Phoenix in Shadow

by Ryk E. Spoor

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “Godspower goes beyond all of these, yet is more constrained in a sense,” Wieran went on, and the cloud above contracted again. “It penetrates the others—the shield of metal, the enchantment of the wizard, the mind-shield of the rannon master—as though they were not there, at the will of the wielder. It can be used to perform nearly any feat, if enough of it is available . . . but only so long as the god itself remains powerful, remains an active and conscious force, which is—nearly always—dependent on their having some number of beings who believe in, worship, the deity. I could not shield myself from your attacks, Phoenix, or those of your newly-empowered friend Tobimar, had I not also gained some godspower of my own to work with. This power is rare—the second-generation children of Kerlamion, alas, have very little of it, and thus Kalshae made poor use of the power she had gained. Had she realized the full potential of what I had given her, you would never have left the Tower.

  “Yet what I have said is not absolute. There are at least two powers which may oppose even godspower and not be bypassed.”

  Poplock remembered his magical studies. “Spirit magic—that’s one.” And who was the most powerful spirit mage of all, according to rumor?

  “Exactly. And so is the chi, ki, spirit energy of certain physical disciplines, which powerful warriors and others have been known to wield.” Wieran’s lecture suddenly made sense. I was right! He’s been thinking about this stuff for years, but never had a chance to tell anyone. Now that he’s started, he can’t wait to show off. “Now, here, two more riddles: how is it possible that a sufficiently trained warrior—one without mystical training—can learn to withstand magic, break spells with a cut or a blow, parry power as though it were steel? And second, how is it that many mystical assaults can cause tremendous damage to their surroundings, yet trained Adventurers and others can survive, though battered, to retaliate?”

  Those . . . are good questions. The first was such a well-known fact that Poplock had never given it much thought; of course a trained warrior could do that, how else could he or she possibly survive in a battle against a wizard? And the second . . . he remembered Kalshae severing the Tower with a single blow. Yet Tobimar had blocked many of her attacks, survived others, all of which should have cut him in half like a reed struck with a sword.

  Which means . . . “Souls. Warriors gotta be focusing their will, their spiritual power, against their opposition. And destroying inanimate, unalive targets is easier than ones with spiritual power.” And that explains the power of the Spiritsmith’s weapons and armor, too. Not magic . . . yet magic.

  “Precisely! I had to lead you a bit, but you did make the connection. So I deduced that there was a connection between the soul, the spirit, and the power of the gods. They require worship—the devotion of a mind and spirit to their cause. They are constrained by worship—a deity who is worshipped as a fire god will never be seen creating palaces of ice. And they can be opposed by spirit, such as the enchantments of a spirit magician, or the simple will of a strong-souled being. Thus I needed spirits for testing, experimentation—sapient spirits, mind you—”

  “—and so you arranged a reason to bring them to you,” Tobimar breathed suddenly. “These people . . .”

  “By the Light,” Miri said suddenly. “So that was the point of all this mechanism and enchantment, your emphasis on efficiency. You used only a fraction of the spiritual power of the prisoners to run the Eternal Servants, maybe even the Unity Guard—”

  “Precisely, Ermirinovas. For the Eternal Servants I need scarce five percent of their available spiritual strength to keep them animate. For the Unity Guard, no more than thirty-five, save for the infrequent occasions they find themselves . . . pushed.” He glanced at the doors behind them. “Of course, in this case I have severely limited their ability to draw on that power. I shall require it.”

  “So you’ve figured out how to make yourself a god,” Kyri concluded with bitter certainty.

  Wieran looked offended. “What? Utter rot. What sort of ridiculous figure of children’s stories do you think I am?”

  That stopped Poplock cold; he thought he even saw Hiriista tilt his head, but didn’t dare even roll one eye in that direction. “Well . . . it did seem the logical conclusion.”

  “I am a researcher!” Wieran thundered. “A mere god? Why would I stop short of the ultimate goal? Think! What do all of these things share? What is the single ineffable quality that all of them have, from the basest matter to the greatest Power, and the single limitation they all must deal with?”

  Poplock thought furiously. What quality do they all have? That a spear or sword has in common with a spell of flame or a mind-reader’s power or a god’s rage or a spirit-mage’s enchantments? What limitation do they all share?

  After a few moments he gave a bounce-shrug. “I can’t figure it. Sorry, but I’m just a Toad.”

  “They exist!” Wieran snapped. “They are things which are. And they are limited in that they cannot create or do anything without taking something in exchange. A sword must be swung with enough power to strike, a god must draw upon its resources to act, a psionic master must withstand the cost of drawing upon their power. Even magic, which can seem to create things from nothing, requires a source of magical power with which to do it.

  “Yet once . . . in the Beginning . . . there was true Nothingness, and from Nothingness Something came.” He looked around them, and Poplock felt a creeping sensation going up his body. “There, behind the essence of them all, above them all, is the key to true power, the power to make things be or not be without the demand to have something else not be or otherwise give up its essence to perform your bidding, the power to transcend all barriers of possibility—the power of Creation itself!”

  Oh, drought. He felt Tobimar’s shoulder tighten in shock.

  Wieran gestured to the now rapidly diminishing cloud of shimmering power. “Undirected godspower—freed of its constraints, no longer directed by a mind! The power of alchemy and symbolism, arrays of gemcalling, summoning circles, patterns of mind and memory written in spirit power! The power and patterns of two demonlords, recorded and adjusted to my desires!” Poplock saw Miri’s fists clench. “The concentration of mental energy and the will and spirit of hundreds, all focused within this array, constraining and guiding even godspower—and the array, focused upon me! When the channeling is complete I will perceive the fabric of all realities, and finally be able to rend it asunder to see the ultimate, and I will become that Ultimate! I will know ALL because all things will be as I envision them!”

  Insane was the first thought that came to mind, but Poplock realized that it didn’t matter. Wieran might well be mad, but he might also be right—and even if not, the powers he described, all focused into him, would then simply make him a mad god with the delusion that all creation was his to behold . . . and change.

  And then Hiriista spoke.

  “Well, then, I think we had best prevent that, hadn’t we?”

  Even as Master Wieran whirled and a blaze of light started from the surrounding mechanism, Hiriista, Magewright of Kaizatenzei, unleashed a mighty torrent of power against the secondary array on the far wall. Bolts of lighting, incandescent blazes of fire, hammerblows of the earth itself, the swirling implacability of water, all detonated against the array, driven by the spirit of the greatest magewright of Kaizatenzei, and the wall and ground cracked, splitting the pattern.

  Instantly Poplock felt a terrifying weight of darkness surge outward, a feeling of triumph and dark rage and hatred. “Guys . . .”

  “You fool! Do you know what you have done?”

  “Unleashed something you bound here, something bound for ages,” Hiriista said equably.

  The ground shuddered, and Poplock remembered the prior earthquake.

  Wieran glanced upward, but already the array was flickering, destabilizing. His head whipped around. “You. You played me. Me!”

  “You made it easy,” Pop
lock said.

  Wieran’s eyes went cold and calculating again. “The entire experiment is ruined, ruined at the last possible moment. I have no time to complete it. I will have to start over.” The look he gave them all—and that lingered on Poplock—was of such icy fury and hatred that Poplock found himself seized with an impulse to hide; Tobimar actually stepped back. “I shall not forget this. You have deprived me—deprived the world—of the greatest discovery in all the histories that have ever been.” He bent over the control consoles once more. “I will remember you,” Wieran said, and those four words were distilled, corrosive venom.

  The pearlescent wall flickered and vanished. Instantly Tobimar and Kyri lunged down the stairway, but Wieran stepped backwards, entering a spherical capsule barely five feet in diameter. The capsule sealed up behind him.

  “Not that easy!” Kyri shouted, even as the room shuddered again. Tobimar ran to assist her; from his shoulder, Poplock could get a look through a small window set in the capsule—

  Mudbubbles. “Don’t bother, guys. He’s not in there anymore.”

  Hiriista gave a disgusted hiss. “Teleportation. Far-travel. He had even that contingency planned for as well.”

  “Worry about that later,” Tobimar said, a note of frustration and worry rising. “You said you unleashed something. Those earthquakes are it moving?”

  “I am afraid so. But it was the only thing I could do to interrupt Wieran; that secondary matrix was placed there long before the main Grand Array, obviously shortly after Wieran arrived, and its only function was to keep whatever-it-was caged up.”

  “No, no, you did the right thing,” Tobimar said. “But what—”

  Miri, who had been standing frozen ever since Hiriista’s action, finally spoke, in a voice so small and terrified it sounded utterly unlike her. “Sanamaveridion,” she whispered.

  “Sanama . . . who?”

  Kyri had gone pale. “Great Balance, no. It can’t be. But I know that language . . .”

  “Oh, yes, it can be,” Miri said, voice shaking. “Sanamaveridion, one of the greatest of the Elderwyrm, the Dark Dragons, the Shadows of the Sixteen.”

  CHAPTER 50

  Kyri felt as though the floor was not merely shaking, but had fallen away into an abyss of horror. “Elderwyrm? No, Miri, that can’t be, they’re legends, stories people tell to scare each other at night, they—”

  “I was THERE!” Miri snapped, tears starting from her eyes. “I saw him—Light forgive me, I guided him in the destruction of the Lords of the Sky!”

  That brought Kyri up short, and she looked at Miri, really looked at her, with the sight granted by Myrionar, and now that Miri was no longer hiding her nature could see the truth, the whirling confused mass of light and dark within the human shell. It sank in, really sank in, that Miri, the dynamic, diminutive, beautiful Light of Kaizatenzei, was something ancient beyond easy understanding, something that had once been a Demon of the highest ranks.

  “We have no time for this!” Tobimar shouted, grabbing both their arms and pulling, dragging them with him. “If such a monster is rising, what do you think it will do to Valatar—to all of Kaizatenzei—if someone isn’t there to stop it?”

  She tore herself free. “Wait, Tobimar! We can’t! The people—”

  The Skysand Prince cast a tortured glance around the ranks and ranks of tubes, within which were sealed so many.

  “Leave them,” Hiriista snapped, heading for the doors. “They are preserved and maintained for the moment. If we cannot stop this new horror, all will die. We have neither time nor knowledge to release hundreds safely, nor do we know if they will be ready and able to flee even were we to succeed.”

  “Worry more about whether we’ll be running straight into the Guards,” Poplock said. “They were just on the other side of that door, you know.”

  Myrionar help these people, she prayed. They have been imprisoned for so long, do not let them be entombed. Then she nodded. “Ready.”

  “No,” Miri said, a hollow, tragic note in her voice. “No, you are not.”

  Then she set her jaw, and her armor glowed with blue power. “But we shall have to be. Kaizatenzei will not fall.”

  Hiriista pulled the bar from the door and cast it aside. Nothing immediately thrust the door open, so he and Tobimar pulled the portals wide, Kyri and Miri standing ready.

  Not entirely to Kyri’s surprise, there was no one there; a faint glow of light receding away showed that the Unity Guard were retreating, unwilling to risk the collapse of the underground. They’ll probably set up an ambush at the exit above ground, perhaps outside the Tower, or what’s left of it.

  “How long do we have?” Poplock asked. “Feels like the shocks are increasing.”

  “Minutes,” Miri said grimly. “With the seal weakened, the Dragon is throwing all his power against the remainder. This will weaken him, of course, in turn, but that will not matter much if he breaks free . . . and without Kalshae and the old Towers as resonance points I cannot reconstruct the trap I caught him in the first time.”

  “Ohhh,” Poplock said, looking impressed. “So you two got him to do some of the big dirty work, take down the major resistance of the Lords and wreck their cities, then used the Seven and One themselves as a trap against him. I’ll bet even Terian didn’t expect that.”

  They were sprinting up the stairs now, halfway up and rising. Miri gave a wry smile. “Oh, I’m sure he didn’t. If he had, it would not have been possible. But they had already placed the Towers in the pattern of his power, so when Sanamaveridion approached the Tower of the Sun, we were able to trigger Terian’s own strength in his own pattern to seal the Elderwyrm long enough for us to get our own bindings on him.”

  Another shock, this one strong enough to make them stagger, and cracks spiderwebbed the walls. “Balance, I don’t know if we’re going to make it.”

  “We have to. If a Dragon assaults the city without someone to stop it—”

  “The Unity Guard—”

  “Have not a chance in all the Hells of my Father,” Miri said bleakly. “They are strong, yes . . . but not as strong as Kalshae or I, nor as strong as either of you.” She glanced at Poplock, and for the first time since they entered Wieran’s laboratory, gave a genuine smile. “Perhaps as strong as you, Poplock. Or perhaps not.”

  “Fear me,” the little Toad said with an answering smile.

  “No sign of them yet,” Tobimar said as they reached the top of the stairs and headed for the next flight, the one leading to the throne room. “Where will they be?”

  “Outside the Tower,” Miri said decisively. “Without Kalshae or Wieran driving them, they’ll be more themselves, and won’t want to stay inside a collapsing building. Now that I think of it, they may even accept me again as commander; I don’t believe they will remember the sequence in which they were controlled.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Kyri said, letting a bit of hope rise.

  Now through the Valatar Throneroom, and another quake that shattered decorative crystal; Kyri went down, rolled back to her feet, reinforcing the power she had already called up. Myrionar, Justice will not be served at all if we fail to protect the innocent here!

  As they emerged from the Tower, they saw the Unity Guard—nearly all of them—gathered outside, staring at the fallen Tower and the surging, tumultuous lake whose waters were swirling and boiling like a pot about to boil over.

  “Light Miri!” The cry was filled with relief. Light Tanvol caught her up in a great bear-hug, then set her down as though afraid he had committed an impropriety. “What has happened?” he demanded, and the others Unity Guards crowded around. “We came to ourselves before a set of locked doors in the depths of the Tower, and the ground began shaking! Then we come out and see the Tower is fallen! What is happening? What are we to do?”

  Kyri saw Miri hesitating, and realized that the once-Demon didn’t know what to tell her allies.

  “We have been betrayed completely by Master Wieran,”
Hiriista said, and the look of pure gratitude that Miri bestowed on the mazakh magewright could have lit the world. “Lady Shae fell in her attempt to stop him from stealing the power of the Great Light, and he had found ways of using even the Unity Guard to his ends. But now the dark monster he had imprisoned and used for his plans is about to emerge.”

  Brilliant. It fits everything they would know, what the townspeople will have seen, and leaves Miri trusted and loved.

  The ground heaved, and the lake bulged up, sending a wall of water twenty feet high thundering towards Sha Kaizatenzei Valatar.

  But the Unity Guard were gathered and had purpose once more; together eighty and more strong, they called on the powers given them and built a mystic wall, a shield that shuddered but held long enough, weakened the surge, so only a thin sheet of water rose to run swiftly through the streets of Valatar.

  “Go,” Miri said, her voice back in its accustomed confident tone. “We will face this threat. You must stand by to save the people, protect the city—for this will be a hard-fought battle indeed, and we will not be able to watch for all the consequences of our actions or those of our enemy.”

  The Guard began to disperse, but Tanvol and one of the other Lights hesitated. “But surely we could—”

  “Go! Surely you have suspected the Lady had given me my special place for a reason. This is a battle you cannot win—a battle you cannot even survive.”

  As Tanvol looked at her uncertainly, the earth reared up like a steed preparing to bolt. Screams and curses and the sounds of shattering stone and glass filled the air, even as the great lake beyond rose up in a mountainous moving mass of water that dwarfed the prior surge to insignificance.

  But it continued to rise, something within forcing the water upward on a scale so titanic that Kyri froze, momentarily unable to even comprehend what she was looking at. The far end of the peninsula split down the center, a yawning chasm into which water poured. The rising power split the mass of water with a roar that struck with a physical force, nearly felled her again, sending waves hundreds of feet high to left and right. Balance, the destruction that will cause around the Lake! How far will those monster waves go?