by Sam Sykes
He finally looked at her. She was still staring at the fire.
“Right?”
When she looked at him finally, he cringed. For the same reasons he cringed when he entered a temple. Because there was no judgment in her eye, no pondering, no hope. Just sadness.
“You talk like it’s a checklist,” she said. “Like you can just keep doing it and someone’s keeping score and you can always come back. Maybe it is like that.” She held her hand out, watched the way the sunlight made the edges of her fingers pink. “I think I thought it was like that, too, at one point.
“But then, if it’s all about numbers, how high can you count? How many good deeds equal a life wrongfully stolen? How many people do you get to kill before you lose count?”
He touched his side. The flesh there felt alien, new, someone else’s. “You saved me, though. You and your arm. I got another chance. That means something, doesn’t it?”
“It means I didn’t want you dead. And whatever’s inside me thought that was enough to save you.”
“So. . you forgive me?”
She smiled sadly. “Fourteen hundred, Denaos. I don’t think it matters what I say.”
In all the times he had been cut, she didn’t think she had ever seen so much pain etched across his face.
“A waste.”
Dreadaeleon’s footsteps heralded his arrival before his grumbling did. The boy looked surprisingly healthy. His color had returned, his eyes were clear, he hadn’t so much as looked at his crotch for days. And yet, everywhere he went, he staggered, stumbled fitfully. As he did now as he approached the pyre and swept a disdainful glare over it.
“You managed to find this thing in all that mess?” He snorted. “One broken, twisted husk of something vaguely pretending to be a woman out of hundreds. Meanwhile, I search for a corpse positively bursting with magical power and I find nothing.”
“You didn’t find Sheraptus’s body?” The tension in Asper’s voice was palpable. “Does that mean-”
“It means I didn’t find his body.” He rubbed his eyes. “Or Bralston’s. Thus, I walk away from this with nothing.”
“You’ve got your health,” Denaos observed with a grin. “And with all the water that came, I bet you no one could even tell if you soiled yourself. Small blessings and all that.”
And instantly, Asper saw the mask come back on. All the pain from his face was gone, hastily buried in whatever shallow grave he kept all those secrets and the terrified, pale little boy. Once again, he was smiling and beaming with no cares beyond what he could be drinking and who he could be groping.
Maybe this was the real him. Maybe what she had just seen was an act.
But she had saved him, whoever he was. With whatever she had.
No, she told herself. No more whatevers. You know exactly what it is. She stared at her hand. You heard him speak to you. And he can hear you, the paper man said. She paused, turned her thought upon herself like a knife. Hello? Are you there?
She reached out to him, the thing inside her. As she had reached out to Talanas before, as she had reached out to Taire. And there was silence, but not as she had heard before. No empty silence of a god gone deaf. A tense silence. A moment before a cat pounces upon a mouse. An instant between an awkward laugh and a long, slow kiss. A silence of someone there.
Listening.
And Asper quietly wondered if she would ever miss the days when she thought she was alone.
“Nothing but smoke and ashes.”
She caught Dreadaeleon’s mutter as the boy folded his hands behind his back and watched Xhai burn.
“You can break something like a living being down so thoroughly with only fire. When they’re gone, they’re nothing more than smoke and ashes. And yet, for some reason, the creature you loathed and that loathed you is made a pitiable and honorable thing when they’re reduced so thoroughly.” He snorted. “And by the envy of savages and bark-necks, our knowledge of life and death goes no further than that. A bunch of soot and dust is all we’ll ever know.”
“Look, if you were going to be all dour and depressing, why’d you even come to a funeral?” Denaos snapped.
“It’s not as though I had anything better to do. Gariath is off being hailed as a hero for slaying that colossal fish. Lenk and Kataria are being hailed as slayers of demons. People with no knowledge beyond how to swing a heavy piece of metal are heroes and I. .” He narrowed his eyes. “I am here.”
“You can’t be serious,” Asper said. “We stop a threat to the mortal world, kill a beast that wasn’t even supposed to exist, somehow come out of it alive and you’re upset that no one paid enough attention to you?”
“It just seems a little unfair is all.”
“Well, it’s not like you didn’t get anything out of it,” Denaos chimed in.
“Didn’t I? I couldn’t find Bralston’s body, either. The only person remotely worthy of a graceful disposal of his corpse and he’s washed away on the tide. The Venarium will not be pleased.”
“The Venarium will be one item on a formalized list of guests warmly invited to suck the hairiest parts of my anatomy,” Denaos said, folding his hands above his head as he turned back to the pyre. “We’re alive, miraculously.” He shot a sideways glance to Asper, who looked away. “And we’re here. The only three humans in a world filled with talking lizards and dead fish-things.”
“Three?” Asper lofted a brow. “What about Lenk?”
“If everything Lenk says is true, it’s beyond a miracle that he’s alive. It’s suspicious. And if everything we saw him do in the battle, what with the turning gray thing and speaking in tongues, then. .”
A frown creased his face.
“Whatever he is, he’s not one of us.”
They said nothing more. The fire filled the silence with solemn chatter, crackling and hissing as it slowly carried Xhai away and into the sky on a cloud of smoke and ashes.
“Right here.”
Shalake put his foot down on the earth. It was damp and moist under his scales, the water having reached this far into the forest.
“It was going to have happened right here.” He pointed to either side of the clearing. “See, it’s not a far journey from the wall or the ring. But that’s not the important part.” He pointed up, to the moonlight shining through the crack in the coral canopy. “The moon shines through here just so.”
He walked to one of the openings. “In my mind, it’s always on the walls. I’m repelling some great invasion force. I’m full of arrows. But I’ve left far more dead behind me and my brothers lived because of me.” He took long, trudging steps toward the center of the clearing. “I limp here and stagger.” He demonstrated, leaning on his tooth-studded club. “I can go no farther. All the years of service and bloodshed have taken their toll. I look up to heaven.”
He did so. The shadows of the coral branches blended with the black stripes of his warpaint to paint him almost pitch-black.
“And I whisper my last words.” He sighed, kneeling upon the earth, letting his club fall. “And then, I die. Right here on the ground. One with Jaga forever.”
Gariath watched impassively, crouched on his haunches atop a large stone. Shalake’s one good eye glimmered with mist. His other was wrapped tightly behind a bandage.
“The thing is, I never knew what my last words were going to be. To my father, to Mahalar. . maybe the oaths I swore when I became a warwatcher. Just one more time.” He stared at his footprint in the damp earth. “And when I finally had the chance to utter them. . I said nothing. I did nothing. My brothers were all dead and I couldn’t remember what the oaths were.”
He looked to Gariath.
“Isn’t that strange?”
Gariath rose up. The wounds he had taken just three days ago were already looking old, the foundation for good scars. His eyes were older, darker than a week-long night, as they looked down at Shalake.
“It wasn’t your death.”
“What?”
�
�The oaths you took were not yours. The words you spoke were someone else’s. When the time came for your last words, you had none of your own to give.”
“What do you mean?”
Gariath’s voice became a growl. “You wanted to die like a Rhega. But you’re not a Rhega.” He held out his hands. “You can no more die someone else’s death than you can live his life.”
“I don’t understand.”
“WHY THE HELL NOT?” The roar tore itself out from somewhere deep in his chest. “Why can’t you understand? Why is it every time I try to explain this, no one seems to be able to figure it out? Everyone always just says ‘what’ or ‘huh’ or ‘wow, Gariath, what the hell does a Rhega even do?’ And then I have to say that a Rhega charges onto a giant fish-thing on the off-chance it might save some humans while the green-skinned cowards that were supposed to be like him skulk and cry and weep about not dying gloriously.”
Shalake’s lip curled backward in a sneer. He mustered as much indignation as he could with one eye. “You dare call us cowards?”
“You fled.”
“We were wiped out!”
“You were given death. Was it not as glorious as you hoped it would be?”
“Ah, how wonderful for the glorious Rhega to honor me not in battle, but in lecture.” Shalake spat. “You intend to try to tell me the weight of death? My brothers and friends are dead. My leader is dead.”
“And all you can think about is how you could say nothing for it. No goodbyes, no great monologues, no answers from ancestors or ghosts to tell you you did good. No words. That’s true death.”
“True death? And you claim I give it too much glory? I saw death today, Rhega. I saw two hundred corpses and they all looked exactly the same.” He thrust a finger at Gariath. “You carry death on your shoulders like it was your son. You ran off into battle without a second thought for us. Those who knew you, your people.”
“You knew only songs.” Gariath snarled. “You knew legends.” His eyes narrowed. “And until I came here, I realize that’s all I knew, too. I came here expecting to find a ghost, a scent of memory, an answer from death. But I can smell only water and death now. Do you know why?”
“Possibly because of all the water and death.”
Gariath glared at him before leaning down to the earth. “There’s no blood here. There’s no scent here. There are no ghosts here. The Rhega who were here took everything they needed when they left to the afterlife. They had no need to stay behind. In their deaths, they did all that they needed to.
“I thought that was impossible. How could anyone die without having regrets? How could anyone die without sorrow for the sons he lost?” He drew in a breath, found it sweet and coppery on the back of his tongue. He blinked moisture from his eyes. “Maybe some never do. And maybe some just turn their sorrow into rage. But there are others who do what they need to when they need to. And when they die doing it, they don’t linger.
“Not all deaths are the same,” Gariath said. “Some of them last forever.”
Shalake’s good eye reflected a pain not present even when the other had a shard of bone stuck in it.
“And that’s who you would die for? Not us, who know your songs. Not the closest thing to a Rhega you will ever see. But humans. Weak, stupid humans who stand for nothing but gold.”
“Yeah.”
The moment he said it, some unconscious part of Gariath wanted to punch himself squarely in the face.
“Yeah. For them.”
Shalake opened his mouth to ask for justification. Gariath’s glare silenced him. Fortunate, the dragonman thought. It was difficult to justify that which was barely understood, much less what was painful to say.
But between the two creatures that shared scaly skin, between their clawed hands that clenched into scarred fists, in the barest space between the point where their easy scowls and easier rage clashed in the air, the knowledge was there.
The knowledge that, when the bodies lay dying, Gariath had made his choice.
Shalake raised his weapon. Through it all, it had lost only a few teeth. The club’s wood was strong and uncracked, despite the skulls that couldn’t claim the same. He held it out in front of him and dropped it in the sand.
“Where we go from here,” he said simply, “we will need no more old and dead things.”
Gariath watched him go. Gariath looked up at the moonlight pouring down from the sky. A storm cloud, perhaps very late to the party that had raged days ago, rolled over, obscuring the light.
And Gariath stood in the darkness, alone.
THIRTY-SEVEN
EMPTY AND BEREFT
The beach was warm under his feet. The sun was shining. He smiled for a moment, savoring it all, save the feeling of sand crawling insistently up his rear end. He yawned, stretching his arms over his head.
He paused.
It didn’t hurt.
He looked to his arm and saw it whole, unscarred. He looked down the rest of his naked body, saw no wounds or blood. He laid his head back on the sand and cursed.
“Oh, come on!”
“What’s wrong?”
He rose, turned around and saw her there. Clad all in black, despite the shining sun. A sword at her hip, long and white like her hair. Eyes as blue as the sky overhead and concern etched across her hard-lined face.
“This was supposed to be over.”
“What?”
“This,” he said, flailing out over the beach. “These weird dreams that only a crazy person would have.”
She looked around the beach. “Plenty of people dream of warm shores and sunshine. What’s so weird about it?”
“Aside from the fact that I’m talking to a woman I’ve only heard in my dreams, who is standing wearing pure black on a beach I wasn’t standing on an hour ago, but upon which I now stand, hale and hearty, despite having wounds that threatened to kill me?” He shook his head. “I’m naked.”
“What, you’ve never dreamed of yourself naked before?”
“Not when I’m alone.”
“But I’m here.”
“Which brings me back to my original point. Why are you here? I thought these dreams were from the voice and that’s gone, right?”
She pointedly looked at her feet.
“Right?”
She cleared her throat and looked up with a sheepish smile.
“Kind of,” she replied.
“Oh, son of a-” He slapped a hand over his face, dragging it down. “I can’t even lie quietly with the threat of soiling myself from agony without something psychotic happening. I abandoned the voice.”
“But then you brought it back.”
“But then I got rid of it again,” he snarled. “I threw it away and I haven’t heard from it for a week. . or. . like, two weeks. It’s hard to keep track at sea.” He pointed affirmatively to the ground. “Point being, this crap is supposed to be over.”
“Oh, look at you,” she said, smirking, “all upset that a crazy voice in your head that tells you to kill demons isn’t making sense.” She sighed. “The reason you’re dreaming of me is the same reason you were able to call upon it. Him, rather. He never really leaves.”
“What? Never?”
“He’s a part of you. As much as you are of him. He invested his power in you and can’t be separated that easily.”
“I never wanted that.”
“Well, no shit you didn’t want that. None of us did. But he chose us, regardless. And we do what he wants us to.”
“But. .” Lenk rubbed his head. “I heard other voices. The people in the ice, telling me things. But there was one that told me not to hurt Kataria, that it wouldn’t-” His eyes widened upon her. “You. You told me that.”
“I did.”
“But you said we did-”
“He only wanted you to kill her because you were getting distracted from what he wanted. You fought him over her. Naturally, he wanted her gone. But you denied him, again and again.”
�
��And now he’s. . what? Sleeping?”
“To be honest, I have no idea. No one’s ever really done that to him. He might be gone, he might be away, he might be trying to figure out how to control you to pull your own testicles out through your nose.”
“So, what, you came here just to tell me that?”
“I came here because I was worried about you. I wanted you to be safe and happy. Because there really aren’t that many of us left and the ones who are tend not to live long. We’re either cast out and killed by people or murdered by demons when we’re old enough to fight them.”
“What, there are other demons?”
“Obviously. They’ve been around for ages, privately plotting against each other, striving to be the one to come in and assume total power over mortality. Now, there’s one fewer.” She chuckled. “Of course, that means the others just have one more obstacle removed and are that much closer to enslaving us all, but don’t let that bring you down.”
Lenk blinked and looked down at his feet. “So. . what happens now?”
“It isn’t really something I can tell you. You don’t have anyone telling you what to do anymore.” She turned around and shrugged. “I suppose your will and your fate are your own.” She frowned. “I envy you a little.”
“Why a little?”
“Because you might die from your wounds and he won’t be around to help you.”
“Oh.” He stared at the ground as she walked away, down the shore. Then, a thought struck him. “Wait. I could hear you. . and I could hear the dead people in the ice. I can’t hear them anymore, but-”
She smiled impishly over her shoulder. “I guess I must not be dead, then.” She looked up, as though she could read something in the cloudless sky. “You’re going to want to wake up now.”
“But I’ve still got-”
“Trust me on this one.”
And she continued walking, fading into nothingess in the span of three breaths against a sun growing brighter.
He awoke with a start, though only by habit. He simply couldn’t remember how people usually woke up. Maybe that was something he would have to learn again.