The Core

by Peter V. Brett

  “Can’t.” The Par’chin withdrew his hand.

  “Why not?” Jardir saw the demon drop into the knot of alamen fae.

  “Because, fool, the queen knows everything her drones do,” Alagai Ka sneered. “Unruly livestock will not concern her. The Heir of Kavri will.”

  “He’s right, Ahmann,” the Par’chin said. “Right now, the crown and my wards have us hidden. But we start throwin’ real power around, ent no missin’ that.”

  Jardir gripped his spear so tightly his hands ached, and the demon gave its hissing laugh. “It pains you to sacrifice drones. Even pathetic savages like these.”

  “They were my people, once.” Jardir saw blood spatter the tunnel wall and knew it was too late to help.

  “Queen knows the thoughts of drones this far from the hive?” the Par’chin asked.

  The demon turned his head-tilting stare the Par’chin’s way. Jardir was coming to recognize the look as more derision than curiosity. As if Alagai Ka was wondering how they could be so utterly stupid.

  “We have been inside the hive for days, Explorer,” the demon said, and Jardir felt his blood turn to ice. “The queen keeps her larder close. When the laying is done, she will feast on them by the thousand to replenish her strength. The losses in your petty uprising are meaningless.”

  “Not meaningless,” the Par’chin said. “They serve something greater.”

  “Do they, Par’chin?” Jardir asked.

  “You’re the one always talking about fate,” the Par’chin said. “About Everam’s Plan. Well maybe He’s got one, after all. Maybe He didn’t abandon these folk. Maybe He set ’em here to help us when we needed it most.”

  “At what cost, Par’chin?” Jardir asked.

  “Don’t matter the cost,” the Par’chin said. “Victory is worth any price. Ent that what you always said? Ent that your excuse for killing your way across Thesa? But now, when victory is so close you could touch it, you suddenly grow a conscience?”

  The greenlander’s words gave Jardir pause. He looked at his old friend, trying to peel away the years to see the innocent young greenlander beneath the hard, painted man.

  “Do you remember the first time we argued, Par’chin?” Jardir asked.

  The son of Jeph nodded. “In the Maze.”

  Jardir nodded. “When the Pit Warder was ravaged by alagai talons and readied himself for the lonely path.”

  The Par’chin’s eyes flashed. “He had a name, Ahmann. Zaji asu Fandra am’Hessath am’Kaji. He was my friend. The man who taught me one-way wardings and pit magic. The man I could have saved, had you not murdered him.”

  “Do not condescend to me, Par’chin,” Jardir said. “I knew Zaji far better than you. He had in his grasp what every warrior dreams of—a glorious death. But you would have snatched it away, forced him to live for decades as a crippled shell of the man he had been, heedless of his wishes, all because Arlen asu Jeph would give the demons nothing.”

  The Par’chin’s aura spiked, and Jardir knew his words hit home.

  —

  Arlen felt like he’d been slapped.

  Give the demons nothing. A childhood oath that had become the defining lens of his life.

  He’d broken it before.

  Arlen looked at the core dwellers, bringing down the last cave demon. Some clutched wounds already beginning to heal, but two lay cooling on the tunnel floor, auras snuffed.

  Jardir was right. The man he had once been would never have stood by and left anyone to the demons—corespawn the greater good. Leaving folk to the demons wasn’t the man his mother taught him to be.

  “You told me on that day that Heaven was not true,” Jardir said.

  “It ent.” Arlen’s answer was a reflex, but his thoughts did not match the conviction in his voice. Who was he to say? “And if this world’s all we got, I’m going to do whatever’s needed to save it.”

  “Including spending the lives of the alamen fae in a feint,” Jardir said.

  “Ent forcin’ ’em to fight, Ahmann,” Arlen said. “Doin’ it of their own free will.”

  “Because they think us gods,” Jardir said.

  Arlen laughed. “You been calling yourself the Deliverer without irony for years now, Ahmann! These folk ent fighting demons for us. They’re fighting because they’re sick of being slaves.”

  “They are savages,” Jardir said. “Are we empowering their will, or manipulating it to our ends?”

  The mind demon made his hissing laugh—a dark, eerie sound. “You are barely less savage than they. Both clinging to fictions you do not understand.”

  “Used to feel that way,” Arlen said, “but the deeper we go, the more I see things I thought fiction are real enough to touch.” He met Jardir’s eyes. “Demon said it himself. We ent successful, most of these folk are gettin’ et anyway. Better they go down with spears in hand.”

  “They might not have gone down at all, had we pointed them toward the surface and not the center of the hive,” Jardir said. “If you have the heart to sacrifice their lives, give them the honor of admitting it.”

  It was an unexpected lash from his old friend. Indeed, their roles had reversed, for his friend had always been able to see the Creator’s Plan in everything, while Arlen was plagued by doubt every day.

  But now…Now his whole body was thrumming with the call of the Core, a song that roared through him like a hurricane. It was power incarnate, the source of all life in the world, and it spoke to him, whispering of greater truths. The world was out of balance, and there was only one way to set things right.

  “Ay,” Arlen spat. “That what you want to hear? Know they can’t win against the hive, but they can hold its attention while we do what we came to. This ent stealing wells, Ahmann. It’s Sharak rippin’ Ka. Either we win, or everyone loses.”

  Jardir looked at the fallen sadly, but he nodded. “Of course, you are correct, Par’chin.” Doubt clouded his aura.

  Arlen looked at him, confused. “Can’t you hear it?”

  Jardir cocked his head. “Hear what?”

  “The Core,” Arlen said.

  Jardir closed his eyes a moment. “I hear nothing.”

  Again, the mind demon gave his hissing laugh.

  “Don’t listen with your ears,” Arlen said. “Not really hearing anything. More than that. Sense we ent got a word for. Shifts in the way the magic feels when it flows through you, telling more than words ever could.”

  Jardir fell into his breath, aura going calm as he reached out with his crown. “I can sense the abyss—feel its power. I can Draw its magic, shape it to my will, but it does not…speak to me.”

  “Maybe you just ent listening,” Arlen said, “because it’s got a lot to say.”

  Jardir crossed his arms. “And what is the abyss telling you, Par’chin?”

  “That it ent the abyss,” Arlen said. “Life flows from there, Ahmann, not the other way around. Every livin’ thing’s got a touch of magic in it, and the sun burns magic away.”

  “What are you saying, Par’chin?” Jardir asked.

  “Maybe there’s a Creator, after all,” Arlen said. “Just been looking for Him in the wrong place.”

  —

  They followed silently in the wake of the alamen fae, hidden by wards of unsight and silence that even the core dwellers could not penetrate.

  Jardir welcomed the quiet, still reeling from the Par’chin’s words.

  Could it be true? Everam and Nie, Heaven and the abyss, all lies? It was blasphemy. It was madness. And yet, when he searched the Heavens, they were empty, and the demons knew nothing of Nie.

  More and more tribes joined them as they approached the tunnels that led to the center of the hive. The core dwellers adapted quickly, and the crude but effective wards Jardir and the Par’chin taught them spread like stones in an avalanche to every bit of sharpened obsidian in the larder.

  Jardir could not deny the glory of the sight. These tortured souls, hundreds of generations born into a captiv
ity they could not possibly understand, finally rising up against their gaolers.

  They did well, at first. The drones were unprepared for their sheer ferocity, or the speed with which the masses armed themselves. They came with insufficient numbers, and were slaughtered.

  They entered a great cavern, dotted with stalagmites. Some were just a few feet high, others larger than the minarets of Sharik Hora. All were hot with magic. Were they vents from the abyss?

  The alamen fae did not seem to notice, advancing into the cavern as if they had been here many times before.

  “Par’chin,” he said.

  “Ay,” the son of Jeph agreed. “Place ent right.”

  Suddenly demons clinging to the stone on the far side of the stalagmites sprang from hiding, striking at the core dwellers. Rock demons appeared behind them, moving to cut off any retreat.

  “Alagai’ting Ka has taken notice,” Jardir said.

  “There.” Alagai Ka pointed upward to a small cave high on the far cavern wall. “My brethren use that vantage to overlook the larder and choose savages for culling.”

  “For eating, you mean,” the Par’chin said.

  The demon hissed. “Do not feign superiority, Explorer. You are hardly above eating my kind.”

  “Ay, and don’t you forget it.” The Par’chin looked to Jardir. “Wait here. Follow me up when the mind is dead.”

  Jardir nodded, watching the Par’chin’s essence drift apart just enough to lighten his body. His wards of unsight throbbed as he went aloft, flying like an arrow for the cave mouth.

  The cave was too far for the demon’s psychic death to kill the drones fighting the alamen, but it was immediately apparent when the demons lost the mind’s guidance and became animals once more. The rock demons left their positions guarding the exit and charged, eager to join in the killing, even as the core dwellers regained footing against the enemy. There were shouts and flares of magic, human screams and piercing demon shrieks.

  Jardir could not guess how the battle would end now, but there was no time to ponder. He gripped his spear and took to the air, the crown’s bubble carrying Alagai Ka along behind.

  They landed at the lip of the cave to find the Par’chin holding the head of a juvenile mind demon. It looked as if he had twisted it off with his bare hands.

  “This way.” Alagai Ka affected not to notice the body of one of his brethren. He pointed into the darkness of the cave, out of reach of the luminescent moss and lichen that grew on the larder walls. “We will progress quickly now.”

  Jardir tensed as they entered the narrow tunnel. He could still could hear the battle as the alamen fae fought—died—to draw attention away from them.

  He felt a crushing pain at their sacrifice, wondering again how Everam could have left them here to suffer in the abyss for thousands of years.

  If there was an Everam. If the abyss was not just molten rock below the surface, hot with magic, as the Par’chin and the demon both believed.

  The tunnels were smooth-walled with sharp turns, sometimes narrowing or widening abruptly. Jardir could sense the magic flowing through them, linking with countless other tunnels to form a three-dimensional greatward.

  The ward was not one of forbiddance—as Jardir encountered from the mind demons that attacked Everam’s Bounty—preventing humans from approach. The demons would not forbid entry to their livestock. This ward simply focused power, Drawing it like a whirlpool down to the center of the hive where the queen lay.

  As the Father of Lies promised, they moved at speed for a time, but Jardir began to notice something amiss. Mimic demons patrolling the tunnels were pausing, sniffing the air. Searching for something they could not fully perceive.

  “Sensing us,” the Par’chin said.

  “How is that possible?” Jardir asked. The crown and Leesha’s cloak protected him, and the Par’chin’s wards of unsight glowed bright with power. Alagai Ka was trapped in the crown’s bubble, unable to reach beyond the forbidding.

  “Your wards are keyed to lesser breeds,” Alagai Ka said. “Even my brethren and I are only a flickering reflection of the queen’s power.”

  “Ent got queen wards on the crown?” the Par’chin asked.

  “Not even Kaji faced one and lived to tell,” Jardir said.

  “So she senses something, but doesn’t know what it is,” the Par’chin said. “And the mimics only know what she does. Maybe we can still tiptoe by.”

  “With every step you take, her power grows,” Alagai Ka said. “Soon there will be no hiding from her.”

  Indeed, not long after, a seemingly empty tunnel came alive with tentacles tipped with magic-dead spikes. The tentacles slapped against the crown’s bubble, but the spikes penetrated and fired like arrows. Jardir spun his spear, scattering them, but one thudded into his thigh.

  Unarmed, Par’chin moved with incredible speed, plucking two of the spikes out of the air even as he twisted and wove around the others. These he threw back at the tunnel wall near the base of the tentacles. The spikes sent up spurts of ichor as they struck. Mimic demons sloughed off the wall to loom before them.

  Jardir embraced the pain as he tore the spike from his thigh, focusing his magic to heal the wound. He tried to push the attackers from their path using the crown’s forbidding, but too much of the power was focused on holding Alagai Ka in for him to project it outward with any force. The demons clustered at the end of the tunnel, and the bubble prevented him from approaching.

  “I can clear them,” the Par’chin said.

  “No,” Jardir said. “We must do it together.”

  “You lose focus and drop that field, Alagai Ka escapes,” the Par’chin said.

  “Then perhaps the Father of Lies has led us far enough,” Jardir said, pointing his spear at the demon.

  “You cannot hope to find—” Alagai Ka began.

  “Think you’re right.” The Par’chin turned a cold eye toward the demon. “Reckon we can find our own way from here.”

  —

  The Consort read their auras and knew the game could go no further. Steeling himself, he summoned his last reserves of power, burning his own flesh from the inside out to sear away the killing wards tattooed on his skin.

  A flash of agony, hot and raw, and he was able to molt off the ruined dermis, free at long last.

  Free, but crippled. The act nearly killed him. His body was in desperate need of repair, his aura dimmer than the lichen on the larder walls. He was too weak to fight.

  Immediately the Consort took to the between-state, becoming too diffuse for physical attack. He remained trapped in the Heir’s bubble, but they could no longer touch him.

  It was a risky ploy. With so little magic left, the Consort did not have the strength to rebuild his body. But only the Explorer could dissipate after him, at the cost of the wards protecting his will. The Consort hoped the Explorer was so foolish, but even human stupidity had its limits.

  The Consort spread himself thin across the field, casting shadows that made him appear to be gathering in one place. His captors took the bait, sending great blasts of energy at the spot. Most of it ran along the edge of the forbidding, though some of the current jolted painfully through the Consort.

  His captors paid a heavy price for the assault, revealing themselves fully to the mimics at last. With visible targets, the demons renewed their attacks, hurling stones and sending magic-dead spikes in a killing spray.

  Again the Explorer and the Heir were too quick to take serious harm, but they were distracted, fearing what the Consort could do if they lost track of him for even an instant.

  But the Consort was not where their attention should have been. This close to the queen, she had direct control of her guardians. The mimics drew impact wards in the air, knocking his captors from their feet. They kept the press, adding heat and pressure wards, buffeting the humans about the tunnel until at last the Heir’s crown was knocked askew, and the bubble flickered for an instant.

  The Consort’s f
irst instinct was to go to the drones, but touching any of their minds would be the same as contacting the queen. She would see the failure in his memories, the treachery and betrayal of the hive. Most of all, she would sense his weakness. It would be the end of him.

  He could not return to the hive until his power was restored. Instead he reached for the nearest path to the surface he could find and took it without considering where it went. Thousands of miles passed in an instant. He found another path down, and another up, swimming along through the planet’s crust until he himself did not know where he was, and the Explorer could never follow.

  —

  “Corespawn it, he’s gone!” Arlen cried.

  “So are we, if we do not focus,” Jardir snapped.

  He was right. There was no way to tell where the demon had gone, but the mimics pressing in were powerful and could not be ignored. Individually, none was as powerful as Arlen or Jardir, but collectively they had the advantage.

  The mimics surged forward while the forbidding was down, closing to just a few feet before Jardir managed to right the crown. The field he raised now was smaller, barely more than the reach of his spear.

  Arlen tasted the magic on the air, Reading the current the way he might translate a scroll. The queen was nearby. He could sense her power, hear her lowing in his mind. She was clawing at their mind wards, attempting to break through, but the protections held. These demons were her last line of defense.

  “Almost there, Ahmann,” Arlen said. “We can still win this if we press.”

  Jardir raised his spear. “Then let us hold nothing back, my true friend.” He slammed a mimic up against his warding field, then dropped the forbidding to rush forward and impale the creature, sending waves of killing magic through the Spear of Kaji. The demon burst into flames, shrieking as it burned to ash.

  A mimic reared up before him, and Arlen drew a cutting ward, cleaving it in two. Mimics could heal most any injury, growing back even severed limbs, but there was no regrowing half its body. For a moment the split halves tried to reconnect, but Arlen kicked one away, drawing a mimic ward at the other to knock it in the opposite direction. The distance too great, the halves lost cohesion and melted away.