She sat cross-legged on the bed and closed her eyes.
The onslaught was so sudden and so intense that she nearly cast herself into the firmament without even thinking of the consequences. An instant after she closed her eyes, she found herself standing in the small room within her mind that Alexander had helped her construct, looking through what used to be a secure doorway leading to the netherworld. Only now, where the door used to be, there was a gaping hole in the imaginary wall leading to a place of inky blackness, endless emptiness, and palpable malice.
Isabel stared into the netherworld with breathless terror, and the darkness stared back. She was paralyzed with fear. Overcome with cold dread.
She had opened the doorway to the netherworld and unleashed the shades. They had come forth into the world of time and substance with the singular goal of finding and opening the Nether Gate. Creatures of the dark would pour forth and consume the world of life, ending all hope, not just for the people of the Seven Isles but for every creature everywhere.
Isabel had doomed them all.
She felt the rush of fear come in waves that threatened to overwhelm her sanity. Guilt crushed in on her. She cowered away from the consequences of her actions. It was the most horrible thing she had ever felt. She had to escape it. But before she could release her hold on her will, she became dimly aware of a quiet place of calm deep within her psyche.
She focused on that place and found herself wondering how Alexander could have possibly endured such terror. The shock of the revelation hit her like a lightning bolt. In an instant, she realized that she had allowed the intensity of the trials to overwhelm her reason and drive out her sense of reality. Alexander had gone through the trials. He had endured. She could too.
Facing her fear of the darkness before her, she withdrew into that place of calm and reason, but the fear followed her. She vaguely remembered Alexander explaining how he had taken refuge within that place of calm in his mind and how the fear and pain couldn’t exist there. For her it still did. She couldn’t find a refuge. She felt trapped in her own mind with a beast of unspeakable evil and cold malevolence. It chased her until she was frantic and exhausted. Then the darkness was all around her. The sensation was familiar. She had fallen into the darkness of the netherworld. The coldness and emptiness threatened to tear her soul apart—she couldn’t find the strength or the resolve to resist the overwhelming pull of the void.
What had been terror only a moment ago spiked into wild panic. She felt the tug of countless formless manifestations of evil pulling at the edges of her soul, trying to unravel the very essence of her being. The abstract fear of unleashing the darkness into the world transformed into a visceral, hopeless horror of being lost to the endless torment of the netherworld.
She felt trapped and alone without any place of refuge. Her fear only fueled the hunger of the darkness and drew the lifeless beings that lived there to her failing light. Her desperation ignited a spark of anger within her that she seized and nurtured into a full-blown rage, but that only seemed to feed the creatures in the dark. They took strength from the negativity of the anger she had deliberately flooded herself with and renewed their attack with a vengeance.
Isabel frantically focused on the exercise she had learned for dispelling anger. She stepped outside of herself and looked at the events transpiring within her mind from the perspective of a disinterested observer. Almost as quickly as she had given her anger life, she snuffed it out and extinguished the passion of it, leaving her vulnerable to the cold, life-leeching darkness of the netherworld. The fear threatened to overwhelm her sanity and she considered letting go—but only for a moment.
Thoughts of Alexander filled her mind and she saw the path to salvation. She focused on him and her love for him. The light of her soul grew bright and drove the creatures circling in the darkness far enough away for her to gain greater control of her mind and her reason. She could still feel the fear but it was less important in the face of her love for Alexander. She renewed her efforts to focus on the light of her love and regained some sense of her circumstances. The panic receded into manageable terror.
When she realized she didn’t know the way out of the darkness, the panic threatened at the edges of her consciousness again, but again she pushed it back. In that moment of relative calm, she understood what she had to do. She reached deep into her mind and found the pathway that led to the realm of light, the portal that had opened within her mind when Sara was born.
With an effort of will and her newly gained powers of visualization, she threw open the passageway to the realm of light. A ray of pure white light the color of life stabbed through the darkness and showed her the way back into her own mind and the world of time and substance. The creatures swirling in the darkness shrieked with fury at the intrusion of the Maker’s light into their realm, but they cowered from it in spite of their hatred for it.
Isabel willed her soul through the darkness toward the source of the light until she found herself back in her own mind. She opened her eyes and gasped for breath as she stood and looked around frantically. She was standing next to the bed in the chamber of trials. The sun had moved down the wall and several feet across the floor.
Isabel had passed the trial of fear.
She had no way of knowing whether she had actually passed into the netherworld or if it had all been an illusion created within her mind by the firmament, and she didn’t really care. She was through the first of three trials and the mana fast had only just begun.
For the next three days she struggled with isolation and hunger. The second day was the worst. She paced for hours trying to take her mind off food, but the grumbling of her empty stomach always brought her back to her hunger.
She drank the Wizard’s Dust-infused water at the correct time each day and waited for the next of the trials to manifest.
She tried to keep her mind busy with her visualization and emotional-control exercises. When she tired of that, she replayed the experience of the trial of fear over in her mind in an effort to learn what she could from it. Her connections to the netherworld and the realm of light led her to speculate about the nature of the world she lived in and how it interacted with the higher and lower planes. When she tired of speculating about things she could not prove, she thought about Alexander. He always brought her back to a place of clarity and purpose. Thinking of him centered her and gave her hope for the future, not just for herself but for the entire Seven Isles.
She drifted off to sleep on the third night of her trials thinking about her husband. Without waking, she found herself floating as a disembodied point of awareness over a battlefield. Alexander was surrounded by an army of enormous proportions. He fought fiercely and with reckless abandon but there were just too many enemy soldiers. One by one she watched her friends die trying to save Alexander. Anatoly fell first. He stepped in front of a volley of enemy arrows and took several long shafts in the chest. He slumped to his knees with blood bubbling from his mouth. Alexander cried out. Isabel could see his horror at losing his mentor, but he was forced to defend himself against another surge of enemy soldiers.
Isabel felt a growing sense of hopelessness begin to build within her as she floated above the fray. Lucky rushed to help Anatoly when a big enemy soldier broke through the cordon of loyal protectors surrounding Alexander and ran Lucky through with a spear. Isabel heard Alexander sob even as he renewed his drive into the enemy.
She saw the frantic and desperate struggle in Alexander’s movements as he tried in vain to overcome impossible odds. From where Isabel floated over the field she could see the enemy horde stretch off to the horizon. Alexander was fighting a hopeless battle. He would strike down hundreds, maybe even thousands of the enemy with the Sword of Kings—but, in the end, he would fall.
She felt a lump growing in her soul. A feeling of loss and despair began to build. She imagined a world without Alexander and quailed from the prospect.
Still the enemy came.
Jack flickered into view as he stabbed a soldier coming up behind Alexander and then fell just as quickly from the crossbow bolt of another soldier. Isabel could see the wild loss and desperate need in Alexander’s eyes. She struggled to reach out to him, to enter the battle at his side, if only to die in the struggle with him. But she had no power. She was a helpless observer without form or substance.
One by one his protectors died trying to save him. Nameless soldiers sworn to the Old Law mounted a valiant struggle to preserve their King, but hack by thrust they were felled in a growing ring of carnage.
And still the enemy came.
Isabel watched as the last of the soldiers loyal to her husband died, leaving him to fend for himself against impossible numbers. He fought on with renewed fury. All was lost but he didn’t give in. He fought on. An arrow found his left arm, rendering it useless, but still Alexander lashed out at the enemy soldiers. The ground was slick with bloody mud and the air was thick with the stench of death.
Then Isabel noticed Phane off in the distance, standing on a rock to get a better view of Alexander’s death. He wore a smile of triumph. Isabel felt the despair threaten to claim her. Only moments later, Alexander was driven to his knee by an arrow through his leg. He struggled in vain to regain his footing but his leg was too badly injured to bear his weight. Even on his knees, Alexander killed three more soldiers before a big man with a blunt mace stepped up behind him and clubbed him in the back of the head.
The wet thud was sickening. Isabel felt an overwhelming flood of loss fill her to overflowing as she watched her best reason for living die right before her eyes. Her sanity threatened to dissolve under the onslaught of loss that filled her with despair.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew this was a test. But the things she had witnessed were too real and too vibrant to be denied. Alexander was gone. Her love had been killed.
She floated for a time and watched the enemy mutilate his dead body for their amusement while the despair overcame her and pushed everything else out of her awareness until there was only loss.
Then time sped up and she saw Phane standing before the Nether Gate chanting a spell. She almost didn’t care anymore until she saw the Gate come alive and the darkness of the netherworld slowly spill out into the world of time and substance.
Phane panicked and fled—the creatures he had unleashed were beyond even his power to control. They ran him down and devoured him, leaving the world naked before the onslaught of the darkness. And still Isabel was powerless to act, trapped in a place of helpless observation. She watched as the world died.
The darkness devoured and consumed everything good in all of the Seven Isles and left only broken, twisted, and corrupted remains. The whole of the world descended into a pit of torment and despair until even the sun itself began to dim.
Isabel felt lost and helpless as the despair threatened to consume her. She could feel nothing but the hollow ache of loss until she simply wanted to cease to exist. Deep within her psyche, a part of her revolted at the spark of hope she felt at the thought of her own dissolution. Somewhere, she knew this was the test of despair. But she no longer cared. She just wanted the endless loss to end. She was ready to let go and release her will into the firmament just to make it stop.
But she couldn’t let go. Alexander would want her to keep fighting no matter what. He’d done just that. Even when all of his allies had fallen, he had fought on. When he was alone, surrounded by a horde of enemy soldiers, he struggled with his last breath for the cause he had vowed to protect. She could do no less.
She struggled to find a place within herself where the despair couldn’t find her. But there was nowhere to hide. The feelings of loss were so real and so pervasive that she couldn’t escape them. With an effort of sheer will, she focused on her memory of her wedding. At first it seemed distant and unreal but the more she focused on it, the more tangible the feelings became until she reached a tipping point and the love she had for Alexander filled her and drove out the despair.
She woke with a start. It was just after dawn. The spot of sunlight was high on the wall and the room was chill with the morning air. She sat up on her bed and breathed deeply, trying to gain some composure and reconnect with reality. She shuddered when she thought of the terrible images of Alexander’s death. She remembered how much she’d worried for him when he had undertaken the trials. If she’d known what he was actually facing, she would have done nearly anything to protect him from the horrors he had endured.
The forth, fifth, and sixth days of the trials passed quietly. Her hunger had faded and she learned to accept the solitude. She spent the days meditating and practicing her exercises, drinking another vial each day at the appointed time and waiting with trepidation for the trial of pain to begin.
On the morning of the seventh day, she had just swallowed the seventh and final vial when a stabbing pain shot through her stomach like a spear had been driven into her. The pain was so intense, it froze her in place. She couldn’t breathe or even scream. With a shudder she toppled off the bed and landed hard against the cold stone floor. The pain flowed into her from the center of her gut and spread out like tentacles of molten agony. They bored into her and ignited her nerves everywhere they went. Just when she thought the pain couldn’t be any worse, another jolt of agony would pulse through her.
She gasped for breath and screamed with an effort of wild panic. As her scream trailed off, she realized she had made a potentially fatal mistake. She was out of breath and the wracking torment was so great that she couldn’t draw another. She closed her eyes and focused on her lungs, commanding them to fill with air but the convulsions shuddering through her prevented her from inhaling. She struggled as the world started to go dark. Her lungs burned with their searing need for air but still she couldn’t make them work.
As her consciousness faded, she made one final effort to draw breath and managed to gasp a small gulp of air. It wasn’t nearly enough but it did stave off the darkness of unconsciousness and oblivion for a few more moments. Each small gulp of air was a struggle. She didn’t know how long she lay there on the cold stone floor struggling to breathe. Each little bit of air took a monumental effort but didn’t lessen the pain.
She began to feel exhausted from the convulsions of agony that tore through her body and her psyche. She had spent so much of her energy trying to take the next breath that she had failed to remember that each trial must be faced and endured. She felt her grip on her identity start to loosen as the pain worked to pry her will to live away from her soul. Darkness closed in around her and her consciousness faded.
Some time later, she found herself floating in the small room looking down at her corpse.
Isabel was dead.
Chapter 18
Alexander scanned the horizon. It was evening of the third day since they’d separated from Conner’s honor guard and headed south toward Bradfield Province, which was adjacent to Grafton. They were being followed. Alexander had noticed their pursuers earlier in the day and was becoming concerned that his ruse might not work. Much hung in the balance. His father was defending against an invading army and needed all the time he could get to prepare his defenses and evacuate New Ruatha and Northport before either city was overrun by the Reishi Army Regency. The life of Abel’s daughter was also at stake. She was being held prisoner in Grafton Province by Phane’s agents. If they learned that Abel had no intention of negotiating with them, they might kill her.
The men following him could only be enemy spies. Abel had no reason to send men after him. They had agreed on their course of action, and Alexander trusted the King of Ithilian. He’d looked at his colors and found him to be a good and honest man. More than that, Abel knew that Alexander’s mission would succeed only if kept secret. He wouldn’t risk exposing their plan. Too much depended on secrecy.
The men following them had to be enemy. The only questions Alexander had were who sent them and why. Cassius was the only player on It
hilian that he was aware of who might have dispatched them. But Alexander wasn’t about to rule out the possibility of other forces at work. He’d learned through bitter experience that there was often more to a given situation than met the eye—even eyes as penetrating as his.
From his vantage point on the little hillock, he could just make out the smudge of color in the distance that gave away the enemy’s position. They were easily a league behind and didn’t look like they were trying to close the distance. That concerned him even more. If they were hunters, they would be making best speed to close with them but they were deliberately keeping their distance.
Their purpose was apparently more strategic, so it stood to reason that they were working with others who had unknown resources at their disposal. Alexander knew as well as anyone that magic could be used to communicate across great distances in the blink of an eye. If they warned the enemy in Grafton, Alexander might arrive to find the princess dead and a trap waiting for him.
Yet again, he wished that Isabel was with him. She would be able to tell him more about the enemy. And he missed her terribly. As he rode through the fertile and well-cared-for countryside of Ithilian, he’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to keep his worry for her and his sister to a manageable level. Both were more than capable of taking care of themselves but they were also in a dangerous place, surrounded by potential enemies. Add to that the fact that Isabel was going to undergo the mana fast and Alexander felt yet another thrill of fear in the pit of his gut. He refocused his attention on the enemy following them and tried to decide if there was anything he could, or should, do about it.
Anatoly nudged his big mare alongside Alexander but remained silent.
“They’re still there,” Alexander said. “I just wish I knew what they’re planning.”
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