Chapter 9
No no no no-
Cauthrien - the demon - advanced with grim determination, an executioner in red steel armor. He waited for her to lift her sword, for her to call down a hundred other demons. Step by step she drew closer. He tried desperately to remember what his bow felt like.
It didn't form.
But instead of attacking, she dropped to one knee before Surana and hung her head, baring her neck. "End this," she rasped. "Finish the job."
Surana lifted a hand, writing a hex with flicks of her fingers. The familiar pattern glowed to life beneath Cauthrien's feet, red and foul. Cauthrien didn't flinch. That hex would make every blow linger, would allow for no aid. A single prick could kill a man caught in that hex, forcing him to bleed out drop by slow drop.
"Surana, don't," he said, moving between the two women, careful to keep both in his field of vision.
"This is the revenant, Howe?" Surana's voice was eerily flat. How tired was she still? How angry, at so nearly losing herself?
"I- yes, but-"
"I killed her once," Surana said, pulling threads of flame from the air as if spinning yarn, "and I will do it again."
I don't want to die again. If I die, whatever tiny chance I have of being welcomed to the Maker's side seems to fade away with it. Where was the Cauthrien who had said that? Drowned, underneath the demon's pall.
"She's possessed," Nathaniel spat.
"And I have killed many demons in my day, too."
Surana took a step closer. The demon remained immobile in Cauthrien's skin.
"She doesn't want to die," he pressed.
Surana snorted. "No," she said, "I don't suppose she does."
"And if you kill her," he said, stepping away from Cauthrien and towards the mage before him, crackling with power, "and the demon lives, we fight it without her help. Doesn't it occur to you that it's a bit strange for a possessed creature to ask for death?"
"Perhaps she's more in control than you think," Surana answered, meeting his gaze. "Step aside."
"No." Cauthrien was all tight-wound control, but he had seen the demon press into her skin. Those were not Cauthrien's eyes. "No, I know her, and that is not-"
His breath stopped and he lurched forward, only slowly looking down to see the tip of the Summer Sword punching out from just beneath his sternum. His lungs rattled and throat squeaked, hands lifting. Blood ran hot down his front. He remembered the revenant, remembered this same blade skewering him, remembered the agony of Surana's healing.
He tried to focus on how he had survived, but the blade began to press down, crushing organs, severing flesh. He whined, high-pitched and distant. He could hear Surana shouting, could feel as the demon let go of Cauthrien's blade, but all he could do was crumple to his hands and knees. Each panting, labored breath jarred the metal still in him. He could feel each splash of blood against the stone beneath him.
Maybe he would just wake up. Maybe death meant waking up, like in a dream. Or maybe he would fall.
The ground became soft and he began to sink.
"Nathaniel!" It was Surana shouting for him, and he scowled and turned his face away. He didn't want chastisement. He wanted to have never come here, to be far away, to have stayed in the Marches and never known that his father was dead. Why hadn't the demon given him that dream? He would have gladly stayed there.
It stopped hurting as much, the putty surrounding him stabilizing the blade as he sunk to his elbows. A few more inches and it would cover his chest. Soon it would crust his eyes shut and he wouldn't have to fight the urge to look at another shout, another scream. He wouldn't have a choice.
Scrabbling hands twisted into the amorphous substance that was all he could remember of a shirt, and he sobbed as those hands jarred the sword. He clawed into the putty, trying to anchor himself, but whoever had him was too strong, wrenching him free. The sword was gone a moment later, and it was Cauthrien, all metal-covered hands and sweat-soaked brow, who cupped his jaw and shouted his name.
"It hurts," he whispered.
"Well, stop it," she said back, and her voice shook. Her eyes were no longer glassy. He could hear fighting somewhere beyond them. Good; Surana must have dragged the demon kicking and screaming from its shell. Cauthrien was alive.
The thought startled a harsh laugh from him. Yes, alive, if one only meant dead and trapped instead.
She slung an arm around him, pulling him to her side. "Make the wound close," she ordered, and with a gasping shudder, he did. The ground beneath them firmed on its own accord. "Can you stand?" she asked.
He shook his head.
She sighed, and lowered him to the ground. "Stay there," she said. "Alive. Whole. Thinking." Her lips quirked for just a moment before her helmet reformed, and she took off running towards the light show that was Surana and the demon.
Gingerly, he reached to touch his stomach. Whole. There was no blood left. He thought of the mabari pup with its slashed throat and its disappearing blood. None of this was real. Not the ground, not his wounds. Not, he realized with a frown, his exhaustion. Slowly, he stood up, focusing hard on the days when battle had left him not dragging himself to safety but invigorated, strong, addicted to the rush of it. His bow formed in his left hand, an arrow in his right. The comforting weight of a quiver on his back made him straighten. He focused on the ground between him and the fight.
It buckled and folded with ease.
Surana had fallen back, with Cauthrien holding the demon off. He waited until the old soldier had dodged to one side of it, leaving it an open target, before he drew. Time seemed to slow. A single arrow could do this, if he did it right. It was weak already, and he had killed stronger enemies.
He took a deep breath, and let fly.
The demon dropped.
Surana let loose a few more testing spells, but the demon's essence was already being torn apart by the winds of the Fade. Cauthrien gave it a kick for good measure. He broke into a gentle jog until he reached them.
"Good shot, Howe," Surana said.
He shrugged.
Cauthrien stood a bit apart, looking out at the horizon with a grimace. The threat was ended, and she was left with no walls to slink back behind. She was whole, but not real. His brow furrowed. Surana followed his gaze to her.
"So, Ser Cauthrien," the mage said. "You're really our revenant?"
Cauthrien looked over her shoulder, startled. "It's my body, yes," she said, slowly. "And I would appreciate if you killed it."
"And what happens then?"
"I don't know." Her smile was thin, and as he watched, she lost her armor and grew soft again, vulnerable. "But it seems like the correct order of things."
Surana nodded, thoughtfully. "Well, I don't suppose that will be too hard to do. Howe can slit your- its throat."
Nathaniel opened his mouth to protest, but Cauthrien nodded and her smile broadened. "I think I'd like that," she said.
He scowled. "This isn't how the stories usually go, is it?" he whispered to her. "Usually, the knight rescues his lady with a kiss. It's not the Warden plunges his knife into the remains of a war criminal, and they all moved on, happily ever after-"
Surana cleared her throat.
Ah- debriefing would be unpleasant. He sighed, running a hand back through his hair, then holding it out to the old soldier. "I'll do it," he said.
She took his hand, gauntlet falling away, and he tried to memorize the whispering feeling of skin on skin, all her callouses and the length of her fingers. "Thank you," she said. "... And do it quickly, please. Time loses meaning here. I don't want to linger another five lifetimes."
He nodded, throat thickening. "Of course," he said.
"And make sure I'm properly burned. And-"
"There's a cottage out in Amaranthine, right?"
She nodded. "If the darkspawn didn't get it. By the Hafter, at its westernmost bend. Outside of Grantham. There's a set of memorial stones out by the northern field. There's an old tree-"
"Show me?" he asked, voice soft.
The desperate tension in her brow and shoulders softened, and the landscape around them began to change.
Fin
