Veil of the Dragon (Prophecy of the Evarun) (10 page)

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
.
A
n 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
.
N
ot 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.”