Angelslayer: The Winnowing War (70 page)

“Would there be any harm in riding along the edge of these cool waters?” she asked. “Where I come from, these sounds—waters running free over their rocks as they fall for the Western Sea—there is no such sound. Or smell—the clean, clear smell of this crisp air, it stirs me.”

“Of course we can ride its edge.”

A second horse was brought for Eryian and both of them mounted. He felt the muscles of the horse's shoulders and sides, uncommon indeed. Such horses as these could fly as the wind itself. All their equipment, their shields and armor, certainly their ships, had no earthly comparison. When first he rode for them, near Ishmia, he thought they were from Etlantis. The thought now seemed foolish.

“Would you lead?” she asked.

“Certainly.”

They rode slowly. Night had fallen, the stars spilled about them. Other than the dark and ugly swirls snagging Hericlon's peak this night, the rest of the sky was full and rich. It was the sky of harvest, not far from the equinox. For a long while, they said nothing, Cassium content to take long, deep breaths, smelling the richness of the air and the coolness of the night. Above them, what men called the star stream of the sky, a virtual river of stars that flowed each night overhead, was brilliant, and reflected itself against the wavering ripples of the river.

“It came into being with a Word,” she said, marveling, “all of it, no time passing. I know that in Enoch's writings he speaks of seven days, but that is just his penchant for counting. If you knew him, if you ever read his writing, they are endlessly filled with counting. Each movement of the heaven, the length and carefully measured time of each season, of each day, of an hour, of a minute—the numbers of bodies that circle the heavens. He must spend all his time counting endlessly. If you were to journey up the streams of the Western Sea and find his city, no doubt you would eventually discover him barricaded in some room counting and counting and counting again.” “You speak as if you know him.”

“I follow the legends and the tales of this small blue planet. It hangs here in these dark skies alone, you know. In times beyond your own, should this Earth survive the shadow of Aeon's End that now closes over its horizons—for that matter, if you have taught well your Angelslayers and there is a future—mankind will acquire the means to search for life out there. They will build endless machines, even primitive flying machines to aid their search. They will profess no greater goal that finding the others—certainly they are not alone. Certainly there are others? If they reach that future, they will endlessly search, but all in vain, never knowing that their world, their Earth, was built on the very precipice of all creation. Beyond them lies the utter dark, nothingness, an endless nothingness. On the other side, never in Elyon's breath has there been life placed so far from heaven's light. It was almost, in your language, something of an experiment, to see if it was possible to survive this far from the source. We all live on an outpost, the very edge of the end of all things known. It is partly why the angels came in the first place, arguing that if the Earth was to be so far from the source of its light, with no life about it, alone in its shining black void—then surely they needed to step down from heaven and ensure its survival. And now you are gripped in a war that may threaten even that. When finally your Earth passes through the shadow of Daath, it will be the virtue of the hearts upon it that will weigh its futures, all of them, though they are unnumbered.”

“You talk as if you are not a part of us.”

“I suppose it is because of where you left me, Eryian.”

“Where I left you? What do you mean?”

“I have spent almost seven centuries—do you know how long that is?—seven centuries on a small ice moon. It was beautiful. We were left everything we could possibly want or need—but there we waited. And waited. And waited.”

“I am sorry. It sounds almost cruel.”

Her eyes took a moment to testify it was no paradise. She paused and inhaled deeply of the crisp mountain air.

He paused abruptly. “Cassium, we are growing perhaps too far from your sons. Three are assassins in these trees. The past months along these ridges, there has been much terror, much bloodshed. We should be careful not to come too far.”

“I have blessed our ride,” she said with absolute firmness, leaving no doubt of her intent. “You need have no fear of assassins.”

He nodded, understanding. For a moment as they rode, she studied him carefully, almost leaving him uncomfortable.

“When first I saw your talisman,” she said, “my heart leapt and tears spilled so quickly and freely. I just let them fall, blurring my vision. You had remembered after all. You cloak your world in the veil, as well you must, as I no longer question, but to see your signet across the sky on such a far place as the ice moon near the seventh star of the Pleiades—it left me weeping. We may die tomorrow; you know that, of course. I need not explain. But dying is meaningless. It is but a crossing, and the planes and futures on its far side are as endless as these stars you see overhead.”

She pulled her horse up and glanced back. “We have come far enough,” she said. They were standing almost midstream. The waters were cool, but not so cold to cause the horses discomfort, for they were ankle-deep in the crystal dark waters.

Slowly, carefully, with her eyes trained on his, she lifted her hand and spread her fingers in what he now realized to be the universal sign of the word. It was more than a gesture of greeting; he had learned in this short time with her that it represented the very utterance that had brought all creation into existence. He did not hesitate to lift his own hand in response, to meet her palm, to spread out his fingers, touching hers one at a time. Something passed between them unspoken, without sound or sight. It was love. She spilled it like pouring an urn over his head; she held nothing back. There was a filter, memories were blocked as he would have asked, scenes and passages of time were strained as if through a fine meshed net, but the love she held for him, and in reflection the love he held for her, was unrestricted.

“It is important to protect yourself,” she said firmly, “but I have crossed futures and stars for you, Righel of the Seraphim, and though we share but a sliver of time, as it closes on us, whispering away into the night so quickly—I touch my hand to yours and I return to you my love. Flesh is weak, I know. I am flesh, Righel. I am the daughter of a mason, a man. I see what comes with tomorrow's dawn and I give you your veil, but
not this.
Not our love! That part I let spill through my fingers like rain through a darkened night. Keep of your veil what you must, but I will not deny our love any longer, Righel. I have come too far.”

The bright ice of her eyes bore into his now like no other he had known and for perhaps the first time in all his carefully hidden memories, in this life he held of Earth, Eryian suddenly wept. He had left her for seven centuries alone on an ice moon. How hard, how terrible must have been those years.

“I am so sorry,” he whispered.

She continued to let the stream fall. He remembered her laughter, her running through fields of grass kicking up bare feet, her ponderings over the depths of the stars above them, her sorrow over the death of her father, her tears, her touch, her smell. He had loved her so. If only life were simple that it could be lived that way, for in all of its complexities, in its politics, in its wars of life and death, its forgiveness and revenge, its pleasure and its rage—this one thing alone among them made sense; all else was madness, there was only one perfection: love. He leaned forward, embracing her, and they both slipped from the saddle, dropping to standing in the river, wading to its edge where they fell to their knees, stripping each other of clothes as if there were only seconds to spare. With their flesh bared to the chill of the night, he ran his fingers through her hair, then the length of her temple to her hip, watching her carefully. He curled his hand over a tender soft breast. But in a second he remembered Krysis, but that was unfair; that was another world, another time, and Cassium deserved this. She had waited for him seven centuries alone. They fell back onto the sand and made love as love was ever meant to be.

T
hat night in a dream, with her body tight against him, both of them buried in woolen coverlets, the person who was Eryian finally revealed itself, using a dream to speak through the veil, to reveal who he was. The veil was left intact, the memories now all hidden in a dream—but the dream could be remembered, as much as he wanted, as much as he wished.

It was a dream that might easily have been complex and tangled, and perhaps in the end it was, but at first it seemed only a simple dream, its images perhaps jumbled, and sometimes making little sense. Only when it was ended would he know all the meanings of what he had witnessed.

He was not a Daath, nor had he ever been one. That came as a surprise to him, but he saw it written out in the air by a swift finger:
“As them, you are not.”

There were stories of this first king of the Daath who was named Righel, and Cassium had referred to him using just that name. Indeed, it once was his. Eryian was one of the few alive that knew the tomb in the catacomb beneath Terith-Aire lay empty. Some came to worship it, to leave offerings, but it was as empty as the nameless many altars to gods and goddesses that existed up and down the coast, in the villages of the Pelegasians and the trading posts of the Weire. He had always known that, but in the simple words quickly sketched by an unseen finger, he understood without any further question that there was no more to worship in the tomb of Righel than the limestone shrine in Lucania dedicated to a god named Baal.

Unlike Baal, Righel, however, had been very real. Eryian saw him, a vague image of a man watching from the shadows and at his shoulders arched the splendid wings of an angel, feathered in a silvery gold, such beautiful feathers he found himself reaching for them, to touch them, almost envious. But the image was mist and as his fingers drew near, it folded in on itself.

The angel Righel, the dream told him, was no more—he no longer existed. At the same time, a voice whispered; once this angel had knelt each morning and each night before his creator, Elyon, vowing His grace, dedicating His cause, and renewing His covenants.

Righel was known. He was named among Elyon's children, and he was numbered among the host of the Elohim. His brother, his closest kindred and, oddly enough, his true friend, was none other than the mighty archangel Uriel. It was the reason Eryian looked so much like a Daath, the same pale skin, the same bluish tint, but he did not, as the others, come in the days of Yered with the ships that bore the Arsayalalyur and his kindred. He was singular; he was a lone traveler if ever there was one.

In his dream for a brief moment, he then saw the mighty archangel, standing at the fore of the eastern gate that watched over the garden of mankind's beginning. There was his sword, the fiery sword of Uriel. It was only an image of a brother who had once been his closest friend. How odd that seemed at first, but when the dream came to an end, he would understand why this bond existed. He had never even read the scriptures of the East of the Land or the blade that turned in all direction, guarding it.

“Warriors,” he heard his own voice, Eryian's voice, echo, “after the blood slips from their blade from the first kill, stop bothering with scripture. The kill becomes their edge.”

And then he saw the world of the Earth pale and become a gray fog. He realized this was because there were countless worlds, endless and beyond human imagining. And it was clear he would never know or comprehend in the course of a dream the world of an angel, its twists and turns. There were those who sang that angels were ever following their Creator, singing His phrases, and the gray before Him scattered in the wind as if angry any fool would even believe such to be the calling of angels.

Then he saw, as though swept past by the wind, a sun clock that bore no shadow, and he realized this represented the palaces of Elyon. The pillars and fountains and hills that were the realms of angels described of Enoch were places where there was no time. Time did not exist; it was neither a concept, nor an entity, nor even a feeling or passion. It simply was not.

Then he witnessed the burning fires that streaked across the sky. These symbols were even this day left etched in rock and carved in caves and painted upon the lintels of temples to represent the angels that had stepped from the heavens and had fallen to Earth. These, as well, were merely symbols that the human mind could conceive and understand, but in truth, the falling of an angel was not something a human could ever know or comprehend.

Then his dream became a day when Eryian was sitting beside his young scion, Lochlain, who at that time was only ten and one year old. They sat on the dock works of Terith-Aire, though in the dream they were hanging in space. It was a real moment, one from his memory. The boy's young face was drenched in sweat. Eryian, as always, had been working him harder than he should have. Why did he push the boy so hard? Why had he driven him so hard when Lochlain was only a child?

No answer came.

“Eryian,” Loch said in his small, young voice. “I try not to anymore, but still at times I grieve for her.” “Your mother?”

“Aye. Sadness in me that she must wait.” “That she waits? How do you mean this, Loch?”

“Her fingers and mine were touching when her spirit left. I remember the very moment her soul slipped out of her, how her fingers fell limp. And I think I am haunted by how hard it must be that she waits there—wherever her soul is—to see me again.”

He was so young, and yet his mind was far beyond his years. And what he had spoken was not from his ego—he understood she had loved him with all her heart, and she had, and his grieving was real, for she would be somewhere weeping, waiting to see him again.