Destiny

by Paul B. Thompson

  “You will witness my triumph. It will be most instructive!”

  With a speed that left Sa’ida breathless, they soared above the laddad camp, rising far higher than Sa’ida had done alone, then they rushed eastward. In seconds they were at a broad shelf cut into the side of Mount Rakaris, which Faeterus called the Stair of Distant Vision.

  Her spirit form went sprawling as he abruptly released her. He lifted a hand, and immediately it was filled with a spear. Rather than an actual, physical weapon, the spear was the representation of a spell. He drove it through her thigh, pinning her in place, and the shock of the spiritual impalement drew an involuntary scream. But pain was a force Sa’ida understood. She conquered her agony quickly, although she could not free her naes. She remained firmly anchored to the stone.

  None of this was visible to Favaronas. From his place at the edge of the Stair, all he saw was the sorcerer standing rigidly by the center pinnacle, head bowed. Abruptly, Faeterus lifted his face and arms to the darkened sky and broke his long silence, declaiming in a loud, clear voice. The language was Old Elvish, and Favaronas recognized the rhyme scheme and meter as an ancient bardic recitation called a houmrya. He had never heard it spoken before. The poetry was said to have erratic, uncontrollable magical effects, and Speaker of the Stars Sithel had banned it long, long ago.

  Because Favaronas was an accomplished scholar, he detected the changes Faeterus was making in the houmrya. Faeterus declared himself “breaker of worlds,” when the actual houmrya line was “maker of worlds.” With such twists, he was transforming an ancient poem of creation into an evocation of destruction.

  As he recited, the monoliths of Inath-Wakenti began to glow. The effect was subtle, like reflected moonlight, but in the unnatural gloom, quite noticeable. When the sorcerer entered into the second canto, the aura brightened to a steady glare.

  Desperately Favaronas scanned the slope below. There was no sign of the elf scouts, and a dreadful thought came to him. Had he only imagined the figures darting among the bushes? Was his terrified mind concocting phantoms? Did he await a rescue that would never come?

  * * * * *

  The Lioness’s little company was concealed behind several large boulders below the plateau. Unnerved by the glowing monuments, Kerian had sent her party into cover. When time passed and nothing else untoward occurred, she told Robien to take the lead. He studied the situation briefly then chose a narrow track winding up the southern end of the plateau. It was steep but seemed to offer more concealment than the way on the north side.

  The others followed, but fired by nearness to his goal, Robien outpaced them. He glimpsed someone hiding in the rocks above and dropped on his belly to avoid being seen. A figure dressed in black was lurking behind the boulders on the slope above the plateau. Was it one of Faeterus’s hirelings, guarding the sorcerer’s back while he worked his conjuration? Peering at a very low angle through scattered brush, Robien saw the clear outline of a crossbow. He unslung his bow and nocked an arrow. His shoulder throbbed, but he ignored the pain, firming his right elbow. He took careful aim. After loosing the shaft, he turned downslope to warn his comrades.

  “There’s an archer in the rocks above the plateau!” he called, keeping his voice low.

  He began to turn round again but pitched abruptly backward, his bow flying from his hand. Kerian, Taranath, and Hytanthas dropped to the ground immediately.

  “Robien!” Hytanthas called hoarsely. “Robien, answer me!”

  There was no reply. Hytanthas was closest to the fallen bounty hunter. He could see an arrow protruding from the Kagonesti’s chest, but in the uncertain light couldn’t tell whether Robien was alive or dead.

  They resumed climbing and Hytanthas was amazed and relieved to find Robien still lived. The arrow had caught him high on the right side of the chest and he lay on his back, stifling gasps of pain. Hytanthas tore a strip of cloth from his own geb and tried to stanch the flow of blood.

  Gripping his bloodstained hand, Robien gasped, “Leave me! Get Faeterus for me!”

  Hytanthas gave the Lioness an anguished look. She told him to remain with the injured elf. She and Taranath resumed the slow ascent.

  Above them, Favaronas had seen neither Robien’s shot nor the return volley. His whole world had narrowed to Faeterus’s recitation of the perverted houmrya. Only two cantos remained, and he was certain that if Faeterus finished it, the race of elves would be wiped from the face of Krynn. Blinking away tears, he looked out over the valley.

  Columns of light had risen from the glowing monoliths. They formed a pattern on the roiling underside of the black cloud. The message that had been too agonizingly bright and fleeting when etched by the glare of the setting sun was written now in ivory light on the cloud. The knowledge feared by the ghosts of the Lost Ones teetered on the edge of Faeterus’s grasp.

  Perhaps he had seen warriors on the slope below, but Favaronas couldn’t risk waiting. He might be the only one with even a slim hope of stopping Faeterus. He had no idea how he would do it, but it was up to him to try.

  He leaned on his battered hands and pushed himself away from the edge, back toward the chanting sorcerer.

  * * * * *

  When the monoliths’ pale glow became a dazzling glare, Gilthas ordered his people to flee to open ground west of camp, where there were no standing stones.

  “Every able-bodied adult is to carry a child or help the old or infirm,” he declared. “Cut all the animals loose.” If there was going to be a conflagration, he wanted any living creature in its path to have a chance for escape. He also called for Sa’ida. While warriors sought the priestess, Gilthas obeyed his own orders and went to help a child wandering nearby. The boy was looking in vain for his parents.

  “You’re not my father!” the boy declared as the Speaker hoisted him up.

  “No, I’m not. Who is your father?”

  “Naratalanathas, son of Cyronaxidel.”

  The boy could be no more than four, yet the complicated old Qualinesti names rolled easily off his tongue. Gilthas was impressed. “Large names for so small a fellow to recall.”

  The child knitted pale brows. “Is your father’s name hard to say?”

  “Not nearly as hard as yours.” That pleased the boy. He said his name was Cyronathan.

  “Come along, Cyronathan. Let’s get everyone to a safer place.”

  In going to the boy, Gilthas found himself cut off from his palanquin bearers by the rush of people. No matter; he would walk. Carrying the boy in one arm and leaning on his staff, he joined the throng streaming from camp. The frightened atmosphere infected Cyronathan, and Gilthas sought to distract the child. His first efforts failed, but mention of Eagle Eye captured the boy’s imagination thoroughly. Cyronathan peppered him with questions about the griffon and asked quite seriously what exactly he must do to secure one of the majestic creatures for himself.

  They passed through the outer line of standing stones and had gone some ten yards farther when a joyous voice cried out the boy’s name. Cyronathan greeted his mother with relief and made plain his wish to escape.

  Gilthas bent to set him on the ground and felt something give way inside. A rush of warmth flooded his chest, and a loud gasp was wrenched from his lips. The boy, not noticing his agony, dashed away to his parents, but Gilthas continued to fold, going down on his knees. Wide eyed and open mouthed, he stared at the elves rushing by on both sides. No breath would enter his lungs. He could make no sound. Slowly, he toppled to the ground. The vision in his right eye faded, submerged in a wash of red.

  Screams pierced the air as fleeing elves realized who he was. In moments the Speaker’s faithful bearers, still carrying the empty palanquin, rushed up beside him. Truthanar arrived on their heels.

  “He’s hemorrhaging!” the healer cried. He rolled Gilthas onto his back. “I need water for the Speaker!”

  Pitchers, buckets, and brimming cups appeared in moments. Truthanar rinsed the still-flowing blood from his king’s
mouth. None of the helpful civilians or warriors gathered round could tell him where Sa’ida was. Soldiers scouring the camp for her had met with no success. Truthanar commandeered help from the multitude, and two dozen elves who’d just raced out of camp ran back in even more rapidly to seek the human priestess.

  Gilthas’s eyes were closed, and he no longer fought to breathe. Truthanar elevated his head and shoulders. With a slim silver lancet, the healer slashed the Speaker’s geb, exposing Gilthas’s emaciated chest. Carefully probing down the ladder of ribs, Truthanar found the spot he sought. Without explanation or warning, he plunged the lancet between two ribs. Dark blood poured from the wound. Elves clustered around screamed anew.

  “Had to be done,” Truthanar explained. “Accumulated blood was compressing the lung.”

  As the blood poured out, their Speaker’s breathing eased. Everyone could see his chest rise and fall and saw the terrible waxen pallor fade from his cheeks. A few minutes longer, and the Speaker of the Sun and Stars would have drowned in his own blood. Although Truthanar’s voice was calm and matter-of-fact as he said this, the hand that had just wielded the lancet so confidently shook as he worked to bind the wound he’d made.

  Gilthas stirred. His eyes opened. “Keri-li,” he whispered.

  Tears fell from the healer’s eyes. “May the gods help you, sire. May they help us all.”

  Riding up with his lieutenants, Hamaramis saw the Speaker lying on the ground surrounded by a spreading stain and feared the worst. The old general, long past leaping from the back of a still-moving horse, did just that.

  “Truthanar! Does he live?” he shouted, scattering elves from his path.

  “He lives, Hamaramis, but not for long.” The aged Silvanesti held the hand of the ruler of the united elf nations and wept unashamedly.

  * * * * *

  “Cleanse, O cleanse the world, Mighty Power! Take back that which was yours!”

  Faeterus spoke the last line of the fourth canto. As he drew breath to begin the fifth and final part of his great incantation, the ground began to quake. Rocks large and small tumbled down the mountainside. One struck the spire next to him, shearing it off and sending sharp shards flying.

  Favaronas, edging toward the sorcerer, ducked, throwing his arms over his head. Faeterus turned away to shield his own face from flying stone.

  Angrily, Faeterus intoned, “Rabthe”—Stillness—and the shaking stopped. He laughed. Looking at the elf cringing at his feet, he confided, “Not even the gods can stop me.”

  He embarked upon the final canto of his song of annihilation.

  20

  May the Door of Heaven open wide for Him Who Bears the Key.”

  Faeterus lifted his left hand. He held the long parchment, tightly rolled, onto which had been burned the inscription revealed by the valley’s standing stones. Under the spell of the sorcerer’s oratory, the columns of light emanating from the monoliths angled inward, converging on the bottom of the swirling cloud at a point directly over the Tympanum.

  The brilliant concentration of light, painful to behold, must be the Door, Favaronas decided. Faeterus had reached the climax of his conjuration. The next line of the houmrya was “Let the Light shine forth so all may See.” Favaronas had no doubt the sorcerer would change the final word to “die,” or “vanish,” or some other destructive command that fit the structure of the poem, and that would be the end. Favaronas’s exhausted brain could think of no way to stop him.

  He reached up one trembling hand and clutched the hem of the sorcerer’s ragged robe.

  Kerian and Taranath cautiously lifted their heads above the edge of the plateau. The Lioness drew her sword.

  Magically restrained but still a horrified witness, Sa’ida screamed, begging her patron deity to intercede.

  “Let the Light shine forth—”

  The sorcerer’s demand ended with a gurgle. Favaronas looked up.

  An arrow protruded from Faeterus’s neck. Blood, black in the muted light, coursed down the front of his robe. He swayed but remained upright. With his free hand he groped for the arrow. It was deeply embedded in the left side of his neck. His fingers brushed over it but failed to grasp it. A second black bolt struck him in the back, and down he went.

  Unseen and unheard, Sa’ida shouted in triumph. The goddess had heeded her servant’s pleas. Or had she? Would the Divine Healer send black arrows in answer to a devoted prayer?

  The spell pinning Sa’ida to the rock dissolved as its maker’s life ebbed, and her joy changed to frustration. She felt herself pulled back to her body, lying unconscious in the elf camp, and she fought against it. The power tapped by Faeterus must be dispersed or safely channeled. If it was not, it would run riot, endangering everyone in the valley. Whereas before, all she wanted was to escape, now she fought to keep her naes on the Stair of Distant Vision.

  The spell that paralyzed Favaronas’s legs likewise faded. His limbs came alive again, kindling into pain as if ten thousand needles pricked his flesh. He pounded on his legs with clenched fists, trying to force them to work.

  Faeterus lay on his side only a few feet away, the hood fallen partly back from his face. He gurgled in helpless fury, then his lips began to move. He might yet complete his terrible design! Favaronas dug in toes and fingers and propelled himself to the sorcerer’s side. He clamped a bloodied hand over Faeterus’s mouth, making certain he could say nothing. Faeterus struggled weakly. Favaronas put his other hand over the sorcerer’s face and leaned all his weight on them. The spasms subsided to twitches then to nothing. Faeterus’s body constricted in a monumental exhalation, and the last flicker of life finally departed his grotesque body.

  His death did not end the titanic conjuration he’d set in motion. The brilliant “door” at the center of the cloud remained, and the cloud itself began to seethe and twist. It spat a narrow bolt of lightning that struck the Tympanum with a loud crash. A second bolt, larger than the first, cracked the granite disk in two.

  “Finish …”

  The unknown voice caused Favaronas to whirl. A human woman knelt only a few feet away. She was translucent, like a ghost, but Favaronas recognized her at once, although he was at a loss to know how the high priestess of Elir-Sana had come to be here.

  “Scroll!” she said. Her image wavered, then disappeared altogether.

  Seize the key before the door opens.

  The words of the ghost and the priestess’s command came together. He snatched the thick scroll from the sorcerer’s rigid fingers. The scroll was the Key!

  A lightning bolt sizzled across the width of the valley and struck the mountainside below the Stair. Favaronas assumed the Speaker’s warriors had shot Faeterus, but he didn’t dare wait for them to arrive. He must finish the conjuration before the wild discharge of power tore the valley apart. He drew a deep breath and spoke the last line.

  “Let the Light shine forth so all may—”

  He froze. “See” was the original ending of the houmrya, but he had no idea what the consequences of such a command might be. He needed something less vague, but positive, and it must be similar to the verb “to see” in Old Elvish so the line would still scan. Merciful E’li, what should he say? A list of ancient verbs raced through the scholar’s mind. His entire body shaking, Favaronas thrust the scroll aloft.

  “Live!” he shouted. “Live! Live!”

  Someone called his name. Before he could see who it was, the world came apart.

  The monoliths went dark, extinguished in their thousands all at once. The blazing Door they’d created in the cloud persisted for the space of four heartbeats; then it exploded. The sound was no louder than a heavy thunderclap, but the explosion blew away the glowing white corona to reveal a black core within, spinning madly. The core slowed, wobbled, then it, too, detonated.

  The first explosion had sent a wave of hot wind through the valley. When the black core exploded, nothing could stand before it. Everyone in Inath-Wakenti was thrown to the ground. The monoliths burne
d fiercely white for an instant then dissolved into clouds of vapor. The granite Tympanum survived the blast but was cleft by a deep crack zigzagging from north to south. Trees were blown down, boulders shattered, and every source of water in the valley, from small springs to Lioness Creek shivered its contents into fine droplets and shot them into the air.

  The blast occurred high above the valley, and its tremendous shock wave roared over the encircling mountains and out into the desert. Like a plow, it lifted a wall of sand and drove it across the empty wasteland. Wells were filled, oases submerged, and small towns buried in the blink of an eye. Unwary caravans caught in the open were swallowed whole, never to be found again. Enormous drifts of sand fetched up against the walls of Kortal, Delphon, and Khuri-Khan. The moving mountain of grit overtopped the low walls of Kortal, collapsing the side facing Inath-Wakenti. Upon reaching the sea, the wave dumped what remained of its sand—although ships as far out as Habbakuk’s Necklace reported showers of brown dirt peppering their sails—and lifted a swelling tide of water. The mighty wave swamped the Horn of Khur and swept ships ashore all around the Bay of Balifor. In occupied Silvanesti, trees were uprooted and waves smashed the port of Kurinost, wrecking forty minotaur ships. Flagstaffs at the Towers of Eli snapped, and the new overlord’s banner fluttered into the sea.

  Because the Khalkist Mountains deflected the blast, Neraka, Thoradin, and Blöde suffered less. Roofs in every town and hamlet were stripped of tiles. Strange changes of pressure affected communities at high altitudes. Drains cracked and wells overflowed. Bells in the town of Neraka rang, though no hand touched their pull ropes. Towers swayed but none fell. Panes of glass shattered, and the streets filled with puzzled members of the Order, who speculated on the coming of another Cataclysm. In Thoradin the Two Hammers Bridge collapsed, dropping four thousand feet to the bottom of the gorge. Fortunately the span was empty, and no one was hurt. Landslides buried tunnel entrances and toppled mine derricks all through the dwarves’ realm.