Disclaimer: The Old Kingdom belongs to Garth Nix, barring the character of Cormac.
"Are you sure this will work?" whispered Yrael. He stood before the barricade at the door, his body hunched in preparation. "And I don't mean half-sure, Mac. I mean, positively, absolutely certain? If this doesn't work, you'll die. And I promise you, it won't be easy to come back this time."
Cormac stood at the opposite end of the room by the stairwell. He wasn't sure of anything about this plan, only that it had to work. There was no room for error, even if he was going solely on his own instinct and whim. In one hand he held the smallest bell by the clapper. He hadn't known why he had chosen it―he had told Yrael it was chosen because of its size. Smaller meant easier to maneuver. But when he had reached for the largest bell, which he had wanted to use, it seemed to repel his hand. The force hadn't been malicious; Cormac was struck with the thought that the bell didn't think he was ready yet. Which was a stupid, crazy thought, but good enough for him. In his other hand he held his hunting knife. He had thought he'd lost it in the river, but when he awoke from death (such a strange combination of words, a combination Cormac still wasn't used to) he had found it in his hand. It had changed: he knew this because he had been the one to make it in the first place. The metal caught lights that weren't there, and the blade felt inexplicably lighter and heavier at the same time, depending on how he angled it. "It'll work, Yrael," he muttered. "Do it now."
Yrael snorted, but touched his hand to the barricade nonetheless. He gave it a slight shove, and the barricade, as well as the door, were thrown backward. As dust spun through the room, Cormac pushed his knife through the ice over the stair, fragmenting the faint trace of the Charter pattern he had drawn. The ice dissipated in a hiss, and steam was added to the hordes of dust that swirled around the room. The dead raised another terrible yell, and Cormac heard them scramble up the stairs, just as he saw their fellows push through the open doorway. They rushed all at once, getting themselves stuck, and in that precious time Yrael and Cormac retreated to the window, their backs pressed against the open expanse.
A horrible squelching sound came from the doorway, and Cormac realized a few of the unfortunate dead had lost their limbs in the process to get through. They dragged themselves forward by their rotting teeth just as the first of the dead struggled onto the landing. They moaned, spraying Cormac and Yrael with bits of rotting throat, but the two men did not flinch.
"Any time would be lovely," Yrael said through gritted teeth, his eyes wild and knuckles white as his hands strained in his sparring stance.
Like in a dream, Cormac switched his hold on the smallest bell, flipping it and catching it by its handle. It rang as it completed its arc through the air, sending out bright peals reminiscent of a woman singing. The dead trembled, convulsed even. At first Cormac grew fearful―perhaps this was the wrong bell to use?
Then he felt it.
A wave of tiredness rolled over him, and he struggled to keep his eyes open. The dead were even less successful than him, falling over each other in slumbering clumps. Cormac turned to Yrael, expecting to see him just as tired, but the other man looked as though he had been struck by lightning.
He didn't feel that this was the proper to time to ask, though. Cormac put the bell back into its pouch, taking his time. It seemed he had worried over nothing. His gait was ambling as he made his way over to the dead, methodically running them through with the hunting knife. Each plunge seemed to end their slumber, and when he was through with them they did not awake.
"That was easy," he shrugged, shooting Yrael a baffled pout. "I'd rather do this than hunt Free Magic creatures." He twirled his knife, letting it spin in the air before sheathing it. "And I did it all by myself! You can't complain that you do all the dirty work now."
Yrael licked his lips in anticipation of something, his eyes narrow slits that searched the darkness beyond Cormac. "Shut up, Mac," he said.
Cormac laughed. "Oh, I'm sorry? Did I offend you? Do you feel threatened now that I can take care of myself?"
Yrael looked at him harshly and snarled, "I mean shut up, Mac! I'm trying to listen―"
Whatever Yrael was about to say next was lost in a deafening roar, an awesome noise that shook the tower to its very foundations. Chunks of the ceiling plummeted from their precarious roosts, a rafter beam catching Yrael on the back of the head and pinning him to the ground in a bloody mess.
Cormac had no time to react to that, though. In the noise and turmoil, a new wave of dead burst in from the doorway. These ones seemed stronger, faster, and Cormac recognized the hatchet-face of Mogget and the haughty aristocracy of the captain among the rotting and dynamic bodies. They swarmed at him, arms grabbing and pulling at whatever they could manage. In return, Cormac slashed blindly. He felt the knife cut through flesh and bone, viscera and vessels. He choked, gagged in the smell, but found he couldn't have stopped hacking even if he wanted to. His body was moving on its own accord, and he didn't try to stop it. The dead pressed for his soft eyes, his tender tongue, his supple chest, their mouths watering in anticipation for the feast. Cormac refused to scream, and instead carved all the harder.
And then he saw it. Carbuncle eyes set in a liquid frame, but a frame that was the dark mirror of his own. It was tall like Cormac, but was graceful, having none of his lumbering movements. He saw his own nose, his own long face, his wide mouth, but the features were made arrogant in a raised-chin expression that just made him angrier.
"Hello friend," it smiled, his own voice tearing at his ears. "It looks like you found an even better way out than I did! Why, you look positively," it paused stretching its neck forward to an impossible length, "alive."
Cormac ignored it as contorted his body even further, sweeping across the room in a dizzying, billowing circle. Instead, he gritted his teeth and focused on the rise and fall of his arm, each unnatural glint of the knife through congealed and knotted blood.
"Friend! Why do you fight?" The thing alighted in front of him, burning the unfortunate dead it landed on to cinders. "We could be useful to each other," it smiled, tilting its head farther and farther until it made a complete circle, the revolution accompanied by a cacophony of sickening pops of bone and muscle. "Put down your weapon, friend."
It reached out to Cormac, and finally he let loose with an animal bellow. He swung the knife in a wide arc, and it hissed as it passed through the thing. He swung, again and again, and for a moment it looked as though the creature was overwhelmed by his ready and answering rage. But the knife didn't seem to hurt it. The shadow creature began to dodge Cormac's feckless swings, smiling at him with his own face, trying to embrace him with his own body. "Friend, friend," it repeated, enraging Cormac past the point of reason. He charged at it, and it gripped him tight. The young man screamed as it tightened its hold on him, his skin cracking and blistering where the shadow substance touched it. "There, there," it comforted. "I'll make sure you're dead this time."
And then he was released. Cormac groped about him but felt none of the river, only stick black blood. Behind him, he felt a searing heat, but it was different from the shadow's burning. This heat felt clean, pure, and strengthened him with its pain. He looked up, delirious and expecting to see his mother of all people. Instead, he saw the shadow's carbuncle eyes wide in fear. Reflected in those glowing bloodstones was a column of white.
"Yrael?" called Cormac shakily, looking over his shoulder for his friend. The rafter was still there, as well as a puddle of blood, but Yrael's body was missing. Instead, the fiery light stirred to his side, and Cormac saw it was not a column, but rather a blindingly tall figure. It passed its hand over him, and he felt the appalling burns on his body close up and heal.
The shadow thing hissed, and made for the window behind him. But the light stretched its arms, barring the shadow and trapping it against the ceiling. The shadow writhed, but the light was implacable.
Yrael's voice boomed out of the bright nothing. "You said you chose this, Cormac."
Cormac dropped his knife, trying to find Yrael amidst the harsh disparity of brilliance and shadow. "Yrael!" he cried again, his hands cupped fruitlessly around his mouth. "Yrael!"
Without relinquishing its hold on the shadow creature, the shining presence seemed to turn toward Cormac. "I am here," it answered simply, softly, though the sound still filled his ears.
"Yrael?" Cormac asked, but he already knew.
The shine shrunk, if only marginally. Its shape spiraled and then straightened; it looked more like Yrael now, the same eyes, short straw-colored hair, but it was larger, grander, and blinked at Cormac solemnly. "Here," it said faintly, and gave him the ghost of a smile.
"Yrael, what happened to you?" For some reason, this defeated him more than anything else, this absolute verification that Yrael was not human, not at all.
"This is how I'm supposed to be, Mac," it replied, and Cormac could catch a bit of Yrael's old humor in its voice.
Cormac didn't answer, but his face fell.
"You said you chose this," Yrael continued, turning back to the shadow. "Well, I choose this, too."
The shadow squirmed, spitting blood and inky poison at them, but Yrael held fast.
"Draw your bell," Yrael instructed, his attention cemented to the shadow thing. Cormac complied, his hand pulling the second largest bell out of its pouch. Yrael, without even looking, laughed. "Saraneth. I should have known this was your doing."
"Yrael―" Cormac began, but the shining presence glowed brighter, silencing him in awe.
"If I'm not mistaken, Cormac, you've chosen The Binder. I know him well. When you ring that bell, both I and this creature will be bound to your will." The shine flickered and grew fainter.
Cormac swallowed hard, looking from the bell to Yrael and back. "Is that it, then? You choose to be my servant? I don't bind my friends to my will, or whatever you mean. Is that it, Yrael? Servant, not friend?" He knew he had asked this question before, but he felt now was the moment of truth. Yrael, in his false form hadn't answered, but now reduced to nothing but light how could he not? It was now or never, and Cormac had the oddest of senses that he would never be able to ask Yrael this again. At least, never be able to ask him and get a straight answer. He choked in laughter at the thought, and was surprised to realize, for the damndest of reasons, he was crying. He might be able to look back at this moment later and make sense of it all, but he felt like he was losing something, someone, and indeed he was. Yrael as he knew him was gone, to be replaced by this great and terrible being who would only be with him, Cormac, because he had to. I chose this, Cormac thought, and this time his tears tasted salty and wholly, regrettably real.
The light that was Yrael shuddered. "No. Your friend, Mac. Always your friend."
The shadow creature howled in one final rally. "I did not crawl through river to be stopped here! I, who ascended the waterfalls and braved the mighty waves, I, who died unjustly in life, I, who kept my wits and will about me in death to make them pay! I will not be stopped here!" Its form boiled savagely and it opened its mouth to shriek again, but at that moment Cormac began to ring the bell. Low sounds filled the tower, low sounds that bounced off the walls and overpowered the beat of Cormac's own heart in their strength. Low sounds that drowned out the creature's shrieking and made Yrael double over as if in pain―these were the gifts of the sixth bell, and Cormac stood in the middle of it all. A wind blew in from the window, thrashing his hair and tattered clothing about his form, but still he stood, an impassive observer.
"Your name, creature," Cormac commanded with uncharacteristic sternness in his voice.
"Marchus!" it shrieked, as its name was ripped from its throat. It trembled violently, floating free in the air and bound to the steel that was Cormac's will. "What would you have of me, master?" it pleaded. "Friend! Friend! Master!" it sobbed, carbuncle eyes dripping hot, bloody tears.
"I would have you die, Marchus."
The creature screeched, and burst into flames.
***
"It's over, Yrael." Cormac's voice was once again kind, and he stooped low over Yrael's bent figure. Yrael was solid again, thoroughly himself with his roguish cleft chin and obstinate jaw. But, at the same time, he wasn't Yrael. He allowed Cormac to help him up, whereas the Yrael from before would have disdained at any such offering. He didn't so much as look at the ashen pile that was the remnants of the shadow creature, whereas the Yrael from before would have spat on it.
Instead: "Is it?" Yrael asked wearily, rubbing his head.
Cormac looked at him carefully. "This part, at least."
Yrael chuckled, and seemed to come to himself, if only a little. He pulled at his little finger, struggling with it momentarily, pulling something off of it. When he brought the thing up to the light, Cormac saw it was the man's little ring. It was small, something that a child would have worn, and he suddenly remembered that he had wanted to ask Yrael why he bothered to keep such a trinket. He had wanted to ask Yrael, but had never gotten around to it. The unknown reason seemed insignificant now, and he accepted it when Yrael placed it in his hand.
"Aw, don't tell me you're proposing," he joked, but when he looked up again he saw Yrael was being serious.
"Think of it more as binding," he said firmly, and Cormac flushed angrily.
"You said we were friends, Yrael, not a master and his servant. Friends."
Yrael nodded fervently. "We are, Cormac, and I'll follow you anywhere. But there will be a time when I will no longer be able to see your mother, you, your children in the faces of your descendants. I won't be able to see the faces of your grandchildren or even your grandchildren's grandchildren. I will look at them and see the faces of strangers. But I will still be bound to them." He pointed to the sixth bell that hung by Cormac's chest. "This ring will remind me of the faces I need to see."
Cormac turned the ring over in his palm for the longest of times. Finally, he sighed and smiled. "It's an awfully small ring," he shrugged.
Yrael smacked him on the back of his head. "You're a blacksmith. You fix it."
"Eventually. But right now, I could really use a drink. I don't mean to sound heartless, but too bad there's no one left to pay us, eh?"
The two of them picked their way to the staircase, careful to avoid the remnants of ice that still clung there. "Well, at least everything is settled here," Yrael replied. "A new crew can come in and finally install that damn winding post everyone was so excited about."
Cormac waggled his eyebrows. "You want to get the project done? It looks Mogget didn't die after all." He received another smack to the back of the head.
"I told you not to call me that."
Author's Note: Yay! Continuing what I was saying in the previous chapter, it bothered by that Yrael/Mogget got the short end of the stick. They were relegated to a gazillion years of servitutde, and all they got was this lousy t-shirt. OK, not really. But I wanted his servanthood to hold meaning. I wanted it to be something that he chose, or at least would have chosen. Here, the actual binding is done by the Abhorsen Cormac, but you might have noticed Yrael being at least verbally bound to Cormac, Cormac's mother, and Cormac's children. More about that in "Children."
This was fun to write guys! I hope it was as much fun to read! If you read it, please review it! I love constructive criticism---it is my meat and potatoes.
Until next time!
Sam ;3
PS: Yes, Yrael gets the name Mogget from a cranky construction foreman. I thought it was funny at least. x3
