“And what of this accusation, Elianas? I accuse you of selfishness, of being afraid of your wings, of not trusting your will and power in our coming battles.”
“Think what the fuck you want to. I cannot alter this.”
Torrullin’s hand was withdrawn, leaving an icy place where warmth was. “Take mine. I know you can.”
“Why would I want to?”
“You need wings, brother, as I do not. Knowing I am Lorinin has somewhat altered my perceptions.”
Elianas brought Torrullin’s face close to his, hands clawed on Torrullin’s shoulders. “Who are you? What game do you play? I need wings? The only reason I grew mine was because you were too swift for me. I needed to keep up with you … I see. Today I set the pace.”
“Sometimes.”
“Fuck you, Torrullin, and do not throw your Lorinin crap into my face. You have no clue what it is you hold within.”
“You do?”
Elianas fell into that trap. “Yes!” He blinked, realizing his error, and gave a rueful laugh. A moment later he released his hold on Torrullin and stepped away. “It isn’t the act of dumping my wings that cast us in here, nor is it the Lorinin in you. I suggest we deal with the matter at hand before we lose sight of everything important in a quest to know every truth both of us continue to hide in the recesses of soul, heart and minds.” He pushed Torrullin with one finger. “What say you?”
Torrullin was not about to relinquish the upper hand. He closed in on the dark man and put his hands onto those tense shoulders. He drew him closer. “Tell me of Lorinin.”
Elianas did not move. “No.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Losing control.”
“What kind of control?”
Elianas raised an eloquent eyebrow.
“Why does that enter the fray along with the Lorinin enigma?”
“You would understand when I tell you.”
Torrullin bored his silver-grey eyes into the dark ones. “How is it you know of Lorinin?”
Elianas stared back without blinking. “I am Danae.”
Torrullin jerked as a loud rumble sounded under Grinwallin, but then it stilled. “A mighty risk, that.”
“A word of power has not the same strength in an alternate, yet I admit I am flattered my name caused a flutter even here. Am I not a creature of power, my brother?”
Torrullin closed his eyes briefly and was then fatalistic. “Neat, Elianas. Fine, whatever.”
“Let us return to Valaris, for there we may find the clearest clue as to how this happened. Something used the Syllvan to manipulate the doorway and knew of a thinness in the spaces there.”
Torrullin nodded and called out to Tristan.
His voice carried far in the still air of a forgotten city.
Chapter 67
This is a point and that is a line. This is an angle and that is a circle. This is an x and that is a y. Does any of it make sense?
~ Anonymous
Valaris
THE EASTERN RANGE was its usual purple, a colour that had nothing to do with great distance, and they were familiar old friends, until Torrullin frowned as he gazed on them.
“Those are the original shapes, before the undermining caused by Margus. This plane is less touched by war and catastrophe.”
“Also less inhabited,” Tristan muttered. “I sense a universal type of abandonment.”
“Great civilizations flourished once, as they did in our reality, for Grinwallin was raised and our home does wait on Avaelyn, and then came this eerie silencing. This is unnatural,” Elianas murmured. “Yet there is no sense of waiting and certainly no sense of watchers. Why here, why now?”
“Yiddin always says every experience has a lesson inherent in it,” Tristan supplied. “Now, while I don’t quite see a lesson in lazing about on a hot day, I do see his point about the paths of our lives, often travelled without seeing them.” He shrugged and smiled. “A lesson? Maybe we must be taught something new or something old and forgotten?”
“More and more Yiddin sounds like an idiot,” Torrullin muttered.
Elianas raised a finger. “Perhaps there is a lesson and Yiddin, Torrullin, is not an idiot. Perhaps it is as simple and as complicated in that we did this to ourselves.”
Tristan snorted a laugh. “No way would I do this to myself.”
Elianas murmured, “We should check the likelihood of sacred sites here, to establish Valleur presence.”
“I am more intrigued to see if the Keep stands. It is a recent building and could tell us something of the time we are in,” Torrullin said.
A low rumble of sound shuddered the earth underfoot.
Torrullin looked at Elianas first, who fixated in confusion on a spot near his feet, and then transferred his gaze to Tristan.
Tristan, this time, found the more correct answer faster than the other two could think it through.
“Beware Digilan,” he breathed.
A sliver of light tore through the fabric before them, a vertical line that widened immediately to form a doorway-sized opening. Swirling mist poured out, then giggling sounds, and with it came the movement that spoke of form on the other side.
It was Digilan, but this Digilan could be quite different on and in this plane. Before they could react and prepare, the form beyond in the swirling mist solidified and stepped through.
As Torrullin drew an astonished breath, the rectangle that was also portal was banished by a flick of the visitor’s wrist and the giggling silenced.
Elianas paled to a pasty tremble and took a step backward as if retreating from terrible danger. That slow move set Tristan’s pulses racing; if Elianas was afraid, then this was something to fear, this creature that looked so much like his father. He drew a shaking breath to speak and discovered he had lost the power of speech. Fear caused retreat, in his case of voice.
Torrullin’s eyes, contrarily, had lit. “Tymall.”
The man who looked like Samuel said, “Father.”
Torrullin stepped closer, eyes hooding as he studied the man before him. He walked around him and then reached out to touch. As their hands made contact the blue kinfire sparked and Tymall, Warlock of Digilan, smiled.
His grey eyes lightened in amusement. “How far will you test before believing?”
Elianas hissed.
Torrullin came to rest and took Tymall’s arm in his hands, the left arm. As trebac sparked he pushed the man’s robe upward to study the skin above the elbow. A crescent-shaped scar lay depressed there, one both father and son knew was caused by Margus Darak Or.
“Happy?” Tymall murmured.
“Son, I am agog to know how you managed this,” Torrullin laughed.
Father and son stepped into a tight embrace and then stood grinning idiotically at each other.
Elianas cleared his throat. He and Tristan gravitated to together to give support to rattled psyches. Tymall, here, wherever here was, did not feel right. Torrullin, both understood, would not agree.
At the sound, Tymall glanced over his father’s shoulder. His grey gaze flicked over Elianas and then settled on Tristan. “Remarkable. You are here. Likeness and likeness.”
Tristan decided he did not like Tymall. He shrugged and kept quiet.
Tymall transferred his attention to Elianas. His eyes narrowed when the dark man stared back. Elianas lost all fear in the reality of confrontation.
“He is Elianas, Ty,” Torrullin murmured, his own skin tight with tension.
“Of course he is, and he is the Danae. He is partly the reason I have come.”
Tristan silently lauded the dark man for his confrontational ways, for Elianas smiled. “Tymall Valla, we meet at last. I have heard much about you.”
Tymall gave an underhanded grin. “You are unafraid; I find that enlightening.”
Elianas paced forward. “I find it enlightening the Warlock of Digilan is here, having superseded the planes and found the right one to exit into.”
“
How is that enlightening?” Tymall questioned.
“I would wager the Digilan of this alternate is none the wiser,” Elianas replied. “That is why you closed the portal fast; they must not know of your existence here.”
“Very good, dark man,” Tymall murmured. “I heard how clever you are. Digilan crosses time in many places. The Danae’s tale has been whispered in the darker places where the real secrets remain ever hidden. I had not expected you to be quite so … close … to my father, however. That is an unknown factor.”
Torrullin’s eyes shuttered. “Close?”
Tymall gave the kind of smile that set Tristan’s teeth on edge. “Close, father, yes. Would you like me to spell it out?”
Torrullin glanced at Elianas, at Tristan, and then moved to Elianas’ side. It was a telling gesture, one not lost on anyone there; Torrullin silently shouted out where his loyalties lay, and would first and always lie.
“Please elaborate,” he murmured.
Tymall shook his head. “I think I have no need to.”
“Then, Ty, pray tell how you managed this and for which purpose,” Torrullin said. He loved this son, yes, but was under no illusions either. Tymall thought first of Tymall every time.
“I intend to, but would feel more comfortable if we move away from the vicinity of portal.”
“It cannot be opened again,” Elianas frowned. “Not to your Digilan.”
“But this Digilan could pull me in and I would avoid it at every cost. I am not Warlock there and were I, well, how to best myself? These are not comforting thoughts.”
“This plane has been largely abandoned,” Tristan murmured. “I doubt we will find our other selves here.”
Tymall squinted at him. “You are not so stupid, Skyler.”
Tristan licked his lips, but did not otherwise react. Elianas sent him an understanding wink.
Torrullin said, “We go to Torrke.”
Torrke
THE VALLEY WAS wild and spectacular in its untouched beauty, and windswept in flurries of autumn leaves.
The season was the same as expected in real time, but there was no Keep, no fawn road meandering east and west, no Graveyard, therefore no sacred sites and no Throne. Either this plane had moved in different directions in an earlier time or that illustrious time was yet to be.
Four men stood on the rise where the Keep was in another place and gazed around them, each awed and humbled for different reasons.
Torrullin, murmured, “This is the valley I discovered after awakening from Rayne.”
Tymall said, “They never came here.”
“Raw beauty, untamed power remains, and it will ever be,” Elianas said, looking up as an eagle flew over.
“This is a world untouched,” Tristan added.
A few moments of silence ensued as each struggled to accept a new concept of Valaris.
Torrullin asked, “They never came here”?” He stared pointedly at Tymall.
“As Tristan said, this is a world untouched. There has been no Valleur settlement and certainly no human invasions either. There are no sacred sites, not here, not anywhere on this planet. No light beings, no darklings, no draithen, no Vallas, no Darak Ors. This is a Valaris uninhabited and untouched. It is pure, a world without the drawbacks of sentience.”
Elianas remarked, “I cannot think that such purity would appeal to you.”
Tymall sent him a blistering look. “Then you do not know me, do you?”
“Enough,” Torrullin said without heat. “Ty, did you choose this?”
“Did I orchestrate this meeting, is that what you ask?”
“That is my question.”
“No.”
Elianas snorted. “Please.”
Tymall shrugged. “I have no need to lie to my father, but believe what you will.” He looked at Torrullin. “An hour ago I was minding my own business, spending time with a healer, in fact, a new arrival, and hoping he could restore me sexual function …” Elianas pulled a face and Tymall glared at him. “Unless you lose it, Danae, you cannot know what I mean, you who lust after my father …”
Elianas snarled.
“Enough!” This time the heat burned in Torrullin’s tone.
Both men subsided and Tymall went on, “The healer irritated me and I was about to kick his arse into the mists, when I felt a shivering in my penis …”
Elianas doubled over to hide his face.
Tymall glared at him once more and then chose to ignore him.
“You know all I can do is take a piss, so I was hopeful. Hope is all I was to have though, for the next instant brought excruciating pain, and I did kick his bony arse out of there. That was not the end of it, for I felt impelled to rise, to walk, to leave the palace, to cross the drawbridge and enter the mists, impelled by a pulsing pain in my penis. It hurt left when I was to go left and right when - you get the picture.
“It was bound to get my attention, and I stood at the site of portal where I last spoke to Tian and was told I could exit safely into a realm where Digilan could not do anything to Valaris, where another Digilan already held the status quo, and I need not be afraid of causing harm. Did I want this, and did I want to see my father in this place where it was safe to walk in sunshine and not mist? Did I want this, the voice prompted? Yes, I did, and thus I listened to the how, and here I am and here you are.”
“How did the voice sound?”
Tymall shrugged. “It was a voice. I cannot say whether male or female, speech or thought. It just was.”
“Gods, this is stranger by the minute. This is like Lethe,” Tristan muttered.
“It is Lethe.” Elianas slapped at his thigh.
“Lethe, Reaume or Ariann, we are not out and the planes are brought closer to bedevil us,” Torrullin understood.
“Or herald oblivion,” Tristan whispered.
“What are you talking about?” Tymall demanded.
Torrullin threaded a hand through his hair in obvious frustration. He frowned at Tymall. “Which words did you hear? Did anything set it apart? An accent, perhaps?”
Tymall’s eyes flicked about. “I told you, there was nothing to hold onto. Are you suggesting this isn’t an alternate and we could be fucking with our realities? This means somebody wanted me out of Digilan.” He paced away, agitation in his steps.
“He duped me, the barrier between this and there is now made up of Shadow Wings,” Elianas muttered.
Tymall growled in escalating fury. “Will someone explain?”
“Do you feel as if you came here of your own will?” Elianas demanded of him.
“I did until I found myself stuck here.”
“Thus was I duped into doing something exceedingly stupid.”
“Gods, we sent the Syllvan out of hiding,” Torrullin groaned.
“And revealed the grotto to the Dryads and Ixion,” Tristan murmured.
“Will someone please put me in the picture?” Tymall demanded.
Elianas looked at him almost pityingly. “Hold onto your cloak and staff now, Warlock, for this will not be pretty.”
Tymall swallowed. “I left my accruements behind.”
Torrullin touched his brow significantly. “Nobody can take that away.”
He referred to the hidden circlet Tymall as Warlock wore on his brow, for it was part of the power a Warlock could wield not only in Digilan, but in other realms also.
“Agreed, but how effective is it if the Danae word of power causes little disturbance?”
“Hopefully we will not need to find out.”
Elianas wandered to a copse of varied trees, all of them in autumn regalia, and sat in the carpet of leaves. He leaned against the nearest trunk, sighed, and his eyes closed. Tristan, after a slight hesitation, followed suit, sitting against a neighbouring trunk.
Torrullin, frowning, watched them and thought he gradually lost his grip on everything. He indicated with his head to Tymall that they do the same and the two headed into the dappled shadows.
Elian
as opened one eye. “Try creating something to drink.”
Torrullin did so and all four were relieved to see a bottle of wine appear in his hands. “At least the Enchanter still functions.”
Tymall leaned over to take the bottle. He pulled the cork free with his teeth, and spat it out to take a huge swig. Lowering the vessel, he said, “Someone had better get to talking.” He drank again and passed the bottle to Elianas.
Torrullin spoke. “A tale of titans at war. The Syllvan of Reaume versus the Dryads of Ariann. The battle had adverse effects on our reality and we suspected it would get worse. Someone had to go in.”
“Obviously,” Tymall murmured, amused.
Torrullin went on over the interruption. “Eventually it would have affected Digilan also. The problem was the actual entry point, the Syllvan grotto being sealed while the battles raged. This is where Lethe takes on importance. Lethe borders both Syllvan and Dryad territory. We entered and found the Syllvan with only four gatekeepers remaining. We had to find a workable solution and thought we had, in the form of Ixion.”
“Father of the Centuar, according to legend,” Tymall frowned.
“Ixion is merely a chosen name for a remarkable being in this instance. He aided us in creating a barrier between Ariann and Reaume and thus ended the confrontation and we could go home. We find ourselves here, but whether Ixion did this we do not know.”
“It seems obvious he had a hand in it,” Tymall murmured. “Why would he call me, though?” Tymall watched Elianas. “Something was given to create a barrier between the two territories and you claim to be the one duped. What did you surrender, Danae?”
Elianas opened his eyes and said, “Shadow Wings.”
Tymall blinked. “Shadow Wings?”
“Yes, Warlock.”
Lore of Sanctum Omnibus Page 120