by Death
“Peasant?” he said. “Is that you?”
“Master!” cried Chlod, dragging himself out of the blood-pool to fall at his feet. “Praise Ranald, I thought you were dead!”
We are all dead, whispered a voice in Calard’s ear, but if Chlod heard it too, he didn’t make any reaction.
“Not yet,” said Calard, answering both.
“You’ve been gone so long, I was worried, and then there were these sabre-cats and they…” His words trailed off as he seemed finally to register his surroundings, and his eyes went wide. The hunchbacked peasant looked around him in dawning horror, and a pitiful moan escaped his lips.
“Gone so long?” said Calard. “I’ve only been here for… what, an hour perhaps?”
“An hour?” said Chlod, looking up at him. The peasant shook his head. “You’ve been gone for two days, master.”
You are dead, said a voice. You just don’t know it.
“Did you hear that?” said Calard. Chlod was starting to shake, and tears were running down his cheeks. Calard could see that the peasant’s sanity was close to breaking.
“Peasant!” he snapped, and Chlod jerked, looking up at him with haunted eyes. “Did you hear that voice?”
“Voice?” said Chlod.
“Never mind,” said Calard.
“What’s in there?” said Chlod pointing.
“What?” said Calard. “There’s nothing there…”
His voice trailed off as he followed Chlod’s gesture and saw that there was something nearby, something that had not been there before. Or at least, something he had not seen.
It was a pile of large red boulders, about a hundred yards away, and it looked akin to an old burial cairn. A way in to the cairn was formed by two tall boulders that leant against each other, forming a crude portal. The inside was dark.
Calard wondered how he had not seen it before.
Your eyes are closed, said a voice in his ear. You blind yourself with lies, denying yourself, deluding yourself.
“Oh, and Chlod doesn’t?” said Calard aloud.
“Master?” said Chlod, eyes darting around to see whom Calard spoke with.
He is a simple creature. He knows what he is. His eyes are open. He does not try to be something he is not.
“And I do?” said Calard.
You are dead! said the voice vehemently, the words spoken with hatred.
Chlod was looking at Calard strangely. Ignoring him, Calard moved towards the cairn.
Did he lie to himself? Calard wondered as he made his progress across the searing red sand. He knew the answer, of course. He always had. For years he had tried to be something that he wasn’t. For years he had tried to live up to hopeless expectations: his father’s, his own.
He heard laughter then, filled with self-satisfaction, and Calard pushed the sound and his doubts away as he reached the cairn. This place was insidious, preying upon his mind. He must not let himself succumb to the voices.
With his sword drawn, he stepped inside the cairn.
A man was kneeling in front of a crude shrine, his back to Calard. He was dressed in plate armour, though it was battered and old, covered in a layer of red dust. His hair was long and lined with silver, and he wore a tattered cloak over one shoulder.
Calard held his sword tightly in his hands, standing over the vulnerable figure. He could cut him down so easily.
Do it, urged a voice, making him start.
The man looked normal enough, but Calard knew that nothing in this hellish realm could be trusted. He shuddered as he thought of the other visions he had already seen, the teeming hordes of skinless, hateful daemons that he still felt crowding in around him, just beyond the veil of reality. Was this figure one of them, merely in a guise that might make him lower his guard? If it turned around would its face be missing, nothing but red-raw exposed muscle and veins?
Calard clenched his teeth, his muscles tensing as the urge to cut the man down took a hold of him. This is no man, he thought. This is a daemon. His heart beat furiously in his chest, and he could hear the pumping of blood in his head, deafening him and blotting out rational thought.
Calard tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword as a savage madness took him, and he stepped forward to strike the man down, his face twisting into a snarl.
As he lifted his sword up for the killing blow, he was momentarily distracted by something glinting in the shadows. His gaze was drawn to a small icon standing upright upon the crude shrine before which the man knelt, and as his gaze focused on that pendant, the blood-fury that had claimed him receded.
With a shake of his head, Calard cleared the last vestiges of the savage rage that had almost overcome him. He lowered his sword, hearing disappointed murmurs and bitter whispering all around him, wondering if this was merely some new vision.
The icon was a small brass statuette attached to a necklace. It was perched upright, leaning upon a rock, and depicted a female figure, a large goblet held in her hands over her head.
“The Lady of the Lake,” he breathed, in awe.
Dead, said a voice in his ear.
The kneeling figure lurched to his feet at Calard’s voice, swinging a sword around in a gleaming arc. Calard’s own blade flashed, and the two swords came together with a sharp clash, and the two knights were locked together for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes.
The knight’s face was not that of some hateful daemon; it was the face of a man, though it had the hollow, haunted look of one that had seen more than his sanity was capable of enduring.
“The goddess be praised,” said the strange knight, his voice cracked and dry. He collapsed to his knees, and tears of relief ran down his ashen cheeks. “She has answered my prayers at last.”
Calard stood there, helpless and in shock, looking at a man who was undoubtedly a fellow knight of Bretonnia.
“There is only the one beast, reborn time and time again,” said the knight, his voice lifeless and hollow. His name was Orderic of Montforte and, like Calard, he was a questing knight, seeking the Lady’s blessing. His armour was of an antiquated style unfamiliar to Calard.
He sat with the knight upon a pair of rocks outside the crude cairn-like structure. Chlod knelt in the sand at Calard’s knee, shuddering and whimpering, glancing around him fearfully.
“I… I cannot recall how many times it has risen,” Orderic said. “A dozen times? A hundred? I don’t remember. It’s all a fog…”
The haunted knight’s voice trailed off and his eyes clouded over, lost in his vague memories. The knight seemed confused when Calard asked him how he had gotten here.
“How long have you been here?” said Calard, breaking the silence that had fallen between them as the knight tried to remember. Orderic jerked and looked at him in surprise, as if he had forgotten that he was not alone.
“I… I don’t know. A while. There is no night here, so it is hard to judge. A week? A year? I don’t know… The Lady led me. Just as she led you.”
“So it would seem,” said Calard, looking around him warily. “But I cannot see why she would bring me here.”
“I know why you came,” said the knight vehemently. “She brought you here that you might relieve me of my vigil. It is your time now to stand guard over the beast, and to slay it when it next rises.”
“What?” said Calard. “No. That is not why I have been brought here. That can’t be the reason.”
“You have to take up my vigil,” said the knight. “I’ve been here too long. I… I am losing myself in this place.”
“But I am embarked on the quest,” said Calard.
“As am I,” said Orderic. “Though I was close to accepting defeat. I have been delayed here too long. Many nights have I prayed for someone to come to relieve me. Those prayers have now been answered.”
Calard bit his lip and looked down. The Lady had led him here. Was this her will? Was this then to be his fate, to take up the knight’s vigil, slowly losing himself to madness until anoth
er knight arrived to replace him? Was he to become a pale, haunted shell of a man like Orderic?
“Why did you take up the quest?” asked Orderic suddenly.
“What?” said Calard, frowning, as if the question was ludicrous. “What do you mean?”
“Why did you take up the quest? I took it up for glory,” said Orderic, laughing hollowly. “And this is where it led me. I realise now that I took up the quest for the wrong reason. The search for glory is not noble. That is why the Lady brought me here. This vigil has been my penance. What did you do to be brought here to this hell?”
“I… I took up the quest to prove that my blood was free of taint,” said Calard, surprised that he had never realised it in such simple terms before. “To prove it to myself, and to my knights. And to prove myself to my father. To make him proud.”
He realised how stupid that was as soon as he said it, for his father was dead and could never give him the acceptance he so craved.
“You are questing for the wrong reason,” said Orderic. “You will never reach your goal until your realise that reason.”
“What is it?” said Calard, but Orderic merely shrugged, smiling without warmth.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I have learnt that the quest is more than a feat of arms. It takes more than just killing a monster to be granted the Lady’s visitation. It is a quest of faith—of faith in the Lady, faith in your belief, faith in yourself.”
“Faith in yourself,” echoed Calard, brow creasing as he pondered the knight’s words.
“You have to take up my vigil,” said Orderic, pleading, desperate. “Please take up my vigil. I… I cannot go on anymore.”
The knight’s gaze dropped, and he merely stared blankly into nothingness. Calard did not know what to say.
“I have denied death for so long waiting for you to come,” breathed the knight. “My quest is unfinished. I cannot die before it is completed. I cannot. Let me finish it.”
Roiling blood-red clouds rolled across the fiery heavens with unnatural speed, and Calard eyed them nervously as ruby lightning lit them from within. Chlod was rocking back and forth on his haunches, speaking softly to himself, and Orderic continued to merely stare into space. Things flickered at the edge of Calard’s vision, as if in agitation at the brewing storm, and the first drops of rain began to patter down onto the red desert sand.
The light shower grew heavier and Calard blinked as it began to run down his face, and only then did he realise that this was no normal rain.
“Blood,” said Calard in horror as warm rivulets ran down his armour and face.
“It begins again…” said Orderic, suddenly coming out of his stupor. He drew his sword as he rose wearily to his feet.
“What is it?” said Calard, standing and drawing his own blade.
“The beast is reborn,” said Orderic, moving in the direction of the blood-pool and the wyvern’s skeleton. His shoulders were slumped in defeat and exhaustion.
Chlod was still rocking to and fro on the ground, and Calard gave him a quick glance before hurrying after Orderic. As he got closer to the blood-pool, he could see that it was bubbling furiously. His eyes widened and he gripped the hilt of his sword tightly as he looked upon the skeleton of the wyvern.
Like a sponge, the porous, dry bones were sucking up the blood, and they were now a deep, bruised red. Sinew and muscle started forming across the skeleton. Ligaments and tendons pulled the bones together tightly, and internal organs formed within the beast’s abdomen. A massive heart grew within its chest cavity, and a spider web of veins and arteries spread across the rapidly regenerating musculature. That heart began to beat, then it was obscured as more muscle and flesh built up over it.
Still not yet fully formed, the wyvern rose from the ground, its red-raw body coiling sinuously, as yet unfleshed wings flexing.
The beast’s massive jaws opened in a silent challenge, its vocal chords not yet formed, and hateful eyes grew within their sockets. The wyvern clawed up the earth as it shuddered and writhed, as if in pain or ecstasy, and finally its green-grey skin began to spread across its flesh.
It all happened within the space of ten heartbeats, and by the time Calard and Orderic closed on it, it was fully regenerated. The beast was already wading into the bubbling pool, and the two knights broke into a run towards it.
“It cannot be allowed to pass through!” shouted Orderic, leaping into the pool. He landed knee-deep in blood, and began splashing towards the wyvern. Calard was only a step behind him. The beast swung its massive head around towards them as it registered their presence, and it let out a deafening screech.
Five minutes later, the beast was dead, and Calard and Orderic collapsed on the bank, exhausted and bloodied. The two knights had fought well together. As quickly as it had arrived, the blood shower had passed, the clouds streaking across the sky to disappear over the burning horizon.
Once again, the beast was nothing but bones, dry and brittle; its flesh had turned to dust as Calard had struck the fatal blow, his sword penetrating the wyvern’s heart. In the blink of an eye, the bones were back where Calard had first seen them. Indeed, the only evidence to show that he had not imagined the entire episode were the injuries that he and Orderic had sustained, and the blood on his blade, which the oppressive heat had already dried to flaking rust.
“There must be a way to end this cycle,” said Calard, wiping his blade clean. “Some way to put the beast to rest once and for all.”
Orderic merely shrugged.
What if there was no way to end the cycle? Was this to be his fate, then, to be stuck here in this nightmarish plane, fighting the beast every time it rose? He thought of the horror and slaughter that would result if the beast passed through the blood-pool, unleashing its fury upon the Old World. Could he in all sincerity turn away, and do nothing?
No, he realised. He could not. If this was what the Lady willed of him, then he would take up Orderic’s vigil. Perhaps it was penance for the tainted blood he suspected ran in his veins. Or perhaps it was as Orderic had suggested—punishment for taking up the quest for selfish reasons.
“Faith in yourself,” Calard muttered. He sighed and shook his head, his shoulders slumping.
You will be with us soon, whispered a voice.
Perhaps this was where he belonged.
Time had no meaning in this hell, and Calard could no longer gauge how long he and Chlod had been trapped there. The peasant had become completely non-communicative, merely rocking back and forth and muttering to himself.
At first, Orderic spoke with Calard about all manner of things, mundane and otherwise. Orderic talked of his homeland, Montforte, and of the things that he missed; the mountain air, the springtime, the endless blue sky.
“And bluebells,” he said with a shadow of a smile on his face. “I miss bluebells.”
Nevertheless, Orderic had slowly become quieter until he had slipped into a protracted silence, staring into nothingness. His eyes had become vacant and dead, and Calard had given up trying to speak with him. Was that what he would be like, given time? Was he to merely wait here until another came to take up his vigil?
He tried to sleep, but whenever he closed his eyes he saw the skinless daemons surrounding him. Waiting.
Calard took to patrolling the area but there was nothing to see from horizon to horizon, save the blood-pool and the cairn. While he walked, his mind whirled with jumbled thoughts. Was Orderic right? Was he questing for the wrong, selfish reasons? Had he blinded himself with falsehoods, trying to be what he was not?
A thought occurred to him. If Orderic killed the beast each time it arose, then why had he faced it in the Grey Mountains? He wanted to question Orderic, but the knight was completely unresponsive.
The fires of Chaos rolled across the heavens, and the red earth was scorching hot beneath his boots. Sometimes he thought he saw winged black things circling overhead, and at others voices whispered in his ears, telling him things he did not want to h
ear.
You are already dead, they hissed. You just don’t know it.
Calard probed the blood-pool, trying to find a way back to reality, but it was no use. He was becoming resigned to the idea of staying here in this hateful realm of Chaos, though the thought of doing so filled him with horror. Yet if it were the Lady’s will, what right had he to argue?
It was while testing the depths of the blood-pool that he found the body.
Sweating and breathing hard, his lungs burning, Calard heaved it onto the bank.
“What are you doing?” asked Orderic, his voice full of horror, making Calard jerk in shock; he had not heard the knight’s approach. Orderic was staring down at him, panic written on his face.
“I found…” started Calard, but his voice trailed off as he stared down at the skeletal remains that he had dredged up from the bottom of the pool.
It was the skeleton of a human, wearing antiquated plate armour. The armour looked familiar…
“Lady wept,” said Calard, looking between Orderic and the corpse. “You’re dead.”
Orderic was shaking his head in denial, his face a mask of confusion and fear.
“No, no, no,” he was saying, backing away, his expression gaunt.
“The wyvern defeated you,” said Calard, kneeling over the skeleton. He touched the thick hole in its breastplate, a hole larger than his fist. “Its sting punched through your chest. It must have killed you almost instantly.”
Orderic touched his own chest, where now there was a gaping hole, and his hand came away bloody.
“It is this place,” said Calard. “It’s brought you back, just like it does the wyvern.”
“I am not dead!” shouted Orderic, clutching his head in his hands and sinking to his haunches.
Calard stood, shaking his head.
“I’m sorry, Orderic,” he said. “Your quest is over. You died. Let yourself go.”