by ML Spencer
He laid him down and took up his sword
And uttered a curse unto Senestra and spake:
‘Unto the last wyrm we fight, till our hearts cool to stone,
And our weapons grow dull and our blood runs red!’
* * *
Then did Erok and fierce Varanth bring the fight
And it seemed then that fate had turned,
For no weapon could pierce them and no serpent could poison.
Till Draxal, rallying his forces, struck Varanth a mortal blow
Which flung him from the sky and slew him upon the ground.
Grievously afflicted, Erok knelt in sorrow and lamentation,
His sword shattered but his spirit unbroken.
He stood again in defiance of the tempest
And unto Draxal took the fight.
Conceived of a hatred that had no fear of death
Erok cleaved the world in twain,
Casting Auld from Man and wyrm from theryl,
Light from Shade and Issia from Pyrial.
The Veil fell betwixt this world and its counter
Shredding Erok’s spirit and body asunder.
The World Above will grieve the World Below,
Till the blood of Raginor is brought again from old.”
* * *
As the bard’s voice faded to silence, Aram sat leaning forward, sucked into the song like a boat caught in a vortex. He stared straight ahead, transfixed, heart thrumming wildly in his chest. So moved was he that he didn’t react when the bard lifted his eyes to the rafters and locked his granite stare with Aram’s own. The visions provoked by the lyrics had ensnared his mind, and nothing in the mundane world could break him away from that.
For within the strains of the ballad, Aram thought he’d found the answer to every mystery of his life. According to the song, Erok had cleaved the world in half, with Auld on one side and Men on the other, separated by some type of veil. It was the first Aram had ever heard of such a thing, and yet the concept resonated with all the authority of an epiphany. Perhaps that’s what his gift showed him, what he could see with his opal eyes that no one else could see. All those glimmering lines and myriad colors that saturated the air—could they be the warp and weft of the Veil between worlds?
And that last line of the ballad: ‘Till the blood of Auld is brought again from old…’
Old Blood. Auld blood. His blood.
His father’s blood.
Suddenly, Aram was certain that’s where his father had come from and where he’d returned to. He knew it in his gut, with a far greater conviction than he’d ever believed anything before in his life.
And if he could see that Veil, then maybe he could part it—maybe even find a way to bring his father home.
“Aram.” Markus tugged at his arm. “It’s over. Let’s go!”
But Aram couldn’t move. His gaze was focused on the threads that wove the fabric of the world, glimmering with color and complexity. Somewhere on the other side of them was his destiny.
Reaching out, Aram took hold of one of the aethereal threads and tugged at it, plucking it from the tapestry.
The Veil resonated, the world before him wavering, the air heating just a little bit. Cautiously, he plucked another thread, creating a fray.
“What are you doing?” Markus asked.
“Aram! Don’t!” Master Ebra bellowed from below.
Ignoring them both, Aram plucked another thread and then another, creating a rent in the fabric just wide enough to get his hands through.
“Aram!”
With all the strength he could muster, he tore the rent open as wide as he could and peered through to the other side.
Chapter Seven
A light appeared before him, stunningly bright.
Aram gasped, for he didn’t know what he was looking at, only that it was wondrous. It was like looking straight into the sun, though blindingly white instead of yellow. His eyesight filled with motes that floated across his vision. At first, he could make out nothing through the glare, for it was too painful to behold. He shut his eyes tight, seeing only red illuminate his eyelids. It took a moment before he dared crack them open enough to look again. When he did, he didn’t immediately recognize what he was seeing.
Slowly, he realized that he was staring at clouds. He was floating within them, and they consumed the entire world. He could feel pinpoint pricks of mist, a heavy dampness in the air, and a frigid, high-altitude chill.
Then the clouds parted, and he looked down upon a world clothed in a single, infinite forest that sprawled to meet a sky more brilliant and bluer than any he had ever seen.
The clouds swirled back together, cloaking him in white. They gathered closer, and as they did, the world darkened, fading to the deep gray of thunderstorms. The air grew colder and the mist around him condensed on his skin, forming droplets that sucked the heat out of him and made him shiver.
The gray world around him faded to darkness.
He floated within a nothingness that went on forever, endless and unyielding. The clouds were gone, and he found himself doubting that they had ever been there. A terrible fear gripped him, and he glanced back the way he’d come. But he couldn’t see the threads of the Veil he had ripped; the only thing behind him was eternal blackness.
Then he heard it: the shriek of a monster.
It was a cry that sounded like the mortal scream of a thousand deaths, a rasping wail unlike anything he’d ever heard. It carried through the darkness like a rogue wave, and he knew there was no place he could hide from it.
Somehow, he knew it was coming for him.
It had sensed his presence and was travelling this way across the vast distance between them. He had no idea what approached; he just knew it was something that wasn’t supposed to exist in his world. He had to escape—only, there was nowhere to go. Another terrible cry sliced through the silence.
Then it came into view: a billowing form that fluttered toward him, gleaming from out of the darkness. It slithered with the ribboning body of a snake, long and sinuous, only flattened, like an eel. It had a dorsal fin that ran the length of its pale body and rippled as it swam through the dark. But unlike an eel, in place of gills, it had wings, long and spindly, insubstantial to move such a creature through either water or air. It had a long head full of teeth that looked like sharpened knives. The eyes that locked on him were vacant pools of emptiness.
Aram screamed as his body was jerked backward, and he spilled onto the wood planks of the ledge. With a cry, he scrambled like a crab away from the rent he had created in the Veil. It was still there, a black wound in the air the size of his body. The glittering fibers of the world were frayed around it, buffeted by a great wind that raced through the hole.
It was awful. Evil. Just the sight of it filled him with a visceral revulsion and a primal fear.
“What is it?” Markus shrieked above the howl of the wind racing through the hole.
Aram didn’t know. All he knew was that he had to get away from it. That thing was in there somewhere, and it knew where he was. A brilliant light gushed out of the rent, flooding the rafters and the beams of the ceiling. Vaguely, he was aware of screams as the adults that filled the longhouse stampeded for the doors.
The ledge beneath him started shuddering like the bed of a wagon on a rough road, and dust rained down from above. A terrible grating noise filled the longhouse, as though every board and plank of its structure was on the verge of splitting.
And then he heard the shriek of the monster.
There was a sudden flash of blinding light accompanied by a scream that came from no human throat. And then the eel-like head appeared, lashing out at him like a whip. Its serrated teeth latched onto his leg and clamped down hard, stabbing all the way to the bone.
Aram screamed in agony as the monster dragged him back toward the rift.
Markus fell on top of him just as his legs disappeared into the hole, catching him around the chest and heaving
him back. Aram screamed again as the monster’s teeth sliced down the length of his leg, tearing him open as Markus dragged him further from the rupture.
“Close it!” Markus screamed. “Close it, Aram!”
Markus sprawled back, pulling Aram tight against his chest and clamping his arms around him. There was another violent flash, and the creature burst out of the rent again, mouth gaping. It lunged for them like a striking snake, but Markus got his leg up and kicked it away ferociously.
The thing recoiled with a defiant shriek then snaked back around, its hollow eyes riveted on Markus. Aram panicked. In desperation, he reached out and wove the threads of the air as quickly as he could, darning the hole in the Veil. As he wove, the monster struck out at them again, but his stitches held. The fabric poked and buckled, as though the thing on the other side were trying to scratch its way out. An enraged cry shrieked from the other side, sounding muffled and far away. Aram kept frantically weaving, tears of pain and rivulets of sweat streaming down his face. He wove and knotted as fast as he could while the monster threw its body against his mending over and over, shuddering the entire frame of the building. Frantic, Aram tied off the last stitch.
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the rupture was gone. The light disappeared and the longhouse went silent and still.
Panting, Aram collapsed back into Markus’s lap, gazing up into his friend’s face in shock, unable to blink. He was aware of Markus’s panic breaths above him, but not much else.
“You’re bleeding!” Markus gasped, laying him down on the planks and crawling around him.
He ripped a hole in Aram’s trousers, tearing the fabric all the way down and exposing his leg. He pressed his hands against the wound, applying pressure, making Aram scream in agony. Struggling to free his belt, Markus wrapped it around Aram’s leg, cinching it tight, as Aram whimpered and started shaking uncontrollably.
“Hang on!” Markus gasped. “I’ll be right back!”
The planks beneath Aram’s back vibrated as Markus moved away, leaving him alone with his agony. It seemed Markus was gone for a long time, but then he was back, dropping down at his side. Vaguely, Aram was aware of his friend wrapping rope around him, passing it behind his back and between his legs. Feeling suddenly lightheaded and cold, Aram whimpered harder. He raised himself up onto his elbows and looked down at himself. His leg was covered in dark brown blood that pooled beneath him on the ledge and saturated the front of Markus’s shirt.
His strength gave out, and he collapsed back to the planks. The last thing he remembered was the rope around him drawing tight.
Markus heaved at the rope with all his might, lifting Aram off the ledge. He had gone up onto the roof and retrieved the rope from the gable beam, feeding it down through the smoke hole and over one of the rafters above them before securing it to Aram. With all his might, he heaved at the rope, lifting Aram off the ledge.
The boy was unconscious, and his body sagged in the makeshift harness, his arms dangling. He had already lost a lot of blood from the deep wounds in his thigh, and the tourniquet Markus had tied around him wasn’t working as well as it needed to. Every pulse of Aram’s heart sent fresh blood welling from his leg, splattering on the floor three stories below.
Feeding the rope slowly, Markus lowered Aram to the floor, where Master Ebra and a few other men received him and laid him out on the planks. Then Markus scrambled down the rope himself, hand over hand, dropping the final distance. There, he crouched beside the bard, who was already bent over Aram, examining his leg. He pressed his hands against the wound and didn’t react at the color of the blood that gushed out to slick his skin.
“We have to stop the bleeding,” Master Ebra said, his voice strangely calm.
He slid his own belt off and used it as a second tourniquet, pulling it tight, much tighter than Markus would have ever thought to do. He then ripped a shred of cloth off what was left of Aram’s trousers, wadding it up and pressing it down deep into the largest of a series of wide gashes.
“Hold this as tightly as you can,” he commanded Markus.
Markus did as he was asked, plunging his fingers into the wound, using the sodden rag to try to staunch the flow of blood gurgling out of it. His own breath came in sobbing gasps, and his hands were trembling violently. When he looked down and saw the amount of blood around them on the floor, it dawned on him that Aram was probably dying. The thought burned his throat and made his lips constrict against his teeth.
“Should we get his mother?” Markus asked, struggling against tears. He knew that if it were him dying, he would want his mother to be there.
“No.” Master Ebra moved around to the other side of him. “Put more pressure on that cloth, as much as you can.” He tore off his own shirt and started ripping the fabric into strips. “Has anyone gone for the healer?”
Markus noticed that a small crowd had gathered around them, the few adults brave enough to remain behind when the rest had panicked. Mister Rannel, the butcher, left immediately to find Mistress Dayslin, while another man, Jan Tubbard, crouched beside them.
“You’ve got to get his legs up higher,” Mister Tubbard said, picking up Aram’s legs himself and sliding a sack of potatoes under them. He then set two fingers on the boy’s neck and checked his pulse, frowning.
To Markus, lifting Aram’s legs seemed to be helping. His face looked a little less pale than it had, and there was less gray around his lips. Markus settled back on his haunches, keeping pressure on the artery while staring down at his bloody hands. It occurred to him then that no one in the room had mentioned the color of Aram’s blood. Perhaps the elders had already known, or at least knew what it meant.
It seemed a great while before Mistress Dayslin arrived with a large bag. She set to work immediately with catgut and needle, cleaning the wounds with water and whiskey then stitching them closed. It took a long time to sew him up, for some of the gashes ran half the length of Aram’s leg. While she worked, Markus stood and backed away, feeling weak and unsteady. He sat at one of the long plank tables and leaned forward, holding his head in his hands. When Master Ebra sat beside him, he didn’t even know the man was there until he felt him patting his back.
“He’ll be all right,” the bard assured him. “What about yourself? Are you injured?”
“No.” Markus shook his head. His thick leather boot had saved his foot when the creature attacked him. “What was that thing?”
Master Ebra’s gaze drifted away and, for a moment, became haunted and distant. At first, Markus didn’t think he was going to answer, but then the bard brought his hand up and, rubbing his eyes, admitted, “It was an aetherling. Though most people just call them therlings.”
Markus stared at him hard a long moment before finally asking, “Where did it come from?”
“Aram did something very rash and very dangerous. He ripped a hole in the Veil, exposing our world to the void. Things could have gone a lot worse. If he hadn’t closed the rupture when he did, it would have grown. Then we would have had a hoard of those things to contend with, not just one, and we would be begging for the Exilari. Aram was lucky.”
“He doesn’t look lucky.” Markus watched as Mistress Dayslin finished dressing Aram’s leg. For the first time, he felt comfortably sure that his young friend wasn’t going to die. “What’s the void?”
The bard paused before answering, looking hesitant. “It’s a long story. To make it short, our world was torn apart long ago in an event known as the Sundering. We live in the World Above, the world of Men. Most magical beings ended up in the World Below. Between these two worlds is only a vast emptiness we call the void, which is patrolled by therlings, like the one that attacked Aram.”
“Will it come back?” Markus whispered.
The bard rose to his feet. “No. With the rupture sealed, it can’t break through again. Not here, at least, although there will be echoes of what was done here further away. Unfortunately, now we have other worries.”
Mark
us glanced at him sharply. “What kinds of other worries?”
Master Ebra’s face turned grim, the lines of his brow deepening. “Exilari sorcerers can detect weaknesses in the Veil. If any are close enough, they will sense the rupture Aram made, and they’ll know it didn’t occur naturally. I’m afraid our young friend has drawn the wrong kind of attention to himself.”
A new kind of fear grabbed Markus, making him shiver. His gaze darted to the boy on the floor before returning to Master Ebra. “Why would the Exilari care about Aram?”
The bard sucked in a cheek, looking away. It was obvious he was uncomfortable with the questions, and he was swiftly reaching the limit of how much he was willing to answer.
“Exilari sorcerers have little natural affinity for magic. They’re like parasites, siphoning the ability from others to use for themselves. Unfortunately, over the centuries, they have bled the world dry of those who can provide what they need.”
Markus pondered his words for a time. “Is that why the Auld disappeared?”
Master Ebra nodded. “The Auld in this world who survived the Sundering were hunted mercilessly by the Exilari. They kept them alive to harvest their essence. The Auld were a long-lived people. Many were tortured for centuries before they finally succumbed. But now the Auld are no more, and the Exilari have become desperate. They’ve been forced to prey upon the Auld’s descendants. They comb the world looking for blood strong enough to give them the essence they need.”
“The Old Blood,” Markus whispered, his eyes going to Aram, who lay covered in blood dark as peat. A terrible foreboding filled him, making him shiver. “So, if their sorcerers sensed the rupture, they’ll be coming here for Aram.”
“Correct.”
Markus stood from his seat. “Then we have to leave!”
Master Ebra held up a hand. “Not so fast. Aram is very weak. He would never survive a journey as he is. We’ll have to remain here a few days, until he is strong enough to travel. We’ll just have to pray their sorcerers are far enough away that we’ll be gone before they arrive.”