He had never had an attack come upon him as swiftly. He dimly heard Iaculous curse, and the dreadful exhaustion, which had matched his every step, dissipated. There was a sudden respite as Iaculous stood over him with glowing hands. He reached out for the healer, and the younger man took his hands tightly.
“It is precarious to heal any natural affliction. It is against the natural way of things,” Iaculous warned.
Denan nodded as a sliver of air entered his straining lungs. He saw the effort of the healer as a bead of sweat dripped down his forehead. His hands burned at the touch, and he released him, but the healing continued, and Denan recovered his ability to breathe.
“Rest now,” Iaculous whispered, and a looming tiredness fell upon Denan like a wave, and he closed his eyes.
Denan awoke to the whistling of the wind and a cool breeze upon his face. Night had fallen, and he was stretched out upon a bedding of blankets. He looked up through the trees, to the stars above and counted their positioning to the time of night. A solitary fire was burning behind a circle of stones, and some meat was cooking across a spit. Denan thought it strange to make camp so close to their destination.
Iaculous sat cross-legged beside him. His face was a deep furrow of concentration, with tightly shut eyes as though in a terrible dream. Denan stared at him for a time, though for how long he couldn’t say.
Then he caught sight of something eerie at the corner of his eye, and even though he didn’t understand, it sent a chill down his spine. There was a thin veil of black energy covering the entire young man’s body, subtle and hidden, like a fine concealing enchantment. It was not settled and still, like the surface of a quiet lake. Instead, it was a wandering brook, moving in waves of pulsing, bubbling energy.
Denan watched from the corner of his eye in silence, wary of breaking the younger man’s concentration. Eventually, Iaculous whispered a few words aloud, yet no sound came from his broken lips, and Denan dared to speak.
“Iaculous.”
The healer immediately woke from his trance and looked around groggily. His face was pale as though terrified, but after a breath, he composed himself.
“It is good to see you have recovered well enough,” he said, staring disapprovingly at Denan as only a successful healer could ever do. Denan had received that same stare many a time after Eralorien had tended to his wounds post-skirmish, and Bereziel before him, though he gazed upon wounds with unrestrained mirth, as if denying death another life was a game of chance and he a gloating master.
“Thank you, apprentice,” Denan said, bowing, and he discovered his chest felt far healthier than before: healthier, yet not healthy. Still, he felt better than he had in an age. All the fear from before had left him, replaced with a perfect calm. He felt as though everything would be fine, as though a deity had whispered to him in slumber, reassuring him that everything could return to the way it was.
“Everything can be right again,” Iaculous said.
Denan recoiled in astonishment. Had the youth been in his thoughts? Was he capable of such a gift?
Iaculous laughed strangely. “I’m not in your thoughts, Denan, but there are moments when I understand the thoughts of others. It is a simple use of weaving and nothing more. Your mind is your own.”
Denan noticed the dark veneer had shimmered its last and vanished. He wondered if there were any weaver powerful enough to turn the passing of time on its head when great and terrible things had befallen the world. So much was unknown to him.
“I think I am more than an apprentice as there are only two of us.” It may have sounded as a jest, but he offered no smile.
“Does the shield still hold the beasts at bay … weaver?”
The title pleased the young man.
“They will be no further trouble,” he said, displaying his fingers, glowing faintly. “The more I weave, the stronger I become. To hold the shield for a day and a night is hardly a test of my ability anymore.”
“How strong are you now?”
“I’m stronger now than when Mallum tore us apart. But he will have become stronger too. A living soul to call upon is tenfold what any weaver in this world could be. Even Bereziel. Even me,” he said. The stones glowed at his chest, and he wrapped his cloak around him to block the cold.
“You fool yourself, apprentice. A week ago, you could barely heal a broken bone,” Denan countered.
“I am a master now. Call me a master.”
“You are a child, blinded by grief as much as me. Arrogance will lead us to further misery!” Denan shouted.
“I can kill him. I can burn him away to a thurken charred ruin if I want to!”
Denan saw the hurt in his face. “If you were so strong, Cherrie would still be alive.” The child went pale at her mention. “My heart wouldn’t be broken.”
Iaculous sniffed, shrugged, and his fingers pulsed. Denan felt compelled to apologise for insulting the child, not because the young man had enchanted him, but for speaking the cruel truth so harshly. If truth be told, he had improved enough in the last few days. Not enough to save them from the horrors, but enough to bring fight to their quarry with the help of an entire battalion at their hands.
“I only need your father’s help to make things easier,” Iaculous muttered weakly.
“I’m sorry, Iaculous. I despaired for all that has happened,” he offered.
Iaculous stared into the growing night with unblinking eyes. When he spoke, after a time, his voice was thoughtful, as though he addressed himself alone and not his companion.
“Every weaver has a limit to the power they can wield, but I see no boundary in what I can achieve,” he said, hugging his cloak tightly against himself. Denan listened as though he were listening to an old storyteller in a tavern. “I have surpassed what Eralorien spent an entire lifetime trying to be, and I have done it with ease,” he said to the darkness. “I can be greater than Mallum. I need to do what I must.”
Denan felt the young man’s own despair. And why wouldn’t he despair? The Hounds were defeated, and Heygar’s final task seemed insurmountable.
“I will do what I must,” Iaculous repeated, and his fingers blazed blue for a moment before returning to normal.
“What must you do?” Denan asked. His words startled the young weaver as though caught in the bedroom with industrious thoughts and exploring fingers. As though he had forgotten Denan was even there.
“I must save them from the beast that’s watching us in the darkness. I must save all our comrades lost on this ill-fated crusade. Only then, when we are seven again, will I kill Mallum.”
40
Homecoming
It was dreary, cold, and a dreadful last day marching back home. After midnight, the first few raindrops sizzled upon their fire until it died. Though Denan thought about making a shelter, an unusual desire to reach his home compelled him to walk through the night. It was a strange to have no fear of the beasts despite the risk of a few roaming packs, but Iaculous didn’t seem to worry, so neither did he.
The young weaver had been right about his increased ability. The light above their heads was twice that of the brightness which had held their ambushers at bay, and he held it now effortlessly. Denan suspected the young man was still upset, as he ignored any attempts at broaching conversation. The child walked as if he were soulless, always forward, matching Denan’s steps, weaving a delicate enchantment in his fingers as he did.
Eventually, Denan ceased attempting conversation, instead focusing on what he would say to his father. His father had loved him, just never enough to show it and certainly not at the end. Perhaps their distance apart might have warmed the old cur’s heart. Perhaps Denan might have the words this time to sway his thinking. Perhaps it would be different this time.
The last hours had been the harshest. Denan had expected to see the familiar signs of civilisation like beaten paths and tilled fields, but all they found was sparseness. He had hoped to make it home by noon, but as evening approached, they str
uggled through barren farms of mulch and weeds and unforgiving paths of grey briar, grown swift by abandonment. This was the richest, most fertile region of Venistra, and it had tasted blight.
This time, it was Denan who fell unusually silent. His feet became little more than clumps of mud. Each step became more laboured than the last, with the sun fading behind their backs. Then they reached the region of the Hundred Houses, and with it, the confirmation that all was lost.
To the peasants, it was a walled-off stronghold, imposing and menacing, standing against the relative green of the surrounding countryside. Built by their long-forgotten forefathers in sturdy ash stone, it would last a millennium. Even though it only housed one family, it had a dozen pavilions and twice as many domes of silvery grey in its impressive construction. All of these parts stood beneath the shadow of the largest structure of them all—the grand throne room.
This stronghold was not alone, for behind the outer wall were Hundred houses. All of them were three stories in height and roofed in yellow thatch. All of them were meticulously painted in the same whitewash, with walls of sturdy brick, black timber frontage, and matching sills on all sides. All of them housed the royal gentry of Venistra.
The only allowance for individuality were the doorways, which they could paint any chosen colour as was a royal’s right. Denan could have taken any house when he had come of age and left his wing in the palace. He would have insisted on a bright, garish green door to irritate most neighbouring relatives and impressive wealthy merchants, who favoured crystal silver or amber gold.
To the lords of the region, it was the “Royal Court of Nobility”. To Denan, it had been his home. To something else, it had become a brutal hunting ground.
The first tracks had appeared east of the eternal caves, and shivers had run up Denan’s spine as he dug his fingers into the soft mud to examine the tracks. They were old, a foot in depth, double as wide across, and notably shaped in a clawed hoof. He knew them well. Further on, they had discovered clusters of trees crushed underfoot, where the beast had forgone its careful meander through the land in favour of a terrifying charge at the smell of human in the wind.
He recognised the beast as the crustacuus. However, he had never come upon tracks as large as these. It was rare for these monsters to rouse themselves from the tunnels of the deep, but it wasn’t unknown for starvation to send them out into the ocean to attack a barge or, worse, set themselves upon an unfortunate little village every decade or two. Were they to come inland towards any under the royal’s watch, just like the Venandi, it was a duty to put the beast down or at least send it fleeing and take the credit for it.
He had only seen one great hunt in his lifetime, but his master of skills had not wasted the opportunity to train the then nine-year-old Denan in the finer arts of tracking them. It wasn’t difficult; they just had to look for destruction everywhere they went. Looking back, he didn’t think his master’s old mind was entirely stable. He remembered watching an entire battalion of his father’s soldiers hunt down and attack the beast in the wide-open region of the wetlands, under the watchful eye and whispered instruction of his old master. The vision of the beast never left him.
“Watch how its flailing tail can swing and tear a soldier from neck to groin as though it were fruit upon a stalk,” his master had said. He licked his lips and pointed at the magnificent, spinning beast as it struggled under the hail of arrows and spears.
Denan had watched from the cover of a few bushes and trees as the hunters attempted to break through its carapace of scaled armour. “It's vicious and terrifying.”
“Look there. What did I say?” his master said. The beast flayed an unfortunate hunter across the front of the body with one flanking tail strike in front of Denan’s disbelieving eyes.
“I can hear screaming.”
“See how he sliced through the armour and skin as though it were a maid preparing a succulent fillet of rodenerack?” his master had said casually. He behaved as though they sat in a beautiful meadow of green on a bright summer day, rather than learning of murderous things in a treacherous downpour of hail.
“I think it was a woman.”
“I wouldn’t mind a bit of rat.”
“I will be sick.”
Denan’s stomach had turned as the dying person struggled to cry without the use of a tongue or even a face. He remembered she managed an entire step forward towards one of her comrades before crumpling in a mush of blood, bone, blonde hair, and entrails.
“Yes, I think you are right. I’m quite sure that was Vala from down the coast. Such a nice young girl. I instructed her for a time, but I could only accept duck eggs as payment for so long. I hadn’t seen her in, oh, at least a year. I think she had two children. Such a shame,” the master muttered.
Denan had stared as the beast killed a few more hunters with its four massive claws. He couldn’t remember the names of the other hunters who had perished, only that the four claws moved independently of each other. It was an awe-inspiring sight as the beast reared and fought for its life and its next meal.
If the source had mixed an arachnid with a sea scarab and allowed it to grow for a thousand years, the crustacuus would be that beast. The only advantage hunters had was that for all of its impressive bulk, its mind was that of a limbless serpent. But great, lumbering brutes like this needed little intelligence to trample and stab those that threatened it. It had taken a hundred hunters a dozen hours to pierce all three hearts at a cost of nearly twenty brave but slightly careless souls.
“The right handful of warriors with the right weapons could have easily slain that creature without the loss of life,” his master had said, tapping the large green sword at Denan’s waist. He had been correct. “But if all is lost, take its eyes and hope it stumbles upon a pack of fevered Venandi.” This, too, had been sage advice.
They had walked home that night, and Denan had thought for too long on the horrors. He hadn’t eaten more than a couple bites of his meal, so his master had eaten his smoked fillet of rat for him.
The two Hounds followed the tracks and those of its hunters until they found themselves atop the hanging cliffs. The cliffs had always been a fine place to bring a young damsel to charm. They were not too steep, just a minor climb, with a stunning view over the stronghold and the surrounding forests at its pinnacle.
From here, they saw where the great hunt had met the beast in battle and failed miserably. The monster had returned the violence tenfold upon the palace and the royals within. It must have been terrifying to see the soldiers fall under its might, the ramparts tumbling down, and the monster tearing itself an entrance and laying waste to all trapped within. Half the wall lay in great mounds of brick and ruin a half-mile across. Many of the mansions within were crushed to mounds of brick and the dead.
Denan had seen prettier battlefields. Through teared eyes and the fading call of nightfall, he saw the outline of the behemoth and its slumber between the last two remaining turrets of his home. Its head rested somewhere in the throne room, where his father had once presided. Its swishing tail flailed delicately in the air as it slumbered and knocked down anything foolish enough to be at its height as it waved back and forth.
As the tracks suggested, the beast was far larger than anything ever seen before. Around the massive creature lay many dead. Three hundred or more. Men, women, children. All royal, and all dead. All of them were entrapped behind the walls without weapons. Some were sucked dry, leaving only skin and bone behind, while others were mushed to a sticky pulp.
Many more still lay where they died, turning to a sickening rot after a week or two out in the sun. Denan wondered if the monster would still feed upon their rancid meat. Probably, the crustacuus would only stay here until it consumed all nourishment.
“Well, so much for controlling your father’s army,” Iaculous said.
Denan once more wept openly for all he had lost. Pitiful and wretched, his weakness disgusted him. He saw the disgust in Iaculous’
s eyes, but he couldn’t help himself. A week ago, he had the world at his feet and a legacy in front of him. Now he had nothing at all. All lost, all gone. It wasn’t fair. None of this was. How could a beast turn upon a place in such a way and cause such destruction?
“I’m sorry, Father.”
“Mallum must have willed that beast to attack in such a way. Another brutal move by that thurken cur,” Iaculous growled. His eyes focused upon the sleeping beast, though he looked shaken at the power showed in controlling such a creature.
Maybe it was his own use of the weaving upon his body, but in that moment, Denan caught sight of a few strands of grey in the young man’s hair return to their original colour. He didn’t know why he thought this unusual. Then, without warning, something broke in his mind, like a vase containing a man’s will. Like an enchantment tested beyond its own strength and forced to step aside in the way of vengeance. Any fear he had felt before, disappeared in hatred. All he could see in his mind was the young face of Mallum. Cheerful. Cruel, young, and beautiful, like Iaculous, but drenched in immorality.
“He … will … pay,” Denan hissed.
Suddenly, he felt as though he had emerged from a lifetime beneath the waves of an unforgiving ocean. His mind spun, and a searing pain tore through it. It felt good, though he couldn’t understand why. He drew his sword, and passion overcame his rationale. He felt the crushing absence of calmness from his mindless trek, but more than that, he felt like Denan of the Green. He felt like Denan of the Hounds.
He leapt from the cliff to a steep slope below, with the screams of Iaculous’s protests in his ear. He landed smoothly as he had done a thousand times before as a child and ran towards the fallen house of his family. Quicker and quicker he ran, with gravity as his ally and hatred as his engine. He knew he would die, and though Iaculous’s cries gave way to compelling thoughts of retreat, his will was stronger than it had been for quite a time.
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