A god would fight harder, he thought. He knew distressingly little about gods. They hadn't mattered before. Magic hadn't mattered. He knew coin. He knew death. He sometimes thought he knew women, though that was often challenged. Crouching, he grabbed the man's hair and pulled his face up. Life remained in those eyes, a blank empty life but life nonetheless. Warden released him and the head flopped on a nerveless neck.
The world flickered as the light blinked, plunging everything into momentary darkness.
They weren't done.
Warden wrenched the blade back from the base of the man's skull. The sound of it popping brought back memories. He had finished many a man this way. A single blade just at the top of the neck. Upward to sever the head or down to go through the throat. Both worked to his advantage.
With the light went the heat this time and Warden's breath misted before his lips. He imagined snow.
The darkness shattered as the world around him crashed in.
Struggling for breath, Warden reached for the unseen stars as the tang of blood washed over his lips. Pain shocked through him by degrees and he felt his strength ebb. The entire world became sparkles of suffering then darkness.
Light, bright
Light, so bright she experienced it as pressure on her sight, surrounded Jalcina. Her head swam with the contemplation of the days she'd spent aboard a ship without a crew or direction. The bodies bloated where they lay. Leaf's eyes accused her whenever she noticed. Jalcina tried not to notice. She rolled over onto her side and stared at the far-flung horizon with its bright crests on black waves.
Surrounded by death.
Her new life brought nothing with it but suffering.
Getting up, she sauntered across the deck and put her hands on the railing. Smooth wood under her hands did nothing to sooth her. The minute rocking of the boat did not sooth her. Nothing soothed her. Underneath it all, she fought the urge to scream from a salt-parched throat. The breeze tugged at forgotten hair, draping it across her shoulder.
She didn't know herself anymore.
Power curled under her skin. It whispered of a forgotten history, the time when magic swirled with the breeze brought by dragon wings and man knew both awe and fear. Wrepta's heart beat beside hers, in time, but weaker.
Once upon a time, Jalcina and Leviana existed in the same way. How had she never noticed before? How in those moments when she awoke from dreaming did she never realize Leviana did not leave? They simply traded sleep. Now Wrepta died within her leaving behind tatters like old cloth.
The heart beat would fade and leave her with what?
Would the history disappear with the ghost of the city?
"I want your secrets." Her voice scratched out of her throat as she concentrated on the faint heartbeat. "What are we?"
You are the culmination of a curse enacted for our failure to control ourselves.
Images flickered across her thoughts; feelings struck and flitted away. Guilt. Suffering. Pain. Elation.
They washed over her even as they came from her.
Standing on a mountain, her fellows gathered, one standing at the head. Blood dripped from a blade and two broken bodies lay surrounded by what might have been salt. He offered a prayer and Wrepta did nothing. None of them did.
Yet they basked in the power it sucked in.
As she watched, the world drained. They changed. Suddenly, she stood with the ocean lapping up her legs. She stood on a shoal in the middle of deep water and knew her life would end there. Sadness hung over her, shrouding her from the high sun. This would be her life. The sand under foot, water surrounding her, a merciless sun overhead. She would never move again.
More powerful than she had ever been and she would never again move from that spot. Others would come to her, worship her, but never again would she move.
Did she fear that?
No.
Power held off the fear, but it could not hold off the memory of those destroyed. It did nothing to hide how she had known them. Their faces. Their names. Their voices. Their father. She had known them. They had protected them all once. Power could not salve her soul. It rotted her as her spire grew, a vein of black granite in the center of the scarlet.
Jalcina considered the ruin left behind by Wrepta's passing jutting from the water. The oily blackness spilled over and pearled over the water.
"You were dead when this started."
Wrepta's response came in a wave of peace. Jalcina closed her eyes and let it cover her. Wrepta disappeared.
Loss dropped her to her knees as she clung to the wood.
Wrepta disappearing reminded her of the emptiness Leviana left behind. Intertwined souls. Yet there was something else.
It stirred inside her, another presence. Not Leviana.
Older. Stronger.
Visions of feathers and flight, strength and power that was hers and not.
Jalcina knew those thoughts. She assumed they came from Leviana, her foreign interloper in her mind. Yet even with her gone, they remained. How was that possible?
Betrayal struck with tearing fangs. Leviana had not been alone as an interloper in her mind.
"Who are you?"
No answer came immediately though the sense of being observed settled at the base of her neck. It was not a lover's gaze, but far from hostile. Pressing her head to the wood, Jalcina rested where she was.
Wrests was gone. Her power remained, but the thoughts had disappeared.
Leviana existed somewhere outside of her though she didn't know how.
This other presence, who were they? Where had they come from? They felt ghostly, no more substantial than wind. Still Jalcina could not deny they were there.
She didn't truly want to be.
Her family, her life, everything she clung to was gone. How many times had she told Vad'Alvarn how much she simply wanted to go home? Now there was no home to go to. No running through the tunnels to greet her father returned from a trip or even cuddling her brother as he fought a fever. Once an imposition, now she couldn't imagine the joy to do it again. She had nothing any longer.
Leviana had her kingdom. Jalcina could only imagine how that drove her the way it had once driven Vad'Alvarn, the would be conqueror king of every kingdom known to man. Whatever else he had been, he had been certain of his course.
She was not certain of hers.
The waves on the edge of the boat were not deep, but deep enough certainly.
If she jumped, would Death stay his hand for the power she had? It seemed such a petty concern, her death. The thought lingered, even as she knew she would never attempt it. She felt the waves as they closed over her, enfolding her in an embrace she deserved. The waters would drag her under and those things below would feast on her from the skin in. She had no other hope.
Her eyes sought the horizon again. Still too bright, but as she stayed there, eyes searching, she heard something else.
Soft whimpers of pain and suffering tugged her heart.
She cared for the sufferer.
No, she didn't. The inner presence did.
"Who are you and who do you mourn?"
Mourning. She never mourned her father. By the time he died, she was not herself. Leviana dominated in those years. No one living remembered him as she did. No record could tell the true story of him. Were there records of what kind of man he had been? Nothing would ever be as vivid as the sight of him carrying her brother away from the monster. Haze surrounded it, but she saw him as he had been, strong, regal, certain.
Rising her head, she smiled. He would have chided her for failing to realize how lucky she was to be alive now. Surrounded by the bodies of her enemies, she still had the ability to stand tall. Whatever else there was, she could certainly see it through if she pressed onward.
"Who do you mourn?"
Sorren, her baby brother, rose up in her mind.
"Your brother?"
A flood of warmth flushed her cheeks as a sense of joy skipped about her heart.
The spirit had a brother who cried for help.
Sorren in danger brought out her strength down to the dredges. She would have moved a mountain to see him safe. She had rushed into the den of a monster for his life.
Even as she sought the words to ask, she felt her power rise and crest, ebb then return. It reached for a height and fell short again and again. Desperation shaded her thoughts as the cries grew in her ears.
They coughed blood into the darkness sealed around them.
Jalcina covered her mouth.
They were dying.
She would never let Sorren die.
The inner spirit scrambled toward the strength to reach them and failed. Jalcina imagined a person climbing a cliff only to have their handholds break time and again before they could reach their beloved at the top.
If it had been Lecern, Sorren, or even her Father, she would throw herself against that cliff again and again, crawl every inch until she reached them. Her throat screamed raw in desperation to let them know they were not alone in their pain and she would never abandon them.
"Let me help you," she whispered. "Tell me how to help you."
Help us.
Wrepta's voice had been a deep contralto tinged with higher notes as she slipped away. This was not that voice. Jalcina imagined her as a woman as inscrutable as a mountain face hiding secrets. Yet she offered Jalcina companionship with her tone. No hostility but also no fear tinged her words. Age, a mountain's age, exuded from her presence as it revealed itself in their connection.
She had been first. Leviana came after. Jalcina even later. Whoever they were, they were one and the same. Each of them as necessary as breath to the other.
The ship rocked beneath her as the waves thrust against the wood. Nature agitated around them, clouds growing deep and thick overhead. Those clouds contained snow and lightning, they promised a storm like the world had not seen in centuries.
Their connection deepened. Jalcina saw the last moments, the awareness they may never know light again. She thought of how their father, she and her brother's, would mourn when he discovered them.
Her life dripped away as she clung to her sibling.
Jalcina ripped herself away from those memories. They drained strength and she needed it. They needed their strength if they were to reach their brother and save him from death.
"Why can't he free himself?"
He's not ready. He refuses himself.
Jalcina nodded.
She let the memories of snow in Arathum drift over her. Acknowledging strength and letting it flow like a river through her was the better strategy.
His name came to her coated in a lightning strike: Warden.
She did not know him truly. It didn't matter. They knew one another, bound to one another in multiple lives. Born brother and sister, turned to lovers, then finally strangers. The Fate Circle turned. With every turn, they changed. With every change, they remained tied to the beginning.
Jalcina struggled to release their connection.
Her life had never been her own. Never. Not from the moment she screamed. This other had been with her then. Leviana had been with her then.
Tears threatened, then appeared dropping heavy on her cheeks.
Never her own person.
Fated.
She refused it.
The desperation infected her, spinning her thoughts into steel nets to trap her. Still she refused. She would not disappear into someone else. Nothing could force her.
Rain plunked down on the deck and puddled around her. Her skirt grew heavy with it and she still did not seek shelter. Where her truth stood nothing could touch.
Covered In Rock
Darkness and his heart beating staccato defined his life. Warden realized he heard his heart much more clearly than he once did even when he wasn't afraid. In the times before, he always heard his heart when fear gripped him. It reminded him to calm and make decisions carefully as they might be the last decisions he ever made.
Now it told him his death hung close as the rocks pressing him in from every side. He whimpered and even that action brought starbursts.
Terror invaded and stole what sense he had. His tomb enclosed him. Warden thought to shift, his body refused.
Pain, suffering, and fear. He spent so much of his life defined by those things. Childhood marred by suffering and death. Adulthood dispensing it upon others. Now he lay broken in a hole so deep he saw nothing surrounded by ghosts of his past. Faces paraded past his vision accompanied by the details of their murders and how he profited from their failure to survive. Remorse was not a common emotion. He killed. His employers paid. He thought little of the circles he broke by killing one person or another. He connected no importance to it.
Or hadn't until it was her.
Killing the Immortal meant fame along with fortune. His name unforgettable because it was forever connected with hers.
A fool's errand. He knew that now, too late to change his path. His choice helped bring an end to an unrivaled empire. It removed her from the throne.
A task unworthy of him, if only he had known that at the time.
A pebble clinked down near his right ear. His heart skipped. He fought to move, but all he could do was breathe.
Suffer. He never killed by suffocation. He did not torture. Yet he could not escape the idea he paid proper penance. Warden groaned. His right hand spasmed, fingers finding rock on all sides. A tear tracked down his cheek and he felt its passage keenly.
Others followed. Life sank from him.
His scream stuck in his dust clogged throat. Someone had to hear him.
It came out at the level of breath. Even the bugs trapped in the hole with him didn't hear.
Or so he thought.
Someone heard.
Someone far away.
Transported again to a distant ship, surrounded by blinding sun, he wasn't alone. Jalcina knelt against the railing, her eyes closed. He felt her. Cramped fingers tried to touch her but only succeeded him in reminding him of his prison.
He cried to her.
She seemed to hear.
Hope sprung to life.
Something changed.
She disappeared. Her presence gone. Around him, the rock gave no sympathy.
His breath came in agonized puffs. Alone in what would be his grave, he sought any chance of escape. Even without vision, the world swam as he searched for what he could not name.
Helenia must have been searching for him. Turning her entire company loose to find him among the broken houses. Certainly someone would think to look down in the depths. Someone. Anyone.
That thought brought no comfort. How long before anyone knew he was gone. He kept to himself, calling none of them friend. Even her interest in him was purely tied to him profiting her. No one would save him.
Not Helenia. Not Jalcina. No one. He would die in a hole, an ignoble death. He might have been better off on the pyre. At least then he would have been remembered.
A fresh set of tears tracked down his face as he gritted his teeth. His hands moved. He flexed them, feeling every bolt of pain. His arms were pinned. His body the same.
"Not like this."
With everything he had, Warden refused his fate. He would not die an unknown. He would not join his father whose cold body lie in the road until the townspeople could no longer bear the stench. Or his mother buried in a grave dug with his own frozen hands that no one visited because no one knew where it was. He would not disappear.
His chest refused to take a deep breath. Powdered stone made every breath taste muddy. He ignored the blood flavor underneath.
We don't have to die.
Warden winced. The voice was the dragon's as he remembered it. The touch of dream state familiar.
They didn't have to die.
Finish Ernal. Surrender for strength. We will survive.
Warden listened, his options few and dwindling. Death, his ever present companion, waited with a tapping cane f
or him to finish. He could not deny the self-interest involved in his survival.
"You die if I do," he gasped.
We die together, yes. All three of us.
Three. Three of them, together, sharing one life force.
"Ernal?"
Your would-be killer. One of the circle with which this began. Finish him. Consume his power. It is ours. He never had any right to it.
The dragon's vehemence threw a pall over Warden's already spotty vision. Anger welled up inside. The dragon was him. He was the dragon. They had been robbed. Now they robbed back, yet they weren't complete.
Warden tried to move again and found himself a little freer. The slabs covering him shifted just enough to give him the illusion of progress.
"How?"
You know..
The knowledge surfaced like river ice or a bloated body. It offered him intimate knowledge of how the power was stolen and how he could take it back. How the well over which they lay was just a visual manifestation of power inherent in the being before him. A way to show how much he had and he had much for one who had so little of the whole.
What he needed was close at hand, but he couldn't reach it. In fact, he would probably die before he saved himself from the rocks covering him. How did he hope to make it to something he couldn't see and take hold of it to save himself when he couldn't even move? Taking as deep a breath as he could, Warden sought to steady his nerves.
Everything jangled inside him. His heart refused to quiet. Yet it wasn't with fight, but fright everything ran. He sought to fight, but it had all the strength of a bug against a horse.
"I can't," came out with a desperate cough. He didn't have the strength.
He didn't have the hope.
Inside, the dragon closed its eyes and faded. It offered nothing else. Abandoned he lay at the bottom of the well. There were not tears enough in him for his pain.
In vain, he projected to the far away where he knew Jalcina existed. His attempts came back rebuffed. She wanted nothing to do with him. Interior searching did not to bring him closer to the dragon he knew resided there. Around him, power hummed but did not comfort.
Ernal collapsed on top of him and there he would extinguish, alone.
Ruins of Fate Page 20