by Mark Anthony
“Lir,” he said through clenched teeth.
A faint glow hovered on the air, then dissipated like fog. The rune was feeble; he was too tired. He slipped his hand inside his pocket. It was empty.
“Get him,” snapped a male voice.
Hands shot into the circle of light, groping for Travis's throat. He twisted away from them—then his heart ceased to beat. Ten feet away, lying on the floor in the center of another bright circle, was the iron box that contained Sinfathisar and Krondisar. It was shut.
Travis started to crawl toward the box, but fingers closed around his ankles, yanking him back.
“I've got him.” A woman's voice, shrill and hard. “Tie him up, and gag him, too. This one's words are dangerous.”
Travis looked up, over his shoulder. A figure stepped into the light above him—a man in a blue suit. On the street he might have been unremarkable: just another businessman heading to the office. Except the suit was disheveled, and his close-cropped hair greasy. In his hands was an electrical cord.
“The Pale Ones were right. They said you were here, that you'd try for the gate. They'll be along in a minute. In the meantime, we can have a little fun together.”
Panic shredded Travis's heart. He kicked and bucked against the hands that held him, but they gripped his legs with unnatural strength. The man grinned, pulled the cord taut, and bent over Travis.
“Dur!”
Travis shouted the word, but it was no use without the touch of the Stones. He had no energy of his own left. The man grimaced, staggering for a moment, then his face twisted in rage.
“No more tricks,” he hissed, and pressed the cord against Travis's neck.
Sparks exploded before Travis's eyes. He clawed at the cord, but he couldn't get his fingers underneath it. A buzzing filled his head.
“Don't kill him, you idiot!” the woman said. “The Master wants this one alive.”
“Shut your trap. I'm not going to damage him. At least not permanently. I just want to try a few experiments before—”
His words ceased as his head abruptly turned to one side. The pop of bones breaking echoed off hard tiles. The man slumped to the floor next to Travis. His arms flopped against the tiles, then went still.
A shriek of outrage cut through the darkness. The hands holding Travis's legs let go. He saw the woman as she entered the circle of light. She was short and dumpy, dressed in a bag lady's shabby clothes. Her long gray hair was snarled, and her yellowed teeth were bared in an expression of hate. However, it was not Travis she was looking at.
The darkness rippled, unfolded. A lithe form clad all in black stepped through.
Vani stood with her hands on her hips, her gold eyes shining in the dimness. The ironheart curled her hands into claws and lunged, but the assassin didn't move. Fear stabbed at Travis. Wasn't Vani going to fight?
Something flashed out of the darkness. The bag lady's head tilted at an odd angle, then fell to the floor with a thud. Her body collapsed into a heap like a pile of rags. Beltan stepped into the light, an axe in his hands, its edge wet with blood.
He knelt beside Travis, concern in his green eyes. “Are you all right?”
“I think so.” Travis sat up. There was a hot line across his throat, and his side and shoulder ached. Blood trickled from a scratch on his hand, but that was all. He eyed the axe. “Where did you get that?”
“It was in a glass box in the wall.” Beltan grinned. “The sign said it was for use in an emergency. I think this qualifies.”
“Can you stand?” Vani said.
She helped Travis to his feet with strong hands. The iron box still lay where it had fallen. He retrieved it.
“Not that I'm complaining or anything, but how did you two find me?”
Vani turned her gold eyes on Beltan.
“I got lucky,” the blond man said with a shrug.
“I would hardly call it luck. You made not a single misturn.” Vani looked at Travis. “He knew right where to find you. Just as he knew you were in danger.”
Beltan looked away and said nothing, but Travis understood. It was the fairy blood with which Duratek had infused Beltan. Sometimes he knew things it seemed impossible he should know.
“There were guards at the top of the stairs,” Travis said. “She was going to hold them back. Jace.”
Vani raised an eyebrow. “You mean the female guard? We found her dead, along with the other three.”
Travis shut his eyes. He didn't know if he could believe Jace and Max were together at last, but he wanted to with his entire being.
Vani sucked in a breath, and Travis opened his eyes.
“Do you hear it?” the T'gol said.
Beltan nodded, his face grim. “They're coming. Ironhearts. And there's another with them.”
A metallic buzz drifted on the air. Silver light oozed like fog from the stairwell, into the corridor.
“A wraithling,” Travis breathed. He gripped the iron box.
Beltan laid a hand on his shoulder. “We know what you came down here to do, Travis. Deirdre told us on the speaking device. You have to go.”
Travis felt sick. “I can't leave you. I can stop them with the Stones.”
“That would only draw more of the Pale Ones to you,” Vani said, standing beside Beltan. “We can hold them back while you go to the gate. You must destroy it. From all we have seen, they have created an army of ironhearts in this place. They must never be allowed to reach Eldh.”
No, Travis couldn't leave them. How could he, if he truly loved them both?
Beltan hesitated, then touched Travis's cheek. “They want you to stay and fight, I can sense it. They want to keep you from the gate as long as possible, to give more wraithlings time to come—more than even you can stop. Don't give them what they want.” He grinned. “Besides, we'll be fine.”
In that moment Travis knew the answer to his question. If he loved them both, he had to leave them. Because if he didn't destroy the gate, there was no hope for them. For any of them.
Despair hardened into resolve. “The artifact of Morindu,” he said, turning toward Vani. “Do you have it?”
She handed him the onyx tetrahedron, then glanced over her shoulder. Shadows moved down the corridor.
“What are you doing, Travis?”
He removed the top of the artifact and pressed his hand against it. Blood oozed from the scratch into the reservoir within the artifact. When it was full he replaced the top.
“Hold them off as long as you can, then get out of here. If I'm right, this whole place is going to go.” He pushed the artifact into Vani's hands and met her eyes. “Promise me you'll use it. That you'll both use it.”
Vani nodded. “We promise.”
“Now, Travis.” Beltan gripped the axe in big hands. “Get out of here.”
Travis hesitated. There was so much more he wanted to say, so much more he wanted to tell them.
Silver light poured from the stairwell. Travis turned and fled down the corridor.
After fifty yards the passage turned. At the corner was a guard station with a bank of closed-circuit television screens. There were no guards in sight.
One of the screens showed a shot of the audience in the Steel Cathedral. The volume was turned down, but even if it wasn't, Travis knew no sound would have come from the TV. The audience stared, mouths open, horror written across the faces. The screen next to it showed a shot of the stage. Sage Carson stood motionless, arms spread wide in a gesture of supplication, eyes cast upward. Playing on the gigantic screen behind him was the videotape of Anna Ferraro's interview with Dr. Larsen. A pair of security guards huddled over the podium on the left side of the stage, frantically jabbing at buttons, but to no effect. Carson must have jammed it.
Travis grinned at the televisions, then he ran on.
He was halfway down the corridor when crimson lights flashed and the wail of an alarm pierced the air. At first he thought he had triggered some sensor, then an electronic voice droned out
of loudspeakers in the ceilings.
“This is an emergency. Please follow the illuminated signs to the nearest exit. This is an emergency. . . .”
The Seekers had done it; they had pulled the alarms. Travis ran on. The corridor ended in a pair of double doors. He gripped the Stones in one hand and held the other hand before him.
Urath!
He didn't even speak the word. With a thought, the doors blew off their hinges and clattered to the floor. He walked over them, into the space beyond. The chamber was large and domed, like an astronomical observatory. Banks of computers lined the walls. In the center was a raised platform, and on the platform was the gate.
It was simple and beautiful—a parabola fashioned of dark metal jutting up from the platform, about twelve feet high and four feet wide. Plastic tubes wrapped around the arc of metal; clear fluid bubbled in them. With his eyes, Travis traced the tubes back. They originated in a tank at the edge of the platform.
He approached the gate, casting his gaze back and forth, the Stones gripped in his hand. He expected the darkness to explode in rage and fury at any second, but the room was empty. The computers blinked, performing unknown calculations. The red lights of the alarm played across the walls, but he heard the siren only from a distance, through the broken doors.
Where are they, Travis? Where are all the scientists?
Gone. They had finished their work; the gate was ready. All they needed was blood of power to fuel it, and they were frantically trying to synthesize it even now.
And what about the guards?
He understood that as well. They had cleared out on purpose; they had let him reach the gate. There were no doors here. They believed they had trapped him. Only there was still one way out.
Travis raised his hand. The scratch had crusted over with dried blood, but he could open it again. There was no way Duratek could know what ran in his veins. The blood of the god-king Orú. Blood of power.
Travis stepped onto the platform and moved to the tank. It was made of Plexiglas; clear fluid bubbled within. On top of the tank was a plastic vial with a cap. It looked as if the vial could be filled, then pushed down into the tank. He removed the cap from the vial.
It took a minute to get the blood flowing from his wound again, and another few minutes to fill the vial. He replaced the cap.
Another sound melded with the distant wail of the alarm—a metallic buzzing. Travis looked up. The crimson light flickering through the open doors was tinged with silver.
He fumbled in his pocket for the radio and pulled it out. “Deirdre, can you hear me?”
The only answer was static. “Deirdre, please, come in.”
The silver light was brighter. The metallic drone drowned out the blare of the siren. The wraithlings were coming, and the army of ironhearts with them. Vani and Beltan had used the gate artifact. Either that, or they were—
A burst of static phased into words. “Travis? I think it's you. I can hardly hear you, but. . . .”
More crackling. Travis clutched the radio. “Deirdre, talk to me. I have to know if everyone is out. Have all of the people gotten out of the cathedral?”
He counted five heartbeats, but all that came from the radio was a hiss. He was about to press the button when Deirdre's voice came again, clearer than before.
“. . . that the last people have just made it out. The cathedral is clear, though no one has seen Carson. And it's already begun. The story is on all of the national news channels. They're running the tape nonstop, and several senators are already calling for an investigation. Duratek is finished.”
Travis couldn't help smiling. “That's good, Deirdre. That's really good.”
A pause. Then, “Travis? Where are you—?”
He pushed the button. “Good-bye, Deirdre. And thank you. You've been a true friend.”
He switched off the radio and set it on top of the tank. At the same moment, brilliant light flooded through the open doors. Figures moved within, spindly arms reaching out for him.
“Come on,” Travis said, raising the Stones in his left hand. “Come get them if you can.”
He sensed them quicken, like a grove of trees in a wind. They surged toward him. Travis grinned, then pressed on the vial, slamming it into the tank. Blood spread through the clear plasma, tinting it crimson, flowing through the tubes.
A sheet of blue fire crackled into being inside the arc of dark metal. Duratek's scientists had done well; they had learned much from the sorcerer and from their research. The gate looked exactly like the one conjured by the artifact of Morindu.
No, not exactly. The gate wavered at the edges, and it seemed to flicker, growing dim then bright again.
They haven't perfected it, Travis. The gate isn't stable.
The flickering grew more erratic. There was no more time. The wraithlings reached the platform, encircling it. Men and women flooded into the chamber behind them, eyes dead and full of murder. Ironhearts. Hundreds of them. The wraithlings reached out slender, deadly hands.
Travis tightened his fingers around the two Stones and threw himself forward, into the blue fire of the gate. As he jumped, he shouted a single word.
“Reth!”
High-pitched cries sounded behind him, a chorus of rage, of hatred, of despair. Then the screams were drowned out by a sound like shattering glass. Shards of blue magic flew in all directions, slicing apart the darkness, then were gone, and nothing remained but the Void.
Travis's mind was already shrinking. The coldness of the Void froze him. All the same, he felt one faint, warm spark of satisfaction.
You did it, Travis. You've destroyed the gate. Mohg will never use it to get to—
The Void was no longer empty. A sound thrummed through it, far louder than the sound of the gate shattering. It was like the rending sound of an earthquake, only there was no land in this place, nothing to break apart.
Travis felt a deep wrenching sensation. At the same moment a crack appeared in the Void, a jagged line of gray light. Even as horror filled him, the crack snaked across the darkness, growing wider as it went. Travis felt himself being sucked toward its center. He fought, but there was no resisting. The crack yawned like a mouth; through it he saw a valley surrounded by knife-edged mountains.
Vani! He tried to cry out. Beltan!
He had no voice. The crack swallowed him, and Travis fell through a hole in the sky.
53.
Durge stood rigid and unblinking as the feydrim slunk into the hall. Grace searched his face, looking for any trace of the man she knew, any sign that she might still reach him.
There was nothing. His features were the same as they had always been—craggy and careworn—only vacant of the nobility that had always resided there, like a castle where the kindly lord no longer lived, where only shadows now dwelled.
Aryn let out another cry as several of the feydrim sidled toward her, talons scraping against the floor. She retreated until her back was to the wall, then thrust out her withered right hand. The two closest beasts fell back, snarling and whining, biting and clawing at their own flesh. Grace didn't know what spell Aryn had cast, but it had worked. However, more of the creatures poured through the door until the hall was a sea of writhing gray fur. Hisses and growls echoed off stone.
I don't understand, Grace. Aryn's frightened voice sounded in her mind. What's wrong with Durge?
There was no time for words. The Pale King wanted Grace alive, to torture and corrupt; the feydrim might harm her, but they wouldn't kill her. They had no such orders regarding Aryn. Grace gathered everything that had happened since the day she and Durge rode into Gloaming Wood together and wove it into a single, shining globe. She sent it spinning along the Weirding toward Aryn.
Oh, came Aryn's astonished reply. And then again, only this time as a sound of sorrow, of horror. Oh . . .
Aryn knew now. She knew what lay in Durge's chest. She knew what he had become. And she knew that he had loved her with all his heart.
; Another scream ripped itself from Aryn, only this one was not a sound of fear, but of fury. She thrust out with both hands, and the air rippled like a pool into which a rock had been thrown. Grace felt the threads of the Weirding go taut as power was pulled from them. The six feydrim closest to Aryn shrieked, then fell over, brain and blood oozing from their snouts.
Wary now, the creatures retreated from Aryn. She rose to her feet, her face a porcelain mask, her eyes brilliant as gems. Power crackled around her, and tears streamed down her cheeks.
Some of the feydrim now turned their attention on the unconscious forms of Oragien and Graedin. They began to paw at their bodies. Grace drew Fellring and swung it with all her strength. Most of the feydrim were quick enough to scramble out of the blade's reach, but one was not; its head rolled away across the floor, trailing blood.
The blood shimmered, then vanished as if evaporating.
No, that wasn't it. Rather it was as if the blood had been absorbed into the stones of the floor. However, there was no time to think about it.
“The Master knew you would resist,” Durge said, his voice hollow and empty as his gaze. “Yet there is no use in it. I have dealt with those who stood guard at the secret door. The way is now open. Already the servants of the Master work to enlarge it. They will pour into this keep like a dark river, and all your men will perish in the flood.”
Aryn looked up from the corpses of the feydrim around her. She stepped over them and walked across the hall, toward Grace and Durge. The creatures scuttled out of her way; they knew her touch was death to them. Grace tried to call out to her to stay back, but she couldn't form the words. Blood flooded her mouth, and fragments of a tooth.
The young witch stopped before Durge. She reached out her left hand, as if to touch his cheek, then pulled back. “What have they done to you, Durge?”
His eyes were stones. “They have made me perfect, my lady.”
Grief lined Aryn's face. “No, Durge. You were perfect.” A broken smile touched her lips. “Only why didn't you tell me that you loved me? Why did you keep it a secret?”