3-3
The Dolorous Stroke, by many accounts, was the greatest act of blasphemy and betrayal committed since the day that Judas had earned his thirty pieces of silver. The unlucky knight Sir Balin, in a fury of wroth, had struck a blow against King Pellam of Carbennic, wielding that very holiest of relics, the Lance of Longinus. In doing so, he damned the entire realm of Listenois to lifelessness and ill fertility for many a year to come.
This had all taken place well before Gilead was born, but he could not have avoided learning of that most terrible act. The signs of it were everywhere, in the poor condition of Castle Carbennic, in the barren fields and rangy cast of the peasants who still worked them so very desperately, and in the woeful appearance of Gilead’s own grandfather, perpetually bound to his bed, barely able to lead, his only solace from agonizing pain the few days when he was able to be carried out of bed and go fishing upon the banks of the River Tees.
As Gilead approached the suture, he felt cast back to his childhood, for the area near to the edge of Leedsrealm felt much the same. An absence of trees was nothing unheard of in Britain, so many of them having been cleared away, but more and more there was an absence even of grass in favor of bare, compacted earth. The sounds of beasts and birds faded from earshot, leaving only the crunching of boots on dry, lifeless soil.
No sky could be seen through the suture, no land on the opposite side, such that the vast rising smoke of the suture was a wall that divided Earth from the void itself. Worse, there was no magic to it, no curse of witchcraft in the air. If anything it was entirely too mundane. Gilead pressed on, drawing his sword.
“We probably won’t run into any bloodfiends,” said Sara. “Though… I suppose for a non-Pretender, it might be smarter to be prepared.”
“Bloodfiends,” said Gilead, too shocked to make it into a question.
“You’ll know one when you see one. Run if you can, but fight if you must. And save the edgeblood for me.”
Like mist, the red stuff that rose from the suture was too fine to be visible up-close, except as a slow constriction of one’s field of view. First Gilead could see clearly out to only forty meters. Then thirty. Then twenty. The ground beneath Gilead’s feet became increasingly tenuous, brittle and insubstantial, coming to resemble dry earth less and less. It was like sugar meringue, crumbly and colorless, and formed perfect impressions of both pairs of footprints. Gilead remembered Sara’s advice and forced himself to look forward and move in a straight line.
Whatever insubstantial stuff was in the air over the suture—Gilead didn’t think he would like the answer if he asked Sara about it—had a mind of its own. There was no other way to explain the way it taunted him, spiraling and lunging at a whim like puckish songbirds. Something disliked him.
“Mother of God and all the Saints…” Sara mumbled.
For a second, Gilead was so hypnotically focused on maintaining his forward gaze that he didn’t even notice what Sara was reacting to. Then he glanced slightly to the side. The silhouette which stood there, partly obscured and turning the mist all around her from pale pink to brilliant vermillion, was unmistakable.
“Dindrane!”
Gilead burst into a headlong sprint. Behind him, Sara screamed his name in desperate panic, but she would not or could not catch up with him.
For a handful of seconds, Gilead was all but blind, moving as fast as his legs could take him through a fog-bank of vaporized blood. Just when he started to slow, fearing that he had been pulled into blind danger by a mere mirage, Dindrane suddenly stood before him, so close that he could feel her bodily warmth playing across his arms. He reached out to embrace her, but she slipped away from him. A cold, bitter expression was wrought across her face.
“Have I done thee wrong?” Gilead said.
“Thou hast done me not enough,” Dindrane said. “Not nearly enough. Fallen Saint, wither thou wend?”
“Sara sayeth that the place is hight ‘Topeka’, and that there are diverse allies to be found there.”
“Seek strength, Fallen Saint. Seek Pretension. Slay the bloated tick, let the Old Man fall from his Tower! Let slaughter be thy might, and feast upon impossibility.”
Gilead didn’t understand. “This is a vision,” he said sorrowfully. “Thou’rt dead, and God in his infinite forgiveness has deigned to visit vision upon me, who has followed step for step in the track of Satan. But what doth it mean?”
Instantly, there was a change in Dindrane’s affect, as she went from being merely the image of Dindrane to being very, inexorably, real. She swapped the Grail into one hand, holding it out and behind, and with her free hand she snapped out, grabbing Gilead by the hair and pulling him towards her. He whimpered softly, and in order to stabilize himself he had little choice but to grab hold of Dindrane’s hips. The flesh was warm underneath the silk, and little rubies jangled at her sides.
“Thou seest only with thine eyes. I am still here for you, Gilead, my love.”
They were held there in suspension just long enough for the shuddering throb to bounce from Gilead’s feet to his skull and back, before Dindrane hardened once more, and shoved him back. He had never come closer to wishing that he had not made his oath.
“What dost thou wish of me?”
“Kill. Kill until thou slayest something that cannot die. Then thou shalt taste the sweet nectar of the grail once more.”
“But what shall I kill?” Gilead asked, staggering forward a half-step.
Dindrane raised an eyebrow. “That is always the question, is it not? Thou holdst the sword, and a woman tells you where to put it. Start immediately behind you.”
Gilead didn’t understand. And then, suddenly, he did. With a roar of challenge, he spun about, his blade sweeping out a massive arc even as his shield came to bear: and sure enough, there was a creature there waiting to be cut. Only after his sword bit deep into the thing’s cuirass of a torso, sending it flying back, did the two square off, giving Gilead a moment to understand what he had struck.
It was a six-limbed thing, man-sized, but each limb jointed like that of a beetle or a fly. Its legs bore four huge claws on each thick and powerful foot, and the middle pair of limbs each bore a lengthy knife fused to one finger; but the uppermost hands were entirely human. It was also not made of ordinary flesh, but a single solid mass of congealed blood. This, then, was a bloodfiend. The great sea of blood that was said to encircle and even underlie Scrapyard was not merely impossible and unnatural: it was actively hostile.
“Dindrane! Behind me!”
No reply was forthcoming. Gilead, foolishness growing with each second that passed, looked behind him to see that Dindrane was gone.
That brief pause was all that the bloodfiend needed. It hissed, a sound that pierced through Gilead’s ears and straight into his heart. An overwhelming sorrow struck him, blinding him with tears and sapping his strength as he was seized by the knowledge that Dindrane was gone. When the bloodfiend leapt, huge beetle-wings unfolding, Gilead was bowled over.
One foot stomped down, pinning Gilead’s sword arm. With its uppermost, almost-human hands it grabbed his shield and pulled it aside, though he still held on to it firmly enough to prevent it from being torn from his grasp. The killer claws of the middle pair of limbs cocked back, ready to run Gilead through. But Gilead hardly cared.
The psychic attack, influenced by unknown forces, had sent Gilead’s thoughts spiraling inwards. No matter what he had seen, Dindrane was dead, gone from him forever. Arthur was dead too, replaced by lesser men who could not defend Britain from the endless Saxon tide. The Grail had not saved him, it had not saved anyone; his baby cousin had died in blood and anguish.
In what were promising to be Gilead’s final moments, he thought about Duranore; that was what saved him.
The inscrutable mechanism, held close to his chest by hope and a length of linen twine, sensed a will on the part of its user, and sprang to life. Brilliant strands shot forth from the central point, tucking Gilead’s clothing into a convolution of space before enwreathing him in shimmering matter (hardlight, so fascinating a violation of physics as to be quite exceptional even by the standards of existence), a soft under-suit matched with a series of steel plates. Sensing his desire, the armor manifested differently than it had for its prior wielder, the metal now shining bright instead of dulled black, and without any tabard to mark the owner’s affiliation.
The bloodfiend’s claw didn’t even dent Gilead’s breastplate, and for a quarter-second both of them were frozen in place trying to process what had just taken place. The shock of suddenly being encompassed by solid armor, armor of a kind that would not be invented until three centuries after his initial death, shook Gilead out of his depressive spiral, reminding him that he had at least two people depending on him.
Then Gilead drove the pointed end of his hexagonal shield directly into the bloodfiend’s temple, shattering the carapace and pressing into its brain. Whatever odd stuff that the thing was made out of, it imitated the texture of flesh well, and when pierced through, it fell just the same.
Gilead fought to his feet, moving awkwardly with the unfamiliar restrictions of plate armor. He had no idea which way was forward and which way was back, but there was little time with which he could orient himself anyways: more bloodfiends were coming. This time he saw them emerge, rising up from out of the ground and congealing from the saturated air, leaving glowing vermillion scars behind. Each one was unique, some tall and gangling with great antlers, others squat and mechanical. All were composed of the same black-red clot.
Finally armored once more, Gilead was ready to take on any challenge that the world could provide him. He fell into his fighting crouch, shield forward and sword ready, then paused. He had promised Sara not to lose himself.
“Sara! Help! I’ve lost my way!”
There was no response, and soon Gilead had other things to focus on. A huge, horned bloodfiend lunged towards him, the breadth of its horns threatening to circumvent his shield and pierce his armor. Instead he bashed the antler to the side, letting its point skid off his pauldron before countering with an upward thrust to the creature’s throat.
How good it felt to be harnessed once more, to not have to worry so much about ill-aimed strikes. Gilead had not realized how much he had missed being armored when fighting against ghouls and brigands, and the sensation of bloodfiend claws sliding off of metal brought laughter to his lips.
Time stretched out, meaningless and flexible in the near-void of the suture. Gilead felt as though he could fight forever, buoyed by some strange energy foreign to him and yet simultaneously as familiar as a childhood memory. Bloodfiends in endless variety swarmed from every direction, forcing him to whip around and around and around, relying on every tool available to protect himself from claws, from teeth, from blood-clot simulacra of thrown knives and caustic spray.
Kill, Dindrane had told him. Kill until he slew something that could not die. Gilead killed until he lost himself, until the ground was smeared with blood and the wet heat had started to soak into the flexible layer underneath his armor. His heart hammered, muscles deliciously sore, and the tide of bloodfiends seemed unending.
Gilead could have spent the rest of his life there, trapped in a frozen moment of violence, and would have, if a shot hadn’t rung out, blasting the bloodfiend before him into a burst of slimy gore. Another shot followed not long after, then another, then another, most sending up gouts of dust where they struck the insubstantial earth. All at once, the bloodfiends that remained turned away and sprinted off in the direction the shots had come from, leaving Gilead alone in the emptiness, accompanied only by the distant sound of violence and the remnants of his battle.
When the Pretender that Gilead had encountered in Carlisle had died, a huge orb of solid red matter had emerged to hover at stomach-height above his body. That one had been huge, as large across as a bull’s skull; but where each bloodfiend had fallen, a similar orb arose, these ones barely as big as an apple.
Gilead was still slightly entranced, the un-space of the suture fogging his thoughts and drawing him away from any consideration of where he was and who else was with him. But he remembered what had been told to him about the red orbs: refined edgeblood, it was called, and it was the source of a Pretender’s power.
He stalked towards the nearest one, ready for it to leap out and strike him at any moment. But that moment never came: it sat there in beatific docility, cheerfully ignorant of gravity while Gilead extended his gauntleted hand towards it. He brushed his fingers against it, but nothing happened; the edgeblood had only touched the steel, not the skin underneath. The only way to test it was for Gilead to push forward, sinking into the edgeblood up to the third knuckle and letting it soak into the fabric.
Instant, overwhelming revulsion. There had been times when Gilead had had poisons placed into his drink that did not make him feel so immediately awful as did the edgeblood touching his skin. Gilead collapsed to his knees, every ounce of strength dedicated towards keeping a hold of his lunch as he was gripped by the sensation of something venomous and hateful assaulting his very soul. For a few seconds Gilead was sure that that briefest touch of edgeblood would do what none of the bloodfiends managed, the darkness at the edges of his vision threatening to snuff out his life.
The toxic influence faded slowly, and after a while Gilead had the strength again to stand. Edgeblood still stained Gilead’s gauntlet, but it felt only like an ordinary toxin now.
“Gilead? Gilead, are you out there?”
It was Sara, somewhere off in the red-black fog. The one who had fired the shots, Gilead realized now that his senses had returned to him.
“I’m here!”
“Follow my voice this way. I can’t leave my tracks or else I’ll lose my way, and then we’ll both be trapped here!”
When Gilead found her, Sara was surrounded by the remnants of bloodfiends, their edgeblood already gone.
“It’s been years since I took any for myself,” Sara said. “I always let Zahra take whatever we were given. Let’s go.”
Sara kept her eyes firmly on the ground, making sure to retrace her steps exactly and keep them in a perfectly straight line. That meant it fell to Gilead to watch for bloodfiends, of which there were quite a few still in the way. Whenever one or two or three emerged, howling and raving, Sara instantly stopped moving, leaving Gilead to interpose himself between her and their opponents. She did not dare even move out of her footprints for risk of obscuring the path of her track and losing direction, instead focusing entirely on getting off rifle shots when she could.
With so many battles against Ruthven’s ghouls under their belts, they’d started learning how to combine efforts without getting in each others’ way. Sara knew when she had the best lines of sight to shoot whoever Gilead was dueling without hitting him in the back, and he started giving her opportunities. Gilead, of course, knew all too well the techniques for keeping a foe away from a person he was trying to protect, but began to learn when it was best to let a weakened opponent pass by him and into Sara’s range.
After all, it had been three days. Sara’s reserve of explosive charges had been almost completely regained after the encounter with Ruthven. Many bloodfiends were un-limbed that day.
Slowly but surely, the world returned to normal. The ground went first: the paleness of the earth abated, first to gray, then to light brown, and Gilead’s armored boots stopped sinking so deeply into it. The scab-black mist grew less and less intense. Gilead hadn’t even realized how awful it had felt on his skin until fresh air returned. After yet longer, many minutes of slow, careful forward movement, they could finally see the sky once more. They were safe.
The ground was completely flat on this side, which made for a distinct lack of things for Gilead and Sara to lean against as they collapsed from relief. In the end, it was mostly each other. The solid shell of plate armor made the prospect of having a woman sagging against his shoulder much more comfortable for Gilead.
“Where did you get that armor?” Sara said as she stood up.
“The gift that the Black Knight gave me. It must bear some enchantment, for when I had need of it, it conjured forth this armor about me. In sooth, I nist how it might be removed…”
Even as he said that word, the armor once more sensed his motive, and the armor dissolved back into light. The clothes he had been wearing beforehand were back, exactly as they had been, without even the stain of edgeblood on his hand.
“Oh,” he said.
“Right,” Sara panted. “Was that another one of your… states? What happened?”
“Nay,” said Gilead. “I held myself in full control. But I could no sooner aver from contact with my love than I could strike down Zahra with my own sword.”
Like a ball tossed skyward, Sara found her thoughts empty, blinking absently at Gilead. When the ball returned, she spasmed, expression twisted instantly into rage as her fist lashed out. A single rapid boxing punch. Gilead went to the ground, cheek stinging.
“You could have gotten both of us killed, running off like that!” Sara shook out her bloodied fist, but looked ready to strike again. “Are you fucking stupid as well as crazy?”
Gilead touched his cheek, surprised that it stung. It had seemed to him impossible that anyone could blame him for what he had done. But then, Sara didn’t know, did she?
He sat up, then rose onto one knee. “That woman in the mist. Her name was Dindrane.”
Sara groaned. “Gilead. Have you never faced an illusionist before? A mind-reader? Anything? Are you really that stupid that seeing a vision of someone you know in the suspicious fog fails to raise a single question?”
“This is not the first time I have spoken to her. She is the one who first told me about Pretenders, mere moments after my resurrection.”
Sara held out a hand, helping Gilead up to his feet. “You can’t let anything you see in a suture…”
Sara tried to move away, but Gilead had moved lightning-quick, reversing the grip she’d had on his wrist. She could not escape.
“Allow me make something plain, Sara Ajami. In the course of my first two lives, I have forsaken everything that had meaning to me. I forsook my mother and my father. I forsook my king, and the people I ruled as king. I forsook my honor as a knight. I forsook God. The one loyalty which I have never crossed, not once, was Dindrane.”
Sara stopped trying to struggle out of Gilead’s grasp, her face growing slack with some mixture of grave acknowledgement and horror.
“I shall keep the oaths made between us. But do not force me choose between my oath and my love; when last such a choice was foisted upon me, it led to my abject destruction as a man. Please do not force such a thing again.”
Sara remained frozen for a few seconds longer, then slowly nodded. Gilead let go of her wrist.
“I will keep that in mind.”
“Thank you. You shall know her by her dress; she wears all red, and has strings of rubies hung ‘pon her waist.”
“I’ll keep a look out for her,” Sara said. She started walking down the way, but stopped after a few steps. “Can I ask you a couple of questions?”
“Certes,” Gilead replied, hurrying to follow her.
“That belt you wear, the braided one. Is that made of human hair? Dindrane’s hair?”
“Yes. Though if it brings you any relief, Dindrane made it, not I, and I was given it as a gift.”
Sara shrugged. “That… actually does make it slightly less creepy, yes. But only slightly.”
Gilead walked a few more steps, starting to finally take in his surroundings. It was a strange place. Utterly flat, like the grasslands of the slavic realms, but the grass was of an odd type that he had never seen before (maize, or corn if you want to be vague about it).
“Might I ask you a question in return?"
“Go ahead.”
“Where are we?”
“The next shard over,” Sara said. “But by local reckoning… we’re in the United States, the eastern part of a district known as ‘Kansas’. The local year is 1941 AD.”