Chapter 8
The Otherworld wasn’t what people believed it was.
The first time Jalen had died and found himself here, he’d been taken aback by the rolling sea of green grass and the apple trees, the scent of their blossoms saturating the air, and the achingly blue sky dotted with cotton-wool clouds.
Ankou’s realm existed in parallel to the real world.
Time ran differently here and Jalen couldn’t be sure how much time had truly passed.
With a sigh, Jalen rested his hands on the balcony railing.
The Otherworld was shrouded in mist, much like Avalon was.
Streams and pools of sparkling water lay between the castle where Jalen was and the village of the dead, a settlement that mirrored an ordinary human one and that never grew any larger, no matter how many souls it housed.
Ankou had given him what used to be his old room, and Jalen had spent weeks curled beneath the blankets, tucked up foetal-like, drowning in pain as he continued to be unmade.
Unmade. He hadn’t realised what would happen when he left Niniane.
It was different from when he broke the bond with Ankou all those years ago.
Between the shredding and the bending of everything he had come to be, the thing that hurt the most was the memory of Arthur’s face the last time Jalen had seen him.
The betrayal that cut worse than any knife or blade in the known realms.
The brilliant green vista spread before him was in stark contrast to the burning in his heart.
Jalen had never meant to hurt anyone, especially Arthur.
He’d spend the rest of his life, whatever that would be now, cursing himself for what he had done.
How had he been so blind? He had been so taken in by what Niniane had wanted that he had failed to truly see what was before him, failed to comprehend the possibility of losing that one person that made his life better than it had ever been.
It was only now, away from the lure of Avalon, that Jalen could truly understand what he had lost. In the spaces between the pain of his unmaking and the pain of what he had done rested a deep and burning rage, and he could finally see what caused Ordes such contempt.
Niniane used Jalen, as surely as she used everyone around her to get what she wanted, and Jalen had let her pull his strings. He had been blind to it, though whether by choice or some sort of misplaced loyalty, he didn’t know.
All he knew for certain was that he was alone.
Another bite of pain rolled through him. He wasn’t sure how long it would go on. He rubbed the burning in his chest. His heart, reforming. His lungs expanding with air he hadn’t had to breathe in over a hundred years.
Becoming human wasn’t his choice. His first choice was to die, but he should have known Death would not let him off that easily. Death was an escape, an avoidance, and the God of the Otherworld was the servant of Death, the bridge between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
‘I suppose I should be pleased you haven’t changed,’ a voice said. ‘Still as broody and full of woe as always. I don’t know what I’d do if you were all sunshine and rainbows, Jalen.’
Jalen glanced over his shoulder. Ophine was perched on the edge of his bed, watching him speculatively.
The wraith was wearing their customary black.
‘Don’t you have a boat to steer?’ He and Ophine had never seen eye to eye, both too filled with the need for vengeance over those who had wronged them.
He sometimes wondered why Ankou had chosen the two of them to stand beside him.
Ophine had a purpose at least. Without a helmsman, the Bag Noz would not make its way to the Otherworld.
Ophine chuckled. ‘My master wants to see you.’ Without waiting for a reply, they stalked from the room, leaving the door wide.
My master. Not our. Jalen bit back the uncomfortable sensation of his muscles rebuilding themselves and followed.
His room was in a tower separate from the main part of the fortress.
He trailed Ophine over a stone bridge, a stream trickling beneath.
The Otherworld was filled with streams. Each one flowed into the sea, and Ankou’s realm floated above the water; dozens of waterfalls tumbled over the edge.
Jalen couldn’t hear them anymore, like he used to be able to, the sound of water a constant noise in the back of his demi-god brain.
Somewhere outside the castle was the black river, snaking across the landscape.
The river linked the Otherworld to the human realm, via Lyonesse.
When souls first arrived here in the Bag Noz, they found themselves outside the great black gates of Ankou’s fortress, Caer Sidi.
It was an imposing sight, all black stone wreathed in mist and guarded by ghostly sentinels.
It was inside, in the great cavern of Caer Sidi that souls were judged on Ankou’s set of brass scales.
If they passed the test, if light and dark were in relative balance, a soul would pass through Caer Sidi and into the true beauty of the Otherworld.
If they were weighed down by darkness, they were sent to the Pit.
Jalen hurried to keep up with Ophine. The wraith moved quicker than he could, his muscles still half-liquid and his thoughts mired in fog.
By the time Jalen emerged into Caer Sidi’s cavern with the brass scales, he was puffing and clutching his ribs.
He leant against the wall, catching his breath.
Ankou’s scales stood before him, as imposing as he remembered.
‘Care to weigh yourself?’ The God of the Otherworld, his hounds on either side, wandered into view. Ankou’s skeletal face glowed in the smoky darkness of the room.
‘Is that why I’m here?’ Jalen asked. His newly formed human heart sped up.
Ankou chuckled. ‘You tell me, Jalen Rowe. You’re the one who washed up on my shores. What were you seeking? Death?’
‘Yes,’ Jalen breathed. ‘But you remade me instead. Why?’
‘I told you before, you still have a role to play in this saga,’ Ankou replied. Behind him, Ophine scoffed.
Jalen shook his head. ‘What role? Arthur—’
‘Still whining,’ Ophine hissed in the grey light. ‘You whined in your sleep, you know. I checked on you. Unfortunately, you hadn’t died.’
‘Enough, Ophine,’ Ankou chided. ‘Jalen has returned to us, whether you like it or not.’
‘I don’t like it,’ the wraith declared. ‘He’s spent too much time with her. We can’t trust him. How do we know he isn’t here to spy on us?’
Jalen laughed bitterly. ‘She wouldn’t even know I was gone.
The moment I told her I was having doubts, she cast me out of her castle, left me to wander Avalon’s shores.
I couldn’t return to the human realm, not after…
’ He paused, cleared his throat. ‘So I did the only thing I could think of. I severed my bond with her and, somehow, I ended up here.’
Ophine’s expression was distrustful.
‘Kill me then,’ Jalen told the wraith with a shrug. ‘I honestly do not care, Ophine.’
‘And give you what you want? No.’ The wraith examined their fingernails, feigning boredom. ‘But if even the tiniest part of you seeks to take advantage of what my master has offered you, I will flay your pretty human skin from your bones and make a new cloak out of it.’
Jalen chuckled. ‘I don’t doubt it. But I can assure you, whatever advantages you think I’m here to flaunt, you’re wrong.’
Ophine raised their eyebrows and turned away from him, muttering scathing things under their breath.
Jalen tried to tell himself it didn’t matter, that this was the way it always was between them, but part of him wished it was different.
Ophine had once been kind to him. Already hundreds of years old by the time Ankou gave Jalen the gift of a new life, it had been Ophine who showed Jalen how the world of their master worked.
It had been Ophine who explained the true nature of the Old Ones to him, but Jalen, enamoured with his new power and a thirst for revenge on the world that had wronged him, didn’t want to listen.
When he had left Ankou for Niniane, Ophine had cursed him into the Pit.
Which, especially now, is where Jalen thought he should have been all along.
At least there, he couldn’t hurt anybody.
Guilt sat in his reformed body like a poison, twisting and swirling through him as if it was alive. He could taste the bitterness of it on the back of his throat, could feel it in his blood and bones. Would it ever go away?
He wasn’t sure he wanted it to. If he couldn’t burn, he would wither instead.
Ankou was watching him through fathomless eyes, those that had seen the making of the world and would now witness the reshaping of it. Jalen stared back at his former master, until he shifted his gaze to the scales.
‘What is it you want?’ he asked the God of the Otherworld.
Ophine made a displeased noise, then swept from the room, their cloak billowing behind them. Jalen waited until he could no longer hear the wraith’s footsteps before he spoke again.
‘Why did you remake me?’
‘You wish I hadn’t?’
‘Three times I’ve died and twice I have become something else,’ Jalen mused. ‘What am I supposed to be this time? I’ve been a murderer, an idealist, a puppet, a betrayer… I may as well have sunk a knife into Arthur’s belly.’
‘You will be yourself, Jalen,’ Ankou said.
‘Whoever that is,’ Jalen mumbled.
‘You have time to work it out, to rediscover the man you are. When you are ready, I will send you back to the world of men.’
‘And if I’m never ready?’
‘Then you can remain here.’
Jalen needed to see the world as it was before he could see the world as it could be.
He had been so tangled in Niniane’s web that he’d not been able to create anything for himself.
He had been caught up in the world of the Old Ones for so long he’d forgotten so many things.
Even while he was in Kernou, his life as a fisherman was secondary to the life he was truly focused on – Arthur’s.
He’d forgotten what it was to live.
On the fifth day, or maybe it was the sixth, Jalen asked Ankou to show him Arthur.
Ophine lingered in the background but as the surface of the mirror swirled, the wraith drifted closer, until they were standing shoulder to shoulder with Jalen, both peering into the glass.
‘You care about her,’ Jalen commented.
Ophine made a non-committal sound but as Jenyfer’s face swam into focus, Jalen sensed the wraith tense then relax as they realised Jenyfer was safe onboard the ship. Ordes came into view. Jalen’s hand lifted to caress his throat. Beside him, Ophine smirked.
Well, Ordes, Jalen thought. I did what you asked – now what?
The vision in the mirror shifted to show a scowling Katarin. The captain had her arms folded and was below deck, leaning against the bulkhead of a darkened cabin. Light shot into the cabin through the small porthole.
Then it was Arthur, and Jalen’s breath caught, his newly formed heart pausing.
Arthur’s eyes were focused on the bowl he held. ‘You need to eat,’ he said softly.
Jalen frowned, leaning closer to the glass as Arthur lifted a spoonful of porridge from the bowl and held it out towards someone shrouded in shadows. Jalen caught a glimpse of a man’s hand.
‘Please,’ Arthur said.
The shadows shifted, and Ulrian Tregarthen’s face moved into the light.
Jalen gasped, watching as Arthur held the spoon steady and his father leant forward and closed his mouth around it.
Katarin muttered something in the background.
Arthur said nothing, just heaped more porridge onto the spoon and held it out for his father. Jalen scrutinised Ulrian – the Chif’s hair was longer, a dark mass of curls crowning his head. He was pale, skin sallow and cheeks sunken, but it was his eyes that made Jalen’s frown deepen.
Ulrian was mad.
‘What happened in Kernou?’ he asked out loud.
Ophine sighed. ‘While you were busy running around after Niniane and then dying loudly, Mordred played into your former mistress’ hands—’
‘I know that,’ Jalen snapped. He couldn’t take his eyes off Ulrian. The tenderness, the care Arthur was showing the man who tormented him, humiliated him…
‘Ulrian was tortured and left to lose his wits. Obviously, Arthur found him and rescued him. In my opinion, he should have let that monster die.’
Jalen shook his head. ‘You don’t know Arthur. Despite what he endured at the hands of his father, he wouldn’t leave him like that. Ulrian is as ensnared in all of this as—’
Ophine slapped him. Hard. Jalen’s head snapped around so quickly he felt his muscles pinch in protest. ‘If you’re about to tell me you feel sorry for that monster, I’ll—’
‘Don’t you?’ Jalen cut in. ‘He is a monster – I’m not disagreeing with that – but his world has fallen to pieces.’
‘Two peas in a little pod, are you?’ Ophine sneered.
Jalen glared at the wraith, then shifted his gaze back to the mirror and Arthur’s face. ‘I know what that feels like. So does Arthur. And now, so does Ulrian Tregarthen.’
The wraith ground their teeth and left the room. Jalen rubbed at his cheek, amazed at how much it hurt. He’d forgotten that as well.
But that pain was nothing compared to the ache in his new human heart.