Through the Black Veil

by Steve Vera

  That’s right. Walkins had been a Pararescueman in the Air Force. For once, Donovan conceded and lay back down. If they hadn’t taken so fucking long he wouldn’t be as injured. Walkins shed his jacket, unbuttoned his stained, last-world shirt and tried to plug a couple of holes.

  Once Donovan closed his eyes he quickly accessed the labyrinth of information punctiliously filed away in his brain. Most human beings were incapable of comprehending the full magnitude of what they contained within the vessels they called their bodies; they’d been given supercomputers in the form of brains and used them as bookends. Donovan, on the other hand, had no such limitations.

  Because it was within the realm of human potential to run a hundred miles straight, it was within Donovan’s potential. Because it was possible to break a cinderblock in half with the mere power of a hand, it was within Donovan’s potential. And just like it was possible for a human being to manually tap into the subconscious, to unlock, direct and coordinate every cell and neuron in the body to focus on healing...

  It was within Donovan’s potential.

  In the five years between his murder at fifteen and the opening of the Tomb, all Donovan had done was learn. He’d studied, in detail, the healing arts of Shaolin Masters, Quantum Field Theory, Chakra, Meridians, as well as devoured encyclopedias of medical journals on how the body systems worked—physically, mentally, spiritually and synergistically.

  He slipped into a quick semi-trance, put his thrombin system at maximum capacity and summoned legions of platelets to the multiple punctures in his body. Clotting was required. He then dimmed his nerve receptors so he could think without the mind-blasting haze of agony. It was harder than he’d remembered. Pain flared right back to his nerve endings the moment he left them unattended.

  There was stirring. Eyes closed, he was aware of Tarsidion scraping his massive body up off the west floor, heard Amanda’s soft murmur as she helped Gavin up. Donovan could even hear the soft whir of the Sprite’s wings...but there was something else. Past them, beyond the walls that surrounded them, he heard voices.

  He lightened his trance. Yes, he was sure of it. Panic and bewilderment.

  Donovan opened his eyes. Better. Painwise at least. He stared at the remains of the Necromancer—a pile of dust the color of a sucked bone, a black robe, bracelets, rings, slippers and, of course...the red jewel that had surrounded her throat.

  “Don’t touch that,” Cirena said, suddenly materializing beside him. Her cloak swirled.

  Donovan ignored her, reached out and grasped the walnut-sized jewel. Nothing happened. He cast a weak glance at her, noted the uncertainty that rippled through her colors, then gazed back down at the jewel. Donovan wasn’t exactly known for his appreciation of beauty, but the stone invited further study. It called to him.

  “Donovan, don’t.” This time it was Noah.

  He looked up at her from the ground. In his haze she appeared mildly distorted, large and disembodied, but her desire for what was in his hand was palpable. He closed his fingers around it.

  They couldn’t have it.

  “Next time you attack the Lord of the Dead, give us a head’s up, huh?” Tarsidion rumbled.

  “Situational awareness, dipshit,” Donovan responded. He didn’t much care for the activity milling around him. He felt penned in, suppressed. What he needed was to get away from these people, to move...

  “Don’t do that,” Noah said with a light touch to his shoulder. “You’re gravely injured.”

  “You think?” His scalp was itchy and his senses had taken on a blurred, fuzzy feeling, punctuated by a high-pitched hum that hadn’t been there before. The corners of his vision were twinkling.

  Noah kneeled beside him.

  “Look at me,” she said gently.

  Because it wasn’t a command, but a request, Donovan obliged. He opened his eyes and stared into hers.

  “You’re dying,” she informed him. “If you want to live you have to let me help you.”

  “You can’t heal me.” It was difficult to focus on her, like she was standing on the other side of a rainy windshield.

  “Not with magic it appears, but there are other ways.”

  “I hear something,” Tarsidion said, finally hearing what Donovan had already detected minutes ago, half dead. The rest of them listened intently except for Noah. Her attention remained solely on him. There was knowledge in her eyes; she knew something. Suspected. Voices drifted on currents of pain and despair.

  “Let me help you,” she repeated. And then Amanda was there, kneeling. He smelled her before he saw her, a sweet freshness that was detectable even through the fear, sweat and blood of their journey. Purple-smudged eyes stared down at him and in his delirium, Amanda looked just like her, like the one he’d died for a world ago.

  Miusette. The only thing he’d ever loved.

  Weakened, delirious and wounded, Donovan felt an unfamiliar heat in his nostrils, a tightening in his chest.

  “Leave me alone.” His voice sounded wrong. Strangled. His nose was running. He screwed his eyes shut so hard that he could feel his skin bunch at the corners but all he could see was the face of his past, before his murder. Miusette’s face. Sunny, unguarded, with a smile so pure it had melted even Donovan’s heart...the way she’d look at him when they’d gaze at each other, forehead to forehead...so young...fifteen...the soft feel of her fingers encircled around his hand... I wasn’t strong enough.

  Globs of wet heat wedged themselves under his lids and spilled down his face, leaving glistening trails he was only too aware of, and these fucks were seeing it all. He tried to sit up but four hands stopped him. I could kill you all, he raged but no words came out. He squeezed his hands into fists but they lacked strength, were weak.

  “Just do it anyway, Noah,” Amanda pleaded. “Look at him, he’s dying. Help him.”

  “Not unless he gives his consent. If he’s too proud to ask for help then he’ll die. And he’ll deserve it. Cause and effect.”

  He snorted.

  The sparkles at the corners of his vision danced to the center and behind them was an image that he’d cauterized from his soul. A sad smile. (Let them help you.)

  Another rush of heat escaped down his cheeks like hot wax.

  “Donovan?” Amanda’s voice. Right by his ear. He felt his sunglasses slide off his face and he snarled.

  “Put them back on,” he tried to snap but all that came out was poot th’m bock awn. In slow motion. He was naked, exposed.

  “Just say yes,” she whispered. “Don’t be an idiot.”

  The last fibers of his control snapped. He opened his eyes and saw only prisms of light, Miusette’s distorted face looking down at him. I could die right now and be with you forever, ’Settie. I could leave this place...

  (No. You’re not done.)

  The heat left. His chest loosened and the distortion behind his eyes dissipated, revealing Amanda’s face looking down at him, not Miusette. Not his dead love’s.

  “Fine,” he whispered and drilled Noah with eyes that had gone dry. “This will settle us up.”

  * * *

  Tarsidion and Cirena swept through the castle like wraiths, past the fraying tapestries, spiraling staircases and closed brooding doors they’d passed on their way and homed in on the cries of distress coming from outside.

  From the living.

  It was a welcome sound to Tarsidion, who’d had enough of the crypt-silence of the land of the dead and of the Donovan situation.

  Stavengre was better equipped to deal with that.

  When they emerged from the warped doors of the castle there was a solitary knight in green, obsolete armor, standing bewildered in the darkness, calling to comrades who no longer existed. He heard the crunch of gravel beneath their boots and whirled, brandishing a great two-handed sword.
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br />   “Hold, friend,” Tarsidion called and raised his hand, glimmering his runes. “Well met.”

  “Shardyn?” he asked in a baffled voice. His great sword lowered slightly. A thick golden mustache twitched above his mouth. “From where did you come? Where is the King?” He looked around at the darkness around them, squinting his eyes. “Why is it so dark?”

  “Neesh,” Tarsidion and Cirena said in harmony and both of their blades retracted in a ring. The blue vaporous light that scraped from their swords dissipated slowly in a luminous cloud. “Those are questions not easily answered, friend.”

  His suspicion returned. “Why?”

  Tarsidion and Cirena looked at each other and shared a mutual discomfort of what must be said. He’ll take it easier from a woman, Tarsidion said with his eyes. Cirena narrowed hers in response, gave a quick wrinkle to her mouth and then stepped forward. In reflex, the recent addition to the land of the living lowered his weapon in the presence of a lady, even if that lady was Sur Cirena Kul Arkeides.

  He was a breed of knight who no longer existed—a Knight of the Southern March.

  “What is the last thing you remember, friend?” Cirena asked him in a low voice. Suddenly Tarsidion felt like Dwensolt yesterday at the Druid’s pool and though Tarsidion wasn’t the type for sentimental displays, he pitied the man for what was about to befall him.

  “I remember screams,” the Cavalier said in rough whisper. “The walking dead poured from the walls, bones of men that fought with the skills of the warriors they once were—” he turned his head from left to right, remembering things only he could see, “—their eyes alight with the unholy fire known only to the children of the Necromancer...the Undead.” His eyes cleared. He was calm. “Where are my men, Shardyn?”

  Even without seeing her face, Tarsidion could sense Cirena’s dread. Perhaps Tarsidion shouldn’t have been so eager to pawn off the bearing of bad tidings but he was no good at such things.

  “Forgive me for doing this, Sir Taksony,” Cirena said in as gentle a voice as Tarsidion had ever from her.

  “How do you know my name?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

  A ripple of spider-light roiled over Cirena’s sultry, almond-shaped eyes and a second later, a globe of blue light manifested above her right shoulder. With its illumination, the graveyard was revealed—scattered piles of rusting armor and crumbling bones. Skulls cried out with open mouths, their screams trapped for eternity within their fleshless jaws.

  The remnants of his army.

  “I read about you as a child, Sir Taksony,” Cirena said, closing the distance between them and putting her hand on his arm. Tarsidion ignored the momentary flash of jealousy that flared through his nostrils. “You are the legendary Captain of the Guard in the tale of Makabru’s Last March.”

  * * *

  Gavin was rather surprised when Tarsidion and Cirena came through the heavy, orchid-embossed doors with three men in tow. The first he recognized immediately as the lone standing captain.

  A statue come to life.

  The next was a salty-looking serjeant with a shock of midnight hair streaked through with silver and a mustache that would have done a cowboy proud. They all had mustaches. The last man wore the lighter, sleeker armor of an archer, studded with metal rivets. His eyes were sharp and intense, and though the quiver on his back was empty and he was holding a bow with a broken string, his posture was strong.

  “What’d they do? Find a Crackerjack box out there?” Skip asked.

  “We’re about to find out,” Gavin said and stood to meet the strangers. They all stood.

  “Gather ’round!” Tarsidion called. “We have guests.”

  Although squinty-eyed and fidgety, each newcomer maintained an air of dignity and quiet confidence. They stopped four feet away from Gavin in a neat, precise, horizontal row.

  “May I present to you the finest of the Southern March,” Cirena announced.

  “A hail to you, Knight of the Shard,” the captain said, a square-jawed handsome devil with golden hair that tumbled over cobalt eyes. In unison the three snapped their heels together and brought their right fists to their long out of fashion breastplates, knuckles up. They held it there until Gavin returned the salute (which was also obsolete), as did Tarsy, Noah and Cirena, who had flanked Gavin on both sides. Only after Gavin had dropped his fist did the newcomers reciprocate—a gesture of respect.

  “I am Sir Taksony, Captain of the Guard of his majesty King Makabru, Ruler of the Southern March, son of Aulrich the Great. We are at your service.” He finished with a flourishing bow.

  “And I am Sur Stavengre Kul Annototh, of the House of Annototh, Knight of the Shard, First Rune.” Gavin also bowed. He then introduced everyone assembled: Tarsy, Noah, Cirena, Skip, Amanda, Dwensolt and even Pyrk, who seemed to hold their interest the longest. “And who are these champions beside you, Sir Taksony?”

  The two others raised their chins.

  “My man-at-arms, Serjeant Arnaut of His Majesty’s Fifth Cavalry, rides as well as any knight,” Taksony said with a proud nod. “Beside him is Archer Aluvion, finest shot in all the ranks—he could hit the eye of a boar at two hundred paces.” A respectful but professional nod. Of all the places their roving eyes could settle, it was on Skip’s jacket that they lingered the most, though Amanda’s well-fitting, albeit filthy jeans also induced curiosity and respectful appreciation.

  Gavin flashed a look at Cirena. She nodded. They knew.

  “We have many questions, Sur Stavengre,” Taksony said after the formal conclusion of introductions.

  I’m sure you do. “And they shall be answered, my new friend.” Gavin motioned them to sit beside the fire they’d built. “But first, shall we break fast together and share some wine?” He cleared his throat. “There is much to say.”

  Chapter 27

  The first thing Donovan noticed when his eyes blinked open was the shockwave of pain that ripped through his arms and radiated like uranium isotopes from the holes in his ribcage and the sides of his torso.

  Immediately he clamped down on his nerve receptors and initiated his body’s natural defenses. After he’d awoken from his murder five years ago, Donovan had been rushed to surgery and had been given a variety of different narcotics and pain medication for the after-effects of being stabbed twenty-six times, shot five times and had his throat slit. Because of that experience, because the effects of those narcotics were a matter of record within his body, he’d learned to duplicate them. It had taken a little time of course, but once he’d mastered the concept of autohypnosis, Donovan could stimulate his body—which was in essence a fully stocked pharmacy already—and generate the effects he wished. Presently, he settled on (5α,6α)-7,8-didehydro-4,5-epoxy-17-methylmorphinan-3,6-diol. Also known as morphine.

  “Morning, Satan.”

  “It’s not morning,” Donovan responded while going down a checklist of his body’s ailments.

  “Okay, how ’bout hello then?”

  Donovan swiveled his head to Amanda and remembered everything. Part of him wanted to kill her for seeing him in a weakened state, kill them all. No survivors. No one to tell. A much smaller part of him, a more distant, deeper part clung to the memory of being able to...feel. To remember. And then he dismissed it. “Who’s downstairs?” he rasped.

  Amanda peeked down over the edge of the altar as if she didn’t already know. “Three guys who got turned to stone five hundred years ago but changed back when you killed Almitra. They’re talking to Gavin. Guy stuff.” She raised her eyebrows at Donovan. “And how’re you doing?”

  “Your concern is touching. Give me some water.”

  Amanda’s face soured. “The least you could do is pretend to be grateful.”

  “For?”

  There was a surge of maroon in her outer bands, threaded with crackling yell
ow—incredulity and offense. “Uh, for saving your life.”

  Donovan scoffed. “It’s the least they could have done. Had I not acted, the moment Almitra had finished her parlay the thousand or so minions waiting in the walls would have fallen on us like the Red Sea on the Egyptians. I saved all of our lives. Again.”

  “But it would be courteous to say thank you just the same,” Noah said from the steps. “It wasn’t easy patching you up.”

  Donovan sat up, which evoked another blast of pain, and turned to the fully armored Shardyn Knight regarding him with gray eyes as still as a windless lake. Even her soul was calm. “Courtesy is for the weak, Sur Noahvden. Amanda. Water.”

  Amanda clamped her mouth shut and rolled her eyes behind her lids with a shake of her head. “Why did I want you to live again?” she muttered to herself.

  “Because without me,” he said, choosing to answer her rhetorical question. “This war is lost.”

  Chapter 28

  “Well lookie what we got here,” Skip said. “He lives.”

  Donovan looked like la mierda. He had zero color in his face, his hair was greasy and matted from sleep and trauma and though he accepted no assistance, he was walking like he’d been thrown out of a ten-story building.

  The new boys stood up at his descent from the stairs and assumed the position of attention. Skip chuckled in his head. Some things were the same everywhere.

  The contrast between them was stark: Donovan in his dirty, bloodstained and ripped black military fatigues against two “Cavaliers” resplendent in green chain mail armor, elaborate surcoats and a lean, dusky-skinned archer holding an unstringed bow. They were all on guard.

  “I am told that you are the slayer of the Necromancer,” Captain Taksony, aka Goldenboy to Skip, said when Donovan reached the bottom. Flanking Donovan were Amanda and Noah. Dwensolt watched silently from beside Tarsidion and Cirena. Skip noticed that Gavin’s stare was carefully neutral. Skip wondered what their intrepid leader was thinking about Amanda’s attention to the son of Satan. There was a pause so long that it became awkward.