Veil of the Dragon (Prophecy of the Evarun) (16 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Trespasses

The forest thinned into the bare and broken black rocks of the Abadain. The few trees that remained grew stu
nted
, in suffrage
amidst
the bleak and brackish stones. A ceaseless cold wind blew from the north, from the slopes of the Karagas Mun towering before them. 

The happas wound deep within the depths of the jagged hills, and within the illusion of their cloister the biting winds sought the company out, boring into them even more than they had above. Though still the passage boded better than the broken boulder-strewn fields, whose chasms had attempted to claim them more than once as they sought to pass through.

Ahead of Chaelus, Al-Aaron’s head bobbed
with
the weariness of his march and of his suffering.
He
had slept fitfully until just before dawn. His words had been few even when he had tried
–
and failed
–
to surrender his sword to Al-Thinneas. Al-Thinneas had closed his hands across the child’s and passed the blade back to him. A clean tunic and cloak covered Al-Aaron now. The blood upon his skin had been washed away. Virgin gossamer had been stretched across his blade.
Ye
t none of it
w
ould relieve him of the fire from which he suffered.

Chaelus drew
along
side him. “It seems I
’m
becoming everything you
’d
foreseen.”

Al-Aaron shook his head. “It’s not by me, but by the lips of prophecy alone.”

“Yet you have no peace because of what you’ve done.”

Al-Aaron turned around, his weak and swollen eyes narrowed, his ashen face tight despite its pain. Beneath the ebbing glow of his spirit, the Dragon’s shadow swallowed him, its smoky tendrils racing through his very breath. 

“Don’t pity me,” he choked. “I did what I had to in order to save you. I would do so again.”

“So that the breath of the prophecy could be uttered?” Chaelus asked, pleading for an answer.

Al-Aaron turned away. “Perhaps that is something only you would understand now.”

“There are many things the colors of which I wouldn’t, and should not see. Yet I do. I see their shadow and their light. But they’re strangers to me. Just as you are, their purpose is veiled from me.”

“I can’t help you.”

“Then at least let me, let whatever possesses me, help you.”

Al-Aaron flinched away from him. “No!”

Chaelus withdrew. His own fear flooded through him. It was bleak with ire and like the Dragon’s spirit growing in Al-Aaron, it was absolute. 

“I need you,” Chaelus whispered. “I need you in this, now more than ever. I need your guidance. I don’t know how to face this. I don’t think I can face both the Giver and the Dragon alone.”

Al-Aaron withdrew into a deeper silence.

“Don’t abandon me,” Chaelus pleaded.

Al-Aaron crumpled over, stumbling. He clutched himself as a spasm seized him.  The glow that Chaelus had once glimpsed within him, the same glow that had once led Chaelus from the dark maw of his own death, dimmed to almost nothing beneath the dark spirit of the Dragon that consumed him.

Al-Aaron waved him away. 

The notes of Al-Hoanar’s voice drifted somber behind them. He sang in his own Goarnni tongue, the sound of its muted words rich in flavor and sadness. Soon Al-Mariam’s voice lilted softly with him, the breath and breadth of her own shadow and sadness woven beneath it.

“You must find a way,” Al-Aaron said. He passed his forearm across his sweated brow. “You
’re
the Giver now. You
’re
our only hope.” 

Chaelus slowed, falling to the words of the song lamented by those behind him as he watched Al-Aaron draw ahead. 

A hundred years have passed

since they were awoken.

A hundred years have passed

since the Wyrm was driven away.

A hundred years have passed

since they remembered why they were saved.

So close your eyes behind the Veil

It is a truth you cannot tell

Go to sleep, go to sleep

In the warmth of Dragon’s fire.

Al-Thinneas came beside him, his cowl drawn over his head. His eyes showed bright as steel beneath. The strike of his staff upon the rocks broke in steady measure with his stride. “And what path will you choose to take, Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius?”

Chaelus chastened himself. Irritation and impatience flooded through him. If there were no answers for himself, he could have no answers for them. “I will be whatever I must.” 

“You of all must know its a rare thing for a Khaalish archer to miss his mark,” Al-Thinneas said.

Chaelus recalled the dying breath and scent of his mother; the depth of Al-Hoanar’s and Al-Mariam’s lament drawing heavy upon him. His frustration deepened. “Don’t pretend to know me.”

“Your Story’s no secret. Not to us. Not to those who knew your father well.”

“I’m not him.”

“No,” Al-Thinneas said. “But neither can you escape him.”

Al-Aaron had stopped ahead of them, a dim shadow wavering upon the horizon.

“Al-Aaron won’t speak of what he suffers,” Chaelus said.

“That is because he can’t. Not yet. For now at least, his suffering must remain his own.” Al-Thinneas withdrew his cowl. His brow furrowed with care. “Just know that in your love of him, you’re not alone.”

Ahead of them, Al-Aaron stood where cliff and wash descended to tall grass plain. Familiar white stones traced circles across the landscape, and three men with spears walked towards them across the open plain.

“Al-Aaron!” Chaelus said.

He and Al-Thinneas ran to the boy, pulling him down beneath the crest of the ridge. Al-Aaron struggled against them. Then he stopped. A wary look held his face, his eyes clenched shut as he listened. 

Al-Hoanar’s face contorted as he dropped beside them. 

“Hunters,” he growled.

Chaelus watched the shadow gather within Al-Hoanar, strange as its tentacles laced through him, strange that it even was, strange that he could see it. Stranger still that against it, the blue aura of Al-Hoanar’s spirit remained steady and unyielding.  

In the valley below, Chaelus could see through the Giver’s sense that the men carried more than just spears. Armored in steel-studded leather jerkins beneath their furs, each of them bristled with sword, throwing ax and bow. Hanging beneath the prostrate cross suspended from their necks was a tin stamp bearing the seal of Tulon, an image of three ships with unfurled sails.

Though the Dragon’s shadow threatened to devour the men, they had not been completely consumed. They were not like the Remnants he and Al-Aaron had faced before. They were just men, not demons. Their shadows were the sort of most men. They were no different to Chaelus or the Servian Knights who accompanied him, living as each of them did in their own embrace of prophecy.

“They’re only mercenaries,” Chaelus said. “They carry with them the writ of Tulon. They’re scouts, and your Garden is no secret from them. Only their fear keeps them away from you now.”

“Little do they know that the three of them alone could claim it, as long as our vows stay unbroken,” Al-Hoanar bristled.

“If Tulon has fallen, then the shadow of the Dragon has already passed beyond us,” Al-Thinneas said.

Chaelus watched while quickened fingers of shadow reached down the length Al-Hoanar’s arm as he reached for the hilt of his sword. The Goarnni loosened the strands of its tether. “It will matter little if they come up the rise towards us.”

A grief as quick as shadow colored Al-Thinneas’ face. He looked down to Al-Aaron and back. “Have you learned nothing?”

Al-Mariam, cloaked in hesitation and fear, nestled into the ground behind them.

Al-Hoanar looked to Al-Aaron. His brow furrowed. “I have learned enough to know that a prophecy unfulfilled will never save us, and that the oaths of dead men mean nothing. I do not desire this, but neither will I deny what warnings truth may bring.”

The three mercenaries stopped, a stone’s throw from the base of the rise, beside a small cairn of stones standing out amidst the grasses. The men circled it. One crouched before it. Crimson motes danced in the wind upon it.

“Wait,” Chaelus whispered.

The crouching man shouted something to the others, and then stood, backing away. In his head, Chaelus listened to both their spoken and unspoken voices. The man’s name was Fallon, he was their leader. Beneath the veil of his flesh, his shadow grew deeper. Without further words the other two, Oleth and Shammus, desperately searched the heights around them. 

Chaelus lowered his head before the mercenaries’ sight passed over him. What they had seen had scared them, and it was greater even than the fear which led them. 

Beside Chaelus, Al-Hoanar stared back at him, the fear in his eyes as dark now as the shadow which filled him. Like the men below, it would be fear that would be their greatest loss.

Chaelus looked to Al-Mariam, who returned his stare, but only for a moment.

“They’ve passed,” Al-Thinneas said, staring into the valley below.

“Something’s scared them away,” Al-Mariam uttered.

Al-Thinneas led them with caution down the loosened slope of the wash, where the happas had long since collapsed.