by Megan Bannen
“You can’t fight tonight. You can barely move.”
“If the telleg come for us, I’ll have to fight whether I’m ready or not. If we start walking now, we can at least get a little closer to Hedenskia before the sun sets.”
“Then let me carry the swords. Let me fight.”
He regards me, his eyes bright with fever, before he takes the Sword of Mercy from its scabbard, gritting his teeth as he holds it out to me. I take the weapon from his hand, the same sword I used to cut the head off the telleg that wounded Tavik. It isn’t as heavy as it looks, but even the extra two pounds in my grasp add an awkward heft to my arm I’m not used to.
“Show me what you’ve got,” Tavik says.
I step back and swing the blade in the air, then jab, then swing again. One corner of his mouth ticks up as he shakes his head. “Your swordsmanship leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s better than what I’ve got right now. Keep it. Consider it a wedding gift.”
Just stringing together that many words winds him. He takes off the scabbard and hands it to me, and we walk side by side, each of us armed with one sword as we follow the Fev northward.
For the next few hours, Tavik moves like it’s the only thing he can do, to put one foot in front of the other without falling over. I try to stop him only once. I get as far as “Are you all—” when he cuts me off.
“Don’t.”
He staggers. He stumbles. His breath goes in and out, a series of gasps and starts and grunts. But he doesn’t fall.
Until he does.
I don’t know what time it is—after midnight but long before dawn—when he trips. I try to catch him, but I’m too slow, and he crashes to the ground. I pull his arm over my shoulders and try to heave him to his feet again, but I’m too weak, and he slips out of my grasp.
“I’m sorry!” I cry, as if that could help him in the slightest. The wound is seeping dark blood through his coat, black in the night.
“Don’t heal me.” His breath rattles in his lungs. “You promised.”
“Don’t leave me!” I beg him. It’s not the fear of being alone. It’s the grief of losing him already snaking its way through my blood, feeding my heart with sorrow even before he’s gone.
His lips barely move. “Don’t.”
“Tavik!”
He doesn’t answer. His eyes lose focus.
“Please!” I press my hands over his fluttering heart.
His breath ceases.
His heart stops beating under my palms.
And I break my promise.
I break it with the ease of snapping a brittle twig in my hands.
I cast aside all that divides me from the life within, and I let Her fill my veins with Her light and fire. My breast thrusts toward heaven. I throw my head back as my mouth yawns wide, releasing a primal song from my throat.
There is movement in the trees, my light drawing the telleg to us like a fire calls to moths in the night. I could not tear my rigid arms away from Tavik’s soul even if I wanted to.
Which I don’t.
My muscles clench hard, forcing my life out of my body and into his in wave after painful, ecstatic wave, like the inevitable pulsing of a heart.
There is light.
So much light.
And then there is nothing.
Forty-Four
He falls into the water, drops into it like a stone.
Less than a stone.
A pebble.
A nothing.
He hangs in the water, suspended in the dark silence, until the thin gray light comes from below. And the telleg. The telleg come for him, mute and terrifying, there in the well with him, just as he knew they would be.
But he is not alone. She won’t let him be alone in this.
His Mother swims between the monsters, and he reaches for Her, longing to be held when the object She carries is cold and hard and sharp.
He doesn’t want this. He sinks further into the murk.
You must stand and fight. She closes his hand around the hilt. I chose you for a reason, and this is it.
The boy shakes his head in disbelief, sending tendrils of his hair floating in the water around him.
Every moment counts now, and you know it.
He looks at her with eyes the same green as his Mother’s. She draws him into Her arms, where he is safe and warm. The monsters swim around them, but She keeps them away.
For now.
She rests her cheek against his curls and whispers the truth from which he can no longer hide.
I did not make you to kill men, my Sword. You were made to kill monsters.
When She pulls away and looks at him once more, he is no longer a child. She takes his chin in her fingertips and tilts his head, making him look into the light at the heart of Her being.
Be my Sword.
Forty-Five
“Father of death!”
The voice comes from the well shaft, faint and echoing as it reaches my ears. My body rolls, but I don’t fall into the water. I land on soft earth.
I hear inhuman hissing and the startled, guttural cry of a man. Steel whistles through the air over my head. There is the slick sound of a blade cutting through flesh and rags.
“Gelya!”
I know this voice. I recognize the familiar touch of fingertips on my face.
“Open your eyes!”
I didn’t know they were shut. When I open them, Tavik’s face blurs before me.
Tavik.
I would say his name if I could.
A dry sob of relief comes hurtling out of his mouth. He takes my icy, limp hand and holds it to his warm cheek. “Why did you do it? You promised me! You promised!”
A slithering in the trees tugs at his attention. He snatches the Sword of Mercy from my scabbard and thrusts it into a telleg, slicing into its waist, cutting it all the way to its strange, rubbery spine. As he leaps to his feet, he yanks out the blade and thrusts it into another telleg bearing down on us.
The world comes into sharper focus, and all I can do is watch as a third monster attacks Tavik from behind. He releases his grip on the hilt of the sword to grab the third monster’s head, slamming it down, forcing its neck onto the blade that’s still jutting out of the other telleg’s chest. He hurls the severed head at yet another telleg as it barrels in for the attack, and it flies backward, smashing into the tree behind it, and Tavik follows closely, drawing the blade from the scabbard at his back and plunging it deep into the creature’s hideous body. He ducks in time to dodge the knifelike swipe of one more telleg’s hand at his back before twisting at the waist and stabbing it clean through. Then he rips both weapons out of the monstrous corpses, and he stands there, panting, surveying the carnage.
I did not make you to kill men, my Sword. You were made to kill monsters.
The Sword is not a literal weapon.
It’s Tavik, the Hand of the Father, reaching for me even as he holds back the things that would harm me.
I can see the exact moment he understands this as he stands above me, surrounded by the bodies of the five telleg he just slew.
“Um, all right,” he says aloud, his voice strained and high-pitched, before looking down at me. “Blink twice if you can hear me.”
I try, but my body and my mind are not yet in the same place.
“Death. Okay.” He scans the perimeter as he takes the scabbard off my back, laying me down gently before he straps it onto himself. He’s still scanning the trees for telleg as he thinks out loud. “So to review the bidding: You brought me back from the brink of death, and you probably put on a giant light show in the process, which means every telleg in a five-mile radius is heading this way to kill us right now. Our current position is open on all sides except for the river at our backs. I can’t swim, and you are out of commission. Also, I’m going to be very blunt here and admit that I’m terrified, and I don’t want to fight these things unless I absolutely have to, so . . . I’m going to get us to better ground. Yeah. That’s what I’m going
to do.”
He picks me up like a baby and carries me through the forest, looking for a better position to defend while trying to make sure he doesn’t whack my head into a tree trunk.
“Let’s look on the bright side,” he chirps. “We’re both alive, and I’m the Sword, which—no offense—is so much more badass than being the Vessel. I’ll be sure to rub that in when you wake up, so you can roll your eyes at me and give me that adorable Gelya scowl. Deal?”
I think I’d prefer to hug him than scowl at him, but since I can’t do either, he gets no answer from me.
“Just please come back to me,” he whispers, followed shortly by “Oh, death!”
A telleg darts out from between two trees, its hand stretching out unnaturally far to gut me, and my body has recovered enough to feel the sickening physical effects of terror.
Tavik kicks the creature’s arm to the side, following with another kick to its chest. It buys him just enough time to slide me down to his side so that he can make my body duck with his to miss the telleg’s next swipe. He draws the Sword of Wrath with his free hand, but all he can do is block.
“Sorry!” he says as he drops me and I slump to the ground. Tavik dodges and blocks, giving him an opportunity to draw his second sword. It doesn’t put him on the offensive, but it makes the monster move to find a better position from which to attack us. Each of its reactions to Tavik’s defenses buys a fraction of a second, and each fraction teaches Tavik how it moves, how it attacks, what it leaves undefended.
It reaches for me, but Tavik brings down his foot on its arm, pinning it to the ground so he can hack it off. A mouth rips its way across the telleg’s face with a horrid screech that Tavik silences as he slashes his blades through the beast’s torso.
“Sorry!” he calls to me again as he grabs me by the collar of my coat and tugs me along a slope, dragging my heels through the leaves. He follows a limestone ledge until it spreads into a broad vertical rock face with a lip just big enough to tuck me underneath.
He’s got what he needs now: a wall at his back and a relatively safe place for me, the boneless Vessel who can’t help him at all. As he ducks down to check on me, I try to make my hand reach out for him, but I still can’t move. Maybe he senses what I want to do, because he takes my hand in his, forms a circle with my index finger and thumb, then locks his own ring with mine. He opens his mouth, but whatever he was going to say, he thinks better of it. Instead, he releases my hand and turns his back on me.
Tavik! I scream in my mind. My useless body has no choice but to watch him strip off his bulky coat and tunic, baring his skin to the frigid air from the waist up, sacrificing warmth to regain his full range of motion. He straps the scabbards back on just as a nearby tree cracks open and the first, ghostly telleg oozes out—the first, because I know there will be more, and Tavik is going to fight each and every one of them.
He draws both blades from his back as it attacks, zigzagging through the trees like lightning through a cloud, but Tavik also moves like a pulsing bolt of light, the Sword of Wrath cutting through the creature’s body in jagged lines. The telleg is lightning, but Tavik is thunder.
The Sword of Mercy slices into the next telleg before he finishes dispatching the first.
They come. They all come for us, floating through the forest, cracking open the trees and sliding out to face Tavik, the Sword, the Hand of the Father.
His blades glow a faint blue-green as he fights them. His body moves between them like water, bending and stretching in ways I never imagined possible. His blades glow brighter as he cuts them down, slithering on the ground like a snake, flying into the air like an eagle. He is the Father’s wrath, burning them, making their flesh hiss and sizzle with each blow.
He does not pray. He is the prayer.
The Greeting of the Morning Sun: Two swords pointing directly skyward draws his body up, dodging a strike on either side as he plunges his swords into a telleg jumping onto him from the ridge above.
The Farewell to the Morning Star: His weapons slam into the telleg on either side of him.
Each prayer movement at full speed, one after another, allows him to dodge each blow while cutting the monsters to ribbons. His blades shine, lighting up the night.
The Supplicant Child: He bows low as a telleg flies overhead. At the same time, he jabs at two more coming at him from the front.
The Offering of Man to the Father’s Service: The blades flow in two different directions, mowing down monsters at his sides while his right leg lifts, evading a telleg’s low swipe.
The Sweeping Away of What Came Before kills three in a row, as easy as scything dry grass.
The Acceptance of Death: He does not falter. He arches his back so far that he’s parallel to the earth as he crosses the swords over his head and kills the telleg behind him.
The Triumph Over the Dark Night: He doesn’t fail, because he can’t. It’s as simple as that. The hilts flip over the backs of his hands, and the swords circle through the air to slam down into the outstretched necks of two telleg at once.
And I am still powerless to do anything but watch.
He recovers his stance and readies himself for the next attack, an entire horde just waiting for him. He bends like the willow around them. He flows like water between them. His swords blur and burn. His body dances, each lithe movement delivering the wrath of the Father. He kills and kills and kills until nothing else comes at us.
The onslaught ceases. A gray carpet of slain telleg spreads out from Tavik’s feet. In the eerie sword-lit silence that follows, he backs up to stand directly in front of my hiding place, keeping his eyes on the woods at all times, standing between me and a forest full of monsters with both swords faintly glowing, ready for the next attack. Even as dawn fills the world with gray light, he stands and waits, his skin steaming in the frigid air.
At last, my weak body returns to me. I stir, but Tavik doesn’t turn away from the woods, not for one second. He promised he would defend me with the last breath of his body, and that is exactly what he intends to do.
I get to my knees. “Tavik?”
He doesn’t answer. His eyes watch for any sign of the telleg’s return.
My footsteps are muted by leaves and telleg flesh as I stagger in front of him, blocking his view. He tilts his head to continue watching the trees, ready.
“I think I got them,” he tells me, his voice distant and mechanical.
I let out a fat sob and throw my arms around his neck, relishing the warmth and solidity of him. For a moment, he’s stiff in my embrace, his arms at his sides, his weapons ready and waiting. Then he drops the swords onto the ground and hugs me back, holding me so tightly I think he might crush my rib cage, but I pull him closer anyway, and we cling to each other, two bodies knotted together, a pinprick of something good and right in a place that is horrible and wrong.
“That was terrifying, just so you know,” Tavik says into the side of my head, setting my hat askew.
I let go so I can yell at him. “Put some clothes on, you lunatic! You’re going to freeze to death.”
“Oh, hey, I’m the Sword. It’s so much more badass than being the Vessel,” he informs me as I wade through the telleg corpses in search of his jacket. I look up long enough to roll my eyes, and he gives me a smug grin.
When I dislodge his coat from underneath a dead telleg, my eyes catch something familiar, and my mind goes back to that moment ten years ago when a telleg killed the last of the knights. Goodson Anskar had moved as swiftly as a Two-Swords to slice through the creature. Then he stared down at the body, just as I am staring at this slain telleg now.
“Tavik, come here.”
He steps to my side, and we both study the body. It’s missing an arm, but the torso is intact, and its filthy cloak is flung back, revealing the bony torso beneath. There’s a familiar mark over its chest.
“What does that look like to you?” I ask him.
“Is that . . . ? It looks like the mark of the O
rder of Saint Ovin.”
“Do you remember that part in the rubbing, the second half of The Ludoïd?” I translate it from memory into Kantari:
And the Father said,
The sons of Ovin have aligned themselves with death,
So they will live and live until the Sword cuts them down.
“Holy Mother, they’re knights,” Tavik utters. “This is what happens to them when they die.”
“They don’t get to die. They have to protect the Mother’s body.”
Tavik nods slowly, taking it in. “Until the Sword cuts them down.”
“The Goodson saw this, and yet he still believed—and continues to believe—that the Father is the One True God.”
Before either of us can say anything more, birdsong bursts from the trees all around us, impossibly lovely in the nightmarish landscape. One by one, the soulswifts descend upon the telleg scattered on the forest floor, and one by one, they fly away, singing a song that hurts to hear, carrying their invisible burdens with them.
Forty-Six
My whole life, I was taught to think of my body as a vessel, a human receptacle for the divine. In my mind, I pictured myself as a pitcher, something useful rather than lovely, pouring out the Father’s Word for the faithful. But ever since I brought Tavik back from the brink of death, I feel more like an amphora—huge yet fragile, weighed down by its content, which is more valuable than the vessel that contains it, taking up more room than the vessel itself.
Herself.
Myself.
We follow the Fev River north, Tavik walking, me shuffling, bumbling, lurching, careening. He looks at me like I’m going to shatter into a million pieces before his eyes, and every five minutes he asks me if I’m all right. I’m not all right, but if I had it to do over, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Very little breaks up the monotony of our trek except the occasional telleg. For the most part, Tavik dispatches them with ease, although with a new sadness as well.
When we wake up on the afternoon of our sixth day in the Dead Forest, we linger beside the ashes of our fire, staring up at the treetops arching above our heads, their long bare twigs crisscrossing the cloudy sky. I can’t speak for Tavik, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to leave despite the oppressive sense of infinity that stretches through the trees. What’s so terrible about this? No knights on our tails. No loved ones lying to us. No war. Simply living. A world with only me and Tavik in it.