Chapter Four – Legends of Shadows

Cold winds buffeted at Ishkinil as they flew low above the plaza beneath the pallid moonlight, her cloak and hair streaming out behind her. She could feel the labouring of the beast, hear its gasping breath as it struggled to keep them aloft. Strong it might have been yet it bore a heavy load, and that with the wounds it had taken all conspired to sap at its strength.

Between the columns they flew, the winged-ape’s grasp upon her arms, just as hers held tight to Dirgesinger. She could see flashing beneath them the numerous dead, some reaching up to try and grapple them as they flew on. One, taller than most, managed to brush her boot. She kicked out to keep its hands from fastening a grip and they flew on, ever on, as the dead turned about and lumbered back across the plaza towards the White Citadel.

The beast’s prodigious strength began to give out as they reached the building, and they came in for a rough landing at the base of the stairs, both tumbling to the ground as it released its grip upon Ishkinil. Even so, as it picked itself up from the ground, it turned about, to face the coming dead, beating at its chest. Ishkinil could see what it was it planned to do, to buy her time, to slow the approach of the dead that walked.

“Go, while you still can,” she told it. The great beast shook his head and patted its chest again, humming an answer. The words were not important, for though she knew them not, she understood its meaning. It would not move.

“Thank you,” she said. “It may be that I shall prevail and this danger shall end, but if not then know that this is not the end.”

The beast appeared to nod slowly before slapping it wide hands upon the ground, snarling at the oncoming dead. Ishkinil turned and bounded up the stairs, towards where the spectral figure awaited, its arms still raised, flashes of sickly energy swirling out from it to scatter across the city and rain down upon it. She knew not what would happen to the rest of the dead should it be defeated, whether they would continue on or not, only that it was the catalyst of the blight, and without it, it could spread no further.

Cresting the top of the stairs and out onto the ledge before the shattered gates, she came face to face with the unwilling catalyst of all the trouble. The spectral figure turned its gaze upon her and a ghastly laugh came from it, one broken, mad, tortured, half weeping as it did. The eyes too of the ethereal figure reflected the madness, wide and frenzied. There could be no reasoning with it. Into its hands appeared a great hooked sword, as ethereal as it was, of the same pustulous green, dripping with ichor.

It advanced towards her, slashing through the air at her with its sword, a blade that no mortal armour or weapon could impede. Dirgesinger leapt to meet it though, and the two blades, mystical and ethereal, clashed together, the strike stopped in a jarring blow. She could see upon the face of the spectral warrior shock, for it could not conceive that such a thing could happen.

Ishkinil smiled, and her laugh was like one fey, gripped by a fevered madness that came upon her when she went against those that impeded Enkurgil’s designs, the shadows closing in tight around her. Here was where she was meant to be, where Enkurgil’s work was to be done, and life surged through her, triumphant and intoxicating, heady to the point of addicting. As once more it struck at her, she twisted her blade, parrying the blow aside and lunged in a devastating riposte, Dirgesinger crooning its song.

Her foe flowed backwards, gliding across the ground, not bound by the broken body of a corpse as the other dead were. The tip of Dirgesinger whispered just scant inches from it.

Then once more it came forward and the two blades leapt and danced and sung, each parried strike ringing like deep sounding deathly bells across the plaza. Back and forth the two moved, parrying and lunging, slashing high and low, riposte into thrust. Sweat ran freely across Ishkinil as she matched wits and skills with the deathly foe before her, its abilities in death just as formidable as they had once been in life.

Above the fight, the raven of the blackest feathers circled, croaking low and sonorous as it did, claws at the ready, preparing to swoop in, to strike when an opening presented itself. None did. Too swift the pair flowed, back and forth, blades moving like liquid lightning, too closely matched in skill.

The long exertion of the night, the race through the citadel and across the plaza, the battle with the spectral foe, began to weigh upon Ishkinil. She could feel her limbs begin to grow heavy as fatigue set in. Alone of the two she would suffer that, for her foe would not tire or grow weary, nor lose focus. It would not falter, but fight on until her strength departed and at last she would fall beneath its ethereal blade, not unless she could end the clash first. Already the spectral sword had come close to scoring her a number of times, the chill of its passing upon her skin.

A look of fell determination set upon her features, and she let her sword drop low, as if she was lacking the strength to keep it up, leaving an enticing invitation open for her spectral foe, an opening that he could see and could not ignore. It had to know that she was weakening, had to expect such an outcome, and so it took it, sword arcing in a ghostly sweep, an almost triumphant look upon its face. It was a great risk, Ishkinil knew, but one she had no choice but to take.

At the last moment, when it appeared all but certain the blow would strike home, she slipped aside, a shadowed blur, Dirgesinger rising once more, to parry aside the enemy’s blade. It came almost too late still, and the sword was beat aside only just, cutting through her cloak so that vapoured strands of it drifted free, to dissipate in the air. The blade scored light across her leg, a glancing wound yet pain flooded through her at its touch. Cold it burned, like the chill of the halls of night, yet hot too, burning with the fires of pain.

Gritting her teeth tight, Dirgesinger twisted in the air, reversing its course. It sung its crooning cry and as she drove it forward, all her might behind it. Swift as a striking cobra it moved, plunging into the unprepared defences of the spectral enemy, driving deep into its body. No resistance would a normal weapon have met, for it could not have touched that ethereal flesh. Dirgesinger, though, was no natural blade, a weapon not of just the mortal world, but of the world beyond, of Enkurgil’s realm. Beneath its touch, the spectral figure felt as solid flesh. The white-blue flames contained within Dirgesinger burst to life, deep within the body of the foe.

The flames licked across it, through it, as Ishkinil slipped Dirgesinger free, stepping back from it. Energy and flames bled from the wound. An unearthly howl, more felt than heard, came from the mouth of the ghostly foe, head tossed back. It began to shrink in on itself as it burned from the inside out, burning ever brighter, the sickly hues being cleansed in flames until it glowed white rather than green. Then at last it burst apart, sending a shower of white sparks to drifting through the air. They slowly fell, like drifting flakes of snow, to settle upon the ground, there to flash and sparkle for a moment before fading away.

Despite her wounds and pain and fatigue, Ishkinil took no rest, nor a moment to savour her victory but turned instead and ran towards the stairs, to head down them. As she hurried own them, the raven in flight above, she could see a great mound of the dead at the base of the stairs, and beyond more corpses still, these collapsing to the ground, twitching for a moment before stillness came upon them, the corrupted source of life that kept them moving having been extinguished.

The mound of dead was piled high, where they had tried to clamber over each other to get at the winged-ape, regardless of losses or wounds. The winged-ape lay among them, half-buried, battered and bloodied, barely moving. Its wings had been shredded, to fly no more, and one eye was shut. Across its great body were dozens of bleeding wounds. With its remaining eye, it looked to Ishkinil as she drew near.

“It is done,” she told it, and the great creature gave a simple nod of its head before its good closed, to open no more, to breathe no more.

For a time Ishkinil sat upon the stone steps, Dirgesinger resting across her knees, beside the body of her fallen companion, resting to recover her strength after her ordeal. Once more silence had fallen upon the city, though now a faint wind touched the night’s air, carried in across the wastes that had been the Inner Sea, carrying with them hints of sand and dust. Stars shone bright in the cloudless sky and the sliver of the moon had risen high, dusting the silent buildings and plaza with its pale glow. The raven perched nearby, upon a rocky protrusion on the hill upon which the White Citadel had been built, where the stairs had been carved into it.

“It is done,” she repeated once more after a long period of quiet. The raven tilted its head this way and that, turning to gaze at her first with one white eye and then the other. “The darkness is lifting. I can feel it in my very bones, the return of life where once there was unnatural death.”

Slow she rose to her feet, aches and pains resting still upon her. Dirgesinger slid home into its sheath, the inner flame fading from it. She stood above the fallen winged-ape, looking down on its now still form. With its eyes closed, it looked almost as if it was at peace, the pains of its life no more.

“I could not have ended this without its help,” she said. “Noble it died, so that I could do what needed to be done. Greatly it suffered in life, yet Enkurgil will take it into his embrace, that it may know peace there, the travails of the world having come to an end.”

She began to clear away the bodies that had piled up around the base of the steps, removing those that had fallen upon the winged-ape and clearing a path through them. Each was laid out alongside each other, yet more innocent victims of the darkness that had befallen Iskor Yar. When space had been cleared, she started to move the winged-ape, to drag it away and prepare it for its eternal rest. She could not leave it there, not after all that it had done.

Near to where she had burned the corpse of Nakhurena, she laid it to rest in one of the dead gardens. Her arms ached from the effort, for it was a heavy burden to move. Laying it out, its arms folded upon its chest, she began to gather up fallen wood from the dead trees that had once grown across the plaza. High she piled them around and atop the body, and higher still so that it reached above her head. When the pyre was lit, it would blaze with such brightness in the night, a suitable remembrance for such a one as she honoured. Unknown they might have been, but she would honour it in a manner worthy of the greatest of men and kings.

When at last she was done, she took up Dirgesinger and with the flames within it, she set it ablaze, the dried wood catching easily alight. She stepped back, watching the flames take, licking the wood and growing ever higher. Sparks danced up into the air, drifting ever higher and she felt the growing heat upon her face.

As the fires burned, she began to sing, a dirge of mourning for the fallen, a song of loss and of honour, of wonder and regret. In this she sang not alone, for the raven took up the song as well, a croaking of melancholy notes. Another voice too added to theirs, one as deep and sonorous as death, for Dirgesinger too took up the song.

Seldom did it do so, and only in times of great respect. In battle its croons were wordless, and never it simply spoke, but on rare occasion in honour of the dead it would give words to the dirge. Well named it was, for the dirge it added went deeper than the one given voice by Ishkinil, a dirge forged in the halls of Enkurgil who alone truly understood death and loss.

Long they sung until the fires burned low again. No more would the winged-ape fly above Iskor Yar. Forgotten by all it might be, but for Enkurgil and Ishkinil and so she sang on, in remembrance, in honour. Still she sang on as the fires reduced to coals, until a stirring began within them. They were pushed aside in the heart of the fire, and a bright spark rose from out of it, white hot, brilliant as a diamond shimmering in the light of the sun. It hung there above the pyre before a great hand reached out from the void and gently grasped it, drawing it in and away, Enkurgil taking the spirit of the fallen to his halls.

Ishkinil bowed her head, her song ending. Much the great beast had suffered in life and yet still it had sacrificed itself for a world uncaring. Its name remained unknown, its origins and its suffering, and none but she would know of its fate. Yet in the halls of Enkurgil it would not be so. There it would be known, and remembered, as all who Enkurgil gathered up were.

“It is time that we left this place,” Ishkinil said. “We have done what we can for it, aye, and paid a heavy price for it in so doing. Iskor Yar must stand now on its own, and if it shows but half the courage of our fallen friend then it shall be well. They know not what it did for them, but we shall remember, for it has shown what it means to be alive, to be human, despite all the savageries that it received at the hands of men.”

Then spoke the raven, and his were the words of foresight, of one who could at times push aside the veil of time, to see what would be. “Legends will remain, and this will be so, that those that yet live will long speak of the winged shadow over Iskor Yar, and in time come to venerate it as guardian and protector.”

Ishkinil nodded with satisfaction, for when thus spoke the raven, its word came not from it alone, but as words of what was to be

Then did she depart, leaving the city behind her, but graven in her heart forever more was the memory of the winged shadow that had flown over Iskor Yar.

The End