Veil of the Dragon (Prophecy of the Evarun) (18 page)

A crumbled gatehouse waited before them, like a ghost of the one at Roanwaith. In darkness and silence it guarded the happas where it passed beneath the palisade that had warded the eastern approach to the city. Its making was a blasphemy to the purity of the Line in whose shadow it leaned. The wattle and plaster that remained upon its higher reaches hung from it like scabs. Its wood rotted around its murder holes and machinations above.

As Chaelus passed beneath them, he let go of the thoughts and the voices to which he held. He watched them fall in his mind’s eye like motes amidst the thousands of others that now clamored against each other, each vying for his attention, to catch a glimpse of the eternal breadth of the Giver’s voice. He watched them pass until only one voice remained, the only voice that feared him. 

The familiar eyes of Ras Dumas’ ivory spire stared back at Chaelus, but not in silence. The tower was a mirror of his own, of his father’s, and the whisper of the Dragon, and his past, echoed through its stones.

Chaelus passed his hand across his brow as the burning of the Dragon’s Crown quickened against him.

***

The ghost of Figus cooed at him, his thin eyes twinkling. The stare of the dead Khaalish warrior crawled beneath them. 

“Do you see?” Figus said. “Do you see what I mean?”

Al-Aaron pressed his face against the cool stone of the gatehouse. Its chill crept like a salve through his bones and drew against his skin until the fire within him fell away. His shattered arm hung from him like a stone.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” Figus said. “You can feel their disbelief like a boil upon your tongue.”

Ahead of him, Chaelus led the other knights across the desolate court, past the putrid and rotting stables and towards the rising gray stones of the dead city. The clamor of the dead had succumbed to the murmuring babble of the Khaalish host beyond the wall, but the eyes of the dead Khaalish warrior burned beneath those of Figus before him. 

“You’re alone with this.” 

Al-Aaron drew himself upright, his legs trembling. The dim shadows of the black sores whispered beneath the skin around his bandaged wound. Dark tendrils laced already between his fingers and, he was sure, up the length of his arm towards his heart. The burning of his fever washed over him.

The ghost of Malius stepped out from behind the gatehouse. His expression was dour but the gentle bearing of his eyes remained. “Time is running short, my love. You mustn’t fail me. He’s right that you are very much alone with this.”

The ghost of Malius thinned into shadow.

Where Malius had been, Al-Thinneas stood. He knelt before Al-Aaron and took his arm within his hands, pressing it gently along its length. Al-Thinneas looked up at him. His eyes were grave, but a smile broke across his lips. 

“Let me walk beside you,” he said.

Chapter Seventeen

Ghosts

“Mother?”

Michalas winced as his small whisper scraped against the listening night. 

His memory of her looked as it always did. Nearly. She stood looking out from the court below, the flowering gardens of Tulon that she loved surrounding her, the colors of the blossoms matching the warm blush of her skin. Her face resembled the Angel’s face. Tonight, her armor and gossamer blade glowed like a halo with the light captured from the distant campfires, just as it had on the night Ras Dumas had come, and she’d been taken from them. 

This time, her hair was as black as a raven’s quill, just like his sister’s.

“Mariam?”

This whisper drew louder than the last, sounding out amongst the ruins like a smithy’s knell. Michalas flinched again.

Her eyes opened and a drifting pale washed over her. The flowering gardens withdrew. The chill of broken stones returned. Yet she remained. The ghost of his sister turned to him. 

Michalas turned and ran.

The singular roar of the carrion birds and the clamoring eyes of decay erupted around him. The broken leaves and spent husks of insect and vermin swirled about him in a breathless vapor, scraping and clawing against his skin like the sack cloth he had hidden in. The numbing cold made the chill of the stones seem warm.

Yet all of it – the Dragon or its minions – boded better than the ghost he’d seen. They’d made her just as he remembered, just as he’d chosen to forget. 

His sister’s scream carried across the night and echoed through the ruins. With it came the jeering cries of the men who’d taken her.

The empty eyes of the broken ruins stared over the shattered maze of stones. The paths twisted through and between alley and close and empty hall. 

Beyond their jagged mouths and against the pitch of night which surrounded them, the great white wall that cut across the city watched him in glimpses amidst the ruins. It followed him, glowing just like the Angels, just like the memory of his mother, and the ghost of his sister from which he fled. 

The tremor of his sister’s footsteps echoed behind him. 

The narrow walls of close and cloister yielded to an open court. The glowing chastity of the wall stood unveiled before him. A captured sliver of moonlight from above broke free.

The harsh light of the Khaalish camp fires burned beyond the open sally door at the base of the wall. Their babbling voices waged war with the rising cackle of descending crows swirling to rest on the parapets and sills above. 

The beat of Michalas’ heart held its own against the sound of the closing footsteps.

The billowing cloud of decay loosened and then divided, each of its twin parts coming to rest within the shelter of the two paths leading back into the ruins. 

The Hands of the Dragon gathered themselves from their miasmas. 

The Left Hand was veiled, the filth of its ragged cloak swirling about it. The ivory and silver raiment of the Right Hand hung unfettered and untouched by its gale.

Beneath their cloaks, both wore scaled armor like the flesh of their master. The bile of their twin faces glistened beneath the wrapping of their veils from the light of the Khaalish fires. Upon their brows, the steel-shod bits of their crowns stayed dull and hollow like the empty holes of their eyes.

Michalas wavered where he stood.

The tremor of footsteps surged behind him. Even their sound was just as he remembered. He could still feel the heart that drove them, chasing him through their mother’s garden long ago. But he heard – no, felt – another with her as well, like a blue light in the darkness.

The Hands of the Dragon stepped towards him, their festering storms still swirling around them, the spiked iron heads of their maces dragging, grating on the ground.  

Beyond the open sally port one of the barbarians stared at him, a stark shadow against the glow of the camp fires. The spear he carried dropped silently to the ground. The barbarian’s outcry carried out amongst the ruins, just as Michalas’ cry had.

“Ghaardi! Ghaardi!”

***

Al-Mariam looked in wonder as silver moon light tinged with blue rained down over her brother. An omen in the storm-wrought night. His gaunt ghost stood shaking and naked, a bleached crown inscribed upon his barren head, the crown of the Dragon, a ghost-like mirror of the one that Chaelus bore.

Beyond Michalas, beyond the open portal that broke across the albescent face of the Line, the gathered horde of the Khaalishite encampment surged. Around him, a swirling cloud of crows and debris converged.

Silence fell over Al-Mariam like a blessing. The screams of the horde and the sharp whistle of spear and arrow faded. Sound, thought, fear, the entire breadth and width of the Pale, all fell away from her, leaving only the rush and beat of her heart between her ears. It drove through her like a song, propelling her towards her brother. 

Michalas succumbed beneath her like chaff against the wind. She hurt him; she knew it. Yet she couldn’t let go of him and didn’t want to, as the stones slammed against them where they fell.

Al-Mariam pressed her face against his head, kissing the bare skin of her brother’s pale scalp. The white marks upon his skin crawled over swollen scars at the edge of her vision. She looked past them into his eyes. They were the eyes of a stranger but their depths still swallowed her, just like the eyes of Chaelus had. She’d found him. Even in all of this. Her tears washed over him. She had found her brother. 

Screaming arrows passed over her. Sharp tangs in rapid succession announced two more as they struck against the rubble beside her. The weight of the entire breadth and width of the Pale returned.

Al-Mariam pressed herself over Michalas. Fear surged its way through her. Her brother’s life would not be returned to her only to be lost again. 

She knew she could do nothing to stop it, to stop the wave of death flooding towards them. It would come to them and not even the breaking of her oath would lay it to rest. 

Michalas looked up at her, his mouth moving, but she could hear nothing from it, his words muted by the rhythmic pulse still pounding within her. Yet at least one thing had been gained. At least they would be together.

Michalas struggled to pull his thin arms away from her. His small hands cradled her face.  Their gentle touch upon her cheeks felt warm against her skin. 

Michalas closed his eyes. His voice resonated inside her although his lips had ceased parting. “Wait.”

Lightning flashed around them. 

Michalas seemed to smile in its glow. He pointed beside them. 

Al-Mariam would not tear her gaze from him. Tears still flowed from her like rain. She did not need to watch their death befall them. 

Michalas pressed her face away until her eyes beheld a dark figure bathed in pure white flame, burning beside them. 

“He’s here,” Michalas said. “The Angels have brought you both.”

***

A Khaalish archer never misses. Chaelus knew this to be true. Unless, of course, they were looking upon the face of their god.

Chaelus felt a soft tingle from the Giver’s holy fire billowing around him. It pulsed through his body, swelling within him as it echoed through his open hands. Like the tiny river that was the Giver’s voice, it grew and poured through him. Any defense he held against it would was lost beneath the surge of its unyielding power. Yet he had put up no defense against it. This time, it was he who had opened the floodgate, summoning it by his will alone. He opened his eyes to its grace.

Al-Mariam cradled her brother within the frail shelter of fallen stones. The Line, like himself, was a floodgate but through which the Dragon’s new minions would soon pour. Al-Mariam had found her brother and the Khaalish had found them both.

The Khaalish archers fired arrows at them amidst their own violent and fear-filled cries. Chaelus understood them all. The ghost of their dragon had found them.

The lone Khaalish sentry stood motionless in the gap of the wall as the horde closed the distance behind him, his mouth still hanging open, his useless spear still left where he had dropped it. 

The man would soon know that prophecy did not lie. Chaelus closed the short distance between them. Then he touched him.  

The chaos and violence of the Khaalish heart and mind, Chaelus had expected and known. He had known it as the Khaalish had come, with only the Line standing between them. He had known it before, from Obidae, the one he had touched before. Yet touching one of them felt nothing like this. The thoughts and feelings of a thousand souls unleashed upon Chaelus all at once, connected to the soul of the one he now held, limp within his grasp, a numbing blur he could scarcely bear. 

Chaelus struggled to hold his own mind clear. He struggled against their chaos and their ire until he found it, just where he had found it in the one the time before. It was there, safe within each of them, the Truth of each of them that waited for him. It was simple. There was darkness and there was light. 

So Chaelus showed them light.

The Khaalish sentry’s flesh yielded to the purity of his soul. The Dragon’s shadow which had struggled to fill him fled away from Chaelus’ touch. It had stood little chance, no more so than the legion which now came behind it, the floodwaters of the Giver’s light pouring over them. And, just as if their mouths had been let open in the sea, they drowned beneath its waves. 

The Khaalish horde fell in rank and in scores, weightless as the whisper of the Dragon in each of them succumbed beneath the Creator’s touch.

Chaelus smiled at the touch of joy that returned from them. He had done this. 

He watched them through the open gateway. Their war arrows now silent, they wavered on their knees throughout the encampment, waiting for his word as their tears washed away the paint of war that had adorned their faces like ghosts.

He had given this to them. 

No. Not him. He was a Roan Lord and King. It was only by sword and spear that he had ever counted the fallen as he pressed his will against them.

No, Chaelus reminded himself, though regretfully. He hadn't done this. 

The cries of “Ghaardi” transcended to the softer whispers of “Shoa Ti”. Their ghost had been vanquished, replaced instead by their god. Yet it was only for the moment. The shadow of the Dragon had been beaten here, but it would not stay away.

The night resumed as the holy fire of the Giver returned to its source.