by Ren Garcia
"My love is in heaven … among the stars. I have to send you there so that you can tell him for me. I have to send you to heaven …"
"Dav, she's not in her mind!" Ki shouted from the ripcar. "Syg, wake up! Don't make me kill you!" She leveled her SK.
"No, no Ki—stand fast! I order you to stand fast!"
Davage drifted toward the stake. Syg rocked back and forth in a daze. He could see she was covered in terrible wounds.
He unsaddled his CARG, held it for a moment, and threw it into the mud. It sank deep. He then unclipped his gun belt where it fell, forgotten.
"Dav!" Kilos cried. "You are defenseless!"
"Syg!" he said. "If you want to kill me …" He parted his coat. "Then aim for my heart! It's yours. I gave it to you once. I freely give it again!"
He stopped in mid-air.
"You? You gave your heart … to me?"
"Remember, Syg, you are going to be my Countess. We are planning to be married, you and I! Remember my castle, in the mountains? Remember my ship and the quarters I gave you? Remember decorating your quarters with colorful fabrics and little trinkets? Remember the coffee we enjoyed drinking together there?"
"Coffee? Yes, yes, I like coffee very much. I used to make it for my love."
"You made it for me, Syg, as you waited for me to come off my watch, remember? Every evening, you always had it ready for me." He felt a pang of longing.
"And you … you were always so happy to see me."
She blinked, trying to remember. "I …"
She set him down into the mud. "I recall your face, your handsome face. I've seen it someplace before. What is your name? Please tell me."
"I am Davage, Lord of Blanchefort, and you are Sygillis of Metatron, soon to be the Countess of Blanchefort, my beloved wife. Your portrait will soon hang next to mine."
"Countess."
Countess …
Married …
House of Blanchefort … the heirs she wanted to give him …
Portraits.
A balcony in the clouds … where she—
Her portrait … SYGILLIS—COUNTESS OF BLANCHEFORT, hanging next to his.
Yes, yes …
"You," she said. "You are my love … Yes, yes, I remember. You came … from the heavens just now … for me? I saw you!"
"I did, Syg. I came here as quickly as I could. I searched all over for you."
She bit her finger and looked around at the bleak sea of mud.
"They wouldn't stop hurting me … wouldn't stop. So, I—I hurt them back … and then I couldn't stop."
She put her face into her hands and fell to her knees.
"Will you marry one who has done this—all of this? Could you love a demon?"
"You are no demon! You fought them fair and square. You did not ask for the fight, but the fight was there and you finished it. You were one against many. You're wounded, Syg."
Sygillis sat there in the rain.
"I … I love you. All I wanted was for us to be left alone, so we could live our lives, and look what I became …"
"They would not leave us alone, and you know that."
"What can you see … when you look at me?"
"All I see, Syg, is the woman I love. The woman I've come to take home and keep safe."
The darkness left her eyes.
The stake changed from black to silver and vanished.
"Daaaaaaav!" she wailed.
Davage slogged to her and knelt down. They embraced. "Daaaaaav! I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"
"It's all right, Syg. It's all over. I'm taking you home."
"It almost had me … the darkness. Not even your light could break it. It was you—your memory, your love—that brought me back."
"Truly … you remember me, Syg?"
"I do, my love, my Captain Davage."
Davage bowed before her in the mud and the rain. "Then will you take this wretch, this wretch that lies before you, and be his Countess, now and forever? I have waited far too long to ask you this question."
She joined him in the mud and gently took him by the chin with her hands, her tears mingling with the rain.
"Yes, my love, gladly. And will you take me and be my Lord, now and forever … and save me from the darkness that awaits?"
"I will never be apart from you again, Syg."
They held each other there in the mud.
"I want to go home, Dav. Take me home, my darling, and never let me go."
He took her in his arms and began escorting her back to the ripcar. As he did, he saw the deep, ugly wounds on her arms and chest up close. They were worse than he first thought.
"You're badly wounded, Syg. We must to the Seeker immediately!"
"The most terrible wound of all you have just healed," she said, looking up at him as he led her to the waiting ripcar. "How many times are you to save me? To save my soul?"
"As many times as is needed."
She reached up and kissed him, her lips wet and cold but warming.
"Lord Probert, Lady Branna, are they safe?"
"They are, Syg. You saved them."
She looked into the mud.
"Wait," she said. "Your CARG, your gun belt. You dropped them."
"Leave them. We must away."
"No, Dav, no. Your beautiful CARG."
She gently broke from his grasp and dug the CARG and gun belt out of the mud. She then took off the black robe she was wearing and threw it down. Naked, her body covered in wounds, she stood before him, holding his CARG and belt, the rain washing the dirt away from both them and her.
"This CARG belongs to our House, Dav, and I'll have nothing of either of us left behind in this terrible place."
Davage took off his wet Fleet coat and draped it over her shoulders. He put his hat on her head to keep the rain off. He then helped her into the back of the ripcar.
"Hi … Ki," Syg said weakly from under Dav's hat, the lack of food and her wounds beginning to take their toll.
"It's good to see you, Syg. I'm glad you're back. I'd about had enough of the captain moping around."
"Raise containment and get us out of here, Ki," he said, and somewhat clumsily, she lifted it thundering out of the mud and into the air. He held the shivering Syg to him.
Soon, in his arms, she was asleep, dreaming.
The nightmare over.
And they climbed out of the rain and cold, the Seeker waiting high above as a star.
They rose into heaven.
15
COFFEE AND PASTRIES
Ennez had never seen so much blood poisoning. Syg's blood was foul, putrid, deeply poisoned, but not beyond saving. He cleansed her blood, cleaned and closed her wounds, and put her on a bland broth diet, as she was experiencing a mid-level stint of malnutrition.
Ennez had wanted her to get some sleep alone, but she would not see Dav leave her side. Ennez relented but insisted she honor the broth diet he'd put her on—her recovery, he said, depended on it.
No sooner did he leave the tiny dispensary than the hidden pot of coffee came out and a plate loaded full of those sweet pastries from the mess that she loved.
Syg drank the whole pot and had ten of those pastries. They giggled and wiped the crumbs from each other's lips as they ate.
Their first meal together as an engaged couple.
"Now that we're engaged," Syg said sleepily, "I suppose I'll need to start wearing Blanchefort gowns. Pardock will have my head if I don't."
"You only need wear them if you really want to."
"I do. Pardock said I could make them any color I want."
"We don't have a set color in our House."
"Then I want my first one to be blue … just like your coat."
She looked up at Dav with big eyes. "You look so tired, my love," she said, licking her fingers.
"I've not slept much, Syg."
"Worried about me, were you?"
"Somebody's got to be."
"Then you should get some rest."
Dav stood to leave, and Syg loudly cleared her throat. He looked at her, and she had moved over in the tiny dispensary bed to make room for him. She was patting the bed with her hand, inviting him to join her.
He slid in, and before long, their bodies and souls intertwined, they slept.
* * * * *
Davage never heard from Princess Marilith of Xandarr again.
Of course, he wondered what had happened there on board Triumph and on the rainy muddy plains of Gelt. The terrible battle that must have raged … one where all of the Fanatics of Nalls met their painful, impaled end before a darkening Syg, her pain and anger nearly consuming her soul.
But what of Marilith? She could not be dead. She will return—she always returned. He had heard rumors, there were rumors aplenty— there were always rumors and hushed tales floating around the parlors and ballrooms of League society. He heard whispers that there had been a terrible battle on wet Gelt—that two goddesses had fallen in love with the same man, and unable to resolve the matter, fought over him and tore at each other, each determined to not only kill the other but to also make her suffer terribly first.
As they fought, they fell from the sky and the land was torn apart, canyons were dug out, mountain ranges formed, and in the end, one goddess met her doom and was thrown down into the earth and was covered by it. The other stood, triumphant and terrible, and forgot herself in the process, roaming the land as a demon.
Dav never asked her what had happened—he really didn't want to know the details. On dark, windy evenings when the topic of conversation turned to Gelt and the Triumph, Syg would put down her coffee cup and look at him with pleading eyes, and he probed her no further. It was, perhaps, best left undiscussed.
But Marilith couldn't be gone, couldn't be defeated. In his mind Princess Marilith had become more that just a woman over the years, more than an adversary—she'd become a force, an irresistible, unpredictable presence, like the coming of a thunderstorm, that could be counted on only to never fully be defeated, to always be just out of reach, to always return and darken the skies again another day.
He had this ongoing dream—rather, an ongoing nightmare, that, one day Sygillis would come to him, throw off her Cloak and become Marilith, tall and blue-haired. That Marilith had killed Syg on Gelt and taken her identity, burying her tiny broken body in a shallow grave and spitting on it and had snuck into Dav's bed and been with him this whole time, undetected. He often Sighted her, concentrating, determined to see through any Cloak.
All he ever saw though was Syg, red-haired, green-eyed, and ever loving, her body flowing with Silver tech that he had built for a second time.
Marilith was gone, and that was sure enough. Perhaps she had moved on, pursuing her strange, fierce life elsewhere. Perhaps she had died of old age … she was past her Time of Goodbyes, after all.
Perhaps her broken heart had finally stopped beating.
That she could be entombed on that cursed ship Triumph, or impaled on a Shadow tech stake could never enter his mind. Princess Marilith of Xandarr would not be so defeated.
The Fanatics of Nalls met their end there on Gelt certain enough; their halls and places of meeting in the dark city of Nalls were left empty, all their knowledge and aspirations made extinct in one titanic battle. The scant few who survived on Seeker, Caroline, and Blue Max were hurried off to the Sisters' research centers and never seen again.
And despite himself, he found that he missed Marilith in some small way. He missed the game, missed the joust, missed that face on the screen, covered in frightening makeup, a sure sign that fresh adventure was in the offing. He supposed, in the end, Marilith owned a bit of his soul that no other woman would ever have … not even Syg.
He guessed that such a thing would have made her happy.
EPILOGUE
"So, what are we supposed to be doing, darling?" Lady Sygillis, Countess of Blanchefort, asked as she and Davage strolled arm in arm through the green passes and vine-covered lanes of the Telmus Grove. She carried a flattering pair of Blanchefort shoes—somehow, some way, Pardock had gotten her to wear them for the ceremony. Beyond, in the sun-washed distance, the tall central spires of Castle Blanchefort rose up into the cool, dark blue sky. It was fluttering with banners and flags. Lord Blanchefort had his countess at last. The ceremony was over; they were married. The baton had successfully made its way to the front of the chapel. The last guest to hold the baton, walk a few steps, and present it to the Elder cleric was a special honor, and many had hoped they would be selected to perform the task. Davage and Sygillis chose Countess Hortensia of Monama—a shocking choice as the strange, black-eyed Monamas were not at a high tier in League society. The countess, with her visions, had, in part, helped pave the way for their love, and Davage had never properly thanked her. He would not continue the error, the countess and her family were now honored friends.
"We are on our way to Dead Hill."
Davage looked down at his tiny new bride. She was wearing a colorful Blanchefort gown. She now had a whole wardrobe of them, and her red hair was set into an elaborate design. She had just had her portrait painted. Her picture would soon by hanging in the hall of the ancestors next to his. Davage had never seen her so beautiful, so happy. Her Shadowmark was decorated with red and blue dots, making her eyes stand out like emerald jewels.
She was flush with excitement. The thing she had long seen in her dreams, the portrait, the thing that had helped pull her from the waiting darkness on Gelt, had finally come to pass, and though she had to stand still for a long time, she savored every moment of it. This was her day, and she wanted it to last forever.
And tonight, she would allow herself to be seeded; tonight the next Lord of Blanchefort was to be conceived. Pardock wanted them to spend the night in the traditional wedding suite in Harn tower. Syg, though, insisted they wouldn't be there for long, as they planned on sneaking into Dav's old room—she wanted to put his balcony to the ultimate test.
"I see," she said. "And what are we going to be doing there?"
"Not we, darling—you. You have to go up to the tombs and commune with the spirits of the dead. I cannot follow."
"I have to do what?"
"You said you wanted to keep with tradition. Well, that's the tradition."
They arrived at the base of Dead Hill. There was the ancient stone gate, the winding gravel path going up the side of the hill about three hundred feet, and then the tombs at the top, the myriad of tombs, most covered in vegetation. Syg leaned up against Dav and looked up the path.
"I've got to go up there?"
"Yes. And you've also got to do it once a year from here on out."
"What!"
"It's tradition."
"How will I know that I've successfully communed?"
"I don't know, having never had to do this myself. I do know that nobody at the castle will get to eat until it's done. I recall my mother telling me that she had to wander around up there for two days. Maybe she'll come out right away to spare you such an ordeal."
Syg strained to see the tombs and looked dubious.
"If you don't want to, Syg, we can just hide out for a bit and then go back and begin the celebratory dinner."
Syg thought for a moment. "That's tempting, love, but no—I want to do this. You'll wait here for me, will you?"
"Yes."
They kissed, and Syg opened the gate. "I won't be long."
"I know you're not going to want to hear this, Syg, but you'll probably want to put your shoes on. Blanchefort ghosts will want to see you in Blanchefort shoes. Fashion, it seems, goes beyond the grave."
Syg sighed and put her shoes on. "You know, Lord Blanchefort, that I am going to have to punish you for this later on the balcony, yes?"
"One more thing, Syg. What you experience up there is for you and you alone."
She blew him a kiss and began walking the gravel path toward the top, her feet already killing her. She should have waited until she got to the top to put them on
.
After a few minutes, Syg reached the top of the hill. The view from up there was lovely, the huge grove with its endless hidden nooks and courtyards. She even spotted a few that she'd have to remember to visit with Dav later—the great Vith castle in the distance, the fluttering banners and flags, the dozens of spires reaching up to the magical northern sky.