Final Words

Afternoon sunlight glittered with motes of dust as it gilded the walls of the king’s keep, the largest beam illuminating the carved wooden throne in which King Griffith sat. Its armrests were the carved faces of great bears, and the wings of oaken eagles made the back, framing the king as he looked upon the young man who sought his audience.

“And you are certain of this?” King Griffith asked, his expression grave.

“Without a doubt your highness,” the young man said, his gray eyes full of pride for his discovery, “I saw him perform magic myself. He lit a cooking fire by merely pointing at it and saying some dark word. I also saw him conjure a walking stick from nothing on the path outside his home, when he believed no eyes were upon him. He is a spellcaster, a warlock, and I had to inform you.”

“You did well,” said the king, rising. “I will see to the matter. You have performed as admirably as the most loyal knight of my guard, and you shall be rewarded once the warlock has been dealt with.”

Ealdian beamed, proud.

“Thank you sire.”

The world was enchanting to look on in the quiet of night as Ealdian wandered the streets, enjoying a walk before heading home from speaking with King Griffith. The moon, nearly full tonight, bathed Tolmacht in serene, pale light. The hour was late enough that the streets were near empty, but they never held any danger in all the nineteen years Ealdian had lived there. Wandering was a comfort, under star, safe and peaceful.

A flicker of movement beyond the falling water caught Ealdian’s eye in the shadowy confines beyond. He turned, tracking it, but too slowly. His side was struck, nearly throwing him into the fountain’s flowing water and forcing him to grab the basin’s rim to avoid landing on the rough cobblestones. Ealdian felt the air driven from his lungs and thought he’d been punched, then hot pain lanced through his torso as the cold blade was pulled out, then driven into his ribs twice more. He coughed, blood dribbling down his chin.

A tall, thin man wearing a hooded cloak walked into his view, holding an odd dagger glittering with runes. It dripped with blood. Ealdian swung at the cloaked man and missed wildly as the world tilted and wavered, spots flickering in a deprived miasma. The cobblestones raced up to Ealdian’s face as he overbalanced and he flung out his hands, landing on all fours. Pain pressed on his heart, lungs and ribs as blood and air filled his torso. The cloaked man stooped, grabbing Ealdian by the hair and yanked him to a kneeling position, and at last he recognized his attacker.

“Prideful boy,” the warlock spat. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? I was harming no one, living peacefully. You’ve taken everything from me. Did you really think I wouldn’t return the favor?”

Ealdian coughed, trying to draw breath. He fell, darkness overcoming his vision as the cloaked man slashed his throat then stabbed the dagger between the cobblestones next to Ealdian’s face. Watching the warlock walk away, Ealdian felt himself fall deeper, darker, past sleep to the void beyond, and for a time he knew no more.

Air filled Ealdian’s lungs, jolting him awake. He groaned, feeling stone and stickiness under his cheek, and weariness unlike anything he had ever endured before clung to his limbs like cobwebs of iron. Whispers and hushed voices around him interrupted his temptation to fall back asleep, if sleep described the utter nothingness he’d just awoken from, and with an effort he sat up. There were gasps and a sudden surge of new mutterings, and the shuffle of feet moving away.

Ealdian rubbed his eyes, opening them to see at least a score of onlookers standing over him. Their faces were pale in the moonlight and their eyes wavered with fear and suspicion. Those closest to him backed away.

A trio of town guards pushed to the front. Two of them sent the crowd away as their captain knelt by Ealdian with mistrust in his blue eyes. They were cold and hard, akin to the steel of the sword hanging at his belt.

“What’s happened?” Ealdian attempted to stand, falling to a knee as his exhaustion pushed him down. “Why are they looking at me like that?”

“What are you?”

“Sorry?”

The captain grabbed Ealdian by the shirt and yanked him to his feet, his white mustache bristling inches from the young man’s face.

“What in Helheim’s name are you?”

Ealdian held onto the captain’s arm, swaying. His head swam, and even the cobblestones looked like a fine bed to him if he could just lay back down and sleep.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m just a farmer—”

“No farmer can come back from the dead.”

Ealdian’s eyes widened. “Wh-what? I wasn’t dead—"

The captain grabbed Ealdian’s wrist and yanked his hand so they both could see it in the moonlight. Ealdian paled seeing it gloved with dried blood. His blood.

“Explain that then,” the guard said.

“I—"

The guard captain then spun Ealdian around, clamping his hand around his upper arm to keep him upright. At Ealdian’s feet was a dark pool of drying blood, sticky with the outline of a body in it. With a sickening lurch, Ealdian noticed the dagger he’d seen in what he thought had been some nightmare still jutting from the ground where the warlock left it. One of the other guards pulled it free with a steely scrape, removing a note that had been wrapped around its hilt. Ealdian twisted to look at the guard captain with fear in his eyes.

“I swear, I don’t know what happened, I’m as mundane as you are, this- I don’t know anything about this, it had to have been a nightmare, or, uh…”

“Oh really? Then explain yer eyes.”

“My- my eyes?”

The captain drew a dagger and held it to Ealdian’s face. He flinched away, then realized the flat of the blade was being held at an angle so he could see his reflection in the polished steel. He gaped.

A blood covered face looked back at him, its charcoal hair matted with gore and his light scattering of freckles across his cheeks covered with smears of crimson. But his eyes… they weren’t his eyes. Gone was all gray from them, replaced by glimmering irises of a most unnatural lilac hue. A small change, but an irrefutable one. An arcane one.

“What happened to me?” Ealdian breathed, reaching up with his free hand to wipe the blood from his cheek, as though hoping it would somehow make his eyes gray again.

The captain didn’t answer, stowing the dagger and pulling Ealdian’s hands behind his back. Iron was clamped over his wrists, and he didn’t resist as he was half dragged, half carried along the road toward Griffith’s Keep, his mind lost to numb shock.

What am I?

The world faded in and out of focus as Ealdian slumped in his chair. Whatever weariness he felt before, it was nothing compared to now. Staying awake just enough to not fall out of his seat was taking everything he had. A guard stood by him, but her task was more keeping him awake rather than preventing his escape.

Ealdian’s eyes began to close again. Were they ever open? He couldn’t remember. More meaningless voices murmured around him, but he was too tired to comprehend their words.

A shock of freezing cold struck him.

“GAH—”

The chill yanked him back to awareness as he belatedly covered his head to protect it from the basin of freezing water that had emptied above it. For the moment, he was awake, and dreadfully cold.

“Good, you are finally paying heed to your king,” Griffith said. Ealdian looked up, seeing Griffith’s expression was that of disgust. There was no subtle disdain, no attempt to mask it. Ealdian’s feelings weren’t worth sparing.

“Ap-p-pologies y-y-your highness,” Ealdian said, shivering as he hugged himself. “I p-p-promise, I am t-trying to stay awake.”

“I do not care for excuses.” The king rested his chin in his hand, regarding Ealdian from his throne, shards of sharpened ice in his once warm eyes.

Word had spread over the last week of the newly immortal man. Curiosity and mistrust filled the room as each day more of Tolmacht arrived to witness the public trial. The note attached to the dagger was all that was needed to find Ealdian incurable in the king’s court in the first hour.

‘The first man to die upon this blade shall be cursed to always wake again from death, whether it be murder, time, accident or other means. The exact spell I shall never reveal, for immortality is only a punishment if it lasts eternally. This is my vengeance.’

No other trace of the warlock remained, though the search continued even now.

“What to do with you…” King Griffith said. “I have sentenced you to death, as all arcane beings should be, but we have yet to find a means of permanently fulfilling that sentence.”

The king turned to his scribe. “What have we tried as of yet?”

The scribe adjusted his narrow glasses and he read from a scroll. “We have attempted beheading, drowning, poison, trampling, drawing and quartering, impalement, boiling in oil, beating, stoning, strangulation, hanging, mauling, breaking the neck, throwing him off of the castle wall, and burning at the stake. None have resulted in a death lasting longer than approximately one hour.”

Just hearing the list was enough to make Ealdian wish to sleep for a year, despite the nightmares he now faced. He wanted to go mad, but his mind healed like his physical injuries after each gruesome end, if end one could call it. Rubbing his accursed purple eyes, Ealdian stifled a yawn.

The king scowled, “Finding this hearing droll, are you? Are our pitiful attempts to slay thee underwhelming, creature?”

“No, no your highness,” Ealdian said, leaning forward in his chair so he could rest his chains across his thighs. “I’m simply exhausted, with all due respect. I begin to wish that I had stayed dead, rather than this torture.”

“You speak as though you did not wish to be a monster.”

“Your majesty, if monster I am, then I want the same as you desire; for this nightmare to end. There is nothing I want more than my old life back, or for Lady Death to take me.”

“Death refuses you,” Griffith said, scowling and standing, “so it appears that it is for us to determine thine ultimate fate.”

Ealdian looked down at the floor, his eyes heavier than all the stones of heaven and earth. He was so tired. Tired in a way that felt like he may die again from the sheer burden of his weariness. Living felt like a dream from which he could not wake, spiraling down into the deep darkness of what lay beyond mortality. His skin still tingled from the memory of flames eating at his flesh, from where rope and steel bit into it, and his lungs felt heavy with water rushing into his nose and mouth as mail gloves held him under. Seventeen so far, he’d counted. Seventeen times his life should have ended, did end, and still he came back. If there was peace on the other side, he wouldn’t find it. No matter how desperately he flung himself at the gates of Death herself.

He breathed an old, tired breath. Inhale. Exhale.

“Sire, if I may,” the scribe continued, “There may be another option.”

“Speak of it then.”

“I have in my notes that when you met with the defendant the day of the warlock’s flight from town, you stated that you would reward him for the information leading to that warlock’s discovery.”

“What does it matter? That was before he became an abomination.”

Ealdian flinched at the king’s words, but pain had tamed his tongue early this miserable week.

“Yes sire, but as it is, we cannot execute him, and it is a waste of time and resources to continue attempting it,” the scribe said. “Additionally, if it is discovered that you failed to keep the oath you have given him, abomination or not, it could damage your reputation as a great king of fair mind and truthful conduct.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“Use the reward as a legal means of mercy, your majesty. Exile him so he cannot trouble the good folk of Tolmacht. He ceases to be our problem, we save our resources, and none can accuse you of breaking your word.”

All I want for a reward is to sleep for a month… Ealdian started to nod off until a jab in his side from the guard brought him back to alertness. Griffith’s face was grim and displeased.

“Ealdian Randír,” King Griffith stated, his voice grave and regal, “I hereby revoke your previous sentence of death on account of the reward of which I owe thee. Instead, you will be exiled from Tolmacht unto my line’s end, upon pain of a hundred deaths.”

Ealdian looked back at Griffith, then at the floor, then at the sea of faces watching the exchange. Some looked away, whether because they pitied him or because they couldn’t stand to look at his accursed eyes, Ealdian could not tell. Others glared at him, their hearts sick with hatred. There was no comfort to be found; Ealdian was no longer one of them.

And it is all that wretched warlock’s fault.

Anger boiled, and though it could not drive off his weariness, it burned his heart with new purpose. If there is one thing that I will accomplish, he thought, clenching his fist, it will be that miserable fiend’s death.

Eighty-two years had passed since the night Ealdian last saw the warlock. His physical scars were erased by each death, but the emotional ones lingered within him, wearying his heart and mind. Though he was now over a century old, he looked to be in his mid-twenties, having died a few years back in a training mishap which returned him once more to the age he had been when he was cursed. A sword was at his hip, and his unnatural eyes simmered with anger as he looked upon the man who brought about this misery. The man he’d sought for the better part of a century.

Ealdian had expected to find a deadly opponent wielding dreadful spells in this cold, isolated cabin far from the nearest town. A letter had at last led him here, after many long years of scouring the northern world. It was what Ealdian had trained for, what he had dedicated his eternal life to defeating. Everything he had done, he had done in preparation for this moment.

Fate insulted that effort.

The warlock lay upon his bed in the small dwelling. His once sleek brown hair was white and wispy, and sun-dried raisins had less lines than his face. Cataracts clouded both of the warlock’s eyes, and judging by the laborious rise and fall of the man’s chest beneath his thin blanket, he was not long for the world.

“You look terrible, Warlock,” Ealdian said, bitter.

“And you sound quite good for your age.” The warlock chuckled. “A hundred and one aren’t you? Sill using ‘warlock’ as though my name isn’t worth associating with me. No, I’m too horrid to be called Alden.” He coughed, a harsh, hacking noise that lasted for some time. When he recovered, he said, “I see you’ve learned nothing from your travels so far, boy, but you have many, many years ahead for that to change. I hope you’ve enjoyed immortality.”

Ealdian scowled. “You forced my travels. I had to leave my home, everything I knew, and still could not escape the stares, the judgement. My family didn’t help me; they were relieved to be rid of me! Rid of the magic you forced on them through me. I have walked far, and all that I’ve learned was through misery and death. I am not a boy anymore, Warlock.”

The warlock wheezed, laughing, “You sure about that? You still pursue a grudge for something you brought upon yourself. And still you failed. You couldn’t find me without my letter.”

Ealdian clenched his fist. “You sent that?”

“I did.”

“Why now? After nearly a century, why lure me here? A trap?”

The warlock coughed again, but he was smiling as he rasped, “A trap? I can’t even sit up, boy. No, I sent the letter because I knew you were looking for me. I know what the people call you in songs and tales now. The Everwander… it suits you. You deserve it.”

“Why then?”

“Because I want to see my best work before I die, before I go where you can never follow. I want to see you’ve suffered.” He laughed again, then the wretched cough returned.

Ealdian pressed the tip of his sword to the warlock’s throat once the hacking rasp ceased. “I should kill you.”

“Go ahead,” the warlock rasped, his lips tinged blue, “I will go to Death by dawn anyway. Please, feel free to hasten my end. I’m sure killing me will make you feel alllll better.”

Fuming, Ealdian sheathed his sword.

The warlock smiled, “Still so petty.” He laughed quietly, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “I suppose you want me to lift the curse I placed on you.”

“You can do that?”

“I can.”

The wind blew in some snow through the open door, swirling it between the two. When it became clear the warlock was not about to use magic, Ealdian clenched his fists.

“Well? Then do it already!”

A defiant glint was in the dying man’s eye as he cracked it open, a smug grin upon his wrinkled, withered face.

“Screw you.”