Veil of the Dragon (Prophecy of the Evarun) (24 page)

Ye
t 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. T
heir 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
–
in
to
which the Giver
–
had fallen at the hand of his father, a black and bloodied
claw
emerged,
grasp
ing
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. 

T
he soul lights in the darkness beneath Ras Dumas’ tower. These were the
ir
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 t
hey 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 Remnan
t
s looked up into the flagrant sky as the Dragon
’
s voice trailed away. The empty hollows of their eyes narrowed. Their moaning erupted a
nd
they cried out as one in their pain. Rows of teeth extended out like ebony razors within their open maws.

The nearest struck
a
t 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
rous
ed 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 w
ill
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.”