by T. A. Miles
“Where do we begin?” Tristus finally asked.
Shirisae shook her head slightly, seeming distracted. “I do not know. Firestorm does not say.”
Tristus noticed the spear’s lack of eager shine, like a candle flame guttering, then saw that Dawnfire had gone quiet as well. “I guess we follow our instincts,” he said and started down the corridor.
He didn’t know if Shirisae was coming, until he caught a glimpse of the lady elf’s red hair in the corner of his vision. Relief swept over him in the same moments a sudden fear began to fill his thoughts. There was something oppressive about the air in this place, something menacing. Whatever had drawn Alere here, Tristus would be thankful to find the elf and leave as quickly as possible.
ALERE’S THOUGHTS WERE on the darkness that had swallowed him as he fled from his home years ago, a blackness so true as to negate all possibility of light, even that which sang from an enchanted blade. Once again Aerkiren was silent, stilled by the settling of ‘true night’ while Alere’s wandering evidently led him nearer to the sword called Behel. He wondered now if this weapon had been present during the attack on his home, if Malek Vorhaven had led the strike himself, and if the Night Blade possessed a power more terrible than any Alere had previously imagined; the power to quell its sibling Swords.
To betray them, Alere considered. Xu Liang admitted himself that he did not know everything about the Celestial Blades. Just because they could not be brought openly against each other did not mean that they could not find other methods of combating. Perhaps Vorhaven had mastered his Sword and discovered this method.
Could any of the Swords truly be mastered? Alere wondered next. And if so, could an individual such as Malek Vorhaven, keeper of the Shadow Folk, be the intended bearer of the Night Blade? How could the Swords fight against chaos with agents of chaos possessing them? Or had Vorhaven not been the chosen bearer and been killed long ago, having attracted the Keirveshen in overwhelming numbers? Perhaps he had not been controlling them at all.
Alere didn’t have any answers, but he was beginning to feel a familiar fear rising in his heart, reaching outward, gripping at his lungs and making it difficult to breathe.
From one fancifully decorated, yet dismal room to the next…out of one abandoned palatial environment into another, Alere moved through the manor. Everything was in order, clean as if tended to on a regular basis, yet it seemed not lived in. It was as if the master of the house had passed on years ago and the servants still carried out their duties as if in a trance, oblivious to their abandonment. It seemed that way, however Alere had yet to see a single servant. He was beginning to wonder just how long ago the gypsy had last visited this place.
In a bedroom with plush red carpet and a large bed with tall, spiral-carved posts, Alere decided to sit for a moment, and gain control of his thoughts. They, like him, had been wandering aimlessly, escaping the consuming fear by ignoring it. This feeling was a trick of the Keirveshen. He’d felt it enough times before to know. It had nothing to do with Vorhaven, or the Night Blade.
“You’ve wasted your time. This place is abandoned except for a few lingering shadows. Dispose of them and be on your way.”
Seconds after speaking the words to himself, someone entered the room, as if in direct contradiction.
Alere stood at once when the woman walked in. He gripped Aerkiren with the intention of slaying the intruder, and was scarcely inclined to change his mind upon seeing that the individual was a simple chamber maid. He knew better than to be deceived by appearances and there was something unsettling about this woman’s aura, besides. It didn’t help that she utterly failed to acknowledge him. She carried folded linen in her arms and came toward the bed, as if accustomed to attending to unexpected visitors and otherwise minding her own affairs.
Alere took a step toward her. “I have business with your lord. Tell me where I can find him.”
She didn’t even look at him. She continued forward and Alere put his hand out to stop her colliding into him. A dreadful sensation of cold racked his body, making him shudder when the woman passed through him. Claws of ice scored his soul, and he almost dropped his sword. He managed to clutch the hilt while he stumbled away, confusion attacking his senses.
Stabbing Aerkiren into the carpet, he dropped onto one knee and leaned against the sword, placing his hand over his heart as it throbbed violently in its cage. He’d been in the presence of more than one spirit, but he’d never had one pass through him before. It was a frightening experience, and almost a paralyzing one. The dread and confusion that resulted of direct contact between life and death threatened to take him over.
Alere fought for control, and regained it just in time to be aware of the voice that entered the room. It was a man, laughing. Alere looked for another dead servant, wanting to be out of its path if it should come through the door. He would wait for it to walk by him, then extinguish both spirits with Aerkiren’s help, just as he had the wraiths he and the others encountered on the Flatlands. However, no other ghosts came. The voice continued, bodiless.
“This is amusing,” the unseen man said. “I should like to watch you wander about for many more days in your vain search—perhaps years—but I am currently not feeling so patient. I have been expecting you, little elf. Come, entertain me with your plans of revenge. I should very much like to hear them as I watch you expire.”
Alere glared at no one. “Are you Malek Vorhaven?” He scarcely waited for a reply. “Answer me!”
Again, the laughter. “You would make demands? An infant cut prematurely from the womb, starving for lack of a mother’s milk, hoping to fill the deep emptiness in your stomach with whatever sustenance comes to you. Darkness brushes your lips and you draw it in, like a suckling foal, always hungry, always eager. Eager for revenge!”
“I will not be moved by your taunts,” Alere informed the bodiless stranger. “You are Vorhaven. You are in league with the shadows!”
“In league with them?” the voice echoed. “My dear young hunter, I command them, as it is I who created them. The gypsy did not tell you everything, but come. Come to me, elf, and I shall reveal all to you!”
“Where?” Alere demanded.
No one answered.
Alere rose and stalked into the hallway, at once forgetting the ghost behind him. His determination was renewed. He would kill Malek Vorhaven. It didn’t occur to him immediately that the man would have to be several centuries old to have been in any way responsible for the foul plague that had been turning men into demons well before his grandfather was born. Such a man would have to be either a very powerful sorcerer, who had used magic to lengthen his life, or no man at all. Thoughts of revenge—of finally ensuring the safety of what remained of his family and his people—blinded Alere to those considerations, as well as to the fact that Aerkiren had begun to sing once again.
Alere moved through the passages of the manor, accompanied by the glow of his Sword, like one bewitched…and perhaps he had been. Somehow, he knew where to go. Somehow, he knew which turns and which doorways would take him to the architect of his nightmares. He was halfway across a carpeted bridge that spanned a grand ballroom, when an unexpected voice called up to him.
“Alere Shaederin! God in Heaven, I’ve been looking everywhere for you! I feel like I’ve been roaming through this forsaken house for days! What are you doing here?”
Alere glanced at the human beneath him, but his gaze quickly returned to his destination; a door on the other side of the bridge. He knew it would lead him to Vorhaven, to revenge against his father’s killer. He had no time for the knight. Without so much as a word to Tristus, whose presence he scarcely wondered at in his trance, Alere pressed on.
“WHERE IS HE going?” Tristus asked, looking for a way up to the bridge and quickly forgetting the matter when his search led him to discover that the ballroom he and Shirisae had entered only moments ago suddenly had no exit. He knew there was something horribly foul about this place—he’d felt t
he malevolence growing heavier with every step through the garishly lavish rooms that seemed to serve no one—but he was just beginning to feel real terror plying at his nerves now. “Shirisae, tell me you see a way out of here.”
Again, he was ignored by an elf. Not only was he ignored, but both Alere and Shirisae had abandoned him as well. Neither of them were anywhere in sight. He stood alone on a sea of black and white tiles, dreading what this emptiness was leading to.
He knew better than to hope for loneliness. He had been alone already, and survived it. Loneliness was too pedestrian an assault now. The enemy in his mind—for surely he was dreaming now—would not rest until he was destroyed utterly, torn apart by anger and despair; the combined elements that awakened the darkness within him. He could feel it rising when the first of the armored figures found their way into a room that had no doors.
They simply appeared, rising through the floor, bleeding through the walls, taking up their assigned positions in the reenactment of a dark dream. It was a reality that had become dream, a haunting memory that could never be forgotten and, as Tristus had feared, it could never be escaped.
Helplessly, Tristus watched his fellow knights come, and felt the familiar sting of tears in his vision. “Please, God...I can’t do it again.” He closed his eyes…and heard the battle begin.
Begin? It continued, as it had continued for days. Warriors belonging to a pagan cult had been gathering near the Citadel, planning a strike against the Order, to be rid of it and its arrogance, as they deemed it. They brought strange weapons, as well as strange craft, weaving spells with their twisted staves that enabled them to move the trees and to take the forms of animals. They ambushed the knights that had gone into the forest to clear them out. Their numbers were greater than the Order anticipated. Reinforcements were slow coming. Knights were falling everywhere. Tristus’ men were in a state of chaos, ignoring orders, panicking while men with the heads of wild boars came at them. The Order would later call it simple trickery, the result of illusions created by poisoned air. Illusions…of men tearing out the throats of other men with the jaws of wolves?
It was no illusion to Tristus. The acrid stench of blood and fear was no hallucination, nor was the beating he took from the wild swings of a giant man with a bear’s head. He felt each blow through his armor, as if it had cut through, but the pain was nothing compared to the terrible fear that assailed him when one of his own men knocked him back and confronted the beastly attacker in his place. The older man, without rank due to a lack of sponsorship—who was a greater knight than any in Andaria who could claim wealth or high family—managed to disarm the cultist. However, he learned quickly that his savage opponent needed no weapon in order to kill.
Tristus recalled himself trying to move and getting nowhere, as if the air had become mud. He could only watch while the beast’s jaws clamped onto the other knight’s neck, breaking it with a fierce crunch. Gerrick, his dear friend, was dead before he hit the ground.
Tristus dropped to his knees, reliving it. Pain quickly evolved to anger. Curse you! Curse you, whatever you are! What right have you to attack us!
‘Us’ became ‘me’. The anger bored inward, running his blood hot, turning his thoughts red.
Murderers, all of you!
He found his sword. He would stop them. He would kill all of them, before they could kill him.
TAYA HISSED AND pulled her hand away from Xu Liang’s skin. She’d barely been able to get her palm on his forehead while he turned his head back and forth on the pillow. His body writhed beneath the bedding as he struggled, caught once again in a web of nightmare.
“He’s at it again,” Tarfan reported needlessly, standing behind Taya, who had to climb up onto the mattress to reach the mystic. “I thought Tristus said this part of his ordeal was over.”
“He didn’t say the nightmares were over,” Taya replied, wringing her hand as if to be rid of the lingering heat. It felt as if Xu Liang’s fever had leapt out of him and infected her as well. “Tristus said the worst of his ordeal appeared to be over. You weren’t listening. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. He won’t wake up. I’m worried.”
“Let him be.”
Both dwarves looked behind them, at the flame-haired priestess who had joined them in the vast chamber.
“Help him!” they both demanded at the same time.
Ahjenta shook her head. “I cannot. This is what happens when humans are exposed to the Flame. They do not trust it. They are afraid to embrace it. It is only because he wishes to live that he survives, but it may be some time before he is at peace again. It will always be worst when he sleeps, when his spirit wanders into the deepest chambers of his mind and heart, to the long passages of his memories and his dreams. The Flame accompanies him. It would guide him, if he would let it.”
“Maybe you’d better explain this to him the next time he’s awake,” Tarfan growled.
“He would not understand,” the priestess replied gently. “Besides, the dreams are not entirely his own.”
“What do you mean?” Tarfan demanded.
“His spirit has wandered on its own, away from his body. It has reached others, and it reaches for them still while it searches vainly for some escape from what it perceives as madness and a threat to its existence. What your friend does not know is that this tunneling through the walls of his dreams leads him to no escape, but only to more dream.”
“Is there some unwritten law you elves have against giving a straight answer?” Tarfan griped, and he may have had more to say, but Taya didn’t listen, drawn suddenly to Xu Liang when he began to speak.
“Stop them,” he murmured weakly. “They’re...killing every—no, don’t! Not that way. Why are you here? Why...are you still here?”
Taya stared at him with pity, wishing she had some way to help, but she was far from even seeing the horrors Xu Liang saw, let alone doing anything to quiet such visions.
XU LIANG’S SPIRIT moved ever away from his body, through the half-darkened passages of his nightmare, and somehow out of them. He emerged in a large rectangular chamber. The walls still looked shadowed in his eyes and the jade fire remained overhead, but it was higher now, and beneath him was a floor of black and white. The killing was over. Where he had once seen grass and trees, and men in armor falling beneath the fangs and claws of wild beasts, he now saw an empty room. The battle that had summoned him toward this place was done.
No, it was not done. A body slumped before Xu Liang, trembling as it reached for the weapon beside it. The knight was slowly rising off his knees, shuddering as the battle waged on inside of him, delighting the fiend that still resided within him, goading him to fight and to keep on fighting until nothing remained but a sea of blood, lapping at his feet.
How did I get here? Xu Liang wondered belatedly. How could my spirit project itself to this place? Why? Is it because of you?
Xu Liang looked at Tristus, who had begun stepping away from him, and saw someone else, the figure of a man who looked more elven than human, and more demon than elven. His hands clutched the spear, dousing its fire with his own flame. It was one of cruelty and rage in its purest form.
Xu Liang remembered, and he reached out, grasping the knight by the shoulder. “No, I will not allow this.”
The demonic figure screamed at the mystic’s touch, pulling forward almost with desperation while Tristus stepped away from it, and immediately collapsed to his knees. He dropped Dawnfire and began to weep.
The dark figure wheeled around, howling in rage. It escaped Xu Liang’s grasp. “You cannot take him from me! He is mine!” And then it turned and threw itself forward, diving slowly back into the knight.
TRISTUS WAS WEEPING.
Shirisae had strayed several paces ahead of him and turned to see him on his hands and knees, Dawnfire lying on the floor just within reach. He might have had a chance if the shadows came, if he could compose himself in time to fend them off.
Shirisae, unsure what the matter was
, set aside sympathy for safety. She said sternly, “Stop that and get up. We have delivered ourselves to an enemy and must remain alert.”
Tristus didn’t stop. His body shuddered as the sobs escaped.
She had never known a man who could shed his emotions so freely. It touched her, even as it angered her. She took a step toward him and repeated her instructions, more gently this time.
“Just leave me alone,” the knight said miserably. “Leave me alone. You’ll never understand. You’ll never know how I feel.”
She was inflicted with the desire to go to him, as she had been numerous times before, and—as before—she resisted. Her care for this gentle human would not let her coddle to him. Something ill was afoot in this house and if they let their guard down they would both die. “Pick up your spear and get on your feet,” she insisted.
He only lifted his hand to his face and continued to weep.
Shirisae’s frustration mounted. She began to wonder at the reality of what she believed she was witnessing.
And that was when the mystic arrived—out of nowhere—and knelt beside Tristus. He put his hands on the knight’s shoulders and frowned with disapproval at Shirisae. “Let him be. He is right. You’ll never understand. You scarcely understand your own feelings.”
Shirisae lifted her chin indignantly, not as awed in this man’s presence as others seemed to be. “How dare you? You, who’d be lost if not for me.”
“I am lost because of you,” Xu Liang returned, speaking in quiet, overly patient tones, as if he were regarding a child. “I gave my life to save his, and you brought me back to serve your own selfish desires. Your attraction to him is a passing whim, and I am made to suffer for it. Leave him alone. It is the very least you can do at this point.”