Heaven's Needle

by Liane Merciel

  “You are not.”

  “Then once more is enough. Take us back to the farmhouse.”

  “I suppose I will, since you ask so sweetly. Come.”

  Kelland released the last glimmerings of his spell, relieved to let go and yet bereft at the loss, as Malentir began his own. The darkness of Duradh Mal settled around them, black and vast and echoing with the reverberations of the Kliastan’s prayers. In the darkness Bitharn pressed closer, resting her arm against his. Offering strength, not seeking it. A bulwark against the night.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, leaning in. He didn’t know if she heard. A cold wind rose around them, snatching the words away. The Thorn’s prayer was nearly complete.

  The chill intensified, tightening its coils around them until Kelland thought his bones must crack, and slowly lessened its grip as blue starlight returned to their world.

  They stood in Renais’ abandoned farmhouse, facing the corrupted perethil. Its gate was gone. The fallen stars had returned to their places, somehow. Their metal edges gleamed, cutting the starlight to slivers on the black-washed canvas.

  “Rest,” the Thornlord said, moving smoothly to the door, “and pray, if you like. In the morning I will turn the perethil.”

  No sooner had he gone than Bitharn fumbled out her flint and lit a fire in the kitchen hearth. She filled a pan with water that Kelland had purified that morning and set it over the flames to warm. The task was so ordinary that it seemed almost absurd after what they’d lived through in Duradh Mal … but there was some solace in mundanity, and he could certainly understand why she’d want a bath.

  By the time she’d found soap, a brush, and a basin to stand in, the water was bubbling. Bitharn wrapped a padded glove around the pan’s handle, glanced at him, and wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure which of us needs a bath most.”

  “There’s enough water for us both.”

  “True. Only one basin, though. I found it, so I get it.” She emptied the pan’s hot water into a larger bucket half full of cold water, then poured some back into the pan for him. Kelland found a mouse-nibbled blanket to hang in the larder’s doorway. Bitharn set the soap and brush under the curtain, then nudged him into the larder. “You get to wash with the carrots.”

  Kelland didn’t argue. He went in, folded his clothes atop a sandy box of turnips and carrots, and sluiced away the filth of Duradh Mal while Bitharn did the same on the other side of the faded blue cloth.

  His bath left the farmer’s floor puddled with water, but neither of them cared. The night’s chill covered them in gooseflesh, but neither of them cared about that either. It was enough to be free of the ugliness that Duradh Mal had wrapped around them like an invisible, leprous skin. Clammy clothes and a wet floor were a small price to pay.

  Bitharn thrust a splint into the kitchen fire and lit one of the farmer’s candles. Cupping its flame with her other hand to protect it from drafts, she started upstairs. Kelland followed closely, never more than a step away.

  At her door she paused, holding the candle between them. “Stay with me tonight.”

  Kelland froze. Astonishment warred with exhaustion, leaving him momentarily mute. Love, desire, a thrill of apprehension so strong it verged on fear: all tangled up together, knotting in his throat. What is the right choice? “My oaths—”

  Bitharn shook her head impatiently. “You are so stupid sometimes. I’m not asking that. It’s only—” She stared at the candle, biting her lip. “I don’t want to be alone. Not tonight. Not after what we’ve been through, and what we face tomorrow. Is it so hard to understand?”

  “No,” Kelland said, abashed.

  There was only one bed in the room. Snuffing out the candle, Bitharn drew the farmer’s blankets back and over them both. She curled with her back to him, the soles of her feet barely touching his legs. In moments she was asleep.

  Sleep was slower to come for Kelland. Desire troubled him, but only a little; it was doubt that kept him awake.

  He’d been wrong again. Too consumed by his own doubts and fears to consider hers. Too thoughtless. Lying beside her, with the moon trailing gossamer scarves overhead, Kelland felt a peacefulness settle over him that he had seldom experienced outside prayer.

  He loved her. He needed her. She shared his devotion and strengthened it; and he was, once more, grateful for and humbled by that truth.

  Why is that forbidden?

  Was it forbidden?

  Bysshelios kept his magic.

  What did that mean, though? Had Bysshelios kept the faith, or betrayed it? He’d been a heretic, there was no question of that … but Kelland wasn’t sure what the Byssheline Heresy meant for him. If anything.

  He could ask the High Solaros when he returned to Cailan. If he lived to return. Here and now, he had more pressing concerns. Survival, and sanity.

  Kelland brushed a stray lock of hair from Bitharn’s neck and turned his face to the sky. He had to protect her in Shadefell. Against ironclaws, maelgloth, corruption, and madness … whatever was there, he had to keep her safe. That much, he knew to be clear and true.

  That much, Kelland hoped as he slid into slumber, he could do.

  At dawn they woke, prayed, and went downstairs to find the perethil’s stars wheeled into a new formation. A pair of skeletal hands, hacked off at the wrist and bound together by filthy string, dangled from the jeweled handle. The bones were stained with rings of rust: they’d come from a prisoner in Duradh Mal.

  “He kept a souvenir,” Bitharn observed dryly while making a porridge of oats and apples. “At least this one’s small, so it should burn faster. That’s thoughtful.”

  “You’re in a grim humor today.”

  “Yesterday I was in Duradh Mal. Tonight I’ll be in Shadefell. I think I’m allowed a little grimness.” Yet she remained in a determinedly light mood, avoiding any mention of the perethil or their destination until the westering sun turned the horizon to a lake of flame. Then Bitharn’s cheer dimmed, and she stole anxious glances at the painting’s stars while she gathered their belongings and counted her arrows.

  Kelland spent the time reading and rereading the papers the Illuminers had left behind, trying to retrace the steps of their desperate search. Aurandane. They’d gone in search of the Sword of the Dawn … but how had they intended to find it? And what would have happened if they did? He looked at the poisoned perethil, remembering the gouges its smooth metal had scarred on a skeleton’s hand, and shivered.

  Malentir returned at sundown. He held the black scrapings from the maelgloth pit gingerly in one hand, disdain etched on every line of his features. He dropped the little bundle onto a table and moved away.

  “You could have left it outside,” Bitharn said, eyeing the pile.

  “That would have been unwise. Better to suffer its presence a little while longer and allow your holy companion to destroy it.” The Thornlord dipped a cup into a barrel of clean water and drank. “I have learned all that can be gleaned safely from that. I have no more use for it, and it should be destroyed. It is not safe to keep.”

  “Why?” Bitharn asked, at the same moment that Kelland said, “What is it?”

  “The second question answers the first, so I will speak to that one,” Malentir said. He refilled the cup, watching its ripples until they stilled.

  “The physicians of the Khamul Rhayat,” he said, “believed that a spirit of corruption caused disease, and that it reproduced in various humors depending on the nature of the illness. The bottled breath of a fevered man could carry his ailment to others; the black blood lanced from a plague victim’s buboes carried that sickness’ spirit; the flooding from a rice-water sufferer’s bowels, the same. Every disease had a corruptive spirit, driven to carry its affliction to a new host and dying if it did not find one. Transferring the spirit to a new victim did not cure the old one—indeed, this theory was of no use in healing anyone—so the Rhayati physicians eventually turned their attentions elsewhere.

  “In the west you have
your Blessed, and few know of the Khamul Rhayat. But I found an echo of their teachings here.” He gestured at the cloth-wrapped ball. “That is blackfire dust. It is the cause of the madness and misery we have seen; it is what destroyed Ang’duradh. It is much like the Rhayati spirit of corruption—except that it does not carry any mortal sickness, but the Mad God’s blight on the soul. And it is no mere humor expelled from a sufferer’s body, but that body entire, condensed and consumed until all that is left is the essence of madness tied by threads of flesh and bone.”

  “I don’t understand,” Bitharn said.

  “Think of how charcoal is made. One begins with a great pile of wood under sod. A slow fire burns through the heap—carefully, without too much air, so that it smolders without being allowed to break into flame. When it is finished, what is left is not truly wood, not anymore, but something closer to the combined essence of wood and fire. It has been transformed: it burns hotter, longer, with little smoke. There is less of it, but it has more power.

  “Blackfire dust is like that, except it begins with human bodies and human souls instead of wood. Maol’s power consumes them in a controlled burn, never bursting into its full fury. After death, its victims do not rot like the corpses of ordinary men, returning to earth and worms, but wither into the dust we saw in Duradh Mal. That dust is the essence of the Mad God’s corruption in human flesh. Every speck of it is capable of spreading that blight. Breathe it as smoke, or let it touch one’s blood, and it is more dangerous still.

  “That is the curse of Duradh Mal. When Gethel broke the seals, the blackfire dust escaped. It seeped into the water and soaked into the earth, poisoning the valley. It may have spread faster when he brought the townspeople into those blighted halls, turning them into monsters. In Shadefell, I imagine, we will find more of that. The Rosewayns were not said to be numerous, but they held that place for many years, and I cannot imagine they did much to purify it while they were there. I’ve long thought they were called to that place and held there in thrall to Maol, rather than choosing it for the reasons they claimed.”

  “How do we shield against it?” Kelland asked.

  “We stay within your light.” Malentir’s smile was grim. “A prospect I do not relish, but better by far than the alternative.”

  “What about Aurandane?” The knight put aside the last few pages he’d been reading. “The Illuminers believed they could find it, and that it could protect them.”

  “Then they were fools,” the Thorn said indifferently. “The Sword of the Dawn is gone. Someone would have found it long before now otherwise—some knight of your order, or a scavenger like Renais. And if it is not gone, if it has lain in Shadefell all these years, then it is best left untouched. The curse on Renais’ painting is nothing next to what Maol could do with a perethil as powerful as Aurandane.”

  “Why would this—Gethel, you said his name was?—why would he dig that up?” Bitharn asked, still staring at the little bundle of blackfire dust. “What could he want with it? Surely he didn’t set out to unleash a Maolite plague in the world.”

  “It is unlikely that was his original intention. But we need not speculate. If he is in Shadefell, I will ask him.”

  “And you expect to get a sensible answer?”

  “Yes.” Malentir drained his second cup. “We are very good at interrogation.”

  “No torture,” Kelland said.

  “No,” the Thornlord agreed. “Pain would be … inefficient, even if he can still feel it. There are better ways, and faster.”

  Unsure what to make of that, Kelland said nothing. He drew his sword, laid it across his lap, and meditated over the naked steel until the last light vanished from the sky. Bitharn busied herself making a kettle of tea no one wanted. As twilight gave way to luminous black, the knight found his eyes drawn to the perethil’s shifting, impossible stars.

  Anxiety weighed heavy on him. Could any of Carden Vale’s people still be alive? How? As what? He thought unwillingly of the maelgloth in their pit, their bodies decaying into blackfire dust even as they struggled to cram more of it into their mouths. If the townspeople were lucky, they’d be dead. If they weren’t …

  And the Illuminers? What would become of them if Maol’s madness took root in their souls? If they found Aurandane, and it was—as Malentir had suggested—only a conduit of corruption?

  Had the Illuminers known what they faced when they went to Shadefell? He didn’t think so. If they had realized the danger, they wouldn’t have rushed off to face it, undertrained and unprepared as they were. Only ignorance allowed them to be so brave … and ignorance in battle carried a terrible price.

  During the Wars of the Five Fortresses, when Baoz’s faithful marched against the armies of the rebel Maghredan, both Baozites and Maghredani had captured each other’s Blessed and subjected them to unimaginable depravities, transforming them to blood-raged ansurak and unleashing them upon their former companions. They did the same to other deities’ servants, when they could, and though the Blessed were stronger willed than other men, when they finally broke they became the most terrible monsters of all.

  That was well over a thousand years ago. The tales of those wars were almost as fanciful as those about Moranne the Gatekeeper or Auberand and the Winter Queen—but they didn’t have to be true to make Kelland worry. If Gethel believed they were true, and tried to enact those rites on the Illuminers, their suffering would be nearly as hellish as if they actually became ansurak.

  And if they did … No one in living memory had faced ansurak, not in this part of the world. They were creatures of a bygone age, mythical as solarions or firebirds; they existed only as skulls on the walls of Ang’arta and drawings pressed between the pages of yellowed books in Craghail’s libraries.

  In the west, at least. In the east and the south, they had never completely vanished. Could Gethel have brought them back?

  Kelland hoped he was wrong. But he couldn’t know. He couldn’t do much of anything besides wait, and brood, until the perethil opened.

  An hour before midnight, its stars began to fall. As before, they tumbled of their own accord, and as before, each was accompanied by an unearthly peal. The sound was utter discord: some fell fast and erratic, stumbling into the last one’s echoes, while others sang dolorous and slow. Each sounded longer and louder than the last, until the final star stood alone on the black, and the perethil tore a shivering rift into the world.

  The Sun Knight stood. He straightened his surcoat, squared the sun medallion over his chest, and reached out to ensure that Bitharn was beside him.

  She was there. He went in. The last thing he saw, as the perethil claimed him, was Bitharn raising her own sunburst to the dark and her lips moving in an echo of his prayer.

  21

  Black mist swathed Kelland as he entered the perethil, burying his boots and climbing up his legs. It did not blind him, as it had before. This time a murky, poisoned light filtered through the world, rising from the wet earth and falling from the shapeless heavens.

  It illumined a never-world. Narsenghal. Shadows surrounded him, though there was nothing to cast them. They rose and fell like moon-pulled tides, and he was the moon that drew them. The gloom shaped itself into crude imitations of his form: faceless heads, lumpen legs, tenebrous arms that clung to their torsos only briefly and then fell back into the shadows, dissolving.

  “What is this place?” Kelland muttered. He was the only solid thing in the world. There was no sign of Bitharn or the Thorn. The ember of his goddess’ presence in his heart, constant even when he was not channeling her power, had gone out; he couldn’t feel Celestia with him here. Around him the shadow faces mirrored his question with gaping, sagging mouths, fumbling through imitations of speech.

  It is … yours. The answer came from all around him: it was the shadow faces who answered. They spoke in a varied susurration, each one articulating a word or a syllable before its voice dropped below a whisper or rose into a howl and another took up the th
read of their thought. We are yours. We are you. Your future, once you go to Shadefell. Your failure. Your fate.

  The shades’ voices, initially as shapeless as their forms, sounded more like Kelland’s with each word. Distorted, to be sure, always a half octave higher or lower or possessed of some inflection that the knight himself would never use … but recognizably, unmistakably, his. And although he knew it was part of the perethil’s snare, he couldn’t help being unsettled by listening to a chorus of his own voice hissing at him, or by the constant cacophony of his own sighs and shrieks behind it. That alone was bad enough, but he could hear a hunger in their voices that unnerved him. The shades weren’t content to imitate him; they wanted to be him, to steal his warm and living reality and wear it as their own.

  Kelland didn’t know whether that thought had been implanted in his head by some magic of the perethil or was recalled from some long-ago lesson at the Dome of the Sun, but he didn’t doubt it was so. The desire in the shadow faces’ writhing, and their frustration at the flaws in their mimicry, were too raw to be false.

  He walked away, although he had nowhere to go in this swamp of shadows. The faceless shades followed, whispering and muttering at the knight’s heels like a pack of ghostly dogs. Kelland ignored them. The first time through the perethil, the Mad God had assaulted him with raw filth and depraved lust. An obvious attack, and an ineffective one. This time, it seemed, the perethil was trying a different trick.

  Do you think this only a trick? Wrong, wrong, the murmuring shadows said, and their cacophony took up the refrain, shrilling and sighing: wrong, wrong.