The Rot's War

by Michael John Grist

  "I-" Leander began, but did not know what to say. She had never heard words phrased like the old Scarab-shell phrased them. She knew of the Heart, but to link the Heart to murder seemed to fly in opposition to all the meanings she understood.

  "You, girl!" the Scarab-shell called up to Varial. "Come with me. There is a place for your talents, before the Molemen arrive."

  Varial didn't ask any questions. She simply climbed down from the Spike line, and stood before the old woman, waiting to be led.

  The old woman led, and Varial followed. Leander asked where they were going, but neither of them replied, so she trailed behind them as she always had, into the warren-like streets of the city. They passed from the Docks into slums more squalid than anything she'd seen in her life, with layers of buildings ridged along narrow streets like accreted crustaceans, growing like mushrooms out of coaly muck. They passed down dirt-alleys and cobblestone squares, past buildings fronted with offal-daub and hovels of fossilized wood. At the Carothaby bi-rail the woman paid for them to board a carriage bound for the Gloam Hallows.

  Across the immense Levi River their carriage rocked, in the company of drunken ghasts and fogged with the scents of ale, the scarab and urine. At the final stop they debarked, with not a word exchanged between them. Leander peered into Varial's face for some kind of explanation for any of this, but there was none. There was blood on her claws, drying like gloves.

  The thick mist of the Hallows mystified Leander. She followed her sister and the Scarab-shell through a hole burrowed in the wall in a daze, into the fog-bound streets beyond, and traipsed after them until they reached the ruins of an ancient Abbey. They moved through its roofless porticoes and past its ribs of strangely carved columns as though in a dream, until at last they stopped in a large paved space in the center. Once it must have been a wide hall, but there was no roof or walls any longer, other than the wall at the hall's head, offering an awesome sight. A grand window of colored glass hung high in the stone, depicting a dark-haired woman holding an infant marked with red lines, while a volcano erupted behind them and a battle took place between glittering armies in the sky.

  Before the window knelt a line of women at a stocky wooden pew, five in total. Their Scarab-shelled guide spoke softly to one, a Cowface with her tongue lolling from her distended jaw like a fat purple worm. Leander flinched from her ugliness. Varial took a step forward.

  Once she'd heard enough, the Cowface addressed them all in a loud voice, her fat tongue wobbling obscenely. "Welcome. There used to be hundreds of us, servants of the true Heart." She pointed to the five wan women on their knees in the mist. "Now we are six."

  "What is this place?" Leander asked. "Why have you brought us here?"

  "We have not brought you here, child," said the Scarab-shell, "but your sister. This place is for her, so she may join our ceaseless battle."

  "What battle?" Varial asked abruptly. "Talk sense."

  The Cowface wheeled on her, her eyes lighting up. "I see him in you, yes; such simmering anger. He longs to escape, just as the Darkness seeks to worm its way in." a long moment passed as Varial met her sharp gaze with anger. "I hear you brought succor to the men of the Spike."

  Leander interrupted. "She murdered them."

  The Cowface turned and leveled her with the same penetrating gaze. "Yet I do not see him in you."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You are not fit to tend our revenant, child. Better for you to live in the light, and take confession from gentry for coin."

  Leander gasped. The Scarab-shelled Sister took Varial's hand gently and led her away, to kneel before the pew in line with the other women. Varial went demurely and knelt without argument. The Scarab-shell spoke soft words in her ear and trailed her warty fingers down Varial's Butterfly wings. At last she turned back to Leander.

  "This place is not for you, child. Leave us now."

  "Leave?" asked Leander. "But she's my sister."

  "She is broken. Can you not see that? Would you bind yourself to a broken thing, so that you both may know the pain of the descent? What does that aid the world?"

  "It aids her," Leander said. "I saved her once. I'll do it again."

  "It aids you, child, not her," said the Scarab-shell, soft but in a tone that brooked no possible argument. "Even then your heart burns with it. I see that plainly. Your efforts at love scar you both. You cannot be together again. Her duty is hers now, as yours will be yours."

  Leander felt control slipping from her, like the cold rush of wind on the Angelway in the moments before they jumped, but there was no elation in this, only panic.

  "But, where will I go?"

  "If you wish to serve the Heart in the light, seek out their Abbey in the shelter of the Seasham cathedral. That is the place for you. Tell the Abbess there I sent you; we have an understanding. She will welcome you in."

  Leander stared hard at her. She didn't understand this new world at all. "You're stealing my sister," she said.

  "She is not your sister now," answered the Scarab-shell, "she is ours."

  * * *

  She did not see her sister again for thirty years.

  The Abbey welcomed her, in the Seasham district, as the Scarab-shell promised. She was given a place and a role amongst the brethren, taught her duties and the sacrament of the Heart. Feeling empty in her own heart, she let their words pour in. What else was she to do? Had she abandoned her sister, or set her free? The Heart promised answers but provided none.

  She buried herself in scripture. She lived on the Abbey grounds and never left. The city was a cruel place, a realm of terrors she did not understand. Instead she worked the earth with her claws and studied the Book of the Heart, memorizing all the psalms, the gospels, the stories, and finding what succor she could in unquestioning faith.

  In time, the old Abbess died. A new Abbess was selected, and Leander was not surprised when it was her. Nothing within the grounds surprised her further. She was the most knowledgeable of all the Sisters in her care. She was the strongest in faith, and had seen the most of the world.

  She took the chancel of the old Abbess and changed nothing. She watched over those in her care. Years passed, until one night a fearful young woman named Avia was admitted at the front gate, clutching a blood-soaked child and asking for shelter. She claimed to have come from the Gloam Hallows cathedral, swearing Leander's own sister had promised her a place in the light.

  Leander admitted her, as she was beholden too. When the girl began carving lines into her own son's face, she threatened to cast her out, but the girl always had an answer. She twisted the words of the Heart into circles, referencing works Leander had never read, telling stories about herself that could not possibly be true; of Aradabar and the Rot, of King Seem and the revenant arch that opened a doorway through time.

  She could not argue with things she did not understand. She could not stop Avia, who swore to scar her son whether in the protection of her four walls or out in the street, hiding from the King's Adjunc.

  She did not know what to do. So she went to the Gloam Hallows cathedral, seeking her sister.

  * * *

  Long years had passed, but she walked the Hallows mist confidently, driven by the belief that what she had come to do was right. When she saw the carved arch at the entrance to Varial's cathedral, and the dappling lights in the fog, she knew her sister was nearby.

  At a lone desk in an octagonal chamber open to the sky, she found her; a Butterfly sitting with wings raised bright and resplendent behind her, bent over her desk with a nib in her hand, scribbling words in an ancient leather-bound tome. It stopped her breath to see her sister. So much time had passed, but the old pain was still there.

  Leander approached, but Varial did not look up.

  "Sister," she said softly. The face she so often saw in her dreams, screaming out as she fell, looked up.

  A smile spread across Varial's cracked brown mouth. Her segmented eyes lit up. She stood, stepped around the desk, and
without a word pulled Leander close to her, her beautiful wings rushing out to cowl them both. With the sudden splay of color came a wave of uncontrollable joy that passed through Leander's whole body. She had not expected this, and it felt more than anything like finally coming home.

  They stood like that, bodies pressed close together, for a long time, and Leander felt something begin to heal within her, as edges of a distant wound finally edged together. After that they sat wordlessly, hand-in-hand across the desk from each other, as the mist drifted about them.

  "I see you are an Abbess now," said Varial, taking in the black hood of Leander's cassock.

  "As are you," replied Leander, noting the same regalia upon her sister, though her cassock was white.

  Varial's jagged smile widened. "Yet over no Sisters. All of my number have gone."

  "Gone where?"

  She shrugged. "Taken by the Rot. He came for them, as he always has, and now they are gone."

  Leander frowned. "You mean they died?"

  Varial squeezed Leander's claws, then let go. "Taken," she repeated. "Like the Unforgiven. The first of his enemies, shucked from this world like a thorn in his side."

  Leander had many more questions, about the Rot, and the Heart, and the girl. "I need to ask you about Avia," she said. "The girl you sent to us."

  Varial spread her mesmerizing wings. "So ask."

  Leander had prepared for this. She was accustomed to speaking before the Sisters, to being respected. She had not expected the warm welcome here, though, and her sister's unflinching gaze unnerved her. "She makes incredible claims. She speaks of Aradabar as a place that yet lives, that might be saved. She tortures her son in ways I should not abide, but I do. When I look into her eyes, sister, I see things I do not understand. I come here to ask you to take her back. My Abbey is not the place for her."

  Varial regarded her sister for a long moment. Leander felt like her soul was being weighed. "Have courage, sister," she said. "Embrace not only what you are, but what you might be. That is the lesson you have yet to learn. I can be patient. It will come."

  "What will come?"

  Varial stood. "Follow me," she said, and walked deeper into the mists. Leander followed, through the ruins and into the empty cathedral hall where she'd first lost her, to the stained glass vision at the end, hanging in the single wall. They stood before it for a time silently.

  "You left me here," said Leander softly, remembering the hard words of the ragged old woman.

  Varial answered without turning. "I left you a long time before that, sister. The moment I fell from the Hasp, we were divided."

  "Why?" Leander asked.

  Varial gave a sad smile, barely visible through the mist. "I was weak. You were strong. What bond could remain between us, after that?"

  The mist thickened the silence, until Varial broke it, pointing to a row of worn grooves in the flagstones.

  "I was knelt at prayer there when Avia came," she said. "She passed through our revenant arch, through the veil of time, from Aradabar. She emerged dusty with ash, as the Corpse World ended beneath the Rot's touch. She asked for my help, and I gave it."

  Leander stared, confused. "You mean from the ruins of Aradabar? You don't seriously believe she traveled three thousand years through an arch, through this 'veil', from a city that is all but fiction?"

  Varial chuckled. "You see, but you don't believe. Sister, can there not be more in this world than we know, or understand? Can there not be room for both your Heart, and the Rot? Here we hold both in our minds at once. They circle each other ceaselessly, not at war, but always consuming. They do not care for us, no more than toys to be played with, so where does that leave us? In the light, or in the dark?"

  "I believe the Heart watches over us, in everything we do," said Leander, falling back on scripture. "He holds us and protects us."

  Varial smiled. "Of course. You see only the light. But then you flew, didn't you?"

  Leander studied her sister. She was older, but not bitter. She was solitary, perhaps beginning to draw deeper into madness, but her gaze was clear. There was not the expectation of inciting some kind of guilt in Leander for matters past, and Leander felt none. All of that had been so long ago. These were merely statements of fact. She had flown, and Varial had fallen.

  "I haven't flown since," she said.

  Varial nodded. "So I feared. That, Sister, is the lesson you have yet to learn. And you will learn it, I promise that."

  An uneasy silence descended. Leander longed to reach out and tell Varial everything, how much she'd missed her, how for so long she'd felt like she was going to die in her Abbey, just fade out of existence without Varial there. But she couldn't say any of that. She had not come here for that.

  "You won't take her back," she said, flatly stating the truth she'd known since first stepping into the mists.

  "I cannot," said Varial. "But you knew that, didn't you?"

  "So show me this revenant," said Leander, surprising herself. Was she beginning to believe in Avia? "I want to see the door into Aradabar."

  Varial nodded. "Of course. This is why you've truly come."

  She shuffled forward, rounding the side of the stained glass wall. Leander felt the past sink away as quickly as it had risen. Soon they were walking over earth crunchy with old ash, into a deeper darkness than anywhere else in the Hallows, leaving the radiant lights of the stained glass Avia behind. It took long moments for Leander's eyes to adjust. Whatever light shone in the ruined cathedral did not also shine here. It grew black and fogged, but even through that Leander recognized the shape standing pale and intricate in the darkness.

  A revenant arch.

  Varial stood by its side, and pointed through the arch into the mists.

  "It's impenetrable to us," she said, her voice echoing strangely. "But to Avia it was no obstacle."

  Leander reached out to touch the dry old stone. It was smooth, like skinned birch. She saw more clearly now its edges tapering away; carved in detail with faded figures of legend, familiar from the arch on Aspelair. "We have one near my Abbey. It leads to nothing, sister."

  "Perhaps yours leads nowhere. This arch leads to Avia's time, sister. To Aradabar. It leads to every place and every time, across all of the Heart and all the Corpse Worlds, if you are willing to pay the cost. It was built by the same Avia who resides with you now."

  Leander sighed. Perhaps she'd expected to find something else here, some proof of a kind. "These are just myths. You conflate legend with the truth."

  Varial chuckled, and spread her arms to encircle the revenant and cathedral. "All of this is myth, sister. Sen, Avia, you and I, we are all just strength in another story, bringing the power a young man needs to send himself further back, and fight the Rot again."

  "You're speaking riddles," Leander said. "None of that makes sense."

  "But it will," Varial said. "When he comes to you and you give this memory to him. It will make sense, and you will find your own answers. Sen, this is the way. This is the path."

  Another shiver came, and Leander took a step back. "I see what I came to find out, sister. You believe it all."

  "Of course I do, as would you, if a woman emerged from the mist covered in the still-warm dust of Ignifer's ash, jetted from the eruption that leveled Aradabar." Varial stepped closer. "You would believe too, if you saw the blood oozing from his scars perfectly matched the image in our glass made millennia ago. Sister, you too will believe when he comes to you at the end, dusted with ash, bearing the scars of his dead friends. You will believe it all."

  "And you have seen those things for me, sister? What follows the end, tell me that?"

  "Darkness," hissed the Butterfly. "The end of all things, and all things to their end, and with that a new beginning. There must be death for there to be life, mustn't there? I saw it as I fell from the Angelway, and I have seen it in every moment since, haunting my every step. The Dark has been with me always, and with it comes the Rot. These are my friends a
nd my bedfellows, and I welcome them, as I welcome you, and Avia, and her child Sen, who watches us even now. All these things I know, my sister, as the Rot's war is coming. The greatest war for this Corpse World, and all the worlds."

  Leander took another step backward. Varial's eyes were wild now, and it disturbed her.

  "Where are you going, sister?" Varial called, almost taunting, through the fog.

  "I am leaving, as I was once ordered to."

  Varial laughed. "And you did! You left me. Sister, let me ask this. Did I ever tell you not to fly again? Did I forbid it, did I pull you down to earth with my own hands?"

  "No, of course not," Leander called through the mist, too afraid to hear more, afraid of what wounds Varial would cut that might never heal.

  "Then why did you not fly?" Varial cried, her bodiless voice ringing through the mist. "Do you know how often I dreamed of it? I would have hated you, but why did you not fly when I hated you anyway? At least in that hate there would have been some joy, as you carried some part of me in the flight with you. Why did you not fly?"

  Leander fled.

  "Sister," came Varial's mad cries through the mist, "dear sister, you and I will be together again in the darkness, before the end of this world comes, I swear it. We will be together again!"

  Leander blinked away tears as she ran. This was the insanity Varial had come to. She fled and put the madness of the place behind her for good.

  FLIGHT

  Sen opened his eyes on Grammaton Square.

  For a moment he was baffled, then the crashing, fuzzy memories trickled back to him; the Darkness had come at the very end. He'd opened the veil just as it spewed through the window and sucked the Abbess in.

  She was gone.

  Yet the weight of her memories remained, sinking inside Sen like a heavy stone, bringing changes and new faith. Like that moment years ago on the Gutrock, when the lump of King Seem had delved into his mind seeking control, her life was a part of him now.