“I do not know if we can mimic them,” Ifferon continued, “but I think we need to change how we approach these battles. Everything is alive in some way. The earth, the sky, even the shadows. If swords and chains can contain gods, there must be something we can do to give our weapons greater life.”
It was an intriguing thought, but no one had any suggestions on how this might be achieved. Herr’Don was eager to return to using brute force, and insistent that it would eventually win the war, while others thought tactics might be employed to greater effect. But none could think of how they might emulate the gods, and though the Céalari had vanquished Agon once before, and this gave everyone present some encouragement, they had also failed in many ways, and this stayed much of the company’s enthusiasm.
“The only thing I can think of,” Ifferon said, “is to offer up my life.”
“No,” Délin said immediately, and a chorus followed.
“What good would that do?” Geldirana asked.
“That’s a coward’s way out,” Affon said.
“How is it?” Ifferon asked, and he felt suddenly offended, and it showed in the frustration of his voice. “I have been a coward for so long, running and hiding. How can I still be a coward if I face Agon and do what I have always feared: die? I am not looking to escape my own prison, but to return Agon to his. If Telm could only do it with his dying breath, than surely the Last Words can only truly be effective if they are my last words too.”
There was an intense and unsettling silence, where no one truly needed to speak, for their thoughts displayed upon their faces, and their emotions showed within their eyes. Some clearly racked their brains for alternatives, for some argument against what Ifferon knew was the only thing they had not tried, the only weapon they had not used.
At times it seemed like Délin would reiterate his refusal, like he had done so many times when faced with the stark reality of Théos’ death. Though his defiance had eventually paid off, Ifferon could not think of any who would weep for him quite like the knight had for the boy. Though a part of him grew to know that Geldirana still felt some kind of love for him, he knew that she would not weep for him, that she would not weep for anyone, not even Affon.
“There must be an alternative,” Délin said at last. “So many are willing to give up their lives to see Agon back in chains, and I know this willing sacrifice as much as any other, but what if you are wrong, Ifferon? What if instead of making yourself into the weapon that weakens Agon, as Adag did, you destroy the only real weapon we have against him: you?”
“I barely know you,” Edgaron said, “but I agree with Trueblade on this matter. Do not die like this.” He glanced at Herr’Don beside him, who sat in silence.
“And what if Ifferon speaks the truth?” Elithéa challenged. “What if that is our only real chance to defeat Agon? Do we pass it up because we do not want to see a comrade die? Do we all die to save him from that fate?”
“I will not accept that this is the only way,” Délin said.
“You are so stubborn, Délin! You were like this with the boy. Why can you not accept death? Why can you not accept that something better can come of it?”
“Because I want to make that something better here and now, not delay it to the afterlife,” the knight explained. “I want Iraldas to be a heaven to some, not just Althar. I have prayed to gods, and one of my patrons is out there now, fighting tooth and claw with evil, and yet I see how selfishness and greed win little wars of their own against us every day. And yet I do not lose hope, because I know that we do not need to pray for change, but make our prayers instead a list of actions we can make, that no one need face evil, and that if they do, they do not face it alone.”
“Then let Ifferon face evil,” Elithéa said. “If that is what it takes.”
“And will you let him face it alone?” Délin asked.
“I will face it!” Herr’Don shouted, standing up, until Edgaron ushered him back into his seat.
“And I, if it comes to it,” Délin said. “But I do not think you inherited death, Ifferon. That cannot be your heirloom. There must be some other way to shackle Agon.”
“It begs the question,” Elithéa said, “why have these chains broken? Have those gods weakened? Were there defects in their work? How is it that Agon can now break free?”
There was silence for a moment as they all pondered the question. Then a new voice broke the silence, and they turned suddenly to the body of Yavün, who was now sitting up.
“I know that answer,” he said, his voice strained.
“Yavün!” Ifferon cried. “You are alive!”
“Cheating death again,” Herr’Don remarked. “It seems you cheat a lot.”
“I have been to Halés and back,” the youth said.
“Bah!” Herr’Don said. “That explains the smell of sulphur. I need some fresh air.” He got up and stormed off, leaving an angry breeze in his wake. Edgaron did not follow him this time, but gave him space.
Ifferon hurried over to Yavün and gave him his water cannister, which the youth eagerly drank from, as if his throat was filled with the burning dust of Halés. Délin fetched a blanket, while Thalla took a damp cloth to bathe Yavün’s head. He gave a weak smile as he saw her, and a stronger smile as her hand touched his face. The others simply sat in silence, curious to hear the youth’s tale.
“Speak already,” Elithéa said.
“Drink a little more,” Ifferon said.
“Who would think that water could be a dam?” the Ferian asked. “You clog his mouth with enough of it. We do not have time for rest when action is needed. Tell us more of these chains, boy.”
Ifferon reluctantly backed away and sat back down, but Thalla remained at Yavün’s side, patting his head with the damp cloth. When he eventually spoke, his voice was still weak, and the colour was still lost in his face, as if he had come back as much a ghost as he was when he was drifting out of his body.
“The chains are alive,” Yavün said in time.
“We know that,” Elithéa replied. “The seven sons of Adag.”
“No,” the youth said. “Well, yes, but it’s more than that. Agon has corrupted their spirits over the years. They clung to him, but he clung back. A thousand years they endured his anger and misery. In time they began to succumb to it, and they were as much chained to him as he was to them. They became demons, and Agon found a way to incarnate them in this world, to host their tainted and twisted forms inside the bodies and souls of others.”
“That can’t be good,” Thalla said, and she looked as though she was going to say more, but she stopped, for her voice was distracting to Yavün. He looked up at her and smiled again, and he only continued his account when Elithéa’s gruff voice seized his attention.
“Tell us of these demons,” she said.
“I don’t know much about them,” Yavün said, “and what I know is in the form of verse.”
“Ever the opportunistic poet,” Elithéa remarked.
“These are not my words,” the youth replied. “They are the Gatekeeper’s.”
And so he began, and perhaps it was the words themselves, or the mention that they came from the lips of the Gatekeeper, if he even had lips to speak them, but everyone shivered a little as he spoke, as if they felt Death had walked into the pavilion.
The first fears death, and, though devout,
to an untrue god he prays;
The second one is death itself,
from the great and dark beyond;
The third is the blackest stag
with whitest horns and eyes ablaze;
The fourth flies high, and covets relics,
and from an egg it spawned;
The fifth is pale, and tall enough
to blot out the sun’s fair rays;
The sixth is dark, of equal strength,
which he shares in brother’s bond;
The seventh is veiled, but powerful,
a Magus of malaise;
And together as they fal
l, the Beast
can from his jail abscond.
The group were stunned to hear these words, and Ifferon could posit what some of the lines referred to, and he knew from the looks of others that they could also.
“I know who the first of these is, or rather was,” Yavün explained. “It was Teron, the head-cleric of the Order of Olagh, whom I never liked nor trusted.”
“You are not alone,” Ifferon said. “But how do you know it was him?”
“I met Melgalés in the Underworld,” the youth answered. Thalla stopped bathing his head for a moment, but then started again. “He told me much of this, and he was able to decipher the initial piece of the Gatekeeper’s riddle, for Teron had become a demon there, gifted a second lease of life by Agon, even if it was in a twisted form. They battled, and he was slain, and so this terrible series of events was put in motion, for the destruction of the demon was the destruction of the first chain.”
“So then my decision to end Teron’s life was a mistake,” Ifferon said, and he felt as if he had let the Beast loose himself, as if he had given him the key to his own cage.
“No,” Délin said. “Blame is another emissary of the Beast. We should not bow down to him.”
“Trueblade is right,” Oelinor said, breaking his lengthy silence. “There is only so much we can see ere it comes to pass. The Beast, Aelor save us, would have broken free in time, and if it were not some of us to break those chains, it would have been others, and we would be here at war just the same.”
“They are the Vials of Wrath,” Yavün said, continuing his account, “and they had been mentioned to me before, but I didn’t know what they were then. They are the forces of constraint, empowered by Agon’s anger, given life by his rage. Just as they contained him, they are also containers, and while they are whole, the bonds are whole. But should they break, as has been foredoomed—for glass vials almost yearn to be broken—then Agon will be freed.”
“No,” Délin said. “So much has been left to fate, and I will not have it that way, where we are powerless to do anything, as if we were mere characters in a tale. If it has been foredoomed that Agon shall be free, then let me foredoom that he shall perish in freedom, and that if he shall not perish, then he shall never be free.”
Many nodded, and some applauded, and some said “aye!” and some cried “hear, hear!” Some said naught at all, for they were still pondering the poem about the Vials of Wrath.
“I know the third,” Geldirana said. “We faced the black stags in Alimror, and we killed them all, including the white-horned one.”
“And the fourth must be the monstrous crow at the Black Eyrie,” Ifferon said.
“And I would think that we also met the second,” Délin said. “For one of the dead Nahamoni attacked us.”
“And the ground trembled afterwards,” Elithéa said, shaking her head as if she did not know why she had not deciphered this before.
“The fifth and sixth must be the Nahamoni twin giants that caught us,” Délin posited.
“And the final one,” Thalla said, “the only chain left to break, is undoubtedly the one who stood in this room only moments ago.”
They all paused as the realisation set in, as the ripples of this knowledge trickled over their minds, and as the aftershocks unsettled their souls, as if they were hearing again for the first time each of those six snapping chains, and the prospect of the seventh and final snap.
And as they looked around, especially to that empty space where the Visage stood not long ago, where he taunted them, as if he knew of his own true role, they realised that he was not the only one missing from the pavilion.
“Where is Herr’Don?” Délin asked.
They turned about, and did not see him.
Fear rose within them, and it seemed to all of them that they had a new type of clearsight, for they could see in their mind’s eye Herr’Don leaving the pavilion.
Ifferon placed his hand upon the back of the now empty chair where Yavün’s sword previously lay. The fear rose further, and their mind’s eye showed the sword in Herr’Don’s hand.
They raced after him, and in their minds they could see him stepping out to meet the Visage, could hear the ominous sound of each step, like the promise of the sound of snapping chains. They charged through the field towards the second pavilion, which seemed further away than it ever had before. They burst through the curtain doors, like Agon had burst through the earth, and they stopped suddenly as the bloodied body of the Visage fell to the ground before them, where the evil Magus’ Beldarian lay crushed beneath Herr’Don’s heavy boots, where Brégest and the other knights lay bruised and battered, and where the Felokar wolves sat like tamed dogs.
“Let the Gatekeeper mock him now,” Herr’Don said, and the tip of his sword, of Yavün’s sword, struck the ground, and it made a terrible sound. In answer came the echo of rending steel, and they knew it in the depths of their hearts, and in the depths of their souls, that the final manacle had snapped.
They were too late, and time seemed to taunt them, even as their eyes beheld the horror, and their hearts feared what terror had been unleashed. The demon was dead. The chain was broken. Agon was free.
XV – DAWN
In the depths of Halés, where the sleep of the dead was disturbed by the constant flailing and thrashing of the Beast’s many limbs, the final chain that clung to Agon’s left ankle strained and broke. The Beast reared up and pulled himself out of the chasm that he had made, the passage he had dug through to the world of Iraldas. He cast off Corrias from his back, as if that god were but a garment, and he placed his two monstrous feet upon the soil of the world above, upon the earth he had not walked for a thousand years.
He roared to the heavens in triumph, a sonic challenge to Althar, where he knew the Céalari were listening, but were powerless to stop him. The sound boomed and rumbled, and he stopped only when he was certain that all ears in the four corners of Iraldas had heard his answering call.
Ifferon might say “Begone!” and some might flee, but Agon’s cry said the opposite. “Come!” it told them, even if it did not use words. “I am here. I am free.”
* * *
Délin and Brégest seized Herr’Don and took the sword Daradag from his hand, but it was too late, and they almost toppled from the force of the quake and bellow that soon followed. It needed no explanation, for they all knew well enough what had been done, even if they dared not ponder what might follow.
“You fool!” Elithéa shouted at the prince.
“He was the last one,” Ifferon said, shaking his head.
“Not the last to die,” Herr’Don, struggling to free himself from the knights’ grip.
“He was the last chain,” Ifferon explained. “Agon did not break any of them. We did.”
The words of Teron came back to haunt him, even if the ghost of the head-cleric could not. You play the games that even the gods dare not play, and you played right into our very hands!
Despite all the anger the company had for Herr’Don and his actions, they knew well that they could not afford too much blame, for they were just as guilty of this end. They had all felled the living chains of Agon, had all contributed in some way to his freedom.
“We’ve lost,” Thalla said.
“No,” Délin answered. “We cannot undo what has been done, but this is not over yet. We can still fight Agon.”
“And die?” Elithéa asked.
“I guess it is time to try my suggestion,” Ifferon said. “Ere long it might no longer be a willing sacrifice.”
Some of them had clearly resigned to this fate, as Ifferon had, and they gave him the kind of mournful and pitying glances that they might give to someone dying. It did not help with Ifferon’s resolve.
Then Yavün came into this second pavilion. They had almost forgotten him, and had left him behind in their attempt to stop Herr’Don. He limped and stumbled, and Thalla caught him by the arm before he fell. He looked deathly pale, and those same m
ournful and pitying glances turned to him now.
“Rest, boy,” Délin said.
“Let me try a different weapon first,” Yavün coughed, but it was clearly an effort just to speak.
“The Sword is not enough,” Ifferon said.
“No, not the Sword,” the youth replied. “The shadow.”
There were some awkward and nervous glances, and some whispers back and forth, broken by Herr’Don’s disgruntled remarks. “He is evil,” he said. “The shadows speak through him.”
“And I can speak through them,” Yavün retorted.
“And what will you say, hmm?” Herr’Don asked. “Will you tell Agon to go back to Halés, and will he listen? No, I did not think so.”
“We haven’t set the Molokrán upon him,” Yavün said. “It is worth a try,”
“You are too weak to try that,” Ifferon said.
“It may be our only chance.”
Oelinor nodded. “He is right. If light is not enough to banish darkness, perhaps darkness itself is the answer. It is time Agon, Aelor save us, faced one of our greatest foes. We have lost many good people to the Lichelord, Aelor save us, and if they can serve some new end, it will help atone for their great crime against this world.”
“What makes you think they will have any effect?” Elithéa asked.
Oelinor looked to her with dim eyes. “They are not servants of Agon, Aelor save us, but Molok, Aelor save us all. They have been on the same side for many years, that is true, but perhaps we can change that now.”
“But you are forgetting something,” Délin said. “Agon consumed Molok. He is as much the master of the Molokrán now as Molok was, and if he did not fear Molok then, I see no reason why he should fear Molok’s servants now.”
“A worthy point,” Oelinor said, “but we are running out of options in this war. We have thrown almost everything we have, but this is something we have not yet tried.”
The Children of Telm - The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy Page 71