by Phil Tucker
“Oh, no,” Dalitha whispered from just behind Kethe. “Oh, no.”
Akinetos stepped up alongside Kethe, hammer in hand. Mixis and Synesis took her other flank.
The demon rose to its full height. The ur-destraas – it had to be. Its massive ribcage pulsed with flame as if the red light were its heartbeat. Kethe could feel the terrible weight of its regard fall upon her and heard several of the Consecrated step back, repulsed by the power of their foe. Her White Song grew distant for a moment, as if a cloud had passed between her and the sun.
Her mouth was dry and gummy with dust. Her throat was squeezed shut. Her chest was tight, her heart pounding. Her knees wanted to give way. Her whole body abhorred being this close to the demon. Its presence was so foul that it was hard to think, to hold firm, to simply stand there before it.
Whimpers arose from all sides. The leather straps of Akinetos’ plate armor creaked as he lowered himself into a combat crouch.
Thoughts were beyond her. All she could do was extend Tiron’s family blade, point it at the demon. It’s ensorcelling us, she thought. Attacking us with terror.
That realization stiffened her resolve, aroused her ire. She took a step forward, her whole body leaning as if into a headwind.
Tiron’s blade flickered with light, then, with an audible whoomph, lit up, pure white against the demon’s carnal red. She felt others around her take heart, saw other blades incandesce. Immense pride filled her: a sense of righteousness, an affirmation of her very existence. This was where she was meant to be.
“Run, Kethe!” Tiron’s yell broke through the noise as he ran toward her, waving a dagger. “ Get out of its way — run!”
The ur-destraas threw back its head, and the flames in its chest burst outward with a rushing, hissing roar of such punishing volume that Kethe nearly missed the attack that followed. Stumbling back, she saw a tendril of flame come flying toward her. There was no time to think, to yell a warning. She leaped up and to the side, somersaulting over the beam, only for the shaft to sweep sideways as if it had been swung from the base, cutting toward her. Kethe screamed and leaped again to land in a crouch atop a massive piece of fallen masonry.
Dozens of similar serpents of fire had emerged from the demon’s chest and were seeking out the Virtues and the Consecrated. Men and women were throwing themselves aside, diving and rolling, desperately trying to avoid the flaming rivers that searched for them with unerring speed.
Kethe ran toward the ur-destraas. At the same time, a burst of fire shot out of its chest and came rushing at her. She fell to her knees, dipping back so the crown of her head touched the ground as she slid underneath the flame, then flipped back up to her feet and forward into another somersault as a second burst tried to take out her legs.
The demon rose off the ground. Screams sounded behind her as some of her Consecrated were incinerated. She caught a glimpse of Mixis running along the shaft’s curved wall, a torrent of flame trailing him and torching the stone. Somehow Synesis appeared above the demon and hung in the air for a heartbeat before falling upon it, both blades pointed down and flaring white, only to be slammed by a new burst of flame. A sphere of white light appeared around her at the last second, but she was smashed aside to disappear from view.
Akinetos was closing on the demon. Fire flew toward him, but instead of leaping away, he swung his hammer all the way up from his heels and over his head and brought it smashing down with exquisite timing on the front of the flame. Demonic fire splattered everywhere, and Akinetos charged right through. The heat was so intense that Kethe saw his thick plate begin to glow cherry-red at the edges.
Kethe leaped, putting all her strength into the jump, and soared up toward the demon. Tiron’s sword was burning so brightly that it seemed to cleave the very air in twain. At the very last, she saw something within its huge ribcage, the dark shadow of a figure suspended in living fire, but then her blade swung into the demon and it was gone.
Kethe nearly collapsed as she tumbled back down to the ground.
“Above!” Tiron yelled from somewhere, and she caught a glimpse of the demon, now sending snakes of flame ripping down toward them all.
“How are we supposed to hit it?” Dalitha screamed as she pirouetted aside, and a burst of fire slammed into the ground where she’d been standing. Before Kethe could answer, the flame began to chase the Consecrated, faster than the young woman could move. Kethe leaped and swiped Tiron’s blade through the river of flame, severing in two and causing it to disintegrate moments before it could strike Dalitha.
Again, she caught a glimpse of Mixis. This time, he was running in a spiral up and around the shaft’s interior, so fast he was little more than a blur. Akinetos hurled his hammer double-handed at the demon with a grunt. Its head was a meteor of flame.
The ur-destraas disappeared just before the hammer could smite it, and Mixis plunged with a cry of rage through the air, his blade swiping at where the demon’s head had been.
“Where’d it go?” gasped Gray Wind, cradling a badly burnt arm to his chest.
“There!” Dalitha pointed into the doorway.
The demon was flying away from them, down the tunnel toward the distant chamber. It had teleported right past them.
“Damn it!” Kethe screamed, and sprinted after it. The demon was moving fast, surging down the broad tunnel, illuminating the interior as it went.
Kethe gritted her teeth and put everything she had into catching up. She was a bolt of livid fury with the White Song screaming within her. Her blade left behind it a trail of white fire several yards long.
She was closing as she burst through an archway into a huge void. Darkness extended outward, darkness without end. Kethe leaped, aiming for the demon’s head as it climbed into the air, but swung her blade a second too late.
The ur-destraas vanished.
She shrieked with frustration and fell to the ground only to slip over the edge into the nothingness beyond. Her scream of fury turned into one of terror, and she contorted her body around, slamming Tiron’s blade into the wall. It sank a foot deep into the stone, and she caught herself, feet flat against the wall, both hands on the hilt.
A second later, hands gripped her by the forearms and hauled her up and back.
“Where’d it go?’ Kethe gasped.
“Look,” Synesis said somberly.
Kethe stood and turned. Far away, a small spark of fire was flickering in the darkness. Kethe’s whole body went cold. From the size of it, the demon must have been nearly a mile away.
“How — how are we going to stop it?” asked Dalitha.
“We can’t,” Akinetos said grimly. “We failed.”
Tiron came running up, breathing raggedly. He stopped, bowed down, hands on knees, then took a deep, shuddering breath and straightened. “What’s it doing?”
Mixis was staring with furious concentration. “It’s pouring fire into something,” he said. “I see dozens of those snakes of flame passing over the ground at its feet.”
“You can see that?” asked Tiron.
“We need to leave,” said Kethe, and the others turned to her in surprise. “We need to go, now, while we can. I know what it’s doing. Didn’t you hear Audsley’s tale? It’s freeing a demon.”
“Another ur-destraas?” asked Dalitha.
“Probably,” said Kethe. “Aletheia’s about the size of Starkadr, if not bigger. Who knows how many demons it took to power its flight. It’s gone right to the back, where Audsley said the biggest demons were kept. I bet it’s freeing the most powerful demon here, and we can’t do anything to stop it.”
“We have to,” Synesis said, emotion thickening her voice. “We can’t lose. This is Aletheia. The White Gate stands above us. We have to stop it.”
Murmurs of consent sounded around them.
“She’s right,” said Akinetos. “We can’t get to it in time. It’s won.” His voice was hollow. He sounded gutted. “We need to get out, find the Ascendant and abandon Aletheia be
fore it falls.”
“It can’t fall,” said Synesis. “Don’t you understand?” She whirled on Akinetos and slammed a fist into his massive pauldron. “It can’t!”
“Come,” Mixis said, taking a step back. “We don’t have much time.”
“Can you get your dragon in here?” asked Kethe.
“No,” Tiron said heavily. “Draumronin was badly wounded. He nearly died. I don’t know where he’s gone.”
“We lost,” Gray Wind said as if he were tasting the words. He sounded stunned. “We lost?”
“We can’t lose,” said one of the other Consecrated. “The Ascendant wouldn’t allow it.”
“Enough!” yelled Kethe. She wanted to sink down, to sob. She felt unhinged, feverish. “Out! Everyone!”
Tiron stepped up alongside her. “You heard the Virtue!” His battlefield bark was rough and raw and caused more than a few Consecrated to flinch. “Run!”
Weeping, stumbling, dazed, they ran back down the hall toward the distant gloom of the main shaft. Kethe felt disembodied, shocked into insensibility. If Aletheia fell like Starkadr had, would that destroy the White Gate? And if so, what would that mean? Could you kill a religion? Could Ascendancy be destroyed?
They staggered out into the shaft just as a terrifying cry echoed down the tunnel after them. Kethe’s skin crawled. What manner of demon had been unleashed that they could hear its scream of victory from so far away?
Akinetos staggered to a stop behind her and looked up the shaft. “The Ascendant. We need to see to his safety. We need to get him out.”
Tears of frustration brimmed in Kethe’s eyes. “We fled Aletheia once before. It’s a miracle that we’ve returned. We can’t flee again.”
“A last stand,” Mixis said with a grim nod. “If we run, we’ll never stop.”
“That’s for the Ascendant to decide,” Akinetos said, moving toward the base of the ramp. “Come on. It’s a long way up.”
Kethe dashed the tears from her eyes and felt someone give her shoulder a shake. She looked up and saw Tiron. His face was grim, and he looked old, worn. His eyes were haunted.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “The battle’s not over till we’re dead.”
She took a shuddering breath and nodded. “Your sword. Do you want it back?”
“No,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “It’ll do more good in your hand. When this is all over, maybe.”
The others were hurrying toward the ramp, moving around the massive blocks of shattered stone that had fallen from the top of the shaft, many of them casting terrified looks over their shoulders.
“Tiron,” said Kethe. “Please, be honest with me. Do you think there’s any hope left?”
As if in response, a second cry echoed faintly out of the tunnel, inhuman and bestial with delight.
“No,” said Tiron. “If we lose Aletheia and the White Gate, I don’t see how we can win. And Zephyr – I think she’s inside the ur-destraas. How the hell are we going to get to her?”
Kethe felt despair rise within her, dark and enervating. She pressed the bases of her palms into her eyes so hard, she saw motes of colored lights dance within the dark.
“But,” said Tiron, and the weary amusement in his voice made Kethe drop her hands, “I’ve been wrong about my chances of survival more times than I’d care to count. A lot of people have tried to kill me over the years, and I’m still here. Come on. We aren’t dead yet.”
He clapped her on the shoulder and set off.
Kethe sniffed, swallowed the knot in her throat, then wiped the back of her hand across her eyes.
“Yes,” she whispered, and her panic began to melt away in the face of her anger. “All right. We’re not finished yet.”
She slid Tiron’s sword into her scabbard and set off after him at a run.
CHAPTER 27
Iskra
Iskra stood in the center of the Hall of the White Gate, watching the great closed doors. At her side stood the Ascendant, clad in his imperial robes, a vast and voluminous affair in which he’d chosen to face their final foe. Before them was arrayed a screen of her Agerastian guards, Tóki and his Hrethings, along with the Ascendant’s elite palace soldiers. Some hundred Aletheian nobles were standing behind them, clustered in a mass of perfume, rapidly beating fans and consternation.
This was it.
There was nowhere left to run.
As one, they watched the massive doors. They were a dozen yards tall and made of precious white planks from Isthani trees hauled in ages past from the near-mythical banks of the river Isthani, deep in the hinterlands of Zoe. Banded in silver and inscribed with powerful runes, the doors were all that stood between them and the demons.
Sweat ran down the length of Iskra’s spine, causing her robes to cling uncomfortably to her frame, but she made no move to pluck them away. The White Gate itself was raging behind her, throbbing within its silver frame as if it were furious at the transgressions that were taking place without, and she was standing beside the Ascendant himself. She would not fidget with her clothing, not here, not now.
Faintly, they could hear the battle outside. Perhaps ten minutes ago, the entire palace had shaken with the cacophonous sound of falling masonry, as if entire sections of it had collapsed under some immense assault. They’d braced themselves for the end, but the attack had ceased; now, all they could hear were the screams of the dying and the inhuman roars of their attackers.
Shouts rose from outside the doors, and Iskra stiffened. Warnings turned into demands, and then the doors themselves began to vibrate.
Iskra clenched her hands into fists. Her heart was a hummingbird trapped within a gauntlet, slowly being crushed. The doors shook not as if they were being smitten by powerful blows, but as if they were coming to life and were about to shiver themselves apart in sheer terror.
“Look,” whispered someone behind her. “Their color!”
The doors were turning gray. The white was slowly evanescing, leaving behind a dull stone hue in its place. The shivering slowed as the gray spread across their surface, then stopped.
“What’s happening?” asked one of the palace guards, his fear causing him to lose all sense of decorum.
A blow was struck against the doors, and several people cried out in alarm as cracks flooded across their surface.
“Be at peace,” the Ascendant said, raising his hands in the shape of the triangle. “And know that my blessings are with you all, now and forevermore.”
The second blow caused the door to shatter into huge chunks of petrified wood, and there before them was Kyrra the medusa, her hair fully aroused into a hissing mass of snakes, her eyes livid and causing Iskra to wince under the weight of their regard. About her clustered the kragh shamans and the Vothaks in their purple and yellow robes. There had to be some two dozen of them all told, and they followed their mistress into the hall, gazing in awe and fear past Iskra at the Gate itself.
“What is the meaning of this?” the Ascendant asked, his voice as hard as iron.
Their guards stood frozen, petrified outside the doors where they’d sought to bar Kyrra’s entrance.
“The end is upon us,” Kyrra said, slithering forward with alien grace, her great coils undulating vividly against the white floor. “Passage to the Solar Gates is blocked. There is no escaping Aletheia.”
“Blocked?” asked Iskra. “The demons have entered the stonecloud?”
“One has,” Kyrra said, stopping before them, ignoring the soldiers. “The greatest of their number, and in its descent, it smashed several sections of the avenue that descends around the central shaft.”
Iskra’s throat tightened, as if she were being garroted. “It reached the base?”
“Assuredly,” said Kyrra. “I felt the deaths of several dragons in the process. They were unable to arrest its passage.”
Whimpers of fear emanated from the nobles. Even the guards grew pale.
“My Virtues stand guard below,” said the Ascendan
t, but sweat was gleaming on his brow. “They will stop it.”
“Of course,” Kyrra said, not bothering to hide her amusement. “But in the meantime, I thought it best to join forces with you here. The kragh and your humans are fighting bravely across Aletheia’s exterior. They are being massacred, of course, and soon the bulk of the demons will pierce their line and come for us here. Together, we might hold them back for a few minutes.”
The medusa’s words were like physical blows. They stole Iskra’s breath, but she did not let them break her spirit. She was reminded of her years with Enderl, her former husband; the more he punished her, the stronger her will to defy him became. She would not give this medusa the pleasure of seeing her crumble.
“The battle is not lost,” she said, pitching her voice so that it carried over the whispers and sobs. “Our forces are many. Four Virtues yet hold the field, and we cannot know for sure what has happened to our dragons.” Oh, Tiron, she thought. Oh, Tiron.
“Of course,” said the medusa. “But in the meantime, I thought to admire your White Gate, as you call it.” She did so, looking past them all and up at the vast conflagration. “I will admit, I am impressed.”
“It matters not what you think of it,” snapped the Ascendant. “It transcends all judgement. So long as it burns, we cannot be defeated. It is the living testament of my will and love. No matter how great the test, we shall pass and emerge all the stronger, our weaknesses burned away, our new selves purified and exalted.”
“Yes,” said Kyrra. “As you say.”
“Why are you not helping to hold the line?” asked Iskra. “If your gaze is as powerful as you claim, you could make an immense difference out there.”
“Why?” Kyrra turned her attention to Iskra. “Because it would mean my death.”
“But you’re going to die in here, you said.”
“The longer I delay that certainty, the better.”
“And you, Ilina?” Iskra stared at the ul-Vothak. “You abandon our cause so readily?” It was only then that she registered the change: the old woman’s skin had taken on the dark, sooty hue of the kragh shamans, and her eyes were glowing with a lurid luster.