“Some say the body is a prison,” Délin remarked, “but I say that to wander between worlds, neither being fully of body or soul, is the real prison. It may not have bars, and it may not have a gate, but that endless wandering is its own lock and key.”
“He looks like he’s sleeping,” Affon said.
Ifferon saw that Délin was holding back a tear. This moment was too like that seemingly endless time when Théos lay upon the plinth at the top of the Mountain Fortress, and where to some he looked like he was just sleeping, but to most he looked dead.
“Is there aught that can be done?” Délin asked.
What few Magi that had survived the last battle shook their heads. Thalla said nothing, but stared at Yavün, and her face was pale, as if she had seen the apparition that Ifferon saw. The scars of her meddling with magic in the White Mountains were still visible, however faintly, upon her face, but there were other scars too: the scars of one who has lost a beloved.
“There is only one thing we can do,” Herr’Don said. “Bury the dead, and bury Agon with them.”
“With them, no,” Délin said. “But let us end this war.”
“Are we to bury Yavün then?” Thalla asked. Ifferon thought that perhaps it would bring her some closure, when there had not been any for the youth before, nor for her mentor Melgalés, whose body still sat in the Rotwood, rotting away slowly.
“There is no time,” Herr’Don said. “We have tarried long enough. It is one thing to be delayed by battle, but quite another to be delayed by battle’s aftermath.”
“There is always time to bury the dead,” Délin said. “If we do not honour the fallen, then it is pointless to fight for those still standing, for a world without honour is not a world worth living in.”
“Why waste time with the shell that remains?” Elithéa asked. “No wonder Man dwindles.”
“Let the weak and wounded bury the dead,” Geldirana said. “They are no good to us in battle, but perhaps may still be of some use.”
So they agreed to this compromise, though to Délin it seemed more an affront. It was only the frequent reminder of Agon’s vicinity, and his imminent release, that encouraged the knight to strive ahead with the others, leaving a bed of bodies in their wake.
They left the pavilion and turned their attention eastwards, to where they knew the Beast still tried to break free, and where they hoped Corrias was still alive to hold him down. Even as they stared in that direction, in the direction of death, the bodies of fallen comrades lay still around them. Ifferon knew that he was not alone in wondering just how many of those still standing would soon be joining the dead.
“And so we come at last to this battle,” Délin said.
“A battle to bring the Beast to his last moments,” Herr’Don said, and the soldiers cheered, cheered through their terror. There were none upon the plains who were not afraid, even those who pretended otherwise, for though the Molokrán sent fear into the hearts of all, nearby was the creature that consumed their master, and he sent fear past all hearts, into the very souls of all survivors.
* * *
Their rest was brief, for there was little time, and they knew they must march from battle to battle, as if each fight were one of their own footsteps. The time between was fleeting, and with each step forward there were fewer people to make the journey. Some abandoned the quest entirely, like Narylal, who led the Rebel Taarí back into the Telar Deeps. Some of those who stayed wished they could also flee, and all of those who stayed wished that they were marching home instead.
As the armies went, the tremors became stronger and came more often, toppling heroes of men and women as if they were but unsteady children not long out of the womb. To watch a great knight like Délin knocked from his feet, and helped up like he had helped Théos many times, was disheartening to Ifferon, much more so than his own falls and tumbles, which he expected, and for which he had little shame. The land moved around them even as they moved upon it, and it seemed to some that it was as much an enemy as Agon, as if even the very earth itself had given in and sworn allegiance to the Beast.
The sound of rattling chains preceded all others, and it grew so frequent and so loud that it dwarfed the wind, and it travelled to their ears as if it had shackled itself to every gale and gust. The sound was unnerving on many levels, for it spoke to them of the bonds of the Beast, but it also spoke to them of their own prisons, and that prison of death that Agon could send them to.
And then when the strange sound became like the everyday whistle of birds, and the terrible tremors became like the normal turning of the earth, the smell of sulphur charged upon them, invading their nostrils and attacking their senses. It burned their noses, singed their eyes, and left an ashy taste upon their tongues.
And when the sulphurous fume seemed somehow natural, like it must have done to Agon and whatever else lived in the darkness beneath Halés, and when the smoke and dust dispersed before them like a curtain pulled back by the hands of gods, they were greeted with a sight that singed their eyes more than any sulphur could, and this was something they could never grow accustomed to.
The sight was so horrifying that many were forced to immediately close their eyes, to block out the bleakness, but they found the evil had corrupted their imaginations, and their minds conjured new and terrible forms worse than their eyes had seen, and so they were forced to open their eyes once more, to free themselves from the tyranny of their own minds. What horrors they saw then made the false images of their minds pale in comparison, and it seemed that they were locked between the twin terrors of illusion and reality, and they felt a semblance of the torment of the Beast, where neither sleep nor the waking world brought any solace.
To some whose minds were weak, the sight of the Beast was enough of a weapon to destroy them. Some fell instantly dead, and perhaps that would have been some relief, were it not for the fact that the horrors haunted them in the afterlife in Halés, and some of them became horrors of their own, to haunt the living that were yet blind to the Beast.
Others did not die in body, but they died in mind, with the walls of their sanity closing in and collapsing around them, and they wandered the battlefield aimlessly, and some wandered onto the sword edge of an enemy or ally, and some wandered straight into the Beast’s jaws, and some others wandered far afield, even to distant lands, where after they were known as the Afflicted, and this torment of the mind was treated like any disease of body, and they were shunned, and they were feared. So did the terror of the Beast spread like a virus of its own, infecting minds, and building far and wide a civilisation built with bricks of fear upon a foundation of terror.
There were no records in any books of what the Beast looked like, bar brief and hurried mentions of his general anatomy, for how he appeared depended on who looked upon him, and what fears festered in their soul. Few who saw the Beast survived, and of those who did, none would dare unlock the images from the cage of their mind, and free Agon to torment them once again.
For Ifferon, he saw a mangled face like the combined deathly countenances of the remnants of a battlefield; Agon was, in all respects, the epitome of a mass grave. Had his agonised features been cemented in form, the mind may have grown accustomed to them, and so come to some sort of reckoning, no matter how harrowing. But his face shifted each time Ifferon looked upon him, and it was a new kind of death, a new kind of horror, and a new kind of memory that Ifferon desperately wanted to forget.
It was easier to not look upon his face, even though Ifferon could feel those dark eyes boring into him like the torture tools of the Visage. He looked instead upon the hulking form of Agon’s body, and the lumbering limbs that stretched out from the cavernous hole like monstrous pillars.
One chain held the Beast in place, biting at the ankle of his left foot like a Felokar wolf might snap and snare a mortal soul and drag it down to Halés. A single chain, with a manacle crafted by the Céalari—of whom no Man or Ferian, or any other race, could imitate—was all
that stood between the Beast and his freedom, and between the people of Iraldas and theirs.
Except Corrias.
For it was Corrias who held the Beast down as if he were a chain of his own, and the great weight of the god helped keep Agon in check, and keep him from tugging and pulling with all his strength on the chain, and keep it from snapping.
For a moment Ifferon thought of what they might have faced if they had not been victorious in returning Corrias to the world. Perhaps the Beast would then be free, and perhaps he, a Child of Telm, would have been the last protection, or the last small obstacle swept aside by Agon.
Then his eyes fell upon what looked little pebbles lining the ground around Agon and Corrias. He was horrified to discover that these were not tiny rocks, but the remnants of those few Al-Ferian who had marched out with Athanda, and those fewer Garigút who had joined them on the orders of Geldirana. He looked to her now, and he saw that she too was just realising what had transpired.
But there was no time to mourn the dead—only time to avenge them.
Ifferon heard the wheels and cogs of the siege machines, a reassuring sound when they were allies. The catapults, trebuchets, and ballistae rolled into range, dozens in number and of all shapes and sizes, some plain and newly made, and some plated with metal, and some creaking heavily like old bastions of bygone wars. Ropes were slung, rocks were loaded, counterweights were pushed in place, and levers were cranked, and all these sounds combined to form the music of preparation, which was a prelude to the song of siege.
Then the sounds died down, and there was a moment of pause while Herr’Don argued with his commanders, many of whom had not slept since they set out from Boror several days before.
“We may hit Corrias,” they warned, and some refused to act.
Ifferon was amused by how quickly the people of Boror had abandoned their faith in Olagh alone, when faced with the monstrosity of Agon, and the beauty of Corrias. Some still clung to their faith, seeing Corrias as Olagh, and Ifferon could not blame them for wanting the reassurance of Olagh’s foretold victory against the Beast in the holy pages of the Olaghris. He could not tell them that Olagh was really Telm, and that Telm was dead, and they would not have believed it, even from the mouth of a Cleric of Olagh, or the mouth of a Child of Telm.
“We will hit the Beast,” Herr’Don said, as if his own words were also promised in the Olaghris. “We have no choice, and Corrias will understand that.”
“I cannot condone this,” Délin said. “There is no honour in firing from range, and there is less honour when the firing is so chaotic that our own father god may become the target. We must engage the Beast in another way.”
“We will,” Herr’Don said, “but we will weaken him ere we approach.”
And so he ordered his men to fire, and the siege weapons groaned and creaked, and great slabs and blocks of stone, and great trunks of trees, and great fiery balls, and great metal bolts, and great explosive kegs, flew across the battlefield and rained down upon Agon and Corrias. Some of these struck like tiny pinpricks, but others struck the faces of the gods, and there was apparent agony in their eyes. The Beast raged and roared, and Corrias struggled to contain him.
“Are you weakening or strengthening him?” Délin asked.
Herr’Don glowered at him, but did not respond. He directed his commanders to launch another volley, and this elicited a similar response from Agon, and a similar struggle from Corrias. Now, however, the father god seemed to be holding back his own cries of pain, for many of the bolts and bricks struck him as Agon dragged him this way and that.
Délin knelt down and closed his eyes. The other knights followed suit, and together they prayed to Corrias, as if he were still in Althar, and not trapped in Iraldas under fire from some of his own worshippers. Ifferon was amazed to see, however, that this prayer seemed to help the god, for he grew stronger and more resolute, and he held down Agon with greater power than before.
But Agon’s rage was rising, and each falling rock seemed to fuel his anger, and each piece of shrapnel seemed to goad him into pulling harder on the last remaining manacle about his foot.
It seemed to Ifferon that Herr’Don was then talking to himself, for he turned to his side as if one of his commanders was there, but no one could be seen. This was not reassuring when the prince was in charge of the largest army upon the battlefield.
“So we will try a different approach,” Herr’Don said.
Then the siege weapons rolled closer to Agon, and great hooks and ropes, and huge nets with weights attached, were loaded upon them, before they were fired upon the Beast. The hooks dug into his flesh, the nets landed upon him and weighed him down, and the ropes were pulled by men and women, and some of the siege weapons were cranked, for the ropes were still attached to them, and they grew tense as the people tried to tether and hold down the Beast.
But Agon had spent too long being chained and held down, and he had spent a thousand years tugging on those chains, hundreds of thousands of days trying to break them, and hundreds of thousands of nights banging his shackled fists upon the roof of his prison. All that anger, which had only grown and festered in this time, erupted now in Agon’s violent flailing, even as he had erupted from the earth like a volcano.
The soldiers of Boror pulled on the ropes, but many were dragged into the air as their strength gave way to the terrible power of the Beast. Then some of the siege weapons were hauled skyward as Agon turned and thrashed, and the soldiers fled as their own engines of war came crashing down upon them. Others were crushed beneath the massive fists of Agon, and the ground shuddered beneath his terrifying thumps. All the while, Corrias tried to keep his grip—but it was slipping.
Archers fired their arrows, but they had little affect, and some brave, or perhaps foolish, soldiers charged up close to the hulking form and slashed and stabbed, only to be cast aside or crushed. One of these was Herr’Don, who worked himself into a frenzy, and began madly attacking one of the monstrous hands of the Beast, until finally he was flicked away. The breath was knocked from him, but he was lucky it was just his breath, and not his life.
And so the armies toiled, and Ifferon saw familiar faces join the fight, and he saw many more unfamiliar ones. Geldirana was there, swinging and cleaving, and Elithéa was there, striking and clashing. Thalla and the other Magi fired off bolts to match the ones shot from the siege weapons, and Délin and his knights moved in and out to strike here and there where one of Agon’s arms came down like an avalanche. Yet none of this seemed to weaken the Beast, and as the armies grew tired, and their numbers dwindled, so did Agon grow more powerful, and his rage increased.
What then could be done, Ifferon began to wonder, if an entire army seemed powerless against this evil force, and if even Corrias himself could barely hold him down? And so he felt the armour of Telm come about him, as if he had inadvertently invoked it, and he felt the gentle thrum of the Scroll behind his shin-guard, echoing the violent thumping of the Beast.
Ifferon approached Agon and issued his challenge. “Dehilasü baeos!” he cried, revealing the Scroll as if it were a mirror that might show the Beast his ugly form. Those dark and disturbing eyes turned towards Ifferon, and he felt as though the lights of the sun and the moon were both upon him, singling him out in the darkness.
“Begone!” the Beast said, and his voice was like the rumble of an earthquake and the roar of a volcano. A gust blew from his mouth and knocked Ifferon from his feet, and the Beast mocked him with his probing eyes, even if he was too much in pain to deride him with laughter.
Ifferon clambered up and held the Scroll forth once more. “Al-iav im-iavün im-samün im-samadas, dehilasü baeos!”
Agon shifted in the chasm of his prison, and he shifted beneath the weight of Corrias, who held two of the Beast’s monstrous arms in check. It was the kind of shifting any would do while mildly uncomfortable, not the casting into the Underworld that those same words had done when uttered by Telm with his dying breath
so many centuries before.
“By fire,” the Beast said, and a roaring fire erupted on his tongue. “And flame,” he bellowed, and the fire spread around him. “And fume,” he roared, and ears were rent, and his anger was palpable. “And fury!” he shouted, and the sky was full of a thousand thunders, and the ground was full of a thousand shaking troops.
Yet through all of this Ifferon stood resolute, with the armour of Telm around him, the shimmer of Telm’s sword around the Scroll, and the glimmer of Telm’s shield around the Shadowstone. Instead of trembling, like he thought he would, he stood firm. Instead of cowering, like he all but knew he would, he stood strong. The fears of what might be were replaced by the knowledge of what was, and Ifferon knew the threat of Agon, and he was afraid, but still he faced it, and still he challenged it.
“Begone!” the Beast bellowed once more, and this time he reached one of his great hands, if they could be called hands, towards Ifferon, and it came at him like a collapsing mountain. Délin raced in and pushed him aside, and the knight narrowly avoided being crushed beneath the hand, which splayed the ground and sent another tremor to all around.
Ifferon got up and began to trek back to Agon, crying aloud Telm’s fateful dying words again, but Délin ran to him and held him back. “It is not working,” he said. “The words are not enough.”
“They have to be!” Ifferon said, and he shrugged off the knight’s gauntleted hand and continued on towards the Beast. Agon turned slowly to him, dragging Corrias along with him, who now tried to grasp at the Beast’s throat, as if to silence whatever powerful words he might utter to counter those of Telm the Warrior-king.
Agon swiped at Ifferon again, but the cleric ducked and dodged the blow. For Agon’s great size, he moved slowly, and his movement was hampered further by Corrias’ restraining grasp. Were it not for this, Ifferon knew he would have perished swiftly beneath the awful weight of Agon’s colossal fists.
The Children of Telm - The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy Page 69