Kelgorath placed the bones at the feet of the statue. They shone stark white against the obsidian—a small, sad bundle that weight almost nothing when he’d carried it, uncharacteristic if not for the thin runic cuts the Song had made. Her killers hadn’t even left the skull there for him to collect.
The temple was a vast, dark place. It reminded him of the ruins Ir Airâm used to inhabit—the ruins she died in—and he winced, a spear of grief skewering him through at the thought. Aiat, so it ought to be. That she would lie in this damp sepulchre, that the cracked stone would be her headrest, and that there would be so little of her left as not to resemble her at all; this was real, and it was good and right. He would not rebel against it.
He would, however, rebel against other things. Kelgorath’s claws gripped the bolts piercing his chitin—the heavy insignia of the Hidden Swarm—and pulled them out. Black blood splashed on black stone. He threw the things aside, irreverent, and the ringing of iron against the ground was the only sound in the deep darkness.
Then he straightened up, squared his shoulders, and spoke:
“Hear me, Xivu Arath, Taken Queen, Sister of Navigation! You, who is the battle and the wave, the ebb and the flow, the twin-edged blade of love and war, I call on you. I want to serve you.”
The War God’s voice resounded around him. It filled the room like molten iron fills the mould, and uttered only one word:
“WHY?”
Kelgorath raised his head and looked past the bundle of bones, up at the statue’s blank face.
“I loved.”
Xivu Arath’s presence wrapped around him. It pushed against his skin, gently enough to make his nerves stand on edge, like the point of a blade pressed just so to almost pierce the flesh.
“HER WEAKNESS HAS BEEN PURGED FROM THE WORLD.” Kelgorath scowled at this. The pressure became more insistent, admonishing. “IT IS A HOLY COMMANDMENT TO NEVER DENY A TRUTH, EVEN WHEN IT GRIEVES US.”
“The Lying Queen made her into bait.”
“IF SHE WAS TRICKED, SHE DESERVED TO HAVE BEEN TRICKED. AIAT.”
“And to pay the cost of Her heresy?”
“WHAT ARE YOU SEEKING?” The voice gained a dry, almost bored tone. “VENGEANCE? CONSOLATION? THE ONLY SORROW YOU CAN HARBOUR IS FOR HER OWN WEAKNESS. THERE IS NO PITY FOR THE TRUTH OF THE UNIVERSE. THERE IS NO GRIEF.”
How so, Kelgorath thought, if everything existed because it must exist, and when grief was eating him up like worm-hunger amplified tenfold? When it was almost a physical thing, a creature with teeth and claws buried in his gut, gnawing a hole through ribs and meat and scrapping against vertebrae? It was real, this sorrow; and he would not deny the real.
“I seek to stick the head of the Witch Queen on my sword and bring it to you in tribute,” he said.
The War God laughed. It was a dreadful, blood-curdling laughter, resonating like a struck gong down to the marrow of Kelgorath’s bones. The temple walls shook with it.
“VENGEANCE, THEN. THE ECHO OF VOWS ONCE PROCLAIMED. I CAN FIND USE OF IT.”
Vengeance. Vengeance for the Queen who had betrayed her, for the false hopes She planed in her heart and the Song that had been her ruin. For the Sky whose warriors had rent her asunder. Kelgorath closed his eyes and let the laughter seep into his bloodstream, into his very being, let the fire of wrath merge with his own fire and fill him up. It was not unlike the Deathsong, this unmaking; a kind of blaze that would reforge him anew.
“RAISE YOUR HEAD, O BROODLESS KNIGHT. DO NOT ABANDON YOUR SORROW. FEEL ITS BLADE AS IT CHISELS AND SHARPENS YOU, AS IT MOVES YOU CLOSER TO THE FINAL SHAPE.” Inexplicably, Xivu Arath’s voice seemed to grow kinder. “CAST THOSE BONES AWAY. RISE FROM THEM WITH THE FIRE OF HER MEMORY; MAKE IT INTO A SWORD THAT WILL CUT FORTH YOUR PATH, SO YOU MAY CARRY HER WITH YOU INTO FINALITY.”
“She is lost forever,” Kelgorath said, because it was a good thing, a holy thing, to say the truth.
“WHILE YOU ARE NOT.”
“I submit myself to you, Xivu Arath, my Queen.”
He roared as the fire consumed him, and the bones, and the dark stone of the temple. Wrath, unending. When at last he rose back up, he was himself no more. His new flesh was imbued with purpose, and his eyes blazed with the clarity only loss could provide. What had remained of Ir Airâm at the foot of the statue was her no more, either; only ash and nothing, and he left it to lie there as he turned away and stepped forth towards his vengeance.
