by Tom Barczak
Beyond Michalas, beyond the open portal that broke across the albescent face of the Line, the gathered horde of the Khaalishite encampment surged. Around him, a swirling cloud of crows and debris converged.
Silence fell over Al-Mariam like a blessing. The screams of the horde and the sharp whistle of spear and arrow faded. Sound, thought, fear, the entire breadth and width of the Pale, all fell away from her, leaving only the rush and beat of her heart between her ears. It drove through her like a song, propelling her towards her brother.
Michalas succumbed beneath her like chaff against the wind. She hurt him; she knew it. Yet she couldn’t let go of him and didn’t want to, as the stones slammed against them where they fell.
Al-Mariam pressed her face against his head, kissing the bare skin of her brother’s pale scalp. The white marks upon his skin crawled over swollen scars at the edge of her vision. She looked past them into his eyes. They were the eyes of a stranger but their depths still swallowed her, just like the eyes of Chaelus had. She’d found him. Even in all of this. Her tears washed over him. She had found her brother.
Screaming arrows passed over her. Sharp tangs in rapid succession announced two more as they struck against the rubble beside her. The weight of the entire breadth and width of the Pale returned.
Al-Mariam pressed herself over Michalas. Fear surged its way through her. Her brother’s life would not be returned to her only to be lost again.
She knew she could do nothing to stop it, to stop the wave of death flooding towards them. It would come to them and not even the breaking of her oath would lay it to rest.
Michalas looked up at her, his mouth moving, but she could hear nothing from it, his words muted by the rhythmic pulse still pounding within her. Yet at least one thing had been gained. At least they would be together.
Michalas struggled to pull his thin arms away from her. His small hands cradled her face. Their gentle touch upon her cheeks felt warm against her skin.
Michalas closed his eyes. His voice resonated inside her although his lips had ceased parting. “Wait.”
Lightning flashed around them.
Michalas seemed to smile in its glow. He pointed beside them.
Al-Mariam would not tear her gaze from him. Tears still flowed from her like rain. She did not need to watch their death befall them.
Michalas pressed her face away until her eyes beheld a dark figure bathed in pure white flame, burning beside them.
“He’s here,” Michalas said. “The Angels have brought you both.”
***
A Khaalish archer never misses. Chaelus knew this to be true. Unless, of course, they were looking upon the face of their god.
Chaelus felt a soft tingle from the Giver’s holy fire billowing around him. It pulsed through his body, swelling within him as it echoed through his open hands. Like the tiny river that was the Giver’s voice, it grew and poured through him. Any defense he held against it would was lost beneath the surge of its unyielding power. Yet he had put up no defense against it. This time, it was he who had opened the floodgate, summoning it by his will alone. He opened his eyes to its grace.
Al-Mariam cradled her brother within the frail shelter of fallen stones. The Line, like himself, was a floodgate but through which the Dragon’s new minions would soon pour. Al-Mariam had found her brother and the Khaalish had found them both.
The Khaalish archers fired arrows at them amidst their own violent and fear-filled cries. Chaelus understood them all. The ghost of their dragon had found them.
The lone Khaalish sentry stood motionless in the gap of the wall as the horde closed the distance behind him, his mouth still hanging open, his useless spear still left where he had dropped it.
The man would soon know that prophecy did not lie. Chaelus closed the short distance between them. Then he touched him.
The chaos and violence of the Khaalish heart and mind, Chaelus had expected and known. He had known it as the Khaalish had come, with only the Line standing between them. He had known it before, from Obidae, the one he had touched before. Yet touching one of them felt nothing like this. The thoughts and feelings of a thousand souls unleashed upon Chaelus all at once, connected to the soul of the one he now held, limp within his grasp, a numbing blur he could scarcely bear.
Chaelus struggled to hold his own mind clear. He struggled against their chaos and their ire until he found it, just where he had found it in the one the time before. It was there, safe within each of them, the Truth of each of them that waited for him. It was simple. There was darkness and there was light.
So Chaelus showed them light.
The Khaalish sentry’s flesh yielded to the purity of his soul. The Dragon’s shadow which had struggled to fill him fled away from Chaelus’ touch. It had stood little chance, no more so than the legion which now came behind it, the floodwaters of the Giver’s light pouring over them. And, just as if their mouths had been let open in the sea, they drowned beneath its waves.
The Khaalish horde fell in rank and in scores, weightless as the whisper of the Dragon in each of them succumbed beneath the Creator’s touch.
Chaelus smiled at the touch of joy that returned from them. He had done this.
He watched them through the open gateway. Their war arrows now silent, they wavered on their knees throughout the encampment, waiting for his word as their tears washed away the paint of war that had adorned their faces like ghosts.
He had given this to them.
No. Not him. He was a Roan Lord and King. It was only by sword and spear that he had ever counted the fallen as he pressed his will against them.
No, Chaelus reminded himself, though regretfully. He hadn't done this.
The cries of “Ghaardi” transcended to the softer whispers of “Shoa Ti”. Their ghost had been vanquished, replaced instead by their god. Yet it was only for the moment. The shadow of the Dragon had been beaten here, but it would not stay away.
The night resumed as the holy fire of the Giver returned to its source.
Chaelus fell to his knees beside Al-Mariam. He cupped the side of her face with his hand.
She leaned into it. She looked back and forth between him and Michalas. He could tell that she wanted to speak but she couldn’t find the words. Tears streamed down her face and washed over his hands. Her own Truth, her Story, for the first time laid bare upon her breast.
In the wake of the Giver’s spirit, the need and pain of Al-Mariam’s humanity struck out at Chaelus like a hot iron against his own. He wanted to pull away but her hand, it held him.
“We’ve only been given time,” he said.
Michalas stared unblinking at him, his eyes deep wells like his sister’s. A nearly identical mark to his own, but like white hot coals, had been seared across Michalas’ naked brow. Yet this crown was made not by the Dragon’s hand. The Dragon’s work showed in the other scars which marred it, but no trace of the Dragon’s shadow dwelt within Michalas, only the soft glow of the Rua, like the Angels which had come to Chaelus before.
Chaelus listened as the footsteps of the other Servian Knights slowed at the sight before them. He unfastened his cloak, took it off and wrapped it around Michalas’ naked form.
“Tell me what to do,” he said.
***
Al-Aaron squinted. The night darkened as the clouds again sealed up the sky.
The pad of the child’s feet ahead sounded out like a war drum against it. He had started off at Chaelus’ word like a sprung trap, back away from the Line, and deeper into depths of the ruined city. He had been waiting for them, Michalas, Al-Mariam’s brother.
So there were two. The Dragon’s crown inscribed upon both of them. The opening lines of the prophecy whispered themselves to him.
One who was but could not be.
One who could not be but was.
The sky shuddered and the rain began. It pierced everywhere but the flesh of his blackened arm hanging useless at his side. He struggled with his cloak where its fold
s caught against it.
He stumbled.
Al-Thinneas’ grip held him steadfast. Al-Aaron surrendered to the strength of his friend.
Al-Thinneas smiled despite the caution in his eyes. It was a relief from the dour warnings of the dead. They had not come to him since the glow of Chaelus’ majesty unveiled itself upon the Khaalish horde.
He hadn’t seen it, what Chaelus had done, only the bright glow at the end of the dim path ahead of him. Yet he didn’t need to. He already knew what Chaelus was, and it was everything that Malius had promised he would be.
Malius, however, had said nothing of Michalas.
The ruins opened up again. Al-Thinneas’ hand pressed against Al-Aaron’s shoulder, stopping him.
The single white spire reached up against the storm-wrought sky like some promise against the storm’s power. Yet the dark stare of its windows offered none, watching over the canal which drew beneath them, taking the water from the Shinnaras beneath the muted stone of the spire’s mount.
Water churned in the rain, overflowing the stone-shod banks.
Michalas stood alone at the water’s edge, the mark of the Dragon a crown of white fire upon his head. A crown of darkness and a crown of light.
One to teach and One to save.
The mark of the Dragon upon him.
Perhaps.
Michalas, Al-Mariam’s brother. Their mother, a Servian Knight, had died during the hunting at the hands of the Servian Lords, if not at the hands of Ras Dumas himself, the one whose tower watched over them now. Ras Dumas had taken one of her children.
Born of cradle, born of grave.
Chosen from forgotten blood.
Perhaps.
The gathered storm rent the heavens. Ochre lights flashed across the sky. All other sounds diminished beneath it.
Al-Aaron felt a gentle pulse within the fingers of his dead hand. He moved them; they were stiff but alive, perhaps a sign of hope that his malaise, and perhaps the ghosts that it carried, would soon end.
Perhaps.
As the storm fell, the decay and refuse of the dead city billowed like its own storm around them.
Born for us to die for us.
For only the fallen may rise.
Chapter Eighteen
Beginning and End
Al-Mariam looked to where her brother stared, somewhere beneath the broken surface of the water where twisting specters turned in rile upon themselves.
She reached out instinctively to him.
“We’re nearly there,” Michalas said upon her touch. “There’s a path beside the water that goes beneath.”
Chaelus knelt beside her. He stared up at the ivory spire before them. The Line climbed up to meet it, joining with the unmanned wall surrounding it. The gray stone crag beneath had turned upon itself in waves like a wrinkled cloth, its very fabric having been made undone. “What will we find?” Al-Mariam asked.
“Both the beginning and the end,” Michalas answered.
Thunder echoed across the sky.
Al-Mariam opened her mouth to question, to question why, to plead that they leave this place now and never come back, to beg that her brother and all of them keep this one chance they had been given. To ask him what he had become, and what would become of them. But her voice died beneath the storm’s growing ire.
Michalas smiled at her still, trying to assure her. She smiled back, but beneath the wreath that now burned upon his brow, his eyes still beckoned her like those of a stranger, a stranger she had met before in the eyes of the one who knelt next to her.
Her hands had trembled, just like her heart, for the moment Chaelus had stood before her, after heaven’s own fire had been extinguished from him. For the moment that he held her face. For the moment after he had saved her, had saved them, as the fire still lingered in his eyes. For that moment, the depth of their waters had threatened to overtake her.
Chaelus stood. His eyes held hers for a moment as they passed. As they did, for the moment, she believed. He drew his unbound sword. Its naked steel burned in the light of the storm as he led them forward, just as he had promised.
Al-Hoanar placed his hand upon hers. He held his blade as well. Its gossamer cast crimson, as if the very oath of it had already been broken. He nodded once to her. His eyes glistened wet. Something had changed in him, as well.
Al-Aaron leaned against Al-Thinneas. Al-Aaron smiled, but Al-Thinneas passed a wary stare towards her. A warning perhaps, or a beseeching for something, an answer she could not give him. Soon, Al-Aaron would die from the Dragon’s poison. She smiled back at Al-Aaron, although it chastened her to give little more than a ruse.
She untethered her blade. Aela’s usual weight disappeared as she raised its length before her.
The water’s tumult subsided to a softer tremor as it flowed beneath the mount. A gate covered the small opening where it entered, but its steel had been warped like the stone to which it was shod, thrusting out at its base, leaving a small gap alongside the river’s course.
Above the cliff, above the wall, the battlements and fortifications looked down on them but no sentry’s eyes or ears followed them. What eyes did the Dragon need against them when its sentry already dwelt within their hearts? Behind them, the glow of the Khaalish fires still burned, but their babble had not yet returned.
Their only pursuer seemed to be the refuse and debris let loose upon the storm-tossed winds.
One by one, with Chaelus at their head, they passed beneath the warped steel grate. The slow churn of the water echoed throughout the stone around them. The thunderous call of heaven reluctantly subsided. Its rust-tossed sky passed away. Darkness overcame them. Only the soft glow of her brother’s crown, too far away for her to see him, remained.
Then, beneath the gossamer, the steel of Aela’s blade took on the gentle glow of stars unfolding around her.
***
The cenotaphs glowed from within, as if each held a single candle at their heart. Hundreds of them, arrayed in vast circles in the subterranean night. The air about them held the foul sweet stench of decay and the whisper of the Shinnaras flowed around them in the darkness.
Chaelus drew towards the nearest of the cenotaphs where Michalas waited. The boy was silent. Like Chaelus, he’d been here before.
Illuminating from beneath the water like a fallen angel, ghostlike in her glow, a girl child lay drawn in upon herself. Her head was shaven and her skin was bare. Ebony spandrels laced out from the black spots that covered her. Her lips moved faintly upon her upturned face. Her gray eyes flickered. A shadow turned in the water beside her, matching the one within.
The soft light of the girl ebbed.
The Dragon, or its vestige, was consuming her from within. The softness of her voice held no plea, and there were none that she could hear. Her spirit floated elsewhere, but with her, both kept alive beneath the brackish water to feed the Dragon’s call, an imprisoned song to its hungering darkness. With each flutter of her eyes and the whispered promises of the shadow behind them, she drew further away and the Dragon’s hold upon her deepened.
Black tendrils, and an unceasing whisper, an unceasing whisper in the dark. Chaelus felt the Dragon’s crown burn against his brow. Perhaps he had once deserved such a fate, but surely not a child such as this. He felt the shadowed voice of Al-Aaron behind him. He wouldn’t leave her to this.
Chaelus thrust his arms into the poisoned water. The shadow burned against his skin like the fire from his crown as the shadow threw itself upon him. He wrapped his arms beneath the girl and lifted, but the shadow only tightened its hold. Black tentacles laced across the welts they had already burned into her skin, throwing the brackish water about in their fury.
Then he saw her, he saw her truth, her light within the darkness. To herself at least, she was alone within it, but her light was no less bright than the scores of others which suffered close to her.
“Come to me.” Chaelus, or the Giver, or the memory of Al-Aaron’s voice inside him, a war
rior’s voice, called out from him to her, just like the one that once called to him. “Take my hand now and rise. Death cannot take you.”
And she did. Her tiny hand reached out, then gripped his arm from beneath the water. Her thin body weighed next to nothing as he lifted her. A faint tremor escaped her lips. The tentacles of the Dragon fell away, its black water pouring forth from her eyes, ears and mouth like oil.