The palace at Da’Rea sat listing to one side, like a ship taking on water. Almost half of it had fallen into the tunnels beneath the city; the remaining portion was a blackened skeleton, its grounds littered with the corpses of dwarves and elves alike. Silus could see no sign of Orlok and his comrades, and he wondered whether the dwarf was amongst the dead or whether he had abandoned the city after the destruction of the palace. The bay was crowded with the wreckage of ships, some still ablaze. In a few places he could see survivors clinging to the flotsam, calling out to compatriots or giving voice to their grief or pain. Very few vessels had survived the assault, but Silus was relieved to see that one unharmed song ship remained, still anchored at the quay.
Keldren looked at the ruins of his former home and Silus saw the beginnings of tears in the wizard’s eyes.
“Did we have to return?” he said. “There is… nothing left. If you’re trying to make some sort of a point…”
“I take no delight in your suffering, Keldren,” Silus said. “We have returned because we need that song ship.”
“I don’t understand. Are we going to sail through time?”
“In a sense, yes.”
In the world’s Ridge Mountains they had made a pyre for Emuel’s body, laying him beside the corpse of the dragon. Katya had enfolded the boy in one of the creature’s wings; Silus had been about to ask her why, but the look she gave him halted the question before it could be formed. It had taken them many hours to collect enough wood for the blaze — little grew this high above the world — yet Silus had endured the search in silence, a penance that was not nearly enough to pay for what he had done. When the wood was ignited and smoke began to shroud Emuel’s body, he had wished that Bestion was still with them. The priest would have known what to say, would have sent Emuel’s spirit into the hereafter with a few suitable words. As it was, no one came forward to say a eulogy for the boy. All stood in silence as he burned. At one point the wood beneath Emuel shifted, sending a sheet of lilac flame high above the pyre, and, for a moment, the hiss of escaping gas sounded like a voice raised in song.
Later, as they gathered around the heat of the embers — wrapped in their cloaks, breaths misting before them — Silus told them of his plan.
“When we return, we’re going to want to ensure that we’re found by the Final Faith as quickly as possible.”
“ The Final Faith! Are you out of your mind?” Katya said.
“Hear me out,” Silus said, as more voices rose in protest. “The peninsula must be united against Hel’ss, and who holds the balance of power on Twilight, who has the largest army on the peninsula? The sooner we can make Katherine Makennon aware of the true nature of Kerberos and the threat Hel’ss poses, the sooner we will be entrusted to aid in the battle.”
“Okay, but how are we going to attract the attention of the Faith?” Kelos said.
“We make sure we return in style. We steal a ship. More specifically, we steal a song ship. We know that Makennon has been trying to recover the Llothriall, so we give it to her. Or, at least, something that looks like it. If we return in a song ship and skirt the western coast of the peninsula, the Faith will be on us in seconds.”
And so they had returned to Da’Rea and there boarded the last intact song ship in the bay.
The wind took the sails and the ship began to move out of the harbour and, despite the smoke rising over the city behind them and the detritus that cluttered the surface of the water, Silus felt his spirits rise. The sea had always been a balm for his suffering, the salt spray and the pitch and yaw of the waves provided him with something very like comfort. When this was all over, he and Katya would find a quiet little coastal village and there they would take up the life they had been so brutally torn from. They would have more children, and he and Zac would teach them the fisherman’s trade. Silus could almost smell the sharp odour of a fresh catch and hear the rapid tattoo of fish tails flapping on boards.
When he turned to see Katya and Zac, sitting on a thick coil of rope by the mainmast, the smile on his face died. His son was huddled into his wife’s arms, looking at Silus as though he didn’t recognise his father. No, there would be no going back to their old life. They had all travelled too far from each other for that to ever be a possibility. When this was all over, they would part ways and the best that Silus could hope for was that his son would not grow up to hate him.
Silus heard a snatch of Keldren’s song, as the hatch to below opened and Dunsany and Kelos climbed onto deck. Kelos had discarded his robe, it having become all but shredded in the battle with the dragon. His bare arms were criss-crossed with many scars, some of them still weeping, and his face was a patchwork of bruises. In his hands he held a crystal decanter filled with a thick amber fluid.
“Used to contain brandy,” the mage said, gesturing with the vessel. “Rather good brandy as it turns out. Don’t worry, I’m sure any residue won’t have diminished the potency of the dragon’s blood.”
“And you’re sure the spell will work this time?” Silus said. “I don’t want us to be stranded millions of years from now.”
“This time, without a doubt, the spell will work. Keldren has helped me prepare and we have gone through the nuances of the spell several times just to be sure. No casting on the fly this time. I’ll get us all home, don’t you worry.”
“Okay, Kelos. Let’s get this over with.”
Silus went to stand at the prow. Even with the strong wind gusting over the ship’s rail, he could smell the heavy incense of magic — cinnamon and burned stone — as Kelos unstoppered the decanter. The mage first poured the dragon’s blood over his hands, and used the remaining contents of the vessel to paint various symbols onto the deck. He muttered to himself as he inscribed each character, a look of intense concentration on his face. Dunsany knelt beside him, holding a book open before his friend, which Kelos consulted from time to time as he laid down the arcane script of the spell. When the last drop of blood had been used, he got back to his feet.
“Technically, you know, this is necromancy,” Kelos said to no one in particular. “Not my field at all. But Keldren has briefed me on the ins-and-outs of it, and it really isn’t that much more complicated than the practise of elemental magic. Of course, one thing that any act of necromancy requires, to be effective, is a death.” Kelos glanced at his feet, beside which sat a wicker cage that occasionally shook and emitted a cluck. “Necromancers generally prefer to work with human death, or deaths. But, really, the nature of the death isn’t important. Necromancers are just naturally attracted to melodrama, preferring a human death — or twenty — to empower their spells. Fortunately, I am not as enamoured of such ostentatious gestures.” Kelos paused. “Dunsany, I know exactly what look you are giving me, and I will ask you to stop it now. Thank you.
“Anyway, for this act of sorcery, the death in question will be given by nothing more significant than this chicken.” Kelos produced the bird from the wicker basket and held it against his chest. “And we need to do nothing more dramatic than this.” With a twist of his right hand, he broke the chicken’s neck. Kelos then produced a dagger and slit the creature’s throat, sprinkling its blood liberally over the symbols on the deck.
“No, my friends. The death is not the dramatic part of this spell at all. This, however, you will find far more impressive.” Dunsany handed Kelos the book he had been holding. “I just hope my pronunciation is accurate. Otherwise, this could go horribly wrong.”
The mage licked his index finger, turned a page and then cleared his throat and began to read.
As he announced each incomprehensible word, the symbols painted onto the deck began to burn with an intense light. Silus closed his eyes against the glare, only to find the afterimage of one of the characters floating in the darkness behind his eyelids. He turned away and opened his eyes, and saw the symbol hanging in the air just beyond the prow of the ship. For a moment, he was afraid that it had been permanently seared into his retinas, but when it began to grow and dark tendrils flowed from it to caress the ship, he realised that it was all part of Kelos’s spell.
“And so the door is written onto the very fabric of the universe,” Kelos said, closing the book and handing it back to Dunsany. “Now, all we have to do is open it.”
Kelos gestured and the sky beyond the prow of the ship shattered, falling like a cascade of stained glass. Before them now was darkness, unrelieved by any light. A warm wind breathed from the void, rippling the sails and sending the ship into a gentle roll. Already the figurehead had been swallowed by this unmitigated night and Silus was afraid that they were all about to be plunged into oblivion when a gust of freezing cold wind threw his hair into his eyes and the deck pitched violently beneath his feet. This was a feeling he knew well. These waves that now towered about them were like old friends; indeed, just beyond them, to the north-west, Silus could see the tumult of the Storm Wall — the perpetual maelstrom that raged a handful of miles from the peninsula’s coast — and he knew then that they were finally home.
He ran across the deck to Dunsany. “Hand me your glass,” he said, before taking the telescope and training it on the horizon.
Just visible to the east was the dense huddle of Malmkrug, clinging to the cliffs that surrounded it. But something was wrong: whole sections of the city had been demolished or razed by fire; the ancient breakwaters that stood guard before the harbour had been broken and now protruded from the sea like the shattered tusks of a beached leviathan. As Silus watched, a vast plume of emerald smoke rose from the centre of the city, followed, moments later, by a thunderclap.
“That was sorcery,” Kelos said, coming to stand beside him. “What in the name of all the gods is going on?”
Silus increased the magnification on the telescope and he could now see the people crowding the city’s streets. Most were fleeing the destruction taking place all around them, hurrying inland now that a maelstrom of fire had begun to consume the harbour, but others were fighting. However, although the conflict was confined to the narrow alleys and thoroughfares of Malmkrug, this was no guerrilla assault. Silus recognised the livery of the Pontaine military and the distinctive red and blue stripes of the Vos National Army. And the battle was not confined to this one coastal settlement, for as Silus scanned along the peninsula, wherever he looked he could see flames and the clash of armies. It would seem that, just as had happened so many times in the past, the peninsula had gone to war, Vos and Pontaine once more fighting for dominance of Twilight.
“Silus,” Kelos said. “Look.”
Silus took the telescope away from his right eye, to see Kelos pointing to the sky, his own eyes raised. He looked up.
A new scarlet moon hung beside the vast sphere of Kerberos. It was about one-fifth the size of the azure deity and its surface was pitted and scarred, crowded with craters that resembled nothing so much as vast pools of blood. A hazy corona partly shrouded the sphere and from this, reaching towards Kerberos, snaked a host of thin red pseudopods. Where they touched the upper atmosphere of the god, bolts of lightning lanced down into the gas giant. Silus felt each strike as a pain, deep in his guts.
“That would be Hel’ss?” he said to Kelos.
The mage nodded, his face pale.
“Are we already too late?”
To this Kelos had no answer. Something seemed to have caught his attention to the east.
A galleon was heading towards them, its sails bearing the crossed circle of the Final Faith.
“Well, at least something is going as planned,” Silus said. “Katya and Zac, get below. There may be violence, and I don’t want you on deck if that happens. Dunsany, tell Keldren to bring the ship to a halt.”
Moments after Dunsany went below, the song came to an end and the sails fell limp, although a strong wind still howled in from the west.
“I must admit, I didn’t think to see the Faith quite so soon,” Silus said.
“They’ll have had mages scrying this area of the coast round the clock,” Kelos said, “ready to give the order to launch at the first sight of the Llothriall.”
“I just hope that Makennon is so delighted to have her ship back that she forgoes the torture,” Dunsany said, climbing back on deck, sword in hand.
When the galleon pulled in alongside, it was not the soldiers of the Final Faith that greeted them, but a ragtag crew of men and women, some dressed in leather cuirasses and wielding shields and swords, others appearing to be nothing more than civilians along for the ride.
A heavily bearded man, wearing a mismatched uniform — the helm of a commander in the Swords of Dawn and a tabard clearly filched from a soldier of the Pontaine army — leapt between the ships and thudded onto the deck in front of Silus.
“No civilian vessels are to be sailed in these waters. We’re commandeering this ship.”
“Hang on a moment,” Silus said, “you’re not Final Faith.”
The men on the deck of the Faith ship laughed at this.
The bearded man grunted and spat at Silus’s feet. “We are now.”
“But what’s happened to the soldiers of the Faith? Why are a bunch of mercenaries crewing one of their vessels?”
“There’s been something of a change of management, sunshine. The Red Chapter is now in charge. So, are you going to do the decent thing, climb over the side and attempt the swim back to shore, or are we going to take this ship by force?”
In reply, Silus unsheathed his sword and drove the point into the mercenary’s right eye and through into his brain. There was a stunned silence from the Faith ship as the bearded man slid from Silus’s blade and fell to the deck, before the hiss of unsheathed weapons filled the air and bodies hurled themselves across the gap between vessels.
The odds were hardly stacked in their favour — there were at least twenty mercenaries and only three of them — but Silus and Dunsany were skilled swordsmen and Kelos was a master of elemental magic, and the element he was most adept with was the one which currently surrounded them.
As Dunsany and Silus stood back to back, blades dancing amongst the mercenaries, occasionally lunging out to strike one of them dead, Kelos withdrew to a quiet part of the deck, closed his eyes and began to mutter to himself, weaving complex patterns with his hands.
When he opened his eyes, five mercenaries dropped their weapons and clutched at their throats, their faces turning purple as a flood of brackish seawater issued from their mouths. Another gesture from the mage brought four columns of water bursting up from the sea to either side of the ship. They stood for a moment, swaying like a snake caught by the music of a charmer’s flute, before they lunged at the deck, snatching up men and women and throwing them far from the ship. Kelos was still raising water elementals when he realised that the remaining mercenaries had all been accounted for, their blood soaking the deck around the feet of Dunsany and Silus.
“Well, that was unexpected,” Dunsany said. “Something must have gone seriously wrong at Scholten if mercenaries are now in charge of the Final Faith.”
“And, thus, getting to see Katherine Makennon is going to be rather trickier than we had imagined,” Kelos said. “What are we going to do?”
“If we take their ship, we’re less likely to be stopped again. Flying the colours of the Final Faith, we should be able to follow the river Anclas all the way to Scholten,” Silus said. “There… well, we’ll just have to think of something, won’t we?”
Keldren climbed onto the deck, his face paling when he saw the dead mercenaries.
“What about the song ship?” Kelos said. “We can’t just leave it here.”
“ This is the brave new world that you would have me inherit?” Keldren said, taking in the chaos that had gripped the peninsula. “Gods, where have you brought me?”
“Keldren, I’m sorry, but we don’t have much time. We have to board the mercenaries’ ship.” Silus said, attempting to guide him by the elbow.
“No, I don’t think so. I would die out there. I will stay with the ship. Perhaps find some quiet bay to anchor her in and wait for this conflict to blow over. This is not the world I was expecting.”
“I’m sorry,” Kelos said, though Silus didn’t entirely believe the regret in the mage’s voice. After all, the elf mage had held him against his will, conducted vile experiments on his friends. Now they no longer had any use for him, it was fitting that they should leave Keldren to fend for himself. They said their goodbyes and watched from the Final Faith ship as the song ship skirted the shore, Keldren’s song fading as it rode away on its tide of magic.
Silus took charge of the Final Faith ship, but it was horribly unresponsive. The boom came round arthritically slowly, and the ropes and masts screamed in protest as the wind pushed against them. The ship’s wheel was badly in need of oiling and as he turned it, Silus could have sworn that he heard something break deep within the vessel. He only hoped that the craft would hold together long enough for them to get to Scholten.
Soon the jagged banks of the river Anclas rose to either side, playing host to a vast colony of gulls, whose stench and clamour rolled over them in a heady tide. When the sails fell lifeless for no apparent reason and the ship keeled to port, Silus only just managed to prevent it running aground.
“Gods, you can tell why the people of Malmkrug never used this as a trade route,” Dunsany said, as he came to stand by Silus’s side. “The currents are lethal.”
Silus could only nod in agreement as he struggled with the wheel.
To the east, the sky took on a vermillion glow and he was just beginning to think that it was far too early for sunrise when, with a deafening screech, a blazing ball of scarlet energy arched overhead and impacted with the cliffs towering over their port side, sending fractures racing through the rock face. Silus pulled hard on the wheel, but whatever had broken earlier now caused the mechanism to jam, and they found themselves heading straight towards the cliffs, slowly breaking apart as they did.
“Kelos!” Silus shouted. “A little help?”
The mage raised his arms and cried out, and silence fell. A pearlescent light surrounded the ship. Silus watched in terror as an avalanche of boulders tumbled towards them, only to be deflected by Kelos’s magic.
“Thank you,” Silus said, “Kelos — can you go below and see to whatever is broken? If I can’t turn the wheel we’re not going to get very far.”
Thankfully, whatever was broken was easily repaired. Within a matter of moments, the wheel was turning again.
Though the distance between Malmkrug and Scholten was not a considerable one, their progress was slow. Every mile was a constant battle against the fierce current and the detritus of war that crowded the river’s surface. The bodies were the easiest to deal with, as they either knocked harmlessly against the ship’s side or broke apart on the prow; the collapsed sections of riverbank, however, were another matter entirely. Several times they had to stop and sound the depths with the anchor before they could progress through a narrowed channel, and by the time they neared Scholten — its peaks just visible over the high walls of the river bank — Silus was beginning to flag, his eyes growing heavier with each passing moment.
“Here, let me,” said Dunsany, carefully removing his friend’s hands from the wheel. “Go and get some rest.”
Silus nodded and went below.
As tired as he felt, however, he didn’t think he could have looked as wretched as Katya. She sat on a bunk in one of the cabins, watching Zac as he slept beside her. When Silus went to her, she shrank away, and the look he gave her chilled him more than any of the sights they had seen that day in Twilight.
“When we get to Scholten…” she began, until sobs took her words away.
Silus watched, utterly helpless, as she struggled to regain her composure.
Katya swallowed, blinked and then started again.
“I have an aunt in Scholten, I believe you met her once. When we get to the city, Zac and I will go to her.”
“Okay, then tell me where I’ll find you.”
“No.”
“But, Katya, Twilight has gone to war. You may not be safe-”
“Oh, and you think we’ll be safer with you? You think you’ll be able to defend us from what is happening; that you’ll be able to protect us from yourself?”
“But Zac; Katya… he’s my son!”
“And if you love him, you’ll understand that what I’m proposing is the best for him. He doesn’t know who his daddy is anymore, Silus. This thing within you… it could come back at any time. Kelos told you that you have a destiny and you do, but not with us.”
“Katya, please don’t do this. I love you both so much. Remember how long we tried for Zac? Remember how blessed we felt the first time you held him in your arms?”
“Please, this isn’t easy.”
“What about me? I don’t think you realise how much this hurts.”
“That’s the problem. It is all about you, and there’s no room for us in your life now that you know what you truly are.”
Silus felt like tearing the room apart then, felt the burn of anger and waited for it to overtake him. But he couldn’t. Katya was right. He was a completely different person from the one she had married. He could no longer justify the danger they would be in if they stayed together. He wanted only what was best for Katya and Zac, and so he had to let them go.
“Just give me one thing,” he said.
“And what is that?”
“Five minutes alone with my son. I want to say goodbye properly.”
Katya looked reluctant at first, but finally she nodded and left the cabin.
Silus stroked his son’s head and said his name. Zac opened his eyes and blinked.
“Hey there, looks like you slept through all the excitement.”
“Mummy?”
“She’s just in the next room. There’s no need to be afraid. Listen, you know that Daddy would never hurt you, right?”
“You hurt Emuel.”
“And that was a mistake, Zac. Daddy thought that Keldren would make him all better. Daddy…” Silus realised that if he was going to talk seriously to his son, he shouldn’t talk down to him. “I made a mistake. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. But you must understand that I would never, ever hurt you.”
The strength of feeling behind his last statement made Zac flinch and Silus reached out to him. His son looked at the outstretched palm as though it were a weapon.
“And that’s why you and Mummy are going on your own journey,” he said, after swallowing the hard knot of grief threatening to choke his words. “You’re going to stay with Aunty Kearney. You’ll be safe there, away from all of… this.”
“Are you coming with us, Daddy?”
“No, I’m not. And that’s why you have to be a brave boy, because you may not see Daddy again for a long time.”
Zac began to cry then, great sobs that shook his little body. Silus gathered him close and for a moment he didn’t say anything. Instead, he buried his face in his son’s hair, inhaling the rich, sweet smell of him, feeling his small warm body against him and not wanting the moment to end, ever. Because, here, he was in the only safe and good place on all of Twilight.
“I promise you, Zac, I will find you again. One day, a long time from now, you’ll meet a man you don’t at first recognise. That man will tell you a story, of a stolen ship and a little boy raised in chaos, and of how hard the man fought for that boy to have a safe, normal life and a place he could call home. And when the story is done you will maybe find the strength to forgive the man, because you’ll understand that everything he did — even the things that seemed cruel and wrong — was all for you.
“I love you, Zac Morlader. I love you more than I think you’ll ever know.”
Silus desperately wanted to hear his love returned, but he just held onto his son as the boy sobbed into his shirt, and when Katya came back into the room, he nodded that he was ready.
Silus had never heard Scholten so quiet. Usually the capital city of Vos was awash with the cries of traders, merchantmen and the preachers who harangued the unholy at every streetcorner chapel. Not a minute would pass that was not marked by the ringing of a bell in some Final Faith church or the screams of a heretic being ‘cleansed’ in the central square. Now there were only the sounds of the gulls hovering over the city, occasionally diving among the streets and buildings to retrieve scraps of meat, the provenance of which Silus dreaded to contemplate. Despite all of this, Katya still stood on the quay with a bag of supplies slung over her shoulder and Zac’s hand held tightly in hers.
“If there’s anywhere that will be safe in this city, it will be Aunt Kearney’s,” she said. “Sorry Silus, but this really is goodbye.”
“Then take care. Both of you. And don’t forget me.”
“Silus Morlader? As if!”
When he held her for the last time, Silus was relieved to find warmth in Katya’s embrace. That small hope would make everything to come much easier to bear.
“I love you,” he said.
“I know you do.”
Silus watched as his wife and son walked away and then he watched the place where they had last stood, and only Dunsany clearing his throat broke him out of his reverie.
“Are you ready?” he said.
Silus nodded.
“Then let’s go and find Katherine Makennon.”
As they headed away from the river, they climbed streets that were eerily empty, and Silus hoped that Katya’s faith that her aunt still remained within the city wouldn’t prove to be misplaced. Houses stood open, shops had been abandoned, the produce lining the streets of the market quarter sat spoiling in the sun. Occasionally they came across a corpse, a citizen that had been caught in the stampede to evacuate the capital, but they didn’t see any soldiers. They would already be at the front lines, Silus presumed, struggling to prevent the Pontaine army from overrunning Vos. None of that would matter, in the end, if they didn’t do something about Hel’ss.
He looked up at the two deities in time to see an arc of blinding energy erupting from Hel’ss and lancing deep into Kerberos. Silus suddenly found himself on his knees, as though he had been struck.
“Are you alright?” Dunsany said, hurrying over and helping him to his feet.
“I… I’m fine. Whatever is happening to Kerberos also seems to be affecting me.”
“Your link with the deity must be growing stronger,” Kelos said.
Silus didn’t know if he wanted that, not after everything they had learned about the true nature of Kerberos, but what he wanted didn’t really matter any more — as Kelos had said, he had been chosen.
They reached the top of the market district to find the monstrous edifice of Scholten Cathedral looming over them, and here, finally, were signs of life. Patrolling the walkways connecting the many spires and towers of the vast church were a motley crew of men and women, all haphazardly armed and armoured. Of the soldiers of the Order of the Swords of Dawn and the priests and acolytes of the Final Faith, there was no sign.
Crouched in the shadow of the tattered awning of a grocer’s shop, they waited for a pike-wielding mercenary to round the corner of the west tower before sprinting across the square and towards the main entrance. There, Dunsany put his head against the ornate portal, listening for any signs of movement from within.
“Now that is very disturbing indeed,” he whispered.
“What is?”
“The Eternal Choir has fallen silent.”
From the moment the church had first opened its doors to the faithful, the Eternal Choir had sung praises to the Lord of All, morning, noon and night. The perpetual hymn had never faltered; members of the choir worked in shifts, to rest and eat and to preserve their voices. For the Eternal Choir to be silenced was unthinkable, and though Silus was no friend of the Final Faith, he found the silence chilling.
“The Red Chapter have really done a number on Makennon,” Kelos said. “How on earth did they manage to wrest control of the Cathedral from the Final Faith?”
Silus had been wondering very much the same thing, for neither the facade of the building, nor the stones of the central square abutting it, bore the scars of battle. However this infiltration had been achieved, it had happened quickly and decisively.
His left hand on the handle of the postern door and his right gripping his sword, Silus nodded to his two companions to follow before entering the cathedral.
As soon as they crossed the threshold they found themselves walking through the debris of broken pews and shattered stained glass. The nave had been utterly desecrated: the fine tapestries gracing every pillar were shredded, the intricate mosaics decorating the floor cracked and tarnished, the central altar broken in half and strewn with the remnants of the great glass dome that had once looked down upon it. Silus’s faith had long since been diminished by everything he had witnessed, yet he still felt a sense of horror at the destruction that had been visited upon this place of worship. Standing under the shattered central dome, he looked up to see a host of pigeons roosting on the broken spars; the murals that decorated the wall around the dome’s base had been scrawled over with crude depictions of sex or blasphemies against the Faith.
“Classy bunch, this Red Chapter, aren’t they?” Dunsany said. “And that is never how you spell faggot.”
“Is that supposed to be Makennon herself, do you think?” Kelos said. “It’s hard to tell. In fact, looking it at, it could be a dog.”
Silus shook his head and proceeded towards the choir stalls. Here, there were signs of slaughter. Underfoot, the floor was tacky with drying blood, and on the High Altar sat a human head; the bishop’s hat that crowned it sat askew, its empty eye-sockets were stuffed with votive candles and its tongue was skewered with the symbol of the Final Faith.
The smell of death suddenly rose up like cloying incense, and Silus stepped back, taking deep breaths through his mouth and willing himself not to be sick. As his nausea subsided, he heard a voice raised in song and thought, for a moment, that one of the choristers had survived the cull. He only realised his mistake when he looked up and saw Kerberos framed by the remnants of a broken stained glass window. This was no human voice, but the call of his god. It had been so long since he had heard it that he had forgotten its sound, forgotten its ability to get right to the heart of him and there find every pain, every worry and fear and doubt, and soothe them away with the balm of its voice. Silus was so tired, so done with fighting against what he had become, that every defence crumbled. He closed his eyes and distantly heard the sound of his sword falling to the floor. Something moved behind him, but he paid it no heed. Instead, he gave himself up entirely to the music pouring from the azure sphere hanging low and heavy in the sky.
When his soul left his body, he felt no loss because he knew that he was coming home.
They both saw Silus falter, but it was Kelos who reached him first. He slung an arm around his friend and helped him over to a pew, where he loosened the top button of his shirt and fanned his face with a shredded hymnal.
“Listen, are you sure you’re up to this?” he said. “Perhaps we should just hole up somewhere for a while, forget the whole thing. What do you say?”
Silus turned at the sound of Kelos’s voice, but did not open his eyes.
“This is how they treat my house?” he said.
“I… I don’t understand.”
“This is how they repay me for all that I have given to this world?”
The voice that came from Silus’s mouth was not his own.
“Who are you?”
“You know me well, Kelos. You too, Dunsany. I am your Lord and Master, and you shall kneel before me.”
When Silus stood and opened his eyes they had no choice, for the azure glare that poured from his pupils possessed them with a fear unlike any they had known.
“What have you done to Silus?” Dunsany said.
“He has become one with me. I — ”
Silus staggered, knocking over an ornate candlestick. An unearthly scream came from his mouth and when he looked up at the two men before him, for a brief moment, a red glare filled his eyes.
“Hel’ss,” Kerberos gasped. “I… I need help. I need… Makennon.”
He shook his head and the scarlet taint was gone, replaced once more by the pure light of the azure god. Barely giving Dunsany and Kelos a second glace, Kerberos made His way to the north transept. There, He stood looking at a mural depicting the great sphere of the deity, with a host of human souls streaming towards it, each with the features of a former head of the Final Faith. Looming over them, looking down on them all, was the face of Katherine Makennon, portrayed with a benevolent — even loving — smile.
Kerberos shook His head, smiling ruefully.
“And just who is the god of this world, do you think?”
Neither Kelos or Dunsany answered, still too stunned by the possession of their friend to even understand what Kerberos was saying.
The god’s gaze snapped to the arches of the gallery above.
“Even now, knowing who strides through the ruins of this church, you would resist me?”
He gestured and the wall before Him melted, collapsing the upper levels and spilling a host of Red Chapter mercenaries into the transept. Those not killed by the fall were trapped in the solidifying rock, screaming as their lungs were crushed and their bones pulverised. A few survived intact, and they turned on Kerberos with their swords drawn before an understanding of what truly stood before them dawned on their faces.
Some knelt before their god then, while others took their own lives, their minds broken. Kerberos looked upon His remaining disciples kindly. They bowed their heads to receive His sacrament, and soon the pain and fear in their eyes was replaced by His pure, azure light.
As one, Kerberos and the three men and four women now possessed of His grace turned to Kelos and Dunsany.
“This is our world,” they said in unison. “This is our creation. This is our-”
One of the men suddenly clutched at his face and wailed. From between his fingers came shards of a brilliant crimson light. The cathedral was now open to the sky through the rent in the collapsed wall, and there Dunsany could see red tendrils reaching out from the sphere of Hel’ss and wrapping themselves around the great disc of Kerberos. The possessed Silus reached out to the man, there was a flash of azure light, and a corpse hit the floor, smoke rising from its flesh. Above them, the two deities were still once more.
“There is little time,” Kerberos and His disciples said.
For a terrifying moment, Dunsany and Kelos feared that they too were about to be possessed, corralled into the service of the Lord of All. Instead, Kerberos opened a door in the north wall and descended the steps beyond, trailed by His followers. Dunsany and Kelos could have run then, but they had come too far not to see this through to the end.
The tunnels below the cathedral led to a vast complex of rooms; some simple storage areas or administrative offices, others housing vast libraries and laboratories. In one high-vaulted chamber Dunsany caught a glimpse of a huge statue of a dwarf, inscribed with glowing runes and holding a steel axe that looked capable of felling entire armies. He was about to walk past when something about the dwarf’s features made him do a double take.
“Kelos, is that…?”
“My gods, you’re right! It’s the exact likeness of Orlok.”
Such wonders, however, held no interest for Kerberos and His disciples, who continued on their relentless march through the many levels of the cathedral. Kelos and Dunsany brought up the rear, keeping their distance lest they attract the attention of the god. Passing through a large set of heavily fortified double doors they came to what must have once been the barracks of the soldiers of the Order of the Swords of Dawn. Now, however, there was no sign of the holy warriors, although the blood-stained floor spoke clearly of what had happened to them. Instead, lounging on cots or sparring in the centre of the room with purloined weapons, there were a host of Red Chapter mercenaries. At first, they did not notice the presence of the god, but when Kerberos sent forth His disciples, the sight of their comrades, possessed by the light of the deity, brought many of them to their knees. Everything that had been human had been stripped away. Now they were merely the vessels of their god. Looking at Silus, Kelos wondered whether he’d ever see his friend behind those eyes again, and where — at that moment — his spirit resided. He was glad that Katya and Zac were not here to see this; the sight of Silus as he was now may well have destroyed them.
With His ever-growing army of followers, Kerberos descended through the last and deepest levels of the cathedral. Any Red Chapter mercenaries they met were either added to the legion or, if their minds were not robust enough, dispatched. And the further they descended, the more Hel’ss made its presence known. Many disciples were lost as the crimson glare of the deity poured from their eyes, with Kerberos forced to end their suffering as quickly as possible before the other god could spread its taint. Kelos and Dunsany followed this trail of the dead, all the while wondering why a god would have need of a mortal woman. Just what would Kerberos say to Katherine Makennon? Would she too become a vessel for the Lord of All?
When they finally stood before the ornate door leading to Makennon’s quarters, Dunsany reached for Kelos’s hand.
“Are you ready?” he said.
“Do we have a choice? Have we ever had a choice? I feel like we’ve been nothing more than pawns in a game played between gods.”
“It’s been a hell of an adventure, though, hasn’t it?”
“Oh, yes. Though it’s a pity we never got a chance to put that retirement plan of mine into effect. No desert island for us, just a ruined land at war once again.”
“That’s the Twilight we love.”
Kelos laughed. “And that’s the Dunsany I love. Now, let’s see what a god has to say for itself.”
K ATHERINE M AKENNON HAD heard the trail of destruction coming her way and had been about to call for her guards, when she remembered that those who remained were no longer hers to command. All authority had been stripped from her by the Red Chapter and she had been confined to her quarters, able to do little more than pray for her liberation.
This she did now, falling to her knees as she heard screams coming from beyond her chamber door.
“Lord of All, deliver me from this torment; free me to serve you once more.”
The prayer was no sooner spoken than the door opened and there, stood before her, was Silus Morlader.
Except it was not Silus Morlader, for from his eyes poured an azure light that she knew all too well.
Katherine Makennon looked into the eyes of her god and her heart filled with hope.
She was about to bow her head when Kerberos sank to His knees before her. He seemed to be in pain, and for a moment a cruel grin crossed His face as His eyes shone with an unholy light.
“No! This world is… not yours! This… this is my creation!” He screamed, and to hear such pain and despair in the voice of her god chilled Katherine Makennon to the very core.
“My Lord?” she said, reaching out and touching the man’s shoulder.
Kerberos looked up at Makennon — her god, her life, her reason for choosing the path that had seen her rise through the ranks of the Final Faith to become the most powerful woman on the peninsula — and there was fear in His eyes.
“Katherine Makennon. You have to help me, or all of Twilight will fall.”
There was a peal of thunder then, so loud that she heard it even here, far beneath the ground, and as her god bowed before her Katherine Makennon began to sob.