by Gregory Ashe
Chapter Forty-three
Erlandr felt the power of taul thudding through him, a twisting in the air where his fingers had traced it, counterpoint to the pinpoint of shadow that still lay at his heart. Some piece of the rent still held onto him.
Adence watched him. The silver-blue glow of Cemilian sorcery that surrounded his hand was almost imperceptible in the ruddy light. Neither man moved. Neither spoke the hepisteis that would shape the raging energy that the cheira had opened.
Erlandr’s fingers twitched. He could not hold taul open much longer. The energy needed shape, form. That was the irony that every practitioner could appreciate. Chaos always sought a channel to direct it.
Movement caught his eye. The flames swished and parted, revealing the smoky vision of the Apsian street on the other side of the rent. Through the darkness came a man, skin tight and spotted with age, hair white and brittle. He moved quickly, though, with the grace of a man a quarter of his age. A practitioner of some standing to have bridged the rent even that briefly. To have recognized the rent, though, to have felt it reopen in the city, that spoke more highly of his skill. And yet, this was not the man Erlandr had seen in the street earlier that day. This man could have been his grandfather. Fire rushed back to close behind the man as he reached the garden. For a moment Erlandr thought he saw a second shape outlined against the inferno, but it vanished, and he forgot it as the man spoke.
“What is this abomination?” he said in Jaecan. There was something familiar about him, but Erlandr could not place it. “It must be shut, immediately.”
“This is the man?” Adence asked. The unknown cheiron still shimmered, its light almost gone. Adence had not relaxed.
“No,” Erlandr said. “Who are you?” It did not make any sense; the man who had betrayed them must come, if he were in the city. Instead this desiccated cadaver had arrived, threatening to ruin everything. “What do you want here? This is none of your concern.”
“Who opened this?” the man said. “You rip a hole in reality wide enough for a carrack to sail through and then sit there watching it eat up the world around it? Ishahb burn you both if you think I’ll stand by and let that happen. It must be closed immediately.”
“Who are you?” Adence said, his voice suddenly hard. “Why do I know your voice, even after all these years?”
“You do not know me,” the other man shrieked. “You cannot know me. It is impossible.”
“Bloody Bel,” Erlandr said, taking a step back. A memory fought to surface at the back of his mind. It was the betrayer—Fashim, the name came to him abruptly—and yet not him at the same time. He was a version of the man Erlandr had once known, but twisted and rotted with time, a corpse ill-preserved. “What are you doing here, Fashim? What did you do to us?”
“Fashim,” Adence said. The old man rubbed one hand at his eyes, the light of the cheiron fading. “Naea. You killed Naea.” The words were faint, though, barely audible above the roar of eternity.
“No,” Fashim said, his voice terrible and seductive at the same time, ringing like a stone down a bottomless well. Erlandr froze, captive by that voice. He saw the cheiron then, pulsing like a wound in the air. “Erlandr killed her. You remember, don’t you? You always feared it, that you would fail her, because you were always so much weaker than her. You could do nothing to save her, and when she was gone, you were nothing—less than nothing, because you could not even kill the man who had taken everything from you.”
The edge of the enchantment brushed Erlandr as it took hold of Adence, and for a moment he felt the sickening fear, the desperate loneliness, the self-loathing that the thing who had been Fashim described. Then it passed, but Erlandr’s throat was raw, and he realized he had been matching Adence scream for scream, caught in a web of sorcery that was irresistible.
Adence’s eyes were rolled back in his head. The old man thrashed and flailed like a puppet in the hands of a toddler. He dropped to the ground.
Fashim turned to Erlandr. “And you. I was foolish; I thought the enmity between the two of you would be enough, and yet you have dragged out your miserable lives all these years. And you have dragged me with you!” He screamed the last words. “Year after year, my life drained away by the rent, until I was nothing more than bones and flesh, and I cannot die. All because of you! If the old fool had killed you, I would have been free.”
“You wanted me to open the rent,” Erlandr said, forcing the words from his aching throat. “You tricked me, used me. You could not do it yourself.” The words came slowly, half-remembered accusations from a century before, but they came.
“It is a gateway to eternity,” Fashim said. “A doorway to eternal life. And you let it become a sinkhole of life, taking away what it was supposed to give. I will finish with you and let the old man do what he came here to do. And then I will be free to step through the rent myself.”
“He won’t do it,” Erlandr said, but he knew the words were a lie. Adence, on the ground now, still twitched, but his screams had ceased. The enchantment was running its course.
“He will,” Fashim said. “When the memories are fresh in his mind, when the fear is at its sharpest. Then he will do anything not to face it. The way you would do anything not to face Tise, not to remember the feel of your hands around her throat in that dark alley after you caught her. You could still smell the stink of her lover on her, of flesh pressed to flesh in summer heat.”
“It’s not true,” Erlandr said. He shaped a cheiron, but it slipped away from his fumbling mind. The old fear gripped him. Her smile when that farmboy had crossed her path. The way her hand lingered on the butcher’s muscled forearm for half a heartbeat too long. Her eyes as she tucked her hair behind one ear and blushed at a sailor’s ribald comment when she passed. The spell caught threads of memory, long-buried fears, and wove them together. How could Tise not have a lover?
Erlandr’s own screams choked him. He could not breathe, but the cry of grief continued, forced out from somewhere deep inside him, from a pit of fear below his gut. He would die now, at Fashim’s hands, the death that should have come a century before. Erlandr clawed at the ground. He fought against the mindless panic, against the grief that swallowed him up, but it washed back over him. An enchantment, he thought. It’s only an enchantment. But the thought slipped away beneath the tide of fear, and Erlandr found himself lost, alone, as life left his body.
He could see her face now, that overly large nose, those eyes as deep as the void. She looked out at him from beyond the rent. Flames, dull now, swirled past her like shadows on glass. It made no sense, seeing her like this. There she stood, a dozen spans from him, dark eyes pleading. Help me, Erlandr begged. Nothing.
Erlandr made one last effort. He fought the enchantment. Like a man in dark waters, he thrashed, searching for the surface. Her face flashed before him again as she tucked her hair behind one ear and smiled at the sailor. Her hair. As dark as night.
Her hair had not been that dark since before they wed; she had begun to go gray just months after they met.
He found the thread of the spell.
It was woven like a spider’s web, an intricate pattern surrounding him, but Erlandr had hold of it. It slipped and threatened to slide from his grasp, but he pulled, forcing himself through it, until suddenly he was free. Darkness washed over him, replacing the cycle of images.
Erlandr rolled over and pushed himself up. The flames of the rent had died away almost to nothing, but there was no sign of Tise. The air behind Erlandr whistled and he threw himself to the ground.
A ball of flame whooshed past him to disappear into the rent. Erlandr scrambled into a strand of rosebushes, their petals crumbling to ash—a side-effect of the parakein—as he jostled them. He traced taul, the air rippling in waves around his fingers, and spoke the hepisteis. The air thickened in front of him. Another ball of flame shot toward him, sending a ruddy light through the dying rosebushes, but it struck Erlandr’s barrier and fizzled with a puff of smoke. <
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A crash and a shout of surprise sounded in the garden. Erlandr stood, taul still pouring chaos into him, only to see Fashim struggling on the ground with someone. Erlandr could feel Fashim’s open cheiron; it would not take him long to dispose of his new assailant.
As Erlandr ran to find Adence, praying to the Sisters that he was not too late, he felt the air contract and then explode outward, sending leaves and small limbs whirling through the garden. A branch struck Erlandr’s brow, sending sparks dancing in front of his eyes and a line of fire across his forehead. Blood, warm and fragrant, ran down his temple and the side of his face. More shouts sounded behind Erlandr. They cut off with another crash. Silence.
Between a pair of elms he saw Adence sprawled on the ground. Erlandr traced taul, forcing the cheiron open again. His mind was fuzzy, in part from the blow, in part from having drawn so much energy through himself. Taul flickered, threatening to collapse in on itself. Erlandr forced it open, yanking power through it, shaping it with the hepisteis. The spell wrapped itself around the old man, eating through the thick web of enchantment that still held him bound.
Adence let out a ragged cough and gasped in air. He rolled onto his side, shaking as if with fever.
“Get up, old man,” Erlandr said. “Fashim’s still here, and we’ll be bloody lucky if the two of us can keep him from ripping the rent wide open.”
Still shaking, Adence pushed himself to his feet. He leaned against one of the twisted elms. Its last few leaves fell, turning to dust as they touched his shoulder. The old man sucked in deep breaths, his face almost as white as his stringy hair.
“Bel take me,” he said, his voice rough. “Bel take me, it wasn’t you.”
“I told you it wasn’t me,” Erlandr said. He could feel old memories still bubbling up beneath the surface, but he did not pay them any attention. I’ve already done enough damage by bringing up the past, he thought. No need to become that man again. “We can both apologize later. For now, open a bloody cheiron.”
Adence drew an unfamiliar shape in the air, silvery-blue energy following his fingers in faint wisps. Erlandr recognized the reek of Cemilian sorcery, but it was not as strong as usual. Adence looked better though, even having just drawn the cheiron. Bloody Cemilians, Erlandr thought. “You’re Bel-blessed lucky that Cemil stumbled onto that particular pocket of chaos.”
“It will keep me on my feet for now,” Adence said. “Although I think there may be permanent damage; I can’t seem to breathe properly.”
“Trust that bastard to work up something nastier than ever,” Erlandr said. “It’s not bad enough to live your worst fears; he wants you to scream your lungs out while you do.”
“Efficient,” Adence said. His dark eyes roamed the garden as he spoke, and his hands were steadier.
“He always was, at that,” Erlandr said. The words, spoken instinctively, stirred loose more memories, but Erlandr shied away from them.
“There,” Adence said. He spoke a hepistys and a shimmer field of Cemilian blue-and-white raced out from one hand. Where it touched trees and bushes it stuck fast, sending shadows and silvery light writhing through the garden. At the center of the garden, a man stood, coated in the shimmering substance. He let out a howl.
“Nice,” Erlandr said.
“Down!” Adence shouted. He fell, one bony hand dragging Erlandr after him.
A razor-thin blade of light swept through the air where they had stood. The elms let out twin groans and, with a long crack, split in half. The leafless branches crashed to the ground. Erlandr slid out from under the fallen trunk. The cut edge was smoother than any saw could have made it, as if it had been sanded and polished.
Adence still lay under the tree trunks, invisible in the shadows cast by the silvery material that coated the trees, but Erlandr could hear him muttering hepisteis. A crackling noise caught Erlandr’s ear. The grass near Adence crinkled and stiffened, turning white as frost enveloped it. Like a river released from a dam, the frost sprang forward, racing across the ground toward the silver-blue outline of Fashim.
Erlandr traced taul again; it had closed when Adence dragged him to the ground. The cheiron opened, but slowly, and Erlandr struggled to focus the chaotic rush into the channel of the hepisteis. There were no dead here for him to summon, no spirits who, whether out of interest or malice, were lingering to observe the course of human events. Within the rent, the dead were silent. Gone. It was what made Erlandr suspect, even after his failures, that the rent held the secret to the realm of the dead.
The thoughts flashed through his mind and were gone, pushed away by the invisible energy that made the air around his hands throb. Erlandr spoke the hepisteis, forcing the flood of power through the carefully-wrought structure of the spell. It blazed to life, a flaming construct that tumbled in the air above one palm, like a child’s toy of red wire. Erlandr breathed between the lines of scorching heat, and his breath congealed, a blue-black sphere at the center of the construct. With a toss of his hand, he sent the flickering globe flying into the air.
He could feel a part of himself follow after it, a piece of his life-force that he had trapped in the sphere. Erlandr had fought Khaman sorcerers before, and although Fashim was nastier than most, Erlandr knew, in general what to expect—although that trick with the light had been new. Darkness would be Fashim’s next move.
The frost had struck some sort of invisible ward, forming a thin half-circle of ice. Judging by the thick cracks in the ice, and the silvered light that streamed out from between them, Adence’s spell had packed more of a punch than Erlandr had expected. It was easy to underestimate the old man; Adence did it to himself so often that Erlandr had come to believe it himself.
“Get ready for the counter,” Erlandr said. The words felt strangely hollow, with a piece of his life gone, but they were loud enough.
“Shadow,” Adence said in a low voice. The faintest blue-white light showed from under the broken trees. Adence was working up his own defense. Good, Erlandr thought; the fire construct would not help the old man.
For one long heartbeat the silver-blue light that Adence had cast on the trees and Fashim shone, unwavering. Almost imperceptibly the long, stark shadows began to shift, creeping across the ground at first. The shadows picked up speed and raced forward. In a matter of moments the garden had gone dark. Only the dull, slow-swirling flames marked the edge of the rent; everything else was black.
Except the fire construct. It swirled through the air, fueled by chaos and by Erlandr’s frozen life-force, almost unnoticeable against the columns of flame that surged in the rent. It was an old trick among Kajan practitioners. Trap a bit of life—not a soul, no, that could cause damage, but a fragment, a piece of the whole—and send it somewhere else for a time. Kajan sorcery could not do much with illusion, but give it a piece of soul, well—it was perhaps time to remind Fashim why Erlandr had been called the Brilliant Flame.
Erlandr cracked open awa, letting a trickle of power rush into him. Not too much; he didn’t want to force Fashim’s hand. He reached out, grabbed the piece of soul, and pulled.
The garden blurred around him as he was yanked across the intervening space, passing through trees and bushes as though they were air, his bodies less substantial than mist. He landed on the opposite side of the garden. The construct flared and circled him. Erlandr left the life-force trapped for the moment. The whole process took less than a heartbeat, but almost instantly Erlandr heard the crackle of thick, vicious sorcery strike where he had just been standing. He had barely escaped. No scream followed. Adence must have avoided it somehow.
Erlandr opened tan, more power this time, but not enough to draw Fashim’s attention—he hoped. It opened easily, the ripples of Kajan chaos sending unseen waves through the darkness. Erlandr shaped them with his breath, with the hepisteis, weakening the fabric of the illusion that held the garden. For several slow breaths, Erlandr heard nothing but his own heart. The illusion shuddered, the structure of the enchantment weaken
ing under his patient attack, and for a moment Erlandr could see again in the ruddy light of the rent. Darkness fell again almost immediately.
A faint whistle was his only warning. Erlandr threw himself to the ground and rolled. Blistering heat followed him, scorching his back and side until it cut off abruptly.
“I saw you,” Fashim called, his voice lilting and mad.
Somewhere to my right. Erlandr slammed open taul, ripping power through the cheiron, and sent it raging toward Fashim through a single hepistys. Kajan chaos, in only the crudest trappings of form, ripped through the garden, devouring plants, tree, grass, insects—devouring life. A muffled scream rang in the air. Erlandr collapsed, shaking, mind numb from the dusky energy that had poured through him.
The darkness gripping the garden vanished.
Erlandr pulled himself to his feet, refusing to look at the burns that covered his back and side. His eyes scoured the garden for Fashim and found the man a moment later.
Fashim still stood, his paper-tight skin covered with raw ulcers, large patches of flesh missing. Yet he stood, sustained by whatever he had done in the rent. The Jaecan raised one hand, tracing a cheiron in the air.
Erlandr could feel the power rushing through the other man, could feel the spell building. It was over; Erlandr had no more fight left in him. Adence was dead, or had abandoned him, as he should have done decades ago. Tise was dead, or had abandoned him as well, vanishing back into whatever eternal realm held her. Erlandr was alone. Death, in the eyes of the Jaecan traitor, stared at him. For the first time in his life, Erlandr smiled back.
It happened almost too quickly to be seen. A spear of blue and white light slammed into Fashim. The Jaecan sorcerer’s cheiron collapsed in on itself, and his frail, desiccated body slumped forward, held up only by the spear. A man burst from the bushes, sword whipping through the air to connect with Fashim’s neck. The blue and white spear flickered out. Fashim’s body, head hanging from a flap of skin, tumbled into a bed of lilies that burst into a pile of dust as he touched them.
Erlandr felt the garden spin around him. The pain in his side was too great; it had grown into something dark and hot that pressed on his mind. Erlandr fell into darkness. His last thought was to wonder who in the world was in the garden with them.