“Sorcery isn’t everything.”
“I can’t help her with such things.”
“She needs you,” Silas said. “If runes were all-powerful, we wouldn’t have swords.”
“What should I do?”
“Convince her to ward away the shadows. She shouldn’t spend so much time talking to them. Even though she appears to use them well, they are dangerous things. The world between worlds is a treacherous place. One so young should not be traveling it.”
“What world?”
“They’ve come to you, in your dreams, haven’t they? Nightmares that felt a little too real?”
Tyrus remembered the strange visits from the Archangel Ramiel. The dreams were fragmented, difficult to piece together. He remembered feeling trapped and alone and struggling to be free more than anything else.
Silas said, “To bring sorcery into this world, she opens that door, like a waking dream. And she invites things from the other world to travel through.”
“I never remember all of the details.”
“That is how your mind protects itself. Even among people with talent, it is a difficult place to travel.”
“I’m sure Dura would have taught her to be careful.”
“Dura taught her on the surface, far from the Black Gate. Things are worse down here.” Silas glanced at Marah. “She can sense it, how the voices are stronger closer to the gate.”
“Why are they stronger?”
“Nothing dies well in the Deep.”
Silas said he had to rest and vanished into one of the temple’s passageways. Tyrus stood guard. The priests asked many questions, and as the meeting stretched into hours of lectures and demonstrations, he began to worry that someone should give Marah a break. He wasn’t sure whether he should interrupt or not, but Silas eventually returned and called for an evening meal.
Tyrus followed Marah into a lower level of the temple where they had a large room filled with tables. The ceiling was low, forcing Tyrus to stoop, and the room was difficult to scan because dozens of thick pillars supported the ceiling. They sat at tables, and more dwarves brought out plates laden with fish and breads. Tyrus asked Silas about the fish, and he spoke at length about underground rivers and the various animals they had domesticated to support their cities.
Marah ate in silence. Tyrus listened politely to Silas, but he worried about Marah. The other priests chatted in their language at tables all around them, but they kept peering at Marah. Tyrus didn’t speak their language, but he knew their faces and hunched shoulders and strange whispers. They didn’t understand her talents.
Tyrus shoveled down the food and asked for more. The priests brought out more plates and bowls. The breads and fish were dry, but the sauces served with them were thick and full of flavor. Tyrus emptied another plate and asked for more. They had not had a real meal since they entered the tunnels, and the flavor was like a luxury. Marah looked sad, and he asked her to eat. Her appetite had improved, but he wasn’t sure what secrets she was keeping from him.
VI
Marah found the temple a nice place. The warm lights and yellow rock were easy on her eyes. She also enjoyed the smell of dust and old scrolls. It made her homesick for the Red Tower. The place hummed with sorcery. The wards kept the voices away, which gave her peace that she struggled to enjoy. Without the voices, she had no idea how bad things were. She wanted to step outside the temple and check on the progress of the Demon Tribes.
She also wanted to pretend there was no war and study the new runes in quiet. The dwarves had as many runes for stone as Dura had for fire. The priests played games with stones on the floor, showing her how to manipulate and move and mold various bricks.
When Marah imitated their work, they applauded.
Although she enjoyed the quiet, performing tricks became tedious. The attention had been the same in the Red Tower. Dura had been good at limiting her time with the acolytes. After seeing one trick, people always asked for more. The temple was so much like the Tower that Marah began to miss Dura again. She closed her eyes and saw her grandmother die. The old memories could not be banished.
The dwarves wanted to know how a sorcerer from the Red Tower could use the source like a priest of the Stone Song. Without the voices, Marah didn’t know what to say.
She said, “Runes are runes.”
“But there are different gates, and each has its strengths.”
Marah had no answer and tried to use silence the way Dura would have done. Sometimes, Dura would stare a person down, and they would keep talking or volunteering information.
The priests didn’t seem to notice. A knot of them wanted to show her scrolls from their vaults and ask her how she would use the runes. The group became excited by the idea, and several priests said she must tour the temple’s vault.
Silas asked Marah, “Do you need to rest?”
The priests answered for her. Dozens of voices wanted to know if there was time for rest with the armies of the Deep marching against the city. They had precious little time to study her talents before the fighting started.
Tyrus spoke loudly enough to still the group. “Marah, do you want to sleep?”
Marah said, “Yes.”
Tyrus told Silas, “Find her a bed.”
That ended the debate. Silas herded the priests away and found her accommodations. Tyrus scooped her into his massive arms and carried her to the room. She enjoyed how people reacted to Tyrus. When he spoke, everyone listened. He carried her to a small room in the lower level of the temple, and he had to duck to enter. The bed wasn’t long enough for him to lie down. He would be curled up more like a dog.
The priest said, “The room is for the Reborn.”
Marah said, “He stays.”
Silas told them both to get some rest and led the other priest away.
Marah lay on the hard stone and looked at Tyrus. “Do you mind staying with me?”
“I will stand guard. I can sleep in the hall.”
Marah looked at the floor beside her bed, and Tyrus sat there, leaning against the wall with his legs stretched out across the room.
He said, “I remember this from the last time I was here. They don’t seem to care for mattresses. Everything is hard. The chairs, the beds, the floors.”
Marah whispered, “I need you to stay. I can’t hear the voices.”
“That’s a good thing, is it not?”
“I don’t know if we’re in danger.”
Tyrus considered that and shrugged. “I think we are safe for now.”
“What happens if we wake up and there are monsters in the temple?”
“We’ll hear them long before that.”
“But what happens?”
“We’re in a little box. So we fight our way out of it and find a bigger box, with allies. The warrens are a strange place. It’s like a bunch of tunnels connecting one large castle. So you fight like a castle. One wall, one gate, one tower at a time.”
Marah listened to him talk. She asked more questions, and her eyelids became heavier. She kept him talking about castles and sieges, and the sound of his voice made it easier for her to sleep. She needed to listen to someone if she was to sleep. The eerie quiet disturbed her, but Tyrus’s deep voice helped her nod off.
Marah awoke refreshed and clearheaded. She had not slept so well since she had been in the Paltiel Woods. Tyrus sat beside her, chin resting on his chest. She touched his shoulder, and his eyes popped open. They left the small room and found Silas, who invited them to break their fast with more bread and fish.
After they ate, Silas showed her the temple’s vault, which was a large circular room, similar to the well on the main floor. The walls were all covered with a latticework of shelves. Thin pieces of wood were woven together to form diamond patterns, and in each diamond slot rested several rolled-up scrolls. The walls seemed to be made of scrolls. In the center of the ro
om was a large circle of fine white sand, like a viewing pool. Wands and rakes rested nearby.
Tyrus asked, “Is that sorcerer’s sand?”
“No,” Silas said, “but it is very similar in texture.”
Silas took up one of the wands resting on a nearby table and moved to the edge of the circle sandbox to draw runes. After drawing a few, he invited Marah to try. She took the wand, but it felt awkward in her hands. She had never enjoyed calligraphy with brushes, and she found the wand equally clumsy.
She tried to imitate Silas’s runes, but hers were sloppy. Silas’s brows furrowed as she scratched at the sand, and Marah’s cheeks flushed.
She said, “I’m better if I use the source.”
“You use sorcery to write?”
“It’s easier. My fingers are small.”
“There’s no need.”
Silas took the wand and lectured her about various matrices that could be built from a pattern of two to three stone runes. Even without the voices, Marah understood at once. Runes had always been intuitive for her. She only relied on the voices to show her the ones the adults tried to keep secret. Once she saw them, she saw bigger patterns.
Reaching for the source, she used sorcery to work the wand and drew a bigger matrix. The air chilled, and her mind filled with runes. Gooseflesh covered her arms, and as though from a distance, she heard Silas question where she had learned such patterns. Marah was discovering them as she went. She released sorcery and looked at the pool. Dozens of runes were scratched into the white surface. The pattern made her feel warm, proud. She gazed upon her work and smiled a small smile.
Silas told Tyrus, “She makes it look so easy.”
“What is that?”
“That is a matrix that could build a wall.”
“From nothing?”
“Oh, no,” Silas said. “It would pull the material together. They say when Jethlah built Shinar that he raised the walls out of the plains.”
Tyrus asked, “Is that what this is?”
“I doubt it,” Silas said. “I can still understand it. No one knows how Jethlah did what he did. The runes have been lost for centuries, but with practice, Marah might do something like that. She has the makings of a master builder.”
Marah reached for sorcery once more, and with a wave of her wand she washed away the runes. The white sand looked as pristine and undisturbed as when she had first come to the vault. Silas had grunted and reached for her to make her wait, but he silenced himself at once.
The sorcery had blown away the runes in an instant, like a strong breeze scattering a clutch of papers.
“How do you do that?” Silas asked. “You switch between runes for priests and runes for sorcerers with such ease.”
Marah said, “I don’t understand.”
“Each order has their own traditions when it comes to the Runes of Dusk and Dawn. And each people have their own variants of temples and towers. The runes of the Red Tower are different from the runes of the Sea Kings, and the priests in Ironwall have a different legacy from the priests of the Stone Song. There are different gates, different ways to draw on the source. Yet you imitate both with such ease.”
“There are no differences.”
“Of course there are.”
“Runes are runes.”
Marah missed the voices then, and that made her feel strange. For much of her life, she had wanted to free herself from their constant moans, but in that moment, she was alone and afraid. Silas was asking difficult questions, and she had no crutch. He was impressed by simple things. The voices could explain why. They could whisper in her ear what she should say. Instead, she had to pretend that she knew what he was talking about.
Silas asked, “When you reach for the source, what do you see?”
“It depends on what I want to do.”
“So you’ve seen the burning gate? And the white gate?”
“Yes.”
“One is used by sorcerers and is closer to the Runes of Dusk. It makes their skin crawl when they use it, and it is the more dangerous, but some would say the more powerful as well. The other is used by priests. The Runes of Dawn are harder to learn, but they have fewer symptoms from prolonged use.”
“That’s not true,” Marah said. “You can use the same runes from either gate.”
“You can, with limitations. It can take a lifetime of study to use sorcerer runes from a priestly gate. Although there are a few rogue priests who use the burning gate, they seldom progress far in their studies.”
“I don’t see why,” Marah said. “Runes are runes.”
“Why do you use one gate over the other?”
“Because sometimes you must.”
“But why?”
Marah shrugged. “Because.”
Silas was asking weird questions, as though he were trapped and needed her help. She couldn’t understand why he didn’t help himself. Some runes were easier to play with from one gate instead of the other, and she didn’t know how she knew that—she just listened to her instincts. She could force the runes to do what she wanted, but why go to the effort when it was easier to meet the runes halfway? She had assumed everyone else did the same thing.
Some of the other priests arrived in the vault. They thanked her for coming to the aid of the Deep Ward and said that few of the Avani had helped them since Jethlah had died. Marah tried to remember when he had died—hundreds of years earlier, she guessed. She missed the voices again.
Marah asked Silas, “How did things get so bad?”
“The shedim are united again.”
Many of the priests nodded. Marah didn’t understand why that changed things, and she feared asking a stupid question. She nodded though, imitating the priests.
Silas said, “But we will unite against them, as we’ve always done. And we fight. What happens after that is beyond my control. We can only focus on doing all we can to win the fight.”
Priests took up wands and traced runes in the sand. Tyrus stood nearby, dominating the room with his bulk. Marah had grown bored of drawing runes, but she watched the sand, waiting to see something new.
She asked Silas, “Is it true that God abandoned us?”
“Who told you that?”
“The dead.” Marah chewed on her lip. “They say He never forgave the angels for fighting each other.”
Many of the priests stopped drawing runes to listen. Marah had no voices to guide her, but it seemed strange that the bottom of the world was filled with monsters and that they had to fight them to survive. She remembered the dragon’s words and Lord Nemuel’s. She wanted to hear the dwarven version of the story too.
“If God abandoned us, where did you come from?” Silas smiled at her. “I don’t believe we were abandoned. Maybe He started ignoring the angels the same way He ignores us, but He didn’t leave.”
“God ignores us?”
“Have you spoken with Him?”
All the priests focused on Marah. The room became uncomfortably quiet, and she thought about all the voices that had shouted at her. The truth was she didn’t know who she talked to, but she thought something as important as the Divine would be memorable. The priests wanted to hear something important from her, and she had no idea what to say.
So she said as little as possible. “No.”
“I’m willing to bet Ithuriel and Mulciber haven’t spoken to Him in a long time, either. His last commandments came at the end of the Second War when He ordered the seraphim to spare what remained of the grigorns. Legend says that if the commandment is broken, it will start the Third War.”
“Killing the grigorns is one of the Last Seven Battles.”
“Dura taught you your history. That is good.”
Marah wanted to say that she had learned many things from the dead of the world, but she decided to keep such talk to herself. The priests were hanging on her words, which made her too
self-conscious. They would ask questions again—all they had were questions. Marah had no answers.
Silas said, “We keep to the older faith. We accept that the Divine is beyond our understanding. We surrender to that truth. Many of the surface dwellers beg angels and demons for favors, but that is how the shedim conquered Sornum—some fools asked demons for runes. Dwarves don’t worship anything with wings. Instead, we find virtue in service. Our fate is to defend the surface and all of our loved ones from the horrors of the Black Gate. And one day, when enough people have died and the war is finally over, we will reclaim paradise.”
Tyrus asked, “Reclaim?”
“Creation.” Silas made a wide gesture with his arms as though he spoke of the entire vault. “Avanor was created to be a paradise. The angelic civil war turned it into a battleground, but this world is older than the heavens and hells. And one day, when the war ends, our task will be to restore it to its former glory.”
Many of the priests nodded.
Marah looked at Tyrus, who seemed as confused as she felt. Dura had spoken of the Seven Heavens as paradise, not the mortal world.
“You, no doubt, were taught something a little different in Ironwall,” Silas said with a wink. “The Temple of the Eagle worships Ithuriel. We fight beside Ithuriel, but we worship Creation itself.”
Marah asked, “The mortal world?”
“Is that so odd? The priests of Ironwall made an old mistake. They worshipped Jethlah instead of the Divine. And when he died, they turned to Ithuriel for help.”
“Did he help them?”
“He fights the same enemy.” Silas sighed. “Whether that is help, I do not know. We’ve fought the demons for thousands of years. We’ve learned to help ourselves because life is short and bloody in the Underworld. Every day is judgment day.”
Many priests nodded, and no one spoke. They returned to drawing runes in the sand. Marah went to Tyrus and raised her arms. He picked her up, and she hugged his neck. She needed to leave the temple and listen to the voices again, but she feared what they would say.
Dance of Battle: A Dark Fantasy (Shedim Rebellion Book 4) Page 31