by Mark Anthony
Xemeth lowered his hands, gazing at them with an expression of amazement. Then he laughed again. “This is most amusing.” He turned his molten eyes on Grace. “But what do we have here? It looks like a little mouse sneaked through the gate with me. I shall have to squash it.”
There was no time to react. Xemeth flicked a finger, and gold sparks blazed forth. Grace braced herself, waiting to be annihilated.
It was the column next to her that exploded instead. It burst apart into a spray of dust and stone shards—all of which flew toward the spinning disk of debris. Xemeth stumbled, then let out another burst of shrill laughter.
He’s intoxicated, Grace. All the signs are there—the dizziness, the poor coordination. The blood of the scarab has made him drunk, and he can’t control his new power.
“It seems I missed. But don’t worry, little mouse. I won’t miss this time.” He pointed a finger directly at her chest.
“Xemeth!” Vani said, struggling to her feet, still holding on to a column. “Why have you come for me?”
Xemeth lurched around, then took several wavering steps toward Vani. “But surely you must know, beshala. I have come to make you mine at last. As you should have been long ago.”
Vani pressed her cheek to the marble column. “So you … love me, then?”
“Love you? I worship you, Vani. Ever since we were children, I knew there was nothing in the world I wanted so much as you. And then …” A grimace twisted his face.
“I’m sorry, Xemeth,” she said.
He drew closer. “No, do not be sorry, beshala. You will never have to abase yourself before me, not like these dogs. I was not worthy of you before, I know that now. But that is not true anymore. I can be anything you want me to be, beshala.”
Xemeth passed his hands before himself, and suddenly his robe was gone. Now he was clad in loose black trousers and a crimson vest. His bare arms and chest were gleaming and muscled, and his face chiseled and handsome. A short black beard adorned his chin.
Vani winced, and Grace understood.
He’s made himself look like Sareth. Sareth, who he always felt was better at everything when they were children.
Xemeth must have noticed Vani’s reaction, for his lips turned down, casting a shadow on the beautiful visage that was a mask as surely as the face of gold he had worn before.
“What is wrong, beshala? Does my new countenance not please you?”
Vani’s eyes were solemn. “I am fated for another, Xemeth.”
He brushed these words aside with a sloppy gesture. “What is fate to one such as I? I am the greatest sorcerer since the god-king Orú. I can make fate as I will—or I can break it. Tell me what I must do to win you, and it shall be done.”
Again Xemeth stumbled and caught himself. Grace traded a look with Beltan, and the knight nodded. He had reached the same conclusion Grace had.
“Very well,” Vani said, her voice rising above the sound of the wind. “There is one way you can win me, Xemeth.”
Grace saw the hard light in the assassin’s eyes. Vani was buying them time.
“What is it, beshala? Tell me what I must do to make your heart mine.”
“Bind the demon, Xemeth. You have the power—I can see it in you.” Vani reached out a hand and brushed his radiant cheek. “I know you can do it … beshala.”
Xemeth’s eyes went wide. For a moment Grace could see him—the small, sad boy who could never get what he wanted. Pity started to blossom in her heart. With a thought as cold as a knife, she excised it.
“Very well, beshala. I need the demon no longer. The Scirathi have been disposed of, and no one else can possibly stop me now. It will be done as you wish, and then we will be away from here. Together.”
“Yes, Xemeth. Together.”
He turned from her and approached the edge of the balcony. The wind tugged at his clothes, but that was all; the demon had no effect upon him.
The air of the Etherion was clearing. The spiraling flotsam was nearly gone. Grace could see it hovering there in the center of the Etherion: a spot of perfect blackness. Her eyes could not seem to hold on to it, and a sickness welled up in her stomach. Every few seconds there was another burst of light as something reached the center of the spiral. Grace thought she saw a figure in a black robe draw close.
Flash. It was gone.
She forced her gaze to Xemeth. He tottered on the edge of the balcony, then steadied himself.
“Behold the power of Orú!” Xemeth called out.
He stretched his arms toward the demon, and a corona sprang into being around his body, like that around the sun. Golden rays shot from his hands, speeding toward the center of the spiral, striking the demon.
Grace did not hear it cry out so much as felt it. Like a shock wave it spread outward, rippling through air, stone, and flesh.
What is he doing to it? Aryn said in her mind.
Grace tried to answer her, but the threads of the Weirding twisted and snapped, and she could not grab hold of them. The walls of the Etherion seemed to pulse. The very fabric of being was unraveling.
Xemeth threw back his head, exultant.
“This is for you, Vani!”
The gold rays extending from his hands grew brighter yet, striking the dark blot of the demon. Grace watched, her fear forgotten in awe. Xemeth was going to do it. He was going to bind the—
Xemeth shuddered and skittered an inch closer to the edge. He shook his head, gazing down at his hands. Gold light still streamed from them toward the demon.
Again a spasm passed through his body. His flesh seemed to ripple like the stone walls of the Etherion.
“I don’t—” he said, but the rest of his words were pulled away from his lips.
Grace blinked. Xemeth’s arms seemed to be growing longer, stretching away from his body and toward the demon. He tried to pull them back.
He did not succeed. The gold rays still reached from his hands to the demon. His fingers elongated to impossible proportions, stretching thinner as they did.
Xemeth screamed. “I cannot let go!”
His words were weirdly distorted, the tones shifted downward like the whistle of a receding train. Xemeth’s arms were a dozen feet long by then, and his fingers were so thin they merged with the rays of light plunging into the demon.
“What’s happening to him?” Vani said, her expression one of horror.
Even as she spoke, Grace understood. The cry of the demon—it hadn’t been agony. It had been delight. Sareth had said the morndari craved blood. The demon had starved in its prison for more than two thousand years. And now it had tasted blood of unfathomable power.
“It’s pulling him in,” Grace said. “And Xemeth doesn’t have enough control over his power to stop it.”
Xemeth’s arms stretched to spindly strands twenty feet long, as if the gold rays were lines the demon was using to reel them in. His screams wavered strangely. Now his head was being drawn toward the demon with the rest of him, his neck and shoulders elongating like his arms to grotesque lengths. Twenty feet. Thirty. Fifty. His scream still rang out, but he couldn’t possibly be alive anymore. Such distortion would kill a man in a second.
And what does a second mean when you’re being pulled into a black hole, Grace? Time stops, and a second is forever.
Gagging, Aryn averted her gaze. Falken pressed her head to his chest. Melia’s visage was solemn, and both Beltan and Vani stared with a mixture of revulsion and fascination.
The liquid sound of Xemeth’s scream seemed to freeze as the moment of his agony extended into infinity. Only his legs remained on the balcony. His body above the waist had become a slender rope, snaking its way along with the golden rays of magic toward the demon.
In the blink of an eye it happened. Like a taut wire suddenly freed at one end, Xemeth’s form snapped away from the balcony, whipped through the Etherion, and was reeled into the shapeless shadow.
Flash.
He was gone.
“Xemeth �
��” Vani murmured, her face hard, yet touched by sorrow all the same.
“Did you …?” Beltan licked his lips. “Did you know that was going to happen?”
Vani shook her head. The assassin had only been trying to gain them some time; she couldn’t have known that Xemeth’s newfound magic—the power he had always craved—would be his undoing.
There wasn’t much debris left in the Etherion. Only a few pebbles, and in bright flashes even those were consumed. All at once the far wall of the Etherion bulged and burst outward in a spray of white stone that swept quickly into a spiraling course toward the demon. The blood of Orú had strengthened it; the demon was going to rip the Etherion apart.
We have to get out of here, Grace started to say.
Another voice spoke first.
“I am so weary, my sister. So terribly weary. I can dance no more.”
“Melia!” Falken cried out. “No!”
Grace jerked her head up in time to see Melia let go of the column to which she had been clinging. Eyes shut, the lady rose into the air. Her small body rolled, until she lay upon her back. Then she drifted away from the balcony, circling with the other debris toward the center of the Etherion.
“Falken!” Beltan shouted. “Hold on to Aryn!”
It was too late. Like Melia, Aryn rose into the air, her eyes shut.
Aryn! Grace tried to shout across the Weirding. Aryn, can you hear me?
But the only answer was from the shadow attached to Grace’s life thread. It pressed around her, close, smothering. Grace was too tired to resist anymore. Her eyes drooped shut.
No, that’s what it wants you to do. It wants you to give in to the shadow of the past so it can consume you.
Grace forced her eyes open. Before her, Beltan’s head lolled on his shoulders.
“Beltan! You’ve got to stay awake.”
She started to shake him, but his arm was ripped from her grasp as he rose into the air to float in the wake of Melia and Aryn. Vani rose up after him. The assassin’s limbs were still, her eyes shut.
The shadow pulsed all around Grace. Everything seemed to grow dim. The call of owls sounded in her mind.
Falken, she tried to shout, but she couldn’t form words. Nor was there any use. Through the fog she could just make out the shape of the bard drifting up to meet the others. She clutched the stone column.
Don’t close your eyes, Grace. Don’t give in to it. The past can’t harm you. It can’t—
But even words were too much effort. The column seemed to melt under her fingers. She felt her body grow unbearably heavy, and she could not resist the gravity of the shadow. Grace shut her eyes, and the past swallowed her whole.
81.
“It is no use,” Sareth said, turning from the edge of the precipice and holding a hand to his eyes.
The Mournish man’s words echoed throughout the vastness of the cavern. Lirith gazed at him with worried eyes.
“So there is no sign of the passage,” Durge said.
Sareth shook his head. “Nothing here is as it was. If the passage to the city yet remains, then I can see no trace of it. In truth, I fear the passage is no more.”
“So we’re trapped here,” Travis said.
It wasn’t accusation, merely realization. All the same, Sareth flinched.
“I am sorry.”
Lirith moved to the Mournish man. “This is not your fault.”
“No, you are wrong. It is entirely my fault.” He turned away from her.
The four of them were still gathered on the finger of stone that thrust into the void, near the altar where Xemeth had found the scarab. For minutes that seemed like hours, Sareth had searched the darkness for signs of the passage he had once used to escape the demon. The green glow of Lirith’s witchlight was comforting, but it pushed back the shadows only for a dozen paces all around them, so Travis had sent his silver ball of rune-light darting through the emptiness, moving it into cracks and crevices to illuminate them.
As Sareth had said, it was no use. One hole in the stone looked like another, and there was no telling where any of them might lead—if anywhere at all.
Lirith gazed at Sareth, her eyes filled with sorrow. Then the witch folded her arms across her chest and moved away, toward the altar.
Travis sighed. Sareth shouldn’t blame himself. It had been Travis’s idea to stop the demon; he should have come down here alone. But it didn’t matter now—blame was not going to help them find a way out. And it wasn’t going to help Grace and the others.
If it’s not already too late.
He peered into the darkness above, and a clammy sweat broke out on his skin. Was the demon still up there? Or the Etherion for that matter? And what of Melia, Falken, and Aryn?
But it was not on the lady, the bard, or the young baroness that Travis’s thoughts dwelled. Instead he found himself thinking of Beltan … and Vani.
And if you could save only one of them, Travis, which one would it be?
He didn’t know where the question came from, only that it was as cold and cruel as a needle in his heart. Nor was there any point in answering it. Right now he couldn’t help either of them.
“Can we not use the gate artifact to reach the Etherion?” Durge said.
Sareth hefted the black stone pyramid. “We cannot, good cloud. The magic of the artifact requires blood of power, and all of the fairy’s blood was consumed when we opened the gate to this place. Xemeth had drunk from the scarab, and the blood of Orú had mingled with his own blood—that was how he was able to open a gate.”
“But were not the Scirathi also able to open gates within the city using the second artifact?”
“They are workers of blood magic,” Sareth said. “The blood of a sorcerer is enough to open a gate within the city, although not across worlds.”
Durge seemed to think a long moment, then suddenly he looked up. “Goodman Travis is a wizard. Are not wizards similar to sorcerers?”
Travis swallowed mad laughter. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve donated blood.”
“No, Travis,” Sareth said. “Your rune magic is strong, but it is of the north. It has nothing to do with the sorceries of Morindu the Dark.”
A frown crossed Durge’s craggy face. “Is there not something else you can do, Travis?”
“I wish there was, Durge. But I don’t know any runes that can get us out of here.”
“And what of the Great Stone?”
Travis drew out the Stone of Twilight. It glittered in the green glow of the witchlight: quiescent, a mystery. Travis barely understood its powers. It could make things whole, that was all he knew. He had used it to heal wraithlings in Calavere, and to bind the Rune Gate. And the fairy seemed to believe he could use it to bind the demon. But as for how the Stone could get them out of this cavern …
He held Sinfathisar out toward the knight. “Have you got any ideas how to use it?”
Durge took a step back. So much for Embarran logic. Travis slipped the Stone into his pocket. “We’re not going to be able to help them, are we?”
Sareth’s visage was grim. “There is no way out of this place.”
“Actually,” Lirith said in a rising voice, “I believe that there is.”
The three men turned to look at the witch. She stood beside the altar, leaning over it.
“What is it, Lirith?” Travis said.
“I think you had better come see.”
“What is it, my lady?” Durge said as they drew near.
“Look here.” Lirith touched the shallow depression on one side of the top of the altar.
“That’s where the scarab was resting before Xemeth took it,” Travis said. “But I don’t see how that helps us.”
“It doesn’t,” Lirith murmured. “But I think perhaps this does.” With her fingers she brushed dust from the section of the altar top that had rippled and warped.
If it hadn’t been for the witchlight hovering above them, Travis would never have seen it. As it was, it
was no more than a tiny spark of gold embedded in the half-melted surface of the pedestal.
Sareth looked up. “We have to break away the stone!”
“Why?” Durge said, glowering.
“Because,” Lirith said, “it might be—”
Travis was already working. He laid a hand on the altar and spoke a word.
“Reth!”
There was a bright sound as rock cracked, then the surface of the altar shattered into small fragments. Travis drew his hand back.
“Look,” Lirith murmured.
The four of them held their breath as a few of the fragments shifted. Filaments like slender wires reached up, searching for a hold. Then they pushed a flake of stone aside, and it crawled up onto the scattering of shards: gold, shining, and utterly perfect.
A scarab.
“How—?” Travis said, but he could get no further.
Soft gold light played across Sareth’s face as he knelt beside the altar. He swore softly. “We are fools. Here it was right before us.”
Travis and the others bent down beside him. Sareth passed his finger over one of the pictographs, brushing away millennia of grime. In one of the sorcerer’s hands was a circle with eight lines. And in the other hand was … the same.
Sareth rose. “There must have been two scarabs set into the altar as part of the binding, not one. But as the demon grew stronger from consuming the gods, it began to reshape the stone in this place. The altar began to melt, and one of the jewels was all but covered.”
“So Xemeth missed it,” Durge said.
“As we would have,” Sareth said, “were it not for your sharp eyes, beshala.”
He was grinning now; she smiled back at him.
Travis held out a hand. With slow, delicate motions, the scarab crawled onto his fingers, then curled up in his palm. It was warm to the touch.
“So how do we use it?”
“According to the tales,” Sareth said, “each of the scarabs was made to contain three drops of the blood of Orú.”
Lirith touched the jewel with a gentle finger. “Blood of power.…”