by Sarah Hawke
The last two days (gods, had it really only been two days?) still seemed impossibly surreal. Her quick dalliances with Rohen in the sitting room and the chapel were already distant memories. Now when she closed her eyes, all she could see was Zin’s lifeless body surrounded by a sea of rampaging Chol.
Your power is all that stands between Darenthi and annihilation, the voice of her mother whispered into her ear. Nurture it. Master it. And when the time is right, unleash the wrath of the Pale upon all who dare stand against you.
Delaryn swallowed and hugged her arms over her chest as she trudged through the snow-covered hills behind Rohen and Sehris. She still hadn’t told them about the voice, mostly because she didn’t even know where to begin. A woman she had never met was talking to her from beyond the grave…it sounded as ludicrous in her head as it would aloud.
She couldn’t even begin to explain her ability to channel the Pale, either, despite the fact that her power was the only reason any of them were still alive. Even the most powerful sorcerers in the world couldn’t physically cross the barrier between worlds, and not for lack of trying. Mortals had been trying to enter the Pale for thousands of years, mostly in misguided attempts to liberate the gods from their ancient prison. What those channelers inevitably freed instead were horrific demons that made the Chol seem harmless by comparison.
Even now, many hours after Delaryn had left Rimewreath behind, she could still hear the demonic whispers in the back of her mind. If she hadn’t returned to the physical world when she did…
“This path should take us all the way up to the fort,” Rohen said, stopping and shifting Varlothin back into the Pale. He waved the glowing wraithblade in front of them to illuminate the rocky steps leading up into the mountain pass. “Let’s take it slow until the sun comes out. Always check your footing.”
“I can lead,” Sehris said, her luminescent violet eyes narrowing as she studied the way ahead. “This way.”
While the dark elf started forward, Delaryn took Rohen’s arm and allowed him to guide her steps with his much steadier boots. The warmth of his touch banished the numbness enveloping her body, though it quickly proved a mixed blessing. The bitter air fluttered her platinum locks beneath her hood, and her cloak and heavy furs proved no match for the icy chill. She had no choice but to reach out to the Aether and allow its power to sustain her through the cold.
The climb was dark and treacherous, but still not quite as harrowing as her and Rohen’s flight from Whitefeather Hold the other night. They were only a few miles south of Rimewreath when dawn finally broke over the mountains. The brilliant reflection of the sun on the snow nearly blinded Sehris’s sensitive eyes, and Delaryn took her friend’s slender arm and helped guide her the rest of the way.
“The sentries must have spotted us by now,” Rohen said, shielding his eyes when they reached a summit overlooking the pass. Sundermount was only a quarter the size of Rimewreath at most; it was essentially a wide tower surrounded by stone walls that blocked the gap between the mountains. Ostensibly, the fort was in a perfect position to protect the pass from bandits and watch over the scattered farmlands in the plains to the south, but in practice the garrison didn’t have the manpower to do much of anything. Thedric had planned to renovate Sundermount just like the rest of the north, but now…
“There are only a few dozen soldiers garrisoned here at any one time,” Delaryn said. “I doubt they have many sentries.”
“Still, hopefully someone sees us up here,” Rohen said. “The Templar used this fort as a supply depot during the last Culling twenty years ago. Maybe we’ll get lucky and discover that a few griffons are still roosting here.”
No one believed that for a moment, of course, but they carefully wound their way down the rocky path from the summit anyway. Delaryn’s stomach twisted nervously when no one in the fort waved a flag or called out in greeting. She didn’t see any movement whatsoever, even when they began their final approach to the gate.
“There’s no one here,” she said, her eyes flicking across the narrow battlements and up to the crenellations at the top of the tower. “The soldiers must have been sent somewhere else.”
“Why?” Rohen asked, shaking his head. “Where would they go?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps Galavir summoned them to Rimewreath?”
Rohen came to a halt about twenty yards from the gate as he examined the fortifications. “I can’t imagine why he would do that. A few dozen soldiers wouldn’t make or break the defense. Those men would be much better off watching this pass in case any Chol tried to slip through the mountains to the plains.”
He paused for almost a minute before he started forward again, his fingers twitching over the handle of his sword. Delaryn followed right behind him, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck tingling in warning. Something was definitely wrong here…
“There’s no damage to the gate or the walls,” Rohen said. “No arrows, no scorch marks, no signs of battle…maybe they really did abandon this place.”
“Or they are all dead,” Sehris whispered. Her violet eyes glimmered in the shadows of her drawn hood as she studied the gate.
Rohen turned and frowned at her. “Do you sense something?”
“I smell something,” she said, covering her nose with her sleeve. “There are rotting bodies on the other side of this gate.”
“Oh, gods,” Delaryn gasped, suddenly thankful for her comparatively weak human nose. “Are you sure?”
“It is not a smell one forgets,” Sehris said.
Rohen swore under his breath as he stepped up to the actual gate. The enormous double doors were old but sturdy, and when he banged the hilt of his sword against the wood, the rattle stirred up dozens of carrion birds on the other side.
“Maiden’s mercy,” Delaryn breathed. “What happened here?”
“I don’t know, but there’s no other way through the mountains,” Rohen said. “We need to get through this gate.”
Delaryn pursed her lips in thought. “I could try to freeze the hinges and make them brittle.”
Sehris reached out a gray hand and placed her fingers upon the wood. “The doors are heavily reinforced with magic. They are designed to withstand attacks by Roskarim shamans and Anointed Chol.”
“Can you unravel the enchantments?” Rohen asked.
“In time, possibly. But without vatari dust to siphon the Aetheric energy, there’s no guarantee.”
Delaryn took a deep breath and reached out to the Aether. When she concentrated, she could feel the enchantments Sehris mentioned; they had been woven deep into the wood and steel. If an artificer with her friend’s skill and expertise couldn’t dispel the magic, no one could.
But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a way through…
“I could get us inside,” Delaryn whispered. “I could take us back into the Pale.”
The others turned to look at her, their faces twisted in equal parts fear and confusion. She was every bit as disturbed by the prospect as they were—just thinking about breaching the wall between worlds seemed to make the demonic whispers in the back of her mind louder—but it was a solution to their problem. The power of her Palerending abilities was as undeniable as it was horrifying.
“No,” Rohen said after a moment. “There’s another way.”
Unsheathing his sword from his belt, he whispered the Elvish command words and transformed Varlothin back into an azure beam of spectral energy. The door had been reinforced against conventional magic, but it was still no match for a wraithblade. The sword passed through the wood as easily as if it were water, and even though the Pale-shifted blade couldn’t actually ignite objects in the physical world, it could still destroy them. Rohen surgically carved them an opening before he pulled the weapon back and kicked the door as hard as he could. A person-sized chunk of wood, seared black at the edges yet somehow not smoldering, tipped into the fort.
The massacre awaiting them on the other side sent a shiver of dread down Delaryn’s spin
e.
“Guardian guide their souls,” Rohen said as he stepped through the gap and into the narrow, U-shaped bailey between the gate and the actual tower. The bodies were everywhere: lying in the snow, slumped on the walls, skewered on the steps leading into the tower. They hadn’t been killed in an organized formation—they had been cut down by swords or riddled with arrows wherever they stood, almost as if they had never seen their attackers coming.
“How…” Sehris whispered, her hands cupping over her mouth as she took in the carnage. “How could this have happened?”
Rohen crouched over one of the bodies and pointed at the blackened lacerations on the man’s throat. “Godcursed steel,” he said. “These men have been dead for several days. Sundermount was sacked before Rimewreath…maybe even before Whitefeather Hold.”
Delaryn couldn’t help but look away. Her eyes threatened to burst with tears, but she forced herself to take a deep breath and inspect the rest of the fort. There was no sign of a siege, no damage to the defenses. The walls and keep were as untouched as the mountains around them. If not for the frozen blood and corpses, no one would have been able to tell that a battle had even taken place here.
“How could they have gotten inside?” she asked despite the fact she already knew the answer.
The same way I wanted to. The same way we escaped Rimewreath in the first place.
Her thoughts flashed back to the strange armored figure she had spotted leading the horde last night. His sorcery and his wyvern mount had been shocking enough, but he was also the reason the Chol had been able to enter the fortress and massacre the Pact Army. He was a Palerender, just like her.
“If the Chol can walk through walls whenever and wherever they want, the horde will be unstoppable,” Rohen said, his voice so dark he almost sounded like a different person. “No one will be safe.”
“Guardian save us,” Sehris breathed. “Living creatures aren’t supposed to enter the Pale! It’s…”
Her fear and confusion hung in the foul air while Rohen slowly stood. He glanced down at his blade as if he expected the runes to flare to life at any moment, but neither Delaryn nor Sehris could hear the Wailing. The Chol were long gone.
“They didn’t devour the bodies, so they must not have stayed for long,” Rohen said. “There may still be supplies inside the tower.”
He sighed heavily as he sheathed his sword, and for a moment, he looked far older than his twenty years. Ever since they had escaped Rimewreath, he had been chewing on his rage in a desperate attempt to quell the pain over Zin’s loss, but Delaryn could tell that his defenses were crumbling. Everywhere they went, they were surrounded by death…
“I doubt the Chol will come back, but we still shouldn’t linger,” Rohen said hoarsely. “I’ll head inside and see if there’s anything worth salvaging.”
Delaryn silently watched as he strode up and into the tower. As much as she wanted to take his hand—as much as she wanted to hold him against her and cry into his chest—she knew what he really needed was a few minutes alone to collect himself.
“Ilhari vlos,” Sehris hissed after he went inside. “Where could the Chol have learned this power?”
“They didn’t,” Delaryn said, wishing she knew how to conjure a burst of flame and immolate the bodies. “The armored man on the wyvern…he is the one with the power. He must have led them here before Rimewreath.”
The dark elf shook her head. “I don’t understand. I’ve read every tome in the Galespire about the Culling and the Chol. Only the Anointed can lead the horde—they don’t take orders from mortal men.”
Delaryn shrugged. “Maybe he’s not mortal. Maybe he’s not even a man. For all we know, he could be a Godcursed elf, too.”
“Riding a wyvern?” Sehris asked. “There haven’t been any nests in Darenthi for centuries.”
“The Roskarim used to breed and train them in the White Ridge to the northwest,” Delaryn said. “People say that hundreds of wyvern riders challenged the ascension of the Wyrm Lord in Highwind.”
“That was twenty years ago,” Sehris said. “I don’t know where this armored man came from, but he’s not a Chol. Perhaps he has been possessed by a demon…it might explain his ability to control the Pale, but I’ve still never heard of any channeling technique like this.”
Her faintly glowing eyes flicked around bailey for several seconds before they returned to Delaryn. The inevitable question she must have been yearning to ask since escaping Rimewreath sat unspoken on her lips.
“I don’t know how I do it,” Delaryn said, rubbing her hands over her face. “It just…happens.”
Sehris didn’t reply. Amidst the stillness of the fort, the only sound was the crows fluttering back into the bailey to continue their macabre feast. Delaryn hissed and shooed them away.
“Sorcerers cannot channel the Pale,” the dark elf said eventually. “It isn’t—”
“You don’t think I know that?” Delaryn snapped. “You don’t think it terrifies me?”
She glared at her friend for several seconds before she swore and clenched her teeth. Tears threatened to burst from her eyes again, but she steeled herself and took in a long, slow breath.
“I’m sorry, I just…” Delaryn shook her head. “I don’t understand what’s happening any more than you do.”
Sehris sidled close and placed her gray fingers atop the other woman’s hand. “I wish I could help,” she whispered. “I wish we knew something about what was going on.”
Delaryn drew in another cold, bracing breath. Sooner or later, she was going to have to tell her friends the truth. Perhaps now was as good a time as any.
“I haven’t learned all of this alone,” she murmured. “I’ve had help.”
Sehris frowned. “What?”
“My mother,” Delaryn said. “She has been speaking to me for a long time. She taught me everything I know about magic.”
The dark elf stared at her, mouth agape, as if she couldn’t tell whether or not her friend was joking.
“I know how it sounds,” Delaryn said. “The Keepers executed her when I was still a baby. I never met her…but I can hear her voice as clearly as I can hear yours.”
Sehris still didn’t move. She didn’t look like she could move.
“I heard her voice off and on when I was a child, but I didn’t realize who it was until after Thedric took me to Silver Falls,” Delaryn went on. “She spoke to me almost every night when I was locked away in the palace. At first, I thought I was going crazy, but then she started showing me things…techniques to better control and even hide my magic. She taught me how to mend flesh, how to freeze the air, how to reach into someone’s mind…it was like having a personal tutor no one else could see or touch.”
“Delaryn…” Sehris whispered. “The dead can’t speak to the living. It doesn’t work that way.”
“According to who? The Galespire? The Tel Bator?” Delaryn snorted. “They think they know everything, but they’re wrong. I can hear my mother’s voice. I don’t know how or why, but it’s real.”
Sehris studied her for a long moment and hugged her arms around herself. “Maybe it is,” she said, “but how do you know it’s your mother?”
Delaryn frowned. “Who else would it be?”
“It’s not a question of who—it’s a question of what,” Sehris said. “Ghosts may not be real…but the demons of the Pale are.”
“What?” Delaryn hissed.
“You heard them calling out to us when we breached their realm. I heard them, too. That’s what demons do.”
“My mother is not a demon!”
“I didn’t say she was,” Sehris said, taking a deep breath and brushing her long black hair back into her hood. “All I’m saying is that this voice might be. Just think about it for a moment: only demons can channel the power of the Pale. It’s their prison—their reality—and all they really want is to escape.”
Delaryn turned away. She couldn’t even smell the corpses surrounding them anym
ore; her nose and throat felt like they were being squeezed shut by a skeletal hand of fear and rage. The voice in her head was not a demon. It didn’t sound anything like the whispers she had heard within the Pale.
And yet…
“The voice never said anything about escaping,” Delaryn whispered. “Not even once.”
“Maybe not, but look around the fort,” Sehris said. “Don’t you sense it?”
Delaryn’s brow furrowed as she glanced around. “Sense what?
“The wall between worlds—the Minamar—is very thin here,” Sehris said stretching out her hand as if she were reaching for something in the air. “I didn’t notice it at first, but if I really focus, I can see tiny fractures all over the fort…”
Delaryn followed the other woman’s gaze. She didn’t see or feel anything…until she fully opened herself to the Aether and allowed its power to permeate her body.
“Oh, gods,” she gasped. “They’re everywhere.”
As the magical currents around Sundermount were laid bare to her eyes, the tiny fractures became impossible to miss. It was as if the fort had been encased in a clear glass dome that was now riddled with glowing, hairline cracks.
Cracks that were growing larger by the second.
“Ilhari, dormagyn udossa,” Sehris breathed, shaking her head. “There hasn’t been a breach in the Minamar this severe since…”
“Since Gareth’s Stand,” Delaryn whispered. “Since my mother summoned demons to defeat the Chol.”
The words hung in the air, as noxious as the stench of death surrounding them. There was still so much Delaryn didn’t understand about the nature of this magic. Why could she channel the Aether and the Pale? Why did they feel so similar yet also so different? Why was the voice of her mother so obsessed with teaching her these techniques?