Fire and Sword

by Dylan Doose

  Ken did not reply.

  * * *

  “Why are you doing this?” Aldous asked many hours later when they had left the inn and Norburg far behind.

  “You have such difficulty accepting a good deed?” Theron asked.

  “When I first arrived at the church,” Aldous said, “I was told that it was only out of kindness that Father Riker and the other monks had taken me in. That it was the kindness of the Luminescent.” He paused, remembering. “There is nothing luminous in Brynth.”

  From then they walked in silence. The band made their way through a dead ravine, under the fathomless gray sky. It was late summer; a cool summer, but still the season of life, yet there was not a leaf on a tree. Sorcery. The trees towered like buildings and their branches mingled and broke against each other, so that they formed a series of archways above the hardened dry mud floor.

  Every so often Aldous looked back to check upon Kendrick, who now trailed them by a dozen feet. The large man’s lips were purple and he was shaking. He looked not the fearsome killer that had delivered such slaughter the night before. He was vulnerable; they all were vulnerable and very human.

  Night fell, only a few shades darker than the cloudy day. They were far from the ravine and the land was flat and straight now.

  “How much farther, Theron?” asked Aldous.

  “We made it further than I thought, much further. I say only four more hours, five at most. Sanctuary is close,” Theron said as he stopped, then bit into a loaf of bread and sipped at a canteen.

  “I’m done, lad. I can’t carry on,” Kendrick said, then dry-heaved twice before hurling up the water he had been drinking during the day.

  “Then we shall camp and make an easy trip in the morn,” Theron said.

  “Won’t make it. I feel the fever. You did what you could. Both of you did, and I thank you for that, but I don’t have the fire to keep on. Leave me. That’s the way of this country, the way we’ve been made. Carry on. No point in waiting for me to die,” Kendrick said calmly before he buckled at the ankles and knees and fell to his side like a tree broken by a storm.

  Aldous reached him first and leaned close. “He’s still breathing. Barely. But still breathing and out cold.” He looked up as Theron reached his side. “He’s right. We need to leave him…” He regretted the words as they left his mouth, for Theron’s stare made him feel more a villain than Kendrick the Cold.

  “We camp here,” Theron said. “No fire, for I am in no condition to entertain guests. Kendrick will wake in the morning and we will reach my estate early afternoon.” Theron’s words were a command; Aldous had no say in the matter, that much was clear.

  He wanted to laugh and cry at the same time as he thought of his predicament. Of course I have no say in the matter. What am I to do? Disagree? Decide to go my separate way?

  “How were you not afraid?” Aldous asked as they lay on the grass in the blackness of night, Kendrick shivering close by.

  “Last night, you mean?”

  “Yes. Not once did you freeze, not once did you slow. Even now I see you are in horrible pain. But you are not afraid of death.”

  Theron gave a laugh. It was a weak laugh, but it was defiant, too.

  “I was afraid. I am afraid. Death is my greatest fear. Life is my greatest love. So I do what I must to carry on, but not only for myself. I was given the chance to save your life, Aldous Weaver, the son of the greatest writer, the man who inspired me.” Theron gave another little laugh. “In many ways, your father saved you.”

  Aldous clutched his belly in the dark, Theron’s words worming through him.

  Theron stood up and removed his cloak, and put it over Ken.

  “How did my father save me?” Aldous asked as Theron lay back down, hoping his tone did not betray his emotion.

  “Because he was instrumental in the shaping of my mind. Much of my outlook on this world is your father’s. I never even met the man, not in this physical plane, but I met his mind.”

  Aldous was not sure if Theron was fevered from his wounds, or if his words were some sort of brilliance.

  “I was given the opportunity to save your life. I thought that if you live you might one day write like your father. You might one day affect even one man or woman as your father affected me. So, yes, I was afraid. Every moment of last night’s events nearly brought me to my knees, but my love of life, and the love of the potential of yours, and even Kendrick’s, overcame that horror of death.”

  Aldous marveled at the man’s positivity. It reminded him of his father in many ways, and that was why he felt all the guiltier about his own negativity. Father always spoke with certainty, like he understood some future factor of his life’s plot that no one else could see. Even when they’d burned him, right there, moments before his death, he spoke with positive inspirational words to his son. Aldous thought that his message must have been: Carry on in goodness, my son; be that lone golden star and do what you can to cast a reflection.

  Theron Ward cast that golden reflection.

  “It’s just hard for me. It is hard for me to trust,” Aldous said, bowing his head as he spoke, not wanting to look Theron in the eyes.

  “Of course it is, but just because something is hard doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.”

  “Do you not think that misplaced trust can be disastrous?”

  “It does not become misplaced until you lose it.” Theron sighed.

  “What does that even mean?”

  “I’m not sure. I thought it sounded good, and I wanted to finish our conversation. Go to sleep and wake up with trust in your heart. You’ll need it.”

  Aldous shook his head in astonishment of the strange man, and he too lay back. The night was cool but not cold, and he was tired enough that he would find sleep, out there with a murderous, dying army deserter and a madly eccentric hunter. Maybe that was the beginning of trust.

  As Aldous looked up at the dark clouds in the sky, he thought of the time when it was always filled with stars. He would sit outside with Mother and Father and they would look up at the stars until Aldous had fallen asleep, then his parents would bring him into his bed and tuck him in. Sometimes he would pretend to have fallen asleep just so he could feel the weightlessness of Father carrying him down the halls of their country estate, placing him into bed, and tucking him in tight. I love you, my son, he would say, and Mother would kiss him on the forehead. Aldous felt a warmness roll down his temples; he was crying. As he wept in silence he saw it: a single golden star fighting its way through the clouds, fighting alone but fighting brilliantly, because it shone, it shone and it lulled Aldous into an easy sleep, and despite the horror of the previous night, he dreamed of his childhood and he dreamed well.

  * * *

  In the morning when he woke, he saw Kendrick first. He was still unconscious and sweating profusely. His chest rose and fell in a rapid, shallow rhythm. Aldous barely knew the man, but he had helped save his life, and it saddened him to know that this man would not rise. He would not make it a five-hour journey to Wardbrook.

  Aldous turned to his other side to see what Theron had to say on the matter, but he was not there.

  Aldous looked all around, and he felt like a fool, not only for the part of him that hoped to spot Theron Ward, but because the ground was mostly flat in all directions, but for a hill to the east. He began to panic, for he had not the slightest clue where he was. He was alone with a dying man, and with limited rations and no weapon to defend himself.

  Panic soon turned to rage.

  After all he said, he left us. The bastard left us. He thought we would slow him down.

  “Theron!” Aldous screamed at the top of his lungs. His eyes strained and his throat grated.

  He screamed for a minute or so then, exhausted and coughing, sat back down and began to weep. He looked up once more to the eastern hill, and in his tear-blurred vision he saw him. Theron was there, dragging something behind him. As he got closer, Aldous could see it was some s
ort of makeshift sled.

  * * *

  Dreams, they are the most mystifying of all things in the magical realm, the most unfathomable. The most sinister. For in my dreams I feel a thousand pains, I sob at a thousand woes, I indulge in a thousand pleasures. They often feel more real than life, yet they are nothing. When I wake they are nothing. Dreams encompass all that I have experienced in my life, both sensory and through thought, whilst at the same time a dream is capable of forming new experience. Who has not remembered a dream they once had in the waking world, then thought of it so much they dreamed of that dream once again? But they dreamed of it as they thought of it as a dream!

  Oh, such strange madness it is.

  Why may I not just sleep? Close my eyes then wake with the night past; why must I leave this strange world to another, ever stranger? A world that I have made and diluted and disrupted, mangled and perverted, a world, or perhaps many worlds, infinite worlds, entirely my own, yet of which I have no control. A wise man once said, “Every man is king of his own mind.” I disagree. Oh how I disagree, for dreaming only involves the mind, and dreaming is madness. Of madness there can be no control. Death beckons me forth, a promise to end the dreams, but what if it lies? What if to die is to dream? To dream forever?

  * * *

  —The scribblings of a madman, unnamed, found dead in his cell, deep in the dungeons of the Imperial City.

  * * *

  Chapter Eleven

  Fever Dream

  Six days had passed since they had arrived at Wardbrook, and for six days Kendrick had remained in a delusional state, half dreaming and half awake, the fever fighting to take him. He fought back. He screamed in his dreams, wailed and sobbed, and when he did wake it was in a mixed state of terror, rage, and unbearable sadness.

  He had already torn two rooms apart in these states of madness, tearing apart the mattresses with his bare hands, tipping over the furniture and pummeling it with bloody knuckles. Theron had been hard-pressed to subdue him.

  When Ken became exhausted, Theron would call for his servants, and together they would spoon water or broth between Ken’s parched lips. In his delusional fury he would demand that Theron and his staff tell him where he was and who they were. He would demand they tell him where his wife was, then after a while he would begin to weep and soon fall back into his dark sleep.

  Of Aldous, Theron had seen little, for the sick room was more than the boy could bear. So Theron sat by Kendrick the Cold’s bedside on the seventh day, just as he had through the first six.

  The fever had broken in the night, and Theron was certain the man would live. But his fight was not over, for the attack of nightmares was yet to cease. And fight Ken did. Whether he knew it or not, he had a formidable will to live.

  Ken sat up fully in the bed and screamed. He roared, a bestial sound that would quake the resolve of a hungry bear. His eyes were wide and mad tears poured down his face, veins bulging in his neck. Yet he was not awake.

  Still he fought the madness, and after a time he lay back down, calm again until the next attack.

  “Keep on, my friend. Do not kneel to the devils that haunt you,” Theron whispered.

  There was a faint knocking at the door.

  “Come in.”

  “How fares he?” asked Aldous. Each and every time Ken engaged his enemy and entered a fit, Aldous would knock at the door, but he never walked through the threshold. Theron knew the boy was sitting outside the room most of the time. He was too afraid to sit as close as Theron, especially after seeing the aftermath of the first destroyed room, but he cared enough to spend many of his hours outside in the hall.

  “He is going to live, of that I am certain. The fever is losing, but some darkness inside him lingers.”

  “He is a frightening man, even in this state,” said Aldous as he looked toward where Ken lay in the bed, as if he were a wounded lion that, with a sudden burst of strength, would lunge and tear out his throat.

  “Perhaps most of all in this state,” Theron said, without taking his eyes from Kendrick. “Tell me, have you been doing what I asked of you?”

  “Yes. It’s fascinating to read something other than scripture. Last night I started a book on the alchemical properties of void dust. Very interesting stuff,” said Aldous.

  Theron smiled. It was certainly not interesting stuff, and he knew for a fact that the boy could not understand a bloody thing in any book on alchemy, unless he was secretly man of science as well as magic. Yet it pleased Theron all the same that he was putting in an effort.

  “There is something I want to give you.” He closed the book in his lap, stood, and handed it to Aldous.

  The boy took it. “The Indisputable Science of Goodness,” Aldous read aloud, then paused. “By Darcy Weaver,” he continued, his voice growing faint as he reached his father’s name. “My father…”

  “Yes,” said Theron, smiling.

  Aldous ran his fingertips along the title on the spine. “Thank… thank you, Theron. I… I don’t know what to say. I’ve never read any of his books. I was too young.” Aldous’ face was red, and his eyes shimmered with the formation of tears.

  “Say nothing. Not until you have read it. Return it to your chambers, then come back here and sit with me and our friend.” It was not an invitation, it was an instruction, and Aldous obeyed.

  At the door he paused, and asked without looking back, “How do you even have this? I thought they burned them all.”

  “Do I look like a man who would burn my books?”

  * * *

  The old woman did not protest as he tied her to the cross. She cackled instead.

  “You are cursed. Cursed by my god and your own, cursed to walk with that demon of chaos that is your wretched soul. You are cursed and you are weak,” said the old woman as he strained to tighten the final knot round her bony wrist.

  The sky was red, and the moon was black. Mountains of corpses surrounded them, surrounded Ken and that old crone on the cross. Thousands of dead children, their innocence only understood after their slaughter, after their screams and sobs carved eternal scars into the soul of a man turned monster. A man who once, like them, had been an innocent child.

  “I will not do this,” said Ken to the old woman as he held the first nail against her palm.

  She laughed, a high-pitched cackle. “You already have, you broken fool. A thousand times, you already have.”

  “No, I will not do it again,” he said as he brought the hammer down, and the clink of the mallet striking the nail mingled with the shattering bone. The old woman became a screaming child, then a mother, then a husband who loved his family. They wept and begged, and so did Ken.

  “Enough!” Ken cried. “Enough, damn you, enough. I know what I have done. When can I forget?”

  Again the form on the cross was the crone. “Never, never will you forget. You may die and be reborn for time eternal, but never will you forget what you have done. You turned your back on humanity, you blackened your soul.” Again she cackled. “Man is fire and the devils are cold.”

  The mountains of corpses shrank and turned to trees and homes, the red sky turned gray, and the black moon turned yellow.

  He was back home, the west, Brynth. The houses were boarded shut and in the streets they walked, men and women covered in black and yellow-green boils. They puked and bled as they screamed and crawled through the mud. When they saw Kendrick, they turned and began to squeal.

  Somewhere in his thoughts, he was repulsed, he was afraid. That place was buried deep. The foul things, once human, turned and faced him; they stared in silence. That silence called Ken forward; it told him to set to work. He pulled his hatchets from his belt and he got to that terrible work on the whole town.

  Alone in that dark village stood a chapel. Cloud white, a hopeful beacon in that endless gray infinity. Ken walked to the chapel. He opened the doors.

  They hung from the rafters. The survivors, those who had not turned into the rats, hung themselves
from the rafters, and at the altar lay the priest, knife in his hand, his wrists slit to the bone. Mothers and fathers hung next to sons and daughters. The silence of the dead town screamed in Ken’s ears. The wickedness of the Luminescent and the wickedness of man were one and the same.

  Wake up. You’re dreaming. This is done. It is over. Just wake up. You don’t need to see the rest.

  “I cannot!”

  You must. I can’t look at the rest. Please wake up, please, please don’t go home.

  The chapel warped before Kendrick. The corpses on the rafters disappeared. The priest rose and turned his back; his hair grew long and he was Eleanor. She knelt by the fire. She was waiting at home.

  “Eleanor, my love, my sweet love, I came home, I came home for you. To protect you.”

  Wake up. Damn you, wake up, don’t do this to me, don’t you go any closer to her.

  In his house, Kendrick fell to his knees. The baby was soon to arrive, and his wife…

  He was right behind her now. She was so grand, so magnificent, her golden hair shining brighter than the fire she sat by. Kendrick reached to touch her.

  You fucking bastard. You know what happens next. You already know! Just wake up! Wake up—

  He touched her.

  She turned.

  Kendrick opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came.

  She wore white, stained black and red. The boils covering her neck swelled as the hot blood ran from them, like a sack of spider eggs begging to burst. The blood… Their unborn child, torn from her own guts.

  She too was on her knees, Eleanor’s monstrous buckteeth gnashing through the little bones and the squishy fat as she hungrily devoured their daughter.

  He tore her apart. With his bare hands he tore Eleanor apart.

  * * *

  Kendrick twitched and twisted in the bed. He cried out and sat bolt upright, eyes wide and crazed, breathing heavily and drenched in sweat.