Phoenix in Shadow - eARC

by Ryk E. Spoor

  “They exist!” Wieran snapped. “They are things which are. And they are limited in that they cannot create or do anything without taking something in exchange. A sword must be swung with enough power to strike, a god must draw upon its resources to act, a psionic master must withstand the cost of drawing upon their power. Even magic, which can seem to create things from nothing, requires a source of magical power with which to do it.

  “Yet once...in the Beginning...there was true Nothingness, and from Nothingness Something came.” He looked around them, and Poplock felt a creeping sensation going up his body. “There, behind the essence of them all, above them all, is the key to true power, the power to make things be or not be without the demand to have something else not be or otherwise give up its essence to perform your bidding, the power to transcend all barriers of possibility—the power of Creation itself!”

  Oh, drought. He felt Tobimar’s shoulder tighten in shock.

  Wieran gestured to the now rapidly diminishing cloud of shimmering power. “Undirected godspower—freed of its constraints, no longer directed by a mind! The power of alchemy and symbolism, arrays of gemcalling, summoning circles, patterns of mind and memory written in spirit power! The power and patterns of two demonlords, recorded and adjusted to my desires!” Poplock saw Miri’s fists clench. “The concentration of mental energy and the will and spirit of hundreds, all focused within this array, constraining and guiding even godspower—and the array, focused upon me! When the channeling is complete I will perceive the fabric of all realities, and finally be able to rend it asunder to see the ultimate, and I will become that Ultimate! I will know ALL because all things will be as I envision them!”

  Insane was the first thought that came to mind, but Poplock realized that it didn’t matter. Wieran might well be mad, but he might also be right—and even if not, the powers he described, all focused into him, would then simply make him a mad god with the delusion that all creation was his to behold...and change.

  And then Hiriista spoke.

  “Well, then, I think we had best prevent that, hadn’t we?”

  Even as Master Wieran whirled and a blaze of light started from the surrounding mechanism, Hiriista, Magewright of Kaizatenzei, unleashed a mighty torrent of power against the secondary array on the far wall. Bolts of lighting, incandescent blazes of fire, hammerblows of the earth itself, the swirling implacability of water, all detonated against the array, driven by the spirit of the greatest magewright of Kaizatenzei, and the wall and ground cracked, splitting the pattern.

  Instantly Poplock felt a terrifying weight of darkness surge outward, a feeling of triumph and dark rage and hatred. “Guys...”

  “You fool! Do you know what you have done?”

  “Unleashed something you bound here, something bound for ages,” Hiriista said equably.

  The ground shuddered, and Poplock remembered the prior earthquake.

  Wieran glanced upward, but already the array was flickering, destabilizing. His head whipped around. “You. You played me. Me!”

  “You made it easy,” Poplock said.

  Wieran’s eyes went cold and calculating again. “The entire experiment is ruined, ruined at the last possible moment. I have no time to complete it. I will have to start over.” The look he gave them all—and that lingered on Poplock—was of such icy fury and hatred that Poplock found himself seized with an impulse to hide; Tobimar actually stepped back. “I shall not forget this. You have deprived me—deprived the world—of the greatest discovery in all the histories that have ever been.” He bent over the control consoles once more. “I will remember you,” Wieran said, and those four words were distilled, corrosive venom.

  The pearlescent wall flickered and vanished. Instantly Tobimar and Kyri lunged down the stairway, but Wieran stepped backwards, entering a spherical capsule barely five feet in diameter. The capsule sealed up behind him.

  “Not that easy!” Kyri shouted, even as the room shuddered again. Tobimar ran to assist her; from his shoulder, Poplock could get a look through a small window set in the capsule—

  Mudbubbles. “Don’t bother, guys. He’s not in there anymore.

  Hiriista gave a disgusted hiss. “Teleportation. Far-travel. He had even that contingency planned for as well.”

  “Worry about that later,” Tobimar said, a note of frustration and worry rising. “You said you unleashed something. Those earthquakes are it moving?”

  “I am afraid so. But it was the only thing I could do to interrupt Wieran; that secondary matrix was placed there long before the main Grand Array, obviously shortly after Wieran arrived, and its only function was to keep whatver-it-was caged up.”

  “No, no, you did the right thing,” Tobimar said. “But what—”

  Miri, who had been standing frozen ever since Hiriista’s action, finally spoke, in a voice so small and terrified it sounded utterly unlike her. “Sanamaveridion,” she whispered.

  “Sanama...who?”

  Kyri had gone pale. “Great Balance, no. It can’t be. But I know that language...”

  “Oh, yes, it can be,” Miri said, voice shaking. “Sanamaveridion, one of the greatest of the Elderwyrm, the Dark Dragons, the Shadows of the Sixteen.”

  Chapter 50

  Kyri felt as though the floor was not merely shaking, but had fallen away into an abyss of horror. “Elderwyrm? No, Miri, that can’t be, they’re legends, stories people tell to scare each other at night, they—”

  “I was THERE!” Miri snapped, tears starting from her eyes. “I saw him—Light forgive me, I guided him in the destruction of the Lords of the Sky!”

  That brought Kyri up short, and she looked at Miri, really looked at her, with the sight granted by Myrionar, and now that Miri was no longer hiding her nature could see the truth, the whirling confused mass of light and dark within the human shell. It sank in, really sank in, that Miri, the dynamic, diminuitive, beautiful Light of Kaizatenzei, was something ancient beyond easy understanding, something that had once been a Demon of the highest ranks.

  “We have no time for this!” Tobimar shouted, grabbing both their arms and pulling, dragging them with him. “If such a monster is rising, what do you think it will do to Valatar—to all of Kaizatenzei—if someone isn’t there to stop it?”

  She tore herself free. “Wait, Tobimar! We can’t! The people—”

  The Skysand Prince cast a tortured glance around the ranks and ranks of tubes, within which were sealed so many.

  “Leave them,” Hiriista snapped, heading for the doors. “They are preserved and maintained for the moment. If we cannot stop this new horror, all will die. We have neither time nor knowledge to release hundreds safely, nor do we know if they will be ready and able to flee even were we to succeed.”

  “Worry more about whether we’ll be running straight into the Guards,” Poplock said. “They were just on the other side of that door, you know.”

  Myrionar help these people, she prayed. They have been imprisoned for so long, do not let them be entombed. Then she nodded. “Ready.”

  “No,” Miri said, a hollow, tragic note in her voice. “No, you are not.”

  Then she set her jaw, and her armor glowed with blue power. “But we shall have to be. Kaizatenzei will not fall.”

  Hiriista pulled the bar from the door and cast it aside. Nothing immediately thrust the door open, so he and Tobimar pulled the portals wide, Kyri and Miri standing ready.

  Not entirely to Kyri’s surprise, there was no one there; a faint glow of light receding away showed that the Unity Guard were retreating, unwilling to risk the collapse of the underground. They’ll probably set up an ambush at the exit above ground, perhaps outside the Tower, or what’s left of it.

  “How long do we have?” Poplock asked. “Feels like the shocks are increasing.”

  “Minutes,” Miri said grimly. “With the seal weakened, the Dragon is throwing all his power against the remainder. This will weaken him, of course, in turn, but that will not matter much if h
e breaks free...and without Kalshae and the old Towers as resonance points I cannot reconstruct the trap I caught him in the first time.”

  “Ohhh,” Poplock said, looking impressed. “So you two got him to do some of the big dirty work, take down the major resistance of the Lords and wreck their cities, then used the Seven and One themselves as a trap against him. I’ll bet even Terian didn’t expect that.”

  They were sprinting up the stairs now, halfway up and rising. Miri gave a wry smile. “Oh, I’m sure he didn’t. If he had, it would not have been possible. But they had already placed the Towers in the pattern of his power, so when Sanamaveridion approached the Tower of the Sun, we were able to trigger Terian’s own strength in his own pattern to seal the Elderwyrm long enough for us to get our own bindings on him.”

  Another shock, this one strong enough to make them stagger, and cracks spiderwebbed the walls. “Balance, I don’t know if we’re going to make it.”

  “We have to. If a Dragon assaults the city without someone to stop it—”

  “The Unity Guard—”

  “Have not a chance in all the Hells of my Father,” Miri said bleakly. “They are strong, yes...but not as strong as Kalshae or I, nor as strong as either of you.” She glanced at Poplock, and for the first time since they entered Wieran’s laboratory, gave a genuine smile. “Perhaps as strong as you, Poplock. Or perhaps not.”

  “Fear me,” the little Toad said with an answering smile.

  “No sign of them yet,” Tobimar said as they reached the top of the stairs and headed for the next flight, the one leading to the throne room. “Where will they be?”

  “Outside the Tower,” Miri said decisively. “Without Kalshae or Wieran driving them, they’ll be more themselves, and won’t want to stay inside a collapsing building. Now that I think of it, they may even accept me again as commander; I don’t believe they will remember the sequence in which they were controlled.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Kyri said, letting a bit of hope rise.

  Now through the Valatar Throneroom, and another quake that shattered decorative crystal; Kyri went down, rolled back to her feet, reinforcing the power she had already called up. Myrionar, Justice will not be served at all if we fail to protect the innocent here!

  As they emerged from the Tower, they saw the Unity Guard—nearly all of them—gathered outside, staring at the fallen Tower and the surging, tumultuous lake whose waters were swirling and boiling like a pot about to boil over.

  “Light Miri!” The cry was filled with relief. Light Tanvol caught her up in a great bear-hug, then set her down as though afraid he had committed an impropriety. “What has happened?” he demanded, and the others Unity Guards crowded around. “We came to ourselves before a set of locked doors in the depths of the Tower, and the ground began shaking! Then we come out and see the Tower is fallen! What is happening? What are we to do?”

  Kyri saw Miri hesitating, and realized that the once-Demon didn’t know what to tell her allies.

  “We have been betrayed completely by Master Wieran,” Hiriista said, and the look of pure gratitude that Miri bestowed on the mazakh magewright could have lit the world. “Lady Shae fell in her attempt to stop him from stealing the power of the Great Light, and he had found ways of using even the Unity Guard to his ends. But now the dark monster he had imprisoned and used for his plans is about to emerge.”

  Brilliant. It fits everything they would know, what the townspeople will have seen, and leaves Miri trusted and loved.

  The ground heaved, and the lake bulged up, sending a wall of water twenty feet high thundering towards Sha Kaizatenzei Valatar.

  But the Unity Guard were gathered and had purpose once more; together eighty and more strong, they called on the powers given them and built a mystic wall, a shield that shuddered but held long enough, weakened the surge, so only a thin sheet of water rose to run swiftly through the streets of Valatar.

  “Go,” Miri said, her voice back in its accustomed confident tone. “We will face this threat. You must stand by to save the people, protect the city—for this will be a hard-fought battle indeed, and we will not be able to watch for all the consequences of our actions or those of our enemy.”

  The Guard began to disperse, but Tanvol and one of the other Lights hesitated. “But surely we could—”

  “Go! Surely you have suspected the Lady had given me my special place for a reason. This is a battle you cannot win—a battle you cannot even survive.”

  As Tanvol looked at her uncertainly, the earth reared up like a steed preparing to bolt. Screams and curses and the sounds of shattering stone and glass filled the air, even as the great lake beyond rose up in a mountainous moving mass of water that dwarfed the prior surge to insignificance.

  But it continued to rise, something within forcing the water upward on a scale so titanic that Kyri froze, momentarily unable to even comprehend what she was looking at. The far end of the peninsula split down the center, a yawning chasm into which water poured. The rising power split the mass of water with a roar that struck with a physical force, nearly felled her again, sending waves hundreds of feet high to left and right. Balance, the destruction that will cause around the Lake! How far will those monster waves go?

  But at the same time the water began to retreat, draining away to fill the space vacated by the impossibility that was rising from the lakebed. Water streamed in thundering cascades from glistening ebony and red scales the size of houses, and two blazing green eyes opened, glaring down at the cowering motes before it as bottom-mud and stone fell away as inconsequential as dust from a man’s boot. Farther back, halfway to the horizon, vast pinions surged from the roiling water, stretching out, out, casting shadows across land and water as though great banks of cloud had suddenly materialized, and with a mighty heave something the size of a mountain lunged skyward, and hung above them, floating unbelievably in the sky, casting the entire city and all about into black shadow as though night had replaced day.

  Sanamaveridion, the Elderwyrm, was free.

  Chapter 51

  Kyri stared in utter horror, unable to move. Too big. Too powerful. By the Balance, I’d heard stories, but they were just that, stories. The Dragons couldn’t be that immense, it was impossible.

  Nevertheless, it stretched above and before her, miles long, darkening the sky as though something had rent the bright blueness asunder and torn a strip half its width down the center of the heavens.

  “Now! We must act now, Kyri!”

  The voice brought her mind back to herself, unparalyzed her shaking limbs even as she heard the screams and panic behind her, and she looked down. “Act? Miri...Miri, what can we do?”

  “You are the Phoenix Justiciar of a GOD,” she said, and her eyes—no less terrified than Kyri felt—were at the same time filled with a frightening determination. “If you and I and Tobimar cannot do something, nothing can. He is stretching, taking this moment in pure pleasure of release, but that will end very soon and turn to rage.”

  Kyri drew Flamewing, felt a ludicrous comfort in its heft and strength, even though it was less than a thorn before the monster above them. “What do you...”

  “I will...distract him, at least for a while.” Her smile was wan. “I was after all one of those who imprisoned him, built this entire country around him, sure in the knowledge he would never be released.” Her tone said it’s all my fault as loudly as if she’d spoken the words. “He will be more than willing to give me his undivided attention. You must stop that wave, break it. I know you cannot get both sides of the lake, but at least one...”

  She almost protested again; even as they were receding at unfathomable speed those waves were nearly as huge as the Elderwyrm that had given them birth. But she knew she couldn’t afford the time. A minute, maybe two, and they’ll strike the shore on both sides. Nearby areas were already hit, no chance there.

  She nodded; then, as Miri started to turn, her back stiff, her eyes a bit too-bright, Kyri recognized the
truth.

  She doesn’t intend to survive. She’s going to do the best she can against that...monster, and she knows she’s going to die.

  Kyri stepped forward, not even sure what she should do—what she could do—to stop the girl who had been a Demonlord...and then she did know, after all.

  She grabbed Miri and planted a kiss of her own on the smaller woman’s perfect lips. As Miri’s eyes widened comically, Kyri gripped her by the shoulders. “You come back, you understand me? Because for all of what you’ve been...it’s Light Miri that I know, and it would hurt me—hurt us—to lose you.”

  Miri’s hand had come up to touch her lips as though she couldn’t believe what just happened; she looked around and saw Tobimar, Hiriista, and Poplock nodding agreement. And then her face lit up with a brilliant determination that buoyed up Kyri’s own spirits. “Then...somehow...we have to win!”

  Kyri smiled as Miri turned again and ran—not heavily, not as one going to a foredoomed end, but as Light Miri of Kaizatenzei, the irrepressible, ever-cheerful defender—towards her mountainous opponent. Then the Phoenix Justiciar closed her eyes and concentrated.

  Myrionar, what a test you have set before us now. But I believe in you. I feel the barrier between us is weakened now, in this moment, and I must ask you for all you can give. Somehow, let me be Justice and Mercy, let me shield those who sheltered us along our path, and then...and then I must help duel a Dragon.

  She could feel the golden-singing power in her, and she was right, that heaviness that had impeded her was weaker—but so was Myrionar; she knew the god was dying, it had told her so.

  So many in danger, Myrionar. I know I ask much, I ask so much, of you who are already so weakened—

  You ask nothing I would not wish for myself, answered the Voice she would never forget, so calm and cool, at once so familiar she felt she had heard it all her life, and yet so different she knew it was no one she had ever met. I give you all that I can...and I will show you the way.