Twilight of the Wolves (6 page)

Azura panted and drifted in and out of consciousness, seeing flashes of Raj and Rej, hearing fragments of conversation, burning, every atom disassembling within him, dispersing into blood smeared across the cold stone beneath him, wetting the skins covering him. His hollow voice broke against the shadows and capsized, remaining stuck within the pestilent bile of his lungs.

Alexander handed the captain a bag of gold and walked aboard, leaving Luca behind. He watched it disappear and Elrik stood beside him.

These savages did something right anyway, Elrik said.

It’s beautiful. It’s why I came. I was searching for paradise and I found it here amongst these demons and brown, almost human natives. Look, there, an Angel. Do you know how many I’ve seen? Seven. Seven Angels in this moon turn. We have nothing like this back home.

We have real food.

Alexander laughed, And here they only have food fit for gods! The wine and beer are too sweet, everything’s too sweet, too full, but these people are every bit as mythic as the stories told. It’s like descending into a madness where all that is rational disappears and you’re left with only these irreal creatures from storybooks come to life. We’ve found our own past and it was across the ocean, like they all said it was. We’ve travelled through spacetime to reach here and they’re simply sitting on
mountains of resources without even realising it. Even one of those trees would fuel a home for a year and I’m sure those southern mountains are full of coal and gold and silver and everything else. Coal sits beneath their very feet and they call it dirt. There is a mountain of coal and an ocean of water and they do nothing to reach it. All of this water. Can you imagine it? There’s enough water to sustain this immense and monstrous forest. This is how we save the world. This is the factory where we’ll rebuild Roca. We entered paradise and the natives don’t even see it. All of this food. No one will ever starve again. We can feed all of Roca, everything. Gods and demons and Angels and ignorant beasts controlling all of it. When we come back, we’ll found a new world.

What about the war?

Alexander laughed, a short bark, You don’t pay attention to anything but your prick, El. You’re barely better than a savage.

Elrik smiled, It’s been fun here, but it’ll be good to be home.

When I look to the sky here I see the future. I see forty years ahead when I’ll stand here and hold it all within my hands. They don’t understand anything here. It’s like Sir Frederic says. Do you realise why we came here? Why the Crown invested in this?

The land of myths and legends, yes? Like everyone said.

Frederic’s low and slow words came to them, You’re a fool, Elrik. You’ve listened to nothing I have said all these many months.

Laughing, Elrik leaned over the rail and watched the wake of the ship, All this talk of politics and so on is lost on me. Far as I can tell from listening to you, we brought them money and they gave us everything.

That’s precisely what I’ve been saying, but you don’t even understand that.

Nope, Elrik stood and turned to Frederic, Ric, he slapped his arm and held it, you’re a smart man, but you bore the shit out of me.

Alexander laughed, The disaster’s real, El. These aren’t expeditions for the curious anymore.

A melon from the forest, they call them Dragonmelons. One could feed a fullgrown man for a day. One piece of fruit for each man and they grow everywhere. Young Elrik, it’s not only curiosities we take back.

Yeah, yeah, Elrik feigned a yawn, All the same, I miss the bitters of home. It’s not wine if it’s not biting back, right? He slapped Frederic’s arm again.

Alexander smiled, I’ve memorised every step of this place. I’ve drawn it all in my head this moonturn. If Luca were to disappear tomorrow, I could recreate it. I feel as if my whole life led to this, to watching Luca go. It’s as if I stepped into the dream at the very center of my reality and let it go. Do you know how that feels, El?

Nope.

Invigorating. All the world is based on the circle. Life and Death and history and time and space. Everything cycles on. I have been to my dream and I will return but it will be in this life. With me go the many faces of Roca, the sphere and the cycle pulse through me. This is the end of my childhood, finally. It ends here, in Luca and so my manhood, too, will end here. Elrik, I’ve found my life and it is Luca.

Frederic put a hand on Alexander’s shoulder, Your father would be proud.

Elrik spit into the water, You know what I see when I look at Luca? He spit again and wiped his mouth, A pisspot full of floating shit.

He stood before the kneeling Angel. It touched his face, his head fitting in Its palm, and It spoke inside him.

Many are dying and many more shall die and the blood will wash all life away in a blaze that cannot be contained because it will be men who set the flames to extinguish this exsanguination
that will take all from the young and new to the old across sexes and races but it all began in the temple of the ancients where a stranger bought love and spread Death and now a shadow casts over all the light of grand Luca and all shall perish within.

The tears ran down the Angel’s face and the Arcane wiped them away.

What can I do? What should I do?

You who are humans must help your sisters and be with them and give them peace and Death but they must be contained and the disease must be stopped but there is no stopping those who need love and the soldiers will come with their ironballs and firewalls to take every and all away for there is naught to be done for those who rot for their fun.

Why do You tell me this?

It is only out of love that I speak at all.

He threw his arms around the Angel’s slender neck and It took him in Its arms, lifting him off the floor.

Don’t leave me, please. Don’t ever leave me. I can’t bear this world without You, the Arcane drew back and stared into his ephemeral eyes where galaxies birthed and died and stretched long.

This place is your home and I must lose you but never shall you be without me as I must be without you.

Help us.

The Angel closed Its eyes, Humanity will suffer again and again and your people will die not only today but tomorrow and ever after in the maelstrom of war but it is only for humans to fight and shift the balance as We must maintain the Dream and keep the balance by swimming with the Dream in Its stream of infinite flux that carries all of existence and nonexistence in it. It is not for Us to interfere with eternity but to ride its waves and currents. If only humans would learn.

I need You. Please.

Their tears met upon their cheeks and they shared a kiss and
breath and their bodies, caught in a vortex of sensations and Light and emotions too strong for humanity.

He walked amongst the poor and forgotten of Luca. Through the Anthill, the many rotting children begging for life. Those that survived this trial would end at the temple to sell their bodies for a life of pain and coercion, the Arcane muttered as he bent and gave them water. He healed their mutilated faces and their blind eyes. Resetting bones, rebuilding tissue, he reached within himself and withdrew the Light to cure the boys and girls left to die because there was no money to be made from their lives and little more to be gained from their Deaths.

At the temple, the boys called to him but he ignored them and entered. The stench of Death assaulted and he gasped into his sleeve to steady his steps.

Crouching beside a body excreting from both ends, he searched within the boy for a source, for the center of the disease. He dug through the disintegrating cells and molecules and found only Death and blood. The body eliminating all at once, all together, and the Light he carried did nothing to heal or save.

The coughs tore through the aura surrounding him, the Light growing dim beneath the thick shade of Death. Every cough burrowed in and he saw his breath twisting, his own atoms becoming unclean, and he ran, screaming, bumping and thrashing against the dying until he found the exit and dashed through the market, screaming for them to be clean, to never go near the temple again, to come to the shrine if they want to live.

Gasping, sweating, he stood in the Angel’s Sanctuary, Return to me! I need you now! Now more than ever before!

The apprentice knelt and watched his master destroy his voice against the echoes of the dome.

The other Arcanes watched, shaking their heads.

The coughing rang in the air as Malik approached the steps. The
boys, spasmodic from their bronchial infections, the look on their faces, the blood on their lips, on their hands became visible. Stopping, Malik coughed and walked away, coughing, spitting a brown globule into the dirt.

The Deathwalker was there when Rej and Raj returned.

Get off ov im, crow! Not dead like, only—he broke off in a fit of coughing.

The Deathwalker turned to them and smelt the air.

Rej grabbed Raj’s hand, See wha he done? See wha the bastard done to me? He coughed, the fear pulsing from deep beneath his skin. A tear fell, Bastard smelling me, Raj. Raj, Raj, Z. Wha’s to happen like?

Raj held him while he coughed and wiped the blood from his lip, You’ll be okay.

The coughing swelled beneath the bridge and Raj looked past Rej to the many who would not make it through that night.

The crumbling temple festered, crawling with Deathwalkers and the boys with nowhere to go, still selling themselves while they emptied their hearts through their mouths into the pool.

Azura shouted at Malik, Get the midwife, you bastard!

Malik ran through the empty streets, his feet carrying him through the night, past the coughs echoing, as his head swam but he found himself at the steps of the temple, coughing with the boys.

Hey daddy, the voice reached him, glistening, shaking him loose, and he straightened and ran for the midwife.

Within his home he accepted the rebukes and shouts of Azura. She squeezed his hand through her labor, his bones crumbling within her strong grip, her screams no longer for him but for every god or human or demon walking the planet, ripping the night from the sky and shoving it through her womb.

The midwife kept her breathing steady and her thoughts focused.

When morning came, so did the child: a girl. The midwife washed her and gave her to Malik who smiled through his tears and handed the girl to her mother, Azura, who clung to her for days.

I hear the soldiers are here.

Whose soldiers?

Vulpen.

Vulpen don’t have soldiers.

I heard they was Gasaru.

Did you see them?

No. You?

Aye, no, no soldiers have I seen.

They’re at war, you know.

Who?

Vulpe and Glass?

Aye, Vulpe and Glass, and us stuck between.

Time to leave, I suspect.

Go where?

Soare?

If you believe such places exist you deserve to go there.

Then into the forest.

The world is a forest. You’ll die in there with the wolves. I hear the southerners are killing the wolves. All the villages been working together to eradicate the beasts.

We’ve lost respect for the gods. No wonder the war’s coming.

Wars come, gods or no.

Vulpe’s been peaceful for centuries. Why would they fight a war?

Might be someone else started it, maybe Drache.

That I’ll believe.

Aye, everyone knows the blackhearts carry dragonblood.
Fiery and furious.

Gullible, your man here. Believe in Ariel, too, aye?

Now, don’t tease him so much. He’s old, a walking relic his own self.

I’ve seen the wolves and the demons. I’ve seen Angels and Arcanes. Real Arcanes, not like the ones who come here. Charlatans who wouldn’t know a word of Soarean if they were choking on it. I once even hunted a dragon with a team and we met an old dragonlord deep in the mountains. He was sitting there talking with a great dragon, must have been as long as ten horses, but it was cold. And we all know Ariel are real.

You touched it, did you? Look at your man here, touching dragons. Slay one, too, maybe?

No, didn’t touch, but you could feel the cold like a breeze pushing out of it.

I thought they breathed fire.

Maybe they do but they’re cold, too. No one knows much about dragons except that they’re real. Ask any farmer of the forest.

The world is a forest.

Aye, and many a farmer’s seen a dragon.

So what do these soldiers want?

No idea.

What do soldiers ever want?

Money and love. And power.

They’ll have all three by Blueday if they want it. And maybe something extra, if any of their tastes lean that way.

Best to stay away from the temple these days.

Just these days? Filthy place.

Our saint! Here to save us from the pleasures of the flesh. Bringing out your goddess soon.

Not mine, but it’d do you well not to mock a goddess.

You ever wonder why only she’s a goddess?

How you mean?

Can you think of any other goddesses?

She’s the oldest. Never needed another one.

Thousands and thousands and thousands of years, the Deathwalker unbroken.

Lots of work for them.

And it’ll get worse here, what with the way the temple is dying and then if these rumors of wars are true. Aye, many a crow round, following every battle.

How long’s the war been going on?

Has it started?

I think we’ll know when it starts.

You mean when it reaches us. Most of the fighting’s taking place in the south right now. Has been for almost a year. Maybe longer.

So it is Drache.

Who knows.

Rej walked into the market spilling his insides into the dirt, clutching after anyone who passed within arm’s reach. He grabbed a hand and felt the foot break his teeth as he coughed more of his lungs into the dirt. The soldier stared down at him with disgust and then horror, and put a sword through his neck and his comrades cleared a circle around the body. He wiped the blade clean, his lips turned sour, his superior telling everyone to stay away from the bodies of the dead. The Deathwalkers tended the body and breathed it away to the Goddess.