by Phil Tucker
Asho gritted his teeth and forced himself to stand straight. "This is how you all feel when you cast magic?"
"No," said Alasha. "We are trained to stop casting long before we get as sick as you."
Asho nodded, thinking of bringing up how he had seen Agerastian Sin Casters hurling black fire and then keeling over at the battle where Lord Kyferin had fallen, and decided to hold his peace. "You speak Ennoian very well. Do all Agerastians?"
"No, hardly," said Alasha. It was clear she was pleased with the compliment. "I learned as a child in my uncle's palace. Before I manifested the talent for casting magic."
"Your uncle's palace?" Asho stopped walking and turned to regard her. "The emperor? You're the emperor's niece?"
Alasha nodded and took his arm, then moved him forward and out of the great hall. "I am. His bloodline has always shown a talent for magic. He claims we are descended from medusas, and perhaps we are. My mother, Ilina, is the al-Vothak, the leader of the... Sin Casters, as you say, in my uncle's absence."
Sweat was running down Asho's back. He wanted to lie back down, and was about to ask that they return to the hall when he saw his black sword propped up against one of the courtyard's slender trees. He immediately clenched his jaw. He wanted to turn away from the blade, but knew that he needed its strength. With Kethe gone, he needed it more than ever.
A memory came to mind. Mæva, desperate, reaching for him, eye wild. "She found me on the verge of death and made me an offer. I accepted. Because of her... I live."
Locking that memory away, Asho hobbled over to it, Alasha guiding him, and reached down and pulled the blade from its scabbard. This time the runes did not immediately catch fire, but rather smoldered a deep burgundy. For the first time that morning Asho drew a true deep breath, the cramps in his chest easing.
I am pleased that you survived, said the sword.
Yes, thought Asho. In part due to your help. Thank you.
He heard laughter echo in his mind. A bitter gratitude. No matter. You now know my worth.
"Asho?" Alasha was frowning at him, her head canted to one side as if she could almost hear their exchange.
I do, said Asho. Do you have a name?
I do not need one.
"Asho? Are you all right?"
Asho started and slid the sword back into the scabbard. It wasn't that his pain and illness had been healed; more that possessing the blade increased his tolerance for feeling sick. Made him stronger. He laboriously belted the blade at his hip. "I'm feeling better, thank you."
Alasha was studying the sword. "I've never seen or heard of the like. I meant to ask you about it. What is this blade?"
"To be honest, I'm not entirely sure. Audsley found it in the rooms below, just outside the Portal to Starkadr. Someone died escaping the mage's stonecloud with it in their hand."
Alasha nodded slowly. "Starkadr. I had but a glimpse. A terrifying place. Inhuman. I doubt anything good could come from such a place."
Asho looked down at his sword. "I'd be inclined to agree." He was seized suddenly by a desire to see the Portal. An urge, if not to say goodbye to Kethe, then at least to bear witness to where she had gone, and to the perils she would now face. "Excuse me, Alasha. I need a moment alone."
"Of course," said the woman stiffly. "But I had hoped to ask you questions about your bond to Kethe. About how she protected you."
"And I'll be happy to answer. But not just yet."
Alasha nodded, lips pursing into a narrow line, then turned to stride back into the great hall. Asho watched her go. She wasn't one to take rebuttals lightly, this imperial Alasha.
Putting her out of his mind, Asho entered the storage room and slowly descended the steps to the chambers below. He was shaking and covered in sweat by the time he reached the bottom, his gorge threatening to rise once more. The blade kept him on his feet however. He could feel it infusing him with a subtle strength.
Again a memory surfaced in his mind. The sound of Ashurina yowling, rising up to claim Mæva as she stabbed herself in the chest.
"Stop it," he whispered angrily. "This is different. I've not struck any deal."
Was that laughter he heard in the deep recesses of his mind?
He reached the bottom and wave of disappointment passed through him, and he nearly laughed at himself. Had he really expected the Portal to be standing open, a last chance for him to dart after Kethe into Aletheia? Instead it stood empty, dead. As useless to him as any empty archway.
Pushing off the wall, he approached the Portal and stood before it. Without Audsley, it would stand inert for another three weeks till its moon phase came back around, at which point it would open again to Starkadr. Without Audsley even that was a useless development. Nobody but the magister could divine which Portal to use from there or how to open it.
I can instruct you on how to open the Portal, Asho. You need but repeat the name of the demon bound within it.
"You know that name?" Asho's didn't bother trying to hide his shock, didn't care that he was speaking aloud. "And that of those within Starkadr?"
I do.
Excitement washed through him. A heady, dark impetuousness. "Do so."
Say this name exactly as I pronounce it: Akressat M'chazk.
Asho tried, and found himself coughing. The sounds, sibilant and awful in his mind, tortured his throat for some reason when he tried to speak them.
The name carries power. Voicing it is a command, and requires a strong will. Few can do so.
"Akressat M'chazk," said Asho, his voice shaking badly.
The Portal immediately flooded with undulating blackness, and Asho stepped back, at once afraid and stunned. He had done it.
"Can you open a Portal to Aletheia?" he asked nervously.
From within Starkadr, I can. Pass through. I will show you.
It was madness. Rank madness. But Asho didn't stop to think. He felt again that desire to throw himself headlong into danger, that same urge that had made him sprint into the demon lord's chamber. He saw Kethe's face as she fell, her vitality snuffed out, her body limp in his arms. Kethe. He would find her. He strode through the Portal, and for the first time entered the massive hall of Starkadr.
The air there was chill, and as Asho stumbled and tried to take in the scope of the space he'd entered, he found that he'd drawn the blade. Its runes were fiery, and as he turned it from one side to another, the sword left streaks of fire behind it.
"This is Starkadr?" He'd never imagined it would look like this. He craned his head back to take in the huge pillar of Portals, then, heart pounding, stomach stewing, he looked out over the ground fog and saw the countless corpses lying slumped within it.
Welcome to Starkadr, master. Would you go to Aletheia now?
"I - yes. I mean. Wait."
What was he doing? The nausea and pain was there, but now it was hidden behind a wall of force. A wall of strength. He was drawing more strongly from the blade. Had been doing for some time now without realizing it.
And now that he was here, surrounded by the alien vastness of Starkadr, he felt doubt trickling into him. What was he going to do in Aletheia? He'd be immediately stopped and questioned as to his business. The fact that he was carrying a sword would lead to his arrest. A Bythian with a weapon? In Aletheia? He felt his weak hope and feverish determination collapse under the weight of reality.
"No. No, I can't. I wouldn't be able to help her. I'd just make things worse."
There is a way, said the blade. If you love her enough.
Asho stared down at the sword. "What are you talking about?"
There is a force within Starkadr that, if unleashed, could challenge even the lofty heights of Aletheia. You could lead that force. You could storm Aletheia's Portals and wash aside all resistance. Crush all who dared oppose you.
Asho wanted to drop the sword, but was afraid that it would continue speaking to him even from the floor – afraid that he might find that he could no longer silence that voice.
"A force? What are you talking about?"
Do you trust the Aletheians? The Virtues and their Grace? Do you trust them to care for Kethe?
"No," whispered Asho.
Then take matters into your own hands. My kind can heal. A rough healing, it is true, but we could return Kethe to herself. Draw her back from the White Gate's embrace. Untouched, unharmed, alive and well. Let me show you how, Asho. There is one below, akin to a god, who would be grateful for your assistance. Free him. He will save Kethe. I swear this to you.
Asho's pulse was pounding in his ears. His legs were shaking. My kind. A demon, then.
Think on it, master. This war you are beginning. The allies you are choosing. It can only culminate in either your death or the end of the empire. But we can help. We can end this war tonight. We can sweep away all resistance. We can open the Portals to every corner of this world and flood it with our might. Lady Kyferin can return to her castle. You can return with her to wed Kethe and be the lord of all you see. A different lord, one wise to the ways of the world, one who understands both the high and low places. A just ruler. Fair and compassionate. You will wield your power in such a way that -
Asho slammed the blade into the scabbard. "No," he growled. One word, absolute, that rang out into the dark vastness of Starkadr.
The sword went still. He stared at it, panting for breath, then collapsed to his knees and retched. For aching minutes he simply gagged and writhed as his body fought the sudden onslaught of nausea and exhaustion. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the cool stone floor.
No.
The voice, when it came, was so quiet as to be almost inaudible within the confines of his mind. Never?
Asho went to swear never, then stopped. He was all alone. Alone with this demon, this blade, this source of strength and sure damnation. Who knew what ends might come to pass? Into what corners they might be driven?
He thought of freeing the Bythians. Tearing down the Ennoian warlords. Killing the Aletheians. Remaking the world as he saw fit.
Never?
With a groan, Asho rose to his feet. He knew he should discard the blade, toss it into the deepest abyss. And yet. They needed it. He needed it. He had to return to Lady Kyferin and tell her about his newfound ability to open the Portals. He had to help her begin planning the next steps, devise a strategy to mine the Gate Stone and cement their alliance with the Agerastians. There was much to do.
Mæva's voice came to him, steeped in regret and sorrow. "I was so young. When the moment came, I realized that I didn't want to die. I thought I needed Ashurina, no matter the cost."
Asho grimaced and brusquely wiped the sweat from his brow. This was different. By the Black Gate this was different.
"Akressat M'chazk," said Asho, and the Portal rippled back to life. He stared at the liquid surface and felt a shiver of excitement mixed with dread. I can open Portals, he thought. I can go where I will.
He took a deep breath, placed his hand on the sword's hilt, and stepped back through into Mythgræfen.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
From then on, Tharok seemed to dwell in in the half-light of twilight and dawn. It was Kyrrasthasa's preferred time for movement, when objects seemed to lose their definite nature and become subtle and bleed into each other, their colors leaching to grey, when the hour was magical and filled with the potential incumbent in all boundaries.
Often he would stalk forward alone, making his way ever higher into the peaks, filled with a restless, yearning energy that seemed to buoy him on long after he thought his muscles should have burned and failed him. Something of Kyrra's gift, he thought: the medusa's kiss, lending him strength.
Of the medusa he saw relatively little. He had thought to engage her in long conversations as they traveled, to ask her of the legends and lore that surely her millennial life span had made her privy to, but she was rarely by his side. Instead, she coursed far afield, moving much faster than he was able to, hunting no doubt, perhaps building up her strength. Occasionally he would catch sight of her in the gloaming or pre-dawn light, a smear of lurid crimson and dangerous yellow, strangely brilliant in contrast to the paled world, as if her scaled hide glowed and glimmered with a light all its own.
By steady but slow degrees, Tharok ascended. He moved out of the Wyvern's Hide, leaving those badlands of gulches and canyons, serrated ridges and broken cliffs, and climbed into the grim and bare sloped peaks of the Cloud Raker mountains to the east of the perilous Five Peaks, which arose to even greater heights. Once again he found himself leaving the tree line altogether, his boots finding purchase on loose shale and broken rock.
Crouching down, he took up different stones and held them up to the faint light so that their metallic hues shone with subtle iridescence. Viridian green, cobalt blue, rock shot through with the rust red of the bones of the mountain. The cliffs here were layered; the different strata of rock lay sensuously upon each other in an almost organic way, undulating with the movement of the ages. He understood now how these cliffs had been formed, the gentle and achingly slow action that had accumulated silt and hardened it into rock. Ages beyond his ken. He considered the strange cliffs, saw in them the history of the world, shook his head and moved on.
Three days out, he knew that not too far to his west the Red River and Crokuk would have arrived at the Dragon's Tear. They would have ringed those still and deadly waters with their tents and issued forth the call for a Grand Convocation. That even now Nakrok would be solidifying his control over the Red River, having no doubt partnered with some ambitious highland kragh to take control. Tharok mused over Maur's fate, and Nok's. Shaya was no doubt being held secure, the great prize that would propel Nakrok to victory. He allowed these thoughts to fuel him, to power him forward as the air grew thinner, as it became ever harder to fill his lungs, as the slopes grew so precipitous that it seemed at times that he was not walking but rather climbing endless ladders of stone that only he could see embedded in the cliff faces.
Tharok moved without fear. He saw nothing to threaten his ascent. Kyrra's presence cleared the immediate slopes of all life, the animals fleeing long before he could cross their paths. Only the distant and circling specks that were the wyverns high overhead kept him company, their lonely and desolate cries echoing down to him on occasion as they searched for mountain goats and lonely kragh.
Each night Tharok built a fire and lay gazing at the flames. He found that the combination of the circlet's power and the medusa's kiss was a potent poison mingling in his spirit, and that by losing himself in the flickering fire he could almost sever his mind's connection to his body and travel the long and fevered roads of time. Strange visions came to haunt him: sights seen by other eyes, by kragh long dead and others who had worn the circlet in their own time. He found that he could sink into these reveries, that he could allow his thoughts to drift, and then would come disorienting and alluring visions. Dreams of other times, of other conquerors leading masses into battle, their war cries sounding so real that they seemed to echo from the cliffs around him. He saw blood smeared over bronze axes, tents aflame, endless butchery. A floating island of black stone with vast and echoing halls. Entire human populations fleeing him across cracked and empty plains, women and children and men.
Curling and coiling throughout these dreams of violence and ascension were sensations even more primordial. At times he visited dark cavernous places where mighty serpentine bodies as large as the greatest trees stirred languorously, and the air was filled with the sound of sibilant hissing. He saw great scales, each as large as his hand, and massive coils as muscular and powerful as the roots of the world. Those visions held a sense of antiquity far greater than those afforded him by the circlet. There was a language in his mind that he could almost understand, a sense of hunger, of need. Small beings worshipping, praying and screaming as they were taken up and given the favor of eternity.
During these times Kyrra would join him, her lithe and powerful body slipping out of
the night to curl about the fire, infinitely more fiery and incandescent in her vermillion and cadmium yellows than the fire itself, so that it seemed a greater ring of flame circled the fire itself. She would gaze at him then, her eyes gleaming like the most entrancing of stars, and he would lie there, his own eyes half-lidded, and would sink and find oblivion in the depths of her gaze.
Finally, at dawn on the fourth day, Tharok stopped halfway along a ledge that curled out around the face of a cliff. Above and below him reared and dropped the heights, the ledge itself but an arm-span wide – but here, on this desolate spot, so high that below him vultures wheeled, he sensed the presence of trolls. He had not known how he would find them, had not known if he would locate them or they would announce their presence by hunting him, but as he stood in the early dawn light, he felt brush against his mind a vast and ponderous presence, as if the very rock of the mountain had shifted and was seeking a more comfortable position. It was the same sense of lethargy and might that he had touched for a moment when he faced down Grax.
Tharok stood still and pushed his mind outward, but the wisp of thought was gone. Frowning, moving carefully now, he proceeded, rounding the cliff face, hugging it where the ledge grew close, until it finally fanned out and opened into a small meadow of broken stones that were covered with a riot of lichen. He scrambled up these boulders, gained a path cleaved between two vast rock faces, and ascended it to the plateau above. Around him the wind whistled and called out in a lonesome manner, and the air was bitingly fresh, tinctured with the tang of mineral and clean stone.
A rock the size of his head exploded into jagged splinters barely a hand from where he was climbing, the sound a sharp and violent crack in that clear air. Tharok immediately ducked down behind a large and opportune boulder and resisted the urge to peer up and over to find his attacker. Instead, he cracked his knuckles, took a deep breath, and focused.