Chapter 27: Darkness Ascends

Love is a fire, love is a wave. Love is a tempest, love is a landslide. Love is a secret crime, and love is the higher law. Like the hungry worm, love tunnels through all the dark recesses till it breaks through rock and soil to squirm under the Sun, and on its winding paths it makes sure that in all the universe no space is left unfilled. The dreadknight made inside the red glow of Kari's dirge a respite with his dark aura, the purple flame of oblivion that shimmers along the edges of deep shadow. Gone was the orange smolder that he siphoned from Arun's land in the early days of his waking. The innanis now surged with power from his brother's teary asylum.

I... will... not... let... you... fall...

With agony and misery and the wheeling thoughts of suicide, Hadeon groaned and heaved in the tumult of his lonely heart. Othomo's inward realm was an infinite plane of cold, gentle rest. Hadeon's, a cavern of cyclones and fires greater than any storm or blast the stormlich or Kari could conjure in their direst need.

Brother...

Othomo's thought reached like a hand to calm him, but when his cerebral appendage touched the writhing mass of his brother's mind, he felt a touch on the back of his fingers like ambrosia and cream. Through a wintry veil glowed two white eyes, framed by rivers of silver thread.

Hadeon's weeping was pitiful now. Othomo turned back to him, in the realm of spirit mind unmasked. Night came from the shadow of his skull like so many thin roots. Hadeon's weeping was pitiful now, a favorable turn from his centuries long fit of screams. Maybe he cried softly for a time, but the wailing began anew when his sisters one by one were put down. They now shared in their weeping for that lamentable act. Othomo, though quiet, did weep the more for having been the slaying hand.

They soothed Hadeon together, he and Selenne, lulling him into a nervous sleep, and then the dark bringer turned and all became black around them. In a prison of dense emptiness, Selenne bent down on her knees and drained her eyes of mercury.

Othomo strode in a wide circle around her, naked in the raw world of spirit, such black and seething and pervasive a force was he that she who made a lamp of the moon trembled. No broad zweihander or war hungry Friesian need bolster him here. He paced around Selenne once more, and when he stopped she felt nauseated to the point of spewing her mercury onto the vacuous floor of her cell. Othomo spread violet shadowy flames like wings, and Selenne's hair was burned away hissing by their dead heat. Her gown he left her, and he donned a gauntlet so that when he touched her chin to tilt up her head, her face would not rot away. Then he let the glove fall into the shadow and he held in that hand a bell, in the other a lawle. Her dark prison rose about her until she was near drowning.

Then Othomo spoke. Dark heart, cold mind, long in weariness and pain, brimming seething stirring whirring in hard, angry rime, colder than cold and older than mold, the gale is not tired, the gale is full of hale and the knight has the right to enact the rite to judge the bearers of Might. His voice was slow and hollow, but the hollow of his voice was full.

"Speak," he said.

She did not.

"Speak," he said. "Your life depends on it. In the cold of night no heart can beat. And do not look to the East, for in my domain their is no dawn. Now, speak."

Her eyes were empty and stung, but her weeping had formed as an effigy of stone in her throat. She opened her mouth, but her words were crammed like flotsam behind the image of the weeping child that choked her then.

Othomo struck the bell.

"We hated you. I hated you." The effigy hardened and grew stone roots, choking her till she spat out silver blood.

Othomo struck the bell.

"I loved him. I loved Arun. He was so beautiful. So vibrant. So dangerous. So alive. And when I saw you, he began to fade. I thought I was going to lo...". The effigy grew thorns, and her neck leaked metallic milk. She doubled over in pain that she could not express.

Othomo struck the bell.

First she gasped, then she spoke, her voice rattling in the gurgle of her punctured throat.

"I was so afraid. I know Archimonde only listened to me because he saw my fear. How I wept. The Whirlwind threatened all things. Your father and Yannis were dear friends. He was as an uncle to you. When you came and my beautiful Sun grew dim, I thought that you had come on his..." The effigy filled her neck and chest, but she pushed her words through and shattered it. Pieces of the effigy fell out of her mouth, others her eyes, and her blood came white and luminous from her pores.

"I thought you were serving him!"

The effigy turned to powder, and as she coughed it away her dark chains abated. Othomo put down the bell and lawle and sat by her in his knightly raiment, giving her his iron hand for strength.

"We were children," he said, his voice almost the voice of a man's and not a shadow. "You both looked so bright. I wanted to play with you. It seemed so perfect. You were bright and I was dark. How could we not have fun? When I came to Tartary I only wished to speak, and you hurt me."

Selenne wept again, her tears clear as snowmelt. "I'm sorry, Othomo. I'm so, so sorry."

They sat on the floor as children do, and as a boy would do for a hurt sister, he held her hand. They talked about the games they could have played, and the friends they wished they still had. Othomo told her how he wanted more than anything to save them both, and for all those long years he wondered what sort of man and woman they were, and if he and Arun would not have otherwise been friends.

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"I would like nothing more," she said. For a while she was happy, and Othomo too, showing his joy with stillness, for he is the cold bringer of sleep. They who hunt beneath his cape are the silent stalkers, the big eyed raptors and denizens of grottos and the trenches of the old black ocean. And during their dreamy banter there was a vision above and within them both of the kindness of creation, for in Genesis there is a synergy of souls, and these two were kindred, being the curtain of night and the beaming lamp of the moon. When their banter was done, the Pale Queen wept, and the dreadknight once again held her hand.

"He can't be saved," she said.

"Why?" he asked.

"He saw our daughter die."

Othomo was quiet, mourning for Phosphora, remembering the sad eyes of his own dying sisters.

"No," she said, "not Phosphora. Sulphina. She is our begotten. We begged Thrond and Archimonde to make us vessels so we could steal away and feel each others' touch. We learned to love and speak as Mortals do, and a child grew in my womb. You've met my Sulphina, Othomo. She adores you."

And only in this moment did such a thing happen. A lonely black tear dripped from the faceless greathelm. A wind from far away came at the dreadknight's call and it lifted high the dark horse tail.

"She..." he began to say.

"I know," the Pale Queen said. "There is no straight path through the mire. Yannis has seen to that. Its he who must be slain, Othomo. Not I or Arun."

"But Arun must free the sun. And you must free the moon."

"I know. And we will."

"Arun is mad with grief."

"Yes. And he will only grieve more when Kari eventually dies. And Yuluru will not last long either. Each one of their deaths drains him of his will, and the worst has already happened, for he saw it with your father's eyes. You know what that means, Othomo."

Another lonely black tear fell from the faceless greathelm, and the wind breezed lovingly into the cape of Night.

"Soon," the dreadknight said, dreading what Night would do.

"Yes. I remember how they used to fight, your father and Yannis. Oroboron was always so sure, and Yannis so afraid. If only they could have trusted one another, as I wish we would have trusted you."

Othomo said nothing, but his eyeless gaze spoke his fears.

"I can reach him. Ride to war, Dreadknight. Bring the thing not yet made, and you and Awondo will die together with my husbands power coursing through you both, making you and Arun brothers in the end. And Awondo, he is much like both of you. He is strong, dark and beautiful, after all. I feel you are the mentor he could have never had. It saddens me you two will only fight. But perhaps you can speak to him through battle, and give him what he'll otherwise die without."

Othomo understood, and a third tear dropped when he remembered Thrond. How he missed his quiet friend. He looked again at Selenne. His throat was too swollen for speech, but his eyeless gaze spoke his fears. Can I trust you?

The Pale Queen smiled, and her lips remained so lighted as she stood, casting away her desolate prison with beams of watery light. They were high above her snowy plains, between the Mending Wall and Golgonooza, with her high cold tower far behind. She unfastened the silken belt about her waist, opening her gown as if she were a mother offering her breast to her infant. But none of her dewy flesh was seen. She glowed within as a field of stars, so many of them gathered into a glass pitcher. The star in her brow glowed scarlet.

Othomo stood at the rending of the world. He staggered at the sound, the thunder, the lightning, the bending of mountains. No muscle of limb or power of mind could break the bonds of the Noble Metals. Only the contrition of their captors held such power. Othomo laughed at the thought of a dire wolf bound by silken string as the dire chain was broken by a silken thought. The moon lifted, still bound, but free at least from Selenne's high cold tower. It hovered a long ways behind her, not daring to come close, not daring to drift away. She opened her robe and her starry bosom vanished behind an impassable cloud that spouted blue lightning. Red eyed fury and the sound of blood drenched war came plowing through the storm, the nimbus, the clarion of loving reunions. Victory leapt out neighing and his voice tore a hole in the sky.

"The dream is real," the Pale Queen said with a smile and a tear.

Far away, Yannis trembled.

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