Yet his sense of foreboding only deepened as he searched for and failed to find a particular visage among the fray. “Where’s the A’dal?” he turned swiftly to Gideon. “Where’s Trell?”
Seventy-three
“The First Law of Patterning is also the first law of the game. You can’t just say the effect you want to create is to ‘win the game.’ This isn’t an effect, it’s a state of being.”
–The Agasi wielder Markal Morrelaine, to Cristien Tagliaferro
Ean had lost count of the hours he and Darshan had been battling the revenants, only noting that the sun had passed its zenith and that they’d slowly been working their way back towards the maze. Darshan drew fuel from Shadow and Ean from him.
His lungs burned and his arms ached, yet strength never left them. A cold energy was funneling through his form; insubstantial, but it kept him strong. Like a river, however, the channels along which it flowed were growing ever wider, ever deeper, such that Ean had begun to feel hollow and oddly…corrugated; honeycombed, like the things dying all around him.
Indeed, the revenants were as fibrous shells, their insides webbed like some sort of noxious weed. While still animated, they crawled over one another to get at Ean, hungry to feed on him, and they needed but a hand or mouth—a fraction of skin-to-skin contact—to do so. Every time he touched one, it became an instant race to slay the thing before it drank of his lifeforce. But once he’d cut them down, they crumbled like brittle black chalk.
Darshan seemed to view their endeavor as a battle of attrition—himself the Great Immortal against the hundreds of thousands that comprised the revenant horde. Ean could see them through Darshan’s bird’s-eye view. In all the time they’d been battling, they’d hardly carved through a fraction of the ranks that waited to get at them. The prince was starting to feel as though he would be battling out his eternity right there, just trying to keep the bloody things off of him.
Darshan’s staff came whirling past Ean’s head. He ducked in time to see a creature that had launched itself towards him meet with the flying end of the weapon. The revenant wind-milled back into the crowd, felling dozens in its passing. Ean resumed his own battling; he stabbed and slashed with his blade, spun and chopped and batted; he crushed faces with his elbows and throats with one deyjiin-fuelled hand.
Behind them, the city gleamed bronze in the sere sunlight.
How long-lived were the days in this alien realm? How many hours had they spent slaying and slashing, as farm workers threshing the wheat?
Ean tried to take Darshan’s perspective on their battle. If he spent a year or a hundred fighting off these things, it would consume but an eye-blink in the endless span of his immortality. But the prince had begun to feel a sort of gnawing urgency to finish this and move on—he felt the game calling him, a cosmic coach shouting to him to resume his place on the field, and beneath this, a growing vehemence towards all things Shail.
At its highest tide, determination fueled Ean through the grueling hours. But when determination ebbed low, he thought of the years he’d wasted, the times he’d sacrificed himself on the altar of reckless stupidity, only to bring himself to this point, where he was endangering everything yet again.
But these thoughts came as shadows, as thoughts will when body and mind are married with action and intent, or when activity becomes repetitive to the point of exhaustion, when labor no longer needs thought to drive it and the mind becomes freed of mechanical restrictions to fear for future and dither over hope; when shields of conviction become enervated, allowing through—if not the bloody strikes of swords, then at least the more permeable lashings of regret.
Throughout, Darshan fought with cold dispassion, making his every action count. He used the fallen as weapons, propelling individuals into the crowd with his staff, or scattering piles of them with deyjiin to fell even more; and his mind, looped with Ean’s, remained focused, determined, undivided of intent.
But every once in a while, Ean perceived a grittiness there, as a gristle beginning to form on the burning edges of his patience. Perhaps he could sustain revenants in feeding for millennia, but could he fight them for that long?
And why had he built the damned maze if he never intended to use it?
Darshan gave a mental grunt and said across their binding, For a man whose life I have twice saved now, you exhibit an astonishing lack of faith.
Ean slashed a revenant in twain and shot a razor grin over his shoulder. So you do have a plan? He batted another creature away with the flat of his blade.
The Malorin’athgul twirled his staff and sent five revenants catapulting into the crowd. He cast an arch look at Ean. You will see its beginnings…now.
He slammed the end of his staff into the earth.
A violent wave of power sheared the sand of revenants for a hundred paces in every direction. United of mind, Ean and Darshan ran together into the maze, the hares luring the hounds. Whereupon Ean learned that revenant hounds could run inhumanly fast.
Darshan led the chase through the rubble walls, which towered four or more stories above them. Due to the low angle of the sun, they ran in shadows, while a hungering mass of cadaverous forms pursued them; the revenants tumbled and frothed and clambered over each other after the beacon light of Darshan’s lifeforce.
Twice the creatures nearly overtook them. Twice Darshan had to blast them back. Each time thereafter the revenants ran faster.
The maze ended in a wide plaza enclosed by high rubble walls and surrounded by standing towers many times as tall. Darshan took a running leap and launched himself to the top of a nearby tower. Ean threw deyjiin beneath his steps and followed.
The Malorin’athgul grabbed Ean’s arm as he landed and braced him until he found his footing on the tower’s steep side. Far below, revenants were oozing into the plaza, their pace slowing as the channel filled. They amassed against the rubble walls and clung there like pitch. Soon they would push each other upwards, as water filling a bowl. The desert beyond the maze wore a carpet of black.
Ready, Ean?
Darshan pointed his staff at the mouth of the maze. Ean felt his intent an instant before deyjiin lanced out towards the maze’s opening. The prince shielded his eyes from the beam and listened to the roar of walls collapsing. The thunder of destruction grew closer, louder, as Darshan raked his lightning power all across the maze, until the tidal wave of toppling walls at last reached the plaza. The revenants became frantic then—but horribly, Ean perceived that their frenzy stemmed from hunger for that energy which was even then sealing their demise.
Darshan changed the intent of his working and erased the foundations of the four buildings surrounding the square. The towers toppled. Glass and metallic-tiled domes collided in ear-shattering crashes. Choking dust inundated the sky.
Ean watched Darshan wreaking this potent destruction, and though the Malorin’athgul’s gaze revealed only concentration, yet the prince perceived through their bond a reflection of his emotion in that moment:
Joy. This undertaking brought him joy.
That’s when Ean understood a terrible truth about the immortal he was now bound to: destruction was the duty the Maker had birthed Darshan from the aether of Chaos to perform, the act in which he felt the most aligned with his purpose. Ean might’ve known such a powerful sense of self in overcoming some extreme challenge of battle or wielder’s skill; but he saw in Darshan’s resonating—if coldly dispassionate—vitality the incontrovertible truth that these beings had not been engendered to carry out any act of creation.
What strength of will must it have required then to even conceive of an action other than destruction? Theirs was not the simple choice a mortal made between right or wrong. For a Malorin’athgul, to participate in a creative endeavor would have to be a conscious and consistent defiance of his most essential nature.
A furnace wind finally cleared the dust of destruction away. Where had been towers remained mountains of crushed stone, with thousands of revenants bu
ried beneath them. Ean shaded his eyes with one hand and surveyed the carnage of the alien city. “Well…what now?”
Darshan planted his staff before him. “We wait for the next wave.”
“Outstanding.” Ean sat down in the shade of a spire. Was he really going to be trapped there until they killed every one of those damnable creatures? “What about the starpoints?” He leaned his head back against the copper tiles and tried to drag his yipping frustration to heel. “I thought you were getting us out of here eventually.”
“Eventually has many interpretations.” Darshan cast him a trenchant look. “Eventually all of the revenants filling these worlds will be destroyed.”
“Right, I get it.”
“I cannot coincide the exterior starpoints of these worlds.” Darshan lifted his gaze to the sky and his brow narrowed slightly, as with contemplation. “I don’t know precisely why.”
Ean pressed palms to his eyes and tried to envision some other solution than escape. He knew so little of the workings of Shadow…
A wielder is limited by what he can envision. The Fifth Law all but sneered at him.
“There is a chance I could escape this realm if I abandon this shell.”
Ean dropped his hands to look at Darshan. “Wouldn’t you still be restricted by the Warlock’s starpoints?”
“There is a chance I could unwork them. We are more powerful in our native form.” Darshan twirled his Merdanti staff in one hand, looking thoughtful, contemplative…and really damned impressive.
“But you don’t want to do that.”
Darshan’s eyes tightened. “This is likely what my brother is hoping I will do—which is exactly why I mustn’t.” He began pacing the outer edge of the tower while spinning his staff. “Since our original path into your realm is blocked by way of your Björn van Gelderan’s ingenuity, my only means of re-entering Alorin is via Shadow—but without a shell, this becomes problematic.”
“Can’t you make another shell?”
“Assuming I can escape these Shadow worlds and return to Alorin at all? Yes…but not quickly.” He tossed his spinning staff into his other hand without disrupting its circle or the thoughtful meter of his steps. “Whether I’m trapped in Shadow or removed to Chaos, my brother’s aims are equally served.”
“Well, we can’t have that.”
Darshan tilted his head slightly. “What is this new thought you’re hiding from me?”
Ean scrubbed at his growth of beard. “I was just wondering…what if I could unwork them?”
“The starpoints?”
“The revenants.”
Darshan arched brows. “As you’ve unworked my eidola.”
“Something like that.”
The Malorin’athgul shook his head. “It cannot be done while we’re subject to the starpoints of this realm.” Abruptly he spun to face the city’s edge. His spinning staff slammed home in his palm, sounding a distant clap of thunder. “They’re coming.” He turned Ean a look. “Get ready.”
When the next wave of revenants reached the maze, Darshan and Ean went down to meet them. There was no other path, save to keep fighting, and as Darshan had said, eventually they would destroy all of the creatures.
Ean was really starting to mislike that word, eventually.
They fought atop a mountain of rubble with the revenants crawling up the hillside like ants. Ean bashed and slashed with a sword fuelled by deyjiin, but there was no end to their numbers, and only so much light in the day…only so much fortitude in his soul.
This from the man who claims to have died three times for the same cause? Darshan had his back to Ean as they fought, but his tone came through loud and clear.
Ean kicked a revenant in the face and slashed another into pieces. Glibly spoken by the immortal who has never tasted death and never will.
I have tasted death, Prince of Dannym. Darshan sent several revenants flying with a swing of his staff and glanced to Ean. I have known it far longer and more intimately than you could ever imagine.
Really? Ean shot him a sharp and challenging smile in return, because I can imagine a lot.
Darshan swept his staff low and upended half a dozen revenants. They tumbled down the incline, taking three times as many others with them. His smile, cast over the top of his whirling staff, became equally pointed. I imagine you do have a certain context of experience that many mortals are lacking.
Ean knocked a revenant flying and speared a sooty look in his general direction. Ha, very ha.
It was then that he heard a low rumble. The rubble shifted beneath his feet—and revenants erupted out from beneath them in a clambering geyser. Within seconds, a veritable tower of the creatures fell upon Darshan.
The resulting avalanche flung Ean off his feet. He landed on the side of the mound and tumbled down the incline into the dark pool that was the revenant horde. His head slammed against something hard, and before he could rouse from the starry spots blinding his vision, a score of the horrid things had descended on him. They dragged him deeper into the pool of their brethren, down into darkness.
In seconds, mouths, elbows, hands—any bit of themselves they could press against him, they had. The prince felt each revenant’s touch as an icy sting that only became more intense as more of them found purchase. His body grew cold, pinned beneath their accumulating forms; his skin instantly rose in welts beneath their probing touch. Different mouths found his fingers; many more his face and throat. Numbness pulsed a pale cadence in concert with a drumming staccato of pain.
Ean!
Ean wanted to answer Darshan’s mental call, but his own thoughts already felt too distant. He suspected such would only worsen as the revenants fed off his energy. How soon before he lost the ability to focus on anything beyond pain and despair? And by Cephrael’s Great Book—how had Pelas managed to escape these things?
…what applies to one applies to all…
Had Darshan gotten the thought across to him, or did the reminder find its own way to the forefront of his muddled thoughts? In any case, Ean heard the words in a repetitive chant.
…what applies to one applies to all…
Recalling him to lucidity.
…what applies to one applies to all…
Suddenly realizing how the Law might apply in the context of Shadow, Ean tried using deyjiin to compartment his thoughts. His binding with Darshan gave him access to the power, but his native instincts as a fifth-strand Adept guided him in working it. Not understanding why it was possible but relieved at finding that it was, the prince portioned off the pain, lassitude and disorientation resulting from the revenants’ feeding into a separate section of his mind.
With those distractions thus compartmented, analytical thought returned to him. So also came the very real fear of remaining trapped beneath these things for all eternity. Darshan had said it wasn’t possible to unwork the revenants, but the Malorin’athgul didn’t understand everything that Ean could do.
Suspended upside-down, as immobile as a bulb buried in the dirt, Ean managed to drag his fingers free of clinging mouths and closed his hand around a revenant wrist. Using this contact, he cast the free part of his mind in search of the pattern that bound the revenant to existence.
This is Shadow. There are no patterns here.
But if what applied to one applied to all, then the Eleventh Law—All things are formed of patterns—must also apply.
Ean knew he hadn’t an infinity of time to solve this mystery. Already he could sense the barrier portioning off his mind thinning. How long would his will survive—how long would his mind survive—if both he and Darshan were being simultaneously drained?
Ean flung his awareness through the revenant’s consciousness—as much as such an entity could lay claim to consciousness—seeking anything that resembled a pattern. But this was no human; it wasn’t even eidola. It seemed little more than an accumulated mass of energized clay lumped into humanoid shape.
Yet some lifeforce had to be animating it�
��driving it; something instilled it with this ravenous need. So where was that intention within the fabric of its existence? And if it was an instilled intention, mustn’t it assume some design? All Ean saw within the revenant’s awareness were liquid shadows.
Ean had shared minds with both Pelas and Darshan; he’d witnessed them using their power innately, molding it to their intent. He’d seen no patterns associated with those workings. But all those months ago, when he’d found the pattern that enabled his own ability to see other patterns, in that deriving he’d proven that even innate workings assumed some design.
What was it he’d learned about Warlocks that seemed suddenly relevant? His mind was getting dull around the edges, the borderlands between analytical thought and numb disability narrowing, the two compartments of his mind beginning to merge.
Ean desperately forced himself to focus.
Innate…something about innate—no, inverteré. Warlocks worked inverteré patterns. And that was important…why?
Something reminded him of Darshan’s imprisoning field around Nadia—deyjiin and elae in balance. They were opposites, the two powers, create and destroy, positive to negative.
Positive to negative…
Ean realized exactly what he was seeing when he looked at the shadows within the revenant’s awareness.
In searching for patterns, he’d been looking for the kind of shadows cast upon the water; instead, he should’ve been focusing on the shadows filtering beneath the surface—inverteré. These were the patterns native to Shadow.
Ean again dove beneath the waves of the revenant’s consciousness, seeking those shadows—patterns in negative. He’d just found what he thought he was looking for when that wall portioning off his mind finally fell.
Pain, numbness, shock—a host of blighting sensations flooded him. Ean mentally dragged his awareness into the equivalent of a lifeboat—nay, a piece of a boat, flotsam on the surf—and started swimming towards the pattern. He latched onto it with everything he had…but he still didn’t know how to unmake it.
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