CHAPTER 59
R’shiel had feared that allowing the Harshini to mingle with the people of the Citadel in the amphitheatre would be inviting trouble, but she need not have worried. Although the Medalonians had spent two hundred years reviling their race, when confronted with one in person, the Harshini were almost impossible to dislike. They didn’t share the human frailties of shyness or self-doubt, and assumed everyone was as happy to meet them as they were to meet others. Their wide-eyed joy at being invited to share the celebration was infectious. After a moment’s awkward silence when the Harshini first arrived, the party settled down again and the citizens of the Citadel set about enjoying themselves as if the Karien army outside didn’t exist.
“Isn’t it amazing what a bit of free food and alcohol will do for a city’s morale,” Brak remarked as he found R’shiel sitting high up in the tiered seating of the amphitheatre watching the party.
“You think that’s going to help morale? Just wait till they find out that the court’esa have been laid on free of charge for the evening.”
“How did you get Tarja to agree to that?”
“Ah, well…come to think of it, I didn’t actually mention it to him. He’s pretty busy at the moment. I didn’t want to burden him with details.”
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate your consideration when the court’esa houses send him their bills for this evening’s entertainment.”
“He’ll get over it.”
“You spoke to him, then?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And what? There’s nothing much to tell, Brak.”
“No more guilt? No more pain?” he asked gently.
“No.”
“Then all that is left to do is wait, demon child.”
She nodded silently. Brak slipped his arm around her shoulder against the cold and she leaned against him as they watched the party in silence, waiting for the dawn.
The party was still well under way when R’shiel and Brak rose from their seats high in the amphitheatre and made their way to the Temple of the Gods. The sky was still dark, but R’shiel could feel the morning approaching. The Citadel was ablaze with light, adding its own unique essence to the celebrations. They walked through the almost-deserted streets in silence, aware that the overwhelming atmosphere in the Citadel was not one of fear or tension, but—temporarily at least—one of joy.
Shananara was waiting for them in the Temple of the Gods, her expression serene and hopeful. She smiled as they walked across the echoing floor to greet her.
“For the first time since I’ve been back, the Citadel almost feels like it used to,” she remarked.
“Let’s hope it lasts,” R’shiel said, suddenly plagued with doubt.
“Have faith, demon child.”
R’shiel didn’t bother to answer that. Faith was something she had been raised to scorn. Instead, she looked at Brak and Shananara questioningly. “What time is it?”
“Almost dawn.”
“Then there’s no point in putting this off any longer.”
She turned to face the Seeing Stone and opened her mind to the power. Drinking in the intoxicating sweetness, she let it fill her until her eyes burned black and she trembled with the raw force of it. She could feel Shananara reach for it too, and then Brak. His eyes darkened until they were as black as ebony. The torrent that she and Shananara could channel was vast compared to the mere stream he had access to, but his touch was that of the maestro next to her ham-fisted grasp. At the edge of her awareness, she felt him call to the Citadel. The mammoth awareness was slow to respond. But Brak knew the Citadel and the Citadel knew Brak. It was a relationship that was centuries old and beyond her comprehension.
In the distance, inside the Citadel, she heard shouts of alarm and the sound of a woman screaming. The walls began to pulse with light. They throbbed as the Citadel responded to Brak’s call. R’shiel felt him stir. She felt the Citadel’s touch and it almost brought her to her knees. Once before he had reached out to welcome her. She realised now that the last time he had merely glanced over her with mild interest.
R’shiel turned her attention to the Temple of the Gods and called out silently for Brehn, the God of Storms. He was waiting for her. Clouds began to gather over the fortress with unnatural speed, blotting out the rising sun and casting a pall of fear over the army outside.
She called out to the other gods. Jagged lightning split the awakening sky as Dacendaran appeared beside her in his motley garb, and beside him Jondalup, the God of Chance materialised. Further along the hall Kalianah appeared, but for this occasion she chose to appear as a young woman, rather than the child she normally preferred. She stood there in all her radiant glory, blinding any man foolish enough to look upon her. One by one, the other Primal Gods appeared, many of whom R’shiel could not even name. But every one of them she had summoned had answered her call. They could not help it. She was drawing on so much of their essence that even they were under her compulsion for a time. Finally Zegarnald appeared, curiously smaller than normal, although he still stood as high as the gallery.
Through the link she shared with Shananara she had no need for words. By mutual agreement they reached out to embrace the Citadel. Every thought, every mood, every happy laugh, every bawdy song and dancing couple, every lover’s caress was drawn into their net. R’shiel drew it to her, relying on Shananara’s skill to filter out the odd discordant thought—a fight between two drunken Defenders over an insult from their Cadet days. Two women squabbling over whose baby was the prettier. A lover’s quarrel. All of it swirled through the net they wove, and with the skill of a master, Shananara refined it and filtered it until it was almost a concentrated essence of joy and happiness and pleasure.
But mixed in with the joy was more than just simple human pleasure. The Harshini were here and they willingly lent their essence to the emotions R’shiel and Shananara were distilling. Passion, pleasure and a hint of the wonder R’shiel had experienced in Sanctuary with Brak were added to the potent blend. The feel of it was enough to make R’shiel’s spine tingle, and she had to concentrate hard to avoid losing herself in the sheer ecstasy of it.
R’shiel had no concept of time, no idea if it was fully dawn yet, or if a whole day had passed. She opened her eyes, seeing nothing but the crystal that loomed in front of her, and placed her hands on the Seeing Stone.
Taking a deep breath, R’shiel hurled everything she had gathered at the Stone, not attempting subtlety or finesse. She had only her strength to rely on, and the knowledge that every Seeing Stone would respond to her sending. Every Seeing Stone and every part of one. Every staff that contained chips of the broken Stone absorbed the elixir of joy that she threw at it greedily. Every drop of pleasure that she could wring from the Citadel she hurled at them, then sent her mind out to follow.
She had unleashed chaos.
The Seeing Stone in Greenharbour pulsated with light, and she caught a glimpse of Kalan, standing before the Stone, her face alight with rapture as she tried to fathom its unaccountable behaviour. With a blurring, gut-wrenching twist, R’shiel found herself looking down over another Stone in a dank cave, surrounded by tonsured priests, who wailed with despair as the pleasure emanating from the Stone began to draw them from their god. In the back of her mind she felt the Stone in Sanctuary, hidden far out of time, trying to answer the call. She gathered her thoughts that were rapidly being torn apart by the maelstrom and threw her mind northward towards Karien.
She reached for any part of any Seeing Stone that she could touch, and the chips of crystal responded immediately. She saw a large temple with a ceiling covered in mother-of-pearl tiles, a priest in glorious robes gripping his staff with wide, terrified eyes as his congregation fell under the spell she was weaving. Another place, another temple. Another terrified priest. Another congregation caught in the thrall. An orgy of rapturous pleasure. Everywhere she cast her mind the response was the same. Her own savage joy suddenly swelled the li
nk and she turned from the Stone.
It didn’t matter now. The damage was done. The power flowed through the Seeing Stone like a dam that had broken under the weight of too much rain. All the pleasure, all the joy, all the sin denied to his believers hit the Overlord’s people like a wave of bliss that made them forget everything for a brief moment in time…including their god.
She felt a surge of power from the Citadel as it reached out to embrace her, to bolster her resistance—and not a moment too soon. She had barely taken her hand from the Stone when Xaphista appeared, striding through the other gods, his eyes burning with anger.
“Stop this abomination!”
Although she well knew the seductive touch of his spirit, R’shiel had never seen Xaphista in material form. She found the sight a little disappointing. He chose to appear as an old man, with long white hair that flowed around his broad shoulders, although the physique he affected belonged to a much younger man. His dark cassock rippled in the breeze of his passing and in his hand he carried a staff that almost brushed the ceiling, topped by a small sun that radiated beams of blinding light through the Temple.
“How dare you! These are my people!”
The ground trembled with his wrath.
“I’m just reminding them of what you’ve made them forget!”
Xaphista’s answer was to hurl a blast of rage at her that almost knocked her off her feet. But the Citadel surged to meet it, adding his implacable will to her own, so it merely buffeted her like a sudden gust of magical wind.
The Primal Gods did nothing. There was nothing they could do but grant her open access to their power. Xaphista was stronger than them combined. That was the danger of him. It was the reason they created the demon child, and the reason they could do little but rail helplessly against him. Individually, they didn’t have the strength to fight him, and their own, inviolable laws did not permit them to kill him. The demon child was their only hope.
“You defy me at your peril, demon child!”
“You threaten me at yours!”
And then, like a tap suddenly turned off, she felt Shananara let go of her power. R’shiel felt it go, and staggered under the weight of Xaphista’s wrath, but the Harshini queen could not hold her power against the might of the God’s anger. But as the torrent through the Seeing Stone dwindled to nothing, Xaphista let out a cry of unimaginable pain. Although she wasn’t certain, R’shiel guessed that across the length and breadth of Karien, the thrall was slowly being shaken by his followers. In the aftermath of R’shiel’s storm of pleasure and joy, one overriding, overwhelming feeling now consumed the hearts of his believers.
Doubt.
“It’s over, Xaphista. The Kariens have begun to doubt you. How long will they belong to you once Kalianah or Zegarnald walk among your followers? They are yours no longer!”
“You will never be strong enough to defeat me, demon child.”
“I’m not trying to defeat you, Xaphista. I just want your people to doubt you.”
The Overlord looked down on her with blazing eyes. “You cannot take my people from me!”
“You think not? You’ve spent centuries convincing them the others gods don’t exist. Every time a Karien turns round now, there will be a Primal God waiting for them. I’ll flood the world with miracles. I will have Jondalup turn every human who games into a winner. I will have Dacendaran turn every person into a thief. Cheltaran will heal every wound, every sick child, every dying old woman. I’ll make the Primal Gods answer every single prayer your people utter. You’ll be so deep in divine intervention that there won’t be a Karien left who can deny the presence of the Primal Gods within a month.”
“Such recklessness would destroy the natural balance of the universe.”
“I don’t care.”
She truly didn’t, and Xaphista knew she wasn’t lying. R’shiel had not been raised among the Harshini. Despite everything they had tried to teach her at Sanctuary, despite everything Brak had explained to her since, she still didn’t quite understand the place the gods held in the scheme of things. It was her ignorance that lent her threat its power. No full-blooded Harshini could have contemplated such a course of action. R’shiel did not appreciate the consequences of her behaviour. She was a child who had accidentally stumbled over a weapon of mass destruction and wanted to use it to get her own way, totally oblivious to the fact that it would destroy her along with her foes.
The Overlord glared at the other gods, who had remained silent for the entire exchange.
“You cannot hide behind this child. Each one of you will fade into nothing as I grow in strength.”
“You cannot destroy us, Xaphista,” Zegarnald boomed, unable to contain his anger. “Look at you! Already the doubt begins to take its toll.”
Zegarnald was right. In the short time Xaphista had been in the Hall, he had visibly diminished. R’shiel wasn’t sure how long she had before his priests restored order. Not sure how long the doubt and uncertainty of his believers would last, or how long the pleasure she had swamped them with would distract them from their god.
“We will have an accounting for this, demon child.” The statement was as close to an admission of defeat as Xaphista was likely to get. He wasn’t conceding victory and he wasn’t going to quit without a fight. He turned on the God of War savagely, even as he dwindled a little more. “I have no need to destroy you, Zegarnald. When the whole world lies prostrate at my feet there will be no wars and you will be obsolete…Each of you represents a vice that my believers eschew. You, Kalianah, and you, Dacendaran—when every human believes it is a sin to love or steal, there will be no need for you, no need for any of you…Enjoy your dying moments, Primal Gods. Before long you will be nothing more than sad, forgotten legends.”
Xaphista’s defiant words were at odds with his stature. He was no taller than Brak now, and he no longer had the power to assume the form he chose. A demon stood before them, larger than normal, but still raging defiantly. It was not a smooth transition. He surged up in size every now and then as pockets of his followers denied what they had seen and felt, but he was dwindling fast. But how much longer did they have before doubt gave way to habit? Before wonder gave way to fear? Before his people shrugged off what they felt, or worse, attributed it to the Overlord and their belief in him came surging back, like the backdraft after a savage explosion?
Not long, R’shiel knew. Not very long at all.
“Go!” she cried to the Primal Gods. “Go out among his people! Now! While you have the chance!”
Most of the gods vanished abruptly and R’shiel became aware of the noise. A wailing arose that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. She discovered she was rigid with tension. The Citadel and the plain surrounding it were filled with incredulous, panicked shouting.
She turned to Xaphista, looking down at him as he shrank back to a demon no larger than Dranymire.
And then she felt it.
On the very edge of her awareness.
The backlash.
“Brak!” There was more than a little panic in her voice as she cried out to him. She didn’t have the skill, or even the energy, to do what was needed now. Brak did, however. The crude iron cage built by the Defenders flew through the air, guided by Brak’s mind, rather than his hands. He could no more touch it than R’shiel could. It landed with a clatter over the cringing demon that had once been a god—and would be a god again, as soon as the racing wave of belief hit them. Xaphista howled his outrage and then his pain as he snatched at the bars of the cage. The three staff heads welded to the bars absorbed his power as easily as they had tortured the little demon caught by his priests when R’shiel had tried to fool the Quorum into believing that a demon meld was really the First Sister.
And then it hit her.
R’shiel fell hard, only vaguely aware of Brak calling out to her, only dimly seeing Shananara as she collapsed beside her. Xaphista leapt at the bars of his cage, but the force of the backlash hit her and she plu
nged into unconsciousness before she could discover if her trap was sufficient to contain him.
CHAPTER 60
When R’shiel finally awoke, it was to find Death standing over her.
The Hall was quiet; even the gods were gone. Daylight, splintered by the stained glass windows, striped the floor in coloured light. Her head was pounding, her body wrung out and weak. R’shiel felt like she had been hit by a falling building.
“Am I going to die now?”
Death looked down at her and shook his head. He was once again in the form of a Harshini, the same benign form he had assumed to escort Korandellan into the Underworld.
She pushed herself up painfully and looked around the temple. The gods were gone. The temple was just a huge, empty hall once more, devoid of life, devoid of power. On her left, Shananara lay at the base of the Seeing Stone, only the faint rise and fall of her chest indicating she was still alive. R’shiel turned her head, feeling every aching muscle complain in protest. Brak lay not far from her on the right, his skin pallid.
He was breathing.
“No…”
Pushing herself up painfully, R’shiel scrambled on her hands and knees to his side.
“No…” she whispered frantically. “No, Brak…gods no…not like this…please…”
She shook him by the shoulders, but he showed no sign of life. Urgently, she took his limp body in her arms and held him to her, hugging him tightly, as if her mere presence could draw him back.
“Please, Brak…don’t do this to me…not now…” she begged, ignoring the looming presence of Death a few feet away. “Don’t pay any attention to him…you never listened to a damned god your whole life…please, Brak, don’t start now…”
“There is no point to this,” Death pointed out a little impatiently, taking a step closer. “It is time he came with me.”
“You’ve taken him already!” she accused, tears spilling down her face.
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