Chapter Ten

Thawn

Abaddiah Thawn descended the steps to his long overdue death. Conscious of the lives above ground he was no longer wont to intrude upon, he continued upon his course. He had been far too old for far too long.

The weight of his gaze fell on the cold body resting in his arms. A sickly child. Its features ached through deep-cut marks, like death itself provided no relief, and its gaunt frame was dwarfed in Thawn’s giant stride. He was near eight feet tall, bolstered by the armour he wore in perpetuity.

At his foot’s knocking, the door opened into the Church of Winter and the staircase bloomed into a hall more than a hundred feet wide and four times as long. Grey stone surrounded him on all sides, painted in slithers of silver moonlight and the walls knocked the sound of his steps back at him a hundred times over.

The corridors of this place had turned the joys of childhood stale. So large then, they felt larger now and all the emptier for the absence of Jask, brother and enemy in even measure, and maybe more besides.

The stone martyrs of Winter watched from their perches in the hollow windows lining the church and Thawn was left unsure whether their vacant expressions offered approval or contempt. Dust had poured through the windows in crested dunes riding the walls of the hall in waves. It was a testament to the disdain with which the Sign of the Tondrus had treated their order. Winter had been a body of millions; now it was of just two.

And Thawn was all too familiar with the other.

Through the glass of his helmet, he saw ghosts of a life scarcely remembered. Boys in gowns were herded into rows behind the Masters, bloodied bands across their backs. Their oath was recited daily at the foot of the throne of the Arm and for every word that was fluffed, a boy of the Master’s choosing was beaten. But Thawn’s memory was vague of those days beyond those broadest strokes. For a life of countless millennia spent in search of the kid now resting in his arms, or rather the thing within, Thawn could remember very little. Years flickered past like days.

Whilst his body had been elevated beyond so-called ‘normal’ men, by means primitives would call magic, his memory had not. Like the watching saints of Winter that lined the church halls, who had been eroded grain-by-grain until few of their features remained, smoothed to a pillar, Thawn’s personhood had been slowly struck from his being. His life had been a gradual process of erosion, where the years would eat away at him until he felt little more than his own shadow.

He was never hungry, he was never tired, he was never thirsty and, for a man as ancient as he, he would never get to be old and grey and whittle away the years in rumination, waiting for death to come knocking.

No, he had to go knocking on death’s door.

Here, death wore a face he knew all too well.

Thawn reached the end of the hall and kicked in a narrow doorway to a small chamber burrowed behind a curved wall. It concealed a tower, reaching up into the heavens. Moonlight pirouetted down from high windows to bathe the chamber in a chilling glow. He set the kid down and a strange unease came over him.

The confessional looked the same as it always had- ugly and angular at the back of the room, entirely uninviting. He had dreaded his summons here. Even now, it triggered a deep-seated anxiety, wired into him by habit.

‘Do you believe in God?’ a high voice said from within.

‘I thought I’d find you here. I’m not a child anymore, Jaho,’ Thawn replied. His voice was almost robotic, as if over the centuries he had slowly traded away his humanity. But that presupposed Thawn was human to begin with; he was not.

‘No? You just act like one. You haven’t changed since Ellaga.’ Slender, gloved fingers drew back the curtain from one side of the box. The Priestern Jaho sat, robed in black, a veil drawn over her face. She straightened herself at the sight of the child.

‘Have you even moved since last I was here?’ Thawn said.

Jaho shrugged. ‘Sometimes if it is hot, I open the door. If there is a draught, I close it again,’ she said dryly.

‘I see.’

‘That is the problem with living forever. It yields so little motivation. Do you not agree?’

‘I have my mission.’

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‘Your mission, yes. And how many thousands of years has it taken for a whiff of fruition? How many were the victim of your inaction? In Colony Two alone, you allow Jask to fester. It’s almost as if you don’t want to succeed.’

‘It wasn’t my choice, by and large. And my masters have infinite patience.’

He sensed Jaho smirk. ‘“By and large.” Do not mistake my tone. I don’t judge you, Thawn, only question. There is a difference.’

Thawn plunged a hand into one of the pockets hanging from his belt. He pulled two totems, both a chain of three esses, wound to a single point. He funnelled them through his fingers to Jaho who considered them.

She hmphed. ‘Yours? And Jask’s?’

Thawn nodded.

‘I see. You needn’t feel sad, Thawn,’ she continued, sensing his mood. ‘When he reformed Winter in his own name, it was a shade of our order. Us. You and I, Thawn. That’s Winter! What Jask created was something altogether unholier. His suffering does not excuse him, of course. Even if it does grant him a modicum of sympathy,’ she said very matter-of-factly.

‘A modicum?’ Thawn said, a hint of offence on Jask’s behalf.

‘Well, perhaps I am being harsh. From what you have said before, he is a brilliant and damaged man. The things that could compel him to go to the lengths he has… I’ve heard many a tale of the horrors of moonwater. What it does to a man, to a mind. He has my pity, but little more.’ She paused in thought.

Thawn said nothing. He did not want to correct her. Not yet.

‘You know Jask still loves you, in his own way?’ If Jaho meant it as a question, Thawn had no reply. He supposed he didn’t know what to call it. Love worked. Hate did too. ‘Moonwater is a cruel paradox,’ she continued. ‘You need only wait, Thawn. Sooner or later, it will do its work. It always does. Even for us.’

‘There are ways around it, no?’ He asked without the conviction he wanted the answer.

‘If there are, they are beyond even me. Documented cases of recovery, beyond charlatanism are scarce. All that I know of are the work of Trillunda of Devil’s End. So, unless you plan on visiting her?’

‘No.’ The thought unsettled him. Devil’s End was the grave of everything unholy made in the name of the Sign- the mages like Trillunda, the Cloven, the Pale Crow- the result of genetic experimentation. But Jaho was wrong. Thawn was going there. Just not for Jask’s sake.

‘Why are you here then? It’s been years since you sought my counsel. Who is the child, Thawn?’

It occurred to Thawn that he should not have to do this. There remained a life behind him if he wanted and his thoughts were drawn on to Andromeda. The sheer joy and shame and pleasure and rancid misery of it all. How perfect she was. And how terrible.

And yet, the grave tempted him more as time wore by. Like a man jaded by his week’s work, his joints aching, who wanted nothing more than to fall into the clutches of his bed. Mortals didn’t recognise the pleasures of death. As Jaho had once said, “Give a man forever in which to do something, and he would surely never get around to it.”

Thawn had decided upon his course. He stepped into the confessional beside Jaho and drew the curtain closed.

‘“Per the rites set forth by Andrus and Matthea of Winter and the Sign, I wish to confess my sins, upon this, the eve of my life”,’ said Thawn, words well-rehearsed.

This time, it was Jaho who said nothing. Thawn sensed her shock. Sharp gasps of air emerged from the booth adjacent. He felt satisfied that he had deprived her of her voice at last. He recalled the endless lectures of his youth, where he would sit at the window and stare, saucer-eyed, as Jaho’s words went through him like ghosts. She was nothing to Thawn anymore: neither mother, nor lover, neither friend nor enemy, neither matron nor mentor. She simply was.

‘After all these years,’ Jaho said finally, ‘you at last come wandering through my door again and you do so to die. Do I really have that effect?’

Thawn was tired of it now, all of it. His mission. His masters. He wanted it to end. He needed it to end. ‘You used to,’ he said eventually.

‘Who is the child?’ Jaho asked a second time.

‘You’ll see. Soon enough.’

The Priestern hmphed again. Thawn was reciting the words over in his mind. Per tradition, when it came a pilgrim’s time to die, they would recant the sins of their life, so they may make peace.

‘Have you considered the possibility that you and Jask are not each other’s responsibility? Winter died long ago.’

‘So did I,’ Thawn said, though he was unsure Jaho took it as literally as he meant it.

‘Then you owe it nothing anymore. Find her, Thawn. Death can always wait, can’t it? It’s waited long enough to make no difference whether you die in a day, a year or ten.’

‘It might be for the best that I didn’t. I don’t know how pleased she would be to see me. Do you know where she is?’ Thawn asked accusingly, as if Jaho should know better than to suggest an impossible task.

‘I’ve sat here for a long time, since before the Long Hunt. Out there, that’s alien to me. I know nothing of anyone anymore, save you.’ Together, they paused and listened to the dead air. ‘If you won’t just tell me simply, should we begin your confession? I get the feeling the child fits in somewhere.’

‘Yes,’ Thawn admitted. ‘Before I start, could you…’ He forced a hand into his satchel and produced a small silver locket. This was where he kept the last piece of his personhood. He clipped it open and extended a small photograph. It was faded and grey, but a thin-faced woman was just about discernible across the years of creases that potted the photo. Thawn passed it to Jaho. She laughed but stifled it into a cough.

‘Ah, sorry Thawn. I’ve never seen your like before. You never were like the other children, ever since Ellaga. What do you want me to do? I owe you a favour, don’t I?’

‘Though I fear she may be dead, if Andromeda ever came back, apologise from me,’ he said. ‘It’s the least the pair of them deserve.’

‘Them?’

Thawn sensed Jaho lean closer. ‘She has a son, Agloff.’

‘Oh, Thawn,’ Jaho said, with a hint of pity. ‘What makes you so sure Andromeda Ashborne is dead?’

‘I left her in that place.’ He bowed his head. Shame took its hold on him.

‘From what you had told me about Andromeda, that’s hardly a death sentence. Her will is stronger than you give her credit for. She sighed. ‘Then I think you should begin.’

Thawn bit his lip and adjusted his visor, briefly peaking past the veiled curtain to look at his legacy on the floor, the child’s broken body and the parasite within that had died with it.

Then, with the deepest of breaths, he began his ancient tale.