For just an instant I thought Kest had moved, but it was only Ethalia, twitching under the strain of whatever invisible forces she was struggling with. ‘Something’s wrong,’ Brasti said. ‘That glow of hers is dimming.’
‘Enough,’ Erastian said, reaching out to grab at her wrist. ‘You’ll kill yourself.’
Ethalia held firm, but she cried out ‘Birgid, help me! I can’t bring him back!’
The old Saint finally managed to tear her hand away from her chest. ‘It’s done, girl,’ he said softly. ‘Let it be done.’
Ethalia began to slump forward, but she stopped herself. Her eyes went to me. ‘I’m sorry – I’m so sorry—’
‘I can thump on his chest,’ I said, moving to his side and trying to replicate her movements from earlier. ‘He’s strong. He can come back.’ You don’t go out this way, Kest. With a blade, maybe – with ten thousand masters of the sword rushing down the hillside at us, maybe. Not like this. We don’t go out just because some fucking God says so.
‘Falcio, stop,’ Brasti said. ‘You’re going to break his ribs. It’s not doing any good. Let him—’
‘No.’ I resumed pushing his chest up and down, though I had no damned clue what I was doing. Ethalia had been doing it, so it must’ve had some purpose.
Erastian sounded sympathetic as he explained, ‘His heart won’t beat for hers.’
The words held such a small, simple truth, that all the strength drained from my body and I found myself repeating them. His heart won’t beat for hers. I looked over at the old man, at this useless sack of flesh who called himself a Saint and was doing me no good whatsoever. ‘Why?’
Ethalia’s eyes were full of pleading, as if she were begging me to forgive her. ‘He won’t follow my heartbeat – he won’t come to my call.’
I grabbed Kest’s hand and put it on my own chest. ‘Then show me what to do. Maybe he’ll come back—’
‘You don’t have the power, Falcio,’ she said. ‘It’s part of the Sainthood. I can’t . . . I don’t even know how to explain it to you.’
‘Just tell me how to save him, damn you!’ I reached out and grabbed her arm. ‘There must be something else you can try. Anything.’
‘You can’t!’ she cried, ‘not without . . . You just can’t, Falcio.’
She turned away from me, too quickly for it to just be guilt. I’ve been a magistrate for a long time and when I look for it, I can tell when someone’s lying to me. ‘Tell me,’ I demanded.
‘He has a right to try,’ Erastian said, his voice wheezing as his own wounds threatened to overtake him. He turned to me. ‘How far are you willing to go to save your friend?’
It took me a while to understand what he was asking. ‘Oh,’ I said finally. ‘I suppose that makes sense.’
Ethalia grabbed me by the shoulders and I could see her eyes were filled with tears now. ‘No, you don’t understand – there’s no assurance I can bring you back.’
‘Just tell me how.’
Misery and uncertainty clouded her face, but she knew me well. Even with all that had already been lost between us, she knew I wouldn’t back down from this fight. Finally she said, ‘Lay down next to Kest and place his hand over your heart. Then we must . . . Falcio, I can’t be the one to do it.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘Would someone please tell me what in all the hells is going on?’ Brasti asked plaintively.
Saint Erastian sat back heavily on his haunches. ‘You aren’t going to like it, that’s for sure,’ he muttered.
I rose for a moment and held Brasti by the shoulders. Before he could speak I shook him. ‘Brasti Goodbow, listen to me. I’m not your friend right now. I’m not a fellow Greatcoat. I’m the First Cantor. Do you understand? Do you still remember what that means?’
‘What in the name of Saint Zaghev is wrong with you, Falcio? Of course I—’
‘No questions, no debate. I’m giving you an order now, so you either follow it, or you walk away. For good.’
He finally understood what was coming next. He looked down at Kest then back at me. ‘Please, Falcio, don’t ask me to do this.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said gently.
I let him go and laid down next to Kest, placing his hand on my heart, then I looked up at Brasti and said, ‘Kill me.’
*
Brasti knelt over me, squeezing his hands into fists, trying to build up his courage. Or whatever it is you need when one of your best friends tells you to murder him.
Ethalia’s voice was gentle. ‘We’re running out of time. He can’t go without—’
‘Brasti,’ I said, locking eyes with him, ‘it’s going to be all right. I swear to you, I’m not going out like this. Not like this.’
He nodded then, placed a hand over my mouth and with the other squeezed my nostrils shut as I told myself, It’s fine. You can do this. You’ve nearly gone to your death dozens of times. Just go a little further this time.
At first it was no different to holding my breath, then it started to burn, like diving too deep into water and waiting too long to come back up. Then the first convulsion hit me and my body struggled to take in air, resisting Brasti’s grip. He let out a great racking sob and held me down even more firmly.
Part of me was thankful that for once in his life, Brasti was following orders. The rest of me was panicking. No, I screamed silently, no, it’s a mistake! This won’t work! You’re killing me! My eyes betrayed me as they tried desperately to lock onto Brasti’s, pleading for him to stop, to see that I was dying, to see that he was killing me.
The second convulsion was worse and now I was fighting back with everything I had, but Brasti was now kneeling on me, holding me down and crushing me under his weight.
I cursed him then, cursed how stupid he was. Damn you to every hell there is, Brasti Goodbow, bastard – traitor— Then a sudden inspiration hit me and my eyes sought out Ethalia. She would understand – she would put a stop to this. But her own eyes were closed as she held one of my hands against her heart. I could feel the beating there. I hated it.
Bitch. Whore. This is what you wanted all along, to be rid of me. You tricked me into this!
I wish I could say I was a better man, that in those last moments I found my courage again, found my Faith.
I didn’t.
I went to my death afraid and cursing everyone I had once loved.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The Land of the Dead
Every duellist knows that the only God who really matters is Death. His is the damp, grasping hand you feel reaching into your heart every time a wound cuts a little too deep or a fever rages a little too hot inside your skin. Death is the opponent whose challenge we all must eventually accept and his is the duel that in the end can never be won no matter how skilled the fencer or how noble the cause. All our tricks and techniques are stripped away when we step into his courtroom for that final trial.
Shit, I thought, looking down at myself. I’m naked.
I had always assumed that the land of the dead, if such a place existed at all, would be an endless expanse of darkness and shadows. Instead, what I found was a landscape carved from bone: roads, trees, mountains in the far distance, even the sky above: they were all the same sickly ivory colour. There were no lights, nothing that glowed or burned, and yet there was no darkness, either, only an endless dead whiteness.
Except me, I thought, once again taking stock of my less than impressive figure. Because when you’re dead and naked what you really want to do is stick out.
‘And people claim my royal staff was of modest proportions,’ King Paelis called out and I turned to see him walking up behind me, his robes glistening seven different hues of red. Even in the afterlife the rich get to dress better than the rest of us.
My wife, walking alongside him, wore armour that glistened against the drab surroundings. It was so perfectly shaped to her that were it not for the ridges and buckles it would have looked as though molten steel had been poured
over body.
‘That’s an odd look for you,’ I said.
‘Really, husband? Was I not always a fighter?’
The King snorted. ‘Enough, Falcio. I’ve gone along with your imaginings as long as I could, but this is too much. You really envision your wife as a great warrior striding across the land?’
‘She was to me,’ I said, wishing she were real, wishing this wasn’t simply the hallucinations that came whenever I slipped too close to death. ‘None of this is real, is it?’
Aline stepped close to me and reached out with a gauntleted hand to smooth the hair away from my face. Her touch felt strangely soft. ‘Do you remember the oath I gave at our wedding, Falcio?’
The question made me uncomfortable. ‘It was something about loving and sharing, but to be honest, I was so busy trying to remember my own vows at the time, it’s possible I wasn’t paying attention.’
She took both my hands in hers. ‘I said you were a silly man, too awkward and earnest to make his way through life in a country that fed on such things.’ She squeezed my palms and now I could feel the steel of her gauntlets. ‘I said I would always protect you.’
Something felt like it broke inside me and a shuddering sob escaped my lips. ‘No – that’s not what you said. The cleric gave us our vows. I was the one who was supposed to say—’
‘How would you know?’ King Paelis asked. ‘You already said you weren’t paying attention.’
‘It was my job to protect you!’ I turned away from them, wishing them away. ‘You aren’t her. You’re a delusion made from fractured memories and broken dreams.’
‘Look at me,’ Aline said. I felt her hand on my arm and she repeated the words more gently this time. ‘Look at me, Falcio.’
I did. I’d never been able to refuse her.
‘Do I look like a delusion to you?’ she asked. Her smile was neither soft nor stern, her features not plain, but nor were they particularly beautiful. For the first time in a very long time I saw her as she had truly been in life: a village woman, a farmer. Pretty, but mostly in the way she grinned when she had something wicked to say. Sensuous, but mostly when she danced. You could see in her eyes how brilliantly clever she was – not for its own sake, but because her sense of practicality demanded it. Beyond and above all those things, however, Aline always had an unwavering determination about her. ‘Whether dream or memory, Falcio, I said I would protect you. I always will.’
‘It’s supposed to be me,’ I said. ‘I was the swordsman. I was supposed to—’
The sky cracked, the sound crashing down on us while the world around us shook and shivered in its wake. Everything went black then, ended, then a moment later the darkness disappeared, to be replaced once again by the endless bone whiteness of this place.
‘Ha!’ the King roared. ‘Did you see that? That was—’
‘Let him figure it out for himself,’ Aline said.
I thought about it for a moment, until I realised I’d mistaken the source of the sound. ‘It wasn’t thunder,’ I said. ‘It was a heartbeat.’
‘One of your last, if you don’t get on with it,’ Paelis said. ‘Hurry. Kest is hiding in this place and you must find him.’
The sky shook again, another heartbeat, and again the world went black before returning. The darkness lasted longer this time. Time to go.
‘Who is Kest hiding from?’
King Paelis put a hand on my shoulder. ‘From you, Falcio.’
‘But why? Why would—?’
‘He’s your dearest friend,’ Aline chided me. ‘Do you truly know him so little? Go. You must find him now.’
I started to move, then stopped. ‘It should have been you,’ I said. I didn’t trust myself to be able to leave if I looked back at her. ‘You should have been the first Greatcoat.’
She gave no reply, but King Paelis laughed in that reedy tone of his. ‘Don’t you get it, Falcio? She gave up everything to protect you. She made an oath that held despite fear and death and the Gods themselves. Aline was the first Greatcoat.’
*
I’m not sure how long I chased Kest in the endless pale shadows as he weaved and ducked around and behind everything that might shield him from me. The sky shook twice more, the final desperate beating of his heart, or mine. Or maybe none of this is real and this is just the last defiant flicker of my life fading away.
Every time I came close to grabbing Kest’s shoulder he darted out of the way, and the chase continued anew. This isn’t real, I thought. There is no world of bone for us to race through. We’re lying on the hard ground. Damn you, Kest, just breathe, and get us out of here.
I shouted for him, again and again, and no sound came from my lips, but he appeared to hear me – not that it did me much good. Every time I called out to him, he looked up at the sky instead of at me, and then turned and ran even faster.
I heard the crack of thunder again and this time, the black clouds began to gather together, expanding until they became too big for the sky. They descended upon the countryside, taking on a thick, oily form as they began to smother everything in sight. Breathing became harder and harder as I tried to outrun them.
‘Kest!’
He didn’t turn now, just kept on running, always ahead of me.
‘Kest!’ I tried to force a shout from my lips. The clouds were all around us, as though the nightmist we’d unleashed in the mine was pursuing us, even here. I started after Kest again, but pulled to a stop when a shape began to push its way out of the black mists, burning them away with an angry crimson fire. He carried a sword, and spun it so fast I couldn’t see the steel, only the trail of flame it left in the air.
Caveil-whose-blade-cuts-water, I thought. The Saint of Swords is coming for me.
Birgid’s words from months before came back to me, reminding me that I had been the one destined to face Caveil – the one destined to die at his hand.
Instinctively, I reached for my rapiers, but the world of the dead has as much justice in it as the world of the living and so I was still naked and unarmed.
Caveil whipped his sword through the air and I felt the tip striking me a hundred times before I could even draw the breath to scream. By the time I looked down at my flesh, a thousand little cuts were bleeding, and tiny flying insects descended on me, attaching themselves to my wounds, sucking at them like human mouths.
The Saint of Swords brought his blade up high in the air and I saw the very moment where it reached its zenith, and the immeasurable fraction of a second where it held before it began its descent towards my skull.
A pale blur leapt between us: a flash of steel came alongside and knocked Caveil’s sword from its path.
‘Don’t worry, Falcio,’ the figure said, taking up a position between me and the Saint. ‘I’ll protect you!’
It was Kest, but not the man I knew. Instead, the boy I had first known, barely twelve years old, grinning from ear to ear as he struggled to hold up a warsword far too heavy for his size, and far too slow to stop the Saint of Swords. Caveil gave out a soundless laugh and struck out with his own blade, stabbing Kest over and over until a dozen holes in his body revealed the black-smothered world behind him.
Caveil’s gaze returned to me and he smiled as he sent his blade shooting out towards me. But again, Kest managed to bring up his sword and strike, ignoring the fact that he was far too wounded for such a feat even to be possible. He kicked out with a gangly leg and hit Caveil in the stomach, knocking him back into the black clouds.
Kest turned to me, still grinning even as he bled from his wounds. ‘Boy, that sure wasn’t easy,’ he said.
‘Kest, come with me,’ I said, extending a hand towards him. ‘We have to go.’
He shook his head and pointed back to the clouds. ‘We can’t, Falcio. There are still more people trying to kill you.’
A second figure emerged from the mists, this one taller and broader of shoulder than Caveil. The armour covering his body was made of thick steel plates. The sword he c
arried was nearly as big as I was.
Shuran.
Even before Kest could lift his sword up in defence, Shuran knocked him aside and began marching towards me, heaving his massive sword back and forth as though he were cutting the space between us apart. His helm covered his face and yet I could see him smiling, his hard jaw set in preparation for the single blow it would take him to cut me in half.
I looked around for something, anything with which to fight back. There was nothing on the cloud-covered ground of use but little black rocks, but when I tried picking one up, intending to throw it at Shuran, even though it was barely bigger than my fist it refused to be lifted, sticking to the earth as though welded there.
Great. Even the rocks in this country are cowards.
I rose back up to my feet. I thought about running away but now my own feet wouldn’t obey my commands. Shuran stopped then, barely three feet away from me, and raised his sword overhead.
‘Goodbye,’ he said.
Just as the heavy sword started down for my head, Kest rose up and parried the attack with his warsword. Shuran grunted in response and lifted up his weapon, just a few inches, before bringing it back down and severing Kest’s hand at the wrist, sending it along with his sword crashing to the ground.
The boy Kest ignored the loss of his hand and dropped to his knees. Picking up his sword in his left, he prepared to attack, but Shuran was faster and with a single stroke he took Kest’s other hand, leaving him without the means to hold a sword.
‘No!’ I screamed.
Shuran tried to knock the boy aside to get to me but Kest ducked and came back up after the blade had swung past. He kicked out with his bare foot, striking the Knight in the hip, sending him stumbling backwards. ‘I’d better go after him,’ he said, before turning to run into the black clouds.
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