?”
“No,” Al-Aaron whimpered.
“Yes,” Malius smiled. His eyes narrowed. “But you must be weary, child.”
“Yes,” Al-Aaron said.
And he was. In the pallid light of Malius’ flesh, the one who’d deceptively become his Teacher, and in the dimming soul lights of the suffering encircling him, his own pain, his own loss, the loss he had caused, all seemed like a ghost that he could scarcely remember. The lifeless weight of his blackened arm pulled against him.
Al-Aaron turned to the sound of Chaelus running towards him.
Al-Aaron’s legs gave way beneath him.
Malius reached out to him. The light of his eyes had passed to dark wells just like the cenotaphs around him.
“Then come to me, and I will give you rest.”
Chapter Nineteen
Offerings
Al-Aaron crumpled to his knees.
Magus, the Dragon, backed away. From beneath his robes he held a long sword, slung low with the drape of blood-stained gossamer.
“No!” Chaelus screamed.
He screamed at Magus. He screamed at the Dragon. He screamed at the Giver already inside him, and to the Angels who had claimed him, awash in the unbearable fact that, even with all the power they had given him, he could do nothing to stop this. He screamed at himself for not having stopped it. He screamed until what had been the gentle breath of the Giver surged like acrid fire through his fingertips.
Magus, the Dragon, turned to him. The child’s smile upon his silver mask burned in the light from the cenotaphs.
“I’m done with him,” Magus said. “But you can still save him. Or leave him to die here and pursue the vengeance you seek.”
The Dragon held out its hand. From it, its shadow poured, greater than the one surrounding them, blotting out the soul lights of the fallen.
The harsh grating of steel resounded within it. The whispering voice of Magus passed away beyond, replaced by the bitter and grating call of Remnants. At the edge of the shadow empty eyes stared back from beyond chainmail veils, behind a wall of blackened shields, blackened swords thrust out between them.
***
Al-Mariam’s heart beat like a war drum. The rest of her body fell numb to the sight before her: An army of spirits waiting at the edge of the shadow surrounding them.
The spirits’ breath hung like a black vapor in tendrils about them. Armored veils hid all but the abyss of their eyes. Beneath them, their acrid laughter shrilled out amidst the grinding clatter of their teeth. Yet it wasn’t laughter. No; it was a desperate sound, one of anticipation, the kind that a starving cur utters for carrion.
Al-Mariam’s fingers warmed around the hilt of her blade. The beat of her heart pulsed through them.
White light seared her vision.
Chaelus stood with his arms outstretched, a ball of white fire once more shrouding him like a funeral pyre in the night, engulfing the horde of spirits before him.
The spirits cried out as the conflagration consumed them, a whispering hiss of wind swirling about them, like the passing of water over coals. The barren trace of their remains billowed in the path that Chaelus cut through them.
Then his tempest diminished. Chaelus fell to his knees beside the crumpled form of Al-Aaron.
Michalas watched him from where he cradled the heads of both the man and the little girl. Their bare skin still held a faint glow. The white crown upon Michalas’ head burned, his eyes still the wells of a stranger.
Al-Mariam stepped before him, between him and the wall of demons that remained.
Al-Thinneas ran towards Chaelus.
Al-Mariam heard Al-Hoanar draw next to her. A tremble held the edge of her voice. “We will die here.”
Al-Hoanar replied, his voice urgent, but plain. “At least we don’t need to fear it.”
Summoned from the storm they had left, swirling winds blew along the edge of the darkness, taking up the remains of the wasted horde.
The winds billowed and swelled, spiraling at last into twin columns in the gap where the fires of Chaelus and the Giver had just passed. Two creatures bearing iron maces and armored in scales of plate, strode forth from them.
The winds descended to a whisper.
The cackle of the demons resumed.
The two were each robed differently. T
he left was tattered and torn. The other adorned with filigree and precious stones. They bore the eyes of nothing in the gap of their linen-bound heads and faces. A mockery of the crown borne by Chaelus and her brother was threaded with bits of broken steel upon their brows.
Beside her, Michalas stiffened. His hand passed to the scars upon his crown.
The Ragged One spoke first. “We have him at last.”
“Yes, we do,” the Jeweled One replied. “We have them both.”
“The Master will take the one.”
“Whilst we will take the other.”
Al-Mariam struggled to find her voice. “You will not touch him.”
“Oh but we will,” the Ragged One said. “We are the Dragon’s Hands.”
“And you will know our name by your suffering,” the Jeweled One said.
“Not on this day!” Al-Hoanar said.
He leapt forward, his gossamer blade whirling down in a blur. Yet faster still was the mace of the Jeweled One as it came up, catching the Knight’s bound blade.
Al-Hoanar quickly turned his wrist, bringing the stout spike at the spigot’s end around. He buried it into the Jeweled One’s shoulder.
The Jeweled One stiffened in shock, but didn’t cry out.
The low mace of the Ragged One came unseen against Al-Hoanar’s left side, where the Goarni could bear no shield to protect himself. Al-Hoanar cried out over a gurgling crack. He flew backwards and landed in silence.
“Yes,” the Ragged One said.
“On this day indeed,” the Jeweled One said.
Al-Mariam screamed. She threw Aela’s edge into a raking cut across the both of them. It broke across the Ragged One, battering its mace back. Her blade was stopped dead still by the mace of the Jeweled One.
Al-Mariam’s arm exploded with pain but above it, Aela’s steel held its own, the tender wrap of gentle white cloth flowing like water across its length, glowing of its own accord just like the extinguished soul lights from the cenotaphs.
The black, soulless eyes of the Jeweled One held Al-Mariam in their grasp. They were not the eyes of a stranger, they had held her before. The loss within them was the same loss that had taken her in its embrace for too long now. It stared back at her, and at the vestal light of her blade which burned before it, the wrappings of its face lit by its own glow.
The scars on Al-Mariam’s palms burned. She breathed. She breathed until the weight of the shadow fell away and the light of the Rua swelled within her, passing down the length of her blade. She forced the blade down with it. The black haft of the Dragon’s Hand yielded until it gave way. Her gossamer blade plunged deep through steel and shadow. The scream of the Jeweled One deafened her ears. A miasma of spirit and air billowed against her.
Al-Mariam stumbled back. She pulled her blade away and brought it back in a clumsy swing between her and the other Hand.
She felt before she saw the hammer blow of its mace come down. She raised her blade against it. Her sword arm, already weary from the effort, crumpled like a flower beneath it. Its weight tumbled over her, forcing her down.
The comforting warmth of tears flowed over Al-Mariam’s cheeks. Her arm trembled, but no less so than the rest of her as she held it in mock defense above her. It was a useless gesture but no less important, as Al-Mariam waited beneath the ebon will of her attacker.
Michalas stood up beside her. Her heart failed as it leapt from her. He seemed so unafraid, but he had faced them before and lived. He would do so again. Perhaps it had been enough then, perhaps she had purchased at least another moment that he might live.
The ringing of a skipping stone broke out across the water of the canal. From within the archway of the passage through which they had come drew the subtle creak of sinew and the acrid smell of unwashed flesh.
***
Al-Aaron’s eyes were open. His skin was wet, ghostlike, laced with black fingers. Spasms shook him. All too sparing quivers of breath escaped him. Al-Thinneas held his hand tight against the place where the Dragon’s sword had pierced him.
Chaelus held out his own hand but the pulse of the Giver that had flowed through him was like a dying ember. Its voice was reluctant, but it was enough, surely, to do what must be done. Its halo danced around his fingers. He reached for Al-Aaron’s brow and to the gap of the wound piercing his side.
Al-Thinneas gripped his arm. His hand was covered in Al-Aaron’s blood. “You mustn’t do this.”
Chaelus felt his own blood burn beneath his eyes. They boiled as he flashed them at Al-Thinneas. Chaelus held them back until the fire of the Giver and of his own conflagration passed. “I will not let him die!”
Al-Thinneas saw the struggle within him, but he did not waver or diminish against it. “It’s not your choice to make.”
“None of this was my choice to make. It was never his. Yet still the spirit of the Giver possesses me. Still another child has come to this.” Chaelus saw, for a moment, the face of Baelus beneath him, his blood scattered upon the snow. He saw the face of madness in his father, the one who had led Baelus to it. “It’s the only way I can save him.”
“Al-Aaron once thought the same of you,” Al-Thinneas said. “It’s what brought his fall upon him.”
The numbing emptiness of the Giver’s wake filled Chaelus. “And because of that you would let him die?”
“I cannot claim to know the Giver as you do, but neither does the dogma of man clutter my faith. I beg you to honor the sacrifice the Younger has made for you. Others can say what they want, and whatever the sin of pride the Younger may have held, he did not save you for himself. He did not even save you for either the Order or your kingdom, whichever folly you would choose. He saved you for something greater.”
Al-Thinneas removed his hand from Chaelus and thrust it out toward the soul lights that had returned around them. The lights of the cenotaphs held a fainter glow, as if their breath had been taken from them.
“He saved you for them,” Al-Thinneas said. “Chaelus, he saved you so that they might live. Let the Rua have its work with Al-Aaron. Your work is another.”
Al-Aaron’s breaths drew sharp and short, a pleading murmur between them.
“Tell me then, how do I save them all?”
Al-Thinneas stood. The gossamer already hung brittle and blackened from his Phennite blade, marked so from his passage here. “Your path lies where it always has, alone in the heart of darkness.”
It was near a pool centered beneath a shadowed copse that the whispering shadow had first come to him, beside the cenotaph where Chaelus had first heard the trepid warning of Al-Aaron. Chaelus had come to silence a whisper to win his kingdom back. Yet Al-Aaron had been there before, beneath the spiritual ruin of Chaelus’ own house.
“I know where the Dragon dwells.”
“Then finish what you came to do, and strike down the Dragon that succors their suffering.” Al-Thinneas nodded and held his stare. “I promise upon my life they will be led safely from here.”
Chaelus nodded back to him. The voices of prophecy and the often-lost battles of faith passed through the soul of Al-Thinneas. They passed in ways that Chaelus understood. Not so from the much quoted words of the spirit that possessed him, but from his own battles, those both won and lost, and bound by the unfinished sacrifice that they both knew waited ahead for each of them. Chaelus reached out and touched Al-Thinneas’ face.
They stood, Al-Thinneas holding Al-Aaron limp within his arms. He nodded once to Chaelus and then he turned away, as the billowing darkness returned.
Amidst the dying lights of the cenotaphs, those that still remained, dwelt another shadow. Chaelus walked towards it.
The press of the Dragon’s shadow engulfed him, taking away his very breath. Its darkness was complete but it was only the shadow of the reckoning he knew he had yet to behold.
It was loneliness. It was the loneliness that for men like Al-Thinneas was born of faith, and for him was born of prophecy. Against the silence of its bower, Chaelus listened t
o the grating whisper of the Dragon’s minions. It felt like coarse sand against his skin.
At the heart of darkness, the dead water of the cenotaph was darker still.
Chaelus stepped into it. It held him like chains. The cold press of its shadows turned against him.
The dark water faded, illuminated from within by a cold, pale gray light. Gray sands swirled beneath it.
