Chapter 23
In Which My Past and Present Have Collided in a Most Unpleasant Way. In Which I Have to Act Fast, or Something Terrible Will Happen to Me. In Which, through All the Screeching in My Head, I Understand with Horrible Clarity that There Is Nothing I Can Do but Wait for It to Happen.
Not even the burliest of knights can go five minutes against a thin-boned elf girl.
I didn’t last one. Glenda barely materialized before she was bounding down the hallway to grab me. Her hand closed about my wrist like an iron shackle. I wasted my last moment staring down at her stupidly as she strong-armed me through the closing portal.
We emerged in a church with a high tapered ceiling, resplendent on all sides with scenes of stained glass. In one quick motion, Glenda unsheathed the sword from my waist and stepped backward.
Knights crowded this place of worship, but I ignored them in favour of the largest stained-glass window, a depiction of God’s Descent in a mosaic of interlocking colours. Light streamed through it, splintering into a fantastical rainbow where it fell upon the checkered floor.
The sight should have brought me comfort.
I’d grown up under God’s many eyes. They’d watched me from the illuminated pages of my family bible, from the carved wood of our church altar, and from stained-glass displays much like this one.
God was integral to my upbringing, His shape as familiar as my brother’s hens.
Now, looking at the tentacled mass, the eyes that sprung from irregular locations like teenage acne and the red halo of light that kept Him in perpetual silhouette, I felt as the sorcerer must. As though I looked upon an intruder, foreign to my understanding.
For the first time in my twenty-five years, I looked up at God and felt only dread.
“Sir Cameron,” a voice called.
I turned to see a white-robed Elder walking at an unbothered pace between the assembled knights. As if I’d entered the church on a whim, and she just happened to recognize me.
She came to a graceful stop before me, unblemished robes gathering at her feet, and smiled with true kindness. “Despite your actions, we are not without mercy. We thought to give you a chance to pray to God in His holy house. To ask forgiveness, and ready your soul for its journey.”
Perfection! I’d recite the longest prayer in my memory, until the knights were rolling their eyes and begging permission to drag me out in chains. She’d offered a precious gift: time for Merulo to notice my absence and rush to my aid with a swarm of constructs.
Why, then, did the thought sicken me?
“I appreciate the offer,” I said, barely registering the words as coming from my own mouth. “But me and God aren’t on speaking terms right now.”
“Then I’ll pray on your behalf. Safe travels, Sir Cameron.”
“Thank you. We are traveling to my murder, but by God, let’s do it safely.” I dropped my bagged possessions, freeing my hands, and evaluated the pack of men before me.
Glenda moved to backhand me, but the Elder stopped her with a wave. “Not inside the church.”
This wasn’t like my taunting of the chancellor. I was no longer under the sorcerer’s protection. But what could they do, kill me?
As a pair of knights rounded on me, gripping my arms above the elbows, I heard my own hysterical laughter. They pushed me down the church aisle, kicking at the backs of my legs whenever I threatened to crumple, until we exited into blinding sunlight.
Why today? If they’d struck even an hour earlier, Merulo might have returned to see my unpacked belongings and wondered after me. It’s as though they knew the precise minute to best grab me, as if . . . Oh.
I really hated magic.
War-unicorns waited patiently along a hitching post, dapples and duns and shiny bays. I didn’t recognize our location, but assumed it was one of the satellite towns bordering the sorcerer’s territory, close enough to the prophesied killing ground that it made an acceptable detour.
With the prickle of swords surrounding me, I followed grunted directions, approaching a white mare with a curling beard. She was far shorter than the equine construct, so I could at least clamber into her saddle without much humiliation.
Secure in my seat, I slammed my heels into the unicorn’s sides, and shouted, “GO, GO!”
The knight holding her bridle regarded me with embarrassment.
A couple of the men laughed, but most looked serious.
Behind me, a slim figure slipped onto the mare and twisted my arms back painfully with inhuman strength, securing my wrists with a twining cloth.
While I struggled and yelped, the knight stroked the unicorn’s muzzle, whispering soothing words.
More respect given to the animal than to the man astride it!
Somewhere inside me, that last lingering thread of comradery snapped.
Seeing that I was properly secured, the knight handed the reins to the slim blue arms reaching around me on either side. I wondered, idly, if I could ratchet my head back with enough force to break Glenda’s nose.
“Were the Elders angry after you shot me?” I twisted around to look at her. “You nearly did me in, which would have meant no more prophecy.”
“Prophesies always come true, one way or another,” Glenda replied coldly. “I should have told you that from the start. It might have saved us all some trouble.”
That couldn’t possibly be true. I felt disconnected, as if I hovered outside my own body. But it didn’t have to be today, that wasn’t specified. I didn’t have to die today.
“Glenda,” I tried again, as the unicorn trotted into motion. Knights on sleek steeds fanned in formation around us, forming a cage. “We used to be close. But the way you’re acting now, it’s like talking to a stranger. Did I ever really know you? I mean, which version is real, then or now?”
The light fell in leaf-filtered dapples as we left the church grounds, following the remains of an ancient road. Glenda’s sigh blew the hairs on the back of my neck. “Do you really want to know?”
“Well, er. Yes?” If I could perhaps engineer a fall from the unicorn . . . I couldn’t outrun them all—but again, I was buying time. Better still would be a plunge into a river or down some crevice.
I craned my neck every which way, but the forest floor rolled out even and unchanging, no handy cliffs presenting themselves.
Fixated on escape, I nearly missed Glenda’s reply.
“I don’t feel things, Cameron. It’s like there’s something frozen in me, something that thaws at birth in everyone else. That’s why I take the Passionweed.”
“The . . . what?” Against my better judgement, I found myself softening. I considered sharing my own debilitation, the Fear, in a last-ditch bonding effort.
“Passionweed. It’s harmless, really. You chew it before a boring play to better connect with the actors’ performances, or at a party, to wind up the intensity of things.
People experiment, and they move on. They grow up.
But for me . . . it thaws me.” Her voice took on a dreamy quality.
“And not just to a normal level. I can surpass normal, feel more than anyone else.”
It sounded exceedingly unpleasant to me, like scraping off a layer of skin to better feel the breeze. Then again, her natural state was what I longed for—to be calm, collected, without the Fear astride me.
“I wish you’d told me,” I said. “Back when we were friends. There’s nothing wrong with .
. . feeling things differently. Or whatever it is you said.
But there’s absolutely something wrong with shooting me full of arrows and—and kidnapping me, and tying me up, and—and plotting my murder, and I don’t see what that has to do with personality quirks or drugs.
Glenda . . .” I was pleading now. “We don’t choose who we are, but you can choose to act differently. ”
“Oh, like you chose to smash my skull in with your sword? To betray the forces of good and order? That sort of choice?” Her hands tightened on the reins in front of me, knuckles prominent through her blue skin.
“Ehrm . . .” Around us I saw sideways glances, the closest knights listening in. Maybe I could use this distraction to subtly steer the unicorn, directing us into an overhanging branch. I’d duck, of course, leaving it to smack Glenda in the face.
“You don’t care about anyone else, Cameron. So long as you stay safe, you’d let this whole world burn.”
It was completely true. “Glenda, that’s not true!
I just think we’ve, uh . . . misjudged the mad sorcerer, you know?
” The unicorn snorted, ignoring the coded instructions I was squeezing through my legs.
“There’s stuff he’s told me, about the pre-Descent world.
We’ve lost a lot, and Merulo’s just trying to restore it. ”
“The prophecy doesn’t require you to have a tongue,” Glenda warned, and I shut up.
She, however, carried on. “You dare to bring up what we’ve lost. Do you have any idea how many men we’ve lost, in the weeks since your betrayal?
It’s a lot, Cameron. If you’d died back then—back when we would’ve hailed you as a hero—they would all be alive.
How many lives are you worth, huh? All those families without sons and fathers.
Is it worth it, just for you? You know it isn’t.
You can’t even pretend otherwise. So why? ”
“I didn’t want to die,” I said miserably, before remembering that my tongue was at stake. I tucked it deep into my mouth, as if I could hide it from her, and tried to slouch in a dejected, placatory way, so that she’d be surprised when I burst into action.
And when would that be? At what point would I launch my grand escape? We continued to not pass any ditches, gullies, or rivers, and the unicorn only tossed her head at my increasingly desperate squeezes and kicks. I waited for a chance, and a chance never came, and then we were there.
“It’s the statue,” Glenda said helpfully. “That’s how we knew the location. You’ll die in its shadow.”
The corroded form of the statue hunched over the swaying meadow, its features honeycombed by time. A light wind teased the grass this way and that, caressing its stone legs. I kicked savagely at the unicorn, hoping to startle it into motion, but it just shivered once, like a dog shaking off a flea.
Glenda slipped lithely off its back and, before I could seize the reins in my teeth and steer the beast to freedom, she yanked me down, hard. I landed on my stomach, the wind knocked out of me, and wheezed uselessly on the ground. It hurt, sucking for air while my lungs resisted expansion.
Then it came: the opportunity. My breath returned to me, while Glenda stood idly, waiting. Of course, in her elven superiority, she’d misjudged the recovery speed of a healthy human man!
I lunged to my feet and dodged past Glenda, through the soft cool grass, all my strength channeled into my pumping legs—then the world tilted, the ground rushing up to meet me. My chin slammed hard into the earth. One of my ankles felt wet, and curiously weak.
Glenda stood over me, holding Gareth’s sword. Its blade dripped a revolting crimson. “This is going to happen, Cameron. Face it with some dignity.”
I hopped at her as best I could with bound hands, but she easily side-stepped my attack. Falling to my knees, my gaze swept wildly around the men as I tried desperately to meet someone’s eye. “I was a loyal Knight of Order. If they do this to me, it could be you next. Please!”
Unlikely to be true, unless the Church started doling out prophecies like weekly bulletins, but I had to try something.
Pain bloomed in my skull. A force pulled me backward, and I rolled my eyes back to see Glenda’s hand clenched in my hair, pulling me through the grass to the statue. Ignoring the keening of my scalp, which felt ready to tear free in a sheet, I writhed, hooking my feet into uneven patches of ground.
“Please don’t do this, please! Glenda, please!” I cried. “Let me speak to an Elder. What Merulo’s planning, it’s not all bad, if you could please hear me out—”
Glenda stepped over my body so that she crouched above me. A shadow fell over us, and I mewled, small and strangled. It was the shadow of the statue.
“What you said . . .” Glenda pointed the sword toward me.
It dripped, my own blood falling to stain my cheaply woven shirt.
That’s right, I’d never gotten a proper one for my man’s body.
That meant another shopping trip was in order.
I could take Merulo’s arm, and pester him, maybe even kiss him if he got too angry with me.
Let me fall into that fantasy, anything to avoid Glenda’s unblinking stare.
“You know what the mad sorcerer is planning?”
I realized my misstep as she leaned closer, hushed and conspiratorial.
“You know the layout of his castle? The number of constructs at his disposal? His favoured spells? Which heretical texts he’s been bargaining for—oh, you didn’t think we’d catch Chancellor Noor for his dealings?
” She smiled, all teeth. “It doesn’t have to happen today, Cameron.
There’s so much we can learn, and I’m sure the Elders would keep you in comfort for the duration. ”
This was it. The reprieve I’d been grasping for.
“I . . . I can’t do that, Glenda.” It was the stupidest thing I’d ever said. “He’s my . . . friend.” Tears boiled, blurring my vision, and I cursed them. My last moments, and I couldn’t even see. “I wish I could, I so wish I could, but I can’t. I just can’t.”
Glenda popped something into her mouth and chewed, like a cow at cud.
The casual, almost vulgar gesture brought fire to my cheeks.
I locked eyes with her in sudden clarity.
“I hope he kills your God. I hope he succeeds in everything.” As fast as it arrived, my resolve crumbled.
“And, Glenda, please, if you ever see him, tell him that I lo—”
She plunged the sword into my neck.
It took two minutes. The sting of the blade, the bubbling of oxygen leaving me.
Glenda’s overflowing eyes. Rotten hatred toward her, wishing she’d move so she wouldn’t be my last sight. Batting a red hand at her, seeing her catch and hold it. Not feeling the touch.
Head tilted back, uncomfortably so. Wishing she’d hold my head, to relieve the stretching. A horrible hunger, gasping through my coppery mouth. Something I wasn’t getting. Something important. What was it?
White clouds in a clear sky. Soon there would be nothing, forever and always, nothing, nothing. Black swallowing the sky, how could there be nothing, how could I be nothing, please Merulo, help me—
My eyes were open, but I could see nothing. Feel nothing.
Soon there would be
Nothing.