by Phil Tucker
Henosis staggered, then righted herself. Her tanned skin was ashen, and Kethe saw with alarm the grievous wound that had opened up her side. It would have killed anyone else. Ainos reeled, passed a bloody hand over her brow, then turned to the Portal.
Its surface shimmered. How many kragh had passed through already? Of Tharok, there was no sign.
"Ready?" Kethe's voice was a rasp. She looked around. Perhaps fifty soldiers were with her, a battered and brutalized combination of Honor Guards and Consecrated.
Henosis smiled, but her pupils were dilated and her expression was distant. "One last fight," she said. "I look forward to the day when I will embrace you both once again."
Despair gripped Kethe by the throat. "That day will be tomorrow, I assure you."
"My soul to the White Gate," whispered Henosis.
"For the Ascendant!" cried Ainos.
Kethe gritted her teeth and plunged through the Gate.
Darkness. Disorientation. Unfathomable distances traversed in the blink of an eye. Then she was back in Bythos, back underground, and bloodshed and screams assaulted her senses all over again.
But there was that massive kragh. By the Ascendant, he was huge, his skin as dark and dusty as coal but with impossible glimmers of fire beneath it. He was staring right at her, ignoring the battle that had engulfed the causeways, ignoring his kragh and trolls as they assaulted a core of soldiers and Bythians at the foot of the ramp to the surface.
Kethe took a deep breath. There was something fell about him, something that made her flesh creep and her soul recoil. He was wearing a plain circlet of iron around his brow and was holding a curved blade whose metal was so dark, it seemed to swallow the light. This he lifted and pointed at her, and then he curved his maw into a smile, revealing his ferocious tusks, each at least three inches long.
Kethe raised her blade and pointed it right back.
Tharok strode toward her, strangely graceful despite his bulk. Kethe inhaled deeply and then felt a jolt of joy – the White Gate felt that much closer. She drank deeply of its power, allowing it to cleanse her flesh and her mind, and poured her might into her blade so that her white fire dripped from its dip, such was its abundance.
At last Tharok let out a roar and charged her, going from a stride to a sprint in the blink of an eye. Kethe screamed her defiance and leaped forward to meet him, and their blades clashed with such a clamor that those fighting dozens of yards away flinched and turned from their own combat to watch.
Never had Kethe been struck with such force. She fell back, staggering on her heels, fighting for balance, but the kragh didn't give her time to recover. He was upon her, blade held in both hands, and he hammered down a blow that she barely managed to sidestep.
His sword cleaved the rock and shattered it.
Kethe sucked in a breath and flew at him. Time seemed to slow, the soldiers and trolls and kragh seeming to move at half-speed, but somehow, against all odds, Tharok parried her blade. Where the two weapons touched, black fire and white flashed like lighting. Kethe launched a flurry of blows at him, seeking a weakness, an opening – and found none.
Tharok wasn't a master swordsman. His was not the agile ability born of a life spent working the blade. Instead, he buffeted her back with such great sweeps of his scimitar that she was driven away again and again. Worse, his sword moved with the speed of a slender weapon, not the huge behemoth that it was. He whipped it to attack her again and again, not needing to recover, to wrest back his arcs.
Kethe felt sweat burning her brow. Tharok loomed over her. With a roar, he raised it high, and before she could take advantage of the opening to skewer his gut, he brought it down as if he meant to end the world with one blow.
Kethe threw her blade up to parry and caught the blow full-on. It slammed her down to one knee with such force that she felt rock shatter beneath her. She screamed and fought to keep her blade up, but he was too strong. He leaned into the blow, putting his full weight behind his blade, and pressed it down toward her face.
White fire blurred toward his head from his right. With a roar, Tharok snapped his blade up and blocked Ainos' cut. He staggered, off-balance, just as Henosis barreled into him, her shoulder thudding directly into his stomach.
Tharok grunted and stepped back again. As Kethe rose to her feet, Ainos circled around behind the kragh. He turned, wary, and for the first time Kethe felt a surge of hope. There was no way this warlord could take all three of them on at the same time.
He went still, his eyes narrowing.
"My soul to the White Gate!" Kethe screamed, and attacked.
Henosis and Ainos leaped forward at the same time. Three blades of blazing flame scythed toward Tharok from all sides.
Tharok grunted and bolted toward Henosis, blocked her blade with his own and overran her position. Ainos and Kethe veered to give chase, swiping and lunging as the warlord retreated with the speed of a deer. They chased him around the Portal as their Consecrated began to emerge, and then Tharok laughed. Following his gaze, Kethe turned and saw four trolls descending upon them.
Hammers swung down. Ainos threw herself into a roll. Kethe leaped back. Henosis dodged and kept after Tharok.
Kethe made a split-second decision. There was no sense in fighting the trolls. They had to kill the warlord. Nothing else mattered.
Tharok fought the three of them even as they were forced to duck and leap away from the hammer swings of the trolls who had formed a second circle around them.
It was a maelstrom of weaponry, and Tharok attacked as much as he defended, taking advantage of every time a Virtue was distracted by a troll's attack to riposte and lunge. Black blade clashed with white. Fire spasmed, and the echoes of their clashes resounded from the cavern's hidden ceiling and off the ribbed stalactites.
Kethe saw an opening. Tharok had overextended, lunging at Ainos. She speared her blade forward, hoping to skewer him, but a troll's hammer clipped her on the shoulder. The force was unimaginable. Kethe spun as she fell and hit the ground so hard, she bounced. Sheer reflex had her climb back up to her feet, but the world was swaying, three Tharoks dancing before her. Her shoulder felt as if it had been dipped into a bed of live coals.
Three hammers swung at her, joining into one at the last moment. Kethe raised her blade but knew it wouldn't be enough. She screamed her defiance, but Henosis was there. Her sword cleaved right into the hammer's head, which exploded into shards that sliced and pelted Kethe's face and chest.
Kethe blinked away dust frantically and saw Henosis standing rigid before her, wide-eyed. A foot of black steel had emerged from her chest. Tharok grunted and with one hand raised his blade, lifting Henosis off her feet.
The trolls ceased their swinging. Even Ainos fell back, her face open with horror.
Henosis gasped and dropped her blade, its white flame guttering and going out before it hit the ground. Gravity pulled her down the length of Tharok's scimitar, which continued to burn, sending up an acrid cloud of burned blood and flesh as she slid down to his cross-hilt.
Kethe wanted to move, to do something, but she was paralyzed by what she was seeing. The White Gate's song had gone silent.
Tharok reached up and took hold of Henosis by the arm, then wrenched her off the blade, tearing it out through her side. Henosis screamed, and blood fountained everywhere. Tharok held her by her arm for a moment, then threw her aside.
Each of Kethe's heartbeats was like a slap in the face. She couldn't breathe.
Tharok stared at his burning blade, examining it coldly, then turned to face her and Ainos. He lowered his head, opened his mouth and bellowed at them in rage, defiance, and victory.
Kethe's skin crawled. She stepped back despite herself, then reached deep for her courage, her determination, her outrage, her bloody-willed resolve, and raised her blade.
"Run!" Ainos' cry cut through her thoughts. "Kethe! Run!"
Ainos ducked between two trolls and ran toward the central causeway. Tharok's roar turned to laug
hter, and he pointed his blade at her. Black flame ran down its length and dripped to the floor, where it seared and spat and disappeared.
Kethe's throat locked up. The four trolls were staring down at her, their yellow eyes flat, hammers held easily in their massive hands. To stay meant death. She looked at where Henosis was lying and thought, No. I can't leave her. I can't flee.
Kethe cursed, a sob of fury and frustration rising inside her, then turned and darted after Ainos.
The trolls let her go. Tharok's laughter pursued her, deep and vast and inimical. The sound of her mortal enemy. The sound of their destroyer.
Kethe saw why Ainos might have chosen that moment to flee. The Portal had finally died. Their Consecrated and Honor Guard had come through and had cut a path down the central causeway, past the first two islands to the diminished mass of Ennoian soldiers and Bythians. They were meeting up with them, fighting through the last of the kragh.
Ainos raced down the causeway, leaping over corpses, her blade devoid of flame. Kethe ran after her and saw the Bythians break free of the kragh cordon and begin to flee up the ramp toward the surface.
Shame and horror burned within her. Each step took her farther from Henosis, farther from the Portal, relinquishing it to Tharok. Overcome, overwrought, she ran after Ainos, and saw that a single figure was directing the escape, was standing tall and screaming, urging Ennoians and Bythians both to flee the death trap that had nearly engulfed them.
It was Asho.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Arms by his sides, eyes closed, Audsley ascended the face of Aletheia, enjoying the turbulent rush of wind that played around him and the wisps of damp cloud through which he cut like a knife through rotting muslin. There was a liberty in flight that rivaled the joys of reading. It was the physical parallel to the unrestrained flight of the imagination, and he wished that he might fly forever.
"This way," he heard Little Zephyr call, and he opened his eyes reluctantly.
She was pulling away to the left, her robes fluttering like torn sails in the wind. Audsley followed her. Before him scrolled the etched face of the stonecloud: the endless ranks of balconies and Circums, the small courtyards and the million windows, the arches and fountains, the estates and bridges.
All dark. All in shadow but for the brave if futile light of the lanterns. And yet, there was movement. Activity. Ignoring Little Zephyr, he flew closer, risking being spotted, pushing through the clouds until he saw the soldiers who were marching along the Third Circum in tight ranks.
Agerastians.
Iskra had come. Events were in motion. A thrill rushed through him like fire racing along spilt oil. He gazed at the assembled forces, then looked up to the stonecloud's apex. Were they confronting the Ascendant even now? Would Iskra hold to her plan for reconciliation and refinement, or would they all drown in an orgy of blood?
Oh, to be able to watch, to rise up to the very first Circum and observe the potential end of the Empire.
But Audsley restrained the urge. He looked for Little Zephyr and saw her awaiting him impatiently in the distance. Putting on a burst of speed, he shot toward her like a rock flung from a sling, the clouds roiling in intricate arabesques in his wake.
"I don't enjoy waiting," the young woman called out. "Remain close."
Audsley didn't bother to respond. They flew on, rounding the face of Aletheia, climbing steadily until at last they came upon a great elbow of rock that extended out from the Second Level. Its surface was covered with an extended estate, large buildings connected by covered passageways, interspersed with achingly beautiful gardens. The Fujiwara estate.
"This way," Little Zephyr called, then dove toward the central building. As they approached, Audsley saw that a battle was taking place at the front – hundreds of Agerastian soldiers were fighting toe-to-toe with Fujiwara soldiers, the ring and cries of the wounded sounding thin and distant.
The estate was in a state of upheaval. Audsley flew over a stone courtyard where servants were bringing out armloads of scrolls, which they threw into a raging fire. He could hear the wailing of ladies-in-waiting and the pounding of feet as more guards ran to the entrance. Nobles and their retinues were running to and fro, many clutching coffers and sacks. They were moving toward the central building, where a large crowd had gathered at the front steps, pleading with stone-faced guards to be allowed inside.
"Fools," said Little Zephyr as she flew over the main building's roof. "Only now do they realize how unimportant they have always been."
"Do they know of Haugabrjótr?" Audsley flew almost shoulder-to-shoulder with her, the slate roof tiles blurring beneath them till a central garden, surrounded on all sides by the building, appeared in their stead.
"No," said Little Zephyr. "Perhaps only a dozen of the most elite members of the clan know. Now, silence. Follow."
She descended into the small garden. It was clearly a sacred place. A small fountain tinkled into a central pool, and crushed white rock lay underfoot, raked into neat rows like furrows in a field. Miniature trees grew from rough black pedestals, and a single willow tree arched its trailing branches over the whole.
Two men in sumptuous robes stood in earnest conversation in one corner. Audsley recognized them dimly from the festival. They started as Little Zephyr landed lightly near the fountain and then bowed respectfully, their eyes slitted as they studied Audsley in turn.
"My grandfather?" Little Zephyr marched across the gravel toward a sliding door.
"Within, my lady. You have cut it perilously close. We leave in moments."
Little Zephyr ignored him, pulled the door open, and stepped inside. Audsley followed as she entered a small hall. There was a sense of age to the chamber that spoke to its importance; the wood was dark with wax and shone in the light of the lamps, and old banners hung from the walls, some torn, some dark with ancient blood. The air was tainted with a subtle but displeasing musk, and a small knot of people were gathered at the far end in front of a raised dais.
The inner sanctum of the Fujiwara clan, thought Audsley. The true center of power in the Ascendant Empire.
Little Zephyr strode up to the dais. "Grandfather, hear my request."
The knot of people parted, and Audsley saw the Minister of Perfection himself seated on a simple chair of black wood. Sere and weathered, his skin yellowed with age, his beard a slender wisp of gray that descended in a stately spike to his sternum, he sat with perfect poise, his chin lowered, and in his eyes Audsley saw a cruel wisdom, an unhallowed awareness, a presence that superseded the human and ranged into the diabolical.
"You test my patience, granddaughter." The Minister's voice was almost a sigh. "I have pressing matters to attend to."
"Yes, I am aware." Gone was the mockery, the archness, the wry insouciance. For the first time, Audsley heard Little Zephyr speak with true respect. "I shall be brief. I wish to take Magister Audsley into my employ and bring him with us to Haugabrjótr."
There was a stir amongst the others. Audsley couldn't have glanced away from the Minister of Perfection's gaze if his life had depended on it. His mouth had dried, his palms itched, and he felt the walls of the small hall recede as he was studied by those dry, reptilian eyes.
"Your Grace," said one of the other men. It was the Minister of the Moon. "This man made a buffoon of himself at my festival. He is crass, unlearned, and expressed a vulgar interest in our most private of affairs. Since he already knows too much, I advise putting him to death here and now."
Audsley smiled and stepped forward. This newfound liberation was divine. "I was once all that the Minister has accused me of, but am such no longer. Tonight, I have finally accepted the gifts of my demons and welcomed them into my soul. No longer do I struggle against their advice and urges. No longer do I serve those who sent me to Aletheia. Now I am my own man, made whole, and ready to serve a higher purpose."
"It was he who killed the Ascendant's Grace," said Little Zephyr. "He who burned the hundreds in Laur Castle."
The Minister of Perfection arched a slender eyebrow. "That was the doing of a mad dog."
"No, Your Grace." Audsley's smile didn't slip. That memory no longer brought him pain. "Only the actions of a man at war with himself."
"He has three demons within him, Grandfather," said Little Zephyr.
Distant shouts echoed from behind a closed door. The Minister raised a small bell and rang it. Another door opened, and a young man ran in and dropped to his knees, forehead pressing the floor.
The Minister looked at Audsley. "If you are what you claim, then kill this man now."
Audsley turned to the youth, who was raising his head, shock and incomprehension flickering across his face as he regarded Audsley. He was handsome, well-built, and his eyes betrayed a rare intelligence. Then a strange and wondrous thing took place: the young man closed his eyes and simply knelt there, waiting, making no attempt to escape his death.
Audsley turned to the Minister of Perfection. What kind of man was this who could so break and subjugate a man's will that he made no effort to save his own life?
He locked eyes with the Minister, then raised his hand and aimed his palm at the servant. He paused for a moment, waiting, expecting a geyser of anguish, of remorse, of indecision, but none of that came. There was an objective here, and a means to achieve it. On one side of the scales lay the Empire and its salvation. On the other side cowered this nameless servant. There was no question as to the need for him to die.
Audsley unleashed a gout of flame. The blast was furious, a wreath of black fire, and the smell of burned flesh and smoke immediately filled the room.
The servant died without a sound, killed instantly.
"Well," the Minister said dryly. "At least he is without troublesome qualms. Very well, granddaughter. You are accountable for his actions in all things. Go."
Audsley closed his hand. Black flame? Not crimson? What did that portend?
He didn't look at the charred remains of the man. He didn't feel anything; a void had replaced his heart. It had been absolutely necessary that the man die, he reminded himself. His death, in fact, had been ordained the moment Audsley had agreed to help Little Zephyr. Why lament over something that was unavoidable?