That One Time I Went on a Quest

I wake up to a stranger leaning against the window.

His face is half-shadowed in the moonlight, a cast of silver upon which features indescribably perfect are etched on by some divine artist. Under those perfectly manicured eyebrows his eyes are abnormally bright, brimming with bloodshot whites. His Phalanx raiment, too wide for his wiry shoulders, looks more like a sarcastic costume than any disguise. On his waist hangs a duelling sabre with a blade of midnight black.

‘Come to the light,’ he coons. His voice is eerily high.

For an eternity we look at each other…then he moves first, faster than shadow. One blink and his face, that flawless sculpture, is an inch from mine. In the dark his eyes look completely insane.

‘Ah…it’s too late,’ he whimpers like a frightened child. ‘The fire’s already seeded. What did you do, little fool?’ He withdraws to the window, silent as a wraith. ‘No matter. We must talk nonetheless. There is so much I want to tell you…but not here. This hole is so insufferably quiet. Shall we take a stroll?’

With monumental effort I untie my tongue. ‘You…you’re Talukiel.’

With a flourish he places his right hand upon his chest, wrist tented up like that of a puppeteer as his fingers tap in a rolling wave, up and down, little finger to index and back again.

‘Call me Talu, for we are kindred,’ he says. ‘Come, let’s hurry. My friends are eager to proceed.’

Incredibly, he offers me his hand.

My sword is leaning on the wall to his right, just within reach –

A metallic ding, like tinkling glass; a black shadow zooms past my outstretched hand, and my ring finger does a lazy backflip and falls away, drawing a trail of crimson and tumbling to the ground. Then the pain comes.

It makes breaking an arm feel like a paper cut.

Talu’s gloved hand closes around my mouth and shoves down the rising scream. The silky material had been heavily scented – lilac. ‘Calm now,’ he chides. ‘Rarely do I sheath my blade unsated, but an exception I shall make. We’re like brothers, after all.’

I mutter something pathetic through his hand.

He lets go but moves the tip of his sabre a hair’s breadth from my throat. I lean back; the blade follows. I shuffle sideways; it follows, always at the same distance and not trembling at all. It could be carrying a full cup on its flat edge and not a drop would spill.

‘Out the door, please,’ he says, politely poking into the soft folds on my neck.

Pull yourself together. If even this little hurdle trips you up how are you supposed to face the Apex?

‘If…if…’

‘Pardon me?’ Talu sneers.

’If…this…’Blood rushes to my head in a powerful wave. ‘If this is how you’ll act then we shan’t speak.’

Incredulity is not a good look for him; it powders his face with an extra layer of crazy.

‘What did you say?’

With each word uttered the next becomes easier. ‘I…I feel sorry for you.’

Talu’s mouth twitches. ‘Such insolence,’ he whispers. ‘She has already perverted your mind –’

I interrupt him. This might be the first time I’ve ever interrupted someone. ‘I can’t think of a single good reason for you to be here. You can’t win. If you came to apologize it’s ten years too late. The only thing left is for you to die. Is that it? Did you come to Iborus to die, Talukiel?’

Talu’s face sinks, distorting his handsome features into the painted skin of an old crone. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Standing up turns out to be easy. A small warmth, the fire of a stubborn candle that refuses to go out, has taken up residence in my head; its presence is comforting, like the hand of some gentle deity. I shuffle toward the door. There has to be guards in the corridor; Tamara said she would triple the night patrols. As soon as we are outside it’ll be all over for him.

Then…why does he want to leave the room?

Words are still tumbling out of my mouth, and I’m not sure if they mean anything at all. ‘Explain it to me then, because I saw you four times at the Games, and you were awesome. I looked up to you. Everyone did.’

Talu grins as if his face is being torn apart. ‘Ah, a fan! How I miss those days of idle bliss – she took them from me. She took from me all that I was.’

My back bumps against solid wood. The door. ‘You were the one who ran away.’

‘RAN AWAY?!’

His foot kicks out lightning-fast; seeing it coming makes no difference. It crushes my stomach like pestle on mortar. A loud crash. Splintered wood fly everywhere. Doesn’t take much to break through the lock it seems – one flying esquire does the trick nicely.

There are dead guards on either side of my door, crumpled on the spot inside their armour.

Everything blacks out for a moment as my head meets the wall; pretty yellow stars burst into the world like so many fireworks.

Before I can blink Talu grabs my neck and coons into my face. ‘And now I’m back! This is the night, the night of our sweet reunion.’ He inhales sharply, and for a split second almost sounds sane. ‘I came back. Maybe she’ll forgive me now.’

‘No she won’t.’

He sends me flying again. This time the fall is soft, cushioned by a body lying face down. There are at least a dozen dead guards all along the corridor.

How…when…

‘Up. Come now.’

The flat of a cheerful dagger slaps against my left cheek, its blue sheen ephemeral in the torchlight.

I get up, shivering uncontrollably. Cold. ‘How…how did you manage…’

His dagger snakes under my chin, forcing my eyes to the ceiling. His mouth is pressed up against my ear and his breath smells like pungent roses. ‘Ask me more questions, please! We’ve time yet before the end, so ask away!’

‘You know, that’s the first time anyone has ever said that to me.’

The pommel of his sabre stabs at a point just below my armpit, sending up a wave of nervous pain. ‘Walk, my dear. We’re going to have so much fun.’

The first person to run into us is Kathanhiel’s maid. She was trotting up the stairs with a covered basket before turning around a corner into the last thing she would ever see. How brave she is, to be staying at Iborus rather than fleeing south on the ironclads like the other non-combatants; because of her care, Kathanhiel has recovered quickly.

Never caught her name; was too timid to ask, with her always politely smiling and bowing whenever I spoke. Now I’ll never know why she chose to stay, or whether she thought this esquire of Kathanhiel was an idiot.

Talu’s sabre plunges into her chest, all the way to the hilt. Her expression stays mildly surprised until the end, and as the basket falls from her slackened arm spools of colourful wool tumble to the ground, rolling down the stairs from whence she came.

I think I screamed. I hope I screamed. I hope I screamed loud and hard enough to tear out my voice so the crying afterward would be silent and forgotten.

‘I’ve spared her from the dragons’ wrath,’ Talu says. ‘She shall be thanking me from her hearth in the evergreen.’

Ah…I want to kill him.

One step at a time we descend, stepping around the thread like a line in the sand.

‘You’re dead.’ Words are coming through my gritted teeth. ‘As soon as the lady finds you it’s over –’

Talu starts giggling; he sounds like a hyena. ‘Do you know about the Stone Graves, my dear?’

‘What?’

’Of course not, these gutless fools would all rather pretend she’s perfect. On the Elisaad campaign she killed three hundred and twenty-one of her most loyal in one night. I watched. Was there, saw it. Oh – it had to be a nightmare, it had to be; the beautiful, indomitable Kathanhiel, turning on her people? “But she wasn’t herself” they said. They’d rather blind themselves than recognize the truth. We know the truth, Kastor – you and I, we know how the sword works. That’s why we’re so…imperfect.’

‘What…what are you talking about?’

Talu’s giddy grin runs from ear to ear. ’The Scouring. I’ll show you what it’s really like. All it’ll take is a few choice words.’ His hot breath spits onto my face. ‘You need only to watch.’

The first landing, consisting of various archives, is completely deserted. Through the window opposite I could see the inner courtyard and the refinery behind it, both lit bright as day. If the patrols on the inner wall raised their heads by a fraction they would spot us, but their eyes, understandably, are trained on the horizon, looking for enemies from without.

Talu’s dagger leans hard into my neck. ‘There is a hole in her,’ he whispers. ‘You, me, all the fools in this little castle, we throw ourselves into it as if our petty lives could fill it, but no, no no no no no no no, doesn’t work like that. She doesn’t care about us.’

Down another flight of stairs we go. The next landing leads to the barracks – which is full of soldiers – yet Talu isn’t slowing down; seems like he can’t stop talking either. ’She begged me to be her esquire, did you know that? On her knees in front of the King and the court, she begged me to be her esquire. Begged. And at first I refused. I told her that the King’s Marshall, the Champion of the Games, shall not be indentured under a little girl playing dragon slayer.’

He stops, the tip of his sculpted nose pressing into my ear.

‘You know why I changed my mind? You want to know? You need but ask and I’ll tell you.’ His tongue runs away before I could reply. ’I wanted all of it I wanted her the sword the mantle of slayer the adoration the fame the cheering of a rapturous crowd as I return victorious with the head of Elisaad mounted atop my golden chariot – all of it, but you see you see the sweet tragedy of her pretty face made me blind they made her look like a saint. Without the dragon fire and her asinine prettiness she is broken! Broken because in her stubborn little head she sees only the face of the dead!’

Around a corner we turn, and the landing is directly below us, not twenty steps away. Two guards are standing by the bottom of the stairs, facing the other way. I yell for help without thinking, the cry of a lamb in the butcher’s shop. They turn around and look straight at me.

Then, putting their hands upon their chests, fingers all tented up, they bow.

‘To your places,’ to them Talu says.

Seconds after these two disappear down the corridor, the first real soldier steps out of the barracks: a young woman with a broken arm set in a sling and a set of Phalanx raiment slung over the other shoulder.

She’s moving in the opposite direction, but something – a tingling on the back of the neck, maybe – makes her look toward the stairs. Her eyes meet mine, and for the longest moment she doesn’t seem to know what she’s looking at.

‘Kastor?’

She calls my name. It feels good to be remembered, circumstances notwithstanding. Talu doesn’t stop me from speaking; I could smell the grin on his face.

‘Hey uh…Talukiel’s here. Mind sounding the alarm?’

The freezing wind cuts to the bone. As the lovable hostage and the demented kidnapper snail across the inner courtyard, hundreds of soldiers follow suit at a distance. Arkai is being carried on a stretcher behind the throng, shouting instructions. Can’t hear what he’s saying at all, as Talu’s mouth is still shoved against my ear. ‘Do you feel it? She’s watching us. Why won’t she come out and play?’

‘There’s more of them in the barracks!’ I shout for the thirteenth time, trying so hard to ignore him and failing miserably. ‘They’re dressed like the Phalanx!’

‘Yes, yes!’ Talu chimes up in a nasally caricature. ‘The Champion of the Games, heir ordained of Ush’Ra’s blade, has returned! Flock to my rallying cry, ye spineless masses! My disciples shall herald unto you the will of the Maker!’ With a flourish he stabs his dark sabre at the sky. ’Eustace of the Vassal of Lucia – show them!’

His voice, shrill to the point of piercing, rises easily above the wind.

Suddenly, a scream from high on the inner wall. A headless body falls from the ramparts. A soldier of the Phalanx is charging down the inner stairs brandishing a bloodied sword and shouting something about answering the call. The soldiers around him react; a brief, violent struggle, and he collapses with four spears stuck through his gut.

Muttered gasps ripple through the courtyard. Talu takes great steps toward the inner gate, dragging me by the neck. The soldiers barring his way hesitate for a moment, then make way.

‘Underwhelming. Had such high hopes.’ Talu mumbles, then raises his voice again. ‘How about you, Beatrice of the Green Isle?’

Right in front of us, not ten steps away, a sack flies into the air and spills open, letting out a cloud of crystalline dust – dry powder. Whipped by the wind, it instantly spreads out onto a throng of soldiers, many of whom are holding firebrands.

An explosion of white. If I hadn’t pre-emptively shut my eyes the flash would have made them blind; amidst the stabbing of thousands of invisible needles upon my eyeballs there are screams, dreadful screams, and the crackle of combusting flesh, of a dozen people turning to ash.

A shove in the back. Talu. But my legs are refusing to budge. Before a swarm of dragons they had worked just fine, because I had been scared and wanted to flee. No fear now. No fleeing.

‘What’s the point? Iborus won’t be brought down by your dozen lackeys.’

Talu’s dagger is roving all of my jowls, more erratic with every stroke. ’Point? Point? The nesting grounds, the Crescent Bridge, three months in the Stone Graves buried in claws and fire, the sound they make oh the sound they make when they’re starving, I hear them even in sleep they don’t stop the screeching is always there – but the sounds people make? They are various. They are lullabies.’

‘You’re not making sense –’

’NO YOU LISTEN TO ME! I had to leave. I had to. I’m not afraid I have no fear because I am Talukiel the Blade!’ Jagged pain; his sabre sinks a fraction into my back, enough to draw blood. ’But you know what that cursed sword told me, when she finally finally finally put it in my hands? It called me a coward. Me, Talukiel the Blade, a coward? Imagine such a thing. Imagine!’

I could picture the scene in my head: pressured by his insistence and her guilt for the Scouring, Kathanhiel gives Talu the sword of Ush’Ra, thinking that despite all appearances she might have found a worthy successor to her charge – he had stuck around, after all. The dragons, her Scouring…if those bitter trials couldn’t drive him away, then surely he was good enough.

The greed that must’ve poured from Talu’s eyes as she gave him the sword, as if he had earned the right to wield Kaishen simply by doing his job…

But greed wasn’t going to keep his hands on the grip. As dragon fire poured into his veins, Talu must have realised that you can’t pretend not to be scared in front of Kaishen: the heat, the weight, the all-consuming drain, and the mad voice of the Apex putting visions in your head…then having to persist through all that to fight a swarm of screeching horrors. That is not something one can simply decide to do.

The illustrious Champion of the Games, who had considered himself far superior to Kathanhiel, had to face the truth: that he was afraid. That he was, in his heart of hearts, a coward.

And the truth drove him mad.

Violent winds have ushered in a storm. Amidst the downpour the inner gates are inching open. Talu shoves us through the gap a second before they slam shut. Two men, laughing at the top of their lungs, fall from the ramparts and splatter not ten feet away.

‘Twins from Cressia, such wasted talent,’ he laments.

The walls are ablaze with torchlight, illuminating rows upon rows of crossbows pointed in our direction. In the middle of the massive outer courtyard stands two great braziers piled high with bluish flame. A lone figure stands between them.

The right sleeve of her shirt is flying in the wind like a tattered banner; in her left hand her sword is a blistering purple-red, the dying gasp of the twilight sun. Rain crashes upon its slanted edge and reincarnates as bellowing clouds of steam, shrouding her face.

‘At last, at last!’ Talu whispers, dragging me forward.

Closer now, close enough to see burning in her eyes; they’re bright with hatred, brighter than fire. Her lips are taut and bloodless. Her feet, planted shoulder-width apart, are radiating red-hot cracks into the dirt.

Talu stops ten steps away. He’s shaking all over, yet his dagger hand remains steady. ‘Ten years I’ve dreamt of this night, in sleep, in waking,’ he declares, ‘and here you are, looking the same as ever. How little has changed.’

Kathanhiel speaks, her voice flame-charged, polytonal and metallic: ‘Coward.’

Talu raises his face to the sky and laughs. ‘You hate them, don’t you? Why, then, did you flee from your own master?’

Kathanhiel’s body seems to expand. The brazier fires bend toward her like worshippers prostrating before a deity.

Talu is choking on his own words. ’How insane – how absolutely insane – that we’ve nothing to say to each other! Oh I know – are you still weeping for him like a broken-hearted little girl? You are – you are! I can see it in your face!’

Kathanhiel closes her eyes and slowly, deliberately, raises Kaishen into honour guard, dividing her face into two flaming halves. She speaks:

‘How I envy you, Talukiel.’

His eyes widen. ‘What?’

’You could come to me to atone for your sins, but I…where am I to go?’ Her voice drops to a whisper; she’s no longer talking to him. ’Are you still waiting for me, I wonder, at the window of your hearth, watching my parade of falsehoods? The hour is nigh; he who betrayed me has come to repent. Yet…this hate I feel…I despise this hate, for this is how you must have hated me.’

A golden bloom, a twisting stream of light ephemeral and divine, rises from her blade, spiralling up and up and up until it’s far above the highest tower and effervescing into the clouds like so many stars. There are no dragon Thralls, no roaring heads, only a great warmth radiating outward like a sun-chased breeze flying over the prairies of the heartland.

Talu recoils from the light as if it stung him. ‘You’re not allowed,’ he whispers, trembling. ’You’re not allowed to be like this. Not allowed. NOT ALLOWED!’

Louder and louder, with each more syllable shriller than the one before, Talu screams: ’Pour your heart into that dumb metal all you want, foolish girl! Oh yes, that’ll bring him back won’t it?! That dream is gone, Kathanhiel! He is gone! Kaishen is dead! Kaishen is dead because YOU LEFT HIM TO DIE!!’

Chaos. The golden light erupts into a fountain of fire, spawning thousands of Thralls. They rove in every direction, scouring the sky, the walls, slinging onto the towers and the battlements, howling like savage beasts. Soldiers are collapsing everywhere, clutching their heads, clawing at their own eyes as the Thralls set them alight. Scores leap off the ramparts and die smoking before hitting the ground.

Talu is laughing. His eyes as well as mine are trained on the little dragons but on us they’ve no effect. ’You see it? You see it don’t you, how little it takes to tear down her lies, how easily broken her body of ash?’ he breathes down my neck. ‘Mark it well: this is her true desire – annihilation. Death.’

He doesn’t see me shaking my head. I know this already, Talukiel, and I’m not going to despise her for it.

Kathanhiel takes two steps forward, levelling Kaishen and so many Thralls at Talu’s face.

‘Let him go.’

He inhales sharply, as if surprised. ‘Strike. What’re you waiting for?’

He probably doesn’t need me pointing it out, so I point it out. ‘Well, you’re holding a hostage.’

He barks: ‘She cares not.’

Kathanhiel’s face is a mask of unadulterated wrath, her sword braced in an overhead arc and ready to strike, her legs set for a great lunge…yet she’s not moving any closer.

‘No I…I think she does,’ I say.

Everything stills. The rain, pelting dirt into mud; the rolling thunder, distant and hollow; the soldiers’ screams, their minds incinerated by the seed of dragon fire….they fade before Talu’s hushed whisper, the last thing I hear:

’You. You…but not me?’

And his cold blade runs hot into my throat.