Veil of the Dragon (Prophecy of the Evarun) (17 page)

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.