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Before, Godwyn, demigod ascendant, pride of his family, was called the Golden.
Before, he was the conqueror of dragons, the bosom companion of fearsome Fortissax. He took after his father in charisma and his mother in might. As the only child of the Eternal Queen and the Elden Lord, he was welcome everywhere, favored everywhere. Of course he had enemies, just as She did. Of course the divine family expected his grace and power to protect him.
When the Black Knives came, the accolades and expectations all proved hollow.
That bleak morning, Leyndell was in chaos. The gold-and-white banners lay limp beneath black mourning streamers that had not flown since the end of the war against the Gloam-Eyed Queen. The knights were out in force, patrolling the streets in threes and fours and shouting at everyone who stepped out their doors to go back inside.
Fia was in the lower city’s sole Church. All three of the active Deathbed Companions stayed there, along with their Revered Mother. Along with Fia herself, whose apprenticeship had ended so recently that she had not yet performed her rites.
The sanctuary was empty this morning. The Companions, fresh from their morning prayers, occupied a half-circle of chairs before the ornate seat of the Revered Mother. Light poured in the windows and the open door from the Erdtree, brighter than the sun. The plain walls and waxed wooden furnishings made a homelike setting, and the five black-clad figures huddled together, trying to understand what was the matter.
No black-clad messenger came to ask the Companions’ boon. No noble scion or spouse lay grieving on the front steps, begging to have a beloved relative borne back to life. Instead, knights clustered around the Church in ominous silence, and sent groups down the nearby alleys as if searching for something..
“What has befallen us?” The Revered Mother, Sarah, spoke from her chair. “Will one of ye go and ask the knights what it is they are doing?” She looked to rise, but her vigor had faded years ago, and it would not be easy for her to walk even so far.
“Of course, Mother.” Fia rose. Iris, one of the older Companions, followed along behind her.
“Sir knight?” Fia called through the Church’s open door. The nearest one turned, crisp, hand on his weapon.
“Go back inside,” he commanded. “This is no time to be out.”
“What news, sir? Please - we haven’t heard.” Fia stepped obediently back, peering around the door. Iris, behind her, leaned to peer out too.
The knight shook his head. “You don’t know? The Golden lies slain, by some foul-”
Whatever he would’ve said was cut off. With a clap of wings like thunder, the dragon Fortissax cruised low overhead. Toward the base of the Erdtree! The knight ducked by reflex. Iris squeaked and hid behind the door. Fia stepped back into shadow, hand over her mouth. In moments, the dragon was past, the shattering noise gone.
Fia closed the door with a mournful creak of hinges. Iris slumped against it. “No,” she whispered. “It can’t be-.”
Fia crouched at her side, patting at her shoulders.
“He is a god,” she said, barely believing. “Yet even gods may die.”
And dead he was.
The Companions spent their afternoon trying to guess what would be next. While Leyndell tolerated Those who Live in Death, it seemed past belief that the Eternal Queen would recommend one of Her own for the ancient, sacred practice when She could grant Erdtree burial instead. And how had the Golden fallen? They, who studied death and knew it intimately, had not known he was close to his ending.
They split for a time, the Companions to their quarters to worry and to prepare. Fia stayed with the Revered Mother, tending to her needs.
A knight came as the sun was setting, tacked a bill to the door under the Golden Seal, and left without speaking a word. Fia retrieved it and handed it to the Revered Mother. A handwritten note was wrapped inside it. When Sarah read it, her face went pale.
“So it is true.” She sagged in her chair. Fia, anxious, moved to pat her thin hand. The Revered Mother said first, in a flat voice: “I am not to show this to you, or share this warning.”
She put the first, handwritten slip of paper into a candleflame, watched it crumble to ash, and read the formal bill aloud:
“Mourn, Leyndell! Godwyn the Golden lies slain by a blasphemous conspiracy.
He will be buried in two days’ time at the foot of the Erdtree. His faithful companion Fortissax shall attend his grave, as is the custom among dragons.
All loyal citizens of Leyndell may attend ceremonies on the grounds of the Church of the Order. All faithful of the Golden Order are welcome within the Erdtree Sanctuary or upon its grounds.
Fear, traitors and blasphemers! Ye shall bow to the wrath of the Golden Order, and all those who practice the arts of Death shall fall beside ye.
Heed now my words: Never again shall Death sully the Divine.”
Sarah laid the scroll across her knees. Below the final line, the seal of the Eternal Queen glowed golden. Fia stood stock-still, stunned.
“Apprentice mine. My last, precious student.” Sarah grasped both her hands. “Gather the others, now.”
Iris was easy to find in her quarters, reading a book before her long mirror. Shannon was examining his wardrobe. Ciara was at the altar, as was so often the case. Fia called them all together, and the four Deathbed Companions knelt before their leader one final time.
Once again, she read the dreadful scroll. Sarah waited for the gasps and soft cries to finish, and folded her withered hands over her knees.
“My little ones. Faithful Companions all, who have borne so many back to life. This is the last assignment I will ever give ye.”
Iris stifled a sob.
“Flee now, Companions. Flee before the knights come, or Death will hold us all before morning.”
“Revered Mother.” Shannon spoke through a handkerchief of black lace, held over his mouth. “What of you?”
“I will remain.” Sarah lifted her chin in pride, white hair curling over her shoulders. Her beauty had outlasted her vigor.
“May we not stay beside you?”
“Lovely Shannon! Someone must speak for Death, but it need not be thee.” Sarah leaned forward to place a hand on his head. “Flee Leyndell. Go far and fast.”
Only Ciara did not speak, but knelt with head bowed, silent and still. Tears streamed in silent protest.
“Go now, Companions.” Sarah rose with difficulty from her chair, and walked to the door. “I do not know how long we have.”
“Come, Shannon.” Ciara was standing in a flash, holding a hand out. Shannon grasped it and they made haste for the door. Iris followed after.
“Fia? Aren’t you coming to pack your things?”
“No. I’m going now.” Fia looked from her elders to her Revered Mother, and saw pride in Sarah’s pale eyes. Her cloak, her stipend -
Well, she would figure out a way, if only she had her life. There was no reason to believe the knights would hesitate.
“Good girl,” Sarah whispered. “Go with my blessing.”
Fia fled.
Leyndell lay unrestful in the evening.
Fia left the Church by an entrance she had used as a child: a gap where the wall did not quite meet a mighty limb of the Erdtree. As a girl, she’d scrambled through that gap to play among the golden leaves. Now, the limb was bare, and she used its bulk to hide from a patrol of passing knights. Working fast, she stripped her distinctive headdress off, tucked it into her dress for safekeeping, and let down her hair. Her Companion’s dress might give her away, but there was no time to change it.
That group of knights formed a loose line around the front of her Church, her home, and paused. Their superior, notable in a golden cloak with the Erdtree’s emblem woven in white, walked the line in approving silence.
Out of sight but not out of hearing, a mailed fist hammered on the wooden door. The hinges gave their mournful creak.
Fia slunk down out of sight, took to the road, and ran for all she was worth.
Within the area around the little Church, all had been quiet. When she reached one of the main thoroughfares, she found it packed with people. In the throng, she was only a pale woman in a black dress, one of many. Some, tears on their faces and offerings in hand, were going to the Erdtree Sanctuary. Others, wearing cloaks and bearing bundles on their backs, were heading for the gates. Knights on horseback tried to control the crowd, to little effect.
Fia put her head down, feeling the lack of her headdress like a pressure on the back of her neck, and stayed as far from the mounted knights as possible. The currents of the crowd would bear her toward the gates, if only she could avoid notice. It was a long walk in the best of circumstances; she guessed it would be hours, if all the roads were so crowded.
Snatches of conversation came to her ears.
“I can’t believe it-”
“Blasphemy against the Eternal!”
“He’s going to prepare their home in Caelid-”
“Who would do such a thing?”
“Heard it was a demigod…”
“That can’t be right.”
“Liurnia is nice this time of year.”
“The Empyrean Heir is fallen too, didn’t you know?”
“Whole Order is up in arms, it’s war, no mistake.”
“We need to go.”
Dire news, if it was true, and Leyndell gave her no reason to believe it wasn’t. Everywhere, on every tongue, murmurs of blasphemy and conspiracy. The notices were everywhere, posted on doors all through Leyndell. With her heart in her throat and a burning blur in her eyes, Fia wondered how many others had been taken by Leyndell’s knights. She couldn’t let herself think of the Revered Mother or her friends and fellow-students, or she would betray herself and them with her grief.
Grief, and anger. The Eternal claimed that the Gods would never again be touched by death - but was she not a mortal queen, before she took the throne? Was not her consort, father of that so-beloved son, a mortal man? She claimed immunity from something she could not begin to understand! Like anyone, the bereaved mother screamed and beat at the coffin, as if it would bring her son back to her unchanged.
But unlike just anyone, Marika’s fury had consequences. She had, with a stroke of a pen, consigned Fia and all those who she loved to the very same fate she would not admit for herself. Banned the arts of Death! Why, as well she could outlaw Death itself. Forbid anyone to die! And in such ridiculous fashion, doom the whole world to stagnation.
And, insult to injury, strip away the purpose of one woman she’d never met.
Never had Fia lain with a noble; never had she completed the sacred rites and borne someone back to life. Now, she never would. No longer could she call herself Deathbed Companion, if the Eternal had declared all the arts of Death anathema. Would her gifts even work, without the blessed perfume? Without the ceremonial bed in its gorgeous drapery of brocade?
No, she thought. They were components of the ritual for good reason.
She was just Fia, now and always. Just Fia. Just a silent, resentful enemy of the Eternal Queen herself.
Fia passed the gates in a crowd so thick that the knights could not stop everyone, not without spilling blood and making the situation a hundred times worse. When one of Leyndell’s mighty sentinels lowered his lance for a barrier, she and half a dozen others ducked under it, so close the breath of his huge steed ruffled her hair.
“Stop!” cried the knight, but nobody did. To pursue would have been to let even more of the milling crowd flow out. The knight stayed in his place, shouting at the tide of people to slow down.
The golden road across the Altus Plateau lay open. Fia left it as soon as she could and hid. She shivered unseen in a hollow beneath a tree until she was sure the knights were not coming for her.
Morning came, and Fia realized she was hungry.
Hungry meant alive. Waking meant she’d slept. Her sore eyes and dry mouth said she’d wept for the Companions, for Godwyn, for herself.
As she’d been trained, she hovered between sleep and awake, and took stock of what was around her. Hard earth below, barely cushioned by fallen leaves. Birdsong, distant. The itch of an insect bite. The shush of rain, falling just outside her leafy shelter.
The sound of someone breathing, very nearby.
Her eyes snapped open unbidden. Every muscle tense, she saw-
Another woman, perhaps twenty years her senior, anonymous in a heavy cloak of thick grey fur. The stranger had shoulder-length hair of an indeterminate shade and appeared no more prepared than Fia herself.
“Shhh,” she said.
Fia, half a heartbeat from leaping to her feet, trembled with the effort of staying put. “Who are you?” she hissed.
“Just another traveler fleeing Leyndell ‘fore it gets any worse. I don’t want to be found any more than you do.” The traveler tilted her head. “So, please- let me rest here where it’s dry.”
“All right.” Fia lowered her head. She couldn’t stop the traveler, and making a fuss would just draw the sentinels down on them both. She was no longer a Deathbed Companion, to cloister herself away. Her home, her friends, her pride, all gone, with Marika’s fury to ensure she would never return.
“Hey,” came the soft voice. “Hey.”
Fia did not look up.
“Is there some way I can help you? I’ve got food, drink. Even a little sorcery.”
“What confidence you have,” Fia managed, in a choked voice.
“Well, I’ve been on the roads before.”
“Then, if you will - let me hold you, only for a moment.” The cadence of her training came back, easing the words. “Share your vigorous life with me, and I’ll ask for nothing more.”
The stranger smiled, quizzical. “Is that all you want? Well then, by all means.”
Fia uncurled, surreptitiously dabbing her face with a sleeve, and spread her arms.
There in the hollow of the golden-barked tree, she took a confident stranger into her arms. There, for the first time, she felt the rich force of another’s life flow into her body, given by that willing touch.
Even without the rituals, without the blessed perfumes or the embroidered baldachin to hide her from profane eyes, she was yet a Deathbed Companion. The raw loss of her church and title, even her Revered Mother, became just a little more bearable.
She was Fia, Deathbed Companion, and some day, she would bring the truth of Death home to the very gods.
The stranger sighed, sleepily content. “I’ll stay a moment longer.”
“Please,” said Fia, and began once more to don her veil.