Chapter 66: Look Homeward, Angel

There was a pyre for the dead, but not after Turk and Regis collected remembrances of their blood. We searched the wreckage extensively, looking for every Cataphract corpse we could find. I found Tomorrow Gives Her Hope, or her head rather. Tall Mountains Call told me not to be sad, and that I gave her hope, and that his name for me would be Light Bringer. I looked at the sighing giant, who is Ymir, being all that is left of the megatheres in Tarthas, having buried the old man Horm and all the others who died when the Angels put hooks in Pandemonium's jaws and drew it out of the ground. I told him that he should travel with Tall Mountains Call to the sword slash west of Haven and go to the bottom of the canyon, then search for Matoya's cave, taken over by the Traitor, Patches, and there they would find the bones of their lost kin.

"Your father and your uncle did set a guard, and these demons whom you helped destroy made them captive, to prevent any messengers passing between the sanctum and Haven, having driven them mad with hunger and pain. There you will see the remains of the grotesques who tormented them. I looked into the eyes of one and saw its hate, and I know that it was put there by another; he who fell from the sky."

Ymir nodded towards Regis. 

And to Tall Mountains Call I said, "Your son fell to Warcloud, pet of Blitzkrieg, when they sent the last of the archons on a rampage across our island, laden with parasites, to spread a miasma of death and disease. He died saving many, and while many have died since, you have made certain that his death was not in vain, having aided in the downfall of the evil ones."

And to them both I said, "Look for the arches at the base of the canyon, far to the eastern side, and look for the bones of the final archon. There you'll find the ones you've lost."

And they did. They left that very night after the pyre. Turk and the Angels thanked them profusely for their help, as both of them were a tremendous boon in the search through the wreckage. In fact, it was Ymir who found Patches, and at Turk's bidding laid him on the fire. His body was soup inside his armor, dripping out in chunks through its holes and seams. Belial had caught Turk's leg with his tongue, and I think he may have managed to bite him, causing the trauma to his leg. Turk unlatched the bonds around the Traitor's wrists and folded his big hands over his chest; the last thing he did before lighting the blaze. Belial had been held down while I cut his tongue, and pressed hard into the grate where he melted through, allowing me to drag Turk away. Abdiel took my spear and threw it at Blitzkrieg. Angels stood at attention, and when Turk was finished singing a hymn for fallen children, they raised their bows and loosed twenty one shafts into the black Tarthas sky. 

Abdiel was still alive, but could not be woken, and Regis offered to heal him personally, he being his order's chief physician. 

"Shall I urge him to find you when he's recovered?", the Angel asked.

Turk shook his head. "I'm going away to rest, and will likely be gone for quite a while. If the Fates will it, I will see Abdiel again."

He put his hand on Abdiel's head as a father would his feverish son. I did not see Regis administer any visible aid, but already Abdiel's wings were showing signs of rebirth. I hoped the Fates would will for me to see him again. He threw my spear into Blitzkrieg's eye, and was on him with his falcata before my weapon even struck. Regis admitted that his foe seemed weaker than in their past duels. Abdiel is exactly the man that Tarthas needs, wasting no time over moral quandaries, doing instead what needs to be done and doing it with fury. He is the son of Ares and Anpiel, a demigod of judgement and vision, and if I were given a choice of practitioners for my own final ending, it would be him.

Turk wanted to be alone for a while, so I climbed to the top of Pandemonium's smoking remains and raised a lantern I took from a spilled supply crate. In my boyhood I would look across the horizon to see the warscape of Tarthas, but now I stood amidst it, and I was looking out to lands of peace, which seemed so far from me that night that I felt I  would never reach them. Only the blurry glow from the moon gave me comfort. It was a blood moon, which to me looked like an echo of the Sun. 

           When the gryphon and the reavers had gone, Turk climbed to where I was and smiled.

"Regis was very generous, and had his people search Pandemonium for more than just our dead."

He gestured downward, so I followed him. He led me to a small crater that had previously been blocked by a pair of large reavers, and there I saw why he smiled, for both our pegasi awaited their riders.

"I want to see the Sun, Victor."

I nodded, unable to speak with my tightening throat. So we camped for the rest of the night, and moments after dawn we mounted our steeds and climbed, coasting for a time among the eels, then drifting between the mantas, straying close to their luminous flanks so that we could hear their song. I had warned Turk of the cold as we saddled up, so he followed my lead, and I only dared to climb a little way above the manta pod. 

"Are these the same mantas you and Abdiel saw?" he asked over the comms. They were skittish, crackling like bacon, but I could fill in the words that were lost.

"It's hard to say," I replied. "I never knew such creatures existed before."

"Lord V has images of them, along with images of Sol and Lune."

I remember the shock I felt then. So many times I had felt myself drawn to Thirty-Third Day. I imagined I would be locked away for my part in the stable heist, but I decided in my heart then that it was my destiny to one day go there, and to rise by one way or another to Lord V's favor, so I could earn the privilege of cartographing the dwelling place of our hope.

"I can't believe it's real," Turk said. I could tell that he was crying. I did too.

Turk wanted to look at the pyre again before leaving.

"Any sign of Belial?"

I shook my head. "He fell through the grate."

Turk nodded. "I suspected as much. I couldn't think with so much pain in my leg. And then the Angels came."

"What will they do now?"

Turk looked upward. "They're going to leave our islands after healing Abdiel, and search for more survivors."

"Survivors of what?"

"Of the Fall, Victor. What else?"

"How long ago was the Fall? It must have been hundreds of years."

Turk sighed. "My memory reaches back very far. It's cloudy, when I look back more than forty or fifty years, but I know with certainty that as long as I have been alive, our world has been a privy."

"Is the gryphon an ark?"

"In a way. It's their ark, large enough for all their orders. But ours were much larger. They had to be, to bring not only people but animals and trees, all the seeds of life."

"And the sky struck them down."

"So many have said. You're reminding me of the apocryphal covenants. That was a harsh time. Many now would still be alive had we not fought so viciously over control of each other's views."

"My memory reaches back far as well," I said. Turk gave me a nod.

"You never chose one. You told me this when you were small. And you showed me your brand almost half a dozen times in one night."

He left the pyre and gathered the phylacteries containing the Cataphracts' blood into a storm case. 

"They only offered me two, and I disliked the ideologies that went with them."

"I dislike ideology in general," Turk said. "It's the poor man's philosophy. Better to train yourself to think."

I nodded, though I hadn't really paid much attention, being distracted by the memory of Turk visiting the Dolomite sanctum. "That was the night I first saw you, when I showed you my brand. Why were you there? I've often wondered, but never asked."

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"I came for the dakine."

I laughed, lightly. Then I realized what he was telling me. "It's true? What Blitzkrieg was saying?"

He rose, the storm case in his hands. "Bits and pieces. Enough to cast doubt. I did awaken you, and the nelumbo was meant to have an effect. But I never meant for Eris or her father to get entangled in our mess. And Blitzkrieg was never going to leave Haven alone."

"Did you pit Jadus against V?"

He rolled his eyes, but I held his gaze.

"Jadus is an idiot. We had V distracted, but he made a comment Jadus didn't like, and instead of letting it pass he got angry."

           "What did he do?"

           "He jumped on the table and bragged about our plan. He told him that as we spoke, V's own pegasus was being carted away for him to ride."

            That had me shocked enough, but it went on.

            "V is deranged and cruel, but it turns out he is not completely unreasonable. He said he understood the Devil threat and that we should have simply asked for his help. Then he offered to allow our use of the pegasi so long as they were returned and a large fee paid. I was about to accept his terms, but Jadus jumped back on the table and said something about the Batch that I would rather not repeat to you. You know what happened after."

It took me some time to recover from Jadus's stupidity, then my thoughts went back to Blitzkrieg's claims. I decided to let the matter go, realizing it was insane to put any trust in anything a Devil said. Then I thought of Patches.

"Did Patches kill Matoya?"

We were loading supplies into our saddlebags. Hannibal, being a larger horse, could bear a much heavier load, so most of our work was done around his muscular flanks.

"I honestly don't know. He told me he didn't, but I can't be sure he was being completely honest."

"They all lied."

"Yes. But so do all of us. Though I must admit I've never heard Regis speak a falsehood. Of course, he doesn't speak much. Maybe that's why."

"You viewed Patches as a friend, then. And not just an ally."

Turk closed and latched his saddlebags, then turned to face me.

"Patches was a broken boy with no home. He came to the surface to spread discord through violence, and he made a fatal mistake. He may not have killed Matoya, but enough of her kindred died while bringing him down. After you freed him, he had nowhere to go, no one to turn to for help. At first I pitied him, and I never fully trusted him, but we shared a common enemy and a common need, and he realized that better than everyone who called him Traitor."

"But he couldn't have been of any true help. Surely he played you."

I remember Turk laughing then, and how small it made me feel. 

"Surely? Because you've only recently become acquainted with him, you can be sure? We were both there, Victor, when you set him free. You remember how I scolded Matoya for keeping a Devil alive. But I developed a relationship with Kharn over the years, while you were living a quiet little life in Haven. Tell me, who was being played by the Devils then?"

His words cut me, and I grew angry, but then he looked down and sighed, and when he raised his head again he brought me in for a hearty embrace.

"There's no happiness in Tarthas, Victor, but you were not wrong to seek it."

When our hug ended, I thanked him for his words, then nodded towards Hannibal and Northwind. "Where are we going?"

"Away from here. Our first stop will be Thieves' Gate, for a brief meeting with Jadus, which you're welcome to attend. And then, I'm going to a place that's very special, so I can rest and heal."

Had he not wanted me to come, he would not have described the place with such tantalizing ambiguity.

"What is this special place?"

"Home."

"For who?"

"For me. For Regis. For Blitzkrieg. For Kharn. For Goth. For Britton. For Saxon. For Qatar."

"You're all the same kindred?"

He pointed to a small tree, and the sagebrush growing beneath its cap.

"One soil, two plants."

"Can I come to your home?"

He nodded. "I was going to insist. Though I don't think you'll find rest there. But you'll find something else. Something more important."

"And what is that?"

"Answers," he told me. Answers.

We flew in silence, as we both had a great deal to think about. We did not  land at Thieves' Gate, for it was a smoking ruin, surrounded on all sides by the armies of Thirty-Third Day.

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