Jason made as if to protest.
“What?” I asked.
He turned to Elandine. “With Carter’s revival, a measure of each Ring’s potency has returned, as you know. Try not to let the office of Death overwhelm you. Her agenda might not be yours.”
Elandine just glared at him, then slipped on the Ring.
“It’s cold,” she said.
Then she added, her voice deeper and more resonant. “But cold is Death’s realm, and I am returned.”
“Oh-kay,” I said, glancing at Jason. He hadn’t been kidding. “Try to keep it together Elandine. Join hands everyone.” So saying, I slipped on the Ring of Commerce.
The queen and Jason didn’t want to hold hands. I remained with my hands out until they – War and Death? – acquiesced. War was on my left. His hand gripped mine in an overly aggressive clench that actually hurt. On my right, Elandine. Her clasp was as light and cold as a dusting of snow over a tombstone.
I sensed the resting aura of Commerce, not conscious, but not quite absent, either, as a dizzying flurry of numbers carved on tablets, bales of silk, and the feel of hard coin. I sensed that I could inflate that aura around me, if only briefly, and glory in the truth of sums. But that wasn’t my path, nor would it provide us the answer we sought.
For the Maker, there was no Ring that served as a badge of office, no Ring of Creation. Had it been so, this would’ve been so much easier. Of course, Jason would’ve have found and stolen something like that a long time ago.
The office of the Maker was conviction. It was an unshakeable trust of knowing yourself as the architect of Ardeyn, first in words, then in lines of code. And finally, in an act of wanton desperation when I’d impressed it on the dark energy network.
I squeezed my eyes shut. My teeth creaked as I ground them together. The hands I clasped in mine were solid evidence of my creation, as was the glass below my boots, and the very air I breathed. It may have been simulated by the dark energy network, but it was simulated as well as reality itself was simulated by atoms of normal matter.
For all that, conviction eluded me.
Certitude had always been hard for me – I was more of a doubter, especially of my own capabilities. Usually, I pulled off a little magic trick by flipping my usual uncertainty into a humorous shield, finding something to laugh about in almost any situation, especially if I could point out how I’d screwed something up. Jokes were my defense for my failure of confidence; they were faux-conviction. Ha, ha.
Except now that it’d come to it, nothing was funny about my inability to grasp the Maker’s power. The version of me who’d done it must have lucked into it. I wasn’t up to the task. If anything, the more I chased it, whatever it was, the further–
“Why do you try to kill the seed of the Maker within you?” intoned the queen, her voice echoing as if from a mausoleum. I opened my eyes and glanced at her. Elandine was there, but also stood there was Death. Instead of armor, Elandine wore shadow. She retained Rendswandir at her belt, but in her possession, I knew it for an implement whose merest touch would slay any living thing. I shuddered.
War added, his voice far more than Jason’s, “If you cannot defeat your own doubts, you do not deserve to be the Maker. All we have left is to fight, and die, on this final field of battle.” War’s grip loosened as he prepared to disengage from our circle.
“Stop,” I told War. In that moment, as I instructed the Incarnation, a trickle of what the Maker had been came to me. I seized it before it could slip away, and willed that my home of old show itself.
The sun burst over the horizon. The Maker’s Hall was revealed as a reflection in the surface of the Glass Desert. Plunging falls, colossal images of noble qephilim, and beyond that, an astounding series of mounting, shining ramparts that seemed to go up forever…
The image wavered in the very substance the rising ramparts had once been constructed of, before the final battle with Lotan’s armies. The Maker’s Hall, a stupefyingly immense glass castle, had been slagged and melted when Lotan burned hottest. Lotan had ultimately been defeated, but the glass castle slumped, becoming the Glass Desert.
Though how any of that could be literally true, I hadn’t the first clue–
The Maker’s assurance retreated like a wave after it breaks. I’d been touched by greatness, but only for a moment, but one lasting long enough to produce an image of the Maker’s Hall.
“As I recall it from old,” uttered War.
“A vision from the Age of Myth,” agreed Death.
“It’s just a reflection,” I protested. “How do we get in?”
They both looked at me like I’d pointed out a turd in the punch bowl.
“Well?” I said. The reflection wavered at our feet. Access to what it represented was closed, and worse, not even really there. My naming sense reported that in its current state, access to the Hall lay beyond our ability.
Death’s visage dispersed, leaving Elandine blinking into the glaring sun. “We’re out of time.” She released my hand.
Jason did the same, muttering, “Nice knowing you, Carter. Actually, no. It pretty much sucked.”
The storm was a pale cloak being drawn across the empty plain toward us. It was maybe thirty seconds away. The queen shouted to Navar and her army. They raced to deploy into defensive positions behind the fence of glass shards where our camp lay. Flickers of Death’s shadow followed in her wake.
Jason turned to face the oncoming storm, lifting his helm to cover his head. He literally swelled in size, becoming more a creature than a man. It was his true guise as War, something that I vaguely remembered as if from a childhood dream. Around him, his army of lesser selves appeared in ones and twos, then fives and tens, and more.
Siraja had watched our failed attempt to enter the Hall. I sensed her disappointment in the lay of her ears. “This is insane,” she said. “We will all die.” But she drew her blade, and set herself to defend.
The dlamma called Far Voyager flew away, moving swiftly in the opposite direction as the oncoming storm, fleeing the field. I couldn’t say I blamed it.
I faced our onrushing foe. The southern half of the Glass Desert was gone. It was hidden under a line of clawing mist, a thunderhead fallen from the sky. The rising sun’s brilliance was dimmed to that of a hazy silver quarter, over which shapes flitted like bats across the moon. Except they weren’t bats. They were kray.
Then the storm engulfed us.
My mouth went dry and my hands shook as the mist washed over me, overwhelming me. Sharp sounds were muffled as fog made it hard to see farther than a few dozen yards. In that murk, the kray swarmed like wasps. They were alien terrors bent on destroying us.
Before I knew it, I was on the ground, my head ringing from smacking into the glass. Had a kray knocked me over? No. My own feet had tripped me up when I panicked. The monsters wouldn’t get me if I brained myself first.
My arms were locked over my head, so I forced them down. Pressing them onto the cracked glass beneath me, I pushed myself back to me feet. I forced myself to draw a few calming breaths.
Maybe all wasn’t lost.
The invading kray were in Ardeyn. Though breached, my world still imposed rules. Though infected, Ardeyn still–
A kray’s shape resolved from the haze and darted at me. “You cocksucker!” I screamed as it knocked me over. Before this moment, the thing had been nameless. Now it had one, even though accidentally bestowed. But in Ardeyn, names have power, if you know what you’re doing.
Rolling to avoid a pincer stab, panting and wheezing, I choked out a different name, one that conflated its new name to stone.
Gray and lifeless as a statue, it dropped on the glass and smashed into three parts.
“Yes!” I whispered, feeling almost jubilant. This wasn’t beyond me, if I could keep my fear in check, and make a plan.
The haze thinned, allowing me to see much farther.
Sword blades and arrow tips flickered as Elandine’s army hewed and
peppered the onrushing force. Seeing that they hadn’t merely been erased by the mist, as some panicked part of my brain had apparently decided, made me stand taller. A score more invaders died the final death at their hands even as I watched. Lone soldiers who’d broken from cover to keep kray from overrunning the queen’s archers spun and hacked with sharp blades. Sometimes a carapace was pierced and the soldier moved onto another foe.
Elandine strode back and forth along the line of archers. Her shadow deepened once more even as I watched, until she was a pillar of darkness. Death walked Ardeyn again, and I could feel her chill from here. Her implement scythed out, and in ones and twos, kray who’d managed to get past the skirmish line of blade-wielders crumbled like ash at its touch.
As effective as Death was, War was more awesome. He was a multitude, fielding nearly as many warriors as the soldiers in Elandine’s army. They fought with more abandon, more ferocity, and with less concern for their own safety. And each time one died, another stepped from War’s flesh, fresh to the fight and a master in the arts of blade and battle. War himself was a bulwark. He lay about him with his flaming implement, smearing kray into so much burning offal with each blow. Watching him, despite everything, filled me with elation.
By chance or design, Siraja and I stood in the pocket created by War and Death. When I saw a stray kray slip through our defense, I named it stone. I was amazed anew each time one smashed onto the glass, leaving a small crater of crazed cracks.
Siraja muttered, “I can’t believe we’re still alive.”
“Stay with me,” I said, “and we’ll get through this.” She spared me a doubtful sidelong glance.
“It’s only luck we haven’t already died,” Siraja said.
“Listen, did you see what I did back there? What the queen and War are doing? We’ve–”
“Look what comes for us now!” She pointed.
I looked. Dread edged my earlier confidence.
Resolving from the fog, a mass of scrambling kray charged across the glass, each twice as large as a man. The flitting, flying ones we’d been downing with so much success were annoying insects compared to the galloping, horse-sized crab-spiders coming for us. Even larger ones, rumbling like tanks, were visible as dim shadows through the mist behind them. More uncertain yet, though too large to dismiss, the hint of something vast heaved closer, cutting through the mist like a supertanker cleaves ocean swells. A kaiju-sized monstrosity whose complete dimensions were cloaked in gray mist. An infrasonic boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom vibrated up through the glass, matching the many-legged strides of the half-sensed thing. Each clap hammered at my courage. It was the central entity I’d failed to identify when I’d first tried to name the storm. My elation tumbled back toward fear. This was nothing less than our end.
War’s forces wavered and shrank, even as the Incarnation’s height diminished to more human proportions. A voice that was purely Jason’s yelled, “It’s the fucking matriarch. She’s coming for me! I gotta get out of here.”
Oh, fuck. I had no time to wonder what he meant by “she.” Jason’s fear was toxic to his ability to manifest War. Without War, we stood no chance. Well, we stood even less of a chance than the zero chance we currently faced. I had no illusions; our odds were grim. But, fuck it. Jason was going to have to face up to his crime, and fight on, like the rest of us, to the end.
Then again… What if the kray were literally here for Jason? At least, as step one of their plan. If he died so far in their debt, one of the Seven Rules would more than simply teeter and bend as had already happened; it would dissolve. That would release Lotan at the core!
But before the Cursed One could do more than blink, the kray would crack Ardeyn like a virus bursting an infected cell. Rather than spewing kray back out into the Strange, they’d instead infect the connection between Earth and Ardeyn, pulling their planetovore matriarch behind them.
“War,” I named Jason. “You are an Incarnation of Ardeyn. You are one of the Seven. Fight! I command you, in the Maker’s name.” Warmth bloomed in my chest as I spoke. I knew that I had again successfully triggered my ability. I just didn’t know how.
Jason receded, and War come once again to the fore. Perhaps more so than at any previous time. The armored man swelled to his former towering height and then some. His army of multiples expanded outward from him like a ripple spreading outward from a stone dropped in water. A rush of kray who’d moved to take advantage of the weakness Jason’s doubt had created along the left flank was quickly overrun. War was back, and I knew he would fight until he could do so no longer.
From the right, where Elandine’s army was deployed, Death in her shadowed caul gave me a nod of congratulations. Almost like she might’ve given the real Maker.
“Impressive,” said Siraja. “Now open the doors to the Maker’s Hall. Because even an eleven-foot tall demigod and the incarnation of Death can’t stand long against that.” She pointed out into the mist at the monstrosity.
She was right. I resolved to try again, using the time War’s return had brought us.
A kray dropped from directly overhead, slamming into me and Siraja. The impact smashed me to the glass. Siraja spun away staggering, but stayed on her feet. The kray ignored her, and lowered one massive claw to snip off my head. I tried to name it, but the stars behind my eyes and the lack of air in my lungs meant I was only able to gasp. The pirate stepped forward and plunged her sword into the kray’s side. Goo sprayed and the monster squealed. Then its many legs buckled and I army-crawled from beneath it before it toppled to the glass.
The qephilim pulled me up just in time to face four more who’d somehow got around War, Death, and their respective armies. Our foes numbers had increased so much that even with kray dead piling up like snow, there were still too many.
Strands of webbing arced high through the air. Where strands fell among the soldiers, screams rang out. The webbing was like acid, in that it burned away the substance of Ardeyn. I growled a wordless curse, then named all the webbing I could see. It dispersed into a rain of white flowers that normally only grew along the mountain tops. The kray responded by launching another volley.
The fight descended into a free-for-all. There wasn’t time to try to open a way into the Hall again. If I didn’t concentrate everything on staying alive, we would be dead in seconds. My nails bit into my palms as I clenched my hands into fists. Panic and fear would only get me killed now. I screamed as I lost myself in the frenzied, hazed battle to save the world.
34: Dissolution
Elandine, Queen of Hazurrium
The kray had no souls. At least, they didn’t before they entered Ardeyn. One of the ground rules for Land of the Curse demanded that any intelligent creature who perished there must leave behind a record of its mind and goals, its accomplishments and failures; its soul.
Thus did Death reap the kray, pulling their newly minted souls from their bodies like pits from an olive. If they’d been natives, she’d have sent them to be judged by her faithful kindred in the Court of Sleep. To her was given the power to expunge from any creature its spark. The kray who’d come into Ardeyn had life. Which Death gladly wiped away, as she relinquished their confused, fledgling souls to nothingness.
Even so, the part of Death that remembered it was Elandine marveled at herself. Never before had Rendswandir moved with such lethal fluidity. Flick, flick, stab, snap; four dead kray. Slash, touch, spin; five more dead kray. Everything was a blur, hypnotizing Elandine and fueling Death’s vigor. Rarely had the Incarnation unleashed her power in such a tide, not since the great battles during the Age of Myth, when humans had fought on the side of Lotan. Then, she’d mowed the humans down with an implement even grander than this one. A scythe of magic and will that she wished was with her now. She’d been sleeping too long, though, to remember where she’d laid it down. Rendswandir would have to do.
Behind her, the Peacemakers delivered death to the foe, too, though not as efficiently as she. Death aided them, in as
much as by killing the kray, those particular kray didn’t attack the humans. But beyond that, she found it difficult to intervene when a kray snipped off a screaming human’s arm, leg, or head with massive pincers, or zipped a convulsing qephilim into a cocoon of reality-wiping webs. When it comes to dying, Death had no favorites. She reaped the souls of her dying allies without sadness or rancor. It was their time, and they would find their fate handed out by the dictates of an Umber Judge.
Death frowned as she slew, and her aura of dissolution flickered. Elandine’s consciousness pointed out that if they were not victors here today, the Court of Sleep would also be wiped away, if Ardeyn was destroyed. Lotan would be loosed–
A horse-sized kray lunged forward, trying to disembowel her with a slashing pincer across her stomach. Death skipped back so the tip only grazed her, then charged back when it wheeled past. But the thing was quick; quicker than she expected. It almost got the pincer back in front of itself as a defense before she stepped in and cut off the entire limb with a stroke of Rendswandir.
The small kray scurriers were easy to kill, but the larger versions that had finally reached them required more effort. This one had five more snapping chitinous claws, each as large as a wagon.
The First Protector – splattered in kray ichor and strands of kray webbing – sidled up to the queen. “Your Majesty, are you all right?” Navar said. “Shadow took you, and I–”
“Navar,” Elandine said, breaking from the spell of the Incarnation for a moment. “Help that squadron! Believe me, I no longer need a protector. Not when Death walks with me.”
Navar’s ears flattened, but the First Protector nodded, and did as she was bid. Navar was ever the faithful servant.
A new wave of kray rushed their line. She saw War step forward to blunt their advance. He did so by flooding the enemy nearest to him with his duplicates, each of which hacked and hewed until the kray went down. Elandine realized that, as Death, she could do something… similar. She just had to let go completely. So far, she’d refused the Incarnation complete control. Elandine was a queen, and the last time she’d given up her power to someone else, she’d regretted it. It might have cost her the kingdom of Hazurrium.
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