Knight Fall

by Joe Ducie

  “Do you ever give any thought,” Emily asked after dinner, “to what you want from life, Declan?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Honesty is all that binds us, my dear.”

  “Then honestly I didn’t expect to live this long,” I said, with a short chuckle that was one part wry humor to two parts bitter terror. “And I technically didn’t, thanks to you and Morpheus.”

  “Would you still blame me if I knew Aloysius Jade would return you to life with that stolen petal?”

  I regarded Emily, resting my elbow on my knee and my stubbly chin on my palm, and saw a great deal of kindness in her eyes. “I’ve never blamed you, not really, and I don’t know why.”

  “Honesty, again? Perhaps some measure of trust from the legendary Knight Infernal Declan Hale? The Shadowless Arbiter… So many silly titles we collect, hmm?”

  “Yeah tell me about it.” I ran a hand back through my hair and shrugged. “I don’t know what I want from life. Who does? Do you?”

  “Peace in our time?” Emily asked, seemingly to herself. “Peace for our children. An end to a conflict spanning countless universes and endless ages of creation? A normal life, away from angels and demons? Freedom, Declan, is what I want from life.”

  In the warmth and the gentle light of the grove, I found my eyes were growing heavy. It had been a long day. “I used to think that my exile meant I could live a normal life—find a girl, nine to five, and so on. Even thought I could go out to a pub, Paddy’s, and meet a girl—just a normal girl, whose biggest problem was finding a job, finishing her degree, or calling her mother. Simple, you know? But every time I’d sit at that bar… every time a girl would smile at me or catch me looking… I’d wonder if she was really normal or just sent to play normal. If she were real or a Renegade assassin or a monster in human guise. I know now that, even if half a century had passed in exile, I would still be sitting at that bar, wondering.

  “The life I’ve lived, the wars I’ve fought… it’s too late to have ‘normal.’ Best I could have would be a lie, a lie spent looking over my shoulder and wondering if the normal girl I met at the bar would stab me in the back—or, worse, step in front of me at the wrong time and catch a stray bullet.”

  Emily patted my knee. “You need to rest. Sleep for a spell, my dear. I’ll wake you.”

  Having been awake for nearly thirty hours, that sounded like the finest damned idea in all Forget. Let the Story Thread plummet into the Void for an hour of blissful, uninterrupted sleep. I used the pack as a pillow, propped against one of the small rocks, and lay down on the grass next to the pool.

  The soft trickling from the waterfall was cathartic, sleep-inducing. Emily remained seated and silhouetted against the ruined sky, humming a soft, somewhat familiar tune, as I drifted away.

  Chapter Twelve

  A Tomfool of Cherry Blossoms

  Emily woke me in what felt like thirty seconds later. I sat up, groggy but better for the sleep, and cleared my throat. “Morning already, eh?”

  “You slept just under two hours,” she said. “And now it’s time for you to storm the Tomb and recover the Roseblade.”

  “Don’t you mean, ‘time for us’ to do that?”

  Emily shook her head. “No, I did not. I will remain here, Declan, and risk no further harm to my unborn child.”

  Quite right, too.

  “Here then.” I unsheathed Myth from my belt. The celestial crystal was cold under my fingers. “I won’t leave you unprotected. If things get dicey, I want you to cut your losses and run. Don’t wait for me.” Things would probably get dicey.

  Emily hesitated, searched my face for something, and then took the Creation Knife. Her eyes glistened with tears, and she chuckled softly. “Oh, Declan Hale. Just when I think I know you so well… you surprise me. Do you know how valuable this blade is?”

  I sniffed and stood up. “You’re worth more.”

  “You’re young and kind,” she said. “Too young and too kind. But I believe there will be peace by the time you’re done. I pray I’m there to see it…”

  I did a few stretches to wake my sleeping limbs and popped my neck to work out a kink left from using the pack as a pillow. “Really glad I brought that shotgun,” I said, now without Myth as well as my Willful power. “I’d hate to get into a fight with Emissary or Oblivion with just my considerable charm at my disposable.”

  “You’re more liable to cut yourself than an enemy with that,” Emily commented, stroking her baby bump. “I will be here when you return. I promise.”

  “First sign of trouble—you get out,” I said. “No arguments.”

  Emily’s lips quirked. “Very well. You’ll find the Tomb about a quarter mile through the trees. Head out the way we came into this grove and turn left behind the copse of oak sentinels. You’ll… you will know when you’ve arrived.”

  I nodded, committing the directions to memory. “Right then. So where did you hide it? The Roseblade?”

  “I… cannot say.”

  I shouldered the shotgun and nodded again, relaxed and confident. “Sure. I guess this was already too easy. Need a bit of a challenge to keep things interesting.”

  “I cannot say because in the Tomb of the Sleeping Goddess… memory pervades. The corridors twist toward your memories, Declan.” Emily’s expression fell. “And I am sorry for that. I know your memories are not happy.”

  Ah, bugger. I’d encountered something like pervasive memory before, in an old, broken temple hidden on one of the Dream Worlds—Scion’s prison, if I had my head wrapped around all that nonsense right. Annie Brie and I had stepped through a memory of my time as commander of a bombardment inter-dimensional cruiser and part of the Cascade Fleet. Good times, back in the day.

  “Not really, no.” I could only agree, for the most part. “But now and again, something happy. I wear it better, remember? Maybe I’ll get lucky and the Tomb will show me nights at Paddy’s or my old friends from the Infernal Academy. Or that time you and I kissed in the Fae Palace, eh?”

  “I stabbed you and left you bleeding on the marble floors…”

  “Still one of my happier memories,” I quipped. “You made that red dress look stunning, Emily Grace.”

  A faint blush rose in Emily’s cheeks as she stood there in the grove, heavily pregnant and clutching a dagger of celestial illusion. “Thank you. Best you be on your way now.”

  *~*~*~*

  Although true night had fallen on Voraskel, enough ethereal radiance from the snowflake creatures and the planet in the sky lit the overgrown path through the enchanted forest to guide my way. I was, of course, on guard for any sign of the enemy. Orc Mare didn’t seem to possess much in the way of stealth ability—I’d hear them coming miles away—but the Emissaries could be a tricky bunch. I kept my shotgun at the ready.

  About five minutes’ walking from the secret grove, the trees started to thin, and more of the sky broke through the canopy. I stumbled onto a road, ancient and cracked, unkempt and tangled with twisted tree roots. The forest was silent—perhaps too silent—and I clutched the shotgun tight. The eight remaining shells of packed star iron and magnesium were all the defense I had against… well, anything.

  Up ahead I glimpsed the tomb, and I didn’t have to wonder anymore just how one buried a god.

  A large pyramid structure, lush with old vines, stood at the heart of a vast courtyard at least two hundred meters across and as long as it was wide. Stone pieces of what had once been walls, mosaics, gargoyles, and statues from the land before the Knights Infernal littered the roadside. At the end of the road, where the trees ended and the courtyard began, the remains of a pillar that must have risen a good twenty meters in its prime had collapsed and cracked.

  Next to that pillar was a statue of a woman, covered in white roses and thorny vines. I glanced at the statue and then stumbled. The statue’s cruel face struck me as familiar—so much so that my heart leapt into my throat—but I couldn’t match the worn stone to anyone I knew.


  I stared at the features for a good minute, and the longer I concentrated, the more it slipped away. Whatever my mind had intuitively recognized escaped my grasp like water in a sieve.

  I shook my head—it was gone. But the answer would come to me, I was sure.

  “All of this feels far too familiar…” I muttered, and breaking the silence felt like committing a sin, like drunken laughter at a funeral.

  As I entered the courtyard of wild grass and cracked stone, a cool breeze blew a smattering of fresh dew-soaked cherry blossoms toward me. The petals swirled up and around me, as if I were wearing a cape caught in the wind, with a scent so familiar that it made my knees wobble.

  Funny how smell could be the strongest of the senses. The aroma in the cherry blossom petals took me back years, to the final weeks of the Tome Wars…

  Someone wrapped her arms around me from behind—tiny, olive-skinned arms with crimson fingernails—and pressed some of the swirling petals between our bodies.

  “You came,” she said. “I knew you would. Even though it’s going to hurt.”

  Gently, I broke the embrace and turned on the spot, careful to keep the barrel of the shotgun at the ready but not quite pointing at the woman before me. “How much of you is you and how much the Dread-Lord Oblivion?”

  Tal Levy’s eyes were honey brown, but she had been host and vessel to the Everlasting Oblivion for over half a decade. Oblivion had eyes of pure blood—no whites, no pupils, just orbs of blood-red menace.

  Those brown eyes in the woman before me were Tal’s eyes. Her dark hair and soft skin were Tal’s hair and skin. Her face was Tal’s face of oh-so-familiar soft angles, although looking a shade older than when we’d last met in Atlantis. She wore a simple garment, a sort of inky black pantsuit with a deep V-neck.

  I reached out, slowly, and cupped her cheek. She felt real and warm and, worst of all, alive.

  Tal sighed against my palm and gripped my hand. “I am me,” she said. “But Oblivion is watching.”

  If I hadn’t been standing so near, I might have missed it, but a crimson sheen flashed across her eyes. Well to remember you’re not face to face with Tal, but with the creature behind the myths of the Beast, of the Devil—the very personification of evil and enemy of humankind. Well to remember, Declan.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “And here I was hoping we had this forest all to ourselves.”

  “Lord Oblivion will let me stay in control,” Tal said. “So long as you recover the Roseblade for him we can have some time together.”

  I wanted to laugh, to dismiss Oblivion’s offer for so much bullshit, but… but here was Tal, my Tal, who had spent six years as host to fucking Beelzebub. Any moment she got to be herself instead of the beast had to be rare. Indeed, that may have only been the second time since we bargained with Oblivion those long years ago. The first being a brief second atop the tower in Atlantis, after I severed the Infernal Clock and just before I died. Why did the cost of such a moment have to come at so high of a price? Or, worse, a price so easy to pay? The Knights would hang me for it, but I would trade the Roseblade for even just this brief moment with Tal.

  “I told Sophie you were dead,” I said. “Broken quill, for the longest time I thought you were. But you’ve been in there this whole time, haven’t you? Tal, I’m so sorry.”

  Tal sniffed, and her gentle smile faltered. “You know you can’t give Oblivion the Roseblade.”

  “Why not?” I rasped. “If it gets me you.”

  Her smile returned, a lot sadder. “And that’s what the Everlasting is counting on, Declan. Your weakness for me.”

  “Songbird, we used to call that weakness love.”

  Tal’s expression hardened into something as cold and as distant as one of the fallen statues littering the courtyard. “He needs you. And he thinks he knows you, knows you to your very core—so much so that he doesn’t care that I’m telling you this. He could stop me in a heartbeat. Smother my mind and take my body. He could stop your heart in less time. He believes you’ll do what he wants… for me.”

  “He’s right,” I said simply, not even having to think about the situation. “So that’s the deal, is it, Oblivion? I get her back, if only briefly, while we recover the Roseblade?”

  “As much as it irks him, Oblivion needs a human, one with strong memory, to navigate the corridors of the Tomb. This place was built so many thousands of years ago by Fair Astoria herself, before she fell from grace.” Tal’s brow furrowed, as if she were listening to something only she could hear. “Her presence and power still encircle her tomb. It was designed with purpose—and to keep her brothers and sisters, the Everlasting, from ever reaching its heart.”

  Fair Astoria fell from grace? Is that the same as dying? So little was truly known about the Everlasting, beyond their names and crimes. I half-expected to find Astoria alive and well inside this damned tomb.

  “I accept,” I said, because I already had, but my mind was racing. To have Tal back at all meant… so many possibilities. A chance to save her, to bring her back, and perhaps learn more about the nature of the Everlasting than any Knight in history, And I was willing to gamble handing over the Roseblade, the most powerful weapon in existence, to Oblivion for a chance at such possibilities.

  Hell, I’d done worse.

  Tal nodded, resigned, and her eyes changed again, from honey brown to tainted crimson. “Try anything,” Oblivion growled, his voice like flat river stones colliding and smashing in a flood, “and I’ll make Tal Levy eat you alive, piece by piece, until all that is left of you is your abandoned shadow. I will be watching, Arbiter.”

  Tal shuddered, and the blood drained from her eyes. She took a hold of herself again, met my gaze, and tried for a smile. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Let’s be about our work,” I replied and offered her my hand.

  Tal entwined her fingers in mine, and together we started for the Tomb of the Sleeping Goddess, one soft step at a time, as if we were old lovers merely strolling through the park.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Tomb of the Sleeping Goddess

  “What does he want the Roseblade for?” I asked, resting the barrel of the shotgun in the nook below my shoulder. “Besides the obvious, of course.”

  Tal shook her head. “I’m… not permitted to say.”

  I looked at her sidelong and nodded slowly. “He binds you, is that how this works? He’s behind the scenes right now, keeping you on a short leash. I thought you dead, Tal—in Atlantis, when we made the deal for the Degradation and the war’s end.”

  “In every way that that matters, I am dead, Declan, and have been for six years.” She shivered and wrapped her arms over her chest. “I forfeited my essence to Oblivion, so you… so you didn’t have to. I belong to him: mind, body, and soul.”

  To that I had nothing to say, save something that could not be articulated by mere words. Perhaps a gut-wrenching scream would’ve come close, but only in the sense of expressing just how inexpressible some thoughts and feelings were and had to be. A yûgen of misery once again. I’d been thinking on that word—yûgen—a lot lately. It was a Japanese aesthetic, a set of ancient ideals, and yûgen could refer to a glimpse of the profound, mysterious beauty of the universe… or the sad beauty of human suffering.

  Not a bad way to view the world, I thought.

  “Shall we head inside, then?” Tal asked.

  A series of wide steps, in ruins much like the rest of the world, led up to what I assumed was the entrance of Fair Astoria’s tomb. I wondered if her remains were actually buried there or if—as had been the case of Oblivion in Atlantis—Astoria were imprisoned there. That didn’t seem likely, but perhaps I should have asked Emily, given that she had secreted the Roseblade somewhere within the structure.

  The great door of faded marble hung open on rusted hinges, just beyond a circle of what I assumed was star iron, given the Infernal runes etched into the metal. I chanced a glance at Tal, unsure who I’d see th
ere, but she didn’t seem bothered by the symbols. Scion, the last Everlasting I had met, had not been able to approach a place protected like this. The old runes afforded some protection against the Elder Gods.

  “Another reason he’s giving me control,” Tal said. “Oblivion exists as… an idea, Declan. Which is not to say he isn’t real. I think we’re long since past doubting the existence of Elder Gods, hmm? He is abstract, like a Voidling. You saw in Atlantis, when he took me—he was naught but mist and malice surrounding the Infernal Clock, shackled to it. But now, nestled away at the back of my mind, festering on my soul, he can pass these old wards, so long as I’m in control. The only Everlasting with that abil—” She gasped and doubled over, as if struck in the gut.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Tal stood and offered me a grimacing smile. “He didn’t want me telling you that.”

  I made a mental note to think on just what had been said later, if I survived the next hour or however long it took to find the Roseblade. He’s the only Everlasting who can bypass wards? Why’s that important?

  And once we did recover the Roseblade, what came next? Oblivion was raw power, even if he were as stunted by the star iron in this place as I was—same shit in different ways—but, given the Roseblade…

  Not even star iron could overcome the power in that sword. Of that, I was quite sure.

  “Let’s head inside,” Tal said. Her olive skin had paled and she sounded as weary as… well, as someone who had been possessed and abused for six lonely years…

  *~*~*~*

  The first few feet of the tomb were dirty and dusty, the air musty, and the light rusty. Old torches in cast iron brackets long past their use-by date flared to life with oily orange flame as we drew near, as was usually the way of such forgotten places. Emily might have been there recently, but I doubted the Tomb of the Sleeping Goddess was a tourism hotspot on Voraskel, even before the Voidflood. Save Emily, Tal and I may have been the first two people to set foot there in a long, long time. The torches offered just enough flickering light to mark a path ahead.