21. The Weight of It All
Chapter 21
The Weight of It All
9 th Day of the Blood Moon
Temple of Achyron – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
It seemed to Kallinvar that he spent every waking moment standing at the edge of the war table, staring down at that stone map. He blinked, his eyes raw and tired.
Hundreds of pulses of red light – convergences of the Taint – covered the continent, Efialtír’s bloody hand tearing into the world. More than the knights could ever hold back. But the blanket of red that had previously consumed the Burnt Lands had shattered and splintered into small flecks, dotted throughout the desert waste. When Tarron had charged the tear in the veil, he truly had closed it and broken the tether between the worlds.
If you had done nothing else, brother, that act alone was worthy of a bard’s tale . Kallinvar drew a long breath. Wherever you are, I will find you. I swear it.
Small green dots were scattered through the red – the Knights spread across the continent. And around many of these dots were tiny pulsing sparks of white: the beating hearts of potential Sigil Bearers. With the entire continent at war, new hearts called out every hour, thumping in Kallinvar’s mind. Some lasted hours, others minutes, and many no more than seconds. It never ended. Even then, the thumping of a hundred hearts in his mind drowned out the chattering voices in the chamber about him. As one faded and Kallinvar felt the death of a weeping soul, two more burst into life, followed by four dying and one more emerging. It was a relentless cycle, one that left most of his nights sleepless.
He had searched through Verathin’s journal entries earlier that morning and found that his old friend’s experience with the new Sigil Bearers had been dramatically different to his own. The journal sat open to Kallinvar’s right, resting over the stone depiction of the Stormwood. He’d marked the page with a silver ribbon.
9 th moon – Year 2943 After Doom
I have not felt the beating of a new heart in over forty years. Not since Sister Vimia. There are twenty-four Sigils left. Twenty-four Sigils until the knighthood is once more at full strength.
Two hundred and sixty-one summers have come and gone since that night, and still it haunts my dreams. When I think back, I can feel the moment that each one of my brothers and sisters died. I can hear their last words, feel the fear in their hearts.
In one night, eighty-three of their souls were ripped from the world. That’s all it took. Just one night. And now, almost three centuries later, we still have not recovered. Are there so few worthy of the Sigil? Is there any purpose to it all? Am I saving these souls, training them, all just to be slaughtered at the rise of the next moon? Is that the cycle we have fallen into now that we have failed? Are we destined to be the wardens of the breaking of time? Has the end already been sealed?
I look back, and I see the entries of the Grandmasters before me. None bear these worries, or at least none dare to bring them into inked existence. Perhaps I am simply the most honest, or the weakest. Not that it matters. I will do my duty either way. Achyron granted me this Sigil so that I may stand against the coming Shadow, not yield to it.
The duty of the strong is to protect the weak. Pain is the path to strength. Though, I have felt much pain and feel no stronger for it. The others look to me as though I am something more. Even Kallinvar. He is twice the man I am, and he does not see it. The truth is that my knights died because I was not strong enough to protect them. Not strong enough in body, nor in mind, nor in heart. I failed them thrice over.
We are flawed, all of us, but I suppose it is not the existence of flaws that destroys us but our willingness to bow to them.
Kallinvar tapped his middle finger against the paper, clenching his jaw. Reading Verathin’s journals was like once more sitting with his old friend. Every word left his heart bleeding to the point that he often ignored them, preferring to read those of Telemanus, Uvrilin, and the other Grandmasters. Though none had ever served as long as Verathin. Most grew weary after a century or so and willingly passed on.
Kallinvar read back again.
And now, almost three centuries later, we still have not recovered. Are there so few worthy of the Sigil?
Why did he feel so many heartbeats now when Verathin had felt so few?
In that moment, he felt another heartbeat falter and die. Another soul lost. Another potential knight stricken from the world. Within a span of seconds, three more sounded in the back of his mind.
He wanted desperately to silence them, to give his mind even just a few minutes’ respite, but all he could do was clench his hands into fists and draw slow, calming breaths.
These are dying heartbeats of worthy souls. The least I can do is listen to them as they fade .
Valerian, Darmerian, Armites, Airdaine, and Olyria were all currently granting Sigils to potential bearers. Five granted the gift of Achyron’s strength while a hundred others faded into Heraya’s embrace. At the very least, of the Sigils granted since Brother Kevan had joined them, none had cost the life of a knight. Their number stood at eighty-six now. Had he more knights to grant Sigils, he would do so. But even if they had their full hundred, there would not be enough knights to do what needed to be done.
The Bloodspawn poured from every shadow, slithered from every crack and crevice in the world, and set fire to Epheria. Every village from Copperstille to Holm was gone. Nothing but ash, broken wood, and shattered bones remained. The same could be said of every settlement along the foothills of Lodhar and Kolmir. And with each passing day, the Bloodspawns’ attacks probed further and further from their holds.
There were only so many places he could send his knights at one time, only so thin he could spread them before they were overwhelmed. And amidst it all, they needed to find the Heart of Blood.
“What am I meant to do?” he whispered, looking down at the stone map. With every decision he made, thousands died regardless. The entire knighthood had stormed a large convergence north of Aonar not one day past. They’d emerged from the Rift into some form of Bloodspawn temple. The Heart had not been there, but hundreds of Bloodspawn had been, Bloodmarked and two shamans amongst them.
The knights had killed every last one of the creatures but lost five of their own. And while that battle had raged, more villages and towns had burned and more heartbeats had died in Kallinvar’s mind.
He had tried. He had done what no Grandmaster had done before: he had called out to all those across the continent, to all the new factions across the land, to Aeson and his new Draleid, to the elves… and for what? They all preferred to war amongst each other, to scrape and grab for every shred of power and land dropped amidst the chaos.
Aeson was so consumed with his rebellion that he couldn’t see how pointless it would all be if Efialtír crossed. What did freedom matter if it would be taken back in a heartbeat?
He had called out and nobody had answered. And with that he had come to the grimmest of realisations: the others would not fight until it was too late. They would not turn their gazes from crowns and vengeance until Efialtír stood before them and forced them to do so with his presence. And then, there would be nothing to be done except stand and watch the world burn.
“That is why you are here, my child.” Achyron’s voice sent a shiver through Kallinvar.
“And what do you want me to do?” he whispered in reply to the god, his right hand clenching into a fist. “You have sent me searching for a blade of grass in a field, a drop of rain in a storm. How am I meant to find this Heart before Fane or the Bloodspawn? With not even a hundred knights. And even then, how?” The rage built within him, his closed fist tapping on the stone. “We are stretched thin as ice. With every day that passes, we let countless die no matter what we do. And with every knight I send in search of the Heart, we have one fewer to hold back the tide. We cannot protect them all. We simply cannot.”
Kallinvar’s heart thumped like a galloping horse, his skin itched, and a pressure built within him as though he were about to shatter and break. A hundred heartbeats thumped in his head, growing louder and louder, each beating to a different rhythm. He scraped his nails against the stone table, the crimson light of the convergences growing brighter.
“I can’t save them…” His breaths grew ragged. “I can’t save them.”
“Breathe.” Ruon’s voice whispered gently in Kallinvar’s ear, a hand resting on his arm. He had not heard her approach. “Slow and steady.”
Kallinvar closed his eyes for a moment and reached his left hand up, resting it atop Ruon’s. He squeezed.
Ruon drew a long breath in through her nose, then released it slowly, continuing to do so until Kallinvar followed suit.
“You cannot,” Achyron’s voice whispered, Kallinvar’s heart quickening once more. “But you were never meant to.”
“You need to rest.” Ruon pulled her hand from Kallinvar’s, then moved around him, grabbing him by the shoulders.
He opened his eyes to stare into her pools of emerald green. Her emotions drifted from her Sigil to Kallinvar’s: worry and concern, so deep and strong it almost overwhelmed him.
He pulled away, instantly cutting the cord that connected her heart to his mind, the concern and worry vanishing. He despised being able to feel the emotions that ran through her. It was a violation.
Even though he could no longer feel the working of Ruon’s heart, Kallinvar could clearly see the hurt in her eyes.
“I’m sorry.” He cupped her cheek, then became astutely aware of the presence of the Watchers who occupied the Heart Chamber going about their tasks and pulled his hand back. “I… My mind is not my own.”
Ruon’s expression softened. “It’s all right. The weight of it all is too much for any one person to bear.”
“You must call the knights back from the cities and towns,” Achyron’s voice echoed. “Their time is wasted there. You cannot protect them all, and for every moment that you try, your chance of finding the Heart grows slimmer.”
“You would have me abandon them?” Kallinvar snapped.
“Abandon who?” Ruon looked into Kallinvar’s eyes as though he were mad. “Kallinvar?”
He stared back, realising she could not hear Achyron’s voice. “I…”
“I would have you do what must be done.”
“The duty of the strong is to protect the weak,” Kallinvar said, incredulous.
“It is.” Ruon reached down to the table and once more rested her hand atop his. “Kallinvar, come. You need rest. It’s been two days since you’ve slept.”
“No.” Kallinvar snapped his hand away from hers and shook his head, turning back to look over the war table. Watcher Adriahn came to a halt on the other side of the table, only for a brief moment, then carried on. “I’m fine, Ruon. Just leave me be.”
“The duty of the strong is to protect the weak, Kallinvar. But how many of the weak will die if you fail? If we fail? How many of those you are trying to protect will be cut down by your own inability to do what you must? This is a world of ever-shifting grey. You must look past the morality of an individual moment and instead look to what this world needs of you. Every second wasted is a life lost.”
“If I leave them, they will all die.”
“And if you don’t, the world will die.”
“I can’t just leave you be.” Ruon grabbed the sides of Kallinvar’s head and pulled him close, staring into his eyes. “Your mind is not right. You need to rest. Or so help me Achyron, I will put you to sleep myself.”
Kallinvar grabbed Ruon’s hands and tore them from his face. “Ruon. Leave me.”
“Kallinvar—”
“ Grandmaster Kallinvar.”
Kallinvar snatched Verathin’s journal from the table and strode from the Heart Chamber, not looking back for even an instant. His footsteps echoed in the temple’s massive halls, like Hafaesir’s hammer pounding against the stone, only matched by the beating of his heart.
“I can’t just let them die,” he whispered, throwing a sideways glance at the young porters who passed and eyed him askance.
“You can, and you will, lest everything we have done is for nothing. You will save more of them by finding the Heart.”
“I can’t… I just… No!”
“Grandmaster?” Brother Sangwen of The First stepped through a door to Kallinvar’s right, his eyes narrowed in concern. Uncertainty and a touch of fear drifted from the man’s Sigil. Kallinvar slashed at the feelings in his mind, shearing them from his thoughts.
“I’m fine, Brother Sangwen,” Kallinvar said without stopping.
Sangwen called out something in response, but Kallinvar couldn’t hear him over the sound of the beating hearts in his mind. The Sigil Bearers. At that very moment, he felt Olyria pressing the Sigil that had once belonged to Brother Tursen into the chest of a new bearer. The wave of emotion swept through him with such force he stumbled, catching himself against the foot of one of many enormous statues that lined the hallway.
A passing priest tried to aid him, but Kallinvar pushed the woman away and carried on, his hand twitching relentlessly at his side.
“You cannot ignore this, Kallinvar.”
Kallinvar moved through the corridors of the temple, Achyron’s voice booming in his mind, the heartbeats of the potential Sigil Bearers never stopping, his own heart feeling as though it were going to tear itself from his chest.
He swung open the door to Verathin’s study, barely hearing it smash against the wood and slam shut. He clasped his two fists against the sides of his head and screamed. “Get out of my fucking head!”
“You cannot run from this, my child. There are no choices from here on out that will be easy. I know you can make them. I know your heart.”
Kallinvar slammed his fist’s down onto the stone desk and swept his hands across it, sending pens, inkwells, journals, and all manner of trinkets smashing against the stone bookcase set into the wall.
“No…” He pulled two scrolls free of their alcove, trying desperately to wipe off the ink that had splashed from the shattered inkwell. Those scrolls had been Verathin’s. They were not his to destroy.
Achyron’s voice continued to speak in his mind as he dropped to the ground and rested his back against the stone desk, tossing the ruined scrolls into the shifting puddle of ink on the ground. He ran his fingers through his hair and pressed the tips into his scalp.
“Why did you leave me?” he whispered, staring up at the ceiling with his hands clasped behind his head. In his mind’s eye, he could see Verathin before him, that all-knowing smile on his old friend’s face. “You had no right to leave… We were meant to stand side by side when the time came… meant to enter his halls together.”
His memories returned to the battle at Kingspass. To charging as Verathin stood alone. To crashing into the ground when Verathin needed him. To not being strong enough. Not being quick enough. Not being good enough. And finally, to seeing the Fade plunge its black-fire blade into Verathin’s heart.
Verathin had died because Kallinvar hadn’t been strong enough to stand at his side.
Kallinvar pressed his fingers into the creases of his eyes, then ran them along his scalp from front to back, tears rolling down his cheeks.
His father – a man he had not seen in over seven hundred years – had taught him that men didn’t cry, and they most certainly didn’t weep. Men were forged by Hafaesir, they were wrought iron given life. Their duty was to be strong and fierce for the ones they loved. To be the immovable, immutable anchor. That was what his father had tried to be after Kallinvar’s mother had died. And to his credit, Yor Thrace had not shed a single tear that Kallinvar had witnessed. Not one. Not a red eye or a cracked voice. And for as long as Yor had not wept, he had not spoken his dead wife’s name. It was as though Kallinvar’s mother had taken every shred of his father’s heart with her when she’d died. Every drop of his joy and every sliver of his love.
After her death, he was exactly as he had said a man should be: iron. Cold and unyielding. Hard and silent.
The night Amendel had burned, Kallinvar had brought the man his moon’s pay to ensure the family had food to eat. Yor had simply looked at him, nodded, then left for his day’s work in the fields, leaving the coin purse on the table.
That was the last time Kallinvar ever saw his father, or his brothers. They all died in the fires that night while Kallinvar bled in the fields outside the walls. After taking the Sigil, he’d wept for days on end and spent every moment feeling ashamed of his tears – of his weakness. He had failed in life and then continued to do so in death.
“Even iron is tempered before it can become stronger,” Verathin had said when he’d come to Kallinvar on the fifth day. “We quench our weapons in water and our hearts in tears. Those who weep are those who wish to become stronger. This is the way of things, brother.”
Verathin had taught Kallinvar more about being a man in five days than his own father had in thirty-five years. And he didn’t think a day would pass in which he’d draw breath and not miss the man who had been a friend, a teacher, a mentor, a father.
“I could use some of your wisdom now…” Kallinvar looked around at the hundreds of compartments in both the chamber’s right and left walls. Each one was filled with scrolls and texts spilling out past their edges. He’d had a thought to tidy them, but he’d not been able to find the heart. Not all the scrolls and texts and notes had been written by Verathin, but most had. The others were things Verathin had collected across the years: notes, letters, poems, and texts he had considered worth reading. Perhaps if Kallinvar left all in its place, untouched, a small piece of Verathin would linger in the living world.
Kallinvar closed his eyes for a moment and pulled his knees closer to his chest. He sat there for a while, unmoving, until the door creaked open. He could feel Ruon’s Sigil in the darkness.
“Grandmaster?” The title left Ruon’s lips with the appropriate amount of venom. He should not have snapped at her.
“I don’t have the patience for a chastisement.” Kallinvar kept his eyes closed, his fingers tangled in the hair at the back of his head.
Ruon sat beside him, resting her back against the stone, her arm pressing against his.
They stayed like that, without a word, for minutes, not a sound but the patter of footsteps from the hallway outside and the occasional crackle of candles.
After a while, Kallinvar opened his eyes. Ruon sat staring at the ground, her gaze following an ant that marched across the stone. She drew a breath. “Do we mean that little to each other that you would suffer alone?”
“That’s not it at all, Ruon. None of this is about you.”
“No, it isn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s about you.” She turned to face him. “And there is no me without you. We are intertwined, you and I. Seeing you in pain hurts more than a blade. I should know. I’ve felt the bite of many.”
Kallinvar swallowed hard, wiping at the long-dried tears, his eyes stinging, a headache slowly thumping. “They all look to me. The same way they looked at him. But I’m not him. And no matter how hard I try to be, I never will be. I don’t know what I’m doing, Ruon.”
“You are obsessed with being what he was.”
“Because he was better.”
Ruon shook her head. “Verathin was exceptional. The wisest soul I’ve ever known. But you are incapable of seeing his flaws – of which there were many. We are, all of us, flawed. Verathin was too cautious and took little counsel. For all his centuries, he could not wield a blade like you. Not even close. But most of all, he wasn’t a leader of men like you are. He inspired with his mind and with his heart. But you… These knights – your knights – would do anything you ask of them. They would place their naked hands in a raging fire if you promised them it wouldn’t burn.”
“What are my flaws then?”
“Would you like me to start alphabetically?” Ruon smiled ear to ear.
Kallinvar couldn’t help but laugh. “Verathin built our knighthood back from the precipice of eradication. And then, with everything he had done, he was taken before the moon rose, and I was left in his place. I led our brothers and sisters to their deaths in Ilnaen, and for what? Tell me that, for what? Tarron is gone. Illarin is dead. Mirken, Daynin, Rivick, Lumikes. So many others. Dead.”
“And you think Verathin would have fared any better?”
“Of course he would have.”
“Verathin had four hundred years to prepare. Four hundred years. You know I loved him, Kallinvar, but what did he do with it? How did he leave us in a better place than we were before The Fall? He didn’t. He did absolutely nothing. He sat, and he read, and he learned, and he rebuilt, but he didn’t have the courage to reach out like you did. He didn’t?—”
“And what good did that do, Ruon? Where are our hundreds of thousands of allies? After I went against the wishes of so many captains. I would love for you to tell me, because I can’t see them.”
“You’ve had less than a year, in a time when the entire continent is at war, every soul grasping at whatever they can. If you’d had four centuries, don’t you think it would have been a little different?” Ruon leaned back into the desk and stared at the door of the study. “I understand you miss him. I do. But you can’t keep wallowing like this.”
“I’m not wallowing, Ruon?—”
“Yes. You are.” Ruon shifted onto her knees and stared at Kallinvar. “I need you back. Tarron is gone. Ildris has barely spoken in days. And you spend every moment lost in your own head talking to a fucking god. I need you back, Kallinvar. I can’t keep doing this alone.”
Kallinvar didn’t dare pull his gaze from Ruon’s. “He wants me to abandon them.”
“Who wants you to abandon who?”
“Achyron. He wants me to abandon the villages and the towns and the cities. He wants me to leave them to fight the Bloodspawn alone, leave them to die, so that we can focus on searching for the Heart.”
In that moment, Kallinvar realised he’d not heard Achyron’s voice in some time. He could still hear the beating hearts of the Sigil Bearers, but it was a faint noise in the background, like the burbling of a river. It was the most peace he’d found in days.
“And what do you think?” Ruon asked calmly.
Kallinvar’s jaw trembled, his hand tapping against his side, his skin crawling. He told the truth. “I think if we keep going the way we’re going, then we will all die and Efialtír will cross and everything will have been for nothing.”
“Then you know what needs to be done.”
“We can’t just leave them, Ruon. They will be like lambs. Thousands will die, hundreds of thousands.”
“But millions will live. Achyron has given us our task, Kallinvar. We must find the Heart before Fane or the Bloodspawn. What good is saving those lives, only to let them die?”
Ruon sat back against the table’s base and pulled her knees to her chest like Kallinvar had.
A silence descended between them, and after a time, Ruon shifted in her place, letting out a short, sharp breath. “You…” She drew another breath and shook her head, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You… Fuck.”
“What?”
When Ruon looked at him, her eyes welled with tears. “Almost six hundred and fifty years I have known you. There are mountains that have lived shorter lives. We have passed through almost everything there is in life. And yet, now, we stand at the end…” She tilted her head up and swallowed, her lips curling in a half-smile as she choked back a laugh. “Why are things like this so hard?”
“Things like what?”
“You’re such a fucking idiot,” she said, laughing again. “Kallinvar, you are my counterpoint in this world. You are the thing around which everything flows. It has been that way since as long as I can remember. Your company, your conversation, your heart. That heart that does nothing but care for others. I would have given the moon and the stars to have met you before all this. To have found you and held you…”
“Ruon—”
“No, shut up. It’s taken me over six hundred years to speak these words. I was always so afraid of destroying what we had. But if everything might end, I refuse to go quietly into Achyron’s halls.” She swallowed hard. “I love you in a way that physically hurts. I feel it clenching in my chest. I feel it in the way my heart aches every time yours does. And now, as I sit here, finally saying these words out loud, I realise how many nights we’ve lost because I’ve been too much of a coward to speak my mind. How many nights we’ve both spent cold and alone that could have been warm and together. I like to think there’s a world out there in which we did meet, and we had children, and they had children, and we died old, me first so I wouldn’t have to spend a moment without you. But that world isn’t this world, and so I’ll settle for every second I can get. I’m not scared anymore. I know you love me. I know you would stand by my side through anything in this life. That you would give the air in your lungs so that I could breathe. That you would walk through fire to keep me safe. I know because you would do that same thing for a man you’d never met, and that is why I love you. Because you are the single greatest soul I have ever known in this horrible, bloody, godsforsaken world. You sit around and wallow and think that the best of us died with Verathin, but you are wrong. Even he knew it. You are everything this knighthood is meant to be. You?—”
“Ruon.”
“What?”
Kallinvar reached across and rested his hand against her chin, brushing the tears from her cheek with his thumb. “Stop talking.”
He looked into her eyes. Those beautiful, vivid green eyes he had looked into a thousand times over – those eyes that searched his soul – and pressed his lips against hers, his heart seeming to swell in his chest.
In that moment, he felt calmer and safer than at any other point in his life. His lips pulled away from hers for just a second, their foreheads pressing together, their noses touching. “I have loved you for the better half of a thousand years.”
“I know.” Ruon kissed him once more, her fingers tangling through the hair at the back of his head. “You are never alone, Kallinvar. Never. We will do what must be done, and we will do it together. And if we die in the trying, then we will see each other again in Achyron’s halls. I just need you to promise me one thing.”
Kallinvar stroked the sides of Ruon’s head with his thumbs. “Name it.”
“I need you to promise you won’t die before me.”
Kallinvar shook his head gently. “You know I can’t do that.”
“I know,” she said, smiling softly. “I just had to ask.”
Ruon pulled away and stood. She walked to the door and reached out her hand. “Are you coming?”
“Where?”
“To bed, Kallinvar. And then we will sleep, because two suns have set since the last time you did. And then we will make the hard choice, and we will do our duty.”