by Tom Barczak
“There are many different kinds of death,” Talus answered.
“I have had enough of them all.”
“Then you will have many more.”
Talus smiled as he stared across the Shinnaras. “But you’re not alone.” He stepped onto the water, his feet holding firm upon it. The new sun glittered upon his golden brow. Talus pointed towards where Michalas still waited for them both on the other side. He held out his other hand to Chaelus.
“Walk with me.”
Chapter Twenty Five
Needles and Stones
The three Tenders encouraged the dying embers and the fire returned in measure. Yet the certain chill of autumn’s ebb would not be kept away.
Michalas sat back on the root of the giant tree. He pulled back his hood. The cold felt good against his skin.
The Tenders withdrew. The small vigil fire they had started had been restored. It danced as the wind channeled between the trees. Deep shadows broke across the baskets of offerings and crimson feathers that had been left before the small door to where Chaelus, the Giver, still slept.
Al-Hoanar had been brief but truthful in his report to the Mother, neither omitting nor adding anything. And like the court of Ras Dumas, there were whispers even here. Already word had spread of Chaelus’ return and of what the Servian Knights had heard of what he had done.
Michalas turned to his sister who sat beside him, still in vigil.
“Has he awoken?”
Al-Mariam started at his voice. She had become quiet, saying little to him since their return. “No. He hasn’t stirred.”
“Do you grieve for him?”
Mariam’s eyes darted to him and then away. “I have no need. There is no need. He’s…you’re…the Giver, are you not?”
“I am not what you think I am. Don’t be afraid of me.”
Mariam turned to him. Like ice melting to a flame, her eyes and then at last her face succumbed beneath her doubt. “I don’t know who you are. But then again, I never really have.”
Michalas held her gaze. He knew her grief for him was real, but it was not the same as the grief she held for Chaelus. It was not even the same anymore as that which she held for herself.
After the storm clouds fell, after the Dragon had fallen, on the nearest bank of the Shinnaras with its waters made clear, the Khaalish had found Chaelus, collapsed.
They had watched him walk across its waters.
In the hours before this, while the others had waited in their camp, Michalas had watched Chaelus. He had watched him through Chaelus’ own eyes and through them he had seen everything, and he had suffered all of it with him.
Not until his loss of the Angel had Michalas ever suffered any loss of his own. He hadn’t suffered it because, until then, there had been nothing of his own for him to lose.
“To know yourself is to know him,” Michalas said to Mariam. “To know him is to know me.”
Mariam returned her stare to the door where Chaelus waited to awaken once more. Her breath was heavy. “What do you mean?”
“He is you, and you are me, and we, all of us are bound one to each other.”
“By prophecy?”
“No. By our suffering.” Michalas placed his hand into his sister’s. “It’s something I never knew. I need you. I need your help, Mariam.”
Mariam turned to him. Her tears had dried. She closed her hand tight around his. It was warm, like the glow of the Angels.
***
An eternity passed. The timeless darkness faded to the warmth of amber light, summoned to him by the voices of lost friends.
Chaelus watched their shadows pass over him, the sounds of their voices ebbing and flowing. Their words, though, remained indistinct.
One voice at last stood out among them, a child’s voice. It was Al-Aaron’s. “I’m with you.” Yet then his voice passed on. Darkness returned.
Another voice brought Chaelus back once more.
Walls of white stone surrounded him. Living shadows broke across the light from the open doorway. Heavy blankets pressed him down as he tried to rise.
The Mother placed her hands to his brow, easing his head back down. She smiled. “Don’t move. There’s no hurry now.”
Chaelus waited for his breath to return. He was in the Garden. “Where’s Al-Aaron? Where’s my Teacher?”
“Al-Aaron is safe, as are you. He has been with you, more than he should have, and now he’s resting.”
Chaelus closed his eyes. Beyond the pain that coursed through every part of him, a chill and numbness ached in the place above his heart, the place where the Dragon had pierced him. He winced.
“There are many different kinds of death,” the Mother whispered as she wiped his brow.
The echo of Talus’ words followed hers.
“You knew I would fail,” Chaelus said.
“Did you fail?” the Mother answered.
“The Dragon defeated me.”
“They waited for you. Your friends, they waited for you until the Dragon’s sky at last fell still beyond the Karagas Mun. Then you came to them. Don’t you remember?”
“The Dragon that I killed was me.”
The Mother smiled. The words of prophecy drew soft upon her lips.
“Lament the ones who will forget.
The Dragon waits within.”
“Save for one,” Chaelus said. “Michalas, Al-Mariam’s brother. There’s no shadow within him.”
“I’ve already heard much about him,” the Mother said, her smile saying more than her words revealed. “He’s here as well, and he waits for you too. Al-Mariam waits outside with him. She hasn’t left his side, that is, when she hasn’t been watching over you.”
She pursed her lips in a faint smile.
“The shadow of the Dragon has passed but for a moment,” the Mother said. “It will regain itself where its shadow still stands. Your Kingdom and your brother are safe for now. Let them be, and don’t suffer twice the loss of what you sought to gain. The time of your gain passed with the life you lived before.”
She stood, her words final as only the truth can be.
He could not go back.
“Then what am I to do?” Chaelus asked.
“You will either go forward or you will fall. Your success or your failure is yours alone to choose. But your fate is tied to the Giver and cannot be changed. The threads of the tapestry have already been woven.”
The Mother paused before the open door. “On the morrow we will pay our respects to Al-Thinneas and the sacrifice he’s made. There are those among us who wonder if you would use such an occasion, as well as his sacrifice, as an opportunity to take up the mantle of our Order as your father did before.”
***
Al-Aaron squinted. He struggled to raise his head. His fever had broken, but weakness still consumed him. Yet the light that came through the open window fed him. Soft sounds drifted upon it, voices familiar but changed, including the voices of two he had only just met.
He lay in one of the upper rooms of the ruined tower, with such height as it held, the room’s window looking out across the forest to the east. The two whom Chaelus had raised had prepared the place for him. Their service in the face of their own suffering stirred him, yet he still could not remember their names. He leaned back into his pallet, pulling the thick furs tight around him.
The Mother entered. She winced as she eased herself upon the foot of the bed. The deep pleats of her black robe spread out beneath her. “How do you feel, child?”
“Did you know there would be two?” Al-Aaron asked.
“Did I know there would be two if two there never has been?” The Mother pursed her lips. Then she smiled. “No, my dear. Not then. Not when you left to save him. But I don’t think any words or wards of mine would have changed what was already made to pass.”
She held his hand open. “I brought something for you.” The tremor of her hands passed into his and she pressed the folded gossamer within them. “It’s somewhat
loose and there’s a stitch that’s flawed. The needle was too big, and my eyes, they don’t see as they once did.”
Al-Aaron opened the gentle cloth. Soft thread shimmered in the light, a verdant field on one side of the open fold, a golden field on the other. Within each of them was a sea of blue that together were held up like open hands.
“It’s beautiful,” Al-Aaron said.
“It is not of me,” the Mother said, “It’s from Rua that all things are made, and it is from it alone that beauty comes. I’m only a vessel and, I’m afraid, a crude one at that. But when I finished it, it was then that I saw it. It was something I hadn’t seen before. It was then that I remembered. Tell me, what do you see?”
“There are two seas.”
“They are ancient and they lie at the very heart of the world. Chaelus could tell you about them. He would know them from his time in the libraries of Lossos. They are the Sea of Beladun and the Crystal Sea. Both are fed by great rivers.
“The first, the Sea of Beladun, overflows in its abundance. There, every kind of bird, fish and plant can be found. The city states which line its banks are burdened only by the wealth they draw from it.
“But the second, the Crystal Sea, is very different thing. It is a dead sea. There is no life to be found there, and only the desert sands find any rest along its banks. So tell me, child, why are they so different?”
“I don’t know.”
“The Sea of Beladun has an outlet that carries its water away. The Crystal Sea does not.”
The fragrance of cut timber struck Al-Aaron. He had never smelt it here. The wood for fires had always been gathered. It was for the funeral pyre that the Tenders would need more.
The Mother placed her hand over his, closing them over the small tapestry. Deep lines traced maps of their own upon them. “Chaelus has known many deaths to stand where he does. Yet still he has such little faith. The child, from what I have seen, knows little of either death or loss. He is like virgin cloth cut from the Rua’s own fold. Perhaps it is through the both of them that the Giver will return. Perhaps by their gift to each other, the water and the abundance of the sea may flow.”
***
Chaelus stared at the clear night sky, the warm train of his breath passing above him. The moon was full and the stars somehow brighter than he thought they could be.
Pale stones pressed out of the hillside beneath him. For passing moments, they still shimmered golden from the distant light of Al-Thinneas’ funeral pyre as its fire dimmed beyond the trees.
Born to us to die for us.
For only the Fallen may rise.
The words of prophecy tumbled from Chaelus’ lips. Yet the prophecy hadn’t been for Al-Thinneas. And it was a prophecy that Al-Thinneas himself had not even believed in. Yet he had sacrificed himself for it. Or rather, he had sacrificed himself for those he loved who did believe.
Many were the eyes of the Servian Knights that had stared at Chaelus through the pyre’s flames, particularly the narrow ones of Maedelous. Hoanar no longer stood with him. The warning of the Mother had proved right.
Above them all, here, the mount of Col Durath, the forgotten watchtower, remained silent. It was why he had come here, with the moon-cast shadow of the Gray Chair settled beside him, he sat upon the crumbling edge of its hall.
Chaelus placed his right hand through his blouse, above the black scar where the Dragon had entered him. He reached with his other for one of the small stones he had collected beside him. The pain no longer troubled him, aside from the fact that it remained. His other wounds from his battle had healed but not this one, not the one that would always be.
He winced as he cast the stone out into the night. Holding his breath, he waited.
It was only the briefest of moments, the moment in between, but he knew that an eternity could be found within its intimate grasp. He had come to look forward to its solace. It had become a reminder to him of the greatness, still, of small things.
A chime struck out into the crisp air as the pebble cascaded across the ruins beneath him; like a spell, or some secret unleashed from a prison from long ago. A trapdoor sprung, or a knot unloosed.
So much had happened. So much had changed.
He reached for another stone. Cullin drew up like a whisper beside him.
“So what does the Giver do now, now that the Dragon is dead?”
Chaelus withdrew his hand. “The Dragon isn’t dead.”
“And neither are you, though there are many who wished for it. And there are many who still do. So where will your path lay? Will you return from the dead to reclaim your throne?”
“I don’t think so. The Dragon will rise again in the east, now that its veil has been lifted. There it will feel safer, where its sleep has already spread throughout the Golden Halls of the Theocracy. I’ll follow it there. Baelus already sits upon the throne. It will be well tended by him, now that the Dragon’s whisper has passed from him.”
Cullin placed his hand upon Chaelus’ shoulder. “Then I will not speak of your return. But understand he will learn of it soon. Word of it will spread. I will watch over your House, and your brother, until you return. As I’ve said, many are the eyes that have already fallen upon it.”
Chaelus clasped his hand over Cullin’s but he could not look at him. Too much had happened. Too much had changed. “As you have done already, my friend.”
The pad of feet sounded behind them.
Beyond the silhouette of the Gray Chair, Al-Mariam stood with Michalas beside her. A wide cloak covered them both.
She pulled her hair away from her face as she stepped across the terrace, her eyes cast back towards her brother as she moved away from him, leaving the cloak to him. She wore a white gown that lit aglow in the moonlight. The soft scent of lavender flowed from her like the gentle promise of rain.
Michalas stared at Chaelus, his eyes, as always, more knowing than they should be.
Al-Mariam hesitated as she drew near. Her eyes shot to Cullin, and then back as she bowed her head. “Giver, may I speak with you?”
Chaelus stood, uncertain. “Don’t call me that.”
Cullin stared at him, and then back to Michalas. “I will leave you to your words.”
Al-Mariam waited, silent until Cullin’s footfalls echoed down the stairs.
She drew beside Chaelus and looked out into the night, just as he had. “There is great power in this place. Is that why you come here?”
“It’s a place that has always been,” Chaelus said. “This comforts me.”
Al-Mariam turned to him, her eyes unwavering. “I had taken Michalas for dead, but even before then, he was someone I never knew. He was someone I had chosen not to know.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew he was not my brother.”
For the first time since meeting her, Chaelus glimpsed the veil behind which she had hidden.
“My mother was a Servian Knight,” she said. “She’d returned with a baby after being sent on a task in the east by the Mother, somewhere near the lands of the Evarun. My mother spoke nothing of it. She raised the boy as her own. Then the Hunting came. That’s when Michalas was taken. Though I love him, I never really knew him. I don’t know how to say this, but he’s like you. He’s one of the Evarun.”
“I’m not like him,” Chaelus said. “Whatever power I hold, it isn’t mine. The power that your brother holds, it’s been his all along.”
“I was wrong about you. I dared not believe that the prophecies were true; I dared not believe who you were, or who you are to be. The Younger’s blind faith in you, it terrified me.”
“But he was wrong,” Chaelus said. “I’m not who he thought I was.”
“No,” Al-Mariam said. “You are more, because you know that you are less, and it is by your blood, and by the blood of my brother, that hope has now been returned to us all.”
Chaelus turned away. The memory of the Giver’s glow upon the clear waters of the Shinnaras burned against him. Th
e words of prophecy the Giver had spoken in the solitude of their passage lingered impossibly upon the edge of his breath.
Born of cradle born of grave
Chosen from forgotten blood
Born for us to die for us
For only the fallen may rise.