by Tom Barczak
He fell to his knees.
His father staggered back through the descending snow, holding up his mailed fist as if it were a malaise itself. His mouth opening and closing to silent speech. He stopped and looked down to where Baelus lay alone in the blood-turned snow.
The boy looked up at his father and swallowed, shaking from cold and fear, his hands clutching at the bloodied wound in his side; the broken shaft of the Khaalish arrow that he had removed still in the snow where he had dropped it.
The arrow should have remained, to keep the wound sealed, but Baelus was too young to have known that, and his father was too consumed to care. The wound was not mortal – yet – and the cold slowed his bleeding and his suffering from it. Yet Baelus was too young to know any of this, either. He turned to Chaelus, his deep eyes fearful and pleading.
Chaelus stood as Malius drew Sundengal from its scabbard.
He could do nothing for the fear which swept through him. “No, Father.”
Malius turned from Baelus, his face somber. He raised his blade and strode towards Chaelus.
Chaelus stumbled back. His hand fumbled with the hilt of his own sword, its blade as heavy as his heart as he held it within his grasp. His fear diminished to despair. He held his blade weak, its length trembling before him. “You don’t have to do this, Father!”
Warm sunlight, reflected blue by the snow, consumed them like fire as Malius seized Chaelus’ blade within his mailed fist. His eyes had changed; they were softer, pleading. “Yes, I do.”
The face of his father leaned close to Chaelus, his breath warm against Chaelus’ neck. A weak smile, awash with shame and yearning, spread across Malius’ face. “The Dragon, it feeds off the living. The dead serve no purpose to it.”
Chaelus trembled.
His father’s eyes showed bright. They looked into him as they had before his mother died, when they had looked out upon the future of a new day, burning bright over the Kessel plain. His father’s smile faded. He gripped Chaelus firm by the shoulder. His breath fell to a whisper. “I was wrong.”
Chaelus’ blade lurched as his father’s fell upon it. Blood spotted the corner of his father’s mouth. Tears gleamed in his eyes. “And I’m sorry.”
Chaelus surrendered the blade. He grabbed at his father, holding him up. He pressed his face into the fading warmth of Malius’ neck as the weight of his father’s body pulled him down. “No!”
Chaelus jolted as the different chill of sand returned. It filled the edges of his mouth. His eyes stung where his blood had matted there. He rose, more lifted than stood, and looked into the empty hulls of the eyes of the thing he had just thought was his father.
“Now I know,” Chaelus said.
The aberration of his father studied him. Hesitation held it fast. “What could you know?”
“I know that I didn’t murder my father, and I know now that you, Dragon, aren’t him.”
The Dragon’s fist clenched and unclenched, uncertain of its failure.
“Don’t let my disappointment in you become complete,” it said.
“You’re not my father. You’re the Dragon, Gorond, and you feed off the suffering of the living. My father’s already passed to the dead, and those those that have their rest, cannot serve you.”
The broken husk of Malius which the Dragon bore stared back at him. The Dragon’s shadow poured out from the hollow of its eyes like oil. The sand and stone around them trembled.
“No,” the Dragon whispered. Its voice shook the broken ground beneath him. “But your death does.”
***
For the first time ever, Michalas felt fear. Not the tears of a child that he knew had already begun to fall, but real fear. Or at least, that’s what he thought it was. It was the opposite of what he felt when the Angels came.
The feeling crawled and curled around the pit of his stomach, not unlike the black tendrils he had seen infesting the bodies of those whom the Dragon had imprisoned within the cenotaphs. Perhaps this wasn’t any different. More than anything else, he wanted it to go away.
Blood pooled beneath Al-Thinneas’ body. Only the stalwart beacon of Al-Hoanar’s gossamer blade remained. Around them, like a wall between them and the Fallen Ones, the thin line of the Khaalish swayed as their cries descended back into the whispered rhythm of their chant.
From just behind Michalas, where she clutched her arms around him, the agonized pleas of his sister cried out to him. She could do nothing more. Before him, Ras Dumas, the Servian Lord that the Angels had brought him to save, stared at him in silence.
Steel scraped against steel. As if they were one, Ras Dumas and the other nine Servian Lords drew their blades from their scabbards and closed their circle around Michalas.
Yet none of these things were what scared him.
Beyond them all was the glow of the Angel. Not near to him but far beyond his reach, and of the distance between them, no passage could have been greater. No cold could be more numbing than the chill this distance held within its grasp. It was like infinite night. The Angel stared at him. She did not smile. She did not stretch out her hand to gently hold his face. There was no voice or comfort at all coming from her.
Tendrils of fear spun their way through Michalas. What had he done wrong? What had he done that she would not to come to him? Had he not already done everything she had asked of him? The doubt of it all tangled and wrought its way inside him, taking away his very breath. To see her and not be near her felt like damnation.
The fearful and fateful prayer of the Khaalish warriors drifted over him. It was fearful, all of it. It was all their fears bound together, yet each fear made somehow less real for its utterance. The strength of their bearers, the Khaalish, grew through the sharing of their own weakness.
Yet it was more than that. It was an offering, and something had been given back to replace it. The blue light in each of them grew, together equaling the blue flame of the Gossamer Blade of Al-Hoanar, before them.
Michalas stood, pulling away from the grip and cries of his sister.
Ras Dalamas towered above, above Ras Dumas and the rest of the Fallen Ones. The light of the Angel behind them went out.
“You are the other,” Ras Dalamas said. His voice sounded like the grave. “But your hope is lost. It’s fire’s already been put out.”
Michalas closed his eyes.
He imagined the fingers of his fear lacing together. He let them. Deeper and deeper they gathered, filling the voids and holes inside him, the ones the Angel had left behind.
The sharp strike of steel tore the fingers apart.
Michalas opened his eyes.
The blade of Ras Dalamas hung in the air above him, a hand’s width away from his fate. The soft lights of the cenotaphs reflected upon it. The blade of Ras Dumas held fast against it.
“No,” Michalas said. “My hope is not lost.”
He stared past the mask of the Dragon helm to the Ram’s head of his former master. Beyond Ras Dumas, the Angel smiled.
“My hope is not lost,” Michalas said, “for I have already seen its passing, and in doing so, I’ve gained the greatest hope of all.”
The cold fire of Ras Dalamas’ stare burned into Ras Dumas. Its red flame billowed from Ras Dalamas’ helm against the black smoke swirling about him.
A single breath passed amongst the Khaalish.
Al-Hoanar muttered under his own breath. “Shoat tu, Mattea.”
The cries of Al-Mariam fell silent.
Ras Dumas turned towards Michalas. The struggling breath of his gentle voice broke amidst the shadow and the light that filled him. The blue light burned like the flame that had once graced his gossamer blade, long ago.
“This is why I saved you, child,” he said. “You’re my redemption. Now go, so that my promise may be fulfilled.”
Ras Dalamas cried out in rage, breaking his blade free from Ras Dumas’ hold. Circling it back, he brought it back down upon the other.
Ras Dumas parried it away, and sta
ggered.
The rise of debris again filled the air.
Michalas backed away. Around him, he heard the crumpled moan of steel and the anguished cries of spirits.
“Follow me.” The shocked voice of Obidae sounded out behind him. “I have found a way.”
Dust and stone cascaded down through the billowing wind.
The remaining nine Servian Lords wavered upon their knees. Their masked veils turned downward, only the circlets of their crowns stared back. Their own limbs bent and twisted against them as they struggled to hold the fire of their spirits within.
With the redemption of Ras Dumas, the promise of their return had been taken from their grasp.
Obidae stood at a break between them, where the darkness behind them had parted.
The Khaalish warriors, still in a shield wall around them, opened a narrow pass down their center to where Obidae waited, their chanting continuing all the while.
Al-Hoanar stared at Michalas, his eyes full of questions and care. With his wounded arm, he lifted Al-Aaron’s limp body up to him, and somehow still helped Al-Mariam to her feet.
Al-Hoanar hesitated as he glanced at the lifeless body of Al-Thinneas, and then at the still sleeping forms of the two they had raised. “We must go.”
“I will carry the man,” Al-Mariam said. She stared at Michalas. Her eyes seemed less broken.
Michalas moved towards the young girl; Sarah was her name.
The solid hand of Obidae clamped over his shoulder. “No, child. I will take her.”
Michalas looked up into the ghost paint of Obidae’s face and the warm blue light that he held in his eyes.
Obidae smiled. “You must lead us from here.”
Michalas smiled. He looked back.
Ras Dumas and Ras Dalamas still circled each other in feints and silence. Only they remained. Around them, the soul lights of the cenotaphs had returned, but the stones of their tombs trembled.
Ras Dumas was buying them time, because there was still something more for Michalas to do.
Ras Dumas stared back at him and lowered his sword. He let it drop to the stones. Its chime rang out like the voice of the Angel. Its echo continued, hiding his anguish as Ras Dalamas ran him through.
The soft glow from the cenotaphs blinked amidst the falling debris.
Ras Dalamas screamed. The last cry of the last of the Servian Lords.
Michalas stopped. He held out his hand and watched the gentle reflections of lights from the cenotaphs growing dim upon it. Their touch still felt warm against his skin.
“Wait,” he said.
Chapter Twenty Three
Prophecy
The illusion of Malius fell away. The dust of its making disappeared into the swirling wind. The tumbled white stones of the Line and the illusion of the suffering Pale beyond went as well, all of them ghosts summoned by the Dragon’s call.
At Chaelus’ feet, the length of Sundengal smoldered with the collapsing light of the storm above.
The growing darkness of the valley of Magedos surrounded him. Within it, wings of even darker shadow spread out beneath a rolling thunder. They spread out across the valley floor. Beneath them, within the pits amongst the blowing sands, something scraped against the stones.
“Chaelus.” A single whisper on the wind resumed its call.
From the nearest pit, the one into which he – into which the Giver – had fallen at the hand of his father, a black and bloodied claw emerged, grasping at its edge.
Sand clung to its wet, skinless flesh. The creature pulled its body up, pushing its way past the heavy bones that had caged it. It clambered until it stood, stooped and broken, naked in the rawness of its gray flesh. The pain of its being cried out in the turn of its gaping mouth and the empty holes of its eyes.
Then a thousand more voices joined in the whisper of his name.
“Chaelus.”
The voices came from the rest of the open pits. More creatures like the one before him rose from them, but not from all of them. A few of them had already been emptied. The bone cages which covered them had already been cast aside.
The soul lights in the darkness beneath Ras Dumas’ tower. These were their souls. The faces of an old man and a little girl stared back at Chaelus. Some at least, had already been saved.
But not these, not yet; these Remnants. Yet they were not like the ones Chaelus had faced before, spirits borne within the Dragon’s armored husks. These were broken souls made into flesh. The expression of their suffering was as varied as their wretched forms. Amongst themselves, they clattered and moaned as they stood, wavering and waiting. Whatever flesh made them, it was not the flesh of the Pale. It was the Dragon’s own.
Chaelus felt the tremor of the Giver building within him. At least he would not have to face this alone.
Within Chaelus’ fingers, the pulse of the Giver quickened once more. He closed his eyes to the glow as it filled him. He watched it wash across the gray stones around him. He succumbed to its gentle and waiting calm, its mantle returning to him like a sigh. It sounded like the clarion call of a life lost, of honor returned, and of failure, but mostly it sounded of love.
Chaelus reached out with it all, with all of its spirit into the sadness and suffering of the creatures before him. He looked into them with the sight of the Giver, deep beneath the caustic chill of the Dragon’s singular dark spirit pulsating through them, consuming them from within. He cried out to them, into the emptiness to where whatever was left of them remained.
“I will not let it take you!”
The presence of the Dragon within each of them drew its grip tighter at his touch, like a parasite being drawn out by a flame. With a thousand voices it let out its own fell cry against him. Then it, the Dragon, whispered back to him with only one.
“Then pick up your father’s sword, for I already have mine.”
The Remnants looked up into the flagrant sky as the Dragon’s voice trailed away. The empty hollows of their eyes narrowed. Their moaning erupted and they cried out as one in their pain. Rows of teeth extended out like ebony razors within their open maws.
The nearest struck at him, clumsy in its rage.
Chaelus rolled beneath it, taking up Sundengal as he did so. The light of the storm held captured in ribbons along its length as he led it upward and then back again. Chaelus crouched through the billowing rush of spirit as the head and then the body of the Remnant fell, its black blood showering across him beneath the weight of the Dragon’s desperate howl.
Sundengal took on the weight of a hundred stone. Its steel darkened beneath the harsh light of the storm, beneath the sepia stain of the Remnant’s blood. No blue flame adorned it.
The voice of the Giver within him was silent. Its fire had passed, like a love found and then lost again, and there was no clarion call to mark the void that it left.
It felt like damnation.
The other Remnants closed around him like a shroud. The tombs of their eyes called to him while their bestial teeth hungered to claim his flesh.
Chaelus roused himself. He kept Sundengal moving in a constant arc before him, between him and the death they longed him to suffer for.
A weight struck him from behind. Chaelus felt no pain, but it reeled him nonetheless, sending him down to the scarred and broken ground. He thrust Sundengal back up against it. Its blade went deep. The body of the Remnant collapsed upon him, dragging on his shoulder where its black teeth still clung to him.
Chaelus pushed it away. The bright red stain of his blood painted a streak across his sword arm, apart from the gray of the rest of the world. Then pain exploded through him. His heartbeat levied against him. His breath hammered in his ears. Sundengal sagged within his grasp.
The Remnants loomed over him.
Chaelus looked up at them. Their faces, the faces of the dead, stared back at him, screaming. They were all his; all the dead he had left spitted upon the field of battle, all the dead he had left to burn beneath the village walls. All
the dead he now left in his failure. Their vengeance poured over him.
From far away, outside of him, the tremor of the Giver’s voice rippled against him. “Wait.”
Chaelus’ eyes burned. His vision blurred. The gray world about him turned.
He let Sundengal slip from his grasp. He held out his open hands.
Thunder exploded from them.
The tombs of the Remnants’ eyes lit up from within. Chaelus closed his own against it. The noise was deafening but its end was abrupt.