“Flesh,” the sharp-toothed one repeated, a keening whine that made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“Hush, Kelast,” the one who looked like Khalim said, soft and placating. “You’ll be all right.”
He sounded like Khalim. I searched his face, looking for some flaw that might give away a shapeshifter, or a detail that would prove that my eyes did not deceive me. There were his dark eyes, untainted by the deceiver’s gold, exactly as I remembered them. There was his smile, warm and guileless.
Khalim had left the citadel where the god Torr had confined him—that I knew. I also knew that he would seek out the lost and wounded, and how else could one describe these strange people gathered around the fire? They showed no visible injuries on the hands and faces that emerged from their robes, but their eyes—the eyes of deer and frogs as well as of men—were hollow and hungry.
But I had been deceived before. I was spared, then, by having witnessed the serpent-god of the desert reach into my memories and put on the image of Khalim. This vision might have been more of the same.
I reached out, and the image of Khalim did the same, but my hand passed through his. I drew it back, startled.
“You really are made of flesh,” he said, awe and wonder on his face.
The sharp-toothed man, Kelast, made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.
And this man, the one who wore Khalim’s face exactly as I remembered it, smiled. He had not called me by name. I had traveled all this way to find him, and he said nothing to acknowledge it.
He was an impostor.
As soon as I had the thought, a knife appeared in his hand. Its blade curved to a point like the talon of a great hunting bird. Khalim had never held a weapon.
The assumed face fell away. Behind it was a flat, lacquered mask, split across the bottom in the semblance of a mouth. Two blank, white eyes stared out from deep, chisel-scarred holes above its empty grin.
I reached for my harpoon. While I was pondering this creature’s face, its companions had pressed in around me, fencing me in on three sides. The deer-headed man stood at my left, wringing long hands as his eyes rolled from side to side. Kelast approached me from the right, his teeth chattering. From the obscuring light of the bonfire emerged more figures: one with the sunken eyes of a desiccated corpse, whose arms reached almost to the ground; another with the teeth of a great cat but the mouth of a woman; yet another that buzzed with the sound of a swarm of flies, whose face was a shifting mosaic of wings. The others were only shadows, lurking in the smoke.
Lightning crackled over my hand as I took the harpoon from my back. “Let me pass,” I said, “or by the dragon who created this weapon and the dragon who keeps the warrior’s temple, I will kill you where you stand.”
“You can’t kill us,” the one who had looked like Khalim said in a different, rasping voice, the pieces of its mask moving in the semblance of speech. “But we can kill you.”
He reached for me. I took the harpoon in both hands like a spear, and the lightning caressed my fingers, sharp as a knife but gentle as a kiss. It darted out ahead of the spear point and spread across the dark robes of my first adversary, lighting up the deep hollows of his eyes.
He staggered backward. I struck at Kelast, aiming the harpoon below his rows of needle teeth. The point met flesh, or something like it, and the man-creature keened and staggered toward the fire. Black blood poured from a wound beneath his chin, open like a second mouth.
The deer-headed man, his eyes darting back and forth, crept closer and seized me by the arm, wrapping both hands around my elbow. I pulled back, but his hands held fast, as painful as if I had touched bare ice. I struggled with him as the others came closer, closing me in, but no matter how I twisted my arm or pushed against him, he still held on.
At last, I took the harpoon in my right hand and swung it in a descending arc. It sang through the air, white light trailing behind it, and struck the deer-headed man across the forehead. Thunder cracked. The fire flickered and dimmed. He let go of my arm, covering his face with both hands.
I ran, pushing past the masked figure and wading into the tall grass. It grasped at me with tiny, invisible teeth, dragging at my clothing and cutting narrow welts into my skin.
The figures around the fire pursued me. Kelast shrieked and giggled, and a single exclamation of “Flesh!” followed me as I ran from the heat of the fire and the sound of their footsteps.
I had to reach the citadel. I could not tarry here, fighting each of these people until either they fell or I did. I could not tell if they were evil creatures, intent on waylaying travelers, or if they were simply other lost souls desperate for a taste of the life they had once left behind—and it did not matter. They wished for a piece of the flesh I had so foolishly brought here, and I needed to evade them. If it was my fate to become a wandering spirit, I would put it off as long as possible.
The citadel, the citadel—it ran through my thoughts like a drumbeat, urging me forward. The grass tore at my arms and legs. My footsteps were heavy and loud, as if I ran on the deck of a ship and not solid ground. I no longer heard my pursuers.
I stopped, my chest heaving, each breath an effort. It felt like drowning. Behind me, the plain stretched on forever, empty as it had been when I arrived. The sky was deep blue and unmarked by smoke. A scar in the grass, straight and narrow, showed the way I had come.
And when I lifted my head to look forward once more, a wall of stone white as floating ice rose from the great grass sea. I had carved a path across the world to find it, and here it was, stark and painfully bright. I had to turn my eyes away.
How long since I had landed on the gray shore and spoken to Fearghus? I could not say. It felt like only a few hours had passed, but exhaustion came and went in waves. It could have been days. I wanted nothing more than to lie down and rest, but I could not possibly do so, not with the citadel so close. When I looked at it again, I could not turn away a second time, nor could I close my eyes.
I slung my harpoon over my shoulder and kept walking.
The gates were open when I arrived, framing a sky now red as fresh blood. From somewhere behind the walls, a low sun stained the walls a livid pink. The heavy doors were carved of marble, seamless and flat, without even a single mark of a chisel to mar their perfect surface. A road of the same white stone formed out of the dust and grass outside and sloped gently upward toward an empty central square lined with plain, smooth pillars. On either side, a colossal statue of a man in armor stood watch. Their faces were almost familiar.
There in the doorway stood a human figure, dressed in fraying clothes, tiny beneath the towering statues. He looked out through the gate, over the endless plain, hands in the pockets of his thin, woven coat.
Khalim wasn’t here. He had left to wander the wilds years ago. Still, I knew his relaxed posture, his quiet patience—the things the creature by the fire of bones had not managed to imitate. Those who had known him as a child had said he was always listening. Now, he was listening for me, and watching me as I crossed from grass to bare earth to marble pavement, hard and cold beneath my feet.
“Eske,” he said, and all my doubts fled from me. He smiled. “You’re here.”
How much I had forgotten in the intervening years. He was as tall as I, though I had remembered him as shorter. He was slight, but when he reached out to take one of my hands in both of his, his grip was as strong as a warrior’s.
His hands were cold. They felt almost like water, like my fingers would pass through them if I returned his grip.
Ten years of exhaustion caught up with me all at once. I fell to my knees. Striking the stone beneath me hurt, but it was a dull, distant pain, receding in favor of the wave of relief and sadness that enveloped me.
I had found him. My long labors were done. I had no idea what to do next.
“Come with me,” I said, gazing up at him. How many details of his face had I forgotten? He was as young as I had been when the god Torr had taken him away, but there were faint lines around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes, evidence of his easy smile. Stubble shaded his jaw. His eyes were dark, not gold like the impostor in Phyreios, and they caught the bloody light of the sun and turned it into the comfort of a hearth.
“Eske,” he said again. I’d forgotten the sound of his voice. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
My heart sank. “But I came all this way to find you.”
He smiled, but his eyes were sad. “I know. I’ll thank you for it later. For now, you’re bending the world around you, and the longer you stay, the worse it will get. The god of this place—Torr—he wants to send you away.”
“Let him. I’m not leaving without you.” I got to my feet.
His smile faltered, and my heart sank. “Unless,” I said, “you don’t want to come with me?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could utter a word, the gates of the citadel slammed shut. The impact shook the world, scattering dust and setting the grass to trembling. I closed my eyes, covering my face with my free arm.
When I looked again, the citadel was gone, as was the vast plain. Khalim and I stood in a dark forest, the trees pressing in around us. Something vast and four-legged shuffled by in the distance, and specks of violet light hovered in the air.
Khalim frowned, and he set his jaw in the stubborn way I had both adored and dreaded in our short time together. He took my hand and stepped forward. I had no choice but to follow. I would have followed even if I’d had a choice.
Half a heartbeat later, I found myself standing on the marble road again, this time inside the great doors, where the statues looked down upon me from their lofty pedestals. My head spun and my vision blurred.
Khalim’s hands were almost solid on my arm, keeping me on my feet. “You can’t keep me out,” he called out to the city and the god that made it.
As if in response, we were shunted away again. My heart flew into my throat, and my stomach dropped, as space and distance distorted around me.
Now we stood upon the shore of a vast, black ocean, under a sky of unfamiliar stars. White-crested waves curled around our feet.
“Are you all right?” Khalim asked.
I could not speak, only nod. I would live.
We traveled again, quick as a thought, and when we arrived in the citadel, Torr was there to meet us.
I had never seen this form before, only the face he had stolen from Khalim, but there was no mistaking him for anyone else. He was as the Ascended must have been, once, before an age of immortality and consuming the blood of sacrifices had turned them into something other than human. He was as tall as a legend, but his skin was soft and brown and his eyes, gold as they were, lacked the haughty distance and metallic sheen of his erstwhile successors.
All around him, the pillars trembled and leaned, and cracks showed on the perfect marble.
“Cease this foolishness,” he commanded. “You know not what you do.”
“I know exactly what I’m doing,” Khalim said.
Torr’s imperious face cracked, showing the barest hint of something that might have been rage and might have been fear. “The passage of this living man will destroy everything. Release him, and you’ll be welcome back here, since that appears to be what you wish.”
“You’ll release us both,” Khalim said, “and give back what you have taken from me. Let the people of Phyreios govern themselves, and let me live a mortal life.”
“Or what?” Torr intoned. His hand went to the curved sword at his hip, but it rested there, waiting.
Khalim looked him in the eyes, his gaze unflinching. “Or I’ll take Eske to and from your city, and watch the world crumble.”
I caught my breath and found my voice at last. “I go,” I began, swallowed, and tried again. “I go with him willingly. Let this be another city that falls around you, Torr. I am only thankful that no other souls will be harmed here.”
“You know nothing of what you speak,” Torr spat.
Khalim’s hand on mine was still cold and intangible, but it was more solid than the stone around us. “Maybe not,” he said. “I’m only a man, and you are a god. What say you, then? Will you let us go, and return what I’ve lost? Or will I watch another of your cities crumble?”
Silence fell over the citadel. Under my feet, I felt rather than heard stone crack and shift.
“Very well,” Torr said. “You’ll have your wish. Let what is to come be on your head.”
Khalim turned to me and took my face in both his hands. “Find me in Phyreios,” he said, and everything went black.
Back to Chapter LXV: The Long Walk
Forward to Chapter LXVII: The Long Way Back
If you’re following along here, this is the antepenultimate chapter! Two more to go! Thanks for reading.
When I get to this point in my rewrites, I want to draw out the peril of the trek to the citadel and give the final confrontation with Torr a little more weight. I also want the moral quandary to be a little clearer–Torr is focused on the greater good, with complete disregard for the individual lives that might be affected, while Khalim and Eske can’t see through time and space and make decisions accordingly. Neither, I think, are wrong, and the narrative should reflect that.
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