A new voice reverberated through the city’s towers, both familiar and strange.
I AM ARTALON.
Aradma stepped into the throne room, onto the purple expanse.
* * *
BE NOT AFRAID. LOOK WITHIN AND KNOW YOURSELF.
The world shifted. Anuit stood in Potter’s Field, in the Duchy of Windbowl. The castle rose to the west, and the morning sun was high enough over the mountains to spill light over the rolling grasses. It was hot, not the springtime sun of May, but the dead of September. She heard laughter.
Anuit turned and saw two girls run past her towards an apple tree, oblivious to her presence. One was blond and fair; the other dusky with dark skin. She gasped. They were Seredith and her own younger self. Other children ran with them, but their forms were misty and diffuse.
“Firetide Eve!” the sorceress exclaimed. “This was the day…”
“Yes,” said a voice, startling her enough to make her jump.
The Man in Black stood beside her. He nodded. “The day the coven noticed you.”
The young Seredith closed her eyes and started counting. The young Anuit giggled and then suppressed her laughter, looking around quickly. She ran towards the apple tree and climbed into its boughs.
“Ready or not, here I come!” Seredith shouted gleefully and then opened her eyes. She looked around, scanning the grasses. She spent a few moments darting this way and that, checking to see if her friend had hidden low among the growth. Then she looked up and fixated on the apple tree.
She shrieked and ran towards its trunk. “I found you, I found you!” she laughed.
The young Anuit giggled again and then shifted, losing her balance. Her giggle turned to a yelp as she fell to the ground, protectively throwing her arms over her face. She stopped inches from the earth, floating suspended for a moment until she dropped harmlessly into the grass.
Seredith gasped and ran to the girl. “I didn’t know you were at the Academy,” she said quietly.
The young Anuit pushed herself to her feet, crossly brushing dirt from her dress. “I’m not,” she said. Then tears welled in her eyes. “Please don’t tell my parents. They’ll get angry with me. I told them I wouldn’t use any magic, but I couldn’t help it.”
Seredith regarded her thoughtfully. “I won’t,” she said.
The Man in Black folded his fingers together in front of his belt. “It was your weaver’s magic, unconsciously projected through your dress,” he said. “Art magic. Old magic.”
Anuit nodded.
“Your parents feared it.”
“Yes,” Anuit said. Then she recognized the Man in Black. “Yamosh,” she named him.
He grinned. “Yes.”
“I’m still in Artalon.”
“Of course.”
“Why are you here?”
“Because I’m your advocate,” he said. Then: “Look.”
The world shifted. Anuit stood on the small hill overlooking her parents’ house. It was now a month past Firetide Eve. The days had started growing longer. The valley trees had not yet turned to gold, but the air carried the promise of autumn.
“This I don’t remember,” Anuit said. She looked around. “I’m not here.”
“No,” Yamosh replied. “You were playing with your friend. You were best friends by now, weren’t you?”
Anuit remembered Seredith wistfully. Unlike the other girls in Windbowl, Seredith liked to talk about things far more interesting than boys.
Seredith’s mother, Marta, approached the home from behind. She stood still for a moment, and her demon Macthogos appeared. His eyes flashed, and fire erupted over the home’s walls and ceiling.
Anuit heard her parents screams as they burned to death. Marta dismissed her demon and nodded in brief satisfaction. A patch of darkness formed around her, and she shadowjumped away.
“That was Leera,” Anuit said, recalling the name of Desdemona and Tal Harun’s daughter from the journals in the darkling library. Then another thought flashed through her mind: Seredith was of House Tal Harun. “I’d always thought the fire was an accident. Leera killed my parents.”
“Yes,” Yamosh crooned. “But it was for the best, in the end. She took you into her coven to be Seredith’s companion. You were to be her companion once she stole her daughter’s body. Your adversity, your pain, set you on the path to become Queen of Dis. Without this, you would have died in mediocrity.”
Anuit shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”
He shrugged.
“Why did you come to me?” she asked again.
“So that you might know yourself,” the former King of Dis said. “You are going to reach the Stag Throne. We cannot stop you now. But you are like me. You have seized power and risen above your station. You are the only one who is worthy to command Artalon’s might. You’ve earned it.”
Anuit turned away from the burning home and confronted the dark god. “If I sit on the throne, I will bind you like demons. You know this, and you would not help me with such a thing.”
Yamosh didn’t blink. “We can’t stop you from reaching the throne. The question is, which one of you will sit upon it? Among all the gods who serve you, I would be your first among equals.”
She blinked. She stood on the stairwell near the top of God Spire. Had she been walking this whole time? Where are the others?
She stood at the threshold, unable to see fully into the room beyond. The walls and ceiling were black and shapeless, like the Void without stars. The dark floor ran a smooth shade of deep purple to the center, where the shadow of a man awaited her inside the blue outline of a circle.
“Oh!” Anuit exclaimed in surprise. “You!”
A new voice reverberated through the city’s towers, both familiar and strange.
I AM ARTALON.
Anuit entered the throne room.
* * *
BE NOT AFRAID. LOOK WITHIN AND KNOW YOURSELF.
The world shifted. Arda stood outside a barn on Galadheimic farmland. She blinked and looked around. How the fuck did I get here?
The Man in White chuckled. “Where is here?”
She started at his presence. “Who are you?”
He gave her a quizzical look. He was fair skinned like the Hammerfoldians and tall. Blue eyes twinkled, and his white hair was cut short, with bangs that turned in different directions. He rubbed his short, neatly trimmed beard and laughed. Light and a comfortable joy radiated off of him, and he felt familiar, like an old uncle who had watched over her life.
“Daag,” she said. “The Good God.”
He nodded. “‘Here’ is everywhere. And nowhere. We are in Artalon and at the heart of the Kairantheum. The gnomes built this city over the land where the ancient sidhe performed the magical rites that created it.”
“But why here?” She watched the road running past the barn, knowing what would happen next. “Why this memory?”
“I want you to know yourself,” the Father God said. “One of you will sit on the Stag Throne and hold the fate of the gods in your hands. I’d like it to be you.”
Arda heard hushed giggling. She saw her younger self—did I look that young in my twenties?—and Gina, the farmer’s daughter, sneaking back early from the tavern. They were drunk.
“This was the first time you explored this side of you,” Daag said.
Arda nodded. “It was… unexpected.”
“You had never considered it before.”
“No. Attaris would never have approved, and he practically raised me.”
Her younger self and Gina passed by the two of them and slipped into the barn. Several minutes of whispers, heavy breathing, and giggling followed. Then the giggling stopped and flowed into low, steady moaning.
“I was surprised,” Arda said, “how good it felt being with her.” Then she chuckled. “I don’t just mean this. I mean after.”
“Yet you concealed your joy. You were ashamed of it.”
“No,” the darkling tilted her
head. “Not ashamed. Just… discreet.”
“Because of Attaris.”
“Because of everyone. Even Danry. He and I had shared a bed on occasion, but I would never commit to him. He’d have been jealous if I committed to a woman.” Then she grinned. “And that we didn’t let him in on it.”
Daag smiled warmly. “Of course.” Then: “But you considered committing to her.”
Arda nodded. “I did. Duty got in the way, but I lingered there. And you’re right. Mostly it was Attaris. He would have…”
“Would have what?” the god asked. “Abandoned you?”
“Yes.”
Daag raised an eyebrow. “Watch,” he invited.
Arda did as he asked, calmly standing and waiting. The moans from inside grew louder, each trading off against the other.
“She’s a screamer,” Daag remarked.
Arda blushed. “We weren’t exactly quiet, were we? I thought we were quiet.”
Daag snorted in amusement. “Watch.”
Not long after, while the young women inside continued their exchange of pleasure, Attaris came by the road.
Arda gasped. “What’s he doing here?”
“He was looking to see where you went. He was concerned.”
Attaris guided his small horse towards the barn and stopped. He listened.
“He recognized my voice!” Arda exclaimed.
“Yes,” Daag agreed.
Attaris’ face flushed a deep red. First embarrassment, then anger, and then disgust. His expression finally settled into disappointment. He turned his horse and returned to town.
“He knew,” Arda said. “He knew!”
“Yes,” Daag confirmed.
“And he never said anything!” she exclaimed. She knew dwarven opinion on same-sex relationships. They were even more against it than humans, and Attaris held to his traditional values.
“What does that tell you?” Daag asked.
“That he… that he loves me.”
“Yes. He chose to forget it,” the god agreed, “out of love for you. He left you alone, gave you some time, until he needed you.”
“Duty called,” Arda confirmed. “I only had a few weeks with Gina. It was hard to leave, but my calling was more important to me than love.”
“But you love now,” he prompted.
“Yes,” Arda agreed. “Very much so. I’d be lost without Anuit.”
The world shifted. Arda and Daag stood outside a church in the last dark moments before dawn’s sun would lighten the sky.
“Traversham!” Arda said. The start of her journey into Astia over ten years ago, the mission to discover why messages had stopped flowing to Windbowl from the Kaldorite-organized resistance fighting the vampire plague. Days before she met Anuit for the first time.
“Shall we go inside?” Daag asked.
Arda shrunk away. She knew what they would see.
The world shifted. They stood inside the church.
“Damn you,” Arda whispered to Daag. “I’m past this now.”
The younger Arda unsheathed her sword and started killing the survivors of Traversham, horrified that they would give themselves willingly to the vampire child that stood at the altar. They chose infection, and Arda killed them for it. They had been alive. She could simply have killed the last vampire and deny them the opportunity, but instead she slaughtered what was left of the town she had originally thought to save.
The younger Arda fell to her knees and screamed, bathed in the blood of her self-righteous murders.
Arda turned away from the scene. “Why show me this?” she asked the Man in White.
“Because I want you to remember you are flawed. The path that led you to Artalon is not pristine.”
“No,” Arda agreed. She looked again on the grisly scene. “I’ve forgiven myself for it.”
Daag nodded. “And because you have, so I do too. You are clean in the Light, but you are tempered. You understand mortal frailty. You know sin.”
“Who am I to judge others, when I have failed so?”
Daag smiled. “You do judge,” he clarified, “but in a different light. You judge with the measure by which you live your life, but you are slow to condemn. You understand the struggles, the trial for clarity, and joy. And you know there is evil in the world, and I mean evil, not the Dark.”
Arda nodded and thought in silence. Finally, she asked, “Why me?”
“Of all the gods, I am the closest to the Light. You are a creature of joy and wisdom won from experience and failure. You are the most worthy to sit upon the throne of Artalon.”
The bloody scene dissolved.
Arda came back to herself on the highest steps at the top of God Spire. She was alone and didn’t remember walking the whole way.
She stepped into the upper chamber, and it was nothing like the old throne room in which Valkrage had died and Arda and her friends had confronted the vampire queen, a Malahkma-infused Sidhna. The walls and ceiling were black and shapeless, like the Void without stars, and there were no windows or balconies. The dark floor ran a smooth shade of deep purple to the center, where the shadow of a man awaited her inside the outline of a blue circle.
A new voice reverberated through the city’s towers, both familiar and strange.
I AM ARTALON.
Arda entered the throne room.
* * *
BE NOT AFRAID. LOOK WITHIN AND KNOW YOURSELF.
The world shifted. Tiberan stood in the shadows of a cave. He watched himself sit with his wife while his sons played at their feet.
“I’m still in Artalon,” he stated.
“Yes, in a way,” Keruhn said. The naked Horned God stood beside him, with his one intense eye and his other empty socket of glittering starlight. “You are at the center of divine space-time. It is here that illusions fall away, and you are confronted with the truth of your being.”
Tiberan wanted to reach out and touch Keira’s hair, even as the memory of himself sat beside her, arm around her slim shoulders.
“You’ve been a good husband to her,” Keruhn acknowledged.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Tiberan replied. “My heart is divided.”
“She knows that,” Keruhn answered. “And your love for Aradma does not diminish your love for Keira.”
“She wouldn’t see it that way,” Tiberan responded.
“She is possessive,” the god acknowledged.
“I am possessive,” Tiberan returned. “I would not share Aradma with anyone, and…”
“And you wouldn’t share Keira, either.”
“No,” Tiberan agreed. “She is my lover, my mate. She put her trust in me, and I in her.”
Keruhn looked at him with sad eyes. “Will you walk with me, Tiberan?”
The elf nodded.
The world shifted. Tiberan and Keruhn watched his first meeting with Aradma. The trolls surrounded his younger self, but he stood transfixed, seeing the elven woman for the first time.
“Do you know why you immediately loved her?” Keruhn asked.
“I do now,” Tiberan replied. “I didn’t then.”
“She is the Dragon’s heart,” Keruhn prompted. “You are the Dragon’s mind.”
“She is the dreamwalker,” Tiberan said. “I sent her out from myself and yearned for her return.”
“She was part of you, and the Dragon spark in you remembers that. And she yearned to return to you. Together, you are one.”
“Yes.”
The world shifted. Tiberan stood again in Artalon, at the threshold of the throne chamber.
“This is not as I remember it,” the horned man said.
“No,” the Horned God agreed. Again he took physical form in the world, drawing upon long-accumulated reserves of faith energy. “The seals are together. You stand outside the true throne room of Artalon now, concealed in ages past.”
Tiberan remained on the threshold, looking inside. The dark room lay shrouded in the deepest shadow of the Void, and the smooth purple f
loor held an unearthly glow. A thin blue ring circled the room, glowing bright against the backdrop.
“It’s empty,” Tiberan stated. “Where is the Stag Throne?”
Keruhn smiled.
“Where are the others?”
“One will arrive, when the throne is ready for her,” Keruhn replied. “And the one who is worthy will come for you.”
Tiberan’s heart grew cold. “What do you mean?” he asked, almost in a whisper.
“Tiberan!” Keruhn exclaimed. “Have you not reasoned it out yet? You are the Stag Throne!”
Tiberan pressed his lips together. “That was what you had hidden away inside yourself,” he accused. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Keruhn smiled sadly. “I’m sorry, Tiberan, but this was the only way. I thought long about how things might be different, but your choices have shaped the path. Mortalkind has shaped its history, both with and without us. Artalon was built inspired by my designs, but I have never violated mortal will. I have been called Nature’s God, and in many ways I am like Rin. I have been the consort of Soorleyn, who moves her affections between Rin and I, but Athra is my mother. Where I saw in civilization the continuation of evolution, Rin would see only death. I sacrificed myself for wisdom.” He pointed to his empty eye socket. “Nephyr granted me her sight, and I became the God of Truth. The God of Reason.
“I saw then the ultimate ends of the Kairantheum. Mortalkind would be shackled to superstition. Twenty four thousand years of gods, and you have barely begun to discover the beauty and potential of the natural world. There are stars to explore, but with us you will forever be stuck here.
“I imagined a greater future for you. One where you mastered the gods, and they served you. Tiberan, we are you. We are of you, and from you, and as long as mortalkind is asleep to that fact you will be fumbling about in your own dreams.
“I designed Artalon to reach all the people of Ahmbren who touch the Kairantheum. All races capable of faith, and of hope, those most highly evolved: dwarves and humans, elves and gnomes, and later, their offshoot races, the darklings, ratlings, and wolven.
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 137