Descent of Angels by Mitchel Scanlon Read Free Book Online Page A

to sally forth from the great Memorial Gate to do battle with the enemies of Caliban.
    Despite the pride and hubris inherent in such vows, he made a silent oath that he would never lose sight of what it meant to be a knight, the humility that must accompany all great deeds and the unspoken satisfaction in knowing that doing the right thing was reason enough to do it.
    Eventually, the applause died down, as Amadis lifted his arms and waved away the clapping and cheering.
    ‘Enough, brothers, enough!’ he shouted with a smile on his face. ‘This isn’t what I came here for. Despite my earlier words, I do seem to have given a bit of a speech, but hopefully it wasn’t too boring, eh?’

THREE
    T HE NIGHTMARE ALWAYS began the same way. It was two years ago and he was seven years of age, one of nearly two hundred would-be aspirants who had come to the fortress monastery at Aldurukh seeking to be accepted as knights-supplicant by the Order. From whatever pleasant fantasy was drifting around inside his skull, the darkness would always come to wrench him back to his first day with the Order.
    It had been mid-winter, the only time of year at which the Order recruited, and hundreds of children would arrive at the fortress, desperately hoping they would be among the handful chosen to start on the pathway to becoming a knight.
    The rite of selection was the same for every one of them.
    The guards manning the gates would tell the waiting aspirants there was only one way to be accepted for training within the Order. They must survive a single night beyond the gates of the fortress until dawn the next morning. During that time, they had to remain standing in the same spot. They could not eat, or sleep, or sit down, or take rest in any way. What was more, they were told they each had to surrender their coats and boots.
    It had been snowing the day Zahariel took the test, and the snow lying in wide drifts against the walls of the fortress and upon the branches of the trees at the forest’s edge gave the scene a curiously festive appearance.
    Nemiel had been beside him: the two of them had each decided they would become knights, assuming they managed to pass the test and were found to be worthy.
    The snow was thick on the ground by the time the test started, and throughout the day, the snowfall continued until it had risen as high as their knees. Though the forest was several hundred metres from the walls of the fortress, the darkness beyond the tree line seemed to reach out from the haunted depths like a living thing, enveloping them in its silky embrace like an unwelcome lover.
    As he dreamed, Zahariel turned in his sleep, the phantasmal cold making him shiver in his cot bed. He recognised the dream for what it was, but such knowledge did not allow him to break from its inevitable course. His extremities had grown so numb, he felt sure he would lose his fingers and toes to frostbite, and knew that in the morning after the darkness, he would wake and check to make sure his nightmare had not translated into the real world.
    Throughout the test, the guards had done everything in their power to make the ordeal more difficult. They had wandered among the ranks of miserable, barefoot children, alternating between cruelty and kindness in their attempts to break them.
    One guard had called Nemiel a pus-brained simpleton for even thinking he was worthy to join the Order. Another had tried to tempt Zahariel by offering a blanket and a hot meal, but only if he would first give up on his ambitions and leave the test.
    Once again, Zahariel could see the guard’s face leering down at him as he said, ‘Come inside, boy. There’s no reason for you to be standing out here, freezing. It’s not as if you’d ever make it into the Order. Everybody knows you haven’t got what it takes. You know it, too. I can see right through you. Come inside. You don’t want to be outside once night comes. Raptors, bears and lions, there’re a lot of different