The Eternals

by Richard M. Ankers

  “It is of little consequence. I shall not need it again.”

  “Are you so sure?” the old man asked.

  I looked deep into those clouded eyes of his, placed my hand on his shoulder and said, “You know we shall not live through this, don't you?”

  “I do.”

  “Yet still you are prepared to meet your fate with a smile upon your face.”

  “Is there any other way?” he replied.

  I did not answer, instead, helped him to mount the smaller of the two beasts, wrapped the reins around his waist, then pressed the ends into his palms.

  “Thank you.”

  “You are welcome,” I replied, and jumped onto my steed's back. “Now let us go free those brothers of yours.”

  “And, Princess Linka,” Sunyin added.

  “Oh, that is a formality, old friend. There is nothing between heaven, hell, and the rising sun that shall prevent my freeing her.”

  “I believe you,” he said.

  “I am a man of my word.”

  Kicking my horse into action, the beast proceeded to take the stairs three at a time. The thunderous tones from behind told Sunyin's mount followed suit.

  We sped up the staircase in such leaps and bounds that even I held my breath. The stallions, undeterred by any slip of hoof, charged on as though their lives depended upon it. On and on, higher and higher, we rose into the night sky. But the further we traversed the more aware I became of a secondary sound to the pounding of stallions' hooves. Inquisitive to the point of vexation, I brought my steed to a steady stop. The beast and its brother obeyed, and I turned my attention to that beyond the horses' steaming breaths. Left and right I tilted my head but could not identify the steady boom that invaded my skull.

  “Perhaps, we should continue,” Sunyin suggested.

  “I know, but the beating disturbs me.”

  “It should, Jean.”

  “Why, do you know what it is?” I spun to look at the old man.

  “It is a wedding dirge. The booming tones of an Eternal joining.”

  I asked no more, leapt straight back onto my steed and slammed my heels into the stallion's flanks. He responded with frothing sputum and a devastating turn of speed. I did not listen for, nor care, if the monk kept pace. The only thing in my mind was Linka's image, chained and trussed, as Vladivar's sneering form towered over her.

  We crested the valley's summit and burst into the iron palace's open gated courtyard. The place stood deserted apart from the odd smear that might once have been monk. I was not the only one who noticed it. As I leapt to the ground, my companion, who had not only reached me, but stood on the flagstones where once his brothers' carcasses lay piled, wept profusely. I had not the heart to desert him.

  “Slaughtered?” he asked between sobbed tears.

  I shifted, uncomfortable in my stance, but knew he'd know if I lied.

  “They were. All but one who aided me. I shall never forget him as you shall never forget your brothers.”

  “I can never forget them, Jean. They are a part of me still and shall be so again in the next life.”

  “If you would like to stay, I will understand,” I offered. “The horses will need caring for.”

  “Will they now?” he said, wiping his eyes.

  With an act of speed I would have thought him incapable of, he surged into the stallions' faces waving his arms like a madman. They responded with such a braying and whinnying as to wake the dead before turning tail and fleeing back down the mountainside.

  “There are no horses to care for now, my friend. I shall continue with you.”

  “You should,” I agreed, shaking my head at the old man's courage.

  He took hold of my sleeve and I led him across the courtyard to the door I had used on my last visit. The doorway stood open and unguarded, an unpleasant welcome to an ever more booming hell.

  We slipped inside after one hasty look and scampered down the narrow passageway. The wall was our friend as we hugged it, more for comfort than need. Every step took me closer to Linka and closer to my death, but I welcomed it and only sought to remain alive long enough to save her, and the Sunyins if I could.

  “Jean,” the old monk whispered in my ear tugging with equal vociferousness upon my sleeve. The booming tones of the dirge shook the earth as I leant in to listen.

  “Jean,” he said again, his tone urgent.

  “What?” I hissed.

  “No rash actions for it shall be Linka and my brothers who suffer them, not us.”

  “Trust me, I know just what to do.” I wasted a reassuring wink, as I hadn't a clue what to do, and he couldn't see it.

  The flickering light from innumerable candles lighted our destination, the faltering darkness doing nothing to ease my mind's dilemmas. How to save my dear Linka before I would be overwhelmed? There had to be a way, I just needed to figure it out.

  “Wait here a moment,” I commanded in authoritative but hushed tones. The old monk did as bade.

  I crept forwards with the stealth only my kind could and peeped from the shadows into Vladivar's packed throne room. Every man at the Crown Prince's disposal stood jammed shoulder to shoulder in that cavernous amphitheatre. All gazed in silent awe to the raised dais that contained their leader. Vladivar basked godlike in their adulation. He was not alone. There at his side stood the Marquis, a full moon to his master's crescent, and below them cowering like frightened sheep, the Sunyins. Linka was nowhere to be seen. Wherever my soul laid, it shook.

  I backed deeper into the intermittent blackness hugging the passageway wall until I felt concealed enough to stop. I was so despondent, so crestfallen that I did not notice my companion had moved until it was too late.

  Sunyin strode past with an air of serene confidence far beyond my own faithless comprehension. I snatched for him, but too late, as his words grazed my ears, “I have not been entirely honest with you, Jean,” he said snatching a knife from within his robes and holding it to his own throat. “I have not been entirely honest at all.”

  For those seconds between Sunyin reaching Vladivar's men, whilst still a short distance from myself, I retained hope, but a matter of steps extinguished it. How he'd concealed the knife, I did not know, but it would do him no good.

  “Crown Prince!” the old monk called.

  Cold eyes turned upon his frail form brimmed full of vicious intent.

  “Do not harm him!” called the Marquis with surprising speed of thought. “He must not be touched!”

  But the old Sunyin had already drawn a trickle of blood from his throat.

  The soldiers' eyes reddened in bloodshot hysteria. They anticipated dinner.

  “Any man that touches the monk shall answer to me!” screamed Vladivar in rare panic. It was to his voice that the assembly peeled apart as a sea of red intent to Moses' calm.

  Sunyin strode on, flawless of step, until he reached his kin, who, as was their way, looked up as one and shouted, “Father!”

  Even the drum beats stopped.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  -

  Truth

  My world moved in slow motion. All I'd known had once again warped into something unfamiliar more complicated than I would have had it. What to do?

  Confusion abounded in my fragile mind. The drums may have stopped but my head still beat like the spring tide upon Europa's western shores, and a steady humming I'd been unaware of only added to the pounding. The tone grew so loud, piqued my suspicions so much, I edged away like a scared but inquisitive mouse all the way back to the courtyard. And a mystery was a mystery no more.

  There, flying high above the valley coasted two mighty Zeppelin balloons. One bore the sea-blues and canary-yellows of the Baltic Empire and the other the brilliant white that meant the Nordic royalty, the forgotten clan, were here too: wedding guests.

  I had to reach Linka, wherever she was, but how? I scanned about as the drum beats started anew questing for some other entry point. There had to be another way into
the castle, be it door, window, or even a drain, but my eyes availed nothing as the Zeppelins closed.

  There was only one way to go, and that was up. High above, my neck craned to its fullest, I could see openings, which with any luck were open windows.

  I stepped away from the wall's shaded protection and eyed the higher parts of Vladivar's iron empire. Giving my nails a long hard look, I picked the wall that abutted the main halls, dug my fingers into the flaking metal and hauled myself up.

  I'd made thirty or forty feet, no more, when the pitter-patter of short steps drew me to look back. Ushering forth in almost inconsolable grief were the Sunyins. I watched in silence as a line of identical brothers hurried caterpillar-like across the courtyard and out of the front gates. Their father was not amongst them and I shared their grief. I wished to call out, offer consolation, say something to help, but it would have given me away, so I left them to their mourning. The elder monk had played his hand, and it looked to have saved his kin, at least, for now. I continued to climb.

  I must have looked like a black smudge, a tarnish upon the rust of Vladivar's castle, my singed cloak billowing behind me, but I made progress. A slow climb it was, my fingers bleeding from the effort, but soon I looked down at a distant pond-sized courtyard rather than a sprawling marketplace. It was from those lofty heights I saw several of the crown prince's guards rush into the open and out of the castle gates to await their guest's grappling irons. I redoubled my efforts in response and prayed they did not look back.

  The higher I ascended the stronger the mountain updrafts that sought to tear me from my grip. Long hair billowed about my face, my cloak entangling me, as both conspired to hinder. There was only so much one man could take and I couldn't take much more. That left me with but one option. The first window I came to would have to do, and that was where I aimed.

  My arms were beyond numb, a sensation I'd never experienced and enjoyed not one jot. The climb was at a point almost beyond my physical limits when redemption found me in a beckoning window. I dragged myself onto the metal ledge and sat a moment not caring if anyone was even in the room. There, I shook my arms back to life as though a fledgling crow about to take its first flight. Gargoyle-like, I remained a silent statue until the Zeppelins were almost close enough to touch before shattering the window glass with a single blow, hooking a leg into the room, and dragging myself in after it.

  I should've pressed on, but the lure of the Nordic people was too strong. I'd never met one and had heard of them as myth rather than actuality. So, in what I saw to be nothing but an empty square of cold iron and stone inner walls, I waited, peering from my hiding place like a thief.

  Like uncertain bees the airships hovered a while before casting their grappling irons down to the waiting men. The guards secured them to points behind the castle walls, wrapping the lines over and over until the Zeppelins where hauled close enough for their passengers to leap to earth. The Baltic lords were first out clad in resplendent colours to match their ship. Flashes of blue and yellow streaked from the Zeppelin's guts, each landing with a thud. Once all unloaded, the Baltics then marched straight into the courtyard and away into the bowels of the castle as though on a road they'd trodden many times.

  Next came the Nordics. Circumspect stars, they glittered against the balloon's internal darkness taking in the scene with great detail. Cowled against the night, almost luminous in their pure white garments, the first, a male of muscular appearance, peered about like a wise owl. I caught a waft of lavender pomade on the breeze, so subtle, so perfect, and knew it to be them. Not before being convinced of his security did he leap like a falling star to the mountaintop path, a trail of blurring light in his wake. More followed, until there was six of them, four princes and two princesses who glowed with an ethereal beauty I'd never before witnessed. In a world where all races, creeds and complexions were shed of colour, they were most ghostlike of all. Pure white, albino visages materialised from beneath locks of long, milk-white hair which spilled from the confines of their cowls. But strangest of all were their eyes, ruby red, they probed all. They seemed to shy from the star-shine and moved as a pack into the shadows of the castle walls were they stood awaiting the guards to lead the way. They mesmerised me. Like gods made real, they held me spellbound. So much so that when one of the females glanced my way, I was so enraptured that I couldn't move. She eyed me; I quailed at her porcelain beauty. Her gaze lingered before she returned her attention to the others and allowed herself to be led away. Their passing into the castle was like an eclipse and I was the lesser man for their dispersal.

  It was something about seeing those most secretive of my kind that spurred me into action. They'd hypnotised me with their magnificence. A calm had settled over my mind, and the lust for blood that had steadily built within my inner-self eased. They were greater than the folktales my mother and father had spoken of when I was a child. I'd pictured them riding the last of the polar bears through a desolate Arctic landscape hunting for blood as heroes. I now knew them not only real, but to be every bit as magnificent as my memory reflected. Yet, I feared for the shy ones almost as much as I did Linka.

  I brushed stray pieces of glass from my clothing, then sucked up the blood from around torn nails. It was preferable to wandering around an Eternal lord's domain smelling like a free lunch. I tugged my cuffs back into place, swept back my hair and made my move. Ear pressed against the metal door, I listened, and then tried the handle: locked. I heard no signs of exterior life, so applied a gentle pressure and extricated my escape.

  Everything stood in near total blackness. I peered down an unwelcoming corridor of stone walls, roof and floor, interspersed by the odd iron doorway. Vladivar's guests wouldn't stay any longer than necessary unless there were superior quarters elsewhere.

  Whatever else that part of the castle proved to be, inhabited was not one of them. My earlier caution soon gave way to a gentle jog, then something faster. I hurtled along the narrow lanes, one moment closer to the drum beats, the next not. The dull thumping echoed through my labyrinthine world seeking to disorientate, until like a snuffed candle it ceased, and I knew my time short.

  Only when I heard the distant booming of a male voice did I have a point to aim for, and I did just that. The sounds of cheering accompanied the unseen speaker, and I imagined myself too late in my interception. Flickering candle light offered little comfort as my midnight world turned to dusk, then false day, and I emerged into some kind of viewing area. Slits in a decorative stonework of about three feet high by one wide allowed me to look out on a sobering scene. I almost wished I hadn't.

  “…and I thank you my fellow Lords and members of the Hierarchy for coming to witness the joining of east and west and the forming of a new super-kingdom. In so doing, I hope our own ties grow ever stronger!” Vladivar's words boomed throughout his hall. He stood alone on his dais dressed in full ceremonial armour, in typically boorish fashion, addressing the gathered dignitaries and his own cheering men.

  I could not see the soon-to-be king's face from my position, but I knew from his tones he sneered. Very unpleasant it was too.

  “What of King Rudolph to whom our allegiances currently lie?”

  “He had an…accident!”

  “You told us he survived the catastrophe at his palace,” one of the Baltic lords spoke.

  “Oh, he did, but at terrible personal cost.”

  “What cost?” the lord pressed in guttural tones.

  “Well, this to be exact.” Vladivar signalled to a guard who thrust forward a sack he held. The crown prince reached inside and pulled forth a matted mess of blood and hair. As he raised it high for all to see, the single gleaming fang of the man we all recognised as Rudolph sparkled in the candlelight.

  “This is preposterous, we were requested to a wedding, not a funeral,” the bolder lord hurled back.

  “Two for the price of one,” Vladivar laughed, his men stomping their appreciation on the stone floor.

  “We
cannot support a joining in these circumstances. We must be allowed to go away and consult with our master.”

  “I am your master now, and there shall be no consultation with any other,” Vladivar snarled.

  “Then, we shall depart and bid you a bitter farewell, Crown Prince.” The Baltic lords swivelled away straight into a wall of armoured men.

  “Going somewhere? I do not think so.” Vladivar leapt from the dais, grabbed the lord who'd addressed him by the throat, and held him high as his legs kicked the air. “Count yourself lucky, tovarisch. If Gorgon had had the decency to show his face, I wouldn't have had to let you live to tell him of what's taken place, would I?” Vladivar nodded the lord's head in mock agreement. “I think it would be wise for you to shut up and watch an Eternal marriage carried out with indisputable correctness. I shall be the king of half this crumbling world and you shall recognise it.”

  Vladivar turned his back on the red-faced lord and released him from his vice-like grip. The hapless fellow fell in a crumpled heap. Vladivar gave the Nordic contingent a venomous– you just try it look – one I felt from the rafters, but they remained impassive. I doubted even a natural disaster would have troubled them to movement.

  “Marquis!” shouted Vladivar. He clapped his gauntleted hands together to metallic clangs and remounted the dais to his throne. “Escort out our bride if you'd be so kind.”

  A hundred heads turned to the darkened passage behind the throne. Even the candles spluttered as if in tremulous anxiety of the moment. I watched from above impotent before the man who was the bane of my world. I didn't have long to wait. Out from the shadows toddled the gelatinous fool that was the Marquis followed by Linka's long stepping grace. Dressed head to toe in black lace and matching veil, raven hair spilled out across her lithe form to pool upon feminine shoulders, Linka emerged like the dark goddess she was. The assembly took a step back before her dusky majesty. All except the Nordic contingent who lowered their heads out of presumed respect.

  Linka rounded the throne and climbed to Vladivar's side as I edged my way along the gallery area until I stood almost parallel to the pair.