“What’s happening?” she cried. “Where am I?”
She recalled the eyes of Lord Sixx, the eyes she had seen in a nightmare. Suddenly she understood. He had used those eyes to transport her to another place, a land of the mind. None of this was real.
But how could that be? she wondered. It felt real. It tasted real. The sounds were very real. Music slowly drifted in her direction. Bellophat? No, that was impossible. He had been destroyed, his music stopped forever. She recognized the lullaby, played on a lute, one of her father’s compositions.
“Help me,” a distraught voice called from behind her. She turned, fairly certain that what she would see would be a horror that would inflame her nightmares for years, should she survive this encounter and escape this place.
Her father was there. His body had been pulled apart, stretched to impossible elasticity as it had been in her dream. But this time his face and chest were still intact, while the rest of his body had been ripped to steaming bands of muscle, bone, and bleeding tissue.
“I went there because you were hungry,” he sobbed. “I didn’t want to die. I wouldn’t have if not for you.”
She was not moving. Her legs were not in motion, but she was getting closer to the web. In a sudden, instinctive burst of understanding, she knew that this gibbering creature before her was not her father. It was nothing more than a nightmare Sixx had dredged up from her past. This isn’t real, she thought. Sixx is trying to get at me though my weaknesses, my fears. But I’m tired of being afraid. I’m sick of feeling guilty.
Sixx could shape this place to suit his needs. She understood that if he broke her will here, he would control her forever. And if he murdered her in this place, she would die in the real world. A smile came to her face, because she knew that it also worked both ways.
“I’ve had enough,” she said, pressing her hands together as if she were clutching a sword. Suddenly a long, burning silver shaft sliced itself from the darkness and she felt the weight of her phoenix armor.
I want to make the monsters go away, a voice from her locked up memories called. Myrmeen identified the voice and realized that what she had told Krystin was wrong; her father had not spoken those words, even though he had loved her very much and would have echoed the sentiment, given the chance. It had been her second husband, the man she had loved until the day he died, though she had not realized that until this very moment. He had been the one to forge this armor. He had given her the strength to wall herself up emotionally until she was ready to deal with the horrors of her past, ready to face her private pain.
Staring at the bastardized image of her father, she knew she had faced it already. She had dredged up all the terrors she had been hiding from, confronted them, and survived. What was before her now was nothing but a lie, an illusion of the mind and the heart.
She had been a victim. All of her life she had blamed herself for tragedies that were beyond her ability to control. She had not sent her father off to be murdered. She had not asked to have her daughter stolen from her.
Myrmeen raised her sword and cleared her mind. She no longer heard either her father’s music or his pitiful wails. The man he had been would never have cried in this way. He would have met his end with dignity. Staring into his eyes, she planted her legs firmly, held the sword parallel to the unseen floor beneath her, and held out her left hand, assuming the first position of defense that the man who had given her the name Lhal had taught her.
The screaming monstrosity racing toward her no longer resembled her father. It had dark hair, a widow’s peak, and eyes covering its entire body. The creature was not a mere construct that Sixx had created to fool her, it was Sixx himself in disguise, terror painted upon his face. He had exerted too much power and could not arrest his flight as he raced toward Myrmeen. As Sixx thundered close, Myrmeen shifted her weight and thrust the sword forward, impaling the screaming figure.
An explosion of blood engulfed her senses, and she suddenly found herself back on the docks, moving in midstride, Lord Sixx’s scream echoing in her ears. The dark man was before her, his many eyes glazing over in shock. Myrmeen stood as if she still held the sword, and Sixx’s chest had been mangled, blood streaming from a terrible wound that had been opened on the psychic landscape. She had no idea if such an injury would have harmed him in this reality—he might have laughed at being impaled—but this wound was different. This one he had suffered within his mind, and even he could not argue with its results. Each of the man’s eyes turned blank as he fell and struck the ground.
Lord Sixx was dead.
“You’re too late!” the first acolyte howled as she held up the apparatus. “You’re—”
She stopped, a stream of blood spewing from her mouth as a sword sliced her heart in two from behind. A gloved hand reached forward and snatched the apparatus from the woman as she sank to her knees, the remaining acolytes mimicking her motions. Myrmeen stumbled forward another step as she saw the laughing, burned face of Reisz Roudabush, his blood-drenched sword in one hand, the apparatus in the other.
A sigh that reminded Myrmeen of the gentle call of a hawk came from the acolytes as each of the children was gently laid on the marble slab. The acolytes then folded themselves into black shapes that shrank to the size of a fist and winked out of existence.
“I took a gamble,” Reisz explained. “These forces didn’t hurt us when we touched Shandower’s gauntlet, so I thought they might be harmless to us now.”
From the charred flesh, the burned clothing that hung on him, and the halting manner in which he moved, Myrmeen knew that the energies gathering behind them were far from harmless to any human. Myrmeen’s attention suddenly was drawn to the sphere gathering in power and intensity behind them, a rolling fireball of arcane energies. The smaller, equally volatile ball of magic that lay within the cage of the apparatus was growing larger in Reisz’s hand.
The old woman had said they were too late. The sacred words had already been spoken. The energies would be released, but without the steady stream of spells the old woman and Lord Sixx were supplying, they would have no focus. Their purpose would be only to consume, or so Myrmeen was willing to wager.
“It never occurred to me that some of these damned things could fly. One of them swooped in and knocked me off the roof after I fired my first arrow,” Reisz said nervously, cutting glances at the shimmering object he held. Desperation tinged his next words. “I never would have abandoned you, Myrmeen.”
“I know that,” she said, certain that the energies from the apparatus in this undistilled form would prove to be poisonous even to humans. Reisz was dead. The last of the Harpers was about to fall.
Suddenly a battle cry came from the crowd of monstrosities that had been forced to wait before the palace of lightning. They were being engaged by human guardsmen. A handsome, dark-haired man appeared before Myrmeen, and she recognized him instantly: Vizier Punjor Djenispool.
She gathered that he had slipped his bonds and run to get help. Hundreds of humans had responded to his plea. His small army fought the creatures of darkness, keeping them well away from the infants near the apparatus.
“We have to take this thing out to sea,” Reisz said. “It’s going to explode—I can feel it—and when it does—”
He decided not to finish. Reisz had no idea what actually would happen if the fireball escaped its cage and sent its energies throughout Calimport. Perhaps a purge would commence, the energies destroying all the creatures of the Night Parade that infested the city. There was an equally reasonable chance that all the humans caught in its wake would perish or be transformed. If the latter occurred, two million new members of the Night Parade would look out to the coming dawn, after the storm had passed.
“It’s not going to be far enough,” Krystin said, holding the voiceless child to her breast. “There isn’t time, can’t you sense it?”
Vibrations rose from the dock. Unchecked, the dark magic of the apparatus was reaching a critical stage. The e
nergies were boiling over, burning away the rain engulfing the city, charging everything within their reach with heat.
Myrmeen glanced at the crying children lying in a circle and felt the greatest sadness for them. Her life had been full, if tortuous at times, and she had made peace with her past. The children would not be given that luxury. A single gallows laugh escaped Myrmeen.
“What’s wrong?” Reisz asked. “What is it?”
“A strange thought,” Myrmeen replied. “I’ve always prided myself on paying all my debts. I swore I would go to my end without owing anyone, but it seems I still owe Pieraccinni a small fortune.”
Reisz’s stricken expression vanished, replaced with an odd glimmer of excitement. Without explanation, he suddenly ran from the marble slab and raced past a collection of monstrosities that darted out of his way, the glowing energies of the apparatus causing them to recoil in fear.
“Reisz, where are you going?” Myrmeen called.
Instants before he vanished down a narrow side street, Myrmeen turned to Krystin and said, “I don’t know what might happen. Protect the children.”
“I will,” Krystin said. Myrmeen turned and only barely heard Krystin’s next words: “I will, Mother.”
The storm engulfed Myrmeen’s senses, and she forced herself on, through the rain, ignoring the lancing pain that came to her with every movement. After several minutes had passed without any sight of Reisz, Myrmeen feared she had lost him. She ambled forward, Lord Sixx’s blade still trapped in her shoulder. Blood leaked down her back, the sting of rain in her wound causing a throbbing to begin in her head. Myrmeen recognized the area into which she was running, amazed that she had found the strength to move so quickly despite her injury. She wondered if her sister’s blood coursing through her veins was responsible for her sudden strength and dismissed the thought. She knew her true motivation was her resolve to pay Reisz back for the kindness, love, and devotion he had given her so many years earlier. She only wished there was something more she could do for him above being at his side when he passed on.
A flood of creatures emptied into the street before her. They raced past Myrmeen without giving her any notice. She pushed herself to move beyond them and venture into the building that had spewed them into the night: the Gentleman’s Hall. Dragging herself through the main chambers of the establishment, Myrmeen found the door to Pieraccinni’s lair thrown open, the merchant on his knees before Reisz. Pieraccinni was no longer human. He was as Alden had described him: His skin was dark blue, like that of a shark, the smoothness interrupted by bulging red and green veins. He had an oblong head, hooded eyes, and flaps at either side of his neck for air. His body shook as if he had palsy, and she recalled the phrase Alden had used, comparing him to a sea creature under unremitting pressure.
Myrmeen’s offhand comment about Pieraccinni apparently had caused Reisz to think of the night Alden had joined their war. The boy had described the disturbing sight of his employer, Pieraccinni, transforming into a monster. Lucius had suggested that Pieraccinni was a living siphon of magical energy with immense power. Power enough, Reisz obviously had gathered, to absord the destructive forces emanating from the apparatus.
“Myrmeen, get out of here!” Reisz barked.
“Leave the apparatus and join me,” Myrmeen said. “He can’t get out of this room.”
“I don’t want to take that risk,” Reisz said. “Reisz,” she pleaded, her voice cracking, “please! Don’t leave me.”
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and bit his lower lip until it bled. Then he turned back to her and said, “Myrmeen, get out before it’s too late.”
At his feet, Pieraccinni babbled incoherently. Myrmeen recalled Alden’s description of what he had seen, and she suddenly understood Reisz’s plan. Pieraccinni’s curse was that he drew magical energy into himself. Lord Sixx had created this room to dampen any arcane power. With those wards removed, magic would come flooding in, overwhelming the man. Reisz hoped that Pieraccinni could take inside himself the apparatus’s magic and spare the city its imminent destruction.
“Reisz, I—”
She stopped. I love you, she wanted to say. She finally wanted to give him the words he had needed to hear, the words he deserved to hear, especially now.
“Don’t lie to me,” he said.
“It’s not a lie.”
He nodded. “And you.”
Suddenly the walls buckled and a long fissure snaked across the roof. Through the crack that had been created Myrmeen saw the rolling fireball that had been contained within the three-story-high cage at the waterfront. It had broken free of its cage and followed the apparatus.
“Myrmeen, run!” Reisz hollered.
She scrambled from the room. Passing through the doorway, Myrmeen hesitated and looked back to see the bloated, quivering body of the arms merchant ripple and become insubstantial. The creature wailed in unimaginable agony as a hole appeared in its chest and grew larger. The gap was filled by a vortex of rapidly changing images: a lake of fire; a dominion of jagged, roughly hewn clouds; a city built entirely on the remains of its dead, bones for supports, skin for covering; and a long desert trail being crossed by hooded creatures taxied in chariots that were alive and screaming under an aqua sky. The abominations were no more repugnant than the ones the Harpers had encountered in Calimport, but they existed in such numbers that as Myrmeen anchored herself in the doorway and stared at the dying creature’s lair, she felt she might be sick with fear.
All paths lead here, a voice called. I am the doorway.
Pieraccinni was not a man—he was not even alive by her standards; he was one of the portals that the Night Parade had used to make the journey to the Realms. To disguise the portal, he had been cloaked in flesh, given a personality and memories, but they were nothing but lies.
Within the portal lay a swirling, chaotic mass of hellish images. Myrmeen saw demons yanking their eyes from their heads and consuming them, colonies of monstrosities waging war against one another, and landscapes where a human being would have burned the moment he touched the ground. Near each of the shifting images were creatures staring at the portal in fascination. Myrmeen wondered how long it would be before one of them decided to reach through the doorway and enter the small room.
Through the fissure in the roof Pieraccinni was able to leech the magic of her world to feed the rift, giving it strength to grow wider. She realized that without Lord Sixx’s dampers in place, the portal would continue to expand until all the magic in the world had been depleted. That meant it could grow large enough to engulf continents, perhaps even the world itself.
“Reisz, we have to close the gateway!” Myrmeen shouted.
The Harper nodded, steeling himself as he hurled the apparatus into the yawning pit before him. Suddenly the lightning cage dissolved, releasing the ball of energy as it shot forward, bursting into one of the shifting tableaus. The portal was engulfed in blinding blue-white energies.
Reisz turned to run from the room when Pieraccinni’s arm shot out, the force of the creature’s will making it corporeal. He grabbed the Harper by the heavy belt at Reisz’s waist and dragged him toward the swelling portal with inhuman force. Before Myrmeen could race to his side, the roof was torn from over their heads as the three-story-high counterpart of the sphere of entropy lowered itself into the room. The fiery, over-sized eye was no more than a dozen feet above their heads and closing. Myrmeen watched in horror as Reisz was yanked toward Pieraccinni.
“Give up the quest, Myrmeen,” he called to her. “You’re not going to find what you’re looking for until you do!”
Before she could take a step in his direction, Myrmeen saw Reisz throw his head back and stifle a scream as he was consumed by the portal that had been Pieraccinni. The arcane energies snapped his body apart and ate him alive. All traces of the merchant’s humanity vanished, leaving only the portal and the massive sphere of light that continued to descend, trying to follow its smaller counterpart. Whatever i
t touched disintegrated instantly.
Tears streaming down her face, Myrmeen pulled herself away and raced from Pieraccinni’s lair. An implosion of sound and light knocked her from her feet and sent her body rocketing across the dining hall. Turning, she picked herself up and saw that the portal and the sphere had connected. The vortex seemed to be consuming the ball of energy, the fiery, magical lace that made up its outer edges straining to weave itself around the sphere.
This was no time for gawking, she reminded herself. Heavy gusts of supernatural winds racked what was left of the Gentleman’s Hall. She ran for the door and in moments she was on the street, stumbling to the ground half a block away. She chanced a look back at the Gentleman’s Hall and saw that the establishment no longer existed. The vortex had grown to encompass the entire building, and the blue-white sphere was now half swallowed up, its lower part emerging in some other world, some nightmare dimension safely away from her own.
The gigantic eye then began to shudder and lose its form. The pressures being exerted by the portal were too much for the sphere. Its pupil spun wildly as if it were searching for a glimpse of the being that had been its undoing. The dark iris stopped for a moment as it fixed its gaze on Myrmeen.
Fear gripped her. She wondered if the sphere really was the eye of the night creatures’ god, as she had imagined earlier. If so, had it seen her? Had it sent an image of her face to its own counterpart in a dimension of undreamt of horror? Would it remember her and seek vengeance?
The street began to shudder, and she scrambled to her feet, prepared to run, but there was no time and nowhere for her to go. The vengeance of the dark god was at hand, it seemed. Suddenly the sphere exploded, spreading a cloud of blue-white energy that resembled shimmering sand released from a shattered hourglass. The energies licked at the sky above Calimport, tinging the heavy rains. Before the unnatural rains could fall, the vortex spread even wider, cutting across an area two blocks in diameter. Buildings were cut in half, their upper portions disintegrating.
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