21. OTHER WORLDS

They left behind this grim discovery in a black mood, silent, the darkness which surrounded them seeming more solid somehow, as if their torches struggled harder to throw it back now.

It had been foolish to hold out hope for the children of Silverfish. They both knew that. They had both, upon hearing of the curse that afflicted the village, known with a certainty that the children were dead. They had both known, with certainty, that even those which had fled the village had met with perhaps an even worse fate. The world could be cruel, and that cruelty had come and swallowed up the better part of Silverfish, and there was nothing to be done. And yet the seed of hope had always lived in their hearts, the hope that folk always harbor against such things, the hope that nothing so horrible might have happened, that the gods might have been kind. And it had sprouted upon finding the tree in the courtyard, the silly, foolish hope that all might still be well, that the children may merely be turned into trees, that at least they would live - and perhaps, perhaps even someone may find a way to return them. But the sight of those bones had stamped down on that sprout and crushed it, ground it beneath its cruel heel. There was only the reality of death that they had expected all along. The Dark Stranger was the only god that smiled on them.

There remained, though, one final “room” in this odd cave for them to explore, across from Ezekiel’s bedroom, and it turned out to be the most curious room of all.

In one corner of the room, jutting from the rock of the floor, was what appeared to be a smooth bar of metal that ran all the way to the ceiling. Their eyes were immediately drawn to it, and not just because the bar appeared to be made of a metal neither of them had seen before - rainbow hues danced on its surface in the torchlight as they approached, and one moment it appeared to be a strange, dark blue, but they would shift the light and shades of green would blossom across its surface, then yellow, swirling and spreading. No, what drew them to this was that they could sense the Art in this, sense the Art ancient and yet still strong, crafted in such a way that they could not begin to guess what it was for. They could not even tell if it was an intricate crafting or one very simple and yet foreign to them, all they could do was feel the reality of the power in it.

It was embedded in a smooth surface of rock in the floor that seemed as if it had almost been carved and polished, table-like, so that it stood a few feet above the floor, and part of that smooth surface dipped down into a rounded basin, inlaid with swirls, as if it had been pressed there by a giant’s thumb. It was filled with a murky liquid that looked almost like shimmering, blossoming storm clouds, and the Art was in that as well, and it seemed almost that it called to them, demanding of them that it be used. The strength of it was such that it drove the memory of what they had seen just moments before from their mind, the bones, the sorry bones were forgotten. This was glory in the Art. And yet to those who could not feel such things, it may seem like not much else other than a strange metal bar and a pool of dirty water. Odd, odd enough to rouse interest, but not much else.

“I have never seen anything like this before,” Elyse said breathlessly, her voice full of wonder. Despite where they were, what they had seen, she could not stop a smile from touching her lips, her mind fogged by the ecstasy of the Art.

Martimeos was smiling as well. “This must be one of the ancient relics of the Art that was spoken of.” He felt a sudden, shocking jealousy run through him. Ezekiel had a find such as this all to himself? The sheer good fortune of the man seemed almost unfair. But then the thought of Ezekiel reminded him where he was. The man hadn’t had good fortune, had he. His workings with the Art had turned him into a glimmerling, and now he was doomed and damned. Martimeos tore his eyes from the metal bar to examine the rest of the cave.

It seemed that Ezekiel had taken great care to clear out this room, perhaps most of all out of any portion of the cave, even more so than his bedroom. If indeed it had been the work of Ezekiel here at all.The broken stumps of stalactites dotted the ceiling, and in many places the floor seemed strangely smooth, flat and polished, much like the stone that the Art-drenched bar rose from, a stark contrast to every other part of the cave. With just a little more work, this would seem a room carved from stone, with barely any sign that it had once been a cave at all. Iron sconces had even been drilled into the walls, and when they each set their torches into one of these, the room seemed almost civilized.

Along one wall, a section of this flat stone rose above the floor a few feet to make another table, and another plain, simple chair stood before it. And on the table, next to an inkpot and quill, lay a book. Leaving the witch still staring at the strange bar, Martimeos crossed the room to pick the book up. It was large, vellum bound in soft leather, and as he turned the pages, briefly looking over the script, he realized it had served as a journal of sorts for Ezekiel. Here, the man had scribbled notes on the Art, less organized than in the treatise bound in the other room. He saw scraps referring to the bar that lay in this very room, or as Ezekiel had called it, ‘the beam’, calling it a ‘beam between worlds’. It was this that had convinced the man that he might travel to other worlds, if only he could unravel the mysteries of the thing. It was interesting, but Martimeos ignored it the moment that he realized what else Ezekiel had used the book for: to log visitors that he had seen.

He flipped through the pages, frantically, but he realized that much like the treatise in the other room, partway through the notes in the book changed into that odd indecipherable script. He flipped back, back, searching, scanning. A name caught his eye. His heart leapt into his throat. “He was here,” Martimeos murmured quietly to himself. “He really was here.” Ezekiel had left behind something more valuable than any wisdom or knowledge of the art. The man had left behind solid evidence of his brother’s trail.

Martimeos desperately wanted to sit down, right now, to read through the logbook, to know, to know for certain right now what it said about his brother, and a part of him said, why not leave? Why not simply leave with it, row back to shore, and leave Silverfish behind? You have what you came here for, you have what you need. But he ignored this petty and unworthy thought, and set the journal down for the moment. They had found much useful, here, much revealing, and yet the most harrowing deed was not yet done.

He turned back to the witch, who still stood before the bar, the beam, staring. “Elyse,” he said, approaching her, “We must now decide how best to lie in ambush. It is clear this is where the glimmerling still makes his home, and I think he will return here, at some point…” he trailed off as he drew closer to the witch, closer to the beam. The Art pulsed through the bar, like a heartbeat. Like his heartbeat. It was in him and of him, it joined with his blood. He had not realized before how strong it felt. Or had it felt so strong before? Had it changed? A dim sense of alarm rose in him, but quickly it was buried beneath the joy of the Art’s power that burned in his thoughts, in his blood. The colors on the surface of the bar swirled in the dancing torchlight.

Elyse was not actually staring at the beam itself, he saw. No, she stood staring at the pool of water before it, staring at the swirling clouds of murk, eyes glassy, lips parted slightly, and one hand tugging at her long dark hair. He followed her gaze, although part of him knew that he should not, down to the murky water. Only it did not seem murky to him, anymore. Colors spread across its surface like oil, spreading rainbows like that which stained the strange beam, and then they were not merely on the surface of the water but on the surface of his thoughts, as well, bleeding into him, spreading into his mind, and he had time for only the briefest flash of panic before this thought was obliterated, before all thought was obliterated, for the colors drowned him and he could not think where he was, who he was. He only knew the color, and that someone was there with him, a woman. Elyse, the last tattered scrap of his mind told him, before it was drowned as well. There was only him and another, a sense of such, and endless pools of spreading rainbows.

In the midst of formless color, for how long he did not know - time had melted into nothing, as well - but eventually, he thought, there should be something other than this.

I think so too, the woman-presence thought back at him. It feels as if there ought to be. This seems stagnant.

And even as they thought these things, the colors began to swirl and foam as they had not before, they became solid, folded in on each other, and began to form structure, shapes…

===***===

Elyse sat astride a horse in the executioner’s square of Cross-on-Green, watching the Queen’s men lead the prisoners up to the gibbet, peering at the procession from beneath the brim of her snow-white hat. Or at least it served as an executioner’s square now; it was the main plaza of the town, dominated in its center by an ancient oak tree, and normally it would be filled with traffic and merchants shilling their goods, but it had a darker purpose today, and it was taken up now by a creaking wooden scaffold for the pleasure of the hangman. Elyse looked up at the sky, thinking that they should hurry, because they were likely in for a harsh rain soon - it had been overcast all morning, but now the clouds were growing a very dark gray, almost black. All around the square, men wielding cudgels and shields kept back the common folk, a crowd of dirty, sullen faces. That was not a good sign. Folk who came to watch an execution in silence were biting back on their anger. “Shouldn’t at least some of them be cheering to see such criminals executed?” she muttered under her breath.

From her side came a snorting laugh, and she turned to arch an eyebrow at the man it came from. Roderick Kells was a handsome man, kinder than his harsh, lean features might suggest, and though he was getting on in years (his black hair was streaked with silver) he insisted on wearing his armor to such an occasion, brightly polished until it gleamed like silver, and a long white cloak without the slightest stain draped across his back. When he saw that she was staring at him, he met her gaze with cool gray eyes. “Cross-on-Green did not fare so well in the Queen’s war,” he told her, sweeping his hand out across the peasants. “See how many of them are women? They paid a high tax in sons and husbands, and I do not think they like to see more of them hanged. Or, at least, they do not like to see them hanged by us.”

Elyse frowned, and then nodded, turning back to the execution. More than just handsome, Roderick Kells was a wise man as well, wiser than many of the other nobles she had seen serving the White Queen. Perhaps it was because before the war, he had not been of noble blood at all. His service in the war had seen him raised to the title of Earl, and he had been given authority to govern the towns of Twin Lamps and Cross-on-Green and all the villages and lands between. A stunning promotion, and yet she thought it was likely not simply because of his loyal service to the crown, either. Roderick had a son, Liam, that one of the Queen’s daughters was completely besotted with, and everyone thought they were likely to be married. Their new nobility probably had at least something to do with the necessity of royalty avoiding marriage with those of common blood.

The Earl was probably right, too, though he ought to be careful with who he said such things around. Back when the war had still raged, the touch of the Queen upon the land could be less graceful than it was these days. Elyse still remembered when the Queen’s men had come to her swamp. She never knew why her mother had been so scornful towards them, never knew why she resisted so much. She could remember her mother’s screeches, though. “I have burned her letters, and I would never serve her! How dare she ask this of me!”

The knight-captain who had been sent to recruit her had not been best pleased with this. And though her mother had worked darker crafts with the Art than she ever thought possible - she could still remember the faces of the men she had felled, faces bloated and swollen beyond recognition, choking on their own tongues - eventually, she had been riddled with arrows and killed, and Elyse herself taken prisoner, though she was barely more than a girl, dragged off in shackles, weeping and screaming and afraid. They had killed her familiar, as well, her sweet Cecil, and that had hurt her far more than her mother’s death had. She had eventually been brought before the White Queen, though, and Her Majesty had grown grim-faced when she heard of the treatment she had been shown, and wept bitterly to hear of her mother’s death.

The Queen had ordered the knight-captain who had taken such violent liberties to be hanged, and then Elyse had been treated almost as if she was another daughter. When the Queen was not busy, of course - she spent much of her time involved with the conquests of the Freetowns of Dorn, and that war took much of her attention until it was done. Elyse had learned of the Art alongside the Queen’s seven daughters, sorceresses all, and had often outshone them - although she had learned not to outshine them too brightly. Cassie was kind and sweet, though a bit of a romantic - she was the one so head-over-heels for Roderick’s son Liam - and Leonora had been friendly as well, but the other, older sisters could be vicious, in particular Morwenna. Elyse shuddered at the memory. She had eventually requested to leave the Queen’s Court, and had said it was merely her wanderlust coming to her, but while this was true, Morwenna’s dark attentions had been just as much motivation.

And so the White Queen had sent her on a journey out across the lands, to serve as advisor and observer to the lords which now governed her newly-conquered territories. Roderick was the latest, and in Elyse’s estimation he governed most fairly, and yet still his subjects were too sullen, with too much anger in them. Still, she thought she could understand. Certainly she had been sullen and angry when she had first been taken by the White Queen as well. It had taken years of being treated as an honored guest to undo that, and these folk certainly could not expect this. It would take a long time of good governance for the folk who the Queen had conquered to smile when they saw her bondsmen. It was too bad that Roderick was one of the few who bothered to govern very well. It all spelled trouble, as far as Elyse saw it.

The skies had only grown darker now, the clouds blackening with alarming rapidity. The condemned stood now upon the gallows, five of them gagged and bound, as nooses were placed around their necks. Two of them were older fellows, lean and staring blankly, perhaps uncaring that they were to die - they probably had not had much longer to go before they would have been dead anyway. One was a weeping man who could not have been more than thirty, who stared out into the crowd red-faced. Another was a fat, sickly looking man, too pale, who seemed to sneer down at the Queen’s men with a perverse, condescending glee. But the last…

The last was a young man, tall and broad-shouldered, tan of skin and with wild, long hair that came down well past his shoulders, and though he stared out over the crowd with a seething hatred for everyone, including her, she could not help but feel that she had seen him before. His face plucked at her memory, but she could not think who it was.

A horn bugled, and cries went out for the crowd to be silent and listen to the word of the Earl, though the folk had not been making much noise to begin with. Roderick unrolled a parchment and began reading out the charges. It was not just any criminals whose execution he would see to personally, and so Elyse knew what the crimes would be. Treason and sedition. The two old fellows were accused of being spies for the City of Bells, out to the far west. The fat man was a cook for the barracks of the Queen’s bondsmen and was accused of no fewer than a dozen deaths by poison. The weeping man was not a traitor at all, merely a man who had murdered his wife and was set to be hanged alongside them. But the young man who seemed so familiar to her…

“Martimeos Cobblespur,” Roderick said, and that name seemed so familiar that Elyse very nearly interrupted him with a gasp, only biting back on her tongue at the last moment. “You stand accused of treason by arson, for using your skill in the Art to engulf in flames two field barracks of the Queen’s bondsmen, causing the death by burning of twelve men and the most grievous injury and crippling of fourteen others. Five credible witnesses have also testified that you have robbed graves for the practice of necromancy, and countless witnesses have sworn that you have trafficked with demons, against which you have offered no credible denial or defense.” The Earl rolled again the parchment, ashen-faced, and handed it off to an attendant before once again staring at the five criminals with the hard eyes of justice. “All of you, for the crimes I have so listed here, and for any others which may be as of yet unknown to us, have been sentenced to hang from your neck until you are dead. Please prepare the condemned for execution.”

“He is a wizard?” Elyse whispered to the Earl, as he rolled the parchment up. She could feel, now, the gentle patter of rain on her wide-brimmed hat. Small drops, now, but the pregnant clouds above them would surely open up worse, soon. On the gallows, the five condemned were being prodded to stand on top of crude wooden blocks. “This…this Martimeos? And he has not pledged service.”

“Indeed,” Roderick replied grimly, wiping the rain from his own face, and then shook his head. Even for such crimes as the wizard had been accused of, the White Queen had decreed that those who work with the Art might be spared retribution if only they would pledge to serve her. “I cannot say I am surprised. He very nearly set the gaol alight as well. I do not think such a man would ever keep to his oaths.”

But Elyse barely heard his words. She knew Martimeos from somewhere, she knew it, her mind just would not cooperate and give up the memory. But the thought that she might be about to see him killed rankled her for some reason, twisted her heart into knots.

All the men were up on unsteady blocks now, and the nooses drawn taut, so that once they were kicked out from beneath their feet they would be strangled to death. “Untie their gags, to give the condemned their last words,” Roderick called.

The Queen’s men did so, unleashing a torrent of cries for mercy from the weeping man. The two old men merely stayed silent, while the fat man would do nothing but spit in the face of the guard who freed his mouth. Martimeos, however, the moment his mouth had been freed, his voice boomed out across the square. “Fools!” he laughed at them, looking at the Queen’s men with scorn. “Fools, all! Dogs of the Queen. You would have done better to take my brother instead of me, if you could have. Now you have spelled your doom. He comes for you!”

The crowd stirred at this, but Elyse didn’t notice. It was all too familiar. Martimeos, his voice, his brother - before she knew it, she was stepping her horse forward, through past the men, towards the gallows. As she did so, the wizard turned to her, and all at once, the hatred in his eyes winked out. He looked at her, confused, even as the Queen’s men behind him attempted to gag him once more. “Elyse?” he called out.

That did it. She did know him, and he knew her, and she would not let him be hanged. “Cut him down,” she cried out, wheeling her horse around. Roderick was looking at her very strangely; all of the Queen’s men were, in fact. “I said to cut him down,” she snapped. “I will not allow him to be hanged, I will not-”

A brilliant line of crackling, burning light suddenly tore down from the heavens with a scream like the very air was being torn apart, and for the briefest of moments the Earl was a shadow ringed by blue flame. And then the light was gone, and he was a smoking corpse on the ground, he and the horse he rode on. A roaring boom shook Elyse down to her very bones, and her horse screamed and danced beneath her, only barely being kept in check. The rain, in mere moments, became a torrential, blinding downpour. Screams arose from the gathered crowd.

All was immediately chaos. Blurry shapes ran past her, ran towards her, but Elyse tried only to focus on the gallows. She had to get to Martimeos, she did not know why, but she knew that she must. There were more screams, desperate screams, screams of pain, and something out there in the downpour growled, an enormous growl, a growl that she knew could not be human. Her horse screamed beneath her again, and now she nearly lost control of it. Its hooves now splashed through red water, and to her right, she saw a Queen’s man kneeling in the street, clutching at a torn throat, blood gushing between fingers desperately attempting to hold it in. A massive shadow loomed through rain behind him - whatever it is, it must be as big as a house - and he was dragged away, and the terror in his eyes told her that his throat was simply too ruined to scream.

Elyse could feel the work of the Art behind this, and she knew it was her duty to do something about it, but for some reason it all seemed so distant and dim. Even her fear was a muted, blunted thing. Only one duty seemed real to her, though she did not know why. She must save Martimeos. She made her way to the gallows, water pouring from the brim of her hat as she struggled to hoist herself onto the slick wood. Just in time, as well, as a gigantic something ripped her horse out from beneath her feet, a hulking shadow that she only glimpsed from the corner of her eye before it disappeared behind sheets of rain, dragging her horse away, its shrieking whinny growing too distant, far too fast. She shuddered, only too aware that she had only made it onto the scaffolding of the gallows just in time. Whatever had dragged her horse away, whatever monstrous creature it had been, it had far, far too many eyes. She stumbled across the platform, nearly tripping, and the first rope she came across was nothing but a torn, bloodied end, as if whatever had been on it had been bitten clean off. “Martimeos!” she cried out desperately.

“I’m here,” the wizard answered, a few feet to her left, his voice barely audible over the rain and the screams, and she found him then, found him and took the noose from his neck, helped him step down from the hangman’s block. Something roared behind them, a roar louder than the thunder, but she almost didn’t notice.

She was laughing with relief, crying with relief, and she didn’t know why, she only knew that she knew this man, that it would have been bitter indeed to see him hang. She didn’t know how she knew him, but she knew he would understand what she said next. “Something is wrong here,” she told him, as lightning streaked through the sky. “I don’t know, I don’t know what, but something is wrong, I know you, don’t I? You know me, and…it’s all not right…”

But even as she spoke, there came the sound of boots on the wood behind them, and they whirled to find a Queen’s man, his white tabard soaked now with blood and mud, one arm hanging limp and mangled and tangled with his chain shirt, but he stared at them with a fanatical determination. “You’ve killed too many friends, wizard,” he snarled, as he advanced on them. “I don’t give a damn what dark powers you’ve called upon, I mean to see you dead.” In front of him, in his good hand, he held out a spear, and before Elyse could do anything, he thrust it into Martim’s gut.

Time seemed to slow. The wizard buckled over, blood bubbling from his lips, spattering against the wooden platform of the gibbet only to be immediately washed away by the rain. The Queensman twisted the spear viciously with a snarl of satisfied vengeance. Elyse thought she should be screaming, that she should be doing something, feeling something, anything in this moment, but she didn’t. She only felt a strange, preternatural calm, an empty clarity of mind. Something had caught her eye. The shaft of the spear the Queensman held was not made of wood. It was a bar of a strange, curious metal, colors dancing across its surface, even as Martim’s blood ran down it. She reached out to grab it, and the moment she did the world melted away with the rain, melted away in a swirl of color, and she was pulled…

===***===

Elyse stood on the bank of the great lake of Nust Drim on the shore of Rook Island. It was a crisp, clear day, and the forests which ringed the lake were painted in the breathtaking colors of autumn. On the opposite shore, she could see the settlement of Briselac, and the graceful fisher’s boats still casting nets and hauling in catches of silver fish which gleamed and flashed in the sun.

Suddenly, she felt dizzy. Silverfish. Why did she want to call the village Silverfish? It was Briselac, it had always been Briselac. What an odd notion. Why had it come to her? She tugged at her hair, then looked at the intricate braids it was done in, all tied up with voluminous silken blue ribbons. And her dress, too, long blue silk, and embroidered so richly. Had she ever worn something like this before? Of course she had. She wore something like this every day. Didn’t she?

“How strange. I thought it might rain. Wasn’t it cloudy just a moment ago?”

At the sound of that voice, all these questions quickly died down, faded away. Elyse turned to smile at the man beside her, looking up at the clear blue sky, puzzled. Martimeos, Aurelic prince, true blood descended from King Alain and Queen Serafina themselves. He was not destined for the throne - that honor would go to his older brother - but to tell true, she privately thought this was probably for the best. Martimeos cared far too much for the Art to pay much attention to his seneschal’s attempts to mentor him in the art of ruling. And besides, if he were meant to rule, he’d never have the time for me. She blushed at this thought, and then snapped at him, “Are you going blind? There’s not a cloud in the sky. Unless you’re going to tell me you’ve learned to listen to the wind for the weather.” He turned to frown at her, and she could not bear to look into those dark green eyes for long. Why had she been so short with him? “Perhaps if you think it might rain, we might head back to the manor,” she said, more mildly. She cursed herself inwardly; now she just sounded simpering. This damnable man. It was trouble, she knew. Real trouble.

In many ways, Elyse could not believe the luck that had befallen her over these past few years. If not for Fortune’s idle chance, she would not be here at all. She had grown up in a swamp, alone, with no one but her mother. And while her mother had taught her the Art, she had also been miserable and cruel. So cruel that eventually Elyse could not take it, and had run away from her, north into the lands of the Aurelic Crown. Her mother would not dare to follow her there, she had reasoned; she was a swamp-witch who had fled their rule in the first place, and Elyse had thought that she might find protection there from her mother among the many learned magi of the kingdom.

Still, she had never expected what had happened. Once in Aurelic lands, she had made camp in the woods for a time, plotting - she had thought that her best bet was to find a magi and convince him to take her on as an apprentice. She had only been hiding in the woods for a few days, living off of what prey her familiar Cecil could hunt for her, when she had stumbled across Martimeos, weak with hunger and hobbling along on a nearly-broken ankle. She had very nearly killed him, at first, worrying that he would give up her hiding spot, but pity had moved her heart when he told her his tale.

The prince was a wizard, it seemed, and had found the life of a royal stifling, cooped up in his court, stifled by his royal retinue. Seized by wanderlust, had gone off on his own, if only for a time. In trying to avoid the men searching for him he had fled into the woods, and poor fortune saw him now injured, lost, out of supply and desperate. Elyse had thought him quite the pathetic figure at first, with his livery torn and cheeks hollow, but she had fed him and healed him as best she could with the Art. Lost and starving he might be, however, but Martimeos had a charming way about him. And somehow, his charm had pried loose her lips and she had told him her story. So when she brought him back to his family - and he would go back, she admonished him, he was a fool if he would not - she had not only received a reward in gold, but Martimeos had invited her to take up residence in his manor, on an island overlooking the great lake of Nust Drim. “I am sure you will have all the protection you need there,” he told her, “And I spend much of my days working with the mysteries of the Art, and two working it are better than one, yes?”

Elyse had taken him up on the offer, and she had to admit that whatever the prince lacked in common sense, he made up for with skill in the Art. And eventually, to sate his wanderlust, he had convinced his family that he should be allowed to travel with a small retinue, and she had gone with him. They had spent their time visiting the subjects and vassals of the Aurelic Crown. They went through the lands of Dorn, who kept their mayor’s councils even as they swore allegiance to the monarchy, to the lands of the mysterious White Queen, who ruled over the snowy, mountain-ringed lands of Nebeltal and was accounted a brilliant sorceress, and whose ambition, it was whispered, was to one day see one of her daughters wear the Crown of Aurelia. One of those daughters, Morwenna, had been quite forward about seeing Martim as a potential path to power, if only she might seduce him. Elyse might have been more jealous had the wizard not seemed so oblivious to her advances. After that, they had journeyed all the way to the town of Farson’s Pass, whose famous bard-mercenaries still prided themselves on the fight they had put up before eventually yielding and swearing fealty to the Aurelics.

The problem with it all was this: during their travels, Elyse had fallen in love with the prince. And Martim, even though he was not destined for the throne himself, could not be seen to court a commoner. Already had some of his advisors and attendants had talks with her, ensuring that she knew this very well, sharp words hidden behind the masks that the Aurelics made a habit of wearing when on official business. She could remember a particularly nerve-wracking discussion with his seneschal, a prissy, wiry-thin man, hidden beneath the stern silver-painted mask he wore and the severe black robes he draped himself in. He had given her very obvious hints that they really spent more time together than was proper.

Martim himself, the seneschal had told her idly, was a romantic, and he may not care if he threw away his position for a peasant, but all the members of his court would then have wasted much time currying favor with him, and that might make them very angry indeed. He was sure that she would not be so foolish as to fall in love with the prince, but certainly she must know how young men are. “I was once one, myself, after all,” the seneschal had told her, his idle, conversational tone at odds with the blank, unsmiling sternness of his mask. “Oh, we men can be fools, can’t we, especially when we’re young. It is so simple to capture our hearts. Young women, such as yourself, I have always thought they had much more wisdom. Certainly you would never be so stupid as to throw your heart at him! Our dear prince is kind to the commoners, but you are a very smart and cautious girl, I can tell, and you must know that noble and common blood cannot mix. Just do be careful with our dear prince. I will understand if you must break his heart a bit, though. Fear no retaliation from us on that account.” Oh yes, Martim himself might be ignorant of her feelings, but his court certainly wasn’t. Things had not quite escalated to open threats yet, but still, the stares and the whispers were there.

She had denied her love for Martim at first. She even tried to teach herself to hate him. Wasn’t he scatterbrained? Couldn’t he be obnoxious, the way he would keep secrets, or the way he occasionally lied and thought nothing of it? Wasn’t he a spoiled, soft prince who knew nothing of hardship, and was inconsiderate of her feelings - shouldn’t he know by now that she loved him, and realize the position he had put her in? It was no use, it had not worked. She hated it. She tripped over her own words with him, where once friendship had made them easy-going; her heart leapt when she saw his smile, but even more telling was the jealousy that burned within her. Watching the suitors that came to court him felt like a hot dagger in her chest, and she lost sleep at night thinking of them, despising them. The only solace was that Martim himself was blithely unaware of them, but how long could that remain true? Even if he never loved a single one of them, his family would look to marry him off to some duke’s daughter to ensure their loyalty, or off to some western princess to buy their vassalage. It is not fair. He is mine. Mine!

They had come out to walk along the shore of Rook Island, and normally when Martim invited her to do such they would talk, talk of the Art, of Martim’s concerns about his royal duties, about what she planned to do herself - the prince thought she may enjoy being a royal tutor for future noble children, an official attendant of the crown, but she did not know that she would put up with a stifling court life if it was not for him. But this time the conversation dwindled off into silence, as she could not seem to stop tripping over her own words - it even got so bad that the prince actually asked her if she was feeling well, and she had no answer other than to feign that she was feeling a bit feverish, so they headed back to his manor.

Martimeos had been gifted the manor by the lake lords of Hallic Nust when he had searched for a place to set up his personal court far away from the High Court in Mannus Aurum, and supposedly, or so the legend said, it had been built by the lake lord Tennelyan in an attempt to seduce the legendary Aurelic sorceress Véreline Valoir into marriage, centuries ago now. She had no idea whether or not this was true, but it was certainly very grand; winged arms with sweeping colonnades enclosing a large courtyard full of apple-tree orchards and a fountain, enchanted with the Art, which always flowed with clean water. Supposedly, there were caves beneath the manor which had once housed ancient relics of the Art, but those had long ago been removed and taken to the lands of Mannus Aurum, to the capital of Alderin, where the Royal Court held sway. She had heard tales of the glory of Alderin, the tall and intricate spires, so tall that they would be impossible to build without the use of the Art, and hoped that one day she might see it for herself.

Usually, the courtyard was full of servants, especially at this time of fall; plucking apples or drawing water from the fountain, or the hedge-mages which flocked to Martim’s court practicing their glamors to the laughing delight of young children. But the courtyard was oddly empty, now. Martim, in his usual distracted manner, did not notice - he walked along barely seeing the world in front of him, clearly pondering something. But it very much put her ill-at-ease. And the prince himself could not help but notice when he strolled in through the front doors of the manor and found the grand entrance hall completely empty. It was beautiful as always - the reliefs of Hallic history carved into the walls, the grand staircase draped in soft red velvet, and lit by dancing witch-lights which flitted about the ceiling and sconce-set torches. But the empty silence of it all made the opulent beauty seem too large, too grand, oppressive, even. It was meant to have people in it.

“How odd,” Martim said, noticing at last, once he was a good dozen steps inside. “Where is everyone?”

Elyse didn’t know. But a feeling of dread was building within her. They might have caught the courtyard at an oddly still moment, but there were attendants whose job it was to greet folk who stepped into the manor itself. Where could they have been?

“Hello?” Martim called out, and his voice boomed and echo through the hall, made louder by the work of the Art. “Where is everyone? Are you alright?”

While the prince continued to call out, to no avail, Elyse stepped around the hall, towards the walls. Something was wrong here, something was horribly wrong, something awful was about to happen, she just knew it. “Martim,” she tried calling weakly, then abruptly froze, and looked down.

She had stepped in something wet. Blood, soaked into the thick red velvet rugs, and hard to spot. The silken edges of her long, blue dress were stained by it, now. She dragged her eyes along, following the bloodstains that she could see, now, following them to a far corner of the room, tucked behind the grand staircase. A corner of the room hidden in darkness, where the torch had gone out. A corner of the room where a thin shadow she knew too well stood over the limp bodies of Martim’s servants and smiled at her.

She screamed, and turned to flee, but the moment she did the grand front doors to the manor slammed shut with a resounding crash. A long, cold wind from nowhere, carrying on it the scent of something foul and rotting, blew hard through the entrance hall, whipping her hair about her head, dousing all the torches, and above their heads the witch-lights winked out. A darkness crashed down upon them, hard, a deeper darkness than ought to be possible even with all the lights extinguished, a dark so complete that immediately she was alone with it, alone, alone with the shadow in the dark -

Through choking sobs, she worked her Art and crafted a witch-light, a little dancing ball of blue flame that was more glamor than flame, but it barely beat back the dark, the dark where she was, where the shadow was, and she screamed when something grabbed her from behind, screamed and tore away from it, her heart seizing with fear. But it was only Martim, a witch-flame of his own dancing above his head, emerald-green to her blue. “Oh, Martim,” she sobbed, “We must flee, she’s here, she’s here-”

The prince certainly knew something was wrong. He had his sword drawn, and all at once he did not look distracted or sleepy, all at once the mischievous grin that he usually wore had disappeared. He looked now as she had never seen him before, grim, ready for violence. He knew, certainly, that someone who worked the Art was against them, but he could not know how bad it would be. “Who?” he demanded. “Who is here?”

“Her mother, of course,” whispered a dry voice from the darkness behind them.

They whirled, and in the dark another witch-light bloomed, white and cold, and there she stood, with that same smile she always had, the one that promised pain.

Elyse’s mother was a distorted mirror of Elyse herself, pale and slender, with long dark hair. She might have once been beautiful, but it was as if a lifetime of wickedness and black moods had etched a mask of hate permanently upon her face. She wore a ragged black dress that melted into the dark, and her eyes were a gray as cold and hard as winter’s love, gleaming beneath a wide-brimmed, pointed hat.

“Did you think I would simply forget you, girl?” her mother went on. Her voice was sweet honey, dripping with false kindness, that Elyse knew could become bitter poison at the slightest moment. “My one and only daughter? Or perhaps you thought to yourself that the magelings of the Aurelic Crown could protect you forever.” The smile looked wrong on her face, and the snarl that replaced it seemed much more natural. “Idiot, imbecile girl. Your mother knows more of the Art than these clumsy nothings could ever dream. The blood of Alain the Dweomer grows weak.”

She was going to bring her back. She was going to bring her back and it was going to be worse than it ever was before. Elyse could not bear the thought of it; fear howled in her blood. “You died! You’re supposed to be dead!” she spat, as her mother walked towards them, smiling, smiling, the wicked promises behind that smile.

This actually caused her mother to pause, though her smile never left her lips. “Dead, girl? When was I dead?”

Elyse had no answer for her. Why had she thought her mother was dead? She was, wasn’t she? I can remember her death so clearly. She thought she could. She thought she could remember her mother’s last cursing words, but even as she tried to hang onto it, the memory slipped away from her.

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“Perhaps you wish that I was dead. You have always been an ungrateful bitch of a child.” Her mother was advancing towards them again, slowly growing closer in the dark, looking almost as if her face was merely floating towards them. “You had to have known that I would come for you eventually, Elyse. You know what you are. Did you think I would simply let you worm your way into the Aurelic court itself?” But then she stopped again, as Martim stepped forth to stand between her and Elyse.

“If you wish to take her, you will face me, first. She is under my protection.” All the warmth had gone from his voice. He had the voice of what he was, now, a prince with royal anger. He had never seemed so noble. Even so, he seemed to realize that this witch might be beyond his abilities. “And if you do still take her, I will do all that is in my power to hunt you down. You may be confident in the Art, witch, but even if you are of greater skill than anyone who serves the crown, you will not survive dozens of magi hounding you. Renounce your claim on her, leave in peace, and I will not pursue you for this assault.”

Elyse watched as her mother stared, with that awful smile growing wider, and she knew, she knew then that they must flee, she must grab Martim and flee, it was their only chance, but it was as if she could not move, her fear rooting her to the spot. “What a brave man,” her mother whispered, her voice full of mockery. “What a brave man to so brazenly lie to a witch such as I. You would never let me leave here in peace, not after this. No, I must ensure that nobody really knows what happened here. Give thanks to my daughter, prince. She purchased your death.”

And then before he could even scream, the darkness rushed in and wrapped up Martim, solid darkness with claws and talons, and Elyse felt hot blood flecking her face, and then she was screaming as her prince lay ripped to shreds, to pieces on the ground, his face grotesque in death, so ruined that she could only still tell it was him by the one staring eye even now fogging over, clouding over, and she wanted to tear her eyes away but she could not, could not stop staring at the red wetness that had once been Martim, and the bile rose in her throat and she sank to her knees and was sick.

“You did this to him, Elyse,” her mother whispered, as she stepped over his corpse, and the witch-light which followed her cast awful clarity over what exactly had been done to him as she did. “You and your foolish pride. I warned you, did I not? I will ensure this time that you can never escape. You have proven to me that you do not deserve the use of your legs.”

But before her mother could come any closer, a red blur slammed into the side of her face, and she was thrown off-balance with a curse. It was Flit, Martim’s familiar, his little cardinal, Flit seeking blood-vengeance, and doing his best to peck out her eyes. And then Cecil, her own familiar, her beloved cat, he leapt out of the darkness, gray fury itself, and he latched his teeth into her mother’s throat, and his paws, larger then any housecat’s, carved deep furrows into her face.

Elyse should have joined in with them. She knew she should have. There was nothing else for her to do. She would never go back with her mother, and her only hope was to fight. But she ran instead.

She ran. Ran, leaping over the remains of Martim spilled across the carpet, trying not to be sick. Ran harder, when she heard her mother’s howl of outrage behind her, and felt the darkness breathe and roar, as if it was alive. She felt the moment that Cecil died, the life crushed out of him, and she felt part of herself die with him, her soul broken in two, and in that moment she thought perhaps it would just be best to die herself. And still she ran. Blindly, through deepest dark, not knowing where she was going.

Only, as she ran, it seemed part of her did know. She found herself in the cellar, with the odd thought that it felt familiar to her, but of course it should feel familiar, she and Martim had been down here before, they had spent nights down here drunk on wine, and she had kissed him once but he had not remembered the next morning, oh, mercy, no, Martim…

But there was a part of her that cut through the pain she felt, that directed her to the stairs down into the caves that led below the manor. But why? They ought to be empty. Their relics had been taken away long ago. And yet she could sense something down there, sense the Art, sense it strong.

Up above, her mother was wailing, screaming the most vile, foul things imaginable, in a rage such as she had never been before, promising tortures that Elyse knew would break her mind and soul, screaming how she would force Elyse to defile Martim’s corpse in the most wretched, sickening of ways, and the sheer ugliness that poured out of her was beyond reason, it was madness. No normal woman would think of such perverse torment. She had trafficked too long with demons. I cannot go back to her. I cannot. I will die, first.

Elyse dove down the steps, into the caves, and the witch-light with her did little good, barely illuminating beyond the first few steps, and so she groped forward, nearly blind in the dark, feeling the Art grow stronger. She knew not what she looked for, but some part of her told her that this Art was her salvation, that it was the only way she might escape.

“You’ll learn what it is to live without teeth and tongue!” her mother howled behind her, close behind her. She must be at the top of the stairs to the caves. Elyse let her witch-light go out, and stumbled forward in true darkness, bumping into stalactites, some of which cracked and shattered with too much noise, too much noise.

Suddenly, the caves were flooded with light, like the light of a hundred witch-lights all at once, white and hard and cold, and her blanket of darkness was stripped away in an instant. “There you are, wicked girl!” her mother crowed, close, too close, and with a scream Elyse dove into the entrance of a smaller cave to her left.

A smooth cave, a strange cave. One that seemed carved and polished by the hand of man. And embedded in the rock, a strange beam of odd metal, on whose surface oily rainbows swirled. It was this that she needed, she knew it.

A low, mocking laugh, very close behind her, and Elyse dared, dared to look back over her shoulder.

Her mother stood there, on the threshold of the smaller cave’s entrance. Her face was bloodied, ruined, one eye now an empty socket red and wet, and Elyse was proud of the damage Cecil had done before he had been killed. “That’s not going to save you, girl,” her mother said, and blood flew from her tattered lips. “Nothing will.”

She may have been right. Elyse did not even know what the beam was. But she dove for it, and her hands touched it just as she felt claws sink agonizingly into her legs, deep into her flesh, and then it all melted, swirled into color, and she was pulled away, away, again…

===***===

Martimeos awoke with a gasp from a nightmare, a nightmare in which he had been torn apart by shadows, ripping and tearing him to shreds. He quickly patted himself all over as the fear still ran hot in his blood, wondering if he might feel wet wounds. The pain had been so real. There was nothing, though, and the fear quickly faded.

After all, to be torn apart by shadows was not so different from what he might expect in the waking world.

He sighed, and looked out the window, up into the sky. The true moon, the body of Nostra, was full tonight. And so was her dark twin, the false moon Oxxos, his body mottled and gray where Nostra’s was soft, silver-white. Red light, dead-light pulsed from him, drowning his sister’s gentle glow, and bathing the landscape in a dread red hue, making the shadows strange, making the world strange. The dead walked beneath the light of Oxxos, the dead, and worse things besides. Demons, and other creatures of nightmare. And Oxxos was full most nights, these days. He stared up at that red, pulsing light in the sky, from the dread moon. It is the end of all things.

He had been there when the last of the known fortress-cities had fallen, had been in the streets of Häddrgost on the night of slaughter, when Oxxos had hung so large in the sky it seemed as if you could see every foul pore in its surface and Nostra was nowhere to be seen. Häddrgost, with its impenetrable stone walls, hidden among the jagged, bleak peaks of the Demon’s Teeth mountains, could have withstood any assault from the hordes of foul creatures that now roamed the world, and which were occasionally herded into armies by fell wizards who sold their souls, who took the flesh of the dead, the damned, the demons into their own, becoming monstrosities themselves, becoming Gul. But what the invincible city could not withstand was the dead-light of Oxxos in his full wrath, when all the city had been bathed in red, when pale, blind creatures had poured out of every shadow, creatures with filthy grub-skin, creatures that were like a mockery of humanity, in the basic shape of a man but lumpy and misshapen, creatures who would moan in something that sounded almost like human language before they fell on you with gnashing black teeth, hungry for blood. Not just blood, they wanted everything. They wanted to crack every part of you open and feed.

Martimeos had seen his Captain, Ritter, go down, his throat torn out as hordes of the pale ones fell upon him and began rending and tearing. Ezekiel was dead, too, though he did not know how - he had found the war-mage in the midst of an empty street, untouched except that he was plainly dead, and surrounding him were the crushed remains of dozens of the pale ones, looking as if they had been stepped on by a giant.

But in the chaos it became obvious, quickly, that the city was lost. It was not merely the guard that was dying, either. Men fought their way back to their homes through the streets only to find that their families had been torn apart and devoured behind their backs. Martimeos had seen men go mad at that realization. He himself had nearly been subject to that cursed fate, but Fortune had smiled upon him. He was one of the lucky few who had made it in time. He sighed, looking down to the woman sleeping fitfully next to him, gently brushing a strand of her golden blonde hair. He had managed to save his wife, his sweet golden-haired Vivian. He could not let these dark thoughts take him. It did not matter if it was the end of the world, he had to hold on for her.

The retreat from Häddrgost had been nearly as much as a slaughter as the fight for it had been. Any semblance of military order had broken down, and it became bands of men fighting for themselves, fighting to get their families free, though how free could they be? Even those who made their way outside the city walls, free from the pale ones, were now in the midst of the howling blizzards of the Demon’s Teeth mountains. And every part of the world was dangerous, wicked creatures lurked everywhere. In the high peaks there was the pendergrast, the white-furred stalker which looked like nothing more than a fat, furry, man-sized snake, which would lay beneath the snow and tear off your leg when you stepped on it, and the giant ogres who had a taste for human flesh. Most of Häddrgost had died in the streets, and he was certain most of those who had not had died in the peaks. There had been others, traveling with them, when they had first fled. It was just him and Vivian now. And they lived, only just barely, because of his skill with the Art. Martimeos wondered, numbly, whether his brother yet lived. He had always been much more skilled with the Art, and yet sometimes, skill was not what mattered. Sometimes it was sheer dumb luck.

It had been an eternity of fleeing, and it had made Martimeos appreciate, in a way he never had in his life holed up defending Häddrgost, just how empty the world truly was. Outside of the fortress-cities, the world was nothing but monsters. It was all horror. They had run across endless plains where gigantic birds, with wingspans as wide as a house, had hunted frothing bull-sized dogs, misshapen and deformed and covered in tumors, only they could not have been dogs because their long, lolling tongues were covered in razor-sharp, rasping teeth, and he had seen them devouring boulders just by licking them, scoring the stone smooth with those tongues, and he could not imagine what they might do to flesh. They had come to the shores of a vast, black lake, and seen flashes of something pale swimming beneath the surface, something pale and covered in faces that looked oddly human, too human, which sounded too human when they cried out, pale tendrils of flesh covered with wriggling human fingers, grasping human hands that would splash above the surface to moan in torment before disappearing back beneath.

They had survived on an hour or two of sleep at a time, always ready to run, eating whatever they could hunt or forage, no matter how vile or despicable. Even the plants in the wilds were putrid, corrupt. He had considered, at that time, whether it might be better mercy if he and Vivian might just end it all on their own terms. A voice had whispered to him in the night, calling itself Ysonne, an ancient goddess from before the time when the world had gone wrong, and told him that she could offer mercy to them both, if only they would have the courage to open their own veins, and the voice had been very tempting. The last of the fortress-cities was broken, they had nowhere to go, and they met no-one on the road. For all they knew, they might be the last humans in a world of nightmare. The aimless fleeing had seemed like it would last forever. Until…

“Are you awake?”

Martimeos turned. There, against the thick-log walls of the home they slept in, sat Elyse, her hair long and wild and matted with mud, filthy and naked and uncaring of such. She watched him intently, her strange blue eyes gleaming with Oxxos’ red light.

It had seemed like it would all last forever until they had come across Elyse’s swamp. Martimeos had felt the Art at work there well before they crossed into it, a strong and complicated crafting of it that sank into the very land, something keeping it pure, and indeed he and Vivian had found it to be a bastion of normalcy. No demons prowled, and while it was a swamp, of course, the waters and the vegetation did not seem so corrupted and foul. It was a bastion of sanity in the monstrous, wicked world they lived in.

And Elyse was the wild, primitive witch that lived in it, so far removed from human contact that the only clothes she bothered to wear were bone-carved necklaces that she made herself, or a small loincloth, or more often nothing at all. Her shamelessness did not bother him - he had seen too much, too awful to care whether she covered herself - but he did not know how she stood the cold. It was nearing winter now, and if it were not for the flame of the Art that he used to enchant their clothes, he and Vivian might well freeze, but Elyse did not seem to care at all. If it was some trick of the Art that kept her warm, he could not see what it was.

According to the swamp-witch, it had been her mother which had so enchanted the swamp, crafting her Art to repel the corrupting influence of Oxxos, at least as much as it could be. Demons would not step foot here, so the witch claimed, and the dead would keep their rest. When he asked Elyse how her mother had come to be here, though, she merely shrugged. She did not know, she said; she had been born and raised in the swamp, and her mother had not told her anything before she had died of illness a few winters back. The only truth she had left her daughter with was that the outside world was doomed.

“I am,” he answered the witch, softly, as to not wake his wife. “What is it?”

Elyse was quiet for a moment, pulling at her knotted and matted hair, her eyes flicking to the slumbering form of Vivian. “Come with me,” she said, standing. “You and I, we must talk.”

Curious, Martimeos followed after the witch as she left, leaving out the primitive drapes of hides that served as a door for the small, moss-covered log cabin she lived in, built on one of the few dry patches of land in the swamp. He hesitated for a moment before going out, casting one look back at Vivian, still sleeping, breathing shallowly on the hard packed dirt of the cabin’s floor. They had been here long enough that he did not fear for her safety, leaving her alone - whatever enchantments Elyse’s mother had crafted, they held true - but still, he was nervous to have her out of his sight. But with a sigh, he lifted up the hideskin door and stepped outside.

The full light of Oxxos beat down on him, the moment he did, the red light oppressive, heavy somehow, and he felt filthy the moment it touched his skin. It was a constant reminder of what had happened, a memory of the bloody night when Häddrgost fell, lost forever, the last bastion of humanity that he knew, gone. And there had always been whispers that the simple light of Oxxos itself was deadly. Some of the mad sages spoke - or, they had spoken - of a time before Oxxos hung in the sky, when men lived longer lives. Now, folk could expect to live long enough to sire children, but to live much past forty years of age was rare. The flesh would begin to swell into hard, knotted tumors, to putrify, and most chose to take their own lives rather than suffer this horror. Had chosen. He may be the last one able to make that choice.

Thankfully, the witch herself seemed to dislike the dead-light as much as he did. He followed her as she walked swiftly to the comforting shade offered by a gnarled copse of knotted ash trees, trunks thick with lichen and laden with dry moss. But he stopped, suddenly, on the edge of the shadows. There was something there, something large, dark, staring at him intently with shining eyes that caught the light of the false moon.

Elyse looked back at him, and gave him a mocking smile for his hesitation. “Do not fear,” she told him, reaching out a hand to those shining eyes, and petting whatever lay there. “This is my familiar, Ulmar. She came back earlier tonight, from her scouting.”’

Peering closer, Martimeos felt his heart quicken a beat. Once his eyes adjusted to the shadow, he could see that Ulmar was a large, jet-black cat - larger than him, large enough that if it had wanted to, it probably could have mauled both him and the witch to death before either of them could do anything. But with Elyse, it acted very tame, accepting scratches behind the ears, emitting a low, rumbling purr as it nuzzled the witch affectionately. He had heard of such things before; the ancient, strange bond that some with the Art developed with the creatures of the wild. It had happened but rarely in Häddrgost, though. The city had had war-dogs when it stood, and cats for the hunting of pests in their stores, and livestock kept in fortified pastures well inside the walls, but these tame creatures would only sometimes choose to make a bond with one of the war-mages. Only two war-mages had such a bond when Häddrgost fell, as far as he knew, out of well over a hundred.

It must have been quite the scouting mission, too. He and Vivian had been here for a couple of weeks, and the witch had not mentioned having a familiar before now. At Elyse’s insistence, he stepped forward into the shade and placed a tentative hand on Ulmar’s broad forehead. The gigantic night-cat (or so Elyse called her) looked at him placidly, and then licked his hand with an almost painfully raspy tongue. The memory came, unbidden, of the gigantic dogs he had seen, with the rasping tongues sharp enough to scour stone, and he shuddered. “What did she see as she scouted?” he asked the witch.

The grave, somber look she gave him made his heart sink. “Keep your hand on Ulmar,” she told him quietly, drawing close, placing her own small, mud-caked hand on top of hers. “It is best if you see yourself. Close your eyes.”

For a moment, nothing happened. He could sense that Elyse was working with the Art, but the craft was too strange, too foreign to anything he had seen before to tell what she was doing. All at once he felt something seize his thoughts, felt another pair of eyes open in his mind, and he cried out, startled. He was vaguely aware of the witch holding his hand down, keeping it on Ulmar’s forehead, and then through these new eyes in his mind, he saw, he more than saw, he felt, tasted…

Tasted the acrid sting of black-blood, putrid blood on her tongue, the blood of twisted and corrupted flesh, flesh too far gone to be safe to eat. Ulmar looked back at the pair of monstrosities that she had just torn the throats out of. They tasted like they may have once been men, but they were warped beyond recognition now. Bloated and naked and filthy, their faces a mass of bleeding teeth that seemed to grow from every pore. She regretted that she had needed to bite them. She should have let her claws do the work.

She stalked like the whisper of death through the shadows, through the high grass and the trees, around the shrieking congregation before her, a camp of the foul and wicked things. She crept very close indeed - close enough to see all - but it was not hard to avoid being spotted, as they were practically blind as they were, in the midst of their worship. The false-moon, the red-moon hung large in the sky, and Ulmar could hear the whispers of it - the whispers that men could not hear, but animals could, whispers which she could not understand, but she thought the demons and monsters must. They cried out to it now, more of the fat bloated men with teeth-covered heads, and others besides - black hounds with too-long snouts and whose paws were human hands howled up at it, and a creature who seemed little more than a gigantic mouth, a humongous staring eye, and stubby legs and arms tore at its own flesh in its ecstasy. Too much, too many twisted forms, too many to count, and they threw their own kind onto a roaring pyre, and exulted as they died screaming, always lifting their arms, if they had them, to the dead moon.

But this was only the start of it. This was only one of their outlying camps. She crested a hill, and lying outstretched before her was a camp of thousands, with hundreds of pyres belching foul smoke and the scent of rancid burning flesh into the air. She had stalked this army for days - had been able to catch its sickening scent on the wind for days before she actually came across it. And she had seen its leader, as well. You might have thought her a woman, at first, if it were not for the fact that she were impossibly tall, towering well over twice the height of any normal woman and the skin of her face far too waxy and pale to be truly living. She wore long, draping robes of snow-white that covered most of her body, and a long, cruel, spiked silver crown. Ulmar had seen her part those robes, once, and had seen that beneath her topmost face she had an entire stack of faces for a neck, five at the least, and perhaps even more. They had cried out, crowing, singing, and Ulmar had been with Elyse long enough to know that there had been the Art in those words.

It was bad. The path this army took headed straight for the swamp. There had been times before when hordes of such creatures had passed nearby, but never before had one headed so directly in the direction of Elyse’s abode. There was still time for them to change course. Still time. But a warning must be given. Licking the back of her paws, Ulmar slinked away, away, back to chart the journey home.

Martimeos gasped as the sight was taken away from him, wrenched away, and dizziness washed over him. He nearly fell before the witch steadied him, but he had no time for this weakness. He knew well the urgency of this vision. What Ulmar had seen was an army led by one of the Gul, and what was more, he knew who this Gul was, had heard of her in reports, and could be no mistaking it. She was the White Queen, or what she had become, and was one of the most notorious of all those who gave themselves over to Oxxos. She had been a mighty sorceress, and ruler of the fortress-city of Caerhyl, before she had betrayed her people to become a Gul and opened the city gates to let her own folk be butchered, using their blood to purchase her power. And then, nearly a decade later, she had put the fortress-city of Calais to siege and broken it, slaughtering its people. He knew of no other Gul that had done so much to doom humanity, responsible for the destruction of two of its greatest bastions.

He seized the witch by the shoulders, ignoring the growl this elicited from the night-cat. “How far away is she?” he breathed, struggling to keep himself from shaking her. “Is she really headed here? How long do we have?”

The witch only looked up at him calmly. She has the strangest blue eyes, Martimeos thought wildly, while the rest of his mind raced through the horrors that might await them should the White Queen get their hands on them. “I do not know,” she said quietly. “Mother’s enchantments, I thought, did more than merely forbid the demons to enter this swamp. I thought they diverted them as well. Never before have so many come so directly towards me.” She paused. “You…you know this creature? Their leader?”

“She is a Gul,” he replied, releasing her, his hands shaking. Ulmar pushed herself protectively between him and the witch. “Called the White Queen. Perhaps it is because she herself can work the Art that she is not so diverted by the enchantments.” He left unspoken the further conclusion, for he was sure that Elyse herself had already reached it. The enchantments likely would not hold if the White Queen were to come upon them. He put his face in his hands, drawing shaking breaths. He had to calm down, he had to hold on. For Vivian. Oh, Vivian. “Why does she come now? Why?” The witch had remained safe in this swamp for years, according to her. Why now, so shortly after he arrived, would doom come here?

“I do not know,” Elyse repeated again, sadly. “I do not know why, now.” And then: “Perhaps she came hunting you.” Martimeos drew his hands away from his face to look at the witch, and she simply looked back at him calmly, still, so calm for what she was saying. She shrugged, and gave no hint of anger or spite. “I don’t know how, or why. It simply seems odd to me that I should have lived here for so long in safety, but the moment I take you in, this…this White Queen should seem to decide to come straight for my home.”

“Would you like me to leave?” He did not think what the witch was saying was likely. Why should an entire army divert to hunt down two humans? Even if the White Queen had known they were there, why should she send so many after them? And yet, who could say. The demons and monstrosities who now ruled this world did things that seemed so often beyond reason. And if the witch wanted him to leave, he did not think he would have much choice. He looked at Ulmar, bigger than he was, with jaws large enough that they could fit neatly around his throat. No, he did not have much choice at all.

“No,” the witch replied. But she ran her hands through her coarse, matted hair, looking at him, biting her lip, and eventually she spoke further. “Before you, when people came to my swamp, I would drive them away. If they persisted, I would kill them. Feed them to Ulmar. Mother always said that outsiders would simply bring trouble. But…” she stopped, staring at him for a long, silent moment.

“Why didn’t you do so to us?” Martimeos asked her, when the silence went on for too long.

Elyse still did not answer, tugging hard at her hair. Finally, she said, “I feel like I know you. I had never seen you before, but the moment I spotted you, I felt like I knew you.” She paused for a moment, searching his face. “You specifically, Martim. I did not get the same feeling for your wife. Why do I feel like I must know you?”

He had no answer for her. Certainly he could not say the same. He knew that he had never seen the witch before, and had not the slightest notion that he ever had.

When he did not say anything, the witch went on. “Perhaps they will divert before they reach us. But if I must leave…if we must leave…to the south, about a week’s march away, there are many ruins; I think that long ago, it must have been a very grand city. Ulmar has always felt the Art there very strongly. I have no place else to go, and I think I should make my way towards them. At the very least, I could satisfy my curiosity about them before I die. But also there is something in me that tells me that I must go there. You may come, as well. I…I would like you to come.”

Martimeos felt numb. He could see the horror of the future, stretching towards him. The thought of what must be done had taken root already, and he did not want to acknowledge it. He did not want to think that the world might be so cruel. “I see,” he told her, his voice dead. “I see. Thank you.” Please. Please let it not be so.

Elyse merely nodded, and then she turned away from him, turned to look out over the waters of the swamp, and after a moment Martimeos left her, returned alone to the moss-covered cabin. The light of Oxxos was waning, now, as the dawn came on, but the dead moon was so full in its strength now that it would be visible even during the day, an ugly, dark blot in the blue sky.

He pulled up the hides that served as a door, and found inside that Vivian was awake, and waiting for him. He sat down beside her, cross-legged, and tried to smile. “Good morning, dear one,” he whispered, brushing back a sweat-damp lock of golden hair.

She smiled back at him, and his heart broke. She was so beautiful, with eyes the color of a morning sky. But she was too weak to lift her head. “Martim,” she said, in a painful whisper, and then grimaced and swallowed. “My love, my love. Why are you so sad, my love? Is something wrong?”

He could not stand it. Not long before they had come to Elyse’s swamp, she had fallen while they had waded across a creek, and gotten a gash across her right leg from a sharp stone. They had kept it clean as best they could, and Martimeos knew some herbcraft to treat wounds such as these, but it had not stopped it from getting infected. He had needed to carry her into the swamp itself, and now the infection was ravaging her. Even with Elyse knowing how to heal with the Art, there was little the witch could do for Vivian at this point. The cruel absurdity of it made him want to tear out his hair. They had survived for so long in a world full of demons and monsters, only for her to fall to a stone, to a simple accident?

“Nothing is wrong,” he told her, as he fetched his waterskin and brought it to lips. Despite the fact that they were cracked and parched, she could only swallow a couple of mouthfuls before she grimaced and turned away. “It is early still,” he murmured to her, holding her hand. She felt so frail, so weak. “Sleep, rest more. Later today, you must try eating again.” Please. Please let her eat. Please let the White Queen turn away from her path. Please.

But of course, the world was too cruel for that.

Over the next few days, Vivian slipped in and out of delirious fever, wasting away before his eyes. He stayed by her side the entire time, though rare were the moments when she could speak clearly to him, and for the most part all he could do was listen to her moaning, give her water when she could actually drink it. All he could do was watch her die. He begged for Elyse to do something more for her, and the witch would oblige him, but all the healing she worked with the Art came to nothing more than a brief respite from the delirium, a few moments where Martimeos could see her beautiful smile again, before she slipped back.

The thought of the approaching White Queen slipped from his mind. Nothing, nothing she could do, nothing the Gul did to him or showed him could be worse than what he was seeing right now. Until, on the fifth day, Elyse beckoned him aside once more.

“They are still coming,” she told him, without elaboration, her voice as calm as if she were announcing simply that it might rain today. She had sent out her familiar to scout once more, and Ulmar had returned this morning. The night-cat had not seen the armies, but she had smelled them, and known that they were still headed directly for the swamp, and returned double-quick, with all speed. “I will leave as soon as I can, I think. Perhaps tonight, even.” She stared at him, as if awaiting an answer.

Vivian would never be able to make the journey, he knew. And so he knew what his answer was. “I will stay behind, with her,” he told the witch. “I…I thank you. You have been good to us, for the brief time we knew you.” Will you have the strength for it? Will you have the strength to give her mercy, before all the horrors of the world come descending upon you?

The witch continued to stare, expressionless. “I do not know why,” she said, after a while, “But I feel that to the south, in these ruins, my salvation lies. I will live. I will, I know it. But you can live, too, wizard. If you come with me.”

What an odd, forlorn hope. There was nothing to live for in this world anymore. It belonged to the demons and the monsters now. “Thank you,” he said again. “Thank you. Truly. But I must be with her to the last.”

The witch did not answer this for some time. Her eyes darted to the cabin, then back to his face. “Very well,” she told him. “I think I will not leave until tomorrow, after all. Ulmar brought down a deer, and has dragged its carcass back here. Might you do me the favor of collecting some wood for the cooking of it? I must do some preparing, myself, and it would be good to journey with some provisions. And you could have one last hot meal, yourself.”

Martimeos was loathe to leave Vivian’s side, even for a moment, but he could not refuse such a modest request, not after all the witch had done for them. And so he took a chiseled stone worked into a branch that the witch used as an axe, and he set about gathering dead and dried wood from the old collapsed trees of the swamp, rarely if every having to use the axe itself, lugging it back to throw in a single pile. It was on one of these return trips that the witch grabbed him once more, and nodded towards the cabin. “She wants to talk to you,” she said simply. “Your wife.”

Dropping the logs, Martimeos sprinted into the cabin. He knew every word he heard from Vivian now may be her last. He found her there, still laying in the blankets he had wrapped around her, her hands folded in her lap, staring straight up at the ceiling, at the dry moss that grew through the cracks there. Her eyes shifted towards him as soon as he entered, and she murmured weakly, “Martim.”

She looked so wasted, so ruined. Her face looked distinctly skull-like, with hollow cheeks and dark circles around her eyes. And yet she was still so beautiful. And she sounded better than she had in days. He sat down beside her, and took her hand in his. It was so, so light. The gentle squeeze that she gave him, the one he could barely feel, was the best she could manage. “How are you feeling?” he asked her.

Vivian did not respond. She seemed to be gathering strength. “Martim,” she said, breathing heavily, “Elyse…told me. She told me…everything.”

All at once, everything fell into place for Martimeos, and a dark rage roared within him. The witch had betrayed him, she had betrayed him. He had wanted Vivian to die without knowing the horrors that came. The witch had worked her healing Art on his wife just so that she could die in terror. How sick, how…

But it seemed almost as if Vivian could read his mind. She gave a shake of her head, almost imperceptible. “Martim…go. With her.”

Here it was. The awful thought he had was approaching. The moment that he had foreseen, the moment that he had dreaded, was here, now. And he was not prepared. “I cannot,” he told her. Hot tears ran down his cheeks, but he did not care. “I will not. I will be with you to the last.”

Tears were in Vivian’s eyes now, too. They had known each other since they were children, and he remembered how awful he had always felt whenever he made her cry. He had to have done it just one last time, didn’t he. “No,” she whispered, every word a struggle. “I…want to know that you live. I want to die, knowing you will live. Please. Promise me.” When he was silent, she sobbed. “Please. Martim. Give me this, at my last.”

What could he say? He knew it was a promise he could not keep. But he could give her the peace of going into the night, thinking that it could be. “I promise,” he told her. “I will live. Oh, Vivian, my love.”

She seemed relieved, but words were beyond her now. The breath went out of her, and she lay her head back, wheezing. He lay down next to her, wrapping his arms around her, uncaring of her fever-heat. This awful, sick world. It had robbed him of her. Long before Häddrgost had fallen, this had already been true. All the moments they might have spent together, which he had instead spent in training, in endless harsh drills, in fighting the wicked, the mad, the corruption at the city walls - all so that it might come to nothing in the end, all so that the city might fall without him being able to do the slightest thing about it. All so that he might have to watch his wife die, so young. Had he not done his duty? Didn’t he deserve something more than this?

He lay there for he knew not how long, unaware of anything other than her. But after some time, he looked up, to find the witch standing in the doorway, staring at them. “What do you want,” he asked, his voice thick.

Elyse approached him, sat down by him, staring at him. He wondered if she planned on saying anything at all. “I am very sorry,” she told him, eventually. “I…she…” the witch seemed to struggle for words. “She loves you very much, I think.”

Martimeos said nothing to this. What was there to say?

The witch opened her palm. Inside it were three berries, black as midnight. “Gurmwort,” she named them. “It…give her the three, and it will be a peaceful passing.”

He looked at her outstretched palm. “I can’t,” he whispered. Elyse gave him a hard look, and he shook his head. “No…I mean…will you…will you do it for me?” She softened, then, and nodded.

He held Vivian close as the witch fetched a waterskin, and watched, feeling nothing, as she slipped the three gurmwort berries in between his wife’s lips, one at a time, and fed her a trickle of water. Such a simple thing to do, and yet he knew he would never have had the strength to do it himself. Vivian’s eyes fluttered open, and she swallowed, then moaned, and then fell back into unconsciousness. It would be the last time he ever saw her eyes with life in them.

Elyse left them, without a word. He stayed with Vivian, whispering words of love into her hair, whispering them though he knew she could not hear him, and hating, hating, hating this world, until his grief was too much to bear, too much to stay with, and he fell asleep with her in his arms.

When he woke, some hours later, it was night. The loathsome light of Oxxos filled the sky. And Vivian was cold.

He rose to his feet, slowly, carrying her in his arms. She was so light. Lighter than he had even realized, now. There had been so little left of her, in the end. He carried her outside, and he hated that red light on her fair skin, hated Oxxos, hated that it might touch her even now. He knew what the false moon did to the dead. He laid her body on the ground, and with the wood he had gathered earlier that day, he began to build a pyre.

He barely noticed when Elyse appeared, out of the darkness, with Ulmar at her side. When she spoke, he had no idea how long she had been watching him from the shadows. “You are burning her?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied simply. He could do no other. He would not leave her body there for Oxxos to blaspheme, to make her walk again, and he would not leave it for the demons and the monsters to defile and devour.

The witch nodded. Over her shoulder, she carried a tooka sack, bulging with supply. She was ready to leave. “I can wait for this. But we must go as soon as it is done.”

“Go now,” Martimeos told her. “I am not going with you.”

Elyse blinked, then stepped back, seeming almost shocked. Her eyes glanced at Vivian's body, then back to him. “But…did she not…she asked of you…”

“Yes. She asked me to go with you. And I told her I would. It’s very simple, witch. I lied to her.” Martimeos gave a low, dusky laugh. He wondered if, at her last, Vivian had even believed him. She had known him, after all. She knew how much of a liar he could be. But she should never have asked of him a promise that he knew he would never, never be able to keep. He could not live in this wretched world without her. He had no interest in it anymore. “Go. Go find your salvation. It’s for you alone.”

“But…Martim…”

“I said GO!” His shout echoed beneath the empty night sky.

The witch stared at him for a long, long moment. Her mouth opened, as if she meant to say something. Then she gave a frustrated growl, and disappeared into the night. Ulmar followed her with a flick of the tail. And that was the last he ever saw of them.

Once he had built his pyre out of dry wood, he laid his wife’s body upon it, and then used the flame of the Art to set it ablaze. Burning the dead had been customary in Häddrgost, and he knew this would not be enough wood to do the job, normally. But with the Art, he fled the flame’s hunger, hotter, hotter, blazing hot, hotter than any natural fire could be, hotter than a forge. He sank so deep into the Art that he was that hunger that the flame had, and he ate Vivian, ate her so this wicked world might have no more of her, ate her and left behind only fragments of charred bone which he scattered into the waters of the swamp. He would be with her soon.

He never let the fire die. He gathered more wood to burn, and would not let it go out. Vivian’s funeral flame would burn as long as he was alive, and he sank into the Art to know the flame’s hunger, sank deep into it, and did not sleep. The flame was the last that he had of Vivian, it was the last part of her he could hold onto. He had failed to protect her, failed to keep her alive, but he could keep her flame burning.

And before the end, his grief and the Art had driven him to madness. This flame, this holy flame, it was Vivian, it was his wife, and he let it burn his skin, let it consume parts of his flesh. When all the monstrosities and horrors of the White Queen finally came upon the swamp, he sat within Elyse’s cabin, scarred and burnt and searing, melted and ruined, with Vivian, his sacred flame, dancing on a small hearth before him. He listened to the approaching demons, listened to them as they came upon him. They knew he was there, knew somehow, and as they approached they cried out in the name of their god, the dead god, the unhuman who had come across the gray seas, who had damned the world and put the false moon Oxxos in the sky, the god who had bled and butchered humanity until this last, until they were nothing, until they were dust.

“HOO-LOON! HOO-LOON! HOO-LOON! HOO-LOOOOOOOOON!”

He heard this, and he knew that the time had come for him to dance with Vivian again, one last time.

And so even as the first horror leapt snarling through the door, the flame erupted, hot, golden-hot, eating him, eating the walls, and he was the flame, and he danced with Vivian again. He asked if she might forgive him, but she did not answer. She only knew hunger now, and soon enough, he realized, so did he, and so together they ate the cabin-wood, ate tree and wicked flesh and everything, everything burned.

They burned so high and so fierce that even Elyse, far, far to the south now, saw the smoke rising into the sky from their flames. She shook her head, and with Ulmar slipped into the tumblestone ruins she had sought, feeling there the Art, and she would find there a strange beam with rainbows dancing across its surface.

===***===

Life after life, world after world, the chaos of color would resolve into clarity and then melt away again, a cacophony of possibilities. And they were there, in each one, Martimeos and Elyse both. Sometimes they had known each other their entire lives, in these worlds; other times they were complete and total strangers, both of them brought together by circumstance, but with some vague notion that they must remember each other. Other times, they were truly foreign to each other, and had no notion of who the other was at all. Strange lives danced before them. Martimeos was a chieftain in the eternal horde of the Nudmen, great, sweeping tribes of horsemen who burned and sacked and slaughtered, and Elyse was one of their whispering, mad shaman, and then it was gone, replaced by a world in which Elyse was hunted through the countryside, condemned for her mother’s dark Arts, and Martimeos was the one who dragged her back in shackles. They were friends, lovers, bitter enemies, and so it was with other folk in their lives as well. And always, it would end with Elyse finding the beam, finding it and the world melting away into formless color once more, and for Martimeos, each and every time, it ended with his death.

Sorrow, joy, love, hate, worlds damned beyond redeeming and worlds filled with boundless promise. All danced and swirled and faded before them, memories of a thousand unknown lives filled their heads, and it seemed that it would never end…