Only in Death

Makarios.

The voice spoke his name, softly but firmly, beautiful and insistent. It seemed to come from all around him, bathing him rapturously in the sound of each syllable. There was no question of his coming when it called.

Makarios.

He tried to respond but found that he had no mouth, no tongue, no voice with which to answer. But he could move, or at least be moved by the voice, and he felt himself being pulled towards its source.

Open your eyes Makarios.

Until he was told to open them, he had been unaware that his eyes were closed, or that he even had eyes at all. He obeyed the voice, and the black void became grey shadow.

Now he was sure he was moving under his own power. He felt legs beneath him driving his steps. The endless shadow clung to him like mist.

Awake!

In an instant the empty grey shadows fled like smoke before wind, and he found himself standing atop a high rampart of pale stone. It was night, but in the cold moonlight he could see the bones of a city spread out below him, stretching off into the darkness. Ruined walls and towers clawed feebly at the night sky, some little more than heaps of rubble. Mute monuments to lost grandeur, all were blackened by fire and overgrown by time.

This place felt familiar to him. He was sure he had been here, before, when this fossil had been alive. But that couldn’t be possible, because that would make this...

No, every muscle in his body told him he should not, by rights, be here. Every drop of blood in his veins screamed it at him. You shouldn’t be anywhere, you should be–

“Is it as you remember it?”

The voice.

He had thought himself alone but the voice was here, too. Not everywhere, like before, but proximate. Immediate. He turned his head and finally saw her, standing a short distance away. Surely a voice so musical and terrible, both comforting and frightening, could only come from such a creature as this.

She moved to his side like a phantom, silent and spectral and unnoticed even by his watching eyes, a young woman clad in flowing black, her skin pale under the moon. Her dark hair seemed an extension of the night around her, and her gaze chilled his heart even as he wished that she would look upon him forever.

Mesmerized by her beauty, and thrown by her question, he took a long time to answer her.

“Yes, and no,” he replied eventually. “Little has changed, and yet so much is different. I can feel it in the air.” The young woman seemed satisfied with his answer; she nodded her head, a small smile on her face. Then she turned and joined him in looking out over the ruined city. It was some time before she spoke again.

“What was the name of this place?” There it was. Intentionally or not, she was forcing him to acknowledge it.

“This was Telcalis, once. A long time ago, it seems.” He turned sharply to face her and was momentarily captivated by the mingling of youth and age in her soft features, of naivete and wisdom. “Who are you?” he asked at last.

“Have you not already guessed? I am the reaper, the door-warden, the guide to those on their last journey.” An empty coldness grew in his chest. The situation was becoming clearer – too clear for his liking.

“Why am I here?” The young woman spread her arms in a kind of graceful shrug as if to say ‘who knows?’

“You have been called back.”

“But I’m not supposed to be here. I can feel that, too. This must be a mistake.” His companion frowned slightly, and extended her left arm in front of her. Wisps and shreds of night curled around her and snaked down her arm, coalescing into a thick ledger in her outstretched hand. Pages hissed by in a rush, turning themselves until the right one was found, and then the young woman ran the long, delicate index finger of her right hand down the page until she found what she was looking for.

“It says you are to be called back and brought here, so here you are.” She flicked her left wrist and the ledger dissolved into smoke and vanished on the breeze. “For what purpose I cannot say.” She read the look of skepticism on his face and added, “And not because I have been bidden to deceive you. I am not privy to the wills of the others. But why do you question? Many I meet would steal, or rape, or kill to earn the second chance you are being given.”

Her words gave him the distinct and unsettling feeling that he had killed for this chance, long ago, when he had stolen into this city and turned it into a tomb. The gods had many ways of rewarding those who drew their attentions, he knew, and not all of them should be considered gifts.

Leaving this feeling unspoken, he instead responded vaguely.

“This just feels... unnatural, lady. We are only meant to walk the last road once.” Again it seemed that his answer was enough to satisfy his companion, or at least give her something to consider. For a long time she stood silent and motionless beside him like a statue.

He had so many questions he wanted to ask her, but before he could manage to form his lips around any more words, a piece of the night splintered from the rest and a raven slid out of the darkness to alight on the young woman’s shoulder. It seemed to speak into her ear, though he heard no more than cacophonous croaking, and then it flapped its wings and disappeared back into the night.

“I am afraid that I must leave you now. There are those who require my guidance on their own journeys, and they cannot be made to wait. For your sake I wish that I could say we will not meet again, but even this reprieve cannot last forever, so I will say only this: may our next meeting be long in coming, and may it be at an hour of your choosing.”

With that, the young woman simply turned and walked away down the battlement, melting into the darkness and leaving him alone and feeling cold and hollow in the absence of her beauty.

He wandered along the wall until he came to one of the towers, and then he descended into the ruined city itself. It felt even more unnatural to walk the quiet streets, empty save for rodents and rubble. This was a haunted place, he was certain of it, and it unnerved him all the more to think that he could now be numbered among its spectres. Yet it didn’t frighten him. Walking again, smelling the air, running his hands over the rough stone of the city’s buildings – just being released him from fear even as it discomfited him.

Eventually he came to a wide, open square at the heart of the city. There was a low stone basin at its centre, where a fountain had once flowed, but the fountain’s statue was gone – smashed to pieces and scattered about the square, he supposed.

Without the shade of buildings and trees the moonlight was brighter here, and amidst the scrub grasses breaking through the paving stones and the shattered pieces of stonework and history he could see a few glittering slivers of light, like white fire burning in the night. He strode over to the nearest one, kicked at it with his foot, and then smiled grimly.

Bending down and brushing the dust from the length of its blade, he closed his fingers on the hilt of a Lorian sword, its flame undimmed by the centuries. At the feel of the metal a numbness in his fingers went away, even as he noticed that it had been there, and his hands began to remember their old strength.

He stood and drew the sword up out of the dirt. It was a long, slender weapon such as was carried by the Oraconitai, with a hilt long enough that it could be wielded with both hands, and though it was much larger than the kind of weapons he preferred it was nonetheless wonderfully light.

With blade in hand again he felt more at home in his skin, more like the warrior he had been so long ago, and for some strange reason the weight of the weapon reminded him of the speeches Isuros had been wont to make before battles. Only in death does your duty end, Isuros had told the armies of the Moril. Only in death can you rest.

Makarios shook his head.

Apparently not, Isuros.