Anuit held up a hand, interrupting her enthusiasm. “Yes,” the sorceress agreed. “We could. But if that’s true, then why didn’t Valkrage?”
Oriand stepped back for a moment. “You’re right,” she acquiesced. “He would have tried. If he couldn’t do it, none can. No one was stronger than he in Time magic.”
“I think he did try,” Anuit agreed. “But I think the imprints themselves—the temporal records as you call it—were stolen. They were ripped from time’s flow and hidden.”
Oriand frowned. “By whom? Who could do such a thing?”
Anuit shrugged. “Well, I imagine Valkrage could have. But the question is, who else?” She nodded to the small book she had brought. “We found secret halls in God Spire, corridors and rooms that don’t look like they were built by gnomes.” She ran a hand through her hair, moving a strand out of her eyes. “Belham revealed them,” she said. “They were shrouded in Dark magic—I suspect, hidden even from Valkrage. I think they were secret halls for the sorcerer lords of the Darkling Empire of the Second Age.”
Oriand exhaled. “This book…”
“Yes,” Anuit acknowledge. “This book was taken from one of their studies. It talks about Time magic and using it to see the past. The first sorcerers had also been wizards. This journal says they discovered Artalon’s secret.”
“What is it?” Oriand’s excitement returned.
“It only says they discovered it, but it does not say what it was. What’s interesting, however, is what it says at the end. Open it.”
Oriand retrieved her spectacles and opened the book. Anuit leaned close and turned to the last page.
Now that we know its secret, we know the Stag Throne is forever locked away from our reach. It cannot fall into the hands of those who could use it, and it is too powerful, too great a risk to the Darkling Empire and to Dis to trust it will stay hidden forever. Therefore, the Lords of Dis have seized all impressions in Time, all history from this place, so that no wizard may look back from the many tomorrows and uncover its secret as we have done.
Oriand closed the book. “The Lords of Dis,” she stated flatly. “They took the temporal records.”
Anuit nodded. “Yes. This is why Valkrage couldn’t look into the past here. This is why the sidhe wizards today are frustrated in their own attempts. Dis holds the secret.”
“I don’t like it.” Oriand frowned.
“At least we now know who knows,” Anuit replied. “It’s a step closer than we were before.”
“So what now? Are you going to just go to Dis and ask the demon lords nicely?”
Anuit gave a cocked smile. “If I can.”
Oriand shuddered. “Very well, then,” she said. “Bring me all the books you can. I’d like to help.”
Anuit pressed her lips together. “I think,” she replied, “as dangerous as these books might be, it’s best not to remove them from the Darkling halls. But I can get you in unnoticed.”
Oriand stood. She looked at Anuit for a moment, feeling a burst of affection. She knew Anuit felt warmly towards her as well. If only Arda hadn’t found her first. Maybe someday.
“Very well then,” she agreed. “Let’s seize this opportunity. Athaym hasn’t made his move, and we’ve not seen any more troglodytes for years. But I don’t trust that he’s going to leave well enough alone. We still need do this before he tries to take it for himself.”
That was always the looming question. When would Athaym reemerge with an army of troglodytes at his command? She couldn’t believe the last remnant of the Black Dragon would leave Artalon alone indefinitely.
“Let’s go,” Anuit said, and Oriand followed her out of the room. They passed Fernwalker along the way, sitting beside Yinkle and Cory Piper.
“I’ll be back,” Oriand said, “but I’m not sure when. Tell Odoune and Suleima to keep things going without me.”
Yinkle nodded. “Don’t get in trouble!” she called after them as the two women left the small dining hall of Aradma’s Legacy.
* * *
Later that evening, Fernwalker did what she always did on her birthday. She walked alone to the top of the tower with a flask of bourbon. She went to a private balcony off one of the higher apartments, just large enough for her to step out under the open sky. She closed the door and sat with her back leaning against it, ignoring the tile’s cold on her bottom. It had become an annual ritual, although the bourbon had only started a year ago.
She uncorked the flask and swallowed deep, allowing the sweet, fiery liquid down her throat. She closed the flask and let it hang loosely in her fingers at her side.
She stared at the expanse of stars. She understood they were the source of life. It was something dragons had known, and Graelyn had taught this knowledge to the druids of ages past. They hadn’t understood, thinking it metaphorical, but Fernwalker knew the mystery was literal. All life came from the stars. The sun was a star. Fernwalker could touch the starlight captured in the world’s creatures by Life, and the more she did so the more tangibly it responded to the music of her soul.
My mother could hear people’s soul music, she thought. Let everyone hear mine. For you, Mom.
Through her sorrow, waves of soft starlight, barely perceptible, cascaded from her skin in undulations of luminescent dust. Watery patterns of the blue light danced over the balcony walls, framing her view of the nighttime sky. The released energy agitated the air and surface of the walls, setting off vibrations that hummed in haunting melodies, echoing her soul’s lamentations.
The music rose above the towers and continued long into the night. Soldiers from all armies looked up from their posts to the sky, contemplating the mournful song that arose once a year above the streets of Artalon.
18 - Geas
Tiberan stood outside the entryway of the igloo. February in the far north felt the full fury of winter’s wrath, and the sun only touched the sky for a few hours a day. Even then, the clouds shrouded most days in dark gray.
Tonight was clear, and he watched the stars in Ahmbren’s coldest moments. He liked these moments, for there was something pure about the cold. He looked into the stars at the countless worlds that hung in the expanse of the Void. The iridescent shimmering of the aurora cut through half the sky, but the other half was crisp, with colored mists farther off between the stars. He didn’t know how he knew they were other worlds, other suns, but he knew. It was the leftover mind of the Dragon inside him. It wasn’t the Fae and certainly wasn’t any knowledge he had acquired from his limited time with the people of this world. It was the Dragon. It always came back to the Dragon.
He closed his eyes for a moment. Standing here in the cold meant he wasn’t dreaming that damned dream. For ten years it had haunted him. When Keira lay beside him it withdrew to a distant haze, but it was still there. Always there.
No moon shone overhead. Only starlight and the aurora lit the gentle slope of the snow plains that descended for miles beneath his gaze. Pristine white, without heat, without life, pure on the world as it had been long since before life emerged from cooling oceans. He wondered if, someday, life would die, and the ice would overtake all of Ahmbren.
He knew he could not stand out here long. Soon he must go back into the hearth within the ice house. It was amazing how much warmer it was inside the igloo, even with its frozen walls. Here outside, exposed to the deepest cold of the night, he knew he would die if he didn’t seek shelter soon. Nevertheless, something in the stars captivated him.
He drew his thick fur cloak tight and tugged the upper lip of his hood down farther over his brow. He wrapped his scarf again around his face. Only his eyes remained exposed to the cold, golden sparks glittering on the nearby ice wall.
“Come inside,” he heard Keira say from within.
“In a moment,” he said back quietly. He allowed himself a few more minutes in the air, then turned to enter the igloo.
At the last instant, however, he saw something move on the virgin snow plains. A man. An antl
ered man.
It was him. The Horned Hunter of the Night.
Keruhn.
Golden light coalesced around the god, that same divine light that Aradma had once said she could see. Tiberan had an instinctive understanding that whatever Valkrage had passed to him had opened his eyes to this light.
The seelie returned to his vantage point to watch. He wanted to freeze time so he could stay out here in the cold and study the god that walked on the surface of the earth. But he couldn’t. He had not been able to touch Time since that night so long ago when Keira had almost been taken by the avalanche. Whatever Valkrage had placed within his spirit remained dormant. There were times when he almost felt it, as if the flow of Time moved through the periphery of his sense, but he could never quite reach out and touch it.
His eyes locked with Keruhn. The god was too far away to see, and the silhouette too dark, yet Tiberan knew their eyes met. A thickness descended upon his mind, and without being conscious of his movements, he stepped out onto the snow. His elven boots allowed him to walk without sinking, and for a moment it seemed as if he floated over the frozen banks without touching the ground.
In three breaths he was far across the fields, coming to stand before the Horned God.
“Tiberan,” the god greeted him. There was nothing unearthly about his voice. Up close, he looked like a simple human, except for the stag antlers sprouting from his forehead. His left eye socket was empty.
“Keruhn,” Tiberan responded. He wondered if he was expected to bow, but he had no intention of doing so.
Keruhn smiled. “I’ve been watching you, Tiberan.”
“I know,” the elf responded. He felt strangely warm, as if the cold moved away from this space out of deference to the god. He looked into Keruhn’s empty eye.
“A price paid for the Horns of Wisdom,” the god replied. “I am a man of faith, Tiberan. Are you?”
“No,” Tiberan replied. “I have never relied upon gods.”
Keruhn’s smile twisted from kindly to amused. “Is that what you think faith is, Tiberan?” he asked.
“What else would it be?”
“Indeed, what?” Keruhn replied.
“Why have you called to me?” Tiberan asked.
Keruhn turned away for a moment and looked thoughtfully at the aurora floating in the sky. “My mother has lost her faith,” he murmured softly.
The god turned back to the elven man. “We, all of us, come from the stars,” the god said. “There is a great power in the universe, a force for good, and Light. This world has recently discovered that divine space-time is nothing more than a constructed matrix of magical energy made by the sidhe and called the Kairantheum. This body,” he opened his hands and gestured to his breast, “is made from the substance of the Kairantheum.”
“Why do you tell me this?” Tiberan asked.
“Because I need you to understand,” Keruhn replied. “Yes. I need you. The temples of old would call this blasphemy, for they taught that mortalkind needs the gods. Yet, I am a god and so I cannot blaspheme, and I say they were wrong. I need you.”
Tiberan folded his arms over his chest. It suddenly struck him that Keruhn stood naked, and he thought it odd he hadn’t noticed this before. Keruhn’s muscles were taut and defined, both round and linear at the same time. His chiseled hips and etched trunk showed cords of strength, and his arms moved gracefully. Every part of his body moved fluidly, under his command. Tiberan was struck by the perfection of his masculine beauty with an awe that was devoid of any hint of desire. He felt energized by the sight of him, and his body responded with sexual energy, swelling hard between his legs. None of this heightened energy was directed back at the god. It was as if he had been magnetized by the god’s charge, and he felt in that moment he could enter woman after woman without tiring.
Keruhn pinched his own shoulder and tugged at his skin. “This body,” he said, “is made from magical energy, but it is merely a body, a shell. Just as your flesh and blood hold within them a soul, a spark of Light within Life, so too does my own.” He pointed to his mind. “I have a soul. I have incarnated in this form as surely as the children of this planet have incarnated in theirs. I believe I existed before the Kairantheum, and I believe I will exist when this body dissolves, just as is true for your soul.
“My mother tells me I am deluded. She tells me that we are fabrications of mortalkind, and that now that they know of the Kairantheum, their beliefs have changed. Their priests now say what I have said, that the gods cannot be false constructs, tricks of elven magic. They say that the gods are only given form by such, and that our spirits emanate from a higher source. They say we are rays of light shining through the Kairantheum and molding forms so we can touch mortal lives. My mother tells me that because of these teachings, I am compelled to believe them. Yet, I think she is wrong. I do believe we come from a higher source, in spite of what she tells me. This is my faith.
“Mortals now vie for control of Artalon. They believe it will bring balance to the gods. My mother fears they will try to use it to control us.”
“And what do you believe?” Tiberan asked.
“I believe unlocking Artalon is the best thing for humanity,” Keruhn said. “I cannot say why. Maybe it is human hope that compels me. I have ever been the Consoler, the Hope of Humanity. It is my nature. Athra wants to keep the Kairantheum free from mortal control. I think she is wrong to do so.”
Tiberan saw the strange logic at work. If what this god said about the Kairantheum was true, it was ironic that he worked against his mother. It was because he was programmed to do so. Yet, the god seemed strangely self-aware of this and didn’t care. Either his faith was real, and he chose to be true to his nature, or he was mindless and a slave to the will of his worshippers even as their own hope was transformed by time.
Time…
“There will be a time,” Keruhn told him, “that you will be needed to unlock the chamber to the Stag Throne. The gods will rise up to stop you, and I will not be able to preserve you from their wrath should you choose to do so alone. I offer you a way through. I offer you my mark, a visible sign of my faith in you. This sign will assuage the fears of the other gods, and they will let you pass. But know that I want you to do what must be done.”
“What is it that must be done?”
“I don’t know.” Keruhn shrugged. “Control us, balance us, do as you will with us. One thing is certain: I know it is the right course for humanity, and they were always special to me. This too is my faith. And there is one more thing,” the god added. “There is something I took from the throne room long ago. I’ve carried this final key to Artalon’s mystery within myself. Artalon’s power will not work without it, so I will hide it in your essence, and conceal it by the mark I give you.”
“What is it?”
“I cannot tell you now, but you will know when the time is right. Once you find the throne room, you will hold the final key to balance, or control, the gods. As a sign of my faith, I give our fate over to mortalkind, through you.”
Against his own expectations, Tiberan believed him. He wondered if he was also being deceived in the same way that Keruhn was deceived by the Kairantheum. But he knew that if a false understanding led someone to a correct conclusion, it didn’t make the conclusion less correct. Results stood on their own. Truth stood on its own, and whether Keruhn was the body of a force greater than this world, or he was just a construct of elven magic, one thing was true: Keruhn was the Consoler and would sacrifice himself for mortalkind if that was what was necessary. It was his nature, whether innate or determined by his worshippers’ beliefs.
“I will not surrender my will to you, nor will I worship you,” Tiberan stated.
Keruhn smiled. “That is why I want you to do this. You will stay true to your own mind; unlike me, you are free from the Kairantheum’s influences. There is, however, one more thing you should know.”
Tiberan waited for him to continue.
“You canno
t open Artalon alone. You are starting to understand the gift Valkrage gave you. You know you are connected to Time. There are three more like you, one for each element. Only together can you reveal the secret throne room in Artalon’s central spire.
“I will give you my mark now, but the time is not yet right to act on it. If you go too soon, you will die, and all will be lost.”
“How will I know when to go?”
Keruhn grinned. “I have faith.”
Tiberan frowned. “I don’t.” Then: “I have no desire to go to Artalon.”
The god shrugged. “I believe in you. Will you accept my mark?”
Tiberan looked at the god for a long while. “I—” his voice caught in his throat. He swallowed. The god wanted the elf to take something of his. A key, of sorts. If he took it, he knew he must journey to Artalon at some point. He would not accept a gift for a purpose if he had no intent of fulfilling that purpose.
There was a strong pull inside him, something from Graelyn’s memory that rose in his heart and responded to the god’s words. This god had been a protector of life and a friend of mortalkind. More importantly, the Green Dragon within Tiberan resonated with the god’s desire to correct something out of balance with the world. The thought of restoring balance to the gods, and even more, delivering gods to mortal control, felt right with regard to the Kairantheum’s intended nature.
Tiberan nodded. “Yes.”
Keruhn reached out and took the elf’s head in his hands. He kissed the center of his forehead.
Tiberan’s head exploded in pain, and he fell over. An intense burning sensation touched two points on his skull in front of his temples.
“I’m sorry, I must leave you now,” Keruhn said. “Holding this form takes much energy, and now I am spent. I must return to spirit…” He faded and disappeared.
The cold returned. Tiberan lay in the snow, and he was vaguely aware through the receding pain that he would freeze if he didn’t get back to shelter soon.
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 104