A cry like they had heard in the maze pulled Lydria out of her trance and she looked to the end of the room. A pair of wooden doors as tall as the room stood between her and the sound, and Lydria looked at the golden handles, halting for a moment, recovering from the shock of remembrance the painting had caused.
“We need to leave this place,” Hokra said. “We have arrived in the house of Griffis – we are close to our goal.”
Lydria nodded numbly, realizing as she straightened her back that she had been hunched over from staring at the painting, searching, hoping that she might find … she didn’t know what. Perhaps a way back to that time, to see her father again. Even magic had its limits, however, and she knew that was impossible.
They made their way quickly down the length of the room, Lydria letting her eyes dart quickly over the paintings they passed, and when they reached the end, Haustis looked to the others to ensure they were ready. She paused when Lydria nodded and waited for her sister to look her in the eyes and say the words, and then she pulled the door open slowly, watching the wielders for a sign that the way beyond the door was clear.
The room on the other side was akin to the room they left but when they entered, they were at the far end of another long room. There was nothing that showed them where the scream had come from and so they spread out along the width of the room. Along the right side there were two more fireplaces, and a single long rug ran the length of the gallery. This one, however, contained no color. It was a singularly deep red with no variation. The walls on either side of and above the fireplaces were covered with more paintings of Griffis, none of them exceptional or even interesting.
Unlike the other room, the wall opposite the fireplaces was covered in a series of thick curtains of dark gold. Strung along the top were bright golden tassels that hung down several inches, and every few feet a silver cord showed through the folds, falling from the top until they stopped several feet above the floor. Hokra took hold of a cord and pulled, the curtain sliding easily along an unseen rod several feet from the ceiling. The wall behind the curtain was made of glass and looked very much like the wall behind Karjan’s desk.
Through the glass they saw the part of the house they had entered was a pentagon. The hallway they had left was the base. The windows they stood in front of looked across a courtyard to another hallway with windows, and a set of doors to the outside, and to the right, two more hallways met at a peak.
Standing in the middle of the courtyard a great fountain dominated the space, water sparkling from lights that reflected its drops in a thousand fragments. The water landed in a large pool at the base but unlike most of the Nethyn Plains, the water in the fountain broke and crashed on everything it touched, and when it cascaded into the pool below, some of it fell out onto the surrounding tile patio. It looked like living, moving water, and the pool reflected the poor light a hundred times, showing that the water, even in the pool, was never still.
The water fell from the hands of a statue. A statue that towered above the roofs of the halls they stood in. A statue, no one was surprised to see, in the form of Griffis, his marble hands held out in a gesture of peace and welcome facing the windows in the hallway opposite their own. Water spilled down the outstretched hands of the statue that despite its size was not ornate. Robes replaced details in the figure. They could only just make out the reflection of the statue in the windows across the courtyard, and Lydria could see the smile the sculptor had given Griffis was joyous and beneficent, but there was tension in his face, as if the smile didn’t sit comfortably.
Working down the side of the figure, hidden in the shadows and darkness, three thin figures moved down the back of the sculpture. Lydria watched as a woman filled a bucket with water from the pool and began to climb a hidden ladder to the top, where she poured the water that fell from Griffis’ fingers. She did not stop, and her pace did not slacken.
“What do these people do?” Haustis asked Dravud. The guide walked closer to them, peering out the windows above their heads. “They stoke the greatness of Griffis,” he said without emotion. “There are always three from Vul chosen for this task. Some say it is a great honor. Others say it is a punishment like no other. The three climb from the pool with water that they pour into the back of Griffis’ likeness to fall down to the pool again. It provides no joy because there is rarely anyone who sees the beauty of the only free water in the Nethyn Plains. The only thing that makes the work bearable is that it may not be eternal. Griffis will sometimes change who feeds his likeness. Sometimes he will reward them after with a high position. More often, however, they are sent back to the beach to begin whatever journey they will take anew, much like the water they endlessly gather and pour. If they make it back to Vul, Griffis will find them and take them to himself and provide them a place in his kingdoms.”
“Did you do this?” Lydria asked the question quietly, not turning to see how the guide would answer.
“I think not. As I have said, when one returns to the beach, one’s memory of all things is lost. As you make your way toward Vul, your memories return, but if I have ever hoisted the pail from the pool, I am blissfully unaware of it.
Lydria continued to watch the people, their movements so sparse and efficient, in an unwavering cycle that did not hide their pain at both the work, and the thought that the work might never end. From where she stood, Lydria could not see their faces, but felt a despair that radiated from them as if it were a physical thing.
Seeing no benefit in watching the endless cycle of carrying and pouring, Lydria called to the others. “The cry remains ahead of us, and it is plain where we will end. Let us continue.” Lydria said the words to the window, her eyes locked on the pointlessness of the work being accomplished so close to her body yet so very far from her ability to save those involved.
They moved quickly among the paintings and artifacts in the second hallway and continued to the doors at the opposite end. Now that they were aware of the building’s shape, they knew the end was near and they keenly felt it was their last chance to reach Wynter before Griffis.
Lydria threw her hands wide, blue light snapping at the edges of the doors at the far end of the room and throwing them wide, ripping them off their hinges and alerting anything that might be waiting their arrival. As they moved through the shattered doorway, the room was empty, but it had not been so for long. The rug in the windowless corridor showed signs of Wynter’s passing. Several golden cuts were visible in the carpet and Lydria and the others gave them a wide berth. In the middle of the room near a black table, a golden gash told them Wynter had stopped and done more than merely poke the floor with the sword.
On the opposite side of the table they found five large golden discs arranged in a circle around a pentagon of black. Each disc was the size of a shield and each was lit from within in varying degrees so it they were easily distinguished from lightest to darkest. The images in each disc were also similar, featuring four distinct areas surrounded by darkness. In each disc, there were points of light that moved randomly. In the pentagon at the center, there were three red lights clustered together near the very center and a single red light close by.
“Is this a map?” Hokra asked. As he said it, Lydria knew he was correct. It was a map of the five paths of the Nethyn Plains and the four kingdoms within each path, all leading to the Palace of Vul Griffis. The beach was separate on each disc, a band of rose gold along the edge, followed by Eigroth, Herewist, Agubend, and finally Vul.
Between the small islands that represented the kingdoms were thin lines that Lydria realized must represent roads, and then deep black areas where nothing could be seen. If it was a map of Eigrae, she might think those areas marked the boundaries of the sea. But here, she knew, they represented the lands where the Shade fit between kingdoms.
“Can Griffis not see into these lands, then?” she asked Dravud.
“Griffis did not create the Shade – though they were created as a result of how he made the kin
gdoms. He has little care for what happens there. Those who inhabit the Shade are broken and he has no use for broken things.”
Within the kingdoms on the map, the lights outside the Shade seemed to be no more than decoration until Haustis pointed out possibilities. “These lights represent people,” she said. Haustis moved down the hall and was rewarded for her efforts by Hokra who said one of the red lights in the palace pentagon moved as she did.
“But what does it tell us?” Lydria rasped, clearly eager to find Wynter and put an end to him.
“The three red lights are us,” Hokra said.
“And the other red?”
“Wynter?”
“Or the sword?” Haustis asked. They all looked to Dravud to see if he would answer. He did not, but Lydria didn’t need the guide to confirm if the light represented Wynter or the sword or Griffis himself. She knew they would find their answers behind the next door, and she wasted no time in pulling them out of their casings, sending them crashing to the floor, her neck nearly as warm as her face as she began to feel the emotional strain of their extended time in the Plains.
Haustis approached the fallen doors carefully and Hokra came close behind, but Lydria didn’t wait for their assertion the way was clear. She knew what she would find behind the door and when she turned the corner and saw the back of a man in tattered black robes kneeling in front of something his body hid, she knew it was Wynter. The patch of darkness under his hand didn’t register as the sword until she noticed the small speck of golden light underneath its point. Then, the form took shape as an outline of where something should have been. Lydria stopped, the others behind her waiting for the man to rise. She saw his back moving quickly up and down. His left elbow was on his left knee and his cupped hand cradled his forehead.
Finally, his right hand moved. Where he had rested the pommel of the weapon against his palm, he now slowly moved his fingers to grip it. He stood and pulled the weapon in front of him. Lydria thought about crying out for him to stop, but she couldn’t see what he was looking at. If he was going to kill something Lydria thought there was nothing in the Plains that would not be better off if put to the Sword of True Death. Instead, Wynter raised the weapon slightly and brought the tip down sharply followed by the sound of lock breaking and chunks of metal falling to the floor.
25-Haustis Avenged
Wynter stepped to the side and glanced quickly in Lydria’s direction so that it seemed if he did see her, he did not care.
“Ellaster.” Wynter’s voice was thin and dry. In the crater, Lydria remembered his voice as being something that did not belong to the man who spoke. Here, the voice fit his condition perfectly. It was the voice of a beaten man who has at long last found what he has truly desired.
What Wynter’s body had hidden was a cage. It wasn’t as tall as Hokra and only a few feet wide. Inside was a woman wearing a dirty, stained, and torn white linen dress. Her hair was gnarled and unkempt, and her eyes vacant and expressionless. A flick of his wrist and the longer point of the Sword of True Death picked apart the walls of the cage and they fell to the floor with shockwave that startled the three travelers.
Wynter knelt again, placing the sword on the floor and holding out both his hands for Ellaster, his wife, to take. This was the same woman Lydria had found and fought in Wynter’s mind in the Cobalt Tower. Yet she was different. She was beaten physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Lydria had seen men with the same look in their eyes after particularly long and arduous campaigns. The silence from their eyes spoke volumes about their souls and Ellaster’s was lost entirely. At the same time, Wynter’s face, as red and disfigured as it was from burns, was uplifted. He was touching his wife and that simple contact had transformed him. He smiled at her, encouraging her to rise from her cage and stand again among those of her kind.
She was hesitant, not trusting that she was free. Lydria had seen that look among men in war as well. But she gripped Wynter’s hands, her eyes never leaving his for a moment. Lydria was sure Ellaster wasn’t aware of her presence in the room. The crack of her knees as they stood straight for the first time in what may have been a very long time, bounced across the walls of the room, pulling everyone’s eyes toward her. As she found her footing, her left hand resting in his right, and her right hand resting on his left forearm, Wynter leaned forward to embrace her and stumbled through the air and into nothing.
There was an uneasy breath as everyone realized what had happened followed by a low sound from Wynter that could have been a resumption in his cries, or the hollow, pent up laughter of someone who has been taunted mercilessly and discovers their way out of the pain.
“It’s you.” Wynter didn’t turn his head toward Lydria but she knew he was speaking to her. His eyes stared at the spot where a moment before he had been holding his wife for the first time since he put an arrow in her heart during a trying moment of decision between mercy and selfishness.
“It is because of you she left me in the tower. And now, it is because of you she leaves me here. Why do you hate me so?” Wynter turned on her and shouted the sentence, froth flying from his mouth and spit hanging from the corners of his lips like a rabid animal. “Is it not enough you took from me my power, my dignity, my ability to be around others without being thought some type of disfigured beast? Now you follow me to this … place. And you take from me the only thing I could have here; the only thing here that is not a lie.”
A wave of compassion and sympathy swept over Lydria and she was sure the others felt it as well. “We had no idea your wife was here, and we do not know where she has gone.” Lydria’s eyes looked quickly to the wall to her left, thinking she might know what had happened to Ellaster.
“I made a promise once, and though I had left that idea behind when I stepped foot on the beach of this place, I will renew my vow now, and I will kill you and all your friends.” And with a quickness Lydria did not think the man possessed any longer, he grabbed the sword with his left hand and swung it wide, switching hands in mid flight to extend its reach further and closed the gap in the room between himself and Lydria.
Instantly Hokra and Haustis flanked Wynter, but he held the Sword of True Death, and they knew that more than their physical bodies were at stake should he strike true with that weapon. Like a small heart the stone between the blades pulsed, sending shimmering trails of blue light flowing across the sharpened and spine sides of the twin blades. The first strike was close to Lydria and she realized the weapon had cut through her shield, a shower of dark blue sparks forming a dark line in the air, momentarily outlining her own magical energy and the flaw that had just been created in it.
Hokra reached out to strike Wynter from the man’s right, his blue axe head sweeping in an arc that would surely cleave the man’s head from his shoulder’s, but the sword continued its follow through from Lydria and reached back to stop the Chag’s magical blade from reaching its target and the impact flung the axe across the room. Meanwhile, Wynter, despite looking like a man twice his age, moved with a deftness that defied reason, jumping into the air as Hokra’s axe spun away, and dodging the blow Haustis aimed at his feet.
“Your sword makes you nimble and fast,” Hokra growled, “but there are three of us.”
Wynter didn’t engage in empty talk but continued to swing his sword. He understood that the weapon’s reach was his best defense.
“Wynter, this is the work of Griffis, not us,” Lydria shouted, trying to break through the noise of blood that she knew must be coursing through Wynter’s brain and ears. “He wants the sword, and he’s using it to draw you to him.”
“I’m not a simpleton, woman,” Wynter sneered. “I understand more than you think.” He jumped high into the air, twisting and landing between Dravud, who had not moved an inch since they entered the room, and Lydria, who now faced him alone, her friends behind her.
“I may just kill you first and then them. I’m beyond caring the order now.” He lunged toward her, the twin blades
snapping with power as they closed in on her, the gap between the points like the maw of a ravenous dog. Lydria parried by creating a garrote of blue power and catching the blades, twisting them and the arms of their wielder, and swinging him wide against the wall before the blades bit through and snapped the cord. The time was enough for her friends to take up positions in front of her again, and again Haustis went for the feet while Hokra picked up any loose thing in the room and hurled it at Wynter hoping to crush him in a blanket of books, pots, steins, whatever happened to be sitting on shelves and table tops. Haustis lunged forward with her spear, the blue tip flying free toward Wynter, a missile that he deflected as if it were an annoying insect.
The sword reacted as if it understood the magic power that stood against it, and stepping quickly to avoid another missile from Haustis, the sword smashed her spear and began to spin in Wynter’s hand, dissolving everything that touched the swirling blue circle as if it were being sucked into a whirlpool. In a moment, the spinning stopped and in a concentrated motion, all the material that had flown at Wynter was propelled toward Hokra, knocking him across the room and into the far wall, burying him in the contents of the room.
Lydria moved forward, desperate to keep Wynter’s back against the stone wall, remembering the caves of Safarngal, she pulled the walls toward her like threads, pulling out long strands of stone to ensnare Wynter and trap him as permanent part of the wall itself.
With a quick flip of his wrist, the sword crushed the stone as it came from the wall, sending shards of rock across the room.
“You can’t beat me you know,” Wynter said, moving forward from the wall and putting his three enemies in front of him once again. “The sword understands. The combination of a stone of power and this Farn’Nethyn blade is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. It cannot be stopped.”
Magic's Genesis- Reckoning Page 23