by Tom Barczak
Twelve hammered silver rings hung between the twelve open doorways around them. The flat discs captured the sullen red glow of the fire light. The fragrant musk of incense held thick upon the air. Twelve stone seats surrounded the fire burning in the center of the room; there to wait for the return of the Giver and the twelve whom he would choose. Chaelus sat down beside the fire. He eyed the open doorways, then settled his sight upon the one through which they’d come. Joshua leaned his stave against the wall and raised a small copper cooking pot to a hook above the flame.
Water pooled around his boots. The memory of Faerowyn and the whisper of the old woman wouldn’t fade.
Joshua raised his hollow stare as he stooped over the fire. “You’ll find that many things aren’t what they seem.”
Al-Aaron appeared like a ghost within the doorway.
He held his left arm close to him. It was bound and bloodied. With his other he carried his sword, bound in gossamer. An azure light showed beneath its wrapping.
Chaelus stood.
Joshua did n’t, instead crumbling leaves into the pot. “The weather’s become fierce, has it not?”
“You’re the high priest,” Al-Aaron said, “yet you do not march with your queen.”
“Such sentiment becomes lost to one who’s soon to follow.”
Al-Aaron came forward. “When did the Dragon come here?”
The kettle trembled as Joshua removed his hand from its chain. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“It walks among you. I wouldn’t have thought even the Fallen Ones would be so blind.”
“That’s because they’re dead.”
A thick, palpable silence descended.
“What?” Al-Aaron asked.
“Less than a fortnight ago, the Servian Lords were murdered as if they were one. Their assassins wielded Gossamer Blades.”
Al-Aaron recoiled as if Joshua had struck him. “It’s not possible.”
“A Servian Knight surrendered to each them. Then they escaped and murdered their captors.”
“It’s trickery.”
Joshua raised his eyes, his voice gaining strength. “It doesn’t matter now. The persecution of the Theocratic Council and their Taurate won’t falter this time.”
“What are you saying?”
“That I’ve been hiding for too long.”
“Do you believe this?”
Joshua’s eyes grew wide. “It doesn’t matter what I believe! The Fallen Ones have been returned to their master. The die has been cast. The Taurate will now have the willing support of the Theocratic Council. From here forward, our persecution will seem more like redemption.”
Al-Aaron remained silent, his face uplifted.
The kettle trembled.
Joshua rose and lifted it, placing it on a wide stone beside the hearth. He stared into the fire. His voice sounded frail. “I’m tired. I’ve been tired a long time and you’re so very young. I’ve walked long enough with the Servian Order.”
The front door crashed open. The storm rushed in. The fire flared before the room plunged into the twilight of the storm. Joshua’s face thinned. A shadow turned within him, its illusion unveiled, just as with the woman in the storm. Unlike her though, Joshua knew it. Yet he didn’t seem to care.
Unmoved, Al-Aaron rose and stepped towards Joshua. “Do you believe the Prophecy has changed?”
Joshua recoiled. “Everything’s changed. You choose not to see!”
“I am afraid it is you who’ve lost your vision.”
“No. I don’t think so.” Joshua’s voice lowered again. He leaned forward. “I know that more than the Dragon’s Sleep has fallen here. I know that we wait in the Dragon’s shadow and we are woe to find any defense against it.”
“It is woe indeed to be without hope.”
“Don’t pity me. Save it for yourself.” Joshua, seized by a fit of coughing, fanned his arm toward the village. “I assure you that it’s not for my character that I suffer the same fate as them.” Straightening, he stared into the still glowing embers. “I don’t suffer from their lack of faith.”
“That is why you’ve fallen.” Al-Aaron turned towards Chaelus. “It’s time to go.”
Al-Aaron stopped within the passage and looked back toward Joshua. “It isn’t too late to stop this madness.”
Joshua turned away. “I’m so sorry that it is.” As the door shut between them, Joshua’s voice followed them. “Flee while you can.”
The rain gave way to a greater darkness. A low mist hung upon the whispering wind. Idyliss whinnied restless from where she wandered nearby.
The markings on Chaelus’ brow began to burn. He reached for Sundengal.
Al-Aaron touched his hand. The dark stain of blood marked its wrapping.
“It won’t protect you in this,” he said.
Chaelus’ consciousness fell to shadow. Darkness exploded beneath an azure flame.
***
Al-Aaron waited as Chaelus tumbled to the ground.
The Remnant which hoped to claim him leaned down in pursuit, appearing strange, almost like child going after a lost sweet. But then the Dragon, having already once suffered Chaelus’ loss, would have its attention on nothing else.
Al-Aaron plunged Baerythe down.
The Remnant’s faceless veil gave a slow turn in surprise as Baerythe’s length penetrated between the bands of its blackened lorica. Blue flame swirled about it. Tremors claimed it. The Remnant’s armor buckled inward.
Al-Aaron pulled Baerythe free. Wind rushed from the Remnant’s tumbling husk, brushing past him. It smelled pungent and sweet, for the scent of the soul that had been set free.
Al-Aaron’s wound cried out.
Two pillars of shadow stood across the narrow clearing, the mist of their making still gathered about them. Beyond them, at the edge of the darker forest night, Magus reined in a black steed.
Chaelus stirred on the ground, an awakening moan upon his lips.
Al-Aaron stepped before Chaelus as the two Remnants, now fully summoned, marched towards him. Their black legion blades hissed as they withdrew them from their scabbards. Beyond the Remnants’ veils, the ire of the Dragon clamored. If the scent of a soul was sweet, then the scent of one made captive held like iron upon the tongue, like the pungent odor of death, but all the worse for the suffering it carried.
The smell washed over Al-Aaron as he narrowed the distance between them. Around him, the ghost songs of the Cherubim sounded again.
Beyond the Remnants themselves, the Dragon, Magus, waited. It hadn’t come for him, but for the return of one he’d taken from it.
The Remnants fell to Baerythe as Al-Aaron passed.
The songs of the Cherubim faded.
Al-Aaron lowered the blackened length of Baerythe’s gossamer blade beside him. Blue flame still trickled across its edge. Behind Al-Aaron, the husks of the Remnants collapsed and buckled upon the shadows that bound them. The souls they’d held billowed past, the glow of blue flame dancing upon them.
***
Chaelus awoke to his head pounding, his vision blurred. He lay upon the ground. Al-Aaron stood nearby, surrounded by the fallen bodies of armored men. Darkened legion helms, skirted in mail, concealed their faces above blackened lorica. Short stabbing blades, widened at their tips like teeth and blackened like their armor, lay on the ground beside them.
Before Al-Aaron, a single rider leveled a stave bearing the standard of the Taurate, the circle Imperious inscribed with the X of the Prostrate Cross. His black mount reared beneath him.
The azure flame from Al-Aaron’s blade illuminated the silver child’s face beneath his cowl. Magus’ whisper - the Dragon’s whisper - caustic and sweet, drifted from it.
“Why do you still stand?”
Chaelus struggled to his knees. The ground beneath him and the enemy before him wavered. Impotent rage coursed through him.
Al-Aaron stood calm, holding his wounded arm close. He raised his sword upright with the other. The thin white cloth
that bound the steel had blackened.
“Because I remembered what protects me.”
Magus turned his stare towards Chaelus as a smile surely passed across his unseen lips. He urged his mount forward. His voice grew coarse as it drew in.
“Death suits you well, Master.”
Al-Aaron stepped between them. “You can’t have him.”
Magus and beast sprang back, blocked by something unseen. He screamed with the sounds of the damned as he pulled the beast up short. “Your kind is dead and your ashes have been scattered. I know this!”
“Then it’s from the ashes we’ve returned. I hold no fear of you.”
Magus screamed again as the beast reared once more beneath him. Al-Aaron remained steadfast, his sword aglow with soft blue radiance. Barely, he whispered, “Go back.”
Magus pulled away as if stricken by the flame, crashing his steed back into the wood until the darkness and mist there consumed them.
Chaelus could only stare into the wood where Magus, where the Dragon, had fled. The weight of its shadow was only surpassed by that of his shame. He hadn’t even raised his blade against it, against the thing that had taken everything from him.
Al-Aaron lowered his own, its supernatural fire extinguished. He staggered over the corpses, his breathing weak. His eyes dimmed. He held out his hand toward Chaelus.
“We have to hurry,” Al-Aaron said. “The Prophecy of the Evarun has begun.”
Chapter Four
Effigy
Chaelus watched the pallid gossamer stretch taut beneath Al-Aaron’s trembling fingers. It pressed against the oiled surface of the steel, overlapping as he guided it up the length of the blade. The steel cast blue in the morning light, like the mystical aura and flame it had held the night before.
Sunlight filtered through the forlorn branches above, branches made bare by the autumn’s tide. Only odd leaves, stragglers remained. The great oak twisted and bent itself behind him, its roots stretching out as it reached high above the small hollow in which they rested.
Al-Aaron leaned over the sword, weary, lost in his task. He steadied the blade with his wounded arm. He still wouldn’t speak of it. Only at Chaelus’ insistence had he even let him tend to its dressing. The bleeding had stopped, but from what he had glimpsed of it, and from what he had seen of the adversary they’d faced, it was no normal wound. Whatever poison it carried drew Al-Aaron further away with each moment that passed.
The blackened cloth of wound and blade lay discarded at Al-Aaron’s feet.
Chaelus knelt beside him. His own fever wore at him, but he said nothing of it. Not while Al-Aaron suffered. But there was something he would say, one question that he had to ask, that his pride feared to say.
“How did I fall while you remained against them?”
Al-Aaron looked up at him. “It was the Dragon’s Call. The poison of the Dragon’s blood awoke within you. There was nothing you could do.”
Chaelus struggled against Al-Aaron’s reply and everything it meant. How could he destroy the Dragon when it could strike him down with a whisper?
“Then how do I to defeat it?”
“By lighting a fire.” Al-Aaron gave a weary smile. “I’ll need it to purify.”
Chaelus played along. “The smoke will reveal us.”
“The Dragon has already found us. It was waiting within you, within both of us. I’d forgotten. Hopefully we can reach the safety of Sanseveria before it returns. The Dragon is eternal. So too must be the power you wield against it. Sword or spear or bow cannot harm it. You can’t hope to defeat the Dragon alone.”
The discarded gossamer appeared already burnt. Its substance was brittle and frail.
“What’s become of it?” Chaelus asked, pointing to the cloth.
Al-Aaron returned to the sword and continued its binding. He didn’t pause in his reply. “It’s been spoiled by the Dragon’s taint.”
Chaelus bristled at the memory of his failure. The dark shadows of men brought down by the hand of a child, while he had watched and done nothing to stop them, letting Magus, the Dragon, escape him. It sickened him and it left behind something else he had yet to ask. “How did you defeat them?”
Al-Aaron looked up at him, holding his gaze. “I didn’t. They didn’t fall by my power. I’m but a channel. The sword is only a symbol.”
“No symbol wounded you after you left me. Forget that you’re only a child. I’m familiar enough with your oath. It was a man’s blade that pierced you.”
Al-Aaron pressed the gossamer’s end beneath the hilt of the sword. He stared into the depth of the steel. “They weren’t men.”
“No beast is cloaked in the arms of the Theocracy. They weren’t ghosts.”
“Not beasts, not ghosts. Remnants, made from the husks of those the Dragon has spent.”
“You say they’re dead?”
“No, not dead. They’re the servants of the Dragon and the dead serve no purpose to it. Only the living may be possessed by its shadow. They’re what remains. It’s within the cenotaphs that they’re made.”
Chaelus’ throat thickened. His vision wavered. The same shadow from the cenotaph pulsed beneath the surface of everything before him, like a face behind a veil. Everywhere, save for the soft glow emanating from Al-Aaron, and even from himself, until at last both light and shadow faded away.
Al-Aaron, unmoved, laid the sword upon the fur beside him. He wrapped the blade within it, binding it finally again in sinew as he spoke. “They’re not dead. Nor are they men anymore. The Dragon’s shadow has consumed them, their souls lost until only the vessel of their wasted flesh remains. Until now I only knew them in stories and legend. They haven’t walked among us since before the Expulsion. They were the wizards’ minions; the dancing horde. That they’ve returned to us, and so disguised, is grave news indeed.”
“What of Magus?”
Al-Aaron paused, setting the bound blade beside him. “Magus is the mask of the Dragon itself. Not flesh corrupted, but the Dragon made into near flesh. It’s as close as the Dragon may come to our image, which was made in the Rua’s own. Even your father succumbed to its lies. You stood no chance against it. Not then. Not now.”
Chaelus staggered to his feet and began to gather the scattered dead wood around them, buried beneath the fallen leaves, and in short time he had the timbers piled together. The fire started after only a few strikes of his flint. Leaning over the small pyre, he shifted the wood as the flame grew, consuming the kindling at its center.
Al-Aaron turned his gaze into the burgeoning flame. “The Dragon is eternal. All that is now has already been so before. Ever since the Expulsion a century ago, the Dragon has waited as its seed silently spread across the Pale. The failing of the Servian Lords opened the door for its return. The Line they guarded was already broken. The Dragon had already been set free.”
Chaelus withdrew his stoke from the fire. The failing of the Servian Lords, he thought, and the failing of his father. “It was with the Schism of your Order that the Servian Lords failed.”
“No. The Schism was only the consequence of it. The failure of the Servian Lords came long before. It began the day their promise was broken, the promise they made to watch for the Dragon’s return in themselves.”
Al-Aaron’s voice trailed away. He stared at his wounded arm. “The wall we call the Line, like the gossamer bound swords we bear, is a symbol, meant to be honored, but not the end in itself. The Line they truly failed to protect was one within their hearts. People will say that the fall of the Servian Lords happened quickly and without warning. But they were dead long before breath ceased to come from their lips. Each of them, chosen by the Giver to defeat the Dragon a hundred years before, was eventually seduced by the Dragon itself, just like the Gorondian Wizards were before them.
“Only your father, Malius, was spared their fate. He was spared by the death you gave him, for only the living may answer the Dragon’s call. The other eleven have now answered to the Dragon they came t
o serve. Now the Dragon hunts for the one who can take your father’s place, the one it has marked. The same mark you bear above your brow.”
Chaelus stood and leaned against one of the great roots that stretched around them. He pressed his face into his hands and passed them over the runes upon his brow. He felt the pulse of the darkness he had just seen beneath everything. “I feel I’ve walked into a dream.”
“It’s the dream of the life you once held that you must walk away from. It’s from the Dragon that I took you and it’s the Dragon that comes for you now. With you, it hopes to make its own dark prophecy complete, when the twelve who’ve fallen rise in fealty to it.”