by Tara Janzen
Nemeton had dared much and lost much in his travels through time in search of the Books and a way to rid Earth of Dharkkum. No one had dared to dabble in the Books’ pages with such bold confidence before or since, except for their maker, she-whose-name-could-not-be-spoken, once called Ysaia and now called Rhayne, White Bitch of the Dangoes. The greatest of all the Prydion Magi, she had conjured the dragons in her cauldron and forged the Magia Blade, some said with Nemeton as an acolyte by her side. Nemeton himself had never confirmed as much, not to Tamisk anyway, and they had spent nigh onto a year together in the White Palace. Nor was it Rhayne’s way to speak overmuch of things in the deep past. Sometimes Tamisk wondered if, in her many incarnations, she’d simply forgotten parts of her past.
All of Nature had been grist for Nemeton’s mill, a place where physics and magic were differentiated only by the skills of the practitioner, a place where a sorcerer became the bridge between the metaphor and reality. He’d taught inquiry in all its permutations of religion, science, and philosophy, and he had taught Tamisk to look for truth only where seemingly disparate beliefs crossed. Light lay at the intersections of harmonic accord, he’d said, like the jewels in Buddha’s net. The rest was man’s dross.
So Nemeton had died by a brutish hand in an unsung age, the man who had bargained with blood to give the world the Hart’s eyrie, the world’s hope of salvation when its end came nigh—but just a man, no god as others might have claimed.
And now the end had suddenly come nigh. Corvus had proven more powerful than Tamisk had calculated, a fact which must have surprised the Warmonger at least as much as it had surprised the Ilmarryn mage. Tamisk was not one to underestimate his enemies. Yet Corvus Gei had taken the scrap of mystery that was his left arm and created chaos on an unprecedented scale. Something had goaded the Warmonger beyond his usually keen sense of self-preservation, and Tamisk knew it could only have been one of two women: Vishab or Avallyn.
No one else held any sway over the man, though not much of Corvus the man could be left after his Pan-shei fiasco. ’Twas what had always held him in check, the clear price he paid for giving in to his anger. Strange beast that he was, he’d brought the pestilence upon himself by carrying a vile rot with him through the weir—and now he’d let it destroy him.
Vishab could have pushed him to such, if she’d found something in the Chandra Yeull Le, the Yellow Book of Chandra, to make Corvus’s destruction a means to her own ends. The exiled priestess had intercepted Corvus ten years ago on his return from the past, finding him before the White Ladies and saving him from certain death. Corvus had brought the book with him, and given it as a boon to her. Tamisk had let her keep it all these years. Indestructible as it was, she could do naught to harm it, and letting her keep the book had kept her from other mischief. But ’twas time for Tamisk to bring the Yellow Book home. It had always been within his reach, and never more so than now, when light and darkness were flickering side by side and rousing the dragons to wrath.
At the top of the steps, Tamisk paused, his gaze taking in the forest he had conjured in the tower, greenery to cover the walls, a glade for his scrying pool, the myriad paths. In the center of it all was the wondrously crude yet infinitely refined contraption encased within the oak’s boughs, Nemeton’s armillary sphere. The solid crystal pillar at its core shone with an inner fire, starfire from the first Star, dreamstone quarried from Deseillign’s vault of heaven. The front of each hand-fashioned piece of copper on its face was aged with rich verdigris and washed in thick layers of color—turquoise, brown, and blue shadowed with gray turning to black. The backs of the pieces were acid-etched with patterns of conductivity. Like the books, the pillar and the skeletal sphere of graduated bronze rings circling it were impervious to man’s meddling. For thousands upon thousands of years it had held its place in the Hart Tower, waiting to complete the task Nemeton had set for it—and for Tamisk—in another long-ago time:
A star fell to Earth in Deep Time and birthed an Age of Wonders. Then the darkness came, following the star, and the whole planet went to hell. So had begun Nemeton’s first lecture.
Tamisk stepped forward, lifting branches out of the way with his upraised arm. There had been rain earlier, Ilmarryn rain conjured by clouds he had set adrift years earlier like mist among the oak’s branches. Fine rivulets of water sloughed off the leaves onto his arm, dampening the fine lawn of his shirt.
Four of the ancient Ages passed before the true nature of the darkness was understood. Called Dharkkum by the descendants of the Starlight-born and fought with all manner of courage and talismans by Stept Agah and men and women whose names are forever written on the stone doors of the Court of the Ilmarryn, ’twas discovered to be an anomaly, a cosmic mischance, a naked singularity bound by no event horizon and no law of Nature beyond its own smoky form and its unpredictable and terrifying power. The whole of Earth’s history is no more than a passing nanosecond to the eternal cusp of destruction birthed in a black hole in the NGC 2300 cluster of galaxies and sent careening across the universe. It’s Earth’s bad luck to be riding that cusp with no hand of God to push it out of harm’s way.
No hand of God, but the hand of Nemeton, and through him, Tamisk. That billions of creatures would die if he failed did not mean that they lacked God’s grace, only that like all other matter, the creatures of Earth were subject to change. ’Twas true the coming change was profoundly cataclysmic. There would be no Earth left, and no creatures left to worry about the lack, but still ’twas merely change, the lifeblood of the universe.
Tamisk knew the broad view as well as any mathematician, astronomer, or physicist, but he also knew Earth to be a wondrous cradle of intelligent life, a rare, nurturing pool of sentience in the cold vastness of space. The creative potential of this one star-wrought planet was equal to the chaos of Dharkkum. ’Twas what had held it together in the past, and Tamisk would save it if he could. All he needed was for the rest of Nemeton’s machinations to fall into place.
Thus I traveled to the home of darkness itself and was washed upon a strange and hostile shore. The galactic beings there knew of Dharkkum and the Star that had come before. The Star they wanted returned, but it had embedded itself too deeply into Earth to be retrieved without tearing the planet apart. The darkness they were content to let lie. For a price, I convinced them otherwise.
Seven small measures of blood had been the price. Blood from the place that had birthed the Starlight-born from the very star the galactic beings had lost. Life had not been their purpose when they’d made the star, but they were fascinated by Nemeton and the world he described. So they’d bargained, and in the end, they’d devised the sphere.
Tamisk’s brow furrowed, and he crossed the final steps to the dreamstone pillar that was the heart of Nemeton’s prize, an odd, zodiacal assortment of dangling rods and orbs on the spherical skeleton of bronze rings that formed the outer shell of the armillary sphere. The Arch Druid had built it in an ancient age, and it had the look of its time, an intriguing guise for such a timeless thing, for at its core was science beyond any Earth had achieved—a break in the time-space continuum, paid for with the promise of Avallyn’s blood, an elixir distilled through countless generations to a richly complex brew not so very different from Tamisk’s own, yet different enough that only the young priestess’s would do. Nemeton had calculated the genealogy of the galactic beings’ price, and he’d known it would take millennia to achieve, a span of time that barely registered on the beings’ collective conscience. To them, ten thousand years was as naught. To Earth, now without her forests and oceans, it had almost been a death sentence.
But the time was nigh.
Of Avallyn, Tamisk had no doubts, just as he had no doubts that it was she and not Vishab who had pushed Corvus beyond the edge of reason. Sent into the Old Dominion, unprotected by the great walls of Claerwen or a thousand ranks of her soldiers, she had been his for the taking—and Corvus had somehow found out.
Palinor had never unders
tood the depths of a man’s lust or love, or how the two entwined, how one woman could become a need as great as breath. The Claerwen priestess was beyond such lowly sufferings, as Tamisk had discovered for himself, but then, so was he. Yet they’d mixed their DNA in an act of physical union as Nemeton had prescribed, and Avallyn Le Severn, Priestess of the Bones and Princess of the White Palace, had been born to grace the last days of Earth and make the sacrifices of salvation.
Setting the Orange Book aside on a small, nearby table, Tamisk chose one of the rods from the constellation Draco, the dragon’s eye, pulling it out of a bronze ring and removing the copper orb on the end. With a softly blown breath and the spoken words “Llagor, Rastaban,” he sent the orb floating off among the boughs on a lazy, spinning path, trailing a silver cloud, the first of eight he would set in the air. With Rastaban afloat, the great bronze rings began to move, creaking into life, their inner gears meshing and rolling. ’Twas a minor skill as magic went, but an important one in this instance. The spinning orbs were the initial key to unlocking the chamber in the pillar. When all were set afloat, the crystal chamber would open and he could make his offering of blood and put the Orange Book in its place.
With the first orb removed, Tamisk felt the power of the sphere shift and come to life. The low hum of its energy reached out beyond the pillar and the rings and set the hairs of his nape on end. He knew that by the fourth orb, the hum would be vibrating in his veins. By the eighth, he’d feel it like an endless wave rippling through his brain.
Nemeton had been near like a god, and he had brought much to pass as he had written. Three of the seven Books of Lore were already safely shelved in their crystalline slots inside the pillar, according to the Bard’s plan and awaiting the moment of final triumph—or final defeat: the Violet Book of Stars, Sjarn Va Le, wrenched at great cost from a troll’s hand on Inishwrath in the Fifth Age and known to some as Shay’s Bane; the Blue Book of the Magi, Prydion Cal Le, kept in Merioneth after being found by Madron, daughter of Nemeton, also during the Fifth Age; and the Red Book of Doom, Fata Ranc Le, sent spinning through the time weir, gathering its fates, until it had come to Avallyn. The last story to be written upon its pages was of the priestess-princess and her Prince of Time—and there was Tamisk’s sticking point: Morgan ab Kynan.
Despite Palinor’s demands, he had a need to see this thief for himself before the White Ladies of Death fed him to the time worms.
Of the three missing books, the Yellow Book, Chandra Yeull Le, was nearly in hand, left unguarded at Magh Dun. The Green Book of Trees, Treo Veill Le, would come in time, delivered as a gift from Rhayne. Tamisk awaited its arrival on faith, but also with impatience. She must know what had happened in Pan-shei. She must have felt the dark wave of terror reverberating through the firmament even as he had, a tremor of anguish that had opened the dark abyss of eternity for a seemingly endless moment—yet the day was already passing into a gloaming dusk and she still had not come.
The Indigo Book of Elfin Lore, Elhion Bhaas Le, was another matter. It had been locked inside Kryscaven Crater with the Prydion Mage, Ailfinn Mapp, during the last plague of Dharkkum. ’Twas Avallyn’s task to free it and the Lost Five. ’Twas she who would place the Indigo Book between the Violet and the Blue and seal the spectrum of color into the pure white light of the first fallen Star. Whence went the light of the Star, Nemeton’s galactic beings had revealed, so would go the naked singularity.
For all its rough appearance, the celestial sphere was an exquisitely balanced electromagnetic radiation chamber with high internal reflection, tuned to the distant cluster of galaxies designated as NGC 2300, with every single atom in harmonic accord for its task of sending Dharkkum back to said cluster and letting the far-flung galaxies deal with their own black-hole spawn.
It should work, Tamisk thought. Though with so much at stake, ’twas hard not to harbor some doubts—especially about the thief time had sent to stand by Avallyn’s side. Morgan ab Kynan was a man, no more, and mayhaps far less. Even the least learned Ilmarryn knew more about the workings of Earth than he; even the least skilled sprite had more practical magic to wield.
“Llagor, Etamin.” He released another orb and sent it sailing through the sea of leaves.
Aye, Tamisk would see this man, this thief, and perhaps rearrange some of his atoms to more finely harmonize him with Tamisk’s accord.
The thought brought a faint smile to the mage’s mouth and eased a measure of the dull pain in his head. Prince of Time or nay, the man would not win the Princess of the White Palace without first running the gauntlet of her father.
Chapter 14
The camp in the lee of the Medain was full to overflowing with wild boys and masutes, the four-legged animals crowding around the rover to warm themselves with the last of the day’s heat coming off the metal bulkhead. Soft circles of lantern light and the flickering flames of campfires dotted the nooks and crannies of the surrounding rocks, illuminating the tents and lean-tos of the Sept Rhymer band. More than fifty wild boys had joined them, including a fair share of girls who looked little different—except up close. Up close the differences were undeniable—softer voices, gentler facial curves, smaller hands—and Morgan wondered if it was the wild girls that had given the Sept soldier bands their reputation for being made up of youths. A good portion of the men were young, but men nonetheless, like Lannikan. Many of the soldiers were paired up. Lannikan and Sakip had a tent separate from the others, and Morgan had noted the care the wild boy took with the dark-haired girl, and how often Sakip splayed her hand low over her stomach. No doubt she was with child, which explained their eagerness to go to a protected place from which they could never return. Their only other option was to settle in Sept Rhymer, but none of the open-desert Septs would be safe from the horror in Pan-shei, and they knew it.
The wild boys had put up a pavilion tent for Avallyn, much to Morgan’s aggravation. She’d slept with him the night before, and if he hadn’t taken off the damned tracking bracelet, she’d be sleeping close to him tonight—a heaven-and-hell situation he was more than willing to endure to have her with him through the dark hours.
He could put the damn thing back on. It only needed contact to reactivate. But he hesitated. Not because he thought the leash would hinder him, but because she would know exactly what he was about, and he wasn’t ready for such a blunt confession of need.
So he stood next to the rover, wrench in hand, staring up at where her tent was pitched in a sand-filled curve of the rockface, halfway up the rise to the grotto. The tent was protected by the two Sha-shakrieg Night Watchers they’d brought with them out of Rabin-19, and on three sides by the curve of stone. Nevertheless it wasn’t as safe as the rover, and—putting his own feelings aside—he felt obligated to go up there and point out that fact. She should be inside the rover, her rover, she and her damned desert wraiths. She had no business sleeping inside a couple of flaps of tanned masute hide when half a galaxy’s worth of beastmen were on her trail.
Aye, he thought, the whole tent idea was as flimsy as the thing itself.
“Crikey,” Aja swore, sliding out from under the rover just as one of the masutes ambled past and nearly knocked him over. They were working on the fusion box with the wild boy mechanic, with York at the controls inside.
Aja was in a fine glower, and had been ever since Morgan had returned with the pack of desert nomads. Not even the promise of seeing the legendary Lost Forest of the Waste had softened Aja’s view of his and Morgan’s new situation or their destination. “Aye, now,” the boy had said with uncharacteristic churlishness, “mayhaps there’s adventure on a grand scale for us, milord. And mayhaps there’ll be naught but more friggin’ trouble.”
Morgan hadn’t dared to tell him just how grand an adventure the White Lady truly had planned. Something was eating at the boy, something more than recalcitrant masutes and wild boys to have put him to such an edge.
“Are they blind or what?” the boy groused, sidestepping a pile
of dung on his way to the toolbox.
“No,” Morgan answered. “Just single-minded. They know it’s going to get damn cold, real quick, and they all want a spot next to the rover.”
“Bloody-minded, if ye ask me.”
“Aye,” Morgan murmured, thinking that it really was going to get damn cold, real quick. Avallyn would be warmer in the rover, not just safer.
“Ye oughta just go up there and see her, Morgan, before ye burst a friggin’ eyeball or something worse.”
“What?” He turned and found the boy looking at him with a grimly purposeful expression. Aja had obviously worked himself up to having his say, and Morgan thought ’twas about time. If anyone was in danger of bursting anything, ’twas the boy.
“I’ve never seen ye so cross-eyed over a woman, milord,” Aja started mildly enough, though his teeth were gritted, “and for all that she’s a pretty piece and a princess to boot, she’s trouble. Look at us.” He gestured at the camp. “Less than three days we been with her and we’re knee-deep in wild boys and masute shit and headed off to a place that any sane folk will tell you probably don’t exist. So I say, go.” His voice dropped to a disgusted pitch. “Go up to see her if ye must. Have her if ye can, by God, and then, by the Bones, let’s be gone from this place.”
So ’twas Avallyn that stuck in Aja’s craw. He’d guessed as much. The boy, by nature, was not given to outbursts, and if it had been anything or anyone except Avallyn he’d latched onto, Morgan would be inclined to agree that they’d come a ridiculously long way under the worst of circumstances and could best serve themselves by cutting their losses and running hard in the opposite direction.
But it was Avallyn, and she was the crux of it all.
“ ’Tis not so simple” was all he could say.