ARC 7: CHAPTER 26: A ROAD THAT WENDS

The Wend.

It goes by many names. The Ethereal Realm. The Tribos Goetica. The Hinterlands of the Far Sea.

Existence is not solid. Reality is not firm rock. It is riddled with imperfections, like an endless tangled collection of cracks, worm holes, and ant tunnels eating through soft earth. I didn’t learn that until after I’d placed my hand on that table of golden wood in Elfhome and let Tuvon and Maerlys stitch my soul to it. While I’d served in Seydis, it had been my task, along with the other knights, to watch these fissures in Creation and guard against the hungry things that dwell in them.

As many horrors as there can be in the waking world, there is nothing quite like getting lost in the gaps. Just like in an old house, rot can be hidden behind bright paint. And the world is very old.

The fog cleared enough to see after some time, though it remained a constant presence. Delphine and I found ourselves in a forest. The trees were thin, gray, twisted like the jutting skeletal digits of some much larger growth. They were perforated and brittle looking, and the rocky ground was treacherous with tripping roots.

“Where’s the light coming from?” Delphine asked. I glanced up and realized what she meant. The sky was black, like we were under an overcast sky at night or in an enormous cavern, but everything was lit by a distant glow. It was hard to describe the light’s color. Something cold and eerie. The sound of lapping waves was ever present, never any further or closer than when I’d first noticed it.

“Whatever it is, it’s not coming from above. Parts of this place have a sky, but not one you’ll be familiar with.”

“I’ve studied the Roads,” Delphine said as she drew closer to me, her eyes wandering about. “I’ve seen diagrams, read accounts from scholars and adventurers who’ve managed to come back. Some of the Alder Knights kept accounts of things they saw, and the Cenocastia held copies.”

I grunted in acknowledgement. “We were told to make reports. Ser Maxim used to tell me it helped prevent the Wend from turning you manic. We were supposed to rationalize what we saw in our writing. Some of us just recounted our duties in confession, though. Not every paladin is also a scholar, and talking can be easier. More human.”

“Is that how you did it?” Delphine didn’t put any particular edge in her voice, but I still felt my lips tighten.

“You know I did. Are you just asking to needle me?”

“No, I… Nevermind. We should find Vicar.”

A paranoid thought came to me — what if he wasn’t here? What if he’d stayed behind and let Delphine and I get trapped here? He’d been with the mirror a while. If the abgrüdai told him something that he could use to find Lias without me, and he’d convinced Delphine that traveling through the Wend Gate was the only option just to get rid of us…

I mentioned as much to Delphine, and she disagreed with me. “That blast of miasma dragged us here, remember? It means the gate was unstable, the Roads all packed up on the other side like pressurized water. He was in the room with us, so he would have been dragged in too.”

We walked a ways more before Delphine spoke again. “What do you think’s going to happen to Tol?”

“It’s being assaulted by monsters and madmen. What do you think?”

“I knew people there,” she said in a small voice. “It wasn’t a bad place, even with all the ugliness down below.”

“Most places aren’t bad places,” I said bitterly. “War doesn’t care. Creatures like the Gorelion don’t care.”

My chest twinged again. I winced, gritted my teeth, and started to move at a quicker pace. Delphine was struggling to keep up, having to hitch up her skirts to clear the uneven terrain. She’d put on sturdier clothes after I’d left to join the battle, and wore a belt hung with pouches and leather purses, probably full of material for her witchcraft.

Was that the right word for it? She used an odd mixture of occultism, folklore, and cleric training. She was a witch, a renegade of the Church who’d been seduced by a demon.

The same demon. It beggared belief. Was some greater power mocking me?

I was drawn from these thoughts by noise ahead. It started distant and indistinct, but as we pressed forward it became clearer. The terrain rose, what had been mostly flat ground with those creepy trees turned into a winding expanse of tall bluffs from which fog poured down here and there like waterfalls. The gray trees still emerged from the rock, often at severe angles. Though it looked solid, the ground felt more like damp earth beneath my feet. There were patches of mud, or perhaps wet clay, and some of the trees were drowned in stretches of murky water, or something that resembled water.

Like everything’s sinking, I thought.

The sound ahead clarified. Soon enough we were able to make out the snarls and barks of a huge canine. Dry wood cracked and water splashed. A high pitched yelp echoed off the cliffs and gray pillars that marred the otherworldly bog.

Taking my sword in hand, I rushed forward fast as I dared. I came into a wide clearing of sorts, one surrounded by tall walls of the silty geography crawling with creeper vines and bursting roots. Though it should have been blocked, that ghostly light was here as well, making the struggle within look like a dramatized scene in a stage play.

Vicar, in his infernal wolf shape, battled with a horse sized thing like some horrid cross between an equine and a locust. It had more than twenty legs on either side of a long, ribbed body, bladed wings that buzzed and beat with thunderous volume every time it moved, and a face like a drowned corpse bloated with rot. Two human arms grew from the end of its long tail, twisting into strange configurations as though it were hand signing.

The demon shot out a barrage of spiky tendrils from its gaping maw. Vicar dodged them, moving with blurring speed despite his size, then spat out a plume of hellfire. The locust-thing screeched and recoiled, buzzing its wings loud enough to make my skull ache.

Vicar bared his iron fangs in a growl I couldn’t hear over the droning. He lunged, tackled the thing to the ground, then got his jaws around the root of one of its wings. He jerked savagely, ripping the wing out along with nearly two feet of splintered bone. The demon shrieked, writhing violently. Its tail wrapped around the hellhound’s body, the arms growing from its end squeezing around Vicar’s neck.

I stepped forward to help, but Vicar didn’t need it. He spat the wing out, aimed his deadly jaws directly down, and engulfed the demon in a torrent of yellow fire. He kept the stream up for nearly ten seconds, heedless that he was also caught in the blaze. An acrid stench suffused the air.

When done, there wasn’t much left of the enormous monster besides a shriveled, curled corpse like a dead insect lying in the middle of a patch of smoking, blackened ground. The circle resembled a pit of tar, the alien soil bubbling as the demon started to sink into it. Vicar stood over his kill, breathing heavily, then turned smoldering eyes to me.

“That’s two,” he rasped. “There is one more, I think. We freed them when you broke the mirror, but Lias had some foresight. They escaped inward, no doubt with orders to warn him. The last got away.”

“Then if he’s still at the end of wherever this path leads, he’ll know we’re coming.” I cursed and turned away from the scorched remains of the mirror demon, inspecting the terrain. “I don’t recognize any of this. It doesn’t look like one of the roads connected to Elfhome.”

“The Magi know many roads that even the Alder Knights were unaware of,” Vicar said. He remained in his wolfish shape, his small eyes glinting red as they scanned our surroundings. “Are you certain you’d recognize it even if it was one of the Elf Paths? My understanding is that many of them have become overgrown since the Table dissolved.”

Overgrown and infested with evil. I shook my head, more in frustration than in answer. “I don’t know. Maybe. Those roads should have markers, so maybe if I find one…”

I didn’t know. We’d gone into this too hastily. Too much had happened at once. I wasn’t prepared.

Delphine was staring at me. “What?” I snapped, more harshly than I’d meant.

“You’re glowing,” she told me.

I glanced down at my hand and realized I was. A faint yellow light exuded from me. It made my black armor look even harsher than normal, the contrast stark.

“It is difficult to hide one’s true nature in this place,” Vicar said with a touch of malicious glee. “The Knights of Seydis were meant to be lights in the darkness, lanterns on the Wending Roads. When they walk in this realm, that becomes more clear.”

“It will also attract trouble.” I started walking, moving toward the faint sound of waves. “Let’s get going before it finds us. Vicar, can you trace that last mirror demon’s scent? It might lead us right to Lias.”

The crowfriar ranged ahead, his scarred muzzle aimed into the surreality stretching before us. “I can.”

The Wend grew stranger as we traveled. The gray bog spread wider, expanding out into an endless, foggy plain that was almost entirely flat. More of those sickly trees and oddly shaped rocks burst out of what soon became an almost unbroken stretch of murky water. There were thin, meandering strings of solid ground moving across it, but those became more sparse, and eventually we were confined to one as the nearest paths became more and more distant.

And always, the sound of waves crashing against cliffs. Always far off, always near enough to feel like I should be able to see it. I could forget about it for a time, but whenever I let my mind go quiet it came back.

“How deep do you think this is?” Delphine asked with a mix of curiosity and trepidation. Her eyes strayed over the glassy water, which was too still to be the source of that faint sound. It reflected our images back at us, stretching them out and distorting them so they were almost unrecognizable.

“It might be shallow as your ankle in one spot and deep as an ocean trench in another,” Vicar told the doctor. He’d paused to sniff at some telltale scent on our way. “Try not to trip.”

“The air doesn’t smell like anything,” Delphine said. “It’s… sterile. Like there’s no life here.”

“There is,” I said. I was leaning against one of the trees that still intermittently grew out of the narrow path across the lake. “This place is far from empty. Just… stay on guard.”

I was sweating. I wanted to get my armor off, take a break. There was nowhere to even sit here. Everything was too close to the water, and I didn’t trust any of it.

“You’re hurt.” Delphine took a step forward. “You should sit down, let me look at you. My title isn’t just for show, you know, I’m trained as a physiker.”

“I’m fine. And we can’t afford to stop. Every minute we waste risks that spirit that got away from Vicar getting to Lias, and giving him more of a lead than he’s already got.”

I glanced at her worried face. “And why do you care, anyway? You already tried to kill me once tonight.”

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Had that really happened earlier the same night? It felt like something that’d occurred a week ago.

Delphine scoffed and walked back towards Vicar. “Fine. Have it your way.”

“It definitely came through here,” Vicar told us, ignoring our feud. He saw my gaze directed back the way we came and lifted his head. “What is it?”

I wasn’t quite sure. “That demon, Idiobi… he gave up too easily. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s as strong as Yith was.”

“And Yith spent many weeks playing cat and mouse with you,” Vicar reminded me. “Its kind are predators. They will almost always avoid a fair fight.”

I knew it wasn’t just that. It wasn’t that it hadn’t attack me, but the things it’d said…

I caught Delphine staring at me again. There was a knowing look in her eyes. Annoyed, I turned forward and started walking.

We traveled for several hours. Soon enough it became clear we weren’t alone. Distinct lights began to form out over the water, very much like the Wil-O’ Wisps that inhabit Urn’s wilderness. Only, these had little in common with those flitting creatures. These were large, almost solid spheres of light that bobbed and drifted. They seemed lethargic to me, bloated, and the light they gave off wasn’t welcoming.

“What are they?” Delphine asked.

“Spirits,” I said. “Wylderlanterns. They congeal out of this place like mold. Keep an eye on them. If they get too close, we’ll have to do something about it.”

The wylderlanterns did not draw close, at least not quickly, but they did grow in number. Soon enough there were scores of them bobbing over the lake, scattered lines of them floating parallel to us.

“There shouldn’t be this many,” I breathed. “Not this soon.”

“They haven’t seen one of your kind in some time,” Vicar said. “They are hungry for light.”

The crowfriar lifted his muzzle and studied the dimly glowing horizon. “There is something ahead. Ruins, I think. Some kind of structure.”

I couldn’t yet see it, but his eyes must have been sharper than mine in that form. We moved forward, the Wend spirits dogging our steps, and soon enough I saw it too. A protrusion of blocky shapes emerging from the flatness of the lake, lying at the very end of the winding archipelago we’d been traveling on. It was like an island, but all gray-green and blue stone with no defined shape. I understood why Vicar had believed it to be ruins at first, but I couldn’t tell if it had once been a structure that’d collapsed or just some bizarrely shaped formation, or what that original architecture might have looked like if the former.

The mound must have been sixty feet high at its tallest point, and there was a gap at the base of it, like an island cave. Our path led right into that opening.

“Could be Lias in there,” I guessed. “Or a dragon.”

“Or just a way forward,” Vicar said. “It will at least give us some space from these carrion feeders.”

I glanced back. The wylderlanterns had choked the path behind us, gathered so thickly I couldn’t make out most of the individual spheres. I cursed.

When I turned back and took a step forward, vertigo washed over me. The world spun. I heard a grunt — my own — and an exclamation of surprise from Delphine.

I managed to catch myself on a knee and a hand. The hard impact of my poleyn against the stone echoed over the lake, loud as if we were inside a cavern or a cathedral.

And all at once, I could hear the wylderlanterns whispering.

Falls he falls he has fallen! The knight fell he weakens he breaks he cannot stand he is weary so weary he fell he fell he fell—

Gritting my teeth, I heaved myself back to my feet. Like I’d emerged from water, the whispers suddenly ceased. I wobbled, but managed to maintain balance. Delphine had stepped forward as though to help me, but hesitated when she caught the look on my face.

Vicar had turned just enough to stare at me sidelong. He said nothing as he turned back toward the island and continued on. There’d been no sympathy in that gaze, just cold appraisal.

Delphine didn’t say anything either, but she followed close when I started limping forward. The lights flooded the road behind us.

The cave in the side of the island fed into a long, twisted tunnel that made me think of a tree root that’d been hollowed out. It corkscrewed downward at a gentle slope, growing narrower as we went. For a while I thought the walls might converge until we couldn’t go any further, trapping us between that swarm of wylderlanterns outside and a dead end. But the tunnel did end eventually, bringing us to the other side.

Delphine’s eyes widened. “That… God In Heaven, that’s disorienting.”

It should have brought us below the lake, or at least on the other side of the island. I’d been able to glimpse the far side of the stony mound before we’d entered it, and the water had continued in an unbroken expanse. But we didn’t step out onto the other side of the island, or into any subterranean space beneath it, but into a bright and vibrant forest.

It had nothing in common with the desolate gray waste we’d originally entered. The trees were thick and tall as redwoods, brilliant in shades of emerald and amber. I could barely make out the canopy high above, and the sky looked like little more than a hazy shroud of light that seemed to move like water. There was more mist, and it glowed in pale colors, but it was light and scattered.

“That’s the Wend,” I mumbled. “It’s all tangled up… it…”

I had to stop to take a breath. Vicar padded forward, his heavy paws disturbing the grass. “We will rest here,” I heard him say as though at a distance. “Doctor, please help Ser Hewer.”

I lost some minutes in my memory. Delphine took me to a hollow in the roots of one of the huge trees, which turned out to be liberally padded with grass and moss. A fine enough bed, I thought, and couldn’t decide why part of me was warning against sitting down. Just a little rest, that was all.

“We need to get your armor off,” someone said. The voice sounded familiar, gentle, almost motherly. I felt a smile twitch the corner of my lip.

“This isn’t the time, Cat.” My voice was a mumble so quiet I could barely hear it myself.

“Who’s Cat?” Someone was working at the vambrace on my left arm.

I had to think about it a moment. “A good woman. A good friend.”

Someone I’d failed.

“God, he’s covered in injuries! Some of these have been here a while.”

“He fights with little regard for his own safety. It is partly thanks to his magic. It will heal all but maiming wounds quickly enough, and dulls his pain. There are limits, however.”

“These burns… there are so many.”

“The result of using his magic for many years under a broken oath. Counterbalanced by his healing, no doubt, or he’d have succumbed to the fire long ago.”

“He’s got a bad fever. Can we get a fire going? I brought some water, but I’ll need more of that too.”

“It will be difficult to find anything safe to burn, much less to drink. Even the smoke in this place can be alive… but I will see what I can do.”

My left arm had been stripped. I felt hand tugging at the pauldron on my right shoulder.

Focusing, I opened my eyes and found Delphine. Her narrow features were pinched with concentration. She’d done up her hair in a bun, getting it out of her face, and rolled up her sleeves. Vicar had gone into the forest.

“If you want your revenge,” I told her, “now’s your best chance. Not much I can do about it.”

“Quiet.” She didn’t stop her work. She’d gotten my gorget off, and was putting some kind of salve on the nail marks on my neck.

It was hard to think, much less to talk, but I made myself ask. I had to ask.

“Did you know about us? About me and her?”

Delphine kept tending to my wounds, taking off bits of armor when she needed to. She remained quiet long enough I thought she hadn’t heard me, or was ignoring me. I kept staring, waiting, my breath coming in shallow gasps.

“Yes,” she said at last.

“For how long?”

“Some time. I was jealous of you. I hated you, even back then.”

I closed my eyes again. “I didn’t know about you.”

“And why would you have? You were her grand prize. I was just a stupid girl and a sinner, a nobody.”

“I wish I’d known about you. I wish I’d known anything. I could have saved us both.”

My vision had gone hazy again. I barely heard Delphine’s response.

“You don’t get it, do you? We were saved. You ruined it. She was wrong about you, and you damned us all.”

“Wrong about me?” I wasn’t sure if I asked the question aloud or just thought it.

“It doesn’t matter. I just gave you some powerful drugs. Renuart said I needed to give you a lethal dose for a normal human, because your resistance to poisons will make them worthless otherwise. This fever will kill you if we don’t do something.”

I barely registered most of that. She’d poisoned me? I needed to stand, to defend myself, to…

Tired. I was so damn tired. Tired of all of this.

“Why bother saving me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because I’m a fool.”

She got my breastplate off. The last thing I heard before falling into blackness was a horrified gasp.

I dreamed of Karles.

I was on the battlefield, my old war sword in hand, and I’d become an angel of death. Every man who fell under my sword died, and I felt like wings lifted me over the dead and dying. The clash of steel, the howl of battle, the shouts of rage and fear that filled the air were a chorus exulting my skill.

I was an angel.

No, a beast.

I was a lion. A great and terrible golden lion that killed with claw and fang and sword. My battle shouts were great roars that made my enemies scream with terror and flee from me, but no one would escape.

I did my queen proud today.

Perhaps, when I returned, I’d make her mine.

I’d been thinking about it. Didn’t I deserve it? A kingdom of my own. The wizard was a serpent. He would come to heel or be squashed. All his schemes and great plans, but did he shine so on the field of battle? I bled for us. I killed for us. I’d grown tired of seeing all those smiling suitors congregating around the throne like roaches, hiding daggers behind their backs and looking at her like she were already theirs.

She’d prefer it this way, too. No more questions, no more doubt. If anyone challenged us, let them face my sword.

I was a lion. Great and terrible and strong. What did I care for the mewling thing fused to my back? Let him struggle in vain like he always had. Failure. Pining fool. Coward.

I didn’t need him anymore. He was no true knight.

“Keep him down! Hold him!”

“I’m trying, damn it! He’s blasted strong… he should be weaker than this.”

“It’s not just him. Get your dagger ready.”

“It’s silver, not gold, I don’t know if—”

“You were a priestess, the gold is already in you. Doubt will kill him and kill us. Do it! Now!”

Something hot as an iron brand touched me. I thrashed, roaring. No, that wasn’t me roaring, I was just shouting. What was that?

“You must fight it, Hewer! Fight it or it will consume you, body and soul. You are stronger than this. You defeated me. The first mortal in centuries to defeat me! Do not disgrace us both.”

Before I could see, a white nova of pain erupted in my chest and swallowed my world.

Back on the battlefield, I knelt before a hill of corpses. There was a gaping wound in my chest. It bled, mixing with the gore sinking into the mud beneath me.

The mound of bodies shifted, and from its depths the lion stretched out its wrinkled muzzle and bared its fangs at me.

“Why resist me? You could be mighty.”

I brought a hand to the hole in my chest. It came back dripping with red. “I never wanted power.”

“Of course you did. You adored glory. You coveted. You lusted. Why not become me? Your former lovers are all lionesses. They could become your pride! Let us take the throne from that fat old fool in the north. I will let you keep it. I have a greater seat to claim.”

“You are not my God,” I told the Lion.

“I am. There is a beast in all of you.”

I felt the hole in my chest bleeding. “One less, now. Begone with you. We’ll have our time.”

The lion laughed as it sank into the mound of corpses. “Perhaps! Many of my kindred are eager to taste your blood, Alder Knight. Fight through the storm, cut your way to me. Come and bare your fangs at a god.”

“If you’re a god,” I asked him, “then why is every angel trying to kill you?”

He said nothing as the charnel pit devoured him, but his mirthful grin vanished.

In my fevered dreams, I heard two voices break through the fog. Perhaps I heard them during one of those brief periods where I drew close to the surface of the water, or maybe it was some quality of the eldritch realm in which we wandered, bringing their words into the depths of my sleep. The difference between waking and dreaming was thin in that place, sometimes nonexistent.

“I don’t understand. Shouldn’t he be immune to this?”

“Resistant, yes, but the Gatebreaker is a corrupted divinity. Demons are very good at this as it is, and he has a particular power over mortal souls. You didn’t see it, but he was able to initiate a mass possession event among the town’s defenders.”

“God… he would have had to turn their own aura against them, generate parasite phantasms inside their souls. The power it would require to do that on multiple people at once…”

“He is dangerous. Possibly the most dangerous being in Urn. We are lucky to have made it out.”

“Did it work? Is he free of it?”

“We just performed spiritual surgery, doctor. It is like removing a cancer. Perhaps it worked, but there is no guarantee, and it will have left a wound. We will need to watch him and hope for the best. There are his other injuries to consider as well, his physical and mental exhaustion, and the fresh damage to his psyche.”

“What do you mean? You’re saying what that demon did worked because he was already worn down?”

“Yes… but Alken has endured much worse abuse than this. I don’t think it’s simply the battle prior that allowed the Gatebreaker to get into his soul.”

A pause, and then a bitter response from the doctor. “So this is my fault. What I told him before everything started, what I caused him to do… it hurt him.”

“You almost sound guilty over it. Did you not intend to kill him all this time?”

“Could you try not to play the devil, just this once? I’m too tired for it, Renuart.”

“Very well. And for what it’s worth, I think I understand. You have much to say to one another, if you both survive this. Besides, I don’t think this is all because of you.”

“What do you mean?”

A lingering silence. When he spoke again, the devil’s voice was soft.

“From what I’ve learned, Alken became the Choir’s executioner five years after Seydis burned. He has dedicated seven years of his life to it. He has compromised his honor, his faith, his friendships, his body, his very soul in pursuit of that duty. He did all of this in the hope that it would prevent his homeland from being subsumed in war once again. And yet now another war has started, right in front of him, at a time and place where he could do nothing about it. That wound is spiritual, and it will take much longer to heal than any blow he has taken in battle.”

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