Chapter 11: What Death Brings
Of all my deeds and actions, I profess little of truth, of its origins, or even if it exists at all. All that seems apparent is its nature. We don’t come into this world whole; we arrive hollow, collecting fragments, losing some, chasing others, and rediscovering pieces we thought we had lost, but had only forgotten about. Truth is only a handful of those fragments, shards that surface unexpectedly. In the stillness of reverie, in the intensity of unfolding bedlam, what is discovered and what was known has the tendency to converge, sparking that illusory phenomena that governs so many of our decisions: truth. It seems the more you claim to have, the less you find.
We rolled along the snow-laden road, the cart’s contents abandoned and replaced with the fourteen bodies that had fallen at the crossroads. One of the corpses toppled off after we hit a bump, crunching face-first into the ground. Sarkana, who was leading the horse that pulled the cart, stopped.
I started to push myself up from the position I was laying in, before Sarkana’s hand nudged me onto my back again. “You shouldn’t move so much, not until we can get that thing out of you,” she advised.
“It’s not as bad as it seems, really.”
“I have seen a good many things. A living, breathing man with an arrow stuck through his eye, now that is a new one.” Without much delay, she hauled the corpse back onto the cart, and continued to lead us down the road back to her sanctuary. Timidly, I touched the shaft still protruding from my eye. I could feel where the edges of the arrowhead had made a notch in the bone of my socket, where the muscles hurt every time I blinked. I’d never felt more quiet than in that moment, regarding the closeness of death’s kiss, the mark it had left with the intent to linger for the rest of my life. I felt like a child, reduced to a guilty quiet as if I had just been chastised by a parent.
Fahim lay beside me, his fingers curled frozen from the cruelty of the wounds that took him.
Somewhere beneath the churning clouds, the passing branches encrusted in white, the slow rolling of the cart, the steady clopping of hooves, and the soothing lullaby that Sarkana hummed, I found myself passing not to memory nor dream, but a place between.
Lisence’s mouth is in a tight line while I take another fist to an already fractured jaw. My vision watering, I see my fingers dig into the ground softened by the spring rains, my blood splattered across the back of my hand, a trail of it drooling from my mouth.
I can hardly see through the swelling in my eyes. But in the uppermost corners of my vision, scraps of clothing lead me to see where the other marauders are crowded around her. Over the ringing in my ears, the continual kicks to my stomach, I can hardly hear their taunts. But the pain isn’t as shocking as her silence is while they continue to have their way with her. It’s a silence that promises murder, or perhaps, promises nothing at all, and is only a vacancy of the mind, an attempt to escape from the agony.
Above me, I could see Felix gliding from tree to tree as he kept up with the cart, looking down at me after each landing. There were other crows in the forest, but he was as detached from them as they were curious of him. Found half-dead beneath an empty nest with one of his legs broken, I had taken him in and fostered him. Since then, it seemed he thought humans were his murder.
When the guards come running on horseback with readied crossbows, the marauders have already left. One of them bends to turn my body over, where I am comfortable with my face buried in the dirt, my thoughts all but stopped entirely while the warmth flows down my throat. They sit me up, just in time to let me see the barest hint of the marauders on the horizon, where I convince myself that I can discern Lisence’s figure bent over the back of a horse. And I wonder, truly, if it would have been better if they had simply killed her.
Suddenly, Sarkana’s face appeared over my blurred vision, the ends of her hair trailing over my cheeks. She called out my name. Before I could respond, I felt her hands around my back and arms as she helped me up. Now past the gates of her sanctuary, I breathed in a reviving breath of temperate air, our countenances once again illuminated by the pale lavender hue streaming above us.
“We’ll get this taken care of,” she said, looking at the eye and prodding the skin around it. “Yes, yes, you’ll be well enough, just needs a bit of … fixing.”
I was unconvinced, but after witnessing her capabilities, I learned not to trust my expectations. “Where will you dispose of the bodies?” I asked.
Sarkana was already getting to work, finding a latch on one of the cart’s sides. She pulled it, and the wooden panel toppled over. Like a pool of water, the bodies spilled out and tumbled onto the lush grass.
“Dispose? Why would I give something so precious to the worms? No, they won’t be disposed, they’ll be utilized. Everything serves a greater purpose, Casimir, even after death.” One by one, Sarkana reanimated the bodies using the same markings on her arms. The corpses staggered to their feet, then stumbled into a line and began shuffling towards the massive, stone slab beneath her home. Every step or so, one of them would stagger and nearly fall, aggravating Sarkana’s impatience as she fought with the exhaustion of manipulating them.
“Can’t you let their souls rest? They didn’t ask for this.”
“Your compassion extends too far, Casimir. Is it too easy to forget that they were trying to murder you, and that they succeeded, at least, in killing your friend? Look at your face for gods' sakes.” She panted, the sweat already shining on her forehead.
I stammered, surprised to find myself defending them. The shock of the wound was more debilitating than its pain. “But there was only one of me and there were a dozen of them, likely obliging to orders, nothing more.”
“All the same,” she wheezed, then let the bodies drop again.
I hopped from the cart and followed her as she walked to the wall of stone. She murmured something under her breath, and a plain, wooden doorway shimmered in front of us, unveiled from the illusion cast over it. She reached to open the handle but instead stopped herself. “Tell me, Casimir, if suddenly a single nation decided to wage war solely against you, would you surrender yourself?”
“That’s …”
“Answer me.”
“Of course not! What else?!”
“And would you trade your life for a hundred men? That is, if they wanted you dead?”
“I …”
“You know what you would say even if you may not like it. Does it make sense to help the hand that pushes the blade into your heart? Or does it seem more fitting, that they should all meet their own end, as long as it was yours that sent them towards it?”
“Why should I care to answer this?” I almost exploded, enraged to find her prodding at the same questions I had been struggling to face as more blood covered my hands since William’s demise. “It’s not the same!”
“Because, Casimir, if you’d so willingly shed a hundred lives for your own, why should thirteen mean anything to you? Doubtless, Fahim’s death will likely be a burden you’ll never awaken without. As for the rest?” She shrugged. “Forget them. Life is haunting enough, is tiresome enough, without needless regrets. Don’t mourn the lives of men who wished to see your head put on a spike. They’re worth nothing, now, unless they are taken by the right hands.”
“You’re too cold,” I told her, remembering Fahim’s last words. "You don't need to mourn someone to consider their lives."
But my reply was only met with a smirk. “Reason has many names. Cold may be one of them. You know as well as I that there was nothing else to do.” She turned the handle of the doorway and opened it towards us. A fungal stench breathed from the cavernous stairs that yawned into the earth, doubling me over from the nausea that immediately flipped my stomach over. Sarkana, however, hardly flinched. She simply turned towards the bodies, and began once again the arduous process of getting them standing. The longer she controlled them, the more blood seeped from the markings on her skin, the more black wisps wafted from the etchings and diffused into the air.
As the corpses stumbled into the stairway, I was dumbfounded by my lack of foresight. The countless enchantments, the eternal spring, the almost invigorating power that exuded from every detail of her home, even to the steps that allowed one to rise above the crypts containing the souls which fueled everything. Their drooping heads bobbed down the steps, one by one disappearing from view into the blackness that exhaled decay. It was only after she joined them, briefly, that I realized she had left Fahim’s corpse undisturbed, still laying on the back of the cart. A token of empathy.
When Sarkana returned, the bags beneath her eyes heavily deepened, her gaze thoughtful in its exhausted contemplation, she approached me in the tense silence between us, and embraced me, or rather, leaned her weight into me. Behind her, the door dissipated from view. I stood there, stunned by her strange, sudden and unexpected affection.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I don’t expect you to understand the life I’ve led, as much as it would relieve me.”
“I … I do. But just how many corpses have you collected?” She pulled away from me with a familiar, wounded expression. I had only returned the press of her body against mine from instinct, to feel the warmth and closeness. “I do forgive you,” I repeated, “I am only curious.”
“I've only taken what others would have wasted. I am no murderer. I would show you, if you desired. But not now, not with that."
But was it truly better than ending a life? Manipulating it long after it should have left to a peace beyond living? Tentatively, I nodded.
“Come, it's time to .”
Warm water trickled from her hands into a steaming bowl. She wiped them off with a cloth, then bent over me while I stared at the ceiling in the chamber I’d first slept in. The wooden shaft still in my peripheral view, I started to dread the sensation it would bring when she pulled it loose. More than that, what I might see stuck on the end of it.
“Do you wish to see from that eye again?” she asked.
“Is that even possible?” Surprised enough at the possibility, I nearly sat up again. She placed a hand on my chest and calmed the excitement, pushing me back down again.
“Necromancy is more than manipulating dead flesh; it's reviving what's perished. There are a few wonders I can work from the things others would have left for the earth. Yes, it is possible. But I should warn you, it won’t be as before. You might see things a bit … differently." Tenderly, she applied the warm cloth to my face, wiping off the bloodstains.
I remembered what it felt like, the first moments after the impact of the arrow, the dizziness, the inability to discern depth from my hand, my blade, as I pursued the last of Fahim’s escorts. “I can’t fight like this,” I admitted. “How can I parry a sword if I can hardly tell its distance from mine?”
“I thought you might say something like that.” Sarkana took up a curved vial from the nightstand, uncorked it, and sniffed the clouded, brown liquid.
“What is that?”
“The solution I’d prepared while you waited, as I suspected you’d want more than just a few stitches. Something to put you into a deep sleep, so I can restore what you lost.”
“How will you do it?”
“I have the feeling, as well, that you’d rather not know.”
“You’re certainly incorrect this time.”
“Well,” she sighed and dabbed closer to the wound. Her breath traced over my lips and eyelashes, a sensation that comforted me more than I wished it to. “What is cataloged in modern anatomists’ textbooks is heavily incomplete, and what healers think is beyond capability isn’t always so. Many things that are missing can be replaced, as long as a fresh part can be found. A donor, you might call it. A fresh corpse. Lucky for you, we have more than a few options.”
“That seems ...”
“Impossible? I had thought so, for many years.” Sarkana bent closer to examine how deep the arrow was buried. “Do you still want your vision back?”
I nodded, pushing away the thought of what she would have to do to grant that wish.
“And do you trust me?”
With her this close, with her breath just a whisper’s width from my lips, I felt trapped to the only answer she sought. Despite everything I’d seen, even her frenzy at the crossroads, I remembered how she cried like a child when that nightmare tormented her, how her hands clung to me after she woke. That, above all else, was what I chose to see when I looked at her. A brooding nefariousness thrived behind her calculating gaze, beneath the very floorboards of that chamber. And yet, beyond it all, I empathized with the tremulous soul that had sought a story to listen to before sleep. How difficult it must’ve been, I thought, to know only death as a friend, as her only truth.
Even with an arrow sticking from my head, I pitied her.
“I do,” I lied.
“Then,” she said, grabbing the vial and placing it in my hand, “you’ll drink this. And when you awaken …” she snapped her fingers, “it’ll be as if it never happened.” She turned the thought over briefly. “Well … not quite. But close enough.”
Her smile was too enthusiastic to feel comforted by it. Still, I tilted my head back and swallowing the brew; the acidic, unpalatably bitter concoction that trailed fire down my throat before settling into a soporific warmth in my stomach. And as we awaited the effects, she hummed the same song for the second time that day. But by the fourth repetition, I saw through a dimming vision, her nervousness as she parted her lips to sing the words hiding behind the melody, the words that brought a melancholy now ushering me to sleep.
Afire sung our laughter
And embers were our song
Before ashes took the hum
Became whispers before long
Ring, ring, children wrung
Hands in chords now circle
Feet skipping a rhythm
Before the song is gone
Afire sparked our laughter
And embers were our song
Before ashes stole the hum
Became whispers before long
Chant, chant, children sung
Giggles into wails
Feet skipping the rhythm
Before the song is hung
Ashes whispered laughter
Then ashes were our song
As the flames smoldered grey
Of a youth there was no more
Sing, sing, souls will sing
Regardless of the pale
Here at burning's hour
As the embers start again