Bloodwalk

by James Davis

  “A spell eater,” Morgynn said as Quinsareth fought to crawl out of the painful mist on his hands and knees, refusing to release his hold on Bedlam. “Well, then. We shall have to feed it.”

  The darkness faded and Quin’s muscles relaxed all at once, released from the wracking pain. Looking up, he braced his sword arm to stand, and Morgynn cast yet another spell. Blood spilled across her face in two thin lines. As it reached her lips, her hands drew circles in the air. The air around them became charged with acute heat. A ring of blackened electricity coalesced around her at arm’s length, spinning as it sparked and rumbled. Quin choked on the scent of burning ozone as streaks of crimson wound themselves into the spell. Rising to one knee, he held the shield before him. Briefly, he wondered if the shield’s last bearer, Ossian, had died in such a stance, and he dimly hoped the shield would protect him.

  Black lightning crackled into several bolts from the ring of magic and disappeared into the shield face. A palpable aura grew around the edges of the shield as it fought to consume the black bolts. The barrage continued until the shield’s aura was nearly palpable. The dark energy of the lightning spilled over and seared Quin’s flesh, raising bloody welts along his arm and neck.

  Quinsareth, numb with pain and moving only on instinct, tried to stand. The burning metal of the shield grew heavy on his arm as the last of Morgynn’s bolts crashed against it. His only impulse was to keep going. His grip on Bedlam’s hilt felt unbreakable, and all of his will was intent on bringing the weapon to bear, though his arm felt nearly useless.

  Morgynn watched casually as he staggered to his feet. Cold air stung his wounds, bringing a fresh pain that threatened to fell him again, but he mastered his balance and cleared the chaos from his mind. He accepted the pain, but could not fathom the notion of defeat.

  This is all that I am, he thought, this is all that there is. Pain and bitter victory. She was right, I know what I am.

  “Prophecy’s hero still stands,” Morgynn purred and glanced at the oracles behind her. “I am only now aware of the treasure you are, pretty one. Your blood will consummate my victory here, finally serving a purpose for your wretched existence. You are nothing but another door, for which death gave me a key.”

  He remembered her passage through Khaemil, recalled her blood merging with the canomorph’s as she had disappeared. Her road was paved in blood, just as his was in shadows. The differences and similarities between them flashed in his head as patterns of Fate Fall tipped inexorably to their ends. The game was almost over and he was defeated. She would use his blood and he would watch the oracles die at her hands.

  Maybe this was meant to happen, he thought. Maybe I will walk away, my mission fulfilled.

  She walked toward him and he knew, looking into her eyes, that this was not true. He could blame the false security of prophecy for Morgynn’s victory, but it had been her false prophecy that had brought him here. He clutched at the one option available to him, the only strategy in the Fate Fall that could make a difference.

  “I know what I am,” he finally replied, his voice weak and croaking with pain.

  He slowly raised Bedlam and turned the blade inward, holding it to his own throat. His eyes, still darkened with shadow, dared her to move even if his painfully tortured voice could not vocalize the threat.

  “Death does not come so quick, Hoarite,” she said menacingly, walking toward him and closing the short distance. “Not while I wish otherwise.”

  She threw herself at him, her fingertips reaching for his chest to initiate the bloodwalk and bypass the oracles’ barrier. He felt the pull of her blood and faintly heard her pulse echo in his ears, merging with the sound of his own.

  He gripped Bedlam and did not move.

  “You were right,” Quin whispered as the shadows within him flared to life. His body faded into an airy nothing, ethereal and bloodless. Morgynn gasped, passing through him harmlessly and stumbling to her hands and knees on the rough marble floor. Hearing her fall, he dismissed the shadows. Becoming solid again, he spun around, exerting the last well of strength he’d clung to. “I am a ghost.”

  Bedlam sliced cleanly through the fallen sorceress’s neck, leaving only a thin red line that refused to bleed for several heartbeats. She tried to cry out, but could not find her breath. Unaware that her voice had become merely a stain on Bedlam’s blade, Morgynn’s mouth opened and closed weakly. Her call to his blood was severed—only a fading echo of her pulse shuddered through his body. A single drop of her blood spattered to the floor, followed quickly by her head.

  He looked away as Morgynn’s body slumped to the floor and, without emotion, faced the horrified oracles. Glaring at each of them, his pale eyes rested longest on Sameska, who simply shook her head, avoiding his gaze. Bedlam’s tip wavered as if he thought to raise it again, wondering if his work was not quite done. Turning around, he limped wordlessly out of the temple and into the dying storm.

  EPILOGUE

  The remainder of the long night passed in chaos.

  Morgynn’s undead creations, the bathor, turned on one another in a frenzy of violence at the moment of her death. Tied by mystic threads to her blood, the faint control they had over their own actions was lost. The hunters, depleted in number and struggling to maintain the defensive barricades, watched in sickening horror as the walking dead tore each other apart, trying to reach the now stilled hearts that no longer denied the death of their bodies.

  The Gargauthans were scattered and forced back by the feverish undead, unable to assert control over them. As they retreated from the bathor’s madness, they were met by the stalking battlebriars standing over the steaming corpses of the malebranche. The Order of Twilight’s battle began anew, this time fighting to escape its own failure. Mounted hunters harried the wizard-priests from outside the ensuing battle, chasing the handful that escaped into the Qurth as others transported themselves by spell or scroll.

  Sensing defeat, the gnoll warriors took advantage of the disorder to loot empty homes of valuables, pausing only occasionally to battle groups of hunters along the walls. Taking what they could carry and abandoning their dead, they scaled the walls, skirting the wailing bathor and deserting their allies.

  The storm calmed to a gentle rain as the heavy clouds thinned. Thunder eased to a soft growl as the lightning retreated to the ruin from which it had been birthed. The lack of thunder was unfortunate for those who sat listening to the ravages of the undead. Screams of unintelligible nonsense were so much the louder in the quiet left in the storm’s wake. Warriors openly wept over fallen comrades. Those who hailed from the northern edges of the Qurth filed away to sit and stare at the white walls of the temple. They tried not to think of those relatives and friends they’d known in Logfell, hoping not to see familiar faces among the maddened bathor.

  The morning sun, when it came, was boon and bane for the weary defenders of the small city, illuminating the death and destruction that had been brought to them. Grassy fields with streaks of brown among the green waved in the gentle breezes of early autumn, under the first sunlight in several days. The topsoil dried and cracked in the heat of an awakening day. Empty farms, quickly abandoned for safer ground only days ago, greeted swift messengers dispatched to other towns to seek help.

  Those from Splondar arrived first, empty-handed and full of dread. They were joined later by riders from Sprynt of the Blacksaddle Barony: a lone hunter rode flanked by several soldiers of the Barony, clad in their blued chainmail with surcoats bearing a lone white turret on a black field.

  The defenders they met at the southern gates eyed them warily. Relations with Blacksaddle had been strained for years. The soldiers bore orders from Lord Marshal Gurnd of Sprynt to inform the defenders of a detachment of troops en route to Brookhollow. The men-at-arms paled as they observed the throng of twitching and writhing bodies massed in the center of town, nodding absently as the events of the battle were told by tired voices.

  The wounded were gathered in the cob
bled courtyard of the temple after the temple itself overflowed with the injured. Those citizens too old or too young for battle, hidden in the chambers beneath the temple, walked among the fallen and dying, searching for loved ones under the bright noonday sun.

  Dreslya found Elisandrya that morning, unconscious and grievously wounded, and moved her to her own quarters within the temple. She spent much of the day with Eli, dressing her wounds and watching over her. She had no wish to face Sameska or the oracles, preferring to leave that task for the next day, after her sister woke and her emotions cooled.

  The sunset, when it came, was viewed with trepidation by those who witnessed it.

  Quinsareth leaned against the wall in the dim candlelight of a temple corridor, staring at the door across from him. Ossian’s shield felt heavy on his arm, a sudden weight that had burdened his mind since the battle with Morgynn. Upon awakening in an abandoned home, he’d looked upon the face of the shield several times before finally entering the temple and finding his way to this door. Though she didn’t know it, Elisandrya had told him the tale of the shield over and over in his mind, the legend of Ossian and his love. Zemaan’s face, wavering when he’d found the shield in Jhareat’s tower, had faded entirely during the battle. What remained was something for which he had no words or explanation.

  Taking a deep breath, he pushed away from the wall and knocked on the door. Elisandrya’s sister, Dreslya, opened the door to look out at him.

  The legend of Ossian and Zemaan had brought him here, wounded and weary, but he was beginning to heal and hoped to sit with Elisandrya.

  “She’s sleeping. She has been since, well, since it ended,” she whispered through the crack in the door. She looked at him more closely and added, “I know you. You—”

  “All the same, I would like to see her, briefly, then I’ll be on my way.”

  Dreslya deliberated a moment before answering.

  “I suppose no harm could come of it. I’ll wait in the hall, but summon me if she stirs. I’ve begun to fear she’ll never awaken.” She opened the door and Quinsareth limped inside. “It’s foolish worry, I know, but it is a sister’s duty.”

  “Quite so, and not so foolish at all,” Quin replied.

  Dreslya smiled at him. Peering into his eyes, studying his face, her smile faded. He couldn’t place the expression she wore, only underlying recognition. Her eyes drifted to the sleeping Elisandrya and back to him. She smiled again, sadly, but nodded knowingly.

  “You are not what you think you are,” she said, “but you’ll figure it out one day. So will she.”

  He’d heard rumors of her vision before the battle, of the actions she took. He could see no deception in her face, only subtle wisdom. No response came to him to answer her sudden statement, but it echoed within him, reaching places he rarely visited.

  Dreslya stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her, leaving Quin to look upon the resting Elisandrya. The moon’s glow highlighted her face and hair as he approached and sat on the plain wooden chair by the bed, leaning his sword and shield against the wall.

  He could not describe what he felt for this strange woman he’d known for less than a day, but something had happened between them, in the shadowalk to Brookhollow, that he could not deny. A connection was made, somehow precipitated by shadows or gods, wild magic or whispered prayers. It seemed as though they’d been acquainted for years, so familiar her face was to him. Clearing his throat, he leaned forward to speak to her, though he knew she could not hear him.

  “I wish we might have met in some other time,” he began, speaking softly. “Some other place or situation. My road rarely crosses with peace or the commonplace, so it is a fanciful wish, but it remains inside of me still.

  “I have a desire to stay here and wait for you, to discover what might become of us. I don’t know, though, if that man exists in me.” He paused, contemplating his words as if from a high precipice from which there would be no turning back. “That uncertainty gives me pause.

  “I am not the man they whisper about in the streets, this warrior out of a prophecy that endures in spite of its falseness. My contribution was incidental, a matter of habit, no different than what I always do. I did nothing out of purpose or goodwill for these people, though their tales in days to come may tell otherwise. You were the one who defied and stood, who fought for your home and a cause. I was just a sword, a footnote in your legend.”

  He looked out the window, an emptiness settling in his stomach as thin clouds passed lazily across the moon. In their shadow, he rested his head in his hands, feeling his pulse pounding in his temples. That moment he’d left her bleeding as he pursued Morgynn into the temple had replayed itself a hundred times as he imagined himself sitting here with her. He could still feel her hand on his cheek as he resolved what he must do.

  “I’m just a ghost, Elisandrya Loethe, passing through,” he said, staring at the floor. Looking at her face, at her closed eyes, and listening to her soft breathing he added, “And you deserve more than that.”

  He stood then, still watching her, and lifted his sword and shield from the floor. Turning away, he limped toward the door and stopped. Raising the shield before him, he contemplated the profile etched in the metal and turned back to lay it gently at her side.

  The night air was cool as he made his way to the small eastern gate behind the temple. He sat by the wall for a while, unable to sleep. He’d listened to the whispering voices of those still awake in the temple’s courtyard. He heard some of them wondering about all that had happened, asking why as they studied a sky newly returned after the storm. The question had never occurred to him, and he wasn’t sure that it mattered. He supposed an answer might exist, somewhere in the past, now lost. The consequences of a moment gone awry had come to haunt the present.

  The idea filled his thoughts as he waited, watching the night pass.

  The soft glow of sunrise encroached upon the stars, but they were not yet dimmed when he felt the stirring in his blood, saw the distant horizon come alive with flickering shadow for his eyes alone.

  “East again,” he muttered grimly, groaning as he stood. The eastern horizon taunted him as it had for months, always calling him closer to that from which he’d run. Unfathomable miles still separated him from the River of Swords, yet its nearness concerned him. Pain still ached within his body from Morgynn’s magic, but did not bother him so much as the other pain he felt, wondering what he should do if he refused the call he’d followed for so many years. He watched the shadows for long heartbeats, standing still in the cold as he imagined other paths, places of his own choosing.

  Lowering his head, he took one step forward and faded away, leaving only wisps of swiftly dispersing shadow behind him.

  That same dawn, Elisandrya awoke, weakened and in pain but insistent upon standing on her own two feet, despite her sister’s protestations. Dreslya had told her of Quinsareth’s visit while she studied the shield he’d left, instantly surmising what it was, having seen its depiction in the murals of the temple’s sanctuary. A legend come to life, the Shield of Ossian from her childhood stories.

  Her eyes widened in shock as she realized what she was truly seeing in the shield’s face.

  “Where has he gone?” she asked, gingerly pulling herself up on Dres’s staff, using it as a makeshift crutch.

  “I don’t know. I never saw him leave the room. When I asked the guards outside, they remembered seeing him walking toward the eastern gate.”

  Later, after making her way past her worrying sister, she’d walked to the wall around the Gardens of Thought on the backside of the temple, overlooking the small eastern gate, seldom used. The sun had just risen above the horizon, the warmth on her skin feeling strange after so many days under the storm.

  She knew he was gone, having knowledge of him she couldn’t explain or put into words. Watching the grass stir in the warm wind, she searched the horizon, squinting in the sun’s light and wondering where he was going, and i
f she might find him.

  The image on the shield, burned in her mind, would not leave her thoughts as she sought the tiny chance of catching his silhouette in the sunrise. The shield still lay on the bed she’d rested in, next to her father’s bow, her own portrait etched on its face.

  about the author

  James P. Davis is a freelance author who is often found with a pen and notepad close at hand. He started writing in high school upon the advice of an excellent English teacher and has worked toward becoming a professional writer ever since. With a new novel in progress and several more waiting impatiently for their turn inside his head, he has no intention of stopping anytime soon. His first published work was the short story “Possessions,” which appeared in Realms of the Dragons II. James lives in Shreveport, Louisiana with his lovely wife Megan and a psychotic cat mistakenly named after a demon prince. Bloodwalk is his first novel.

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