by Joe Ducie
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE ASHES OF TRUE EARTH
’All of this, for you, in your avarice’
Against the protests of my advisors, who fell on me like vermin, pigeons, seagulls after my bag of hot chips, once I strolled from my quarters within the Fae Palace, Tal lead me down to the cavernous hall of portals about halfway up the mighty tower. A nexus point for travelling across my vast and bountiful empire.
“Where are we going, Tal?” I asked, as my royal guard—save for Vrail, who was attending to other matters, moving his family back from off-world, now that most of the unrest had rested—cleared a path.
Tal checked her pocket watch, which told the time of the casual twenty-four-hour clock of the real world, and not the fucked time of everywhere and anywhere else. One could experience some serious jetlag, crossing worlds—into territories where the days lasted a year, the nights even longer, or worse, where the clock was just out of whack an hour or two. Those were the ones that really messed with your head. Subtle menace, like an Elder God or two I could name.
Tal arranged a portal to True Earth, the next available (which was immediately for the king) and we stepped from the vast and vaulted splendour of the Fae Palace and into a familiar, if a little dusty and worn, basement of a bar in Perth, Western Australia—on Murray Street. My royal guard followed swiftly, a good half-dozen toughs armed to the teeth, all of them capable of slitting throats in a heartbeat, and had done so recently during the rebellion. We were about twenty minutes up the road from my bookshop in Joondalup. What remained of my bookshop, after Oblivion had his way with mirkfyre and ruin.
I had a thousand and one questions, but I trusted Tal. Trusted her not to steer me off the edge of the nearest cliff. Hell, I’d manage that all on my own.
This bar was an old favourite of mine, and I admired the aged wine cellar as Tal and I walked up from the portal archway in the basement, a key waypoint for Story Thread travel, licensed and approved, of course, and up a set of stairs into the bar proper.
Lazy, mid-afternoon sunlight bled through the stained and dusty windows, casting faint golden pools on the few inches of sawdust coating the floors. A stage in the corner held a band of slumped jazz instruments—and a grand piano, all of which looked tired. The round tables sank under the weight of drinks once spilt, the velvet-backed chairs last in style four centuries ago.
The bar had character—something that couldn’t be faked.
Albert McSorley stood in his traditional, well-worn spot behind the long bar. Dozens of cold, frosty craft beer taps lined the bar, a bridge of cool pipes and golden promise. The wall behind him stretched up to the ceiling, a library ladder in place, full of bottles both local and alien.
McSorley’s on Murray Street was an institution, one of the few licensed premises on True Earth that catered to the world-travellers, the Knights Infernal least among them, though this was a knightly bar. The proprietor himself was once among our ranks. Old Al did a roaring trade most weekends from off-world visitors looking to explore a piece of True Earth. Perth, the city beyond his doors, was traditionally safe territory. Until very recently, even protected by the king of the Knights Infernal himself, before I got myself all ensnared by the Everlasting.
I wondered if I’d ever get back here, just as me. No crowns or demons on and in my head.
I didn’t like my odds.
Albert McSorley appraised us from over his bar. Last we’d spoken, I’d told him Fair Astoria, the Immortal Queen of the Renegades, had died—died hard. I was ever the bearer of wholesome news. He grunted at me, lips quirked, something knowing dancing in his eyes.
“If you think being king gets you out of paying your tab,” Al said. “You’ve got another thing coming.”
I relaxed, even found half a smile. “I don’t drink anymore, Albert.”
He blinked and looked… relieved. I’d gotten a lot of that from people that knew me and my drinking. Relief that I’d stopped. Things always look better in hindsight. “Well, you get a year under your belt and we’ll call it even on the bar tab, Hale.”
A guard at my back bristled. “You will address his highness as such—”
“No,” I said to the guard “Thank you, but no. Not here. Not him.” Albert McSorley was an old man. Even for a knight, he was old and had done the living of the next fifty men combined. He had been there over a hundred years ago, in Ascension City, when the Tome Wars had started.
He had been there when the Tome Wars ended over a hundred years later, seven years ago now.
“Lot of news about you coming through the gateway, kid,” McSorley said. He lined up a row of shot glasses on the bar and poured whisky for everyone but me.
I waved at my guards, letting them know it was fine to drink if they so choose.
At the last, he filled a shot glass with soda water and a lime wedge for his king and shrugged it across the bar toward me. I had to chuckle.
“Cheers,” I said, and clinked glasses with Tal. She savoured the whisky on her lips, and I had the strongest urge to kiss her—doubly intoxicated, that way. Damn it all, I’d die loving her. No way out of that nest of brambles. Ten years could pass and I’d still be dwelling on Tal Levy, wondering what might have been.
“Heard you were dead, that they finally got you in that bookshop of yours,” McSorley continued. “Didn’t believe the rumours. You’ve survived far worse.”
I considered, then nodded.
“Heard you’d been seen in the ruins of the Reach,” he said, and here the air grew cloying enough to be cut with the bluntest knife.
The Reach, a city-world in ruin, my ruin. I had destroyed it with the Roseblade seven years ago now. The first domino to fall at the end of the Tome Wars. Voraskel and Avalon, not long after. Worlds cascading into worlds, like a game of cosmic billiards. All at my hand. The millions I had killed that day were owed an accounting.
Once the Everlasting were stopped.
Oblivion snorted. ‘You think it stops with us?’ he whispered. ‘There’ll always be another reason to fight, Hale. It’s all you know how to do. Granted, you’ve set yourself the grandest challenge in the Story Thread in vowing to destroy my family, but even should you succeed… it won’t end there, will it?’
I ignored him. Easier than acknowledging his eerie armchair analysis.
“That… could have been my shadow,” I said. I hadn’t heard any rumours of being in the Reach. Had Dusk been up to something clever and nefarious wearing my spare face? The Roseblade had lain hidden, for a time, in the Reach. My doing. That blade was destroyed now.
“And then,” McSorley said and laughed aloud, an absurd, wild laugh. “The craziest rumour of all, as a mass exodus of lords and ladies, nobles and merchants, fled from Ascension City and through my archway. All of them in the last day, I might add, and all of them vocally opposed to you in the past. Some of them calling for your head, after the Tome Wars, in support of Good King Faraday…” He knocked back a shot and his eyes flashed. “Such rumours turned fact. Rumours claiming the Shadowless Arbiter had taken the Dragon Throne, that the streets of Ascension City ran crimson with the fallen, that Declan Hale’s bloodlust and avarice would never be sated. Executing people at will without cause or reason in the grand square, parading heads through the streets, and raiding the royal cellar for the oldest and rarest of liquors.”
“There was very little blood in the streets,” I said and drank my soda water and lime. “And absolutely no parading.”
McSorley nodded. “It should always have been you on that throne, son. I’ve said the same to any who asked, including your brother, when he stopped by years ago. He didn’t stop by again.”
“Yeah…”
“Takes some convincing, this one,” Tal said.
McSorley nodded again, gravely at her, and refilled her shot glass. “I am glad to see you well, Miss Levy. You deserve it—but, if I may, you stand far too close to this one.” He glanced at me. “Trust an old man, it will only end one way.”
He shook his head. Once. And tapped on his bar. He met my eyes. “Which one is it? You would never have taken Ascension City on your own. That’s not your way. You could have done it, of that I’ve no doubt, but you wouldn’t have done it. So, which one?”
Old age hadn’t slowed Al down one bit, and he was one of the few who believed in the Everlasting. I made a gun with my fingers and thumb and mimed blowing my brains out. “Lord Oblivion.”
McSorley paled and took an unconscious step back. He crossed himself, and I was surprised to see he had religion.
“Oh, don’t give me that look,” he scowled. “I’m an old man. A little superstition never hurt. Particularly given that, for all that matters, we are in the presence of a god.”
‘I like him,’ Oblivion said.
Everyone does, I replied. He’s a… facilitator. A good man. Rarer than rare.
I glanced at Tal and she tapped an imaginary wristwatch.
“It was good seeing you, Albert. Take care.”
He picked up a spotless pint glass, an even cleaner rag and, as was his way, began to polish. “Aye, son, you too. Though every time feels like the last. I’ll pray for you.”
*~*~*~*
I figured out what Tal had in mind, where we were heading, about half an hour later, after we’d flagged down some taxis to take me and my guard across town—not north toward Joondalup, but west toward the coast, through the city, and toward Karrakatta Cemetery. As was standard, my royal guard carried universal credit cards and even a bit of cash—enchanted wallets linked to the treasury on Ascension City, that ensured we’d always have money when travelling, and no matter where we travelled.
Another perk of being the king.
I didn’t have to punch through an ATM and steal a wad of fifties. I was legit now, free to raid the coffers. My usual way was far cooler, though.
Our three taxis pulled up outside of the cemetery in the western districts of the city of Perth just before three in the afternoon. It was a nice day, one of the three hundred or so a year where Perth enjoyed clear blue skies, warm weather, and the bright, redeeming sunshine that made everything look vibrant, healthy—alive.
Even the rows of mismatched and flower-strewn tombstones, graves, and mausoleums in Karrakatta Cemetery were robbed of their spookiness by the warm light of the afternoon.
“Stay a good distance away,” I told my royal guard. “And don’t enter the chapel. We don’t want to cause a scene.”
‘That would be a first for you.’
Shut up, Oblivion.
The royal guard murmured agreement but didn’t look too happy about it. I had to stop myself from reminding them just how much I’d survived without their so-called protection. Hell, not so long ago these men and women would have taken my head without blinking on the order of Jon Faraday. Well, perhaps not, given that they’d sworn loyalty to me and usurped the throne on what they believed was my order.
Still.
We were underdressed. Well, I was. Tal wore a pair of business trousers and a proper dark blouse, her hair tied back in a black ribbon. She’d found a pair of sunglasses from somewhere, too, and placed them over her eyes. I was scruffy in jeans and a short sleeve shirt, my shabby waistcoat over the top. Not informal, I suppose, but I’d been better dressed when attending Astoria and Ash’s funeral a week ago.
Damned if that wasn’t a grisly comparison.
We crossed the pebbled path onto the red-brick stone before the chapel, and joined the thin crowds heading into the air-conditioned space. The room, pews and seats for about two hundred, was full, and that was nice. I’d attended plenty of funerals where the only people there were a priest, a Knight, and often the person who had killed the poor bastard going into the ground. Often that person had been me.
In a way, I was doing the same again today.
On an artist’s pedestal by the wide glass doors sat a large memorial placard:
In Loving Memory
ETHAN JAMES REILLY
December 12, 1997 - September 7, 2017
Life is but a stopping place
Beneath the fancy typography was a goofy photograph of my wayward apprentice, grinning like an idiot at the camera and holding up two fingers in peace. A flash of memory, the sound of his head popping from his neck, made me grimace.
I pivoted to a better memory—that of Ethan tackling a sniper that had tried to kill me at the university tavern a few years back. He’d knocked the bastard from the third floor and ridden his body down to the ground. The kid may have never graduated from the academy, but he had been more a Knight Infernal than most.
I didn’t recognise anyone in the service except for Sophie, who sat near the front with an older woman that resembled Ethan so closely as could only be his poor mother. They held one another’s hands. Only once, as the room filled and the coffin was brought in on the shoulders of his family, placed on the plinth at the head of the room, did Sophie look our way.
She didn’t smile, but she also didn’t curse. Was it only a day ago she had confronted me before the might and power of the Dragon Throne? Less than that? I think Tal and Sophie had planned this between them. Having me here. Trying to remind me why it all mattered, perhaps. Events moved on cosmic, celestial scales with me at their heart, which made the whole sordid mess seem pointless, after a while.
I needed to remember the people lost along the way. If I was to fight, if I thought myself capable of waging war on this scale, I had to remember the cost.
Such as Ethan Reilly. Dead in a torn heartbeat.
‘You waste what little time you have,’ Oblivion whispered. ‘I took great pleasure in severing that boy.’
Hush, I said, and for a wonder he did.
Nice words were said. His friends spoke kindly of Ethan. Sophie said a few words, sent him her love across the only void that mattered, and the coffin was lowered slowly into the floor of the chapel, down and away to the crematorium.
Over so quickly, these things, so the next coffin could be hauled on in.
There was a wake in the next room, a chance to speak fond memories of the departed, and there would be a proper send-off at the Irish bar in Subiaco, ten minutes away, that afternoon. I didn’t think I’d be attending. There was too much on my plate, as it stood. And, if I were to be honest…
I couldn’t bring myself to confront his mother. In that, as in many other ways, I was a coward. She and I had never met, but Ethan had often spoken of her during our apprenticeship. I was a fool for ever taking him on, teaching him how to harness his unfound Will. He had saved me, more than once, and I had gotten him killed. I’d had more than enough experience in such matters at that point to know things could only end one way. This way.
Tal went to see Sophie and I stepped back out into the sunshine of the cemetery. My knightly royal guard fell into step behind me, but kept their distance, as I strolled through the narrow alleys and crooked rows of tombstones, among bright green grass and bouquets of fresh flowers draping the dead in the dying.
Such a small space, this cemetery. It made me think of the World Cemetery, accessible through the Fae Palace, in comparison. Every Knight Infernal to have ever lived and died was buried in that cemetery—had a tomb to mark their passing. The cemetery spanned entire continents, the entire world, and was even starting to get a little full—particularly after the Tome Wars. My grandfather was a caretaker there. I should really pay him a visit, before the end.
Tal would hit you for thinking that last thought.
Lost in my last thoughts, I’d taken a seat on an old wooden bench with a memorial plaque of its own under the shade of a Eucalyptus tree. I rubbed at the back of my neck, warding away the inevitable headache. Futile, I’d wager, when the headache was Everlasting. In that moment, surrounded by the dead, I felt like one of those songs from the seventies, probably sung by the Eagles, about running out of time.
That forced a wry chuckle out
of me.
Gravel crunched underfoot, a kind hand squeezed my shoulder, and Detective Annie Brie of the West Australian Police Force sat down next to me on the bench.
“Hello, Declan,” she said, a petal of the Infernal Clock beating away in her heart.
“Hello, Annie,” I replied.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LONG LIVE THE WAR KING
‘Pillars of salt, pillars of sand’
“Nice day, despite the occasion,” Annie said, her jet-black hair resting on the shoulders of her worn yet form-fitting red leather jacket. Her jade-green eyes settled on me, though they were hidden behind reflective sunglasses. Everybody looking cool but me, squinting in the sun.
She wore boots and jeans, a familiar revolver strapped to her waist in an old holster. That gun had seen a few things, killed a few monsters. Its previous owner had died strung up and gutted at the Hillaries Boat Harbour by an Emissary dragon, right after the dragon had blown up my favourite bar. What had been that old detective’s name… Sam? Sam… something? Damn, I should have remembered that.
Annie, with the petal of the Infernal Clock in her heart—I had brought her back to life—was deadly with that gun. I mean, all guns were deadly, but Annie… she could fire from across the cemetery, drunk and blindfolded, and the slug would still find the mark. She had a knack, something akin to but not quite an enchantment. Something better, unique. Again, the petal’s doing.
It had been the best part of ten days since last I saw Annie, after our adventure in Switzerland at the Atlas Lexicon, after she had skewered Dread Ash on an enchanted sword, killed the Everlasting with the petal in my heart, dragging it through into Tal, possessed at the time, and saving the whole wide world.
She looked tired. We all were tired.
Could we do the same now? Stab Annie and me together and hope the same thing would happen? I didn’t dare, and not just for fear it wouldn’t work. Or that it would harm Annie. Messing with those petals could annihilate worlds. And, thinking it through now, Oblivion would have to be in control, I was certain. He’d never sit still long enough for it to work. We’d caught Ash purely by surprise.