Let's drink to the dead lying under the water
And the crust of the blood on the driven snow
-Sisters of Mercy, Nine While Nine
Dorian would speak to his assassin, but he has already exhaled his last breath. Dying
takes much longer than he expected. He has time to study her as she crouches in the snow, her blade now cleaned with a
handful of snow lying pink at her side. The sword gleams across her knees, her hair shines like an angel's corona, the ring on
her finger glows in the dim light from the antique stand lamps of the park, as she holds vigil over his body.
This war between us is ridiculous, he would say if his lungs hadn't seized. We've only ever wanted the same thing: a
finer world, or at least it to survive long enough for a try at something better. It's only that my way has a chance, colleen,
and yours never did.
In his dying, he is reverting to the accents of his birth country. He can hear the cadences of Eire skirling through his
failing synapses. He does not feel himself transported back, but rather forward, as the deep night and the cold park begin to
thin and he sees through them to green fields heavy with the scent of heather and thyme, hot grass and ancient stone. His
assassin still sits her heels in the snow. He still sees the smooth gray blocks of granite forming the walls and steps of Grant
Park behind her, and hears the sparse traffic of Michigan Avenue beyond, but they have become a veneer. She is also
crouching in the meadow grass, and the globes of the lamppost are also the sun. Neither of them are so evil that they are
denied the Summer Lands.
We should have reached an accord long before now, he says to her. You with your precious Balance, did you never
see I was there holding the other side? Now you've gone and tipped it against yourself. Nathan won't be careful, as I
was. He's a beast, and he won't stop until he's sucked the marrow from the bones of the world, you'll see.
Nathan, having betrayed him into death, would now be after those others who allowed caution and not lust for power
drive their actions. Come morning, not one would be left who could restrain him. He had always balked when Dorian
counseled patience. No amount of blood could slake his thirst for it, no riches content him. He would ask for it all, and the
lord Dorian had served with chary respect would give it to him, until the time came when payment was demanded and
Nathan would find himself short.
Aye, he's not Old Nick, but the closest thing to, is Sha'daal. And while we must bargain with the Devil if we're to
survive, still we must be very conscious of the price. I could have negotiated us the best of terms, my lass, if you hadn't
killed me just now.
- But his adversaries would never entertain the notion of bargaining for their lives with their
enemy, and so he'd had to send Adrian after their generals, clip their wings just enough so they
wouldn't interfere, but he'd taken too much of their blood for mercy and Nathan had wanted it
all. And so here he lay, his life bled out on the snow before him, a wide pool already freezing in
Chicago's bitter night. She'd murdered him quickly and with precision. He'd barely turned at the
quiet scuff of boot on snow before her sword darted up through his throat and into his brain
stem. He had expected instant blackness, but while his basic functions ceased immediately, his
heartbeat and respiration cutting out like a car whose ignition had been turned off, his mind
remained clear. If anything, it was more efficient than it had ever been, now that it wasn't
distracted by animal concerns.
- And so he could read her every emotion as she watched over his dying. He knew her hatred of him, as the author of so
much death, ordering the killings of people she loved just as her war leader had ordered Dorian's killing. He knew her regret.
She had a conscience, this one, and didn't like murder, but she was a soldier and she would do her duty as one. That made
her different from Adrian, who didn't regret a drop of the blood he'd spilled on Dorian's behalf.
Now, colleen, don't go shedding tears over me. I had my chance. If I'd answered your captain's call to parlay sooner
than this, neither you nor I would be here now. But he's a man of principle, is Ray, and I knew he wouldn't accept the
concessions we must make. Better to leave him fight the good fight and let foxes such as myself go behind the lines and
seal the bargains. Sure, and it hurts now, my love, but in the end it would have hurt less than losing it all.
Because all I've done, I've done because I love this world. For all it's sin and wickedness it's still a beautiful place.
And I figured it best to sacrifice a little of it so that we'd have something of it left, afterward. We'd only be cutting out a
cancer anyway.
Sha'daal hadn't asked for so much, after all. Just a few millions to replenish the Legions. Just a promise that they
wouldn't interfere in a greater war, that when worlds beyond their ken asked for allies, they wouldn't heed the call. This
world had more than enough wicked bastards to spare, didn't they, and what was it their business if Sha'daal's enemies were
destroyed? For all Dorian knew, it was their fault things had come to this sorry state to begin with. Perhaps they deserved
death. Perhaps not. But in the end, it was on this world that he lived, not some Avalon light-years away, and so he'd made
his bargain and hadn't once regretted it.
Not even now. He had paid in blood for blood taken. Adrian wouldn't tolerate Nathan's posturing, anyway, and
without him to hunt their adversaries, Nathan would soon find the task beyond him. Granted, the world still lost. Their
adversaries, for all their ideals, wouldn't be able to stop the tide now, but at least she would die with heroes fighting her,
rather than being raped and looted by Nathan before what was left of her was given over to Sha'daal. He had atoned, and his
world would fall in glory.
You always thought I worshipped Sha'daal, but I never loved him. Might be you'll understand that before you join me
in the Summer Lands, colleen, and we'll have a good laugh and a drink over it.
If we don't have the world, at least we'll have the afterlife, and from what I'm seeing that's not such a shabby bargain.
He can no longer hear the traffic or see the snow. The skirl of pipes, purl of harp and keen of flute pull his dead feet
into the dance, and she bends grasses when she leans forward to close his eyes. He still sees her there. She has accepted the
sadness and anger; what she feels for him now is respect. Had it been elder days, she would have taken his head and placed
it in a niche in her wall to lend her his strength and cunning. He pats her shoulder there in the Summer Lands as she takes
hold of her sword and prepares to rise.
"My head goes with you, colleen," he says. "Put it to good use."
He turns to the sunlight and peace. A stream crosses the field, vanishing down a gentle slope into a stand of trees.
There are mountains in the far west, which he'll get around to exploring when he's had his fill of the fields and woodlands.
There will be people somewhere about, when he's ready for company: his family, very old friends, strangers from other
places and other times. All in all, he thinks, the young colleen did him a favor with her sharp sword.
But when he looks to the east, a shadow is rising. He sees gray mists the color of Sha'daal's cloak swallowing the hills
and fields, devouring the sky, and feels a coldness blow through the warmth of summer. He understands with the clarity of
the dead that he was wrong in his assumptions about Sha'daal. This war has never been about dominion. Sha'daal never
intended to rule the universe, but unmake it. And when that has come to pass, everything will become this cold, uniform
gray, even the Summer Lands, even Heaven and Hell and the hidden worlds.
I have no desire to rule over your world, Sha'daal had said in that barren whisper. Serve me as I ask, and you will
know peace.
Dorian chuckles. Soon, his laughter is ringing from the far hills as he finally sees the truth of a promise scrupulously
kept, and he turns toward his assassin's retreating back, hears her feet crunch in the snow as she ascends the steps to the
bridge and heads for the parking garage where she will gate back home, mission
complete.
"I'll never admit you were right, colleen," he calls after her. "But I'm saying
I might have listened a little more closely when I made my bargains, and now it's
in your hands. So bloody win the war."
She rams her sword home in its sheath as he heads for the woods to sing
out his warning to the easeful dead.
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