Veil of the Dragon
Author: Tom Barczak
Date: 2012-04-16 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy
Description: Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius is raised from the dead by the hand of a child. His kingdom stolen by the evil dragon, Gorond, Chaelus’ only hope to reclaim his throne rests with the child knight who saved him, the heretical order to which the child belongs, and the truth about Chaelus which they alone protect.

Veil
of the

Dragon

Book I
of the

Prophecy of the Evarun

Tom Barczak

Gossamer Press

114 Harvard Dr. Norman, OK 73072

Veil of the Dragon

Book I of the Prophecy of the Evarun

Copyright © 2012 by Tom Barczak

Gossamer Press

Kindle edition,

May, 2012

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this e-book or portions thereof in any form. Please purchase only authorized editions. Uploading and distribution by any means without permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

Book Design, Cover Design, Cover Art, Interior Illustrations and Maps by Tom Barczak.

Published in the United States of America

Related works by Tom Barczak:

Awakening Evarun

(Part I of VI)

Kindle

Awakening Evarun

(Part II of VI)

Kindle

Awakening Evarun

(Part III of VI)

Kindle

Awakening Evarun

(Part IV of VI)

Kindle

Awakening Evarun

(Part V of VI)

Kindle

Awakening Evarun

(Part VI of VI)

Kindle

For Olivia, Nicholas, Maxwell and Julian.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my Muse, for never letting me down.

Thank you to Cas Peace and Pat Smith for your thorough and selfless editorial help, through both the beginning and the end.

Thank you to Robert Ferrier for noticing the Hero in the Journey.

Thank you to the Norman Galaxy of Writers.

Thank you to OWFI.

Thank you for every single one who’s read Awakening Evarun.

Thanks to Steve, Vannoy, Brenda and countless others for a gift I can never explain or repay.

Thanks to Andrew for your constant support.

Thank you to Bill Bernhardt for taking the time to teach.

Thanks to J.S. Chancellor, Doug Brown, Walter Rhein, Jenny Hilborne and David Alderman for being willing to share what you’ve learned.

Thank you to Janet Morris, for taking me under your wing and showing me how to fly.

Thank you to the Irredeemable Order of Hellions. You’re not a biker gang. But you could be.

Thanks to Boynton Williams and Associates, for allowing me to keep my day job.

Thank you to my family.

Mostly, thank you to God, for allowing me the privilege of doing this.

Chapter One

A Summons

Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius, awoke from death to the hands of a child.

Void shattered to azure flame. A warrior’s call carried out on a child’s voice. “Take my hand now and rise, Chaelus. Death cannot take you.”

Chaelus succumbed beneath beating waves of nausea. The fires of fever tore through him. Light burned through the edges of his lifeless eyes. A firm arm held him. Water erupted as the chill of the grave melted to a lesser cold. His legs caught against stone. The arm stiffened to protect him. The warmth of a labored breath brushed past his skin as he was lowered to firm ground.

The child’s voice whispered, “You’re safe now, but you’re sick. You’ve been poisoned. The blood of the Dragon flows in your veins. Your fever is the Dragon’s call. It will pass, but until it does, give it no heed. It strengthens with the attention you pay it. The fire within you will soon die.”

The azure flame descended to shadow.

***

Chaelus opened his eyes to a failing dusk.

The chill of hard ground bled through the thin cloak around him. Shaking, he pulled it closer.

A sliver of a boy sat near, leaning against a tumbled pale milestone. Holding a small branch, he toyed with the dead leaves around him, pushing them away, his head held down, his thick blond hair hanging loose over dark eyes, his voice soft but aloof with the imperious tongue of Gorond.

“You’re no longer dead,” the boy said, “save to everyone you know.”

Chaelus eased himself upright. His eyes burned. “Who are...?” His voice stuck thick and painful upon his tongue. “What are you?”

The boy raised his head. “My name is Al-Aaron.” He smiled and his dark eyes deepened. “I’m a Servian Knight, and I’ve waited long for your return, Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius.”

Al-Aaron stood, brushing the soil from his leggings. “But we must hurry. We’re but a day from your House. It’s been three since your death. It won’t be long until they realize you’re gone.”

Chaelus sputtered. “What’s happened to me?”

“You’ve fallen, and you’ve been raised. You were dead, but now you live.”

Chaelus struggled through the fog of his thoughts and the maze of memories that lingered. The boy was right. He’d died. The plague of the Dragon’s Sleep had claimed him. Or so he’d thought. Either way, his young brother Baelus sat upon the throne now.

Chaelus tried to stand but his legs collapsed beneath him. “Then you must help me return.”

“Baelus won’t return the throne so easily, and you’re still too weak. You can’t go back. Not yet.”

Al-Aaron gestured to a small sack on the ground near where he’d been sitting. “There’s food for you here. It’s only bread and dried fruit but it will give you strength.”

A horse whinnied nearby. Chaelus felt relief at the dim sight of Idyliss tethered to a tree beside them. Al-Aaron lifted a bundle from her back and dropped it to the ground. Murky light reflected off the bronze hilt of Sundengal lashed upon it; the sword that had once belonged to his father.

Al-Aaron turned away. He stroked behind the mare’s ears. “These are the things you brought with you to your death. Take what you need, and we’ll bury what is left.”

***

Chaelus’ healing flesh pressed pale against the leather binding of Sundengal’s hilt. The black marks of the Dragon’s Sleep upon his hand had faded. New sunlight danced across Sundengal’s blade, but the weight of the blood it bore still remained.

Al-Aaron, silent through the night though never sleeping, stirred on the back of Idyliss behind him.

Chaelus returned Sundengal to her scabbard as he drew in Idyliss’ reins with his other, still trembling hand.

The sun rose beside them, cresting above the horizon like a phoenix as they moved north along the narrow ridge.  Its light burned beneath the crisp and still darkened sky.

A man and a boy.

Student and teacher, Al-Aaron had told him.

Chaelus turned back again to Al-Aaron and the bundle of furs that concealed the boy’s blade. To be a boy and a Servian Knight seemed difficult enough, despite the gossamer bound blade he carried. Forbidden to shed the blood of man, the sword remained the symbol of the order to which Chaelus’ father had once belonged - and its heresy as well.

The heavy weight of Sundengal pulled at his side, even more than the armor he wore.

In the valley below, the worn and pitted bleached stones of the happas - the ancient road left behind by the Evarun – wound northward away from the Roan kingdoms, through the borderlands of the Northern March, and away from his throne.

He raised his hand to his head, to the funeral markings he bore there, a black crown etched upon his shaven brow. The runes showed him as a victim of the Dragon’s Sleep, but from what the boy said, it was from another death altogether that he’d been raised.

A chance to reclaim what he’d lost.

“My strength has returned,” Chaelus said. “So must I.”

“You won’t be welcomed,” Al-Aaron replied, his voice weary. “If we’re fortunate, your brother will think only your corpse has been stolen.  If you return, I assure you you’ll be dead again before you reach your white tower’s gate.”

Chaelus smiled at the irony of the boy’s words. “I’ve already died once. It should be nothing to do so again.”

Al-Aaron’s moment of silence drew tangible, his gaze distant, stretching across the valley below. A sad smile crept to the corner of his mouth. “Then there’s something I would show you first.”

He touched Chaelus’ arm and his voice softened to the thick whisper of one who’d just awoken. “Look out. Tell me what you see.”

In the dawning light, dark shadows and mist still filled the valley. Stunted copses released birds into the rusting sky. Rings of burial mounds, like the one from which Chaelus had just been raised, rose from the valley floor.

“Wizard Mounds,” Chaelus answered. “The Gorondian Empire called them cenotaphs in their texts. They’re little more than empty tombs.” In the shadows of the copses, fresh turned earth revealed where one of the mounds had been disturbed. “So that’s what we use them for now.”

“Then you know only a shadow of their purpose,” Al-Aaron said.

“What do you mean?”

Al-Aaron turned back to the valley. “Take us there. I’ll show you.”

Stands of birch studded the steep slope of the hill that led down into the shrouded valley floor. Thick, tall grasses sprung up through the growing mist around them as Chaelus led them down. Idyliss struggled against their steep descent, until it leveled out at last into a morass of mud and water that clung to the mare’s hooves.

Al-Aaron remained silent.

Chaelus continued what seemed to be blindly forward through the thick wet grass, not entirely certain what the boy intended for him to see. He stopped when he heard at last the reassuring clap of the happas beneath Idyliss’ hooves. He led her carefully upon it, if only to escape the dampness for a moment. The raised outline of the ancient road reached between the copses ahead.

Chaelus turned to Al-Aaron. “Teacher.” The word sounded awkward, tumbling unbidden from his lips. The weight of it hung upon the lingering mist not yet burned away by the morning sun.

Al-Aaron replied distantly, his eyes focused somewhere beyond Chaelus, down the length of the road. “Follow the happas. It will lead us there.”

With the slope of the hill behind them, the stands had withdrawn, leaving open grasses, but the scattered copses stood thick with shadow. They were old, and beneath them, the sodden mounds of the cenotaphs began to appear. The air fell still as they passed beneath the first bent shadows of the trees. Idyliss slowed without Chaelus’ urging.

The mounds were no more than a man’s stride in height, and three in width. Some had collapsed upon themselves, stagnant water filling the deep depressions at their centers. One copse, denser and older than the rest, stood at the center of the circle of mounds. Beneath its gray trees spread the surface of a dark and fetid pool, the ground descending toward it reluctantly. As they drew near, a chill reached out from the water’s edge, crawling across the air to meet them.

The sky darkened.

Chaelus reined in Idyliss, suddenly restless. “The shadow of the Dragon passes.”

Al-Aaron looked up at the gathering clouds. He let himself down, leaving the happas, and passed over a line of ancient stones concealed amidst the grasses. He halted at one of the nearest mounds.

Chaelus followed, dismounting and leading Idyliss beside him. The air grew stiff and foul.

“It’s an ancient place,” Al-Aaron confided. “Its roots lie deeper than anything the Keepers of Lossos can teach; deeper than those of the Gorondian Empire that fell.”

Chaelus slowed and tied Idyliss’ reins around one of the low entangled branches.

He remembered the scent of flaxweed smoke, which the Lossons burned to ward away the stench beyond their walls, mingled with parchment and ink, and his last days in exile before being summoned back to the aid of his father’s House. The only knowledge that remained the Lossons kept safe within their walls. The Gorondians took their secrets with them.

“Then you speak of a time that’s lost,” he said.

“Not by all. Not by the Servian Order. I speak of a time before the Expulsion, before the Giver brought about the Dragon’s fall a hundred years ago. Chaelus, suppose you wanted to convince someone of something, something you knew to be untrue. Tell me, what’s the best way to tell a lie?”

“To hide it in truth.”

Al-Aaron smiled. “Yes.”

Al-Aaron knelt beside the mound, pulling a small knife from beneath his belt and stabbing it down into the moss and turf covering it. Pulling on the knife hard, he cut a square into its surface. Flattening the knife like a spade he lifted the sod gently and set it to one side. He wiped the blade and returned it to his belt. Leaning back from his work, he asked, “What do you see?”

Chaelus leaned over where the boy had dug. Beneath the short grass lay rich black soil. A hand’s width beneath the surface, smooth black stone glimmered. On it, small things moved, trying to find their way back into the deeper places of darkness.

“The stone of the cenotaph.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

“Then look deeper, but not with your eyes. Place your hand there. See the truth beneath the stone.”

Chaelus knelt. His hand shook as he held it above the cenotaph. The familiar burning of his fever pressed again inside of him. He felt its warmth beneath the markings on his brow. He looked to Al-Aaron, who nodded.

Chaelus reached down.

The cold touch of the stone seized him like ice. His body grew heavy and slow. The world before him shivered. A shadow drifted from the mound, from deep beneath its forgotten stones. Black wings stretched out from it, like the Dragon waiting in the ice water of his tomb. And like the Dragon, a familiar voice whispered to him.

“The Blood of Malius.”

Chaelus’ fever consumed him.

“Chaelus.”

His own name struck like a mallet and he fell backwards, landing hard against the ground. The whispering voice of the Dragon echoed inside of him, its breath a part of his flesh.

The harsh light of dawn blinded him. The shadow of the cenotaph passed away.

Al-Aaron’s hand reached down to him through an azure glow which held like a fire about the boy. Chaelus reached out to it, but the light faded at his touch. His breath parted from him.

“What is it?” he whispered.

Al-Aaron took Chaelus’ hand. “It’s the world as it is. It’s the truth that waits for you beneath the lie.”

The menace of the mound and the black stone beneath it dimmed in the sharp morning light.

“It was from a cenotaph deep beneath your father’s House that I raised you.”

“My tomb,” Chaelus said, his voice drifting.

“Did the Lossons ever teach you why the Gorondian Empire fell?”

“The Gorondians were wizards. They were consumed by their own dark magic.”

Al-Aaron tightened his mouth as silent thoughts fought within him. He breathed out. His gaze grew long again. “They were seduced by the Dragon,” Al-Aaron said. “Eventually the Dragon came to possess all of them. With the cenotaphs the Dragon consumed their flesh, and the flesh of their people, keeping them alive only to appease its unending hunger, until only the suffering of their spirits remained.”

He looked up at Chaelus. “The Dragon of legend is real. It lorded over the Pale many times before and has returned to do so again. Its voice is one you know well. Its whisper seduced you as you took your father’s throne. Just as it whispered to your father, so it whispers to your brother Baelus, just as it whispered your own name now.”

Chaelus closed his eyes. Against the burning tapestry of sunrise beyond them floated the silver mask with the child’s face that had whispered from behind his throne since before he was born, the mask that veiled a face he’d never seen, and whose whisper had summoned him to his grave.

“Magus,” he said.

“Magus is no man. He’s the Dragon made flesh.” The slow smile returned to Al-Aaron’s face. “His wrath was unequaled when he found I’d stolen you from him.”

The nearby copse whispered as sunlight breaking through the branches lit upon the surface of the still and fetid pool. Voices and visions swirled about Chaelus, threatening to consume him but for the one question Al-Aaron hadn’t yet answered.

“You know much of me, Al-Aaron,” Chaelus said. “You know much of my father’s House. You know more than a boy, or even a knight not born of it, should. But that’s not what troubles me. It’s another thing. Tell me, Al-Aaron, Servian Knight, why did you raise me?”

“We shouldn’t remain here.” Al-Aaron climbed onto the back of Idyliss. “I’ve risked too much in showing you this, but I wanted you to know what hunts you. Now it’s seen you. It won’t be long before it comes to claim you.”

“Answer me,” Chaelus said.

“Roanwaith isn’t far from here. I know someone there who will give us rest. It will be our last until we pass into Sanseveria, where what is left of my Order awaits. Only there will you be safe.”

“Answer me!” Chaelus demanded.

Al-Aaron’s dark eyes hardened. They were no longer those of a child. Their depth strengthened with zeal. “Because it’s you, Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius, that the Dragon covets and fears above all others. If you would regain your kingdom, you will come with me to Sanseveria. I will help you defeat the Dragon. But if the Dragon takes you first, know that not only will your own House fall, but so will the rest of the Pale as well.”

Chapter Two

Roan

Twilight faltered through the gathering storm. A drumbeat echoed beneath it.

Chaelus looked down upon the Village of Roanwaith. His fever had quickened since the darkness of the cenotaph that morning. Their rest since then had only been brief.

A chill swept through him, a shadow of the Dragon itself.

A whisper in the dark.

A whisper in the dark from great wings of shadow spreading out as he drowned alone in the watery void of his tomb. The whisper of Magus in the dark, uttering poison to him, even as he died in fever upon his throne. The same whisper that Magus, or the Dragon, had delivered to his father, it did so now to his brother Baelus as well.

Bloodstained snow.

Over Baelus, wounded on the field of battle, Chaelus had risen up against their father. In doing so, it seemed he had damned them both. The blood of the father is the blood of the son, and the Dragon wanted him because he was his father’s son. So now the Dragon haunted Baelus as well.

The blood of his father weighed heavy at Chaelus’ side. The tremor of his hand diminished as it tightened over Sundengal’s hilt.

To silence a whisper and win his kingdom back, the kingdom of his father, the kingdom he’d never wanted.

The keep of Hasslyd, Roanwaith’s queen, stood dark over the village beneath. The slumbering shape of the inn rested atop the ruined wall surrounding it. The acrid stain where Chaelus had left the bodies of its villagers to burn, still marked its bleached stones.

But today, the drumbeats came for her.

“It’s the march of the dead,” Chaelus said. “Their queen has fallen. They’re taking her to the cenotaphs.”

Behind him, Al-Aaron’s face had turned ashen. “Then Hasslyd’s beyond our help,” he said. “Draw your cloak. Conceal your face as they pass, even Idyliss. Yours shouldn’t be seen here. Your war with them hasn’t been forgotten. For now, you’d do best to remain dead.”

A black-robed and hunchback priest passed beneath the broken arch that reached above the happas. He held his hands above him, the chain of the incense burner held taut between them. The ball swinging from his left hand welled with fragrant smoke. The flattened bronze ring of the Giver hung about his neck, swinging to the staggered rhythm of both drum and step.

The priest’s pale face turned upward, his sunken eyes closed, a scowl laced with ecstasy stretching across it. His lips trembled as he chanted in the Gorondian tongue. Behind him, a great cart bore the corpse of Hasslyd, pulled by four black-robed apprentices. Small yellow flowers wreathed Hasslyd’s brow above a crimson veil. Two more of the holy men followed, drums around their necks, beating out the rhythm of their death march.

Villagers and sordid guardsmen gathered behind them, perhaps two score together and all with their faces veiled. They were silent save for the few who followed their priest in the muttering of words they couldn’t have understood.

When the day of the Dragon had come

All of the souls were seized with envy

At the price that had been paid by some

As a torch lit a fire within them.

Chaelus pulled his hood lower, withdrawing into it, reining Idyliss onto the raised curb stones of the happas, and the sheltering shadow of the wood that ran alongside of it. He lifted his cloaked arm before his face as if to ward off the miasma of the dead.

To spread the words they had heard

Rejoicing they were already dead

As they slept in their beds

The truth of their vanity fed.

The column passed.

“The Dragon’s Sleep has fallen here,” Chaelus said.

“No.” Al-Aaron reached behind, pulling forth the bundle concealing his sword.  “It’s something worse.” He looked at Chaelus sideways. “No hail or challenge was made to us from either the procession, the guards, or the village. We’ve hidden our faces, but not our arrival. Even in their time of woe, the Measure of the Roan Kingdoms and its rule over your people shouldn’t have been forgotten.”

The wall encircled the nearest half of the village, arching away as it rose beneath the shadow of the inn above. The thinning moonlight cast long shadows across the wall to reveal the fluted traces of a maker’s skill that had long ago been lost. They ran across its weathered face as it spiraled at last into the abrupt and broken arch. The peeling plastered face of a thatched guard tower stood beyond. Torn crimson banners marked with the Prostrate Cross draped from the broken twist of the arch above.

“The trappings of the Theocracy have come far to be seen upon the House of a Roan Lord,” Chaelus said.

“It’s been long since Hasslyd ruled here,” Al-Aaron said. “The war you made with her left her weak. She would have been all too willing when the Taurate came to her with offered hand.”

Chaelus stiffened at the rebuke. “I didn’t bring this shadow here.”

“No. But neither should you forget it was from its darkened ruin you were raised.”

Al-Aaron loosened the bundle and eased it beneath his cloak. A queer silence ebbed across the threshold of the open gate as the clod of Idyliss’ hooves echoed against it. Beyond the gate the speaker stone, draped again in tattered crimson cloth, rose above the stones of the happas as it continued past. The villagers passed or stood muttering in darkened doorways unconcerned by the presence of strangers among them.

Nestled beneath the shadow of the arch of the ruined wall, empty stables waited beside the smoldering light of the tavern. Mirthful voices babbled beyond its open door.

Chaelus slowed.

“Why do you stop?” Al-Aaron asked.

“It’s been long since I’ve heard laughter.”

“Don’t be seduced. Hasn’t their queen just passed? The veil of the Dragon blinds them, just as it blinds you to the shadow that consumes this place.”

Thunder cut across the air and Idyliss shifted. Chaelus soothed her as Al-Aaron dismounted.

Al-Aaron seized his arm.

“Make your way to the chapel beyond the village,” he said. “There you’ll find the one we seek. He’s the chief priest and a friend of my order. His name is Joshua. His is a holy place; you will be safe there until I return.”

Apprehension gripped Chaelus at the thought of Al-Aaron’s departure, but not for the boy, for himself. The threat of losing the boy surprised him.

“You shouldn’t go alone.”

Al-Aaron stared at him. “I fear more if I don’t. Do only what I’ve asked you and don’t waver from it. The shadow of the Dragon’s already here. It will test you. Now go.”

A second crack of thunder sounded out. The scent of jasmine struck at Chaelus. He closed his eyes against the memory and regret that it summoned. He opened them to find Al-Aaron gone and the fullness of night descended upon the village.

***

The shadows welcomed Al-Aaron just as they used to.

They, like he, hadn’t forgotten. His mouth split into a grin as he slipped, silent and without effort, into their familiar embrace. The heavy sounds of the world fell dreamlike and distant behind him. His gift remained, learned in the darkness as a beggar thief, to listen to the whispers, the rattle of chains and the oiled creak of leather, the crumpled rustling of broken leaves upon the wind.

And a whisper.

Al-Aaron’s smile faded.

The Dragon’s whisper. He could smell its pungent decay, its caustic touch upon everything. The stain it left sharpened the presence of everything around him and stared back at him through eyes that shouldn’t be.

But the Dragon didn’t rule him. Not anymore. Now he would meet it at his choosing.

The night deepened and the colors grayed. The silent eyes of villagers looked out through still darker doorways as Al-Aaron passed. The grief they suffered had little to do with the death of Hasslyd. Within each of them, the shadow of the Dragon turned. Their stares followed him.

The fires from the inn diminished against the night. Above the longhouses, a mist gathered beneath Hasslyd’s keep. It had started there. What had she done? What could Hasslyd have been promised to make a sacrifice so great, to have condemned so many of her own to be taken by shadow?

The wind fell still as thunder pealed across the void. The chill of the night caused Al-Aaron’s breath to gather.

A dark figure stepped out from the doors to Hasslyd’s hall, searching. Shadow consumed its form. Al-Aaron’s smile returned. He’d found it. He had found the Dragon.

A flush of crimson robes billowed next to him, unfettered by the rain.

The ghost of Malius smiled, his voice little more than a tremor above the storm. “Keep him safe for me.” His spirit faded. His stay no longer than any time before.

Al-Aaron swallowed the pride in his throat that always came with the presence of his Teacher. Only when Chaelus reached Joshua would he be safe, and this would only happen if the Dragon had its attention on something else.

Al-Aaron’s grin widened, the pride in his throat swelling into his chest. He would do what no one else had done, what only Malius and the rest of the Servian Lords ever could have. He would summon the Dragon to him. It wouldn’t suffer to pass upon the soul of one of the Servians it had sought so hard to destroy.

Al-Aaron stepped out from beneath the shadow of the eaves. He swept the binding and furs away from Baerythe. The soft blue light of its blade burned through the thin white gossamer that embraced it. Upon the air, songs once sung by the Cherubim and heralds of old danced upon the storm.

The Dragon turned towards him, a pillar of shadow. The azure light of Baerythe reached out to it. The Dragon raised its hand. The mist swirled beside it, another shadow birthing within it. The same mist swirled at Al-Aaron’s feet as the truth of his failure swept through him. Dread filled the air behind him as he turned.

Shadow filled his vision. The empty eyes of the Dragon stared down at him, dark and wretched pools beyond a chain mail veil. The glow from Baerythe’s blade succumbed beneath it.

The Dragon’s voice spoke his name with an iced breath.

“Al-Aaron.”

The rain deepened. The Dragon spoke another name.

“Chaelus.”

Al-Aaron’s throat tightened. He thrust Baerythe upward. The distance between Al-Aaron and the shadow widened. The Dragon, brought its short blackened blade forward, catching Baerythe upon it. The swords locked, blue light washing over the blackened bands of the legion lorica the Remnant wore, the malevolence of the Dragon’s shadow pulsing from beyond the armored veil of its helm.

Forgotten stories by heralds of old returned to Al-Aaron; songs of the Dragon, and of the Remnants which served it, the quickened husks of the souls it had already spent.

The songs of the Cherubim fell away. Only the measured sound of the Dragon’s breathless whisper remained behind its veil.

“I’ve found him,” it sighed.

Fear gripped Al-Aaron. In a sweeping motion he swung Baerythe and himself away. But not before the Remnant’s blade fell, cutting down across Al-Aaron’s arm. Though it didn’t cut deep, frozen fire burned into him, lashing at his senses. He staggered from the pain and the chilled fingers reaching out from it. But more than this, he staggered from the sudden understanding that overwhelmed him. It was by his own pride that the Dragon had tricked him. It had used him, and he had led it to Chaelus.

The Remnant turned in the direction of the chapel, its breath suspended about it like a second veil.

Clutching the growing weight of his wounded arm, Al-Aaron’s failure closed about him. Tears welled in his eyes as he ran with a fool’s hope toward the chapel.

Chapter Three

Waith

The rain drew against the village, a muted curtain, colors faded beneath it. Doorways on the happas stared back through the veil. Mud swelled. Lightning flashed upon the timber walls of Hasslyd’s hall. Her shredded banner tossed. The wind howled with a baleful cry.

Once more, the scent of jasmine summoned Chaelus.

Jasmine, and the musk of swamp and smoke. The gentle crush of veil and the soft press of lips beneath.

Faerowyn.

A vision of her, or her spirit, stood against the glow of the tavern door. Hearth and lamp light settled like a halo about her. Beneath a black cowl, her crimson veil burned with the brilliance of embers. Her dark eyes called to him just as they used to.

But it wasn’t her. It couldn’t be.

Still he whispered her name, “Faerowyn.” His voice sounded hollow and grievous against the storm.

The distance vanished. Her cold hand clutched his.

Beneath her veil, the scent of jasmine fled before the nauseous sweet smell of decay. Thick, garish paint bled in the blowing rain. A hag, her skin gray and faded. A shadow turned within her. She stared back at him, beholding nothing.

Still her hand gripped him, her voice a whisper he already knew well.

“Chaelus.”

Chaelus urged Idyliss past her.

Lightning split the night again, and the longhouses succumbed beneath the brilliant glow as he rode. Beyond, the fields lay fallow and wasted, littered with the bloated filth of forgotten beast and harvest.

The storm light dimmed. The warmth of fire beckoned from beyond a narrow doorway, a thin pillar of azure smoke rising from the center of the chapel’s conical roof.

Carvings marked the lintel above the door: the sigil of the House of Waith resting within the sacred circle of the Creator.

The door moaned in the wind. It opened to the bent silhouette of a man awash in the glow beyond. Chaelus found no voice to call out, but the man raised his own aged voice above the tempest.

“What do you seek?”

Chaelus dropped from Idyliss, his hand on Sundengal. The length of the happas and the eyes of the longhouses were empty. The whisper of the old woman was silent.

“I seek a priest named Joshua,” Chaelus said. “I’ve come with a boy.” Chaelus withheld the honorific that revealed the boy’s knighthood. “His name is Aaron.”

“Where is he?”

“He’ll come.”

The man looked beyond him into the growing abyss of the storm. “Then the doorway’s no place for our talk.”

The man weighted himself against a wide branch stave as he retreated through the narrow passage. Chaelus squinted against the light and followed him.

A broad smile stretched the old man’s face, but his eyes revealed little. “If it’s the boy you wait for, then feel welcome. Feel safe. I’m Joshua.” He chewed on his lip. “And you must be Chaelus, once Roan Lord of the House of Malius.”

Chaelus drew his hood back, the sting of rain in his eyes.

“Don’t fear your past here,” Joshua continued. “It’s but chaff, like so many of the other things we do well to leave behind.” He frowned for a moment as his voice faltered. He placed his hand upon Chaelus’ wrist.

Chaelus winced at the chill, like that of the old woman in the storm.

“Warm yourself by the fire,” Joshua said. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Twelve hammered silver rings hung between the twelve open doorways around them. The flat discs captured the sullen red glow of the fire light. The fragrant musk of incense held thick upon the air. Twelve stone seats surrounded the fire burning in the center of the room; there to wait for the return of the Giver and the twelve whom he would choose. Chaelus sat down beside the fire. He eyed the open doorways, then settled his sight upon the one through which they’d come. Joshua leaned his stave against the wall and raised a small copper cooking pot to a hook above the flame.

Water pooled around his boots. The memory of Faerowyn and the whisper of the old woman wouldn’t fade.

Joshua raised his hollow stare as he stooped over the fire. “You’ll find that many things aren’t what they seem.”

Al-Aaron appeared like a ghost within the doorway.

He held his left arm close to him. It was bound and bloodied. With his other he carried his sword, bound in gossamer. An azure light showed beneath its wrapping.

Chaelus stood.

Joshua did n’t, instead crumbling leaves into the pot. “The weather’s become fierce, has it not?”

“You’re the high priest,” Al-Aaron said, “yet you do not march with your queen.”

“Such sentiment becomes lost to one who’s soon to follow.”

Al-Aaron came forward. “When did the Dragon come here?”

The kettle trembled as Joshua removed his hand from its chain. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“It walks among you. I wouldn’t have thought even the Fallen Ones would be so blind.”

“That’s because they’re dead.”

A thick, palpable silence descended.

“What?” Al-Aaron asked.

“Less than a fortnight ago, the Servian Lords were murdered as if they were one. Their assassins wielded Gossamer Blades.”

Al-Aaron recoiled as if Joshua had struck him. “It’s not possible.”

“A Servian Knight surrendered to each them. Then they escaped and murdered their captors.”

“It’s trickery.”

Joshua raised his eyes, his voice gaining strength. “It doesn’t matter now. The persecution of the Theocratic Council and their Taurate won’t falter this time.”

“What are you saying?”

“That I’ve been hiding for too long.”

“Do you believe this?”

Joshua’s eyes grew wide. “It doesn’t matter what I believe! The Fallen Ones have been returned to their master. The die has been cast. The Taurate will now have the willing support of the Theocratic Council. From here forward, our persecution will seem more like redemption.”

Al-Aaron remained silent, his face uplifted.

The kettle trembled.

Joshua rose and lifted it, placing it on a wide stone beside the hearth. He stared into the fire. His voice sounded frail. “I’m tired. I’ve been tired a long time and you’re so very young. I’ve walked long enough with the Servian Order.”

The front door crashed open. The storm rushed in. The fire flared before the room plunged into the twilight of the storm. Joshua’s face thinned. A shadow turned within him, its illusion unveiled, just as with the woman in the storm. Unlike her though, Joshua knew it. Yet he didn’t seem to care.

Unmoved, Al-Aaron rose and stepped towards Joshua. “Do you believe the Prophecy has changed?”

Joshua recoiled. “Everything’s changed. You choose not to see!”

“I am afraid it is you who’ve lost your vision.”

“No. I don’t think so.” Joshua’s voice lowered again. He leaned forward. “I know that more than the Dragon’s Sleep has fallen here. I know that we wait in the Dragon’s shadow and we are woe to find any defense against it.”

“It is woe indeed to be without hope.”

“Don’t pity me. Save it for yourself.” Joshua, seized by a fit of coughing, fanned his arm toward the village. “I assure you that it’s not for my character that I suffer the same fate as them.” Straightening, he stared into the still glowing embers. “I don’t suffer from their lack of faith.”

“That is why you’ve fallen.” Al-Aaron turned towards Chaelus. “It’s time to go.”

Al-Aaron stopped within the passage and looked back toward Joshua. “It isn’t too late to stop this madness.”

Joshua turned away. “I’m so sorry that it is.” As the door shut between them, Joshua’s voice followed them. “Flee while you can.”

The rain gave way to a greater darkness. A low mist hung upon the whispering wind. Idyliss whinnied restless from where she wandered nearby.

The markings on Chaelus’ brow began to burn. He reached for Sundengal.

Al-Aaron touched his hand. The dark stain of blood marked its wrapping.

“It won’t protect you in this,” he said.

Chaelus’ consciousness fell to shadow. Darkness exploded beneath an azure flame.

***

Al-Aaron waited as Chaelus tumbled to the ground.

The Remnant which hoped to claim him leaned down in pursuit, appearing strange, almost like child going after a lost sweet. But then the Dragon, having already once suffered Chaelus’ loss, would have its attention on nothing else.

Al-Aaron plunged Baerythe down.

The Remnant’s faceless veil gave a slow turn in surprise as Baerythe’s length penetrated between the bands of its blackened lorica. Blue flame swirled about it. Tremors claimed it. The Remnant’s armor buckled inward.

Al-Aaron pulled Baerythe free. Wind rushed from the Remnant’s tumbling husk, brushing past him. It smelled pungent and sweet, for the scent of the soul that had been set free.

Al-Aaron’s wound cried out.

Two pillars of shadow stood across the narrow clearing, the mist of their making still gathered about them. Beyond them, at the edge of the darker forest night, Magus reined in a black steed.

Chaelus stirred on the ground, an awakening moan upon his lips.

Al-Aaron stepped before Chaelus as the two Remnants, now fully summoned, marched towards him. Their black legion blades hissed as they withdrew them from their scabbards. Beyond the Remnants’ veils, the ire of the Dragon clamored. If the scent of a soul was sweet, then the scent of one made captive held like iron upon the tongue, like the pungent odor of death, but all the worse for the suffering it carried.

The smell washed over Al-Aaron as he narrowed the distance between them. Around him, the ghost songs of the Cherubim sounded again.

Beyond the Remnants themselves, the Dragon, Magus, waited. It hadn’t come for him, but for the return of one he’d taken from it.

The Remnants fell to Baerythe as Al-Aaron passed.

The songs of the Cherubim faded.

Al-Aaron lowered the blackened length of Baerythe’s gossamer blade beside him. Blue flame still trickled across its edge. Behind Al-Aaron, the husks of the Remnants collapsed and buckled upon the shadows that bound them. The souls they’d held billowed past, the glow of blue flame dancing upon them.

***

Chaelus awoke to his head pounding, his vision blurred. He lay upon the ground. Al-Aaron stood nearby, surrounded by the fallen bodies of armored men. Darkened legion helms, skirted in mail, concealed their faces above blackened lorica. Short stabbing blades, widened at their tips like teeth and blackened like their armor, lay on the ground beside them.

Before Al-Aaron, a single rider leveled a stave bearing the standard of the Taurate, the circle Imperious inscribed with the X of the Prostrate Cross. His black mount reared beneath him.

The azure flame from Al-Aaron’s blade illuminated the silver child’s face beneath his cowl. Magus’ whisper - the Dragon’s whisper - caustic and sweet, drifted from it.

“Why do you still stand?”

Chaelus struggled to his knees. The ground beneath him and the enemy before him wavered. Impotent rage coursed through him.

Al-Aaron stood calm, holding his wounded arm close. He raised his sword upright with the other. The thin white cloth that bound the steel had blackened.

“Because I remembered what protects me.”

Magus turned his stare towards Chaelus as a smile surely passed across his unseen lips. He urged his mount forward. His voice grew coarse as it drew in.

“Death suits you well, Master.”

Al-Aaron stepped between them. “You can’t have him.”

Magus and beast sprang back, blocked by something unseen. He screamed with the sounds of the damned as he pulled the beast up short. “Your kind is dead and your ashes have been scattered. I know this!”

“Then it’s from the ashes we’ve returned. I hold no fear of you.”

Magus screamed again as the beast reared once more beneath him. Al-Aaron remained steadfast, his sword aglow with soft blue radiance. Barely, he whispered, “Go back.”

Magus pulled away as if stricken by the flame, crashing his steed back into the wood until the darkness and mist there consumed them.

Chaelus could only stare into the wood where Magus, where the Dragon, had fled. The weight of its shadow was only surpassed by that of his shame. He hadn’t even raised his blade against it, against the thing that had taken everything from him.

Al-Aaron lowered his own, its supernatural fire extinguished. He staggered over the corpses, his breathing weak. His eyes dimmed. He held out his hand toward Chaelus.

“We have to hurry,” Al-Aaron said. “The Prophecy of the Evarun has begun.”

Chapter Four

Effigy

Chaelus watched the pallid gossamer stretch taut beneath Al-Aaron’s trembling fingers. It pressed against the oiled surface of the steel, overlapping as he guided it up the length of the blade. The steel cast blue in the morning light, like the mystical aura and flame it had held the night before.

Sunlight filtered through the forlorn branches above, branches made bare by the autumn’s tide. Only odd leaves, stragglers remained. The great oak twisted and bent itself behind him, its roots stretching out as it reached high above the small hollow in which they rested.

Al-Aaron leaned over the sword, weary, lost in his task. He steadied the blade with his wounded arm. He still wouldn’t speak of it. Only at Chaelus’ insistence had he even let him tend to its dressing. The bleeding had stopped, but from what he had glimpsed of it, and from what he had seen of the adversary they’d faced, it was no normal wound. Whatever poison it carried drew Al-Aaron further away with each moment that passed.

The blackened cloth of wound and blade lay discarded at Al-Aaron’s feet.

Chaelus knelt beside him. His own fever wore at him, but he said nothing of it. Not while Al-Aaron suffered. But there was something he would say, one question that he had to ask, that his pride feared to say.

“How did I fall while you remained against them?”

Al-Aaron looked up at him. “It was the Dragon’s Call. The poison of the Dragon’s blood awoke within you. There was nothing you could do.”

Chaelus struggled against Al-Aaron’s reply and everything it meant. How could he destroy the Dragon when it could strike him down with a whisper?

“Then how do I to defeat it?”

“By lighting a fire.” Al-Aaron gave a weary smile. “I’ll need it to purify.”

Chaelus played along. “The smoke will reveal us.”

“The Dragon has already found us. It was waiting within you, within both of us. I’d forgotten. Hopefully we can reach the safety of Sanseveria before it returns. The Dragon is eternal. So too must be the power you wield against it. Sword or spear or bow cannot harm it. You can’t hope to defeat the Dragon alone.”

The discarded gossamer appeared already burnt. Its substance was brittle and frail.

“What’s become of it?” Chaelus asked, pointing to the cloth.

Al-Aaron returned to the sword and continued its binding. He didn’t pause in his reply. “It’s been spoiled by the Dragon’s taint.”

Chaelus bristled at the memory of his failure. The dark shadows of men brought down by the hand of a child, while he had watched and done nothing to stop them, letting Magus, the Dragon, escape him. It sickened him and it left behind something else he had yet to ask. “How did you defeat them?”

Al-Aaron looked up at him, holding his gaze. “I didn’t. They didn’t fall by my power. I’m but a channel. The sword is only a symbol.”

“No symbol wounded you after you left me. Forget that you’re only a child. I’m familiar enough with your oath. It was a man’s blade that pierced you.”

Al-Aaron pressed the gossamer’s end beneath the hilt of the sword. He stared into the depth of the steel. “They weren’t men.”

“No beast is cloaked in the arms of the Theocracy. They weren’t ghosts.”

“Not beasts, not ghosts. Remnants, made from the husks of those the Dragon has spent.”

“You say they’re dead?”

“No, not dead. They’re the servants of the Dragon and the dead serve no purpose to it. Only the living may be possessed by its shadow. They’re what remains. It’s within the cenotaphs that they’re made.”

Chaelus’ throat thickened.  His vision wavered. The same shadow from the cenotaph pulsed beneath the surface of everything before him, like a face behind a veil. Everywhere, save for the soft glow emanating from Al-Aaron, and even from himself, until at last both light and shadow faded away.

Al-Aaron, unmoved, laid the sword upon the fur beside him. He wrapped the blade within it, binding it finally again in sinew as he spoke. “They’re not dead. Nor are they men anymore. The Dragon’s shadow has consumed them, their souls lost until only the vessel of their wasted flesh remains. Until now I only knew them in stories and legend. They haven’t walked among us since before the Expulsion. They were the wizards’ minions; the dancing horde. That they’ve returned to us, and so disguised, is grave news indeed.”

“What of Magus?”

Al-Aaron paused, setting the bound blade beside him. “Magus is the mask of the Dragon itself. Not flesh corrupted, but the Dragon made into near flesh. It’s as close as the Dragon may come to our image, which was made in the Rua’s own. Even your father succumbed to its lies. You stood no chance against it. Not then. Not now.”

Chaelus staggered to his feet and began to gather the scattered dead wood around them, buried beneath the fallen leaves, and in short time he had the timbers piled together. The fire started after only a few strikes of his flint. Leaning over the small pyre, he shifted the wood as the flame grew, consuming the kindling at its center.

Al-Aaron turned his gaze into the burgeoning flame. “The Dragon is eternal. All that is now has already been so before. Ever since the Expulsion a century ago, the Dragon has waited as its seed silently spread across the Pale. The failing of the Servian Lords opened the door for its return. The Line they guarded was already broken. The Dragon had already been set free.”

Chaelus withdrew his stoke from the fire. The failing of the Servian Lords, he thought, and the failing of his father. “It was with the Schism of your Order that the Servian Lords failed.”

“No. The Schism was only the consequence of it. The failure of the Servian Lords came long before. It began the day their promise was broken, the promise they made to watch for the Dragon’s return in themselves.”

Al-Aaron’s voice trailed away. He stared at his wounded arm. “The wall we call the Line, like the gossamer bound swords we bear, is a symbol, meant to be honored, but not the end in itself. The Line they truly failed to protect was one within their hearts. People will say that the fall of the Servian Lords happened quickly and without warning. But they were dead long before breath ceased to come from their lips. Each of them, chosen by the Giver to defeat the Dragon a hundred years before, was eventually seduced by the Dragon itself, just like the Gorondian Wizards were before them.

“Only your father, Malius, was spared their fate. He was spared by the death you gave him, for only the living may answer the Dragon’s call. The other eleven have now answered to the Dragon they came to serve. Now the Dragon hunts for the one who can take your father’s place, the one it has marked. The same mark you bear above your brow.”

Chaelus stood and leaned against one of the great roots that stretched around them. He pressed his face into his hands and passed them over the runes upon his brow. He felt the pulse of the darkness he had just seen beneath everything. “I feel I’ve walked into a dream.”

“It’s the dream of the life you once held that you must walk away from. It’s from the Dragon that I took you and it’s the Dragon that comes for you now. With you, it hopes to make its own dark prophecy complete, when the twelve who’ve fallen rise in fealty to it.”

Chaelus lowered his reeling head. The light of the fire, faint in the sunlight, danced upon the bare face of the rocks around it. “Then by what you say I’m already damned, just like my father.”

“This is what the Dragon wants you to believe.”

Chaelus watched the light fade from the stones as the small fire ebbed behind him. Just like everything he had known or loved had already done. “And what do you believe?”

“That there’s hope, that you have a choice. But there are other losses you carry. There are wounds you have yet to speak of. Promises of your own, perhaps, that were broken.”

Chaelus turned away. He felt again the cold touch of the old woman’s hand. He remembered the sweet scent of jasmine that had lured him to her.

“Her name was Faerowyn,” he said.

“She was someone you loved.”

Chaelus’ voice fell distant as he saw her with his mind’s eye again. “Her beauty was a fire to me.”

“You were with the Lossons, exiled by your father.”

“So it was for her as well, but her family rose to high station within the Theocracy. Her father was a member of the Theocratic Council itself. Only the High Priests of the Taurate held reign over him. If, that is, even they truly did.”

“All men fall,” Al-Aaron whispered.

“Her family was surrounded by the luxuries their circumstance afforded,” Chaelus said. “Promises were made for her that her family couldn’t ignore; everything she wanted, everything that the prince of a Roan Lord could never offer her.”

“Then Malius summoned you back.”

“Yes. There was once a time when I’d hoped his world would never become mine.”

Al-Aaron stared into the flames as he reached for the pile of spent gossamer beside him, clutching it unceremoniously within his fingers. He held it above the flames as one end of the darkened cloth fell from his grasp, hanging wind-tossed above the fire that reached up to meet it. The cloth withered above the heat, giving off an acrid stench that filled the air. As the parched threads erupted into flame, he let the gossamer fall. He closed his eyes, his lids shrouded gray above them.

“Tell me of the death of your father,” he said.

Chaelus sank again against the tree root. The weight of shame and memory pressed him there. His breath grew thin. “There’s no greater guilt I bear. Yet still it’s worsened, because I can’t remember how it came to pass.”

“Then tell me what you can.”

“I had returned from exile in answer to his summons,” Chaelus said. “The host of Roan Lords had gathered to him. They’d just beaten back the Khaalish horde. On the field of war I found my brother Baelus, of less years than you are now, lying wounded in the snow.

“It was for this that I challenged my father’s judgment. He couldn’t let it stand. He struck me and I saw darkness. I awoke and he was dead, his sword in my hand, his blood a fearful tapestry across the snow. No sooner had he died, than the gathered Roan Lords bowed in fealty before me.

“That is my shame – that’s how I came to sit on my father’s throne.”

“Your father died long before,” Al-Aaron confided. “And perhaps there is more you have yet to remember.”

“But either way his blood is on my hands.” To Chaelus’ surprise, anger welled within him; anger at his fate, at his loss, at his father, and at the promise of the child knight before him when every promise his order had made had been broken.

“You watched me fall,” Chaelus said. “You watched me as Magus – as the Dragon – poisoned me, just as it did my father. Why didn’t you save me then?”

Al-Aaron raised a stick, pressing one end of it into the still-burning cloth, setting glowing embers of it rising upon the air. His wounded arm diminished against him.

“You weren’t ready.”

***

Al-Mariam waited.

The needle passed unwavering, held in the Mother’s hand. The thin white cloth took up the dappled sunlight of the small white room into a fire all its own.

“I know it’s been long, my dear,” the Mother said. “You’ve already surrendered so much. But the time hasn’t come for this.”

The Mother’s voice flowed as did her hands, working threads of blue, green and gold. Her words were gentle, strong and deliberate. There was no mistake within them and Al-Mariam knew that, despite their closeness to each other, the Mother would brook no argument from one who had requested her counsel. But this time she would at least try.

“But, he’s my brother,” she said, the words coming out more rushed than she’d planned.

The Mother’s needle passed through the cloth once more, her thin lips unmoved.

“I know I’m ready,” Al-Mariam persisted.

“Then you know little, and less even than I’d thought.” The Mother set her cloth down, letting the needle rest on it. “You forget that it’s not your place to decide this. You’ve only just taken your oath and already you would so willingly cast it aside.”

Al-Mariam bit her lip as she stared at the ground. She drew her hands deep within the shadow of her robes. She listened to the remembered screams of the dying. The pitiful cry of little Michalas resounding above them all, as he was torn from her arms while the hands of the soldiers groped her. Above the sordid and jeering faces, she suffered most at the sight of the banner of the Servian Lord, Ras Dumas, tossing upon the gray sky.

Her voice trembled as she spoke. “I can’t abandon him.”

“No, my child,” the Mother said. “But your love won’t save him. Neither will your wrath against the one who took him, or even against the ones who defiled you. Be wary of what you call truth. There is only one, and it is patient and good. There are no others. Be wary of letting your passions rule you.”

“Than what would you have me do? I know Ras Dumas let him live. I know that for some foul reason he kept him for his own. I won’t abandon my brother just because the tower of Ras Dumas has fallen silent.”

“But you must. The loss of Dumas and the other Servian Lords is no small thing. The Dragon has reclaimed its servants, and we were caught unaware. I do not care for this veil which has passed over us.”

“It’s not Dumas that I care for!”

“And that is why you must be wary,” the Mother said. “Our fate is tied to that of the Fallen Ones, just as they are bound by prophecy to us. It may be the only thing that saves us. Don’t let your desire hide this from you.”

“What of Al-Aaron?  Does he not seek his own heart first?”

“The path upon which Al-Aaron has placed himself is a perilous one.”

“But you believe him.”

“No. But I believe in the spirit of Rua which works through him. His path can’t be bent. It’s a truth, I fear, for which he will suffer terribly. No. Do not be jealous of the child. I think you should pity him instead, for he’ll need it in the darker days to come.”

***

The burning motes drifted for a time before they fell.

Al-Aaron removed the charred stave from the dying coals as he watched Chaelus step away beneath the outstretched bower of the twisted oak.

The cold breath of Malius’ spirit settled against his ear.

“You nearly failed me, child,” Malius said.

“I’m…sorry,” Al-Aaron whispered.

“Don’t bother me with your sorrow. You were prideful and arrogant, and you nearly cost me my son because of it.”

The soft touch of Malius’ gloved hand brushed against his face. “But only nearly, my love. It’s no matter, now. There is still work left for you to do.”

Al-Aaron closed his eyes. “I don’t know if I can. My fever, the Dragon’s Sleep, already it claims me.”

Malius’ hand came to rest upon his wound. The chill of the poison drifted away.

“You need only bring him to the Hallas gate,” he said. “I will carry you until then.”

Chapter Five

Flesh and Bone

Chaelus reined Idyliss in.

The shadow of the Karagas Mun, the boundary of Gorondia, the land of the Dragon, stretched across the horizon. The fortification known as the Line, once watched over by the Servian Order, stretched unseen and forgotten along its length.

Beneath the dark border of the distant mountains, a chalk white cliff reached out like a long bone finger. Tall stands of pine crowned the summit of the cliff and gathered again along its base.

The sky was clear in the way that only comes after a storm.

Chaelus shifted uneasily at the sight of the ancient borders, both near and far. Together they had controlled his past, now it seemed they would control his future as well.

Aaron sat behind him in weighted silence.

“The edge of Sanseveria,” Chaelus observed.

Al-Aaron shifted. “The Garden of Rua lies at its heart. It’s where the members of my Order await us. There we’ll find our protection, and our rest.”

“The Garden of Rua. My father never spoke of it,”

“It’s a sacred place, a secret place.”

The ground fell to where the trees gathered at the base of the pallid cliff. A heavy mist clung about them. A thicker silence weighted the air.

With no other guidance from the boy, Chaelus led them forward.

Conifer trees stood dark and defiant above the tall grasses. Ancient oaks grew between them. The false promise of sunlight whispered through their leafless branches above.

Idyliss dug at the ground, her eyes wide, not unlike the night before. Chaelus stroked her neck and dismounted. “Something’s already here.”

Al-Aaron slumped down, his sword bundle in hand. “The Dragon is waiting. Let Idyliss go. She can’t go where we go.”

Before he knew he had, Chaelus released the reins from his hand.

To slay the Dragon and win a kingdom back.

Idyliss leaned into him, the strength and warmth and memories of her muzzle against his face. She would go on if he asked her to. Had she not so far? Within Idyliss’ dark eyes similar memories dwelled, but they were different as well. Idyliss saw only honor and duty. Yet it was he who’d been summoned. He wouldn’t ask the same of her.

Al-Aaron pulled the cover from his sword, letting it drop into the tall grasses. His balance wavered.

Chaelus laid his hand on Idyliss’ flank. She galloped south towards her duty, towards home.

“She’ll be safe,” Al-Aaron said.

Chaelus, concerned, drew up next to him. The pallor of Al-Aaron’s eyes had spread across his cheek and brow.

“I know,” Chaelus said. “She’ll find her way back, back to the white tower. I worry more for you.”

Al-Aaron dismissed him. “I’ll find my rest in the Garden.”

Chaelus caught him as he stumbled.

Al-Aaron’s stare was unfocused.

Chaelus held onto him as they walked.

The grasses gave way to the tangled growth of underbrush beneath the trees. Mist gathered in the low swells of the ground. Its touch felt like ice as they passed.

Thin traces of blue flame flickered along Al-Aaron’s gossamer blade. Against its glow, the shadows of the wood took on the visage of Remnants from the night before.

Chaelus kept his hand near Sundengal’s hilt.

The muted rush of broken water echoed through the trees, appearing in brief glimpses between them. Shallow and wide, the river broke over stones thrust up against its wake. Beyond it, the chalk pale of the cliff stood above them, just beyond the band of woods at its base. The broken and rust colored ground climbed up to meet it like flesh on sullen bone.

Al-Aaron slumped down beside the river’s edge.

Chaelus eyed him, and then the face of the cliff, its top obscured by the haze rising from the river’s opposite bank. The silence of shadow and mist gave its reply.

“We shouldn’t linger,” Chaelus said.

“Come closer,” Al-Aaron replied.

The markings on Chaelus’ brow grew warm. “The mist gathers.”

“Our speed won’t carry us from it.”

Al-Aaron turned slightly from the water, cupping his hands before him, water dripping from between his fingers. A gesture from his eyes motioned Chaelus down to him.

Chaelus knelt. The sunlight dimmed in the mist, but he could see what Al-Aaron held. The water shimmered in his hands, as thin shadows cascaded within it. The air near the water grew chill.

Al-Aaron looked into him, his voice a whisper. “The seed of the Dragon. It’s in the water, it’s in the air, it’s waiting inside all of us.”

Chaelus stood, stepping back as Al-Aaron released the water from his hands.

Al-Aaron stared at him, a blank expression for the moment upon his face. “It is time.”

A black wall of overlapping shields stood within the mist of the opposing bank.  Magus drifted behind them, a silent shadow. He carried the same standard as the night before, though this time careless across his shoulder as he edged his mount behind the line.

Al-Aaron hefted his sword and staggered into the shallow rushing water, his face still pale. The river muted his voice.

“Don’t challenge them, Chaelus. This is what it seeks. The Dragon only wields what power you give it. Have faith in my protection.”

Magus reined his steed in a cascade of stone at the base of the broken slope.

“My shadow grows within you, child.”

Al-Aaron lowered his sword to his side, its aura settling upon the surface of the water. “Still, you can’t stop us.”

Chaelus drew Sundengal. The ring of it cut through mist and shadow alike. The time had come. And this time he would have it. “Nor will you stand after we’ve passed.”

The Remnant Legionnaires stepped forward, splashing into the river to meet him. From behind their shields rasped the teeth of their blades, beckoning a shadow all of their own.

Their lorica glistened, but not from the water. Shifting darkness covered them. The stench of decay clung about them like oil. The soulless shadow of the Dragon’s eyes burned within each of them, a cold fire beyond their chainmail veils.

The Remnants stopped just before they passed into the azure light of Aaron’s blade.

Chaelus kept moving towards the silver face of Magus beyond them. With a war cry he threw the weight of Sundengal’s steel against the waiting shield wall that stood between them. The river fought against him, but he slammed into his opponents, jarring shield and limb, forcing the one to the right of him backwards. Sundengal’s tip found its mark between the blackened plated steel plates of one to the left of him.

Some moments last longer than others.

The legionnaire, or Remnant, or Dragon, stared back at him with the eyes of no man. Beneath its armored veil, beyond the rough gray cloth that wrapped the pallid skin, the portal to its soul was nearly empty to all but the swirling malice of the Dragon within it. But within it there was something else watching him as well, something helpless buried deep beneath its grieving, a nearly silent voice attempting to cry out, until a gurgling snarl silenced it.

Chaelus’ thrust forced Sundengal down, turning it as he did, feeling for the response of the back of the black armor beyond. The Remnant hung rigid upon the blade, its haunting visage passed, a blistering wind cascading around it.

Chaelus yanked Sundengal free, forcing his way through the gap where the Remnant fell. The husk collapsed into the river behind him, the bright scrape of steel still resounding. To the legionnaires on either side of him, he paid no heed.

Blue light from Al-Aaron’s blade drifted upon Magus’ silver mask. “Come with me,” Magus whispered.

Chaelus stood alone in the torch lit darkness of his throne room.

“You will not hide from me, Dragon!” he screamed.

Magus stepped out from the edge of shadows behind the throne. He traced his hand along its crest. “For long you trusted my council. For long I protected you from your enemies. Don’t turn away from me now.” Magus stepped down from the dais. “Leave the child knight, and come back with me.”

“It’s from you that he saved me,” Chaelus replied.

“And I see that you’re better for your rest. Perhaps even better knowing many of the truths he’s told you, many of which I’ve protected you from all this time.” Magus turned away. “But still it’s alone that Baelus sits upon your throne. I don’t know how long he can suffer the wait of your return. Already there are so many who stand against him.”

“Only because you poison him just as you did me, just as you did to our father, just as you do to me again now.”

Magus held out his hand. His whisper descended. “But you could save him, and in doing so save everything, if you would just return with me.”

Chaelus closed his eyes. Fire burned upon his brow. He opened them to the brightness of a noonday sun, and another memory summoned against him.

The war sky had faded. The fires had gone and the smoke had yielded at last. But the whisper of Magus continued. “Let this be your rightful day.”

Sunlight glinted off shield, helm, spear and bridle upon the ridge above him. His Guard waited there, radiant. Their stone faces worn smooth by the pride of their feats, of the test that lay behind them and of their faith in their liege as well. The once white ruins of his father’s House rose above them, the blackened stone and timber of the great tower now reclaimed. Now he could rebuild what his brother and his father had both so miserably lost.

Chaelus spurred Idyliss to meet them. It was a new day. The bodies of the dead could stay behind him.

Al-Aaron’s grip upon his arm brought him back.

“Walk,” Al-Aaron urged. The strength of his voice still persisted beneath its tremor. With his voice, the weight of the river and the morning light returned.

The Remnants’ shield wall had withdrawn but it still waited before Chaelus, motionless in the shadows upon the shore. They had not closed the gap where one of their number had fallen. Magus held his beast in check beyond the open portal.

With a simple rush, Chaelus could end this with Magus impaled upon his blade. The whisper silenced and his kingdom returned to him. A new day.

His hands trembled around Sundengal’s hilt.

Al-Aaron stood beside him, his gossamer blade burning with blue fire. “Do as I say and we will pass through them. Or don’t, and all that you love will be lost.”

The voice of Magus sounded, thin and malevolent, as he led his mount into the shield wall’s gap. “Don’t think you can win this, child.”

“We will pass by you.”

“There will always be struggle with you,” Magus said. “Don’t think you can be freed of it.”

“Perhaps, but there will be no struggle here. Not on this day.”

Magus turned his silver face to Chaelus as he continued to speak to Al-Aaron. “You can’t escape, little prophet. Already your own end quickens. When it comes for you at last, you will know that I have him.”

Al-Aaron lifted his sword before him. “Follow me, Chaelus. Don’t look back. Don’t give your attention to it.” Wrapped in a halo of blue, Al-Aaron pressed forward towards the gap and Magus beyond.

He paced forward until the nostrils of Magus’ beast flared only an arm’s width away from him. Rearing its head, it retreated without command from its master. Slowly, inexorably, the steed fell backward, matching each forward step that Aaron took. The Remnants held motionless beside them, the black shield wall paling as the mist deepened.

Chaelus pressed down the fear and shame gnawing within him. Alone, Al-Aaron had saved him once more. Chaelus tightened his sword grip and followed, focusing on the light of the boy’s blade as Al-Aaron clambered up the crumbling slope, the glow obscuring the enemy around. The silver child’s face of the Dragon disappeared within its aura as Magus pulled away.

Yet still he felt him near. It was like the mingled clamor of insects, all of them calling to him, threatening him, seducing him. A single whisper turned at once into thousands. A thousand whispers, a legion, at once turned into one.

Behind him, the roar of the river broke as something stood against its wake. Chaelus looked back. The river and its bank stood empty. The mist had perished. The defeated Remnant was gone. So too were Magus and the shield wall through which they had only just passed.

Chaelus spun back to Al-Aaron, who waited, leaning exhausted against the base of the cliff. A narrow crevasse broke across its surface. Within its depth, a steep stair, carved from the heart of the rock itself, climbed high towards the summit above them.

Chaelus stopped. “They’ve vanished.”

Al-Aaron inclined his head. “They’re no further than they just were.”

“Then tell me, how does flesh and bone disappear?”

“It doesn’t. And you don’t listen. The Dragon has only taken itself back to which it came. The seed of the Dragon revealed. You would do well to heed my warnings. I don’t give them lightly. I only hope you didn’t summon them back to us.”

Weighting himself against the cliff, Al-Aaron ascended into the depths of the crevasse.

Chaelus returned Sundengal to her scabbard.

The promise of blue sky offered itself between forest and bleached stone above. Broken stones littered the steep and narrow stair. The steps leveled only slightly as it neared its summit, wrapping around the ruined base of a small tower rising out of the cliff and hidden from sight below. The watch towers had long since gone to ruin. Wildflowers and tall grasses grew amidst its scattered stones and within the small clearing about it.

To the south, the Northern March fell away in gentle rolling waves to the majestic gray peaks of the Albanjan Mountains. Beneath their northern end, where forested hills climbed to meet them, unexpectedly, the white spire of the House of Malius presented itself as a distant glimmer of reflected sunshine a hundred leagues away, a wayward beacon against the shadow that consumed it, and all that Chaelus had left behind.

To slay the Dragon and win his kingdom back, he thought. But it was his father’s kingdom, wasn’t it, and it was Baelus’ now. It was a kingdom he never wanted. So why did he do this?

Because of blood spilt on fallen snow. He did this because he had killed his father. Because, in the end, it was not a whisper in the dark but he himself who had brought ruin down upon his father’s House. Perhaps, in some way, it would be his atonement.

Around the little clearing, the woods pressed in but hesitated to consume it. At a place where the forest thinned, a marker stone lay toppled. The words inscribed upon it told the name of this place. It was in the lost language of the Evarun, unspoken since before the time of the Expulsion. Few men could read it.

Hallas Barren.

“The Gate of the Fallen,” Chaelus translated as he walked nearer. His voice trailed off. Beneath the marker’s shadow Al-Aaron lay crumpled, hidden amidst the tall grasses.

***

“Al-Mariam,” said the Mother.

Al-Mariam looked up from where she knelt in the hollow. The Mother stood alone upon the narrow path. The gentle blue of her shawl, set apart against her pale robes, shone like a jewel against the long and dappled shadows of the forest.

“Yes, Mother,” Al-Mariam replied as she lowered her eyes. She set her gathered timbers down and walked towards her.

The Mother reached out to her, her thin fingers barely visible beneath the sleeve of her robes as she touched her chin. “Come with me.”

“I’m honored, Mother.”

As Al-Mariam fell in beside her, her Teacher slid her arm around hers.

“Someone passed the Hallas Gate. Al-Aaron has returned to us.” The Mother raised her face, clearly waiting. “I see you have nothing to say to this.”

“What you would have me say?” Al-Mariam asked.

The Mother squeezed her hand. “Don’t mock me child, you are far too dear for that. Speak your heart. Isn’t that what you always do?”

Al-Mariam smiled inwardly at the Mother’s affection, tempered as always by the guilt of disobedience that burned within her. “I fear my heart fails me.”

“And it will, if that’s what you wish. But I choose to believe that grace is much wiser than either you or I may ever be. Its works are often, but not always, unseen. I have trust you will keep your vows.”

“But my heart hasn’t emptied of its need.”

“Nor should it, for its path is what led you here. But it’s not the only power that guides you. If it is, then fear for your brother you must, for he will surely perish. Our faith is everything, or it’s nothing. This is what you fail to understand.”

Al-Mariam sighed. “Then pray I may trust for now.”

“I do. The Younger will be here soon.” The Mother withdrew her hand, dismissing her. “Go and find Al-Thinneas. I’ve already sent him to welcome Al-Aaron, and the son of Malius whom he’s returned to us.”

Chapter Six

Shadow

Chaelus wiped his brow. Blood stung his eyes. Scars traced his arms from the path he’d cleared through the tangled wall of the forest.

He carried Al-Aaron over his shoulder. The boy had scarcely moved, waking only once since Chaelus had taken him into his arms and entered the woods. The boy’s words even then had only been as faint as his breath.

The forest itself was endless. The trees, ancient and bent, stood ever closer together. The sky, as well as the path they’d set upon, had disappeared. Tall pine had given way to the tangled branches of savage oak, their limbs hanging low and conspiring with the thick underbrush below.

The woods held silent save for the thrashing of his club, retrieved from the forest floor. No animal, bird, or creature spoke; perhaps driven off by the noise he made, or perhaps it was as it seemed, and nothing lived here at all. Shriveled berries and withered leaves were the only signs of life so far. Even the smell of decay and the vestigial carrion life it held had passed from here. Only void remained, like the void of death Al-Aaron had raised him from.

It shattered beneath the flickering red seal of a message, seen by the memory of a candle’s flame.

Chaelus’ fingers floated just above it, like they had when he’d received it; the summons from his exile with the Lossons. Chaelus’ touch lingered just above the seal of his father’s House, his chest tightening. Such a small thing to bring such dread upon his heart.

Chaelus shook his head until the vision fell away.

Al-Aaron moaned upon his shoulder through his fever-drawn haze.

Then the cold brush of winter fell.

Chaelus’ hand trembled over Sundengal’s hilt. Its blade, struck red with blood, lay where it had dropped through the snow between him and the crumpled form of his father. Baelus sobbed beyond him, his face turned into the snow, refusing to look. The other seven Roan Lords remained motionless around them, their faces indiscernible, their silence frozen upon the ice-filled air. Chaelus swallowed hard as he tried to control his fear.

A breeze stirred the snow upon the field until the blood beneath it disappeared. The murmur of the Roan Lords echoed around him as, one by one, they bowed before him.

Chaelus turned his eyes away. His breath caught still within his throat. The dour wake of the forest returned around him.

Behind him, a bitter sigh resounded through the bent and broken wood. The forest was speaking. Behind him, the path he’d only just cleared had gone. From the trees, shadows bled like oil, folding down amidst the branches.

His breath held like a vapor.

The Dragon’s whisper splintered across the frozen air.

“It is time.”

The ground shook. Cracks swallowed root and branch, the same shadow rising up from them with a nauseous sputter. The shadows pooled.

Chaelus stumbled back. The knotted wall of the forest pressed against him.

A black serpent rose from the ebon pool, towering over him, its skin flowing like oil over the darkness swirling within it. Its eyes were voids, darker even than the pool which spawned it. Its body lashed and coiled upon itself. Dark wings spread out from it like rain.

Chaelus’ brow burned with fire awakening within him. The frozen air pressed like a vice against his skin. Beneath it all, his strength surged. The Dragon stood revealed to him at last, with no polished mask before it. Here, in this place of promised hope.

He lowered Al-Aaron’s silent form to the ground. The boy’s eyes shifted beneath their lids. Chaelus drew Sundengal from its scabbard. His stomach churned, but neither vision nor oblivion claimed him. His heart raced. If this was to be the time, then he would let it be.

“Then let us end this,” he said.

The Dragon reared up. Its maw opened rows of sharpened bone.

With both hands, Chaelus hurled Sundengal’s edge at the Dragon’s flailing middle. Sundengal struck deep, passing through the coils. The Dragon screamed with the cry of every nightmare Chaelus had ever known.

And then another voice, a lighter voice, spoke his name.

“Chaelus.”

Bright and supple, like a cymbal, the voice descended in a light from above.  Three spirits hovered there, their beauty clothed only by the light which veiled them. The Dragon recoiled beneath them. Chaelus shielded his eyes against their glory, screaming out a voiceless cry against the wind which surrounded them in a shuddering gale.

The leftmost spirit smiled. “Chaelus, all that has come before you has passed. The shade of your life has fallen.”

The rightmost inclined her head. “You have died so that you may be given new life, a sacrifice so that others may live.”

The center one drew down to him as she reached out her hand to his brow. “But one more sacrifice still remains before your summons. The sword of your past must be broken.”

At her word, Sundengal shattered in a blinding thunderclap. Chaelus’ arms crumbled like sand beneath the blow. Amidst the still resounding chime of falling steel, Chaelus opened his eyes. The spirits were gone. Only the Dragon and its shadow remained, and it seized him in its coils. Its jagged maw rushed over him, swallowing his sight.

***

Michalas’ foot slipped. His knee slammed hard. Wet stone raked against his skin. His fingers and arms, cold and distant, pulled away from him a little more. Soon they would fail him.

He winced, pressing his body tighter to the cistern wall from which he clung. The sewer churned beneath him. Water dripped across his bare scalp, stinging his eyes and the still open wounds above them. He squinted at the small unreachable circle of light above.

The Angels hadn’t freed him only to leave him here to die, but he couldn’t escape through the sewers. He knew what its waters held. There had to be another way. He looked up to the distant spot of light above. The Angels would show him.

He searched with his feet across the slick stones.

He didn’t notice when his fingers failed, he only felt the blood pounding in his head as they grasped out to darkness. The slick stone scraped hard across his shoulders and legs as he fell, tearing his skin as he tumbled downwards.

He landed as fast as he’d fallen. The hoarseness of his breath and the pounding of his blood resounding in his head, keeping silent the sounds of the sewer that was, thankfully, still beneath him.

Hope trickled through his pain. His legs hung limp beneath him but wet stone pressed against his chest. He stretched his fingers, awakened by the bile clinging to them, gingerly across the surface of the ledge. No answering press of stone turned them away.

Michalas’ trickle of hope flowered.

His arms trembled as he reached out further. The frozen touch of water within the tiny seams of the stones greeted his fingers. Tears streaked across his cheeks as he wedged his hand into them. He pulled himself forward. Stone scraped across his back and his head. Finding another handhold, and then another, he pulled himself deeper into the unexpected passage.

Webs, their denizens gone, clung across his face and arms. This was a secret place, a forgotten place. Michalas smiled.

A frozen wind brushed his cheek with a familiar sweet and caustic smell. His smile faded.

A shaft of light split the darkness ahead of him, piercing from the left through a small hole, illuminating the passage before it. An eye had been carved around the hole, along with harried script, sometimes faded, sometimes not, of places and names now lost. The webs wavered in the air like ghosts, carried by the sick-smelling breeze.

Upon it, he heard the Dragon’s voice.

“It is time.”

“But the One hasn’t been returned,” said another, more caustic voice.

“The blood and failure of Malius runs deep,” the Dragon replied. “The son of Malius will  return. If not the elder, then I will take the next in line. The Fallen Ones will rise to complete their service to me. The failure of the servants of the Giver will be complete.”

“But what of the other?” a third asked with a languid hiss. “What of the One we didn’t expect?”

Michalas inched forward, closer so he could hear. He’d done just what the Angels had asked him to, just as he’d always done.  He’d delivered the message for his master, and then he’d returned.  But his master was one of the Fallen Ones, and the Dragon had already come to claim him.

Yet the Angels had told Michalas to stay.

And so the Dragon’s servants, its Hands, had tortured him, and left him in the cenotaph alone with the serpents that dwelt there.

The Angels rescued him but left him alone again, and he had no idea why. But the Angels knew, and if they did, perhaps the Dragon did as well, because it was speaking of him.

Michalas leaned closer. He winced as the warmth of the light touched him. Once he was sure it wouldn’t strike him down, he pressed his own eye against the one carved into the stone.

Beneath him, the tiny lights of the cenotaphs still glowed, each like its own star unto the night. At their center, the Dragon stood with the two who served him. Michalas’ master had called the Dragon, Magus. Its silver mask burned with the glow from the cenotaphs while the flesh of the two others, the Hands of the Dragon, shifted beneath the gray and white wrappings of their veils. Between them, black water trembled within the open cenotaph where they’d kept him.

The pale, drawn faces of two men left from Dumas’ court stared sightlessly at the edge of the shadows. They lay wasted on the floor like crumpled dolls, their backs against the cenotaphs from which they had been somehow spared; unaware of each other, and even less of themselves. They were listless, lost to the Dragon’s Sleep from which they suffered.

“We don’t know what consequence he’ll bring,” the Left Hand said. Veiled and cloaked in white, its robes glittered in the starlight of the cenotaphs.

“We don’t know his purpose,” the Right Hand offered, its threadbare cloak of gray but a shadow of its twin.

“He means nothing,” Magus replied to them both. “The blood of the Evarun doesn’t flow within him.”

“Are we sure?” both Hands of the Dragon said with a single voice. “What of the mark he bears?”

The water in the cenotaph shuddered. The slick forms of the creatures that had held Michalas crested the surface. Their razor black skin glistened as their forms rolled upon themselves.

Michalas caught his breath, but not before the notes of it rained downward.

Magus raised his head.

Michalas backed away. The glowing eye stared back at him in silence.

“What is it?” The Hands of the Dragon spoke again, as one.

“The child has returned,” the Dragon said.

Michalas clenched his eyes shut. The Dragon’s power grew with the attention he gave it. Michalas dug his fingers against the stone, so that the pain might divert his thoughts, then reached to the pallid markings ringing his brow, glowing cold beneath the wounds where the Hands of the Dragon had tried but failed to cut them away. The chill of their gaze passed through him. The Dragon could see him as if he were a candle in the night.

Michalas opened his eyes. Then, as much as he could in the shallow and narrow passage, he ran.

The walls and filth scraped against him, but less so than did the screaming of the Dragon’s voice that assailed him, following him through the souls of the very stones around him as it tried to force its chill of fear into his very bones. But, just as when its serpents had held him, their coils cutting against him, while the Hands of the Dragon plied their cruel tools against him, it failed.

There was little Michalas could do against the pain, weariness and revulsion that the Dragon had delivered upon him. Yet the one thing he did not feel, the one thing that the Dragon sought from him but could not find, was fear.

He had never felt it, because the Angels had always been with him.

The stones trembled as they changed, melting away like ice upon spring water.  The passage closed in ahead of him. Beyond it, a glow like the sun beckoned.

Michalas smiled. The Angels had returned. Just as they always did. Just as they’d promised him they would, from the first moment they brought him back home. He clenched his eyes shut again, and leapt.

Chapter Seven

Maddea

He was dead and risen once more.

Moonlight danced in a bright and silver arc down the length of Sundengal’s blade, miraculously whole, and still clenched in both of Chaelus’ hands where he knelt astride the rutted path. Al-Aaron slept beside him. The Dragon and its shadow had passed and the dire of the forest had gone with them. The normal night and its sounds had returned to take their place.

Death hadn’t taken him.

Yet the Dragon had tried. It had been no vision.

How he knew this, Chaelus wasn’t sure, but the truth of it settled deep like the fever still waiting within his bones. For a timeless moment, the Dragon of legend had feared him. For a moment, it had trembled beneath him; that is, until the spirits came. The Dragon had feared their glory even more until the one had cast Sundengal asunder, leaving Chaelus defenseless and alone against the Dragon’s ire.

Spirits or Angels, they weren’t a vision either and, like the Dragon, they seemed to have already claimed him. To save others, they had said. To be sacrificed, they had said. And so they had pressed their will against him.

He would not let them do so again.

Beyond the trees a gray stag, his head adorned with ivory fur like a crown beneath his antlers, broke through the gentle forest growth. He paused, motionless before Chaelus, returning his stare. The stag’s eyes, wells of the softest shadow, concealed themselves from him.

Chaelus lowered Sundengal. His hand neared the markings written upon his brow. Moonlight ablaze with an azure glow settled upon them both. The cervine prince rutted once at the ground. It bowed to Chaelus. Then it sprang away into the forest night, across the path that hadn’t existed a moment before.

A pale marker stone, pitted and worn, rose from the center of the path. A single rune, once carved deep but now so shallow that it seemed to be older than the stone itself, marked its face. It was the same rune borne upon Sundengal’s hilt amidst the twisted filigree of dragons. It was the rune of his father’s House - the rune of the Servian Order.

A mark, a line, and a serpent.

Angels, and the ones that served them, just as his father once had. Now Chaelus, his son, had come to them in his need.

The sound of Sundengal’s breaking still resounded deep inside Chaelus. Was it warning or was it prophecy? Sacrifice or calling, he claimed neither one. He only knew that Al-Aaron knew much more than he had said to him. But Al-Aaron’s eyes still slept behind their own dark veil, no more answers would come from him. The darkness they saw was a darkness Chaelus already knew all too well.

Chaelus returned Sundengal to its scabbard. He lifted Al-Aaron and cradled him within his arms. Beyond the marker stone the path descended into a wooded valley. Through the trees the floating lights of torches danced across its floor.

Water cascaded beside him. A small stream coursed between the pale stones covering the broken slope, the ruins of a wall long since fallen. At its base, a shallow stone well collected and released the water again into a gentle winding channel that cut across the valley floor. Rushes and tall grasses grew along the water’s edge and at the edge of the small pool where it led. Moonlight, freed from the sky above, danced across the surface of the water. The path descended the splintered stones set like a giant’s staircase, continuing to the pool’s edge and beyond.

The rustle of leaves broke the silence.

Beyond the pool, at the clearings farthest edge, two cloaked and hooded figures stepped out from the shadows. The larger of them threw back his hood and stepped out into the dappled moonlight. His olive features stood sharp, his grayed hair cropped close in a patrician style. The man’s blood flowed from no Roan House, but from the east, from the Theocracy. Chaelus had known many of them during his time in Lossos, and had even loved one of them, the favored sons and daughters of the Pale. The hilt of the man’s sword revealed itself from beneath his cloak.

Still holding Al-Aaron, Chaelus reached for Sundengal’s own.

“Chaelus, Lord of the Roan House of Malius.” The man spoke just as Al-Aaron did, in the tongue of Gorond. He pulled away his cloak, revealing the shorter stabbing blade of the Phennites bound in gossamer. Upon the breast of the black tunic he wore rested the white circle of the Servian Order. “I am Al-Thinneas. The lady Al-Mariam stands beside me.”

Cool dark eyes measured Chaelus from beneath her cowl. A slip of dark hair tumbled across them.

“We are Knights of the Servian Order,” Al-Thinneas said.

Chaelus felt Al-Aaron’s weight grow heavy against him, but it dimmed against the sudden weight of everything that had led him here. Like a cascade of stones upon a mountain slope, he could scarcely recall its beginning, only that everything had changed, and that he could carry no more of it.

“Then take him quickly,” Chaelus said. “He’s hurt.”

Al-Thinneas gestured to the pool. “Bring him across the Maddea’s water. Leave within it what sins you’ve brought with you.”

Beneath the rushes, the same pale stone lined the edge of the pool. Channels at each end fed it and then took the water away. Stone steps descended and then ascended through the water between them. Chaelus drew closer to the water’s edge. The bottom of the pool was obscured beneath the pale reflection of the moon. Ripples shattered it as he descended. The water soon swelled up to his chest, taking Al-Aaron’s weight as he floated upon its surface.

Al-Thinneas lifted Al-Aaron from Chaelus’ arms and his voice boomed. “Let go, and bow before your risen life.”

Chaelus’ head felt captured in webs, his limbs suddenly weak within the water. The marking of his crown felt frozen against his brow, its fire suddenly extinguished. Chaelus stumbled, dropping for a moment beneath the surface. He rose to the sounds of the vale surging back to him, the moonlight brighter than any sun, bathing the two tending to Al-Aaron in the azure glow he’d seen before. The scent of lavender filled the air. His sword and armor weighted him as he climbed up the worn steps from the pool.

***

Al-Mariam drove her nails deep into her skin, the pain sharp and keen as the barbarian son of one of the Fallen Ones rose from the Maddea, its holy water falling from his armor and unbound sword like rain.

His gaze passed from Al-Thinneas to her and remained. His eyes were an eternal gray, both bright and cool like a first snow fall. His new beard was not much longer than the dark hair scarcely covering the black marks ringing his head like a crown - the mark of the Dragon, the mark of the Prophecy of the Evarun.

She saw that Al-Aaron stared at her from where his gentle head rested in Al-Thinneas’ arms, the sorrowful veil of the Dragon’s Sleep drawn across his scarcely-opened eyes. He breathed in fits, lost within the miasma that claimed him. So much sacrifice only to be lost.

Al-Thinneas set Al-Aaron down alongside the rushes. He passed his hands over Al-Aaron’s mordant wound, undoing its binding. The wound was open, but it didn’t bleed. Thin black arms traced across the grayed flesh around it.

“What did this?” Al-Thinneas asked.

“Remnants are what he called them,” the barbarian replied. He stared at Al-Aaron, his eyes turning heavy and worn at their edges. “One night past. Their poison just claimed him.”

Al-Thinneas studied the barbarian, just like he studied everything that was new.  Little escaped his scrutiny. “Only the Mother can help him now. She will know what to do.”

The barbarian lifted Al-Aaron.

Al-Mariam stepped back. No. Nearly every part of her wanted to flee from all of it, from what the barbarian’s presence meant, from the promise of the prophecy he held, and from everything he threatened to destroy; but not all of her.

Was this what terrified her the most? She hadn’t felt it like this before. It was a tremor in her very soul, and still his eternal stare wouldn’t leave her. No. Al-Mariam kept her face composed as the skin of her palms finally broke. Pain shot through her as the warmth of her blood washed against her fingers. Her vision and her heart sharpened in succession. She would not allow this. She stepped forward. “Set the child down. Your blade cannot pass.”

The barbarian’s crystal eyes narrowed. Still holding the Younger, his hand fell to the hilt of his sword.

Al-Mariam felt the beat of her heart through her hand as it dropped to rest against Aela’s hilt, the sword of her mother, the sword that Al-Mariam was not allowed to wield.  Bound by gossamer, bound by oath, and like her mother before, Al-Mariam was forbidden to shed the blood of man with it, forbidden even to defend herself against him.

A faint tremor of fear, or a warning of it, shot through her. Her gossamer-bound blade trembled as it fell from its already loosened halter into her hand. The sharp ring of Aela’s muffled steel sounded out against the trees.

The barbarian drew his sword but held it at rest. “Don’t be foolish.”

“Al-Mariam,” Al-Thinneas said.

Her anger stiffened its resolve like roots quickening deep into the ground. “His sword is unbound. It defies the oath of our order.”

Al-Thinneas’ voice dropped to a sharpened whisper. “You speak of an oath you already betray. Put away your blade.”

“You would let him defile this sacred place?”

“He’s not one of us. I would let him defile what he chooses for now, unless you have forgotten why he’s here, or whom he’s returned to us, or the Dragon’s crown that rests upon his brow.”

Al-Aaron stirred. A pitiful moan escaped his lips.

Al-Mariam lowered Aela’s gossamer-bound blade. So much sacrifice to be remembered while the loss of others was so easily forgotten. Al-Aaron was not that much older than Michalas would be, but that didn’t matter to anyone else but her. Now Al-Aaron had returned to them with his prize, and in so doing he had brought doom upon them all.

Al-Mariam returned Aela to its tether. “I see only a mark. Anything more is a fool’s belief.”

The barbarian sheathed his blade, but his eyes remained upon her.

It was the pain in Al-Thinneas’ eyes, the eyes of her friend, that cut her more than the barbarian’s sword ever could. It rent her open as he spoke. “Go, Al-Mariam. Tell the Mother what has passed here.”

***

The ancient trees reached high above the clearing like giants. Their leaves had mostly passed with the season’s turn. The close weave of their branches appeared like stone as torchlight conspired with moonlight across their surface. The columns of their trunks stood solemn, watching, waiting. The pillared and ancient halls of Lossos dimmed in comparison to them.

The broken white stones scattered beneath them pressed up in circles from the rich crimson soil of the forest floor. The foundations, the flesh and bone remains of something greater. The ground rose towards the shadow of a mount looming above them, visible at last between the trees. The vestige of a wide stairway crept towards its summit where, along its crest, large stones stood upright like broken teeth. The flicker of firelight danced between them, and through the mouth of the once great portal that had fallen.

Three men in rust-colored tunics waited at the base of the stairs, their shaven heads bowed. The two on either end carried staves shod at their tops with small iron crooks. Al-Thinneas bowed in return then turned to Chaelus.

“They are the Tenders, servants to the flame and to the Mother who guides us. They’ll take Al-Aaron into the Mother’s care now.”

The center and eldest of the three stepped forward with his arms held open to receive Al-Aaron. The wells of the man’s eyes were as dark and as veiled as those of the forest prince who had guided Chaelus here.

Chaelus hesitated. “I’ll stay with him.”

“The Younger’s risked much to bring you here.” Al-Thinneas looked out to the forest edge then leveled his stare back again. “If you seek to destroy the Dragon who stole your kingdom, know that his risk was for more than this.”

“Al-Aaron believes in prophecy.”

“No. His belief is in something deeper.” Al-Thinneas touched Chaelus’ arm. “Trust in the sacrifice he’s made.”

Al-Aaron shifted in Chaelus’ arms. His eyes had closed again, his murmuring ceased. A deeper shade of pale passed over him.

The Tenders waited, watching, either unmoved or unconcerned.

Chaelus transferred Al-Aaron into the waiting arms of their leader. The Tenders bowed to him and ascended the stairs.

“The Younger?” Chaelus asked.

“It is a term of endearment and respect reserved for the youngest of our Order,” Al-Thinneas explained. “If only his youth offered freedom from the poison which claims him.”

Like his own youth, or that of Baelus, Chaelus thought, lost to the changes thrust upon them. “It does nothing.”

“You don’t think he belongs among us. That he’s a child and not a knight.”

Chaelus didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He ascended the broken stair. Pieces of stone, freed by his passage, plummeted into the depths beneath and to whatever answers lay hidden there.

“Wait,” Al-Thinneas called.

The stairway stopped at a small landing overlooking the open remains of what had once been a round hall. It looked like his own hall, the hall of his father, in the tower his father had been given as a Servian Lord. Only the sky existed above these ruins now and even the deeper forest held its branches short of the ancient walls, as if in respect of its hallowed ground.

Staircases led down to the left and to the right, curving along the walls that remained, but the one on the right had already collapsed at its base. A large fire burned from a pit in the center of the hall. Al-Aaron lay still beside it. An old woman in robes knelt with him. Twelve stone seats ringed them like guardians. Behind her, the three Tenders stood respectfully distant. Torches, burning from sconces, added still more light, turning the night below into the semblance of day.

Even from where Chaelus stood distant the woman’s face was familiar, betrayed by the lines upon it, carved out of misery itself long ago. She had known his father and she had come to his father, less young but just as aged, while he, then a boy, hid behind the curtains and watched them; three visitors cloaked in black, Servian Knights with cloth-bound swords at their sides.

They had asked his father to honor a promise he had made to them, and to Chaelus’ mother, long before. His father, however, had refused them.

“I’ve seen her before.”

“She’s our Mother,” Al-Thinneas replied. “Her name is Olivia and she’s the Matron of our order.”

“She grieves for him,” Chaelus said.

“Yes, for his suffering, but also for what he’s done.”

Amidst the few shadows that remained small groups of people gathered, women among them, and the men were only men by the thinnest of years.  Their hushed whispers carried across the night air. Along with their dress, the gathered Servian Knights betrayed the many lands of their origin. Their gossamer-bound swords hung openly at their sides and, one by one as they turned to watch him, their whispers ceased.

“No,” Chaelus said. “He’s a child who’s done nothing to deserve this. He raised me from my death, even as death claims his own, this Servian Order made up of women and children.”

Al-Thinneas turned away. “We once numbered in the thousands. Since our exile, we’ve fallen to several score. Now that the Hunting has returned again, we will number fewer still. It’s why we gather for the Synod, so that our fate can be decided.”

“Your fate is that soon there will be none of you left,” Chaelus said.

Al-Thinneas smiled. “I don’t think so. Our path is eternal, provided we pass on our Story, each one of us to the next.”

“Your Story?”

“Our Story - of our death, of how we were saved, and of who we came to be.”

Chaelus hung upon Al-Thinneas’ words, unsure.

Al-Thinneas’ smile broadened. “You’ll find that there are many different kinds of death.”

Chaelus remembered the strength of Al-Aaron’s voice as he called to him from beyond his tomb. To what end had Al-Aaron, a child, suffered to come here? Or, for that matter, Al-Mariam, who had only just held her blade against him, her oath to her Order lost beneath her fear of him?

“Whether it be of a man, woman or a child,” Chaelus murmured.

Al-Thinneas descended the stairs the way they had come. Chaelus hesitated, then followed. At the base of the steps a narrow path led away, around the foot of the mount. Beyond it, the way widened as they went. Between the great trees, the phantom pallor of pale and silent ruins floated in the night.

Beyond the balding stone at the base of a hillock, they stopped before a small dome of the same pale stone, its surface broken by a single door, and its mass half buried beneath the ground. One of the ancient trees rose through and behind it, its branches reaching high towards the canopy above them. Moonlight settled around them in subtle patches.

“I’ll leave you here,” Al-Thinneas said. “Think no more of this day.  Let rest be your portion, and pray for the Younger as well. We’ll call for you when he awakens.  The Synod will meet on the morrow. We know why you’re here. You may bring your claim for help then. I’m sure they’ll have many questions for you as well.”

From beyond the doorway, the smell of incense and fresh rushes beckoned Chaelus. A small fire illuminated the interior with a faint light. The mass of the living tree pressed in between the stones, having split them apart over time until it had become, at last, a part of the dwelling itself. A wide stone pallet stacked with woven blankets and furs lined the wall of the place, broken once by the girth of the tree. Fresh grasses had only recently been laid, and at the foot of the pallet, painted earthen jars and baskets overflowed with dried fruits and bread. So far, in this life at least, he hadn’t seen such comforts.

Chaelus dropped to his knees, attacking one of the small, round loafs. He ate with wariness though, eyeing the door as he added handfuls of dried fruit to his meal. Its meat dripped from his hands and clung upon the beard on his face.

Sharp whispers sounded beyond the door, between Al-Thinneas and another. Then silence. The booted feet of two men came to rest outside. Guards to protect, but who and from whom? He remembered the gossamer-bound blade the woman had held against him, even as he’d returned to them one of their own.

Al-Aaron’s wound was shallow but grievous for the black taint it held, not so different from Baelus, his innocent blood let out upon the snow. No child should be present upon the field of war. It was what Chaelus had told his father, and what he had stood against him for. Such a thin thread that, once unbound, had sealed his fate.

Chaelus thought of the Mother, Olivia, who herself had once tried to save him from his father. Perhaps she could dispel Al-Aaron’s shadow. Then, perhaps together, Al-Aaron and the Mother would give him the answers he needed.

Or he would find his own.

Chaelus sank back against the pallet as sleep summoned him with the strength of something denied.

Chapter Eight

Promise

The Mother’s hands were small within her own, smaller than they’d ever been. Her eyes looked more tired as they stared past her, past the dying fire and into the ebbing night.

Al-Mariam looked uneasily at the binding of her own hand as the Mother stood, her grip tight upon her.

As they stepped away from the fire, the soft scuttle of sandaled feet on stone descended behind them. The whisperers, the other Servian Knights, had already left to recount and debate the truth of what they’d heard and what they’d seen until only the Mother and Al-Mariam remained.

She glanced back at the three Tenders.

They had just arrived, adding wood and stoking the fire with the attention deserved of sacred things, the sacred flame that burns until the twelve watchtowers are lit once more.

Prophecy, and those who serve it.

“The flesh of the Younger will mend,” the Mother said. Her voice was weary. “But his wound is deeper than flesh. Tell me, Al-Mariam, what would you have done to the barbarian?”

Al-Mariam held breathless as the weight of her own guilt pressed down, the guilt of one who only claimed to serve. “I only threatened him, a feint. He dared bring his blade unbound before us.”

“No,” the Mother said.

Al-Mariam struggled back against the single word as it hammered through her. “I would never have broken my oath.”

“To think is to do,” the Mother pressed. “To pretend is to have already done. Your words reveal your heart, child. So they reveal your actions. I’d thought more of you than this. It’s not what you promised me when I agreed to let you join the Order.”

Al-Mariam waited as the Mother stopped at the edge of the narrow staircase leading down to her chamber.

The Mother still looked away. “I had hoped the sin of the Younger would remain his alone. But perhaps the sin was not his, but rather one to be shared by all of us.”

“What do you mean?”

The Mother grunted under her breath. “Go now. Return to your tasks. Think about what you’ve done. We will speak of it again after the Synod has passed.”

Al-Mariam released her grip as the Mother pulled away from her and descended the stair. Al-Mariam’s hand trembled, as did her thoughts.

No. She had already given up too much to have been so foolish. Or had she been?  She had been forced to pretend many things to find herself here. At first she had pretended simply to survive. Then later she had done so to gain the trust of those who served her purpose. Each time, it had always been to get back what she’d lost, a cold choice, made because she had nothing left to lose; but not this time.

This time she had thoughtlessly risked all of it because she did have something to lose, something she had never sought to gain. She had found hope here.

The empty hall fell away as she spun to the smaller staircase that led to her chamber.

No, no, no, no, no!

Al-Mariam slammed her fist into her thigh. The pain shot through her. Her breath held captured within her throat but her grief still pursued her.

Then they came, unexpected, unbidden. Tears, horrible, horrible weak tears overcame her. Her shoulders, shoulders that had always carried more than this, trembled. Al-Mariam slumped down to the floor of her cell. Her strength fled, finally unbound. She fumbled her hand to the open door and pulled it to.

The narrow blades of torchlight that remained cut across her and floated against the wall beside her. Shadows broke across them. Her breath caught again. Muffled voices, and the soft slip of booted feet passed outside. There were few who would pass here beneath the open council hall so near to the Mother’s chambers.

Al-Mariam shuddered as she breathed in, and tried to calm herself. She wiped at her tears, the cloth of her bandage coarse against her cheek.

No one should be here tonight. The other Servian Knights, those that had returned, did so heart-sore and wary. Their Order had been betrayed once again. The Hunting had returned. With so many lost, and with so much and so little to be said, there were no answers that could be found between them. By now, the simple comfort of their own safety here had seduced most of them to their rest. The only answers left for them would be found on the morrow from the Mother’s own lips. It would be a simple answer.

The whispers faded as their makers slipped away, whoever they were. Perhaps they had heard her, or perhaps they had thought better of their own need, whatever it was.

And what need was hers? She knew it before even her heart even answered.

There had been no prophecy to shield her, not even in the eye of her mind, as the soldiers raped her. No prophet had come to guide her to solace as she wandered afterwards, wounded and alone. That night, Ras Dumas had taken the only things she had ever loved; her mother, her brother and herself.

Al-Mariam tugged at the bandage on her hand, pulling away the layers. Dried blood matted the gossamer close to the skin.

The Mother was right. She had failed her, just as she had failed in her vows, the vows the Mother had said would save her, the vows Al-Mariam had made to the one person who had believed in her when everything else had been taken away from her.

No. There had been no thought before the blade passed to her hand, to let flow the blood of one of the fallen Servian Lords. The same blood that had destroyed her life had taken away the lives of all whom she had loved, as her shame bled its own course beneath that graying sky.

But what had the Mother asked her? Would she have used the Gossamer Blade against him? She had stood alone at the thin line of the abyss, but had stepped away.

No, it was Al-Thinneas who had stopped her, just as the Mother had stopped her once before.

Yes, she would have, she would have taken the barbarian’s life had she been able, and once she had she would not even have known the loss.

Chaelus, Barbarian Lord of the House of Malius, once dead and then born again, with the mark of the Dragon upon him, son of Malius, one of the fallen Servian Lords. So it was that the Younger had brought him here, against the will of the Mother, to see that the Prophecy of Evarun would be fulfilled.

The barbarian was both more and less than she had imagined, and if the Younger was right, the barbarian was everything she feared.

There were others among the Servian Knights who feared the barbarian as well, those who already spoke of failure. It was not their failure but the failure of what their faith had asked of them, to defend but never shed the blood of man. The Servian Knights could not help but doubt, as they watched their own kind be killed, unable to defend themselves against the blades of the very people they sought to protect, as they alone still waited for the Giver to return.

The fulfillment of the Prophecy would bring them little hope, for from the prophecy’s own lips, with its light would come an even greater shadow to an already darkened night.

Herald the Dragon’s return

As the Fallen they will rise.

To bring to fell the Shadowed Pale

When the Giver does return.

Suffering upon still more suffering. But it mattered nothing. Leave the Younger to his fervor and the others to their schemes. She would not be like them and never had been. If she had begun to believe that she was more than this, then that was her failure.  She never would be. She would never be pure. She would never be able to believe like they did. She only wanted back what she had lost. She only wanted to get her brother back.

That was the one thing from her depths that had summoned her against the barbarian. His being here threatened it all. Of everything she had worked so hard to gain, of everything she needed and had waited for the Mother to give to her, it was the Mother’s trust that she needed most. And because of the barbarian, because of what he had brought upon them, she had already lost it.

Al-Mariam looked down at her hand. A slight tremor still held it, but the wounds from her nails had already begun to close. Only small red marks remained. So much blood had come from such small wounds that would soon never show again.

She would wait. And when she met again with the Mother, she would bear whatever the Mother would have her bear. Trust, like a wound, heals.

She would watch. The barbarian son of the Fallen One would reveal his true blood to them all. And blood spilt is forever lost.

***

Chaelus opened his eyes to Al-Aaron’s hazy silhouette, half kneeling, half sitting in the sharp light of the open doorway, like a ghost.

And a ghost is what it was.

Chaelus rubbed at his eyes. A wary pulse bounded through him as he moved. The hilt of Sundengal pressed into his side, conspiring with the chainmail hauberk he still wore.

He was alone.

Chaelus stared at his hand in which Sundengal had shattered. The remembered touch of the spirit still lingered across his brow. The Dragon’s mark beneath it echoed with a listless burning.

Chaelus sank back into the silence, the vague words of their prophecy echoing against it; musty words he had all too often scribed himself during his lingering exile amongst the tomes of Lossos.

One who was but could not be

One who could not be but was.

One to teach and One to save

The mark of the Dragon upon him.

Born of cradle, born of grave

Chosen from forgotten blood.

Born for us to die for us

For only the fallen may rise.

One to prepare the way

Until the desert he will wait.

One to walk alone

He will raise twelve to show the way.

Neither spear nor shaft shall harm him

His symbol shall be his passage.

A Martyr by those who claim him

The Dragon’s oath fulfilled.

Twelve to share the Gift

Twelve who did forget.

Herald the Dragon’s return

As the Fallen they will rise.

To bring to fell the Shadowed Pale

When the Giver does return.

To lament the ones who will forget

The Dragon waits within.

The Prophecy of the Evarun.

He never thought it spoke of him. He still wasn’t sure that it did, and he didn’t care why. It was a prophecy for others; it offered him nothing to bring his kingdom or his father back. They were empty words and if it was his fate, then there was little left for him in it.

Chaelus drew aside the veil of the curtained door. Two Servian Knights stood watch outside. Their gossamer blades hung at their sides over their chainmail hauberks. They were armed for war but, by their oaths, were unable to wage it. For what purpose did they serve? Certainly not for his, but for some promise that had been made of him.

Al-Aaron’s wound would heal, now that he was here amongst his own. They would know the poison that claimed him. But Al-Aaron’s Order answered to another calling than his, and as much as Chaelus wanted to, even needed to, he knew he couldn’t depend on Al-Aaron any longer.

Beside the fire, rekindled while he had slept, more bowls of the dried fruit and bread had been left. His stomach, spoiled from the night before, gnawed at him.

The shadows lengthened as Chaelus ate. The burning dusk came nearly silent as the cool evening air began to settle, interrupted by the distant sound of laughter, a sound he remembered from many lives before but unlike even the laughter he had heard from the inn of Roanwaith. It was a sound without malice.

A bronze razor, jars of oils, and a small copper mirror had been laid beside a basin. A clean gray tunic, folded, waited nearby.

Chaelus undid his sword belt and set Sundengal down. Then, stripping off his armor and the cares of all the lives he’d already lived, he bathed.

***

Al-Aaron wavered on the thin line spanning the darkness. The chill of his wound whispered. The memories of his past called from its shadow.

He could still see the man’s face leaning down to him, silhouetted at the sewer’s end, the bright sting of daylight flashing upon the newly fallen snow behind him.

The sun burned like fever against Aaron’s brow, sweat mingling with the blood that covered him, burning the corners of his eyes. The dead body of Figus, his master, pressed against him, frozen in the darkness behind him.

Aaron held his breath, hoping that the man wouldn’t see him.

The man reached out his hand to him and waited.

“Would you end this life, child, and take another instead?” the man asked. “I will not hurt you as he did.”

Aaron let the scarcest whisper of his breath escape. The man already knew.

“Why not?” he whimpered.

The man stood. His robes billowed around him like a crimson fall against the snow.  “Because you’re brave, my love, braver than most.  You’re so brave, I think there’s someone only you can save.”

“Who’s that?”

The man smiled. “My son.”

***

The soft voices of the shadows whispered within the narrow close, warning him not to try.

Aaron’s hand jerked just as he touched the old woman’s thin cloak. She’d already stopped, already knowing he was there, like no mark had ever made him before.

The two men walking with her stopped as she did. Their eyes pierced through him like the eyes of hawks, but their hands never went to the swords whose hilts he’d already spied beneath their cloaks.

Aaron wanted to run, but he didn’t. He couldn’t.

Her eyes were less predatory than those of her guards. Her eyes though, held him like a watchman would hold his hands upon a thief. It was a feeling he knew well, because that’s what he was.

The old woman gathered her cloak and skirt up from the muddy, snow-clogged street and squatted down next to him

“What do you want, my dear?”

“Are you the one they call the Mother.” Aaron’s voice sounded small and weak against the noise of the babbling street behind them. “A man named Malius told me to come to you.”

The old woman’s face grew pale. Her stare released him.

Aaron wanted to run, but he didn’t. He couldn’t, because something even more powerful than her stare kept him there. Something that told him to stay. Instead, he attempted a smile and continued with what the man named Malius had told him to say. “He sent me to you, so that I can save his son.”

The old woman’s hand seized him. Her grip was cold. Her stare returned, but a reassuring smile turned her lips, like the one he had just given her. “Then you must come with me, for you have seen a ghost, my dear. The man named Malius is dead.”

***

The rush of sound returned as the waters of the Maddea fell away. Aaron knelt just as he’d been taught to, and then he laid down, his face pressed against the cool damp grass of the morning. The warmth of the new sun danced over him.

The soft edge of the Mother’s robes brushed against him as she stood over. He could hear the booted step of Al-Thinneas close beside her.

The gentle prod of her gossamer blade to each of his shoulders felt like lightning, like a promise of a new life fulfilled. And it was, unlike anything he could have dreamed of, and more.

The memory of Figus fled past him, along with the ghost of Malius, the spirit of the fallen Servian Lord who’d brought him here; ghosts of the past he’d left behind.

The sounds of the Garden succumbed beneath the soft lace of the Mother’s voice. “Arise, Al-Aaron, and claim your risen life.”

***

The small chamber fire did little to ease the chill of the Mother’s small private chapel. Yet Al-Aaron knew that the dawn of winter had very little to do with the discomfort he felt.

“Yes, Mother,” he replied. His voice crackled. His throat thickened.

The Mother’s eyes narrowed. “Are you so sure? I wouldn’t be. Not about this. And still my question is unanswered.”

The Mother pulled the thin blue blanket snug about her. She reached with one end of her stave, placing it carefully into the fire pot beside where they sat, shifting the old embers, rekindling them from deep within. Sparks lit out and danced upon the air.

She pulled the stave back. “I’ve heard your words regarding the one you would return to us. They’re the same words I spoke to his father, Malius, before he fell.”

“I won’t abandon this.”

The Mother turned to him. Her stare held him, as always. “Is that what you think it was?” She paused, a question held close within her thoughts. “To say so is to already have lost. Or do you believe you have gained some new power over this?”

Al-Aaron turned his eyes upward, to the three Nephelium painted on the ceiling.  The small glowing angels hovered around the Giver as he bowed on his knees before them. It was a Giver from another age, but the Giver had returned. Al-Aaron’s voice drew thin. “No, Mother.”

“Then again I will ask you. Will you be done with this?”

“I cannot ignore the vision that has been placed before me.”

“The visions of Malius you claim can’t be trusted. For this reason, you are forbidden to go. You aren’t ready, and you’ve already forced too much in trying to be.”

“The blood of the Evarun is in him.”

“This we know, but there are many things we don’t. You’ve been blinded by where your vision has led you, and by the many things you’ve kept from me.”

His chest tightened with a faint fire from the truth of what she said, of what he still hid from her. “Mother, I don’t claim…”

“But you do! You have already claimed too much, much more than you can possibly bear.” The Mother paused. Her voice thickened with emotion. “The burden of prophecy is no idle thing, child. Can’t you see what it’s already taken from you?”

Al-Aaron slumped back, reeling. “I’m sorry.”

The Mother stood. “The time for regret is over.”

“You don’t believe he’s the One?”

“No, Al-Aaron, he is not the One.” The Mother’s eyes softened as she reached toward him, raising her hand beneath his chin. She smiled. “But trust at least that your vision of Malius was not wholly in vain.”

“What do you mean?”

“Chaelus is not the One, my child. But I believe he’s the one who will lead Him to us.”

Behind the Mother, the ghost of Malius stepped forward, his dark crimson robes flowing about him. A small smile broke across his face.

“It’s almost done, my child,” Malius said.

Al-Aaron waited as the Mother left, knowing she would never see and hear the spirit of Chaelus’ father. Al-Aaron righted himself upon his seat. “Everything’s gone just as you said it would.”

Malius stared back into him. “Of course it has. And I know how tired you must be, but one more task still remains for you to bear.”

“No one believes me.”

Malius’ smile thinned.  His haggard eyes narrowed further.

“They will. They will all believe you in time. Until they do, pay them no heed, for the faithless are your enemy. You only need do this one thing. Return to me my son.”

***

Al-Aaron bolted awake, his thin breath captured within his throat. His arm was cold, and still filled with a weight that bore down upon where the Remnant blade had cut him.

He stared up into the face of the Mother.

The light of the dying fire transformed her long straight silver hair into golden cloth as the lines tracing across her face deepened. Al-Aaron could not help but fall into them as she leaned over him where he lay, her eyes clenched tightly, lost in her prayers.

Al-Aaron relaxed into the softness and warmth of the bedding around him. He was in the Garden of Rua. He was safe. But more important than that, Chaelus was too. He’d returned to Malius his son.

Chapter Nine

Synod

A tentative knock sounded as Chaelus put his head up through the neck of the tunic that had been left for him. The ghost weight of his armor still clung about him like a hundred stone.

A boy waited upon the threshold. It was not the vision of Al-Aaron he had beheld before. This boy was real, and he wasn’t Al-Aaron. He gave Chaelus an awkward bow, revealing a mouth only half full of teeth as he offered a meek smile. “I’m Login.  I’ve been asked to bring you before the Synod.”

Chaelus rose from his pallet as he let the tunic drop around his shoulders. “Another child knight as well then?”

Login stepped back, his eyes turned downward. “No sir. I serve the knights while I wait for my mother’s return. She sits upon the Council of Twelve. If you’re ready, we shouldn’t delay. The Synod won’t wait for us.”

The cool, evening air had already begun to settle as Chaelus stepped out through the doorway. The sun hadn’t set yet. It cast a warm glow amidst the trees around them, setting them ablaze with a languid fire. The burning dusk watched in silence as the leaves, dropping on the gentle breeze, resounded about them like the crackling of embers.

Login led him without pause towards the ancient stairs leading up to the ruined hall. The glow of the fire beyond its solemn stones burned brighter now than it had the night before.

Chaelus followed close behind him, hearing once again the clamor of voices. This time an urgent tenor held them. Login stood back from the edge where he waited, his eyes still cast downward.

The fire in the ruined and open hall had grown, its flames reaching high into the endless night sky. Robed in black, several score gathered standing around it, but it was clear there were fewer here than there should be.

Only seven of the twelve stone seats were filled. The Gossamer Blades of each of those seated rested upon the flagstones at their feet, pointing towards the fire. They betrayed the many lands of their owners, though each was still alike in their binding.

The Mother sat in one of the seats, facing away from Chaelus, her head bowed. She appeared small before the gathered Servian Knights. Her long gray hair hung straight, tucked beneath the blue blanket draped around the shoulders of her black robes. Al-Thinneas sat beside her.

To the Mother’s other hand sat someone else, just as familiar as she was. An aged man now, but his narrow eyes betrayed him. Chaelus remembered the rap of staves that had echoed across his father’s hall, drawing closer as, with a child’s care, he parted the curtain to see the ire within his father’s face. Not at the Mother, but at the sight of the man, Maedelous, who stood beside her. This man.

“The Twelve of the Synod are the eldest of the Servian Knights,” Login whispered. But his sight was elsewhere, as if he had just awoken. His voice wavered. “The empty chairs will remain, to honor those who haven’t yet returned.”

The Mother raised her head. The evening breeze blew through her hair. Though she looked small, Chaelus knew she could look down upon giants. Those gathered before her looked upon her with reverence.

The fire, burning between them all, flared in the breeze, sending out its sparks. For a brief moment, the night turned inescapably quiet. For a brief moment, nothing less than the moment remained.

“Rua.” The Mother’s voice drifted across the break. It was soft. It was gentle. “We humble ourselves before your grace, so that our sacrifice will not be in vain.”

Chaelus looked around for Login, but the boy had gone, away from the sight of the empty seats, and the one he had loved who’d once sat there.

Unlike the day before, no stares turned towards Chaelus from below as he descended the unbroken left stair, gaining comfort in his anonymity, seemingly safe amongst the shifting shadows of the night.

Beside Maedelous sat a scowling man from the southern land of Goarnn. His shield arm was missing, the sleeve of his robe tied off unceremoniously. His bearing was strong, with his hair pulled back into the ornate and gilded braids of his countrymen. His coarse beard stuck out from his chin.

The remaining knights who sat upon the circle looked to be men too young to have had either their faith or their wisdom tempered. Yet perhaps it had been. Their proud faces were pale as they sat next to the empty seats of the lost knights, knowing themselves to be next; believing surely that they alone stood against a tempest of the most awful reckoning. And perhaps it would be. In silence they waited on the Mother’s words.

“The time for grief has not yet come,” the Mother said, as if in answer to his, or their, thoughts. Looking towards her, Chaelus saw that her stare rested upon him, gentle but firm.

The Goarnni man stood up. “Why hasn’t it?”

His voice resounded thickly above the erupting whispers around him. “Why shouldn’t it? What other comfort is there while we wait for death and do nothing about it?”

“You forget yourself, Al-Hoanar, just as you forget your oath,” the Mother replied. Her voice was tempered but the gentleness had fled from her eyes.

It had fled from the Goarnni’s eyes as well, if it had ever been there. “I didn’t forget my oath.  Neither will I forget those who haven’t returned. Nor will I forget why; why our brothers and sisters were forced instead to be cut down and hung out on gibbets by the very ones they sought to serve.”

“Enough,” Maedelous interrupted, a subtle veil betraying his eyes. “We cannot forget that it is not men we serve, but the Grace of Rua.”

“And tonight,” Al-Aaron’s frail voice sounded like an anvil struck, “It has been returned to us.”

He stood like a dim shadow, like the ghost Chaelus had seen on his doorstep. Al-Aaron slumped as much as he walked as he descended the stair.

Chaelus began to move toward him, then hesitated as if an unseen hand had stopped him.

Al-Aaron’s face and hair washed golden as he drew close to the fire, no longer ghostly but more like a spirit, as if one of the angels from the woods had returned.

“Roanwaith has fallen,” he said.

A murmur rose amidst the crowd.

“The boy is mistaken,” Maedelous challenged, his voice brittle and hollow in its timbre. “Either your malaise still speaks for you, child, or you would have your words deceive us.”

“Man, woman and child, all have succumbed to the Dragon’s Sleep,” Al-Aaron returned, unmoved. His voice in fact succeeded in its strength. “There we faced the Remnants of legend, borne within the shell of the Theocracies’ own legions. We did so once more beneath the stair of Hallas Barren. The Remnants were led by the Dragon itself, in the form of the Wizard Magus, the whisperer who seduced both Malius and his heir. They hunted us. They hunted for the one I’d taken from him.”

The murmur of the Servian Knights grew again.

The Mother narrowed her eyes at Al-Aaron but her stare was not scornful. It was one of sorrow, or waiting. “And so you have.”

Al-Aaron closed his eyes. His mouth opened as if to speak. His face whitened. Then he toppled.

Two of the knights standing nearest caught him as he fell.

Chaelus pressed his way, past the unseen hand, through the crowd towards Al-Aaron.

“Take him to his rest,” the Mother said. She bowed her head.

The two Servians returned Al-Aaron up the stairs.

Chaelus felt the Mother’s stare hold him through the crowd. The sorrow and waiting in them remained.

“Then the Gorondian Legions have been reborn,” the Mother whispered. Her stare broke away to gaze into the fire.

“It’s no surprise,” Al-Hoanar broke out. His beard trembled as he spoke. “There’s no doubt of the evil that rules the Theocracy.”

“The Dragon will act more freely under this guise,” Maedelous added. “It won’t suffer us now that the Fallen Ones have been destroyed and the Hunting has returned.”

“The Theocratic Council has always been the Dragon’s sanctuary,” the Mother said. “Ever since the rise of the Taurate, the hearts and minds of the Theocratic Council have been poisoned to the Dragon’s will. But this means nothing to where our own faith should rest. Instead, it speaks to the very reason it was lost to begin with.”

“What do you mean?” Maedelous sounded surprised.

“We’ve lost our vision, Maedelous. We’ve been blind to the Dragon’s return. For too long we’ve balked at the sins of others. In doing so we’ve failed to look at our own.”

“So you say we are to blame for this?” Al-Hoanar said.

“No,” the Mother said. “But I do say that we can no longer stop it alone. Perhaps we were never meant to.”

The Mother stood. To Chaelus, she was no longer frail but instead the younger woman who had once come before his father. Her stare returned its hold upon him.

“Not all of the Fallen Ones have been destroyed. The Dragon still waits for the return of all twelve. Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius, your father was one of the twelve Servian Lords who fell. By your hand, and the grief you hold, was he spared the Dragon’s call. I know you’re aware of the eyes of the past resting upon you.”

The entire Synod turned to him.

Chaelus’ fever wept across his brow. Its lament brought a stinging pain to his eyes. He flushed beneath it, but raised his head and stepped towards the Mother. Her knights parted before him.

“I won’t deny their weight or their shadow,” he said.

“And I can do nothing of either for you, but to say that I once loved and knew your father well.”

“You came to him when I was a child.” Chaelus stared at Maedelous beside her.  The old man’s eyes were veiled. “You came with another.”

“We sought to save you from the same fate as your father,” the Mother said. “The same fate that brings you to us now.”

“We were not successful.” Maedelous let loose a bitter smile. He leaned forward. “So much less so for the blood that has been spilled, and the souls we have lost because of it.”

The Mother’s eyes darted to Maedelous. “Yet it seems, in the end, providence did what we could not.”

Maedelous stood. He drew his long tunic close in the orators’ fashion. He held his other hand open, outstretched before him. “It is only because in the end, Malius heeded the cautions we paid him. For too long he’d been warned, of his own failings and the need for his son’s protection.”

“My father believed it was you who betrayed him,” Chaelus returned. “And although I was only a child, I remember the word he used for you particularly. Serpent.”

Maedelous’ eyes narrowed still more. “His greatest betrayal was by you – and himself. He betrayed both his oath and his order! His union with your mother should never have been. We forgave him once. We shan’t do so again. And now it’s you before us; the very fruit of his betrayal, bearing shamelessly the unbound blade of your father.”

Chaelus stepped forward as a chill swept through him. The old man was baiting him. Chaelus stayed his hand as it crept towards Sundengal’s hilt. He stepped closer to Maedelous.

“You wouldn’t dare.” Maedelous bristled as he returned to his seat. His robe caught his feet and he staggered. “Your arrogance only reveals his failure.”

The Mother stood. “That’s enough, Maedelous. Be wise.”

Maedelous paused, but then he nodded and sank into his seat, his eyes narrower and darker than before.

The Mother lowered herself back into hers. “We did not gather for this purpose, yet our purpose it has become. For you, Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius, I’ve but one question. Why have you come here?”

“I’ve come to restore my father’s House,” Chaelus answered.

“The light of your father’s House diminished long ago, along with any hope it once carried. So tell me again, Chaelus, son of Malius, why have you come to us?”

Chaelus hesitated, unsure. He knew of no other words to say.  “To slay the Dragon.”

The murmuring around the Synod deepened.

“And so you have,” the Mother said. “Al-Thinneas, it is time.”

Al-Thinneas stood. He bowed his head, first to the Mother, and then to each of those seated.

“One of our own was confronted upon the streets of Tulon but three days past,” he said. “It was a servant of Ras Dumas who found him. The boy said little but passed to our brother a message, pleading that it be delivered to the Mother herself. Our brother tried to gain more, but whether from ignorance or fear, the boy said nothing more before he fled.”

“Read what it says,” the Mother said.

“Of course.” Al-Thinneas pulled from his robes a small round red leather case. Opening one end, he slid out a bone tube. Its seal had already been broken, and from it he withdrew a parchment, unrolling it before him.

“It is written in the lost tongue of the Evarun. Ras Dumas, indeed, took no small care in giving this message to us.”

“Read it,” the Mother urged.

“It’s but a single word,” Al-Thinneas said, and then paused. “Magedos.”

The silence returned as Al-Thinneas sat down.

The Mother waited as one by one the whispered questions began again between them all. She waited until the whispers fell away and only silence remained again.

“Ras Dumas sends us word of where his own House stands,” Maedelous quipped.

“No,” the Mother said. “It’s more. Magedos is more. It’s the place where the Giver fell. It’s where the Dragon can be defeated again.”

“Then the Giver has returned,” one of the knights in the gathered Synod cried out.

Chaelus stared into the dance of the flames. The chatter of the gathered knights erupted into flames of their own. The circle around him widened. They did not speak of him by name. Surely, they would not speak of him.

“No,” the Mother said, silencing their growing murmur. “The Giver has not returned.”

Chaelus looked up. Al-Aaron’s words of prophecy felt heavy upon him.

The Mother’s stare fixed upon him.

“But I believe we have been given the way to prepare for him,” she said.

Chaelus could read nothing in her eyes, nothing to tell him what she, in fact, believed. Yet it was certainly more than what she claimed before the gathered host.

“Or perhaps it’s an invitation to our slaughter,” Maedelous said. “It’s folly to believe in such madness. Surely this is a trap that Ras Dumas laid before his death.”

“Perhaps,” the Mother said. She pulled her shawl close again. “But it’s no secret that it was in the valley of Magedos that the Giver fell. His blood still remains there, and by the words of the prophecy, it is by the blood of the Giver that the Dragon will be defeated.”

Chaelus stepped into the circle. The heat of the fire and the stares of those around it pressed like a cutting knife. “I was told by Al-Aaron that when the Dragon is destroyed, the Pale will be restored, and with it my kingdom.”

No voices replied, only the returned silence and the crackling song of the fire.

“You speak words of prophecy well,” the Mother proffered.

“But are they true?”

“Yes.”

“They are words of blasphemy!” Maedelous exclaimed.

“Perhaps blasphemy is the only way,” the Mother countered, unmoving, measured.

“He’s not worthy!”  Maedelous argued.

The Mother looked at Chaelus. “Nor does he believe we are.”

Chaelus girded himself as Maedelous unveiled his eyes to him. Cold fire burned within them.

“He’s a barbarian,” Maedelous said. “He’s not a man of Rua. He’s not Servian!”

“Nor was Talus before he was raised and the last Giver he became,” the Mother said. “Indeed, a prince turned thief he was and a soulless man, stoned to death before he was raised.”

“I don’t claim your prophecy,” Chaelus resumed, “but I will do what I must to restore my father’s House. I will do what I must to regain my throne. And if I must go to Magedos to do it, then I will slay the Dragon there. I only ask that you show me the way. Or do not. But if Rua is with me and you are not, than pray that you stand aside.”

The Mother’s soft voice drifted. “You will meet the Dragon in Magedos. But you cannot do it alone.” She reached out with her staff into the roots of the fire. Blue flame swirled around it like the azure glow of Al-Aaron’s gossamer blade. “Maedelous, who will you send as council?”

His face contorted in a leer. “If it must be this way, then Al-Hoanar I will send as my proxy.”

“And I will send Al-Thinneas as mine.”

Al-Thinneas nodded to the Mother and again to Chaelus. Yet Chaelus’ thoughts had already passed to another.

“What of Al-Aaron?” he asked.

The Mother’s eyes softened. “Go to him while you can. The Younger succumbs to the Dragon’s Sleep just as you did. There is little left for him now but his faith. Prepare yourself, barbarian, for you leave on the morrow. The shadow of the Dragon deepens. The time of your testing has already begun.”

The Mother’s gaze passed from face to face, and as each eye met hers in turn, there occurred something intimate between them, a silent dialogue between their souls.

Chaelus stiffened as her stare returned to him. It was only for a moment, but it was enough for him to know that something had changed between them. There would be no secrets kept from her. He was transparent to her. He was a ghost. Just as his father had once been. He looked again to the surrounding faces, most of them still veiled from him by the fire. From those that he could see, tears fell. Whether they were from shame or joy, he didn’t know.

Chapter Ten

Whispers

Chaelus knelt beside Al-Aaron. The flames of the small fire pot quickened in the breeze from the open window.

Al-Aaron slumped back into his pallet. His pallor had deepened. His eyes fluttered. His voice was a hoarse whisper. “Tell me what you saw. Tell me what you saw as you passed through the forest’s veil.”

“The Dragon came to me,” Chaelus said.

Al-Aaron closed his eyes. “It was a vision of the darkness within you.”

“It was no vision,” Chaelus said, his voice cold. “It was the Dragon, and it was waiting for me, here, in your sanctuary. For a moment I even stood against it, until three spirits came against me.”

Al-Aaron’s eyes opened. “Spirits?”

“They floated above me, bathed in a glow. They cast apart Sundengal, and left me defenseless against the Dragon.”

Al-Aaron stared lost into the ceiling and the faded mural there.  It showed three Angels. He leaned back and closed his eyes again. He smiled. “Malius was right.”

Chaelus withdrew, uncertain at the utterance of his father’s name. “My father died in madness. In the end he knew no right.”

“He knew what you were. He alone understood what you would become. He knew more than the order I serve.”

“And how would you know this?” A trace of foreboding crept up Chaelus’ spine.

Al-Aaron stared back at him. Silence was his answer. His eyes sparkled like dark mead beneath the veil that still remained, but revealed nothing more. “And now the Nephelium have come to you, just as he said they would.”

Chaelus looked again to where Al-Aaron had been staring.  The three Angels overlooked a prostrate man. A shattered staff rested on the ground beneath them.

“They have come to name you,” Al-Aaron said.

“I will not be sacrificed again.”

“Your sacrifice is already over. The Giver’s already been reborn.”

***

Al-Mariam pressed her hands into the deep pleats of her robe. She lowered her head as one of the three Tenders rushed past her, his errand his own. Al-Mariam’s thoughts raced as well.

The Synod was over. Whispers already floated amongst the broken halls; whispers of prophecy, whispers of the Dragon reborn. Ras Dumas was dead, along with the rest of the Fallen Ones. They had been taken back to the Dragon they had ultimately come to serve. Now the Synod had asked the blood of one of the Fallen to save them while her brother, if he even lived, waited still, alone.

And perhaps he did - live. Her heart had soared at Al-Thinneas’ word of the servant boy found in Tulon. Then it broke when she realized the Mother had kept the news from her.

The door to the Mother’s chapel stood open. The small room was dark but for the light of the fire pot at its center. Its deep coals glowed crimson. The Mother stood beyond it, turned away.

“I’ve come as you asked, Mother,” Al-Mariam whispered.

“Come in, child,” the Mother replied.

“I was wrong,” Al-Mariam offered.

“Yes you were. But can you tell me why? Can you tell me why you fear the son of Malius so?”

Al-Mariam stepped back, for some reason surprised at the painful truth of the Mother’s words. The wall stopped her. “I don’t understand, Mother. I do not fear him.”

“Don’t lie to me, child. Tell me. Is it the smell of him? Or do you see in his face, the faces of the foul men who took you? Or is that you see the face of his father and, within it, the face of one who took your kin?”

Each word struck Al-Mariam like a dagger. The Mother had always, or so she had thought, spoken the truth to her, but never like this. No. Never like this.

“I see nothing in him,” Al-Mariam replied.

“So you lie to me again,” the Mother said. “I believe the face that you see in his is perhaps your own.”

Al-Mariam closed her eyes. Anger rushed through her like a wave breaking against the shore. Yet all that came were more quiet tears. “Why do you do this to me?”

“I do this because I gave you rest when you were broken. Because you lied to me too often, and I’ve let you. This is my sin and it shames me so.”

The Mother turned around. She raised a woven wick before her. She blessed it. Then she lowered its tip above the coals. Each of the bound grasses erupted independent of the other as soon as they were near, until the whole end was consumed. Then the fire died, leaving the end of the wick as a single glowing ember like the one that had made it so.

She raised this glowing end to the nearest of the four burners, each opposite the other. “Bring the son of Malius to me. I would speak with him alone. He waits by the window above the servants’ stair. Then prepare yourself to go with him. Go with him to Magedos and find your brother. Perhaps then you may find your way home.”

The Mother turned her back to her, her admonition over.

Al-Mariam backed out of the chapel, stunned. Her feelings were mute but tangled as she took the narrow stair to where the barbarian waited. The triumph of her release was diminished by her failure at the very same.

The solace of the passage broke like a wave upon the moonlit halo above. Al-Mariam withdrew into her cowl. Her sandaled feet sounded out in harsh whispers as she climbed the final steps, the bound steel of her blade bouncing in rhythm against her robes.

She stopped just within the vestigial shadow of the doorway.

Chaelus, the barbarian lord whom little Al-Aaron claimed would be their savior, waited alone.

Pale light washed over him and the ruined room around him. He still carried his sword but his armor was gone, replaced by the humble gray shift of an acolyte. His beard was gone too. He looked smaller than he had before, more vulnerable, but somehow stronger in his weakness. Yet it wasn’t weakness. His eyes were subtle chasms as their stare fixed upon hers.

Beneath the sleeves of her robes, she pressed her nails into her palms, awakening again the scars from before. Once again the pain brought her back. “The Mother would see you now.”

Al-Mariam turned at once and began back down the short stairs to the small chapel where the Mother waited. The barbarian’s heavy footfalls came quick behind her.

Chaelus seized her arm at the chapel door.

Al-Mariam’s pulse quickened.

She spun on him, her eyes wide with anger that fell away as soon she saw his face. It was the face of humility ensconced before her. Her voice held frozen within her throat.

“You needn’t fear me,” Chaelus said.

Al-Mariam trembled as his grip lessened.

Still, something recoiled within her. She raised her chin to him, her will at last returned. “You assume that I do, and you’re foolish to do so.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t brave, only that I’ve done nothing to deserve your angst.”

His eyes were deeper than any she had known and she felt herself slipping into them as if they had no end. Beneath the pleasant scent of oil upon him dwelt a strength that was even deeper than the calm that rested within his eyes. Was it this that already captured the belief of those around her? Or was it the same strength that had taken everything else from her before?

A cold chill ran through her. Al-Mariam pulled her now-remembered arm away from his hand. “That remains to be seen.”

She threw the door open. The Mother inclined her head to the barbarian as they entered. The corners of her eyes smiled. “Please, come. Sit down. I would have you break bread with me.”

Then the Mother turned to her. Her eyes cut into her like before. “You may go, Al-Mariam. Your work here is done.”

***

The Mother held a flat wooden bowl holding a single loaf of bread out to him. “Tell me then, how shall I call you? Shall I call you my Savior?”

Chaelus accepted the bowl. “I would rather you didn’t.” He sat on the nearest of two benches. Two wooden chalices filled with wine already waited upon the table. “I don’t think you’re that foolish.”

The Mother pressed out her robes as she sat down. “If you are, then you are. If you’re not, then you’re not. I wouldn’t presume it to be so from only the word of one disobedient child, Servian Knight or not.”

“You don’t agree with him,” Chaelus said.

The Mother took the loaf of bread and raised it, a silent prayer dancing upon her lips. Breaking it, she handed half of it to him. “I don’t agree with the one whose path he’s chosen to follow.”

Chaelus reached out but then hesitated as the weight of her words fell upon him. Then he took the bread as his voice struggled out as a whisper. “You speak of my father. But I don’t see how the boy can claim to know the will of someone who’s dead.”

“There are many different kinds of death,” the Mother said. “He claims the ghost of Malius came to him. He said the ghost of Malius led him to you.”

“The ghost of my father?”

“Does this change anything for you? Dark is your memory of your father. So much blame you’ve placed upon him. So much blame you’ve borne upon yourself to suddenly find him to be the light which raised you. It would be a burden to the one who took his life.”

Chaelus tore a piece of the bread away, shrugging as he set the remainder of the loaf down. “It’s nothing to one who doesn’t remember.”

“Memories lost to the Dragon’s Sleep.” The Mother’s voice softened and grew distant. “Only the ones that haunt you still remain.”

Chaelus placed the bread into his mouth, holding it there until it washed amidst the sweet explosion of wine. He waited as it travelled down his senses.

“And what of the sleep that Al-Aaron suffers?” he asked. “You claim his fate will be his own. I don’t recall having any choice.”

“Perhaps,” the Mother replied. “Or perhaps, like the memory of Malius’ death, the memory of your choice has been lost as well. I have all too often found that our choices lie at the heart of most of our sins.”

“Is that what the Dragon’s Sleep is?” Chaelus asked. “Is it punishment for our sins?”

“No more or less so than for your father before.”

“Then it seems I know very little of him.”

“You know that before you were born, Ras Malius was one of the twelve Servian Lords.  They took the title, Ras, upon themselves from the Evarun, along with the mantle of their rule. But it wasn’t the purpose for which they were intended. They were the first ones the Giver raised, and they were the ones the Giver left to show the way before he died. But they fell.

“When Malius married your mother, he broke away from the other Servian Lords. We thought that one of the Fallen Ones had been redeemed. And for a time your father, Malius, served our purpose with us, and protected us from the other Servian Lords. But with your mother’s death he resumed his fall. Her redemption of him was but for a moment. His exile of you was her final wish, to protect you, even from him. And perhaps from us as well.”

The Mother stood, her gaze still fixed upon the gentle flickering flames. “It was against my wishes that Al-Aaron came for you. But it would seem that what once was, has begun anew. Tell me, Chaelus, what is the greatest task of faith?”

“I wouldn’t presume to know,” he answered.

The Mother raised her stare to him. “Then perhaps indeed you are the wisest among us. Yet I believe it is obedience to what you cannot see. Patience is its greatest gift.”

“Patience?”

“Yes,” the Mother said. She looked upward. “They prepare for a war against an enemy they have never seen, yet one which already dwells in the darkest parts of their hearts. They’re restless and they’re afraid, and they’ve forgotten why they’re here.”

“Why are you here?”

The Mother turned to him. “We wait. We wait here to prepare the way for the Giver, but the binding of steel is a false symbol to the one who still suffers death. There is no armor that can protect one from the Dragon that already waits within. The Dragon’s own dark prophecy has been set in motion and it can’t be undone. The Dragon will suffer no will against it and not even the wisest amongst us will be spared. All that we know will be washed away. Only then will our great hope arise. Only then will the Giver return.”

Chaelus stood. “Then why do you speak words like ‘savior’ to me?”

“Like I said, there are many different kinds of death, and too many things have already been said in your name. Already, the silent voices, the whispers, they chatter. There is something about you that neither they, nor I, understand; something powerful, something dark. The blood of the Fallen flows within you. So too does the blood of the Evarun. It’s the blood of your mother, whom your father saved and eventually wed in defiance of the other Servian Lords.”

“My mother plays no part in your prophecy,” Chaelus said.

The Mother held his stare for a moment, then smiled. “You know that she does. The shadow over her past was its own warning. I know you remember it well. You knew it well on the day we first came for you.”

Chaelus remembered his mother’s voice, like crushed flowers, soft and worn, from beyond the shadows of the curtains where he’d hidden on the day the Mother had come to see his father.

“Don’t turn from me, Malius,” his mother had said. “You know this must be. He must be protected!”

“I will protect him,” his father had said.  His father’s breath was silent and heavy. “I will protect him. He’s my son.”

“He is our son. He is my son. This is why he must go. You know this.”

“They once spoke such things of you, my love, but you are still here. Have I not cared for you?”

Chaelus had strained to hear the words of his parents as the rap of staves echoed across the hall towards them. He remembered the whisper of Magus from the other side of the throne. He remembered the sound of his mother’s footsteps as she ran away.

Chaelus had parted the heavy curtains with care.

A woman with graying hair, flanked by two like men, had stood before his father. All were cloaked in black with the circle and the mark of the prostrate cross emblazoned upon their chests. Cloth-bound swords hung from their waists, even hers.

The Mother had been beautiful then, but already hard-faced from care. The two men held cautious eyes, those of Maedelous the narrowest. They didn’t kneel, only bowing their heads slightly towards his father.

Chaelus’ father either hadn’t noticed the infraction, or hadn’t cared.

The Mother had stepped forward of her companions. “It is good to see you, Malius.”

“Olivia,” Chaelus’ father’s voice had hovered then, it seemed, on the edge of sadness. “Why have you come?”

“You know our purpose here, Malius. Don’t pretend otherwise. We have honored your request so far. Now we’ve come to ask you to honor ours, and his mother’s as well.”

His father had listened, his face contorted, as Magus leaned over beside him.  He then sat forward in his throne. “Is that why you bring these serpents with you, to better threaten me?”

“Mind your words, Malius. They are foolish and false. We know they aren’t yours. We know the forked tongue of the one who whispers to you.”

“Don’t be so sure. I remember very well the poisoned words of the one named Maedelous who stands beside you.”

The Mother softened. She stepped towards him, unafraid. “You’ve fallen, Malius. Your vows have long since been broken. Fulfill this one last promise while you still can.”

His father continued. “No. I won’t let you take my son.”

“He’s not yours to keep.”

“It is my blood that flows within his veins,” Malius spat.

“So too does another’s, and you cannot protect him from the fate this has brought upon him.”

Malius stood. “I already have. Now leave.”

Chaelus’ memory withdrew from the eyes of a boy and passed to the eyes of a younger man.

The bronze hilt of his father’s sword, Sundengal, shimmered in its scabbard beneath the light of the morning sun. It was powerful, just like his father who wielded it, just like he would be one day.

“Chaelus,” his father said. “Come to me.”

Chaelus lifted his eyes from the sword where it hung at his father’s side. He eased the small gray mare he rode up beside where his father sat tall upon his own black steed. His father didn’t turn to him but remained looking past him, to where the mountains fell away.

“This is our fate,” Malius said.

Beneath them, the Vicarus wove its wide course leagues away, a golden mirror shining along the base of the Kessel, to which the eastern plains beyond descended. The round white tower of his father’s House stood tall like a fist, keeping watch from the wooded hills above it.

“It’s what we are, what we have built upon everyone that has passed before us.”

“Who were they?”

“The foolish and the weak. Those who wouldn’t learn.”

“Will the Dragon one day return?” Chaelus asked.

His father smiled. “Only if we don’t remain to keep it at bay.”

His father turned his mount from the precipice, leading it back down the hill. “Come my son, perhaps tomorrow I will tell you more, but today your mother worries. She waits for us with Baelus below.”

The pleasant coolness of the morning had already passed. Clouds gathered above the plain. To the east, they descended into a wall of gray haze that shifted as it neared, growing beneath the hooves of a thousandfold.

Chaelus turned his mare and yelled out. “Father! Riders approach!”

His father had already disappeared.

The clarion call of his mother’s horn cut through the morning air.

The forest blurred past Chaelus until he found them.

His mother looked both strange and beautiful, leaning against the sage-like boulder along the hunting path down which they’d come. The arrow was deep, its crimson feathers worn and savage, the rich blue of his mother’s dress swollen dark around it.

Chaelus dropped the reins as he jumped down. He knelt, silent beside her, his father already cradling her within his arms.

Her lips trembled upon her pale face, the gentle forest shadows dancing upon it. “The horn.”

His father stroked her hair, his hands shaking. “We heard it.”

“The Khaalish. They’re back. Baelus is safe within the tower. But their scouts, they found me. I’d come to warn you. ”

“Chaelus saw them.” His father’s voice trembled. “We took flight to you even before you sounded the horn.”

“Is he with you? Is he safe?”

“He’s here.”

She sighed. “Promise me...” She fell weak as a choking cough overcame her.

Tears streamed down his father’s face. “Anything. I will do anything, my love.”

Her eyes grew fierce again as she continued. “Send him away, Malius. Send him far away from this place before the shadow which consumes it descends upon him.”

“I’m sorry, my love.  I’ve done this to you. I shouldn’t have taken you away. You shouldn’t have to die. This should never have been for you.”

“It was my choice. This has always been my choice. All is at last as it should be. Now you must promise me.” His mother sighed again as she closed her eyes.

His father stiffened, choking back his tears. “Aalyanna, I will do everything you ask.”

The Mother’s voice dispelled his dream.

“You take the blood of them both with you to Magedos,” she said. “As to which your fate will choose, I cannot say.”

Chaelus wavered between the scented warmth of the chapel and the pull of the past which still held him in its grip.

“I’ve come to gain my kingdom back,” he said.

“So you say again,” the Mother said. “Your kingdom means nothing to me. Soon you will learn that your desires and your life are no longer your own. Perhaps you are who you do not yet claim to be. Perhaps you aren’t.  Either way, you must understand that everything you know is no longer safe. Not even here.”

“You need not warn me of the deceptions of Maedelous and his kind.”

“It is not to the machinations of man that I speak. The Dragon which hunts you is far too clever to be so bold. No. It’s the very thing you depend upon the most – it’s of this that you must be wary.”

Chapter Eleven

Col Durath

The subtle glow of moon and stars broke the ruined stone arch above him. The whispers of the Synod had passed, even those that followed him as he’d left through the cloister around the open hall.

Chaelus leaned out over the fluted and pitted stone window sill. The craftsmen of the Evarun may have held no equal, but even their skill couldn’t prevent the loss that time, or prophecy, could bring. The forest floor descended amidst the crumble of the ruined tower beneath him.

It was with a whisper that this had began. It would be with a whisper that it would end. Blood on fallen snow and a whisper in the dark. The name and memory of his father ran deep amongst the Servian Knights, but it was a memory stricken by legend and myth. It was a memory bereft of anything he knew.

What is the best way to tell a lie? To hide it in truth. So Malius, his father, had done to him.

The stares of three in particular had followed him after the Synod: Maedelous, the Goarnii, Al-Hoanar, and another who stood with them, one he had not expected to see here, one from his life before; Cullin, Roan Lord of the House of Soloth.

Chaelus’ old brother at arms and childhood friend had not retreated from his disbelieving stare, nor from the poisoned company of Maedelous. Neither had the question retreated from Chaelus as to why Cullin was here. The Roan Lords had long ago lost any charity for the machinations or schemes of the Servian Order. Yet here was one he had once thought was his brother, here, just like he was.

He exhaled and climbed out through the broken window, lowering himself to the tumbled slope of broken stones. The vestige of a path wrapped around the slope of the hill beneath it, leading back to the ruined stairs of the Synod. To his right, the secret valley descended into mist, to where hearth fires of the Servian Knights smoldered in the distance.

The knotted mass of a fallen tree bordered the path, nestled amidst moss and undergrowth. The forest loomed over him, tangled and dense, the trees closer here than he had seen since his passage to this place. Beyond the rotting log, a small path climbed up through the stunted mounds pressing up between them.

Two statues of gray stone, set apart from the gaunt white ruins of the valley, rose from pedestals on either side of the narrow path. Their faces had been removed, not by time, but by vengeance or regret. Chisel marks had left unmistakable traces upon them, leaving them silent to the act as they waited, their gossamer-bound swords still held in both hands, pointing towards their feet.

The path climbed unmarred by the malice of the wood itself. Yet darkness still claimed it, cloaked from the light of the moon, the caryatids alone standing to guard whatever secrets it held.

Chaelus climbed over the log and between the reach of the two solemn guardians. A cold wind whispered past.

The mounds, half buried tombs of gray stone like that of the statues, lay scattered across the hillside. Dark holes stared back through their moss-covered portals, the passage through which the souls of their owners had once been let to pass. The branches of the forest hung dark and saddened about them. Another, smaller path led off between them. The chill of the place deepened as he passed.

Near the crest of the hill, the forest opened. The gray ghosts of ruins reached up into the moonlight.

Chaelus stepped up onto an open court. Another statue, one the height of two men, sat on a pedestal at its center, looking northward.

Chaelus followed along the curved edge of the broken walls. To the north, the heights of the forest stopped beneath them. Beyond them, beyond the bare gray hills of the Abadain, the sky trembled above the black wall of the Karagas Mun, no longer a distant vision.

The statue stared northward with empty eyes, his weathered face lost like those at the base of the hill. His hands rested upon the sword within his lap. The tip of the blade had broken off, but traces of lines still remained upon it to reveal the image of the binding it was meant to portray. Worn steps, carved into the front of the statue base, led up to him, as if the Servian Knight portrayed there had climbed up to sit upon the chair himself, before his flesh had become stone.

The remembered footfalls of Cullin drew close behind Chaelus. He lowered his hand to Sundengal’s hilt.

“Do you know the story of this place?” Cullin asked.

Chaelus turned in silence.

Cullin stepped out like a ghost from the path. The silver sigil of the House of Soloth, a chalice over a setting sun, hung pronounced amidst the furs over his chainmail coat. At his waist, his broad sword hung unsheathed, its steel blade bound by gossamer.

The eyes in Cullin’s stoic face smiled. “It’s here where you’ll find the loneliness that awaits you, my friend.” He placed a red fruit, clutched within his hand, to his mouth. Its juices fell fast between his fingers. “Chaelus, of the Roan House of Malius.”

“Tell me then, when did you abandon your own?” Chaelus whispered, nodding to Cullin’s gossamer bound blade.

Cullin barked the briefest of laughs. “No, I am no cleric of this. But I am no fool either. I am only their guest, one who will not share in the ignorance and folly of our brethren. As we speak, the gates of the Evarun stand open for the Khaalish to again pass freely through. But to the north, an even greater darkness stirs, one I do not claim to understand but one I fear more than I do my own death. The Line which guards against the Dragon has been broken. Those who watch it have fallen. So I have come here to watch it myself.”

Damp leaves lifted up around them as a gentle breeze awoke. The smell upon them wafted stale, reminding Chaelus of the graves he had just passed.

He stiffened. “This place is forgotten.”

“No,” Cullin said. “It’s waiting. It is the Mont of Col Durath, the Gray Chair. This, my friend, is the Watchtower of old.”

“What does it wait for?”

“For the signal fires to be lit again. It waits for the return of the Giver, the One, the one who will return them to their purpose. There are even those who believe it waits for you.”

Cullin seized Chaelus’ hands in his own. A smile cut across his face. “It’s been long since we’ve met, my friend.”

Chaelus backed away. “Since you betrayed my father’s House.”

Cullin’s voice lowered. His eyes narrowed. “There are many things for which many of us must be forgiven.” He stepped forward. “Yet I did not betray your father, Chaelus. I was with many who grieved at the loss of both Malius and his House, but I could no longer stand beside you and watch you take the same path as he.”

“It would seem that his House isn’t lost yet.”

Cullin shook his head. “To your brother, Baelus, and all who knew you, you’re dead. They remain ignorant to the truth of this. Already there are some who have begun gathering their colors to him.”

“I seem to remember that my father trained Baelus in war and the Measure well.”

The corner of Cullin’s mouth turned down. “Hold no doubt that there are many who follow Baelus closely. Already they circle like vultures, waiting above him. I’ve kept watch over him, as closely as I’ve been able.”

Chaelus turned away.

“Your father’s loss was not by my hand,” Cullin said. “Nor do I believe it was by yours. Your father’s death came long before breath ceased to come from his lips. I’ve been told you’ve already seen enough to know this.”

Chaelus felt a dull pain.

“If you knew this,” he asked, “why didn’t you stop him? Why didn’t you stop me?”

“Because he wouldn’t see, because you couldn’t see, just as I couldn’t see, as young Baelus still can’t see now. I know that you know the whispers he hears.”

“He won’t hear them much longer, even if I fail.”

Cullin placed his hand upon Chaelus’ shoulder. “I’ll leave you here amidst the solace of the stones. But the truth that you seek isn’t here. It lies with the dead that wait beneath you. There is more in this than you know, Chaelus, Lord of the Roan House of Malius. Your path has already been laid. To gain what you seek, you mustn’t turn away from it.”

“I don’t want this.”

Cullin turned away. He raised his head to the night sky. “Then leave it, but don’t mourn the passing of all that’s been given to you. Your desire will succumb before the truth, just as you will if you continue to seek your own solace. If nothing else, know it was for this that your father fell.”

Beneath Col Durath, the mist parted from the narrow path amidst the tombs. Yet the chill of the place remained. The path ended before one of the mounds, a tomb set apart from the others. Small white flowers crowned its top.

Chaelus passed his hand over his brow and his own dark crown that sat there.

No opening broke the surface of the door’s bright white stone, nor was it as aged as its companions. It glowed against the night between the damp leaves pressing against the virgin moss growing upon it.

Chaelus fell to his knees.

He drew his hand across the face of the tomb, pressing the leaves gently aside as his fingers traced the fluid engraving beneath.

Aalyanna

Chaelus cleaned the remaining leaves and moss away until only the fluid script of the Evarun that spoke his mother’s name remained.

Around it circled a seamless script with neither beginning nor end. Chaelus had seen it before, had copied it even from the pages of dusty tomes in the halls of Lossos. It was a blessing; one, it was said, that the Evarun reserved only for their own.

Chaelus picked one of the small white flowers atop his mother’s tomb, and yielded to the memories he knew were no longer his alone.

Chapter Twelve

Blood and Prophecy

In solemn splendor, the Servian Knights lined up along either side of the narrow path, their heads bowed over the pommels of their upraised swords.

White robes covered their chain mail coats, the symbol of the prostrate cross struck red upon their chests. Around them, the last remaining leaves fell like solemn motes in the dawn light filtering down between their Gossamer Blades, the glimmer of their steel mute beneath the fabric which held them.

The Servian Knights recited prayers in the tongue of the Evarun, the words and the notes of their voices resounded with hope and mourning.

The Mother, in black robes with her deep cowl drawn across her eyes, waited at the line’s end. Maedelous stood opposite her, his legion lorica ill-fitting and worn and from an age already passed. The Gossamer Blades of both hung at their waists.

Chaelus waited as the Servian Knights who were to lead him passed by; not two, but four of them.

Al-Thinneas bowed his head. “The Happas Servius will take us north to Magedos and your purpose there. We’ll make for Hallas Barren, the northern gate, by day’s end. The way isn’t hard, but there our rest will end. Beyond it the broken wilds of the Abadain hold sway.”

Al-Aaron drew up close behind Al-Thinneas, permitted, somehow, by the Mother to come. Much of Al-Aaron’s pallor had withdrawn with the night’s passing. It was as if his belief in the Nephelium alone had healed him. Yet beneath his unexpected vigor, Chaelus knew that the Dragon’s shadow still burgeoned inside Al-Aaron, just as it had in him, unseen and unknown. He could only hope that the boy who had raised him from the cenotaph’s dark well remembered this too.

Chaelus seized Al-Aaron’s shoulder. “The Dragon’s poison still claims you.”

Al-Aaron pulled away. Though his pallor had diminished, he was still weak and his eyes had lost much of their glimmer. Only the sternness, that was never intended for a child, remained.

“Why do you do this?” Chaelus asked.

“Because I promised to,” Al-Aaron murmured.

The woman named Al-Mariam followed Chaelus, but not the cause he served.  Chaelus watched her keep her stare away from him. He waited as the scent of her lavender passed. For whatever reason, the Mother had sent her to come as well, and Al-Mariam’s quest, for now at least, was hers alone. Just so long as her blade remained that way as well.

Al-Hoanar, the Goarnni, was last among the four. His blade – a spigot, one of the gladatorial weapons of his people – hung upon his armless side. Gossamer bound the spigot’s thick stabbing blade but did little to hide the not so subtle promise of the hand’s breadth spike protruding from the back of its hilt.

Al-Hoanar slowed as he passed and murmured, his voice muffled by his thick braided beard. “The wards which protect this place only guard against the darkness we bring. They do nothing against the darkness we take with us.”

The shadows of the upraised swords danced over Chaelus as he followed the four Servian Knights. At the procession’s end, the light touch of the Mother’s hand rested upon him. “Be still,” she whispered. “Be wary.”

The piercing stare of Maedelous, and all the whispers it brought, along with the unexpected warning of Al-Hoanar and the Mother, pursued Chaelus as he passed.

Still sunlight undressed the shadow of the white road beyond them, beyond the Garden of Rua. Gray rock slopes ascended alongside it into the still dark shadows of the forest.

Few words passed amongst Chaelus and his new companions as the forest of Sanseveria diminished into a thin cloak that struggled over the rocky hills and falls of the hillocks of the Abadain.

Few thoughts passed through Chaelus. Even the normal wariness that kept a man alive spoke nothing to him. Perhaps some of the peace of the Garden remained, or perhaps just a veil.

The shadows of the day shortened, then grew.

Twinned ivory stone columns welcomed the evening’s call in the shape of languid trees, rising from either side of the Happas Servius as it climbed a hilltop. The columns’ sinuous arms reached across from one to the other, forming an arch above the path.

The full moon rose. The rusting light of the sun passed to mark the lapsing of the day. Soft gray shadows reached away from the stones and scattered bones that lay across the open courtyard beyond.

Chaelus let his hand fall to Sundengal’s hilt. His fingers tightened over it as the dying sun gasped upon the dead faces there.

Beyond the arches, Al-Thinneas set his pack beneath a broken wall. “Here’s where hope fled.”

Al-Hoanar grunted as he settled next to Al-Thinneas. “It’s where they fled.”

In silence, Al-Aaron continued past. Al-Mariam did as well, disappearing into the shadow of the trees beneath the ruin.

“The Evarun and the Gorondians were once a single race,” Al-Thinneas said.  “It’s said they were born from a time before even the Dragon itself. But their hearts weren’t the same, and it was from their hearts that the Dragon came. The Evarun wept as they watched the Gorondians fall, seduced by themselves, seduced by the Dragon’s call. The Evarun wept for them, but they wouldn’t share their end. Confident in their piety, the Evarun retreated to a place where they believed the Dragon’s shadow couldn’t find them.”

Chaelus knew the story well, having scribed it many times before. He stared, distracted by where Al-Aaron’s silhouette climbed alone to the ruins’ summit.

“It’s not unlike the Servian Knights’ own lament,” he offered.

Al-Thinneas gave a quiet smile. “I have thought so myself, but have spoken little of it. Perhaps this is another reason why you’re here.”

Al-Hoanar stared at Chaelus. The Goarnni’s face was humorless, but nonetheless thoughtful.

“The Gorondians wouldn’t let the Evarun go,” he said. “Amongst the dead here are the Evarun who stayed behind to fight them, so their own people could be free. That we don’t follow them is a lament all its own.”

Al-Aaron stood away from the rest of them, looking out across the growing gloom of the rugged hills, his pack thrown down to the stones beside him.

Chaelus approached him.

“There’s much you haven’t told me,” he said.

“There’s much you don’t need to know,” Al-Aaron replied.

“I would decide that.”

“Would you?”

“I would know what I face.”

“I wonder,” Al-Aaron said. “Or would you turn away?  Would you, if you knew that you would die again before your task is complete, if you knew that you would never again sit upon your white tower’s throne?”

The voices of the Nephelium drifted through Chaelus like fallen snow. “I know that you lie to me now, just as you lied to me then. Why did you awaken me?”

“To help you fulfill your destiny.”

In Chaelus’ mind, snow fell and froze.  Whispering cracks spread out across its surface.  He trembled from the chill of it.

Al-Aaron turned away. His voice was just as cold. “There are many different kinds of death; death of self is the rarest of these. I believe that your death will be the greatest of them all.”

***

Al-Mariam pushed past scrub and branch, dropping her bundle at last where wood gave way to sky.

Raising her face, she breathed in the cooling air, feeling its answer deep within her. Her limbs loosened, releasing their wear from the day’s march, her neck and fingers rolling free from the tensions her thoughts and feelings had forced upon her.

She breathed again, allowing the peace of the moment to settle within her.

Resting her hand upon Aela’s hilt, her fingers released in a single motion the binding which held the blade to its harness. The sudden weight of the sword felt good, powerful within her hands. Raising it up before her, Al-Mariam balanced her weight against it.

Moonlight illuminated the blade, the gossamer dressed faint against it, her face captured along with another’s within it.

Al-Mariam spun on her heel, her blade a flash that ended taut before her.

Chaelus stood unmoved well beyond Aela’s tip at the edge of the clearing, a mixed look of respect and amusement lurking in his dark eyes. “So you are a warrior after all.”

A portion of her calm returned but it was weighted by guilt. Her breathing resumed. She was afraid, yes, but as her heart quickened, that feeling was measurably replaced by another of which she couldn’t speak.

Chaelus approached her, sadness replacing the amusement in his face. “Such a spirit cannot be contained.”

Al-Mariam’s feet shifted upon the stony ground, but she did not, or could not, she would not lower her blade.

Chaelus passed her. He sat down on the trunk of a tree and looked up to her. His eyes were weary, but searching. “You’re still new to this.  You’re new to the Servian Order.”

She dared not speak to him, yet she knew it was not a question.

Chaelus’ eyes didn’t waver. “There are indeed few enough of you left.”

“What do you want?” Al-Mariam asked.

“I would have my kingdom returned,” he answered. “To do so I must defeat the Dragon that stole it from me. To do this, I must depend upon you. To do this, I must know you. I would know who I can trust, after all I trusted are lost. Tell me, Al-Mariam, what is your Story?”

Al-Mariam’s chest tightened. The tremor of her hand passed down through the length of Aela’s blade. “Don’t mock me.”

She could do nothing beneath the measured heat of his continued stare.

“How did you come to serve the Servian Order?” Chaelus asked. “What gain do you seek from them? What manner of death was it that summoned you, only to lose you again to this?”

What manner of death, Al-Mariam thought? No, death hadn’t chosen her. No cool embrace at the long end of suffering had come to greet her, as it had him. She would have welcomed it. Instead, she had been forced to suffer the long lonely wait that had come to pass.

She smiled. “You’re a fool.”

Within the space of her gathered heartbeat, Chaelus stood.

The sharp sound of drawn steel echoed through the clearing. Chaelus circled her, his unbound blade bright against the ebbing night. “If you won’t tell me, then at least show me how one fights with a blade who doesn’t wish to kill.”

Al-Mariam’s jaw tightened as her previous fear and anger returned. “I won’t.”

Chaelus’ sword danced confident within his hand. “If what your prophecy says of me is true, then it may be the last free choice I make. And that is something I won’t be denied.”

Al-Mariam kept away from him, tracking him from outside the circle of his blade.

“If I can’t know you, then at least show me this one act of yours, if in the end I’m to save you.” He reached out and glanced his blade sharply against hers.

Al-Mariam pressed back at him, batting his sword away. The unbound ringing of steel trembled through her. The ghostlike gossamer that bound Aela to her promise dimmed into something less than the pale thread of its making.

Al-Mariam’s fear bled out into a coarser anger. “It’s no act!”

She backed away. A log broke her stride. Her balance gave way.

Chaelus’ hand swept up against the small of her back. He lifted her up, his strength around her like a second skin. The warmth of his body both comforted and terrified her. Once more she fell lost into the deep well of his eyes as he drew closer.

His kiss was coarse and tender, strong and uncertain, like the first shoots of spring forcing their way through the lingering snow. For the first time, the long cold wait that had fallen on her trembled away.

Chaelus pulled back from her, taking the warmth of his breath with him. In his eyes, sunlight reflected like falling snow. The sadness within them returned.

“Be mindful of your anger,” he said. “It could lead to your fall.”

Shame and embarrassment quickly brought Al-Mariam’s anger surging back and she pulled away from him. Her hand fumbled with the leather tether as she returned her blade to it, but she would not turn her eyes from him. She could not. She did not.

She backed away from him, up the mount of Col Durath, back towards the others.

Still, the lingering ghost of him held her captive, breathless, as one by one everything she had built to defend herself tumbled from her mind. He stood watching her, his sword still unbound.  Her voice held itself breathless as she murmured, “It is no act.”

***

The pulse of Chaelus’ heart echoed with the sounds of the ebbing night around him.

He found his way further down the wooded, rocky slope away from the haunting ruins above, away from the others, away from the pull of Al-Mariam, away even from the ghost of Faerowyn whom he’d already lost, away from the chilling words Al-Aaron had spoken, away from the ghosts of all of the things that had been summoned back to him.

He had to clear his head, clear his heart of the too many voices, too many feelings, the all too much that he did not want to be his.

The haunting allure of Al-Mariam still lingered about him, subtle and deep, the gentle heave of her breasts beneath her hauberk as she breathed, in the peace of the moment before she knew that she was no longer alone. Her breath then had held a whisper all its own, powerful and mournful, a promise of something not yet fulfilled. Just as it had been for him, he knew that her suffering came from a choice that had never been hers.

Chaelus envisioned the eyes of Faerowyn upon him beneath the votive promise of her veil, and all the desire and the doubt that it hid. It had been a promise of something more, a life more, but something more than his fate would let him be. It was the promise of a life to be lost, and so it had been.

A trace of Faerowyn’s promise whispered beneath Al-Mariam’s unoffered one. But unlike Faerowyn, Al-Mariam wore no veil. She didn’t need one.

Al-Mariam’s promise was bound within the length of the blade she had held twice now against him, her reflection unwavering in the steel beneath the gossamer that bound it. She feared him. She feared what he had brought with him, perhaps more than he did himself. Because of this, her promise, the very breath of her clung upon him, no less than the taste of her returned kiss, and from it he feared he would not escape.

Of all the Servian Knights, only Al-Mariam didn’t ask him to suffer for the sake of prophecy. She would not ask him to sacrifice himself. Unlike the others, Al-Mariam alone would never ask him to be her savior.

Yet promises were made to be broken, and he had already lost too much from broken promises.

No. He would wait. He would let the Servian Knights and the promises each of them served lead him to Magedos, and to the Dragon’s ruin. After that, whatever remained of the Dragon’s shadow could take him, and the rest of them as well when he was through.

The pale dusk brightened as the forest fell away.

Across the clearing, the tops of the tall grasses shifted. The subtle creak of sinew and the harsh smell of unwashed flesh whispered upon the air.

Chaelus dropped to his knee, easing Sundengal from its scabbard. The morning sun blinded him through the low thick wood beyond. Broken footsteps sounded out amongst fallen branches beneath the trees.

The strangled blast of a Khaalish horn shattered the dawn around him.

Just like the rest of his past, they’d returned.

As a shadow fell across the sun, Chaelus jumped up with a cry of war.

***

The dawn stood silent as Al-Aaron stopped, settling into the infant shadows of the tall grass just as the sun began its crest. A stone’s toss ahead of him, a dark man bound in furs waited in the brush. A dark mane adorned with bits of bone and blood-red feathers hung behind his head. Dark paint streaked from his eyes and around his mouth in a soulless visage like nothing he had ever seen before.

The silence erupted into trumpet calls. The voice of Chaelus cried out, distant across the clearing. In a single motion the man raised a bow, pulling both fletching and bow string to his cheek.

In Al-Aaron’s mind rose the memory of Figus, cackling mirthless over his trembling drink as he waved the remains of his shattered arm. A Khaalish archer never misses.

The ghost of Malius stared across the clearing. He looked down at him, haggard eyes stern. “Remember your promise to me, child. Or would you let it end like this?”

A soft whisper and thunderous crack announced the bowstring as it and the blood feathered shaft left the barbarian’s fingers.

Al-Aaron felt more than heard himself scream. The distance between him and the Khaalish archer fell away like burnt gossamer.

***

Chaelus’ cry faltered.

A man in white robes stood before him. The sunlight burned like a fire around him. He leaned upon a staff, holding his other hand to his side.  Coarse brown hair and pale skin framed shadowed eyes of the grayest blue.

Chaelus stumbled backwards until he felt the rough bark of a pine press against him.

“I am Talus,” the man said. His voice was like the tinkling of cymbals. The sounds and smell of the Khaalish vanished as the burning light of the sun softened blue around him. “I am the Giver.”

Chaelus’ legs gave beneath him and he fell to his knees.

Talus removed his hand from his side, both of them crimson.  His held his open palm out to Chaelus. “My blood is your blood, and it alone shall protect you.”

Fear gripped Chaelus. He stared downward, away from the vision. “What’s happening?”

The warmth of blood and flesh pressed against his brow and lips as Talus placed his hand upon Chaelus’ face, raising it back up to him.

Talus smiled as he let go and backed away. “My path is now your path. My fate is now your fate. My strength is now your strength.”

Chaelus felt the warm sensation of Talus’ touch still upon him as Talus drew his hand away. A sudden wind carried past them.

Feeling a pull at his cloak, Chaelus looked down to see several crimson-feathered shafts embedded in the tree behind him.

He spun back but the vision of Talus was gone. It was replaced by a much crueler visage, white war paint covering dark skin as one of the Khaalish weighted his war ax high overhead.

Chaelus jumped up, sidestepping the spear which now hung from the tree where his chest had just been. Sundengal lay beyond his reach in the grasses.

The Khaalishite stood motionless before him, confused. His eyes were wide with fear. The shadows of more warriors waited just beyond the trees. They wouldn’t stay so for long.

Throwing his arms out, Chaelus shouted as he seized both the man’s head and ax hand.

The Khaalishite closed his eyes and fell limp. The ax tumbled from his hand. He let out a pitiful cry in his tribal tongue, which somehow, Chaelus understood.

“To see you is death,” the Khaalish warrior whispered.

A shadow rolled out like oil from him. It disappeared into the ground. Chaelus stared in shock as he continued to hold the Khaalish warrior up. The Khaalishite trembled, burying his face against him.

Chaelus lifted the man’s face up and ran his thumb over the warrior’s trembling eyelids.

Chaelus spoke to him in the barbarian’s own tongue, a tongue he didn’t know, in words that overtook him, that Chaelus knew were not his own, and that he was powerless to stop.

“Then open your eyes, Obidae,” he said. “And be reborn.”

Chapter Thirteen

Awakening

The dead leaf danced across the paving stones.

Michalas pulled his foot away. He listened to it though. It wasn’t really dead.

It whispered along with the other leaves, even in the fall of their passing, gathered within the clutches of the broken stones around him, the whisper of life that remains amongst those things which only seem to have passed.

Ras Dumas had taught him that. Ras Dumas was the one who’d helped him give meaning to the voices he’d always heard, the whisper of life that he’d always known was around him.

Ras Dumas had also taught him the truth about the Dragon. Of what it had done, where it had gone, and where it still remained. But of all the things that Ras Dumas had told him, there was one thing that right now was the most important thing. The Dragon only possesses the living; the dead serve no purpose to it.

Michalas shivered from the cold. With his numb fingers he pulled the ragged sack cloth he had found closer. It scratched his skin, but at least he was safe within it. He was safe at least for now, but it had only been a day.

When the darkness of the tunnel had exploded into light, the screams of the Dragon were extinguished, replaced by the Angel’s voice. Now the Angel’s light had faded into gray, her voice receded beneath the cries of carrion birds and the scraping whisper of decay, here amidst the ruins of the dead city that sprawled beneath Ras Dumas’ tower.

Here is where he would wait, just as the Angel had told him he should, here, where she and the two who always came with her had left him.

The wind whistled through the narrow close where he huddled in the corner of two walls. The empty eyes of dead windows stared over him. Only a thin chasm of gray light filtered down between  the walls. Black crows called to each other as they circled above, searching for him, listening.

Michalas held his breath until they passed.

And the gray light brightened.

Michalas leaned his face into the summoning glow of the Angel’s hand as it touched him.

Her light surrounded him. It tunneled through him like a breeze. The damp chill of the bleak stones faded away.

“I knew you’d come back,” he said.

“Trust that your wait is almost over,” the Angel whispered.

But her hand pulled away from him.

Michalas recoiled from the chill that returned. But the soft feeling of her touch lingered like a flower’s smell.

The Angel smiled at him. Her dark hair was like a lantern’s frame. “You must wait only a little more, for the coming of something you know, and for the return of something you’ve lost.”

The other two Angels faded behind her, and then she did as well.

Michalas smiled at the place where they’d been.

Wait for something he knew and the return of something he’d lost. What or who?  Ras Dumas was the only person he’d really known, or wanted to know, despite all the things he knew Ras Dumas had done. Other than him, Michalas didn’t know anything or anyone, not anymore. The only people he’d known before were his mother, whom the Angels had given him to, and his sister Mariam. But like Ras Dumas they were both dead.

Michalas’ smile broadened. Like Ras Dumas, at least they were safe.

***

The sun resumed its unerring path.

Chaelus rose beside the crimson-feathered arrows, struck into the tree where he had only just been standing, until his eyes met the thick shaft of the Khaalish spear, where his head had just been. He ran his fingers across the brackish feathers and binding that rested beneath its broad, sunken tip.

The image of Talus, the Giver, still burned against the back of his vision, underlying everything above it like an inverted veil. The Giver’s touch still pulsed through him, like a second skin living beneath his own. He could smell him, like an odor of subtle incense. He could even taste the sweet ardor of his holy breath.

Al-Thinneas, Al-Hoanar and Al-Mariam stood just apart from him, each bathed in a faint cerulean glow. Beneath it, the shadow of the Dragon turned within each of them as befell each of their fates.

Yet how could he know? How could he see? In answer, Chaelus felt the heartbeat of the Giver pulse within his chest, along with the memories Talus held, of who Talus was, or had been, a thief and a murderer, and even a lord like him, and how Talus had felt just the same once, when the Giver had come to him a hundred years before.

The voice of Al-Thinneas struck sharp against his senses. “The Khaalish have fled. It wasn’t by chance that they found us. They were aided by one of our own.”

“That’s madness,” Al-Hoanar blustered. “Here, so close to the Garden?”

Al-Thinneas gripped the spear and pulled it free from the tree, weighing it within his hand. He stared at Chaelus. “This was a trap meant for the Giver alone. The Happas Servius is wild and our passage is too young to have been followed. But there were many of our own who knew it. It was why the Khaalish knew to wait here.”

Al-Mariam drew closer with the measured creak and din of her hauberk beneath her coat. “To be one of the Order is to know the Prophecy, and to know the Prophecy is to know that if he is indeed the Giver, neither arrow nor spear would harm him.”

She raised the point of her unfettered blade towards Chaelus. The revelation of the Dragon’s shadow within her grew as the fear and uncertainty of her faith, and the kiss they had only just shared, burned beneath the chill of her stare.

“If they believe as the Younger claims,” she said, “they’d know it’s only this that he needs to fear.”

Chaelus held her stare but did not, or could not, rise against it. He dared not taunt her as he had before. The gentle touch of the Giver inside him cautioned him back.

Instead, he waited against the tremor of his heart, not of fear, but something else.

Al-Thinneas rested the butt of the spear over her blade, gently pressing it down.

Al-Mariam returned her sword to her side. “Or perhaps it was just a test.”

“It’s a warning,” Al-Hoanar’s thick voice drove back. “From someone who never believed.”

Chaelus slumped down against the tree, unable to stand anymore against the flurry of thoughts that shouldn’t be his.

Among them, the whisper of the Khaalish war chief’s name, Obidae, echoed inside him as did everything the man’s soul possessed; everything he did, why they’d come here, everything that had been promised to them and by whom. They had come for Chaelus, to destroy a false prophet, but had fled instead, touched by the one who now dwelt inside him.

Al-Hoanar was right, though he hadn’t known this would be. Al-Hoanar was right, though he hadn’t, and couldn’t, say the name of the one who had caused it. Al-Hoanar didn’t know it was Maedelous who had sent the Khaalish here. But he suspected.

Chaelus still felt the press of Obidae’s face upon his fingertips. He felt his face and everything beneath it as if it were his own, and he knew that Obidae now felt the same of him. Even more so, Obidae felt it of the one of his own who had fallen.

Chaelus felt a wave of nausea creep over him. Kalek, Kalek was his name. Kalek was dead. Kalek was blood kin to Obidae, and Kalek was not the only one who had fallen this day.

The three Servian Knights looked back with hesitation as Chaelus stared at each of them, desperately searching.

Al-Mariam backed away from him. The ice of her stare shattered as she did. The shadow within her billowed forth like smoke to a fire that was already beginning to consume her.

Al-Hoanar drew closer. His own shadow lessened somewhat as a shade of doubt that was more like truth swept over him. The Goarnni had seen something, and something in him had changed.

Al-Thinneas, radiant, held out his hand.

Chaelus grasped it, trembling, as another shadow, one that none of the others could see, passed over him.

“Where’s Al-Aaron?” he demanded. “Where’s my Teacher?”

***

Blood. Blood and the bitter taste of bile clung to his lips. Tears burned upon his cheeks.

Al-Aaron lowered himself into the matted grass where his stomach had just emptied, beside the stilled body of the Khaalish archer. The deep smell of sweat and leather remained, mingling now with the sharp tang of the life spilled out before him. In the grass, Baerythe waited where it had dropped from his grasp, its gossamer torn and thick with blood.

What had he done?

“Only what you’ve done before.” The memory of Figus’ hungry whisper responded unbidden, unwanted to Al-Aaron. “Only what you did once before to me, my love.”

He had killed a man, just like he’d done before.

The dead warrior stared back to where his own blood lay spattered across Al-Aaron’s chest. Al-Aaron felt it, dried upon his face, where his tears hadn’t cut through.

The dead man wore the same leer Figus had worn, the same expression that had come for him that very last time. It took him back to the dark sewer hole where the slaver had once kept him, where the damp chill and shadow had at last become his comfort. There he would wait until the monster Figus came for him, sometimes to beat him or make him steal, and sometimes to do things that were even worse.

Al-Aaron swallowed, his throat swelling. No. This was different. This time he hadn’t killed for himself. He’d had no choice, and the Giver, the only one that mattered, was safe because he’d done so.

Yet how would he tell the others?

The ghost of Malius crouched down next to him amidst the blood-stained grasses. “I fear this is something they will never understand, let alone forgive. Only you and I will know that you were right. And you were, my love, and now you know what it is that you must do.”

Al-Aaron’s hand trembled as he seized Baerythe’s matted blade from the clinging grasses. He returned it to its harness. The clamor and cries of his friends sounded out across the clearing. He heard his own name being called. Mostly, he heard the voice of Chaelus.

He smeared his hand across his cheeks, pressing away the tears, the sweat, and the blood. He felt cold. He forced down again the bitterness in his throat. No. Chaelus couldn’t find him here. Not like this. Even he wouldn’t understand.

The morning sunlight shattered through the branches like broken glass. Al-Aaron withdrew into the sharp whisper of their shadows.

Yet neither could he leave Chaelus. There was no one else to protect him.  If, he thought, like the barbarian who’d died this would be his end too, then nothing else mattered anyway, not even the oath he’d just betrayed. No. He would stay, but he would stay hidden. He would find his place in the shadows. They would welcome him as they used to, even now in the harsh light of dawn.

The crush of tall grasses broke the silence.

Chaelus stood dark against the rising sun, bathed in all the glory that had been promised him. The corpse of the dead Khaalish warrior still stared from behind him.

Al-Aaron’s knees turned weak. He stumbled. The tall grasses met him as his strength fell away. He raised his hand, still trembling, before him. “I didn’t mean to do this. I didn’t mean to. I…I did it to save you!”

Chaelus’ dark shadow drew over him like a shroud but it was a shadow awash in light, Chaelus’ countenance veiled in the thin line between the two.

Al-Aaron choked. Streams of tears broke again against his cheeks. “I’m sorry that after all of this, I’ve failed you!”

Chaelus reached down and cupped the warmth of his hand against Al-Aaron’s face. His eyes glowed with a calm fire and his voice sounded like the tinkling of cymbals. “Then let it pass from you.”

Chapter Fourteen

Passage

Al-Mariam pressed aside the thin gray branches reaching up amidst the stones.

Chaelus’ silhouette broke above the summit of Hallas Barren above. Shafts of amber sunlight still pierced through the clouds gathering overhead. To the north, the sky trembled.

Al-Aaron hadn’t woken, and Chaelus hadn’t spoken.

Al-Mariam’s heart quickened. As best she could, she returned her attention to her charge. She brushed her hand through Al-Aaron’s blood-matted hair. Water and care had not taken it all away. Perhaps nothing would. He didn’t move, or even know her touch as it passed.

“He’s so far away,” she whispered.

Al-Thinneas placed his hand over hers. With the strength of his touch and eyes edged with their usual concern, he was the closest thing she had known to a father since her own had been taken from her. Just as with the child whose head rested in her lap, she realized Al-Thinneas had become like family to her.

“He’s tired,” Al-Thinneas said. “Let him rest.” He looked to the distant figure of Chaelus and the malaise which claimed him. “Let them both rest.”

The sky echoed above them.

“The weather’s already turning,” Al-Mariam offered, grateful for the storm’s distracting clamor.

“Its change has already passed,” Al-Thinneas stated. “By the morrow, we will no longer know the day’s passage.” He placed a finger to the dark spots that showed upon Al-Aaron’s hand. Wrappings still covered his wound above them. “The shadow of the Dragon has been cast over all of us.”

“Shadow or not, the time for our passage has come,” Al-Hoanar said as he joined them. He dropped his pack beside Al-Thinneas. “There’s no safety to be had here.”

“Nor it seems was there ever,” Al-Thinneas returned.

“Whoever sent them though, has much to consider,” Al-Hoanar said, smiling.

“They will know what happened here,” Al-Thinneas said, then paused. “We will leave before dawn, whatever fate or the Dragon bring.”

“What’s happened?” Al-Mariam asked. She heard the tremor in her own voice.

“The machination of prophecy,” Al-Thinneas replied.

“Then you do believe all that Al-Aaron has claimed of him.”

“I believe that the Younger believes. And I know what I saw. I’m no theologian, like Al-Aaron or the Mother. Mine is a simpler faith. And I know that there is much in the ways and desire of man or woman that must yet come to pass.”

Al-Thinneas paused again. He smiled. “The most amusing thing about prophecies is that there is always something that has yet to be fulfilled.”

The silhouette of Chaelus hadn’t moved. Al-Mariam could only guess that he watched the road ahead, and whatever fate waited there. A statue, not unlike the one that watched in vigil above the mount of Col Durath.

“Yet the one we are made to follow speaks no words,” she said.

“Then go to him,” Al-Thinneas said, his stare holding her fast, his eyes knowing her heart as they always did. “And ask for them.”

***

“It seems you were right,” Chaelus whispered. “You were right when you said this would be my death.”

The remembered scent of jasmine drifted over him in answer. His memory of Faerowyn looked out over the ruin’s precipice.

No temptress’ veil marred the innocence of her face, the child’s face that he had fallen in love with so many lives ago. No lies sullied her lips, or the unfulfilled promise they had once borne for him.

To be forced to imagine something lost, to find something safe.

Chaelus’ heart ached at the sight of Faerowyn, imagined or not. At least this time it was no Dragon’s spell that kept her, and there were no words of prophecy or Dragon’s ire that could take the vision of her away from him.

At Faerowyn’s feet, the stain of ashes marked the center of a stone ring the breadth of a man, the only trace of the fire it had once contained. Above her blowing hair, in the distance, the fists of the Karagas Mun reached up to an even darker sky, broken only by the flashes and cries of the suffering storms waging within it.

Against the storm’s tumult, the soft tread of footsteps approached from behind him.

Anguish veiled his sight as Faerowyn disappeared.

Al-Mariam hesitated, unsettled as she came towards him.

At least in this he wasn’t alone.

Al-Mariam’s gossamer-bound blade hung beside her. Her hands clutched each other deep within her cloak.

Chaelus kept his silence, if silence could be had anymore amidst the continuous chaos and murmur of everything around him and within him; the sounds that followed from the blush of the One, Talus, the Giver, the one who had claimed him and colored everything before him.

“Here, the watch fire once burned.” Al-Mariam looked past him as she spoke, her demeanor less forceful and more cautious than before. The shadow of the Dragon within her had dimmed. “It is midway between the Garden and the Line.”

“How fares Al-Aaron?” Chaelus whispered.

“He sleeps a boy’s sleep,” she replied. “I will carry him if he doesn’t wake soon.” Her voice softened more as she spoke of him.

Chaelus could tell that her love for Al-Aaron was deep, no less than his own, and like himself, Al-Mariam claimed Al-Aaron’s suffering as her own. In this too, Chaelus realized, he wasn’t alone.

“And then?” he asked.

“And then we will help you do what you have come to do.”

The wariness in her voice returned but this time, Chaelus knew, surely by the Giver’s touch alone, it was not because of him.

“The Mother should not have sent him with us,” he offered. “His faith has blinded him.”

“Short of his death, you know he wouldn’t have stayed,” she answered.

The growing thunderheads of the Dragon’s storm howled above them. Chaelus could tell that the angst of their bearing was about to be unleashed. Whatever small thing was left to bear against it had already been given to him; a man without faith, a man without reason.

Al-Mariam stared at him in silent wonder.

“Who do you love?” she asked. “For whom do you suffer all this?”

Chaelus drew closer to her, but not like he had when he had taunted her in the woods. He was as powerless to prevent it as he was to stop the second heart beating within him. And this time it was not his own heart but the second heart, the heart of the Giver that was summoned; not by her, but by the need she bore.

Chaelus heard as much as he sensed her tremble in waiting.

He did too.

He stopped only a breath before her.

“Do you believe the things they say of me?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Al-Mariam averred, her stare cast downward.

Chaelus watched a second shadow pass through her, but this time it was not of the Dragon, but of a memory. A memory of loss.

His hand reached out at once to her face. His fingertips brushed against the unexpectedly soft warmth of her cheek. For a moment, her trembling matched his own, carrying with it the face of a midnight-haired boy that was a mirror of her own. Spectral faces surrounded him, searching for him, but still they could not see him, and his eyes still held hope.

Al-Mariam fumbled back from him, one hand trembling against her cheek, where his own had been. The shadow reclaimed her and became something more. “Don’t do that again!”

Chaelus turned from her, stunned, and lowered himself at once to the ring of stones. “Forgive me.”

The imagined spirit of Faerowyn returned to him. He leaned into her hand as it brushed against his cheek. He breathed in the smell and comfort of her memory as he looked past it to the storm-draped mountains, where the black heart of the Dragon waited for him.

The dark-haired child’s face lingered in his vision. His name drew upon Chaelus’ tongue … Michalas. Michalas waited beneath the shadow for his sister. Yet he didn’t wait only for her.

“You say it doesn’t matter what you think,” Chaelus said, “because you haven’t come here for me, or for what I seek. You’ve come for someone else. You’ve come for your brother Michalas, and he is waiting for you.”

Her sharp breath answered him. “How do you know this?”

“Just as I know that it was a boy who raised me from the dead, the same boy who was willing given up his life and his faith for me. Just as I can hear the Giver’s voice inside my head now, and can still feel his touch upon my skin as if he dwells within me. So it was that I saw your brother’s face, even though I’ve never known him.”

“Stop it.”

Chaelus turned to her. “It is the promise of you that keeps him. Though he’s not afraid, he knows he’s run out of time.”

Al-Mariam stepped back. “I said enough!”

“Then at least know that I never wanted this,” Chaelus offered. “Though still, it is mine.”

Chapter Fifteen

Trespasses

The forest thinned into the bare and broken black rocks of the Abadain. The few trees that remained grew stunted, in suffrage amidst the bleak and brackish stones. A ceaseless cold wind blew from the north, from the slopes of the Karagas Mun towering before them.

The happas wound deep within the depths of the jagged hills, and within the illusion of their cloister the biting winds sought the company out, boring into them even more than they had above. Though still the passage boded better than the broken boulder-strewn fields, whose chasms had attempted to claim them more than once as they sought to pass through.

Ahead of Chaelus, Al-Aaron’s head bobbed with the weariness of his march and of his suffering. He had slept fitfully until just before dawn. His words had been few even when he had tried – and failed – to surrender his sword to Al-Thinneas. Al-Thinneas had closed his hands across the child’s and passed the blade back to him. A clean tunic and cloak covered Al-Aaron now. The blood upon his skin had been washed away. Virgin gossamer had been stretched across his blade. Yet none of it would relieve him of the fire from which he suffered.

Chaelus drew alongside him. “It seems I’m becoming everything you’d foreseen.”

Al-Aaron shook his head. “It’s not by me, but by the lips of prophecy alone.”

“Yet you have no peace because of what you’ve done.”

Al-Aaron turned around, his weak and swollen eyes narrowed, his ashen face tight despite its pain. Beneath the ebbing glow of his spirit, the Dragon’s shadow swallowed him, its smoky tendrils racing through his very breath.

“Don’t pity me,” he choked. “I did what I had to in order to save you. I would do so again.”

“So that the breath of the prophecy could be uttered?” Chaelus asked, pleading for an answer.

Al-Aaron turned away. “Perhaps that is something only you would understand now.”

“There are many things the colors of which I wouldn’t, and should not see. Yet I do. I see their shadow and their light. But they’re strangers to me. Just as you are, their purpose is veiled from me.”

“I can’t help you.”

“Then at least let me, let whatever possesses me, help you.”

Al-Aaron flinched away from him. “No!”

Chaelus withdrew. His own fear flooded through him. It was bleak with ire and like the Dragon’s spirit growing in Al-Aaron, it was absolute.

“I need you,” Chaelus whispered. “I need you in this, now more than ever. I need your guidance. I don’t know how to face this. I don’t think I can face both the Giver and the Dragon alone.”

Al-Aaron withdrew into a deeper silence.

“Don’t abandon me,” Chaelus pleaded.

Al-Aaron crumpled over, stumbling. He clutched himself as a spasm seized him.  The glow that Chaelus had once glimpsed within him, the same glow that had once led Chaelus from the dark maw of his own death, dimmed to almost nothing beneath the dark spirit of the Dragon that consumed him.

Al-Aaron waved him away.

The notes of Al-Hoanar’s voice drifted somber behind them. He sang in his own Goarnni tongue, the sound of its muted words rich in flavor and sadness. Soon Al-Mariam’s voice lilted softly with him, the breath and breadth of her own shadow and sadness woven beneath it.

“You must find a way,” Al-Aaron said. He passed his forearm across his sweated brow. “You’re the Giver now. You’re our only hope.”

Chaelus slowed, falling to the words of the song lamented by those behind him as he watched Al-Aaron draw ahead.

A hundred years have passed

since they were awoken.

A hundred years have passed

since the Wyrm was driven away.

A hundred years have passed

since they remembered why they were saved.

So close your eyes behind the Veil

It is a truth you cannot tell

Go to sleep, go to sleep

In the warmth of Dragon’s fire.

Al-Thinneas came beside him, his cowl drawn over his head. His eyes showed bright as steel beneath. The strike of his staff upon the rocks broke in steady measure with his stride. “And what path will you choose to take, Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius?”

Chaelus chastened himself. Irritation and impatience flooded through him. If there were no answers for himself, he could have no answers for them. “I will be whatever I must.”

“You of all must know its a rare thing for a Khaalish archer to miss his mark,” Al-Thinneas said.

Chaelus recalled the dying breath and scent of his mother; the depth of Al-Hoanar’s and Al-Mariam’s lament drawing heavy upon him. His frustration deepened. “Don’t pretend to know me.”

“Your Story’s no secret. Not to us. Not to those who knew your father well.”

“I’m not him.”

“No,” Al-Thinneas said. “But neither can you escape him.”

Al-Aaron had stopped ahead of them, a dim shadow wavering upon the horizon.

“Al-Aaron won’t speak of what he suffers,” Chaelus said.

“That is because he can’t. Not yet. For now at least, his suffering must remain his own.” Al-Thinneas withdrew his cowl. His brow furrowed with care. “Just know that in your love of him, you’re not alone.”

Ahead of them, Al-Aaron stood where cliff and wash descended to tall grass plain. Familiar white stones traced circles across the landscape, and three men with spears walked towards them across the open plain.

“Al-Aaron!” Chaelus said.

He and Al-Thinneas ran to the boy, pulling him down beneath the crest of the ridge. Al-Aaron struggled against them. Then he stopped. A wary look held his face, his eyes clenched shut as he listened.

Al-Hoanar’s face contorted as he dropped beside them.

“Hunters,” he growled.

Chaelus watched the shadow gather within Al-Hoanar, strange as its tentacles laced through him, strange that it even was, strange that he could see it. Stranger still that against it, the blue aura of Al-Hoanar’s spirit remained steady and unyielding.

In the valley below, Chaelus could see through the Giver’s sense that the men carried more than just spears. Armored in steel-studded leather jerkins beneath their furs, each of them bristled with sword, throwing ax and bow. Hanging beneath the prostrate cross suspended from their necks was a tin stamp bearing the seal of Tulon, an image of three ships with unfurled sails.

Though the Dragon’s shadow threatened to devour the men, they had not been completely consumed. They were not like the Remnants he and Al-Aaron had faced before. They were just men, not demons. Their shadows were the sort of most men. They were no different to Chaelus or the Servian Knights who accompanied him, living as each of them did in their own embrace of prophecy.

“They’re only mercenaries,” Chaelus said. “They carry with them the writ of Tulon. They’re scouts, and your Garden is no secret from them. Only their fear keeps them away from you now.”

“Little do they know that the three of them alone could claim it, as long as our vows stay unbroken,” Al-Hoanar bristled.

“If Tulon has fallen, then the shadow of the Dragon has already passed beyond us,” Al-Thinneas said.

Chaelus watched while quickened fingers of shadow reached down the length Al-Hoanar’s arm as he reached for the hilt of his sword. The Goarnni loosened the strands of its tether. “It will matter little if they come up the rise towards us.”

A grief as quick as shadow colored Al-Thinneas’ face. He looked down to Al-Aaron and back. “Have you learned nothing?”

Al-Mariam, cloaked in hesitation and fear, nestled into the ground behind them.

Al-Hoanar looked to Al-Aaron. His brow furrowed. “I have learned enough to know that a prophecy unfulfilled will never save us, and that the oaths of dead men mean nothing. I do not desire this, but neither will I deny what warnings truth may bring.”

The three mercenaries stopped, a stone’s throw from the base of the rise, beside a small cairn of stones standing out amidst the grasses. The men circled it. One crouched before it. Crimson motes danced in the wind upon it.

“Wait,” Chaelus whispered.

The crouching man shouted something to the others, and then stood, backing away. In his head, Chaelus listened to both their spoken and unspoken voices. The man’s name was Fallon, he was their leader. Beneath the veil of his flesh, his shadow grew deeper. Without further words the other two, Oleth and Shammus, desperately searched the heights around them.

Chaelus lowered his head before the mercenaries’ sight passed over him. What they had seen had scared them, and it was greater even than the fear which led them.

Beside Chaelus, Al-Hoanar stared back at him, the fear in his eyes as dark now as the shadow which filled him. Like the men below, it would be fear that would be their greatest loss.

Chaelus looked to Al-Mariam, who returned his stare, but only for a moment.

“They’ve passed,” Al-Thinneas said, staring into the valley below.

“Something’s scared them away,” Al-Mariam uttered.

Al-Thinneas led them with caution down the loosened slope of the wash, where the happas had long since collapsed.

In the valley below, the stones of the happas resumed, but it was bones and not stones that traced their patterns on either side. Bones and rusted steel, their trappings long since taken by rot, waited within the shallow grave of time which slowly claimed them. They bore testament to the battle that had once been fought here, a battle where thousands had fallen. Their spectral voices sounded out upon the gale.

“Who lies here?” Al-Mariam asked.

“Those who forgot, and those we’ve forgotten.” Al-Aaron’s voice was a grim whisper against the wind, its normal music shaded by the torture he shared with the souls who lay dead beneath him.

Al-Hoanar cleared the grasses away from a cairn of stones where the hunters had lingered. “And so others now keep it.”

Al-Thinneas stared at Chaelus, his wonder left unspoken in his eyes. “It’s the Khaalish.”

The cairn stood a shoulder in height. There were others, numbered by the score, scattered across the plain. Bundles of grasses adorned with crimson feathers ordained their summits. The voices upon the wind swirled through and amongst them.

Chaelus closed his eyes as he passed the cairn. He listened to the voices of the dead as they whispered to him, telling him their names, showing him their faces, and all they had taken and all they had lost. Each one of them had been a Servian Knight, until by their own hands their own oath had they broken, ignorant of the buried bones of their ancestors beneath them that had suffered for the same, and so the same before them. And so they remained with them and cursed themselves. Their only solace now came from their keepers, those who tended the cairns and who watched over them.

Al-Aaron gave a sharp gasp. The stones of the cairn before him fell and scattered. He had heard them too. The ghosts had spoken to him. He knew them because he shared in their sin.

Al-Mariam reached out to him but Al-Aaron pulled away.

The opening drops of rain blew across them. Chaelus drew his cowl over his head. “Here is where your Order fell.”

“How can…” Al-Mariam began.

“He’s right,” Al-Aaron said. A tremor held his voice. “It’s here where the Servian Lords and their army first drew blood against the Khaalish hordes. It’s here where our vow, their vow, was first broken. Their whispers on the wind, I can hear them. I can hear them because I’ve done what they did.”

Trumpets carried above the wind, above the rain and the voices of the dead. They were Khaalish horns.

“And now they gather to us,” Al-Hoanar whispered.

“No,” Al-Thinneas countered. “It’s something worse.”

“It is the horns of those who keep this place,” Chaelus said. The call of the Khaalish, at once both the heralds of his past, and the harbingers of his future.

Obidae and his raiding party would be with them by now. Already Chaelus knew that the spirit of the Giver he had passed to Obidae by his touch was already spreading to the other warriors around the Khaalish leader.

Then, several bowshots away, Chaelus saw it, where he had not seen it before, not even from the rise where they had hidden. The ground rose to meet a thin crest of white stone. A solemn tower broke up its length against the stygian shadow of the Karagas Mun. A soft glow illuminated its stones. “It’s beyond the Line that they wait for us.”

Chaelus had never seen the wall before. But he knew its mark on parchment well. A weight fell upon his chest at the sight of it. He pressed away the teeming voices of the dead, but they would not have it. They knew well that they had been heard, and they had waited long enough for it.

The Servian Knights slowed in wonder at the sight of the Line. Despite the nearness of the Garden it was clear that they too, excepting only Al-Thinneas, had never laid their eyes upon it.

Yet they had waited to. And Chaelus, or at least the spirit inside him, knew their need well, as much as he knew the desperate need of the dead to be heard, and to be forgiven.

It was a need that he, or at least the spirit of the Giver was somehow supposed to fill, even if they didn’t know it yet, and he didn’t know yet how. How would he? Why should he? The answer was simple, and it waited for him like the voices of the ghosts around him. He would, because the one who dwelt inside him would. He would, because he had no choice.

Two walls comprised the Line. The first and southern most of them was nothing more than rubble. Made of broken stone and loss, it was all that remained of the wall that the Servian Lords had built as protection from their own.

The happas met a narrow causeway that bridged the wide ditch running before it. The dull glint of bone and war filled the space beneath.

“Shoa Tu Mattea,” Al-Hoanar whispered in his own tongue as he placed his fist to his brow, his lips and his heart.

The sight of the small round tower returned again beyond the ruined gateway. A smaller tower still rose from its center. The wall they protected stood more or less intact with only a part of its battlement lost. Stairs reached down like arms along either side of the lower tower.

Dense scrubs of tangled growth, made of pine and coarser things still, gathered beneath the shelter of the wall.

The solemn stones of the wall bore neither flute nor mark, save for a single repeating band running beneath the crenellation of the battlements. The flowing line of script was unbroken. It was taken from the pages of prophecy and spelled out in the lost language of the Evarun; and, it seemed, of his fate as well.

Mourn the ones who will forget

The Dragon waits within.

Al-Aaron already waited for them at the top of the wall. The shattered merlons framed the weight and despair of the Karagas Mun before them. Beneath them, the twisted body of the river Shinnaras still held the amber light of the setting sun like glass.

To the east, a great cloud of dust plumed against the sky. Beneath it, beyond the river’s opposite shore, were the dark shapes of a hundred score riders, the light glinting red upon their rings of mail, upon the tips of their spears and upon the Circle Imperious that they held high above their heads on standards.

Like the hunters before, the singular malice of the Dragon did not fully possess them. “These aren’t Remnants,” Chaelus said.

“No,” Al-Aaron said. “They’re men.”

“It’s the Khaalish,” Al-Hoanar said. “And they march as a legion, just as the Gorondian legions of old. It is to the Theocracy that they rally their allegiance; to the Theocracy, and to the Dragon as well.”

“Then it seems we’ve found our keepers,” Al-Thinneas said.

Al-Mariam and Al-Hoanar slowed as they reached the top of the stairs, their unease clear.

Al-Mariam watched the seemingly endless ranks of the Khaalish as they passed.  She sagged against the battlement’s rise.

“The Khaalish would have taken the path of the Shinnaras at its headwater,” Al-Thinneas said. “Long have they marched deep within the Dragon’s hold.”

Al-Aaron pointed down along the western length of the wall, to where the Karagas Mun crept southward and across the gaping mouth of the Shinnaras. The sun lowered itself behind, painting the sky red as the discourse of the Western Sea rumbled beyond. At the jagged mountains’ ending, on the river’s southern bank, a single white spire rose silhouetted against the setting sun. The lights of hundreds of campfires burned in the darkness of its shadow.

“They go to meet the Dragon,” Al-Aaron said. “Beneath the gates of Magedos.”

“Then it’s an army we will find there,” Al-Hoanar said.

“No,” Chaelus said. The anguish of the dead rippled through him. It mingled with the fear of those around him. “It’s just the beginning of one.”

Chapter Sixteen

Memory and Loss

The campfires stared back at Michalas in the waning twilight. They looked like the eyes of monsters. The trembling chill of the stones where he hid vanished beneath their heated glare.

Hundreds of fires already blazed along the river’s edge. The men who kept them had only just arrived and still more of them came, an unending line of torches leading off to the horizon.

They looked like the fires from the day Ras Dumas had come. Drums and horns had heralded his arrival too, just as it did this army now.

Michalas clenched his eyes. They burned, and they were wet. He wiped at them, surprised. He slumped against the ruins. From somewhere inside him something else seemed strange - a dull and hollow sound echoed like a trap door closing, or a string that had once bound something very tight breaking free.

From nowhere, he remembered his sister’s screams, coming from beyond the soldiers’ backs.

Michalas felt again the rugged soldier’s grip which dragged him away and held him up before the fearsome leer of Ras Dumas. He felt again the roughness of Ras Dumas’ armored fist tugging his hair back away from his brow. He felt the grip soften as Ras Dumas’ eyes widened.

Michalas knew the truth even then. He knew it the same way he’d always known everything. Like the release of his breath, he knew why Ras Dumas had come. He even knew why Ras Dumas had taken him, and he knew Ras Dumas would begin to change on that very day, at the very moment Ras Dumas touched his brow.

But what he’d never known was why. He only knew what the voice of the Angel had told him - that everything was as it should be. And it had been, ever since he could remember. So he’d forgotten his sister, just like he’d forgotten everything except what the Angels had asked of him to do. He’d even pressed away the agony of her screams – until now.

The warm breath of the Angel whispered against his cheek. The sun of her glow washed over him. The cold stones awakened beneath him. The Angel whispered the same word again – the same word she had then, on the day before Ras Dumas came, the day the Angels left their mark upon him.

“Wait,”

Michalas opened his eyes to the night shadows where he waited. The Angels were gone. He ran his arm beneath his nose and then dried himself. The chill of the stones returned beneath him. Hopefully their warmth would come back again soon.

Beyond the edge of the ruins, the barbarian horde waited. Ras Dumas had said they would come. They came from the east, summoned by the Dragon again to lay waste to the kingdoms of the Northern March. More than that, they came to destroy the only ones who could defend against the Dragon, the ones to whom Ras Dumas had once belonged, the ones who still bore the Gossamer Blade.

Yet the barbarians were afraid; afraid of the Dragon, afraid of the ruined city by which they waited. They heard the spirits of those who suffered beneath its stones. No. Until the Dragon released them against the Servians, they would come no closer to it than they already had. He was safe from them here.

Michalas looked up towards the darkened sky. The carrion birds had stopped searching for him. The Hands of the Dragon had found him, and they would be coming soon.

He closed his eyes again. Darkness descended amongst the colors left behind his eyes, the ghosts of the campfires that still danced there.

Beyond them, another light, a blue light, fair and bright, billowed and flamed. It was getting closer. It felt familiar. Whatever it was, it would come to him soon.

Then, above the distant clamor of the barbarians, he heard it; not one but several voices, coming from the fair blue flame. One of them sounded like his sister.

***

“Wait.”

Al-Mariam’s words  hung upon the air and tasted on her tongue like blasphemy.

The auburn mantle of dusk had settled into a grayish night. It was neither black nor moonlit, but rather a haze of some pallor in between that hung thick in the air around them. Yet this wasn’t what terrified her.

The number of campfires beneath them had grown as they followed the length of the Line. The ivory spire of Ras Dumas still rose ahead of them, now glowing like a beacon flame from the light of the fires spreading out along the river’s edge before the ruined city beneath it. The number of campfires had grown and with them, the number of soldiers who tended them.

Ahead of them, the Line fell with the ground to cut at last between the gray stones of the ruined city. Canals, black as pitch, radiated out from the tower’s foundation to the edge of the ruined city, where the Khaalish encampment waited for them on the open plain between the river and the Line.

She felt the press of her sword’s hilt against her palm, and the simple promise it held. Chaelus had taunted her with it and she had reacted angrily towards him. But he had been right. She had seen it, as she had washed its taint from Al-Aaron’s skin.

Al-Aaron’s pale face and gaunt eyes bore no sight, of anyone or anything. His malaise had deepened since reaching the Line and the only thing he had left to bear, it seemed, was more suffering.

And now beneath them an army gathered. An army of men who would freely be permitted to do what others of their kind had done before. She felt the weight of her blade and the strength and protection it held for her. For this she had taken her vows, and her vows kept her from stopping the men doing what others had done before. And the Khaalish army barred the path before them.

“I believe we’re mistaken in our quest,” she said.

Al-Thinneas turned to her. “What do you mean?”

“The army gathering here is greater than any of those borne by the Lords of the Northern March. You need but ask the one we follow. But they haven’t come for them, at least not yet. They have come to vanquish another foe first; one that the Dragon fears more, one that will be powerless against the Khaalish. They’ve come to destroy what is left of the Servian Order. The Mother must be warned.”

“Of the Khaalish at least, she’s correct,” Chaelus said. He returned up the descent of the happas ahead of them. His gaze pierced her as it set upon her. “But the object of our quest hasn’t changed.”

Al-Mariam tightened her hand across her sword grip, useless as it was. Her fear swelled into anger. “And so many you would willingly have suffer for it.”

Chaelus turned away. “There is at least one among my people who still keeps vigil. They watch. They will know and they will warn them.”

“If not, then I pray they may know the debt in blood that was paid before them.”

“Enough,” Al-Thinneas said. “A promise was made to bring you to Magedos. That is what we’ll do, though our protection of you seems to be wasted.”

Al-Thinneas’ stare was no less weighty than Chaelus’ as he turned upon her. “Of ourselves, and our brothers, we must have faith that it will not be.”

“She’s still correct,” Al-Hoanar said. “An army still holds the Shinnaras and its crossing. The valley of Magedos, the place where the Giver fell, lies beyond the river, within the shadow of the Karagas Mun. I doubt the Khaalish will let us pass through freely. I doubt that it would happen without blood being let tonight.”

“It’s not in the Valley of Magedos where the Dragon waits,” Chaelus said. He turned to them. The crystal stare of his eyes glowed like blue fire, the glow of a man possessed. “The Khaalish serve the Dragon out of fear. They will not pass where it dwells.  It’s why their encampment sits beyond the city’s ruin, beyond the reach of the shadow of the Tower. There we will find the Dragon.”

The glower of Chaelus’ stare subsided. It softened as it turned upon Al-Mariam. Within it she saw the face of her brother, Michalas.

“I tell you that blood will be spilt there,” Chaelus said. “And it’s there that blood waits for one of you.”

***

Chaelus closed his eyes and breathed.

Like the aura which whispered upon his flesh, Chaelus felt the whisper of the Giver’s voice like a constant echo within him.

Sometimes it was louder than the others.

Sometimes it was distant, but it was always present beneath the voices of those around him. More from a sense of knowing than words, the Giver’s voice allowed Chaelus to sense the soul of each one, the secret truth which they often did not even know themselves. It was the same truth that Al-Aaron had tried to show him, what now seemed a lifetime ago. Now, Chaelus saw all of it, both the shadow and the light.

To be possessed by the spirit of the Giver was also to hear his own voice speak words that were not his, and to know he held no power to stop them. Like a flaxen boat upon a storm-wrought sea, he was tossed to the will of the Giver’s spirit. At times the sea was quiet and sometimes it was not, and just as if he were such a boat on such a sea, Chaelus suffered little hope he would survive the ordeal.

No lord or king was he, to be a victim to this. Yet had he ever been, with the bitter whisper of the Dragon set upon his ear?

The campfires of the Khaalish horde multiplied against the dark mirror of the Shinnaras. The thousandfold voice of the Khaalish legion which kept them pulsed within him.

Chaelus had tried to keep their voices away. They had come to him slowly at first, like a rivulet finding its meager way across parched and arid ground. Drowning out the voices of the dead as they had, he welcomed them at first. But their little gorge cut deep as it widened, and as the ground fell away along its banks, the harsh and savage voice of the Khaalish horde billowed over him.

Yet one voice remained over all. It was the voice of Al-Mariam’s brother, Michalas, like a whisper of the words of prophecy which bound them together.

One who was but should not be.

One who should not be but was.

The sense of him brushed over Chaelus with the softness of the child’s voice. Like the one which had summoned him from his death, like the voice of Al-Aaron, it called to Chaelus, revealing its owner to him, letting him know that Michalas waited for them amidst the ruins of the city.

Chaelus sensed Al-Mariam behind him, her shadow and her light shifting in their muted veils within her. He had done what he could for her. Her anguish at least was now checked in place by the only thing she would allow to pierce its depths; her love for her brother.

Chaelus had done nothing to check his own grief.  Not even the breath of the Giver’s voice had breached the silence left within him in the wake of Al-Aaron’s fall. Even with all of the Giver’s knowing, he felt chastened that he could do nothing for the one who had saved him.

Bathed in the light of the moon’s fire, Al-Aaron had stood fearless before the Dragon, the Dragon Chaelus knew he would have to face, that he was going to face now - alone. Al-Aaron was the only one who could help him. Chaelus had tried to reach him, to save him, to make him see, but even all the Giver’s knowing did little to assuage the fact that in this, he had already failed.

A crumbled gatehouse waited before them, like a ghost of the one at Roanwaith. In darkness and silence it guarded the happas where it passed beneath the palisade that had warded the eastern approach to the city. Its making was a blasphemy to the purity of the Line in whose shadow it leaned. The wattle and plaster that remained upon its higher reaches hung from it like scabs. Its wood rotted around its murder holes and machinations above.

As Chaelus passed beneath them, he let go of the thoughts and the voices to which he held. He watched them fall in his mind’s eye like motes amidst the thousands of others that now clamored against each other, each vying for his attention, to catch a glimpse of the eternal breadth of the Giver’s voice. He watched them pass until only one voice remained, the only voice that feared him.

The familiar eyes of Ras Dumas’ ivory spire stared back at Chaelus, but not in silence. The tower was a mirror of his own, of his father’s, and the whisper of the Dragon, and his past, echoed through its stones.

Chaelus passed his hand across his brow as the burning of the Dragon’s Crown quickened against him.

***

The ghost of Figus cooed at him, his thin eyes twinkling. The stare of the dead Khaalish warrior crawled beneath them.

“Do you see?” Figus said. “Do you see what I mean?”

Al-Aaron pressed his face against the cool stone of the gatehouse. Its chill crept like a salve through his bones and drew against his skin until the fire within him fell away. His shattered arm hung from him like a stone.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” Figus said. “You can feel their disbelief like a boil upon your tongue.”

Ahead of him, Chaelus led the other knights across the desolate court, past the putrid and rotting stables and towards the rising gray stones of the dead city. The clamor of the dead had succumbed to the murmuring babble of the Khaalish host beyond the wall, but the eyes of the dead Khaalish warrior burned beneath those of Figus before him.

“You’re alone with this.”

Al-Aaron drew himself upright, his legs trembling. The dim shadows of the black sores whispered beneath the skin around his bandaged wound. Dark tendrils laced already between his fingers and, he was sure, up the length of his arm towards his heart. The burning of his fever washed over him.

The ghost of Malius stepped out from behind the gatehouse. His expression was dour but the gentle bearing of his eyes remained. “Time is running short, my love. You mustn’t fail me. He’s right that you are very much alone with this.”

The ghost of Malius thinned into shadow.

Where Malius had been, Al-Thinneas stood. He knelt before Al-Aaron and took his arm within his hands, pressing it gently along its length. Al-Thinneas looked up at him. His eyes were grave, but a smile broke across his lips.

“Let me walk beside you,” he said.

Chapter Seventeen

Ghosts

“Mother?”

Michalas winced as his small whisper scraped against the listening night.

His memory of her looked as it always did. Nearly. She stood looking out from the court below, the flowering gardens of Tulon that she loved surrounding her, the colors of the blossoms matching the warm blush of her skin. Her face resembled the Angel’s face. Tonight, her armor and gossamer blade glowed like a halo with the light captured from the distant campfires, just as it had on the night Ras Dumas had come, and she’d been taken from them.

This time, her hair was as black as a raven’s quill, just like his sister’s.

“Mariam?”

This whisper drew louder than the last, sounding out amongst the ruins like a smithy’s knell. Michalas flinched again.

Her eyes opened and a drifting pale washed over her. The flowering gardens withdrew. The chill of broken stones returned. Yet she remained. The ghost of his sister turned to him.

Michalas turned and ran.

The singular roar of the carrion birds and the clamoring eyes of decay erupted around him. The broken leaves and spent husks of insect and vermin swirled about him in a breathless vapor, scraping and clawing against his skin like the sack cloth he had hidden in. The numbing cold made the chill of the stones seem warm.

Yet all of it – the Dragon or its minions – boded better than the ghost he’d seen. They’d made her just as he remembered, just as he’d chosen to forget.

His sister’s scream carried across the night and echoed through the ruins. With it came the jeering cries of the men who’d taken her.

The empty eyes of the broken ruins stared over the shattered maze of stones. The paths twisted through and between alley and close and empty hall.

Beyond their jagged mouths and against the pitch of night which surrounded them, the great white wall that cut across the city watched him in glimpses amidst the ruins. It followed him, glowing just like the Angels, just like the memory of his mother, and the ghost of his sister from which he fled.

The tremor of his sister’s footsteps echoed behind him.

The narrow walls of close and cloister yielded to an open court. The glowing chastity of the wall stood unveiled before him. A captured sliver of moonlight from above broke free.

The harsh light of the Khaalish camp fires burned beyond the open sally door at the base of the wall. Their babbling voices waged war with the rising cackle of descending crows swirling to rest on the parapets and sills above.

The beat of Michalas’ heart held its own against the sound of the closing footsteps.

The billowing cloud of decay loosened and then divided, each of its twin parts coming to rest within the shelter of the two paths leading back into the ruins.

The Hands of the Dragon gathered themselves from their miasmas.

The Left Hand was veiled, the filth of its ragged cloak swirling about it. The ivory and silver raiment of the Right Hand hung unfettered and untouched by its gale.

Beneath their cloaks, both wore scaled armor like the flesh of their master. The bile of their twin faces glistened beneath the wrapping of their veils from the light of the Khaalish fires. Upon their brows, the steel-shod bits of their crowns stayed dull and hollow like the empty holes of their eyes.

Michalas wavered where he stood.

The tremor of footsteps surged behind him. Even their sound was just as he remembered. He could still feel the heart that drove them, chasing him through their mother’s garden long ago. But he heard – no, felt – another with her as well, like a blue light in the darkness.

The Hands of the Dragon stepped towards him, their festering storms still swirling around them, the spiked iron heads of their maces dragging, grating on the ground.

Beyond the open sally port one of the barbarians stared at him, a stark shadow against the glow of the camp fires. The spear he carried dropped silently to the ground. The barbarian’s outcry carried out amongst the ruins, just as Michalas’ cry had.

“Ghaardi! Ghaardi!”

***

Al-Mariam looked in wonder as silver moon light tinged with blue rained down over her brother. An omen in the storm-wrought night. His gaunt ghost stood shaking and naked, a bleached crown inscribed upon his barren head, the crown of the Dragon, a ghost-like mirror of the one that Chaelus bore.

Beyond Michalas, beyond the open portal that broke across the albescent face of the Line, the gathered horde of the Khaalishite encampment surged. Around him, a swirling cloud of crows and debris converged.

Silence fell over Al-Mariam like a blessing. The screams of the horde and the sharp whistle of spear and arrow faded. Sound, thought, fear, the entire breadth and width of the Pale, all fell away from her, leaving only the rush and beat of her heart between her ears. It drove through her like a song, propelling her towards her brother.

Michalas succumbed beneath her like chaff against the wind. She hurt him; she knew it. Yet she couldn’t let go of him and didn’t want to, as the stones slammed against them where they fell.

Al-Mariam pressed her face against his head, kissing the bare skin of her brother’s pale scalp. The white marks upon his skin crawled over swollen scars at the edge of her vision. She looked past them into his eyes. They were the eyes of a stranger but their depths still swallowed her, just like the eyes of Chaelus had. She’d found him. Even in all of this. Her tears washed over him. She had found her brother.

Screaming arrows passed over her. Sharp tangs in rapid succession announced two more as they struck against the rubble beside her. The weight of the entire breadth and width of the Pale returned.

Al-Mariam pressed herself over Michalas. Fear surged its way through her. Her brother’s life would not be returned to her only to be lost again.

She knew she could do nothing to stop it, to stop the wave of death flooding towards them. It would come to them and not even the breaking of her oath would lay it to rest.

Michalas looked up at her, his mouth moving, but she could hear nothing from it, his words muted by the rhythmic pulse still pounding within her. Yet at least one thing had been gained. At least they would be together.

Michalas struggled to pull his thin arms away from her. His small hands cradled her face.  Their gentle touch upon her cheeks felt warm against her skin.

Michalas closed his eyes. His voice resonated inside her although his lips had ceased parting. “Wait.”

Lightning flashed around them.

Michalas seemed to smile in its glow. He pointed beside them.

Al-Mariam would not tear her gaze from him. Tears still flowed from her like rain. She did not need to watch their death befall them.

Michalas pressed her face away until her eyes beheld a dark figure bathed in pure white flame, burning beside them.

“He’s here,” Michalas said. “The Angels have brought you both.”

***

A Khaalish archer never misses. Chaelus knew this to be true. Unless, of course, they were looking upon the face of their god.

Chaelus felt a soft tingle from the Giver’s holy fire billowing around him. It pulsed through his body, swelling within him as it echoed through his open hands. Like the tiny river that was the Giver’s voice, it grew and poured through him. Any defense he held against it would was lost beneath the surge of its unyielding power. Yet he had put up no defense against it. This time, it was he who had opened the floodgate, summoning it by his will alone. He opened his eyes to its grace.

Al-Mariam cradled her brother within the frail shelter of fallen stones. The Line, like himself, was a floodgate but through which the Dragon’s new minions would soon pour. Al-Mariam had found her brother and the Khaalish had found them both.

The Khaalish archers fired arrows at them amidst their own violent and fear-filled cries. Chaelus understood them all. The ghost of their dragon had found them.

The lone Khaalish sentry stood motionless in the gap of the wall as the horde closed the distance behind him, his mouth still hanging open, his useless spear still left where he had dropped it.

The man would soon know that prophecy did not lie. Chaelus closed the short distance between them. Then he touched him.

The chaos and violence of the Khaalish heart and mind, Chaelus had expected and known. He had known it as the Khaalish had come, with only the Line standing between them. He had known it before, from Obidae, the one he had touched before. Yet touching one of them felt nothing like this. The thoughts and feelings of a thousand souls unleashed upon Chaelus all at once, connected to the soul of the one he now held, limp within his grasp, a numbing blur he could scarcely bear.

Chaelus struggled to hold his own mind clear. He struggled against their chaos and their ire until he found it, just where he had found it in the one the time before. It was there, safe within each of them, the Truth of each of them that waited for him. It was simple. There was darkness and there was light.

So Chaelus showed them light.

The Khaalish sentry’s flesh yielded to the purity of his soul. The Dragon’s shadow which had struggled to fill him fled away from Chaelus’ touch. It had stood little chance, no more so than the legion which now came behind it, the floodwaters of the Giver’s light pouring over them. And, just as if their mouths had been let open in the sea, they drowned beneath its waves.

The Khaalish horde fell in rank and in scores, weightless as the whisper of the Dragon in each of them succumbed beneath the Creator’s touch.

Chaelus smiled at the touch of joy that returned from them. He had done this.

He watched them through the open gateway. Their war arrows now silent, they wavered on their knees throughout the encampment, waiting for his word as their tears washed away the paint of war that had adorned their faces like ghosts.

He had given this to them.

No. Not him. He was a Roan Lord and King. It was only by sword and spear that he had ever counted the fallen as he pressed his will against them.

No, Chaelus reminded himself, though regretfully. He hadn't done this.

The cries of “Ghaardi” transcended to the softer whispers of “Shoa Ti”. Their ghost had been vanquished, replaced instead by their god. Yet it was only for the moment. The shadow of the Dragon had been beaten here, but it would not stay away.

The night resumed as the holy fire of the Giver returned to its source.

Chaelus fell to his knees beside Al-Mariam. He cupped the side of her face with his hand.

She leaned into it. She looked back and forth between him and Michalas. He could tell that she wanted to speak but she couldn’t find the words. Tears streamed down her face and washed over his hands. Her own Truth, her Story, for the first time laid bare upon her breast.

In the wake of the Giver’s spirit, the need and pain of Al-Mariam’s humanity struck out at Chaelus like a hot iron against his own. He wanted to pull away but her hand, it held him.

“We’ve only been given time,” he said.

Michalas stared unblinking at him, his eyes deep wells like his sister’s. A nearly identical mark to his own, but like white hot coals, had been seared across Michalas’ naked brow. Yet this crown was made not by the Dragon’s hand. The Dragon’s work showed in the other scars which marred it, but no trace of the Dragon’s shadow dwelt within Michalas, only the soft glow of the Rua, like the Angels which had come to Chaelus before.

Chaelus listened as the footsteps of the other Servian Knights slowed at the sight before them. He unfastened his cloak, took it off and wrapped it around Michalas’ naked form.

“Tell me what to do,” he said.

***

Al-Aaron squinted. The night darkened as the clouds again sealed up the sky.

The pad of the child’s feet ahead sounded out like a war drum against it. He had started off at Chaelus’ word like a sprung trap, back away from the Line, and deeper into depths of the ruined city. He had been waiting for them, Michalas, Al-Mariam’s brother.

So there were two. The Dragon’s crown inscribed upon both of them. The opening lines of the prophecy whispered themselves to him.

One who was but could not be.

One who could not be but was.

The sky shuddered and the rain began. It pierced everywhere but the flesh of his blackened arm hanging useless at his side. He struggled with his cloak where its folds caught against it.

He stumbled.

Al-Thinneas’ grip held him steadfast. Al-Aaron surrendered to the strength of his friend.

Al-Thinneas smiled despite the caution in his eyes. It was a relief from the dour warnings of the dead. They had not come to him since the glow of Chaelus’ majesty unveiled itself upon the Khaalish horde.

He hadn’t seen it, what Chaelus had done, only the bright glow at the end of the dim path ahead of him. Yet he didn’t need to. He already knew what Chaelus was, and it was everything that Malius had promised he would be.

Malius, however, had said nothing of Michalas.

The ruins opened up again. Al-Thinneas’ hand pressed against Al-Aaron’s shoulder, stopping him.

The single white spire reached up against the storm-wrought sky like some promise against the storm’s power. Yet the dark stare of its windows offered none, watching over the canal which drew beneath them, taking the water from the Shinnaras beneath the muted stone of the spire’s mount.

Water churned in the rain, overflowing the stone-shod banks.

Michalas stood alone at the water’s edge, the mark of the Dragon a crown of white fire upon his head. A crown of darkness and a crown of light.

One to teach and One to save.

The mark of the Dragon upon him.

Perhaps.

Michalas, Al-Mariam’s brother. Their mother, a Servian Knight, had died during the hunting at the hands of the Servian Lords, if not at the hands of Ras Dumas himself, the one whose tower watched over them now. Ras Dumas had taken one of her children.

Born of cradle, born of grave.

Chosen from forgotten blood.

Perhaps.

The gathered storm rent the heavens. Ochre lights flashed across the sky. All other sounds diminished beneath it.

Al-Aaron felt a gentle pulse within the fingers of his dead hand. He moved them; they were stiff but alive, perhaps a sign of hope that his malaise, and perhaps the ghosts that it carried, would soon end.

Perhaps.

As the storm fell, the decay and refuse of the dead city billowed like its own storm around them.

Born for us to die for us.

For only the fallen may rise.

Chapter Eighteen

Beginning and End

Al-Mariam looked to where her brother stared, somewhere beneath the broken surface of the water where twisting specters turned in rile upon themselves.

She reached out instinctively to him.

“We’re nearly there,” Michalas said upon her touch. “There’s a path beside the water that goes beneath.”

Chaelus knelt beside her. He stared up at the ivory spire before them. The Line climbed up to meet it, joining with the unmanned wall surrounding it. The gray stone crag beneath had turned upon itself in waves like a wrinkled cloth, its very fabric having been made undone. “What will we find?” Al-Mariam asked.

“Both the beginning and the end,” Michalas answered.

Thunder echoed across the sky.

Al-Mariam opened her mouth to question, to question why, to plead that they leave this place now and never come back, to beg that her brother and all of them keep this one chance they had been given. To ask him what he had become, and what would become of them. But her voice died beneath the storm’s growing ire.

Michalas smiled at her still, trying to assure her. She smiled back, but beneath the wreath that now burned upon his brow, his eyes still beckoned her like those of a stranger, a stranger she had met before in the eyes of the one who knelt next to her.

Her hands had trembled, just like her heart, for the moment Chaelus had stood before her, after heaven’s own fire had been extinguished from him. For the moment that he held her face. For the moment after he had saved her, had saved them, as the fire still lingered in his eyes. For that moment, the depth of their waters had threatened to overtake her.

Chaelus stood. His eyes held hers for a moment as they passed. As they did, for the moment, she believed. He drew his unbound sword. Its naked steel burned in the light of the storm as he led them forward, just as he had promised.

Al-Hoanar placed his hand upon hers. He held his blade as well. Its gossamer cast crimson, as if the very oath of it had already been broken. He nodded once to her. His eyes glistened wet. Something had changed in him, as well.

Al-Aaron leaned against Al-Thinneas. Al-Aaron smiled, but Al-Thinneas passed a wary stare towards her. A warning perhaps, or a beseeching for something, an answer she could not give him. Soon, Al-Aaron would die from the Dragon’s poison. She smiled back at Al-Aaron, although it chastened her to give little more than a ruse.

She untethered her blade. Aela’s usual weight disappeared as she raised its length before her.

The water’s tumult subsided to a softer tremor as it flowed beneath the mount. A gate covered the small opening where it entered, but its steel had been warped like the stone to which it was shod, thrusting out at its base, leaving a small gap alongside the river’s course.

Above the cliff, above the wall, the battlements and fortifications looked down on them but no sentry’s eyes or ears followed them. What eyes did the Dragon need against them when its sentry already dwelt within their hearts? Behind them, the glow of the Khaalish fires still burned, but their babble had not yet returned.

Their only pursuer seemed to be the refuse and debris let loose upon the storm-tossed winds.

One by one, with Chaelus at their head, they passed beneath the warped steel grate. The slow churn of the water echoed throughout the stone around them. The thunderous call of heaven reluctantly subsided. Its rust-tossed sky passed away. Darkness overcame them. Only the soft glow of her brother’s crown, too far away for her to see him, remained.

Then, beneath the gossamer, the steel of Aela’s blade took on the gentle glow of stars unfolding around her.

***

The cenotaphs glowed from within, as if each held a single candle at their heart. Hundreds of them, arrayed in vast circles in the subterranean night. The air about them held the foul sweet stench of decay and the whisper of the Shinnaras flowed around them in the darkness.

Chaelus drew towards the nearest of the cenotaphs where Michalas waited. The boy was silent. Like Chaelus, he’d been here before.

Illuminating from beneath the water like a fallen angel, ghostlike in her glow, a girl child lay drawn in upon herself. Her head was shaven and her skin was bare. Ebony spandrels laced out from the black spots that covered her. Her lips moved faintly upon her upturned face. Her gray eyes flickered. A shadow turned in the water beside her, matching the one within.

The soft light of the girl ebbed.

The Dragon, or its vestige, was consuming her from within. The softness of her voice held no plea, and there were none that she could hear. Her spirit floated elsewhere, but with her, both kept alive beneath the brackish water to feed the Dragon’s call, an imprisoned song to its hungering darkness. With each flutter of her eyes and the whispered promises of the shadow behind them, she drew further away and the Dragon’s hold upon her deepened.

Black tendrils, and an unceasing whisper, an unceasing whisper in the dark. Chaelus felt the Dragon’s crown burn against his brow. Perhaps he had once deserved such a fate, but surely not a child such as this. He felt the shadowed voice of Al-Aaron behind him. He wouldn’t leave her to this.

Chaelus thrust his arms into the poisoned water. The shadow burned against his skin like the fire from his crown as the shadow threw itself upon him. He wrapped his arms beneath the girl and lifted, but the shadow only tightened its hold. Black tentacles laced across the welts they had already burned into her skin, throwing the brackish water about in their fury.

Then he saw her, he saw her truth, her light within the darkness. To herself at least, she was alone within it, but her light was no less bright than the scores of others which suffered close to her.

“Come to me.” Chaelus, or the Giver, or the memory of Al-Aaron’s voice inside him, a warrior’s voice, called out from him to her, just like the one that once called to him. “Take my hand now and rise. Death cannot take you.”

And she did. Her tiny hand reached out, then gripped his arm from beneath the water. Her thin body weighed next to nothing as he lifted her. A faint tremor escaped her lips. The tentacles of the Dragon fell away, its black water pouring forth from her eyes, ears and mouth like oil.

“I know her,” Michalas said. “I played with her once. Her mother was in Ras Dumas’ court. Her name is Sarah.”

“Take her in my cloak,” Chaelus pleaded.

Michalas nodded, this time with only a child’s eyes.

The shuffle of Al-Aaron’s boots moved past them.

Al-Aaron stood beyond the empty cenotaph, breathless and pale, watching from the wavering edge of darkness around them, light rippling over him from the souls of those remaining in the cenotaphs. His blackened arm hung from him, all but lost to the Dragon’s taint; its shadow within him no longer the dim ghost it had been but greater perhaps even than that of the girl just raised. Perhaps even greater than Chaelus’ own.

Chaelus smiled at Al-Aaron, his throat thick with a sudden and impotent grief.  He did not need the Knowing. The spirit of the Giver could tell him nothing he didn’t already understand. He could do nothing. Al-Aaron smiled back, heedless at least for the moment to his own suffering, heedless at least for the moment, of the Dragon’s call which would soon come to claim him.

***

Al-Aaron smiled despite the chill settling over him. His feet at last stayed firm beneath him, not unlike the promise of prophecy.

Born of cradle, Born of grave.

Michalas bundled the child close to him within the warmth of Chaelus’ woolen cloak. Chaelus knelt beside them, passing his hand across her naked brow. Al-Mariam stood beside them both, the point of her gossamer blade thrust out into the darkness.

One to teach and One to save.

Al-Thinneas crouched low beside a cenotaph. Al-Hoanar stood watch near him.  Al-Thinneas stretched his arms beneath the water and lifted an older man, the black water and its poison still clinging to him. His glow fell away, his spirit returned. The old man sputtered and gasped, expelling the fetid water. Cradling him within his arms, Al-Thinneas covered him.

He looked up at Al-Aaron.

Al-Aaron smiled again. It was done. Whether it was two, or whether it was one, the Giver had returned. His promise to Malius had been fulfilled. Chaelus had been returned to fulfill his destiny.

A baleful moan sounded.

Chaelus stood, Sundengal within his hand, the soul lights of the dying captured within it.

“This is all we can do,” Al-Thinneas said. He stared towards Chaelus and to Michalas. “It’s time to go.”

“No,” Chaelus said.

The cry faded. From the silence, from the impenetrable darkness around them, came footsteps sounding like the knocking of a distant tomb. Al-Aaron sagged, a sudden weight overcoming him. The burning of his fever washed over him like the breath of a noonday sun.

Malius stood before him. He was no ghost; not this time. Chaelus and the others all turned at the sight of him. Yet Malius didn’t turn towards them, only to him.

“You’ve done well, my child.”

Al-Aaron’s reply came out like a choked whisper. “You’re not a ghost.”

Malius pulled back the depth of his hood. The mark of the Dragon, like that of Chaelus, was inscribed in sepia upon his brow. Malius’ pale skin glowed like the doomed lights of the cenotaphs. He was his own light within the darkness.

“Did you think I would reveal my spirit to you,” Malius said, “and not come to you in the fullness of my flesh? I thought you were of better faith.”

The pulse of Al-Aaron’s blood pounded with his breath. The hesitation of doubt pulled at him. The ghost of Malius had told him to return his son. He had told him to return his son to him.

“I didn’t know,” Al-Aaron said. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Where else did you expect to find me, if not my Master’s home?”

“No,” Al-Aaron whimpered.

“Yes,” Malius smiled. His eyes narrowed. “But you must be weary, child.”

“Yes,” Al-Aaron said.

And he was. In the pallid light of Malius’ flesh, the one who’d deceptively become his Teacher, and in the dimming soul lights of the suffering encircling him, his own pain, his own loss, the loss he had caused, all seemed like a ghost that he could scarcely remember. The lifeless weight of his blackened arm pulled against him.

Al-Aaron turned to the sound of Chaelus running towards him.

Al-Aaron’s legs gave way beneath him.

Malius reached out to him. The light of his eyes had passed to dark wells just like the cenotaphs around him.

“Then come to me, and I will give you rest.”

Chapter Nineteen

Offerings

Al-Aaron crumpled to his knees.

Magus, the Dragon, backed away. From beneath his robes he held a long sword, slung low with the drape of blood-stained gossamer.

“No!” Chaelus screamed.

He screamed at Magus. He screamed at the Dragon. He screamed at the Giver already inside him, and to the Angels who had claimed him, awash in the unbearable fact that, even with all the power they had given him, he could do nothing to stop this. He screamed at himself for not having stopped it. He screamed until what had been the gentle breath of the Giver surged like acrid fire through his fingertips.

Magus, the Dragon, turned to him. The child’s smile upon his silver mask burned in the light from the cenotaphs.

“I’m done with him,” Magus said. “But you can still save him. Or leave him to die here and pursue the vengeance you seek.”

The Dragon held out its hand. From it, its shadow poured, greater than the one surrounding them, blotting out the soul lights of the fallen.

The harsh grating of steel resounded within it. The whispering voice of Magus passed away beyond, replaced by the bitter and grating call of Remnants. At the edge of the shadow empty eyes stared back from beyond chainmail veils, behind a wall of blackened shields, blackened swords thrust out between them.

***

Al-Mariam’s heart beat like a war drum. The rest of her body fell numb to the sight before her: An army of spirits waiting at the edge of the shadow surrounding them.

The spirits’ breath hung like a black vapor in tendrils about them. Armored veils hid all but the abyss of their eyes. Beneath them, their acrid laughter shrilled out amidst the grinding clatter of their teeth. Yet it wasn’t laughter. No; it was a desperate sound, one of anticipation, the kind that a starving cur utters for carrion.

Al-Mariam’s fingers warmed around the hilt of her blade. The beat of her heart pulsed through them.

White light seared her vision.

Chaelus stood with his arms outstretched, a ball of white fire once more shrouding him like a funeral pyre in the night, engulfing the horde of spirits before him.

The spirits cried out as the conflagration consumed them, a whispering hiss of wind swirling about them, like the passing of water over coals. The barren trace of their remains billowed in the path that Chaelus cut through them.

Then his tempest diminished. Chaelus fell to his knees beside the crumpled form of Al-Aaron.

Michalas watched him from where he cradled the heads of both the man and the little girl. Their bare skin still held a faint glow. The white crown upon Michalas’ head burned, his eyes still the wells of a stranger.

Al-Mariam stepped before him, between him and the wall of demons that remained.

Al-Thinneas ran towards Chaelus.

Al-Mariam heard Al-Hoanar draw next to her. A tremble held the edge of her voice. “We will die here.”

Al-Hoanar replied, his voice urgent, but plain. “At least we don’t need to fear it.”

Summoned from the storm they had left, swirling winds blew along the edge of the darkness, taking up the remains of the wasted horde.

The winds billowed and swelled, spiraling at last into twin columns in the gap where the fires of Chaelus and the Giver had just passed. Two creatures bearing iron maces and armored in scales of plate, strode forth from them.

The winds descended to a whisper.

The cackle of the demons resumed.

The two were each robed differently. The left was tattered and torn. The other adorned with filigree and precious stones. They bore the eyes of nothing in the gap of their linen-bound heads and faces. A mockery of the crown borne by Chaelus and her brother was threaded with bits of broken steel upon their brows.

Beside her, Michalas stiffened. His hand passed to the scars upon his crown.

The Ragged One spoke first. “We have him at last.”

“Yes, we do,” the Jeweled One replied. “We have them both.”

“The Master will take the one.”

“Whilst we will take the other.”

Al-Mariam struggled to find her voice. “You will not touch him.”

“Oh but we will,” the Ragged One said. “We are the Dragon’s Hands.”

“And you will know our name by your suffering,” the Jeweled One said.

“Not on this day!” Al-Hoanar said.

He leapt forward, his gossamer blade whirling down in a blur. Yet faster still was the mace of the Jeweled One as it came up, catching the Knight’s bound blade.

Al-Hoanar quickly turned his wrist, bringing the stout spike at the spigot’s end around. He buried it into the Jeweled One’s shoulder.

The Jeweled One stiffened in shock, but didn’t cry out.

The low mace of the Ragged One came unseen against Al-Hoanar’s left side, where the Goarni could bear no shield to protect himself. Al-Hoanar cried out over a gurgling crack. He flew backwards and landed in silence.

“Yes,” the Ragged One said.

“On this day indeed,” the Jeweled One said.

Al-Mariam screamed. She threw Aela’s edge into a raking cut across the both of them. It broke across the Ragged One, battering its mace back. Her blade was stopped dead still by the mace of the Jeweled One.

Al-Mariam’s arm exploded with pain but above it, Aela’s steel held its own, the tender wrap of gentle white cloth flowing like water across its length, glowing of its own accord just like the extinguished soul lights from the cenotaphs.

The black, soulless eyes of the Jeweled One held Al-Mariam in their grasp. They were not the eyes of a stranger, they had held her before. The loss within them was the same loss that had taken her in its embrace for too long now. It stared back at her, and at the vestal light of her blade which burned before it, the wrappings of its face lit by its own glow.

The scars on Al-Mariam’s palms burned. She breathed. She breathed until the weight of the shadow fell away and the light of the Rua swelled within her, passing down the length of her blade. She forced the blade down with it. The black haft of the Dragon’s Hand yielded until it gave way. Her gossamer blade plunged deep through steel and shadow. The scream of the Jeweled One deafened her ears. A miasma of spirit and air billowed against her.

Al-Mariam stumbled back. She pulled her blade away and brought it back in a clumsy swing between her and the other Hand.

She felt before she saw the hammer blow of its mace come down. She raised her blade against it. Her sword arm, already weary from the effort, crumpled like a flower beneath it. Its weight tumbled over her, forcing her down.

The comforting warmth of tears flowed over Al-Mariam’s cheeks. Her arm trembled, but no less so than the rest of her as she held it in mock defense above her. It was a useless gesture but no less important, as Al-Mariam waited beneath the ebon will of her attacker.

Michalas stood up beside her. Her heart failed as it leapt from her. He seemed so unafraid, but he had faced them before and lived. He would do so again.  Perhaps it had been enough then, perhaps she had purchased at least another moment that he might live.

The ringing of a skipping stone broke out across the water of the canal. From within the archway of the passage through which they had come drew the subtle creak of sinew and the acrid smell of unwashed flesh.

***

Al-Aaron’s eyes were open. His skin was wet, ghostlike, laced with black fingers.  Spasms shook him. All too sparing quivers of breath escaped him. Al-Thinneas held his hand tight against the place where the Dragon’s sword had pierced him.

Chaelus held out his own hand but the pulse of the Giver that had flowed through him was like a dying ember. Its voice was reluctant, but it was enough, surely, to do what must be done. Its halo danced around his fingers. He reached for Al-Aaron’s brow and to the gap of the wound piercing his side.

Al-Thinneas gripped his arm. His hand was covered in Al-Aaron’s blood. “You mustn’t do this.”

Chaelus felt his own blood burn beneath his eyes. They boiled as he flashed them at Al-Thinneas. Chaelus held them back until the fire of the Giver and of his own conflagration passed. “I will not let him die!”

Al-Thinneas saw the struggle within him, but he did not waver or diminish against it. “It’s not your choice to make.”

“None of this was my choice to make. It was never his. Yet still the spirit of the Giver possesses me. Still another child has come to this.” Chaelus saw, for a moment, the face of Baelus beneath him, his blood scattered upon the snow. He saw the face of madness in his father, the one who had led Baelus to it. “It’s the only way I can save him.”

“Al-Aaron once thought the same of you,” Al-Thinneas said. “It’s what brought his fall upon him.”

The numbing emptiness of the Giver’s wake filled Chaelus. “And because of that you would let him die?”

“I cannot claim to know the Giver as you do, but neither does the dogma of man clutter my faith. I beg you to honor the sacrifice the Younger has made for you.  Others can say what they want, and whatever the sin of pride the Younger may have held, he did not save you for himself. He did not even save you for either the Order or your kingdom, whichever folly you would choose. He saved you for something greater.”

Al-Thinneas removed his hand from Chaelus and thrust it out toward the soul lights that had returned around them. The lights of the cenotaphs held a fainter glow, as if their breath had been taken from them.

“He saved you for them,” Al-Thinneas said. “Chaelus, he saved you so that they might live. Let the Rua have its work with Al-Aaron. Your work is another.”

Al-Aaron’s breaths drew sharp and short, a pleading murmur between them.

“Tell me then, how do I save them all?”

Al-Thinneas stood. The gossamer already hung brittle and blackened from his Phennite blade, marked so from his passage here. “Your path lies where it always has, alone in the heart of darkness.”

It was near a pool centered beneath a shadowed copse that the whispering shadow had first come to him, beside the cenotaph where Chaelus had first heard the trepid warning of Al-Aaron. Chaelus had come to silence a whisper to win his kingdom back.  Yet Al-Aaron had been there before, beneath the spiritual ruin of Chaelus’ own house.

“I know where the Dragon dwells.”

“Then finish what you came to do, and strike down the Dragon that succors their suffering.” Al-Thinneas nodded and held his stare. “I promise upon my life they will be led safely from here.”

Chaelus nodded back to him. The voices of prophecy and the often-lost battles of faith passed through the soul of Al-Thinneas. They passed in ways that Chaelus understood. Not so from the much quoted words of the spirit that possessed him, but from his own battles, those both won and lost, and bound by the unfinished sacrifice that they both knew waited ahead for each of them. Chaelus reached out and touched Al-Thinneas’ face.

They stood, Al-Thinneas holding Al-Aaron limp within his arms. He nodded once to Chaelus and then he turned away, as the billowing darkness returned.

Amidst the dying lights of the cenotaphs, those that still remained, dwelt another shadow. Chaelus walked towards it.

The press of the Dragon’s shadow engulfed him, taking away his very breath. Its darkness was complete but it was only the shadow of the reckoning he knew he had yet to behold.

It was loneliness. It was the loneliness that for men like Al-Thinneas was born of faith, and for him was born of prophecy. Against the silence of its bower, Chaelus listened to the grating whisper of the Dragon’s minions. It felt like coarse sand against his skin.

At the heart of darkness, the dead water of the cenotaph was darker still.

Chaelus stepped into it. It held him like chains. The cold press of its shadows turned against him.

The dark water faded, illuminated from within by a cold, pale gray light. Gray sands swirled beneath it.

Chaelus looked back to where he had just been, to the distant cries of his friends, there where the darkness still remained. He imagined he could see through it all. He imagined that he saw, once more, those he knew he would never see again.

Chapter Twenty

Magedos

Voices sounded upon the wind. They sounded like the voice of madness itself, blowing cold against Chaelus’ skin as they called out to him. He couldn’t understand their words but he understood their sound, and he didn’t need the knowing of the Giver to do so. It was the sound of souls that had already been lost.

He braced himself against the sands billowing around him through the pale gray haze. The pitch beneath Ras Dumas’ tower above him had perished, perhaps along with his friends, the Servians, as well.

Or perhaps it was he who’d died. Perhaps he’d died again. Either way, aside from the voices upon the wind and the spirit of the Giver which possessed him, he was alone. Chaelus lifted Sundengal before him, the light of its steel made mute by the haze.

Coarse, dark sand shifted against his feet where the cenotaph had been. Only a ring of flat stones now pressed up from beneath, smooth save for the sinuous glyphs etched deep into their faces.

Above him dark mountains, the Karagas Mun, reared up into a cold, bleak sky; the harsh edges of their barren black stone melting into the turning clouds that reached up beyond his vision. A single narrow pass broke their length, the mountains keeping it hidden within their shadow. It was the valley of Magedos, the place where the Giver fell, the place where the Dragon would be defeated.

Dark holes, pits, stared back at Chaelus like eyes upon a pale face from where they lay scattered across the ground towards the valley’s narrow horizon. Monstrous shadows writhed beyond the valley in a swirling haze. They were like the wyrms from the cenotaphs; vestiges of the Dragon, yet were themselves as tall as mountains. The sand and stones, even here, shook at their tremor.

The bleached and splintered bones of things larger than a man trembled across the open pits. Drifting sand swirled around them. A tumbled cairn of stones marked the nearest of them.

Sundengal held a wyrdling weight.

The wind tore through Chaelus like a banshee, its sands burning into the exposure of his flesh as it called him by name from beyond the darkened spine. He shielded himself from the sand, but he could not tear his mind from its voice. The wakening of fear ravaged through him with every utterance of his name.

“Chaelus.”

“Chaelus.”

“Help us.”

The oppression of Magedos filled Chaelus’ vision, perhaps because of the dim storm-wrought light that lay against it, perhaps because of what it was. Either way, its power pressed upon him. He felt both the sharp press of the wind and the pleading of its voices.

The weight of Sundengal grew. It pulsed like a living thing in his hand.

Chaelus fell to his knees.  The sand shifted beneath him.  He clenched his eyes from the pain and burning of the Dragon’s Fire racing through him. Tears filled them, but he choked them back.

I have indeed passed on once more, he thought. Once more my own death passes before me.

“It’s a necessary one.” The voice and presence of Talus swelled within him.

Chaelus stiffened even as he diminished against it.

“But you aren’t alone,” Talus said.

The world blurred. Chaelus fell beneath the Giver’s thought, and then fell again to his memory.

Gray stones trembled beneath the burgeoning red sky as the Dragon and its minions rose in multitude and dark ire upon the horizon.

Dumas and Malius waited patiently beside Talus. Dalamas did not. The youngest of his followers, Dalamas raised his mailed fist like a shield as the first shadows of the storm fell against them. “We stand only twelve with you, my Teacher, and already it comes. How can we defeat an enemy such as this?”

Talus smiled as the first sands tore against his skin. The first and the last of the ones he had chosen stood with him still, though each with their own doubts, and the purpose that had been given to them. Only remnants of the Dragon’s shadow still lingered within them.

“You can’t,” Talus said. “One more sacrifice remains.”

“What more sacrifice would you ask of us?” Dalamas cried out against the sands.

“Go, Dalamas,” Talus said. “Take Dumas and go from us. Tell the others that the Dragon comes. Malius, take up Sundengal and come alone with me.”

Gravel crumbled beneath Talus’ boots as he sought a path ahead of them to a place where the sky narrowed between the dark peaks above. A cairn stood like a sentinel before one of the now emptied pits of the cenotaphs. Held between its piled stones, a strip of thin bleached funeral cloth, left behind by the Evarun who had worshipped here before, lifted upon the growing wind.

Talus took the gossamer from the stones as the measured stride of Malius came up from behind him.

“What yet remains, my Teacher,” Malius asked, “before our victory over the Dragon?”

“Our surrender remains,” Talus answered. “Your surrender. Bind up your blade in this, so that the others may know of your trust in me, so that they will bind theirs as well, just as you, my favored one, are bound to me.”

“I don’t understand, Teacher. Already the Dragon flies towards us. How can we surrender? Your words sentence them – all of us – to our deaths.” A splinter of fear broke across his voice as the sound of his drawn steel echoed against the canyon walls. Just as the prophecy had said it would.

“To follow me,” Talus said, “is a death they must freely accept.”

Malius’ hands shook as he took the gossamer from Talus. Talus winced. It hurt so to understand what his friend could not. Already and so soon, the shadow grew within him. The Dragon had already cast its veil upon him.

“And what if they don’t?” Malius asked.

“Then I cannot help them,” Talus replied.

“You would betray us here, before we face the Dragon itself?” Fear grew in measure within Malius’ voice.

Talus stepped closer to the edge of the cenotaph’s well.  If only Malius could see his lack of faith. If only he could know what it held for him, for all of them. “I am afraid that it is you who will betray me.”

“Forgive me, Teacher,” Malius said. “I cannot serve you in this.”

Talus looked up to the constant light as the roar of the Dragon billowed over him. The pain of steel pierced Talus’ side. He sucked in his breath. It was just as the prophecy had said it would be. And so it would be for the next as well. His voice, to his surprise, barely wavered.

“My return is your forgiveness.”

The memory and presence of Talus fell away as the rust-colored sky blurred back into muted haze.

Chaelus lifted his pounding head from the sand. The stone cairn still remained before him, before the well next to where he had fallen. He had come here in his vision. It was where he had died. The burning of his fever deepened.

No.

Magedos. It was the place where the Giver fell. The place where Talus died.

Not I, thought Chaelus; him. But I will die here too, here in the place where my own father took the Giver’s life, where his father took his Teacher’s life.

It numbed him and it tore at him, all of it. It did so because Chaelus knew it was true.

He had seen it with his own eyes.

Chaelus stared at the now pounding weight of Sundengal still clutched within his hand. The sword of his father, the blood of the Giver still borne within it, the same blood that now pulsed within him, blood born of prophecy. In far too many ways all of it had become one.

Chaelus stood. His knees trembled. He looked down into the well’s abyss, just as Talus had once done. Yet only silence answered him against the dull haze reflecting from the surface of the water below. It trembled as small stones, set loose from their precipice above, broke across its surface.

The wind whipped harder against him. The peal of his own name deafened him as the legion of voices turned into one.

“Help us.”

“Chaelus!”

“You are the Giver.”

“Help us!”

The surface of the water quivered and distorted his reflection upon it.

“Chaelus.” Another voice, a more familiar voice, caustic and sweet, the voice of Magus, the voice of the Dragon, whispered from behind him. “Will you heed their cries, my love.”

***

Al-Mariam saw them from the corner of her eye, but she was too afraid to turn away from the Hand of the Dragon still towering above her.

The Khaalish legion filled the void of the passage through which they had come.  Each of their faces was painted with a ghostlike visage, and they bore no reckoning to men. They pulsed like a single living thing to the unintelligible guttural chant that they murmured beneath their breath. They were no legion. They were a horde.

One stood alone in front of them. An array of crimson feathers struck out from behind his head. He clutched a pair of spears, one in each of his fists.

The Dragon’s Hand still above Al-Mariam sputtered and hissed. “What’s this?  The Master hasn’t summoned you.”

“No,” the barbarian chieftain said. He hefted his spears above his head. His accent was thick but his words, spoken in the tongue of Gorond, were clear. “The Dragon’s veil has been cast aside.”

At the chieftain’s signal, the gathered horde poured past him.

Al- Mariam fell down. Beside her, Michalas stood in wonder.

The Hand of the Dragon staggered back, three arrows pierced through its breast. Shadow billowed from it, from its eyes, from beneath the wrappings which bound it, and from its wounds, swept along by the winds which still surrounded it.

Like a wave breaking over broken rock, the Khaalish horde descended upon the remaining Hand of the Dragon and the demon shield wall waiting at the edge of the shadow behind him. The barbarian’s hacking blades blurred before them like the wave’s broken froth.

The Dragon’s Hand hurled its mace, shattering the wall of flesh that came. A dozen of the Khaalish either crumpled or flew backwards, instantly dead from the malevolent force of the blow.

Yet its return swing never came.

The Dragon’s Hand screamed out, succumbed beneath the wave of those that came behind the first. Their swords, their spears, and the full force of their flesh fell upon it. Its black cloud billowed, spiraling out and away from between them in a maelstrom of shadow and decay and crumpling steel.

Al-Hoanar moaned where he lay.

Al-Mariam knelt beside him, passing her hand across his cheek.

Al-Hoanar smiled, wincing as he did. “I told you. Nothing to fear.”

The barbarian chief knelt beside her. His ghost face leaned close to her. The fevered pulse of his breath vibrated against her. “My name is Obidae. Has the Giver now gone to his task?”

Al-Mariam backed away. She remembered the men which had held her down on that day. She remembered the clutch of their smell. She reached out to Michalas with one hand, while the scars upon her other hand burned into the pommel of her sword. She imagined its gossamer oath had fallen away.

“Yes,” Al-Thinneas said.

Al-Thinneas strode towards them. He carried Al-Aaron in his arms. Al-Mariam could not help but notice the emptiness beside him. Chaelus, the Giver, had left them.

The Khaalish chief spun from her to Al-Thinneas. “Then gather up your fallen and leave while you can. Let us end this for our part.”

“No.”

Michalas’ small voice resounded from where he had come to stand beside Al-Mariam. Beneath his voice, and through it, labored the breath of another. It was a woman’s voice, and it held an ancient strength. It echoed against the surrounding darkness and the screams of the Remnant spirits that suffered there beneath the Khaalish spear. The fire upon Michalas’ scarred brow marked a halo that wrapped a gentle blanket of light around him. Chaelus’ cloak dragged at his feet.

“The bones of your willingness are worthy,” Michalas said. “But its flesh won’t suffer the scourge that will claim it.”

Michalas pointed towards the wall of shadow that the Khaalish horde were assaulting. The Khaalish clamored against each other for their chance to join in the fray. Their chanting swelled and echoed.

“Shoa Ti. Shoa Ti.”

Yet the rhythm of the Khaalish chant, and the crash and din of their weapons, did nothing to hide the painful slaughter in their cries. Though the Khaalish horde surged without reluctance towards their enemy, it was obvious that the teeth of the rocks upon which the wave of their vengeance fell would not recede. They only gathered corpses at their feet.

Al-Hoanar labored as he scrambled to stand. He clutched his sword arm to his side. Blood stained his fingers around the hilt.

“My pitiful eyes,” he said. “They tell me once more of my lack of faith.” His eyes narrowed to the slaughter before him, tears falling from them. His sword lowered. “Even their courage won’t suffer this for long.”

Obidae stood. He scowled, first at Al-Hoanar, then at Michalas and then at the truth that he now saw threatened to consume him. “Then at least until then, let it be our courage that saves you.”

The wind rose. The ravaging blister of debris billowed around them.

“Draw what is left of your legion back to you,” Michalas said.  Then his voice was once more a child’s voice. “This is something I have to do.”

Al-Mariam felt her brother’s words drop like a grave stone upon her.

“No!” she hissed.

She felt another’s clutch upon her wrist.

Al-Thinneas, with gentleness and strength, pulled her hand from her brother’s wrist. The mark of her fingers remained there but Michalas had already left. He still stood before her but was already lost to the light and the beginnings of the fire of the spirit which claimed him, and to the suffering it would force him to face.

“Let the boy do what he must,” Al-Thinneas urged. The piety of his stare pressed deep against her, but his words crushed her, as if he had just said that her Michalas was dead. They pushed against her heart like a vice.

“So that I can lose him again?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Do it because you must, do it so that yet another promise made won’t be broken.”

Obidae cried out beneath his upturned spears. Slowly at first, reluctantly even, the Khaalish pulled back to him. As they did, the broken front of their line became visible, along with the scarcity of their numbers. It was only a few hundred. The Khaalish drew back to a protective circle around their leader.

The demons drew closer beyond the wall of shadow, their armored veils now torn aside. The terror of their empty eyes was bettered only by their ghoulish maws beneath, filled with beast-like teeth meant for the consumption of souls, the corpses of the Khaalish, torn and cast away beneath them. Unsated, they howled at the ones who had retreated from them.

Al-Mariam cried out at them, at everything, but a deafening thunderclap crushed any sound. It shook her and pulsed through her like a living thing, her grief and her fears carried away by it.

Michalas stood before her, between her and the howling enemy, immolated, a burning silhouette just as Chaelus had been.

The howls of the Dragon’s legion turned from cries of lust to howls of pain. The light of her brother’s holocaust burned through the legion of dark warriors surrounding them. It burned through them by rows, circling about them until their darkness was turned to light.

The faces of the Khaalish that had retreated held her brother’s luminance as if it were their own, silent save for their continuing chant of “Shoa Ti”, now a trembling and constant whisper, baptized in the light of her brother.

“No,” Al-Mariam whimpered.

She couldn’t lose him to this. She couldn’t watch until whatever spirit protected him fell fragile and failed him before the darkness assailing him; because it would, because the darkness, it would always return. Yet as much as that, she could not bear to watch the tempest consume him, and take away from her everything left of him that she had only just regained.

Light ebbed to darkness and darkness ebbed to light. Michalas wavered where he stood. The broken husks of the Dragon’s spawn descended into ashes around him. The dim lights of the souls in the cenotaphs returned again as they did.

Michalas looked back to her. His stare, suddenly in need of her, claimed her.

The ground trembled beneath her as she ran to him.

Michalas sloughed listless into her arms. His eyes weighted back into his head.  His breathing fluttered.

Al-Mariam felt the sharp sting of detritus. Her cloak flew about her. Winds buffeted. Then, as quick as it had come, the sudden wind died. Black mist wrapped about her feet.

Al-Thinneas cried out. He looked past her, his eyes opened wide. He set Al-Aaron down to rest beside the two who had been raised from the wells of the cenotaphs. Al-Thinneas’ Gossamer Blade flew into his hand.

Al-Hoanar readied his own blade as well, such as he could within the grip of his shattered arm. Beside him, Obidae murmured a chant beneath his lips, his spears held loose within his hands.

Tendrils of not mist but thick, acrid smoke spiraled up amongst the Khaalish encircling them. Their ghost-scribed faces washed pale with their fear of it. They waved at it and stabbed at it with their spears, but it was smoke and ether and it laced up between them, wrapping around them, whispers of it gathering at last into columns, eleven of them all told, that stretched high above.

Al-Mariam passed her hand across her brother’s cheek. She touched the reddened corners of his eyes, wet from where her own tears were falling, beneath where the Dragon’s crown, that was wreathed beneath the scars upon his brow, had been changed to ash.

Chapter Twenty One

Fallen

Chaelus spun towards the voice.

Only sands blew where the dark water of the Shinnaras should be. Beyond the plain the ground rose again, to the low white ruin of the Line; its broken remains scattered, worse than Chaelus remembered, stretching out upon the jagged horizon. Beyond it, the gray world of the Pale continued.

Near a breach in the wall, a shadowed figure sat on a stone, its face veiled by the blowing sands.

Chaelus’ cry stole across the wind. “I have come for you, Dragon!”

The ghostlike pallor of the Shinnaras plain rushed past Chaelus. The winds bit at him like locusts. He held his arms up in defense against them. His stomach turned, until only the fallen stones of the Line remained between him and the Dragon, sitting before him.

Sand borne upon the wind burned Chaelus’ eyes, deepening the veil between them.

He raised up Sundengal.

“Do you know why you’re here?” the Dragon asked.

“I’ve come to destroy you,” Chaelus answered. “I’ve come to restore what you’ve broken.”

“No, Chaelus.” The Dragon stood. “You’ve come for something else.”

Chaelus leveled Sundengal. The calm of the Giver extended through his hand and held the blade without tremor. “You won’t deceive me. Not this time.”

“The kingdom you seek is already lost,” the Dragon said. “So too are those you’ve come to save. You, my love, have been sent as a meaningless sacrifice, sent to die again by those who call themselves your friends.”

“Then death can come again,” Chaelus said. “And I’ll take you with me.”

The Dragon sighed, the sound coarse like the blowing sands. “Do you know the meaning of the mark I placed upon you?”

“You marked me because you fear me, because you knew what I’d become.”

“No,” the Dragon said. “I marked you because you are special, my love. The child Al-Aaron was right about one thing. It’s upon you and you alone that all things depend.”

“I won’t let you deceive me again.”

The veil of sand lifted. In the gray light, the silver childlike face of Magus shimmered.

“I’ve never lied to you,” the Dragon said. “I have only told you what others wouldn’t. Wasn’t it I who served you all those years? Wasn’t it I alone who served you while your so-called friends did nothing to save you? I am the only one who ever tried to.”

The Dragon raised its gloved hand towards the gap in the wall. “But if you don’t believe me, then look with your own eyes and see.”

Beyond the gap, thunderclouds turned, rolling upon themselves, blanketing the Pale beneath their shadow. Beneath them, the stones of the ruined city heaved. Liquid black rock rose from the ground, crawling out across the Pale. The tower that had stood above them was gone, its white stones cast down under the churning blanket of darkness.

As if in answer, the domed and painted courts of the Theocracy, too far to be seen, somehow stood dark before him, beyond the heights of the Albanjan. Their lights were gone, their veil already cast aside, as their own darkness swept towards him.

Between them stood a single white tower, his tower, the one his father ruled from before him. But had never seen it like this before. It was graceful, slender and tall, rising above the churning haze like a star against the night sky, the roar deafening beneath it as the storm clouds of stone broke against its walls.

Chaelus stepped away. “There is one tower that still stands against you.”

“It will soon fall like the others. It will fall just like the one before it did.”

“The tower is me.”

“No, my love. It belongs now to the one you left behind.”

Chaelus saw a vision of blood struck red upon the fallen snow. Guilt shadowed his whisper. “Baelus.”

“Know that he suffers this for you. Despite what you have heard, your brother loves you and he waits for you. But he won’t last much longer. He can’t bear to suffer this for long.”

“Why do you show me this?”

“Because I, unlike your friends, my love, would offer you a choice. I would help you end this. Come with me, and together we can save your brother.”

Magus reached out his hand.

Chaelus drew back and raised Sundengal between them.

“What of the suffering of your friends? Join with me and the suffering of those you left behind, those you love, will end. Even now they die as they wait for your sacrifice. Don’t let them. I don’t wish for your death. I don’t wish for theirs. It’s your life that I need. It’s theirs. Help me save them.”

“No.”

The Dragon lowered its hand. “Then you choose the same fate your father did.”

A sullen red glow flooded Chaelus’ mind and vision. “You killed my father slowly, just like you killed me. I won’t let you do it again.”

“I didn’t kill your father. You did.”

“Enough of this,” Chaelus said, stepping closer.

“He was offered a choice, like you, but he did nothing. Instead he chose to place his faith upon the dead words of prophecy. Consider the sacrifice he made for you, only to die by your hand.”

“I said, no!” Chaelus’ hand erupted with the Giver’s blue flame. Its power poured out from him. Sundengal held the light upon its length as it arced across the silver mask.

Bits of soft metal flew away.

The Dragon crumpled before him, seated on its knees, its hands held out before it. The Dragon looked up, the child mask still hanging to its face, a cleaving nearly splitting it at an angle across its middle from brow to cheek.

The Dragon lifted its hands to the rent mask, grabbing it. With a horrible sound it peeled away.

Chaelus stared, helpless, held in place by the pale face and dead eyes of his father.

***

Breathing was the only sound; his own and the breathing of the Angel who held him.

The Angel had his mother’s face – no, his sister’s face. She smiled back at him. The Angel looked so much like Mariam. He had never noticed it before now.

Michalas smiled back as the Angel touched her hand to his cheek.

She was a glowing flame against the endless night behind her. Yet it wasn’t the night. It pulsed, felt more than seen, like waves in the ocean. He floated in its waters. It quivered around him.

Michalas felt the sound of his breath, and the breath of the Angel against it.

“Your task has nearly ended,” the Angel said.

The Angel pointed away, to the center of the living darkness where the night sky remained. Twin blue stars flickered so that all the other stars fell dim to compare. Around the night sky, at the edge of the swirling darkness, eleven pillars of red flame burned. But one of them burned less so. The center of its flame was tinged with blue.

“Yet one more task still remains.” The whisper of the Angel floated in his ear. “There is one more promise yet to be fulfilled.”

“Ras Dumas.”

The answer of the Angel was silence.

Michalas opened his eyes, little more than slits, and waited as the normal darkness of the world returned before him.

Yet it wasn’t all darkness. The candle flames of the souls within the cenotaphs close by still burned with the glow of the innocent. And he could feel his sister’s breath, her arms wrapped tight around him. Twin blue flames captured the gossamer blades of Al-Hoanar and Al-Thinneas from where they stood beside him.

The glow from the swords washed across the faces of Obidae and the hundred-odd Khaalish warriors who still protected them. They were all that was left of the army of a thousand that moments before had stood against them, before they were turned by the will of the Giver, and before the teeth of the Dragon had consumed them.

Beyond them, the glow washed across the ram’s head visage of Ras Dumas’ helm, and the ferral masks of the other ten Servian Lords who stood with him.

The eleven Servian Lords encircled them, hovering at the edge of the abyss. Black smoke drifted around them; their battle armor scarred and bitten from an age that had long since passed, the glory of its past darkened by the shadow which bore them. Upon the brow of each masked helm was set a crown.

The Dragon’s dark spirit burned with red fire from behind the eye slits of their armored veils. Yet, beneath the mask of Ras Dumas, somewhere very deep, in a place that the Dragon’s fire hadn’t yet consumed, the other fire burned as well.

It was why the Angels had asked him to return. It was why they’d told him to stay.

Carefully, Michalas pressed away his sister’s arms. They resisted him, like deep roots set within the soil, until at last they gave way.

He stood. Amidst the startled, awed cries of the Khaalish he made his way between them until he stood before his old master. Michalas bowed his head.

“My Lord Dumas.”

No reply came from the flames burning within the shell before him. The only sound was the echo of his voice against burning steel.

Michalas bent down on his knee. “I delivered your message, just as you asked me to, my lord. The Servian Knights, they are here before you now. They’ve come to your aid, just as you asked them to.”

The Servian Lord standing next to Ras Dumas turned towards Michalas. Its red flame burned as cold as fallen snow.

The mask upon its face bore the head of a dragon, the mark of Ras Dalamas, first in line of the Servian Lords after Ras Malius. The glow from the cenotaphs diminished against it.  Its breath buffeted the black smoke around it. “We are the Fallen. We have risen once more.”

The raking of steel broke against him as Ras Dalamas drew his sword. The blade widened at its tip like a fang. Black smoke whispered against it as he lifted it high above his head.

“No!” Al-Thinneas cried out. He stepped before Michalas.

Ras Dalamas stopped and lowered his sword, pointing it towards Al-Thinneas. “You are a fool. The blade of your Order has broken. The fire that wields it is useless against us.”

“It is your circle that has broken,” Al-Thinneas said. “The promise the Dragon made to you can never be met until you are twelve once more, and twelve you shall never be.”

The Dragon’s fire within Ras Dalamas flared. The glow of it trembled like a kettle about to turn. Ras Dalamas’ voice descended to a chastened whisper. “A promise made by the blood of the Fallen can never be broken. Already we can taste the sweet ardor of its sacrifice. When it is made at last, our circle will be complete, and so too will our return.”

The cold red flame within Ras Dalamas expanded until the smoke around it was consumed. A burgeoning echo of silence descended, pulsing through the air like a heartbeat.

Al-Mariam’s grip and cry seized Michalas, pulling him away.

Al-Thinneas held his Gossamer Blade upright before him. The blue glow which dressed it rained over him like a veil.

The blade of Ras Dalamas rose again.

It sliced invisible through the air. Only the crumpling sound of Al-Thinneas’ body as it fell sounded against its muted call, his head having already struck the stones beneath his feet.

Chapter Twenty Two

Malius

“No. No. No. No!”

Chaelus staggered back, stumbling. Sundengal slipped from his grasp.

Malius, his father, rose from where he had fallen, drawing the crimson wrappings of Magus away. His long gray hair smeared the blood from the cut alongside his mouth where the edge of Sundengal had found him.

“You’re dead,” Chaelus said.

“Your new wisdom becomes you, my son,” Malius said. He smiled. The blood cast his face in a cruel parody of the man he had once been. “Did you believe you would only kill me once?”

“It was you?” Chaelus choked on the pain and tears of his sudden realization. “When the Dragon whispered its poison into my ear, it was from your lips?”

Malius smiled. “I did it to protect you, my son. I did it to protect you in a way I could never do while I lived. I did it to prepare you for the choice you’re faced with now, because the way that stands before you, my son, it is a dark way.”

“Yet here you are, standing within its shadow.”

“Your friends, these Servian Knights, the ones even I once claimed as my own, the truth that you seek isn’t theirs. They will turn away from you just as they turned away from me. Already, in your absence, they conspire and plot their ways against you.”

“No,” Chaelus said. “I’ve already seen the truth. The spirit of the Giver has shown me. I’ve stood in the flesh of his footsteps. I’ve waited alone with you in the darkness of Magedos. I felt it when you put your sword through his side.”

“Then at least I am no longer alone in that,” Malius said.

“It’s you, father, who turned away,” Chaelus said.

Malius stared at Sundengal where it lay upon the broken ground. The light of the burgeoning storm branded it with ire. Sands blew like the passage of time across the length of the blade.

“Too long have I suffered for the curse of a moment,” he said.

Sundengal’s veil of blowing sand was not unlike the gossamer which bound the swords of the Servian Knights. Beneath it, the ghosts of blood and snow still remained, and they yielded nothing else before them.

“I can’t remember your death,” Chaelus whispered.

“Yet still it was. But I hold no blame for you, my son.”

Malius turned and spread out his hands upon the cracked and pitted stones of the Line. His eyes held a covetous and distant stare as they looked out across the illusion of the Pale.

“You are my redemption,” he said.

Chaelus stepped back. The Giver’s own words, spoken similarly once to Malius, haunted him.

“I knew it when I first saw you, held within your mother’s arms.” Malius’ voice softened. “She was of Forgotten Blood, exiled from her own kind. Just as you were born of my blood, you are born of her flesh, and so too, the lost power of the Evarun flows deep within your veins.”

“And so you marked me.”

Malius continued to stare out across the shrouded leagues. The tower, and his brother Baelus who held it, had nearly fallen. It was only a matter of time until it did.

“So that you would rule this new kingdom with me,” Malius said. “So that you would help me to create it anew.”

“What of Baelus?” Chaelus asked. “What would you have of your other son?”

Malius wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.

“I don’t need him anymore.”

“Have you whispered the same to him of me?” Chaelus asked. “His blood’s no different than my own. Or do you merely use us as you did our mother?”

Malius struck him in the face with his fist like a hundred stone.

“Your wisdom no longer suits you,” he said. “You seek too much with it.”

Chaelus looked in surprise through the arrows of pain that struck him. Not all of them were real, not all of them were bound within his flesh. Some of them were bound within his memory. He stared past them, past the blowing sands to the blood and the snow and the memory unfolding before him, at once unbidden and reclaimed.

He fell to his knees.

His father staggered back through the descending snow, holding up his mailed fist as if it were a malaise itself. His mouth opening and closing to silent speech. He stopped and looked down to where Baelus lay alone in the blood-turned snow.

The boy looked up at his father and swallowed, shaking from cold and fear, his hands clutching at the bloodied wound in his side; the broken shaft of the Khaalish arrow that he had removed still in the snow where he had dropped it.

The arrow should have remained, to keep the wound sealed, but Baelus was too young to have known that, and his father was too consumed to care. The wound was not mortal – yet – and the cold slowed his bleeding and his suffering from it. Yet Baelus was too young to know any of this, either. He turned to Chaelus, his deep eyes fearful and pleading.

Chaelus stood as Malius drew Sundengal from its scabbard.

He could do nothing for the fear which swept through him. “No, Father.”

Malius turned from Baelus, his face somber. He raised his blade and strode towards Chaelus.

Chaelus stumbled back. His hand fumbled with the hilt of his own sword, its blade as heavy as his heart as he held it within his grasp. His fear diminished to despair. He held his blade weak, its length trembling before him. “You don’t have to do this, Father!”

Warm sunlight, reflected blue by the snow, consumed them like fire as Malius seized Chaelus’ blade within his mailed fist. His eyes had changed; they were softer, pleading. “Yes, I do.”

The face of his father leaned close to Chaelus, his breath warm against Chaelus’ neck.  A weak smile, awash with shame and yearning, spread across Malius’ face. “The Dragon, it feeds off the living. The dead serve no purpose to it.”

Chaelus trembled.

His father’s eyes showed bright. They looked into him as they had before his mother died, when they had looked out upon the future of a new day, burning bright over the Kessel plain. His father’s smile faded. He gripped Chaelus firm by the shoulder. His breath fell to a whisper. “I was wrong.”

Chaelus’ blade lurched as his father’s fell upon it. Blood spotted the corner of his father’s mouth. Tears gleamed in his eyes. “And I’m sorry.”

Chaelus surrendered the blade. He grabbed at his father, holding him up. He pressed his face into the fading warmth of Malius’ neck as the weight of his father’s body pulled him down. “No!”

Chaelus jolted as the different chill of sand returned. It filled the edges of his mouth. His eyes stung where his blood had matted there. He rose, more lifted than stood, and looked into the empty hulls of the eyes of the thing he had just thought was his father.

“Now I know,” Chaelus said.

The aberration of his father studied him. Hesitation held it fast. “What could you know?”

“I know that I didn’t murder my father, and I know now that you, Dragon, aren’t him.”

The Dragon’s fist clenched and unclenched, uncertain of its failure.

“Don’t let my disappointment in you become complete,” it said.

“You’re not my father. You’re the Dragon, Gorond, and you feed off the suffering of the living. My father’s already passed to the dead, and those those that have their rest, cannot serve you.”

The broken husk of Malius which the Dragon bore stared back at him. The Dragon’s shadow poured out from the hollow of its eyes like oil. The sand and stone around them trembled.

“No,” the Dragon whispered. Its voice shook the broken ground beneath him. “But your death does.”

***

For the first time ever, Michalas felt fear. Not the tears of a child that he knew had already begun to fall, but real fear. Or at least, that’s what he thought it was. It was the opposite of what he felt when the Angels came.

The feeling crawled and curled around the pit of his stomach, not unlike the black tendrils he had seen infesting the bodies of those whom the Dragon had imprisoned within the cenotaphs. Perhaps this wasn’t any different. More than anything else, he wanted it to go away.

Blood pooled beneath Al-Thinneas’ body. Only the stalwart beacon of Al-Hoanar’s gossamer blade remained. Around them, like a wall between them and the Fallen Ones, the thin line of the Khaalish swayed as their cries descended back into the whispered rhythm of their chant.

From just behind Michalas, where she clutched her arms around him, the agonized pleas of his sister cried out to him. She could do nothing more. Before him, Ras Dumas, the Servian Lord that the Angels had brought him to save, stared at him in silence.

Steel scraped against steel. As if they were one, Ras Dumas and the other nine Servian Lords drew their blades from their scabbards and closed their circle around Michalas.

Yet none of these things were what scared him.

Beyond them all was the glow of the Angel. Not near to him but far beyond his reach, and of the distance between them, no passage could have been greater. No cold could be more numbing than the chill this distance held within its grasp. It was like infinite night. The Angel stared at him. She did not smile. She did not stretch out her hand to gently hold his face. There was no voice or comfort at all coming from her.

Tendrils of fear spun their way through Michalas. What had he done wrong? What had he done that she would not to come to him? Had he not already done everything she had asked of him? The doubt of it all tangled and wrought its way inside him, taking away his very breath. To see her and not be near her felt like damnation.

The fearful and fateful prayer of the Khaalish warriors drifted over him. It was fearful, all of it. It was all their fears bound together, yet each fear made somehow less real for its utterance. The strength of their bearers, the Khaalish, grew through the sharing of their own weakness.

Yet it was more than that. It was an offering, and something had been given back to replace it. The blue light in each of them grew, together equaling the blue flame of the Gossamer Blade of Al-Hoanar, before them.

Michalas stood, pulling away from the grip and cries of his sister.

Ras Dalamas towered above, above Ras Dumas and the rest of the Fallen Ones. The light of the Angel behind them went out.

“You are the other,” Ras Dalamas said. His voice sounded like the grave. “But your hope is lost. It’s fire’s already been put out.”

Michalas closed his eyes.

He imagined the fingers of his fear lacing together. He let them. Deeper and deeper they gathered, filling the voids and holes inside him, the ones the Angel had left behind.

The sharp strike of steel tore the fingers apart.

Michalas opened his eyes.

The blade of Ras Dalamas hung in the air above him, a hand’s width away from his fate. The soft lights of the cenotaphs reflected upon it. The blade of Ras Dumas held fast against it.

“No,” Michalas said. “My hope is not lost.”

He stared past the mask of the Dragon helm to the Ram’s head of his former master. Beyond Ras Dumas, the Angel smiled.

“My hope is not lost,” Michalas said, “for I have already seen its passing, and in doing so, I’ve gained the greatest hope of all.”

The cold fire of Ras Dalamas’ stare burned into Ras Dumas. Its red flame billowed from Ras Dalamas’ helm against the black smoke swirling about him.

A single breath passed amongst the Khaalish.

Al-Hoanar muttered under his own breath. “Shoat tu, Mattea.”

The cries of Al-Mariam fell silent.

Ras Dumas turned towards Michalas. The struggling breath of his gentle voice broke amidst the shadow and the light that filled him. The blue light burned like the flame that had once graced his gossamer blade, long ago.

“This is why I saved you, child,” he said. “You’re  my redemption. Now go, so that my promise may be fulfilled.”

Ras Dalamas cried out in rage, breaking his blade free from Ras Dumas’ hold.  Circling it back, he brought it back down upon the other.

Ras Dumas parried it away, and staggered.

The rise of debris again filled the air.

Michalas backed away. Around him, he heard the crumpled moan of steel and the anguished cries of spirits.

“Follow me.” The shocked voice of Obidae sounded out behind him. “I have found a way.”

Dust and stone cascaded down through the billowing wind.

The remaining nine Servian Lords wavered upon their knees. Their masked veils turned downward, only the circlets of their crowns stared back. Their own limbs bent and twisted against them as they struggled to hold the fire of their spirits within.

With the redemption of Ras Dumas, the promise of their return had been taken from their grasp.

Obidae stood at a break between them, where the darkness behind them had parted.

The Khaalish warriors, still in a shield wall around them, opened a narrow pass down their center to where Obidae waited, their chanting continuing all the while.

Al-Hoanar stared at Michalas, his eyes full of questions and care. With his wounded arm, he lifted Al-Aaron’s limp body up to him, and somehow still helped Al-Mariam to her feet.

Al-Hoanar hesitated as he glanced at the lifeless body of Al-Thinneas, and then at the still sleeping forms of the two they had raised. “We must go.”

“I will carry the man,” Al-Mariam said. She stared at Michalas. Her eyes seemed less broken.

Michalas moved towards the young girl; Sarah was her name.

The solid hand of Obidae clamped over his shoulder. “No, child. I will take her.”

Michalas looked up into the ghost paint of Obidae’s face and the warm blue light that he held in his eyes.

Obidae smiled. “You must lead us from here.”

Michalas smiled. He looked back.

Ras Dumas and Ras Dalamas still circled each other in feints and silence. Only they remained. Around them, the soul lights of the cenotaphs had returned, but the stones of their tombs trembled.

Ras Dumas was buying them time, because there was still something more for Michalas to do.

Ras Dumas stared back at him and lowered his sword. He let it drop to the stones. Its chime rang out like the voice of the Angel. Its echo continued, hiding his anguish as Ras Dalamas ran him through.

The soft glow from the cenotaphs blinked amidst the falling debris.

Ras Dalamas screamed. The last cry of the last of the Servian Lords.

Michalas stopped. He held out his hand and watched the gentle reflections of lights from the cenotaphs growing dim upon it. Their touch still felt warm against his skin.

“Wait,” he said.

Chapter Twenty Three

Prophecy

The illusion of Malius fell away. The dust of its making disappeared into the swirling wind. The tumbled white stones of the Line and the illusion of the suffering Pale beyond went as well, all of them ghosts summoned by the Dragon’s call.

At Chaelus’ feet, the length of Sundengal smoldered with the collapsing light of the storm above.

The growing darkness of the valley of Magedos surrounded him. Within it, wings of even darker shadow spread out beneath a rolling thunder. They spread out across the valley floor. Beneath them, within the pits amongst the blowing sands, something scraped against the stones.

“Chaelus.” A single whisper on the wind resumed its call.

From the nearest pit, the one into which he – into which the Giver – had fallen at the hand of his father, a black and bloodied claw emerged, grasping at its edge.

Sand clung to its wet, skinless flesh. The creature pulled its body up, pushing its way past the heavy bones that had caged it. It clambered until it stood, stooped and broken, naked in the rawness of its gray flesh. The pain of its being cried out in the turn of its gaping mouth and the empty holes of its eyes.

Then a thousand more voices joined in the whisper of his name.

“Chaelus.”

The voices came from the rest of the open pits. More creatures like the one before him rose from them, but not from all of them. A few of them had already been emptied. The bone cages which covered them had already been cast aside.

The soul lights in the darkness beneath Ras Dumas’ tower. These were their souls. The faces of an old man and a little girl stared back at Chaelus. Some at least, had already been saved.

But not these, not yet; these Remnants. Yet they were not like the ones Chaelus had faced before, spirits borne within the Dragon’s armored husks. These were broken souls made into flesh. The expression of their suffering was as varied as their wretched forms. Amongst themselves, they clattered and moaned as they stood, wavering and waiting. Whatever flesh made them, it was not the flesh of the Pale. It was the Dragon’s own.

Chaelus felt the tremor of the Giver building within him. At least he would not have to face this alone.

Within Chaelus’ fingers, the pulse of the Giver quickened once more. He closed his eyes to the glow as it filled him. He watched it wash across the gray stones around him. He succumbed to its gentle and waiting calm, its mantle returning to him like a sigh.  It sounded like the clarion call of a life lost, of honor returned, and of failure, but mostly it sounded of love.

Chaelus reached out with it all, with all of its spirit into the sadness and suffering of the creatures before him. He looked into them with the sight of the Giver, deep beneath the caustic chill of the Dragon’s singular dark spirit pulsating through them, consuming them from within. He cried out to them, into the emptiness to where whatever was left of them remained.

“I will not let it take you!”

The presence of the Dragon within each of them drew its grip tighter at his touch, like a parasite being drawn out by a flame. With a thousand voices it let out its own fell cry against him. Then it, the Dragon, whispered back to him with only one.

“Then pick up your father’s sword, for I already have mine.”

The Remnants looked up into the flagrant sky as the Dragon’s voice trailed away. The empty hollows of their eyes narrowed. Their moaning erupted and they cried out as one in their pain. Rows of teeth extended out like ebony razors within their open maws.

The nearest struck at him, clumsy in its rage.

Chaelus rolled beneath it, taking up Sundengal as he did so. The light of the storm held captured in ribbons along its length as he led it upward and then back again. Chaelus crouched through the billowing rush of spirit as the head and then the body of the Remnant fell, its black blood showering across him beneath the weight of the Dragon’s desperate howl.

Sundengal took on the weight of a hundred stone. Its steel darkened beneath the harsh light of the storm, beneath the sepia stain of the Remnant’s blood. No blue flame adorned it.

The voice of the Giver within him was silent. Its fire had passed, like a love found and then lost again, and there was no clarion call to mark the void that it left.

It felt like damnation.

The other Remnants closed around him like a shroud. The tombs of their eyes called to him while their bestial teeth hungered to claim his flesh.

Chaelus roused himself. He kept Sundengal moving in a constant arc before him, between him and the death they longed him to suffer for.

A weight struck him from behind. Chaelus felt no pain, but it reeled him nonetheless, sending him down to the scarred and broken ground. He thrust Sundengal back up against it. Its blade went deep. The body of the Remnant collapsed upon him, dragging on his shoulder where its black teeth still clung to him.

Chaelus pushed it away. The bright red stain of his blood painted a streak across his sword arm, apart from the gray of the rest of the world. Then pain exploded through him. His heartbeat levied against him. His breath hammered in his ears. Sundengal sagged within his grasp.

The Remnants loomed over him.

Chaelus looked up at them. Their faces, the faces of the dead, stared back at him, screaming. They were all his; all the dead he had left spitted upon the field of battle, all the dead he had left to burn beneath the village walls. All the dead he now left in his failure. Their vengeance poured over him.

From far away, outside of him, the tremor of the Giver’s voice rippled against him. “Wait.”

Chaelus’ eyes burned. His vision blurred. The gray world about him turned.

He let Sundengal slip from his grasp. He held out his open hands.

Thunder exploded from them.

The tombs of the Remnants’ eyes lit up from within. Chaelus closed his own against it. The noise was deafening but its end was abrupt.

A fateful sigh lingered upon the wind. Above the empty sands of the valley floor the gray clouds pulled away, leaving behind a pale, unbroken sky.

The ground quivered beneath the Dragon’s voice. “How many times do you think Grace will save you?”

Chaelus stumbled to his feet. The pain of his wound harried him. He felt the dark tendrils of the Remnant’s poison already lacing through his veins. He felt the Dragon’s poison that was already there racing to meet it.

Between the two was only the void his own failure had left. The Giver had saved him once more, but there was nothing left in Chaelus to remain. And the Dragon still lived, and so it would when he died here.

Sand barred Chaelus’ throat. “Enough so I would see you revealed before me.”

The windswept sigh fell away.

“Then so be it,” the Dragon said.

Sinuous fissures twisted between the open pits scattered across the valley floor. The sands poured into them like water. The tremors grew. The ground heaved and buckled. Like a web, like the sinuous tendrils beneath the skin of the fallen, the cracks laced together into one, and as it widened, strange sounds, at once beautiful and poisonous in their appeal, whispered up from deep within its bowels.

Chaelus drew back, regretting the challenge he had only just made.

The beckoning sounds from beneath the ground descended to a hush.

Rock, sand and broken bones exploded beneath Chaelus. The ground fell away.  He flew weightless. Then the stench of spoiled musk, ash, sand and the broken ground, and the loss of all hope, returned to him like a hammer blow.

He trembled beneath the blood, pain and sand that veiled his vision. He trembled beneath the shadow that towered over him, swaying like a whore just unveiling herself, rising up from the vomitus chasm from which it came.

It was the Dragon unveiled.

The Dragon bore no head, had neither limb nor wing. It was blood red, glistening and wet, and ceaseless in its motion. It lashed against the sands, coiling about itself. The substance of its skin rippled across its length.

Chaelus listened for the call of the Giver’s voice. He listened for even its silence amidst the growing cacophony of madness. But the only silence he heard was the sound of its loss.

The Dragon slowed before him.

“You will not find this so easy,” it said. “The Giver has no hold over me here.”

Within the space of a heart’s beat the Dragon’s shadow poured over Chaelus like oil, covering him as it coiled around him, its flesh cutting deep wounds like unseen blades of frozen steel. It flung him down. The broken ground exploded against him once more, sending dust and sand and bone skyward.

Within the space of a heart’s beat, the entirety of the Pale trembled in the Dragon’s shadow. Chaelus felt it. He saw it through the veil of shadow that covered him. It hovered across the length and breadth of the Pale like a tapestry of a dark story that had already come to pass.

Blood and sand caught within Chaelus’ chest and mouth. Coughing and spitting, he expelled what he could. He pressed himself upright, but his shoulder collapsed under the pain. Its flesh had already gone cold, like Al-Aaron’s arm. He trembled within its frozen grip.

Chaelus collapsed onto the sands. There, within the hollow sound of his own heart’s beat, he watched the breadth of the Pale begin to fade.

***

Al-Mariam drew her legs up close. Her fingers clutched within her robes, her nails digging deep, the simple spun cloth protecting her from herself no less so than the chainmail coat she wore protected her from sword and spear.

Yet she feared neither sword nor spear.

The bare gray stones of the Abadain whispered like ghosts as the wind struck them from the brooding sky above the Karagas Mun.

The fires of the Khaalish burned around her in their shared encampment upon the ancient battlefield through which, it seemed, they had only just passed. The ruin of the Line stared back her, a ghostlike apparition waiting like the memory that it was, just beyond the fires’ light.

Their debate about staying so near had been short-lived. Al-Hoanar’s protestations had broken down quickly. They couldn’t hide from the storm they’d aroused. That and the simple fact that the souls they had saved would not survive without rest.

Still, the fires and their warmth gave her no comfort.

Their only remaining hope, Chaelus, had left them. Whether she believed in him or not, it was he and his faith alone that stood in the eye of that storm; a barbarian possessed by the spirit of the Giver.

Al-Mariam didn’t want to believe in him. She wanted to hate him. But she couldn’t anymore, because she did believe in him. She believed in him because her brother had been returned to her. She believed in him because she saw herself within Chaelus’ eyes.

The eyes of the young girl Chaelus had raised shifted restless behind their mantle. So young, she could have done nothing herself to have been brought to this. Yet she and the older man, like poor Al-Aaron beside them, still slept the sleep of the dying. Sounds not words drifted fitfully from the lips of each as they waited, each of them in their own way waiting for death.

It was the same for each of those laying beside the hundreds of campfires around them, at rest with the Khaalish warrior who raised them from the cenotaph; the same Khaalish warriors whom the Giver, whom Chaelus, had turned. It was at the urgent press of Michalas that they had done so. Willingly, even as the black stone of the tomb collapsed around them, the Khaalish had saved all of those whom the Dragon had taken there.

But then again, nothing had been what she’d expected.

Al-Hoanar leaned down to her. His armor creaked against the mournful whisper of the stones. He bowed his head before Michalas. His eyes burned red from care. “Sleep while you can,” he said. “This is a place we shouldn’t linger.”

Al-Mariam nodded. She smiled. She wiped at her eyes with her cloak. She could say nothing to him. Al-Hoanar had stood with her against the Dragon’s Hands. He had stood alone against the Fallen Ones, after she herself had fallen in her anguish.

Al-Hoanar knelt beside Al-Thinneas where he lay in death beside her. The murmuring of Al-Hoanar’s prayer drifted along with the mourning of the stones.

Even in death, Al-Thinneas’ dignity didn’t suffer. A veil of gossamer draped across his eyes. Beneath it, the Khaalish had painted their strange ghost face upon him. Red feathers lay scattered across the furs they had draped over him. His Gossamer Blade lay at rest upon his chest. Their guards stood in honor around him.

Al-Thinneas had been her guardian, even when she had let no other man near. He was, at least until now perhaps, the only man she had ever loved.

Michalas lay stretched out at her feet, clothed in Khaalish furs. He lifted his hands before the fire. He had still said very little to her, but at least he was with her. At least he was safe now. But then, she knew now, he had always been.

Still, she could not stop crying.

***

Michalas held his hands out to the warmth of the small fire. His fingers still tingled with the memory of the fire the Angels had lit upon him. Just like it, the glow from the camp fire consumed them, as well as the night around them, even as its embers slowly died.

One who was but could not be.

One who could not be but was.

Ras Dumas had taught him the words of prophecy. He had taught him what they meant. They were about him, and the one to come after him. At the time, Michalas had been unsure as to which one he actually was. Now he knew, and to those who still felt doubt, it would not be long before they would understand it too.

Ras Dumas had told him once that there was no quality that could be found in circumstance. A circumstance was neither good nor bad. It simply was. Its quality could only be found in the threads of the lives that bound them.

In this Michalas had never known struggle, only the constant trust in the Angels who guided him. His own struggle would come soon. He knew it. It would come for all of them, and had already begun. The threads of its tapestry had already been woven.

One to Teach and One to save

The Mark of the Dragon upon him.

He passed his hand over his brow to the scars which the Hands of the Dragon had given him, over the mark that the Angels had placed there. The mark they had already changed, just as they had changed him, just as it would still be changed on the brow of Chaelus, the one he shared it with.

A cold, wet kiss touched his cheek, and Michalas looked up into the storm-wrought sky. Beneath it, the mountains trumpeted out fire and smoke. The sky shifted upon itself until at last he could see scattered snowflakes floating down, glowing red by the light of the Dragon’s fire burning beyond the Karagas Mun.

Michalas turned towards his sister. She only half saw him, though a smile still turned at the corners of her mouth. She could not understand yet. But she would. A curl of her hair slipped across her face and she did not pull it aside. Her eyes, still wet from her tears, looked past it through an impassioned veil. Her mind and her heart looked at other things.

Born for us to die for us

Because only the fallen may rise.

Chaelus would fail. He would fail because he must. But even Chaelus didn’t know this yet. He couldn’t. Neither the Angels, nor the spirit of a lifetime past that possessed Chaelus could show him this. But the Dragon wouldn’t stop until Chaelus knew.

The Dragon must defeat him. Then, and only then, would Chaelus become the one he was meant to be.

Chapter Twenty Four

Loss

The Dragon’s eyeless face lowered towards Chaelus. The flesh at its end peeled away. Bestial jaws broke out like a jagged bone fist, opening and closing, hovering over him. Its breath reeked of jasmine and decay.

“Still you’re too foolish to understand,” the Dragon said. “I am Gorond. I am the Dragon. I am more like you than you know, and you are more like me than those you serve claim you should be. I am you, and you are me, and I suffer for my want of you. Just as you suffer for me.”

The Dragon’s coil tightened around Chaelus. It lifted him up to his knees. His breath burned within him. His fingers paused as they brushed against Sundengal’s hilt where it had dropped amidst the sands.

Pain slurred his speech as he whispered, “No.”

Chaelus cried out. He cried out at everything.

Seizing Sundengal, he brought its length down into the Dragon’s flesh. Darkness billowed from its skin, pouring across the captured light of the storm and seized Sundengal’s blade.

The Dragon’s coil tightened again. Its whisper filled him, just like it had always done, like it had done with his father, pulsing within him, a bitter whisper in the dark. The Dragon’s mouth lowered to him, its teeth extending forth, the skin above them curled back in a sneer. It wavered just above his heart.

“It’s a pity,” the Dragon said, “for you could have taken such pleasure in this.”

The Dragon entered him like a fist, slicing through his armor. Agony tore through his chest.

Chaelus’ consciousness wavered. The sweet smell of jasmine mingled with the memory of his lost life.

Sundengal grew heavy in his hand.

He could do nothing more against it. He was beaten. There was nothing left, no Giver, no fire, no hope, that would save him.

Only the fecal odor of jasmine remained.

***

Chaelus watched his blood pool across the flagstones. They felt cool against the fire upon his brow.

Yet the flagstones weren’t real, only another illusion of the Dragon that had already claimed him.

Chaelus felt the Dragon’s whisper around him and through him. It still whispered his name, from every shadow and crack where it lurked.

A man stood with his back towards him, facing Chaelus’ throne. It was the throne of Baelus now, but it was not Baelus who stood there. A silver mask rested on the small table beside him, flickering in the torchlight of his hall.

“You’ve failed, Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius,” the Dragon said, but it was Chaelus’ own voice that spoke.

Once more, if nothing other than to meet his own end, Chaelus pushed himself up to his knees.

The Dragon turned towards him. “Meet your prophecy fulfilled.”

Chaelus stared into his own face, but darker eyes stared back at him. It was the face of the man he had been when he was king. Sundengal hung from his waist. He, the man, the Dragon, smiled at him.

Chaelus staggered to his feet. He scarcely heard the whisper that escaped his own lips. “No.”

“I am you, and you are me,” the Dragon cooed. “And I love you more than vanity itself.”

The Dragon stepped down to him from the wide steps of the dais beneath his throne. “It’s an opportunity that most fail to seize. What would you say to me then? What would you say to yourself?”

Chaelus backed away. Revulsion filled his throat at the sight of the thing before him. “I’m not you, Dragon.”

“But you are,” the Dragon said. “It is the one thing you have always failed to see, even at the darkest heart of your suffering. Such is your vanity.”

“Then take my last breath and end this,” Chaelus said.

“No. You will not escape me as your father did. No, my love, I would not suffer such loss for you. If you will not serve me, then your suffering shall be my reward, and it shall be greater than anyone has ever known, greater than everything you have ever lost before.”

The Dragon drew Sundengal’s twin from its scabbard, walking in a tight circle around Chaelus, dragging the sword’s tip against the flagstones.

“No,” Chaelus said.  “I won’t fight you.”

“Then your failure is complete.”

“No,” Chaelus said. “I said I won’t fight you. I never said I wouldn’t release you.”

The scraping of Sundengal’s twin upon the flagstones stopped. Chaelus watched his own face turn askew towards him. He watched the dark soulless eyes of the Dragon behind his own widen.

“You can’t …” the Dragon began.

Some moments last longer than others.

In a single motion, Chaelus brought Sundengal to bear. Its edge hovered, or at least seemed to, waiting upon the Dragon’s neck, Chaelus’ own neck, before finally passing through. The sharp whisper of its steel resounded like a clarion call, of blood and prophecy, of lives lost and regained from the shadows around him. It ended beneath the clamor of Sundengal’s twin as it dropped upon the flagstones.

The Dragon fell to its knees. The steel and leather and flesh of its husk crumpled. Shadow poured from its neck like blood and fume. Its head rolled away, trailing oily shadow. Chaelus turned away from his own dead stare.

The whisper of the Dragon fell silent.

***

The shadows around Chaelus bled into light.

Michalas stood alone beyond the broad waters of the Shinnaras.

The morning sun etched its rays across the river. Thinning ribbons of ebon hue streaked amidst clear blue water.

Chaelus felt the presence of spirits beside him. They were the spirits of the fallen, now raised; their thankful sighs resting upon the air, not lingering but passing, no longer the remains of what the Dragon had made them.

Michalas smiled from beyond the mirrored water. His crown had changed. It showed black like Chaelus’ own, stark now against Michalas’ alabaster skin.

The Shinnaras brushed gentle against the polished stones of its bank and against Chaelus’ boots as he stood there. Amidst the thinning darkness of its waters, he looked to his own reflection and the alabaster crown that now adorned his brow. It had changed too - becoming what the child’s had been.

Chaelus looked back. Like the waters, the darkness of the Karagas Mun and the Valley of Magedos beneath it had thinned. Beyond them, where Chaelus had seen the Dragon’s minions turn in ire upon the horizon, darkness still remained. There, the storm clouds rose in a spiral high above, the Dragon’s fire still burning at their heart.

The Dragon, and its darkness, would return.

“It’s not over,” Talus said.

The glow of the Giver washed over Chaelus from where he stood beside him.

“But now your true task may begin.”

“Is that why you left me?” Chaelus asked. “So that your vessel would fail?”

“There are many different kinds of death,” Talus answered.

“I have had enough of them all.”

“Then you will have many more.”

Talus smiled as he stared across the Shinnaras. “But you’re not alone.” He stepped onto the water, his feet holding firm upon it. The new sun glittered upon his golden brow. Talus pointed towards where Michalas still waited for them both on the other side. He held out his other hand to Chaelus.

“Walk with me.”

Chapter Twenty Five

Needles and Stones

The three Tenders encouraged the dying embers and the fire returned in measure. Yet the certain chill of autumn’s ebb would not be kept away.

Michalas sat back on the root of the giant tree. He pulled back his hood. The cold felt good against his skin.

The Tenders withdrew. The small vigil fire they had started had been restored. It danced as the wind channeled between the trees. Deep shadows broke across the baskets of offerings and crimson feathers that had been left before the small door to where Chaelus, the Giver, still slept.

Al-Hoanar had been brief but truthful in his report to the Mother, neither omitting nor adding anything. And like the court of Ras Dumas, there were whispers even here. Already word had spread of Chaelus’ return and of what the Servian Knights had heard of what he had done.

Michalas turned to his sister who sat beside him, still in vigil.

“Has he awoken?”

Al-Mariam started at his voice. She had become quiet, saying little to him since their return. “No. He hasn’t stirred.”

“Do you grieve for him?”

Mariam’s eyes darted to him and then away. “I have no need. There is no need. He’s…you’re…the Giver, are you not?”

“I am not what you think I am. Don’t be afraid of me.”

Mariam turned to him. Like ice melting to a flame, her eyes and then at last her face succumbed beneath her doubt. “I don’t know who you are. But then again, I never really have.”

Michalas held her gaze. He knew her grief for him was real, but it was not the same as the grief she held for Chaelus. It was not even the same anymore as that which she held for herself.

After the storm clouds fell, after the Dragon had fallen, on the nearest bank of the Shinnaras with its waters made clear, the Khaalish had found Chaelus, collapsed.

They had watched him walk across its waters.

In the hours before this, while the others had waited in their camp, Michalas had watched Chaelus. He had watched him through Chaelus’ own eyes and through them he had seen everything, and he had suffered all of it with him.

Not until his loss of the Angel had Michalas ever suffered any loss of his own. He hadn’t suffered it because, until then, there had been nothing of his own for him to lose.

“To know yourself is to know him,” Michalas said to Mariam. “To know him is to know me.”

Mariam returned her stare to the door where Chaelus waited to awaken once more. Her breath was heavy. “What do you mean?”

“He is you, and you are me, and we, all of us are bound one to each other.”

“By prophecy?”

“No. By our suffering.” Michalas placed his hand into his sister’s. “It’s something I never knew. I need you. I need your help, Mariam.”

Mariam turned to him. Her tears had dried. She closed her hand tight around his. It was warm, like the glow of the Angels.

***

An eternity passed. The timeless darkness faded to the warmth of amber light, summoned to him by the voices of lost friends.

Chaelus watched their shadows pass over him, the sounds of their voices ebbing and flowing. Their words, though, remained indistinct.

One voice at last stood out among them, a child’s voice. It was Al-Aaron’s. “I’m with you.” Yet then his voice passed on. Darkness returned.

Another voice brought Chaelus back once more.

Walls of white stone surrounded him. Living shadows broke across the light from the open doorway. Heavy blankets pressed him down as he tried to rise.

The Mother placed her hands to his brow, easing his head back down. She smiled. “Don’t move. There’s no hurry now.”

Chaelus waited for his breath to return. He was in the Garden.  “Where’s Al-Aaron? Where’s my Teacher?”

“Al-Aaron is safe, as are you. He has been with you, more than he should have, and now he’s resting.”

Chaelus closed his eyes. Beyond the pain that coursed through every part of him, a chill and numbness ached in the place above his heart, the place where the Dragon had pierced him. He winced.

“There are many different kinds of death,” the Mother whispered as she wiped his brow.

The echo of Talus’ words followed hers.

“You knew I would fail,” Chaelus said.

“Did you fail?” the Mother answered.

“The Dragon defeated me.”

“They waited for you. Your friends, they waited for you until the Dragon’s sky at last fell still beyond the Karagas Mun. Then you came to them. Don’t you remember?”

“The Dragon that I killed was me.”

The Mother smiled. The words of prophecy drew soft upon her lips.

“Lament the ones who will forget.

The Dragon waits within.”

“Save for one,” Chaelus said. “Michalas, Al-Mariam’s brother. There’s no shadow within him.”

“I’ve already heard much about him,” the Mother said, her smile saying more than her words revealed. “He’s here as well, and he waits for you too. Al-Mariam waits outside with him. She hasn’t left his side, that is, when she hasn’t been watching over you.”

She pursed her lips in a faint smile.

“The shadow of the Dragon has passed but for a moment,” the Mother said. “It will regain itself where its shadow still stands. Your Kingdom and your brother are safe for now. Let them be, and don’t suffer twice the loss of what you sought to gain. The time of your gain passed with the life you lived before.”

She stood, her words final as only the truth can be.

He could not go back.

“Then what am I to do?” Chaelus asked.

“You will either go forward or you will fall. Your success or your failure is yours alone to choose. But your fate is tied to the Giver and cannot be changed. The threads of the tapestry have already been woven.”

The Mother paused before the open door. “On the morrow we will pay our respects to Al-Thinneas and the sacrifice he’s made. There are those among us who wonder if you would use such an occasion, as well as his sacrifice, as an opportunity to take up the mantle of our Order as your father did before.”

***

Al-Aaron squinted. He struggled to raise his head. His fever had broken, but weakness still consumed him. Yet the light that came through the open window fed him. Soft sounds drifted upon it, voices familiar but changed, including the voices of two he had only just met.

He lay in one of the upper rooms of the ruined tower, with such height as it held, the room’s window looking out across the forest to the east. The two whom Chaelus had raised had prepared the place for him. Their service in the face of their own suffering stirred him, yet he still could not remember their names. He leaned back into his pallet, pulling the thick furs tight around him.

The Mother entered. She winced as she eased herself upon the foot of the bed. The deep pleats of her black robe spread out beneath her. “How do you feel, child?”

“Did you know there would be two?” Al-Aaron asked.

“Did I know there would be two if two there never has been?” The Mother pursed her lips. Then she smiled. “No, my dear. Not then. Not when you left to save him. But I don’t think any words or wards of mine would have changed what was already made to pass.”

She held his hand open. “I brought something for you.” The tremor of her hands passed into his and she pressed the folded gossamer within them. “It’s somewhat loose and there’s a stitch that’s flawed. The needle was too big, and my eyes, they don’t see as they once did.”

Al-Aaron opened the gentle cloth. Soft thread shimmered in the light, a verdant field on one side of the open fold, a golden field on the other. Within each of them was a sea of blue that together were held up like open hands.

“It’s beautiful,” Al-Aaron said.

“It is not of me,” the Mother said, “It’s from Rua that all things are made, and it is from it alone that beauty comes. I’m only a vessel and, I’m afraid, a crude one at that. But when I finished it, it was then that I saw it. It was something I hadn’t seen before. It was then that I remembered. Tell me, what do you see?”

“There are two seas.”

“They are ancient and they lie at the very heart of the world. Chaelus could tell you about them. He would know them from his time in the libraries of Lossos. They are the Sea of Beladun and the Crystal Sea. Both are fed by great rivers.

“The first, the Sea of Beladun, overflows in its abundance. There, every kind of bird, fish and plant can be found. The city states which line its banks are burdened only by the wealth they draw from it.

“But the second, the Crystal Sea, is very different thing. It is a dead sea. There is no life to be found there, and only the desert sands find any rest along its banks. So tell me, child, why are they so different?”

“I don’t know.”

“The Sea of Beladun has an outlet that carries its water away. The Crystal Sea does not.”

The fragrance of cut timber struck Al-Aaron. He had never smelt it here. The wood for fires had always been gathered. It was for the funeral pyre that the Tenders would need more.

The Mother placed her hand over his, closing them over the small tapestry. Deep lines traced maps of their own upon them. “Chaelus has known many deaths to stand where he does. Yet still he has such little faith. The child, from what I have seen, knows little of either death or loss. He is like virgin cloth cut from the Rua’s own fold. Perhaps it is through the both of them that the Giver will return. Perhaps by their gift to each other, the water and the abundance of the sea may flow.”

***

Chaelus stared at the clear night sky, the warm train of his breath passing above him. The moon was full and the stars somehow brighter than he thought they could be.

Pale stones pressed out of the hillside beneath him. For passing moments, they still shimmered golden from the distant light of Al-Thinneas’ funeral pyre as its fire dimmed beyond the trees.

Born to us to die for us.

For only the Fallen may rise.

The words of prophecy tumbled from Chaelus’ lips. Yet the prophecy hadn’t been for Al-Thinneas. And it was a prophecy that Al-Thinneas himself had not even believed in. Yet he had sacrificed himself for it. Or rather, he had sacrificed himself for those he loved who did believe.

Many were the eyes of the Servian Knights that had stared at Chaelus through the pyre’s flames, particularly the narrow ones of Maedelous. Hoanar no longer stood with him. The warning of the Mother had proved right.

Above them all, here, the mount of Col Durath, the forgotten watchtower, remained silent. It was why he had come here, with the moon-cast shadow of the Gray Chair settled beside him, he sat upon the crumbling edge of its hall.

Chaelus placed his right hand through his blouse, above the black scar where the Dragon had entered him. He reached with his other for one of the small stones he had collected beside him. The pain no longer troubled him, aside from the fact that it remained. His other wounds from his battle had healed but not this one, not the one that would always be.

He winced as he cast the stone out into the night. Holding his breath, he waited.

It was only the briefest of moments, the moment in between, but he knew that an eternity could be found within its intimate grasp. He had come to look forward to its solace. It had become a reminder to him of the greatness, still, of small things.

A chime struck out into the crisp air as the pebble cascaded across the ruins beneath him; like a spell, or some secret unleashed from a prison from long ago. A trapdoor sprung, or a knot unloosed.

So much had happened. So much had changed.

He reached for another stone. Cullin drew up like a whisper beside him.

“So what does the Giver do now, now that the Dragon is dead?”

Chaelus withdrew his hand. “The Dragon isn’t dead.”

“And neither are you, though there are many who wished for it. And there are many who still do. So where will your path lay? Will you return from the dead to reclaim your throne?”

“I don’t think so. The Dragon will rise again in the east, now that its veil has been lifted. There it will feel safer, where its sleep has already spread throughout the Golden Halls of the Theocracy. I’ll follow it there. Baelus already sits upon the throne. It will be well tended by him, now that the Dragon’s whisper has passed from him.”

Cullin placed his hand upon Chaelus’ shoulder. “Then I will not speak of your return. But understand he will learn of it soon. Word of it will spread. I will watch over your House, and your brother, until you return. As I’ve said, many are the eyes that have already fallen upon it.”

Chaelus clasped his hand over Cullin’s but he could not look at him. Too much had happened. Too much had changed. “As you have done already, my friend.”

The pad of feet sounded behind them.

Beyond the silhouette of the Gray Chair, Al-Mariam stood with Michalas beside her. A wide cloak covered them both.

She pulled her hair away from her face as she stepped across the terrace, her eyes cast back towards her brother as she moved away from him, leaving the cloak to him. She wore a white gown that lit aglow in the moonlight. The soft scent of lavender flowed from her like the gentle promise of rain.

Michalas stared at Chaelus, his eyes, as always, more knowing than they should be.

Al-Mariam hesitated as she drew near. Her eyes shot to Cullin, and then back as she bowed her head. “Giver, may I speak with you?”

Chaelus stood, uncertain. “Don’t call me that.”

Cullin stared at him, and then back to Michalas. “I will leave you to your words.”

Al-Mariam waited, silent until Cullin’s footfalls echoed down the stairs.

She drew beside Chaelus and looked out into the night, just as he had. “There is great power in this place. Is that why you come here?”

“It’s a place that has always been,” Chaelus said. “This comforts me.”

Al-Mariam turned to him, her eyes unwavering. “I had taken Michalas for dead, but even before then, he was someone I never knew. He was someone I had chosen not to know.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew he was not my brother.”

For the first time since meeting her, Chaelus glimpsed the veil behind which she had hidden.

“My mother was a Servian Knight,” she said. “She’d returned with a baby after being sent on a task in the east by the Mother, somewhere near the lands of the Evarun. My mother spoke nothing of it. She raised the boy as her own. Then the Hunting came. That’s when Michalas was taken. Though I love him, I never really knew him. I don’t know how to say this, but he’s like you. He’s one of the Evarun.”

“I’m not like him,” Chaelus said. “Whatever power I hold, it isn’t mine. The power that your brother holds, it’s been his all along.”

“I was wrong about you. I dared not believe that the prophecies were true; I dared not believe who you were, or who you are to be. The Younger’s blind faith in you, it terrified me.”

“But he was wrong,” Chaelus said. “I’m not who he thought I was.”

“No,” Al-Mariam said. “You are more, because you know that you are less, and it is by your blood, and by the blood of my brother, that hope has now been returned to us all.”

Chaelus turned away. The memory of the Giver’s glow upon the clear waters of the Shinnaras burned against him. The words of prophecy the Giver had spoken in the solitude of their passage lingered impossibly upon the edge of his breath.

Born of cradle born of grave

Chosen from forgotten blood

Born for us to die for us

For only the fallen may rise.

Al-Mariam seized Chaelus’ hands.

Chaelus drew away, awkward as Al-Mariam folded her own around them.

“My brother speaks only of you,” she said. “Will you speak with him? Will you help him? Please?”

Chaelus pulled his hands away and stepped back. He looked down into the broken slope of ruined promises below. Only silence answered him. “I don’t know that I can.”

Mariam grasped his hand again. She placed his fingers into the soft open palm of her own. The gentle scars there, of her own making, were fading. She moved his hand to rest just above her breast. He felt the soft tremor of her heart beneath her skin.

Al-Mariam whispered. Her voice was choked. “Then at least know that though you may not want my heart, still it is yours.”

The veil behind Al-Mariam’s eyes drifted away.

Chaelus tried, but he could not turn away from their depths.

“I will do what I can,” he said, his own voice now thickened.

The thud of his feet sounded like the beating of an anvil, only matched by the pounding of his heart. Al-Mariam walked beside him but continued past, a gentle whisper in her step as she descended the stairs beyond.

Chaelus lowered himself to his knees before Michalas and looked up at him, the unbidden words of prophecy coming from his lips.

“One who was, but could not be.

One who could not be, but was.”

“Which one are you?” Chaelus asked.

“I don’t know what I am,” Michalas said, shaking his head. “I see Angels, but only now do I know their suffering.”

Chaelus withdrew before the child who would save him, the child through whom he was supposed to save others. The suffering Michalas spoke of stared back at him. It surprised him but it relieved him as well, for it was not so different from his own.

“I don’t know how to serve you,” he said. “Or anyone without you.”

Chaelus stared at the tumbled litter of stones beneath them, down to the trail leading amidst the tombs of the Forgotten, the tombs of the Evarun, to the tomb of his mother. And, if what Al-Mariam said was true, to whatever truth it would hold for them both.

He swallowed hard.

Then he held out his hand.

“Walk with me. I’ll tell you my Story.”

Epilogue

Solace

Olivia rested her head against the frame of the open doorway. The small prayer stone given to her by her sister Bakassas more than a lifetime ago, slid easily between her fingers.

The fall of the night had deepened but few had yet to return to their chambers. The long night of mourning for the passing of Al-Thinneas, and so many others and so much else, had only just begun.

Her old friend stood alone in his chamber, his back towards her, a leather satchel open on the pallet before him.

“What counsel decieved you, Maedelous?” she asked. “Where will you go now to find solace from the things you’ve done?”

Maedelous’ thin hands hovered just within the open satchel.

“Would you go to the Theocracy, where the Dragon still finds refuge?” she continued. “Or would you go further east, to find solace amongst the Caliphates of the Khaalish, with whom you’ve wed?”

“You would do well to watch the words you speak,” Maedelous answered.

“I speak only truth,” Olivia said. “Al-Hoanar has already confessed to me of your treatise with the Khaalish, and of the trap you set for Chaelus.”

“I think your truth has fallen short of wisdom.”

“But it doesn’t lie.”

“Nor does it shy away from disparity,” Maedelous muttered. “But choose whatever truth you will.”

“It’s a long path we’ve taken together, Maedelous. You and I alone remember what truths have come to pass.”

Maedelous drew his satchel tight. “The watchtowers of the Twelve have fallen.  Their passing hasn’t gone unnoticed. I travel south to seek what word there may be amongst the people there. I believe I will find the faith of the Goarnni to be far less fickle.”

Olivia absorbed the pain in her heart, staring away as Maedelous passed her in the doorway. She listened as his hurried footsteps faded.

She stepped into Maedelous’ chamber. His pallet was neatly made. The sparse utility of his chest marked the only other furniture on this side of the simple black curtain which had been drawn across the small room.

Olivia threw it aside.

Upon a stand in the corner, Maedelous had hung his lorica. Scarred and beaten from battles and age, it had still been cared for. For loyalty. For love. For faith. The thin candlelight flickered against its polished steel bands.

On the stand beneath it, Maedelous’ legion sword lay at rest. The same flicker of candlelight danced across it, the gossamer of its binding left folded beside it.

Glossary of the Pale

Bakassas

Marsh kindom of the Witch Queen.

Cenotaph

Tombs of black stone left empty since the time of by Gorondian Empire, they’re used now by the living to house the newly dead.

Col Durath

The watchtower of old at the center of the Garden of Rua.

The Dragon’s Sleep

A plague that consumes both the spirit and the flesh.

Evarun

The Forgotten Ones. Once holiest of the peoples of the Pale, they fled to their own exile in the lands of the east centuries ago with the rise of the Gorondian Empire. Some consider them to be Angels.

Expulsion

The defeat of the Dragon of legend and exile of it beyond the Line.

Fallen Ones

The Servian Lords after their fall from Grace.

Ghaardi

Savior

Giver

Chosen prophet of the Evarun.

Gorond

The evil dragon of prophecy and legend.

Gorondian empire

An empire of wizards that ruled the Pale a century ago.

Gossamer Blade

Sword and symbol of the Servian Knights, its edge bound by Gossamer to mark their oath never to shed the blood of man.

Hallas Barren

Southern Gateway to the Garden of Rua.

Hallas Farren

Northern Gateway to the Garden of Rua.

Happas

Ancient highways built by the Evarun.

House

The designation of property and relations of the Roan Kingdoms.

Line

Fortified wall built by the Servian Lords to watch for the Dragon’s return.

Lossos

Sanctuary of knowledge.

Madea

Ritual bath and gateway.

Magedos

Where the Dragon of legend was defeated.

Measure

The rule of honor, law and war of the Roan Kingdoms.

Nephelium

The three Angelic Messengers of Rua.

Northern March

Northern Roan kingdoms.

Pale

The known world.

Remnants

The Dragon’s minions.

Roan Kingdoms

Independent kingdoms of the west governed by the rule of the Measure.

Rua

The Creator. God of the Evarun and Sacred Sovereign of the Pale.

Sanseveria

Land of exile of the Servian Knights. Its center and heart is the Garden of Rua.

Schism

The splintering of the Servian Order from the Servian Lords who once ruled it.

Servian Knights

Order of Knights forbidden to shed the blood of man. Raised by the Servian Lords to defend the Line against the return of the Dragon.

Servian Lords

The first twelve raised by the Giver of old. They raised the pale from the Dragon’s Sleep, but in the end, fell themselves.

Shoa

Rua.

Spigot

Cruel double ended weapon of the gladiatorial pits of Goarnn.

Theocratic Council

Secular Lords of the city states of the Pale.

Theocratic states

Also called the Theocracy, the united city states of the Pale, goverened by the Theocratic Council and the Taurate.

Tulon

City state with ties and treaties to the Roan Kingdoms.

Taurate

Priests who preside over the Theocratic Council

Void

Death.

White Towers

Twelve stone towers built by the Evarun to watch over the hearts of men.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

My background is an Artist, turned Architect, turned Author, who’s finally getting around to writing those stories I started on my front porch as a kid.

It’s a story I’ve been trying to tell all along, in my paintings, with my poetry, and even before that, just sitting around the table with my friends, slaying dragons.