A great battle, long ago, between the Celts and the Romans. Men clad in animal furs and woad against the armoured might of an empire. He breathed in the scent of blood and battle percolating through the air. On this ground, from dawn until dusk, men of the highlands and those from a far-off country had fought one another in a growing ordure of churned mud and entrails. The rain came and did not wash the ground clean of the slaughter. Many fell, more than could ever be counted, and such was the scale of it that Death herself walked corporeal among the fallen, harvesting their screaming souls. Her great ragged wings beating in time with the clash of sword and the drumming of blows upon armour and shields. Through the night, she slid her freezing fingers into the chests of the dying and plucked out their hearts before favouring their blue lips with a final, fleshless kiss.
It was the dawn of the following day when Khale materialised. The light of the Timestone ebbed away around him and he trod a path through the moaning and the dead. Death had already come upon him. The man he had been back then. He could see himself now. The last man left standing, alone, wearied, bloodied but still fighting on against Death itself. He had been a mere mortal but still a darkness clung to him more than any other man of his clan. It coloured his blood with a bitter lust for the kill that none of his fellows shared. He could see his friends and family among the dead, carved into pieces, torn apart, the hollows where their eyes had once nestled no longer judging him as they had before. The elder Khale advanced with what speed he could through the morass of corpses. Death had raised her blade high to lay him low and he saw his sword raised in kind, meeting hers with a thunderous crack that shook the air and the ground.
The Man That Turned Death's Blade Aside.
A name that would reverberate through the coming millennia.
A monster was being made. A nightmare was about to be born.
Death was tireless. She swung her blade down to cleave his skull. Again, she was parried. Again, she was denied blood. No words were spoken. No sound was uttered by either one. There was only the relentless song of clashing steel ringing out across the reeking battlefield as the elder Khale came closer. On and on the duel went as he parried each thrust and feinted away from every slash she made. The memories were bright and hot in his mind. He could feel his heart aching as he remembered this day.
The struggle would soon be decided.
The elder Khale unsheathed his sword. It shone alien in the grey light of the highlands. Burnished and glinting in a way not dissimilar to the shade of his tainted eyes. It was Carcosan yellow steel, a good, strong blade and one of the last of its kind. Khale watched as Death misjudged the weary mortal he had been. The arrogance born in the hearts of all Gods and Goddesses making her gestures grander, her blade falling only after ostentatious, taunting sweeps and displays of her unholy dexterity were made. She thought his slowness to be more than the feint it was. Despite himself, Khale smiled as there was the smallest pause between one blow and the next.
There!
The mortal man struck.
A dagger secreted in one of his boots was driven into the place where Death’s heart should have been. She had no heart to speak of so the wound was no more fatal to her than the bite of an ant, but it was the distraction that he had needed. Faltering, her black eyes wide at the sign of harm inflicted upon her by a mortal, Death did not see, or believe, that she was about to fall to his sword. He shattered her smoking blade and then his sword came around again to decapitate her.
The elder Khale’s blade struck the killing blow aside.
His eyes met those of the man he had once been.
“What are ye?”
His eyes had been so clear and untainted then, without sickness or disease.
“I am what you will become.”
“What I’ll become?”
“Slay her and you are doomed.”
The mortal man’s face twisted in a snarl he could feel shaping his own features. Their swords struck, clashed and then ground against one another.
“She’s my kill. I will have her.”
“You will not. If you do, there’s nothing but darkness and despair to come. You will be a hollow man. An emptiness adrift. You. Must. Not. Slay. Her.”
Khale fought Khale and as they did, the world shifted around them. Waves of sickness and pain struck each man. Time was being torn. Far away, the elder Khale fancied he heard a profound wordless scream. The mortal Khale was weeping tears of blood. The elder Khale drove home a series of heavy two-handed blows, driving the mortal Khale to his knees. He set his sword against the throat of the other man and shivered as he felt a line of ice cold drawn across his own neck.
“I do this for you. For the life you can have if you turn and walk away from this battlefield. It will be short and mortal and the life you should have had. The one I should have had.”
The eyes of the other were not sick and yellow like his own, the defiance in them raged fierce and clear.
“I will have my kill, whoe’er you are. Or, you will have yours and take my head home.”
“You must not slay her.”
“ ... but I may slay him.”
The elder Khale’s heart missed a beat as he realised who had spoken, what had happened and what he had done. He looked down at the face of the mortal Khale and saw that all colour was draining from it. The eyes were dilating. The mouth was slack. The elder Khale dropped his sword and stepped away, letting his own corpse fall to the ground. It lay there. Still. Unmoving. A great wound in its chest and blood blossoming out from it.
Khale turned and faced Death.
She held his heart in one hand and his own dagger in the other. She smiled at him, the same cold smile that he had in some way inherited.
“So, is that it now? Am I to die, at last?”
He closed his eyes and waited. His mortal self was slain. Time would catch up with him now. All the centuries upon centuries of darkness would never have been. He was to be freed from the weight and yoke of endless living at last.
But nothing came.
Nothing changed.
Death laughed at him with the shrillness of a feasting vulture.
“You are not to die here, Khale. I said forever, remember?”
He opened his eyes, “What?”
“I told you that what you did on this day, raising your hand to a Goddess such as me, for turning my blade aside, would be forever. I set you upon the roads of the world, to walk them all until Time’s end."
“But Time is changed now. I died here. I will rot here. I will never be immortal.”
“You died here by your own hand, dear Khale.”
A tremor passed through him.
“You have learned much since you were a caveman of these hill-folk,” she said disdainfully, prodding one of the Celtic bodies with her foot. “You should know that what you have created here, by coming back, is a paradox. You fought with yourself. You died but you are here before me, still alive.”
Khale’s fingers made fists and he ground his teeth against the tears he could feel burning in his eyes.
“You forget that you are not a God to rewrite Time as you wish it to be. You are mine, Khale, and I wish you to walk all the roads that you have already walked again. Every day, every year, every century that you have already suffered through, you will suffer through again. Remember, you are the puppet and I am your mistress.”
Khale screamed. It was a wet, raw sound torn from somewhere deep inside and with it he set upon her. He remembered the first time when he had been a mortal man, how he took her head clean off in one stroke. This time, he butchered her. He hacked and hacked away at Death until she was nothing more than pulp, torn cloth and splintered bones, and she did not stop laughing for all that time. He trampled her remains into the bloodied mud of the battlefield as a sudden and terrible cold surged through his heart and up into his throat, choking him as surely as a freezing hand might. He fell to his knees to weep and to wail, long and hard, as the corpse of Death slowly di
ssipated and blew away like ashes on a wind that was not there.
Khale was left alone on that battlefield and alone in the world, once again.
For none are like him, nor shall they ever be.
For he is the Wanderer and he is Eternal.
END
#
Greg James is the author of the Age of the Flame trilogy. He enjoys long walks around his home city of London as well as reading, writing, insomnia, Coca-Cola and thinking up new Fantasy worlds to entertain readers with. Those who are not entertained get teleported to the cornfield.
Find him at his website gryeates.co.uk or follow him on Facebook
The Sword of Sighs
If you enjoyed Greg’s story, check out his best-selling fantasy!
Sarah Bean lives a quiet life in Okeechobee, Florida until the day when she is transported from our world to the fantastic realm of Seythe. She meets a wayfaring wizard called Ossen who saves her from the dreaded black riders, servants of a being known only as the Fallen One. Together, they will have to undertake a treacherous journey to the far-away Fellhorn mountain where Sarah must find the one weapon that can save them from the black riders pursuing them - The Sword of Sighs.
Rachel.
CD Reiss
Do people like you ever have wishes, Jonathan?
What does that mean? People like me?
People who have everything. Was there ever something you wanted but could only wish for?
* * *
I hated the word festooned.
Festooned implied some kind of old-world family dancing around with ribbons, draping them over lamps and doorways, catching the flowers as they fell out of their hair. It brought to mind musical theater and swaying skirts. It felt Swiss Family Robinson. Mary Poppins. The Waltons. Good night, Jon-boy.
Despite the sour taste in the front of my tongue and the bitter one in back, festooned was the only word that suited the house on this, the day of my engagement party. I wanted to drink far more than I had. I wanted to take that bottle of Jameson’s I knew my mother hid under her bathroom vanity and sit in a corner to finish it. I wanted to suck it dry. But I didn’t do that anymore. When I drank, I held a glass and sipped until the ice melted, never finishing before. Then I waited and eventually got another. I hadn’t been drunk since I was sixteen.
And if I did drink that bottle? Who would care but my fiancé, Jessica? Or more to the point, whose opinion did I value besides hers? Who else did I serve?
She wanted this event, and she got it. I couldn’t deny her anything, and really, it wasn’t such a big deal to throw a party. It was nothing to gather a team of people from Hotel A to festoon my parent’s Palisades house, send invitations to the right people, and make sure there was food. My staff were experts at managing women with exquisite taste, such as my bride-to-be. It was no burden to me whatsoever.
The burden was having the engagement at my father’s house. The burden was explaining to him that the wedding would be at the my future in-law’s residence in Venice, and his presence was not requested.
There were reasons for all of it, of course, spite not being the least of them. I understood spite, even enjoyed it on occasion, poured over cold cubes of guilt with a chaser of regret. But this spite was too old and too ugly to enjoy.
“There you are,” my mother’s voice came from behind me. I’d been looking out toward the yard, watching subsets of staff ready it for the flood of people. “Have you seen Jess?”
“She’s out with my sisters getting her feet and fingers done. Something tasteful, I’m sure. No need to worry.”
Mom slipped her hands over my shoulders, her hands brushing the fabric free of some imaginary lint. “Are you happy?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You’ve seemed down. Is it Jessica?”
“No.”
“The thing with your father?” Mom didn’t look concerned as much as benign. She’d perfected that look of harmlessness over forty years, and she wore it well under light makeup and a strawberry blonde chignon.
“Yes.”
“He’s come to terms with it.”
“Is the bar up? I need a drink.”
She looped her arm into mine and we walked outside.
* * *
My father hadn’t ever actually come to terms with anything in his life, ever. He sat and waited until opportunities presented themselves. He was utterly non-aggressive in the way a cat is utterly still outside a mouse hole, waiting for the rodent to either forget he was trapped or get hungry enough to risk everything and leave.
The party setup was going smoothly, people in tuxedos and black dresses gadding about with purpose. The hedges had been trimmed, the tennis court locked. The pool had been cleaned, repainted and decorated with floating flowers. No one asked me a goddamn thing about anything and I liked it that way. The bartender, an actor from the looks of him, was setting up glasses in neat rows. Behind him, the majesty of the Pacific Ocean stretched into a haze where sea met sky.
“He told me he understood,” Mom said, continuing a conversation she assumed I wanted to have. “Business deals sometimes go bad and someone gets hurt.”
“It’s fine, ma.”
“You should talk to him about it.”
“Hey,” I said to the bartender. “Two Jameson’s, rocks.”
“I’m not having any,” Mom said.
“They’re both for me.”
She smiled and punched my arm. “Jon. Always the joker. Listen to me. This radio silence with your father isn’t productive. I mean, he did agree to have the engagement here.”
“You insisted.”
“To save him embarrassment. This thing with him has put me in the middle and to be truthful, it’s stressful.”
She knew how to feel stress, my mother. The management of anxiety was an art form with her, necessitating the use of a cocktail of medications and hospitalizations when she misjudged her secret alcohol intake. Poor Mom. Really. A willing captive in a house as big as an island nation.
It was my turn to flick an imaginary piece of lint off her shoulder. “He took my future in-laws for everything, blew a chunk of it and passed a few million back to them. Not enough for them to get a decent lawyer.”
“It was twelve years ago and it was a legitimate business deal.”
“Legal. It was legal. Not legitimate.”
Despite earlier denials, she took the glass of whiskey, holding it but not putting it to her lips, as if it was a prop. I remembered she drank wine in public and whiskey in private. I was getting muddled already.
“I know they’re your family now, the Carneses. But don’t forget where you came from, young man.”
As if I ever could.
* * *
The last family party my father and I had attended together had been seven years earlier. Sheila’s birthday had an unfortunate proximity to Christmas, so every one of her birthday parties became Christmas parties. Her house in Palos Verdes perched on the edge of a sheer drop to the ocean. For a mile in each direction, a beach as wide as a sidestreet ribboned at the base of the cliff. But toward the end of that year, the beach disappeared under rushing tides as it rained for twenty days straight.
Children toddled underfoot, with nannies running bent-kneed behind them. Extended family on top of extended family, most drunk or on their way there, myself included, even at sixteen. I did what I wanted, like all my friends. Nothing could happen to us that money couldn’t fix, so no one paid attention.
I had no self-control at that point. I was a loose cannon of temperamental fits, drunken rages, and risky behavior. The last incident had been driving my father’s new Maserati into South Gate to drag my friend Gordon out of a meth house. I’d thrown him into the driver’s side and hit the gas from the passenger’s side to wake his sorry ass out of a stupor. We’d sideswiped his dealer’s Escalade, four-thousand-dollars’ worth, and in the end, Gordon had gone right back to using, but my addiction to nearly dying had been sated for a month, at
least.
Then, the week before Christmas, Sheila’s birthday. Los Angles had already had twenty-two inches of rain since school started. There was a rumor Death Valley would have a once-in-a-lifetime bloom, come spring. My friends and I were planning a road trip in Charles’s Hummer just to mow our path over fields of poppies.
I was drunk already, bullshitting with my cousin Arthur over which Ivy League schools we were going to stroll into. Which had the best clubs, where the legacies were. Arthur was a douchebag. The last time I’d driven down Sunset with him, he leaned out of his BMW to make some noise at a girl, which was bad enough. But when she flipped him the bird he shouted, “Man, I bet there’s some guy out there so tired of fucking you.”
“Arthur, really?” I felt like getting out and apologizing to her, but the light turned green and we were gone.
“What, Jon? Look at her. All legs and shit. Fuck her.”
That was the last time I went out with Arthur. But at a family party, as long as we kept to schools and baseball, I could hold a conversation with him.
Sheila’s party graduated from family thing to some kind of pre-Christmas fuckall event, and the kitchen got crowded. I was less and less inclined to move. People I knew came in and out, most not related to me at that point, and aunts and uncles kissed me goodbye and left.
I don’t even know what I was drinking. A bong went around. It was lead crystal and totally illegal, even if the bud wasn’t, and the liquid inside was chartreuse absinthe.
Just because.
The movement of the party shifted down the hall, through the library and into the living room, where I saw my father was still there.
And Rachel had shown up.
* * *
Was there ever something you wanted, but could only wish for, Jonathan?
I wish I wasn’t raised by crazy people.
Something for the future. That you want, but don’t think you’ll get.
Yes, I—
Don’t tell me. That’ll ruin it.
* * *
Jessica was nowhere to be found. She didn’t answer my texts or calls. Margie, who had taken her out for the “girl thing” with three other sisters, said my fiancé had left the spa in her Mercedes the hour before.
“Did she have an accident?”