That One Time I Went on a Quest
Kaishen

River Hei coils around the jutted cliff, dashing against the yellow-red granite, struggling with all its might to leap over the confines of the canyon and failing, over and over. White vapour rises all around us, glittering in the twilight like stars crystallised.

The mountain winds had summoned a blizzard during our ascent and now the hilltop is covered in yellowish slurry. What could have made the snow stink like sulphur and sting the skin? None of the cultists had seen us coming because of it; they were all hiding under the trees, afraid of getting the stuff on their clothes. It takes the most bizarre of zealots to be willing to die for nothing and still want to feel warm and cosy while killing themselves.

It had taken Kathanhiel five minutes to run them down.

The last body is still somewhere in the thicket, in two pieces, with guts all over the forest floor. Don’t want to be anywhere near that. All the others I have rolled over the cliff, and Maker knows if I see another corpse with terror frozen on his face I’ll jump into the river myself.

If only that one guy didn’t go at the headstone with the hammer. What a stupid move. Everything these people do is aimed at provoking her. They all laughed like lunatics as they were struck down. I don’t understand.

It’s in pieces now, the headstone of blue marble. Kathanhiel had said that it doesn’t matter, that there is no body here, but she has not moved from that spot for two hours. Kneeling bare-shinned in the snow must be killing her skin – something she very much cares about – but even that is trivial now. Nothing will get her to stand up. She wouldn’t even hear me talking.

I have to wait. I can wait. She can take as long as she needs.

We make camp amidst the forest pines, and as night falls a bitter wind descends from the distant peaks, carrying more of that putrid yellow snow. In the dark, pine needles are falling thick and fast; seems this poisonous stuff has only appeared recently, or all these branches would already be naked.

Footsteps. Kathanhiel, with snow heaped high on her shoulders, has finally returned from her vigil by the broken tomb. She sees the nook in the tree that I’ve stuffed with our driest blankets and falls into it with a sigh. I hand her hot tea in a mug; she cradles it with both hands.

‘This filth comes from the dragon aeries to the northwest,’ she says, and begins the impossible task of cleaning her hair, strand by strand. ‘They roost on literal mountains of their own lithified excrement, and for several weeks a year the wind spreads it all around.’

I dig out the jar of chrysanthemum oil and hand it to her. ‘Is that where the Apex could be?’

‘No the…it should be alone. It loathes the company of its own kind.’

‘Oh…why is that?’

For a while she ponders that, her fingers twirling into her hair until they bunch up in a knot. ‘Do you ever envy the happiness of others, Kastor?’

My heart skips a beat. ‘Uh…’

‘Rutherford does. He grows jealous of us humans and giants, for when he turns to his kin there are only echoes of himself – the lesser dragons lack even the self-awareness to perceive their lack thereof.’

‘Is…is that a big deal?’

Kathanhiel raises her eyebrows. ‘You think it is not?’

‘No I mean…it’s a giant lizard, not a person, so it shouldn’t think about these things the same way we do…right?’

For a moment she looks amused, then with a sigh the smile quickly disappears. ‘What a strange question. I suppose I’ve always considered its mind to be similar to ours. It…simply gives me that impression.’

I replace the courage to one-up my idiocy.

‘Then why do we have to kill it?’

Kathanhiel’s eyebrows ascend into her hairline. ‘What?’

This has sat in the back of my mind for a long time, and every time I think to bring it up something else has always pushed it back…but there is time now. ‘Who came up with the idea of killing the Apex over and over again, when we know they’ll always come back? Isn’t that counterproductive? If its mind is so similar to ours then we could maybe, I don’t know, talk it out…figure out a solution…’

Kathanhiel is laughing, as if that was a funny joke. ‘Kaishen used to lecture me all about it – the fallacy of the cyclic symbiosis, so he called it. Wistful thinking is all it is.’

‘But –’

‘Heed me well, Kastor: it matters not whether the dragons are inherently evil, whether behind their rampage there exists some higher purpose or inner turmoil. We know for a fact that by killing the Apex we give the Realms decades, centuries of peace. That is the path laid out for us, and it is the one we will follow.’

An irrelevant image pops into my head: Rukiel and Tamara, crowding around Kathanhiel’s bed, demanding that she snaps out of it, whatever it is, and perform her duty.

You know what she did just then? Make a speech. She didn’t believe any of that.

Out of my mouths streams completely different words. ‘I…I don’t know what I’m saying my lady I…must be tired…’

Kathanhiel lays aside her mug and comes over to me. She picks up my hand with hers and I could feel her pulse through her warm fingertips. ‘Futile, isn’t it – all that we do?’ she says, looking at me. ‘You are right: slaying the Apex doesn’t solve anything. Sooner or later another will rise, and the brood will go south again. But I don’t really care.’

‘A-about what?’

‘About all of it.’

Slowly her palm turns against mine until our fingers lock together. This isn’t happening. I’ve grown feverish and fallen into a dream.

‘M-my lady?’

Those eyes. No one has ever looked at me like that and no one ever will; she’s not really looking at me, but at a time and place that she has experienced and I have not.

‘This is the life Kaishen gave me,’ she says quietly, ‘and I’ll not run from it.’

She tells me a story long overdue:

’I had known for a long time that he was dying. By the time we began the quest for Elisaad he was taking enough opiate to kill a normal person…but his body absorbed little of it. Some days he threw up even water.

’The sword of Ush’Ra was the only thing keeping him alive. From the Ford to the Ranges, we fought constantly, seeking out dragons on the roam and consuming their fire so he could eat properly for a while. Still he grew thinner by the day and I didn’t know what to do. Of course I didn’t; I kill things – that’s the only thing I could do.

’Consuming so much dragon fire had a cost. He was overtaken by the Scouring and for three days disappeared into the catacombs. I stumbled in the dark, cried out his name until I couldn’t make a sound. There was…a voice in my head, telling me to lay down and cease, that the past few years was all a pleasant dream and now you’ve finally woken up and behold, you are alone after all. I was going to lay down and die, just…leaving. But the thought of him returning to his senses and seeing me cold on the floor was…I couldn’t bear it.

’So I kept walking. And walking. And by some miracle…no, it was not the Maker that brought me to him. I did it myself. He told me that even in his trance, he had kept hearing me call his name: Kaishen, Kaishen!

’I…I told him that he makes me want to live, that I don’t want to live without him. The look on his face when I said that…he was being torn apart. After that he distanced himself and the stupid me didn’t know why. So I kept pestering him, professing my cancerous affection over and over as if that was what he wanted…but they were daggers to his heart. I know that now.

‘What do you do when you fall in love with a dead man walking?’ (Kathanhiel laughs, her eyes glittering) ’By the time we reached Elisaad’s lair he could barely hold onto his sword even with the gauntlet. His hands were so cold. I put them to my lips and try to warm them but they were rigid and gaunt, all skin and bone and stagnant blood. How were we supposed to slay Elisaad like this?

’So I offered to go in his stead. “Allow me the burden of Ush’Ra’s blade. I shall bring you the head of the wyrm, and we can go home together and receive the accolades the Realms have denied you all these years.” That’s what I said. Despicable, isn’t it? What was I thinking? Why did I not beg him to turn back, so that we could spend our last days together on that rise above the River Hei watching the sun go down?

’He – he smiled at me. He was always smiling, even to those that insulted him. He said that if you practice smiling long enough, eventually you can smile at anything. I learned that trick. I learned it well. And when I saw his mouth curl up I got angry and I bit his lips.

’“I’m not going to kill him,” he said. “Not all evils can be put to the sword. Don’t follow me, Kath. I know exactly what you’ll do.”

’I begged him to explain. It seemed to me utter lunacy to have come so far only to spare the very evil we’ve come to destroy. There will always be suitable candidates to take up the sword of Ush’Ra; I was capable, and I’ll make sure the successor is capable. I would teach them as he taught me. I would make them live as he made me. What was wrong with that? Was it not a good thing, the way it was…the way we were?

‘He didn’t look at me. “I don’t want you to go on this,’ he said. “I want you to want to live.”

’My head went numb. I thought that all this time he had despised me, that he only put up with me because he had ran out of time to choose another. When he took me from the bastard prince he was only retrieving an asset, and of course he treated me with kindness – I stabbed those who didn’t! (Kathanhiel laughs, holding her forehead) How despicable I was…foolish…I’ve never hated myself as much as that instant, frozen before the Citadel gates, gazing into his face.

’Lost my head. The mental exhaustion from his deteriorating health, the imminent battle with the Apex, and the desperation of facing the loss of the one who deserves to live forever…I panicked.

’I remember his face as I turned to run: he was smiling. It was genuine; there were tears in his eyes. He never cried, even in the throes of unbearable pain he never did. Why did he smile like that, Kastor, when I ran away like a coward? Why didn’t he hate me?’

Our campfire has died out. In the dark I couldn’t see her crying. Kathanhiel has laid down next to me and kept my fingers crossed with hers. She has stopped shaking; her voice has risen out of that husky, half-choking trough, and is sounding lighter now.

‘Running away was easy. Coming back was not.’ She laughs at that, at herself. ‘By the time I came to my senses and gathered enough courage to go back he was already dead – ash on the marble floor of the Kalarinth Citadel, before Elisaad’s grinning face. The Apex had been…strange; seemed sane, almost. It allowed me to retrieve Ush’Ra’s sword, and told me to leave. I was in no condition to fight; the way I was, the sword would have killed me.’

I squeeze her hand to let her know that even though I can’t think of anything to say, I am still listening.

‘The rest you know,’ she continues, almost cheerfully. ’Came back, went to the King, borrowed his troops, made Talukiel my esquire…I managed all that because people liked me, since I liked the things they liked: power, fame, looking pretty…’

‘There’s nothing wrong with that,’ I point out. ‘Everyone likes those things.’

‘Not Kaishen,’ she says, closing her eyes. ‘He never looked at me.’

Soon after that she falls asleep. I try for a while to keep watch; the wind that keeps blowing her hair into my face helps greatly with staying awake. We are wedged inside a nook at the base of a massive pine, and the stump of her right shoulder is digging painfully into my ribs. That’s not enough to make me want to move.

How long has she waited to tell that story, I wonder? Must be exhausting, having her own precious memories drowned out by all the inane tales folks throw at her. No wonder she hates Talukiel with such passion; in her mind they are the same, cowards that fled when they were needed the most.

Will she atone for it the same way too?

Kathanhiel is breathing deep and slow, each puff of her breath a warm tingle on my neck. Maybe…maybe if I put my arm around her now she won’t notice no no no what are you thinking don’t do that, how dare you think that after all the stuff she’s told you –