by Tom Barczak
Chaelus looked back to where he had just been, to the distant cries of his friends, there where the darkness still remained. He imagined he could see through it all. He imagined that he saw, once more, those he knew he would never see again.
Chapter Twenty
Magedos
Voices sounded upon the wind. They sounded like the voice of madness itself, blowing cold against Chaelus’ skin as they called out to him. He couldn’t understand their words but he understood their sound, and he didn’t need the knowing of the Giver to do so. It was the sound of souls that had already been lost.
He braced himself against the sands billowing around him through the pale gray haze. The pitch beneath Ras Dumas’ tower above him had perished, perhaps along with his friends, the Servians, as well.
Or perhaps it was he who’d died. Perhaps he’d died again. Either way, aside from the voices upon the wind and the spirit of the Giver which possessed him, he was alone. Chaelus lifted Sundengal before him, the light of its steel made mute by the haze.
Coarse, dark sand shifted against his feet where the cenotaph had been. Only a ring of flat stones now pressed up from beneath, smooth save for the sinuous glyphs etched deep into their faces.
Above him dark mountains, the Karagas Mun, reared up into a cold, bleak sky; the harsh edges of their barren black stone melting into the turning clouds that reached up beyond his vision. A single narrow pass broke their length, the mountains keeping it hidden within their shadow. It was the valley of Magedos, the place where the Giver fell, the place where the Dragon would be defeated.
Dark holes, pits, stared back at Chaelus like eyes upon a pale face from where they lay scattered across the ground towards the valley’s narrow horizon. Monstrous shadows writhed beyond the valley in a swirling haze. They were like the wyrms from the cenotaphs; vestiges of the Dragon, yet were themselves as tall as mountains. The sand and stones, even here, shook at their tremor.
The bleached and splintered bones of things larger than a man trembled across the open pits. Drifting sand swirled around them. A tumbled cairn of stones marked the nearest of them.
Sundengal held a wyrdling weight.
The wind tore through Chaelus like a banshee, its sands burning into the exposure of his flesh as it called him by name from beyond the darkened spine. He shielded himself from the sand, but he could not tear his mind from its voice. The wakening of fear ravaged through him with every utterance of his name.
“Chaelus.”
“Chaelus.”
“Help us.”
The oppression of Magedos filled Chaelus’ vision, perhaps because of the dim storm-wrought light that lay against it, perhaps because of what it was. Either way, its power pressed upon him. He felt both the sharp press of the wind and the pleading of its voices.
The weight of Sundengal grew. It pulsed like a living thing in his hand.
Chaelus fell to his knees. The sand shifted beneath him. He clenched his eyes from the pain and burning of the Dragon’s Fire racing through him. Tears filled them, but he choked them back.
I have indeed passed on once more, he thought. Once more my own death passes before me.
“It’s a necessary one.” The voice and presence of Talus swelled within him.
Chaelus stiffened even as he diminished against it.
“But you aren’t alone,” Talus said.
The world blurred. Chaelus fell beneath the Giver’s thought, and then fell again to his memory.
Gray stones trembled beneath the burgeoning red sky as the Dragon and its minions rose in multitude and dark ire upon the horizon.
Dumas and Malius waited patiently beside Talus. Dalamas did not. The youngest of his followers, Dalamas raised his mailed fist like a shield as the first shadows of the storm fell against them. “We stand only twelve with you, my Teacher, and already it comes. How can we defeat an enemy such as this?”
Talus smiled as the first sands tore against his skin. The first and the last of the ones he had chosen stood with him still, though each with their own doubts, and the purpose that had been given to them. Only remnants of the Dragon’s shadow still lingered within them.
“You can’t,” Talus said. “One more sacrifice remains.”
“What more sacrifice would you ask of us?” Dalamas cried out against the sands.
“Go, Dalamas,” Talus said. “Take Dumas and go from us. Tell the others that the Dragon comes. Malius, take up Sundengal and come alone with me.”
Gravel crumbled beneath Talus’ boots as he sought a path ahead of them to a place where the sky narrowed between the dark peaks above. A cairn stood like a sentinel before one of the now emptied pits of the cenotaphs. Held between its piled stones, a strip of thin bleached funeral cloth, left behind by the Evarun who had worshipped here before, lifted upon the growing wind.
Talus took the gossamer from the stones as the measured stride of Malius came up from behind him.
“What yet remains, my Teacher,” Malius asked, “before our victory over the Dragon?”
“Our surrender remains,” Talus answered. “Your surrender. Bind up your blade in this, so that the others may know of your trust in me, so that they will bind theirs as well, just as you, my favored one, are bound to me.”
“I don’t understand, Teacher. Already the Dragon flies towards us. How can we surrender? Your words sentence them – all of us – to our deaths.” A splinter of fear broke across his voice as the sound of his drawn steel echoed against the canyon walls. Just as the prophecy had said it would.
“To follow me,” Talus said, “is a death they must freely accept.”
Malius’ hands shook as he took the gossamer from Talus. Talus winced. It hurt so to understand what his friend could not. Already and so soon, the shadow grew within him. The Dragon had already cast its veil upon him.
“And what if they don’t?” Malius asked.
“Then I cannot help them,” Talus replied.
“You would betray us here, before we face the Dragon itself?” Fear grew in measure within Malius’ voice.
Talus stepped closer to the edge of the cenotaph’s well. If only Malius could see his lack of faith. If only he could know what it held for him, for all of them. “I am afraid that it is you who will betray me.”
“Forgive me, Teacher,” Malius said. “I cannot serve you in this.”
Talus looked up to the constant light as the roar of the Dragon billowed over him. The pain of steel pierced Talus’ side. He sucked in his breath. It was just as the prophecy had said it would be. And so it would be for the next as well. His voice, to his surprise, barely wavered.
“My return is your forgiveness.”
The memory and presence of Talus fell away as the rust-colored sky blurred back into muted haze.
Chaelus lifted his pounding head from the sand. The stone cairn still remained before him, before the well next to where he had fallen. He had come here in his vision. It was where he had died. The burning of his fever deepened.
No.
Magedos. It was the place where the Giver fell. The place where Talus died.
Not I, thought Chaelus; him. But I will die here too, here in the place where my own father took the Giver’s life, where his father took his Teacher’s life.
It numbed him and it tore at him, all of it. It did so because Chaelus knew it was true.
He had seen it with his own eyes.
Chaelus stared at the now pounding weight of Sundengal still clutched within his hand. The sword of his father, the blood of the Giver still borne within it, the same blood that now pulsed within him, blood born of prophecy. In far too many ways all of it had become one.
Chaelus stood. His knees trembled. He looked down into the well’s abyss, just as Talus had once done. Yet only silence answered him against the dull haze reflecting from the surface of the water below. It trembled as small stones, set loose from their precipice above, broke across its surface.
The wind whipped harder against him. The pe
al of his own name deafened him as the legion of voices turned into one.
“Help us.”
“Chaelus!”
“You are the Giver.”
“Help us!”
The surface of the water quivered and distorted his reflection upon it.
“Chaelus.” Another voice, a more familiar voice, caustic and sweet, the voice of Magus, the voice of the Dragon, whispered from behind him. “Will you heed their cries, my love.”
***
Al-Mariam saw them from the corner of her eye, but she was too afraid to turn away from the Hand of the Dragon still towering above her.
The Khaalish legion filled the void of the passage through which they had come. Each of their faces was painted with a ghostlike visage, and they bore no reckoning to men. They pulsed like a single living thing to the unintelligible guttural chant that they murmured beneath their breath. They were no legion. They were a horde.
One stood alone in front of them. An array of crimson feathers struck out from behind his head. He clutched a pair of spears, one in each of his fists.
The Dragon’s Hand still above Al-Mariam sputtered and hissed. “What’s this? The Master hasn’t summoned you.”
“No,” the barbarian chieftain said. He hefted his spears above his head. His accent was thick but his words, spoken in the tongue of Gorond, were clear. “The Dragon’s veil has been cast aside.”
At the chieftain’s signal, the gathered horde poured past him.
Al- Mariam fell down. Beside her, Michalas stood in wonder.
The Hand of the Dragon staggered back, three arrows pierced through its breast. Shadow billowed from it, from its eyes, from beneath the wrappings which bound it, and from its wounds, swept along by the winds which still surrounded it.
Like a wave breaking over broken rock, the Khaalish horde descended upon the remaining Hand of the Dragon and the demon shield wall waiting at the edge of the shadow behind him. The barbarian’s hacking blades blurred before them like the wave’s broken froth.
The Dragon’s Hand hurled its mace, shattering the wall of flesh that came. A dozen of the Khaalish either crumpled or flew backwards, instantly dead from the malevolent force of the blow.
Yet its return swing never came.
The Dragon’s Hand screamed out, succumbed beneath the wave of those that came behind the first. Their swords, their spears, and the full force of their flesh fell upon it. Its black cloud billowed, spiraling out and away from between them in a maelstrom of shadow and decay and crumpling steel.
Al-Hoanar moaned where he lay.
Al-Mariam knelt beside him, passing her hand across his cheek.
Al-Hoanar smiled, wincing as he did. “I told you. Nothing to fear.”
The barbarian chief knelt beside her. His ghost face leaned close to her. The fevered pulse of his breath vibrated against her. “My name is Obidae. Has the Giver now gone to his task?”
Al-Mariam backed away. She remembered the men which had held her down on that day. She remembered the clutch of their smell. She reached out to Michalas with one hand, while the scars upon her other hand burned into the pommel of her sword. She imagined its gossamer oath had fallen away.
“Yes,” Al-Thinneas said.
Al-Thinneas strode towards them. He carried Al-Aaron in his arms. Al-Mariam could not help but notice the emptiness beside him. Chaelus, the Giver, had left them.
The Khaalish chief spun from her to Al-Thinneas. “Then gather up your fallen and leave while you can. Let us end this for our part.”
“No.”
Michalas’ small voice resounded from where he had come to stand beside Al-Mariam. Beneath his voice, and through it, labored the breath of another. It was a woman’s voice, and it held an ancient strength. It echoed against the surrounding darkness and the screams of the Remnant spirits that suffered there beneath the Khaalish spear. The fire upon Michalas’ scarred brow marked a halo that wrapped a gentle blanket of light around him. Chaelus’ cloak dragged at his feet.
“The bones of your willingness are worthy,” Michalas said. “But its flesh won’t suffer the scourge that will claim it.”
Michalas pointed towards the wall of shadow that the Khaalish horde were assaulting. The Khaalish clamored against each other for their chance to join in the fray. Their chanting swelled and echoed.
“Shoa Ti. Shoa Ti.”
Yet the rhythm of the Khaalish chant, and the crash and din of their weapons, did nothing to hide the painful slaughter in their cries. Though the Khaalish horde surged without reluctance towards their enemy, it was obvious that the teeth of the rocks upon which the wave of their vengeance fell would not recede. They only gathered corpses at their feet.
Al-Hoanar labored as he scrambled to stand. He clutched his sword arm to his side. Blood stained his fingers around the hilt.
“My pitiful eyes,” he said. “They tell me once more of my lack of faith.” His eyes narrowed to the slaughter before him, tears falling from them. His sword lowered. “Even their courage won’t suffer this for long.”
Obidae stood. He scowled, first at Al-Hoanar, then at Michalas and then at the truth that he now saw threatened to consume him. “Then at least until then, let it be our courage that saves you.”
The wind rose. The ravaging blister of debris billowed around them.
“Draw what is left of your legion back to you,” Michalas said. Then his voice was once more a child’s voice. “This is something I have to do.”
Al-Mariam felt her brother’s words drop like a grave stone upon her.
“No!” she hissed.
She felt another’s clutch upon her wrist.
Al-Thinneas, with gentleness and strength, pulled her hand from her brother’s wrist. The mark of her fingers remained there but Michalas had already left. He still stood before her but was already lost to the light and the beginnings of the fire of the spirit which claimed him, and to the suffering it would force him to face.
“Let the boy do what he must,” Al-Thinneas urged. The piety of his stare pressed deep against her, but his words crushed her, as if he had just said that her Michalas was dead. They pushed against her heart like a vice.
“So that I can lose him again?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Do it because you must, do it so that yet another promise made won’t be broken.”
Obidae cried out beneath his upturned spears. Slowly at first, reluctantly even, the Khaalish pulled back to him. As they did, the broken front of their line became visible, along with the scarcity of their numbers. It was only a few hundred. The Khaalish drew back to a protective circle around their leader.
The demons drew closer beyond the wall of shadow, their armored veils now torn aside. The terror of their empty eyes was bettered only by their ghoulish maws beneath, filled with beast-like teeth meant for the consumption of souls, the corpses of the Khaalish, torn and cast away beneath them. Unsated, they howled at the ones who had retreated from them.
Al-Mariam cried out at them, at everything, but a deafening thunderclap crushed any sound. It shook her and pulsed through her like a living thing, her grief and her fears carried away by it.
Michalas stood before her, between her and the howling enemy, immolated, a burning silhouette just as Chaelus had been.
The howls of the Dragon’s legion turned from cries of lust to howls of pain. The light of her brother’s holocaust burned through the legion of dark warriors surrounding them. It burned through them by rows, circling about them until their darkness was turned to light.
The faces of the Khaalish that had retreated held her brother’s luminance as if it were their own, silent save for their continuing chant of “Shoa Ti”, now a trembling and constant whisper, baptized in the light of her brother.
“No,” Al-Mariam whimpered.
She couldn’t lose him to this. She couldn’t watch until whatever spirit protected him fell fragile and failed him before the darkness assailing him; because it would, because the darkness, it
would always return. Yet as much as that, she could not bear to watch the tempest consume him, and take away from her everything left of him that she had only just regained.
Light ebbed to darkness and darkness ebbed to light. Michalas wavered where he stood. The broken husks of the Dragon’s spawn descended into ashes around him. The dim lights of the souls in the cenotaphs returned again as they did.
Michalas looked back to her. His stare, suddenly in need of her, claimed her.
The ground trembled beneath her as she ran to him.