But it would never have been enough, if not for the Boundary.
Caeden frowned. He’d always had doubts, but something had changed after the beginning of the Andarran invasion. Sometime after what had happened with the Jha’vett in Deilannis, he’d given the surviving Andarrans the secret to creating the wall of energy, even if they never actually knew that it had come from him.
He closed his eyes, breathing deeply. The air here was more stale than in Andarra, hotter and danker and heavier than anywhere outside of the ilshara. It was familiar, though. Every lungful brought back more memories.
After a few moments he shook his head, touching the blade at his side for reassurance. There was a lot to sort through, a lot to understand—but now wasn’t the time. The others, if they were here, would undoubtedly have detected his entry into the city. The Portal Box gave off too much energy for them not to have noticed.
Still, as he peered cautiously back into the main hall of the Citadel, there was nothing. No movement. No one rushing to detain him.
He thought for a moment and then hurried back inside, through the hall and down a set of winding stairs to the left. He briefly checked the way ahead with kan to ensure that he wasn’t going to run into someone on the journey down, grimacing at the amount of effort it took to even grasp here.
The spiraling staircase took him nearly to the ground; he emerged onto a short, steeply inclined street, the ground underfoot solid ashen rock.
“Tal’kamar.”
Caeden stiffened, then turned to face the man who had evidently been waiting for him.
“Meldier.” Caeden met the older man’s gaze steadily, trying not to show the panic that was flashing through him. “You made it back.”
Meldier eyed Caeden warily. “Once I was free of the Plains, Lethaniel found me easily enough.”
Lethaniel. One of the sha’teth. Like Echoes but more self-aware, able to act of their own will and able to use kan. Capable of things that not even the Venerate were able to do. Caeden had given them a new set of bindings, turned them to the Venerate’s side after the Gifted had created them. He’d had to, in order to excuse yet another journey across the Boundary.
He’d managed to build some safeguards into those bindings. Not many, though.
Meldier clearly saw the recognition in his eyes because he immediately took a step back, hand going to the hilt of his blade.
“And you have remembered.” He cocked his head to the side. “I have not raised the alarm with the others, because I wanted to have this conversation with you first. So, Tal’kamar? Are you still so certain that you are on the right side?”
Caeden hesitated.
For all that had come back to him recently, despite everything, Caeden knew that he had never felt certain.
“No,” he said softly.
Meldier betrayed a flicker of surprise, though he eventually nodded.
“Honesty,” he said quietly. “Good. You are more … you than last we spoke, then.” He remained wary, though. “Does that mean that you are reconsidering?”
Caeden shook his head slowly. He could have tried to deceive Meldier, could have tried to get close enough to use Licanius without a fight … but Meldier was too wise by far to fall for something like that.
And more importantly, Meldier had been a friend, once. Even if Caeden had thought that it would succeed, he wouldn’t do that to him.
“I remember El telling me to create the Plains.” Caeden watched Meldier closely. “He did it so that the Darecians would come here, find the rift and try to use it. Put machinery around it that could break it wide open and release him.”
“That was never in dispute, Tal.” Meldier held his gaze. “He did it because it was the only way to change the fate of this world.” He swallowed, his expression earnest. “The things I said to you on the Plains … El knows that I was angry, but they remain true. I am not angry that you did as El asked—I am angry that you are trying to make that act be without meaning. You cannot take the weight of the Plains upon yourself, Tal. This prison was made to make our actions inevitable, and even in following El, we are only doing His will rather than Shammaeloth’s. We are the blade, Tal’kamar. We are not the hand that wields it.”
We are not the hand that wields it.
Caeden felt his muscles tighten at the phrase. Meldier must have seen something in his eyes because he stepped back, suddenly looking afraid.
“You’re wrong.” Caeden walked forward, abruptly feeling more sure of himself. “We are the hand, Meldier. These are our choices. Maybe El is right and Shammaeloth has usurped his creation in order to make every action inevitable. Perhaps we really are all just cogs in the machinery of El’s prison. But he convinced me to kill millions, and he ultimately did it by offering me something that I desperately wanted.” His voice shook slightly. “Even if I was always meant to make that choice—even if Shammaeloth or God or whomever we want to say set all of this into motion exists—it was my choice.”
Meldier scowled. “You shoulder blame where none is due, Tal. If I take a bird, clip its wings, and toss it from a cliff—is it then the bird’s choice to fall? Because that is what has been done to us. Our every moment from birth has been guided, prepared, set up in such a way as to ensure a very particular outcome. And choice is meaningless if it cannot affect the outcome.” He shook his head. “If you truly remember—then how can you doubt Him? Doubt His power, doubt His story?”
“I do not doubt his power.” Caeden clenched his fists. “And perhaps he is even a god, Meldier. But he is not one we should be following. He is not one who can be trusted.”
Meldier said nothing for a few moments, then sighed heavily.
“Then it is decided,” he said regretfully.
He drew his sword.
“I don’t want to fight you.” Caeden stepped backward, half drawing Licanius from its sheath. “We were friends, Meldier.”
“Friends. Enemies.” Meldier smiled sadly. “We have known each other for thousands of years, Tal’kamar. We are men. We have been both.”
Caeden grimaced, his heart dropping. “I still don’t want to do this.”
Meldier watched Caeden sadly. “Then don’t.”
He gestured.
Five enormous, twisting columns of kan erupted from the ground in a circle around Caeden, hundreds of thick black threads entwining to create each one. They hurtled fifty feet into the air, towering over Caeden before the sharp-edged tips curled back downward.
Streaked toward Caeden in an unthinkable torrent of dark energy.
Caeden snatched himself from time, breathing hard as he watched the tentacles inexorably reaching down toward him. Even with Licanius in his hand, kan was hard to control here, and those grasping threads were going to be on him in moments. This wasn’t something that Meldier had simply conjured—not here, not with how difficult it was to handle kan in the first place. This was something that he’d planned, knowing that Caeden would eventually come to Ilshan Gathdel Teth.
This was a trap.
Caeden stepped forward, slashing desperately with Licanius at the nearest column, his vision all but filled by the wall of writhing kan. Even as the black lines dissolved and Caeden saw Meldier standing calmly beyond, the first tip of another of the columns touched him.
He gasped as the kan drained into him, cold and dark and insidious.
His time bubble dissipated and the remaining three columns flooded into him, too, though there was no pain. He stood for a moment, frozen, waiting for something more to happen.
“What did you do?” he breathed eventually, reeling. The kan was just sitting there inside him, like ice flowing through his blood.
“Did you think that we wouldn’t prepare for you?” Meldier asked grimly. “You might have stopped some of it, Tal, but it wasn’t enough.”
He vanished.
Caeden stepped out of time again, acting on pure instinct, spinning as Meldier’s sword came slicing toward the hand that held Licanius.
Pain ricocheted through his head.
It had happened the moment he’d touched kan, he knew, but he snarled and ignored it as best he could. He threw out a quick blast of Essence at Meldier’s face but the other man didn’t bother moving; the bolt dissolved before it got within a foot of its target.
Caeden gritted his teeth. Even with Licanius, it was taking every ounce of his concentration to move past the pain and grip kan, to keep the flow of time at bay.
Meldier pressed forward, faster than Caeden now. How the man was managing that level of control without Licanius, here beyond the Boundary, Caeden had no idea.
The Venerate attacked again and Caeden defended desperately, so focused on keeping Meldier’s thrumming blade from his skin that he didn’t have enough time to respond with either kan or Essence.
Meldier finally eased up, eyes cold and frustrated as he stepped back. He clearly hadn’t anticipated that Caeden would last this long.
Caeden suddenly knew what he was about to do and threw out a web of suppressing kan, but the knives tore through his mind again and he was too slow. A blazing bolt sizzled into the sky, illuminating everything within miles a heavy, burning orange.
He cursed. There wasn’t much time until the others got here.
He knew that running was probably the best course of action now.
Instead, he attacked.
Meldier’s eyes went wide as Caeden let his instincts take over. Ignoring the furious pain in his head, he stretched out his palm; pulsing needles of Essence began streaming from it, swarming as if alive, surrounded by minute, delicate strands of kan. Meldier threw up another barrier but this time the attack sliced through it. Meldier screamed as several of the needles struck his face, blistering wherever they touched. One hit him in the eye in an explosion of viscous fluid and he stumbled backward, almost falling.
Caeden only had time for a sliver of relief before Meldier straightened, his vision already healed.
Caeden’s heart dropped. Even with Licanius, the constant, near-unbearable pain meant that he didn’t have long before time would wash back over him, and this would all be over.
Meldier gestured and an arrow of twisting kan flew toward Caeden. Caeden knew that if it reached him it would burn through his mind; moving on instinct alone he met it with a creation of his own, not a simple shield but a complex, multilayered arrangement that smashed into the spiraling kan and altered it.
Meldier screamed again, but this time it was more than simple agony.
The other man fell to the ground, eyes wide and suddenly terrified, his spinning defenses vanished. “No,” he choked as Caeden let time crash back into him, then moved forward to stand over his opponent. “Please, Tal’kamar.”
Caeden gazed at Meldier, a deep sadness heavy in his chest.
He stepped forward to use Licanius, and the movement saved him.
Pain lanced through his back as the blade swung from behind scored deep, raking along his shoulders. He fell, Licanius slipping from his grasp, noting almost absently that Essence was not rushing to heal the wound as it should have been. He collapsed on top of Meldier but was aware enough to smash his elbow into the man’s face, then rolled to the side the moment that he hit and snatched Licanius back up again.
He got only the impression of flashing steel before his right arm burned with a deep cut; he growled as he came to his feet, stumbling a little. Meldier was still on the ground, unconscious from Caeden’s last blow.
His vision cleared enough to see Isiliar, red hair wild, her eyes wide and blade dripping blood.
Caeden staggered, holding up a hand half in warning, half in petition. “Isil—”
Before he could even finish her name the Venerate was moving forward, teeth bared, sure and smooth despite the mania behind her stare. Her blade flicked out just as he forced his way through the pain in his head and regained his control over time, scrambling backward as Isiliar’s blade scored a deep, sparking mark in the black stone wall where Caeden’s head had just been.
Then Isiliar was upon him again, and Caeden knew immediately that he was no match for her. Whatever advantages Licanius gave him were nullified by the screaming pain that echoed through his head as he touched kan. Just like in Alkathronen, it was all he could do to fend off her blows. His back burned; small cuts began to appear on his arms, his chest, his face as Isiliar’s blade whirred forward again and again and again.
None of his injuries healed now.
Sweat stung Caeden’s tired eyes but he was unwilling to blink in case he gave Isiliar an opening; he gasped for air as he fell steadily back against the onslaught, Licanius growing heavier and heavier in his hands. Against Meldier, Caeden had at least felt capable. Not confident, but still with the slim hope that he might emerge from the fight alive.
There was no chance for such optimism here.
After what seemed like minutes Isiliar finally broke off, snarling with frustration. Caeden didn’t even have enough energy to try and press the attack, simply grateful for the momentary respite as he desperately sucked in lungfuls of air. It wouldn’t last long, though. Isiliar was rushing, almost manically eager to finish him, trying to end the fight with every blow. If she had been her usual, methodical self, he would already have lost.
From the steely aspect that was creeping into her fury-filled gaze, he suspected that she knew the same thing.
He stumbled backward a little, wiping his forehead with a sleeve. The worst part—even through the pain and fear—was that he understood the raw rage in her eyes … and he couldn’t blame her. Whenever he looked at her, he saw the broken reflection of the woman that he had trapped in the Tributary two thousand years ago. The friend whom he had betrayed, and so utterly destroyed in the process.
Isiliar lifted her blade once again, stepping forward.
“Isiliar. Please. Please … forgive me for what I did,” he wheezed at her as he held his blade up to defend once again.
Isiliar froze.
“Forgive?” she breathed in disbelief, the word a curse on her lips. “Forgive? No. No.” There was silence as she shook her head dazedly, and there were tears glistening in her eyes. “El take you, Tal’kamar. This is my forgiveness.”
She stepped back, gesturing in the air, and Caeden suddenly knew what she was doing.
Feeling sick to his stomach, he reached deep past the pain one last time and grasped at kan.
Another complex structure. Another counteraction. He knew exactly what it would do this time, knew that he’d designed it precisely to fight Isiliar. This was her terrible weapon, the one that she didn’t think anyone could beat.
They released their creations at the same time.
A wall of flame raced toward Caeden. Met his kan. Paused.
Reversed course.
Swept inward.
Consumed Isiliar in a torrent of fire and screaming and blood.
Caeden could feel tears in his eyes as he staggered over to her. Isiliar’s skin was charred, blackened. She was sobbing through cracked lips, and her eyes rolled upward to meet his.
Caeden knelt down beside her.
“I am so sorry, Is,” he said softly. Her eyes, for the first time, were not full of hate. Regret, perhaps. But no longer madness. “I wronged you, and …” He swallowed down the lump in his throat. “I wronged you.”
Before she could regenerate, he gently drew Licanius across her throat.
He collapsed beside her body, everything a haze of pain and grief, for … a minute? Two? Thousands of years of life, and he had just snuffed it out. Tears flowed freely down his face as he looked at Isiliar. He knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that the danger was far from over—but the emotional and physical toll was too great. Whatever Meldier had done to him seemed to be restricting his healing, slowing it. He could feel everything knitting back together but it was not going anywhere near fast enough.
Finally he dragged himself to his feet and tried to stumble forward, but it was too much. He was losing too much bl
ood. His vision swam and he collapsed again, resting his hand against a nearby wall. He grasped for kan but Licanius, for some reason, didn’t help this time. Behind him, he could hear something moving, someone groaning. Meldier.
He tried to turn, squinting in the garish orange light still hovering high above.
Dark energy crashed into the base of his skull, and he knew no more.
Chapter 47
Davian covered his mouth, restraining a cough as he tried not to breathe too deeply of the dank stench of the tunnel.
The smell had gotten steadily worse as they’d gone deeper, air ripe with a thick, unidentifiable sweetly sick tang that burned his lungs. Beside him, Fessi maintained her grip on his shoulder but was using her other hand to press a cloth against her mouth, looking ill.
They moved carefully forward, wary of every turn in the increasingly narrow passageway. This part of the tunnel system seemed natural rather than hewn; only the ground underfoot was smooth, scratched and worn from what appeared to be constant traversal. The only light came from the sliver of Essence that Davian maintained in front of them, a tiny ball that barely showed them what lay a few feet ahead.
Partly that was due to caution, but it was also because Davian had very little Essence to draw on. With no torches, no plants, no energy anywhere around—and kan being so difficult to grasp—it was, quite simply, the best that he could currently do.
After a few minutes of tense silence, a split in the tunnel revealed itself.
An Echo of Things to Come Page 71