by S. G. Night
And, for that matter, the Humans didn’t really care why the Demons left them alone. For them, it was because Racath’s words had rung true: the Demons were afraid of them, so long as they stood together.
It was a time of celebration. Every night, they danced in the streets, built bonfires in the squares, feasted on what they could. Before long, lavish retellings of the uprising were becoming local legends. They spoke mostly of the shadowy man who had rallied them together against their oppressors. Jax Tollo, of course, knew exactly who that man had been — the Genshwin he had known as Azrael — and Elias knew it too. But the people had their own versions of the story.
Young boys and old men bickered over the details. Whether the man had been descended from the heavens in a ray of rare sunlight, or had walked in a cloak made of pure shadow. Whether he threw blades of sharpened air, or if he had killed the Arkûl with his gaze alone. Whether he beaten the Demon on the bridge with his own bare hands, or if he had somehow called down lightning from the skies and rent the bridge in two. Some even said they’d seen him walking on the river water after the explosion.
But they all agreed on a name. Details aside, everyone knew him as their guardian angel, their keeper and their mentor. They called him the Dragon.
Times were going to be hard, Jax knew that much. But it didn’t matter. They could all work, could pull together and survive. They always had before. And, for the first time, they were free. Truly free. Free, and standing. There would be no more hangings in the Burrows. No more Arkûl. No more penal taxes, no more home invasions. No more enforced worship at the Mnogo shrines on Simtag. No more Dominion. No more kneeling.
Just the freedom.
That day was Daratag, the fourteenth of Deach. Today, we call that day the Day of Severance. And that was the day that, for me, marked the beginning of the end of the Fourth Age.
FIFTEEN
Spineless
Once the river had carried him about a mile downstream of Milonok’s walls, Racath climbed ashore. He was rejoined by Sokol, and together, they began the trek homeward. Racath traveled north on foot to a small town near the fork where the Milon split off of the main body of the Valcan River, where he joined up with a Drifter caravan headed for the town of Eran in the northeast.
It took a solid week to make the trip back to Oblakgrad. The fastest route took them through Watchman’s Gate, the only pass that cuts straight across the Spikes. Watchman’s Gate was a place that crawled with the Dominion’s pawns. The garrison there was large, dedicated to the enforcement of the Dominion’s travel restrictions. The place was abuzz with activity — word had spread of a revolt in Milonok, and that the suspected instigator had possibly escaped.
Getting through the checkpoints in the pass was a nerve-wracking ordeal, but Racath’s skills in evasion and disguise — aided by the Drifters’ experienced aptitude for undermining road law — eventually saw them through to the other side without incident.
On the eastern side of the Spikes, they went their separate ways. Again on foot, Racath hiked nearly fifty miles across the plains and wetlands, into the Kanar Mountains. The Kanar didn’t quite match the height or grandeur of the Spikes, allowing Racath easier passage through their valleys. When he made it to a small fishing village on the banks of the Dir River, he bought passage on a barge headed south to Oblakgrad.
And so, a full eight days after destroying the Demon on the Milonok Bridge, Racath found himself face-down on his bed in Velik Tor. The pillow sucked his face in like the embrace of an old friend, sleep calling to him from the exhaustion of an entire month’s worth of travel, hunting, and fighting. He answered it gladly.
——
Racath wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep when Alexis shook his shoulder.
“Hey!” she chided in his ear. “Wake up! Up up up!”
He grunted, annoyed, shrugging her off.
“Wake up, Racath.” It was Toren’s voice. “We need to talk.”
“Oh, you’re here, too?” Racath mumbled into his pillow. “That’s delightful. You two can throw a party together. Just do it quietly. Elsewhere.”
“Racath, we’re serious,” Alexis insisted. “Up.”
Groaning, Racath sat up, stretching against the stiffness in his joints. “Fine,” he grumbled. “What’s so fauling important?”
“Why didn’t you tell us you were back?” Alexis demanded, her sable hair floating around wounded eyes as she threw herself onto a chair. Sokol, who had been resting comfortably on her perch above Racath’s bed, chirped amicably and hovered down to Alexis’s shoulder. They gyrfalcon cheerfully nuzzled her cheek, and Alexis absent mindedly stroked the bird’s crest with a finger. Sokol cooed.
“God, I dunno.” Racath rolled his eyes. “Maybe because I’m exhausted? Did you seriously wake me up to ask me that?”
“No…” Toren said. He sounded strangely sober, tentative and…worried. “We woke you up because we’ve all been hearing rumors that someone had destroyed the Milonok Bridge last week. Someone who sounded an awful lot like a Genshwin.”
Racath rubbed at his eyes. “Is there a question in there somewhere?”
“Was it you?” Toren asked as he took his place in another chair. There was a hint of accusation in his brown eyes. Accusation and condemnation.
Racath gave him a wry, sleepy look. “Were there any other Genshwin in Milonok at the time?”
“No.”
“Then I guess it was me.” He sat back against the headboard, resting his hands behind his head. “Oops.”
“Oops?” Toren blurted indignantly. “That’s all you’ve got to say for yourself?! Oops?!”
“What were you doing in Milonok in the first place?” Alexis added. Her tone was significantly calmer than Toren’s. “Who was your target?”
Racath blew a sigh out through his lips and mulled the question over. Reluctantly, he explained everything. Stealing the letter from Unin, freeing Elias, finding Jax, poisoning Felsted, the game at the Rivet, killing Zayne…and eventually, fighting Jared.
“I’ll be damned…” Alexis whispered when he had finished. “Jared…I never would have thought…”
“Why would he do that?” Toren wondered aloud, the shock of the news momentarily covering his outrage at Racath. “After all these years, why betray us? Why betray us now?”
Racath shook his head morosely. “I asked him the same question. He told me that he believed the Majiski are bound to die. That the Genshwin are a lost cause. He said he didn’t want to die for the Humans.”
“That cowardly puddle of piss…” Alexis spat through her teeth, clenching her fists. “I can’t believe I ever even liked the bastard.”
“There’s more,” Racath said somberly. “Before I killed him, I saw his face. It was…twisted. Deformed, somehow. It looked like snakeskin, all smooth and slimy. His hair was gone. And his eyes were red, too.”
Toren and Alexis looked at each other nervously, then back at Racath. “When you say deformed…” Toren inquired. “What exactly do you mean? Did something…happen to him?”
“It might have been some kind of chemical damage,” Alexis offered, as though searching to offer some sort of reasonable explanation to latch onto. “Something that—”
“No,” Racath interrupted. “The last thing he told me was that the Dominion had put the pieces together, even without his information. He told me they passed an edict, saying that any killing they can link to the Genshwin will cost Human lives.” Pause. “And then he said the Demons keep their promises.”
Racath watched the blood drain from Toren’s face. “What…what does that mean?”
“Did they do something to him?” Alexis asked, her eyes wide.
Racath nodded “I’m not sure. But somehow, something had turned him. I don’t know what he was, but he definitely wasn’t Majiski anymore.”
“But how?” Toren said, aghast. “What could have happened to him?”
Racath gave a helpless shrug. “Dark magic isn’t really my
specialty.”
They both turned to Alexis. Taken aback, she looked back and forth between them. “What? You think I would know? Guys, the only thing anyone ever taught me about magic was how to carve fancy symbols onto stuff and dump energy into them. Hell, I don’t even know how magic works. What makes you think I would know about this?”
A small, pensive silence followed. Then Toren’s face darkened, and the indignation came back to his eyes. “But…what happened then? What happened with the whole bridge incident?”
“On my way out of the city, I ran across a mass hanging in the slum,” Racath explained. “The start of the executions that Jared had talked about. They were just taking people off the street and killing them…because of us.” He found himself staring down at his fists; they were knotting tighter and tighter with every word. “I couldn’t just sit there….”
“Oh, hell, Racath,” Toren breathed in disbelief. “Please, tell me you didn’t—”
His eyes stinging, Racath glared up at him. “Toren. They hanged a little girl. A tiny little girl. Her neck was barely big enough for the noose. Because they could. What would you have done?”
Shame mixed with the anger behind the big Majiski’s eyes, and he looked away.
“What did you do?” Alexis whispered intently.
Racath ground his teeth, the memories playing in his head. “I intervened right before they pulled the switch. I called out to the people watching. Told them what they needed to hear. They attacked the guards and the executioner pulled the lever. I tried to save them, but….” Racath’s voice caught behind a lump in his throat. He blinked back the tears, turned his head away.
“Oh, Racath….” Alexis reached out and put a soothing hand on his. “Racath, that isn’t your fault. You don’t have to carry the blame for that. Brother, it wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it was,” Racath choked. “They died because of what I did. Because of who I killed.”
“Racath—”
“They were on that gallows because of me,” Racath persisted, the words tumbling out of him. His will faltered for a moment and a single tear escaped, cutting an icy trail down his cheek. “The Demons killed them to punish us, to punish me. It was my choices that they suffered for. I had to do something. I owed them that much. I owed their families that much.”
“So what did you do?” Toren asked, pointedly looking anywhere but at the tear that fell from Racath’s eye.
“I helped them,” Racath confessed. “I helped them kill the guards. I armed them. And I told them to keep fighting. And they did. The riot spread, took over the entire slum.” Through the burning in his eyes, Racath was aware of a proud smile that found his lips, diverting the path the tear was taking down his face. He brushed the tear away.
Toren’s eyes went wide. “Racath!” he hissed. “You…you started a revolt? You came out, showed yourself, then openly defied the Dominion?”
“Yes,” Racath replied. A single, unconscious laugh escaped his chest. “Yes, I suppose I did.”
“Racath!” Toren rebuked again. “This is beyond serious! Mrak is going to have your head for this! Literally. He’s already pissed at you, and we all know how often you ignore Zauvijék Nijem. Let’s face it, you’ve done some pretty compromising stuff in the past, but this is different! This isn’t like throwing a drunk across the room, or doing some small magic in front of a Human. Hell, this isn’t even like letting someone see your markara. You started a riot! A rebellion! Racath, Forever Silent didn’t go out the window this time — you pushed it off a fauling cliff! And when Mrak finds out, he’s gonna shove you after it. He probably already—”
Racath shot a withering stare at Toren. “Don’t you dare lecture me, Toren Valgance. I get enough of that piss from the old man. I don’t need it from you, too. And don’t pretend like you buy into his philosophies. We both know that, deep down, you feel the same as I do about Zauvijék Nijem. The only difference between you and me is that you’re too scared to admit it.”
Toren bristled. “The difference between you and me is I understand that breaking our laws has consequences that you can’t control! You’d deny it, but you know that our laws have kept us safe for decades. Maybe they’re flawed, yeah, but I understand that they’re for our own good. We need order so that we don’t fall apart! We can’t just decide on a whim to throw caution to the wind and jump out of the dark!”
“Did you not hear me!? They hanged a little girl, Toren!” Racath retorted, emphasizing each word. “They killed a child. Was what I did the logical thing to do? No. Was it the orderly and safe thing to do? Faul no. Was it the smart thing to do? Probably not. But you know what?”
He glared daggers at Toren, teeth clenched. “It was the right thing to do, and I’m not sorry. Just because you don’t have the balls to—”
“That’s enough, both of you!” Alexis bellowed, stomping her foot hard on the stone floor. She glowered at them. “Toren, it isn’t your place to condemn him.”
Toren hackled again. “But he—!”
“I don’t care,” she cut him off. “Racath might have been stupid, but that’s not for you to decide. And regardless of what Mrak says, I agree with him. He did the right thing.”
Toren looked as though he might say something more, but then he dropped his eyes, cowed, and stayed silent. Puzzled, Racath watch him, saw his eyes flicker between his hands and Alexis’s face. Odd…no one had ever been able to stop Toren in the middle of a judgmental rant before. And yet he seemed to fold for Alexis.
“And we were in the middle of the story,” Alexis continued calmly, pulling her feet up to rest her chin on her knees. “Go on, Racath,” she said, the perfect audience. “The people were fighting the guard?”
“Yeah…” He shot one last glare at Toren, and then returned to the story. “They took over the guard houses, got as much equipment as they could.” The proud smile returned to his lips. “Alexis, you should have seen them. You should have seen the way they fought together. It was like…like…like a bee swarm. Like an angry hive. They just…destroyed the Dominion on their side of the river. They took their lives back. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen…the look on their faces when they realized that they could fight….”
Alexis raised her eyebrows as Racath trailed off. “It sounds like there’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”
Racath nodded. “The garrison on the eastern side was gathering on the Bridge, getting ready to march in and quell the riot. A Demon was leading them, this big dragonish thing.” He shrugged. “The Humans probably could have handled it themselves, but…it would have cost too much. Too many lives. So I had to kill it myself.”
“You fought a Demon?” Alexis said with an awed little gasp. Next to her, Toren was still glaring at the floor. “What…what was it like?”
“Scary as hell,” Racath laughed. “I tested your crossbow on it, actually.”
“Really?” Alexis asked, suddenly beaming. “How was it? Did it work? Did that kill it?”
“The thing works perfectly,” Racath reported. “And the enchantments—”
“Rotendry.”
“ — the rotendry is one of the most incredible things you’ve ever pulled off,” Racath said. “It should have worked, too. Those bolts could take someone’s head off. But…”
Alexis’s excitement darkened. “But…?”
“Like I said, the thing was big,” Racath explained. “Like some witch had whored herself out to a dragon, and it was their bastard son. The crossbow worked perfectly, but the bolt didn’t quite make it through its scales.”
“Awww,” Alexis pouted. “Too bad. How did you kill it, then?”
Racath hesitated. He wasn’t entirely sure if it would be a good idea to mention what happened with Briz’nar’s fire. He still had no idea what he had done or how he had done it, and bringing it up would only divert the conversation.
Not to mention that the Genshwin weren’t supposed to use magic too often, for the same reason they hid their
markara beneath their gauntlets — to keep their identities as Majiski a secret. Mrak thought of magic as a whimsical power that was too easily overused, something that would too easily compromise a Majiski. That was why he had never taught them much at all about how to use it. And Racath had no desire to add an extraneous use of obvious magic to the list of grievances that Mrak was certainly compiling.
“I…stabbed it…” Racath lied. “Through the eye. And when it died, it sort of…glowed, smoldered and burned a whole lot. I ran, jumped off the Bridge into the river, and then the thing exploded. The blast cut the bridge in half, and took of the Arkûl garrison with it.”
Alexis whistled slowly. “Damn. That’s intense. Then what?”
Racath shrugged. “Then I swam down river and came home. You’ve probably heard more than I have about what’s happened in the Burrows since then.”
“They say that the Humans formed some sort of quasi-government,” Toren offered, still slightly sullen from Alexis’s rebuke. “They’ve organized, and they’ve been fighting the Dominion’s attempts to take the district back.”
Alexis grimaced. “I’m not sure how long that can last….”
“They’ll be fine,” Racath said. “The Dominion doesn’t care enough about the Burrows to throw an army at it. They won’t bother to put too much effort into destroying the uprising unless its influence starts to spread outside the walls. They’ll focus on containing it, and I’m sure that the Humans will be perfectly happy to stay contained for now.”
Sighing, Toren leaned back in his chair. “Faul. I never really thought that something like this could happen.”
“Me neither,” said Alexis; she looked at Racath, stone-serious. “This changes things, Racath. You changed things. Nothing is really ever going to be the same after—”