The Fall

[Amen]

Ora Sten arrived at a small, ill-used warehouse on the far northern edge of Tirel’s shipping district, and stepped out of his carriage while he adjusted the short sword strapped to his hip. A man emerged from the warehouse and approached him with a smile and an extended hand, and they clasped forearms.

“Olvar Segersall, I presume,” Sten said.

“Indeed sir,” Olvar replied. “Welcome to Tirel! I’ll be honest sir, you’re a bit more distinguished than I imagined from your letters.”

“Ah,” Sten said with a chuckle. “You mean 'old.' And letters were never my strong suit, it’s true. Anyway, don’t let appearances fool you, I’m quite spry.”

“I have no doubt,” Olvar said with a wide smile. “I meant no offense, I just…well. Let’s step inside, eh? We’ve done enough hinting around with the written word, it’s time to have it out. No prying eyes or ears here.”

Ora nodded and held his hand out – lead the way – and Segersall turned and walked into the warehouse, half-turning to speak over his shoulder as he went. “I trust the trek wasn’t too strenuous,” he said. “You arrived very quickly.”

“The weather was with us, and as I said, I don’t feel as old as I look.”

“That is good,” Olvar said, and it sounded like he meant it. “I guess I just imagined there were protocols in place for someone like you. You know, that you’d have to request leave, wait for it to go up the chain, so to speak.”

Ora chuckled again. “I’m no inquisitor, Mister Segersall. My Brotherhood is friendly with the Church, to be sure, but we don’t answer to them. Different faiths, different leaders, different rules. I operate with a fair degree of autonomy, thankfully, as your letters made the situation seem rather…well, sensitive.”

“That is a relief,” Olvar said. They were inside the warehouse now, and Ora could see that it had been converted to a wizard’s makeshift workshop. Tall boards had been raised to create partitions and rooms, and the men walked between them as they talked. “As I’m sure you gathered from my letters, I’m not sure the Church would smile on what I’ve been doing here, though I assure you I’ve taken the greatest care and I have the best of intentions. My experiments strike some as being somewhat alarming, however.”

“Believe me when I say that I would know if your intentions were dark, sir,” Ora said. “Please speak freely. You have nothing to fear from me.”

“Of course,” Olvar said. “Where to begin? Well. As I told you, I’m something of a wizard, though I’ve been operating outside the Church’s purview for some time, for reasons that will become obvious. Like I said, my theories and my proposals were met with a fair bit of alarm, for reasons I fully understand. You see, my mentor was one of the foremost experts on the concept of liquid time. Are you aware of the phenomenon?”

“Somewhat,” Ora said unsurely. “Something about how time flows nonlinearly on Althanas. That a man could be in two places at once.”

“Indeed,” Olvar said. “More precisely, a man could be perceived to be in two places at once, though of course there’s no chance of meeting yourself, at least due to the phenomenon we’re discussing here. It isn’t time travel per se, merely a physical inconsistency in the way time flows from one region to the next. If it is Tuesday in Tirel and Knife’s Edge is only seventy leagues away, then it should be Tuesday in Knife’s Edge as well, at least at the same time. However, the time spent traveling between the two cities is never uniform. If you leave Tirel on a Tuesday and you perceive two days passing on the road, then it should be late Thursday night when you arrive, yes? But it never works that way. Sometimes you arrive on Friday, sometimes you arrive on Wednesday, no matter how many sunsets you saw. Do you follow me so far?”

“No,” Ora admitted.

Olvar laughed. “Well, I don’t blame you. Time is a subject sticky enough; never you mind anomalies within time. I shared my master’s interest in liquid time, but not to such an obsessive degree. You see, I formulated a theory, and if I’m right, it may have dire consequences for our world.”

“Say on, and I will do my best to follow.”

“Well, my area of study is not as complex as my mentor’s. I postulated that liquid time is not just limited to Althanas, but also to regions and realms related to it. Well, let’s be specific, eh? My theory was that Haidia also experiences liquid time, but that time passes there differently than it does here, especially now that the portals have been sealed.”

“Go on,” Ora said cautiously.

“I believed that time was passing much slower for us here than it was there. That is to say, the people of Haidia – if you want to call them people – would experience months for every day we experienced here. Do you follow the implication?”

“I think so,” Sten said. “They would recover from the Demon Wars faster than we would. They would repopulate swiftly, make faster advances in warfare and technology. They’d be prepared for a second war before we would. You said you believed that, though…did something change your mind?”

“Yes,” Olvar said. “Well, no. I said believed because I wasn’t sure then. I am now.”

Ora paused, raising his eyebrows as he stopped walking. Sten slowed, and then stopped, taking a steadying breath before he turned around. He nodded. “Now you see why I had to be careful,” he said. “Why the Church would be concerned. I don’t blame them…let me assure you, I took every precaution…”

“Mr. Segersall,” Ora said slowly, “what exactly did you do?”

Olvar took a moment to gather his thoughts, to word his response precisely.

“I hypothesized a way to slow down Haidia’s advancement, to bring the span of time between our realms in line, but it was…dangerous. I realize now how foolish I was, and how lucky I am – how lucky we all are.”

“Olvar…”

“No, don’t be alarmed. Everything is fine now, thank the gods,” Olvar sighed. “You see, my plan was to open up miniscule tears between this world and theirs – nothing large enough to be noticed, sensed, or even seen. The idea would be to link our realms harmlessly for brief moments at regular intervals, preventing Haidia from getting too far ahead of us in the time stream.”

“Portals?” Ora breathed. “Portals to Haidia?”

“Tiny portals, sir. Not even large enough for air to slip through. At least, that’s how it was supposed to go. Breathe sir, I haven’t finished the story, and I’ll ask you to keep your hand off your sword until I’ve finished it. You’re going to like the next part even less.”

Olvar took a steadying breath, and took a step away from Ora Sten.

“When I had enough evidence, I knew I had to do something, with or without the Church’s sanction. So I came here, and perfected my art. Most of what I did was ward-work and safeguarding. I opened portals to Haidia, yes, but I had tools in place so that if I lost control, this entire area would collapse into a void, and then detonate spectacularly, and then anti-magic runes and dehlar shielding would sanitize all magic from the atmosphere. No portal could be sustained. I was doing this to protect the world.”

“What happened?”

“Something unexpected,” Olvar said. “Something that shouldn’t have been possible. As I said, the portals were so small…”

“But?”

“But the last one expanded for a fraction of a second, and something came through.”

“Then why are we still standing here?” Ora said, his voice low and dangerous. “Why haven’t your safeguards wiped this area from the city?”

“Because it wasn’t a demon, sir,” Olvar said. “It was a man. And he asked for you by name.”

[Amen]

Just by writing these words, I may be undermining everything I’ve set out to do, and make moot every black sacrifice I’ve made. I can’t help it. Martyrdom is harder than it looks, at least when you have time to premeditate it.

Martyrdom.

That’s the crux of what I’ve done. I harbor no illusions, reader. I call it martyrdom, knowing that you will call it something different, and who can blame you? Without these words, the world will only know that I’ve done evil and never know the why. And for this act to be martyrdom, these words can never be read or known. The easy answer must be the only answer.

To do a godly thing, I must be ungodly in the eyes of everyone.

There’s nothing, excepting maybe fire, that I’ve ever feared more.

~

[Amen]

Ora Sten entered the room cautiously, mouth set at a grim line and his hand set on the hilt of his blade. A man sat on the end of the room opposite the door with his back to Sten, facing a mirror, but the old paladin could not see his reflection. Supposedly, this man had been to Haidia and back.

Sten sized him up.

He was a big man, dressed in rags, with broad shoulders and dense muscle. His skin clearly favored swarthiness, but he had been out of the sun for a long while, and now his pallor suggested illness and a thin layer of soot that might never wash out. His limbs were exposed, and so too were a network of scars about his shoulders and forearms, the latter suggesting experience with a blade. He was a fighter, and a strong one. His hair was very long – well beyond shoulder length – and black, and full, but so straight that it did not tangle or knot much despite being relatively uncared for.

Sten was sure he had never met this person before in his life and yet…and yet there was something familiar in his movements, something distantly recognizable.

“Do I know you, sir?”

The man chuckled and dropped his chin, and then half-turned so that Ora could see a bit of his face in the candlelight, framed by his hair. Now he could see that the man was shaving an impressive beard off.

“I certainly hope so,” the man said. “You helped raise me, for fuck’s sake.”

Ora narrowed his eyes and stepped to the side, letting his hand drop off his sword. The man finished a swipe of the razor and wiped it off on a towel, raising the twin embers in his eye sockets to look up at the older paladin.

“Marcus,” Ora said breathlessly. “Marcus Book.”

“Back from the dead,” Marcus said with a grin, but it was stillborn on his lips.

[Amen]

“You can imagine my shock when he came through looking like a wild man,” Olvar said. “Well, I’m sure you can imagine my shock at something coming through at all, thinking I was about to have to commit suicide to keep the world safe. And instead of a demon, there’s a wild-eyed bearded man standing there, ranting.”

“I wasn’t ranting,” Marcus said.

The three of them were sitting around a table. Olvar and Ora nursed small drinks, but Marcus consumed nothing. His hair was framing his face, creating dark shadows on his cheeks and making his eyes glint. Ora hadn’t seen him with hair since he was a boy, owing to the Brother’s habit of shaving their heads bare, and so seeing him thus was jarring. At least the beard was gone.

“Well, it sounded like ranting to me,” Olvar said. “Anyway, when I got him calmed down he told me who he was, and I immediately set about sending letters to the people he spoke of. I was afraid for him, thinking it possible that hundreds of years had passed since the events he spoke of, due to the temporal discrepancy between Haidia and Althanas.”

“Not hundreds thank the Light,” Ora said. “It’s been about sixteen months since Ivan’s folly in Knife’s Edge. We thought you dead, Marcus.”

“I know,” Marcus said. “I don’t blame you. I almost can’t believe it myself.”

“What happened? Is Ivan…?”

Marcus shook his head. “I’m sure Anya told the Brotherhood what happened before I went through the portal. I carried Ivan with me, because he could no longer contain the Light and he was about to become a living bomb. Once we were on the other side, the demons started massing, and Ivan and I tried to hold them off until…I don’t even know when, or if there was a plan. I can’t remember. We just fought as long as we could, and then the Light won out and Ivan blew up and killed damn near everything. I was tossed around and pretty beat up, so when I woke up again I had no idea where I was or how to get back. I only found out later that the portal was gone and there was nowhere to get back to, but I figured that was for the best. Nothing else could get through, either.”

“Poor Ivan,” Ora sighed. “How long were you there? I mean, how much time passed for you?”

Marcus shrugged. “A year, at least. Maybe two. Felt like a lot longer. There’s something like day and night down there, but nothing like we have up here. Even if they were similar and measurable, they tended to run into one another. I’m just gauging based on when I slept and for how long, but you can’t sleep well and live long in Haidia, so it’s hard to say.”

“But you survived,” Olvar said sympathetically.

“Somehow,” Marcus agreed. “Being a paladin down there is like…no, it’s literal. You are the only light in existence, and everybody can see that light and desperately wants to put it out. You learn to run far enough to hide, and hide long enough to rest, and then you do it over. And you figure out some of the politics. They’re not unified down there; every major devil is playing against the others in a giant war, with every side vying for the largest, strongest army. They’re just waiting until there’s a mutual enemy they can team up against, though, and a lot of the time that was me. Every so often you can get one devil or another to turn on his friends just long enough for you to get forgotten, but you can’t depend on a devil for long.”

“How did you end up here?” Ora said.

“I’m not sure. Mitra, I guess. I started hearing his voice a little stronger, for a few minutes every few days, so I went toward it. Eventually I found where the voice was strongest, and I reached out to it – tried to pull as much of the Light to me as I could. Next thing I know, I’m here.”

"Mitra? You mean the Light?" Ora said, confounded.

"We'll talk about it later," Marcus said.

“Your link to your god must have pulled you through,” Olvar surmised. “It must be incredibly powerful to have stretched the boundaries of my portal, though, and certainly without tripping my wards. But then, I never accounted for a paladin. How could I foresee that?”

“You couldn’t,” Marcus said. “Thank the gods for your experiments, though. That said, you should probably stop them. If anybody found out that you’ve figured out how to get to Haidia…”

“Yes,” Olvar said with a sigh. “Well, you showing up gave me quite a shock. I think even if not for the obvious failure of my wards, you gave me enough of a shock to keep me from attempting anything like this again for awhile, if ever. I don’t know if any man can do this safely, despite the obvious benefits.”

“Perhaps you should partner with the Brotherhood,” Sten said. “We would certainly welcome your research, and perhaps with the help of our scribes you can perfect your methods.”

“Perhaps,” Olvar said. He didn’t sound convinced.

Marcus put a stop to any attempt at convincing him when he changed the subject. “Where is Anya?”

“Gone on a personal project some months ago,” Sten said. “She was inconsolable for awhile after losing both you and Ivan. At first we thought she was concerned about the portal remaining open in the cathedral, because she spent a great deal of time in the vault, but it became more and more clear that she was looking for a way to get you back, or find you. I’m not sure. Anyway, they eventually ordered her to return and take some time to herself. Toward the end of it she began talking about Alexander Farkus a lot, and then she was gone.”

“Farkus,” Marcus said, raising his eyebrows.

“Yes, a scribe I think?”

“He was,” Marcus said. “I remember him. He went with us to Farshire years ago. It was my first field assignment. Ora, I’m afraid I have to ask you for another favor.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” Marcus said. “I need you to take me back to Farshire. Immediately."

[Amen]

The easy answer is that I did it for power. I did it because I don’t care who I hurt. I did it because I want to live forever, and I don’t care what price I have to pay to achieve that immortality. I did it because I begrudged the lives of everyone who ever loved me. I saw the pleasure and wealth and peace of those around me, and decided I would take it from them whether I was worthy of it or not. I took the easy way out.

I knowingly let hate consume me, or I descended into madness.

The truth is, perhaps, more terrifying.

You tell me.

Does it make it worse, knowing I’m doing this with a clear mind? That I’ve searched the dark corners, boldly, and I’ve come away with my objectivity and my sanity intact? I know evil exists and I know it’s to be fought. I know my duty. I know it better than ever now, but it isn’t as simple as doing as I’m told.

I didn’t do this for me, and this wasn’t an accidental fall into insanity. It was a choice. I did it for you, and for all the lives I’m about to destroy.

Do I sound insane yet?

~

[Amen]

They took the carriage north and east, switching out the horses with decreasing frequency as they trekked farther out from civilized Salvar. Marcus was largely silent and unmoving. He ate and slept little, and exercised obsessively when they took the opportunity to stop or rest. For the most part, Ora presumed that Marcus was depending on the Light more than ever to sustain him. At times, the man and the element seemed to be in communion, and Marcus had grown closer to it and away from the mortal plane.

Once, Ora asked why Marcus didn’t cut his hair, as was expected of a paladin. The templar just stared at him, confounded, as if he did not recognize his comrade.

“Do you recognize the road?” Ora asked another time.

“No,” Marcus said. “It was years ago, though, and nothing looks the same. If I’m honest, Ora, I don’t think anything will look the same to me anymore.”

“Because of Haidia?”

But Marcus didn’t answer.

[Amen]

Farshire was once a jewel in the distant wilderness, a beacon of civilization in one of the harshest lands on Althanas. But they had paid for their finery and safety with the blood of their neighbors and the health of the land, and they made that deal with a demon. Marcus, Anya, and Farkus had come to investigate the suffering inflicted upon the countryside. Before Marcus and Anya found the demon, Farkus disappeared, and when the demon was put to death the deal was broken and the paladins were chased out of town.

Now Farshire was paying for its transgressions.

The brickwork streets, once offering the smoothest surface for carriages, were so torn, uneven, and hole-ridden that they were now barely passable on foot. Marble statues were cracked and ruined and leaning precariously. Once, beauteous vines adorned every wall, but now their naked roots choked the life out of every building, and the buzzing of flies was ubiquitous. The window frames were empty and rotted, and the delicate curtains swayed in a half-dead breeze, tattered and brown.

The villagers were much the same. There were maybe ten teeth left in Farshire, all told. The horses were gone, eaten years ago along with the dogs, but their bones littered the gutters still. Only the rats remained, wet and greasy, huge and aggressive, roaming the alleys in swarms and gnawing on drunks’ noses as they lay insensible. There were a few cats, earless and mean, but they stuck to the roofs out of fear and ate only carrion they could steal.

Buzzards circled overhead against the overcast sky, day in and day out. Ora heard that they stole children.

Marcus’ face showed no emotion as they walked the ruined streets. He took it all in silently.

“You couldn’t have known,” Ora whispered to him, but he said nothing.

From memory or, more likely, by sheer luck, he led them to the town square. The villagers avoided them in the streets, but now a small crowd was forming at the alley entrances. Their heads were bowed, but they were tense, and there was a sneer on every face. Ora eyed them cautiously, but Marcus didn’t seem to be aware of them.

In the middle of the square, they’d collected a massive pile of wood, which had been burnt. Above it were five posts, leaning drunkenly over the charred pile. Ora could not comprehend the purpose of this at first, his brow furrowed in confusion until Marcus let out a shivery sigh. Ora followed his gaze, and gasped.

There was a body tied to the top of one of the poles.

Marcus lowered his head, and Ora hesitated before stepping forward. As he approached, he felt his heart flutter, and his guts tie themselves into knots. The body was not charred, having been kept well above the flames, but the skin was one tremendous, split scab, red and cracked. Ora reached out and gripped the hilt of his blade to still the shaking of his hands, and tears stung his eyes.

It was hard to tell at first, but now he could see the subtle curve of breast and hip, and of sinewy arms and strong shoulders. Her hair was burnt away, but she hadn’t had much to start. Paladins shave their heads, after all.

“You sons of bitches,” Ora said, his voice wavering. “You sons of bitches, you burnt her. Not Anya…not Anya.”

“Didn’t burn her,” one of the villagers shouted. “Just cooked the witch ‘til she stopped screaming.”

Others laughed and jeered, but when Ora drew his sword they shrank away and hushed. They were numerous but small, so malnourished and wretched that they couldn’t even trust in their superior number. Seized by wrath, Ora began to charge them, but Marcus laid his hand upon the older paladin’s forearm.

“You can’t,” Book said evenly. “That’s not what we do. Come on.”

He crossed the square, and Ora followed, letting his shoulders droop. He couldn’t raise his chin. Gently, so gently, and with a steady hand, Marcus lowered the post and untied his mentor’s body from it. Through the scars and the burns, Ora could see the shape of Anya’s cheeks and jaw, her full lips now made of dead skin all the way through, cracked and raw.

Her corpse was small in Book’s arms, so small that it seemed impossible that it was once the woman they’d known.

[Amen]

By now you’ve heard the words of Ivan the Lost. That evil is organized, that it’s a conspiracy arrayed against the world of light. The truth is that Marcus Book was right, and Ivan was wrong. It’s not a conspiracy.

It’s chaos. It’s ignorance and hate, and it resides in the hearts of all men.

Only that can explain how Anya Shea came to the village of Farshire as a friend, with sympathy in her heart for men who’d made so many mistakes, eager to help them out of the hole they dug for themselves, and for that they burnt her alive, and lived to laugh about it.

The truth is that the darkness isn’t organized or ordered. Not yet.

Not yet.

~

[Amen]

They bought a coffin from the village, and put Anya’s body inside it, and then stored it on the carriage. Ora didn’t want to pay for it, or use any goods produced in that cursed village, but Marcus did it anyway. The older paladin eyed him that night as they sat on the village outskirts around a campfire. Marcus did not weep, or rage. He only sighed, and stared into the flames. When Ora woke the next day, he hadn’t moved – he just watched the smoke rise from the ashes.

“What now?” Ora said.

“I need to go back into the village,” Marcus said. “She came here to find Alexander’s body. I’m going to finish that, and then we’ll be done here. They should be buried in Knife’s Edge, with our Brothers.”

“They wouldn’t give his body to Anya, why would they give it to us?”

“They don’t have a choice,” Marcus said.

“How? How did they even…?”

“She didn’t fight them,” Marcus said. “She just let them do it. She forgave them for what they were about to do to her, before they did it.”

“I won’t,” Ora said. “They must be punished. They must suffer for this. If they try to burn us, I will kill them.”

“No,” Marcus said sharply, lifting his head. His eyes blazed in the early morning gloom. “That’s not our way, Ora, and it’s not what Anya would want. If they attack us, we’ll defend ourselves, but they have no chance of overpowering us. Fight them off, but don’t kill anyone. We’re here to do our duty, and to uphold the Light, and that’s what we’ll do. That’s what we must do, Ora.”

“You’re right,” Sten said softly, after a time. “Of course you’re right, Marcus. Thank you. But they must be punished for this. They must. There must be justice.”

“Justice,” Marcus said thoughtfully. “I don’t think there will be justice.”

“There must,” Ora muttered, without conviction. “They can’t just walk away from this. Not after what they’ve done, we can’t just walk away without any sort of reckoning…”

“I never said there wouldn’t be a reckoning,” Marcus said, staring at the smoke. “It’s just that no Brother will bring it.”

[Amen]

The prospect of finding the corpse of a man murdered in secret half a decade past was daunting enough, but Ora Sten could not imagine how such a thing could be accomplished in Farshire. It seemed to him that there was a strong chance that whoever had done the black deed was long since dead, or had fled the town sometime during its slow collapse. Or had suffered some blacker fate still – it was possible, if not likely.

Still, he followed Marcus dutifully, with his hand on the hilt of his sword, and he watched the dark corners and the alleyways. Marcus was unarmed, but walked purposefully and calmly – either self-assured or oblivious, Ora couldn’t tell. The longer he spent with the man, the more he saw the changes the exile to Haidia wrought in him, and he began to worry that the templar was broken.

Their search seemed random, and after a few hours Ora said so, and Marcus nodded. “It is, in a way,” Marcus said. “I’ll know where to start when I see it. Trust me, Brother.”

Sten glanced at the younger, larger man, and didn’t know what to say. Ultimately he said nothing, but hunched his shoulders and kept an eye out.

“There,” Book said just before noon, and he pointed. At first Ora’s heart sank, for now he was sure he’d been following a madman. He was pointing at a building indistinguishable from the others surrounding it. Like every other structure in Farshire, it was brown and grey and dilapidated and half-collapsed, and certainly uninhabitable by civilized men.

“I don’t think there’s anyone in there, Marcus,” Ora said unsurely. “What’s different about this building?”

“It’s this building,” Book said confidently. “They’re in there.”

“Who’s in there?”

“I’m not sure yet, but they’re in charge, as much as anyone is here now.”

“How do you figure that?” Ora said.

“For one, the door is solid, locked, and reinforced, and it’s been repaired recently. The windows are boarded, and there’s smoke coming from the chimney. They don’t have neighbors, and people rarely come and go as far as I can tell. All those luxuries in a place like this? Somebody’s in there, and he’s got clout,” Marcus said.

Ora considered it, and found himself surprised that he couldn’t poke holes in the templar’s logic. At that point it felt less likely that Marcus was making sense and more likely that the lunacy was contagious. Without firm ground to stand on, Sten shrugged. “How do we get in?”

“I don’t feel the need to fuck around,” Marcus said, sounding fifty years older than he was. “It’s got a front door, let’s use it.”