“By accident.”
Astlin stepped forward to peer over the fallen table. Kelgrun lay on his back atop the shattered remains of his chair. His clearly broken legs were still trapped under the heavy circle of wood. Taking satisfaction from death and maiming was wrong, but the Shadow Caste had caused so much of both that Astlin couldn’t feel guilty about savoring their defeat.
“Speaking of Teg,” she said to Celwen, “Keep an eye on the last Magist while I step out for a minute.”
A smile twisted Kelgrun’s sweat-streaked face. “Not the last,” he wheezed.
Astlin turned to see Gien crouching beside a pillar at the edge of the room. His expression was unreadable behind the net covering his face.
Celwen rose from Belar’s motionless body and fixed a predatory look on Gien. “They are monsters. Both of them deserve to die.”
“So do you,” said Astlin.
Celwen rounded on her, looking suddenly like a trapped animal.
Gien came skulking forward in weird spurts of motion. “I can help,” he said in a thin whiny voice. “I can help guard Kelgrun.”
Astlin looked into the veiled Magist’s mind and instantly recoiled at the fevered chaos she saw there.
I was crazy, she thought. This guy had a messy divorce from sanity, went back and burned the house down!
“I didn’t fight you,” said Gien. “Let me help!”
“You’re a whipped cur,” Kelgrun spat at Gien. “Long since gone rabid. The Mithgarders would have put you down, but I stayed them.”
Childlike wonder lit up Gien’s face. “They’re all dead.”
Kelgrun lay back with a groan.
Leaving Celwen with Gien seemed like a questionable idea at best. But a sudden foreboding fanned Astlin’s concern for Teg into a blaze. She pictured the deep chamber she’d seen in Celwen’s mind and was there.
The cold dry air smelled of lye and blood. Astlin stood on a round platform covered with small dark gears.
Smith.
Could a souldancer lose so much of himself and survive? The absence of a screaming rift to Kairos argued that, at least in Smith’s case, the answer was yes.
The skull-like face of the souldancer of Kairos was nowhere in sight. But Astlin wasn’t inclined to look—especially since Teg lay on the cavern floor in a distressingly large, dark pool.
Instantly Astlin was kneeling beside him, her skirt soaked in blood that felt far too cold. Shadows mercifully hid the full horror of his wounds.
In that terrifying moment, Astlin realized that she had no idea what to do. She hesitated to touch him for fear of hurting him even worse. If only Tefler were there, he could channel prana and Teg would be healed. But Astlin didn’t know how to reach him.
“Teg,” Astlin said, her voice trembling. “I’m here. I’m sorry. Please say something.”
There was only silence, deeper than any Astlin had known. Her mind reached out to Teg’s and found nothing.
On the edge of panic, Astlin pierced the veil of the ether. The sight of a life cord, however faint, extending from Teg’s body consoled her. But her comfort proved fleeting when she saw a hazy image of Teg racing along the dimming silver thread toward a colossal shape that loomed in the rose-colored mist like a black pyramid.
With a cry of defiance Astlin plunged fully into the ether, imposing herself between Teg’s fleeing soul and the all-consuming Nexus.
“You took my whole family,” she raged at Zadok. “You’re not getting any more of my friends!”
The body that Astlin wore covered the light of her soul like a shroud. She tore the cover away.
23
Teg had fought.
He knew that much. Even when Izlaril had pinned him down and hammered him with inhuman ferocity, Teg had kept fighting through darkness and pain until the darkness parted and the pain vanished like a bad dream.
Now he was floating in a rosy fog. Or was he flying through it? His long experience with ether-runners informed him that this was the ether, but not how he’d gotten there.
Since everything seemed okay at the moment, Teg decided to relax and enjoy the ride. He wondered if this was what manning the Wheel felt like and made a mental note to ask Nakvin the next time he saw her.
Eventually—there was no way to tell time in an infinite featureless mist—a dark spot appeared. It gradually got bigger and bigger until Teg realized that the dark speck must actually be something really huge a great distance away.
He continued gliding toward the distant object, eyeing it with more curiosity than concern. When the speck resolved into a black triangle roughly the size of a guilder piece held at arm’s length, something else appeared.
It hung in the ether between him and what was now clearly a pyramid. At first Teg thought it was a person. But that would be ridiculous. Nobody traveled through the ether without a ship—well, nobody else did.
Teg got confirmation that the new arrival wasn’t human when it suddenly burst into brilliant blue light that turned his calm to sublime peace. His second theory identified the radiant object as a star. But that couldn’t be it, either because the ether’s flammability meant that a star appearing here would vaporize him and whatever Middle Stratum system was on the other side of the mist.
Besides, no star was this beautiful.
The black pyramid pulled Teg closer. The speed at which it grew to dominate his field of vision gave him some idea of how fast he was moving. The blue star stayed right there between him and the pyramid. Oddly enough, he had no trouble looking at it despite it being brighter than any light he’d ever seen.
And there was something familiar about it that Teg couldn’t put his finger on.
He was racking his brain for a word that clung stubbornly to the tip of his tongue when the light called out to him.
The Nexus is pulling you in, Teg. You have to turn back!
The blue light’s words were familiar, but not enough to make sense. While Teg mulled them over, he saw that the pyramid, which now filled the ether in front of him, wasn’t actually black. It was really made up of countless intersecting and overlapping planes in every color he could imagine; and some he couldn’t.
The pyramid’s heart remained dark though, and Teg felt an overwhelming urge to know what was in there.
Teg, no! You’ll lose yourself unless you go back now!
The blue star was talking to him again. It was still there, infinitesimally small against the dazzling dark majesty of the Nexus.
Teg knew what waited inside the darkness, now—everything. The answers to every question he’d ever had and infinite others he’d never thought to ask. It was all right there at his fingertips. And the only way to get the answers was to let go and become the knowledge.
Damn it, Teg. I’m not losing you like I lost Cook. Wake up!
Who are you? Teg asked the tiny blue light. And finally he saw.
Unlike the black pyramid, which was really a labyrinth of prisms wrapped around the unknowable, the blue star turned out to be human after all.
In fact it was Astlin.
Now I remember where I saw that light, thought Teg. It was the same blue glow given off by the three luminous points that sometimes hovered above Astlin’s forehead.
Except now there weren’t three little balls of light, but a circlet that seemed to be carved from a single sapphire and set with three oval gems of the same type. Teg looked closer and saw that the crown didn’t glow. It reflected a hidden source of light so incomprehensibly pure that he was both irresistibly drawn to it and repulsed by it with a terror he couldn’t name.
Go back! Astlin pleaded.
Why? Teg wondered again. There’s nowhere to go back to. What’s left for me now?
Please. Astlin’s outstretched hand touched his.
That was when he knew.
Zadok beckoned him with the answers to every question in the universe. But Astlin had just answered the only one that mattered, which the Nexus never could, because the answer was outside
the universe.
Teg had watched the Guild march across the spheres despite all the resistance that the old faiths, the Gen, and finally Jaren’s ragtag crew of pirates could muster. He’d heard his mother’s prayers fall on deaf ears and had seen Deim’s mad pilgrimage burn down the world, only for Vaun to plant his flag in the ashes.
Now Teg knew why every cause was lost, every movement doomed; every battle hopeless. He considered again the ancient philosophers’ riddle of whether the White Well’s emptying into the Void caused evil or if sin caused the dimming of the Well, and he laughed to see the question resolved.
The answer was yes. The game was rigged. Evil had its thumb on the scale.
Now Teg looked at Astlin and saw Good’s little finger brushing the balance’s other pan.
I thought I was looking for a home, Teg confessed to Astlin, but I’ve really been looking for you.
Teg’s journey to the edge of the Nexus looked like a glacier’s advance compared to his flight back along his silver cord.
Time lost all meaning while Astlin knelt beside Teg in the lonely chamber surrounded by endless miles of stone. His chest slowly rose and fell, signaling her victory over the Nexus for his soul.
Though she couldn’t say how long it had been since she’d hidden her light and left the ether, she was relieved to see that most of Teg’s horrific wounds had healed—except for deep, frostbitten gouges in his hand and neck. And those were just the injuries she could see. Astlin still didn’t dare turn him over.
At last she gathered the resolve to reach him telepathically.
Teg, it’s Astlin. We’re back in the Stone Stratum, but you’re still hurt pretty bad. Please tell me what to do.
The only answer was a jumble of dream images—a banquet in the middle of an enormous white Guild hall where a wolf, a lion, a leopard, a rat, a bat, a walrus, and Gien sat feasting on Teg, whose constantly healing body lay on a golden table.
A winged woman whose hair looked jet black from one angle and ginger-brown from another floated overhead, declaring that this was her funeral feast and that others would take her place.
Astlin left Teg to his dreams and stood up. She didn’t know why his body wasn’t fully healing or why his mind was still dormant. She needed to go for help, but she hated the thought of leaving him comatose and alone.
An intense nexic impression made up Astlin’s mind for her. That was Gien—crying out in pain before something cut him off.
With a thought, Astlin was back in the Magists’ dining room. The massive table seemed to have disappeared until she saw its splinters flung across the gold marble floor. Kelgrun definitely was gone.
Astlin’s heart raced as she searched the room. Her sudden glare startled a young man in dark pants and a white jacket who emerged from behind the yellow banner. The tray of shellfish he’d carried crashed to the floor like a cymbal.
“It’s dangerous here,” she told the servant, reinforcing her words telepathically. “Get back to the kitchen and close the gate.”
The serving man did as he was told, but Astlin doubted that she’d remain undisturbed for long. The Shadow Caste—known to the people of Temil as the Magisterium—were actually the sphere’s secret rulers. The local puppet government would notice their absence soon.
A whimper reached Astlin’s ears from beyond the room’s only set of doors. She hurried toward the sound and saw that one section of the left door’s intricate glasswork had been smashed out. Cool night air carrying a hint of salt wafted in through the broken frame.
Outside, the sea below the clifftop was a shadowy abyss. Grey clouds racked by green-white lightning hid the sky. All around her an orchestra of chirping insects played.
The whimpering was coming from beside the door. Astlin turned to find Celwen and Gien huddled in the manicured bushes growing next to the outside wall. It was the Magist who sniveled as he clutched his left wrist, which had a large splinter driven through it. Blood dripped onto—and ran ran off—his green robe.
“What happened?” asked Astlin.
Celwen rose and answered. “Kelgrun shattered the table with some kind of Working. He must have mended his legs too, because he fled through one of the gates.”
Astlin studied Celwen, who looked shaken but unhurt. “Are you okay?”
The Night Gen gave a curt nod and looked down at Gien. “He dove through the window and took me with him. I was shielded from harm, but he was less fortunate.”
Both women helped Gien to his feet. “Let’s get you a medic,” Astlin told him.
“No time,” the Magist said. “Pull it out.”
Astlin had no objections to yanking the finger-sized splinter out of Gien’s wrist. She felt a burst of nexic power and saw the puncture wound shrink until not even a scar remained.
“You can heal with nexism?” Astlin marveled.
Gien sniffed.
“He uses metasomatic tissue regeneration,” Celwen explained. “It is similar to Teg’s. Speaking of whom, I assume that is where you disappeared to. How is he?”
Astlin frowned. “He’s in some kind of coma. We need to find him some help. And we need to get off Temil before we’re found out. Kelgrun probably went for reinforcements.”
“He fled to the Guild house dock,” said Celwen, “in pursuit of a bald man in a mask.”
Astlin’s eyes widened. “Show me.”
A vision of walls like slabs cut from white mountains came to Astlin through Celwen’s mind. Hundreds of ships were attached to a network of pipes and scaffolds that hung from the ceiling.
Xander was striding down a catwalk leading from a gate to the familiar three-bladed hull of the Kerioth. A blurry form limped behind him—probably Izlaril. Kelgrun had just stormed through the gate behind them a moment ago.
“I’m going after them,” Astlin told the Night Gen and the rogue Magist. “Take a gate and meet me there.”
She pictured the dock. It was a substratum within Vigh’s Guild house, but as long as Astlin could see her destination, she could will herself there. She turned to Celwen.
“About what I said earlier…”
Celwen cut her off. “You were right.” She bowed her head. “I deserve to die.”
“If we all got what we deserved,” Astlin said with a sad smile, “there’d be no one left.”
Astlin’s next thought took her to a catwalk suspended dizzyingly high above a pearl-tiled floor. The smell of heavy machinery and a faint sharp ether scent replaced the ocean air.
The sourceless light reflected from the white walls momentarily dazzled her, but Astlin’s eyes soon adjusted enough to see Xander and Izlaril standing in front of the Kerioth’s boarding hatch at the walkway’s end.
Kelgrun stood midway between the nexus-runner and Astlin with the back of his orange-red robe turned toward her. The former head of the Shadow Caste faced Xander and spoke in a booming voice.
“Tainted soul of Vaun Mordechai, your maker commands you! Return with me and complete our great work.”
Xander cocked his head. The expressionless mask on his face tilted, and the ruby on its brow glittered.
“Strange. I seem to recall Vilneus tainting my soul.”
Kelgrun advanced a few steps. “He acted at my direction. I enabled your apotheosis. Yet your host absconds with Thera’s vas and the rod of partition.”
Xander held up a slim purple rod. Astlin’s breath caught at the horrid sight.
It’s the same one, she thought. It tore my soul apart.
“You mean this clever bauble?” Shaiel asked Kelgrun through Xander. “Rest assured, I shall put it to far better use than your decrepit order could have dreamed.”
“Xander!” Astlin shouted from the middle of the walkway. “I’m here to take you home.”
“From what I’ve seen of this pretender’s mind, you and he have no home.”
Xander’s mocking tone was a dagger in Astlin’s heart, but she reminded herself that the words were Shaiel’s.
“His home is wi
th me,” she said.
Astlin saw Izlaril break into a run before she noticed Kelgrun making the signs of the Steersman’s Compass. Shaiel’s Blade was fast, but not as fast as the Magist’s Working.
Blue lightning sizzled from Kelgrun’s hand to strike Izlaril, blasting him off his feet. The Blade of Shaiel lay groaning on the catwalk under a cloud of smoke that reeked of burned hair.
“We bred you for loyalty, Son of Haath,” Kelgrun told Izlaril. “So I do not begrudge your devotion. But your choice of master casts doubt upon your judgment.”
Xander advanced and held out his hand as if ordering Kelgrun to move back. Sickly golden light shone from his open palm. Frost formed where it touched the catwalk, but the air in front of Kelgrun scattered the freezing light like a prism. The distortion moved back along the beam and surrounded Xander.
Kelgrun raised his arms. “As I made you, souldancer of the Void, so do I unmake your host.”
A cloud of fire swept across the catwalk , cutting of Astlin’s view of everything beyond Kelgrun. Xander’s scream rose above the roar of the flames.
Otherworldly heat radiated from the fiery curtain, and Astlin immediately knew its source.
Elemental fire.
Kelgrun was drawing much more from the Fire Stratum than Astlin had needed to incinerate Hazeroth. Not even Xander’s idealized body could take that kind of heat for long.
Astlin dashed toward Kelgrun, but a wave of his hand sent a torrent of flame screaming across her path.
The same swirling fire storm that engulfed Xander now protected the man who was trying to murder him. Astlin willed herself inside the burning whirlwind. She stood face-to-face with Kelgrun, who only smiled when she rushed him. She felt his will assert itself, wrapping him in a bubble of nexic force that repelled her charge.
“Foolish child,” he scolded her. “You think your borrowed light is truth? One abstract truth is nothing against the practical knowledge of a hundred lifetimes.”
Kelgrun loosed a gout of fire at Astlin without warning. She reflexively held out her hands and called on her light to fend off the flames. Unlike Belar’s Working, some of Kelgrun’s fire managed to break through.
The Secret Kings Page 20