Zilok’s eyes flared around the room, igniting the shadows with crimson light. The Godgate’s power radiated from him. He had succeeded! He swelled to bursting with the essence of creation, change, and destruction.
With so much inside him, he felt the threads all around him, as though there was no stone in the walls, no creaking wood in the floorboards, no flesh in the Sunrider or Sef. They were all bundles of threads that desperately wanted to soak up the GodSpill he held, and he knew that if he didn’t control it, he would lose it all.
Zilok envisioned himself as an impervious vessel, held together by will and singular purpose. He reveled in his divine strength, then gave direction to the forces he had marshalled. He moved to the scrying pool. The Wildmane was a three-inch figure on the surface. He battled a horde of darklings within Ethiel’s crimson throne room.
Zilok pointed at the Wildmane’s lock of golden hair on the table. It floated into the air, and the Sunrider’s dagger rose with it. He focused on the Wildmane, bringing all of his power to bear. In his mind, he took himself to that location, imagining himself standing right next to the Wildmane as he sliced through darkling after darkling.
“Tell me again, my friend,” he said to Medophae. “Just how sorry you are.”
Zilok unleashed his spell.
54
Mirolah
Ethiel vanished through the wall, and Mirolah chased her, but just before she left the room, she turned. With a gesture, she caused her body to float upward, and made it hover near the domed ceiling, out of reach of the physical threads below. What good would it do to fight Ethiel if she left her body behind to be killed by Kikirian or the darklings?
She turned and pursued Ethiel, like a ghost, through the wall. There could be only one place the Red Weaver was going. Ethiel had been cut off from the Fountain. She had to restore her connection to have any chance of fighting Mirolah.
Mirolah plunged down through the red walls and floors, past the sandstone and into the dark rock. She entered the room that held the bulbous core of the Fountain and pulled up short. Ethiel was hastily threadweaving, pulling energy from the Fountain to lash her parasitic connections back in place, to repair the destruction Mirolah had wrought.
With a deft twist of the threads, Mirolah undid Ethiel’s work again. Ethiel whirled around, the vaguely humanoid cloud bunched and ugly. A face formed in the middle of it, all teeth and hatred.
Ethiel turned and leapt into one of the cracks, directly into the Fountain’s bulb, vanishing into the swirling, churning maelstrom of pure GodSpill.
Mirolah stopped, aghast. She moved forward carefully, then shied away. That was insanity! How had Ethiel done it? There were no threads in that heaving storm. It was pure, raw GodSpill. If the slightest sip made Mirolah feel invincible, stepping into a storm of it would destroy her, wash away her identity like a droplet hit by a bucket of water.
But if Ethiel had found a way to overcome the sheer, overwhelming power... If she had found a way to master it, then she’d be far more powerful than Mirolah could fight.
If I hesitate, I lose. If I let her go, she’ll return stronger than ever. She underestimated me once. She won’t do it twice. I have to end this now.
Mirolah paused an excruciating moment longer. For the dozenth time in the same amount of days, she faced her own death. She wished she could run away. She thought of Fillen, of the darkling that had gutted her. Mirolah had run then, and her sister had died. She thought of Medophae far above, fighting Kikirian and the darklings. If Mirolah didn’t defeat Ethiel, what would stop her from enthralling him again?
She wasn’t that girl anymore, to hide from the unknown, to run from her fears. She wasn’t, and she never would be again.
Mirolah braced herself and jumped into the Fountain’s core.
55
Medophae
Medophae’s rage seared him. He could feel its heat on the back of his eyes, in the soft skin between the fingers of his fist. He was lost in the throes of battle rage. His rational mind was nothing more than an impartial observer. Rather than using his eyes to see, or his ears to hear, his entire body was a receptor. Darklings leapt at him from the front and from behind, and somehow Medophae felt them all coming. He met their charge with fist or sword, crushing and cutting and kicking and ripping. Oedandus roared in approval, revealing in the destruction of Dervon’s children.
Medophae showed no mercy. In Denema’s Valley, he had been hampered by the need to protect the others. But here, everyone was an enemy. He slashed with wild abandon. He did not care where the godsword struck, as long as it struck something.
Kikirian stood back, probably waiting for the lesser darklings to wear Medophae down. But with every wound they inflicted upon him, he grew stronger. Oedandus crackled in fury about him. The darklings slashed his arms with their claws, but the wounds closed before the claws left his skin.
When thirty darklings had been reduced to a dozen, Kikirian seemed to realize his mistake and waded into the fray.
Medophae side-stepped. Kikirian’s gauntleted fists smashed into the red marble. Huge cracks raced away from the impact. Medophae grabbed the throat of a darkling that leapt on him and bit his head. He snapped its neck with a twist and swept his sword through the bellies of two more.
Kikirian lunged. Medophae jumped straight up and delivered a thunderous kick to the side of the dramath’s head. The dramath crashed to the floor.
As Medophae landed, a darkling jumped on his back and raked its claws across his throat. The godsword disappeared as he ripped the darkling away, slamming it down. His sword flared back, and he cleaved the darkling in two. Another leapt onto his arm, grabbing with fore claws and hind claws. Medophae turned and used the darkling as a shield as two others came on. They ripped into their fellow without thinking. He skewered them both.
Kikirian and two darklings rose up before him. Again, Kikirian swung. Medophae tucked and rolled underneath the huge fist. He came up behind Kikirian, and the dramath stumbled, off balance. A darkling slashed Medophae’s thigh, and he sliced its head off with his sword. He reversed the stroke and swept the godsword across the small of Kikirian’s back.
But the giant dramath was quick for his size. He twisted out of the way, taking only a minor cut, but he roared as if he had been sliced in two. Oedandus’s golden light was like a burning poison to Kikirian and every child of Dervon.
The three remaining darklings came at him, and Medophae cut them down like wheat stalks. Kikirian watched with hateful eyes, holding his side and keeping his distance.
“You lose, dramath,” Medophae growled.
They circled each other.
“Your pets are gone, dramath,” Medophae said. “Your mistress has abandoned you, and death looks you in the face,” he said.
“There are future battles, godslayer. Other battlefields,” Kikirian rumbled.
“Not for you.” Medophae strode forward.
Kikirian backed off, sneering, then he stood tall and closed his eyes. An inky aura surrounded him.
Medophae roared and attacked, but Kikirian vanished in an inky cloud.
Medophae cursed. That was how Kikirian had escaped the first time they met. Medophae looked around the throne room. Only he and Mirolah remained, and she hovered forty feet in the air as though she were in a deep sleep.
Medophae tried to piece together what had happened, but the last thing he could remember was Kikirian striking him on the head. After that, he had apparently relived the past, when Bands had still been with him.
As always, Ethiel struck him in his weakest spot. She created his fantasy, held him in it like a prison. Even now, a part of him wanted to return to the illusion, to pretend that was still his life.
He shook his head. He needed to find Ethiel, needed to help Mirolah. No doubt the two threadweavers had entered into some battle he could not see, but Mirolah couldn’t beat Ethiel. She was brave to try, but Ethiel had killed far more experienced threadweavers. By the gods, Ethiel had somehow
captured a dragon and Tarithalius. Even Medophae didn’t fully understand her powers or—
A cool wind blew through him. Not across his skin, not through his hair, but through the center of his soul. He gasped and spun around. There was no one. A calm voice rose in the silent air, barely audible, but he recognized it. He could never forget that voice.
“Now you can tell me again, my friend, just how sorry you are.”
“Zilok!” Medophae yelled. Where was he? Where was that feral rat? He spun, trying to find the undead spirit.
The cool wind turned icy, and Medophae’s chest constricted. He gritted his teeth and struggled to draw a breath. This was an attack. Zilok had risen, just as Ethiel had. Was this a concerted effort? Why only show up now?
Zilok picked up the lock of hair and the dagger. Looping the hair around the blade, he gave one quick slash.
“Sever.”
The icy wind became a knife, cutting through his organs, scraping against the backside of his ribs. Medophae screamed and crashed to his knees. The knife slashed over and over, racing throughout his chest and belly, gutting him like a fish.
Medophae tried to stand, but his legs were jelly. The knife slashed and slashed. It felt like the cold blade was separating all of Medophae’s organs from his bones. He roared through the pain, swinging the godsword left and right, trying to catch Zilok’s weaving, but he fell forward onto his hands.
The godsword flickered and died.
He stared at his right fist. Weakness swept through him as golden fire receded up his arm, then vanished. He fell to his side.
Zilok pulled the lockmouth from its bowl, ripping its lips off of the side. He brought the dagger to the fish’s neck and slashed. The body fell away and the head remained, suspended in the air, sucking spasmodically.
“Bring.”
There was a vicious yank, and everything the cold knife had severed ripped away. Medophae looked down at what he was sure would be a gaping hole in his chest, but there was no blood. There was no wound. His flesh was smooth and unhurt.
He flopped to his back, struggled to lift his arm. He commanded the godsword to return.
Nothing happened.
“Oedandus,” Medophae growled. He felt the rage inside him, the injustice of Zilok’s attack, but it was fatigued. The dark voice was silent.
Medophae’s vision swam and his arm fell. His eyelids drooped, and his head clunked against the red marble.
“It’s not possible,” he whispered.
As he spiraled into unconsciousness, he heard Zilok’s voice.
“The possibilities are just beginning, old friend.”
56
Mirolah
From the first moment she plunged into the Fountain’s core, Mirolah was a ship tossed by fifty-foot waves. She screamed, reaching out to protect herself, to create a shell of threads around her, but her construct disappeared like a cup of water thrown into the ocean. There were no threads here. The raw GodSpill speared through her, eating her threads. Her very essence lay within those threads, everything she had ever done, everything she had ever felt. The GodSpill washed through her, washed her away.
It stole her memories. Her first kiss with Bylan the cobbler’s son vanished. She lost her brother Dorn’s laughter. It stole her mother’s face. The night her brother died. Coming to Lawdon and Tiffienne’s house. Her adopted sisters. Fillen’s death. Orem’s laughing stone. Seeing a quicksilver flash through the magistrate’s prison. Meeting Medophae. Soon, there would be nothing.
“No,” she screamed. She flailed as piece after piece of her washed away. She barely had enough of her own identity to resist, to even care she was being torn apart.
Resist...
An idea rose within her, and she clung to it with sheer desperation. It was a memory of Orem and one of his endearing “mentor” speeches at Denema’s Valley:
“I have plenty of power, Orem,” Mirolah said. “Two weeks ago, I couldn’t raise a pot. Today I transformed a boulder into a table. What will I be able to do a month from now?”
“It’s impressive, yes. But remember being the most powerful doesn’t mean you’ll succeed,” he had said after her transformation of the boulder. “You have the giant’s confidence. The giant is the biggest and the strongest, able to hurl humans through the air, nearly impervious to their attacks. But strength comes in many sizes. The giant will believe he is the strongest until a quicksilver cuts his hamstring, his wrist, and his throat before he can raise a hand.”
She quieted at that. “But threadweaving is different. I could stop Stavark before he could ever reach me.”
“Stavark is to you what a normal human is to the giant. But what of another threadweaver? What of some other entity you can’t imagine now? What happens when you find yourself overmatched by something you don’t understand?”
She sighed. She had just turned a boulder to a table, and neither Medophae nor Orem had anything good to say to her. She threw up her hands. “Well then I’ll die, I guess.”
“Wonderful,” he said sarcastically. “That’s the spirit. That’s the attitude that will restore the GodSpill to the lands.”
“Well, you give me no choice,” she blasted back at him. “You drive me into a corner, then blame me for being there.”
“But there is a choice. That’s what I’m trying to show you.”
“What choice?”
“Surrender.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No. You said you would die.”
“There’s no difference!”
“Imagine swimming against a powerful river,” Orem said. “It won’t stop, but eventually you’ll have to. If you fight until you exhaust yourself, you’ll sink and drown. But if you surrender to the current and let it take you downstream, you may survive. You could find a rock to grab, or an eddy that will allow you to reach the shore. Then possibilities open up again. Power versus power is the most basic strategy in a conflict. Sometimes you must lose a battle to win a war. Sometimes surrender is essential to a victory.”
But Orem was wrong. He had to be. The Fountain wasn’t some river, powerful but knowable. If she surrendered, she would cease to be. There was no shore to reach. How could she willingly make that choice?
“...if you surrender to the current and let it take you downstream, you may survive...possibilities open up again...”
The Fountain tore at her. She lost the memory of her father, then she lost her foster father, Lawdon, and then Tiffienne.
No.
She spent one last, desperate moment in agony...
...and then stopped fighting.
She dissolved. Mirolah ceased to be, flowing into the churning ocean of GodSpill. Her memories scattered and were gone. She had never had any adopted sisters. Orem and Medophae and Stavark were just the names of mortals. She was not a scribe nor a threadweaver. Her dreams vanished, too. No little children in her future. No husband. Even her own name flowed away. She wasn’t Mirolah. She was only the GodSpill, the pure power of creation that had soaked the lands of Amarion for thousands of years, then been trapped away here. She longed to return to the lands. She had changed them irrevocably, but the lands had changed her, too, left an impression on her that she could not forget. The lands needed her, and she needed them.
She spun and twisted, crashed and raged and beseeched and wept. She was immense, unfathomable, and yet she had been contained. She did not belong here; she belonged in the threads of Amarion. Death spread throughout the lands in her absence. They were so dry and fragile. She longed to return, had fought her prison for so long to return.
She rushed against the walls of her prison. They had weakened over the long centuries. She had almost cracked them open, but they had been reinforced. Someone had created maddening funnels that allowed only a little of her to escape, only a little at a time...
I can do something...
A voice whispered within her vastness. She could barely hear it. She suddenly realized it had been speaking for a l
ong time.
I can do something...
Who are you?
I am one within you. If you help me, I can help you.
The voice was so quiet, an airless whisper caught within the roar of an ocean.
I know who reinforced your prison. I can undo what was done. I can set you free. I came to set you free.
Never before had a voice spoken within her. She was creation incarnate, the essence of change. She had no voice.
Help me help you...
She raged and twisted, threw herself against the impassive walls. Centuries of struggle. She must keep trying. She must overcome these reinforcements.
The voice whispered over and over: I can help you. I can help you. I can help you.
Who are you?
I am Mirolah....
57
Ethiel
Ethiel slowly reformed herself and smiled at the crack in the Fountain’s core where the young threadweaver had entered, believing she was following Ethiel. In truth, Ethiel had made herself so diffuse so quickly that Mirolah had been fooled into thinking she had dived into the Fountain.
Novice. But jumping into that churning GodSpill was certain death. It would dissolve her, and if the girl had any experience at all, she would have known that.
Still, it had spooked Ethiel how Mirolah had become so powerful so quickly. She should never have needed to resort to a trick to best the girl. In the throne room, the little bitch had thread woven something that Ethiel still could not understand. At first, Ethiel thought that Mirolah had somehow displaced space, removed her threads from Kikirian’s grip to reform halfway across the room. But there had been no indication of that, which left only one possibility. The girl had stopped time. That was something even Ethiel herself had not mastered. That was truly frightening, and Ethiel had to admit to herself, at the very least, that it had caused her to panic.
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