Kyr
Garin’s heart was filled with a mixture of hope and confusion.
Not yet striven to bloodshed?
The words were confusing to him. Still, the message had been clear about his goal. Steeling himself, Garin turned and left the chamber. Soon he had ascended the stair and stood again before the concealed door that had gained him entry to this place. Placing his ear to the wall, Garin strained to hear what lay beyond. There were no shouts of pursuit, only the faint sound of muffled chanting. Careful to make as little noise as possible, Garin gingerly pushed on the door, allowing only the smallest crack to open in the wall. Though it was difficult to see anything in the darkness beyond, there was no one immediately visible through the opening. Taking a deep breath, Garin quickly slipped through and shut the door. At once he dropped to his knees, willing his breath to slow as he carefully listened for footsteps. For a few long moments he knelt there until he was sure that his emergence had gone unnoticed. Only then did he stand and carefully creep further into the temple. Reaching the innermost row of pillars, Garin hid behind the nearest one and, with careful movements, peered around its edge in an attempt to see the events transpiring within the temple’s heart.
The priests had returned to the central altar, upon which now smouldered the remains of an unknown sacrifice. They lay prostrate before it, chanting strange prayers to the Shadow in an unknown tongue. Joining the priests in their worship was a larger throng of Once-men, presumably those that had had awaited the coming of Daath in the plaza outside. Garin carefully scanned the crowd, trying to catch a glimpse of Daath himself, but he was nowhere to be seen. Satisfied that the attention of the group was occupied, he turned to the bronze doors and was surprised to find them already unbarred and open, presumably as a part of the rite he was witnessing.
Quickly he turned back to the group around the altar, scrutinizing each face to see if any eyes were upon him or the door, but all eyes were closed as the priests intoned their black prayer. He knew his chances were small, but he also knew that no better time than this would come. Without a moment’s hesitation, Garin darted from the pillar to the back wall of the temple and quickly edged his way around and through the posts of the great gate, only daring to breathe when he had reached the other side.
Ahead of him rose the summit of the Mount of Sacrifice, a slope of gravel and withered trees crowned with an obscure mass of mingled of gold and darkness. A mirthless laugh sounded.
“Blind monkey,” the voice hissed, “So I have found you again, and without Kyr to protect you.”
All around Garin shadows rose and congealed, revealing a squadron of Once-men. Their weapons were drawn, and a ghostly blue fire burned in their empty eyes. In their midst stood Daath, his black cloak billowing behind him, a cruel smile on his noble face.
“Have you seen the Beloved?” whispered Daath. “I can see by your eyes it is so. Good! Then you have something of worth to offer me.”
The Once-men closed in on Garin, bound him in shackles of rusted iron, and led him up the mountainside.
Chapter 22: The Altar and the Oath
So… The reignition attempt was aborted at the crucial moment?
“Yes, master,” spoke the Entrope, a wave of shame washing through him.
He had been summoned from his sleep by an inexplicable sense of urgency and now stood within the Chamber of the Pool, surrounded by clouds of boiling green flame.
Surrounded by the burning embrace of the Presence…
Do not think that this failure has gone unnoticed. Perhaps the time of your successor’s awakening, the time of your dissolution, is closer than you reckoned.
The Entrope’s heart sank within him as the Presence spoke, even as his mind involuntarily chanted that this, too, was meaningless.
Nevertheless, continued the Presence, I did not call you here to chide you, but rather to share my imminent triumph. Rejoice, Servant of the Void, for the disturbance has been localized and even now is facing termination at my hand.
“Disturbance?” asked the Entrope. “You spoke of this when last we met, yet I must confess the nature of it is still unknown to me.”
The eyes of the Presence flashed with mirth at the Entrope’s words, and its mouth opened wide in silent laughter.
Almost you sound like those we hate, it chided. We would not speak of natures, rather of perturbations of the primal void, false faces places upon the nothingness from whence all springs and to which all in the end returns.
The Entrope shuddered, mindful of the precipice at which he stood. Such ill-considered expressions had been the downfall of many a prior incarnation. He knew that the human mind was neurologically predisposed toward certain false teleological perceptions, perceptions that were ultimately responsible for the tendency to see reality as a cosmos, an ordered purposeful whole, rather than the froth of chaos that it truly was. Only by relentless application of certain psychomodulatory techniques could the tendency be held at bay, and this not for long. He had held on longer than most of his past versions, but eventually each had begun to succumb to the delusion of purpose and had willingly submitted to the Rite of Dissolution, transferring their memories to the blank slate of their successor’s brain before being disassembled into their constituent elements. Though reluctant to undergo the rite, the Entrope knew that his time was soon at hand.
But not yet…
“My apologies, master, for the unfortunate way in which my thoughts where phrased. I sought only to determine how best to assist in the great work of eradicating this and other disturbances like it.”
This time the presence laughed audibly, with more than a hint of scorn.
Servant, you do not grasp your limitations! In this you can do nothing. The disturbance is located in a place you cannot reach. But I can. Even now I hold its squirming form in my grip. You need only watch. I will give you my eyes that you may see my deeds in the outer realms.
At once a torrent of images overwhelmed the Entrope: a storm-wracked sky, a rocky hilltop swathed in shadow, a procession of guards holding the shackled form of a boy…
***
The barren hillside sloped steeply upward, its surface a rough mass of uneven boulders occasionally breached by the twisted corpse of a tree. Above, clouds churned and writhed as if in pain, showering the ground beneath with a freezing, bitter rain. More than once Garin tripped on a rocky outcropping, only to be roughly pulled back to his feet and forced to march on by the Once-men guards. Then, abruptly, the ground leveled off. They had arrived.
From the rocky summit of the hill two great trees stretched skyward into the storm. One gleamed brilliantly as if wrought of living gold, its bows laden with silver apples that twinkled like stars. The other seemed less a physical object than a tree-shaped hole in space, a towering mass of inky blackness that was difficult even to look at for long. Between them lay an altar of black stone, its cracked surface stained with the blood of countless sacrifices.
Daath, who until now had led the procession, turned and stepped aside, gesturing toward the altar.
“The Place of Sacrifice! Gaze on it well, blind monkey, for if you choose poorly it may well be the last sight your eyes perceive. Now, I ask you again. Where is the Beloved!”
A wave of fear surged through Garin, his mind assailed by a billion thoughts of failure and pain, yet he held his tongue.
“So be it,” said Daath flatly. “Bind him!”
At once the closest soldiers grabbed him by his shoulders and laid Garin flat upon the altar, binding his limbs to the cold surface. Above him, the branches of the trees entwined in a subtle weave of mingled light and darkness. The weave pulsed like a thing alive, and for a moment Garin could see in its complex pattern the history of all things: the eternal balance between what was, what could be, and what, erased by corruption, could never be again.
Then a crash of thunder drew his attention, and Garin turned his head to see Daath approaching, his black form momentarily silhouetted by lightning. In hi
s hand was an iron spike.
“You do know what this place is, do you not?” asked Daath mockingly. “It is the Garden spoken of in all the earliest tales of the worlds of Phaneros. Here the ancestors of your people, of all peoples, once payed fealy to me, and it is here that that fealty will again be renewed. The stone beneath you thirsts, blind monkey. It thirsts for the blood of those who bound it over to me. And today it will drink of yours, if you do not speak. I am willing, oh, so willing, to slay the Beloved in your stead, but I am prevented from discovering her. Ah, but if her location were to be willingly revealed… Speak, blind monkey! Where is her crypt! I know it must be on this mountain.”
“You… you would free me for this knowledge?” asked Garin, his mouth dry with fear.
“I would,” said Daath smoothly. “Is this act so large a price? Come, you do not even know her. Why give your life for hers? What love do you hold for her?”
“Kyr loves her,” croaked Garin.
“Indeed he does,” replied Daath, “hence my desire to slay her. For I would strike him a blow from which even he cannot recover. But what of you, child of man? Why should that be of comfort to you? Have you even seen Kyr since entering my domain below? I am sure you have asked why he has not come for you many times. Or has that thought not occurred to you in your ignorance? Why do you persist in protecting the beloved of one who has so clearly abandoned you when I am offering your release in return? Do you not wish to see your sister again?”
At the mention of Trielle memories flooded Garin’s mind: the look in her eyes as she laughed, the way she would listen to him, no matter the concern. Grief surged through him, and he felt the last dregs of his resistance begin to melt away. Then another, more recent memory surfaced, the memory of a face so pure that it outshone the stars, of a form of surpassing beauty, marred by a mortal wound, and from far away he could almost hear the words of Kyr whispered so long ago amidst the ruin of Sha-Ka-Ri.
Son of man, do you trust me?
“Hear me Daath,” he said, surprised at the strength in his voice. “You may tempt me with words of my family, with memories of my life before this journey began, but I have seen the Beloved and I know that she must live again regardless of the cost to myself. So come, slay me if you will, but I will not give her into your hands!”
Daath’s noble mouth opened in a wide grin.
“So be it, blind monkey!”
In a single, swift movement Daath raised the iron spike and struck downward toward Garin’s heart. Garin closed his eyes, waiting for the impact.
He felt a pinprick on his chest, nothing more, and opened his eyes to see the face of Daath contorted with effort as if all his strength was being brought to bear upon an impossible task. Garin looked down and saw that the tip of the iron spike had just broken his skin. Despite Daath’s obvious exertions, it would go no further. A single drop of blood ran from the wound down the side of Garin’s chest.
You have not yet resisted to the point of bloodshed…
In a blast of light and heat the iron spike ignited with white-hot flame. A cry of pain escaped Daath’s lips, and he released the spike, but it never fell. Slowly at first, and then with increasing velocity, it rose into the air, a blazing arrow shooting skyward as if loosed from the Bow of Apollo. There was a moment of silence as it pierced the roiling underbelly of the storm, and then a thunderous sound like a mountain shattering as a great gleaming crack split the clouds in two. And through that crack poured the brilliance of the stars.
All around Garin the heavenly light fell. It rained down around the two trees in great shimmering sheets, illuminating the ruined garden with soft brilliance. It touched his bonds and they dissolved away, crumbling into dust. He rose to his feet, blood still streaming from the puncture wound in his chest. Enraged, Daath moved as if to seize him, but to him the lambent starlight was a wall as hard as diamond, a ward that surrounded Garin, protecting him from harm.
Lifting his eyes skyward, Garin watched as the last vestiges of the storm boiled away into nothingness, replaced by the naked effulgence of the night sky. And from the velvet darkness between the stars came a wind of light and power that descended in a great spiral to encompass Garin, forming into a road of stars beneath his feed. Joy swelled within his heart, and with a glad smile he stepped forward and tread the path that stretched between the worlds. His last sight of Mythos as the walls of the crystal sphere parted before him was Daath: his fists pounding on the walls of light, his proud mouth opened in a scream of primal rage and loss.
***
The Entrope pressed his hands to this hears, but could not drown out the awful scream. All around him the chaos ripped and tore at him like a hurricane of knives. Whether the onslaught lasted for minutes or millennia he could not tell; he only knew that after what seemed like ages of suffering the storm abated and the boiling entropy clouds again parted to reveal the shadowed form of the Presence. The Entrope opened his mouth, but was silenced by a searing wave of fire, like liquid pain, that stabbed from the Presence’s blazing eyes.
Do not presume to speak, blind monkey, said the Presence angrily. The time for speech has long past. The disturbance grows greater now, and has strength that I did not anticipate. But it matters not, for he is yet within my reach. Soon he will reach the Primal Wound, the ancient seat of my strength, and it is there that he will be consumed. In the interim, servant, there is a task for you to perform. Shepherd the Heirophants, cajole them, do what is needed to hasten the next reignition, for if the disturbance cannot be quelled in the high realms, the only recourse is to assure that the dissolving husk of a dead cosmos is all that remains on his return. Do this and I assure you that you will be the final Entrope, the one to see with his own eyes the nameless abyss from whence the cosmos sprang and to whence it will inevitably return.
The green fires vanished with the suddenness of a thunderclap and the Entrope found himself standing alone within the Chamber of the Pool, slowly withdrawing tendrils of green nanosubstance trickling down his body. As he stepped from the pool and painfully began the journey back to the Omegahedron, his lips split apart in a narrow grin as he contemplated the promise made by the Presence.
The final dissolution was near, and he would be the one that would herald its advent.
Book Four: Though the Fractured Virtue of the High Places Still Strove Beneath It Yet…
Chapter 23: On Ancient Wings
With a flicker of blue lightning Trielle’s ether chariot crackled into existence in the space around Galed. A small gas giant swathed perpetually in azure storms, the planet boasted more natural sattelites than any other world in the Conclave, earning it the nickname “Galed of the Sixty Moons”. Trielle gestured to the ship’s infochryst and a hologram of the Galed lunar system appeared in the air before her. While the first three moons were small, little more than captured asteroids really, the fourth moon appeared to be one of the planet’s larger sattelites. Reaching forward, Trielle touched the image of the fourth moon and it enlarged to fill the hologram. A few seconds later a halo of abstract white lines appeared around it, each a link to information about the moon’s internal structure, possible origin, orbit, and other physical parameters. Trielle gestured at the first of these, and a block of illustrated text sprang into the air above the image.
Trielle’s eyes narrowed as she read. Evidently the moon was largely composed of iron and nickel, with a relative lack of crustal silicates. The surface was covered with a shallow, acidic sea, stained red by iron oxide, which was broken only by a range of low mountains. The only solid ground on the moon, the mountains meandered northward in a series of great, lazy arcs from their origin point near the equator. The atmosphere was thin but breathable, with a relatively high oxygen content that made up for the low barometric pressure. There were no indigenous lifeforms and no listed inhabitants. Trielle was tempted for a moment by the next link, which promised to give a convincing account of the moon’s origin as the captured core of a nearby gas giant that had lost i
ts atmosphere due to some ancient stellar catastrophe, but eventually she turned away. She was not here to explore planetary geology.
Bringing her hands together, Trielle shrank the vast globe to more manageable proportions and plotted a course that would skim the ether charior along the tops of the mountain range. Unless Tserimed was an aquatic creature that could swim in rust, she reasoned, he would have to be on one of the peaks. A few moments later the ether chariot sprang to life, its gravitics carving a flickering gorge in spacetime, and within moments she was soaring above the blood-red sea. The sky above was a deep violet speckled with the twinkling light of the closest moons. The western horizon was dominated by Galed itself, a massive cerulean dome banded with wisps of white cirrus. A soft tone alerted her that the craft was approaching its first stop, and she looked northward to see a jagged gunmetal gray pyramid rising from the murky waters. The ether chariot slowed down as it neared the peak, and Trielle scrutinized the slopes to see if there were any signs of habitation. There were none, and Trielle soon moved on to the next mountain.
Several hours later Trielle gestured for the ether chariot to stop. With a weary sigh she sat back in the control chair, exhausted from the search. So far she had scrutinized less than a sixteenth of the mountain range, and was far from sure that she had not missed something crucial. Filled with a sudden, overwhelming sense of futility, Trielle gazed off into the distance at the seemingly endless ribbon of mountains. Then a curious feature caught her eye. While most had sheer, jagged peaks, one far-off mountain rose instead to a high, flat plateau. She did not know what to make of it, but after hours of work it seemed her first real lead. Reaching forward into the hologram, Trielle altered her ether chariot’s course and a few moments later was hovering high above the strange mountain.
The Sovereign Road Page 21