Sick With Desire

Valens watched Hadrian pack his saddle-bags for a long, hard ride. “You’re sure you want to attempt this, with so few men?”

“A small force will move faster, and we will accomplish nothing without speed.”

“Better men, perhaps? The Imperial Army has some of the finest cavalrymen in the world.”

“The men of House Sixtus already know me, are used to my style of command. We’ll get farther with tight maneuvering, avoiding as many fights as we can. You’ll need your elite horsemen to countercharge the Aleani knights, or to screen against the mounted archers of the Bolthoi.”

“This isn’t strategically necessary. We just need to defeat the Bolthoi army in the field.”

“It’s not strategically necessary for the Empire’s immediate survival, but what about five years from now? Fifty? Five hundred? Beat one Bolthoi army, they’ll go subjugate more steppe tribes until they can come back with another. Rufio’s quick thinking may have saved countless lives from the Shadow.”

“Very well. King on High go with you. May you return triumphant.”

“I can promise nothing. I’ll keep you up to speed, mind-to-mind, but in case this is the last time I see you… thank you, Valens.”

“I should be thanking you. I went looking for a contractor, a temporary business arrangement, and found a servant loyal to the point of death. I do hope I get a chance to repay that loyalty.”

“When you wear the Crown of Aurelian, when you ride through the gates of Urba Rhatia, when the barbarian kings of the west kneel before you, then I will look upon you, up from among your courtiers or down from the halls of the King on High, and consider my loyalty repaid in full.”

Hadrian rode north from Aureliopolis at the head of forty men in the heraldry of House Sixtus, moderately armored, with crossbows and sabers.

Rufio had learned the precise location of a manifestation of the Shadow, when he had cast a Lunar spell on a dying Shadowman. Hadrian tried not to reflect with jealousy, on how long it had taken him to do anything comparable with the Solar Discipline. Rufio had then psychically transferred this understanding to Valens, who had passed it on to Hadrian; it felt, in his head, much as he imagined the migratory routes of birds did, embedded at a level below senses, articulation, or understanding.

Twelve days after setting out, they crossed the Istros River. Once, centuries ago, this land had been a province of the Rhatian Empire known as Valatsia. Then it had been the Eastern Kingdom of the Aleani, before that folk was driven out by other barbarians and into the western provinces. For awhile it had stood as the Kingdom of the Songnu, a truly alien and frightful people from the far eastern reaches of the steppe, the King on High’s scourge to chastise the Rhatian people for their innumerable sins.

But now the Songnu were gone, their race reduced to a few itinerant free companies in the Empire and the west, or else subject bands within the greater Bolthoi horde. Most had been slain– killed in battle by the conquering Bolthoi, or else sacrificed to their dark gods.

It took many days more before the Bolthoi came on them. They repelled a nighttime attack on their camp, then a chance encounter with a band headed the other way, then an ambush in a narrow pass. The number of their company was reduced to twenty-nine by the time they drew close to the manifestation of the Shadow, and they stopped encountering ordinary men.

Instead, they came under attack from men mad-eyed or dead-eyed, men with two heads or two bodies or two souls, the High Priesthood of the Shadow.

Then they pushed through into the birthing-grounds of monsters. Hadrian had imagined monsters which burst in gore from the wombs of women to be the worst the Shadow had to offer, but here too were monsters that were seeded from parasites which devoured and replaced a man’s gonads, much as certain aquatic parasites will sever and replace a fish’s tongue. Here were creatures which sprang from the nightmares of those asleep, bursting their skulls, and which were formed of men replacing their bodies bit by bit with the cursed fragments of animals and plants until nothing of the original creature remained. Monsters there were too which inflicted pain on humans not as a byproduct of their reproduction, but because they were born of the pain itself.

When Hadrian finally reached the Place Under the Eaves, he was alone. The Shadow’s influence had blocked his psychic line to the civilized world for many days, and by now, his thoughts would likely have been incoherent and dangerous for his emperor to read at even a high level.

Maybe, in an age long forgotten, this place had been a forest. The trees now were pillars of obsidian, the canopy a solid blanket of fuligin. A presence, invisible but no less perceptible for it, stood over him, caressing his face. Gently, it asked, “Will you speak for me?”

In a moment, Hadrian understood. He knew precisely how many times the world had turned on its axis since the Shadow had been born. He knew the demon that was its soul, how the Nephiloi in their desperation had given it a body, many bodies. He knew why it smothered the Celestial Magics, why it hated Man. Why it loved Man, in its own sickly way.

All his life, he had craved knowledge, of things that were, and things that had been. He had it now. He had a chance to tell everyone.

He felt the refiner’s fire in his soul, when he understood too that would live to tell nobody.

For he also knew what he had to do.

He smiled up at the invisible being, and held up a Sign. This knowledge, at least, would see use: a Fire Sign he had seen drawn in manuals, which nobody sufficiently attuned to the Discipline could ever practice, only use once.

The last thing his eyes saw before the blaze put them out was the light of day, piercing the veil which had kept it off this place for millenia. Then this body of what called itself the Final Principle went up as a burned offering to the King on High, and his own body with it.

His soul followed.