by Tom Barczak
Michalas inched forward, closer so he could hear. He’d done just what the Angels had asked him to, just as he’d always done. He’d delivered the message for his master, and then he’d returned. But his master was one of the Fallen Ones, and the Dragon had already come to claim him.
Yet the Angels had told Michalas to stay.
And so the Dragon’s servants, its Hands, had tortured him, and left him in the cenotaph alone with the serpents that dwelt there.
The Angels rescued him but left him alone again, and he had no idea why. But the Angels knew, and if they did, perhaps the Dragon did as well, because it was speaking of him.
Michalas leaned closer. He winced as the warmth of the light touched him. Once he was sure it wouldn’t strike him down, he pressed his own eye against the one carved into the stone.
Beneath him, the tiny lights of the cenotaphs still glowed, each like its own star unto the night. At their center, the Dragon stood with the two who served him. Michalas’ master had called the Dragon, Magus. Its silver mask burned with the glow from the cenotaphs while the flesh of the two others, the Hands of the Dragon, shifted beneath the gray and white wrappings of their veils. Between them, black water trembled within the open cenotaph where they’d kept him.
The pale, drawn faces of two men left from Dumas’ court stared sightlessly at the edge of the shadows. They lay wasted on the floor like crumpled dolls, their backs against the cenotaphs from which they had been somehow spared; unaware of each other, and even less of themselves. They were listless, lost to the Dragon’s Sleep from which they suffered.
“We don’t know what consequence he’ll bring,” the Left Hand said. Veiled and cloaked in white, its robes glittered in the starlight of the cenotaphs.
“We don’t know his purpose,” the Right Hand offered, its threadbare cloak of gray but a shadow of its twin.
“He means nothing,” Magus replied to them both. “The blood of the Evarun doesn’t flow within him.”
“Are we sure?” both Hands of the Dragon said with a single voice. “What of the mark he bears?”
The water in the cenotaph shuddered. The slick forms of the creatures that had held Michalas crested the surface. Their razor black skin glistened as their forms rolled upon themselves.
Michalas caught his breath, but not before the notes of it rained downward.
Magus raised his head.
Michalas backed away. The glowing eye stared back at him in silence.
“What is it?” The Hands of the Dragon spoke again, as one.
“The child has returned,” the Dragon said.
Michalas clenched his eyes shut. The Dragon’s power grew with the attention he gave it. Michalas dug his fingers against the stone, so that the pain might divert his thoughts, then reached to the pallid markings ringing his brow, glowing cold beneath the wounds where the Hands of the Dragon had tried but failed to cut them away. The chill of their gaze passed through him. The Dragon could see him as if he were a candle in the night.
Michalas opened his eyes. Then, as much as he could in the shallow and narrow passage, he ran.
The walls and filth scraped against him, but less so than did the screaming of the Dragon’s voice that assailed him, following him through the souls of the very stones around him as it tried to force its chill of fear into his very bones. But, just as when its serpents had held him, their coils cutting against him, while the Hands of the Dragon plied their cruel tools against him, it failed.
There was little Michalas could do against the pain, weariness and revulsion that the Dragon had delivered upon him. Yet the one thing he did not feel, the one thing that the Dragon sought from him but could not find, was fear.
He had never felt it, because the Angels had always been with him.
The stones trembled as they changed, melting away like ice upon spring water. The passage closed in ahead of him. Beyond it, a glow like the sun beckoned.
Michalas smiled. The Angels had returned. Just as they always did. Just as they’d promised him they would, from the first moment they brought him back home. He clenched his eyes shut again, and leapt.
Chapter Seven
Maddea
He was dead and risen once more.
Moonlight danced in a bright and silver arc down the length of Sundengal’s blade, miraculously whole, and still clenched in both of Chaelus’ hands where he knelt astride the rutted path. Al-Aaron slept beside him. The Dragon and its shadow had passed and the dire of the forest had gone with them. The normal night and its sounds had returned to take their place.
Death hadn’t taken him.
Yet the Dragon had tried. It had been no vision.
How he knew this, Chaelus wasn’t sure, but the truth of it settled deep like the fever still waiting within his bones. For a timeless moment, the Dragon of legend had feared him. For a moment, it had trembled beneath him; that is, until the spirits came. The Dragon had feared their glory even more until the one had cast Sundengal asunder, leaving Chaelus defenseless and alone against the Dragon’s ire.
Spirits or Angels, they weren’t a vision either and, like the Dragon, they seemed to have already claimed him. To save others, they had said. To be sacrificed, they had said. And so they had pressed their will against him.
He would not let them do so again.
Beyond the trees a gray stag, his head adorned with ivory fur like a crown beneath his antlers, broke through the gentle forest growth. He paused, motionless before Chaelus, returning his stare. The stag’s eyes, wells of the softest shadow, concealed themselves from him.
Chaelus lowered Sundengal. His hand neared the markings written upon his brow. Moonlight ablaze with an azure glow settled upon them both. The cervine prince rutted once at the ground. It bowed to Chaelus. Then it sprang away into the forest night, across the path that hadn’t existed a moment before.
A pale marker stone, pitted and worn, rose from the center of the path. A single rune, once carved deep but now so shallow that it seemed to be older than the stone itself, marked its face. It was the same rune borne upon Sundengal’s hilt amidst the twisted filigree of dragons. It was the rune of his father’s House - the rune of the Servian Order.
A mark, a line, and a serpent.
Angels, and the ones that served them, just as his father once had. Now Chaelus, his son, had come to them in his need.
The sound of Sundengal’s breaking still resounded deep inside Chaelus. Was it warning or was it prophecy? Sacrifice or calling, he claimed neither one. He only knew that Al-Aaron knew much more than he had said to him. But Al-Aaron’s eyes still slept behind their own dark veil, no more answers would come from him. The darkness they saw was a darkness Chaelus already knew all too well.
Chaelus returned Sundengal to its scabbard. He lifted Al-Aaron and cradled him within his arms. Beyond the marker stone the path descended into a wooded valley. Through the trees the floating lights of torches danced across its floor.
Water cascaded beside him. A small stream coursed between the pale stones covering the broken slope, the ruins of a wall long since fallen. At its base, a shallow stone well collected and released the water again into a gentle winding channel that cut across the valley floor. Rushes and tall grasses grew along the water’s edge and at the edge of the small pool where it led. Moonlight, freed from the sky above, danced across the surface of the water. The path descended the splintered stones set like a giant’s staircase, continuing to the pool’s edge and beyond.
The rustle of leaves broke the silence.
Beyond the pool, at the clearings farthest edge, two cloaked and hooded figures stepped out from the shadows. The larger of them threw back his hood and stepped out into the dappled moonlight. His olive features stood sharp, his grayed hair cropped close in a patrician style. The man’s blood flowed from no Roan House, but from the east, from the Theocracy. Chaelus had known many of them during his time in Lossos, and had even loved one of them, the favored sons and daughters of the Pale. The hilt of th
e man’s sword revealed itself from beneath his cloak.
Still holding Al-Aaron, Chaelus reached for Sundengal’s own.
“Chaelus, Lord of the Roan House of Malius.” The man spoke just as Al-Aaron did, in the tongue of Gorond. He pulled away his cloak, revealing the shorter stabbing blade of the Phennites bound in gossamer. Upon the breast of the black tunic he wore rested the white circle of the Servian Order. “I am Al-Thinneas. The lady Al-Mariam stands beside me.”
Cool dark eyes measured Chaelus from beneath her cowl. A slip of dark hair tumbled across them.
“We are Knights of the Servian Order,” Al-Thinneas said.
Chaelus felt Al-Aaron’s weight grow heavy against him, but it dimmed against the sudden weight of everything that had led him here. Like a cascade of stones upon a mountain slope, he could scarcely recall its beginning, only that everything had changed, and that he could carry no more of it.
“Then take him quickly,” Chaelus said. “He’s hurt.”
Al-Thinneas gestured to the pool. “Bring him across the Maddea’s water. Leave within it what sins you’ve brought with you.”
Beneath the rushes, the same pale stone lined the edge of the pool. Channels at each end fed it and then took the water away. Stone steps descended and then ascended through the water between them. Chaelus drew closer to the water’s edge. The bottom of the pool was obscured beneath the pale reflection of the moon. Ripples shattered it as he descended. The water soon swelled up to his chest, taking Al-Aaron’s weight as he floated upon its surface.
Al-Thinneas lifted Al-Aaron from Chaelus’ arms and his voice boomed. “Let go, and bow before your risen life.”
Chaelus’ head felt captured in webs, his limbs suddenly weak within the water. The marking of his crown felt frozen against his brow, its fire suddenly extinguished. Chaelus stumbled, dropping for a moment beneath the surface. He rose to the sounds of the vale surging back to him, the moonlight brighter than any sun, bathing the two tending to Al-Aaron in the azure glow he’d seen before. The scent of lavender filled the air. His sword and armor weighted him as he climbed up the worn steps from the pool.
***
Al-Mariam drove her nails deep into her skin, the pain sharp and keen as the barbarian son of one of the Fallen Ones rose from the Maddea, its holy water falling from his armor and unbound sword like rain.
His gaze passed from Al-Thinneas to her and remained. His eyes were an eternal gray, both bright and cool like a first snow fall. His new beard was not much longer than the dark hair scarcely covering the black marks ringing his head like a crown - the mark of the Dragon, the mark of the Prophecy of the Evarun.
She saw that Al-Aaron stared at her from where his gentle head rested in Al-Thinneas’ arms, the sorrowful veil of the Dragon’s Sleep drawn across his scarcely-opened eyes. He breathed in fits, lost within the miasma that claimed him. So much sacrifice only to be lost.
Al-Thinneas set Al-Aaron down alongside the rushes. He passed his hands over Al-Aaron’s mordant wound, undoing its binding. The wound was open, but it didn’t bleed. Thin black arms traced across the grayed flesh around it.
“What did this?” Al-Thinneas asked.
“Remnants are what he called them,” the barbarian replied. He stared at Al-Aaron, his eyes turning heavy and worn at their edges. “One night past. Their poison just claimed him.”
Al-Thinneas studied the barbarian, just like he studied everything that was new. Little escaped his scrutiny. “Only the Mother can help him now. She will know what to do.”
The barbarian lifted Al-Aaron.
Al-Mariam stepped back. No. Nearly every part of her wanted to flee from all of it, from what the barbarian’s presence meant, from the promise of the prophecy he held, and from everything he threatened to destroy; but not all of her.
Was this what terrified her the most? She hadn’t felt it like this before. It was a tremor in her very soul, and still his eternal stare wouldn’t leave her. No. Al-Mariam kept her face composed as the skin of her palms finally broke. Pain shot through her as the warmth of her blood washed against her fingers. Her vision and her heart sharpened in succession. She would not allow this. She stepped forward. “Set the child down. Your blade cannot pass.”
The barbarian’s crystal eyes narrowed. Still holding the Younger, his hand fell to the hilt of his sword.
Al-Mariam felt the beat of her heart through her hand as it dropped to rest against Aela’s hilt, the sword of her mother, the sword that Al-Mariam was not allowed to wield. Bound by gossamer, bound by oath, and like her mother before, Al-Mariam was forbidden to shed the blood of man with it, forbidden even to defend herself against him.
A faint tremor of fear, or a warning of it, shot through her. Her gossamer-bound blade trembled as it fell from its already loosened halter into her hand. The sharp ring of Aela’s muffled steel sounded out against the trees.
The barbarian drew his sword but held it at rest. “Don’t be foolish.”
“Al-Mariam,” Al-Thinneas said.
Her anger stiffened its resolve like roots quickening deep into the ground. “His sword is unbound. It defies the oath of our order.”
Al-Thinneas’ voice dropped to a sharpened whisper. “You speak of an oath you already betray. Put away your blade.”
“You would let him defile this sacred place?”
“He’s not one of us. I would let him defile what he chooses for now, unless you have forgotten why he’s here, or whom he’s returned to us, or the Dragon’s crown that rests upon his brow.”
Al-Aaron stirred. A pitiful moan escaped his lips.
Al-Mariam lowered Aela’s gossamer-bound blade. So much sacrifice to be remembered while the loss of others was so easily forgotten. Al-Aaron was not that much older than Michalas would be, but that didn’t matter to anyone else but her. Now Al-Aaron had returned to them with his prize, and in so doing he had brought doom upon them all.
Al-Mariam returned Aela to its tether. “I see only a mark. Anything more is a fool’s belief.”
The barbarian sheathed his blade, but his eyes remained upon her.
It was the pain in Al-Thinneas’ eyes, the eyes of her friend, that cut her more than the barbarian’s sword ever could. It rent her open as he spoke. “Go, Al-Mariam. Tell the Mother what has passed here.”
***
The ancient trees reached high above the clearing like giants. Their leaves had mostly passed with the season’s turn. The close weave of their branches appeared like stone as torchlight conspired with moonlight across their surface. The columns of their trunks stood solemn, watching, waiting. The pillared and ancient halls of Lossos dimmed in comparison to them.
The broken white stones scattered beneath them pressed up in circles from the rich crimson soil of the forest floor. The foundations, the flesh and bone remains of something greater. The ground rose towards the shadow of a mount looming above them, visible at last between the trees. The vestige of a wide stairway crept towards its summit where, along its crest, large stones stood upright like broken teeth. The flicker of firelight danced between them, and through the mouth of the once great portal that had fallen.
Three men in rust-colored tunics waited at the base of the stairs, their shaven heads bowed. The two on either end carried staves shod at their tops with small iron crooks. Al-Thinneas bowed in return then turned to Chaelus.
“They are the Tenders, servants to the flame and to the Mother who guides us. They’ll take Al-Aaron into the Mother’s care now.”
The center and eldest of the three stepped forward with his arms held open to receive Al-Aaron. The wells of the man’s eyes were as dark and as veiled as those of the forest prince who had guided Chaelus here.
Chaelus hesitated. “I’ll stay with him.”
“The Younger’s risked much to bring you here.” Al-Thinneas looked out to the forest edge then leveled his stare back again. “If you seek to destroy the Dragon who stole your kingdom, know that his risk was for more than this.”
“Al-Aaron believes in prophecy.”
“No. His belief is in something deeper.” Al-Thinneas touched Chaelus’ arm. “Trust in the sacrifice he’s made.”
Al-Aaron shifted in Chaelus’ arms. His eyes had closed again, his murmuring ceased. A deeper shade of pale passed over him.
The Tenders waited, watching, either unmoved or unconcerned.
Chaelus transferred Al-Aaron into the waiting arms of their leader. The Tenders bowed to him and ascended the stairs.
“The Younger?” Chaelus asked.
“It is a term of endearment and respect reserved for the youngest of our Order,” Al-Thinneas explained. “If only his youth offered freedom from the poison which claims him.”