by Jeffery A. Sergent
in Issue 103, August 2020
I
“Will it come back?” Jade asked, pulling the fur collar more tightly about her. The giant chartreuse bird wheeled around a snow-tipped peak once before turning westward, toward the pale orange bleeding across the nameless range.
Tallus rubbed his hands together as he stepped up beside her. His gloves were too thin for any practical use here, but being from a land of hot sun and warm seas, he knew little of the practicalities of facing ice and snow. “No. The simulacrum follows but a single geas.”
“What will become of it?”
He shrugged and turned away.
Jade felt she should’ve been bothered by his lack of concern for something he had created from dirt and bone. She followed its path a little longer, and as she watched, she discovered that she didn’t actually care either. She knew she should have – or that there had been a time when she would have – just as there had been a time when she would’ve found the light of the setting sun a beautiful sight despite the bitter cold. And the mountains fading into the mists. She pulled her collar tighter still, letting her finger linger at the scar that cut across the base of her neck. Well, at least she was aware that she no longer cared. She would cling to that if nothing else.
“So,” Bojan said, “this is the edge of the world.” He used part of his blue turban to cover his nose and mouth. Before the travelers, the land ended abruptly. Below stretched a rolling sea of clouds stretching eastward as far as the eye could see.
“It is a daunting sight,” Tallus said, “knowing that one could simply step off the edge and fall for eternity.”
“Something is under there,” Bojan said.
“This is just as the ancient scrolls of my order described,” Tallus countered. “The scrolls tell us the world has four edges, and beyond those edges lie nothingness. Why would one part be true and not the other?”
“Bah! Truth is whatever you want it to be.”
“Ah,” Tallus wagged a finger at him. “You are using Pelsarious’s argument.”
Jade rolled her eyes. “Let’s discuss philosophy when we get out of this damned cold.” Of the three, she alone had experienced cold such as this, having grown up in the Northlands where her father had ruled a barony. Like her mother, however, who had been born in the Eastern Empire, she had never come to appreciate or tolerate it.
“The air is thinner up here, too,” Bojan said.
“It is syphoned into the void,” Tallus piped in, then went to retrieve the pack filled with his sorcerous accoutrements.
“I thought you hated all sorcerers for what was done to you,” Bojan said, moving next to Jade.
Without thinking, Jade’s hand moved to the smooth, polished stone tied around her neck. It was mauve, but now streaked with gray like circling storm clouds. The colors and patterns shifted almost imperceptibly deep within. “I do,” she said. “But he’s comely and adores me. And we may need him.”
Bojan’s eyes narrowed and flashed toward the sorcerer like dagger strikes.
“Just in case,” she added.
He placed his hands on her shoulders. “We will fix this, kahdis. I swear.”
She smiled for him, but even the simple gesture for her longtime, faithful companion required effort. She simply didn’t care anymore, and it had gotten gradually worse ever since a sorcerer had ripped her soul from her body. That’s why she had always enjoyed Bojan’s company – he had helped her to feel. And to care.
“Come,” he said. “Perhaps it will be warmer inside.”
And so they approached the Weeping Tower.
There was nothing spectacular about the tower. It stood forty feet tall at most and was unadorned. The roof was conical with four windows below, one facing each cardinal direction. A single open door faced away from the World’s Edge. As they neared, however, Jade noticed droplets of water rolling down the sides of its dark, smooth stones.
Bojan removed his glove and touched the stone. “It’s cool.” He stared up its length. “Maybe seeping from within?”
“Magic,” said Tallus. “Someday you will learn that there are powers at work that taunt our meager understanding of the world. According to the scrolls, the tower weeps for the ignorance of man.”
Bojan studied the dampness on his palm then wiped it dry. “Why must one come to the mage-priests, then, to beg their knowledge?”
“Too much knowledge can be dangerous. Who knows the working of their minds?” He shrugged. “This way, only those dedicated to asking the questions will learn the answers.”
They all paused before the open doorway.
“Just one question for you, Jade,” Tallus said. “Before we go inside.”
“Make it quick.”
“Given that the tower exists, I have fewer doubts that the mage-priests exist. But they are, if the tales are true, men of vast power.”
“Men of knowledge,” Bojan said.
Tallus smiled. “Knowledge is power, my friend. It opens the doorways to might, magic, and the divine. Why else gather and guard it as these men have. But to the point: have you considered carefully what you are about to do?”
“I have.”
“Do you know what a sorcerer could do with a human soul? It is a raw, unbridled source of power. Men would kill for it. They would kill entire cities for it. Nations. And you are about to go before them with a filled Soul Stone. If careful, they could siphon its energy for decades. Perhaps even centuries. Or they could use it to create a spell the likes of which are unfathomable to my small mind.”
“Then why haven’t you tried to take it?”
“I do not practice that type of magic. But who says they do not? What makes you think they will simply help you free it from the stone?” He waited for an answer that didn’t come. “I am simply asking, is this the only way?”
Bojan then spoke: “A bit late to be voicing those concerns.”
“No, it’s not the only way,” Jade said. “I could have a spellbinder, even one as small-minded as yourself, destroy the gem. But then someone must immediately kill me before I turn into a rampaging gohlu. That would free my soul to whatever doom awaits it. Not an option I like, but if the mage-priests can’t or won’t help . . .” She shrugged.
“So, you are saying you brought me all the way out here to possibly kill you?”
Jade did not answer.
“How do you know you can trust me? What if I kept the stone?”
“That’s why I brought him.” She nodded toward Bojan.
Tallus looked at the tall, thin man and laughed half-heartedly. Bojan made a slight bow in return.
“Let’s go, gentlemen,” Jade said. “My only concern at the moment, getting warm.”
II
Inside was warm, and pale blue stones were set in sconces around the circular room, filling the chamber with a cerulean lambent glow. Jade slipped the thick coat off her shoulders to change out of her thick woolen shirt.
Bojan and Tallus studied one of the illuminating stones, whispering back and forth. The room took up the entire floor, and a stairway curved up along the wall to the next floor. The floor was thick with dust and littered with several bundles.
“What are those?” Tallus asked, moving from the wall.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jade said, quickly sliding on her thinner garment, allowing only the barest glimpse of the scars crisscrossing her back. She repositioned the short swords at each hip then moved toward the steps.
“It is a man,” Bojan said, examining one of the shapes. “Or was. Mummified now.” The body collapsed into a pile of dust when he touched its sleeve.
Tallus moved about the room. “All the same. Wonder why they were left out so carelessly? They have had to have been here a long time. Judging by the clothing and possessions I can see, however, not long enough for a body to disintegrate.”
“It doesn’t concern us,” Jade said.
“It does if these are the fabled mage-priests,” he said. “Or their victims.”
“They do not look like monks,” Bojan said. “More like pilgrims, like us.”
“Enough wasting time,” Jade said, starting up the steps.
“By the gods,” Tallus whispered. His words were quickly followed by what sounded like a drop of water falling into a pool, magnified a hundred times.
Exasperated, Jade turned, but the harsh words she’d been about to unleash froze in her throat. The wall upon which the stair rose rippled as if it were, in fact, that pool. The stone wavered like water, and rings rippled out across the face of the wall, fading as they reached the edges of the steps.
Tallus was taking slow, tentative steps toward the wall.
“Back!” Bojan shouted.
Jade simply watched, strangely fascinated. She should have shouted a warning to Tallus as Bojan had done, but she did not. Perhaps she should have shouted in fear, but she didn’t do that either, even though what she saw defied explanation. Three grey shapes pushed through the stone from the centermost ripple. When they had reached a foot in length, they began to pull the wall open into a rough triangle. The stone did not break or crumble; the tower did not tremble. The wall parted like a curtain. The protuberances, which now appeared more like insect legs, seemed to gather the pale light, which swirled upon them like oil on water. Next, came a grey shape, rounded like a lump of clay clumsily molded by a child. Three thick legs on toeless feet moved the bulk through the parted stone. The thing stood four feet high and was at least four in circumference. The feet and appendages were spaced evenly about its sides, and from underneath its bulk waved three long tentacles, each ending in a large leaf-shaped pad. There seemed to be no eyes, but it moved with a single-minded purpose toward the spellbinder.
Tallus stood as one mesmerized as the thing slowly approached. Whether it was fear or fascination, Jade did not know.
“Back!” Bojan shouted once more.
The thing stretched one of its squid-like tentacles forward. Tallus raised a hand toward it. For a moment, they stood like two beings who do not speak a common tongue reaching toward one another in a gesture of tentative greeting, but as quick as a heartbeat, the tentacle shot forward, wrapping around Tallus’s waist with the leaf pad slapping across his chest.
Bojan drew his tegha and yelled something in his native tongue as he ran toward the bulk. He swung the curved blade, but one of the insect arms knocked it aside – the impact made a sound like metal striking stone. He staggered, catching himself against the edge of the steps.
Tallus’s body convulsed, and he screamed.
Strange, Jade thought, he did not try to fight back. Was he so afraid? But how could a wizard be afraid of a supernatural beast, unless, of course, he wasn’t the wizard she’d thought him to be. As she watched, a small part of her wondered why she didn’t attack. She clutched the gemstone at her throat. Had she felt it move? Yes, there it was again, something tugging at it though her hand covered it completely.
Tallus’s body spasmed momentarily, then began to shrivel, then pale, then waste away.
Jade instantly knew what’d happened. She knew with every fiber of her being that it was drawing Tallus’s soul from his body, and now, her exposed soul was being drawn toward the beast. It feasted on the life-giving essence and discarded the empty shell. A bone-freezing chill raced through her entire body, not from temperature, but from the inside, like when she’d felt her body’s vital essence missing from herself that very first time.
Bojan was fighting again, trying to get near the tentacle to try to free the already dead Tallus, who would soon join the other discarded husks in the room.
When Bojan struck, he sliced the curved blade across the soul-eater’s body. It twitched but made no sound. It swatted at his stroke away with an insect leg but would not be distracted from its meal.
A moment later, it dropped the shell that had been Tallus. Bojan was striking again, but the creature struck with two arms, swatting the sword with one, bludgeoning him on the shoulder with the other. His sword clattered to the floor, and he staggered backwards. The thing didn’t even have to turn its body, both tentacles began their calm, slow reach toward her dear friend.
Energy and movement surged through Jade’s torso and limbs at once. Her body moved as if acting of its own volition. She leapt up the steps two at a time, drawing her two short, straight blades, then she turned and launched herself into the air, over the soul-eater. A scream emerged from the depths of her being, a scream made up of all her fear and frustration. As she landed on top of the beast, she drove her swords downward with all her weight and momentum behind them. The blades plunged into the thick hide, making wet sucking sounds. A cold amethyst liquid erupted from the wounds, and its appendages waved eerily about in complete and utter silence. The only sound it made was the scuffing of its feet. Jade pulled the swords free, rolled to the floor. Her lungs were already on fire from the effort.
It finally stopped and held the leaf shaped pads up as if there were its eyes. They moved around, first turning toward Bojan then Jade. She felt the pull more strongly on her Soul Stone and knew it was coming for her next. As it lumbered toward her, she rushed past, slashing at its side, but her attack left no mark. As she turned, Bojan stood beside her, sword in hand, panting.
“Kahdi,” she said. She was suddenly aware that she hadn’t used that intimate form of address once during this journey, but now, the word came as easily as it had before her soul had been torn from body.
“I have never heard tale of such a creature,” he said. “Surely, some sorcery created it.”
Jade didn’t answer. Instead, she charged the beast. She ducked under one of its insect-like arms then came up, leaping into the air, bringing both blades to bear against it. The appendage cracked and snapped off. Bojan moved in at the same time, slicing then, swirling around, sliced again. Amethyst oozed from the x cut into its hide.
They met on the opposite side, backing away as the pads tracked Jade.
“At least it bleeds,” Jade said.
Bojan’s eyes narrowed. “I fear we would wear ourselves down trying to do substantial damage to it.”
“We take it apart limb by limb if nothing else.”
Her companion didn’t look happy, but he nodded assent. They moved again. Bojan first this time, scoring it’s hide again. Jade tried for another limb, but her attack was angled imperfectly, and the blades slid away harmlessly.
Bojan didn’t make it to the other side with Jade this time. A tentacle had caught him by the waist and lifted him from the ground. It slithered around him, tightening like a giant constrictor, the leaf pad poising itself to slap his chest.
“Flee,” he shouted. “Find the mage-priests.”
The thought crossed her mind that this may be a trap of the mage-priests to deter anyone brazen enough to make it this far. It didn’t matter. They didn’t matter. Only Bojan mattered. She ran at the beast and the insectoid arms swatted at her again. This time, instead of attacking them, she slid under the creature and rolled under its massive bulk. She came up where Bojan dangled in the air and chopped with each sword, again and again. Four times both blades struck, and each cut a chunk of flesh away. The insect arms reached for her – the other tentacles coiled above her – but the seventh stroke severed the limb.
The soul-eater staggered, silently thrashing its appendages. Jade pursued it in a berserker fury, stabbing and slashing its sides. Several thin lines appeared, some leaking amethyst. The thing walked toward the wall near the door. It may as well have been taking a stroll: it moved slowly and deliberately, paying no heed to Jade’s attacks at all. Two arms tapped the wall, and they rippled. It pulled the stone aside like the curtains of a stage. Frigid air swam around her, pouring into the opening. The thing strode through, Jade still hacking and slashing. When she reached the opening, she wavered on the edge of an abyss. Beyond, above and below, a vast emptiness lay. Points of light shone, some brightly, some dimly, and round spheres – some with swirling stripes, some with rainbow rings – drifted among them. Instead of blackness among the stars, however, swirls like paint strokes of green, violet, red, and blue swashed between. It was both frightening and beautiful to behold.
Just below her feet large rocks floated by, some as large as mountains. To one of the these the creature now drifted. Jade fought for her balance, but as rush of air pushed her forward as the rent in the wall was sealing shut, she wondered: why not let go? It seemed hours that she hung there suspended on the brink of the void, caught in that moment of in-between, but she fell backwards instead.
The stone closed, rippled, then was solid wall once more.
Her lungs burned for air, and her body spasmed as she coughed. Blackness wavered on the edges of her consciousness, and she fell back into Bojan’s arms as darkness swallowed her thoughts completely.
III
Jade awoke wrapped in Bojan’s arms. She rose without comment and went immediately to Tallus’s corpse.
It was like old, brittle leather stretched over bones. Merely a shell. All that had made it a living being was gone. She examined her own hands. The knuckles protruded a little more than they had a few weeks ago. The scars on her wrists looked more pronounced. She touched her face, feeling the cheekbones a bit more pronounced. “Will this be all that’s left of me in the end?” she wondered aloud. As she spoke, the husk crumbled into dust. Only the clothing and items he had carried remained.
Dirty green globes illumined the single room of the next floor. It was bare, except for the grey statue of a man in the center of the room. It depicted a warrior clothed in banded mail with a helm that flared at the base and sloped down its back. A crescent moon turned sideways, points up, rested above the open helm revealing the hard, gaunt face of a man with eyes closed. His hands rested on the pommel of a massive two-handed sword. It being the only item in the room, they were drawn toward it. Another stairway continued upward on the far side of the room.
Before it rested the skull of a beast – his last opponent maybe – cloven nearly in twain.
“The craftmanship is without peer,” Bojan said. “Look at the texture of the face. The detail of the armor. Incredible.”
Jade peered into the face. The features didn’t look like they were from the Middle Kingdom, the North, or the East. Maybe this is what men looked like beyond the western jungles.
Its eyes opened.
Jade gasped and grabbed Bojan’s arm. He whispered something in his native tongue.
The head slowly turned to regard the intruders as they stepped backwards, drawing their weapons. The statue lifted the massive sword and spoke in a language Jade could not understand. When the figure moved, thick dust fell to the floor revealing the tarnished silver of the mail beneath.
Bojan spoke to it.
The figure bowed his head and whispered something over and over with the rhythm of a litany. When next he spoke, it was in Mariannan, the trade tongue of the Middle Kingdoms.
“Bold pilgrims, lost souls, I bid you welcome to Raulpantha on behalf of the mage-priests. I am the Last Guardian of the tower.”
“So, you hack to pieces whoever makes it past your soul-eating demon?” Jade asked. She poised to attack. “I think you’ll not stop me either.”
He pounded the point of the blade into the floor, gripping the cross-guard in each hand. The floor vibrated and his voice echoed. “I am the Last Guardian, chosen by Xytal Rygelin, mage-priest to the mage-priests, keeper of the forgotten lore. He empowered me to choose who comes before him.”
“We meant no offense, Guardian,” Bojan said, lowering Jade’s blades with his own.
The Last Guardian nodded and smiled. “You misunderstand. I am the last to hold this post. Xytal Rygelin conferred this honor upon me when I, too, came seeking knowledge. As part of my payment and part of my answer, I was told that I should wait here until the last seeker should come.”
“How do you know this?” Jade whispered.
“Xytal Rygelin told me: ‘a woman shall come bearing the greatest joy for all the world to see, and she will leave bearing the greatest sorrow.’”
Jade touched the stone. “You mean this?”
He nodded.
“What do you mean ‘the greatest sorrow’?”
“I do not know,” he said. “I have waited nine hundred years and a day for you to arrive. Now, you are here. My task is finished.”
Bojan said, “I did not know that one had to pay to seek knowledge from the mage-priests.”
“Everything has its cost.” With that, the Last Guardian shouldered the huge blade and left. His heavy footfalls gradually hushed as he descended the stairway.
When they heard his footfalls no more, Bojan said, “Where will he go, I wonder? Was his price worth his answer?”
“His affairs are not our concern,” Jade said. Though, she hesitated before moving toward the way up. She couldn’t fathom standing nine hundred years, waiting on someone to show up. He could have easily been lying, but, somehow, she knew he wasn’t. What was worth doing that sort of penance? Would she have do it to be rid of the accursed stone?
She didn’t know.
“Kahdis?” Bojan’s voice startled her.
“Sorry.”
“We dare not risk this great sorrow. We must go,” he said. “Now.”
“I have to keep going.”
“For what price?”
“Whatever it takes.”
Bojan nodded and followed as Jade moved to the first step. She stopped. “You don’t have to go. You know that, right?”
“I have come all this way. I will not abandon you at the end. We will see this through to the end. Together.”
Something stirred in her chest; something she hadn’t felt in a long time. It felt heavy and burdensome. It made her feel – something she couldn’t describe. Not anymore, at least. But she thrilled at it. She knew Bojan was the reason, so it couldn’t be bad. When she continued upward, she had to wipe the tears welling in her eyes. Another sensation she had forgotten.
IV
She stepped into the final chamber not knowing what to expect. The room, like the others, was circular, but this one was lit now by sunlight coming through the four large windows. They were open to the outside, yet this room felt warmer than any she’d been in yet. The room was empty, totally bear of any living essentials, not even rugs to make sitting upon the stone floor more comfortable. The occupants alone filled the room. They were nine. All were grey with dust as the Last Guardian had been, and all were ancient looking. Most appeared to be mummified, shriveled to no more than those left by the soul eater. Jade’s first fear was that the beast had been here and devoured them all without the Guardian’s knowledge. She walked behind each, her fear growing as she saw two with collapsed skulls. One’s arms were missing.
“Gods,” she whispered. “Have we come all this way to look upon corpses?”
“Death,” a gentle voice said, “dwells wherever mortals dwell.”
Bojan hissed. Jade spun, swords drawn.
A pleasant laugh followed.
One of the mummies stood. He moved stiffly, spasmodically, almost like an automaton she’d seen at a puppetry display in the streets of Valesh. A cloud of dust surrounded him, and a sweet tang filled the air and grew increasingly more unpleasant. The moving mummy bowed. The voluminous robes seemed stiff. His white hair and beard flowed to his waste. “I am Xytal Rygelin, mage-priest to the mage-priests and the last of my order. How may I serve the Last Seeker?”
As with the guardian, she couldn’t comprehend the fact he’d been sitting on the floor meditating for nearly a thousand years. Yet, seeing it, she could not doubt it. “I need help.”
“So did all who came here before. What distinguishes your need?”
“If you knew I was the last, how do you not know what I want?”
“What you need is abundantly clear,” he said with a gentle smile. “I would like to hear what you want?”
“I want my soul returned to me from this accursed stone. I want to be able to feel again, to laugh again, to cry. I want to stop searching and fighting and to just – just rest. To go home. To grow old and die happy.”
He nodded.
“I want to be me again,” she said.
“And you want me to do this with the wave of a hand?”
“I don’t know.”
“What price are you willing to pay?”
“Anything.”
“You met the Last Guardian,” the mage-priest said. “He gave the exact same answer. Would you stand watch for nine hundred years and a day if I asked?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
“Your home would no longer exist. Your faithful companion would be dust, as are mine. No one you knew, nothing you care about would exist. The world would be different. You would move through a strange world alone. Is this what you want?”
“Kahdis,” Bojan whispered. “No.”
“I – I – ” Words would not come to her.
She looked to the mage-priest. “Do not fear what lies before you,” he said. “I will say no.”
“You will lose everything,” Bojan said. “You will lose me.”
She looked back to Bojan. His eyes were wide, but he would not speak. “I have to do this.” She pulled him close. Their eyes met. “If you have something to say, say it now.”
He said nothing.
“Thank you for all you’ve done for me. All you’ve sacrificed. You’ve been a true, true friend.” She managed a smile. “I couldn’t have made it here without you. But I have to do this for me.”
“Mage-priest –” she began, but before she had finished, in one swift motion, Bojan pulled the dagger from his belt and plunged it into her chest.
She grabbed the hilt of the weapon in both hands and tried to pull it free. She collapsed to her knees still too shocked to scream. Her mouth moved, but her brain wouldn’t send the command to form sounds.
“That’s how it feels,” Bojan said. “That’s how I feel. A pain I can do nothing about. A pain that will kill me unless I do something about it first.”
She coughed. A little splatter of blood landed on the floor in front of her. Bloody spittle hung from her paling lips. She tried to speak again, but again, no words emerged.
His eyes were wide like one insane, and his voice changed pitches when he spoke. “No,” he said. “Don’t speak. I don’t want you to. I can’t hear you say you’re willing to abandon me. After all we’ve been through. After all I’ve done. I left my life behind to come with you this time. Because I thought you cared.” He paced back and forth.
The mage-priest watched, detached, unemotional.
“And now I’ve thrown that away. My whole life.” He came to kneel before her. Tears streaked his face. He pulled her closer, using one hand to steady the dagger to push it in further.
Jade screamed.
“I loved you,” he whispered.
He drew his sword, turning toward the mage priest.
“No,” she said, coughing more bloody spittle. “Please.”
Both men looked into one another’s eyes but neither spoke. Bojan cut once. The mage-priest’s head launched from his body, the smile of contentment, however, never left his face. Both head and body were dust before they reached the floor.
Jade forced herself to her feet and drew both swords.
Bojan laughed. “What do you plan to do now? Kill me?”
“Yes,” she said and attacked.
Bojan parried one blow and side stepped the other. Jade stumbled past him, struggling to breath as her heart beat against the blade.
Bojan looked at her with disgust. “How many leagues have we traveled together? How many nights have we huddled to ward off rain or cold?”
Jade didn’t understand. At least, she had always told herself she didn’t.
“Do not fear what lies before you,” the mage-priest had said. But she had been afraid. Of Bojan. She had known for a long time that he had loved her. That’s why she had left him behind for those years. But she had needed him this time, his sword, his steadfastness, his loyalty.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He spat on the floor. “Just lie down and die with your mage-priest.” He stepped toward her to look down upon her. “At least I may be able to sell that cursed stone for a price to make all these years worth it.”
When he reached for the stone, she knew he’d made a fatal mistake. From the look on his face, she knew he realized it, too, but just a second too late. He thought the fight finished before she was dead. And because of that, he died with one of her swords thrust into his belly and up into his heart.
His eyes locked onto hers, filled with fear and wonder. “Die,” he said, then fell to the ground to lay among the mage-priests.
Jade wept. She wept for the lost opportunity of freeing herself from this curse; she wept for the rage of Bojan’s betrayal; and she wept for the fear created by love. Finally, she wept for the part of her that she had lost.
Sometime later, she did not know how long, she pulled the blade free from her chest. Thick, blackening blood oozed out with the horrid sucking sound.
The air had gotten much colder within the tower. She stood and dropped Bojan’s dagger with his body then walked from the tower.
Die – his final declaration echoed in her thoughts.
“I never die,” Jade whispered, leaving the past behind. “Not anymore.”
©August 2020, Jeffery A. Sergent
Jeffery A. Sergent is a high school teacher in southeastern Kentucky and a lifelong fantasy fan. His work has appeared in Alienskin and previously in Swords & Sorcery Magazine. He has also written a novel, Absent.