96. Shades of Grey
Chapter 96
Shades of Grey
25 th Day of the Blood Moon
Temple of Achyron – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
Kallinvar rubbed his fingers into his temples, trying without success to ease the ache in his head. Even with the healing of Heraya’s Well, his body groaned as he sat in the chair behind Verathin’s desk.
Rain drummed against the window behind him, and the candle had run low, its flame the last source of light in the study. He pushed himself back in the chair and looked over the desk and the piles of books. Those he’d found in Gildrick’s study, and others Poldor had brought to him – all with missing pages. The journals of the old Grandmasters were splayed about the desk, ribbons marking pages Kallinvar had thought important. There seemed to be about a thousand.
With Gildrick gone, Kallinvar had decided to spend his time in the temple, searching desperately for any hint of what the Watcher had found before he’d died. It seemed an impossible task, but so too was chasing every convergence that emerged across the continent while the Blood Moon tainted the sky.
If Poldor was right and Gildrick had indeed found something, Kallinvar needed to know what it was. Anything, any hint or clue, was better than sending the knights to die in battle after battle that meant nothing.
They had lost so many knights since the Blood Moon had risen that Kallinvar barely recognised his own brothers and sisters. And he finally understood why it had taken Verathin so long to replenish the knighthood. His old friend had been slow and careful in his selection, something Kallinvar could not afford to be. Many of these new knights held the hearts and minds of a knight but lacked the skills and battle constitution. Some had borne the Sigil less than a day before meeting their ends.
And many knew the ways of war but lacked the qualities of the heart and soul.
Kallinvar had tried to take the front foot, tried to stop sitting around and waiting, stop reacting and start acting . But now he knew he had been playing into Efialtír’s hands. He had weakened his own position, and when the time came – if the time came – that Fane or the Bloodspawn tried to use the Heart to cross Efialtír, the knighthood would be too weak to fight them.
As he spoke, he could feel Sister-Captain Olyria and half the knighthood battling through a Lorian fort on the northern fringes of Lodhar.
The days were fast fading, and the Blood Moon would soon set. If they did not find the Heart before then, he would at least take solace in the fact that he would have four hundred more years to do so.
“I wasn’t built for this, Verathin,” Kallinvar whispered. “My place is in battle, beside my brothers and sisters, with a Soulblade in my fist and Bloodspawn beneath my boot. The pages of history were always your domain.”
The lack of an answer cut into him.
“You always used silence to win our arguments.” Kallinvar let out a long sigh. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept for longer than an hour. His eyes stung, and his neck was stiff as a board.
“This is hopeless,” he whispered to himself. He felt as though he had read through every book in the temple a thousand times, though he knew he’d barely scratched the surface.
They had yet to find the book Gildrick had been reading or any of the missing pages from all the others.
He and Poldor hadn’t said it out loud, but they both knew the truth. There was a traitor inside the temple, or in Ardholm at least. Pages didn’t simply tear themselves out. Had the missing pages been from Grandmaster Invictus’s book of Andarsían recipes, Kallinvar would have thought little of it. But that was not the case. And if there was a traitor, then Kallinvar could not believe that Gildrick’s death had not been a purposeful act.
Furthermore, if that traitor was not Watcher Tallia, then who was it? The thought that any in Ardholm could have betrayed them sent a chill down Kallinvar’s spine.
He leaned forwards and pressed his forehead to the pages of the book in front of him. It was the same book he’d found on Gildrick’s lap: A History of the People of Ardholm .
“Why was this the last book you were reading, old friend?”
Kallinvar knew he was missing something. Something that was right there in front of him.
The door creaked open, and Ruon pushed in with a steaming plate of roasted vegetables and sliced lamb. She was the only thing that brought him any semblance of peace.
“Fresh from the kitchens,” Ruon said as she brushed aside the book before Kallinvar and laid the plate in its place.
“You should be sleeping.” Kallinvar stared at the steam wafting from the food as he spoke, slowly moving his gaze to Ruon.
“I’ll sleep when you sleep.”
“You only got back an hour ago, Ruon.”
“Don’t lecture me, Kallinvar, you’ll only turn yourself into more of a hypocrite than you already are.” Ruon walked along the stone bookcase, tracing her fingers across the edges of scrolls. “I once asked Verathin whether he’d read all of these.”
“What did he say?”
“He laughed.” Ruon shook her head. She stopped, tapping her finger against the spine of a red leatherbound volume. “Eat that food while it's hot, and we will spar.”
“I don’t have time to be sparring, Ruon. None of us do.”
“You’ve been sitting there with your head in those books for days on end. Sparring clears your mind. I told Ildris to meet us in the sparring pits. It’s not a question.”
Kallinvar began to argue but decided against it. He never won arguments with Ruon – nobody did.
Kallinvar devoured the food before him as Ruon stared at him with horror in her eyes.
“You could have at least taken a breath.”
“No time for breathing.” Kallinvar picked up the empty plate and made for the door before turning and cupping Ruon’s cheek with his free hand. He stared into her eyes for a long moment, then kissed her. “Thank you for never doubting me.”
She rested her hand atop his. “That cuts both ways.”
The pair of them stepped from the study and walked through the great halls of the temple, their steps echoing.
“It is quiet tonight,” Kallinvar said as they walked, looking about at the empty halls.
“Watcher Poldor is holding a vigil in Ardholm,” Ruon said. “He came to me earlier to see if the other Watchers and temple hands could be given a few hours reprieve.”
“He came to you ?”
Ruon nodded. “The incident with Tallia has more than a few people on edge, Kallinvar.”
Kallinvar gritted his teeth. “I was wrong to treat her as I did.”
“You were. Have you apologised?”
Kallinvar shook his head, biting at his lip. “I wanted to… I should have.” He bit at his lip. “I will.”
Ruon led Kallinvar through the temple and down to the sparring pits, where they found Ildris. Ruon grabbed a sword from the racks and tossed it to him. “Best of five?”
Just as Ruon had said it would, the moving of bodies and the clash of steel settled Kallinvar’s mind, focused him. The world around him grew quiet, the vibrations jarring his arms as he and Ruon whirled about one another.
Sweat slicked Kallinvar’s entire body, his shirt clinging to his chest and arms, his hair tacked to his forehead. He blocked low as Ruon moved in, then brought his blade around to strike at her left shoulder.
Ruon turned the blow away and swept Kallinvar’s blade down. And at that moment, Kallinvar finally understood. Hours upon hours of pouring over Gildrick’s books and beating his head against the table and all he had found was a headache. But with his mind clear, he understood.
That brief moment of elation was cut short when Ruon’s blunted blade smashed him in the stomach. The blow knocked the wind from his lungs, and he fell backwards into the sand, coughing and gasping for air.
As Ruon stood over him, the coughing turned to laughter.
“I didn’t hit your head, did I?” Ruon asked as she offered her hand.
Kallinvar took her hand and hauled himself to his feet with Ruon’s help. He shook his head. “ A History of the People of Ardholm ,” he said, shaking his head.
“Are you sure she didn’t hit your head?” Ildris asked.
“No…”
“No?”
“Yes, I’m sure. No, she didn’t hit my head. The night Gildrick was killed?—”
“Killed?” Ruon searched Kallinvar’s eyes. “Go on.”
“He had a number of books open in his study. A History of the People of Ardholm and a list of all people inducted into the Watchers.”
Ruon gestured for Kallinvar to continue.
“If there is a traitor, one who…” He hesitated, not wishing to say the next words out loud but knowing they were true at the same time. “One who is tied to Efialtír, perhaps Gildrick believed they go back as far as the rebellion in five-twenty-one After Doom. Perhaps even that their ancestors were brought in after Grandmaster Invictus’s decision to admit the refugees from Lur?nel.” As Kallinvar spoke, he connected more threads in his mind. “Gildrick was trying to establish a connection, trying to make sense of it all.” A heavy weight formed in his stomach. “Gildrick believed there was a traitor within the Watchers…”
“That cannot be…” Ruon stared back at him in disbelief. “Then what of the other book, the one that has gone missing, the one Poldor spoke of? And Gildrick’s mention of a dead god?”
Kallinvar’s heart sank. “I don’t know.”
Urgent footsteps slapped against the stone stairs that led down to the sparring chamber, and Watcher Poldor appeared at the entrance. “Grandmaster!”
“What is it, Poldor? What’s wrong?”
“You need to see this now. You were right. It’s Watcher Tallia,” Poldor explained as he led Ruon, Kallinvar, and Ildris back through the temple to the Watcher’s chambers. “I couldn’t get it out of my head – Gildrick’s death… the missing book… Tallia… everything.”
“But you’re the one who told me she hadn’t been in the Watcher’s chambers that day, Poldor. You defended her.”
“I know, but I was always taught never to leave a question unasked. The pages were ripped from those books, Kallinvar, and I’ve searched everywhere for the book Gildrick had been reading. It’s gone.” Poldor turned left through a long corridor, then right through the next, the door to the Watcher’s chambers up ahead. “I held the vigil tonight in Ardholm and told all the Watchers and all the temple hands that you had demanded they all attend. A vigil in remembrance of the lost knights, the brave souls who have given everything to preserve our world.”
“And why are you not there?”
“Watcher Hatia leads it.” Poldor stepped through the door into the Watcher’s chambers. “I slipped out near the beginning.” He stopped in the antechamber. “The books Gildrick was reading in his study, I believe?—”
“That he thought the traitor was a Watcher.”
Poldor smiled. “Precisely. Though I’m not sure he was certain there was a traitor, but he suspected one. Ever since he realised quite how many pages had been torn from certain books, knowledge obscured… There were threads.”
“Why did he never come to me about this?”
“I’m afraid that was perhaps my doing, Grandmaster.”
“Yours?”
“I convinced Gildrick that there was not enough evidence. That suggestions of a traitor inside the temple – of all places – were a thing to be handled with extreme care. That we shouldn’t go to you until we had more.”
And then Gildrick died. Kallinvar didn’t say the words out loud. He did not want Poldor to bear the weight of them. The man was well intentioned.
“Please,” Poldor said, gesturing for Ruon and Kallinvar to follow him. “While the others attended the vigil, I took the liberty of searching every room.”
“You did what? Poldor, that is beyond your decision to make.”
“And the weight you bear is beyond that any man should hold, Grandmaster. And yet, you do. Sometimes we must go beyond when times are dire.”
Poldor led them through the various corridors of the Watcher’s chambers, stopping outside an open door.
“Watcher Tallia’s room,” Poldor said, pushing open the door.
The room looked little different to any others, if a little scattered and in need of a clean. Though Kallinvar wouldn’t fault Tallia for that in a time like this.
“I’m failing to see the need for your urgency, Poldor.”
The man nodded. “I thought the same, at first. But when I made to leave. I kicked the bedpost, clumsy as I am… It’s hollow.”
Poldor knelt and tapped on the right leg at the foot of Tallia’s bed. At first the man’s knuckle produced a hard thunk , but as he moved down, a muffled echo sounded within.
“You claim her a traitor for having a hollow bed post?”
“No, I claim her a traitor for having these.” Poldor manoeuvred the wooden panel at the inside of the bedpost until a segment slipped away with a click. When the man stood, Kallinvar’s eyes widened.
Poldor held out tens of torn pages, all wrapped together with string. But the pages were nothing, not compared to the dull gemstone in his other hand.
Kallinvar couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He could, but he didn’t want to. To consider the possibility that Tallia was a traitor and to know her as one were two different things, something Kallinvar had not realised until that moment.
Efialtír truly had found a way inside Achyron’s temple. Kallinvar reached out and took the gemstone into his hand. It was empty. No red light glowed from its core, and he couldn’t feel the Taint radiating from within. Perhaps it had never been used. But how had it found its way into Watcher Tallia’s hands? How had it found its way to Ardholm at all?
Kallinvar turned and stormed from the room, holding the gemstone firmly in his hands. Ruon and Ildris sprinted after him, Poldor with them, and in that moment, Achyron awakened in his mind once more.
“This must end now, my child. Efialtír cannot set root in my sanctuary.”
“Where is she?” Kallinvar demanded as he pushed through the doors from the Watcher’s antechamber into the hall.
“She’s in the village,” Poldor answered, breathing heavy. “At the vigil.”
“ Where ?”
“In the square before The Salted Sparrow.”
Kallinvar pushed through the wicket gate set into the great temple doors and descended the stairs with a fury. The rain was cold against Kallinvar’s skin, but the rage that pulsed within him cared little for it, part Achyron’s, part his own. The people he had spent the last seven hundred years protecting had betrayed him, had killed one of the few people he had called ‘friend’.
Lanterns blazed all about the city, the light of the Blood Moon drifting languidly over the rooftops. Villagers raised their fists to their foreheads as Kallinvar and the others passed, but Kallinvar didn’t stop.
Hundreds were gathered at the square in front of The Salted Sparrow, candles lit all about them. They stood as a Watcher recounted a story, the words of which Kallinvar did not hear amid the pounding of his own heart.
“Watcher Tallia!” he roared, his Sentinel armour flowing from the Sigil in his chest.
Heads snapped around at the sound of Kallinvar’s rage-filled shout. The crowd parted, leaving Tallia standing alone with a candle in her hands and a look of pure terror on her face. The young woman’s hood was drawn, the rain splattering against it.
“What is this?” Kallinvar tossed the gemstone so it skittered across the ground and came to a stop at Tallia’s feet.
This woman had betrayed them. She had betrayed Achyron, betrayed her people, but most of all she had betrayed Gildrick.
“I’ve never seen that before. I don’t…. I don’t…” She staggered backwards as Kallinvar approached, dropping her candle onto the stone, the wax splattering, the flame living on.
“Do not lie to me!” Kallinvar grabbed her by the throat and lifted her into the air, his Sentinel armour making it seem as though he were lifting a feather.
“I’m not,” she choked, eyes wild with fear.
“How could you kill him?” Kallinvar did nothing to hide the seething rage in his voice. “He was good. He was kind. He treated you like an equal.”
“Be done with this,” Achyron said in his mind. “She is a slave of Efialtír. Destroy her!”
Kallinvar pushed the god’s words away.
“Answer me!” he roared again.
“I didn’t… I don’t know what you’re?—”
“Do not dare lie!”
“I’m not, Grandmaster.” Tallia pulled at the fingers of Kallinvar’s gauntlet, her legs dangling, the rain beating harder against her. “Please.”
“I know what you did. Your treachery is not in question here, child. Your reasons are.”
Evidence could be planted. The pages might have been ripped by someone else, and the gemstone also. But that compartment in Tallia’s bed, that told him of planning, of a need to hide.
Kallinvar released his hold on Tallia’s throat and let her fall to the stone with a thump .
He turned and snatched the gemstone into his hand, looking into the dull red heart of it.
“Destroy it!” Achyron roared in his mind. The presence of Efilatír’s touch in this place had set a fire in Achyron. “Burn the Taint from my home!”
Kallinvar squeezed his hand into a fist, and the gemstone shattered in his gauntlet. Memories of Gildrick flashed through his mind, of the man’s kindness and generosity, of his thoughtfulness and selflessness. Kallinvar’s mind slowed over the oldest memory, of a boy of fourteen summers, scraggy and small, but with a smile from ear to ear. That boy had grown into a man, and that man had grown into a friend, a friend that had trusted Kallinvar to keep him safe.
“Pain is the path to strength,” Achyron said.
Kallinvar opened his hand and let the shattered remnants of the gemstone fall to the ground. A rage flowed through him like a river of molten fire that burned his veins and clouded his mind. He turned and unleashed a guttural roar, his Soulblade forming in his fist. He swung the mighty blade, green light gleaming in the falling rain.
Tallia screamed but went silent as Kallinvar stopped the arc of his Soulblade just short of taking her head. The blade hovered a hair’s breadth from her neck as she knelt on the stone. Green mist drifted from its surface, a clap of thunder howling in the sky.
“Do it,” Achyron demanded.
Kallinvar said nothing, holding his blade in place. Tallia stared up at him, eyes pleading.
All about him the citizens of Ardholm stood in a shattered circle, holding their breaths, staring. Even Ruon, who stood behind him, said nothing.
More memories of Gildrick drifted through Kallinvar’s mind.
“She is a servant of Efialtír, and you will do as you are commanded.” Achyron’s voice was calm but absolute. “She slaughtered Watcher Gildrick. She would have Efialtír cross the veil between worlds. It is your task to end her before she does.”
“No,” Kallinvar whispered.
“You took an oath, Kallinvar. You will do what is required of you.”
“I will not do this.” Kallinvar’s hand remained steady, the rain drumming against his Soulblade, green light misting. “The duty of the strong is to protect the weak.”
“She is not the weak, my child.”
“It is her weakness that has brought her here. She is a soul of Ardholm. It is our solemn duty to protect her from Efialtír. We have failed in that duty, but I will not fail her now.”
“Do not defy me, Kallinvar. It is by my will that you still draw breath.”
“A man should not simply wish to live. He should wish to live in a way that he deems to be right,” Kallinvar whispered, the citizens of Ardholm still standing around him, staring at him as though he’d gone mad. It was Verathin who had spoken those words to him all those centuries ago, and they had bound to Kallinvar’s soul. “This is not right.”
“Then I will strip the life from your bones, burn the Sigil from your soul, and leave you to die as you should have before I saved your life. Efialtír is too close. I cannot allow defiance.”
“Do it then!” Kallinvar roared, blood trickling from Tallia’s neck as his Soulblade shook in his hand. “Do it and be done!”
Kallinvar’s Sigil ignited in a pulse of burning energy, green light swallowing his vision.
In an instant he stood amidst an ocean of endless silver sand. Around him, towers of crystal jutted into the sky, hundreds of feet wide and twice again as tall.
Achyron stood before him, garbed in that gleaming green plate with blazing sun pauldrons, his features stern and harsh. “After all this time, you would turn your back on me?”
“Turn my back on you?” Kallinvar leaned into his anger. “I have given my life to you!”
“I gave you that life, Voran Thrace. I made you what you are.”
“I made myself, forged my strength in the rivers of blood I spilled in your name. I have given you seven hundred years of service, of undying devotion. When Efialtír bore down on this world, I stood in his path and I did not yield. When my brothers and sisters were slaughtered at the last Blood Moon, I fought with every fibre of this life you gave. Where were you?”
Achyron stared back at Kallinvar, unyielding, his green eyes watching.
“Where were you?” Kallinvar roared. “When Verathin died in your name. Where were you? When Illarin died, when Tarron was pulled into that tear, when Gildrick was murdered, where were you, Achyron?”
“I was fighting the war you cannot see.”
“When we die, do you even care?”
“Of course I care, my child. My love for your world is the only reason you exist.”
“Do you? Truly? Or are we just tools to be worn and tossed away? Weapons to be wielded in a war between gods?”
“The duty of the strong is to protect the weak, Grandmaster Kallinvar.”
“I know my gods damned oaths!” Kallinvar’s rage burned through him. “Pain is the path to strength. I have held more pain than any soul has a right to. I have watched my brothers and sisters die again and again for centuries, and still I do not falter.”
Kallinvar stepped closer to the god. “The duty of the strong is to protect the weak. I have embodied that oath since before I spoke the words.”
“That woman is not ‘the weak’, my child. She is a slave to the god that betrayed us all.”
“She is a child!”
“A child who killed Watcher Gildrick.”
“No decision is straightforward,” Kallinvar said, speaking Achyron’s own words back to him, never straying from the god’s gaze. “Black and white do not exist. We live in a world of ever-shifting grey.”
Achyron stared back at him in silence.
“It is my soul that will bear the weight of every life I take. My soul. Not yours. I will fight for you, as I always have. I will stand against The Shadow, as I always have. I am a warrior, I am your warrior, but I am not your executioner. I will not slaughter a young woman of twenty summers in cold blood. I will not be that man. Because the day I become him is the day I do not deserve to bear this Sigil.” Kallinvar pressed his hand to his chest. “The day I become that man is the day I lose sight of why I’m fighting in the first place. And since the Blood Moon rose, I have come too close to that. So you will have me as I am or kill me now. Strip the Sigil from my chest, and give it to someone you deem worthy.”
Kallinvar clenched his hand into a fist and stared at the warrior god. “I am tired, and I would welcome rest.”
Achyron drew a long breath, his expression still and unreadable, and silence hung between them until at last the god said, “It is not your time.”
Kallinvar’s Sigil pulsed again, the green light flashed across his eyes, and he once more stood in the square in Ardholm, the rain sheeting down over him. His Soulblade was still pressed slightly into the skin of Talia’s neck, green mist drifting from its surface.
Kallinvar recalled his Soulblade and stared down at the young woman. “Sister-Captain Ruon, bring Watcher Tallia to the cells. The rest of you, sleep.”
Kallinvar turned and walked back towards the great temple, ignoring the murmurs that rose about him. His heart galloped like a horse, and his hands shook.
Arden jolted awake in his bed as Kallinvar slammed open the door.
“Grandmaster, what is it?”
“You are to go to your brother. Tell him I need him here. There are five days left before the Blood Moon sets, and we must be ready. Nothing else matters.”