Aude came upon two figures then, in this world between worlds. One had the form of a woman, but in her face shone a thousand eyes, and from her swollen belly grew a thousand legs; a baby goat suckled at her breast. The other was a king, ensconced in a pillar of yellow flame. Behind him there was more to behold, tendrils reaching out like the arms of a starfish, hungry and wanting.
“You have come into his domain, child,” the woman with a thousand eyes said.
Aude heard her voice and remembered it. The Heavenly Mother. Her Queen of Heaven.
“I followed your path,” Aude said, her voice no more than thought in the void.
The flaming king flickered and expanded, then retreated again to the same size as the woman. “You have interrupted.”
“I saved a boy who was afraid,” Aude said. “I am here to help my brother.”
Fear was no longer something she was capable of, her body still transformed and infused with rage. She held onto that rage, even through the dark void between her soul and her flesh. She could smell the blood, her brother’s blood.
“Death is coming on the wings of war,” said the crowned pillar of fire. “You may spare the life of your brother, but it does not come without a price.”
The monster’s blow came so fast — so unpredictable and wild — that Olivier did not have time to react. And he was too tired, even if he had wanted to make a show of it. How did Roland manage this, day in, day out, always pitted against the greatest and the grandest warriors?
Olivier felt certain that his name would not be remembered in any song, an unremarkable warrior beaten to a bloody pulp, while fat, jaundiced king Balan looked on and Charlemagne grunted in disgust into his beard.
He struck the ground and was lost.
Aude gasped to see the figure of her brother appear, floating before the yellow figure in the fire. The king had no face, but he was smiling.
“I will spare him, but you must give me a boon,” he said.
The Queen of Heaven agreed, though she said no words.
“I will do anything,” Aude said.
In this darkened realm, Aude saw the dripping blood on her brother’s brow, sensed the pain. But the rage did not go away. The beast on the other side of her mind was closing in to destroy this brilliant man, at all costs.
“You are bound to the man Roland,” said the burning king, as if discovering a great secret. “You are promised to him. Pledge your bond to me, and link your life to his, and I will give you power over the beast.”
“And I will take you, when the time comes,” said the Queen of Heaven. “And you will rise at my side, a suckling child among the thousand eyes.”
Aude hesitated. Roland was the greatest of all the peers, but he was forever in the path of death. Such a pact would tie her forever to his fate. And the heaven she imagined… Well, none of that was worth it if Olivier lay dead by her hand.
She would be consigned to a fate of madness, of eternal vigilance. Olivier would live.
“What must I do?” asked Aude.
The Queen of Heaven turned her eyes upward. “You need only to say the words. You know them. You have always known them.”
The vision of Olivier intensified, and Aude saw his eyes see her and know her. But he was looking up into the face of the giant, and that was madness.
The beast stopped mid-blow and Olivier fled back from the dream of doom. Above him the beast fell back, raising its shaggy head to the skies. It said something incomprehensible, and seemed to gasp and cry, and then: “I relent! I give myself to the Heavenly Mother, and bind myself and my betrothed to the Nameless. I relent.”
Then it fell.
Aude awoke to the familiar sound of Turpin clearing his throat. She reached up, and he grabbed her hand.
“I saw her. I saw the Queen of Heaven,” said Aude.
“You need to sleep.”
Aude was changed. There was another thing inside of her. A promise that burned like acid. That would be there until it was released when, upon the field at Roncevaux, Roland would be cleaved into two. She saw it. She knew it.
“Your brother would like to see you,” Turpin said.
“Does he know?”
“Yes, Fierabras told me. We managed to spirit away… the creature… you… your… whatever it was.” He was sweating more than usual. His voice sounded broken, afraid.
“Then he is safe. Good,” said Aude.
“Balan’s forces retreated as soon as the giant fell, but his son and daughter are among us now. Fierabras says he has been healed of the affliction, the yellow priests have vanished, and he has dedicated himself to the Mother of God and Christ Almighty.”
Her body was once again her own. Bruised and tattered, her skin felt boiled. But it was still hers. “The scepter?”
“Fierabras has kept it. He says it no longer works.”
“You knew?”
“I suspected. I have made my blood oaths too, Aude.”
Every breath burned, but it was her own pain. Her own lungs. The promise she had given still seared at her, but she suspected in time she would become accustomed to it.
Aude looked up at the ceiling, admiring the bright paint. Her old room. The room she had left as a meek child. Now she was not only a woman, but also a changed creature. Forever bound to Roland in a way he would not understand.
“Aude… what happened?”
“I told you. The Queen of Heaven saved me, and I saved my brother. And you saved me too. Go home. Take Maugris in your arms and tell him you love him, and forget about me.”
“Aude… ”
“Thank you, Turpin. I’d like to sleep now. For quite a while, I think.”
And she closed her eyes, opening them in her dreams to a thousand more.
The Living, Vengeant Stars
E. Catherine Tobler
Sleeping upon the ancient Camorian ice shelf with the northern winds ghosting down the mountains, Elspeth Ernine was warmer than she should have been, given the dark man enfolding her from behind. She tried to elbow him in the ribs, but he didn’t have ribs. He had a mouth, a terrible gaping hole, and he pressed it against her ear as the others in the party slept undisturbed.
Soon, he whispered, and Elspeth shifted away from the voice even as he wormed closer, darkness made damp and corporeal. Within a fraying dream, he showed Elspeth the next place he meant for them to go, a temple shattered into and across a river churning with gelatinous masses of entrails and eyes. The stench of the place enveloped her as the dark man did.
Had killing the invisible horror of S’tya-Yg’Nalle not been enough? Never enough, the dark man said, and Elspeth understood the enormity of what he wanted of them; saw in the far distance the colossal, tentacled beast slumbering beneath green waters, bound to the prison stones with chains as thick as tree trunks. This was the goal. These others paved the way, weakened the Great One as he slept unknowing. Why should I serve any longer? the dark man rasped.
Elspeth flinched at the touch of the dark man’s not-hands on her arm, and shifted in her roll, to come face to almost-face with him. From her side she drew Feymal, the blade said to have issued from the unknowable depths of Holy Wood, seemingly wrought for her hand alone. She pressed its lustrous edge against whatever darkness served as his throat. They needed no words — touching was forbidden him. She would fight for him, because alone she could not overcome the horrors of Lowenhold Prison, the place that bound her sister. She would go for her and her alone, slaying whatever horror she must to get there.