Veil of the Dragon (Prophecy of the Evarun) (19 page)

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.