Astera shuddered. A white halo enveloped her—only for a moment, a growing brightness that reached a crescendo, then disappeared. When normality returned the areas around her bruises, cuts, and fractures still emanated light, gashes in flesh glowing like the muscle beneath was luminescent, until all knitted themselves closed. Her skin was left unblemished.
She exhaled. Knees weakened. Exhausted. Apparently loss of lifespan no longer concerned her so greatly. That was a step in the right direction.
Rook wiped the blood from his nose and the snot from his stubble. With the hostilities ceased, the pain around his wrist was harder to ignore. “Kings,” he swore. The burn was bad. Already blistering. He glared at her, then presented the wound. “Now do me.”
He wondered what her empty eyes were thinking. Were they thinking at all? Maybe that explained everything.
She reached into her satchel for her medical supplies. “You have no Essence. A spell could heal you, but I cannot. Not a mundane human.”
He wasn’t focused, and neither were they, so he said nothing further. She treated his wounds—the ones she gave him—near the well. They both still bristled beneath their facades. Neither wanted to speak.
So Jason did.
“Rook,” he said, but he didn’t continue for a long time after that. Eventually: “Astera cut Lord Arqa’s head off. He didn’t even flinch. He didn’t even notice. The whole time he was standing there, before he…and the whole time his silhouette flickered, like he had two shadows, like there was something made of darkness pulling the strings of his body, like a—like a puppet.” The recollection clearly discomforted him. “What I’m saying is…he looked like a man, and he talked to us like a man, but what we saw wasn’t human—he was a demon. That means we have to deal with him like a demon.”
“A demon bound to corporeal form,” Astera said. “Some kind of parasite from the aether. I’ve never encountered such a thing before.”
“How do we kill a demon?” Rook said, to the point.
Jason sighed. “You don’t. Get it? You don’t. I spent years as a scribe. I’ve copied books on the arcane. I’ve read some of them, too. You don’t kill demons. You run away and hide. And if you’d seen what we’d seen, you’d know that that’s our only option. He can’t be killed.”
“There must be some way.”
“Yeah, there isn’t. Why do you think they shoved him into a prison?”
“Perhaps Daphana loved him,” Astera said. “She couldn’t bring herself to slay him.”
“Or maybe she just couldn’t.”
Rook stood. He spoke seriously. “Then we’ll imprison him again. But we aren’t leaving these people to the fate you handed them.” That was with a glare to Jason. He shied away.
“It is not true that they cannot be slain. They are vulnerable to enchanted weaponry, from a manaforge or otherwise,” Astera said. “And magicians can excise them back to the aether—banish them. The Magisters of the Old Kingdom knew many ways to control demons, keep them bound, drain them of their Essences.”
“We could try asking Pyrthos for help,” Jason said. He shook his head, as if this were to offer some sort of middle ground.
Rook and Astera glanced at each other. Their minds both went to Antigone—Aletheia’s old master. Somehow they doubted she and the rest of her people would be eager to assist them after they kidnapped her apprentice. Especially in light of recent events.
“No,” Rook said. “That is no option. We have a poor rapport with the Magisters. They might help us, then jail us; or they might jail us and not help us at all, and Arqa would be left to rot. The risk isn’t worth it.” He turned to Astera. “You say a magician could banish him—could you?”
She shook her head. “It would require one with great talent for channeling and siphoning mana. He would also need knowledge of the arcane rituals tailored for this particular demon, which few do beyond Pyrthos. He would be a great Magister. I am but a huntress. I have not the skill, to say nothing of the experience and expertise.”
Rook stared off at the lake. Blue toward the horizon. “No. But we know someone who might.”
“We do?”
“She’s no Magister,” he said. “But she’s the best magician I know.”
----------------------------------------
“Eris is a child,” Astera said.
“She’s hardly younger than me,” Rook said. He reorganized his things into his backpack. Chose what to take and what to leave behind at Arqa #1. He intended to leave soon, one way or another.
“You are also a child.”
He turned to look her in the eyes. She was four inches taller than him. “A quarter your age, but half the fool.”
“Whatever his true nature, Lord Arqa is a powerful aethereal entity. A runaway mage who has not reached her twentieth year is not capable of banishing his Essence.”
“She’s powerful.”
“For a human. But she is reckless and knows few spells.”
Rook spoke quickly, returning to his business. “Still. Powerful magician for a human, and she banished herself from our party. That’s some experience to her name already.”
“She is not a demonologist.”
“She reads endlessly. Studies more than anyone else I’ve ever met. She’s obsessed with the aether. If anyone outside Pyrthos knows how to banish a demon, it’s her.”
“You have no notion where to look for her.”
“Nanos. She told me she wanted to go to Nanos more than once. That’s where we start.”
“You’re searching for one woman across a principality.”
“One very conspicuous woman.”
Astera’s voice lowered. “This could take months.”
“We move up the Hepaz, if we’re lucky we find her by winter.”
“She may not even still be alive.”
He stopped. That was an interesting thought. It hadn’t crossed his mind. Had she been adventuring, like him? Did she have new companions? New friends? A new lover? How would he feel if she did?
He hated that he was thinking more about that now than Aletheia. More about Eris’ angled cheekbones than mourning the fallen. But it was hard to imagine anything else, now that the floodgates were opened.
The warmth of her skin on the cold Chionos night. The softness of her lips. The deliciousness of her mouth. How it was they hadn’t gone further he still didn’t understand, and yet still he hardly knew any memories better. It was that kiss that enthralled him to her for all the rest of the year. How differently things might have gone if he had rebuffed her advances. Treated her like the siren she undoubtedly was…
Astera was right. Maybe she was dead. Maybe she was halfway across the continent. Maybe it would take years to find her. Maybe she couldn’t help them, or maybe she wouldn’t. But who else could they go to? Rogue magicians were rare, and those willing to risk themselves like this, with the right knowledge—even rarer.
“There’s no choice,” Rook said softly.
“What if we find her, retrieve her, and return only too late? Why return at all if we cannot save the people of Arqa?”
“Why fight at all if there’s some chance we might lose?”
She fell silent after that.
“But you’re right. First,” he continued, heaving his backpack over his shoulders, “we try everything else we can. Consult every local history. Learn every legend. Maybe there’s some other choice. We might still be able to put him back in his jail.”
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That was Jason’s task. He and Astera slept off their journey. Rook didn’t sleep. He spent restless hours imagining the scene described to him. Aletheia’s final moments. The horror she must have felt. It took all his willpower to stay calm. But as ever, he didn’t dwell on sorrow. Rook never let darkness consume him. He transformed grief into his drive to keep going.
After, Jason consulted with the ealdorman on who this Lord Arqa was, on Daphana, on the history of the valley. He said nothing, but instead suggested that the brave heroes of the Shrine to Zur-Bas had earned the honor of listening to the oral history of the valley directly from one of the town’s temple priests.
They did not keep books in Daromese here. They didn’t have paper.
Rook agreed. So it was fifteen or sixteen hours after the party’s re-convening by the well that they ascended the sandstone steps of the open-air temple that overlooked Lake Arqa.
There a priest in white greeted them. He instructed them to sit atop a large circular plate of bronze inlaid in the floor. He assumed a position on a pedestal before the plate, surrounded by censers, which he lit before kneeling. Then he began his speech. Jason translated in whispers:
“A million tides ago, the people of Darom were ruled from across the Great River, beyond the Colossal Walls, by the people of the horse…”
All that Rook knew. More followed, about the Fall. Mythology. A Daromese perspective. The origin of the perpetual day. He wasn’t interested in that, not with so much on his mind. He was focused on answers.
“…many of our brothers and cousins drove out the horse people and their Magisters who cursed us, but we in Arqa still were held enthralled with their magic which twisted through the sky, and their promises of banishing the sun. A lineage of their nobles continued to rule in the Valley. We trusted them yet. And for generations, Arqa thrived as a metropolis, the jewel of all Darom: the magic of the East blocked out the sun on every twenty-fourth tide, gave us and our animals respite. Water sprung from the earth in all places.
“But the children of the people of the horse were still a perfidious set of rulers. They spoke a strange language. Sent their children away to be educated in foreign lands, even at great danger in crossing the Wastes, which in the Old Days were harsher and filled with more chimeric abominations than they are today. Great fell lizards swept with glistening golden wings across the infinite expanse of—"
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Jason interrupted him here with a question. The priest looked perturbed at first, the flow of his narrative disrupted, but he responded to the point. Thusly translated:
“The names of the rulers from those ancient times have been lost, but it is known that the last of the horse people were driven out five hundred thousand tides ago…”
Finally, Rook thought. He leaned in.
“…even with their magic, the children of the horse people were bound to the laws of aging and death. They withered as all men do, and so when they died their sons took their places, as ours do today. But one ruler exemplified the perfidy of his people’s character. He fell in love with an immortal visitor from across the sea. To be with her forever he made a deal with Death itself: that he would never age, nor die, but that the people he ruled over would die in his stead. Our suffering concerned him not.
“Death approached him from the very depths of his keep, the site of which, like so many others, is lost to us now. There He granted this lord power over His domain, mastery over all things which once carried souls but whose souls lingered no longer. Thus the unholy lord forged an army of the undead with which to oppress the very people his ancestors conquered, his forefathers enriched, and his regime swore to protect—"
A scream pierced the air from the town square outside. The priest stopped. They all hesitated. Just as he was about to resume, another scream, then many more: distant shouting, a clamor overtaking the normally-sleepy town.
They waited, listening.
The town’s alarm bell rang.
Storytime could wait.
On the temple’s steps they saw people with ragged clothing dripping into Arqa’s square from the east, from the direction of Arqa 2. At first only a handful, but many more with wagons and animals behind. Those at the front of the line shouted in fear and battered against the chests of their confused receivers.
Rook pressed down toward the well. Voices everywhere. Scared whispers and frightened shouts. “What’s happening?” he asked Jason. He glanced between newly arriving faces. All looked exhausted. He saw a woman collapse at the well. A dirty child with no guardian. A man with no shirt, sunburnt. A girl battered the torso of a guard, yelling frantically in Daromese. “Jason! What are they saying?”
Jason stood still. His face was white.
“They say the dead are rising.”
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Would that Rook’s companions had let loose a monster that stayed put until it was killed. They were already out of time. They couldn’t spare the hours, let alone the weeks or months, required to find Eris—there would be nothing left of this place.
“We have to deal with him now,” he said.
“We went over this already,” Jason said.
“We’ll capture him and put him back in his vault.”
“How? He can’t be injured.” He grabbed Rook’s wrist and grasped the burns there; fire erupted for a split second across Rook’s skin. The pain made him shout. He hissed and pulled himself away. “You can be,” Jason added, “in case you forgot.”
Rook might have punched Jason for it, but he realized only too quickly that he was right. All his life he told himself there was no evil that couldn’t be overcome with the sword, but that wasn’t true. Now he found himself powerless. He wanted to go anyway. To go fight Lord Arqa, even if it meant his death, because at least then he would have made an attempt. Tried to avenge Aletheia. Tried to make up for the horrors they had unleashed.
“A demon of flesh and the dead,” Astera said distantly. The noise around them grew only louder by the passing seconds, yet somehow there was clarity in their bubble, like they were somehow outside time. “The ghouls were drawn to his Essence. Corrupted by it. Now reinvigorated…he raises the dead to serve his own purposes.”
Rook’s gaze went to the pyramid. The colossal white pyramid, more ancient than even the Daromese, that overlooked the whole of the town and shaded its square from the never-moving sun. His eyes lingered on its sealed entryway, a metal portcullis.
“You said they were ossuaries,” Rook said. “When we first came here, you said the pyramids were filled with bones.”
Jason nodded. Rook closed his eyes. The clamor, the alarm bell, crying and fear. All washed over him. Trying to think of something.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. Almost an acceptance of defeat.
More refugees poured in. Confusion reigned.
The town’s militia gathered to handle the influx of newcomers. Men in robes, with whatever weapons they could find. A few dozen of them. Their captain—the only one with a sword, bronze—shouted orders.
A panting man appeared in the crowd. He screamed at the top of his lungs, and when he spoke everyone stopped, turned to him, and listened. Once he was finished, all reasoned order dissolved. Shouts overtook speech. Sobs erupted from each refugee. Everyone ran in every direction.
This time, Rook didn’t need to ask for a translation. He knew the news the man brought. The last twenty hours still seemed almost too nightmarish to be real, and he realized then that the mistake Astera made was too great to be rectified in full. Not right now. Not without a miracle. But he could still help the people of Arqa as best he could.
He followed the militia to the outskirts of town. Arqa had no walls, but there were ruins all around its perimeter, and they made good fortifications in case anything decided to attack.
Rook never saw such fear in men’s eyes. He stood beside a man with a pitchfork as refugees filed past on the dirt trail, alert for danger, the hot sun on his skin. After only another hour the stream stopped, and the desert between the towns once again returned to its normal silence.
Here he noticed the storm clouds. A small section against the blue sky, above the distant horizon. But they weren’t white: they were pitch black—and they never seemed to move.
Rook stayed out there, waiting, for what felt an eternity. The thought couldn’t escape him that this was all his fault. If only he’d gone with them…
One of the militiamen yelled and pointed at the horizon. Rook shaded his eyes, and in the far distance, approaching on the trail, he saw another man. A single man. Old. Emaciated. When he came closer it became clear that the point of a sword had been driven into his heart; his shirt was bloodied and torn. He walked all the same.
Astera gasped at the sight. “We left him a body,” she said.
“We left him two,” Jason said.
The old man came to an abrupt stop within shouting distance from the captain of the militia, stood atop the ruins of a wall. And there he stayed. Staring at them. Doing nothing. Standing in the open.
Then another man joined him. Then a woman. Then a child. Each smeared with blood. Some missing limbs. Others disemboweled. More followed. Families of the undead congregated at Arqa’s doorstep, never coming closer, yet their ranks always swelling. Soon there were dozens of them—too many to see at once on the narrow path between the towns.
No one said anything, but Rook was thinking. He was thinking about how every single unliving monstrosity before him now was the fault of Astera directly; and, indirectly, himself. And he wondered if she wasn’t the only one who deserved to die for her crimes.
The horde lurched forward in perfect unison…
The militiamen routed. Even the captain abandoned his position: every single guard left his post. They screamed, stumbled over themselves, and fled like children. No one was left overlooking the pathway except Rook—and he could do nothing but gawk.
“Rook,” Jason said. He tugged at Rook’s arm. “We need to go.”
The horde lurched forward again. Now it walked, advancing in their direction. Rook drew his sword. He was ready for a fight, ready to defend the people of this valley, ready to redeem the honor stolen away from him.
“Rook!” Astera said. “This fight will not avenge Aletheia!”
The wire around his sword’s hilt bit his palm. She was right. There was no winning this fight.
He turned, and all three of them retreated back toward town. They ran; even a jog outpaced the horde easily.
But they did not beat the battle back to Arqa 1. When they arrived at the outskirts scant minutes later, the assault had already begun.
Lord Arqa was no mindless monster. He had been waiting to use his magic. As his horde from Arqa 2 pressed the attack, he raised corpses underfoot.
Rook heard the screams long before he saw anything else. Noises so animalistic he hadn’t known humans could make them. Sounds of incomparable horror. But then he did see, as they sprinted past a merchant’s house. Hands thrust through dirt. Arms digging their way from the ground. The earth itself giving birth to human beings. Most were well-preserved in the relentless dry heat of Darom. Everywhere the dead pulled themselves free from their internment.
One ghoulish cadaver with green skin that flaked off in the sun lunged at Jason. It stumbled over itself, and when it put too much weight on its right leg the bone inside snapped, and it fell to the ground. Jason dodged easily out of the way.
They kept running.
Back to the town’s square. There, more decomposed bodies. Fresh graves dug up, from the inside up. Some, more decomposed. Shambling skeletons. The bodies of animals came alive, too, and threw themselves into battle. Men fought all off savagely while women ran and children cried.
They found Pyraz there. Barking, biting, and clawing at corpses, tearing loose flesh off bones. He wagged his tail when he saw Rook and fell in at once to his master’s side.
Rook joined the melee. This was what he had wanted. The undead were slow, awkward, and unarmed: he decapitated one, skewered another, and chipped away at the ribcage of a skeleton within seconds—but it made little difference. The dead did not die again.
Over their shoulders, the horde led by the old man closed in around town.
The withered corpse of an old woman chased a girl down the street. Rook intervened, cutting the corpse down. Another stumbled toward him; he grabbed it, tossed it to the ground. It fell and couldn’t get back up. These undead weren’t like ghouls. They were hardly dangerous—they could get away if they ran. But they couldn’t be defeated, either. The ultimate troops for holding ground.
Astera conjured a spear of ice in her hands. She impaled one corpse, but it melted in the hot sun, and she was forced to conjure another, and another, sometimes following up thrusts with balls of fire or shocks of lightning—but she quickly became too tired to keep fighting.
Rook looked up toward the pyramid. Its hundred-foot portcullis was open—the first time in eons. And on the slopes of the hill, a legion of skeletal infantry formed into ranks.
They could fight forever and still find no end to their adversaries.
They retreated toward the lake.
“You want to fix this?” Jason shouted. “Your sword won’t cut it!”
“If we’re careful enough,” Rook started. They were on the lake’s dock, its pier that ran some ways out onto the water. There people frantically loaded themselves onto boats. “If we try…they’re not dangerous alone…”
That was when he saw the shadow on the ground. Something skittering. Moving toward the well. Suddenly, from behind a building, a sanspider emerged. A huge, eight-legged, bear-sized sandspider, with the shaft of an arrow lodged in its head.
It moved anyway. Fast. Throwing up dust with each step. What few eyes it had left spotted a man fleeing from a skeleton; it pounced on him, and with its vicious claws tore him to pieces, ripping out his throat. Blood sprayed everywhere onto the sand.
Undead sandspiders. That was the shock Rook needed. Before his thoughts had been clouded over by emotion, but now he saw the true gravity of the situation. He saw his own insignificance. He saw that if they were going to banish Lord Arqa, they would need an army—and a great magician of their own. One unarmed elf, one unarmed scribe, and one scruffy orphaned knight would never be able to contest with a demon. How could they? Who were they, really? And if they died here, if they never made it out, who else would right their wrongs?
He jumped into one of the boats. A small fishing boat, already overcrowded. Its captain undid its rope and pushed them off. Pyraz was the last one onboard, jumping the distance and landing in Rook’s arms. And just as they set out into the lake’s water, the sandspider turned in their direction. It moved like a horse: a canter, then a gallop, skittering their way—but they were off, into the water, safe, just as it reached the pier.
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They landed on the lake’s far shores some hours later. Rook’s determination to leave Arqa had seen him travel with his backpack and all his things; Jason and Astera were not so lucky. Most of their travelling gear was left behind. Astera had only her armor and her bow. Jason had nothing. As the refugees from Arqa gathered, they remained separate together, exhausted, silent. Rook sat on the beach, letting the waves lick against his pants.
All were thinking the same thing. So much destruction. So much death. So much suffering. And it was all their fault. And what was there to say?
Only Jason tried.
“We shouldn’t have opened that door.”
Excitement had numbed Rook over the last two tides. Now, thinking it all over again, he choked in grief. Aletheia. But only for a moment. A single second, then it was gone. Subdued again. Channeled into purpose.
“We look for Eris,” he said.
Long silence.
“What if we can’t find her?” Jason said.
“We will.”
“What if she can’t help us?”
“We’re better off with her still.”
“What if she won’t help us? I’ve heard the stories. She didn’t sound like the most reasonable person to have around.”
Rook rubbed his forehead. The thought that followed made him sick, but it was as true as it was expedient, “Her objection was to Aletheia. She has no reason to turn us away now.”
“How about that we’re sending her on a suicide mission?”
“…we’ll need a better pitch. Do you have any other ideas? Anyone else to go to? Any cards to play that don’t involve giving up and moving to Ganarajya?”
Jason shook his head. Astera shook hers. She had her palms in her eyes; she was crying.
“Then my plan it is. Yours have caused enough trouble for us as already. We travel north to the Hepaz. From there, seek passage upstream to the Great Divide, travel to Kem-Karwene, and seek her along the way.”
“You don’t know she’s been there,” Jason said.
“I don’t know a lot of things. I don’t know the moon will rise again once we leave Darom, but I have high hopes for it.”
“There is more reason to think some things than others,” Astera said with a sniff.
“If she has visited those parts within the last year, someone will remember her,” Rook said. “We’ll find something. I know we will.”
“Kings, you do still have the hots for her,” Jason said. “Is she really that special?”
Rook had an answer to that question, but he didn’t want to say it out loud. “Magicians are always memorable for normal people. So are beautiful women.”
That Jason couldn’t disagree with. He burst into laughter. “This will take months.”
“Then we’d better start now,” Rook said. He glanced back across the lake. Far in the distance, much beyond the horizon, more black clouds gathered to block out the sun.
Jason sighed and craned his head up at the high rock walls that made up Arqa Valley. “I guess so."