by T. A. Miles
In the midst of that thought forming, Eisleth said, “There is a long road yet to travel, Merran.”
•—•
Light ran, like blood, through the forest, casting dimension upon the depths. The disrobed branches of autumn etched shapes upon the ground, their shadows as the imprints of many hands. They were the fingers of scavengers, prodding through the tattered remains of clothing and flesh that once contained a life. There was no life left to the form now; it was a heap of ruin.
A black figure hovered over the body, crouched down …pondering …
Perception shifted across the clearing and into the woods, to the top of a cliff overlooking a modest conglomeration of gray stone and peaked roofs. A low hill rose behind the town, evidence of a manor house protruding above the forest, its high roof and towers silhouetted against the moon.
Haddowyn.
The town’s name was tattooed across the memory of an adolescent, who had arrived at the cliff years before. Red hair ran behind the slender form, into the trees, like blood. Skin as pale and luminous as the moon, shone as if a beacon against a cloak of crimson and shadow. Gradually, the darkness folded around the figure, which in such dreams always appeared wiser and more beautiful than so few years could allow a mortal being.
In direct contrast, a grotesque figure crept from the shadow where the would-be icon had been standing, and ambled down the cliffside. The dream spun a view of Haddowyn that was rinsed in red, showing only patches of the buildings while the rest of the world sat recessed in a burning-edged blackness. From this perspective, the town was shuffled through, arriving at doors or windows, only to abandon them. A search was to be satisfied with this effort, the pull toward something familiar. It was like instinct, raw and potent.
But there was nothing to be found. Blackness descended.
Korsten opened his eyes in the stillness of his bed, looking across folds of darkness, traveling back over the images of the dream. He arrived back at the cliff, where the vision in his memory had scarcely diminished. The glory remained, though there was a deadness about it in Korsten’s more conscious state. Like an elaborate pall, the vision covered death. The androgynous child never came down from the cliff in the dream, in flagrant contradiction to the fact that Korsten had gone down to Haddowyn, and resided in the town long enough to construct nightmares.
Whenever he woke from the dream, he felt as if he would see his younger self standing there still—a virtual stranger to his adult self—were he to look. But he would never look upon that cliff face again, because Haddowyn was gone, and there was no going back to it.
It was with that thought, that the bed beneath Korsten lost form and he lowered into it, as if into water. Tendrils of red swelled around him; his hair at first, but it swiftly became ribbons of blood. They streamed from him at several points, turning black at the spreading ends, forming a darkness all around him, dragging sensations of pain to the edges of his skin. It anchored there, refusing to leave him.
Words leapt instantly forward, tracing the inside of his throat with a cutting edge. He tasted blood when he said, “Let me help you.”
The words were met with silence and drowning. Abandonment.
The thought was answered with defiance in the very instant it formed. “I do not need help!”
As if moved by the force of the voice, the waters churned beneath Korsten, dragging him further down.
“You have a choice, Korsten.” The voice of defiance took on the tone of betrayal. “Return to me, else make yourself my enemy. Either way, I will end all of your suffering. I promise you that.”
The depths wrapped around Korsten, continuing to drag. The blackness at the edges of Korsten’s perception grew deeper, heavier, helping to hold him below consciousness …below wakefulness. He was still dreaming.
Realization that it was yet a dream in no way diminished the pull of his nightmares. Ropes of blackening blood continued to feed the shadows, burning him as surely as it was sinking him.
Red came freshly to light in the corner of his vision, though it was neither of his hair, nor of blood. It was the color and the shape of his soul—or, at least, of the key to where his soul lay hidden. Korsten raised his hand toward the scarlet butterfly, and it was then that another hand plunged into the depths, catching him and pulling him out of his nightmare and into the waking world.
Breaking through the water, Korsten beheld a flash of a silver-eyed gaze, but it was quickly replaced by the expectation that he would be met with green instead; the eyes he had come to know as compassion. In actuality, the eyes that looked at him, in a mix of shock and aggravation, were the familiar blue of the first person to insist that he awaken into a better reality from the nightmare that was Haddowyn. It was Merran.
Korsten was reminded that it had all been a nightmare. He was yet surrounded by water—he must have fallen asleep in the bath.
He struggled to take in air for a moment, feeling that he might collapse back into the small pool, but Merran held him steadily upright, aiding him to disgorge the liquid he had managed to swallow. When he was breathing somewhat normally, his partner’s familiar hands took hold of his face, insisting on eye contact, which Korsten made readily.
Before Merran could comment, Korsten quickly said, “It wasn’t that …”
“I wasn’t going to ask if it was that,” Merran answered, managing to sound cross, adding one more incidental element that could have threatened to hurtle Korsten into a state of reversion—to where he had been before detaching from nightmare years ago—but they both insisted upon stability.
Raising a hand to Merran’s wrist, Korsten made very sure eye contact. In as sober a tone as he could muster, while yet struggling for air that didn’t ache in his lungs, he said, “It was a dream. A very real one, but it was nothing more.”
Merran observed him for a brief span, but seemed to accept the words. “I was going to ask if you’re all right.”
“I am,” Korsten told him, aware of how true that was, compared to how much the opposite it would have been, had his dream been the reality. “I am, Merran. Thank you, for bringing me out of it.”
Merran only continued to watch him, and Korsten knew that the most prominent thoughts moving behind his partner’s steady gaze were of the recent past, even above the distant concern that had been Korsten’s once self-destructive tendencies. But they both understood that facing demons was a far more arduous task than succumbing to them.
The past reached, like long shadows, and Korsten knew that by any one of them, he might return to his beginnings. He supposed that, in a way, he did so each time he confronted one of the Vadryn. It was because of the Vadryn that he had come to Vassenleigh.
Details of the room became clearer around him. Across the smooth stone floor lay a wide bed centered upon a raised area. Along the exterior wall of his chamber stood a lengthy balcony that overlooked aspects of Vassenleigh, and which was home to curtains of flowering vines during the warmer seasons. This was where he had come to live within Vassenleigh, when he wasn’t surviving alongside Merran outside of it.
“I’m sorry, if I startled you,” Korsten finally said.
Merran’s response was to push Korsten’s wet hair out of his face. Then he pressed his lips to Korsten’s forehead. The gesture was understood, as was the silence that accompanied it.
It was a silence that was not allowed to linger, however. “Elwain Dunlar has physically survived events at Feidor’s Crest,” Merran informed him. Standing, he retrieved Korsten’s robe from a nearby bench and carried it back to him.
Korsten was glad to hear of Elwain’s health. He hoped that the boy would survive emotionally as well. He accepted his robe while rising from the edge of the pool, wrapping it around himself on the way to the bed. It was his hope to lie down for a short while before meeting with the Council. If they had until that evening, he might have been able to accomplish mo
re than a short while. Not that he had any desire to dream again, not while events behind them were yet so fresh.
“I’m glad you came,” he said to Merran while he lowered himself onto cool, clean bedding.
It wasn’t long before his partner joined him, still in his coat. Korsten turned with the full intention to help him out of at least that layer, but winced as an unexpected twinge of pain assailed his side.
“I thought you weren’t hurt.” While Merran made the comment, he simultaneously prompted Korsten to raise his arm enough that he might be able to look for damage.
“I don’t know what happened,” Korsten began, but then he recalled. “Actually, I scraped against something while we were contending with the cellar demon.”
“Probably one of the stakes,” Merran determined. “There’s no tear, only a bruise.”
Korsten acknowledge his cursory appraisal with a nod. “It can be taken care of later.”
Merran’s silence was not one of agreement, necessarily, but he withdrew his healing hand all the same. It was a part of him that Korsten felt he could become reliant on, if allowed, because it was capable of healing beyond physical—or of soothing anyway, where emotions were concerned. He and Merran had discovered that talent—and each other—abruptly during Korsten’s early time at the seminary.
Mercifully, they were separated for much of Korsten’s study years, because the war with the Vadryn did not wait for new priests to be trained and the effort could spare no one who was able to operate outside of Vassenleigh. Eventually, Korsten came to be assigned to work with Merran, and in spite of everything that time could change and didn’t regarding Renmyr—and everything it had insisted Korsten come to love about Ashwin—his feelings for Merran remained the same comfortable challenge his partner had first introduced him to in Haddowyn.
Their situation carried an unspoken comfort, yet they seemed to both know that to not speak of it at all would eventually wear them down. Korsten knew that the arrangement was such that it would likely be Merran who wore down first, owed to Korsten’s refusal to move too far ahead of himself. He first had to settle affairs with Renmyr. He knew that there was no actual need for it—that it was only his personal desire to find closure. He also knew that the circumstances were scarcely able to affect intimacy between him and Merran, but within the walls of Vassenleigh, there was more to be had than merely that. A spousal arrangement was possible.
The notion was terrifying, because Renmyr was yet too close behind him.
Disregarding all of that, Korsten still laid himself directly beside Merran, and he kissed him very deliberately before settling.
Contact calmed Korsten’s emotions at once, and not only because he loved Merran. He had come to wish that he had never helped to inspire such a talent to emerge from its dormant state within Merran. Of course, it had connected itself to physical healing. And of course, it would be triggered by Korsten’s constant stress. It denied them both the ability to achieve an actual, earned healing, because it continually soothed their suffering when they were touching, and allowed them to forget what had initially brought them together.
Ten
In the hours since hearing of Priest-Adepts Korsten and Merran’s return and being summoned to a preliminary meeting with his peers, Ceth had become so lost in his thoughts, that he was not quite certain whether his feet had carried him to the chambers of a fellow Superior, or if it had been his mind. The notion reconnected him physically to the carpeted floor underfoot, which curved gently into the room of Matriarch Sione, whose turn it was to host a more casual meeting among them. His hand traced a varnished wood railing with elaborately carved panels, following it to the lower level.
His colleagues were gathered beneath an ornate chandelier of bronze, depicting many different insects and the heads of flowers. Strands of golden beads hung down from the lanterns at the center. The light which passed through them projected sporadically throughout the room, including over a partially open aviary which lined one wall and extended onto the chamber balcony. Hanging plants and potted trees followed the path of delicate architecture, providing perches for a myriad of birds, whose various songs created an arrangement of sound entirely unique to the moment.
It was a room that Ceth found exceedingly pleasant. The same could be said of its resident, who stood in fragile tiers of green silk, her slender form followed by the contours of her gown and of the many braids and ringlets that held her brown hair in a loosely controlled flow toward the floor. Beside her was Jeselle, black hair raveled from her temples and down her back, blending with an ornate black cassock, both of which were offset by the pallor of her skin and the near lack of color of her eyes. Her clean-lined features were both striking and severe.
Nearby, stood Ashwin and his twin, and Gwythanis. The latter of Ceth’s fellow patriarchs bore a leonine countenance, complimented by a mane of black hair and a broad frame. Deep blue cuts of fabric rested neatly against sun-dark skin. These were the individuals Ceth had known the longest, and who he served alongside of as the heads of one of the most unique households known to any era.
When Ceth joined his colleagues, they brought their previous conversations to a close and found places to sit. Sofas upholstered in gentle brocades furnished the room at key locations, providing an ample sense of space and comfort. Ashwin and Jeselle took a seat together while Sione, Gwythanis, and Ceth found individual seats. Eisleth remained standing, as he was wont to do most days.
It was Jeselle who presented them a proper opening to their meeting. “What we’re about to discuss will be addressed officially with the remainder of the Council, and with our returned priests, tonight. But there are multiple options before us, and we should consider which is the best of them now.”
Ceth reclined in the high-backed chair he had selected. He typically liked to be in motion himself, and sympathized with Eisleth, but Sione’s space had a lulling quality to it that Ceth found himself not so inclined to fight.
“The towns of the northern reaches of Edrinor have an alignment,” Ashwin said. “Though, it is scarcely intentional. Nature has aligned them. We’re well aware of this. In the past, we have utilized the pillars of earth found at each location to channel magic from one place to the next. The early Reach gates were fashioned after them. A natural Barrier had also been formed of them, disallowing the migration of fouler things from the forests of the far north.”
“But it did not stop men,” Eisleth inserted, “and men have become the vehicles of demons.”
Ashwin allowed his twin’s comment a moment to settle. And then he said, “Over time, the natural energies have depleted, but our enemies may have found ways to revitalize them. Lilende, Feidor’s Crest, Endmark, Haddowyn …all of them vital, all of them portals by which the enemy seeks to gain entrance.”
“The Vadryn will reopen the northern gates, and let the armies of a worse enemy in,” Jeselle said. “The demons are already here. They struck prematurely nearly a century ago, but the beast behind the attack has learned better since. He will be sure to amass the armies of his parent power before striking again. Lilende still stands. Haddowyn has fallen. Feidor’s Crest is gone now as well, and I believe that was precursor to an event in Endmark.”
“The crossing over of another archdemon,” Eisleth inserted. “They’re stationing themselves strategically, as generals of the Vadryn army.”
Jeselle’s Foresight was unmatched. If she had envisioned such a scenario, then it was as valuable as information collected by their priests in the field.
Endmark was situated just to the east of Feidor’s Crest. It was near enough that the towns might have been able to support one another, under different circumstances, but the two locations were also far enough apart that illness would take some time to spread, even where the Vadryn were concerned. Of course, with the disappearance of hundreds of soldiers, they may have had a very different problem at Endmark than an ov
ertaken population. The direct involvement of archdemons was a possibility, and evidence of that was undoubtedly what had been brought back to them.
In direct relation to the thought, Ashwin said, “I think there are significant clues in what Korsten and Merran witnessed at Feidor’s Crest.”
“It may be prudent to assign someone to observe Feidor’s Crest from a distance, and to intercept or report anything that may come from it,” Gwythanis suggested.
Ceth looked over at him, his hand resting on the chair wing. “As we have done with Haddowyn, which has been dead.”
Gwythanis drew in a breath and nodded; Haddowyn was a topic of debate between them. “Its stillness may be a deception.”
That was true. Ceth conceded the possibility with silence, mainly because it was not important to bring up further argument just yet. They could continue to discuss it at a later time.
“All is not lost,” Sione reminded. “Lilende has four priests stationed there and a steadily growing army.”
“And it may be possible to take Eastmark back,” Ceth said, prepared to contribute to optimism. “Though I still believe it is best to heighten the defenses at Sarily and to begin preparing the coast. I know that the cities along the south shores have been supplying resources to the north. They’re not necessarily aligned to the Old Kingdom restoration, but there seems some intention yet to unify in that region. Rather than the Kingdom Alliance, they’ve adopted the term Cities Alliance.”
“Which could mean that they intend to go forward without a king,” Ashwin interpreted. “It’s not ideal, but it’s an improvement, over isolated cities with individual ideas on government and the state of Edrinor. We can yet work with that, and maybe to the overall advantage of a greater restoration.”