Arc 8: Chapter 46: Doombearers |
In the end, I did go to my meeting with Death in armor.
Dusk settled over the Bannerlands as Tzanith led me out into the countryside. I took Morgause, and Tzanith rode side-saddle on some mount she’d summoned from the wilderness during our weeks acting the ambassadors, a pale deer-thing with eyes like dim stars that I strongly suspected was no chimera. At least, not one wrought by mortal alchemists. We’d spoken little after my confession, save for her occasional directions.
“I suppose it’s for the best,” Vicar said in a dry voice from my right shoulder. “I was not eager to be forced to watch the two of you rut.”
I’d believed the devil was asleep during my conversation with Tzanith back at the palace, lost in one of his torpors. While everything I’d said he had either known or guessed, it was still embarrassing to realize he’d been listening to that entire drama.
“You think I made the wrong choice,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
“You did make the wrong choice,” Vicar grumbled. “It was a good match. She would have strengthened your position.”
That’s all it was to him. He didn’t care about my doubts or reasons, only that I’d given up an advantage, passed over power. Then again, he was the devil on my shoulder.
“And the rest of it?” I asked. While I was embarrassed to talk about my confession, part of me wanted to know the devil’s thoughts. He was from the Iron Hell, and had insights I lacked.
“You mean your naive belief that the succubus truly cared for you?” Vicar asked in a voice dripping with contempt.
“It is possible,” Vicar said, shocking me. When I glanced at him, the faint glint of his red eye appeared. “Demons — or at the very least, abgrüdai — are concentrations of Abyssal substance given sentience by devouring mortal souls. They reflect mortals, in a way, though they tend toward the basest and most hostile of emotions.”
“Then—”
He cut me off with brutal calm. “That creature is old enough to have seen Heaven burn, Alken. It was born in the depths of the Abyss, which is in a way a prison and a torment more rancorous than even my old masters could conceive. Whatever shreds of affection it might feel for you, which I would say are closer to territorial possessiveness, they are drowned out by hunger and malevolence. The abgrüdai are mouths, appendages of the Abyss who have learned how to mimic life. And besides…” Here, a bit of his usual cruelty surfaced. “Because of you, Pernicious Shyora spent twelve of this planet’s cycles in the hands of the Iron Tribunal. Did you know they can stretch time, in their realm? Make a moment seem an hour, or a day a century? If there was anything resembling warmth for you in Tormentsister’s withered heart, then I assure you, it has been thoroughly extinguished by now.”
I could say nothing, did not know what to say, because it was true.
“We can also be certain that she has returned to her master’s side,” Vicar continued after a pause. “Either Reynard put very powerful bindings on her that persist even now, or he found her after she escaped that cathedral. Your actions threw her deeper into torment and slavery, paladin, and she will not have forgotten.”
I closed my eyes, feeling sick. Vicar gave his knives some minutes to sink in before his infernal gaze went to the elf riding some distance ahead of us.
“You should kill the handmaiden,” he said in a horribly calm, quiet voice. “Now that she knows your secret, she is a danger to you.”
“I won’t do that,” I snapped. “Don’t bring it up again.”
He did not. As we went, I shifted under the pelt’s weight. It had been a warm day, a foreshadowing of an impending summer, and Vicar was becoming less comfortable to wear. Perhaps it was coming close to time to stop. Safer to lock him up, pull him out when I needed advice or some scrap of esoteric lore the old devil might know.
And I was being vindictive, because he’d angered and upset me.
Though he didn’t exactly move, I felt tension from him as we traveled along the grasslands beyond the Banner’s capital. Only belatedly did I realize that I’d just given him a direct order. Though I understood the mechanics of our pact from a practical perspective, I’d come to understand something disquieting about the devil’s nature. Not only were my orders binding, but they were also painful. Whatever nature the Zosite had woven into him, whatever barbed mechanisms of iron and fire drove his actions, they were not gentle. Whenever I gave him a command, demanded he employ his powers on my behalf or did anything to compel him, it hurt. And though he could be cutting and cruel in his advice, he was also a slave. I could hardly expect him to be polite about it.
His nature also had an uncomfortable similarity to my own. I had all of this in mind when I softened my voice and said, “I’m sorry.”
“There is no reason to be,” Vicar said, not quite hiding his bitterness. “I am what I am, ser knight, and at the moment that is your servant. I will obey.”
I didn’t say anything else, knowing it would just annoy him. I didn’t bother explaining that I wasn’t just sorry about how I’d abused our pact, but also that he’d been made into this.
We went for some time, and it wasn’t until dusk had well and truly settled over the plains that Tzanith stopped her mount. She pointed, and ahead I saw the edge of a small lake. There were many in this area, satellites to the great lake-moat that surrounded the Herald’s Keep. Tall grass and cattails obscured the borders of the water, and a low mist had begun to form along its surface as night drew near and the air cooled.
There was a boat at the water’s edge, untended and with no dock. It might have been some fisherman’s vessel left on the shoreline, but the symbolism seemed too blunt. The back of my neck itched, and my throat became dry.
Tzanith turned her mount to face me then. “Alken…” She hesitated, and there was tension behind her words. “Whatever happens, I can’t protect you. We will have to abide by the Choir’s judgement.”
She didn’t need to add the rest — that if I’d accepted her offer, then Maerlys would be compelled to defend me. I felt little regret, save for the hurt I’d done to Tzanith personally.
“I know,” I said. “Let’s not despair yet, alright? We haven’t even heard them out yet.”
She said nothing, but her long wings fluttered nervously under her cloak.
We dismounted then, and I took the small chest that had previously been in my room from Morgause’s saddle. We left our mounts untied, for they were both well trained and smart enough not to wander off. Tzanith took the one oar left with the boat, and I settled in behind her.
“Not subtle, are they?” Vicar whispered to me. His dour mood had faded, replaced by his usual dark humor.
“They’re probably trying to scare me,” I agreed. The boat was dark wood, too well made for a fisherman’s, with a tall prow and subtle shapes worked into the frame. There was silver in the make. Silver, which is precious to the dead, for it gives them light and guards them from predators.
Like the very ferrymen said to navigate the strange waters of the Underworld, Tzanith rowed me over the foggy surface of the lake. She’d donned a gray cloak over her courtly attire, and pulled the hood up over her elfin ears, falling into the same ritual atmosphere this whole thing had taken on. The cloak covered her dragonfly wings, obscured the faerie light she gave off so that anyone observing us from a distance would not know her for what she was. My red cloak did the same for me, obscured me in red-tinted shadows and hid my true nature. My pointed cowl was up, and even as Tzanith quietly rowed I sank into my role, became the Headsman again for the first time in weeks.
Ahead, a shadow began to form in the depths of the misty waters. It soon clarified into a small island, one with a single tall oak tree grown on it. There was little else save grass and weeds.
And two figures, both waiting for me beneath the tree.
Tzanith guided the boat to the island’s shore, then remained with it as I clamored off and approached the pair who waited for us. I caught her eye, gave her a reassuring nod, but her gaze was neutral, mask-like. Almost appraising. Whatever there’d been between us, my confession earlier had changed its quality. The desire the elf felt for me was gone, I suspected, replaced by regret and pity. It wasn’t what I’d wanted, but I didn’t think she would pursue me as she’d done before. Whether we continued to be allies remained to be seen.
Her tear was in my pocket. That, at least, I hoped was a good sign, an indication that I hadn’t fully alienated the Elf Queen’s handmaiden.
My attention shifted to the ones waiting for me at the island’s center. They were both cloaked and hooded. One was large and hunched, an ominous outline I instinctively knew wasn’t human in shape, and the other was small and slim. Neither showed their face, making it impossible to read their expressions as I drew near. The sun had half sunk beneath the distant horizon. Night wasn’t far off.
The one standing to the left, the large one who hunched beneath a ragged cloak and deeply shadowed hood, spoke first. “So. You have completed your task. Uncovered the culprits behind the Faen of Draubard’s disappearance, delivered justice to them, and even restored our wayward daughter to us.”
The ancient, decaying animal face peering out from beneath that frayed hood tilted slightly down, almost a bow, as its owner took his shepherd’s crook in both hands. “You have done well, Headsman.”
I nodded to the other Doombearer. “It took some turns before the end, Lord Urawn, but we got there.”
Urawn Aarlu didn’t have a face made for smiling. Pale and withered, the death-touched drow made a noise almost like a snort. “You have brought him?”
In answer, I showed him the small chest I’d carried to the meeting. “He’s in here. I’d open it, but… He figured out how to speak a couple weeks ago.”
“Hm.” Urawn paced to the side some steps, his hooves light across the island’s grass. “A strange compromise you have found, Alken Hewer, to avoid the fate the Choir wished of this blackguard.”
And here we are. “I was not tasked with delivering death to Ivan Hunting, my lord. And you know what his end might mean, without an heir to his role.”
Did those milky eyes widen in surprise, or was that my imagination? Urawn adjusted his grip on his crook, studying me in silence for a time. My gaze drifted to the second figure. Rysanthe wore something close to the garments she’d tended to in the past beneath her cloak and hood, though she’d traded the short nymph’s dress for something more like a warrior’s robe. She wore abundant silver and ivory about her neck and wrists, and her feet were sandaled. There was no sign of the skeletal being I’d brought out of the catacombs beneath Evangeline’s fortress.
I gave her a bow. “I’m glad to see you restored, Lady Miresgal.”
Rysanthe let a smile flash beneath her shroud. “And I am glad to see you in good health, my friend. I did not properly thank you before quitting the surface world, and for that I apologize. You have my sincerest gratitude for saving me. I am in your debt.”
“If that’s the case,” I said, feeling oddly fey and daring, “could I ask you to not kill me tonight?”
Silence. Both chthonian elves watched me with unreadable expressions. The shadows crept larger, and the old oak at the island’s center creaked in a light wind. It was only then that I realized there was someone else on the island with us. They lurked in the deeper darkness directly beneath the tree, leaning against its trunk so they nearly blended with it, little more than a silhouette. Tall and wild-hared, they clutched a long, scarred spear with a head of faerie iron.
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Oraeka was here as well. With me, Rysanthe, and Urawn, that was four faen in one place, four Doomsmen. The building dread I’d felt for weeks as I waited for this confrontation settled on me as heavily as the night then threatening to blanket the world — inevitable and fast leading to its conclusion.
“You will hand over the Briar King,” Urawn Aarlu said in a low, grim voice that brooked no argument. “He is to be punished for his crimes.”
“That is the Briar’s task,” I said.
Urawn’s white eyes narrowed. “I see that you have been inducted into many new secrets since our last meeting, mortal. You know of the Briar’s true purpose?”
I chose not to respond. While I’d been informed that the Briar was part of the God-Queen’s infrastructure, that they were not the Choir’s opposite anymore than the Iron Hell was opposed to Old Heaven so much as vassal to it, I did not actually know what was inside that nest of qliphoth. One of Aureia’s seals, yes, and a power that bound the Onsolain to their role and restrictions, but the immortals present at that council had been tight lipped about the true nature of the concealed power.
Better to remain quiet, and let the old reaper guess at what I knew.
“The Briar has proven insufficient to the task of containing their king,” Urawn Aarlu said in a tone of brittle patience. “As they have forgone their duties, it falls to us to enact the land’s retribution for his crimes. Rysanthe Miresgal will deliver the sentence. You need only give him to us.”
“I will not,” I said in a calm voice.
Both of the drow tensed. Rysanthe studied me with a worried look and said, “Alken, please do not force our hands. You must give him over. The Choir has spoken.”
“Not all of them,” I reminded her.
Urawn’s voice held more exhaustion than anger. “Arrogant. You mortals, always so arrogant.”
“I’m arrogant?” I asked him incredulously. “While you were holding council in Heavensreach, lord reaper, the one in this box came very close to ripping open Draubard’s ceiling and claiming the Briar for himself in one stroke. While the angels on that damned mountain were arguing with each other and moving us around like pieces on a board, she was languishing in a vampire’s dungeon.”
I jabbed a finger at Rysanthe, who turned her violet eyes down in what might have been shame. My finger did not drop as I continued. “The Briar King still has a role to fulfill, whether any of us like it or not. I know what Umareon wants, and that he’s using this punishment as a front for it.”
“You speak of matters you barely comprehend,” Urawn told me darkly. “You do not fathom the will of the Choir, boy, only the grumblings of malcontents and exiles.”
In a moment of pique, I almost told him that Eanor and Baraqel had been at that council too. I’d sworn no oath of secrecy over it, after all, and Urawn obviously had not been told that I’d been appraised of his vaunted secrets, inducted into the same circle of knowledge and power as him. But some shadow of wisdom made me clamp my jaw shut.
Urawn studied me a long moment, his eyes taking in Vicar, seemingly dormant on my shoulders, my frayed red cloak, my grim and black-armored aspect with the featureless tabard of black cloth and the executioner’s tree on my belt. He snorted again, and his voice became cold. “I see it now. What they intend to make of you.”
“And what’s that?” I asked him.
“Our opposite,” the old elf said bitterly. “A mockery. You are no faen, Headsman, no proper Doombearer. They simply want a leashed monster with which to devour obstacles in their path. You are the Choir’s minotaur more than its hand, the beast they have set into the labyrinth.”
I went cold inside, for those words matched much of what I’d already felt.
Urawn continued in a firmer voice. “I had hoped to intervene, to test you and see if you could truly become one of us.” He gestured to Rysanthe and Oraeka. “But you must be elemental for this role, Alken Hewer, inevitable, as the wind and the tides themselves. You are too human.”
I closed my eyes, still holding the small chest that held Ildeban’s head between my hands. There was no wind on that lake, no particular warmth or severe cold. Everything was still and waiting.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said at last.
Urawn lowered his head, watching me from beneath the brim of his hood. “Do you remember what I told you, when I gave you your task?”
I nodded, my words emerging with a calm that surprised me. “That if you deemed me unworthy, you would kill me.”
“Will you hand over the Briar King?” He asked again, his voice hard as glacial ice.
“No,” I said quietly. “I will not. He must go back to Briarland.”
Rysanthe closed her eyes. In the deeper shadows beneath the tree, the silhouette of Oraeka with her hunter’s spear shifted.
“Because it was demanded of you?” Urawn asked.
I shook my head. “No. Because Aureia’s remaining seals must be protected… and because it’s what he deserves. He has not yet completed his role.”
The ancient elf nodded slowly, and the odd calm that had begun to coil through me like tendrils of ice grew barbs. Would I defend myself, at the end, or accept my doom with some measure of grace? I’d given death to many in exactly the same way, and nearly all of them had fought. Would I be like the necromancer, Emery, who’d offered his neck and gone with a measure of dignity? Or would I scramble and plead, as Leonis had?
Perhaps I would die like Horace, suddenly and with a faint look of surprise fixed to my face.
“I see,” Urawn said again and sighed with what seemed like relief. “Good. That is good.”
I stared at him for a long moment before speaking. “What?”
The drow turned sidelong, the silver bells on his crook singing as he planted it on the island’s sparse grass. “Do you remember what I told you, back at Oria’s Fane?”
“Besides saying you would kill me if I didn’t pass your test?” I asked. When the drow nodded, I wracked my brain, going over my memory of the conversation. The withered goat had said a lot of things. Threats, admonishments, almost grandfatherly bouts of wisdom.
Still confused, I recalled his actual orders. He bid me to find and recover his predecessor, Rysanthe, and to—
“Ah,” I said aloud as I got it. “Damn. That’s what you meant?”
Urawn only watched me with one ghostly eye, his elongated visage turned to the side. He’d told me to bring my doom to those responsible.
My doom. Mine.
Shaking my head I said, “I thought you just meant—”
“That you should bring the Headsman’s doom?” Urawn asked, no amusement or mockery in his grave, lilting voice. “Or the Choir’s? Do you consider your own will chained to those two offices, Alken Hewer?”
“That was the test all along,” I realized. “The minotaur in the labyrinth… you wanted to know if I’ll do what the Choir wants me to, regardless of what I think is right or wrong. If I’m just their fist.”
“A faen is meant to be an answer to the land’s pain,” Urawn said. “We are not soldiers — we are fates. For any seraphim or sidhe to try to take hold of that and wield it like a sword…” He held up a four fingered and and gripped it into a fist, as though to demonstrate. “I needed to know what you were, Headsman; a blade, or a will.”
Part perplexed, part relieved, and a good deal angry at all these mind games I said, “You immortals and your goring tests. We’re not children.”
“You are young yet,” Urawn disagreed. “You will see to it that one is given the doom you have woven for him?”
When he nodded to the box in my hands, I glanced down at it and nodded. “I will.”
Just as soon as Qoth was done sulking and answered Emma’s summons again, we would pass Ildeban off to him. He would take it to his father, and to Nath, and I did not like to think of the torments they had in wait for their errant monarch. The old hobgoblin could end it any time, just as soon as he overcame his conceit and chose an heir.
Still whiplashed by the way this interview had gone, I said, “So did I pass your test, old man?”
Urawn blinked at my informal address, and seemed to consider the question a moment. “You have proven that you are not the Choir’s creature, at least, and that you have some understanding of what your role requires, the need for balance. But you are mostly mortal still, and there will be more trials to come.”
I’d almost forgotten, or overlooked, the fact that the Choir was merely one of several supernatural powers left to rule the God-Queen’s dominion. The faen were an old role, older than the Choir Concilium, and it was to that ancient office that Urawn judged me.
“One such trial begins now,” Urawn continued.
I felt my shoulders droop fractionally, the weight of my pauldrons seeming to triple. So soon? But aloud I said, “What would you have of me?”
“Not just of you,” the drow said. He gestured, and both Rysanthe and Oraeka stepped forward, the three elves forming a space equidistant from me so we formed almost a circle, or a four pointed star. When I looked around curiously at them, Rysanthe gave me a small smile. Oraeka just stood there, her spear planted on the island turf and her barbarous aspect distant and grim.
Urawn looked past me. “Handmaiden, is he ready?”
Tzanith had stepped forward, I realized, so she stood not far from my back. When I glanced back at her, the pixie gave a graceful bow to the other elf. “He is, Lord Urawn.”
“Ready for what?” I asked.
But they were not talking about me. Urawn’s voice took on a more brooding quality, even as a strangely ritual atmosphere had come over the circle. “One of the land’s powers has demanded she be allowed a voice with us… apparently, she has deigned that you no longer represent her interests equally to those of the Choir’s or the Accord’s.”
“She?” But part of me already knew who he was talking about.
In answer, Tzanith turned to the lake. Out over the faraway hills, the first gleam of the moon had appeared with the onset of night. It was the Living Moon, rising slow and hesitant, little more than an emerald-silver blade severing that divide between land and sky. The moon shone, its light spilling across the world as a single soft ray. That column of moonlight split the lake, seemed to scatter the fog where it touched and formed a glowing space down its center.
And from that moonlit water, a shape emerged. Though it looked like he rose from the lake itself, I knew instinctively that it was more like he stepped through a doorway, that that intersection of the moon’s first light and the lake in that time, that place, with we Doombearers present opened the door.
He was hulking and huge, near nine feet in height with an apish build, long arms swinging dramatically with every motion in a stride made more for loping than walking. His skin was a rusted shade of tanned orange, his course hair starkly white, his eyes brimming yellow and red like candle flames.
Karog strode onto the island clad in ancient bronze armor. It was similar to what he’d worn during the tournament, only this time the decorative skull worked into his left spaulder was fashioned of Hithlenic bronze, a mixture of gold and faerie iron just like what made my axe. His two cleavers were sheathed in beautifully woven meshes at his hips, with a larger blade, also curved, tied at his back. There were living flowers woven around the hilt of that sword, almost like a maiden’s love token. The war ogre stepped into the empty space to my right, completing our circle, and let out a low, threatening growl. He ignored my stare, his attention fixed on Urawn.
“The burnt elf sent me to deliver a message,” Karog rumbled. “Your cult no longer represents her well. She demands I be her voice in it.”
If Urawn was taken aback by this, he did not show it. Instead, he merely seemed to appraise the hulking warrior in silence.
“Wait,” I said and drew the circle’s attention to myself. “I thought Oraeka represented the Sidhe as Doomsman. Doombearer, whatever.”
“Oraeka guards the sacred hunting grounds and preserves of the land,” Urawn said in a calm voice, his manner almost like that of some noble child’s tutor. “She punishes those who hunt endangered beasts and trespass on holy shrines, but she represents no monarch or council save the very oldest spirits who dwell deep in the world’s wilds.”
I chewed on that for some minutes. In truth, I’d also believed I was Maerlys’s representative. After all, she’d given me orders of execution before, like that day I beheaded King Rhan, the same event that had been the catalyst to Lias finding me and my ill-fated journey to the capital.
Ill represented, Karog had said. It was true, I realized. The last time I’d gone before Maerlys, I’d challenged and threatened her, shucked off her control over me and all but won a battle of wills before taking back the young prince she’d stolen. This was retribution for that, I realized, retribution and assurance. She sought to shore up her loss of power by appointing her own champion, her own faen.
Looking to Karog I said, “Didn’t the Emperor give you orders to retrieve Jocelyn?” Retrieve or kill him, I added silently.
Karog’s nostrils flared, a gesture that looked challenging, though I knew it as one of acknowledgement from past experience with the western mercenary. “I swore an oath of knighthood, but I did not swear to the Emperor personally. His court sent me to find the wyrm’s host because they did not know what to do with me, and because they found my presence amongst them… unnerving.” He snorted, steam billowing out of his flat nostrils. “The elf queen spared my life and offered me work. It suits, for now.”
It was my torn to snort. “Still the mercenary, then. You know this role is more than that? Just how many masters are you going to bounce between, kin fomori?”
In riposte he said, “I would ask the same of you.”
It was well struck, and I fell silent. Instead, turning to Urawn I asked, “You’re alright with this? Even after all that you said to me?”
Did the drow sigh, or did I imagine that? His breath misted like Karog’s, only with cold rather than alchemical heat. “In your case, my issue was more with the Choir than with you personally. Maerlys is her father’s heir and a monarch of the Sidhe. It is her right to appoint who she will. Still…” He glanced at Karog. “The oath you have sworn is sacred and more ancient than all the kingdoms of this land. Will you abide by it?”
“I never break my word,” Karog said in an unmistakeably bitter voice. “It is all others who have proved faithless. We will see if you elves are any different.”
It was true, I realized then, that Karog had never reneged on his pact with any of his various masters. He might be fickle and ill-tempered, but in every case he had either been discarded or betrayed by those he fought for. The Vykes had tried to take his mind, Laertes had simply used him as muscle during the tournament, and even the Emperor had driven him away, had given him a near impossible task.
Whether Maerlys proved any less treacherous than those other masters remained to be seen.
“Then be welcome amongst us, kin fomori.” Urawn bowed his head to the ogre, and both Rysanthe and Oraeka followed suit. Rising, the ancient drow addressed all of us then. “You will all be called soon. This land bleeds, crying out for its pains to be answered. The Powers weave new dooms even now, and we must be their avatars.”
He turned then to the ancient tree at the island’s center, lifting a hand and stretching his other arm so the bells on his crook rung. That ringing seemed to resonate through my very being, and I shivered at the sensation. The air itself went still, the tree’s branches ceased rustling, and the moon crept up behind us to cast us all in an unreal light. “War is upon us, faen. A war of falling feathers and of broken gaols, of crowns shattered and of fools who would be gods. No army or edict shall end this pain. We must be the hands of fate. I pray that we are worthy to the task.”
Rysanthe bowed her head, looking tired and sad. Oraeka studied her spear, her demeanor holding a dark focus. Karog only glared at Urawn’s back, his own judgement reserved behind a mask of distrust.
And me? Instead of looking at that aspect of death and the ancient tree to which he seemed to be making his pronouncement, I looked back. Back toward the rising moon, and the shadow of the city where it seemed drowned within that same light, darkened by it rather than illuminated. Just a trick of perspective, I knew, but the image stuck with me. I felt no passion for the elf’s cause, no fervor to fight this great war against darkness. The light itself seemed to make that darkness.
I wondered where she was just then, and when I would see her again.
End of Arc 8
